Ten things wherein one doeth good to oneself
(1) One doeth good to oneself by abandoning worldly
conventions and devoting one- self to the Holy Dharma.
(2) One doeth good
to oneself by departing from home and kindred and attaching oneself to a guru
of saintly character.
(3) One doeth good to oneself by relinquishing worldly
activities and devoting one- self to the three religious activities, - hearing,
reflecting, and meditating [upon the chosen teachings].
(4) One doeth good
to oneself by giving up social intercourse and dwelling alone in solitude.
(5) One doeth good to oneself renouncing desire for luxury and ease and enduring
hardship.
(6) One doeth good to oneself by being contented with simple things
and free from craving for worldly possessions.
(7) One doeth good to oneself
by making and firmly adhering to the resolution not to take advantage of others.
(8) One doeth good to oneself by attaining freedom from hankering after the
transitory pleasures of this life and devoting oneself to the realization of the
eternal bliss of Nirvana.
(9) One doeth good to oneself by abandoning attachment
to visible material things [which are transitory and un- real] and attaining knowledge
of Reality.
(10) One doeth good to oneself by preventing the three doors
to knowledge [the body, the speech, and the mind]
from remaining spiritually
undisciplined and by acquiring, through right use of them, the Twofold Merit.
************************************************************************************************
Everything
Is Cognition-Only
In the following passage from the Compendium
of the Great Vehicle (Mahayana-samgraha), Asanga indicates that all objects of
perception are cognition-only.
The reasoning [that the doctrine of cognition-only
is proven by both scripture and reasoning] is also indicated by this scripture
[i.e., the Sutra Explaining the Thought]. When the mind is in meditative equipoise,
in terms of whatever images that are objects of knowledge--blue and so forth--that
are seen, the mind is seen. Blue and so forth are not objects that are different
from mind. By this reasoning, bodhisattvas should infer that all cognitions are
cognition-only.
************************************************************************************************
'The
Path to Happiness'
A Dhamma Talk by Sogyal Rinpoche
Presented
by the RIGPA Fellowship (Melbourne)
Thursday 13 February 2003
Dallas Brooks
Centre
300 Albert Street, East Melbourne 3001
This paper was written by:
Mr Julian Bamford BA AppRec
Director, Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey)
Ltd.
President, Chan Academy Australia
Secretary, Standing Committee on
Publication, Publicity, Education, Culture and Arts, World Fellowship of Buddhists
Assistant
Editor, Longhair Australian News
Assistant Editor, Brooking Street Bugle
Presenter,
Buddhist Hour Radio Broadcast
The paper was published on 3 March 2003.
It
is from notes made of Sogyal Rinpoches talk and attempts to relate the main themes
of the talk and where able capture as closely as possible the Rinpoche's words,
anecdotes and stories.
The writer humbly apologises for any error
or misinterpretation that he may have made in his note takings and requests the
understanding of the Rinpoche, the great Teachers and the reader.
May the
blessings of the triple gem bless you
1. An Introduction to Sogyal
Rinpoche and the Dhamma Talk 'The Path to Happiness'
A representative from RIGPA Melbourne welcomed the guests and audience of over 850 persons to the Public Dhamma Talk by Sogyal Rinpoche at the Dallas Brooks Centre in Melbourne on 13 February 2003.
The Chan Academy Australia's Resident Practitioners and Buddha Dhamma Teachers John and Anita Hughes attended the talk as special guests of RIGPA Melbourne. Our Chan Academy Australia President Mr. Julian Bamford was their driver and attendant for the evening.
John and Anita met with fellow guests Sandup, and Dr. Ranjith Hettiarachi from the Buddhist Foundation (Vic) Australia, a Regional Centre of the World Fellowship of Buddhists. Also in the audience were our Centre's Members and friends Julie O'Donnell, Rani Hughes, Jocelyn Hughes and Lainie Smallwood.
As part of the introduction the Convenor spoke of Sogyal Rinpoche's work and his program of Buddha Dhamma teachings and meditation retreats at Centres around the world.
In a hands-up poll of the audience about 35% (approximately 280 persons) signalled that they had not heard a Dhamma talk before.
Sogyal Rinpoche's Dhamma teaching programs bring him to Australia each year. His first visit to Australia was in 1985 and our Teacher John D. Hughes recalls attending the Rinpoches first Melbourne talk with some of his students.
2.Buddha Dhamma Teacher,
Translator and Aide to Great Masters
Born in Kham in eastern Tibet, Sogyal Rinpoche was recognised as the incarnation of Lerab Lingpa Terton Sogyal, a teacher to the 13th Dalai Lama, by Jamang Khyentse Chokyi Lodro, one of the most outstanding masters of the twentieth century,
Jamang Khyentse Chokyi Lodro supervised Rinpoche's training. Rinpoche has studied with many masters, of all schools, especially Kyabje Dudjom Rinpoche and Kyabje Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche.
First as a translator and aide to these masters, and then teaching in his own right. He travelled to many countries, observing the reality of people's lives, and searching for how to translate the teachings of Buddha Dhamma to make them relevant to modern men and women, by drawing out their universal message while losing none of their authenticity, purity and power.
Rinpoche is the Teaching Holder of the Lineage of Dogzchen.
He has studied in both the University of Delhi India and the University of Cambridge UK.
His book The Tibetan book of Living and Dying has been published in 26 languages and sold over 1.5 million copies in 54 countries around the world.
It has been adopted by colleges, groups and institutions, both medical and religious, and is used extensively by nurses' doctors and health care professionals.
Sogyal Rinpoche teaches world wide, addressing thousands of people in his teaching programs and is a frequent speaker at major conferences.
There is an annual calendar of retreats and teachings at RIGPA Centres in France, Ireland, Germany, UK and major cities in Australia. Teachings are also provided through RIGPA's Australian 'bush telegraph' network of students.
3.'The Path
to Happiness' and Practice of Dzogchen or "Great Perfection"
The practice of Dzogchen, or "Great Perfection", is the most ancient and direct stream of wisdom within the Buddhist tradition of Tibet. It is considered the very pinnacle of all teachings, and the most immediate path towards enlightenment.
As a way in which to realise the innermost nature of mind, Dzogchen is the clearest, most effective, and most relevant to the modern world. It is the path at once simple and profound, one that can be integrated with ordinary life and practise anywhere.
The Rinpoche explained to the audience in the first minutes of his talk that he was going to give the complete Buddha Dhamma path.
He began with the words:
Looking at the world today...and being human....the main purpose of life is to be happy. All people share that same goal.
Buddhism is all about ultimate happiness or enlightenment. Following the spiritual path. It is nothing more than practice to achieve enlightenment, to be completely free from suffering.
Whatever happiness we have now is only temporary.
Where do we find ultimate happiness within ourselves?
It cannot be found in anything external from ourselves. But unfortunately we spend most of our time looking outside.
As an old story tells: it is as if you have left your elephant at home and gone to look for its footprints in the forest'.
While there is a small percentage of happiness and suffering that comes from outside circumstances, ultimately happiness and suffering depend upon the mind.
The term Dhamma is what Buddhism (or Buddha Dhamma) is all about. It is not so much about religion.
Dhamma can be understood on many levels. At the highest level Dhamma is ultimate truth. It is the absolute, no characteristics, and no methodology, described as 'not even a hairs breadth of teaching'.
At the relative level it is the path leading to that truth. The realisation of the inherent nature of things. Dhamma at the relative level is the means to realisation.
At this point in his talk the Rinpoche asked the audience 'are you 'OK'. He then came down of the stage and stood at the front row of the audience and delivered the whole Dhamma talk from there.
4. The heart of the practice of
Buddha Dhamma.
The Rinpoche commented that while his talk may be called a public talk, in reality he was giving a Dhamma talk. The most essential teaching...the heart of the practice of Buddha Dhamma.
Ultimate truth
is the whole of dhamma.
Dhamma is the ultimate truth itself.
Relative truth or conventional truth is the path to realise the inherent nature of things.
The practise is to realise the inherent nature of everything.
Relative dhamma is to make it more accessible.
This is called ground path foundation.
5. What is the 'Ground' path foundation?
It is this, the original primordial teaching - Buddha nature.
What it speaks of is our potential seed, the seed for enlightenment in all of us.
One ground is that there is not the slightest difference between the Buddha and ourselves.
The second ground is that the Buddha recognised the adventitious stains, the temporary obscuration.
Ground is often represented by the primordial Buddha Sammanthabhadra Buddha.
Always well, always good. Forever unchanging fundamental nature which is unchanging, beyond words and thought.
As an example of primordial nature think of the sky.
In the sky the sun is shining this is like the Buddha.
Even though the sky and the sun may be obscured by cloud they are still there. The sky is still there; the sun is still shining.
The Great Perfection speaks of this very nature. Buddha nature is unstained and pure. At the highest level sooner or later you will get it. By hearing this dhamma teaching just once plants the seed.
There are three qualities: essence, nature and compassion.
Essence is the clear sky
Nature is the clear sun
Compassion is the shining of the sun - outwardly in all directions this is what compassion is like.
The whole point or purpose for following this path is to become like this.
Every being has the Buddha nature.
But our minds are rooted in ignorance - and the destructiveness of emotions brings negative kamma. Being like this, clouds our original nature our true nature.
6. Following a means
of realising your true nature.
Buddha Dhamma is not about dogma - it is about following a means of realising your true nature.
There are three qualities or grounds. They are true nature, nature of truth, and the nature of Lord Buddha.
Essence is empty
Nature is cognisant
Compassion
is confidence
Essence is sometimes described as shunyatta - great openness.
In mathematics if there were no 'zero' there would be nothing. The origin of zero is a topic that India's past Prime Minister Nehru talked about in his book.
Emptiness or shunyata.
As an example it could be described as teaching or study in a very scholarly way. It is so rich. When we practise it has to become essential. Practice is experiential.
Way of teaching: da (permanence) che (non existence) brahva (real).
Truth is nature is the whole of nihilism and externalism.
The trouble is that because something exists we think it is permanent. An example is this glass of water.
You look at it, you see it here in my hand, you think it must be permanent. But what if it drops to the floor and breaks. Then breaks into smaller and smaller bits down to the size of an atom. And even atoms can be broken down until there is just light and energy.
It is not permanent even though it appears so.
Nothing is independently existing. If you and I would be permanent we wouldn't die.
We are nature and nature is impermanent. Then we might say its nothing.
But it is not nothing either.
It appears because of many causes and conditions that each being creates for himself or herself.
This is what is called dependant origination.
In the Heart Sutra and the Prajna Paramita it is noted that form is emptiness - emptiness is form.
7. The practical
benefits of discovering impermanence
What then is the practical benefit of this?
When you realise impermanence it helps us to let go of our attachments and grasping.
When a person has ignorance they believe that things are permanent, so then they grasp at them.
When they realise that things are impermanent then they will stop their attachment.
Love is not attachment. When a person grows more in freedom and letting go, from this action comes real love.
When you destroy an atom it releases tremendous energy.
When we destroy attachment it releases compassion.
When we realise impermanence we can let go and become free.
At the same time knowing that things are not permanent and not nothing.
Because of inter-dependence whatever words we say or think the resulting kamma is our own.
Nagajuna said: we are our own past.
Buddha said if you want to know your past, then look at your present.
Whatever we say or do, we have to be responsible, particularly what we think.
The Buddha's words in the Dhammapada stated: we are what we think.
8.
Mind is not just mind, it is also heart.
We are what we think - all that we are, misery and happiness, is the outcome of our own actions in the past.
When we do something noble it is a good thing, but if our motivation is screwed up the resulting kamma can be not so good.
Mind is free of permanence and non-existence.
The Buddha said commit not one single unwholesome action, avoid negativities and unwholesome harmful actions.
About unwholesome actions Shantideva said all the suffering there is in this world comes from thinking of oneself. All the happiness in the world comes from thinking of others.
While the essence of mind is emptiness, its nature is cognisant.
At a certain level everything breaks down to light and energy - clear light is cognisant nature. Awareness equals knowing of emptiness.
9. The usefulness
of words as indicators of meaning
The basis or root of the problem is at the moment that light is misused by the ego.
