Are We There Yet?

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Robert Kennedy, S.J., Roshi

I recently attended a talk at Fordham University by Roshi Robert Kennedy.  A Fordham student asked Roshi, “What’s the biggest obstacle for beginning Zen practitioners?”  He answered that at first Zen students are infatuated with the idea of practice and meditate with enthusiasm.  Then after a year or two, not so much. They haven’t gotten enlightened and their problems haven’t changed — their practice hits a wall.  At this point students focus in on the imperfections of their teacher and other sangha members and wonder if there’s a better practice somewhere else.  A lot of Zen students drop out.  Those who persist eventually develop a more mature view of practice:  Enlightenment is no longer just around the corner — or even if it is — sitting won’t make it happen.  As Ma-tsu inquired, “How can polishing a tile make a mirror?”  We just do the work — without expectation of gain — because it’s the work of being human.

Roshi’s words resonated because I’d recently completed a teleconferenced Dharma course offered through an on-line organization. The course was fine, but I was struck by the achievement-oriented striving permeating many of the participants’s questions.  They’d read about Daniel Ingram’s stages of enlightenment and wanted to know exactly where they were along the path.  Some of them despaired because they couldn’t afford to go on long retreats or take time off from work to do so.  How would they ever achieve stream-entry? They were in a hurry, and Enlightenment was their destination.

Practicing “like your hair’s on fire” is all well and good — practice needs sincerity and determination.  But in practice, as Ayya Khema noted, we’re “being nobody, going nowhere.”  Larry Rosenberg says pragmatic Americans want to know the fastest way to get from Point A to Point B, but in meditation we go from Point A to Point A.  We stay where we are, over and over.  We’re always beginners — no starting practice, no advanced practice — just practice.  We’re in it for the long haul.

If we practice in this way, without gaining idea, our practice takes care of itself.

Where are we on the path?

We’re always here.

 

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Awareness and Happiness

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We don’t pay enough attention to our lives.  Every passing moment is a potential moment of  intimate connection with our deepest selves, our loved ones, and the natural world. Every passing moment is a potential moment of wise and compassionate engagement with ourselves and others.  Every passing moment is a potential moment of insight into the question of what is the truest and most meaningful way for us to live our lives.

Instead, our lives pass us by.  We’re all too often disconnected from ourselves, our bodies, nature, and people around us. Our lives get caught up in the routine and humdrum.  Our minds run on old automatic programs — some written deep within our genes: our sense of ourselves as separate from others, our sense of our minds as separate from our bodies, our attraction to novelty, our pursuit of pleasure and flight from pain, our anger when frustrated, our fear of the unfamiliar — others learned in childhood: our respect for authority, our identification with a social class and ethnic group, our belief that personal worth comes from pleasing others or achieving outward success, our fear of being our true selves.

We create new automatic programs all the time.  Repeated practice allows tasks that initially require a great deal of attention to eventually run on pure habit.  Remember how difficult it was learning how to type?  At first, placing and moving our fingers was a slow, painstaking process.  Eventually our hands knew what to do without the mind’s interference.

William James called habit “the great flywheel of society.”  If we had to pay attention to everything we’d get precious little done.  Habit affords us economy of time and efficiency of action.  Habit also allows us to multitask: we can run well-learned behaviors in the background while devoting scarce attentional resources to more demanding tasks in the foreground.

Once behavior becomes habitual, however, it’s hard to analyze what’s gone wrong if the behavior proves problematic.  We know something’s gone amiss, but we can’t figure out what it is.  Solving the problem requires paying fresh attention to it: watching how a habit operates, what sustains it, and what it’s consequences are.

The Pleasure Principle

There are several key programs nature has written into our nervous systems which have a  profound and direct bearing on our ability to be happy.  Most notably, our nervous system seems to have been designed for pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain (what Sigmund Freud called the pleasure principle.)  At first glance this may not seem like much of a problem.  After all, we all want more pleasure and less pain!

