The Three Kayas

The mind is not something that can be completely understood conceptually. This is almost obvious. Thoughts are within the mind, they cannot transcend it and grasp it from without. Or, to paraphrase a sutra, just as a sword cannot cut itself, the mind cannot apprehend the mind. In fact, the mind has no characteristics. Characteristics are mental constructs that live within the mind. They therefore cannot be true properties of the mind. This empty quality of mind (empty of characteristics) is the dharmakaya. It is in fact our Buddha nature. It is a fertile quality that pervades all phenomena, allowing them to change and grow, appear and disappear. It is expansive and vast, the ground of all existence, and although it can be hinted at through concepts, can only be experienced directly for it to be truly "understood." When making a rough analogy to Christian thought, I like to think of this as being the analogue of "God," but this is a totally nonconceptual, nonanthropomorphic God, more like how I understand the God of Spinoza, than the usual way people think of Him or, presumably, Her.

However, emptiness is a word that can be easily misunderstood, since it has a very negative connotation in Western thought, seemingly implying a nothingness. As though our consciousness is dark, like in a deep sleep. Yet appearances are constantly arising. Thoughts are always happening, so many that it's inconceivable, and you can't make them stop if you wanted to. Furthermore, there is a sense that these appearances are known and perceived, illuminated, if you will. This luminous quality of mind, is called the samboghakaya, and in Christian thought, I make the rough analogy to the Holy Spirit. Like an ethereal energy that pervades everything, is somewhat conceptualized, though not anthropomorphically, and also provides inspiration. The samboghakaya forms of the Buddhas can appear in visions to advanced practitioners and relay teachings and blessings, in much the same way the Holy Spirit can visit people.

Finally, the actual thoughts and appearances themselves correspond to the nirmanakaya. The Buddha's physical form is called the nirmanakaya, and I would say is analogous to the Son in Christian thought. A physical instantiation of the Godhead sent to help sentient beings.

This presentation of the three kayas, unlike the Christian presentation, emphasizes the presence of each in our very own mind. Salvation is right here, right now in this very instant. All the tools are with us, closer than we can even perceive, but they are there, and once we see them, we can make use of them. I, personally, am constantly distracted by everyday appearances and my own conceptual constructs. Even when I'm practicing dharma intensively, it's easy for me to get caught in the lie that practicing dharma is like climbing a staircase. With that attitude, I am putting off enlightenment/salvation by ignoring the only place it can be found: right now. When I do remember to stay in the present moment, I can't tell you how different, relaxing, and totally right it feels. In the Buddhist presentation, this is emphasized, and of course many Christian contemplatives have understood this and practiced it. Thomas Merton springs immediately to mind. Several denominations have embraced meditation as a spiritual tool. It would be nice if it became a more mainstream Christian practice. I think it could help a lot of people.

Eternity

Osama bin Laden's death has been announced this morning. NPR was interviewing a man whose wife was killed in the WTC collapse. He expressed satisfaction at the fact that Osama was burning in hell and that his wife was in heaven with the angels. I doubt he really believed this because it makes no sense on the face of it. If the WTC attack really was the proximate cause of his wife being sent to a better place, it would make no sense to be angry about this. Further, how can it make sense for a finite amount of wrongdoing (the result of which was that someone went to paradise) to be punished by an infinite amount of torment without end? It seems incredibly unjust.

Since becoming a Buddhist I've noticed again and again Christian obsession with permanence. When you die, there are two options, black and white, eternal bliss or eternal suffering, no in-between, no change. If this is really the case, then the negligible amount of time we have on this planet seems like a ridiculous fitness test for admittance into either category. It's like you're looking at a 10,000 mile stretch of road and judging it based on the first millimeter.

I was disheartened to see the jubilant reaction at another person's death, even more so when I realized that a lot of people believe that he will be tormented forever in hell. How can one person wish that kind of inconceivable suffering on another?

I have to say that the Buddhist idea that everything is impermanent, unsolid and changing makes a lot more sense to me, and is supported by continued observation of all phenomena. Not once has anyone seen something which is not subject to change. There is no blissful state that lasts for all time, nor is there a state of torment. Everything which arises also ceases.

