With Bliss-Bestowing Hands Searching for the Ox

The Ten Ox-Herding Pictures are traditionally considered to represent stages along the path of awakening. The first picture is of a beginner; in the last picture, the beginner has become a master. For present purposes, I'm skipping the steps in between.

The beginner appears to be intent on seeking. The master seems to have found, mastered, and transcended whatever he was looking for, and now, for lack of better words, is blessing everything he encounters.

The boy in the tenth picture looks remarkably like the beginner in the first - perhaps a hint that beginning never ends, or in T.S. Eliot's words, the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

In Original Dwelling Place, Robert Aitken Roshi wrote:

I spend time with inquirers disabusing them about absolutes. When someone who has read a little in Zen Buddhism asks me if I am enlightened, I respond without hesitation that I most certainly am not. When someone asks me how many koans I have passed, I respond that I am still working on my very first koan and that I haven’t passed it yet. This is not false modesty but is true to the very bottom. There is enlightenment beyond enlightenment, passing beyond passing. Each milestone on the path may seem a be-all and end-all experience. Everything falls away. The everyday self disappears. Yet the path continues to open out.

Experience is the moment; the path is endless practice.

The tenth ox-herding picture brings to mind words from another tradition:

… I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life. (Revelation 21:6)

The point I seem to be trying to make is that it’s never too early to spread kindness. No need to ‘attain’ something first. Just do it. The marketplace awaits your bliss-bestowing hands.

Oh and the flip side of that is, do we really believe there is something to attain? Or, perish the thought, that we have attained it?

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Lately I've been discovering the music of Libera.

I am the day, soon to be born

I am the light before the morning

I am the night that will be dawn

I am the end and the beginning

I am the Alpha and Omega

The night and day, the first and last

Zen but not Buddhist

Don't worry - I'm not jumping ship, just letting my mind wander.

As time passes, I seem to have been shedding one thing after another - old habits, language, values, beliefs (see, e.g. Prayer Pruning: Goodbye Jesus?) like articles of clothing along the dock on the way to a dive into the lake.

I wrote elsewhere (Buddhist Blasphemy?) that I call myself a Zen Buddhist because the label seems to be the best description of what I seem to be. And then, because I'm a Zen Buddhist, I do Zen things, like put on a black robe and do zazen on a zafu on a zabuton in a zendo, chant the four Bodhisattva Vows and pay attention to the abbot.

Ever with an eye for a simpler way, it seemed logical to wonder about extracting from Buddhism some kind of 'pure' Zen - in words attributed to Bodhidharma:

A special transmission outside the scriptures,
Not founded upon words and letters;
By pointing directly to [one's] mind,
It lets one see into [one's own true] nature and [thus] attain Buddhahood.

(I was tempted to replace the last four words with "..." because of the B word.)

It's not that everything Zen has to be as wordless as the Buddha's holding up a flower evoking a smile from Mahākāśyapa, but I admit to ducking for cover when I encounter language like:

This teaching of causality is not that of universal mutual co-arising and non-temporal causality developed later (as, for example, in the Hua-yen tradition), but the temporal, twelvefold chain of dependent arising as discovered by the Buddha during his enlightenment under the Bodhi tree and classically expressed in the Mahāvagga…. Dhātu-vāda is antithetical to Buddhism, since it is the very teaching that Śākyamuni intended to deny. (Paul L. Swanson "Zen is not Buddhism": Recent Japanese Critiques of Buddha-Nature)

But I'm not convinced that bare bones ‘pure’ Zen as a method of transmission can stand on its own.

The law of entropy says that over time, things naturally dissipate, decay, scatter, become diluted, disorganized, out of focus, forgotten. The principle seems to have wide application: a drop of ink in water, galaxies, civilizations, memories, my desk.

Energy and direction are required to counteract entropy. This opposing force also takes many forms: biological growth and healing, cultivating relationships, repair and cleaning, spiritual practice.

So if Zen is a blooming awareness, how best help the flower unfold and propagate, and at the same time, counteract the natural tendency of awareness to become a fading memory, soon easily confused with a clever facsimile constructed entirely of thoughts?

The Buddhism component, with its priesthood, ordination, teishos, sanzen and dharma transmission, is a ready-made machine for nurturing, refining, and passing on awareness, with the added benefit of quality control to ensure that the end product is the real McCoy.

Granted, the gadget is of very old construction – some parts seem unnecessary and overly ornate, but modernizing it has mostly been rather conservative – I suspect, at least partly, because of the priceless nature of the human raw materials and the onerous responsibility for their transformation. It works, and if it ain’t broke…

Nevertheless, those inclined to be ‘spiritual but not religious’ may be turned away from the Zen by a perceived irrelevance of the Buddhism.

Domyo Burk covers this nicely in her post Zen and Religion at Sweeping Zen:

When someone describes themselves as “spiritual but not religious” they usually mean that they pay attention to aspects of life beyond their immediate and personal physical, emotional and mental concerns – like universal truths, morality, or the existence of God – but they do not identify with an established tradition, set of beliefs, or institution. If we use this popular understanding of religion, we might use the term “Zen practice” to refer to the Zen teachings and practices that address our relationship to ultimate reality, and the term “Zen Buddhism” to refer to the set of traditions, resources and institutions that people have created to support and convey those teachings and practices. Zen Buddhism includes writings, a special vocabulary, history, mythology, rituals, devotional practices, imagery, religious objects, clergy, institutions and – most of all – many groups of people, now and over the course of the last thousand years, consciously practicing Zen Buddhism together.

...

I hope non-religious folks can find a way to practice Zen, because I believe that in its essence Zen is about training to master the art of living a human life. I want people to have access to that training even if they aren’t interested in religion, or if they follow a different religion. I see this training as a wonderful opportunity to take full advantage of having a human life, but even more I see it as a fundamental human responsibility. Should we not work to master the art of our human life as we would work to master a skill, a trade, or another kind of art? Should we not diligently train ourselves throughout our lives toward greater wisdom, compassion and facility with using this tool of a human body-mind?

