Zen Buddhism and all things Buddhist

Quote: from the Father of Relativity

2006-01-02T11:47:00.000-08:00

The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend a personal God and avoid dogmas and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity. If there is any religion that would cope with modern scientific needs, it would be Buddhism.

Albert Einstein

The Five Skandhas (Heart Sutra continued)

2005-12-29T14:16:00.000-08:00

Understanding the mind is paramount to understanding Buddhism

In many Buddhist writings, you will read about the “Five Skandhas”. This is very simple, and is again, Sanskrit for the constituents of the mind.

They are split into two, those being “form” Skandhas, and “mind” Skandhas.

The Five Skandhas, also called Formations are:

form

apperception, sensibility or feelings

perception

volition (will, impulse)

consciousness

1. Form is composed of matter made up of four elements: earth, water, fire, wind. Form is conceptual, and should not be grasped at, or held important.

2. Apperception or sensibility is derived from the sense organs:

1. eye enables sight

2. ear enables sound

3. nose enables odour

4. tongue enables taste

5. body enables touch

6. mind enables the experiences of the five organs above, but also of its own function called “knowing”

This set of pairs, i.e. organ + function, is known as the Twelve (12) Bases of Consciousness.

3. Perception is a product of the six externals above: sight, sound, etc. It is the individual's processing of the 12 bases to 'feel' the environment

4. Volition is the reaction of the will to the objects and may produce aversion, attraction, etc. In other words, the feeling as basis for emotion.

5. Consciousness grasps the qualities of the six objects. It creates a third member of the sets in 2 above. These are designated Visual consciousness, auditory consciousness, and so on, ending with mental consciousness. These are called the Eighteen Elements [dhatu].

These five aggregates or formations, the skandas, are not ultimate and eternal in nature but are conditioned. They arise from causes and circumstances. Like all phenomena, they come and go; endure and change and disappear.

Since we are composed of these, we are impermanent. There is no part of us that is eternal. We cannot logically say, "That is mine; I am that; that is my Self" This is what Buddhist call “the endless wheel of life and death”

The quite amazing upshot is that “existence, as we see it, is illusionary and conceptual”

Called the "Five Aggregates" because in turn they too are not solid indivisible whole entities and are made up of even smaller parts. The break-down [can go] on and on, until there is not even a single particle which one can call a Self. They only come together as an "aggregate" due to causes and conditions. Since it does not have an unchanging self and is impermanent (i.e., when the causes and conditions are gone, so is it ;) it is EMPTY.

This is the subject of the Heart Sutra!

The Heart Sutra

2005-12-22T13:42:00.000-08:00

The best book I have read on Buddhism is a collective work from Mahayana Buddhist Sutras translated into English . The particular book is about The Heart Sutra, or Prajna Paramita Hridaya Sutra

What does that mean? Well it is in the Buddhist language Sanskrit.

Prajna means Wisdom

Paramita means Perfection, namely the 10 qualities leading to Buddhahood: (1) perfection in giving (2) morality (3) renunciation (4) wisdom (5) energy (6) patience (7) truthfulness (8) resolution (9) loving-kindness. (10) Equanimity

Hridaya means Heart

Sutra means a Buddhist scriptural text purporting to present a narrative of a teaching given on a particular occasion by the Buddha.
This specific wording for Sutra is due to the wanting of Buddhists to get away from Doctrine or Dogma, and keep it as a kind of “take it or leave it” text. It’s not a lecture or preaching.
The Heart Sutra discusses the concept of all object (form) are inventions of the mind, and are actually empty. The mind invents names for every last item on the earth.
All existing is produced from causes and conditions and the self is a false self, without any selfhood.

I will disscuss this more in the next posts

The life play

2005-12-19T02:02:00.000-08:00

When we watch a play, or a film, we get rather involved. The villain comes on; we berate him. The heroine comes on; we cheer!
We may even get so involved that we get butterflies in our stomach (adrenalin rush). But it’s a play; it isn’t real.
So what are we seeing here? We see people in a real life setting, doing things that we do everyday. In fact what is the difference with real life? Well, there is no difference. Like a picture of the Grand Canyon is no different to eye actually seeing it. It’s a collection of light waves which invoke a set of emotions and memory, sewn together with some insight, and consciousness.
When the play is finished, we go home, having been not effected (albeit temporarily) by the events.
Taoism and Buddhism tries to treat life like an event too. An event of nature; not one that we are sat watching as if removed, but one that we are integrated into. In 'The way of Zen' by Alan Watts, he said "As the tree produces Apples, then we can say that a tree “apples”.
"As the earth produces people, then we can say that the earth “peoples”
We should get involved with life, but not grasp at it, and not keep memories and thoughts as real, just like watching a Play.

