The Intersection of Buddhism and Christianity

A woman asked me why I consider myself both a Buddhist and a Christian, and here was my response:

I grew up attending the Methodist church every Sunday; my parents were very religious. But, for me, I was having a difficult time believing that there was some guy in the sky who was watching everything and making decisions about my life. I just couldn't get it. So, I wandered off to find something that made more sense. I went to India to study when I was in college and had an opportunity to learn more about Buddhism, and the ideas that I learned simply made more sense to me. Buddhism has four components that are unique (as noted by the Buddhist teacher Stephen Batchelor):

• The idea of dependent origination: The idea that everything is interconnected. We are all always interacting with our environment and each other and ourselves in an ever-changing flow. The sense of separation and permanence is just an illusion.
• The Four Noble Truths: Life is difficult, and we make it more difficult by trying to be happy by doing and thinking things that are inherently dissatisfying over the long haul. In other words, we try to be happy by changing our external circumstances (I'll be happy if I get a new car, house, boyfriend, etc.) That never works for very long. Happiness is a state of being that we choose to reside in, regardless of our external circumstances.
• The practice of mindful awareness: Most of what confuses us is that we are sleepwalking through life, responding in old conditioned ways based on our upbringing and our old experiences in life. If we choose to be more aware of what we are thinking and doing, we start to get a better idea of what is motivating our thoughts and actions, then we can choose differently.
• The importance of self-reliance: It's not enough to just read stuff and say we believe. We must take responsibility for our thoughts and actions, and channel the incredible power within us to be a beneficial presence in the world.

With this inspiration, I decided to deepen my practice. I made a connection with a Buddhist teacher named Lama Surya Das, and I have been his student since 1999. Having a teacher helps people have a more objective perspective of how we get stuck and how to move forward.

Then, I rediscovered Christianity within the context of these Buddhist teachings. I now see how Jesus was saying very similar things. Although he talked about "God", I believe that he was using terms like Father as a metaphor, not as an actuality. I interpret "God" as Pure Potential, the "stuff" that all things are made of, this incredible energy that manifests into everything and everyone. We each have this unique point of awareness through which "God" manifests. Buddha called this Buddha Nature, the innate Great Perfection. I now see Jesus as a way shower, as someone who figured it out and tried to get us to see with fresh eyes as well. I think Jesus would have agreed with everything Buddha said.

One point of uncertainty I still have is whether there is a soul, or something within us that is eternal. Christianity obviously talks about it existing, and certain traditions of Buddhism refer to something similar that goes on beyond death. I'm not sure. I still have questions about whether there is some eternal part of us that stays intact after death, or if everything is truly impermanent and ever-changing. I guess we'll find out for sure when we die :-> Regardless, I don't need to believe in a soul to try and be a good person right here right now. I can use these tools to improve my life and be happy regardless of my external circumstances. That's what draws me to the Buddhist way of living and enables me to see the teachings of Jesus in a whole new way.

Space

Sometimes it seems we spend most of our time focusing on the “stuff” in our lives-things, people, situations, hopes, fears, future plans, past remembrances. The concepts and labels that we put on things and people can clutter our minds. Like a pack rat, we have collected both physical and mental stuff that bogs us down and blinds us to the innate sense and wisdom of being. In between all our “stuff”, within all this stuff, even within us, there is space, emptiness. Thich Nhat Hanh has a wonderful teaching on space. He suggests that we focus awareness not on the stuff, but rather on the space between, opening it up, expanding it, because that is where true freedom is. So, in this moment, take a few deep breaths. As you breathe in silently say, “I see myself as space”. And breathing out, silently say, “I feel free”. Breathing in—space, breathing out—free. The instruction is that simple.

Beyond what we spend the majority of our time focused on, beyond our mental and physical “stuff”, beyond these illusions is freedom. And within the very midst of them is freedom. We don’t have to go to India to find it; we don’t need any special equipment or time. We have the power to see the world in a totally different way--recognizing the essential emptiness of stuff. Thich Nhat Hanh’s teaching is trying to help us drop our delusive thinking by instructing us to focus on the space instead--the space outside of ourselves and the space inside of ourselves and the space that is the essence of all things. Just for a minute, right now, take a few moments, and bring your attention to the empty space around you and empty space within you. Imagine that you can breathe in and out and expand the empty space, like de-cluttering your mental house, dropping the labels that we hold onto so tightly. Do some mental housecleaning. Let go of the perception that everything and everyone is something solid and permanent. Focus instead on emptiness as the essence of all things.

