Mother’s Day 2013

05/12/2013 By 8 Comments
mother's love 2

To celebrate all kind mothers everywhere on Mother’s Day (USA), including you, since a bunch of flowers is a bit hard to pull off, Kadampa Life offers you instead a double billing. Two fabulous guest articles, one on the Buddhist meditation of seeing everyone as our mother and the other a story of a mother’s love.  

Happy Mother’s Day
by Sona Kadampa

mother's love 2If you’re a mother, I hope your family is spoiling you today. As kids, we used to give our mum the works – a lie-in, breakfast in bed, fresh flowers, home-made cards, gifts, and Sunday lunch out.

It felt good to appreciate what she did for us, year after year. And now my own friends and family are having kids, I can see the quantities of love and hard work that go into mothering.

Buddha’s teachings, Dharma, teach us to use that feeling of gratitude as a powerful seed that can, over time, blossom into a vast, unconditional mind of love that encompasses everyone.

It’s a big seed to swallow if you’re new to Buddhism because it builds on an understanding of past and future lives. However, it’s worth the effort, and even if you’re still on the reincarnation fence this beautiful practice can be of great benefit.

In Joyful Path of Good Fortune Geshe Kelsang invites us to consider how our consciousness existed in the moment before mum and dad ‘made’ a brand new body for us to live in. He says:

Where did that mind come from? It came from the mind that existed before conception, the mind of the previous life. This mind itself came from the previous life, and so on without beginning.

In that earlier life we could have been an animal, an insect, or a different kind of being entirely, living in a realm unknown to us. Or, we might have been the next-door neighbour. Whatever kind of existence we had, we definitely had a mum. Maybe we had a butterfly-mum, maybe we had an elephant-mum. Maybe we had a mum very similar to the one we have now. Whoever she was, where is she now? Where are all those mothers now?

Buddha’s answer:

I have not seen a single living being who has not been the mother of all the rest.

Whether you believe in rebirth or not, I think this meditation can change your life. Even attempting to view everyone in the way you see your mother at her best, with an attitude of gratitude, appreciation, and unfettered love – opens up a new, loving pathway in the mind.

Every living being – the swimming ones, the flying ones, the many-legged ones, the irritating ones, the peaceful ones, the famous ones and the notorious ones – were once, in a different time and a different form, our mother, and we’ve had a close, loving relationship with them all. How cool is that?

My own mother died when I was a child. I missed her fiercely as a teenager, and feel her absence to this day. This meditation brought a special ‘mum’ feeling back for me, 20 years after her death. Rather than focusing on my personal loss, it taught me to contemplate what Mum gave me – a deep, unshakeable feeling of being cherished and protected. By using my memory to access that feeling, I can turn anyone into my mother. I can ‘remember’ what they did for me – even when, just as my mum sometimes did, they’re having a bad day. Then, I naturally feel close to them, appreciate them and want to do something kind for them. Just like we used to do on Mother’s Day.

mother's day in BuddhismNext, Geshe-la gets us to go into those kindnesses in some detail. It’s very extensive and well worth a read.* From her pregnancy to this day, our mother has loved, worried about, and watched over us. We wouldn’t be able to walk, talk, or even think straight without what she gave us. She dedicated her whole life to striving, with no time off, to turn us from a helpless, frog-like creature into a fully functional human being.

You can add your own personal memories to the list. As a single mother, my mum worked harder than anyone I know, giving up so much, just so we could have the things we wanted.

I thought I appreciated this at the time, but I realised years later that my appreciation was still pretty self-centred! One year, on the anniversary of my mother’s death, a Bulgarian friend told me their custom would be to eat her favourite meal on that day. I decided I would do this – but then I realised I had no idea what my mother’s favourite meal was.

Of course, I knew what mine was. Mum cooked a mean macaroni cheese, and her fish fingers and parsley sauce were mouthwatering. But I had to ask a family friend what Mum loved – and got a surprise. She loved steak, with grilled banana on top. I’d have remembered such an unusual meal if she’d ever cooked it – but we kids were not steak fans, so we never ate my mum’s favourite meal at home, in all those years of macaroni cheese and fish fingers.

Still, it’s never too late to show some appreciation, even if your mum of this life is gone. Six months after I met my partner, also a Kadampa Buddhist, his mother died of a long-term illness. In her last days, as the family gathered, I had the chance to promise her I’d look after her son, and to tell her that he was using his life in an amazing way. It meant the world to be able to tell her this.

It’s hard to say these things to a loved one when they’re in the full flush of health, but you can show appreciation in quiet ways, too – for example, by engaging in a gentle, regular process of reducing your delusions. I discovered, a little late in life, that a relationship without the delusion of attachment is well worth having.

As an adult, I acquired a stepmother, and with her I seem to have a quieter, more accepting relationship than many of my friends have with their own mothers.

It took me a long time to work out why our relationship was so easy-going, but I have a theory on it now. We do not ask each other to make us happy. For example, she isn’t particularly invested in or critical of what I do with my life, and my expectations of her unquestioning support, forgiveness, and a share in her resources are – compared to the expectations I had of my mum – moderate.

mother's kindness

In Buddhist terms, our relationship benefits from less attachment. That’s a delusion that is often mixed with love and features a lot in families. When we’re demanding, disappointed, or unsatisfied with our loved ones, usually attachment is at work, and it can be squarely blamed for many family arguments and schisms.

I’m nowhere near controlling my attachment, but the natural situation with my stepmother has shown me how peaceful and fulfilling a loving, attachment-free relationship can be. So, to help mothers everywhere, including my own – all of them – I’ll be working to replace attachment with appreciation this Mother’s Day.

We can’t give breakfast in bed to every mum in the world this Mother’s Day, nice as that would be. But we can appreciate the contribution every single living being has made to our wellbeing, now or in the past, and meditate on that warm, gentle feeling of ‘thank you’.

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*Editor’s postscript: If, as sometimes happens, your mother suffered from strong delusions and/or bad habits and was not there for you, it can help to recall that she did give you your body, and apply these contemplations instead to your principal caregivers as you grew up.

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A Mother’s Love
by Eileen Stead

It is said in Buddhist teachings that a Mother’s love is the closest we can get to pure love in samsara, where most experiences of love are contaminated by the deluded mind of attachment.

I once asked for a definition of love, and the answer came, “Love is wishing for the happiness of others without expecting anything in return.” A totally selfless love without a thought of one’s own happiness or comfort. This is why a Mother’s love is said to be the paradigm of love, for what kind Mother would not leap into freezing water to save her child from drowning?

This is the story of one such Mother, but it was not the freezing water of a fast flowing river but the “dark satanic mills” of Huddersfield from which she rescued her two children. When she was a girl, she had a dream, or should I say a passionate wish, to be a singer. She did have a lovely pure voice, and was sometimes called upon to sing the Soprano solos in the “Messiah” at the local church. But alas, her destiny was to work in the clattering environment of the Mill, which she hated.

Reggie and Vera SteadAt the age of twenty six, Carrie Brogden (a good Yorkshire name!!) married, and soon became pregnant. Now in those days — 1908 — there was a paucity of prenatal care, and when she went into labour early on a Whit Monday morning nobody had suspected that the young couple would be blessed with twins. But that was it–first a big healthy boy followed by a diminutive but equally lively girl; and from that moment, Carrie Brogden made a vow that her children would have the opportunity she never had. They would become musicians. How she would achieve this, she had no idea, but she had planted the seed in her heart.

When the children were six and a half, the First World War broke out and life changed dramatically for everyone. The young men were hastily conscripted and shipped off to the battle fields of France and Belgium. The horrors of that war — the fighting in the trenches, the loss of limbs, having to survive in the waterlogged ground with your dead buddies lying beside you – provided endless agonies.

