Dale DeBakcsy has an article entitled "The dark side of Buddhism" in The New Humanist from 2013.
Karma "gets insidious is in the pall that it casts over our failures in this life. I remember one student who was having problems memorising material for tests. Distraught, she went to the monks who explained to her that she was having such trouble now because, in a past life, she was a murderous dictator who burned books, and so now, in this life, she is doomed to forever be learning challenged."
I don't disagree, that is pretty wack. Not every Buddhist believes in that kind of stuff.
Consider a false idea of karma I didn't believe destroyed. You can find all sorts of strange ideas in people. Buddhists aren't exempt.
1. Found this talk on Dhamma Talks at Dhammagiri, and thought to create a post where I collect them.
This one is based off Mahanama Sutta SN 11.12
He refers to a previous talk about the Buddha. The name of the monk isn't given in the video text.
This is from Goenka's outfit in India.
He talks about the 6 recollections, the 3 jewels, your generosity, your virtue and the devas.
I have a progression where I do the Brahma Viharas, anapanasati for 4 days, one day of 6 element, and then I do Buddhanasati. I do just sitting for my second meditation, and sometimes I throw in a contemplation of the 10 precepts, and sometimes I throw in a contemplation of the 12 nidanas meditation. I'm looking to keep my practice as vibrant and dynamic as possible. I sort of see others priming it, but I don't really like led meditations. Listening to things and I incorporate them when I'm no my own when appropriate.
2. My standby was by Kamalashila. I've always visualized walking up to the Buddha and joining him, but K asks permission to join the path and is given it. I like that.
“This Dhamma that I have attained is deep, hard to see, hard to realize, peaceful, refined, beyond the scope of conjecture, subtle, to-be-experienced by the wise. But this generation delights in attachment, is excited by attachment, enjoys attachment. For a generation delighting in attachment, excited by attachment, enjoying attachment, this/that conditionality and dependent co-arising are hard to see. This state, too, is hard to see: the pacification of all fabrications, the relinquishment of all acquisitions, the ending of craving; dispassion; cessation; unbinding. And if I were to teach the Dhamma and if others would not understand me, that would be tiresome for me, troublesome for me.”
Muqi is a 13th century Chinese monk who was also an artist. Pronounced /moo CHI/ by Professor James Cahill. Also spelled Muxi.
I thought of 6 Persimmons, when my cousin was feeding one to his son. (Tricycle on Archive). Here's a lecture by Professor James Cahill on YouTube.
I like this one:
There's a plastic tarp caught in a tree. Some painters were loading up their truck and it flew away and they were not able to retrieve it. It's kind of ugly, and I like watch what my mind does when I see it past my Manjushri statue, that is also imperfect because it was blown down and broke.
I think about impermanence in the 13th stage of anapanasati, and I saw today that the tarp broke, it's now in 3 sections, more likely to fall off the tree. The leaves have fallen off in winter time in North America. I miss the green leaves, but the colorful goodbye was spectacular. Days are shorter, it gets dark early.
I was listening for rapture, makes me slightly manic, hypomanic, and I saw the broken tarp and I laughed and cried. Things are a little intense before they consolidate into happiness, or sukha. It's that vital transition that makes up Buddhism, makes it different than a Dionysian cult. Cult can have a positive connotation where it whips up devotion and energy for the spiritual practice. The joy of a goal, my children hugging me, sex, drugs and rock and roll. The poets might see it as drunk on spiritual rapture.
Impermanence might be obvious, but I contemplate it, and I've worked on calming the selfing done in the skandhas, the 5 heaps in stage 8, and I contemplate what happiness really is in stage 10, but I look at how I'm still subtly clinging to samsara too, in stage 13. I imagine I would feel better if that tarp wasn't in the tree.
There's a guy who used to have a long grabby things in Brooklyn for taking the plastic bags that get caught in the trees, he just fixes the reality instead of coping with the mental situation, and that's a valid approach. They made bags need to be bought in grocery stores, so now there are fewer bags flying around in New York City, but I still get the bags for takeout, and use them for small garbage cans.
I've started a blog about my personal experiences in a dharma friendship, this blog was more objective experience and reports of culture. I feel like this blog may have run its course, we'll see what I do with it.
"I here find myself compelled to dissent from a typical response I often encounter among Western Buddhists. This is the response which says that, in any conflictual situation, we must adopt a stance of detached neutrality, that we shouldn’t take sides but should try to see the good and bad hidden in both sides. That’s a style of Buddhist rhetoric I don’t want to accept. I also don’t want to accept the familiar line, “Everything is impermanent, so don’t worry.” It’s true that everything is impermanent, but by the time this regime ends, millions of lives may be lost and damaged and the entire ecosystem of the earth disrupted beyond repair."