There’s a serious downside, however.  There are a great many behaviors that lead to short-term pleasure, but long-term misery.  These include addictions like overeating, alcoholism, and compulsive sexual activity, achievement-undermining behaviors like  procrastination and carelessness, and relationship-destroying behaviors like selfishness and intimidation.  In fact, the list of behaviors that lead to quick satisfaction and long-term grief is practically endless.

Most of the “defense mechanisms” psychologists talk about are habits of mind that effectively  eliminate anxiety.  Psychologists talk about “denial” and “repression” which are mental processes that limit our awareness of thoughts and feelings that might disturb us.  The cigarette smoker who says cancer will never get him, the driver who won’t buckle his seat belt, the teenager who won’t wear a condom, and the alcoholic who thinks he can handle his liquor are all disregarding crucial information in order to avoid anxiety about doing what pleases them.  They’re also risking their own lives and happiness and the happiness of others around them.

Habits that bring immediate pleasure and eventual grief can only be changed by shining the light of awareness on them.  All too often, our attention is only focused on the pleasure such acts bring, and we disconnect from awareness of their harmfulness.  If each and every time we engage in these behaviors, however, we slow things down and consider the fruits of our actions, would we be able to keep the behavior going?  If we keep in mind what the smoke we’re inhaling is doing to our lungs, and remind ourselves what it’s like to have cancer with each and every puff of each cigarette — would we be able to continue smoking?

The Impermanence of Satisfaction

Our nervous systems are built so that we can’t stay happy for long.  Nature designed us that way for a reason: A permanently content squirrel wouldn’t gather nuts for the coming winter.  It wouldn’t nervously scan the environment for predators.  It wouldn’t live long enough to pass on its genes.  So it is with us.

Similarly, our nervous systems are built to pay less attention to sensations that repeat and fail to change  over time.  Psychologists call this habituation.  Sometimes habituation’s a blessing; it’s the reason why bad odors lose their potency over time.  Habituation makes sense in terms of biological survival.  We need to pay more attention to information that’s rapidly changing than to information that’s static.   It is more important to pay attention to a charging tiger than to the stationary tree that’s behind it.

Habituation comes with a cost, however.  The temporary, fleeting nature of pleasure means we’re restlessly driven to seek new pleasures which are equally fleeting in turn.  Even winning the lottery doesn’t lead to greater happiness over time — lottery winners are no happier a year after they win than they were the year before they won.

Another downside to habituation is that chronic problems never capture our attention the way emerging ones do.  We can see this at work in the way television handles news stories.  A fresh problem becomes an object of public concern, and television becomes consumed with covering it.  Three months later the problem hasn’t been solved, but the public is bored with it and television moves on to something new.  We mobilize national or world resources to solve a problem in Haiti or Somalia, then lose interest in what’s happening in those countries after the immediate sense of crisis is over.  Haiti is front-line news one day, but the grinding poverty that is everyday life in Haiti is never news. Even the very word news says volumes about the way we stay only fleetingly informed about the world.  All this is only natural.  We only have so much attention to spare.  We attend to the sensational, the dramatic, and the novel, and never get around to solving the basic problems which are the true ground of unhappiness.

The Reality Principle

Fortunately we’re not totally dependent on our programming.  We’re capable of learning from experience and modifying it.  We learn to bypass the easy pleasures that undermine long-term goals, and tolerate the short-term pain that helps us achieve them.  This ability to delay gratification and tolerate useful pain is part of what we mean when we talk about becoming an adult.  In Freud’s language, we learn to put the “pleasure principle” in service of the “reality principle.”  As children, if we’re lucky, our parents act as “mindfulness agents” warning us to pay attention to the long-term consequences of short-term pleasures.  We don’t appreciate our parents much for this as children, but if they haven’t done this for us we find ourselves in deep trouble as adults.  As adults we learn to become our own “mindfulness agents.”  We’re responsible to ourselves for becoming aware of how we derail our long-term happiness. This requires us to invest our lives with fresh curiosity and attention.  It requires us to look at ourselves in new ways, without the habitual blinders that prevent us from seeing ourselves as we really are.

