Seven Reasons Not to Hate

1. Hatred hurts.
2. No-one is inherently a certain way.
3. Things we hate in others are also in us.
4. We can never be sure who is right.
5. You can't fight karma.
6. Through understanding comes compassion.
7. Hatred cannot overcome hatred. Only love can overcome hatred.

Incredulity

I just read a story on CNN.com that a special panel appointed by Bush has recommended that when Castro dies, we need to have people in Cuba to "assist" and "ease the transition to democracy." Hasn't any one learned their lesson? What right do we have to dictate how another country runs its government when we can't even take care of our own problems? This CNN article seemed to take it for granted that we have the right to mold Cuba in our own image, that everything we say about Cuba is true, and that everything Cuba says about itself is false. I think the strangest juxtaposition in the whole article was when the state department accused Cuba of "bullying tactics," in reference to a recent power outage to "U.S. interests in Havana."
(CNN takes it for granted that the power outage was intentional and targeted only U.S. interests. According to Cuba, it was simply a power outage, affecting a wide area of Havana. You won't find Cuba's side of the story in the article, though.) The next paragraph describes the draconian sanctions that have been placed against the island, which have been rendered even more draconian in the past couple of years. Who's bullying whom?

More Spiritual Materialism

My Padmasambhava statue arrived. It looks great, but for balance I need another statue. I ordered the above pictured 11-headed 1000-armed Avalokitsehvara. Avalokiteshvara was a student of Buddha Shakyamuni. The extra heads and arms are metaphorical, but they look cool.

A Buddhist Seventh Step Prayer

Here is the Seventh Step Prayer as it comes out of "the Big Book."

My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, the good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. Grant me strength, as I go out from here, to do your bidding. Amen.

I rewrote it to have a more Buddhist feel:

Buddhas, bodhisattvas, enlightened beings in the ten directions,
I ask for help, willingness and strength
To remove those defects of character whose extinction
Will be of maximum benefit to all sentient beings.
I take refuge in enlightened dharma teachings.
Objects of refuge, please abide with stability in my heart.

TAYATA GATE GATE PARAGATE PARASAMGATE BODHI SVAHA

The last line is the mantra of the Perfection of Wisdom (Prajnaparamita) and records the path to enlightenment. Loosely it means: beyond, gone beyond, gone completely beyond, gone utterly beyond, enlightenment, hooray!

Speaking of character defects, I realized last night, although it's not a huge surprise, that one of the biggies for me right now is judgmentalism. I really have a tendency to search for the flaws in people, and when I've finally found them, illusory or not,
I use them to justify a dismissive attitude. Of course, now that I'm a practicing Buddhist, I'm the sort of person I would have been highly dismissive of at an earlier, angrier stage of my life. Hee hee.

No Title Needed, although one has been supplied

Found this turtle wandering around in my back yard after a rain. They like to come out right after it rains because there's more food around to eat. (I think they might eat worms.)

...and this.

The store owner finally called and she's sending me the above-pictured 6-inch statue. It is one of the best Padmasambhava statues I've seen. A lot of them are painted with gold paint, and have their features painted on in a way that I personally don't find aesthetically pleasing. I like the subtle coloration of this one.

Also, my thangka is in transit. I'm watching it's progress from New Delhi via its UPS tracking number. Spiritual materialism, how exciting!

Just bought this, I hope

After agonizing for hours about which thangka to buy, I selected the one above, depicting the wheel of life mentioned in my las post. It should arrive in 5 to 7 days. I've also been trying to buy a statue of Guru Rinpoche (also known as Padmasambhava), but the first one I tried to buy turned out to have been already sold to someone else, and the second one I've tried to buy seems to be encountering an unresponsive store owner. I'm still hopeful about it. It's a beautiful statue.

A gift that grows with time

For most normal folks, drinking means conviviality, companionship and colorful imagination. It means release from care, boredom and worry. It is joyous intimacy with friends and a feeling that life is good. -A.A. Daily Reflection, June 26

When I heard these words read yesterday, I couldn't stop myself from snickering. For they describe alcohol as exactly opposite to the way I think of it. Maybe when I started out, these words applied. I did have the idea that I couldn't enjoy a party without drinking, and to some extent this was actually true. I've always been incredibly shy and afraid of human interaction, and the alcohol helped to lower my inhibitions. Now, though, when I think of alcohol, I think of anger, resentments, hangovers, puking, incredible physical discomfort, etc. It's kind of amazing to me now that I ever held on to the illusion that alcohol was a positive force in my life.

In Buddhism, we learn that all beings are trapped in samsara. As the lamas explained it, this means that we are all trapped in habit patterns which cause our suffering, and we can't see how to break out of them. The goal of the bodhisattva is to free all beings from the ocean of samsara, so that they can attain happiness. Alcoholism is an extreme example of being trapped in samsara. We alcoholics suffer, not perceiving the way out. Little did I know it when I decided to become a Buddhist, but freeing myself (with lots of help from others) from the cycle of alcoholism is wonderfully consonant with the bodhisattva path. In our center we have a thangka (painted cloth) of the wheel of life depicting sundry beings trapped in the cycle of suffering, the whole world of which is in the grips of the evil deity Mara. If you look closely, you can see a little white thread which emanates from the wheel and gradually ascends out of the picture, with various beings seen progressing along it. This is the bodhisattva path, allowing those who follow it (by helping others follow it) to transcend the cycle of samsara. There is a saying in A.A., "to keep what you have, you've got to give it away," a neat summary of the bodhisattva way.

A poem

Here's a poem I just wrote:

Three Instances of Inspiration

The rock was made of tiny crystals,
a revelation which drew my attention in a mysterious ecstasy.
The origin of the rock held me transfixed as I pondered
the patterns of the stones in the high mountain country.
Enthralled by the beauty of deep observation,
I perceived the coalescence of the stream's chatter into a subtle voice:
"Why don't you do this more often?"

Rarely, as I descend into unconsciousness,
I am able to listen to myself piecing together sentences that don't make sense.
One memorable time, I perceived this voice saying:
"You have let yourself be suffused with the Holy Spirit. I'm proud of you."
How peaceful I felt after that.

In a crowd of people outside the temple in the green wilderness,
I gave birth to the image of a blue figure bowing his head with clasped hands.
As we walked around the temple, chanting, I experienced a wonderful energizing joy.

A Spiritual Reason for Good Hygiene?

Growing up I always felt that good hygiene was beneath me. Who cares whether my hair is dirty or my room is messy? What does it matter in the grand scheme of things? It's what's inside that's important. I don't subscribe to these views quite as strongly any more, and the following paragraph says a little bit about why.

We heard ten or twenty minutes of teachings by the Dalai Lama at our center today, seeking to explain how karma works. Part of it was quite similar to Thich Nhat Hanh's closing paragraphs in a previous post. Namely, we should avoid actions that are likely to produce suffering for ourselves or others in the future. An interesting example regards hygiene. Killing another being produces bad karma, and this includes killing insects. So if you are faced with an insect infestation you incur quite a bit of negative karma by killing them. If you are faced with such a situation, you may be forced to kill the insects, despite the karmic consequences. For example, if they pose a health and happiness issue for yourself or others. The best way to avoid the karmic issue is to maintain good hygiene in the first place to stop the infestation from happening. Thus good hygiene becomes a spiritual principle whereby we avoid killing living creatures. Also, as humans with the divine spark, we need to be proud of ourselves, and making our surroundings more beautiful is part of that. It is paying homage to our wonderful nature and the blessings of our remarkable human birth.

Something else the Dalai Lama said really stuck out to me. He said we should never talk negatively about another person. That's pretty wild. I do know that in my case negative talk about others is usually an outward sign of my inner negativity, and doesn't have much to do with the object of criticism. Pondering it now, though, it seems like when there is gross injustice, or even minor injustice, for that matter, talking negatively about the perpetrators may be necessary in order to stop the injustice. Probably he means that we should never talk about others with malice-borne motives. Describing the negative situation in an effort to help others, sounds to me like a different kettle of fish, or however the saying goes.

A neat image

Speaking of connections between Christianity and Buddhism, I found the above neat image on the web. I love the setting in the high mountain country. I've found such places to be quite spiritual.

Real Love Never Ends (Thich Nhat Hanh)

In Judaism, we are encouraged to enjoy the world as long as we are aware that it is God himself. But there are limits, and the Ten Commandments, which God gave to Moses on Mount Sinai, express this. The Ten Commandments are a precious jewel of the Judeo-Christian heritage, helping us to know what to do and what not to do in order to cherish God throughout our daily life.

All precepts and commandments are about love and understanding. Jesus gave his disciples the commandment to love God with all their being and to love their neighbors as themselves. In First Corinthians, it says, "Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is not envious, arrogant, or rude. It does not rejoice in wrong. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth." This is very close to the teachings of love and compassion in Buddhism.

"Love bears all things, believes all things, endures all things." Love has no limits. Love never ends. Love is reborn and reborn and reborn. The love and care of the Christ is reborn in each of us, as is the love of the Buddha. If we invoke the name if Buddha or pray to Christ but do not practice love and understanding ourselves, something is wrong. If we love someone, we have to be patient. We can only help a person transform his or her negative seeds is we are patient and kind.

To take good care of yourself and to take good care of living beings and of the environment is the best way to love God. This love is possible when there is the understanding that you are not separate from other beings or the environment. This understanding cannot be merely intellectual. It must be experiential, the insight gained by deep touching and deep looking in a daily life of prayer, contemplation and meditation.

