Metta Refuge Dharma Nuggets

Progress in Awakening Begins With Acknowledging Where You Are

2012-02-25T22:15:00.003-08:00

Pema Chodron

"It is tempting to ask ourselves if we are making 'progress' on the spiritual path. But to look for progress is a set-up-a guarantee that we won't measure up to some arbitrary goal we've established.

Traditional teachings tell us that one sign of progress in meditation practice is that our kleshas diminish. Kleshas are the strong conflicting emotions that spin off and heighten when we get caught by aversion and attraction.

Though the teachings point us in the direction of diminishing our klesha activity, calling ourselves "bad" because we have strong conflicting emotions is not helpful. That just causes negativity and suffering to escalate. What helps is to train again and again in not acting out our kleshas with speech and actions, and also in not repressing them or getting caught in guilt. The traditional instruction is to find the middle way between the extreme views of indulging-going right ahead and telling people off verbally or mentally-and repressing: biting your tongue and calling yourself a bad person.

Now, to find what the middle way means is a challenging path. That is hard to know how to do. We routinely think we have to go to one extreme or the other, either acting out or repressing. We are unaware of that middle ground between the two. But the open space of the middle ground is where wisdom lies, where compassion lies, and where lots of discoveries are to be made. One discovery we make there is that progress isn't what we think it is.

We are talking about a gradual awakening, a gradual learning process. By looking deeply and compassionately at how we are affecting ourselves and others with our speech and actions, very slowly we can acknowledge what is happening to us. We begin to see when, for example, we are starting to harden our views and spin a story line about a situation. We begin to be able to acknowledge when we are blaming people, or when we are afraid and pulling back, or when we are completely tense, or when we can't soften, or when we can't refrain from saying something harsh. We begin to acknowledge where we are. This ability comes from meditation practice. The ability to notice where we are and what we do comes from practice.

I should point out that what we're talking about is not judgmental acknowledging, but compassionate acknowledging. This compassionate aspect of acknowledging is also cultivated by meditation. In meditation we sit quietly with ourselves and we acknowledge whatever comes up with an unbiased attitude-we label it 'thinking' and go back to the out-breath. We train in not labeling our thoughts 'bad' or 'good,' but in simply seeing them. Anyone who has meditated knows that this journey from judging ourselves or others to seeing what is, without bias, is a gradual one.

So one sign of progress is that we can begin to acknowledge what is happening. We can't do it every time, but at some point we realize we are acknowledging more, and that our acknowledgment is compassionate-not judgmental, parental or authoritarian. We begin to touch in with unconditional friendliness, which we call maitri—an unconditional openness towards whatever might arise. Again and again throughout our day we can acknowledge what's happening with a bit more gentleness and honesty. . ."

Pema Chodron from Start Where You Are
Copyright © 2004 Shambhala Sun Magazine

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Simple, Skillful Instruction for Doing Loving-kindness (Metta) for Yourself

2012-02-25T15:27:00.002-08:00

"When you practice loving kindness meditation, you first start by sending loving and kind thoughts to yourself. You remember times when you were happy. When that happy feeling arises, it's a warm glowing feeling in the center of your chest. And a radiating feeling. As soon as that feeling arises, then, you make a wish for your own happiness: 'May I be happy. May my mind be peaceful and calm. May I be filled with joy. May I be cheerful.'

Whatever wish you make for yourself, feel that wish. You know what it feels like to be peaceful and calm. Bring that feeling of peace and calm, put it into your heart, radiate that feeling to yourself. You know what it feels like to be happy. Bring that feeling into your heart, and radiate that feeling to yourself. Whatever wish you make for yourself, you want to feel that wish.

You can make the same wish over and over again, as long as it has meaning for you, or you can change the wish occasionally. But you don't make a wish like this, you don't say: 'May I be happy. May I be happy. May I be happy. May I be happy. May I be happy.' When you do a wish like that, it turns into, like trying to memorize something, and you start thinking about other things. You want to feel the wish. Make the wish, feel the peace and calm, if that's what your wish is, keep that feeling in your heart, when that feeling starts to fade, then you make another wish.

While you're sitting like this, your mind is going to wander. You're going to think about other things. As soon as you notice that your mind is thinking about other things, you simply let go of those thoughts. Don't continue thinking, even if you're in mid sentence let it go. Relax the tension and tightness caused by those thoughts in your head, in your mind, in your body. And gently come back to the feeling of loving kindness and making a wish for your own happiness.

It doesn't matter if your mind wanders fifty times during the sitting, and fifty times you see that, you let it go, you relax, you come back to your meditation object. That is a good sitting. A bad sitting would be, noticing that you're thinking about something, and to continue thinking, not letting it go.

When you're sitting, you want to sit with your back reasonably straight. Please don't move your body at all. Don't wiggle your toes, don't wiggle your fingers, don't scratch, don't rub, don't change your posture. Don't rock back and forth. Sit very still.

While you're sitting like this, there can be some sensations that arise in your body. You want to cough, and itch, heat, vibration, a painful feeling. As soon as that arises your mind will be drawn to it, and then you start thinking about that sensation: 'I wish it would stop. I really don't like this feeling when it happens. I wish it would just go away.' Every thought like that makes the feeling become bigger and more intense. So, the first thing you do is to let go of the thought about the sensation. And then, relax the tension or tightness in your head, in your mind.

Next you will notice that there is a tight mental fist wrapped around that sensation, you really don't like that sensation there, you really want it to go away. The truth is when a sensation arises, it's there. That's the truth. And it's OK for that sensation to be there. It has to be OK, because it's there. Anytime you try to fight with the truth, anytime you try to control the truth, anytime you try to make the truth be anything other than it is, that's the cause of suffering. Allow that sensation to be there. Make it OK for it to be there. Relax. Gently come back to the feeling of being happy and making a wish for your own happiness.

While you're doing this meditation, this is a smiling meditation. You want to put a smile in your mind. A little smile in your eyes, even though your eyes are closed. A smile on your lips, a little one, and a smile in your heart. Whenever you notice that you're not smiling, then start again. . ."

Bhante Vimalaramsi

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How Mindfulness Brings Meaning to Our Lives

2012-02-18T14:41:00.000-08:00

"When we rush in with...mental chatter, we are no longer being mindful. We are just thinking about being mindful. Mindfulness is not thinking about, it is being present and actually knowing in the moment without any mental commentary. If commentary begins to happen, we simply ignore it and return to being present in the moment.

Think about this. There are so many things happening in our lives that we never really experience. We experience only ideas, interpretations, and comparisons. We dwell on things that happened in the past or anticipate future events. But we almost never experience the moment itself. It is for this reason that we often find our lives boring and meaningless. What we need to realize is that this sense of meaninglessness does not come from our lives, but from the quality of awareness with which we live our lives."

Ani Tenzin Palmo - Reflections on a Mountain Lake: Teachings on Practical Buddhism

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What Was Your Original Face - Before Ignorance and Craving?

2012-02-08T12:50:00.000-08:00

"A fundamental experience and comprehension which the enlightened Zen masters have urged us to realize is known as the original face. A famous Zen patriarch asked, 'Before your father and mother were born, what was you original face?'

If we understand 'father and mother' in a traditional symbolic way to refer to ignorance and craving, this question directs us to realize our original nature as it was before a lifetime of habitual illusions based on ignorance and greed.

Here, in this original face, there is no station or grade, no prejudice, no philosophy or religion; all beings are the family, all worlds are the household. Only on the basis of the most fundamental realization, only with open mind and heart, can the affairs of the family and household have a sound foundation for accomplishment."

from "The Original Face" in Classics of Buddhism and Zen by Thomas Cleary, Volume Four

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On Skill in Letting Go of Hindering Visions by Luang Pu

2012-02-02T15:10:00.000-08:00

It’s normal that when people practicing concentration start getting results, they can have their doubts about what they’ve experienced—for example, when they experience conflicting visions or start seeing parts of their own bodies. Many people came to Luang Pu, asking him to resolve their doubts or to give them advice on how to continue with their practice. And a lot of people would come to say that when meditating they saw hell or heaven or heavenly mansions, or else a Buddha image inside their body. “Was what I saw real?” they would ask.

Luang Pu would respond:

“The vision you saw was real, but what you saw in the vision wasn’t.”

The questioner might then ask,“You say that all these visions are external, and that I can’t yet put them to any use; if I stay stuck simply on the vision I won’t make any further progress. Is it because I’ve been staying so long with these visions that I can’t avoid them? Every time I sit down to meditate, as soon as the mind gathers together it goes straight to that level. Can you give me some advice on how to let go of visions in an effective way?”

Luang Pu would respond:

“Oh, some of these visions can be lots of fun and really absorbing, you know, but if you stay stuck right there it’s a waste of time. A really simple method for letting go of them is not to look at what you see in the vision, but to look at what’s doing the seeing. Then the things you don’t want to see will disappear on their own.”

Excerpt from "Gifts He Left Behind: The Dhamma Legacy of Phra Ajaan Dune Atulo (Luang Pu)

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How Practicing Meditation in Nature Can Help Us Let Go

2012-01-28T16:18:00.000-08:00

"...being in nature invites us to let go of our preoccupation with our own mind-created personal drama. This happens in part because nothing in the natural world is self- referencing. The redwoods are not proud of their lofty heights, the spotted turtle is not ashamed of his speed.

When we are away from the world of people, so dominated by the needs of the ego, our own habits of self-reference can, with the support of meditative training, evaporate in the morning mist. In such moments, when we lose track of ourselves, we inhabit a simpler realm where there is just the coming and going of experience in the field of awareness. No self, no other, just what is.

As the Buddha said to Bahiya:

In the seen there will be merely the seen; in the heard there will be merely the heard; in the sensed there will be merely the sensed; in the cognized there will be merely the cognized.... Then you will be neither here nor beyond nor in-between the two. This itself is the end of suffering. —Ud 8

Or as the Chinese poet Li Po has put it:

The birds have vanished into the sky
And the last remaining clouds have passed away
We sit together the mountain and me
Until only the mountain remains.

Mark Coleman
from "Only the Mountain Remains: Practicing in Nature" (click to download)

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Thich Nhat Hanh Poem - Going in Circles

2012-01-24T14:43:00.000-08:00

Going in Circles
by Thich Nhat Hanh

O you who are going in circles,
please stop.
What are you doing it for?

"I cannot be without going,
because I don't know where to go.
That's why I go in circles."

O You who are going in circles,
please stop.

"But if I stop going,
I will stop being."

O my friend who is going in circles,
you are not one with
this crazy business of going in circles.
You may enjoy going,
but not going in circles.

"Where can I go?"

Go where you find your beloved,
where you can find yourself.

from:
Call Me By My True Names - The Collected Poems of Thich Nhat Hanh

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A Not-self Teaching: Who do you say "I am" is?

2012-01-23T15:05:00.000-08:00

Image via Wikipedia

Then Ven. Khemaka [a non-returner], leaning on his staff, went to the elder monks and, on arrival, exchanged courteous greetings with them. After an exchange of friendly greetings & courtesies, he sat to one side.

As he was sitting there, the elder monks said to him, “Friend Khemaka, this ‘I am’ of which you speak: What do you say ‘I am’? Do you say, ‘I am form,’ or do you say, ‘I am something other than form’? Do you say, ‘I am feeling... perception... fabrications... consciousness,’ or do you say, ‘I am something other than consciousness’’? This ‘I am’ of which you speak: What do you say ‘I am’?”