We need to understand that words are only indicators of meaning.
To explain this another way, think of a movie projector.
The projector sends light onto a screen to light all our senses.
The phenomenon housed inside the projector is a light bulb that enables images resident on the film to projected onto a screen. But the bulb is not involved in the outcome, not at all.
Another example that explains this is a piece of rope on the ground.
The person fails to see the rope where it is, or what it is, but instead mistakes it for something else that is not there - a snake.
Ego is the nature.
Cognisance is cognition.
We use cognisance to get awareness of cognition.
The manifestation of energy of the enlightened mind.
There are three equal parts.
Wisdom that knows
Compassion that loves
Power
that is able to conquer.
When you see the sky, the sun shines bright in it.
This an analogy for the enlightened mind
The
tremendous light is wisdom
The tremendous warmth is compassion
Together
they give life tremendous power - light - warmth - power - luminosity.
10.What
is our real nature?
How can we show people their real nature?
Who are we?
When we are happy - that's who we are
When we are sad
- that's who we are
We end up not only believing but becoming as well.
But this is only temporary.
Everything around us, everything we associate with ourselves is impermanent.
If you really look all these talks, stories come because of causes and conditions, were these to cease the stories would end.
If you look with your mind, if you exercise your good thoughts it is already past.
Because whatever arises when you start thinking, it is already gone.
A great master once said you can never have a thought in the present.
What is
the essence or the nature of our mind? Clarity, cognisance, fundamental nature
of mind is awareness.
With our mind is also that of our wants, feelings and understanding.
Our purest mind, purest feeling, purest heart. It is always with us, it always has been, it always will be with us.
The mind is there at all times, whether we are happy, high or low, sick or well.
Pure consciousness will continue until enlightenment.
The Dalai Lama said this consciousness is mind most conscious.
The Prajna Paramita and Heart Sutra speak of this.
Nagajuna said that it is beyond words, beyond thought, beyond description. The fundamental innate mind of Buddha is the ordinary mind - it is the most natural in the sense that it is nature.
Wisdom is ordinary whereas delusion is extraordinary.
It is simply your flawless present awareness, cognisance awakened.
When we come to discover this fundamental grounded mind then we discover ourselves.
11.
Finding the antidote to suffering
The greatest source of suffering is not knowing who we really are.
People are under a great amount of stress, so much pressure on keeping morality. The new morality is not about good or bad but it is about whether living is fun or boring.
When you really practice meditation you can discover this incredible joy, compassion, love, in fact we discover ourselves.
Everything is with you, what the masters give is incredible love, wisdom, they show us but they cannot liberate us.
In order to realise, how to realise is to go straight there. There are some extraordinary beings, when they realise; they are liberated there and then.
We view and we see. With meditation we confirm and maintain the view as reality. Then we take action.
There is a direct approach.
Meditation on peace.
In order to remove distraction and mindlessness - the antidote is mindfulness - being in the present.
One is lightly mindful focussing on breathing, in and out, but not 100%. Place 25% on mindfulness of breathing.
Breathe in and breathe, knowing that you are breathing in and breathing out, no other analysis or commentary.
Pure attention for 5 to 10 minutes - this is anapannasati, meditation on the breath.
Thinking about this and that.
Another 25% is on our senses, whenever you feel your mind being distracted you bring your mind back to the breath.
Meditation is still purist. Breath is the object. Pure attention, pure attention. Slowly the mind will settle.
Breathing in breathing out. One pointedness is the foundation meditation. Shamatha meditation.
Now the preliminary. Now what is the essence, heart foundation of meditation? It is the state of non-state, this is the reality the goal.
12. Arousing bodhicitta for the
sake of others
The state of non-distraction is simply knowing, nothing to meditate on. You are undistracted, undisturbed. Bodhicitta - compassion.
Stay in that meditation, and wait for a few moments, it has the power to purify much negative kamma.
You come closer and closer to the true state.
Bodhicitta
- enlightenment
Heart of - enlightenment
Mind of - enlightenment
What is it?
Arousing bodhicitta for the sake of others is wanting to attain enlightenment.
What you really want to do is awaken them from suffering.
Bodhicitta - is love and compassion. It is wanting to free beings from suffering - wanting all beings to be free suffering and the causes of suffering.
It is wanting all beings to reach this state of enlightenment. Only this lasting happiness is the state of enlightenment.
Wisdom - love - enlightenment. There are two aspects:
Aspiration aspect
and
Action aspect.
Aspiration aspect is the goal. That you want all beings to be free from suffering.
Action aspiration is practising. Meditation, dana, patience, wisdom and the six paramitas.
You dedicate that course of action to all beings enlightenment.
By this power and the merit of this action may this become the causes for all beings to become enlightened.
That is the teaching, that is the practice.
If this practise is held for a few moments it has the power to purify many eons of negative kamma.
With the heart and wisdom of bodhicitta - you connect with it forever.
It is incredibly powerful. All that is needed is to pray very strongly for the peace and sanity of the world.
You must not sacrifice long term benefits for short-term gain.
Because in the long term you will suffer more pain.
13. The practise
of calm abiding
Some persons are not able to remain in a state of undisturbed meditation. For those persons there is another method.
Use the five sense doors, because they are the source of negative emotions. For example:
Eye
- beauty - desire
Eye - ugliness - abhorrence
If we really look deeply at something arising we see that there are many causes.
Objects of blame or anger are from many causes. To understand this we can become free of much suffering.
Even though negative emotions may arise, grasping has not yet arisen. It is only when you act on the negative emotion that is does become dangerous.
Many emotions can arise but it is how we respond to them.
Realise that the essence of mind is empty - from that emotion are empty. For example: as soon as you awake you are liberated.
It is when you start thinking why? It is then that problems, stresses begin to arise.
When you remain undisturbed and negative emotions clear. Our restless thinking subsides into peace.
This is the practise of calm abiding.
Our restless thinking mind subsides into a mind of peace.
Negativity and aggression are disarmed, unkindness removed, revealing our true happiness from a state of calm abiding. The confusion evaporates and gives peace from our emotions.
The more we purify and come in touch with our true nature the more our compassion can arise.
Knowing the quality of mind. This goodness is who we really are.
Buddha nature.
Skylight nature.
Wisdom and loving compassion radiate out.
Ego has dissolved and we simply rest in this nature of mind, a quiet state of confidence and peace we can ever imagine.
When we keep in this state of mind, we become more at peace.
Mind is peaceful.
By the power and the merit of this dhamma talk may it become the causes for all beings to become enlightened.
May you cultivate all the blessings from this talk
May you aide Buddha Dhamma Teachers,
Translators and Great
Masters.
May you dedicate the blessings
of reading this dhamma talk to
finding ultimate happiness within yourself.
May you practice to achieve enlightenment, to be completely free from suffering
May you come to realise your true nature, Buddha nature.
May you find peace within yourself
May you be well and happy
References:
RIGPA
Melbourne, Centre for the Study and practice of Tibetan Buddhism. Program 2003
brochure.
Public Talk 'The Path to Happiness'. Sogyal Rinpoche. Australian
Tour 2003 brochure. RIGPA Melbourne Centre.
************************************************************************************************
The
Paradox of Happiness
By John Tarrant
Everyone knows
happiness is A Good Thing, more desirable than say, vacuum cleaners or eye shadow,
and right up there with fame, fortune and the love of beautiful women (or men).
The founding fathers of the United States offered happiness as part of the mission
statement for a people coming together as a nation, encouraging them to pursue-and
perhaps to go so far as to chase, harry, hunt down, subdue and corral-happiness.
Even the Dalai Lama has said that happiness is the point of Buddhism.
At the
same time, happiness is, as quarry, elusive. Happiness is a unicorn. Everyone
wants to find it, yet, just when you are hoping for its company, it has a way
of disappearing into the leafy shade of its forest. Then the family barbecue or
job interview or visit to the hospital just has to stumble along with ordinary
human skills and no special blessing.
While a lot of time is spent pursuing
happiness, the evidence is compelling that if you plunge toward this unicorn directly,
you will miss it by miles, and therefore won't receive its famous kindnesses.
Doesn't everyone know this already? Yes. Does that stop anybody from chasing happiness?
No.
Mostly, if a method for achieving happiness is not successful, people
think something like, She should have loved me more. Or, I wasn't trying hard
enough. Or, I wasn't holding my mouth right. Or, If only I had bought a different
car. Whether the needle on the blame meter points to yourself or to others, that
particular machine will always seem to be malfunctioning, since it never gives
a diagnosis that is useful for fixing the problem. You try to do the method better,
rather than looking at whether the method works. So let's look at the method.
The
Approach Direct
The direct approach to happiness is splendid in its simplicity.
It comes down to a bold slogan: Get the Loot. This is the basic happiness-is-a-warm-gun
or diamonds-are-a-girl's-best-friend tactic. There is an endless quest to store
happiness in objects from which it will seep out like golden light in the winter
of any sadness that may come upon you. Variant and popular forms of Get the Loot
are: Get the Girl and Get the Prince. More subtle variations are Get the Spiritual
Transformation and Get the Psychological Adjustment to a Difficult Childhood-"I'll
take a nice enlightenment to go with my espresso please."
The obvious
problem with the Get-the-Loot approach is that loot doesn't last. My really cool
linen jacket from last year looks, well, so last year, and my nice, new Volvo
has become my mechanic's friend. It doesn't seem that happiness can be stored
in any stable way-it's even worse than electricity in this regard. You might try
to make things last a little longer. You could buy an extremely reliable car.
You might extract a promise that your partner will always love you, but would
you believe such a promise? Aren't there some Monday mornings when you don't love
even your dog? And if you did believe such a promise, would it work? Would you
really get happiness?
The Approach Indirect
The ancient authorities, including
the Buddha, are convinced that you cannot just waltz right up to the unicorn of
happiness. The unicorn disappears if you even look straight at it. You have to
take an interest in the rosebushes or the child playing with dolls, and then you
might see the unicorn out of the corner of your eye. At first nearly everyone
thinks you can just pretend an interest in the rosebushes or the child, but you
can't fake out the unicorn. Pretending an interest in the rosebushes happens when
you say to yourself, "I'm meditating to get healthy, to grow kinder, to get
enlightened, to pick stocks better and be happy." Though some of these purposes
might be noble, this approach doesn't work; you can't manipulate yourself into
changing any more than you can manipulate other people into changing. A unicorn
is like a human being in that relations with it are fatally compromised by coercion
and demands. You can't make a unicorn come to you; it has to want to.
The
Approach Without Guile
A spiritual practice is different from many human endeavors
in that it does not have a pre-designed goal. You have to just do the spiritual
practice without guile and be a courteous host to whatever comes. That's when
unicorns appear. The nakedness of this practice makes you unicorn-prone. The unicorn
of happiness is not elusive because it is an illusion. It is real. It just inhabits
a different dimension from getting and losing and good and evil and pleasure and
loss, which are the places we usually look for it.
The legend of the unicorn
says that it is attracted to virgins; indeed, virgins are its only known weakness.
Before you despair, it might be interesting to take this bit about virgins as
an image of what goes on in the mind. The virginal mind is innocent in the positive
sense. The innocent mind is not thinking about itself and what it can get. It
isn't thinking, "How do I look as unicorn bait?" "No unicorn could
ever be interested in me." "I'll be famous if I catch a unicorn."
"How do I construct the best unicorn-catching machine?"
Instead,
the innocent mind is just hanging out, living its life. It attracts the unicorn
because it is like the unicorn, who is also just hanging out, living its life.
The innocent mind is the meditation mind, the mind before the world was built
and populated with stories about what to think and do. It is sometimes called
beginner's mind. It exists before enlightenment and before theology and theology's
argument with human desire. The innocent mind is not spending all its time scheming
to get others to do what it wants or policing its own impulses. It's open to something
new, something that it hasn't thought of. It's the person at the party who doesn't
network or try to impress you.
In the legend, the unicorn has another property:
its horn stops the action of poisons. This image refers not just to the openness
of the meditation mind but also to the way it actively undermines unhappiness
and delusion.
