“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.
DN 16 the Mahaparinibbana Sutta suggests 4 holy places. Where the Buddha was born in Lumbini. Where he got enlightened: Bodh Gaya. Where he taught his first sermon that enlightened others, "turning the wheel of the Dharma": Deer Park (Sarnath). And where he reached parinirvana: Kusinara.
When you look at the Lumbini wikipedia page, you see that countries build temples: India, Japan, Thailand, Chinese, Germany, French, Sri Lanka, South Korea, Cambodia, Austria, Singapore, Canada, Vietnam, Tibet, Myanmar, and even Russia is building a temple. It's not lost on me that USA doesn't have one. These spiritual tourism cities have a logic of their own.
There are some good pillars of Ashoka there. In the mythology there were many Buddhas before our era Buddha and one of them is Konagamana, who was also born in Lumbini.
Only 3% of the people in Lumbini now are Buddhists, it's mostly Hindu now, and there are twice as many Muslims as Buddhas.
It's not the original tree at Bodh Gaya, it's the grandchild of the original tree. Someone must have taken a cutting and grown a tree, and someone took a cutting from that one, and grew a tree.
Like all good tourist spots, it includes other notable sites. There is a temple that was built 200 years after the Buddha's death, which makes it quite old. It must have been refurbished a few times. There is a stupa and an Ashoka pillar dedicated to the girl who gave the Buddha some milk. There is a great statue:
(Sarcastic voice) Like all good spiritual places, there were bombings in 2013.
Sarnath has the Dhamek Stupa. The Dharmarajika Stupa is one of the few pre-Ashokan stupas remaining at Sarnath, although only the foundations remain. It has been the subject of extensive depredations and archaeological excavations, from the late 18th through the early 20th century (source). There's an 1833 drawing of it.
The Ashokan pillar erected here was broken during the invasions of the 12th century but many of the pieces remain at the original location.
There's a 5th century relief of the Buddha's first sermon that is notable.
Perhaps the most impressive stupa is the Chaukhandi Stupa.
The Sarnath Museum looks cool too, where the above relief is.
Mulagandha Kuty Vihara looks interesting too.
There is also another grandson of the Bodhi tree planted in Sarnath.
Kushinagar is where the Buddha died. I've been reading the fantastical Mahaparinibbana Sutta. I don't really get the spiritual importance of the story where Ananda could have asked the Buddha to live 20 more years, but he missed it. Excoriating people for lack of mindfulness isn't what Buddhism is about, in my humble opinion.
There are some dubious explanations of earthquakes, but the idea that enlightenment causes some is a cute idea. There's a big debate over whether the Buddha at boar by eating "Pig's Delight" but I think it would be truffles.
Ramabhar Stupa is the thing to see. In a way it reminds me of the Native American mounds in North America.
There's a Parinirvana Temple.
If you added in other sites, I would pick:
Vulture's Peak Rajgir Bahar India.
Rajgir is where Nalanda, a great center of Buddhism 427 CE until around 1400 CE., which hosted the scholars Dharmapala, Nagarjuna, Dharmakirti, Asanga, Vasubandhu, Chandrakirti, Xuanzang, Śīlabhadra and Atiśa..
Sravasti includes stupas and many sites, archaeological and reconstructed that are in the Pali Canon.
Sankissa has some sights, pillars, statues, monastery and stupa ruins.
Vaishali has archaeological sites too.
Mathura has the first image of the Buddha on record perhaps.
When I think of sites I would like to visit, I think Bodhidharma's cave and a walk around Shikoku to the 88 temples, for Kukai. India, Nepal, China and Japan. I'm sure I could find more places I'd like to go, but that's what comes to mind this morning.
DN 16 expresses a contradiction. Some of the monks are wailing and pulling their hair out, and some have attained something so that they don't see death as a surprise. Both contradictory reactions are possible. One is of great devotion but little insight, and one seems blase but actually contains the insights the Buddha has led you to.
Shrine flowers
teaching impermanence
and joy
one flower
still
opens up
a few days later
I want to learn
how to open up
with no nourishment
just water
unconditioned
Dharmakaya
with stillness, simplicity and contentment
Joseph Goldstein has 33 talks on the Satipatthana Sutta. April 2004 on YouTube on AudioBuddha.