“Friends, it’s not that I say ‘I am form,’ nor do I say ‘I am something other than form.’ It’s not that I say, ‘I am feeling... perception... fabrications... consciousness,’ nor do I say, ‘I am something other than consciousness.’ With regard to these five clinging-aggregates, ‘I am’ has not been overcome, although I don’t assume that ‘I am this.’

“It’s just like the scent of a blue, red, or white lotus: If someone were to call it the scent of a petal or the scent of the color or the scent of a filament, would he be speaking rightly?”

“No, friend.” “Then how would he describe it if he were describing it rightly?” “As the scent of the flower: That’s how he would describe it if he were describing it rightly.” “In the same way, friends, it’s not that I say ‘I am form,’ nor do I say ‘I am other than form.’ It’s not that I say, ‘I am feeling... perception... fabrications... consciousness,’ nor do I say, ‘I am something other than consciousness.’ With regard to these five clinging-aggregates, ‘I am’ has not been overcome, although I don’t assume that ‘I am this.’"

— The Buddhist Pali Canon, SN 22:89

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Understanding Meditation as Surrender

2012-01-19T13:06:00.000-08:00

"No matter what else we do in meditation, just by the fact of sitting down and giving up the tasks with which we normally clothe ourselves, we are challenging our very sense of self. We’re testing the possibility of giving up these roles and just being what we actually are.

This takes trust. You have to trust yourself to the ground when you sit on it. You have to trust yourself to the practice, to let yourself be held by it and give up, surrender. You want to say, 'I’ve got to do something.' But you can’t do this. We can’t, finally, do our practice, just as we can’t do ourselves into a state of calm or a state of keen discernment. We can set up the conditions for it to arise, and that’s where grace or blessings or inspiration comes in."

Anne Carolyn Klein – "Grounded by The Earth"

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Take time to "meet the Buddha!"

2012-01-17T21:20:00.000-08:00

Ajahn Chah instruction on breathing meditation:

"Look on the breath as if it were some relatives come to visit you. When the relatives leave, you follow them out to see them off. You watch until they’ve walked up the drive and out of sight, and then you go back indoors.

We watch the breath in the same way. If the breath is coarse we know that it’s coarse, if it’s subtle we know that it’s subtle. As it becomes increasingly fine we keep following it, at the same time awakening the mind. Eventually the breath disappears altogether and all that remains is that feeling of alertness. This is called meeting the Buddha."

~ Ajahn Chah

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Buddhist Insight into Effective Social Protest and Change

2012-01-14T22:28:00.000-08:00

“When we attack injustice, cruelty, and suffering with intolerance and loathing, we make the mistake of believing that hatred can generate compassion and goodness. Hatred is suffering, and can only perpetuate suffering, not alleviate it. Change that arises from duality is change in content only -- the what’s change, but the how’s remain the same. The oppressed become the oppressors. We only change roles.

Profound change—change in *how* we do not what we do—happens only with complete acceptance—acceptance that goes beyond the dualities of right and wrong, them and us, good and bad. This acceptance demands our full attention, our complete willingness, our unconditional love, and our deepest wisdom and compassion. There is nothing passive about it.”

Zen teacher Cheri Huber

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The body is not self? Easy to say!

2012-01-14T22:09:00.000-08:00

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Krishnamurti on How to Discover God or Truth

2012-01-03T12:12:00.000-08:00

"To discover God or truth—and I say such a thing does exist, I have realized it—to recognize that, to realize that, mind must be free of all the hindrances which have been created throughout the ages, based on self-protection and security. You cannot be free of security by merely saying that you are free. To penetrate the walls of these hindrances, you need to have a great deal of intelligence, not mere intellect. Intelligence, to me, is mind and heart in full harmony; and then you will find out for yourself, without asking anyone, what that reality is."

J. Krishnamurti

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Meditation - There's More to It Than Sitting

2011-12-29T14:55:00.000-08:00

In the [the Buddha's] Discourse on How to Establish Mindfulness, there is the following section on Clear Comprehension:

A meditator when moving forward or backward is clearly aware of what they are doing; when looking ahead or behind, clearly aware of what they are doing; when bending, stretching ... when carrying things , clearly aware of what they are doing; when eating, drinking, chewing, savouring ... when passing stools or urine ... when walking, standing, sitting, falling asleep and waking up ... when speaking or staying silent, they clearly aware of what they are doing.

That is, whatever the meditator is doing, that is what they must be mindful of.

In other words, the sitting meditation is only a part of the practice as a whole. The Buddha wanted us to develop a meditative life. To know what we are doing at all times. A life of full-time awareness. The danger for meditators is to raise the sitting meditation practice to the position of a magical ritual as if all we needed to do was a little sitting in the morning and in the evening (perhaps) and liberation from suffering is assured.

Too often meditators think sitting meditation is the be-all and end-all of the Path. I once met a meditator because of this. He had been tremendously ardent, spending months in intensive meditation only to come out and live the 'good life.' After years of this so-called practice, achieving very little in terms of inner peace, he had achieved little but sorrow and despair. He felt the five years of so he had spent on the meditation practice had been a great waste.

So, it is this dependence on meditation sitting as the one and only practice that leads to disillusionment and disappointment. Eventually the meditator may abandon the practice altogether as useless! So sitting meditation is only part of the Buddha's path, though undoubtedly necessary.

Bhikkhu Bodhidhamma
"Meditation In Ordinary Daily Life"

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On Bringing Awareness to our Sexuality

2011-12-28T12:58:00.000-08:00

"One some level, we as a society regard sexuality as something dark, forbidden. This shadowy undercurrent of puritanical sentiment still flows deep in our cultural memory. As a consequence, the desire for sex is rarely simple.

Sometimes is it imbued with the thrill of conquest or the lure for the forbidden. Often it is driven by the thirsting desire for excitement and romance, to cover over the anxiety of our aloneness. And almost always, from our very core, there comes some desperate craving for acceptance, for love.

Yet the power of our sexual energy is in itself neither good nor bad. Far more important than the mere denial of fulfillment of desires, the clarity of our awareness determines whether our sexuality is a heaven or a hell."

Ezra Bayda from Saying Yes to Life (Even the Hard Parts)

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Pema Chodron on the Path of Compassion

2011-12-28T11:37:00.000-08:00

"Compassion is not a magical device that can instantly dispel all suffering. The path of compassion is altruistic but not idealistic. Walking this path we are not asked to lay down our life, find a solution for all of the struggles in this world, or immediately rescue all beings. We are asked to explore how we may transform our own hearts and minds in the moment.

Can we understand the transparency of division and separation? Can we liberate our hearts from ill will, fear, and cruelty? Can we find the steadfastness, patience, generosity, and commitment not to abandon anyone or anything in this world? Can we learn how to listen deeply and discover the heart that trembles in the face of suffering?

The path of compassion is cultivated one step and one moment at a time. Each of those steps lessens the mountain of sorrow in the world."

Pema Chodron

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When the Tibetan Master Cried at the Loss of His Son

2011-12-27T15:31:00.000-08:00

"When Marpa, the great Tibetan meditation master and teacher of Milarepa, lost his son he wept bitterly. One of his pupils came up to him and asked: ‘Master, why are you weeping? You teach us that death is an illusion.’

And Marpa said: ‘Death is an illusion. And the death of a child is an even greater illusion.’ But what Marpa was able to show his disciple was that while he could understand the truth about the conditioned nature of everything and the emptiness of forms, he could still be a human being. He could feel what he was feeling; he could open to his grief. He could be completely present to feel that loss. And he could weep openly.

There is nothing incongruous about feeling our feelings, touching our pain, and, at the same time understanding the truth of the way things are. Pain is pain; grief is grief; loss is loss — we can accept those things. Suffering is what we add onto them when we push away."

Ajahn Medhanandi from "The Joy Hidden in Sorrow"

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Metta for a Dog and Its Delight

2011-12-13T13:34:00.000-08:00

O Great Doggy Heart,

Looking upon the Wonderful Object of your Joy and Desire,

May your Master make time for your Joy and Delight in the Chase,

May you race through the grass with ecstasy,
as the Great Hunter of Things Thrown and Things Caught!

May your Master delight in your Joy and Delight in the Chase

May your Master look deeply into this Joy and Delight

And sense the endless Fields of Love, where Dog and Delight and Master and Play,

And are One in the never-ending Bliss of the Dance of Being.

Steve Goodheart

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Quantum physics, Oppenheimer, and the Buddha

2011-12-10T12:30:00.001-08:00

“If we ask, for instance, whether the position of the electron remains the same, we must say ‘no’; if we ask whether the electron’s position changes with time, we must say ‘no’; if we ask whether the electron is at rest, we must say ‘no’; if we ask whether it is in action, we must say ‘no’.

“The Buddha had given such answers when interrogated as to the condition of man’s self after death, but they are not familiar answers from the tradition of the 17th and 18th century science.”

Robert Oppenheimer

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Listen with Compassion

2011-12-10T11:31:00.001-08:00

“Deep listening, compassionate listening is not listening with the purpose of analyzing or even uncovering what has happened in the past. You listen first of all in order to give the other person relief, a chance to speak out, to feel that someone finally understands him or her.

Deep listening is the kind of listening that helps us to keep compassion alive while the other speaks…During this time you have in mind only one idea, one desire: to listen in order to give the other person the chance to speak out and suffer less. This is your only purpose. Other things like analyzing, understanding the past, can be a by-product of this work. But first of all listen with compassion.”

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

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The Old Monk and the Secret of Heaven and Hell

2011-12-10T09:53:00.001-08:00

The old monk sat by the side of the road. With his eyes closed, his legs crossed and his hands folded in his lap, he sat. In deep meditation, he sat.

Suddenly his zazen was interrupted by the harsh and demanding voice of a samurai warrior. “Old man! Teach me about heaven and hell!”

At first, as though he had not heard, there was no perceptible response from the monk. But gradually he began to open his eyes, the faintest hint of a smile playing around the corners of his mouth as the samurai stood there, waiting impatiently, growing more and more agitated with each passing second.

“You wish to know the secrets of heaven and hell?” replied the monk at last. “You who are so unkempt. You whose hands and feet are covered with dirt. You whose hair is uncombed, whose breath is foul, whose sword is all rusty and neglected. You who are ugly and whose mother dresses you funny. You would ask me of heaven and hell?”

The samurai uttered a vile curse. He drew his sword and raised it high above his head. His face turned to crimson and the veins on his neck stood out in bold relief as he prepared to sever the monk’s head from its shoulders.

“That is hell,” said the old monk gently, just as the sword began its descent.

In that fraction of a second, the samurai was overcome with amazement, awe, compassion and love for this gentle being who had dared to risk his very life to give him such a teaching. He stopped his sword in mid-flight and his eyes filled with grateful tears.

“And that,” said the monk, “is heaven.”

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Using Breath as an Anchor to Come Back Home To

2011-12-09T22:45:00.001-08:00

"For me, it is an axiom that meditation is not so much about being with the breath every single second. That is very difficult and can only be achieved in very specific circumstances. But this does not mean the meditation of coming back is not effective.

You could have a thousand thoughts, and a thousand times you will have the opportunity to come back. You can make the choice to come back at any time, and it will diminish the power of the mental habit. So cultivation is the coming back, again and again, to the breath. It is not useful to think only about the effect of meditation, because that is a slippery slope. Better to focus mainly on cultivation.

When we come back to the breath, we come back to experience. It’s very important to see that when attention goes off, it generally goes into abstraction. In abstraction we are ignoring reality instead of being in the fullness of experience, which is where our creative potential can come out and express itself. We all know we have a brain, we have a certain kind of emotional system related to the heart, we have a body, and we have sensations that go with it. All this is not going to stop. But there is a difference between what I would call creative functioning within those potentials of thinking, feeling, and sensation, and being stuck in them and feeling you can’t get out. Concentration brings back the mental, emotional, and physical patterns to the creative functions of mind, body, and heart.

