Ambition and surrender to blooming

On the one hand you’ve got to applaud mavericks.  I think about Daniel Ingram who writes Mastering Core Teachings of the Buddha, that lays it all out there: Here’s how to get enlightened.  I think about others like David Smith and his A Record of Awakening.  For the the phrase “go for it,” and “petal to the metal” capture this spirit.  And yet for 5 years Daniel Ingram was a “one technique freak”, and built up his practice.

Rosenberg talks about a retreat where he slept from 11-4, and basically mediated 50 minutes and walked for 10, ate at his meditation spot and slept at his meditation spot.  And you couldn’t move.  Then somewhere along the 90 day retreat, they were told they were going a week without sleep.

I think about Milarepa’s last teaching, lifting up his clothes to show the calluses on his butt.

How do you press, push yourself into something that is so surrendering?  In meditation, you’re just opening up to your experience, trying to become more intimate with it, really looking into what is going on in your mind with depth.  That’s a kind of surrender, a kind of opening, you're not forcing anything.  It's no slam dunk.  It’s not a detachment or numbing as you push.  It isn’t something you can just willfull come into being.  Deepening in meditation is a healthy intimacy, which passes through a kind of preciousness, and then widens into a stable openness, realization of conditions and compassion.

How willful can someone be?  I’d rather exert myself mildly in a community of strivers, than willfully pushing myself in a world of people who are quite happy the way things are.  Everyone is striving in one way or other.  We’re interconnected.  I see a webs connecting each of us, flexible, stretchy webs that are almost invisible, but I see them more and more.

I think about the science fiction novels where people connect together mentally to run robots in war.  They are told that if they do it too long they will be injured.  But the reality is that they will become enlightened.  The first group they tried this on became enlightened and wouldn’t fight the war.  So they were isolated and hidden.  But you can’t hide something as awesome as enlightenment.

On this anapanasati retreat, I focused more than ever on thinking how I can deploy these insights into my live outside retreat.  I had lots of little insight into how I make my own suffering, the second arrow that doesn’t need to go in.

I had plenty of interesting experience to contemplate on.  From borderline behaviors, to a dog attacking me, to a neighbor of the center making sure I wasn't a harmful stranger, to finding a tick on my arm.  I had lovely visualizations of riding around the circle of meditators on a unicycle and slapping high fives to everyone including the Buddha.

Cliches are not bad in Buddhism, and in a way you can read something without a felt sense of what they are saying.  The words run over you like water over rocks. But there's a deepening on retreat.  I became fascinated by my breath.  I felt more deeply annica, which is impermanence.

So many levels of goodness.  Seeing the foliage of New England in fall.  Walking outside.  Good vegetarian food.  When I walked in someone hugged me and I felt so warm and welcome.  Other people really helped me, and I hope I helped them.

Milarepa talks about stopping chasing the sticks like a dog, and turning to face the stick thrower like a tiger.

The overflowing energy on retreat I poured into howling along to my favorite Rush songs, driving home.  I couldn't stop laughing when my friend said he had to open his eyes in the shrine room to see who was licking their balls.  It was the guide dog of one of the retreatants.

It's cool to read another person's musings on a retreat, like the secular buddhist blog does.

Photo Essay

I don't take pictures of people on retreat, so it's just things.

the sales pitch

I find the sales pitch to upgrade on Spotify prime interesting.  Usually ads aren't interesting.  Spotify is a music app that plays music (when did we stop calling them programs?).  If you don't upgrade to prime, you can play it on your computer, but not your smart phone, and there are adds.  I've used Rhapsody and Pandora, but somehow Spotify has enough of the music on line for me not to worry.  Only the heavy hitters aren't on Spotify and I'm OK with that.  Most of the music I like isn't mainstream anyway.

The add says something like:  Don't steal the music, listen to spotify, and every time you listen to a favorite artist, you earn money for the artist.

The argument appeals to your ethics, in the Buddhist's case, the ten precepts.  Not to take the not given, the second precept.  The flip side virtue is generosity.  This ad appeals to my ethical sense.  Usually ads appeal to the lower nature, desire for status, appealing women, ease in life.  This ad essentially says you will feel better if you stop stealing.  I like it.

Going on retreat

The retreat I'm going on is not on the Bodhyanga's, as in the photo, but on Anapanasati, mindfulness of breathing.  Twelve years ago I went on a Brahma Vihara retreat, and it blew my mind.  I've missed the anapanasati retreats that came through for one reason or other.

Metta and Mindfulness of Breathing are the building blocks of the system of meditation.  To go deeper into them yields a richness.

As someone who has practiced for 12 years, I don't need a new practice.  I'm not interested in collecting new meditation practices that I don't have time to practice.  I need to keep banging away at these two practices, mindfulness of breathing and the metta bhavana.  And yet I look forward to the novelty of this retreat.

I've taken the next step into the 6 Element practice and my life wasn't supportive enough to build that one up.  I don't do the 4 brahma vihara's, even though I love them.  I just alternate Metta and MOB.

Still, going on retreat is lovely in so many ways, and deepening my appreciation of anapanasati is important, feels like completing the circle of learning.

With children, I always have a conflict of leaving them.  Some of my buddhist friends without children see that as pathological attachment.  My non-Buddhist friends wonder how I could leave my family, they see it as selfish to go on retreat.  You can't please everyone.  My true friends support me and don't try to change my course with their own agendas.