From "It's No Time To Be Neutral" 11/8/24
Yesterday was Dia de los Muertos is a remembrance of ancestors, a holiday from our Mexican brothers and sisters.
Yesterday was Halloween is a day when you can dress up in an alternate persona, or hero, and beg for candy. I never really got into it, though of course I did it as a kid for the candy haul. I went around with my daughter who was dressed up like a bat. She says next year she wants to dress like a witch with her mother. I sometimes think about getting a Cat in the Hat hat. Lots of amazing costumes on social media, some people are the opposite of me, and make it really happen.
Today is Diwali is the triumph of light over darkness. My friend voted yesterday to get that out of the way, hopefully light triumphs over darkness politically. I've been reading about Zoroastrianism, because I'm studying Iran, and they have a specific take in the fight of light over dark. Jainism and Hinduism also celebrate Diwali. My Buddhist friend is part of a leading team for a Diwali retreat.
My favorite holiday is Thanksgiving. A feast and a positive attitude.
Previous one and before that.
“The fourth of the hindrances the Buddha mentions in the Satipatthana Sutta are the mind states of restlessness and worry. The Pali word for restlessness is uddacca, which means agitation, excitement, or distraction. It is sometimes translated as "shaking above," where the mind is not settled into the object but hovering around it. "Restlessness" —literally, without rest—expresses all these aspects. The Pali word for worry is kukkucca, which is the mind state of regret or anxiety. This refers to how we feel about not having done things that we should have done and about having done things that we shouldn't have. Although restlessness almost always accompanies worry, it is possible to have restlessness present without worry or regret.”
P153 Mindfulness by Joseph Goldstein.
The Five Aggregates by Mathieu Boisvert, teaches at University of Quebec in Montreal, starts like this with a forward by A.K. Warder:
In Buddhist philosophy, the theory of the five aggregates (pancakkhandha) of realities, or real occurrences known as "principles" (dhamma), is the analysis of what elsewhere is often called the "problem" of matter and mind. In Buddhism, to separate these would be to produce a dilemma like the familiar one of "body" and "soul" (are they the same or different?). But the resolution is different. Whereas the "soul," according to Buddhism, is a non-entity and the problem therefore meaningless, consciousness is as real as matter. The tradition emphasizes that consciousness is inseparably linked to matter: there can be no consciousness without a body; although there ·could be a body without consciousness, it would not be sentient.
Matter and consciousness are two of the "aggregates"; the other three link them, or rather show diem.·inseparably bound together in a living being. These are, to use Boisvert's translations, "sensation" (vedana, variously translated as "experience," "feeling," etc.), "recognition" (sanna or "perception") and "karmic activities" (sankhara, "forces," "volition," etc.). Sensation - being either pleasant, unpleasant or neutral - can occur only in a body which is conscious. Similarly, recognition occurs solely when consciousness is aware of sensations. The karmic activities, sometimes restricted to volition (cetana), were gradually elaborated to include about fifty principles, from "contact" (phassa, the combination of a sense organ, its object and consciousness), energy and greed.: to understanding, benevolence, compassion and attention.
Links:
Review of The Five Aggregates
We are all subject to death, we lost K today.
First one is actually Christopher Titmus, What self, what world (2005), warm up.
Sangharakshita:
First talk I think about is Mind Creative, Mind Reactive (1967).
The Ten Pillars of Buddhism (1984)
Here are 8 talks on the Bodhisattva Ideal (1999).
History of Going For Refuge (1988)
Here's an example of the Sevenfold Puja ritual (1968)
6 talks on Milarepa (2006)
Wisdom Beyond Words (8) (1993)
What is the Dharma (7) (2000)
The Path of Regular Steps and the Path of Irregular Steps (1974)
Evolution: Lower and Higher (1966)
Rosh Hashanah begins ten days of penitence culminating in Yom Kippur, as well as beginning the cycle of autumnal religious festivals running through Sukkot which end on Shemini Atzeret in Israel and Simchat Torah everywhere else. (Wikipedia)
They're selling flowers on a Wednesday:
Eating symbolic foods, such as apples dipped in honey, hoping to evoke a sweet new year, is an ancient tradition recorded in the Talmud.
Three books of account are opened on Rosh Hashanah, wherein the fate of the wicked, the righteous, and those of the intermediate class are recorded. The names of the righteous are immediately inscribed in the Book of Life and they are sealed "to live". The intermediate class is allowed a respite of ten days, until Yom Kippur, to reflect, repent, and become righteous; the wicked are "blotted out of the book of the living forever."
The best-known ritual of Rosh Hashanah is the blowing of the shofar, a musical instrument made from an animal horn.
