Bee Dharma

Today I experienced one of those little dharma lessons which managed to take root and come to florition in my consciousness (register as a teaching). 

 I noticed a bee climbing the screen in full sunlight, unable to reach the outside, where shelter and food awaited. The natural and first inclination I had was to capture the bee, somehow, and release it to the outside. It was not even a thought. It felt deeper than thought; something part of the natural order. The obvious course of action. 

 But then my mind jumped into the process with its judgement that the bee was probably a carpenter bee. Suddenly there was this negative reaction to the presence of the bee, and the past and potential destruction such bees are capable of doing to the siding of the house. This judgement caused me to falter in my desire to rescue the creature.

 The mind can be a good servant but a terrible master.It takes practice to respond from the deeper, truer place of compassion for all beings without judgement. The mind is hardwired to make judgements in the interest of self preservation. But one must ask what self are we preserving? 

The illusion of a separate self makes one prone to defensive reactions. The reality is that on some deep level the bee and I somehow "inter-are" as Thich Nhat Hanh would say. Nothing is independent in its existence. All is connected and it is from this deep truth that my initial inclination to rescue the bee came.

Thay's passing into the cloudland

 A poem to commemorate the passing of Thich Nhat Hahn on January 22, 2022 at midnight.

The winds blow with no coming and no going

The waves roll but do not move

The mountain sits firmly on shifting ground

What is essential remains in that groundless expanse

I first met Thich Nhat Hahn in 2009 when I went to Omega Institute in New York. I was expecting there to be about 50 people, as it was billed as a small gathering for a weekend meditation. It turned out to be an overflow of 500 people crammed into the main hall. At first I was disappointed thinking the experience would be dimmed by the numbers. In fact I couldn't have been more wrong. Being in the presence of Thay with 500 other people of single mind and purpose only served to magnify his peaceful presence and spiritual power. Have you ever been with 500 people and could hear a pin drop? Very moving. I especially remember the walking meditation. Thay gathered the children around him, They had the choice position, some even holding his hand. I was just beautiful to see how deeply they were connected. Thay knew that the idea of Interbeing was most fully appreciated by young childre who didn't need much convincing to believe in their connection to everything and everyone, especially children lucky enough to have parents that would bring them to Omega for a meditation retreat!

Insight

Amazing how suddenly insight bubbles up from seemingly nowhere and enters into consciousnesses on the most fragile and diaphanous wings imaginable to float along from flower to flower until,  just as suddenly, it disappears leaving hardly a trace. How many times I have had original, even profound thoughts,  only to find they have utterly disappeared when I get around to thinking about them again. Maybe that is the key; insight does not arise so much from thinking as from grace. Somehow the thinking process is too opaque to allow the light to shine through.

So today while walking on the Biltmore Estate which is only minutes away from my home I found myself thinking about the nature of reality and had the following thoughts or maybe even insights after listening to Thich Nhat Hanh speaking about the nature of duality and how energy and matter are one; sometimes particle and sometimes wave but never destroyed only transformed.

Many of our fears or perhaps our most primordial fear is the fear of cessation or death. Our thoughts and ego or personality can not quite release their grip on the illusion of separateness and strive to maintain this separateness at all cost and through all manner of defense. We just can't quite accept that holding onto the ego will lead to the opposite of what we seek, which is the absence of suffering.

And the idea of dropping the ego seems suicidal, especially in our very deluded society. So we are trapped in a cage (our own very specially constructed even guided cage) pacing from end to end alternately embracing or rejecting the self and all its complex delusions. Feeling pleasure we are temporarily mollified, feeling pain we flee.

So to be free of the cage we have to be free from the self. Another way of saying this is to become the cage. If their are no frontiers, no separateness, then the cage is just an illusion. And this is something that science in its limited way is beginning to understand.

So to abandon the ego is to be free of the illusion of duality. The Buddhist have the idea of dependant arising. Nothing has any fundamental concrete identity because everything depends on everything else. Without this than not that. Reality exists because we think it exists. If there is no thinking, no perception or mind construct, than there can be no separate reality since duality is an illusion. What else is there? There is the "glue" that always was and will be without birth or death. We could replace the word "glue" with spirit or God or God realization or truth, whatever word that conveys essentially the mysterious and unknowable force that unifies and supports all phenomenon. This is the essence of Thich Nhat Hanh's idea of interbeing. There are fundamentally no boundaries.

So where does fear, in all of its related forms, come from? They all arise from the same place, they have the same origination, and that is mind which is the seat of dualitstic thinking. And according to Buddhist philosophy, dualism is an illusion. If one could eliminate dualistic thinking then fear would be replaced with liberation. 

Heart Sutra (in English)

The Heart Sutra was given by the Buddha to explain the nature of reality. It might take a little study to really get at the deeper meaning and significance. You can find a pretty good explanation of the Heart Sutra here. 

Folding as a spiritual practice

 

We are just thawing from the mega snowstorm. I love being lovingly slowed down by so-called inclement weather. I see it as an opportunity to go inward for a moment without the normal pressure to be up and doing. Slowing down allows me to pay more attention to every activity and even to turn each activity in a meditation. This happened when I applied the Konmarie method of tidying up my clothes drawers. What a joy to very consciously pay attention to each article of clothing; almost to develop a relationship with each article. Being unhurried turns the activity into a opportunity for gratitude. It becomes possible to see deeply into not only the activity but also into every aspect of the fact that I have clothing; what exactly does it take for me to have this clothing. I can be grateful for the cotton farmer, the rain, the tractor drivers, the factory worker toiling away, etc. Now I have a different appreciation for the clothing as a result of seeing deeply into it. This is what Thich Naht Hanh means by Interbeing.

Buddhist Chant for Troubled Times (Gyuto Monks of Tibet)

Uncommon Conversations: Thich Nhat Hahn and Br. David Steindl-Rast

A lovely conversation between two who embodiment  peace and gratitude.