Carrie’s husband did come home eventually, but he was a saddened man. He was suffering from angina, and, worse than that, he had been gassed and found breathing difficult. You may be thinking “What has all this got to do with Carrie’s ambition for her children?” But wait! There was to be a small War Pension. Not a lot, but, she thought, just enough to pay for music lessons. Bravely, she announced her plan to the family. The Pension would pay for the Music Lessons, and not be used for anything else. She herself would become the breadwinner.

Having found an excellent violin teacher for the boy and piano teacher for the girl, she started her life of selfless dedication to earn the money she needed to fulfil her promise. Being an excellent cook, she would rise at some unearthly hour to start cooking; and then would sell her homemade “pies and peas” from the kitchen window. She became well known in the neighbourhood and did good business. Later, her husband, who had recovered a little from the war, began to make ice cream, which was also very popular.

This they did for a number of years. The young teenagers were by now progressing well in their studies, particularly the boy who, according to his teacher, was the best violin pupil he had ever taught. At only sixteen, he was asked to lead a small orchestra in the one and only silent cinema boasted by the local town.

Reginal Stead MBE lead violinist BBC Northern OrchestraAs was the custom in the North of England in those days, anyone in work brought home his or her pay packet on Friday and placed it unopened on the kitchen table. The mother then took charge, opening the envelopes and handing out a meagre amount of pocket money to each member of the family, keeping the rest for household necessities. At least that’s what the young man thought, but all the money he earned at the cinema was put secretly away in a box while she continued to slave away in the kitchen.

When the young man was eighteen, fully grown and winning first prize in violin competitions amid glowing reports, his teacher said, “To continue to be a success, he must have a good Italian violin. I’m taking a trip to Cremona and will bring back a couple of instruments for him to try. They will be expensive, I’m afraid, about two thousand pounds.” The young man was aghast and looked at his Mother in consternation, but she coolly replied, “Yes, we can afford that.” I‘m sure you must have guessed, dear reader.  She had saved every penny he had earned in the Cinema, and in that box was exactly the right amount of money to buy the Italian instrument. I remember its name. A Joseph Gagliano. A fine violin.

From there on his career blossomed, and after the Father died of a heart attack at the age of sixty Carrie Brogden attended every concert of her now famous son. She felt great pride and knew in her heart that she and she alone had made this possible. Of course, without his dedication and natural ability it could not have happened, but she understood that, without her, he would most likely be working in the dreadful clattering atmosphere of the mill.

This is a story of a Mother’s love, but being in samsara, as we are, did attachment creep in? A little pride perhaps? Who would begrudge her a little of that? I think the holy beings would understand, and forgive her.

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Editor’s postscript: Reginald Stead MBE become a member of the Hallé Orchestra in the 1930s and went onto become the leader of the BBC Northern Orchestra from 1945 to 1971. The BBC conductor, Edward Downes, later stated that Stead was “one of the finest leaders in the country and could play all the solos beautifully.” Eileen first heard him when she was six and he was eighteen; she was bewitched by his violin playing while on holiday with her father. Years later they met again and married.

 

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In praise of integrity

04/07/2013 By 22 Comments
Integrity dictionary

I recently re-read a good article on Heart of Compassion on honesty and keeping it real, well worth reading twice. It has also prodded me to finish writing down some thoughts on integrity that I’ve had up my sleeve for a while.

Integrity definitionThe dictionary definition of integrity is:

Adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty.

One of the things I love most about the old Kadampas is their integrity. They seemed to practice Dharma as if no one was looking, totally for its own sake, with no side-tracking worldly concerns. (The 8 worldly concerns are attachment to praise, pleasure, a good reputation, and gain, and fear of or aversion to their opposite.)

A few years ago, when I was about to go on quite a long retreat, a friend said: “You’ll be setting a great example!” I remember thinking, and replying, “I don’t want to set an example, though. I just want to practice as if no one is looking.” I don’t know if that thought was a cop-out or not, but I know at the time it helped me enjoy the retreat a great deal.

integrity and Understanding the Mind TharpaAlthough it can obviously be helpful to set a good example, it is counterproductive if there is pretension or concealment involved. (Perhaps it is better to be a good example than to set one?)  If I look to someone for inspiration or advice, for example, I am not worried about their faults per se because we all have those. What will destroy my confidence in their ability to help me is if they don’t seem to be doing anything about these faults, particularly if they don’t seem to believe or care that they have them, and even more so if they are trying to cover them up or being prideful. (Others probably evaluate our advice using similar criteria.)

A Bodhisattva promises to work for the welfare of all living beings without pretension or deceit. Here are some useful definitions from Understanding the Mind (where you can read all about them) that have helped me understand what integrity is and aspire to it, since it seems free from these faulty attitudes.

The definition of pretension is a deluded mental factor that, motivated by attachment to wealth or reputation, wishes to pretend that we possess qualities that we do not possess.

The definition of concealment is a deluded mental factor that, motivated by attachment to wealth or reputation, wishes to conceal our faults from others.

If we have wealth or reputation, we have to be particularly careful because we have the grounds for attachment to arise every day – trying to hold onto our wealth or popularity, fearing their loss. Our behavior will no longer have integrity if it is motivated by these concerns and results will not be as good as they could be, even if we are ostensibly helping a lot of people.

Here’s another good one, self-satisfaction:

The definition of self-satisfaction is a deluded mental factor that observes our own physical beauty, wealth, or other good qualities, and, being concerned only with these, has no interest in spiritual development.

If we count among our “other good qualities” the fact that everyone right now loves us, praises us, and does what we ask, we develop a spiritual smugness that means after years of supposed practice and example we have not taken an actual step forward toward liberation or enlightenment.

Crabs in a bucket

If you put a crab in a bucket and it can climb out of that bucket, it will climb out. But if you put two crabs in the bucket, when one of the crabs tries to climb out, the other will pull it back in. (Apparently. I’ve never tried this.) Neither will ever escape. It doesn’t matter that it is possible to escape; the crabs will hold each other back from doing so.

Atisha

Atisha, founder of Kadampa Buddhism

Sometimes we may not believe in the idea of our own limitless potential and instead have a jealous or insecure sense that someone else’s success somehow diminishes our own. With that mentality, even if we are not fully aware of it, if we see others improving we will naturally if unconsciously reach out to hold them back, or at least experience that most ignoble of  feelings, schadenfreude, when we see them fall back.

However, we don’t only hold each other back by criticizing each other, putting each other down, or rejoicing in their misfortune. Actually, I think we are more effectively held back in samsara when people shower us with praise, power, and gifts, especially if we take it seriously and buy into it. Words of fame and praise do nothing to advance us spiritually, especially if we become dependent on them for our self-image and self-esteem. As Venerable Atisha says in his quintessential Advice for all wannabe Kadampas:

Words of praise and fame serve only to beguile us, therefore blow them away as you would blow your nose.

Profit and respect are nooses of the maras, so brush them aside like stones on the path.

Geshe-la in Tibet

Geshe Kelsang in Tibet

I was once on a little pedestal by dint of my position – not a huge pedestal like Nelson’s in Trafalgar Square, more like one of those plastic pillars a foot high in a MacDonalds playground, but still not quite on the level playing field. When I was pushed off my pedestal (as we all are sooner or later), I took incredible inspiration from the old Kadampas, and still do. The real Kadampas would hide their best qualities in plain sight. On the outside they were a pure example by observing moral discipline motivated by non-attachment and contentment, on the inside they were motivated by a fiercely kind bodhichitta, and, even more deeply and secretly on the inside, they were relaxing in the bliss and emptiness of Tantra. 