This is when I see the fellows down by the water praying: The ritual of tashlikh is performed on the afternoon of the first day of Rosh Hashanah by most Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews (but not by Spanish and Portuguese Jews or some Yemenites, as well as those who follow the practices of the Vilna Gaon). Prayers are recited near natural flowing water, and one's sins are symbolically cast into the water. Many also have the custom to throw bread or pebbles into the water, to symbolize the "casting off" of sins.
The Hebrew common greeting on Rosh Hashanah is Shanah Tovah.
So thinking a lot about what you do when you get big sky mind? You just keep going is the answer.
What's after that? What do you try for there? You're going into deeper meditative states.
Reading today in Satipatthana sutta the phrase, "disappearance of consciousness."
With deep meditative states that's maybe a description of absorption and you just build a reservoir of deep and wide meditative experiences.
I learned this from Sangharakshita, and I follow Triratna Buddhism, but I've read widely in Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana. I consider myself a one Dharma Buddhist. I meditate with 3 fellows in Iran every day online. I'm writing this for them.
I started out alternating metta and mindfulness of breathing. The one where you count, first stage the in breath, then out breath and then in the body without counting and then tip of the lip or nose.
Then you learn the brahma viharas: metta (universal loving kindness), karuna (compassion), mudita (sympathetic joy), upeksha (equanimity). This meditation is for emotional positivity, and has some insight especially equanimity. It builds on anapanasati, infact, all these meditations build on each other.
Eventually you learn the 16 stages of anapanasati. This meditation builds concentration and insight.
Another meditation is the 6 elements. You see earth, water, fire, air, space and consciousness, come into, flow out of you, "it's not me, it's not mine. This meditation helps with egoism and insight. I had a powerful experience with this meditation on retreat. It also leads to a spiritual death, in which it's natural to add in a sadhana. A sadhana meditation is a visualization given to you by a guru. You can also do visualization practices without a guru.
For visualization I do Buddhanasati, mindfulness of the Buddha. I contemplate the Buddha, I imagine him inviting me to meditate with him, giving me his blessing to begin on the path, giving me the support of the teachings that come down to me. I visualize, chant the mantra (om muni muni, mahamuni, shakyamuni, swaha).
Focused meditation is contrasted with unfocused meditation or just sitting. You alternate a focused meditation with an unfocused meditation.
The fact is that at some point, me after 20 years, loosen up and just meditate. I spontaneously follow the breath or radiate out metta (6th and 7th dyhana--I'm not making any claims, I'm just saying I try).
That brings up the Dhyana and Bhumis.
What makes one a buddha is to take refuge in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. Taking the refuges and precepts is the ceremony that makes you a Buddhist. You chant them with your sangha, or you can chant them on your own.
To me the Buddhist path consists of meditation, fellowship, study, devotion and ethics.
All traditions have meditation, they will tailor it to their spiritual program.
Here are lead throughs of the various meditations:
First off there's Karen Armstrong's. She's a great BBC religion presenter, and wrote a memoir about her spiritual journey as a Christian nun, a few books actually, rewrote one of them. She's not a Buddhist but her sister is one ... She has some spiritual insight and is a good presenter, so it's a basic good job by someone who isn't a Buddhist but is symptathetic.
Next I read a book by H.W. Schumann, an English translation of Der historische Buddha: Leben und Lehre des Gotama (2004).
Then I read Gautama Buddha: The Life and Times of the Awakened One by Vishvapani Blomfield. It's good.
There is a Tibetan version by Tenzin Chogyel The Life of the Buddha from the 18th century.
Then there's Nanamoli The Life of the Buddha: According to the Pali Canon. This is excellent, and it's the kind of book I never stop reading.
There's also Noble Warrior, another version from the Pali Canon by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu and Khematto Bhikkhu. I'm only 21% done with this one.
I'm not done with this one, but I'm looking to find more, if you know of any, please comment.
Lalitavistara Sūtra is surely on my to read list (8400 translation). Hey they have an app, so I don't have to download.
In DN 16, the Buddha has time to initiate a last discipline Subhadda.
The Buddha says that Channa, his chariot driver supposedly when he was a prince, has been talking bad about some others, and he's to be ostracized by the other monks. All business up to the end. Channa overcomes this ostracizing to become an arihant so the story ends well.
Bob's Burgers is an absurd cartoon about a burger joint and the family that runs it.
In season 11, episode 19, Bob challenges his nemesis Jimmy Pesto to a meditation contest.
They get Mort the mortician, next door, to judge the contest.
The characters are the characters, Jimmy Pesto is a jerk, so he jerks out of the competition when Bob starts to win.
It's absurd, and in no way objective or something that would happen, but I thought it was a funny notion in popular culture about meditation.
Bonus Link
Old NY Times article about Loren Bouchard, who created the show.
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