Rest Your Heart (Blue Cliff Monastery)

This type of artwork is the grandparent to the earliest movies, made and "cranked" by hand. Thank you to Tina Swift for making this happen and to Sarah Martin for the phenomenal song. Happy New Year, Everyone!
Lyrics:

REST YOUR HEART – by Sarah Martin

In a time with no beginning, swimming through the cosmic sea,

one day the darkness grew so lonely, she said, “My heart feels so heavy.”

And her sister, the light, was listening. She said, “My dear, come lean on me,

for we are the heartbeat of the cosmos, and together we are free.

[CHORUS:] “So come and lean on me. Rest your heart with me.

We are not one without the other. Don't be afraid to lean on me.”


There is a tree deep in the forest. She has a heart like you and me.

One day she felt the greatest sadness. She said, “My heart feels so heavy.”

And deep below her, the bedrock was listening, and she said, “Please lean down on me,

for I am resting on the cosmos, that's why my heart is so strong and free.” [CHORUS]


One night, a deer came wandering into the forest dark and deep.

She had traveled weary miles, and her heart cried out for sleep.

Then a voice came out of the silence. It said, “My dear, come lean on me,

for I am resting on the bedrock, that's why my heartwood is strong and free.” [CHORUS]


A mother came into the forest carrying her baby, fast asleep.

The night was cold and she was weary, and her heart began to weep.

And then she heard a whisper in the darkness, so gentle and so sweet.

It said, “Dear Mother, come lean against me, and we can share each other's heat.

For this old tree is strong and steady, and I'm as cozy as we can be.

We are not one without the other. Don't be afraid to lean on me.” [CHORUS]


The little baby, his eyes came open, there in the darkness, there in the wild.

He could feel the warmth around him, he could feel his mother's smile.

And he said to all the beings in the cosmos, “Well, you can come and lean on me,

for I am leaning on my mother who is resting with the deer against this tree.

And we are all leaning on the bedrock on the cosmos, a mystery.

We are all leaning on each other. Don't be afraid to lean on me.” [CHORUS (2x)]

We are not one without the other. Don't be afraid to lean on me.

• Category

  • People & Blogs

• License

  • Standard YouTube License

ALL COMMENTS (4)

A Sober Heart

Ajahn Chah recorded the following talk at the request of one of his students, whose mother was on her deathbed. The student had expected no more than a few words for his mother, but instead Ajahn Chah offered an extended message of consolation, encouragement, and meditation instruction for the mother and the whole family.

Now, Grandma, set your heart on listening respectfully to the dhamma, which is the teaching of the Buddha. While I’m teaching you the dhamma, be as attentive as if the Buddha himself were sitting right in front of you. Close your eyes and set your heart on making your mind one. Bring the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha into your heart as a way of showing the Buddha respect.

Today I haven’t brought you a gift of any substance, aside from the dhamma of the Buddha. This is my last gift to you, so please accept it.

You should understand that even the Buddha—with all his virtues and perfections—couldn’t avoid the weakening that comes with aging. When he reached the age you are, he let go. He let go of the fabrications of life.

“Letting go” means that he put these things down. Don’t carry them around. Don’t weigh yourself down. Accept the truth about the fabrications of the body, whatever they may be: You’ve relied on them since you were born, but now it’s enough. Now that they’re old, they’re like the utensils in your home—the cups, the saucers, and the plates—that you’ve held onto all these years. When you first got them they were bright and clean, but now they’re wearing out. Some of them are broken, some of them are lost, while the ones remaining have all changed. They haven’t stayed the same. That’s just the way things are.

The same holds true with the parts of your body. From the time of birth and on through your childhood and youth, they kept changing. Now they’re called “old.” So accept the fact. The Buddha taught that fabrications aren’t us, they aren’t ours, whether they’re inside the body or out. They keep changing in this way. Contemplate this until it’s clear.

You’ve been alive for a long time now, haven’t you? Your eyes have had the chance to see all kinds of shapes, colors, and lights. The same with your other senses. Your ears have heard lots of sounds, all kinds of sounds—but they were no big deal. You’ve tasted really delicious foods—but they were no big deal. The beautiful things you’ve seen: they were no big deal. The ugly things you’ve seen: they were no big deal. The alluring things you’ve heard were no big deal. The ugly and offensive things you’ve heard were no big deal.

The Buddha thus taught that whether you’re rich or poor, a child or an adult—even if you’re an animal or anyone born in this world—there’s nothing in this world that’s lasting. Everything has to change in line with its condition. The truth of these conditions—if you try to fix them in a way that’s not right— won’t respond at all. But there is a way to fix things. The Buddha taught us to contemplate this body and mind to see that they aren’t us, they aren’t ours, they’re just suppositions.

For example, this house of yours: It’s only a supposition that it’s yours. You can’t take it with you. All the belongings that you suppose to be yours are just an affair of supposition. They stay right where they are. You can’t take them with you. The children and grandchildren that you suppose to be yours are just an affair of supposition. They stay right where they are.

And this isn’t just true for you. This is the way things are all over the world. Even the Buddha was this way. Even his enlightened disciples were this way. But they differed from us. In what way did they differ? They accepted this. They accepted the fact that the fabrications of the body are this way by their very nature. They can’t be any other way.

This is why the Buddha taught us to contemplate this body from the soles of the feet on up to the top of the head, and from the top of the head on down to the soles of the feet. These are the parts of your body. So look to see what all is there. Is there anything clean? Anything of any substance? These things keep wearing down with time. The Buddha taught us to see that these fabrications aren’t us. They aren’t ours. They’re just the way they are. What other way would you have them be? If you’re suffering from this, then your thinking is wrong. When things are right but you see them wrong, it throws an obstacle across your heart.

The Buddha looked at things in line with their conditions, that they simply have to be that way. So we let them go, we leave them be. Take your awareness as your refuge. Meditate on the word buddho, buddho [the Pali term for “awake”]. Even though you’re really tired, put your mind with the breath. Take a good long out-breath. Take a good long in-breath. Take another good long out-breath. Focus your mind again if you wander off. Focus on the breath:buddho, buddho.

