GGBC Talk

Impressions of Buddha

2012-01-30T13:56:00.000-08:00

Drawing of Buddha, by Hailee (young member of GGBC),
Jan. 28, 2012.

by Hailee

When you are a Buddha
you will speak words of wisdom.
When you are a Buddha
you will be patient.
When you think you are a Buddha
Peace will find you.

Is the Tibet Issue a Buddhist Issue?

2012-01-12T19:45:00.000-08:00

by Gelongma Losang Drimay

If you are involved with Tibetan Buddhism, you have no doubt seen and heard numerous reports about the situation in Tibetan--the upheaval and hardships that the Tibetan people have been experiencing over more than half a century now. For many people who consider themselves to be "Tibetan Buddhists"--whatever their nationality--being in favor of freedom for the Tibetan people seems to go hand-in-hand with one's religion, one's Dharma practice.

But is the situation in Tibet a Buddhist issue? If you are a Buddhist--a Tibetan Buddhist--do you HAVE to get involved with a "Free Tibet" or a "Save Tibet" movement? Do you have to look at horrifying pictures of people being tortured, humiliated, and executed?

After all, there are many atrocities in the world, in China itself and even here in the United States. Americans and non-Americans, humans and non-humans all over the world are experiencing exploitation, injustice, the suffering of having their lives stolen from them, their opportunities to have a meaningful life stolen from them.

On the website of the Campaign for Tibet, there is a quote:

"Tibet is a human rights issue as well as a civil and political rights issue. But there's something else too - Tibet has a precious culture based on principles of wisdom and compassion. This culture addresses what we lack in the world today; a very real sense of inter-connectedness. We need to protect it for the Tibetan people, but also for ourselves and our children."

- Richard Gere, Chair of the Board of the International Campaign for Tibet

I, the author of this blog, tend to stand back and watch, not getting involved. I'm not advocating that; I just feel frozen by the overwhelming magnitude of the problems in the world, Tibet just being one issue out of many.

Prof. Robert Thurman argues that Buddhists should be interested in preserving the Tibetan culture because it is one that has managed to put a priority on Buddhist education and practice over the centuries. I can't find an exact quote about this right now, but his views are well-publicized. See: www.bobthurman.com, and Why Tibet Matters So Much.

Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche composed a new prayer in 2011 called Remembering the Kindness of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan People, in which he says:

. . . And the numberless Holy Beings
Who preserved and spread the Buddha Dharma in Tibet;
And the Tibetan people who practiced
And served Buddhism so faithfully for a thousand years,
As well as those who, along with many others,
Died sacrificing their lives for Tibet and His Holiness―
May all their positive wishes be fulfilled immediately. . .

So I seemed to have argued that the Tibet situation is important for Buddhists, but I still can't decide whether it's more important than so many other ethical issues in the world today. I would like people to feel free to practice Buddhism without automatically being expected to get involved in foreign policy or Tibetan independence.

What do you think?

Lama Yeshe on the Life of Jesus

2011-12-24T08:20:00.000-08:00

Lama Yeshe, Kopan Monastery,
Nepal, 1981. Photo by Merry Colony,
restoration by David Zinn.
Archival portrait available through
Heart of the Moon Media
(www.heartofthemoon.com).

This article is from the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive
e-newsletter, December 2011.

Christmas Dharma by Lama Yeshe

Somehow we're still alive and aware enough to remember how long it is since Jesus was born. It was one thousand, nine hundred and eighty two years ago, right? And I myself am fortunate enough to have been born in the Shangri-La of Tibet, to have come into contact with the world of Western dakas and dakinis, and also to somehow have this chance to acknowledge the history of the holy guru, Jesus.

I've found that having a little understanding of Jesus's life helps me develop my own path, but it's not easy to fully understand the profound events in Jesus's life. It's quite difficult. Of course, the superficial events of his life are fairly easy to understand, but there's not enough room in our mind to comprehend his high bodhisattva actions.

Even at the time when Lord Jesus and Lord Buddha were here on earth it was very difficult for ordinary people to understand who they really were. At that time, very few people understood.

Today I was looking at the Bible, at the Gospel of John in particular, and he was talking about the miracles Jesus performed and how few people understood the profundity of his liberated mind that allowed him to perform those miracles.

Anyway, whenever I'm at a meditation course such as this at Christmas time, I like to talk about such things. But you need to understand that when I do, I'm not trying to be diplomatic. I don't need to negotiate my relationship with you in that way! It's just that from the bottom of my heart, I sincerely feel and believe that just to remember Jesus's life is an incredible opportunity.

In a way, of course, it doesn't matter where people come from-East or West-or what color they are, those who eliminate their self-cherishing thought and give their life for others are exceptional human beings. For that reason I'm happy simply to bring Jesus to mind and reflect on what he did.

Also, to some extent I'm responsible for my Western students' psychological wellbeing, so if we're going to bring Buddhism to the West we need to do it in a healthy way rather than introduce it as some exotic new trip. We don't need new trips. We need to do something constructive, something worthwhile. Anything truly worthwhile does not diminish any light; it only enhances it.

And with respect to psychological health, we're part of the environment and the environment is part of us. Therefore, those of us who were born in the West should not reject the Christian environment into which we were born. We should consider ourselves lucky to have been born into a Christian society and to have the wisdom to understand what that means for our mind. Such understanding is very useful if we're to remain healthy.

Especially these days, when there's dangerous revolutionary technology everywhere and the world is overwhelmed with fighting and war, we really need to actively remember the lives of our unselfish historical predecessors.

So John was explaining how God sent Jesus to us as a witness to the truth, but most unfortunately, some ignorant people failed to recognize who he was or understand what he was teaching and killed him.

In my opinion, the Buddhist point of view is that Jesus was a bodhisattva, not only in the sense that he had realized bodhicitta and overcome selfishness, but in the sense that, as a performer of miracles, he was a saint, like Tilopa and Naropa or, to name a living example, His Holiness Zong Rinpoche-somebody completely free of superstition who sometimes instinctively does strange things that the rest of us don't understand.

For example, John says that one day Jesus was near the water when a woman came by to fill her pot. Jesus then said to her, "How can you satisfy your thirst with water? It's water that makes you thirsty in the first place." He told her that since it's water that makes her thirsty, how can water be the solution to her thirst. It's some kind of reverse thinking. Who can understand that? It sounds crazy, doesn't it?

What he meant was that only spiritual water can truly slake your thirst. So you can see, the actual meaning is somehow beyond words. The woman's taking water; he says, "Why are you doing that? It's not going to solve your problem of being thirsty." It's crazy talk. Nowadays we'd probably hit somebody who spoke to us like that. But luckily, back then Jesus didn't get beaten up for talking in that way.

John also said that since Jesus was born from God, his disciples were also derived from God's energy. That's similar to what the Buddhist teachings say when they explain that all shravakas and prateyakabuddhas are born from Shakyamuni Buddha. The sense here is that such followers are born from the teacher's wisdom truth speech. Through internalizing that they discover the truth for themselves and become such realized beings.

Philosophically, of course, we can say that Buddhism doesn't accept that God is the source of all human beings and things. But from another point of view we can say that Buddhism doesn't contradict that statement either.

For example, where does the human realm come from? The Buddha said that the human realm is caused by good karma. That's true. If the upper realms do not come from good karma, then where do they come from? Then, from the Buddhist point of view, all good karma comes from the Buddha...or, you can say, God. Therefore, the human realm comes from God, from Buddha. Because of the Buddha's holy speech, sentient beings create good karma. I want you to be clean clear about this.

Still, philosophically you can argue this point one way or the other. It depends on how you interpret it. You can interpret the statement negatively or positively. Actually, you can do anything with philosophy.

Lama Yeshe gave this teaching at Lama Tzong Khapa Institute, Pomaia, Italy, on Christmas Day, 1982. Edited from the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive by Nicholas Ribush. The rest of this teaching as a well as video of Lama giving it will be available online next year.

Using Depression as the Path to Enlightenment

2011-12-02T12:20:00.001-08:00

by Gelongma Losang Drimay

In our final class of Transforming Problems, we looked at some of the mysteries of the world of Harry Potter, dementors - "Get too near a Dementor and every good feeling, every happy memory will be sucked out of you." - and patronuses - "a kind of positive force, and for the wizard who can conjure one, it works something like a shield," as allegories for negative states of mind and how to protect oneself from them, namely by learning to generate powerful positive states even under very gloomy and fearful circumstances.

When we feel depressed it can be like a dementor attack, feeling like you'll never be cheerful again, as they say. Everything seems cold and dark and threatening and we lose confidence in ourselves. Harry Potter and his classmates learn how to protect themselves from dementors by creating their own patronus, a protective force in the form of a totem animal. In order to conjure a patronus, one must generate a very powerful positive emotion, not just happy--Harry is instructed--but also powerful. Can you remember feeling like that at some point in your life? Bring the whole memory back into your being. Bookmark that feeling so that you'll be able to find it again when you get an attack of the blues.

What would Buddhism say is the most powerful positive emotion? Probably bodhichitta, but that is a piece of jargon that needs unpacking. I think it includes: faith that there is a state of transcendence--something beyond this humdrum existence; that you have the possibility of achieving that state; a genuine openness to other people--that you love and respect them; a wish to make your life meaningful, especially for others.

Here is some advice from a qualified master, Lama Zopa Rinpoche:

Maybe you wake up in the morning feeling depressed for no particular reason. If you can't solve this problem through meditation it might help to just go to sleep, or go somewhere to rest, or take a nice drive somewhere. Otherwise you'll get upset, disturbing the people around you as well. When you're angry, all sorts of bad, uncontrolled thoughts can come into your mind.
If you're depressed due to a certain situation then you can apply the meditation techniques that relate to that particular set of conditions. But if you just feel sad for no particular reason, it's best to practice bodhicitta.

from Transforming Depression on www.lamayeshe.com

Rinpoche then goes on to explain the meditation on Tong-len, taking on the suffering of others and sending them all your happiness and goodness.

On the Online Advice Book, Rinpoche gives several other suggestions to specific people who wrote to him asking for advice about dealing with depression, for example:

read lam-rim books, not heavy philosophy, and not just any Dharma book, but lam-rim books
keep reciting mantras, such as OM MANI PADME HUNG
recite sutras, such as Arya Sanghata Sutra and the Golden Light Sutra
do the Vajrasattva purification with the remedy of the four opponent powers
practice rejoicing - rejoicing that you have the depression and rejoicing systematically in every kind of goodness of yourself and others
and again, do the meditation tong-len or general bodhichitta practice

Using depression as the path means taking that depression as the very material with which to develop the causes for enlightenment. In this way, you are lucky to have the depression. If you didn't have the depression, you wouldn't be looking around for ways to practice Dharma. Now that you have it, you can use it to develop understanding about samsara, about karmic cause and effect, about the nature of the mind, compassion, the need for liberation and buddhahood. If you use your depression as material for your tong-len practice, it becomes a cause of your complete, perfect enlightenment. When you become a buddha, you'll be able to look back on this and see it as one of the many things that led you to enlightenment.

Do a rough estimate of how many people in your neighborhood, town, county, state must be experiencing depression right now. Ten rows of chairs with ten chairs going across in each row makes a hundred, to give you a quick sense of what a hundred people would look like. Imagine a hundred depressed people sitting there in front of you. Choose: one depressed person or a hundred depressed people? One is better. Wish very strongly to take their depression from them. (See elsewhere for exact tong-len visualizations and techniques.) Then send them all your happiness and potential for happiness. They receive it. Now congratulate yourself that you did it. Feel glad. Repeat for several days or weeks, however long it takes.

Let someone know if you sense that you are spiraling down. Please be happy.

Yoga and Recovery at a Buddhist Center - a conversation

2011-11-21T19:24:00.001-08:00

Kyczy Hawk, Yoga Recovery

A new yoga program is starting up at Gyalwa Gyatso Buddhist Center (GGBC), Monday evenings starting in January 2012, led by Kyczy Hawk. Recently Kyczy (keet-ski) and Venerable Drimay (dream A) sat down to have a conversation about this program and how it fits in with the mission of Gyalwa Gyatso Buddhist Center, http://gyalwagyatso.org/about/ . The conversation from November 19, 2011 is paraphrased here.

Drimay: I noticed some of the notes you left on the flip chart from your class on Sunday (November 13) and I want to find out more about that, but maybe you can tell me what the Y12SR program is about first.

Kyczy: The class on Sunday was a workshop, so that was different than the Monday night meetings. Y12SR—Yoga of 12 Step Recovery—is an all 12 step recovery for AA, Al-Anon, etc. It’s specifically for people in 12-step recovery programs. It’s open to everyone from a recovery path, i.e. recovery from any behavior or substance. The behavior can be co-dependency.

Drimay: What will you actually do at the sessions?

Kyczy: The first part of each meeting is a discussion group. We read out of a daily meditation book, talk about non-harming, non-stealing, non-lying, or gratitude, which are conventional subjects. We do that for an hour and then have a one-hour yoga practice—Hatha yoga, the physical practice.

The first hour may include readings to use as a jumping off point for discussion. We include readings from approved materials that we obtain from the central offices of any of the recovery programs or can include meditation books or other recovery-oriented literature. We could also discuss a subject that overlaps the 8 limbs of Raja Yoga and 12 Steps.

Drimay: People are excited to have a recovery program at GGBC. Land of Medicine Buddha (LMB)—our sister center in Soquel—hosts an AA meeting that runs itself. It doesn't depend on anyone from the center facilitating it. They seem to be people who just like to have their meetings in a Buddhist setting. It's a well-attended meeting. GGBC would like to offer something like that to benefit the community at large.

I would like to start an open-ended discussion about how Yoga philosophy is informing the 12-step work that you are doing. Some Yoga philosophy is the same as Buddhism and some is not. I do believe that it's possible for great masters to pick up something from another tradition and explain it in a very universal way, for example His Holiness the Dalai Lama's commentary on the gospels in The Good Heart. But I would like it to be clear which teachings are coming from which tradition.

There are two different banners at our center: Buddhist Programs and Wellness Programs. This is because there is then more freedom to offer things that are compatible but not part of the Buddhist tradition, or not part of our specific Buddhist tradition, i.e., chi-gong, mindfulness based stress reduction, etc.

Now as for the topics on the flip chart... I know many yoga practitioners don't like to call what they are doing “Hinduism”.

Kyczy: Yoga is non-denominational; it's philosophical. It is not a religion. People from every path can practice yoga.

Drimay: I say it's coming from Hinduism. That's my stance and I'm sticking to it. It's fine to show how parts of it can apply to people's lives who are not Hindu, but Patanjali (the compiler of the Yoga Sutras) was a Hindu. I want to make sure that when people come to the center they understand which tradition’s language they are hearing. When they are in the Y12SR class they are going to be hearing some ideas that are coming from an Eastern philosophical system which is not Buddhism. There could be some overlap, but so could there be with Christianity. If someone were teaching the Bible and the 12 Steps then it would be more clear that it's not Buddhism.

Kyczy: I was at a retreat with Noah Levine recently and from his Buddhist philosophy he's trying to develop a recovery program because of the monotheistic issues of the 12 Steps. I thought the issue at GGBC would be with the monotheistic tradition of the 12 Steps rather than the very diluted yoga stuff.

Drimay: I've heard more discussion about the issue of whether a person can follow the 12 Steps without being Christian, so I think that topic has already been covered elsewhere. By the way, I'm okay with using the label “Yoga philosophy” with a footnote that says it “comes from Hinduism.” The thing is that Yoga philosophy shares a lot of language with Buddhism. As in the saying about England and America being two nations separated by a common language (lift, boot, biscuit), I see words on the flip chart that are used in Buddhism but I don't know what you mean when you use them, words such as karma, tantra, etc. I can see that you are generalizing them, universalizing them when you write the meaning underneath. Maybe that is partly due to working with a general audience.

Kyczy: As an example, the 12-step slogan of “let go and let God” suggests a monotheistic 12-step point of view. If you don't believe in a monotheistic higher power you may still go along with the phrases such as these; that is one of those things where you'd rather be sober than right. Instead, I say, “let go of the results.” We all have our struggles with the concepts.

Drimay: Another example of a term common to both Buddhism and Hinduism is Dharma. We call this whole path to enlightenment Dharma. But when you say Dharma to an Indian person they think it means duty, like your filial responsibilities and the obligations that come with your caste. We might be using the same words but we mean different things.

Kyczy: It's semantics, although that term isn't robust enough for what it really is. It's more like depth of meaning. When I'm speaking to people who come to the Y12SR groups, they're coming from recovery but they're also wanting something more than what the 12 Steps offer. Most of them have done the steps already. [Link to the 12 Steps: http://www.aa.org/en_pdfs/smf-121_en.pdf]

They want to get a little more richness in the dialogue of our principles in the program, as well as physical / somatic health benefits and trauma release. We do yoga to get rid of the trauma which is lodged in our bodies which is why people come to speak and come to move. This is key.

Drimay: Okay now I understand. I was wondering how you were going to connect the physical yoga practice to recovery. It has to do with releasing trauma held in the body.

[Back to the flip chart...] Some other terms that we could have more conversations about are Ishvara-Pranidhana—which literally is something like praying to God—and Self, a term which Hindus and Buddhists have debated for centuries.

Kyczy: Maybe it's too confusing to have this class in this facility. I am not even attempting to touch on the Buddhist path. I'm talking about straight yoga and the basics of the 12 Steps. Maybe there is too much confusion or there is a possibility for confusion that would make this not right in this situation.

Drimay: There is more enthusiasm than trepidation, so I think we should try it. My idea is just to bring some of the differences out in the open. We have to trust the students to be grown-ups, to be able to keep things clear, not to mix up terms from a yoga class with those of a Buddhism class.

Kyczy: I take what I know about the Sanskrit words and condense them down to words that we use in recovery. I'm looking into the light, the positive rather than “Don't do this and that.”

Drimay: Do you know that Buddhism also uses the term yoga with the literal meaning of unification? That's Buddhism’s goal. As for exactly what is being unified, that takes some explanation. We talk about different levels of tantra—yoga tantra, anuttara yoga tantra—but those are secret teachings, restricted teachings. The lamas have been teaching about these things more openly these days just to clear up misinformation.

Kyczy: There are similar issues in Yoga. The term tantra here in Raja Yoga has been morphed in common parlance into a practice that was not the original intent. Its the same with kundalini yoga.

Drimay: Let's keep the dialogue open. This could be the beginning of some cross-understanding.

Kyczy: I'd like to come back and discuss things more.

Drimay: It feels like working at the United Nations.

Kyczy: The United Nations of the Heart.

Kyczy Hawk, RYT 200, has studied with Nikki Myers, Durga Leela and Annalisa Cunningham gaining a deep well rounded understanding of relationship between yoga and recovery. She teaches an ongoing Y12SR, Yoga of 12 Step Recovery class, yoga for those in recovery as well as conventional yoga classes at Willow Glen Yoga. She also teaches for well known non-profits such as The Art of Yoga Project and the Niroga Institute. She has written a book, Yoga and the 12 Step Path, published by Central Recovery Press, due out in April 2012. Additional information: http://www.yogarecovery.com/

Bhikshuni Losang Drimay, a Buddhist nun, has been the resident teacher of Gyalwa Gyatso Buddhist Center since 2001. http://gyalwagyatso.org/about/teachers/#drimay

About Buddhist Nuns and Monks

2011-11-07T09:30:00.000-08:00

by Bhikshuni Losang Drimay

[This is a handout that I give out to groups sometimes. I thought it might be interesting for a wider audience as well.]

I was ordained as a Buddhist nun(shramanerika, getsulma) in 1991, after 7 years of formal practice inthis Buddhist tradition. I took full ordination (bhikshuni, gelongma)in 1994.

I grew up in California and WashingtonState. My parents are from Berkeley where they went to high schooltogether. My parents are very supportive of my lifestyle and,although they now live in Washington State, we see each other a fewtimes a year.

There are very few Westerners who areordained as Buddhist monks or nuns at this point in time. Many of usknow each other and get together for conferences and teachings. Buddhist monks and nuns of Asian origin are more numerous, but theyare still scarce.

We cut our hair and wear the robesbecause that is the uniform for monks and nuns. The Buddha cut hishair when he left home to become a religious seeker, so we do thesame. It also eliminates a lot of vanity and time-consumptionassociated with hairstyling. The patchwork shawl was designed by theBuddha’s request and has stayed the same throughout the centuriesin all the various traditions.

You can receive ordination vows whenyour spiritual master thinks you are ready. There is no definiteminimum course of study required beforehand, although you should bewell-versed in the Buddhist teachings and aware of what you aregetting into. Our organization, Foundation for the Preservation ofthe Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), requires 5 years from the time oftaking “Refuge” (formally becoming a Buddhist) before becoming amonk or nun. There are various rules that monks and nuns must follow,but the main principle is abandoning the affairs of a householder’slifestyle in order to commit one’s whole life to religious practiceand study.

I became a nun in order to do somethingmeaningful with my life. By wearing the robes, people know what I amand if they are interested in Buddhism they can talk to me. It makesit clear to people what I am doing with my life.

Most Buddhists are not monks or nuns(just like Catholics). Most Buddhists just wear regular clothes andhave regular jobs.

Land of Medicine Buddha (LMB), where Ilive, is not a monastery; it is a sort of Buddhist conference centerconducting classes and retreats.

There are currently (2011) fourordained people living at LMB: one English monk, one Tibetan monk,one Singaporean nun, and one American nun (myself). From time to timewe also have visiting teachers who might be monks or nuns. 

Some Terms

Monk – man who has taken monasticvows, which includes, among other things, celibacy.

Nun – woman who has taken monasticvows, which includes, among other things, celibacy.

Householder/Layperson – someonewho might be a Buddhist, but who has not taken monastic vows.

Venerable (Ven.) –English-language form of address for any Buddhist monk or nun.

Lama – Tibetan word for “Guru”,meaning spiritual master.

Rinpoché – Tibetan word meaning“precious one,” a respectful form of address for: reincarnatedlamas, abbots, your own main lama.

Tulku – Tibetan word meaning“emanation,” a term for spiritual masters who come back lifeafter life in order to guide others.

Geshé – Literally “VirtuousFriend”; a title somewhat like a Doctor of Divinity, earned afterapproximately 20 years of higher study in a monastic university.

Useful Links

The website for the sangha of the FPMT: International Mahayana Institute

The page on the IMI website about ordination

Exploring Monastic Life - an annual retreat at Sravasti Abbey, Washington State

Listening to your Readings

2011-10-06T15:25:00.000-07:00

I get through pages and pages of reading material each week by listening to them. I use the Read Out Loud function of Adobe Reader on my PC and the Text-to-Speech option on my Kindle. (I'll give some technical details below.)

It might take some adjustment listening to an automated voice, but you get used to it. The automated readers don't know how to handle Tibetan words and words written with diacritical marks, so you just have to shrug that off. But otherwise I have been very happy with the natural-sounding cadence of the electronic voice on my devices. My Kindle does slightly better than my PC.

There seem to be some programs aimed at the visually impaired which allow the user to teach the computer new vocabulary or to correct its pronunciation, but I haven't invested in any of those programs.

Students of the Discovering Buddhism courses might like to use the text-to-speech option in order to get through the assigned readings. Part of the reading assignments are being made available to students in the form of a PDF, readable by Adobe Reader. Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand, the other main reading, is available as an e-book, for use on devices such as Kindle.

There are also years' of transcripts and articles available online through sites such as www.lamayeshe.com and www.berzinarchives.com. You can save these as PDF's (look for the button or link on the page where you have the article open).

