Buddhist Writings

Self-consciousness

Gill Washington Buddhist Writings, I Am, Meditation , , , , 0 Comment

From: Buddhism without Beliefs

by Stephen Batchelor

Self-consciousness is at once the most obvious and central fact of my life and the most elusive. If I search for my self in meditation, I find it is like trying to catch my own shadow. I reach for it, but there’s nothing there. Then it reappears elsewhere. I glimpse it from the corner of my mind’s eye, turn to face it, and it’s gone. Each time I think I’ve pinned it down, it turns out to be something else: a bodily sensation, a mood, a perception, an impulse, or simply awareness itself.

I cannot find the self by pointing my finger at any physical or mental trait and saying: “Yes, that’s me.” For such traits come and go, whereas the sense of “I” remains constant. But neither can I put my finger on something other than these traits that-however ephemeral and contingent they may be-nonetheless define me.

The self may not be something, but neither is it nothing. It is simply ungraspable, unfindable. I am who I am not because of an essential self hidden away in the core of my being but because of the unprecedented and unrepeatable matrix of conditions that have formed me. The more I delve into this mystery of who I am (or what anything is), the more I just keep going. There is no end to it, only an infinite trajectory that avoids falling into the extremes of being and nonbeing. This trajectory is not only the center, which is free from this duality, but the central path itself.

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Right Answer

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From: Awakening The Buddha Within

by: Lama Surya Das

In life we may keep looking for the right answer, but there is no right answer. Everything is relative rather than absolute. That’s the answer. In meditating we strive to keep going deeper and deeper, peeling off layers of the onion until we find the center of the onion, called sunyata, the Sanskrit term for emptiness.

As we keep peeling and peeling, we begin the process of unmasking our personas. First we unmask the body, then the mind. Then we go deeper and unmask the psyche, continuously letting go and unmasking all the layers. We all have so many masks it’s as though every day in our life has been Halloween. When we remove the masks, we are shedding our fantasies about ourselves, others, and the world. We can see
and be seen. We know and are known. We are.

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Ripening Fruit

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From: A Gradual Awakening

By Stephen Levine

As we begin to awaken, we see within us something opening
like a flower. We notice that something is displacing our image
of how things are. We discover we’re not so bent on always
knowing who we are. It’s the experience that seems to matter
most, the being, that we find of value. It seems as we let go of
possessing experience and just let experience unfold, the flower
opens more and more, the heart opens more and more. And we
somehow feel that everything will be all right that things are
working out just as they are supposed to. It’s painful sometimes,
it’s ecstatic sometimes; but somehow it’s always perfect. As we
penetrate deeper and deeper, it is evident that it is the clarity
of the seeing that nurtures our opening, while the object observed
matters little.

We can’t imagine how we ever could have missed seeing the perfection
in the first place, or how we could ever lose it again. How could we
ever again be blind to the simple, easy, natural, perfect way things are?
Experience is simply experience itself. And if looking into that flower
we see a moment of greed or selfishness or fear, we see it within the
context of that perfection, within that clarity, and it’s like another petal
in the flower. We see that it’s all natural. Our selfishness doesn’t make
us feel separate. We see how naturally we’re selfish, but there’s no
self-condemnation. We see it as just how it is. Perfect. No need to be
separate because of it. Full of self-forgiveness, full of letting go, full of
understanding. It is there, but it’s not us. It’s just more stuff. There’s
room in us for all of it.

So at last we are becoming who we always wanted to be, free of much
of the guarded self-imagery and neediness that caused so much discomfort
in the past. But we see that even this “wonderful me” must be let go of.
The being we have become is still separate, though healthier. There’s still
that subtle “someone” experiencing it all and wanting to keep it opening.
There’s someone who hasn’t altogether merged, hasn’t disappeared; still
someone looking at the perfection of things. It’s then we realize that the
flower must die for the fruit to be born.

We recognize that the flower exists on just a subtler level of mind, and
that perfection, too, is a concept of how things are and can become a
subtle separation which allows for “someone” to watch the perfection
of it all. We see that we must let the flower be so it may fall away and
leave the fruit.

