Fruits of Action
This month’s DPP homework has arrived and one of the topics is Karma. Cool. Turns out, one of the assigned readings is from Small Boat, Great Mountain, which I just finished (and posted about yesterday). So I’m ahead of the game already!
Another of the readings is from Seeking the Heart of Wisdom, by Joseph Goldstein and Jack Kornfield. Here’s a sampling:
“The law of karma refers to the law of cause and effect: that every volitional action brings about a certain result. If we act motivated by greed, hatred, or delusion, we are planting the seed of suffering; when our acts are motivated by generosity, love, or wisdom, then we are creating the karmic conditions for abundance and happiness.
“And analogy from the physical world illustrates this: if we plant an apple seed, the tree that grows will bear apples, not mangoes. And once the apple seed is planted, no amount of manipulation or beseeching or complaining will induce the tree to yield a mango. The only meaningful action that will produce a mango is to plant a mango seed. Karma is just such a law of nature, the law of cause and effect on the psychophysical plane.
“…Another dimension of the law of karma helps in understanding how individual personalities develop. While it is true that there is no enduring entity, no unchanging self that can be called “I,” it is also quite obvious that each of us is a uniquely changing and recognizable pattern of elements.
“This comes about because each of us has in our own way, both consciously and unconsciously, cultivated different mind states. If we cultivate loving-kindness, we experience its taste in the moment and at the same time are strengthening it as a force in the mind, making it easier for it to arise again. When we are angry, we experience the suffering of that anger as present karma and are also strengthening that particular pattern of mind.
“…Who we are as personalities is a collection of all the tendencies of mind that have been developed, the particular energy configurations we have cultivated.”
But that’s not the end of the story:
“Our lives are a dynamic process of energy transformation, constantly flowing and changing, and we each have the power to determine the direction of our lives and to live in accord with our deepest values.
“If we become more conscious and awake, developing the ability to observe clearly, we can being to use our energy creatively and not be bound so blindly to past conditioning.”
Good thing!
Free!
I’ve been reading a wonderful — and fascinating — book, called Small Boat, Great Mountain. It’s a compilation of talks by Ajahn Amaro given at a Dozgchen/Vipassana retreat in partnership with Tsoknyi Rinpoche at Spirit Rock several years ago. It’s wonderful for many reasons, not the least of which is the fact that it’s available FREE on iBooks or as a pdf here.
I am tempted to quote it at length. (It’s VERY readable. I’ve highlighted passages on just about every page.) But I’ll spare you that. Instead, I’ll give you a peek at the table of contents:
Essence of Mind
Ultimate and Conventional Reality
The Place of Nonabiding
Being Buddha
The View from the Forest
Cessation of Consciousness
Immanent and Transcendent
Who Are You?
No Buddha Elsewhere
Off the Wheel
The Portable Retreat
There’s also a very interesting Forward written by Drubwang Tsoknyi Rinpoche, an entertaining Preface by Guy Armstrong, and an excellent selection of Tibetan and Theravada chants.
Check it out!
(image from The Buddha Tarot by Robert M. Place)
The Dance Goes On
The Dancing with Life KM Group meets again tonight. We’re still finishing up the first section of the book by Phillip Moffitt, which focus on the First Noble Truth, the fact that there are difficulties, troubles, challenges…”suffering”…in this life.
The passage I’m bringing for tonight’s discussion is from the very end of this first section, on page 72 in the hardback version. I chose it because it’s a reminder that acknowledging and accepting the fact of life’s “suffering” does not mean becoming a doormat, or a martyr, or in some way pretending that the problems and difficulties don’t matter.
It says: In practicing being with life just as it is, you still prefer that your suffering end and you act on that preference whenever possible.
But most crucially you do not demand that your difficulties go away. Instead, you consciously and voluntarily carry your suffering, and in your acceptance of it you find meaning….Astonishingly, when you fully accept dukkha [suffering], you also discover distance from your difficulties. The way out of suffering is the way through. As Sumedho says, “To let go of suffering we have to admit it into consciousness.”
(image from “A Whole World,” by Couprie and Louchard)
No Such Thing
And now for something entirely different…
I was getting ready for last night’s Hi-Pointe Sitting Group, looking for something “pithy-yet-inspirational” to read aloud, and ran across this excerpt from Against the Stream, by Noah Levine (which was not at all right for last night’s sit, but which stayed with me, partly I think because Relationships and Sexuality are the topics for this month’s DPP homework, but mostly because I haven’t heard this subject talked about much in Dharma discussions, and certainly with not this much clarity.)
