Basics of Buddhism – 6 - Addictions and Afflictions

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This morning we continue a series of talks about the Basics of Buddhism by exploring how we cause our own suffering.  We all do it at some time or another—we think, speak or act unskillfully.   Buddhism offers some practical ways to untangle the power that we give to unskillful thoughts, unskillful emotions and unskillful actions.

As we explore these practices to change our thinking, there is some helpful research that is being done in the field of addiction recovery.   First, Roz and Pam shared with me a new book entitled, The Power of Habit  by Charles Duhigg.  In it, he encourages us to see more clearly how cues lead to routines, lead to rewards, which create cravings out of the cues.  When you start having a cup of coffee in the morning, and you get that little jolt of caffeine, you create a routine of wanting the reward of the coffee high.  Over time, just smelling coffee gives you a little jolt, BEFORE YOU EVEN HAVE A SIP.  If you don’t drink any coffee after smelling it, you may start to experience the discomfort of craving.  We have bodily sensations that are unpleasant because of the habit that we have formed around coffee.  This can be true of any routine that we establish that includes some kind of reward.  There are the habits of drinking and drugs and smoking, and the other habits of anxiety, depression and fear—in fact both sets of habits can reinforce and support the other.

Finding the cue, the routine, the reward and the craving is exactly what The Buddha was teaching.  In Sanskrit the word for this craving, aversion or ignorance (the three poisons) is Klesha or affliction.  The Buddha noted that craving, aversion and ignorance were at the root of our suffering.  We can now see through the lens of the scientific research, that he was right. 

Another excellent psychiatric study, entitled “Craving to Quit” by Brewer, Elwafi and Davis, details the positive impact that mindfulness training can have on eliminating unskillful habit loop.  They outline three contributors to addictive behaviors:

• Over-ruminations (cyclical mind-states) 
• Internal sensations (emotions, bodily sensations) when we try to run away from or wallow in some uncomfortable feeling.
• External cues: past experiences that were pleasurable, neutral or painful that now drive our present response.

In Buddhism, we practice uncoupling thoughts/emotions of craving and aversion from reaction by no longer ignoring them.  We can in fact develop a tolerance for craving and aversion.  We can be mindful of thoughts, emotions and automatic behaviors and objectively observe them rather than being sucked into responding in our old habitual unskillful ways.

Every day, we have many opportunities to practice! First, we can practice in a controlled environment, like our focused meditation time, and secondly and equally powerful, we can practice in the moment of an afflictive thought or emotion arising.  It is powerful to practice in the eye of the storm.  With time, these practices become a new default mode of simply being present to whatever is arising.

AND we can use this process to develop skillful habits as well.   In the book, the author gives the example of toothpaste.  In the early 1900’s, only 6% of people brushed their teeth.  Through advertising, people were encouraged to create a routine in order to look more beautiful and have greater health.  The advertising connected the activity, toothbrushing with a positive reward, beauty and health, and made it a routine to do every morning.  Toothbrushing went from 6% to 65% in just two years.

There are no ads for mindfulness and meditation, at least none that are as powerful as toothbrushing, because these practices don’t always have an immediate reward, the issue that we have with working out or eating right.  So, we can overtly build in a short-term reward to encourage the routine leading to a habit of mindfulness and meditation.  Our February Love Challenge of meditating at least five minutes a day can be this opportunity.  In the Buddhist teachings, we are encouraged to meditate like our hair is on fire, having that great of a sense of urgency.  But, perhaps, meditation could be rewarded in some subtler way—it’s even been proven that if we who love our to-do lists, put meditation on the list, then check it off each day, that feeling of reward that we get when we accomplish something good for ourselves, that can create the habit. 

