Via Daily Dharma / December 6, 2016: Should We Become Monks?

If you are really practicing all the time, then it makes no difference whether you are monk or not. Being a monk is just a way of helping you do that.

—Matthieu Ricard, "Released from All Bounds"

Via Sri Prem Baba

Via Daily Dharma / December 5, 2016: Finding Your Place on the Path

There is humility in the act of pilgrimage, akin to the act of bowing; you’re surrendering your own path to follow where others have gone before. It puts you in place, in that sense, and your intentions in perspective.

—Pico Iyer, "The Long Road to Sitting Still"

Via Ram Dass

 

 

So what do I do? I do my best, but I give up the fruit of the action. If I don't know what's supposed to happen, it's probably better if I don't get to attached to one particular outcome. I listen to hear what my next step should be. I do my acts in the best way I can. And how it comes out...well, that's just how it comes out. Interesting, nothing more. It's a matter of letting go of expectations.

Via Sri Prem Baba

Via Daily Dharma / December 4, 2016: A Clouded Reality

If we indulge the human propensity to understate, exaggerate, and alter facts for whatever comfort or false security a lie might accord us, we forfeit our capacity to see reality clearly, and see only a world of our own invention.

—Lin Jensen, "Right Lying"

Via Sri Preem Baba

Andreas Vollenweider - The Glass Hall

Via Daily Dharma / December 3, 2016: Breaking Habits

Through repeated meditation practice, we can build awareness of our existing mental habits. With awareness, there is space—allowing us to interrupt habitual response patterns and bring intention to our responses, choosing to form a different association. —Wendy Hasenkamp, "Brain Karma"

Via Ticycle: Turkey, Cranberry Sauce, Death

Zen priests and partners Robert Chodo Campbell and Koshin Paley Ellison talk about the importance of having meaningful conversations about what we want out of our life (and death).

 

By Wendy Joan Biddlecombe

Nov 23, 2016

The third Buddhist Contemplative Care Symposium was held at the Garrison Institute earlier this month, bringing together 170 caregivers and healthcare practitioners for the weekend-long event to discuss ways to make sure patients’ wishes are kept in mind as they navigate the dying process.
Tricycle’s web editor, Wendy Joan Biddlecombe, sat down with conference organizers Robert Chodo Campbell and Koshin Paley Ellison, co-founders of the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care, which offers the only accredited contemplative-based chaplaincy program in the U.S. Their book, Awake at the Bedside: Contemplative Teachings on Palliative and End-of-Life Care, was released by Wisdom Publications in April and is in its third printing.

Here’s what Chodo and Koshin had to say when asked if the holidays are the appropriate time to have the tough conversations about what we want out of our life (and death): 

Koshin: Now is always a good time for meaningful conversations.

Chodo: Death is always present. It doesn’t stop for the holidays. But I wouldn’t necessarily raise the topic over Thanksgiving dinner or Christmas lunch unless there was someone in our presence transitioning toward death. In that case, then I would want everyone in the room to be open to a conversation. Because why would we be sitting around and bullshitting and not talking about what’s in front of us?
So I don’t think it should be barred from the holidays, but it’s also not something I’d put on the menu in particular: turkey, cranberry sauce, death.

Koshin: One of the things that’s particular about this symposium is that we’re gathering together to share the challenges and joys of being with people in their death process. Most of the people here are not clinicians—75 percent of end-of-life care comes from family members and friends. How do we have the meaningful conversations that make our wishes known, and how do we allow ourselves to really be open to these conversations? Have you told everyone you love that you love them? Are there people in your life who are you most grateful to? Who haven’t you told that you love them or are grateful to them? Are there relationships you would like to repair? What are you waiting for? It’s amazing that we don’t often take these risks because of our own nervousness or distractedness.

Chodo: Speaking of the holidays, a great party or after-dinner game would be to have everyone write down the five most important people in their life.
Koshin: And why.