Here goes:
“While unconditional love can be nonattached, there is no such thing as unconditional relationship. When our love becomes sexual and thus relational, we impose certain conditions that are nonnegotiable.
“Fidelity, for example, and kindness and caring action–if these conditions aren’t present, the relationship will be a source of more pain than pleasure and will surely end in a broken heart, fractured spirit, and fatigued mind.
“Of course, the conditions of relationship don’t necessarily have to affect unconditional love, but most often when the container of loving sexual relationship is broken, the love itself is also somehow altered.”
Exactly.
What We Carry
At last Monday’s “Dancing with Life” KM group we ended up talking about retreats and dharma buddies, and lots of other interesting and important things, but we never got around to reading from the book. No matter. We’ll just pick up next week where we left off.
But I still want to post the passage I had planned to share with the group. Because it’s one I’d somehow missed on previous readings.
It’s from page 69 (hardback edition) and it comes after the part where Phillip Moffitt uses the metaphor of a wagon that carries a load to explain the idea that bearing one’s “essential, unavoidable suffering” is what allows a person to move on with their life.
The group has discussed this at several of our meetings, but we never got to the sentence that jumped out at me this time around, which is: You are being the carriage for conscious life.
Not: You are being the carriage for your own personal struggles. Or even: You are being the carriage for your own, individual life.
But: You are being the carriage for conscious life.
Here’s the sentence that precedes it: “Making the radical choice to know dukkha by mindfully agreeing to bear it as your part of the burden of being human gives your life meaning, no matter how modest or challenged it is.”
This, I believe, is what Phillip means when he says that the Four Noble Truths are not just Truths that are Noble, but that the living of them is, in fact, what ennobles us.
(image from “Offerings,” by Danielle and Olivier Follmi)
How Much?
I just started reading a terrific new book: How Much is Enough?: Money and the Good Life, by Robert Skidelsky and Edward Skidelsky.
The authors begin with a review of classical, Keynesian economics (not nearly as dry as it sounds) and goes quickly on to detail the Faustian bargain Western societies have made….”that now that we have at last achieved abundance, the habits bred into us by capitalism have left us incapable of enjoying it properly.”
Sad but true.
Ah, but then the authors go beyond the obvious conclusion that “the unending pursuit of wealth is madness,” and propose an alternative. “Drawing on insights from all times and places, we identify seven basic goods, the possession of which constitutes living well.”
I’ve only read to the end of Chapter 2, “The Faustian Bargain,” but I’ve got a very good feeling about how this is going to turn out…based on the thoughtful, and quite readable arguments put forth in the first two chapters. And on the titles of the hopeful-sounding chapters to come. Which are:
Chapter 3 — “The Uses of Wealth”
Chapter 4 — “The Mirage of Happiness”
Chapter 5 — “Limits to Growth: Natural or Moral?
Chapter 6 — “Elements of the Good Life”
Chapter 7 — “Exits from the Rat Race”
Stay tuned.
(image from that unidentified deck of cards I’ve had forever in my desk drawer)
You Can’t Pretend She’s Not There
In keeping with this month’s theme of Women and Sexuality in Buddhism, I read a selection from The Buddha and the Goddess, by Rick Fields at last night’s Hi-Pointe Sitting Group.
Here’s a taste:
Thus have I envisioned:
Once the Buddha was walking along the forest path in the Oak Grove at Ojai,
walking without arriving anywhere or having any thought of arriving or not arriving.
And lotuses, shining with the morning dew miraculously appeared under every step
Soft as silk beneath the toes of the Buddha.
When suddenly, out of the turquoise sky, dancing in front of his half-shut inward-looking eyes, shimmering like a rainbow or a spider’s web,
transparent as the dew on a lotus flower–the Goddess appeared quivering like a humming bird in the air before him.
She, for she was surely a she, as the Buddha could clearly see with his eye of discriminating awareness wisdom, was mostly red in color, though when the light shifted, she flashed like a rainbow.
She was naked except for the usual flower ornaments goddesses wear.
Her long his was deep blue, her eyes fathomless pits of space, and her third eye a bloodshot song of fire.
