Joy

I’m continuing the series of talks about the Lojong or Mind Training teachings. This group of 59 pithy slogans is a great place to start or deepen your practice, whatever your level. wherever you are at. In fact, a good reference book is Pema Chodron’s entitled,  Start Where You Are. These teachings are about getting comfortable with the power we have to transform the way we relate to ourselves and others, regardless of our external circumstances.

This week, we’ll talk about the slogan:

21. Always maintain a joyful mind 

Someone asked me recently if Buddhism was just Atheism with a happy face.  Superficially, this slogan may seem to say that. “Let’s just pretend that we’re always happy”. But, we all know that doesn’t work over the long haul.  The basis of this slogan is the First Noble Truth—life includes suffering. However, what this slogan emphasizes is that there is a way to respond to suffering without adding more suffering. 

First, we can encourage our minds to look for the broader perspective. When we are mired in the details of the stories we’ve created about our lives, we can get very unjoyful.  “Sally did this to me, and I’m mad at her—how can I feel joy?” “I’m sick/I’ve had an accident, I lost my job”—these stories start to feel like WHO we are. Our language even intensifies it:  “I am sick” “I am unemployed”…  We are covered in the aggregate of our experiences. Eckhart Tolle calls this cover the pain body—those stories, emotions, feelings, sensations that we so tightly identify with.  Our experiences and our stories appear to BE us. Is that all we are?  Is that all life is?  Just a bundle of emotions, feelings, sensations, thoughts? In Buddhism, we are encouraged to look beyond these aggregates, these superficial things that we hold on to and identify with.  Emotions change, thoughts come and go, and we can change the stories about our lives. We made them up in the first place. 

How can we find the joy in life? I was reflecting the other day on the common phrase TGIF-Thank goodness it’s Friday! What about Monday?  Or Wednesday? How about finding some joy in those days as well? I’ve taken to signing my emails with “Happy Monday!” or “Happy Thursday!”  reminding myself to find the joy in each day. Don’t wait until Friday to find the joy in your life. 

Here’s a quick exercise you can to try.  Close your eyes and bring to mind all the things that have brought you joy in your life.  Right now, fully experience that sense of joy.  Bring awareness to the every sensation of joy in your body. Now take a deep breath, and recreate that feeling of joy. Realize that the feeling of joy is within us, NOT in the external situation.  When we are struggling with the circumstances in our life, we can stop and access this deep sense of joy that is a part of who we truly are.

This slogan is not asking us to just slap on a smile when we’re not feeling it. It is encouraging us to explore something other than the constantly changing experiences of our minds and our bodies. Look more deeply and you’ll realize you can have joy whenever you want. Get acquainted with the experience of joy.  What is holding you back from finding joy in your life?

When we tease apart what is actually happening, we can discover the deepest sense of living. People who are dying often find this sense of peace, this strong appreciation for living. What does it feel like to be alive beyond the pain? In Buddhism, we are reminded we are all dying; we just don’t know when. By awakening to this truth, we can awaken to an appreciation for living in each moment. We can cultivate a sense of joy.

The second component of this slogan is encouragement to lighten up, to aspire to finding more humor in life. We are so hard on ourselves. We are carrying around this heavy burden of past experiences. We are judging ourselves and others. The phrase, “Lighten Up!”  can be a great visual for taking this heavy burden of past experiences, stuffing them into a big balloon, then allowing them to be carried away with the wind.  Give yourself a break every day from carrying these “burdens”.  You’ll find that you’re able to more effectively deal with what is happening in each moment.

Pema Chodron says that “sooner or later you will be in a situation where you can’t change the outer circumstances at all, and it comes down to how you relate to things.” Wake up to the power you have to see things, people and yourself differently. 

Don’t wait for joy. Look for the joy. Share the joy, expand the joy. When we suffer, we recognize that we are suffering. Then we choose to look beyond and lighten up. “When adversity is no longer experienced as adversity, this is a sign of success in spiritual practice.” B. Alan Wallace, Buddhism with an Attitude

Finding all things in life useful for waking up

We are discussing a group of teachings called Lojong (Mind Training) that include seven key points along with 59 pithy slogans reminding us how to awaken to the happiness of living.  There are many books with great translations of these teachings, but one of my favorites is Pema Chodron's Start Where You Are. This week, I'll talk about the fourth point which states, "Showing the Utilization of Practice in One's Whole Life" which includes Slogan #17: "Practice the five strengths, the condensed heart instructions."