The concept of emptiness in Western culture can be very negative. You might hear someone sadly say, “My life is so empty”. We can look at this in another way. We could say, Yes! Great! I recognize that life is empty. These stories that we make up about everything and everyone in our life are just that—made up stories. In western culture, emptiness is seen as lacking, that a poor person that has nothing. And in Western culture, the person who has lots of things and people in their lives is thought to have everything. And yet, we know that judging happiness by the clutter in our lives won’t work. We all know many happy people with very little in their lives, and many unhappy people with lots of things. We don’t have to study Buddhism to witness that phenomenon. It’s not that having stuff is inherently good or bad, but rather our relationship to it that makes all the difference. If we can see the stuff as essentially empty and impermanent, we can free ourselves from the tethers of trying to hold on to it all.

Cleaning out the physical space in our lives is a valuable process, but cleaning out the mental space in our lives is also a valuable tool to discovering the peace and happiness that is here, right now, in this very moment. The irony is that we can’t see if for all our stuff.

Finding peace in our lives is as close as our next breath. Breathing in space, breathing out free.

“Far beyond delusive thinking, we attain complete Nirvana.” - The Heart Sutra

Basics of Meditation

We all know that meditating on a regular basis is “good” for us, so why is it so difficult to do? We each will need to ask ourselves three questions: Why meditate? What is meditation? And how to meditate?

To begin, we can ask ourselves why would we want to meditate in the first place? Why are you trying? …you may want less stress in your life, or maybe you want to have a spiritual experience…but don’t we all just want to be happy? This is something innately within all beings. We want to not suffer, we want to be happy. Thomas Jefferson thought it was so important, he made it one of the top three inalienable rights in the Declaration of Independence. The Buddha thought it was so important he noted that life is suffering as his very first teaching. No matter how unskillfully we think or act, we are all just trying to be happy or trying to relieve suffering, either our own or someone else’s, in whatever conditioned way we have learned. The Buddha also recognized that we suffer because we seek happiness in inherently dissatisfying ways.

So, why meditate? To increase the happiness in ourselves and others. But more importantly, each of us must find our own specific motivation. When the going gets tough, you will need to be clear on why you sat down to meditate in the first place. Meditation can be a powerful transformer, but it doesn’t work to just read about it or hear about it. It requires actual practice. So ask yourself, why try? What is going on with me or my life that is motivating me to meditate? What motivated you to read this material? Be honest with yourself. Because when the alarm goes off tomorrow morning, and you’re supposed to get up and meditate, at that moment, when you really just want to hit the snooze button, you’ll need to remind yourself of this specific motivation.

Second, what is meditation? Meditation in all its various forms begins with one objective: To train the mind. The mind is the most powerful tool that we have. The mind determines how we perceive everything and everyone in our life. The interpretation that our mind gives any situation is so strong that we believe that it is absolutely true. When you walk down the street, you see people who you didn’t know. Think about some stranger you recently. Bring them to mind. What were they wearing? How did they look? Now recognize some judgment you may have about them. What opinion did you already form about them? It seems so real, these opinions and perspectives that we have, yet they are mostly built on our conditioned habits of relating everything we see, feel, experience with something we previously saw, felt, experienced.

In this moment, point to your gizzard. Where did you point? How did you decide where to point? We search our internal database for any information we might have about a gizzard. Maybe something to do with chickens? Maybe something to do with eating? Thoughts and sensations and experiences might seem so real, but mostly we are making up stories about what is going on around us, based on our experiences in the past. Meditation is about helping us recognize these stories for what they are. Just stories. We have the power to transform our lives by looking at our stories, dropping the stories that aren’t serving us, and seeing things and people, including ourselves, more clearly. This is what meditation is all about.

What Meditation is NOT about is stopping our thoughts. Anyone who has tried to meditate even once knows the frustration of trying to stop thinking. The more we try to stop, the more it seems we think. Our mind is like a little puppy running around with too much energy, running from one thought to thought, sometime with very little connection. We spend most of our 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. Meditation is training the mind to see ourselves and the world more clearly. So, we begin by making friends with our thoughts and emotions, not pushing them away, not clinging to them, not ignoring them, letting them rise and fall of their own natural process.

