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Post by silver on Feb 5, 2016 10:13:07 GMT -5
This was written by someone at another forum:
"A phantom of delight."
I am but a fragment, A fragment of a bigger entity. I seek the truth, It turned out truth itself is seeking me.
I was so far-sighted, I lost my adjacent view. I searched far and wide, I failed to grasp my inner light.
The whole universe tried its best, To embark me on this quest, For discerning my bona fide zest, I took it as just another jest.
I turned a blind eye to the truth, It triggered a cascade of perplexity. By this time ignorance took it's toll, I couldn't fathom reality's expression.
It was as close to me as my eyebrows, Right along from the distant first. I deemed everything to be enduring, When every atom and cell yelled impermanence.
I surmised everything to be existing independently, Even when nature's first call was reliance. If you don't agree with this genuine bind, I hold you custody to name one in your right mind.
Everything is the mind and the mind is everything. I align my sight on the city of dreams. And i can't seem to identify a thing, That is not an artifact of the mind.
Everything that takes birth will cease to exist. Everything that once shone will loose it's lustre. Everything has it's accorded deadline. And i stand in the middle of it all.
I am but a lost cause, For the ship of freedom has sailed. Maybe if i look in the right place, I may one dawn soar in the bright open sky.
I am the explorer that lost his compass, I am the sailor that wrecked his boat, I am the artist that broke his hand, I am the spirit with no purpose.
I have galloped the four corners of the earth, And left no stone unturned. For lasting happiness is a rare gem, As if i am searching for a stream in the deserted plain.
That will be the fate of everyone, If they look for aqueous life on land. Life is fast as the clouds of autumn, And death uncertain as the brewing of a storm.
I am the humankind, I came from a troubled past, And am stirring into the unknown future, What moment have we truly got than the explicit present.
I am the part of a bigger we, With no relative they. For reality expounds selflessness, And Phenomena as empty.
What we call comfort is transient, That roots from the insatiable sense organs. How many times have we been let down, By the demolition army of our greed.
Hurrah! One man rummaged for truth, And came into terms with the absolute. The question we should ask is, Who is he?
Who is he?
Who is he?!...
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Post by silver on Feb 10, 2016 10:13:05 GMT -5
This post was made fresh this morning off of my Buddhist forum's 'death' thread:
"As far as I'm concerned, the thing about Death I find hard to accept is the fact that it separates us from the people we love.
And since speculating all day about it and squandering precious living time on it will make absolutely no difference on the end result, I'd rather dedicate that precious wit energy and intellectual zest to studying the Dharma and living as hedonistically as I always do.
Death, to me, is just a post-it reminder that I have to enjoy this life to the most. Nothing else."
I thought it was quite insightful.
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Post by silver on Feb 17, 2016 9:36:04 GMT -5
I've only read this far in this article, but it promises to be brill:
The Warrior Tradition: Conquering Fear
by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche| February 18, 2015
Bodhisattva Fear Chogyam Trungpa Buddhism Lion's RoarBodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. Photo by A Gude.
This article is based on a seminar Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche conducted in 1979 for teachers in Shambhala Training on meditation and the view of warriorship. That seminar was about fearlessness, and as well, about how to recognize and conquer real enemies in the world outside. (The material presented is now the core of Trungpa Rinpoche’s book, Smile at Fear.)
Chögyam Trungpa had a far-reaching sense of history, as well as a deeply held commitment to bringing the buddhadharma into Western society. So he was not just addressing his immediate audience when he lectured. His life was dedicated to helping others—and some of those others, he knew, would live in difficult times to come, where they would need the “rock meets bone” teachings that he specialized in. I think that he gave such teachings during his lifetime knowing that they would be needed later, even though they seemed a bit extreme at the time. He didn’t present outrageous material to shock people or to indulge himself. He knew that the world was a much more difficult place than most of us, immersed in 20th-century North American comfort, were willing to admit.
He had witnessed the destruction of the Tibetan culture and way of life by the Communist Chinese. When they invaded Tibet, they sacked its monasteries, destroyed priceless cultural treasures, and imprisoned, tortured and killed many tens of thousands of his compatriots. Having gone through that kind of genocidal destruction, it was difficult and unnecessary for him to ignore the extremes that reality can present.
When I dusted off the transcripts of these talks on fearlessness given in 1979, I found that they were full of penetrating and helpful advice. They are still provocative and somewhat outrageous. But in light of recent world events, they also seem compassionate and designed to make us more wakeful, so that we can find a sane and direct way to work with fear.
— Carolyn Rose Gimian
Conquering Fear: The Ground
When we bring together the ancient spiritual traditions of the West with those of the Orient, we find a meeting point where the warrior tradition can be experienced and realized. The concept of being a warrior is applicable to the most basic situations in our lives-to the fundamental situation that exists before the notion of good or bad ever occurs. The term “warrior” relates to the basic situation of being a human being. The heart of the warrior is this basic aliveness or basic goodness. Such fearless goodness is free from doubt and overcomes any perverted attitudes towards reality.
Doubt is the first obstacle to fearlessness that has to be overcome. We’re not talking here about suppressing your doubts about a particular thing that is taking place. We’re not talking about having doubts about joining an organization, or something like that. We are referring here to overcoming a much more basic doubt, which is fundamentally doubting yourself and feeling that you have some kind of shortcoming as a human being. You don’t feel that your mind and body are synchronized, or working together properly. You feel that you are constantly being short-changed somewhere in your life.