What are the five strengths? They are five attitudes and actions that have practical application every day, in every situation, to finding the truth in each moment.  The five strengths enable us to open our hearts to others and to ourselves.

Here's a rundown:

• Strong determination/Commitment: We commit to staying present, to looking for the humanness in others (and in ourselves), looking for the interconnection between us all.  We commit to see pain and suffering in life as fuel for transformation.   When we were young, most of us had experiences that caused us some pain--emotional, psychological, physical.  Remember the first time you had your heart broken?  Past experiences may have implied that the best way to deal with suffering is to deny it, run away from it, fear it.  These teachings are encouraging us to see pain in a completely differently way.  We are committing to seeing pain as a tool for transformation, not as a burden to bear or something to be afraid of. Going towards the pain, looking more deeply at the pain--it may seem counter-intuitive, but it's been proven to work effectively to diminish the impact of pain on our happiness.
• Familiarization: We practice being present so that being present becomes a habit, instead of the old habits of avoidance, distraction, or all the other ways we try to escape discomfort.  Meditation and mindfulness are spiritual exercises--we're building muscle memory so that our natural inclination is to find the "pleasantness of presentness". 
• Seed of virtue:  The Buddhist philosophy sees each being as innately good, as having Buddha nature.  Buddha emphasized that everyone can do exactly what he did.  We can achieve deep happiness because we are innately good.  It is this seed of virtue, even if you don't believe it, even if you've never experienced it, it's still there.  You don't have to go get it, it's already within you. Remind yourself that you are innately good.  Look for the good.  Practice as if.  
• Reproach:  My favorite! You already have conversations with yourself anyway, so why not make them positive, helpful ones?!?  This tip encourages us to come up with some word or phrase that reminds us to quit stewing on unskillful thoughts.  Tell yourself to STOP! It might not work immediately, but over time, you can train your mind by silently saying STOP! or "Mind, I've tried it your way and it didn't work."  "Be gone!" or  whatever word or phrase works for you.  It might seem silly, but that's okay too.  Sometime a silly word or phrase can snap us out of fear, pain or sadness.  I always giggle a little when, as I'm going over and over some fear or concern, I silently tell myself, "Don't get weird!"  This little phrase is enough to wake me up and begin looking for the good in myself and in the situation!
• Aspiration:  Say you want it. Say, "I want to wake up.  I'm willing to try something new to be happy."  You might not yet feel like you deserve it, or that it's not possible, then begin by having compassion for yourself, right where you are.  Then, aspire to try something new anyway.

We often have a tendency to live our lives with our thermostats set too tightly. We are trying to get so completely comfortable in life that we are never quite happy.  It's either too hot or too cold or too new or too old.  It's never quite right. These lojong teachings are encouraging us to see our discomfort, our dissatisfaction as an opportunity wake up.  We can stare directly into the heart of our discomfort, to look through it, and find the deep peace that comes from no longer running away, no longer spending the majority of our time wishing things were different.  We can find the peace that resides within us, that is always there to rely upon, regardless of our external circumstance.    

Drive All Blames Into One

I’m continuing the series of talks about the Lojong or Mind Training teachings.  This group of 59 pithy slogans is a great place to start a mindfulness practice or to deepen your current practice, wherever you are at.  In fact, a good reference book is Pema Chodron’s entitled, Start Where You Are.  This week, we’ll talk about two of the slogans in the Third Point:

POINT THREE: Transform Bad Circumstances into the Way of Enlightenment.

11. When the world is filled with evil, transform all mishaps into the path of enlightenment.

12. Drive all blames into one.

Evil?  Is there evil in the world?  Many people think there is, but in these teachings, we are encouraged to look more deeply into this need to label certain things and certain people as “evil”.  No doubt, there are horrendous things that happen in the world, many caused by human beings.  Are some people evil and others not? Do we all have evil inside of us, and some of us just cover it up better than others?  What is evil? 

