When I'm Happy

When I am happy, may my good fortune flow to others;
May its blessings fill the sky!
When I am unhappy, may the sorrows of all beings be mine;
May the ocean of suffering run dry!

~ from "Mind Training Taking Joys and Pains Onto the Path"

Tiger's strength ~ Dragon's fluidity

Inhaling earth energy: strength, solidity, support, resources.

Exhaling sky energy: letting go, openness, fluidity, freedom.

Discussion On Making Things Equal

by Chuang tzu 

Joy, anger, grief, delight, worry, regret, fickleness, inflexibility, modesty, willfulness, candor, insolence -- music from empty holes, mushrooms springing up in dampness, day and night replacing each other before us, and no one knows where they sprout from. Let it be! Let it be! [It is enough that] morning and evening we have them, and they are the means by which we live. Without them we would not exist; without us they would have nothing to take hold of. This comes close to the matter. But I do not know what makes them the way they are. It would seem as though they have some True Master, and yet I find no trace of him. He can act -- that is certain. Yet I cannot see his form. He has identity but no form...

Once a man receives this fixed bodily form, he holds on to it, waiting for the end. Sometimes clashing with things, sometimes bending before them, he runs his course like a galloping steed, and nothing can stop him. Is he not pathetic? Sweating and laboring to the end of his days and never seeing his accomplishment, utterly exhausting himself and never knowing where to look for rest -- can you help pitying him? I'm not dead yet! he says, but what good is that? His body decays, his mind follows it -- can you deny that this is a great sorrow? Man's life has always been a muddle like this. How could I be the only muddled one, and other men not muddled?...

The torch of chaos and doubt -- this is what the sage steers by...

He who dreams of drinking wine may weep when morning comes; he who dreams of weeping may in the morning go off to hunt. While he is dreaming he does not know it is a dream, and in his dream he may even try to interpret a dream. Only after he wakes does he know it was a dream. And someday there will be a great awakening when we know that this is all a great dream. Yet the stupid believe they are awake, busily and brightly assuming they understand things, calling this man ruler, that one herdsman -- how dense! Confucius and you are both dreaming! And when I say you are dreaming, I am dreaming, too...

Once Chuang Chou dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn't know he was Chuang Chou. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Chuang Chou. But he didn't know if he was Chuang Chou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang Chou. Between Chuang Chou and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things.

~ from Chuang tzu, Chapter 2. English translation by Burton Watson.

No Separation

But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For heaven and the future's sakes.

~ from Two Tramps in Mud Time by Robert Frost

Two Poems for My Friend Bosai

by Ryokan

Yes, I'm truly a dunce
Living among trees and plants.
Please don't question me about illusion and enlightenment --
This old fellow just likes to smile to himself.
I wade across streams with bony legs,
And carry a bag about in fine spring weather.
That's my life,
And the world owes me nothing.


The gaudy beauty of this world has no attraction for me --
My closest friends are mountains and rivers,
Clouds swallow up my shadow as I walk along,
When I sit on cliffs, birds soar overhead.
Wearing snowy straw sandals, I visit cold villages.
Go as deep as you can into life,
And you will be able to let go of even blossoms.

~ from Dewdrops On A Lotus Leaf

How many legs does a dog have?

Abe Lincoln: If you call the tail of a dog a leg, how many legs does that dog have?

Fool: Five.

Abe: No. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.

Ryokan's rules

Take care not to:
talk too much
talk too fast
talk without being asked to
talk gratuitously
talk with your hands
talk about worldly affairs
take back rudely
argue
smile condescendingly at others' words
use elegant expressions
boast
avoid speaking directly
speak with a knowing air
jump from topic to topic
use fancy words
speak of past events that cannot be changed
speak like a pedant
avoid direct questions
speak ill of others
speak grandly of enlightenment
carry on while drunk
speak in an obnoxious manner
yell at children
make up fantastic stories
speak while angry
name-drop
ignore people to whom you are speaking
speak sanctimoniously of gods and buddhas
use sugary speech
use flattering speech
speak of things of which you have no knowledge
monopolize the conversation

~ from Ryokan's Dewdrops On a Lotus Leaf
(translated by John Stevens)

Wish-fulfilling Jewel

Compassion and awareness united, each a seed bearing the fruit of the other, each fruit containing more seeds.

