EC Buddhism

Schooling the World

2012-02-15T20:42:00.000+11:00

What happens when we replace a traditional culture’s way of learning and understanding the world with our own? This trailer for the documentary "Schooling the World" takes a look at the effects of modern education on the world’s last sustainable indigenous cultures, as well as at the failure of institutional education to deliver on its promise of a way out of poverty – in the United States as well as in the so-called “developing” world.

Video from KarmaTube

The 10 Very Best Zen Stories

2012-01-22T04:59:00.000+11:00

The 10 Very Best Zen Stories
By MYRKO | Published: 20. SEPTEMBER 2008

Photo copyright by QT Luong of terragaleria.com
Many teachings from Zen-Buddhism are told in short and delightful stories. They are usually designed to develop the mind and to free it from distortions and so to connect with our spirit.

Some of them are really inspiring and enlightening. It is helpful to the mind to think about them and feel the deeper meaning. Even if it is not possible to grasp them fully, the beauty and simplicity of the message usually gets through to us one way or the other.

The following 10 Zen stories are a selection of the ones I found most inspiring and really worth to ponder about. Some may be instantly understood, some others need to be thought through and recognized in oneself.

They are about the following topics: life in the present moment, different perspectives, attachment, resistance, judgment, delusion, beliefs and thought as mental concepts but not truth and unconditional love. Please feel free to post your interpretation or other stories into the comments.

After reading the first, follow it's advice to read all the others. :)

1. A Cup of Tea
Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.

Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor's cup full, and then kept on pouring.

The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. "It is overfull. No more will go in!"

"Like this cup," Nan-in said, "you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?"

2. The Burden
Two monks were returning to the monastery in the evening. It had rained and there were puddles of water on the road sides. At one place a beautiful young woman was standing unable to walk accross because of a puddle of water. The elder of the two monks went up to a her lifted her and left her on the other side of the road, and continued his way to the monastery.

In the evening the younger monk came to the elder monk and said, "Sir, as monks, we cannot touch a woman ?"

The elder monk answered "yes, brother".

Then the younger monk asks again, "but then Sir, how is that you lifted that woman on the roadside ?"

The elder monk smiled at him and told him " I left her on the other side of the road, but you are still carrying her."

3. Finding a Piece of the Truth
One day Mara, the Evil One, was travelling through the villages of India with his attendants. he saw a man doing walking meditation whose face was lit up on wonder. The man had just discovered something on the ground in front of him. Mara's attendant asked what that was and Mara replied, "A piece of truth."

"Doesn't this bother you when someone finds a piece of truth, O Evil One?" his attendant asked. "No," Mara replied. "Right after this, they usually make a belief out of it."

4. The Other Side
One day a young Buddhist on his journey home came to the banks of a wide river. Staring hopelessly at the great obstacle in front of him, he pondered for hours on just how to cross such a wide barrier. Just as he was about to give up his pursuit to continue his journey he saw a great teacher on the other side of the river. The young Buddhist yells over to the teacher, "Oh wise one, can you tell me how to get to the other side of this river"?

The teacher ponders for a moment looks up and down the river and yells back, "My son, you are on the other side".

5. Is That So?
The Zen master Hakuin was praised by his neighbors as one living a pure life.

A beautiful Japanese girl whose parents owned a food store lived near him. Suddenly, without any warning, her parents discovered she was with child.

This made her parents very angry. She would not confess who the man was, but after much harassment at last named Hakuin.

In great anger the parents went to the master. "Is that so?" was all he would say.

When the child was born, the parents brought it to the Hakuin, who now was viewed as a pariah by the whole village. They demanded that he take care of the child since it was his responsibility. "Is that so?" Hakuin said calmly as he accepted the child.

A year later the girl-mother could stand it no longer. She told her parents the truth – that the real father of the child was a young man who worked in the fishmarket.

The mother and father of the girl at once went to Hakuin to ask his forgiveness, to apologize at length, and to get the child back again.

Hakuin was willing. In yielding the child, all he said was: "Is that so?"

6. Maybe
Once upon the time there was an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. "Such bad luck," they said sympathetically.

"Maybe," the farmer replied.

The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. "How wonderful," the neighbors exclaimed.

"Maybe," replied the old man.

The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune.

"Maybe," answered the farmer.

The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son's leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out.

"Maybe," said the farmer.

7. Cliffhanger
One day while walking through the wilderness a man stumbled upon a vicious tiger. He ran but soon came to the edge of a high cliff. Desperate to save himself, he climbed down a vine and dangled over the fatal precipice.

As he hung there, two mice appeared from a hole in the cliff and began gnawing on the vine.

Suddenly, he noticed on the vine a plump wild strawberry. He plucked it and popped it in his mouth. It was incredibly delicious!

8. The Blind Men and the Elephant
Several citizens ran into a hot argument about God and different religions, and each one could not agree to a common answer. So they came to the Lord Buddha to find out what exactly God looks like.

The Buddha asked his disciples to get a large magnificent elephant and four blind men. He then brought the four blind to the elephant and told them to find out what the elephant would "look" like.

The first blind men touched the elephant leg and reported that it "looked" like a pillar. The second blind man touched the elephant tummy and said that an elephant was a wall. The third blind man touched the elephant ear and said that it was a piece of cloth. The fourth blind man hold on to the tail and described the elephant as a piece of rope. And all of them ran into a hot argument about the "appearance" of an elephant.

The Buddha asked the citizens: "Each blind man had touched the elephant but each of them gives a different description of the animal. Which answer is right?"

9. Right and Wrong
When Bankei held his seclusion-weeks of meditation, pupils from many parts of Japan came to attend. During one of these gatherings a pupil was caught stealing. The matter was reported to Bankei with the request that the culprit be expelled. Bankei ignored the case.

Later the pupil was caught in a similar act, and again Bankei disregarded the matter. This angered the other pupils, who drew up a petition asking for the dismissal of the thief, stating that otherwise they would leave in a body.

When Bankei had read the petition he called everyone before him. "You are wise brothers," he told them. "You know what is right and what is not right. You may go somewhere else to study if you wish, but this poor brother does not even know right from wrong. Who will teach him if I do not? I am going to keep him here even if all the rest of you leave."

A torrent of tears cleansed the face of the brother who had stolen. All desire to steal had vanished.

10. Nothing Exists
Yamaoka Tesshu, as a young student of Zen, visited one master after another. He called upon Dokuon of Shokoku.

Desiring to show his attainment, he said: "The mind, Buddha, and sentient beings, after all, do not exist. The true nature of phenomena is emptiness. There is no realization, no delusion, no sage, no mediocrity. There is no giving and nothing to be received."

Dokuon, who was smoking quietly, said nothing. Suddenly he whacked Yamaoka with his bamboo pipe. This made the youth quite angry.

"If nothing exists," inquired Dokuon, "where did this anger come from?"

Bonus 11. Teaching the Ultimate
In early times in Japan, bamboo-and-paper lanterns were used with candles inside. A blind man, visiting a friend one night, was offered a lantern to carry home with him.

"I do not need a lantern," he said. "Darkness or light is all the same to me."

"I know you do not need a lantern to find your way," his friend replied, "but if you don't have one, someone else may run into you. So you must take it."

The blind man started off with the lantern and before he had walked very far someone ran squarely into him. "Look out where you are going!" he exclaimed to the stranger. "Can't you see this lantern?"

"Your candle has burned out, brother," replied the stranger.
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http://www.awakeblogger.com/2008/09/the-10-very-best-zen-stories/

The Varieties of Religious Therapy: Buddhism

2011-12-26T01:10:00.000+11:00

The Varieties of Religious Therapy: Buddhism
By Ryan Howes, PhD, ABPP on November 23, 2011 - 7:12am

The Varieties of Religious Therapy (VRT) is a blog series featuring representatives from twelve belief systems discussing how they integrate faith with their approach to psychotherapy. This installment, the twelfth of twelve, is an interview with a Buddhist psychologist and author. See the Introduction for a full description of VRT and the table of contents.

Twenty-five hundred years ago, an Indian prince named Siddharta Guatama sat beneath a tree waiting for enlightenment. He arose as the Budda - the "enlightened one" - and spent his 45 remaining years teaching the path to liberation from suffering; the dharma. Today there are over 360 million followers of Buddhism worldwide.

Lorne Ladner (Ph.D., Pacifica Graduate Institute) is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Centreville, Virginia. He teaches meditation and Buddhist practice and directs the Guhyasamaja Buddhist Center in Northern Virginia. Dr. Ladner has written or co-authored a number of books including The Lost Art of Compassion: Discovering the Practice of Happiness in the Meeting of Buddhism & Psychology, and a chapter on mindfulness for the APA's recently released Spiritually Oriented Interventions for Counseling and Psychotherapy. Dr. Ladner was formerly an adjunct faculty member Argosy University, and he currently gives lectures and workshops in the areas of the psychology of compassion and other positive emotions, mindfulness, and meditation.

Please take a deep, cleansing breath and enjoy these responses from a wise practitioner.

What is the role of religion or spirituality in your clinical practice?

I would say that my spiritual practice plays a role in my clinical practice in two different ways. The first is unspoken and relates to my own internal practice. I practice in the tradition of the H. H. Dalai Lama which puts great emphasis on a spirituality grounded in empathy, loving-kindness, compassion, and altruism. So, as part of my own practice, both when I'm by myself and when I'm with others, I actively engage in psychological methods for increasing those qualities. So, that would include actively cultivating empathy and compassion for patients I'm working with. Though I don't talk about that with patients, it appears that some people with whom I work over an extended period of time sense some of that. Also, interpersonally or intersubjectively, those emotions and perspectives are there in the room affecting the interaction. According to the psychotherapy research, so much of what is helpful or healing for patients happens on a non-verbal level in their having a different kind of intersubjective experience than they had in the past related to issues they may be facing. So, whenever a therapist can bring some degree of compassion into the relationship, that would have an impact on both people involved.

Then, another way that those things affect my clinical practice is more explicit. I keep up pretty well on the clinical research related to applying meditation techniques in the context of psychotherapy and I've also written articles and books on that subject. So, I often teach people mindfulness or other meditation techniques in the context of therapy. If there is clear, clinical, scientific research indicating that mindfulness or compassion meditation or a visualization technique can help a patient with the specific problems they are bringing to therapy, then I bring that up, briefly explain the research, and offer to teach them that technique. In general, I'll only bring up such methods when there is clear, clinical research indicating that they are effective in relation to the client's presenting problems.

Since I have written about meditation and therapy, I also sometimes have people come in who are specifically interested in Buddhist practices from their own side. In those cases, if someone asks me about a particular Buddhist practice as it relates to coping with their presenting problems then we may discuss it some as well.

How does your technique or theory differ from mainstream psychotherapy?

This question is a bit difficult to answer because over the past ten years or so integrating techniques derived from the Buddhist meditative tradition into psychotherapy really have become pretty mainstream. That wasn't true when I started out as a therapist. But, now there are well over a thousand journal articles just related to applying mindfulness in the contexts of stress reduction and psychotherapy. And, then coming largely out of the Mind & Life meetings between leading scientific researchers and H. H. the Dalai Lama (along with other Buddhist teachers), there's also a fast-growing body of research on applying other Buddhist techniques as well such as compassion meditation, meditative concentration techniques, and so forth. Books, trainings and workshops on all these topics appear more and more. So, in some sense all of this is becoming fairly mainstream. But, compared with most of my colleagues, I probably do actually engage with clients in more guided practice of mindfulness or other sorts of meditation during sessions. I suspect that I also place more emphasis than average on issues such as looking a strengths (a focus of positive psychology) and enhancing positive emotions such love, compassion for self, compassion for others, gratitude, and forgiveness. There is clinical research on the benefits of such positive emotions, but I suspect that my own interest in their role in mental health is also influenced by the Buddhist psychological tradition's view that such positive emotions are totally essential to human happiness and mental health.

A new client comes to therapy reporting his main problem is feeling detached from God. How would you proceed?

I would ordinarily begin by exploring what their experience of feeling detached from God was actually like, how and when it had developed, and what their relationship with God had been like before. Sometimes such experiences arise due to grief reactions and then it's important to explore the client's grieving process. At other times such experiences arise due to depression and an overall sense of disconnection; in such cases I believe that the initial focus should be less on religion or spirituality and more on treating the depression and overall sense of disconnection. And, then with some other people the issue is more specifically a religious or spiritual issue. (Of course this can also be true in the other examples I just shared, so perhaps the distinction is more a matter of timing and emphasis.) When someone is feeling detached from God and from their own spirituality, it can be quite helpful to have someone to talk with who is open to helping them explore their own beliefs. I majored in college in Religious Studies, and then in graduate school also studied the role of spirituality and religion in psychology from a Jungian perspective. So, I generally believe that if someone is troubled by a sense of distance from God, then exploring that together in a way that's grounded in that person's own direct experience, personal history, and beliefs can be very helpful, and I've often felt quite honored to get to work together with another person as they explore those kinds of issues.

http://m.psychologytoday.com/blog/in-therapy/201111/the-varieties-religious-therapy-buddhism

Who Was the Buddha?

2011-12-26T01:01:00.000+11:00

Who Was the Buddha?
By Toni Bernhard, J.D. on November 30, 2011 - 8:56am

The name Buddha means "awakened one." This is the story of how a young man became the Buddha. As with all ancient tales, we can't know what is to be taken literally and what is to be taken metaphorically. It doesn't matter to me. I'm inspired by his story either way.

The Buddha was born a prince in a small kingdom that is part of modern-day Nepal. His name was Siddhartha Gautama. His father, the king, indulged his son's desires and protected him from being exposed to human suffering. The king posted guards at the palace gates to keep Siddhartha from seeing how less fortunate people lived. He even had attendants hold a parasol over his son so he wouldn't experience heat or cold or dust. Everything unpleasant about life was hidden from him.

When Siddhartha was nine-years old, his father took him to a plowing festival. At one point, the nurses left the prince unattended under a rose-apple tree. In striking contrast to the noise of the festival, it was calm and quiet under the tree. Siddhartha sat cross-legged and became aware of the sensation of his breath going in and out of his body. It was his first experience of true calm and peacefulness. Soon his nurses returned and broke this peaceful abiding, but the experience had a profound effect on the young prince.

One day, when Siddhartha was a young man, he talked his attendant, Channa, into taking him beyond the walls of the palace. For the first time, Siddhartha was exposed to life as the rest of us experience it.

As the story goes, when he saw an old person with shriveled skin, bent over and leaning on a walking staff, he asked Channa what was wrong with him. Channa replied, "He's old. Everyone who lives for a long time gets old and looks like that."

When Siddhartha saw a person who was delirious with fever and whose skin was covered with blotches, he asked Channa what was wrong with him. Channa replied, "He is sick. Everyone is subject to disease."

When Siddhartha saw a corpse on the side of the road, he asked Channa what was wrong with him. Channa replied, "He's dead. We all die, sweet prince."

Then Siddhartha saw a man seated cross-legged under a tree, looking calm and peaceful. He asked Channa, "What sort of man is this?" Channa replied, "He is a homeless wanderer in search of truth."

Siddhartha was shaken to the core by this first glimpse of human suffering and by the man he'd seen under the tree. He felt called to leave his life of luxury and become a wanderer himself. He sought the answer to three questions: Why do people suffer, could one find freedom from it, and if so, how?

Siddhartha's renunciation is unparalleled in history. At 29, he was a prince in the prime of his life—a life of power, privilege, and wealth. But he gave it all up. He traded his opulent clothes for a robe made of scraps of material found lying around. He ate only what was given to him. He slept under a tree for shelter.

He sought out spiritual teachers and undertook many different practices. He found that he could easily attain transcendent states of mind, but they always passed, leaving him with his three unanswered questions. At one point, he became an ascetic, starving himself in an attempt to gain spiritual awakening. This extreme didn't bring him any closer to understanding suffering or to the freedom that he sought than had the other extreme of a life of luxury and sensual pleasure at his father's palace.

So, Siddhartha decided to go off by himself. Recalling his experience as a child under the rose-apple tree, he accepted some much-needed food from a young girl and then sat down under a fig tree, vowing not to get up until he knew the answer to his questions.

As he sat, he was assailed by mental suffering in all the forms that are so familiar to each of us—the painful mind states of greed, ill-will, confusion, and their cousins: temptation, fear, and doubt. He just sat. After seven days, he had his great insight which people have been speculating about for 2,500 years and which I describe here based on my understanding of his teachings.

He saw that everything arose due to causes and conditions, and that everything was subject to dissolution—both the physical body and mind states of all varieties. When he saw that painful mind states arose as the result of causes and conditions and were impermanent (as opposed to being a fixed part of his identity), they lost their hold on him. He realized that reacting with aversion to them just intensified his suffering, but that when he just witnessed and acknowledged their presence, a contented peace came over him.

In this stillness, he at last saw the answers to his three questions: why do people suffer, could one find freedom from it, and if so, how? He became the Buddha—the awakened one—seeing clearly these things:

(1) Suffering is present in the life of all beings because everything that arises is subject to dissolution and so any satisfaction can only be temporary. Every one of us is subject to illness, old age, death, and separation from those we love. During the course of our lives, we will experience joy and we will experience sorrow.

(2) Freedom from mental suffering is possible because painful mind states, like all phenomena, are impermanent and so we need not identify with them as "me" or "mine."

(3) Freedom from mental suffering is attained by greeting our experience with an open heart, knowing that some of it will be joyful and some of it will be sorrowful. When we are openly present with whatever arises—not clinging to the pleasant and not recoiling from the unpleasant—we, too, can experience the peacefulness of a buddha.

The Buddha spent the rest of his life—45 years—as a wandering monk, sharing his insight with others, regardless of their caste or gender. He devised an astounding number of practices to help people understand suffering and to point the way to attaining the peace and contentment that he attained under that fig tree. I've written about some of these practices, such as the cultivation of compassion and equanimity (see 4 Qualities of Mind that Alleviate Suffering) and the practice of mindfulness (see 6 Benefits of Practicing Mindfulness Outside of Meditation).

It is said that soon after his experience under the fig tree, the Buddha passed a stranger on the road who was so struck by the Buddha's calm radiance that he asked him, "Are you a god?" The Buddha replied, "No. I am not." "What are you then?" the man asked. And the Buddha said, "I am awake."

For me, this story is inspiring because it means that, through our own effort, the peaceful contentment we see in statues of the Buddha is within the reach of all of us.

The Buddha's teachings have given rise to dozens of schools and traditions. Some of them have elevated the Buddha to a god-like figure to be worshipped. But the ancient texts make it clear that he was just an ordinary—if remarkable—person who embarked on an extraordinary journey of discovery. This is why I and many others don't consider Buddhism to be a religion.

To me, Buddhism is a path of practice that helps me understand suffering—my own and that of others—and teaches me how to open my heart so wide that it can respond with compassion to the suffering in the world, while, at the same time, resting in the peaceful contentment of a buddha.

I'm the author of the How to Be Sick: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide for the Chronically Ill and their Caregivers, winner of the 2011 Gold Nautilus Book Award in Self-Help/Psychology. Website: www.howtobesick.com

http://m.psychologytoday.com/blog/turning-straw-gold/201111/who-was-the-buddha

Letting Go: The Power of Detachment

2011-12-26T00:56:00.000+11:00

Letting Go: The Power of Detachment
By Steve Taylor on December 4, 2011 - 4:31am

A few years ago, an acquaintance of mine moved to Barcelona to begin a contract job. Within minutes of arriving at the airport all his luggage was stolen, including his wallet, with his money and the contact details for his job in it. At first he was in a state of panic, wondering how he was going to survive. He didn't speak Spanish, and didn't know anyone in the city. At first, he approached people at the airport, telling them what had happened and asking for money, but no one believed him. He went to the police, but they were unhelpful too. For the first few nights he slept rough on the streets, or on the beach, and stole food from finished plates outside restaurants.

However, once the initial panic and fear faded away, he felt a strange sense of well-being. One night, after about two weeks of being homeless, he fell asleep on the beach with a feeling of liberation inside him, and a sense of being - in his words - 'in tune' with a deeper part of himself. As a Buddhist, he recognised that this was a spiritual feeling, connected to 'letting go of my normal identity and status.' From this point, his perceptions seemed different too - his surroundings seemed more real and beautiful. Eventually he went to the British Embassy, who loaned him the money for a return flight, but he felt no hurry to go back home - in fact, he waited another week before buying a ticket.

Another acquaintance told me how, after many years of unhappiness, she finally began to feel a sense of well-being in her late forties, when she went into her menopause. Part of the reason for this was, she believes, because she stopped being concerned about her appearance. As a younger woman, she had always been beautiful and had a lot of attention from men. As a result, her sense of identity had been bound up with her appearance; she'd always made an effort to look as good as possible, wearing a lot of make up and spending a lot of time shopping for clothes. Being thought of as 'beautiful' made her feel special.

At first, when she realised that her beauty was fading and that men were no longer as attracted to her, she felt a sense of loss. But soon this switched to a sense of liberation, as she began to realise that she didn't actually need the attention. She began to let go of her attachment to her appearance, and realised that, by placing so much emphasis on it, she'd lost touch with her true identity. She began to feel more authentic and much happier.

The key to understanding these experiences is the concept of attachment. Normally, as human beings we're psychologically attached to a large number of constructs, such as hopes and ambitions for the future, beliefs and ideas about the world, knowledge, status and achievements. At the same time, there are more tangible attachments such as our possessions, our appearance and our jobs or roles. All of these attachments support our sense of identity like scaffolding. They are the building blocks of our sense of 'I'. We feel that we are 'someone' because we have hopes, beliefs, a job, or because we're successful and attractive, and so on.

We think we need these attachments to feel happy, but paradoxically, letting go of them can bring - at least for some people - a deeper kind of well-being. Letting go makes us aware that the attachments actually clutter up our minds, and overburden us with demands. We feel a sense of clarity and openness, now that our 'identity scaffolding' has dissolved away. There's a new sense of energy too, since our mental energy is no longer consumed by maintaining the attachments.

But even more importantly, psychological attachments seem to obscure a deeper, more authentic part of ourselves. This 'core' of our being doesn't need external happiness, because somehow it exists in a natural state of fullness and contentment.

In other words, it may be that we've been looking for happiness in the wrong place: not outside, but inside. It may be that true well-being comes not from accumulating things, but actually letting go of them.

Steve Taylor is the author of Out of the Darkness, and Waking From Sleep, described by Eckhart Tolle as 'An important contribution to the global shift in awarenss.' www.stevenmtaylor.com

http://m.psychologytoday.com/blog/out-the-darkness/201112/letting-go-the-power-detachment

KarmaTube: Be Selfish, Be Generous

2011-12-08T16:44:00.000+11:00

The Dalai Lama once said that the most generous act there is, compassion, is actually a selfish act: "If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion."

What does generosity mean to you? Why do you give? What can you give? Here are some thoughts from a group of volunteers for CharityFocus, an organization that focuses on the practice of selfless generosity and small acts of kindness. How would you answer these questions for yourself?

Video from

KarmaTube: A Gift Economy at Karma Kitchen

2011-12-08T16:41:00.000+11:00

A Gift Economy at Karma Kitchen
Imagine a restaurant where you pay-forward for the person after you. How long might the chain of generosity last? At Karma Kitchen, in three cities around the United States, it has gone on for close to 25 thousand people -- and is still going. Katie Teague provides a thoughtful and hopeful portrait of how gift economy can work.

Video from KarmaTube

WAY OF LIFE: An effortless process & not a strenuous job!!

2011-12-05T16:56:00.000+11:00

The Four Noble Truths

2011-11-22T01:01:00.001+11:00

http://www.thebigview.com/buddhism/fourtruths.html

The Four Noble Truths

1. Life means suffering.

2. The origin of suffering is attachment.

3. The cessation of suffering is attainable.

4. The path to the cessation of suffering.

1. Life means suffering.

To live means to suffer, because the human nature is not perfect and neither is the world we live in. During our lifetime, we inevitably have to endure physical suffering such as pain, sickness, injury, tiredness, old age, and eventually death; and we have to endure psychological suffering like sadness, fear, frustration, disappointment, and depression. Although there are different degrees of suffering and there are also positive experiences in life that we perceive as the opposite of suffering, such as ease, comfort and happiness, life in its totality is imperfect and incomplete, because our world is subject to impermanence. This means we are never able to keep permanently what we strive for, and just as happy moments pass by, we ourselves and our loved ones will pass away one day, too.

2. The origin of suffering is attachment.

The origin of suffering is attachment to transient things and the ignorance thereof. Transient things do not only include the physical objects that surround us, but also ideas, and -in a greater sense- all objects of our perception. Ignorance is the lack of understanding of how our mind is attached to impermanent things. The reasons for suffering are desire, passion, ardour, pursuit of wealth and prestige, striving for fame and popularity, or in short: craving and clinging. Because the objects of our attachment are transient, their loss is inevitable, thus suffering will necessarily follow. Objects of attachment also include the idea of a "self" which is a delusion, because there is no abiding self. What we call "self" is just an imagined entity, and we are merely a part of the ceaseless becoming of the universe.

3. The cessation of suffering is attainable.

The cessation of suffering can be attained through nirodha. Nirodha means the unmaking of sensual craving and conceptual attachment. The third noble truth expresses the idea that suffering can be ended by attaining dispassion. Nirodha extinguishes all forms of clinging and attachment. This means that suffering can be overcome through human activity, simply by removing the cause of suffering. Attaining and perfecting dispassion is a process of many levels that ultimately results in the state of Nirvana. Nirvana means freedom from all worries, troubles, complexes, fabrications and ideas. Nirvana is not comprehensible for those who have not attained it.

4. The path to the cessation of suffering.

There is a path to the end of suffering - a gradual path of self-improvement, which is described more detailed in the Eightfold Path. It is the middle way between the two extremes of excessive self-indulgence (hedonism) and excessive self-mortification (asceticism); and it leads to the end of the cycle of rebirth. The latter quality discerns it from other paths which are merely "wandering on the wheel of becoming", because these do not have a final object. The path to the end of suffering can extend over many lifetimes, throughout which every individual rebirth is subject to karmic conditioning. Craving, ignorance, delusions, and its effects will disappear gradually, as progress is made on the path.

When Mao came face to face with his destiny at Buddhist temple

2011-11-17T19:13:00.000+11:00

Indian Express, Aug 14, 2011

Mt Wutai, China -- Mao Zedong, founder of China's Communist Party, rarely visited temples as he remained steadfast with his atheist ideology, but his visit to the sacred Buddhist Mountain here left a legend of how a fortune card he picked accurately predicted his destiny.

