by Domyo Burk | Sep 15, 2012 | Why We Practice
Spiritual longing, like any desire, can cause great distress and be an obstacle in spiritual practice. It also is a great force that can propel us along a difficult path and drive us to investigate the deepest and scariest spiritual questions, so I heartily encourage it.
For about seven long years of my junior Zen training, I was in a pretty much constant state of anguish due to my spiritual longing. These years followed three or four initial “honeymoon” years, when I was thrilled with my discovery of Zen and used it to transform my life. I anticipated being able to continue to “succeed” at Zen the way I had succeeded at many other things, but soon I began to encounter teachings that would not yield to my habitual kind of investigation. I longed to understand what I could not, master what I had not, and be something I was not – at least that I wasn’t yet.
My spiritual longing was aroused by chants like this part of the Hsin Hsin Ming, or Affirming Faith In Mind (by Chinese Zen ancestor Kanchi Sosan), which we would chant daily at the meditation retreats I attended:
The Way is perfect like vast space,
where there’s no lack and no excess.
Our choice to choose and to reject
prevents our seeing this simple truth.
Both striving for the outer world
as well as for the inner void
condemn us to entangled lives.
Just calmly see that all is One
and by themselves false views will go.
Attempts to stop activity will fill you with activity
Remaining in duality,
you’ll never know of unity.
And not to know this unity lets conflict
lead you far astray.
This chant felt like a taunt after several hours of seated meditation during which, for me, there might not have been a single moment when I was not choosing and rejecting, striving and entangled. There was rarely a moment that seemed “perfect like vast space, where there’s no lack and no excess.” And if there was, it was fleeting and impossible to re-create. I was very familiar with the fact that, as the chant says, “attempts to stop activity will fill you with activity,” but the chant goes on to remind us that “remaining in duality you’ll never know of unity.” Can’t stop activity, but also can’t stop the effort unless you resign yourself to – god forbid – never knowing of unity and letting yourself get led far astray!
The Hsin Hsin Ming was far from the only teaching that aroused my longing while making the object of my longing seem very, very far away. Even the simplest of our chants, Dogen’s instructions for zazen (Fukanzazengi) tells us that if we “take the backward step that turns the light and shines it inward,” “body and mind of themselves will drop away, and [our] original face will manifest.” What was my original face? Would I see it only after a dramatic awakening experience? Why couldn’t I get my body and mind to drop away, no matter how hard I tried?
My unrequited spiritual longing led to real despair. Such suffering may seem trite to some people, but then I would guess they have never experienced it. I wrote poems during this period of angst which I have saved in order to help me remember what it was like. Here’s one:
DAFFODILS
On the day of my deepest desperation,
there is not the slightest sympathy
in the gleaming yellow of the daffodils.
They simply wait
for my return.
To me, life seemed bleak and pointless. I had lost my taste for everything, so there was no distraction or solace to be found. I was on the outside looking in, separated from my original face, from unity, from the One, from Buddha-nature, from those who knew.
I remember the brilliance of the daffodils in the spring sunshine, beaming despite my suffering. The daffodils and Zen masters seemed to murmur together about the great mystery of life, just out of my hearing. They all looked down on me in pity, saying to each other, “Oh, it is so obvious, doesn’t she see it?”
For each of us our deepest spiritual longing takes a different form or attaches itself to different words, and this can also change over time. I wanted to know I was fundamentally OK – acceptable, worthy, lovable. At times I longed to be able to speak and act freely and spontaneously, as my “true self,” free from the constraint of self-consciousness. I also craved understanding. I wanted to know for myself what the masters were talking about.
And yet I kept on, because my longing was greater than my despair:
TWO CAMELLIAS
Even after all the effort,
the grief is not gone.
Having tried everything,
having mastered nothing,
there is no hope even
for temporary relief. And no one else can help.
(Consumed as they are by their own struggles, or,
victorious,
their encouragements echoing,
across the abyss
that separates sanity from despair.)
And yet it seems there is some shred of faith left:
on an aimless barefoot walk in the cold rain,
careless of broken glass
and unyielding pavement,
stooping to pick up two fallen camellias,
cradling pink rain-dropped petals
all the way home,
finding a shallow glass dish
and filling it with water,
setting the camellias afloat in it –
poignant,
superfluous
hope.
The terrible irony of spiritual teachings that arouse spiritual longing is that the Buddha’s first teaching is that craving is the very cause of dissatisfaction! But while it may seem relatively straightforward that we should let go of our desire for worldly things like fame, wealth and pleasure, how can we awaken if we let go of our desire to awaken? Should we really just give up our desire for liberation and enlightenment?
The answer is a paradoxical “yes” and “no” – typical of Zen. “Yes,” because to realize what the Zen masters are talking about, we have to let go of any idea, let alone any hope, of enlightenment. “No,” because until we understand what the Zen masters are talking about, we don’t know what it means to let go of any idea of enlightenment. There is no use in pretending to be enlightened before we are. It doesn’t help to anticipate the final answer and try to avoid going through the process to get there. Ideally we don’t give up our longing until we are truly satisfied; this keeps us motivated, searching and practicing.
