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Hang onto your hats everyone!
Why do Buddhists talk about many Buddhas?
Often when we speak of “the Buddha,” we mean the historical figure Siddhartha Gautama, who attained enlightenment and began teaching the dharma around 2,600 years ago. But Buddhist tradition holds that this individual—also known as Shakyamuni Buddha—was only one in a series of awakened ones that stretches back into the distant past and extends into the farthest reaches of the future.
Of the many buddhas who preceded Shakyamuni, one of the most important was Dipamkara. His name means “light maker”: it is said that at his birth many lamps appeared and that he predicted Shakyamuni’s enlightenment.
After a long period, Dipamkara’s teachings faded and were forgotten. Then came a succession of other buddhas, leading up to Shakyamuni, the buddha of our era. In the distant future, after a similar decline, it is said a buddha named Maitreya will emerge. Dipamkara, Shakyamuni, and Maitreya are often depicted in a triad representing past, present, and future. Past buddhas and future buddhas are objects of devotion that exist eternally and are available to those who seek them.
Although buddhas are infinite in a cosmic sense, the appearance of one in our world is rare. Buddhist cosmology describes a vast array of worlds of which ours is only one. Each of these worlds is overseen by a buddha, and rebirth in these worlds, known as buddha-fields, is the goal of many Buddhists.
Two of these prominent buddhas are Amitabha (Japanese, Amida), the Buddha of Infinite Light, and Bhaishajyaguru, the Medicine Buddha.
Amitabha Buddha is central to Pure Land Buddhism. He rules over the Western paradise of Sukhavati, literally “blissful land,” a place where enlightenment is much easier to achieve than elsewhere.
Bhaishajyaguru is the patron of doctors and healers and rules over an Eastern paradise. Rays of light that emanate from his blue body illuminate the world so that practitioners will never be in darkness. Devotion to him is said to ensure longevity, wealth, and prestige.
The Eastern and Western paradises are both said to be located trillions of buddha-fields away from our (impure) realm, which gives an idea of the epic scope of Buddhist cosmology.
Many other buddhas also reside in Pure Lands across the cosmos, serving as objects of reverence.
The post Buddhas Across the Cosmos appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.
Sitting in radical equanimity, we let all of life be just what it is and our resistance drops away. Whether it’s cancer, problems at work or in a marriage, our broken dreams or dashed hopes—all the ups and downs of life are “just as they are” when we are sitting. Our problems and fears remain but, somehow, by dropping resistance to them, everything is okay. We let them be, we leave them behind, in our equanimity during the minutes of our sitting. (After sitting we had best work to fix that marriage, solve the problems, cure our cancer. However, during the minutes of sitting, we put aside all need to fix, solve, and cure.) By assuming a balanced, stable, and comfortable physical posture—as comfortable as our health will allow—we facilitate a balanced, stable, and easy heart. Then, we just let be.
♦
From The Zen Master’s Dance: A Guide to Understanding Dogen and Who You Are in the Universe by Jundo Cohen © 2020. Reprinted with permission of Wisdom Publications.
The post The Power of Radical Equanimity appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.
The 8th-century Indian Buddhist sage Shantideva dedicated a chapter of his work The Way of the Bodhisattva to the subject of patience. In the new book Peaceful Heart: The Buddhist Practice of Patience, the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche follows the 134 verses from the Patience Chapter and explains how they apply to our busy lives today. In this excerpt, he discusses verses 15 through 18, translated by the Padmakara Translation Group.
15
And do I not already bear with the
common irritations—
Bites and stings of snakes and flies,
Experiences of hunger and thirst,
And painful rashes on my skin?
16
Heat and cold, the wind and rain,
Sickness, prison, beatings—
I’ll not fret about such things.
To do so only aggravates my trouble.
If we look at our lives, we already have a certain amount of patience. We can bear many difficult circumstances quite well. For example, we all have to endure minor illnesses such as colds and headaches. We have to deal with plenty of weather we don’t like. We put up with mosquitoes and mice and many other creatures that cause us minor trouble.
Rather than constantly seeking to eliminate all small irritations from our lives, we can use them as a basis for developing more patience. If you emphasize comfort over the practice of patience, your mind will get weaker and weaker. If you want your life to be free of the challenge of needing patience, your mind will be in constant fear. You will feel increasingly under threat, increasingly provoked, increasingly paranoid. This will lead you to act more negatively and to reject much of the world.
Practitioners need to be going in the opposite direction. We need to have a little oomph to work with all the challenges we encounter. A lot of people wonder, “Why does my life have so much struggle?” But there is no such thing in samsara as a life free of struggle. There is no such thing as a life where nothing threatens us. So instead we should ask ourselves, “Why doesn’t my life have more oomph?”
It’s interesting that it’s easier to be patient with things or beings that cannot be held responsible, such as the weather or infants. We should also notice that it’s relatively easy to muster our tolerance toward people we want to please or impress, such as those we find attractive or our superiors at work. These examples show how capable we are of having control over our minds. If we use these easier situations as a training ground, we are also capable of extending our patience to situations or people that tend to provoke our anger more strongly.
Shantideva’s point here is that developing patience depends a lot on our self-confidence and self-image. If we see ourselves as nervous, shaky, and irritable, our experiences will tend to follow that image. So we need to change our attitude to see ourselves as tolerant and not easily disturbed. This will make a great difference in how we react to outer conditions and will set in motion more favorable ways for things to unfold. When we see ourselves in such a positive light, it will be easy to tolerate small disturbances, let go, and move on with ever-increasing patience. As our minds become more agile and ready to make use of discomfort and adversity, we will gain more strength to face the great disturbances of life with tolerance.
