Buddhism

The Guardian’s Mark Vernon has a brief review yesterday of Stephen Batchelor’s latest book, “Confession of a Buddhist Atheist.”

Vernon notes that the “anti-religion” Christopher Hitchens comes out endorsing this new work, which seems a bit strange after writing in 2007 “of Buddhists as discarding their minds as well as their sandals.” Perhaps he’s taken the time to look a little more deeply into Buddhism (take note Bill Maher, Brit Hume, etc).

Batchelor, he describes as the “vanguard of attempts to forge an authentically western Buddhism.” Having read and enjoyed “Buddhism Without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening” as well as “Living with the Devil” I happily agree with this claim.

Vernon goes on: “For myself, as an agnostic, I was saddened that Batchelor has now definitively opted for atheism: the closure on the transcendent that decision represents felt like a partial turning away from his previous open efforts to discern the nature of things.”

Which of course got me thinking, is Buddhism (in the West?) or should it be (anywhere) atheistic or agnostic? A third option, one espoused by one of our fellow Buddho-Bloggers, Adam, is Apatheism. I tend to think that Adam’s view most closely hits the mark of the early Buddhist suttas. The Buddha just didn’t much care about God (Brahma), Gods (Devas), etc. He taught about them at times, such as how to reach the “Realms of Brahma” by practicing loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. He even equated this “Realm of Brahma” -if attained by these practices- with “release of the mind” (cetto-vimutti). While traditionally this is felt to be a step shy of awakening (bodhi / nibbana), at least one great contemporary scholar thinks they (tradition) got him (the Buddha) wrong: perfect loving-kindness etc is awakening (see “How Buddhism Began” for details).

But the Buddha also made fun of the Gods, including Brahma, suggesting that he was merely deluded in thinking of himself as the “creator” of all other beings (because he was the first to appear in his realm), and that he didn’t have the answers that the Buddha did regarding the ends of the world (universe). But Gods do also play a supporting roll in Buddhism throughout its history. It was a Brahma, Sahampati, that asked the Buddha to teach his Dharma, even though it was so profound that few would understand it. And the Buddha is said to have risen to Tusita heaven to teach his -then deceased- mother.

As one of, I assume many, in the West that came to Buddhism after a period of Atheism (and agnosticism, and anti-theism), I can appreciate the article’s discussion of Humanists (oh yea, I was one of those too) flocking to see and read Batchelor’s works. As a college student studying Buddhism, one of the most important lessons I received was that Buddhism is more a system of orthopraxis than it is of orthodoxy. What this means is that it is your practice that counts, not your beliefs. To me this suggests that Buddhism is ‘big’ enough to embrace theists (especially those of a mystical leaning), atheists, agnostics, apatheists, and others without contradiction. So our quarrels about correct understanding of God in relation to the path may be quite mistaken to begin with.

Thank you from the Progressive Buddhism bloggers

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 Hagiography literally means “sacred writing” but carries with it more of a technical meaning referring to a branch of literature dealing with biographies of religious persons usually inspired by veneration.  In the life of Dogen, for example, the hagiographical material portrays Dogen’s life in a certain way.  We read the life of Dogen as that of a Soto sect saint who fits the needs of Sotoshu.  

Other facts about Dogen’s life, especially about what he wrote are much more complicated.  Those who study Dogen in academia, if they wish to know the real Dogen, can’t allow themselves to fall prey to hagiographical accounts.  It also make sense for those of us who are interested in Dogen’s religious message that we read and study Dogen without biases or credulity avoiding, as much as possible, the packaged hagiography of a saint.  

It is almost a truism to say this, but hagiographical biographies of religious saints like Mother Teresa, for example, are really so much propaganda.  An idealized portrayal of Mother Teresa is useful in selling the dogmas of the Church—and Dogen’s hagiography helps to sell Soto Zen.  In some ways, hagiography is less important than what the particular saint means in his works as something objectively meant in the way of an assertion or at least a clear implication of one.  

If as a student of Zen we wish to find the real Dogen beyond the facade of hagiography, we have to examine what he said so as to find out what is meant.  And if we wish to understand Dogen by way of Buddhism then we must compare what he said (or meant) with the canon of Buddhism.  In doing this we may better be able to discover what Dogen was trying to market in 13th century Japan which, by the way, didn’t sell all that well.  But more importantly, we may find that Dogen’s Zen may not fully resonate with Buddhism.

