Animals – Kadampa Life

Disney’s movie Chimpanzee ~ “There is meaning in those eyes.”

04/27/2012 By Luna Kadampa 9 Comments

I watched the movie Chimpanzee last night with my friends Anya and her two great kids, Zia (12) and Tom Tom (10). We wanted to see it before May 3rd as Disneynature are donating some of the profits this week to the Jane Goodall Institute.

(Spoiler alert: I knew the plot before I watched the movie and it made no difference, but you could always go see the movie first and then read this.)

Oscar is Isha’s child, and the early part of the movie shows his first years growing up under her doting care, learning how to smash nuts with the right tools and goofing around with his friends while she tries vainly to sleep. (Anya related to all these early scenes.) He looks so human, they all do. (Or we look like chimps.) His chest and rib cage looks like a little hairy boy’s chest and rib cage. His hands are like our hands. And his face is expressive, by turns curious, amused, playful, soulful.

When the film-makers started the movie, they didn’t know that his mother would be killed. But she is injured by the patriarch Scar and his army of chimpanzee rivals from over the Ridge in the rainforests of the Ivory Coast, in a raid on their nut grove. Isha becomes separated from her family, and is picked off by a leopard (this being Disney, the gruesome scenes are only hinted at.)

Oscar on his own in the movie Chimpanzee

Tiny Oscar looks for her everywhere. As the days go by, he becomes thinner and thinner, and covered with ticks because no one is grooming him. He tries to stick his little arm into a bees’ hive, but it isn’t long enough to reach the honey, and he just gets stung. He tugs at all the other mothers, asking for help, but they have infants of their own and growl him away. Even his friends are not playing with him like they used to. Oscar is alone.

At this point, I had read beforehand, the film-makers thought their movie was over. But then something extraordinary happens. The only person Oscar has not approached, and with good reason, is Freddy, the enormous gruff alpha male. When Oscar does finally pluck up the courage to approach, Freddy surprisingly lets him sit near him, and Oscar starts to watch and learn.

Oscar follows Freddy everywhere, and from his side Freddy develops more and more interest in Oscar, until he is giving him the choice portions of the food he finds and prepares. And then one day Freddy lets him ride on his back, something that a male chimp never does, and certainly not the Big Boss who has a reputation to maintain.

Oscar and Freddy in the movie Chimpanzee

The movie shows that over the coming days and weeks Freddy becomes devoted to Oscar. He grooms him, something usually reserved for those higher in the hierarchy, not the weakest member of the group who has nothing to offer in return; and he even lets Oscar sleep in his arms. He adopts Oscar, and Oscar is saved. The movie has a happy ending, thanks to love.

Life in that world is not easy, and there are no final happy endings in samsara. The rival gang of hungry chimps, seen off once thanks to Freddy’s teamwork, will be back. The chimps still have to hunt other monkeys for food — monkeys intelligent enough to realize they’ve been ambushed and that there is no escape from being ripped limb from limb (also hinted at, not shown.) The photography and scenery in the movie is spectacular, including scenes set in slow and fast motion, but beneath that seemingly enchanting cloud-wrapped canopy of trees lies a very traumatic world, none of whose inhabitants ever feels truly safe.

Spending over an hour in the company of chimps in this movie helps us see how similar to us they are in many ways – in terms of their wishes and fears, their maternal love, their cleverness at using tools to prepare food, the importance of teamwork to survival, their cultivated social relationships, their rivalry and violence, and their bodies. And Freddy’s unexpected reaction to Oscar, in particular, shows a remarkable, selfless love. No one could argue that this love is merely instinctive, because it does Freddy’s standing in the group no good when, preoccupied with Oscar, he is unable to cultivate his allies or patrol his borders. It works out okay for him as it happens, but he didn’t know this when he fell for the small bundle of love.

This movie is a good testimony to how animals can share with us the same emotions, feelings, ability to learn, sociability, and even self-awareness. They are in a lower realm, and they don’t have the opportunity to develop spiritually in this lifetime, but they have minds, they think and feel, and their Buddha nature is no different to ours. They are not mere bodies with instincts, devoid of sentience or thought, as many people claim in justification for treating them badly or as less than people.

“There is meaning in those eyes”

I saw an interview with some of the film-makers, who spent up to three years in the jungle with the chimps, and here are some of their remarks:

People watching this movie “can understand that the chimps’ potential and relationships are as watchable as a human drama.”

“Why did Freddy adopt Oscar? It was pure altruism. It was selfless looking after the young orphan where he hasn’t got an agenda.”

“When those eyes look out at you from a massive screen, there is meaning in those eyes, and we as human beings connect to them.”

“The chimps are very endangered, the rain forest is being cut down, they are part of the bush meat trade, living in fragmented patches of forest, threatened with extinction.”

“[The audience are] going to see that we are not the only beings with personalities and minds capable of thought.” ~ Jane Goodall.

By the way, for the parents amongst you, I can report that Tom Tom turned to us in the middle and whispered loudly, “I LOVE this movie!” Both kids pretended to be chimps after the auditorium emptied, running and jumping through the aisles, and even their own mother said she could not see that much difference between them and Oscar… ; – )

In Buddhism, person, being, self, and I are synonyms. Human beings are just one type of person. That has always made sense to me.

And my question to anyone who watches this and sees Oscar’s eyes is:

Who can believe that he is not a person?

Here are some interesting links to other chimpanzee and primate stories:

If only they could all be freed. Chimpanzees see sunlight for the first time in 30 years.

Are animals smarter than people?

Do monkeys wonder?

Filed Under: Animals, Love & compassion Tagged With: animals, Chimpanzee the movie, Disney movie Chimpanzee, Jane Goodall Institute, life, love, movies, Oscar the chimpanzee

The kindness of others — a pelican’s story

04/16/2012 By Luna Kadampa 4 Comments

Here is a short tale involving one pelican and five human beings — an illustration of a world working properly.

pelican found injured on Clearwater causeway

My friend was walking over the Clearwater bridge at dusk when a drunken man on a bicycle stopped her, almost toppling off as he waved an arc with his arm: “There ish a shick pelican by zhat biiig tree. Can ya do shumthing?” He knew he wanted that pelican saved, but he needed all his concentration just to stay on his bike. He’d picked the right person — my friend is a regular Gerald Durrell who used to collect animals and insects from the wild as a child in the dubious belief that they would be better off under her care and protection – ants, tortoises, rivetingly exciting cocoons.

As she was observing the large flapping bird to figure out what to do, another friend texted her about something and, hearing about the pelican, said she was driving right over. Pelly was by now trying to commit hari kiri by waddling out onto the busy highway so they parked the car between him and the highway, at which point he ducked under the car and they were stuck. Now my friend is the sort of person who swerves on her bike to avoid ants, oblivious of her own death and the impending pile-up behind her, so here she was out on the busy highway trying to push Pellyback the way he had come so at least he wouldn’t get squashed.

By now another compassionate motorist had stopped to help, and the three of them had to conclude that this was the not the way to go about the rescue. So the friends went home and picked up a large cardboard box, thick gloves, a blanket, and a flashlight. Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to pick up the closest thing we have to a pterodactyl when he doesn’t want to be picked up. The only advice they’d managed to garner from any animal welfare person on the phone was “Grab it by the beak”, which seemed a bit of a tall order. After an adventure in the darkening undergrowth, they did manage to throw the blanket over him, grab his beak, and put him in the box.

pelican at clearwater beach Kindness the Movie They drove to the well-known sea bird sanctuary in Indian Shores where, despite the late hour, a competent bird person was waiting. She picked Pelly up by his wings and his beak, making it look rather simple considering, and took him in for rehabilitation. He had been starving, but she managed to fix him.

In this way, at least five human beings were involved in the rescue of one bird, and everyone felt better for their part in it. There is nothing particularly remarkable about this tale. There are countless small, unnoticed acts of kindness like this all over the world every single day, and also countless huge acts of heroism.

Kindness, the Movie

Kindness the Movie Eva Ilona Brzeski

When human beings are functioning correctly, they are kind. Don’t you love hearing about kindness? People are much happier being kind than being cruel, even if our delusions (uncontrolled states of mind, such as pride or anger) don’t always let us be kind. Sometimes no humans will help rescue even another human, but that is when the world is not working properly.

A documentary film-maker and friend of mine, Eva Ilona Brzeski, is making a movie called: Kindness the Movie. She is searching for true stories of kindness to feature in the film. It is a really wonderful project because there is in fact a never-ending supply of stories about others’ kindness, if we look for them, and focusing on these increases our love and respect. Kindness helps not only the recipient but the donor, because it is in harmony with reality, the interconnection of all beings, and part of our pure Buddha nature.

