New Beginner's Class

Beginner’s Mindfulness Meditation Class

Every Tuesday from 6:30 – 8:00 pm

Deerpath Primary Care

1800 Hollister Drive, Suite 102

Libertville, IL 60048

Email for more information

Meditation can wipe away the day's stress, bring you a new sense calm in your daily activities, improve the quality of your family life and reduce your stress at work. If stress has you anxious, tense and worried, try mindfulness meditation.

According to the American Journal of Psychiatry, published by the American Psychiatric Association: A group mindfulness meditation program can effectively reduce symptoms of anxiety and panic and can help maintain these reductions. According to the National Institutes of Health: Mindfulness meditation is effective in decreasing stress symptoms in a wide variety of patients of all ages, genders, and educational backgrounds.The medical profession has been conducting studies on the efficacy of mindfulness and the impact of meditation on practitioners for over 30 years. Results show that people who meditate regularly experience significant wellness benefits decreased heart rates, respiration, blood pressure and oxygen consumption, all signs of improved wellness and physical health.

Mindfulness meditation is a simple and effective technique anyone can do anywhere to get themselves back in focus.  It doesn’t require any special equipment, or clothing, can be done at home, at work, inside or out and even – under certain conditions – while driving.  It’s a near perfect way to manage anxiety, control worry, lower tension and increase happiness.”

Although the roots of meditation go back thousands of years to the religious practices of ancient India, especially Buddhism, mindfulness meditation is a non-denominational, pan-sectarian practice.  All three major religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, have a meditation practice.  It’s not something complicated or cultish - it’s simply sitting still, breathing mindfully and letting the mind quiet naturally.”

Join meditation teacher Carl Jerome of the North Shore Meditation and Dharma Center at DPC every Tuesday at 6:30 to learn how to meditate, to learn the insights that meditation offers, and to grow healthier and happier. 

Here’s the Simple How-To of Mindfulness Meditation

Mindfulness is when mind and body are wholly engaged with what is happening. No evaluating, no judging, no stories or notions about it. Just full engagement.

Mindfulness meditation is simply wholeheartedly observing our breath.

Mindfulness is the driving force of a clear, peaceful, calm, quiet and confident mind. Meditation is what charges our mindfulness battery.

What do we do? We just sit, still, without moving, and focus on our breath. No numbers, no words, no visualizations, no wondering about the breathing. Just noticing it go in and out: in the diaphragm, chest, or at the tip of the nostrils. When a thought, a sensation, a feeling, a sound, whatever, arises as a distraction and we notice that we are thinking or feeling of hearing, we let go of that distraction and mindfully return to observing our breath.

We don’t judge or evaluate our meditation. We just sit.

Meditation is about letting go, not attaining. How do we let go? We let go by focusing our attention on something else. For example, when we notice we are listening to a bird, we let go by simply (re)focusing on our breath.

We allow the breath to be natural. We don’t try to change it or control it. We simply breathe. Simply observe. We become calmer, healther, and more peaceful.

Buddhist Best Practices, Part 2

In our last blog, we looked at the first three of the six paramitas. Here we look at the last three.

4. Right Effort

We generally describe right effort as abandon and refrain the unwholesome, develop and maintain the wholesome. But a definition is not a plan.

Right Effort requires us to simplify our life and to restructure it in ways that conduce to the performance of our practice. We can, once we see how, create an environment in which our practice can thrive. After all, what we are doing now is creating an environment in which our practice is difficult. So it is more a shift in style than something new.

Right Effort keeps us on the Path. We shift our lives in order to lower our stress levels. By minimizing our interactions with others we minimize “selfing,” ego-energizing involvements and conflicts. By taking the conditions of our body and mind seriously, we eliminate deleterious habits, eliminations that can be ended easily, providing we grasp the power that meditation and practice. We do instead of thinking and talking. We meditate and we gain insight. We create an environment in which practice can flourish and in which the sense of well-being we derive from this induces us to further practice.

Five Right Efforts

Techniques for Ridding Ourselves of Defilements:

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

This is often described as abandon and refrain, develop and maintain.:

	Unarisen	Arisen
Defilements	(2) Refrain	(1) Abandon
Wholesome Mindstates	(3) Develop	(4) Maintain

2. The second of the five right efforts is to activate these positive mindstates: regret and 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 briefly, quietly and gently on an unwholesome action, seeing it harmful. Next consider its undesirable consequences until a very gentle distaste for it sets in. Then, 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 structure and the structure 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. Note that this is not a therapeutic model; we are not looking for sources and origins, we are only looking at the mental paradigms and models with which the defilement is created.