17
There are some whose bravery
increases
At the sight of their own blood,
While some lose all their strength
and faint
When it’s another’s blood they see!
18
This results from how the mind is set,
In steadfastness or cowardice.
And so I’ll scorn all injury,
And hardships I will disregard!
Our reactions to situations, people, and our own states of mind are based on how we condition our minds. For instance, if you have habituated yourself to be brave in battle, seeing your own blood flow may give you even more courage to fight. But if you’ve habituated your mind to weakness and oversensitivity, you may faint or panic even when you see someone else’s blood. Your response in that moment comes from how you’ve built up your habits in the past.
You can train your mind to be strong and resilient, or you can train your mind to be fainthearted and easily discouraged. This is your choice. If you want to be a bodhisattva, it’s not viable to act like a weak dog and run away with your tail between your legs, succumbing to your habitual reactions. A bodhisattva needs to endure countless challenges, so you have to shed any tendencies toward cowardice.
In these modern times, particularly in the West, it’s common for people to give up on themselves easily. Many dharma students tend to judge themselves too harshly and then become discouraged. Part of the problem is they want to be too good. So when they see their neuroses and their imperfections, they have a hard time accepting themselves. This comes from having unreasonable expectations. It is a puritanical mindset. I hear people say, “I’ve been practicing for the last twenty years. How could this happen? How could I do this? How could I have this thought, this feeling?” This often happens just when they think they’ve made some progress. The result can be deep despondency.
Our thoughts, feelings, and reactions come about due to a vast number of interdependent circumstances. When the perfect circumstances converge for you to have a particular reaction, it’s almost impossible not to have that reaction, at least initially. As a result, no matter how long you’ve practiced, it’s very unlikely that nothing will bother you anymore. It isn’t realistic to think you’ll be exempt from getting frustrated or losing your temper. The mark of a true practitioner is not what arises in your life and mind, but how you work with what arises.
It all comes down to your perspective and your self-confidence—your oomph. Now you may think, “What can I do about that? I’m just not a self-confident person.” It’s important to know that self-confidence isn’t something we’re born with. Everyone can develop self-confidence if they want to. But we must understand that here we are talking about genuine self-confidence, not ego’s bloated version, which is more like arrogance.
The process begins with your willingness to take a chance. Rather than having everything absolutely clear and predictable ahead of time, you have to be willing to go into the unknown. This may require a leap of faith—faith in your own mind and its innate wisdom and ability. Then, having taken that leap, you have to work with your intelligence—skillfully, mindfully, and patiently—as the situation unfolds. Going through this kind of process repeatedly will increase your self-confidence, especially when you encounter difficulties and find ways to turn them around or bring about the best outcome possible.
Here it is helpful to remember verses 15 and 16, in which Shantideva advises us to train ourselves in cultivating positive qualities by beginning with relatively small things. This is a realistic, doable approach to developing any desirable attribute in your mind. For example, you may wish to be a generous person but realize that you’re not very generous. Resigning yourself to being stingy by nature will get you nowhere. That is just making an excuse based on laziness.
If you’re genuinely interested, you can always find small ways to be generous. You can even practice by passing money or some object you’re attached to from one of your hands to the other. The Buddha actually suggested this simple practice to a disciple who thus got over his miserliness and eventually became a great patron of the dharma. Starting small will serve as an effective beginning to your generosity practice, which you can then take as far as you want it to go.
With patience especially, we can use the small irritations that come up in our lives as wonderful opportunities to train. For example, sometimes we feel offended, but at the same time we realize it’s silly to be offended. Here we have a great chance to apply the humor we already see in the situation. This humor is based on realizing the irony of what is happening: we’re blaming somebody else, but the real problem is our own ego, manifesting in the form of a ridiculous uptightness. This kind of ironic humor is not just a patch we use to cover up pain. It is an insight that can turn irritation into a genuine laugh or smile, which gives us a feeling of release. A humorous perspective gets us through the slight pain of the offense and enables us to turn that pain into wisdom. We can then appreciate the pain as we would the pain of an immunization. We need to take advantage of these situations, which are within our reach to work with successfully. If we forgo such opportunities to practice in small ways, then to believe we will be patient when bigger things come around is just wishful thinking.
Because humor and appreciating irony are such effective means of cutting through irritations, I would like to share a contemplation I once had, which I found both funny and helpful. It occurred to me that people come with different shoe sizes, but that doesn’t bother me. They have different pants sizes and hat sizes. That also doesn’t bother me. So why should I be bothered that people come with different sizes of ego? Just as I don’t have to wear other people’s shoes, I don’t have to wear other people’s egos. I can just let them wear their own egos, whatever size they are. Why should I take the size of someone else’s ego personally and let it bother me? It is theirs and theirs alone to wear. I can just let them be.
The size of another person’s ego can make you feel very bothered and uncomfortable. But if you can find other ways of looking at your irritation, especially using humor, then you have a better chance of being patient. In this way, your patience will increase not only in trivial situations but also in serious situations where humor and irony are more difficult to find.
♦
Excerpted from Peaceful Heart: The Buddhist Practice of Patience by Dzigar Kongtrul © 2020. Reprinted with permission of Shambhala Publications.
The post The Path of Patience appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.
When the Blessed One was in Shravasti, there was a young god named Maniprabha who had hoops in his ears and necklaces around his neck and whose body was graced with strings of precious stones. He had a luminous celestial mansion of exquisite, divine jewels.
