Basics of Buddhism – 4 – Mindfulness and Meditation

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This morning we continue a series of talks about the Basics of Buddhism by continuing to discuss the Eightfold Path.  Last week, we talked about the three components of the Path: Wisdom, Ethics and Training.  This week, we’ll finish our discussion on the Training component of the Buddhist practice:

• Wise Effort:  Having a passion for enlightenment
• Wise Mindfulness:  Practicing mindfulness by being fully present in each moment
• Wise Concentration:  Practicing meditation to train our mind

Wise Effort is all about deciding that you want to make this radical way of being a priority.  I love that it’s described as passion.  This isn’t about drudgery—“oh, I have to go meditate again…” “I better be mindful”, but rather seeing it as the way beyond suffering and stress and struggle.  If you love the feeling of peace more than the feeling of distress, then be passionate about awakening.  Without effort, our mindfulness and meditation will be haphazard and ineffective.  We still might get a little relief from our troubles, but not the radical shift in experience that you might be looking for.

Mindfulness is a commitment to stay awake to the reality in each moment, to stop sleepwalking through life.  We can approach living with curiosity and non-preference, savoring things just as they are.  Then, from this place of curiosity, the richness and fullness of the world opens up and provides us with amazing gifts of clarity.  It’s important to NOT think about mindfulness as a burden to bear but as a gift that we are giving ourselves, a easily obtained, always there, totally free medication for what ails us.  Practicing wise mindfulness is one of the key processes for transformation as taught by the Buddha.  Each moment, we have an opportunity to explore what is happening within and around us at a deeper level. 

When we become mindful, we realize that our experience of this present moment is often filtered by our past experiences.  Past experiences can by helpful in some ways.  If you’ve ever burned your finger by placing it on a hot stove, you know going forward not to touch a hot stove.  However, in order to survive, our mind is designed to makes broad generalizations from the past that sometimes hold us back from seeing what is really going on in the present moment.  If you grew up with a father who was abusive, your mind might hold as a constant truth that “all men are abusive”.  We all have this tendency to draw broad generalizations about the world based on our past experience.  The practice of mindfulness helps us sort out exactly how we are perceiving ourselves and the world, and this is the powerful first step in being able to sort through what thoughts and emotions are helping us and which ones are holding us back. 

Think of a time when you had a pre-conceived idea about what was going to happening or about a certain person, and it turned out to be wrong.  Perhaps you expected a day to be difficult, and it wasn’t so bad after all.  We can start to bend the way we experience ourselves and the world but deciding how we want to experience them, and what is holding us back from that experience.

Even with happy memories, our minds can sometimes cling them, creating certain expectations, trying to recreate them over and over again, wanting a particular situation (or relationship or activity) to be just the same as it was before.  Clinging too tightly to happy memories can create expectations that cause a sense of disappointment and disillusion when things don’t turn out as well as they had in the past. I’ve heard it said, “I want this Holiday to be just like it used to be when Mom made everything perfect.”  Then, it’s not perfect, and we become disillusioned and sad.  Mindful awareness helps us recognize these potential pitfalls.  Chasing after pleasant experiences in order to be happy doesn’t work over time.  This is what the Buddha discovered 2500 years ago. 

How can we rise above aversions caused by past experiences?  How can we rise above just chasing after mere pleasure?  And equally daunting, how can we rise above ignoring any thing or any person we judge as capable of bringing us NEITHER pleasure nor pain?  Clinging, aversion and ignorance are at the core of our dissatisfaction. 

THE ANSWER IS THE POWERFUL PRACTICE OF MINDFULNESS! It’s been scientifically proven to work!  The amazing panacea of this simple practice is well-researched to be a transformative process! 

Mindfulness is a simple process designed to create a gap between stimulus and response.  We need a little time to be able to sort through our thoughts and emotions and then determine the most skillful response to any situation.  Mindfulness gives us the precious gift of the gap.

