Perfecting Patience is Our Path

Anger–The Problem

To end anger, one of the three poisons, and perfect patience, the third of the six paramitas, we must first recognize that anger is always destructive for us, for those around us, and for the world, and that its antidote is the diligent practice of patience.

Anger and Meditation

What we learn from meditating, from sitting still and seeing our minds, is that all anger is a defilement–an emotion that hinders us from seeing clearly and making appropriate decisions. Anger is, without a doubt to a meditator, the one of the strongest and most destructive emotions. We also learn from simple observation that defiled behavior can only lead to more defiled behavior; being angry cannot make us peaceful, acting angrily does cannot make this a better world.

For Buddhists or anyone who practices mindfulness meditation, anger is anger, anger is always a defilement, an afflicted emotion, and there is no such thing as righteous anger. And, “anger management” is an oxymoron. It is not about “managing” our anger, meaning making better use of our anger, it is about eliminating anger.

Anger is one of the most common and destructive defilements, it afflicts our minds almost all the time, whether it is in its least weighty forms, as uneasiness or irritability, or in its full-blown forms, as rage/fury and combat.

Ending Anger

To reduce and ultimately eliminate anger, we need to understand it and to develop wisdom, patience, and discipline

·       We need to recognize anger and how and when it arises in our mind.

·       We need to understand that for anger to arise, we must concoct a story about some perceived injustice;

·       We must acknowledge how anger is always harmful, never beneficial, to both us and others and the world.

·       We need to see that patience is the antidote for anger, and

·       We need to understand the benefits of being patient in the face of difficulties.

·       We then need to apply practical methods in our daily life to reduce our anger and even to prevent it from arising at all.

This is called leading a disciplined life.

Patience–The Alternative

Patience, the practice of patient acceptance, is the antidote for faulty frustrated desires (greed, the I-wants and shoulda-hads) and unwanted occurrences (negative greed: the I-shouldn’ta gottens, shouldn’t bes). We need to make the perfection of patience an omnipresent practice; not just a fallback position to use in desperation when screaming fails to accomplish our goal.

Patience is a mind that is able to accept fully whatever occurs. It is much more than just gritting our teeth and putting up with things, that’s the tolerance/intolerance thing. Being patient means to welcome wholeheartedly whatever arises, having given up the idea that things should be other than what they are.

When patience is present in our mind it is impossible for anger to gain a foothold. As we know from the cushion, since we can only have one thought at a time, if there is patience there cannot be anger.

It is always possible to be patient; there is no situation so bad that it cannot be accepted patiently, with an open, accommodating, and peaceful heart.

We start training ourselves to be patient meditation, then we take it off the cushion and practice patience by learning to accept the small everyday difficulties and hardships that arise without complaint. Gradually our patient mindstate increases and we remain peaceful in the face of our imagined adversities.

·       If we practice the patience of voluntarily accepting suffering (which is all imagined and unreal), we can maintain a peaceful mind even when experiencing difficulties.

·       If we maintain this peaceful and positive state of mind through mindfulness, angry minds will have no opportunity to arise. (You’re always breathing, so you can always return to your breath, even when someone is screaming at you). On the other hand, if we allow ourselves to dwell in aversive thoughts there will be no way for us to prevent anger from arising.

·       By training our mind to look at frustrating situations in a more realistic manner, we can free ourselves from anger and a lot of other unnecessary mental suffering: If there is a way to remedy an unpleasant situation, what point is there in being angry? On the other hand, if it is completely impossible to remedy the situation there is also no reason to get upset either. This line of reasoning is very useful, for we can apply it when we feel ourselves just becoming angry and thereby move to patience.

Being patient doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t do something to improve the situation. If it is possible to remedy the situation, then of course we should; but to do this we do not need to become angry. Simple awareness will do. For example, when we have a headache take a pain reliever, but until the tablet takes effect just accept whatever discomfort there is with a calm and patient mind.

As long as we are alive, we cannot avoid unpleasant, difficult situations and a certain amount of physical discomfort, but by training our mind to look at frustrating, anger-producing situations in a more realistic manner, we can free ourselves from a lot of unnecessary suffering.

Instead of reacting blindly through the force of emotional habit (anger), we should examine the situation. We should not become angry just because things do not go our way. We must break that old habit of ours if we are to progress past anger and move meaningfully forward in our quest for peace and happiness.

In reality all of our problems are nothing more than a failure to accept things as they are–in which case it is patient acceptance, rather than attempting to change externals, that is the solution.

Lessening and managing the anger is not the point on which we practice. The point is to patiently accept things are they are and to let go of all our fabrications about how they oughta be/shoulda be.

Problems do not exist outside our mind, so when we stop seeing other people and things as problems they stop being problems. No anger.

Shifting to Right Paradigms

It’s Time for a Paradigm Shift

We make decisions based on certain underlying assumptions we have about ourselves and our world. These notions, which are called paradigms, guide and in fact determine our every action. These are our paradigms, our habitual responses to the world. They are “the box” in the phrase “thinking outside of the box.”

We don’t start thinking outside of the box until we realize that the box isn’t working. When things don’t feel right, when they just don’t seem to make sense, when we can’t find the answer we’re looking for, we might search outside another box, search for another paradigm that works better. When we make a change in our modus operandi, it’s called a paradigm shift.

It is important to realize that we don’t make changes until something significantly wrong seems to demand it, and even then, we are often slow to make paradigm shifts, even when our paradigm is debilitating. We tend to keep fighting to make the current paradigm work. Perhaps in the case of minor paradigms because we are stubborn or strong-willed.

In the case of major paradigms, like the five listed below, our attachment to the paradigm is often so deeply rooted that it is built into our biology, our genes. Our instinct for survival, for example, is such a strong attachment that we don’t even sense that it can be changed, even though it obviously hinders us when we are attempting to save our lives. When our fight-flight paradigm is activated, we become tense and anxious. An anxious and stressed mind hinders us from seeing clearly and making the best choice under prevailing conditions.

Regardless of their magnitude, paradigms are all habits, and what we learn in meditation is that all habits can be changed.

Here are five of our major paradigms, all of which meditation suggests need to be shifted:

If I get more of what I want and what I think I need or ought to have, then everything will be alright.