The Chinese unicorn is sighted even more rarely than the European
one. It is said to have appeared at the time of Confucius' birth and to have a
taste for wisdom. One sage had the interesting thought that if a unicorn is so
seldom seen, you might not know for certain what it looked like. It might be capable
of changing shape. In fact you might meet one and not realize it. How can you
be sure that a unicorn is not present on a given occasion? You might be sitting
with the unicorn of happiness at this very moment and not know it. Perhaps when
you are unhappy, you are just not paying attention.
Security & Insecurity
The
strategy of running straight at the Unicorn And Getting the Loot has another serious
drawback, which is that it is asking for too little. When you are unhappy, you
look for a remedy that is in the range of what you already know. Yet what you
already know might be precisely what is obscuring your vision of the unicorn.
There is a Hindu story about a person who prayed to see Krishna. She meditated
hard and it so happened that the blue god was meandering along the woodland path
and noticed her. He bent over and tapped her on the shoulder. She did not open
her eyes. "Please don't distract me," she said, "I am meditating
with a sacred goal in mind." "Oh, O.K. then," thought Krishna,
"I wouldn't want to interfere with that," and wandered on down the path.
This is a version of the map-and-territory problem. When you rely on what
you know you are always relying on a map which, as soon as it is drawn, has begun
to diverge from the territory it intended to describe, which is life. You make
adjustments to fit the map, you stand on your head to fit the map. Yet happiness
adheres to the territory. Happiness is rooted in what we do not know; otherwise
everyone would already be happy. No one knows what a unicorn is before they meet
one, and no one can know what their life will look like after they have met one.
The unicorn won't change the stuff in your life; it will change you.
If the
unicorn is pursued through the getting of things and experiences, the basic idea
is that something from outside will make you happy. Then the hidden assumption
is that what is inside is pretty pathetic or at least not worth considering in
the happiness stakes. Yet what is inside is the only source of happiness.
The
big secret is that the unicorn already lives inside you. If the unicorn is already
here, the unicorn comes. If it is not here, it will never come. Zen teachers sometimes
carry a carved stick as an accoutrement, an indicator that they are important
in case no one otherwise notices. One old teacher said, "If you have a stick,
I'll give you a stick. If you don't have a stick, I'll take it away."
The
desire for loot is usually in some way a hunger for security. A dedicated collector
learns quickly that another pair of shoes or another epiphany will not be the
final and necessary contribution to happiness. This is why collecting has a melancholy,
poignant air. The quest for security is doomed, and its failure is what makes
it interesting. It's like taking certain drugs, say, or skipping classes at university
or gambling in casinos-it's so bad for you that it feels cool; it gives you a
sense of wealth since you are squandering life as if you were immortal. Seeking
security is a rebellion against the unpredictability of reality and also against
its demanding fascination.
The deep reason things coming in from the outside
are not ultimately consoling is that there is a bigger question going on- security
for whom, happiness for whom? You might have an idea about who you are, and the
security is a support structure for that idea. Security is always for an idea
that you are "a someone." Yet it is hard to prove that you really are
"a someone." If you check your thoughts out, they come and go, they
change radically overnight or according to the state of your digestion, and you
may find that you often don't even believe them. If you look, you can't find who
is thinking your thoughts.
Bodhidharma, who brought Zen to China from India,
is meditating when a student says to him, "My mind is not at peace. Please
put it to rest."
Bodhidharma says, "Bring me your mind and I will
set it to rest."
"But I've searched for my mind and can't find it."
"There,
I have put it to rest."
Being unable to find your mind when you look for
it might be thought of as a moment of massive uncertainty, yet this is exactly
what frees you. Uncertainty makes happiness possible because it stops certainty
from interrupting happiness. Happiness is the natural state of things; the unicorn
is already here.
Nothing Is Too Good For Little Me
When the mind and heart
are at rest, they are not important or unimportant, secure or insecure, and this
natural state is happiness. Security, on the other hand, is the cause of unhappiness.
It is in the service of a character called "Me," as in "What about
Me?" who is always worried what will happen to her. There is "Poor Little
Me" and "Nothing Is Too Good For Little Me," and both are based
on the longing for security.
When I was three or four I had an imaginary playmate
who was the foreman on an imaginary construction site. His name was Bill and I'd
ring him up on an imaginary phone next to the black wall phone in the front hall.
I used to give him orders. I'd say, "Bring the bulldozer." We would
also have conversations at lunchtime. "Another bloody jam sandwich,"
I would complain to him enthusiastically, flinging it over my shoulder. Having
a self is a bit like keeping Bill with you for the rest of your life, and setting
your life up to assure him that he is real.
"Little Me" is a hypothesis
to explain where thoughts come from. Yet no one knows where thoughts come from.
Sometimes they don't even seem to belong to anyone. The next line of the poem
just arrives, the way the next moment of the world does. This is good news for
you because it leaves the door open for the unicorn, who also appears out of nowhere,
but bad news for Little Me, who likes you to think that she is the source of your
thoughts and therefore essential.
So many of your thoughts are for the sake
of preserving Little Me. When you were a child she entered your employ as a governess
who promised to be a help. As you grew she became your faithful retainer, general
secretary and assistant. Yet her main purpose seems to be to make herself feel
secure. She exists to make sure that she continues to exist. An idea is trying
to maintain itself, a phantom who asks that you serve her. Yet security for Little
Me is not security for you. She is so fascinating to herself that she is uninterested
in other people, including you. You have to run around and Get the Loot to assuage
this phantom's anxiety. You have to build pyramids because she is frightened of
dying. The Sufis have a story about a donkey who persuades his rider to carry
him. Little Me is like that donkey. She did seem to be a help at first, but pretty
soon she started impersonating you and writing checks.
Little Me fields all
your calls. Meanwhile she gives you the sort of plausible and utterly useless
advice that Polonius offered Hamlet. The advice is useless because it is not about
you, it's just designed to hold your attention on her.
There is nothing truly
wrong with Little Me other than that she, or he, doesn't exist. The secret to
happiness is that Little Me is not necessary. When you discover this you may find
it a great relief.
This is why happiness is simpler than suffering, which
is always working so hard. The unicorn of happiness is allergic to advice and
Little Me's complicated schemes are not interesting to her. She is a free wanderer
with no fixed destination or shape; her hooves are in the Tao.
Trying Too
Hard Is Always a Good Idea
When I first took up meditation I struggled a lot.
I really, really, really wanted an experience of enlightenment, so I dashed straight
at the unicorn of happiness. When I sat, I was consumed by physical pain, and
so naturally I sat up all night. I experimented with breathing in special ways.
Basically I tried to concentrate and stay alive for the next five minutes of sitting.
Condemning my own states of mind-"This is not a unicorn, and neither is this"-was
a lonely path and my own lack of inner kindness wore me down. Perhaps it was a
way to convince myself that I was worthy of a visit from the unicorn. Yet all
that effort was for the sake of an idea-wisdom will be hard for me, it will take
a long time and I will have to suffer to earn it-and this idea was just a prejudice:
Little Me's opinion.
When you think that you need something to navigate by,
you might cling to a bad or unverifiable idea, which might take you in some other
direction than the one you hoped to go in. I was willing to change everything
about my life except my ideas. In this way spiritual work which can look so sincere
and revolutionary can become at bottom just another quest for security. You could
make an argument that shopping at Saks Fifth Avenue is more spiritually sincere.
I thought that the unicorn would appear and show me something completely surprising,
and at the same time it would say to me, "Yes, John, that's the way to meditate,
steady as she goes, you're getting it now. And as a reward, I'll share a few additional
secrets with you."
This is the poignant situation of the one who sets
off to seek wisdom. I thought happiness would change my world completely and at
the same time it would still be my world. In this way, I thought that happiness
would confirm my map of the world. Actually, happiness does the opposite: it steals
your map so that you can't use it any more. And when there is nothing to navigate
by, you are in Unicorn World.
In a certain kind of Zen training, the opening
in which you see through your illusions is called kensho, which means, more or
less, seeing your true nature. At the zendo where I practiced in the early days,
we had a little kensho factory and would encourage each other to sit unmoving
through pain. The meditation hall was very noisy, leaders would be yelling, and
the sound of the Zen stick whacking people would cut through the air. It was either
surprisingly interesting or seemed like a medieval hell, according to your point
of view. For me it was both.
When I began to teach, I did more or less the
same thing as I'd been taught. The method was tuned toward the direction whence
unicorns were expected to appear. I noticed, though, that unicorns did not seem
to come from such places, and when, on occasion, they did appear, they seemed
indifferent to our methods. People didn't seem to have spiritual openings when
the system was tight and pure. The openings came when the system broke down.
Perhaps
people wore out and couldn't try any harder and then just felt their lives for
a while and were amazed at the spaciousness that opened inside and out. Perhaps
their minds escaped their control moves and they saw something-say a tree-as if
for the first time. Looking at a tree with such purity they might have noticed
a kinship with the tree and have been grateful to be alive, a gratitude that seemed
irreversible. The unicorn does not come from the direction you might be expecting
it to.
After a while, I began to change my teaching method. Mainly this meant
not chasing the unicorn directly and, instead, being interested in what showed
up in people's psyches. Then unhappiness became interesting rather than evidence
of failure; unhappiness itself became a gate to happiness.
Here's an example.
Year after year, on the last day of a retreat, a man fell into despair believing
that he had missed another opportunity for enlightenment. It was as if it was
his job to sit around and be the one who failed. His mood was compounded when
others seemed to be glowing and illuminated. His inner narrative went something
like, "I haven't accomplished anything or made myself admirable to myself
or others. I've worked so hard, yet I'm really not sincere enough."
This
is the sort of thing only a sincere person would think. But he was bereft. Then
one time, mysteriously, a Patsy Cline song arrived in his mind and just stayed.
"I fall to pieces" repeated itself over and over like a koan or a mantra.
This didn't seem orthodox to him, but there was nothing he could do about it.
Gradually he began to notice that falling to pieces could be a positive thing.
The mind's prison could fall to pieces. He was amused and touched, and a thoughtless
compassion for life began to grow in him, a glimpse of a luminous animal moving
through the trees. Things didn't go further for the moment and when the retreat
ended the old blues came back.
"I feel so discouraged," he thought.
"I just feel so discouraged." This phrase began repeating itself also,
many times. "I feel so discouraged." His internal voice grew more and
more depressed, and then a change occurred. Gradually the voice became energetic.
"I feel so discouraged," grew louder. He began to have fun with it.
He was shouting to himself, "I feel so discouraged!" as if in triumph,
and laughing. "And what's wrong with that?" he thought, embracing his
one life. Even discouragement became funny and marvelous. How good to be alive
and discouraged. That was his moment of spiritual transformation.
So what is
the take-away point about the unicorn?
Everyone wants to use happiness as
a fix for problems, yet happiness is its own, very big thing, and it is selling
happiness short to make it a fix for problems. To be happy is to experience life
not as a series of struggles but as a gift, one that has no known limit. This
doesn't mean ignoring your difficulties: it means not assuming that they are what
you think they are. If you throw away everything you believe about your difficulties
you will notice that many of them disappear and the rest become interesting.
When
you get the hang of being more interested in life than in agreeing with your thoughts,
then you will get the life you get. And you will be able to have as much happiness
as you want with almost no effort whatsoever. When you stop believing your thoughts,
you look around just for you, just because it is interesting to look around. Some
people call that enlightenment. But you won't call it that. You'll be too interested
in the new view. And you'll notice that wherever you look there will be nothing
but those damned unicorns.
John Tarrant is the author of The Light Inside
the Dark: Zen, Soul, and the Spiritual Life (HarperCollins) and the director of
Pacific Zen Institute, which conducts retreats devoted to koans, inquiry and the
arts.
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The
Purpose and Importance of Philosophical Studies
Loppon Jamyang
Lekshey
One who can bless the mind into Dharmakaya just by remembering
him,
One who can bestow the accomplishment and blessings like stream of water,
One who is the excellent saviour during the bardo, present and future lives,
May my Guru with such qualities remain on my crown forever.