The value of “many groups of people … consciously practicing Zen Buddhism together” is echoed by James Ford Roshi in his Huffington Post article (well worth reading in its entirety) How to Be Spiritual But Not Religious in a Way That Actually Helps:

There's something really important about people on a spiritual path coming together regularly with others. …

We desperately need others, if we hope to grow spiritually.

The human ego is not a pretty thing to behold in isolation. We need each other. We need our rough edges bumped against, and worn down a little.

And little does this as well as throwing one's self into a spiritual community.

It's easy, and exciting, to envision an evolving Zen Buddhism that can be embraced by a wider and wider sangha without losing its edge. Surely it's happening as we speak.

Calligraphy by Kanjuro Shibata XX "Ensō (円相)" (Wikimedia Commons)

Pulling Strings

We have a saying in the law business: We are deemed to intend the natural and probable consequences of our acts. In other words, defenses like "Sure, I hit the window with a sledge hammer - but I didn't actually expect it to break!" don't cut it.

Sometimes I picture the universe as having absolutely every single point in space-time joined by a string to absolutely every other point. Any movement, anywhere, affects us. Everything we do - and think, which is a form of action - to some extent affects everything else.

Because of the infinite complexity of this interconnectedness, we generally move almost totally blind to the radiating consequences of our actions. Nevertheless, we place great store in feeling in control of our lives - that when we turn the steering wheel to the right, the car will go to the right and not into oncoming traffic.

I noticed that I had been thinking about the string analogy recently when I had an urge to eat something nonvegan.  It goes like this:

Taking a roast chicken from the supermarket shelf pulls a string that goes into the storeroom and magically pulls another roast chicken out onto the shelf to take its place. Each roast chicken in the storeroom is connected by a series of strings to a live chicken. As sure as night follows day, whenever a roast chicken leaves a store in a shopping cart, far away and unheard, a wretched chicken is dragged out of a house of misery into a slaughterhouse, whether we want to think about it or not.

Remembering the string analogy helps me choose actions that don't naturally and probably lead to suffering ... or does it? If every action is the result of the sum total of the influence of every other action, everywhere, do we even have free will?

My inclination is to fall back on "I don't know - does it matter?" and just carry on acting as if I do have free will, one step at a time.

I was taken with Kokyo Henkel's post Karma, Free-Will, and Determinism over at Sweeping Zen:

A bodhisattva is one who is willing to play the game of appearing as a sentient being who is in control of herself and living in accord with other sentient beings, completely willing to receive the effects of karma, even though ultimately the set of conditions we called “me” that did the action is not the same set of conditions called “me” that receives the result. The freedom of the bodhisattva is that by seeing the illusory nature of free will, they are willing to receive whatever effects come.

Suffering exists.

The laws of cause and effect exist.

We can't control them, but we can unreservedly throw ourselves into them.

And act, when we feel a pull ... on our heartstrings.

The Polish Cross-Examination

Quite a while ago, I posted a courtroom reminiscence (The Ten Commandments Cross-Examination). The urge is upon me again.

I was in the middle of a fairly lengthy trial in the BC Supreme Court. Generally, these are pretty serious and formal affairs. In Canada, we still wear the traditional barrister's garb, minus the wigs.

Because the trial was about events that mostly took place in Poland, many of the opposing witnesses required a Polish interpreter, which tended to slow down the flow of cross-examination.

One academic gentleman I was attempting to rake over the coals was particularly elusive and just would not give me a straight answer. Over the coffee break, I cornered the translator and asked him if he would please tell me how to say "yes or no" in Polish. He very kindly told me to say "tak lub nie."

Things went much better after that, as I could follow up my questions with a sharp "TAK LUB NIE?" I noticed the judge smirk when I caught his eye the first time I used it.

As the trial proceeded, my learned friend (that's what we call each other in court) introduced a note which his witness claimed had been written by my client. It was in English, but had obviously been composed by someone whose native language was Polish. I questioned the witness (who spoke English) about this.

DA:            So you say this note was written by my client.

Witness:     Yes.

DA:             My client isn't Polish, is he?

Witness:      No.

DA:              But judging by the wording, surely this note was written by someone

                    who is Polish.

Witness:       Well, your client was in Poland for a month. Maybe he became a little

                     bit Polish.

DA:               After this trial's over, I think we're all going to be a little bit Polish.

Judge:          Tak!

The Narrow Way - A Review

There are times I feel awed by courageous acts of compassion. This is one of those times. Blogging friend Chris Lemig’s book The Narrow Way comes out next month and I’m honoured to be able to say a few words about it.

As the subtitle suggests, The Narrow Way is about Chris’s coming to terms with realizing he is gay in a time and place where homophobia was the norm. His gut-wrenching descriptions of the fear and self-loathing he experienced and his nightmarish descent into substance abuse and suicidal thoughts are riveting, and surely took great courage to write. How he managed to climb out of such a pit of torment and make his way as a new Buddhist to India and Tibet is a gripping and inspiring story.

Although I’ve kept my own words to a minimum, I hope these passages will whet your appetite for a wonderful book that I had great difficulty putting down.

From time to time, Chris quotes from his journal.  Here is a passage verging on despair.

I worry that everyone who sees me knows I’m spun.

My face turns red and my hands turn cold and purple.

My teeth are falling out and my breath smells a little like death.

It makes me crazy.

I don’t take care of my dog.

It controls me. Sometimes I do it only hours after saying I wouldn't.

I don’t even like it anymore.

It defines me and that’s scary.

His drug use fails to produce the much-needed refuge.

I take a hit and inhale into oblivion, letting my eyes roll back until I forget who I am, who I was, who I might be. I hide, deny, evade and make another attempt at this futile escape. But there is no escape. Even though I have changed my name and moved once a year for the past eighteen years, even though I have changed my story and lied through my teeth, the truth has found me out every time. It tears through my body and mind like a chainsaw, unrelenting and agonizing.