This is the biggest and baddest of all the paradigms, for it leaves us always wanting and never satisfied. It says that we should base our lives on greed. It tells us to always be striving, never to be content.

I am not responsible for my state of mind.

This paradigm blames others for how we feel. This allows us to blame the people and stuff around us for our states of mind, absolving us of responsibility for our anger and other unwholesome responses. It is, after all, the neighbor that makes us angry; the “lousy” weather that ruined our vacation.

I am always right.

Regardless of what we do or think, we know that we are always right. Which makes anyone who disagrees wrong. Consider that even when you did something you thought was wrong, you believe that “under the circumstances” it was the right thing to do.

The best way to live is to find fault in everything.

This is hard for us to recognize, but we are always looking to make things better, to find the fault in what is happening and correct it. Tis paradigm makes us perpetual fault-finders, never able to comfortable in our own skin.

I can multitask.

One of the early observations from meditation is that we can only have a single thought at a time. We can’t think two things simultaneously. Which means that when we are multitasking, we are actually jumping back and forth between tasks. That raises our anxiety level and prevents us from performing any of the tasks optimally. This paradigm tells us it’s ok to listen to music and drink coffee and drive at the same time. And that’s not a good thing.

Until we understand our false and faulty paradigms, and that they are a source of stress and anxiety rather than of peace, we won’t search for new paradigms. And until we not only search for new paradigms but actually make a paradigm shift, we will remain unable to address our most serious suffering, our Big Dukkha.

Right Paradigms

Here are two right paradigm shifts suggested by meditation:

Our responsibility to ourselves, our families, our friends, and the world, is to use each moment to be of benefit to ourselves, our families, our friends, and our world.

Whether we are having lunch or deciding on a chemo-therapy treatment for cancer, the paradigm is the same: do what is least harmful and most benefit to oneself, others and the world. This is a giant paradigm shift. And perhaps the most important realization that comes from meditation. Because when we do what is most beneficial, we become peaceful and confident.

Our responsibility to ourselves, our families, our friends, and the world, is to use each moment to lessen our dependence on paradigms that create suffering and to act in ways that lead to longterm peace, happiness and well-being.

This means to walk the path. Regardless of your spiritual tradition, walking the path is being morally disciplined and doing what is needed to develop and act from wisdom.

For Buddhists, this means taking the road not taken, which is the Middle Path.

Five Ways To Abandon Negative Mindstates

Another View of Right Effort

Right Effort, number six on the noble eightfold path, is generally described in terms of the four right efforts: abandon and refrain from the unwholesome, develop and maintain the wholesome. This is the classic formula in Buddhism for letting go of negative mindstates and replacing them with wholesome mindstates. But there is another way understanding of Right View.

In this less well known understanding, five techniques are offering for ridding ourselves of our defilements:

1. For every defilement there is an antidote (patience for anger; sympathetic joy for jealousy, etc). The first of these right efforts is to replace the defilement with a wholesome thought that is its exact opposite.

While our list of defilements is long, the list of antidotes is quite short:

Generosity

Compassion

Lovingkindness

Patience

Humility & Modesty

Moral discipline

Sympathetic joy

Equanimity

Right Speech

Trustworthiness

Dependability

2. The second of the five right efforts is to activate these positive mindstates: shame & embarrassment, regret & distaste. Ordinarily in the West these are considered negative mindstates, but in Buddhism these are positive mental qualities that we can used to abandon an unwanted thought or action.

Here’s how: Reflect quietly and gently on an unwholesome action, seeing it as a little embarrassing or somewhat shameful. Then consider its undesirable consequences until a distaste for it sets in. Finally, as regret arises in us we use that regret to calmly push the thought away, shelving it until and similar situation arises again. Next time, though, when we look at what happened last time we were in this type of situation, the regret leads us to change strategies. No guilt, no wallowing, no ruminating.

3. In this third method, we confront the defilement directly, scrutinize and investigate its source and the source of each of its components. When this is done, the defilement quiets down and disappears on its own. This contemplative destructuring, which requires patience to learn, is a very powerful tools for evaporating everything from physical pain to depression. Email if you would like more information about this technqiue.

These first three are very effective ways to reset our behavior, to help establish new and lasting habitual patterns, leading to ever-increasing wholesomeness in our thoughts and actions.

4. The fourth technique is to strongly divert our attention away from the defilement. When a powerful, unwholesome thought arises and demands to be noticed, instead of indulging it we forcefully redirect our attention to a mindful presence somewhere elsewhere. This has a limited value, though, as it is weak at resetting our habitual behavior.

5. The fifth right effort, to be used only as a last resort, is suppression–to vigorously wrestle the defilement to the ground and keep it pinned there until it can safely get up and redirect our attention to something better for us.

Using these five techniques skillfully, we slowly take back control of our mind. The wholesome thoughts and mindstates we want become the thoughts and mindstates we have. And when an unwholesome thought does arise, we have the tools to eradicate it.

To Be or Not To Be

E Prime - The Ultimate Right Speech

According to Robert Anton Wilson, "In 1933, Alfred Korzybski proposed that we should abolish the ‘is of identity’ from the English language.The ‘is of identity’ takes the form X is a Y, or ‘Joe is a Communist,’ ‘Mary is a dumb file-clerk.’ In 1949, D. David Bourland Jr. proposed the abolition of all forms of the words ‘is’ or ‘to be’ and this new English without ‘is-ness’ he called English Prime, or E-Prime.

The case for using E-Prime rests on the simple proposition that ‘is-ness’ sets the brain into a medieval Aristotelian framework (which posits a permanence to our world view by suggesting that an event is naturally characterized by giving its position in space together with the time of its occurrence) and makes it impossible to understand modern problems and opportunities. Removing ‘is-ness’ and writing and thinking only and always in operational/existential language sets us, conversely, in a modern universe where we can successfully deal with modern issues."

From a Buddhist perpective, E Prime weakens and lessens our concept of the Self. It loosens our idea of Self at the third and fifth skandhas. At the third skandha, perception, it lessens our ability to attach a label to people and things, falsely making them appear as permenent, solid and substantive. At the fifth skandha, consciousness, where we normally appropriate and identify with our perceptions (I’m the kind of person who does this when he sees that”, E Prime shatters our clinging by stopping us from so easily identifying with our sense contacts.