The Big Picture

If there’s no enduring happiness in pursuing short-term pleasure, is long-term pleasure any better?  Isn’t it subject to the same rules of habituation, the same limitations of our nervous systems to stay permanently happy?    If the endless pursuit of pleasure seems meaningless, is there something else worth pursuing and basing one’s life on? Is there a state of being more worthy of our efforts? This is the question that religion and philosophy attempt to address.  If there are different answers proposed by various religions and philosophies, how can one go about determining what’s true?  What is the Good Life?  What is the meaningful life?

The answers to these questions can be found through learning to pay fresh attention to life.  As we observe ourselves more closely, we start to inquire into our relationship with the larger world of existence.  Who are we really? What should we be doing with our lives?  What is our place in the natural order of things?  We discover that we’ve all too easily accepted answers to these questions that have been handed down from family, religious authorities, and the Great and the Wise.  We become aware of how the dissociations that define us: mind vs. body, self vs. nature, me vs. you,  are arbitrary and porous.  They’re seen as constructions of the social mind that could have been drawn differently and elsewhere, not the contours of reality itself.  These dissociations gradually diminish in their persuasiveness as we develop our ability to see through them with greater clarity.  It’s as if, in allowing our attention to penetrate more deeply into the interstices of our daily life, we’re shining the light of awareness onto the problem of Being itself.  Every time we’ve freed an aspect of Being from the constraints of conventional wisdom, every time we’ve breathed awareness into the space and upon the ground in which we actually live, we experience a realm of existence which can only be referred to as the sacred and holy.  Sacredness doesn’t derive from any particular set of beliefs or dogmas.  It doesn’t exist as Idea.  We directly experience the quality of sacredness itself, the quiet that seems deeper than deep and purer than pure.  The experience speaks for itself without need of interpretation.  It’s there waiting to be attended to.  After the experience comes the search for words and labels, but the experience is prior to words and labels, and in the conceptual search, the experience itself is once again lost, tarnished, encrusted, constrained, and buried.  It waits to be freshly rediscovered in the next moment of awareness.

 

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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. ↩

Libya, March 2011

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I’m in favor of the current allied military action in Libya.  I wrote to President Obama one week ago urging him to support a no-fly zone, and I’m pleased he finally heeded the advice of Samantha Power, Susan Rice, and Hillary Clinton.  Some liberal bloggers, with whom I usually agree, are appalled however.  Josh Marshall worries the intervention is too late and in support of a hopeless cause. Others take a dismal view of almost any exercise of American power and are cynical about Western humanitarian justifications. These critics would have left the partisans and their families in Benghazi, Misurata, and Ajdabiya to be slaughtered by the thousands.  Gadhafi left no doubt about his intentions in a recent radio address: “We are coming tonight… We will find you in your closets. We will have no mercy and no pity.”

As a practicing Buddhist, being in favor of any military action is problematic.  Should a Buddhist ever support military action?  Shouldn’t Buddhists be pacifists? After all, our first precept is to abstain from killing living beings, while the noble eightfold path emphasizes the intention of non-harming.  When a warrior asked the Buddha whether he would go to a special heaven when he died, the Buddha reluctantly informed him he would be reborn in one of the lower realms.  The Buddha taught unequivocally that violence breeds more violence and that practitioners should always strive for peace and reconciliation.

The question about whether it is ever permissible to apply force against another human being is complex.  Are we allowed to cause harm in self-defense?  In protecting our family?  In preventing serious crime? Can we call the exterminator when termites eat into our home?  (For a more thorough examinations of these issues, check out this post.) The Pali canon never condones violence or killing, but the Mahāyāna Upaya-kausalya Sūtra condones killing on compassionate grounds in extraordinary circumstances. Similarly, the Ārya-satyaka-parivarta Sūtra permits a ruler’s use of force to protect life when all attempts at negotiation and placation have failed.   One can always cite scripture in support of whatever position one wants to take.