For modern followers of Dogen, particularly in the West, what they have inherited from Japan is Dogen’s practice of “just sitting” (shikantaza) in which “sitting meditation” (zazen) is believed to be the only way to enlightenment.  This belief, I need to point out, rests on Dogen’s particular belief that “all existence is the Buddha-nature” even though this idea is not found in Buddhism.  This is somewhat ironic because Dogen said “the true intention of the Buddha can be found only in the Sutras”!

For beginners, it is easy to become mesmerized by all that comes with Dogen’s understanding of Buddhism and Zen.  It is also difficult to wake up from such a trance if we have neglected first to study the canon of Buddhism, especially the Mahayana canon, relying instead on Dogen’s works.

I realize that this might provoke the ire of those who exclusively follow the teachings of Dogen and Zen masters who believe in Dogen’s particular view of Buddhism.  But reason reminds us that we cannot practice Buddhism or Zen by looking only through Dogen’s spectacles.  We must first have the big picture, then see where Dogen fits in.  Beginners, especially, need to be cautious.  Following personalities like Dogen instead of the Dharma (i.e., the big picture) is a great mistake.  It will make spiritual progress almost impossible.  I can’t emphasize enough that veterans and beginners need to include Sutra reading and study along with their practice of ‘sitting’.  This means reading the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, the Lankavatara Sutra, the Lotus Sutra, and many others—including the Pali canon (Nikayas).  These are huge gold mines.  Personally speaking, I don’t find much gold in Dogen’s works.

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Neither can I, but that’s exactly what some are suggesting now that Tibet has been under Chinese occupation for over 50 years. A recent online article called for the Dalai Lama to end the campaign of non-violence in relation to the oppressive Chinese government:

It has been 51 years since the last most significant Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule. That’s a long time. In the ensuing years under the leadership of the 14th Dalai Lama the Tibetan people have chosen a non-violent protest against Chinese occupation. You don’t have to be a brain surgeon to know that this has not worked. In fact I am here to say it will NEVER work. This is because the non-violence advocated by the Dalai Lama has pacified the current Tibetan to the extent that the Chinese are now in firm control. Mix in some global politics and economics and you can say the Tibetan cause in its current format is utterly hopeless!

That is why it is now time for the Dalai Lama to renounce this non-violence and call for an armed struggle against the illegal Chinese occupation of Tibet. People who know me understand that I am a man of peace. However, as I’ve watched the failure of the Tibet cause in my lifetime, I am now convinced the Chinese will win, if something urgent is not done. While in the past I may have subscribed to the Ghandian view of non-violent struggle, when it comes to the Tibetan cause I am more along the line of the “Just War” position as advocated by St. Thomas Aquinas .

James: Never is a word of impatience because there could be a democratic revolution in China tomorrow and over-night the relationship between the Chinese and Tibet would change. Impatience is a desire to force delusions we have of how things should be if we had our way but being a trick of the mind, things never turn out the way we think they will and thus bring much suffering. Impatience is a lust for control, which is often disguised as a sincere concern but can can often backfire and just cause more suffering. For example, fanning the flames of an armed insurrection in Tibet could just harden the Chinese government and turn a public that quietly supports the cause of the Tibetan people into supporters of the state. Nothing unites a people more than a war.

Plus, how could the Tibetan people even have a chance in a fight against the jaws of the giant Chinese military machine? It would merely end in even more Tibetan deaths and the aftermath would be horrific to the cause. The Chinese would turn Tibet into a further military state and perhaps create a “final solution” for Tibet, which could easily include mass executions and an increased re-population of Tibet by ethnic Chinese.

Besides, if you think that the Dalai Lama is going to give up on non-violence then you really don’t know much about him, nor about his religion. Besides being a leading voice in the world for peace today, he is first and foremost a simple monk. It would go against his vows as a Buddhist monk to renounce non-violence. And how could he send Tibetans into war yet not himself espouse violence? In fact, the very act of sending Tibetans into war would be one of violence. It is greedy to demand that one of the holiest men in Buddhism (and the world) call for blood-shed because you are frustrated and impatient that Tibetan freedom isn’t coming fast enough. I can see the Dalai Lama smiling in response and calmly stating that none of us are truly free anyway.