My retreat experience is very challenging.  It's not relaxing and I work very hard.  I don't skip things and I make the most of it, because frankly you never know if you'll ever get back on one again.  And sitting in meditation lots of things come up that I distract my mind away from, and I have to deal with my backlog of pushed away negative stuff.  It can also be blissful, I can get into deep meditative states that are very pleasant.  And it feels very healthy to be around the spiritual community.

I'm very much looking forward to it.

Daw Suu

Things could be worse.  Things could be better.

Today I watched The Lady, about the life of Aung San Suu Kyi.  The Burmese call her Daw Suu.  The feeling you get is that people can get caught up on the larger world movement, and that can destroy one's personal life, and the struggle for integrity against the larger world.  What a weird long distance relationship.  What a dramatic conflict between the personal and the political.  I guess that's what being a political prisoner is all about.

She should have been the president of Burma, except for the Junta.  She could have left and just been with her family and lived a quiet life, except for her conscious.

Daw Suu sacrificed her family life, for her political life, though her sons were teenagers when she started her quest for democracy.  All she wanted was democracy.  It helps me to realize, as broken as our political system is, at least there's a shred of democracy.  It could be worse.  I like how she focuses on fear in what I read about her.  There's an amazing scene where a line of men are lined up, pointing guns and she walks into them.  I think that's why I'm sickened by the shenanigans in our democracy in the USA.  It's not so dramatic as guns pointed as people.

Daw Suu's life challenges me, why am I not more political?  I still struggle to find my cause, beyond being nice to the people around me, and blogging, though I am deeply touched by the Buddhist movement in India.  I have a hard time imagining what I could contribute, perhaps I need to work harder figure that out, raise money to go there and do some research.  Daw Suu quotes her father:  "You may not think much about politics, but politics thinks about you."

I've shot guns in my life for sport.  But seeing them used in this movie make me sick.  Guns are sickening.  It's time we move past guns, grow out of it, grow up.

I'm not a huge fan of Gandi because he wasn't really against caste, but Daw Suu continues the tradition of non-violent protests, which I do like.  She's really courageous.

I read most of the wikipedia entry about her before I watched the movie.  There's nothing about hunger strikes (presented in the movie), in the wikipedia entry.

Before today, I learned mostly about her through following the links of Rev. Danny Fisher.  He's a real blogsattva, and if it's social and political awareness you want, you follow his blog.  He's the one who hipped me to this movie.

I like Luc Besson.  I like David Thewlis (Naked is one of my favorite movies).  Burma is 89% Buddhist, btw, compared to 0.7% in the USA.  Daw Suu was married to Michael Aris, a scholar.  Her husband was a twin, both Himalayan scholars.  Another interesting fact, her brother drown in an ornamental pool.

Choose the world you build

P. 42 Inconceivable Emancipation:

"We can create a world of the gods, a world of refined, sensuous, intellectual, aesthetic, but rather selfish, self-indulgent pleasure;  or a world of human beings, a world of ordinary domestic, civic, political, and cultural obligations and activities.  We can create a world of asuras or anti-gods, a world of jealousy, excessive sexual polarization, over-aggressiveness, ruthless competition, and overt or covert conflict; or a world of hungry ghosts, a world of neurotic craving, intense possessiveness, and relationships characterized by extreme emotional dependence.  We can create a world of tormented beings, a world of pain and suffering, of intense physical and mental distress; or a world of animals, a world of straightforward food, sex and sleep.

Or, turning our back on all these, we can devote ourselves to developing as individuals.  We can devote ourselves to the Budhisattva ideal.  We can devote ourselves, direcetly or indirectly, to building the Buddha-land."

my other blogs

In the democracy of the internet, anyone can publish themselves.  No guarantee anyone will read it, but think the process of writing is what gives me joy.  Publishing is the final stage of the writing process.  The internet affords one an easy quick route to publication.

Face to face communication is the best way to communicate, but there are other modes.

And if people don't like what you have to say, well, they just don't tune in.  No harm no foul.  I enjoy reading the subjective personal narrative, and I enjoy expressing my personal narrative.

Started a gratitude blog to express my gratitude.  Gratitude is a way of putting your mind into an appreciative place.

I haven't been posting as much on my mental health blog, but I did recently.

Perhaps sports is a false refuge, but I like my male soap opera, so I created a sports blog.  "He made his appearance at the fields of sports and in the casinos, but his aim was always to mature those people who were attached to games and gambling." (quoted from Vimalakirti-Nirdesa in Inconceivable Emancipation p. 46)

Some culture ideas I have doesn't have a Buddhist twist, so I created a cultural blog.

I love hiking, so I created a hiking blog.

I love Wafa's, a Turkish restaurant, so I created a fan blog for it.  They have great vegetarian food.

I spent more time blogging about my sons when they were small, but I still hope to blog more about them.

My partner is awesome, so I created a tribute blog, that also has buddhist pictures.  I repost cool quotes, and Buddhist pictures.  I put my own pictures up of her, and the flowers I send her.

Hope you like them!

The Bodhisattva's Reply by Sangharakshita

The Bodhisattva's Reply

What will you say to those
Whose lives spring up between
Custom and circumstance
As weeds between wet stones,
Whose lives corruptly flower
Warped from the beautiful,
Refuse and sediment
Their means of sustenance -
What will you say to them?

That woman, night after night,
Must sell her body for bread;
This boy with the well-oiled hair
And the innocence dead in his face
Must lubricate the obscene
Bodies of gross old men;
And both must be merry all day,
For thinking would make them mad -
What will you say to them?