The more tired you feel, the more refined your focus on the breath must be every time. Why? So that you can contend with pain. When you feel tired, stop all your thoughts. Don’t think of anything at all. Focus the mind in at the mind, and then keep the mind with the breath:buddho, buddho. Let go of everything outside. Don’t get fastened on your children. Don’t get fastened on your grandchildren. Don’t get fastened on anything at all. Let go. Let the mind be one. Just be aware at the breath. You don’t have to be aware of anything else. Keep making your awareness more and more refined until it feels very small but extremely awake. 

The pains that have arisen will gradually grow calm. Ultimately, we watch the breath in the same way that, when relatives have come to visit us, we see them off at the boat dock or the bus station. Once the motor starts, the boat goes whizzing right off. We watch them until they’re gone, and then we return to our home.

We watch the breath in the same way. We get acquainted with coarse breathing. We get acquainted with refined breathing. As the breathing gets more and more refined, we see it off. It gets smaller and smaller, but we make our mind more and more awake. We keep watching the breath get more and more refined until there’s no more breath. There’s just awareness, wide awake.

Let go of everything, leaving just this singular awareness. But don’t get deluded, okay? Don’t lose track. If a vision or a voice arises in the mind, let it go. Leave it be. You don’t need to take hold of anything at all. Just take hold of the awareness. Don’t worry about the future; don’t worry about the past. Stay right here. Ultimately you get so that you can’t say that you’re going forward, you can’t say that you’re going back, you can’t say that you’re staying in place. There’s nothing to be attached to. Why? Because there’s no self there, no you, no yours. It’s all gone.

This is your duty right now, yours alone. Try to enter into the dhamma in this way. This is the path for gaining release from the round of wandering-on. Try to let go, to understand, to set your heart on investigating this.

Don’t be worried about this person or that. Your children, your grandchildren, your relatives, everybody: Don’t be worried about them. Right now they’re fine. In the future they’ll be just like this, like you are right now. Nobody stays on in this world. That’s the way it has to be. This is a condition, a truth, that the Buddha taught.

If any preoccupation comes in to bother the mind, just say in your heart, “Leave me alone. Don’t bother me. You’re no affair of mine.” If any critical thoughts come up—fear for your life, fear that you’ll die, thinking of this person, thinking of that person—just say in your heart, “Don’t bother me. You’re no affair of mine.”

What’s the world? The world is any preoccupation that gets you stirred up, that disturbs you right now. “How is that person going to be? How is this person going to be? When I die, will anyone look after them?” All of this is the world. Whatever we think up—fear of death, fear of aging, fear of illness, whatever the fear—it’s all world. Drop the world—it’s just world. That’s the way the world is. If it arises in the mind, make yourself understand: The world is nothing but a preoccupation. Preoccupations obscure the mind so that it can’t see itself.

If you think that you’d like to keep on living a long time, it makes you suffer. If you think that you’d like to die right now and get it all over with, that’s not the right way either, you know. It makes you suffer, too, because fabrications aren’t yours. You can fix them up a little bit, as when you fix up the body to make it look pretty or clean. That’s the way it is with fabrications. The only thing you can fix is your heart and mind.

This house you’re living in: You and your husband built it. Other people can build houses, too, making them large and lovely. Those are outer homes, which anyone can build. The Buddha called them outer homes, not your real home. They’re homes only in name.

Homes in the world have to fall in line with the way of the world. Some of us forget. We get a big home and enjoy living in it, but we forget our real home. Where is our real home? It’s in the sense of peace. Our real home is peace.

This home you live in here—and this applies to every home—is lovely, but it’s not very peaceful. First this, then that; you’re worried about this, you’re worried about that. This isn’t your real home. It’s not your inner home. It’s an outer home. Someday soon you’ll have to leave it. You won’t be able to live here anymore. It’s a worldly home, not yours.

So you have to understand that everybody, all the way down to ants and termites and all the other little animals, is trying to run away. There’s no one who can stay here. Living things stay for a while and then they all go: rich people, poor people, children, old people, even animals. They all keep changing.

When you sense that the world is like this, you see that it’s disenchanting. There’s nothing that’s really you or yours. You’re disenchanted—nibbida. Disenchantment isn’t disgust, you know. It’s just the heart sobering up. The heart has seen the truth of the way things are: There’s no way you can fix them. They’re just the way they are. You let them go. You let go without gladness. You let go without sadness. You just let things go as fabrications, seeing with your own discernment that that’s the way fabrications are.

The important point is that the Buddha has us build a home for ourselves, to build a home in the way I’ve described to you. Build a home so you can let go, so that you can leave things be. Let the mind reach peace. Peace is something that doesn’t move forward, doesn’t move back, doesn’t stay in place. It’s peace in that it’s free from going forward, free from moving back, free from staying in place.

Pleasure isn’t a place for you to stay. Pain isn’t a place for you to stay. Pain wears away. Pleasure wears away. Our foremost Teacher said that all fabrications are inconstant. So when we reach this last stage in life, he tells us to let go and leave things be. We can’t take them with us. We’ll have to let them go anyhow, so wouldn’t it be better to let them go beforehand? If we carry them around, they weigh us down. When we sense that they weigh us down, we won’t carry them around. Let your children and grandchildren look after you, while you can rest at your ease.

Today I’ve brought you some dhamma as a gift in your time of illness. I don’t have any other gift to give. There’s no need to bring you any material gift, for you have plenty of material things in your house, and over time they just cause you difficulties. So I’ve brought you some dhamma, something of substance that will never run out. Now that you’ve heard this dhamma, you can pass it on to any number of other people, and it’ll never run out. It’ll never stop. It’s the truth of the dhamma, a truth that always stays as it is.

Venerable Ajahn Chah Subhaddo (1918–1992), a teacher in the Thai forest tradition, founded several monasteries, including Wat Pah Nanachat in Thailand and Cittaviveka in England. This talk is reprinted with permission of the Sangha at Wat Pah Nanachat, Ubon Rajathani, Thailand and Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery, Redwood Valley, California. Translated from the Thai by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. This is an abridged version; to read the talk in its entirety, visit accesstoinsight.org.

Image: Faro-8, Algarve, Portugal, 2010. From the series Still Life: Between the Living and the Dead by Robert Richfield/ Alan Klotz gallery NYC.