—Karmashataka
One of our favorite avadanas, or teaching stories, from the Karmashataka is the tale of the god Maniprabha, whose body, like the celestial mansion he lived in, shone with light and was adorned with fine jewels. One day when the Buddha was teaching at Jeta Grove (near the ancient Indian city of Shravasti), the brightly shining deity came to the garden with flowers, which he scattered over the Buddha to show homage. He then bent down to touch his head to the Buddha’s feet in a traditional gesture of respect before sitting to hear the dharma. (The image of a god bowing down to the Buddha may be surprising for some readers. But in the Buddhist framework, buddhas far exceed the gods in spiritual realization. Maniprabha’s deference to the Buddha is an embodied expression of this truth.) The Buddha offered a teaching that had such an immediate and profound effect on Maniprabha that the young god’s eventual awakening became inevitable. In celebration he rose from his seat, again touched his head to the feet of the Blessed One, circumambulated him three times, and disappeared upon the spot.
Some of the other monks in the sangha were confused. They had been studying with “continued, earnest, and sleepless efforts at dusk and dawn” when they saw Maniprabha’s great light emanate and then disappear. They went to the Buddha to ask what had happened. The Buddha explained, but the monks still had questions. They inquired how it came to be that Maniprabha had taken rebirth as a god whose residence was a celestial mansion and whose body was ornamented with divine jewels.
As is often the case in the Karmashataka, the Buddha’s response comes in the form of a story within the story. The story takes place long before Siddhartha Gautama became the Buddha—before he was even born. Back then, Buddha Kashyapa, one of the other buddhas the sutras say have appeared throughout history, was teaching the dharma. At the time, there lived in Varanasi a householder of tremendous wealth. After Buddha Kashyapa’s final passing, the householder, out of deep devotion, built a great stupa (shrine) containing the hair and nail relics of Buddha Kashyapa’s holy body. This stupa was so magnificent that even its rain gutters glimmered with jewels. Not only that, but the householder organized the construction of an associated monastery. For the rest of his life, he faithfully served the monks who studied and practiced there and provided for their every need.
The Buddha explained to the monks that after going for refuge and maintaining the fundamental precepts of a lay vow-holder all his life, the householder was reborn among the gods in a celestial mansion made of jewels. That householder’s name? Maniprabha, which means “Jewel-Light.”
Like all the stories of the Karmashataka, the story of Maniprabha is a gem that crystallizes for us certain essential teachings on karma. One facet is the enormous power of actions taken from a mindset of devotion.
When we think about our actions, we often focus on their effects, but the Buddhist view of karma easily overlooks the importance of the underlying intention. Yet as Joseph Goldstein points out, “the Buddha used the term karma specifically referring to volition, the intention or motive behind an action. He said that karma is volition because it is the motivation behind the action that determines the karmic fruit. Inherent in each intention in the mind is an energy powerful enough to bring about subsequent results.” Indeed, the Buddha stated, “Action (karma) is volition, for after having intended something, one accomplishes action through body, speech, and mind.”
The story of Maniprabha starts with a description of his numerous acts of devotion. Far from being a set of isolated occurrences, these actions are an upwelling of Maniprabha’s devotion in previous lifetimes. In honor of the earlier buddha Kashyapa, he built a magnificent stupa and an associated monastery where he rendered service all his life, and provided for the material well-being of the monastics there. But Maniprabha’s devotion was directed not only to these two buddhas. From his consistent, lifelong support of the monastery, we recognize that his devotion is also to the dharma and sangha, to notions of love and service, to compassion, and to putting others first.
In the course of the story, Maniprabha is never depicted as wavering. He appears with purpose, fulfills that purpose, and departs. Moreover, in the story of his past life, we are given to understand that the service he rendered was a joyful commitment that he never abandoned. The purity of that devotion later manifests concretely in the pristine qualities of his future rebirth in the god realm—in his brilliant appearance, his splendid ornamentation, his divine residence, and his clear intention. Practitioners will find it particularly interesting to note that his acts of devotion gave rise to the auspicious circumstances needed to receive teachings directly from a buddha. Not only that, but Maniprabha was able to comprehend the teaching so deeply that he arrived speedily at the threshold of liberation.
Seen in relation to our own practice, the potential benefits of devotion are numerous. Devotion has the quality of stabilizing the mind. When something occurs that in other contexts might set us off balance, devotion helps us stay on course. For example, at times when we hear criticism from others, we may notice that our potential reactivity and defensiveness are allayed by the depth of our conviction in the dharma. We are able to actually hear their feedback and contemplate its validity without losing our emotional center.
Devotion is akin to love: when cultivated, it grows over time. It develops within the context of an ongoing relationship. When that relationship—with a person, to the teachings generally, or to a certain lineage or practice—is healthy and not excessively predicated on projected longing, devotion matures and deepens. It is balanced. It becomes less superficial as it increases.
In keeping with our individual temperaments and inclinations, we may find ourselves drawn to certain devotional acts and disinclined to others. Traditional forms such as making offerings, building stupas, or bowing our heads or bodies are certainly important. But there are also contemporary forms more familiar to us: we can set out the cushions at the dharma center, “like and subscribe” to our favorite dharma sources on social media, or help to update Rinpoche’s iPhone. We may be spontaneously engaging in these activities without recognizing the devotion we are already expressing.
Simply attending dharma teachings with a mind that is genuinely open and receptive, not armored or argumentative, can itself be an act of devotion. It is a practice to notice where devotion already exists in our minds and hearts. That mindful awareness increases their power.
