The Three Foundations of a Serious Buddhist Practice

The Three Foundations of Our Practice

From Human-Centered Buddhism by Venerable Master Yin Shun

For the serious student of the Buddha, for a disciple of our teacher, Master ji Ru, the Venerable Master Yin Shun explains that there are three foundations to our practice.

The three mind factors that form the foundation of our practice are (1) confidence in and a vow to attain One Mind, (2) development of bodhicitta, of great compassion mind, and (3) a vision of emptiness.

ONE Generating One Mind–meaning confidence in and the vow to achieve One Mind.

In brief, this is to have such confidence in One Mind (our inherent Buddhanature) that One Mind become our ideal and goal. It also means to make a great vow, a vow that is the omnipresent and directing in all of the decisions of daily life, the vow to attain One Mind. This begins with having trust and appreciation for the profundity of the practice: the profundity and thoroughness of its wisdom, the expansiveness of its compassion, and the ultimate purity of mind it generates. This confidence must not be based on speculative thoughts, but on our own practice experiences.

Exercise:

(1) While we may get a momentary glimpse of one mind in certain mindful daily activities, although more likely not, the commitment to generating One Mind must include a commitment to attending silent retreats, retreats that are long enough to allow our One Mind to arise and produce the confidence in One Mind that allows us to achieve it stably. Commit now.

(2) Contemplate the Xinxinming (attached below)

If we could improve the affairs of the everyday world, of course it would be good but it would not be a thorough solution. When we have deep confidence that One Mind is the ultimate answer, and not doing worldly “good” deeds, we have the impetus to commit to the path and its way so as to purify the world and relieve all sentient beings from their suffering. Only then are we are vowing to seek One Mind for the greatest good of all beings while helping those around us along the way. So that we don’t stray, we must constantly reaffirm this aspiration.

TWO Develop Bodhicitta, or great compassionate mind, which is the union of compassion and wisdom through One Mind as the foundation of bodhisattva deeds.

Buddhism regards liberating sentient beings from the suffering as its highest ideal. The relative degree of relief from suffering here and now is secondary. Compassion has to be practiced with the understanding that mankind and all living beings are equal and interdependent until one realizes all beings and phenomena are empty of real substance. If all of our actions were based on self-interest then even if we were engaged in charitable enterprises, such activities would not qualify as bodhisattva deeds, as deeds of a great compassion mind.

Exercise:

Contemplate the three kinds of dana: material, spiritual and the giving of no-fear. Contemplate Chadrakirti’s model for compassion. Contemplate Shantideva’s Way of the Bodhisattva, Chapter Three: Taking hold of Bodhicitta.

THREE Develop a vision of emptiness that is based on dependent origination.

Start by gaining a serious understanding of karma: the wholesome and unwholesome, cause and effect–the action and consequence sequence that comes from dependent origination. Going a step further, contemplate how everything in the world is based on conditioned origination. Of course suffering results from causes and conditions and therefore the ending of suffering has its causes and conditions. Likewise, birth and death and the ceasing of birth and death have their causes and conditions.

Contemplate: Emptiness from these perspectives: the two truths, the five aggregates, and dependent origination,. 

Gratification, Danger, Escape

The Real Problem Is That You Just May End Up In Heaven

Before my enlightenment, O monks, when I was still a Bodhisattva, this thought occurred to me: ‘what is the gratification in the world, what is the danger in the world, and what is the escape from the world?’ Then I thought: ‘whatever joy and happiness there is in the world, that is the gratification in the world; that the world is impermanent, pervaded by suffering and subject to change, that is the danger in the world; the removal and abandoning of desire and lust for the world, that is the escape from the world.’

In what can be seen as another version of the Four Noble Truths, the Buddha explains this triad: gratification, danger, and escape, in the numerical sutras.

In essence, the sutras are explaining that what we generally call joy and happiness is the feeling of gratification from a sense pleasure–from seeing, hearing, tasting, touching feeling or thinking something we like or want or think ought to be. There are two levels of danger in this.

On the first level, we are attaching our happiness to pursuing and acquiring external things and experiences.  The nature of these externals is that they are impermanent and fleeting, so we must always be seeking others and more. Doing our best is never enough. If we like golf, we need more time on the course and better scores to stay gratified. Even score of 66 is only gratifying until the next game. And so it is with clothes and music (why do people have 900 tunes on their iPhone and still need more?), and everything else. Additionally, because everything is impermanent, we are constantly losing the things on which we bank our happiness–houses burn down, portfolios collapse, restaurants close, and so on. So inherent gratification, we begin to see, is danger.