"Love does not rejoice in wrongdoing." Love instructs us not to act in ways that will cause suffering now or in the future. We can discern when something that seems to be joyful has the capacity to destroy future happiness, so we do not abuse alcohol, ingest unhealthy foods, or hurt others by our words. Real love never ends. It will be reborn and reborn.

A Righteous Thrashing

Recently, while playing Scrabble (natch), my opponent said she was giving me a righteous thrashing (and she was). But this juicy phrase also calls to mind some of my internal struggles with Buddhist philosophy. (I can hear Shunryu Suzuki right now, telling me that the struggle is not the point. That figuring out the philosophy is not the point. Just sit. Just be now. Even this is part of the feedback loop.)

See, in Christianity, and, as far as I know, in Islam as well, there is such a thing as righteous anger. I'm not sure the phrase would make much sense to a Buddhist. I know of no tale of a Buddha clearing the counting tables in the temple, no Zen armies unleashed upon the enemies of God. Part of me likes this. But part of me doesn't want to let go of a not-so-little coal of burning rage. At the past. At injustice. At the oppressors. The argument is that the rage I feel is earned. The recipients are deserving. Their sins unforgivable. Frankly, it feels good to be mad sometimes.

Now, I can see some of the delusion inherent in this anger. After all, everyone who feels angry, at that moment, feels his target deserves it, though instead the real target may be oneself or person involved in a past interaction. Anger is misleading and opportunistic. Furthermore, delivering of righteous thrashings serves to perpetuate angry hurts. As we thrash the Iraqis, more and more Iraqis begin to nurse fantasies of thrashing us. (Forgetting, for a moment, that national identities are also delusions.)

I know that letting a feeling be and repressing it are two different things, but I am a little wary of doing the latter. I've spent many years with a chasm between brain and body and I am loathe to do anything to endanger the bridge. Indeed I hope the teachings of Buddhism can be a bridge.

And if they are not, they are not.

As is so often the case with tumultuous feeling, I have circled the thing here, without really nailing it down. I am unable to be more organized in this matter because I am just teasing these thoughts out here for the first time. So thank you for your patience, and I apologize for the mess.

My old method would be to deliver to myself a searing and righteous mental thrashing for being so unfocused. But maybe I can leave it unresolved, and allow these seemingly conflicting feelings to coexist until they reconcile. (Like two cats meeting each other for the first time.)

Banana Pudding

I am a big fan of bananas. Must be my primate heritage. In any event, someone gave me a bunch of ripe bananas today, and it occurred to me that I could make banana pudding. I need to go out and buy most of the ingredients, though. 'Tis a quandary. Should I make it, or should I not?

Discrimination and Ignorance

I'm not the first person to have this thought, but those people who feel that gay couples are an abomination seem to have their priorities in the wrong place. How can love be wrong? Two people who love each other and are devoted to each other share a sacred thing. Hatred is an abomination and righteous hatred is even worse.

Speaking of discrimination, I was down the hall from a class today which seemed to be aimed at helping poor black kids break out of the cycle of poverty and insecurity which so many blacks are currently trapped in. What I mean by that is that black kids often grow up feeling inferior, and such internalized inferiority makes it very difficult to break out of the cycle. What's worse is that the racism in this country has morphed into a very difficult-to-combat form. Many people hide their racism even from themselves. Yet it is there. Powerful and deadly. In any event, the teacher was relating how she had been called "nigger" at a few times in her life and how terrible it made her feel. She seemed determined to try to muffle the effects that it might have on her students when they encountered human behavior at its most repugnant. Her advice was basically that it's okay to be angry, but you've got to realize that the person doing the name-calling is ignorant. I am glad that some people are reaching out to these kids, and I hope it has some effect.

May all beings be free of suffering and the causes of suffering . May all beings have happiness and the root of happiness. Even the hatemongers. For if such a person were to become truly happy, they would stop behaving the way they do. They would stop causing so much suffering. (Thanks to the Khenpos for explaining this.)

May any merit achieved here be dedicated for the benefit of all sentient beings.

The Wonders of Modern Technology

My partner just bought our household a wireless router and my laptop a wireless card. Oh frabjous day! Much frustration has been eliminated which had stemmed from two people wishing to check their email simultaneously. I can also connect to the internet from the comfort of the front porch or the living room. It's really good stuff. Of course the flip side of this is that most of the time I spend online is completely wasted. Ack.

A clarification

It occurs to me that one of the photos in the previous post could be mistaken for a barbecue. Actually, it's a picture of the fire puja ceremony.

I'm back

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Well, I'm back from the retreat. What a wonderful experience! The focus of the retreat was Medicine Buddha, which was good for me to experience. Medicine Buddha is the embodiment of all the healing power of all the buddhas. He is a brilliant blue, the color of lapis-lazuli, which to me suggests soothing. The color is also related to the pure buddha mind we all share, which is like the sky. In any event, to cure sickness, one can take standard medicines and medical treatment to cure the physical part, and do the Medicine Buddha ceremony, and/or chant the Medicine Buddha mantra to cure the spiritual part. Here is the medicine buddha mantra:

tayata om bhekandze bhekandze maha bhekandze radza samungate soha (medium length version)

om bhekandze soha (short version)

"Tayata" means thus. "om" means a million different things. The lamas translated it for us as meaining "auspiciousness, longevitty, prosperity, supreme good things." "bhekandze" means healer or rejuvenator and refers to medicine buddha.
"maha" means "great". "radza samungate" means something like "king within that state." "Soha" is another difficult to translate word, but it ends almost every mantra. It's comparable, I think to "amen" in this sense. The lamas translated it as "established."

By the way, this reminds me, I also took refuge vows at the retreat. This is comparable to baptism is protestant churches. As the lamas explained it, it's not anything I haven't already done in my heart, just an official recognition that I have become a Buddhist, specifically in the Ngingma tradition. I received a dharma name, which is Pema Dharje. The family name "Pema" means Lotus, and everyone taking refuge received that name. "Dharje" means "prosperity", so you might translate my name as Lotus of Prosperity, which I think is an aupicious name.

I'll post some more a bit later.

I'm off for the weekend

Well, today, I'm leaving for the Buddhist retreat led by the Khenpo brothers. Nobody responded to my last post! Y'all must have heeded the warning at the beginning.

Anyway, just wanted to pass on a bit that I've learned since my last post. It turns out that many of the ideas that I was espousing are very similar to gnostic christianity of the first few centuries. In fact, many scholars have posited that gnosticism was influenced by Buddhism, possibly via Buddhist missionaries in Alexandria. Apparently the early church was widely diverse and had many different sects. However, at some point, the orthodoxy came to political power and used its power to wipe out the heretics, as it saw them. Apparently, one of the hallmarks of the orthodox viewpoint is that knowledge of Christ is not gotten through inward reflection (which is gnosis) but by reading approved scriptures and listening to clergymen who are in a direct line of succession from apostles. Contrariwise, many gnostic sects believed that discovering new spiritual truths is a sign of spiritual maturity, and teachers encouraged their students to come up with such truths. This is strongly reminiscent of the way Zen students are encouraged to compose koans as a sign of their understanding. I strongly believe that the route to spirituality is within, that we all have inherent Buddha nature, and that to contact God, the universal spirit, or the tathagata, we need to look inward. I also strongly believe that spirituality is a living thing, and that I need to interact with it in order to make true progress. I cannot just listen, accept and mimic.

Was Jesus a Buddha?

Warning: This post meanders. If you like uninterrupted narrative, then this may not be the post for you.

I've been reading the Lotus Flower Sutra of the Wonderful Law, which, I believe, might also be translated as the Lotus Flower Sutra of the Wonderful Dharma recently. I've been trying to read some of it just before going to bed. The reason for this is that I used to watch TV right before falling asleep. I recently heard a study that found that kids who watch TV right before sleeping have various issues, which, to tell the truth, I don't actually remember. However, I've noticed during my morning meditation that my mind often wanders to the plot of the TV episode I'd seen the previous night. What may in fact be the case is that the damn TV is percolating through my head throughout the gulldurn night. (Spellcheck just informed me that gulldurn is not a word.) Why should I let it? My goal is more spirituality, so it seems like a good idea to give my mind something spiritual to chew on as I sleep. You know, it's funny, as I'm writing this, more and more things are coming to mind. For instance, I have solved several math problems, or at least made a lot of conceptual progress on them, by falling asleep right after thinking hard about a problem. Evidently, my mind has kept working at it after I lose consciousness. So, again, it seems tremendously important to feed it something good. The other line of evidence I know is that I've heard several people in the fellowship of alcoholics anonymous mention that in their morning meditation, or prayer, or what have you, they are continuing where they left off the previous night. So, with all that said, I've been reading this sutra.