When emphasizing intention and devotion, the thought does come to us: Isn’t it enough that I’m here at the dharma talk? Or that I made it onto this cushion? Aren’t these virtuous actions good enough on their own? There can be a sense in our daily practice—and in our lives—that going through the motions is enough. This is especially true when we’re experiencing the challenges of life, and we find ourselves tired, overwhelmed, scared, anxious, busy, or burdened, as we often have every reason to be. Devotion feels like yet another item on our to-do list.
True devotion, however, does not actually drain us. It is a source of vibrant energy that makes our commitments come alive and become a source of joy.
Strengthened by devotion, we are more resilient when we encounter exhaustion, criticism, or the questions that arise naturally along the way. Our efforts will continue to grow in spite of challenges and even in response to them.
We know we’re experiencing devotion when we feel a genuine, spontaneous appreciation for the gifts we are receiving—for the fact that we can meet with qualified teachers, hear the word of the dharma, and find support in the sangha. Devotion is the wish to demonstrate this appreciation in respectful form, to pay homage as Maniprabha did.
Maniprabha leaped to repay the Buddha’s kindness without hesitation. Similarly, the dharma can inspire a realization of our wondrous good fortune that naturally overflows in an abundance of gratitude.
♦
This is the second installment in a four-part series on the Karmashataka (“A Hundred Deeds”) Sutra, a collection of ancient teaching stories on karma that has recently been translated from Tibetan into English. Read the first installation here.
The post The Karmic Power of Devotion appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.
In 1997 I spent three months in India. A friend in Delhi had Old Path, White Clouds, a very thick, novel-like account of the Buddha’s life by Thich Nhat Hanh. I soaked it up like a sponge, reading for hours in the land where the events recounted in the book had happened millennia earlier.
Thich Nhat Hanh’s intention was to make the Buddha and his disciples come alive, and that is how I experienced them. I was moved by the Buddha’s calm and even his humor in the face of insult and slander, his compassion when he helped a serial murderer to awaken, how he was saddened by a major split in the sangha, and the way he taught through his final moments. Every word on the page awoke in me the wish to follow this path for myself and discover the liberation that this awakened individual was pointing to in my own heart.
I’ve read this book several times since. It was my bedtime reading one summer retreat at Plum Village, and I looked forward to reading it each evening by flashlight. A good story never grows old.
The post Turning Word appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.
It’s true that in specific circumstances where you have the ability to alleviate the suffering of another person or to protect another person from suffering, there is, in that sense, an inequality. One person has a capacity that the other person does not. But there is no such sense of inequality, no feeling of superiority, in the actual mode in which compassion views the other sentient being. . . . The other being for whom I feel compassion is just like me. That person wants happiness just like me and has every right to be happy and to overcome suffering just like me, whether that person is close to me or not. . . . That type of compassion is based on the equality of self and others. There’s no room there for feeling superior.
♦
Healing Emotions: Conversations with the Dalai Lama on Psychology, Meditation, and the Mind-Body Connection by the Dalai Lama, edited by Daniel Goleman © 1997 by the Mind and Life Institute. Reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications.
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As the Buddha taught, life inevitably has situations or people we will not want to encounter. This is not a problem in itself—if we simply practice how we relate to it. The content of life, the what, is always what it is at any given moment, just the fact, but it’s how we relate to that moment that will either lead us toward or away from more suffering. Easier said than done, of course—but luckily, we have our whole life to practice.
♦
From Your Life Is Meditation by Mark Van Buren © 2020. Reprinted with permission of Wisdom Publications.
The post Relating to Life appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.
Zen Buddhist Literature has a reputation for being confounding, yet in many cases the challenges of the texts are a positive feature. The verbal puzzles called koans, for instance, are designed to be so impenetrable that the student is pushed to break through to a nonconceptual understanding. One of the most influential, and perhaps most perplexing, Zen texts is the Shobogenzo, a collection of writings by the 13th-century master Eihei Dogen, founder of the Japanese Soto Zen school. The Shobogenzo contains nuanced discourses on such subjects as the nature of reality, time, and enlightenment.
Although Dogen’s meaning often can be elusive, his intention was not to bewilder but to expound on subtle subjects as clearly as he could. Many of the passages seem cryptic in part because Dogen alludes to Chinese cultural forms and literature that today’s readers do not recognize.
At the Zen Life & Meditation Center in Chicago, Roshi Robert Joshin Althouse recently gave a dharma talk on the Shobogenzo’s most frequently cited section, the Genjokoan.
When it comes to spiritual truths and the authentic teaching of Buddhism and Zen, they don’t get much better than Dogen’s Genjokoan. I have read many different translations of the Genjokoan, and I find Dharmavidya David Brazier’s new translation, called The Dark Side of the Mirror, to be the clearest. It’s often assumed that the Genjokoan is a series of different teachings, but what this new translation makes clear is that this teaching is one piece of cloth all the way through.
To understand what Dogen is saying, we need to put ourselves into the mindset of a 13th-century monastic. Our style of practice at the Zen Life & Meditation Center in Chicago is less traditional, and our members are mostly lay practitioners. Dogen, however, was a very religious man, and this is a religious text.
Dogen’s early life was full of tragedy and misfortune. He lost his father when he was 2 and his mother when he was 8, and he felt this very acutely. As he was watching the incense smoke rise over his mother’s casket, he vowed to ordain as a Buddhist monk, and when he turned 13, he did so. He spent four years at a Tendai monastery on Mount Hiei, which was the main Buddhist center of Japan at the time. While he was there, a deep question arose in him about the teaching of original enlightenment, a dominant teaching that claimed we’re all inherently, intrinsically awake. And the question that arose for him was this: if we are already awake, then why must we practice so rigorously?