No sense experience is ever enough. No amount of gratification is enough. Therefore we are constantly seeking, constantly in need, always unsatisfied. Often almost unaware of how unsatisfied we really are. As we know, we are insatiable for sense pleasures because we deludedly think they are the source of happiness, when in fact they are the source of our discomfort, of our uneasiness and anxiety. Yet more danger.

On another level, there is the danger that if we get a great deal of sense gratification, we will be able to convince ourselves that we are happy, that we aren’t stressed, that we feel peaceful and happy. In Buddhist cosmology, constant sense gratification leads us to become devas, gods in the heavenly realm.

What’s wrong with being a god in a heavenly realm? Appealing as that may seem on the surface, what’s wrong is that it leaves us unaware of how fraught with danger our lives have become. We are unable to see that running from one purchase to another, from one vacation spot to another, from concert to another, is stressful and destructive. Once we become devas, we are stuck in the fog of our own delusion that we’re happy, and then one small event, like loosing our iPhone, can shatter us. A market crash that means we can no longer indulge ourselves in material luxuries leaves a deva karmically devastated, without any understanding of how to heal and find a path to spiritual renewal.

So the dangers are that we are pinning our happiness on impermanent externals and that, with enough sense gratification, we will no longer be able to see that there is really no need, or a way to escape this self-destructive cycle.

The way to escape, of course, is to stop believing that sense pleasure is the answer and to realize that we can have real longterm peace and happiness by abandoning our lust and desire for sensory pleasure and allowing our hearts to guide us into lives of compassion and service to others.

As another version of the Four Noble Truths, gratification suggests the first and second noble truths, that craving and clinging are the source of suffering, danger suggests the first noble truth, the truth of suffering, and escape suggests the third and fourth noble truths, that there is a way out of suffering, nirvana, and that there is a way to end suffering: the noble eightfold path.

The Ultimate Perspective On Life That Is No Perspective At All

Sun-faced Buddha, Moon-faced Buddha

In the Blue Cliff Record, Case Three is a koan in which the great 8th century monk, Master Ma-tzu, once a man of great physical presence and prowess, has just awakened. He is lying quietly, old, sick and about to die. His attendant enters and asks, "How are you feeling?" Master Ma says, "Sun-faced Buddha, Moon-faced Buddha."

In Buddhist mythology, the Sun-faced Buddha lives for eighteen hundred years in brightness and good health; The Moon-faced Buddha lives only one night, in darkness and ill-health. Master Ma uses his final moments of life to teach his student that whether one is sick or healthy is unimportant. All one does, his answer suggests, regardless of the conditions, regardless of whether sick or healthy, all one does is just practice. Sick or healthy, there is no difference.

To practice this way, to be peaceful in the face of the unwanted and when “perceived injustices” arise, we must train ourselves to see things as they really are. But more than just that, we must be able to see things as we think they are: good or bad, wanted and unwanted, and at the same time to understand that their ultimate nature is undifferentiated. Then everything is one. It is this way of seeing the world that leads us to One Mind, to Buddhahood.

Sun-faced Buddha, Moon-faced Buddha doesn't lead us to being uncaring or indifferent, quite the opposite. It leads us to a very clear and powerful engagement with every moment, with a sense of awe and wonder that arises from within when differentiation and preferences no longer cloud our vision.

As Shunryu Suzuki-Roshi, founder of the San Francisco Zen Center, said in a dharma talk: SUN-FACED BUDDHA, MOON-FACED BUDDHA! "I am here, I am right here."

We Must Be Clear

Now That We’re No Longer Singing

Ding Dong! The Witch is dead. Which old Witch? The Wicked Witch!

Ding Dong! The Wicked Witch is dead.

I want to be clear. Not diplomatic. Not obtuse. Not sidestepping.

Here’s what happened to His Holiness when he tried to sidestep the issue:

From The Wall Street Journal:

According to an official statement released by the Tibetan Government in Exile on Wednesday, speaking at USC the Dalai Lama “said [that] in the case of bin Laden, his action was of course destructive and the September 11 events killed thousands of people…so his action must be brought to justice.”

The Los Angeles Times, on Wednesday wrote that this meant the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism implied Osama bin Laden’s death was justified.

But in its statement, the Tibetan Government in Exile disagreed.

