I did not make this I have no idea who did but it is getting harder to find each time I look for it, so i decided to put it here for the future. This is a great comic rendition of the Death Bardos. Taken from the Bardo Thodol.
The problem with shiny is that it’s usually sharp. When I was a young boy around Christmas I became enamored with one of the glass ornaments on the tree. It was one of those thin glass red foiled ones. I ran up and grabbed it off the tree and in my excitement, and, zeal of the moment I grasped it very tightly. The sound was really what I remember most like thin ice cracking on a lake with that high pitch “Tink” sound. The next thing I noticed was the blood, pain, and, the shattered ornament in my hand. I have the scar to this day. It cut me deep in the fleshy part of my hand. The significance of the lesson was lost on me at that young age.
As I got older there was many more shiny distraction, Beautiful people, and things in my life I destroyed by grasping too hard at them. The lessons where all lost on me then, as well. It took me many years to realize the truth of attachment, grasping, and, the suffering that it causes in our lives. It took me many years to even see, that I needed to work on balance in my life.
Finally twenty seven years into life I had broken, crushed , and destroyed just about all the shiny in my life there was no shiny left for me to grasp. I was very fortunate to have had such a great opportunity to change my relationship to life and to walk a spiritual path. I am grateful to have had such great teachers that have taught me that the root of all suffering is attachment.
One of the greatest and worst things about this samsara is that all things are impermanent and depending on my relationship to this fact, it can either be a freeing truth or a bone crushing juggernaut of suffering, It is all my choice . I have the choice to train my mind, I have the choice to live the eightfold path today. I rarely grasp tight enough to break things now ( and for this I am extremely grateful ) but grasping and attachment will always be something I have to work on, I think that may be the point who knows. What I do know is that when I am practicing equanimity, I can serve the greater good in any situation without much work on my part. The work was already put in through daily practice before the causes and conditions came together. It is through a daily meditation practice That I am able to compassionately and skillfully react to situations in my life.
Non attachment is a hard practice and I am not so sure I am any good at it but I try and each time I get a little better.
I was fortunate enough to be invited to Monroe prison for their yearly prison sangha celebration called Buddhafest.
As I sat and interacted with the inmates while watching their loud and fun antics, I was filled with great joy. The joy I felt was brought on by the fact that this was the great truth about the Dharma in action, right there in front of me. Prisons, no prisons, walls, no walls – we are all somehow trapped in this samsara. If these men can find freedom from suffering, even behind bars, and under watch of guards, then we all can find freedom from suffering right here and now, wherever we are. This is the great truth of the Dharma. We can be free from suffering no matter what.
The Buddha taught only two things: the origins of suffering, and the cessation from suffering. We don’t have to be a prisoner to our emotions. We don’t have to flitter in the wind with every mood. This is true freedom.
The path is there, well laid out for us. The eightfold path is the path to true liberation from samsara – with or without enlightenment. Simply trying to follow the path will ease suffering in our life. We are all so lucky to have not only achieved precious human birth, but to also to have had great contact with the Dharma.
It is moments like this that propel me forward on the path. I know the Dharma works. I know it can end suffering in my life. All I have to do is the work.
So what are we going to do? I see people all the time on Facebook and other social networks, posting about this political thing, or that political thing. It seems like everyone is putting out a call to arms for one thing or another. But what are we really doing?
We need to get off our asses (my ass included). We need to get off the computer if we are ever going to enact any real change in the here and now. Sitting around and posting pictures of kittens, or angry political rants scrawled over a picture of a flag, a country, or a horrid picture of dead soldiers in a poignant angry looking font is not enacting change in any way. Most people (myself included) just scroll past that shit nowadays anyway. As a society, we are assaulted daily with so much visual and audio stimulus. It’s almost impossible to wade through the sea of useless crap that we are consuming in the form of media to actually get a point through.
So what are we going to do? I often wonder if there is anything we can do. Maybe if we start at a small local level, because the system we have in place is much too large to take head on. We need to start with ourselves. You know, like Gandhi said, “Be the change you wish to see.” Maybe we need to pull our heads out of our narcissistic asses and “do” something – actually go out and do something in the real world. Like volunteer at a hospice, take Dharma into the prisons, or a meeting, or work with at-risk youth so they have a decent example in their life.