General speaking,
it is an attribution of a scholar to learn every field of knowledge. But the aim
of study are different, in the sense that some long for the well-being of this
life, some aim at life hereafter, and yet some particular people just do not aim
for any of the above. Their aim is to attain liberation from samsaric problems.
In any case, the actual goal of all these sections of people is happiness. Nevertheless,
due to one's ignorance people are mistaken in recognising the actual happiness
and the cause of that happiness. Therefore, out of attachment and hatred they
seek happiness, but instead create miserable circumstances. For this reason, Buddha
Shakyamuni, out of compassion, gave teachings of three vehicles in order to dispel
our ignorance and lead us to the right path towards liberation. These teachings
explain what is the actual happiness and how to achieve it.
Therefore, it
is a unique opportunity to avail of such circumstances and facilities for learning
the teachings of three vehicles. Despite having such an opportunity, if one is
caught in laziness and distraction, it will be an unrecoverable loss. It is like
walking with golden-soled shoes. One will never recover the lost gold during that
walk. Besides, the role of motivation becomes very important in order to make
the Dharma study meaningful.
As the 21st century approaches people seem to
trust more on modern age. At the same time the effect of the degenerate age becomes
more evident among the religious people. The reason why I say this is because
more and more religious people ignore the conditions of past and future lives
as well as the law of karma. The Tibetan scholar Gyalsay Thogme said, "With
the physical form of religion one may create the non-religious act." I would
say that this is now becoming true as we find several people who, while working
hard in the name of Dharma, aspire to gain wealth, high position, large following
and reputation etc. without any sense of shame and hesitation. One should rather
do business or become a politician.
The value of the Dharma is immeasurable
and so is its fruit. It is clearly stated in the Pramanavarttika of Dharmakirti
that the teaching of Buddha Shakyamuni is undeceivable. It is ironic that even
some of the Buddhists doubt the efficacy of the Dharma just because they do not
find results immediately. Such a thought arises on account of the lack of proper
understanding and confidence in the law of karma. The karma, in general, is of
three types depending on the strength of the karma; the karma that ripens in this
life, that which ripens in the life hereafter and that which ripens in the other
following lives. If one expects the results of one's meritorious act immediately,
as in the case of eating food and getting rid of hunger, then he or she does not
have a proper knowledge of how the inter-dependence of cause and result works.
However, the virtuous deeds can never be wasted. It also depends on how purely
one is committed to virtuous deeds. It must be done according to the Buddha's
teachings, otherwise it will not result in benefit. If one is not able to practise
Dharma purely, motivation-wise etc., one should not blame the Dharma.
In
order to practise pure Dharma, of course one must be free from the eight unfavourable
conditions and be endowed with the ten obtainments plus the renunciation thought.
But these are not enough. Apart from the above things, one must have the right
opportunity of learning and concentration on Buddha Dharma. With such an opportunity
one must also have the right motivation. To the real Buddha's followers, the purpose
of learning Dharma is how to relinquish the Samsaric problems and how to attain
Nirvana. Buddhism is not a way to acquire worldly contentment. The purpose of
learning Buddha Dharma is to be able to practise the right path and to teach the
right path to other sentient beings.
It appears to be quite common these
days for some people to jump into a particular practice without doing enough studies.
Later they claim to have accomplished as great meditators or realisers of the
perfect view. In fact it is not as easy as it is made out to be. Sakya Pandita
said, "A meditator without hearing (Dharma) is like a maimed perso trying
to climb up a rock." Of course it is not possible for an ordinary person
to judge the inner qualities of other persons. Nevertheless, one must be able
to judge the physical gestures and signs of inner attainment which are mentioned
in both the Sutra and Tantra. Yes, there are occasions, such as during the fourth
consecration or through the Guru's blessings, that one may recognise the true
view or reality, but this is very rare. This is possible only for extraordinarily
fortunate people.
Therefore it is important for ordinary people to clear
the wrong view, to cut doubts on view and to clarify the right view before going
for meditation. So before one goes to meditate on view, one must first be able
to confirm what the right view is. For that, one must go through the study of
Buddhism or Buddhist philosophy. The right view is the view of the Madhyamika
School. It was accepted by the past qualified scholars that there is no difference
in terms of the view between Sutrayana and Vajrayana. Though the Madhyamika view
is interpreted differently by the scholars, it is not wise to praise one and criticise
the others. One must analyse which is more reasonable with one's own wisdom. Having
analysed intensely, one must then meditate on that view. Some of today's scholars,
who are so by name only, do write criticial books, but they do not possess even
a fragment of the knowledge of the past scholars. I find that these books reflect
their ignorance, hatred, pride, etc. and also ultimately result in giving a discriminatory
tendency to one's followers and readers. However, I do not mean that today's scholars
should not write books. It is important for them to research thoroughly on the
subject they are going to write on.
Again, if one thinks that one can first
study and practise later, then it is a big mistake. Fundamentally, all compounded
things are impermanent. There is no certainty that one will live on as planned.
Practising Dharma can never be too early because we have been roaming in Samsara
from beginningless time. So the present birth is not the first one in this Samsara.
Since this is the case, one should engage in the practice of Dharma from right
now. What I mean here by 'practice of Dharma' is meditation on compassion and
Bodhicitta (altruistic thought). When one's mind becomes absorbed with the nature
of compassion and Bodhicitta, then it becomes the source of Buddha's qualities.
Sarva Mangalam
************************************************************************************************
The
Practice of Looking Deeply
by Thich Nhat Hanh
All authentic
practices of the Buddha carry within them three essential teachings called the
Dharma Seals. These three teachings of the Buddha are: impermanence, no self and
nirvana. Just as all-important legal documents have the mark or signature of a
witness, all genuine practices of the Buddha bear the mark of these three teachings.
If
we look into the first Dharma Seal, impermanence, we see that it doesn't just
mean that everything changes. By looking into the nature of things, we can see
that nothing remains the same for even two consecutive moments. Because nothing
remains unchanged from moment to moment it therefore has no fixed identity or
a permanent self. So in the teaching of impermanence we always see the lack of
an unchanging self. We call this "no self," the second Dharma Seal.
It is because things are always transforming and have no self that freedom is
possible.
The third Dharma Seal is nirvana. This means solidity and freedom,
freedom from all ideas and notions. The word "nirvana" literally means
"the extinction of all concepts." Looking deeply into impermanence leads
to the discovery of no self. The discovery of no self leads to nirvana. Nirvana
is the Kingdom of God.
Impermanence
The practice and understanding of impermanence
is not just another description of reality. It is a tool that helps us in our
transformation, healing and emancipation.
Impermanence means that everything
changes and nothing remains the same in any consecutive moment. And although things
change every moment, they still cannot be accurately described as the same or
as different from what they were a moment ago.
When we bathe in the river
today that we bathed in yesterday, is it the same river? Heraclitus said that
we couldn't step into the same river twice. He was right. The water in the river
today is completely different from the water we bathed in yesterday. Yet it is
the same river. When Confucius was standing on the bank of a river watching it
flow by he said, "Oh, it flows like that day and night, never ending."
The insight of impermanence helps us to go beyond all concepts. It helps us
to go beyond same and different, and coming and going. It helps us to see that
the river is not the same river but is also not different either. It shows us
that the flame we lit on our bedside candle before we went to bed is not the same
flame of the next morning. The flame on the table is not two flames, but it is
not one flame either.
Impermanence Makes Everything Possible
We are often
sad and suffer a lot when things change, but change and impermanence have a positive
side. Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible. Life itself is possible.
If a grain of corn is not impermanent, it can never be transformed into a stalk
of corn. If the stalk were not impermanent, it could never provide us with the
ear of corn we eat. If your daughter is not impermanent, she cannot grow up to
become a woman. Then your grandchildren would never manifest. So instead of complaining
about impermanence, we should say, "Warm welcome and long live impermanence."
We should be happy. When we can see the miracle of impermanence our sadness and
suffering will pass.
Impermanence should also be understood in the light of
inter-being. Because all things inter-are, they are constantly influencing each
other. It is said a butterfly's wings flapping on one side of the planet can affect
the weather on the other side. Things cannot stay the same because they are influenced
by everything else, everything that is not itself.
Practicing Impermanence
All
of us can understand impermanence with our intellect, but this is not yet true
understanding. Our intellect alone will not lead us to freedom. It will not lead
us to enlightenment. When we are solid and we concentrate, we can practice looking
deeply. And when we look deeply and see the nature of impermanence, we can then
be concentrated on this deep insight. This is how the insight of impermanence
becomes part of our being. It becomes our daily experience. We have to maintain
the insight of impermanence in order to be able to see and live impermanence all
the time. If we can use impermanence as an object of our meditation, we will nourish
the understanding of impermanence in such a way that it will live in us every
day. With this practice impermanence becomes a key that opens the door of reality.
We also cannot uncover the insight into impermanence for only a moment and
then cover it up and see everything as permanent again. Most of the time we behave
with our children as though they will always be at home with us. We never think
that in three or four years they will leave us to marry and have their own family.
Therefore we do not value the moments our child is with us.
I know many parents
whose children, when they are eighteen or nineteen years old, leave home and live
on their own. The parents lose their children and feel very sorry for themselves.
Yet the parents did not value the moments they had with their children. The same
is true of husbands and wives. You think that your spouse will be there for the
whole of your life but how can you be so sure? We really have no idea where our
partner will be in twenty or thirty years, or even tomorrow. It is very important
to remember every day the practice of impermanence.
Seeing Emotions Through
the Eyes of Impermanence
When somebody says something that makes you angry
and you wish they would go away, please look deeply with the eyes of impermanence.
If he or she were gone, what would you really feel? Would you be happy or would
you weep? Practicing this insight can be very helpful. There is a gatha, or poem,
we can use to help us:
Angry in the ultimate dimension
I close my eyes
and look deeply.
Three hundred years from now
Where will you be and where
shall I be?
When we are angry, what do we usually do? We shout, scream, and
try to blame someone else for our problems. But looking at anger with the eyes
of impermanence, we can stop and breathe. Angry at each other in the ultimate
dimension, we close our eyes and look deeply. We try to see three hundred years
into the future. What will you be like? What will I be like? Where will you be?
Where will I be? We need only to breathe in and out, look at our future and at
the other person's future. We do not need to look as far as three hundred years.
It could be fifty or sixty years from now when we have both passed away.
Looking
at the future, we see that the other person is very precious to us. When we know
we can lose them at any moment, we are no longer angry. We want to embrace her
or him and say, "How wonderful, you are still alive. I am so happy. How could
I be angry with you? Both of us have to die someday and while we are still alive
and together it is foolish to be angry at each other."
The reason we are
foolish enough to make ourselves suffer and make the other person suffer is we
forget that we and the other person are impermanent. Someday when we die we will
lose all our possessions, our power, our family, everything. Our freedom, peace
and joy in the present moment is the most important thing we have. But without
an awakened understanding of impermanence it is not possible to be happy.
Some
people do not even want to look at a person when they are alive, but when they
die they write eloquent obituaries and make offerings of flowers. But at that
point the person has died and cannot smell the fragrance of the flowers anymore.
If we really understood and remembered that life was impermanent, we would do
everything we could to make the other person happy right here and right now. If
we spend twenty-four hours being angry at our beloved, it is because we are ignorant
of impermanence.
"Angry in the ultimate dimension/I close my eyes."
I close my eyes in order to practice visualization of my beloved one hundred or
three hundred years from now. When you visualize yourself and your beloved in
three hundred years' time, you just feel so happy that you are alive today and
that your dearest is alive today. You open your eyes and all your anger has gone.
You open your arms to embrace the other person and you practice: "Breathing
in you are alive, breathing out I am so happy." When you close your eyes
to visualize yourself and the other person in three hundred years' time, you are
practicing the meditation on impermanence. In the ultimate dimension, anger does
not exist.
Hatred is also impermanent. Although we may be consumed with hatred
at this moment, if we know that hatred is impermanent we can do something to change
it. A practitioner can take resentment and hatred and help it to disappear. Just
like with anger, we close our eyes and think: where will we be in three hundred
years? With the understanding of hatred in the ultimate dimension, it can evaporate
in an instant.