Enemies are our spiritual friends

If there are no aggressors or harm-doers, patience does not arise. It appears only in the presence of those who attack us. Given therefore that it is precisely an enemy that is the definite cause for the practice of patience, how can it possibly be said that the enemy is an obstacle to our merit and virtue? It does not make sense, for the former is the cause of the latter. It is the absence of the enemy that prevents patience from arising.

-Kunzang Pelden, "The Nectar of Manjushri's Speech," a detailed commentary on Shantideva's Way of the Bodhisattva

Death and hiking

I know that's a weird title, but it's descriptive of the two topics I had in mind for this post. My pet mouse Delta just died, a fact which most people might find a bit sad, but on the whole utterly trivial. In a way, it's as trivial as all death. Vast numbers of creatures of all sizes are dying every single second. How significant is one more? Still my wife and I were very attached to the little girl, and we were quite sad to see her go. It's interesting to compare the life of a mouse with the life of a dog, a human, or even a car. It's easier to observe the overall arc of life in a mouse because it does happen so quickly. In all cases we start accumulating various problems which don't quite fix themselves, and after a while they become catastrophic enough that our body ceases to function. It's the natural arc of life in which every creature is embedded. My Buddhist training tells me that when a tragedy happens, like the death of a loved one, to use it to further my own practice. I think to myself that I am no different in nature from the one who died, and I will eventually die, though I don't know when. It could be that I won't see tomorrow. Realizing this, I am spurred by the short time I have left to make the most of every moment.

Speaking of running short on time, I'm about to leave on a 4.5 day hiking trip. It should be a lot of fun. Unfortunately, that means I have to end this blog post rather abruptly....

Excellent video

This video really drives home its point. I cried watching it.

Frozen in time

The Buddha compared the course of our life to the trajectory of an arrow. Just as the arrow rushes toward its target, our life proceeds inexorably towards death. To us, it appears as though time is fixed. As we stare at a person, or at ourselves, we do not see any change from second to second. Yet, we really are changing. Our bodies are changing. Our mind is changing. Nothing ever remains the same. This is what Buddhists call subtle impermanence, or even subtle suffering. It is called suffering because the perception that things remain the same, that they are therefore real objects which we can cling to and find support in, is actually completely and totally illusory. All conceptual constructs are constantly bubbling in and out of existence. People in their youth typically have no comprehension of the reality that they will one day either grow old or die. This is somewhat odd, in that this one of the most blatantly obvious things we can observe about reality. The Buddhist view is that this elementary error is due to lifetimes of habit. We habitually cling to objects as real. We habitually cling to our current form as permanent. Yet nothing is permanent, and therein lies hope. By abandoning our attachment to what is impermanent, we can find happiness in the vast nonconceptual state of Buddhahood. More importantly, if we abandon attachment to self and dedicate ourselves to the happiness of others, the subtle suffering coming from our attachment to outer appearances dissolves, and the clear light of Buddhahood shines forth.

Off Facebook for a while at least

I've decided to take a break from Facebook for a while. So I'm back here posting. Will anyone read what I write? I'm not sure. Perhaps a few, or maybe none. Still, I think it's more important for my own personal progress to make longer more considered posts, than to keep posting status updates which don't really lead anywhere.

St. Francis of Assisi

I came across the following story on Wikipedia. St. Francis came to a town which was being terrorized by a wolf. It had killed both people and animals. So he went and found the wolf in the hills outside the town, spoke to it and convinced it to stop. Then, because the wolf was only eating out of hunger, St. Francis made a pact with the townsfolk that they would feed the wolf from now on. Then St. Francis baptized the wolf.

This strikes me as so right. It reminds me of a story of the Buddha, in which there was a powerful hungry ghost (yidak) who had many children, and she would go out nightly and kill many beings to feed her children. The Buddha asked her to stop, but she couldn't. Then the Buddha took one of her children and hid it in his begging bowl, where the mother yidak couldn't see it. (Normally yidaks are clairvoyant and can see everywhere.) The mother became so distraught looking all over the place without success that finally she came to the Buddha and asked him if he knew where her child was. He gave her back her child and said, "Look how much suffering you underwent when you could not find your child. Imaging how much suffering other being are undergoing when you kill their children." The mother yidak realized the truth of these words, but asked the Buddha how she could feed her children without killing. In response, Buddha asked his followers to dedicate a bread offering (changbu) after lunch every day to this yidak family, a tradition that continues to this day.