My own view is that there are times when resort to force is permitted, but it must meet certain conditions: 1) It must be undertaken as a last resort, 2) it must be undertaken for the compassionate protection of beings, and not out of hatred, greed, or revenge, 3) it must use the minimum force necessary to accomplish its goal, 4) it must have a reasonable chance of success, 5) it must not dehumanize opponents, 6) it must make all reasonable efforts to avoid harming innocent non-combatants, 7) the magnitude of reasonably anticipated “blowback” must not exceed the good it is hoped it will achieve, and 8),  it must be undertaken with the understanding that even the most moral use of force still generates some degree of bad karma.

The Alīnacitta-jātaka, one of the Jātaka Tales that purport to tell the story of the Buddha’s many incarnations on the bodhisattva path before his birth as Siddhartha, seems relevant to this discussion. It tells the story of King Brahmadatta who befriended an elephant during his reign.  Later, the King and Queen conceived a child, the Buddha-to-be in a future incarnation, but the King died before the child was born. The neighboring King of Kosala, hearing about Brahmadatta’s death, plotted to take over his kingdom, and proceeded to lay siege to it.  On the day of the Bodhisattva’s birth the townsfolk began battling the Kosalan army:

“But as they had no leader, little by little the army gave way, great though it was. The courtiers told this news to the Queen, adding, ‘Since our army loses ground in this way, we fear defeat. But our King’s friend, the elephant, has never been told that the King is dead, that a son was born to him, and that the King of Kosala is here to give us battle. Shall we tell him?’

“Yes, do so,” said the Queen. She dressed up her son, laid him in a fine linen cloth, and  went with all her court to the elephant’s stable. She laid the babe at the elephant’s feet, saying, “Master, your comrade is dead, but we feared to tell it you lest you might break your heart. This is your comrade’s son; the King of Kosala is making war against him; the army is losing ground; either kill my son yourself, or win the kingdom back for him!”

The elephant stroked the child with his trunk and lifted him upon his own head; then  moaning and lamenting, laid him in his mother’s arms, saying, ‘I will master the King of Kosala!’

Then the courtiers put his armor and caparison on him and unlocked the city gate. The elephant trumpeted and frightened all the host so that they ran away and broke up their camp; then seizing the king of Kosala by his topknot, he carried him to the young Prince, and laid him at his feet. Some rose to kill him, but the elephant stayed them; and he let the captive king go with this advice: “Be careful in the future, and don’t be  presumptuous because our Prince is young!”  After that, the power over all India fell into the Bodhisattva’s hands and not a foe was able to rise up against him. The Bodhisattva was consecrated at age seven; his reign was just and when he came to life’s end he went to swell the hosts of heaven.”

The text implies citizens have a right to defend themselves and use force against an oppressor, but self-defense must be tempered by mercy and reverence for life.  Of course, no lives are lost in this charming tale.  The elephant is able to scare the invading army away without injuring anyone, and the invading king’s life is spared.  If only U.N. sanctions and warnings had been effective in frightening Gadhafi into leaving his enemies in peace!  It would have made this tale a perfect parable.

I could easily have cited another Jātaka Tale the counsels radical pacifism, however.  In that tale a king threatened by an invader says “I want no kingdom that must be kept by doing harm.”  He opens his city’s gates to the invader and allows himself to be taken captive.  While imprisoned he cultivates compassion for his conqueror.  The tale has a happy ending.  The invading king develops insight into the wrongfulness of his actions, frees the virtuous king, and leaves his kingdom in peace.   This tale is even more charming than the first.  Can you see Gadhafi developing moral insight and leaving his enemies in peace?

Does our current military action in Libya meet these the eight conditions I outlined above?  Well yes and no.

In order to meet such a test a military action would have to be motivated by compassion.  As the stated purpose of the action is to protect civilians, and as there will be no occupation, and as President Obama’s rhetoric is neither dehumanizing nor bloodthirsty, I think the action meets those criteria, at least for the United States. It’s possible, however, that a desire for vengeance lurks in the background for some coalition members or U.N. supporters. The Lebanese remember Gadhafi’s murder of Musa al-Sadr in 1978, the British remember the Lockerbie bombing of 1988, and the Saudi’s remember Gadhafi’s 2004 plot to kill Crown Prince Abdullah.  Gadhafi has created an enormous amount of low-grade karma over the past forty years, and human memories are long.

