I feel rapture in my meditation in a way I've never been aware of it before. It's like my life force and energy are surging forward. In some ways it's uncomfortable, and a distraction. It makes me want to get up and blog about it, instead of sitting with it in meditation, and allowing it to settle a little bit more into serenity. Folding it into a focused effort is part of the journey.
I don't know my breath. I imagine I can feel oxygen going into my body but is that a story I'm telling myself about a faint feeling. I'm trying to put my finger on it, but honestly all I really know is that I feel my chest expanding. I can imagine my diaphram going down to open things up, but do I really feel that? I don't think I'm being overly doubtful, but perhaps it's these subtle edges that focusing on the breath is all about. What is actually going on? I think of Stephen Batchelor's break with the Tibetans and going to Korea and just sitting in meditation and asking, what is this? I think of Mun just saying Buddha over and over again in his language.
I wonder if information is my new addiction. I don't hide it that I've struggled with addiction, and one hallmark of that just transfering the addiction to something more acceptable, like workaholic, or shopaholic. Informationaholic is where I'm at. I cruize Twitter for the latest, trying to figure out if and why Maxime Chanot left NYCFC. Reddit's karma is nothing in this world, and yet I was so excited to blast past 30K to 31k with a popular comment. Do I express myself too much on Twitter, Reddit and Blogger? Sometimes I think of something and have to rush to express it before I forget it. It's all so ephemeral. The navel gazing of a mindfulness practitioner. It's a good thing the Mahayana ideals were introduced to counteract, and articulate more altruistic internal forces.
The best headway I've made is on Facebook, which reconnected me with my high school class. In some ways I think of the 4 years of high school in weird ways, that include the musical Grease, to the Ramones Rock and Roll High School. It was a phantasmagoric party enhanced by The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Heathers, Pretty In Pink, Valley Girl, Porky's. Movies are intoxicating, and I've left those behind as much as I've left Facebook behind.
In high school, I bought into the self development program they were selling, and there was automatic friendships through shared suffering and efforts. I'm still thinking about Thoreau and Conrad, 1984 and Animal Farm. I got my first taste of Asian ideas in my Junior year Russia/China class, when they talked about Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. The next year I took an ancient history class, and learned about ancient Greek philosophers, in very small high school ways. I was yearning for ideas, philosophy seemed to hold a power to organize experience I'd hitherto been deprived of in my education. I read on my own too.
I've yet to put a limit on my apps on my phone, to cap the amount of energy I dissipate. What do I want to channel my energy towards? What do I want to deliberately do? Being on the path towards enlightenment is an endless journey, and the support of sangha, mindfulness, study, devotion and ethics is great, but what do monks do all day besides meditate and pay attention? The struggle for existence: Eating is such a big project, and complicated when you strive for veganism.
I recently read 1% of Americans are vegan and 4% are vegetarian. I thought there were more vegetarians. It's so hard to be a purist for me any more, I've lost my desire to be a cutting edge vegan, the art of the possible means I fall short of my ideals, and I'm not going to lambast myself, I want to be encouraging. You can do it, even if I fall short. Some people say that if you fall short of spiritual ideals, what's the point?
The point is that reaching for something is better than just not seeing the lotus in the muck. There is beauty, and spiritual beauty is very important. Supposedly Kukai was a proponent of that, but I've yet to crack the tome of his teachings next to my bed. To be an expert is so much harder than a reality star. I was interested to see that in the documentary Harmontown (2014), he sought to evolve and not just celebrate his shortcomings, making it more documentary than reality TV.
Which is to say I don't really know how to channel my energy towards the good. Inspired heroes like the Buddha, Thoreau, Mary Oliver give me hints, but I'm embedded in my own life of various exposures, and responsibilities. What is my vision, where do I want to go? How do I want to use this energy? I guess you live the questions. But the joy of meditation is quite a joy, and all the hyperbole about it is I guess warranted when you finally start touching it. The glimpses and tastes of the fruits of practice are quite sweet. Rapture is a geyser you want to harness, and that reminds you that you own your own energy and it's your responsibility to channel it.
A mental formation I can get upset about is the idea that you can be murdered for displaying a flag that signals tolerance for others sexuality.
On August 18th 2023 Laura Ann Carleton, a mother of 9 children, was gunned down for displaying a flag that signaled tolerance and acceptance at her clothing store in Lake Arrowhead California (source). A special flag was created to commemorate her.
Expressing outrage perhaps closes down the space that stochastic terrorism creates.