Those dull-eyed men must tend
Machines till they become
Machines, or till they are
Cogs in the giant wheel
Of industry, producing
The clothes that they cannot wear
And the cellophaned luxury goods
They can never hope to buy -
What will you say to them?

Or these dim shadows which
Through the pale gold tropic dawn
From the outcaste village flit
Balancing on their heads
Baskets to bear away
Garbage and excrement,
Hugging the wall for fear
Of the scorn of their fellow-men -
What will you say to them?

And wasted lives that litter
The streets of modern cities,
Souls like butt-ends tossed
In the gutter and trampled on,
Human refuse dumped
At the crossroads where civilization
And civilization meet
To breed the unbeautiful -
What will you say to them?

`I shall say nothing, but only
Fold in Compassion's arms
Their frailty till it becomes
Strong with my strength, their limbs
Bright with my beauty, their souls
With my wisdom luminous, or
Till I have become like them
A seed between wet stones
Of custom and circumstance.'

Bhante quote on Buddha-land

P. 40 Inconceivable Emancipation:

"Zen is a well-known example of the application of spiritual meditation to various otherwise mundane activity in such a way as to bring them into harmony with that realization.  In this way, Zen is applied to architecture, to landscape gardening, to archery or swordsmanship, to flower arrangement, and to everyday manners and customs.  The Zen approach, in which the human subject is creative in relation to it's object, is akin to the building of a buddha-land, in that it transforms various aspects of the world."

And later,

"If you don't have the power to build a Zen temple, you can at least paint your room, or even just tidy up a bit."

Pure Land

The pure land is as pure as we make it.  If we are less pure, the pure land has impurities.  We can't even see the pure land if we're don't have any purity.

Bhante Sangharakshita sees it as a koan that the Buddha or a Bodhisattva creates a pure land, and yet what you see in it, is up to the person.  Something to meditate on, to transcend. (p.36 IE)

But if we are to make sense of conditionality, "this being, that becomes," we know that we're all connected an you can't build a buddhafield alone (as much as we might like to try).

Milarepa had build and tore down a tower for quite a while.  His teacher was helping him to burn off his negative karma.

In the Meghiya Sutta, the Buddha suggests what you can do if you're not ready to meditate.  He can work on noble friendships, ethics, listen to the Dharma, and develop discernment, to see conditionality.  He can also clarify what is to be abandoned, develop good will and a positive attitude, mindfulness (we have two meditations for this, this is the ground floor in the system of meditation) and understand the no permanent self doctrine.

Subhuti on the Buddhist Manifesto

I wrote a post when this came out.  Subhuti has a rare clarity of mind; Everything he says seems uncontroversial, yet he is challenging.

He used an metaphore I'd never heard of:  Aunt Sally

He uses a complex vocabulary, I will link 3:

"Atavism"

"Post-Enlightenment Epistemology"

"Propitious"

Listening to Subhuti, I can't help but wish he'd write a kind of Confessions of an Atheist Buddhist, Stephen Batchelor type memoir, which is an intellectual tour de force.  If he could combine his formidable intellect with a personal narrative, I would greatly wish for that.  He'd probably prefer to be a man of action, he does so much in India and Turkey.

I have to think more about the criticism that the internet is superficial.

I love his talking about the danger of formalism, and connecting it with conditionality.  One example is the focus on lineage, in which he quotes a sutra where the Buddha warns against that.  I loved the phrase, "gravitational pull of the conditioned," which he also talks about in terms of reliance on rites and rituals in and of themselves.  He sees the Buddha pointing to principles beyond the literal teachings.

He hammers on the monastic vs. lay dualism.  He really pushes for authenticity and a meritocracy based on commitment to the 3 jewels.

"People absorb 20% from a screen compared to a book"  He said he, "read it in a study."  Please post a comment if you find this study.

I hope this isn't superficial.

Cultural Wanderings

Bodhisattva Vow by Adam Yauch (deceased Beasty Boy)(1994)


As I Develop The Awakening Mind I Praise The Buddha As They Shine
I Bow Before You As I Travel My Path To Join Your Ranks,
I Make My Full Time Task
For The Sake Of All Beings I Seek
The Enlighted Mind That I Know I'll Reap
Respect To Shantideva And All The Others
Who Brought Down The Dharma For Sisters And Brothers
I Give Thanks For This World As A Place To Learn
And For This Human Body That I'm Glad To Have Earned
And My Deepest Thanks To All Sentient Beings
For Without Them There Would Be No Place To Learn What I'm Seeing
There's Nothing Here That's Not Been Said Before
But I Put It Down Now So I'll Be Sure
To Solidify My Own Views And I'll Be Glad If It Helps
Anyone Else Out Too
If Others Disrespect Me Or Give Me Flack
I'll Stop And Think Before I React
Knowing That They're Going Through Insecure Stages
I'll Take The Opportunity To Exercise Patience
I'll See It As A Chance To Help The Other Person
Nip It In The Bud Before It Can Worsen
A Change For Me To Be Strong And Sure
As I Think On The Buddhas Who Have Come Before
As I Praise And Respect The Good They've Done
Knowing Only Love Can Conquer In Every Situation
We Need Other People In Order To Create
The Circumstances For The Learning That We're Here To Generate
Situations That Bring Up Our Deepest Fears
So We Can Work To Release Them Until They're Cleared
Therefore, It Only Makes Sense
To Thank Our Enemies Despite Their Intent
The Bodhisattva Path Is One Of Power And Strength
A Strength From Within To Go The Length
Seeing Others Are As Important As Myself
I Strive For A Happiness Of Mental Wealth
With The Interconnectedness That We Share As One
Every Action That We Take Affects Everyone
So In Deciding For What A Situation Calls
There Is A Path For The Good For All
I Try To Make My Every Action For That Highest Good
With The Altruistic Wish To Achive Buddhahood
So I Pledge Here Before Everyone Who's Listening
To Try To Make My Every Action For The Good Of All Beings
For The Rest Of My Lifetimes And Even Beyond
I Vow To Do My Best To Do No Harm
And In Times Of Doubt I Can Think On The Dharma
And The Enlightened Ones Who've Graduated Samsara

[end]

(The capitals for the words is just from the website I found the lyrics.  They didn't spell Dharma right once, I corrected that.)

