Lama Surya Das writes: "This is how we awaken our inner guru, our inner guide-the Buddha within, the secret master comfortably ensconed forever in our own heart cave. This inner guru is none other than truth itself-our own innate wisdom and heart center's noblest intuitive understanding and love. This is the inner meaning of the provocative, iconoclastic Zen saying "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!" Because he must be an imposter, since the only real Buddha or divine being is within. When you invoke the gods or the angels, when you pray, you are awakening the sublime being within yourself."
Firstly, many thanks to Valerie for keeping updates coming while the rest of us have been slacking off (read: extremely busy).
Now, to the meat of the matter.
Gardening has become one of my favorite past times. Zen teachers often preach the benefits of vegetarianism--and with gardening you can take an active role in this. Even if you don't dedicate yourself to vegetarianism, you can still reap the benefits of cultivating your own garden.
In today's economy, food is becoming increasingly expensive. One way to curb that cost is to grow seasonal foods on your own.
There are many guides online to what you should plant and when, but if you're living in North America, I highly recommend Southern Exposure Seed Exchange's guide (and seeds!).
Their guide can be found here: http://www.southernexposure.com/plantingdates.pdf
Their seeds are Organic and they consistently work to better the environment.
You can read more about Southern Exposure Seed Exchange at their website: www.southernexposure.com
For thirty years I have been in search of the swordsman;
Many a time have I watched the leaves decay
and the branches shoot!
Ever since I saw for once the peaches in bloom,
Not a shadow of doubt do I cherish. - Ling-Yün and the Peach Blossoms D.T. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, 1953, 2nd Series, p. 145,
The wind has settled, the blossoms have fallen;
Birds sing, the mountains grow dark --
This is the wondrous power of Buddhism. - Ryokan, (1758-1831) Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf
Translated by John Stevens
Nothing in the cry
of cicadas suggests they
are about to die
- Basho
My legacy -
What will it be?
Flowers in spring,
The cuckoo in summer,
And the crimson maples
Of autumn ...
The best place to find God is in a garden.
You can dig for him there. - George Bernard Shaw
Your garden doesn't have to be big. It can be as small as one cabbage plant in your apartment window. Cultivating Zen through gardening is a great way to realize your buddha nature and realize, too, your own impermanence.
Activities are endless, like ripples on a stream. They end only when you drop them. Human moods are like the changing headlights and shadows on a sunlit mountain range.
All activities are like the games children play, like castles being made of sand. View them with delight and equanimity, like grandparents overseeing their grandchildren or a shepherd resting on a grassy knoll watching over his grazing flock. ~Nyoshul Khenpo Rinpoche, from a spontaneous Vajra Song
From Lama Surya Das: Right action doesn't have to be daunting and seemingly unreachable prospect. As we go through life, it's as if we are playing with sand that sifts through our fingers. When we are children and built our castles in the sand, they were filled with fun. Our adult projects could be almost the same way: full of joy instead of fear, openness instead of defensiveness, equanimity instead of dualism, anxiety and doubt.
Like me, you are probably trying to fine-tune your actions so they reflect your deepest-held beliefs and values. Fine-tune is the operative term here: how to live and act more and more in a manner congruent with our inner beliefs and words. This is a constant, ongoing and gradual unfolding process. Remember we are all works in progress, striving to refine our spirits and our lives. It's unrealistic to expect to instantly transform from seeds into healthy, fully blossomed shade tress. In this spiritual business, we are growing Bodhisattvas, not shade trees; we are growing up in a spiritual sense. We are refining our true nature; refining the ore and extracting the gold. A process-oriented philosophy, Buddhism doesn't believe in finality. It is about coming home, not about impossible, pie-in-the-sky promises. It can be as simple as we can be. Because we are quite complicated, are paths are complicated.
To take up our spiritual beliefs and concern and apply them in everday life, we have to learn to treat life like an intimate dancing partner. Why withdraw and turn into wallflowers-mere specatators? Feel the music of your own life; dance to the drumbeat of living spirit through your own being.
As you walk the path, remember to practice self-forgiveness and self-acceptance. Life is like an experiment, and everything we do is improvisational. Right action essentially requires of us only that we be perfectly sincere, appreciate things as they are, understand causality and its ethical implications and try to do our best. For doing our best is the very best any of us can do.