When you were growing up, at a very early stage-perhaps around two years old-you must have heard our father or mother saying no to you. They would say, “No, don’t get into that,” or, “No, don’t explore that too much,” or, “No, be quiet. Be still.” When you heard the word no, you may have responded by trying to fulfill that no, by being good. Or you may have reacted negatively, by defying your parents and their no, by exploring further and being “bad.” That mixture of the temptation to be naughty and the desire to be disciplined occurs very early in life. When our parents say no to us, it makes us feel strange about ourselves, which becomes an expression of fear.
On the other hand, there is another kind of NO, which is very positive. We have never heard that basic NO properly: NO free from fear and free from doubt. Instead, even if we think that we’re doing our best in life, we still feel that we haven’t fully lived up to what we should be. We feel that we’re not quite doing things right. We feel that our parents or others don’t approve of us. There is that fundamental doubt, or fundamental fear, as to whether or not we can actually accomplish something.
Doubt arises in relating with authority, discipline and scheduling throughout our life. When we don’t acknowledge our doubt, it manifests as resistance and resentment. There is often some resentment or a reaction against the sitting practice of meditation as well. The moment that the gong is struck to signal the beginning of meditation practice, we feel resistance. But in that situation, we find that it’s too late. We’re already sitting there on the cushion, so we usually continue to practice.
However, resistance in everyday life provides us with many ways to manipulate situations. When we are presented with a challenge, we often try to turn away rather than having to face it. We come up with all kinds of excuses to avoid the demands that we feel are being put on us.
The basic NO, on the other hand, is accepting discipline in our life without preconceptions. Normally, when we say the word “discipline,” it comes with a lot of mixed feelings. It’s like saying “porridge.” Some people like porridge, and some people hate it. Nevertheless, porridge remains porridge. It is a very straightforward thing. We have similar feelings about discipline and the meaning of NO. Sometimes, it’s a bad NO: it is providing oppressive boundaries that we don’t want to accept. Or it could be a good NO, which encourages us to do something healthy. But when we just hear that one word, NO, the message is mixed.
Fearlessness is extending ourselves beyond that limited view. In the Heart Sutra, it talks about going beyond. Gone beyond, gate, is the basic NO. In the sutra, it says there is no eye, no ear, no sound, no smell-all of those things. When you experience egolessness, the solidity of your life and your perceptions falls apart. That could be very desolate or it could be very inspiring, in terms of shunyata, the Buddhist understanding of emptiness. Very simply, it is basic NO. It is a real expression of fearlessness. In the Buddhist view, egolessness is pre-existing, beyond our preconceptions. In the state of egolessness everything is simple and very clear. When we try to supplement the brightness of egolessness by putting a lot of other things onto it, those things obscure its brilliance, becoming blockages and veils.
[tbc]
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Post by silver on Feb 17, 2016 9:52:34 GMT -5
[above article cont'd]
In the warrior tradition, sacred outlook is the brilliant environment created by basic goodness. When we refuse to have any contact with that state of being, when we turn away from basic goodness, then wrong beliefs arise. We come up with all sorts of logics, again and again, so that we don’t have to face the realities of the world.
We run up against our hesitation to get fully into things all the time, even in seemingly insignificant situations. If we don’t want to wash the dishes right after we’ve eaten, we may tell ourselves that we need to let them soak. In fact we’re often hoping that one of our housemates will clean up after us. On another level, philosophically speaking, we may feel completely tuned into the warrior’s world. From that point of view, we think that we can quite safely say, “Once a warrior, always a warrior.” That sounds good, but in terms of the actual practice of warriorship, it’s questionable. “Once a warrior” may not always be a warrior if we disregard the beauty of the phenomenal world. We prefer to wear sunglasses, rather than facing the brilliance of the sunshine. We put on a hat and gloves to shield ourselves, fearing that we might get burned. The colourfulness of relationships, household chores, business enterprises and our general livelihood are too irritating. We are constantly looking for padding so that we don’t run into the sharp edges of the world. That is the essence of wrong belief. It is an obstacle to seeing the wisdom of the Great Eastern Sun, which is seeing greater vision beyond our own small world.
The ground of fearlessness and the basis of overcoming doubt and wrong belief is to develop renunciation. Renunciation here means overcoming that very hard, tough, aggressive mentality which wards off any gentleness that might come into our hearts. Fear does not allow fundamental tenderness to enter into us. When tenderness tinged by sadness touches our heart, we know that we are in contact with reality. We feel it. That contact is genuine, fresh, and quite raw. That sensitivity is the basic experience of warriorship, and it is the key to developing fearless renunciation.
Sometimes people find that being tender and raw is threatening and seemingly exhausting. Openness seems demanding and energy consuming, so they prefer to cover up their tender heart. Vulnerability can sometimes make you nervous. It is uncomfortable to feel so real, so you want to numb yourself. You look for some kind of anaesthetic, anything that will provide you with entertainment. Then you can forget the discomfort of reality. People don’t want to live with their basic rawness for even fifteen minutes. When people say they are bored, often they mean that they don’t want to experience the sense of emptiness, which is also an expression of openness and vulnerability. So they pick up the newspaper or read anything else that’s lying around the room-even reading what it says on a cereal box to keep themselves entertained. The search for entertainment to baby-sit your boredom soon becomes legitimized as laziness. Such laziness actually involves a lot of exertion. You have to constantly crank things up to occupy yourself, overcoming your boredom by indulging in laziness.