There is a wonderful teaching on mindfulness called the Satipatthana Sutta in (Sutta means “teaching or scripture”. The original teachings were actually sewn together, so the name came from the “sutures” in the papers held together).  It’s from the Pali Canon, a set of the original teachings on Buddhism.  In the Satipatthana, we learn that there are three facets of mindfulness: 

1.         awareness of what is happening internally,

2.         awareness of what is happening externally, and

3.         awareness of both at the same time 

Being mindful can help us utilize all the old emotions and thoughts that arise as tools for our awakening going forward.  If we find that we are stuck or we realize we’re having old unskillful thoughts or feelings, in that moment of mindfulness, we can say “Yahoo!  Fantastic!  I now see where I’m stuck.” We don’t have to beat ourselves up for still having old unskillful thoughts and emotions.  They may continue to arise, but each time you realize that you’re stuck is actually a joyous opportunity for a great awakening!  Seeing that you’re hooked is the vital first step.   Slowly, the stranglehold that they have over our reactions begins to loosen.

WARNING:  The first thing that often happens when we begin to practice mindfulness is that we see the dirt more clearly.  We see the dirt in the form of thoughts that race through our minds and emotions that race through our bodies.  Most of us probably begin wanting to be mindful with the hope of gaining a sense of peace, and the good news is that is possible, BUT FIRST, be prepared to have moments of “Holy Gamolly!  That’s what I’ve been thinking and feeling all these years???  That’s where I’m stuck?  Yuck!”

Mindfulness practice can occur in any moment of any day.  Here’s some practical ideas on how to integrate a little mindfulness into your life:

• Every time you walk through a doorway:  Use this simple activity to take a mindful moment.  Our minds often race ahead to where we’re going or are still processing what happened in the room we just left.  This simple practice helps create a little gap in the present moment.
• Every time the phone rings:  With our trusty cell phones with us always, imagine turning it into a mindfulness tool!  Each time the phone rings, take one mindful breath before you answer.  How wonderful to have a mindful reminder, regardless of the contents of the call. At the end of a call, take another mindful breath, aware of how conversation is impacting your thoughts and emotions. 
• A wristband:  Placing a wristband or mala beads on your wrist can be a visual reminder to take a few mindful breaths throughout the day.

Practicing mindfulness in the real world can be a challenging task.  SO, we can create a space to practice mindfulness with fewer distractions and difficulties.  This is what meditation is all about.  There are times when meditation will feel so awesome that you feel blissed out.  And there will be other times when meditation feels like the most painful thing you can imagine doing.  A word of encouragement, it gets easier over time.

One misconception about meditation is that it can only be done by sitting in the lotus position, in complete silence, for long periods of time.  GREAT NEWS!  THIS IS NOT TRUE!  Meditation includes sitting meditation, guided meditation, eating meditation, walking meditation and even lying down meditation.  There are many options to explore 

One of the most common questions people have about meditation is:  How do I stop my thoughts?  The good news is that we are NOT trying to stop our thoughts.  Thank goodness!  Anyone who has tried to meditate even once knows the frustration of trying to stop thinking.  The more we try to stop thinking, the more it seems we think.  Our mind is like a little puppy running around with too much energy, running from one thought to another, sometimes with very little connection from one thought to the next.  Most of us, we spend lots of time either rehashing the past or fantasizing about the future, either can be pleasant or painful, but both the past and the future take us away from being fully present in this moment.  We can begin by making friends with our mind, making friends with our thoughts and emotions, not pushing them away, not clinging to them, not ignoring them.  Just let them rise and fall of their own natural process.   

Basics of Buddhism - 3 - The Eightfold Path

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The Eightfold Path includes eight practices that transform the way we experience ourselves and the world.  These eight practices are (from Lama Surya Das’ translation in Awakening the Buddha Within):

1. Wise View:   Seeing things as they truly are, not through the filters of our past experiences
2. Wise Intentions:  Buddha emphasized, “As we think, so we become.” Changing our intentions changes the way we see and experience the world
3. Wise Speech:  Speaking in a way that supports ourselves and others on their spiritual path
4. Wise Action:  Acting in ways that are wise and compassionate
5. Wise Livelihood:  Working in a way that supports oneself and others on their spiritual journey
6. Wise Effort:  Having a passion for enlightenment
7. Wise Mindfulness:  Practicing mindfulness by being fully present in each moment
8. Wise Concentration:  Practicing meditation to train our mind

These eight practices are designed to invigorate our daily lives with the compassionate awareness, honesty and curiosity.  It’s translated as a path but in the original teachings it was described more like a wheel with eight spokes or an eight-limb concurrent process.  It’s not necessary to start at the first step and end at the last, but rather to incorporate each as the situation arises. 