Loving-kindness meditation can be brought in to support the practice of 'bare attention' to help keep the mind open and sweet. It provides the essential balance to support your insight meditation practice.
It is a fact of life that many people are troubled by difficult emotional states in the pressured societies we live in, but do little in terms of developing skills to deal with them. Yet even when the mind goes sour it is within most people's capacity to arouse positive feelings to sweeten it. Loving-kindness is a meditation practice taught by the Buddha to develop the mental habit of selfless or altruistic love. In the Dhammapada can be found the saying: "Hatred cannot coexist with loving-kindness, and dissipates if supplanted with thoughts based on loving-kindness."
Loving-kindness is a meditation practice, which brings about positive attitudinal changes as it systematically develops the quality of 'loving-acceptance'. It acts, as it were, as a form of self-psychotherapy, a way of healing the troubled mind to free it from its pain and confusion. Of all Buddhist meditations, loving-kindness has the immediate benefit of sweetening and changing old habituated negative patterns of mind.
To put it into its context, Loving-kindness is the first of a series of meditations that produce four qualities of love: Friendliness (metta), Compassion (karuna), Appreciative Joy (mudita) and Equanimity (upekkha). The quality of 'friendliness' is expressed as warmth that reaches out and embraces others. When loving-kindness practice matures it naturally overflows into compassion, as one empathises with other people's difficulties; on the other hand one needs to be wary of pity, as its near enemy, as it merely mimics the quality of concern without empathy. The positive expression of empathy is an appreciation of other people's good qualities or good fortune, or appreciative joy, rather than feelings of jealousy towards them. This series of meditations comes to maturity as 'on-looking equanimity'. This 'engaged equanimity' must be cultivated within the context of this series of meditations, or there is a risk of it manifesting as its near enemy, indifference or aloofness. So, ultimately you remain kindly disposed and caring toward everybody with an equal spread of loving feelings and acceptance in all situations and relationships.
How to do it . . .
The practice always begins with developing a loving acceptance of yourself. If resistance is experienced then it indicates that feelings of unworthiness are present. No matter, this means there is work to be done, as the practice itself is designed to overcome any feelings of self-doubt or negativity. Then you are ready to systematically develop loving-kindness towards others.
Four Types of Persons to develop loving-kindness towards:
• a respected, beloved person - such as a spiritual teacher; • a dearly beloved - which could be a close family member or friend; • a neutral person - somebody you know, but have no special feelings towards, e.g.: a person who serves you in a shop; • a hostile person - someone you are currently having difficulty with.
Starting with yourself, then systematically sending loving-kindness from person to person in the above order will have the effect of breaking down the barriers between the four types of people and yourself. This will have the effect of breaking down the divisions within your own mind, the source of much of the conflict we experience. Just a word of caution if you are practicing intensively. It is best if you choose a member of the same sex or, if you have a sexual bias to your own sex, a person of the opposite sex. This is because of the risk that the near enemy of loving-kindness, lust, can be aroused. Try different people to practice on, as some people do not easily fit into the above categories, but do try to keep to the prescribed order.
Ways of arousing feelings of loving-kindness:
1. Visualisation - Bring up a mental picture. See yourself or the person the feeling is directed at smiling back at you or just being joyous.
1. By reflection - Reflect on the positive qualities of a person and the acts of kindness they have done. And to yourself, making an affirmation, a positive statement about yourself, using your own words.
3. Auditory - This is the simplest way but probably the most effective. Repeat an internalized mantra or phrase such as 'loving-kindness'.
The visualisations, reflections and the repetition of loving-kindness are devices to help you arouse positive feelings of loving-kindness. You can use all of them or one that works best for you. When the positive feeling arise, switch from the devices to the feeling, as it is the feeling that is the primary focus. Keep the mind fixed on the feeling, if it strays bring it back to the device, or if the feelings weaken or are lost then return to the device, i.e. use the visualisation to bring back or strengthen the feeling.
The second stage is Directional Pervasion where you systematically project the aroused feeling of loving-kindness to all points of the compass: north, south, east and west, up and down, and all around. This directional pervasion will be enhanced by bringing to mind loving friends and like-minded communities you know in the cities, towns and countries around the world.