The Buddha folded his hands together and greeted the Goddess thus: “O goddess, why are you blocking my path? Before I saw you I was happily going nowhere. Now I’m not so sure where I go.”
“You can go around me,” said the Goddess, twirling on her heel like a bird darting away, but just a little way away, “or you can come after me
but you can’t pretend I’m not here,
This is my forest, too.”
With that the Buddha sat, supple as a snake, solid as a rock, beneath a Bo tree that sprung full-leaved to shade him.
“Perhaps we should have a chat,” he said. “After years of arduous practice at the time of the morning star, I penetrated reality and ….”
“Not so fast, Buddha,” the Goddess said,
“I am reality.”
It goes on from there, but you get the gist.
(I found this in Jack Kornfield’s The Buddha Is Still Teaching. He credits Dharma Gaia: A Harvest of Essays in Buddhism & Ecology, edited by Allan Hunt Badiner.)
(image from The Buddha Tarot by Robert M. Place)
Dancing with Awareness
Last night at the Dancing with Life KM group, we spent a lot of time talking about the Third Insight, what Phillip Moffitt calls “knowing that you know.”
On page 62, he says, “Using mindfulness in working with the Third Insight means that you practice consciously shifting your awareness….For instance, if you experience pain in your back during sitting meditation, concentrate your attention not on the physical stimulus or even your experience of the pain itself, but rather on your awareness of the pain…..
“In other words, instead of just being aware that the mind is experiencing suffering around an event, notice that the knowing of it is independent from the experience itself.” (emphasis added)
I have learned that this is really the key in being able to connect with whatever’s happening….without reacting to it automatically in some old, habitual way.
On page 63, Phillip goes on to say, “You will quickly notice that this awareness is untouched by what it is aware of, regardless of whether it is pleasant or unpleasant. It is simply there, knowing that it knows. Note, however, that this knowing is not removed from or indifferent to the experience; rather, it offers you an expanded perspective on the experience. It opens you to the awareness of awareness itself.”
This may not sound like much. But in my experience, it’s the difference between being on “auto pilot” and having a conscious choice in the way you live your life.
(image from Q-card by zolo.com)
One Book
At the end of the retreat, someone asked the teachers what “one book” they would recommend….like the Bible or the Koran….to read/study/ponder as a guide in following the Buddhist path.
Phillip Moffitt immediately suggested The Middle Length Discourses: A Translation of the Majjhima Nikaya, by Bhikkhu Bodhi. It’s the main text for the Dedicated Practitioner Program, and it’s definitely on par with the Bible and Koran, but frankly it’s a bit….daunting.
Sally Armstrong and Andrea Fella both suggested The Life of the Buddha, by Bhikkhu Nanamoli. That’s a new one for me, but coming so highly recommended, it must be worth checking out.
Here’s the description on Amazon.com: “Composed entirely of texts from the Pail canon, this unique biography presents the oldest authentic record of the Buddha’s life and revolutionary philosophy. The ancient texts are rendered here in a language marked by lucidity and dignity, and a framework of narrators and voices connect the canonical texts. Vivid recollections of his personal attendant Ananda and other disciples bring the reader into the Buddha’s presence, where his example offers profound inspiration and guidance on the path to freedom.”
I think I’ll add it to my list.
(image from “Offerings,” by Danielle and Olivier Follmi)
“Dancing” with Phillip
I talked with Phillip Moffitt after the retreat and told him about the two KM groups we’ve organized to discuss his book, Dancing with Life. I told him that one of the groups is taking the time to read the book out loud, word for word, during the meetings — then stopping to discuss whatever anyone wants to discuss. And that the other group is reading the book at home, in short sections, then bringing a sentence or two to discuss with the group.
He was really touched by the care and attention we are taking and asked that I post something about our methods on his Facebook page. (Which I did, here.)
He also said that I should emphasize to the groups that the 4 Noble Truths (which are what he uses for the basis of his book) are not just Truths that are Noble, but in fact, are Truths that Ennoble. He said that he mentioned this point in the book, but was advised not to press it too strongly, for fear (on the publisher’s part) that it would not be understood.
Seems pretty clear to me. But OK.
Phillip was very insistent that I make this point to the group. The truths that the Buddha taught are not just noble in themselves; they are truths that ennobles us.
There you go.
Straight from Phillip to you.
(image from “Dancing in Colombia,” by Fernando Botero)