The next part of the translation that we should address is the adjective at the beginning that has been called many different words:  Right or Clear or Wise or Complete or Perfect.  Many translations use the word, “Right”, but for me that implies a rigidness, a right versus wrong. With these teaching, we are encouraged to see a situation as a whole, and to consider that no rule or dogma can fit exactly each moment of living.   These ideas encourage us to be fully aware within the context of each moment, then we can choose more wisely if we are aware of the nuances of the present moment.  So, the word “wise” sounds pretty close to that description.  I also like the word clear because it describes how we are wiping off the windows of our vision to see more clearly ourselves and our lives.  If it’s necessary to choose only one, perhaps wise is the best description.  For me, wise describes what is skillful and what does the most good and the least harm. 

The Eightfold Path can be broken down into three sections—as described in Lama Surya Das’ book, Awakening the Buddha Within.  In it, he describes the three sections as Wisdom, Ethics and Meditation.  Let’s look at these three separately.

The first two steps are part of the Wisdom training:  wise view and wise intention.  We all have a certain view of the world.  We may hang on to the view that our parents told us, or we may have come up with our own perspective through our life experiences.  If I were to ask you, how do you describe the world?  What would you say?  What would your parents have said?  Is it a scary place?  A difficult place?  A wonderful place?  An unfair place?  A beautiful place?   We often view the world from our past experiences and that vision that others have ingrained in us.

When I was growing up, there was a girl down the street named Shirley Stewart.  I can see her face right now.  She lived catty-cornered to me, and she would follow me home from school and taunt me the whole way, saying that she wanted to fight me for some reason or other.  I was a scrawny, sickly little kid—I did not have one good punch in me, but I certainly fantasized about it!  I’d like to say I was a pacifist but I was just too dang scared to try and hit her.   She never hit me but threatened to do so about a thousand times.  Luckily, we moved away from the neighborhood when I was 12, but I can still see Shirley’s face staring me down, making me feel stupid and weak.  As I grew up, I had to deal with this lingering fear and anxiety.  It no longer had to do with Shirley Stewart. It had to do with the old conditioned habits inside my brain and my body.   Wise view is about clear seeing.  I began to practice sending loving-kindness to Shirley, wherever she might be, and to make friends with the fear and anxiety that I had tried to push away for so long. Wise view is an opportunity to see ourselves and other people in a clear, fresh way.  Bringing new light to each moment helps each of us to see what is happening more clearly. 

Wise view is also encouraging us to practice seeing the world with newfound curiosity.  Can we really put one label on the world or on ourselves, particularly when everything and everyone is always changing?  When we make a decision that we and the world are a certain way, we then only see those things that confirm our prior decision.  What has happened in your past that you are hanging on to? What are the filters through which you see the world?  We may have a relationship go bad, and then all potential partners start to seem to have those same traits.  We were mistreated when we were young and the whole world might look like a scary place.   We begin to recognize these filters and peel them away, so that we can see ourselves and others more clearly. It helps build a sense of wonder in each moment, a fresh curiosity to see more clearly.  It helps to see clearly the unnecessary JUDGMENTS we often place on ourselves, on situations and on other people.  Wise view is about opening ourselves up to new possibilities.

Wise intention is how we decide what to do.  What are your intentions in your life?  What do you value?  If you could describe your values in three words, what would they be?  Now, think about your thoughts, words and actions this last week.  How well did those match your values that you just described?   The Buddhist path is designed to help us live our values, and the first step is being clear about what you value, then putting those values into practice every day. 