And doesn't make his struggle coming out of the closet any easier.

I couldn't even see that it wasn't desire at all but the essence of the real me, the gay me, just trying to get out. So I took the drugs wildly, hoping they would help me to sound out that name with dry throat and tongue. I would snort whole grams of speed in one great inhale, stay awake and stuttering for days, make my way to the gay clubs and porno stores when I thought I had finally broken through. But even then I could only stand there on the shore of that sea of men and sex while the throbbing music and the desperate moans crashed over me like waves. Sometimes I would hold those men in the middle of the night, there in the dark little booths where I could get down on my knees and with open arms and mouth finally confess. But mostly I would just bite my lip till it bled and run for the door. Three years I did this. Nine hundred blinding sunrises in a row. Then the bottom came up too fast and seeing the imminent future of me, shattered and broken there on the hard, concrete earth, I called home.

And once out, it was far from a cakewalk.

I've been out of the closet for only a month when I find myself pinned down in the back seat of the car. We have just come from the funeral of a friend who died from crack cocaine. Her sister and her son, two people I once called friends, are beating me half to death. We are drunk and angry and I have just said something stupid.

“She had it coming to her,” I heard myself slurring under my breath.

Now I take what’s been coming to me for years and I will never again feel this afraid, this alone, this powerless. Flailing fists smash my face, sending electric shocks of violence to my brain. Fingernails tear at my eyes and I think: “She’s going to scratch my eyes out. She wants me to go blind.” “Faggot, faggot, you fucking faggot!” they scream. Or are they saying, “Fly caged bird, fly”?

I think I will go deaf from the screams that are filled with hate and loud enough to shatter a stone heart. But my heart is not stone; it is flesh and muscle beating two hundred times a minute as I start fighting for my life…

I was completely drawn into the book by Chris’s imagery – whether the sights and smells of a drug hit gone wrong …

It is three years before India and I am not going anywhere. Instead, it is four in the morning and my eyes are wild and bloodshot as I pick through the carpet, searching for tiny pieces of crack cocaine that may have sizzled off the end of my pipe. My roommate sits on the bare floor of her room cooking up a fresh batch on a tarnished, blackened teaspoon but I can’t wait to get another hit. I try to smoke what turns out to be the clipping of a dirty toenail, and it fills my mouth with the taste of burnt skin and rubber.

The temptation to use again, always just around the corner …

Four days later without a drink or a cigarette and the cravings come in powerful waves that threaten to bowl me over. “Just one drag, just one drink and it will all go away,” say the voices of old demons still squatting in a back room in my mind. “Stay quit, stay quit, stay quit,” says another voice, a voice that I am just learning to trust, a voice that I’m beginning to recognize as my own.

I chant the mantra to myself when the bargaining and the drafting of new promises begin and the demons withdraw. Stay quit, stay quit, stay quit.

Or the sights and sounds and strangeness of India.

The bus that will take me there from Delhi is an hour late. Plenty of time to stare, dumfounded and open-mouthed, into the face of India as I wait by the side of the road. I am clutching a sweaty bus ticket while she stares back at me, unblinking and unashamed, with a hundred thousand expressions to fit a hundred thousand moods. She is the young leper girl without a nose in bright blue sari begging for rupees while she dances and twirls to tabla beats. She is the prostitute leading the young man into the abandoned, graffiti covered shack across the street. She is the cars, auto-rickshaws and motorcycles screaming endlessly by. She is the three-legged dog covered in mange darting through the traffic.

This is not the face of India that I had expected or imagined.

Panic and despair as a long and carefully planned attendance at a talk by the Dalai Lama seems to unravel.

Back down Bagshu Road I run, following the black lines of the map that is burned in my mind, all the way to the building marked Security Office. I am on the tips of my toes, humming a little victory tune as I walk through the door. I have made it! Ten thousand miles on this long, hard road. There is no stopping me now!

But then, without any warning, I am stopped, suddenly and surely and dead in my tracks. A giant chalkboard hangs at the far end of the hall and I narrow my eyes in the dark to read and reread the tall letters that spell out in clear and perfect English: THERE ARE NO MORE PASSES FOR HIS HOLINESS’ TEACHINGS.

“There must be some mistake,” I say out loud. I close my eyes, imagine the website that I thought I had checked and double-checked. Passes are only issued on the first day of the teachings, it said.

There is obviously some translation problem at work here, so I scurry from door to door peering into the tiny rooms looking for answers. But no one is home. Then I hear a stirring towards the back. In the very last office sits the only stern Tibetan I have ever seen. He gets up from a rickety wooden chair and looks me up and down. I have lost the ability speak so I wave and sign in unintelligible gesticulations. I try to tell him that I want a pass for the teachings; that I have just gotten off the seventeen-hour bus ride from New Delhi and the fifteen-hour flight from America. I pantomime the past year of preparations and planning and hard work. I explain in sweeping, arcing gestures all the magic and synchronicity that has led me here, to this very place, at this very moment.

He is unmoved.

“Didn’t you read the sign?” is all he says. “Yes,” I manage in a whisper.

In the face of extreme suffering.

I let my backpack slide off of my shoulders and I sit cross-legged on the cold platform next to a pile of filthy rags. But it is not rags at all. Suddenly, it begins to stir and unfold. I leap up, ready to run down the tracks in fear as a human form uncurls itself from underneath a torn t-shirt smeared with dirt and grime. It is a young man, no more than twenty, already broken beyond repair. He is all bones now, sharp at the joints that threaten to tear through the wrinkled brown paper sack that used to be his skin. His wispy beard and wild, black hair are a nest for lice and leaves and bits of trash that have come to rest there.

He struggles to move and each bending of each brittle limb is a creaking agony. I think he might be dying right then and there before my eyes.