For the warrior, fearlessness is the opposite of that approach. Fearlessness is a question of learning how to be. Be there all along: that is the message. That is quite challenging in what we call the setting-sun world, the world of neurotic comfort where we use everything to fill up the space. We even use our emotions to entertain ourselves. You might be genuinely angry about something for a fraction of a second, but then you draw out your anger so that it lasts for twenty-five minutes. Then you crank up something else to be angry at for the next twenty minutes. Sometimes, if you arouse a really good attack of anger, it can last for days and days. That is another way we entertain ourselves in the setting-sun world.
The remedy to that approach is renunciation. In the Buddhist teachings, renunciation is associated with being nauseated by the confused world and the pain of samsara. For the warrior, renunciation is slightly different. It is giving away, or not indulging in, pleasure for entertainment’s sake. We are going to kick out any preoccupations provided by the miscellaneous babysitters in the phenomenal world.
Finally, renunciation is the willingness to work with real situations of aggression in the world. If someone interrupts your world with an attack of aggression, you have to respond to it. There is no other way. Renunciation is being willing to face that kind of situation, rather than covering it up. Everyone is afraid to talk about this. It may be shocking to mention it. Nonetheless, we have to learn to relate to those aspects of the world. We have never developed any response to attack-whether it is a verbal attack or actual physical aggression. People are very shy of this topic, although we have the answers to these challenges in our warrior disciplines, our exertion and our manifestation.
In the warrior tradition, fearlessness is connected with attaching your basic existence to greater vision or what we call the Great Eastern Sun. In order to experience such vast and demanding vision, you need a real connection to basic goodness. The key to that is overcoming doubt and wrong belief. Doubt is your own internal problem, which you have to work with. But then beyond that there may be an enemy, a challenge, that is outside of you. We can’t just pretend that those threats never exist. You might say that your laziness is some kind of enemy, but laziness is not actually an enemy. It would be better to call it an obstacle.
How are we going to respond to real opposition that arises in the world? As a warrior, how are you going to relate with that? You don’t need a party-line logic or a package deal response. They don’t really help. In my experience of how students usually relate with conflict, I find that they tend to freeze up when someone is very critical of them. They become non-communicative, which doesn’t help the situation. As warriors, we shouldn’t be uptight and uncommunicative. We find it easy to manifest basic goodness when somebody agrees with us. Even if they’re half agreeing with you, you can talk to them and have a great time. But if someone is edgy and negative, then you freeze, become defensive, and begin to attack them back. That’s the wrong end of the stick. You don’t kill an enemy before they become the enemy. You only slash the enemy when they become a 100% good enemy and present a real 100% challenge. If someone is interested in making love with you, you make love to them. But you don’t rape them. You don’t kill an enemy before they become the enemy. You only slash the enemy when they become a 100% good enemy and present a real 100% challenge. If someone is interested in making love with you, you make love to them. But you don’t rape them. You wait until the other person commits themselves to the situation. Working with your enemy is the same idea.
When a warrior has to kill his enemy, he has a very soft heart. He looks his enemy right in the face. The grip on your sword is quite strong and tough, and then with a tender heart, you cut your enemy into two pieces. At that point, slashing your enemy is equivalent to making love to them. That very strong, powerful stroke is also sympathetic. That fearless stroke is frightening, don’t you think? We don’t want to face that possibility.
On the other hand, if we are in touch with basic goodness, we are always relating to the world directly, choicelessly, whether the energy of the situation demands a destructive or a constructive response. The idea of renunciation is to relate with whatever arises with a sense of sadness and tenderness. We reject the aggressive, hardcore street fighter mentality. The neurotic upheavals created by conflicting emotions, or the kleshas, arise from ignorance, or avidya. Ignorance is very harsh and willing to stick with its own version of things. Therefore, it feels very righteous. Overcoming that is the essence of renunciation: we have no hard edges.
Warriorship is so tender, without skin, without tissue, naked and raw. It is soft and gentle. You have renounced putting on a new suit of armor. You have renounced growing a thick, hard skin. You are willing to expose naked flesh, bone and marrow to the world.
This whole discussion is not just metaphoric. We are talking about what you do if you actually have to slash the enemy, if you are in combat or having a sword fight with someone, as you see in Japanese samurai movies. We shouldn’t be too cowardly. A sword fight is real, as real as making love to another human being. We are talking about direct experience and we’re not psychologizing anything here. Before you slash the enemy, look into his or her eyes and feel that tenderness. Then you slash. When you slash your enemy, your compassionate heart becomes twice as big. It puffs up; it becomes a big heart; therefore you can slash the enemy. If you are small-hearted, you cannot do this properly.
Of course, many times conquering the enemy might not involve cutting them in two. You might just turn them upside down! But you have to be willing to face the possibilities.
When the warrior has thoroughly experienced his or her own basic rawness, there is no room to manipulate the situation. You just go forward and present the truth quite fearlessly. You can be what you are, in a very straightforward and basic way. So tenderness brings simplicity and naturalness, almost at the level of simple-mindedness.
We don’t want to become tricky warriors, with all kinds of tricks up our sleeves and ways to cut people’s logic down when we don’t agree with them. Then there is no cultivation of either ourselves or others. When that occurs, we destroy any possibilities of enlightened society. In fact, there will be no society; just a few people hanging out. Instead, the fearless warriors of Shambhala are very ordinary, simpleminded warriors. That is the starting point for developing true bravery.