Everyone as Dear

Jeffrey Hopkins explains the Buddhist logic of embracing our enemies as our friends.

Jeffrey Hopkins

So how should we view sentient beings? If they have all been in every possible relationship with us from time without beginning (and time has no beginning in Buddhism), should we consider them to be enemies? Everyone has indeed been the enemy—the person who wants me to trip, fall down the stairs, break a leg. My first teacher, Geshe Wangyal, said that one problem with this outlook would be that you’d have to go out and kill everybody.

Difficult to do. Everyone has also been neutral, like the many people we pass on the streets; we may even know some faces, but we don’t have any open relationship with them. They are just people working here or there; we may see them often, but there is neither desire nor hatred. Should we consider them to be neutral? Or should we consider these people to be friends?

The answer given by popular early twentieth-century Tibetan lama Pabongka is provocative. It is not an abstract principle, but refers to common experience. To render it in my own words: If your close friend became crazed and attacked you with a knife, you would attempt to relieve him of the knife and get his mind back in its natural state; you would use the appropriate means to take the knife, but you wouldn’t then kick him in the head.

Pabongka himself uses the example of one’s own mother: If your mother became crazed and attacked you with a knife, you would relieve her of the knife. You would not then proceed to beat her up. That’s his appeal: Once there’s a profoundly close relationship, the close relationship predominates. Why is a friend acting so terribly? Why is she turning against you and attacking you? It’s due to a counterproductive attitude—a distortion—in the person’s mind.

Indeed, if your own best friend went mad and came at you with a knife to kill you, what would you do? You would seek to disarm your friend, but then you would not proceed to beat the person, would you? You would disarm the attacker in whatever way you could—you might even have to hit the person in order to disarm him, but once you had managed to disarm him, you would not go on to hurt him. Why? Because he is close to you. If you felt that everyone in the whole universe was in the same relationship to you as your very best friend, and if you saw anyone who attacked you as your best friend gone mad, you would not respond with hatred. You would respond with behavior that was appropriate, but you would not be seeking to retaliate and harm the person out of hatred.

He would be too dear to you.

Therefore, in teaching compassion, Buddhists do not choose a neutral person as the example of all sentient beings; they choose the strongest of all examples, their best friend. Your feeling for that person is the feeling you should ideally have for every sentient being. You cannot go up to the police officer on the corner and hug her. But you can, inwardly, value her, as well as all sentient beings, as your best friend.

So if everyone in the past has been close, then there is good reason that closeness should predominate. And this becomes a reason—in addition to the similarity between oneself and others—for meditatively cultivating love and compassion, rather than hatred and distance, with respect to everyone. It is not sufficient merely to see that sentient beings are suffering. You must also develop a sense of closeness with them, a sense that they are dear. With that combination—seeing that people suffer and thinking of them as dear—you can develop compassion. So, after meditatively transforming your attitude toward friends, enemies, and neutral persons such that you have gained progress in becoming even-minded toward all of them, the next step is to meditate on everyone as friends, to feel that they have been profoundly close.

In meditation, take individual persons to mind, starting with your friends. Reflect on how close your best friend is—recognize your attitude, for example, when your friend needs your concern, like when she’s ill. This is an appeal to common experience—to how we already naturally react to close friends. Then, in meditation, extend this feeling to more beings.

First you need to recognize people as having been friend, enemy, and neutral person countless times over countless lifetimes— or at least you can’t say that there isn’t anyone who hasn’t been a friend, or you can’t say there isn’t anyone who hasn’t been an enemy, or you can’t say with surety that there’s anyone who hasn’t been neutral. Once you recognize this, it’s possible to begin to recognize everyone as friends.

To consider ourselves dear we usually do not have to enter into meditation. We cherish ourselves greatly. When we see ourselves suffering, we have no problem in wishing to escape that suffering. The problem lies in not cherishing others. The ability to cherish others has to be cultivated. In meditation:

1. Visualize someone you like very much and then superimpose the image of someone toward whom you are neutral. Alternate between the two images until you value the person toward whom you are neutral as much as the friend.

2. Then superimpose, in succession, the images of a number of people toward whom you are neutral, until you value each of them as much as the greatest of friends.

3. When you have developed facility with those two steps, it is possible to extend the meditation to enemies.

For me, it’s much more disruptive to think about my friends as having been enemies than it is to think about my enemies as having been friends. No matter how difficult it is to think of a hated enemy as having been a close friend in a recent lifetime, it’s more disruptive to think of my close friend as having been an enemy. With regard to neutral people, it’s shocking, a whole new perspective, to think, “Just two lifetimes ago, we were very close friends, and now by the force of our own actions we don’t even know each other, don’t even care about each other, we neglect each other, we’re indifferent.”

Is it convincing to base subsequent practices on this notion of cross-positioning over the course of lives? I think it is, but success in changing attitudes certainly isn’t easy to achieve, since it depends on either a belief in rebirth or a willingness to play out the rebirth perspective. Nevertheless, both of these provide a strong foundation, whereas if the appeal were to an abstract principle or because Buddha said so, it would be all right for a day or two but would not be profoundly moving.

The other approach—that doesn’t rely on rebirth—is merely that we’re all equal in wanting happiness and not wanting suffering. And if it’s worthwhile for me to gain happiness, then it’s worthwhile for everyone else to gain happiness. Noticing this similarity makes us close. The late-fourteenth-century yogi-scholar Tsongkhapa says that in order to generate compassion, it is necessary to understand how beings suffer and to have a sense of closeness to them. He says that otherwise, when you understand how they suffer, you’ll take delight in it. For example, so-and-so enemy just got liver disease, and you think, “Good riddance. She’s getting what she deserves.”

Thus, in order to care for other beings, it’s not sufficient merely to know that they suffer, because knowledge that a person is suffering this way might make you happy, especially if that person is an enemy. “May this person be run over.” We all have such thoughts due to a lack of intimacy. Not only must we know the depths of their suffering, but they must be dear to us.