…

I am no more than ten feet away. I could take two decisive steps and help him to his feet, take him to God-Knows-Who, to someone, to anyone for help. But I don’t. All the meditations on compassion, the wish to free others from their suffering and pain, are sucked out of me like air into the vacuum of space. Instead, I stare, jaw dropped open, like a dumb, mute statue of stone. It takes long, slow minutes for him to rise to his feet and when he does I think the cool breeze coming from the north will blow his hollow bones and paper skin down the tracks. As the apparition staggers off and disappears around the corner, I wrap the memory of him neatly into an unlabeled box and hide it away on a lonely back shelf in my mind. By the time my train comes four hours later, chugging and steaming around the tracks, I will have already forgotten him.

A simple act of kindness.

This descendent of the Bodhi Tree stretches her long, dangling limbs over me, just like her forbearer did over the Buddha two and a half thousand years ago. Her leaves shimmer and twist and dance in the warm breeze. Sometimes a score or more of them break loose from her branches and spiral down to the earth. Pilgrims swarm, giddily snatching them up before I can even think about rising. A young Tibetan monk, ten years old, picks one up that has landed right in front of my feet. He has an armful of them already and he cradles them to his chest like precious jewels. He is about to return to the stream but when he sees me looking on longingly, he turns and with a happy smile and bright eyes drops every last one of them into my lap.

At last.

His Holiness is still smiling and offering his blessings to the crowd as the car pulls away. Our eyes meet for a split second. It is not the perfunctory eye contact of politicians and celebrities but a genuine reaching out. For that brief moment I know he is looking just at me, taking the time to really see me. He smiles, then I smile back. I melt and dissolve right there before his eyes until I am completely content and for the first time in my life I am certain that I have come the right way.

Friendship and a call to action.

Monks and nuns and pilgrims encircle us as we say our goodbyes. Finally, I let go of Sonu’s hand and begin to walk away. I turn to wave one last time but he has already disappeared. I have missed the point entirely. Yes, it is good to meditate, to prostrate, to pray. But what good is this if it doesn’t help those in need?

A deep bow of gratitude, Chris. You made me laugh and cry. Thank you for your kindness and courage to tell your story. I hope that many who find themselves overwhelmed by despair, standing where you have been, will know that they are not alone and that there is a way out, even though at times it seems very narrow indeed.

Let me close with your quote of Joseph Campbell:

Where we had thought to travel outward, we will come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we will be with all the world.

Twice Around the Blog - Thanks Again!

As Snow Branches celebrates its second blogiversary today, I'm reminded how fast time flies.

Once again, I'm grateful for all the support, expressed in many ways, by you kind readers: Twitter reetweets and mentions, G+ +1's, Facebook likes, shares and comments, and of course, the generous blog comments and follows, and links to Snow Branches in your posts and blogrolls. Thank you.

As I said in one of my earliest posts, The Oak Tree in the Garden,

I started blogging because I wanted to make a difference, and felt sure there was more I could do on the internet than click the Hunger Site every day.

I want to make a dent in all the suffering out there, but my problem is believing the fallacy that I need to make a dent that is significant to me.

But how is it possible to know the effects of even the smallest action? In a very real sense, I have no idea what I'm doing or what the universe is doing.

The first of the Bodhisattva Vows is a daunting proposition:  "All beings without number I vow to liberate". To keep our vow, we can only speak and do the things that seem right at the moment - hopefully things that are kind, helpful and sincere - and leave the consequences to themselves.

That said, It has been a humbling, uplifting and sobering experience to be told by readers that they have changed their lives after reading these posts. It's impossible to ignore such encouragement to keep writing.

Looking back over the year, I can't help noticing that I've been posting less frequently - 21 posts in 2012, down from 40 in 2011 - a trend I hope to turn around next year. Despite fewer posts, traffic is heavier - 17,200 visits this year up from 9,300 last year, now from 115 countries all told.

I'm excited to continue this aimless journey and would be greatly honoured by your company. Thanks again.

The Bodhisattva Express

The Bodhisattva's way is called "the single-minded way," or "one railway track thousands of miles long." The railway track is always the same. If it were to become wider or narrower, it would be disastrous. Wherever you go, the railway track is always the same. That is the Bodhisattva's way. So even if the sun were to rise from the west, the Bodhisattva has only one way. His way is in each moment to express his nature and his sincerity.

We say railway track, but actually there is no such thing. Sincerity itself is the railway track. The sights we see from the train will change, but we are always running on the same track. And there is no beginning or end to the track: beginningless and endless track. There is no starting point nor goal, nothing to attain. Just to run on the track is our way. This is the nature of our Zen practice.

Shunryu Suzuki Roshi from Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

To my simple-minded way of thinking, there is a lofty view and a lowly view of what a Bodhisattva is. One is a highly evolved being so far up the awareness food chain as to barely have physical existence, who, out of great compassion, foregoes buddhahood to come to the aid of all beings.

The other is anyone with a sincere desire to end the suffering of others.

I can relate to the lowly one, of course, but the other, multiple arms and all, is so beyond my event horizon that my third eye glazes over. True, given our amazing interconnected universe of infinite dimensions, we can probably say the two versions are one and the same, but really, I don't think I need to know that just now.

Pema Chödrön's book had been tirelessly beckoning to me from the bookshelf. Despite its title (or probably, because of it) I studiously ignored No Time to Lose for as long as I could. After struggling with it for over a year, I finally gave in. The masterpiece is her companion to The Way of the Bodhisattva (Bodhicharyāvatāra), by the 8th century Buddhist monk Shantideva. She calls it the essential guidebook for fledgling bodhisattvas longing to alleviate suffering.

Although I quote from it quite a bit, this post is not a review of her wonderful book. These are just some thoughts about the subject closest to my heart: the spread of kindness by ordinary people. The awakening of the bodhi heart of compassion. The flowering of bodhichitta.