These first two steps are cultivating a desire and intention to see ourselves and the world more clearly.    The next three steps are about ethical living.  With this clear perspective, we can begin to live a sacred life.

Wise speech is about being more careful how we respond verbally.  We can create a GAP between stimulus and verbal response by asking ourselves these three questions:  (from Adrienne Howley’s book, Naked Buddha) “Is it true?”  “Is it kind?”  “Is it necessary?”  These three questions may cut out about 75% of what we are saying to ourselves and saying to others! 

CELLPHONES AS AWAKENING TOOLS:  Have you ever hung up the cell phone and started recapping the conversation to the person you’re with, only to double check that the phone disconnected?  What were you saying that you didn’t want the person on the phone call to hear?  It’s easy to use gossip and slander as a bonding process among friends.  Wise speech is reminding us that words have power, and we can choose words that encourage and support.  What do you say to yourself? Wise speech is also about that voice that we all have in our head, giving a regular commentary on our behavior and our circumstances.  How might you encourage and support yourself through examining your current inner voice and exploring the possibility of giving yourself a break, with some encouraging and supportive inner words?

Wise Action is about acting in ways that encourage and inspire.  With greater awareness, we create more options on how to respond to any stimulus.  Habit and past experience are not the only ways to choose how to act.  Wise action can come from a place of reflection and intention for good.  What action will ease suffering?  What action will create the most good?

Wise Livelihood can sometimes be thought of as limited to only a few jobs that really “do” any good.  Instead, Wise Livelihood includes not only WHAT you do to make a living but also HOW you do it.  How do you show up for work? HOW you interact with your co-workers?  We can practice working in a way that supports oneself and others on their spiritual journey

This step does not mean we all have to change jobs! If you’re an arms dealer or making nuclear bombs, you might want to reconsider your profession.  However, in most cases, it is far more about waking up to how we work.  You can find an awesome job but still be acting in ways that are unskillful.  Wise Livelihood reminds us to seek work that is supportive but also to do whatever work we’re doing in ways that are supportive as well.

Lastly, we have the Meditation Training of Wise Effort, Wise Mindfulness and Wise Concentration. 

Wise effort is about having a passion for awakening!  It might feel easier at times to just do what you’ve always done before.  We crave to go back to the rut, go back to old unskillful habits.  THIS IS IMPORTANT TO DECIDE RIGHT NOW:  What thought will you have in those difficult moments to keep you thinking and doing in more skillful ways?  Wise Effort is encouraging us to reach within and find that passion for happiness and to, as the Dalai Lama proclaims, “Never give up!”

Dig deep within you to find the passion and fire within you to change.  In the coming weeks, there will be moments when an old way of thinking will arise.  A moment of craving to go back to the old way of living, it will at times seem so much easier than practicing these darn teachings.  BUT!  Within each of us is a passion to live a new life, a greater life, a more fulfilling life.  Find that passion now so you’ll be able to access it when the going gets tough.

Basics of Buddhism - 2 - The Buddha's very first teaching

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This morning we continue a series of talks about the Basics of Buddhism.  Last week, we talked about the three catalysts of experience:  external circumstances, internal thoughts and feelings that arise and fall away, and the most power potential: our ability to choose how we WANT to experience life.

When Siddhartha Gautama sat under the Bodhi tree, he realized this powerful third option, and it opened his eyes to the way things really worked.  It is said that he walked around for weeks in bliss, assuming that he would be unable to describe this new way of seeing things to others.  Finally, he realized that he should at least try!  The Buddha had discovered that we can pro-actively manage our response to the world, create our thoughts and our feelings, AND by doing so, we relieve suffering, both our own and others, and can actually be happy.  Great news!

So he wandered 259 kilometers to the Northwest of Bodh Gaya, to a place called Sarnath, and  found his five ascetic friends so he could teach them what he had discovered.   It’s said that they saw him coming, and dis’ed him as “There is Siddartha, that luxury-loving fellow who gave up fasting and fell back into a life of ease and comfort. Don’t talk to him or acknowledge him, that jerk!”  Okay, maybe that wasn’t exactly what they said, but it could have been something similar.  When he came closer, they felt like something had profoundly changed him.  It was then that he began to teach The Four Noble Truths.