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 and only works if the defilement is met with a diversion of equal or greater strength.

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. Like four, this too has limited value and limited effectiveness, because it has little resetting strength.

5. Meditation

Meditation is what charges our mindfulness battery, and mindfulness is the driving force of a clear, peaceful, calm, quiet and confident mind.

What do we just do? We just sit, still, without moving, and focus on our breath. No numbers, no words, no visualizations, no wondering about the breathing. Just noticing it go in and out: in the diaphragm, chest, or at the tip of the nostrils. When a thought, a sensation, a feeling, a sound, whatever, arises as a distraction and we notice that we are thinking or feeling of hearing, we let go of that distraction and mindfully return to observing our breath.

We don’t judge or evaluate our meditation. We just sit.

Meditation is about letting go, not attaining. How do we let go? We let go by focusing our attention on something else. For example, when we notice we are listening to a bird, we let go by simply (re)focusing on our breath.

Allow the breath to be natural. Don’t try to change it or control it. Simply breathe. Simply observe.

6. Wisdom

Wisdom, in the paramita context, can be considered as the understanding and intention that leads us to maintaining the practices of right effort, mindfulness and meditation. The right understanding, or view, is no view–just being mindfully present. The right intention is the intention to wholeheartedly and with utter diligence make it our life’s work to be generous, disciplined, patient, and mindful; plus be meditators.

Conceptually, Buddhist wisdom is often described as the four noble truths: there is suffering, its causes, that it is possible to end suffering, and the path to ending it. A level deeper of that concept are the five aggregates. And on the deepest level, wisdom is understanding and someday realizing the twelve links of dependent origination.

We will look at the aggregates and the links in upcoming blogs.

The First Three Buddhist "Best Practices"

Part One: The First Three Paramitas

1. Generosity

2. Morality (Moral Discipline)

3. Patience

4. Right Effort

5. Meditation

6. Wisdom

These are the key practices of a bodhisattva, and their perfection, meaning doing them purely regardless of the circumstances, is the way of a bodhisattva. So if we emulate the paramitas, even when they don’t arises quite so naturally as we would like, we will be moving ourselves along the path to peacefulness. They can be thought of as a shorthand version of the Noble Eightfold Path.

There is considerable variation in the scriptural lists of paramitas, values we need to cultivate to live more peaceful lives and to reduce and eliminate our suffering. There is this Chan list of six, but there are other lists of ten as well. In one list of ten, patience is replaced by renunciation, and honesty, determination, lovingkindness, and equanimity are added.

1. Generosity

 is the basic principle of enlightened living, giving without discrimination simply because there is a need. The implication, of course, is that there is no Self to get in the way.

2. Morality is leading a virtuous life (doing, saying, and acting appropriately), simply not doing what we know is wrong, meaning things that produce stress and anxiety for us, for those around us, and for the planet.

3. Patience

 is the antidote for anger in its various forms, ranging from irritation to hatred, and is the mindstate that arises when we stop asking everything to be other than what it is.

4. Right Effort is the paradigm we must maintain diligently to move meaningfully along the path.

5. Meditation is what gives us the single-pointedness that allows peace and clarity to arise

6. Wisdom is the foundation of all our actions; it is right view or understanding and right intention)

1. Generosity

How are we supposed to do to attain freedom from suffering, to reach the emptiness of emptiness, to walk stably on the middle path? According to the Diamond Sutra, just be generous. Generosity, dana in Sanskrit, is often used in the context of making monetary offerings. But in daily life, generosity is meant is a much larger context. Generosity is what arises when our own self-cherishing and self-centered needs give way to being of benefit to others.

As we practice with the paramitas, our attachments, especially to our self, weaken and disappear. This is, in essence, the actuation of the Three Pure Vows (to do no harm, to be of benefit, to save all beings).

Generosity involves the gift, the giver and the receiver. Ideally, the giver should give simply because there is a need, with no expectation of personal gain, reward, or benefit; and the gift should be given without consideration of the receiver, with complete disregard for the recipient’s character or qualities. Finally, the gift can be material, it can be money or things, or it can be spiritual, meaning the gift of the dharma. Both hold an important place in perfecting this paramita, though spiritual giving, giving the gift of the teachings, is considered a higher form of giving.