B. Alan Wallace, one of the preeminent Buddhist translators of our time, sees this word differently.   Instead of “evil”, he describes it as “the fact that the world is enslaved in vices”.  We are enslaved to our addiction to unskillful thoughts and actions.  It is not that our essence is evil or that there is evil lurking somewhere in our minds or our bodies.  Each of us, we have the potential for both skillful and unskillful thoughts and actions, but that does not make us any less of a human being, according to Buddhist philosophy.

So, why do we feel this need to label people or things “evil”?  It seems that if something or someone is labeled as evil, then any actions that we take against them must be okay, right?  It’s “us versus them”! We create that sense of separation between ourselves and others, and that makes retaliation, resentment, revenge seem okay.

In the Buddhist teachings, there is the analogy of the two arrows.  The first arrow represents the event or circumstance or emotion or thought that causes the initial suffering.  We all can bring to mind things or people that have hurt us.  Someone said hurtful words or did hurtful things to us.  We or our loved ones have gotten sick, been in accidents, or been harmed in some way.  These are all examples of the first arrow.  These are all a part of life that will never go away.

The second arrow is our reaction to the initial suffering.  There is no denying that hurtful things will happen.  However, our reaction to the suffering, the second arrow, is always within our control.  Here’s one of the best examples from my perspective:

(facts from Wikipedia) On October 2, 2006, a man named Charles Roberts parked his truck in front of an Amish schoolhouse and entered the school, shortly after the children had returned from recess.  Roberts was holding a 9mm handgun.  He ordered the girls to line up against the chalkboard and allowed a pregnant woman, three parents with infants, and all remaining boys to exit the building.  Someone outside the building had heard the ruckus and called 911.  The first trooper arrived and, while waiting for reinforcements, attempted to communicate with Roberts.  Quickly, a large crowd—including police officers, emergency medical technicians, and residents of the Amish village—had assembled as he continued to threaten violence against the children.  The police attempted to negotiate with Roberts.  Within 45 minutes of entering the school, Roberts began shooting the victims and eventually shot ten girls (aged 6–13), killing five.

The troopers immediately approached. As the first trooper in line reached a window, the shooting immediately stopped. Roberts had committed suicide.  Inside the school, the coroner reported, "there was not one desk, not one chair, in the whole schoolroom that was not splattered with either blood or glass. There were bullet holes everywhere, everywhere."

 How did the Amish respond to this horrific first arrow?

On the day of the shooting, a grandfather of one of the murdered Amish girls was heard warning some young relatives not to hate the killer, saying, "We must not think evil of this man." Another Amish father noted, "He had a mother and a wife and a soul, and now he's standing before a just God."

A Roberts family spokesman said an Amish neighbor comforted the Roberts family hours after the shooting and extended forgiveness to them.   Amish community members visited and comforted Roberts' widow, parents, and parents-in-law. One Amish man held Roberts' sobbing father in his arms, reportedly for as long as an hour, to comfort him.   The Amish have also set up a charitable fund for the family of the shooter.  About 30 members of the Amish community attended Roberts' funeral, and Marie Roberts, the widow of the killer, was one of the few outsiders invited to the funeral of one of the victims.

 Marie Roberts wrote an open letter to her Amish neighbors thanking them for their forgiveness, grace, and mercy. She wrote, "Your love for our family has helped to provide the healing we so desperately need. Gifts you've given have touched our hearts in a way no words can describe. Your compassion has reached beyond our family, beyond our community, and is changing our world, and for this we sincerely thank you."

Some commentators criticized the swift and complete forgiveness with which the Amish responded, arguing that forgiveness is inappropriate when no remorse has been expressed, and that such an attitude runs the risk of denying the existence of evil.  Thankfully, others were supportive.  Donald Kraybill and two other scholars of Amish life noted that "letting go of grudges" is a deeply rooted value in Amish culture. They explained that the Amish willingness to forgo vengeance does not undo the tragedy or pardon the wrong, but rather constitutes a first step toward a future that is more hopeful.

So here we are, each of us, with our own struggles and suffering.  Does this mean that if someone beats us, we should hug them and say “give me more”?  Does this mean regardless of the first arrow, we do nothing?  No. By seeing the truth in the moment, we are able to more skillfully respond to the first arrow, in whatever way is the most helpful to all concerned.  The example of the Amish is clear.  They took action to try and stop the suffering in the initial encounter.  When that failed, then they took action to stop the secondary suffering that occurred.  BE AWARE OF SECOND ARROWS.