Chodo: And why. Who is the person you could call at three o’clock in the morning if you really needed something? Most of us don’t have five people. We might get one or two.
Koshin: Who would drop everything to show up for you.

Chodo: And that can be quite shocking: “Wow, I need to tend to my relationships. I need to write more, call more.”

Koshin: Those relationships are like the refuge of sangha. We live in a time where isolation is one of the greatest indicators of morbidity and early death.

Chodo: It could be simply looking around the table and thinking, “Yeah, no, yeah, no. Maybe, yeah, no. Yeah, definitely”—those are the people that are important to me in my life.

Koshin: It’s also who you don’t want to be there. Because when we have very little time, seeing certain people can be too complicated, too charged, too traumatic. It’s important to just be able to know who you don’t want to be there and if you want to address that relationship . . . or not. Our practice is to investigate everything.

Read Robert Chodo Campbell’s essay, “Death is Not an Emergency,” from Awake at the Bedside

Via Sri Prem Baba

Via Daily Dharma / December 2, 2016: Learning to Learn

Don’t follow the old masters’ footsteps,
seek what they sought.
To learn about pine trees, go to the pine tree;
to learn of the bamboo, study bamboo.

—Basho, "Basho as Teacher"

Via Bill Maher Fanpage / FB:

Via Daily Dharma / December 1, 2016: Self-Actualization

To study the way of enlightenment is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things.

—Eihei Dogen Zenji, "Actualizing the Fundamental Point"

Via Ram Dass

 

 

Ramakrishna said, "Only two kinds of people can attain to self-knowledge: those whose minds are not encumbered at all with learning - that is to say, not overcrowded with thoughts borrowed from others - and those who, after studying all the scriptures and sciences, have come to realize that they know nothing."

That last part is when the jnana yoga path is really working, because the "know nothing" is the next step in this trip. You learn and you learn and you learn until you realize that with all you've learned, you don't know anything - and that's the route through. You use your intellectual models to get you going - they're really helpful for that - but you don't cling to the models; you keep letting go of them, letting go of the intellectual structures. Otherwise they get in your way.

Via Sri Prem Baba

Via Daily Dharma / November 30, 2016: The Mind’s Potential

The mind has the capacity for great things; it is not meant to behave in petty ways.

—Huineng, "Prajna"

Via Lionsroar: Among the Bodhisattvas at Standing Rock

Lion’s Roar spoke with Wendy Egyoku Nakao, abbot of the Zen Center of Los Angeles, about her work to thwart the Dakota Access Pipeline, in order to – as the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and their allies have put it – “protect our water, our sacred places, and all living beings.” Following news of use of increased force against protestors at Standing Rock, her message is particularly urgent.

Thanks for talking to Lion’s Roar, Egyoku. I understand that you’ve been to Standing Rock not once, but twice. How long have you been involved, and how did that come to be?
Wendy Egyoku Nakao: In the summer of 2014, the Zen Peacemakers held a Native American Bearing Witness Retreat (NABW) in the Black Hills of South Dakota. It was held in a meadow in Santee Sioux land. During this retreat, several Native American Elders, mostly Lakota, spoke to us about their history and current situation. They asked us to listen to their stories and to participate in their ceremonies if we’re invited into them. There is a great suspicion of non-native peoples due to the genocide and breaking of all treaties by the U.S. government.

I have attended the Bearing Witness retreats at Auschwitz-Berkinau, which have been happening for twenty-one years now, and Rwanda for the twentieth anniversary of their genocide. The NABW was a first attempt to bear witness to the genocide in our own country. The effects of this retreat continue to resonate in many ways: a small retreat was held in the Cheyenne River reservations this summer, a Dakota Native American Bearing Witness is being held in Minnesota this month, winter clothing has been sent to Pine Ridge reservation, and visits to Standing Rock are ongoing.