It is not what you do but why you do it. There is no such thing as ordinary activity without an ordinary mind. With an ordinary mind, even seemingly pure activities will have ordinary results.

Part 2 coming soon to a blog near you. Meanwhile, over to you, do you agree with this or not?

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Finding my heart

03/10/2013 By 3 Comments
baby in arms

I am only a parent of cats and take my hat off to parents of small humans, who seem to have to work 24/7 for others. But I think even pet parents have some of the same experiences, and also some of the same concerns when it comes to balancing love and attachment and avoiding undue worry and stress when things go wrong…♥)  So, when Kadampa working dad recently had the good idea of starting a Facebook page for Buddhist parents, I joined the group too. And to let more parents know about this forum, I thought it was a good excuse to post this guest article by him. Scroll to the bottom of this article to read the Facebook About. 

Just before I was to get married I was at the New Kadampa Tradition Summer Festival in England.  I went up to what was then the Protector Gompa (a special meditation room dedicated to the Dharma Protector).  I felt like getting married was the right thing to do for my spiritual practice, but I still had doubts.  So I made as sincere of a request as I could that my path be revealed to me.  What happened next was the only time something like this has ever happened to me.  I was meditating, my eyes were closed, but in my mind a Buddha who I understood to be Tara approached me.  She was made of a silvery metalic liquid, but very much alive.  In her hands was a baby – in normal flesh and bones that I could see as clearly as I could see any person out of meditation.  She then handed me the baby and said, “This is where you will find your heart.”  And then everything vanished.  I can still vividly remember and see this within my mind.  All doubt was then dispelled and I knew what my path was to be.  Thirteen years later, I now have five kids!

Prior to my being a parent, I was very much a Vulcan – heart-felt emotion wasn’t really part of my personality, and I was very intellectual in my approach to the Dharma (I still am, unfortunately, but it is slowly changing…).  I really struggled with feeling any Dharma realizations like love and compassion in my heart, and as a result I tended to shy away from such meditations and instead to focus on emptiness and other philosophical or technical topics.  “Finding my heart” was (and still is), in many respects, my greatest spiritual challenge.

To my surprise, the love I have for my children is not some sappy, mushy sort of thing, but is rather very active.  It can best be described as “There is nothing I wouldn’t do for them.”  It is a feeling of a fortunate assuming of personal responsibility for their welfare – I am glad it is me who is responsible for them, because I wouldn’t trust that anybody else would look after them the way I would and I very much want them to be taken care of.  It is a love that ‘knows them’, in many ways better than they know themselves.  I know and understand how they work and think, so I am always sensitive to what is best for them.  It is a love that happily works for their benefit.  It is a love that would rather me have the hardest tasks or the worst things so that they can have the best.  It is a love that somehow can see past all of their faults and understand where those faults are coming from and develop compassion wishing to protect them.  It is a love that literally laughs out loud when I see their summer portraits and the unique goofiness in each of their expressions!

And here’s the thing:  all of this comes naturally.  I haven’t worked to develop this love, I just naturally feel it.  Venerable Geshe-la explains the reason for this is because we have special karmic connections with these particular beings from our previous lives where we now spontaneously feel a pure love towards them.  Of course there are times when our minds are full of delusions towards our kids, but compared to everyone else we feel the most natural love for our kids.  It is thanks to my kids that I ‘found’ my heart, I realized what it means to feel an active love for somebody.

How wonderful if we can extend the love we feel towards our children to all living beings, where we can view all living beings as our children.

Here is the Facebook forum: https://www.facebook.com/groups/288032664659782/members/ 

About: The purpose of this group is to provide a platform for Kadampa parents to share their experiences of how they use the Kadam Dhama to be better parents and to ask questions about how to apply the Dharma to common parenting challenges. Through this, we can all learn from each other’s trials and tribulations as we seek to unite the Kadam Dharma with modern parenting. Over time, this page will become like a repository of the accumulated wisdom of Kadampa parents, which will then hopefully prove helpful to future Kadampa parents for generations to come. The group is open to parents and non-parents alike, because in the end our job as Kadampa Bodhisattvas is to help others grow. Please add all of the Kadampa parents you know to this group. The group is also open to Kadampa teachers who wish to better understand and help their students who are parents. And yes, parents are free to post pictures of their little ones doing all of the silly things they do! Please note, the views expressed in this group are those of individual practitioners and do not represent those of the New Kadampa Tradition itself. This is an “unofficial” group of practitioners. For the official New Kadampa Tradition Facebook page, please visit: https://www.facebook.com/kadampa

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Breathe out problems, breathe in love

02/23/2013 By 8 Comments
giving meditation

The other day someone asked me: “I know we’re supposed to put others first – but I was taught that in the Girl Guides and its always just made me feel like a doormat.”Buddhism is not about being a doormat

Interestingly, someone else in a separate conversation on the same day also told me that they’d been taught that in the Girl Guides, but their take was different, they felt it was a Buddhist teaching for them in disguise, and they really liked it. 

What is the difference? The answer is what is going on in the mind. Putting others first has to come not from a sense of onerous, self-sacrificing duty but from a genuine cherishing of others, feeling that their happiness is important, even more important than our own. If we genuinely feel that way, we will naturally and happily want to put them first, there’ll be no self-flagellation involved. But that does not mean that our happiness becomes entirely unimportant. Happiness is our nature, our Buddha nature. It is not wrong to desire it. What is wrong, insofar as it doesn’t work, is seeking it outside when it is inside, and thinking that our happiness is more important than anyone else’s when it’s not.

Actually we need to learn to enjoy our own company a great deal, and it is no fun hanging out with a doormat! We have to like and respect ourselves, which means we have to have something good to like and respect about ourselves = and generally this is our positive and happy qualities, all of which come one way or another from cherishing others. Cherishing others is a win win for us and for others.

we are not the center of the universeThe great Indian Buddhist Shantideva famously said that all suffering in this world comes from self-cherishing and all happiness in this world comes from cherishing others. All of it. I’m not sure there is even an exception to this rule. What Shantideva says makes sense because self-cherishing is a delusion, an unrealistic mind – who else but your own self-cherishing attitude thinks you are the most important person in the world?! (Asked what he felt about death recently, an Australian comedian joked half-seriously that his main fear was who was going to take his place in the center of the universe.) Not even your own mum agrees with this assessment of your own importance, except maybe sometimes, and certainly none of the other 7 billion humans on the planet does — and don’t even think about all the animals who have no clue who you are and don’t care. When we are thinking and acting while taken in by an hallucination, it is no surprise when things don’t work out. Cherishing others, on the other hand, is entirely realistic because it understands that others actually are important, both to themselves and also to us. Others also think they are the only real ME, and we depend on them for everything.

Test the teachings like gold

We don’t need to take Shantideva’s word for it though. In fact we should never take even Buddha’s word for anything, he said so himself – advising people to test everything he said as they’d assay gold to see if it was genuine. We test what we hear and read about Buddhism in the laboratory of our own mind, reasoning, and life experiences in order to come to our own conclusions and decisions, our own good ideas. However much we admire or trust someone, just taking on what they say without thinking it through and making it our own idea has limited benefit, for sooner or later we’ll fall back on our own habitual thoughts and behaviors again. That’s one reason why I think in Buddhism we talk about listening, contemplating, and meditating – we don’t just stop at listening.test Buddha's teachings like gold

So, in this instance, we can look at our own lives to see whether self-cherishing causes us problems or not, and whether cherishing others causes us happiness or not. A simple experiment to get us started is to think of a problem we’ve had recently, such as today. Any problem will do.