Song of Chandrakirti

There are two ways of seeing everything,
A perfect way and a false way.
So each and every thing that can ever be found
Holds two natures within.

And what does perfect seeing see?
It sees the suchness of all things.
And false seeing sees what appears, no more.
This is what the perfect Buddha said.

We learned this song at a retreat I attended over the weekend. If I were to take a stab at interpreting this, I would say that concepts are not true reality, and that there is a nonconceptual way of seeing things that one achieves after meditating and practicing which is nonconceptual. This is but the tip of the iceberg of what could be said about the song, though.

An idea

Most prose takes a high level description of mental events. This character got out of bed, talked with some other character, went to the park, etc, etc. But if you look closely at experience, it is actually filled with much more mental chatter, much of it verbalizable, although much of it is not. Driving down the road, that tree looks interesting, I'm hungry, where should I eat, my toe itches, Glenn Beck sure is a nutcase, etc. (This is a poor imitation, but hopefully signals the kind of thing I mean.) It's interesting because most of this mental chatter is completely forgotten, and our own memory of events conforms to the type of high-level abstract narrative that tends to characterize prose. Moreover, this type of high level description tends to conform to the idea of independent objective experience. Two people in similar situations would tend to agree to a large extent on the high level narrative. In any event, I had the idea that it would be fun to try to write a prose piece in such a way as to emulate the more detailed stream of consciousness. Actually James Joyce did this a bit in Ulysses, now that I think about it, but the more I thought about it, the less I was able to conceive of how to do it. Normally, I can only capture the moment-by-moment stream if I let myself go and just observe it, but the moment I try to analyze and remember it, the process is contaminated by the fixation on remembering it. The thoughts turn away from their natural progression and turn toward an analysis of the progression. Hmm.

A suspicion

I wonder whether following the money funneling into these town hall disruptors would ultimately lead to the insurance companies?

Another useless war

Why are we in Afghanistan?

Different Buddhist Schools of Thought

Here is an excerpt of a piece I am writing describing the Buddhist view of perception.

According to the Svatanrika school of Tibetan Buddhism, the self does not exist inherently. When you look for the self, especially when the mind is focused in meditation, you will find that every hypothesis turns out to be off the mark. I recall meditating on the mind one time, where the exercise was to identify the shape of the mind, identify its color, etc, and coming to the startled conclusion that "The mind appears to have no qualities." The closer you, look the less substantial it seems. This is not to deny that people exist, but that they have no unchanging eternal aspect (something akin to a soul.) People change from moment to moment and each aspect of their body and mind is interdependent with many other causes and conditions usually considered separate from the self. Now many people will agree that there is no permanent unchanging self, but yet in their day to day lives, still react emotionally as though they have one. In every experience, there always is a sense that there is a "me" experiencing it. When you hear a sound there is a sense that there is a sound and a person experiencing that sound, but actually both the sound and the experience occur simultaneously. The perceived and the perceiving are indivisible in our consciousness. So how does it make sense to say that there is a separate entity hearing that sound? It is quite common to intellectually agree that a certain concept is true, but to act without taking the fact to heart. For example, alcoholics can often see that alcohol will not bring them lasting happiness, but will actually lead to immense suffering, but they often cannot bring their actions into harmony with this intellectually held belief.