When bad things happen to us, how many arrows do we shoot into the situation?   Who are we blaming for our suffering?   What value does blaming serve?  In the slogan, “drive all blames into one”, the one is not about blaming ourselves instead of others.  Instead, when we feel a strong need to blame, it’s a signal for us to look deeper.  What are we holding on to?  Where are we stuck?  The “one” that is referred to is recognizing that all blame is centered in a belief of separation, a “them versus us” mentality.  We can try to understand the causes of suffering, but blaming ourselves or others is not helpful. 

Here is the power of this slogan.  When we feel a need to blame someone, even ourselves, we can use that emotion or thought as a wake up call.  First, “What does blame feel like?”  Then, “Why am I wanting to blame myself or someone else?” Lastly, “What is the best response in this situation?” 

Thus, the third point of the Lojong teachings is reminding us that we can use adversity as fuel for our awakening.  Bad circumstances can help us see where we are still stuck.  If our priority in life is always to seek pleasure, avoid pain and ignore everything else, then we will continue to cause ourselves more suffering.  BUT, if our priority in life is simply to fully awaken, to see clearly, then adversity becomes just another opportunity to practice.  The wonderful paradox is that happiness, peace, joy and wisdom, are by-products of waking up. 

The importance of mindfulness practice

Each time we practice being present in the moment, we hone our skills to see the truth.  With presence, first we recognize that the second arrow just causes more suffering, and we become willing to remove it.    With more practice, we are able to catch the second arrow before it is flung.  The first arrows will inevitably come, BUT we always have an opportunity whether to inflict a second, a third, a fourth.    Be mindful of your arrows.  Drive all blames into one.

Outline of Lojong teachings

How to use our struggles to transform the mind

ONE: The preliminaries, which are the basis for dharma (Truth principles) practice

1. First, train in the preliminaries: Shamatha-Vipassana meditation plus the four reminders: A. recognize the preciousness of human life, B. Wake up from the illusion that everything is permanent, C. Be aware that everything we do has consequences, D . Realize that obsessing about getting what we want and avoiding what we don’t want does not result in happiness.

TWO: The main practice, which is training in bodhicitta (awakened/open heart/mind).

Absolute Bodhicitta:

2. Regard all dharmas as dreams.

3. Examine the nature of unborn awareness.

4. Self-liberate even the antidote.

5. Rest in the nature of alaya, the essence (all the potential in the universe, our true home).

6. In postmeditation, be a child of illusion.

Relative Bodhicitta:

7. Sending and taking should be practiced alternately. These two should ride the breath.

8. Three objects, three poisons, three roots of virtue.

9. In all activities, train with slogans.

10. Begin the sequence of sending and taking with yourself. (practice of Tonglen)

THREE: Transformation of Bad Circumstances into the Way of Enlightenment

11. When the world is filled with evil, transform all mishaps into the path of enlightenment.

12. Drive all blames into one.

13. Be grateful to everyone.

14. Seeing confusion as the four kayas (modes of being) is unsurpassable shunyata (emptiness) protection.

15. Four practices are the best of methods.

16. Whatever you meet unexpectedly, join with meditation.

FOUR: Showing the Utilization of Practice in One's Whole Life

17. Practice the five strengths, the condensed heart instructions.

18. The mahayana instruction for ejection of consciousness at death is the five strengths: how you conduct yourself is important.