When confronted with the most horrific, heinous deeds, whether perpetrated at us or upon us, real or imagined, or at or upon our family, or our friends, or our community, or our country…we never have the spiritual or moral right to kill the perpetrator.

The only thing a Buddhist is allowed to kill is his or her self. Or the Buddha, if he happens to get in your way. That’s it, both literally and metaphorically.

What’s the first precept? Do not kill. What does the Noble Eightfold Path tell us? Do not kill. What about the Bodhisattva Vows? Do not kill. Not mercy killings; not euthanasia, not suicide.

But what about our enemies? No. Absolutely not.

What did the Buddha do when Devadatta tried to kill him…three times? He responded with compassion. What did the Buddha do when King Kalinga cut his body limb from limb? He responded with compassion.

Let’s not delude ourselves. Revenge has no place on the middle path. The middle path has no place for hatred. Rejoicing in our defilements is not our practice.

The Buddhist response to a “perceived injustice” (Bodhidharma’s phrase), regardless of its scale, is compassion.

Change Your Karma, Change Your Life

Giving, We Can't Afford Not To

In Buddhism, we talk about seeds, the memory fragments of how we acted in the past that lead us to act in similar ways in the future. Collectively, they form our karma, our predispositions to action that determine not only who we are but also how we will respond to the world in the future.

If we are acting in ways that are unwholesome, the dharma tells us to let go of the unwholesome behaviors and thoughts and replace them with their antidotes. So if we want to establish ourselves firmly on a path of spiritual growth, stably becoming more and more peaceful, we need to turn ourselves away from our self-centered actions, thoughts, and speech and start doing, saying, and thinking in exactly the opposite way.

What’s our greatest obstacle? In the dharma's understanding, it is the first of the three poisons, the constant and omnipresent desire for more more more which leaves us always off balance, always a little uneasy, even when we finally get what we want. And the antidote, the opposing pathway? That’s the first of the six paramitas: dana–generosity, giving, charity.

There are, in the traditional understanding of dana from the Pali Canon, three types of dana: material giving, spiritual giving, and the giving of no-fear. While on the surface, the practice suggestion below appears to be concerned only with material giving and its effects on us, in fact, it also strengthens the spiritual aspect of dana, the dharma within us, and also generate feelings of no-fear, in us and others.

In a dharma talk several years ago, Master Ji Ru said that dana was our most important practice. This exercise will show you why, in the most profound way. It will show you what happens when you to make dana central to your life. Doing it will karmically secure you on the path. It will not only plants new seeds to make your life more peaceful and happy, but it will leave you standing comfortably in the garden of compassion and loving kindness, sympathetic joy and equanimity (the four heavenly abodes).

If we want to make the most wholesome of all behaviors, dana, our most habitual response to the world, we must constantly be thinking about it and practicing it. This is planting wholesome seeds, or in neuroscientific terms, making and keeping the implicit explicit. Keeping the implicit explicit, assuring dana stays in the forefront of our minds, fertilizes the dana garden and makes it flourish by clustering our neurons and hardwiring the behavior.

The practice: Make dana flourish: Commit to making a donation to a different charity each week for a year. The donation can be as little as a dollar or two, or\ more, depending on your budget. Decide how much you can afford and set an amount to give each week. Then, whichever the charity you choose, give that amount.

It isn’t the amount of the donation that matters, but the giving and the process leading to the giving that is important. This is about process more than outcome. Giving the same amount to each charity teaches us to be equanimous in the face of dukkha, to remain calm and clear when confronted with the suffering of others.

Having to find a different charity each week that we feel comfortable supporting keeps us constantly self-parenting, talking to ourselves about how to be charitable and the need and value of charity. It makes this implicit aspect of our Buddhanature explicit. It makes us more aware of need around us, a crucial element in keeping us motivated when we are faced with the distraction of our old self-centered habits, like feeling we need to hold onto what we have, like living from scarceness rather than abundance.

What I have seen in my practice of this exercise is that, as the months pass, it has gotten easier and easier to give. It hasn’t taken more thought and effort to find new charities; in fact, it takes less. Why? Because, I suspect, I have begun, at least on some levels, to live in the dana garden–giving has become my default position. The worries and concerns about not having enough and needing to get more (old karmic seeds that are now shrinking) have been replaced by a realization that I already have all that I need. And the four heavenly abodes, as I mentioned above, have quietly become, in a deeper and more meaningful way, my new residence.

Please join me in this practice. 

