Category Archives: Dharma

Musings on Dharma

Is Buddhism Non-theistic?

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You often see the claim made that Buddhism is a non-theistic religion.  As is often the case, however, things are never quite so simple.  There are ways in which the claim is true,  ways in which it’s untrue, and even ways in which it’s just quasi-true.  It makes my head hurt just to think about it.

The claim of Non-theism is true in the sense that there is no God in Buddhism who is a Creator, Judge, or Deity-in-Charge.  In Buddhist cosmology the universe has always just existed and is continually evolving and devolving based on causes and conditions.  There’s no First Cause or Prime Mover setting the machinery in motion.  In addition, the fate of human beings is determined by their own actions in accord with the laws of karma.  There’s no Divine Intercessor putting one’s merits and demerits onto a permanent record card that follows one around over countless lifetimes.

The claim of Non-theism is not completely true because the Buddhist suttas and sutras make reference to all sorts of supernatural beings who inhabit the universe, from ghosts, demi-gods, devas, and brahmās to celestial buddhas and bodhisattvas.  The Buddha, himself, is often described as “a teacher of gods and men”.  The ghosts, devas, and brahmās are reborn into their own realms, and the celestial buddhas reside in Pure Lands.  As you might imagine, all of this leads to a very complicated cosmological space.  At times these beings visited the Buddha in our world.  At times he went to their realms to teach the Dharma.

In the Brahmajāla Sutta, the Buddha describes how a brahmā may come by the mistaken belief that he is the “Great Brahmā, the Conqueror, the Unconquered, the All-Seeing, the All-Powerful, the Lord, the Maker and Creator, Ruler, Appointer, and Orderer, Father of All that Have Been and Shall Be.”  The Buddha sees this delusion as an natural consequence of the particular way the universe happens to expand after periods of contraction.  During this expansionary phase one of the beings residing in the Ābhāsvara realm (which corresponds to the second jhāna) is reborn alone into the lower Brahmā realm (corresponding to the first jhāna) through exhaustion of his accumulated merit.  Forgetting his former lives, he imagines having come into existence spontaneously and without cause. Brahmās are long-lived beings and over the eons this solitary brahmā becomes lonely and wishes for company.  When others come to co-inhabit his space through the natural process of rebirth, the brahmā mistakenly believes his wish for company made it happen.  This is the start of his delusional grandiosity.  The gods within the Buddhist cosmology are not omniscient, and they apparently need Buddhas to help straighten themselves out.

Do contemporary Buddhists believe in ghosts, devas, and brahmās?  It depends on whom you ask.  In traditional Asian Buddhist cultures literal belief remains widespread.  For example, Mirka Knaster quotes John Travis regarding Munindra’s teachings:

“I listened to him go into great detail, sometimes for two hours.  There was this incredible excitement about the Buddhist cosmology.  You felt like you were surrounded by devas and all kinds of unseen things, in some way.  He had that twinkle in his eye about the unseen.  It was not just a belief system for him.”  [1]

Western Buddhist communities, on the other hand, are often made up of converts who have left a prior theistic belief in an Abrahamic Sky God behind.  They often view celestial beings as outdated cultural vestiges which can be safely jettisoned without changing the essential meaning of the Dharma.  Western Buddhists are the foremost promulgators of the idea that Buddhism is non-theistic.

There are three additional issues, however, which complicate the relationship between Buddhism and theism even further.

Deity yoga is a practice within the Tibetan Vajrayāna tradition.  In deity yoga, a particular deity/bodhisattva/Buddha (the lines between these concepts get quite blurred) is taken as one’s yidam, or tutelary deity.  One engages in complex mental visualizations of one’s yidam, then engages in a process of imitating and merging with one’s yidam, and finally one dissolves the merged self/yidam.  The yidam is seen as having an existence within relative reality (within a Pure Land saṃbogakāya realm), but as being essentially empty in terms of absolute reality, so that it’s both real and unreal at the same time.  In yet a third understanding of the yidam’s reality, the yidam is a representation of one’s own unrealized Buddha nature.  Finally, the yidam is a means to exploring the reality of identity itself.  We have our usual view of ourselves as limited and unable to become a Buddha.  In deity yoga one practices giving up that limited self-view and tries on a different narrative in which one has the unlimited wisdom and compassion of a Buddha.  In the end both narratives yield to the realization of emptiness.

Asking a celestial Buddha for assistance is a practice within Pure Land Buddhism.  Pure Land Buddhism teaches that one cannot reach enlightenment through one’s own efforts, but if one recites the mantra of Amitābha Buddha one will be reborn into his Pure Land after death and will achieve enlightenment from there.   Having faith in a Buddha’s divine intervention seems similar in some ways to theistic beliefs and practices in the West.  Keep in mind, however, that Amitābha Buddha is neither a creator nor a judge.  He offers assistance to all who recite his mantra.  Prior to achieving Buddhahood,  Amitābha Buddha was a simple monk who declared an intention to create an ideal realm for Buddhist practice.

There’s one final issue concerning Theism and Buddhism which is probably unique to Western Buddhism.  I currently sit with a Zen group that meets in a church, has a Jesuit priest as its roshi, and a priest who’s a former Carthusian monk as a regular visiting teacher.  Dharma talks sometimes include references to Jesus and/or God.  I personally don’t find god-talk helpful to my Buddhist practice, and I’ll say more about my personal reactions in a future post about how to listen to Dharma talks.  But it’s evidently helpful to those who are using it, and I suspect to more than a few of my fellow listener/sitters.  I imagine their concept of God has evolved from a concrete, personified creator-controller-and-judge deity to something coexistant with creation itself, maybe a synonym for the ground-of-being.  You can certainly find strains within the Christian mystic, Sufi, and Kabbalistic traditions to  support such a view.  There are those who believe in the concept of the perennial philosophy, the idea that the mystical experience has the same content regardless of religion, and that underneath the hood all religions point to the same experience.   I think that many of those who are comfortable with god-talk in a Dharma talk believe there’s no fundamental contradiction between being a Theist and practicing Buddhism, or at least practicing Zen.

I recently heard Roshi Robert Kennedy, who’s both a Jesuit priest and a Zen master, talk about this issue with great subtlety.  He considers himself a Zen practitioner, but not a Buddhist.  He understands that the Buddhist and Christian views of the ultimate nature of reality are not really reconcilable, but he also believes that sitting zazen is a practice without theological content.  You don’t have to believe in anything to sit.  I suspect roshi believes that the truths (with a small “t”) that emerge from sitting are not the provenance of any religion and that sitting assists our maturation as human beings regardless of our religious beliefs. But I don’t want to put words in Roshi’s mouth.

So is Buddhism theistic or non-theistic?

As Suzuki Roshi was fond of saying, “not always so.”

 

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  1. [1] Knaster, M. (2010).  Living This Life Fully: Stories and Teachings of Munindra.  Boston: Shambhala, p. 26. ↩

Metamorphosis

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It’s official:  I’m an ex-psychologist.  My license to practice expired last month.  It’s been a long time coming.

I first aspired to become a psychologist forty-three years ago.

 

VA Traineeship 1971

Graduation 1977

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Becoming and then being a psychologist was an important part of my life. I gave up practice over four years ago but hung onto my license. Maybe I’d come to regret giving it up.  Maybe I’d need to return to work.  Letting go of the “maybes” was a slow process.