To be upset by violence is normal, to be upset by specific hatred in normal. When you're doing the compassion meditation in the Brahma Viharas, a far enemy is horrified anxiety. If you open yourself up to the suffering of others you're going to feel that feeling all the time, and the meditation practice is in a way practice for something you have felt over and over throughout your life.
Of course working for tolerance and whatnot is important, but the larger meditation goal is be able to let go of these fixations when you need to, to function, or go deeper in meditation. Not in a hide your head in the sand way, and not suggesting you don't work towards social justice in your world.
All the harm done in the world is from a place of confusion and bewilderment, and even eating only plants you're killing bugs in the field, and bugs with the transportation. Modern agriculture is the least harm we can do, as individuals, we have to eat. People who say ha, plants have feelings, don't really care about plant feelings, because if they did, they would connect the dot that animals eat more plants, eating animals is eating more plants, but they're trying to poke logic holes into something they don't want to do. The best argument for carnism is "I want to and I can." It's not illegal yet. My hope for society is that we trend in the more ethical direction for our own sake, moving towards ethical gladdening.
Meditating, it helps to drop these mental formations, and focus on the object of concentration, in my case the breath, ala anapanasati. Insight into mental formations could be part of a solution for violence. We work best on ourselves.
We're all bewildered and confused. It's not easy to reduce my bewilderment.
Before I go into studying this book, I'm going to express my reservation. Having Buddha nature in us still doesn't absolve us from practice to get there, the hard spade work, and it's not a foregone conclusion even if you postulate Buddha nature.
My second qualm is to wonder if it's imported Hinduism. Everyone is god, everything is god, yadda yadda. We're all Buddhas.
Even so, Buddhism evolves, and develops ideas. We need to use our brains for something and it's fun to study Buddhism. There's an extensive literature on Buddha nature (Wikipedia). Why not look at it?
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I haven't seen a more clear articulation of Buddha nature than this video of Kamalashila's 30 minute introduction to a retreat in 2020 on YouTube. He says he's said the story before, he just intimates how thinking about Buddha nature really opened things up for him. He didn't examine it from a philosophical point of view, nor a literary point of view, he asked himself if it would help his practice of Buddhism. And it did. Wonderful. Sympathetic joy to him. I feel like I need to begin to ask if it could help my practice.
Sallie King has a book called Buddha Nature (1991), that came out in 1991. I have to read it now.
Here's a review of the book on jstor. It's not long and mostly a summary.
This is a complicated book:
I see things in terms of ideas that set the continuum. To counter the excessive individualism of going for enlightenment, the Bodhisattva ideal pushes the altruistic element.
On the one hand mappo posits that there's been such a degradation of society that nobody can get enlightened any more. The Buddha's life is too remote, his influence has waned, and nobody can get enlightened anymore.
Countering mappo is Buddha-nature says you're already enlighten and you're trying to realize it. Everyone has Buddha-nature. Icchantika is the idea of a person who can't become enlightened.
Links:
Buddha Nature Wikipedia
I don’t feel as though I have to confine myself to the subset of thoughts in the Pali Cannon or prescribed thoughts. Maybe there's nothing Dharmic about it, but this passage struck today, from A Prayer For The Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers (p. 141);
"You don't have to have a reason to be tired. You don't have to earn rest or comfort. You're allowed to just be."
The story is about a monk who travels around a provides tea. She is joined by a robot who has come out of hiding. The robots hid from society in the wilderness, but this one has become curious about humans again. The monk and robot strike up a friendship and share experiences, and reflect together.
The monk is struggling in that she somehow struggles not to accept the above quote, she internally resists that, she feels obligation to her raising and to others. She feels like a leetch if she is alright with just existing.
There will be a harsh punishment for letting go of the protestant work ethic. The struggle is internal, too.
As a side note, this "lack of ambition" also leads to being single often, maybe not all cases.
Another struggle for me in the spiritual life, a terrible concepts makes me feel so precious, is the mating mind. Being single also lets go of the mating mind.
Just as the Calendar Began to Say Summer
I went out of the schoolhouse fast
Read an article about Tan Dun’s Buddha Passion in the Guardian. Listened to it on Spotify.
"Buddha Passion was inspired by murals dating from the 4th-14th centuries in the Mogao caves in China’s Gansu province. The Chinese-American composer’s work sets an assortment of Buddhist texts in a mixture of Chinese, Sanskrit and English for four main vocal soloists, two Indigenous singers, two choruses and symphony orchestra. Comprising a prologue and six acts, it presents a series of tableaux symbolising the importance of love and compassion, and depicts the path towards enlightenment."