I go to the Oceti Sakowin (OS) encampment to support a Native American friend who has her own camp within OS, to and to bear witness to their stand and the birthing and emergence of a new Native American nation. I have a deep resonance with the Native peoples and a vow to address the hard-wired instincts we seem to have to destroy the first peoples of this land. I also find that Native American spirituality is deeply resonant with the earth and, as a Zen Buddhist, I have come to live my life from a place of deep listening and ceremony/prayer.

Also, living at the Zen Center of Los Angeles, I have always been keenly aware of the people who lived here before us — the Tongva and Chumash tribes — and the need to honor them and their ancestors. These are people who were savagely enslaved and decimated to make room for the settlers.

Could you say more about how being in L.A. has honed that keen awareness?
I have always felt a unique “sense of place” in the city of Los Angeles. The little Zen mountain of ZCLA is a power spot; one can certainly feel the energy of the place just walking in. The roots of spiritual energy go deep. We are on sacred land of people going back thousands of years. I feel that the energy and voices of the Native Americans from all those generations past are continually speaking to us when we listen to the sense of this place.

What would you most like Lion’s Roar and Buddhadharma’s readers to know about the DAPL situation?
We need to understand that the Native American call to stand against the DAPL and to protect the water has had the effect of unifying the Native American tribes for the first time in recent memory. In addition, indigenous peoples throughout the world, and non-native allies, are being drawn to the energetic vortex of these encampments to offer support. The encampments are providing the context for inter-tribal healing, reclaiming of their cultural practices, renewing their ceremonies and prayer as a way of life and protest, and forging a viable identity as Native Americans. Essentially, the Native peoples are “decolonizing” by standing against their genocide and letting corporations and governments know that they have every right to exist and live on their land.

On your second trip to Standing Rock, you attended in your capacity as a priest, along with other clergy. What can you tell us about that gathering and the common ground that was (or was not) found there?
Rev. John Floberg, who has had twenty-five years of relationship with the Standing Rock Sioux through the Episcopal Church in North Dakota, issued a call for clergy to come “Stand with Standing Rock.” He’d hoped for 100, but in the end, over 500 clergy representing some fifteen denominations attended. The unifying factor was to stand with Standing Rock against the DAPL and for the protection of the water for all. I spotted at least seven Buddhist clergy there.

Rev. John laid out the agreement of the participants: Prayerful. Peaceful. Nonviolent. Lawful. We were asked not to engage in any violence and to treat law enforcement with respect. We were free to express our faith through our dress and speeches and to stand in solidarity with the Standing Rock Sioux nation.

One of the most important moments was the repudiation of the 15^th-century Doctrine of Discovery by eight Christian Churches on the morning of the gathering. This doctrine, issued through Papal Bulls which are still on the books of the Catholic Church, sanctioned the domination and destruction of indigenous peoples by explorers and missionaries in the interests of the spreading of Christianity. The effects of this colonizing document reverberate in the world today through our laws and basic attitudes of racism. (In 2014 at the Zen Peacemaker retreat, Steve Newcomb, a Native American lawyer who has dedicated his life to having this document renounced, taught us about its pernicious effects.)

The ceremony for renouncing the document began with representatives from eight Christian churches, which had already repudiated the document, each taking turns reading a statement of renunciation in front of Tribal Elders. Then copies of the document were given to each Elder and subsequently burned. All clergy and people at the camp in attendance were witnesses, with Rev. Floberg stating that “We [the Protestant churches represented] were wrong” about the document. Very powerful.

Following the ceremony, each clergy member was smudged with sage and then joined a procession to the bridge where a violent confrontation between militarized police and unarmed Native Americans had taken place a week prior. The burned-out remains of trucks and tires littered the bridge. On the other side, were manned army tanks and sound cannons.

The gathering at the bridge was marked by short speeches by various clergy, and the singing of hymns. Police helicopters are in constant surveillance there, so it was hard to hear many of the speakers. Among the most moving speakers to me were an African American woman pastor and a Muslim American woman, who each spoke of how the doctrine of discovery has affected their people. Roshi Joe Bobrow said a few words at the gathering and led the crowd in a few lines of “Kwan Um Bosa.”