Okay, I’ll go first. I work as a project manager for a medical journal and sometimes one doctor or another can be a bit big for their boots. One was complaining about the imposition of only being paid $1,500 for a few hours’ work, and I found myself wondering briefly what planet he lived on. I was a little miffed at his rather rude and condescending email and felt discouraged for a few minutes. Then I got over it.

So, let’s analyze what was going on, and, specifically, who was I thinking of when I was feeling miffed…

Why, me, of course. “How dare he be so insensitive to ME!! Doesn’t he realize what my hourly rate of pay is?!” As my thoughts began to run away with themselves, I started to project this worry into the future as well… “Oh no, I have to work with this guy for a whole MONTH, what if I can’t do it …?”

Then, how did I get over it? By thinking about him and how he wants to be happy but, in this instance at least, doesn’t really know how to – if $1,500 for 3 hours work can’t make you happy, you may be relatively hard to satisfy. His own irritation was doubtless stressing him out. Plus, his dog probably loves him, he can’t be all bad. I genuinely wished him happiness and the problem magically disappeared.

Ok, your turn. Who were you thinking of while you were having your problem? ….

…. Now, if you imagine cherishing the other person or other people around you instead of yourself, what happens to your problem? ……

breathing out problemsDid the problem disappear? Poof…!

If it did, you can extrapolate that the same thing will happen to all your problems if you move away from the poky space of self to the vast space of others.

(This is not just the case for relatively small problems, such as having to work with an irritating client, but with seemingly insurmountable, existential ones. Loren Jay Shaw, for example, was in Super Max solitary confinement for 3 years, and it was cherishing ants that stopped him going quite literally insane.)

Combine your understanding with breathing meditation

Then, what you can do next, if you like, is think that this problem and all other problems caused by your self-cherishing appear in the form of dark clouds at the level of your heart, in the center of your chest. Think:

“I don’t need any of this – these thoughts are just bad habits, and they are not me.”

Then with this decision, breathe the dark clouds out through your nostrils so they disappear forever. Do that for a while, feeling your heart becoming lighter with every breath.

After a little while, imagine breathing in blissful, clear light – like the sky, only infinitely clearer. It enters your nostrils and descends to your heart, or heart chakra — your spiritual heart located in the center of your chest. It looks like light, but its nature is love, cherishing others. You can also think of it as all the love from throughout the universe, including that of all holy beings, blessings. With every breath, feel your heart become happier.

Than spend a few minutes combining the two, breathing out the last of the dark clouds and breathing in the blissful clear light.

Buddha peaceWe can identify with this peaceful, spacious feeling at our heart, thinking:

“This is my Buddha nature. This peace and love I am feeling, however slight, indicates my potential for limitless love. This is who I am.”

We are not the clouds of our delusions, we are the sky of our Buddha nature. We can hang out in this blissful clarity at our heart for as long as we like, feeling at home there, thinking “This is me.”

Then, for the extra icing on this meditation cake, we can think that everyone in the world has this same potential at their heart. How wonderful it would be if they could remove self-cherishing and its problems and identify with their pure love instead. Then we can dedicate all the good karma or good fortune we’ve created so that we and others quickly accomplish this.

Before we rise from meditation, we can think ahead briefly to how we are going to remember this love for the rest of the day. One excellent way is to use the Lojong (mind-training) motto with everyone we meet or think about:

“This person is important. Their happiness matters.”

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Home is where the heart is

02/16/2013 By 31 Comments
Rousseau lying on back

I have had the thought of late that I don’t think I’ll ever be completely, utterly happy until I realize I am everywhere. We all are, as there is no world outside our mind.

I suppose what has partly bought on this cosmic rather pleasing thought is the amount of times I’ve been asked in the last few months since I came to Liverpool from Florida:

“Really? That is a BIG change?!”

Whereas it is a surprisingly un-big change.

Plus, give me a dollar or a quid for the amount of solicitous comments I’ve received along the lines of whether I am feeling at home yet? (I am, thank you.) But the truth is I don’t feel I left home. Home is where the heart is, as they say. My home is in my heart. Luckily, my heart goes with me everywhere.

Rousseau lying on back Kadampa LifeDon’t get me wrong. I LOVE Florida! I occasionally have to work at not missing my panther and all the other divine kittens I had the good fortune to meet over the last few years (oh, and the humans too …) I plan on visiting plenty. But, the occasional attachment aside, I don’t feel I have actually left anyone; they all came along for the ride, in my heart. I’m still “in” Florida as well as “in” England (whatever “in” means) – even while physically there, Florida was only ever dreamlike appearance to my mind, and I can still “be” there in my heart-mind. As Geshe-la points out, the mind can go anywhere – it’d take considerable effort and expense to lug my body to the moon, but my mind can go there in an instant just by thinking about it.

Beatles and meditation

“Love is all you need.”

Florida is empty of inherent existence and can be anything depending on my thoughts, so I like to imagine it as a Pure Land — I still enjoy offering it up to all enlightened beings and living beings, with all its pterodactyl pelicans, lapping turquoise seas, and gorgeous gargantuan tropical undergrowth. My hairdresser yesterday spent 10 minutes marveling aloud at the Armadillo she had once seen in Florida – I offer him up too, along with, now, the swans in Sefton Park, the miniature chirpy birds, and the timeless English countryside.

Be here, now. Be everywhere now.

It was EM Forster who said:

Only connect.

daffodils at Kadampa Meditation Centre Liverpool

Thank you, Flower Fairy!

Love is the great connector. With equanimity, we reduce our sticky attachment Velcro-ing us to our only (bring out the violins) loved ones, and love the ones we’re with as well as the ones we’re not currently with. (An anonymous flower fairy just left the first daffodils of spring outside my door with a message wishing me a joy-filled day — what’s not to love about Liverpudlians?!) [Remembering how everyone is our kind mother and that we depend on others for every atom of our being, we can feel at home anywhere. Love makes us feel entirely connected, settled, and supported – it stops loneliness and homesickness in their tracks.

I just this moment received this gracious reply from an old friend I wrote to in Florida, who is going through a hard time:

“You are so kind to have me on your mind with all the new frontiers you are forever moving through.”

That’s what I mean! Why wouldn’t I have her on my mind? Why would I be concerned for her over there but not over here?! To prove it, I’m now going to dedicate this article to her and Chuck.

Uncertainty

One of the six general sufferings of samsara, according to Buddha, is Uncertainty. Impermanence means that everything is unstable – our relationships, our locations, our enjoyments, our bodies. Unless we find a way to transform change, we are in for trouble – and not just in this life but in all our future lives.

how to handle things falling apartAs a child, we travelled, my parents and I. We lived in New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Guyana, Turkey, Ghana, and Singapore, and visited many other countries too. Though my parents adapted remarkably well to change on almost every continent, for them travel was rooted in, I think, a sense of Britishness. They were happy to come back and retire here; England is home for them. My older brother who started in England and was packed off to boarding school aged 7 told me at Christmas that if he could choose where on earth he would live, he too would live in England, just where he does live. For me, though, starting my life in New Zealand, paying occasional visits to the motherland, England never felt like my roots. My parents were my roots, and that was fine, as I never doubted that they’d look after me (I was lucky!) Every two or three years I’d be going to a new continent and meeting new people. One day, on the school bus waiting to drive off to another first day at another new school (nine in all), I felt an existential ennui at having to start all over again making new friends, and doubted that I’d have the energy or ability to do it. Just before the bus rolled away, my mother gave me this parting shot:

“If you want people to like you, like them first.”