Meditation falls in two primary categories: concentration or insight. There are techniques for increasing the level of concentration on a particular object, like a candle or a mantra or our breath, and techniques for increasing the level of consciousness we bring to the entirety of our experience.

In Buddhism, the term for concentrated meditation is shamatha. In shamatha practice, we start by focusing all our attention on an object, like our breath or a candle or a mantra. If you’re new to meditation, we usually start with our breath. Breathing in, know that you are breathing in, Breathing out know that you are breathing out. Be aware of all the sensations in your body of breathing. It helps to begin by focusing on one specific area, like the rising and falling of your chest as you breathe. Imagine experiencing each breath like that first breath you take after having your head under water. Breathe naturally but with full awareness. Then, when you realize that you have become distracted and are no longer focused on your breath, you gently, ever-so gently silently note, “thinking” and return awareness to the breath. Again and again as many times as needed. This is the basics of meditation.

The second primary type of meditation is insight or Vipassana. Once we start to concentrate our attention, the mind begins to settle down. The thoughts may still be coming and going, but slowly the hum of random thoughts have less power over us. In Vipassana or insight meditation, awareness then rests in the moment of just being, just sitting. No place to go, nothing to do, resting in the natural perfection of just living. Often, we make things a whole lot harder than they need to be. Just taking it all in, and seeing everyone as interconnected and perfectly placed. In Dzogchen, a particulat Buddhist tradition, it’s called the Natural Great Perfection. Seeing the innate perfection in things left just as they are. Jack Kornfield, a Buddhist teacher, says that 50% of meditation is simply self-acceptance. Carl Rogers, a noted psychologist, says that we must first accept ourselves, before we can truly change.

So, meditation is not just about focusing on our breath, that is the first step. Meditation is a process to reveal the world around us and within us in all its glory, no matter what form. The flower is beautiful but will wilt and become garbage, the garbage will decompose and become a beautiful flower. With meditation, we can begin to look at life more wholistically. Things that we think are beautiful and things that we think are grotesque, they are all part of this incredible process called living. Meditation is ultimately about how to see it all and maintain a compassionate and loving presence--the happiness that lies deep within each moment, regardless of what is happening.

Third, we need to know how to meditate. As many of you may have already figured out, there are many different ways to train the mind--transcendental meditation, Insight meditation, Zen meditation. How to sort it all out? Well, we can start with these basic teachings, and then it’s time to explore the possible traditions. This upcoming Wednesday, September 29, 2010, at 7 pm – 9 pm, you will have an opportunity to experience some of the different kinds of meditation and the groups here at Unity Temple that practice those methods—Thich Nhat Hanh, Korean Zen, Tibetan Buddhism, Vipassana--find what fits for you. This is an opportunity to find a small sangha to support your meditation practice.

I encourage everyone to try creating a meditation practice at home. It takes three essential ingredients. First, pick a place in your home, with a chair or a cushion. Designate a special room or corner as the place for meditation. You can make it fancy or plain, just make it consistent. Second, pick a time. It helps to have a specific time in the morning or at night, where you commit to making meditation the number one priority. Sit for five minutes or 20 minutes, the amount of time is less important than the consistency of doing it each day. Third, pick a practice, a type of meditation. I encourage those of you beginning to start with some guided meditations. I can suggest some CD’s that I’ve found helpful. So, you pick a place, a time and a type. That’s it.

Armed with our personal motivation, knowing what is to be done, and making it a priority to do so, we can now begin incorporating this simple practice into our daily lives, a simple practice that turns out to be incredibly transformative. Give yourself 30 days to try this “different” activity. Albert Einstein said that we can never solve a problem with the process that caused the process in the first place. Try out this new process, and let me know how it goes.

Lama Surya Das, a Dzogchen master, relates to life in this way, “Things are not as they seem to be, nor are they otherwise. So, we might as well burst out laughing.”

The Basics of Dzogchen

There are many different practices in Buddhism, just as there are in Christianity. Dzogchen is a set of practices within Tibetan Buddhism. Dzogchen is translated as the Great Perfection or the Great Completion. These teachings are based on the understanding that within each of us lies a primordial state of perfection. Lama Surya Das, a leading Buddhist teacher and author of Awakening the Buddha Within, has many books and lectures that cover this special set of practices. We also talk about this state as Buddha nature or our innate goodness. However, I’m sure many of us have days when we don’t feel like there is any goodness to be found. But even then and even now, it is here, just waiting to be uncovered, just waiting to be nurtured, just waiting to be allowed to shine. The teachings of Dzogchen encourage us to discover this innate goodness, to practice cultivating it, then put it into action in our lives.