For instance:

Standard English: The photon is a wave.

E-Prime: The photon behaves as a wave when constrained by certain instruments.

Standard English: The photon is a particle.

E-Prime: The photon appears as a particle when constrained by other instruments.

The description of a photon as either a wave or a particle is both inaccurate (a photon is both, depending) and polarizing (probably fighting words at the local quantum bar). We could make up a word like "wavicle" - but why? E-Prime seems an efficient and effective way to express all sorts of uncertainties, paradoxes, ambiguities, ambivalences and mysteries. In other words, E-Prime encompasses all the richness that the "is of identity" is too narrow to contain. For Buddhist, this makes E Prime ideal for expressing phenomena in a conditioned world.

E-Prime is not an easy language to learn. To say "You are wrong" in E-Prime, you would have to say, "Based on what I understood of the circumstances in the moment, I don’t understand your reason for doing what you did." To say "I am right," you would have to say "I behaved in accordance with my understanding of the situation."

Getting unstuck from the "is of identity" would make life both at the quantum bar and at home more peaceful. Give it a try.

If you don’t feel ready for a day of E Prime, try this simple linguistic exercise to loosen your clinging to Self: spend a day without using the pronouns "I, me, my or mine."

Cure Your Anger

Patience is The Antidote


This is the third and final blog in the series on Anger

Patience, the practice of patient acceptance, is the antidote for faulty frustrated desires (greed, the I-wants and shoulda-hads) and unwanted occurrences (negative greed: the I-shouldn’ta gottens, shouldn’t bes). We need to make the perfection of patience an omnipresent practice; not just a fallback position to use in desperation.

Patience is a mind that is able to accept fully whatever occurs. It is much more than just gritting our teeth and putting up with things, that’s the tolerance/intolerance thing. Being patient means to welcome wholeheartedly whatever arises, having given up the idea that things should be other than what they are.

When patience is present in our mind it is impossible for anger to gain a foothold. As we know from the cushion, since we can only have one thought at a time, if there is patience there cannot be anger.

It is always possible to be patient; there is no situation so bad that it cannot be accepted patiently, with an open, accommodating, and peaceful heart.

We start training ourselves to be patient on the cushion when we teach ourselves how to be patient with our thoughts and feelings as they arise. Then we take it off the cushion and practice patience by learning to accept the small everyday difficulties and hardships that arise. Gradually our patient mindstate increases and we remain peaceful in the face of our imagined adversities. There are many examples of people who have managed to practice patience even in the most extreme circumstances––Empty Cloud, for example, when he was being tortured. or those in the final stages of cancer, who, although their bodies are ravaged, maintain peaceful minds.

·       If we practice the patience of voluntarily accepting suffering (which is all imagined and unreal), we can maintain a peaceful mind even when experiencing suffering and pain.

·       If we maintain this peaceful and positive state of mind through the force of mindfulness, angry minds will have no opportunity to arise. (You’re always breathing, so you can always return to your breath, even when someone is screaming at you). On the other hand, if we allow ourselves to dwell in aversive thoughts there will be no way for us to prevent anger from arising.

·       By training our mind to look at frustrating situations in a more realistic manner, we can free ourselves from anger and a lot of other unnecessary mental suffering: If there is a way to remedy an unpleasant situation, what point is there in being angry? On the other hand, if it is completely impossible to remedy the situation there is also no reason to get upset either. This line of reasoning is very useful, for we can apply it when we feel ourselves becoming angry.

Being patient doesn’t necessarily mean that we shouldn’t do something to improve the situation. If it is possible to remedy the situation, then of course we should; but to do this we do not need to become angry. Simple awareness will do. For example, when we have a headache take a pain reliever, but until the tablet takes effect just accept whatever discomfort there is with a calm and patient mind.

As long as we are in samsara we cannot avoid unpleasant, difficult situations and a certain amount of physical discomfort, but by training our mind to look at frustrating, anger-producing situations in a more realistic manner, we can free ourselves from a lot of unnecessary suffering.

Instead of reacting blindly through the force of emotional habit (anger), we should examine the situation. We should not become angry just because things do not go our way. We must break that old habit of ours if we are to progress past anger and move meaningfully forward on the Path.

In reality most of our problems are nothing more than a failure to accept things as they are – in which case it is patient acceptance, rather than attempting to change externals, that is the solution.

Lessening and managing the anger is not the point on which we practice. The point is to patiently accept things are they are and to let go of all our fabrications about how they oughta be/shoulda be.

Problems do not exist outside our mind, so when we stop seeing other people and things as problems they stop being problems. No anger.

The Three Patiences

There are three kinds of situation in which we need to learn to be patient:

·       When we are experiencing suffering, hardship, or disappointment

·       When we are practicing Dharma

·       When we are harmed or criticized by others

Correspondingly, there are three types of patience:

·       The patience to deal with our perceived suffering in each moment – we do this when we realize that we are the source (it’s our past actions) of all our suffering and that if we are patient with the suffering it will cease

·       The patience not to retaliate – we learn not to retaliate when we combine patience with compassion (and further when we realize we are the real source of the suffering, so why retaliate against someone or something else

·       The patience required to practice the Dharma – this is using our understanding of emptiness and dependent arising to lessen attachment and increase patience, which may be the only way we have of eradicating our delusions and suffering

These three types of patience can liberate our mind from anger, one of our strongest and most obsessive delusions.

Right Speech Helps Allay Anger

The main root of harsh speech is aversion, assuming the form of anger. Harsh speech is speech uttered in anger, intended to cause the hearer pain. Such speech can assume different forms, of which we might mention three. One is abusive speech: scolding, reviling, or reproving another angrily with bitter words. A second is insult: hurting another by ascribing to him some offensive quality that detracts from his dignity. A third is sarcasm: speaking to someone in a way that ostensibly lauds him, but with such a tone or twist of phrasing that the ironic intent becomes clear and causes pain.

