inyeon and wall facers

More and more Buddhist concepts are coming into movies and shows. After 2500 years, Buddhism, which is transferred through highly personal relationships, has finally reached the entire world.  If you consider the Chinese sailors reaching North America roughly 250 years ago, Buddhism has touched North American after 1/10 of it's history. It's only recently that monks and others have began to build sanghas in North America. Now that the internet connects the world it seems like all the ideas are available to us, and that the world is quite small, but we are still divided by languages. English might turn out to be the lingua franca of earth, but it might be another language. Maybe there will be several languages that everyone speaks. Maybe it will be a patois. English is made out of several languages, that's why it's almost impossible to really spell.

Past Lives (2023) has a romantic Korean concept of inyeon (인연), where people are connected over a number of lifetimes. Conditionality might include rough ideas of reincarnation where something is transfered, or it might not, maybe it's more like the memories in brains still influencing real life. Like my photos of my grandparents who have been gone for a long time, but I still think about them, and they influence my in known and unknown ways. Whatever the notions, the romantic notion is quaint, and could be traced to Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism. 

I'm watching 3 Body Problem (2024) on Netflix, and they talk about wall facers. That I know of it was Dogen (1200-1253) that liked to meditate facing a wall. He was a Japanese Buddhist who went to China for more teachings and had some powerful writings he left us. He wanted to put all his eggs into the meditation basket instead of the traditions of reciting sutras and mantras, he chose a less devotional path. Most westerners really emphasize meditation in Buddhism, but there is Pure Land Buddhism which focuses more on devotion and other power.

Dogen might have not invented facing the wall, it's unlikely the actual person who chose that first is credited. The Buddha taught anapanasati and brahma viharas, and those were already present in the culture probably, he just tailored them to Buddhism to lead towards the insights he discovered.

There are other shows and movies that have Buddhist influence. There is an anime movie where Jesus and Buddha go on a holiday as teenagers. And then there are straight on, Buddhist movies like Little Buddha (1993), Kundun (1997), Seven Years In Tibet (1997), The Cup (1999), Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring (2003).

Equanimity

So I devoted myself to anapanasati for 4 months, but I've brought back in the Brahmaviharas. I still sit with K sometimes on zoom and radiate qualities of the sublime abodes. 

How to proceed? Do I radiate the quality, or do I pick specific people in a 5 stage version from Buddhaghosa? You radiate the quality in the last stage, so I guess if you do that quite well, you could just radiate when you feel confident, but I'm not confident yet, so I fall back on the 5 stages. 

Metta, karuna, mudita are more straightforward. 

Upekṣā, Upekshā, or Upekkhā is equanimity. 

Building up metta, karuna, and mudita, equanimity also can build on anapanasati. In anapanasati you're relaxing the body, relaxing the emotions, gladdening the mind, steadying the mind, liberating the mind. How do you liberate the mind? Through insight into conditionality, disentangling, letting go of the conditions for suffering, relinquishing. Follow the breath. 

When it feels too complicated, I have a simple visualization. A circle touching a line. You are the circle, and you're not remote, and your not engulfed, you're aware of suffering through your compassion. You've coped with horrified anxiety, and you're not remote or pitying. You see others but it doesn't sink your ship, their problems. You wish them well, with a friendly smile. You appreciate virtue. 

For me, going to the breath is the door to piti, or joy. I wish joy on everyone, in general, and in meditative states. The good qualities of your friends who meditate deeply, and just the joy of seeing a stranger find a dollar on the street. Any kind of joy, and meditative joy.

I meditate on the two bodies, my physical body and the truth body (or the 3 bodies). Rooted in my body, in all it's glory and injuries and aging. All the mindfulness of the body work I have done, as part of the satipatthana sutta. I go for enlightenment with my body, feelings, mind and insight. 

I have worked on the 6 element meditation. I have taken my body apart, also in the 32 parts meditation. I have meditated on corpses. Life is so short, fragile. We must make use of our given time. 

I think about the beauty of it all. The devotional pujas, mantras and mythology that excites me, energizes me. 

All the work culminates on working through the 4 stages to the 5th stage and radiating equanimity out into the world. It feels kind of abstract to say it, but the embodiment and culmination of meditation cycles means it's something. Radiating upeksha. 

Radiating upeksha is all the metta, karuna, mudita, plus all the gladdening and steadying and insight, including the 6 element tearing down, and the resulting build up of a sadhana if you get that too with a guru, or without a guru, or no build up, just letting it sit there and stand, beaming out upeksha into the world, beyond the world, out into the universe and everything. 

All the friendships, past and present. All your study of the Dharma. All the ethical striving, all the simplifying to create the conditions. All the devotion. All the support you have received. All the conditions that allowed for your will to evoke in yourself to radiate upeksha, beaming it in all the directions. 

It is the culmination of hard work, circumstances, seeming luck and the will to enlightenment. 

This thing I call myself feel the fruits of the practice.

The wisdom of equality is embodied in Ratnasambhava (seen below).

In the insight tetrad of anapanasati, you contemplate impermanence, disentangling, cessation and relinquishment. These contemplations are supported by equanimity. 

In some sense a base of equanimity is freedom from the hindrances.

In DN9, the discussion of the jhana. In the first jhana there is no lust. In the second jhana there is no thought. In the third jhana there is equanimity. Delight in concentration vanishes too. The fourth jhana is beyond pleasure and pain and equanimity refines the state, neither happiness nor non-happiness. Passing beyond the infinite (5), into infinite consciousness (6) and into no-thingness (7), and cessation (8). The end is beyond perception.

I see Equanimity meditation as a culmination meditation. I've grinded on metta, karuna, upeksha, and now I'm putting it all together. I'm also utilizing the disentangling, cessation and relinquishment in the anapanasati. This is really trying to carry it across the finish line, no matter how basic I struggle. 

Last updated 4/19/24.