There is no description possible of the fruit because no matter how we try
to describe it, we’re still describing the flower. The fruit doesn’t exist in
mind, in language. Mind gives form to the flower, but clinging to form and
mind must be relinquished for the fruit to be revealed, for our original face
to come forth.

This fruit, fully ripened in beings like Christ and Buddha, has no seeds,
nothing to be reborn, no desires to create karma, no thirst for satisfaction.
This fruit does not perish, but remains as an offering for all who come after.

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Good Spiritual Friend

Gill Washington Ayya Khema, Buddhist Writings, Practice , , , , 0 Comment

“A good spiritual friend who will help
us to stay on the path, with whom we can
discuss our difficulties frankly, sure of
a compassionate response, provides an
important support system which is often
lacking. Although people live and practice
together, one-upmanship often comes between
them.

A really good friend is like a mountain
guide. The spiritual path is like climbing a
mountain: we don’t really know what we will
find at the summit. We have only heard that
it is beautiful, everybody is happy there,
the view is magnificent and the air unpolluted.
If we have a guide who has already climbed
the mountain, he can help us avoid falling
into a crevasse, or slipping on loose stones,
or getting off the path. The one common antidote
for all our hindrances is noble friends and
noble conversations, which are health food for
the mind.”

~ Ayya Khema

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Eating the Blame

Gill Washington Awakening, Buddhist Writings, Jack Kornfield, Spirituality, Suffering, Zen , , , 0 Comment

From: After the Ecstasy, the Laundry

By Jack Kornfield

When we are confused or in pain, we often judge ourselves as
“not spiritual enough.” But the awakened heart does not judge
anything-not our family or our love, nor our pain and confusion,
our passion or anger. “Terrible harm has been done by this
misunderstanding,” said one Catholic monk.

In mature spirituality we are willing to have a dialogue
with pain, with evil, to hold them in our prayers. In
situations Of great pain, someone has to consciously
suffer the impact, to become the ground where the
sorrows can be held and reworked. These things can be
carried with grace. But it can’t be faked. If you go to
someone with 99 percent of goodwill and are still caught
in 1 percent anger, all they feel is the anger, and it pushes
them from reconciliation. The heart has to willingly hold the
whole of suffering for it to be transformed.

In Zen, holding the suffering sometimes takes the form of
“eating the blame.” It is illustrated by the story of a
cook who made soup for the monks from a turtle offered by
fishermen that morning. When the soup was ladled into the
monks’ bowls, the roshi bellowed for the cook to come out.
The turtle’s head, which should have been removed before
serving, was floating in the master’s bowl. The cook bowed
to the master, looked into the bowl, saw the problem, and
with a deft movement of chopsticks plucked the turtle head
out and ate it. Then he bowed to the master, the master
back, and the cook returned to the kitchen.

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Essence of Life

Gill Washington Awakening, Buddhist Writings, Life, Pema Chödrön, Spirituality , , , 0 Comment

From: When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

by Pema Chodron

“We think that if we just meditated enough or jogged enough
or ate perfect food, everything would be perfect. But from
the point of view of someone who is awake, that’s death.
Seeking security or perfection, rejoicing in feeling confirmed
and whole, self-contained and comfortable, is some kind of
death. It doesn’t have any fresh air. There’s no room for something
to come in and interrupt all that. We are killing the moment by
controlling our experience. Doing this is setting ourselves up for
failure, because sooner or later, we’re going to have an experience
we can’t control: our house is going to burn down, someone we love
is going to die, we’re going to find out we have cancer, a brick is
going to fall out of the sky and hit us on the head, somebody’s going
to spill tomato juice all over our white suit, or we’re going to arrive
at our favorite restaurant and discover that no one ordered produce
and seven hundred people are coming for lunch.

“The essence of life is that it’s challenging. Sometimes it is sweet,
and sometimes it is bitter. Sometimes your body tenses, and sometimes
it relaxes or opens. Sometimes you have a headache, and sometimes you
feel 100 percent healthy. From an awakened perspective, trying to tie
up all the loose ends and finally get it together is death, because it
involves rejecting a lot of your basic experience. There is something
aggressive about that approach to life, trying to flatten out all the
rough spots and imperfections into a nice smooth ride.

“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be
continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in
no-man’s-land, to experience each moment as completely new and
fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again. From the
awakened point of view, that’s life.”