This sutra is the longest Buddhist sutra I've ever encountered. The Heart Sutra is a couple of pages long. The Diamond Cutter Sutra is 32 chapters of a couple of paragraphs each. The Sutra of Innumerable Meanings, and the Meditation Sutra on the Bodhisattva Universal Virtue are each a few pages long. Yet the Lotus Flower Sutra of the Wonderful Law is, if memory serves, more than 150 pages long. It's interesting because it alternates prose and poetry, with the poetry paraphrasing and amplifying the preceding prose. One of the key points this sutra makes is that the Buddha teaches through expedient means. In other words, he says what is needed to lead a particular person or class of person closer to enlightenment, even if what he says is not literally true. For example, many people are turned off by the promise of future Buddha-hood, and so when the Buddha started out, he didn't mention this. Only when his disciples had progressed enough did he reveal their destiny. There are several cool parables that explains this idea. One is called the parable of the Magic City, and it goes like this. Suppose you are leading a group of people across a desert, away from a place of great pain and suffering, and toward a place of happiness. Part way through the journey, the travelers start to complain about the arduousness of the journey and their current travails, and decide to turn back. Seeing this, in order to keep them moving in the right direction, you produce a magic city for them to inhabit, and once their urge to turn back has been quelled, you make the city disappear, and continue to lead them toward the real city on the other side of the desert. Even though you have produced an illusory city, you didn't really lie to them. It was just a way to keep them moving in the right direction.

I think Jesus may have been a Buddha. If I recall correctly, when people would ask him if he were the Messiah, if he were the Son of God, he started out by denying it. Only later in his ministry did he actually admit to it. Perhaps what is left unsaid here is that we are all children of God, as anonymous pointed out earlier. Sure Jesus is the Son of God, as are we all. This is a different language than the language of Buddhism, but Jesus needed to teach through expedient means. As a Jew preaching to Jews, he needed to speak their language. In the same way, much of Buddha's teachings are influenced by Hinduism. You need to give people a place to start. I think of Jesus as my root guru, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

In the Lotus Flower Sutra, the Buddha says that as soon as he became enlightened under the Bodhi tree, he always was the Tathagata. (This reminds me of an image I had when I was a child. I imagined that the universe began at some point, whereupon it started growing forwards and backwards in time. I liked to encapsulate this by the phrase "As soon as the Universe was created, it always was.") So, in some ways, the Tathagata has Godlike attributes. (You know, the word "Godlike" has lots of negative connotations. When people talk about being like Gods, it is often implied that they relish the feeling of power and superiority. Yet enjoying having another's fate in your hands is distinctly un-Godlike. God is not superior. He is not way up there with all of us way down here. We are all part of the God-consciousness. We are all part of the Tathagata. But ... we are not all awake, and so we are not all Buddhas.) I'm going to a Buddhist retreat this weekend, and I hope I can ask one of the monks there about this conception of the Tathagata. In any event, what I wanted to say was that in the same way that Shakyamuni Buddha is a specific instantiation of the Tathagata, so too is Jesus a specific awakened son of God.

Now What

I have not meditated in maybe a month. Though tough times are particularly good times for meditation, I have trouble bringing myself to sit. Just sit, and it's strangely too much for me. I awake, tell myself I'll do it soon, or not even think of it, or, as has largely been the case, tell myself I'm too busy for that ten minutes. Strange.

My response to stress and pressure is often to become somewhat manic. (Feel driven, unable to stop working, unable to get whatever the stressor might be out of my mind.) This can be a very useful attribute. I get a lot done. But it has a down side. For instance, it can be very stressful for those around me. And my quality of life suffers as well.

I would like, then, to rededicate myself to meditation. I wonder if it will feel like starting over...

In other news, I went to a Catholic service over Memorial Dat weekend. I normally would have avoided it, but I though a little spiritualiy could be good, whether or not I agreed with the dogma. Well, it was a real shame what I encountered. I got sort of a demonstration of the worst of the religion. The priest was bored, seemed to be going through the motions, reduced all the theater of the ritual to a dumb show without content. Worse still, the content of his sermon was hateful. The message was 1. The church will tell yo what to do. Do not try to figure it out yourself. He used as an example that it took him years in seminary to discover why contraception was, in fact wrong. Therefore, just take our word for it. 2. Gays should not be allowed to marry, and homosexuality is an abomination. 3. The DaVinci Code is not true.

The last point was not especially hateful, just a bit silly.

A good movie

I just saw Gandhi, and it was an incredibly moving movie. I can't say how well it reflects Gandhi's actual life, and the political situation at the time, but as a movie, it really touched my heart. I plan on reading more about him. Here is one of the scenes that stayed with me. After the U.K. granted Indian independence, the Indian government voted to make Pakistan a separate (Muslim) country in order to stave of civil war. In the ensuing chaos, where Muslims and Hindus became fearful and mistrustful of each other, massive violence broke out. A disheartened Gandhi began a fast which was to end either when he died or when the sectarian violence was ended. In the movie, a delegation of people came to tell Gandhi that they had agreed to stop fighting, that in mosques and hindu temples around the country people had vowed to stop. Gandhi is so weak from fasting he can barely talk:

Nahari: I'm going to Hell! I killed a child! I smashed his head against a wall.
Gandhi: Why?
Nahari: Because they killed my son! The Muslims killed my son!
[indicates boy's height]
Gandhi: I know a way out of Hell. Find a child, a child whose mother and father were killed and raise him as your own.
[indicates same height]
Gandhi: Only be sure that he is a muslim and that you raise him as one.

Egotism?

Have no further doubts;
Rejoice greatly in your hearts,
Knowing that you will become buddhas. -Shakyamuni Buddha, from The Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Law

Nowadays, I try to curb my criticism. So often my criticism in the past has been a manifestation of inner negativity that really had nothing to do with the thing being criticized. It was a way to bolster my ego, although it was rather ineffective. As a resilt, I don't have a firm idea of where to draw the line. Take the Christian doctrine of original sin. It has taken me some time, and I am still working at it, to get the idea out of my bones that I am fundamentally unworthy. I don't want to be unneccesarily critical of Christanity, but some viewpoints are erroneous, and I think this is one of them. In Buddhism we learn that all beings have the same underlying Buddha nature. I am not any different than Shakyamuni Buddha, deep down, and I can be a Buddha in this lifetime. So can you. Now from the viewpoint of my Western, Christian upbringing, this smacks of egotism and hubris. Who do I think I am, anyway? And even if I do admit a small theoretical possibility that I could be a Buddha, I better not act like it! Aspiring to help other beings is not bad, and being a genuine Buddha is infinitely good. Believing in my self-worth is fundamental and neccesary to genuinely help others. Otherwise, I will probably delude myself into believing I am helping others, when in actual fact I will be attempting to prop up a failing ego. Believing deep down to my core that I have self-worth and that I can be a Buddha (even as I write this, my mental editor says "someday") is NOT egotistical. It is the only way to be selfless. It is the only way to ensure that my stake in the game is not greed but compassion.

More about alcoholism

Most of us have been unwilling to admit we were real alcoholics. No person likes to think he is bodily and mentally different from his fellows. Therefore, it is not surprising that our drinking careers have been characterized by countless vain attempts to prove we could drink like other people. The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death. -Alcoholics Anonymous ("The Big Book")

I recently visited Oregon, and I attended a great A.A. meeting in Eugene. One of the passages that was read at the beginning of the meeting was the passage above, and it really is a good passage. I had tried to control my drinking many times and many different ways before I eventually joined A.A. I would limit my intake, which would work for a while, but it would always end up escalating. I would change my brand. Maybe only certain brands make me puke, I thought. I never stopped puking though. I would quit drinking altogether, engaging in so-called white-knuckle sobriety. Eventually, the little voice in my head would convince me it was okay to drink again. I tried only drinking on a full stomach. Nope, didn't work. Even when I wasn't puking, the alcohol was distorting my personality and poisoning my emotions. The last night I ever drank, I felt a spike of rage within me. That scared me. I had turned inward. I had become completely self-centered, and I was actually enraged at someone for disturbing my self-absorbtion. I returned to the program after that, and have been sober ever since. As my drinking days recede into the past, and I keep in contact with other alcoholics, I can see more and more clearly how delusional my behavior was. It's always easy for me to admit that someone else is an alcoholic. If I heard someone in the program say, "I'm going to go back out, I think I can drink successfully this time," or "I don't think I need this spirituality stuff anymore," or "I think I don't need to go to meetings anymore," I would have no difficulty identifying their behavior as self-deluding. Yet, when I come up with similar thoughts, it is very hard for me to see the truth. Like the passage above says, I had a very hard time admitting deep down that I am an alcoholic, and that alcohol is more powerful than I am. I have been trained to be self-reliant, and the idea that I am weak in some way, that I can't solve a problem by myself, encounters fierce resistance in my mental landscape. When I first entered the program, I was fed up with alcohol. I was sick and tired of beign at its beck and call, not being able to quit. I didn't have any of the terrible consequence that a lot of alcoholics amass. I never lost my job. I never got a DUI. I never killed anyone. But even people who have amassed these consequences have trouble admitting their alcoholicism. It's the nature of the disease that we are uniformly blind to its presence. In any event, that first time through, I didn't realy admit, deep down, that I was an alcoholic. But after my three week relapse, I was forced to admit it, and it was painful. I couldn't believe that it had layed dormant inside me all those months, just waiting for a weak moment.
The fact that there was this indestructible force inside me which cared nothing about me and which was bent on inducing me to behave in a self-annihilating way, this was incredibly painful for me to realize. But, I have accepted it, and having accepted it, I can deal with it free of delusion. How wonderfully Buddhist!

Contemporary Obtusity

I read a great essay on the Mahablog which talked about a Salon article about Karen Armstrong. Among other things, Armstrong mentions that the idea that scriptures should be taken literally is a modern idea, and that people in the past would have found this idea strangely obtuse. Rather, scriptures need to be read more like poetry, often sitting in your head for a while before the meaning becomes apparent. Clearly the Genesis creation story shouldn't be taken literally, for example. After all, there are many creation stories in the Bible, many contradictory. In any event, both of the links above express a lot more than I can, and a lot more eloquently. They are worth the read.