Even if freedom was granted over-night there would still be a lot of misery and suffering within the newly independent state. There could be power struggles, corruption and your average crime. What I’m trying to say is that having democratic freedoms doesn’t guarantee lasting happiness. There are many people in the world living with all kinds of freedom that are very unhappy. Freedom brings with it other problems such as rampant greed. The author of the opinion piece then gives their reasons for why they are calling for armed insurrection:

1. We’re running out of time – Tenzin Gyatso the current Dalai Lama is over 70 years old. He he is not going to live forever. Even if he lived another 20 years that is a limited time. Once he passes away the Communists in Beijing are going to put forth their own Dalai Lama who is more sympathetic to their cause. The Tibetan people will have their own. This split will be the final nail in the coffin for Tibetan independence. Right now there is unity. Never under-estimate the power of this unity.

James: To assume that the Tibetan people wouldn’t relate more to their Dalai Lama seems a bit hyperbolic to me. The Dalai Lama is a central pillar in what makes up Tibetan culture, and to think that they would bow to the Chinese fraud of a Dalai Lama doesn’t give the Tibetan Buddhists much credit for their tenacity at maintaining their religion in the face of oppression. Besides, it’s not about Tenzin Gyatso himself, so much as it is about the essence of a Dalai Lama. Tenzin Gyatso is just the current version of that essence. Tibetans aren’t going to disregard their century long traditions of finding the new incarnation of the Dalai Lama and trust the Chinese “methods.” Tibetans of all people know that everything is impermanent and that was the case with their long hidden civilization when the Chinese took over but the other side of impermanence is that eventually China’s power will wane too.

And it is important to note that there is a strong and growing Tibetan diaspora in India and beyond, which has brought a lot of attention to Tibetan culture, Buddhism and it’s political cause. That attention has brought many countries onto the side of the Tibetan people. Isn’t it better for the Tibetans to live within places like India or American or Europe, etc. where the allowance of other cultures and religions maintains and grows their culture instead of wiping out the Tibetans that are left in an armed insurrection? We all want freedom for Tibet but forcing it through violence runs contrary to everything the Dalai Lama and Tibetan Buddhism teaches. So you’re not only asking them to go to war against one of the biggest militaries in the world, you’re asking them to betray their beliefs in the process:

2. Non-violence only works with liberal democracies – Every non-violent movement cites Gandhi’s success in securing independence from Britain. We now have over 50 years of analysis to figure out why it worked. The answer is simple. It worked because of Britain. I’m not excusing British imperialism or exploits of the sub-continent. All I’m saying is because Britain was a well established liberal democracy you could appeal to its citizenry on moral grounds. You can’t do that when you’re dealing with a violent communist regime like China. (Same goes for the Burmese struggle too.) China is not a liberal democracy. You can not appeal to its citizenry on the basis of compassion and morality. China is gearing up for world domination. It has cash, it has energy, it has enthusiasm. The communist regime will not do anything to give the impression it is weak. And granting anything to Tibet would be perceived as weakness. It will not relent to some pesky monk in a robe preaching.

James: How does this author know that the Chinese people aren’t sympathetic to the Tibetan cause, and that they aren’t compassionate, moral people? Throughout history it has often been the case that the people under a dictatorship are good, just people who are just as much victims of their government as the Tibetan people are!! And once again, they are assuming that the Chinese people won’t rise up themselves against their government. As I said before, a Tibetan uprising could unite the people behind their government at a time when western philosophy and Buddhism are on the rise within the silent majority in China. Why push them into the hands of the oppressor by igniting a war?

And in the end, a country isn’t anything but an attachment to an institution that we think is going to make us happy, prevent us from suffering and helping us succeed. Yet here in America, (which is supposed to be the beacon of democracy) we are in a current state of absolute corruption. Our government is owned by the corporations, and is increasingly disenfranchising the people who are increasingly poor and unhealthy.