Let Impermanence Nurture Love
Because we are ignorant and
forget about impermanence, we don't nurture our love properly. When we first married
our love was great. We thought that if we did not have each other we would not
be able to live one more day. Because we did not know how to practice impermanence,
after one or two years our love changed to frustration and anger. Now we wonder
how we can survive one more day if we have to remain with the person we once loved
so much. We decide there is no alternative: we want a divorce. If we live with
the understanding of impermanence we will cultivate and nurture our love. Only
then will it last. You have to nourish and look after your love for it to grow.
No Self
Impermanence is looking at reality from the point of view of time.
No self is looking at reality from the point of view of space. They are two sides
of reality. No self is a manifestation of impermanence and impermanence is a manifestation
of no self. If things are impermanent they are without a separate self. If things
are without a separate self, it means that they are impermanent. Impermanence
means being transformed at every moment. This is reality. And since there is nothing
unchanging, how can there be a permanent self, a separate self? When we say "self"
we mean something that is always itself, unchanging day after day. But nothing
is like that. Our body is impermanent, our emotions are impermanent, and our perceptions
are impermanent. Our anger, our sadness, our love, our hatred and our consciousness
are also impermanent.
So what permanent thing is there which we can call a
self? The piece of paper these words are written on does not have a separate self.
It can only be present when the clouds, the forest, the sun, the earth, the people
who make the paper, and the machines are present. If those things are not present
the paper cannot be present. And if we burn the paper, where is the self of paper?
Nothing can exist by itself alone. It has to depend on every other thing.
That is called inter-being. To be means to inter-be. The paper inter-is with the
sunshine and with the forest. The flower cannot exist by itself alone; it has
to inter-be with soil, rain, weeds and insects. There is no being; there is only
inter-being.
Looking deeply into a flower we see that the flower is made of
non-flower elements. We can describe the flower as being full of everything. There
is nothing that is not present in the flower. We see sunshine, we see the rain,
we see clouds, we see the earth, and we also see time and space in the flower.
A flower, like everything else, is made entirely of non-flower elements. The whole
cosmos has come together in order to help the flower manifest herself. The flower
is full of everything except one thing: a separate self or a separate identity.
The flower cannot be by herself alone. The flower has to inter-be with the
sunshine, the cloud and everything in the cosmos. If we understand being in terms
of inter-being, then we are much closer to the truth. Inter-being is not being
and it is not non-being. Inter-being means at the same time being empty of a separate
identity; empty of a separate self.
No self also means emptiness, a technical
term in Buddhism which means the absence of a separate self. We are of the nature
of no self, but that does not mean that we are not here. It does not mean that
nothing exists. A glass can be empty or full of tea, but in order to be either
empty or full the glass has to be there. So emptiness does not mean non-being
and does not mean being either. It transcends all concepts. If you touch deeply
the nature of impermanence, no self and inter-being, you touch the ultimate dimension,
the nature of nirvana.
Who Are We?
We think of our body as our self or belonging
to our self. We think of our body as me or mine. But if you look deeply, you see
that your body is also the body of your ancestors, of your parents, of your children,
and of their children. So it is not a "me"; it is not a "mine."
Your body is full of everything else-limitless non-body elements-except one thing:
a separate existence.
Impermanence has to be seen in the light of emptiness,
of inter-being, and of non-self. These things are not negative. Emptiness is wonderful.
Nagarjuna, the famous Buddhist teacher of the second century, said, "Thanks
to emptiness, everything is possible."
You can see no non-self in impermanence,
and impermanence in non-self. You can say that impermanence is no self seen from
the angle of time, and non-self is impermanence seen from the angle of space.
They are the same thing. That is why impermanence and non-self inter-are. If you
do not see impermanence in non-self, that is not non-self. If you do not see non-self
in impermanence, that's not really impermanence.
But that is not all. You
have to see nirvana in impermanence and you have to see nirvana in non-self. If
I draw a line on one side there will be impermanence and non-self, and on the
other side there will be nirvana. That line may be helpful, although it can also
be misleading. Nirvana means going beyond all concepts, even the concepts of no
self and impermanence. If we have nirvana in no self and in impermanence, it means
that we are not caught in no self and impermanence as ideas.
Nirvana
Impermanence
and no self are not rules to follow given to us by the Buddha. They are keys to
open the door of reality. The idea of permanence is wrong, so the teaching on
impermanence helps us correct our view of permanence. But if we get caught in
the idea of impermanence we have not realized nirvana. The idea of self is wrong.
So we use the idea of non-self to cure it. But if we are caught in the idea of
non-self then that is not good for us either. Impermanence and no self are keys
to the practice. They are not absolute truths. We do not die for them or kill
for them.
In Buddhism there are no ideas or prejudices that we kill for. We
do not kill people simply because they do not accept our religion. The teachings
of the Buddha are skillful means; they are not absolute truth. So we have to say
that impermanence and no self are skillful means to help us come toward the truth;
they are not absolute truth. The Buddha said, "My teachings are a finger
pointing to the moon. Do not get caught in thinking that the finger is the moon.
It is because of the finger that you can see the moon."
No self and impermanence
are means to understand the truth; they are not the truth itself. They are instruments;
they are not the ultimate truth. Impermanence is not a doctrine that you should
feel you have to die for. You would never put someone in prison because they contradict
you. You are not using one concept against another concept. These means are to
lead us to the ultimate truth. Buddhism is a skillful path to help us; it is not
a path of fanatics. Buddhists can never go to war, shedding blood and killing
thousands of people on behalf of their religion.
Because impermanence contains
within itself the nature of nirvana, you are safe from being caught in an idea.
When you study and practice this teaching you free yourself from notions and concepts,
including the concept of permanence and impermanence. This way, we arrive at freedom
from suffering and fear. This is nirvana, the kingdom of God.
Extinction of
Concept
We are scared because of our notions of birth and death, increasing
and decreasing, being and non-being. Nirvana means extinction of all notions and
ideas. If we can become free from these notions we can touch the peace of our
true nature.
There are eight basic concepts that serve to fuel our fear. They
are the notions of birth and death, coming and going, the same and different,
being and non-being. These notions keep us from being happy. The teaching given
to counteract these notions is called "the eight no's," which are no
birth, no death, no coming, no going, not the same, not different, no being, no
non-being.
Ending Notions of Happiness
Each of us has a notion of how we
can be happy. It would be very helpful if we took the time to reconsider our notions
of happiness. We could make a list of what we think we need to be happy: "I
can only be happy if..." Write down the things you want and the things you
do not want. Where did these ideas come from? Is it reality? Or is it only your
notion? If you are committed to a particular notion of happiness you do not have
much chance to be happy.
Happiness arrives from many directions. If you have
a notion that it comes only from one direction, you will miss all of these other
opportunities, because you want happiness to come only from the direction you
want. You say, "I would rather die than marry anyone but her. I would rather
die than lose my job, my reputation. I cannot be happy if I don't get that degree
or that promotion or that house." You have put many conditions on your happiness.
And then, even if you do have all your conditions met, you still won't be happy.
You will just keep creating new conditions for your happiness. You will still
want the higher degree, the better job and the more beautiful house.
A government
can also believe that they know the only way to make a nation prosper and be happy.
That government and nation may commit itself to that ideology for one hundred
years or more. During that time its citizens can suffer so much. Anyone who disagrees
or dares to speak against the government's ideas will be locked up. They might
even be considered insane. You can transform your nation into a prison because
you are committed to an ideology.
Please remember your notions of happiness
may be very dangerous. The Buddha said happiness can only be possible in the here
and now, so go back and examine deeply your notions and ideas of happiness. You
may recognize that the conditions of happiness that are already there in your
life are enough. Then happiness can be instantly yours.
Thich Nhat Hanh
is a Zen teacher, poet and leader of the engaged Buddhist movement. A well-known
anti-war activist in his native Vietnam, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace
Prize by Martin Luther King, Jr. The author of more than forty books, he resides
at Buddhist practice centers in France and Vermont.
Reprinted from No Fear,
No Death: Comforting Wisdom for Life, by Thich Nhat Hanh, with permission of Riverhead
Books, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc. Copyright © 2003 by Thich Nhat Hanh.
***********************************************************************************************
The
Role of Beliefs in Relation to the Concept of Liberation.
by
Venerable Traleg Rinpoche
First talk in a series of seven at the annual November
Retreat,
held at Maitripa Contemplative Center, Victoria, Australia on 27th
November 1999
Many people who come to meditation want to learn about Buddhist
meditation but are often very skeptical and uneasy about the Buddhist philosophies
that come with it, about certain aspects of the religious elements. People have
the notion that Buddhist practice and meditation experiences can be separated
from the belief systems in which these practices are embedded. When we come to
a Buddhist retreat, people may be afraid of getting converted and they feel that
would be seen as a terrible thing. In this day and age many people have this idea
that a belief system in general, and religious belief systems in particular, are
dangerous. As if someone who believes is dogmatic, not innovative or progressive,
is a traditionalist, a conservative, someone with blinkers on and is someone whose
mind is shut off from new thoughts and ideas, or that they simply believe but
do not actually know, as if a believer is someone who remains a prisoner in their
own tradition.
That is highly questionable. As soon as we embark on the practice
of meditation we have to make use of certain Buddhist concepts in order to make
sense of what we are doing. For example, when we do meditation we already have
concepts of enlightenment, spiritual liberation, nirvana, ignorance, defilements
and obscurations of the mind that inhibit the realization of our spiritual goal.
As soon as we embark on practice, we are already making use of certain Buddhist
conceptual tools. This is important to understand.
It is also true that because
of what we believe in we may become dogmatic, opinionated and fundamentalist in
holding or propounding one's beliefs. But that does not mean we can embark on
the spiritual path without believing anything at all. We have to believe in certain
fundamentals of spirituality. If we have no orientation we would have no idea
about what we are trying to achieve, where we are going ,what kind of personal
predicaments we are trying to overcome, or what psychological and spiritual conflicts
we need to grapple with and understand. One has to have orientation according
to a spiritual approach. We cannot say we should learn to dispense with all of
our belief systems. We cannot approach our spiritual practices without approaching
it from a particular perspective, a viewpoint.
When we discuss Buddhist meditation,
Buddhist practice and Buddhist meditation experiences, we are discussing things
from a particular perspective. We are not saying these things because we are Buddhists.
We don't think Buddhism is the only way, or superior to all other religious or
spiritual traditions. But the Buddhist approach to spirituality and Buddhist way
of realizing ultimate truth or even discovering the sacredness of spiritual reality
- all of these things can be attained only by adopting a particular viewpoint.
This is why in Buddhism we talk about developing proper view - a Noble view -
things that we believe in, must come from having adopted the proper noble view.
The term in Pali is Samadhiti, in Sanskrit is Samardirshti and in Tibetan Yongpati
dawa - meaning the proper noble view.
Instead of believing in nothing, one
has to learn to see what should be discarded, jettisoned. We learn what we should
stop believing in, spiritual things that may need to be discarded, and what we
need to believe in, things can't be abandoned in, order to advance on the spiritual
path. This is how we lean how to orient ourselves on the spiritual path. Liberation
and our belief systems are intimately related. What we believe in has the ability
to lead us to liberation, because having the proper view can steer us in the right
direction. Improper view on the other hand, leads us to distortion of our spiritual
goals and would only increase our delusions of the mind instead of overcoming
our delusions. Improper view can increase our anger, our sense of superiority
and pride and our delusions. So it is possible to believe in spiritual matters
in a way which encourages our delusory mental states. It is important, therefore,
that we overcome our delusions as part of our practice of meditation.
When
we embark on the path we need to have proper orientation - which comes from having
the correct view. The correct view is the opposite of having the incorrect view
or ignoble view. To have the noble view is seen as the same as one's spiritual
vehicle. It is the transport that we need to lead us from our samsaric condition,
to liberate us, and finally, lead us to nirvana. There's no separation between
the vehicle required to arrive at our spiritual destination and the views we need
to inculcate. Instead of old views inhibiting us, and as a consequence, tying
us to the limited condition of samsara, if we are able to cultivate and inculcate
correct views then we find liberation. The views in themselves have the capacity
to lead us to our ultimate spiritual destination. So views and liberation are
not only compatible and complimentary, but having correct views will produce liberation.