On a relaxed tour of this 1200 years old Buddhist shrine after successfully leading the revolution in 1949, Mao picked up a fortune card no: 8341 out of the pack offered to him by Buddhist monks and insisted on knowing what it foretold.

Much to his chagrin the monks maintained stony silence.

Their refusal to speak despite his persistence made him leave the place in a huff.

It later turned out that the card predicted that he would live for 83 years and his rule as a leader of the party would last 41 years.

Mao was born in 1893 and died in 1976 on the 83rd year of his life. He took over the leadership of the ruling Communist Party of China, (CPC) and the Red Army in 1935 during the Long March and remained its leader till his death, which makes it a leadership of 41 years.

True or false, this legend of Mao's destiny is on the lips of scores of official tourist guides here on this picturesque mountain. It is interesting to note how much China has moved away from Mao's era and has aggressively marketed the spiritual importance of the Buddhist shrine using his own legend.

For over 1200 years, Wutai Mountain has been China's most sacred Buddhist place because it was where the highly revered "Manjusri, the Bodhisattva of wisdom", one of prominent disciples of Lord Buddha, once lived and taught Buddhism.

The atmosphere in the shrines easily reminds one of any Indian temple, with hundreds of devotees seen going around it chanting prayers, while others lighting fragrant sticks before the giant bronze statues of Lord Buddha.

This mountain is regarded as one of the four holy Buddhist Mountains in China, with 360 temples built on it dating back to the Tang Dynasty (618-907) after Buddhism came to China from India.

Currently only 47 temples exist here. Broadly imbibing the Hindu and Tibetan Buddhist traditions is a massive white pagoda which can be seen from several miles.

The pagoda, in Nepalese style, has a base circumference of 83.3 meters and is 75.3 meters high.

It reportedly contained a small India-made iron stupa, where some remains of Sakyamuni (One of the names of Lord Buddha) are kept.

Mt Wutai lies in Wutai County in Xinzhou Region of China's flourishing Shanxi Province which has taken a prominent spot on China's burgeoning tourist map.

Besides the temple, the province which has emerged as the power house of China catering power supply to top cities like Beijing, also houses the famous 'Pingyao' -- the ancient city which is a UNESCO world heritage site.

The city dating back to 557 BC-532 BC is regarded as the

"outstanding city model" of Han nationality styled during Ming and Qing dynasties. Hans constitute over 95 per cent of Chinese population.

Plush with houses and places built with ancient Chinese style architecture, the walled city has age-old Buddhist temples, China's first Bank as well as an old prison, depicting torture kits extensively used by the rulers to keep the population under check.

The place which has emerged on top of China's tourist map with modern hotel facilities designed to give the experience of living in the ancient houses is attracting lakhs of tourists every year.

Places such as this helped China emerge as one of the top three tourist destinations in the world last year raking up billions of dollars in tourist inflows.

With 56 million tourist arrivals last year, China edged out Spain, to become the world's third most visited country, behind France (79 million) and the United States (61 million).

Buddhists split on claiming Jobs as one of their own

2011-11-17T18:56:00.001+11:00

by Daniel Burke, Religion News Service, Nov 2, 2011

Cupertino, CA (USA) -- A few days after the death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, a mini-debate erupted on the Facebook page of Buddhist Geeks.

The tech-savvy podcast and digital magazine had linked to a CNN article that explored the late entrepreneur's ties to Zen Buddhism.

One Buddhist Geeks fan said she had recognized Buddhism's influence on Jobs, and wished him a "very auspicious rebirth."

But another argued that Jobs should be held responsible for a spate of worker suicides last year at Foxconn, a Chinese factory that produces parts for iPhones.

Buddhist Geeks responded that it "certainly wasn't our intention to grab up Steve Jobs as a fellow Buddhist. As you and others have pointed out, there is plenty about Steve that we might not want to claim."

In addition to questions about Apple's business decisions, a new biography of Jobs portrays him as mean and egocentric.

Vincent Horn, the co-founder of Buddhist Geeks and a self-described "Apple fanboy," says the debate over Jobs touches on age-old arguments.

One camp argues that when a person practices Buddhism, he walks a linear path that should completely change his life and eradicate bad behavior. Horn calls this "Buzz Lightyear" school of enlightenment, after the "Toy Story" character's token phrase: "To infinity and beyond!"

Another camp argues that even celebrated Zen masters retain human foibles.

"I think the two camps are locked in a perennial argument about the nature of human beings and human ethics," Horn said. "It's so deep and so core and that's part of the reason this whole thing with Steve Jobs has brought up such emotion."

Adam Tebbe, founder and editor of the website Sweeping Zen, said the debate over Jobs is complicated by the fact that the Apple chief rarely spoke publicly about Buddhism.

"It does feel like we're dancing around the edges and not talking about what his real feelings were," Tebbe said.

The Rev. Danny Fisher, a professor and coordinator of the Buddhist chaplaincy program at University of the West, in Los Angeles, said American Buddhists have grown somewhat leery of discussing "celebrity Buddhists."

"At the same time, we could be avoiding the important conversations about Steve Jobs," Fisher said. "Because he is wearing this label of Buddhism, he could be a catalyst for discourse regarding these big questions about Buddhist practice and the market."

Barry Boyce, a senior editor and feature writer at Shambhala Sun, a Buddhist magazine, said he is wary of portrayals of Jobs as a committed Buddhist.

"To be quite honest, I never heard him saying or in any way indicating that he was looking deeply at the interconnected affects of what he was doing with his life and company," Boyce said.

Ashes to beads: South Koreans try new way to mourn

2011-11-17T18:17:00.001+11:00

Ashes to beads: South Koreans try new way to mourn

by HYUNG-JIN KIM, Associated Press, Nov 14, 2011

ICHEON, South Korea -- The intense grief that Kim II-nam has felt every day since his father died 27 years ago led to a startling decision: He dug up his father's grave, cremated his bones and paid $870 to have the ashes transformed into gem-like beads.

<< In this Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2011 photo, Kim Il-nam, a retired high school principal, displays beads made from his father's ashes during an interview in Icheon, South Korea. Kim dug up his father's grave, cremated his bones and paid $870 to have the ashes transformed into gemlike beads. "Whenever I look at these beads, I consider them to be my father and I remember the good old days with him," Kim said. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

Kim is not alone in his desire to keep a loved one close — even in death. Changes in traditional South Korean beliefs about cherishing ancestors and a huge increase in cremation have led to a handful of niche businesses that cater to those who see honoring an urn filled with ashes as an imperfect way of mourning.

"Whenever I look at these beads, I consider them to be my father and I remember the good old days with him," a gray-haired Kim, 69, told The Associated Press in a recent interview.

"As a little boy, I often fell asleep while being hugged by my father," he says, sobbing and gazing at the blue-green beads, which sit on a silk cloth in a ceramic pot on a table.

A decade ago, six out of every 10 South Koreans who died were buried, a practice in line with traditional Confucian instructions to respect dead ancestors and visit their graves regularly. Since then there has been a big shift in South Koreans' thinking about the handling of the deceased, in part, officials say, because of Western influence and a strong government push for citizens of this small, densely populated country to consider cremation as a way to save space.

The government cremation campaign included press statements, pamphlets and radio broadcasts. A law passed in 2000 requires anyone burying their dead after 2000 to remove the grave 60 years after burial.

The results have been dramatic: The cremation rate last year was so high that only 3 in 10 were buried.

About 500 people have turned their loved ones' ashes into Buddhist-style beads at Bonhyang, a company based in Icheon, just south of Seoul. It and several other ashes-to-beads companies say they have seen steady growth in their business in recent years.

Bonhyang founder and CEO Bae Jae-yul says the beads allow people to keep their relatives close to them, wherever they go. He also says stored ashes can rot, a claim denied by crematoriums. "Our beads are clean; they don't become moldy and don't go off and smell bad," he says.

Bae uses ultrahigh temperature to melt cremated ashes until they are crystalized and can be turned into beads in a 90-minute process. The colors are mostly blue-green but sometimes pink, purple and black.

The ashes of one person can produce four to five cups of beads, Bae says, although the ashes of young people have a higher bone density that can yield up to eight cups of beads.

Bae isn't the first to use the technology in South Korea.

A meditation organization obtained similar bead-making technology in the late 1990s, but it was imperfect and wasn't long in the public eye, Bae says. He says he saw the potential, bought the technology and spent several years refining the process.

Bae believes his company has an important edge over rivals. His beads are made purely from human remains with no added minerals, which he says other companies blend in.

Bonhyang's chief rival, MiKwang, says added minerals help produce more rounded, gemlike beads in a faster time and at lower temperatures.

Mikwang officials say they have more business than Bonhyang but refuse to disclose their profits. Bae also refused to disclose business details. No special government license is necessary to start an ashes-to-beads business, according to the Health Ministry, which says individuals have the right to determine how to dispose of loved ones' remains.

The fledgling industry has drawn some criticism.

"They are only interested in making business profits," Do Young-hoon, a researcher on South Korea's funeral culture, says. "The highest level of respect for the dearly departed is to let them go back to nature."

Businesses turning the dead into beads were launched in the United States, Europe and Japan in the past, but were mostly unsuccessful because few people regarded it as a normal way to dispose of dead bodies, says Park Tae-ho, chief researcher at the Korea National Council for Cremation Promotion, a Seoul-based civic group.

Bae's customer Kim, a retired high school principal, says it took some time to persuade his family to accept his plan to honor his father "because they thought a ghost could come to our home along with these beads."

Every morning, Kim, a Catholic, prays to his father's beads, which he keeps on a bookshelf. He takes some beads with him in his car and has also given some to his five daughters.

Despite loyal clients like Kim, Bae says he is still years away from seeing a profit, partly because of the emergence of copycats. But he still feels confident about his business when he sees his customers' delighted reaction to the product.

"People are moved," Bae says, "and I feel it's something worthwhile. I'm confident this business will flourish considerably someday."

Bae says seven Buddhist temples and one Catholic church lease his bead-making machines. He is also negotiating deals over his technology with dozens of other religious organizations in South Korea, and with businesses in China, Thailand, Japan and the Philippines.

Ashes-to-beads businesses could also get a boost when South Koreans take advantage of next year's quadrennial leap month in the lunar calendar to conduct cremations. There's a traditional belief that the ghosts that supervise humans go on vacation during a leap month, so many people in South Korea don't feel sinful for relocating graves or digging up their relatives for cremation.

Kim plans to exhume his mother and make beads from her remains next year.

"I've also told my daughters I want my ashes turned into beads," he says.

The Karmapa's statement on the recent acts of self immolation by Tibetan monks and nuns

2011-11-17T18:15:00.001+11:00

The Karmapa's statement on the recent acts of self immolation by Tibetan monks and nuns

The Buddhist Channel, Nov 14, 2011

Dharmsala, India -- A Buddhist nun in China's western Sichuan Province burned herself to death on November 3, 2011, bringing to 11 the number of Tibetan clergy and former clergy who have set themselves on fire since March. The series of self-immolations, unprecedented in Tibetan Buddhism's modern history, has continued despite an increasingly large Chinese security presence in the predominantly ethnic Tibetan area.

In response to the gruesome events, His Holiness the Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje, issued the following statement on November 9, 2011:

"Since March this year 11 brave Tibetans have set themselves on fire while calling for freedom in Tibet and the return of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to his homeland.

These desperate acts, carried out by people with pure motivation, are a cry against the injustice and repression under which they live. The situation is unbearably difficult, but in difficult situations we need greater courage and determination.

"Each report of self-immolation from Tibet has filled my heart with pain. Most of those who have died have been very young. They had a long future ahead of them, an opportunity to contribute in ways that they have now foregone. In Buddhist teaching life is precious. To achieve anything worthwhile we need to preserve our lives. We Tibetans are few in number, so every Tibetan life is of value to the cause of Tibet. Although the situation is difficult, we need to live long and stay strong without losing sight of our long term goals.

"As His Holiness the Dalai Lama has said, the Chinese leadership should face up to the real source of these tragic incidents. Such drastic acts have their origin in the desperate circumstances in which Tibetans find themselves living. A ruthless response will only make things worse. Where there is fear, there can be no trust.

"His Holiness the Dalai Lama has stressed that the use of force is counter-productive; repressive measures can never bring about unity and stability. I agree with him that the Chinese leadership needs seriously to review its policies towards Tibetans and other minorities. I appeal to right-thinking, freedom-loving people throughout the world to join us in deploring the repression unleashed in the monasteries in Tibet, particularly in the Tibetan region of Sichuan. At the same time I appeal to the Chinese leaders to heed Tibetans' legitimate demands and to enter into meaningful dialogue with them instead of brutally trying to achieve their silence.

"Because the Tibetan issue involves truth and justice, people are not afraid to give up their lives, but I request the people of Tibet to preserve their lives and find other, constructive ways to work for the cause of Tibet. It is my heartfelt prayer that the monks and nuns, indeed all the Tibetan people, may live long, free from fear, in peace and happiness."

The monk who flew in a jet

2011-11-17T18:14:00.001+11:00

The monk who flew in a jet

Source: Business Bhutan, January 1, 2011; Published on the Buddhist Channel, Nov 14, 2011

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia -- In 2008, as my friend and I sat down in the restaurant to eat our dinner, we saw a man in the hotel lobby. Immediately, we assumed that he was alone so decided to invite him for dinner.

"I don't eat dinner," the elderly man declined the offer, "I am on my way to the gym."
The next morning, I met him in the hotel lobby and noticed that he was wearing the same clothes.

"Excuse me," he said politely and then looking at the young monk sitting next to me, said affectionately, "Son, it is time for us to go home." The son obediently picked up his small cloth bag from the floor and followed his father.

Earlier, curious to see a monk in the Uma hotel in Paro, I had started a conversation with him.

"Yesterday was my father's 70th birthday and he wanted me to spend it with him in a special place," the monk informed me. The monk could have been in his early thirties. He had short hair and was wearing saffron robes and had a pair of slippers on. "What a beautiful country you have? They had flown into Paro in their own jet.

So who are these people? The elderly man is Ananda Krishnan and the monk his only son.

Krishnan is the second richest man in Malaysia . According to Forbes he is worth 7.6 Billion dollars. The Tamil Malaysian of Sri Lankan Tamil origin is a self made man and is a notable philanthropist but leads a low profile life. He and his son are both Buddhists.

Few years ago, the billionaire lost his son. He started to look for him and his search stopped in a Buddhist monastery in north Thailand . Shocked to see his son in saffron robes, short hair with a begging bowl in his hand the father invites his son for a meal.

"I am sorry; I cannot accept your invitation." Like all my fellow monks, I have to beg for my food." Krishnan reply made headlines, "With all my wealth I cannot even afford to feed my own son."

The son still lives in the monastery in the forest of Thailand and like all the monks in the monastery depends on other people's generosity for his sustenance.
Hearing stories like these one wonders if we are giving up everything that we already possess to acquire things that we really don't need.

This story clearly demonstrates that human contentment and well being in real terms requires us to go beyond physical, mental, and emotional dimension. Krishnan's son clearly shows that detachment could be a greater wealth and devotion a bigger asset in our lives.

Buddhify web app promotes calmer urban experience

2011-11-15T14:59:00.001+11:00

Posted on 15 November 2011 - 05:28am

LONDON (Nov 14, 2011): For a lot of people the day begins amid the chaos of a transit pressure-cooker.

Agitated workers wedge onto trains or buses to make the stressful commute to work and arrive feeling frazzled, a state that only worsens as the day wears on.

Now, a Glasgow-based entrepreneur and digital innovator has launched a new web application for iPhone and Android smart phones intended to help people on the go learn to cope better with some of the struggles of city life.

The Buddhify app introduces users to restful mindfulness meditation practices by allowing them to select from 32 audio tracks to hear instruction from either a male or female voice.

Although its name makes reference to Buddhism, a religion in which meditation plays a key role, the app is intended for use by anybody interested in mental wellbeing.

"The only prerequisite is having a mind," Rohan Gunatillake said.

"Its origins are in the Buddhist tradition, but it's totally independent. It's a way of training your attention in such a way that it develops positive qualities in your mind."

The app also has a two-player mode allowing friends to meditate together.

The traditional ways meditation instruction is delivered seem somewhat outdated to Gunatillake, who has been meditating since 2003.

"The perception of the aesthetic wasn't quite right -- it felt too hippy, the baggage of lotus flowers and incense still
comes with the meditation scene, but that's always been like wrapping paper rather than the actual thing," Gunatillake said.

"It's a cultural effect because of the boomer generation who came across it and who are teachers now."

Buddhify is also meant to help people who may not have time to take meditation courses in real life.

One audio track provides instruction on how to meditate while walking and another on how to mentally wish others peace and happiness - how "to take a break from our own personal soap opera" by choosing a random person to focus on.

"When travelling around have you ever noticed that despite being among so many people we're often just stuck in our own little stories?" Gunatillake's recorded voice asks.

"If it's the start of the day it's all about things we have to do, if it's the end, it's all about the drama of the day's
events. Exhausting stuff really."

The trick is to spread kindness to become happier and more generous, the recording says. –Reuters

Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche (1961 - )

2011-11-07T06:28:00.001+11:00


Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche, aka Khyentse Norbu, is the third incarnation of the founder of the Khyentse lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. He kept with Khyentse tradition and learned from masters from all four schools of Tibetan Buddhism: Sakya, Geluk, Nyingma, and Kagyu. From a young age he has been active in the preservation of the Buddhist teaching, establishing centers of learning, supporting practitioners, publishing books, and teaching all over the world. Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche supervises his traditional seat of Dzongsar Monastery and its retreat centers in Eastern Tibet, as well as his new colleges in India and Bhutan. He has also established centers in Australia, North America and the Far East.[1] He created the organization the Siddhartha's Intent, which organizes all his teachings and tours around the world. He rebuilt the Dzongsar Monastery in the 80's when Tibet began to lax their policies on practicing religion. In addition to having his seat at the Dzongsar Monastery, he started the Khyentse Foundation, a non-profit organization with the stated goal "to act as a system of patronage for institutions and individuals engaged in the practice and study of Buddha's wisdom and compassion." He has also been involved with the arts. He recently became an author and released his first book in 2007, What Makes You Not a Buddhist. He has also become pretty involved in the film industry. He has made two films, The Cup (1999) and Travelers and Magicians (2003). He was also the star of a documentary called Words of My Perfect Teacher, the film examined the Vajrayana Buddhist student-teacher relationship. The film essentially works as biographical portrait of Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche.
Date of Birth: 02 Jan, 1961 Location: India State: Himachal Pradesh
Summary Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche, aka Khyentse Norbu, was born in 1961 in Bhutan. He is the grandson of H.H. Dudjom Rinpoche. At the age of seven, he was recognized as the third incarnation of the founder of the Khyentse lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. He studied at the Palace Monastery of the King of Sikkim. His root-master teachers don't come from one lineage, but from all four main schools of Tibetan Buddhism: Sakya, Geluk, Nyingma, and Kagyu. Members of the Khyentse lineage tend to take a non-sectarian tradition, which is why he had root-masters from all four schools. Some of the teachers he received empowerments from were His Holiness the Dalai Lama, His Holiness the 16th Karmapa, and his own grandfather, His Holiness Dudjom Rinpoche. His main guru was Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche. He spent much of his teen years publishing rare texts that were in danger of being lost forever. He left Sikkim to attend college at Sakya College in Rajpur. After completing his studies there, he went to London's School of Oriental and African Studies. When he returned from college, he had the opportunity to help restore the Dzongsar Monastery, which was destroyed during the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1959. He helped re-establish the Dzongsar Shedra in 1982 in Sikkim, India. In 1983, classes resumed, with the arrival of Khenpo Kunga Wangchuk, one of the original teachers from Tibet who had spent 20 years in prison under the Chinese. The Shedra was moved to Bir, 70 km from Dharamsala. In 2004, the Dalai Lama inaugurated a brand new complex in Chaundra, 6 km from Bir, which can house 1000 monks and is called the Jamyang Khyentse Chkyl Lodro Institute. The complex also includes eleven classrooms, reading rooms, a library, and a main hall. The institute now has many trained teachers and students enrolled in its nine year graduate program. In addition to the monastery and institute, he established another college in Bhutan. In 1989, Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche founded Siddhartha's Intent, an international Buddhist association of non-profit centres, most of which are nationally registered societies and charities, with the principal intention of preserving the Buddhist teachings, as well as increasing an awareness and understanding of the many aspects of the Buddhist teaching beyond the limits of cultures and traditions.[2] His teachers asked him to travel in order to open more Dharma centers around the world. He established centers in Australia, Europe, North America, and the Far East. He established Siddhartha's Intent, which organizes his teachings and tours. Khyentse Norbu found himself very intrigued with the idea of film-making and in 1999, he released his first film The Cup. In 2001, he started the Khyentse Foundation, a non-profit organization with the stated goal "to act as a system of patronage for institutions and individuals engaged in the practice and study of Buddha's wisdom and compassion." In 2003, he released his second film Travelers and Magicians. In 2007, he went with a different medium and released his first book What Makes You Not a Buddhist.

Real Gurus “Couldn't care less”

2011-11-07T06:18:00.001+11:00

The dilemma of an Eastern master in a postmodern world

An interview with Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche
by Andrew Cohen

The enlightened mentor—the guru—has throughout the ages been that great being who willingly does battle with the powerful forces of ignorance that reside in the depths of the human soul. Through his or her living presence, the guru catalyzes extraordinary transformation, guiding human beings from darkness to light, from the limitations of a small and petty existence to the free and infinite expanses of illuminated awareness. Few modern teachers are as qualified to claim the title of guru as Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche, heir to a long and illustrious lineage of enlightened Buddhist masters. In this recent interview with spiritual teacher and WIE editor in chief Andrew Cohen, Dzongsar Rinpoche candidly discusses what it takes to fulfill his role as guru and explains why the greatest challenge, East or West, is to have the courage to completely disengage from public opinion and attain "a genuine indifference."

ANDREW COHEN: You are uniquely straddling two worlds: you were born a tulku and had traditional Buddhist education and training in your own culture, but you have spent a lot of time in the West and have also become a well-known filmmaker. So you seem to have one foot in the premodern world and one foot in the postmodern world. You are quite an independent thinker, forging your own path as one of the pioneers in this very interesting time of transition in the evolution and development of the dharma, of East-meets-West spirituality. So I would like to talk with you about what it means to be a guru at this point in history.

When someone takes on a guru, as is clearly illustrated in Words of My Perfect Teacher, it's a deep and serious engagement. And in the film, you speak very directly about the challenge that relationship poses to the ego, to the separate sense of self. The guru represents the dissolution of the ego, and yet Westerners of our generation, more often than not, don't seem to be prepared for this. And while you have said that there are many different methods for finding enlightenment, for discovering "the guru within," one of the quickest and easiest is to receive the blessings of the teacher. Why is this? What actually is the role of the guru, and why is it so vital?

DZONGSAR Rinpoche: The reason why the guru is the most effective is because the guru is someone you are supposed to look at as being superior to a human being. But he is also someone you can relate to. A guru is someone who eats pizza, who likes the same pizza that you like. And that's quite important because at the same time that he is someone you can relate to, he is the one you have consciously or unconsciously hired to destroy yourself!

COHEN: Could you say what you mean by that?

DZONGSAR: You give up everything and then hire him to destroy your ego. And you pay him body, speech, and mind to do that.

COHEN: When you say "destroy the ego," that's not a small thing.

DZONGSAR: Yes. That's true.

COHEN: And as we were saying earlier, it seems that the destruction of the ego is an alien concept in postmodern Western culture, which is a nonreligious secular society. In fact, it seems that in postmodern culture, the ego, or the separate self-sense, has become even more powerful as a result of the cultural revolution that began in the sixties. At that time, the emphasis became freedom of the individual and freedom for the individual. And the result is that, unlike in previous times, there was no God above that one had to fear, which in the past had perhaps engendered humility, a bit of healthy fear of something higher than oneself.

So when we in the West discovered enlightenment and then found that in order to attain it, the ego, or the separate self, had to die, this was a very big shock because culturally we had no training or preparation for this whatsoever. Now in the film, Words of My Perfect Teacher, you speak about how you hire the guru to be the assassin, the man or woman you hire to "completely dismantle you." But how does a teacher succeed in "dismantling" their students' egos in this kind of cultural milieu?

DZONGSAR: It's difficult. This is why defining ego is very important, especially within a culture that doesn't have this kind of background. And I think the classic way of defining the ego is, at the end of the day, the only solution: Ignorance—which is the same as ego—is when you're looking at two, or more than two, ever-changing transitory things, and yet you think that they're one; you think they're independent and permanent. That is ignorance and that is ego.

For instance, if I look at my hand, I make three mistakes. One, I think it's the same hand I had this morning. But that's not true; it has changed. And two, I think there's something called "hand" when there actually isn't because it's a part of a lot of things—my veins, my skin, my blood, all kinds of things.

COHEN: So the point is that there's no such thing as independent existence.

DZONGSAR: Right. And then another mistake I make is not realizing that the existence of my hand actually depends on many things. For instance, the fact that the ceiling hasn't fallen on my hand is the reason why it's moving, why it's there. But I don't think in that way. I think my hand is there because my hand is there.

COHEN: You're talking about what is called "dependent origination," the understanding that everything that exists depends upon everything else that exists, which depends upon everything else that exists. In this, one sees that one's own self exists as part of this infinitely dependent process in which there is no one who is isolated or separate from the whole.

DZONGSAR: Yes, and all this information needs to be transmitted to one who wants to be the victim of the guru.

COHEN: In the movie, you also spoke about how the guru crushes people's pride, as the means to purify them of ego motivations and attachment.

DZONGSAR: Yes, because pride is thinking something that is not necessarily you. For instance, if I asked you, "Are you a man?" you would say, "Yes." That is confidence, not pride. Now, if I ask, "Are you a superman?" and you say, "Yes," that may be pride because "super" is only an adjective, and is not imputed. Pride, ego, and ignorance are all synonymous.

COHEN: And you said that the teacher who "crushes your pride and makes this worldly life completely miserable is something that you ask for. He is the assassin, he is the man or woman whom you have hired to completely dismantle you."