In the first one his some background to his journey. At one point he says, "I could happily just sit there and think and entertain myself." But that's not what meditation is about. Do you want to think or do you want to get enlightened. What choice are you making. Do you want to indulge this pattern or arouse the ardency, which is the energy factor. This path isn't a path of uninterrupted bliss. You need courage.
The goal is to clearly comprehend what is going on. Investigate and develop wisdom.
Here is the first one.
In the second one he talks about pseudo enlightenment stage, when you develop lopsided in second one. There's a selflessness in faith. Faith keeps us open to things beyond our current level of understanding. I've never hear of faith described that way, and it's blown my mind. He reference Tracing Back the Radiance by Jinul (1158–1210). Mindfulness helps us not to proliferate into desire and confusions.
Goldstein is an 80 year old American, grew up in Catskills, studied philosophy at Columbia. He went to Thailand in the peace corps. He came back and started teaching at Naropa. He helped establish Barre Center for Buddhist Studies. He uses the phrase "guru job" in his first talk, and I wonder about his guru jobs aside from author and retreat leader, retreat talker.
Links
First book: The Experience of Insight (pdf).
You can find all his books on his Wikipedia page.
Looking on Goodreads, most people have read his book on Mindfulness (2013). Then Insight Meditation: The Practice of Freedom (1993). Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation (1987) with Jack Kornfield. With the first book The Experience of Insight: A Simple & Direct Guide to Buddhist Meditation, he has these 4 books top the list of books that come up. One Dharma: The Emerging Western Buddhism (2002) looks interesting too. Books are more concise, some people prefer audio learning.
In The Experience of Insight (1976/2020) Ram Das talks about Goldstein and gives credit to Munindra for teaching him in Bodhgaya.
I love hearing about new Buddhists, I've never hear of Jinul (1158–1210). Jinul is also spelled Chinul.
"The young monk's relationship with his preceptor does not seem to have been especially close, for his biographer states that he never had a permanent teacher. Chinul's intellect and his natural inclination toward solitude and retreat had been noticeable since his youth; with the fractious climate of the church in his days, he probably felt more comfortable learning to get along on his own considerable talents in seclusion. From early on in his vocation Chinul made up for the lack of personal instruction by drawing inspiration from the Buddhist scriptures. In the spirit of self-reliance that is central to Buddhism, he took responsibility for his own spiritual development and followed the path of practice outlined in the scriptures and confirmed through his own Sŏn meditation. Chinul's progress in Buddhist practice was, therefore, based on using scriptural instructions to perfect formal Sŏn practice."
From The Korean Approach to Zen: The Collected Works of Chinul, Translated with an Introduction by Robert E. Buswell Jr., pages 20-21.
He founded the Jogye order. "In 1994, the Jogye order managed 1725 temples and 10,056 clerics and had 9,125,991 adherents." They attach to the Huineng lineage, famous for his Platform Sutra and winning poetry contests.
His magnum opus is called: Excerpts from the Dharma Collection and Special Practice Record with Personal Notes.
One of his teachings is essence-function.
They derisively called her the mango woman, the courtesan who wanted to see the Buddha. She locked wheels with other vehicles trying to get to the Buddha. They offered her all the money in the world not to go, but she wanted to see the Buddha. He agreed to eat with her, and she served him and the sangha a meal. She was inspired to become a nun.
The Verses of Ambapali: Read the poem from the Therigatha attributed to Ambapali. The Therigatha is perhaps the first book of women's spirituality on earth, that comes down to us, and is quite riveting, and sparkles with spiritual intensity. I once read it on retreat, and was really wowed by it. She has the refrain, "The truth of the Truth-speaker's words doesn't change."
Today is Empty Cloud's (Xu-yun) birthday. He lived to be 119, and wrote a memoir about his life. I found the earlier parts best. He walked all around China, first to sacred mountains to honor his parents, and then to Tibet and over to Myanmar. At times he suffered quite a bit, but he was disciplined and led an interesting life, through a lot of interesting Chinese history. Later in life he traveled around a lot visiting monasteries to support them, and raise money for them. He was brutally beaten when the communist took over at the very end of his life, when he was over 100. He lived to be 119, which is a pretty amazing feat in itself. There's research that restricted calorie intake can extend your life, and I think he was partially starved in parts of his life in the early years.
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