Suffering

About This Mind

Gill Washington Ajahn Chah, Buddhist Writings, Nature, Practice, Sorrow, Spirituality, Suffering, Truth , , 0 Comment

By Ajahn Chah

About this mind… In truth there is nothing really wrong with it. It is intrinsically pure. Within itself it’s already peaceful. That the mind is not peaceful these days is because it follows moods. The real mind doesn’t have anything to it, it is simply (an aspect of) Nature. It becomes peaceful or agitated because moods deceive it. The untrained mind is stupid. Sense impressions come and trick it into happiness, suffering, gladness and sorrow, but the mind’s true nature is none of those things. That gladness or sadness is not the mind, but only a mood coming to deceive us. The untrained mind gets lost and follows these things, it forgets itself. Then we think that it is we who are upset or at ease or whatever.

But really this mind of ours is already unmoving and peaceful… really peaceful! Just like a leaf which is still as long as no wind blows. If a wind comes up the leaf flutters. The fluttering is due to the wind — the “fluttering” is due to those sense impressions; the mind follows them. If it doesn’t follow them, it doesn’t “flutter.” If we know fully the true nature of sense impressions we will be unmoved.

Our practice is simply to see the Original Mind. So we must train the mind to know those sense impressions, and not get lost in them. To make it peaceful. Just this is the aim of all this difficult practice we put ourselves through.

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Egocentricity and Getting Impersonal

Gill Washington Buddhist Writings, Cheri Huber, Practice, Spirituality, Suffering, Zen , , , 0 Comment

The following passages are from Trying to be Human

By Cheri Huber, Edited by Sara Jenkins

Egocentricity

Egocentricity is the process of wanting something other than what is. Egocentricity means there is an “I” who is separate from everything else and doesn’t like it; one thing is happening, but I want a different thing to be happening. Egocentricity is that constant concern with how I feel, what I think, what I’m doing, what I want – looking at what is and seeing it as inadequate. My identity is maintained by the struggle of wanting something other than what is; that is how I continue to know myself.

This practice involves finding a willingness to suffer in order to end our suffering. Instead of spending our time trying to avoid suffering, we just find the willingness to go directly into it. Whenever anything causes us to suffer, we can know two things: suffering is the same as egocentricity, and when it arises, that is our best opportunity to end suffering. As we open to our suffering,as we embrace it, as we accept it, our relationship to it changes. It is no longer something horrible, something to escape from. Suffering becomes just another opportunity, another chance for freedom.

Please find out about that for yourself.

 

Getting Impersonal

One thing I like about practicing with a group is that we begin to see how impersonal it all is – all our melodramas that can seem so terribly personal. If we spent six months together, we all would know each other’s life stories, and it would be the same story. One person lives in Toledo, another one lives in Shanghai, but it is the same story. Being a human being is pretty much the same for all of us; the differences are far, far less than the similarities. What we think, what we fear, how our emotions arise – fundamentally, we are very much alike. We get caught up in differences in content because that is how we experience ourselves as separate.

Working in a group enables us to see not only how we are all attached to the same things, but how, when we are attached, we suffer, and how, when we come back to the present moment, we cease to suffer. It’s that straightforward.

As we see the sameness of our experience, our suffering becomes less charged:our story is one more story among countless stories. It becomes easier to find the courage to bring our attention back to the present, to allow whatever happens simply to happen.

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Choosing Universal Love

Gill Washington Awakening, Buddhist Writings, Enlightenment, Lama Surya Das, Spirituality, Suffering , , , 0 Comment

THE BODHISATTVA VOW

From: Awakening the Buddha Within

By Lama Surya Das

Traditional teachings about rebirth say that most of us are unwitting prisoners on the wheel of samsara; we keep returning because we have no choice. According to this way of thinking, there are also men and women walking among us who are here of their own conscious volition. These men and women are known as Bodhisattvas. Bodhi means awakening; sattva means being. This is a being who is ready for nirvana but whose compassion is so great that he or she remains on this earth solely in order to reduce suffering and help free others. A Bodhisattva is someone with pure, impeccable intentions – a gentle yet fearless spiritual warrior who strives unceasingly to help everyone reach nirvanic peace and enlightenment.

A transcendent Bodhisattva has seen beyond delusion and selfishness; he or she has felt and experienced the intolerable despair, alienation, misery, and suffering in the world: Because such a person is able to understand that we are all caught in the same existential plight, he or she seeks to alleviate the suffering of all.