Growing up the way I did left a lack of good examples in my life. If it had not been for the handful of people that tried to help, I would not be here today. The funny thing about that is at the time, I did not respond in any positive fashion to their attempts to help me, or to their lead and example. I remained that shit-ass-know-it-all kid with no hope of a decent life. What they did do was plant a seed; a seed that, when the causes and conditions where right, grew to be the firmly rooted tree I held on to as my soul weathered the storm of my own creation.
As a direct result of these people who tried to show me a better way, when the time came I was able to use the tools they had given me so many years before. The soil of my heart was finally tilled enough for these seeds to take root. Now it has become my lifelong practice to continue to nurture and fertilize this soil. The seeds will only grow if I continue to give them what they need – good and bad seeds alike. So it is also my practice to only nurture the good seeds, and not the bad.
It is a process that cannot be rushed. It’s a lifelong daily practice. Day in and day out, I have to continue to do what is needed to nurture my heart, to train the mind in the great way. Even when I do not see the results I “think” I should be seeing, I must still work, and I must still practice. I do not have control over how fast the seeds will grow, nor do I have control over what fruit they will bear. I only have control over what I do to help that seed bear fruit.
From this example, I can see how I might change things slowly. I can do whatever I can to help all sentient beings; it is through this action that I myself may plant some seeds that will bear the fruit of change.
On the last day of retreat with Noah Levine, he had the practitioners write something about our experience. This is what I wrote.
Day 1: Man, trees are really fucking tall!
Day 2: In this moment, it’s like this.
Day 3: Wait! It took seven years of sobriety, three years of daily meditation practice, two years of therapy, and three days of intensive meditation to figure that out? Really?!!
Day 4: Am I having a heart attack?
Day 5: My body knows what to do, I should trust it.
Day 6: It will never cease to amaze me how you can come to love and appreciate twenty five people – most of whom you have never met – in the span of six days without saying a single word to them.
Right Action in the Eightfold Path is the second ethical principle. It pertains to the body as a means of expression, as it really involves the body’s actions. The idea of practicing the Five Precepts in our daily life comes back to Right View. If we have Right View, and can see the correctness of the Four Noble Truths in samsara; the Five Precepts will then come naturally. We will want to follow them, knowing that they will lessen suffering for ourselves and others we come in contact with.
The First Precept is to abstain from harming sentient beings, particularly abstaining from taking life. Suicide falls into this category, as we are no less important a sentient being as any other around us. This brings up often the question of eating meat. The Buddha and his disciples where not vegetarians – they ate what was offered to them when they went on alms rounds. If meat was put in their bowl, they ate it. The exception to this is if the animal had been killed specifically for them; they would not eat it, as the animal would have lived if it had not been sacrificed to feed them.
The Second Precept is don’t take what is not freely given. So, do not steal – but more so than that, do not manipulate others to get what you want. Do not take it if it is not yours, whether you do it by force or by guile. Manipulating others to give you something means what you received was not freely given to you. Guilt, emotional blackmail, harassment, threats – they all fall into this category. It is not just the action of physically taking something which is not yours; it is also all the actions and mindstates that lead to you getting what is not offered.
The Third Precept is to abstain from sexual misconduct. Do not hurt yourself or others with your sexual actions. Lying or leading others to believe you feel a certain way in order to bed them, cheating on a significant other, and having sexual activities with a person who is in a committed relationship are all examples of sexual misconduct. The harm done by this one act can be immeasurable; not only do we cause suffering to the significant other, but to the children and other family members as well. The ripples and impact from this action can have lasting harmful effects, all due to one selfish act. The harm we can do ourselves with sexual misconduct can be grave as well. The guilt, shame, and general self-hatred that can be kicked off by heedlessness is only the beginning of our problems. If we act with reckless abandon with our sexual energies, it can very well mean death to others and ourselves.
The Fourth Precept is to refrain from false speech. Do not lie. This idea of honesty pervades all the precepts. It goes further than just not lying; sometimes it can mean having the wisdom to know whether to speak at all. I often like to run what I am going to say through two criteria: Is it true? and Is it useful? If what I am thinking meets both of those, then I will open my mouth. Harsh speech is to be refrained from as well. As speech is our primary form of interpersonal communication, it has the capacity to be extremely harmful when we are not mindful of what and how we say things.
The Fifth Precept is to abstain from intoxicating drinks and drugs causing heedlessness. I found this one to be very important on my path. For me, when this precept was broken, I would soon break all the others due to my heedlessness. It’s impossible for me to be mindful of myself and others when I am intoxicated. Heedlessness, i.e. being unmindful, makes the practice of Right Action impossible.