In the article on addiction, the psychiatrist emphasizes that realizing our thoughts and emotions only have power because we give it to them is also a powerful step towards changing our habits.  If we try to merely distract ourselves from them, or ignore them, we might find temporary relief, but we are not getting to the core, to the source of the suffering—this is why many addiction recovery processes fail.   Instead, we can learn to become disenchanted with these afflictive thoughts and emotions, to realize that we have the power to see through them and beyond them, then practice taking away that power through creating a replacement habit of mindfulness. 

Techniques to create the gap and become disenchanted

Recognize shenpa:  Pema Chodron is an American Buddhist nun who has studied the Buddhist teachings for over 50 years.  She has written many incredible books and given talks on how we get hooked-when we know what we are thinking or feeling is irrational, but we can’t shake it. The Tibetan word is Shenpa.  She also calls it that “sticky feeling”, the feeling like we can’t shake something off, like having an itch that you feel like you must scratch or you’re going to die.  Addiction can be seen as getting hooked, when we feel like we must take that drink or smoke that cigarette or eat that food, or we feel like we’re going to die.

We can also get hooked in smaller moments, when we get hooked into old habits and emotions triggered simply by a situation or something someone says.  Someone says something to you that makes you tighten inside.  Pema calls it pre-verbal, a yucky feeling at the pit of our stomach perhaps.  Then, the thoughts come and the intense desire arises to respond in a unskillful habitual way.  Think of a time when you’ve been criticized by someone.  Recall the exact moment when they said something negative about you.  What did that feel like?

Rise above:  To broaden our perspective, the monk Matthieu Ricard encourages us to use a visualization of the ocean, imagining soaring above the ocean of afflictive thoughts and emotions, instead of being caught in a boat on the surface, in the midst of the storm.  Meditation, mindfulness and visualization can be key practices in overcoming addictions and afflictions.  Hooray for this possibility of transformation, without any special equipment needed! Just our minds!

Serve others:  Another method of dissolving the power of unskillful thoughts is finding ways to serve others, instead of myopically focusing on ourselves.  One practice that works well in AA is when a newly sober person is given a job to make the coffee or set out the chairs, a simple job that serves others.  How might you serve others to get beyond your limited ways of thinking?  With this new understanding, we then practice again and again.  Through consistent practice, we strengthen the mental muscle of choosing the more skillful path.  We actually are re-wiring our brain.

In her book, Taking the Leap, Pema Chodron related a story that was circulating after 9/11.  It was said that a Native American grandfather was speaking to his grandson about the violence and rage in the world, and he likened it to having two wolves in your heart.  One wanting to be vengeful and angry and the other wanting to be understanding and kind.  The grandson asked him which of the two wolves would win….and the grandfather said, “The one you choose to feed.”

Today and every day forward, we can make the commitment to feed the right wolf, to be aware when we have that tightening in our gut, and sense negative thoughts and emotions arising, AND we can pull the plug, not feed them.  We can forego that short term sense of pleasure, trade it in for a longer term sense of well-being and happiness:

Matthieu Ricard in his book, Happiness, recommends three specific practices that correlate to these techniques mentioned above, for getting beyond unskillful actions and moving towards a deeper sense of happiness and well-being, regardless of our external circumstances or our habitual thoughts and emotions:

•Concentration (strengthening our ability to stay present) Identify the positive result you’re getting from the unskillful behavior.   Part of this mindful awareness is discovering how our fear and unskillful behavior is actually serving us.  If we overeat, we might do so because we remember the short term relief that comes from doing so.  If we get angry, we want that sense of relief when we first strike back.  A major part of mindful awareness is looking for the short term payoff.  Right now, take a specific example of a bad habit you are trying to stop, and bring to mind a recent situation where the desire to respond in that unskillful way was so strong AND when you did actually follow through with the unskillful action.  What did that desire initially feel like right before responding?  Then, what was the payoff that you imagined and received?  Psychologically, it is often described as some sense of relief.  I can’t stop thinking about that drink or that cigarette, until I give in, and in that action, we do feel some relief from the sense of suffering.  Mindful awareness enables us to catch ourselves in that moment of fantasizing about the good feeling we will get from doing the unskillful thing, AND TO REINFORCE THE LONG-TERM NEGATIVE RESULTS—THIS IS A CRITICAL STEP TO STOPPING THE HABIT.  Replace the thought and emotion about the short-term payoff with a different thought about the long term good of a skillful response.   

