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.

Do you love your wife?

The Great Way Is All About Love

Whether we choose call it The Great Way, or the Tao, or Grace, or Universal Love, or Merging with the Divine, or Surrendering to Allah, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that we understand and practice with The Great Way and its implications, both for everyday and for ultimate meaning.

The Great Way tells us to be here, now, present and observing; to be here, now, wholeheartedly, with judging, without preferences, without expectations, without opinions, without speculating or supposing or surmising. Not without discerning, but without preferring things to be other than what they are.

The Great Way is a process, a becoming, and it asks us to be in its becoming. No easy task.

When we are approaching The Way; when we are with The Way, or when we are The Way, we are observers, witnesses without karmic impediment or thrust, of whatever is in front of us. There is no desire for it to be anything other than what it is.

Do you love your spouse with wanting them to be anything other than what they are, in this moment and in every moment? The Great Way suggests if you do anything else, you don't love them. Do you love your spouse for exactly who they are in each and every moment, without judgment, without expectations, with hesitation? The Great Way suggests anything else would not be loving them. No easy matter.

GO FOR THE GOLD

Candy or Gold, You’re Choice

What we call happiness in everyday parlance is only “happiness” because we’re not seeing it clearly. What we call “happiness” is, in fact, nothing more or less than being excited about getting what we want. In dharma terms, that’s greed, not happiness.

True happiness doesn’t come from getting what we want and it isn’t dependent on externals. Externals, as we know from meditation, are impermanent and always changing. To hang our happiness on something that is about to disappear isn’t real happiness. Real happiness comes from within, from letting go of our delusions, from being our Buddhanature, being our original untarnished self.

If we want to reach true happiness, we must be dedicated, disciplined, and above all, honest with ourselves. And we must be willing to give up the illusion of happiness that comes from getting our way in order to be happiness.

We act more like kids than adults in making this choice. We tell ourselves we want it both ways. We’re not willing to give up our candy for gold. We tell ourselves we can keep the candy and get the gold too, building one delusion on top of another. It doesn’t work that way. And even though we realize that it doesn’t work that way–after all, if it did we would be happy by now–we continue to tell ourselves we’re right and that we should be attached to the stuff we like and want.

Until we are willing to rearrange our priorities and commit to living a disciplined, meditation- and wisdom-informed life, all we will do is increase our unhappiness, our stress and anxiety. We know this, of course, if we look at what’s happening around things we say make us happy.

Take a closer look: What do most people say at the end of a cruise: WOW, this was great, we should do it again next year. Instead of enjoying the end of the cruise, we’re trying to get more of it and our idea of it. This is greed. This is protecting and defending our feeling about how great the trip was by buying another. This is fertilizing the seeds that say, “If a little is good, a lot is better” thinking that “a lot” will finally make us r-e-a-l-l-y happy.

Again, this excitement at getting what we want; it is not real happiness

We spend so much time working on our desires and attachments, strengthening them and increasing them, that we aren’t present with the things we tell ourselves are so wonderful and such a source of our happiness. We’d rather talk about how good it will be next year than to actually be on the cruise.

This is the candy in our life, and we hold onto it tenaciously. Ironically, it is exactly that tenacity that prevents us from moving along the path to real happiness, the gold.

Question is, do you want occasional moments when you delude yourself into thinking you’re happy or do you want to be happy all the time. Are you willing to trade the “happiness” that comes from getting externals for the happiness that comes from within, from a settled mind that is clear and at ease, even under the most difficult circumstances? The happiness that comes from spiritual well-being and a disciplined mind can survive even sickness, aging and death, so why is it that we are so willing to forego it for momentary “pleasures.”

When we let go of the candy, when we are willing to sacrifice external pleasures, we become free of the mental burdens, the stress and anxiety, that they entail and that binds us to our suffering.

External pleasures are our addictions to eye-candy, ear-candy, nose-candy, tongue-candy, body-candy, and mind-candy. They foster the three poison: greed, anger, and delusion, and they actively block the qualities we need to achieve inner peace. Even if we had all the time and energy of a million lives, the pursuit of these pleasures would only lead us further and further away from the goal.

So do we relish our passions or renounce them? Do we follow the path or only give it lip service?

GO FOR THE GOLD!

Compassion Comes in Stages

The Three Stages of Compassion

Compassion is the essence of our practice. And practicing with compassion is a three-step process, as Chandrakirti explains at the very beginning of his Entering the Middle Way. Understanding this process tells us where to start and guides us as we become more and more capital-B-Bodhisattva-like.

We can all start here, now, by practicing with the first of the three types of compassion, compassion for the suffering of others. As we become more aware, we can move to practicing with the second type of compassion, compassion that arises from the suffering caused by delusion. Finally, when our practice deepens sufficiently, we practice the third type of compassion, compassion that arises from an awareness of emptiness.

Where we are on our path determines the type of compassion we practice, but knowing the direction in which our compassion will grow allows us to aspire toward deeper and deeper levels of compassion and to be open to an ever-increasingly profound practice.

Here is Chandrakirti’s triad:

1. Compassion with reference to beings.

This arises when our practice allows us to clearly perceive the pain and suffering of others. It is the first kind of compassion to arise and it causes us to strive to do what we can to help those who suffer.

This form of compassion is marked by our no longer being able to remain unmoved by the suffering of beings and by aspiring to do everything possible to help alleviate their suffering. It is often random and is not necessarily directed by wisdom. It is where we all begin as we dabble out toe in the stream.

2. Compassion with reference to reality.

This arises when we genuinely perceive how, through ignorance and delusion, beings create their own suffering. This compassion arises when we see deeply how, in striving to alleviate their suffering, beings are in fact causing themselves more suffering. Blinded by their ignorance of how things really are (impermanence and non-self), they continue to deepen their suffering thinking they are working to eliminate it.

Through understanding the illusory nature of reality, genuine perception of this situation brings forth this second type of compassion, which is more intense and profound than the first kind, and in which the delusions underpinnings of the suffering are addressed. Here there is focus and wisdom guiding our compassion. We see this type of compassion, for the most part, that we see in our Sangha.

3. Compassion without reference.

What distinguishes this third type of compassion from the first and second is that this compassion retains no notion of subject-object/self-other, nor of intention.  [It is what the Buddha and Subhuti are chatting about in chapter ten of the Diamond Sutra.] It is the ultimate form of a Buddha or Bodhisattva's compassion. It depends on the realization of emptiness.

This third and most profound type of compassion opens naturally and spontaneous from within. It is our default or factory setting. It is simply who we are when we attain one mind. This is the compassion that is manifest in the mostly deeply practiced of our Teachers, those we address as Venerable Masters.

Understanding the three types of compassion, and the order in which they occur, tells us where to start with our practice of compassion, what to expect next, and extends our vision so that we may practice with ever-increasing depth to until we are able to be of benefit to all those touched by suffering, without discriminating and ultimately practicing without any preferences.