In short, for compassion to develop toward a wide range of persons, mere knowledge of how beings suffer is not sufficient; there has to be a sense of closeness with regard to every being. That intimacy is established either through merely reflecting that everyone equally wants happiness and doesn’t want suffering, or through reflecting on the implications of rebirth, or both, with the one reinforcing the other. Both techniques rely on noticing our own common experience and extending its implications to others. ▼

Jeffrey Hopkins served for a decade as the interpreter to the Dalai Lama. He is Professor of Tibetan and Buddhist Studies at the University of Virginia. From Cultivating Compassion, © 2001 by Jeffrey Hopkins. Reprinted with permission of Broadway Books.

Healing Ecology

This article from the Tricycle Wisdom series by David R. Loy addresses the collective dukka (suffering) that comes from separating our own well-being from the well-being of the whole of creation, in other words, from our dualistic perspective. In an attempt to reinforce our individual sense of self through the use of increasingly sophisticated technology, we unwittingly reinforce our own anxiety because such attempts are ultimately futile since we are not separate. Dr. Loy argues that embracing our collective natures and seeing ourselves as a part of the entire natural system is the only way to heal both ourselves and the earth.

As a complex religious tradition, or group of traditions, Buddhism has a lot to say about the natural world. Passages in many Buddhist texts reveal sensitivity to the beauties of nature and respect for its various beings. A good example is the Jataka tales (“birth stories”) that describe the previous lives of the Buddha before he became the Buddha. In many of them he is born as an animal, and in some of the best-known tales the Buddha sacrifices himself for “lower animals,” such as offering his rabbit body to a weak tigress so that she can feed her starving cubs. Such fables challenge the duality usually assumed between humans and “nature”— as if we were not part of nature! They suggest that the welfare of every living being, no matter how insignificant it may seem to us, is spiritually important and deserving of our concern. All beings in the Jatakas are able to feel compassion for others and act selflessly to help ease their suffering. In contrast to a Darwinian “survival of the fittest,” which is often used to justify our abuse of other species, its stories offer a vision of life in which we are all interconnected, parts of the same web of life, and therefore also inter-responsible, responsible for each other.

This compassion is not limited to the animal realm. If we can believe the traditional biographies, the Buddha was born under trees, meditated under trees, experienced his great awakening under trees, often taught under trees, and passed away under trees. Unsurprisingly, he often expressed his gratitude to trees and other plants. Some later Buddhist texts explicitly deny that plants have sentience, but the Pali Canon is more ambiguous. In one sutra, a tree spirit appears to the Buddha in a dream, complaining that its tree had been chopped down by a monk. The next morning the Buddha prohibited sangha members from cutting down trees. Monks and nuns are still forbidden to cut off tree limbs, pick flowers, even pluck green leaves off plants.

Yet great sensitivity to nature is hardly unique to Buddhism. So what special perspective, if any, does Buddhism offer to our understanding of the biosphere, and our relationship to it, at this critical time in history when we are doing our utmost to destroy it?

To answer that question, we have to go back to a more basic question: what is really distinctive about Buddhism? The four noble (or “ennobling”) truths are all about dukkha, and the Buddha emphasized that his only concern was ending dukkha. To end our dukkha, however, we need to understand and experience anatta, our lack of self, which seen from the other side is also our interdependence with all other things.

There are different ways to explain anatta, yet fundamentally it denies our separation from other people and from the rest of the natural world. The psychosocial construction of a separate self in here is at the same time the construction of an “other” out there, that which is different from me. What is special about the Buddhist perspective is its emphasis on the dukkha built into this situation. Basically, the self is dukkha.

One way to express the problem is that the sense of self, being a construct, is always insecure, because inherently ungrounded. It can never secure itself, because there is no-thing that could be secured. The self is more like a process, or a function. The problem with processes, however, is that they are always temporal, necessarily impermanent—but we don’t want to be impermanent, something that is changing all the time. We want to be real! So we keep trying to ground ourselves, often in ways that just make our situation worse. For Buddhism the only true solution lies in realizing our nonduality with “others” and understanding that our own well-being cannot be distinguished from their well-being.

Does this basic insight about the intimate connection between sense of self and dukkha also apply to the sense of separation between ourselves and others? The issue here is whether “separate self = dukkha” also holds true for our biggest collective sense of self: the duality between us as a species, Homo sapiens, and the rest of the biosphere.

If this particular parallel between individual and collective selves holds, there are two important implications. First, our collective sense of separation from the natural world must also be a constant source of collective frustration for us. Secondly, our responses to that alienation, by trying to make our collective species-self more real—in this case, by attempting to secure or “self-ground” ourselves technologically and economically—are actually making things worse.

Western civilization developed out of the interaction between Judeo-Christianity and the culture of classical Greece. Greek culture emphasized our uniqueness by distinguishing the conventions of human society (culture, technology, and so on) from the rhythms of the natural world. What is important about this distinction is the realization that whatever is social convention can be changed: we can reconstruct our own societies and attempt to determine our own collective destiny.

Today we take that insight for granted, yet it’s not something that most premodern, traditionally conservative societies would have understood. Without our sense of historical development, they have usually accepted their own social conventions as inevitable because also natural. This often served to justify social arrangements that we now view as unjust, but there is nevertheless a psychological benefit in thinking that way: such societies shared a collective sense of meaning that we have lost today. For them, the meaning of their lives was built into the cosmos and revealed by their religion, which they took for granted. For us, in contrast, the meaning of our lives and our societies has become something that we have to determine for ourselves in a universe whose meaningfulness (if any) is no longer obvious. Even if we choose to be religious, we today must decide between various religious possibilities, which diminishes the spiritual security that religions have traditionally provided. While we have a freedom that premodern societies did not have, we lack their kind of “social security,” which is the basic psychological comfort that comes from knowing one’s place and role in the world.