In related news, I just found a copy of The Threefold Lotus Sutra at a local used book store. It goes into a lot more detail than the two other sutras I've encountered. It's also filled with a lot more poetic whistles and bells. For example, we have the following passage:

After the Buddha finished explaining this, the three-thousand-great-thousandfold world was shaken in the six ways; various kinds of celestial flowers, such as utpala, padma, kumuda, and pundarika, rained down naturally from the sky; and innumerable kinds of celestial perfumes, robes, garlands, and treasures of priceless value also rained and came rolling down from the sky, and they were offered to the Buddha, all the bodhisattvas and sravakas, and the great assembly. The celestial bins and bowls were filled with all sorts of celestial delicaciesl celestial banners, flags, canopies, and playthings were placed everywhere; and celestial music was played in praise of the Buddha.

So, are we to believe that flowers rained from the sky! Of course not! The thing that comes to mind for me here is the pictorial language of music videos. I watched quite a bit of MTV when I was younger, and this sort of image would occur fairly often. When I was watching these videos, I wasn't thinking ,"How unrealistic!" Rather I immediately understood the metaphorical nature of the image. I just need to train myself to do that with scriptures too. It makes reading them a lot easier, rather than having to contort your interpretation to be consistent with an ultra-literal reading. Even in the Diamond-Cutter sutra, there were passages that required mental gymnastics for me to take literally. For example, Shakyamuni Buddha says that he knows the myriad streams of thought of all future Buddhas. This sounds very supernatural, but I don't think Shakyamuni meant it in quite the way my Western TV-conditioned mind immediately supposes. Admittedly, I don't have a deep understanding of the meaning of his statement.

Lastly, an example from the Bible. At some point, a voice from heaven declares of Jesus, "This is my son, in whom I am well pleased." Reading this literally is probably a bad idea. What would a voice from heaven sound like? Would it be thunderous? Would it be melodic? Would it be infinitely subtle? Doesn't it imply the existence of an anthropomorphic God? Rather, I think it should be interpreted as a poetic punctuation mark. Just as the flowers falling from the sky underscored the extreme spiritual importance of what the Buddha had to say, the voice from heaven declaring the merits of Jesus underscores the importance of his life and teaching.

Thoughts

When one is in an intense state of hatred, even a very close friend appears somehow annoying. If one harbors hateful thoughts, it ruins one's health. Even if one has wonderful possessions, in the moment of anger one feels like throwing them or breaking them. So there is no guarantee that wealth alone can give one the joy or fulfillment that one seeks.-the Dalai Lama

Miscellaneous Remarks

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust

We humans always want a solid base to stand on. Some idea that we consider bedrock, completely unshakable. For example, the idea that if I meditate, things will go a certain way, or that if I pray to a deity, life will work out a certain way, or that if I'm a good person, nothing bad will happen to me, etc etc, are all ideas which might serve as a solid base. And yet they are all delusions. Part of the difficulty of life is acceptance of the fact that nothing is truly unshakable. There is no idea that cannot be overturned. Once we realize this, we need not cling to our ideas so tenaciously, and thus not suffer so much when we need to let them go. It seems to me that people tend to become angriest and even violent when they see a genuine threat to their core beliefs. Giving up their core beliefs, they unconsciously feel, would be more painful than violently lashing out against the threat. I think this is why there was so much violence associated with the civil rights movement. This is why ordinary people became distorted with fierce rage. The very foundations of their personalities were being assaulted. I, too, am guilty of this. When I first moved to my present location in the midst of the Bible belt, I became angry and resentful at the omnipresence of evangelical culture. I perceived the local culture as a threat to my worldview. In the end, I got over it. Why should I become angry at people for having opinions differing from my own? The answer's pretty simple in my case: insecurity. Not having enough belief in myself to allow others to disagree with me. Thinking about it now, I'm rather astonished about how worked up I was.

Two Dads

I once brought home a comic book
Casper the Friendly Ghost
When my Dad found out about that book
He exploded in rage, tore it in two
I stood in the hall tearful, afraid

I was playing with my brothers
I was lying on the carpet
Suddenly my other Dad was there
Face contorted in rage
And I was dragged by my foot to witness
where I had forgotten to flush the toilet

Oh let me be free of these resentments
Let these two men not be the sum
Of these ancient incidents.

Coming Home, by Jane Blue

howling winds
unexpected rains
dash water horizontal
the way I remember this valley
in my turbulent youth

and a man has been howling
downtown on the mall
for two days

I've come home
in the ignonimy of winter
at 3 a.m. on the bus
and sick, in such a fever

clouds roiled over the river
full moon behind gauze
like the eyes of a she-wolf
protecting her young
that glittered from a night cave
behind the rending
the dancing, the boiling
the steaming clouds
with rays streaking out
like claws, shining

and there was the snarl
of thunder

I thought all this was behind me
now this wild man, warning
as though he's just whirled out
of the desert, dervish
manic, shrieking gibberish, blind
to me but eyes wide open
to something more real

claps his hands over his ears

the voices, the pain
that will not stop

Containing the Paradox (Pema Chodron)

Life is glorious, but life is also wretched. Appreciating the gloriousness inspires us, encourages us, cheers us up, gives us a bigger perspective, and energizes us. We feel connected. But if that's all that's happening, we get arrogant and start to llok down on others. We make ourselves a big deal and want life to be like that forever. The gloriousness becomes tinged by craving and addiction.

On the other hand, wretchedness--life's painful aspect--softens us up considerably. Knowing pain is an important ingredient of being there for another person. When you are feeling grief, you can look right into somebody's eyes because you feel you haven't got anything to lose--you're just there. The wretchedness humbles us and softens us, but if we were only wretched, we would all be so depressed and hopeless that we wouldn't have enough energy to eat an apple. Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us. They go together.

Atisha said, "Whichever of the two occurs, be patient." Whether it is glorious or wretched, delightful or hateful, be patient. Patience means allowing things to unfold at their own speed rather than jumping in with your habitual response to either pain or pleasure. The real happiness that underlies both gloriousness and wretchedness often gets short-circuited by our jumping too fast into the same habitual pattern.

Patience is not learned in safety. Is is not learned when everything is harmonious and going well. When everything is smooth sailing, who needs patience? If you stay in your room with the door locked and the curtains drawn, everything may seem harmonious, but the minute anything doesn't go your way, you blow up. There is no cultivation of patience when your pattern is to just try to seek harmony and smooth everything out. Patience implies willingness to be alive rather than seek harmony.

1914 was different

I found the following letter in a book I found in a neighbor's basement. It is dated February 11, 1914. The return address is

Harriman City Schools
Arthur A. Strock, Superintendent
Harriman, - Tennessee

It is addressed to

Miss Lula Karr,
City.

It reads as follows:

The next meeting of teachers will be held Saturday, February 21st, at 10 o'clock. All teachers are expected to be present.

The work for that time will take up the Renaissance and the Reformation as two parallel forces acting upon education and influencing its ideals.

The Renaissance movement will be considered purely from its literary aspect as a motive for the remaking of education as noticed in (1) the Italian contribution to education, (2) the German organization of school systems, and (3) the influence of the English public schools upon our educational methods.

The information will be considered from the moral and religious aspect in the bearing upon religious instruction and training as an integral part of education, especially in Germany.

Arthur A. Strock, Supt.

Two Aspirations

May all beings be free of suffering, and the causes of suffering, which are delusions.

May all beings have happiness, and the cause of happiness, which is total awareness of the present moment.

Vocabulary

Earlier today I was bragging about how I had "the largest vocabulary of anyone I know." At the time I vaguely sensed it was not a smart thing to say. Later, I was at a meeting describing how I "resented it when other people have success." Someone else pointed out that that was called "envy." By golly, he was right! My vocabulary is so big, I can't even figure out what envy is! :)

Symbiosis

I realized I've been a bit remiss and have only been describing about 30% of the source of my current spiritual condition, which is, by the way, lots better than it used to be. In addition to studying and practicing Buddhism, there is another fellowship which I belong to, which i credit with the other 70%. Now the thing is that a core tradition of this fellowship is anonymity. In particular, when discussing it publicly, members are to remain anonymous. After some thought, I've decided this blog is an anonymous venue, so I can safely refer to the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. Attending regular meetings for me is an important way to maintain my spiritual health. What I mean by this is maintaining a good attitude about myself and others, maintaining and cultivating the willingness to help others, do the right thing, and recognize the important things in life. Meditation and Buddhist practices definitely help me with this, and in fact the fellowship has encouraged me to cultivate my Buddhist practices. On the other hand my Buddhist practice has helped me be part of the fellowship, and to practice the so-called steps. That explains my title. The two components interact with each other and reinforce each other in complex ways.

I also wanted to say a few words about why I think the fellowship is so powerful. I think it's because it consists of individuals for whom spiritual health is not just an optional nicety, but instead consists of individuals for which spiritual health is a matter of life and death, literally. Although many of us start out by looking for "an easier softer way" those that remain come to learn that total dedication is essential. So we in the fellowship are all working, incredibly earnestly, toward this goal of improving ourselves spiritually. (A summary of what I mean is given above: maintaining a good attitude about myself and others, maintaining and cultivating the willingness to help others, doing the right thing, and recognizing the important things in life.) That's why I think it works so well.