The first teaching by the Buddha after his enlightenment was the Four Noble Truths (translation is from Awakening the Buddha Within by Lama Surya Das)

• Life is difficult.
• Life is difficult because we seek to satisfy ourselves in ways that are inherently unsatisfying.
• The possibility of liberation from difficulties exists for everyone.
• The way to free ourselves is to practice the Eightfold Path that results in enlightened living.

The first Truth is that life is difficult.  The word in Pali, the original language used to write down the teachings, was dukkha. In his book, Insight Meditation: The Practice of Freedom, Joseph Goldstein translates dukkha in three ways:  suffering, insecurity or just feeling unsatisfied.  The Buddha realized that most of us live life with some sense that things, or we, are just not quite right.  Sometimes, this feeling lingers in the background, or sometimes it slaps us in the face.  We might get close to passing sense of pleasure, by achieving a goal, or feeling successful for a bit, then we often go right back to feeling that there is something more to be done, that something is missing.  Our culture encourages this sense of “not enough”, encourages doing over being.  In fact, doing can be confused as the thing that gives us value as a person.

The Buddha recognized that there is also unavoidable pain in life--we get old, we get sick, we die.  Those that we love get old, get sick, and die. This is the reality of living, and we often suffer because of it.  The First Noble Truth is to face this reality honestly. Buddhism is sometimes misunderstood as having a very negative perspective on life.  I offer the exact opposite perspective.  Buddhist practices encourage us to face the facts!  Be honest!  And out of that honesty, comes a starting place for real joy, real happiness, regardless of these cold hard facts. 

Another misconception about Buddhism is that we are trying to detach from our thoughts and feelings, to pretend that they aren’t there, or even trying to STOP our thoughts or emotions.   Many of us may have probably tried to not get involved in order to avoid being hurt.  Sometimes, this method seems to work for awhile.  But in the long run, we lose the most precious gift of life—being fully and completely engaged in living.  If we don’t engage, then we might then suffer from a feeling of isolation and loneliness. 

The word “non-attachment” is often used in the translation of Buddhist texts, and it is sometimes misunderstood that the teachings are encouraging us to deny our thoughts, our emotions, deny anything that causes us suffering.  THIS IS AN INACCURATE TRANSLATION.  The truth is the exact opposite.  We are encouraged to get to know ourselves in a deeply honest and compassionate way, to get to know our thoughts, our emotions, our sensations, our reactions.  We are encouraged to make friends with the thoughts and emotions and situations that might scare us.  “Non-attachment” is to realize that these thoughts and emotions are NOT who we truly are. FIRST, we have to SEE them clearly in order to transform our response to them.  Compassionate awareness and honesty are key ingredients to the Buddhist path.  Buddhist Nun, Adrienne Howley, in her book, Naked Buddha, goes so far as to say that, “Buddhism can be of no real value to an individual unless one learns to be perfectly honest with oneself.”

I encourage you, in this moment, to finish this sentence, “If I were perfectly honest with myself, …”  What would you say? This level of questioning doesn’t stop at the first answer that might arise.  Sometimes when we’re in pain, we feel angry, but when we probe deeper, there might be fear underneath the anger.  This process of compassionate honesty is a method to retrace the steps of our difficulties, to get to the root cause of suffering.

THE SECOND NOBLE TRUTH IS Life is difficult because we seek to satisfy ourselves in ways that are inherently unsatisfying.  We keep trying to rearrange our external world and respond with clinging, aversion or ignorance to our thoughts and emotions, hoping to create a sense of happiness.  This DOES NOT WORK LONG TERM.  We might get a passing sense of happiness or pleasure, or avoid some pain, or ignore some unpleasantness, but in the long run, we are chasing after an ephemeral experience.  We are waiting for happiness to be created by either our external world, our passing thoughts or our ever-changing emotions.  THIS METHODS ARE INHERENTLY UNSATISFYING and also a whole lot of work.  It takes so much energy to constantly be trying to rearrange things and people and places to make them make us happy. 