When I started college I planned to become a biochemist.  It turned out I was more interested in Civil Rights and the Vietnam War than equilibration constants and soon switched majors to political science.  When I became disillusioned with improving the world through political action I turned to saving it one-life-at-a-time through psychology. It was a slow way of fulfilling the Bodhisattva Vow to liberate all beings, but, hey, it was a start.

Preparing for my preliminary exams stressed me out so much I was developing an ulcer.  My wife asked “what would be so terrible if you failed the exams?”  “Then I’d never be a psychologist!” I whined. “Poor you!” she replied with benign sarcasm. “Then you’d just be like the other five billion people on earth who aren’t psychologists.”

I’ve finally joined the five billion.  Only now it’s nearly seven billion.

Letting go of my license isn’t the end of it, though.  Like everything else in life, it’s a process. Yesterday I was in the garage looking through piles of old lecture notes, publication drafts, correspondence with editors, and xeroxed copies of articles I’d used for teaching.  Was I ready to put them in the trash?  And what about the hundreds of books taking up valuable real estate on my bookshelves? I’ll probably never read them again.  Am I ready to donate them? Will anyone have them?

Let go.  Don’t hang on.  Be ready for what’s next.

A friend of mine, the son of an African chief, had a mother who sang a Praise Song to him every morning while growing up.  The song was sung at his wedding and one day will be sung at his funeral. The song existed long before he was born, but when he was born a new verse was added specifically for him.  The song defines him.  It tells how his ancestors came to the valley to become warriors and chiefs.  It tells what his qualities are, what his duties are to family and tribe, what he will one day accomplish.

The song is a powerful metaphor for identity:  the narrative we create and reinforce about ourselves.  We can allow that narrative to define us.  We can treat it as real, as if it had totemic power — or we can see it transparently as story, aware of how it fails to define and constrain our complex, elusive, ever-changing selves.

Life is never static, but flows like a river.  It’s essence is change.  We shed identities and try new ones on for size like snakes shed their skins.  Last month I was a psychologist.  Who am I now?

Already a new narrative takes its place — grandfather, writer, piano student, cancer survivor, diabetic, social activist, Buddhist — a new set of identifiers.

When I’m on the cushion, though — who is it that sits?

“Eno said, ‘Do not think good, do not think evil.  Now, what is your real self?’

Myo asked, ‘Beyond these secret words is there a secret deeper still?’

Eno said, ‘I have told you nothing secret. See your true face, it is all there.’”

– From the Mumonkan, Case 23

 

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Why Do Buddhists Bow?

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Rabbi Simcha Bunim of Peshicha (1765-1827) used to say that everyone should keep a piece of paper with “for my sake the world was created” in one pocket, and a piece of paper with “I am but dust and ashes” in another.  The Rabbi was expressing an existential truth: each individual being is important, but not self-important.

Rabbi Simcha Bunim

Western psychology has had precious little to say about modesty and humility.  It sometimes seems these old-fashioned values have no place in today’s culture of self-promotion, entitlement, and exhibitionism.  Western personality theorists reached tentative agreement in the 1980s that the “Big Five” factors accounted for most of the variance in human personality: 1) anxiety proneness, 2) introversion-extraversion, 3) openness to experience, 4) conscientiousness, and 5) agreeableness.  Modesty and humility had no place of honor within that standard model.

Canadian psychologists Kibeom Lee and Michael Ashton recently challenged the Big Five model by proposing the existence of a sixth personality factor they’ve called “Honesty-Humility.”  People with high degrees of Honesty-Humility avoid manipulating others for personal gain, feel little temptation to break rules, are uninterested in attaining wealth, and feel no sense of entitlement to elevated status or privilege.  Persons with low degrees of Honesty-Humility, on the other hand, are self-important, motivated by material gain, tempted to bend rules to get ahead, and Machiavellian in their relationships with others. It’s very interesting that honesty and humility are linked together. Honesty-Humility almost sounds like the ideal Buddhist personality factor: ethics, modesty, and non-greed.  It also sounds maybe a little Canadian, eh?

The Honesty-Humility factor was in the news last month with the publication of a study by Baylor University psychologists showing that job supervisors rate health care  employees who score high on Honesty-Humility higher on job performance than those who score low.  In fact, Honesty-Humility predicted job performance ratings better than any of the so-called Big Five Factors. [1]

In Asian Buddhist cultures modesty and respect for others are conveyed through the simple gesture of bowing.  The hands-together bow is used throughout Asia: in Japan (gasshō), China (héshi or hézhǎng), Thailand (wai) Viet Nam, (hiệp chưởng) and India (the añjali mudrā or namaste).

The practice of bowing can sometimes be difficult for Westerners to fully appreciate. They often see it as a violation of the Biblical injunction against bowing down before graven images and idol worship [2] or associate it with “kow-towing:” acceptance of undemocratic status differentials, submission to power, and self-abasement.

 

 

 

 

 

 

These connotations may prevent Westerners from experiencing the beauty of bowing practice. Bowing is an expression of Buddhism through motion. In Zen, for example, one bows upon entering the Zendo, bows to the Buddha, bows to one’s cushion, bows to one’s teachers, and bows to one’s fellow practitioners.  Zen is a bona-fide bowing bonanza.  What’s the meaning of all these bows?

The word “gasshō” is Japanese for “to place the two palms together.”  It’s a sign of respect –  but respect for what?  Judeo-Christian bowing is a recognition of God’s sovereignty.  Does bowing before the Buddha acknowledge the Buddha’s sovereignty?  Is it an act of fealty?

Hardly. The Buddha isn’t a diety: he rules over nothing, is sovereign over nothing.   Buddha images are a four-fold representation.  They represent the totality of existence, our own capacity for awakening, the teachings, and the historical source of those teachings.  When we bow we express gratitude for the historical Buddha as a teacher, gratitude for the teachings themselves, respect for our own capacity for awakening, and acknowledgement of the oneness of Being.  The Buddha is neither separate from the totality of Being, nor from ourselves.  In bowing to the Buddha we bow to ourselves-as-part-of-everything.  We acknowledge the smallness of our egos, the vastness of Being, and the way of Enlightenment.

Zoketsu Norman Fisher once observed Dainin Katagiri Roshi mumbling a Japanese verse as he bowed.  Katagiri Roshi translated the verse:

“Bower and what is bowed to are empty by nature. The bodies of one’s self and others are not two. I bow with all beings to attain liberation, to manifest the unsurpassed mind and return to boundless truth.” [3]

Similarly, the Venerable Dhammananda Bhikkhuni notes:

“It is important to understand the significance of this humble gesture. When we bow down before a Buddha image it means we are able to let go of the importance of the self. We bring our head below our heart. We bow with body, heart and mind and by so doing we gain merit. When a student bows before a teacher, it is the student who gains merit because she/he is able to let go of the self; the teacher gains nothing at all.”

The practice is not a recognition of the teacher’s higher existential status or superiority.  It’s a letting go of our small self and a demonstration of the appreciation and respect due all beings. The teacher returns the bow.  According to Katagiri Roshi, “bowing is mutual, just one bow, bowing back and forth.”

Respect for all beings is a core principle in Zen.  It’s an expression of what Albert Schweitzer called “reverence for life.”  But it goes beyond that: we even bow to our cushion.  We are grateful for, respect, and help maintain the inanimate world as well.  Since everything in the universe is connected, everything is necessary for our own small individual existence.  We show gratitude and respect for our cushion, the ground that supports us, the walls that protect us, the air we breathe, the water we drink, the earth, moon, and stars.