Dogen left Mount Hiei to study at Kenninji, a Rinzai Zen monastery, in Kyoto. But he was still dissatisfied and traveled with his teacher Myozen to study in China, which the Japanese considered to be a more authentic spiritual center. Myozen, and eventually Dogen, were accepted to the temple on Mount Tiantong.
One day, Dogen heard the temple’s abbot, Rujing, scolding another monk and telling him to drop off “body-mind,” and when Dogen heard that phrase, he had a “sudden awakening,” or kensho. A year later, Dogen received transmission from Rujing. By the time he returned to Japan about five years later (1233), he was really enthusiastic about teaching the buddhadharma.
This is when he writes the Genjokoan, this profound spiritual text.
The Genjokoan was written as a letter to a lay Buddhist practitioner or possibly a Confucian. We don’t know what the practitioner had asked, but we have to assume that Dogen wrote something that a layperson could understand, and that he wasn’t trying to be esoteric.
As David Brazier points out, you have to appreciate how, through his experience in China and his upbringing in a Japanese aristocratic family, Dogen was steeped in Chinese culture. Just as we are steeped in a cultural context that is secular, scientific, and humanistic, Dogen was soaked in Taoism and Confucianism. In spite of this larger context, however, Dogen always considered himself a Buddhist.
The central teaching in the Genjokoan uses the image of being a mirror, the dark side of the mirror. Taoist teachings help clarify and bring this important metaphor to life.
Though one may deeply understand the forms of body and mind, though one may deeply understand what the body and mind are saying, still, this is not a reflection in a mirror, nor like the moon in the water, which is only realized on one side when the other side is dark.
This is the crux of the whole Genjokoan. He’s saying that when you look at your reflection in water, there’s a tipping point: either the water’s transparent or it’s murky and reflective like a mirror. It doesn’t gradually become a mirror. It’s either a mirror or it isn’t. Dogen is using this as a metaphor: when you drop off the body-mind, when you forget the self, you become a mirror that reflects the dharma.
Dogen is criticizing the interpretation of original enlightenment that claims one can possess the dharma. One may have kensho, but one may not necessarily be aware of it. Waking up allows you to see and appreciate the dharma, and from this point of view the dharma is what is other than you, because the dharma is unconditioned. You and I are conditioned. To wake up, to be liberated, is to be able to reflect the buddhadharma, as it is, without your projection. You don’t possess enlightenment. It possesses you.
To make this point, Dogen alludes to Taoist ideas about yin and yang. The concept of yin and yang is very dialectical. You’re either on one side or the other. And if you go too far to either extreme, you can flip to the other side. Yang is the active, masculine principle, and yin is the receptive, feminine principle. Taoism would say that you should dwell on the yin side as much as possible, because it’s receptive and can see the other side. When we are on the yang side, we tend to be blind and act out in ways that are unbalanced. We need to use this male energy to be in the world, but once we’ve accomplished the task at hand, it’s wise to return to the yin side.
Dogen builds his entire argument around this central metaphor of the dark side of the mirror that reflects the buddhadharma. Later on he uses more opposites and pairs: Fish and birds, Buddhist enlightenment and delusion, shore and the boat, firewood and ash. He’s using these metaphors constantly throughout the Genjokoan, and he says the same thing over and over and over again: be on the yin side. He’s saying this: To get over yourself, appreciate what is other than you and get on with living, being liberated, free of the karma that we create. Trust the universe and let it carry you along.
When Dogen says that to study Buddhism is to study the self, he is inviting you to let go of your secondhand experience and see directly. Study your human nature, your habits, your thoughts, your behavior—and you may discover you are not as interesting as you thought. To wake up is to discover your authentic self, which is always firsthand and outside all contrivances and conventions.
The French sociologist Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) defined religious consciousness as the ability to make a distinction between what is mundane and what is sacred. Without enlightenment, we just have humanistic psychology or mindfulness, but that’s not the same as mindfulness in the context of a genuine spiritual path of awakening. And that’s not what Dogen is teaching. Dogen is very clear about enlightenment. He’s saying that’s the point—to wake up.
At the same time, Dogen is completely realistic. He’s not talking about an ideal of enlightenment. He’s talking about the actual living transmission of the dharma. The first four lines of the Genjokoan illustrate this point well. The passage starts off with Dogen talking about the Buddhist teachings from the outside, the yang side. As David Brazier translates:
Birth and death, practice and daily life, delusion and enlightenment, ordinary beings and all the Buddhas; such is the Buddha dao [Buddha way], Buddha’s dharma of all dharmas.
Then Dogen talks about experiencing the teachings for yourself. (Note that the term that Dogen uses for the Buddha way is Buddha dao, which carries a greater sense of the Chinese thought encompassing it.)
As the myriad dharmas are other than self, when one is in their midst, there are no creating and destroying, no sentient beings and all buddhas, no delusion and enlightenment.
He has moved to the yin side, where all those dualities disappear. Then, in the third line, he unifies the first two lines:
Out of abundance and lack, springs forth the original dao of Buddha, and for this there is making and destroying, delusion and enlightenment, and there are living buddhas.
He’s talking about when you are that mirror reflecting the buddhadharma. There is no self here, and the world is sacred through and through.
It’s possible to get stuck here—to think you’ve finally arrived—but the path is always the goal. Practice is enlightenment. With the fourth line, he throws cold water on you:
So it is and nevertheless, blossoms fall bittersweet and weeds spread amidst woeful resignations.