After all, Zen Master Dogen made an incredibly arduous and dangerous trip to China in the 1200’s because of his spiritual longing. He wasn’t fully satisfied with the Buddhist teachings and practices he encountered in Japan, so he traveled to China where he encountered Soto Zen and achieved the understanding he longed for. Later he wrote, “Why leave the seat in your own home to wander in vain through the dusty realms of other lands? If you make one misstep you stumble past what is directly in front of you.” This sounds very wise, but hindsight is 20/20. I sometimes wonder whether Dogen didn’t hear a teaching exactly like that from one of his Buddhist teachers before he left for China, but nevertheless had to make the trip to truly understand it.
If you will indulge me, another poem from my years of junior training to remind me how I felt:
ASPIRATIONS
Is an aspiration still an aspiration
when you stop believing you can attain it,
when you stop believing it can be attained?
Just one of billions –
a number beyond imagining –
and full of rot,
sainthood recedes like a puddle of water
in a hot pan.
I, for one,
had soup for lunch,
stooped to caress a cat on the sidewalk,
and drew easier breath
under the yellow-garland cottonwoods
on the riverbank.
What have I to do with saints? their
insight and perfection,
their principles and influence?
And yet, I’m not ready to fold up
in my stacks of linens
or drown in my dishwater.
Those sages agitate my living
like a mosquito near my pillow in the night.
I keep going forward,
more and more hopeless but
unable to ignore that sound.
Before we awaken to our true nature, our spiritual work is like polishing a tile to make a mirror. This image comes from an ancient Zen story about the interaction between a Zen teacher, Nangaku, and his student, Baso. Baso had been sitting constantly in zazen for ten years. In his fascicle called Kokyo (translated by Nishijima and Cross), Dogen writes, “We can imagine what it is like in [Baso’s] thatched hut on a rainy night. There is no mention of him letting up on a cold floor sealed in by snow.” Can you imagine this kind of dedication fueled by anything other than longing?
Nangaku went to visit Baso and asked him, “What is the aim of sitting in Zazen?”
Baso answered, “The aim of sitting in Zazen is to become a Buddha.”
Nangaku then picked up a roof tile and started rubbing it against a rock. Baso asked him what he was doing. Nangaku replied, “I am polishing a tile.”
Baso asked, “What is the use of polishing a tile?”
Nangaku said, “I am polishing it into a mirror.”
Baso asked, “How can polishing a tile make it into a mirror?”
Nangaku answered, “How can sitting Zazen make you into a Buddha?”
At one level this story points at the folly of our efforts in spiritual practice, when we are still stumbling past what is directly in front of us. Sometimes people in practice have some idea about what the result of practice will be, and when the master sets them to polishing a tile they figure he knows what he’s talking about and they earnestly and busily go to work. Some time later when they are getting frustrated, they think the master has made a fool of them and they get angry. They may even think they have solved the riddle of Zen practice by saying, “Forget this tile-polishing! There’s nothing to get, I had it all along, and the test was just to see how long I would go about this foolish business.” But this is not a real answer. This may make a person’s life easier, but it won’t really satisfy their spiritual longing.
At deeper level, earnestly and diligently polishing a tile is sacred activity even if you can’t make a mirror out of it. In his compassion Dogen writes:
“For several hundred years, since ancient times, most people interpreting this story – great matter that it is – have thought that Nangaku was simply spurring Baso on. That is not necessarily so… the making of mirrors through the polishing of tiles has been dwelt in and retained in the bones and marrow of eternal buddhas; and, this being so, the eternal mirror exists having been made from a tile… Tiles are not dirty; we just polish a tile as a tile. In this state, the virtue of making a mirror is realized, and this just the effort of Buddhist [ancestors].” (Kokyo, translated by Nishijima and Cross)
When we just polish a tile as a tile – when we just sit zazen – ironically our goal is realized. But this is not easy. Most of the time we keep on sitting zazen in order to become a buddha, which is a mistake, but there is no way to correct that mistake without continuing to sit zazen.
The mistake is that we are looking somewhere else for the object of our longing. We can’t help it, it’s the habit of a lifetime or more. Even looking within ourselves for the answer doesn’t help, because even that is actually still looking somewhere else. We have to stop any looking whatsoever. When someone asks you to show your original face you cannot hesitate for an instant, wondering where it is or whether you can manage to show it. It is not that you find your original face and hang onto it for such occasions, holding it up with confidence and saying, here it is! Rather, it is that you are no longer tempted leave your reality to look for the answer. It is just you meeting the challenge before you, bare and undefended. And what is this, if not your original face?
Although we need to stop looking, we should not stop longing. This is just giving up. Our heart needs to filled to the brim with longing as we finally stop looking. Usually we can only do this when we have spent a great deal of time and energy desperately rubbing a tile, and we finally give up out of sheer exhaustion.
ABSORPTION
Luminous moon,
how many anguished hours have I spent
gazing into the heavens,
longing for your bright secret? All the while bound
to the low and heavy earth
with the weight of my passion?