DZONGSAR: You may not realize that's what you're doing, but that's the idea—to dismantle everything: your identity, everything. And it's not like dismantling one big habit. It changes. Let's say today I would like to be stroked. Then a teacher should not stroke me. Or maybe today I would like to be beaten. Then maybe I should be stroked. So that's why this is actually beyond abuse and not abuse. If somebody bites you or beats you and handcuffs you, that's a kind of abuse, isn't it? But what I'm talking about is ultimate abuse. At the same time, abuse phenomena only exist if you are still clinging to transitory phenomena as permanent and real. If you don't, there is nothing to be abused. But that's difficult, really difficult.

COHEN: In that case, the teacher's work would be done.

DZONGSAR: Yes, of course. But the kind of student we're talking about doesn't exist. And that kind of teacher doesn't exist, either. Teachers don't have that kind of courage. I don't have it. I may be a teacher, but I don't have that kind of courage because I love my reputation. Who wants to be referred to as an abuser? I don't. I am a sycophant. I try to go along with what people think. If people think a teacher should shave his head, wear something maroon, walk gently, eat only vegetarian food, be so-called serene, then I'm very tempted to do that. Rajneesh had the guts to have ninety-three Rolls Royces. I call it guts. One Rolls Royce is one thing. Even two or three—but ninety-three is guts! And I don't have the guts, the confidence. I like Rajneesh very much. I like him much better than Krishnamurti. Many of his words are quite good, and I can see why the Westerners would like him.

COHEN: Perhaps the problem with Krishnamurti was that he pretended that he wasn't a guru or a master, although he obviously was. I think this made it very difficult for people.

DZONGSAR: Yes; it was a contradiction.

COHEN: Are you saying, then, that you hold back with your students?

DZONGSAR: I do, always.

COHEN: At the same time, you said in the film that you're an assassin—that that's your job.

DZONGSAR: Yes, in the context that if I am a student's teacher, then that is my job. But I'm not promising I can do it. You know, but I love very much the eight worldly dharmas. I'm like these police undercover cops who are sent into a Mafia family. What I'm supposed to do is really check out these people, but I fall in love with what they do, so I follow what they want. It's difficult. And that comes from attachment to the eight worldly dharmas—attachment to the praise and fear of the criticism.

COHEN: But some of the greatest Tibetan gurus have the reputation for being the most fierce, like Marpa, for example. He was the fiercest.

DZONGSAR: Oh, yes, of course. They could do it because they have no agenda. Their only agenda was to enlighten. They didn't care what people said, what other people thought—I call it CCL: couldn't-care-less-ness. That holds the biggest power. But who has it today? No one.

COHEN: One of the most interesting things that was revealed about you in the film was the juxtaposition of the roles you're playing. As a guru in the West, you are working with Western students who, at least in theory, are coming to you for enlightenment, and yet who come from this postmodern context where there's an inherent mistrust of authority. Whereas in Bhutan, thousands and thousands of Bhutanese people have no doubt that you are a living god.

DZONGSAR: I think on both continents I have mastered the art of pretense. I go to Bhutan and I know what to do for them, to do what is most harmonious. Because if I act or say things in Bhutan or in Tibet that I say in the West, I'll be in trouble. Now that is what I was referring to before. I do this because I don't want to lose disciples; I don't want to be criticized. Of course, I can justify those actions by saying, "Oh, it's coming from a good motivation, because I don't want to jeopardize the spiritual path of hundreds of people."

COHEN: You described in the film how it's very difficult for you to have an authentic relationship with many of your Bhutanese devotees because of the kind of admiration they have for you. But with your Western students, there is the fundamental ego position that feels that "no one is higher than me." And this also presents difficulty, because for any authentic guru to be able to help a student achieve enlightenment, there has to be the acceptance from the outset that the guru has realized something that the student has not yet realized. Then, of course, there's the tremendous pressure the teacher places on the ego and the student's identification with it. And in Words of My Perfect Teacher, Lesley Ann Patten showed very well how many of your Western students were struggling with these very issues—with the notions of hierarchy and authority, and even with their lack of faith in the possibility of enlightenment itself.

DZONGSAR: Yes, exactly. But in both cultures there is one thing that is similar—it's this culprit: expectation. In Eastern cultures, like in Bhutan, there may be blind devotion, but they all have an expectation. In the Western culture, they may be skeptical and secular, but there's also expectation. And that expectation, while it may manifest differently, fundamentally has only one nature and that is that everybody wants to be happy. And that is where things go wrong.

To be a Buddhist and to be practicing dharma have nothing to do with being happy. If you're practicing the dharma to be happy, then it's like you're doing the opposite, just the opposite. Enlightenment has nothing to do with happiness or unhappiness. And both cultures come to me to be happy. That really is the source of all the misunderstanding.

COHEN: Yes. The goal is to be free from both happiness and unhappiness.

DZONGSAR: Yes, and I have to teach them what to expect. But it's really difficult.

COHEN: The fact that you are in these two different cultures seems to make it challenging for you to be simply and authentically yourself. Because on the one hand, in Bhutan, there is a certain role you need to assume, which you've accepted—that's your dharma, your destiny. But there are restrictions associated with that premodern context. And in the West, because of the postmodern secular context, there are also restrictions. So your own capacity to just be fully and spontaneously yourself, even as a teacher or as a guru, must be inhibited in both cases. Could you speak a little bit about this?

DZONGSAR: This is a very good question. It all goes to tell me that the bottom line is that I need to develop my courage, the courage to learn CCL—"couldn't-care-less-ness." In the morning, with a little bit of good motivation, I can start teaching. That will accumulate some merit, I'm sure. At least I'm not going around teaching people to blow themselves up or kill infidels. And even teaching I only do when I'm in a spiritual mood. But my job now, my duty is to first develop my "couldn't-care-less-ness." The bottom line is that I need to learn that; I need to achieve that. Then, even if I receive bad publicity in the West, I couldn't care less. Once I achieve that, then I'll reach a certain level where real genuine compassion is. Until then, everything is a bit deceptive.

Vivid Awareness: The Mind Instructions of Khenpo Gangshar:Amazon:Books

2011-10-14T01:12:00.000+11:00

ECGMA says: Thanks to Mr. John F, (no, not Kennedy but a lawyer by profession, Tibetan Buddhist by faith and my friend by fate) who brought to my attention with good recommendation of this book.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1590308166?pd=1&d=d&qid=1318422058&sr=1-4

Vivid Awareness: The Mind Instructions of Khenpo Gangshar (Paperback)
Rinpoche Thrangu

Product Description
Review
"These instructions are exceptionally concise and easy to follow. Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche received this distillation of the essential points of Mahamudra from the renowned master Khenpo Gangshar, and he credits them with saving his life. They could save your life too—giving you the tools to stabilize the mind even in the most terrifying and challenging of circumstances."—Pema Chödrön, author of Taking the Leap

"We are fortunate to have an actual disciple of Khenpo Gangshar who has mastered these teachings to both explain and demonstrate how enlightenment can manifest in our mind and in our life."—Sakyong Mipham, author of Ruling Your World

Product Description
In the summer of 1957, the revered Buddhist teacher and scholar Khenpo Gangshar foresaw the difficulties that would soon fall upon Tibet and began teaching in a startling new way that enabled all those who heard him to use the coming difficulties as the path of Dharma practice. The teaching consisted of the essential points of mahamudra and dzogchen, both view and practice, presented in a way that made them easy for anyone to use, even in the most difficult of circumstances.

Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche was one of the grateful recipients of these teachings, which he regards as among the most important he has ever been given. He transmits them here, for the benefit of all of us who strive to practice in challenging times. They include contemplations on the ephemeral nature of both joy and suffering, meditations for resting the mind, and guidance for cultivating equanimity in any situation.

About the Author
Khenchen Thrangu was born in Tibet in 1933. He has founded numerous monasteries and nunneries, schools for Tibetan children, and medical clinics. He has taught extensively throughout Europe, Asia, and the United States, and is the abbot of Gampo Abbey. He was appointed by the Dalai Lama to be the personal tutor for the Seventeenth Karmapa.

Good for you, good for others

2011-10-13T11:40:00.000+11:00

Good for you, good for others

Posted on 10 March 2011 - 07:02pm

A FEW years ago, I attended a lecture by Mother Teresa's confessor. His face surprised me – he looked stern, a distinct contrast from the kind and jolly faces of Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh and the Dalai Lama.

Part of the lecture touched on compassion. He told us of a conversation he had with a young Hindu, whom he mentored. The boy, I am guessing, was faced with a person whom he found hard to forgive due to anger and disappointment.

The priest surprised me. His reply: "I told the boy: one day in your life, you may find that kindness is not what you thought it to be."

I could not understand what he meant. Was not God all about kindness, forgiveness and love? Is this priest trying to preach unforgiveness? His advice seemed to extend beyond establishing firm boundaries in order to prevent people from stepping all over you. I called my mother and told her I did not like Mother Teresa's priest.

Years later, work has taught me what he meant. This past year, I have had the privilege to serve children and families from high-risk and vulnerable backgrounds, with focus on teenagers. By high-risk and vulnerable I mean persons, who, by virtue of being non-Malaysian, are denied education and exposed to systemic and public abuse.

This does not exclude Malaysian teenagers who break your heart again and again. A significant part of the work colleagues and I do is outreach with young people living in red-light areas.

Their stories emerge a piece at a time. Many when they finally trust you, reveal they use and sell drugs and their bodies. Both young women and men prostitute themselves, and many young men sell their girlfriends nightly and use the money to buy heroin and crystal meth.

When press and academic researchers come to interview, they often ask: what are your success rates? I tell them that the more high-risk your clientele are, the lower your success rate.

This does not mean that we have not successfully reunited teenagers with families, checked them into drug rehabilitation centres or built support systems so that they feel that they have family.

At times, we feel like professional beggars: begging a child who is not yet 18 years not to return to the streets, not to meet his gang members that night or not to drink. Only to wonder, whether, when you see the teen the next morning, there will be needle marks on his arm – that heroin use and possible HIV infection took place.

I am now less judgmental of how couples practise love. Anyone who comes from a tumultuous and tempestuous background, if it is violent and teaches that your body is a tool to be used and not to cherish, will cling to whatever beacon is available. Especially if that beacon comes in the form of a man who loves you – never mind that he sells you night after night, or in the form of a girl who loves you – even though her drug habit gets you into trouble again and again.

Each underage client is a human being in need of intervention often lasting months, if not years – the nature of working with non-adults who are vulnerable: in terms of food and shelter, and who require family, love and the wisdom of mentors.

Supporting a teenager facing trauma is emotionally, mentally and physically taxing. One of my closest colleagues and I often share how we dread the sound of our phones ringing: Will this be another hospital call, to inform someone is dead? Is it the police to tell us a kid's in lock-up again?

People tell my colleagues and I that we must be extremely kind because they could never do our work. Many think that such compassion is inborn and that we know how to take care of ourselves. However, we too are human beings who are susceptible to illness and exhaustion. Many social and humanitarian workers experience burnout in the form of post-traumatic stress disorder or secondary trauma, which explains high turnover rates across the many professions dealing with human rights abuse on the frontline.

Many workers battle physical illness and mental trauma while running against time to save clients, with the knowledge that success is never a guarantee. Putting the client first unequivocally places many in unhealthy habits and lifestyles: many of us chain-smoke, sleep little, eat fatty but convenient food and give up exercise and hobbies.

Recently, I thought of what that old confessor said. Why I thought he was unkind, and how, maybe, I was too young then to understand what he sincerely meant.

There is a fine balance with no easy answers between self-care and selfishness, and between being kind and practising stupid compassion.

Perhaps that old man knew his role as Mother Teresa's confessor was this: to teach her that true kindness is given to all beings. The practice of compassion towards others must include oneself.

The writer is an amateur cook and yoga practitioner in her free time. Comments: letters@thesundaily.com

Off Tracking To Namo Buddha

2011-10-11T06:25:00.000+11:00

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Friends of Namo Buddha (big)

2011-10-11T06:09:00.000+11:00

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Photographer: Mr. John FAM

Thrangu Tashi Yangtse Monastery #2 - Big

2011-10-11T06:07:00.000+11:00

Photos by Mr. John Fam (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)

Buddhist Protectors of the Chinese Zodiac

2011-09-08T11:13:00.000+10:00

http://blog.tsemtulku.com/tsem-tulku-rinpoche/horoscopes/the-buddhist-protectors-of-the-chinese-zodiac.html#Vairocana

Imee Ooi - Usnisa Vijaya Dharani Sutra

2011-09-08T02:48:00.000+10:00

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Uploaded by o0othelonetigero0o on Oct 1, 2009

Website: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Buddhism/253631344296?ref=ts

Blog: http://fullandhappy.wordpress.com/

MP3. (40MB) : http://www.zshare.net/download/66492931e835941a/

To quote the Usnisa Vijaya Dharani Sutra, "... if someone hears this Dharani even for just a moment, he will not undergo karmic retribution from the evil karma and severe hindrances accumulated from millions of lifetimes, that would otherwise cause him to revolve in the cycles of birth and death - in all kinds of life forms in the evil paths - hell, hungry ghost, ferocious animals, crawling creatures and even ants and other life forms ... he will be reborn in the Buddhalands, together with all the Buddhas, or in a distinguished, wealthy and reputable family.

The Usnisa Dharani also states, "... If one can chant this Dharani 21 times daily, he is worthy of accepting all the immense worldly offerings and will be reborn in the Land of Ultimate Bliss after his death. If one chants this Dharani constantly, he will attain a form of enlightenment and be able to lengthen his lifespan besides enjoying the most extraordinary bliss ... "

This is an extremely important spiritual prayer.

It can eliminate all evil karmic hindrances and eradicate the suffering of all evil paths. This prayer can also elevate the souls of ones ancestors out of debtors prisons and other hell-like conditions.

This prayer has the power to liberate parts of the soul trapped in the clutches of lower entities.

After hearing this prayer, it totally eliminates any possibility that the listeners soul may end up in a hell-like existence in the next life.

This prayer liberates all souls who hear it (animal or human), from of falling into the sea of birth and death; samsara.

The cycle of physical birth and death is ended by repeating this prayer.

Therefore, The Usnisa Vijaya Dharani is a powerful and wonderful medicine that can universally free sentient beings from the sufferings in the cycles of birth and death. This has fully demonstrated the great compassion of the Buddha to save the world. Memorizing this prayer permanently transforms and elevates the soul.

The Usnisa Vijaya Dharani is given with the aim that all sentient beings living in this troubled and tumultuous world would benefit from it. The Usnisa Dharani will help beings overcome their sufferings and obtain happiness, increase their prosperity and longevity, and help them achieve rebirth in a world of light populated by Immortal Enlightened Beings.

Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free: http://www.freerice.com

Imee Ooi - The Pure-Land Dharani (拔一切业障根本得生净土陀罗尼) (Sanskrit)

2011-09-08T02:43:00.000+10:00

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Uploaded by o0othelonetigero0o on Jan 7, 2010

Website: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Buddhism/253631344296?ref=ts

Ten Short Mantras Vol. 1

This dharani is the dharani of the Buddha Amitabha. Thus, if one recites it, he or she can be reborn in the Western Paradise of Amitabha.

Namo Amitabhaya. Tathagataya. Tadyatha. Ami-ri-do-po-pi. ami-ri-do-shi-dan-po-pi. ami-ri-do. pi-ja-lan-di. ami-ri-do. pi-ja-lando. chie-mi-ni. chie-chie na. ji-do-ja-li. Svaha!

Amitabha Sutra is the popular colloquial name for the Shorter Sukhavativyuha Sutra, or the Buddha's Discourse of the Amitabha Sutra, is a Mahayana Buddhist text. It is one of the primary sutras recited and upheld in the Pure Land Buddhist schools.

It was translated from Sanskrit into Chinese by the Tripitaka Master Kumarajiva in 402, but may have existed in India as early as year 100, and composed in Prakrit language. The bulk of the text, considerably shorter than other Pure Land sutras, consists of a discourse which the Buddha gave at Jeta Grove in Sravasti to his disciple Shariputra. The talk concerned the wondrous adornments that await the righteous in the Western Pure Land (Chinese: 西方極樂國), as well as the beings that reside there, including the buddha Amitabha. The text also describes what one must do to be reborn there.

In Pure Land and Chan Buddhism, the sutra is often recited as part of the evening service (Chinese: 晚課), and is also recited as practice for practitioners. The Jōdoshū and Jōdo Shinshū schools also recite this sutra when necessary. It is frequently recited at Chinese Buddhist funeral services, in the hope that the merit generated by reciting the sutra may be transmitted to the departed.

A common format for the recitation of the Amitabha Sutra may include some or all of the following:

Praise for the Incense Offering (盧香讚)
Praise to the Lotus Pond (蓮池讚)
The Amitabha Sutra (阿彌陀經)
Pure Land Rebirth Dharani (往生咒).
Amitabha Gatha (彌陀偈)
Recitation of Amitabha Buddha's Name (佛號)
Transfer of Merit (迴向)

A-di-đà kinh là bản rút ngắn của Đại thừa vô lượng thọ trang nghiêm kinh.

Đây là một trong ba bộ kinh quan trọng nhất của Tịnh Độ tông, lưu hành rộng rãi tại Trung Quốc, Nhật Bản và Việt Nam. Kinh này trình bày phương pháp nhất tâm niệm danh hiệu A-di-đà và sẽ được A-di-đà tiếp độ về cõi Cực lạc lúc lâm chung (niệm Phật). Nguyên bản tiếng Phạn của kinh này vẫn còn tồn tại và người ta cũng còn tìm thấy những bản dịch Hán ngữ của hai dịch giả lừng danh là Cưu-ma-la-thập và Huyền Trang.

Kinh A Di Đà do đức Phật Thích Ca Mâu Ni thuyết về y và chánh báo của đức Phật A Di Đà nơi thế giới Cực lạc ở phương Tây, cách cõi Ta bà này mười muôn ức cõi Phật. Kinh cũng chỉ bày pháp môn niệm Phật để được vãng sanh về cõi Cực lạc của đức Phật A Di Đà.

Amitābha
Sanskrit: अमिताभ
Hindi pronunciation: Amitābho
Chinese: 阿彌陀佛
Vietnamese:A-di-đà Phật
Japanese: 阿弥陀如来
Tibetan: འོད་དཔག་མེད།
Mongolian: Одбагмэд, Аминдаваa, Аюуш
Thai: พระอมิตาภพุทธะ
Korean: 아미타불

Tisarana (Pali) / Three Refuges：by Imee Ooi 三皈依 (巴利文唱誦)：黃慧音居士

2011-09-08T02:38:00.000+10:00

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Title: Tisarana (Pali) / Three Refuges / 三皈依 (巴利文)
Artist: Imee Ooi 黃慧音
Publisher: IMM Musicworks, Malaysia / 馬來西亞：願願音樂工作室; immmusic.com

【Tisarana Lyrics in Pali, language spoken by the Buddha 南傳巴利文版〈三皈依文〉:】

Namo Tassa, Bhagavato, Arahato, Sammā Sambuddhassa (3X)

Buddham Saranam Gacchāmi
Dhammam Saranam Gacchāmi
Sangham Saranam Gacchāmi

Dutiyampi Buddham Saranam Gacchāmi
Dutiyampi Dhammam Saranam Gacchāmi
Dutiyampi Sangham Saranam Gacchāmi

Tatiyampi Buddha Saranam Gacchāmi
Tatiyampi Dhammam Saranam Gacchāmi
Tatiyampi Sangham Saranam Gacchāmi

Namo Tassa, Bhagavato, Arahato, Sammā Samabuddhassa (3X)

【Translation Notes 翻譯名詞淺釋：】

(1) Namo means "Homage"; 「禮敬、歸命」之意

(2) Tassa means "to Him (Buddha)";「祂」（指：佛陀）

(3) Bhagavato means "the Exalted One," one who is far above all beings, the ultimate alone; 「世尊」：為世人所尊崇，世間最尊貴者

(4) Arahato (Arahant/Arhat) means "the Worth One," one who is worthy of receiving offerings from both people and gods; also someone who is free from all defilements, without greed, hatred, and ignorance; 「應供」：應當受人間及天上的人供養，即「阿羅漢」（已斷見惑及貪嗔癡等思惑之聖者）

(5) Sammā Samabuddhassa means "One who has attained the Unsurpassed Perfect Enlightenment" (e.g., attaining "Anuttara Samma-sambodhi"); 「正等正覺者」、「正等覺」；漢文音譯：三藐三菩陀，即證得「阿耨多羅三藐三菩提」者（意譯：無上正等正覺者）、另譯：「正遍知」

(6) Tisarana or Ti-sarana, meaning the "Threefold Refuge," in which every faithful adherent of the Buddha puts his/her faith, consists of:

- Buddham: the Buddha (the Enlightened One);

- Dhammam: the Dhamma (His Teachings - the law of deliverance);

- Sangham: the Sangha (member of the Buddhist Order - the community of the disciples);

「三皈依」就是皈依：「佛、法、僧」這三寶

(7) Saranam means "shelter" or "refuge"; 「能受到收容、保護、依祜之處所」

(8) Gacchāmi means "to go" or "to proceed";「前進，依止」之意

(9) Dutiyampi means "secondly, for the second time, second time also"; 「第二次、再一次」

(10) Tatiyampi means "thirdly, for the third time, third time also"; 「第三次」

【Lyrics Translation 歌詞翻譯：】

Tisarana (The Three Refuges) Lyrics 《三皈依》歌詞：

Homage to Him, the Exalted One, the Worthy One, the Supremely Enlightened One
禮敬世尊、應供（阿羅漢）、正等正覺者（正等覺，正遍知）　(3X)

To the Buddha I go for Refuge. 自皈依佛
To the Dhamma (The Teachings) I go for Refuge. 自皈依法
To the Sangha (The Community) I go for Refuge. 自皈依僧

For the second time, to the Buddha I go for Refuge. 再皈依佛
For the second time, to the Dhamma (The Teachings) I go for Refuge. 再皈依法
For the second time, to the Sangha (The Community) I go for Refuge. 再皈依僧

For the third time, to the Buddha I go for Refuge. 三皈依佛
For the third time, to the Dhamma (The Teachings) I go for Refuge. 三皈依法
For the third time, to the Sangha (The Community) I go for Refuge. 三皈依僧

Homage to Him, the Exalted One, the Worthy One, the Supremely Enlightened One
禮敬世尊、應供（阿羅漢）、正等正覺者（正等覺，正遍知）　(3X)

【Picture subtitle 圖片故事：為世間幸福而傳道】

The Buddha's exhortation to His first sixty Arahant disciple monks, "Let not the two of you take the same path to preach the Dhamma for the welfare and happiness of all!"

釋尊為鼓舞、激勵祂座下六十位已證阿羅漢果的比丘，宣說了以下的傳道宣言：「為了使更多的人得到利益和快樂，你們不要兩人同走一條路，必定要將這自覺之道傳播到各個地方去

！」

Namaste Dog by LG40

2011-09-03T02:41:00.000+10:00

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Ratana Sutta by Imee Ooi

2011-09-02T11:28:00.001+10:00

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ECGMA says: Specially dedicated to LG40!

ratana sutta imee ooi mp3 | lyrics

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(黃慧音) Imee Ooi - The Chant Of Metta (Pali chanting) Từ Kinh

2011-09-02T02:27:00.000+10:00

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Imee Ooi - Buddhist Heart Sutra

2011-09-02T02:26:00.000+10:00

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Uploaded by EvolMaxiel on Dec 1, 2009

After Watching this from 'chillout108' it inspired me to buy her CD and create a video.

Prajna-paramita Hrdaya Sutram by Imee Ooi
http://www.alyta.com/HeartSutraSanskr...

Imee Ooi's website
http://www.immmusic.com/

Heart Sutra - Sanskrit-English
Translated by Zuio H. Inagaki
http://www12.canvas.ne.jp/horai/heart...

Lyrics:

Namah sarvajnaaya
-Adoration to the Omniscient!

Aaryaavalokiteshvara-bodhisattvo gambhiiraayaam prajnaapaaramitaayaam caryaam caramaano vyavalokayati sma: panca skandhaah; taamshca svabhaava-shuunyaan pashyati sma.
-When Holy Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva performed the deep practice in the Perfection of Transcendent Wisdom, he contemplated that there were five aggregates but observed that they were devoid of essential nature.

Iha Shaariputra ruupam shuunyataa shuunyataiva ruupam, ruupaan na prithak shuunyataa, shuunyataayaa na prithag ruupam, yad ruupam saa shuunyataa, yaa shuunyataa tad ruupam.
-In this case, Shaariputra, form is voidness and voidness is itself form; voidness is not different from form, and form is not different from voidness; that which is form is voidness, and that which is voidness is form.

Evem eva vedanaa-samjnaa-samskaara-vijnaanaani.
-So it is for perception, conception, volition and consciousness.

Iha Shaariputra sarva-dharmaah shuunyataa-lakshanaa, anutpannaa, aniruddhaa, amalaa, na vimalaa, nonaa, na paripuurnaah.
-In this case, Shaariputra, all things have the characteristics of voidness; they neither arise nor perish; they are neither defiled nor pure, neither deficient nor complete.

Tasmaac Chaariputra shuunyaayaam na ruupam na vedanaa na samjnaa na samskaaraa na vijnaanaani.
-Therefore, Shaariputra, within the voidness, there is no form, no perception, no conception, no volition, nor consciousness.

Na cakshuh-shrotra-ghraana-jihvaa-kaaya-man aamsi.
-Neither is there eye, ear, nose, tongue, body or mind.

Na ruupa-shabda-gandha-rasa-sprashtavya-dha rmaah.
-Neither is there form, sound, smell, taste, touch nor concepts.

Na cakshurdhaatur yaavan na mano-vijnaana-dhaatuh.
-Neither is there realm of sight, etc., until we come to the non-existence of realm of consciousness.

Na vidyaa, naavidyaa, na vidyaa-kshayo, naavidyaa-kshayo, yaavan na jaraa-maranam na jaraamarana-kshayo, na duhkha-samudaya-nirodha-maargaa, na jnaanam, na praaptir apraaptitvena.
-Neither is there wisdom, nor ignorance, nor extinction of wisdom, nor extinction of ignorance, etc., until we come to the non-existence of old age and death and the non-extinction of old age and death. Neither is there suffering, cause of suffering, extinction of suffering, nor the path leading to extinction of suffering. Neither is there wisdom nor acquisition because there is no grasping.