We don’t have to wait to get reborn, we don’t have to even decide whether reincarnation is true or not. We just need to practice being present, and find out for ourselves if what they are saying is true. A great quote from a Dzogchen master named Manjusri is, “One instant of total awareness is one instant of total freedom and enlightenment.” Dzogchen breaks down this idea of “enlightenment” into bite size pieces.

There are three primary points in Dzogchen: View, Meditation and Action.

The Glimpse/View: To recognize one’s own nature

Meditation/Practice/Path: To practice resting in that nature

The Result/Fruition: To sustain that awareness

The basic premise of Dzogchen is that everything exists in the natural state. Imagine that everything you need right now exists in this present moment. No place to go, nothing to do, just be present and you will find whatever you need. How can this be? Imagine that whatever answer you are struggling with, whatever situation is worrying you, that the process for solving this issue is to first do nothing. Now, of course, many of us already choose the method of “doing nothing”. We do nothing because we are afraid, or we do nothing because we can’t decide, or do nothing because it seems too difficult to think about the problem. So, I’m not talking about THAT kind of doing nothing—I think most of us have all already mastered that. This is actually a different kind of “do nothing”. This is about being fully present in this moment and being open to the huge potential that exists in each moment. So maybe “being open and present” is a little doing, but mostly not doing--not being distracted, not struggling, not over-analyzing--just relaxing into the fullness of the present moment.

Most of us have already had a glimpse of being fully present. Recall a time that you were in nature or playing a sport well or listening to a great piece of music or see great art, when you felt “in the zone”, a sense of all things being connected, a sense of life being perfect, nothing to be added or subtracted. That is awakening. That is what this is all about. There is a state of being that we all can realize and cultivate.

One of the things I love about Buddhism is that it is very practical. This is not about anyone telling you what to believe. Buddhism is about offering up a new way of looking at the world, then you have to go try it out for yourself. It’s not enough to just read about it or hear about it. Test is for yourself. You decide if it works. And Dzogchen teachings are the same. There are people who came before us, who were kind enough to show us the path that worked for them. They found some techniques that worked, for breaking down pre-conceived notions of how they viewed the world, and now we have an opportunity to learn from their experience.

Dzogchen is the meditation teaching of non-meditation. We’re not trying to get to some higher level of consciousness; we are not trying to create some vision or special experience. We are practicing just being. We begin by bringing awareness to the breath, just breathing in and breathing out with awareness. But focus on the breath is not the end process. It is a stepping stone to just resting naturally in the moment. Imagine that you are in a dark room, with windows so dirty that you can’t see out. Your sense of the world would come from all the experiences that you have had inside that dark dirty room. Now, imagine one day that your arm accidentally brushes up against the window, and a little dirt is removed, enabling you to see a little bit of what lies outside the window. This little glimpse might encourage you to begin washing the window little by little until you see more and more of what’s going on around you. The dirt symbolizes all the thoughts and sensations that cloud our sense of being. There’s no reason to get mad at the dirt. We don’t need to feel badly for having the dirt—everyone has some. We just need to clean the windows. We are cleaning the windows of our awareness. With all this cleaning, we might then realize that, in truth, there is no window; there is no room. It’s just a mental construct that we created in order to define who we are. But with the practice of awareness, of seeing beyond our thoughts and sensations, we start to experience the fullness of life. When your window was dirty, the fullness of life still existed. There were still many other things happening beyond your small room, but YOU didn’t know it. This is a good illustration of the glimpse that Dzogchen is talking about. The glimpse of the fullness of life begins with just washing the window a bit.

The second step in this process reminds us that, to expand the number of moments we experience fully, we need to commit to and then follow through with practice. We commit to practice no matter how difficult or frustrating it might sometimes be. Oftentimes, early on in practicing mindfulness and meditation, we are struck by all the crazy thoughts and projections that we place on ourselves and the world. It can be somewhat unsettling. It may make you want to jump up and run out of the room and never meditate or be mindful again. BUT, this second step reminds us to stay put, to hang in there, to keep trying. As Pema Chodron says, if you can manage to hold your seat, especially during the tough times, great progress can be made. if you can manage to not get freaked out by what you’re experiencing, and to just sit and observe how your mind tries to hold onto its old way of viewing the world, then you start to see the incredible possibilities that truly do exist in this world.