If you would like to know more about the movie, click here.

Your turn: if you have any stories of kindness to share, please share them here, and/or send them to Eva.

Filed Under: Animals, Love & compassion Tagged With: animals, Buddhism, Kindness the Movie, love, pelican rescue, seabirds in Indian Rocks

What is Buddha’s enlightenment?

04/11/2012 By Luna Kadampa 8 Comments

This Sunday is another big holy(i)day for Kadampa Buddhists. April 15th marks the anniversary of Buddha Shakyamuni demonstrating the attainment of enlightenment in 589 B.C.E. I thought I’d take advantage of the opportunity to say something short and simple about what Buddha’s enlightenment means to me.

Buddha Shakyamuni, the historical Buddha

For sure, on Buddha’s Enlightenment Day, we remember the kindness of the historical Buddha, the one everyone has heard of, the one who started his life as Prince Siddhartha and became known as Buddha Shakyamuni. Without his appearing in our world to give teachings, there would be no Buddhism or Buddhist meditation in our lives today. You can read his inspiring life story in Introduction to Buddhism.

Also, Geshe Kelsang has just asked my good friend Olivier to produce the Life of Buddha as a qualified movie, and Olivier is asking for “Kadampas from all over the world.” Please see the end of this article if you’re interested.

Faith in our own potential

As a Buddhist, I have faith or confidence in the Founder of Buddhism, Buddha Shakyamuni — faith in his enlightened nature of universal compassion and omniscient wisdom, in his teachings, in his example. But effective faith in Buddha necessitates faith in our own enlightened potential. He only appeared in this world to teach us Buddhism because he knew we could all be just like him, that we already had within us the seeds of enlightenment. In fact, Buddha Shakyamuni is just one of countless Buddhas – those who have perfected their qualities until they cannot be perfected further, out of a compassion that yearns for the capacity to free every single living being from suffering.

The imperative to become enlightened

As I sit here with my dying cat Nelson, (whom I’ve had to join in the yard to write this as he wants to go outside in accordance with his feral upbringing,) there is an imperative to become enlightened for his sake. If every cat is as adorable as he is, which they are, if that is possible, which it is, then samsaric suffering is truly brutal, pervasive and heart-breaking. Nelson is only a year and a half old, but already has a tumor that is taking up half his little (runt of the litter) body. He hasn’t eaten in days, and each day drinks less, trundles around less, suffers more. Right now he is just lying here under the table, bravely and uncomplainingly accepting his fate, as animals seem to do so much better than us. He is still managing a faint purr when I reach down to stroke him.

What did Nelson do to deserve this? As a person, nothing. He is naturally pure, like all of us. His ignorance, his real enemy, drove him to engage in deluded actions that have led to this. He needs, like all of us, to purify his mind of suffering and all its causes (ignorance, delusions, and karma) so that he never has to take another samsaric rebirth again. How am I going to help him do that if I am just an ordinary person who cannot even speak the language of cats, or read his mind, or follow him from life to life? I love him and I want to protect him. I can perhaps give him some temporary love and protection for the days or weeks he remains with me here, but that is nowhere near enough. I cannot settle for that. I want to give him peace by blessing his mind all the time, and as soon as he is in a human body I want to show him how to end mistaken appearances and suffering once and for all. I want to set the example that Buddha Shakyamuni and many other great Buddhas and Bodhisattvas have set for me.

That is a lot for me to accomplish even for one small cat, so what about my other cat, also joining us here at the table for a spell, not in pain but still in a cat’s body? And what about the feral cat colony I discovered last month, one of whose members is the spitting image of Nelson, that live a mile down the road? And what about everybody else?!

Sadness won’t do it, although it can be an impetus. I need to attain enlightenment.

My teacher says in Modern Buddhism page 26:

Enlightenment is the inner light of wisdom that is permanently free from all mistaken appearance, and its function is to bestow mental peace on each and every living being every day.

That is what we need. And we need it fast.

That wish alone dissolves away my sadness and helplessness and leaves me blissful and energized. Compassion is bliss, according to Buddha’s Tantric teachings. One minute sad for Nelson, the next blissed out, that’s how it works. Nelson is purring in agreement. (I like to think of his purrs as him tuning into Buddha’s omniscient wisdom, enlightened mind, blessings.*) He would tell me, if he could, that he would far rather I be blissful than sad because I’m far better at helping him feel peaceful if I am feeling that way myself. Our mental states are catching. Blessings are contagious.

Is bodhichitta pie in the sky?

Someone commented on this article, How would you save this bear?, about a month ago:

“As much as I know intellectually that bodhichitta is more beneficial, I don’t really feel it in my heart. For me the idea of becoming a Buddha to benefit others seems very abstract, compared to directly helping beings now. Have any of you got any advice on how to increase my faith that developing bodhichitta is the best way to help others?”

I replied:

“For one thing, it is not an either/or, in the sense that if we are not trying to help any individuals now as well, it is hard to say we are working to help everyone!

The way I see it is that we already want to help others and we already want to improve ourselves (largely so we can be of more use to others.) If we increase both those wishes — wanting to help more and more people until we want to help everybody, and wanting to improve ourselves more and more until there is no further room for improvement – we have bodhichitta. So the seed is there, we just have to keep watering it.”

A couple of days later, I had Nelson in his usual spot on my/his meditation cushion, and decided to respond to this comment further:

“Hello again, your comment came into my mind this morning when I was meditating with my small cat Nelson purring next to me. He looks to me for protection, love and food, which I try my best to provide him, but I’d like to scoop him out of samsara altogether. To do that — and to help all my current nearest and dearest — I need to generate bodhichitta because I need to become a Buddha with the necessary power. To develop bodhichitta, I need love and compassion for all living beings at least equal to what I have for Nelson. He is an example showing me what I need. So even to help our nearest and dearest, we need bodhichitta, let alone to help everyone else.”

With our thoughts, we create our world

We can choose how we think. We may think our thoughts rule us, but that is only if we are not exerting control over our own mind. We can learn to think big, enlightened thoughts instead of small, selfish ones. We can ignore the inappropriate attention that leads to all our baseless, disturbing delusions, and choose to think realistic things that will liberate and enlighten us. With our thoughts, we create our world, to summarize what Buddha taught us. We are what we think. There is no Nelson outside my experience of Nelson. There is no world outside my experience of the world. So I am in the process of creating a better me, a better world, and a better Nelson, for his and everyone’s sake.

Buddha’s Enlightenment Day is a good time to remember all this and renew our intention to follow in kind Buddha Shakyamuni’s footsteps by developing compassion and wisdom.

*A short video of Nelson tuning into Buddha’s blessings on my/his meditation cushion:

Update: Nelson died at 5:30am on Saturday April 14th, in my arms. So many kind people have been praying for him, for which I am very grateful, and I’m sure he is too. May he and all animal beings, human beings, and others quickly be released permanently from suffering and mistaken appearances, and find enlightened bliss.

*************************

Life of Buddha Play

Filed Under: Animals, Coping with death, Love & compassion, Problem-solving Tagged With: Buddha Shakyamuni, Buddha's enlightenment, Buddhism, cats, dealing with delusions, Life of Buddha, New Kadampa Tradition, NKT, peace

Is compassion happy or sad?

03/13/2012 By Luna Kadampa 40 Comments

Compassion is the fuel of spiritual progress, but is it a sad or a happy state of mind? The Buddhist scriptures all say it is a peaceful, happy mind, but how does it feel in our own experience? How is it even possible to be happy or calm when caring about the horrible suffering of others? It seems crucial to know this if we are going to put any energy into contemplating suffering as opposed to digging our heads into the sand or switching channels.

I first decided to explore this subject when I was with Ralph the kitten. This is what I wrote down at the time.

After Ralph’s death:

Today, two days after his death, tears still spring to my eyes when my mind alights upon any details of his final hours. I even miss meditating with him (nothing like having a helpless kitten on your lap to help you meditate.) I managed to meditate for 30 years without him, but today I missed him all tucked up in my overalls.

But this sadness, though moving, is not unhappy, if you know what I mean. I am not averse to it. It is mixed with a sort of smile.

There is a part of me that misses him out of attachment, but I also know that this is looking backward rather than forward, and the past does not even exist. I am missing a non-existent kitten. There is no point in that. There is no point in even wanting him to still be a kitten, healthy or not. Better to think of him in the present, wishing him all happiness wherever he is, with any luck out of his limited cat body and in the Pure Land.