Bodhisattvasya prajnaapaaramitaam aashritya viharaty acittaavaranah. Cittaavarana-naastitvaad atrasto, viparyaasaatikraanto nishtha-nirvaanah.
-Depending on the bodhisattva's Perfection of Transcendent Wisdom, one dwells without any mental hindrance. Because of the absence of mental hindrance, one is fearless; freed from delusory thoughts, one will reach Nirvana.

Tryadhva-vyavasthitaah sarvabuddhaah prajnaapaaramitaam aashrityaanuttaraam samyaksambodhim abhisambuddhaah.
-All Buddhas dwelling in the three periods realize the highest, perfect enlightenment depending on the Perfection of Transcendent Wisdom.

Tasmaaj jnaatavyo prajnaapaaramitaa-mahaamantro mahaavidyaa-mantro 'nuttara-mantro 'samasama-mantrah, sarvadukha-prashamanah, satyam amithyatvaat, prajnaapaaramitaayaam ukto mantrah.
-For this reason, know that the Great Mantra of the Perfection of Transcendent Wisdom is the Great Wisdom Mantra, the Unsurpassed Mantra, and the Unequaled Mantra. It extinguishes all suffering, and is true and real because it is not false. It is the Mantra proclaimed in the Perfection of Transcendent Wisdom.

Tad yathaa gate gate paaragate paarasamgate bodhi svaaha.
-Namely, "Gone, gone, gone to the other shore;
Gone completely to the other shore.
Svaha."

Iti prajnaapaaramitaa-hridayam samaaptam.
-Thus ends the Essence of the Transcendent Wisdom Sutra.

Imee Ooi - Om Mani Padme Hum (Beautiful Chanting)

2011-09-02T02:24:00.000+10:00

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Website: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Buddhism/253631344296?ref=ts

Blog: http://fullandhappy.wordpress.com/

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Tibetan: ༀམཎིཔདྨེཧཱུྃ།
Devanagari: ओं मणि पद्मे हूँ;
Bengali: ওঁ মণিপদ্মে হুঁ
Tamil: ஓம் மணி பத்மே ஹூம்
Chinese 唵嘛呢叭咪吽
Korean Hangul 옴 마니 파드메 훔 or 옴 마니 반메 훔
Japanese Katakana オンマニハンドメイウン
Mongolian: Ум маани бадми хум
Vietnamese: Úm ma ni bát ni hồng
Thai: โอมฺ มณิ ปทฺเม หูมฺ

Avalokiteśvara
Quán Thế Âm
अवलोकितेश्वर
觀世音 or 觀音 or 觀自在
観世音 or 観音
อวโลกิเตศวร
སྤྱན་རས་གཟིགས་
Жанрайсиг
관세음보살

One of his students asked Buddha, "Are you the messiah?" "No", answered Buddha.
"Then are you a healer?"
"No", Buddha replied.
"Then are you a teacher?" the student persisted.
"No, I am not a teacher."
"Then what are you?" asked the student, exasperated.
"I am awake," Buddha replied. (Buddha)

Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.

Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.

The tongue like a sharp knife... Kills without drawing blood.

You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.

Have compassion for all beings, rich and poor alike; each has their suffering. Some suffer too much, others too little.

Do not overrate what you have received, nor envy others. He who envies others does not obtain peace of mind.

Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.

Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace.

All that we are is the result of what we have thought. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.

Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship.

However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do you if you do not act on upon them?

It is a man's own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.

It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell.

Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn't learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn't learn a little, at least we didn't get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn't die; so, let us all be thankful.

Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free: http://www.freerice.com

Imee Ooi - Mantras Of The Sanskrit (Heart Sutra)

2011-09-02T02:22:00.000+10:00

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Imee Ooi - Namo Guan Shi Yin Bodhisattva (Chanting)

2011-09-02T02:14:00.000+10:00

Guan Yin (Goddess Of Mercy). Namo Kuan Shi Yin Pusa Translation: I hail to the Bodhisattva who listen (with mercy) the voice of the world.

Get the audio from: http://www.ziddu.com/downloadlink/11718889/Ooi-01-ImeeOoi_NamoGuanShiYinBodhi...

http://www.ziddu.com/downloadlink/11718880/2-ImeeOoi_NamoDaBeiGuanShiYinBodhi...

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The Buddha We Are

2011-08-29T18:59:00.001+10:00

The Buddha
We Are

by Josho Pat Phelan

As many of you know, Shunryu Suzuki Roshi was the founder of the San Francisco Zen Center. He was a Japanese Buddhist priest who came to the United States–to San Francisco–in 1958 to lead a Japanese American congregation. After he arrived he began sitting zazen by himself. I heard that he put a sign on the door listing the times he did zazen, and, slowly, others, mostly young westerners, began joining him. The book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind is a collection of some of Suzuki Roshi's lectures. Suzuki Roshi offered his teaching to encourage us to practice and to take care of our lives, and he did this without emphasizing the differences between various schools of Buddhism, and without any particular emphasis on Buddhism as a religion. However, Suzuki Roshi was trained in the Soto school of Zen Buddhism in Japan.

One of the fundamental teachings in Soto Zen, or the starting point for the Soto teachings, is that we are all Buddha, we are already Buddha. Suzuki Roshi said "...to be a human being is to be a Buddha. Buddha nature is just another name for human nature–true human nature." This means that being Buddha is intrinsic or essential to being human. If we were not Buddha, we could not be human. The word "Buddha" means "an awakened one," one who is awake to things as they really are, without the coloring and attachments of our individual conditioning. So another meaning of Buddha is our unconditioned nature. In the book How To Raise An Ox, Francis Cook talks about the Buddhist term, "intrinsic enlightenment." He said it "refers to the idea that all living beings are Buddhas. It does not mean that beings possess a Buddha nature, or that beings are containers in which a seed form of Buddha can be found, as if there were two realities, beings and Buddha. It means that beings are Buddha, but they are blind, stupid Buddhas who are ignorant of their true nature."

Soto Zen teaching starts with the premise that since we all are Buddha, that we are already complete, and that we already have everything we need. I think most of us are drawn to practice meditation out of a sense that something is missing from our lives. We may feel a lot of stress or tension and want to become calm. We may have a bad habit like smoking that we want to stop and think that meditation may give us the support we need, or we may come to practice out of mental or emotional pain and frustration. I think if someone told me that they had a strong conviction that they were Buddha and that they wanted to begin practicing zazen in order to realize their "Buddhahood," I would be suspicious.

From our human point of view, most of us are motivated to practice out of pain or a deep need to change our lives. But from Buddha's point of view, we are already Buddha and when we practice we are just expressing our true nature. We have unconditioned nature, we are unconditioned nature; but at the same time, most of us are ignorant of our unconditioned being. Our habits and conditioning hang like a cloud over our awareness. One way to characterize our conditioned nature is by saying that there is something that we don't have that we need. From the time we are born, the way we are treated, the things we are told, the way our language and our society is constructed, supports the notion that there is something that we don't have that we need. Whether we think we need new clothes or a new car or other gadgets, or happiness, or fulfillment, or peace of mind, or even realization–whenever we feel that there is something that we need that we don't already have–we are ignoring our inherent completeness and are setting up a duality between who we are and who we want to be.

Right now, in this moment, if we are dissatisfied, we are rejecting a moment of life. If we reject our life in this moment, in what moment will we accept it? Practice and realization can only be experienced right now. There is no other time. Because we are inherently complete, it does not follow that we should just lie back and enjoy it. We need to take care of ourselves, to support ourselves and take care of our lives, and, as much as possible, to take care of the environment and help improve the living conditions of all people. But the Buddhist attitude is that we take care of our activity and so we take care of the world as our selves, which is different from trying to obtain something outside ourselves, which, once we get it, will make our lives better. This kind of dualistic grasping can never be satisfied. There will always be something newer or something better available. Our sixth ancestor in China, Hui Neng, taught in the Platform Sutra: "...the Wisdom of Enlightenment is inherent in every one of us. It is because of the delusion under which our mind works that we fail to realize it ourselves....You should know that so far as Buddha nature is con cerned, there is no difference between an enlightened person and an ignorant one. What makes the difference is that one realizes it and one is ignorant of it."

Soto Zen Buddhism was brought to Japan by Dogen Zenji in the first half of the 13th century. Dogen trained in monasteries in Japan and then travelled to China searching for a more original or pure form of Buddhism. He was born into an aristocratic ruling family, but when he was two years old, his father died, and five years later his mother died. At his mother's funeral, he noticed the incense smoke rising and curling and disappearing into the air. This reminded him of his experience of the impermanence of life, and, out of this deep sense of impermanence, he decided to become a Buddhist monk. When he was older and began his serious training, he had the persistent question: if we are already Buddha, or already enlightened, why do we need to put so much effort into practice?

Buddhism teaches that we are already Buddha whether we realize it or not. "Realize" means "to make real". In Buddhism the realization that is referred to is not something that happens just in our minds or to our perceptions. It is said that realization must penetrate every cell of our bodies, down to the marrow of our bones and out to each tip of our hair. This realization that penetrates our body and mind goes beyond our thinking process. When we practice zazen, our attitude shouldn't be to try to stop our thinking, but rather to set aside our belief in our thinking, or to set aside our belief that our point of view is right so our intention to practice can settle into our flesh and bones. Suzuki Roshi emphasized practice through Right Effort both in zazen and in our everyday activity. He emphasized wholehearted effort, by bringing our whole body and mind, bringing ourwhole attention, our undivided attention to whatever we are doing. In this way, there is no separation between ourselves and our activity. When our attention is undivided, our experience of ourselves and of the world is undivided.

There are some instructions called "The Way to Practice Throughout the Day" that were given to laymen when they visited Zen monasteries in the 14th century: "the way to practice throughout the day is to throw yourself completely into each activity." When you do zazen, do nothing else but zazen; do not think about enlightenment, do not think about Buddhist teaching. When you go to service, hold the sutra card with two hands and chant wholeheartedly; do not think about the meaning of the sutras, do not think about zazen. When you go to breakfast, fully attend to the food in front of you and realize the mind of eating; and when you rest, just rest. So when you sit zazen, just do zazen; and when you work, just work. This spirit of just sitting or just working becomes common to all our activity when we practice. In this way, wherever we are, whatever we are doing, we have the opportunity to practice. We don't have to be in the meditation hall or in the mountains to practice. Our practice isn't even dependent on meditation. Since we are already Buddha, we can never leave the environment of practice.

Buddhism teaches that it is not even "we" who practice, but the Buddha we are who practices. We just resume our true nature, or our true nature resumes itself. Suzuki Roshi, quoting Dogen, said, "So we say, we practice our way not for ourselves and not for others. We practice our way for the sake of our way. There is no other reason why we practice our way. We just want to go back to our home as a duck wants to return to water... like a traveller who comes back and lies down in his own bed."

DEALING with INSULT....Lord Buddha

2011-08-29T12:32:00.001+10:00

WISE TEACHINGS

DEALING with INSULT….

Lord Buddha

The Buddha explained how to handle insult and maintain compassion.

One day Buddha was walking through a village. A very angry and rude young man came up and began insulting him. "You have no right teaching others," he shouted. "You are as stupid as everyone else. You are nothing but a fake."

Buddha was not upset by these insults. Instead he asked the young man "Tell me, if you buy a gift for someone, and that person does not take it, to whom does the gift belong?"

The man was surprised to be asked such a strange question and answered, "It would belong to me, because I bought the gift."

The Buddha smiled and said, "That is correct. And it is exactly the same with your anger. If you become angry with me and I do not get insulted, then the anger falls back on you. You are then the only one who becomes unhappy, not me. All you have done is hurt yourself."

"If you want to stop hurting yourself, you must get rid of your anger and become loving instead. When you hate others, you yourself become unhappy. But when you love others, everyone is happy."

Beautiful Quotes

If you are right then there is no need to get angry
And if you are wrong then you don't have any right to get angry.

Patience with family is love,
Patience with others is respect,
Patience with self is confidence and
Patience with GOD is faith.

Never Think Hard about PAST,
It brings Tears...
Don't Think more about FUTURE,
It brings Fears...
Live this Moment with a Smile,
It brings Cheers.!!!!

Every test in our life makes us bitter or better,
Every problem comes to make us or break us,
Choice is our whether we become victim or victorious !!!

Search a beautiful heart not a beautiful face.
Beautiful things are not always good
but good things are always beautiful.

Remember me like pressed flower in your Notebook.
It may not be having any fragrance
but will remind you of my existence forever in your life.

Do you know, why God created gaps between fingers?
So that someone who is special to you, comes and fills those gaps by holding your hands forever.

Sogyal Lakar - Lama sex abuse claims call Buddhist taboos into question

2011-08-23T18:14:00.001+10:00

Lama sex abuse claims call Buddhist taboos into question

Allegations against Sogyal Rinpoche highlight the dangers of Buddhist injunctions against gossip and insistence on loyalty

- Mary Finnigan
- guardian.co.uk, Friday 1 July 2011 12.41 BST
- Article history

An exiled Tibetan Buddhist nun prostrates around the main temple and the residence of Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama. Photograph: Ashwini Bhatia/AP

In November 1994 an American woman known as Janice Doe filed a $10m lawsuit against the Tibetan lama Sogyal Rinpoche, charging him with sexual, mental and physical abuse. The case was dealt with out of court and Janice Doe signed a non-disclosure agreement in return for a cash settlement.

Sogyal denies allegations of abuse, but fresh evidence against him was recently aired in an investigative documentary called In the Name of Enlightenment, broadcast on Vision TV in Canada. A beautiful young woman identified as Mimi described an abusive sexual relationship. She was the first person claiming direct experience of Sogyal's exploitative attentions to go public since the 1994 lawsuit.

Sogyal (surname Lakar – Rinpoche is a title that means "precious one") is the frontman for a Tibetan Buddhist organisation called Rigpa, which has a worldwide reach with 130 centres in 41 countries. He has a bestselling book, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, to his name and he starred alongside Keanu Reeves in the movie Little Buddha. Sogyal is a formidably successful guru – probably the best known Tibetan after the Dalai Lama. His trajectory into Buddhist superstardom suffered only a temporary setback following the Janice Doe lawsuit – despite the fact that lurid rumours about his sex life circulate on the internet with increasing volume and persistence.

The allegations raise a wider question: why are victims of sexual exploitation by charismatic religious leaders reluctant to denounce their abusers? In the Canadian documentary, Mimi highlights the Stockholm syndrome – a term used to describe the paradoxical reactions of individuals who bond with their abusers. "The person beating us, she says, "is also the only one giving us affection – and food and a roof over our heads."

Sociologist Amanda van Eck is deputy director of Inform, the cult information resource at the London School of Economics. She says fear is probably the main reason why women stay silent: "In some groups there has been fear of retribution," she says, "which means they don't want to speak publicly. In other cases, which may overlap with fear of retribution, they are fearful of negative consequences – damnation, of not being saved, of possession by evil spirits, of being attacked by negative forces and so on."

If the outside world has been demonised by cult leaders, Van Eck says, women may also be fearful that no one can be trusted.

Many women who have described abusive sexual relationships anonymously on internet forums refuse to come out of hiding because they want to move on, rather than relive traumatic periods in their lives. Some also feel a need to protect their families.

In my personal experience, there are two taboos in Buddhist organisations, both of which have merit and both of which can be used as manipulative tools. One of them is an injunction against gossip – useful when trying to establish a calm mental state, but also useful to prevent the circulation of critical comment.

The second is samaya – the bond of loyalty that is one of the key tenets of Tibetan Buddhism. It supports the relationship between teacher and neophyte, but it can be deployed unscrupulously as a threat – break your samaya and attract dire consequences to yourself and your loved ones.

Another factor is that acceptance into the inner circle around an important guru delivers high status within the organisation. Women are persuaded to view the master as a deity and to be compliant with his wishes and whims, to undertake a punishing workload and be available for sex on demand. They are separated from family and friends, discouraged from contact with the outside world and persuaded to see the organisation as family with the guru (confusingly as father-lover) in absolute power and control. By the time women realise they are being abused, exploited and embedded in a coercive cult, it is often too late for them to extricate themselves. Their investment is total and their chances of making lives for themselves beyond the organisation have dwindled into non-existence.

Whether or not Sogyal's relationships were abusive, as claimed, they raise another question: how does a short, overweight, Tibetan lama manage to attract beautiful young western women? The answer is rooted in the mystique of tantra – the only Buddhist tradition that includes sexual union in the path that leads to enlightenment. Professor Geoffrey Samuel from Cardiff University explains: "In the third initiation of the highest yoga tantra, sexual union is introduced as a parallel to the experience of enlightenment. It creates certain sensations that help towards experiencing the state of ultimate realisation – in other words Buddhahood."

But Samuel says that although this arcane version of sacred sex is present in Tibetan Buddhist scriptures, it should not be confused with the modern neo-tantra movement and nor is it appropriate for recent converts to Buddhism."People should have a health warning" he says. "An elderly guru seducing a young woman probably isn't doing it to assist her towards enlightenment."

Tibetans outside Tibet are refugees who feel constantly under threat from forces beyond their control. Their social conventions include a taboo against criticising lamas. The Dalai Lama is constrained by this and so too are the majority of other lamas teaching in the west. They have closed ranks around Sogyal, regardless of their misgivings about the allegations against him. A more cynical view of this apparent conspiracy of silence hinges on the fact that Sogyal pulls in a lot of money – some of which is channelled into Tibetan worthy causes.

How To Be Positive - Ajahn Brahm - Series of Motivational Talks

2011-08-08T19:58:00.000+10:00

Tsem Tulku Rinpoche Goes Home!!

2011-07-01T02:34:00.000+10:00

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Tsem Tulku Rinpoche led 63 pilgrims to offer 3000 Manjushri statues and robes to 3000 monks of Gaden Monastery, the main monastery of Gelugpa school in South India.

Gift from Tsem Ladrang : Gurus for Free

2011-07-01T02:14:00.000+10:00

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Here is a special offer from Kechara (Tsem Ladrang Dept)!

Due to a lot of very positive feedbacks on how beneficial this book is, we decided to have a free 62 book giveaway!! First come, first serve please. You may donate the book you win to your dharma centre, any centre or a friend. It is a must read according to much feedback we have received.

H.E. Tsem Tulku Rinpoche gives a clear and easy explanation of our roles in Dharma centres, the guru, the disciple, sponsors, how do you you know which centre is good for you and many other subjects that a modern day practitioner must know.

All you have to do is answer the following 8 simple questions correctly. Please note that all answers can be found within this blog.tsemtulku,com, and the first 62 persons will receive the book for their centre. *It will be shipped to you free of charge.

Watch this video for further participation details.

http://kechara.com
http://blog.tsemtulku.com
http://vajrasecrets.com
http://facebook.com/tsemtulku
http://facebook.com/kecharahouse

Farm to Fridge - The Truth Behind Meat Production

2011-05-22T19:39:00.001+10:00

Viewer Discretion is advised. It's really really sick!

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ECGMA says: I am sorry, I will not apologise for my language here. After watching this clip, I am sick to the stomach at inhumane act of cruelty by such despicable humans. These people are bastards but then what does that make of 'us' whose demand for such consumption encourages the meat industry to continue to supply our voracious appetite for meat. Should consumers be as guilty as the meat suppliers? Initially, while watching, I had so many vulgar words running through my mind and cannot explain the inner anger this clip shows us. I couldn't watch the entire clip. What is wrong with the human race?!?!?

---------------------------------------------------
Mercy For Animals presents Farm to Fridge. Narrated by Oscar-nominee James Cromwell, this powerful film takes viewers on an eye-opening exploration behind the closed doors of the nation's largest industrial farms, hatcheries, and slaughter plants -- revealing the often-unseen journey that animals make from Farm to Fridge.

Learn more at:

http://www.MeatVideo.com
http://www.ChooseVeg.com
http://www.MercyForAnimals.org

Little by little - Teachings by Buddha

2011-05-20T02:31:00.000+10:00

Little By Little
     The Buddha tells us that one becomes good little by little—as a water pot is filled with water, drop by drop by drop. (He also tells us that one becomes evil, little by little, drop by drop by little decision drop.)

     Little by little. Drop by drop.

     Little by little. Drop by drop.

     After years of trying to fill my water pot ALL! AT! ONCE!, I'm finally understanding that my attempts to change everything NOW were like trying to fill a beautiful, delicate water pot with a fire hydrant. Rather than winding up with a full pot, I pretty much sprayed the thing all around the room (and nearly cracked it!).

     Little by little. Drop by drop.

     That's the way to roll.

     Moment by moment. Little decision by little mundane decision. Day in and day out. THAT's where it's at.

Tara: Buddhist Goddess in Green and White

2011-04-29T19:42:00.001+10:00

Tara (Sanskrit, "star") is a Buddhist savior-goddess especially popular in Tibet, Nepal and Mongolia. In Tibet, where Tara is the most important deity, her name is Sgrol-ma, meaning "she who saves." The mantra of Tara (om tare tuttare ture svaha) is the second most common mantra heard in Tibet, after the mantra of Chenrezi (om mani padme hum).

The goddess of universal compassion, Tara represents virtuous and enlightened action. It is said that her compassion for living beings is stronger than a mother's love for her children. She also brings about longevity, protects earthly travel, and guards her followers on their spiritual journey to enlightenment.

Origins of Tara

Before she was adopted by Buddhism, Tara was worshipped in Hinduism as a manifestation of the goddess Parvati. The feminine principle was not venerated in Buddhism until the fourth century CE, and Tara probably entered Buddhism around the sixth century CE.

According to Buddhist tradition, Tara was born out of the tears of compassion of the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara. It is said that he wept as he looked upon the world of suffering beings, and his tears formed a lake in which a lotus sprung up. When the lotus opened, the goddess Tara was revealed.

A similar tradition has White Tara born from the tears of Avalokiteshvara's left eye and the Green Tara born from those of his right. In a third legend, Tara was born from a beam of blue light emanating from one of the eyes of Avalokiteshvara. Tara is also the consort of Avalokiteshvara.

Green Tara, with her half-open lotus, represents the night, and White Tara, with her lotus in full bloom, symbolizes the day. Green Tara embodies virtuous activity while White Tara displays serenity and grace. Together, the Green and White Taras symbolize the unending compassion of the goddess who labors day and night to relieve suffering.

In seventh-century Tibet, Tara was believed to be incarnated in every pious woman. She especially came to be associated with two historical wives of the first Buddhist king of Tibet, Srong-brtsan-sgam-po (d. 649). His wife from imperial China was said to be an incarnation of White Tara, while the king's Nepalese wife was an incarnation of Green Tara. It may be that the desire to regard both these pious women as incarnations of Tara led to the concept of the goddess's green and white forms.

Green Tara

Green Tara (Sanskrit: Syamatara; Tibetan: Sgrol-ljang), filled with youthful vigor, is a goddess of activity. She is the fiercer form of Tara, but is still a savior-goddess of compassion. She is the consort of Avalokiteshvara and considered by some to be the original Tara. Like Avalokiteshvara, the Green Tara is believed to be an emanation of the "self-born" Buddha Amitabha, and an image of Amitabha is sometimes depicted in Tara's headdress.

Green Tara is believed to have been incarnated as the Nepali wife of the Tibetan king Srong-brtsan-sgam-po. In Buddhism, the color green signifies activity and accomplishment. Thus Amoghasiddhi, the Lord of Action, is also associted with the color green.

Green Tara is iconographically depicted in a posture of ease and readiness for action. While her left leg is folded in the contemplative position, her right leg is outstretched, ready to spring into action. Green Tara's left hand is in the refuge-granting mudra (gesture); her right hand makes the boon-granting gesture. In her hands she also holds closed blue lotuses (utpalas), which symbolize purity and power. She is adorned with the rich jewels of a bodhisattva.

In Buddhist religious practice, Green Tara's primary role is savioress. She is believed to help her followers overcome dangers, fears and anxieties, and she is especially worshipped for her ability to overcome the most difficult of situations. Green Tara is intensely compassionate and acts quickly to help those who call upon her.

The iconography and role of Green Tara is illustrated in this medieval devotional hymn:

On a lotus seat, standing for realization of voidness,
(You are) the emerald-colored, one-faced, two-armed Lady
In youth's full bloom, right leg out, left drawn in,
Showing the union of wisdom and art - homage to you!

Like the outstretched branch of the heavenly turquoise tree,
Your supple right hand makes the boon- granting gesture,
Inviting the wise to a feast of supreme accomplishments,
As if to an entertainment-homage to you!

Your left hand gives us refuge, showing the Three Jewels;
It says, "You people who see a hundred dangers,
Don't be frightened-I shall swiftly save you!"
Homage to you!

Both hands signal with blue utpala flowers,
"Samsaric beings! Cling not to worldly pleasures.
Enter the great city of liberation!"
Flower-goads prodding us to effort-homage to you!

---First Dalai Lama (1391-1474)

White Tara

White Tara (Sanskrit: Sitatara; Tibetan: Sgrol-dkar) is sometimes called the Mother of all Buddhas and she represents the motherly aspect of compassion. Her white color signifies purity, wisdom and truth.

In iconography, White Tara often has seven eyes – in addition to the usual two, she has a third eye on her forehead and one on each of her hands and feet. This symbolizes her vigilance and ability to see all the suffering in the world. The "Tara of Seven Eyes" is the form of the goddess especially popular in Mongolia.

White Tara wears silk robes and scarves that leave her slender torso and rounded breasts uncovered in the manner of ancient India. Like Green Tara, she is richly adorned with jewels.

White Tara is seated in the diamond lotus position, with the soles of her feet pointed upward. Her posture is one of grace and calm. Her right hand makes the boon-granting gesture and her left hand is in the protective mudra. In her left hand, White Tara holds an elaborate lotus flower that contains three blooms. The first is in seed and represents the past Buddha Kashyapa; the second is in full bloom and symbolizes the present Buddha Shakyamuni; the third is ready to bloom and signifies the future Buddha Maitreya. These three blooms symbolize that Tara is the essence of the three Buddhas.

In religious practice, White Tara is believed to help her followers overcome obstacles, espeically those that inhibit the practice of religion. She is also associated with longevity.

Other Taras

Tara is sometimes depicted in colors and forms other than green and white. Tibetan temple banners frequently show 21 different Taras, colored white, red, and yellow, and grouped around a central Green Tara. In her ferocious, blue form, invoked to destroy enemies, she is known as Ugra-Tara, or Ekajata; as a red goddess of love, Kurukulla; and as a protectress against snake bite, Janguli. The yellow Bhrkuti is an angry Tara.