So it is only incorrect views that we need to overcome. We should not be thinking
meditation is all about getting rid of views. We do not have to transcend all
viewpoints. If we have the idea that in order to achieve liberation we need to
overcome all views because they are limiting, we cannot reach spiritual liberation,
we cannot make progress on the spiritual path. Even if someone doesn't want to
become a Buddhist, and only wants to practice meditation, they already think their
life is incomplete. They already think their current situation lacks fulfillment,
and that fulfillment can be found in spirituality, and spirituality will uplift
them from their present state of being. To see like that already requires a lot
of conceptual categories and that person already believes in varieties of things.
It is not possible to simply drop what we believe in just like that.
It is
possible to make use of our viewpoints in order to have better meditation experiences.
When we are doing meditation we may think meditation experiences are independent
from what we believe or independent of a viewpoint. Simply because a meditation
experience is independent of our viewpoint and our beliefs, does not mean beliefs
can be discarded. Beliefs can help us orient ourselves in the way that we can
experience the things that we do. Beliefs can infact steer us in the right direction
in order that we have the appropriate meditation experience. In that way you can
see how closely these two are connected. And it is because of them, from them,
through them, that we can make sense of experience. Otherwise how do we understand
what is going on? Otherwise everything would be totally incomprehensible. At the
same time, I am not saying that with use of viewpoints we can fully comprehend
what is going on. It is just that without them we cannot make sense of experience
at all.
For example, How do we try to understand meditation?
We understand
it by reading literature that describes meditation experience. We are told meditation
is about emptying the mind. Mind becomes agitated because of discursive thoughts
and it is because of discursive thoughts that mind is trapped in the world of
appearance, and that leads to us being separated or divorced from reality.
Without
making use of conceptual tools we cannot attempt to make sense of meditative experience.
We would not know what sort of mind-state is conducive to appropriate meditation
experiences, the sort of mind-state which should be seen as confirming ones spiritual
progress, or inappropriate experiences when one has gone astray. Some experiences
have the appearance of being genuine meditative experiences but are infact false,
mislead the meditator into confusion and produce false confidence about attainments.
Here, in reality the meditative experience may have led the person astray.
In
order to understand what is going on, we have to make use of our conceptual tools,
to steer ourselves in the right direction and continue with our spiritual practice
more purposefully. The noble view is connected to liberation because it leads
to proper understanding, to insight, and from insight arises wisdom. Unless one
has a correct view one does not have a proper understanding of spiritual matters.
First we have to have correct our conceptual understanding instead of thinking
all concepts are defiling by nature and therefore have to be overcome. Via a proper
understanding, proper concepts and thoughts, the correct framework, one is able
to do meditation.
The correct understanding comes from becoming familiar with
the teachings. We cannot separate Buddhist doctrine from Buddhist meditation experiences.
Because Buddhist teachings have four characteristics:
1. The teachings
have the quality of having the content of leading sentient beings to enlightenment
2. The words which express the meaning are devoid of any linguistic imperfections
3. The function of the teachings is to eliminate mental afflictions
4.
The purpose of the teachings is the pacification of the suffering of beings.
By
familiarizing oneself with the teachings which have these four characteristics,
one progresses. Then these teachings don't remain abstract and are appropriated
in the continuum of ones own experience. They become inseparable. Outer expressions
of the teachings refer to written or spoken and inner expressions of the teachings
refer to our own experiences.
That's why in Buddhism we have to practice meditation
by trying to understand the teachings and by placing one's own experiences in
the context of the teachings themselves and appreciate that they cannot be separated.
The understanding that one develops from inculcating the teachings in one's own
being is liberating in itself. It's not that one practices and then finds liberation,
but digestion of the teachings is in itself the same as liberation.
This means
that the teachings are important to us not because they were given by the Buddha,
but because he realized the significance of the teachings and passed them on.
The authority of the teachings pre-exists. It does not come from the fact that
Buddha gave and endorsed those teachings, but because he realized the full content
and significance of the teachings. He was not in a privileged position, and we,
disadvantaged to access the content of the teachings, as if we have a distance
from the direct teachings of the Buddha in terms of time and of our nature. But
by developing the proper view, by developing proper understanding through the
practice of meditation, we learn the significance of the content of the teachings.
And as a consequence we become liberated. The teachings themselves represent liberation.
When the teachings are fully understood, they do not remain on a conceptual level.
Oneself and the teachings become inseparable and that is the goal - enlightenment.
Therefore, we have to appreciate the importance of developing the correct
view in relation to meditation and the importance of having a comprehensive world
view, of human nature, of our place in the scheme of things, and in terms of life,
and one's own relations with the world we live in. All these things have to be
taken into account in meditation, otherwise we only deal with one aspect of our
life, otherwise our world will be fragmented - bits of this and that. Then we
become confused.
There are competing world views and without being a Buddhist
chauvinist and believing that Buddhism has the only truth, there doesn't have
to be one worldview that is true and all others wrong. We approach it from a Buddhist
point of view. Teachings are a raft across the river, the finger pointing at the
moon - once you see the moon you don't have to look at the finger. But don't use
this example as a reason to get rid of views. The necessity of the boat and the
finger, the teachings, have become assimilated into one's being. They are there
to remind oneself of the fact that these conceptual tools that we use, are like
transport and as soon as one is in the vehicle one is on the journey. Then the
effect has already taken place and one has already been liberated.
************************************************************************************************
The
Wisdom in the Dark Emotions
By Miriam Greenspan
I was
brought to the practice of mindfulness more than two decades ago by the death
of my first child. Aaron died two months after he was born, never having left
the hospital. Shortly after that, a friend introduced me to a teacher from whom
I learned the basics of Vipassana meditation: how to breathe mindfully and meditate
with "choiceless" awareness. I remember attending a dharma talk in a
room full of fifty meditators. The teacher spoke about the Four Noble Truths.
Life is inherently unsatisfactory, he said. The ego's restless desires are no
sooner fulfilled than they find new objects. Craving and aversion breed suffering.
One of his examples was waiting in line for a movie and then not getting in.
I
asked: "But what if you're not suffering because of some trivial attachment?
What if it's about something significant, like death? What if you're grieving
because your baby was born with brain damage and died before he had a chance to
live?" I wept openly, expecting that there, of all places, my tears would
be accepted.
The teacher asked, "How long has your son been dead?"
When I told him it had been two months, his response was swift: "Well then,
that's in the past now, isn't it? It's time to let go of the past and live in
the present moment."
I felt reprimanded for feeling sad about my son's
death. The teacher's response baffled me. Live in the present? My present was
suffused with a wrenching sorrow-a hole in my heart that bled daily. But the present
moment, as he conceived of it, could be cleanly sliced away from and inured against
this messy pain. Divested of grief, an emotionally sanitized "present moment"
was served up as an antidote for my tears. However well meaning, the message was
clear: Stop grieving. Get over it. Move on.
This is a familiar message. Its
unintended emotional intolerance often greets those who grieve, especially if
they do so openly. I call this kind of intolerance "emotion-phobia":
a pervasive fear and reflexive avoidance of difficult emotions in oneself and/or
others. This is accompanied by a set of unquestioned normative beliefs about the
"negativity" of painful feelings.
Emotion-phobia is endemic to our
culture and perhaps to patriarchal culture in general. You'll find it in sub-cultures
as different as spiritual retreats, popular self-help books and psychiatric manuals.
In fact, my teacher's supposedly Buddhist response was very much in line with
the prevailing psychiatric view of grief. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual IV (the "bible" of psychiatry), the patient who is grieving a
death is allotted two months for "symptoms" such as sadness, insomnia
and loss of appetite before being diagnosable with a "Major Depressive Disorder."
Grief, perhaps the most inevitable of all human emotions, given the unalterable
fact of mortality, is seen as an illness if it goes on too long. But how much
is too long? My mother, a Holocaust survivor, grieved actively for the first decade
of my life. Was this too long a grief for genocide? Time frames for our emotions
are nothing if not arbitrary, but appearing in a diagnostic and statistical manual,
they attain the ring of truth. The two month limit is one of many examples of
institutional psychiatry's emotion-phobia.
Emotions like grief, fear and despair
are as much a part of the human condition as love, awe and joy. They are our natural
and inevitable responses to existence, so long as loss, vulnerability and violence
come with the territory of being human. These are the dark emotions, but by dark,
I don't mean that they are bad, unwholesome or pathological. I mean that as a
culture we have kept these emotions in the dark-shameful, secret and unseen.
Emotion-phobia
dissociates us from the energies of these emotions and tells us they are untrustworthy,
dangerous and destructive. Like other traits our culture distrusts and devalues-vulnerability,
for instance, and dependence-emotionality is associated with weakness, women and
children. We tend to regard these painful emotions as signs of psychological fragility,
mental disorder or spiritual defect. We suppress, intellectualize, judge or deny
them. We may use our spiritual beliefs or practices to bypass their reality.
Few
of us learn how to experience the dark emotions fully-in the body, with awareness-so
we end up experiencing their energies in displaced, neurotic or dangerous forms.
We act out impulsively. We become addicted to a variety of substances and/or activities.
We become depressed, anxious or emotionally numb, and aborted dark emotions are
at the root of these characteristic psychological disorders of our time. But it's
not the emotions themselves that are the problem; it's our inability to bear them
mindfully.
Every dark emotion has a value and purpose. There are no negative
emotions; there are only negative attitudes towards emotions we don't like and
can't tolerate, and the negative consequences of denying them. The emotions we
call "negative" are energies that get our attention, ask for expression,
transmit information and impel action. Grief tells us that we are all interconnected
in the web of life, and that what connects us also breaks our hearts. Fear alerts
us to protect and sustain life. Despair asks us to grieve our losses, to examine
and transform the meaning of our lives, to repair our broken souls. Each of these
emotions is purposeful and useful-if we know how to listen to them.
But if
grief is barely tolerated in our culture, even less are fear and despair. The
fact is we are all afraid and act as if we're not. We fear the sheer vulnerability
of existence; we fear its unpredictability. When we are unable to feel our fear
mindfully, we turn it into anger, psychosomatic ailments or a host of "anxiety
disorders"-displacements of fears we can't feel or name.
According to
experts, some 50 million people in this country suffer from phobias at some point
in their lives, and millions more are diagnosed with other anxiety disorders.
One reason is that we've lost touch with the actual experience of primal, natural
fear. When fear is numbed, we learn little about what it's for-its inherent usefulness
as an alarm system that we ignore at our peril. Benumbed fear is especially dangerous
when it becomes an unconscious source of vengeance, violence and other destructive
acts. We see this acted out on the world stage as much as in the individual psyche.
As for despair, how many among us have not experienced periods of feeling
empty, desolate, hopeless, brooding over the darkness in our world? This is the
landscape of despair. Judging from my thirty years of experience as a psychotherapist,
I would say that despair is common, yet we don't speak of despair anymore. We
speak of clinical depression, serotonin-deficiency, biochemical disorder and the
new selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitors. We treat the "illness"
with a host of new medications. In my view, "depression" is the word
we use in our highly medicalized culture for a condition of chronic despair-despair
that is stuck in the body and toxified by our inability to bear it mindfully.
When we think of all despair as a mental disorder or a biochemical illness, we
miss the spiritual metamorphosis to which it calls us.
In retrospect, a more
helpful answer from my meditation teacher (and one more in line with the Buddha's
teachings) might have been, If you are grieving, do so mindfully. Pay attention
to your grief. Stop and listen to it. Befriend it and let it be. The dark emotions
are profound but challenging spiritual teachers, like the Zen master who whacks
you until you develop patience and spiritual discipline. When grief shattered
my heart after Aaron's death, that brought with it an expansion, the beginning
of my experience of a Self larger than my broken ego. Grieving mindfully-without
recourse to suppression, intellectualization or religious dogmatism-made me a
happier person than I'd ever been.
What I learned by listening closely to
grief was a transformational process I call "the alchemy of the dark emotions."