The Cittamatrin school of Tibetan Buddhism goes on to analyze the exterior world, coming to the conclusion that it and the things in it don't actually exist. The reasoning here is somewhat different. All objects are perceived through the mind. All experiences are mental experiences. Our minds cannot directly come in contact with a table for example. Indeed such a statement seems to be an absurd category error. So everything we experience is but a thought, a mental event. Hence it makes little sense to postulate that there is anything except the mind. Both internal and external phenomena are of one mental ``substance." At first this view seems solipsistic, that everything is but a massive hallucination, a delusion that we create. However, the refutation to this is that there is no self that could possibly have created all these mental events in the first place. The self is as much a product of mind as are seemingly external objects. The example given here is that of a dream. Life is like a dream according to this viewpoint in the sense that nothing is inherently real. Nothing has true physical solidity. That's not to say there is no difference between waking and dreaming life, but it does mean that they are of the same basic nature. I recall several lucid dreams that brought this point home to me. In one dream, I was floating through space when I realized that my true body was asleep in bed, and I couldn't fathom where it could be in the dreamscape. It seemed like it was in a totally different universe possibly way far beyond the horizon. It was a disorienting experience. In another dream I was walking down a very realistic street and the thought occurred to me that I might be dreaming. Yet as I gazed upon the scenery, it seemed so realistic that I came to the conclusion that I couldn't possibly be dreaming. After I woke up, I realized that I had been. Another time, I was walking down a street in my hometown, when I realized that the entrance to a building I was familiar with was very different than it had been. At that moment I realized I was dreaming, despite how real the scene was. These repeated dream experiences have driven home to me that the way the mind experiences waking life and the way it experiences dream life is truly of the same nature. After all, there is no fool-proof way to tell whether you are waking or dreaming, and as illustrated here, the mind can be frequently confused by this.

The Madyamika school of Tibetan Buddhism points to a problem they see with the Cittamatrin viewpoint, namely that the Cittamatrins seem to be saying that the mind has an inherent reality. The mind is like the ocean and thoughts are like waves on the ocean, or the mind is like a mirror and thoughts are reflections in the mirror. The Cittamatrins say that the ocean and the mirror really exist, whereas the Madyamikas argue that the mind can't really inherently exist either. It is totally beyond conceptuality. So they actually say that it doesn't exist. It doesn't not exist. It doesn't both exist and not exist. And it doesn't neither exist nor not exist.

Even beyond this is the Shentong school, but I'll save my commentary on that for another day.

Giving up Facebook for a month

The difference between my blogging endeavors here and my time on Facebook is similar to the difference between reading a book and watching the TV. One is a lot more mentally engaging than the other. Facebook saps my strength with little to show for it. Therefore I've decided to give it up for a month and see what happens. That means I might be more active on this blog. We'll see.

A favorite song of mine

Cripple Creek


A cripple on his deathbed and a daydream did ride,
Out past the streams of fire on a pedaled path did glide,
He left his wheelchair spinning deeper in the mud.
in it set his memories and his body and his blood.

An angel came to greet him by his side she flew,
whispered as a part of him what he already knew,
his head was spinning freely and it was plain to see,
his burden was himself, he bore, the sight his eyes could be.

His death, it died quite easily, right there was gone for good,
but he couldn't see his loved one, like he thought he should
he thought "if they were gone", said he, "and this cannot be true"
the search to find what wasn't there has brought him back to you.

-Alexander Spence

Dreaming on Dreaming

Last night I had a dream where I was sitting in a teaching by my Lama, my mom in the back, in a house by a lake. At some point, his translator said that Lama had some free time, so if there was anything anyone wanted him to do, now was the time. There was silence for a while and my mind started racing, trying to figure out what to do with this golden opportunity. Someone else asked something, sparking me to remember a question I had. I said to the translator "In dreams people are not real, whereas in real life people are real in some sense, although not real in another. What is the difference?" The translator said to me, "well you agree that real life is like a dream?" and I responded "Yes, that's what prompted me to ask this question. I mean in real life I don't have miraculous powers like in a dream, but..."(I felt a little bit like I was bragging here. Basically saying that I do have miraculous powers in dreams.) At this point in the dream someone started talking over me, and then I started talking over them, and then I found that I wasn't saying what I wanted to say and kind of wished I would shut up. Another character mentioned that sometimes two people can see the same detail in a dream, and the translator asked them how, and the other person said "Heroin!" I almost yelled "Not me!" At this point the Lama said "twenty minutes" indicating that some preestablished period of time had elapsed. He looked tired. After he left, I noticed my mom was gone from the back of the room. After this, I was standing out on the pier looking at the lake, feeling disappointed that my question wasn't definitively answered. I didn't realize I had been dreaming until I woke up.

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy on Buddhism?