[tbc]
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Post by silver on Feb 17, 2016 9:58:54 GMT -5
[above article cont'd]
The Path
The starting point on the path of fearlessness is the discovery of fear. We find ourselves fearful, frightened, even petrified by circumstances. This ubiquitous nervousness provides us with a stepping stone, so that we can step over our fear. We have to make a definite move to cross over the boundary from cowardice to bravery. If we do so properly, the other side of our cowardice contains bravery.
We may not discover bravery right away. Instead, beyond our nervousness, we find a shaky tenderness. We are still quivering, but we are shaking with tenderness rather than bewilderment. That shaky vulnerability contains an element of sadness, but not in the sense of feeling badly about ourself or feeling deprived. Rather, we feel a natural sense of fullness which is tender and sad.
It’s like the feeling you have when you are about to shed a tear. You feel somewhat wealthy because your eyes are full of tears. When you blink, tears begin to roll down your cheeks. There is also an element of loneliness, but again it is not based on deprivation, inadequacy or rejection. Instead you feel that you alone can understand the truth of your own loneliness, which is quite dignified and self-contained. You have a full heart, you feel lonely, but you don’t feel particularly bad about it. It is like an island in the middle of a lake. The island is self-contained; therefore it looks lonely in the middle of the water. Occasionally, ferry boats carry commuters back and forth from the shore to the island, but that doesn’t particularly help. In fact, it expresses the loneliness or the aloneness of the island further.
Discovering these facets of fearlessness is preparation for the further journey on the warrior’s path. If the warrior does not feel alone and sad, then he or she can be corrupted very easily. In fact, such a person may not be a warrior at all. To be a good warrior, one has to feel sad and lonely, but rich and resourceful at the same time. This makes the warrior sensitive to every aspect of phenomena: to sights, smells, sounds and feelings. In that sense, the warrior is also an artist, appreciating whatever goes on in the world. Everything is extremely vivid. The rustling of your armor or the sound of rain drops falling on your coat is very loud. Because you are so sensitive, the fluttering of occasional butterflies around you is almost an insult.
Such a sensitive warrior can then go further on the path of fearlessness. There are three tools or practical guides that the warrior uses on this journey. The first is the development of discipline, or sila in Sanskrit, which is represented by the analogy of the sun. Sunshine is all-pervasive. When the sun shines on the land, it doesn’t neglect any area. It does a thorough job. Similarly, as a warrior, you never neglect your discipline.
We’re not talking about military rigidity here. Rather, in all your mannerisms, every aspect of behavior, you maintain your openness to the environment. You constantly extend yourself to things around you. There is a complete absence of laziness. Even if what you are seeing, hearing or perceiving becomes very difficult and demanding, the warrior never gives up. You go along with the situation. You don’t withdraw. This allows you to develop your loyalty and connection to others, free from fear. You can relate with other sentient beings who are trapped in the confused world, perpetuating their pain. In fact, you realize that it is your duty. You feel warmth, compassion, and even passion towards others. First you develop your own good conduct, and then you can extend yourself fearlessly to others. That is the concept of the sun.
The second guide on the warrior’s path is represented by the analogy of an echo, which is connected with meditative awareness, or samadhi. When you try to take time off from being a warrior, when you want to let go of your discipline or indulge mindlessly in some activity, your action produces an echo. It’s like a sound echoing in a canyon, bouncing back on itself, producing more echoes that bounce off of one another. Those echoes or reflections happen all the time, and if we pay attention to them, they provide constant reminders to be awake. At first, the reminder might be fairly timid, but then the second, third and fourth time you hear it, it’s a much louder echo. These echoes remind you to be on the spot, on the dot.
However, you can’t just wait for an echo to wake you up. You have to put your awareness out into the situation. You have to put effort into being aware.
Becoming a warrior means that you are building a world that does not give you the setting sun, or degraded, concept of rest, which is purely indulging in your confusion. Sometimes you are tempted to return to that cowardly world. You just want to flop and forget the echo of your awareness. It seems like a tremendous relief not to have to work so hard. But then you discover that this world without even an echo is too deadly. You find it refreshing to get back to the warrior’s world, because it is so much more alive.
The warrior’s third tool is actually a weapon. It is represented by the analogy of a bow and arrow, which is connected with developing wisdom, or prajna, and skillful means, or upaya. In this case we are talking about the wisdom of discriminating awareness, which is experiencing the sharpness of sense perceptions and developing psychological accuracy. You can’t develop this kind of sharpness unless some experience of egolessness has manifested in your mind. Otherwise, your mind will be preoccupied, full of its own ego. But when you have made a connection with basic goodness, you can relate with both the actual sharpness of the arrow and with the skillful means provided by the bow. The bow allows you to harness or execute the sharpness of your perceptions.
The development of this discriminating awareness wisdom also allows you to accurately detect the enemy. A real enemy is someone who propagates and promotes ultimate selfishness, or ego. Such enemies promote basic badness rather than basic goodness. They try to bring others into their realm, tempting them with anything from a cookie up to a million dollars.
In the Shambhala warrior tradition, we say that you should only have to kill an enemy once every thousand years. We mean here the real enemy, the basic rudra principle, which is the personification of Ego-hood, of ego run wild. You can work with other enemies by subjugating them, talking to them, buying them out, or seducing them. However, according to this tradition, once in a thousand years a real assassination of the enemy is necessary. We’re talking about someone who can’t be reached by any other means. You might use a sword or an arrow, whatever means you need to overpower them, so their ego is completely popped. Such an assassination has to be very direct and personal. It’s not like dropping bombs on people. If we pop the enemy, and only then, they might be able to connect with some basic goodness within themselves and realize that they made a gigantic mistake. It’s like having rotten teeth in your mouth. Eventually you have to have all your teeth removed, replacing them with false teeth. After that, you might be able to appreciate the teeth that you lost.