The practice of giving purifies our minds and relieves our suffering in three ways. First, when we decide to give something of our own to someone else, we reduce our attachment to the object; making this a habit weakens our craving and clinging, the main causes of our dukkha. Second, establishing the habit of being generous resets our karma so that in the future we produce less and less dukkha for ourselves. And third, and most important, when giving is practiced with pure intention, our generosity produces virtue and wisdom, which has the immediate effect of changing our karmic course and eliminating dukkha.

The highest for of giving, which is neither material nor spiritual, is the giving of No-Fear.

Ten Practices for the Giving of No-Fear

1.     The more peaceful we are, the more we give no-fear

2.     Understand no-self, when there is no self, there is the giving of no-fear

3.     Body – Slow gentle movement, no clumsiness, less eye-contact, humble stances

4.     Speech – Right speech, gentle language, slow speaking, mindful speech

5.     Mind -- Replacing defiled mind states with their antidotes

6.     Equanimity – Stop discriminating and differentiating, stop value-adding judgments

7.     Understanding that everyone acts only to relive their own suffering, never to cause us to dukkha

8.     Making compassion the central point of departure for everything we do and don’t do

9.     Become the smallest person in the room, allowing modesty and humility to guide our actions

10.  Never go on the battlefield

11.  Never say it more than once

12.  Conquer our own fear of fear

13.  Living with a heart filled with sympathetic joy

14.  Always offering as much support and comfort as possible

15.  Recognizing that we have intellectually, economically and spiritually a strong duty and responsibility to care for and protect the weak

The giving of no-fear is the giving of the gift of ultimate wisdom.

2. Morality (Moral Discipline)

Morality is acting in “right” ways. There are a number of lists that codify these behaviors. View them as guidelines, not absolutes; view them as rafts, not doctrines. Contemplate them anew each time conditions warrant their arising.

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 disciplined and follow the rules

5.     Meditate

6.     Be wisdom-oriented

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:

            Harsh, mean-spirited or angry words

            Falsehoods

            Gossip and small talk

            Belittling others to raise your own status

As Much As Possible, Maintain One of these Mind-States

1.     Generosity

2.     Compassion and Lovingkindness

3.     Patience

4.     Humility and Modesty

5.     Moral Restraint

6.     Equanimity

7.     Right Speech

8.     Truthfulness

9.     Dependability

10.  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.)

11.  Distaste (Develop a gentle aversion to all that is unwholesome in body, speech and mind.)

The Precepts

I asked a student to contemplate these and she emailed me the next day saying “I must be missing something, I don’t do any of these.” I told her to contemplate just “no killing.” She emailed me a few days later: “I could spend a whole lifetime just on ‘No killing,’ couldn’t I?”

Don’t be deceived by their brevity and simplicity, these are life practices.

1.     No killing

2.     No taking of things not given

3.     No sexual misconduct

4.     No falsifying

5.     No drugs

Patience

Patience is a mindstate that is able to accept fully whatever occurs. Patience is the antidote for faulty frustrated desires (greed, the I-wants and I shoulda-hads) and unwanted occurrences (negative greed: the I-shouldn’ta gottens and it shouldn’t bes), and for the anger that arises from not getting. 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.

Being patient means being there wholeheartedly with whatever arises, having given up the idea that things should be other than what they are. It is always possible to be patient; there is no situation so bad that it cannot be accepted patiently, with an open, accommodating, and mindful practice.

When we practice the patience of voluntarily accepting suffering (which is all imagined and unreal, so why not?), 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 and/or affirmations there will be no way for us to prevent anger and ill-will 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 in response to “problematic” conditions. 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. And importantly, we need not to believe that things should be other than what they are.

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. That’s patience.

Sitting perfectly still in meditation is one of the best training for a patient life.

Gain Freedom From Fear

Freedom from Fear

Excerpted and edited from an article by Ajahn Geoff

The Buddhist idea about fear is complex. This is due partly to Buddhism's dual roots — both as a civilized and as a wilderness tradition — and also to the complexity of fear itself, even in its most primal forms. Think of a deer at night suddenly caught in a hunter's headlights. It's confused. Angry. It senses danger, and that it's weak in the face of the danger. It wants to escape. These five elements — confusion, aversion, a sense of danger, a sense of weakness, and a desire to escape — are present, to a greater or lesser extent, in every fear. The confusion and aversion are the unskillful elements. Even if the deer has many openings to escape from the hunter, its confusion and aversion might cause it to miss them. The same holds true for human beings. The mistakes and evils we commit when finding ourselves weak in the face of danger come from confusion and aversion.