Bruce Blair, Yale’s Buddhist chaplain (and former abbot of the Kwan Um School of Zen’s New Haven Zen Center), once told me that Korean Zen Master Seung Sahn continued to bow one-hundred-and-eight times every morning even into his seventh decade. Bruce asked “Do you want to know why one-hundred-and-eight times?”  I knew “108” was an auspicious number in Buddhism, but was game and replied, “Okay, why?”  Bruce then told me to follow his lead.  We started doing prostrations in the middle of New Haven Square, Bruce counting aloud as we did them: one… two… three… four… five….  After ten I got the idea.  No logical reason. No “meaning.” The meaning was in the performance itself.  Just do it.  Bruce and I smiled at each other.  Direct transmission.

Bowing is good for the soul.  In India they say “namaste,” “I bow to the divinity in you,” in accordance with the Advaita Vedānta doctrine that ātman and Bráhman are one.  In Buddhism it’s not divinity we’re acknowledging, but our capacity for awakening and the non-duality of existence.  It’s a spiritual exchange in which we recognize the unique importance of each being in the universe as well as the smallness of the Self.  Would  Rabbi Simcha Bunim of Peshicha have understood?

Ronald McDonald "wais" in Bangkok

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  1. [1] Please note, however, that these employees worked in the health care field.  Would Honesty-Humility also correlate with car salesmen’s job performance ratings?  Maybe not. ↩
  2. [2] Exodus 20:3; Leviticus 26:1; Deuteronomy 5:7 ↩
  3. [3] This story appears in Rev. Heng Sure’s chapter “Cleansing the Heart: Buddhist Bowing as Contemplation,” in Barnhart, B. and Wong, J. (2001). Purity of Heart and Contemplation: A Monastic Dialogue Between Christian and Asian Traditions. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group. ↩

Borscht Belt Zen

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When did this post begin?  Some would say it began with the Big Bang.

Once the universe was set in motion, this blog post became as inevitable as the formation of the solar system, the emergence of life and consciousness, and Doug Adams’ creation of the Improbability Drive.

I personally think it began in 1966.  That was the year that the legendary Alan Watts, the renowned Buddhist[1] interpreter, psychedelic advocate, and alcoholic, arrived at my small East-coast liberal arts college to give a series of talks.

It’s said we are born anew every moment, that every moment is a turning point, a hinge of fate.  Attending Alan Watts’s talks was certainly a turning point in my life, although I couldn’t have known it at the time.

For one thing, it marked the beginning of a life-long interest in Buddhism.  See Exhibit A:

That’s a photo of me reading D.T. Suzuki’s Outlines of Mahayana Buddhism in 1966 taken by my father.  I might not be a Buddhist if it hadn’t been for Alan Watts.  He was my Dharma door.  His talks also sparked an interest in psychedelics, and later that year, while it was still legal, I prepared for taking LSD using The Psychedelic Experience, the Leary-Alpert-Metzner adaptation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, as my Frommer’s guide.  Shortly thereafter I read the Evans-Wentz translation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead which introduced me both to Tibetan Buddhism and C. G. Jung (who wrote the introduction to the book).  My ensuing interest in Jung helped spark a growing interest in psychology. I became a Psychology major in 1968.  One thing leads to another.

In the same year Alan Watts visited my school, I befriended a fellow undergraduate named Art who was an aspiring comic book artist.  We collaborated together on three projects that year.  The first was a sophomoric underground comic strip that caused a minor scandal on campus.  The second was a dreadful campus radio satire of Star Trek in which Captain James T. Kirk battled a creature made of pure lethargy.  The third is the only one I really remember with any degree of clarity.  (I know, anyone who remembers the sixties wasn’t really there!)

Those of us with a rapidly approaching sell-by date will remember Mutt and Jeff.  

Mutt and Jeff was a multi-panel comic strip created by Bud Fisher in 1908 that remained in syndication until 1987.  Mutt’s the tall one, Jeff’s the short one, and Bud Fisher’s the well-heeled chump on the left.

Inspired by our interest in Zen, Art and I came up with a four-panel Mutt and Jeff homage based on “Joshu’s Dog” — Case Number One in the Mumonkan. In the first panel Mutt asks Jeff if a dog has a Buddha-nature.  In the second panel, Mutt replies “wu!” In the third panel Mutt glares at Jeff with daggers in his eyes.  In the final panel we see poor Jeff in a garbage can with a blackened eye and a banana peel resting on his head.  Early twentieth century Zen Masters could be quite fierce!

 

If my memory serves me correctly, the cartoon eventually appeared in the East Village Other around 1967, but I could be mistaken.  In any case, it seems to have subsequently disappeared. Neither Art nor I have a copy, and I’ve been unable to locate it on the internet.  Like a Tibetan sand painting, it exemplifies impermanence.  Art and I never collaborated on any further projects.  We went our separate ways.  I went on to graduate school.  Art went on to invent the genre of the graphic novel and win the Pulitzer Prize.

The Mutt and Jeff cartoon exemplified the vaudevillian quality of the Zen koan.  I’m currently reading Andy Ferguson’s monumental Zen’s Chinese Heritage: The Masters and Their Teachings that was just reissued by Wisdom Publications.  The book covers 25 generations of Chinese Ch’an teachers, which means an awful lot of baffling Zen stories drawn primarily from the Compendium of Five Lamps by the eleventh century Zen Master Dachuan Lingyin Puji.  The Mutt and Jeff cartoon keeps returning to my mind as I read them.  Some of these Zen stories would have made wonderful routines for Borscht Belt comedians. The following is a current favorite of mine.  As you read it, just imagine Groucho as Zhizang:

After Zhizang became abbot of the Western Hall, a layperson asked him, “Is there a heaven and a hell?”

Zhizang said, “There is.”

The layman then asked, “Is there really a Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha — the three jewels?”

Zhizang said, “There are.”

The layman then asked several other questions, and to each Zhizang answered, “There are.”

The layman said “Is the master sure there’s no mistake about this?”

Zhizang said, “When you visited other teachers, what did they say?”

The layman said, “I once visited Master Jingshan.”

Zhizang said, “What did Jingshan say to you?”

The layman said, “He said there wasn’t a single thing.”

Zhizang said, “Do you have a wife and children?”

The layman said, “Yes.”

Zhizang said, “Does Master Jingshan have a wife and children?”

The layman said, “No.”

Zhizang said, “Then it’s okay for Jingshan to say there isn’t a single thing.”

The layman bowed, thanking Zhizang, and went away.

It’s a great joke.  It has a terrific build up, and Zhizang’s timing’s impeccable.

The story points to the reality of both absolute and relative truth.  Zhizang and Jingshan teach the same Zen, but Jingshan does it from the vantage point of absolute truth, Zhizang from relative truth.  The joke is that it’s all well and good to dwell on the mountain top of oneness if you don’t have a wife or kids.  If you do, however, you have to come down and dwell in the world of the ten thousand things.

It reminds me of Zen Master Hakuin’s colophon to his painting of Eaglehead Mountain:

 

“Looking above, Eaglehead Mountain –
Looking below, the fishing boats of Shige and Shishihama.”

We have to coordinate the heights of the mountain top with the view below — both equally valid views.  If you stay at the top you risk altitude sickness.  If you just stay in your little fishing boat, you miss the glorious heights.