Two days earlier, in the ER waiting room:

I don’t know if I want any cats now. (I was planning on rescuing a couple in the Fall). Where is that coming from? A friend of mine lost her beloved cat recently in a nasty freak accident and it crushed her. Right now I understand why she said she didn’t ever want another cat. My mother always resisted our having pets and would say it was because her beloved guinea pigs were eaten by rats when she was a kid. (The more obvious reason was that we were continuously traveling around the world, but for some reason she’d usually play the guinea pig card). It slightly irked me when she did this, as I really wanted pets and had to make do with collecting ants and cocoons; but I understand her reluctance better now.

But cats still need homes. So do guinea pigs and other animals. American comedian George Carlin said that getting a pet is a tragedy waiting to happen, as they always “go away”, unless we are 80 and get a tortoise. But we do it anyway. And as they say:

“It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”

Everyone “goes away” — we’ll have to watch all our loved ones go away, if we don’t go away first. I think we have to be brave enough right now to accept a certain amount of sadness when the people we know are suffering. This is part of our training. One day our compassion will be bliss, but even if it is now mixed with minds that cause some sadness – such as fear, worry, and attachment – it is still better not to shrink away from getting involved with others.

Back to today:

However, at the same time we can work on removing the sad and worried part and increasing the happy and blissful part, and, starting in this article, that’s what I want to look at (with more help from you and my Facebook friends!)

Waves of worry

We worry about ourselves (and loved ones) all the time. Parents worry about their children every single day. In samsara, worries are waves on an ocean – there is never an end of things we can worry about because everything can go wrong. We think short-term: “Oh it’ll be alright if he just gets a job! Or if his sickness is cured!”, but it still isn’t alright. Perhaps a brief respite, but then a new worry rolls onto the shore.

So we have to go deeper for both our own and others’ sake. We have to want us all to have real, lasting freedom. Where does this come from? Only from peaceful and controlled minds. If we wish that for them, in this wish we discover there is peace. There is also some peace to be had in accepting that we cannot control their minds for them, nor their karmic path.

I think realistically that our wish for them to have real freedom by overcoming the delusions and impure karma is more attainable than our wish for them to be free from one samsaric problem at a time! The waves of suffering cannot end until the ocean of samsara — created by delusions and impure karma — is dried up. Focusing on this doesn’t mean that we don’t take the cat to the vet, but it does mean we keep things in perspective, which helps a great deal.

dry up the ocean of samsara

Getting practical

A practical thing to do on a daily basis is to catch those worries as they start to roll in and transform them into bigger and better non-worries! For example, a friend of mine lost her job quite a while ago and is still finding it hard to get another, despite great efforts. I feel sad for her every time I think of how disappointed she feels. (And she is not alone, of course — finding someone who never has any financial concerns is almost impossible.) However, if I go deeper and wish for her to have complete freedom from this and all worries by drying up the entire ocean of samsara, immediately there is some mental peace. The same goes for worry about a loved one’s cancer results, or a cat’s infected eyes. “May they be free from ALL suffering and its causes. I will make this happen.” This wish galvanizes us and we have some control again.

Tara Day

12/08/2011 By Luna Kadampa 14 Comments

(I wrote this article on 8th September shortly after Rousseau first came to my house, and he has relaxed quite a bit since then! Still, a story is a story…)

Buddha Tara

Today, and the 8^th of every month, is Buddha Tara Day, so here is a quick anecdote to celebrate her.

I just got a rescue cat, a panther to be more precise. A dream cat just like the ones painted by Henri Rousseau, and hence his name.

Rousseau stands on his back legs without leaning on anything and growls deeply like a bear if he sees or hears anything out of the ordinary outside. Out of the ordinary at this point includes anything with skin, fur, feathers, or scales.

Can you see Rousseau in this painting?

So he was growling at the door in the dark of night when my Russian neighbor ran up to it, all in a fluster, saying that there was a man who needed an ambulance but her phone was dead and I had to “hurry help”.

We ran over a couple of streets while I spoke on the phone to 911, to find a large rather respectably dressed man in the midst of a psychotic episode, yelling into a cell phone with no one the other end, staring blankly at everything and nothing, lurching violently around, repeatedly slamming his body hard on the pavement, and, most alarmingly, staggering into oncoming traffic.

...and/or Buddha Tara

Irena is about 5 foot 2 but she was trying to touch him: “Please seet down sir, you hurt self.” The policeman on the line (I’d called medical emergency but they decided I needed the police too) heard him scream and told us firmly to “Step away from him immediately and wait at a distance.” We didn’t have to wait long, and I guess this is the point of my story. The fire/rescue paramedics turned up in minutes, sirens blazing, followed fast on their heels by the ambulance and police. It seemed that Irena and I were no longer needed

It was the same when someone, probably Mr. Magoo, flew off an embankment, having mistaken the gas pedal for the brake, and smashed onto my car several years ago – the entire rescue brigade was there in no time at all. And what struck me then and now was how kind all these emergency people are. They didn’t know (me or) this psychotic fellow personally, but they were still going to do what they could to help him. The fact that they felt sufficiently responsible for him to appear within minutes of the call for help was impressive, and shows the power of community and our dependence upon others. We can say skeptical things like, “Yeah, well, they’re paid to do it”, but when we meditate on the kindness of others we can see that a kindness is a kindness, regardless of motivation (and in any case, let’s face it, we find it hard enough figuring out our own motivation half the time, let alone that of others )

Their speed reminded me of Tara, the “swift one, the heroine”. She is right there, swift as the wind, whenever we need her. If human beings can show up that fast, clearly it is no problem for her to show up the instant we call.

Tara is seated but her right leg is outstretched, showing how quickly she will jump up and help us, her total commitment to us. But Tara doesn’t run around like a headless chicken focusing exclusively on the outer world, getting entirely stressed out. Her left leg in the meditative posture shows how we need to focus on compassion and wisdom in our heart so that our actions of helping others flow naturally from there. Responsibilities born from compassion and love are not stressful or burdensome but joyful; hence her beautiful smiling face and energetic posture.

(On that point, we can be very busy doing the things we naturally want to do and not find it in the least stressful e.g. a child having fun in crowded DisneyWorld, as opposed to feeling pressurized at having to work hard every day because we feel we need something in return.)

As for Rousseau, he likes Tara and all the Buddhas. He stares at their pictures for ages each day without growling at all. He just has to work a bit more on the sentient being part.

Do you have any Tara stories to share in the comments?

Please “like” Kadampa Life on Facebook if you do!

And please share this article with anyone who might enjoy it.

****************************************************

Meantime, check out Losang’s immaculately beautiful statue of Tara:

Filed Under: Animals, Inspiration Tagged With: blessings, Buddha Tara, compassion, emergency, Henri Rousseau, Kadampa Buddhism, love, New Kadampa Tradition, Tara

Tara Day (article has moved)

10/26/2011 By Luna Kadampa Leave a Comment

Buddha Tara

Dear Kadampa Life Subscribers, to find this article on Tara Day (December 8 2011), please click here.

Something got muddled up in the dates, probably me

But do go to the article and enjoy it and leave your comments there! And press the gold stars, and share it with your friends, as always

I really appreciate all of you ~ thank you for subscribing to Kadampa Life.

Filed Under: Animals, Inspiration Tagged With: Buddha Tara, compassion, emergency, Henri Rousseau, Kadampa Buddhism, love, New Kadampa Tradition

Trust v. personal responsibility

09/01/2011 By Luna Kadampa 49 Comments

Trusting holy beings…

I recently renamed the feral cat Korska “Nelson”; I figure it might help him to be named after one of my great heroes, Nelson Mandela, who triumphed over adversity just as I want this little guy to do, in his own way.

Nelson is coming along, albeit very slowly and in fits and starts. Sometimes he is interested, sometimes he is standoffish and hissy, and sometimes he doesn’t show up at all. Currently he has an open sore on his forehead and a swollen right eye which concerns me, he is way too skinny still, and at some point I’ll have to freak him out by capturing him to neuter him and give him his shots. But I’m set on my course to make him as tame as possible, and will overcome the obstacles en route one way or another, taking any opportunity he gives me. I can see I’m going to need a lot of patience and a lot of persistence/effort, but he’s worth it.*

As it was pouring with rain at his breakfast time this morning, I managed to lure him into the kitchen for a few precious moments while he ate, and was even able to dab a blob of Neosporin on his forehead with a wooden spoon. He actually purred as he rubbed up against the door, and he sniffed my leg and reluctantly let me stroke his back while he was eating. But although he is lonely and clearly likes my company in a funny kind of way, after he’d eaten he still didn’t stick around in my nice dry kitchen, let alone avail himself of the comfortable sofa, soft carpet, squashy cushions and other cat-friendly offerings in this potential cat-palace that awaits him. Instead he curled himself up on some damp leaves under a few inches of shelter, which did nothing to stop the raindrops dripping on his tail. I was cajoling him, “Hey, Nelson, sweetheart, why don’t you stick around with me for a while in here, it is so much nicer than out there in the wilderness!! I will never hurt you – in fact I will make sure you reach your full cat potential and that you are as healthy and happy as possible, and I will not curb your freedom, you can still go outside whenever the urge takes you if you do decide to be tamed.”