When I asked how I could possibly like a whole bunch of strangers, she said:

“Get them to talk about themselves. And remember that everyone is beautiful when they smile.”

She doesn’t remember saying these things, but I do.

Madhyamaka Centre 1980s

Madhyamaka Centre 1980s

As an adult, I have continued to go from place to place – apart from a 14-year stint at Madhyamaka Centre, by far and away the longest period I’ve spent in one place, a veritable exception to the rule. (And on three separate occasions, months apart, after we all moved into Madhyamaka Centre in 1986, my teacher Geshe-la asked me the curious koan-like question: “Have you moved into Madhyamaka Centre yet?” knowing full well that I had [or thought I had!] Make of that what you will.)

Why am I telling you all this? Partly as I’m feeling chatty, and partly because it has been my karma so far in this life to move around a great deal, and this uncertainty has given me ample opportunities to contemplate the truth of Dharma. So, hopefully, if you’re perhaps in the midst of some big move or change, reading this might help a bit.

All this moving is nothing, obviously, not to mention luxury compared to the amount and type of upheaval experienced by refugees all over the world. It is also nothing compared to our constant travels from life to life. Other general sufferings of samsara are having to leave our body over and over again and having to take rebirth over and over again.

meditation in Puerto RicoChange is inevitable so if we can find a way to feel at home and to feel happy wherever we go — place to place and life to life — we are free. We have mental freedom. That’s what I want. Geshe Kelsang left Tibet with just his robes and 2 texts in the late 1950s, and then he had to leave India to come over to an alien West to try and bring peace to a bunch of materialistic, self-indulgent (speaking for myself) barbarians. Not only did he remain perfectly happy through all of these upheavals, but I am quite sure he has mastered the art of being everywhere at the same time, as well as never leaving home.

“You can only have 130 friends!”

That modern-day phenomenon, Facebook, is a connector too, in its own way. At its best, it helps people feel close across continents, in that locationless cyberspace that could be anything really, so make of it what you will. I was recently talking to a young teenage boy about Facebook in the World Peace Café downstairs, and he told me that Facebook doesn’t work because you can only really have 130 friends. I knew what he meant, but I still told him it wasn’t true – we can love as many people as we want, it is up to us, not up to them. A Bodhisattva is known as a friend of the world. Karmically a Bodhisattva may spend more time with some people than with others in any given day or year, but mentally they remember their deep connection to everyone in the universe. If we emulate this, then when we physically encounter old and/or new friends in this and future lives, on Facebook or anywhere else, we are ready for them!

The mandala of bliss and emptiness

Just to get a bit Tantric for a moment, the mandala universe is everywhere. The union of bliss and emptiness pervades all phenomena, is the “stuff” of all phenomena. As it says in The Root Tantra of Heruka and Vajrayogini:

“In the supreme secret of great bliss
Always gather the nature of all.”

The mandala and Deities are this bliss and emptiness appearing as completely pure form, pervading time and space. Bliss and emptiness are in our heart and they are simultaneously everywhere. Heruka and Vajrayogini are everywhere. Compassion and wisdom are everywhere. (At the least, I like to be in 24 places at a time …) You can find out more about Tantra in Geshe Kelsang’s books. 

Buddhism expands horizons

Expanding horizons

Buddhism does nothing if not expand our horizons. We think about limitless past and future lives, limitless worlds, beginningless and endless consciousness and time, how every single living being is our mother, how there is nothing really “out there” as everything is mere appearance to our mind… We can break out of our poky prison, so dingy we can hardly see past the end of our nose, with its bars of self-grasping ignorance and self-cherishing.  If I check my problems, I can see that they all stem from grasping at things as fixed and real and/or thinking my own happiness and problems are far more important than everyone else’s. Dharma expands us in space, time, awareness… til we feel connected to everything and everyone in a non-dual experience where prison walls have no place. Then we spring everyone else from this crushing prison as well, bringing them to an absurdly welcome and serene state, bringing them home.

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Happy Valentine’s Day to Everyone

02/14/2013 By 6 Comments

A good day to talk about love, I think. This is the annual “love day”. For most of us, our love is a mixture of two things – attachment, which is not in fact love at all, and love, which is.

I like Valentine’s Day in America. Everyone sends everyone Valentines. In England, Valentine’s Day is just about romantic love, or it was when I last lived there. You send a Valentine’s Day card to someone you are in love with or someone you’ve been admiring from afar. It is often mysterious, “from a secret admirer.”  But here you may get a card and flowers saying “love from Grandpa.”  In England, that would be very strange, you would be worried. When I first got over here I learned about this difference, and then entirely forgot what Valentine’s Day is like in England. I sent my Dad a Valentine’s Day card, and he was touched, but a bit mystified.

But, as I said, I like it. The multimillion dollar card industry may have it made in the States, but I’m with them on this one. So Happy Valentine’s Day, Dad, and everyone else!*

What is desirous attachment?

It is not the same as desire – we need desires, but we don’t need attachment. Attachment is “dö chag” in Tibetan, which literally means “sticky desire”. There is a stickiness, neediness, dependency, and self-centeredness associated with attachment. It’s “I need you to make ME happy”, as opposed to “I want to make YOU happy”, which is actual love. Attachment weakens us, and we give away the key to our happiness. Love strengthens us, and we stay in charge of our happiness.

Attachment is all about me and what I can get from you, and love is all about what I can give or do for you. There are three kinds or levels of love, affectionate love, cherishing love, and wishing love. Briefly, affectionate love is just liking people, having a warm, fuzzy feeling, the way our mom feels when she hasn’t seen us for awhile, just unconditionally delighted to see us without that needy, “I want YOU to do something for ME.” On the basis of affection, if we think about how kind someone is, we come to cherish them – we find them special, we want to take care of them, their happiness matters. So because we cherish this person, our question is “Are they happy?” The answer is usually, “Well, they could be a lot happier,” and we wish for them to have what they need, what they want, to be happy now and always. This is wishing love.

Attachment stands in horrible contrast to all types of love, but to begin with it can be quite hard for us to tell them apart as our relationships are so mixed up. It is one of Buddha’s great kindnesses that he distinguishes between them so clearly. It can save us from immense heartache. We can learn to reduce the attachment and increase the love in all our close friendships, which is guaranteed to bring us more meaning and joy.

Here is a definition from Understanding the Mind:

“Desirous attachment is a deluded mental factor that observes its contaminated object, regards it as a cause of happiness, and wishes for it.”

“Contaminated” means tainted by the ignorance of self-grasping, which makes it seem as though the object or person we are attached to is real, “out there”, independent of our mind, as if we are uninvolved in bringing it into being. Attachment externalizes happiness, thinking it inheres in things and people, as opposed to being part of a peaceful mind. It can be a cream donut or a person – neither one has anything to do with me. It seems to be capable from its own side of giving me the happiness I want. And because our happiness is out there, we need to go get it.

(In the case of attachment, the object or person seems to have the power to make me happy. In the case of anger, it seems to have the power to make me unhappy.)

Are you a spiritual person?!

Having strong attachment is the opposite to the spiritual life. If I ask you, “What is a spiritual person? Are you a spiritual person? Do you have to wear open-toed sandals to be spiritual? Do you have to wear robes? What do you have to do to be a spiritual person?” and then go ahead and answer my own question, I would say that a spiritual person is someone who knows where happiness and suffering come from. They know their source lies in the mind. They know they’re on a journey to happiness. They still can be doing the same things that everybody else does – they can have a job, raise a family, eat donuts — but where they seek happiness and fulfillment is on the inside, in the mind. Do you agree?!

Attachment is the opposite. That’s why Buddha called the rest of us “worldly people” – someone is worldly if they are always looking outside of themselves for their happiness, and don’t recognize that their happiness comes from within.