I also have 35 to 50 pages of material to get through each week from the online FPMT Master's Program. After a while, my eyes are scanning across the pages but I'm not absorbing anything. So here's how I do it.

(Your settings are going to vary according to what kind of system you have, but I will explain how I listen to articles and books.)

At home, I play files from my computer using Adobe Reader's Read Out Loud function, which can be found under the View menu.

Then I have to go back to the same View, Read Out Loud option and activate. If you write down the shortcuts keys, you won't have to go to the menu.

You can adjust the pitch and speed of the voice through your computer's voice or text-to-speech settings. That's something outside of Adobe Reader.

In the car--4 to 6 hours a week--I plug my Kindle into the car stereo and play files from there. You can also use this method at the gym or on a walk if you have a big pocket or a pouch to put your Kindle in.

If it's a book that's text-to-speech enabled, like Liberation is, you just turn on the speech by pressing the Aa button and then selecting like this:

You can control the pitch and speed, to a certain extent, by pressing the Aa button again after text-to-speech has been activated. (Do this before you start driving.)

The important thing for me is that I can email my own documents to my Kindle, through the special @kindle.com email address that Amazon assigned me (and that they will be happy to assign to you).

Your file can be in any number of file types. If you just drag the files over manually, they won't be converted into Kindle format. In Kindle format, it becomes re-sizable, searchable, and text-to-speech-able. Sometimes you might want a PDF on there just as it is, so that you don't lose the formatting. But let's say you have a PDF that you want to listen to on your Kindle. Here are the instructions, straight from the Amazon Kindle website:

Option to Convert PDF Files to Kindle Format

If you prefer to have your personal PDF documents converted to the Kindle format so you can take advantage of Kindle functionality such as variable font size, annotation, Text-to-Speech, etc., type "Convert" in the subject of the e-mail when you submit your personal document to your @kindle.com address.

Are you on a Mac? Or using a different kind of e-book reader? Let us know how it works on your device.

Happy listening.

What Does Buddhism Say about Suicide?

2011-09-16T11:48:00.000-07:00

by Gelongma Losang Drimay
September 16, 2011

Some people mistakenly have the idea that Buddhism supports suicide because they have heard of monks lighting themselves on fire. There have only been a handful of Buddhist monks who have lit themselves on fire in modern times as acts of political protest. This isn't a Buddhist doctrine. Their actions may have been noble--trying to bring attention to human rights issues--but in general Buddhism doesn't support the reckless harming of one's body.

Anyway, I want to talk here about suicide, which is different from self-sacrifice. I mean killing yourself out of despair, self-pity, feeling like you've made such a big mess out of everything that there is no point in going on. What does Buddhism say about that?

Precious Human Rebirth

Those of you who have been through the Lam-rim teaching (such as in the Discovering Buddhism courses) will have heard the point about how precious our opportunity is now that we have managed to attain a human life; and not just an ordinary human life, but one in which we have miraculously met the Dharma teachings and have the mental faculties to be able to understand and practice the Dharma. Maybe our relationships or employment are not going so well, but we still have a chance to move our Dharma practice forward as long as we are in the human life, so we should try to stay alive just for that reason.

Suffering Doesn't End with the Ending of This Life

According to Buddhism, this life is just one in a continuum of past and future lives. Our past lives go back into the unseeable distance. We will continue to have lifetimes in the cycle of uncontrolled rebirth indefinitely as long as we remain under the influence of our delusions, and the karma we create because of those delusions. If you think you're getting out easily just by killing yourself, you will be very disappointed. Your karma will follow you. The only way to get out is to remove the delusions through study and practice.

The Suicidal State of Mind

Your state of mind at the time of death sets the mood for your transition. You want to be in the most positive state of mind-- feeling gladness, contentment, and compassion--in order to activate the positive potential to get the best rebirth next time. If you are feeling overwhelmed by sadness, anger, or any kind of insanity, don't kill yourself right now! It's a bad time to die. You are in a bad state of mind, so don't go right now. Wait until you feel better. (And then you won't feel like killing yourself anyway.)

Interference by Spirits and Malevolent Forces

Some cultures believe in unseen forces. Our modern, Western culture is skeptical about such things, however, Lama Zopa Rinpoche advises that many/most/all instances of suicidal thoughts can be traces to the influence of spirits. These spirits might be seeking revenge, or maybe you just owe them a karmic debt from something you did in the past, maybe even in a past life. Be careful. Don't try to harm them back; that will just make it worse. Try to apologize. Feel compassion for them. And then follow the instructions of a qualified lama as to what sorts of pujas to get done. You can requests the recommended pujas to be done on your behalf, by big monasteries such as Kopan or Sera, or by local practitioners such as Geshe Dakpa or the Gyuto monks.

Here are some selected comments by Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche on the topic of suicide:

Suicide is a result of the negative karma from criticizing people. Previously created negative karma ripens on the base of that negative karma, then these maras influence your mind and make the thought of suicide arise. It is not your own thought, somebody else influences it. It is harm to you by these maras based on your negative karma.
_____________________________

Generally, problems in life are created by the mind. This moment’s thought creates this moment’s problems. This moment’s thought is created by the mind of the past.

In the hundreds of volumes of teachings called the Kangyur, the Buddha explained depression that you can’t find a reason for, and also sudden states of depression and unhappiness that come when you wake up in the morning, and similarly in the evening. In his teachings on the shortcomings of not practicing the five lay vows, Buddha explained that depression that suddenly happens at nighttime is the result of sexual misconduct committed in the past. Since the action was performed out of self-cherishing, it becomes negative karma.

One solution is to purify the mental continuum of these sufferings. The purification is not only in order not to experience depression. There are many other sufferings to be experienced in the human realm, as well as in the lower realms. By purifying the cause of those negative experiences, suffering for so many eons can be avoided.

Performing Medicine Buddha practice, confession to the 35 Buddhas practice with prostrations, and Vajrasattva practice purifies not only the karma of sexual misconduct but also all other negative karmas.
_____________________________

Please, I want to remind you again that, when the suicidal mind arises, there’s an external spirit involved, besides karma. The person doesn’t know, starts to hallucinate, thinking this is the only solution for peace and happiness. But it’s totally opposite to that.

Therefore, at the beginning, as I told you, you should look at your mind as the baby or the student and yourself as the teacher. Therefore, you don’t listen to the mind, as the baby. It’s very dangerous. Before you follow the mind, analyze whether the shortcomings of an action are greater than the benefits. Do whatever has the greatest benefit or at least greater benefit and fewer shortcomings.

Otherwise, if you don’t analyze, it’s very dangerous. It stops you from having vast amounts of merit, and giving enormous benefits to others.

Besides past negative karma, those outside spirits also harm you when the suicidal thought arises, so don’t follow it. Just ignore it. Let it disappear, like wind passing through.
_____________________________

Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Online Advice Book, www.lamayeshe.com

A Perfect Buddhist Altar

2011-09-16T11:07:00.000-07:00

The Altar designed by Lama Zopa Rinpoche at FPMT International Office

(from an online pamphlet on the fpmt.org website; not all the pictures are included here)

An altar is the place that contains holy objects which inspire the mind and inform the practice.
The altar located on the main floor at FPMT International Office in Portland, OR, USA was created following a traditional Tibetan altar design.

It includes a variety of symbols that cover a wide array of Buddhist images. All the features and images are used to create positive mental imprints.

The delicate painting and art work includes a wide variety of representations including the Eight Auspicious Symbols, the Offering Maidens, the Four Friends, dragons, birds and flowers. Many of the paintings are done in relief.

The shape of the frame for each bay is traditional to Tibetan Buddhism. The blue background inside the bay is a representation of the Dharmakaya. This backdrop with the correct lighting creates the appearance of having the Buddha arising from the Dharmakaya.

A traditional altar should contain representations of the enlightened body, speech and mind of the Buddha. The design of this altar includes library shelves on each end. The Kangyur, which is a complete set of the Buddha’s sutras, is on the right side as one faces the altar. The Tengyur, which is a complete set of the commentaries on the sutras, is on the left side.

The height of the statues is important as well. They should be placed in a manner that the gaze of the Buddha’s eyes is landing on the face of the person viewing the statue.

In this altar design, Lama Tsongkhapa is first on the far left, followed by Chenrezig, then Shakyamuni Buddha in Sambhogakaya aspect in the center, the Dharma king Songtsen Gampo is next, and on the far right Lama Yeshe.

There is a strong well-constructed shelf that runs the length of the altar for offerings. This shelf is strong enough to support the weight of a 250 pound person. This level of strength is recommended so that it can accommodate extensive offerings and also be used to access the altar bay for placing the statues. It is important to realize that the statues are quite heavy due to the fact that once they are filled with mantras, an already heavy statue can increase in weight to between 300 to 500 pounds.

Here is an example of the water bowls and shelf.

This offering shelf should also be wide enough to accommodate large water bowls. Again it must be kept in
mind that water bowls can be quite heavy as the number and volume of the bowls increase. In addition it is wise to use water proof material for the surface of the shelf for easy maintenance and upkeep.

The construction of the altar was completed in phases due to the size of the structure Each bay and each book shelf were constructed as individual units and then moved into the gompa where they were bolted together and attached to the wall. The crown of the altar was constructed and attached after all the bays were in place.

A Tibetan artist named Ajiba Sherpa (“Gelek”) moved to Portland for three months and painted the altar after it was completed and in place.

The artist applied the primary background colors of blue and reddish orange first. Then using pre-drawn stencils, he traced the different images on to the background colors. Following the stencilling, he delicately hand painted all the images in a manner that created a relief effect. He used scaffolding to work at the higher elements of the altar and the crown.

The final product is a beautiful piece that replicates the basic design of altars from the old monasteries of Tibet with all the necessary elements.

References:
Altar Set-up and Water Bowl Offerings. FPMT Education Services, Portland, OR, USA

You become like a light in the world

2011-07-07T15:36:00.000-07:00

This Saturday, some of us will be doing a light offering practice as part of the Practice Day for our Discovering Buddhism course, The Wisdom of Emptiness.

The Benefits of Making Light Offerings

[excerpted from FPMT Essential Buddhist Prayers, Volume 2]

It is said in The Ten Wheel Sutra of the Essence of Earth (Kshitigarbha): “All comfort, happiness, and peace in this world come from making offerings to the Rare Sublime Ones. Therefore, those who want comfort, happiness, and peace should always try to make offering to the Rare Sublime Ones.”

In general, all goodness in samsara and nirvana comes from making offerings to the Triple Gem, but specifically, different kinds of offerings bring you different benefits. Guru Shakyamuni Buddha, whose holy mind was enriched with the ten powers, announced in Tune of Brahma Sutra Clarifying Karma that making light offerings brings you ten benefits:

1. You become like a light in the world.

2. When born human you achieve the clairvoyance of the pure flesh eye.*

3. You achieve the devas’ eye.**

4. You receive the wisdom of knowing what is virtue and what is non-virtue.

5. You are able to eliminate the darkness of ignorance, the concept of inherent existence.

6. You receive the illumination of wisdom; even in samsara you never experience darkness.

7. You receive much wealth and enjoyment.

8. You are reborn in the deva or human realm.

9. You quickly become liberated.

10. You quickly attain enlightenment.

Devas or human beings who accumulate the merit of making one light offering, a handful of flowers, will see the Buddha Maitreya.

The Sutra of Arya Maitreya says, “Those who offer a thousand lights or a thousand blue utpali flowers or make the pinnacle of a stupa or a holy form will be reborn when Maitreya Buddha shows the deed of gaining enlightenment and will receive his first Dharma teaching.”

It is also said that those who offer even one flower or rejoice in the merit of others who off er will achieve buddhahood. This means that even if you don’t get enlightened during the time of Guru Shakyamuni Buddha’s teaching, during Maitreya Buddha’s teaching your mind will ripen and you will gain liberation.

Offering light, in particular, is a special door of dependent arising for quickly completing the accumulation of merit and receiving great blessings. It is said in the second chapter of the root tantra of Chakrasamvara, who is a manifestation of Shakyamuni Buddha, “If you want sublime realizations, offer hundreds of lights.”

* The ability to know exactly where the spiritual guides teaching Dharma, your disciples, and so forth are abiding within the billionfold world systems.
** I.e., the divine eye—the ability to know where your disciples die, transfer, and are reborn.

[Notes on the eyes are drawn from FPMT Master's Program material, Ornament of Clear Realizations chart.]

Download the text.

Western science arriving at same conclusion Buddha did 2500 years ago..

2011-05-31T10:37:00.000-07:00

This article is about two four year old girls who where born joined at the head, are they one ,two or many selves ? In the New York Times Magazine May 29, 2011, link below
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/magazine/could-conjoined-twins-share-a-mind.html?_r=1&ref=susandominus

A Blog, Neuroself, has commentary on the article, I pasted it below. I highly recommend a look at the Blog.

http://neuroself.com/

From Neuroself Blog:
If you let your mind get caught in a loop of thinking, these girls will trigger a sort of philosophical optical illusion about the self. On the one hand, if their brains are indeed connected and sharing information, they have
one - very unusual - brain. So using a neural definition of the self, that means they're one person. But when you see them on video you experience them - as their mother does - as having two minds. Using a mental definition of self, that means they're two selves. But then you realize these two selves have one brain... and back again you go to the beginning. And that's the optical illusion. Depending on whether you define the self using minds or brains, you see a different number of people: One. Two. One. Two. The purpose of this illusion, which I submit should be called the "Neuroself Illusion," is not to get you to choose one or two. Rather, it is to introduce you to the very real possibility that neuroscience does not support our four-hundred year-old Enlightenment assumption that each of us has a single self. Rather, neuroscience - mixed with simple logic - makes it increasingly likely that we will conclude the brain makes multiple selves or - if you think that idea makes no sense - no self at all. But either way we're in for a cultural (but not a scientific!) paradigm shift. Because both conclusions rock western society's core metaphysical assumption: that an individual self, in an individual body, is what we really are. Increasingly, the smart money says it ain't. (my bold dj)

Bodhisattva Confession Recordings

2011-04-20T10:31:00.000-07:00

Some people have been asking for recordings of the Bodhisattva Confession to the 35 Buddhas to help them memorize it while doing prostrations, so I have uploaded this onto Internet Archive. Each section of the practice is in a separate file.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche emphasizes that it is critical to actually recite the words--that reciting the words is even more important than doing the prostrations--so don't just depend on the recording.
I recorded these a few years ago; the FPMT Education Dept. wording may have changed slightly since then, but still it will be okay.

http://www.archive.org/details/BodhisattvaConfessionTo35Buddhas

How to pronounce mantras

2011-04-18T09:27:00.000-07:00

by Gelongma Losang Drimay
re-posting from May 23, 2008
originally posted on the "Have You Ever Wondered?" page of our old website

Q: How do you pronounce that mantra?

A: Well, that depends. Do you want to pronounce it the way the Tibetans do? Or the way that someone from India would? And what part of Tibet or what part of India?

Q: I don't know. I just want to pronounce it the right way.

A: As English speakers, we're probably never going to pronounce the mantras quite like the Indians or Tibetans do, even if we get an accurate explanation.

But here are some tips.

First, Buddhist mantras are preserved in the Sanskrit language, the classical language of India. But these days, we are mainly receiving them from Tibetan lamas, after they have been put through the mill of the Tibetan alphabet and the Tibetan way of pronouncing things.

There are several variations on the way that mantras are spelled in Roman letters:

(1) Sometimes you will receive a written form of a mantra that has been transcribed by someone who is just trying to write down the sounds that they are hearing from their lama's speech.

(2) Or you might be looking at a mantra very carefully transliterated from the Tibetan alphabet into the Roman alphabet (the alphabet that is used for English).

(3) Or you might be looking at a mantra spelled out for you the way they do in travel books, in an attempt to help you pronounce it: PAR-LAY VOO FRAHN-SAY?

(4) If the text you are looking at was prepared by a scholar, then the mantra is most assuredly written in the international standard of romanization for Devanagari (the alphabet used for Sanskrit), complete with diacritical marks.

Note: Sanskrit has been written in a number of different alphabets over the centuries. Please understand that Sanskrit is a language and Devanagari is an alphabet.

The advantage of the accurate standard spelling is that a person could, if they wanted to, look up that word in a Sanskrit dictionary. If it's not spelled correctly, that becomes very difficult.

If you prefer the travel book type of spelling, please consider that not all Dharma students are English-speakers; other languages use the Roman alphabet and they have different ideas about how those letters are pronounced.

At this point, please look over the separate document Sanskrit Tibetan Equivalencies.

Below is the Deva-nagari alphabet, which is most commonly used for Sanskrit, as well as some other Indian languages. (India has many languages which are written in different alphabets.)

The function of the letter H

In both Sanskrit and Tibetan there are aspirated and un-aspirated consonants that we don't have in English. English-speakers have a very hard time discerning these sounds. In formal writing, the letter H always represents an out-breath, a puff of air. So, you have a T with no puff (unaspirated), and a TH with a puff (aspirated). Don't make the mistake of turning this into an English 'Th' as in Thursday.

In the 'travel-book' type of spelling, they often help you out by putting an H in, for example after the letter C, so that you make the English 'Ch' sound. However, the letter C is always pronounced like the English 'Ch' in both Sanskrit and Tibetan; never like 'City' or 'Cat'. Sanskrit consonants with the H-sound: KH, GH, CH, JH, T-dot-H, D-dot-H (retroflex), TH, DH, PH, BH.

Retroflex

Sanskrit has some sounds which are called 'retroflex'. That means that you bend your tongue back. Put the tip of your tongue on the high point of the roof of your mouth and then talk.

The Tibetan alphabet represents these sounds by flipping regular letters so that they are facing backwards. The official romanization of Sanskrit puts dots under letters to indicate retroflex. In the Devanagari alphabet, these are distinct letters. Letters that can be retroflexed are: T, TH, D, DH, N, S, KS.

Don't worry too much about actually making this retroflex sound; I just want you to understand what those dots are about.

V

That's the letter V. Or is it really?

There is a Sanskrit letter that is officially romanized as V, but many Indians don't pronounce it that way. And Tibetan-speakers can't pronounce the sound V (that is, the sound that English-speakers call V). They make it B or W. Try it. Give a word with V in it to a Tibetan person and listen.

However, Sanskrit scholars will stand by their claim that it is a V. Devanagari has a B and a V. Tibetan has a B and a W. The Sanskrit V can end up as either a B or a W in Tibetan spelling. In Indian pronunciation, when the V comes after another consonant, it becomes W, as in Svaahaa, pronounced Swaahaa.

In Sanskrit, V is considered to be one of the consonants derived from a vowel, namely the vowel U. That makes it very tempting to call it a W.

C and J

The Sanskrit sounds that we spell with a C and J, are spelled with Tibetan letters that come out as TS and DZ. Tibetan has other letters that equal C and J. This is not a mistake. The Tibetans listened to the Indian speakers and when they heard them say these sounds, as in the words CITTA (mind) or JAMBHALA (a wealth deity), they heard a sound more up towards the front teeth, rather than back in the mouth. Contrast 'ts' with 'ch'. And 'dz' with 'j'.

Vowels

To make it simple, you can basically use Latin pronunciation for vowels in Sanskrit. Most European languages besides English use Latin vowels, so if you know a bit of Spanish, just think like that. However, Sanskrit actually has long and short vowels. That's probably an advanced lesson.

Even the letters R and L have vowel forms in addition to their consonant forms, so don't be surprised to see an R sitting all by itself between two consonants. That's not a mistake. Think about it. Even in English, R is often functioning as a vowel, isn't it?

M with the dot

The M with a dot—either under or over it—is actually listed as a vowel. It is called an anusvara and generally represents a nasal sound. Exactly which nasal sound depends on the context. In Roman letters, you can't just have a dot hanging there with nothing else, so the scholars decided to use an M. That raises a controversy about some words. Everyone is happy with the syllable OM ending with an M sound.

But what about HUM-dot? Is it HUM or HUNG? This dot is used even in Tibetan writing, so there is still no M or NG; it's just a dot. But Tibetans universally say HUNG. And if you asked most Indians—at least Northern Indians—they would say HUNG. So don't get thrown off by the Romanization. It's still fine to say HUNG.

Sanskrit Alphabet as a Mantra

In Vajrayana Buddhism, the Sanskrit alphabet is recited as a mantra in order to bless the speech. (You might argue that I should say Devanagari alphabet, but since it's just an oral recitation, saying Sanskrit is accurate.) So this introduction to the Sanskrit alphabet will at least help you with that.

Tibetan Pronunciation

If the scribe or woodblock-carver hasn't slipped, then the Tibetan spellings of mantras are very consistent, letter-for-letter transliterations of the Sanskrit. They might have quite different ways of pronouncing them, but the spelling is very orthodox.

Some of the common Tibetan pronunciations are different from the scholarly pronunciations, but they are not wrong. They are in accord with how many Indian speakers pronounce things.

• Some variations are due to the limits of Tibetan pronunciation (like the way that we just can't hear an unaspirated T).

• Others are due to Tibetan spelling rules mistakenly being applied to Sanskrit (like the way we might pronounce TH with a soft 'Th' sound).

• There is a special compound consonant in Sanskrit that comes out as JÑ in official spelling, but is usually pronounced GY by both Indians and Tibetans.

• I've already mentioned the V/B/W controversy which accounts for a lot of the variations.

• Tibetan doesn't have long vowels, so they just ignore the long vowel markers. Or bizarrely, they sometimes turn it into a nasal sound.

• Tibetans abhor compound consonants, so those are always reduced to what they would consider the root letter. SMARA becomes MARA, etc.

• Tricky spelling rules in Tibetan make BY into J, PR into T, and in Kham, KY becomes CH, so that accounts for many of the variants.

• A final consonant often modifies the vowel, in Tibetan, so they sometimes apply that to Sanskrit words even though it doesn't apply. PADMA becomes PEMA. And PHAT-dot becomes PAY.

• For some unfathomable reason, the Tibetans pronounce the retroflex SH as KH, even though they clearly write it with just a backwards SH. And they make KSH-dot (a special compound in Devanagari) into KHY.

So that's all for now. I might add more later. Pleases excuse the colloquialisms in this paper; it is meant as a casual explanation for non-scholars. I have avoided using a lot of diacritical marks and non-roman fonts (here), because they won't display correctly online.

Online Resources:

Tibetan Transliteration Schemes: http://www.thlib.org/tools/scripts/wiki/tibetan%20transliteration%20and%20transcription.html

Sanskrit Pronunciation and Diacritic Guide: http://www.sanskrit.org/www/Sanskrit/SanskritPronunc.htm

Printed Resources:

Modern Tibetan Language, Volume 1, by Losang Thonden, Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 1984.

Tibetan-English Dictionary, by Sarat Chandra Das, Gaurav Publishing House, 1985, (originally published by The Bengal Secretariat Book Depot, 1902).

What is a deity in Buddhism?

2011-03-28T15:50:00.000-07:00

"What is a deity in Buddhism?" - a question posted by Anonymous, 1/13/11.

From the glossary on www.lamayeshe.com:

deity (Tib: yidam): an emanation of the enlightened mind used as the object of meditation in tantric practices.

An example of such a meditation is here excerpted from a White Tara practice described by Lama Zopa Rinpoche:

The guru deities—all the Buddha’s holy mind, the wisdom of Dharmakaya, that which is the absolute guru, bound with infinite compassion, which embraces me and my family and all living beings—manifests into White Tara, specifically to grant long life realizations. Her nature is of white light, and she is extremely youthful and beautiful. She has one face and two arms and is sitting in the vajra posture. The right hand has the palm facing outward on the knee, in the mudra of granting realizations. The left hand has three fingers pointing up, signifying Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. She is holding the stem of an upali flower. She is sitting in the vajra posture on a lotus and moon disc seat, looking at me and all sentient beings with compassionate eyes and a loving smile. She is beautifully adorned with divine dress and jewel ornaments.