Everything Changes

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The one thing to know is everything changes. 

Living in that knowing changes everything.

No Sense

We ignore the direct evidence of our senses, and give too much credence to our stories.

Nothing To Be Done for Such People

Worthy admonitions cannot fail to inspire us, but what matters is changing ourselves. 

Reverent advice cannot fail to encourage us, but what matters is acting on it. 

Encouraged without acting, inspired without changing -- there’s nothing to be done for such people.

~ Confucius, Analects 9:24

Four Essentials of Practice

Refuge and Awakening
Recognize that suffering arises. Form the intention to discover and renounce the causes of suffering. Cultivate the intention to wake up and generate good for all beings, actually practice doing that. Appreciating the difficulty of doing so, respect and rely upon those who have shown the way.


Awareness: Shamatha ~ Vipashyana
Ground your body in the here and now. Rely on the chair or floor or ground supporting you. Rest attention in the sensations and movements of breathing. Ride the breath a while. Open awareness to the whole experience of bodyheartmind, here in this place. See sensations and perceptions arise and dissolve. See feelings of like, dislike, and indifference arise and dissolve. See thoughts, images, emotions, and memories come and go. See the space between thoughts and feelings. Rest in just recognizing.


Caring and Relating: The Four Immeasurables
Consider others -- friends, strangers, and enemies -- and notice how you feel about them. Recognize that everyone wants to be happy, wants to be free of suffering. No matter how you feel about them, cultivate the wish that they have happiness and the causes of happiness. Cultivate the wish that they be free of suffering and its causes. Share their suffering and celebrate their successes and happinesses.


Sharing the Benefits
Appreciate the effort you are making. Recognize the benefits of your practice. Dedicate the benefits to others -- to all others. Actually share them, in real life.

an awareness of impermanence 

a heart of compassion 
a foundation of faith

~ Sangye Nyeton, Jamgon Kongtrul, Ken McLeod

Wisdom

"Wisdom wears an indigo jacket. She takes long walks in the purple hills at twilight, pausing to meditate at an old temple near the crossroads. She was sick as a child so she learned to be alone with herself at an early age.

Wisdom has a quiet mind. She likes to think about the edges where things spill into each other and become their opposites. She knows how to look at things inside and out. Sometimes her eyes go out to the thing she is looking at, and sometimes the thing she is looking at enters through her eyes. Questions of time, depth, and balance interest her. She is not looking for answers."

~ from The Book of Qualities by J. Ruth Gendler

The Taste of Freedom

Just as the ocean has one taste, the taste of salt, even so this Dhamma has one taste too: the taste of freedom.

~ The Buddha, Uposatha Sutta

Freedom

From this hour, freedom!
From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines,
Going where I list, my own master, total and absolute,
Listening to others, and considering well what they say,
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that
would hold me.

I inhale great draughts of space;
The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine.

I am larger, better than I thought;
I did not know I held so much goodness.

~ Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road

Carrots

Nasrudin was sent by the king to investigate the lore of various kinds of Eastern mystical teachers. They all recounted to him tales of the miracles and the sayings of the founders and great teachers, all long dead, of their schools.

When he returned home, he submitted his report, which contained the single word "carrots."

He was called upon to explain himself. Nasrudin told the king, "The best part is buried; few know -- except the farmer -- by the green that there is orange underground; if you don't work for it, it will deteriorate; and there are a great many donkeys associated with it."

~ from The Exploits of the Incomparable Mulla Nasrudin by Idries Shah

Skandhas

Experience is comprised of five groups (skandhas) of experience: sensations, feelings, thoughts and emotions, impulses, and consciousness. The sense of self is a projection of continuity and independence onto experiences which are actually impermanent and dependent, arising and disappearing depending on causes and conditions.

The reactive emotions that lead to suffering are part the self’s habitual emotional and behavioral attempts to cling to pleasant experiences, push away threatening experiences, and ignore neutral experiences.

