Blog Archives

Taking Refuge in Yourself

10/29/2020

We are all familiar with taking refuge in the Three Jewels … Buddha, dharma, and sangha. This is what we are taught from the very beginning of our Buddhist training and the refuge statement is repeated in temple and at home during meditation countless times.

It was much to my surprise, therefore, when in reading The Life of the Buddha, by Bhikkhu Nanamoli, based on the Pali canon, I found that the Buddha said at one point that one should take refuge in yourself and no one else. How does that gibe with the Three Jewels refuge?

The refuge was recited at the time of the Buddha. People did it spontaneously and then he instructed that people recite the refuge as part of the transmission of becoming a follower of the Buddha, "the going forth and admission."

When he was older, however, and contemplating death, and when he heard of another teacher dying and being missed, he spoke about the way in which all things rise and fall, the impermanence of all things, and instructed his disciples; "Therefore, each of you should make himself his island, himself and no other his refuge; each of you should make the Dharma his island, the Dharma and no other his refuge."

He was instructing that people should be aware that they have everything they need inside themselves to be at peace and happy and that the teachings are there to provide support and guidance. We are each our own Buddha, we have Buddha nature inside of us, and it is to that that we should look to for confirmation of the truths of the dharma. We should not look to authorities, such as the Buddha, and we should not even look to the sangha, since both are impermanent.

Thus, when we recite the Three Refuges, the first refuge, Buddha, is not, or not just, the historical Buddha, it is the Buddha nature that is within each of us. When we prostrate ourselves upon entering a zendo before the statue of the Buddha, we are not bowing to the statue, or even to the historical Buddha, we are bowing to the Buddha nature that is within us.

This is possibly one of the least known yet very important teachings of the Buddha. Our only salvation, the end to our suffering, comes from realizing the Buddha within us and taking refuge in it.

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Speak the Truth but Beware

10/21/2020

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Spiritually it is a good thing to speak the truth. So often we are afraid to speak the truth because of the negative impact it will have on us, the backlash we will feel from those who don’t want to hear or face the truth. But if it is an important truth, it must be spoken for you to move past the pain the incident causes you.

But beware. As with all things that come from the heart and are pure, speaking the truth can be commandeered by the ego-mind and turned into something which rather than releases your pain causes you suffering, When the ego-mind grabs ahold of the truth, it can become an act of revenge or anger, it can become an act of self-righteousness, an act of I’m better than you. If speaking the truth becomes tainted with those emotions or feelings, then the spiritual value of speaking the truth is lost and instead you will experience suffering. It will become toxic.

For example, in my book, How to Find Inner Peace, I discuss the importance of speaking the truth in the section on freeing oneself from anger and other negative emotions. Part of the instruction on speaking the truth was that it must be spoken free of emotion.

Because the ego-mind almost always takes charge of this desire to speak the truth, doing it free of passion is challenging, unless one has freed oneself from the control of the ego-mind and have been able to say “no” to its guidance with consistency. You can be spiritually advanced in many ways, and yet regarding core issues be very much under the control of your ego-mind.

If you find you are only able to speak the truth with anger or other negative emotion, then it’s best not to speak. Speaking the truth with anger accomplishes none of the positive goals of speaking the truth, not for you nor the person you are speaking to. It will just make a bad situation worse.

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October 12th, 2020

10/12/2020

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The Mind - Suffering Connection

10/6/2020

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We suffer because we assume our feelings and perceptions reflect reality, that they are truth. They thus determine how we relate to ourselves and the world around us. Yet it is these very feelings and perceptions that are the cause of our suffering, not the reality of our being nor the experience itself.

The Buddha said that the cause of our suffering is craving. And that the freedom of suffering lies in letting go, rejecting, that craving. The Buddha did not list the other sources of our psychic suffering because craving is the font for them all - all our emotions: fear, anger, insecurity, etc. are a function of our cravings. And they are all a product of the mind.

The purpose of Buddhist practice in a word is to change how we have habitually reacted to our life experiences, changing an emotional reaction to a dispassionate response, and thus not suffer. The key is to free yourself from the control of your ego-mind.