Heroes Confirm: Sengcan was Right

The Carnegie Hero Fund Commission names about 95 individuals from the United States and Canada each year as recipients of the Carnegie Medal. The medal is given to those who risk their lives to an extraordinary degree while saving or attempting to save the lives of others.

When those who have received the award where asked about their feelings at the moment of decision, every recipient asked had the same reply: there was no moment of decision. Whether climbing through a electric fence to save someone who was being mauled by a bull or searching a burning house for an aging resident who was unable to walk, or jumping on a attacker who was raping and stabbing a woman on the ground, each of the heroes said they acted spontaneously. There was no moment of decision. A startling answer to most people, but not to a disciple of the Buddha.

This illustrates what Sengcan said in the Xinxinming, his enlightenment poem, written fifteen hundred years ago. Sengcan, the third patriarch of Chan, points us to a place beyond picking and choosing, beyond discriminating-analytic-dual thought, a place in which we must have trust and then have faith. The mind that made these ninety-four hundred people heroes is the mind of liberation, the mind of pure love, the mind to which Sengcan is pointing.

May we all have faith in this mind beyond our preferences, as Buddha and Jesus and Mohammed and all our great spiritual teachers have had for thousands of years.

Here’s Robert Clarke’s translation of our third patriarch’s poem, which is one of the most beloved of all Chan teachings. Take it to heart and you will be free; it’s as simple as that.

The Xinxinming

The Great Way is not difficult

for those who have no preferences.

When love and hate are both absent

everything becomes clear and undisguised.

Make the smallest distinction, however,

and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.

If you wish to see the truth

then hold no opinions for or against anything.

To set up what you like against what you dislike

is the disease of the mind.

When the deep meaning of things is not understood,

the mind’s essential peace is disturbed to no avail.

The Way is perfect like vast space

where nothing is lacking and nothing is in excess.

Indeed, it is due to our choosing to accept or reject

that we do not see the true nature of things.

Live neither in the entanglements of outer things,

nor in inner feelings of emptiness.

Be serene in the oneness of things and such

erroneous views will disappear by themselves.

When you try to stop activity by passivity

your very effort fills you with activity.

As long as you remain in one extreme or the other

you will never know Oneness.

Those who do not live in the single Way

fail in both activity and passivity,

assertion and denial.

To deny the reality of things

is to miss their reality;

To assert the emptiness of things

is to miss their reality.

The more you talk and think about it,

the further astray you wander from the truth.

Stop talking and thinking,

and there is nothing you will not be able to know.

To return to the root is to find meaning,

but to pursue appearances is to miss the source. icon

At the moment of inner enlightenment

there is a going beyond appearance and emptiness.

The changes that appear to occur in the empty world

we call real only because of our ignorance.

Do not search for the truth;

only cease to cherish opinions.

Do not remain in the dualistic state.

Avoid such pursuits carefully.

If there is even a trace of this and that,

of right and wrong,

the mind-essence will be lost in confusion.

Although all dualities come from the One,

do not be attached even to this One.

When the mind exists undisturbed in the Way,

nothing in the world can offend.

And when a thing can no longer offend,

it ceases to exist in the old way.

When no discriminating thoughts arise,

the old mind ceases to exist.

When thought objects vanish,

the thinking-subject vanishes:

As when the mind vanishes, objects vanish.

Things are objects because of the subject (mind):

the mind (subject) is such because of things (object).

Understand the relativity of these two

and the basic reality: the unity of emptiness.

In this Emptiness the two are indistinguishable

and each contains in itself the whole world.

If you do not discriminate between coarse and fine

you will not be tempted to prejudice and opinion.

To live in the Great Way is neither easy nor difficult.

But those with limited views are fearful and irresolute:

the faster they hurry, the slower they go.

And clinging (attachment) cannot be limited:

Even to be attached to the idea of enlightenment

is to go astray.

Just let things be in their own way

and there will be neither coming nor going.

Obey the nature of things (your own nature)

and you will walk freely and undisturbed.

When the thought is in bondage the truth is hidden

for everything is murky and unclear.

And the burdensome practice of judging

brings annoyance and weariness.

What benefit can be derived

from distinctions and separations?

If you wish to move in the One Way

do not dislike even the world of senses and ideas.

Indeed, to accept them fully

is identical with enlightenment.

The wise man strives to no goals

but the foolish man fetters himself.

There is one Dharma, not many.

Distinctions arise

from the clinging needs of the ignorant.

To seek Mind with the (discriminating) mind

is the greatest of all mistakes.

Rest and unrest derive from illusion;

with enlightenment

there is no liking and disliking.