Right Action is the practice of reacting compassionately and kindly to others, to be honest and respect others belongings, to keep our sexual relationships harmless to other and ourselves.
I was recently asked how I have integrated my Buddhism with an idea of a higher power. The question was hard for me to answer. I have an idea of how this works in my life, a sort of abstract feeling of how it all goes together and it works well for me. However, I could not explain it.
Having an engineering background, I am of a firm belief that if you cannot fully explain and teach something in terms others can easily understand, then you do not have a full understanding of it yourself. This has sat with me the last few days.
When I first started this path I’m on, things were so different. I was new in recovery, scared, and had no real idea of what a higher power was, or what it was to me. I had my mother’s god, the one taught to me when growing up; he was loving and caring, but a bit vengeful when the rules were not followed and there was lots of hellfire and brimstone. Having broken so many of those rules, I had very little hope this god would help me. Lucky for me, this was wrong.
As my practice in meditation and the Dharma grew stronger, I started hearing more and more about this concept of being born with Buddha nature. That is, I am and always have been complete and have all I need inside. I just have to do the work to clear away the delusion and obscurations of that true nature. This however left me with a quandary: how am I supposed to look to myself in this path, when I was taught in order to stay sober I had to look to a higher power outside of myself?
This sat heavy with me for a long while. I spoke with others in sangha about this question, and was told to sit in meditation with it and the answer would come. The more I sat with the question, the more I realized the idea of separateness from a higher power is a delusion of the dualistic mind. There is no self! My answer was in the concept of Not-Self. If there is no separation of my mind, or the guru’s mind, or the mind of enlightened ones – or even the mind of all the Buddhas who have come before – then there is no separation of me from my higher power. There is no separation between me and you, just clouded perception; only an incorrect view.
This frozen view of self, this idea of a separate ego, it’s as if my mind is an iceberg floating in the ocean. Separate but the same. One day, one lifetime, I will have purified my view enough that this iceberg will melt and merge back into the sea. The sea was a part of me the whole time, only held separate through a frozen view. The true nature of the mind will be revealed to me; no more separation, no more frozen view.
Knowing this has allowed me to have an even greater communion with my higher power. I have a clearer path to understand what my higher power’s will for me is on a daily basis. I no longer feel the need to name or make separate my higher power, for it is in everything and everyone. I stopped looking for where it is, because nowadays I can no longer find where it is not. From the person going slow in the fast lane, to H.E. Garchen Rinpoche. All precious teachers, all ways, my higher power is speaking to me, teaching me, showing me its will for me on a daily, hourly, and minutely basis.
Should I forget, should I lose skillful view, I have only to stop, close my eyes, and count my breath. When I come back to the present moment, there is my higher power waiting patiently and lovingly for me to return. It never leaves, because it’s never gone. It is in everything and everyone including me. I have only to stop, be mindful and skillful in this moment for my view to adjust and my will to align with the will of the Dharma. That is, for me, to be of maximum service to all sentient beings.
I never truly knew how I felt about myself until I spent six days in silence with complete strangers. It’s the faces you see. They become mirrors of your own ill will towards yourself. You tend to project your inner self hatred onto them. Next thing you know the story in your mind is so fantastic it even comes complete with a lynch mob.
Of course I have no real basis of comparison. For all I know it may be the same if you truly love yourself. I don’t know? I would like to think it is a series of warm loving feelings over and over. Every time someone passes you, another feeling of warm loving kindness. Who knows?
What I do know is, that is what I would like others to experience when they pass me.
What if nothing is wrong ? This sticks with me. Resonates within me often when I meditate. What if nothing really is wrong? What if it just is? That is in fact the truth nothing is wrong until I judge it. Until I label it as such. Inherently things are not wrong or right they just are. It is not until my mind comes in and starts throwing labels and judgments around on everything it comes in contact with does it become anything other then what it is in that moment.
Through my attachment and aversion to what is happening in the moment I let the moment slip away. I judge as wrong or right or pleasant and unpleasant. In that one label my mind goes into a whole pattern of reactions to the label I have just put on the situation. A pattern worn deep into the groves of my mind by constant habitual reactions. If it is unpleasant aversion kicks in I want it away, I want to pretend it is not there or not happening. If it is pleasant I want more and more and more till either it makes me sick, hurts me, I hurt it, or I finally get bored with it and move on to the next pleasant addiction.
the Constant habitual cycles of my mind are what my meditation helps me with. The more I further my practice the more room I get between thought and reaction. It is in that moment if am lucky enough, I get to respond in a skillful mindful way.