•Loving-kindness (cultivating positive mind-states) We can trust in our innate goodness.  Find the strength that is within you to change—it’s there within every single person.  If you are constantly telling yourself how bad you are for having these reactions and responding unskillfully, you are feeding the wrong wolf.  Trust in the fact that you are innately good, that there is good within each and every one of us, that we each have an enormous amount of energy and power that we can focus with laser-like precision to change the way we respond.  I work in a spiritual center that has the largest Alcoholics Anonymous group in the city.  I personally know dozens of recovering alcoholics and addicts who had been abandoned by their family and friends as completely unsalvageable, and many have found the power within themselves (and through the strength of the group support and process of AA) to transform their lives into good, even into joyful living!  It is possible!

•H.A.L.T.  Choiceless awareness (not taking things personally)   There’s an easy acronym that some of you may have heard, H.A.L.T.  Halt.  I learned this many years ago when I was reacting in very irresponsible ways, and I’m amazed at how helpful it has been.  HALT stands for Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired.  Whenever these kinds of emotions arise in us, we can begin to see them as signposts, reminders to HALT, to pause, TO CREATE A GAP, to consider carefully whether we want to act upon our urges in that moment.   

RECOGNIZE—RISE ABOVE—SERVE OTHERS

Basics of Buddhism – 5 - Imagination

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This morning we continue a series of talks about the Basics of Buddhism by discussing the power of our imagination.  As the third key component of Buddhist practice, along with mindfulness and meditation, visualization through imagination helps us transform the way we experience ourselves and our world. 

If we want to transform the way we experience ourselves and the world, imagination is an important skill to cultivate. Normally, we might think of imagination as making things up, NOT being fully in the present. The definition of imagination is the power of forming a mental image of something not present—isn’t that the opposite of this whole idea of Buddhist practice? The answer might seems to be Yes, BUT it turns out these two things don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Let’s look more deeply at how we can direct the use of imagination in a positive way. Imagination can be a powerful stepping stone that stretches us beyond our current conditioned responses and old ways of seeing the world, into a new world of new perspectives. It’s like a bridge leading us to a greater understanding about what it means to be truly present.  Imagination can actually re-wire our brain for happiness.

Why would we need imagination to awaken? Let’s start with where you are in this exact moment. What is your main motivation for wanting to learn something new? To relax? To de-stress? To experience peace? To find answers? There are many different motivations that encourage us to practice, all excellent reasons in their own way.  I offer that all of these motivations are grounded in our imagination. We imagine that life could be different. We imagine that having this experience of Buddhism might change our lives in some positive way. The first step in learning anything new is imagining that things could be different. Imagination brings forth the full potential of each moment in our lives, allowing us to see alternative ways of living.

When people get depressed, one of the most debilitating aspects is that they cannot imagine living without depression. When we are in pain, we sometimes 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 be different. And yet, it is possible, in the midst of any difficult experience, in the middle of reacting in our old unskillful ways, we can realize that all things changes. Nothing stays the same forever.  All things are impermanent.  This is an important principle in Buddhism, and one in which imagination can play a key role.

When we awaken to the possibility that things are ever-changing, we are able to direct our experience of the present beyond our current limited thoughts and feelings. The teachings of the Buddha are all about waking up to the fullness of each moment, and imagination is teaching us how to be fully open to all possible experiences. Stephen Batchelor is a well-respected Buddhist practitioner, scholar and teacher, and he has a whole chapter on imagination in his book Buddhism Without Beliefs. In it, he describes that there are three important factors in Buddhist practice: First, commitment, Second, practicing the technique, and Third is imagination. It’s noteworthy that he puts imagination in such an important place. When we look at the first two steps of the eightfold path, we find Wise View and Wise Intention, and at the core of these two steps is practicing imagining how things might be in a broader context.