Another powerful mindfulness exercise is described by Don Miguel Ruiz, author of The Four Agreements. He suggests that we imagine we go back to our childhood, before we were given words to describe everything, before we personally had an experience of so many things. From this place of innocence and not-knowing, look around at everything and everyone and imagine that you are seeing and experiencing this world for the first time, without words or experiences to pre-judge. Imagine that you are experiencing yourself without words, without preconceived notions about who or what you are. By taking away our words and our memories, we can start to recognize what a huge impact our words and memories make on how we interpret the world that we live in today. In this way, we start to see the world anew. Dzogchen teaches that this is NOT just a mental exercise, that you really do have the ability to start fresh in each moment.

The last step and of course continual step, is action, continually expanding the moments spent in full awareness. With the glimpse, then practice, you begin to embody this new way of living in more and more moments of each day. You discover more and more ways to see the world and yourself in a fresh new way. You rest in the full view of life more often and that becomes your pattern, your “habit”, when the synapse of your brain become rewired.

There is a wonderful Dzogchen poem by the Venerable Lama Gendun Rinpoche:

Happiness can not be found
through great effort and willpower,
but is already present,
in open relaxation and letting go.

Wanting to grasp the ungraspable,
you exhaust yourself in vain.
As soon as you open and relax
this tight fist of grasping,
infinite space is there -
open, inviting and comfortable.

Nothing to do or undo,
nothing to force,
nothing to want,
and nothing missing -

Emaho! Marvelous!
Everything happens by itself.

Imagination

(To listen to the talk, click here)

In our search for happiness, imagination is one of the most powerful tools available to us. Stephen Batchelor has a wonderful chapter on imagination in his book Buddhism Without Beliefs. In it, he describes that the three most important factors in mastering mindfulness and meditation are:

• First is commitment. We make a conscious commitment to ourselves to devote time and effort to this worthwhile practice.
• Second is technique. We study and practice the techniques of mindfulness and meditation in order to master them.
• Third is imagination. It might seem surprising that he would elevate imagination to such importance. Why would we need to have imagination in order to awaken?

Why meditate in the first place? Why care about learning mindfulness? To relax? To de-stress? To find answers? There are many different reasons to begin a meditation practice, all excellent motivators in their own way. But one of the best motivators is our imagination. We imagine that life could be different. The first step in learning anything new is imagining that things could be different.

When people get depressed, one of the most debilitating aspects is that they cannot imagine living without being depressed. When we are in pain, it seems that we lose our ability to imagine life without pain. We all get caught up in the experience we’re having, clinging to it with the unconscious assumption that things will never change. And yet, it is possible. In the midst of a difficult experience, in the middle of reacting in our old unskillful ways, we can remember to imagine how things might be different, we can awaken to the incredible experience of living beyond our limited thinking and feeling.

How might we use our imagination as a powerful tool for passionately living life? Here are some ideas to consider.

First, we can recognize the ability to access imagination in each moment. Each moment is sacred—not just the ones spent meditating. Each moment. We are creating our life moment- by-moment. When we feel stuck in a certain situation or overwhelmed by the circumstances in our lives, we can remind ourselves to leverage the power of imagination to see clearly the breadth and depth of each situation, the possibilities beyond our limited way of thinking. We are deciding moment-by-moment how to live. Most of the time, we fall back on the easy answers, like what our parents did, or what our friends are doing or what we think we should do. We might think of so many moments as just getting through life, doing what we have to do…

Rodney Smith, a Vipassana teacher, encourages us in the following way: “We often feel our everyday existence is a distraction from our spiritual intention. When this happens, life is divided between the sacred and mundane, and the mind pits one concept against the other. But belief shapes reality, and if the belief is maintained that the sacred lies somewhere else other than Now, our spiritual life will be governed by that limitation.” We can choose to see the sacred in each situation, know our practice is not separate from living in each moment, visualizing the vast, limitless resource of imagination that creates our experience.