In other words, part of the rich cultural legacy that the Greeks bequeathed the West—for better and worse—is an increasing anxiety about who we are and what it means to be human. There is a basic tension between such freedom (we decide what to value and what to do) and security (being grounded in something greater, which is taking care of us), and we want both. As soon as one of them is emphasized, we want more of the other. In general, however, the modern history of the West is a story of increasing freedom at the cost of decreasing security, in the sense that loss of faith in God has left us rudderless. Thanks to ever more powerful technologies, it seems like we can accomplish almost anything we want to do—yet we don’t know what our role is. That continues to be a source of great anxiety, not only for us individually but collectively. What sort of world do we want to live in? What kind of society should we have? If we can’t depend on God to tell us, we are thrown back upon ourselves, and our lack of any grounding greater than ourselves is a profound source of suffering. This helps us to understand why our collective sense of separation from the natural world is a continual source of frustration. The stronger our alienation from nature, the greater our anxiety.

This brings us to the second implication mentioned earlier: our collective response to this collective dukkha is just making things worse. First, let’s remember how things go wrong individually. We usually respond to the delusion of a separate self by trying to make that sense of self more real—which doesn’t work and can’t work, since there is no such self that can be isolated from its relationships with others. Since we don’t realize this, we tend to get caught up in vicious circles. I never have enough money or power; I’m never famous enough, attractive enough.

When we think about our collective response from this perspective, I think the motivation becomes clear. Lacking the security that comes from knowing one’s place and role in the cosmos, we have been trying to create our own security. Technology, in particular, is our collective attempt to control the conditions of our existence on this earth. We have been trying to remold the earth so that it is completely adapted to serve our purposes, until everything becomes subject to our will, a “resource” that we can use. Ironically, though, this hasn’t been providing the sense of security and meaning that we seek. We have become more anxious, not less. That’s because technology can be a great means, but in itself it’s a poor goal.

Sooner or later, one way or another, we will bump up against the limits of this compulsive but doomed project of endless growth. Since our increasing reliance on technology as the solution to life’s problems is itself a large part of the problem, the ecological crisis does not call for a primarily technological response. Dependence on sophisticated, ever more powerful technologies tends to aggravate our sense of separation from the natural world, whereas any successful solution must involve accepting that we are part of the natural world. That, of course, also means embracing our responsibility for the well-being of the biosphere, because its well-being ultimately cannot be distinguished from our own well-being.

The solution does not lie in “returning to nature.” We cannot return to nature, because we have never left it. That way of describing the natural world is dualistic; it dichotomizes between us and where we are located. The environment is not merely the place where we live and act, for the biosphere is the ground from which and within which we arise. The earth is not only our home, it is our mother. In fact, our relationship is even more intimate, because we can never cut the umbilical cord. The air in my lungs, like the water and food that pass through my mouth, is part of a great system that does not stop with me but continually circulates through me. My life is a dissipative process that depends upon and contributes to that never-ending circulation. Eventually I too will be food for worms.

Any genuine solution to the ecological crisis must involve something more than technological improvements. If the root of the problem is spiritual, the solution must also have a spiritual dimension. And again, this does not mean a return to premodern religious conviction, which is impossible for us today. Buddhism shows another way, which de-emphasizes the role of dogma and ritual. The Buddhist approach is quite pragmatic. The goal of the Buddhist path is wisdom in service of personal and social transformation. When we meditate, for example, we are not transforming ourselves. We are being transformed. Quiet, focused concentration enables something else to work in us and through us, something other than one’s usual ego-self. This opens us up and liberates a deeper grounding within ourselves. Our lack of self is what enables this process; it frees us from the compulsion to secure ourselves within the world. We do not need to become more real by becoming wealthy, or famous, or powerful, or beautiful. We are able to realize our nonduality with the world because we are freed from such fixations.

Although living beings are numberless, the bodhisattva vows to save them all. He or she assumes the grandest possible role, on a path that can never come to an end. Although such a commitment is not compulsory, it follows naturally from realizing that none of those beings is separate from oneself. We discover the meaning we seek in the ongoing, long-term task of repairing the rupture between us and Mother Earth, our natural ground. That healing will transform us as much as the biosphere.

David R. Loy is a professor, writer, and Zen teacher in the Sanbo kyodan tradition of Japanese Zen Buddhism. His books include A Great Awakening: Buddhist Social Theory andThe World is Made of Stories. This article was adapted from Money, Sex, War, Karma: Notes for a Buddhist Revolution by David R. Loy © 2008. Reprinted with permission of Wisdom Publications, wisdompubs.org.

Image: The Starving Tigress, Buryatia, 1800-1899. Buddhist lineage, ground mineral pigment on cotton. Collection of Buryat Historical Museum.

Letting Go, Letting Love

After the Ecstasy

An excerpt from Jack Kornfield's forthcoming book

Ajahn Buddhadasa, whose monastery spread across a great forest of the Malay Peninsula, invited his students to sit with him in the coolness of the trees. Then he made a point of directing his students to look for Nirvana in the simplest ways, in everyday moments. “Nirvana,” he would say, “is the coolness of letting go, the inherent delight of experience when there is no grasping or resistance to life.”

Anyone can see that if grasping and aversion were with us all day and night without ceasing, who could ever stand them? Under that condition, living things would either die or become insane. Instead, we survive because there are natural periods of coolness, of wholeness, and ease. In fact, they last longer than the fires of our grasping and fear. It is this that sustains us. We have periods of rest making us refreshed, alive, well. Why don't we feel thankful for this everyday Nirvana?

We already know how to let go—we do it every night when we go to sleep, and that letting go, like a good night's sleep, is delicious. Opening in this way, we can live in the reality of our wholeness. A little letting go brings us a little peace, a greater letting go brings us a greater peace. Entering the gateless gate, we begin to treasure the moments of wholeness. We begin to trust the natural rhythm of the world, just as we trust our own sleep and how our own breath breathes itself.

On a retreat, a healer and psychologist who had devoted fifteen years to spiritual practice was struggling yet again with the question of relationships. Feelings of longing and craving and blame kept coming up again and again. We talked and I suggested he spend some days directing a lovingkindness meditation toward himself. At first he resisted; like so many of us, he felt uncomfortable focusing on himself. It was awkward to offer the intention of love and kindness to himself over and over for days. But as the retreat went on, his heart softened. Forgiveness for himself and others arose. The world began to look more beautiful. And then came a realization:

It is I who must love myself. No one else can make me feel whole. Only I can provide that love. Now I know that wholeness is always accessible to me and all beings everywhere. This knowing allows me to live with a new peacefulness and kindness to myself and others. In the simplest way, it has changed my whole life.