You are beaming with relief
like a proud parent
as I make the daring leap, call out:
Hey, moon!
How wonderful that we ended up
in the same night sky!
by Domyo Burk | Aug 29, 2012 | Your Zen Toolbox
In traditional Zen practice we have a lot of what we call “forms.” Forms are the physical ways we do things… they include the ways we move in the meditation hall, place our shoes outside the door, the way we chant and offer incense, show respect for one another, and cook communal meals. Our forms include our rituals and ceremonies, the titles and names we use, and the rules, procedures, conduct, traditions and paraphernalia we encounter in our particular religious practice.
If you practice Zen you have a relationship to “form” whether you like it or not. You may avoid form if you practice entirely on your own, or in a rare community that has gotten rid of all forms. However, in a community setting it’s pretty much impossible to get rid of all forms, because you’re going to have to make some decision about the physical ways you do things together – an voila, forms! Even if you are ambivalent about form and engage in it simply because it is part of the whole practice package, and even if you generally try to avoid form, you still have a relationship with it.
For most of us, our relationship to form changes over time and occasionally makes big evolutionary leaps. In my case, I converted to Zen from religious non-conformism and spent many years devouring the details of the forms in an effort to perfect them. Then, even though I had become a monk, I began to think the forms were stupid, pointless, and a big cramp in my style. Rather ironically, then, I was put in the position of shuso, the one who helps to maintain the container of form for the whole sangha. I knew that whenever I approached someone to correct or instruct them about a form, they could see me as a glowing bodhisattva, a bigoted tyrant, a nit-picky irritant, or simply as a fixture of their practice environment, like the hot water pot or the bell calling them to zazen. To face these possibilities calmly, I have not relied on confidence in myself. Rather, I have relied on a growing confidence in the wisdom of these forms.
I want to roughly describe a series of different relationships to form, based on my own experience and my observations of others. I don’t mean to suggest this is an exhaustive list, or that the different relationships always unfold in this order. However, I hope these descriptions might be useful for understanding and accepting the viewpoints of others, and for reminding us that our own viewpoints are subject to change. Whatever category or categories you might fall into, engage that relationship wholeheartedly: explore it, question it, feel it, accept it, and do not compare it to others. The most important thing I have learned is that the form works its own magic on us, below the level of our conscious minds.
First, new practitioners of Zen often engage the form as if The Form Is the Key. At some level we hope that if only we can bow in all the right places at all the right times (gracefully and reverently, but also without any ego involved), finally fold our oryoki cloth in a perfect rectangle, finally zing the teacher with our understanding in sanzen with just the right mix of deference and attitude, the reward of Zen will be ours! This big, complicated, puzzling, frustrating spiritual practice will yield to our efforts (we hope). Sometimes we see the teachers or fellow practitioners that inspire us performing some simple action like putting their shoes straight and our heart almost breaks. We had no idea there could be so much subtlety to placing one’s shoes, or that we could be so very far from embodying our own ideals.
Later, such practitioners have either given up Zen because they felt they could never master all those forms, or they have come close to mastering them and realized they still don’t have It. Eventually, no matter how difficult you find it to learn forms, you can move through a Zen environment performing complicated and graceful maneuvers (that look really good to newcomers) and still feel dead inside. You can practice diligently long enough to earn a fancy name or vestment, yet still feel like these are pasted on over your anguish.
Then we arrive at a rather tense relationship with form: I’ll Do It Only Because You Make Me. Many people start here, and never go through a honeymoon with form. Here we can feel a bit like our deepest longing is being held hostage. Some aspects of Zen have changed our lives or touched us so deeply that we know we must keep coming back. But then our teachers and seniors insist that we engage in certain activities, and surround ourselves with various paraphernalia, that may be meaningless to us at best and repulsive to us at worst. We are constantly on our guard against being bamboozled into something that compromises our integrity, independence, values or self-image. It can be extremely difficult for some of us to participate, for example, in a ceremony if we suspect it is getting everyone all worked up emotionally to the point that they are losing their better judgment. Some people absolutely cannot practice where the kyosaku (“encouragement” stick) is used to strike people during meditation, even when it is totally voluntary, because of the suggestion of violence, punishment or intolerance. Others are repulsed by the system of ordinations, wagessas, rakusus, and kesas, seeing it as being ripe for abuse by egotistical competitive types.
This can be a very difficult relationship to have with form, and many people stop practicing Zen because of it. Some of us strive to find ways to practice only those parts of Zen that seem pure, or fundamental, or at least acceptable to ourselves. We dream about how wonderful practice must be at centers where one gets ordained, or we only feel comfortable meditating if there is a beautiful rock on the altar instead of one of those troubling, baggage-laden (usually male) Buddha images. Or we participate at a traditional center, but duck out right before the irritating or aversive form is about to start.