Rereading it, I think that's pretty awesome, a fair modern statement of the Bodhisattva Vow. I could see chanting that.  Better yet, create my own.

I found out about the song from Shambhala SunSpace, the blog of the Shambhala Sun.  Unfortunately, I didn't take Hip Hop seriously until a while after the song came out, so I've just found the song.  Listening to the song on spotify, I agree with a comment that it's a bit hard to understand, not easy to distinctly hear.

Wikipedia says, "Yauch was a practicing Buddhist. He became an important voice in the Tibetan independence movement. He created the Milarepa Fund, a non-profit organization devoted to Tibetan independence, and organized several benefit concerts to support the cause, including the Tibetan Freedom Concert."

Also, "In 1995, while attending a speech by the Dalai Lama at Harvard University, he met his wife, Tibetan American Dechen Wangdu. They married in 1998 and also had a daughter, Tenzin Losel, in the same year."

Here is an interview of Adam Yauch from Shambhala Sun.

(BTW on Spotify (in USA), when you search Bodhisattva Vow, you also get a decent song by Alex Walsh, and, I listened to his album Master and Disciple, which is  folk music with many Buddhist themes.  He seem to have Nichiren influences.  Pretty cool.

There's also a "classically trained" pianist, Carol Colacurcio, who has as song of that title too.)

Fish Basket

The pure land is right here, right now.  We can live in the pure land that leads to enlightenment.

Bhante Sangharakshita tells the Indian story (p37 of Inconceivable Emancipation) of the woman with the fish basket.  She sells fish weekly at the market.  One day it's late before she sells her fish and she asks a flower seller if she can stay the night because it's late, and she doesn't want to walk home.  She can't stand the sweet smell of flowers, so she gets her fish basket to fall asleep.

He tells the story to point out that we might not be able to stay in a pure land, despite the initial response, "I'd like to be there."  So the question becomes, what stops us from living in the pure land?

I'd say my fish basket is sports fanaticism, and video games, but there are the psychological traits of dreaminess, brittleness in the face of criticism, lack of energy towards the good (laziness) and individualism and the desire to be left alone to figure things out in my own way in my own time (which may or may not be an evasion or just the way I learn things).  There are squishy things I avoid because they are somehow psychically too painful.  I haven't even figured out all the ways in which I hold myself back, or the underlying dynamics of all that.

As usual the way you work on things is meditation, noble friendship, dharma study and patience.

Vimalakirti-Nirdesa Quotes

"You should absorb yourself in contemplation in such a way that you are released in liberation without abandoning the passion that are the province of the world."  VN/T p.24

picky little point

I love the movie Tron Legacy.  I saw the original as a kid, so it is visually in my consciousness.  I think it's visually a very very amazing movie.

And I think it's cool that Flynn is meditating, that he's thinking Zen.  But I don't think Zen, which is after all a sect of Buddhism, is about quietism.  I think with mindfulness and kindness we move more towards action.  There is a growing tradition of engaged buddhism.

So that little detail, Flynn's misunderstanding, bothers me about the movie.

Wanderlust Versus World Weariness

"If we are beset by this kind of spiritual ennui, it is vital that we shake it off, that we get completely away from any feeling that life--spiritual life--is dull and boring." (p.6 The Inconceivable Emancipation:  Themes from the Vimalakirti-Nirdesa)

There's an old saw in the TBC, when someone comes along who's younger than 32.  For some reason 32 seems to be the magical number when the hard drive starts to get bugs in it, and we seek out something beyond our usual programming.  We can not solve the equations on their basic terms.  

(I'm jealous of the ones who come to the dharma younger, I read it, and maybe that built some foundation, but I read Zen, and that was utterly confusing, I didn't have the context to put it in.)

I think a lot about the book The Unbearable Lightness of being, where one fellow feels like life is meaningless, trivial, and he can be a hedonist, and just pleasure himself.  His girlfriend takes everything so deeply.  She is overwhelmed with meaning.  And there is a third one who takes things playfully, dances with the mysteries.

(I haven't read it in a while, and maybe I'm misreading, perhaps I should reread it again, but I take those distinctions whether or not they derive from that book.)

(The women order members up at Aryaloka have that playful spirit, I haven't really felt that amongst most of the men up there.)

I recently read a blog post about ennui, on a fantastic blog.

Recently, the question was asked in my study group is based on the quote, "Every moment is unique."  How can we cultivate this?  My answer is notice differences and change, instead of seeing the sameness.  There's a richness in mindfulness, life is not boring.

I think I've lost the quest for utmost wondrousness that I set out for myself.  Like the blogger who drifted into ennui, I've grown world weary, a sure sign that I've lost my mindfulness and kindness.  Catching myself falling short of my ideals can be dispiriting, if I take it the wrong way.  But when I gain a little mindfulness, I can catch my negative undertow and use my ideals as my guiding light.