Overall, these three principles-the sun, the echo, and the bow and arrow-are all connected with the natural process, or path, of working with our basic intelligence. Beyond that, they describe the fundamental decorum and decency of the warrior’s existence. A warrior should be capable of artfully conducting his or her life in every action, from drinking tea to running a country. Learning how to handle fear, both how to utilize one’s own fear and that of others, is what allows us to brew the beer of fearlessness. You can put all of those situations of fear and doubt into a gigantic vat and ferment them.
The path of fearlessness is connected with what we do right now, today, rather than with anything theoretical or waiting for a cue from somewhere else. The basic vision of warriorship is that there is goodness in everyone. We are all good in ourselves. So we have our own warrior society within our own body. We have everything we need to make the journey already.
[tbc]
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Post by silver on Feb 17, 2016 10:10:45 GMT -5
[above article contd]
Fruition
Fearlessness has a starting point, it includes discipline, it makes a journey, and it reaches a conclusion. It is like the Great Eastern Sun: the sun rises, it radiates light, and this benefits people by dispelling the darkness and allowing the fruit to ripen and the flowers to blossom.
The fruition of fearlessness is also connected with three analogies. The first is that fearlessness is like a reservoir of trust. This trust arises from the experience of basic goodness, which we have already discussed. When we feel basically good, rather than degraded or condemned, then we become very inquisitive, looking into every situation and examining it. We don’t want to fool ourselves by relying on belief alone. Rather, we want to make a personal connection with reality.
This is a very simple, straightforward idea. If we accept a challenge and take certain steps to accomplish something, the process will yield results-either success or failure. When you sow a seed or plant a tree, either the seed will germinate and the tree will grow, or they will die. Similarly, for the inquisitive warrior, trust means that we know that our actions will bring a definite response from reality. We know that we will get a message. Failure generally is telling us that our action has been undisciplined and inaccurate in some way. Therefore, it fails. When our action is fully disciplined, it usually is fulfilled; we have success. But those responses are not regarded as either punishment or congratulations.
Trust then is being willing to take a chance, knowing that what goes up must come down, as they say. When a warrior has that kind of trust in the reflections of the phenomenal world, then he or she can trust his or her individual discovery of goodness. Communication produces results, either success or failure. That is how the fearless warrior relates with the universe: not by remaining alone and insecure, hiding away, but by constantly being exposed to the phenomenal world and constantly being willing to take that chance.
The reservoir of trust is a bank of richness from which the warrior can always draw conclusions. We begin to feel that we are dealing with a rich world, one that never runs out of messages. The only problem arises if we try to manipulate the situation in our favor. You are not supposed to fish in the reservoir or swim in it. The reservoir has to remain unconditional, unpolluted. So you don’t put your one-sidedness, your bias or conditionality, into it. Then the reservoir might dry up.
Normally, trust means that we think that our world is trustworthy. We think that it’s going to produce a good result, success. But in this case, we’re talking about having a continual relationship with the phenomenal world that is not based on either a good or bad result. We have unconditional trust in the phenomenal world to always give us a message, either success or failure. The fruition of our action will always provide us with information. Such trust in the reservoir keeps us from being too arrogant or too timid. If you’re too arrogant, you’ll find yourself bumping into the ceiling. If you’re too timid, you’ll be pushed up by the floor. Roughly speaking, that’s the concept of the reservoir.
The ancient Chinese Book of Changes or I Ching often talks about success being failure and failure being success. Success sows the seeds of future failure, and failure may bring a later success. So it’s always a dynamic process. As warriors, fearlessness doesn’t mean that we cheer up by saying, “Look! I’m on the side of the right. I’m a success.” Nor do we feel that we’re being punished when we fail. In any case, success and failure are saying the same thing.
That brings us to the next analogy, which is music. Music is connected with the idea of continuously being joyful. The feedback, or the result, that comes from the warrior’s practice is never a dead end. It presents another path. We always can go on, go beyond. So while the result of action is fruition, beyond that, the result is the seed for the next journey. Our journey continues, cycling between success and failure, path and fruition, just as the four seasons alternate. There is always a sense of creativity, so there is always joy on the journey, joy in the result.
Why are you so joyful? You are guided on the path by the disciplines of the sun, the echo, and the bow and arrow. You have witnessed your basic goodness, taking joy in having nothing to hang onto. You have realized the fundamental NO. You are free from doubt and you have experienced a sense of renunciation. So whether the situation brings success or failure, it brings an unconditional good understanding. Therefore, your mind and body are constantly synchronized; there is no deficit of any kind in the body or the mind. Your experience becomes like music, which has rhythm and a melody that is constantly expanding and being recreated. So the sense of celebration is constant, inbuilt, in spite of the ups and downs of one’s personal life. That is continuously being joyful.
Having developed trust and appreciation, you can finally conquer fear, which is connected with the analogy of a saddle. In the Buddhist teachings we talk about developing such a good sense of mental balance that, if you become mindless, your awareness automatically brings you back, just as in the process of skidding on the ice and losing your balance, your body automatically rebalances itself to keep you from falling. As long as you have good posture and a good seat in the saddle, you can overcome any startling or unexpected moves your horse makes. So the idea of the saddle is taking a good seat in your life.