In Japan, Tara is a bodhisattva called Tarani Bosatsu. The Japanese Tara embodies both the white and green forms of the Tibetan Tara, and is usually only found on mandalas and temple banners. She is pale green and holds a pomegranate (a symbol of prosperity) and a lotus. Tara is not often to be found in China.

Chade-Meng Tan: Everyday compassion at Google

2011-04-21T19:25:00.000+10:00

Muso Soseki

2011-04-16T22:16:00.000+10:00

http://www.dailyzen.com/zen/zen_reading1104.asp

April 16, 2011

West Mountain Evening Talks

Muso Soseki

The Master said, "Bukko Zenji's advice to his disciple Bukkoku goes: 'I doubt that many students in Japan will attain satori in their lifetimes. Some students in this country tend to admire intellectual understanding instead of trying to attain satori. It is a pity that students with great capacity waste their whole lives reading widely in the native and foreign classics, cultivating the art of composition, and in that way leaving no time for coming to see clearly into their Original Nature. There are students of another kind who do not have this wide knowledge and culture, but think it is best to sit in zazen absentmindedly, never making any real effort to seek the Way. People like this will never reach satori, either, however long they remain in the world.'

"When my teacher, Bukkoku, told me this, I said, 'Apart from those who are born with the capacity for immediately perceiving the truth, which of the two you have described is superior?' My teacher answered, 'Even students with little ability can attain satori in this life. If they continue diligently in their zazen until the last day of the last year of their lives, a single word will be enough for them to attain satori a thousand times over. On the other hand, those who rely on their learning will not only waste their lives in this world, but in their next lives too they will fall into a world that they would rather avoid.'"

A monk said to the Master, "Those who use their scholarship to seem superior to others are beyond consideration. But why do you criticize those Zen students who have studied the Zen classics and so give off the light of wisdom?"

The Master answered, "Second-rate and third-rate students cannot go back to their Original Home. So out of pity for them the Patriarchs built temporary inns for them, which are like the classics you mention. In a sense these inns are good to have. Everyone needs sermons on the sutras at the sutra inns, sermons on the precepts at the precept inns, commentary on the records of Zen at the commentary inns. So there is no reason to rule out Zen preaching entirely.

"But a priest once said, 'Bodhidharma came to China from India. And without relying on words and letters he pointed straight to the mind and brought students to realize satori!' And he went on, 'If looking into the true self is merely a matter of words, the whole of Buddhist scripture is nothing but words. Then what is the meaning of Bodhidharma's coming to China?' Huang-po says, 'If any of you students wishes to be a Buddha, there is no need at all to make a study of any Dharma whatsoever. Just learn non-inquiry and non-attachment. There is no mind that is born unless you seek for something. There is no mind that dies unless you are attached to something. To be without birth or death is Buddhahood. The eighty-four thousand gates to the Dharma are there only to attract the students' attention.' This is only a teaching of ours, who are followers of Bodhidharma. All the teachings of the Great Vehicle follow the same path.

"The Lotus Sutra says, 'Once at the Void-King's palace a craving for enlightenment awoke in me and in Ananda at the same time. He set about acquiring wide learning, whereas I devoted all my energies to practice. That is why I have attained enlightenment.' The Surangama Sutra says, 'When he saw the Buddha, Ananda cried out in grief, lamenting the fact that he could acquire no Dharma power because he had devoted himself from the beginning to seeking knowledge only.'

"The Sutra on Perfect Enlightenment says, 'Whatever they may desire, students with no enlightenment who do not practice have no chance of attaining satori. They devote themselves to acquiring more knowledge, and in so doing simply make it harder than ever for themselves to see their true natures.' No one, even though he were to emit the light of wisdom as a result of reading many books, could compare his leaning with Ananda's. It is much better to find the Buddha's way to enlightenment than to rely on scholarship. I am reluctant to speak of the sayings of the Patriarchs and to lecture on the sutras. Because what I really want is to make my students understand that the core of the teachings of the Buddha and the Patriarchs is never found in words and letters."

The monk inquired further: "Zen masters welcome students of the first kind, and guide them with words and with direct presentations of the mind, and they think most highly of those who have mastered both. So it is only natural that some gifted students try to master mind and words at the same time. Do you say they are wrong?"

The Master answered, "One of our forerunners once said, 'Students who have had no glimpse of enlightenment would do better to study mind first rather than words. Those who have attained some enlightenment should study words first and then mind. You have called mind and words into question, but you know nothing of their real workings.' Another master said, 'Words polish mind and mind polishes words. It's best when you can use them freely, just as you please.' Do you really understand what he is saying? You must realize that the original state of satori has nothing to do with either of them, but that mind and words are separated simply as a means for teaching novices. Beginning students try to understand their teachers' words by analyzing them, and as a result they block their own way and lose the pointer that was guiding them toward satori. That is why the master said, 'Students who have had no glimpse of enlightenment would do better to study mind first rather than words.'

"On the other hand, someone who has attained enlightenment but not mastered words will not be recognized as a master and will not be able to teach and guide students. So one may have a high regard for a perfect command of both mind and words without directing beginners to study mind and words at the same time."

Muso Soseki (1275-1351)

Excerpted from Sun at Midnight – Poems and Sermons of Muso Soseki translated by W.S. Merwin and Soiku Shigematsu

Depending on how long one has practiced, at some point we all realize the dead end of intellectual understanding. That doesn't mean there is no value in "words and letters." What is criticized above is the substitution of meditation time with what can become the distraction of reading one more teacher's instructions, one more sutra, and how about that new school of Zen? We find endless ways to distract ourselves everyday. Endless ways to tell ourselves daily life has become meditation, so no need to sit anymore….We also finds endless ways to fool ourselves and others.

Huang po's comment is most succinct and clear: 'If any of you students wishes to be a Buddha, there is no need at all to make a study of any Dharma whatsoever. Just learn non-inquiry and non-attachment. There is no mind that is born unless you seek for something. There is no mind that dies unless you are attached to something. To be without birth or death is Buddhahood. The eighty-four thousand gates to the Dharma are there only to attract the students' attention.'

It's easy to see how all these teachings are methods to get our attention; however, there is the very real work of putting some of it into practice. Non-attachment does not just drop out of the sky on you…. If we remember all the poems, stories, and teachings are the fingers pointing to the moon, we can continue to pursue practice with "great effort, no goal."

And to continue the illusion Muso mentioned above, these days we have the Inn of Daily Zen to provide a little inspiration from time to time.

May your Practice be Pure!

__________________________________________________
Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone powered by U Mobile

The monks and I: Teaching and learning in Thailand

2011-04-01T14:06:00.001+11:00

International volunteers pay to teach Buddhist monks in Chiang Mai and Ratchaburi. Journey to nirvana not guaranteed

By Richard S. Ehrlich 31 March, 2011

Foreign teachers can expect to work six hours a day, but can spend the rest of their time absorbing Thai culture.

Foreigners are being invited to teach English to Buddhist monks at two temples in Thailand -- at a cost of hundreds of dollars.

And staff at one temple claim that many visiting instructors "experienced nirvana temporarily" during meditation sessions.

The temples, Wat Luang Phor Sodh in Ratchaburi and Wat Doi Saket in Chiang Mai, run slightly different programs, but essentially offer the chance to learn about Thai culture while teaching English.

Foreign teachers have to pay for their own lodging, food and other expenses, as well as their airfare to and from Thailand. And though all of the saffron-robed monk students are male, the temples welcome both men and women teachers.

"All English speakers are welcomed," said Dr. Barton "Bart" Yanathiro, a 75-year-old American Buddhist who helps run the classes in Ratchaburi, about two hours southwest from Bangkok by bus.

Foreigners teach basic English grammar, pronunciation, spelling and conversation to monks in brightly lit classrooms.

Dr. Yanathiro is the temple's secretary for international affairs and assists with the Immersion in Buddhist English Program. He also manages the Buddhist Meditation Institute, which teaches meditation in English, as part of the World Buddhist University.

Dr. Yanathiro said the abbot and several monks at the temple already speak English, and "a foreign professor monk" heads the teaching program.

"We began informally two years ago, but last year was our official opening," said Dr. Yanathiro. "We have had a total of 18 teachers and 85 registered students so far. Two teachers stayed long-term, but most came for one to two months.

"The [monk] students learn English from fluent English-speakers, and the teachers learn meditation and Thai Buddhist culture."

Classes run from May 23 to September 7, and from October 10 to February 22, 2012.

When foreign instructors are not teaching the monks, they can study Buddhist Samatha-Vipassana meditation, in an English-language program led by Dr. Yanathiro.

"Numerous teacher volunteers have been able to meditate to experience nirvana, and get advice from Buddha or the Noble Disciples," he said. "This is an undreamed of, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

"Of 16 teachers since the very beginning, six experienced nirvana temporarily. An additional three transcended beyond this world to Dhammakaya, and another three more achieved trance states like heavenly bliss. The remaining four only attained inner peace."

All of the monk students are male, but both temples welcome male and female teachers from abroad.

Asked about their purported temporary experience of nirvana, Dr. Yanathiro replied: "I am using the official definition, where one actually sees and communicates with Lord Buddha and his disciples.

"Most amazing is the personal instruction some have gotten directly from Buddha. One was taken to a volcano and told to jump in. When he did so he became one with the earth. In another meditation he became a tree. Another teacher-meditator experienced becoming a leaf on a tree which then fell to earth, decayed and became part of the earth.

"They see Buddha and the disciples. Communication is by direct telepathy, so language is irrelevant. One does get clear verbal communications, but more impressive are their descriptions of experiences such as feeling oneself becoming a tree."

None of the teachers reported any side effects from their trances.

'Hey, fat lady! You so beautiful!'

Foreigners who want to teach and study at the temple can register with Global Service Corps of San Francisco, via its website which offers classes lasting two weeks or longer.

Fees, described as "Service-Learning Program Contributions," start at US$1,480 for a two-week program and jump $415 dollars for each additional week, up to a 13-week program which costs a total of $6,045. After that, the weekly fee increases by $255.

The temple provides "a U.S.-style house across the street from the wat, which has two bedrooms for two people each. A cabin and separate dormitories for men and women, which are more spartan, are also available inside the temple," Dr. Yanathiro said. Thai cuisine, non-vegetarian and often spicy, is included.

An American woman, who taught at the temple, wrote in her "CHITARITA" blog in 2010 that shortly after she arrived, a good-natured monk called out to her: "Hey, fat lady! You so beautiful!"

American director David Poppe has been developing the teaching program at Wat Doi Saket since October 2009.

She described her role as an English teacher at the temple as a "culture shock" and fascinating life-changing experience.

In Chiang Mai, Wat Doi Saket welcomes foreign teachers but does not actively encourage meditation, though they are welcome to study Buddhism in their free time.

"I have been developing this program since October 2009," said Wat Doi Saket's teaching director David Poppe, 25, who was born in Simsbury, Connecticut.

"The temple has 160 novice monks, and class sizes range from six to 35. Given the size and schedule of the school, only two volunteers can live here and teach at one time.

"Teachers can expect to work roughly four to six hours per day, with the mornings free."

Wat Doi Saket's English teaching program is part of the ATMA SEVA Foundation. Foreigners pay much less to teach English at Wat Doi Saket, compared with the teaching and meditation program in Ratchaburi.

The first volunteer came for four months and paid 30,000 baht (US$1,000). A two-week trip would cost between 5,000 to 8,000 baht, depending on accommodation and working hours.

"At the wat, there is a kitchen below the volunteers' bedrooms, and each day one of the cooks delivers breakfast, lunch, and dinner," Mr. Poppe said.

"So far, none of the volunteers has been Buddhist. Religion has no bearing in regards to acceptance to the program. The goal is to improve conversational English, and if volunteers are interested in Buddhism they can pursue infinite knowledge, but nothing is scheduled or pushed."

Mr. Poppe first came to Thailand in 2007 and while not a Buddhist himself, is "very intrigued by Buddhism."

"I can arrange meditation retreats, dharma lectures, and have access to Buddhist resources if the desire to learn is present," he said.

For more information on volunteering in Thai temples, click on the above links.

Richard S. Ehrlich is from San Francisco, California. He has reported news for international media from Asia since 1978, based in Hong Kong, New Delhi and now Bangkok.

Feedback - THE PRACTICE OF TONGLEN

2011-03-17T00:39:00.000+11:00

Thank you for your feedback, John.

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone

From: Johnfam <johnfam63@yahoo.com>

Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2011 10:53:39 +0800

To: ECGMA<eugene1chung@gmail.com>

Subject: Re: [EC Buddhism] THE PRACTICE OF TONGLEN

Eugene, the author only explain and teaches the practice in a very simplistic manner. As humans we are nothing special, we do not have that power to heal, our thoughts and meditation has not reach the ultimate that we are willing to truly take the pains sickness and suffering of others. Only a bodhisattava can do it. However in our practice of this meditation, we visualize the deity any deity that ave the ultimate qualities of compassion. Eg chenrezig (kuan yin) or for that matter Jesus Christ or mother Mary. We visualize them as having a rainbow body and we visualize ourself as them, having all the special qualities. At this stage we then start the visualization process of taking the sickness, pain etc in the form of black smoke and as we exhale the smoke changes to white and we give it to recipient whom we visualize are taking in and are comforted or cured by it.

There is another practice called the Varasattava practice , where we visualize the deity vajrasatta sitting above us with his toes directed at our crown. As we chant the 100 syllable mantra, nectar flows to the crown of our head fills our body and pushes out all impurities like black tar coming out of our toes .

The practice is very good if done correctly. The problem is we can use our human body, but we are limited by out attachment to it.

John

Sent from my iPad

On Mar 16, 2011, at 10:21 AM, ECGMA <eugene1chung@gmail.com> wrote:

THE PRACTICE OF TONGLEN
By:
E deity have
Y deity,
that In order to have compassion for others, we have to have compassion for ourselves.
E to take the sufferings
In particular, to care about other people atwho are fearful, angry, jealous, overpowered by addictions of all kinds, arrogant, proud, miserly, selfish, mean —you name it— to have compassion and to care for these people, means not to run from the pain of finding these things in ourselves. In fact, one's whole attitude toward pain can change. Instead of fending it off and hiding from it, one could open one's heart and allow oneself to feel that pain, feel it as something that will soften and purify us and make us far more loving and kind.

The tonglen practice is a method for connecting with suffering —ours and that which is all around us— everywhere we go. It is a method for overcoming fear of suffering and for dissolving the tightness of our heart. Primarily it is a method for awakening the compassion that is inherent in all of us, no matter how cruel or cold we might seem
to be.

We begin the practice by taking on the suffering of a person we know to be hurting and who we wish to help. For instance, if you know of a child who is being hurt, you breathe in the wish to take away all the pain and fear of that child. Then, as you breathe out, you send the child happiness, joy or whatever would relieve their pain. This is the core of the practice: breathing in other's pain so they can be well and have more space to relax and open, and breathing out, sending them relaxation or whatever you feel would bring them relief and happiness. However, we often cannot do this practice because we come face to face with our own fear, our own resistance, anger, or whatever our personal pain, our personal stuckness happens to be at that moment.

At that point you can change the focus and begin to do tonglen for what you are feeling and for millions of others just like you who at that very moment of time are feeling exactly the same stuckness and misery. Maybe you are able to name your pain. You recognize it clearly as terror or revulsion or anger or wanting to get revenge. So you breathe in for all the people who are caught with that same emotion and you send out relief or whatever opens up the space for yourself and all those countless others. Maybe you can't name what you're feeling. But you can feel it —a tightness in the stomach, a heavy darkness or whatever. Just contact what you are feeling and breathe in, take it in —for all of us and send out relief to all of us.

People often say that this practice goes against the grain of how we usually hold ourselves together. Truthfully, this practice does go against the grain of wanting things on our own terms, of wanting it to work out for ourselves no matter what happens to the others. The practice dissolves the armor of self-protection we've tried so hard to create around ourselves. In Buddhist language one would say that it dissolves the fixation and clinging of ego.

Tonglen reverses the usual logic of avoiding suffering and seeking pleasure and, in the process, we become liberated from a very ancient prison of selfishness. We begin to feel love both for ourselves and others and also we begin to take care of ourselves and others. It awakens our compassion and it also introduces us to a far larger view of reality. It introduces us to the unlimited spaciousness that Buddhists call shunyata. By doing the practice, we begin to connect with the open dimension of our being. At first we experience this as things not being such a big deal or so solid as they seemed before.

Tonglen can be done for those who are ill, those who are dying or have just died, or for those that are in pain of any kind. It can be done either as a formal meditation practice or right on the spot at any time. For example, if you are out walking and you see someone in pain —right on the spot you can begin to breathe in their pain and send some out some relief. Or, more likely, you might see someone in pain and look away because it brings up your fear or anger; it brings up your resistance and confusion.

So on the spot you can do tonglen for all the people who are just like you, for everyone who wishes to be compassionate but instead is afraid, for everyone who wishes to be brave but instead is a coward.

Rather than beating yourself up, use your own stuckness as a stepping stone to understanding what people are up against all over the world.

Breathe in for all of us and breathe out for all of us.

Use what seems like poison as medicine. Use your personal suffering as the path to compassion for all beings.

--
Posted By ECGMA to EC Buddhism at 3/16/2011 01:21:00 PM

Keeping those who suffer in our hearts

2011-03-16T13:28:00.001+11:00

In light of this morning's 8.9-magnitude earthquake and tsunami in Japan (which struck at 2:46 local time), we again present Judy Lief's instructions for tonglen — a practice that can be of help at a time of seeming helplessness. [And: if you want to donate to the American Red Cross's relief efforts, you can do so by clicking here.]

Tonglen Practice

Each time you practice tonglen, begin with basic mindfulness practice. It is important to take some time to let your mind settle. Having done so, you can go on to the practice of tonglen itself, which has four steps.

The first step is very brief. You could think of it as "clearing the decks." You simply allow a little pause, or gap, before you begin. Although this first step is very brief and simple, it is still important. It is like cracking the window to let in a little fresh air.

In the second step you touch in with the visceral world of feelings and emotions. Each time you breathe in, you breath in heavy, dark, hot, sticky, claustrophobic energy; and each time you breathe out, you breathe out light, refreshing, clear, cool energy. With each breath the practice shifts direction, so there is an ongoing rhythm back and forth. You are taking the habit of grasping and rejecting and you are reversing it.

The third and fourth steps take that same approach and apply it to specific topics. Start as close to home as possible, with something that actually affects you personally. You should work with a topic that arouses real feelings, something that actually touches you or feels a little raw. It does not need to be anything monumental; it could be quite ordinary. For instance, maybe someone screamed at you when you were driving to work. You could breathe in the aggression they threw at you and you could breathe out to that person a wish to free them from the pain of that anger. If you yourself have just come down with a sickness, you could breathe in that sickness, and breathe out your feeling of health and well-being. The point is to start with something that has some reality or juice in your life.

Once you are underway, it is good to let the practice develop on its own and see where it takes you. In this case, no matter what comes up in your mind, you breathe in what you do not like and you breathe out what you do, or you breathe in what is not so good and breathe out being free of that. For instance, after you breathe in that driver's aggression and breathe out your soothing of that anger, what might come up next is your own anger at being so abused first thing in the morning when you had started out in a pretty good mood. You could breathe that anger in and breathe out the ability not to take such attacks so personally. In that way your thoughts follow along naturally, revealing more and more subtle layers of grasping and rejecting.

In the fourth step you expand the practice beyond your own immediate feelings and concerns of the moment. For instance, if you are worried about your friend, you expand that concern to include all the other people now and in the past who have had similar worries. You include everybody who has suffered the pain of seeing someone they are close to in danger or trouble. You breathe in all those worries and breathe out to all those countless beings your wish that they be freed from such pain.

Tonglen practice is a radical departure from our usual way of going about things. It may seem threatening, and even crazy; but it strikes at a very core point—how we barricade ourselves from pain and lose our connection with one another. The irony is that the barricades we create do not help all that much; they just make things worse. We end up more fearful, less willing to extend ourselves, and stunted in our ability to express any true kindness. Tonglen pokes holes in those barricades that we create.

Tonglen is always about connection: making a genuine connection with ourselves and others. It is a practice that draws us out beyond our own concerns to an appreciation that no matter what we happen to be going through, others too have gone through experiences just as intense. In tonglen we are continually expanding our perspective beyond our small self-preoccupied world. The less we restrict our world, the more of it we can take in—and at the same time, we find that we also have much more to give.

TONGLEN - TAKING AND GIVING

2011-03-16T13:26:00.001+11:00

"Without attuning body, speech and mind unto the Doctrine,
What gain is it to celebrate religious rites?
If anger be unconquered by its antidote,
What gain is it to celebrate religious rites?
Unless one meditate on loving others more than self,
What gain is it merely from the lips to say: 'O, Pity (sentient beings)"
Milarepa (From Evan Wentz 'Tibet's Great Yogi Milarepa')

INTRODUCTION

This meditation technique can be extremely powerful when practised correctly. To me, it represents the full idea of a Bodhisattva; a being who wishes to help all sentient beings, without concern for his/her own interests. It is adviseable to read the pages on Meditation Theory (chapter on Vipashyana) and Meditation Practice if you are not used to (analytical) meditation..

In case you find this meditation very difficult to do, it may well be a very positive sign! It is definitely extremely difficult to let go of our selfish attitude and deciding to give all one's own happiness and positive karma to others and take upon oneself the suffering of all sentient beings. If you do this meditation seriously, it cannot be easy - unless you are an extremely advanced practitioner. If you realise that doing this practice is too difficult when trying to focus on all sentient beings, it may be helpful to start at an easier level; instead of being surrounded by all other sentient beings, you can imagine sitting opposite yourself of a future lifetime and practice giving and taking. If that works well, try to imagine your mother, father or a good friend with whom you practise. Next, one can try to think of ones entire family, friends or neighbourhood, and so gradually expand it to include everyone, even animals and life forms we cannot even see.

This meditation works in many ways, to name but a few:
- reducing selfish attachment
- increasing a sense of renunciation
- creating positive karma by giving and helping
- developing loving-kindness and bodhicitta
- it refers to all of the 6 Perfections: giving, ethics, patience, joyous effort, concentration and wisdom.

A SAMPLE TONGLEN MEDITATION SESSION

Set yourself a time, like 15 or 30 minutes for the session, put a clock in front of yourself.
Take a couple of deep breaths to relax, check if your body is relaxed and reasonably comfortable.
Set the motivation: for example recite the refuge prayer:

I go for refuge to the Buddha,
I go for refuge to the Dharma,
I go for refuge to the Sangha. (3x)

Setting the mind towards enlightenment:

By virtue of giving and so forth,
may I become a Buddha for the benefit of all sentient beings. (3x)

The four immeasurables:

May all sentient beings have equanimity, free from attachment, aggression and prejudice.
May they be happy, and have the causes for happiness.
May they be free from suffering and causes for suffering.
May they never be separated from the happiness that is free from suffering. (3x)

The seven-limbed prayer:

Respectfully I prostrate with body, speech and mind;
I present clouds of every type of offerings, actual and imagined;
I declare all the negative actions I have done since beginningless time,
and rejoice in the merit of all Aryas and ordinary beings.
Please teacher, remain until cyclic existence ends
and turn the wheel of Dharma for all sentient beings.
I dedicate the virtues of myself and others to the great Enlightenment.

Short breathing meditation (maybe 5 minutes or so):

Concentrate on the tip of your nose, and feel the breath going in and out.
To help your concentration, you can count every out-breath as one, and count from 1 to 10. When you arrived at 10, simply start at 1 again. All the attention is with the feeling of the nose and the counting, nothing more, nothing less.
Regularly check yourself if you are still concentrated, do not get angry when distracted, simply return to counting from 1.
Just before the end of the session, release the concentration on the counting and the tip of your nose, and simply be aware of how you feel.

Giving and taking; try to imagine the following:

- Visualise all sentient beings around you: enemies in front, friends behind you all sentient beings are in the form of human beings.
- First visualise that all their sufferings take the form of black clouds of smoke that surrounds them, and inhale this smoke.
- Direct the smoke to your heart where you visualise a black spot, representing your own egoistic self-cherishing mind.
- The destructive force of all the black smoke of suffering goes to this self-cherishing mind, completely destroying it

Take some time to do this.

- Now imagine exhaling bright white nectar and light towards all beings. This white nectar is your own potential for happiness which you give away.

Take some time for this part. When you are used to both practices, you may try the following:

- If possible combine both above practices of inhaling black smoke and exhaling light and nectar with every in- and out-breath. If this takes too much effort, simply return to either giving or taking.

Near the end of the session, let go of the thoughts of giving and taking, and take some time to sense how you feel now.

Next, try to make some sort of brief positive conclusion, like: "this meditation is too difficult, so I need to practice more", "this was really great, I should do this more often" or "I must work harder to control my selfish mind", something like that - but it must be your own conclusion.
Then try to concentrate very strongly on this conclusion, but without discussing it in your thoughts: just try to hold on to the feeling that the conclusion gives you and try to focus intensely on it for just one or two minutes.

Dedicate the positive energy of the session to whichever goal you like, use for example:

May all sentient beings have equanimity, free from attachment, aggression and prejudice.
May they be happy, and have the causes for happiness.
May they be free from suffering and causes for suffering.
May they never be separated from the happiness that is free from suffering. (3x)

and below prayers:

By this virtue may I soon
reach a Guru-Buddha-state,
and lead each and every being
to that state of Buddhahood.
May the precious Bodhicitta
not yet born, arise and grow
may that born have no decline
but increase forever more.

And any specific wishes that you may have.

Tonglen: Taking and Giving Meditation

2011-03-16T13:24:00.001+11:00

by Joseph H. Rowe

Tonglen: in Tibetan, it means "give and take". Basically, you take in unhappiness, and you give out happiness.

This centuries-old meditatitive practice of compassion for self and others has a universality which for me is the secret heart and meeting-place of Buddhism and Christianity. I have been practicing it for several years, and much more intensely during the last year. In my life, it has had a profound effect on many levels --- so much so that I am at a loss for words to describe it, except to say that it seems to me to invoke the highest order of magic that there is.

Preliminary background teaching which is the foundation of the practice:

Your true, authentic being is absolutely pristine, flawless wisdom-mind, known as "Boddhichitta" to Buddhists and as the "Holy Spirit" to Christians. It is your eternal, ever-present Source, beyond the grasp of the personal mind, yet intimately informing it. Like the Sun, however hidden it may be by dense clouds of thought and emotion and sensation in your personal skies, it is always There, shining brilliantly and effortlessly. In the following exercises, it is referred to as your True Nature.