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Being Nobody

Gill Washington Ajahn Sumedho, Buddhist Writings, God, Mindfulness, Practice , , , 0 Comment

By Ajahn Sumedho

Now how many of you feel you have a mission in life to perform? It’s
something you’ve got to do and some kind of important task that’s been
assigned to you by God or fate or something. People frequently get
caught up in that view of being somebody who has a mission. Who can be
just with the way things are, so that it is just the body that grows
up, gets old and dies, breathes and is conscious? We can practice,
live within the moral precepts, do good, respond to the needs and
experiences of life with mindfulness and wisdom – but there’s nobody
that has to do anything. There’s nobody with a mission, nobody
special, we’re not making a person or a saint or an avatar or a tulku
or a messiah or Maitreya. Even if you think: ‘I’m just a nobody,’ even
being a nobody is somebody in this life, isn’t it? You can be just as
proud of being nobody as of being somebody, and just as deluded
attached to being nobody. But whatever you happen to believe, that
you’re a nobody or a somebody or you have a mission or you’re a
nuisance and a burden to the world or however you might view yourself,
then the knowing is there to see the cessation of such a view.

Views arise and cease, don’t they? ‘I’m somebody, an important person
who has a mission in life’: that arises and ceases in the mind. Notice
the ending of being somebody important or being nobody or whatever –
it all ceases, doesn’t it? Everything that arises, ceases, so there’s
a non-grasping of the view of being somebody with a mission or of
being nobody. There’s the end of that whole mass of suffering – of
having to develop something, become somebody, change something, set
everything right, get rid of all your defilements or save the world.
Even the best ideals, the best thoughts can be seen as dhammas that
arise and cease in the mind.

Now, you might think that this is a barren philosophy of life because
there’s a lot more heart and feeling in being somebody who’s going to
save all sentient beings. People with self-sacrifice who have missions
and help others and have something important to do are an inspiration.
But when you notice that as dhamma, you are looking at the limitations
of inspirations and the cessation of it. Then there is the dhamma of
those aspirations and actions rather than somebody who has to become
something or has to do something. The whole illusion is relinquished
and what remains is purity of mind. Then the response to experience
comes from wisdom and purity rather than from personal conviction and
mission with its sense of self and other, and all the complications
that come from that whole pattern of delusion.

Can you trust that? Can you trust in just letting everything go and
cease and not being anybody and not having any mission, not having to
become anything? Can you really trust in that or do you find it
frightening, barren or depressing? Maybe you really want inspiration.
‘Tell me everything is all right; tell me you really love me; what I’m
doing is right and Buddhism is not just a selfish religion where you
get enlightened for your own sake; tell me that Buddhism is here to
save all sentient beings. Is that what you’re going to do, Venerable
Sumedho? Are you really Mahayana or Hinayana?’

What I’m pointing to is what inspiration is as an experience.
Idealism: not trying to dismiss it or to judge it in any way but to
reflect on it, to know what that is in the mind and how easily we can
be deluded by our own ideas and high-minded views. And to see how
insensitive, cruel and unkind we can be by the attachment we have to
views about being kind and sensitive. This is where it is a real
investigation into Dhamma.

I remember in my own experience, I always had the view that I was
somebody special in some way; I used to think, ‘Well I must be a
special person.’ Way back when I was a child I was fascinated by Asia
and as soon as I could, I studied Chinese at the university, so surely
I must have been a reincarnation of somebody who was connected to the
Orient.

But consider this as a reflection: no matter how many signs of being
special or previous lives you can remember or voices from God or
messages from the Cosmos, whatever – not to deny that or say that
those things aren’t real – but they’re impermanent. They’re anicca,
dukkha, anatta. We’re reflecting on them as they really are – what
arises ceases: a message from God is something that comes and ceases
in your mind, doesn’t it? God isn’t always talking to you continuously
unless you want to consider the silence the voice of God. Then it
doesn’t really say anything does it? We can call it anything – we can
call it the voice of God or the divine or the ringing of the cosmos or
blood in your eardrums. But whatever it is, it can be used for
mindfulness and reflection – that’s what I’m pointing to, how to use
these things without making them into something.

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