As mentioned, desirous attachment is not the same as desire. There are many non-deluded desires that it is suitable to cultivate, such as the wish to help others, to accomplish pure happiness, even to overcome desirous attachment! And there are neutral desires too, such as the wish to open the door. If we got rid of all desire, we would cease functioning at all. We need to work on what we desire.

How do we develop desirous attachment

Very simply put, attachment exaggerates the apparent qualities of an object until we feel we have to have it. Here is another definition from Understanding the Mind:

“First we perceive or remember a contaminated object and feel it to be attractive, then we focus our attention on its good qualities and exaggerate them. With an exaggerated sense of the attractiveness of the object we then hold it to be desirable and develop desire for it. Finally our desire attaches us to the object so that it feels as if we have become glued to it or absorbed into it. Only when all these stages are completed has desirous attachment occurred.”

This is quite unlike love, which does not distort its object but recognizes it for what it is, for example as kind or lovable. Our neutral minds also don’t distort the attractiveness of their object — you go to the sock drawer to decide what socks to wear today, but you don’t spend hours thinking about it, unless you’re a sad case. With attachment, there has to be an exaggeration of seeming desirable features going on in the mind.

We can exaggerate at the speed of light!  Exaggeration is like a top notch advertising agency in the mind. We just meet someone, “Oh, he’s got nice eyes… I bet he’d make a great husband. I wonder if he’ll marry me?” The whole advertising industry feeds into our attachment, they know us – think how glued people were to the commercials in last week’s Super Bowl. The producers didn’t spend a million dollars on them just to provide us with entertainment. They know they’ll work to make us buy stuff  because we have attachment that is all too ready to go along with a gross exaggeration of the apparent qualities of a product. “Oooh, if I buy this dream car …” 

I’ll take this subject of love and attachment up again in a few days — Valentine’s Day will be over, but I’m betting it’ll still be relevant :-) And here is that new article… Falling in love (again) according to Buddhism.

Over to you: what do you think about all this?!

*This article originally appeared as Love, attachment and desire according to Buddhism. I am currently in England and, as of 9.19 am, only one person has sent me a Valentine’s Card… I rest my case.

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World of kindness

12/10/2012 By 12 Comments
world of kindness

By a guest blogger.

world of kindnessWe are all connected in mutual acts of kindness. We often think people are not kind unless they are trying to be nice to us in unselfish ways. But this is not true; a kindness is any act from which we derive benefit, irrespective of the other person’s motivation. In September 2006, the San Francisco Chronicle ran this story:

 Socialite Paris Hilton thrilled a homeless man in Hollywood Tuesday night when she handed him a $100 bill. The cheeky beggar raced up to the wannabe singer’s car as she was leaving a McDonald’s and asked her for $100. A source says, “Paris reached down beside her and handed the man a crumpled $100 bill. She then stopped to pose for pictures with the homeless guy, who offered to wash her windows, before racing off.”

This beggar did not question the selflessness of Paris Hilton’s motivation before accepting the gift; he just appreciated having the $100 … In the same way, if we benefit in any way from the actions of others, then for us they are kind, irrespective of motivation.

I became an American citizen last year. Even pre-warned by my aunt, who had been at her own Ceremony a few months earlier, I still couldn’t quite believe that I teared up to Neil Diamond singing Coming to America. During the Ceremony you watch a film montage of faces of immigrants from the last 100 years – photos of travellers of all ages coming through Ellis Island to start again, to be reborn, with nothing in their pockets, but with a burning hope that their future will be a better place. (And due to the kindness of others, it often was.) I was struck by how all my enjoyments here in New York have arisen from the kindness of immigrants I never knew who built this city.

statue-of-liberty-pictureThere is a walk in Manhattan you might enjoy sometime. It takes you from the Hudson River Park on the Lower West Side down to the Robert F. Wagner, Jr. Park overlooking the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. I sit there sometimes, looking out toward that iconic figure holding the flame of freedom in her outstretched hand, the symbol of opportunity, and meditating on just how lucky I am — on how every single cell of my body arises in dependence upon the kindness of others.

I woke this morning with a body conceived by my parents, and grown from enormous amounts of food provided by them and others. My parents also gave me my name, which I use all the time! As I slept, my head rested on a pillow made by someone I never knew in the Philippines, on sheets sown by Indians, under a duvet stitched together by Californians. People in Philadelphia filled my mattress. I stepped out of my bed to land on a rug woven by Tibetans in a house built by Americans in the 1920s. I drank Indian tea planted, grown and harvested by hundreds of workers, in a tea-cup designed by someone in China, stirred by silver spoons welded by people from Sheffield. I put on clothes fabricated by numerous people, all able to do it by being supported by numerous others, in Pakistan, Indonesia, America and England. And that was all in the first five minutes of my day! I greeted my neighbors in the English language created from the German and Romance languages, improved in large part by Chaucer and Shakespeare, carried down through countless generations, and gradually taught to me by many different caregivers. I commuted to the library to work on sidewalks laid by others, avoiding cars by following traffic lights invented by others. Others created my job and the demand for my work, and even the money I earn for my labors was invented and printed by others. For entertainment this weekend I might check out a movie, which if I bother to stay and watch the credits I will see was produced by a team of thousands. I will also read a Buddhist book that has come to me by some miracle from generations of wise Teachers who practiced these teachings and so kept them alive for me today.

I live in a body and a world constructed entirely from others’ kindness. Precisely what did I do to create the necessities and comforts of the world I enjoy moment by moment? Almost nothing. If I had to give back everything others have given me, what would I have left? Nothing at all.

Do I remember that I live in a world created by the kindness of others? My answer is, “Yes, I will try to, now, today, and always.”

Being confident

As well as increasing my feelings of gratitude, I find this meditation makes me confident – I don’t feel the need to go grasping at friends because I feel full of love already. And I think it can also have the side effect of helping us become popular! It is an awful irony that when we are lonely and desperately need a friend, our loneliness can give off an unattractive energy that makes a lot of people uninterested in coming anywhere near us. We seem like altogether too much hard work. Conversely, when we look like we can take it or leave it, we have that genuine air of confidence that makes us irresistible.

Postscript: I asked a friend for this article as I have been traveling a lot recently and unable to blog. I’m pleased I did, as I really like it. Please feel welcome to contribute articles yourself, sharing your own experiences of putting meditation into practice in daily life.

Over to you: Do you live in a world of kindness?

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Happy Thanksgiving, One and All!

11/21/2012 By 1 Comment
Forget Christmas, let every day be Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving is here again in the States and, although I was not brought up with it and often barely eat more than a tofurkey sandwich unless people invite me over (hint?!), it has become my favorite holiday. People everywhere stop to count their blessings, and this makes them feel grateful and appreciative, so it is a good day. (Not for turkeys, however, not a good day for them at all. I don’t like the role that turkeys are forced to play. So p’raps don’t invite me over for the meal part after all… or the football… but the rest of it, yeah!)

Back in the day, from what I’m told, the first settlers gave thanks for good harvests. Nowadays most of us are a good deal more removed from the source of our food, which means that what it takes to get food onto our plates every day is hidden from us unless we really stop to think about it. But although I may not be thinking about the background of my frozen peas as I plop them in the pan and then gobble them down with my tofurkey, I am just as dependent on those who planted, grew, harvested, packaged and delivered my food as the early settlers were. In fact, the chances are that these days a good deal more people are involved in the process of getting food into my stomach to sustain my life for another 24 hours. On Thanksgiving we have a better chance of remembering this, and the thought pleases us for we feel supported.