Consciousness

2005-12-15T15:48:00.000-08:00

The late, great philosopher, Alan Watts, talked about floodlight and spotlight consciousness. If you think of a spotlight, it focuses on one thing, but a floodlight lights up everything. The same is for vision and hearing too.

We can see things passing in peripheral vision, and focus on small text with clarity. We can hear a voice in a crowded room too, focusing on one thing, but still hearing everything else. During a deep conversation, you would hear your name shouted out in a split second reaction.
Well watts talked of consciousness in the same way. The spotlight is the ego. Focused on memory, past and future. On good and bad. On happy and sad. All the dualistic things that lead to suffering. The floodlight is the way we walk, and eat, and process information without seemingly knowing it.
Sometimes I need to remember something. A famous actors name perhaps and you rack your brains, pulling all kinds of faces. Actually, if you relax, and do absolutely nothing, breathing normally, it just comes to you. This is the floodlight consciousness.
What meditation is trying to do is remove the spotlight, and see the floodlight. It is that simple. Thinking bad things about a neighbour who built a fence inside your boundaries, and letting it go around in circles in your mind is spotlight. Peeling an orange is floodlight. Getting upset because you lost a bet on the horses is spotlight. Swallowing and digesting food is floodlight.

Tis' the Season to be Jolly

2005-12-14T05:25:00.000-08:00

I’m still very much into Christmas. Although I lean towards the Buddhist ideology, I have remnants of my Christian upbringing. All my life, I have got my self excited about things. Leaning Chess (to obsession), reading Cosmology books with interest in Relativity and Time. Maybe I cherry picked all nice things that may let me know what I am. Maybe Buddhism is another one of these, but I am not going into this blindly.

I think Christmas has this helping, friendly theme. The Buddhist phrase is “helping all sentient beings”. It’s an exciting time. No stress or work. Sitting with family, relaxing. Maybe what the Buddhist ideal is all about. Not grasping any particular one thing, but just sitting quietly, observing the world from a middle ground, and making no waves.

Anyhow, Christmas was invented by the Church to compete with a Pagan Festival and Roman Saturnalia, hence the reason that you can enjoy it without being a Christian, particularly.

Santa clause in his red gear was invented by Coca Cola, which I still drink….so it seems apt :-)

Equanimity

2005-12-13T06:58:00.000-08:00

I keep on reading the word Equanimity, in Zen and Buddhist literature.
Equanimity is described in the dictionary as:
Evenness of mind; that calm temper or firmness of mind which is not easily elated or depressed; patience; calmness; composure; as, to bear misfortunes with equanimity.

And from a Hindu newsletter:
>>Man in his pursuit of higher ambition is constantly juggling between dichotomies - success and failure, attachment and aversion, hope and despair, happiness and misery. Motivated by desire to succeed he tosses himself into the storm of materialistic world. Success makes him happy and it may lead to yet another vaulting desire, which ultimately breeds greed in him. But, conversely, all his efforts may amount to a colossal failure. Then the intense feeling of despair leads to anger. No wonder, the Bhagavad Gita (16.21) names desire, greed and anger, as "the three gates to hell".
In his day-to-day struggle for existence man is led to confront these dualities of life which narrows his perspectives to one of the two limiting states: success or failure, happiness or misery etc., but there could be a situation when the two are balanced. In such a condition, one has neither the feeling of attachment with success and the resulting feeling of hope, joy etc. nor that of aversion to failure and the opposed feeling of despair, misery etc. That is the state of equanimity in activities, speech or thoughts.<<

Sounds very Buddhist actually, talking of Dualism, and Equanimity.
My own view is that you can see detachment and dissociation as Equanimity in your mind. Your view that you are being mindfull and calm is actually that you are neglecting and dissociating the people around you. I have seen this in my self, and will work on it.

The perceived world vibrating

2005-12-08T15:38:00.000-08:00

I lay in bed the other night. There is nothing behind the house but trees for a mile, so it is very dark at night. I could just make out a sort of rectangle where the window was, but it wasn’t a shade or colour I could describe. Best description was “barely visible”. So what did I have? No sound…apart from the wife snoring. A feeling of pressure from the bed. A feeling of warmth in a direction towards the aforementioned wife.

Visually, it is pitch black, with a faint rectangle, which could be anything. The 6 senses were thin on information (as described by Buddha; Seeing, Hearing, Taste, Touch, Smell, Consciousness). I could be anywhere in this darkness if it wasn’t for memory. I was remembering this place. The memory didn’t associate with any fear, in fact, felt comfortable.

What’s your point here? I hear you ask.