So, how might we use imagination as the rocket fuel for a passionate, joyful life? Here’s some ideas:

First, we can recognize and remember our ability to access imagination exists in each and every moment. Each moment is sacred—not just the ones spent in church or at home meditating. Each and every moment is sacred. 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 the possibilities beyond our limited way of thinking. WE TRULY ARE JUST MAKING ALL THIS UP. We are deciding moment by moment, how to live and how to respond to all that life creates. 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 or what we did in the past. We might unfortunately think of life as just getting by, doing what we have to do…but the Buddhist practice is about life being so much more.

Imagination is a powerful tool that we have available to us in each moment to stretch beyond our mental limitations. Imagination is a process of seeing ourselves, all others and the world in all its glory.

Practicing imagination strengthens our capacity to think outside the box!   One of my favorite quotes from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll:

 “Alice laughed. ‘There's no use trying,’ she said: ‘one can't believe impossible things.’ 

‘I daresay you haven't had much practice,’ said the Queen. ‘When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.’”

Our ability to think beyond our limitations is a learnable skill. The visualizations that are part of the Buddhist practices, like loving-kindness, the point of peace and the offering practice, these efforts strength our imagination muscle—in fact the practices re-wire our brains into a new way of seeing the world.   Visualizations might seem corny or artificial, but they still work! Buddhist teachers encourage their students that even if you feel like you’re faking it, we are still planting seeds, the seed of loving-kindness, planting the seed of awakening to our innate goodness, just by the mere practice of imagining. Stephen Batchelor likens Visualization more to artistic creation than technical problem solving. We can think of living as an artistic endeavor. Each of us is creating this life that we are experiencing. Each of us is making choices about how to live, moment by moment. The limitations that we think exist are in most cases, self-imposed. Imagine all the possible ways you could live your life!  Imagine how long that list could be!

AND, 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 and imagination 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 imagine that we are pure awareness, we can imagine that we are love and compassion and wisdom and goodness. We can imagine being fully awake, fully present. This powerful process of imagination opens us up to the amazing possibilities of how to live our life.

This innate goodness within everyone, in Buddhism it’s referred to as Buddha Nature, can be liken to the SUN, which 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 night time on Earth, 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 open 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 any misconception that life must unfold in a certain direction, that living is limited to a limited set of emotions and thoughts. Imagine that you are not a thing but rather pure awareness manifesting anew in each moment.

Life is more an unwritten book to be explored rather than a finished product to be defended. The Buddha’s enlightenment is an exercise in seeing life in a whole new way. Because first, he imagined that there was a whole new way to be discovered. If he didn’t imagine another possibility, he would have never started looking in the first place!

We each have this incredible tool of imagination within us:

1. Each of us can know that it is always available in every moment.
2. Exercise it, strengthen your use of it, and
3. Rest in knowing that imagination is limitless.
4. We can imagine our lives as a clean sheet of paper, waiting for the living to be written down, to be lived, moment by moment. In this moment, imagine your life as that clean piece of paper. What would you write? How would you live? What would you create anew?

Strengthening our imagination muscle enables us to benefit from the practice of visualization.   Buddha found that there are certain qualities that we can cultivate through visualizing and imagining experiencing them.  Here is the “fake it till you make it” part that has been scientifically proven to be true.  An athlete can mentally imagine performing his physical activity and by doing so, does a better job when he begins to actually play.  So too, we, as spiritual athletes, can practice feeling a certain way, and we slowly begin to experience the world in this new way of being. 

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

(For Podcast, click here.  For ITunes version, click here)

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

(For Podcast, click here.  For ITunes version, click here)

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.