Harsh speech is an unwholesome action with disagreeable results for oneself and others, both now and in the future, so it has to be restrained. The ideal antidote is patience — learning to tolerate blame and criticism from others, to sympathize with their shortcomings, to respect differences in viewpoint, to endure abuse without feeling compelled to retaliate. The Buddha calls for patience even under the most trying conditions:

Even if, monks, robbers and murderers saw through your limbs and joints, whosoever should give way to anger thereat would not be following my advice. For thus ought you to train yourselves: "Undisturbed shall our mind remain, with heart full of love, and free from any hidden malice; and that person shall we penetrate with loving thoughts, wide, deep, boundless, freed from anger and hatred."

But while the main practice for eliminating anger is patience, holding wisdom in mind and speaking calmly and with lovingkindness and compassion in your heart can play a big part in holding you stable and in allaying anger.

Anger In Personal and Business Relationships

Anger is particularly destructive in relationships. When we live in close personal or business contact with someone, it is easy for us to become critical and short-tempered with our partner and to blame them for our faulty sense of discomfort. Unless we make a continuous effort to deal with this anger as it arises, our relationships will suffer. In relationships where there is continuous fighting, the anger eventually trumps the love––being stronger and more karmically active. Eventually there will come a point when before they have recovered from one row the next has already begun.

To prevent the build-up of bad feelings we need to deal with anger as soon as it begins to arise in our mind.

We clean our houses, so why not our minds? We clear away the dishes after every meal rather than waiting until the end of the month, because we do not want to live in a dirty house nor be faced with a huge, unpleasant job. In the same way, we need to make the effort to clear away the mess in our mind as soon as it appears, for if we allow it to accumulate it will become more and more difficult to deal with, and will endanger our lives and our relationship.

We should remember that every opportunity to develop anger is also an opportunity to develop patience. It is opportunity to erode away our self-cherishing and self-grasping, which are the real sources of all our problems. We do this by practicing with patience.

It is through our anger and hatred that we transform people into enemies. We generally assume that anger arises when we encounter a disagreeable person, but actually it is the anger already within us that transforms the person we meet into our imagined foe. Someone controlled by their anger lives within a paranoid view of the world, surrounded by enemies of his or her own creation. This false belief feeds the anger and makes us the victim of our own delusions and fantasies.

Stop Feeding Anger - 2nd in this 3-part series on anger

Anger and How It Arises

Stop Feeding Anger

• We feed anger every time we act angrily
• We feed anger by watching violence on TV
• We feed anger by reading newspapers and magazines
• We feed anger by watching violent movies
• We feed anger by playing violent games
• We feed anger by participating in violent sports
• We feed anger by watching, reading, and listening to news stories
• We feed anger every time we let anger arise and bloom in us
• We feed anger by telling ourselves that there is good, healthy anger
• We feed anger when we justify our anger
• We feed anger when we encourage others to be angry
• We feed anger every time we speak angrily or harshly or abusively
• We feed anger every time we are bullying, retaliatory, or vengeful.
• We feed anger every time we threaten someone.

Anger is an aversive, negative mind-state that

·       Focuses on someone (or something),

·       Feels (second skandha) them to be unattractive or undesirable,

·       Exaggerates their bad qualities and

·       Wishes to harm them.

Anger arises at the level of the second skandha when there is a feeling of aversion, which is always! Realizing this may help to understand that anger is therefore never an appropriate response to anything!

Anger arises when we concoct a story about someone or something we don’t want or like, then develop an aversion to it, which in fact really doesn’t exist.  Because anger is a fantasy, an exaggeration, anger is always unrealistic and intrinsically faulty. The person or thing that it focuses on does not in fact exist. So we develop anger from a fiction we create about someone or something that doesn't exist.

Anger, viewed this way, never serves any useful purpose whatsoever.

Understanding this, we then need to watch our mind carefully in order to recognize anger whenever it begins to grip us. The moment we feel the grip start, we need to practice discipline, awareness, and mindfulness. In other words, we need bring ourselves back close to the Path.

We do this by letting go (of the anger) and by resetting our intention to compassion and patience., This our attention and leads us to compassionate responses and actions that plant wholesome seeds in our garden and those allow us to make better choices in the future.

Understanding Anger

There is nothing more destructive than anger:

·       It destroys our peace and happiness now, and

·       Impels us to engage in negative actions that lead to untold suffering in the future.

·       It blocks our spiritual progress and prevents us from accomplishing our spiritual goals.

Anger is by nature a painful state of mind. Whenever we develop anger,

·       our inner peace immediately disappears and even

·       our body becomes tense and uncomfortable.

·       We are so restless that we find it nearly impossible to fall asleep, and whatever sleep we do manage to get is fitful and unrefreshing.

Metaphorically speaking, anger transforms even a normally attractive person into an ugly red-faced demon, a hell-being. We grow more and more miserable, and, no matter how hard we try, we cannot control our emotions.

One of the most harmful effects of anger is that it robs us of our reason and common sense:

“When reason ends, anger arises.” ––HHDL

Anger always carries with it a wish to retaliate against that or those whom we think have harmed us. Often we are willing to expose ourselves to great personal danger merely to exact petty revenge. To get our own back for perceived injustices or slights, we are prepared to jeopardize our job, our relationships, and even the well-being of our family and children.

When we are really angry we lose our freedom of choice, we are driven not by reason but anger and rage, anger violent sister. Sometimes this rage is even directed at our friends and family. Forgetting the immeasurable kindnesses we have received from our them, we often strike out against the ones we hold most dear. It is no wonder that an habitually angry person is soon avoided by those who know him.

The antidote for anger is patience, or “patient acceptance” as it is termed in Vajrayana, and if we are seriously interested in progressing along the spiritual path there is no practice more important than this.

Why We Get Angry

Anger is a response to feelings of aversion from the second skandha, making anger omnipresent. Whenever we are prevented from getting what we want (greed) or when we are forced into a situation we dislike (greed) – in short, whenever we have to put up with something we would rather avoid – our undisciplined mind reacts by immediately feeling aversive. This uncomfortable feeling is what turns into anger.