An image of what concentration does is that of a glass with muddy water. If you shake the glass, the water gets muddy and you can’t really see through it. But if you leave the glass alone for a bit, the mud goes to the bottom and the water at the top becomes clean. This is the basic idea of concentration: if things are not so agitated and they settle down, then you can see more clearly and there can be more space for you to see. Over time meditation develops space around our thoughts, around our feelings, and around our sensations."

Martine Batchelor from "Breaking Free with Creative Awareness"

Insight Journal Winter 2008

Martine Batchelor is the author of Meditation for Life, The Path of Compassion, Women in Korean Zen, and Let Go: A Buddhist Guide to Breaking Free of Habits. She teaches at Gaia House in England and also world-wide, and lives in southwest France.

Slack Mind or Agitated mind - Build a Fire - Extinguish a Fire

2011-12-06T13:36:00.001-08:00

“Monks, suppose a man wanted to make a small fire burn up, and he put wet grass on it, put wet cow dung on it, put wet sticks on it, sprinkled it with water, and scattered dust on it, would that man be able to make the small fire burn up?” — “No, venerable sir.” — “So too, monks, when the mind is slack, that is not the time to develop the tranquility enlightenment factor, the concentration enlightenment factor, and the equanimity enlightenment factor. Why is that? Because a slack mind cannot well be roused by those states. When the mind is slack, that is the time to develop the investigation-of-states enlightenment factor, the energy enlightenment factor, and the happiness enlightenment factor. Why is that? Because a slack mind can well be roused by those states.

“Monks, suppose a man wanted to extinguish a great mass of fire, and he put dry grass on it,... and did not scatter dust on it, would that man be able to extinguish that great mass of fire?” — “No, venerable sir.” — “So too, monks, when the mind is agitated, that is not the time to develop the investigation-of-states enlightenment factor, the energy enlightenment factor, or the happiness enlightenment factor. Why is that? Because an agitated mind cannot well be quieted by those states. When the mind is agitated, that is the time to develop the tranquility enlightenment factor, the concentration enlightenment factor, and the equanimity enlightenment factor. Why is that? Because an agitated mind can well be quieted by those states.”

The Buddha, Samyutta Nikaya, 46:53

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When Meditating, Don't Chase the Shadows

2011-12-02T20:00:00.001-08:00

"When you sit and meditate, even if you don't gain any intuitive insights, make sure at least that you know this much: When the breath comes in, you know. When it goes out, you know. When it's long, you know. When it's short, you know. Whether it's pleasant or unpleasant, you know.

If you can know this much, you're doing fine. As for the various thoughts and concepts (sanna) that come into the mind, brush them away -- whether they're good or bad, whether they deal with the past or the future. Don't let them interfere with what you're doing — and don't go chasing after them to straighten them out. When a thought of this sort comes passing in, simply let it go passing on. Keep your awareness, unperturbed, in the present.

When we say that the mind goes here or there, it's not really the mind that goes. Only concepts go. Concepts are like shadows of the mind. If the body is still, how will its shadow move? The movement of the body is what causes the shadow to move, and when the shadow moves, how will you catch hold of it? Shadows are hard to catch, hard to shake off, hard to set still.

The awareness that forms the present: That's the true mind. The awareness that goes chasing after concepts is just a shadow. Real awareness -- 'knowing' — stays in place. It doesn't stand, walk, come, or go. As for the mind — the awareness that doesn't act in any way coming or going, forward or back — it's quiet and unperturbed. And when the mind is thus its normal, even, undistracted self — i.e., when it doesn't have any shadows — we can rest peacefully. But if the mind is unstable and uncertain, it wavers:

Concepts arise and go flashing out — and we go chasing after them, hoping to drag them back in. The chasing after them is where we go wrong. This is what we have to correct. Tell yourself: Nothing is wrong with your mind. Just watch out for the shadows."

From "The Art of Letting Go" by Ajaan Lee Dhammadharo
Translated from the Thai by Thanissaro Bhikkhu (Geoffrey DeGraff)

Ajaan Lee Dhammadharo

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A Buddhist Vision of the Beatitudes

2011-12-02T14:25:00.001-08:00

Blessed are the merciful, for they have learned how to be merciful to themselves.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they have looked into their heart of darkness and smiled with the wisdom of a Buddha.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they have transformed the war in their own hearts.

Blessed are they who mourn, for through suffering they will seek and find the path to release.

Blessed are the poor (the beggars) in spirit, for they will discover the kingdom of heaven is already within.

Blessed are they that are persecuted for righteousness sake, for they have learned to let go of persecuting the unrighteousness of others.

Blessed are the meek, for they have learned the joy of letting go of self and of finding self in others.

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after liberation, for they have found the desire that leads to the end of all entrapments.

Steve Goodheart

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Held In the Arms of Mindfulness

2011-11-28T14:48:00.001-08:00

In the space of sacred silence, I come home again.
Held in the arms of mindfulness, I am at peace,
A child of the Buddha.

Steven Goodheart

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The Moment We've Been Waiting For

2011-11-28T14:38:00.001-08:00

If we will only realize it, this is the moment we've always been waiting for, and there is no other.

Steven Goodheart

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How Even a Telephone Ringing Can Help Us Awaken

2011-11-26T10:13:00.001-08:00

"The Buddha is someone who is very close to us. The Buddha is the power of awakening, of loving, of understanding in us. Every time the Buddha is calling, we have to listen with all our being. That is why our minds have to be with our bodies; so we stop every activity, including thinking, and we go back to ourselves, using our breathing as a vehicle. We arrive, and we listen very deeply to the voice of the Buddha. That is the voice of peace, of stability, of freedom.

If we don’t know how to listen to the voice of the Buddha, we won’t be able to restore peace, tranquility, and solidity inside ourselves. In Plum Village we enjoy the practice of listening to the bell very much. Every time I listen to the bell, I feel I am a better person. I am more solid, I am more free. I am calmer, more understanding. That is why everyone should profit from the practice of listening to the bell of mindfulness.

You will notice that in Plum Village we practice mindfulness of listening with other sounds. For, example, every time we hear the telephone ringing, all of us in Plum Village will stop our talking, stop our thinking, and go back to our in-breath and out-breath, and listen. Even though the sound of the telephone is a very ordinary kind of sound, when you practice, it becomes something very important too.

We practice breathing, with the gatha: 'Listen, listen, this wonderful sound brings me back to my true home.' 'Listen, listen,' that is what you say when you breathe in. When you say, 'Listen, listen,' that means 'I am listening deeply,' and when you breathe out you say, 'This wonderful sound brings me back to my true home.' My true home is where there is peace, there is stability, there is love, and I love to go home, because at home I feel safe."

From a Dharma Talk by Thich Nhat Hahn at Plum Village, July 1998

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Allen Watts on Beat Zen and Square Zen

2011-11-25T22:05:00.001-08:00

“. . .the Westerner who is attracted by Zen and who would understand it deeply must have one indispensable qualification: he must understand his own culture so thoroughly that he is no longer swayed by its premises unconsciously.

He must really have come to terms with the Lord God Jehovah and with his Hebrew-Christian conscience so that he can take it or leave it without fear or rebellion. He must be free of the itch to justify himself. Lacking this, his Zen will be either “beat” or “square,” either a revolt from the culture and social order or a new form of stuffiness and respectability.” Allen Watts

Sound interesting? You can read Allen Watt's entire article here:

Beat Zen? Square Zen? or just Zen?

Allen Watts

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Working with the Six Parimitas

2011-11-25T12:52:00.001-08:00

The Six Paramitas
by Jack Kerouac from “Some of the Dharma”

    1.    Unselfish giving for others, DANA, radiant & selfless

    2.    Moral purity, kindness, SILA, sympathy, absence of craving

    3.    Forbearance, patience, KSHANTI, endurance, forgiveness

    4.    Energy, enthusiasm, VIRYA, effort for the ideal

    5.    Dhyana concentration, DHYANA PARAMITA, 4 stages of meditation

    6.    Wisdom, insight, PRAJNA PARAMITA, absence of conceptions and illusions

Meditation on the Six Paramitas
from the Japanese Soto Zen tradition

Dana - May I be generous and helpful.

Sila - May I be pure and virtuous.

Kshanti - May I be patient and able to bear and forbear the wrongs of others.

Virya - May I be strenuous, energetic, and persevering.

Dhyana - May I practice meditation and attain concentration and oneness to serve all beings.

Pranja - May I gain wisdom and be able to give the benefit of my wisdom to others.

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What Attention Can Reveal

2011-11-23T12:28:00.001-08:00

“If you can sustain your attention on any part of nature long enough, nature opens up to you and reveals its secrets, whether it's watching a leaf on a tree or it's watching the moon in the sky or even watching the finger on your hand.

Whatever it is, if you can sustain your attention unmoving and without comment, silent and still, you'll find the object in front of the mind will open up its secrets to you. And you'll see much more in there than you've ever seen before.”

Ajahn Brahmavamso

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The Right Attitude in Meditation

2011-11-22T13:07:00.001-08:00

"Having the right attitude is essential for success in meditation. Although it is necessary to motivate ourselves to meditate, samâdhi will not arise from ego-based craving for altered states of consciousness or for the repetition of previously experienced peaceful states. This craving will actually increase stress. There is too much desire and sense of self.

The quickest way to make progress in meditation is to be perfectly content, putting energy into being mindful in the present moment, and not hoping for or expecting anything."

Ajahn Chah

"A Mind of Harmony"

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Renunication - It Really Isn't Medieval Self-Torture

2011-11-20T14:48:00.001-08:00

"The Buddha taught that as conditioned beings living in a conditioned existence (Samsara) we can never be completely free of all sorts of unpleasantness, stress, and suffering. All conditioned phenomena are flawed, and that inevitably gives rise to unsatisfactoriness.

This is the First Noble Truth of the Buddha’s teaching, and far from being a vague philosophical speculation, it is something that each of us experiences first hand for him-or-herself in daily life. While true and permanent freedom (Nibbana) comes about as a result of the insight gained through Vipassana meditation, we can eliminate a great deal of unnecessary suffering in the meantime by applying the principle of renunciation.

Unfortunately, the very word “renunciation” has a strange medieval ring to it in this modern, Western-dominated, supposedly hedonistic age. For most, it carries the smell of sack-cloth and ashes, an image of penance, self-denial, self-deprivation, even self-torture. It is thought of as a negative, dejected turning away from the world, a gloomy giving up on life, the last refuge of spurned lovers and aging old maids.

It is none of those things. Genuine renunciation, as the Buddha teaches it, is akin to throwing open the windows of the mind to morning sunshine and crisp, cool air. Renunciation is “cleaning house,” getting rid of trash and useless clutter, both figurative and literal. It is recognizing that when we become attached to things, we do not own them, instead they own us. It is putting things in proper perspective, simplifying our lives, and being satisfied with 'enough.'”

Petr Karel Ontl
"Of Mindsets and Moneypots"

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Thich Nhat Hanh and the Soldier Who Poisoned Five Children

2011-11-11T11:53:00.001-08:00

Vietnamese Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh

Dharma Talk given by Thich Nhat Hanh on May 10, 1998 in Plum Village, France.