Many years after Aaron's death, after a second radiantly healthy child and a third
who was born with a mysterious neuromotor disorder, I began to write about these
alchemies-from grief to gratitude, fear to joy, and despair to faith-that I had
experienced in my own life and witnessed countless times in my work as a psychotherapist.
The alchemy of the dark emotions is a process that cannot be forced, but it
can be encouraged by cultivating certain basic emotional skills. The three basic
skills are attending to, befriending and surrendering to emotions that make us
uncomfortable. Attending to our dark emotions is not just noticing a feeling and
then distancing ourselves from it. It's about being mindful of emotions as bodily
sensations and experiencing them fully. Befriending emotion is how we extend our
emotional attention spans. Once again, this is a body-friendly process-getting
into the body, not away from it into our thoughts. At the least, it's a process
of becoming aware of how our thoughts both trigger emotions and take us away from
them. Similarly, surrender is not about letting go but about letting be. When
you are open to your heart's pain and to your body's experience of it, emotions
flow in the direction of greater healing, balance and harmony.
Attending to,
befriending and surrendering to grief, we are surprised to discover a profound
gratitude for life. Attending to, befriending and surrendering to fear, we find
the courage to open to our vulnerability and we are released into the joy of knowing
that we can live with and use our fear wisely. Attending to, befriending and surrendering
to despair, we discover that we can look into the heart of darkness in ourselves
and our world, and emerge with a more resilient faith in life.
Because we
are all pretty much novices at this process, we need to discipline ourselves to
be mindful and tolerant of the dark emotions. This is a chaotic, non-linear process,
but I have broken it down to seven basic steps: 1) intention, 2) affirmation,
3) sensation, 4) contextualization, 5) the way of non-action, 6) the way of action
and 7) the way of surrender.
Intention is the means by which the mind, heart
and spirit are engaged and focused. Transforming the dark emotions begins when
we set our intention on using our grief, fear and despair for the purpose of healing.
It is helpful to ask yourself: What is my best intention with regard to the grief,
fear and despair in my life? What would I want to learn or gain from this suffering?
The second step in using the dark emotions for growth is affirming their wisdom.
This means changing the way we think about how we feel, and developing and cultivating
a positive attitude toward challenging feelings.
Emotional intelligence is
a bodily intelligence, so you have to know how to listen to your body. The step
I call "sensation" includes knowing how to sense and name emotions as
we experience them in the body. We need to become more familiar and friendly with
the actual physical sensations of emotional energy. Meditation, T'ai chi, yoga
and other physical practices that cultivate mindfulness are particularly useful.
How does your body feel when you are sad, fearful or despairing? What kinds of
stories does your mind spin about these emotions? What happens when you simply
observe these sensations and stories, without trying to understand, analyze or
change anything?
In step four, contextualization, you acquaint yourself with
the stories you usually tell yourself about your emotional suffering, and then
place them in a broader social, cultural, global or cosmic context. In enlarging
your personal story, you connect it to a larger story of grief, fear or despair
in the world. This gets us out of the isolation and narcissism of our personal
history, and opens us to transforming our suffering into compassion.
Step five,
the way of non-action, is the skill that psychologists call "affect tolerance."
This step extends our ability to befriend the pain of the dark emotions in the
body. When you can tolerate the pain of grief, fear and despair without acting
prematurely to escape it, you are practicing the way of non-action. Again, it
is helpful to meditate on your emotions with the intention of really listening
to them. What does your grief, fear or despair ask of you? In meditation, listen
to the answers that come from your heart, rather than from your analytic mind.
The dark emotions ask us to act in some way. While the way of non-action builds
our tolerance for dark emotional energy, step six is about finding an action or
set of actions that puts this energy to good use. In the way of action, we act
not in order to distract ourselves from emotion but in order to use its energy
with the intention of transformation. The dark emotions call us to find the right
action, to act with awareness and to observe the transformations that ensue, however
subtle. Action can be strong medicine in times of trouble. If you are afraid,
help someone who lives in fear. For example, volunteer at a battered women's shelter.
If you're sad and lonely, work for the homeless. If you're struggling with despair,
volunteer at a hospice. Get your hands dirty with the emotion that scares you.
This is one of the best ways to find hope in despair, to find connection in a
shared grief and to discover the joy of working to create a less broken world.
Finally, step seven, the way of surrender, is the art of conscious emotional flow.
Emotional flow is something that happens automatically when you know how to attend
to and befriend your emotions. When we are in flow with emotion, the energy becomes
transformative, opening us to unexpected vistas.
When we look deeply into the
dark emotions in our lives, we find both the universality of suffering and how
much suffering is unnecessary, the result of social inequities, oppression, large
scale violence and trauma. Our awareness both of the universality of suffering
and of its socially created manifestations is critical to the healing journey.
Knowing how our grief, fear and despair may be connected to larger emotional currents
and social conditions de-pathologizes these emotions, allowing us to accept and
tolerate them more fruitfully, and with more compassion for ourselves and others.
We begin to see the dark emotions as messengers, information-bearers and teachers,
rather than "negative" energies we must subdue, tame or deny. We tend
to think of our "negative" emotions as signs that there's something
wrong with us. But the deepest significance of the feelings is simply our shared
human vulnerability. When we know this deeply, we begin to heal in a way that
connects rather than separates us from the world.
Miriam Greenspan is the
author of A New Approach to Women and Therapy. Her forthcoming book, Healing Through
the Dark Emotions: the Wisdom of Grief, Fear and Despair, will be published in
January by Shambhala.
From "The Wisdom in the Dark Emotions" by Miriam
Greenspan. Shambhala Sun, January 2003.
************************************************************************************************
The Wisdom of the Body & the Search for the Self
From
the impermanent to the heroic to the sacred-The Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche on how
the view of body changes and evolves in the three vehicles of Buddhism.
From
the Buddhist perspective, our spiritual journey begins here-with this very body
and mind. Who we are now consists of these two, body and mind, and who we might
become will also be expressed through body and mind. Yet what is the true nature
of these two?
From the Buddhist perspective, our spiritual journey begins here-with
this very body and mind. Who we are now consists of these two, body and mind,
and who we might become will also be expressed through body and mind. Yet what
is the true nature of these two?
Our present experience of life can be viewed as a long dream, arising from our lack of understanding about who we truly are and the actual nature of our world. What we usually refer to as a "dream" is only a short-term fantasy that we wake up from every morning. The real dream we are having is our "waking life," a delusion that continues on and on. When we are in this dream and do not recognize that we are dreaming, then everything we see appears as solid and real, and we do not see any possibilities for transforming our painful experiences. However, when we recognize that we are dreaming, then everything becomes spacious, transparent and free, and all of our confusion and suffering can be easily transformed.
All the teachings of the Buddha are taught for the purpose of developing the penetrating knowledge that sees through this illusion and wakes us up. It is important to realize that these teachings do not constitute a religion in the conventional sense. Rather, they represent a genuine science of mind, a science of insight that uncovers the pure nature of the mind and world that we experience. They also portray a philosophy of life-an approach to life that deals with its meaning and helps us understand how we can overcome the suffering of the world.
When we say that Buddhism is a "science," we are talking about going into the depths of our inner world using the methods of the path to explore the two basic states of confusion and wisdom. Our resulting understanding of mind brings us greater clarity about how to lead our lives effectively and meaningfully. The spiritual journey is nothing more and nothing less than this.
We may not accept the view that we are "dreaming." However, most of us recognize a personal sense of self, a familiar face, so to speak, that looks out on the world and reacts habitually to each experience. This sense of self, of "I," pervades each moment, each interaction, perpetuating itself infinitely. Yet how often or how closely do we look at it?
The two aspects of this self are always together: body is the ground for mind, the stabilizing element that brings mind to the present. The embodied mind can settle, be tamed and be trained, whereas mind without body can go anywhere in an instant. It is when we work with our mind that we overcome whatever we experience physically or mentally as negative or disturbing. So when we discover the actual nature of the body, we are on a genuine path to experiencing the pure nature of mind and its world.
The Body in the Three Yanas
The Buddhist path is divided into three yanas, or vehicles, which represent levels or progressive stages of Buddhist teachings. The Hinayana focuses on individual liberation and the teachings of the Four Noble Truths and dependent origination. The Mahayana focuses on the teachings of emptiness, compassion and buddhanature, and introduces the ideal of the bodhisattva, who is dedicated to the liberation of all sentient beings. The Vajrayana (also called Tantrayana or Mantrayana) is known as the "diamond vehicle," and also the "path of skillful means." By taking the state of fruition as the path, this "rapid vehicle" can result in liberation in one lifetime.
Each of the yanas presents a specific view of the body and corresponding methods for investigating and discovering its essence.
The Hinayana view of body focuses on the relative existence of one's own body as a product of karma and as an impure and impermanent collection of aggregates. The body is taken as an object of meditation to induce the state of renunciation and spur the renunciate to the full state of cessation.
The Mahayana view of body, from the absolute point of view, focuses on the nonexistence of both the body itself and the mind that fixates on the body as a self. From the perspective of relative truth, the Mahayana views the body as inseparable appearance and emptiness. This illusion-like body becomes the basis for understanding the suffering of samsara more deeply and the ground for cultivating a genuine heart of love and compassion for all sentient beings. Moreover, the Mahayana meditation practices take not only one's own body as an object of consideration, but also the bodies of all sentient beings.
The Vajrayana view of body is that the state of enlightenment is present within one's physical form at this very moment. Body, speech and mind are regarded as sacred and are seen as the three kayas, or bodies, of buddha-primordially pure expressions of wisdom and compassion.
By looking at the view of the body from the perspective of the three yanas, beginning with the Hinayana, we can see how, through the application of methods of investigation such as the practice of the four foundations of mindfulness and analytical meditation, we can expose this "self" further and further-the self that is pure fabrication, the no-self that is appearance-emptiness, and the state of primordial purity manifesting as the three buddha kayas.
The Four Foundations of Mindfulness
The Four Foundations of Mindfulness are meditations that cultivate a correct knowledge of the natures of four specific objects: the body, feeling or sensation, the mind and phenomena. (Phenomena here refers to the six objects of our six sensory perceptions: forms, sounds, smells, tastes, touch and mental objects.) In this context, knowledge is primarily that which correctly recognizes relative truth, or the relative characteristics of these four things. However, on the basis of this, there is a gradual development of the higher knowledge that recognizes absolute truth. The Hinayana emphasizes these four mindfulness practices as meditations upon the nature of relative reality, while the Mahayana approach makes use of these practices as a way of realizing the absolute truth.
These four meditations work with the five collections of physical and mental components (known as the five skandhas, or aggregates) that comprise sentient beings: physical forms, sensations, perception, concept or mental formations, and consciousnesses. Among these five, the form skandha relates to the body and the next four are all related to mind. In short, we can say that there are two observed objects of self-clinging: body and mind.
Essentially, the practice of mindfulness consists of investigating these individual objects of meditation in order to discriminate between or distinguish the actual characteristics of the things themselves from the abstractions we create in dependence upon them. For example, the abstraction or concept of "my body" can be distinguished from the aggregate of body itself. The actual body is a physical thing composed of various elements, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with my name for it, my image of it, and so on.
The Hinayana Approach: Reversing Attachment to Self
From the Hinayana point of view, the body is the basis for the self-clinging that is said to be the cause of suffering. At the same time, the body is viewed as the main basis for the path that leads to the transcendence, or cessation, of suffering. Thus, the body is both a fundamental cause of suffering as well as that which suffers; in addition, it is a fundamental cause of liberation because it is that which engages in the path of transcendence.
In a basic way, the mindfulness of body relates to our fundamental sense of existence. Due to our samsaric tendencies, our existence is normally not very stable or grounded; it is very wild, like a mad elephant. For that reason, at the first stage of mindfulness practice, we work with the existence of form. In particular, we work with three different levels of form: the outer form of our physical existence, the inner form of our perceptions, and the innermost form, which is related to the Mahayana understanding of the selflessness of body.