And being an American I have an up close view of what war does and does not do. Unfortunately America has a lot of experience with war and “liberating” people. After fighting in Iraq for 6 years now, the best we can say about it was that we created a barely stable yet highly corrupt government. And in Afghanistan we are stuck in a perpetual war, with no end in sight. I’m not saying that war should never be used but I believe it should be used very sparingly because while war can bring some good, it can and always does bring unexpected problems. And I’m not trying to say that Tibetans shouldn’t be able to decide for themselves if they want a war because that’s their right. However, to say that the Dalai Lama, (who is considered by many to be an incarnation of a Buddhist saint of compassion) should push a war is unrealistic. And finally, it’s easy to talk tough and call for war when you’re not the one who has to fight that war. Of course that’s assuming this individual isn’t Tibetan or unwilling to fight but I didn’t read anywhere in the article that the author would lead the charge or fight in the ranks.

PHOTO CREDIT: The Dalai Lama arrives at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. AP Photo/Jonathan Hayward, The Canadian Press.

~Peace to all beings~

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(as posted at American Buddhist Perspective)

My friend and former meditation teacher Bodhipaksa has recently been collecting and commenting upon interesting “Fake Buddha Quotes.”  This has been a source of occasional comedy, sometimes frustration, and also a bit of wonder. Why is it that people coin these fake new quotes? Why do others pick them up and spread them, unchecked, across the web and other networks? Why are some, like Bodhipaksa and myself, a bit frustrated with them? First a couple of those quotes (click the link for Bodhipaksa’s comments):

“When words are both true and kind, they can change our world.” (from here)

“Suffering, if it does not diminish love, will transport you to the furthest shore.” – Buddha (from here)

“You cannot travel the path until you have become the path itself”
–Buddha (from here)

“Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.”
—Buddha. (from here)

He is able who thinks he is able. #Buddha (from here)

And finally, my favorite (from here):

Ok, so now that we’ve all had a good laugh, I have to ask: why create fake Buddha quotes? The simplest answer is that it’s just plane old humane mistakes (plain… human). Little slips in translation or memory, or perhaps big ones and viola! (voilà) a new Buddha quote. As a guy who grew up believing that Americans fought a big war about silver in the 1860s and that the second World War was called “war war two” I can see where this is probably very often the case.

In good Buddhist fashion we can call that the ignorance cause. Then there would also be the greed and aversion causes (the three poisons). Greed perhaps for personal aggrandizement or mere attention, aversion could manifest in besmirching someone else (using a made-up Buddha quote) or making a silly one up to make the Buddha look bad.

And now, why do we repeat them? Well, probably for the same reasons – mostly ignorance if you ask me. We all, especially if we call ourselves Buddhists, owe it to ourselves and the world to read some early Buddhist teachings now and then. Check out Access to Insight (you can download the whole thing on your iPhone/iPod) if you haven’t already. Even though I’m a bit of a Theravāda snob these days, I will also heartily suggest reading Tibetan, Zen, Ch’an, Shin, etc writings as well. It’s very important to get a taste of each tradition; you don’t need to believe it or practice it, but see where it is coming from so that you can see your fellow Buddhists and human beings. So don’t forget the great Catholics (Thomas Merton, Merton movie, or Anthony De Mello, “I’m an ass, you’re an ass“), Protestants, Hindus, Muslims and others.

And lastly, why are some of us a bit frustrated with these fake Buddha quotes? Well, as Bodhipaksa suggests in his comments, the Buddha simply didn’t say that. Why make up new things when we already have HUGE canons of real Buddha quotes? Perhaps we could say it’s disrespectful, not to mention the above (ignorant, greedy, malicious) potential roots behind the quote. The stated goal of Buddhism, along with the aleviation of suffering, is to know things as they truly are (yathābhūtaṃ ñāṇaṃ). So fake Buddha quotes, unless they are created out of the heart of a true bodhisattva, will potentially not only spread greater unclarity in the world but also increase suffering.

That brings me to a final, scholarly point. What about the Mahāyāna? And in particular a quote from the Adhyāśayasaṃcodana Sūtra, the “Sūtra for inciting determination”:

Yat kiñcin maitreya subhāṣitaṃ sarvaṃ tad buddhabhāṣitam.