FIVE: Evaluation of Mind Training

19. All dharma agrees at one point.

20. Of the two witnesses, hold the principal one.

21. Always maintain only a joyful mind.

22. If you can practice even when distracted, you are well trained.

SIX: Disciplines of Mind Training

23. Always abide by the three basic principles.

24. Change your attitude, but remain natural.

25. Don't talk about injured limbs.

26. Don't ponder others.

27. Work with the greatest defilements first.

28. Abandon any hope of fruition.

29. Abandon poisonous food.

30. Don't be so predictable.

31. Don't malign others.

32. Don't wait in ambush.

33. Don't bring things to a painful point.

34. Don't transfer the ox's load to the cow.

35. Don't try to be the fastest.

36. Don't act with a twist.

37. Don't make gods into demons.

38. Don't seek others' pain as the limbs of your own happiness.

SEVEN: Guidelines of Mind Training

39. All activities should be done with one intention.

40. Correct all wrongs with one intention.

41. Two activities: one at the beginning, one at the end.

42. Whichever of the two occurs, be patient.

43. Observe these two, even at the risk of your life.

44. Train in the three difficulties.

45. Take on the three principal causes.

46. Pay heed that the three never wane.

47. Keep the three inseparable.

48. Train without bias in all areas. It is crucial always to do this pervasively and wholeheartedly.

49. Always meditate on whatever provokes resentment.

50. Don't be swayed by external circumstances.

51. This time, practice the main points.

52. Don't misinterpret.

53. Don't vacillate.

54. Train wholeheartedly.

55. Liberate yourself by examining and analyzing.

56. Don't wallow in self-pity.

57. Don't be jealous.

58. Don't be frivolous.

59. Don't expect applause.

Lojong (Mind Training) teachings

The Lojong teachings encourage us to transform our struggles in life to the fuel for awakening. Therefore, this group of teachings is very pithy, practical and a great place to start. If you’d like to follow along, there are many books to choose from, but Pema Chodron’s is one of my favorites. And it’s title, Start Where you Are, seems like the perfect New Year’s book!

When we think about starting fresh, how do we do that? These teachings by describing the two basic types of meditation: Shamatha and Vipassana. Shamatha is the type of meditation we start with on Sunday mornings, which is translated as calm abiding. We are just resting in awareness of things left just as they are, aware when we become distracted and bringing the mind back to the point of awareness. It prepares the mind for Vipassana.

Vipassana is often translated as seeing things as they are, no added stuff. But more deeply, it’s translated as insight meditation, seeing clearly into the nature of all things. Not just calmly resting in awareness but taking awareness to a deeper, broader, more profound level. As if we could see down to the levels of electrons and protons and neutrons, but even more minute, beyond even the tiniest "pieces" of being, and at the same time, more expansively, seeing all things at once in the very broadest sense. The practice of Vipassana is cultivating insight into the truest meaning of all things.

The other set of “preliminaries” that is an important starting place are the Four Mind Changers, or the Four Reflections--four thoughts that motivate the mind toward practicing and studying these Truth Principles.

The first reflection encourages us to contemplate the preciousness of our human birth. A well-known Buddhist meditation is the simple phrase: Since death is certain and the time of death uncertain, what should I do? Living can, at times, be taken for granted. Imagine all the activities and events that had to take place or not take place for you to be here reading this, in this very moment. Human beings are somewhat fragile, and being born ain’t easy. We each have had our own challenges, the issues in our lives that we grappled with. We all navigated through all the dangers and pitfalls of our lives to arrive at this moment right now. So, to experience the manifestation of spirit is quite miraculous. We don’t know what tomorrow may bring. We don’t know for sure what will happen later today. But 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 have in our lives in order 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 tried 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. Nor should we try. The things we like fade away as do the things we don't like--both the things we like and dislike can awaken us. 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 loosen up a bit, not try to force everything and everyone to be just the way we think we want it or them...accepting things just as they are, not out of complacency but as the best place to start living. With this mind changer, we are practicing accepting the ever-changing-ness of life. It doesn’t mean that Buddhists don’t do anything productive. It means we first see with fresh eyes what is happening right now. Instead of acting out of habit, we can imagine that we don’t know and must look again. And from this place of just seeing, just being, we find all new ways of being and doing.

We can try 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 bodies 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 looking for external happiness. Our lives are like sand mandalas--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 nonjudgment? Our lives will continue to change and morph and become something entirely different, whether we want them to or not. The amount of joy in the journey is determined by whether we loosely ride the waves of uncertainty, or we 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. But Buddha turned the idea of karma on its side. His teachings are that yes, there is the law of cause and effect, but it is far more complex than we can imagine. It is far more helpful to focus on what we do right now in this moment, than to worry about what we did ten years ago. This moment is the only place where we can change our lives. How can we be more kind and generous and grateful and wise 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. We focus on what we’re afraid of, what we don’t want. Instead, this reflection is encouraging us to see what 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 discovered in each moment. Don’t live your life waiting for things to be different. Happiness is about 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 nonjudgment is to fully experience not knowing. What if it was okay to not know, but just 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? Not knowing allows us to find new answers. We can reflect on the idea of “I don’t know”.