Beginning Anew

"During the Vietnam War there was an American soldier who got very angry because most of the soldiers in his unit got killed in an ambush by Vietnamese guerrillas; that happened in a village in the countryside, so out of his rage he wanted to retaliate. He wanted to kill a number of people who belonged to that village. So he took out a bag of sandwiches, and he mixed explosives into the sandwiches and left them at the entrance to the village. He saw children coming out and happily taking the sandwiches, thinking that someone had left these delicious sandwiches, and they ate together, enjoying a lot.

And just half an hour later he saw them begin to show signs of suffering. Their father and their mother and sister came, and tried to help, to give them massage and medicine, but the American soldier who had hidden himself not far from there, knew very well there was no way to save these children, and that they would die. He knew that even if they had a car to transport these children to the hospital it would be too late. Out of anger he had done things like that. If anger is strong in us, we are capable of doing anything, even the cruelest things.

When he went back to America he suffered because of that: that scene appeared to him in his dreams, and he could never forget it. Any time during the day if he found himself alone in a room with children, he could not stay, and had to run out of the room right away. He could not talk about that to anyone except to his mother, who said, 'Well, that was the war, and in a war you cannot prevent these things happening.' But that did not help him, until he came to a retreat organized by Plum Village in North America.

During many days he was not able to tell people of his story. It was a very difficult retreat. We sat in circles of five or six people, and invited people to speak out about their suffering, but there were those who sat there unable to open their mouths. There were war veterans who were deeply wounded inside, and fear and despair were still there.

When we did walking meditation I saw one or two walking far behind, at least twenty meters behind us. I did not understand why they did not join us, but walked far away like that. When someone inquired, they learned that these ex-soldiers were afraid of being ambushed. So they walked far behind so that if something happened they would have enough space to run away. And one war veteran set up a tent in the jungle, and in order to appease his fear, he set up booby traps around his tent. That happened in the retreat in North America…he always had the guerrillas around him, and in him, ready to kill him at any time.

Finally that American Vietnam War veteran was able to tell us the story of the explosives put into the sandwiches. It was very good for him to be able to tell it, especially in front of the Vietnamese people, his former enemies. I gave him a prescription. I had a private consultation with him, and I said:

'Now look, you killed five children, yes. And that is not a good thing to do, yes. But don’t you know that many children are dying in this very moment, everywhere, even in America, because of lack of medicine, of food? Do you know that 40,000 children die every day in the world, just because of the lack of medicine and food? And you are alive, you are solid physically. Why don’t you use your life to help the children who are dying in this moment? Why get caught in the five children who have died in the past? There are many ways…if you want, I will tell you how to save five children today. There are children who need only one table of medicine to be saved, and you can be the one who brings that tablet of medicine to him or to her. If you practice like that every day, the children who died because of the explosives will smile in you, because these five children have participated in your work of saving many children who are dying in this very moment.'

So, the door was opened, so that the man was longer trapped in the feeling of culpability. That is the amrita, the ambrosia of compassion, of wisdom, offered by the Buddha: there is always a way out.

So that war veteran has practiced and has been able to help many other children in the world. He has gone back to Vietnam, has done the work of reconciliation, and the five children who died have begun to smile in him and to become one with him.

In the beginning it was a distressing image, but now the five children have become alive, have become the energy helping him to live with compassion, with understanding. The garbage can be transformed into flowers if we know how to do it."

Related links:

How Loving-kindness Practice and Meditation Can Help with Military Suicides

Skillful Ways to Deal with Your Demons

Veterans Day Book-At Hell’s Gate: A Soldier’s Journey from War to Peace by Claude Anshin Thomas

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A Buddhist Paraphrase of I Corinthians 13

2011-11-08T18:47:00.000-08:00

Here's a "dharma" version I wrote of the much loved I Corinthians, 13, passage on love. In Buddhism, "wisdom" is typically seen as the highest attainment, but I feel that "love" can fill that bill too, if love is understood in its fullness and selflessness, that is, in its divine or fullest sense.

Beyond all fabrications and conditions, wisdom and love are one—indeed wisdom and love "inter-are"—for genuine love is always wise, and highest wisdom is always loving, though we may not always understand these as such with our present self-centered sense of wisdom and love. Anyway, here's my paraphrase. I think it rings true. ~ Steve Goodheart

"If I speak in the tongues of gurus or of divas, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.

If I have the gift of samādhi and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge of the True Self, and if I have concentration that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ..

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are samādhis, they will cease; where there are spiritual teachings, they will be stilled; where there is spiritual knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness, non-duality, appears, what is in part disappears.

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face—our 'original face.' Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: wisdom, insight, and love. But the heart of these is love."

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The Mind of Grabbiness

2011-11-08T16:46:00.000-08:00

With insight, we can let go of the mind of grabbiness...but first, we have to notice we are grabbing, and then, look into what we are grabbing at. No judgment, no resistance — just look -- eventually we see that we are grabbing at what we believe to be "my" or "me" or "mine." That's where we stick—that's where the "glue" is.

In Buddhist practice, the universal solvent is the "glue" is not-self—not the concept of not-self, but the actual insight that is itself not-self. In meditation, this insight arises of its own accord when we become truly quiet and sense the transience and unsatisfactory nature of those things we self-identify with. To sense this is to see what the Buddha called the "emptiness" of fabricated, conditional things. This insight into "emptiness" doesn't leave a vacuum, nor is it nihilism, because we also sense "that" which is free and limitless and just is—the deathless, and we are not (and never have been) apart from "that."

Call it "original mind" or True Self, this awakening to what is dissolves the epoxy of grabbiness, so that we can hold the things of life loosely and without getting stuck to them because we want them to do what they cannot do—supply us a real self, last forever, and end the root causes of our unhappiness.

So, slowly, through self-inquiry, meditation, and insight—and yes, a whole lot of loving-kindness and compassion—we learn not to grab. And if we do grab—and we all do—that's just our practice too. Don't try to end grabbiness—that goal can be just another thing to grab onto! Rather, just look into the grabbiness itself with curiosity and interest.

Don't want or expect anything for the inquiry, except to know what some particular grabbiness is about. With insight into why we are grasping and grabbing, our growing wisdom and awakened heart help us to let go of those causes of grabbing, and thus, the root causes of suffering.

Steven Goodheart Essay

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Spiritual Practice—It Comes Down to Being Real

2011-11-06T00:46:00.000-07:00

"Many people get caught up in spiritual experiences and perceptions and all kinds of interesting, subtle impressions, some of which can be exciting and uplifting.

But there is nothing like the simplicity of being oneself—settling into yourself, just being there, recognizing what you are, and feeling the sense of intimacy and realness of that.

All the inner journey, all of the spiritual practice, ultimately comes down to this: that we are able to be genuinely what we are. If you want to do inner practice in order to develop certain powers or go to other dimensions, or have special experiences, you still don't know what spiritual work is. And this is because you have not yet recognized what reality is or what being real means."

A. H. Almaas "Loving the Real"
from The Unfolding Now—Realizing Your True Nature through the Practice of Presence

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On Trusting the Ebb and Flow of Love and Life

2011-11-02T13:50:00.000-07:00

“When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand.

We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity — in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern.

The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now. Relationships must be like islands, one must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits — islands, surrounded and interrupted by the sea, and continually visited and abandoned by the tides.”

― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

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Meditation: How to Deal with the Tight Mental Fist of Aversion

2011-10-30T13:18:00.000-07:00

"[When pain arises in meditation] you’ll notice that there is a tight mental fist wrapped around that sensation. That tight mental fist is aversion. “I don’t like it, I don’t want it to be there.”

Now the truth is, when a sensation arises, it’s there. That’s the truth. Any time you try to fight with the truth, any time you try to control the truth, any time you try to make the truth anything other than it is, you’re fighting with the dhamma. And it causes a lot of pain and suffering. It takes a normal pain, and it turns it into an emergency. And then you can’t stand it, and then you have to move around, you can’t—“argh this is too painful!”

So what you do next is notice that tight mental fist, and you have to realize the truth, that that pain is there, and you’re tightening around it. So you allow the space for that pain to be. You’re not trying to control it, you’re not trying to make it anything other than it is. All you’re doing is taking that craving, that dislike of that feeling, and you’re letting it go. You relax... you gently smile, come back to your object of meditation, stay with your object of meditation as long as you can.

The thing with pain is that it’s not going to go away right away, whether you like that idea or not. And it’s going to come back, and your mind is going to do the same thing again. It’s going to think about “Why doesn’t it just stop? Why doesn’t it go away?” Or, if it’s an itch, “Why don’t I just scratch it?”

But the whole point of the meditation is to learn how mind’s attention works, not how to control anything. Loving-kindness is loving acceptance of the present moment. That means allowing the present moment to be, even though it’s extremely painful. Allow that feeling to be, relax the tension and tightness wrapped around it, smile. “But it hurts!” I don’t care! Smile. Come back to your object of meditation.

Now one of two things will happen: Either the pain will go away, or it won’t. So, if it doesn’t go away, what happens with your mind is that it starts to gain equanimity. And before long, that sensation can be there and it doesn’t’ even pull your attention it. And you don’t pay attention to it anymore. Most often, it does go away eventually. It depends on your attachment to it.

But trying to think our pain and control our pain, our frustrations, our anger, our dissatisfactions whenever they arise, trying to control those with your thoughts, or trying to ignore the fact that it’s there, is the cause of more and more suffering. So we really have to learn to let go of our thinking about the pain and allow the space for that pain to be there without tightening around it."

Bhante Vimalaramsi
from Commentary on the Anupada Sutta

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Dhamma Sukha Meditation Center

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Thomas Merton - In Humility is the Greatest Freedom

2011-10-27T18:05:00.000-07:00

"In humility is the greatest freedom. As long as you have to defend an imaginary self that you think is important, you lose your peace of heart. As soon as you compare that shadow with the shadows of other people, you lose all joy, because you have begun to trade in unrealities, and there is no joy in things that do not exist."

Thomas Merton

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How Fear of Death and Fear of Life Relate to Each Other

2011-10-27T15:59:00.000-07:00

"Our fear of death is directly equatable to our fear of life. When we think of dying we think of losing something we call 'me." We wish to protect this thing at all costs, though we have very little direct experience of what this 'I' refers to other than as some idea that seems constantly to be changing.

In death, we fear we will lose our 'I,' or 'me-ness.' And we notice that the stronger this idea of 'I,' the more distinct is the feeling of a separation from life and a fear of death. The more we attempt to protect this idea of 'I,' the less we experience anything beyond that concept.

The more we have invested in protecting something of 'me,' the more we have to lose and the less we open to a deeper perception of what dies, of what really exists. The more we hide or posture or postpone life, the more we fear death.

Protecting this precious 'I,' we push life away, and wonder at its meaninglessness.

Until we have nothing to hide, we cannot be free. If we are still considering the contents of the mind as the enemy, we become frightened, think we have something especially wrong with us. Not recognizing the mind as just the result of previous conditioning, nothing special. That all these states of mind which we fear so much can actually be mulched back into ourselves to become fertilizer, the manure of future growth. Which means that in order to allow these materials to compost, to become rich fertilizer for growth, we must begin to make room in our hearts for ourselves.

We must begin to cultivate the compassion that allows the moment to be as it is, in the clear light of awareness, without the least postponement of truth."

Stephen Levine in "Getting Born"
from Who Dies? An Investigation of Conscious Living and Conscious Dying"

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An Enlightenment Koan — Maybe You're There Already

2011-10-24T16:05:00.000-07:00

There once were two monks who lived in a woods. One was committed to sitting under a particular tree forever until he achieved enlightenment. He sat there under the tree eating only the bugs and spiders and lizards that happened to wander close enough. He drank only the water that fell when it rained. There were cob-webs hanging off of him and he was dirty and smelly and not a pleasant, aesthetic experience.