Because, Maitreya, all that is well spoken is Buddha-spoken.

You can find this in some great contemporary scholarly books including: Buddhism, Mahayana Buddhism (P.Williams) And On Being Buddha (P. Griffiths), and Elaborations on Emptiness: Uses of the Heart Sutra (D. Lopez).

The idea here seems to be that whatever is well spoken is the Buddha’s speech; i.e. if you speak well, you speak as a Buddha. This is very definitely an innovation of Mahāyāna Buddhism. In an article (free to Jstror subscribers) L. Snellgrove explains that some “misplaced wording” in one of his articles had Aśoka, a great early Buddhist king, declaring that ‘all which is well spoken is the word of the Buddha’ when in fact he stated that ‘whatever has been said by the Buddha, is well spoken’.  We can see where some semantic clarity makes a pretty big difference.

What do you think? Can we ‘fake quote’ the Buddha for good ends? Do we have a duty to point out fake Buddha quotes made by friends? Or is whatever is ‘well spoken’ an automatic ‘Buddha quote’?

Thank you from the Progressive Buddhism bloggers

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 I remember as a kid how I loved to take my allowance from mowing lawns and baby sitting to Harvard’s Bookstore to buy comic books, three for a dime.  Mr. Rice, my father’s old pal, owned the store.  He was a retired magician.  It was not unusual to find a magic trick in a shelf of books.

I usually took Gary and Chuckie with me to the bookstore who were younger kids.  It was about five blocks from our house.  As an older kid it was my duty to watch out for Gary and Chuckie and to introduce them to reading comics!  You can’t imagine the delight we had when entering Mr. Rice’s bookstore.  Heaped up on the east wall were tons of comics; many from the late forties.  This was kid’s heaven.

It was not unusual for us three boys to carry fifty comics back to Maple Street where we all lived.  And this was just the first part of the great ritual of comic book reading and popsicle sucking that took place during the summer.

I guess the sheer joy of walking into Mr. Rice’s bookstore never left me because when I discovered Zen Buddhism I had the same joy.  To hold D.T. Suzuki’s translation of the Lankavatara Sutra in my hand was sheer joy.  And to read it not understanding a damn thing was also joyful because one day I knew that if I could understand everything in this Sutra, I would be at least a Bodhisattva.

What I wasn’t too happy about was doing seated meditation.  My teacher I could tell also hated to do it.  But we all did it.  It wasn’t until I really got into the Sutras and then read what the Chinese Zen masters had to say that I began to get a grasp of what meditation was really about.  Thanks to my comic book reading, I eventually came to see that meditation is the effort to penetrate through the veil of phenomenal waves; these waves being our mental images and internal dialogue.  If we were lucky, we would see the substance from which these illusory waves were made which is beyond birth and death.

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Peter Clothier is a long time expert in art, a fellow dharma practitioner and fellow blogger. You can find his blog over at, “The Buddha Diaries.” He has written a great, easy to read book titled, Persist: In Praise of the Creative Spirit in a World Gone Mad with Commerce. As both a Buddhist and an artist I was pleased to read aspects of Buddhism within his advice on how to be a creative person/artist in this modern world of commerce.

I especially liked how the author compassionately stated that just because your art doesn’t sell, doesn’t mean you’re not a good artist. That is a very brief summation of a lot of the book so I encourage you to read it cover to cover for yourself but for a struggling painter like myself who doesn’t make consistent money from my art–it’s nice to hear. Especially coming from someone who has been in, “the biz” for as long as Peter.

I use to think that if my art didn’t make me a millionaire that I wasn’t a true and talented artist. Peter helped me rediscover doing art simply because it’s my passion and brings me joy. I guess you could say he teaches to, “Paint canvas and carry turpentine” as in the Zen saying, “Chop wood, carry water” to remind us all to be present in the moment and to focus solely on whatever activity that moment finds ourselves engaged in. I also really appreciated his advice on meditating before doing your art to clear your mind of doubts about your talent and that critical voice that says, “You’re not doing it right.” It is clear how the meditation can clear your mind for the creative ideas to flow freely in the moment. This is a great book for anyone interested in being a creative person in a modern world that has boiled art down to mere commodity.