One encouraging thing the Guide has to say about parallel universes is that you don't stand the remotest chance of understanding it. You can therefore say "What?" and "Eh?" and even go cross-eyed and start to blither if you like without any fear of making a fool of yourself.

The first thing to realize about parallel universes, the Guide says, is that they are not parallel.

It is also important to realize that they are not, strictly speaking, universes either, but it is best if you don't try to realize that until a little later, after you've realized that everything you've realized up to that moment is not true.

The reason they are not universes is that any given universe is not actually a thing as such, but is just a way of looking at what is technically known as the WSOGMM, or Whole Sort of General Mish Mash. The Whole Sort of General Mish Mash doesn't actually exist either, but is just the sum total of all the different ways of looking at it if it did.

The reason they are not parallel is the same reason that the sea is not parallel. It doesn't mean anything. You can slice the Whole Sort of General Mish Mash any way you like and will generally come up with something that someone will call home.

Please feel free to blither now.


-Mostly Harmless, Douglas Adams

Lucid Dreaming

I had an interesting type of lucid dream last night, where at various points in the dream, I became aware that I was dreaming but was still caught up in the dream. In fact, what was rather fascinating was that I was walking down a sidewalk, thinking how much the progression of events so far seemed dream-like, but that this was definitely not a dream because the reality around me seemed so clear and real. Then something clicked. I'm not sure what clued me in, but as I gazed up at a gas station sign, I realized that I was, indeed, dreaming. Later in the dream, I remembered I was dreaming when I saw that another character's hand had healed way too much for one day, and I said to him something like "That's what happens in the dream world."

I've had lucid dream before, where as soon as I realize I'm dreaming, I begin to take authorship of the dream in a much more direct way. I feel in those dreams, like I'm consciously causing things to happen, whereas in the dream last night, it was more like my consciousness observing an unconscious process.

In Tibetan Buddhism, the recognition of ones dreams is said to beneficial to the path. On the one hand, it makes you realize how much ordinary reality is like a dream, and on the other hand, it makes it possible to practice while you are sleeping. It is also said, that after you die, it will be easier to recognize the fact that you are in in-between state between this birth and the next. Usually, it is said, beings are propelled by their karma, caught up in the dream-like appearances of the in-between state, into their next birth, but that if you realize what's happening, you can affect your rebirth to be more positive, or even gain enlightenment in this state.

Words of the Buddha

You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection.


This is an unsourced quote I got off an internet list, but it sounds like the Buddha to me. A persistent problem Westerners face, which apparently is absent in Tibetans, is the tendency to continually and obsessively self-criticize. To hold ourselves to higher standards than anyone else, and suffer inner dejection when we fail to meet those expectations. It is as though we are constantly stabbing ourselves with a knife, over and over and over again. Wouldn't it be great if we stopped? There's a difference between stabbing yourself with a knife and openly, warmly, compassionately assessing yourself. If you feel like you did something wrong, I'm not saying you shouldn't admit it, but it is better to lovingly accept yourself than to think "I'm no good." In fact the ability to merely see yourself as you are is a wisdom aspect of your mind, so when you notice certain things about yourself, even those you'd rather not accept, you are coming in contact with your own wisdom deity, your own Buddha nature. Or maybe it's better to say your inner wisdom nature is being revealed.

My Status

I haven't been posting as much lately, because my blogger energy has been depleted. When I began the path of recovery and I first began the Buddhist path, there was a lot I didn't understand and a lot I felt I needed to share in order to make progress. At this stage in my path, I don't have that same need, and have therefore stopped publishing regularly. Also, to be totally honest, I have started hanging out on Facebook and that has drained the energy I normally would funnel into a blog post. I posted the story about Lama Chenrezi's blessing because it was such a remarkable event of direct interest to my readers.

Anyway, I have no interest in drinking again, today. Alcohol robs you of your experience. It's like turning on a dimmer switch in your mind. There are outer appearances of having fun. People can be laughing, but in reality you are not present. Why would I want to do that? It's like grabbing for a vase of flowers, that starts to disappear every time you reach for it, but in reality far worse. There's a peculiar mental twist in alcoholics, which for some reason, only remembers the good parts of drinking, however illusory, and never fully contemplates the reality.