There was a second monk who lived in that same woods, who traveled around the woods and had a lot of fun, who occasionally went into town and got himself in a little bit of difficulty now and then—he did have a weakness for the rice wine.

As chance would have it, a messenger of Brahma happened to be passing through. Now the tradition was that, if you recognized the messenger of Brahma, you got to ask the messenger a question. The old man under the tree recognized the messenger, and he said, “Hah there. I see you, messenger of Brahma. I claim the answer to my question.”

The messenger said, “Oh, all right. What's your question?”

“How many more life-times must I sit under this tree, meditating, before I experience enlightenment?”

“Well,” said the messenger, “I'll go ask Brahma and come back when I'm next this way and give you the answer.”

Overhearing this, the second monk said, “Hey, I'd kind of like the answer to that, too. That'd be interesting to know.”

Years passed. As chance would have it, the messenger again came back through and the old man recognized him. The old man said, “Hah, I recognize you, messenger. Have you brought my answer from Brahma.”

The messenger says, “Yes, Brahma says you've got four more lifetimes before you finally achieve enlightenment.” The old man under the tree said, “Ah, dung. Four more lifetimes of sitting under this damn tree, amongst the spiders and the lizards and the muck and the rain. Yuck! Phew!”

The second monk said, “How about me?”

The messenger said, “Brahma said you have ten thousand more lifetimes before you finally 'get it.'”

The monk said, “Ten thousand more lifetimes? Incredible! Ten thousand more lifetimes enjoying this incredible world we live in? Enjoying these woods, enjoying being alive!”

The messenger said, “No, no, you're there already.”

As related be Mike Young

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Zen - It's Not About Finally Getting all the Cookies!

2011-10-23T22:31:00.000-07:00

"Most people who come to the Zen Center don't think a Cadillac will do it, but they think that enlightenment will. Now they've got a new cookie, a new "if only." "If only I could understand what realization is all about, I would be happy." "If only I could have at least a little enlightenment experience, I would be happy."

Coming into a practice like Zen, we bring our usual notions that we are going to get somewhere--become enlightened—and get all the cookies that have eluded us in the past.

Our whole life consists of this little subject looking outside itself for an object. But if you take something that is limited, like body and mind, and look for something outside it, that something becomes an object and must be limited too. So you have something limited looking for something limited and you just end up with more of the same folly that has made you miserable."

Charlotte Joko Beck

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The Metaphysical Views the Buddha Did not Hold

2011-10-23T13:49:00.000-07:00

As he was sitting there [Vacchagotta] asked the Blessed One: “How is it, Master Gotama, does Master Gotama hold the view: ‘The cosmos is eternal: only this is true, anything otherwise is worthless’?”
“…no…”

“Then does Master Gotama hold the view: ‘The cosmos is not eternal: only this is true, anything otherwise is worthless’?”
“…no…”

“Then does Master Gotama hold the view: ‘The cosmos is finite: only this is true, anything otherwise is worthless’?”
“…no…”

“Then does Master Gotama hold the view: ‘The cosmos is infinite: only this is true, anything otherwise is worthless’?”
“…no…”

“Then does Master Gotama hold the view. . .

To see the rest of the questions and answers, go here!

The Buddha on Not Getting Caught in Metaphysical Speculation

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Look at "no-self or "not-self" in terms of the Four Noble Truths

2011-10-23T12:44:00.000-07:00

“To avoid the suffering implicit in questions of "self" and "other," [the Buddha] offered an alternative way of dividing up experience: the four Noble Truths of stress, its cause, its cessation, and the path to its cessation.

Rather than viewing these truths as pertaining to self or other, he said, one should recognize them simply for what they are, in and of themselves, as they are directly experienced, and then perform the duty appropriate to each.

Stress should be comprehended, its cause abandoned, its cessation realized, and the path to its cessation developed.”

Thanissaro Bhikkhu
from “No-self or Not-self?”

For more in-depth dharma articles and instruction, visit: METTA REFUGE

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Peace is Not Something You Can Force

2011-10-21T21:43:00.000-07:00

"Peace is not something you can force
on anything or anyone –
much less upon one's own mind.
It is like trying to quiet the ocean
by pressing upon the waves.
Sanity lies in somehow opening to the chaos,
allowing anxiety, moving deeply into the tumult,
diving deeply in the waves, where underneath,
within, peace simply is." ~ Gerald May

For more in-depth dharma articles and instruction, visit: METTA REFUGE

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The Truth of Silent Illumination

2011-10-21T20:33:00.000-07:00

Silently and serenely one forgets all words;
Clearly and vividly That appears...
When one realizes it, it is vast and without limit;
It is Essence, it is pure awareness.
Singularly reflecting in this bright awareness,
Full of wonder in this pure reflection...
Infinite wonder permeates this serenity;
In this Illumination all intentional efforts vanish.
Silence is the final word.
Reflection is the response to all [manifestation].
Devoid of any effort,
This response is natural and spontaneous...
The Truth of silent illumination
Is perfect and complete.

Chan Master Hung Chih

For more in-depth dharma articles and instruction, visit: METTA REFUGE

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About practice and theory in Ch'an (Zen)

2011-10-21T20:19:00.000-07:00

About practice and theory in Ch'an (Zen)

"Phenomena ever change; the underlying principle, being absolute, neither changes nor acts; it is the Bhutatathata (sanskrit, "suchness of existence")

When we see a flag streaming in the wind, we know that, in theory, only the mind moves and not the wind or the flag. In practice, we cannot deny that the wind blows and the flag moves. We know also that in theory mind, wind and flag are but one undivided whole.

Now, how can we have an experiential realization of this sameness? If we fail to experience it, we will also fail in our self-cultivation. This is the most important phase of the meditation, which can be achieved only if we put an end to our feelings and discrimination."

Ch'an Master Hsu Yun

For more in-depth dharma articles and instruction, visit: METTA REFUGE

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Rabindranath Tagore - The Stream of Life

2011-10-12T10:29:00.000-07:00

Stream Of Life

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day

runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.

It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth

in numberless blades of grass

and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.

It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth

and of death, in ebb and in flow.

I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life.

And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.

Rabindranath Tagore

For more in-depth dharma articles and instruction, visit: METTA REFUGE

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Krishnamurti on Meditation as Freedom from the Known

2011-10-11T13:58:00.000-07:00

"...So we ought to enquire into what is meditation - to meditate. It's really important, because a mind that's merely mechanistic, as thought is, can never come upon that which is totally, supreme order, and therefore a complete freedom. Like the universe is in total order: it's only the human mind that is in disorder. And so one has to have an extraordinarily orderly mind, a mind that has understood disorder - we went into that the other day - and is free completely from disorder, which is contradiction, imitation, conformity, and all the rest of it. Such a mind is an attentive mind, completely attentive to whatever it does, to all its actions, in its relationship, and so on and so on.

Attention is not concentration. Concentration is restricted, narrow, limited, whereas attention is limitless. And in that attention there is that quality of silence - not the silence invented by thought, not the silence that comes about after noise, not the silence of one thought waiting for another thought. There must be that silence which is not put together by desire, by will, by thought. And in that meditation there is no controller. And this is one of the factors in all the so-called meditative groups and the systems they have invented: there is always effort, control, discipline.

Discipline means to learn - not to conform - to learn so that your mind becomes more and more subtle, not based on knowledge, learning is a constant movement. So meditation is freedom from the known, which is the measure. And in that meditation, there is absolute silence. Then in that silence alone, that which is nameless is. . ."

J. Krishnamurti from "Is Anything Sacred?"

For more in-depth dharma articles and instruction, visit: METTA REFUGE

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The Problems of Thinking About Enlightenment

2011-10-06T18:36:00.000-07:00

"The temptation when thinking about enlightenment is to come up with something defined that you can imagine, such as a state or quality of being, and then fixate on that ideal rather than doing the practices that lead to freedom.

It is absolutely guaranteed that anything you can imagine or define as being enlightenment is a limited and incorrect view, but these views are extremely tempting just the same and generally continue to be very seductive even through the middle stages of enlightenment. Every possible description of the potential effects of realization is likely to feed into this unfortunate tendency.

Thus, my distinct preference when practicing is to assume that enlightenment is completely impractical, produces no definable changes, and has nothing whatsoever to do with the scopes of the other trainings. This means that I take it as a working hypothesis that it will not make me a better person in any way, create any beneficial mental qualities, produce any states of happiness or peace, and provide no additional clarity into any of the issues surrounding how to live my ordinary life. I have experimented with adopting other views and found that they nearly always get in the way of my insight practices.

A view so easily becomes sacred, and thus the temptation is to not investigate the sensations that make up thoughts about that view, but rather to imitate the ideal expressed in the content of that view. This can seem like practice in fundamental insight, but it is not."

Daniel Ingram
Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha

For more in-depth dharma articles and instruction, visit: METTA REFUGE

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Thich Nhat Hanh - A Simple Teaching on Bringing Mindfulness to Whatever Arises

2011-10-06T15:36:00.000-07:00

"There are some practitioners who want to bend and twist their breathing the way they think it ought to be. The Buddha said that is not the correct way. You only be aware of your breath and do not try to intervene. You don't need to do anything, just know. You just observe, you do not need to suppress, you do not need to force. You just be with your breath in awareness. When there is sunshine it just shines across the land and it doesn’t try to spread its rays everywhere or force the land to absorb its rays. The sun just shines.

We too practice in a very non-violent, very loving way with our breathing. When you are sitting with a bent back you just recognise your back is bent and quite naturally your body adjusts itself to become a little straighter. There is no forcing. If you are agitated but you are mindful of this feeling of agitation you simply recognise 'I have irritation.' You should not say 'Irritation is very bad, I have to get rid of my irritation.' No, you just be aware of your irritation.

The teaching of the Buddha is non-violent. If there is irritation you simply recognise you have irritation. You allow irritation to be there and embrace it as if it is a baby. You do not judge, you do not force, and you do not condemn them. You only look at your irritation with compassion. I go back to my body with non-violence, with care, with compassion. When the sunshine falls on the vegetation, the vegetation itself becomes green.

When your mindfulness is shinning upon what is happening in you then you do not need to force but you know right away and you smile with compassion to your irritation and then your irritation will disappear. You know that everything changes including your irritation. If you are aware then your irritation becomes weaker, but if you are not aware then the irritation can grow very fast turning into anger and stress, and other negative feelings. If you are aware it will weaken naturally because it is impermanent."

From a Dharma Talk given by Thich Nhat Hanh on January 18, 1998 in Plum Village, France

For more in-depth dharma articles and instruction, visit: METTA REFUGE

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Grieving is Not About Forgetting

2011-10-06T12:28:00.000-07:00

"Every great loss demands that we choose life again. We need to grieve in order to do this. The pain we have not grieved over will always stand between us and life.

When we don't grieve, a part of us becomes caught in the past like Lot's wife who, because she looked back, was turned into a pillar of salt.

Grieving is not about forgetting. Grieving allows us to heal, to remember with love rather than pain. It is a sorting process. One by one you let go of the things that are gone and you mourn for them. One by one you take hold of the things that have become a part of who you are and build again."