If we decide to stick it out, though, we may arrive at yet another relationship with form, perhaps best called, Whatever. This is the “whatever” that is said with a small shrug. It is not tuning everything out, nor is it a bleak indifference. It is more good-natured than that. We can say this about the forms when we begin to notice how impermanent and ephemeral our small selves are, how often we are wrong, how limited is our view, how profoundly we change over time. Then we start to take ourselves less seriously. It is not that we shrug and say, “Ah, violence? Who cares?” It’s more like we shrug at ourselves. When our inner champion for social justice is on her soapbox, crying out against the patriarchy we are helping to perpetuate by reciting the lineage of (almost all male) teachers from the time of Shakyamuni Buddha, we smile gently at her and say, “Hmm. You may have a point there. But is this really about justice, or is it about you? What are you so afraid of?” Because we are holding ourselves more lightly, we can start to take the risk of experimenting. Reciting the lineage of male dharma ancestors one more time is not likely to forfeit all the gains women have made, so what happens if we do it wholeheartedly, just once?
In a particularly open and quiet moment, we may come to see the forms as an Existential Lifeline. Just for a moment, we see what is right in front of us as if we were seeing it for the first time – fresh, without filters, without judgment. If our eyes happen to rest at that moment on a sunset or a stoplight or a coffee mug, we may have a very interesting experience. If we happen to be sitting, or bowing, or chanting, or putting on our wagessa, or caring for an altar, or reading a scripture, or facing a teacher, we may receive a piece of the transmission from our dharma ancestors. It is almost like they have left their initials carved into the rock next to particularly stunning, remote waterfall. The message is: we were here, isn’t this place amazing? Then all of the forms appear to serve one purpose, and that is merely to call our attention to the wonder of our existence. In themselves, the forms are indeed empty and many of them are utterly arbitrary, but they are also profound and precious.
It is probably this aspect of the form with attracts us to begin with. Many of us grew up without being exposed to the practice of taking care without any underlying motive. Sure, we knew how to take care of something expensive, or how to take care when we were about to take a big test. But to carefully place our shoes straight or eat mindfully so our silverware doesn’t bang noisily against our bowls? Personally, when I first started encountered Zen, I found the concept completely radical. The reverence and appreciation these Zen people seemed to have for their lives! I wondered, “How do I get some of that?”
Later, even the stoplight and the coffee mug may begin speak the dharma of the ancestors to us. Everything becomes (at least in some moments) rich and luminous and poignantly precious. Putting on our coat becomes as reverent and important an activity as putting on our robes. Having dinner with a difficult relative becomes as engaging as a koan. Learning to dance reveals as much about ourselves as reflecting on the precepts.
Ironically, although it is often Zen practice that has allowed us to experience life this way, this is also one of the times when we are most likely to give it up, or at least find ourselves drawn further and further away from it. Our response to form becomes It Is All The Same. Everything is dharma, everything is practice, so why limit ourselves to a prescribed set of acceptable behaviors? Why spend our vacation time staring at a wall, when we can explore the dharma through passionate sex? Why continue to perform the same stale rituals over and over, when there is a world full of spiritual traditions out there to explore? Many of the people in the world who describe themselves as Zen Buddhists, but do not affiliate themselves with any group or particular lineage, preach the dharma of “it is all the same.”
When we recognize the truth of sameness, when we gain faith that everything, in a sense, is holy, we may also experience a fair amount of anger towards our spiritual traditions and advisors. It can seem as if they have tricked us by convincing us there was something inherently lacking or defiled about the world or about ourselves. Perhaps they just wanted to recruit more followers, or perhaps they are much less wise than we thought, but they have distracted us for too long with all their forms and ideals. Now we have discovered the inherent purity of ourselves and of all things, and no one is going to put us back in that prison of shame!
Once again, though, if we still stay with the form, our relationship to it can shift in a very significant way. We may notice that our spiritual advisors were not imprisoning us in shame. We were imprisoning ourselves. Having discovered that there is nothing inherently lacking in ourselves or in the world, we have liberated ourselves from ourselves. If there is anyone that needs to be carefully watched lest they capture us again, it is ourselves.
Yet, even when proximity to the form is no longer threatening, there remains an important question: why would we bother to keep holding the form after it no longer seems to serve any purpose for us personally? Why would we continue to enter into the formal spaces, which often just cramp our styles? This was a critically important question for me, as a monk. I realized that as a religious non-conformist, my personal definition of “conform” was “to give up one’s intelligence and will; to lack creativity; to huddle together like sheep out of fear.” I was shocked to look up the word and find it meant “to act in accord or harmony with a standard or norm.” What was I missing here?
When our view broadens, we create space for regarding form as The Creation of Sangha. This is about conforming with each other so that we create something in common and move in harmony together. In order to create anything together, we have to compromise with each other. Each of us has to sacrifice some of our independence, willfulness, personality and flavor not because those things are bad, but because we value and want to support our common endeavor. Imagine what it would be like if the temple was simply open on Sundays for several hours for “spiritual practice,” and no other forms were applied. Imagine people coming into the zendo, doing fast or slow walking meditation here and there, bowing in the corners, doing yoga, coming and going, perhaps carrying on conversations and strumming on guitars. Perhaps that sounds like heaven on earth to you, but ask yourself how supported you would feel in your spiritual practice, especially when the going got hard. Would you be able to meditate as deeply if the person next to you was doing Chi Gong, or reading a book of poetry?