Rinpoche gave the following advice regarding generating oneself as the deity, however one must have the relevant empowerment in order to visualize oneself as any particular deity.

Yi means mind, dam means seal – two things not to be separated. Something sealed means not to be separated. Yi is your mind. With what is it sealed? With the deity that you’re going to become one with in the future. Your body, speech, and mind will become one with the deity’s holy body, holy speech, and holy mind, and then you will achieve enlightenment. So, the quick way to achieve that is through tantra.

In everyday life you visualize yourself as the deity, not just only the deity but the guru. One has the understanding that the deity and guru are oneness, one thing. When you visualize yourself as the deity it means the guru. This way, not only when you practice the sadhana, but when you get dressed or when you eat, drink, or sleep, during all these activities, sense enjoyments, etc., think of yourself as the guru-deity. It is good to have the awareness of the deity, but the main thing is the guru. When one experiences sense enjoyments or other things, all of this becomes an offering to the guru and one collects the most extensive merit. If you just think of yourself as the deity then it becomes merit, but not the most merit. The main awareness is of the guru. Your form is the deity but the awareness is of the guru.

continue reading on www.lamayeshe.com

Responding to Questions about Gender, Language, and Financial Support

2011-03-28T12:55:00.000-07:00

Recently, two questions were posted that seem to be related. I don't know if they are by the same anonymous person, but I will group them together here.

1. Anonymous said...
Why do the most famous Tibetan monks reincarnate in male form rather than in female form? Consequently, the most popular or highly visible Tibetan monastic teachers in the West seem to be mostly males.

Why don't more Tibetan monastics learn to speak and write English? Many Westerners have learned to speak and write Tibetan in order to translate ancient texts, probably a very tedious and lonely task which doesn't pay into one's senior care.

Many years ago at LMB, there was Western a nun who had given up her Engineering career and donated her savings. When she needed surgery for a life threatening medical problem, no fund was set up for her, whereas the male Tibetan teachers are usually taken care of. Why such different treatments of monastics?

2. Anonymous said...
In reference to the nun who had given away savings from her engineer career: Am i to understand that Monastics cannot receive medicare or medical? Or is it by choice?

Response:

There are three points here are: gender inequality, language obstacles, and financial support.

First let me say that I don't want to be an apologist for the way things are. I myself am a Western Buddhist nun living in the West. If you are a nun (or monk) I'd be happy to discuss the vinaya with you privately. If you are not ordained, then some of these rules aren't for you to know.

More than any specific complaint is the general one, "Why aren't things the way I want them to be?" or "Why aren't things easy?" or "Why aren't things perfect?" Those are slightly different questions. Things are uncomfortable because we are still in samsara, under the control of our own karma and delusions. But these conditions could still be perfect for our practice. One of the advantages to being in the human realm, as opposed to the god realm, is that things are just uncomfortable enough to urge us to get out of samsara, not to take it easy.

Gender issues are the stuff of college degrees these days; for example, at UC Santa Cruz you can major in Feminist Studies. I don't see any reason to blame Buddhism in particular for gender differences. I've noticed that even self-proclaimed feminists still unconsciously focus on the alpha male, even as they stand in front of a female teacher asking why there are no female teachers.

Nevertheless, Tibetan women in my generation have been significantly influenced by Western women leaders, becoming more confident and pursuing higher studies. Just a handful of very intelligent and determined women have affected the lives of hundreds--probably now thousands--of Tibetan and Himalayan nuns; namely, Betsy Napper with the Tibetan Nuns Project, Karma Lekshe Tsomo with Jamyang Nunnery, Jampa Tsedroen (Carla Roloff) with her support of nuns in South India as well as important research and translation to benefit Western Buddhist nuns, Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo with her Dongyu Gatsal Ling Nunnery, and Tsenla who established the Kopan Nunnery, Kacho Gakyil Ling. Tsenla is Tibetan but received a Western education by English nuns, and then went on to be the first Tibetan woman to take ordination with Lama Yeshe. She lives in the United States now, translating and teaching.

We are living in pioneering days. I sometimes wonder if we made pledges in our past lives to take rebirth here and now to help establish the Dharma in the West, in modern times. We are the ones who are charged with the task of translating the Dharma, both literally and figuratively. It's a time of challenge, but also of creativity.

Language issues: I'm pretty sure there are more Tibetans who speak English than there are Americans who speak Tibetan. Still I am amazed at how much progress has been made in my lifetime by Western translators. Back in the 70's it seemed like there were only about five Dharma books that everybody read. Then in the 80's, maybe ten. Within the past twenty years we have seen the Lam-rim Chenmo appear in English (in the three-volume set, The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path), Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand (in two completely separate translations), and the many-volumed release of The Library of Tibetan Classics (Wisdom Publications). This is only a sampling. I have several of Arya Nagarjuna's works on my shelf. The source texts for the FPMT Master's Program are provided in English. And the FPMT Education Office is just launching a systematic re-translation of all the source texts for its Basic Program.

Financial Support: I'm not familiar with the specific case of the engineering nun. The organization certainly didn't tell her to give up her savings. Maybe she did that because she wanted the merit (good karma), or maybe she was very enthusiastic about a particular project. Moreover, many of us start out with no savings, so it still comes down to the fact of being broke.

It's true that paying for medical expenses is problematic in this country, not just for nuns but for most people. It's not practical to tackle this problem on an organization-wide scale because other countries don't have this problem. The best we can do is to provide medical insurance through the local centers, but if a particular nun (or monk) is not affiliated with any particular center then there is no safety net. (However, Santa Cruz County has a safety net for low-income residents called Medi-Cruz.)

To the follow-up question: No, there is no particular reason that a nun or monk can't use Medicare or Medical. On a related subject, I also advocate that American monastics and monastics living in America should make sure they are making adequate Social Security contributions (or that such are being made on their behalf). I want people to know not to opt out of Social Security. (There is a way for members of religious orders to opt out, but you shouldn't do this because it is irrevocable. You can't get back in once you opt out.) During times when I have lived only on offerings I have still reported self-employment income, even though I was below the taxable income level, simply so that I could make regular Social Security contributions. Even if I am living at a Dharma center in my old age, the Social Security payments can help with expenses. Plus, Medicare is tied to Social Security. You don't get Medicare if you are not eligible for Social Security. (I'm not a tax adviser; I just want my fellow monastics to be aware of this.)

Part of the comment by anonymous says "male Tibetan teachers are usually taken care of." The Tibetan monks we see over here are usually teachers--not just teachers but lamas--so, yes, they are usually taken care of. However there are thousands of regular monks and nuns living in the Himalayas and in India who don't have any such medical support. They are plagued by unhealthy living conditions. I can't even visit those monasteries without immediately getting sick. So we must be careful about our comparisons and generalizations. In general, the living conditions over here are much healthier. And in general, male and female Western monastics are treated relatively the same.

I hope some of this was helpful, or at least interesting.

Practice to Avert Earthquakes and other Natural Disasters

2011-03-23T15:08:00.000-07:00

Over the March 19-20 weekend, Lama Zopa Rinpoche gave us a transmission of a set of practices to do to avert earthquakes and natural disasters.

Here is the final, edited version on the FPMT website:
If One Wishes to Control the Earthquakes

What Did I Miss? Lama Zopa Rinpoche in San Jose - March 2011

2011-03-13T09:40:00.000-07:00

Summaries of all four days' teachings are here now: March 12, 13, 19 and 20. These are from rough notes typed on the spot for the benefit of the audience, not verbatim.

Saturday, March 12, Day 1

Rinpoche began by saying that even though he has not come to Gyalwa Gyatso Buddhist Center very often, he thinks about us all the time.

He thanked all the people who have been working at our Dharma centers since the beginning, and through all these years.

He told some stories about some of the lamas who have taught at Vajrapani—the oldest center in America in our organization.

One of those great lamas was His Holiness Zong Rinpoche [also spelled Song Rinpoche]. The mother of the reincarnation of Zong Rinpoche was in the audience and Rinpoche mentioned her.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche has great hopes for and confidence in the current incarnation of Zong Rinpoche [who is now in his twenties]. Zong Rinpoche spent a school year living in California, with Pam and Karuna, when he was young, but after that he stayed put in the monastery and completed his geshe degree last year. Lama Zopa Rinpoche feels that he could be a great leader for the Tibetan monasteries in this life, and that teaching in the West and elsewhere in the world would be easy for him, without question.

Another great lama who taught at Vajrapani was His Holiness Serkong Tsenshab Rinpoche, who was the reincarnation of Marpa's son, Dharma Dode. Rinpoche told the life story of Milarepa, whose guru was Marpa, mentioning some of the principles of guru devotion. Even though the enlightened Marpa put Milarepa through so many hardships, Milarepa never got angry with his guru.

And of course, His Holiness the Dalai Lama is one of the most important great lamas to have visited Vajrapani Insitute around the time that his Nobel Peace Prize was being announced.

Later in the evening, Rinpoche said that praying that His Holiness's holy wishes may be fulfilled "is the most important prayer in the world, in your life." If this prayer succeeds, then every single sentient being will get enlightenment.

We are so fortunate here to have the opportunity to receive the oral transmission of the Golden Light Sutra. In many parts of the world people are overwhelmed with disasters and violence. And even in places where there is so-called peace—the mere absence of war—people don't have any idea of how to live a meaningful life. They have no idea about rebirth, so they live totally wrong, all their actions done with the wrong motivation.

Then, Rinpoche read the benefits of the Sutra of Golden Light. For example, for those who hear this sutra, there will be no turning back from enlightenment. The place, the area where the sutra is recited will be protected.

After going through the opening prayers—the Diamond-cutter verse and the Seven Limbs—very slowly with meditation, Rinpoche recited the first chapter of the 31-chapter version of the Sutra of Golden Light.

We finished with a Vajrasattva mantra practice for the people in Japan who were killed by the tsunami.

Rinpoche stayed close to the schedule, starting soon after 4:00, breaking for dinner around 6:15, and finishing before 11:00.

The room seemed quite full, well over 100 people, but you are still welcome to jump in even if you missed this first night.

Sunday, March 13, Day 2

Rinpoche is spending much of each session teaching and leading meditations, including going through the opening prayers very slowly explaining how to meditate on them.

At the end of this evening, Rinpoche had completed Chapter 3 (of 31 chapters) of the Sutra of Golden Light.

Because of the recent earthquake-tsunami and related catastrophes in Japan, Rinpoche continues to comment on that and include the Japanese people in the prayers. For example, this evening the Seven-Limb Prayer included an extensive explanation of the importance of merit under the limb of rejoicing—how important it is to have merit and not to destroy it with anger.

“The people in Japan didn't have the karma to experience peace and happiness. Or they had the karma, but it hadn't ripened. The negative karma was more powerful; it was not purified before. If it had been purified, then they would not experience these problems. Or they experience but very small.” [from roughly typed notes]

And [again roughly]:
“Every single sentient being can attain enlightenment. So it's possible for you to purify so that you won't receive this suffering result. But if it's not purified then you experience all these problems like there have been in the world—disease, famine, torture, war, dictatorship, dangers of fire, water, earthquakes, tsunamis.”

Unfortunately, we often destroy whatever good karma we've created by getting angry.

Rinpoche gave us something to write down in our notebooks so that we remember to do it every morning when we start the day. Say to yourself: “Today, I'm not going to make myself irritated or disturbed; whatever happens I won't let it bother me. I will be happy to receive obstacles.”

Use the obstacles, problems as part of your spiritual path. “Whenever a problem comes, immediately give it to the selfish mind, the ego, your enemy, blow it away.” The self-cherishing egotistical attitude was the original source of the problem, so blow it away through the practice of tong-len. “Put all the blame on the one,” as it says in the Seven-Point Thought Transformation, i.e. blame your problems on self-cherishing.

“When you use the problems for tong-len practice, you get courage, a brave heart. Limitless skies of wow wow wow merit.”

After the dinner break, we received the oral transmission of The Dharani Called 'Possessing the Limbs of All the Buddhas' (Arya sarva buddhadgavati nama dharani, PAGPA SANGGYE TAMCHI KYI YENLAG DANG DENPA ZHE JA WE ZUNG).

Rinpoche explained the benefits of the Sutra of Golden Light, which you can read here: http://www.fpmt.org/sutras/golden-light-sutra/benefits.html After hearing the recitation of Chapters 2 and 3, we finished up at 10:00.

Saturday, March 19, Day 3

Rinpoche phoned in some instructions for us to start doing some prayers for the disaster victims in Japan while we were waiting for him to arrive; namely, Vajrasattva,, Tong-len, and Ksitigarbha. Venerable Sarah led the prayers but we were only nearing the end of the Vajrasattva practice when Rinpoche arrived.

Rinpoche led an extensive meditation on the Diamond-Cutter verse—the verse from the beginning prayers: KAR MA RAB RIB MAR ME DANG, A star, a visual aberration, a flame of a lamp, etc., which segued into some examples of how people try in all sorts of distorted ways to get satisfaction. They go about it in the wrong way because of the underlying ignorance which believes that things truly exist.

Rinpoche then discussed some verses from the Foundation of All Good Qualities:

län chig nye päi däi wäi ten zang di

shin tu nye ka dön ch'en she gyur nä

nyin tsän kun tu nying po len päi lo

gyun chä me par kye war jin gyi lob

Precious freedom of this one-time life

Is so meaningful and hard to find.

Bless me with the mind which day and night

Always takes its essence without cease.

Rinpoche explained that this perfect human rebirth which has the freedom to practice Dharma is more precious than a whole sky filled with wish-granting jewels, because with this human life we can achieve enlightenment in one brief lifetime of the degenerate age through practicing not only the Mahayana Paramitayana path to Buddhahood, but also the Mahayana Secret Mantra path which is able to cease the course conceptual mind and develop the clear light and illusory an a means to achieving Buddhahood. Then:

lü sog yo wa chu yi chu bur zhin

nyur du jig päi chi wa drän pa dang

shi wäi je su lü d'ang dr'ib ma zhin

kar nak lä drä ch'i zhin drang wa la

Like a water bubble, this life is

Fleeting—it decays and then death comes.

After death, your good and bad karma

Follow you around like a shadow.

nge pa tän po nye nä nye päi tsog

dra zhing dra wa nam kyang pong wa dang

ge tsog ta dag drub par je pa la

tag tu bak dang dän par jin gyi lob

Knowing this with a firm conviction,

I'll give up even small non-virtues,

And take up all virtuous actions.

Bless me to live conscientiously.

And so we are urged not to waste even a day, or an hour, or a second, but to take every opportunity to collect virtuous actions, however small. And to be careful to avoid even small non-virtues because the end up ripening as such big problems in the future.

As the motivation for the oral transmission, we were reminded that bodhicitta covers all sentient beings so it benefits them all. We heard a quote from Kyabje Kunnu Lama Rinpoche's Praise of Bodhichitta, about your bodhicitta, i.e. your good heart, being the base which causes continual happiness and peace for all sentient beings from this life up to the happiness of full enlightenment.

Rinpoche cited verse 92 from the Guru Puja:

Contemplating the advantages of cherishing others:

MA NAM CHE ZUNG DE LA GÖ PÄI LO

The mind that cherishes mothers and places them in bliss

THA YÄ YÖN TÄN JUNG WÄI GOR THONG NÄ

Is the gateway leading to infinite qualities.

DRO WA DI DAG DAG GI DRAR LANG KYANG

Seeing this, I seek your blessings to cherish these beings

SOG LÄ CHE PAR DZIN PAR JIN GYI LOB

More than my life, even should they rise up as my enemies.

We received transmissions of some practices to avert earthquakes and other harm from the elements; namely, Wishing to Control the Earthquakes, Prayer fulfilling Wishes Simultaneously, and Making Requests and Offerings to the landlord and Goddess of the Four Elements.

After finishing the transmission of Chapter Four of the Golden Light Sutra, Rinpoche also gave us the oral transmission of the Heart Sutra in English.

The Sixteen Arhat practice did not happen this day as had been previously announced. We finished at 11pm.

Sunday, March 20, Day 4

Lama Zopa Rinpoche began saying, “Before the Golden Light Sutra I thought to do this abbreviated Medicine Buddha prayer. There is an elaborate Medicine Buddha practice composed by the 5^th Dalai Lama which is very inspiring. That one was requested a long time ago. That one is available in English—the first translation into English from the Tibetan text. And then there is the one we have been doing for many years composed by Panchen Losang Chokyi Gyaltsen, who composed the Mahamudra text and the Guru Puja and so many other works.”

The transmission we received was of this text: Medicine Buddha Sadhana. The English edition was translated in 1982 by Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche, edited by Ven. Thubten Gyatso (Dr. Adrian Feldmann).

This particular sadhana spells out the mantra: TADYATHA / OM BHEKHANDZYE BHEKHANDZYE MAHA BHEKHANDZYE / RADZA SAMUDGATE SVAHA – with one BHEKHANDZYE after the MAHA. However you can also recite two BHEKHANDZYE's. His Holiness the Dalai Lama seems to recite two, like this: TADYATHA / OM BHEKHANDZYE BHEKHANDZYE MAHA BHEKHANDZYE BHEKHANDZYE / RADZA SAMUDGATE SVAHA

At first Rinpoche thought it was composed by Kachen Yeshe Gyaltsen, but then the colophon said it was composed by another lama. Anyway, the mention of Kachen Yeshe Gyaltsen prompted some stories about the early days of Kopan Monastery and the annual one-month introductory courses there which were inspired by Rinpoche's reading of a certain lo-jong text by Kachen Yeshe Gyaltsen.

The Kopan course has been happening for 40 years now and out of Kopan there have emerged about 150 Dharma centers around the world. In the early courses, Rinpoche would spend about 3 days just talking about the mind, because people from Western countries have such a different idea about the nature of the mind and for many of them the idea of rebirth—the continuity of consciousness from one life to the next—is a foreign idea.

Rinpoche said, “It's because of karma, who can understand Buddhism. People have different capacities. Some can understand the extremely profound meanings, such as emptiness. Some cannot understand that, no way. Only the gross level, the gross dependent arising. It all depends on their past karma, whether they have learned, meditated. They found it extremely beneficial for their life, they found answers. Then they went back to their home countries and wished for people in their country to meet Dharma so that's how the centers happened.”

Not everybody comes away from these courses continuing to do any formal daily spiritual practice, but Rinpoche thinks it's worthwhile just that they stop killing things—that they realize that ants and fish, etc., are sentient beings. Most people stop killing because of compassion; a fewer number stop killing because they understand karma. “You love yourself and you don't want to suffer, so you don't create the cause, so you don't have to experience the result.”

The 84,000 teachings of the Buddha can be condensed into Hinayana, Mahayana-Paramitayana, and Mahayana-Vajrayana. Rinpoche said, “If you say just Mahayana, and then Vajrayana as if Vajrayana were not part of Mahayana that would be totally wrong. That's not correct Vajrayana.” Vajrayana must be practiced on the basis of bodhicitta, the special attitude which defines something as Mahayana. Without that Mahayana attitude, Vajrayana doesn't become a cause of enlightenment. Not only that, it can even cause rebirth in the lower realms.

Another way to summarize all the Buddha's teachings is, “The foundation is to not harm; the second thing is to benefit.”

Rinpoche then discussed the importance of having bodhicitta in your heart as the motivation for receiving the transmission of the Golden Light Sutra. When someone has been very kind to you, you feel that person in your heart. Actually every sentient being has been kind to us. We just need to think about it. When they were our mothers, in past lives, they were kind to us in these four ways: 1) They endured hardships giving birth to us; 2) They protected us from dangers when we were young; 3) They educated us in the ways of the world; 4) They collected negative karma on our behalf, doing things like stealing and lying to support us, and even the seemingly good or neutral things they did for us were done with ignorance and so became causes for their further circling in samsara. Therefore, we owe each of them a great debt.

Rinpoche then gave what seems to be a complete summary of the entire path to enlightenment, pointing out how amazingly fortunate we are to have met this authentic path while having the opportunity to practice.

Then, whatever happens to us, we must realize that it is a result of our karma. It is a causative phenomenon, and we created the cause. If we don't want more results like that, we must refrain from creating more harm, for example, by retaliating. Moreover, we need to be very careful not to be the cooperative cause for other people to create negative karma causing their own future suffering. If we fight with people, causing them to fight back, just think of the negative karma they will be creating. Therefore it is our duty to develop compassion.

We received a little bit more of the Golden Light Sutra transmission, stopping somewhere in Chapter Five, page 100.

Then we received the jenang (subsequent permission) of White Tara.

After the jenang, people lined up to offer katas to Rinpoche.

Rinpoche was pleased with how things went and plans to come back to continue the Golden Light Sutra.

This last evening had the most people in attendance. The jenang was finished before 11pm, but with people lining up to make offerings it probably went till about midnight.

There are some wonderful pictures of the event in the photo album of our center's Facebook page.

Animal Liberation Movie

2011-02-11T14:00:00.000-08:00

This morning a certain headline grabbed my attention: Indie film ‘Bold Native’ explores the ethos of animal liberation

Lama Zopa Rinpoche teaches a certain practice called Animal Liberation which he encourages especially for people who have health problems, to clear up their bad karma from harming other sentient beings. Usually, small critters such as bait worms and crickets are liberated from bait shops and pet stores. They are carried
around a stupa or other holy object while specific prayers and mantras are recited for them. Then they are released into the wild. In the open markets of Asia, live animals such as fish and birds are often sold for human consumption, so these animals could be rescued. In Tibet, it has been a long-held practice to rescue even large livestock marking them as liberated with paint and mantras. On top of the immediate release from slaughter, this traditional practice is also aimed at liberating them from a miserable rebirth.

So this article about animal liberation movie caught my eye. Moreover the lead actor is from Santa Cruz. However, this is a more extreme form of animal liberation as described here:

As the leader of a small cell of animal liberators who call themselves Bold Native (and whom the government are after for millions of dollars in property damage), Charlie’s life and livelihood are dedicated to freeing animals from injustices inflicted upon them by humans. The fiction feature length film follows Charlie, documentary-style, over a two year period as he organizes 35 simultaneous liberation actions—the largest ever coordinated in the decentralized, loosely organized movement known as the Animal Liberation Front, or ALF...

Contemplating the movement’s ethos, the film depicts the full spectrum of animal rights activists through its characters—on one end is Jane, who works within the system to get incremental improvements made at fast food corporations; on the opposite end is Riley, the radical ex-girlfriend who resorts to shocking acts of retaliatory violence. In the middle—the moral compass of the film—are Charlie and his loyal, irreverent and goofy sidekick Sonja (played by endearing up and comer Sheila Vand), who adhere to the ALF’s unwritten law, “Never hurt anyone, animal or human.”

- Good Times, TUESDAY, 08 FEBRUARY 2011, ELIZABETH LIMBACH

What do you think?

Small Self

2010-12-02T15:47:00.000-08:00

Mark Eckhardt
Since 1998, Mark Eckhardt has studied Zen Buddhism under the auspices of Bill Yoshin Jordan
Posted: December 2, 2010 08:40 AM

PBS's 'This Emotional Life': The Small Self: How Your Identity Constrains You

So who are "you" anyway?

By "you" I am referring to your identity, or the thoughts, beliefs, ideas and positions that are the basis of your sense of yourself. These are the things that the brain uses to create the experience of being unique, an individual separate from everything and everyone. It is what allows me to say, "I am Mark, and you are you." Zen Buddhists refer to this as the "small self," and understanding it begins with the question, "Who is the 'I' that you refer to?"