The Practice of Tonglen:

(1st phase: environmental Tonglen)

Sit or recline in a comfortable position. Let your awareness come to your breath. Gently focus on your breathing for several minutes, just observing the inbreath and outbreath like the tide. Now, note the feeling-tone of your environment, both physical and psychic. Note the negativity that is there. The pain, the fear, or the anger --- the suffering. This suffering may be very subtle, disguised by thoughts and habits, or it may be flagrantly, painfully present. Don't judge this negativity, just allow it to be felt and observed in all its aspects. Now, with each inbreath, breathe in this negativity. Let it be breathed like a polluted cloud into your deepest core: your True Nature. Then let the outbreath, which emanates from this True Nature, send out pure, luminous calm, happiness, wisdom, and well-being back into this troubled environment. Breathe in suffering and negativity; breathe out calm and luminous well-being. When you breathe in the negativity, it passes through your personal being on the way to the core, and its effect is to cleanse and purge your sense of being a separate, isolated, ego-being identified with a specific body. It cannot hurt this body (on the contrary, it often has cleansing effects on it), it only attacks and gently, subtly corrodes and starts to break up the stubborn sense of selfish separateness which is so deeply-rooted in us. Continue this until you feel a very distinct change in the environment.

[Commentary: this, like the subsequent phases, may at first startle or even dismay you. Most breathing/visualization exercises have you breathe in clean, fresh energy and breathe out stale, negative energy. There's nothing wrong with those exercises, and they have their place. But this one is exactly the opposite in form, and works on a much deeper level. Have faith in the praises of this beneficial exercise by scores of generations of great practitioners. After some time in this practice, you will begin to notice what many call the "ambrosia effect" of the outbreath. Strangely, the outbreath seems more nourishing than the inbreath at a deep and subtle level. Some people experience it as suffused with a golden light, or a white light. This outbreath is the key to healing through Tonglen. In this phase, you are _allowing_ the outbreath from your True Nature to pervade and heal the negativity in your inner and outer environment. You don't have to "accomplish" this. Just allow the luminous outbreath to do its gentle work.]

(2nd phase: self Tonglen)

Now, imagine yourself as dual: self A and self B. Self A is your ordinary, familiar, worrying, fantasizing, suffering, confused self, both body and mind. Self B is your true Self, which is at one with your True Nature. Let Self B breathe in all of Self A's personal negative emotions and confusion, and/or painful or distressed regions of the body, physical sensations, etc.; and then breathe out calm, well-being, happiness, and wordless wisdom. Continue this until you feel a very distinct change in your body/mind.

(3rd phase: Tonglen for others)

Now, think of someone you know who is in physical or mental distress.

Feel their distress as a black, oily, noxious cloud of negativity and pain.

Breathe this cloud of suffering deeply into your True Nature, and breathe back out to them all of your happiness, calm, wordless wisdom, and love. Again, this noxious cloud of suffering cannot harm you, it can only attack your deep-rooted sense of separateness, and the blockages and delusions which arise from that sense of separateness. In my own case, I have even felt that it was helping to clear up my clogged arteries, like a kind of radical cleansing agent. Breathe in your friend's suffering, and breathe out your profoundest happiness, which emanates from your True Nature. Continue this until you have a vivid sense of your friend receiving this love, and a vast calm and well-being in your "local" bodymind system.

(Ultimate phase: limitless Tonglen)
(optional for advanced practice only)

Now, if you feel so inclined, allow your friend's suffering (which is not separate from your own) to expand its borders, and include other beings' suffering. It could start with those close to them, but it doesn't have to stop there. The sky is the limit: ultimately it could include a whole community, the whole planet Earth, or even all beings everywhere.
Breathe in the suffering and pain, breathe out happiness and the peace that passeth understanding.

[ Overall commentary: phases 1 and 2 often come together as one exercise for me, but sometimes they are very distinct. I rarely if ever reach the ultimate phase! Often it's all I can do just to reach some sense of completion with phases 1 and/or 2. As for the visualization aspect: some people are much more visual than others, and see golden or white streams of light-energy streaming out to specific places in their own or another's body; but I am usually not this visual, and naturally stay with feeling-tones of peace, healing, etc. Each person finds their own way of doing this. Also, Tonglen is not really that different from prayer. In fact, you may want to think of it as a kind of prayer which uses breathing. The most important key feeling to keep in mind is that of the outbreath. If your mind wanders (as it surely will!), just gently bring it back to the
practice. Even if you completely forget the practice in a long fantasy or train of thought, just gently come back to it, and never indulge in self-aggressive criticisms for having "blown it". ]

The Heart-Practice of Tonglen

2011-03-16T13:22:00.001+11:00

All-Embracing Compassion:

The Heart-Practice of Tonglen

As human beings, we have a very interesting habit of resisting what is unpleasant and seeking what is pleasurable. We resist, avoid, and deny suffering and we continually grasp at pleasure. If we observe our behavior, it is easy to see that we habitually resist and avoid people, situations, and feelings we consider to be painful, unpleasant, or uncomfortable, and we are naturally attracted to people, situations, and feelings we consider pleasant, comfortable, and gratifying. According to Buddhist teachings, this behavior is a symptom of fundamental ignorance and is influenced by the defilements of greed (attachment), hatred (aversion), and delusion (misperception of reality). To break the spell of this dualistic perception, to dissolve the barriers in our hearts that keep us feeling separate from others, and to cultivate a deep compassion for all living beings, including ourselves, we need to meet and embrace reality in a radically new way. To accomplish this, we can use the precious heart-practice of Tonglen.

Tonglen is a Tibetan word which means sending and taking. This practice originated in India and came to Tibet in the eleventh century. With the practice of Tonglen, we work directly with our habitual tendency to avoid suffering and attach ourselves to pleasure. Using this powerful and highly effective practice, we learn to embrace our life experiences with more openness, compassion, inclusiveness, and understanding, rather than denial, aversion, and resistance. When we encounter fear, pain, hurt, anger, jealousy, loneliness, or suffering, be it our own or others, we breathe in with the desire to completely embrace this experience; to feel it, accept it, and own it, free of any resistance.

In this way of practice, in this way of being, we transform our tendency to close down and shut out life's unpleasant experiences. In accordance with Buddha's First Noble Truth, we acknowledge, touch, and embrace our personal and collective suffering. We do not run away. We do not turn the other way. Touching and understanding suffering is the first step toward true transformation. Rather than avoiding suffering, we develop a more tolerant and compassionate relationship with it. We learn to meet and embrace reality—naked, open, and fearless.

Although the idea of developing a relationship with suffering may sound somewhat morbid, we must remember the teachings of the Second and Third Noble Truths as well: when we touch and embrace suffering, we can finally understand what causes it. When we understand the cause of suffering, we can eliminate it and be liberated. There is an end to suffering, however, we must learn how to meet it in a new way. Tonglen practice can help us accomplish this shift of awareness, this training of the mind.

A New Way to Embrace Our Life Experience

It is obvious that Tonglen practice is completely contrary to the ways in which we usually hold our personality (ego) together. Each of us have our defensive ego strategies for coping with the pain, hurt, disappointment, and suffering we encounter in life. We armor, protect, and separate ourselves from our inner and outer experiences in numerous ways that we are not even conscious of. In truth, Tonglen practice does indeed go against our habitual tendency of always wanting things to be pleasant, of wanting life on our own terms, of wanting everything to work out for ourselves no matter what happens to others. This practice dissolves and transforms the armor of our self-protection; the psychological strategies and defenses we create to keep ourselves separate from our own suffering and the suffering we encounter in the world. Tonglen practice gradually wears away our habitual grasping at a false sense of self (self-grasping/ego fixation/identification with the personality).

Tonglen effectively reverses our usual pattern of avoiding suffering and seeking pleasure. In this process, we finally liberate ourselves from a very ancient prison of selfishness. With this radical shift of awareness, this new way of embracing our life experience, our heart becomes more tender, open, sensitive, and aware. We naturally feel more alive; more loving and caring, both for ourselves and others. By practicing Tonglen, we connect with a less defended and more open, spacious dimension of our being. The all-embracing compassion of our true nature begins to shine through and we are introduced to a far more intimate and grander view of reality. With this sublime heart of love, liberated from attachment, aversion, and indifference, we gradually recognize and feel the absolute interdependence and preciousness of all living beings. This is true intimacy with life. This is the cultivation of bodhicitta—the awakened heart of compassion and wisdom.

Hearing and Feeling the Cries of the World

Breathing in, we allow ourselves to feel the inevitable suffering that occurs in this life. Our heart's natural response to this suffering, while breathing out, is compassion. We breathe in the pain and suffering of this world like a dark cloud, letting it pass through our hearts. Rather than bracing ourselves against this pain and suffering, we can let it strengthen our sense of belonging and interdependence within the larger web of being. Avalokiteshvara (Chenrezig) is the Bodhisattva of Universal Compassion. His name means "One Who Hears the Cries of the World." Long ago he vowed not to return to nirvana until all living beings had been liberated from suffering. Avalokiteshvara listens to and feels the pain and suffering of the world. He breathes in, receiving the cries and anguish of the world and responds with the greatest care and compassion. In Buddhism, the traditional vow made by the Bodhisattva is to alleviate the suffering of all sentient beings.

The path of the Bodhisattva is to remember our belonging and connection with all of life. When we know in our hearts that we are connected to the insects, animals, trees, the earth, and every living being, we do not cause harm or suffering to any of these parts of ourselves. Rather, we become sensitive and attuned to the cries of the world, and we learn to respond with wisdom and deep compassion. We develop the wish to free all beings from their suffering and its causes; we desire, more than anything, to bring them happiness and peace. Indeed, the practice of Tonglen is an excellent way for us to train our heart and mind so we too can develop universal compassion and help alleviate the suffering of all living beings.

Suggestions for the Practice of Tonglen

Use what seems like poison as medicine. Use your
personal suffering as the path to compassion for all beings.

In Tonglen practice, through our compassion, we take on (embrace without resistance) the various sufferings of all beings: their fear, hurt, frustration, pain, anger, guilt, bitterness, loneliness, doubt, rage, and so forth. In return, we give them our loving-kindness, happiness, peace of mind, well-being, healing, and fulfillment.

1) Sit quietly, calm the mind, and center yourself. Reflect on the immense suffering that all beings everywhere experience. Allow their suffering to open your heart and awaken your compassion. You may also choose to invoke the presence of all the Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and enlightened beings, so that through their inspiration and blessing, compassion may be born in your heart. In this way, you are resting in bodhicitta—the enlightened nature of the mind. Bodhicitta, is an inexhaustible source of purity, generosity, and compassion.

2) Imagine in front of you, as clearly as possible, someone you care for who is suffering. Although this may be more challenging, you may also imagine someone you feel indifferent toward, someone you consider to be an enemy, or those who have hurt you or others. Open yourself to this person's suffering. Allow yourself to feel connected with him or her, aware of their difficulties, pain, and distress. Then, as you feel your heart opening in compassion toward the person, imagine that all of his or her suffering comes out and gathers itself into a mass of hot, black, grimy smoke.

3) Now, visualize breathing in this mass of black smoke, seeing it dissolve into the very core of your self-grasping (ego) at your heart center. There in your heart, it completely destroys all traces of fear and selfishness (self-cherishing) and purifies all of your negative karma.

4) Imagine, now that your fear, self-centeredness and negative karma has been completely destroyed, your enlightened heart (bodhicitta) is fully revealed. As you breathe out, imagine you are sending out the radiance of loving-kindness, compassion, peace, happiness, and well-being to this person. See this brilliant radiance purifying all of their negative karma. Send out any feelings that encourage healing, relaxation, and openness.

5) Continue this "giving and receiving" with each breath for as long as you wish. At the end of your practice, generate a firm inner conviction that this person has been freed of suffering and negative karma and is filled with peace, happiness and well-being. You may also wish to dedicate the merit and virtue of your practice to the benefit of all sentient beings.

Another Excellent Form of Tonglen

Clearly imagine a situation where you have acted badly, one about which you feel shameful or guilty, and which may be difficult to even think about. Then, as you breathe in, opening your heart, accept total responsibility for your actions in that particular situation. Do not judge or try to justify your behavior. Simply acknowledge exactly what you have done wrong and wholeheartedly ask for forgiveness. Now, as you breathe out, send the compassionate radiance of reconciliation, forgiveness, harmony, healing, and understanding. Breathe in the pain and the blame, and breathe out the undoing of harm. Breathe in taking full responsibility, breathe out the compassionate radiance of healing, forgiveness, and reconciliation. This exercise is especially powerful. It may give you the courage to go see the person(s) whom you have wronged and the strength and willingness to talk to them directly and actually ask for forgiveness from the depths of your heart.

Tonglen is a Practice and a Way of Life

Traditionally, we begin by doing Tonglen for someone we care about. However, we can use this practice at any time, either for ourselves or others. Tonglen can be done for those who are ill, those who are dying or have just died, or for those that are in pain of any kind. Tonglen can be done either as a formal meditation practice or right on the spot at any time. For example, if we encounter someone in pain, right on the spot we can begin to breathe in their pain and send out some relief. At any time, when we encounter our own emotional discomfort or suffering, or that of others, we open our heart and fully embrace what we are encountering on our in-breath. Breathing out, we offer the heartfelt radiance of acceptance, loving-kindness, and compassion. This is a practice and a way of life.

Practicing Tonglen on one friend in pain helps us begin the process of gradually widening the circle of our compassion. From there, we can learn to take on the suffering and purify the karma of all beings; giving others our happiness, well-being, joy, and peace of mind. Tonglen practice can extend indefinitely, and gradually, over time, our compassion will expand. We will find that we have a greater ability to be loving and present for ourselves and for others in even the most difficult situations. This is the wonderful goal of Tonglen practice, the path of the compassionate Bodhisattva.

THE PRACTICE OF TONGLEN

2011-03-16T13:21:00.001+11:00

THE PRACTICE OF TONGLEN

By:

In order to have compassion for others, we have to have compassion for ourselves.

In particular, to care about other people who are fearful, angry, jealous, overpowered by addictions of all kinds, arrogant, proud, miserly, selfish, mean —you name it— to have compassion and to care for these people, means not to run from the pain of finding these things in ourselves. In fact, one's whole attitude toward pain can change. Instead of fending it off and hiding from it, one could open one's heart and allow oneself to feel that pain, feel it as something that will soften and purify us and make us far more loving and kind.

The tonglen practice is a method for connecting with suffering —ours and that which is all around us— everywhere we go. It is a method for overcoming fear of suffering and for dissolving the tightness of our heart. Primarily it is a method for awakening the compassion that is inherent in all of us, no matter how cruel or cold we might seem
to be.

We begin the practice by taking on the suffering of a person we know to be hurting and who we wish to help. For instance, if you know of a child who is being hurt, you breathe in the wish to take away all the pain and fear of that child. Then, as you breathe out, you send the child happiness, joy or whatever would relieve their pain. This is the core of the practice: breathing in other's pain so they can be well and have more space to relax and open, and breathing out, sending them relaxation or whatever you feel would bring them relief and happiness. However, we often cannot do this practice because we come face to face with our own fear, our own resistance, anger, or whatever our personal pain, our personal stuckness happens to be at that moment.

At that point you can change the focus and begin to do tonglen for what you are feeling and for millions of others just like you who at that very moment of time are feeling exactly the same stuckness and misery. Maybe you are able to name your pain. You recognize it clearly as terror or revulsion or anger or wanting to get revenge. So you breathe in for all the people who are caught with that same emotion and you send out relief or whatever opens up the space for yourself and all those countless others. Maybe you can't name what you're feeling. But you can feel it —a tightness in the stomach, a heavy darkness or whatever. Just contact what you are feeling and breathe in, take it in —for all of us and send out relief to all of us.

People often say that this practice goes against the grain of how we usually hold ourselves together. Truthfully, this practice does go against the grain of wanting things on our own terms, of wanting it to work out for ourselves no matter what happens to the others. The practice dissolves the armor of self-protection we've tried so hard to create around ourselves. In Buddhist language one would say that it dissolves the fixation and clinging of ego.

Tonglen reverses the usual logic of avoiding suffering and seeking pleasure and, in the process, we become liberated from a very ancient prison of selfishness. We begin to feel love both for ourselves and others and also we begin to take care of ourselves and others. It awakens our compassion and it also introduces us to a far larger view of reality. It introduces us to the unlimited spaciousness that Buddhists call shunyata. By doing the practice, we begin to connect with the open dimension of our being. At first we experience this as things not being such a big deal or so solid as they seemed before.

Tonglen can be done for those who are ill, those who are dying or have just died, or for those that are in pain of any kind. It can be done either as a formal meditation practice or right on the spot at any time. For example, if you are out walking and you see someone in pain —right on the spot you can begin to breathe in their pain and send some out some relief. Or, more likely, you might see someone in pain and look away because it brings up your fear or anger; it brings up your resistance and confusion.

So on the spot you can do tonglen for all the people who are just like you, for everyone who wishes to be compassionate but instead is afraid, for everyone who wishes to be brave but instead is a coward.

Rather than beating yourself up, use your own stuckness as a stepping stone to understanding what people are up against all over the world.

Breathe in for all of us and breathe out for all of us.

Use what seems like poison as medicine. Use your personal suffering as the path to compassion for all beings.

The paradox of kindness

2011-03-13T14:10:00.000+11:00

ECGMA says: I know I have posted this before in one of my 10 active blogs but posting this again as a reminder of compassion in us all that 'be kind' is good but 'do kind' is better and encouraged.

The Power of Kindness

The year was 1863, on a spring day in Northern Pennsylvania. A poor boy was selling goods door to door to pay his way through school. He realized he had only a dime left, and that he was hungry. So he decided he would ask for a meal at the next house. However, he lost his nerve when a lovely young woman opened the door.

Instead of a meal, he asked for a drink of water. She thought he looked hungry and so she brought him a large glass of milk. He drank it slowly, and then asked, "How much do I owe you?"
"You don't owe me anything," she replied. "Mother has taught us never to accept pay for a kindness." He said, "Then I thank you from my heart." As Howard Kelly left that house, he not only felt stronger physically, but his faith in God and man was strengthened also. He had been ready to give up and quit.

Years later, that young woman became critically ill. The local doctors were baffled. They finally sent her to the big city, where they called in specialists to study her rare disease.

Dr. Howard Kelly was called in for the consultation. When he heard the name of the town she came from, he went down the hall of the hospital to her room. Dressed in his doctor's gown, he went in to see her. He recognized her at once. He went back to the consultation room determined to do his best to save her life. From that day, he gave special attention to the case.

After a long struggle, the battle was won. Dr. Kelly requested from the business office to pass the final billing to him for approval. He looked at it, then wrote something on the edge, and the bill was sent to her room. She feared to open it, for she was sure it would take the rest of her life to pay for it all. Finally, she looked, and something caught her attention on the side of the bill. She read these words:

"PAID IN FULL WITH ONE GLASS OF MILK..."
(Signed)
Dr. Howard Kelly*
__________________________
*Dr. Howard Kelly was a distinguished physician who, in 1895, founded the Johns Hopkins Division of Gynecologic Oncology at Johns Hopkins University. According to Dr. Kelly's biographer, Audrey Davis, the doctor was on a walking trip through Northern Pennsylvania one spring day when he stopped by a farm house for a drink of water.
~~~~~~
This beautiful story about Dr. Howard Kelly is one of many true stories found in The Power of Kindness. I love the quote from Leo Buscaglia:
"Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around."

Quite frankly, this is the part about kindness that we all understand. But it's the other part that many of us fail to grasp.

That is...practicing random acts of kindness can change our lives! And that is what this book is all about.

The great English writer, Aldous Huxley, was a pioneer in the study techniques to develop human potential. In a lecture toward the end of his life, he said this:
"People often ask me...what is the most effective technique for transforming their lives?"
He then said, "It's a little embarrassing that after years and years of research, my best answer is - just be a little kinder."

This is the paradox of the power of kindness. It doesn't feel powerful at all. I n fact, it almost feels too simple to be important. But as Huxley said, it is the #1 thing that can transform your life.

Kindness, more than anything, is an attitude that brings us back to the simplicity of being. It is also the one way you can be assured of making a difference with your life.

All the Best,

Mac Anderson
Founder, Simple Truths

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone

The Four Contemplations that Turn the Mind

2011-02-18T04:22:00.000+11:00

*If you received this via email, click on the link at "Posted by ECGMA to ECBuddhism Blog" to view the blogpost"*

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

Yongey Mingyur Dorje Rinpoche is the incarnation of the Great Terton Yongey Mingyur Dorje of the 17th century, who was foretold by Guru Rinpoche himself. The Terton Mingyur Dorje revealed practices on Dorje Drollo and Padmasambhava. He also revealed the Guru Yoga for the IInd Karmapa Karma Pakshi. Praised by the Xth Gyalwa Karmapa, Yongey Mingyur Dorje was renowned for turning back armies and bringing peace. His succeeding incarnations were all great meditation masters, scholars, and compassionate teachers.

In Nepal, the present VIIth Mingyur Dorje Rinpoche was born in 1976 as the son of Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, the holder of Chogyur Lingpa's Lineage. He was recognized as the Terton's incarnation by the XVIth Gyalwa Karmapa. Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche confirmed that he is also an emanation of Kangyur Rinpoche, a highly renown Nyingma lama. Since a young age, Mingyur Rinpoche would often go to caves and say he was off to meditate, even though at the time he never received any instructions.

At the age of 12, the VIIth Yongey Mingyur Dorje was officially enthroned by the XIIth Tai Situ Rinpoche; he has received transmissions and teachings from the Situ Rinpoche and is considered one of the principle representatives of the Tai Situpa. Rinpoche primarily resides at Palpung Sherab Ling Monastery, Situ Rinpoche's seat in North India. After having completed his first 3-year retreat at the age of 17, Mingyur Rinpoche was appointed retreat master of Sherab Ling Monastery.

Mingyur Rinpoche has also received transmissions and instructions from Lama Tashi Dorje, Adeu Rinpoche, and Saljay Rinpoche on Mahamudra. He was instructed in Dzogchen by his father Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche and Nyolshul Khenpo Rinpoche. Mingyur Rinpoche studied Buddhist philosophy at both the Dzongsar Shedra and Sherab Ling Shedra. From Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche he received the Kagyu Dam Ngak Dzo transmission.

Rinpoche has returned to Tibet and gave blessings at his monastery there. He also teaches in the West and is known for his ability to convey the Buddha's teachings in a skilful way. Recently, the Tai Situpa appointed Mingyur Rinpoche to be the head of Tergar Monastery. Mingyur Rinpoche oversaw the fundraising and construction of Tergar Institute at the sacred pilgrimage site of Bodhgaya. And now the Institute is the home of the Kagyu Monlam.

Mingyur Rinpoche tells us more about himself and his work in the radio broadcast you can hear at the end of this lecture.

The Four Contemplations that Turn the Mind

Introduction

One of the most fundamental teachings of the Buddha is the Four Noble Truths. In fact the Four Noble Truths constitute the main theme within which all the Buddhist teachings can be understood to fit.

First is the truth of suffering. Second is the origin or source of suffering. The third is the truth of the cessation of suffering. And the fourth is the truth of the spiritual path that leads to the cessation of suffering. We could think of the Four Noble Truths by way of the following analogy. The truth of suffering is like a disease. The truth of the origin or source of suffering is like identifying the causes of a disease. The truth of the cessation of suffering is analogous to the state of health or well-being when the disease has been cured. And the truth of the path that leads to the cessation of suffering is analogous to the medicine a person takes to become cured. In terms of daily spiritual practice, the truth of suffering concerns what we need to recognize to be the case. The truth of the origin of suffering concerns what we need to eliminate. The truth of the cessation of suffering concerns what we need to attain. And the truth of the path concerns what we need to rely upon in order to bring that about.

Using the analogy of being sick with a disease, you have to recognize that you are sick to begin with and before you can take any steps towards health. This is the stage of recognition or understanding of what has already gone wrong. If a person lets months go by and doesn't’t pay attention to the fact that he or she is not feeling very well, it could very well be that a disease is developing which is not being dealt with. That person may not be facing up to the fact of illness. However, if we have first recognized that we are sick and want to become healthy, to cure ourselves, we need to understand what the causes underlying that sickness are, because if we don’t identify them, we won’t get any better. And that’s analogous to the second truth, the truth of the source or origin of suffering, whereby you understand what it is you need to eliminate so that the cause does not give rise to the result, which is suffering.

Now let’s imagine that there is a leak in the roof of this building. It starts raining and here we are watching the rain dripping through the roof onto the floor, drop by drop, so that the lovely floor here is being filled with a bigger and bigger puddle of water. We would probably rush to mop up the water with a towel. But if we just keep mopping up the water as it drips through the roof, we won’t really solve the problem, will we? If we don’t look up at the ceiling and find out where the water is coming from, the rain will continue to drip onto the floor and we will be continuously mopping it up. We have to recognize the source of the leak, don’t we? The point here is that if we want to be free from suffering, we have to accurately identify the source of suffering.

I’ll give you another example. Suppose I was going to leave the room through that doorway and behind the curtain there was a large mountain lion that looks as if it could potentially attack and kill a human being, but it’s a stuffed animal. I don’t know that it’s stuffed and I don’t know that it’s there, but behind the curtain there’s a stuffed mountain lion and I’m going to go out through our past that curtain to leave the room. And because I don’t know that there’s anything there and quite cheerfully leave the room, humming a little song. And as soon as I get outside and see what’s there, I’m startled, because I see the seemingly ferocious beast about to pounce on me. As long as I don’t know it’s a stuffed mountain lion, I’d have the same kind of fear as if I’d met a live mountain lion. I’d have the same reaction in the immediate moment of seeing that stuffed animal. But if I knew that there was something harmless out there to begin with, I would just laugh - it wouldn't’t hold the same kind of fear for me, because of my previous knowledge about its nature. And the more stuffed mountain lions that were put there to try and make it even more threatening to me would only increase my certainty and fearlessness about the fact that that there was nothing at all to be afraid of.

Let me tell you another story. I once went to a wax museum where there are mannequins that look very real, like real people. There was a wax figure of H.H. the Dalai Lama in this particular wax museum. I was very impressed. It looked just like His Holiness. I was standing there marveling at how realistic this wax figure of His Holiness was when a couple came into the room, pointed at the wax figures, chatted away, and took pictures. Suddenly the woman came and stood next to me and said to her companion, “Take a picture of me.”

I thought to myself, What’s this all about? It sort of made me chuckle that she wanted her picture taken in this way. So I turned to her and smiled. She immediately shouted, “Ahhh!” and jumped away from me. Her companion was standing there holding the camera with his mouth wide open. So obviously they mistook me for one of these wax figures.

This story relates to the matter of recognition and identification that is associated with the first two of these four noble truths: the truth of suffering and the truth of the source of suffering. The whole point of identifying the truth of suffering as such is to become free of that suffering - through identifying it and then eliminating its causes. That’s the whole point of that level of practice. And with that kind of recognition and that kind of practice we can save ourselves an enormous amount of trouble. A lot of the problems and complications we face in life are quite meaningless, because they don’t need to happen in the first place. And so we can free ourselves from so much of that just by recognizing the truth of suffering for what it is and practicing in order to eliminate its causes.

The Four Contemplations

Now, the ordinary preliminary practices, the four contemplations that turn the mind, are to a great degree concerned with recognizing and identifying the truth of suffering and the truth of the source of suffering. These contemplations help us direct our mind away from activities that lead to suffering and toward activities that help us become free from suffering.

1) This Precious Human Birth

The first contemplation which turns the mind away from concerns and activities that lead to suffering is reflection on this precious human birth that is endowed with every freedom and asset. It is difficult to get and can be easily destroyed, so now is the time to make it meaningful. The main point here is that this human birth provides us with the best opportunity to become free from suffering. But we have to recognize this and understand what we need to do to achieve that freedom.

The cause for obtaining a precious human birth is abandoning negative activity and accumulating positive activity. Having achieved this precious human birth, what then are we free from?

We are free from eight types of negative rebirths or negative states: being born as a hell being, as a hungry ghost, as an animal, as a barbarian, as a long living god, as a person with wrong views or ignorance, or being born at a time when Buddha’s teachings are not present. If the Buddha’s teachings are not present or obtainable, then one is unable to learn the practices that lead to liberation. And also, being born deaf or mute, one can’t understand the teachings. To be free means freedom from these eight states which entail extreme suffering, either in this life or future lives.

The Buddha also said that the human being has power. In the Indian language the name for Buddha is Purusha. In English that means “powerful one, strong one, young one.” So we are all like precious jewels. We need to engender a joy of recognition that we have a precious body or opportunity which is like a wish-fulfilling jewel that is very difficult to obtain.

In our minds we experience many kinds of suffering, not only from this life but from previous lives, with the likelihood of considerable future suffering. And the main cause of suffering, the second Noble Truth, is grasping. So if we have a method to overcome or change grasping, we are able to turn the mind away from grasping which causes the suffering.

So how does grasping manifest in one’s mind? When we grasp to external objects, we have an idea or misconception that the happiness or the suffering that results from them are within the external objects. We hold the external objects to be the source of happiness. But this is not really the case. The object is not the source of happiness or suffering. Objects themselves are impermanent, a result of causes and conditions. The reality perceived by the grasping mind does not correspond to the reality of the objects as such.

2) Impermanence

A powerful remedy for grasping or fixation on objects as the source of happiness and unhappiness is meditation on impermanence, the second contemplation that turns the mind. There are two types of impermanence, subtle and gross, which can be demonstrated in the following way. Let’s look at this cup I am holding now. Is the cup I’m holding now the same cup as the one I used earlier in the day? We tend to perceive it as the same cup, right? That’s the subtle grasping to permanence, the erroneous perception that the cup has inherent self nature. But it’s really not the same cup. It has been changing all the time, with the passage of time. That is subtle, moment-to-moment impermanence.

An example of coarse grasping to permanence would be thinking, “This really is a cup. I like it. I want it.” And because of the typically greater intensity of coarse grasping there is usually greater suffering involved. As beginners, we can’t hope to eliminate all of the grasping to permanence straight away. That’s fine. The most important thing is to recognize the grasping. Simple recognition is very beneficial. As we continue to practice and also experience some understanding of emptiness, grasping can be pacified and eliminated.

3) Karma

The third contemplation that turns the mind is that of examining the consequences of our actions. The Buddha taught that in general all phenomena are interdependent. Our physical body and the external world all arise in the own mind. One’s body, one’s mind, the external phenomena of the world are all interdependent with each other. Karma, or causes and conditions with the attendant consequences, accumulates because of this interdependence.

For example, when you plant rice or some other crop in a field, there are many conditions and requirements to have a successful yield. First we need earth, then moisture, adequate warmth, air, and a seed. We also need the absence of creatures who might eat the seed. We need time for the crop to grow, and we need the farmer who plants the seed. If you gather all the causes together, the appropriate combination and context, you will obtain a positive result. Each of these different variables is interdependent with the others. If you don’t have earth, for example, the seed cannot be planted. If you don’t have air, the seed won’t grow. If there is no moisture, it won’t sprout. The fruition of the plant or flower is related to the causes; it is interdependent with the causes. Because of the causes, you get the fruit.

As far as we are concerned, activities that are based on negative mental states or intentions will result in suffering. If one accumulates negative actions, the result will not be happiness - it will be suffering. If you plant corn, you will not get a bean as a result. Likewise, positive intentions and actions yield positive results.

4) Samsara

The fourth thought that turns the mind is samsaric suffering. What is samsara?

Within samsara are the six realms of beings. The three lower realms include beings in the hell realms, hungry ghosts, and animals. Then we have what is called the three higher realms of humans, demigods, and gods. So when we talk about samsara, we are referring to these six realms of beings.

However, the Buddha taught that all the six realms of beings are actually projections of one’s own mind. In the ultimate sense, the six realms of beings do not really exist. But because of the relative truth based on interdependence, they appear. How do the six realms of beings arise? They arise from the six poisons that are in our mind. And the six poisons within our own mind, through interdependence, manifest outwardly as the six realms. Contemplating the suffering in these realms helps turn our minds toward the Dharma that can free us from suffering.

Let’s go back to the mountain lion behind the curtain. Suppose it weren't’t a stuffed mountain lion but a live one behind the curtain. How would that change the picture? Imagine this: It’s not a stuffed animal, and there’s no point in pretending there’s no problem. There is! What do you do now? Run away?

My point is that if there really were a mountain lion behind the curtain, and not a stuffed one, the way we dealt with the situation in the first example with the stuffed lion wouldn't’t work this time. You would need to apply greater intelligence and a different way of dealing with that other situation. By analogy, further intelligence is what we develop when we understand and experience shunyata, emptiness, and the nature of mind. That level of practice is a step further than what we referred to in the first case. When you have developed the view of emptiness and the experience of the very nature of mind and have brought it to its consummation, then you can deal with the real mountain lion more easily, so to speak. You will be able to deal directly with the causes of suffering. They will hold no fear for you, no threat. You will be able to fearlessly proceed along the path and utilize the means that lead to cessation of suffering.

Take the example of Milarepa. Fire couldn't’t burn him, water couldn't’t drown him. From his own perspective he was beyond birth and death. Why? Because fire, which is emptiness by its very nature. could not harm Milarepa who was emptiness himself. Emptiness couldn't’t harm emptiness.

The process of birth and the process of death all take place only within the context of the state of confusion. From the point of view of the ultimate nature of emptiness, birth and death are not inherently existent. So from the perspective of one who has realized emptiness, that individual’s perception is no longer involved in the process of birth and death. Thus we read accounts of Milarepa seeming to die in one area while someone else is receiving a teaching from him in another place. Or of Milarepa having already “died” and his corpse having been placed on the funeral pyre and set alight. When his disciple Rechungpa came late to the funeral, Milarepa was sitting up in the flames and singing a song of instruction to him. How can we account for these kinds of occurrences without understanding them from the point of view of the realization of emptiness?

It can bee seen here that the truth of the cessation of suffering ties in very directly with realization of emptiness. In the ultimate sense, the truth of the cessation of suffering concerns the experience of the very nature of mind itself, the ultimate nature of mind. And the means to bring about that realization constitutes the fourth Noble Truth, which is the truth of the path. And so there’s a structure here. The Four Noble Truths are interrelated and tie in with one another. They are not separate from one another, but are intimately connected. This is why the Four Noble Truths are a foundation for Buddhist practice and liberation.

Thank you very much.

New Year's Eve talk presented in Vancouver, 2003.

Radio broadcast on Aug. 10, 2007 in Hartford, Ct.: http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wnpr/local-wnpr-616210.mp3

May virtue increase!
HomeProgramsTeachingsLineageContact © 2007 Tergar Institute
(submitted to the website of Ven. Thrangu Rinpoche with explicit permission from Ven. Mingyur Rinpoche by Gaby Hollmann).

THE FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS

2011-02-18T04:14:00.000+11:00

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THE FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS

His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama

From the Second Dharma Celebration, November 5-8 1982, New Delhi, India.

Translated by Alex Berzin, clarified by Lama Zopa Rinpoche, edited by Nicholas Ribush.
First published by Tushita Mahayana Meditation Centre, New Delhi, 1982

When the great universal teacher Shakyamuni Buddha first spoke about the Dharma in the noble land of India, he taught the four noble truths: the truths of suffering, the cause of suffering, the cessation of suffering and the path to the cessation of suffering. Since many books contain discussions of the four noble truths in English, they (and the eightfold path as well) are very well known. These four are all-encompassing, including many things within them.
Speaking of the four noble truths in general, and considering the fact that all of us want to have happiness and to eliminate suffering, we can speak of an effect and a cause on both the disturbing side and the liberating side. The true sufferings and true causes of suffering are the effect and cause on the side of things that we do not want; the true cessation and the true paths are the effect and cause on the side of things that we desire.

The Truth of Suffering

We experience many different types of suffering. All are included in three categories: the suffering of suffering, the suffering of change and all-pervasive suffering.
      Suffering of suffering. This refers to things such as headaches and so forth. Even animals can recognize this kind of suffering and, like us, want to be free from it. Because beings have fear of and experience discomfort from these kinds of suffering, they engage in various activities to eliminate them.
      Suffering of change. This refers to situations where, for example, we are sitting very comfortably relaxed and at first everything is all right, but after a while we lose that feeling and get restless and uncomfortable.
      In certain countries, like India, we see a great deal of poverty and disease: these are sufferings of the first category. Everybody realizes that these are suffering conditions to be eliminated and improved upon. In many Western countries there may not be so much problem of poverty, but where material facilities have been highly developed there are different kinds of problems. At first we may be very happy, having overcome the problems that our forefathers faced, but as soon as we have solved certain problems, new ones arise. We have plenty of money, plenty of food and good shelter, but by over-estimating the value of these things we render them worthless. This sort of experience is the suffering of change.
      A very poor, underprivileged person might think that it would be wonderful to have an automobile or a television set, and should he acquire them, at the beginning he would feel very happy and satisfied. Now, if such happiness were something permanent, since he had the car and the TV set his happiness should remain forever. But it does not; it goes. After a few months he wants another kind of car; if he has the money he will buy another kind of television set. The old ones, the same objects that before gave him so much satisfaction, now cause dissatisfaction. That is the nature of change; that is the problem of the suffering of change.
      All-pervasive sufferings. Because it acts as the basis of the first two categories of suffering, the third is called, in Tibetan, kyab.pa.du.ched.kyi.dug.ngel (literally: the suffering of pervasive compounding). There may be those who, even in developed Western countries, want to be liberated from the second suffering, the suffering of change. Bored with the defiled feelings of happiness, some seek the feeling of equanimity: this may lead to rebirth in, of the three realms, the upper realm that has only the feeling of equanimity.
      Now, desiring liberation from the first two categories of suffering is not the principal motivation for seeking liberation (from cyclic existence); the Bhagawan Buddha taught that the root of the three sufferings is the third: all-pervasive suffering. Some people commit suicide; they seem to think that there is suffering simply because there is the human life, and that by cutting off the life there will be nothing. This third, all-pervasive suffering is under the control of karma and the disturbing mind. We can see this without having to think very deeply that this is under the control of the karma and disturbing mind of previous lives: anger and attachment arise just because we have these present aggregates. The aggregate of compounding phenomena is like a helper for us to generate karma and these disturbing minds; this is called ne.ngen.len (literally: taking a bad place). Because that which forms is related to taking the bad place of disturbing minds and is under their control, it supports our generating disturbing minds and keeps us from virtue. All our suffering can be traced back to these aggregates of attachment and clinging.
      Perhaps, when you realize that your aggregates are the cause of all your sufferings you might think that suicide is the way out. Well, if there were no continuity of mind, no future life, all right—if you had the courage you could finish yourself off. But, according to the Buddhist viewpoint, that's not the case; your consciousness will continue. Even if you take your own life, this life, you will have to take another body that again will be the basis of suffering. If you really want to get rid of all your suffering, all the difficulties you experience in your life, you have to get rid of the fundamental cause that gives rise to the aggregates that are the basis of all suffering. Killing yourself isn't going to solve your problems.
      Because this is the case, we must now investigate the cause of suffering: is there a cause or not? If there is, what kind of cause is it: a natural cause, which cannot be eliminated, or a cause that depends on its own cause and therefore can be? If it is a cause that can be overcome, is it possible for us to overcome it? Thus we come to the second noble truth: the truth of the cause of suffering.

The Truth of the Cause of Suffering

Strictly speaking, Buddhists maintain that then: is no external creator. According to Buddhists, a buddha is the highest being, but even a buddha does not have the power to create new life. So now, what is the cause of suffering?
      Generally, the ultimate cause is the mind; the mind that is influenced by bad thoughts such as anger, attachment, jealousy and so forth is the main cause of birth and all such other problems. However, there is no possibility to cut the mind, the stream of consciousness itself. Furthermore, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the deepest level of mind; it is simply influenced by the bad thoughts. Thus the question is whether or not we can fight and control anger, attachment and the other disturbing negative minds. If we can eradicate these, we shall be left with a pure mind that is free from the causes of suffering.
      This brings us to the disturbing negative minds, the delusions, which are mental factors. There are many different ways of presenting the discussion of the mind, but, in general, the mind itself is something that is merely clarity and awareness. When we speak of disturbing attitudes such as anger and attachment we have to see how they are able to affect and pollute the mind; what, in fact, is their nature. This, then, is the discussion of the cause of suffering.
      If we ask, "How do attachment and anger arise?" the answer will be that they are undoubtedly assisted by our grasping at things to be true and inherently real. When, for instance, we are angry with something, we feel that the object is out there, solid, true and unimputed, and that we ourselves are likewise something solid and findable. Before we get angry, the object appears ordinary, but when our mind is influenced by anger, the object looks ugly, completely repulsive, nauseating; something we want to get rid of immediately—it appears really to exist in that way: solid, independent and very unattractive. This appearance of truly ugly fuels our anger. Yet when we see the same object the next day, when our anger has subsided, it seems more beautiful than it did the day before; it's the same object but it doesn't seem as bad. This shows how anger and attachment are influenced by our grasping at things as being true and unimputed.
      Thus, the texts on the Middle Way (Madhyamaka) philosophy state that the root of all the disturbing negative minds is the grasping at true existence; that this assists them and brings them about; that the closed-minded ignorance that grasps at things as being inherently, truly real is the basic source of all our suffering. Based on this grasping at true existence we develop all kinds of disturbing negative minds and create a great deal of negative karma.
      It explains in the Madhyamokavatara (Entering the Middle Way), by the great Indian pandit Chandrakirti, that first there's attachment to the self, and then grasping at things and becoming attached to them as "mine." At first there is a very solid, independent I that is very big—bigger than anything else; this is the basis. From this gradually comes "this is mine, this is mine, this is mine." Then "we, we, we." Then, because of our taking this side, come "others, our enemies." Towards I or mine arises attachment; towards him, her and them we feel distant, and anger, jealousy and all those competitive feelings arise. Thus ultimately, the problem is this feeling of "I"—not the mere I, but the I with which we become obsessed. This gives rise to anger and irritation, along with harsh words and all the physical expressions of aversion and hatred. All these actions (of mind, speech and body) accumulate bad karma. Killing, cheating and all similar negative actions also result from such bad motivation. So, you see: the first stage is solely mental, the disturbing negative minds; in the second stage these negative minds express themselves in actions, karma. Immediately, the atmosphere is disturbed. With anger, for example, the atmosphere becomes tense, people feel uneasy. If someone gets furious, gentle people try to avoid him. Thus he, too, gets disturbed. And later, the person who got angry himself feels embarrassed and ashamed for having said all sorts of absurd things, whatever came into his mouth. When you get angry there's no room for logic or reason; you become literally mad. So later, when your mind has become normal again, you feel ashamed. There are no good points about anger and attachment; nothing good results from them. They may be difficult to control, but everybody can realize that there is nothing good about them. This is the second noble truth. Now the question arises whether or not these kinds of negative mind can be eliminated.

The Truth of the Cessation of Suffering

The root of all disturbing negative minds is our grasping at things as truly existent. Thus we have to investigate whether this grasping mind is correct or whether it is distorted and seeing things incorrectly. We can do this by investigating how the things it perceives actually exist. However, since this mind itself is incapable of seeing whether or not it apprehends objects correctly, we have to rely on another kind of mind. If, upon investigation, we discover many other, valid ways of looking at things and that all these contradict, or negate, the way that the mind that grasps at true existence perceives its objects, we can say that this mind does not see reality.
      Thus with the mind that can analyze the ultimate we must try to determine whether the mind that grasps at things as truly findable is correct or not. If it is correct, the analyzing mind should ultimately be able to find the grasped-at things. The great classics of the Chittamatra and, especially, the Madhyamika schools contain many lines of reasoning for carrying out such investigation. Following these, when you investigate to see whether the mind that grasps at things as inherently findable is correct or not, you find that it is not correct, that it is distorted—you cannot actually find the objects at which it grasps. Since this mind is deceived by its object it has to be eliminated.
      Thus, through investigation we find no valid support for the grasping mind but the support of logical reasoning for the mind that realizes that the grasping mind is invalid. In battle, the mind supported by logic will always be victorious over the mind that is not. The understanding that there is no such thing as truly findable existence constitutes the deep clear nature of mind; the mind that grasps at things as truly findable is superficial and fleeting.
      When we eliminate the disturbing negative minds, the cause of all suffering, we eliminate the sufferings as well. This is liberation, or the cessation of suffering: the third noble truth. Since it is possible to achieve this we must now look at the method. This brings us to the fourth noble truth.

The Truth of the Path to the Cessation of Suffering

When we speak of the paths common to the three vehicles of Buddhism—Hinayana, Mahayana and Vajrayana—we are referring to the thirty-seven factors that bring enlightenment. When we speak specifically of the paths of the bodhisattvas' vehicle (Mahayana) we are referring to the ten levels and the six transcendent perfections.
      We find the practice of the Hinayana path most commonly in Thailand, Burma, Sri Lanka and so forth. Here the practitioners are motivated by the desire to achieve liberation from their own suffering. Concerned for themselves alone, they practice the thirty-seven factors of enlightenment, which are related to the five paths: the four close placements of mindfulness, the four miraculous powers and the four pure abandonments (which are related to the path of accumulation); the five powers and the five forces (the path of application); the seven factors of enlightenment (the path of seeing); and the eightfold path (the path of meditation). They are able to manifest thereby a cessation of the disturbing negative minds alone, attaining nirvana, individual liberation. This is the path and the result of the Hinayana.
      The primary concern of followers of the Mahayana path is not merely their own liberation but the enlightenment of all sentient beings. With this motivation of bodhicitta—their hearts set on attaining enlightenment as the best means of helping others—these practitioners practice the six transcendent perfections and gradually progress through the ten bodhisattva levels until they have completely overcome both types of obscurations and attained the supreme enlightenment of buddhahood. This is the path and the result of the Mahayana.
      The essence of the practice of the six transcendent perfections is the unification of method and wisdom so that the two enlightened bodies—rupakaya and dharmakaya— can be attained. Since they can be attained only simultaneously, their causes must be cultivated simultaneously. Thus together we must build up a store of merit, as the cause of the rupakaya, the body of form, and a store of deep awareness, or insight, as the cause of the dharmakaya, the body of wisdom. In the Paramitayana, we practice method grasped by wisdom and wisdom grasped by method, but in the Vajrayana we practice method and wisdom as one in nature.

Wife-beating study shocks Buddhist Bhutan's 'happiness' chief

2011-02-15T20:41:00.000+11:00

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Wife-beating study shocks Buddhist Bhutan's 'happiness' chief

By Vishal Arora Religion News Service

Updated 4d 10h ago |

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By John MacDougall, AFP
Buddhism is the religion of Bhutan (shown in this 2002 photo of the 17th century fort that houses religious centers) but its peaceful message is contradicted in a new study that shows most Bhutanese women think their husbands have the right to beat them.

NEW DELHI — The government commissioner charged with promoting "Gross National Happiness" in the tiny Buddhist nation of Bhutan said he was deeply dismayed by a recent study that found a majority of Bhutanese women think their husbands have the right to beat them.

Karma Tshiteem, head of Bhutan's Commission for Gross National Happiness, called the findings "surprising" and "shocking," and said such attitudes are "totally inconsistent" with Buddhist teachings.

The survey by Bhutan's National Statistics Bureau found that roughly 70% of women say they deserved beating if they neglect children, argue with their partners, refuse sex or burn dinner, reported the Business Bhutan newspaper.

The acceptance of domestic violence is highest (90 percent) among the women in Paro, a picturesque valley that's home to Bhutan's most revered monastery, Takshang. The capital city of Thimphu scores the lowest acceptance rate, about 50%, for wife beating.

"Any form of violence is totally contradictory to the teachings of the Buddha," Tshiteem said, noting that Ahimsa (non-violence) "is a central tenet in Buddhist philosophy."

Mahayana Buddhism is the state religion of Bhutan, where a vast majority of the 700,000 citizens are Buddhist.

Gross National Happiness, which seeks to create an "enlightened" society in which government fosters the well-being of people as well as other "sentient beings," was first envisioned by Bhutan's former King Jigme Singye Wangchuck in 1972.

The landlocked Himalayan nation — about half the size of Indiana — peacefully transitioned to democracy after the king abdicated power in 2006, but Buddhist principles continue to shape the country's government.

Bhutan's Gross National Happiness index — as opposed to more traditional measures like a nation's economic activity — is based on nine components of happiness: psychological well-being, ecology, health, education, culture, living standards, time use, community vitality and good governance.

Because healthy family relationships are key to harmonious communities, "attitudes accepting such behavior, in these relationships or even outside, would be totally inconsistent" with Gross National Happiness, Tshiteem said.