I’d like to have Thanksgiving every day (no turkey, no football, no lines at the airport, but the good bits!). And I can, there is nothing stopping me. For one thing, I can remember how lucky I am to have this precious human life. For another, I can remember how this precious human life and every single one of my needs and enjoyments come from the kindness of others.

Lucky me

prize: precious human life

In the meditation on our precious human life we count our blessings because this life is right now giving us an unprecedented opportunity to make serious spiritual progress even on a daily basis, yet it is so almost unbelievably rare — a fact that becomes obvious if we compare our situation to that of most other living beings. Even the simplest things in life are precious, such as being able to walk or talk or write or taste, something we often don’t realize until we no longer have them due to sickness, disability or death. Traditionally in Buddhism we count 18 blessings, called the eight freedoms and the ten endowments – chances are you have every one of these (if you want to know for sure, you can check out Joyful Path of Good Fortune.

Don’t let this be true for you: “You don’t know what you’ve got till its gone.”

Thanks to others!

Then in the kindness of others meditation we contemplate in as much personal detail as we can where exactly each of these blessings comes from?! Quick answer: Others.

Geshe Kelsang says:

Our body is the result not only of our parents but of countless beings who have provided it with food, shelter and so forth. It is because we have this present body with human faculties that we are able to enjoy all the pleasures and opportunities of human life… Our skills and abilities all come from the kindness of others—we had to be taught how to eat, how to walk, how to talk, and how to read and write… Our spiritual development and the pure happiness of full enlightenment also depend on the kindness of living beings. ~ Transform Your Life

Great full

Remembering all this makes us feel grateful. We feel “full” for all that is “great”! We need gratitude to feel good about our lives and also as a foundation for love and compassion for others. Whenever we recall any kindness someone has shown us, studies and our own experience show that we feel instantly better, and closer to them. (A 15th century etymology for gratitude is “pleasing to the mind”). Gratitude predisposes us to many positive states of mind. So when we take a little time to itemize all the kindness we have received since the day we were born, we can overflow with happiness! As we fill up with happiness, it seems to push all our negative, selfish minds out, for there isn’t room for both – like scum being pushed out the top of a bottle when we fill it up with clean liquid.

On the other hand, when we feel depleted, exhausted or ungrateful it is easy for the negative moods to settle in. We feel we are lacking something, hollow, and project that on the world around us, which feels bereft of happiness and support. We can develop attachment for external objects to fill us up, and if we see others’ experiencing good things we can easily feel envy for the things we feel we don’t have.

“Hang on a minute”, I hear some of you say. “I don’t have that much to be thankful for – my life is in fact a huge mess and it is all their fault.” If we find ourselves pursuing this depressing line of thought, we can go back to the precious human life meditation. To be able to even think about these things means we must have a precious human life – so with that established we can stop dwelling on what is wrong with our lives and instead remember everything we have going for us. Then we can ask ourselves where each of our freedoms and opportunities actually comes from. (Answer above!)

We choose what we think about, so we might as well choose to smell the roses rather than stick our nose in the stinky garbage can.

Happy Thanksgiving to you too, Mister Turkey

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Please give this article to anyone who might like it.

(Postscript: despite the title of this article, Christmas can be cool too… more later.)

(I wrote this article last year but it still seems relevant this year!)

Please like Kadampa Life on Facebook if you do.

Filed Under: Current issues, Happiness, Love & compassion Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

A Temple for this place and time

10/07/2012 By 17 Comments
New York city meditation KMC NYC

I have been in New York City for the last ten days, on the occasion of attending the city Temple opening for Kadampa Meditation Center NYC and the North Eastern Dharma Celebration in upstate New York.

The new Buddhist Temple in Chelsea is a three-dimensional peace-space, refuge from the busy streets and lives outside. An enormous

Buddha Shakyamuni and Tara at KMC NYC

Buddha Shakyamuni and Tara

Buddha Shakyamuni seems to float in mid-sky, surrounded by the most ethereal looking statues I have yet seen in the New Kadampa Tradition. I loved seeing a blissful Great Mother Prajnaparamita next to a knowing, smiling Tara. There are a lot of women in this city, and a lot who attend the Buddhist center, and it seems timely and inspiring to have these female enlightened beings in pride of place, perfect role models both.

I love being in New York City. It keeps me on my toes. New York is full of intelligent, creative people who actively decided to come here. I don’t always get that sense in other places I’ve lived and visited – people perhaps end up there by accident, or because their communities and families are there, or because they are relatively content with their lifestyle, or because they have not got a sufficiently strong desire to get up and move away. In New York, it seems people are dedicatedly pursuing their dreams. People come here to ride the formidable energy, but the challenge can be a loss of a sense of privacy or space.

New York and samsara and meditationIn a way, although people everywhere are trying to get a foothold in samsara, in New York many seem to be attempting an ascent of the entire mountain. They have come here to do just that, to become masters of their universes, or at least scale greater heights, harnessing their often formidable intelligence, creativity, energy, or modern derring-do. How, this has been making me wonder, do New Yorkers interested in Buddhism most skillfully relate to and use the teachings on renunciation, on giving up on samsara? (I’m still getting to the bottom of this – so, New Yorkers, please tell me what you do in the comments.)

Waves of humanity

I have been really enjoying practicing Dharma in New York this week, particularly trying to unite the wisdom practice of seeing the wave upon wave of humanity (and their dogs) as mere appearances to my mind, with no depth other than their emptiness, with the method practice of understanding that I have a long, rich, deep history with each and every one of them that goes back through countless lives. According to Buddhism, they are not inherently friends, enemies, or New York city scene and KMC NYC templestrangers – what they are depends on how I look at them, and there are many ways to do this, some helpful, some not. One helpful way of looking is to remember that they have all been my own caring mother, another is to understand that they are always exactly the same as me in wishing to experience happiness and freedom so we have a lot in common. I have microseconds to develop a connection of love and/or wisdom with the people I pass or see, before they are gone – in Florida I like to contemplate the ocean waves of impermanence, here it is the people waves. If I don’t succeed in using those precious seconds — distracted by what they are wearing perhaps, or buying into their apparently alien differences — whoof, they’ve disappeared, and I remain surrounded by anonymous strangers.

Right now, for example, in 56th street below this apartment there is an ear-splittingly loud revving of Harley Davidsons as thousands of people with red and white flags take to 5th and 6th Avenues to celebrate Polska Day, hundreds of whom seem to be on motorbikes. Now there is loud Polish music pounding in through the windows, even though I’m on the fifth floor. We’re having a Polish PARTY!! So, today, how do I feel connected to an anonymous Pole on a Harley? How much do we have in common? It is so easy to see how, without a concerted effort to view each person, not just the mess of humanity, through the lens of love or wisdom, people can end up feeling most isolated in the places where there are the most people. But with a little bit of effort, the opportunities to make spiritual progress around here are as endless as the lovable human beings coming and going all around us all the time.Polska Day NYC Buddhism and meditation

On my way in on the bus from La Guardia last week, I sat next to a young actress who was returning to New York from San Diego for a wedding. She was excited to be home. Just as we were driving up 37th Street, she pointed at (to me) a total stranger crossing in front of our bus, and exclaimed: “I know that girl! I was at school with her!” She was beaming as she turned to me and said: “What are the chances of that?!” She felt connected, I could see it in her eyes, even though her friend had come and gone already; and the remembrance made her happy. Later on the subway, I thought that it would be wonderful if we could have that happy shock of recognition of the past we share with all coincidental strangers, including the Coptic Christian sitting next to me absorbed in a religious book, and the woman with two young children sitting opposite.