Rachel Naomi Remen
Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories That Heal

For more in-depth dharma articles and instruction, visit: METTA REFUGE

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Poem - Stand Still in the Pain

2011-10-06T11:59:00.000-07:00

Stand still in the pain,
Rooted in that in you which is light.
Let the sword go through you.
Maybe its not a sword at all.
Maybe it is a tuning fork.
You become a note.
You become the music
You always longed
To hear.
You didn't know you were
A song

Ylva Elisabet Eggehorn

For more in-depth dharma articles and instruction, visit: METTA REFUGE

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Forever Oneness, Who Sings to Us in Silence

2011-10-06T11:42:00.000-07:00

Forever Oneness,
Who sings to us in silence,
Who teaches us through each other,
Guide my steps with strength and wisdom.
May I see the lessons as I walk,
Honor the purpose of all things.
Help me to touch with respect,
Always speak from behind my eyes.
Let me observe, not judge.
May I cause no harm, and leave
Music and beauty after my visit.
When I return to forever,
May the circle be closed
And the spiral broader.

Bee Lake, Australian Aboriginal mystic and poet

For more in-depth dharma articles and instruction, visit: METTA REFUGE

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Pema Chodron - The Love That Will Not Die

2011-10-06T11:19:00.000-07:00

"Spiritual awakening is frequently described as a journey to the top of a mountain. We leave our attachments and our worldliness behind and slowly make our way to the top. At the peak, we transcend all pain.

The only problem with this metaphor is that we leave all the others behind—our drunken brother, our schizophrenic sister, our tormented animals and friends. Their suffering continues, unrelieved by our personal escape.

In the process of discovering bodhichitta [Bodhichitta is a Sanskrit word that means "noble or awakened heart."] the journey goes down, not up. It's as if the mountain pointed toward the center of the earth instead of reaching into the sky. Instead of transcending the suffering of all creatures, we move toward the turbulence and doubt. We jump into it. We move toward it however we can. We explore the reality and unpredictability of insecurity and pain, and we try not to push it away. If it takes years, if it takes lifetimes, we let it be as it is.

At our pace, without speed or aggression, we move down and down and down. With us move millions of others, our companions in awakening from fear. At the bottom, we discover water, the healing water of bodhichitta. Right down there in the thick of things, we discover the love that will not die."

Pema Chodron
When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

For more in-depth dharma articles and instruction, visit: METTA REFUGE

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"What is this?" A Koan to Bring You Home

2011-10-04T11:46:00.000-07:00

"We can't wake up simply by wishing to. Without specific, ongoing effort we will continue to sleepwalk through our self-centered dream. Genuine awakening requires bringing attention repeatedly to the present moment of our life.

One laserlike tool to help us do this is the practice of continually asking ourselves, 'What is this?' Used in this way, the question become a koan, and as with all koans, the 'answer' can never be conceptual.

Don't try to analyze what the moment is about. Instead, fully feel the texture of what your life truly is right now. The only real answer to the question 'What is this?' is your immediate expereince itself."

Ezra Bayda
Saying Yes to Life (Even the Hard Parts)

For more in-depth dharma articles and instruction, visit: METTA REFUGE

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How Even God Can Become an Object of Attachment

2011-10-03T16:17:00.000-07:00

"Attachments necessitate objectification; there has to be an object to be attached to, and by its very definition there is a loss of the oneness. When we see this we can see that even God becomes objectified and an object of attachment. If you look at your usual experience, everything in it is an object, and you are attached whether you like it or not

If you like something, it's a positive attachment, you're holding onto it. If you don't like something, it is a negative attachment, you're pushing it away. There is attachment in the rejection; by trying to push something away you're trying to hold onto something else in yourself. This is the external manifestation of attachment, what it looks like from the outside.

But these feelings of wanting are not what the actual attachment feels like. You might feel that you can't let go of someone or something, that you love it, that you would feel a great loss if it were gone. Most people can only focus on the object of attachment; if they really saw the attachment itself they would start falling out of love."

A. H. Almaas —Diamond Heart - Book Two, pg 48)

For more in-depth dharma articles and instruction, visit: METTA REFUGE

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Bernie Glassman on the Zen of "letting go" that is not "letting go"

2011-10-02T15:15:00.000-07:00

"All of us who come to Zen have a yearning to let go. Naturally, we want to be free of the self, free of the ego, attain the mind that Shakyamuni attained under the bodhi tree. But what is letting go?

I don't think we understand it at all. We've got this idea of something trapped that we got to set free. Like there's a bird in your hand, what Zen is about is spreading your fingers and letting it fly away. Whoosh! I'm enlightened!

But you and the bird are the same! You and your hand are the same! Nothing needs to be opened! Nothing needs to fly away! Realize this and you've automatically let go!"

Bernie Glassman
quoted in Ambivalent Zen by Lawrence Shainberg

For more in-depth dharma articles and instruction, visit: METTA REFUGE

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How Does One Live with the Darkness in Oneself?

2011-10-01T20:49:00.000-07:00

"How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one's culture but within oneself?

If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse.

There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light."

Barry Lopez

For more in-depth dharma articles and instruction, visit: METTA REFUGE

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Four Poems of Kabir with Music

2011-10-01T20:29:00.000-07:00

If you love the wisdom of the Indian mystic Kabir, you will enjoy these four poems, which are accompanied by some lovely music you can listen to. Enjoy!

Kabir- "I Said To The Wanting-Creature Inside Me" - Poem and Music

Kabir – "The Sound" – Poem and Music

Kabir – "Breath" – Poem and Music

Kabir - "The Time Before Death" - Poem and Music

"All know the drop merges into the ocean. But very few know that the ocean merges into the drop." ~ Kabir

For more in-depth dharma articles and instruction, visit: METTA REFUGE

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Courage Does Not Always Roar

2011-10-01T00:28:00.000-07:00

Courage does not always roar. Sometimes it is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, "I will try again tomorrow."

For more in-depth dharma articles and instruction, visit: METTA REFUGE

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The Importance of Heightening the Mind in Meditation

2011-09-30T15:38:00.000-07:00

"The Buddha concluded one of his most important talks with the phrase, adhicitte ca ayogo, commitment to the heightened mind. What this means is that we lift the mind above its ordinary concerns, as when we come here to practice meditation. Our normal cares of the day— looking after our own bodies, feeding them, looking after other people, being concerned with what other people think about us, how we interact with them, all the concerns of the day—we put those down, lift our mind above them, and bring it to the meditation object.

When you look at the affairs of the world, you see that they spin around just as the world does. There’s a classic list of eight: gain and loss, status and loss of status, criticism and censure, pleasure and pain. These things keep trading places. You can’t have the good ones without the bad ones. You can’t have the bad ones without the good. They keep changing places like this, around and around, and if we allow our minds to get caught up in them it’s like getting our clothes caught up in the gears of a machine. They keep pulling us in, pulling us in. If we don’t know how to disentangle ourselves, they keep pulling us in until they mangle our arms, mangle our legs, crush us to bits. In other words, if we allow these preoccupations to consume the mind, the mind gets mangled and doesn’t have a chance to be its own self.

We don’t even know what the mind is like on its own because all we know is the mind as a slave to these things, running around wherever they force it. So when we come to meditate, we have to learn to lift our mind above these things. All thoughts of past and future we put aside. We just bring the mind to the breath so the mind doesn’t have to spin around anymore. It simply stays with the breath coming in, going out, and gains at least some measure of freedom.

From this heightened perspective we can look at our normal involvement with the world and begin to realize that, for the most part, it doesn’t go anywhere. It just keeps spinning around, coming back to the same old places over and over and over again. All that gets accomplished is that the mind gets more and more worn out.

If we allow the mind to rise above these things so that it doesn’t feed on them, doesn’t run after them, we’ll begin to get some sense of the mind’s worth, in and of itself. As the mind gets still, things begin to settle out. Like sediment in a glass of water: If you allow the water to stay still for a time, whatever sediment is in there finally settles out and the water becomes clear."

Heightening the Mind
Thanissaro Bhikkhu July, 2001

For more in-depth dharma articles and instruction, visit: METTA REFUGE

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How to Use Anger as Spiritual Practice

2011-09-29T18:13:00.000-07:00

"Do you imagine anger should be suppressed? Pushing anger down, below awareness, does not free us from its grip. When we do this, anger festers, and its consequences continue unabated. Whether suppressed anger resurfaces as physical symptoms, depression, passive aggression, or explosive rage—sooner or later it will rise.

Yet expressing anger in words and actions is not more skillful than pushing it down. And when we justify our anger, we get hijacked into believing our thougths are The Truth.

Without justifying anger, repessing it, or acting on it, we have only to genuinely feel our anger. When we do, we see the present moment of anger is very quiet—and also very specific. Anger is never just ANGER—which is a mental concept. Rather it is a concrete, visceral experience—perhaps of tightness, pulsing, heat, pressure—plus strongly believed thoughts.

Bringing attention to these sensations in the quiet light of awareness, you may experience a release from the constricting belief that this emotion is 'you.'"

Ezra Bayda
Saying Yes to LIfe (Even the Hard Parts)

For more in-depth dharma articles and instruction, visit: METTA REFUGE

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Spiritual Practice and Money

2011-09-29T17:57:00.000-07:00

"Spiritual practice must include everything, even the temporal worldliness of money. We may imagine that, spiritual practitioners that we are, finances are not worthy of our consideration; yet these issues make an especially rich field for practice.

Money issues are rarely about money—try to see them with clarity and precision. Then bring awareness to the well of emotion out of which your beliefs and behaviors arise.

You may discover that behind most financial insecurity is the terror of losing control or feeling helpless. Honestly facing this fear is the price we face to be free."

Ezra Bayda
Saying Yes to Life (Even the Hard Parts)

For more in-depth dharma articles and instruction, visit: METTA REFUGE

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When we are sick, is the body more "me" or "mine?"

2011-09-28T15:25:00.000-07:00

"Consider the human body. Do you consider the body to be yours? It’s very easy to say, “The body is not self” when one is young, healthy and fit. The test comes when one is sick, especially when that sickness is very deep and lasting, or can even be life threatening. That’s when one can really see at a deeper level whether one is taking the body to be ‘me’ or ‘mine’.

Why does this fear arise? The fear is always because of attachment. One is afraid that something which one cherishes is being threatened or taken away. If ever a fear of death comes up at any time, that will show with ninety nine percent certainty, that in that moment one is seeing or thinking that this body is ‘me’, or is ‘mine’."

Ajahn Brahmavamso from “Anatta—Not Self”

Goodheart Comment: And what about when we are having great enjoyment or pleasure in the body? The pleasure or the pain, as such, is not the problem! The dharma issue is this: what do "I" self-identify with?

Can we just be with the flow, mindfully, without adding story lines and grasping? Can we enjoy without clinging? Can we have pain without clinging? That's the cutting edge where we prove what we know theoretically and what we have demonstrated for ourselves about not-self.

For more in-depth dharma articles and instruction, visit: METTA REFUGE

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How a Buddhist Works with the Prayer of St. Francis

2011-09-28T13:54:00.000-07:00

"Below is a mantra I often work with during the day. It’s an adaptation I made of the much-loved Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi. (St. Francis is my favorite Christian saint, among other things, because of his love of animals, and especially birds! See: The Compassion of the Swans)

In Buddhism, working with a mantra is different from the usual method of meditation—I would describe it as a kind of combined mindfulness practice and metta, or loving-kindness practice. Rather than the breath being the focus, or states of concentration, the focus is on the meaning and feeling and spirit of the words. . ."

To see the adapted St. Francis prayer-mantra and to listen to a beautiful piano transcription of “Pie Jesu” by as played by Angelicus, go here:

A Buddhist Mantra based on the Prayer of St. Francis

For more in-depth dharma articles and instruction, visit: METTA REFUGE

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Thoughts on "How To Live this Year as If It Were Your Last"

2011-09-28T12:57:00.000-07:00

Running from death misses the point of life!