And then it struck me. I sounded like the Buddhas, and especially our Spiritual Guides, trying to get through to us… The Tibetan word for disciple, “dul wa”, literally means “one to be tamed”. It is so obvious to the kind and wise holy beings what we need to do to be happy and safe, but, even if we intellectually know what they are after, it seems we don’t trust them enough to follow their suggestions, or at least we are in no hurry about it. Instead of gladly escaping into the heart of the Buddhas, including the Tantric mandala palace, we stubbornly, fearfully, and proudly insist on staying outside in the wilderness of samsara, subject to being attacked by wild animals, mange, bitey insects, loneliness, mental pain, physical discomfort and all manner of other sufferings.

No trust, no progress. (If you’re in another tradition and rely on God, Jesus, Mother Mary, etc, I imagine the same principle applies.)

At least Ralph was cooperative. Because he understood somehow that he needed help, he really bonded with me, which turned out to be the best move of his short life. I really would like Nelson to cooperate with me consistently, but all I can do is blast him with love until I get through, and try and be as patient and persistent with him as the Buddhas undoubtedly have to be with me.

… while also taking responsibility for our own spiritual journey

There is an element of surrender in trust, so how does this square with taking personal responsibility? I put “v.” in the title, but it is not really trust versus personal responsibility, they get along just fine, and have a dynamic ever-deepening relationship. Genuine trust entails believing also in our own potential to progress and genuine personal responsibility entails understanding that we need to make progress, which involves trusting others who can lead us, just not trusting them blindly.

This seems to be borne out by the Lamrim teachings on refuge. Simple refuge is just the call for help. As our refuge progresses, we assume more and more responsibility for our own spiritual journey, and with Mahayana refuge we actually rely on Buddha, Dharma and Sangha to fulfill our greatest spiritual potential for the sake of everyone, which involves a rather huge amount of personal responsibility!

…And avoiding institutionalization

Meanwhile, upstairs with the Russian tenants lives Roberto the baby possum. They found him half-dead while I was away and have been feeding him up prior to his release. They love him!

He has doubled his size on Russian home-cooking!

They’ll be sad to see him go. And right now he shows the manner of being tamed (albeit slightly reluctantly) – unlike Nelson he does not object to being held, cuddled, stroked, and kept indoors. Yet in a way you can tell from his eyes that he is not tamed; he is just doing what he is told because he has little choice in the matter. It is certainly better than nothing; in fact it has saved his life. But in a week or so we must drive him to a large patch of woods and release him into the wild, at which point he will revert to his instinctive/habit-formed wild behavior to survive.

This has been reminding me that we can tame ourselves or even others physically by forcing ourselves to behave, but that won’t be enough. For example, we can follow the rules in a workplace, monastery or spiritual center not out of our own volition but just because we are told to, expected to, or scared not to — like children or baby possums. However, genuine moral discipline is based on our own discrimination of what to do and not to do, and our own resultant adult decision/intention. Just falling in with the crowd doesn’t guarantee that we are tamed on the inside or for very long, and when thrust back in the “outside world” we may just revert to our old wild samsaric habits.

It can be enormously supportive to have the external discipline provided by spiritual centers — and I would not have traded my 14 years living at Madhyamaka Centre for anything, nor the other 14 years I spent closely associated with other centres. Also, check out this article about this nun leaving her monastery for the first time in 84 years to meet the Pope — look at her alert face at 103 years old! In the book, titled “What is a girl like you doing in a place like that”, she is quoted as saying:

‘Who can spend 84 years in a convent without being happy? Of course I’m happy.’

Look at that face! Aged 103

I believe her and think that she probably has a very rich inner life. If we are in a spiritual center but are not becoming genuinely happier and more open as the years go by, we can check to see if we are voluntarily taking responsibility for training our mind or whether we have fallen into institutional modes of thinking and behaving. We need integrity to avoid being like a leaf in the wind, carried away by whatever happen to be the current gusts of the institutional zeitgeist.

How do we know if we’ve become a bit institutionalized I wonder? Is it if the small world of our school, office, workplace or spiritual center seems to be the main place where it’s at? When we become preoccupied with concerns that would seem petty to anyone “outside”? When we are cowed by authority because we are too attached to, and fearful for, our position in the pecking order, or our job, or our status within the organization? How do we overcome it? Your suggestions are welcome.

In any event, whether we are currently inside or outside of an organization, Roberto is a reminder that we need to take responsibility for ourselves and change our minds, not just our behavior.

Faith v. fanaticism

(Here, the “v.” is justified.) Arguably blind faith is not faith at all but fanaticism as it possesses no degree of personal responsibility – what do you think? Blind faith can manifest as a childish wish to please a holy being in order to be rewarded, or fear of displeasing them in case we are punished; and that is abnegating responsibility. Also the outcome of our actions depends on our karma, not on any external law-maker or law-enforcer. Nor does blind faith really trust, because to really trust a holy being I think we have to know their actual nature — unconditional love.

Fanatics of all stripes notoriously end up acting in irresponsible, dangerous ways with respect to themselves and others, whereas actual faith is necessarily flexible, including the flexibility to doubt and question. I would argue that extreme fanatics such as suicide bombers have no actual faith at all but are simply holding false views as supreme, which is a type of ignorance.

Buddha taught that all virtuous minds are pervaded by faith. Faith can never be in contradiction, therefore, to love, compassion, wisdom or any other virtuous mind.

If you have any relevant experiences you’d like to share, please feel free to do so in the comments.

*Update Sept 2011: Nelson tested positive for both feline leukemia and feline AIDS, a double whammy. I recently got another rescue cat, Rousseau, and have to keep them separate to avoid infection; so I look after Nelson outside and on a friend’s porch next door. Ironically, since he was fixed and I obliged him to recuperate on that porch for a week — with us doing meditations and prayers together every morning — he has become a very friendly little guy who now follows me around and actually wants to come in the house!! Another of samsara’s sick little jokes.

*Update 2: Nov 2011, Nelson is currently doing really well, fattening up and becoming friendlier by the minute! I even let him inside when the other cat is outside… He loves to be cuddled. He has learned to trust

*Update 3: Feb 2012, Nelson is now the cuddliest, sweetest cat in the world and joins me for many of my meditation sessions. Who would have thunk it?! There is hope for us all.

Update 4: April 2012, Nelson has just been diagnosed with a large cancerous tumor in his stomach, along with anemia and some dehydration. He stopped eating a few days ago. Now I am focused on making sure he is as comfortable and blessed as possible for his remaining time in this cat body, and my main wish for him is that he has a wonderful rebirth, hopefully in the Pure Land. He totally deserves it. p.s. I adore this person.

Filed Under: Animals, Meditation Tagged With: animals, blessings, Buddha, faith, Fulfilling our potential, life, love, New Kadampa Tradition, possum, spiritual path

Have you ever fallen for a perfect stranger?!

07/28/2011 By Luna Kadampa 8 Comments

With just a few twists and turns we can and do bump into perfect strangers who become part of our hearts and lives for a lifetime. In fact, apart from our immediate family, which of our closest friends did not start off as a stranger?!

Sparky and Joe

The happy tail of Winston

A marvelous encounter took place in heat-drenched Manhattan yesterday. I was meeting my friend J (her of Ralph’s story) to do some shopping for a laptop. Right next to Best Buy was Pet Smart and so I said entirely jokingly: “Let’s go in there and I’ll buy a small dog.” J agreed that she needed to go in there anyway to buy some cat treats so we visited with the adoptive cats for a while and then made to leave.

At the doorway, a cute dog stopped us in our tracks, and we bent to pet him. Then we noticed his owner sitting on the window ledge with tears in his eyes. Joe told us in a delightful but sad Irish brogue that he was being forced to bring Sparky back as he was severely allergic to him and that he and his girlfriend Julia were gutted, absolutely gutted. This half-Peke half-ShihTzu ”Shinese” was the best dog in the world and this was obvious even though they’d only had him for a week. Joe had been trying everything to work a way around the allergies, but “I feel like I’ve swallowed a furball and if I cuddle him I just can’t breathe.” The tears in his eyes came from the allergy and the fact that he was finding it agony to hand him back in. The shelter woman hadn’t arrived yet, he was waiting.

