Blog Archives

Nirvana - It's Right before Your Eyes

2/21/2014

For many people, nirvana is mistakenly thought of as a Buddhist heaven. A place somewhere in the spiritual cosmos where there is no more pain or suffering.

But just as Buddhism is all about being present in the moment, nirvana is also in the here and now. It is, actually, nothing more than a state of mind. Let me quote from several Buddhist sources.

First, a verse from the Heart Sutra:

“Bodhisatvas, abiding always in perfected wisdom,
Their minds have no fears or obstructions,
Therefore they have no fears or obstructions;
Free of confused illusions,
They reach nirvana.”

The "only" door that needs to be opened to reach nirvana is to have no fears or obstructions, to be free of confused illusions. And one achieves that by abiding in perfected wisdom, which is principally to be aware of the emptiness of all five skandhas ... appearance of form, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness-ego, and experiencing things directly without the intervention of those ego-driven thoughts.

Next, two verses from an ancient Chinese poem, “Affirming Faith in Mind.”

“Do not reject the sense domain.
For as it is, whole and complete,
this sense world is enlightenment.”

“Not only here, not only there,
truth’s right before your very eyes.”

The point being made here is that when you see the sense world “whole and complete,” meaning as it truly is, with dispassion, free of the intervention of your thinking mind, free of labels, because you are aware of the emptiness of all five skandhas, that is enlightenment. Nirvana is being able to see things as they really are.

Finally, verses from a poem by the 18th century Japanese Zen master Hakuin, “In Praise of Zazen.”

“The cause of our sorrow is ego delusion.
From dark path to dark path
we’ve wandered in darkness-
... The gateway to freedom is zazen samadhi-”

“What is there outside us,
what is there we lack?
Nirvana is openly shown to our eyes.
This earth where we stand
is the pure lotus land,
and this body the very body of Buddha.”

The point here needs no further explication. Nirvana is right here, right now, if we are only able to see things clearly, just as they are, free of the intervention of our ego thinking-mind, free of labels.

In all three poems, nirvana is clearly in the here and now, with the pre-condition to experiencing it being an awareness of the emptiness of all five skandhas and being free of the intervention of our ego thinking-mind. (As noted in many of my posts, we can never be free of our ego or its thinking-mind; it is a part of us. But with awareness, we can be free of it’s intervention; when it arises we can choose not to engage it but just watch it subside.)

This is by no means easy to achieve - an understatement if ever there was one - but it is something which is possible and indeed only possible in the here and now. Remember that this is not a flash of light thing for most of us. It is an incremental process as we walk the path, with our slowly gaining more moments in more days in which we are aware of the emptiness of all five skandhas and experience things directly as they really are, with dispassion, free of all obstructions ... all labels, all fear and anxiety, doubt and confusion, anger, negativity, and lust. Thus we experience nirvana bit by bit, and for this we are grateful.

0 Comments

Embrace the Moment, Not Merely Accept

2/17/2014

0 Comments

Buddhist writing is filled with the concept of acceptance ... of oneself, of the moment, of the world as being the way they are. Acceptance is a key component of equanimity.

I have also often cited the acceptance “prayer” that is used in 12-step programs: “And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, etc. as being exactly the way it is at this moment.”

Acceptance is thus a very powerful frame of mind. The problem is that in the English language, the word “acceptance” in this context is taken by most people to imply resignation. But in the Buddhist use of the word, it clearly does not mean resignation, or even assent, agreement.

In the Buddhist sense, acceptance is a far more positive word, indicating awareness that things are the way they are because it’s just the way they are and being open to receiving all that the present moment has to offer, being open to the sense world free of all labels. Indeed, one could say that there is nothing to accept, to assent to; that it is just the way it is. As a monk once said to me, “It’s like the law of thermodynamics.”

I have noted in my books and posts that at times words from Pali or other eastern languages have been translated into English in ways that may be literally correct, but which are misleading on their face and therefore need to be clarified for the reader, creating a barrier when there should be none. “Acceptance” is one of those instances, and a very important one because it creates much push-back from people trying to walk the path. They do not want to accept the way things are right now, in the sense of resignation.