The early stages of exploring this question can be perplexing and difficult. I recall being extremely frustrated when senior Zen students would abruptly stop me in the middle of rambling about the problems in my life and ask, "Who is this 'I' that you keep referring to? Show him to me." During one conversation, one person went as far as to say, "If that is who you are, no wonder you are constantly stuck." I didn't appreciate those words, but they were enough to get me to stop complaining and consider that perhaps I did not know as much about myself as I thought.

So what is the small self?

Neuroscientists often refer to invariant representations, or the model that the brain uses to create our perceptions. As Jeff Hawkins, the author of "On Intelligence," stated, "The brain uses vast amounts of energy to create a model of the world. Everything you know and have learned is stored in this model. The brain uses this memory-based model to make continuous predictions of future events."

The implications of the memory-based model are significant. Research suggests that as much as 80 percent to 90 percent of what you perceive is stored memory rather than what your eyes and ears actually see and hear. This is the small self, and ultimately it constrains your ability to respond freely or authentically to what is happening around you. Examples of this include not being able to speak out, empathize or respond appropriately to certain situations; not seeing or taking advantage of opportunities; and refusing to grow or express certain emotions.

For most people, realizing that most of what you think, do and feel is nothing but the activation of stored memory is unsettling, for it smacks the popular notion of who we think we are right in the face. This truth not only exposes that we are not as free as we like to believe, but that we are not fully present to the people and things in our life as well. So if this is the case, and neuroscience is right, then what can be done?

The simple answer is nothing.

The brain uses memory to ensure that you survive from moment to moment -- this is a good thing. On the flip side, however, this fact underscores the Buddha's teaching identifying the small self as the source of needless suffering, or the "stuck-ness" that we all experience in certain areas of our lives.

While the Buddha's teachings might evoke feelings of hopelessness initially, he also prescribed a solution or pathway to greater freedom and control over our thoughts and actions. The foundation for this is Zazen, or Zen meditation.

Zazen's core aim is to facilitate realization into the nature of reality. When this happens, our map of the world and ourselves is seen for what it is: empty, or void of any fixed meaning. Experiencing emptiness for the first time can be like jumping off a cliff in the middle of night: totally terrifying because suddenly you have absolutely nothing to hold on to. Yet for most people it is the first time in many years that they experience life "outside the box," free from the constraints of the small self. Once this experience has taken place, many people dedicate themselves to minimizing the grip of their identity for the purposes of cultivating a much larger expression of themselves.

Ongoing Zazen coupled with other aspects of personal development will reduce the suffering, or stuck-ness, that the Buddha spoke of. The result is a person who can operate with a higher degree of grace, fluidity and authenticity in situations that are foreign, uncomfortable and marked by stress and pressure.

The great Zen master Dogen Zenji said, "To know the Self is to forget the Self. To forget the Self is to be enlightened by the ten thousand things." In today's fast-paced modern society, one's carefully constructed identity and the preservation of it is often valued above and beyond everything else. Without knowing it, this emphasis only serves to prevent us from having a much deeper experience of who we are.

Imagine for a second what it would be like if you were free from constraints of the small self, identity, just for a few seconds. What would you do? What would you say? Who would you be?

This Emotional Life is a two-year campaign to foster awareness, connections and solutions around emotional wellness. Join our community at www.pbs.org/thisemotionallife.

Mark Eckhardt is part of the teaching staff at the Santa Monica Zen Center. In 2008 he founded LYFE Systems, a consulting company that works with professionals in the area of leadership. His work integrates aspects of Zen training with Western methods and science for increasing human performance and effectiveness.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-eckhardt/small-self-identity-constraint_b_784540.html

Guru Devotion: in meditation and in life

2010-11-19T15:17:00.000-08:00

Anonymous said...
I'm working with the "Short Daily Meditation" Practice" from a previous class and had some questions. They all relate to the concept of a "guru" as it appears in the practice.
(a) In the "Preliminary Motivation" it mentions "the virtuous friend"
(b) In the "Visualizaton" it mentions "your root guru"
(c) In the "Graded path to Enlightenment" it mentions "the kind and venerable guru"
Are all of these the same person ?
If I take teachings at the center are they the main teacher ?
Given the first verse of the "Graded Path" it seems I need a guru. What do I need to do to get one ?
Thank You.
August 22, 2010 5:13 PM

Drimay says....

This Fall we have been studying Guru Devotion in the Discovering Buddhism course called "The Spiritual Teacher." I was thinking that the answers to the above questions would surface during this course; I hope most of them did.

Let me first mention some things that I think are important. The way we think about our spiritual teachers is a factor in our own progress. If we are having mental blocks--not able to understand things, not able to get to classes or retreats, not able to meditate, etc.--it is to our own advantage to improve the way we are thinking about our spiritual teachers.

People seem to be scared of the idea of guru devotion. I think it is because it gets mixed up with giving your power away and becoming blindly obedient. My opinion is that guru devotion isn't so much about what we DO but about how we THINK, how we hold the guru in our mind. It's about the psychology of having a positive attitude, an attitude of gladness and inspiration. There is some kind of magic about that attitude and makes realizations happen quickly.

So my main point is that if you want to move forward to enlightenment, cultivate positive thoughts toward your gurus. And if you don't have positive thoughts about your gurus, go through the steps such as learning what the definition of a qualified guru is and then checking how many of those qualities your guru has. If you have qualified gurus, you will start to be amazed and very appreciative.

Now, for the questions:

Virtuous Friend is a translation of the Sanskrit Kalyana Mitra, which comes into Tibetan as Gewai Shenyen. Geshe, the title used for those who have completed a rigorous course of scriptural study at one of the major monastic univerities, is a contraction of Gewai Shenyen. When it says, "I have met the virtuous friend," that most certainly means the living teachers who guide us, the guru in human form.

The visualization actually gives us quite of bit of information where it says, "He [the Buddha] is the manifestation of the omniscient mind of all the buddhas, the ultimate guru," (there is the definition of 'ultimate guru') and, "He is inseparable from your root guru." Here are at least two of the elements of guru yoga--the inseparability of the Buddha (1) with your root guru (2).

The root guru is sometimes defined as the one who first turns your mind to the Dharma. Sometimes the root guru is described as the teacher who most inspires you. In class we learned that it is possible to have more than one root guru. Guru Atisha had five root gurus (amongst 152 gurus that he had in all) and Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche seems to have two (amongst about 30 gurus).

The fact that they are all being visualized in the form of just the one Shakyamuni Buddha and that this buddha is just a manifestation of the ultimate guru seems to resolve the problem of which guru to visualize.

In The Graded Path to Enlightenment verses, it actually says "Correct devotion to him is the root of the path," so we don't need to worry about how many gurus there. It's the devotion that we have toward however many gurus that counts.

As for the teachings that we get on a regular basis, those might be from a qualified guru, but in the case of the classes that I teach, I am not a qualified guru. I'm not offering to be anybody's guru. You would be better off to think that the Dharma center and all its activities are manifestations of the guru's enlightened activities--that it's all part of Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche's mandala, or His Holiness the Dalai Lama's mandala. We are just household servants in their mandala.

Do you need to get a guru? Yes, I think that would be a good idea, but just do it slowly, carefully. Get teachings from various gurus--open teachings that don't require any commitment--and check how you feel. Will you be able to hold that person with a pure attitude? Does that person have suitable qualifications to be called a guru. Then with the thought of wanting to take that person as a guru, you can go ahead and receive teachings or transmissions, and then they become one of your gurus.

May all the kind gurus stay with us until we are fully enlightened.

Dear Life: a comic about samsara

2010-11-19T14:36:00.000-08:00

How to Find a Spiritual Teacher by Mariana Caplan, Ph.D.

2010-08-23T17:02:00.000-07:00

I was surprised to see this article--How to Find a Spiritual Teacher, Mariana Caplan, Ph.D.--on Huffington Post. We'll be doing the Discovering Buddhism course on The Spiritual Teacher later this Fall (October 19 - November 16).

Rarely does a week of my life go by, without someone writing to me either looking for a spiritual teacher, confused about a spiritual teacher, or upset by a deep disillusionment by their spiritual teacher. The question of the spiritual teacher is a perennial question that in many ways is so less real and relevant among seekers as it was 500 years ago. The difference is that the stage is different. Unlike the great Buddhist hero Milarepa who transversed the Indo-Tibetan subcontinent by foot and then built nine houses before his teacher would begin to instruct him, we can simply click on google and within minutes have access to almost every prominent spiritual teacher there is, living or dead, and likely even some type of cyber-transmission.

cont. at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mariana-caplan-phd/criteria-for-spiritual-te_b_685333.html

Karma Experiment: Reducing Wildfires by Reducing Anger

2010-08-16T16:42:00.000-07:00

by Drimay

At the beginning of this summer we were having a course on Karma at GGBC, (June 1 to June 29). Karma isn't something that ordinary people can see directly; only buddhas (completely enlightened beings) can see the link between a specific karmic cause and its result. So I suggested that we do an experiment in order to learn about karmic cause and result empirically, systematically keeping track of the karma we were creating to see if we could change something big.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche explains that so-called natural disasters are not actually coming from something outside of ourselves, e.g., mother nature. Rinpoche says that anger is the main cause of natural disasters--tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, wildfires.

In class, we discussed various disasters we could focus on and we decided to target California wildfires, because they seem the most related to us. It's easier to see how they could be coming from our karma, because they often affect us directly.

Class members kept track of their anger and patience using the Karma Card--a sheet of paper with sections for each day of the week where you can record things you do with your body, speech, and mind. For example, at the end of the day you might remember that you snapped at someone, saying some angry words, so you can record that as angry speech. Or maybe you practiced patience by letting another driving get in the lane, so you can put down that you did a patient physical action.

Some people were diligent about filling in their cards. Others didn't fill in their cards very well, but at least they started paying more attention to overcoming anger and being patient.

Now we are well into the summer, so I'm starting to check the wildfire situation. In 2008, I myself had to evacuate from a fire zone and in 2009 my friends did.

I'm looking up the statistics now on the CAL FIRE website:

2008: 1,525,074 acres burned, 13 fatalities
2009: 422,147 acres burned, 3 fatalities
2010 (mid-season): 52,277 acres burned, 0 fatalities

Emily Hsu is now teaching a series on Dealing with Anger (Aug. 5 to Sept. 16) so some of our members are continuing to work on this theme. Even those who are not in Emily's class should continue to overcome their anger and increase their patience. Then at the end of this summer I'll update the fire statistics and see how we did.

I know some of you will be saying that the reduction in fires is just due to the cool, damp weather, but that's just the mechanism for fewer fires, not the underlying cause. I said when we started this experiment that even if it works, they probably won't believe it. So far, it seems to be working. If you still don't believe it, we might have to repeat the experiment next year, and the year after that, until we are convinced.

Our Prayers are Working: Dalai Lama predicted to live to 113

2010-07-08T17:01:00.000-07:00

In conversation with The Dalai Lama
Barkha Dutt, Updated: July 06, 2010 20:07 IST
...

Katherine: Just to let you know, your Holiness, first of all Happy Birthday, just, just 10-20 years?... please stay for another 75 years.

NDTV: Not just 10-20 years, stay with us for another 75 years.

The Dalai Lama: Oh that's a little long I think, it might be a little impossible, maybe a 100 years.

NDTV: A century mark.

The Dalai Lama: Recently I met the former President of India, a great scientist...

NDTV: Abdul Kalam.

The Dalai Lama: He mentioned that his father, when he passed away was 103, also I found in Tibetan settlements, I met Tibetans last year, two years back I think, I met these Tibetans who said their ages were 103, 104, like that, so it is possible now, so up to 105, 110 may be possible, some people say, some prediction by some Tibetan masters some 200 years ago, it was a prediction related to me, in that prediction it said that the person's longevity was 113, and in the early 60s I had a dream which indicated that my life span was 113, and 2 years back I received this prediction, both were same, also after confirming with my doctors after surgery, so I tell this story in large gatherings where there are a lot of people, sometimes some people in the audience believe that the Dalai Lama has some kind of a healing power, and as far as that is concerned, 2008 I think in October, I went through surgery, so that scientifically proves that Dalai Lama has no healing power, I think it's quite clear.

NDTV: I think you are the only spiritual leader who is honest enough to say that otherwise many godmen parade that they have healing powers.
...
Read more at: http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/in-conversation-with-the-dalai-lama-35955

On July 6th, 30 people gathered at GGBC for the Dalai Lama's birthday party: some stories about His Holiness, recitation of the Guru Puja, a birthday cake (actually made of cupcakes), and a reading of the extensive version of the Long Life Prayer for the Dalai Lama. We had the video playing of the earlier birthday events recorded in Dharamsala. See: http://dalailama.com/webcasts/post/115-his-holinesss-75th-birthday

Lucky People

2010-07-04T08:56:00.000-07:00

http://www.robotnine.com/2010/07/lucky-people-this-compilation-of-close.html

"Lucky People!
This Compilation Of Close Calls And Near Misses Will Leave You Smiling.
Be Sure To Watch All The Way To The Big Ending!"

One of our members writes: "it so beautifully demonstrates that if you have the karma to live, NOTHING will kill you. It's amazing, I've watched it a few times."

Discovering the Virtues of a Wandering Mind

2010-06-29T13:45:00.000-07:00

From The New York Times Science section June 29, 2010.

At long last, the doodling daydreamer is getting some respect.

Paste this Link in your browser to read all the article. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/science/29tier.html

In the past, daydreaming was often considered a failure of mental discipline, or worse. Freud labeled it infantile and neurotic. Psychology textbooks warned it could lead to psychosis. Neuroscientists complained that the rogue bursts of activity on brain scans kept interfering with their studies of more important mental functions.

....During waking hours, people’s minds seem to wander about 30 percent of the time, according to estimates by psychologists who have interrupted people throughout the day to ask what they’re thinking. If you’re driving down a straight, empty highway, your mind might be wandering three-quarters of the time, according to two of the leading researchers, Jonathan Schooler and Jonathan Smallwood of the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Dave: As a person attempting to meditate I found the estimate that the mind wanders 30% of the time a bit conservative. This is interesting work, from a western point of view. I think meditators have known about this all along. Stopping a wandering mind and concentrating is a lot of what meditating is all about. I think the researchers could benefit from looking into meditation.

Lay Vows

2010-06-24T11:00:00.000-07:00

Question: In our last Discovering Buddhism class we talked about Lay Vows. What are the Lay Vows and what are the different ways you can take them ? Thank You.

Have a look at this previous blog post on the Pratimoksha Vows.

What I was referring to as Lay Vows in class can also be called precepts. Lay Vows (Skt. Upasaka/Upasika; Tib. Genyen) are taken on the basis of the Refuge Vow. You should take them from a qualified master who is keeping pure morality.

Several of our students have taken them in recent years from Geshe Ngawang Dakpa, resident teacher for our San Francisco center, who is learned in scripture and protocol as well as being very stable in his own conduct.

If there are enough students who want to take them now, we can invite Geshe-la to give them at our center. Otherwise, you can connect with the program coordinator at Tse Chen Ling to go up there and take them.

Some masters only give all 5 precepts at once; others let you take the ones you are ready to take.

- Drimay

Have you ever wondered ... How to set up an Altar?

2010-06-18T18:42:00.000-07:00

by Cathy Young [re-published from previous GGBC newsletter]

Why set up an altar?

Our altars are set up to hold representations of the Buddha's enlightened body, speech and mind, which act to remind us of our goal in Buddhist practice to develop these qualities in oneself in order to reduce our mental afflictions and seek the ability to help all sentient beings.

Where do I set up my altar?

Since most of us do not have a separate shrine room for our practice, set your altar up anywhere that feels right.

Here are a few guidelines:

The spot should be clean and respectful.
When first setting up your altar it is good to clean the area really well and burn incense to purify it.
The size of the altar is not important.
Place the altar so it sits higher than your head as you sit in front of it.
If you put your altar in the bedroom, don't place it at the foot of the bed (where your feet would be pointing to it). It also needs to be higher than the bed.
The altar needs its own shelf or table; it should not do double duty with anything else.
The altar should be cleaned/dusted each day and kept very neat.
Offerings should/could be made daily.

What do I place on the altar and what do they represent?

At the heart of the altar place representations of the Buddha's body, speech and mind.

Buddha's enlightened body... represented by a statue. Usually Shakyamuni, the founder and source of the teachings of our time.
Buddha's enlightened speech... represented by some sort of scripture. It can be any sort of Dharma text. Lama Zopa Rinpoche recommends placing a copy of the Sutra of Golden Light on our altars.
Buddha's enlightened mind... represented by the Stupa of Enlightenment.

The statue of the Buddha is placed in the middle of the altar.
The scripture or Dharma text is placed to the left of the Buddha.
The Stupa of Enlightenment is placed to the right of the Buddha.

If you can elevate these three pieces so that the offerings sit below them, great. These three objects on the altar represent the Three Jewels of Refuge. By remembering their qualities and developing them, we reduce the negative qualities of attachment, hatred and ignorance, and increase positive qualities like faith, respect, devotion, and rejoicing.

References:

Virtual Tour of Tibetan Buddhist Altar
Tibetan Altar, Snow Lion, Gail Birnbaum
The Preliminary Practice of Altar Set-Up and Water Bowl Offerings, by Lama Zopa Rinpoche

The Nietzsche Family Circus

2010-06-15T11:25:00.000-07:00

Something just for fun, shared by one of our members: http://www.losanjealous.com/nfc/perm.php?c=38&q=132 (We're not saying here that we advocate the views of Nietzsche.)

Refresh

There are no facts, only interpretations.

The Nietzsche Family Circus pairs a randomized Family Circus cartoon with a randomized Friedrich Nietzsche quote.

What's Happening on May 27 - Saka Dawa - Enlightenment Day

2010-05-24T17:49:00.000-07:00

The anniversary of the Buddha's enlightenment and parinirvana is this Thursday, May 27th (this year), so some of our students were wondering whether anything special was happening at our center. Essentially, we will be having the usual Thursday-night class with a special practice towards the end.

This anniversary is calculated according to the lunar calendar and falls on the full moon of the 4th lunar month. Different countries adjust their lunar calendars in different ways, so this holy day --called Saka Dawa in Tibetan and Wesak in several South Asian languages--sometimes coincides and sometimes is one month off. Japan switched their calendar to solar and so they celebrate the Buddha's enlightenment on April 15th. The Tibetan Saka Dawa comes in either May or June. Read below.

Bill Coderre said...

According to a mailing from Vajrapani, May 27, this coming Thursday, is Saka Dawa, which commemorates Lord Buddha's birth, enlightenment, and parinirvana. As cited by Lama Zopa Rinpoche virtuous actions done on this day are multiplied one hundred million times!

Any suggestions for a prayer or practice to perform on that day, especially tying into the recent DB3 "Presenting the Path" course?

May 21, 2010 10:49 PM

Dionne Wilson said...

I think we should do something... why not?? [Ananda Dharma] is doing a Vajrasattva practice that evening. We should celebrate it in some way... maybe a group reading of the Sutra of Golden Light? If we have a good sized group and each person took a page or two, it wouldn't take that long. I think if we all read it as a group it would be a bit much, right? The PDF I have of it is 104 pages but the type is large and the format is such that there isn't very much type on most of the pages. Any thoughts??

May 22, 2010 4:18 PM

Reply from Thursday-night class instructor, Emily Hsu:

In general I like the idea of doing some special practices on Sakadawa, but given the recent breaks that we've had in class I'd rather not cancel the normal Bodhisattva Conduct class this week. We just had a two-week break last month and then another one a couple of weeks ago, and I think that a lot of interruptions interferes with the momentum of the class as well as hurts the student's learning. And Drimay and I both agree that having class is virtuous enough.

So what I propose is to have class as usual for the first half and then do some Vajrasattva practice toward the end after the break.

But for people who would rather do a full evening of Vajrasattva practice, a puja, or something else, there are a number of other events available in the area that day.

Have you ever wondered ... Why We Prostrate?

2010-05-15T11:51:00.000-07:00

re-published from November 2007 newsletter
compiled by Cathy Young

When we first come to a Buddhist ceremony, visit a Lama, or visit a Buddhist center you may notice that many folks stand in front of a Buddha image and drop to the floor. What they are doing is a prostration. They place their hands together, with their thumbs cupped inside the hands, at their heart. This is called the prostration mudra. They then place the thus joined hands at the crown of the head. Then with finger tips still pointing upwards they touch their prayer hands to forehead, then the throat, lastly bringing them down to rest at the heart. Then placing their hands flat on the floor, go down to their knees touching their forehead to the floor. Only to stand back up again. Some even lay flat on the ground, bringing their prayer hands over the back of their heads, coming up to the knees and then fully upright. Only to start the whole procedure over again till they have finished 3 rounds of this devotional gymnastic. This is the act of “Prostration”.

The forehead to floor prostration is called the “Five-Limb Prostration”, because all four limbs and the forehead are touching the floor.
“Full length Prostration” is when the entire body is stretched out on the floor.
The shortest form of prostration is to place your hands in prostration mudra at your heart.

Prostrating at the beginning of teachings is a gesture of respect for the teacher and/or the teachings, and it help to subdue one's pride so that we can be open enough to listen. If we sit down to a teaching full of pride, we won't be able to learn anything, and in our minds we may even criticize the teacher or teaching.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche says: When you put your palms together to a statue of Buddha, a picture of Buddha, or whenever you see a holy object, you immediately get ten benefits:
1. You will achieve rebirth in the king’s family, you will have wealth and power, and you can become king. If you were a king, you would have a lot of influence to benefit so many sentient beings. You could make charity of your wealth to many sentient beings and those beings would listen to what you say. In this way, you would cause so many beings to meet the Dharma. You could teach them the right ways to practice, and to abandon wrong things that harm themselves and other sentient beings. You could give them correct wisdom.
2. You will achieve the extensive form. That means you will have a perfect body with complete sense faculties, as I mentioned before. If you have a perfect body, there are no obstacles to whatever Dharma you wish to practice, such as taking vows, taking ordination.
3. All the people surrounding you, maids or servants people in the office or your family, will be perfect. Their minds will be harmonized to yours, so there won’t be any fighting or difficulties, and they will do exactly as you like according to your wishes. So your practice of benefiting other sentient beings becomes even more beneficial, because you have the help and support of people around you.
4. You will be able to make extensive offerings to the Guru, Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.
5. You will receive respect and service from others.
6. You will be able to listen extensively to the Dharma.
7. You will have extensive devotion. Prostrations cause us to achieve devotion. without devotion to the Guru, without faith, you cannot receive blessings from the Guru. Therefore, you cannot achieve the realizations of the path to enlightenment. Without devotion to the Triple Gem, you cannot achieve their qualities within yourself, the qualities of Buddha, the qualities of Dharma, and the qualities of the Sanga. Being without faith is like a vehicle without fuel - unable to function; or like everything in a city not functioning and then collapsing when there is no electricity. Devotion is an extremely important foundation.
8. You will have a very good memory and a clear mind. If you want good memory, it means doing a lot of prostration! If you don’t want to become a vegetable or suffer from Alzheimer’s, do a lot of prostration.
9. You will achieve extensive wisdom.
10. You will achieve extensive realizations, all the way up to enlightenment. You will achieve the complete, perfect quality of cessation, the perfect quality of realization. In the case of the Lesser Vehicle, you will achieve the right-seeing path, the path of meditation, the path of no more learning, freeing you from the cycle of death and rebirth, old age, sickness, and death. In the case of Highest Tantra, the clear light of meaning, you will be completely free. You will cease the disturbing-thought obscuration and achieve the pure illusory body.

Wow, all that from putting your palms together. As Martha Stewart would say, “It’s a good thing!”