In Mahayana Buddhism, one is encouraged to take what we call the Bodhisattva Vow. Taking this vow means you understand the world’s pain, and you commit to work for the enlightenment of all. That means all the people, all the creatures, including all the inhabitants of the air and sea – insects, birds, shellfish, dolphins, whales and sharks, all the shiny little eyes in the dark forests, as well as all the creepy crawly, buzzing things trying to get in and chew on your house or on you.

The first time I heard the Bodhisattva Vow was in I971, and I was at Lama Thubten Yeshe’s monastery in Nepal. I felt overwhelmed by the magnitude of it all. And I’m still somewhat intimidated by it. Lama Yeshe explained the vow very simply. He said, ‘Think of what you want, and realize that all beings want and need the same things. They are just seeking it through different ways.’

If you were to take the Bodhisattva Vow, you would commit yourself in this way:

Sentient beings are numberless: I vow to liberate them.
Delusions are inexhaustible: I vow to transcend them.
Dharma teachings are boundless: I vow to master them.
The Buddha’s enlightened way is unsurpassable: I vow to
embody it.

This is a four-line affirmation sangha members chant and avow every day. To take the Bodhisattva Vow means that at least for a moment, one can see past one’s own problems and preoccupations and elevate the spiritual gaze toward universal fulfillment. The moment you affirm that great intention – to work for the good of all living creatures – whether or not you are always able to follow it as perfectly as you might wish – you are called a Bodhisattva, a child of the Buddhas. When this epiphany occurs, all the Buddhas rejoice. The scriptures say that as soon as you make this Bodhisattva Vow to realize enlightenment and relieve universal suffering; all the Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, devas, angels, and guardians of the Dharma clap their hands and rain down celestial flowers and divine nectar. It’s like you scored a touchdown or hit a home run. As poetic as that seems, I really feel that this is true in a spiritual sense. You can feel it yourself as you open a little more to the joy of spiritual awakening.

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What Attachment Is

Gill Washington Ajahn Sumedho, Attachment, Buddhist Writings, Love, Spirituality, Suffering , , , 0 Comment

Excerpted from The Mind and the Way

By Ajahn Sumedho

First, you must recognize what attachment is, and then you let go. That’s when you realize non-attachment. However, if you’re coming from the view that you shouldn’t be attached, then that’s still not it. The point is not to take a position against attachment, as if there were a commandment against it; the point is to observe. We ask the questions, “What is attachment?” “Does being attached to things bring happiness or suffering?” Then we begin to have insight. We begin to see what attachment is, and then we can let go.

If you’re coming from a high-minded position in which you think you shouldn’t be attached to anything, then you come up with ideas like, “Well, I can’t be a Buddhist because I love my wife, because I’m attached to my wife. I love her, and I just can’t let her go. I can’t send her away.” Those kinds of thoughts come from the view that you shouldn’t be attached.

The recognition of attachment doesn’t mean that you get rid of your wife. It means you free yourself from wrong views about yourself and your wife. Then you find that there’s love there, but it’s not attached. It’s not distorting, clinging, and grasping. The empty mind is quite capable of caring about others and loving in the pure sense of love. But any attachment will always distort that.

If you love someone and then start grasping, things get complicated; then, what you love causes you pain. For example, you love your children, but if you become attached to them, then you don’t really love them any more because you’re not with them as they are. You have all kinds of ideas about what they should be and what you want them to be. You want them to obey you, and you want them to be good, and you want them to pass their exams. With this attitude, you’re not really loving them, because if they don’t fulfill your wishes, you feel angry and frustrated and averse to them. So attachment to children prevents us from loving them. But as we let go of attachment, we find that our natural way of relating is to love. We find that we are able to allow our children to be as they are, rather than having fixed ideas of what we want them to be. When I talk to parents, they say how much suffering there is in having children, because there’s a lot of wanting. When we’re wanting them to be a certain way and not wanting them to be another way, we create this anguish and suffering in our minds. But the more we let go of that, the more we discover an amazing ability to be sensitive to, and aware of, children as they are. Then, of course, that openness allows them to respond rather than just react to our attachment. You know, a lot of children are just reacting to our saying, “I want you to be like this.

The empty mind-the pure mind-is not a blank where you’re not feeling or caring about anything. It’s an effulgence of the mind. It’s a brightness that is truly sensitive and accepting. It’s an ability to accept life as it is. When we accept life as it is, we can respond appropriately to the way we’re experiencing it, rather than just reacting out of fear and aversion.