We asked him where Sparky came from – he and his family were in a house fire and wasn’t allowed in their shelter, and then his family were not able to have him back as they lost everything. He is just one year old. He was in a cage for weeks.

I looked at J. She looked back at me. It was obvious what she was thinking. “What is there to lose?” I rather naughtily encouraged her half under my breath. “Perhaps he could just spend the weekend with you and F and then, if F or the cats object, you can bring him back on Monday? Delay his re-entry into the cold lonely cage?”

Thing about J is that she is a pushover when it comes to animals… but there was just something about Sparky.

The 29-year-old DJ sized up the situation and seized his chance: “Hey girls, how about we take Sparky for a walk to the dog park? It’s not too far. You can see how good he is with the other dogs.” (Said Sparky is apparently spectacularly well behaved and friendly with every life form on earth, if Joe with the blarney stone is to be believed, and of course, smitten by Sparky, we believed him.)

We walked miles through the sweltering heat, Sparky tugging on the end of J’s green leash, his panty pink tongue hanging out. He is a human-magnet. And it is true that he managed to make friends with all the dogs in the park within a matter of minutes. Then Joe sloshed him with water to cool him down, and we started walking back.

“Why not cut out the middleman”, I proffered. “Just lend Sparky to J and you could both meet up again next week at Pet Smart if it doesn’t work out?”

And so we came to be carrying Sparky home in a shopping bag via Bleeker Street subway to the World Trade Center and the Park line back to New Jersey to an unsuspecting fiancé who never knew what hit him until it was too late and he’d fallen for him at first sight

And there he is to this day. Well, it is only a day later, but it looks like he has stolen the hearts of his new family and will not be going back into a cage anytime soon. Even the cats liked him instantly, and when it comes to Fluffer that is really saying something. And the landlords say he can stay, even though they don’t allow dogs. He is now called Winston because of his Churchillian jaw. Sir Winston, to be precise.

So in one chance meeting, this perfect stranger entered the hearts and lives of a family who weren’t looking for a dog but will love him for his whole life. Joe, all smiles, says he thinks he ran into angels this sweltering summer’s day in Soho. But it was the other way round.

Meet your daughter (again)

Another friend sent me an ultrasound of his daughter in her mother’s womb yesterday. She is lying in the position in which Buddha entered paranirvana, and he is chuffed: “It’s quite something when you see your daughter facing straight at you on the big flat screen TV, lying on her right side, with her head on her hand (not sucking her thumb)! I can’t say that’s her orientation relative to anything in the outside world, as she floats in her ambionic fluid, but it was very clear on the screen and I rejoice in my projection!”

He has not officially met her yet but already he adores her: “As I said to my wife when they confirmed her gender, ‘I guess I’ll be saying yes to just about anything from now on!’” When did that love happen?! Why did it happen?! In beginningless lifetimes, we have all been each other’s father and each other’s daughter. That recognition – for example when the facts are staring us in the face on a flat screen TV — is enough to bring out our innate love, our Buddha nature. However, we don’t have to wait countless lifetimes to be everyone’s father and daughter again; we can recognize that relationship right now if we want to greatly speed up our love for everyone.

Actually, although it is true that our best friends started off as strangers, if we go back even further we’ll see that they also started off as our kind mothers. Take any slice of time and our bodies and relationships will appear different; but the fact is that once someone is our mother, they are always our mother. Look at a photo of your mom before you were born — is she your mother or not?! Yes, we say “That’s a picture of my mom before I was born.” And let’s say she dies and a trusted person with clairvoyance introduces you to her in another form, won’t you still recognize her as your mother and wish for her happiness and safety?

Sure, we can argue that we’ve all been each others’ enemies too, but not only is thinking in that way unproductive, we were also only each others’ enemies when we had ignorantly forgotten our mutual dependence, close relationship and lovability, and were under the influence of anger’s inappropriate attention.

We are generally superficial in our perceptions and as a result love does not flow. I reckon the three poisons actually depend on superficiality, on taking appearances at face value, on confusing appearance for reality. Someone appears disagreeable and we believe that they are, inherently so, even though stacks of evidence points to the contrary.

We can love anyone so we might as well love everyone

Nothing is fixed; we can accelerate our universal love by understanding this. We don’t need to wait for “chance” meetings like that of Winston, we don’t need to wait for someone to become pregnant, we don’t need to wait for things to change physically. We can imagine these changes happening, as we do in the meditation on equanimity, and our relationships will change dramatically. We can bring everyone up to the level of our mother, our best friend, or even our child. Genuine love entails noticing and accepting that everything and everyone changes all the time while it itself endures. Love does not take appearances at face value. Love does not judge the book by its cover. If love depends on everything and everyone staying the same, it is actually not love at all but attachment.

Sir Winston of New York

Useful tip: If you find it hard seeing everyone as your kind mother, as in the Buddhist Lamrim meditation, or you have as yet unresolved grievances with your mother, you can try seeing people as your pet dog instead to begin with! Do whatever works. Geshe Kelsang Gyatso calls meditation “beneficial believing”. It is endlessly creative — not just repeating things to ourselves, but tuning into our own experience and building on that. Geshe Kelsang says in Eight Steps to Happiness (page 148):

Since an object’s nature and characteristics depend upon the mind that beholds it, we can change the objects we see by changing the way we see them. We can choose to view ourselves, other people and our world in whatever way is most beneficial. By steadfastly maintaining a positive view we gradually come to inhabit a positive world, and eventually a Pure Land.

To conclude, we’re all going to become Bodhisattvas and enlightened beings at some point because we have the potential to and the methods exist – sooner or later these two conditions will come together and we’ll travel the spiritual path. Therefore, I always think I may as well get started now! I’ll save myself and others a lot of unnecessary heartache if I do …

Your comments are most welcome, and please share this article if you like it.

Filed Under: Animals, Love & compassion Tagged With: animals, Buddhism, children and parents, Eight Steps to Happiness, equanimity, life, love, New Kadampa Tradition, parenting

Ralph’s story

06/24/2011 By Luna Kadampa 37 Comments

Ralph on my lap when I started writing his story

I never thought poop could make me so happy. It was just a small piece the size of a dime, but it was enough for me to hope that Ralph could eliminate the four days of build-up inside him. Because of what it represented, I wasn’t even disgusted when I picked it up to feel its consistency; to me it was almost beautiful! I have never wanted someone to poop more. When Ralph finally let it all come out at the vets’ office the next day, it was high-fives all around, and he felt our approval and purred even more loudly than usual.

That teaching on emptiness, (that beauty is in the eye of the beholder!), has been just one of many I’ve had this roller coaster week while caring for Ralph, who entered our lives out of nowhere on Sunday, promptly stole our hearts, then left us again last night. This six-week-old kitten had paralysis in his back legs and walked by dragging himself along with his front legs. He was left outside my house. He was a combination of utter sweetness and utter helplessness, and as a result loved by everyone who had the privilege of knowing him, including me, his lucky adoptive mom.

I want to tell Ralph’s story, as he may have been one tiny unique being but he came to represent for me these past four days, well, a lot! All suffering beings, and the truth of Dharma. I want to share him and I also want this story to remember him by. I’m not saying this story is unusual. It is not. Ralph’s story is like all our stories, but for some reason I learnt so much from him that I could fill a book. The intensity of our experiences can make four days seem like four months – showing the emptiness of time. There is also life before Ralph and life after him, and they do not feel the same at all. It has been a roller coaster, as I said, but I do not regret a single moment.

Sunday

It was Sunday when F found him dirty, abandoned, and dragging his legs outside our house — he could have been dying for all we knew, and only the Emergency vet was open, so I took him there on the way back from dropping F and J at the airport.

They are clearly practiced in the art of showing no emotion as they see one tragedy after another roll in through their sliding doors. When I arrived, the steely receptionist called out “Good Sam”, and they came to collect him and asked me to sign some papers. This is when I discovered I had two rather unpleasant alternatives: (A) Hand him over to them (hence the Good Samaritan finding a stray) and risk never seeing him again even though I said I wanted to adopt him later, especially as it was quite clear they thought he should be euthanized; (B) Spend lots of money — $100 just for the first exam and then whatever was needed after that in a particularly expensive and sterile vet place where I’d still have to leave him on his own. I mulled over option A for about 2 seconds, enough time to see a couple of big eyes looking reproachfully at me through the cat carrier. Then I decided on a whole ‘nother option (C), and took him home to take his chances overnight.

How Ralph got around.

Monday

Worrying in the waiting room at All Cats Hospital, Largo

(I will keep this in the present tense as this is how I wrote it waiting at the family vet.)