You just woke up. You just finished a seven-day sesshin [meditation retreat] and your samadhi [meditative concentration] is very strong. You are enjoying this peaceful, calm, and spacious awareness, but little by little, day by day it slowly fades. So you might feel slightly depressed that such clarity doesn’t seem to last. You are still subject to impermanence. Your body is going to get old, you’re going to get sick, and you’re going to suffer. You won’t return to delusion in the same way—but you will still have to deal with problems and difficulties. This is what is meant by the koan of Genjokoan.
The typical Chinese characters for koan roughly mean “a public case.” But Dogen is not using those characters here, and he doesn’t do anything by accident or use words haphazardly. The characters he uses for koan refer to equality or balance.
Here, he’s bringing in a Confucian element, the principle of li, which means to perform rites correctly so that heaven and earth remain in balance along with the natural right ordering of daily life. This includes just doing your duties, like if you have a family member who’s sick and you have to take care of them instead of going out to a party.
Dogen is saying that enlightenment includes this Confucian idea of li, which is not a passive thing. You actually become engaged in some way with your community, your sangha, the world, your family. The koan of the Genjokoan is whatever circumstance you’re in. Your challenge is to take your place there, accept that situation, and work with it.
For Dogen, nonduality is not an abstract philosophy about the absolute and relative. He uses it as a practical tool. He says that when you are that mirror and you realize genjo, you manifest the truth of the phenomenal world and you have a responsibility to engage in the world. You have to do something. So when you give life to your life wholeheartedly by accepting what is right here, which is koan, then genjo is what manifests.
The Genjokoan begins with a reference to the buddha dao and ends with a discussion of li. But throughout he is talking about faith, a faith in the buddhadharma and a faith that is supported by rigorous practice.
He is saying, again and again, forget yourself, be humble, be modest. Whatever your circumstance, whether high or low, good or bad, that’s your life just as it is, so right here is always Genjokoan. But don’t be complacent. He warns that if you think you understand the dharma, then you probably don’t. Don’t think you’ve arrived at some place where there is no more work to be done. Wherever you’ve arrived is just a jumping off place for the next thing that you need to do. Don’t just drop off body-mind. Drop off the dropped-off body-mind.
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It’s a misunderstanding to say that the Buddha’s teachings were trending in the direction of some “desireless” state as our existential end. . . . That is the fundamental confusion about Buddhism and desire in the West—that meditation is leading toward a flat-line life free of desire. No, desire will remain (because it’s wired into us). It’s the karma of craving that mindfulness can help us slip free of.
Meditation, if correctly wielded, is not about shoving desire to the side. It’s about learning to live with and learn from desire. Again, as brain science is increasingly clarifying, desire is part of our evolutionary emotional inheritance. Our karmic patterns rest not in the fact of desire in our brains, but instead in how we relate to desire when it arises. The Buddha would have us aim “higher” than what craving can deliver.
♦
From The Five Hurdles to Happiness: And the Mindful Path to Overcoming Them by Mitch Abblett, PhD © 2018 by Mitch Abblett. Reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications.
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The Pali word dukkha (duhkha in Sanskrit), usually translated as “suffering,” sits at the heart of the Buddha’s four noble truths—which boil down to (1) dukkha exists, (2) dukkha arises from causes, and (3) we can end dukkha (4) by following the Buddha’s path to awakening. This central term is best understood alongside the related word sukha. The prefix su- generally means “good, easy, and conducive to well-being,” and the prefix du- correspondingly means “bad, difficult, and inclining toward illness or harm.” On the most basic level, then, sukha means pleasant while dukkha means unpleasant. The noble truth of suffering, however, does not simply refer to bodily pain; its meaning is far more subtle and rich.
One can also feel mental pleasure and pain. Here, the twin prefixes are employed again. A “good mind” (su-manas) is contrasted with a “bad mind” (du-manas) to yield the Pali words most often used to describe happiness (somanassa) and sorrow (domanassa), also known as mental pleasure and mental pain. Here, happiness and sorrow simply refer to the experience of a painful or pleasurable feeling, which is different from emotional pleasure or pain. When Buddhist teachings talk about emotions, such as love and hate, they are describing our disposition toward the things we encounter. This important distinction can be easily lost in translation.
Dukkha is further used to describe the disappointment that comes when the things we are fond of inevitably change and slip through our hands. The Pali term for this is viparinama-dukkha, meaning the suffering of change, which the second noble truth explains is caused by craving and attachment. We experience emotional pain when we crave either pleasure or the absence of pain, and don’t get what we want. Mind- fulness practice is designed to help us abandon this craving by replacing it with emotional equanimity.
Beyond the physical, mental, and psychological sense of dukkha, we might add an existential sense of these words. In Pali texts, the feeling that the very conditions of the world we inhabit are unsatisfactory is called sankhara-dukkha, or the suffering of conditioned reality. The fact that all beings must consume to live and that we will age, become ill, and die are also sources of suffering.
Fortunately, there is a corresponding state of existential well-being—the liberation from suffering that comes about with awakening.
The post What’s in a Word? Dukkha appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.
Humans have a lot of problems. Some problems, like our search for meaning and the need to come to terms with our mortality, appear to be timeless. But many of the urgent problems we face are unique to our time: the climate emergency, systemic injustice, weapons of mass destruction, and many more.
When it comes to existential problems, Buddhist teachings offer wisdom that directly supports us in our struggles, but how the dharma applies to the problems that mark our own time may seem less clear. Teachers often point out that practice can help us be more effective in our commitments by reducing stress, anxiety, and despair on the one hand and promoting resilience and clarity on the other. Yet this does not tell us how we can make our values and concerns an integral part of our practice or how we can find in millennia-old Buddhist ethical teachings guidance on dilemmas that have emerged only in recent decades.