Here’s the good news:  The Third Noble Truth is that the possibility of liberation from difficulties exists for everyone.  We each have within us the incredible potential to be happy, to have a deep sense well-being REGARDLESS OF OUR EXTERNAL CIRCUMSTANCES OR PASSING THOUGHTS AND EMOTIONS!  Oh happy day!  This realization is what catapulted the Buddha into a radically different life.  This is what caused people to flock around him to listen to his every word, to follow him wherever he went.  He taught to anyone who would listen:  kings and paupers, men and women, anyone who might have a glimpse that his teachings might true.  He was egalitarian at a time when solely supporting your tribe was seen as the safest bet for safety.  He threw out the idea that some people were better than others.  He realized that we all have this great potential within us.

The Fourth Noble Truth became the Eightfold Path, eight ways to see and experience yourself and the world differently to create this inner happiness and Peace.  For today, we’ll stop here, and talk in more depth about the Eightfold Path next week.  For now, we can delight in this realization that we can change the way we see ourselves and the world by first getting fully honest with ourselves.

Basics of Buddhism - 1 - The Three Catalysts of Experience

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This morning we start a series of talks about the basics of Buddhism.  I’ll be referring to this book, Buddhism for Non-Buddhists.  If you already think you might be a Buddhist, that’s okay too. But, I want to clarify that what I will be talking about is American Buddhism.  I’m going to try and strip away the Asian cultural overlay and the dogma and doctrine that have seeped in over the years.  Many Buddhist teachers today, like Lama Surya Das and Jack Kornfield are doing the same.  The truth of what the Buddha learned over 2500 years ago is just as true today as it was then.  You don’t have to shave your head or wear special clothing.  This is about how you show up in your life right now. In this moment. 

American Buddhism is not about being Buddhist.  It’s about using the practices of Mindfulness, Meditation and Visualization to ease suffering and be happy.  You get to continuing to be a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, Atheist, Agnostic, “Spiritual but not Religious”, or “none of the above”.   Buddhism wasn’t even a word until the mid-1800’s when Westerners came to Asia and found that people there were practicing something they called “The Way” or “the Path”.  The Western translators wanted to compare it to Christianity, because many of the early translators were Christian missionaries.  So they made it an “ism”.

But, the way of the Buddha is different.  The Buddha, this man who emphasized that he was just a regular guy, not a god or anything special, except that he was “awake”.  He encouraged anyone hearing his teachings to NOT believe him just because he said it.  Question these teachings!  Try them out!  See if they work for you!  Don’t take my word for it!

The Buddha taught that EVERYONE has the potential to awaken, to be fully present and to live abundantly in each moment, regardless of who you are or where you were born or what has happened to you up to this exact point in your life, regardless of even of what may happen in the future.  We all have this incredible potential for happiness, because there is this innate potential for goodness within each and every single person.  No one is left out.  If you find a thought, a practice, or an action that adds value to your life, keep doing it.  If not, toss it aside.  Buddhism is the opposite of many other “isms”, because you are enthusiastically encouraged to think for yourself. 

One of my favorite quotes is by John Lennon:

“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life.  When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up.  I wrote down ‘happy’.  They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.”

-John Lennon

If you are willing to consider radically changing the way you experience you and the way you experience the world, then you must first ask yourself, “How DO I want to experience life?”

The entire practice of Buddhism is about becoming aware of our current thoughts and feelings, then transforming our experience through the specific practices of mindfulness, meditation and visualization.  We can learn to focus our energy with laser-like precision into creating the experience we want.  We can learn to ease suffering and be happy regardless of our external circumstances, regardless of the thoughts and emotions that will continue to arise and fall away within us. We can learn to create a sense of well-being in each moment. How awesome is that?????