Training ourselves to be aware of the physical symptoms of anger, which arise before the emotional components, gives us a good chance of stopping anger from taking hold. Some of those physical responses we can notice are faster shorter breaths, increased heart rate, facila tension, muscle tension and jerkiness, teeth clenching and grinding, flushing, prickly sensation in the hands, and sweating.

As soon as you notice these sensations arising, shift your mindstate, intention and attention to reduce and eliminate the anger and let patience arise. If you wait the adrenaline will surge through your body and it will be too late. So act early to transform and reset yourself on the Path––using right effort–abandoning the anger and refraining from maintaining the conditions necessary to maintain it, then developing patience and compassion and maintaining those.

The final part of this series will appear in about 2 weeks. Look for the announcement in the Center's next newsletter.

What Happens To Me After I die?

Our eternal query, “What happens to me after I die?” has but three possible answers:

1. When your body dies, your soul lives on.

2. When your body dies, there is nothing more. 

3. When your body dies, you are reborn.

Numbers 1 and 2 are the answers offered by eternalists and materialists respectively. According to eternalists, including Western theistic religions such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam, when you die, your soul goes to heaven––or somewhere else, and lives on forever. According to materialists, including nihilists and annihilationists, there is nothing beyond this corporal existence. When the body dies, that’s it.

These two ideas, eternal life versus nothingness, were discussed and debated in the time of the Buddha 2500 years ago, just as they are today. Both are ideas that the Buddha categorically rejected.

Eternalism is refuted by our own experience of reality. When, by practicing meditation, our minds are calm and clear we observe conditions accurately, we see that everything is permanent. Since nothing is permanent, there can be no such thing as an eternal soul, or any other eternal entity; there can be no eternal place, such as heaven, and no eternal God, either.

Materialism is also refuted by our experience of reality. Materialism says we are physical entities only. But, when we practice meditation, we notice that we have a consciousness as well as a body, even if it is sometimes hard to differentiate the two. Our own experience tells us that we are not just a body.

Furthermore, Buddha observed the result of these views in the lives of the human beings who held them.  He saw that eternalism led to mental laxity, and that materialism led to chaos and anarchy.  Both of these isms, he said, are wrong views, for the reasons just sited.  And both were wrong views because they were speculative views, and speculative views only serve to increase, rather than reduce, our suffering.

The Buddha’s answer to the question of what happens to us when we die is rebirth, answer number 3. Rebirth means that our present life is but a link in a chain of lives extending infinitely back in time and infinitely forward into the future––“from beginningless time to endless time,” as we say.

Without rebirth, there is no moral imperative to our actions, and autonomy and self-interest override any sense of ethics. After all, without rebirth, without consequences, why bother with anything other than autonomy and self-interest? The recent banking crisis perfectly illustrates how autonomy and self-interest trump ethical and moral values in a world without the consequences of rebirth.

It is rebirth that gives us consequences.  Rebirth strongly suggests to us that we avoid evil and do good for the sake of our own well being. With rebirth, morally good deeds bring agreeable results, and bad deeds bring disagreeable results, for the effects of our actions correspond to the moral quality of those deeds.  Therefore, when we behave immorally, amorally, or unethically we harm ourselves. We simply need to act in ways that lead to peace and happiness if we want to be peaceful and happy.

However, we clearly cannot find this kind of moral equilibrium within the limits of a single life. On the contrary, there are countless examples of evil people who live long, prosperous, luxurious lives. For example, King Leopold II of Belgian, whose forced labor camps resulted in the deaths of 3-5 million Congolese in the late 19^th century, lived a life of extravagance and luxury. His Villa Leopolda, a house he built in France for his mistress, was recently in the news when the Russian billionaire, Mikhail Prokhorov, defaulted on his agreement to buy the Villa.  The selling price was $736 million! America’s robber barons, our own exemplars of unabated, opportunistic venality and greed from the same time period, seem modest in comparison. Consider Cornelius Vanderbilt, whose summer “cottage” in Newport, Rhode Island is valued only at about $150 million!

The world is full of morally unscrupulous people who enjoy happiness, esteem, and success. On the other hand, we all know people who lead lives of utmost integrity, but who endure great suffering. One lifetime is just too short for the principle of moral equilibrium to reveal itself. Karma needs more time to work itself out.

The knowledge that our good and bad actions determine the quality of our future, in the nearterm and in future lives, affords us a powerful reason to avoid unwholesome conduct and to diligently pursue the good. Only when we realize that there is this moral equilibrium are we truly on the Path; only then is it a joy to be alive. Otherwise, the world is a dark and dangerous place, regardless of how successful we might be at any given moment.

Belief in rebirth and karma is fundamental to Buddhism. With these, we know our present living conditions, our dispositions and aptitudes, our virtues and faults, to be the results of our actions in the past, in this and in our previous lives.  With that understanding, we bequeath our present actions to our future lives. We know that our present actions of body, speech, and mind, if well-chosen, will advance us along our spiritual Path, ushering us to peace and liberation.

Finally, there is a deeper significance to karma and rebirth that bears mentioning, and which has profound implications for the cause of ethical conduct. That is, if we inherit our personal lives from our own karmic past, the universe itself must be intrinsically both ethical and meaningful.

Together rebirth and karma make the universe an orderly, integrated whole, with transcendent significance. A logical pattern is revealed, not only in the physical and biological domains, but also in the ethical domain.  We are able to discern the logic and see the pattern by virtue of knowing and practicing with the concepts of rebirth and karma.

Together rebirth and karma teach us that, beyond the range of normal perception, a moral law holds sway over our deeds, and, through our deeds, over our destiny. Karma, operating across the sum total of our lives, locks our volitional actions into the dynamics of the universe, thus making ethics an expression of the intrinsic orderliness of the cosmos.

How To Act Right, Making The Most of Every Moment

Make Every Moment Count

Impermanence is one of the cornerstones of Buddhism. Yet it is often confused and distorted by these two wrong views of its meaning:

Wrong View One: Insight tells us to embrace our experiences without clinging to them — to get the most out of what’s happening in the present moment by fully appreciating its intensity, knowing that we will soon have to let them go to embrace whatever comes next. This offers us false wisdom on how to consume the pleasures of the moment.