But if the teaching behind the word is a combination of awareness that things are the way they are because it’s just the way it is, free of all labels, and being open to receiving all that the present moment or situation has to offer (even situations that stimulate pain and sorrow have much to offer to our development), then perhaps a better word to use to convey the fulness of the meaning and avoid the push-back is “embrace,”

If the teaching were, “to embrace” the moment, it would at once convey the positive aspects of Buddhist teaching and be removed from the tainted connotation of resignation. Also “embrace” is an active word whereas “acceptance” is more passive. While we have little or no control over what happens in the world and even in our immediate family, we do have control over how those things impact us, we do have control over how we relate to ourselves and the world around us. Which brings up the final reason for using the word “embrace” ... it is expressive of the concept of having unconditional love and compassion for all people and things.

And so I would revise the acceptance prayer as follows: “And to embrace is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I embrace that person, etc. as being exactly the way it is at this moment, experiencing it with dispassion, free of labels, free of the intervention of my thinking mind, and open to receiving all that the present moment has to offer.”

0 Comments

The Ego As Saboteur

2/13/2014

0 Comments

Suffering is universal, and craving is the source of all suffering, but it’s the ego and it’s thinking mind that are both the repository of all the learned experiences that lie at the root of craving and the generator and proponent of that craving.

In my post, “The Mystery of the Ego - An Answer,” I related how I realized that my ego-mind was in large part a function of “little Ronnie,” not just my learned experiences but more decisively my reactions to them as a little child. That all the torment and bad advice I receive from my ego-mind is actually the result of some basic defense mechanisms that little Ronnie developed to protect himself, not knowing how misguided and harmful his child’s perspective was. Thus its intransigence.

Part of that realization was understanding that my becoming a sex addict was little Ronnie’s way of protecting me from what he thought would be the inevitable failure of any relationship I was in. He couldn’t trust any relationship because he thought he was unloveable and so engaged in activities that increased his/my sense of independence.

But recently, I realized that there’s even more to the destructiveness of little Ronnie’s insecurity and the defense mechanisms he developed. Not only did he attempt to protect himself (and me) by increasing my feeling of independence while in a relationship. He strove to destroy those relationships in order to free me from what he felt was an unhealthy dependence on a love that was not to be trusted and would ultimately fail me. This occurred with each long-term relationship I’ve had.

My first long-term relationship was very warm and loving. During the third year of our relationship, I for some reason wrote an intense letter to a former lover, who I had always viewed as the love of my life. But I didn’t send the letter and instead just put it in my attache case. One day, my partner was looking for something and discovered the letter. The result was disastrous. The relationship imploded because he could no longer trust me.

For years I wondered why in the world I had written that letter and then left it in my attache case where it could be so easily discovered. I now know. Little Ronnie wanted to protect me by freeing myself from the relationship.

My next long-term relationship was everything you could want from a relationship. And it lasted for 12 years until my partner died of AIDS. But during this whole time, my sex addict activities continued unabated. My partner became aware of them because he found some video machine tokens in my bureau drawer. (Why did I leave them in the drawer where they could be so easily found?) But rather than stomping off, he just said that I could do what I wanted; he just didn’t want to know about it.

So little Ronnie’s defense mechanism didn’t destroy the relationship in this instance. But there is no question in my mind now that that was his intent.

I am currently in the deepest loving (although nonsexual) relationship that I have ever known, with my best friend. We have become family and have a mutual deep and complete love for each other. We are one, our lives are collaborative, and we constantly exhibit selflessness in supporting each other. My ego thinking-mind’s cries of “What about me! What about my perspective!” are viewed with compassion by me but have little relevance.

But over the course of the last few months, despite my knowing that a certain subject that I broached caused my partner much mental anguish, and as a result me as well as his pain is my pain, I continued to broach this subject again and again. I meditated on why I was doing this to someone I loved so much, to whom I wanted only to offer joy and help relieve his suffering. That is my main purpose in life. But my behavior just wouldn’t stop.

Then after the most recent episode, as I sat there stunned again by my words and their impact, I meditated and came to the realization I noted above ... that my ego thinking-mind, little Ronnie, was attempting to protect me by destroying the relationship. Making me independent once again. Thank goodness it didn’t work since our love is so deep and trusting.