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Mara is the bad boy of Buddhism; its devil and tempter, if you like.  Essentially, we live in the land of Mara—and certainly we inhabit the body of Mara since Mara is synonymous with the Five Aggregates (S. iii. 195).

The root word of Mara essentially refers to death and destruction (√MRI).  Mara causes us lose sight of the deathless (i.e., nirvana).  Some of his tools by which he does this are the kleshas (P., kilesa) .  Kleshas are primarily disturbances of the mind such as greed, hatred (pratigha), ignorance (avidya), arrogance (mâna), doubt, and false views.  By these, and other means, Mara holds sway over the world.

Our Buddhist bad boy is also the big honcho of the world of sensual pleasures; who is also aware of any attempt to curb sensual pleasures.  We could say, it is a direct challenge to Mara’s authority to crash his sensual parties!  From Mara’s point of view, there is nothing better than getting wound up in sensual delight throwing all caution to the wind.  Mara especially loves us when we are chained to sensual pleasures.  He also loves us when we are unrestrained, in the example of eating a chocolate fudge cake or gambling, or following the course of Tiger Woods becoming a sex addict.

If there were such a device called a ‘Marometer’ that measures how ensnared people are by sensuous things, most of the human race could certainly be called Mara’s minions.  To be sure, Mara is the greatest of all tempters having no equal while most of the human race are daily educated to say “yes” to their base desires no matter how harmful they ultimately prove to be.

Some of us might even get lucky when we die being reborn as Mara.  Apparently, one of the Buddha’s great disciples, Maha Moggallana the Elder, in one of his previous lives was Mara.  His name then was Dusi whose sister Kali was the mother of the present Mara.

Compared with Mara, the Buddha seems to be Mr. Fun Sucker.  In the literature the Buddha comes across as a cranky old dude who wasn’t in the best health having let his asceticism go too far.  Still, the Buddha saw the perils of birth and death and, of course, rebirth; who also realized the bliss (sukha) of having finally liberated one’s self from the coils of illusion and suffering. 

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So far I have enjoyed reading A. Charles Muller’s translation of The Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment with a commentary by the Korean Son (Zen) Monk Kihwa (1376–1433).  Kihwa’s commentary is espeically illuminating at times.  According to Muller,

“Kihwa is the inheritor of a Son tradition whose practices were derived mainly from the Imje school, which he received through his teacher Muhak, who was in turn taught by Hyegun, both of whom had traveled to Yüan China to receive direct instruction from Chinese Lin-chi masters” (ibid., p. 24).

It was in the spring of 1404, after a period of intense spiritual reflection, living in a small hut, that Kihwa had a major awakening.  Again, citing from Muller’s book who cites from the Haengjana:

One night, while taking a refreshing walk to conquer the demon of sleep, suddenly, without intention, he blurted out a verse, saying:  “Walking, walking, suddenly I turn by head.  Lo!  The mountain rock pierces the clouds!”  Another day, he entered the privy and when he came out, ‘dropped the wash bucket’ saying:  “There is only this single affair of reality—if there is a second, then it cannot be true.  These words themselves—how empty!” (ibid., p. 26)

This wasn’t the only spiritual awakening Kihwa had.  There were others.  Eventually, he even became the tutor to the king for some three years.  Just before he died in 1433 he left the world these final words:

“How void and empty!  Originally there is not a single thing.  The spiritual luminosity pervades and penetrates perfectly throughout the ten directions, but there is neither mind nor body to undergo birth and death.  Past and future go and return without the slightest hindrance.” 

And,

“About to depart, I raise my gaze to the ten directions of the vast heavens where there is no path to the Western Paradise” (ibid., p. 27).

In his commentary to the Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment, Kihwa has some interesting words to say about ignorance that are extremely insightful.

Awareness (Skt. vidyâ) has the meanings of “marvelous illumination” and “illumination of the correct.”  Ignorance (Skt. avidyâ) means “to turn away from illumination and face the darkness,” or “lose the true and abandon oneself to error.”  Abandoning the true and falling into error is generally called “inversion.”  Since the types of error are not limited to one kind, the text says “various.”