 

I love Zen because it has a sense of humor.  It follows Oscar Wilde’s advice that “Life is too important to be taken seriously.”

Everything is of the utmost importance.  We do everything with care, attentiveness, and concern.  We just carry the importance lightly.

Sometimes jokes in the West also contain serious messages.

I love the following joke for what it has to say about humility often being egotism in disguise, like a wolf in sheep’s clothing:

“It was Yom Kippur and the cantor left the standard liturgy to improvise before the congregation.  “I’m nothing,” he cried out.  “God, I’m like a worm crawling on his belly, like dust beneath your feet.”  He began to wail and rend his clothing.  Hearing him, all the rich congregants in the expensive seats in the front of the Synagogue took up his cries of piety.  ”Forgive us, dear God.  We’re nothing.  We’re lower than the low.”  And they too began to wail and rend their garments.  Hearing this, little Mottel the Tailor in the cheap seats way in the back echoed the cry of humility.  “Oh, God,” he said, “I’m lower than the lowest vermin.  I’m garbage!  I’m nothing!”  With this the congregation stopped its prayers and stared at Mottel.  “Who is he,” the rabbi said incensed, “to think he’s nothing?”

Who is Jingshan to think there’s not a single thing?

 

 

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  1. [1] Watts wasn’t strictly a “Buddhist” interpreter.  He expoused a mixture of Buddhism, Vedanta, and Taoism, and sometimes his understanding of Zen was a litle idiosyncratic.  Nevertheless he was a brilliant and inspired speaker who did much to familiarize Westerners with Eastern Philosophy. ↩

Loving-kindness

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“It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than ‘try to be a little kinder.’” – - Aldous Huxley

When I first began my Buddhist practice, the idea behind loving-kindness meditation wasn’t all that attractive to me.  I couldn’t make any sense out of it.  What did it mean to chant “May all beings be happy?”  Did saying or thinking that somehow magically make beings happy?   How could all beings be happy, since happiness is a mental state  dependent on causes and conditions?  Isn’t suffering an inherent part of life?  If you had to wish for something, wouldn’t it be better to wish for everyone to be mindful?  There was a fairy-tale element to loving-kindness meditation that didn’t jibe with my empirical-pragmatic approach to life.

It took me a long time to come to terms with loving-kindness.  The first step on that journey was understanding how Western notions of feeling and emotion interfere with  understanding what loving-kindness actually is.  Western notions of feeling and emotion have been colored by nineteenth-century Western Romanticism in art, music, poetry, philosophy, and psychology.  Novels of sentiment first emerged in the late eighteenth century with the publication of Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther — novels in which the protagonist was intimately in touch with a powerful and often tormented emotional life.  Music underwent a metamorphosis from the sacred beauty and mathematical elegance of Bach to the powerful emotional drama of Beethoven, Wagner, and Mahler.  Poetry was transformed by Wordsworth, Byron, Keats, and Shelly.  German Romanticism provided the underpinnings for Freud’s theories of the unconscious, the passions, and the will.  The ideal of romantic love transformed Western marriage, often trumping the importance of familial obligations and financial considerations.  It all came down to being in touch with feeling — being genuine and true to one’s emotional life.

So I was surprised years ago when I heard Sharon Salzberg quip that (in regards to teaching loving-kindness) she wanted the following words engraved on her tombstone: “It doesn’t matter what you feel.”  What she meant by that was that you didn’t have to feel anything special as you practiced loving-kindness.  The point was to just do it.

I’ve been told there’s no word corresponding to our Western category of “Emotion” in Pali, Sanskrit, or Tibetan.  There are words for individual emotions — compassion, anger, greed, happiness — but no category of “Emotion” to which they all belong.  In the Abhidharma, for example, there are just the categories of skillful and unskillful mental factors.  Emotions are lumped together in the same category with other mental factors relating to volition, perception, and concentration.

It’s better to think of loving-kindness as an attitude we’re trying to cultivate than a feeling we’re trying to “have,” with all the issues of false consciousness and inauthenticity that arise when we try to “create a feeling.”  It’s unrealistic to think we can actually “love” everybody in the same way.  How can I feel the same way emotionally about my insurance broker as I do to my wife or my children?  That’s crazy.  And then try to think about other people who are even harder to love –  you can make your own list, ending with someone like Hitler, for example.  No way that’s going to happen.

On the other hand, I can cultivate the idea that all beings deserve my non-hatred.  I can disapprove of them and their actions, and do what I can to stop them from inflicting harm, but I don’t have to afflict myself and the world with the venom of my hatred.  I can work on the idea that all sentient beings should be treated humanely.  I can start working on that with the people nearest and dearest to me.  Then I can work my way up to my insurance broker.  I can save working on Hitler for last.

Motherly love, and love for one’s mother, play a significant role in traditional Asian descriptions of loving-kindness.  The Metta Sutta states, “As a mother would risk her life to protect her child, her only child, even so should one cultivate a limitless heart with regard to all beings.”  Tibetans argue that we should treat all beings like we would treat our mother.  The argument that accompanies this is that since we have already lived an infinite number of lifetimes, and since all other beings have also transmigrated over infinite lifetimes, then every other being has at one time or another already actually been our mother. We should therefore treat all beings with impartiality as if they were our mother.

This argument sometimes falls on deaf ears in the West. Besides the issue of non-belief in reincarnation, we’ve been through the Freudian revolution in which all our troubles have been laid at our mothers’ doorsteps.  It’s hard to remember a time in our culture when mothers were unalloyed objects of veneration.  This veneration is still present, however, in Indian culture.  You can see it reflected in the Indian cinema, from classic films like “Mother India,” to Bollywood hits like “Kahbi Kushi Khabi Gham.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mothers  in Mother India (L) and Kabhi Kushi Kabhi Gham (R)

However you may personally feel about your actual mother, this imagery is intended to serve as an encouragement to take the person who best embodies love or is most worthy of love, and use this person as the standard for the kindly treatment of others.

One beautiful aspect of traditional metta practice (see below) is that one begins by extending loving-kindness to oneself.  For some people, this is the hardest aspect of loving-kindness to cultivate.  Airplane flight attendants advise us that, should an emergency arise, we don our own oxygen masks before putting them on our loved ones.  People who are the most demanding and unforgiving of others are often, first and foremost, the most demanding and unforgiving of themselves.  If we are to be truly kind to others, we need to first extend the same courtesy to ourselves.

Loving-kindness is not just an attitude, but a complex skill set with many component facets: generosity, attentiveness, caring, patience, open-heartedness, forgiveness, gentleness, abstaining from expressions of irritation and anger, expressing appreciation, offering advice and assistance, sympathetic joy, and trustworthiness.  We have the good fortune in this life to be surrounded by a sufficient number of imperfect and irritating people to practice and develop these skills daily.  While traditional meditations like reciting metta verses or practicing tong-len can be helpful in developing loving-kindness, they are no substitute for putting it into practice in real life with real people.  You are provided with the opportunity to do so every single day of your life.

“Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.”  –  Henry James

 

METTA (LOVING-KINDNESS) CHANT

Imaya dhammanu /By this practice

Dhamma patipattiya/ In accord with the true Dhamma

Buddham pujemi /I honor the Buddha.

Imaya dhammanu/ By this practice

Dhamma patipattiya/ In accord with the true Dhamma

Dhammam pujemi /I honor the Dhamma.