It’s a start

Last Wednesday I climbed eagerly onto a half-empty car on a full subway, only to smell why people had moved swiftly on up the carriage wrinkling their noses. There was a poor woman bent over herself, head between her knees. She had soiled herself and seemed to be attempting to rock herself into some comfort. Throughout the ride I wondered what to do, how I could help her, where I could take her. I am still wondering. Sometimes, practically, it is really hard to know what to do, and that can cause an inertia not wanting to do anything, just wanting to move on up the carriage. But I could still start somewhere, mentally at least, by sitting as close to her as I could stomach, and trying to put myself in her shoes by using the contemplations on equalizing and exchanging self with others and taking and giving, the kinds of things taught at the new Temple. There is always something I can do, and even and especially if it did not seem enough at the time, it incentivized me to hurry up along my spiritual path to Tara’s enlightened state.New York city meditation KMC NYC

Super samsara, super nirvana

The beautiful new temple seems to be entirely in the right place at the right time, a symbol of modern Buddhism. “Super samsara, super nirvana”, I once heard a Buddhist Lama say. This city thinks big, so, by New Yorkers learning to transform its world-renowned, energetic activity into ever-increasing compassion and wisdom, I think amazing things might be on the verge of happening and spilling out to other places.

Next time you come to New York, try this for me. Take a square block and walk around it, and see how many people are still there by the time you get back to the beginning and start to walk around it again. It feels like it is changing at the speed of a dream and, guess what, maybe it is a dream? And, guess what, even slower-paced places may be a dream too. Even the quietest suburb in middle America may be a dream. A good friend of mine says there is nowhere he feels closer to the dream-like nature of phenomena than in the Big Apple. Its very speed reveals its impermanence, and its impermanence reveals its emptiness. Hence, in all the potential claustrophobia, there is only space, and therefore, paradoxically, being in the middle of 8 million people living on a rock is where he feels at greatest peace.

Filed Under: Current issues, Love & compassion, Wisdom Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Compassion and the super-rich

09/22/2012 By 13 Comments
kindness of Buddha

A man walked past me on the beach recently dressed in a plain grey tee-shirt and ordinary looking shorts, only his state of the art new trainers and the X-Men type headset gracing his crown gave him away. I caught a drift of his conversation: “Yeah, the plane can stay there at the airport, we can catch the game, the car can take us back to the airport, and we’ll be back at the hotel no later than midnight.”

compassion and the super richHe is clearly one of the super-rich, in a world where cars seem to drive themselves and whole planes can be left casually lying around waiting for us. Yesterday I read in the paper that the top 5% of the US population buys 37% of the goods. What do you feel when you read statistics like this (and there are plenty of them)? Judging by the press, the Facebook comments I often see, and my own occasional grumpiness about it, I’m guessing sometimes maybe a touch of resentment or irritation? “Bl**** rich people with bonuses got us all into this mess!” An annoyance at society’s inequality and the decline of the middle class? A fear for the future? A burning desire to get involved in politics to put an end to careless rich people gorging on the rest of us? (I think being a politician is possibly the most thankless task of all). Envy arising from insecurity (especially when we ourselves are suffering from the recession)? Dislike? (If you count yourself amongst the super-rich, is there still someone richer, a neighbor perhaps, whom you feel annoyed about sometimes?)

Buddha’s Return from Heaven Day

I decided to write on compassion to celebrate Buddha’s Return from Heaven Day, which is today, September 22nd. You can read a beautiful teaching given on this day in 1991 by Geshe Kelsang Gyatso here. In it, he says:

On this day we should especially remember Buddha’s kindness…. kindness of Buddha

The nature of Buddhadharma is compassion – an unbiased compassion that is not just for human beings but for every living being, including animals.

I often write about developing compassion for animals — today I feel like writing about developing compassion for rich people, who are also “living beings” and still in samsara :-)

What is samsara?

In samsara, there are six realms, including the demi-god and god realms that outshine the wealth, possessions and glory of the super-rich as a sun outshines a firefly. But all these realms are in samsara and all of them are to be abandoned if we are to find true and lasting happiness.

Buddha called ordinary, suffering life “samsara.” What is samsara? Samsara is the experience of an impure, uncontrolled mind. Our world does not exist from its own side but is projected by our own thoughts. At the moment, due to our delusions and karma, we are projecting a world full of suffering.

This world is characterized by a lack of freedom. At the moment we experience only relative freedom. We are not free in significant ways. For example, are we free from being born, getting sick, growing old, or dying? These happen without any choice, whether we like it or not. At some point, without choice, we have to be separated from everything we love, we have to put up with things we don’t like, and we experience a lack of satisfaction. No one who is truly free would choose to experience pain over happiness.

The different realms of samsara are all dream-like projections of a mind distorted by delusions, in particular self-grasping and self-cherishing. Liberation from samsara, so-called nirvana, or the Pure Land, is a dream-like projection of a pure or non-deluded mind. Samsara is not a place, and when we are aiming to live a pure life free from suffering it is not necessary to go somewhere else to find Milarepa's cavethis. When Milarepa (who lived in Tibet in the 11th century) was asked where his Pure Land was, he pointed to his cave. Samsara is not outside our minds any more than nirvana is. We can remove the samsara from our minds by gaining true mental freedom from our delusions, and then we will naturally be creating and living in a pure world, with blissful experiences.

Compassion for everyone

In Eight Steps to Happiness Geshe Kelsang says we also need compassion for everyone in samsara, including those who appear to be better off than us. There is something missing otherwise, and we are in danger of feeling resentful, which undermines our spiritual progress. Of course, some people are rich right now, but that doesn’t mean they are not suffering. It doesn’t in fact mean that they are suffering any less than us. Quite possibly many of them are suffering more. They have all the human sufferings we have – sickness, birth, ageing, rebirth, no satisfaction, etc. And they often have more desire, trying to slake their thirst with yet more salt-water as attachment can never be satiated. He didn’t seem particularly excited, my friend on the beach, just matter of fact, and it struck me that having your own plane soon grows old, just like every other 21st century marvel even many of us hoi poloi have already gotten used to – cars, comfortable bedding, indoor plumbing, traveling through the air, high definition TV, computers, iPhones, etc etc. My great-grandparents would have thought they’d died and gone to heaven if they could have used a fraction of what we now routinely take for granted in our daily lives. Even beings in the god realms may be getting some ideas from Apple.

shit creek of samsara

Better to get out of samsara’s creek altogether!

So, we can do what we can to balance out society and make it fairer; and to preserve our democracy I personally think it behooves us to take some responsibility, at least by voting. However, it is impossible to fix samsara or make it work for any length of time, and having an unbalanced mind about the rich is not going to improve a thing for us or for anyone else. We have to gather all blame into our delusions, not rich bankers. Actually, rich people got their wealth from past giving. If they continue to give, they will also continue to create the causes for future wealth, just like Warren Buffett or Bill Gates, and that is something to rejoice in, without feeling insecure. Every time we get annoyed or jealous, we burn merit or good fortune. But every time we rejoice in someone’s qualities or good fortune, we create the cause to have those ourself.samsara is not a zero sum game

There is not set amount of wealth, it is not a zero sum game. Wealth and possessions are a result of good karma or merit, so if we create merit we necessarily create the cause for wealth – it’ll appear from somewhere, even if we are in a desert, as there is no external world that is fixed. In a dream, things just appear due to the ripening of karmic seeds. It is the same in our waking worlds. If we are worried about running out of resources, the Kadampas say the best thing we can do is practice giving to others and offering to holy beings. In one concentrated mandala offering we can create the cause for whole worlds of prosperity and joy!

 

 

Filed Under: Love & compassion Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
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