Geshe Loden, in “Path to Enlightenment”, says: “Prostration is paying homage.... It is a powerful form of body language by which we generate and demonstrate respect, humility and devotion to the holy objects, such as Buddha's and gurus, who are the inspiration for our practice of Dharma. The real purpose of prostration is to train the mind with devotional attitudes. Prostration is a powerful method to overcome pride. Pride will cause many to have a strong resistance to bowing down before any other being, including the Buddha. The real purpose of prostration, however, is to train the mind in attitudes of devotion which are a source of happiness, not to grovel at the feet of someone else."
Geshe Loden continues: "By physically bowing before the field of merit (or teacher, buddha image, etc.), we make prostrations of the body. By praising them and speaking of their qualities we prostrate with our speech. We prostrate mentally by holding an attitude of respect, faith and devotion and reflecting on the good qualities of the Buddha's, gurus and holy objects. We can prostrate body, speech, and mind together by bowing before the field of merit and reflecting on their qualities as we recite a prayer of praise...."
Now that we have established what prostration is and why do it, the question most often asked is “What if I can’t physically do a prostration?”. The good news is, you can do them mentally. I was recently a participant of a purification ceremony called a Nyung Nae which required a lot of prostration. Well, by the second day my knees would no longer allow me to physically prostrate. At which point our leader, the amazing Venerable René said to go ahead and do mental prostrations. He also said it would be good to stand (if possible) while mentally doing them. Between you and me, I don’t think mental prostrations have quite the bang as doing them physically.

However, our teachers tell us over and over to be sincere and do the best you can. The practice of prostration is powerful at any level. If you can remember to generate the mind of bodhichitta while prostrating this will ensure that your practice leads to enlightenment and thus enables you to be of the greatest benefit to others. I have only briefly touched on the benefits of this simple and important practice. So one way or another, get out there and start prostrating!

I asked Emily Hsu, if there was a difference between mental and physical prostrations. Below is her gracious reply.

"Your question about a mental prostration vs. a physical prostration. I haven't found anything in the texts about this, so I'll just share some of my own thoughts with you. In general the mind is what determines the power of a particular practice. It is what we do with the mind that has the power to purify and subdue the mind. If we do a prostration physically but our mind is distracted or full of pride, then the prostration will have little strength to purify the mind. In contrast, if we do a mental prostration correctly, with a focused mind, genuine humility and regret for our negative actions, with deep respect, truly bowing down with the heart, (and ideally with an understanding of emptiness), then this would have a tremendous power.

"So I think that you could say that a mental prostration could be just as powerful as a physical prostration if it is done purely. However, I think that the physical prostration really helps us get into the proper state of mind, physically bowing down, becoming lower than someone, surrendering, showing humility. It might be more difficult to generate this same state of mind without the physical aspect. But if we are able to do a mental prostration with the same degree of humility, regret, and surrender, then I would say that it may be just as powerful as a physical prostration. But we need to be really honest with ourselves to see if the same state of mind is induced merely mentally or if we also need the physical side. I would recommend that if people are not able to do a prostration physically, at least try to put your hands together and bow your head."

Source: The Preliminary Practice of Prostrations, to the Thirty-Five Confession Buddhas. Translation and Instructions by Lama Zopa Rinpoche FPMT Practice Booklet

Oceans - Disney Nature Official Trailer 2010

2010-05-12T15:36:00.000-07:00

Attention students of DB3--Presenting the Path--who are meditating this week on the Precious Human Rebirth:

I haven't seen this movie yet, but it might be a good way for you to get a sense of life as a sea creature--how many there are and how difficult their lives are.

Everything that we see is a shadow

2010-05-10T10:48:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite blogs is The Imaginary Foundation, which calls itself, "a think tank from Switzerland that does experimental research on new ways of thinking and the power of the imagination." (They also sell humorous T shirts.)

Recently, they blogged an astute quotation that turns out to be from Martin Luther King:

Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.

- comment by user

Two Collections

2010-04-22T10:08:00.000-07:00

I have another question on "A Short Daily Meditation Practice."

In the section "The Power of Truth", line three mentions "the completed two collections". What are the two collections ?

Posted by Anonymous to GGBC Talk at April 21, 2010 12:04 AM

______________________________

The two collections are the collections of
1. merit
2. wisdom
Or as Lama Zopa Rinpoche says:
1. the merit of virtue, and
2. the merit of wisdom

Virtue/merit is the cause for the form (rupakaya) of a buddha, i.e., your own future form as a buddha. And wisdom is the cause for the mind (dharmakaya) of a buddha, i.e., your own future buddha mind.

- Drimay

Pratimoksha Vows

2010-04-13T21:49:00.000-07:00

Anonymous said...

I have a question on "A Short Daily Meditation Practise."

In the section "The Graded Path to Enlightenment," there is a reference to "pratimoksha vows" - (Verse 6, Line 3).

What are these vows ?

How do I find out more about them ?

Thank You.

April 13, 2010 9:27 PM

Response from Drimay:
I am so glad that you are looking at this practice. Pratimoksha is a Sanskrit term which literally means 'individual liberation.' Pratimoksha Vows include various levels of monastic vows (for monks and nuns) as well as both temporary and lifelong vows for lay Buddhists. Householders (people who are not monks or nuns) can take a set of eight precepts for one day (24 hours). They can also take five precepts for life; namely, 1) not killing, 2) not stealing, 3) not committing sexual misconduct, 4) not lying, and 5) not taking intoxicants. Some masters let people choose which ones of the five they want to take; other masters only allow taking all five or none at all.

Even if you haven't taken these vows, you can think about the ten non-virtues as a checklist for what to avoid. For example, sometimes you might be reading a confession prayer where it says to review your pratimoksha vows, so you can review the ten non-virtues.

Keeping the pratimoksha vows well--i.e., maintaining basic ethical conduct--is the basis for all the higher sets of vows--bodhisattva and tantric.

Thank you for your question.

- Drimay

Bodhisattva on the Pier

2010-04-06T15:40:00.000-07:00

Why Tara's Foot is Off the Cushion: Ready to Spring Into Action

Bibi is a Maltese-Shitzu who was blown off a pier by gale-force winds. Raden Soemawinata was on the pier to scatter his grandmother's ashes. The photos in this article capture this example of compassion in action.

Rebirth and Japanese Primatology

2010-03-15T21:54:00.000-07:00

What is a link to a blog post entitled "Rousseau Meets Japanese Primatology" doing here?

This excerpt might explain:

"Plato’s 'great chain of being', which places humans above all other animals, is absent from Eastern philosophy. In most Eastern belief systems, the human soul can reincarnate in many shapes and forms, so all living things are spiritually connected...The fact that primates, our closest animal relatives, are native to many Eastern countries, has only helped to strengthen this belief in the interconnectedness of life. Unlike European fables, which are populated with ravens, rabbits, foxes and the like, Eastern folk tales and poetry are laced with references to gibbons and monkeys. The three wise men, or magi, of the Bible are matched in the East by the three wise macaques of Tendai Buddhism (of “See no Evil, Hear no Evil, Speak no Evil” fame).

Feeling humility towards animals affects the way we study them. If we believe the soul can move from monkey to human and back, there are no grounds for resisting the idea that we are historically connected. So, it’s hardly surprising that evolution was never controversial in the East: it was a logical and welcome thought."

"The Tibetans are Like the Na'vi"

2010-02-26T09:54:00.000-08:00

Robert Thurman asserts that the "Tibetans are like the Na'vi" in this New York Times article about the 2010 Tibet House concert at Carnegie Hall.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/25/arts/music/25benefit.html?8ur=&emc=ura1&nl=

Excerpt:

"... the Tibetan cause has become a regular topic of American public discourse, and the Dalai Lama a familiar face around the world. In 1989 he won the Nobel Peace Prize and is now a regular presence in the mainstream news media...He may be dressed in robes and sandals, but his organization is tech-savvy: on Monday an official Dalai Lama Twitter account began sending out regular news updates.

As Professor Thurman sees it, the visibility of the concerts and the Dalai Lama’s example of nonviolence have drawn worldwide sympathy for the Tibetan cause and put pressure on the Chinese government to reconcile.

'The Chinese desperately need spirituality,” he said. “They would benefit from the Dalai Lama’s representations and his walking the talk of Buddhist ethics. So as a peacemaker and as a religious leader he likes to have a hand in China.'"

Q: Are Chenrezig and Avalokitesvara the same Buddha ?...

2010-02-23T10:43:00.000-08:00

"Are Chenrezig and Avalokitesvara the same Buddha ?" - Anonymous

Yes, they are the same. Chenrezig is a Tibetan name and Avalokiteshvara is Sanskrit.

Avalokiteshvara is a compound of Avalokita + Ishvara; the full Tibetan translation of this compound is Chenrezig-Wangchug.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche translates the name Chenrezig with phrases like 'loving-eye looking one.' The suffix Ishvara/Wangchug means 'powerful.' Another term for this same buddha is Arya Lokeshvara, i.e., Loka+Ishvara.

Guan-yin/Kuan-yin (Chinese) and Kannon (Japanese) are also the same buddha/deity, although the iconography and the perception of the gender can be quite different.

How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer

2010-02-17T11:52:00.000-08:00

I've been reading a book called How We Decide. It's not a how-to book with instructions about decision-making; it's a book about the neurological aspects of decisions--what goes on in the brain when we make decisions and the neuroscience behind good and bad decision-making. The author, Jonah Lehrer, makes the typical mistake of so many scientists and science writers of mixing up and interchanging the terms 'mind' and 'brain'. But if you can forgive him for that, it's a good read.

Here are some of my favorite parts.

Regarding a study by a researcher named Philip Tetlock on the performance of so-called pundits:

"Although they were paid for their keen insights into world affairs, they tended to perfrom worse than random chance. Most of Tetlock's questions had three possible answers; on average, the pundits had selected the right answer less then 33 percent of the time. In other words, a dart-throwing chimp would have beaten the vast majority of professionals. Tetlock also found that the most famous pundits in his study tended to be the least accurate, consistently churning out overblown and overconfident forecasts. Eminence was a handicap.
"Why were these pundits (especially the prominent ones) so bad at forecasting the future? The central error diagnosed by Tetlock was the sin of certainty, which led the 'experts' to mistakenly impose a top-down solution on their decision-making processes."

And later, reflecting on a breakdown in Israeli military intelligence leading to the Yom Kippur War:

"The only way to counteract the bias for certainty is to encourage some inner dissonance. We must force ourselves to think about the information we don't want to think about, to pay attention to the data that disturbs our entrenched beliefs."

Lehrer has some fascinating things to say about how emotions can be useful advisers, giving us access to unconscious insight and experience--things we know, but we don't know we know. But we must supervise these various parts of the mind, not letting either the rational or the emotional mind take over completely.

Lehrer says,

"The best way to make sure that you are using your brain properly is to study your brain at work, to listen to the argument inside your head.

"Why is thinking about thinking so important? First it helps us steer clear of stupid errors. You can't avoid loss aversion unless you know that the mind treats losses differently than gains. And you'll probably think too much about buying a house unless you know that such a strategy will lead you to buy the wrong property. The mind is full of flaws, but they can be outsmarted."

And to give us hope:

"... the best decision-makers don't despair. Instead, they become students of error, determined to learn from what went wrong. They think about what they could have done differently so that the next time their neurons will know what to do. This is the most astonishing thing about the human brain: it can always improve itself. Tomorrow, we can make better decisions."

How to Reverse the Effects of Karma

2010-02-07T21:31:00.000-08:00

I had a question on how to reverse the effects of karma.

I am currently suffering as a result of an action I commited less than 24 hours ago. I followed suffering back to an action and further back to a thought. By choosing to view a person in a certain way I behaved in a way that I now see is very very unkind. I deeply regret my action.

My question is what can I do now to undo the effects of my action ?

- Anonymous

Hmm. I started to answer this in terms the traditional practice called the Four Opponent Powers which is a method for purifying karma, i.e., the imprints of actions which ripen into results. However, upon closer reading of your question, I see that you say you have already experienced the effect (result). That would mean that the karma has already ripened. It's finished. You can't purify results; you can only purify the causes, the karmic seeds before they have ripened.

It is possible though that the result you are experiencing right now is from a karma committed a while ago, maybe in a previous lifetime, and not the one you did just 24 hours ago. In that case the 24-hour-ago karma still needs to be purified.

Or it could be that you have just stumbled onto something that is a pattern, a habit of yours, so it's still worth purifying.

If the suffering is continuing, notice that it's not just one big monolithic experience, but rather a series of micro-experiences, each one the ripening of another cause. So hurry up and purify the karma that hasn't ripened yet. There's always a chance to change the situation.

As for the Four Opponent Powers. You've already done the first one; namely, regret. Regret is the same emotion that you would have if you just found out that you have drunk poison. You would feel that you urgently need to get it out of your system before it harms you.

The other three powers are:

Reliance (Dependence)

Remedy

Resolve (Refraining)

See text of the practice of the Four Opponent Powers here:

http://www.lamayeshe.com/index.php?sect=article&id=394

Best wishes and thank you for your question.

- Drimay

Record-size jade Buddha arrives in Escondido

2010-02-05T14:41:00.000-08:00

Cheyenne Sun-Hill, the jeweler mentioned in this story has a connection to Land of Medicine Buddha; his mother Morganne is the bookstore manager there. This is an interesting story, involving Lama Zopa Rinpoche and one of the FPMT projects in Australia.

Jade Buddha for Universal Peace Home Page: http://jadebuddha.org.au/en/

Tour Dates and Locations: http://jadebuddha.org.au/en/tour_dates/

It looks like the Jade Buddha will be in San Jose in September-October 2010.

Record-size jade Buddha arrives in Escondido

By GARY WARTH - gwarth@nctimes.com | Posted: February 3, 2010 9:15 pm

The world's largest Buddha carved from gem-quality jade arrived Wednesday in Escondido to begin a two-week stay that includes a Sunday unveiling ceremony expected to attract up to 3,000 people.

"It has an enormous impact," Ian Green said about how people react to seeing the sculpture, officially called the Jade Buddha for Universal Peace. "It was in Vietnam three months, and in that time 4 million people came to see it. People were in tears."

Green is director of the Great Stupa of Universal Compassion in Bendigo, Australia, which commissioned the Buddha carving and organized a worldwide fundraising tour that includes Escondido as its first American stop.

The Buddha, consecrated in December by the Dalai Lama, arrived at Escondido's Phap Vuong Buddhist Monastery by truck about 6 p.m. Wednesday after a nine-hour-plus customs delay in Long Beach. A small crowd that gathered for its arrival included Buddhist monks dressed in orange robes, who bowed in respect as the container doors opened to reveal an alabaster throne and the statue, wrapped in a protective covering.

At 4 tons and nearly 9 feet high, the sculpture is the largest Buddha ever carved from gem-quality dark-green nephrite jade, although a larger one is being carved in Vietnam from light-colored jadeite.

Its final destination will be the Great Stupa, which Green explained is a mound-like building that symbolizes the Buddha's mind and contains relics. Buddha, which means "enlightened one" in Sanskrit, is the name that the spiritual teacher Siddhartha Gautama was given by his followers in about 500 B.C. and is the basis for a religion followed by 325 million people worldwide.

The jade Buddha statue was completed in 2008 after two years of carving in Thailand. The $250,000 cost of the carving and the initial $1 million purchase of the jade itself is being funded by donations and sales during the Buddha's worldwide tour.

The creation of the Buddha began with an unexpected call in 2003 from Cheyenne Sun-Hill, a jeweler in Santa Cruz.

"He spoke like a 'dude,' like out of a movie," Green said.

Sun-Hill told Green he was a jeweler who had heard of a large jade stone discovered in Canada, where a high-quality translucent nephrite called polar jade was discovered in the late 1990s. A Buddhist, Sun-Hill had been trying to find a monastery interested in using the 18-ton stone called "Polar Pride" for a Buddha carving.

"I liked him," Green said about his meeting with Sun-Hill. "He was a fun guy, but a devoted Buddhist, too."

Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Green's spiritual master at the Australian stupa, also took a liking to Sun-Hill. After throwing Tibetan Mo dice, which are used for divination, Green said his master told him the stone "must be made into a jade Buddha as a holy object to be offered to the world."

[Read the rest of the story and see pictures at:]

http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/escondido/article_6e4c49e7-e350-5ce7-b8a2-a2bda00c7575.html

Trapdoor Books Publishes "Buddhist Thriller"

2010-01-29T09:56:00.001-08:00

Trapdoor Books claims that "geeks and Tibetan Buddhist (will) collide this week" after the release of The Magician of Lhasa, "the world's first Buddhist thriller." A brief review appears in Shambhala SunSpace (text below) and the author of The Flatbed Sutra of Louie Wing suggests that the reader not "start this book before bedtime—you just might be up all night."

In Brief: The Magician of Lhasa

The Magician of Lhasa
By David Michie
Trapdoor Books, 2009; 290 pp., $14.99 (paper)

In this Buddhist thriller the stakes are high. China is invading Tibet and, in order to save two ancient texts from destruction, a young novice monk, Tenzin Dorje, carries them across the Himalayas. Paralleling his dangerous journey are the present-day challenges of Matt Lester, a scientist who finds his nanotech project mysteriously moved from London to Los Angeles and his relationship with his fiancée in crisis. The tension mounts for both men and, just when it comes to a head, their lives collide. The Magician of Lhasa illuminates the complimentary nature of science and Buddhism, and is woven through and through with dharma. David Michie is also the author of three mainstream thrillers published in United Kingdom (From the Shambhala Sun Space)

Newly Painted Medicine Buddha Statue at GGBC

2010-01-28T14:04:00.000-08:00

When our new location was inaugurated in the Fall of 2007, Lama Zopa Rinpoche gave us a sandalwood image of Medicine Buddha and suggested that we get it gold-leafed. Our retiring director, Linda Hoeber just recently arranged and sponsored that to be done by the resident artist at Land of Medicine Buddha, Gelek Sherpa. Isn't it beautiful?

Gelek went above and beyond, adding the aura in back with textured relief, repairing the stem of the medicinal plant and painting the lotus base.

The newly painted and gold-leafed statue, which is about 15" in height, is now installed on the side altar at our center.

Photo by Dionne Wilson, January 2010.

Mandala lecture this Saturday at Stanford

2010-01-28T09:42:00.000-08:00

TT & WF Chao Lectures on Buddhist Art 2009-10

Christian Luczanits
Visiting Professor, Religious Studies

“The Tibetan Buddhist Mandala
and Its Evolution”

Saturday, January 30, 2010
1:00-4:00 p.m.
Building 200, Room 02

Stanford University

The mandala is one of the most intriguing artistic expressions of Tibetan Buddhism, where it occurs in almost uncountable forms, formats and functions. Nevertheless, despite its many forms, its multivalent symbolism and its usage at different levels of Buddhist practice, the mandala of the Tibetan tradition is already highly systematized and incorporates a number of conventions.
Taking the standard Tibetan depictions of the mandala as a point of departure, this lecture considers the history, meaning and relationship of its component parts. Using the earliest depictions of mandalas in Buddhist contexts from India to Dunhuang a number of principles crucial for understanding the Tibetan mandala can be deduced. A comparison of these mandala depictions and their descriptions in early tantric sources further reveals the gradual evolution of the mandala until it reaches its systematized form in Tibet and Nepal.

Christian Luczanits, Visiting Professor of Religious Studies during winter 2010, is a specialist in Buddhist art, with a research focus on India and Tibet. He is the author of Buddhist Sculpture in Clay: Early Western Himalayan Art, Late 10th to Early 13th Centuries (2004) and other works on the western Himalaya, as well as numerous contributions to the literature on Buddhist art in both Indian and Tibetan cultural contexts. A graduate of the University of Vienna, Prof. Luczanits has taught at Vienna, Freie Universität, and U.C. Berkeley.

GGBC folks at Long Life Puja in San Francisco

2010-01-23T18:35:00.000-08:00

(Double Rainbow that appeared as we drove up to the puja on Saturday morning--a very auspicious sign. Photo by Ven. Tenzin Tsomo.)

Six of us from GGBC attended the long life puja (ceremony) for Geshe Ngawang Dakpa at our San Francisco center (Tse Chen Ling) today. Assistant Director Dave Jeffords did a good job formally representing us by helping to make the body-speech-mind offering to Geshe-la and by receiving a kata (offering scarf) at the end of the puja when Geshe-la acknowledge the representatives of each of the center.

(Pictures of Dave by Dionne Wilson.)

The center was just pleasantly full of students from around the Greater Bay Area ranging from San Anselmo to Santa Cruz. Geshe Norbu of Ananda Center was the umze (chant leader). The puja itself--including tsog and the extra verses that are especially for long life--took about 3 hours. Tse Chen Ling offered lunch to everyone at the end.

Dionne, from GGBC, took pictures with her professional camera. See her gallery at: http://picasaweb.google.com/mousegunn/LLPujaForGGBC#

Geshe Dakpa will resume his once-a-month teachings at GGBC on February 13 with the topic "Seven-Point Mind Training."

Notice How Your Mind Constructs the World You Live In

2010-01-20T18:02:00.000-08:00

This week’s meditation in Drimay's class "Mind and its Potential" asks us to "Notice how your mind is an active participant in constructing your world" as you go about your daily affairs. The article below looks at all the different ideas people around the globe have imputed on to the movie 'Avatar'. It illustrates clearly, I think, that the mind is an active participant in constructing our world.

January 20, 2010 New York Times

You Saw What in ‘Avatar’? Pass Those Glasses! By DAVE ITZKOFF

If you thought that “Avatar” was just a high-tech movie about a big-hearted tough guy saving the beguiling natives of a distant moon, you might want to check the prescription on your 3-D glasses.

Since its release in December, James Cameron’s science-fiction epic has broken box office records and grabbed two Golden Globe awards for best director and best dramatic motion picture. But it has also found itself under fire from a growing list of interest groups, schools of thought and entire nations that have protested its message (as they see it), its morals (as they interpret them) and its philosophy (assuming it has one).

Over the last month, it has been criticized by social and political conservatives who bristle at its depictions of religion and the use of military force; feminists who feel that the male avatar bodies are stronger and more muscular than their female counterparts; antismoking advocates who object to a character who lights up cigarettes; not to mention fans of Soviet-era Russian science fiction; the Chinese; and the Vatican. This week the authorities in China announced that the 2-D version of the film would be pulled from most theaters there to make way for a biography of Confucius.

That so many groups have projected their issues onto “Avatar” suggests that it has burrowed into the cultural consciousness in a way that even its immodest director could not have anticipated. Its detractors agree that it is more than a humans-in-space odyssey — even if they do not agree on why that is so.

“Some of the ways people are reading it are significant of Cameron’s intent, and some are just by-products of what people are thinking about,” said Rebecca Keegan, the author of “The Futurist: The Life and Films of James Cameron.” “It’s really become this Rorschach test for your personal interests and anxieties.”

The “Avatar” camp isn’t endorsing any particular interpretation, but is happy to let others read the ink blots. “Movies that work are movies that have themes that are bigger than their genre,” Jon Landau, a producer of the film, said in a telephone interview. “The theme is what you leave with and you leave the plot at the theater.”

Mr. Cameron might have opened the door to multiple readings with his declaration that “Avatar” was an environmental parable. In a news conference in London in December, he said he saw the movie “as a broader metaphor, not so intensely politicized as some would make it, but rather that’s how we treat the natural world as well.”

In a column for the Christian entertainment Web site movieguide.org, David Outten wrote that “Avatar” maligned capitalism, promoted animism over monotheism and overdramatized the possibility of environmental catastrophe on earth. At another site that offers a conservative critique of the entertainment industry, bighollywood.breitbart.com, John Nolte wrote that the film was “a thinly disguised, heavy-handed and simplistic sci-fi fantasy/allegory critical of America from our founding straight through to the Iraq War.”