To the extent that the allies make all efforts to avoid civilian deaths and limit their actions to protecting the cities in rebellion a good case can be made for this being a moral intervention –  or at least as moral an intervention as is possible given the inevitable negative consequences inherent in any use of force.  We don’t know how this will turn out in the end.  If a civilian bloodbath is averted; if a relatively free government is established in rebel-held territory; if tribal civil warfare and devolution into anarchy is avoided; if the war does not stir up virulent anti-Western sentiment in the Middle East; if the democratic strivings that began in Tunisia and Egypt and are sweeping through the Middle East are bolstered and supported, then this will have been worth it.  But, as the Japanese say, “Ningen banji Saiō ga uma” (人間万事 塞翁が馬)  — Everything is like Uncle Sai’s horse: Good?  Bad?  Who Knows?  We never know how the story ends until it’s over.  And of course, the story which we are a part of is never over.

Would the Buddha have approved of the Libyan no-fly zone?   Would he have approved Allied bombing of the railroads leading to Auschwitz?  Would he have approved an intervention in Rwanda?  Maybe not.  On the other hand, this Buddhist does approve, and hopes things turn out as well as they can. We live in a world where tough moral choices can’t be avoided.  Going into battle creates bad karma.  But so does sitting back and watching thousands die while arguing moral niceties.

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Japan, March 2011

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Japan’s been on my mind.  Your’s too?   Words fail to convey the depth of our sorrow for and horror at the loss of life, home, livelihood, basic necessities, and connectedness for countless families.  Words fail at conveying our admiration for the heroism of the workers risking their lives struggling to bring six runaway nuclear reactors under control.  Words fail to express the depth of our cynicism about the nuclear power industry’s assurances of safety.  What more is there left to express?

As Zen practitioners, we have a natural affinity for Japan as an ancestral home of our practice.  I’m not the praying type, so I haven’t offered any prayers.  But I’ve done something practical: donated to the Japanese Red Cross Society.  Google has made it easy to do at this URL:

http://www.google.com/crisisresponse/japanquake2011.html

Please do more than metta and tong-len.  Let’s put compassion into action.

I’ve never been to Japan, but I found myself free-associating this morning on the word “Japan” and all that it signifies in my imagination.  It’s not exactly a poem, but maybe it will remind you of whatever Japan signifies for you.  Feel free to add your own associations below in comments.

Japan — Land of…

Shinto, Shingon, Jodo Shinshu, and  Zen

Hakuin, Basho, Ryokan, and Dogen

Honen, Ryonan, Shinran, Nichiren

Sega, Sony, Nintendo, and Canon

Seiko, Toshiba, Yamaha, and Nikon

Bushido, samurai, ninja, and ronan

Honda, Toyota, Mazda, and Nissan

Kagemusha, Yojimbo, Ran, and Rashomon,

Gojira, Mothra, Gamera, and Rodan

Sushi, sashimi, miso, and daikon

Kurosawa, Miyazaki, Murakami, Mishima

Pillow book, floating world, samisen, and geisha

Nanking, Guadalcanal, Burma, and  Iwo Jima

Karate, Ju-Jitsu, Sumo, and Aikido

Hirohito, Tokyo Rose, Matsui, and Tojo

Rock gardens, cherry blossoms, chrysanthemums, origami

Kobe, Sendai, earthquake and Tsunami

Hiroshima, Nagasaki — now Fukushima Daiichi


 

 

 

 

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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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The Five Hindrances

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How’s your meditation practice coming along? If the answer is “not so good,” what’s getting in the way?

Often the number one thing getting in the way of meditation practice is our idea about how our meditation practice should be going. We have beliefs about how our mind ought to be during meditation instead of simply observing it as it is. Or we have an idea about the kind of progress we ought to be making, comparing our meditation today with how it was during certain moments idealized in memory.