Here, in this moment, we can start now.  We can find heaven, not in the future or on some far off planet.  Here, when we decide how we want to experience life, and then invest all our energy into that pursuit, we can ease suffering (both our own and others) and become happy on a more regular basis.  We can practice being present, and we can cultivate qualities that create more happiness in our life:  qualities like loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity. 

When we ask ourselves how we want to experience life, we can then begin to explore what caused us to have a certain experience in the past.  Let’s start with what’s been happening right now in your life?  So far, what has been creating whatever life you’ve been experiencing?  I offer first these two possibilities:

Experiences are often caused by two catalysts: 

1.         How we allow the outside world to impact us.  Something happens in our external world, and it creates certain thoughts, emotions, feelings, sensations.  It might seem that the external circumstance is CAUSING us to think or feel in a certain way, BUT the experience is actually being created within us.  It may seem like someone or something is making us angry or happy, but we are the ones creating the anger or happiness.  Consciously or unconsciously, we are choosing!  When we think we want a new car or a new relationship, what we really want is the feeling that those things will give us …we want to feel happy or loved or safe or whatever the specific experience is that you are searching for, the one you might think you don’t yet have, the one that you might think can only be created by changing your external circumstances.

2.         How our internal electrical impulses and bio-chemical processes arise and fall away. We all have them. These electrical impulses in the form of thoughts and bio-chemical mashups in the form of emotions and sensations can drive our thoughts and feelings from high to low, low to high, often without any external reason whatsoever.  We sometimes assume that we’re irritated because of what is happening outside of us, when in fact it’s just the arising and falling away of a thought or just a hormonal experience—and this ain’t just girls having these hormone things going on!  Guys, if you have every lusted after a person who you knew was absolutely wrong for you but you had to had “have” them anyway, there might have been some testosterone overload involved.  I’m just sayin’….

When we realize that we are often allowing external circumstances and internal processes to create our experience of the world, we now have the secret weapon, THE THIRD CATALYST, the power tool, the greatest insight that life can offer.  You can choose how you respond to life, regardless of external circumstances or your internal thoughts or feelings.  You can choose how you respond to thoughts, feelings, emotions, sensations.  THIS IS WHAT THE BUDDHA DISCOVERED WHILE SITTING UNDER THE BODHI TREE.  Now, you can see how important it is that you decide how you WANT to experience life!

I have a dear friend, Laura, who was diagnosed with cancer two years ago. It was devastating news, and I’m sure, one that carried with it much fear and anxiety.  But I was so proud of the way she pro-actively decided how she wanted to go through the process. She said that she decided early on that she wanted the experience to be transformational and wanted it to be an opportunity for her to cherish her friendships and her family.  Whenever things got tough, whenever the pain and the treatments were excruciating, she said that she would ask herself the question, “How do I want to experience this situation?”  She didn’t want to grovel in self-pity or ask “why me?” She looked for ways to respond with love and kindness to herself and to those around her.  She wondered how she might inspire others by her actions.  She is my role model for how we can experience the best and worst of life in a pro-active and positive way.

When I see the Dalai Lama, he is so often laughing--laughing in spite of a very difficult situation for his people.  The Dalai Lama is deciding how he wants to experience life.  It doesn’t mean that he is diminishing the difficult facts.  It doesn’t mean that he is ignoring reality.  It doesn’t mean that he’s not working hard to transform the situation.  But it does mean that along the way, he has decided that happiness is a choice.

It turns out that deciding to be happy has an incredible benefit.  By focusing our energy on happiness, we create more energy to work with.  We create more energy to change ourselves and the world for the better.  Life doesn’t have to seem so difficult.   We can actually create happiness by changing our responses.

Don't Be So Predictable

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This morning I want to talk about the Lojong or Mind training teachings again, as I did last week.  They include 59 pithy slogans divided up into seven main categories.  These teachings were written 1000 years ago by a Buddhist monk named Atisha, but I would advocate that they are just was valuable and applicable to life in the 21 century as there were way be then!