Vinny Ferraro has a mantra I learned early on in meditation. It is “nothing to do , nowhere to go, no one to be, Nothing is wrong . ” This mantra to me sums up everything I need to here in relation to my constant Attachment and aversion.
Nothing to do. In this moment I have nothing else to do but what I am doing in this moment. If I am mindful in this moment and not worried about what I am going to do next I can devote my full attention to experiencing whatever there is to experience in that one moment. I will not be a sleep I will be Awake and present for whatever comes my way.
Nowhere to go. I am constantly in a rush and for no reason most of the time I really have nowhere to go to but I want to rush off to there any way. By doing this I never allow time to settle into the moment to just be with whatever is. My mind by keeping me constantly rushing around has effectively distracted me from the moment at hand. I can no longer interact effectively or respond loving and compassionately if I am not present in the moment . If I am constantly worried and fixated about getting somewhere in time. This expectation or attachment to being in a certain place at a certain time can and often does distract me from the moment I am in and once again I am asleep not fully present.
No one to be. For years I did not love myself enough to be ok with who I am. I always strove to be different then what I was. Whether doing it to vie for the attentions of one person or another or to try and get the cool kids to be my friend. I was constantly hiding and denying who I really was deep down. Then when this self would pop up I would go through a range of emotion from hate to intense anger for being me. Not a lot of love or compassion for me, For who I was in this moment. The further I come in my practice the more I come to appreciate who I am in this moment. I have forgiven myself of past digressions and truly come to love who I am from moment to moment. The only way I was able to do this was to realize there is no one to be. I am who I am in this moment and this moment only.
Nothing is wrong. In this moment nothing is wrong nothing can be. Wrong right pleasant unpleasant are all tricks of the judging mind. The moment is what it is and cannot be changed. It is my task to try and let go of my attachments and aversions so I can just be. In this moment it is like this. When I can reach this level of non attachment . Nothing truly is wrong. It is what it is and it is only my reactions to this that can change it in my mind. I have realized I have very little if any control over what goes on around me. What I do have is control over my reactions to it. I can take a situation that in light of all things is indeed very heavy with suffering and through my reactions to this suffering I can choose to stack on even more suffering on top of what is already there. It is my attachment to keeping something I have and my aversion to not getting something I want that can take a painful situation and stack suffering on top of it. Then I get the joys of suffering double.
Pain is unavoidable suffering is not.. In this lifetime we can be free from suffering if we choose to be in this very lifetime in this very moment we can rid ourselves from suffering if only we realize that this is how it is.
One of the things I find hardest to keep up at times is my desire to meditate. I know the joys of a daily meditation practice. I know the benefits as well. Ten years ago when I started this path it was out of a search for relief. I was newly sober my emotions where completely out of control. I had developed clinical anxiety from the amount of LSD and Alcohol I had consumed over the last twenty seven years. So the motivation to sit was strong meditation was the corner stone of my life.
If I did not sit the anxiety would be so great I would not be able to function. My morose self pity of poor me and look at my life would get out of control and I would become miserably ineffective. I would be no use to my fellow man what so ever. So in pain motivation was always there.
After many years of steady meditation practice I seem to find bright shiny things to distract me. Projects, work, women, food, Facebook, You name it I can find it. So, manic enough, I can go a week without sitting. Once again I get all out of whack and I don’t even know why until I go to sangha for the week.
As I sit in meditation with my peers it becomes overwhelmingly obvious what I was missing all week. As I sit and count my breath and bring my attention on the now. I remember again that my primary goal is to enlighten for the benefit of all beings. Now as that is a lofty goal I know it will take much work and there is no time to lose. Yet still I will get distracted by all the shiny in this samsaric existence. I forgot it’s all an Illusion. Once distracted by all the shiny it’s not long before all I can see is the shit before my Bodhicitta is so low I forget how satisfying practice just for the sake of practice can be.
I am grateful for sangha it gives me the fire to burn through the darkness and be the light. The three jewels are the most precious things I have ever been given. Buddha, Dharma, Sangha what I am starting to see is you really can’t have one without the others. Each one of them leads to the other. From the Buddha came the great teachings of the Dharma and through the Dharma the Great community I am a part of was born.
In moments of silence I find deep and stirring gratitude.