"How soon will we accept this opportunity to be fully alive before we die?"

“Until we find out who was born this time around, it seems irrelevant to seek earlier identities. I have heard many people speak of who they believe they were in previous incarnations, but they seem to have very little idea of who they are in this one. . . . Let’s take one life at a time. Perhaps the best way to do that is to live as though there were no afterlife or reincarnation. To live as though this moment was all that was allotted.”

“You have to remember one life, one death–this one! To enter fully the day, the hour, the moment whether it appears as life or death, whether we catch it on the in-breath or out-breath, requires only a moment, this moment. And along with it all the mindfulness we can muster, and each stage of our ongoing birth, and the confident joy of our inherent luminosity”

“Our life is composed of events and states of mind. How we appraise our life from our deathbed will be predicated not only on what came to us in life but how we lived with it. It will not be simply illness or health, riches or poverty, good luck or bad, which ultimately define whether we believe we have had a good life or not, but the quality of our relationship to these situations: the attitudes of our states of mind.”

Excerpts from the best book I've ever read on mindful living and dying: Stephen Levine's, A Year to Live: How To Live this Year as If It Were Your Last

For more in-depth dharma articles and instruction, visit: METTA REFUGE

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Why is “letting go” so important in Buddhism?

2011-09-27T17:37:00.000-07:00

The following excerpt is from Living Meditation, Living Insight: The Path of Mindfulness in Daily Life by Burmese Budddhist teacher Dr. Thynn Thynn.

Why is “letting go” so important in Buddhism?

Thynn: The term “letting go” has become a catchword in Buddhist circles. It is true that “letting go” is crucial for arriving at self-realization of inner freedom, but you have to understand how to let go.

What are we supposed to let go of?

Let go of your clinging. Let go of the motivating desire behind whatever you’re doing. It may be a desire to succeed, to be perfect, to control others or to glorify yourself. It doesn’t matter what it is specifically; what matters is the desire behind your act. It is easy to mistake the act for the desire.

To let go is to let go of clinging to desire,

not to let go of the act.

We have been talking about stopping and looking at emotions. Try to stop and look at an act; see if you can identify the desire propelling it. When you see the desire, you can also detect the clinging to the desire. When you see the clinging, you see it resolve and you spontaneously let go.

To read the entire interview and here a great "Zen song" by folksinger Chris Smither, go here:

Letting Go and Picking Up in Buddhism (with music of Chris Smither)

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What is Our Life About? And What is the Path?

2011-09-27T17:13:00.000-07:00

What is Our Life About?

Ezra Bayda

Our aspirations, our calling, our desire for a genuine life,
is to see the truth of who we really are—
that the nature of our Being is connectedness and love,
not the illusion of a separate self to which our suffering clings.
It is from this awareness that Life can flow through us;
the Unconditioned manifesting freely as our conditioned body.

And what is the path?
To learn to reside in whatever life presents.
To learn to attend to all those things
that block the flow of a more open life;
and to see them as the very path of awakening—
all the of the constructs, the identities,
the holding back, the protections,
all of the fears, the self-judgments, the blame—
all that separates us from letting Life be...

To read Bayda's entire poem and listen to an incredibly beautiful piece of music by Ludovico Einaudi, go here:

What is Our Life About? (poem and music)

To discover more Shambhala books by Zen teacher Ezra Bayda, go here:

Shambhala Publications: Ezra Bayda

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Choose life! Choose love! Choose to live!

2011-09-27T09:17:00.000-07:00

“Most people can look back over the years and identify a time and place at which their lives changed significantly. Whether by accident or design, these are the moments when, because of a readiness within us and a collaboration with events occurring around us, we are forced to seriously reappraise ourselves and the conditions under which we live and to make certain choices that will affect the rest of our lives.” ~ Frederick Flack

In critical moments of retrospection such as this—moments often wracked with pain, remorse, and self-condemnation—can we realize that we can always choose to do something better this time? Can we open ourselves to the compassionate thought that there are skillful ways to choose to love ourselves better than we ever have before?...

To read the rest of this essay, go here:

Choose life! Choose love! Choose to live!

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Don't Be Discouraged When Meditation Uncovers the First Noble Truth

2011-09-27T08:35:00.000-07:00

"Many people start meditating and then get frustrated with how much suffering and pain they experience, never knowing that they are actually starting to understand something. They cling to the ideal that insight practices will produce peace and bliss and yet much of what they find is suffering.

They don’t realize that things on the cushion tend to get worse before they get better. Thus, they reject the very truths they must deeply understand to obtain the peace they were looking for and thus get nowhere. They reject their own valid insights that they have obtained through valid practice. I suspect that this is one of the greatest and most common stumbling blocks on the spiritual path."

Daniel Ingram

Go here to read a fuller explanation of these ideas:

Dealing with Suffering *is* Spiritual Practice

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Take Time to Meet the Buddha!

2011-09-26T23:34:00.000-07:00

In all of the stress about world events and your daily life, take time to breathe! Just stop—and get in touch with your breath. Take time to “meet the Buddha,” as Ajahn Chah says:

"Look on the breath as if it were some relatives come to visit you. When the relatives leave, you follow them out to see them off. You watch until they’ve walked up the drive and out of sight, and then you go back indoors.

We watch the breath in the same way. If the breath is coarse we know that it’s coarse, if it’s subtle we know that it’s subtle. As it becomes increasingly fine we keep following it, at the same time awakening the mind. Eventually the breath disappears altogether and all that remains is that feeling of alertness. This is called meeting the Buddha."

~ Ajahn Chah

For more in-depth dharma articles and instruction, visit: METTA REFUGE

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Meditation Tip - Bathing in the Breath

2011-09-26T23:05:00.000-07:00

"[In meditation] think of yourself as totally surrounded by the breath, bathed in the breath, and then survey the whole body to see where there are still sections of the body that are tense or tight, that are preventing the breath from coming in and going out. Allow them to loosen up. This way you allow for the fullness of the breath to come in, go out, each time there’s an in-breath, each time there’s an out-breath.

Actually the fullness doesn’t go in and out. There’s just a quality of fullness that’s bathed by the breath coming in, bathed by the breath going out. It’s not squeezed out by the breath. It’s not forced out by the breath. Each nerve in the body is allowed to relax and have a sense of fullness, right here, right now. Then simply try to maintain that sense of fullness by the way you breathe. Your focus is on the breath, but you can’t help but notice the fullness."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu

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The Middle Way: The Opposite of a Profound Truth May be Another Profound Truth

2011-09-26T22:22:00.000-07:00

In the Zen tradition, there is famous story about how the Sixth Patriarch was chosen by way of a kind of competition by a poem, or gatha. One day the Fifth Patriarch asked him monks to express their insight in a poem. The senior disciple, the highly educated Yuquan Shenxiu, offered this gatha:

The body is the bodhi tree.
The mind is a great bright mirror.
Every day you have to wipe it clean
so that the dust will not cover the mirror.

Huineng, an illiterate peasant, who came to study with the Fifth Patriarch, asked one of his dharma brothers to write out this poem for him:

There's no such thing as the bodhi tree.
There's not such thing as the great bright mirror.
From the beginning everything is empty.
Where can the dust cling?

As legend and tradition has it, on the basis of this poem, the illiterate Huineng was chosen as the Sixth Patriarch. Later, Shenxiu established the so-called "Northern School and Zen eventually split into the "gradualist" and "sudden" enlightenment schools.

Consider these two gathas. Which would you have chosen? Why?

Is one the second poem better or more insightful or more profound? Why? In practice, does one really have to choose one or the other as "correct" or "the only way?" What do you think?

Maybe if this profound insight of quantum physics founder Niels Bohr had been understood by these ancient worthies, Zen might not have fallen into schism and warring schools:

“The opposite of a true statement is a false statement, the opposite of a profound truth can be another profound truth. The poles of a paradox are like the poles of a battery: hold the together and they generate the energy of life; pull them apart, and the current stops flowing. When we separate any of the profound paired truths of our lives, both poles become lifeless spectres of themselves — and we become lifeless too.” Niels Bohr

My understanding of the the Buddha's "middle way" is that one seeks to avoid getting caught up in "views, including views like those in these two gathas. I've found that if one looks deeply into practice, both views can be skillful and enlightening—"the opposite of a profound truth can be another profound truth." Surely the point is to not get stuck in either view, but to find the skill in both!

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The Major Purpose of Compassion is Not to Reduce Hurt but Lead to Truth

2011-09-26T13:44:00.000-07:00

"Let's talk a little more about what compassion means. Usually, compassion is seen as the desire to alleviate someone else's pain; compassion is experienced as the desire to help. We feel compassionate when we see somebody hurt. Rarely do we feel compassionate when someone is not hurting. So we connect compassion with pain and hurt. However, this is only the elementary level of compassion—emotional compassion...but [telling the truth] is the real function of compassion. The point of compassion is not to eliminate suffering but to lead the person to the truth so that she will be able to live the life of truth.

This is an important fact that we tend not to see because our ideas about compassion are not accurate. Look for yourself. What kind of compassion have you believed in and acted from? For most of us, it's obvious where our prejudice lies. Our compassion has not been on the side of truth; it has been on the side of feeling good. That is not the compassion of Essence; it is the compassion of emotions. It is understandable that it hurts to see someone hurting. You may also feel compassionate towards yourself when you are hurting; this compassion helps. So what is the relationship between hurt, truth, and compassion?

Compassion is a kind of healing agent that helps us tolerate the hurt of seeing the truth. The function of compassion in the Work is not to reduce hurt; its function is to lead to truth. Much of the time truth is painful or scary. Compassion makes it possible to tolerate that hurt and fear. It helps us persist in our search for truth. Truth ultimately will dissolve the hurt, but this is a by-product and not the major purpose of compassion.

In fact, it is only when compassion is present that people allow themselves to see the truth. Where there is no compassion, there is not trust. If someone is compassionate toward you, you trust him enough to allow yourself to be vulnerable, to see the truth rather than reject it. The compassion doesn't alleviate the pain; it makes the pain meaningful, make it part of the truth, makes it tolerable.

This way of viewing compassion makes a tremendous difference in our lives. Seeing compassion as a guide to the truth rather than as something to alleviate hurt can change the way we behave toward ourselves, our friends, everyone. It may seem like a subtle difference, but one perspective will take you away from truth, and the other will take you toward it. One will keep you unconscious, and the other will help you learn the truth."

A. H. Almaas, Diamond Heart, Book One, "Truth and Compassion"

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Let the Ego Bleed and Open the Heart

2011-09-24T14:58:00.000-07:00

"The Buddhist definition of ego as 'holding on to ourselves' and controlling our experience helps us understand why it is so hard to let ourselves feel our emotions and let them be. We usually try to keep them from flowing through us because they threaten the control we try to maintain. Since ego by definition is the actvity of holding holding on, 'I' cannot let go, 'I' wants to ward off anything that threatens this hold.

What is possible, however, is to let the emotions wash through me, and in so doing, wash the controlling part of me away with them. If I can really open to the actual texture and quality of a feeling, instead of trying to control it or churn out story lines from it, 'I'—the activity of trying to hold myself together—can dissolve into 'it'—the larger feeling and process itself.

If I fully become my sadness, it may intensify for a while, and I may feel the full painfulness of it. Yet really letting myself the pain and letting myself dissolve into it wakes me up to the feeling of being alive. Emotions, we could say, are the blood shed by the ego—they start to flow whenever we are touched, whenever the shell around the heart is punctured. Trying to control them is trying to keep the shell from cracking. Letting the ego bleed, on the other hand, opens the heart."