Covering 15,000 households, the Bhutan Multiple Indicator Survey also found that more than one in four women believe HIV/AIDS is transmitted supernaturally; one in four children do not attend school and one in five children are involved in child labor.

Buddhism and the Blues

2011-02-10T03:24:00.001+11:00

Depression

Buddhism and the Blues

Buddhist psychology's core techniques of meditation and awareness may have much to offer ordinary Westerners.

By Hara Estroff Marano, published on October 01, 2003 - last reviewed on January 03, 2011

To most people Buddhism is an ancient Eastern religion, although a very special one. It has no god, it has no central creed or dogma and its primary goal is the expansion of consciousness, or awareness. But to the Dalai Lama, it's a highly refined tradition, perfected over the course of 2,500 years, of analyzing and investigating the inner world of the mind in order to transform mental states and promote happiness. "Whether you are a believer or not in the faith," the Dalai Lama told a conference of Buddhists and scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, you can use its time-honored techniques to voluntarily control your emotional state.
Yes, the Dalai Lama is the spiritual leader of over 300 million Buddhists worldwide. Yes, he is the head of the Tibetan government in exile. But in the spirit of Buddhism, the Dalai Lama has an inquiring mind and wishes to expand human knowledge to improve lives. At its core, Buddhism is a system of inquiry into the nature of what is.

He believes that psychology and neuroscience have gone about as far as they can go in understanding the mind and brain by measuring external reality. Now that inner reality—the nature of consciousness—is the pressing subject du jour, the sciences need to borrow from the knowledge base that Buddhism has long cultivated.

A comprehensive science of the mind requires a science of consciousness. Buddhism offers what MIT geneticist Eric Lander, Ph.D., called a "highly refined technology" of introspective practices that provide systematic access to subjective experience. Yet Buddhist psychology offers more than a method of investigation. Its core techniques of meditation and awareness may have much to offer ordinary Westerners, whose material comforts have not wiped out rampant emotional distress.

The Buddhist view of how the mind works is somewhat different from the traditional Western view. Western psychology pretty much holds to the belief that things like attention and emotion are fixed and immutable. Buddhism sees the components of the mind more as skills that can be trained. This view has increasing support from modern neuroscience, which is almost daily providing new evidence of the brain's capacity for change and growth.

Buddhism uses intelligence to control the emotions. Through meditative practices, awareness can be trained and focused on the contents of the mind to observe ongoing experience. Such techniques are of growing interest to Western psychologists, who increasingly see depression as a disorder of emotional mismanagement. In this view, attention is hijacked by negative events and then sets off a kind of chain reaction of negative feeling, thinking and behavior that has its own rapidity and inevitability.

Techniques of awareness permit the cultivation of self-control. They allow people to break the negative emotional chain reaction and head off the hopelessness and despair it leads to. By focusing attention, it is possible to monitor your environment, recognize a negative stimulus and act on it the instant it registers on awareness. While attention as traditional psychologists know it can be an exhausting mental activity, as Buddhists practice it it actually becomes a relaxing and effortless enterprise.

One way of meditation is to use breathing techniques in which you focus on the breathing and let any negative stimulus just go by—instead of bringing it into your working memory, where you are likely to sit and ruminate about it and thus amplify its negativity. It's a way of unlearning the self-defeating ways you somehow acquired of responding catastrophically to negative experiences.

Evidence increasingly suggests that meditation techniques are highly effective at helping people recover from a bout of depression and especially useful in preventing recurrences. Medication may be needed during the depths of an acute episode to jump-start brain systems, but at best "antidepressants are a halfway house," says Alan Wallace, Ph.D., head of the Santa Barbara Institute for the Study of Consciousness. But meditation retrains the mind to allow ongoing control over the content of thoughts and feelings.

Basic Meditation Exercise

Sit with an alert and relaxed body posture so that you feel relatively comfortable without moving. (You can sit either in a straight-back chair with your feet flat on the floor or on a thick, firm cushion three to six inches off the floor.)
Keep your back, neck and head vertically aligned, relax your shoulders and find a comfortable place for your hands (usually on your knees).
Bring your attention to your breathing. Observe the breath as it flows in and out. Give full attention to the feeling of the breath as it comes in and goes out. Whenever you find that your attention has moved elsewhere, just note it and let go and gently escort your attention back to the breath, back to the rising and falling of your own belly.
When you can maintain some continuity of attention on the breath, try expanding the field of your awareness "around" your belly to include a sense of your body as a whole.
Maintain this awareness of the body sitting and breathing, and, when the mind wanders, bring it back to sitting and breathing.

How to Practice Mindfulness Meditation

2011-02-07T16:56:00.001+11:00

How to Practice Mindfulness Meditation

By Karen Kissel Wegela, Ph.D.

Created Jan 19 2010 - 10:37am

Cultivating mindfulness is the key to overcoming suffering and recognizing natural wisdom: both our own and others'. How do we go about it?

In the Buddhist tradition and in Contemplative Psychotherapy training, we nurture mindfulness through the practice of sitting meditation. There are many different kinds of meditation. For example, some are designed to help us relax; others are meant to produce altered states of consciousness.

Mindfulness meditation is unique in that it is not directed toward getting us to be different from how we already are. Instead, it helps us become aware of what is already true moment by moment. We could say that it teaches us how to be unconditionally present; that is, it helps us be present with whatever is happening, no matter what it is.

You may wonder what good that is. After all, don't we want to suffer less? Aren't we interested in tuning in to this natural wisdom, this brilliant sanity, that we've heard about? Aren't those changes from how we already are?

Well, yes and no. On the one hand, suffering less and being more aware of our inherent wakefulness would be changes from how we experience ourselves right now, or at least most of the time. On the other hand, though, the way to uncover brilliant sanity and to alleviate suffering is by going more deeply into the present moment and into ourselves as we already are, not by trying to change what is already going on.

The sitting practice of mindfulness meditation gives us exactly this opportunity to become more present with ourselves just as we are. This, in turn, shows us glimpses of our inherent wisdom and teaches us how to stop perpetuating the unnecessary suffering that results from trying to escape the discomfort, and even pain, we inevitably experience as a consequence of simply being alive.

As we've seen in earlier blog postings, the man called the Buddha taught that the source of suffering is our attempt to escape from our direct experience. First, we cause ourselves suffering by trying to get away from pain and attempting to hang on to pleasure. Unfortunately, instead of quelling our suffering or perpetuating our happiness, this strategy has the opposite effect. Instead of making us happier, it causes us to suffer. Second, we cause suffering when we try to prop up a false identity usually known as ego. This, too, doesn't work and leads instead to suffering. (See earlier blog entries for more on these ideas.)

Mindfulness, paying precise, nonjudgmental attention to the details of our experience as it arises and subsides, doesn't reject anything. Instead of struggling to get away from experiences we find difficult, we practice being able to be with them. Equally, we bring mindfulness to pleasant experiences as well. Perhaps surprisingly, many times we have a hard time staying simply present with happiness. We turn it into something more familiar, like worrying that it won't last or trying to keep it from fading away.

When we are mindful, we show up for our lives; we don't miss them in being distracted or in wishing for things to be different. Instead, if something needs to be changed we are present enough to understand what needs to be done. Being mindful is not a substitute for actually participating in our lives and taking care of our own and others' needs. In fact, the more mindful we are, the more skillful we can be in compassionate action.

So, how do we actually practice mindfulness meditation? Once again, there are many different basic techniques. If you are interested in pursuing mindfulness within a particular tradition, one of the Buddhist ones or another, you might at some point wish to connect with a meditation instructor or take a class at a meditation center. Still, I can provide one form of basic instructions here so that you can begin.

There are three basic aspects worked with in this meditation technique: body, breath and thoughts. First, we relate with the body. This includes how we set up the environment. Since we use meditation in preparing ourselves to work with others, we use an eyes-open practice. That makes what we have in front of us a factor in our practice. Very few people can dedicate a whole room to their meditation practice, so they choose a corner of a room or a spot in their home where they can set up a quiet space.

If you like, you can make a small altar of some kind and decorate it with pictures or photos and sacred objects from your own tradition. You might want to light candles and incense as reminders of impermanence, but you can also have a plain wall in front of you. As long as you are not sitting in front of something distracting, like the TV or the desk where your computer lives, it doesn't matter too much what is in front of you.

Once you've picked your spot, you need to choose your seat. It's fine to sit either on a cushion on the floor or on a chair. If you choose a cushion you can use one designed for meditation practice like a zafu or gomden or you can use a folded up blanket or some other kind of cushion or low bench. The point is to have a seat that is stable and not wiggling around.

If you choose to sit on a chair, pick one that has a flat seat that doesn't tilt too much toward the back. If you are short, like me, you will want to put something on the floor for your feet to rest on, taking a little bit of weight. You don't want your legs dangling uncomfortably. If you are very tall, with long legs, make sure that your hips are higher than your knees-either on a chair or on a cushion. If you don't do that your back will start to hurt pretty quickly.

Okay, once you have your seat and your spot, go ahead and sit down. Take a posture that is upright but not rigid. The idea is to take a posture that reflects your inherent brilliant sanity, so one that is dignified but not stiff. The back is straight with the curve in the lower back that is naturally there. I was once told to imagine that my spine was a tree and to lean against it. It works for me; you can see if it works for you.

Sitting on a cushion, cross your legs comfortably in front of you. There's no need to contort yourself into an uncomfortable posture. Just simply cross your legs as you might have done as a child. Notice again that you want your hips higher than your knees. If necessary, add more height to your seat by folding up a blanket or towel.

Hands rest on the thighs, facing down. The eyes are somewhat open and the gaze rests gently on the floor in front of you about four to six feet away. If you are closer to the wall than that, let your gaze rest on the wall wherever it lands as if you were looking that distance in front. The gaze is not tightly focused. The idea is that whatever is in front of you is what's in front of you. Don't stare or do anything special with your gaze; just let it rest where you've set it.

Let your front be open and your back be strong.

Begin by just sitting in this posture for a few minutes in this environment. If your attention wanders away, just gently bring it back to your body and the environment. The key word here is "gently." Your mind WILL wander; that's part of what you will notice with your mindfulness: minds wander. When you notice that yours has wandered, come back again to body and environment.

The second part of the practice is working with the breath. In this practice rest your attention lightly (yes, lightly) on the breath. Feel it as it comes into your body and as it goes out. There's no special way to breathe in this technique. Once again, we are interested in how we already are, not how we are if we manipulate our breath. If you find that you are, in fact, controlling your breath in some way, just let it be that way. It's a bit tricky to try to be natural on purpose, so don't get caught up in worrying about whether your breath is natural or not. Just let it be however it is.

Again, sit for a few minutes with the posture and the environment and with your breath. In and out. In and out. Sometimes this is quantified as 25% of your attention on your breath. The idea isn't to get it "right," but instead to give you an idea that you're not channeling all of your attention tightly on to your breath. The rest of your attention will naturally be on your body and the environment.

Finally, the last part of the practice is working with thoughts. As you sit practicing, you will notice that thoughts arise. Sometimes there are a great many thoughts, overlapping one over the next: memories, plans for the future, fantasies, snatches of jingles from TV commercials. There may seem to be no gaps at all in which you can catch a glimpse of your breath. That's not uncommon, especially if you're new to meditation. Just notice what happens.

When you notice that you have gotten so caught up in thoughts that you have forgotten that you're sitting in the room, just gently bring yourself back to the breath. You can mentally say "thinking" to yourself as a further reminder of what just happened. This labeling is not a judgment; it is a neutral observation: "Thinking has just occurred." I like to think of it as a kind of weather report: "Thinking has just been observed in the vicinity."

How long should you practice? If you are new to it, try to sit for 10 to 15 minutes and gradually increase to 20 or 30 minutes. Eventually, you could extend it to 45 minutes or an hour. If you want to sit longer, you might want to learn how to do walking meditation as a break. We'll get to that in a later posting.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, remember that mindfulness meditation is about practicing being mindful of whatever happens. It is NOT about getting ourselves to stop thinking. Repeat: it is not about getting ourselves to stop thinking. It is easy to fall into believing that that is the goal. Many people have a mistaken idea that becoming blank is the goal of meditation. Perhaps it is in some approaches, but it's not in mindfulness meditation. So once again: if you find you are thinking (and you will), include it in what you notice. Don't try to get rid of your thoughts. It won't work and it's the opposite of the spirit of the practice. We are trying to be with ourselves as we already are, not trying to change ourselves into some preconceived notion of how we ought to be instead.

Happy sitting!

The Art of Now: Six Steps to Living in the Moment

2011-02-07T16:54:00.001+11:00

The Art of Now: Six Steps to Living in the Moment

by By Jay Dixit, published on November 01, 2008 - last reviewed on October 07, 2010

Created Oct 26 2008 - 11:00pm

A friend was walking in the desert when he found the telephone to God. The setting was Burning Man, an electronic arts and music festival for which 50,000 people descend on Black Rock City, Nevada, for eight days of "radical self-expression"—dancing, socializing, meditating, and debauchery.

A phone booth in the middle of the desert with a sign that said "Talk to God" was a surreal sight even at Burning Man. The idea was that you picked up the phone, and God—or someone claiming to be God—would be at the other end to ease your pain.

So when God came on the line asking how he could help, my friend was ready. "How can I live more in the moment?" he asked. Too often, he felt, the beautiful moments of his life were drowned out by a cacophony of self-consciousness and anxiety. What could he do to hush the buzzing of his mind?

"Breathe," replied a soothing male voice.

My friend flinched at the tired new-age mantra, then reminded himself to keep an open mind. When God talks, you listen.

"Whenever you feel anxious about your future or your past, just breathe," continued God. "Try it with me a few times right now. Breathe in... breathe out." And despite himself, my friend began to relax.

You Are Not Your Thoughts

Life unfolds in the present. But so often, we let the present slip away, allowing time to rush past unobserved and unseized, and squandering the precious seconds of our lives as we worry about the future and ruminate about what's past. "We're living in a world that contributes in a major way to mental fragmentation, disintegration, distraction, decoherence," says Buddhist scholar B. Alan Wallace. We're always doing something, and we allow little time to practice stillness and calm.

When we're at work, we fantasize about being on vacation; on vacation, we worry about the work piling up on our desks. We dwell on intrusive memories of the past or fret about what may or may not happen in the future. We don't appreciate the living present because our "monkey minds," as Buddhists call them, vault from thought to thought like monkeys swinging from tree to tree.

Most of us don't undertake our thoughts in awareness. Rather, our thoughts control us. "Ordinary thoughts course through our mind like a deafening waterfall," writes Jon Kabat-Zinn, the biomedical scientist who introduced meditation into mainstream medicine. In order to feel more in control of our minds and our lives, to find the sense of balance that eludes us, we need to step out of this current, to pause, and, as Kabat-Zinn puts it, to "rest in stillness—to stop doing and focus on just being."

We need to live more in the moment. Living in the moment—also called mindfulness—is a state of active, open, intentional attention on the present. When you become mindful, you realize that you are not your thoughts; you become an observer of your thoughts from moment to moment without judging them. Mindfulness involves being with your thoughts as they are, neither grasping at them nor pushing them away. Instead of letting your life go by without living it, you awaken to experience.

Cultivating a nonjudgmental awareness of the present bestows a host of benefits. Mindfulness reduces stress, boosts immune functioning, reduces chronic pain, lowers blood pressure, and helps patients cope with cancer. By alleviating stress, spending a few minutes a day actively focusing on living in the moment reduces the risk of heart disease. Mindfulness may even slow the progression of HIV.

Mindful people are happier, more exuberant, more empathetic, and more secure. They have higher self-esteem and are more accepting of their own weaknesses. Anchoring awareness in the here and now reduces the kinds of impulsivity and reactivity that underlie depression, binge eating, and attention problems. Mindful people can hear negative feedback without feeling threatened. They fight less with their romantic partners and are more accommodating and less defensive. As a result, mindful couples have more satisfying relationships.

Mindfulness is at the root of Buddhism, Taoism, and many Native-American traditions, not to mention yoga. It's why Thoreau went to Walden Pond; it's what Emerson and Whitman wrote about in their essays and poems.

"Everyone agrees it's important to live in the moment, but the problem is how," says Ellen Langer, a psychologist at Harvard and author of Mindfulness. "When people are not in the moment, they're not there to know that they're not there." Overriding the distraction reflex and awakening to the present takes intentionality and practice.

Living in the moment involves a profound paradox: You can't pursue it for its benefits. That's because the expectation of reward launches a future-oriented mindset, which subverts the entire process. Instead, you just have to trust that the rewards will come. There are many paths to mindfulness—and at the core of each is a paradox. Ironically, letting go of what you want is the only way to get it. Here are a few tricks to help you along.

1: To improve your performance, stop thinking about it (unselfconsciousness).

I've never felt comfortable on a dance floor. My movements feel awkward. I feel like people are judging me. I never know what to do with my arms. I want to let go, but I can't, because I know I look ridiculous.

"Loosen up, no one's watching you," people always say. "Everyone's too busy worrying about themselves." So how come they always make fun of my dancing the next day?

The dance world has a term for people like me: "absolute beginner." Which is why my dance teacher, Jessica Hayden, the owner of Shockra Studio in Manhattan, started at the beginning, sitting me down on a bench and having me tap my feet to the beat as Jay-Z thumped away in the background. We spent the rest of the class doing "isolations"—moving just our shoulders, ribs, or hips—to build "body awareness."

But even more important than body awareness, Hayden said, was present-moment awareness. "Be right here right now!" she'd say. "Just let go and let yourself be in the moment."

That's the first paradox of living in the moment: Thinking too hard about what you're doing actually makes you do worse. If you're in a situation that makes you anxious—giving a speech, introducing yourself to a stranger, dancing—focusing on your anxiety tends to heighten it. "When I say, 'be here with me now,' I mean don't zone out or get too in-your-head—instead, follow my energy, my movements," says Hayden. "Focus less on what's going on in your mind and more on what's going on in the room, less on your mental chatter and more on yourself as part of something." To be most myself, I needed to focus on things outside myself, like the music or the people around me.

Indeed, mindfulness blurs the line between self and other, explains Michael Kernis, a psychologist at the University of Georgia. "When people are mindful, they're more likely to experience themselves as part of humanity, as part of a greater universe." That's why highly mindful people such as Buddhist monks talk about being "one with everything."

By reducing self-consciousness, mindfulness allows you to witness the passing drama of feelings, social pressures, even of being esteemed or disparaged by others without taking their evaluations personally, explain Richard Ryan and K. W. Brown of the University of Rochester. When you focus on your immediate experience without attaching it to your self-esteem, unpleasant events like social rejection—or your so-called friends making fun of your dancing—seem less threatening.

Focusing on the present moment also forces you to stop overthinking. "Being present-minded takes away some of that self-evaluation and getting lost in your mind—and in the mind is where we make the evaluations that beat us up," says Stephen Schueller, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania. Instead of getting stuck in your head and worrying, you can let yourself go.

2: To avoid worrying about the future, focus on the present (savoring).

In her memoir Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert writes about a friend who, whenever she sees a beautiful place, exclaims in a near panic, "It's so beautiful here! I want to come back here someday!" "It takes all my persuasive powers," writes Gilbert, "to try to convince her that she is already here."

Often, we're so trapped in thoughts of the future or the past that we forget to experience, let alone enjoy, what's happening right now. We sip coffee and think, "This is not as good as what I had last week." We eat a cookie and think, "I hope I don't run out of cookies."

Instead, relish or luxuriate in whatever you're doing at the present moment—what psychologists call savoring. "This could be while you're eating a pastry, taking a shower, or basking in the sun. You could be savoring a success or savoring music," explains Sonja Lyubomirsky, a psychologist at the University of California at Riverside and author of The How of Happiness. "Usually it involves your senses."

When subjects in a study took a few minutes each day to actively savor something they usually hurried through—eating a meal, drinking a cup of tea, walking to the bus—they began experiencing more joy, happiness, and other positive emotions, and fewer depressive symptoms, Schueller found.

Why does living in the moment make people happier—not just at the moment they're tasting molten chocolate pooling on their tongue, but lastingly? Because most negative thoughts concern the past or the future. As Mark Twain said, "I have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened." The hallmark of depression and anxiety is catastrophizing—worrying about something that hasn't happened yet and might not happen at all. Worry, by its very nature, means thinking about the future—and if you hoist yourself into awareness of the present moment, worrying melts away.

The flip side of worrying is ruminating, thinking bleakly about events in the past. And again, if you press your focus into the now, rumination ceases. Savoring forces you into the present, so you can't worry about things that aren't there.

3: If you want a future with your significant other, inhabit the present (breathe).

Living consciously with alert interest has a powerful effect on interpersonal life. Mindfulness actually inoculates people against aggressive impulses, say Whitney Heppner and Michael Kernis of the University of Georgia. In a study they conducted, each subject was told that other subjects were forming a group—and taking a vote on whether she could join. Five minutes later, the experimenter announced the results—either the subject had gotten the least number of votes and been rejected or she'd been accepted. Beforehand, half the subjects had undergone a mindfulness exercise in which each slowly ate a raisin, savoring its taste and texture and focusing on each sensation.

Later, in what they thought was a separate experiment, subjects had the opportunity to deliver a painful blast of noise to another person. Among subjects who hadn't eaten the raisin, those who were told they'd been rejected by the group became aggressive, inflicting long and painful sonic blasts without provocation. Stung by social rejection, they took it out on other people.

But among those who'd eaten the raisin first, it didn't matter whether they'd been ostracized or embraced. Either way, they were serene and unwilling to inflict pain on others—exactly like those who were given word of social acceptance.

How does being in the moment make you less aggressive? "Mindfulness decreases ego involvement," explains Kernis. "So people are less likely to link their self-esteem to events and more likely to take things at face value." Mindfulness also makes people feel more connected to other people—that empathic feeling of being "at one with the universe."

Mindfulness boosts your awareness of how you interpret and react to what's happening in your mind. It increases the gap between emotional impulse and action, allowing you to do what Buddhists call recognizing the spark before the flame. Focusing on the present reboots your mind so you can respond thoughtfully rather than automatically. Instead of lashing out in anger, backing down in fear, or mindlessly indulging a passing craving, you get the opportunity to say to yourself, "This is the emotion I'm feeling. How should I respond?"

Mindfulness increases self-control; since you're not getting thrown by threats to your self-esteem, you're better able to regulate your behavior. That's the other irony: Inhabiting your own mind more fully has a powerful effect on your interactions with others.

Of course, during a flare-up with your significant other it's rarely practical to duck out and savor a raisin. But there's a simple exercise you can do anywhere, anytime to induce mindfulness: Breathe. As it turns out, the advice my friend got in the desert was spot-on. There's no better way to bring yourself into the present moment than to focus on your breathing. Because you're placing your awareness on what's happening right now, you propel yourself powerfully into the present moment. For many, focusing on the breath is the preferred method of orienting themselves to the now—not because the breath has some magical property, but because it's always there with you.

4: To make the most of time, lose track of it (flow).

Perhaps the most complete way of living in the moment is the state of total absorption psychologists call flow. Flow occurs when you're so engrossed in a task that you lose track of everything else around you. Flow embodies an apparent paradox: How can you be living in the moment if you're not even aware of the moment? The depth of engagement absorbs you powerfully, keeping attention so focused that distractions cannot penetrate. You focus so intensely on what you're doing that you're unaware of the passage of time. Hours can pass without you noticing.

Flow is an elusive state. As with romance or sleep, you can't just will yourself into it—all you can do is set the stage, creating the optimal conditions for it to occur.

The first requirement for flow is to set a goal that's challenging but not unattainable—something you have to marshal your resources and stretch yourself to achieve. The task should be matched to your ability level—not so difficult that you'll feel stressed, but not so easy that you'll get bored. In flow, you're firing on all cylinders to rise to a challenge.

To set the stage for flow, goals need to be clearly defined so that you always know your next step. "It could be playing the next bar in a scroll of music, or finding the next foothold if you're a rock climber, or turning the page if you're reading a good novel," says Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the psychologist who first defined the concept of flow. "At the same time, you're kind of anticipating."

You also need to set up the task in such a way that you receive direct and immediate feedback; with your successes and failures apparent, you can seamlessly adjust your behavior. A climber on the mountain knows immediately if his foothold is secure; a pianist knows instantly when she's played the wrong note.

As your attentional focus narrows, self-consciousness evaporates. You feel as if your awareness merges with the action you're performing. You feel a sense of personal mastery over the situation, and the activity is so intrinsically rewarding that although the task is difficult, action feels effortless.

5: If something is bothering you, move toward it rather than away from it (acceptance).

We all have pain in our lives, whether it's the ex we still long for, the jackhammer snarling across the street, or the sudden wave of anxiety when we get up to give a speech. If we let them, such irritants can distract us from the enjoyment of life. Paradoxically, the obvious response—focusing on the problem in order to combat and overcome it—often makes it worse, argues Stephen Hayes, a psychologist at the University of Nevada.

The mind's natural tendency when faced with pain is to attempt to avoid it—by trying to resist unpleasant thoughts, feelings, and sensations. When we lose a love, for instance, we fight our feelings of heartbreak. As we get older, we work feverishly to recapture our youth. When we're sitting in the dentist's chair waiting for a painful root canal, we wish we were anywhere but there. But in many cases, negative feelings and situations can't be avoided—and resisting them only magnifies the pain.

The problem is we have not just primary emotions but also secondary ones—emotions about other emotions. We get stressed out and then think, "I wish I weren't so stressed out." The primary emotion is stress over your workload. The secondary emotion is feeling, "I hate being stressed."

It doesn't have to be this way. The solution is acceptance—letting the emotion be there. That is, being open to the way things are in each moment without trying to manipulate or change the experience—without judging it, clinging to it, or pushing it away. The present moment can only be as it is. Trying to change it only frustrates and exhausts you. Acceptance relieves you of this needless extra suffering.

Suppose you've just broken up with your girlfriend or boyfriend; you're heartbroken, overwhelmed by feelings of sadness and longing. You could try to fight these feelings, essentially saying, "I hate feeling this way; I need to make this feeling go away." But by focusing on the pain—being sad about being sad—you only prolong the sadness. You do yourself a favor by accepting your feelings, saying instead, "I've just had a breakup. Feelings of loss are normal and natural. It's OK for me to feel this way."

Acceptance of an unpleasant state doesn't mean you don't have goals for the future. It just means you accept that certain things are beyond your control. The sadness, stress, pain, or anger is there whether you like it or not. Better to embrace the feeling as it is.

Nor does acceptance mean you have to like what's happening. "Acceptance of the present moment has nothing to do with resignation," writes Kabat-Zinn. "Acceptance doesn't tell you what to do. What happens next, what you choose to do; that has to come out of your understanding of this moment."

If you feel anxiety, for instance, you can accept the feeling, label it as anxiety—then direct your attention to something else instead. You watch your thoughts, perceptions, and emotions flit through your mind without getting involved. Thoughts are just thoughts. You don't have to believe them and you don't have to do what they say.

6: Know that you don't know (engagement).

You've probably had the experience of driving along a highway only to suddenly realize you have no memory or awareness of the previous 15 minutes. Maybe you even missed your exit. You just zoned out; you were somewhere else, and it's as if you've suddenly woken up at the wheel. Or maybe it happens when you're reading a book: "I know I just read that page, but I have no idea what it said."

These autopilot moments are what Harvard's Ellen Langer calls mindlessness—times when you're so lost in your thoughts that you aren't aware of your present experience. As a result, life passes you by without registering on you. The best way to avoid such blackouts, Langer says, is to develop the habit of always noticing new things in whatever situation you're in. That process creates engagement with the present moment and releases a cascade of other benefits. Noticing new things puts you emphatically in the here and now.

We become mindless, Langer explains, because once we think we know something, we stop paying attention to it. We go about our morning commute in a haze because we've trod the same route a hundred times before. But if we see the world with fresh eyes, we realize almost everything is different each time—the pattern of light on the buildings, the faces of the people, even the sensations and feelings we experience along the way. Noticing imbues each moment with a new, fresh quality. Some people have termed this "beginner's mind."

By acquiring the habit of noticing new things, says Langer, we recognize that the world is actually changing constantly. We really don't know how the espresso is going to taste or how the commute will be—or at least, we're not sure.

Orchestra musicians who are instructed to make their performance new in subtle ways not only enjoy themselves more but audiences actually prefer those performances. "When we're there at the moment, making it new, it leaves an imprint in the music we play, the things we write, the art we create, in everything we do," says Langer. "Once you recognize that you don't know the things you've always taken for granted, you set out of the house quite differently. It becomes an adventure in noticing—and the more you notice, the more you see." And the more excitement you feel.

Don't Just Do Something, Sit There

Living a consistently mindful life takes effort. But mindfulness itself is easy. "People set the goal of being mindful for the next 20 minutes or the next two weeks, then they think mindfulness is difficult because they have the wrong yardstick," says Jay Winner, a California-based family physician and author of Take the Stress out of Your Life. "The correct yardstick is just for this moment."

Mindfulness is the only intentional, systematic activity that is not about trying to improve yourself or get anywhere else, explains Kabat-Zinn. It is simply a matter of realizing where you already are. A cartoon from The New Yorker sums it up: Two monks are sitting side by side, meditating. The younger one is giving the older one a quizzical look, to which the older one responds, "Nothing happens next. This is it."

You can become mindful at any moment just by paying attention to your immediate experience. You can do it right now. What's happening this instant? Think of yourself as an eternal witness, and just observe the moment. What do you see, hear, smell? It doesn't matter how it feels—pleasant or unpleasant, good or bad—you roll with it because it's what's present; you're not judging it. And if you notice your mind wandering, bring yourself back. Just say to yourself, "Now. Now. Now."

Here's the most fundamental paradox of all: Mindfulness isn't a goal, because goals are about the future, but you do have to set the intention of paying attention to what's happening at the present moment. As you read the words printed on this page, as your eyes distinguish the black squiggles on white paper, as you feel gravity anchoring you to the planet, wake up. Become aware of being alive. And breathe. As you draw your next breath, focus on the rise of your abdomen on the in-breath, the stream of heat through your nostrils on the out-breath. If you're aware of that feeling right now, as you're reading this, you're living in the moment. Nothing happens next. It's not a destination. This is it. You're already there.