Every sangha and its attendant forms is an imperfect package. Some of its forms may be deep, beautiful and meaningful, and some of its forms may be anachronistic, awkward and inefficient. When we have invested deeply in the sangha over time, we may be able to negotiate to change some of them. Most of the time, though, we simply engage in the forms because that is the way we do things when we are together. In one sense, the more standardized the form, the more inclusive is the group. It is a very moving experience to go to Japan and see Zen Buddhists straightening their shoes, bowing, and sitting zazen just like we do. We belong to the same group.
Over the long haul, do you believe the sangha is important, to you and to others? If so, then support it. Every time you straighten your shoes, you are addressing the sangha: “I value being a part of this community.” When you come to sit with others, even though your practice at home is strong, you are saying, “This community has been of great benefit to me, and I want it to continue for my sake and for the sake of others.” Especially when you compromise something of yourself by following a form, you are saying, “Though my community is imperfect, it is doing the Buddha work.”
by Domyo Burk | Jun 14, 2012 | Personal Musings
A friend of mine recently asked me how I view after-death experience.
This is a somewhat awkward question for a Zen teacher to answer. On the one hand I view after-death experience as irrelevant to how I decide to live my life. The Buddha aptly categorized the issue of what happens after death as a question “which does not tend to edification” – that is, to the instruction or improvement of a person morally or intellectually.1 Furthermore, the Buddha taught that the religious life has nothing to do with the answers to such questions and in fact the pursuit of the answers may fatally distract one from the critical task at hand: spiritual liberation and wisdom in this life.
On the other hand, as a Zen practitioner I am committed to facing everything in order to see the truth. When my friend asked his question, I noticed that I had been dutifully avoiding the question of after-death experience. This made me determined to examine my own thoughts on the subject – but not in order come closer to any objective truth about the matter, which I believe is difficult if not impossible in any case, and a distraction besides. Rather, I wanted to examine my own mind for what might be lurking there: feelings, assumptions, anxieties or judgments around the possibility of after-death experience.
It seems to me that the pivotal question about after-death experience is, “to what extent do ‘I’ experience it?” Clearly, whatever “I” there is that might experience something after death will not have a physical body, so this “I” will be substantially different than my before-death existence. The idea that our thoughts, memories, personalities, loves, intentions, etc. continue to manifest free of the body in some kind of soul or essence or “life-energy” seems preposterous to me. My personal experience has borne out the Buddhist teachings: our “self” is a flowing, dependently co-arisen phenomenon. We are who we are in dependence on and relationship with our physical form, our brains, our environment, our culture, other beings – in short, everything. There is no independent, enduring, unchanging thing we can point to and call the essence of our self. A different “self” arises for us in different situations, throughout the day, and over the course of our lives. Even if there is some kind of essence or life-energy in us, you can’t just pop it out of a body and that body’s context and have it remain a neat package of all the most unique and sentimental aspects of a person. This, frankly, seems to me like mere wishful thinking, especially when it is coupled with the belief that the neat packets of people-essence collect over time in a great repository where they experience everlasting life. However, this vision is the central tenet, the pivotal teaching, of many religions, so I am sorry if offend anyone by speaking frankly.2
Now things get a little trickier, because I personally know a few people – people I respect and trust – who say they have experience with spirits or ghosts. I do not have this experience myself, but I cannot easily discount it. How does the possible existence of spirits or ghosts fit with my view of after-death experience, if I don’t believe in a soul?
Notice that I did not state the view that we do not have any kind of life-energy that might separate from our body upon death. I simply proposed that such an energy is not going to pop out as an ethereal duplicate of our embodied sense of self, like all of a person’s essential programs and data get downloaded onto an invisible computer disk for complete transfer to another manifestation. It seems extremely unlikely, what with the way energy of all kinds usually dissipates when it is released. But who knows – maybe “life-energy” acts differently (although I hate to speculate about some previously undiscovered form of energy or matter). Maybe “life-energy,” when it is very strong, has its own gravitational pull and remains coalesced.
Even if we have some kind of life-energy that remains collected after death, perhaps even with some kind of shape and characteristics (let’s call it a spirit), what would be the nature of this phenomenon? Given our plentiful stories of forlorn or vengeful ghosts, I get the impression that persistence of a spirit is often the result of painful or negative impulses or mind-states, like the desire for revenge, an unrequited passion, or an inability to accept a difficult reality. Being pulled into a future existence (of some sort) by such unresolved issues seems to me like remaining in bondage. I hope that before I die I have managed to thoroughly examine my mind and heart and resolve anything that might clutch me to its bosom in the transition of death.
Still, it appears that troubled ghosts are not the only kind of spirit. Tibetan tulkus are supposedly the result of spiritual adepts who deliberately chose, upon death, to send their life-energy toward a rebirth in another human form (starting from the moment of conception). The advantage of doing this is that the reborn person inherits some of the dead adept’s spiritual strength and wisdom, and their ardent intention to be of benefit to others. It’s a “leg-up,” if you will, in the new being’s spiritual practice. If this is possible (and I am not saying it is), than it seems that a spirit can also be the result of selfless and positive impulses or mind-states, like a pure altruistic desire to be of service.