These are Pema's words:

The Sanskrit term bodhichitta is often translated as "awakened heart" and refers to an intense desire to alleviate suffering.  On the relative level, bodhichitta expresses itself as longing.  Specifically, it is the heartfelt yearning to free oneself from the pain of ignorance and habitual patterns in order to help others do the same.  This longing to alleviate suffering of others is the main point.  We start close to home with the wish to help those we know and love, but the underlying inspiration is global and all encompassing.  Bodhichitta is a sort of "mission impossible":  the desire to end the suffering of all beings, including those we'll never meet, as well as those we loathe.

On the absolute level, bodhichitta is nondual wisdom, the vast, unbiased essence of mind. Most importantly, this is your mind - yours and mine. It may seem distant but it isn't. In fact, Shantideva composed this text to remind himself that he could contact his wisdom mind and help it to flourish.

When I first read Suzuki Roshi's comparison of the bodhisattva path to a railway track, it struck a chord. Although compassionate action takes myriad forms, adapting and reaching out to suffering wherever it calls from, the resolve to do it is straight as an arrow.

As we grow in our practice, its fruits - wisdom and compassion - come to our aid: wisdom guiding our actions to be more skilful, and compassion giving us the courage to act more for others and less for ourselves.

But "sincerity itself is the railway track." From the very first moment we decide to take this path, there is really only one answer to our question, "what should I do next?" The answer is, "follow your heart!"

Here is some guidance from a champion of compassion:

So we can ask: What is compassion comprised of? And there are various facets. ... But first, compassion is comprised of that capacity to see clearly into the nature of suffering. It is that ability to really stand strong and to recognize also that I’m not separate from this suffering. But that is not enough, because compassion, which activates the motor cortex, means that we aspire, we actually aspire to transform suffering. And if we’re so blessed, we engage in activities that transform suffering. But compassion has another component, and that component is really essential. That component is that we cannot be attached to outcome.

Joan Halifax Roshi TED Talk

Compassion and the True Meaning of Empathy

To start each day on the right track, Pema Chödrön recites these verses from the Bodhicharyāvatāra every morning before getting out of bed:

Just as all the buddhas of the past

Embraced the awakened attitude of mind,

And in the precepts of the bodhisattvas

Step by step abode and trained,

Just so, and for the benefit of beings,

I will also have this attitude of mind,

And in those precepts, step by step,

I will abide and train myself.

Let's give Pema the last word:

Personally, I am indebted to Shantideva for his determination to get this message across: people like you and me can transform our lives by awakening the longing of bodhichitta. And I am deeply grateful to him for expressing, unrelentingly, that it is urgent, very urgent, that we do so.  We have no time to lose. When I look at the state of the world today, I know his message could not possibly be more timely.

And now as long as space endures,

As long as there are beings to be found,

May I continue likewise to remain

To drive away the sorrows of the world.

The Way of the Bodhisattva, v. 10.55

Amen.

Related posts:

The Call

Do Bodhisattvas Go To Heaven?

Skilful Action and Collateral Damage

Acts of Kindness: Does Size Matter?

An Ancient Tree Blooms: The Awakening of Compassion

The Oak Tree in the Garden

The British Properties and the Heron

At the ferry berth

A chain link fence
Separated me

From the rocks

And a heron

Painted, like the waves and clouds,
Shades of October grey.

A sunlit patch

On the North Shore hills:

The British Properties.

Hundreds of homes

Stacked up the slope,

Striving to be the most aloof
And those inside,
Striving for the good life.

The heron stretched its neck to preen
And my heart went out to it,

Then carried on to the hills,

To their dwellers.
May they succeed.

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Too Bad for You, Buddy!

Or words to similar effect, form in my head from time to time, and occasionally, I'm not happy to report, escape my lips. Each time, it's a variation on a theme: my less than compassionate response to someone else's misfortune.

Unless we're arhats or saints with permanent halos, as night follows day, when we learn about (or imagine) unpleasant things befalling someone who 'had it coming', uncharitable thoughts follow. Such persons include, but are not limited to - I seem to be lapsing into legalese here - individuals whom we deem arrogant, unkind, unfair, critical, proud, pompous, selfish, cruel, and generally anyone who has, or is imagined to have, slighted us, or has stupidly disregarded our advice. And of course, those who have the effrontery to think it's OK to judge us.

An extreme example is the outbreak of jubilation and festivities that erupted after the killing of Osama Bin Laden.

When the misfortunes that befall these folks are only embarrassing, it's just funny. A lot of slapstick comedy relies on this - the haughty character's flamboyant exit, followed by his sheepish reappearance when he realizes that he has just stormed into a closet.

When something they value, besides their pride, gets damaged, as when we hear of a bullfighter getting gored in an important place, we get a jolt of guilty pleasure - jolt because it comes out of the blue and is usually short-lived, and guilty because deep down, it really doesn't feel good.

Lately, I've noticed this happening quite a bit. Since I'm pretty sure I'm not becoming a nastier person, I think I'm probably just catching myself in the act more often. I let the little ones come and go without much mental comment, but when I catch myself in a doozy, I get a good chuckle out of it.

Perhaps the little squirt of endorphin our brain gives us when someone else stumbles used to have some value in the distant past when our survival depended on besting others. Perhaps it's similar to the pleasure we get from eating sweet fatty foods or the adrenalin 'fight or flight' rush - the one useful if we are going to spend a cold winter without much food, and the other useful if our house catches fire, but in general, both doing more harm than good.

Regardless of whether it's an instinct or just a deeply ingrained mental habit that we learned as little children, it continues to be strongly and widely reinforced by society - for example, in business, when the wealthy are ruined, in sports, when the bullies are beaten, and in theatre, when the villains suffer painful retribution.

But there is a world of difference between having unkind thoughts and harbouring them.

In zazen and mindfulness practice, we can treat our thoughts as part of our ever-changing mental scenery - whether they be mean thoughts or thoughts of elephants eating popcorn - and we neither try to push them out of our minds nor pursue them. When we realize we have taken off on a train of thought, we just get off and return to being present. If we deliberately pursue a thought, then we are no longer doing zazen or mindfulness. We’re just thinking.