His admission papers show him with the same last name as mine, he is now officially my son and I his mom! But I’m a hopeless mom and trainee Bodhisattva, I’m just preoccupied with worry right now. I’m waiting for results from his blood tests and x-rays. I know the “pros” are already thinking it’s kinder to euthanize him because of his paralysis and will try and persuade me of same. But that’s no way good enough of a reason.

Ralph just after F scooped him up

His distended belly is full of poop, his bladder is huge, and he drags himself along with his little kitten paws, but he loves any touch, even being bathed, even being prodded, even having his bladder squirted, even having his paws clamped to test for pain. He loves being placed in his cat carrier. In fact he loves anything that involves anyone paying him any attention at all. He purrs so loudly that no vet has yet managed to hear his heartbeat. He is very much liking being alive and I intend to keep him that way as long as I can.

But I’m leaving for England in one week and what are we to do with him long-term? He needs his bladder expressing regularly and goodness knows what else with his stools. His inability to walk seems the least of his problems right now. J, bless her heart, will not let this little guy die, and has been spending hours on the internet figuring out his future care and calling everyone she knows for a home for him. If she can’t find one, and if he is not infectious to her other cats, I suspect she will have him herself as she can’t help her kind heart. She is also fund-raising and bank-rolling the not inconsiderable costs of these vet visits, which is just as well as he has cost more than my monthly income already.

What an emotional roller coaster it is to look after a sick animal. I’ve been anxious about him despite all my best training! Why is his stomach so distended? Will he survive the night? Is his breathing too shallow and fast? Is he breathing at all? (waking up the poor little guy to check!) Why is he shivering? And, scariest of all, will I ever learn to express his bladder so as actually to get enough pee out of him?! So far I haven’t managed it. I am too scared to squeeze too hard in case I bruise his bladder. The vets tell me I’ll get the hang of it but I wish I had the hang of it already!

How I stopped worrying in the waiting room

In fact, two things are going on:

(1) I think all my problems will be solved if only I can get the pee out of him/he controls his own bowel movements/he eats and drinks properly/he can put some weight on his back legs. Of course, even if all that happened, there will still be plenty more things to worry about!

(2) When I see any other cats at the moment (a) they appear enormous, like giants and (b) I think they are so lucky to have four functioning legs even if they don’t seem to know it.

Isn’t it like that with all our problems?! (1) Whatever difficulty we encounter with relationships, jobs, money, sickness, helpless dependents, etcetera etcetera, it can fill our mind and we think that if only this was out of the way we could be sooo happy. And (2) when we see someone else without that problem, we think they are so lucky, although they are oblivious to their good fortune!

Samsara is impossible, really. So many intractable problems in just one 2lb sentient being despite the best efforts of J, F, me, the vets, the nurses, and a growing number of well-wishers. Geshe Kelsang often says that temporary liberation from particular sufferings is not good enough. Samsara is the cycle of impure life projected by our ignorance of self-grasping and self-cherishing. The seven sufferings of samsara are like waves on an ocean; they’ll never stop rolling in on their own. We need to recognize this so that we can stop worrying about one problem at a time ( = literally endless worry) and turn our attention to removing the causes of all our own and others’ suffering. That is the spiritual path. So, for example, while I do the very best I can for Ralph, worrying about it at the same time is missing the point.

Easier said than done, but it is something trainee Bodhisattvas train in – helping others practically to the best of our ability but also remembering to put a lot of energy into generating renunciation, bodhichitta and wisdom, using these very karmic appearances that arise as fuel.

For example, I admit I never saw myself squirting a cat! But that is the appearance to my mind, so I accept it. While I’m doing that I can with one part of my mind attend completely to Ralph’s need to empty his bladder, and with another part I can think about how wonderful it would be to squeeze the samsara out of everyone. Same physical action, hugely more meaning and hope. There are, after all, a gazillion Ralphs not getting the attention they need right now.

You can hear him purring if you listen.

Medicine Buddha

When I feel particularly worried about him, faith helps hugely. We can mentally hand things over to the enlightened beings when they seem too much for us. Ralph and I did Medicine Buddha puja out loud earlier and loved it, everything seemed okay, everything was okay.

I also did Medicine Buddha puja dedicated to the even more helpless creatures who have sadly had to die in the saving of Ralph, namely his fleas, possibly his worms if he has any. What a horrible dilemma, there is no way in samsara to avoid killing completely despite our very best intentions. But Venerable Geshe Kelsang said 25 years ago at Madhyamaka Centre that we could do Medicine Buddha puja every month with strong faith in Medicine Guru and strong compassion for all the animals and insects whom we have inadvertently killed, and Medicine Guru would be able to take them to his Pure Land.

Tuesday

Ralph again slept overnight like a baby — which he is — high on the chest of drawers in my room with an unobstructed view of the Buddhas on the shrine and of me on my bed.

Korska

(Meanwhile the young feral hissy cat outside, Korska, has developed a slight limp – what to do about him?! Keep feeding him and let him take his chances? Catch him earlier than I was going to (in August) and take him to animal services for the full treatment? Difficult, as I’m going away soon and don’t want him to be convalescing on his own, and I don’t him to run away as I have plans to slowly tame him (well, I can try!). Next to little Ralph, his problems don’t seem as great as they did; but I will have to get to him later. I really admire people who take responsibility for many feral animals).

Ralph had fun at the vets today. He even managed to crawl down a nurse’s buxom cleavage when we were momentarily distracted so that just his little orange back legs were sticking out. Everyone at the vet’s has gone gaga over him. In fact, he has now managed to win over, by my calculations, F and J who found him and where he is going next week, me, six neighbors who now knock on my door to visit him, two vets, four nurses, the man in the bank, and basically everyone else who has crossed his path. All kittens are cute, and yes of course I am biased, but he is a fuzzy ball of concentrated cuteness. Maybe he needs to be extra-friendly and open as he knows his life depends on people loving him. He also has a lot of merit, or good karma, as people have offered to help pay for him, and he is not going to go homeless even though he is always going to need care. He has a bevy of supporters watching the videos I send of him from my iPhone; he could have a You Tube channel of his own. He seems to bring out the best in everyone.

He has had another very happy day. Tuesday was also another day of many teachings from my little emanation. I will save these for other articles so I can finish his story.

Ralph in his favorite spot.

Wednesday

4pm: I prayed to Tara in the car just now coming home from the vet as Ralph was lethargic, breathing faster, and, most ominously, not purring when I reached over to touch him, which was a first. We’ll do Medicine Buddha together out loud. Dissolve our worries away in the bliss and emptiness of Buddha’s mind. He loves doing pujas, which is just as well.

Worrying in the waiting room at Emergency Services

6:30pm: When I came into the Emergency vet just now, they yelled out “Triage! Respiratory distress! Front desk!” and off Ralph was whisked into ICU, with no time for goodbyes. I feel helpless again. His rapid breathing in the car was not the heat because it progressively got worse through the afternoon and it looks like he must have pneumonia or FIP. Will I have to take him home and help him die? F***, you have to be brave. Right now I don’t feel cut out for this. Why am I such a wimp? Of course I can and will do it, but I’m feeling some despair right now. All I can see is his big limpid trusting eyes. He thinks I am his mommy, he trusts me. Why can’t I protect him? How can I not feel that I am totally letting him down? I’d be a frigging hopeless vet. How on earth are people so brave?

There is a picture here in the waiting room next to the picture of Golda the Retriever (deceased), with the words:

“Even in our sleep pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom, through the awful grace of God.”

I really get that right now even though I’m a Buddhist and know the holy beings are not doing this. But it is a situation of forced self-improvement.

Right now I don’t know what will happen. The uncertainty is awful. And one of the six sufferings of samsara so why expect anything else, but I don’t like it.

Just now the receptionist was taking J’s credit card details and I was willing her to hurry up as they were not going to give Ralph his x-rays until they had them. Right in the middle someone phoned for directions and it seemed to take an age: “Turn left down…, no, left, yes, past the blah blah blah… and then half a mile… yes half a mile…blah blah blah”. I was impatiently thinking, “For goodness sake, hurry up, don’t you know Ralph is waiting?” when I heard the receptionist say, “And how many were hit by the car?”

That jerked me back into perspective.

His last morning. I can see in retrospect that he is beginning to breathe faster, and is more agitated than before; though I didn’t notice it at the time.

How I stopped worrying in the waiting room (part two)

Compassion and emptiness: It is not unkind to dissolve people away into emptiness. When I saw Ralph’s chest rising and falling so fast, and J (on the phone from NJ) and I timed it to discover he was breathing at a rate of 91 breaths per minute instead of the normal 30, we knew I had to get going fast to the ER. I felt sick to the stomach, but J calmed me with three magic words: “Don’t freak out.”