Should we aim to retain some kind of self-existence after death, especially if there is a potential to pay our good qualities forward into some other being (or beings)? I, for one, am not inclined to try, because I think this is a very tricky business. I strongly suspect that if we have a selfish motivation for lingering as a spirit or taking some kind of rebirth, we are enslaving ourselves – and I don’t think many of us will develop the spiritual mastery required to be free of all selfish motivation, especially during the transition of death.
If we can, instead, offer to pay our good qualities forward in an open-handed way, I think we will have all of our bases covered. That is, we can avoid lingering after death in the bondage of self-attachment, and we can also take advantage of any potential to put our life-energy to good use after our death. When we offer ourselves in an open-handed way, we are not expecting anything in return. We are not offering up the best we have only if we can be there to see it used. I don’t blame people for being rather obsessed with the possibility that they will have some degree of self-consciousness after death, it seems rather natural to wish for such a thing. However, in my experience self-concern is the recipe for suffering, while letting go of self-concern is liberation that allows for full life and intimacy with the universe. I view the transition of death as the ultimate opportunity for letting go of self-concern. And what happens after death? It is impossible for me to imagine the fate of human beings after death as anything but utterly mind-blowing and profound beyond imagining – because that’s my experience of the universe so far. Why would the nature of the universe change after death?
1 The Lesser Mâlunkyâputta Sutta, Sutta 63 of the Majjhima-Nikâya, http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/bits/bits013.htm
2 This is one good reason not to speak frankly. In fact I have great respect for many individuals who hold beliefs like the ones I describe, and I am sorry if I offend them. Still, I think that every once in a while it is good for each of us to speak our truth without restraint.
by Domyo Burk | Mar 6, 2012 | Your Zen Toolbox
When someone wishes to become a Buddhist, they “take refuge” in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, after passing through the “gateway of contrition.” Yet Buddhism is not a theistic religion, and the Buddha’s last teaching was “be a lamp unto yourself.” Who or what is providing refuge to a Buddhist, and to whom are we confessing our shortcomings? How are the acts of taking refuge and being contrite compatible with being “a lamp unto yourself”?
Some people have no trouble summoning devotional spiritual feelings, but many of us are too much a product of our skeptical culture to readily give ourselves over to something that seems “outside” of ourselves. Whether the thing inviting surrender is a religion or a person, we want to preserve our dignity and autonomy. We feel some alarm, if not outright aversion, when we read the phrase in our scripture containing the Zen Buddhist precepts, the Kyojukaimon, “We should repeat with bowed heads… I take refuge in the Buddha, I take refuge in the Dharma, I take refuge in the Sangha.” (The Buddha is the historical Buddha but also our own ability to awaken; the Dharma is the Buddhist teachings but also the truth; the Sangha is the community of Buddhists but also all living beings.) Why are we bowing? Does this bowing imply unworthiness? Doesn’t “refuge” imply these things will give us something we can’t give ourselves? Why can’t we just meditate and try to be a good person?
The answer to that last question, of course, is that we can just meditate and try to be a good person, and that in itself is of essential importance. However, we will be missing an extremely valuable and potent aspect of spiritual practice if we skip too quickly over the paradox of refuge.
Essentially, human beings can rarely tap into their full potential if they do not, in some way, acknowledge and align themselves harmoniously with That Which Is Greater, with the Ineffable that inspires our deepest hearts. Even our individual life is much, much greater than the part we usually identify as “self,” or “I, me and mine.” We are supported by, challenged by, and influenced by an infinite number of causes and conditions. In a very literal way, we are only who we are because of where we stand in relationship to the rest of the universe.
When we get some inkling that there is something beneficial, beautiful, noble or even benevolent in the “rest of the universe,” we can turn toward it with interest at the very least, and perhaps even with gratitude or devotion. This is what Huston Smith calls turning toward the “more.” Fortunately, this does not require belief in a deity, or even in something good that is inherently separate from ourselves. As Huston Smith describes in Why Religion Matters:
“…the finitude of mundane existence cannot satisfy the human heart completely. Built into the human makeup is a longing for a “more” that the world of everyday experience cannot requite. This outreach strongly suggests the existence of the something that life reaches for in the way the wings of birds point to the reality of air…
“The reality that excites and fulfills the soul’s longing is God by whatsoever name. Because the human mind cannot come within light-years of comprehending God’s nature, we do well to follow Rainer Maria Rilke’s suggestion that we think of God as a direction rather than an object.”
If you can imagine the wonder and order of evolution proceeding without a being to direct it, why not imagine a moral and spiritual order in the universe without a being to oversee it?