Not surprisingly, the religious overtones of “Avatar” were of interest in Vatican City, where the film was reviewed by Gaetano Vallini, a cultural critic for L’Osservatore Romano, the daily newspaper of the Holy See.

In his review, Mr. Vallini wrote that for all of the “stupefying, enchanting technology” in the film, it “gets bogged down by a spiritualism linked to the worship of nature.”

In a telephone interview, Mr. Vallini said his widely reported review might have been overemphasized because of the publication it appeared in. His assignment to write about “Avatar” was not an attempt to advance a particular agenda, he said, but rather “a compulsory choice” given the anticipation surrounding the film.

Ultimately, Mr. Vallini said, “the movie doesn’t provoke many emotions,” and its observations about militarism, imperialism and the environment “are just sketched out as themes.”

“It is Cameron’s narrative choice,” he continued, “as he is aware of the fact that the visual aspect widely compensates for this lack.”

Other viewers say that issues of imperialism are central to the film. In a post on the science-fiction Web site io9.com, Annalee Newitz, the site’s editor in chief, wrote that “Avatar” depicted “the essence of the white guilt fantasy, laid bare,” a dimension she said it shared with movies from “The Last Samurai” to “District 9.” (Critics have also said that “Avatar” copied story elements from the movies “Dances With Wolves,” “Pocahontas” and “Ferngully: The Last Rainforest”; the Poul Anderson novella “Call Me Joe”; and the “Noon Universe” book series by the Russian authors Arkady and Boris Strugatsky.)

In movies like “Avatar,” Ms. Newitz wrote, “humans are the cause of alien oppression and distress,” until a white man “switches sides at the last minute, assimilating into the alien culture and becoming its savior.”

Ms. Newitz said in an interview that since publishing that post, she had heard from readers around the world who disagreed with her interpretation, which she appreciated. “Just the idea of whiteness is a local phenomenon,” she said. “It’s certainly not in parts of the world where white people are not dominant.”

In China, for example, the film’s imperialist themes have upset audiences who believe that the plight of the aliens, the Na’vi, who are forced from their home by human industrialists, is a parable for Chinese people whose dwellings have been forcibly razed by local governments to make way for new construction. As one pseudonymous commenter quoted on Chinasmack.com wrote: “China’s demolition crews must go sue Old Cameron, sue him for piracy/copyright infringement.”

There is, at least, consensus among “Avatar” critics that good science fiction operates on an allegorical level. In novels like “Dune,” films like “Star Wars” or television series like the recent “Battlestar Galactica,” Ms. Newitz said the fantastical elements of these works offer a place of “narrative safety” to contemplate real-life issues like environmental decay, totalitarianism and torture.

“There’s something very satisfying about being able to think through those issues without feeling you’re actually taking a political position,” she said. “Because you’re not – you’re just talking about stories.”

Over the breadth of Mr. Cameron’s career, he has been attracted to outsize themes. Ms. Keegan said that it was possible to read “The Terminator,” his breakthrough 1984 movie, as an anti-technology polemic, an anti-war film or a modern gloss on the birth of Jesus.

“Or,” she said, “ you could just watch it as a movie where Arnold Schwarzenegger stomps around like a robot.”

Paradoxically, the pileup of arguments surrounding “Avatar” might have made a sympathetic figure out of the outspoken Mr. Cameron, who now finds himself in the underdog position of having to account for every possible message in his ostensible popcorn film.

“Often to his detriment, he says exactly what he thinks,” Ms. Keegan said. “All of that makes him seem outside the Hollywood bubble, even though on paper he couldn’t be more of an insider.”

Ms. Newitz, however, was not sympathetic to Mr. Cameron, who wanted to make a singularly ambitious film, and may have gotten his wish. “It’s like, do you feel bad for Obama?” she said. “He’s the president — he kind of asked for it.”

Buddhism at Work:

2010-01-17T21:28:00.000-08:00

Dave Simpson said...

Buddhism at Work:

I was mad yesterday. I didn’t get a gig that I wanted. Three of company’s managers wanted to move forward, but one put the kibosh on it. I mentally blamed the one fellow for being too narrow-minded and having a hidden agenda. But is that true? I really don’t know, but yesterday my angry mind told me it was true. But before I did anything stupid, I took a step back.

Usually when I want something, I’m apt to overestimate the good qualities of the object or situation. For example, I was primarily focusing on the potential income from the gig, and downplayed the potential downside of the opportunity. This exaggeration of qualities, both good and bad, is something most of us experience when we want something. Our judgment can get cloudy, and our pursuit of gain, pleasure, praise, or fame, leads us towards actions that can harm others (including ourselves).

Of course, the opposite is true when I don’t want something, or someone has blocked my goal achievement. I can exaggerate their undesirable qualities, and nurture a resentment, or at least, manufacture righteous indignation. This state of mind also clouds judgment, and often leads to harm, such as sending a silly email assigning blame to someone else.

When I stepped back and looked at my emotions and mindset last night, I examined my “wants” from the gig, and realized it was gong to be a tougher gig than I thought. I also imagined the manager who did not want to commit as someone who was bright, capable, and perhaps saw something in the proposal that I didn’t see. I actually began to appreciate him a bit more. My mind settled in to a restful state, and today, and can begin to strategize on how to win future gigs with this firm, with clarity of mind, and focus.

January 11, 2010 3:43 PM

Buddhism beats depression

2010-01-05T09:30:00.000-08:00

Should the health service sponsor Buddhist techniques to beat depression? Why not, if they work

Ed Halliwell guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 5 January 2010 11.42 GMT

2010 could be the year that mindfulness meditation goes mainstream in the UK. It's already endorsed as a treatment for depression by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence, and today a major mental health charity is calling for meditation-based courses to be offered much more widely on the NHS.

more at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/jan/05/religion-buddhism

Meditation Timer

2010-01-02T21:23:00.000-08:00

Check out this online timer for your meditation session. Set however many minutes you want to meditate:

http://www.berkeleymonastery.org/meditate.asp

Medicine Buddha Sadhana for Ultimate Healing Class 3

2009-12-14T16:23:00.000-08:00

This link is for participants in the Ultimate Healing course, December 2009. This Medicine Buddha practice is the meditation homework for class 3. It's in the Ultimate Healing book as well.

This pdf is laid out to be printed back-t0-back and folded into a booklet. It can be a little tricky getting the reverse side printed the right way around and the instructions vary according to the printer you are using. Good luck.
http://www.fpmt.org/HOPE!/letter/booklet/medbudltrbklt.pdf

This version is "reader" style, which can be easier to print, but doesn't fold into a neat booklet:
http://www.fpmt.org/HOPE!/letter/reader/medbudltrrdr.pdf

Social scientists build case for 'survival of the kindest'

2009-12-10T10:45:00.000-08:00

Social scientists build case for 'survival of the kindest'

ScienceDaily (2009-12-09) -- Researchers are challenging long-held beliefs that human beings are wired to be selfish. In a wide range of studies, social scientists are amassing a growing body of evidence to show we are evolving to become more compassionate and collaborative in our quest to survive and thrive.

In contrast to "every man for himself" interpretations of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, Dacher Keltner, a UC Berkeley psychologist and author of "Born to be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life," and his fellow social scientists are building the case that humans are successful as a species precisely because of our nurturing, altruistic and compassionate traits.

They call it "survival of the kindest."

more at: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091208155309.htm#

The Hidden Message in Water

2009-12-09T19:03:00.000-08:00

We discussed this book in class two of "Ultimate Healing" after we did "Chenrezig Healing Meditation". This meditation is in chapter 21, pages 220-222,in the book "Ultimate Healing", by Lama Zopa. The Hidden Message book has evidence supporting the meditation.

"The Hidden Message in Water", By Masaru Emoto
Available on Amazon

Product Description
This book has the potential to profoundly transform your world view. Using high-speed photography, Dr. Masaru Emoto discovered that crystals formed in frozen water reveal changes when specific, concentrated thoughts are directed toward them. He found that water from clear springs and water that has been exposed to loving words shows brilliant, complex, and colorful snowflake patterns. In contrast, polluted water, or water exposed to negative thoughts, forms incomplete, asymmetrical patterns with dull colors. The implications of this research create a new awareness of how we can positively impact the earth and our personal health.

Vajrasattva Retreat and the Relics at Vajrapani Inst.

2009-12-09T16:13:00.000-08:00

I wanted to pass on more information about the Vajrasattva Retreat and the relics, as a few questions came up during your Ultimate Healing class at GGBC.

- The relics will be here during the Vajrasattva Retreat. The relics will also be available for viewing / practice on Dec 26 from 10am to 4pm.

- Partial attendance is allowed for the Vajrasattva Retreat, for people who can't come for the entire duration.

Jennifer

Vajrapani Institute Office
(831) 338-6654
10am-6pm, Pacific Time - 7 days a week
http://www.vajrapani.org

Karma Activity: protecting living beings

2009-12-04T16:53:00.000-08:00

Today I did something that was related to the 'homework' this week from our Ulimate Healing course--the exercise in protecting the welfare of living beings.

I hung up reflective streamers and whirligigs around the Memorial Shrine Temple to stop birds from flying into the windows. I also shopped for decals that are translucent to humans, but show up well to birds--a fun example of the emptiness of the object, making the object appear differently to different observers--but I couldn't find any locally and we'll just have to get them online. (Search for "bird window decals" or "stop birds flying into windows" if you have the same problem.)

There are various reasons that a person might do something like preventing birds from flying into the window. One is compassion for the birds. Another is that you don't like cleaning up the mess. In this week's exercise, the idea is to change our karma; specifically the karma of having poor health or a shortened life span. In the case of the bird-window injuries, my efforts would help purify the karma of getting in injury-accidents. I do have a tendency to bump my head hard on things that are placed just a little too low, like stove hoods, and Asian doorjambs. So now maybe I'll have a little less of that.

Then, after doing the karma activity with the awareness of dependent arising, we can rejoice to multiply the effect and dedicate in order not to lose the positive potential.

May all beings be protected from collisions.

Ribur Tulku Recognized - Autumn 2009

2009-12-02T19:26:00.000-08:00

Several of our older students at GGBC took teachings and vows from the Late Ribur Rinpoche who made Aptos (Santa Cruz) his home during the last years of his life. He was one of my very dear teachers. When he returned to India in 2005 to leave his body there I decided to make the journey to see him quickly one more time. Fortunately I got there just in time, spending the last week of 2005 at Sera Monastery, visiting Rinpoche several times that week. Two weeks later, while I and most of the monastery were at the Kalachakra Initiation with His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Amaravati, Andhra Pradesh, Rinpoche left his body on the full moon day, January 15, 2006.

This season, we are just finding out about his new emanation (tulku), which has been officially confirmed by His Holiness. Read this message from Lorne Ladner, Director of Guhyasamaja Center, and also a close student of the previous Ribur Rinpoche.

- Drimay
________________________________

[November 2009]

This is an update going out to Genden Ling (the Dharma Center of Kyabje Ribur Rinpoche) and friends…

It’s been nearly 4 years now since Kyabje Ribur Rinpoche passed away in South India. Before Rinpoche’s death, he made it extremely clear to quite a few of his students that he would quickly take rebirth in order to continue his work for the benefit of sentient beings. Before Rinpoche passed away, he even made it clear that he’d built his Labrang (home) near Sera Mey for his next incarnation to grow up in, requested Gyumed Khensur Rinpoche Lobsang Jampa (whom Rinpoche often praised very, very highly) to be his first teacher in his next lifetime, and even chose a young monk to be his attendant in his next life.

Soon after Rinpoche passed away, his nephew and long-time attendant Tenzin Rinpoche wrote to H.H. the Dalai Lama who indicated that it would not be difficult to find the tulku of Ribur Rinpoche and that this would be possible in 4-5 years time. Also, Kyabje Ribur Rinpoche had told a couple of people that his tulku would be found very close to Sera Mey monastery in South India.

So, last year at the request of Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Gyumed Khensur Rinpoche arranged to have some monks collect names and information about boys recently born near Sera Mey. These names were then given to Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche who subsequently arranged to have them given to His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Recently, His Holiness wrote back to Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche indicating that a young boy (currently) named Tenzin Pasang who lives close to Sera Mey Monastery in South India is the reincarnation of Kyabje Ribur Rinpoche!

The young boy apparently lives with his father and older sister. His parents have been told about this news by a group of monks from Sera, and they were apparently quite happy with the news and quite agreeable to his entering the monastery to study when he is old enough to do so! His parents apparently mentioned that Tenzin Pasang often liked holding a Vajra and Bell.

I was just given permission to share this news with Rinpoche’s students, so feel free to pass this along to friends who may not already be included in Genden Ling’s email list if you like. I hope that others of you who knew and studied with Kyabje Ribur Rinpoche—a true emanation of Shri Heruka Chakrasamvara—are as joyful at this news of the discovery of his reincarnation as I am!

As this time, nothing is particularly needed in terms of help or support for the tulku. So, it appears that for now we can simply rejoice and also make prayers that the tulku continues to uphold and spread the Buddha’s teachings in general and Je Tsongkhapa’s teachings of Sutra & Tantra in particular as vastly and skillfully as the previous Ribur Tulku and also that all of his holy wishes be fulfilled.

Also, His Holiness the Dalai Lama advised that the boy recite the mantras of Manjushri and the Miktsema name mantra of Je Rinpoche to remove obstacles or obscurations. Gyumed Khensur Rinpoche indicated that it was OK for us students to also recite these on behalf of the tulku. If opportunities arise in the future such that donations can be collected for pujas or other needs of the young tulku, then I’ll pass that along as well in case people have the wish to help in those ways as needs arise.

Thanks!
With much joy,
Lorne Ladner

Rejoicing = Buddhist Thanksgiving

2009-11-26T09:04:00.000-08:00

Rejoicing is a practice that Lama Zopa Rinpoche urges us to do every day of the year. It is the lazy man's way of making large amounts of positive energy (sonam) as quickly as possible. Be careful to rejoice in the right kind of thing, though. Don't rejoice in the defeat or failure of others (such as the other football team being crushed).

In the notes from the Medicine Buddha Puja, in which rejoicing comes up repeatedly, Rinpoche advises various things to rejoice about:

During the puja, rotate your rejoicing meditation in the following way:

During the first seven-limb verse, rejoice in your own merit – all the merit you have accumulated in the past (resulting in this precious human rebirth), present (following your teacher’s advice, serving others, etc.), and that you will accumulate in the future, all the way until enlightenment. Think, “How wonderful, how precious.”

In the next seven-limb verse, rejoice in the merit of others – all the wonderful things they have done, their qualities, etc., thinking, “How wonderful, how precious.”

In the next seven-limb verse, rejoice in the deeds of the buddhas and bodhisattvas, including your own teachers and the lineage lamas. Remember the hardships they endured to practice and preserve the Dharma, and how many countless beings they have benefitted, thinking, “How wonderful, how precious.”

In the next seven-limb verse, return to rejoicing in one’s own merit and qualities, then that of others, and so on.

New Mission Statement

2009-11-22T17:36:00.000-08:00

We have a mission statement now:

Gyalwa Gyatso Buddhist Center's mission is to preserve and promote the Mahayana Buddhist tradition in Silicon Valley through education, practice and service.

Golden Light Sutra Recitation to save 500,000 animals from being sacrificed

2009-11-11T11:26:00.000-08:00

This Saturday's practice will be a recitation of the Golden Light Sutra to fulfill Lama Zopa Rinpoche's request: November 14, 4:30pm to approx. 5:30pm (or however long you want to keep going). Location: Gyalwa Gyatso Buddhist Center, 1550 La Pradera Drive, Campbell, CA 95008
________________________________________

Message from FPMT International Office, from Lama Zopa Rinpoche:

Tuesday, November 10, 2009 2:45:07 PM

You might have heard the Nepal news about the 500,000 animals that are going to be sacrificed over two days on 24th November (Ghaddimai animal sacrifice festival, happens every five years in the terrai).

The Buddha boy wrote to the organizers asking them not to do it but his request was rejected. It is a big Hindu festival and now the Buddha boy is thinking to go there and try to stop it. I think unless one has special powers to show, people will not listen. It is a big religion with not 100 or 1000 followers but millions. Now it seems to have become a problem in Nepal like the problem with shoes and the Hindus in Pashupati. Now probably no matter what the reality is they will think it is the Buddhists who are making problems.

My observation shows that the Buddha boy won't be able to stop it. Possibly some animal rights organisations might be able to help, but it's not sure. If western organisations and people like Nobel Peace (laureates) ask, maybe could help, but it would need many.

It came out good to read the Golden Light Sutra 100 times so i have asked Kopan gompa to send some monks to read it at the stupa and make strong prayers for the sacrifice not to happen, to dedicate like that and of course dedicate for world peace. You can find the Sutra in various languages here: http://www.fpmt.org/teacherszopa/advice/goldenlight.asp

I would like to request the centers and students to read the Golden Light Sutra and recite the Padmasambhava prayer for removing obstacles and for quick success, for the sacrifice not to happen. This needs to be done quickly as the sacrifice is happening on 24th November. You can find the Padmasambhava prayer here: http://www.fpmt.org/teachers/zopa/advice/pdf/Padmasambava%20prayer%20to%20clear%20obstacles%20feb05km.pdf

Please recite any number of the Golden Light Sutra and the Padmasambhava prayer for removing obstacles and for quick success.

With much love and prayers,

Lama Zopa

--
Doris Low
Center Services Director
FPMT International Office
1632 SE11th Ave
Portland, OR 97214
USA

Responsible Parenting

2009-11-06T16:27:00.000-08:00

New Advice from Lama Zopa Rinpoche
FPMT News
November 2009

Responsible Parenting

All these mothers of old protected you, bore so many hardships for you, and created so much negative karma for you. It is truly unbelievable. Can you even begin to imagine their kindness? In fact, almost every single action of theirs was negative karma because it was done out of attachment. For this reason I advise people that the way to take care of a child is to think of him or her simply as a sentient being, rather than as "my child." At the beginning of a sadhana, a meditation, or a practice, when you generate bodhichitta toward all sentient beings, you should think that your child is one of those sentient beings. Likewise, when you dedicate your merits to achieve enlightenment for sentient beings, you should think that your child is one of those sentient beings.

You should have the same motivation to take care of your child as you would any other sentient being. Your child is a sentient being from whom you have received every happiness experienced from beginningless rebirths, from whom you receive all your present happiness, and from whom you will receive every single happiness, not just one, of all your future lives. Your child is also a sentient being from whom you receive liberation from samsara, and from whom you receive the realizations of the whole entire path up to enlightenment. With that recognition, with that understanding, think of your child as being the most precious and kindest being in your life. Of course, it is the same for all other sentient beings, exactly the same, but you have a particular karmic connection with the one who is your child, and therefore have a particularly strong responsibility to take care of him or her. However, you should do so with the consideration that he or she is a sentient being…

When you encounter difficulties – when your child does not listen to you, when you cannot control him, when you have a job and many things to do, and you become disappointed and parenting becomes very difficult for you – then it is good to rejoice thinking: "My life is beneficial for at least one sentient being; my limbs are beneficial for the happiness of this one sentient being." If you can rejoice like this, there will be no difficulties in your mind or in your heart. With this positive wish to help your child, the thought of being annoyed at or exhausted by your child will not arise…

Because parents spend so much time with their child, they have incredible influence on him or her... If they don’t have a clear idea about how to direct a child’s life in a positive way, then the child’s future will not be clear. In that case their having become parents will be a great loss. While many good things could have happened to the child, because the parents did not have a clear idea about parenting, the child’s whole life can turn into one of suffering and problems…

The conclusion is that even if a child can simply develop the first of these seven qualities [kindness, delight, patience, contentment, forgiveness, humility and courage], kindness, with everyone he or she meets, the effect on other people will be amazing. Each time that the child does something positive, then however much the parents suffered for that child, it will all become worthwhile... Therefore, my conclusion is that if a child is brought up with a clear plan for his or her life to be beneficial to sentient beings (or at least to this world, the country, the neighbors, the surrounding people and the family), due to which he or she practiced a good heart and refrained from harming others, or even just practiced the first guideline, kindness, then each time the child does this, however many years the parents spent worrying and suffering, it all becomes worthwhile…

So you have an incredible opportunity to help your children. In this way not only are you helping them in terms of this life, but you are helping them create the causes to experience happiness in life after life. In addition, you are bringing them closer to liberation and enlightenment. Isn’t that just amazing? I have used the benefits of doing just one prostration as an example but there are other things you can teach your children…

On the other hand, how can you expect your children to have a happy life without their creating good karma from their own side? It is impossible. Without merit, without good karma, how can they achieve happiness and success in their life? It is impossible.

Excerpted from a compilation of teachings titled Planned Parenting: How to Make Having Children Meaningful from the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive. Originally transcribed, compiled, and edited by Joan Nicell and Jon Landaw from Rinpoche’s teachings on May 15th and 23rd, 2009, at the 100 Million Mani Retreat at Institut Vajra Yogini, Lavaur, France.

Buddhist Lectures at Stanford

2009-11-02T18:47:00.000-08:00

Here are a couple of talks that you might be interested in at Stanford:

http://hcbss.stanford.edu/

Upcoming Events

Thursday, November 5. Luis Gómez (Michigan, emeritus). "Imagining Paradises: Invoking Blissful Abodes." 5:15 p.m., Encina Hall West 208. HCBSS Forum: Exploring the Buddha Fields.

Thursday, November 12. Reginald Ray (Naropa). "The Path of Desire: Tantric Saints in Indian Buddhism." 5:15 p.m., NEW LOCATION: Levinthal Hall, Stanford Humanities Center. Saints and Sages Colloquium. (Co-sponsored by Religious Studies and Stanford Humanities Cent

Unmistaken Child DVD is now for sale

2009-10-25T23:15:00.000-07:00

The DVD of the documentary Unmistaken Child about the search for the reincarnation of Geshe Lama Konchog is now for sale on Amazon. If you buy it through the search box on our website, our center will get a commission. Or just follow this link:
http://www.amazon.com/Unmistaken-Child-Dalai-Lama/dp/B002MZCSW4?&camp=212361&linkCode=wsw&tag=gyalgyatbud07-20&creative=380801

Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars

Product Description
A visual stunning, spellbinding spiritual journey to a world rarely seen by outsiders. The Buddhist concept of reincarnation, while both mysterious and enchanting, is hard for most Westerners to grasp. UNMISTAKEN CHILD follows the 4-year-search for the reincarnation of Lama Konchog, a world-renowned Tibetan master who passed away in 2001 at age 84. The Dalai Lama charges the deceased monk s devoted disciple, Tenzin Zopa (who had been in his service since the age of seven), to search for his master s reincarnation, a child who may be anywhere in the world. Tenzin sets off on foot, mule and even helicopter, through breathtaking landscapes and remote traditional Tibetan villages. He listens to stories about children with special characteristics, performs rituals and rarely seen tests designed to determine the likelihood of reincarnation, and eventually presents his chosen one to the Dalai Lama, who will make the final decision.

“What’s in a Name?" - Tibetan Monastic Names

2009-10-22T22:03:00.000-07:00

Someone writes:
"I’ve often wondered why there are so many monks and nuns called Tenzin……but you are not one of them. What’s Losang mean?"