And so I practiced tonglen on little Ronnie once again, receiving his pain and sending him my love and compassion and understanding. And this time, sending him the teaching of “not-two,” that we are all one and that our only security lies not in our ego’s focus on separateness, but in our knowledge of our true Buddha nature and in our interconnectedness, the development of a communal perspective rather than an individualistic one.

I relate this story because it has relevance to everyone. As I’ve written previously in posts and in my book, Raising a Happy Child, we are all insecure and both suffer and cause suffering in others as a result, both to members of our immediate family as well as to strangers. As our families and the larger society have drifted further and further from a communal model to an ever-more I-centric model the suffering of humankind has increased exponentially, as can be seen by the huge increase in the incidence of depression and the corresponding prescription of drugs to combat it.

The world would be a much better, a much happier place if everyone were able to feel at one with their family members and the rest of the human community and see that their only purpose in life is to offer others joy and help relieve the suffering of others. To follow the central moral maxim of every major religion ... do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

0 Comments

Belief in You Buddha Nature - The Beginning and the End

2/9/2014

0 Comments

Your belief in the teachings of the Buddha is the starting point for walking the path. Without that belief there is no path. And central to that teaching is belief in your own true Buddha nature, in your unborn Buddha mind.

If you do not at some level believe in that then making progress on the path, standing up to all the challenges we face from our thinking mind and our environment, would be very difficult if not impossible. For it is to your true Buddha nature that you turn your life over to, that you surrender your ego thinking-mind to, that you find refuge in when you are present, free of the intervention of thought. Your true Buddha nature is your “not self,” the antithesis of your ego. It is your source of strength.

As we progress on the path, we make more and more conscious contact with our true Buddha nature. We experience its wisdom, its seeing with equal mind, its freedom from likes and dislikes, its awareness of the emptiness of all five skandhas.

And if we are lucky, at some stage in our practice, we become one with our true Buddha nature 24/7. I am not there yet, for that is enlightenment, that is complete freedom from our ego thinking-mind. that is freedom from all fears and obstructions, from all confused illusions.

And so belief in your true Buddha nature is both the beginning and the end of the path, in the sense of having made it home. The path itself, of course, has no end; it continues till we die.

0 Comments

My Mind Trapped Me

2/5/2014

0 Comments

Once again, my thinking mind has used my spiritual practice to create a trap for me. I believe that if live my life well ... that is, in accord with the Five Precepts and Six Paramitas ... that all will be well, that the future will take care of itself, because regardless what life throws at me or how far I stray, I will always return to my true Buddha nature and be in touch with my inner strength, present, aware of the emptiness of all five skandhas, experiencing things directly with dispassion, not ruled by fear and anger, and able to make decisions that are in my best interest,

At some point, however, I changed this mantra to say, I believe that if I live each moment well ... And during the past few months as I’ve been contemplating some changes in my life, I have felt much stress, anxiety, and doubt.

What I realized while meditating the other morning was that my revised mantra had created a new fear within me ... that if I did not live each moment well, the consequences would be bad. My mind had created it’s own trap because I know that I won’t be spiritually centered, aware, 24/7. And so I had fear about the process I was going through. Basically I couldn’t trust myself.

However, I do believe without any doubt that regardless how unaware I may be for much of the day, at a minimum I will return to my true Buddha nature once a day when I meditate each morning. And at that time I will realize what transpired the previous day, have a teachable moment, be present, and center myself once again.

And with that faith and knowledge, I have no fear of the unknown, nor fear of the known, because there is nothing to fear; fear is just a thought in my thinking mind and I am aware of the emptiness of all five skandhas. Regardless what life throws my way, I know I will always return to my true Buddha nature each day and be at peace and content.

And if I am present, at peace and content, not ruled by fear and anger, in conscious contact with my true Buddha nature, there is nothing that can harm me. In that space, I know that the only thing that’s important is for me to follow my purpose, which is to offer others joy and help relieve the suffering of others, to respect my body and my mind, to live within my means, and to be in touch with nature.

0 Comments