Second, we can practice using imagination. Our ability to think beyond our limitations is a learnable skill. Visualizations can be a powerful part of the practice, like the loving-kindness practice that we do, or imagining ourselves as the Buddha. These visualizations may at first seem corny or superficial, but that’s still a good place to start. Buddhist teachers encourage us that, even without thinking anything is changing, we are planting seeds. We know that a flower or plant begins to grow beneath the soil once it is planted, regardless if there is any change visibly seen. So are the seeds of love and compassion calling forth the awakening of innate Buddha nature, just by the mere practice of imagining.

Think of yourself as an artist. Each of us is creating a life. Each of us is writing the unfinished story of our life right now. Each of us is making choices about how to live our lives right now. The limitations that we think exist are in most cases, self-imposed. Take a few minutes, and imagine all the possible ways that you might live your life from this point forward. Think beyond your current circumstances, beyond any assumed limitations, beyond any self-imposed constraints, beyond, beyond. With this willingness to stretch beyond our boundaries, each of us can more wisely choose the possible ways we could live life to its fullest.

Third, we can never run out of imagination. Everyone feels down at times, we get sick, and get old, we feel scared and angry and frustrated. But, the truth of our being is that there is a never-ending source of light within us. We may feel angry, but we are not anger. We may feel afraid, but we are not fear. Thoughts and emotions are NOT who we are. We can remember that we are pure awareness, we can imagine that we are love and compassion. We can imagine being fully awake, fully present.

This innate goodness within us is like the Sun. The sun is always shining. It never stops. It doesn't need something outside of itself to shine. It just keeps shining--no matter what. There may be clouds in the way, it might be nighttime, so we don’t see the Sun, but the Sun is still shining. The light of our being is the same way. It might be covered up or out of view, but it’s still there . This unique point of awareness is always present in each moment.

Who or What is having this experience of living anyway? Who or what is having these thoughts or feeling these feelings right now? Who or what are you? Loosen any certainty that you are a certain way, loosen the clinging to misconception that life must unfold in a certain direction, that living is limited to a few old emotions and recurring thoughts. Imagine that you are not a thing or a body, but rather pure awareness manifesting anew in each moment. Imagine the possibilities.

Know that imagination is always available, in every moment, to every person. Access it, exercise it, strengthen it, leverage the power of it, use it as the fuel for our lives unfolding, and know the power it provides for transformation.

In fact, we would not have this Buddhist path, these powerful teachings, if the Buddha had no imagination. He would have not found a new answer, because he would not have imagined one to exist, and therefore would have not gone seeking a new way of living. That’s the power of imagination.

The Four Mind Changers

The Four Mind Changers

Buddhist teachings often sound extremely negative because there is all this talk about suffering and getting sick and dying. That does sound pretty grim. Don’t we all just want to be happy? Most of us try to ignore death and dying, staying as far away as possible until we are confronted with the harsh reality of life. There is only one cause of death that everyone suffers from. The cause of death in all cases is birth. Every one of us who has been born, by the very nature of living, are going to die. (Except allegedly all this vampire stuff out these days, but that’s another story…) The Buddhist teachings are shouting at us in order to save us from misery—Don’t sleepwalk through life! Wake up to that fact and decide how you shall live your life purposely and fully.

A well-known Buddhist meditation is this simple phrase: Since death alone is certain and the time of death uncertain, what should I do?

Looking at life in this raw state of reality can cause us to wake up. Once we see these things more clearly, we can start to live our lives more fully present. It is cliché to talk about the person who is sleepwalking through their life to suddenly be given a fatal diagnosis, then finds the happiness and peace that they were looking for all along. Do we need a fatal diagnosis to wake up? If so, then know right now that being born is a fatal diagnosis. Knowing that, what should we do? Stephen Batchelor has an excellent chapter on this meditation in his book, Buddhism without Beliefs.

Another tool for our awakening is called the four mind-changers or four reflections to turn our minds toward the Dharma, or the truth of our being. There’s a wonderful commentary on these teachings in the book by Joseph Goldstein entitled, One Dharma, if you’d like to learn more.