If one moment in practice can be said to have more value than another, then I would say it's that moment when we become aware that we are no longer present, let go of the thought that was distracting us, and return to the present. Kosho Uchiyama Roshi has referred to this process as 'vow and repentence'. And a quote from Samuel Beckett comes to mind: "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." It is coming home.

So we need have no remorse or shame about uninvited unkind thoughts, no matter how out of character they may seem. They simply remind us that we're human. If we find we are not letting these thoughts go, but brooding on them and nurturing them, or even trying to cultivate them in others, then we may need to take a long, honest but compassionate look at ourselves and try again. Fail again. Fail better.

Image: detail from Christ Carrying the Cross (Heironymus Bosch) - Wikimedia Commons

Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream

In this dawning age of mindfulness, how often we hear 'be present in the moment'. In my own practice, on the cushion and off (when I remember), that's my aim too. But do I pine over happy days gone by? Yes, sometimes. Do I yearn for better days ahead? Yes, often.

Looking back over the mayhem of our civilization's troubled adolescence and how far we've come, it's hard not to dream about the future our grandchildren might have if we would only embrace our evolution rather than run away from it.

Global Warming Stopped and Reversed

Albedo Yacht pumping sea
water into the atmosphere

With the future of the biosphere looking bleak and the chances of our puny efforts actually creating a stable climate for those grandchildren seeming pretty slim, here's an encouraging development.

Over the past few years research into cloud reflectivity modification has received funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It involves seeding clouds with the most benign substance around - seawater - to make them more reflective to infra-red while allowing visible light through.

Around 1,900 floating machines would be enough to stop the rise in temperature. The cost? $7.5 billion, barely one percent of the USA's annual military budget.

The War Machine Re-Tooled for Disaster Relief

The spending of mind-boggling amounts of hard-earned tax dollars on a killing machine will eventually come to an end.  However, the downside of dismantling the armed forces would be roughly two million military and civilian personnel losing their jobs. Assuming bulldozers are cheaper than stealth bombers and hospital ships cheaper than aircraft carriers, re-tooling the military for disaster relief and humanitarian aid looks like a viable workaround.

As Isaiah prophesied an awfully long time ago:

They will beat their swords into plowshares

and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,

nor will they train for war anymore.

Here's a little glimmer of light from Al Gore's website:

The U.S. Department of Defense plans to open up 16 million acres of its land for renewable energy development, which it hopes will create a boom of solar, wind and geothermal projects and provide clean power to military bases, the department announced Monday.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar signed a memorandum of understanding to work together on promoting renewable energy generation projects on public land that has historically been restricted for military uses. About 13 million of those 16 million acres are located in western U.S., where a lot of solar, wind and geothermal power development already has been taking place on private and other types of public land.

People Won't Come Out Any More

Because there is nowhere to come out from. Faded into the mists of history is the almost irresistible compulsion, when describing someone, to include facts that are almost always irrelevant: gender, racial origin, sexual orientation, first language, apparent wealth, height, weight, apparent age, taste in clothing, religion, and on and on.

Much more heart to heart exchange. Much less hiding from each other.

Emancipation

Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream has gone viral. Mahalia Jackson shouted out, "Tell them about your dream, Martin!" And he did. The powerful don't take advantage of the weak. The remnants of male chauvinism are found only in museums. And yes, the animals are finally free.

The sky's the limit to the hurts that can be healed.  Perhaps, once in a while, we need to let go of the present moment, follow John Lennon, and just imagine.

No More Country & Western Music

Unless it's played backwards - then you reconcile with your estranged spouse, get your job back, and your dog comes back to life. KIDDING! I'm sorry. That was a terrible, cruel joke. I actually love country. A lot. Honest!

Here's Pete Seeger's rendition of the song I used for the post title.

The Zen Cure, an Alternative to the Death Penalty and a Case for Dharma Lineage

Getting strapped into "Old Sparky"

It seemed like a bright idea at the time, but I'm having doubts that this argument can withstand scrutiny. If it turns out to be exploring a dead end, perhaps others can see a way through. Anyway, here it is.

The death penalty is wrong for so many reasons and should be abolished. Zen practice can (suddenly and/or gradually) result in a fresh view of the world, the unfolding of wisdom and compassion, and a commitment to the Bodhisattva path. Inmates on death row should have the option of intensive Zen training with a qualified teacher. Their progress could be verified by masters with recognized dharma transmission and by experienced psychiatrists. The ultimate goal is their return to society.

The penal system deters crime, rehabilitates offenders and protects the public. At least that's the theory.

The death penalty doesn't deter crime. States in the USA without the death penalty have consistently lower murder rates. In the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, A recent study concluded:

The findings demonstrate an overwhelming consensus among these criminologists that the empirical research conducted on the deterrence question strongly supports the conclusion that the death penalty does not add deterrent effects to those already achieved by long imprisonment.

And of course the death penalty doesn't rehabilitate offenders - at least, not in this lifetime.

The death penalty may protect the public, but at great cost. The Innocence Project reports that, despite apparently compelling evidence of guilt at trial, 300 inmates on death row have been exonerated based on DNA [as at September 29, 2012]. One wonders how many of the 78 people executed in the USA in 2011 and the thousands awaiting execution (3,189 as at January 1, 2012) may be innocent.

Another purpose of the penal system is retribution. Killing a murderer is supposed to make society in general, and the family of the victim in particular, feel better. Personally, the killing of Troy Davis, Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden all just made me feel sick.