My statement that it is a matter of life and death may sound like hyperbole. I don't think it is. Alcoholics have a progressive disease which involves both a physical and mental component. The physical component occurs when they put alcohol into their body. The liver and pancreas don't secrete the right enzymes, and one of the byproducts of alcohol digestion, acetone, remains in the bloodstream far longer than in a normal person. (Moreover, this worsens as we age. Thus, it is "progressive.")
This acetone creates a physical craving, which causes an alcoholic to want to drink more. This further increases the acetone level, causing the alcoholic to want to drink even more, in a vicious cycle. A normal person wants to stop after one or two drinks, whereas an alcoholic always wants another one. So, once an alcoholic manages to stop drinking, that craving subsides, and everything's fine. Here's where the mental component comes in. After a week, a month, a year, two years, or whatever, the mind gives in to the compulsion, and the alcoholic takes a drink, initiating the vicious cycle. The main problem for an alcoholic is how to combat this part of the disease, and the solution has been found to be the maintenance of one's spiritual health. If you can maintain your mind in a condition where it doesn't want to pick up that first drink, the physical aspects of the disease are irrelevant. You just won't pick it up. So we've reached a strange conclusion: the solution to a physical illness is spirituality. That's why for us alcoholics spirituality is a matter of life and death. Once we pick up that drink, we could easily end up dead, or we could kill someone else in a car wreck, or whatever. This is especially true if a lot of time has passed since we drank last. Because the physical reaction keeps getting worse as we age, we won't pick up where we left off. We will be in a far worse place.

I feel like it would be a crime not to pass along what might be life-saving information which has helped me out so much. And that's why I've done it. :)

Morning

Plastic electronics do not define me
Anymore than paper and liquid
Anymore than the elements
Of which I am borne.

We sit staring as if in a mirror, seeking recognition, smiling in terror, but if you smile to me

The filth across the floor
breeds pestilence.
A sock, astray, bugs.
Crumbs crawl from the couch.
The air teems.

But light is salvation,
song is renewal
The air is never still.
It teems.

Ego and Egolessness

One of the things that seems very easy for an ex-Christian to understand is egolessness or selflessness. The idea that the self is not so important. But I think there is actually a vast difference here between the two concepts. Of course, we must forget the idea that ego is sinful. But beyond that, I think the word "ego," having many different connotations and uses, both technical and general, is confusing.

We must have a strong ego to properly let it go. My main teacher in Zen thus far has been Shunryu Suzuki. He says that to practice zazen is to express our true selves. In yet another duality, the leaving of the self allows another self space. In psychological terms, I believe what happens is that both ego and superego are quieted, and that afterward, superego may not be as assertive or powerful. My roundabout point here is that there is some danger in the encouragement to egolessness. For those like myself with bruised, shrunken, damaged egos, it is important to rehabilitate the thing before letting it go. I must understand what my will is before I can really choose not to follow it.

"Each one of us must make his own true way, and when we do, that way will express the universal way. This is the mystery. When you understand one thing through and through, you understand everything. When you try to understand everything, you will notunderstand anything. The best way is to understand yourself, and then you will understand everything. So when you try hard to make your own way you will help others, and you will be helped by others. Before you make your own way you cannot help anyone, and no one can help you. To be independent in this true sense, we have to forget everything we have in our mind and discover something quite new and different moment after moment. This is how we live in this world."
--Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind; "Emptiness"; p.111.

I am glad I quoted at the end of this piece as opposed to the start, because I do not know how to follow such words properly.

I am human

I am glad you're posting now Beckett. Sorry about the defensive nature of some of my recent comments. I appreciate your honesty and I truly believe that honesty is necessary for real growth. I sometimes forget that and fail to be completely honest with myself and others in some situations. For example, I went to lunch with a couple of people yesterday and I felt like I was controlling my behavior for the sake of appearances. It didn't feel good then or afterwards. In fact, it left a kind of psychic stain on my consciousness. I didn't really realize it. I have been agitated this morning and I didn't really know why, until I wrote these words.

I understand your instinctive revulsion, Beckett, for the trappings of religion. Heck, I felt that way myself a few short months ago. I'm not trying to convert you to Tibetan Buddhism. You need to do what you have to do. If something I say can be of benefit to you in your practice, that's wonderful. If something doesn't feel right, don't use it. After all, that's what I do when I hear other people's ideas. I use what seems useful and leave aside what doesn't feel right. On the other hand, and I am pointedly not implying anything about your practice here, I have noticed that there is a kind of fear I have that I need to lean in to. That is, I'm afraid of something, such as going to the Buddhist group, and it is good for me to go, just to dissipate the fear. It helps me to be more open with life in general, to accept the good and the bad. it helps me to be more receptive to the world around me and the needs of others. It also makes life more interesting. By encountering situations I instinctively avoid, my life becomes richer.

Death and the Everyman

Though this blog has been active for months, I post here as a contributor for the first time. For a couple reasons, I have been out of sorts lately. Not centered. Having trouble meditating. Having trouble feeling at ease. It is important not to cower in the face of dis-ease but acclimate oneself to it.

Hence, today's post. The greatest dis-ease: death. Not surprisingly Zen Buddhist texts are not shy about death. Nor of course is the Bible. It is often postulated that religion exists at the edges of human knowledge. Thus, as our knowledge has expanded, religion's dominion has dwindled. There is, though, one area over which religion has lost no power: death and the hereafter. Christianity taught me when I was young that this world was limited, but the next was unlimited. It taught me to be good so that I could go to heaven and experience eternal bliss with the heavenly father. Present pains are transitory, and will be redressed in heaven. We all know the meek shall inherit the earth. Death is, then, nothing to fear, but something to embrace, as a trip to paradise. Yet I continued to fear death; both of myself and others.

Zen Buddhism has also encouraged me to accept death; even embrace it. Not because I will be headed for an afterlife, but because I will resume my true nature as nothingness. I am to accept death because I am unattached to life.

There are some harmonies beween both traditions. Both encourage us to live in the moment, because we do not know what moment will be our last. They teach that attachment to the past and future are irrelevant. The present moment, being alive and in contact with what is happening right now are what matter.

Meditation seems to be a little dose of death. The clearing of all thoughts. The release of breath, emptying of the lungs. The absolute stillness. By tasting death in these little doses, does one become more comfortable with ultimate stillness? I realized when I was quitting smoking that part of my addiction was driven, ironically, by fear of death. If I do it to myself, might it be easier to take?

Nonattachment is an easy idea to get behind when the things to which one is attempting to let go of are clearly harmul: temper, addictions, a bad relationship. But for it to be practiced fully, one must be equally willing to let go of "good things:" love, sex, life. There is a strong similarity between Plato's enjoinment to moderation, and Buddhism's attempt at evenness. Not too high, not too low. Not too much, not too little. It is relatively easy to accept that one could become comfortable letting go of her own life; that one might be acquiescent at the moment of death. Letting go of the life of a loved one is much more difficult. Recently, on one of these posts, we talked of music and its use in sad moments. Here is a line that has always struck me with its sadness and truth: "Do you know how much I love you, is a hope that somehow you will save me from this darkness." (Bonnie Prince Billy, I See a Darkness)

I am not really laying out an argument here, just the chaos of thoughts that fly around the subject. I wouldn't feel so at ends if I could lay out a strong argument about death (that I believed in, at least). And if I could, I'd either be a devotee of an established thought system or a major philosopher.

The closest I can come to a synthesis is that living in the moment is vital. And if every moment is given its due, the unanswered question of death can remain that way interminably. Grief and sadness come when one dwells on the past; what can no longer be. Whether someone has passed away, or a friend has simpy gone out of your life, the sadness comes from the lack of an ability to recreate the moments that have alreasy passed between you. It's a very selfish, which isn't to say bad, feeling.

One more quote from Bonnie Prince Billy, aka Will Oldham: Death to everone is gonna come...death to me, and death to you, what else can we do.

And, as a postcript, in an earlier post, V suggested that a way to think about reincarnation without bringing the supernatural into play was that in each moment one is reborn: is not the same person. Recently, a friend suggested another way to think of it: Traumas and triumphs are passed down through the generations. A potato famine reverberates in the new world, in the tenement, then in the suburban home. It is bequeathed to each subsequent generation. Your forebears live in you: not just in your genes, but in your worldview, and in much more subtle and profound ways than we typically imagine.

A Wonderful Weekend

This Sunday, at our Buddhist sitting group (Losel Shedrup Ling) we had a visit from Ani Yeshe Palmo, who is a Lama. (I don't really understand what "ani" and "lama" mean.) She talked for two and a half hours, and my heart was touched a couple of times. She told us about Shinay practice, which is essentially, the form of meditation where you sweep thoughts from your mind. Prior to this talk, I had no idea that there were other kinds. She said that before Shinay, you should 1. ask for help from your teacher. You can visualize the historical Buddha here, or the Dalai Lama, or, if you have a formal teacher, you can visualize him or her. The exact words from the formal practice are:

Glorious and precious Root Lama, seated on the lotus and moon seat on the crown of my head, through your great kindness, having accepted me as your disciple, please bestow upon me the enlightened accomplishments of your body, speech and mind.

You can visualize your teacher, beyond size, seated on a white moon-disk on a lotus above your head.