The Pali Canon speaks of five hindrances (pañca nīvaraṇāni) or obstructions during meditation: sense desire (kāmacchanda), ill-will (byāpāda), sloth and torpor (thīna-midda), restlessness and remorse (uddhacca-kukkucca), and doubt (vivikicchā). We have all had moments — perhaps eons — when these have been present in our sitting practice.

Sense desire includes wishing for our sitting space to be warmer, cooler, or quieter; wishing we were more comfortable or in less pain; wishing our nose wasn’t so stuffy or our stomach so full; wishing that attractive person had taken the cushion next to ours in retreat. Sound familiar?

Ill-will includes resentments from the day that carry over into our practice as well as anger arising from emerging memories of past hurts. We can spend countless cushion-hours imagining what we’re going to say the next time we see that so-and-so. We can rehearse rationalizations that justify our anger, and reinforce our narrative about being the aggrieved party. We can dig the hole deeper.

Sloth and torpor refer to mental states of dullness, boredom, sleepiness, and lack of alertness. These states are often due to physical causes such as sleep deprivation, exhaustion, or postprandial “coma.”

Restlessness has two facets: motor restlessness and mental restlessness. You may feel jittery or have an urge to get up or shift position. Your mind may race about without focus like a hyperactive mongoose. Remorse is a sore spot in memory where you wish that you could redo something — your mind keeps returning to it, endlessly replaying “woulda,” “shoulda,” and “coulda”.

Doubt could be doubt about the Dharma, the path, your teacher, or your practice. “Is this the right practice for me?” “Should I be trying something else?” “Does practice get you anywhere?” You may be doing mindfulness of the breath and wonder whether you should be counting your breaths, doing mental noting, reciting metta phrases, or engaging in choiceless awareness instead.

Calling these mental factors hindrances, however, is a fundamental mistake. It’s better to think of them as grist for the mill. They are the contents of our consciousness. Instead of wishing them away, can we invest them with interest and simply observe them as they are? When we do this, the hindrances become our very practice itself rather than obstacles in the way of practice.

If boredom presents itself, what happens if we investigate boredom? What are its qualities? What is its intensity? How does it vary from moment to moment? Is it just a quality of mind, or can it be experienced in the body as well? What happens if we don’t wish boredom away, but allow it to stay for as long as it wishes to be around?

If ill-will is present, what if we observe it in a friendly manner? What if we embrace ill-will with mindfulness, and treat it, as Thich Nhat Hanh has said, “like a kindly older sister or brother?” How is it experienced in the body? What thoughts act as accelerants to it? How is our sense of self involved? Can we observe how it makes us burn inside and adds to our misery?

If we keep drifting off into dreamy mental states, can we watch the process of beginning to nod off again and again, and invest energy in observing the process? Can we observe the very moment when we drop off? Were we experiencing an in-breath or an out-breath at that moment?

If sense desire is present, can we just watch desire? Can we “urge surf,” watching the desire arise, peak, and subside? Can we see how it catches and ensnares us, and then mysteriously fades away without our acting on it?

If these “hindrances” persist, if we remain “caught,” if we are the victims of a “multiple hindrance attack,” can we stay with this process without getting discouraged or disturbed? Can we let go of expectations that our minds will always be clear, calm, and steady? No matter how much practice you have had, it’s unreasonable to expect anything else. After all, our minds, like everything else, are affected by causes and conditions. Can we extend compassion and lovingkindness to ourselves in such moments?

It’s said that when we practice meditation we are actually practicing three separate skills: 1) staying with the object of meditation, 2) recognizing when we’ve drifted off, and 3) returning to the object without fuss or judgment. When we have a “good meditation,” i.e, when our concentration is good and we’re able to stay with our object of meditation, we are developing the first skill. When we keep drifting and returning, even if we do it 100 times in a sitting, we’re developing the second and third skills. These, in fact, may be the most important skills in terms of improving our daily lives: recognizing when we’re no longer present and returning to mindfulness.

The poet William Blake wrote in the Marriage of Heaven and Hell that “if the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.” Keep watching your mind just as it is. Turning poison into wisdom is the path of the Buddhas.

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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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