Still, although “It” might not be a “being,” it is important to bow our heads and take refuge. Isn’t part of you touched when you place your hands palm-to-palm in reverence? Such reverence is about acknowledging connection and aspiration, amongst other things. It gets us past our limited self and allows us to access a greater energy and potential. This is what has been proved again and again in 12-step programs; there is usually a limit to the change someone can make until they surrender, in some way, to a “higher power.” This step has been troubling to many addicts who are agnostics and atheists. Buddhism offers a way to take refuge without belief in a deity – but it’s not the no-deity part that is important, it’s the emphasis on refuge itself. The act of taking refuge is consistent with a profound aspect of our humanity, or of our being part of this amazing universe.
by Domyo Burk | Feb 16, 2012 | Karma Relationship: Taking Care of Your Life
When you want to make a change in your life, have you ever wished you skip over the willpower part? If only you could leap directly to that deep conviction that you are intimately connected to all beings, so anger wouldn’t arise in the first place and you wouldn’t have to resist indulging it. If only you could suddenly find yourself four months into a new exercise routine, when you would be very familiar with how good it makes you feel and you would naturally be motivated to do it.
Sadly, in the midst of a discussion about willpower and its relationship to Lojong, Buddhist mind training, Yangsi Rinpoche warned us that Lojong is not about forcing oneself to do something or to refrain from something. It is not a fast-acting remedy to laziness or a lack of self-control that is meant to be applied in emergencies. Rather, he said, it is like a holistic approach to health that requires time to have an effect, and this effect is based in understanding, not in our ability to force ourselves to act in a particular way.
Rinpoche’s teaching is certainly consistent with my own experience of Buddhist practice. At first – and sometimes for a very long time – it takes a great deal of effort to conform to a particular practice, such as not misusing sexual energy. Our habits and desires pull us in one direction, while our aspiration to change pulls us in another. Over time, though, by carefully observing the workings of cause and effect in our life, we see clearly how misusing sexual energy leads to suffering for ourselves and others. We become converted to the teaching; it takes less effort to conform to a particular practice because we understand its relationship to suffering or happiness, and we naturally seek happiness and want to avoid suffering.
However, according to the Buddhist teachings there is no way around having to use and cultivate energy if we want to make any progress on a spiritual (or any) path. To use an analogy from physics, the energy (force) we apply to something multiplied by the progress we make (the distance we move it) equals work. Spiritual practice can be hard work. The effort and energy required to create change – to stop something already in motion, such as a habit, to redirect energy, or to start something new – Buddhists call Virya, translated as energy, effort, zeal, vigor, vitality, or perseverance. It is listed as one of the Mahayana perfections, or paramitas, which are necessary for awakening oneself and others. It is also listed in the Theravadin tradition as one of the five spiritual faculties necessary for spiritual progress.
To me the “willpower” described in psychological terms by Baumeister and Tierney is synonymous with Virya, and I appreciate the light their books shines on this sometimes elusive human faculty. The research they describe clearly proves that willpower is, or acts like, an energy, in that it can be depleted and replenished. Like our physical energy it seems to build up naturally over time with rest and nourishment, and gets used up when we apply ourselves to certain kinds of tasks. What is particularly fascinating to me is that willpower is depleted in many different ways (keeping track of tasks undone, dealing with physical pain, and making decisions, for example) and that its supply never appears to be infinite.
It makes sense that Virya or willpower is an energy – after all, “energy” is one of the translations of Virya. This is a good argument for using Virya, like all energy, wisely. Ideally we will apply our energy to things that will lead to “progress” – healthier habits, better states of mind, more harmonious relationships, etc. – but also to a situation what will require less energy, and perhaps even increase our overall supply of energy.
Buddhist practice is aimed at doing exactly this. As Rinpoche said, the long-term change comes from a change in our understanding. In my experience, this is that process of conversion, seeing and experiencing the value of a certain behavior of body, speech or mind oneself, in a very personal and real way. In the context of Lojong this might be taking on the practice of imagining all beings have been one’s loving and nurturing mother in a past life, and working diligently at it until one is so convinced of its beneficial effects that one would not want to live without such a view. It would not take so much energy to maintain the practice, because the motivation to do so would arise naturally. The stronger this practice got, the less often anger or greed would arise in response to other beings, and the less energy would be expended in restraining anger and greed.
But… it still takes energy/willpower/work to get there, although many of us (like me) secretly hope for a clever way to get to the place where we are “converted” with a minimum of the grueling, exhausting, often frustrating and uninspiring work. The folly of this hope is illustrated in the following story. Tenzin Palmo, a nun in the Tibetan tradition, encountered Togdens during her training. The Togdens were ordained monks who engaged in particularly rigorous practices like living as hermits, taking almost no food, or sitting out in the cold wrapped in wet sheets and drying the sheets with an energy they summoned from within. They were renowned as spiritual adepts, but one the Togden once told Tenzin Palmo:
“You think we yogis are doing some very high, fantastic, esoteric practice and if only you had the teachings you also could really take off! Let me tell you, however, that there is nothing I am doing that you have not been taught. The only difference is that I am doing it and you aren’t.”1
1. Mackenzie, Vicki. Cave in the Snow: Tenzin Palmo's Quest for Enlightenment. Bloomsbury Publishing, 1998.
Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength by Baumeister & Tierney
by Domyo Burk | Feb 14, 2012 | Adjusting Your Attitude: Changing the Heart as well as the Mind
Much of the time we observe the world around us and pass judgement on it. Something we observe may appear good, bad or neutral, but we usually feel like we are simply drawing a conclusion from the data of our experience. We may qualify our judgement by acknowledging it is “just” our opinion or preference, but usually we have a sense that we can’t do much about our opinions and preferences. We either like something, or we don’t. We believe people can usually be trusted, or we don’t. We are convinced the world is going to hell in a hand-basket, or we aren’t.