Imaya dhammanu /By this practice

Dhamma patipattiya/ In accord with the true Dhamma

Sangham pujemi /I honor the Sangha.

 

Aham avero homi /May I be free from enmity

Abapajjo homi /May I be free from mental suffering

Anigho homi /May I be free from physical suffering

Sukhi attanam pariharami /May I take care of myself happily.

 

Mama mata pitu /May my mother and father

Acariyaca ñatimittaca/ And teachers, relatives, and friends,

Sabrahma carinoca/ And fellow brahma farers,

Avera hontu /May they be free from enmity

Abyapajja hontu/ May they be free from mental suffering

Anigha hontu /May they be free from physical suffering

Sukhi attanam pariharantu /May they take care of themselves happily.

 

Imasmin arame, sabbe yogino/ In this grove, may all yogis

Avera hontu /May they be free from enmity

Abyapajja hontu/ May they be free from mental suffering

Anigha hontu /May they be free from physical suffering

Sukhi attanam pariharantu/ May they take care of themselves happily.

Amhakham arakkha devata /May our guardian deities

Imasmim vihare /In this temple

Imasmim avase /In this dwelling

Imasmim arame /In this place

Arakkha devata /May the guardian deities

Avera hontu /May they be free from enmity

Abyapajja hontu/ May they be free from mental suffering

Anigha hontu/ May they be free from physical suffering

Sukhi attanam pariharantu/ May they take care of themselves happily.

 

Sabbe satta /May all beings

Sabbe pana /All living things

Sabbe bhuta/ All creatures

Sabbe puggala/ All individuals

Sabbe attabhava pariyapanna/ All personalities

Sabbe itthiyo /All females

Sabbe purisa /All males

Sabbe ariya /All nobles ones

Sabbe anariya /All who are not nobles

Sabbe deva /All deities

Sabbe manussa/ All humans

Sabbe vinipatika /All those in unhappy states

Avera hontu /May they be free from enmity

Abyapajja hontu/ May they be free from mental suffering

Anigha hontu /May they be free from physical suffering

Sukhi attanam pariharantu/ May they take care of themselves happily.

 

Dukkha muccantu /May they be free from suffering

Yatha laddha sampattito/ May they enjoy safety and abundance

Mavigacchantu Kammassaka/ Have Kamma as their true property.

Idam no puñña bhagam /May this merit of ours be apportioned

Sabba sattanam /To all beings.

Sadhu, Sadhu, Sadhu! /Well spoken! Well spoken! Well spoken!

 

Credit: Top Photo courtesy of Nancy Zarider

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Buddhist Teachers Behaving Badly

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The latest dustup over John Tarrant’s Shambhala Sun obituary for Robert Aitkin Roshi provides us with yet another opportunity to examine the issue of bad sexual behavior on the part of some Buddhist teachers.  Unfortunately, this kind of examination is always timely.  In the past year we’ve seen scandals surrounding Eido Shimano Roshi and Dennis Gempo Merzel, but over the years scandals within the Buddhist community have become sadly familiar.   We should take these scandals as opportunities to explore ever relevant questions concerning sex, power, and Enlightenment.

The Third Lay Buddhist Training Precept states “I undertake the training rule to abstain from sexual misconduct.” (Kāmesumicchācāra veramanī sikkhāpadam samādiyāmi).  The precept emphasizes the prevention of harm to sexual partners and concerned third parties.  The precept is vague, however, about what constitutes sexual misconduct.  The precept is usually interpreted in the light of the prevailing customs and mores within each distinct Buddhist community.  Peter Harvey [1] has done an excellent job of surveying the ways the precept has been interpreted across societies and over time.  My review of these interpretations below is abstracted from his survey (but any errors in it are completely my own).

Sexual misconduct traditionally includes adultery and consorting with prostitutes (c.f. Sutta-nipāta and Nāgārjuna) as well as rape and incest.  Having sex with anyone who is already in a committed relationship with another is also usually considered a violation of the precept.  In Thailand flirting with a married woman is seen as a violation, whereas in Sri Lanka premarital sex is proscribed.  The fourth-century Abhidharma-kośa-bhāsya included the use of “unsuitable” orifices, places, or times.  The Upāsaka-śīla-sūtra included frequenting brothels and the use of “instruments.” Gampopa’s (1079-1153) Jewel Ornament of Liberation included overly frequent sex (more than five successive times!) and homosexuality, whereas Patrul Rinpoche (1808-1887) proscribed masturbation in his Kuzang Lama’i Shelung.  Buddhaghosa and Śāntideva both considered homosexual behavior to be a violation of the third precept, but homosexuality was tolerated and accepted in Japan, even as part of monastic life.

Where does this leave the issue of teacher-student sex?  In the contemporary West, the ethics concerning teacher-student sex are still evolving.  In elementary, middle, and high schools teacher-student sexual contact is not permitted as students are still (for the most part) minors who cannot give consent, and because it would constitute a serious violation of a relationship of authority and trust.  Ethical rules concerning college faculty-student sex are less clearly delineated since many students are no longer minors. Some colleges forbid it, others merely discourage it.  Ethical guidelines recognize an inherent conflict between grading and writing letters of recommendation for students and being in a sexual relationship with them.  While faculty-student relationships occur with considerable frequency, there’s also a considerable degree of queasiness about the potential for abuse of power within these relationships.  In counseling and clinical psychology, therapist-client sexual encounters are considered ethical violations.  Psychology’s ethical standards recognize the danger of abuses of power, the need for therapist objectivity, and the irrational idealizations that clients may project onto therapists.  Lastly, we might mention that sex abuse scandals within the Roman Catholic Church have increased public awareness of the real and enduring psychological and spiritual harm caused by violations of clerical authority and trust.

These issues of trust, authority, abuse of power, idealizations and projections, and the need for teachers to retain impartiality and objectivity are all relevant to the question of relationships between Buddhist teachers and their students, and there have been attempts to develop codes of ethics for Buddhist teachers.  For example, Spirit Rock has developed a code of ethics for teachers in the Insight Meditation tradition that includes the following paragraphs:

“We agree to avoid creating harm through sexuality and to avoid sexual exploitation or relationships of a sexual manner that are outside of the bounds of the relationship commitments we have made to another or that involve another who has made vows to another. Teachers with vows of celibacy will live according to their vows. Teachers in committed relationships will honor their vows and refrain from adultery. All teachers agree not to use their teaching role to exploit their authority and position in order to assume a sexual relationship with a student.

Because several single teachers in our community have developed partnerships and marriages with former students, we acknowledge that such a healthy relationship can be possible, but that great care and sensitivity are needed. We agree that in this case the following guidelines are crucial:

A) A sexual relationship is never appropriate between teachers and students.

B) During retreats or formal teaching, any intimation of future student-teacher romantic or sexual relationship is inappropriate.

C) If interest in a genuine and committed relationship develops over time between a single teacher and a student, the student-teacher relationship must clearly and consciously have ended before any further development toward a romantic relationship. Such a relationship must be approached with restraint and sensitivity – in no case should it occur immediately after retreat. A minimum time period of three months or longer from the last formal teaching between them, and a clear understanding from both parties that the student-teacher relationship has ended must be coupled with a conscious commitment to enter into a relationship that brings no harm to either party.”

Similar codes of ethics have been developed by a number of Zen communities, including ones where teacher misconduct has occurred in the past (e.g., San Francisco Zen Center, Kwan Um School of Zen).