The best way not to freak out at times of crisis is to remember emptiness, if you can. All this scary stuff is mistaken appearance, it is like a dream (or nightmare), it is not really happening. But if our wisdom is not strong yet, we might think that this is callous – dissolving away Ralph and his suffering when in fact he is still really suffering, how can that work?! Perhaps we prefer to seize on method practices at this time, but I can see in my experience that we need both, because while my compassion was for a real inherently existent kitten experiencing real pain and distress, this mind had no solution in it, and so it caused more pain for me and less ability to stay present and positive for him. Remembering emptiness in no way diminishes the compassion. There is no contradiction between compassion and emptiness; in fact they are two sides of the same coin. Within the mind of compassion, we need the solution, and this is the wisdom realizing the emptiness of inherent existence of persons and phenomena. We need to dissolve our loved ones into emptiness for them to be able to arise in a pure, blissful form. Otherwise they remain stuck and our hearts remain uselessly broken.

Now he really wants to escape samsara and get to the Pure Land: “Let me out!”

Watching someone you love gasping for breath is not high up on anyone’s wish list. Samsara sucks. Samsara sucks for everyone. But luckily samsara is not real.

This is the union of method (renunciation and compassion) and wisdom.

The power of prayer: I did not like leaving Ralph alone with the brisk uniformed people at the Emergency Hospital for even an hour, yet I knew I was about to leave him alone forever as he couldn’t stay. All that I could do was pray. But luckily prayers are very powerful when our compassion and faith are strong, which is often the case at times of crises, especially if we’ve been training in refuge.

Ralph’s death

Ralph’s little body was filling up fast with more and more fluid, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

I kept stroking him and speaking loving encouraging thoughts of his future to him, breathed in his suffering as if there was no tomorrow, and blew mantras into his ears. He purred a lot and kneaded my face with his paws, whilst at the same time opening and shutting his little pink mouth trying hard to breathe and meowing at me for help. He could hold a gaze better than any other cat I’ve known. Sometimes in the past few days I’d do something else for a while, but when I looked back at him he was still staring at me. He died in my arms, looking at me with those beautiful eyes that then gently drooped shut. He died very peacefully and his last thoughts, I pray, were ones of love and trust. I touched him firmly on the head with Medicine Buddha sadhana, his favorite, to help his subtle consciousness leave his body through his crown.

I’ll never forget the feel of his tiny body in my hands as his eyes closed for the last time and then as I held him doing prayers and meditation for the next couple of hours. It looked like Ralph had just fallen asleep in my arms, but his consciousness was wending its way through the bardo to his next life, and he was no longer there. Death is so natural and so weird at the same time. People in India and Tibet meditated in the charnel grounds… and I discovered there is nothing quite like meditating on impermanence while holding a body in your hands.

JP told me a few days ago that when she was with her husband just after he was killed, she wanted to hold every part of his body. Her friend was sitting with her and said quietly: “That arm is not J. That leg is not J….” It was an intense, she said, but timely teaching.

Conclusion

An hour before Ralph died he pooped again all on his own, and looked at me for approval. It did feel like an offering, but this time it also made me sad. Although all I had wanted two days earlier was for him to be free of his chronic constipation and be able to poop on his own, having control over his own bowels was now no longer enough. And he didn’t even know this. The waves of samsara keep rolling in.

It is 2.15 right now, and Ralph had a vet’s appointment at this exact time for the free daily laser therapy they were generously offering him to bring back his legs. But my tiny dancer doesn’t have that body any more. I pray and imagine that he is dancing with the Dakinis instead, a beautiful, smiling Daka with red hair and luminous green-blue eyes.

Filed Under: Animals, Coping with death, Love & compassion Tagged With: blessings, cats, death and impermanence, faith, how to develop compassion, life, love, samsara, transformation, true nature of things

7 questions to ask about animals and us (part three)

05/28/2011 By Luna Kadampa 13 Comments

Click here for part one and click here for part two.

In the Vajrapani teaching in 2008, Geshe Kelsang said:

Milarepa said to the hunter Gonpo Dorje:

‘You have the body of a human but the mind of an animal.’

That is, we have the same intention or view. What we human beings want and what animals want is exactly the same. We know all about computers and many other things, but our aim is the same – temporary happiness or worldly pleasure. Animals have various methods for finding worldly pleasures, and so do human beings. Their methods may differ but their aim, view and intention are the same; and, with regard to this, human beings are no more special than animals.

But surely my mentality, wants, needs and actions are far more sophisticated than an animal’s?

Are they? We are all equal in that we wish to be free from suffering all the time and always want to be happy. We never wake up and think, “Hey, I’d love a whole bunch of suffering today”, and nor do animals. In his commentary to Medicine Buddha in 2006, Geshe Kelsang said:

“Everybody wants to be free from suffering and be happy all the time; even animals have the intention to be free from suffering. They want to liberate themselves from suffering of this life.”

Buddhism teaches that unless we have developed a spiritual perspective and wish for the happiness of future lives, liberation or enlightenment, our outlook is really quite hard to distinguish from that of an animal! Our aims are the same. And as everything depends upon our intention, the results we’ll ultimately get out of our life are pretty much the same too.

If we can equalize our self and others, really understanding how just like our own self animals wish to be happy and free, we are not going to project alien “other” so strongly upon them, and with this inclusive perspective we can empathize with them. They are just like me. From their perspective, they are “me”.

Animals also create actions and experience their karmic effects, just like we do. In the Prajnaparamita commentary in 2008 Geshe Kelsang said:

Even animals, like dogs, also experience some inner mental peace from time to time. Why? Because they have on their consciousness the imprints of mental actions of meditation and concentration that they performed in their previous lives, and when these imprints of the mental actions of meditation ripen they experience mental peace. When they experience mental peace they are really happy because their mind is happy.

According to Buddha, we human beings are also not inherently or permanently human. We too can take rebirth as animals, and have indeed done so many times already in our countless previous lives. We are all in this ocean of samsara together. In the introduction to the Paris Festival in 2008, Geshe Kelsang said:

When we take rebirth as human beings we will have to experience various kinds of human suffering; when we take rebirth as animals we will have to experience animals’ suffering; and when we take rebirth as a hell being we will have to experience the sufferings of hell beings. We should contemplate this continually again and again until we develop the strong wish to attain permanent liberation from the sufferings of this life and countless future lives.

When you open your eyes, what do you see?

Geshe Kelsang has said things like this so often:

Our intention is to benefit people throughout the world, to benefit all mother living beings including animals, other non-human beings.

Buddhists are encouraged to remember animals all the time, and to pray for their welfare. Geshe Kelsang has said that if we wish to develop compassion, all we have to do is “open our eyes”. When I take the paper bag of self-preoccupation off my head and look around here, I see lizards, cats, birds, worms, beetles, ants, dogs, and so on… animal beings are everywhere! If I bother to put myself in their “shoes” for even a few moments, and feel how they struggle to survive, it is quite an eye-opener and hard not to develop concern for them. It can also be a perspective shifter on how lucky we are at the moment, and — depending on our familiarity with Buddha’s teachings — a constant reminder of the need to use this time to attain liberation from samsara as soon as possible and enlightenment for their sake.

Animals have nothing. As Geshe Kelsang said in the 2008 Vajrapani teachings:

For example, dogs and other animals have nothing belonging to them. Relatively their body belongs to them but human beings control everything, even their body. They don’t even have any ability to control their own body. Human beings use them.

But how am I responsible for animals?

I’d like to quote here from Dougal’s comment on part one:

“We owe animals big. Geshe Kelsang once said he sometimes wants to sue humans on animals’ behalf. As he says: we need to work on our compassion, all of us, ’til it has the power to protect all living beings without exception; and at the same time we have to start facing our responsibilities in this world, right now, and do what we can to end the hell on earth our society inflicts on so many millions of living beings every day. I applaud Wayne Pacelle and the HSUS, and all those speaking out for our brothers and sisters without a voice – thank you. Think I’ll go buy his book.”

Someone told me yesterday that the etymology of the word responsible is “able to respond”. We are able to respond right now (in both ways mentioned in this comment), so doesn’t this mean that we are responsible whether we like it or not?

We are immensely privileged right now with our precious human life. And with great privilege comes great responsibility.

What about being decent to insects, isn’t that going a bit far?