All dualities come from ignorant inference.

They are like dreams or flowers in air -

foolish to try to grasp them.

Gain and loss, right and wrong,

such thoughts must

finally be abolished at once.

If the eye never sleeps,

all dreams will naturally cease.

If the mind makes no discriminations,

the ten thousand things are as they are,

of single essence.

To understand the mystery of this One-essence

is to be released from all entanglements.

When all things are seen equally

the timeless Self-essence is reached,

No comparisons or analogies are possible

in this causeless, relationless state.

Consider movement stationary

and the stationary in motion,

both movement and rest disappear.

When such dualities cease to exist

Oneness itself cannot exist.

To this ultimate finality

no law or description applies.

For the unified mind in accord with the way

all self-centered striving ceases.

Doubts and irresolutions vanish

and life in true faith is possible.

With a single stroke we are freed from bondage:

Nothing clings to us and we hold to nothing.

All is empty, clear, self-illuminating,

with no exertion of the mind’s power.

Here thought, feeling,

knowledge and imagination are of no value.

In this world of suchness

there is neither self nor other-than-self.

To come directly into harmony with this reality

just say when doubt rises not-two.

In this not-two nothing is separate,

nothing is excluded.

No matter when or where,

enlightenment means entering this truth.

And this truth is beyond extension

or diminution in time and space:

In it a single thought is ten thousand years.

Emptiness here, emptiness there,

but the infinite universe

stands always before your eyes.

Infinitely large and infinitely small;

no difference, for definitions have vanished

and no boundaries are seen.

So too with Being and non-Being.

Don’t waste time in doubts and arguments

That have nothing to do with this.

One thing, all things,

move among and intermingle without distinction.

To live in this realization

is to be without anxiety about non-perfection.

To live in this faith is the road to non-duality,

because the non-dual is one with the trusting mind.

Words!

The Way is beyond language,

for in it there is

no yesterday

no tomorrow

no today.

Eating A Whole Chocolate Bar

Eating A Candy Bar

A Dharma Story

Dad comes home from work just before dinner to hear Mom yelling at their 14-year old son for eating a chocolate bar when it’s half an hour before dinner. The mother is enraged; the father doesn’t see a problem.

What this story tells us is that eating a chocolate bar isn’t good or bad. It isn’t a right or wrong thing to do. Why? Because eating a chocolate bar doesn’t have any intrinsic meaning. If it did, it would always be the same to everyone, regardless of the conditions. But that is not the case; otherwise the couple would be in agreement: they would both see the incident as bad, leaving them both infuriated, or they would both see it as good, leaving them patient and calm.

What the dharma tells us is that eating a candy bar can be either good or bad because eating a candy bar isn’t intrinsically anything, it is “empty.” When the dharma says something is empty, it isn’t denying that it is real. It is simply saying it is meaningless until we assign it a value. So in this example, it wasn’t good or bad until the parents imposed their ideas on it. And they could only impose their ideas on it because it was empty.

A further look at the incident reveals that the boy was hungry as dinnertime approached and so snacked on a chocolate bar. He was tired and worn down after basketball practice that afternoon; he saw eating the chocolate as a good choice. Mom became infuriated because she had spent an hour that afternoon shopping for dinner, another hour preparing a “healthy” meal for the family, and there was her son, ruining his appetite on a bar of sugar and fat. It was bad, wrong, disrespectful, unhealthy, and so on. Dad comes in the door, having had a great day at the office, and can’t see anything to get angry about: it’s just a chocolate bar.

What makes something right or wrong, good or bad, just or unjust, fair or unfair, is simply whether we define it as something we like or don’t like. Things we feel an affinity for are right, good, just and fair; things feel an aversion toward are wrong, bad, unjust and unfair. Once those feelings arise in us, we fabricate “stories” to explain and justify the feelings. Then we take ownership of the stories and identify ourselves by them: “I’m the kind of mother who becomes angry when the boy misbehaves and her husband is unsupportive.” And that’s the problem.

It is always our “stories,” our skewed relationship with what’s happening not what’s happening, that causes our suffering–never the people, places, things or events that are happening.

This is a key understanding of the dharma, that everything is empty and that we are the source of our own suffering.

What this means is that if we stop telling stories we will end our suffering. It is that simple. The great way is easy; just stop the stories as Sengcan tells us. Unfortunately, we are great storytellers and we love our stories. It’s hard to see that giving them up will make us happy and even harder to give them up. But storytelling is the source of all suffering.