Given the evolving consensus about teacher-student relationships, why does misconduct continue to occur?  The answer is simple: because all human beings are imperfect, and because any position of power invites both temptations and opportunities for abuse.  The Buddhist community, however, may have several unique factors that complicate addressing this issue.

Certain tantric practices (e.g., the use of mudras or “seals”) may open the door for potential abuse unless there is a widely understood consensus on ethical guidelines regarding their use. Similarly, the idealization of “crazy wisdom” within tantric traditions may lead students to rationalize teachers’s unacceptable behaviors, and teachers to rationalize being out-of-control.

The biggest obstacle within Buddhism, however, may be the idea of “Enlightenment” itself.  Enlightenment is traditionally described as something that puts a permanent end to unwholesome desiring.  Once one has achieved Enlightenment, there’s no backsliding.  Enlightened Beings are, by definition, incapable of sexual misconduct.  Any teacher who believes this is at risk for becoming an abuser.  Any student who believes this is at risk for rationalizing and accepting abuse.

The idea that one can have a magical experience that makes one perfect and makes one invulnerable to harmful temptations is a fairy tale.  Everyone’s brain contains a hypothalamus, and no amount of meditation or insight can surgically remove it.  The hypothalamus is the seat of desire in the human nervous system, including sexual desire.  We have a wonderful cerebral cortex which can dampen, override, and modify hypothalamic output, but not eliminate it.  As Freud might say, we all have an “id,” a dynamic, insatiable source of passion and desire, that is a permanent part of our psychological constitution.  Buddhism teaches us to be heedful and mindful of desire and deal with it intelligently in order to be fully and completely human.  It shouldn’t teach that there’s a stage when we no longer need to exert due care.

Buddhist practitioners often experience powerful meditative experiences that have real transformative power.  These realizations, however, do not completely obliterate temptation or the repetition and acting-out of deeply ingrained behavioral patterns.  Meditative realizations need to be gradually actualized and reinforced.  Psychotherapists know that a genuine insight in one situation does not automatically generalize and transfer to other situations.  There’s a process called “working through” that needs to occur before one can actualize insight across circumstances.  Similarly, Korean Zen Master Bojo Jinul (1158-1210) taught that the Buddhist path is one of “sudden enlightenment” followed by “gradual cultivation.”  We never finish our development.  Enlightenment is a horizon we aim at, not something we achieve.

That’s why codes of ethics will always be necessary.  That’s why there will always be Buddhist teachers who will fall short of embodying them.  That’s why our life needs to be one of continual practice.

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  1. [1] Harvey, P. (2000).  An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press ↩

The Noble Eightfold Path

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The Pali for “Noble Eightfold Path” is Ariya Aṭṭhangika Magga, literally the “Aryan Eight-Limbed Path.”   Nowadays, the word “Aryan” has negative connotations because of its appropriation by Nazis and white supremacists, but in ancient Pali it meant “noble” or “exalted,” and Buddhists reserved it as an honorific for practitioners who had reached a high level of realization: stream-enterers, once-returners, non-returners, and arahants.  The name “Noble Eightfold Path” is a bit misleading, because it’s not so much the path that’s noble, as it is the path that nobles follow to attain realization.  The Noble Eightfold Path is the path alluded to in the Fourth Noble Truth: the path towards release from suffering.  It’s the Buddha’s prescription for what ails us.

Traditionally, the Eightfold Path is subdivided into three aggregates: wisdom (pañña), virtue (sīla), and concentration (samādhi).

The wisdom aggregate has two components: right view (sammā ditthi) and right intention (sammā sankappa).  Right view, at an initial level, is an understanding of karma — that actions have consequences — as well as belief in rebirth and the possibility of liberation.  At a higher level of realization, it is also the ability to directly perceive the three marks of existence: unsatisfactoriness (dukkha), impermanence (anicca) and non-self (anattā) in all compound phenomena.  Right intention involves both a renunciation of clinging, and the adaptation of an attitude of good will and non-harming to all beings.

The virtue aggregate includes the components of right speech (sammā vācā), right action (sammā kammanta), and right livelihood (sammā ājīva).  Right speech refers to abstaining from lies, backbiting and slander, abusive and hurtful speech, and frivolous talk. Right action involves adhering to the ethical precepts of abstaining from killing, stealing, sexual impropriety, and intoxicants.  Right livelihood means earning one’s living in a way that adheres to the precepts.  Certain occupations are specifically proscribed for Buddhists including trafficking in human beings, weapons, meat, intoxicants, and poisons.

The concentration aggregate also has three components: right effort (sammā vāyāma), right mindfulness (sammā sati), and right concentration (sammā samādhi). Right effort means developing control over one’s mental state by abandoning unskillful thoughts, preventing unskillful thoughts from taking hold, and reinforcing skillful thoughts.  Right mindfulness means cultivating awareness of bodily sensations, feelings, mind, and mental objects in all one’s activities.  Right concentration is the development of one-pointed concentration through practicing the meditative absorptions (jhānas) in order to have sufficient stability of mind to develop insight into the marks of existence.

The Eightfold Path has both a mundane and supramundane level.  On the mundane level one follows the path elements to prepare for stream-entry, but at the point of stream-entry all eight elements coalesce into the supramundane path from stream-entry to arahantship.

One can think of each of the path elements separately, but one can also think about them as reflecting and reinforcing each other, like the jewels of Indra’s net, or like holograms, each element containing all the other elements within them.  For example, right speech requires right intention, abstaining from intoxicants, abandoning unskillful thoughts and maintaining right mindfulness.  When one is practicing one aspect of the path, one is reinforcing them all.

The Noble Eightfold Path is Theravāda Buddhism’s map for Destination Nirvana, but other schools have provided somewhat different maps for realization.  Mahāyāna Buddhism has its Bodhisattva path; Vajrayāna has Atiśa’s Stages of the Path. There’s even a Zen-inflected pathless path:  As Toni Packer has written:

“Awareness cannot be taught, and when it is present it has no context. All contexts are created by thought and are therefore corruptible by thought. Awareness simply throws light on what is, without any separation whatsoever.   Awareness, insight, enlightenment, wholeness — whatever words one may pick to label what cannot be caught in words — is not the effect of a cause. Activity does not destroy it and sitting does not create it. It isn’t a product of anything — no technique, method, environment, tradition, posture, activity, or nonactivity can create it. It is there, uncreated, freely functioning in wisdom and love, when self-centered conditioning is clearly revealed in all its grossness and subtleness and defused in the light of understanding.”

So what do I make of the Noble Eightfold Path?  After all, I’m an existential Buddhist who doesn’t believe in literal karma and rebirth.  Since I don’t believe in literal rebirth, I also don’t believe in the literal meaning of stream-entry, i.e., being on the glide path to non-rebirth.  According to the Theravāda map, I’m already hopelessly mired in wrong view.