Religious beliefs don't seem to make taking a stand on capital punishment any easier. If you believe every word of the Bible, then you will also support the death penalty for Adultery - Men and Women (Leviticus 20:10), Blasphemy (Leviticus 24:16), Breaking the Sabbath (Exodus 31:14-15), Being a Disobedient Child (Exodus 21:15 and Leviticus 20:9), Homosexuality - Men Only (Leviticus 20:13), and Not Being a Virgin on Your Wedding Night - Women Only (Deuteronomy 22:20-21), whereas Jesus is said to have said "turn the other cheek" and "if you did it to the least of these, you did it to me." Some Christian denominations that do not oppose capital punishment, like the Roman Catholic Church and Southern Baptists, still decry its use for vengeance. Many others outright oppose it.

You would think that Buddhists would be on side, but there is even disagreement about whether Buddhism forbids the death penalty. In general, Buddhist groups in secular countries such as Japan, Korea, and Taiwan tend to take an anti-death penalty stance, while in Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Bhutan, where Buddhism has strong political influence, the opposite is true. Just as the First Precept against killing other beings seems to be circumventable to permit eating animals because they taste good, it has been gotten around, it seems, to sanctify killing people for the greater good, whatever that means.

So the choice has to be a personal one. I hope you will forgive my biased phrasing of the question: "Is the priceless gift of a human nervous system and consciousness, through which we can awaken to our interdependent, compassionate nondual nature, and in a sense, through which the universe can realize its own existence, something we have a right to take away from another human being just because she or he has done it to someone else?"

Can a murderer be cured? I think the answer is 'yes', at least sometimes.

In his Message Supporting a Moratorium on the Death Penalty, His Holiness the Dalai Lama said:

Before advocating execution we should consider whether criminals are intrinsically negative and harmful people or whether they will remain perpetually in the same state of mind in which they committed their crime or not. The answer, I believe, is definitely not. However horrible the act they have committed, I believe that everyone has the potential to improve and correct themselves.

Is Zen training a way to do it? Again, I think the answer is a qualified 'yes'. Even though the justice system is supposed to weed out those who are not guilty by reason of insanity, there will be those on death row who are deeply disturbed - either originally or as a result of "death row syndrome." Can they be reached by a skilled psychotherapist or a wily Zen master? There is only one way to find out.

Ultimately, how can apparently cured murderers be let loose on the streets? Many, I suspect, are, or have learned how to be, skillful con artists, capable of faking spiritual transformation and psychological healing. That's where even more skill is required to detect the fakers. For psychological issues, it probably means highly qualified psychiatrists. For Zen issues, the obvious choices are masters who have received full dharma transmission, i.e. those who have been through the process of "it takes one to know one".

This is only a brief and I’m sure extremely naive sketch of a concept, not the blueprint for a solution. Many, many practical challenges await. In fact, it sounds more like the description of how an advanced civilization might treat its criminals in a science fiction novel, set in the distant future or a distant galaxy, rather than West Livingston, Texas.

But then who ever thought we would walk on the moon?

On the subject of how we relate to 'evil' people, Meredith Garmon has written some great posts over at Lake Chalice, including Primary Sociopaths and Secondary Sociopaths, Answer Evil with Justice and Community and The Wound that Cuts Through Every Human Heart.

May I also suggest exploring the Prison Dharma Network website if you haven’t already?

Photo: An African-American prisoner is prepared for execution in "Old Sparky," Sing-Sing Prison's infamous electric chair. Photograph taken circa 1900 by William M. Van der Weyde. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Look! A Mayfly!

Look! A mayfly!

Tears begin, but then my heart

Sings a little song

The mayfly is a member of the Ephemeroptera, from the Greek meaning 'lasting only a day'. After a year as a nymph, it crawls out of the water, moults, spreads its wings, takes to the sky, finds a mate, lays its eggs, and dies, all in a day.

A cascade of emotions took me by surprise.

Melancholy and a sense of futility surfaced first. Compared to the rest of its life, the tiny creature's last day is like a flash of lightning. So much heroic activity in such a short time, and for what? So that more mayflies can grub around in a stream for a year to spend a frantic day in the sun, provided they don't get eaten by the fish or the birds first? Perhaps even so that people can contemplate them, get all teary-eyed and write poetry that other people who may not have seen a mayfly can read and get all teary-eyed too.

Melancholy becomes wonder. The critter's last day really isn't so much frantic as it is perfect. After a slow climb out of the water, it waits in the sun until it's ready to moult. It climbs out of its old skin and waits again until its wings dry in shape. Then at just the right time with just the right effort, flapping them, the former bottom dweller does the unimaginable. (I don't imagine that mayflies imagine, but who knows what goes on in their little heads.) Its flight is an invitation to jump for joy.

Then the adult stuff - courtship, wild mayfly sex, laying eggs. Since baby nymphs don't need looking after, the parents do the right thing and give themselves completely for the benefit of all beings in the vicinity that could use some nourishment.

I recognize I'm projecting here, or maybe squinting at my reflection. The sadness, wonder and joy I feel contemplating that brief life, are the sadness, wonder and joy of my life.

And the cascading emotions aren't quite over.

I feel an uneasy chill that I really don't want to deal with, knowing exactly what it is. The mayfly's life is brief, but not a moment is wasted. My life is not so brief, and about those wasted moments, let's just say I seem to be studiously ignoring what Zen Master Daito Kokushi said in 1337:

Time flies like an arrow, so do not waste energy on trivial matters.

Be attentive. Be attentive!

Guilty as charged.

So many lessons packed into a tiny mayfly.

So many lessons in everything, if we just pay attention.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here is one of my favourite pieces of music that breaks my heart – the theme from Schindler’s List, composed by John Williams and played by Itzhak Perlman. Although the movie is about the Holocaust, the music makes me think of the suffering of the animals for whom the Holocaust has never ended.

Mayfly photo credit: Richard Bartz via Wikimedia Commons.