The second step is the refuge prayer:

We go for refuge to the genuine, glorious Lamas. We go for refuge to the mandalas of meditation deities. We go for refuge to the Buddhas, the transcendent victorious ones endowed with all qualities. We go for refuge to the Sacred Dharma. We go for refuge to the Noble Sangha. We go for refuge to the assembly of dakas, dakinis, Dharma protectors, and guardians who possess the eye of wisdom. [recite 3 times]

Ani Yeshe Pomo suggested that we visualize all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas (the Noble Sangha) as clouds, and after a while, we can differentiate the clouds into individual Buddhas.

The third step is about bodhichitta, which is about using our accumulated merit to help others. (I've posted about Bodhichitta before, quoting Pema Chödrön.)

To the Buddha, Dharma, and the Supreme Assembly, I go for refuge until I attain enlightenment. Through the merit of my practice of generosity and the others [other practices], may I accomplish Buddhahood for the benefit of beings.[recite three times.]

Now comes the Shinay meditation. Meditate, possibly concentrating on the breath, and aiming for having your eyes open, sweeping thoughts away. When a thought occurs, gently push it away.

After this you can do a different type of meditation. (I forget it's name.) Here, when a thought occurs, instead of pushing it away, look directly at it. Meditate with your own mind as the object of meditation. You can also concentrate on each of your five senses. Abide with the one doing the watching, or "Watch the watcher." Abide with the one doing the hearing. Abide with the one experiencing tactile sensations. We had candles which we smelled, abiding with the one doing the smelling. We also had a little nut or raisin that we tasted, abiding with the one doing the tasting.

After this meditation is over, you can practice tonglen. Imagine your root Lama over your head on the Moon disk over the Lotus. Imagine a beam of light emanates from this root Lama, and hits your heart (not the organ.) It converts the blackness of your afflictions into pure white light that fills your body. This is performing tonglen on yourself. Now imagine someone you love, and imagine that as you breath in you are drawing the black smoke of their afflictions into your body, where it vanishes. Their blackness disapears and is replaced by pure white light. Now, and this is harder, imagine this same process for someone you dislike, or even hate. Finally, imagins doing this for all sentient beings at once, drawing in their afflictions as a black smoke through you nose, and it disappears as it enters you, nullified by the white light filling you.

The last step is very important, and I was quite touched to hear Ani Yeshe Pomo's explanation. This step is the dedication of merit. You accumulate merit through this practice, but if you don't render it indestructible, it can be spent in an instant. She said that if you go outside and step on a spider after practicing, that can immediately dissipate your accumulated merit. So what you do is seal the deal by dedicating the merit for the benefit of all sentient beings, whereupon it becomes indestructible. The exact wording is not important, just the fact that we do it. Here are the words we used:

Through this merit, attaining omniscience, having defeated all harmful enemies (the mental afflictions), may I liberate all beings from the ocean of existence, which is swept with the waves of birth, old age, sickness, and death. The courageous one, Jampal, knows things as they are, as does Kuntuzangpo. May I train following their example, and completely dedicate all of these virtues. Through this virtue, may all beings, having perfected the accumulation of merit and wisdom, attain the two sacred bodies of Buddha that arise from merit and wisdom. Through the blessings of the Buddhas, who have attained the three bodies, and the blessings of the ultimate, changeless Dharma, and the blessings of the infinite aspirations of the Sangha, dedicating in accord with the truth, may my aspiration prayer be accomplished.


She also said that it was important to practice every day, even if you abbreviate it to two minutes, but that you should include all of the steps (omitting the second type of meditation (mind,sense) and/or tonglen if necessary). In particular, the dedication of merit should always be included, even if all you say is "I dedicate this merit for the benefit of all sentient beings."

I hope I didn't garble this too much. Ani Yeshe Pomo was a soft-spoken unassuming woman with a powerful message, and I hope I have communicated it to some degree.

Cultivating Forgiveness (Pema Chodron)

Forgiveness is an essential ingredient of bodhichitta practice. It allows us to let go of the past and make a fresh start. Forgiveness cannot be forced. When we are brave enough to open our hearts to ourselves, however, forgiveness will emerge.

There is a simple practice we can do to cultivate forgiveness. First we acknowledge what we feel--shame, revenge, embarassment, remorse. Then we forgive ourselves for being human. Then, in the spirit of not wallowing in the pain, we let go and make a fresh start. We don't have to carry the burden with us anymore. We can acknowledge, forgive, and start anew. If we practice this way, little by little we'll learn to abide with the feeling of regret for having hurt ourselves and others. We will also learn self-forgiveness. Eventually, at our own speed, we'll even find our capacity to forgive those who have done us harm. We will discover forgiveness as a natural expression of the open heart, an expression of our basic goodness. The potential is inherent in every moment. Each moment is an oppurtunity to make a fresh start.

The Button

There is a fungus which attacks tarantulas.
It lodges in their nervous system.
It directs them to build a special burrow
Where the tarantula dies
And the fungus grows, bursting up through the ground
Emerging from the tarantula's exploded body.

I saw the button on the table before me
And I pushed it, and an oak tree bloomed in my mind.
I pushed it again, and grimaced.
I collapsed to the ground.
I pushed it again,
and screamed.
The pain
lasted
forever.
And I pushed it again.
And the pain returned.
And I screamed.
And I writhed.
And I noticed that the oak tree was really a fungus.
And I pushed the button again.
And I screamed,
And pushed
And screamed.

Four Methods of Holding Your Seat (Pema Chodron)

When our intention is sincere but the going gets rough, most of us could use some help. We could use some fundamental instruction on how to lighten up and turn around our well-established habits of striking out and blaming.

The four methods for holding our seat provide just such support for developing the patience to stay open to what's happening instead of acting on automatic pilot. These four methods are:

1.Not setting up the target for the arrow. The choice is yours: you can strengthen old habits by reacting to irritation with anger, or weaken them by holding your seat.

2.Connecting with the heart. Sit with the intensity of the anger and let its energy humble you and make you more compassionate.

3.Seeing obstacles as teachers. Right at the point when you're about to blow your top, remember that you're being challenged to stay with edginess and discomfort and to relax where you are.

4.Regarding all that occurs as a dream. Contemplate that these outer circumstances, as well as these emotions, as well as this huge sense of ME, are passing and essenceless like a memory, like a movie, like a dream. That realization cuts through panic and fear.

When we find ourselves captured by aggression, we can remember this: we don't have to strike out, nor do we have to repress what we're feeling. We don't have to feel hatred or shame. We can at least begin to question our assumptions. Could it be that whether we are awake or asleep, we are simply moving from one dreamlike state to another?

Sorting

I was clearing out my mailbox, when I noticed that I had actually been invited to be a contributor here. How nice. Thank you. I am here.

Stages in my Spiritual Development

I recently discovered that the "J" in Prajna should be pronounced. I had assumed it was silent. How did I learn this? Well, therein lies a tale.

According to what I've learned, resentments are the number one offender which cause alcoholics to drink again. I recently heard some advice for getting rid of resentments. Pray for two weeks for the happiness and serenity of the person you resent. (In some cases it may take two months.) You will find that your resentment is gone. The other person doesn't change, but you no longer are letting them live without rent in your head. Okay fine, but what about people like me who don't believe in a deity? Well, I realized that I have resentments against people, but I also have (or perhaps had) a resentment against the idea of God.

The solution hit me. I can kill two resentments at once by praying for the happiness and root of happiness of the people I resent. This removes my resentment of them, and removes my resentment of God. This is similar to the Buddhist practice of tonglen which I mentioned in an earlier post. So I've begun doing that. I've also begun praying more generally, avoiding the wish-fufilment species of prayer, but more along the lines of, God help me to do the right thing. This Sunday, I finally figured out where a local Buddhist group meets, and I was feeling ambivalent about going. I asked God whether I should, ans the answer was clear. I should do it because I fear it. So I attended the Buddhist group's meeting. It was very interesting, and I got quite a bit out of it. I plan on going back next Sunday. In any event, we chanted in Sanskrit a couple of times, and it turns out that Prajna is pronounced like it's spelled!

P.S. The idea of God is consistent with Buddhism. The Zen Monk Suzuki thought that Westerners could use Buddhism to become more in tune with their native religions. In my view, by practicing meditation and mindfulness, I can ask God better questions. Thich Nhat Hanh believes that having two spiritual roots is an excellent idea, and that we should not renounce our original religion. Perhaps he realizes that such renunciation is often motivated by resentment, and is thus not a healthy spiritual foundation.

A Puzzle, by Vacuous

The man with large orbital neandertal ridges
Talked of Mother Teresa.
She was asked what she said when she prayed.
Nothing, I just listen.
And what does God say?
Nothing, she said, he just listens too.
This sounds profound,
But I have no idea what it means.

BTW

I am taking some time off from posting, so I can devote more time to reading. I will still read comments though, so if you have any burning desires...

Untitled, by Vacuous

one time I went with my Momma
to see the circus
I was greedy with anticipation
we rushed forward
there was a homeless man sleeping in the doorway
the crowd spoke with one silent voice
the idea is not to be acknowledged

the incident did not make a big impression on me
actually it made a profound impression
the deep mark that it left on my psyche
is that such incidents must not, cannot make big impressions

600 sand hill cranes by the Hiwassee river
huddled down
feathers puffed out
to protect against the cold air
this image remains in my mind
though i do not know why

Complacency

I feel like I am becoming complacent in my spirituality and I want to change that. I think it's like yoga. If you practice every day you can maintain your flexibility and even improve it. But if you stop, you lose that flexibility. Similarly, I feel like I went through a rapid period of spiritual growth and have now tapered off a bit. This is true of a lot of enterprises: a relatively small initial effort has dramatic consequences, but to go further, one has to expend much more energy. (Weightlifting comes to mind.) I know also that I shouldn't expect overnight changes, and that as long as I keep practicing, my character is bound to steadily improve.