I'd hoped that I'd established something that was irreversible.  That was hubris.  You can always backslide (until you become a stream entrant).  "Beware the thin part of the wedge," is one of my favorite sayings.  I got puffed up.  I have been deflated.  I hope that is the basis for true spiritual progress, the humbling.  I hope I can choose to move toward the ideas, the richness, the unbearable heaviness of being, utmost wondrousness.  The words vigilance and discipline have been standing out to me.  I'm constantly challenged by the writings of Bhante Urgen Sangharakshita, and my spiritual friends.

Vimalakīrti Nirdeśa visual study aid

Here are the 8 talks for the Vimalakirti Nirdesa, on Free Buddhist Audio.

There's a list of mythical beasts mentioned on page 16 of Thurman translation (Click on the definition to see an image I have found of the mythical creature):

Brahmas:  Creator gods.

Sakras:  Indra, king of gods.

Lokapalas:  Kings of the 4 quarters, protectors.  Also Wikipedia.

Devas:  gods.  Wikipedia.

Yaksas:  forest demons.

Gandharvas:  Heavenly musicians.  That are birds.

Asuras:  Titans.

Garudas:  Magical bird.  Which, by the way, is the national symbol of Thailand

Kimnaras:  Horse head, human body.

Maharagas:  Mythical serpent race, of which I couldn't find any images.

Back to school

It's September, and my boys started second and third grade.  It's back to school time.  

In the Triratna Buddhist Community you can become a mitra, it is self selective, when you realize that you're a Buddhist, you want to follow the 5 precepts, and you want to practice within the Triratna Buddhist Community context.  Though shopping around is allowed now, you still you have some kind of allegiance to the TBC, otherwise why ask to be a mitra in this context?  The mitra ceremony is a puja with three offerings:  a flower, incense and a candle.  They all symbolize impermanence, and beauty and the fragrance and light of the dharma.

Then, if the spirit moves you, you can ask for ordination into the order.  You become, in the lingo, a GFR mitra.  GFR is short for "going for refuge", which of course you can do without the TBC or TBO, but it's just how the tradition has evolved in distinguishing people who have asked for ordination.  

I have asked for ordination.  Now ordination isn't self selective, the order decides when and if you get ordained.  You have to be witness to be effectively going for refuge.  You might be effectively going for refuge, but not witnessed to be so.  Effective means many things and I'm not going to unpack that now.  There is a checklist of things you can do, but being invited is beyond a checklist.  The only organization in the TBO, beyond centers, which are run autonomously (though in close relation with friendships in the order), is the preceptors college, who's sole purpose is to say yes or not yet to ordinands.  

One thing that being a GFR mitra gets you (and that's a horrible way of looking at it), is that you can go on GFR mitra retreats, or retreats that include such people.  And also it includes study.

In the good old USA, we don't have the amount of order members like you do in other places.  So the order is stretched thin.  So we have some on line Dharma study.  And it happens to be on the Vimalakirti Nirdesa.  There are great talks on FBA, and many translations of this excellent sutra.  So I'm embarking on a deeper study of this sutra, which I've read a few times, and listening again to the talks, and rereading the book based on those talks.

I embark on this journey of study with excitement, and hopefully the right view of looking into the text.  Approaching a text is a kind of sacred journey into the heart of the Dharma.  What we find there will change each time, maybe, and hopefully I will bring the requisite energy and view to the study.  I approach with respect and reverence.  If I am receptive the text will beam out at me some of the feel of enlightenment, a glimpse perhaps, a finger pointing at the moon.  I'm excited.

Merton follow up

For whatever reason, I didn't mark the places I thought were interesting in a cross over, similarities in the spiritual life of Thomas Merton and mine as a Buddhist, but I think he spoke to me on many occasions in The Seven Storey Mountain.  Merton is often an awesome writer.  

In 1947 Bhante comes out with A Survey of Buddhism, and in 1948 Merton comes out with The Seven Storey Mountain.  I'd need to be better versed in those times to see if there was much cross over, but it feels significant that those two classics come out around the same years.  They both found the conflict of writing and being spiritual, saw themselves as split between two people, at times.

I learned an awful lot about Catholicism.  In the end I find the focus on sin, the negativity, threats and fake spirituality a real turn off.  Maybe I've just never heard a definition of God that I understand.  I like that Buddhism doesn't need a creator god to grease the wheels.

I have known some very awesome Catholics who I really respected, and I believe you can go deep in any spiritual tradition.  I inherently respect it that others must find their own path.  When I first found my path, I wanted everyone to know it, and I had a kind of evangelical zeal, that is obnoxious, misplaced, and doesn't listen.  A kind of immaturity, which I grew out of, hopefully.  It helps my spiritual life to read about other traditions.  In a way, I want to stay away from Christianity because our culture is so saturated with it, but Merton makes it worth it to me.

I get into scuffles with people about spirituality and religion.  People are against the obviously wrong things religious organizations can do, or people in power in religious organizations can do. I don't think that touches the deep spirituality in each tradition.  I'd rather focus on the positive potential in depth, while keeping an eye out for abuses, than to focus on the abuses and wrongs, and ignore the potential goodness.  Merton was very keen to the way we can dissemble and rationalize anything, within himself.

I translate all the talk of God, to talk about using other power in my spirituality.  We need self power, community power and other power to get very far in the spiritual life.

