I found this cool picture of Jesus done in the style of Tibetan thangkas. I can't attribute it properly since I found it on a cached webpage via a Google search. I couldn't find the image on the webpage itself.
I think it's important to be teachable and see the wisdom in all traditions. I found myself drifting into a bit of sectarian closed-mindedness the other day, while reading Thich Nhat Hanh, and being dismissive of it since he's a Zen Buddhist and not a Tibetan Buddhist. But the more I reflected on what he had to say, the more I found it to be true. Moreover, once I saw the truth of his words, it actually gave me a lot of peace, calm and equanimity.
In short, and somewhat subconsciously, after studying the four thoughts that turn the mind to the dharma, I came to the conclusion that all aspects of human experience are suffering. It was almost like I didn't give myself permission to enjoy things, because I "knew" that they were tainted by suffering. In fact, Buddha taught that pure experience is possible. It is possible to attain the cessation of suffering. Now I had known this, but phrased this way, it seemed to me that all of my experiences would be suffering up until the attainment of enlightenment, at which point the suffering would cease. Thich Nhat Hanh very simply said that everything is not suffering and asked the reader to please enjoy the sunset and other experiences. I think that pure experiences are possible for ordinary people, and that the closer we get to Buddhahood, the more we progress down the path, the more often those pure experiences will manifest.
3 comments:
That is a cool picture of Jesus.
BTW, Jesus was the embodiment of human suffering.
Remember some hikes which after a while got difficult, hot and tiring? But when we got to talking about scifi or something fun the time flew by and we never noticed our fatigue?
Or, think of Peter walking on the water. When he doubted and looked at the surrounding waves, he began to sink. But when he looked at Jesus, he forgot all his troubles.--Scribe29
Blowing your anonymity, scribe29. ;)
You're talking about relieving suffering by taking your mind off of it. There's another way to relieve suffering, and I can testify to its efficacy, and that is to stare directly at the suffering. Now, I've had pains and other bodily nuisances while meditating, and sometimes I will stare directly at the pain, try to feel its quality, but that doesn't always work. That's actually caused it to spiral out of control at times. But a method that I learned which works very well, and i think it's because it's more analytical, is to identify your sources of suffering, and then, from moment to moment, analyze what percentage each of these sources is contributing. For example, when meditating today, I had pain in my back, pain where my butt was touching the cushion, and a kind of queasy feeling located in my abdomen. I just watched these things, didn't try to regulate them or interfere with them, but just watched them and I started to feel really good.
This technique was taught by the Zen teacher (I think he's Zen) Shinzen Young, and concomitant with this, he made the point that when you mindfully experience pleasure, that pleasure is intensified. However, when you mindfully experience painful experience, the suffering is actually diminished. If this is not an arrow pointing toward the existence of Buddha nature, I don't know what is.
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