We collectively have a low tolerance for insects it seems – I’m constantly passing white vans with slogans on them promising one way or another to be the best at ridding my home of “pests” and “stop being bugged”. Factory farms may be hidden away, but no one bats an eyelid at these proud proclamations of slaughter. We tell annoying people to “buzz off…”

There is to my knowledge no humane society for insects at this point in time. I personally have always had a thing for insects. I like what Issa says:

“Look at the tiny gnat. See him wringing his hands, wringing his feet.”

But although some may see me as a ridiculous bleeding heart liberal, at the same time I know I have a way to go. I am more careful with animals than insects – I would be far more concerned if I ran over a raccoon than if I trod on a beetle. This tells me that I still haven’t comprehended the full horrors of samsara, where I and my kind mothers can take rebirths in these forms.

In the What is Karma? chapter in Introduction to Buddhism, Geshe Kelsang says:

If we kill even a tiny insect, this is a non-virtuous action because it causes great suffering to the insect.

(Gulp!)

In Tantric Grounds and Paths (p. 151) he says:

It is with the help of subtle external winds that plants draw up water, grow new leaves, and so forth. Such winds are the life-force of plants…. Thus, although it is incorrect to say that plants are alive in the sense of being conjoined with consciousness, we can say that they are alive in this sense.

We can choose to believe these things or not, of course. I don’t have trouble seeing animals and insects as sentient and flowers and vegetables as not, I’ve always thought of it that way. However, it is not obvious judging by people’s sometimes paradoxical relationships with their plants. Yesterday I visited an old friend who is very fond of her plants, and she showed them to me one by one. The last one, a hibiscus, had tiny white insects all over its flowers and she explained that she was spraying it with insecticide to save it. I objected that I didn’t think one hibiscus plant was worth the lives of hundreds of insects, no way. And she replied, “That is where you are wrong. Plants have feelings too.” And I said, sort of under my breath, “Well, why do you keep attacking them then with those large scary garden shears, that’s got to be agony”, and, louder, “Plants don’t have consciousness.” And she replied, “No they don’t, but they do have feelings.” Admittedly she has never been a master logician, but I still am trying to figure out the best answer for her to that. Let me know in the comments!

As part of the meditation on generating universal compassion, explained in Summer 2008, Geshe Kelsang said:

In the third stage, we focus on ourself and all animals and we think, “Just as I want happiness but not suffering, so too do all animals. In this respect we are all exactly the same. Therefore, I must believe that I myself and all animals are equally important. My happiness and their happiness, my freedom and their freedom, are equally important.” In this way we develop a caring attitude towards all animals, including insects, and we hold this for as long as possible. We should practice this every day in many sessions, continually until we cherish all animals, including insects, without exception.

Geshe Kelsang lovingly picks up the dying wasps on a summer’s day near his window and spends ages blowing mantras on them. I don’t know how many of you were at Madhyamaka Centre the year a fly flew into his teacup, and he scooped it out, paused the Je Tsongkhapa empowerment, made a lot of prayers blowing into his hand, and then laughingly but seriously told us that the insect was now in Tushita Pure Land.

I have more questions than answers when it comes to insects. What is our responsibility toward them? Are they necessary collateral damage because it is impossible not to harm unintentionally in samsara, as some people say? Have you found ways to increase your concern for them without resorting to going around with a cloth over your face and sweeping the path before you like the commendably compassionate but perhaps impractical Jains? What is to be done about insects?

But what can little old me do to help all these animals and insects? The problem seems insurmountable.

Buddha said that anyone who deliberately harmed another living being was no follower of his. At the very least, we can observe this refuge commitment.

As mentioned in part one, we turn a blind eye perhaps because we just don’t want there to be that much suffering. However, our head in the sand sadly doesn’t stop the suffering. Buddha advises us in the first of the four noble truths not to shy away from suffering – we need to know suffering in order to take the steps to overcome it. We can let animals remind us that there is immense suffering in the world but right now, with our precious human life, unlike them there is something we can do about it.

As Geshe Kelsang said in 2008 during the Vajrapani teachings:

Because we have the opportunity to study and practice Buddhadharma, we have the opportunity to understand the nature of samsara, and to cut the continuum of samsara and achieve permanent liberation from suffering. We have the opportunity to control our delusions, through which we can solve our own problems of anger, attachment and ignorance, and we can benefit others effectively. We have all this opportunity because we have met Buddhadharma. With regard to this, human life is valuable and very precious. It depends on our view and intention.

If we try to be brave and courageous, like a hero or heroine, and contemplate others’ suffering, we can increase our capacity very quickly. When I saw the lizard just now with the other by the throat, after running after it to make it drop its prey, I prayed mentally:

“May you be happy. May you be free from suffering.”

So simple, but so effective. Taking and giving is also so useful at times like this. And if we always remember our potential and theirs, we need never be discouraged. If you are a Tantric practitioner, use a situation like this to remind and motivate you to be a Buddha right now. If you are not, you can think “I am a Bodhisattva already, right now, bringing an end to this suffering.” Bring the result into the path. Please never despair, it helps no one, and there is always something we can do.

If we keep animals on our radar, they are a far larger category than human beings and will help our renunciation and compassion grow strong. If we think about animals, there is also more chance of our turning our attention to the other realms of samsara, such as hungry ghosts and hell beings, so that we will actually develop universal rather than biased compassion, the only basis for bodhichitta and enlightenment. Then we can pull the plug on samsara’s ocean.

Meantime, we can also specifically look out for the animals in our life, whoever they are. If you are stuck for ideas, Pacelle gives 50 practical suggestions at the end of his book for how to take action to help animals.

Even helping one animal makes a big difference. One day a woman came across a girl walking along the beach throwing dying stranded starfish back into the ocean. She asked her: “Why are you doing that? There are miles of beach and thousands of starfish. What difference does it make to throw that one back?” The girl looked at the starfish she was holding and replied: “It makes all the difference in the world to this one.” I don’t know if the Starfish story is true or not, but it could be.

And most significantly, if we combine our actions with bodhichitta, we create vast merit or good karma. In Joyful Path of Good Fortune, Geshe Kelsang says:

With bodhichitta, if we offer just one morsel of food to a dog, our merit will be as great as the number of living beings upon whose behalf we perform the action.

I was wondering too how Pacelle has become able to protect so many thousands of animals? He has been passionate about them since a boy. He must have created the karmic causes to help them. We can too.

Last but not least…

Baby Luna just rescued from being a Brazilian street dog

Geshe Kelsang himself has two rescued dogs. I remember when he and his assistant found the first one several years ago — a dirty grey bedraggled creature who, upon being given his first bath, looked like a drowned rat. But then he arose as a wonderfully radiant white fluffy fellow, whom Geshe-la now describes as very special, like a Bodhisattva. In the Brazil Festival last October, Geshe-la talked about how even our pet dog could be an emanation of Buddha, just as Buddha Maitreya appeared to Asanga on retreat as a dying dog (and maggots!) to help Asanga quickly purify his mind through compassion.

Enough already with our human superiority complex. In Eight Steps to Happiness, in the section on humility, Geshe Kelsang says:

“Since we cannot be sure one way or another, rather than wasting our time speculating whether the dog is an ordinary animal or an emanation, we should simply think, ‘This dog may be an emanation of Buddha.’ From this point of view we can think that we are lower than the dog, and this thought will protect us against any feelings of superiority.”

We never know. So, for all these reasons, and just in case, let’s be nice to animals and insects.

Your comments are most welcome. And please share this article if you think others might like it.

Filed Under: Animals Tagged With: animals, Buddhism, compassion, Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, Humane Society, life, love, New Kadampa Tradition, The Bond: Our Kinship with Animals, Wayne Pacelle

“There is meaning in those eyes”

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Buddha Shakyamuni, the historical Buddha

Faith in our own potential

The imperative to become enlightened

Is bodhichitta pie in the sky?

With our thoughts, we create our world

*************************

Life of Buddha Play

Share this:

Like this:

Waves of worry

Getting practical

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Trusting holy beings…

… while also taking responsibility for our own spiritual journey

…And avoiding institutionalization

Faith v. fanaticism

Share this:

Like this:

The happy tail of Winston

Meet your daughter (again)

We can love anyone so we might as well love everyone

Share this:

Like this:

Sunday

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Conclusion

Share this:

Like this:

But surely my mentality, wants, needs and actions are far more sophisticated than an animal’s?

When you open your eyes, what do you see?

But how am I responsible for animals?

What about being decent to insects, isn’t that going a bit far?

But what can little old me do to help all these animals and insects? The problem seems insurmountable.

Last but not least…

Share this:

Like this:

Missed an article?

Visits

Free Modern Buddhism eBook

Latest articles

Find an article

Subscribe

Free Modern Buddhism eBook

Helpful info

Kadampa books and centers

Tags

Follow “Kadampa Life”