So, the four reflections are:

· The preciousness of our human birth

· The contemplation of impermanence

· The law of motivation/intention (cause) and results (effect)

· The fact that craving, aversion and ignoring causes suffering and will never bring us complete happiness

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

The 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 our 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.

Getting Our Ducks in a Row

The first step on the Eightfold Path is Right View, Seeing things as they truly are, not through the filters of our past experiences. This first step is critical to the practice of all the other steps. It’s taught first because it’s an excellent place to start the journey. We begin by waking up to the fact that we are causing our own suffering. I think of it in the same vein as the first step of the 12-step program, when people admit that they are powerless over some old conditioned unskillful behavior.

This last week, someone said to me that they were waiting to do something until they got their ducks in a row. I’m so glad that they said it because I could really relate. No matter how many things are going right in my life, I’m often focused on the one or two things that aren’t going so well. Preparing for the holidays, my dear family has swerved into a familiar pattern of dysfunction and I along with them, and I have found myself frustrated trying to get them all in a row to no avail. I’m hoping that some of you can relate to this way that we see the world and our families and ourselves as a project, something to be changed and improved upon in some way.

Obviously dealing with our families is a lifelong journey, so we have plenty of opportunity to practice seeing things differently, seeing things with fresh eyes. I have started to see how my clinging to things being a certain way often ensures that I’m never completely happy. I’m subtly trying to get those ducks in some arbitrary row that I’ve made up. I make to do lists of all sorts, subconsiously feeling like once everything is done, then I’ll be happy. For me, the first step of the Eightfold Path, Right View, reminds me to honestly examine why I want things to be different in the first place.

In his teachings, the Buddha was trying to point out that getting the ducks in a row is not the purpose of life. If we do happen to get the ducks in a row, it will probably be fleeting because, before we know it, those pesky ducks will be running amok again OR we will desire new ducks or all the other ways that our thoughts and emotions can be scattered. So, before we start chasing after the ducks again, we could try a new approach. We can try using mindful awareness to examine more closely what is actually happening, seeing more clearly our thoughts, our motivation and our actions from a fresh perspective.

“If only…”

Lama Surya Das encourages us to identify those subtle and not-so-subtle ways that we hide from the truth, by identifying what we’re wishing for. “If only….” How would you finish that sentence?

If someone were to ask you about your childhood, what would you tell them? What is your story about that? Now how does that color the way you see the world right now? Don’t we all have this story that we’ve used to rationalize our behavior? How we all cling to our story about our past experiences…

Most of us, we continually consciously or unconsciously defend the stories that we repetitively tell ourselves…in Buddhism there is a Sanskrit word called, “Samsara” that is literally translated as “perpetual wandering”. It is the symbol of this cyclic conditioned existence that we find ourselves in. We often keep doing the same things, telling ourselves the same stories about it, and having the same frustrating outcome. So, Right View helps us get off the hamster wheel.

A Zen proverb says if you cling to nothing, you can handle anything. So, we can take this opportunity right now to be more honest with ourselves, to imagine being more Teflon that Flypaper.

Some exercises to practice Right View:

1. I don’t know. Even if you think you know, it’s extremely valuable to rest in the place of not knowing. Imagine yourself being in your situation for the very first time. What would it feel like to let go of our previously held beliefs about ourselves, others and start from a place of not knowing?

“We’ve enclosed ourselves in a relatively small space by thinking life is only one certain way. 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 (Spring 1998)

2. Self-inquiry. What am I holding on to?

What are you clinging to? What are you not being honest with yourself about? In this moment, finish this sentence, “If I were being completely honest, I would tell myself….” What would each of us say? How can we commit to dropping the old stories, dropping the old way of explaining things or people or past events or even ourselves.

If you are in an accident and you break your arm, ignoring it, not looking at it, will not fix it. It’s only when you face the reality of the wound, only then you can begin to take appropriate action to heal.