This doesn't have much to do with today's reading, except of course that tonglen practice is a good way to practice improving one's personality. I love the way it transforms objects of my anger into tools for spiritual growth. I have a tendency, as I have remarked many times, not to acknowledge my own anger. When the `object of my fury' arises in my brain, I have two tendencies: one is to immediately banish it; the other is to get into an extended daydream in which I heap scorn on the object. Neither of these two courses is optimal. A third course, which I implement more often nowadays with my Buddhist practice, is to recognize the fury, and rest with its implications. In other words, I might be thinking of something and have an internal mental commentary in which the word "Bullshit" comes to mind. It actually is a new thing for me to recognize this when it happens, and to follow through on the implications. I said "bullshit" so I must feel strongly about this thing. Only when I recognize my own resentments can I be free of them. One of the wonderful things about my Buddhist practice is that it has made me more perceptive to all sorts of things, not the least of which is my own thought process. (I have no idea what other people's thought processes are like, and my perceptions about my own are likely not to be all that relevant to others. Each person has a unique mental construction. )

Inviting Your Unfinished Business

You can bring all of your unfinished karmic business right into tonglen practice. In fact, you should invite it in. Suppose that you are involved in a horrific relationship: every time you think of a particular person you feel furious. That is very useful for tonglen! Or perhaps you feel depressed. It was all you could do to get out of bed today. You're so depressed that you want to stay in bed for the rest of your life; you have considered hiding under your bed. This is very useful to tonglen practice. The specific fixation should be real, just like that.

You may be formally doing tonglen or just having your coffee, and here comes the object of your fury. You breathe that in. The idea is to develop sympathy for your own confusion. The technique is that you do not blame the object; you also don't blame yourself. Instead, there is just liberated fury---hot, dark, and heavy. Experience it as fully as you can.

Breathe the anger in; remove the object; stop thinking about him. In fact, he was just a useful catalyst. Now you own the anger completely. You drive all blames into yourself. It takes a lot of bravery, and it's extremely insulting to the ego. In fact, it destroys the whole mechanism of ego. So you breathe in.

Then, you breathe out sympathy, relaxation, and spaciousness. Instead of just a small, dark situation, you allow a lot of space for these feelings. Breathing out is like opening up your arms and just letting go. It's fresh air. Then you breathe the rage in again---the dark, heavy hotness of it. Then you breathe out, ventilating the whole thing, allowing a lot of space.

-Pema Chödrön

Comments on this very moment

I type poorly. I use a hybrid hunt and peck method which takes quite a bit of time and involves much backtracking to correct mistakes. This morning, I noticed that I can often type out passages, albeit slowly, without looking down at the keyboard. It's an interesting and surprising [TO ME!] observation about myself in the current moment.

Existing in the moment is damn good advice, since that's all we can ever directly experience. Worrying about, and being caught up in the past or future, we rob ourselves of experiencing right now. Right now will defy expectations, but that's good. It is surprising, and, as a result, stimulating. By being consistently present in the moment, we can make fully conscious decisions, rather than letting our auto-pilot system make the decision for us, while we daydream.

Do I live up to this ideal? Absolutely not. I let my auto-pilot run way too often for my taste. That's okay, I am not perfect, and recognizing that I do this is part of living in the moment. As I progress, I hope that my auto-pilot will come on line less and less. My journal which I write in each night, when I remember, helps me to assess my behavior throughout the day, and helps me to see where I could have done better, where my auto-pilot got me into trouble.

Meditation is very good practice for living in the moment. In meditation, thoughts unrelated to the present moment come up, and I try to let them go. I am just there, experiencing the world around me, without interpreting it verbally. I find that in situations that arise during the day, I can often pause and relax into it, much as I do when meditating.

This very moment is the perfect teacher

As we become more open, we might think that it's going to take bigger catastrophes to make us want to exit in our habitual ways. The interesting thing is that, as we open more and more, it's thie big ones that immediately wake us up and the little things that catch us off guard. However, no matter the size color, or shape of the catastrophe, the point is to continue to lean into the discomfort of life and see it clearly rather than try to protect ourselves from it.

In practicing meditation, we're not trying to live up to some kind of ideal---quite the opposite. We're just being with our experience, whatever it is. If our experience is that sometimes we have some kind of perspective, and sometimes we have none, then that's our experience. "This very moment is the perfect teacher" is really a most profound instruction. Just seeing what's going on---that's the teaching right there. We can be with what's happening and not dissociate. Awakeness is found in our pleasure and our pain, our confusion and our wisdom. It's available in each moment of our weird, unfathomable, ordinary everyday lives.

-Pema Chödrön

Comments

Tonglen is a Tibetan word meaning "Sending and receiving." "In the practice of tonglen, we breathe in whatever feels bad, and send out whatever feels good." If we feel discomfort, anger, guilt, loneliness or other emotions usually considered "bad," rather than trying to deny them, repress them, project them onto others, we can instead merely accept them. What a simple, revolutionary concept!

Slogan: "Drive all blames into one"

"Drive all blames into one" is saying, instead of always blaming the otyher, own the feeling of blame, own the anger, own the loneliness, and make friends with it. Use tonglen practice to see how you can place the anger of the fear or the loneliness in a cradle of loving-kindness; use tonglen to learn how to be gentle with all that stuff. In order to be gentle and create an atmosphere of compassion for yourself, it's necessary to stop talking to yourself about how wrong everything is---or how right everything is, for that matter.

I challenge you to experiment this way: drop the object of your emotion, do tonglen, and see if in fact the intensity of the so-called poison lessens. I have experimented with this, and because my doubt was so strong, for a while it seemed that it didn't work. But as my trust grew, I found that that's what happens---the intensity of the emption lessens, and so does the duration. This happens because the ego begins to be ventilated. We are all primarily addicted to ME. This big solid ME begins to be aerated when we go against the grain and abide with our feelings instead of blaming the other.

The "one" in "Drive all blames into one" is our tendency to protect ourselves: ego-clinging. When we drive all blames into this tendency by staying with our feelings and feeling them fully, the ongoing monolithic ME begins to lighten up, because it is fabricated withour opinions, our moods, and a lot of ephemeral--but at the same time vivid and convincing--stuff.

-Pema Chödrön

Untitled, by Vacuous

Once, when I was young
My Momma and I came to Hiwassee Tennessee
Where a maple tree dropped its leaves in Autumn.
Some lay on the ground.
Some fell in the water.
Momma's face was so serene.
Her joy was my joy.
Later, we visited a Trail of Tears memorial,
But I didn't understand what it was about.

Untitled, by Vacuous

Starlings, loud, startling
Back aching, slacking
Ash tree blooming over asphalt tiles
Leaves decaying, cloying
Restless, immersing in red cedar reflecting
Dim air, damp atmosphere
Cold squirrels chattering
Breath vapors blooming
Each instant individual
Each moment momentous

Comments on Sunday Morning

I like quite a few of the points this poem makes. Divinity should be within us, not an external oppressive force. It can be captured in certain moments, often representing a deep connection with the natural world. Things such as wet roads on Autumn nights, but also in sadder emotions, which is an interesting point. The poem also reinforces the common criticism of the conventional view of heaven, where everything is perfect and no-one ever dies. If nothing ever changes, things are bound to be uninteresting and significantly less beautiful than earth. Death is the mother of beauty, the poem says. If the trees displayed their Autumn colors all year round, would we find the colors as beautiful? I would not. It would be symptomatic of a deep wrongness (to co-opt a usage from Stranger in a Strange Land). The trees go through their cycles each year and this is part of the beauty. If they were to retain their almost-dead leaves for the mere purpose of being visually pleasing to some humans, they would lose their deeper beauty. The beauty expressed in their intricate interplay with the rest of nature. I like the passage on the primitve religion. The poem seems to be saying, here is a more honest, more basic religion. These chanting men
feel a deep connection with nature: the sun, the wind, the lake. And when they die, they know they will rejoin the earth, they will rejoin nature, and that is indeed a mystical, spiritual thing.

Sunday Morning by Wallace Stevens

I

Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe.
As a calm darkens among water-lights.
The pungent oranges and bright, green wings
Seem things in some procession of the dead,
Winding across wide water, without sound.
The day is like wide water, without sound,
Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet
Over the seas, to Palestine,
Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.

II

Why should she give her bounty to the dead?
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in lonlieness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch.
These are measures destined for her soul.

III

Jove in the clouds had his inhuman birth.
No mother suckled him, no sweet land gave
Large-mannered motions to his mythy mind
He moved among us, as a muttering king,
Magnificent, would move among his hinds,
Until our blood, commingling, virginal,
With heaven, brought such requital to desire
The very hinds discerned it, in a star.
Shall our blood fail? Or shall it come to be
The blood of paradise? And shall the earth
Seem all of paradise that we shall know?
The sky will be much friendlier then than now,
A part of labor and a part of pain,
And next in glory to enduring love,
Not this dividing and indifferent blue.