What strikes me is how alone he is, until he enters into Gethsemani, which is nearly the whole book.  He meets Catherine de Hueck, who encourages him.  And he reads a lot, which is a kind of one way impersonal communication.  But he takes a 3 year spiritual journey, mostly alone, with little help, which he acknowledges wasted time.  He had friends, but not in his spiritual life.  I dislike that because I am guilty of this fault.  I need to connect more with sangha. 

So I found one mention of Thomas Merton on FBA, an uncorrected seminar transcript, where Sangharakshita talks about obedience, and says he read a biography of Thomas Merton.  Sangharakshita is talking about his time where he just did what his teacher told him to do.  I don't know enough about the life of Thomas Merton, just this autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, so I don't know about his vow of obedience.  

In the comments of my last post, someone suggest reading the Asian Journals, which you can get as a pdf (here).  Bhante and others seem to reference them a few times in the seminars, mostly because of of Bhante's guru's was met by Merton, Chetul Sangye Dorje.

The Eternal Legacy is Bhante's book on the writings of Buddhism.  I've never really read an equivalent one for Christianity, but I followed Merton's spiritual journey a little bit.  I found The Story of a Soul, which includes audio and a list of other resources. I was tempted to read the Lives of the Saints, after a visit to the Cloisters, but it was hard to determine which one was the best to read.  It turns out there are many versions, and edited down versions.  (I decided I'd rather read about Padmasambhava or Milarepa.) I couldn't find any free video or audio of Merton beyond the movie on Netflix (which isn't, after all, free).

I suppose I'll try to dip into spiritual classics of other traditions once in a while, because it makes for a broader world, and I do enjoy memoirs and especially spiritual memoirs.  The Seven Storey Mountain is a universal spiritual classic.

Thomas Merton

Just watched a documentary on Netflix about Thomas Merton.  (In the USA, not sure if Netflix is around the world.)  He seems like a very interesting spiritual person, who didn't necessarily conform, and followed his conscience.  He was open to eastern insights and was impressed by any tradition's spiritual depth.  

I glossed his Wikipedia entry.  He had a tragic death. Wikipedia (today): "On December 10, 1968, Merton had gone to attend an interfaith conference between Catholic and non-Christian monks in suburban Bangkok, Thailand. While stepping out of his bath, he reached out to adjust an electric fan and apparently touched an exposed wire and was accidentally electrocuted. He died 27 years to the day after his entrance into theAbbey of Gethsemani in 1941. His body was flown back to the United States and he is buried at Gethsemani Abbey."

(Also interestingly he fathered a child, who has not been identified, before his conversion.)

One of my therapists, who died while I was in treatment with him, said the beginning of The Seven Storey Mountain is difficult, but I got a used copy recently, so I'm going to give it a try. I read 50 pages into it and it's pretty interesting.  He's a good writer, I can see why this was a surprise best-seller.  He lived in Flushing for a while, where I live.  His father was a painter, who took him all over the world.

I haven't been able to find any free audio or videos of him, but the Netflix movie has some good footage of him, and other people.  It's not too long.  Britannica has an entry on him.  They only let you read the first page.

Dualism

"Any kind of life that is making no effort to evolve is escapism." (Sangharakshita)

I was visiting a friend who lives on the beach, and we listened to Margaritaville Radio.  I had a little resistance to it, but then I read the Jimmy Buffett wikipedia article.  They describe his music as "island escapism".  Jimmy Buffett has best sellers on the fiction and non-fiction best selling list, which only 7 other authors have done before, the likes of Hemingway and Steinbeck.  A famous musician, author, business man and philanthropist, he's seems like he's not a bad guy.  I asked myself why I would have a kind of antipathy towards his "island escapism" style of music.  

What's wrong with escapism?  It's not like you go to his concert and somehow escape you life.  Any kind of escapism is only temporary.  Like everything there are extremes and of course the middle way is perhaps the best.  The Buddha had the middle way really refer to between asceticism and hedonism.

My understanding of the talk about dualism is that it's bianary thinking and there are grays in life.  That we do better with Keat's negative capability.

In the spiritual life there are extremes of confrontationalism and consolation.  I used to think confrontationalism is the only way, but then when I reflected, I thought consolation is OK, we don't have to be ascetics.  The Buddha talks about tightening the lute strings not too tight and not too loose, when he comes across an extreme ascetic.

In the above quote by Sangharakshita, he doesn't say only give effort to evolving or no effort to evolve.  He just says effort.

There is the idea that no effort is a kind of spiritual laziness, and that being really busy with worldly life is a kind of busy laziness.

Most people see monks or religious people as extreme.  When I see someone in religious garb, I wonder, have they gone too far.  Why can't they just be spiritual on the inside, why do they have to wear special clothing that marks them out in a specific sect or religion.  But then again, why not try to show on the outside your effort on the inside.

I remember a movie (Kadosh) where this guy is pleading with God to help him in his spiritual life, it's kind of touching, even though I didn't like the character in the end, there was a kind of brutality to his parents and another family forcing a woman to marry him without love (even if that is my modern conceit about marriage).  But I digress.

I was in Fat Cat celebrating two years of a relationship.  (We'd been to the Cloisters and Awash already.)  I have been there in many years and they tore down the walls of the jazz room, so you could hear all the people playing ping pong and billiards and all the other games there.  (The place was jammed btw, on a Wednesday night in the mid August.)  I have a kind of reverence for jazz.  Each musician is a composer, their solo is a unique composition.  They play between the rules of a song, how long they get to solo, and in what keys they can solo, and yet there is a kind of freedom and expression of individuality.  Asians and Europeans usually pack jazz clubs, Americans don't so much appreciate this unique contribution to world culture.  That makes me sad.  So this place has people walking in front of the musicians with their game equipment.  At times it's hard to hear the music the hubbub was so loud.