Wrong View Two: Insight into change gives us hope. No matter what the situation, anything is possible: we can do whatever we want to do, get whatever we want even if we don’t have it yet, create whatever world we want to live in, and become whatever we want to be. This offers us false wisdom on the results of our actions.

The questions that arises from these false views are

1) If experiences are impermanence and fleeting, how could they be worth the effort needed to engage them?

And 2), how can we find genuine hope in the prospect of positive change if we can't fully rest in the results when they arrive? Aren't we just setting ourselves up for disappointment?

The real wisdom of impermanence is that the effort which goes into making us more peaceful and happy is worthwhile only if the produces well-being and happiness that is largely resistant to change, largely stabilizing.

If all our experiences of the present are something fabricated or produced, moment-to-moment, from the raw material provided by our past actions, from our seeds, then in our desire to consume pleasure, we are producing and consuming pain, dukkha.

So what do we do with our stressful experiences? Buddhism suggests that we learn to use them to get beyond them. Buddhism suggests that our obligation in response to every moment, to every new experience, is to learn to use it in a way that furthers our spiritual growth. Types of actions that do this are labeled “the path.”

These activities include acts of wisdom, acts of virtue, and the practice of meditation. They include generosity, compassion and lovingkindness, patience, humility, moral disciple, right speech, dependability, and regret (When we act in a way that is seemingly appropriately but the outcome is not beneficial, then we use regret, very gently, to remind us to try another tactic next time.)

These activities produce a sense well-being and peace relatively stable and secure, relatively helpful. For this reason, they lead us further along the path, rather than obstructing our progress. So they are skills that need to be mastered. They are the basic set of tools we have making everyday decision-making. In any situation, our intention should be to choose one of them as the basis for our next action.

With that attitude, we make use of impermanence and the process of change to move us freedom, well-being, peace and happiness. And that's what Buddhist practice is all about.

Always Do What Is Appropriate, But What Is Appropriate?

How Buddhists Should Behave?

While many Buddhist are hesitant, some even loathe, to tell others how they should behave, or even to setup standards for themselves, Buddhism does give us some very strong guidelines. These are ways of behaving that skillfully use whatever is happening in our lives, good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant, to facilitate the ending of our dukkha. The six paramitas, are an obvious example of these guidelines.

These recommended ways of behaving are activities that weaken our bonds of attachment and that produce the clarity of mind needed for progress along the path. They are The Path, which in essence is just a list of skills worth mastering. They're our basic set of tools, so we will want to keep them handy and in good shape.

These guidelines aren’t speculative (which would be wrong view). Nor are they absolutes (again, wrong view). They are simply ways of behaving that minimize our dukkha and lead us to a life of peace and happiness.
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Some of these are, of course, the already mentions paramitas (Generosity, Morality, Patience, Diligent Effort, Meditation and Wisdom), the five precepts (No Killing, No Stealing, No Sexual Misconduct, No Lying, No Intoxicants), and the eight aspects of the Noble Eightfold Path (Right View, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration).

But here is another skillful means way of looking at the criteria for daily decision-making:

Always Act Appropriately

These can be used to guide our every decision:

1. Do no harm, then if possible
2. Be of benefit
3. If you can’t be of benefit, do nothing
4. Be morally upright (No killing, no stealing, no lying, no misuse of sexuality, no recreational drugs,etc) and follow the rules
5. Be meditative
6. Be wisdom-oreinted

Always Use Right Speech

Only speak when it will improve the silence.

1. Only speak when conditions suggest you should speak
2. Only speak when you have something to say that will be of benefit
3. Always speak in ways that can be heard
4. Only say it once
5. Never go on the battlefield; being of benefit isn’t about winning

Wrong speech, the Big Don'ts:
Harsh, mean-spirited or angry words
Falsehoods
Gossip and small talk
Belittling others to raise your own status

Default Mind-States

Whenever a negative mind-state arises, use Right Effort to replace it with one of these positive mind-states:

Generosity
Compassion and Lovingkindness
Patience
Humility and Modesty
Moral Restraint
Equanimity
Right Speech
Truthfulness
Dependability
Regret (When we act appropriately but the outcome is not beneficial, then we use regret, very gently, to remind us to try another tactic next time.)

A No-Regrets New Year's Wish

"I have no regrets, and the world too has no regrets.” That’s what a Taiwanese lay Buddhist leader said to a friend from his hospital bed. Facing a serious illness, that was a statement of profound clarity coming from someone who understood being peaceful.

Because of our habit of always seeking more of what we tell ourselves we like and less of what we don’t, a habit imbedded in the second skandha, we are always wanting. This means we are never satisfied. We go through life always thinking things should be different––the weather, the waiter, the sales clerk; our kids, our spouses, our lives, our love, our health, our lifespan, everyone and everything. By this wrong view, we are endlessly bound in regret and wanting, endlessly forced into stress and anxiety, never confident and satisfied, never peaceful and happy.

Regret is, like its companions: thankfulness and gratitude, a dukkha-producing story that arises when we don’t get our way. As long as we are telling stories about how it ought to have been, then we aren’t present in this moment, unfolding with life, and our lives remain filled with regrets and what ifs.

Until we understand we are here because all of the conditions of the universe and all of our actions of the past have placed us here, we won’t be able to see the rightness and value and meaning of this moment and so we will create regrets that lock us into our delusions and keep us unhappy.

Recognizing interdependence and impermanence is entering the gate of emptiness. It is realizing the original nature of all things and being with their emptiness. Since all things, even us, are empty, there is nothing to regret and no one to not regret it!

Once we understand this, however slightly at the beginning, we will be able to live happy and peaceful lives; we will be able to march down the Path to peacefulness with stumbling. Once we realize there are no regrets, the struggle has stopped–– the seeking has ended. “Happy are those who possess nothing,” as the Dharmapada tells us.

While I certainly have concerns about my family and friends, students and fellow practitioners, over mankind, over the planet, in another sense, I have no regrets about my life nor about the universe. I wish this for you and for all sentient beings:

May your New Year be filled with No Regrets.

Thus, we are not perplexed by life, we just do it

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 “Thus I heard…”

Thus I heard, at one time the Buddha was at such and such a place with a gathering of this many monks.