My point is simple. Why can’t we do this all the time? Realise that everything is memory and illusion. So anything you get upset about, or happy about is just your ego's perception of the input from the senses. Its not real......so

There is a man who is screaming at you in a Bar, or you are watching Friends on Paramount, or you are 99.9% sure you are in your bedroom in the dark. They are all exactly the same thing; vibrations. That’s reality!
The difference between them all is an illusion.

Past and Future

2005-12-06T04:02:00.000-08:00

Imagine you are on the edge of a Gorge, and in front of you is a long rope bridge, some 400 feet long. Half way along, you will look down into a beautiful valley, 600 feet below, with luscious trees and plants surrounding a fierce rapid strewn river. Unless you can fly, this is a unique opportunity to view this beautiful place from a fantastic vantage point.
So what does the average person do? Well if they venture onto the bridge, they will say these things to themselves. Is the bridge safe? what if it snaps?; what is it like on the other side, is it dangerous? Behind me was good, shall I go back?; this drop below would kill me if the bridge snapped; At least I am past half way, not far to go before I can get off this damn bridge….and so on.
If we live for the moment, we will enjoy the moment. If we project the past and future, and carry it around with us, we will miss the moment, holding up our burden. We are so obsessed with the past and future, that we don’t see the real world for what it is. We wouldn’t enjoy the beautiful view in the middle of the bridge because we are too busy analysing things that aren’t there.
The past doesn’t exist and neither does the future. They are concepts. Concepts that we use to keep perpetuating the words “I”, “Me”, “Myself”. Perpetuating the ego.

The Chess metaphor

2005-12-05T08:28:00.000-08:00

I used to think that Chess was a metaphor for life. Now I realise it is great example of suffering, as Buddhism see's it.
I lived and breathed the game, and rose to a fairly good level. Now I realise that what I was doing was grasping and trapping my self in the endless wheel of birth and death. “What!!” I hear you cry, well, I will explain.
The dualistic way of everyday life is what Buddhism is trying to escape. Grasping at good, and rejecting what we think is bad. Creating duals, and seeing them as different. To say yes is to affirm, and thus limits you. To say no, is to negate, and thus limits you. Yes and no, in many ways, are the same thing.
When I studied Chess, it was with the soul purpose to be better and to win the game. Losing was bad, winning was good. To lose to a dumb trick that I should have spotted was even worse, sparking off a totally new line of study, confusion, and obsession.
The dream is to be able to beat every chess player, and it’s a total illusion. It satisfies nothing. It grasps at what you perceive to be good, thinking that you have noted bad. It affects your life. You feel inadequate, and try to study more, to try and combat your inadequacies, to have every angle covered. You are trapped in a loop. If I ever play Chess again, it will have to be on totally different terms, but I havnt thought about what they should be yet.
Choose the middle ground. Don’t grasp at impermanent things. Live for the moment.

complacency

2005-12-03T15:08:00.000-08:00

Its so easy to become complacent. Think about spinning water in a bucket with a stick. The height of the water increases at the edges. If you stop stirring, initially, it seems to be the same, but if you dont continue the stir, it will find its own level again.
Buddhism is similar. To practice, is to feel content, which leads you to believe that you can live without practice. "Im ok now, I understand the meaning of life", and you dont meditate for a while, because you want to enjoy this new good feeling, and the water finds its own level again.
The level it finds is suffering; paranoia, want, depression, defilement. You have to keep it up. Learn the way. Dont let the water find its own level.
Do something: anything!, everyday, to keep you on the path.
Even if you read a bit, or sit on your mat for 10 mins, or contemplate something quietly sat on the bus, you have to keep realisation and practice going, day to day.

Famous Buddhists

2005-11-29T06:51:00.000-08:00

Leonard Cohen – Poet/Songwriter
Richard Gere- Actor
George Lucas – Star Wars Film Director
Joanna Lumley – actress
Keanu Reeves – actor
Oliver Stone - film director
Patti Smith- rock star
Steven Segal – actor
Tina Turner – singer
Uma Therman – actress
Ruby Wax- actress, comedienne
Orlando Bloom –Actor

The Buddha: In a nutshell

2005-11-28T04:56:00.000-08:00

Name: Siddhartha Gautama
Father: Suddhodana, king of the Sakhyas
Born: 560BC, at the Foot of Mt.Palpa in Nepal
Died:480BC, 80 years old
The Buddha summed up his teachings thus:
"We will have to find out the cause of sorrow and the way to escape from it. The desire for sensual enjoyment and clinging to earthly life is the cause of sorrow. If we can eradicate desire, all sorrows and pains will come to an end. We will enjoy Nirvana (In Buddhism, it is basically a blissful spiritual condition where the heart extinguishes passion, hatred and delusion) or eternal peace. Those who follow the Noble Eightfold Path strictly, (right opinion, right resolve, right speech, right conduct, right employment, right exertion, right thought and right self-concentration) will be free from sorrow. This is that middle course which the Tathagata (the one who has reached enlightenment) has thoroughly comprehended, which produces insight, which produces knowledge, which leads to calmness or serenity, to supernatural knowledge, to perfect Buddhahood, to Nirvana.”