When someone suggests the “power of positive thinking,” we may think it is something we are supposed to do in our minds to make ourselves feel better. We may think it involves choosing to take a “positive spin on things” rather than listening to our discriminating wisdom when it says something is amiss. Correspondingly, we usually figure that this effort to draw positive conclusions instead of negative ones doesn’t change the reality outside of us, except when we interact differently with that reality because of our new, positive attitude (which, of course, is no small thing).
The Buddhist view on the relationship between positive mind-states and reality is different. Buddhism acknowledges the effect of positive mind-states on our subjective experience; it is more pleasant and less stressful, for example, to feel relaxed than it is to feel angry. When we feel grateful, our chests feel warm and energy flows through us, but when we feel suspicious and stingy, our chests feel tight and our body feels tense. So there’s a good argument for cultivating positive feelings over negative ones if you can. But feeling good isn’t all there is to it.
In the Buddhist view, when we are able to consciously transform the way we relate to an experience, we can change the very nature of that experience. This is because “reality” doesn’t have the hard edges we usually think it does. For me there is no reality “out there,” separate from my mind; I will never be able to perceive a thing without the involvement of my mind. And what is the use of any reality “out there” that can’t ever be perceived? In a sense, reality is born as we perceive it. Don’t get me wrong, this doesn’t mean nothing exists except what sentient beings have perceived, as if only the subjective is real. Rather, it is that reality arises in the encounter between subject and object.
This may seem overly philosophical, so here is a concrete example. Say a woman butts in front of me in line at the grocery store. She’s busy talking on her cell phone and clearly in a big hurry, and takes the opportunity of a few extra, ambiguous feet of space to nudge her cart into the line in front of me. It is possible she just didn’t notice me, but that hardly seems like a good excuse. My first reaction is to get angry and defensive, and to curse the woman’s selfishness and self-absorption. My own self-concern arises, and I press my cart in a little closer, to guard against any other people who might want to get ahead of me.
Then I try the Buddhist exercise of imagining that each person I encounter has, in a previous life, been a kind, nurturing mother to me. And I recall the Buddhist teaching that all beings just want to be happy and avoid suffering (even if they go about seeking what they want in ignorant or destructive ways). Now I notice how anxious and tense the woman in the grocery line is. I know what it feels like to be in a hurry and overwhelmed, and I have no difficulty imagining that in certain circumstances I would at least be tempted to act like she just has. I feel a certain connection with her, and certainly some compassion for her. After all, is it likely she would be so pushy if she was spiritually at peace? Some of my anger and tension dissipate.
Now, what is reality in this example? A selfish, pushy woman butted in front of me? A suffering sentient being, just like me, acted out the age-old drama of seeking happiness and avoiding suffering? Is “reality” only the objective observation that a woman pushed her cart into a few feet of space in front of me in a line? Or all of the above? Reality turns out to be fairly flexible, or at least full of possibilities.
Fortunately, Buddhist mind training does not involve denying or suppressing experiences or reactions we might categorize as “negative.” I don’t have pretend that it isn’t rude to butt in front of someone at a grocery store. I don’t even have to pretend I don’t care about someone butting in front of me. Without turning away from any aspect of our experience (internal or external), we have some options about how to relate to that experience. We can follow trains of thought that take us deeper into emotions like anger or despair, or we can get creative and apply some other techniques and tools.
Another example of a technique aimed at “positive thinking” is to give something away when you are feeling a sense of lack. It’s best if you give exactly the kind of thing you feel you are lacking, such as paying some personal attention to someone else if you are feeling rather unappreciated by the people in your life. Your generosity will probably be appreciated and will generate some connection and warmth, which might be nourishing for you. For a moment you step out of a sense of powerlessness, waiting for the attention of others, and into a position of strength, where you have something valuable to offer others. This is not a panacea for relationship problems (if there is a real issue to be addressed it will still be there after your act of kindness), but it could get you into a better space for dealing with problems. Or it could jar you out of a neurotic, pessimistic habit of mind that is primarily about your skewed interpretation of the actions of others.
I will close with the Buddha’s own words on this very challenging Buddhist practice of positive thinking, from the Dhammapada:
“All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him, as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the carriage.
“All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.
“‘He abused me, he beat me, he defeated me, he robbed me’ – in those who harbor such thoughts hatred will never cease.
“‘He abused me, he beat me, he defeated me, he robbed me’ – in those who do not harbor such thoughts hatred will cease.
“For hatred does not cease by hatred at any time: hatred ceases by love – this is an old rule.” (translation by Max Müller)