3. Let go of any sense of struggle

Who or what are we fighting with or against anway? How can we try to surrendering to the moment, the deep truth in the moment? Imagine, even for a moment, that life isn’t about struggling against something or someone. That life can be about being in the flowing of living. Letting go of this sense of struggle can be incredibly powerful.

4. Cultivate compassion

Sylvia Boorstein says that the practice of seeing clearly is what finally moves us toward kindness. Seeing, again and again, the infinite variety of traps we create for seducing the mind into a struggle, seeing the endless rounds of meaningless suffering over lusts and aversions (which, although seemingly urgent, are not where true happiness lies), we begin to feel compassion for ourselves. And then, quite naturally, when we feel compassion for ourselves, we feel compassion for everyone else. We can know as we have never known before that we are stuck, all of us, with bodies and minds and instincts and impulses, “all in a tug-of-war with our basic compassionate nature that yearns to relax into love. Then we surrender. We love. We laugh. We appreciate.”

With this first step of Right View, we commit seeing ourselves and others with insight and compassion. When we feel a sense of struggle, we can remind ourselves to take refuge in mindful awareness, from this sense of having a fresh, new experience. When we get lost, we need only pause, relax, open to what is here, what is now and re-arrive in the natural presence of just being. We can give up the struggle, embraced the ducks wherever they are, and allow ourselves to be at peace

This week, as many of us go through spending time with old friends and family, imagine that you are experiencing them for the very first time. Imagine that you truly don’t know. That we can ask ourselves honestly what we’re holding on to, and perhaps just a little we can let go of any struggle, and be at peace with and have compassion for whatever situation arises.

From Ananda Baltrunas, "A Prison of Desire" is a man that was in prison for 20 years and now is a Pureland Buddhist priest

"When I look for freedom today I find it not in fantasy or in dreams, but in simple awareness. What kind of freedom is it that exists in doing nothing? It is the freedom not to knee-jerk react. It is the freedom to merely observe. I don’t have to judge the trauma that arises in my mind. I don’t have to get involved with the hundred narratives that might try to occupy my mind during any given day. In not clinging to thoughts and ideas, wants and desires, hatreds and resentments, the prison of my most negative thoughts and emotions have faded into a haze that still arises but no longer dominates my life. I have found freedom: it is the freedom of nonattachment, the freedom to not cling and to not resist. It is the freedom to allow myself to surrender to each moment and be at peace."

John Corbaley Dharma Talk December 2010 Getting Sick

From John Corbaley (Thanks, John!)

A couple of weeks ago, I had a bout of illness. Nothing extremely serious; just some seasonal flu bug that had been making the rounds at work. It’s an occupational hazard when your workplace is 90% female abounding with young children. There seems to be quite a bit of this going around. I read in the paper the other day about a school in Overland Park that shut down last week because of this ailment. I also heard from someone about a retirement center in Johnson County that went on “lock down” because of it.

I have to start out by saying that I have been extremely lucky in avoiding the majority of these maladies over the years. It had been so long that I had been sick before that I really couldn’t even remember the last time I had been off work for illness, probably 10 or 12 years at least. And oh yes, I had had a flu shot over a month ago-a requirement for healthcare workers.

This bout, however, really hit me hard. I went to work on Monday, had an OK day; fixed dinner and had a nice evening. Then about midnight it hit. Visits to the bath facilities every half hour or so for the rest of the nite. I will spare you the gastro intestinal details which I am sure you can fill in for yourself. Suffice it to say, by the end of the second day of just lying there in the bed, unable to do pretty much anything, you just want someone to shoot you to make the pain and discomfort stop.

So thirsty, but the smallest sip of water makes you violently nauseated. And it just seems to go on and on. You really can’t take any medication, because you can’t keep it down. That sick. I thought of the Hungry ghosts in Buddhist cosmology, beings who populate one of the hell worlds, with stomachs the size of mountains and mouths the size of a needle’s eye, constantly yearning for something impossible to possess.

As this bout of illness strung out to the third, fourth, and fifth days, as you start to feel better by tiny increments, I began to develop a bit of perspective about what was happening to me. First off, I began to develop a bit of a realization about what it might be like for people with major health challenges from diseases that don’t go away, that they don’t ‘get better’ from, that are with them every day for the rest of their lives. An illness like the one I had gives you a flash-in-the-pan glimpse of how fundamentally that would change your perceptions, your outlook, and your life.