Again, the lesson of spiritual practice is not about gaining knowledge, but about how we love. Are we able to love what is given to us, to love in the midst of all things, to love ourselves and others? Are we able to see the illumination offered by the sun every morning? If we cannot, what must we do in the body, heart, and mind to allow us to open ourselves, to let go, to rest in our natural perfection? The gate is open, what we seek is just in front of us. It is so today and every day.

Meditation teacher Larry Rosenberg went to practice with Zen Master Seung Sahn in Korea. During the journey he undertook a pilgrimage to other masters and temples, and while traveling on a remote road he came across a particularly elegant Buddhist shrine, or stupa, at the base of a mountain. Next to it was a sign, “Way to the Most Beautiful Buddha in All of Korea,” and an arrow pointing to the thousand-step path up the mountain. Larry decided to climb, hiking up the steps until he reached the top. The view was breathtaking in every direction. The simple Zen stone pagoda matched the elegance of the one below. But in place of the Buddha on the altar there was nothing, only empty space and the gorgeous green-hilled vista below. When he went closer, at the empty altar was a plaque that read, “If you can't see the Buddha here, you had better go down and practice some more.”

From After the Ecstasy, The Laundry: How the Heart Grows Wise on the Spiritual Path by Jack Kornfield Copyright (c) Jack Kornfield. To be published in June 2000 by Bantam Books, an imprint of the Bantam Dell Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.

Our True Nature

Whatever our lives are like, our buddha nature is always there. And it is always perfect. We say that not even the buddhas can improve it in their infinite wisdom, nor can sentient beings spoil it in their seemingly infinite confusion.

Our true nature could be compared to the sky, and the confusion of the ordinary mind to clouds. Some days the sky is completely obscured by clouds. When we are down on the ground, looking up, it is very difficult to believe that there is anything else there but clouds. Yet we have only to fly in a plane to discover above the clouds a limitless expanse of clear blue sky. From up there, the clouds we assumed were everything seem so small and so far away down below.

We should always try to remember: The clouds are not the sky and do not “belong” to it. They only hang there and pass by in their slightly ridiculous and nondependent fashion. And they can never stain or mark the sky in any way.

(From the blog The Masculine Heart.)

~ Sogyal Rinpoche

Self-protective clinging

Shedding Self-Protective Clinging

Too often Buddhist 'nonattachment' is misconstrued as 'non-loving.' The purpose of Buddhist practice is not to 'renounce' our families or community, but to shed habits of self-protective clinging that prevent us from loving them more unconditionally, powerfully, enjoyably.

- Lama John Makransky, "Family Practice"

In my own life I can certainly attest to the very negative effects of clinging to certain ideas thus inevitably inviting  considerable suffering. Letting go of these ideas, though they have a negative overall influence in one's life, can feel a bit like jumping out of the ship into the unknown depths. Such abandoning of familiar surroundings can seem quite counter intuitive almost like committing a kind of personal suicide. The truth is, it is a kind of personal suicide; a suicide of ego. The ego has a certain set of expectations concerning reality and how one fits into that reality. In fact though, the reality we cling to sometimes so desperately is only a construct of our minds seeking to make sense of such an impermanent situation. The ego is doomed to utterly disappear and this creates clinging, though of course we know the clinging is pointless in the end. There is no way to claw ourselves back on to solid ground. 

I have recently had to jump ship in certain areas of my life because the ideas I had were causing me to suffer terribly. It became obvious that holding on to these ideas was going to bring about even more suffering and I felt that I needed to act in a way that might reverse that direction. It feels at times that I went about it in a very unskillful way. It feels at times that I made this decision to "jump ship" out of fear rather than courage. Certainly such actions do not bring about an immediate resolution to the emotional turmoil, but my hope is that new possibilities will manifest themselves where space has been created. 

Blinded by Views

The Buddha tells the following story in the Khuddaka Nikaya (Udana 6.4): Once upon a time in the city of Shravasti there lived a king. One day, the king instructed a servant to round up in one place a gathering of men who had been blind since birth. “The blind men have been assembled, your majesty,” said the man. The king further instructed him to introduce an elephant to this group of men, such that each could examine it for himself. “This, sir, is an elephant,” the servant said to each of the blind men in turn. But to the first he presented the head of the elephant, to the second, the ear, and so in turn to the rest of the blind men he presented the tusk, trunk, body, foot, backside, tail, and tuft of the tail. At this point the king approached the blind men and asked of each, “Tell me, sir, what is an elephant like?” Each answered according to his own experience, saying in turn that the elephant was like a water pot, a winnowing basket, a plowshare, a plow pole, a granary, a pillar, a mortar, a pestle, and a broom.




This much of the tale is generally well known. But how it ends, and the point the Buddha was making by telling this story, is less commonly recognized. We understand the point that any single thing might have multiple different components and perspectives, and that our understanding of any particular issue is going to be limited by the extent of our own direct experience. But in its original telling the story goes on to say that these nine blind men began quarrelling about the nature of the elephant, each one saying, “The elephant is like this, not like that,” and “The elephant is not like that, it is like this.” Eventually they came to blows and began striking one another with their fists. The king who had called them all together sat back and watched, we are told, with great amusement. The entire enterprise had been, from the start, a form of entertainment for the king.



The Buddha told this story in response to a conflict between many teachers of different traditions living in the same vicinity. Not only did they all have differing views, opinions, and beliefs, but they also depended upon these differing views for their livelihood. And it may not entirely surprise us to hear that “they lived arguing, quarreling, and disputing, stabbing each other with verbal daggers, saying, ‘The dhamma is like this, it’s not like that,’ and ‘The dhamma is not like that, it’s like this.’” Does any of this sound familiar?



What the king seemed to know is the extent to which views, beliefs, and opinions in human beings link directly to very primitive instincts for defending what belongs to oneself and attacking what is regarded as belonging to others. The whole enterprise of creating “belonging” as part of our construction of reality, along with the sense of “self” to which it all belongs, is perceived by the Buddha to be the root cause of the suffering we inflict upon ourselves and others. It is one thing to have a difference of opinion with someone else; it is something else entirely to have this difference become the basis for stoking the fires of greed, hatred, and delusion.