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Compassion – difficult people

Gill Washington Buddhist Writings, Pema Chödrön, Spiritual Writers, Suffering , , , 0 Comment

From: a talk on The Practice of Compassion

By Pema Chödrön

Then you do it for the difficult ones. You think of the difficult person or people and you wish for them to be free of suffering and the root of suffering. Now, a very interesting thing often happens here. You can really get into wishing them to be free of suffering, because you think if they could be free … basically you want them to be the way you want them to be, you know (laughter). Could they be free of their lousy personality so that I could feel better? (Laughter) This you might call not quite compassion. It’s more like justifying your dislike of them by using a compassion practice.

And the other thing is, of course, being glad that they’re suffering (laughter). Hard to face, but true. When we really dislike people, maybe we’re well aware; or maybe we’ll get more in touch with it by doing this practice; but there’s a lot of rejoicing, almost, about their misfortune. Because basically they hurt you and you want them to suffer too. So you’re glad when you hear that things aren’t going well for them. And you feel pretty unhappy when you hear that everything is fine for them. Those kinds of feelings come up about people that we find difficult. So, rather than feeling bad about that just notice that that’s what happening. Have a sense of humor. Whatever it is, let the words go and notice the effect.

Sometimes with difficult people, I find it is also quite helpful to actually imagine different scenarios for them. I have actually cooked up some real genuine compassion for some of the very difficult people in my life by beginning to think of, for instance, something happening to one of their children or something that I know that, if that degree of misfortune happened to them, I wouldn’t be glad, that I would really feel compassion for them. So you can use your imagination here if it helps you to feel some kind of compassion for someone who your heart is shut to, a difficult person.

In other words, you find the person or people and you encourage this feeling by saying the words, “May they be free of suffering and the root of suffering.” And then you notice the effect. Then you expand the whole thing by moving onto the next stage. So we keep expanding it in this way, and just notice what happens.

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Heart Sutra

Gill Washington Buddhist Writings, Spirituality, Suffering, Wisdom , , , 0 Comment

Great Wisdom Beyond Wisdom Heart Sutra

Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva, when practicing deeply the Prajna Paramita, perceived that all five skandhas in their own being are empty, and was saved from all suffering.

O Shariputra, form does not differ from emptiness, emptiness does not differ from form; that which is form is emptiness, that which is emptiness form. The same is true of feelings, perceptions, formations, consciousness.

O Shariputra, all dharmas are marked with emptiness: they do not appear nor disappear, are not tainted nor pure, do not increase nor decrease. Therefore, in emptiness, no form, no feelings, no, perceptions, no formations, no consciousness; no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, no color, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no object of mind; no realm of eyes, until no realm of mind-consciousness; no ignorance, and also no extinction of it, until no old age and death, and also no extinction of it; no suffering, no origination, no stopping, no path, no cognition, also no attainment.

With nothing to attain, a Bodhisattva depends on Prajna Paramita and the mind is no hindrance. Without any hindrance, no fears exist. Far apart from every perverted view one dwells in nirvana.

In the three worlds all Buddhas depend on Prajna Paramita and attain unsurpassed complete perfect enlightenment.

Therefore, know the Prajna Paramita is the great transcendent mantra, is the great bright mantra, is the utmost mantra, is the supreme mantra, which is able to release all suffering and is true not false. So, proclaim the Prajna Paramita mantra, proclaim the mantra that says,

“Gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate! Bodhi! Svaha!”

All Buddhas, ten directions, three times
All beings, Bodhisattvas, Mahasattvas
Wisdom beyond wisdom, Maha Prajna Paramita

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Four Noble Truths

Gill Washington Attachment, Buddhist Writings, Desire, Spirituality, Suffering 0 Comment

The Four Noble Truths represent the core of
the teachings of the Buddha, and are as follows:

The First Noble Truth

Unsatisfactoriness and suffering exist and
are universally experienced.

 

The Second Noble Truth

Desire and attachment are the causes of
unsatisfactoriness and suffering.

 

The Third Noble Truth

There is an end to
unsatisfactoriness and suffering.

 

The Fourth Noble Truth

The end can be attained by
journeying on the Noble Eightfold Path.

 

“I teach suffering, its origin, cessation and path. That’s all I teach” ~ The Buddha

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