A good place to start addressing these questions is to ask why we should treat the Buddha’s teachings as trustworthy at all. One good answer is to point to places in the scriptures where the Buddha said that it was up to those who heard him to discover for themselves whether or not the dharma is true.
A famous source for this statement is the Kalama Sutta, from the Pali canon (Anguttara Nikaya), a sutta that addresses the question of religious authority directly. The sutta relates that the Buddha had entered the town of Kesaputta, in the territory of the Kalamas. Having heard of the Buddha’s great knowledge and profound teachings, the Kalamas seek his guidance on a matter that has left them confused and in doubt. Many teachers, they say, pass through Kesaputta, and all claim that their own doctrines are right and all other doctrines are wrong. Since the Kalamas hear this from each teacher, they have no way to decide whose teaching they should follow.
The Buddha responds with these oft-quoted words:
Kalamas, don’t go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, “This contemplative is our teacher.”
—trans. Thanisarro Bhikkhu
Champions of free and open inquiry love this advice: don’t trust authority; decide for yourselves. The passage has become Exhibit A for the claim that the Buddha taught a rational form of inquiry particularly well-suited to our times. As the Theravada monk Thanissaro Bhikkhu pointed out in a Tricycle essay (Fall 2012), however, this is misleading. If we carefully read the text as whole, we see that the Buddha is not just telling the Kalamas to reject tradition, custom, and authority. He also counsels skepticism toward rational thought or any kind of reasoning process. As Ven. Thanissaro writes, “The Buddha’s skepticism toward reliable authorities extends inside as well as out.” In other words, you need to evaluate your own knowledge and convictions. And when you do, you find that logic and inference—the tools of reason—are not the right foundation to build on.
If the Kalamas cannot rely on reason or thinking things through, they ask the Buddha, what can they rely on instead? The Buddha answers:
When you know for yourselves that, “These qualities are unskillful; these qualities . . . lead to harm and to suffering”—then you should abandon them. . . . When you know for yourselves that, “These qualities are skillful” . . . then you should enter and remain in them.
As we assess this advice, let us keep in mind what we already know about the Kalamas. First, they think it’s good to listen to teachers who have real knowledge, and they are eager for guidance. Second, they know when they’re confused. Third, they recognize that the source of their confusion lies in not having any basis for deciding between competing doctrines. All this makes them prime candidates for learning from the Buddha. They’re ready to hear, they respect those who are wise, and they are motivated to learn. Would the Buddha have responded as he did if they did not have these qualities? It seems unlikely.
The Buddha’s guidance is thus not universal; it is addressed to these people in their particular situation. And here it helps to point out: we are not the Kalamas. We do not know what they know, and we know some things that they do not. Whether the Buddha’s advice to them has relevance for us remains an open question. So let’s go on.
Having told the Kalamas to rely on what they know, the Buddha asks them a series of questions about whether greed, hatred, and delusion (a triad known in Buddhist teachings as the three poisons) lead to good or to harm. They are firm in their answer: “They lead to harm and to suffering. That is how it appears to us.” By asking for their views, the Buddha is helping the Kalamas discover that they already have real knowledge—knowledge they can rely on.
If the Buddha posed these questions to us, we might have the same response: that greed, hatred, and delusion always lead to harm and that their absence always brings benefit. But maybe not. There are good arguments to be made in favor of that view, but for most of us it’s a topic open to debate. After all, we do see counterexamples in the news every day: people driven by the three poisons, yet apparently thriving at almost every level.
Here we come to a major difference between the Kalamas and us: The Kalamas—as we learn later in the sutta—believe in rebirth. This belief makes the causal connection between actions and their consequences easier to accept, because it implies that actions may bear fruit only in future lives. If we lack that belief or don’t give it much weight in deciding how to act, the claim of karmic retribution that the Kalamas “know for themselves” becomes much more difficult to accept.
Even for those of us who do believe in rebirth, our belief is not quite the same as that of the Kalamas. The Kalamas lived in a culture where virtually everyone accepted rebirth as a given, an incontestable part of the fabric out of which the universe was woven. A good comparison is the belief in traditional Christian societies that after you die you will be reborn in heaven or in hell. This is not just useful information for Christians to store away. If you are steeped in a traditional Christian culture, this belief shapes at a deep level how you live your life. Your eternal destiny (in a Christian context) or your samsaric fate (in a Buddhist context) is shaped by your actions in this life. If that is the truth of your world, it works its way into your conduct from day to day, even hour to hour. It is not something you remember from time to time; it is an ever-present reality.
For many people today, the belief in a Christian heaven and hell is no more compelling than the Buddhist belief in rebirth. However, we can accept another belief in place of belief in karmic retribution, and it is one that the Buddha presents as bedrock truth: the law of cause and effect. Implicit in the Buddha’s questions to the Kalamas about the impact of the three poisons, it is known in Pali as idappaccayata (literally, “having its foundation in this”):
This existing, that exists;
this arising, that arises;
this not existing, that does not exist; this ceasing, that ceases.
Majjhima Nikaya 3.63
This is a succinct statement of the law of cause and effect, something we moderns can get behind. Despite some philosophical doubts or religious objections, it is the guiding principle of science, our most esteemed form of knowledge. It is an inescapable baseline assumption. A world in which this law does not operate is contrary to common sense, just as a world in which rebirth did not operate would have gone against common sense for the Kalamas. Quoting the Kalamas, we can say, “That is how it appears to us.”