An overreaction or an exaggerated reaction to situations shouldn’t happen at this level. You have trust, you are constantly being joyful, and therefore you can’t be startled, either. This doesn’t mean that your life is monotone, but rather you feel established in this world. You belong here. You are one of the warriors in this world, so even if little unexpected things happen, good or bad, right or wrong, you don’t exaggerate them. You come back to your seat in the saddle and maintain your posture in the situation.
The warrior is never amazed by anything. If someone comes up to you and says, “I’m going to kill you right now,” you are not amazed. If someone says that are going to give you a million dollars, you think, “So what?” Assuming your seat in the saddle at this level is achieving inscrutability, in the positive sense.
It is also taking your seat on the earth. Once you have a good seat on the earth, you don’t need witnesses to validate you. Someone once asked the Buddha, “How do we know that you are enlightened?” And he touched the earth in what is called the earth-touching mudra, or gesture, and said, “Earth is my witness.” That is the same concept as holding your seat in the saddle. Someone might ask, “How do we know you won’t overreact to this situation?” You can say, “Just watch my posture in the saddle.”
Fearlessness in the warrior tradition is not a training in ultimate paranoia. It is based on training in ultimate solidity-which is basic goodness. You have to learn how to be regal. Trust is like becoming a good citizen, celebrating the journey is like becoming a good minister in the government, but holding your seat in the saddle is finally assuming command. It is how to be a king or queen.
At the same time, conquering fear is not based on blocking your sensitivity. Otherwise, you become a deaf and dumb monarch, a jellyfish king. Sitting on the horse requires balance, and as you acquire that balance in the saddle, you have more awareness of the horse. So when you sit in the saddle on your fickle horse, you feel completely exposed and gentle. If you feel aggressive, you don’t have a good seat. In fact, you are probably not even riding the horse. You don’t put your saddle on a fence railing. You have to saddle a real horse.
In this case, riding the horse is riding somebody else’s mind. It requires a complete connection. In the Buddhist tradition, this is called compassion, or working with somebody else. You are completely exposed in this situation. Otherwise, it’s like a medieval knight encased in his armor. It’s so heavy that he has to be cranked up onto the horse. Then he rides off to battle and usually falls off. There’s something wrong with that technology.
Often, when someone tells us we should be fearless, we think they’re saying not to worry, that everything is going to be all right. But unconditional fearlessness is simply based on being awake. Once you have command of the situation, fearlessness is unconditional because you are neither on the side of success or failure. Success and failure are your journey.
Nevertheless, sometimes you become so petrified on your journey that your teeth, your eyes, your hands, and your legs are all vibrating. You are hardly sitting in your seat; you are practically levitating with fear. But even that is regarded as an expression of fearlessness if you have a fundamental connection with the earth of basic goodness-which is unconditional goodness at this point.
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Post by zin on Feb 18, 2016 17:22:51 GMT -5
This post was made fresh this morning off of my Buddhist forum's 'death' thread: "As far as I'm concerned, the thing about Death I find hard to accept is the fact that it separates us from the people we love. And since speculating all day about it and squandering precious living time on it will make absolutely no difference on the end result, I'd rather dedicate that precious wit energy and intellectual zest to studying the Dharma and living as hedonistically as I always do. Death, to me, is just a post-it reminder that I have to enjoy this life to the most. Nothing else." I thought it was quite insightful. I found it insightful, too : ) I tend to dedicate my 'precious wit energy and intellectual zest' to looking at the life in things, whatever thing it may be. Sometimes I think, if I die while watching something in nature especially, I'll not know that I've died!
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Post by silver on Feb 21, 2016 13:50:00 GMT -5
From another forum, during a discussion called 'Is sanity required?' "Some people are disabled by ignorance, illness, lack of medicine, lack of social skills, poverty, insanity, addiction etc. That is a small part of their being even though it may overwhelm at times. My question is really about how much sanity or other environmental or good karmic factors are required? The dharma has been deeply understood by the uneducated, the immoral and the crazy. Thank Buddha. Bankei criticized fellow Japanese Zen teachers who hid their own failure to realize Unborn Buddha-nature with, instead, a mish-mash of confusing old Chinese-language koan-anecdotes, the “dregs and slobber of the Chan Patriarchs” as he called the ancient lore! And he chided the overly clever who are deluded by their own cleverness. “I tell my students, 'Be stupid'!... What I'm talking about isn't the stupidity of (mindless) stupidity or (clever) understanding. That which transcends stupidity and understanding is what I mean by stupidity.”www.enlightened-spirituality.org/Zen_Humor.html
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Post by zin on Feb 22, 2016 18:37:47 GMT -5
1) One day a thief stole many of Nasrudin's belongings and took them to his house. But he saw Nasrudin was following him with the rest of the stuff.. Thief asks: What are you doing? Nasrudin answers: Aren't we moving in here?
2) It was night and there was a noise in the house. Nasrudin's wife wakes him up, and says "There's a thief in the house!" ... Nasrudin answers: "Let him search the house first.. If he finds a valueable thing we will take it from him!"..
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Post by silver on Feb 24, 2016 0:38:48 GMT -5
This was taken from the other forum I frequent, and I edited it for the purpose of a general comment about emotions and what it has to do with spirituality, in general:
No one has sufficient compassion or skill to be perfectly attentive at all times. Mind states are effected by our inattention and arisings. This is why the presence of genuine teachers is healing and calming and will effect us positively. False teachers are nothing but a bundle of unresolved excitement, agitation and disruption that may take years to be understood and assimilated. Quite often one is alienated or lost to the path by such scoundrels.