But then I liked the buzz or an active social life.  It reminds me of old recording where you can hear people talking in the background, when jazz was the popular music, it was the rock and roll, the hip hop music of it's time.

Jazz is a uniquely live art form.  You can crystalize it, but seeing live jazz is a million times better.  Every moment is unique.

It's a lovely dance between individualism and collectivism.  The way a well honed quartet plays off each other is a beautiful dance of collaboration.  It's a model of working together and harmony to create art, the beautiful.

And I found myself annoyed at these yobbos disrespecting the artists.  And yet, it was cheap vibrant jazz, it only costs $3 to get in.  They have a normal bar, but a lot of people seemed to be drinking PBR.  I like beer, and I like beer with flavor, which goes against perhaps modern American beer making culture with it's various brands that I won't list.  I guess I'm starting to sound like a snooty aesthete.  I backed down.  Maybe all the cover money went to the artists.  Maybe these people dabbled in listening to a form they might not have, while they waited for a table to become available.  I talked myself out of a negative mental state.

I really enjoyed watching the musicians and telling myself stories about about how they talked to each other, the pecking orders, the silent rules.  I loved seeing their collaborations and solos.  

I've drifted away from jazz because in a way it's so complex, that in middle age and with meditation, I've sought out simplicity.  And I don't know the song forms or keys, the rules underneath what might seem like chaos to people who don't know jazz.

I thought about Dharma Punx, and how Noah Levine's presentation of the Dharma comes out of his subculture of punk.  I love all forms of music, but I think Dharma Jazz is a really cool idea.  I know Herbie Hancock is a Buddhist and there are others.  Spirituality can be a private thing, I'm sure there are others.  My friend who is a jazz and music aficionado, references an article in a major jazz publication, which I can't find on line.  If anyone knows of the article link feel free to comment below.  

Jazz is the opposite of John Cage's music, which I read in Nothing and Everything - The Influence of Buddhism on the American Avant Garde: 1942 - 1962, with it's silences.  You can make up your mind whether you think avant-garde is indulgent or revolutionary.  

I heard Stanley Crouch quit the jazz scene because too many people were showing up to jam who didn't understand the rules of jazz and thought free jazz was an opportunity for people without talent, supposedly.

I've recently let go of a relationship I've over-invested in, and I feel a kind of freedom to express myself, so I hope you've enjoyed the musings.  

And end for Jayarava's Raves?

Jayarava writes, "So that's it for Jayarava's Raves. I have nothing else planned out to say on Buddhism. In a sense I feel I've said what I wanted to say about it. If you read one essay a week it would take you six years to read them all. I have been working on packaging some of the essays up into a book (or perhaps two) but I have no deadline in mind at present."

Critical Ecumenicalism

Subhuti came out with a Buddhist Manifesto.

Go read it, and process what you think, ponder on it.

My feeling was that not much new was said, but it's cool to see it all in one place, but then as I read it, I could feel the spiritual energy coming from it.  Subhuti has a fantastic mind, and he's very active in India and Turkey, and probably a lot more stuff that I don't even know about, including pumping out these amazing essays.  I wish Windhorse would just go ahead and collect them all in a book.  (And reprint Meeting The Buddhas, an awesome awesome book.)  Subhuti is an admirable man.  And by the end of pounding away, he has me wanting to take over the world, create a pure land.  Awesome.

Here is a quote from it:

"The challenge Buddhists face today is to find ways of communicating and practising the Dharma that are truly effective in these new circumstances."


I'm actually having trouble getting quotes off my iPad, so I'll just leave you with this one.  It's a rich document that doesn't really lend to quoting, though there's a lot of interesting stuff in there.  


Googling "Buddhist Manifesto" you only get references to Glenn Wallis' Buddhist Manifesto, from 2009, other than Subhuti's, 2012.  Mr. Wallis has similar themes of getting back to basic Buddhism, which accepting modern developments, founding things on Gotama's teachings.  He sees meditation as the basis, he references the Anapanasati Sutta, and, "careful analysis of the categories of lived experience."  He's afraid that "skillful means" could easily lead to "anything goes":  What would stop us from saying that something was Buddhism?  From there he goes off on solutions that have a faint whiff of recognizability to me, but honestly, I didn't connect ultimately with this manifesto as much as I did with Subhuti's, and therefore I highly recommend Subhuti's as the best on the internet in the summer of 2012--and likely much beyond.

Sangharakshita on the Sciences within Triratna

In The Mail: Obama Karma

"Ultimately, Obama's Karma is the way in which his inner world is manifested in the outer world. It's the same for all of us.  The one thing--perhaps the only thing--we have control over is ourselves; but that is all we need."  p.6 Obama Karma: Lessons on Living Inspired by the 44th President


I'm skeptical reading the introduction, he writes loose and fast, but I'll read some further.  Why can't people use footnotes?  Why can't they share where they learned their information?  


The more I learn about Obama, the more I like him.  The more I learn about Mitt, the less I like him.


Russell Razzaque is a psychiatrist from UK.  He has some videos of the meditations he suggests to consolidate the lessons from each chapter.  The Password is "launch".


BTW, I found a course on line that looks interesting.  It doesn't say when it's going to start, but it looks like an interesting course on Coursera.  I'm tempted to take a poetry course or a history course, or a class on irrational behavior.

Time lines

I've been looking at time lines of Buddhism, and I came across this photo of all religions:




You can see my linking of timelines in my twitter feed.