Basically, this means that when we cling to a thought, we are grasping at Birth and Death. A thought comes and goes, unless we keep it going. Thoughts are illusions based on the 5 senses.
If we don’t cling to things, we escape suffering. Suffering is of our own doing.

Enter the Dragon

2005-11-27T14:24:00.000-08:00

Was amazed tonight! Watched Enter the Dragon for the first time in 20 years. He is teaching some kid, and says, "its like a finger pointing to the moon; dont concentrate on the finger, or you will miss the moon in all its glory".

Now I thought this film was rubbish once, but these are the words of the Boddhidhama, who brought Zen Buddhism to China, also, he is associated with the Shaolin temple, and is honored as the founder of kung fu. Of course so is Enter the Dragon, set in a Shaolin Temple, and practicing Kung Fu.
I was just a bit impressed with the accuracy of this corney 70's Movie!

Bruce Lee...respect!

Mindfullness

2005-11-25T11:06:00.000-08:00

I heard 3rd hand today that a friend had been calling me to his wife for phoning him during some telly program. I initially got quiet annoyed, but thought quickly about the book I am reading (see previous posts). I got down to thinking where the anger came from, and why it would bother me so much. I think I have a fear of being a bore, and finding out someone was bored by me, when it didnt show at the time.
I feel good now, after realising, and watching my mind. It came from nothing, and now its gone to nothing. Its just a condition. It isnt my true self. This is a new way to meditate to me, and actually, I havnt sat and meditated for days.

Some free literature

2005-11-22T13:35:00.000-08:00

I like free stuff. I think its so easy to just buy from Amazon without any feeling of some achievement. These e-books are great. I print them on A5 duplex, and bind them in a plastic wallet.
http://www.buddhanet.net/ebooks_ms.htm

All the books are zipped here:
http://www.buddhanet.net/ftp12.htm

Meditation

2005-11-21T14:14:00.000-08:00

The book I am reading is about Meditation, by a Dr LynnLynn. Its a new angle for me, and the second book on "mindfullness" that I have read in a week.
You have anger, you see it, it fades. If you cling to the anger, it continues and festers. This is the meditation, and different from my usual understanding. The Dogen style of sitting zen is my understanding, but as she says, why go somewhere to meditate, when the meditation is needed right there and then. If your house was on fire, you wouldnt go down the road to put it out.
Anyhow, more on that as I read more.

The nature of things

2005-11-20T10:49:00.000-08:00

Of course, if I was a tree, I wouldnt say, "its winter now, and I should get rid of these leaves", because Winter is one of the many examples of humans catogorising nature.
I stood in the trees, beyond my garden (Picture is from June, lush with leaves!)). The railway is visible now that the leaves have gone, and the trees and blackberries stretch for half a mile, before the resovoir starts.
I heard the leaves rustling through the branches as they fell. I thought of them rotting, and feeding the same tree.
I thought of birth and death, and how we shouldnt grasp anything that is imperminant. Ive read this stuff in many books, but on the embankment, beyond the garden, where the trees and blackberries stretch for half a mile, I could feel it. I watched nature, and let it happen, like a clean mirror that sees everything, and gently reflects it back.

19th Nov 05

2005-11-19T11:26:00.000-08:00

Thought a lot about temperment being a condition. Tempers, dislikes, anger, petty niddling annoyances. They change. They start and end with emptyness. The emptyness is the true mind.
It difficult to avoid conditioning. Its like an alarm clock. You were totally aware of the silence just before and just after the alarm.
The reading I am doing isnt suggesting that you try to suppress these conditions, but see them and let them run their course. To see them and know them makes you the knower, rather than the known.
This is important in trying to see your true mind.
Its helping!

Zazen notes

2005-11-18T05:10:00.000-08:00

1711/05: Tonights Zazen was strong in the impermanence, and permanence of things. The hearing is permanent, like the mind and the sounds that the hearing hears are impermanent.
Where I meditate (the garage) is an old chest freezer, and it hums a bit. The point is always hammered home when it clicks off. The noise seems permanent, and so much so, you ignore it. It is at its loudest when it clicks off. This shows how the mind continues the life of the freezer noise, by its absence, and memory of it.
Anyhow, that was a thought during Zazen. I also noticed how the traffic passing is birth and death. It comes, it goes, and in my moment, no longer exists.
This is why it doesn't matter. Because it is impermanent. If I didn't understand this, I would be annoyed by the traffic sound. I would be clinging to the desire to find a quieter place. Clinging to impermanence is not the way.