People are naturally attracted to such false dharma clowns because this accords with their nature and they prefer this to the real work ... The most dangerous and insidious examples are those with some partial development potential and rogue nature. This is why the attention to the 'first wheel of dharma', ourselves, is so critical. In a similar way the genuinely spiritual for want of a better word, may conceal their inner knowing by presenting a superficial outer persona.
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Post by silver on Feb 25, 2016 19:15:31 GMT -5
from Tricycle mag:
What the Buddha Never Said
Shakyamuni's imagined sense of humor Bodhipaksa “When you realize how perfect everything is, you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky.” Do you remember that bit in the scriptures where the Buddha rolled around on the floor laughing? Neither do I. Even though the above quote is frequently attributed to the Buddha, according to what we can gather from the suttas he doesn’t seem to have been a bundle of laughs.
Verse 146 of the Dhammapada suggests that merriment is inappropriate in the face of the suffering we see around us: “When this world is ever ablaze, why this laughter, why this jubilation?” In the Tuvataka Sutta (Sutta Nipata 4.14) the Buddha puts laughter in the same category as sloth, deception, and fornication: things to be abandoned.
Perhaps even more alarmingly, when the comic actor Talaputa asks for confirmation that he is destined for a heavenly rebirth because of the laughter and delight he brings to others, the Buddha warns him that members of his profession are in fact destined for the “hell of laughter” because of the “intoxication and heedlessness” that their craft inspires (Sutta Nipata 42.2). So much for my planning a career as a Buddhist stand-up comic.
Among religious and philosophical figures the Buddha is not alone in being a killjoy, or at least in being depicted as one. Jesus said, “Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep” (Luke 6:25). Plato, Aristotle, and Hobbes all believed that laughter was bad for the character because it frequently results from a feeling of superiority, coming as it does at the expense of others. Albert Rapp, a mid-20th-century academic, suggested in his book The Origins of Wit and Humor that the way we open our mouths wide and expose our teeth when we laugh had its origins in “the roar of triumph in an ancient jungle duel.”
Interestingly—although perhaps also dispiritingly—there is scientific evidence that supports this dim view of laughter. The British psychologist Richard Wiseman spent years in a quest (funded by the British Association for the Advancement of Science) to find the world’s funniest joke. To do so, he created a website where members of the public could submit jokes and vote on how funny they were. Again and again, the jokes voted as funniest were those that triggered a sense of superiority in the reader. At the risk of being reborn in the hell of laughter, I submit the following example:
Texan: “Where are you from?” Harvard graduate: “I come from a place where we do not end our sentences with prepositions.” Texan: “Okay. Where are you from, jackass?”
Research also shows that while jokes reinforcing a sense of superiority may appear harmless, they may have damaging effects on others. Wiseman tells about a study done at Jacobs University Bremen in which women with various hair colors were exposed to “dumb blonde” jokes. Blonde women who participated in the study scored lower on a subsequent IQ test than did their blonde counterparts in a control group, suggesting that they had internalized the message that their hair color correlated with a lack of intelligence.
I find this all rather unsettling. I like a good laugh, and I enjoy using humor in my teaching. I don’t think the humor I use puts anyone down, although I’ll certainly be on guard for that possibility in the future. Other Buddhist teachers value humor and laughter as well. The Dalai Lama, for example, has a chapter in one of his books entitled (very appropriately, given his ready and infectious laugh) “I Am a Professional Laugher.”
And puzzlingly, despite his scriptural portrayal as a party pooper, the Buddha’s wit is obvious, even filtered through the often mind-numbing repetition and stock phrases of the suttas. Take, for example, Digha Nikaya 11, where the Buddha portrays the Great Brahma as a blusterer, publicly careful to maintain among the other gods a reputation for being omniscient but privately embarrassed at his inability to answer spiritual questions. Surely the Buddha—a man so capable of wry humor—must have laughed, at least sometimes?
Perhaps the Buddha’s strictures only applied to forms of laughter that denigrated others, or that were crude and coarsening (like Talaputa’s?) and thus allowed for more harmless expressions of amusement. I find it easy to imagine him chuckling in a self-deprecatingway while delivering a humorous anecdote, bursting out in laughter in response to life’s absurdity, or simply laughing out loud with joy. I also find it easy to imagine that the monks who passed on the scriptures chose to focus more on the Buddha’s words than on his manner of delivery, or that they may have tried to distance him from the supposed evils of mirth by failing to mention his laughter. Yet again, perhaps he really was just so darn mindful that the closest he would allow himself to laughter was a smile. We’ll never know.
But what about the notion, found in our fake quote, that everything is perfect? The Buddha stressed the unsatisfactoriness of the world and regarded only the holy life and awakening itself as perfect. Other practitioners, however, having experienced a deep acceptance of things as they really are, have come to the conclusion that it’s fitting to regard everything as “perfect.” For example, this passage by the 14th-century Tibetan teacher Longchenpa is frequently quoted: “Since everything is but an apparition, perfect in being what it is, having nothing to do with good or bad, acceptance or rejection, one may well burst out in laughter.” (I suspect that the similarity between this and our fake Buddha quote is not accidental.) There’s a danger in misunderstanding such views, of course, which is that by regarding everything as perfect, one might conclude that nothing needs to be changed and thus fail to act to relieve suffering. Rather than considering everything to be perfect, I think it’s safer to say that while there are times when we have experiences that are perfect because we have dropped any resistance to the way things are, the world itself, filled as it is with suffering, is far from being a perfect place.