The day prior to the gathering, Rev. John had crossed the bridge, approached the police in tanks, and asked to speak with them. He told them about the upcoming clergy gathering and also explained the doctrine of discovery, which he told them was the reason the militarized units were on the bridge and the Native Americans were asking to be respected and heard.

After the gathering was over, several Christian clergy went to the capital of Bismarck with the intention of performing civil disobedience on behalf of stopping the pipeline. I think about 14 were arrested.

Are you heartened that President Obama is considering rerouting the DAPL?

No, because the violence continues with militarized police becoming more aggressive against unarmed protectors acting in prayer and ceremony, and pipeline construction continues night and day. President Obama needs to act now to stop the pipeline because the president-elect will likely not be so inclined.

I think we are heading for more confrontation in the days ahead. The First Nation peoples are taking a ceremonial and prayerful stand for healing from historical trauma and declaring their right to live on this earth. The DAPL folks have continued their actions, with the support of the Morton County law enforcement, regardless of injunctions, and are poised to go under the Missouri River. The mainstream media all but ignores what is happening. The current POTUS has been weak on the issue; the future POTUS is invested in Energy Transfer Partners. I encourage everyone to Stand with Standing Rock and protect the Water. Water is Life.

For more information about Standing Rock / DAPL, visit http://standingrock.org/

Via Lionsroar: A New Look at the Heart Sutra, from Thich Nhat Hanh and Norman Fischer

Photo by Chris Ensey.

Zen teacher Norman Fischer looks at the famed Heart Sutra and explains why compassion and emptiness go hand in hand. Plus, Thich Nhat Hanh offers his new translation of the Heart Sutra, which teaches the transcendent wisdom that frees us from fear, wrong perceptions, and suffering.

The key term in Buddhism’s Heart Sutra is the Sanskrit word shunyata, usually translated into English as “emptiness.” As the sutra says in its opening lines, “All dharmas [things, phenomena] are empty.” Eyes, ears, noses, tongues, bodies, minds: all external objects—and all Buddhist teachings—are empty.

The word “emptiness” is a fair translation of shunyata, but it has the drawback of sounding negative, even despairing. The emptiness of the Heart Sutra is something else entirely. It’s good news of joyful freedom and liberation. Commentators to the sutra often ask the question, “Empty of what?” and answer, “Empty of separate self, empty of weightiness, empty of burden, empty of boundary.”

The Chinese, searching for a word that might translate shunyata, used the character for “sky.” All dharmas are empty like the sky—blue, beautiful, expansive, and always ready to receive a bird, a wind, a cloud, the sun, the moon, or an airplane. The emptiness of the Heart Sutra isn’t the emptiness of despair; it’s the emptiness of all limitation and boundary. It is open, released.

When I am bound inside my own skin and others are bound inside theirs, I have to defend and protect myself from them. And when I do place myself among them, I must do it carefully, which is hard work, because I am often hurt, opposed, and thwarted by others. But when there’s openness, no boundary between myself and others—when it turns out that I literally am others and others literally are me—then love and connection is easy and natural.

This is why the emptiness teaching of the Heart Sutra, which seems to be rather philosophical and dour, is the necessary basis for compassion. Emptiness and compassion go hand in hand. Compassion as transaction—me over here, being compassionate to you over there—is simply too clunky and difficult. If I am going to be responsible to receive your suffering and do something about it, and if I am going to make this kind of compassion the cornerstone of my religious life, I will soon be exhausted. But if I see the boundarylessness of me and you, and recognize that my suffering and your suffering are one suffering, and that that suffering is empty of any separation, weightiness, or ultimate tragedy, then I can do it. I can be boundlessly compassionate and loving, without limit. To be sure, living this teaching takes time and effort, and maybe we never entirely arrive at it. But it’s a joyful, heartfelt path worth treading.