“Thus” begins virtually all sutras. “Thus,” in fact, is the first of six conditions necessary for the making of a sutra. Without all six, you don’t have a sutra. With all six, you do.

On one level, these six conditions, sometimes called the six fulfillments, answer our most mundane questions about the provenance of the sutra: who said what, to whom, when, and where. On another, deeper level, the six fulfillments are in themselves a lesson in conditioned causality: “Because there is this, there is that.” This key teaching, as the scriptures remind us, is the dharma. We will approach dependent origination in future blogs; for now, let’s just look at each of the six conditions in the context of relieving dukkha in our everyday lives.

First, here is a list of the six fulfillments:

1. Thus –– The condition of authenticity and accuracy is met with the opening word “thus.”

2. I heard –– For there to be a sutra, someone must have heard and reported on what was heard.

3. At one time –– This asserts when the talk took place.

4. The Buddha –– There has to have been a speaker for this event to take place, usually the speaker is the Buddha.

5. At such and such a place –– There must be a place where the talk was given.

6. A gathering of this many monks –– An audience must have heard it.

Now let’s take a deeper look at the six.

Thus –– When “thus” is present, we know this dharma can be believed. If the dharma is not “thus” it cannot be believed.

Today: If we say that there can’t be a teaching unless it is accurate, authentic and builds faith, (which is the implicit and explicit understanding I find in this condition), then, am I not raising the larger questions: Is what I am doing today, now, in this very moment, truthful and authentic? Am I being present and mindful? Am I building a more peaceful and compassionate world, one based on a greater truth? Is my every action for the benefit of others. Or am I mired in my own afflictions, leading myself and the world down a false path?

We are, in every moment, faced with a choice: Are we, or are we not going to be Thus? The question is no longer which one I am going to choose, or which one I should choose. The question is, “Wouldn’t it be silly of me not to choose thusness?”

I have heard  Usually the “I” refers to Ananda, the Buddha’s trusted attendant and constant companion, who memorized and edited all the teachings.

The “I” is also, as Master Hua explains, the “Hypothetical Self” of a Bodhisattva. The Hypothetical Self is the self which realizes that there is no self. The other three Selfs are (1) The Ordinary Self, which comes from attaching to the body, (2) the Divine Self, which comes from defining one’s self theistically, and (3) the True Self, the self of a Buddha.

Another model of the self, which is used throughout the Diamond Sutra, is discussed in the blog Who Am I Anyway. 

Hearing, listening, being present and being in the moment; sitting on the ground in front of the Buddha, mindfully listening, authentically hearing what is being said––without losing focus, and without fabricating stories about what is heard––that’s what is meant by this second condition.

Today: In order to memorize the sutra, Ananda had to be absolutely clear and present in every moment, and that’s is being suggested for us too. We must stabilize our minds so that we can listen to what the world is telling us and hear conditions as they arise, accurately and clearly. Hard as this is to do, to be utterly mindful is our practice. When someone is talking to us, if we allow our minds to weave stories about what they are saying instead of listening to them and hearing them accurately, it is impossible for our Buddhanature, for our compassionate self, to arise in response to what is being said. Then, instead of doing right from a pure heart, we do wrong from an afflicted mind-state.

At one time –– The third condition is simply saying: We must make time to practice. We must make time to meditate. We must make time for listening to dharma talks. We have to just do it, no excuses! After all, if we aren’t willing to make time for the dharma, what are we willing to make time for? TV, a football game, another hour surfing the web? More self-cherishing and self-indulgence? The truth is, if we make time for the dharma, we will find that there is enough time for everything else. On the other hand, if we use our time unwisely, there will never be enough time.

Today: No excuses! No wasted time contemplating to-do lists on the cushion. No expectations about how things ought to be, or about what I do or don’t want. Instead, right now, today, we are being called upon by the dharma to make time for the dharma. Making time for the dharma is the first step to becoming the dharma. This is what a bodhisattva does. What could be more important to us, to our families, to our communities, and to our planet?

The Buddha’s final words were an exhortation. “What are you waiting for?” he called to us as he lay upon his deathbed. “Do it now!”

The Buddha –– In order for a talk to take place, there must be a speaker. In this case, the speaker is the Buddha, which literally means that Siddhartha Gotama was there, talking. When a Buddha talks, we listen. We know that a Buddha speaks only when he or she believes that what is being said can be heard and understood, and will be of benefit.

In order to approach sutras in the most beneficial way, we need to understand the deeper meaning of the phrase “the Buddha.” If we take “the Buddha” to be simply a man, then, for us, the teaching will be mundane. But if take “the Buddha” as a metaphor for our own enlightened mind-state, a mind-state universal to us all, then “The Buddha” is the ultimate nature of reality/emptiness, shunyata. In that case, we are hearing the sutra from a place deep inside ourselves, from our own Buddhanature, not from just any person who happens to be a few steps further along the Path than we are.

Today: In a sense, the sutras are mirrors that reflect, not the ordinary face we see in ordinary mirrors, but the face of the Absolute in each of us. Since each mirroring sutra is different, to move most effectively along the Path, it’s important to have a teacher who can guide us toward the sutra or sutras most beneficial to us.

Look carefully into the mirror and learn to see the dharma from a deeper place inside you, not to flatter yourself, but so that you can move along our path with humility.

In such and such a place –– We now must establish a location for the talk. Location is more than longitude and latitude. The location itself is charged with meaning and can contribute to our understanding of the Dharma   Is the place an embodiment of the living dharma? Does the place reflect the values we hear in the teaching? Is dana as integral a part of the place as its bricks and mortar? (Can we ever truly hear the dharma if there are granite countertops and gold faucets in the bathrooms of the meditation hall?)

Today: We fulfill the condition of place in our daily practice. That place can be at home, where we practice alone, or it can be in a Temple, Monastery or Dharma Center where we practice together as a community and have the opportunity to hear the Dharma from our teachers. To obtain the best results from practice, we need both kinds of places. One result of practice is the certainty that our lives would be immeasurably impoverished if we had no teacher, no center, no practice. We have to make space in our homes for meditation and we must support our Teachers and Dharma centers, financially as well as with our continual physical presence and participation.