Non-specific Pervasion tends to spontaneously happen as the practice matures. It is not discriminating. It has no specific object and involves just naturally radiating feelings of universal love. When it arises the practice has then come to maturity in that it has changed particular, preferential love, which is an attached love, to an all-embracing unconditional love!
Loving-kindness is a heart meditation and should not to be seen as just a formal sitting practice removed from everyday life. So take your good vibes outside into the streets, at home, at work and into your relationships. Applying the practice to daily life is a matter of directing a friendly attitude and having openness toward everybody you relate to, without discrimination.
There are as many different ways of doing it as there are levels of intensity in the practice. This introduction is intended to help you familiarize yourself with the basic technique, so that you can become established in the practice before going on, if you wish, to the deeper, systematic practice - to the level of meditative absorption.
Entrusting in the Primal Vow of Buddha, Calling out the Buddha-name, I shall pass through the journey of life with strength and joy.
Revering the Light of Buddha, Reflecting upon my imperfect self, I shall proceed to live a life of gratitude.
Following the Teachings of Buddha, Listening to the Right Path, I shall share the True Dharma with all.
Rejoicing in the compassion of Buddha, Respecting and aiding all sentient beings, I shall work towards the welfare of society and the world.
Commentary: I'm still new to Buddhism and have grown up Catholic-familiar with prayer, but not so much with meditation. Buddhists pray as well as meditate and I found this prayer which you can recite daily as a confirmation of your practice. For those of you who are more familiar this post may not be very helpful for you, but for those less familiar-the fundamental, basic building blocks, including prayers can be especially useful. Have a lovely day!
I found a book two days ago (or it found me) in the Library titled "Awakening the Buddha Within" by Lama Surya Das. Just reading 50 pages last night put me in a lifted mood today. I follow what I feel/think is best for myself and I am feeling an urge to involve myself more with Buddhism. I plan on going to a Buddhist Temple in Fairhope next Sunday the 22nd if anyone would like to accompany me; it will be my first time going to any Buddhist spiritual establishment. http://fairhopetibetan.org/index.html Now to share with you a blog entry by Lama Surya Das:
“It seems odd that we spend so much time in schools on such matters as simplifying radicals, learning about the War of 1812 and identifying the parts of speech and so little on the personal quest for meaning. “ –Noddings (1984)
I have been thinking and writing lately about what would constitute a truly Higher Education system — a wisdom-for-life leadership, learning, and empowerment process — which integrates ones upbringing, schooling, and life experience into a meaningful whole. Higher ed today seems to have become, for the most part, mere vocational training, although jobs in this economy are scarce and college graduates such as my goddaughter — Bowdoin College, 2009 — tell me they are pessimistic about going forth into this new world. I personally would rather learn more than earn more.
What philosophy class teaches us how to find ourselves? How to inquire and come to our own conclusions and eventual convictions regarding life’s Biggest Questions, such as how we shall live our lives, what is our true work, why we are here-where we come from — and where are we going (to quote Gauguin), who am I, how shall I love, what is Higher Power (however we may conceive of it), why bad things happen to good people, how to get my hands on the steering wheel of my life in order to attain happiness and fulfillment, inner peace and well being, the end of existential anxiety? Where can we learn and integrate these things today, in order to benefit ourselves as well as for the betterment of the world and to pass it on to future generations?
I think our current economic and sociopolitical crisis provides us with a real chink in the armor of complacency which has obscured American originality and imagination in past decades, leaving us in a learning moment for the genuine light to shine through. Let’s each together be part of that shining.
Comment: I recently met a work partner, a non-profit called What about Blue, two guys and a girl who were kayaking the Mississippi River to raise awareness and funds for the global water crisis. They told me about a man they met on the river who had lost his job, had no luck finding a new one and decided the best use of his time would be to travel by canoe along rivers of the U.S. till he felt his trip was complete. I think this fits perfectly with the final paragraph of this entry-we are in a new time and with this new time comes new opportunity and a chance to see things in a different, more clear light. Below is a picture of one of the Kayakers, Danielle, taken by another kayaker Brian.
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