Pema Chodron, an American who is a Buddhist nun and has been practicing for over 50 years, has an excellent commentary on these teachings entitled, Start Where You Are.  Wherever your life may be in this moment, these teachings are available to help guide us to higher levels of awareness, awareness of ourselves and of our world.  We can use these teachings right now to start fresh in our lives, as if every moment were a brand new year.

In the sixth point, of mind training, Slogan #30 is “Don't be so predictable”.  How is it that we respond predictably?   Imagine a time when someone made you angry or frustrated—what was it about them or their actions that caused anger or frustration to arise in you?   And how did you respond?  Often, we feel our buttons pushed, as it is said, and we react in a way that we’ve always reacted with the person or in that situation.  These times are opportunities to not be so predictable.

This slogan is included up a broader category which states, “DON’T KEEP TAKING THE WRONG MEDICINE FOR THE SAME ILLNESS”

·       Don’t run away:  Don’t continue reinforcing bad habits (running away from your problems is a race that no one ever wins)

·       Don’t be consistent:  when consistency means living according to the past

·       Don’t  live in a small space: when there is a whole big wide world of possibilities just waiting for you to try new things, be willing to risk failure

Marshmallows!

FORTY years ago Walter Mischel, an American psychologist, conducted a famous experiment. He left a series of four-year-olds alone in a room with a marshmallow on the table. He told them that they could eat the marshmallow at once, or wait until he came back and get two marshmallows. Some ate the marshmallow immediately. Others tried all kinds of strategies to leave the tempting treat alone and were able to wait until he returned.

Nothing surprising there, but here’s the astonishing part:  whether the four-year-olds’ were able to defer gratification was reflected over time in their lives. Those who waited longest scored higher in academic tests at school, were much less likely to drop out of university and earned substantially higher incomes than those who gobbled up the sweet straight away. Those who could not wait at all were far more likely, in later life, to have problems with drugs or alcohol.

Ken McLeod also has a commentary on these teachings, and he uses the translation, Don’t rely on a sense of duty, a preconceived idea about what is right, to make decisions in your life.  I was raised Methodist, but we have many people here who were raised Catholic, and I have been intrigued by learning about the various experiences that people have had with their Catholic upbringing.  Someone shared with me that in her church, the priest and her parents warned her regularly not to question ANY of the church doctrines, and in fact, if you even doubted in your mind, that God would know that you have doubted and would punish you!  I have to tell you my perspective on that—that is really messed up! 

One of the great transformations in human evolution is the arising of critical thinking.  We each get to determine, based on facts, based on reflection, and based on our own experience, what is real, what is true for us, what is worth believing and practicing and what is not. 

This person who shared this “fear of doubt” with me was shocked when they came to the Temple here, because not only is there no dogma or doctrine to adhere to, we are actively encouraging you to question everything you are told.  Don’t believe a word I’m saying!  Go out and try for yourself to see what works for you.  This is what the Buddha taught, and this is also what Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, the co-founders of the Unity movement, taught. 

I know it’s much easier to just have someone tell you what to do, this is right and this is wrong, then go and do that consistently every single day.  But, from my perspective, life is far too complicated for a cookie cutter solution to each problem.  We as human being are far too complicated.   We may share 98% or more of each other’s DNA, but you, each and every single one of you, are as unique as a snowflake.  Doing things because we have a sense of duty will not always ease the most suffering or create the most good. 

The new year is always a good time to start fresh, but in our Buddhist practices, every moment is like a new year, every moment an opportunity to start anew.  We can practice seeing ourselves and the world from a fresh perspective.  We can practice not limiting ourselves to our past experiences.  We have each moment like a precious gift to begin again. 

In Buddhism, this is much like the idea of grace in Christianity.  No matter what you did up until this exact moment in your life, you get a new chance to begin again.  You may still have to live with the consequences of your past actions, but you can begin anew and create a different future for yourself.  The future is being created in the exact moment.  What shall your future be?

So, I encourage you to try this wacky idea of not being so consistent, of no longer consistently running away from problems that scare you, from no longer playing small, in a limited space created by your past experiences.  Play life in this new way, with courage and wonder, with curiosity and playfulness, with less fear of failure and more love for the joy of just trying.