Attachment, aversion, and ignoring are the traditional three poisons that push the cycle of reactivity. Reactive patterns, since they are based on false projections of independence, permanence, and control, never deliver the satisfaction they seek.

Fully experiencing sensations, feelings, emotions and thoughts, and impulses in attention, knowing them to be experiences and not facts, breaks the cycle of reactivity, and gradually dispels the confusion and projections that result in cycles of suffering.

~ for a graphic depiction of the five skandhas, click here
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Eyes

Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?

~ Henry David Thoreau, Walden

To Ease the Pain

Well, while I'm here I'll do the work --
and what's the work?
To ease the pain of living.
Everything else,
drunken dumbshow.

~Allen Ginsberg

The Essence

Everything changes

Struggle and suffering arise

The essence of what ends suffering: compassion and awareness

Awareness: knowing what is arising

Compassion: feeling and caring
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You Can't Win & You Can't Lose

"Then the path of peace depends on being patient with the fact that all of us make mistakes.  And that’s more important than getting it right.  This whole process seems to work only if you’re willing to give yourself a break, to soften up, as you practice patience.  As with the rest of the teachings, you can’t win and you can’t lose.  You don’t get to just say, “Well, since I never can do it, I’m not going to try.”  It’s like you never can do it and still you try.  And, interestingly enough, that adds up to something, it adds up to appreciation for yourself and for others.  It adds up to there being more warmth in the world.  You look out through your eyes and you just see yourself wherever you go -- you see all these people who are escalating their suffering just like you do.  You also notice people catching themselves just like you do, and they give you the gift of their fearlessness.  You begin to be grateful for even the slightest gesture of bravery on the part of others because you know it’s not so easy.  Their courage increases your trust in the basic goodness of yourself and all beings throughout the world -- each of us just wanting to be happy, each of us not wanting to suffer."

~ Pema Chodron, Practicing Peace in Times of War, p. 53-54
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Come Back

Will you seek afar off? you surely come back at last,
In things best known to you finding the best,
   or as good as the best,
In folks nearest to you finding the sweetest, strongest, lovingest,
Happiness, knowledge, not in another place but this place,
   not for another hour but this hour...

~ Walt Whitman, A Song for Occupations

Calm and Clarity

"Because by cultivating concentration and inquiry together, you are then going to develop creative awareness and creative engagement. And that’s why personally I don’t worry so much about the exact technique because I am more interested in them developing samatha and vipassana, whatever way it is. Because what I think is important is to develop the calm and the clarity.

"But I believe that the way concentration works is actually by returning, not by staying with the thing all the time. So that each time you return you’re not feeding your habit, and you dissolve [its] power. And that’s what will create some spaciousness. And then with the questioning what I believe is that by cultivating the questioning, you’re dissolving the tendency we have to permanentize, by becoming more aware of change."

~ from an interview with Martine Batchelor at Buddhist Geeks

Examining Experience

Attention in the breathing body, aware of the rising and falling of sensations, feelings, thoughts, memories, impulses, actions... asking of any experience that I seem to grasp at or reject:

Is this experience not changing?

Is this experience not made of up other sensations, feelings, and thoughts?

Is this experience not dependent on many causes and conditions which are coming together and falling apart?

Is this experience in my control?

Is this experience me or mine?

Is this experience ultimately satisfying?

Is this experience worth grasping or rejecting?

Creating A Path

by Stephen Batchelor

"As we learn to play this complex instrument of bones, flesh, nerves, impulses, thoughts, and feelings, we trace a path that weaves its way like a channel through the landscape of our experience. It is guided by an intuitive yearning for what we value most deeply; its space is the openness we are able to tolerate within our hearts and minds; it is sustained by the networks of friendship that inspire us to keep going. The path follows the contours of our life as one day turns into the next. It is found amidst the most mundane of circumstances as well as the most sublime...
To create a path is to become intimate with the space opening up withing, around, and before us. This intimacy comes from the mindful awareness of what is unfolding in our body, feelings, minds, and worlds from moment to moment. We get used to the taste, the feel, the texture of the path. It ceases to be something to which we self-consciously aspire.. When we stray from it, we feel its loss as an act of self-betrayal."

~ Stephen Batchelor, Living With the Devil, p.79-80