The last three elements of fear — the perception of weakness, the perception of danger, and the desire to escape it — are needed to avoid the evils coming from complacency. If stripped of confusion and aversion, these three elements become a positive quality, heedfulness — something so essential to the practice that the Buddha devoted his last words to it. The dangers of life are real. Our weaknesses are real. If we don't see them clearly, don't take them to heart, and don't try to find a way out, there's no way we can put an end to the causes of our fears. Just like the deer: if it's complacent about the hunter's headlights, it's going to end up strapped to the fender for sure.

So to genuinely free the mind from fear, we can't simply deny that there's any reason for fear. We have to overcome the cause of fear: the mind's weaknesses in the face of very real dangers. The elegance of the Buddha's approach to this problem, though, lies in his insight into the confusion — or to use the standard Buddhist term, the delusion — that makes fear unskillful. Despite the complexity of fear, delusion is the single factor that, in itself, is both the mind's prime weakness and its greatest danger. Thus the Buddha approaches the problem of fear by focusing on delusion, and he attacks delusion in two ways: getting us to think about its dangerous role in making fear unskillful, and getting us to develop inner strengths leading to the insights that free the mind from the delusions that make it weak. In this way we not only overcome the factor that makes fear unskillful. We ultimately put the mind in a position where it has no need for fear.

When we think about how delusion infects fear and incites us to do unskillful things, we see that it can act in two ways. First, the delusions surrounding our fears can cause us to misapprehend the dangers we face, seeing danger where there is none, and no danger where there is. If we obsess over non-existent or trivial dangers, we'll squander time and energy building up useless defenses, diverting our attention from genuine threats. If, on the other hand, we put the genuine dangers of aging, illness, and death out of our minds, we grow complacent in our actions. We let ourselves cling to things — our bodies, our loved ones, our possessions, our views — that leave us exposed to aging, illness, separation, and death in the first place. We allow our cravings to take charge of the mind, sometimes to the point of doing evil with impunity, thinking we're immune to the results of our evil, that those results will never return to harm us.

The more complacent we are about the genuine dangers lying in wait all around us, the more shocked and confused we become when they actually hit. This leads to the second way in which the delusions surrounding our fears promote unskillful actions: we react to genuine dangers in ways that, instead of ending the dangers, actually create new ones. We amass wealth to provide security, but wealth creates a high profile that excites jealousy in others. We build walls to keep out dangerous people, but those walls become our prisons. We stockpile weapons, but they can easily be turned against us.

The most unskillful response to fear is when, perceiving dangers to our own life or property, we believe that we can gain strength and security by destroying the lives and property of others. The delusion pervading our fear makes us lose perspective. If other people were to act in this way, we would know they were wrong. But somehow, when we feel threatened, our standards change, our perspective warps, so that wrong seems right as long as we're the ones doing it.

This is probably the most disconcerting human weakness of all: our inability to trust ourselves to do the right thing when the chips are down. If standards of right and wrong are meaningful only when we find them convenient, they have no real meaning at all.

Fortunately, though, the area of life posing the most danger and insecurity is the area where, through training, we can make the most changes and exercise the most control. Although aging, illness, and death follow inevitably on birth, delusion doesn't. It can be prevented. If, through thought and contemplation, we become heedful of the dangers it poses, we can feel motivated to overcome it. However, the insights coming from simple thought and contemplation aren't enough to fully understand and overthrow delusion. It's the same as with any revolution: no matter how much you may think about the matter, you don't really know the tricks and strengths of entrenched powers until you amass your own troops and do battle with them. And only when your own troops develop their own tricks and strengths can they come out on top. So it is with delusion: only when you develop mental strengths can you see through the delusions that give fear its power. Beyond that, these strengths can put you in a position where you are no longer exposed to dangers ever again.

The Canon lists these mental strengths at five: conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. It also emphasizes the role that heedfulness plays in developing each, for heedfulness is what enables each strength to counteract a particular delusion that makes fear unskillful, and the mind weak in the face of its fears. What this means is that none of these strengths are mere brute forces. Each contains an element of wisdom and discernment, which gets more penetrating as you progress along the list.

