Fri, 30 May 2008
Stepping Stones
The Spring Retreat is now going on at the Tibetan Meditation Center in Frederick. I was there last weeken and, barring accident, I'll be back tomorrow. The focus last weekend was on Tantric practice. Khenpo Tsultrim talked on the meaning of empowerment and Khenpo Choephel talked on the significance of tormas. Her'e a short excerpt from Khenpo Tsultrim's talk.
To develop bodhicitta you should be well trained in the four immeasurables, loving kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity. The practice of equanimity one should give up the self grasping mind. The practice of equanimity is regarding the happiness of others as equally important as your own. At the beginning, to practice with self grasping is a skilful means. But through this practice we are liberated from self grasping. The practice of the four immeasurables does not have to be a Mahayana practice, even Brahma practiced it. But bodhicitta cannot be developed without the immeasurables. To be enlightened you do not have to change your clothes, you only have to change your mind. Someone who transforms their mind is truly ordained. Saraha abandoned his monastic vows and took a consort and drank and said, "Today I am truly ordained."
Thu, 29 May 2008
First Meeting
Here's the story of the first time I met the Karmapa. I think I've told this story before, but you start repeating yourself as you get older.
I first met the Sixteenth Karmapa when he did the Black Hat Ceremony in Washington. That was back in June of 1977 at Georgetown University. I got a ride down with Mike and Pat, that was before I had a car. The auditorium was filled, but it was a smaller space than those the Seventeenth Karamap has been using. Before the ceremony a young lama (I think it was Ponlop Rinpoche) came out and gave a dharma talk. I did not unserstand a single word he said. After that was the Black Hat Ceremony. The ceremony was pretty simple. A monk did the traditional mandala offering on a mandala plate, then another monk carried a hat box with the black hat up to the Karmapa. The Karmapa took the hat out of the box and held it on his head while he silently recited one mala round of the mantra, "om mani padme hum." After that, the hat went back in the box and we all filed past to receive the Karmapa's blessing. Everyone received candy as tsok and a protection cord, the first one, I think, I ever got. The attendant monks found a soda machine and all stood around drinking sodas. Fresca was a favorite. And that was that.
Tue, 27 May 2008
More Karmapa
Here's the rest of my notes on the remarks H. H. Karmapa made last Friday at the New Jersey KTC. These remarks were made before and after the Medicine Buddha empowerent. My notes, don't capture the personality of the Karmapa. I found him to be serious, yet light hearted, and intelligent without being pedantic. I didn't feel any special zap, but I was pleased by his teaching.
Only one Buddha, Shakyamuni, has appeared in this world. However, we believe in the distant past and future beings will appear with the same qualities. So we give the name Buddha to beings with these qualities. If we use the qualities of Shakyamuni for declaring someone a Buddha, it is quite possible that there have been many Buddhas. In Tibet many teachers were Buddhas and in the future Buddhas of the West will wear suits and ties. Medicine Buddha is usually pictured quite similarly to Shakyamuni, except for his blue color. But I suspect he looked quite different. When we call him Medicine Buddha, we may think of him as a doctor, with a white coat and stethoscope. But traditional medicine is herbal, so we picture him holding a medicinal fruit.
Sometimes people tell me that Tibetans have so many deities, you probably don't need doctors. We do need doctors, but there is a purpose for practicing Medicine Buddha. Disease has both a distant and immediate cause. The distant cause of all diseases are the three poisons of anger, greed, and ignorance. Just as the three poisons are the distant causes of disease, the four elements are the immediate cause. The poisons cause an imbalance of the four elements. If the four elements are balanced, you will be well, and if not, you will be ill. This means that the cause of disease is not only physical, it can also be emotional. and you cannot cure an emotional problem by a physical means. Medicine Buddha is the special object of reliance for all who seek treatment for these problems.
If we can place our minds at rest when they are disturbed by emotion, we will move from a state of affliction to mental flexibility. That is the purpose of meditation. But often when we try to do so, we are unable to. The empowerment in a deity provides a mental focus that allows our minds to settle , like silt will settle from muddy water when it is not disturbed. And that is the purpose of the practice.