The difference between the Kalamas and us, of course, is that for us causality—at least in its strong, lawlike form—operates only on the physical plane. We exclude from its workings the inner, subjective realm where the three poisons operate—questions about good and evil, right and wrong, and the whole domain of morality.
Judging on this basis alone, then, we are not good candidates to learn from the Buddha. Knowing that a seed properly tended will grow into a certain kind of plant—the law of causality operating in the realm of biology—tells us very little about how to conduct our lives so as to produce what is positive.
However, there are certain causal relationships—in the sense that science understands them—that do influence how we live our lives. Let’s take the example of the climate emergency. Science, with its remarkable ability to extrapolate from present conditions to future consequences, tells us that human actions are rapidly transforming our environment, leading us toward future catastrophe. It also tells us that if we change our conduct, we may have it in our power to prevent that.
Keeping in mind that this understanding of causality may play the same role for us as understanding the causal workings of the three poisons does for the Kalamas, let’s return to the sutta.
Having led the Kalamas to recognize what they already know to be true, the Buddha now moves the conversation to a different plane. Instead of giving them advice on how to practice or offering them other teachings, he tells them how his disciples, having used their knowledge of the three poisons to transform their lives, would practice:
Now, Kalamas, one who is a disciple of the noble ones [is] . . . devoid of greed, devoid of ill will, undeluded, alert, and resolute.
Although the Buddha has reminded the Kalamas that they know something fundamental about the three poisons, this does not mean they are ready to put that knowledge into effect. After all, they are not followers of the Buddha, trained in moral conduct, concentration, and wisdom. They may know how the three poisons work, but this does not mean they are free of their influence. So the Buddha invites the Kalamas to make a leap, to take their knowledge deeper. Be like my disciples, he suggests: having freed yourself of the three poisons, be “alert and resolute,” and you will find the real answer to the confusion that brought you here.
From here on out, the Buddha’s instruction enters familiar territory. His description of his disciples’ practice appears many times in the Pali canon, in more or less identical language. But we should not lose sight of the fundamental difference in the circumstances of this sutta. The Buddha is not telling the Kalamas to be alert and resolute, since they are not ready for that step. He is just pointing out that his disciples—those who accept his authority—would make this their practice.
Putting this core teaching at one remove reminds us that the Kalamas are a naive audience. They know nothing about the Buddha’s teachings. Specifically, when he tells them that his disciples dwell “alert and resolute,” these are most likely not technical terms pointing to a whole body of teachings (such as those found in texts like the Satipatthana Sutta, which details the four foundations of mindfulness). Instead, this description will refer back to what the Kalamas know to be true. Understanding for themselves the workings of moral cause and effect, they will be alert to their operations. Resolute, they will naturally turn away from the three poisons.
By describing to the Kalamas how his own followers practice, then, the Buddha is not telling them to practice in the same way. Instead, he is counseling them to take to heart (or keep in mind) what they already know for themselves to be true.
In our own circumstances, there are things we know to be true, things we can clearly and mindfully comprehend. We know that the climate emergency is real, we know how it arose, we know we can address it, and we see the possibility of a path toward doing so if we act soon. (We too could say, “That is how it appears to us.”) Cultivating mindfulness in this context means keeping this fourfold knowledge in mind.
Mindfulness is about more than body, feeling, mind, and mental formations (the “four foundations”). It is about being alert and resolute in light of the fundamental knowledge we already possess, knowledge that truly matters. Letting such knowledge permeate our hearts and minds may in the end make it impossible not to act on what we know.
Our knowledge of the climate emergency (or other truths we find to be fundamental) is not dharma knowledge as such, yet it can still play a fundamental role in our practice. We see this when we consider what the Buddha tells the Kalamas next. Still speaking of how his own disciples would practice, he presents another teaching repeated often in the suttas. Disciples who have abandoned the three poisons deepen their understanding through practice of the four divine abidings or boundless states: love (or good will), compassion, joy (or appreciation), and equanimity. As the Buddha puts it with respect to compassion:
[They dwell] . . . pervading . . . everywhere and in every respect the all-encompassing cosmos with an awareness imbued with compassion: abundant, expansive, immeasurable, free from hostility, free from ill will.
While the Buddha goes on to offer the Kalamas a second way of resolving their initial confusion, for us it is this teaching on the boundless states that completes the lessons the sutta offers. We can put it this way: Start with what you know to be true—a truth based on the law of cause and effect, which informs your view of your world on a fundamental level. Deepen that knowledge by keeping it in mind and taking it to heart, alert and resolute. Then let it permeate and transform the world you inhabit through cultivating love and joy, equanimity and compassion. Let the attitude with which you practice transform the knowledge that you know truly matters.
We are not the Buddha’s close disciples, devoid of the three poisons, and we are not the Kalamas, who know beyond doubt how the three poisons operate in karmic terms and who have now been given teachings that show how to work with this knowledge. But we too have been given a teaching that we can rely on. Like the Kalamas, we know something true and powerful; we know truths that range from the climate emergency to social injustice and beyond. That knowledge lets us connect with the great moral concerns of our time.
Alert to what we know to be true, resolute in acting on its significance, we can infuse our practice with what we care about deeply, and we can inspire our conduct in the world with the fruits of our practice. Learning to dwell in a world permeated with love, compassion, joy, and equanimity, we find the strength and clarity to act as the situation demands of us. We know what needs to be done, and we know how to cultivate our hearts and minds in ways that support the call to action. Whether our work succeeds or not, we will be acting on our values. The life we live will be its own reward.
The post What You Know to Be True appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.
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