Of the five strengths, (1) conviction requires the longest explanation, both because it's one of the most misunderstood and under-appreciated factors in the Buddhist path, and because of the multiple delusions it has to counteract.

The conviction here is conviction in the principle of karma: that the pleasure and pain we experience depends on the quality of the intentions on which we act. This conviction counteracts the delusion that "It's not in my best interest to stick to moral principles in the face of danger," and it attacks this delusion in three ways.

First, it insists on what might be called the "boomerang" or "spitting into the wind" principle of karmic cause and effect. If you act on harmful intentions, regardless of the situation, the harm will come back to you. Even if unskillful actions such as killing, stealing, or lying might bring short-term advantages, these are more than offset by the long-term harm to which they leave you exposed.

Conversely, this same principle can make us brave in doing good. If we're convinced that the results of skillful intentions will have to return to us even if death intervenes, we can more easily make the sacrifices demanded by long-term endeavors for our own good and that of others. Whether or not we live to see the results in this lifetime, we're convinced that the good we do is never lost. In this way, we develop the courage needed to build a store of skillful actions — generous and virtuous — that forms our first line of defense against dangers and fear.

Second, conviction insists on giving priority to your state of mind above all else, for that's what shapes your intentions. This counteracts the corollary to the first delusion: "What if sticking to my principles makes it easier for people to do me harm?" This question is based ultimately on the delusion that life is our most precious possession. If that were true, it would be a pretty miserable possession, for it heads inexorably to death. Conviction views our life as precious only to the extent that it's used to develop the mind, for the mind — when developed — is something that no one, not even death, can harm. "Quality of life" is measured by the quality and integrity of the intentions on which we act, just as "quality time" is time devoted to the practice. Or, in the Buddha's words:

Better than a hundred years

lived without virtue, uncentered, is

one day

lived by a virtuous person

absorbed in jhana.

— Dhp 110

Third, conviction insists that the need for integrity is unconditional. Even though other people may throw away their most valuable possession — their integrity — it's no excuse for us to throw away ours. The principle of karma isn't a traffic ordinance in effect only on certain hours of the day or certain days of the week. It's a law operating around the clock, around the cycles of the cosmos.

Some people have argued that, because the Buddha recognized the principle of conditionality, he would have no problem with the idea that our virtues should depend on conditions as well. This is a misunderstanding of the principle. To begin with, conditionality doesn't simply mean that everything is changeable and contingent. It's like the theory of relativity. Relativity doesn't mean that all things are relative. It simply replaces mass and time — which long were considered constants — with another, unexpected constant: the speed of light. Mass and time may be relative to a particular inertial frame, as the frame relates to the speed of light, but the laws of physics are constant for all inertial frames, regardless of speed.

In the same way, conditionality means that there are certain unchanging patterns to contingency and change — one of those patterns being that unskillful intentions, based on craving and delusion, invariably lead to unpleasant results.

If we learn to accept this pattern, rather than our feelings and opinions, as absolute, it requires us to become more ingenious in dealing with danger. Instead of following our unskillful knee-jerk reactions, we learn to think outside the box to find responses that best prevent harm of any kind. This gives our actions added precision and grace.

At the same time, we have to note that the Buddha didn't teach conditionality simply to encourage acceptance for the inevitability of change. He taught it to show how the patterns underlying change can be mastered to create an opening that leads beyond conditionality and change. If we want to reach the unconditioned — the truest security — our integrity has to be unconditional, a gift of temporal security not only to those who treat us well, but to everyone, without exception. As the texts say, when you abstain absolutely from doing harm, you give a great gift — freedom from danger to limitless beings — and you yourself find a share in that limitless freedom as well.

Conviction and integrity of this sort make great demands on us. Until we gain our first taste of the unconditioned, they can easily be shaken. This is why they have to be augmented with other mental strengths. The three middle strengths — persistence, mindfulness, and concentration — act in concert. Persistence, in the form of right effort, counteracts the delusion that we're no match for our fears, that once they arise we have to give into them. Right effort gives us practice in eliminating milder unskillful qualities and developing skillful ones in their place, so that when stronger unskillful qualities arise, we can use our skillful qualities as allies in fending them off. The strength of mindfulness assists this process in two ways. (1) It reminds us of the danger of giving in to fear. (2) It teaches us to focus our attention, not on the object of our fear, but on the fear in and of itself as a mental event, something we can watch from the outside rather jumping in and going along for a ride. The strength of concentration, in providing the mind with a still center of wellbeing, puts us in a solid position where we don't feel compelled to identify with fears as they come, and where the comings and goings of internal and external “dangers” are less and less threatening to the mind.