I'm not going to explain the empowerment in great detail, The most important quality for empowerment is faith. It is important to have an openness that allows the empowerment to be intimate with you. Too much explanation can obstruct this. It's said in traditional texts that empowerments should not be given publicly. But it's also said if empowerments are given with compassion, they can be given to all beings. The best way to receive the empowerment is to rest your mind in naturalness. This is the best sort of faith, and also the best basis of healing. So please take this empowerment while resting your mind.
I am delighted you have all come here today and I have had the opportunity to meet with you. It's like meeting with long lost relatives. It has made me smile and I do not smile often. I will not forget any of you.
Mon, 26 May 2008
The Karmapa at KTC
I have to apologize for eing offline so long. I've had problems with my phone service for the past three weeks and only got them resolved today. Last Friday I attended the Medicine Buddha empowerment H. H. Karmapa gave at the New Jersy KTC. As usual I took notes and the first half of my notes, the talk the Karmapa gave before the empowerment. I will post he remarks he made about thhe empowerment tomorrow.
Brian arranged for a tour bus to go from Wahington to the KTC. That sounded better than driving up all by myself and hogging a parking space, so that's how I went. Because there were more people than could fit on the bus, two vans took people from outlying locations, which included Baltimore. The van I took was about half Euro and half Chinese. Several people were from the Baltimore and DC Shambhala Centers and their conversation had a lot of chit chat about the various Shambhala levels.
When we got to the KTC there was a long line waiting to get through the security screening. I set off the metal detactor big time. Eventually they waved me through. I guess I must have seemed harmless. We sat under a huge tent and I was way towards the back, so far from the stage I could barely see the Karmapa's face. We got there about an hour before the talk and while I sat there, I saw various people I knew walk by. They were all too intent on what they were doing to notice me, leaving me feeling like a ghost.
So here are my notes and I do want to emphasize that they are notes because people sometimes mistake them for a transcript. The notes were taken the old fashioned way, ink and notepad, then transcribed and uploaded for your reading pleasure.
As I am a Buddhist, I know most about Buddhism. It's always considered best to talk about what you know. But I do not consider myself an expert. We are now in the 21st Century and we need to learn to apply new methods appropriate to it. In my life I have studied Tibetan, Chinese, and English. This has increased my ability to communicate. As the world is shrinking, there is a real possibility that we will be able to achieve a new harmony through communication.
I was born in Tibet and come from there. I have a deep feeling for Tibetan culture. However, I am also familiar with the Chinese culture and language as they have become very widespread in Tibet.
The knowledge of languages, especially Chinese, has been helpful to me. The Tibetan language varies from region to region and it's said that two Tibetans from different regions sharing bread will run out of words in common before finishing it. Chinese, in comparison, is standardized, so that is very helpful. And English is spoken in many lands across the globe. So knowledge of different languages increases the possibilities for understanding and communication between different peoples.
In my experience, peace and happiness must expand outwards until they cross all boundaries and borders. Why? Because we are troubled by the boundaries we create between self and other. Even though we don't know if this boundary is valid, we act as if it is. We want the best for ourselves and whether others get enough doesn't matter.
Some people say to me the attempt to benefit others just leads to frustration and problems and it's best to benefit yourself first. Even in something as simple as offering a cup of tea, you must first ask if they want tea, because they may dislike it. Since our own desires are known to us, it is simpler to benefit ourselves, and so we should begin with this.
However, we need to reflect carefully on this. There are always two ways to look at things. When I was in Tibet, Westerners were comparatively rare and not there for long. We speculated that Westerners must dislike everything we like and like everything we dislike. I was reluctant to teach the Dharma because I thought they would perceive its positive qualities as negative. So I made an experiment. I told funny stories and saw they would laugh. I told sad stories and saw they were sad. And I told infuriating stories and saw they were angry. So I concluded Westerners were not so different from Tibetans after all.