It is natural that most issues are complex, and that people will have different perspectives on them. It is also inevitable that most perspectives will derive from a limited range of experience and are unlikely to embrace the whole. It may be further understandable that people express their differences of opinion, engaging in mutual dialogue and debate. What is utterly unnecessary, the Buddha seems to be is saying here, is that such differences need to escalate to stabbing each other with verbal daggers, striking one another with fists, and worse. At that tipping point, something profoundly unhealthy happens, as primordial mechanisms of aggression and defense kick in. Once this happens, the original content of the dispute is lost and the impulses of the self take over: the need to establish oneself, defend oneself, aggrandize oneself, and generally attack and injure anything viewed as not in agreement with oneself.



The problem, as usual, is not with the content but with the process. So the solution is to be found not in what we believe, but in how we hold those beliefs. The solution to differing views is not some objective standard by means of which those with wrong views can simply learn what is true and change to right views. Such a reference point does not in fact exist in our postmodern world of diversity and the local construction of meaning. Rather, the key to harmony is learning to differ in opinions without engaging the fatal move of saying, “Only this is true; everything else is wrong.”



In the Canki Sutta (Majjhima Nikaya 95), the Buddha outlines some of the ways we gain knowledge: accepting it on faith, going along with what people generally approve, receiving a tradition that has been handed down through generations, working it out through reasoned argument, or accepting a view after careful reflection. He then goes on to say about each of these that regardless of what one believes, it may turn out to be “factual, true, and unmistaken,” or it may turn out to be “empty, hollow, and false.” Since one can seldom ever really be sure which is the case, truth is best served by recognizing a viewpoint as only a viewpoint, and refraining from taking that extra step of regarding it as true to the exclusion of all other views. In other words, all views—even correct views—are best held gently, rather than grasped firmly.



The point of the story is not just that most things have multiple different perspectives, but the absurdity of being attached to only one viewpoint and the harm that can ensue when one does so. So by all means let’s disagree on things, and even, if need be, let’s do so vociferously. But let’s also try not to take it all personally. That’s when the fists start flying.



Andrew Olendzki, Ph.D., is the executive director and senior scholar at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, in Barre, Massachusetts, and the editor of Insight Journal. He is the author of Unlimiting Mind.

Bits of Rubble

Within boundless compassion, everyone is number one! 

BUDDHISM IS A PATH of supreme optimism, for one of its basic tenets is that no human life or experience is to be wasted or forgotten, but all should be transformed into a source of wisdom and compassionate living. This is the connotation of the classical statement that sums up the goal of Buddhist life: "Transform delusion into enlightenment." On the everyday level of experience, Shin Buddhists speak of this transformation as "bits of rubble turn into gold."

This transformation expresses the boundless compassion, nonjudgmental and all-inclusive, that is the moving force in the Buddhist tradition. In this appraisal of life, abundant with the accumulated pain and sorrow of humanity, is also found the capacity of the human spirit to achieve its fullest potential through awakening to the working of boundless compassion deep within our life.

The Buddha's compassion is the basis for the parable of the four horses that he preached when he resided at the Kalandaka Grove. The first horse, he explained, runs swiftly the instant he sees the shadow of a whip. The next horse will run fast the moment his skin feels the whip. The third horse runs when the whip cuts into his flesh. The slowest horse will run only after repeated lashings.

The scripture uses the parable of the four horses in order to describe four kinds of people on the path of Buddhism. The first kind awakens and moves forward on the path of the Four Noble Truths the instant they hear about the sufferings caused by old age, illness, and death. The second kind moves when they actually see sufferings with their own eyes. The third kind is not affected by the sufferings of others, but when a family member experiences sufferings, they move forward on the path. And the fourth kind is not distressed at all by seeing old age, illness, and death in others or even among family members, but they are pushed forward on the path when they personally experience these sufferings.

The sympathy of the Buddha identifies with the slowest horse, this last group of people that includes most of us. But some of us do not easily awaken to the meaning of life's evanescence and unexpected tragedies, even if we personally experience them. When we finally do feel a need, it may be too late, because old age limits our physical and mental capacities, illness prohibits any sustained quest, and death obliterates everything. Such people are called foolish beings (bonbu).

Foolish beings, however, are the primary concern of Amida Buddha, and it is upon them that the flooding light of boundless compassion shines, eventually bringing about a radical transformation in life—”hopeless to hopeful, darkness to light, ignorance to enlightenment." This awareness of foolish beings is at the core of Japanese Buddhist life, regardless of school or denomination.

At a Shin temple in Japan, I once heard a teacher talk about his only son, who had had a terrible case of asthma since the time he was born. Hoping for a cure before the boy entered first grade so he could receive normal schooling, they moved to a warmer climate. The boy grew strong enough to enter primary school with his peers. One of the first major events in the Japanese school year is what is called Field Day, when students participate in a race according to their grade level.

Early in the morning of Field Day, the little boy went to school accompanied by his mother. As the father waited for their return home later that day, he could hear gleeful laughter and happy conversation coming from the two as they approached their home. Sensing their excitement, the father thought that his son must have done well in his race. As soon as the two entered the house, he called out to his son, asking, "Did you take first place in your race?" "No, Dad," the boy shouted, "I didn't come in first—I came in eighth!" "Oh," the father said, "And how many kids ran in your race?" "Eight!" the son shouted, clapping his hands.

The mother turned to the father with a big smile. "Isn't it wonderful that he could run just like the other children? He came in eighth place; he finished the race! Remember when he couldn't even run at all? This is cause for celebration! Our son is Number One!" With this story, the teacher reminded us that within boundless compassion each of us is Number One, whether in last place or not. In fact, it is the last-place finisher, the foolish being, who is first in the eyes of Amida Buddha.

From Shin Buddhism: Bits of Rubble Turn into Gold, © 2002 by Taitetsu Unno. Reprinted with permission of Doubleday.