We work with the outer form of our physical existence by bringing our complete attention to the physical body, which is the primary basis for our clinging. When we work with mindfulness of body, we work with the basic root of emotions, which is attachment. The method of practice is to feel the body within the state of calmness, or shamatha. We simply experience the skandha of form without adding anything to it-without adding any labels, judgments or thoughts, such as, "This is my body," "This is a good body," "This is a beautiful body," "It is so healthy," "It is so unhealthy," and so forth. The instruction here is just to drop it all. At this point, we are simply being open. By bringing body into the present, we come into contact with what body actually is, rather than continuing to think about what it actually is.
What we are working toward is seeing the actual nature of the outer form of our body, without concern for speculations, such as, "Is the body mind or matter? Is the body a projection of mind or not?" At this level, we should forget about such philosophical or theoretical divisions. The Buddha teaches this basic approach in the sutras when he says such things as, "When you see, just see. When you smell, just smell. When you touch, just touch. When you feel, just feel."
Once we are able to simply sit and be with our body, then it is possible for us to have a sense of the profound nature of our physical existence. That experience takes us to the inner state of physical existence, allowing us to see the true nature of our body, the reality of the relative existence of self. At this stage, we experience the impermanent nature of our body, which is the subtle experience of the mindfulness of body. It is said that as a result of this technique, we begin to feel our body in a way that is completely different from our ordinary experience. We actually begin to feel the empty nature of the body. The body naturally leads us to the experience of shunyata, or emptiness. Usually, we experience only the labels we impose on our body. When we look at ourselves in a mirror, we see nothing more than our conceptual mask. What is the problem with putting on this mask? We forget that we are wearing a mask and we scare ourselves. Practicing mindfulness of body is a way to experience the true self-the true body-without any barrier.
Reversing Attachment to Body
In the Hinayana tradition, mindfulness of body is also practiced using the method known as the "meditation on ugliness," or the "meditation on that which is repulsive." The object of one's meditation, in this case, includes both one's own body and the bodies of others. Traditionally, one reflects on how our bodies are impure or unclean, to counteract the perception of our bodies as pure, and the five skandhas are viewed as "aggregates of filth." This meditation engenders a sense of disgust toward the body and strengthens our sense of renunciation, of wishing to be free of samsara.
This attitude of revulsion is generated in stages by means of the "ten perceptions of the body." The first of these is the perception of the body as mortal, the recognition that death could occur at any time. The next meditation works with the perception of the body as being ugly or gross by reflecting on all of the unpleasant things that are inside our body, such as blood, lymph, phlegm and other foul and revolting things. The remaining eight perceptions are based on considering what happens to a body after death.
Although we are very attached to our bodies right now, if we think about these a great deal, then our perception of our bodies will change. Essentially, we are attempting to divest ourselves of whatever it is that we are fixating on as "I" or as a self through contemplating the dissolution of the body, until finally we realize that there is no basis in the body for the concept "I." This meditation should only be done under the guidance of a qualified Buddhist teacher.
Contemplating impermanence is another method for reversing our attachment to the body and inspiring us to take advantage of the precious opportunity of this life that allows us to cut attachment. When we reflect on death and impermanence, we reflect on the certainty of death as well as the uncertainty of the moment of death. We also contemplate the kinds of experiences we will have at the time of death, and what will truly help us through them. We consider what we are leaving behind-our physical body, our family and friends, all our possessions and power, and even our teachers.
When we reflect in this way, we see that this reality is not frozen-it is flowing like a river. Every moment is new, fresh and profoundly awakening. We can take full advantage of this moment or let it slip from our hands, just as each moment in the past has slipped away. That is seeing impermanence: seeing the transitory nature of our lives and the fragile nature of our existence.
The Mahayana Approach: Selfless Body
The Mahayana approach to mindfulness of body is not based on perceiving the body as impure or as pure, or on perceiving its composite nature. At this stage, the practice of mindfulness of body is closely related to the notion of selflessness-the nonexistence of body-rather than to the existence of body.
As far as the Mahayana path is concerned, there is no solid physical body that actually exists outside of our mind. The way we experience the existence of our body is simply mind's projection. At this stage, we discover a much deeper level of physical presence, and our mindfulness practice consists of seeing the true nature of that experience. As we approach the level of absolute reality, we see more clearly the relative state of mind, body and mindfulness.
At the same time, the Mahayana views the body in the same way as someone who wishes to cross a river views a boat. It is immediately useful and beneficial, if used properly. Shantideva, one of the greatest exponents of the bodhisattva path, who lived in India in the seventh and eight centuries, says in his classic work the Bodhicharyavatara:
Upon finding the
boat of human birth now, cross the great river of suffering.
O fool, there
is no time for sleep, for this boat is hard to catch again.
Dream and Emptiness
That the physical world is not necessarily solid and real can be understood through the example of a dream. When we are dreaming, there is a subject, an object and the action between them. As long as we remain in the dream state, we experience a real world, real phenomena and a real body. However, when we look back at last night's dream from the point of view of today, we see that the reality we experienced in our dream does not exist.
Furthermore, if we look back at both last night's dream and yesterday's waking experiences, then we can see that they are equally nonexistent-as far as today is concerned. There is no good reason to say that yesterday was more solid and real than last night's dream, except that we cling to our dreamlike experience of yesterday more than to our experience of last night's dream. Therefore, in the Mahayana path, our whole experience of the body, our entire experience of the physical world, is simply a projection or a production of our karmic mind, and that experience exists only as long as we remain in this dream of samsara.
It is the view not only of Buddhist metaphysics, but also of Western science in general and modern physics in particular, that our ordinary sense faculties, such as the eye consciousness, do not see the subtle nature of the objects we perceive. In a similar way, we mistakenly believe that this life's appearance of our own body is truly existent and real and that our confusion and suffering are real.
The vipashyana (insight) meditation on the emptiness of form taught by the Buddha in the Heart Sutra, says, "Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Form is no other than emptiness, emptiness is no other than form. . ." Maintaining the discipline of seeing the dreamlike nature of our body and bringing our mind back to the awareness of that experience is the mindfulness of body in the Mahayana path.
Method of Practice: Analytical Meditation
There is no way we can really practice mindfulness of body, in the Mahayana sense, without understanding and practicing analytical meditation. In the Mahayana, this meditation is performed by searching for the "self" within the body, searching for exactly what we think of as "I." For example, when you have a headache, you say, "Oh, I have a headache." You do not say, "Oh, body has a headache." And when you cut yourself in the kitchen you say, "I cut myself." This shows how we perceive our body as being the self.
One practices this analysis by going through the entire body, dividing it into fragments, and asking in an experiential way: "Is any part or all of my hair my self?" "Is either eye my self, or both eyes?" "Are my eyelashes my self?" "Is my ear my self?" "Is my nose my self?" And so on. The purpose of this is to reverse the misapprehension of the body as a self. If the self were a real part of the body, then you would find it through this type of search. In fact, you do not find any "self," and so you come to know that neither the whole aggregate of form nor any part of it is the self. Through this examination, you resolve that the body is not a basis for the self.
Interdependence and Existence
From the Buddhist point of view, whatever is dependent on something else for its existence has no true existence in and of itself. Because the appearance of something that we take to be a self depends on the coming together of all five skandhas, it exists only interdependently. This is similar to the formation of a "tent" made up of five matchsticks. The first matchstick can only stand upright when the other four are present and support it. When all five matchsticks are present and support each other, then they can form the appearance of a tent. In the same way, the illusion of self can only exist on the basis of all five aggregates, with their attendant causes and conditions, coming together.
The self that we experience coming from the past moment to the present moment to the future moment is like the reflection of a moon in clear water. The reflection is remarkably vivid, yet there is no moon in the water. In the same way, the "self" we experience seems to be real and existent, but when we look at it closely, it is just empty form. When all the causes and conditions of self come together, the five skandhas and so on, then you have the appearance of a self that continues from past to future. But that appearance, like the moon's reflection, is without any true, independent self and is therefore emptiness.
Appearance-Emptiness
If this is so, then how do these forms exist? How does this body exist? The body exists in the form of a collection of countless atoms or subtle particles. However, from the point of view of Mahayana analysis, when we examine form, deeply looking for these particles, no matter how precise or refined our analysis, we will not be able to find the subtle particles that theoretically compose the coarser elements. We will not be able to find a subtle particle that itself is partless-that cannot be broken down further.
So if these subtle particles do not inherently exist, how could something more coarse ever inherently exist? This is similar to the analysis of modern science, which likewise finds no solidly existing particles. However, scientists still refer to energy fields, quarks and strings, which is a more comfortable way of describing emptiness.
Similarly, when we analyze "mind," no solid, truly existent mind can be found. Mind itself has many parts, and each part is momentary. Consequently, both bases of self-clinging-body and mind-are actually empty yet appearing form. This is what we call "illusion," and all appearances are like this-empty-appearing forms, like mirages. In the same way, when we are experiencing mental suffering, it seems very solid and real, and when we are experiencing happiness, it also seems very solid and real. However, when we look at these states, nothing solid is actually there.
If we are viewing all phenomena as being like illusions and dreams, then in post-meditation we need to engender dream-like compassion toward illusory beings, who are tormented by taking appearances to be real. We extend our compassion to all samsaric beings, exerting ourselves in pacifying their suffering and bringing to them the wisdom that will end their illusion.
We have to remember that the analysis we are doing here is from the point of view of ultimate reality, not from the point of view of relative truth or conventional reality. From the perspective of the absolute nature, we say that things are empty and do not have true existence. However, from the perspective of relative reality, from the conventional point of view, things do exist in the nature of interdependence.
The Vajrayana Approach: Sacred Self
According to the view of Vajrayana, the physical existence of form is sacred. In the Vajrayana, the fundamental nature of our body, speech and mind is recognized as primordially pure and enlightened. When their pure nature is known and manifest, they are acknowledged as vajra (indestructible) body, vajra speech and vajra mind.
In this tradition, a practitioner works directly with his or her body and mind using a variety of skillful methods to swiftly transform them into the nature of enlightened body and mind-right on the spot. Therefore, in order to find enlightenment, it is not necessary to renounce the world (the outer body) or one's own body and mind, and leave them behind, as practiced in the Hinayana vehicle, or to seal all appearances with the theoretical view of emptiness, as in the Mahayana. Enlightenment is already right here, within our subtle mind and body, and there is no need to search for liberation outside. We do not have to wait for eons in order to experience a pure buddha realm. In one moment, we can directly cut through all our clinging and enter the vajra world. Therefore, in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, the view of Vajrayana is considered the highest, and its meditation is regarded as supreme.
Three Stages of Body and Mind
Penetrating the nature of mind and body is emphasized equally in the Vajrayana. In the tantric scriptures, such as Hevajra and Kalachakra, the state of mind and body are generally taught to exist in three stages: coarse, subtle and utmost subtle.
The three stages of mind are: 1) the coarse mind-kleshas (defilements) and thoughts; 2) the subtle mind-mind that is resting in basic nondual emptiness; and 3) the utmost subtle mind-absolute bodhichitta (awakened mind or heart), freedom from all conceptualization.
The three stages of body are: 1) the coarse body-the skandhas, the ayatanas and dhatus; 2) the subtle body-the prana, nadis and bindu; and 3) the utmost subtle body-the vajra body.
The coarse body is our relative, physical body that is composed of and functions through the five skandhas, eighteen dhatus and twelve ayatanas (the ayatanas and dhatus comprise all the elements of the perceptual processes: the six sense organs, including mind, their objects, and the corresponding consciousnesses). From the Vajrayana perspective, this body is seen as the basis or fundamental ground of transmutation.
The subtle body, which pervades the coarse body, consists of three elements: a network of channels, or nadis; the subtle wind energies, or prana, which move through these pathways; and the essence of the physical body, known as bindu. By means of practicing with these three, one accomplishes the three vajras-the indestructible nature of the three aspects of enlightened body, speech and mind.
Thus, in the tantric view, the ground of body is full of pathways or highways (nadis) upon which the horse of prana circulates, and the wealth of subtle and pure energies (bindus) is enjoyed by the accomplished rider. Conversely, it is taught that the dualistic mind is like a person without legs who rides on the blind horse of prana.
The utmost subtle body is the genuine body of the spontaneously present, indivisible three vajras. This is the resultant form in the Vajrayana, and it is the pures