I'm reading Mythology by Edith Hamilton, and I was looking at Greek timelines, and then I moved to Buddhist timelines.  There's some amazing information out there, presented visually.  I watched Ken Burn's documentary on baseball, so I've been thinking more about history.  Of course his one on the Civil War is, I think, his best one, but the Jazz one is also awesome because there's nothing else like it.  He can get a little stuck on Armstrong in my opinion.  And his others documentaries are great too, the one on the Brooklyn Bridge is pretty good.  He's really quite amazing, even if I was a bit bored at the beginning of the baseball one, at times.  He puts it at a leisurely pace, he doesn't pack information in at a breakneck pace.  These were all done before the internet took off, I think.  I think now I'm used to being bombarded with information.

In a side note, seeing Bhante on Skype yesterday, in NYC, Aryaloka and Mexico City, was awesome.  I didn't learn anything new (not the point anyway) but did have some human contact with him.  I did however learn he likes Sea-Drift, from Leaves of Grass.  I didn't know he liked Whitman.  I'd just read that he didn't like Walden, so it's good to see he does like some American.

It's hard to imagine he came out with Survey of Buddhism: Its Doctrines and Methods Through the Ages
 in 1947, which for my money has the most spiritual heat of any book on the earth.

If I could have gotten one question to ask him, I would have asked him what it felt like when he went forth, that first step after he'd given all his stuff away, and went off into India.  Must have been liberating and scary, exciting and worrisome.  Where am I going to sleep tonight would be my first question.  Going forth...  awesome.  

solo practice day

Not my weekend for my kids, and my partner was out of town, so I had some rare solitude.  To make the most of it, I decided to have a practice day.  Here was what I did:

Dedication puja from TBC puja book
Body scan from FBA
Mindfulness of Breathing (40 min)
Breakfast, walk, break time, read Dharma
Confession puja from the Sutra of Golden Light
Just Sitting (30 min)
Lunch, break time, read Dharma
Metta Meditation (40 minutes)

I read Thubten Chodron's book on the Chenrezig sadhana.  In my order, you don't do the sadhana until you're been witnessed to be effectively going for refuge, but it doesn't hurt to read about it.  I've wanted to read something from her.  She's not a bad writer.  I have a tanka of Chenrizig, that my wonderful partner gave me, and I look at it from time to time.  Thubten Chodron's teacher also added in the eight point mind training to their lineage of practice, and I like that too, so I enjoyed reading about that.  I've studied that on a GFR retreat, and even before that, so it's a text I treasure.  I am so grateful for all the retreats I've been on.  I don't have the money to go on the GFR retreat in California this year, but my heart goes out to those who will be on it this year, I'm sending you my best wishes.

It was a hot day yesterday, but I didn't turn on the AC until after the Metta meditation.  For some reason when I meditate, the heat doesn't bother me as much.  I think I get some sensory integration from meditation.  I also get what my friend called, "coming out of warp speed," feeling in my head from meditating that much.  It was only 3 meditation, but it was bolstered with a body scan and 2 pujas, and Dharma reading.

On my walk, aside from enjoying my body in motion, I look at the beautiful flowers people so kindly plant in front of their homes.

I felt a little lonely in the evening, but it was too late to connect with anyone.  I could have made a phone call, but I just went to bed.  My dreams intensify when I ramp up my practice, and that's always interesting.

I'm going to take it a little bit more easy today, but I'm going to try and do the 4 Brahma Viharas. But I'm going to be more worldly today, listen to music, and maybe get a Sunday Times, do some errands and tasks.  I'm going to read about Vairocana, because his head is above Chenrizig and below Amitabha in the visualization, in Vessantara's excellent book, Meeting the Buddhas: A Guide to Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and Tantric Deities.

Padmabandhu in Spanish and translated by Manjunatha

I watched and listened to this video this morning on my practice day.  I like the diversity in the TBC!  It's 17 minutes and it's funny sometimes when the translation is botched and fumbled, the translator is gracious in his fumbling, and the speaker is funny too!  It's a personal account on why he's an order member.

8th Anniversary

I started this blog 8 years ago.

I've had a lot of ups and downs over the last 8 years, and this blog has been a sort of public notebook of my spiritual journey.  This blog has actually afforded me some wonderful experiences, reading books, going to the opera, watching movies.  I am grateful for that.  I think about how far I've come, and how much more work I have to do on my spiritual journey.

Anyway, happy anniversary blog!

In The Mail: The Misleading Mind

I got The Misleading Mind today, written by Karuna Cayton.

Karuna Cayton was trained in the Tibetan Gelugpa tradition in Nepal with Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche.  He spent 12 years in Nepal.  Karuna means compassion.  Cayton is a village in England.  Not sure which names were given to him and which names he changed.  Some people get a name like Karuna, but I doubt he was named that at birth.  He's from Soquel California, near Santa Cruz.  He does counseling, coaching and business workshops.

I will let you know if I have any worthy thoughts on this book.

What follows are some links of reviews and interviews already done about this book:

Here is a review on Digital Dharma:  "The ideas covered in The Misleading Mind will not come as anything new to those who have even casually perused the Buddha’s teachings."


Here is an interview he put on his blog.


Here is an audio interview on The Secular Buddhist:  “Because we constantly and immediately superimpose our interpretation upon experience, we never really experience things as they are. We experience things as we are.” — Karun Cayton, The Misleading Mind.


Here is another interview, if you can bear the 30 second advert.

Here is written interview on Spirituality and Practice website.