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.
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.
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.