13 posts tagged “buddhism”
I was struck the other day by this thought. It began with me remembering in my pocket-notebook that I have no control over anything outside my mind, which is a bit of a misleading thought since nothing is outside my mind, but in the dualistic Western sense of reality it is very important to remember, all the same. What happens to me, whether by specific people or circumstance, is beyond my control. This lead to some other interesting thoughts and a hasty ditty, and I finally got around to typing them out of my pocket-notebook:
I must remember
I have no control over what happens to me, or what actions others take upon me, except to control my own actions. I can only control what happens within my mind - which is everything.
Be the person you would have all other people be, and your aura will inspire emulation.
How could we think the outer world is anything but smoke when all that exists beyond the body, speech, and mind is free of our influence, as well as our experience - in fact it will never be a part of our reality at all yet we postulate and use the imagination to construct elaborate delusions about the surrounding expanse of space and the activity it contains - while really all of experience significant to us is happening right there in our mind, our skull.
No! A second thought.
The mind is completely free from the body - it exists elsewhere entirely - but it is aware of the body. It is stuck to it with karmic tar and deluded into thinking it belongs to the body and its transient world, somehow. It is synced with the body to preserve experience and reality - scared to be free - tied to Samsara/body by negative karmas, habits, and attachments (karmic tar).
Be free
Be free
Freedom is not law-bound
Freedom is not suffering
Freedom is not harming
Be free
Be free
When we are free we will grow
wings of compassion
and fly to the aid of our fellow sentient beings
The six realms of existence happen daily in the chaotic mind, gunked up with negative karmic tar. When I am afraid for no logical reason in the dark, am I not in the animal realm? I sometimes fail to remember that these obstacles are just ephemeral states of mind, and the way to clean that tar is the path of compassion and wise action - especially through patience in the face of suffering.
My blog's name is Shunyata because it represents the Buddhist teaching I most admire as a means toward enlightenment. Enlightenment is, as my guru would say, a two-winged bird needing both wings - perfect wisdom and compassion - to fly. Perfect wisdom comes, I feel, from aligning one's perceptions with the true nature of reality. Shunyata, roughly 'emptiness', represents the idea that the nature of all within Samsara is simply emptiness - everything is empty of independent arising and permanence. Something that's been on my mind a lot lately is my whole conception of reality. We are here in the now, and though we imagine a past and a future in our linear minds, they are merely memories and extrapolations based on those experiences - the product of our imagination that is huffing away in the now to process those conceptualizations. You and I share a kiss, a moment later that experience that was just a significant part of our mind-trip, our reality, is reduced to memories in the minds of two individuals, tainted with emotion and confabulation. Everybody's reality is the same in this regard, it is all a mental process after all. Then the memories fade in those two mortal minds until they are snuffed by the Void - burnt in Yama's furnace. Reality is so flimsy that way, shifting every moment into an entirely new form. I wish everyone who read this instantly understood how wondrous and beautiful everything is - for the same reason the phoenix is wondrous and beautiful. Blessed Yama. Blessed Void. Blessed third noble truth.
All living and dying things like these dogs and me coming and going without any duration or self substance, O God, and therfore we can't possibly exist. How strange, how worthy, how good for us! What a horror it would have been if the world was real, because if the world was real, it would be immortal. (134-5)
There were a lot of passages from Dharma Bums that really appealed to me today, and this was one of them. It's so true - if any of this were real it would be a tragedy. Good thing the universe is just smoke! I may have just read the Dharma Bums but that memory is smoke drifting off in the sky as I write this; time to burn more experience! Brad was telling me how he has this fantasy of being an old man in retreat in the mountains, and meandering down to some mountain town once a month for supplies and to meet up with like-minded mountain-dwellers for revelry before returning to the meditative seclusion. I was thinking how it's all about freedom - we spend our whole life building imaginary cages that keep us from such a care-free life. There are all those people would think I was wasting all my higher education to drop out and take to the mountains in spiritual pursuit, while I would think I had finally stopped wasting time. This thought brings to mind my writing; Buddhism is all I ever want to write about. It's so exiting for me and coming to a deaf audience sometimes. Kerouac describes the same sentiments: "the feeling I always got when I tried to explain the Dharma to people, Alvah, my mother, my relatives, girl friends, everybody, they never listened, they always wanted me to listen to them, they knew, I didn't know anything, I was just a dumb young kid and impractical fool who didn't understand the serious significance of this very important, very real world" (110-1). Seriously significant, very important, very real world my ass. *grins*
It's South Park night so I'm off to Bradford's to watch the boys ridicule homeless people!
On Wednesday I went hiking up Mt. Zion for some much needed and much missed outdoor meditation. The mountain was still rather snowy, but it was a great day for it and the hike was great fun. Bradford came with me, and we had a great conversation on attachment, loss, and the Buddhist method for dealing with it. Its difficult to deal with a loss, especially the loss of a person, but as long as you appreciate every moment there is no loss in death - only inevitable change.
I noticed something interesting when reading Dharma Bums this week. Japhy is explaining yabyum, but either he or Kerouac has a misunderstanding about the mantra Om Mani Padme Hum. He is associating this mantra with yabyum, but that mantra is the mantra of the Bodhisattva of compassion, Avalokiteshvara. "This is what they do in the temples of Tibet. It's a holy ceremony, it's done just like this in front of chanting priests. People pray and recite Om Mani Pahdme Hum, which means Amen the Thuderbolt in the Dark Void. I'm the thunderbolt and Princess is the dark void, you see" (28-9). Om Mani Padme Hum actually means 'the jewel in the lotus'.