Longchenpa’s words, besides suggesting that—from a certain point of view—things can be seen as perfect, remind us that insight can be an occasion for hilarity. Seeing through our lifelong delusions of permanent selfhood and separateness, we may realize that the joke, all along, has been on us.
Bodhipaksa is a Buddhist author and teacher who was born in Scotland and now lives in New Hampshire. When not debunking Fake Buddha Quotes, he runs Wildmind, a leading online meditation resource.
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Post by silver on Feb 25, 2016 20:20:51 GMT -5
From the above, the next to the last paragraph reminds me of some exchanges here from the distant past and other sentiments expressed about things as they 'are'---
But what about the notion, found in our fake quote, that everything is perfect? The Buddha stressed the unsatisfactoriness of the world and regarded only the holy life and awakening itself as perfect. Other practitioners, however, having experienced a deep acceptance of things as they really are, have come to the conclusion that it’s fitting to regard everything as “perfect.” For example, this passage by the 14th-century Tibetan teacher Longchenpa is frequently quoted: “Since everything is but an apparition, perfect in being what it is, having nothing to do with good or bad, acceptance or rejection, one may well burst out in laughter.” (I suspect that the similarity between this and our fake Buddha quote is not accidental.) There’s a danger in misunderstanding such views, of course, which is that by regarding everything as perfect, one might conclude that nothing needs to be changed and thus fail to act to relieve suffering. Rather than considering everything to be perfect, I think it’s safer to say that while there are times when we have experiences that are perfect because we have dropped any resistance to the way things are, the world itself, filled as it is with suffering, is far from being a perfect place.
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Post by silver on Feb 26, 2016 12:10:39 GMT -5
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Post by silver on Feb 26, 2016 13:35:27 GMT -5
Sanity lies somewhere between the inhibitions of conventional morality and the looseness of the extreme impulse.
~ Chogyam Trungpa
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Post by silver on Mar 1, 2016 14:18:46 GMT -5
Ok. Time now for a political break as one of our (other) forum members is a seasoned writer (will provide the link to his column etc.) Monday, February 29, 2016 a bit of Donald Trump fluff Snapped off the following bit of fluff a couple of evenings back and submitted it to The Guardian on a whim. Since, on reflection, the submission strikes me as highly unlikely, I thought I'd inflict the cotton candy on the more forgiving space here: LIE TO ME WITH A BRITISH ACCENT Americans can genuflect with the best of them when the mere mention of "Downton Abbey" or some other aristocratic tableau is brought to bear. There is something so soothing and elevating and downright dignified about all those well-scrubbed and well-heeled and well-controlled denizens of the social stratosphere. And although I have sworn off the opiod of "Downton Abbey" in its latest seasonal incarnation, still I find myself longing for that sense of dignity when listening to the political hullabaloo here in the United States. If there were ever a man better suited to everything the European aristocracy might look down upon, I can't think of one better than Donald Trump. Not only is he obscenely rich, but he manages to fold in a stupidity that is truly mesmerizing. Oh, and did I mention loud? Donald Trump is unabashedly loud in stark contrast to the almost-Japanese reticence of the upper-crust Brits or French. The man is an embarrassment to the country I belong to. Somehow I imagine the French as being particularly catty and I can't say that I blame them. On the other hand, it was the French who managed to build the 500,000 square feet of Versailles with precisely zero toilets as we know them today. The smell was pretty potent, much as Donald Trump's brickbats are. Where is the dignity and careful consideration that hunger and education and healthcare and employment and the endless munificence of war deserve in my wishful mind? I don't give a damn where anyone goes or doesn't go to church: Aren't there issues deserving of Lord Grantham's fictitious gravitas? I think there are. But I am also somewhat schizophrenic. On the one hand, a little suave certainty, delivered in measured tones, would go a long way to speaking to the whole nation as opposed to addressing some raucous constituency that is fed up with the Lord Grantham wannabes of the past. On the other hand, the ingrown blindness of a lineage that rarely sees beyond its cosseted being has a kind of stupidity that is likewise galling: Scratch the surface and reveal the incestuous politesse that rides roughshod over honest difficulties. In the midst of the blitzkrieg that is Donald Trump, there is a part of me that loves "Cinderella" and other fairy tales that live happily ever after and have a certain quiet dignity and kindness to them. The tones and notes of the 'good ol' boys' in their good ol' ties calls out to me. And to remain aboveboard, yes, there still is a part of me that thinks anyone with a British accent is, ipso facto, smarter than I am. True, George Orwell, that pin-wielding gadfly in the balloon factory, is a hero of mind, yet even he knew the fine art of five-course silverware. How else could he be so effective? Is there a middle ground in all of this -- some dignified person not given to bouts of mindless volume on the one hand or consumed by an underlying insistence that "l'état, c'est moi" on the other? I considered suggesting we give the colonies back to the Brits, but that seems a harsh possibility. So perhaps the answer lies in borrowing someone like Michael Kitchen, an actor whose TV persona as Detective Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle in "Foyle's War" was credible and quiet and firm ... and could think. Yes, I think he would do quite nicely. I just want someone to lie to me with a British accent. genkaku-again.blogspot.com/2016/02/a-bit-of-donald-trump-fluff.html
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