Tan Dun is a Chinese born American, it was his birthday August 18th, he's 66 years old. He lives in New York.
I heard a talk once about a pilgrimage around an island Shikoku in Japan, where you dress in white robes, and you hike around the island and stop in 88 temples and stay the night in whichever ones you want. It sounded so wonderful. Supposedly it was based on Kukai (774-835) who founded a Japanese sect of Vajrayana Buddhism. It sounded lovely.
Reading Kukai's Wikipedia page, I wonder what mountain is sacred in North America to Buddhists? In New York City?
Kukai founded the sect Shingon Buddhism, that thrives to this day.
This talk by Vadanya suggests that Kukai allowed Buddhism to use nature and art beauty in the spiritual life.
Kukai was a dynamic fellow who did things in the world and held it lightly it seems. He also was into Vairocana.
I'm beginning to see how modernism works over the ideas of Buddhism in the context of modern ideas. Kukai is a Vajrayana teacher where you need teachers to unlock texts, because it's not open source, it's the whispered lineage. To open up Kukai is in a certain sense not what is meant by it. But there are a lot of interesting aspects to this talk.
He says Buddhism is not about a total philosophy of everything and it doesn't put forth a metaphysic that explains everything. They're just saying, this ways of being can lead to enlightenment. You can improve your relationship to reality, and it's not for philosophical quibbling and it's not really committed to taking over everything in thinking. I really believe that about Buddhism, but I don't know if any ancient Buddhists actually ever think that, that's a modern interpretation of the teachings. You can advance the teachings in our times, but wow you need to be really careful doing that.
He goes off on nature, and seeing an alive universe, and seeing the larger mysteries. He really develops that, and that's also a modernist idea, not so much a part of Buddhism's original teachings.
It reminds me of Mary Oliver who sees rocks as alive, etc. There's also the Triratna idea that it's OK to celebrate Christmas and Easter as pagan festivals. There's a real openness to the whole of culture that I guess traditional Buddhists would say, "that's not Buddhism."
I was trying to fall asleep, I'm exhausted, and this talk woke me up, I had to listen to it, and then go to sleep.
I see now how Kukai fits into Triratna, possibly, and that's perhaps a narrow interpretation, and a modernist interpretation that is expansive.
I got out my copy of Teachers of Enlightenment, Kulananda's book on the Triratna refuge tree of inspiration to read about Kukai, since I stumbled upon him, and started wondering about him.
This is a quote from Kukai’s Major Works:
“The blue sky was the ceiling of his hut and the clouds hanging over the mountains were his curtains; he did not need to worry about where he lived or where he slept. In summer he opened his neck band in a relaxed mood and delighted in the gentle breezes as though he were a great king, but in winter he watched the fire with his neck drawn into his shoulders. If he had enough horse chestnuts and bitter vegetables to last ten days, he was lucky. His bare shoulders showed through his paper robe and clothes padded with grass cloth.... Though his appearance was laughable, his deep-rooted will could not be taken away from him."In a way Triratna has done something extraordinary revolutionary. Lineage doesn't matter, and you can draw from every school of Buddhism. Honestly that's crazy, I can see why they get so much hate, that I see online. The idea that you can read Kukai and get what the Shingon sect imagines as their wisdom, it's almost like stealing. They might think those insights belong to their sect, and it's a kind of imperialism to come in and steal this rich resource. But is knowledge something you can steal? Is Triratna a literature based sect, inclusive, expansive?
What is the proper relationship to sects in Buddhism, how open source is Buddhism? I guess you live the questions.
I read part of a book by Robert Thurman about a pilgrimage around a sacred mountain in Tibet.
When you're neither monastic nor lay, you go forth still in society.
I want to go on a 5 day pilgrimage into meditation, reading, prostrations, puja, and reflection. We'll see how much of my ambition I can pull off.
Days of Brahma Viharas, anapanasati, pure awareness meditation. Reading the Heart Sutra, Diamond Sutra, Bodhisattvacaryāvatāra, and the Lotus Sutra. Maybe Vessantara's Meeting The Buddhas.
Maybe a visit to the Met: Tree and Serpent: Early Buddhist Art in India, 200 BCE–400 CE. Maybe a trip to the Rubin Friday night if it's still free then.
Nature walks to the pond, around the neighborhood to look at flowers, look for wildflowers for my shrine.
I started off tonight with a short sit and puja. I'll do worldly things too, got a lot of errands and cleaning to do. And I'll end by cooking a meal for my daughter and ex, when they get back.
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