For one thing, it brings you into the moment like few experiences can. We are usually to numb to the processes of our bodies, when you’re in pain, you feel every moment. I really did come to view this as a gift; mostly because I knew that this was temporary, I knew that this eventually would stop, so I started to view it as a kind of gift, a gift of awareness of momentary phenomena.

This experience also gave me a fresh perspective on my relationship with food. For quite a few days, I had absolutely no appetite. For the first few days, of course, I couldn’t even think about food without feeling nauseated. Even after that, I still had that small momentary distance that kept hunger at arms length, and allowed me that ability to examine my perceptions of being hungry without being automatically sucked into the daily habit of being automatically hungry three times a day, as mealtime approached--That feeling, the three times a day one, wasn’t so much a sense of actual need for food, but more just a conditioned response to the time of day and anticipation of the habitual mealtime.

I still remember quite vividly that first time, in the middle of the night of the third or fourth day, when I took that first sip of water that I could keep down. I was vividly reminded of the mindful eating practices I had experienced on retreat. If you have never had the opportunity to try mindful eating, I highly recommend it. It really is quite easy to do, just bring your awareness in a careful, slow way, to the process of eating as you break it down step by step. I’ve been trying to do it in the days since.

Of course, your monkey mind works constantly against you, trying to pull your awareness this way and that, trying to get you out of the moment. It made me very aware of how unconsciously we do most things really, eating while we’re watching TV, driving, web surfing, whatever. What ever happened to just eating? We’ve become so programmed to just tasting and swallowing, tasting and swallowing. So easy to overwhelm our sensations of satiety, the feeling of enough, that overeating becomes the norm.

As I lay there in my sick bed those first days, I was reminded of the role of the early Buddhist monks as healers. For my dissertation, I had studied the voluminous sections of the Vinaya devoted solely to healing the sick, treating wounds and various medical conditions with a generous collections of herbs, ointments, and preparations. What a boon these simple monks would have been, traveling to new lands as mendicants, arriving at communities with this kind of knowledge among those who had never experienced it before.

How much they would have been welcomed and valued for these simple gifts of kindness and healing to relieve pain and discomfort. The Buddha was both wise and clever in carefully outlining these methods, recipes, and instructions for his bhikkhus, knowing how valuable they would be as the spread the dharma around the world.

The Buddha has always been viewed as a healer in the psychological sense, healing the illness of ignorance with the wisdom of the noble truths and eight fold path. But this role as healer has traditionally always been augmented in very practical ways with the knowledge of healing very physical ailments as well. The Bhaisaj Guru, the medicine Buddha, holds his urn of healing herbs and unguents, offering the gift of both bodily and mind bound deliverance from suffering.

This concept is best expressed in the words of an eighth century Indian monk Santideva, who described the quintessential healing role in his towering work, the Bodhicaryavatara, the Way of the Bodhisattva. I’ll close with a brief quote from it.

“May I allay the suffering of every living being,

I am medicine for the sick.

May I be both the doctor and their nurse,

until the sickness does not recur.

May I avert the pain of hunger and thirst with showers of food and drink.

May I become both drink and food in the intermediate eons of famine.

May I be an inexhaustible treasure for impoverished beings.

May I wait upon them with various forms of offering.

Abandonment of all is Enlightenment

And enlightenment is my heart’s goal...

I am the protector of the unprotected

and a caravan leader for travelers.

I have become the boat, the causeway, and the bridge

for those who long to reach the further shore.

May I be a light for those in need of light.

May I be a bed for those in need of rest.

May I be a servant for those in need of service, for all embodied beings.

For embodied beings may I be a wish-fulfilling jewel,

the pot of plenty, the spell that always works,

the potent healing herb,

the magical tree that grants every wish,

and the milk-cow that supplies all wants.

Just as earth and other elements

are profitable in many ways to immeasurable beings dwelling throughout space,

So may I be sustenance of many kinds for the realm of beings throughout space,

until all have attained release.”

--- John Corbaley, M.S., M.A.