With the exception of the karma/rebirth issue, however, the Noble Eightfold Path still seems like a pretty good prescription.  It emphasizes the importance of the interplay of intellectual understanding, intention, ethics, enlarging the heart, and meditation.  Practicing one of these without the support of the others is probably the fast track to nowhere.  Without an initial understanding of suffering, impermanence, and interdependence there is little motivation to practice.  Just meditating, however, without the larger envelope of the intention to help all beings can lead to detachment and withdrawal.  Trying to calm the mind while one’s immoral behavior is busy generating turbulence is like trying to erect a tent during a hurricane. Rushing out to save beings without developing discernment, mindfulness, and equanimity is a recipe for what Trungpa Rinpoche called “idiot compassion.”  Finally, a sterile intellectual understanding of Buddhist concepts without the direct experience of reality arrived at through meditation leads to a mistaking of the map for the territory.  One haggles over concepts without ever touching the reality the concepts merely point at.  Alan Watts called this eating the menu instead of eating the meal.  Compassion, ethics, meditative practice, and intellectual understanding are all necessary components of paths to realization — however one imagines that destination — if we are to avoid drifting too far off, either to the left or to the right, and winding up in a side-ditch.

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Letting Go

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Renunciation is not giving up the things of the world, but accepting that they go away. — Shunryu Suzuki Roshi

Meditation is practice in letting go.  In meditation the ten thousand things arise, and we let them be.  A kaleidoscopic cacophony of sensations, thoughts, and reveries arise and vanish — fleeting specters in the Cartesian Theater of the mind.  We have hopes and expectations for what each moment of meditation will be like:  “I will stay alert, focused, calm, and peaceful.”  “My meditation space will be quiet and comfortable.”  “I will learn something… make progress… taste Enlightenment.”  Our practice is to continually let go of these hopes and expectations and let the ten thousand things be as they are.  We effortlessly open to each moment, accepting each moment as it is, embracing it, experiencing it fully.

Why practice letting go?  Polly Young-Eisendrath recently made the following point about practicing mindfulness, but it applies to letting go as well:

“The reason for learning… is not so that you can sit around and meditate. It’s like when you learn to drive a car in a parking lot. It’s not so you can drive that car in parking lots. You learn in the parking lot because it’s a restricted, safe area. When you [meditate] it’s like learning to drive in the parking lot. Then, in time, you take the car out onto the highway…. Practice is cultivated in order to get around in life….”

We meditate in order to learn how to let go in our daily lives.  We need to learn how to let go because trying to hold onto anything is like trying to nail jello to a wall:  Nothing sticks, nothing stays.  When David Chadwick [1] asked Suzuki Roshi to express the heart of Buddhism in just a few words, Roshi replied “Everything changes.” (If David had asked him another time, would he have gotten a different answer?)  We can’t hold onto a world that’s constantly changing and transforming — we can’t make the world stop being the world.

“Clinging” is another word for “holding on.”  The Buddha taught that clinging was the ninth link in the chain of Dependent Origination.  In that chain, craving led to clinging, and clinging to “becoming” (bhava), i.e., to continued stuckness in cyclical existence.  There are two places where the chain of dependent origination can be broken: at the point where a pleasant feeling turns to craving, and at the point where craving leads to clinging.  We can break the link of craving through awareness of its dangers and insight into where it will lead us.  We can break the link of clinging by simply letting go.

Sometimes the Buddhist message about craving, clinging, and attachment is misunderstood.  People misinterpret it to mean that we should be free from desire and interpersonal relationships.  In Buddhism there are good desires — the desire to help others, to be happy, and to become enlightened are prominent examples.  The desire to be a good parent or a good spouse are others.

Another way of saying this is that aspiration is all right, but craving is not.  Cravings are intense desires that are fixated on a particular object or experience.  There is a tightness, rigidity, stereotypy, or “must-ness” about them — like the addict craving a fix; the overeater, a binge; the miser, more wealth.  Satisfying a craving leads to transitory pleasure, but as the pleasure fades, more craving ensues.    Cravings have a way of taking over our lives and enslaving us.

Similarly, in Buddhism attachment is not the same thing as relationship. The Buddha never intended to discourage relationships.  Affection, love, care, and concern are the very essence of enlightened life.  Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche explained the difference between love and attachment this way in a recent tweet:

Love is when you are thinking ... "how can I make you happy?" Attachment is when you are thinking ... "why aren't you making me happy?"
January 26, 2011 2:09 PM via TwitBird iPadReplyRetweetFavorite
@ponlop
Dzogchen Ponlop R.

In Buddhism attachment refers to a rigid, tight clinging and holding on to something, as if it were an existential life-raft.  Think, for example, of a person clinging to a relationship that’s already dead and unable to move on.  He keeps returning to a dry well, hoping for water, stuck in recurrent despair.  He may even resort to stalking and violence, hoping against hope to control the other person who wants nothing more of or from him.

Similarly, nothing kills relationship as quickly and thoroughly as clinging — clinging stifles and suffocates the loved one, dragging the loved one down into the swamp of the clinger’s neediness and efforts to exert control.

We can cling to other things besides relationships.  We can become stuck in an unrewarding job, or stuck on a goal that’s beyond our talents (or a poor match for what could really make us happy).  We can become attached to money, possessions, popularity, and status.  We can believe we’re promised or owed these things by life, and become resentful when they’re not delivered, thinking life has given us a raw deal.

We can become attached to all kinds of beliefs about how life is supposed to be.  “Life is supposed to be easy!”  “Life is supposed to be fair!”  “Bad things are not supposed to happen to me!”  “I should be further ahead in life!” “I’m not supposed to be ill, sick, handicapped, or dependent!”  “Raising children (or working for a living, or marriage) shouldn’t be this hard!”  “Other people should appreciate me more!” “I should be better, smarter, braver, more loving, more perfect!”  Psychologist Albert Ellis used to jest that whenever we placed demands on how life “must” be, we were engaging in “must-erbation.”  We are happier when we let go of our demands on life, and accept life as it is, and ourselves as we are.  That doesn’t mean we cease making efforts to improve ourselves and our circumstances – it’s just that we don’t demand that our efforts always succeed.  We understand that when we want to make God laugh (as Anne Lamott[2] so aptly wrote) we tell Her our plans.  We understand that there is no such thing as perfection.  There is just life as it is.

So we sit in meditation, practicing letting go.  Breath by breath.  Moment by moment.  Again and again.  We observe the places where we get caught, where we get stuck, the places where we get tight, the places where we separate ourselves from the moment with thoughts about how the moment ought to be.  And we breathe.  And we let go, loosen, and unfold.

Special thanks to L. J. Kopf ([email protected]) for permission to use Metaphysical Phunnies in this post.

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  1. [1] D. Chadwick (1999).  Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Zen Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki. New York: Broadway. ↩
  2. [2] A. LaMott (1995).  Bird by Bird.  New York: Anchor. ↩

Decisions, Decisions

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Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura…

In the middle of our life-journey
I found myself in a dark wood…
– Dante, Inferno

As Kierkegaard noted, while we understand life backwards, we can only live it forwards. We are all time travelers [1], and while we only live within each moment, moment to moment, the moments tick inexorably away towards the future. The thoughts we entertain and the actions we engage in within each moment give birth to the next moment. This is the meaning of paticca-samuppāda, or dependent origination.

We do this living forwards in a fog of uncertainty. Every choice we make is a bet with an associated degree of risk and uncertainty. We can never accurately predict where each step, each decision, each fork in the road, will eventually lead.

We all crave certainty. We want to know the right stock to invest in, the best school to attend, the right career path to follow, the right partner to marry, the right time to have children, the best smartphone to own, the true religion that will save us. We try to contrast and compare, weigh the pros and cons, play the odds, but we’re really like the farmer with the lost horse in the Taoist fable. Good choice? Bad choice? Who knows?