Answer:
When we take ordination as a monk or nun in the Tibetan tradition, it is the custom (although not a rule) that the first part of our ordination name is part of the ordaining master's name, usually their first name. For many decades now, His Holiness the Dalai Lama has been ordaining batches of people each year, usually in the springtime. His name is Ngawang Losang Tenzin Gyatso, or Tenzin Gyatso for short, so hundreds of monks and nuns now have the first name 'Tenzin'. In Dharamsala, it's probably the most common name.

In the May 2009 issue of the e-newsletter of the IMI (International Mahayana Institute - the organization of monks and nuns of the FPMT), some statistics about names were published. Of the approximately 300 international sangha members in the organization, 75 are Tenzin Something, 96 are Losang Something (including the spelling variations Lobsang and Lozang), and 69 are Thubten (or Thupten) Something. The rest have other first names. Jampa, Lhundrup, and Ngawang are also common first names amongst those of us in the Gelug lineage.

So, you can see that I am actually in the majority in this group, with the name Losang. Lama Tsongkhapa's monastic name was Losang Drakpa. Tibetans often have layers of names, so the name that a lama is known by is not necessarily their ordination name.

My ordaining master was Geshe Jampa Gyatso (now passed on), so you might think I would have received the name Jampa, which is Tibetan for 'maitri' (or metta), loving-kindness. But I got the name Losang (Skt. Sumati), which means good mind. Tenzin (Skt. shasana-dhara) means holder of the (Buddha's) teachings. Thubten (Skt. muni-shasana) has a very similar meaning - teachings of (Shakya-) muni (Buddha).

Signed,
"Gelongma Losang Drimay"

Tibetan Sand Mandala - Timelapse - 8 fps

2009-10-22T21:55:00.000-07:00

haineux said...: This might entertain/amuse/enlighten some people:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/musaeum/4017197748/in/photostream/; October 21, 2009 7:42 PM

Where the Wild Things Are

2009-10-20T17:30:00.000-07:00

By DAVID BROOKS

In Homer’s poetry, every hero has a trait. Achilles is angry. Odysseus is cunning. And so was born one picture of character and conduct.

In this view, what you might call the philosopher’s view, each of us has certain ingrained character traits. An honest person will be honest most of the time. A compassionate person will be compassionate.

These traits, as they say, go all the way down. They shape who we are, what we choose to do and whom we befriend. Our job is to find out what traits of character we need to become virtuous.

But, as Kwame Anthony Appiah, a Princeton philosopher, notes in his book “Experiments in Ethics,” this philosopher’s view of morality is now being challenged by a psychologist’s view. According to the psychologist’s view, individuals don’t have one thing called character.

The psychologists say this because a century’s worth of experiments suggests that people’s actual behavior is not driven by permanent traits that apply from one context to another. Students who are routinely dishonest at home are not routinely dishonest at school. People who are courageous at work can be cowardly at church. People who behave kindly on a sunny day may behave callously the next day when it is cloudy and they are feeling glum. Behavior does not exhibit what the psychologists call “cross-situational stability.”

The psychologists thus tend to gravitate toward a different view of conduct. In this view, people don’t have one permanent thing called character. We each have a multiplicity of tendencies inside, which are activated by this or that context. As Paul Bloom of Yale put it in an essay for The Atlantic last year, we are a community of competing selves. These different selves “are continually popping in and out of existence. They have different desires, and they fight for control — bargaining with, deceiving, and plotting against one another.”

The philosopher’s view is shaped like a funnel. At the bottom, there is a narrow thing called character. And at the top, the wide ways it expresses itself. The psychologist’s view is shaped like an upside-down funnel. At the bottom, there is a wide variety of unconscious tendencies that get aroused by different situations. At the top, there is the narrow story we tell about ourselves to give coherence to life.

The difference is easy to recognize on the movie screen. Most movies embrace the character version. The hero is good and conquers evil. Spike Jonze’s new movie adaptation of “Where the Wild Things Are” illuminates the psychological version.

At the beginning of the movie, young Max is torn by warring impulses he cannot control or understand. Part of him loves and depends upon his mother. But part of him rages against her.

In the midst of turmoil, Max falls into a primitive, mythical realm with a community of Wild Things. The Wild Things contain and re-enact different pieces of his inner frenzy. One of them feels unimportant. One throws a tantrum because his love has been betrayed. They embody his different tendencies.

Many critics have noted that, in the movie version, the Wild Things are needlessly morose and whiney. But in one important way, the movie is better than the book. In the book, Max effortlessly controls the Wild Things by taming them with “the magic trick of staring into all their yellow eyes without blinking once.”

In the movie, Max wants to control the Wild Things. The Wild Things in turn want to be controlled. They want him to build a utopia for them where they won’t feel pain. But in the movie, Max fails as king. He lacks the power to control his Wild Things. The Wild Things come to recognize that he isn’t really a king, and maybe there are no such things as kings.

In the philosopher’s picture, the good life is won through direct assault. Heroes use reason to separate virtue from vice. Then they use willpower to conquer weakness, fear, selfishness and the dark passions lurking inside. Once they achieve virtue they do virtuous things.

In the psychologist’s version, the good life is won indirectly. People have only vague intuitions about the instincts and impulses that have been implanted in them by evolution, culture and upbringing. There is no easy way to command all the wild things jostling inside.

But it is possible to achieve momentary harmony through creative work. Max has all his Wild Things at peace when he is immersed in building a fort or when he is giving another his complete attention. This isn’t the good life through heroic self-analysis but through mundane, self-forgetting effort, and through everyday routines.

Appiah believes these two views of conduct are in conversation, not conflict. But it does seem we’re in one of those periods when words like character fall into dispute and change their meaning.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

HH the Dalai Lama Congratulates President Obama on Nobel Peace Prize

2009-10-19T12:00:00.000-07:00

Published: Sunday, 11 October, 2009

Washington, DC, USA 9 October 2009 (Office of Special Envoy of HH the Dalai Lama) - His Holiness the Dalai Lama has congratulated President Obama on being named the recipient of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.

In a communication sent today to the President, His Holiness, who is in Washington, D.C., said, “I am pleased that the Nobel Committee has recognized your approach towards resolving international conflicts through the wisdom and power of dialogue.”

He said, “The Committee has rightly noted your efforts towards a world without nuclear weapons and your constructive role in environmental protection. The 20th century was a century of bloodshed and all of us have the responsibility to make the 21st century, a century of dialogue and co-operation. There is thus the need for concerted efforts from all sides in this highly interdependent world to promote and adopt a more compassionate approach.”

http://www.dalailama.com/news.455.htm

Venerable Ingrid 'Opens the Eyes' of our Buddha Statue

2009-10-14T13:41:00.001-07:00

Several years ago, Cathy Young of Inner Journey donated an Buddha statue to our center and the Gyuto monks filled it and consecrated it. But recently one of our sangha members (a nun) pointed out that the eyes had not been 'opened' -- that means painted in. So I asked Venerable Ingrid Nordzin to 'open the eyes' which she did this morning. She also noticed that the rest of the face needed touching up, so she's doing that too. Many thanks to Ven. Ingrid from GGBC.

The first picture here is before Ven. Ingrid started painting. Can you see that the eyes are just white?

More images at Picasa.

Come to the center to see the finished result.

Clay Sanskrit Library

2009-10-13T21:09:00.000-07:00

I learned about this effort in October Harpers magazine.The Clay Sanskrit Library is a series of translated books covering a wide spectrum of Classical Sanskrit literature spanning two millennia. It may of use to you in your studies

Welcome to the Clay Sanskrit Library

In the late 1990's, when John Clay started to work on the concepts for the Clay Sanskrit Library ("CSL"), his key objective was to produce fifty titles. After ten years of progress, the list of volumes set for publication encompasses well over fifty works, as shown at http://www.claysanskritlibrary.org/volumes_all.php.

This summer (Year 2009), the current programme of development of additional texts is being brought to a close. Published volumes may be purchased through the distribution sources listed at http://www.claysanskritlibrary.org/order.php.

John Clay would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who helped to ensure the success of this pioneering publishing programme.
John Clay's vision came to life in the late 1990's, when he began to put the people and resources together for what would become the Clay Sanskrit Library. Since the publication of the first volume in 2005, forty-nine volumes have been published, including twelve new volumes in 2009, and another seven titles are scheduled to be released in August 2009. The selection represents the richness and wide variety of Sanskrit literature, covering works of drama, poetry, satire and novels, as well as the two famous epics, the Maha·bhárata and the Ramáyana.

The Clay Sanskrit Library is a series of books covering a wide spectrum of Classical Sanskrit literature spanning two millennia. Bound in the convenient pocket size (4.5" x 6.5") in an elegant design, each work features the original Sanskrit text in transliterated Roman letters on the left-hand page with its English translation on the facing page.

http://www.claysanskritlibrary.org/index.php

Can The Mind Affect Reality?

2009-10-13T21:00:00.000-07:00

The question to me is, "Is there reality without the mind?" I can't find it. Dave

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/index2.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=23367&pop=1&page=0&Itemid=1

Can The Mind Affect Reality?
By Leonardo Vintiñi
Epoch Times Staff Oct 4, 2009 “All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become.” —Attributed to Gautama Siddhartha, the Buddha

According to Dr. Joe Dispenza, every time we learn or experience something new, hundreds of millions of neurons reorganize themselves.

Dr. Dispenza is known throughout the world for his innovative theory concerning the relationship between mind and matter. Perhaps best known as one of the scientists featured in the acclaimed 2004 docudrama “What the Bleep Do We Know,” his work has helped reveal the extraordinary properties of the mind and its ability to create synaptic connections by carefully focusing our attention.

Just imagine: In every new experience, a synaptic connection is established in our brain. With every sensation, vision, or emotion never explored before, the formation of a new relationship between two of more than 100 thousand million brain cells is inevitable.

But this phenomenon needs focused reinforcement in order to bring about real change. If the experience repeats itself in a relatively short period of time, the connection becomes stronger. If the experience doesn’t happen again for a long period of time, the connection can become weakened or lost.

Science used to believe that our brains were static and hardwired, with little chance for change. However, recent research in neuroscience has discovered that the influence of every corporal experience within our thinking organ (cold, fear, fatigue, happiness) is working to shape our brains.

If a cool breeze is capable of raising all the hairs on one’s forearm, is the human mind capable of creating the same sensation with identical results? Perhaps it is capable of much more.

“What if just by thinking, we cause our internal chemistry to be bumped out of normal range so often that the body’s self-regulation system eventually redefines these abnormal states as regular states?” asks Dispenza in his 2007 book, “Evolve Your Brain, The Science of Changing Your Mind.” “It’s a subtle process, but maybe we just never gave it that much attention until now.”

Dispenza holds that the brain is actually incapable of differentiating a real physical sensation from an internal experience. In this way, our gray matter could easily be tricked into reverting itself into a state of poor health when our minds are chronically focused on negative thoughts.

Dispenza illustrates his point by referring to an experiment in which subjects were asked to practice moving their ring finger against a spring-loaded device for an hour a day for four weeks. After repeatedly pulling against the spring, the fingers of these subjects became 30 percent stronger. Meanwhile, another group of subjects was asked to imagine themselves pulling against the spring but never physically touched the device. After four weeks of this exclusively mental exercise, this group experienced a 22 percent increase in finger strength.

For years, scientists have been examining the ways in which mind dominates matter. From the placebo effect (in which a person feels better after taking fake medicine) to the practitioners of Tummo (a practice from Tibetan Buddhism where individuals actually sweat while meditating at below zero temperatures), the influence of a “spiritual” portion of a human being over the undeniable physical self challenges traditional conceptions of thought, where matter is ruled by physical laws and the mind is simply a byproduct of the chemical interactions between neutrons.

Beyond Belief
Dr. Dispenza's investigations stemmed from a critical time in his life. After being hit by a car while riding his bike, doctors insisted that Dispenza needed to have some of his vertebrae fused in order to walk again—a procedure that would likely cause him chronic pain for the rest of his life.

However, Dispenza, a chiropractor, decided to challenge science and actually change the state of his disability through the power of his mind—and it worked. After nine months of a focused therapeutic program, Dispenza was walking again. Encouraged by this success, he decided to dedicate his life to studying the connection between mind and body.

Intent on exploring the power of the mind to heal the body, the “brain doctor” has interviewed dozens of people who had experienced what doctors call “spontaneous remission.” These were individuals with serious illnesses who had decided to ignore conventional treatment, but had nevertheless fully recovered. Dispenza found that these subjects all shared an understanding that their thoughts dictated the state of their health. After they focused their attention on changing their thinking, their diseases miraculously resolved.

Addicted to Emotions
Similarly, Dispenza finds that humans actually possess an unconscious addiction to certain emotions, negative and positive. According to his research, emotions condemn a person to repetitive behavior, developing an “addiction” to the combination of specific chemical substances for each emotion that flood the brain with a certain frequency.

The body responds to these emotions with certain chemicals that in turn influence the mind to have the same emotion. In other words, it could be said that a fearful person is “addicted” to the feeling of fear. Dispenza finds that when the brain of such an individual is able to free itself from the chemical combination belonging to fear, the brain’s receptors for such substances are correspondingly opened. The same is true with depression, anger, violence, and other passions.

Nevertheless, many are skeptical of Dispenza’s findings, despite his ability to demonstrate that thoughts can modify a being’s physical conditions. Generally associated as a genre of pseudo-science, the theory of “believe your own reality” doesn’t sound scientific.

Science may not be ready to acknowledge that the physical can be changed through the power of the mind, but Dr. Dispenza assures that the process occurs, nevertheless.

“We need not wait for science to give us permission to do the uncommon or go beyond what we have been told is possible. If we do, we make science another form of religion. We should be mavericks; we should practice doing the extraordinary. When we become consistent in our abilities, we are literally creating a new science,” writes Dispenza.

This Storm is Too Dangerous

2009-10-13T12:54:00.000-07:00

I decided around noon to cancel class tonight. I checked the NOAA website and they have increased the wind speeds to 55 or 60 miles per hour. Since I live in Soquel (Santa Cruz County), I have to drive over Highway 17 to get to Campbell and that road is dangerous enough as it is.

I hope everyone who was planning to come to class gets this message.

See you next week (October 20th).

- Drimay

A Weekend of Healing

2009-10-09T09:33:00.000-07:00

I'm standing here next to Larry Wong on the deck at Land of Medicine Buddha where we are both getting ready to lead retreats over this long weekend -- Larry leading Chi Gung and me leading sessions of Medicine Buddha practice -- two very compatible activities.

Vimal, the cook, has some delicious menus lined up. We will also have the good fortune of having Gen Wangdu, a visiting lama from Sera Monastery, teaching us about karma on Sunday morning at 11am. Happy Columbus Day.

How Nonsense Sharpens the Intellect

2009-10-06T14:30:00.000-07:00

This article concludes with: "Still, the new research supports what many experimental artists, habitual travelers and other novel seekers have always insisted: at least some of the time, disorientation begets creative thinking."
I think a Buddhist might say less attachment begets creative thinking. The article also talks about how those in the grip of 'disorientation" look for new patterns to create a new meaning. I think a Buddhist relishes 'disorientation' as a step toward understanding emptiness and would seek more of it. What do you think?

October 6, 2009 New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/health/06mind.html?em

MindHow Nonsense Sharpens the Intellect By BENEDICT CAREY

In addition to assorted bad breaks and pleasant surprises, opportunities and insults, life serves up the occasional pink unicorn. The three-dollar bill; the nun with a beard; the sentence, to borrow from the Lewis Carroll poem, that gyres and gimbles in the wabe.

An experience, in short, that violates all logic and expectation. The philosopher Soren Kierkegaard wrote that such anomalies produced a profound “sensation of the absurd,” and he wasn’t the only one who took them seriously. Freud, in an essay called “The Uncanny,” traced the sensation to a fear of death, of castration or of “something that ought to have remained hidden but has come to light.”

At best, the feeling is disorienting. At worst, it’s creepy.

Now a study suggests that, paradoxically, this same sensation may prime the brain to sense patterns it would otherwise miss — in mathematical equations, in language, in the world at large.

“We’re so motivated to get rid of that feeling that we look for meaning and coherence elsewhere,” said Travis Proulx, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and lead author of the paper appearing in the journal Psychological Science. “We channel the feeling into some other project, and it appears to improve some kinds of learning.”

Researchers have long known that people cling to their personal biases more tightly when feeling threatened. After thinking about their own inevitable death, they become more patriotic, more religious and less tolerant of outsiders, studies find. When insulted, they profess more loyalty to friends — and when told they’ve done poorly on a trivia test, they even identify more strongly with their school’s winning teams.

In a series of new papers, Dr. Proulx and Steven J. Heine, a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia, argue that these findings are variations on the same process: maintaining meaning, or coherence. The brain evolved to predict, and it does so by identifying patterns.

When those patterns break down — as when a hiker stumbles across an easy chair sitting deep in the woods, as if dropped from the sky — the brain gropes for something, anything that makes sense. It may retreat to a familiar ritual, like checking equipment. But it may also turn its attention outward, the researchers argue, and notice, say, a pattern in animal tracks that was previously hidden. The urge to find a coherent pattern makes it more likely that the brain will find one.

“There’s more research to be done on the theory,” said Michael Inzlicht, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, because it may be that nervousness, not a search for meaning, leads to heightened vigilance. But he added that the new theory was “plausible, and it certainly affirms my own meaning system; I think they’re onto something.”

In the most recent paper, published last month, Dr. Proulx and Dr. Heine described having 20 college students read an absurd short story based on “The Country Doctor,” by Franz Kafka. The doctor of the title has to make a house call on a boy with a terrible toothache. He makes the journey and finds that the boy has no teeth at all. The horses who have pulled his carriage begin to act up; the boy’s family becomes annoyed; then the doctor discovers the boy has teeth after all. And so on. The story is urgent, vivid and nonsensical — Kafkaesque.

After the story, the students studied a series of 45 strings of 6 to 9 letters, like “X, M, X, R, T, V.” They later took a test on the letter strings, choosing those they thought they had seen before from a list of 60 such strings. In fact the letters were related, in a very subtle way, with some more likely to appear before or after others.

The test is a standard measure of what researchers call implicit learning: knowledge gained without awareness. The students had no idea what patterns their brain was sensing or how well they were performing.

But perform they did. They chose about 30 percent more of the letter strings, and were almost twice as accurate in their choices, than a comparison group of 20 students who had read a different short story, a coherent one.

“The fact that the group who read the absurd story identified more letter strings suggests that they were more motivated to look for patterns than the others,” Dr. Heine said. “And the fact that they were more accurate means, we think, that they’re forming new patterns they wouldn’t be able to form otherwise.”

Brain-imaging studies of people evaluating anomalies, or working out unsettling dilemmas, show that activity in an area called the anterior cingulate cortex spikes significantly. The more activation is recorded, the greater the motivation or ability to seek and correct errors in the real world, a recent study suggests. “The idea that we may be able to increase that motivation,” said Dr. Inzlicht, a co-author, “is very much worth investigating.”

Researchers familiar with the new work say it would be premature to incorporate film shorts by David Lynch, say, or compositions by John Cage into school curriculums. For one thing, no one knows whether exposure to the absurd can help people with explicit learning, like memorizing French. For another, studies have found that people in the grip of the uncanny tend to see patterns where none exist — becoming more prone to conspiracy theories, for example. The urge for order satisfies itself, it seems, regardless of the quality of the evidence.

Still, the new research supports what many experimental artists, habitual travelers and other novel seekers have always insisted: at least some of the time, disorientation begets creative thinking.

Mantra for Prostrations

2009-09-23T15:19:00.000-07:00

Q: Where can I find the words to the 'song' sung while doing prostrations? O Namo....
_______________________________

A:

Mantra for Prostrations:

OM NAMO MANJU-SHRI-YE /
NAMAH SUSHRI-YE /
NAMA UTTAMA SHRI-YE
SVAHA

(3x with prostrations)

"The mantra OM NAMO MANJUSHRIYE NAMAH SUSHRIYE NAMA UTTAMA SHRIYE SOHA multiplies the prostrations one thousand times. If you recite it every day, it helps to develop a direct perception of emptiness in this life, also to not encounter harm or obstacles."
[from Lama Zopa Rinpoche's Online Advice Book; Practice Advice : 35 Buddhas Practice]

Pain beyond words, and an impulse to endure

2009-09-23T14:30:00.000-07:00

From the New York Times 9/22/2009
"Pain Beyond Words, and an Impulse Just to Endure" link http://bit.ly/FV71I

Dana Jennings talks about pain as a teacher, how it humbles one, and how it changes his perceptions of daily bumps and bruises. The article made me think about what the Buddhist perspective on this might be. Is this pain his Karma? Is he burning off bad karma? Are all events in conventional day to day activities nothing more than a collection of impressions? One impression/imprint measured against another, which we weave together into a story we call reality?

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/22/when-pain-goes-beyond-words/?scp=1&sq=pain%20beyond%20words&st=cse

Looking for the inherently existent "I"

2009-09-17T13:12:00.000-07:00

These two photos were taken with a scanning electron microscope. They are powerful images to use in the meditation where we look for the inherently existent "I" in our bodies. Does the "I" existing from it's own side exist in the embryo? Does the independent "I" exist in the red blood cells? We have about 5 million red blood cells in our bodies. Does that mean there would be 5 million "I" if "I" existed independently in the red blood cells?

Six day old human embryo implanting itself in the wall of the womb

Human Red Blood Cells these carry the Oxygen around our body

Light of Path teachings online streaming video

2009-09-09T10:04:00.000-07:00

Watch video-on-demand of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Light of the Path teachings on the FPMT Media Center. Translation available in French, Spanish, Italian, and Chinese. Starting Sept. 11.
http://onlinelearning.fpmt.org/mod/resource/view.php?id=484

What is Light of the Path Retreat?

Light of the Path Retreat 2009 will be the first of a 5 year series of teaching retreats led by Lama Zopa Rinpoche. The root text for the course is Lama Atisha's Lamp on the Path to Enlightenment. These are FPMT retreats hosted by Kadampa Center, the FPMT affiliate located in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA.

Inspiration to Attend

In the 11th century, Lama Atisha (Shri Dipamkara) was invited from India to Tibet for the purpose of transmitting the complete teachings of Lord Buddha to the Tibetan people, and presenting them in a way that was clear, precise, and easy to practice. To that purpose, Lama Atisha wrote and taught the Light of the Path to Enlightenment (jangchhub lam gyi drönma), which became the cornerstone of teaching and practice for thousands of Tibetans and provided a foundation for understanding and realizing Lord Buddha's teachings which has flourished to the present time.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche has now offered to give a modern day commentary on this profound and ancient text over a number of years, beginning in September of 2009. We consider this event to be the ultimate teaching and practice lineage transmission available for FPMT teachers and students and strongly encourage everyone to attend in person. We will also make full use of the spectrum of information technology to make this new program available to a worldwide audience.

Sept. 1st Radio Interview with Ven. Tenzin Chogkyi

2009-09-01T11:38:00.000-07:00

If you stay up late, you can listen to Venerable Tenzin Chogkyi on the radio at 11pm on KKUP 91.5 FM on Vibrational Voyage. Tony McGettigan (the show's host) and I (Drimay) interviewed her yesterday.

Here are the links to the classes she is teaching this month:

In the interview, Ven. Tenzin Chogkyi talks about her experience in long retreat, teaching in prisons, the thought transformation practice, and how Dharma practice changes over the course of one's life.

Laura Livengood Schaub talks at Inner Journey

2009-08-28T09:22:00.000-07:00

Tonight - August 28 - is one of the open talk's at Inner Journey by our own Laura Livengood Schaub. People can just drop in to ask questions about Buddhism. I think Laura said there were 8 people last month. Inner Journey, a 'metaphysical' store in Los Gatos, just clears some floor space and sets up a circle of chairs. You can send your friends there, or drop in yourself. There is no charge; that's why they are called Free Fridays.