The first reflection encourages us to contemplate the preciousness of our human birth. We all often take being alive for granted. Imagine all the activities and events that had to take place or not take place for each of us to be here in this very moment. Human beings are somewhat fragile, and Living isn’t always easy. We each have had our own challenges, the issues in our lives that we have grappled with. Each of us, we all navigated through all the dangers and pitfalls of our lives to arrive at this moment right now. So, to experience the this incredible point of awareness is quite miraculous. We don’t know what tomorrow will bring. We don’t know for sure what will happen this afternoon. By contemplating this fact, we can pour ourselves wholeheartedly into this moment. This is another paradox in Buddhism. To live life fully, we must recognize how easy it is to not live. This first reflection is telling us to not take so much for granted, to wake up with gratitude to this experience of life in all its complexity.

The second mind-changer or reflection is challenging us to wake up from this dreamlike state of pretending that anything is permanent. As most of us experience, western culture is often about accumulating things, accumulating experiences and even accumulating people in our lives. Checking off the list of things and activities and people we “need” to be happy, and wanting ourselves, and those things and those people to not only be a certain way, but to also stay whatever way it is that we like them to be. We try to control our lives so things can stay fun and cushy. But no matter how much we try, we cannot make things stay the same. A child once told Thich Nhat Hanh how grateful she was that things change. Otherwise, she would never grow up! So, we are asked to try loosening up, not trying to force everything and everyone to be just the way we think we want it or them to be. With this reflection, we are practicing accepting the ever-changing-ness of life. It doesn’t mean that Buddhists don’t do anything productive. It means we act from knowing that everything is impermanent and knowing that deep happiness will NEVER come from external things, activities or people.

“We’ve enclosed ourselves in a relatively small space by thinking. It binds us in, and we’re not aware that we’re living in a tiny, cluttered room. BUT With the practice of mindful awareness and quiet reflection, it’s as if the walls of the room are torn down, and you realize there’s a sky out there.” - Larry Rosenberg, The Art of Doing Nothing (Tricycle Magazine, Spring 1998)

There is tremendous power seeing things and actions and people with fresh eyes, adding compassion and wisdom to each situation instead of a checklist for improvement. This is critically important to the way we view our own bodie, our own lives. Many of us are constantly trying to get things just right. Get a new haircut, find the perfect dress. Instead this reflection is encouraging us to waking up each morning and first focus on full awareness, instead of first on the to-do list. This idea seems like the polar opposite of what we have been taught to do, but it’s been proven to work a heck of a lot better than the method of accumulation and looking for external happiness. Our lives are like the sand mandalas that are made, everything we have will eventually wash away. We may wish for certain things in our lives to change more quickly or other situations to not change at all. But the question is: How do we look at each situation with curiosity and non-judgment. Our lives will continue to change and morph and become something entirely different, whether we want to or not. The joy of the journey is determined in whether we ride the waves of uncertainty, or grasp at everything with tight white knuckles.

The third reflection is that everything we do has consequences. In Hinduism, the belief is that karma is unrelenting; if this then that, there’s nothing you can do to “save” yourself from unskillful past actions. But Buddha turned this idea of karma on its head. His taught that yes, there is the law of cause and effect, but it is far more helpful to focus on what we are doing right now in this moment, than to worry about what we did ten years ago. How can we be more kind and more generous and more grateful and wiser right now? There is this element of grace that exists in Buddhism. The idea is that we can wake up at any moment and begin increasing the compassion and wisdom in our lives.

The four reflection is about how labeling things as good, bad or irrelevant is causing us suffering, If we don’t try something new, we will continue to get the same suffering in our lives. If we focus on what we’re afraid of, on what we don’t want, then we will have no time to learn from all the new experiences in our lives happening moment- to-moment. This reflection is encouraging us to see what truly is and work with it. Sometimes suffering may seem too harsh a word, but even that vague sense of dissatisfaction is robbing you of the joy just waiting to be experienced. Don’t live your life settling for good enough when it comes to experiencing joy and happiness. We might try to continue old unskillful habits rationalizing this is what we like, this is what we con’t like, and we don’t care about this other stuff. True happiness will always depend on what is within us, not what is happening to us. Aldous Huxley said that the measure of man is not what happens to him, but what he does with what happens to him.

So, this last reflection on curiosity and non-judgment is about fully experience “not knowing”. What if it was okay to not know, but to keep asking the question with an open heart? What if the answers that we are seeking are there in the silence of each moment? What if admitting that we don’t know and sitting in silence with that was the best way to find the best answer. The Buddha taught that not knowing frees us to find new answers. We can rest with the idea of “I don’t know”.