In Mahayana Buddhism, compassion is often discussed in terms of absolute and relative compassion. Absolute compassion is compassion in the light of emptiness: all beings are empty; all beings are, by virtue of their empty nature, already liberated and pure. As the sutra says, suffering is empty, and relief from suffering is also empty.
 
But this would be one-sided and distorted. Relative compassion—human warmth and practical emotional support—completes the picture. Absolute compassion makes it possible for us to sustain, joyfully, the endless work of supporting and helping; relative compassion grounds our broad view of life’s empty nature in heart connection and engagement. Either view by itself would be impossible, but both together make for a wonderfully connected and sustainable life.

The Insight That Brings Us to the Other Shore

The insight of prajñaparamita, the perfection of wisdom as taught in the Heart Sutra, is the ultimate truth, transcending of all conventional truths. It is the highest vision of the Buddha.
Prajñaparamita is the liberating insight that helps us to overcome all pairs of opposites, such as birth and death, being and non-being, defilement and immaculacy, increasing and decreasing, subject and object, and so on. All phenomena are products of dependent arising: that is the main point of the prajñaparamita teaching. This helps us to get in touch with the true nature of no birth/no death, no being/no non-being, etc., which is the true nature of all phenomena.
This is a state of coolness, peace, and non-fear that can be experienced in this very life, in your own body and in your own five skandhas. It is nirvana. As it is said in a very beautiful sentence in the nirvana chapter of the Chinese Dharmapada, “Just as the birds enjoy the sky, and the deer enjoy the meadow, so do the wise enjoy dwelling in nirvana.”—Thich Nhat Hanh

Avalokiteshvara
while practicing deeply with
the Insight that Brings Us to the Other Shore,
suddenly discovered that
all of the five Skandhas are equally empty,
and with this realization
he overcame all Ill-being.
“Listen Sariputra,
this Body itself is Emptiness
and Emptiness itself is this Body.
This Body is not other than Emptiness
and Emptiness is not other than this Body.
The same is true of Feelings,
Perceptions, Mental Formations,
and Consciousness.
“Listen Sariputra,
all phenomena bear the mark of Emptinesss;
their true nature is the nature of
no Birth no Death,
no Being no Non-being,
no Defilement no Immaculacy,
no Increasing no Decreasing.
“That is why in Emptiness,
Body, Feelings, Perceptions,
Mental Formations and Consciousness
are not separate self entities.
“The Eighteen Realms of Phenomena
which are the six Sense Organs,
the six Sense Objects,
and the six Consciousnesses
are also not separate self entities.
“The Twelve Links of Interdependent Arising
and their Extinction
are also not separate self entities.
“Ill-being, the Causes of Ill-being,
the End of Ill-being, the Path,
insight and attainment,
are also not separate self entities.
“Whoever can see this
no longer needs anything to attain.
“Bodhisattvas who practice
the Insight that Brings Us to the Other Shore
see no more obstacles in their mind,
and because there
are no more obstacles in their mind,
they can overcome all fear,
destroy all wrong perceptions
and realize Perfect Nirvana.
“All Buddhas in the past, present, and future
by practicing
the Insight that Brings Us to the Other Shore
are all capable of attaining
Authentic and Perfect Enlightenment.
“Therefore Sariputra,
it should be known that
the Insight that Brings Us to the Other Shore
is a Great Mantra,
the most illuminating mantra,
the highest mantra,
a mantra beyond compare,
the True Wisdom that has the power
to put an end to all kinds of suffering.
Therefore let us proclaim
a mantra to praise
the Insight that Brings Us to the Other Shore.
“Gate, Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha! Gate, Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha! Gate, Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha!”

Thich Nhat Hanh translates the Heart Sutra‘s closing Sankrit mantra as: Gone, gone, gone all the way over, everyone gone to the other shore. Enlightenment!

Image: “I have arrived I am home” calligraphy by Thich Nhat Hanh, available in the Lion’s Roar Store.