IV

She says, "I am content when wakened birds,
Before they fly, test the reality
Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings;
But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields
Return no more, where, then is paradise?"
There is not any haunt of prophecy,
Nor any old chimera of the grave,
Neither the golden underground, nor isle
Melodious, where spirits gat them home,
Nor visionary south, nor cloudy palm
Remote on heaven's hill, that has endured
As April's green endures; or will endure
Like her remembrance of awakened birds,
Or her desire for June and evening, tipped
By the consummation of the swallow's wings.

V

She says, "But in contentment I still feel
The need of some imperishable bliss."
Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,
Alone, shall come fulfilment to our dreams
And our desires. Although she strews the leaves
Of sure obliteration on our paths,
The path sick sorrow took, the many paths
Where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or love
Whispered a little out of tenderness,
She makes the willow shiver in the sun
For maidens who were wont to sit and gaze
Upon the grass, relinquished to their feet.
She causes boys to pile new plums and pears
On disregarded plate. The maidens taste
And stray impassioned in the littering leaves.

VI

Is there no change of death in paradise?
Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs
Hang always heavy in that perfect sky,
Unchanging, yet so like our persihing earth,
With rivers like our own that seek for seas
They never find, the same receding shores
That never touch with inarticulate pang?
Why set the pear upon those river-banks
Or spice the shores with odors of the plum?
Alas, that they should wear our colors there,
The silken weavings of our afternoons,
And pick the strings of our insipid lutes!
Death is the mother off beauty, mystical,
Within whose burning bosom we devise
Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly.

VII

Supple and turbulent, a ring of men
Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn
Their boisterous devotion to the sun,
Not as a god, but as a god might be,
Naked among them, like a savage source.
Their chant shall be a chant of paradise,
Out of their blood, returning to the sky;
And in their chant shall enter, voive by voice,
The windy lake wherein their lord delights,
The trees, like serafin, and echoing hills,
That choir among themselves long afterward.
They shall know well the heavenly fellowship
Of men that perish and of summer morn.
And whence they came and whither they shall go
The dew upon their feet shall manifest.

VIII

She hears, upon that water without sound,
A voive that cries, "The tomb in Palestine
Is not the porch of spirits lingering.
It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay."
We live an an old chaos of the sun,
Or old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail
Whistle about us in their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.

Comments on Nothing

I've been somewhat irritable yesterday and today. It doesn't really manifest itself in personal interactions, but rather in my own mental commentary on the world. When I encounter something, I am quite likely to say "this is bullshit," or some such to myself. I am not sure what the origin of this is, but I have a guess. I attended a funeral a few days ago of a homeless man. His family was there, but they didn't seem sad. They didn't seem to care about anything but their own selves. The clincher was when the man's cousin, with a leather bible which had gold trim, got up to make his remarks, and proceeded to deliver a sermon filled with pompous bullshit. It really turned me off. I felt like, this man is a real hypocrite. Now I'm just saying what I felt at the time. I may be being too harsh on these people. It could be that the cousin was just doing his best to do a good job to honor his dead cousin. So he delivered a beautiful (in his mind) sermon. It may be. When my own grandmother died, I myself attempted to do a good job writing some remarks to say at the funeral. Indeed, and I'm ashamed of this, after I delivered my remarks, I was a bit surprised when no applause occurred. That's how hard-wired this sort of thing is for me. So perhaps I shouldn't be so hard on the man. It's interesting that this event has had such a lasting effect on me.

As for today's passage by Chödrön, it contains a lot which I try to take to heart and implement in my daily life. Living completely in the moment, for one. Perhaps this is the basic Buddhist tenet. Being comfortable with our own mind, accepting our emotions, these are others. Not prejudging, not saying "well I know how that's going to be," and using this as an excuse to not do or experience something. These are all good practices.

Nothing to Hold On To

Instructions on mindfulness all point to the same thing: being right on the spot nails us. It nails us right to the point of time and space that we are in. When we stop there and don't act out, don't repress, don't blame anyone else, and also don'r blame ourselves, then we meet with an open-ended question with no conceptual answer. We also encounter ourselves.

The trick is to keep exploring and not bail out, even when we find that something is not as we thought. That's what we're going to discover again and again and again. Nothing is what we thought. I can say that with great confidence. Emptiness is not what we thought. Neither is mindfulness or fear. Compassion---not what we thought. Love, buddha nature, courage---these are code words for things we don't know in our minds, but any of us could experience them. These are words that point to what life really is when when we let things fall apart and let ourselves be nailed to the present moment.

The path of the warrior-bodhisattva is not about going to heaven or a place that's really comfortable. Wanting to find a place where everything's okay is just what keeps us miserable. Always lokking for a way to have pleasure and avoid pain is how we keep ourselves in samsara. As long as we believe there is something that will permanently satisfy our hunger for security, suffering is inevitable. The truth is that things are always in transition. "Nothing to hold on to" is the root of happiness. If we allow ourselves to rest here, we find that it is a tender, nonaggressive, open-ended state of affairs. This is where the path of fearlessness lies.

-Pema Chödrön

Note: "Samsara" is a Sanskrit word meaning "journeying." It is "the vicious cycle of suffering that results from the mistaken belief in the solidity and permanence of self and other."

Comments on the Essential Paradox

Things are as bad and as good as they seem. Sometimes nowadays someone will tell me about somehting tragic or upsetting, and I will experience a wave of emotion wash over me, and then I will move on. This is actually quite good for me. It used to be that I would repress emotions of sadness or grief, often having them convert to anger. One of the things I was afraid of was losing my happiness. If I give in to the grief, I unconsciously thought, then I will never escape. I must not even acknowledge it. How much better it is to experience it genuinely and then move on. I notice that the elderly talk about death and in less reverent tones than the young, excluding those young who have seen a lot of death. An elderly person will often say simply "So and so has died" and then already be talking about something else one minute later. I think this is healthy. Death is a fact of life. Sadness is appropriate at the loss of a good friend, but there is no point, no obligation either, to grieve continuously. I think many of the elderly have learned this lesson, probably the hard way. As their friends and family continue to die, death becomes much more of a familiar entity, unworthy of extensive comment. Now, I am not espousing a fatalisitic view here. I am not saying everyone dies, so what's the point in living? I am saying, everyone dies, so what's the point in grieving. In a sense my view is exactly the opposite of the fatalistic interpretation. Finally, it should be said that it is not desirable or possible to completely eliminate grief. When a person close to you dies, it is completely natural to experience a large amount of grief. Trying to stop this emotional floodtide is not what I advocate at all. I do advocate not clinging to it. Experience these emotions but there's no need to prevent them from leaving when the time comes.

The other side of the coin is pleasurable experience. The first thing that comes to mind here is drinking alcohol. I used to drink a beer, experience a mild euphoric buzz, and then down as many beers as I could after that in an effort to maintain that euphoric buzz. The nature of the euphoria was such that this strategy always failed, and I would end up throwing up into a toilet the next day. (Hopefully I made it to a toilet.) I was trying to experience joy and cling tenaciously to it. How much better it is to experience joy when it naturally occurs, and let it pass peacefully on its way when the time comes.

The Essential Paradox

In the Heart Sutra, one of the Buddha's principal disciples, a monk named Shariputra, begins to question Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, asking, "In all the words and actions and thoughts of my life, how do I apply the prajnaparamita? What is the key to training in this practice? What view do I take?"

Avalokiteshvara answers with the most famous of Buddhist paradoxes: "Form is emptiness, emptiness also is form. Emptiness is no other than form, form is no other than emptiness." His explanation, like the prajnaparamita itself, is inexpressible, indescribable, inconceivable. Form is that which simply is before we project our beliefs onto it. The prajnaparamita represents a completely fresh take, an unfettered mind where anything is possible.

"Form is emptiness" refers to our simple, direct relationship with the immediacy of experience. First we wipe away our preconceptions and then we even have to let go of our belief that we should look at things without preconceptions. In continuing to pull out our own rug, we understand the perfection of things just as they are.

But "emptiness also is form" turns the tables. Emptiness continually manifests as war and peace, as grief, birth, old age, sickness, and death, as well as joy. We are challenged to stay in touch with the heart-throbbing quality of being alive. That's why we train in the relative bodhichitta practices of the four limitless qualities and tonglen. They help us to engage fully in the vividness of life with an open, unclouded mind. Things are as bad and as good as they seem. There's no need to add anything extra.

-Pema Chödrön

Random Thoughts

I once read that we need to be entirely ready to have God remove all of our defects of character. This sort of advice is hard for me to follow, especially given my disbelief in any sort of deity. However, i think the use of the word God here indicates that it is not by a conscious act of self-will that we will eliminate or reduce our character defects. It is not by a constant self-policing that we will be free of them, but rather we need to gradually practice living spiritually. Meditating daily helps, certainly. After I started writing my daily actions in a journal yesterday, it occurred to me that I actually have reduced many of my character defects, and I hadn't really appreciated it. For example, I believe that I am far less egotistical than I was.

The main point here, of this advice, as far as I can see, is to not cling to one's character defects. Accept the fact that you can live without them. This is the first step toward living without them, or reducing them anyway. Some defects we will never be rid of. That's okay too. We are just people, and that's the way we are. It's interesting how I can be very charitable towards other people's flaws, but I tend to be more self-critical and hold myself to a higher standard. if only I held myself to the same standard I hold everyone else to. Then I could accept my own flaws. That doesn't mean that I cling to them and refuse to let them go. it means that I am ready to let them go, but if they prove to be hard to get rid of, I am not going to beat myself up over it.

This is very Buddhist advice. I am not going to cling to this. I am not going to cling to that. I will live with what i have without being attached to it.