The final condition for a sutra to arise is Audience. In addition to telling us who heard the Dharma that day, which, as a literary device, indicates how important a sutra is, the nature of the audience gives us clues as to its skillful means, the attitude and assumptions behind the talk.

The Buddha used a variety of teaching strategies, called skillful means, to ensure that the Dharma was heard and understood. So we can expect a dharma talk addressed to a king to be quite different from one addressed to a thousand monks, or to a single passerby. For example, consider the audience for the Lotus Sutra: …a large group of monks, twelve thousand in all. Eighty thousand bodhisattva great ones were also there. There were gods, dragons, satyrs, centaurs, asuras, griffins, chimeras, and pythons, in addition to all the monks and nuns, laymen and laywomen. There were great wheel-turning kinds, minor wheel-turning kinds, golden wheel-turning kings, silver wheel-turning kinds, and other wheel-turning kings. There were kings and princes, ministers and people, men and women, and great elders, each surrounded by followers numbering in the hundreds of thousands. [Gene Reeves translation]

We can be sure that this extraordinary group has gathered to hear a message of extraordinary importance.

Today: Everyday, in every moment, I ask this question: Am I being a good audience for the dharma? Am I making the time to hear my original nature through the chatter of my afflictions? Am I being a good audience for the Ultimate? And, of course, what can I do when I notice I’m not such a good audience?

Conclusion

Thus, we are not perplexed by life, we just do it. However, to be living thus, we have to clear away the fog of our afflictions. We have to strive to be authentic, both to ourselves and to the dharma. We have to go from the ordinary self to the tranquility of no-self. We have to learn to listen and to hear. We must continually be located at the place where the Dharma is spoken. We must become an audience for the Absolute. We need to find and support spiritual teachers who guide our practice. We must make a sacred space for the teachings in our homes, our lives and our hearts.

Practicing Without Tolerance

Tolerance and Intolerance, No Difference

For the religions of the West, tolerance is an important spiritual teaching.  Buddhism, on the other hand, does not consider tolerance to be an appropriate spiritual practice.

From a Buddhist perspective, tolerance reinforces an erroneous sense of self and other, hardens the ego and increases selfishness, and encourages passivity in the face of the human imperative, which, in the Buddhist view, is to awaken to truth by virtue of one’s own self-power.

The core of Buddhist practice is to cultivate positive mental states and renounce negative mental states for the simple reason that positive mental states manifest in positive actions, which increase happiness; while negative mental states manifest in negative actions, which decrease happiness. Since, in the Buddhist view, tolerance promotes unwholesome states of mind which bear fruit as unwholesome actions, for a Buddhist, tolerance is unsuitable as a spiritual practice. 

In fact, in the Buddhist view, tolerance promotes intolerance.

How can that be?

To find out, let’s take a look at two definitions of tolerance, one religious and one secular

The first, from the Catholic encyclopedia, defines tolerance as “Forbearance in the presence of an evil which one is unable or unwilling to prevent….Considered in the abstract, tolerance contains two ideas: the existence of an evil; and the magnanimous determination not to interfere with the evil, but to allow it to run its course.”

The second, from Webster’s dictionary defines tolerance as:

1. sympathy or capacity to endure pain or hardship

2. the capacity of the body to endure or become less responsive to a substance

Here is how Buddhists take exception to these ideas.

1.     For a Buddhist, there is no external force, whether it is evil or good.  One of Buddhism’s central teachings is non-duality, sometimes expressed in the phrase “gift, giver, receiver, no difference.”

2.     In the Buddhist view, nothing is permanent, including no permanent forces, whether they are evil or good.

3.     Buddhists emphatically reject “blind faith” as wrong view and as being counterproductive the quest for liberation.

4.     Buddhism rejects attitudes which generate unwholesome mental states. When tolerance means  putting up with something in a rather grudging or resentful manner, a mental pattern of resentment is formed; or, when tolerance implies weakness, such as an inability to stand up for oneself, weakness becomes a habit. Buddhist practice renounces these and all negative  mental states as not conducive to increased well being.

5.     Buddhism avoids unwholesome actions by renouncing the states which give rise to them. Since tolerance relies upon mental states such as exclusivity, magnanimity, arrogance, conceit, and possessiveness, states which give rise to an array of unwholesome actions ranging from minor irritation to armed conflict, in the Buddhist view, tolerance is not a suitable practice. As the Mahanidana Sutta, DN 15, explains in the dark chain of causation: when there is possessiveness, there is the arising of stinginess, and in dependence on stinginess there is the arising of defensiveness, and in dependence on defensiveness various unwholesome things originate, such as conflicts, quarrels, disputes, insults and accusations, the taking up of arms, and all kinds of wrong speech, such as slander, lies and divisive speech.

6.     Tolerance, requires non-agreement.  Since non-agreement, in the Buddhist view, as we have just seen in the sutra, leads to conflict, non-agreement is not a suitable Buddhist practice.

As a Protestant Minister said to me when I asked about him about tolerance: “Both tolerance and intolerance are the same Cross upon which those who are different get crucified.” Indeed.

Then, what do Buddhists teach in situations where other faiths promote tolerance?

Buddhism has two unique teachings to offer:

1.     The practice of reflective acceptance

2.     The practice of reconciliation and non-differentiation

Let’s very briefly look at each:

Reflective Acceptance  means looking deeply, seeing clearly, and accepting circumstances as they are: Impermanent and fleeting. When we see clearly and accept reality, we can respond appropriately. As we learn in the Canki Sutra (MN 95), reflective acceptance is one of the critical conditions needed for us to arrive at the capital “T” Truth of Buddhism.

Reconciliation and Non-differentiation –– Reconciliation means learning to be peaceful with whatever conditions are in front of us. In our practice, whether on the cushion or off, we have countless opportunities for reconciliation, countless moments in which we may gratefully embrace the world of differences we live in. And the most effective way to embrace differences is with a practice of non-differentiation, the practice which dissolves differences: my ideas, their ideas, no difference.

Closing Thought

Recently, I saw this bumper sticker: Truth, not Tolerance. Would you be willing to put it on your car?