Radio Interviews on Vibrational Voyage

2009-08-27T19:59:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year, I reconnected with Tony McGettigan who hosts a radio program on KKUP 91.5FM called Vibrational Voyage. I have started to help find interesting people for Tony to interview, starting with Steve Ginsberg, acupuncturist and long-time Dharma practitioner.

We met at our center, GGBC, on August 15th, to do a pre-recorded interview -- Tony, Steve, and I. Steve is a good story-teller, so Tony had an easy job of interviewing and got two shows worth of recording out of that one sitting. The two parts of the interview aired on August 18th and 25th. See background info about those shows at the Vibrational Voyage site.

Eventually, Tony will get the MP3 files uploaded so that you can listen to them if you didn't catch the broadcasts. We have at least 3 more people lined up to be interviewed, so stay tuned.

A Day at the Memorial Shrine

2009-08-27T09:57:00.000-07:00

Nine of us spent last Sunday, August 23, at the Memorial Shrine Temple at Land of Medicine Buddha for a day of practice related to the course we just finished - Wisdom of Emptiness.

I loved how quiet it was (apart from a few pilgrims who wandered by). And being surrounded by all the amazing art in there - scenes of the Buddha's life and panels of various sets of buddhas.

All the participants were very focused and enthusiastic. After a lunch from the main dining room - quinoa, tofu, and steamed veg - we wandered back up the hill for an hour-long discussion. Then another set of sitting-walking-sitting, before dedicating the merit and packing up at 5pm.

Let's do it again!

Does the Buddha Have a Big Belly?

2009-08-20T12:54:00.000-07:00

Q: Why does the Buddha have a big belly?

A: The Buddha is not depicted with a big belly in Tibetan or Indian art. The big belly seems to be a Chinese thing. [Addendum: My Chinese cultural consultant says that the big-bellied Buddha is most certainly Maitreya, the future Buddha. The big belly represents being full of potential.]

In Tibetan and Indian iconography, you can clearly see the Buddha represented in a slender and fit body.

The "Have You Ever Wondered" page for the month of August give more detail about the body of a buddha. Have a look.

Prayer to Calm Wildfires

2009-08-15T11:01:00.000-07:00

Q: What can we do about the fires burning in California this summer?

A: Here is a prayer that a friend sent me recently. It is a prayer directed to Padmasambhava, the Indian Buddhist guru who helped establish Buddhism in Tibet.

SA CHU ME LUNG JUNGWE BARCHE KYI
When obstacles arise in earth, water, fire and air

GYU LU NYEN CHING JIKPE DU CHUNG TSE
To threaten these illusory bodies of ours with destruction

YI NYI TE TSOM MEPAR SOLWA DEP
With no trace of doubt or hesitation we pray:

ORGYEN JUNGWA SHYI YI LHAMOR CHE
O Guru Rinpoche, with the goddesses of the four elements

JUNGWA RANG SAR SHYIWAR TE TSOM ME
You will harmonize the elements into their natural state - of this we have no doubt

ORGYEN PEMA JUNGNE LA SOLWA DEP
To the Lotus-born Guru of Orgyen, we pray!

SAMPA LHUN GYI DRUP PAR CHIN GYI LOP
Grant your blessing, so all our wishes be spontaneously fulfilled!

OM AH HUNG VAJRA GURU PEMA SIDDHI HUNG

from Tulku Orgyen Zangpo Rinpoche

What would be a good class for me to start with?

2009-08-07T15:43:00.000-07:00

Anonymous said...: What would be a good class for me to start with?; August 6, 2009 4:51 PM

_________________________

A: Come to the center for a one-night open talk. We try to have those at least once a month. That will give you a chance to see what the center is like. Or even a movie night is good just to meet us and get a feel for the place.

Then, joining at the beginning of a Discovering Buddhism course -- any course -- is safe. Don't worry about which course it is exactly. Everyone shows up with different backgrounds as far as their knowledge about Buddhism. You just gradually fill in the missing pieces.

The next Discovering Buddhism course begins on September 1st. It's a good one for people of all levels -- Transforming Problems. (Who doesn't have problems that need transforming?) It will be taught by a popular guest teacher, Venerable Tenzin Chogkyi, an American nun who has been in India recently.

Hope that helps.

- Drimay

_____

Do you have anything you want to talk about?

2009-08-06T16:42:00.000-07:00

If you are a current participant in any of the classes or programs at GGBC, feel free to leave a comment or question on this blog.

What is to be done, if anything, for attachment to teachers?

2009-05-25T09:24:00.000-07:00

Q: What is to be done, if anything, for attachment to teachers?

One standard attachment antidote: focus on the impurity of the object of attachment.

this doesn't seem appropriate

Another antidote: focus on the shortcomings of having the object (in this case, teachings?)

again, this doesn't seem appropriate.

Then, there is focusing on the non-inherent existence of the object...

Is there an "exception" re: attachment in the case or our revered teachers? (I suppose I should have taken the "finding a spiritual teacher" DB class.) Is this case different because while attachment to material objects gives rise to delusional thinking/activity, can attachment to our teachers can be positive in some way? (i.e. transformed into something positive? (like more resolve to study/practice?)

I suppose this question was prompted after His Holiness left the Bay Area last month. At the end of teachings or appearances, I feel this desire to follow HH around ala Grateful Deadheads and a sense of sadness. (Though, there is often this residual "glow.") And I am now anticipating (I know, I shouldn't ) similar feelings at the end of [a certain] Rinpoche's stay in San Jose. I suppose I should just translate this into more practice. Or meditate on impermanence or emptiness?

______________________________________

A: If it isn't something like sexual desire or some kind of jealousy, then I think attachment to a qualified Mahayana guru is fine.

It's great to want to hear them and see them all the time. To be constantly thinking about them.

At some point later on the path...like, at the point where you become a buddha.... maybe you can put down that attachment.

Even our very highly qualified teachers talk with strong emotion about their own teachers, putting their palms together and bowing their heads whenever they mention their guru's name.

Sometimes it's the terminology that trips us up. There is a klesha/nyongmong/mental affliction called attachment, which is based on a misunderstanding of how the object exists--imputing characteristics onto the object that it doesn't have. We do this when we are infatuated with someone. "He is the most beautiful, the most wonderful, my Prince Charming." That wears off and then we see that we were exaggerating.

In the case of a qualified Mahayana guru, it's hard to exaggerate their qualities. In fact, we usually underestimate their qualities. They can lead us to the highest happiness--the bliss of liberation and enlightenment. So it would be great to stick with a teacher like that.

Genius vs. Practice

2009-05-01T16:24:00.000-07:00

Op-Ed Columnist

Genius: The Modern View

By DAVID BROOKS

Published: May 1, 2009

The latest research suggests a more prosaic, democratic, even puritanical take on great accomplishment. It’s not I.Q., but deliberate practice.

Read whole story at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/01/opinion/01brooks.html

How to do the Meditation Assignment

2009-04-29T11:27:00.000-07:00

Q: Does the entire 'Daily Meditation' booklet need to be recited or just portions of it?

A: The assignment is really just to mentally go over the outline (see handout or here), referring to the longer practice to fill out the areas that you want to go more into depth on.

Q: [about having trouble saying the words out loud]

A: The main point is what you are doing mentally. The words just help keep us on track. Sight reading the words is fine. You don't necessarily have to say them out loud.*

* However, if you don't have any particular trouble saying the words, it can help your concentration to say them out loud (even softly). Mantras are generally recited aloud; e.g. the prostration mantra at the beginning and the mantra of Shakyamuni Buddha towards the end.

Also: See the online outline: http://www.gyalwagyatso.org/materials/daily_outline.htm Try clicking on the hyperlinks to see the detailed description of each section. You don't have to do each section in detail every time. You can focus on some things and leave the rest for another time.

- Drimay

Snow Lion Newsletter Articles Relevant to Our Course

2009-04-24T19:36:00.000-07:00

The Snow Lion newsletter that has just been delivered has a few articles that are relevant to our current course in which we have been learning about Calm-Abiding meditation. Have a look:

__________________________________

Buddhist Theory of Personality Types: The Right Meditation for Each Type, The Inner Science of Buddhist Practice Book Excerpt

introduced and translated by Artemus B. Engle

Asanga discusses a range of issues that relate to different kinds of personality types. One classification of seven types is based on the degree to which an individual may be susceptible to any of five mental afflictions.

They are described as:

one who has a strong tendency to develop desire;
one who has a strong tendency to develop hatred;
one who has a strong tendency to develop ignorance;
one who has a strong tendency to develop pride;
one who has a strong tendency to develop discursive thoughts;
one who is equally [but only moderately] disposed [to all the mental afflictions]; and
one whose mental afflictions are weak.

.... Here is [Asanga's] assertion:

Those [five types of individual] who are highly prone to develop desire, hatred, ignorance, pride, and discursive thoughts must at the very outset purify themselves of their unfavorable mental trait on the basis of the type of meditation object that purifies those who are highly prone to a particular mental affliction. Following that, they will [be able to] attain mental stability. The [appropriate meditation] object for these individuals is absolutely fixed and [these practitioners] must apply themselves using their specific [meditation] object.

cont. .... http://www.snowlionpub.com/pages/N86_1.html

________________________________________

A Quick Exercise to Calm the Emotions, The Union of Bliss and Emptiness Book Excerpt

by H.H. the Dalai Lama, trans. by Thupten Jinpa

In The Practice of the Six Yogas of Naropa, a process called "dispelling the impure winds through the nine rounds of breathing" is explained: First one inhales through the right nostril and exhales through the left, then one inhales through the left and exhales through the right. First close the left nostril with the back of your right index finger and inhale through the right nostril, and then exhale from the left nostril while blocking the right nostril; after that, block the right nostril with your left index finger and so forth. During this process, although in reality you are inhaling and exhaling through the nostrils, imagine that the winds come out and go in through the two side channels. One can also do the practice without blocking the nostrils by hand.

This will calm the force of whatever emotion you have, because it prevents reinforcement of it. The strong force of emotion calming down is just like turbid water becoming clear. A nonvirtuous state of mind should be transformed to a neutral one and then skillfully transformed into a virtuous state.

http://www.snowlionpub.com/pages/N86_2.html

__________________________________

How to Choose an Object of Observation, Study and Practice of Meditation Book Excerpt

To choose an object of observation, a meditator may "investigate among various objects such as a Buddha image to see what works well"—that is, the meditator may try them out—or "read texts to see what objects of observation are recommended," or "seek the advice of a virtuous spiritual friend, or guide (dge ba’i bshes gnyen, kalyanamitra)—a lama (bla ma, guru) who can identify a suitable object of observation"; although meditators of sharp faculties are able to choose an object of observation by studying the texts and trying out the objects of observation set forth in them, most people need to rely on a teacher.

Ge-luk-pas, however, refute the position that any object of observation that seems easy or comfortable will do. Rather, the object of observation has to be one that will pacify the mind. Therefore, an object that arouses desire or hatred is not suitable. According to Gedün Lodrö, the erroneous position that any easy or comfortable object of observation is suitable stems from a misinterpretation of a line from Atisha's Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment, which Gedun Lodro interprets in the context of changing the object of observation as, "One should set one's virtuous mind on any one object." It can also be understood as an exaggeration of the valid position that for an inexperienced meditator, the cultivation of calm abiding is difficult and that, therefore, the object of observation should not also be difficult.

Meditators who have one of the five predominant afflictive emotions—desire, hatred, obscuration, pride, and discursiveness—must pacify the predominant afflictive emotion by using the specific object of observation that is an antidote to it; they are unable to use any other object of observation successfully until they have done so. The objects of observation that pacify the five predominant afflictive emotions are called objects of observation for purifying behavior. However, someone whose afflictive emotions are of equal strength or who has few afflictive emotions may use any of the objects of observation set forth in the Ge-luk system. Since the body of a Buddha is considered the best object of observation in this system, it would be seen as the most suitable object of observation for such a person.

http://www.snowlionpub.com/pages/N86_5.html

Setting Up an Altar

2009-04-10T19:51:00.000-07:00

[a class member writes]

In our reading packet the arrangement of objects on the altar is listed as being (from left to right facing the altar):
stupa - Buddha - scripture

Yet in most other instructions I've read (and on the altars at GGBC) the arrangement is:
scripture - Buddha - stupa

What's the deal with that?
________________________

Tsomo and I are discussing it. We're not sure.

What does it say in Liberation?

The main point is that the 3 objects are there.

Another issue is that the instructions could sometimes be stated from the point of view of the observer and sometimes from the point of view of the Buddha. (Buddha's right or your right.)

But it could be that the altar at GGBC is wrong.

Let's try to figure this out.

- Drimay
.

Do Horses have Buddha Nature?

2009-03-20T10:32:00.000-07:00

[a class-member writes...]

I just read this interesting piece - New York Times editorial "Equine Alternative" - and I have a question... From a Dharma perspective, how would one explain the relationship between humans and certain domesticated animals? In this case, horses.
Do horses have a Buddha nature?
They've had such a huge impact on human development. Our debt to them must also be huge.
_______________________

We had been discussing buddha nature (Skt. tat'haagata-garbha) in our recent class on The Buddha Jewel. It turns out that a certain aspect of a buddha's mind, the Svabhava Kaya or Essence Body is also our potential to become a buddha, i.e., our buddha-nature.

Here is a definition of the Svabhava Kaya:

“ ‘The essential body possessing two aspects of purity.’ These two aspects are an innate purity and an adventitious purity. The innate purity is the void nature of a Buddha’s omniscience and the adventitious purity is the condition of having abandoned the two types of obscurations.” [nyon-drip and she-drip]
– Liberation in Our Hands, Part II, Appendix E, MSTP, p. 289

The first part - innate purity - we already have. This is the fact that our mind is empty of, or lacking, any inherent nature. That emptiness applies to all phenomena; all phenomena are empty of inherent existence. In this case we are talking about minds, so it applies to all minds. Beings that have a mind are called 'sentient beings'. Animals are sentient beings. They have some kind of awareness. They have minds, so they have this first type of purity, which is part of their buddha nature.

The second part - adventitious purity - is different for us than for a buddha, but it is still one of the reasons we can become a buddha. It is the fact that the pollution on our mind-streams is not one with mind itself. And the pollution is not permanent. It can be removed. There isn't any particular negative emotion or misunderstanding that can't be removed. That means they can all be removed. In the case of a buddha, all the pollution has been removed. For us, this adventitious state of our mental obscurations is part of the proof that we can become buddhas.

So, that counts for horses too. You can't say that there is some type of delusion on the mind-stream of a horse that could never be removed. However, it would be very difficult for that horse to attain enlightenment in a horse's body. We have to focus more on the continuum of that sentient being. That horse is not always going to be a horse. This leads us to another type of buddha nature--the buddha nature that needs developing.

This developmental buddha nature amounts to those seeds of goodness in our mind-stream which can be cultivated. Sometimes animals collect these kinds of mental imprints accidentally by contact with some holy object. Sometimes human beings purposely expose animals to some holy object for example by reciting Dharma to them or by leading them around a stupa. Then, we see that animals do have the ability to show compassion and concern for others. These days, many heart-warming incidents of animals showing compassion and even wisdom are showing up on YouTube and elsewhere. So, yes, animals have goodness which can be developed all the way up to buddhahood.

May all horses attain the state of complete and perfect buddhahood.

Drimay

~

Our Highest Potential

2009-03-09T09:42:00.000-07:00

Someone posted this on the Discovering-Buddhism-At-Home forum and I thought it fit in nicely with our upcoming course on Refuge in the Three Jewels.

"From an ultimate point of view, however, the significance of Christmas is that this very day we can realize the Holy Jesus nature within our own psyche, or mind. We can develop continuously and achieve the same type of power that Jesus possessed. we can definitely do this. Do not think that Jesus and God are something else while we are only small insignificant beings. There is no difference at all between the ultimate nature of Jesus' Holy Spirit, the transcendent quality of God's nature and the ultimate nature of our own minds."

Lama Yeshe, Silent Mind, Holy Mind, p 26

Jonah Lehrer: Passions Of The Brain

2009-03-03T12:29:00.000-08:00

Interesting radio interview related to emotions and thinking:

Fresh Air from WHYY, March 2, 2009 · According to new neuroscience studies, emotion has a strong influence on how the human brain makes decisions. Jonah Lehrer, the author of How We Decide, joins Fresh Air to discuss the latest research.

Yahoo identifies Nirvana

2009-03-02T17:35:00.000-08:00

This message is showing up on my Yahoo email page today, a message from Yahoo:

For email fanatics, it's Nirvana.

Visit the Yahoo! Mail blog for news, updates, tips, and more.

Do you think our lamas would agree with that definition?

The Antidote

2009-02-25T19:31:00.000-08:00

Here's something related to our most recent class of Samsara & Nirvana:

The antidote directly damaging the seeds that are objects of abandonment is the wisdom directly realizing emptiness. However, as the antidotes to as many superimpositions which have erroneously engaged the aspects of the three exalted knowers as there are, one should cultivate all the apprehender aspects that are opposite classes of the aspects of the objects of observation of those [superimpositions] by means of a union of calm abiding and special insight.

- by Gyeltsab Je, in The Explanation: Ornament of the Essence, trans. Toh Sze Gee

I know... it brings up even more questions. But that's all right; it gives you more to think about.

- Drimay

Mental Afflictions: the response of the brain

2009-02-18T11:00:00.000-08:00

In our current course on Samsara & Nirvana, we've been learning about mental afflictions (S. klesha, T. nyon-mong), which team up with karma to become the origin of suffering--the second of the Four Noble Truths.

One of our classmates has forwarded this article to me:

In Pain and Joy of Envy, the Brain May Play a Role (see below)

This part, "When confronting characters that the participants admitted to envying, brain regions involved in registering physical pain were aroused: the higher the subjects rated their envy, the more vigorously flared the pain nodes in the brain’s dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and related areas," fits in nicely with the classical Buddhist description of a mental affliction:

“An affliction is defined as a phenomenon, that, when it arises, is disturbing in character and that, through arising, disturbs the mind-stream.”
page 298, Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path (Lam Rim Chenmo), Vol. One.

Or:

“By ‘delusion’ [klesha] we mean something that, through its own power and whenever we develop it, has the function of immediately making our mind-stream – our personal mental continuum – unpeaceful and unsubdued.”
Day Fourteen, Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand, Wisdom Publications

But this part is trickier: "Conversely, the researchers said, when subjects were given a chance to imagine the golden one’s downfall, the brain’s reward circuits were activated, again in proportion to the strength of envy’s sting: the subjects who felt the greatest envy the first time around reacted to news of their rival’s misfortune with a comparatively livelier response in the dopamine-rich pleasure centers of, for example, the ventral striatum."

So, in the second case, it doesn't really seem like suffering, does it? But still, can you sense that the mind is disturbed or aggitated? From the three major divisions of suffering*, can you tell which one this second experience would be? I.e., being glad when something bad happens to someone else, a.k.a., 'malice'.

* Suffering of suffering, Suffering of change, Pervasive suffering.

Here is some of the original article from the New York Times:

By NATALIE ANGIER
Published: February 16, 2009

Most human vices have enough sense to be very, very tempting. Lust, gluttony, sloth, hurling powerful if unimaginative expletives at a member of the political opposition, buying a pair of Thierry Rabotin snakeskin printed shoes at 25 percent off even though you just bought a pair of cherry-red slingbacks last week — all these things feel awfully good to indulge in, which is why people must be repeatedly abjured not to.

One vice, however, dispenses with any hedonic trappings and instead feels so painful you would think it was a virtue, except that there’s no gain in lean muscle mass at the end: envy. Skulking at sixth place on traditional lists of the seven deadly sins, right between wrath and pride, envy is the deep, often hostile resentment you feel toward somebody who has something you want, like wealth, beauty, a promotion or the admiration of peers. It is a vice few can avoid yet nobody craves, for to experience envy is to feel small and inferior, a loser shrink-wrapped in spite.

“Envy is corrosive and ugly, and it can ruin your life,” said Richard H. Smith, a professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky who has written about envy. “If you’re an envious person, you have a hard time appreciating a lot of the good things that are out there, because you’re too busy worrying about how they reflect on the self.”

Now researchers are gleaning insights into the neural and evolutionary underpinnings of envy, and why it can feel like a bodily illness or a physical blow. They’re also tracing the pathway of envy’s equally petty foil, the sensation of schadenfreude — taking pleasure when those whom you envied are themselves brought down low.

.... read in full at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/17/science/17angi.html?emc=eta1

What level are you?

2008-11-14T17:43:00.001-08:00

I'm still putting my thoughts together about this one.

It comes in response to inquiries about where to start and what course is right for which level of student.

I also want to address those students who have been around long enough to start thinking of themselves as advanced. But advanced means more than just 'been around a long time'; it also means 'willing to cranking it up'--taking on bigger challenges and being willing to stretch the mind.

More to come...

Making a Connection

2008-11-08T13:52:00.000-08:00

Once we learn about karmic cause and effect, we start noticing connections.

One class member wrote: "After sharing in class some weeks ago about being separated from relatives and friends, I read about 'Slander' [also called Divisive Speech] on page 79 and have give much thought about how many times I have slandered in this lifetime."

And just to clarify:

"In the past I might have gossiped about how I was treated by my stepfather and other people as well. Is telling about their bad behavior also considered slander?"

Yes. That's what we mean here by divisive speech, sometimes translated as slander. In English, slander implies that it's a lie. But that is not required in the case of this top-ten non-virtue. It can be true and yet still serve to split people apart, i.e., divide them.

We might not be aware that that is our ulterior motive--dividing people. But isn't that what you mean, really? You want the listener to have a worse impression of the person you are talking about. The result of that is that they will become estranged. And so the karmic results for you would be that you become separated from people.

How do I know what to rejoice about?

2008-11-05T11:10:00.001-08:00

The homework for Class Five asks us to practice rejoicing as a way of creating merit--positive potential for Dharma realizations.

Usually we rejoice when we get what we want. Some of you might be rejoicing that your candidate or ballot measure won in the recent election. (Some of you might be feeling discouraged by the outcome.)

On a day-to-day basis, we rejoice when even trivial things happen that we like:

our favorite song somes on the radio
someone compliments us on our appearance
it's the night of our favorite TV show
we manage to find a good way to get around a traffic jam (it sounds like there was a terrible jam on Hwy 101 this morning)

This is not the type of thing we are rejoicing about in this practice. Here, we are rejoicing in virtue or merit.

Sometimes 'virtue' and 'merit' are used interchangeably. But virtue (Tib. gewa) can refer to any kind of good karma, whether the result will be something within samsara or outside of samsara, in the way of liberation or full enlightenment. Whereas, merit (Tib. sönam) can be used to refer more specifically to that special type of positive action which will lead to results outside of samsara, including all sorts of realizations up to full enlightenment.

In brief, we are rejoicing about good karmic actions. We are rejoicing about causes that will ripen as favorable results. For example:

I meditated today.
I kept my mouth shut instead of saying something spiteful.
My friend did some good volunteer work.
Someone I read about in the newspaper is helping to make the community safer.
My Lama is working tirelessly to free us from suffering.
There are enlightened beings in the world who are willing to guide me.

Rejoicing means celebrating, feeling glad. You might think that feeling glad is something that just happens by chance. Actually, it is something that we can cultivate intentionally, until it becomes a habit.

A glad mind is a happy mind. Wouldn't you rather have a mind which is habitually happy than one that is usually focused on problems and faults?

Then, this glad, happy mind is one that has energy--energy that will enable you to create more positive actions and to have results in your Dharma practice.

Yay!

See Homework 5 at page for this course.