Even then, though, the mind can't reach ultimate security until it uproots the causes of these comings and goings, which is why the first four strengths require the strength of discernment to make them fully secure. Discernment is what sees that these comings and goings are ultimately rooted in our sense of "I" and "mine," and that "I" and "mine" are not built into experience. They come from the repeated processes of I-making and my-making, in which we impose these notions on experience and identify with things subject to aging, illness, and death. Furthermore, discernment sees through our inner traitors and weaknesses: the cravings that want us to make an "I" and "mine"; the delusions that make us believe in them once they're made. It realizes that this level of delusion is precisely the factor that makes aging, illness, and death dangerous to begin with. If we didn't identify with things that age, grow ill, and die, their aging, illness, and death wouldn't threaten the mind. Totally unthreatened, the mind would have no reason to do anything unskillful ever again.

When this level of discernment matures and bears the fruit of release, our greatest insecurity — our inability to trust ourselves — has been eliminated. Freed from the attachments of "I" and "mine," we find that the component factors of fear — both skillful and unskillful — are gone. There's no remaining confusion or aversion; the mind is no longer weak in the face of danger; and so there's nothing from which we need to escape.

We fear because we believe in "we." If we develop the strengths that allow us to cut through our cravings, delusions, and attachments, the entire complex — the "we," the fear, the beliefs, the attachments — dissolves away. The freedom remaining is the only true security there is. In trading away the hope for an impossible security, you gain the reality of a happiness totally independent and condition-free. Once you've made this trade, you know that the pay-off is more than worth the price.

Without This Perspective, You'll Never be Happy

The Two Truths

At first when we meditate, we spend most of our time simply observing our breath. And that is difficult enough. But as we relax into our meditation, we develop insights about how our mind works.

One of the insights we have early on is that there are good sits and bad sits; there are meditation periods that feel like we are really meditating and others where we can barely get two breaths in a row without a distracting thought.

As we continue to observe this, over a period of weeks and months, we realize that meditation is just meditation, and whether we have a “good” meditation or a “bad” meditation is simply a question of how we choose to label it. If we get ten breaths in a row, then we might say, “I’ve had a good meditation.” If we’ve only had nine, though, would that make it bad? And what about 5 breaths twice or three times in a row?

In fact, it simply becomes good or bad when I have my self-talk tell me it’s good or bad. It doesn’t take long to realize that meditation is neither good nor bad; it is, intrinsically, empty of any definition or value, meaning or weight until I assign it a definition, value, meaning and weight.

On an implicit level, most people understand this. They understand that we can “reframe” things; we can alter the meaning or value of something by altering its context or definition, as the Taoist farmer story illustrates.

Taoist Farmer Story

This farmer had only one horse, and one day the horse ran away. The neighbors came to condole him over his terrible loss. The farmer said, "What makes you think it is so terrible?” A month later, the horse came home--this time bringing with her two beautiful wild stallions. The neighbors became excited at the farmer's good fortune. Such lovely strong horses! The farmer said, "What makes you think this is good fortune?” A week later, the farmer's son was thrown from one of the wild horses and broke his leg. All the neighbors were very distressed. Such bad luck! The farmer said, "What makes you think it is bad?” A war came, and every able-bodied man was conscripted and sent into battle. Only the farmer's son, because he had a broken leg, remained. The neighbors congratulated the farmer. "What makes you think this is good?" said the farmer.


What isn’t explicit, however, is that the reason we can reframe things is that they don’t have any permanent, set in stone, definition or value. That is the point of the Two Truths and we must realize it if we are to become peaceful and happy.

What This Means

This means that whether we like something or don’t like something is the problem, whether we label it good or bad is the problem. It’s not the nature of the thing that’s problematic, just the definitions and values we superimpose on it. When we realize the Two Truths, we stop assigning values in a way that makes us anxious and stressed and start assigning meaning from a place of peace. We shift our meta cognitive conversation so that it brings us and our families, friends, communities and world to a better place.