So, the four mind changers/reflections are:

• The preciousness of our human birth
• The contemplation of impermanence
• The law of cause and effect
• The fact that craving, aversion and ignorance causes suffering and will never bring us complete happiness

These four reflections are powerful tools to support us in transforming our sense of living, to infuse deep happiness into life, regardless of our external circumstances:

Purpose of this teaching is to see with fresh eyes, to hear with fresh ears, to taste, to smell, to feel the warmth of the breeze on your skin, as if for the first time. This week, imagine that you are experiencing some activity for the very first time. Imagine that you truly don’t know, and see how that changes the experience.

Since death alone is certain and the time of death uncertain, what should I do?

The Four Immeasurables

The Four Immeasurables

"Compassion and love, joy and equanimity are not mere luxuries.
As the source both of inner and external peace,
they are fundamental to the continued survival of our species."
--His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama

During the time of Buddha’s enlightenment, there was the beginning of a shift from a purely agrarian economy to some capitalism that was springing up in small towns around Northern India. One of the things that Buddha discovered was that along with the process of selling and buying also came greed, corruption, stealing, killing. Although the time may have been long ago, it seems that our financial situation continues to have elements of greed, corruption, stealing, killing. Buddha identified a reaction in people, that can happen in good times and in bad, when people feel a primitive sense of lack and poverty, have a sense of separation from one another, a desire, a craving to gain advantage over others, a need to put up defenses. As Buddha reflected on the negative impact of these thoughts and feelings, he could see that they were arising out of a sense of craving, aversion and ignorance. This reaction caused great suffering in the world then, and it causes great suffering in the world now.

So what do we do? Where do we begin? Is it an impossible task to overcome these historic and monumental struggles within and around us? The Buddhist teachings encourage us that there is a way to get better address the challenges we face. The Buddha discovered that we can get beyond these struggles: First, by recognizing them for what they are, then by practicing a kinder way of being and living, to see things more clearly, to act more compassionately and wisely.

One of the practices that the Buddha developed to help cultivate these attitudes and actions are call The Four Immeasurables, The Four Sublime States, which are LOVING-KINDNESS, COMPASSION, SYMPATHETIC JOY and EQUANIMITY.

The short prayer practice goes like this:

May all beings have happiness and the cause of happiness,

May all beings be free from suffering and the cause of suffering

May all beings have sympathetic joy which is free from suffering

May all beings come to rest in the great equanimity which is beyond attachment or aversion to friend, enemy or stranger.

The Buddha taught the following to his son, Rahula (from "Old Path White Clouds" by Thich Nhat Hahn):

"Rahula, Practice loving kindness to overcome anger. Loving kindness has the capacity to bring happiness to others without demanding anything in return. Practice compassion to overcome cruelty. Compassion has the capacity to remove the suffering of others without expecting anything in return. Practice sympathetic joy to overcome hatred. Sympathetic joy arises when one rejoices over the happiness of others and wishes others well-being and success. Practice equanimity to overcome prejudice. Non-attachment is the way of looking at all things openly and equally. Myself and others are not separate. Do not reject one thing only to chase after another. I call these the four immeasurables. Practice them, and you will become a refreshing source of vitality and happiness for others."

So, the practice of the Four Immeasurables calls upon each of us to try to cultivate these four feelings and actions. In these practices, sometimes we don’t initially feel very loving or joyful. We start to say this prayer about everyone being happy and peaceful, and we don’t feel very happy or peaceful ourselves. Just sit with those thoughts and emotions; make friends with them. Feel it completely, then go back to the practice of visualizing being loving and kind. This practice is not to whitewash over longstanding emotions. RATHER, it is to uproot those old habitual emotions, see them for the illusion that they are, and replace them with kinder and more productive ways of viewing the world.

Loving-kindness - I want all beings to have happiness and feel love.

Compassion - I want all beings to be free from suffering.
Sympathetic Joy - I want all beings to never be separated from sublime joy
Equanimity - I want all beings to live in equanimity, beyond judgments of friend, enemy, stranger.

Love, Compassion, Joy and Equanimity practice is a way to transform our world:

1. We see more clearly how we are interacting in the world.

2. We explore a new way of being, to be open to new ways of seeing ourselves and others.

3. We learn to fully embody these experiences as we deal with ourselves and others.