A Snuggle, a Swim and a Hug - Taking Refuge in the Three Jewels

The early Buddhists seemed to love making lists - the Four Noble Truths, the Ten Perfections, the 108 Cravings (comprised of six groups including the 18 Cravings Through the Sense of the Nose for Sensual Pleasures Associated with a View of Eternalism or Nihilism, Internally or Externally, of the Past, Present, or Future). Out of curiosity, I had a look at the 38 Blessings. It turns out the first one is Not Associating with Fools. Who knew?

I think because I’m a bit of a minimalist (read: simpleton), lists enumerating the Virtues, the Hindrances, the Dwellings of the Noble Ones and the Unwholesome Actions just don’t ring my bell. I guess that’s why I’m attracted to the simplicity of Zen - even the name only has three letters.

There is one little list, however, that I have grown very fond of: the Three Jewels - the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, a.k.a. the Three Treasures.

Many folks with great scholarship and great insight have already written about the Three Jewels. This little offering is just a freehand sketch of what they mean to me. I know that as soon as I open my mouth, I fall into error, creating artificial separations, but here goes.

First off, the Three Jewels are not separate 'things' - more like one thing seen from three different directions. For the same reason, our take on them will be different, each from our own vantage point.

Buddha - not just the chap who sat under a tree and noticed something important. Buddha nature may be a better term. Vast emptiness. All-inclusive. Capable of becoming anything. Capable of awakening.

Dharma - the teachings of the Buddha and more. The laws of cause and effect. Change. Unfolding. Awakening. Relieving suffering.

Sangha - for sure everyone who follows the teachings of the Buddha - but also every other being of every kind, everywhere.

Taking refuge in the Three Treasures is a formal Buddhist ceremony. It is also a personal act we perform with our whole being - not just our thoughts and words - but our whole lives: a lifelong, intimate love affair.

We take refuge in the Buddha whenever we sit down, let go of our thoughts (including the thought of taking refuge) and simply pay attention. A little habit has crept up on me: last thing at night, if I snuggle up with the universe, for want of a better term, my iron grip on my little sense of self seems to loosen and I'm asleep in a few seconds.

My mental picture of taking refuge in the Dharma is going for a joyful swim in a river, doing a playful dance with the currents of cause and effect. It's also expressed in our sincere efforts to do the right thing, to be a manifestation of wisdom and compassion.

Taking refuge in the Sangha. Group hug. How wide can we spread our arms? We support and nourish and heal and cherish. And we are supported and nourished and healed and cherished. How cool is that?

Photo credit: Tambako the Jaguar via Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic

~~~~~~

I apologize to anyone who got a malware warning from visiting this site, especially if your own blog started setting off alarm bells for linking to it. I hope I didn’t cause you too much grief. The problem seems to have been a link on my blogroll and a spam comment that I hadn’t deleted. Both are fixed now and thankfully, Google was very prompt to reassess the site and give it a clean bill of health. Please feel free to contact me at ashton at shaw dot ca. A useful resource for checking site safety is http://sucuri.net.

Blowing in the Mind

I feel a little thrill whenever I see flags flapping in the wind. I usually gaze and listen for a while and then come back to earth, noticing that my feet are plodding along the pavement as usual and that some litter has blown up against a fence.

This is the 29^th koan of the Mumonkan:

Two monks were arguing about a flag. One said, "The flag is moving."

The other said, "The wind is moving."

The Sixth Patriarch happened to be passing by. He told them, "Not the wind, not the flag; mind is moving."

Their habitual way of thinking about flags in the wind was stripped away, leaving – something else.

About two hundred years later, some monks were debating the koan. Zen master Miaoxin overheard them and said,

It's not the wind moving, it's not the flag moving, it's not the mind moving.

Something else was stripped away, leaving – what?

This progression reminds me of the first few times I attended our Zen centre. The first time I went, the abbot gave a dharma talk during the second sit, which I thought was pretty profound. The same thing happened the second time I was there. The third time I went, he just sat in silence. I remember thinking to myself, what could be more profound than that? Well, the next time I went, he wasn’t there at all…

I suspect “mind” is one of the most difficult words to define. There is mind meaning thought; there is the subconscious mind; there is no-mind and there is mindfulness; there is little mind and there is big Mind; there is original mind and everyday mind and there is beginner’s mind and there is don’t know mind.

Then there are the Three Minds (sanshin):

Magnanimous Mind (daishin) is like an ocean or a mountain: calm and steady, yet accepting and nourishing countless beings and situations without differentiation. The ocean is serene because it accepts the many rivers without resisting.

Nurturing Mind (roshin), literally "old mind", is akin to the attitude of a kindly grandmother or parent who delights in caring for others. It is the spirit of the bodhisattva, the fully mature person.

Joyful Mind (kishin) is the joy that comes from deep in our hearts even in the midst of difficulty. It arises from the insight of zazen, that we live together with all beings and are not separate.

(These originated with Dogen Zenji and were propounded by Kosho Uchiyama Roshi (Opening the Hand of Thought) and subsequently by his successor, Shohaku Okumura Roshi (Realizing Genjokoan), founder of the Sanshin Zen Community, from where the above quote was taken.)

Rational thought insists on trying to compartmentalize and categorize mind in order to comprehend it, as it does with the rest of the world. Except it can't. The best it can do is ask interminable questions.

If it would only shut up and pay attention, it might notice something important.

I don't know much, but I know enough not to vex my brain or anyone else's by trying to think up - or worse, suggest - answers to these questions.

What is it that flaps in the wind? What is it that watches the flag through my eyes? What thinks about the flag with my brain? What is asking this question? What wants to know the answer? What opens and unfolds, withers and dies all at the same time? What suffers and at the same time seeks out and relieves suffering? What is both nowhere and everywhere? What is neither one nor more than one? Neither nothing nor something? What is writing these words? What is reading them? Wouldn't a cup of tea be nice?

It occurs to me that I may have overstepped my bounds. I don't want my aimless musings / infantile burblings to be mistaken for teachings. As an unordained layman with no qualifications, verification, rank, transmission or lineage, I'm not really anything. If I must be something, perhaps the litter blown against the fence.