Despite the uncertainty that shrouds our every decision, we still need to do the best we can. What other choice is there? This is where mindfulness comes in. Mindfulness is a light that illuminates our path one step at a time. Mindfulness allows us to see one moment ahead in the fog of uncertainty.

Before making an important decision, after we have done our diligent research and weighed the pros and cons, it’s helpful to take the time to sit mindfully with the choice at hand. This means giving up thinking about the choice but just sitting quietly with the choice as an open question. As Dogen might say, “think non-thinking.” This allows the choice to breathe and reverberate throughout our being, permitting all aspects of Being that rational thought alone cannot fathom or penetrate to resonate with the choice. As we sit, inchoate thoughts and feelings we had not been previously aware of have the space to unfold. When we take the time to sit with a decision in mindfulness we emerge into a new kind of clarity, one that rings true within our deepest selves.

When we have done everything possible to make a good decision, it can still come out badly. We can never control the consequences of our decisions once our actions have launched them into the real world. Whatever the consequences are, we now own them. We may not like them, but we have to deal with them as best we can. Is it possible to live without regret? Without longing for the road not taken? Without whining? Is it possible to accept our current life fully, just as it is?

In the Angulimala Sutta, a murdering brigand gives up his thuggish ways to become a member of the Sangha, and eventually achieve Enlightenment. Despite his enlightened status, he’s vilified by the public. The Buddha tells him to accept the consequences of his past actions with equanimity:

“A clod thrown by one person hit Angulimala on the body, a stone thrown by another person hit him on the body, and a potsherd thrown by still another person hit him on the body. So Angulimala — his head broken open and dripping with blood, his bowl broken, and his outer robe ripped to shreds — went to the Blessed One. The Blessed One… said to him: ‘Bear with it, brahman! Bear with it! The fruit of the kamma that would have burned you in hell for … many thousands of years, you are now experiencing in the here-and-now!’ [2]


The Buddha would give us the same advice: “Suck it up!” Imagining a world where things can be different right now than they actually are is a waste of our energy. It’s the way we made it. The world is as the world is. Can we live in it with mindfulness, acceptance, and even joy?

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  1. [1] Thanks to Charles Yu’s How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe for this metaphor! ↩
  2. [2] Translation by Thanissaro Bhikkhu ↩

The Fourth Precept

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The current public discussion over the role vitriolic political rhetoric plays in creating an atmosphere that increases the likelihood of violent actions is as good a time as any to revisit the Fourth Buddhist Precept.

The Fourth Precept reads:

Musāvāda veramaṇī sikkhāpadaṃ samādiyāmi.

I undertake the vow to abstain from false speech.

“False speech” is a faithful translation of “musāvāda,” but most Buddhists interpret this precept more broadly to include all forms of wrongful or harmful speech.  The Pali Canon identifies four types of wrongful speech: 1) lies, 2) backbiting and slander, 3) abusive and hurtful speech, and 4) frivolous talk.  This would include speech that is harsh, untruthful, poorly timed, motivated by greed or hatred, or otherwise connected with harm. Gossip, misleading arguments, verbal bullying, incitements to violence, rage outbursts, malicious ridicule, and poorly worded or ill-timed truths that cause pain without benefit all fall into the category of wrongful speech.

Thich Nhat Hanh has interpreted the fourth precept to include all forms of unmindful speech and unheedful listening:

“Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful speech and the inability to listen to others, I am committed to cultivating loving speech and compassionate listening in order to relieve suffering and to promote reconciliation and peace in myself and among other people, ethnic and religious groups, and nations. Knowing that words can create happiness or suffering, I am committed to speaking truthfully using words that inspire confidence, joy, and hope. When anger is manifesting in me, I am determined not to speak. I will practice mindful breathing and walking in order to recognize and to look deeply into my anger. I know that the roots of anger can be found in my wrong perceptions and lack of understanding of the suffering in myself and in the other person. I will speak and listen in a way that can help myself and the other person to transform suffering and see the way out of difficult situations. I am determined not to spread news that I do not know to be certain and not to utter words that can cause division or discord. I will practice Right Diligence to nourish my capacity for understanding, love, joy, and inclusiveness, and gradually transform anger, violence, and fear that lie deep in my consciousness.”

and elsewhere:

“Do not say untruthful things for the sake of personal interest or to impress people. Do not utter words that cause division and hatred. Do not spread news that you do not know to be certain. Do not criticize or condemn things of which you are not sure. Always speak truthfully and constructively. Have the courage to speak out about situations of injustice, even when doing so may threaten your own safety.”

It’s hard to improve on either the aspiration or the advice!

Mindfulness of speech allows us to carefully guard what we’re about to say.  If we’re aware that we’re about to say something we might regret, it’s helpful to pause just long enough to ask ourselves four questions:

  1. Why am I saying this?
  2. Is it completely true?
  3. Is it the right time to say it?
  4. Is it liable to result in benefit or harm?

If the motivation is self-serving or hateful, if it’s not completely true, if it’s poorly worded or ill-timed, or if it is likely to cause more harm than good, then don’t say it.  It’s simple.

The Buddha often refrained from giving painful or unwelcome answers until the questioner had asked three times.  There’s an American Indian proverb that we should think things over three times before we say them.  Once certain things have escaped our lips, it’s impossible to take them back or undo their harm.  Mindfulness is the key.

It’s often said that there are three kinds of lies, “lies, damned lies, and statistics,” but by my count there are six different kinds:

  1. Lies to aggrandize the Self (exaggerating one’s accomplishments)
  2. Lies to avoid shame and blame
  3. Lies to take advantage of others (manipulation, con games)
  4. Lies to cause malicious harm (gossip, slander)
  5. Lies to protect others from embarrassment (“little white lies”)
  6. Lies to help others (“skillful means,” paradoxical therapy)

These lies are not all equally harmful or blameworthy.  Lies intended without harm and resulting in no harm seem less blameworthy than those devised with malice aforethought that succeed in injuring their target.  Self-aggrandizing speech reinforces patterns of “selfing” and causes others to doubt one’s trustworthiness but causes little other harm.  Virtuous lies are lies that may even have positive results.  We might include in this category the physician who offers hope to a terminal patient, or the Bodhisattva who uses “skillful means” to hasten a student’s enlightenment. Virtuous lies seem less blameworthy, however, if and only if both their intention and their effect is beneficial.  For example, the physician’s offer of false hope to the terminal patient might ease the distress of the person who is unable to come to terms with death, but it could also impede acceptance and preparation for death in a less psychologically fragile patient.

Inflamed political rhetoric fails a number of important karmic tests.  It is 1) not fully truthful, 2) spoken out of aversion, 3) slanderous and/or demeaning in intent, and 4) crafted to ignite passion rather than reason.  What good could possibly come from it?

As the Dhammapada notes:

“If you speak… with a corrupted heart, then suffering follows you — as the wheel of the cart, the track of the ox that pulls it.” [1]

Words, like actions, have consequences, and set the stage for our future happiness or misery.  This is the implacable law of cause-and-effect.  We can refrain from causing harm to ourselves and others only through mindfulness, discerning wisdom, and a compassionate heart.

This week the reckless use of language has not only clouded and impeded a true national dialogue on the important issues of our time, but it also has contributed to tragic deaths and injuries caused by a deluded mind with a semi-automatic weapon.

May all the victims, families and friends of the victims, and all beings find peace and freedom from sorrow.

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  1. [1] Thanissaro Bhikku, translator ↩