Sometimes it's appropriate to ask people what they like. But too many questions can be an invasion of privacy. There is a fundamental level where everyone is the same. Everyone seeks happiness and wants to avoid suffering. So we can be supportive and empathetic to others.
People ask me what is my favorite food. But people feed me different dishes and don't name them, so I don't know what they're called. I suppose I like whatever fills me the most.
Sun, 04 May 2008
Zen at War
Someone asked a question about the Japanese Zen masters who supprted Japan in the Second World War. If they were enightened, how could they do such a thing? Normally I would side step this question, but tonight I did, for better or worse, and here it is.
Everyone starts meditating with some sort of expectations about it. And when they see long time meditators behaving badly, they have doubts about the value of practice. So they want to know what they can reasonably expect from practice, without any BS. This is a tricky subject to talk about for several reasons. First, because it's difficult to talk about what happens to the mind in meditation because Western languages don't have the framework to discuss it. Second, talking about what happens in meditation can create expectations, and these expectations are obstacles to practice. But, I'll do my best.
One analogy often used for meditation is a pail of muddy water. Normally the mud is stirred up by our daily activity, but if we sit quietly, the mud settles to the bottom, leaving clear water. So this is calming the mind, the first stage of meditation.
Let's extend the analogy by saying that a golden statue is in the pail of water. As the water clears, the statue becomes visible. You don't have to make the statue, the statue was always there, only it was hidden. Similarly, as the mind becomes calm, its real nature becomes apparent. This is glimpsing the real, the second phase of meditation.
You might think, that's the final goal of practice, but it is not. After that, one must apply what one has seen to daily life. This is not any easy or automatic thing, it's quite a difficult practice. Even experienced practitioners make mistakes here and sometimes seem to behave worse than someone who's never practiced. If you judge a person by their worst behavior, certainly it will seem that a long term practitioner has made no progress. But there is a difference. A practitioner will be learning from their mistakes, but a non-practitioner probably will not.
There's another side to this. A practitioner's behavior is guided by their understanding of the precepts. Having some understanding of things as they are does not automatically make your behavior spotless. If you misunderstand the precepts, you're going to have learn them the hard way. So practice and keeping the precepts go hand in hand. This is why the idea that enlightened practitioners are beyond the precepts is false and destructive.
Getting back to the original question, the problem with Japanese Zen masters who supported the war is not that their practice was faulty, it was that their understanding of the precepts was defective. This is not so surprising. People who are kind in everyday life can be blood thirsty when it comes to international relations, shouting "Bomb them back to the stone age!" So many Japanese misunderstood the precepts, and they certainly learned their value the hard way.
So the point is that meditation may be the heart of Zen, but it is not the whole of Zen. You cannot expect meditation practice to do for you what it was not meant to.
Thu, 01 May 2008
Non-Attainment
The ground is buddha nature. Its recognition is enlightenment. Clearing away the false concepts that obscure it is the path. And meditation practice is an important part of the path. The reason for emphasizing buddha nature, co-emergent wisdom, or whatever you want to call it, is to emphasize that enlightenment is not a product of causes and conditions, for if it were, it would be subject to decay. It's the recognition of what we always have been , but forever have been unable to see. Unable to see because we look for it in the wrong way, dividing reality with such dualisms as perceiver and perceived. To quote from my ngondro liturgy:
By the blessings of this prayer, may I realize the reality of samsara and nirvana, which is beyond dispersing and accumulating, accepting and abandoning, existence and non-existence, free from all, the fundamental ground of all, mahamudra -- things as they are.
Not dwelling upon the act of realizing, the one who realizes, or the realization itself, without abandoning that which is obscured, the one who obscures, or the obscuration itself, completely transcending the traveling, the traveler, and the path traveled; may the path of mahamudra manifest.
Without dwelling on the act of attainment, the one who attains, or what is attained, may the no-duality of abandoning and obtaining, and the inseparability of ground and fruition, the nature of everything manifest and unmanifest, the result of mahamudra, become apparent.