If the nature is originally clear and bright, how can there be ignorance? Beyond the clear and bright essence, delusion suddenly arises, and one loses the true brightness and correct wisdom, turns to darkness and falls into error.  It is like a person who suddenly becomes confused, mistaking North for South and East for West.  The marvelously bright true mind is still and luminous at the same time.  Being luminous yet still, it is called the dharma body.  Being still yet luminous, it is called true wisdom.  True wisdom ends thought; the dharma-body lacks attributes.  Yet even though the attributesless dharma-body is the true body, we take the material body as our own body; and while the thought-ending wisdom is the true mind, we take conditioned thought as our own mind.  Since we take conditioned thought to be our mind, we confuse true wisdom.  Since we take the material body to be our body, we confuse the dharma-body.  Because of this, not only are we confused about the dharma-body and true wisdom, we also don’t know that the material body and conditioned thought are both unreal.  All of this is brought about by the most primary manifestation of nonenlightenment” (ibid., pp. 78–79).

I haven’t been to all of the Zen centers in the West but it is my guess that Muller’s fine translation is not taken up my most of them.  I suspect, instead, these centers perfer to engage the non-dharma-body in zazen, and be aware of their conditioned thoughts, a practice, by the way, that has nothing to do with apperceiving Mind.  

There is much about the pure Mind in this book and Bodhicitta (the arousal of pure mind).  It is well worth foregoing beer and pizza for a weekend and buying this book, instead.  

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The Dalai Lama recently visited to Bodh Gaya for discourses to Buddhist pilgrims at the Mahabodhi temple. The following, and above are all pictures taken during his visit to the site venerated by Buddhists as the place where Buddha realized enlightenment. I like the first three pictures and the last one most.~Peace to all beings~

PHOTO CREDITS: Tenzin Choejor of The Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

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 This Friday, at a birthday party for a friend, someone asked me what is meditation?  A basic, sound question, I first explained to Karl (the person who asked me the question) that meditation taught these days is mainly for the purpose of achieving relaxation.  I then went on to say the Buddha's meditation is not about this.  The meditation the Buddha taught is the means by which one gains access to ultimate reality and, by so doing, is able to distinguish what is true and everlasting from what is illusory and finite.

Karl didn't seem to have a problem with this answer.  I didn't try to dumb down my answer either.  I then went on to explain the Buddha's meditation by way of analogy using transverse waves (or transverse vibrations) and longitudinal waves.  I pointed out that the phenomenal world we apprehend with our senses, including our entire body, can be thought of as transverse waves—in fact, from a scientific view the whole visible universe is one of transverse waves or the same, electromagnetic waves.  Such waves even include our thoughts which are more like transverse vibrations.

I explained to Karl that transverse waves were like ocean waves consisting of up and down motions, whereas longitudinal waves are more like sound waves although this is not quite accurate insofar as most illustrations of sound waves actually show transverse waves.  Perhaps a better example is a huge block of steel.  If you tap on it with a hammer the wave created is more like a longitudinal wave.  It goes with the steel medium—not up and down like a water wave does which is occurring at right angles to the body of water (i.e., up and down).

What the Buddha wants us to do, I told Karl, is enter into the world of longitudinal waves which are harmonious with the absolute medium of reality, this medium being pure Mind.  However, there is a problem—a very challenging one.  Unlike transverse waves, which are in opposition to the medium from which they arise and then eventually cease (the arising and ceasing showing their inadequacy), connecting with longitudinal waves cannot be approached by thought or any kind of mentation or mental exercise since these are transverse.  And least of all will physical practices work. 

However, there is a way to do it. Part of us is interfacing with the world of transverse waves putting us in immediate sympathy with the psychophysical body of birth and death while another part is not.  This is connected with the medium of pure Mind itself.  This is where “one pointedness of mind” comes into play because when our mind reflects into itself thus becoming singular (i.e., itself) instead of manifold (i.e., transverse), it becomes longitudinal resonating with the field of pure Mind, itself.  In other words, we come to suddenly harmonize with Mind, itself, the absolute medium. 

Again Karl didn’t seem bothered with this answer.  In fact, he was excited about meditation after I began to lay out the details.  This became for me, somewhat of a learning experience, too, because I realized that meditation could be put into a more accurate analogy and still be understood. 

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