The solution suggested by this Two Truths concept is hard to execute, but relatively simple to understand. We must recognize that us and things are both real in an everyday sense and not real (meaning lacking in any intrinsic definition or meaning) at the same time. This isn’t denying the existence of anything it is simply explaining it in a different way. So the question is: Why is there a need for a two-pronged explanation?

The reason for understanding ourselves and the universe from this two-pronged perspective is that when viewed from only one of these, not both, we are making ourselves uncomfortable and stressed. If, for example, we tell ourselves something is good, then we have a positive emotional response to it and want more of it; similarly, if we tell ourselves something is bad, we have a negative emotional response and either want to get rid of it or ensure that we don’t get any more of it. In either case, we are left, at least a little but sometimes greatly, uneasy.

The middle path is when we see both of the truths as one. The middle path, the merger of the relative and absolute truths, is when we see the mundane while at the same time knowing that it is a mental construct open to constant revision rather than as something permanent.

Further, the Two Truths point to us to a deeper understanding of No-Self and that to a realization of Non-Self (see page 000). By no-self we mean that we are a fabrication, a mental construct based on our past memories and the stories we have told ourselves about those memories. It’s not to say that we don’t exist, that would be nonsense. Rather, it is to suggest that we make up stories about who and what we are. We might think we are great neighbors–we’re quiet, keep up the property, and very complain; our neighbors might disagree–they see us as aloof and unfriendly. We might think of ourselves as easy to get along with, some of our coworkers might disagree and think of us a rigid or stubborn. No one here is correct, no one incorrect. Why? Because any opinion is as valid as any other in a world where nothing is permanent.

Again, this is not to deny our existence or the existence of the things around us, but simple to say that we an they have no particular value or meaning until we assign it.

We all live as if we had a firm basis to our being, and that understanding of the universe generates our chronic disconnect, our endemic discomfort with life. If I understand all my ideas of self, all my concepts and ideologies, all my role definitions, all my emotions and definitions as having no inherent, permanent meaning or value, then my life eases up. I stop having meta cognitive conversations with myself about how bad things are, how they should be different, about what I have to avoid to be peaceful, etc. Instead, I recognize and realize things for what they are: just “things” here and now. When this happens, everything becomes clear. We simply tell ourselves to do what is next and appropriate, and it is always obvious what is next and appropriate.

The ultimate goal of Buddhism is to end our everyday uneasiness and discomfort, our anger and suffering, largely through behavioral shifts that occur when we practice with reflective meta cognitive voices instead of just falling into habitual dukkha-producing patterns.

Practicing with the Two Truths

“That’s Not True” Practice: To gain a better understanding of how we assign negative values and meanings to things that then cause us to be upset, try this practice: Every time you feel yourself irritated or frustrated or upset in any way, ask yourself: What’s upsetting me? (That Lincoln Navigator just cut in front of me; I hate when people do whatever-it-is.) And when you get the answer, tell yourself: “That’s not true.” (If you need to, add something like: She probably couldn't see me, there must be big blind spots on an SUV of that size.) Then immediately let go of the incident.

With the “That’s Not True” practice, we are developing the Two Truths into new meta cognitive voices, recognizing both truths at the same time, then immediately letting them go without any discomfort arising, without any further story-telling about how this or that shouldn’t have happened.

Note that this is a process. The more you do it, the faster and more effective it becomes, and the more peaceful you become. Here’s explicitly what happens: First, you notice that you have an internal meta cognitive conversation that is responsible for how you define and assign value to things and events, people and actions. Next, you recognize its content and effect on you. Third, you see what triggers the conversation. Then you change the meta cognitive voice to one that will lead you to reflect on what’s really happening in a way that leaves you feeling peaceful not upset. Finally, you notice that this new voice is making your life easier and so you use it more and more, rehearsing with it internally when you can, and externally when it would be beneficial.

“Or Not” Practice: Philip Whalen, the renowned Zen Master from San Francisco, had a single two-word phrase that he repeated incessantly: “Or not.” Whenever anyone said anything with great assurance, whenever an opinion was raised strongly, whenever almost anything was said confidently by a student or would-be student of his, he would say, “Or not.” This was his reminder to us of the Two Truths.

If you say it often enough, both in self-talk and verbally so others can hear, you eventually find any assertion silly and laughable. You eventually find you are shifting to a less secure “permanent” view of things to a fluid understanding of the world, to a Two Truths understanding of the world.

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.