"The middle part of the mantra, maṇi padme, is often interpreted as 'jewel in the lotus,' Sanskrit maṇí 'jewel, gem' and the locative of padma 'lotus', but according to Donald Lopez it is much more likely that Maṇipadme is in fact a vocative, not a locative, addressing a bodhisattva called Maṇipadma, 'Jewel-Lotus'. The oṃ is straightforward as the sacred syllable prefixed to many mantras, and the hūṃ is an exclamation or interjection, the like of which are also frequently found in mantras" (Wikipedia.org).
The lotus flower is an important part of Buddhist symbolism. As a river flower, the lotus grows up out of the mud and the murky water towards the sky and glowing sun. This is like a mind that overcomes the "mud and murky water" of ignorance and misconception, and thereby reaches the infinite-clear sky of enlightenment. Once it overcomes the mud and murky water, it blossoms, and the jewel in the lotus is Bodhicitta (roughly translated as the attitude of compassion or altruism). Yabyum is the symbolic joining of wisdom and compassion, though as far as I know Avalokiteshvara isn't usually/ever the deity depicted as the deity representing compassion in yabyum imagery.
I feel like Kerouac would know this
since he mentions elsewhere in the book that he ascribes to the
Mahayana/Tibetan Buddhism tradition, and that Avalokiteshvara is his
"favorite Buddhist saint" (12).
Works Cited:
I've been heading down the rail trail to this old rusted out bridge over the Mascoma river. The river is especially high this time of year because of all the thawing snow, but there are still some rocks above the surface under there. I climb down, take a seat, and read the Dharma Bums.
I've really been enjoying this book, which really reflects Kerouac's later (later than On the Road) appreciation for Buddhist philosophy and... bums. I think the idea of the 'dharma bum' is incredibly romantic and entirely too appealing to me. I have a rucksack too! Maybe it's time to bum around the country and take a bite out of life. I jest, of course... at least I have this wonderfully escapist literature, and I nice place to escape to and read it.
Suffering is somehow tied to salvation in the Christian belief. When Christians encounter obstacles on their mortal journey they tend to babble off the God is testing them, as he did Job. (sorry, Christians, I dearly love the Christian stereotype as a source of humor) Jesus also supposedly suffered for our sins. I realize that suffering is an inherent characteristic of this reality. Still, sometimes I wish the added benefit of having someone else to blame. When we can displace blame, there is no motivation towards change, but it is infinitely easier to have a scapegoat and no worries. Today I am suffering greatly, and not only is there nobody to blame but much of it is an almost random suffering. For example I just cracked my head pretty good against a metal window frame. It hurt like a motherfucker. Normally such an incident wouldn't phase me, but I am exhausted, and incredibly stressed about other situations so my emotions are on edge. Smashing the front-top of my head against the corner of a metal window-pane really got me thinking. It is so much harder to accept the fact that we cause our own suffering when the correlations are apparent. When circumstances just lead to some insane situation that feels every day a little more hectic, all you can do is take refuge in the faith that you are overcoming obstacles of your past by patiently enduring the consequences of your actions. Some thing's missing in the lesson, however, if I can't see the correlation between cause and effect. It's this whole "what did I do?" phenomena. It makes me wonder if, with the way the universe works - for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction - things that happen to you, not as a result of the actions of other beings but just circumstantial experience, then perhaps they are the results of actions you did without intention. Just as you were acting without the intention of harm, and were therefore blind to the negativity, so are you blind to the direct cause of some of life's sufferings. What if some pain inadvertently caused by my body found its way back to me in the form of a lump on my head? It still stings!
It's been my experience that the six realms of existence in Samsara, the animal, hell, preta (hungry spirit), sura, and asura realms are not just incarnations occurring after we experience a death, but are states of mind that we can experience at any time. Of course this is standard stalk for Tibetan Buddhists, but what came to my mind today is the fact that I can actually observe my mind passing through these states, and when I understand what is happening in my mind - what negative obstacles I am overcoming as a product of my mind - they dissipate and my mind returns to a calm, rational place. Just tonight I was afraid, for whatever reason, walking in the dark - I've always been afraid but I've never let it get to me since I know it to be an irrational fear. Just the same sometimes when I am alone I get a little perturbed and when this happened to me tonight I realized after a few spine-ridged moments that I had slipped into the animal realm, and regained control of my mind. So funny sometimes how we experience the fruit of the past!
Living in the now is vitally important because when you look back with regret, or forward with anticipation – you are suffering, or planting the seeds of suffering, and this distracts from Dharma. What is more important than living every moment in the best way you are able, and with your mind's full attention?
This is a philosophy I try to live by, but it is sometimes hard to forget unchangeable regrets, or shrug off anxiety about the unpredictable unpreventable future. All day (day 41) unpleasant things have been weighing on my mind. I should stop brooding now and get to bed. Do the sane ones sleep or keep awake?
Memory of a Rose
I stopped to smell the sweetest rose in all the world;
The aroma crept silk across skin and filled my lungs,
Driving all the fragrant memories from my mind.
Transfixed, I watched it fade away - rotten in my hands,
and was forever ruined on roses.