John Welwood
from "Befriending Emotion" in
Awakening the Heart: East/West Approaches to Psychotheraphy and the the Healing Relationship

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Something the Buddha and Richard Feynman Had in Common

2011-09-23T15:25:00.000-07:00

“If you simply do what's in the books, you're not following the Buddha's method. The Buddha didn't follow what was in books. He had to use his own powers of ingenuity. We have the advantage that we're building on the discoveries he made, but we still have to go back and make those same discoveries for ourselves. We have to use the same method he used. And one element in that method is this ability to improvise.

...A British physicist who went to study with Feynman in Cornell was amazed by, on the one hand, how brilliant he was in physics, but also how playful he was. After a while he realized that the two were connected. If you don't learn to play around with ideas, you don't see new things. If you don't learn to play around with what's happening in the mind, you don't make any discoveries.

The Buddha was the type of person who made discoveries. You have to make yourself the type of person who makes discoveries, even if it's simply to reconfirm what he discovered. You have to go through the same process, really testing things.”

Thanissaro Bhikkhu - "Standing Where the Buddha Stood"

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Dharma Practice - Commiserate with the Turtle in Trouble, Help the Sick Sparrow

2011-09-23T14:08:00.000-07:00

"Working for the welfare of all beings means that you contrive to benefit all sentient beings, high and low. In other words, you carefully investigate others's distant and near futures, and think of various means that will be the most congenial to their well-being.

Commiserate with a turtle in trouble, and take care of a sparrow suffering from injury. When you see the distressed turtle or watch the sick sparrow, you do not expect any repayment for your favor, but are moved entirely by your desire to help others.

Fools may think that if another's benefit is given priority, their own good must be lost. This is not the case. The practice of benefiting others is a total truth, hence it serve both self and others far and wide...

Therefore serve enemies and friends equally, and assist self and others without discrimination. If you grasp this truth, [you will see that] this is the reason that even grasses and trees, wind and water are all naturally engaged in the activity of benefiting others, and your understanding will certainly serve others' benefit..." Dōgen Zenji

Quoted in Eihei Dōgen: Mystical Realist
By Hee-Jin Kim, Taigen Daniel Leighton

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Zen is Not Beyond Morality - It is Living Morality

2011-09-23T13:32:00.000-07:00

"When Zen arrived and began to take root in this country, there arose a misconception about the role of morality and ethics in the practice of the Buddhadharma. Statements that Zen was beyond morality or that Zen was amoral are made by distiguished writers on Buddhism, and people assumed this was correct. Yet nothing could be further from the truth.

Enlightenment and morality are one. Enlightenment without morality is not true enlightenment. Morality without enlightenment is not complete morality. Zen is not beyond morality, but a practice that takes place within the world based on moral and ethical teachings..."

John Daido Loori Roshi from Invoking Reality: The Moral and Ethical Teachings of Zen

To read the full article, go here:

Zen Minus Moral Precepts Equals No Zen

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Look at suffering in and of itself—don't ask who is suffering

2011-09-22T22:29:00.000-07:00

"The Buddha has us focus simply on the problem of suffering without asking who’s causing this, or who you are, or what you have to do to your sense of self to make it better. He says, 'Just look at the suffering in and of itself.'

That’s important: the 'in and of itself.' That helps get you out of the entanglements that come from your clinging to your suffering.

When you can look at these things as events simply on their own terms, simply as a pattern of cause and effect without asking how you’re involved in it, when you can simply see the fact of suffering as it’s being caused, then you see the connection to its cause. You realize that you don’t have to engage in the cause. That helps loosen up your attachment to the suffering.

So it’s important to understand this process: that you’re clinging to, identifying with, the very things that cause you to suffer. Even though that’s what defines you, it’s simply a definition you’ve imposed on things. You don’t really need it to function. You don’t really have to worry about being annihilated if you stop the suffering.

For many people that’s a scary idea, because the connection between their self and their suffering is so strong. This is why the Buddha focuses you back on just the suffering in and of itself.

Don’t ask who’s doing this. Don’t ask how you’re involved in it. Just ask, 'What’s happening here?' Look at things in and of themselves as events, as processes."

Thanissaro Bhikkhu

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Pema Chödrön on Unconditional Friendship with Ourselves

2011-09-21T20:04:00.000-07:00

"As long as our orientation is toward perfection or success, we will never learn about unconditional friendship with ourselves, nor will we find compassion.

It is tempting to ask ourselves if we are making 'progress' on the spiritual path. But to look for progress is a set-up-a guarantee that we won't measure up to some arbitrary goal we've established.

Traditional teachings tell us that one sign of progress in meditation practice is that our kleshas diminish. Kleshas are the strong conflicting emotions that spin off and heighten when we get caught by aversion and attraction.

Though the teachings point us in the direction of diminishing our klesha activity, calling ourselves "bad" because we have strong conflicting emotions is not helpful. That just causes negativity and suffering to escalate.

What helps is to train again and again in not acting out our kleshas with speech and actions, and also in not repressing them or getting caught in guilt. The traditional instruction is to find the middle way between the extreme views of indulging-going right ahead and telling people off verbally or mentally-and repressing: biting your tongue and calling yourself a bad person.

Now, to find what the middle way means is a challenging path. That is hard to know how to do. We routinely think we have to go to one extreme or the other, either acting out or repressing. We are unaware of that middle ground between the two. But the open space of the middle ground is where wisdom lies, where compassion lies, and where lots of discoveries are to be made..."

Pema Chödrön / Start Where You Are / March 1999
Click to read full talk: "Signs of Spiritual Progress"

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Voltaire - "On Tolerance"

2011-09-21T19:49:00.000-07:00

"Grant then that we may mutually aid each other to support the burden of a painful and transitory life; that the trifling differences in the garments that cover our frail bodies, in our insufficient languages, in our ridiculous customs, in our imperfect laws, in our idle opinions, in all our conditions so disproportionate in our eyes, and so equal in yours, that all the little variations that differentiate the atoms called men not be signs of hatred and persecution."

~ Voltaire "On Tolerance"

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A Tibetan Lama's Insight into Doing Good for Others

2011-09-20T14:04:00.000-07:00

Helpful Thoughts on Doing Good for Others

By Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche

Question (Helen): For months at a time, I can be tremendously active and capable of helping others. Inevitably, a difficult situation arises, and I despair of ever making any difference in the world whatsoever. I realize that good heart is the way to go, but how can I deal with these periods of burnout?

Answer (Rinpoche): Ideally, we serve others with pure heart, not expecting gratitude, payment or recognition. We accept complaints with equanimity and patiently continue, knowing that people don't always see the purpose of what we're doing. Though our actions may seem insignificant or unproductive, if our motivation is pure and we dedicate the merit expansively, we generate great virtue.

Though we may not accomplish what we set out to do, auspicious conditions and our ability to benefit others in the future will only increase. No effort is wasted; when someone witnesses our loving-kindness, he sees a new way of responding to anger or aggression. This becomes a reference point in his mind that, like a seed,will eventually flower when conditions ripen. Then when we dedicate the virtue, our loving kindness will extend to all beings.

We mustn't become discouraged if someone we are trying to help continues to experience the results of her negative karma and, in the process, creates the causes of future suffering. Instead, because she doesn't have enough merit for her suffering to end, we must redouble our efforts to accumulate merit and dedicate it to her and others. We're not out to accomplish selfish aims. We are trying to establish the causes of lasting happiness for all beings. By purifying our self-interest and mental poisons, we develop a heroic mind. The process of going beyond suffering and helping others do the same is the way of the Bodhisattva."

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The Mind Compares Itself with Images of Buddha or Jesus

2011-09-20T13:49:00.000-07:00

"The mind compares itself with images of Buddha or Jesus, with saints and with blessed beings of which we have read. And the mind finds itself wanting in the balance. The mind condemns itself for being what it is, though it fears letting go into the spacious freedom that would release it from its bondage. Like the battered child carried gently away from its mother, the tormentor, the mind cries out in pain for what it is leaving, fearful of what is yet to come. To the mind, even hell is acceptable and preferable to the the unknown.

We berate ourselves for the content of the mind, for the anger and doubt, for the fear and loathing. And it is this very act of judgment of the mind, that causes us to feel separate from ourselves and all else. It is constantly rating us on our behavior and participation, and seldom disappears long enough for us to merge with our experience, to become one with life.

Our models, our ideas of who we are and how the world is supposed to be, create a cage. Each concept becomes a bar that blocks our perception of truth. Each idea of how things are limits our ability to experience them as they really may be. We can't go beyond our idea of the world to actually touch the world. When we move beyond our models and ideas, we feel threatened and defensive. Confronting some reality which opposes our self-image, our sureness confuses and upsets us. We don't know who we are because we think of ourselves as ideas and old models. The world is constantly confronting us with the truth. We are constantly withdrawing. Our experience is pain."

Excerpt from Stephen Levine's Who Dies?

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True Spirituality is Not a "High"

2011-09-20T13:18:00.000-07:00

"True spirituality is not a high, not a rush, not an altered state. It’s been fine to romance it for a while, but our times call for something far more real, far more grounded and responsible, something radically alive and naturally integral, something that shakes us to our very core until we stop treating spiritual deepening as a something to dabble in here and there.

Authentic spirituality is not some little flicker or buzz of knowingness, nor a psychedelic blast-through, nor a mellow hanging-out on some exalted plane of consciousness, but a vaster than vast fire of Liberation, an exquisitely fitting crucible and sanctuary, providing both heat and light for what must be done. Divine dynamite. Dying to see, dying to live, dying into a deeper Life, until we are our true size, no longer seducible by any disguise or distraction, no matter how brilliant or ecstatic."

Robert Masters
Dissociation in Holy Drag: An Inside Look at Spiritual Bypassing

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Krishnamurti on Dogma & Make-Believe Religion

2011-09-20T12:49:00.000-07:00

"We have reduced religion to mere ritual or belief, and our gods, our self- disciplines lead, not to reality, but only to respectability. Our gods have really no meaning at all, and religion has become merely a series of beliefs and rituals without significance. Their influence is conditioning, like any other organised influence, whether it be the communist, Christian, or the Hindu. The influence of dogma, belief, ritual, is tyrannical, limiting because it conditions and therefore makes the mind small, petty. Being confronted by immense problems, we are meeting them with our conditioned minds, and so we make these vast problems stupid and petty, thereby increasing the problems.

So, is it not very important to find out, actually to understand and experience for oneself, how the mind can be free from all the influences which religion has imposed? Because religion which is organised obviously does not lead to reality. Reality can come into being only when the mind is free, when the mind is unconditioned. And is it possible not to belong to any religious group or organisation, to any church, but to stand alone and find out what is true? Surely, religion as we know it is a process of make-believe.

From childhood we are forced into a particular pattern of thought, and the mind believes for it's own security, for it's own safety; but religion is something totally different, is it not? It is a state in which reality can come into being - reality, truth, God, or what name you will. But when the mind is conditioned, shaped by belief, can it ever be free to receive that which is true? Is not religion the state of mind in which the known is not, so that the unknown can come into being? Because, after all, our gods are self-projected. We create our gods, we pursue ideals and beliefs, because they give us satisfaction, comfort, solace. But surely none of these things free the mind to discover reality and that is why it seems to me very important to strip ourselves of all these conditionings, not as an ultimate gesture, but right from the beginning, and to find out whether the mind can remain uncorrupted."

Quotes taken from "Krishnamurti's Talks in America. May 28, 1954

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