The first step in this process is being aware that our emotions are a just product of our mind, that they are not a reflection of reality. Let me explain this with some real-life examples.

Facts have a basis in reality. Labels don’t. For example, if one is unemployed or not making much money, that is a fact. To label yourself a failure, however, is your ego-mind’s take on that reality. That is a dependent thought that comes from family, peers, or the larger culture.

The fact that your environment supports that label makes it no less illusory; it makes it seem very real and makes it harder to free ourselves from that perception, but it is still just a creation of our mind. One could just as easily say, for example, things just didn’t work out; that would be a dispassionate response, very different from the pejorative phrase, “failure.” Same facts, different perception, strikingly different emotional outcome.

Another example is the weather. Heat, cold, rain, snow are objective, measurable facts. Yet one person will thrive in a particular weather condition while another can’t stand it. Our reactions to the weather are entirely subjective.

What causes these differing reactions? It’s again our learned experience and cravings.

And this subjective view in turn causes many of us suffering. How often have we experienced weather we didn’t like … whether high heat and humidity or unrelenting rain or snow … which had the psychological impact of making us miserable and depressed?

What has happened is that our ego-mind has put mental labels on everything that we experience … labels that something is good or bad … which interfere with our perception of the true quality of things.

The point is that heat, rain, cold, snow, etc. are neither good nor bad … they just are. Our perception of the “lousy” weather may seem very real to us, but it’s all a function of our mind and thus illusory. Take away the labels and we can perceive the value and wonder of all types of weather.

So it is with all things in life. We cannot know the true nature of things because the labels in our mind interfere with how we perceive them.

Especially and most poignantly ourselves. Our self-image develops from our interaction with family, especially during our formative years, and later with peers and culture,. Perversely, our self-image is formed by these external actions and valuations; our view of ourselves does not flow from within.

For most of us, the resulting self-image contains negative aspects that we often deplore or even loath. We don’t respect ourselves. We are insecure beings.

How does this hurtful state of affairs come about? It is the result of human nurture, not nature, and it begins almost from the moment of birth.

Birth, being thrust out of the womb, has to be a scary experience. When an animal is born, it is typically licked all over by its mother and is always next to the mother’s warmth until weaned. A baby in our culture is not so fortunate.

Babies need to feel secure and nourished, not just when it’s convenient for us, but 24/7. But when a baby cries, his parents are often busy, or they’ve often been told it’s good for the baby to cry … like it’s never too early to teach someone the hard fact of life that you can’t always get what you want. And so the baby feels unwanted. Every time this situation repeats itself, that feeling of not being wanted is strengthened. This is not good for the baby’s development; it creates a craving out of the natural need to be loved and feel secure.

When the ego develops around age 2 or 3, that feeling of being unwanted is given a label … insecurity. From that feeling of insecurity, which is the mother of all our neuroses, come feelings of fear and anxiety. This becomes our default emotional reaction, throughout our life, when we want or desire something badly. Surely you have experienced such fear or anxiety.

But it’s not only acts of the omission that impact us, the actions of those we depend on or look up to have a huge impact. When children are repeatedly called bad, stupid, lazy, fat, ugly, or similar names, something that many children experience, they come to believe it because they both value the source it’s coming from and are too insecure to fight back, too insecure to do anything other than meet those expectations in the hope of being loved. And so little Johnny comes to believe that he is bad or stupid and will carry that burden throughout his life.

Also from our learned insecurity comes the habit of labeling everything we experience in a way that judges it as either good or bad. We do this because it gives us a sense of power, the power to judge; we crave power. “I think this is good; I think this is bad.” The power of self-righteousness. As an emotional bonus, if we feel something is bad, we feel superior to it. What an antidote to insecurity.

This is how your ego-mind develops. This is how our brain becomes wired. The ego-mind thinks it is protecting us with its emotions and perceptions, but instead they are the cause of our suffering.

It is often said that we are not in control of our emotions; that is because they are a product of our ego-mind and we are in its control.

Ah, but you say, what about the rich and famous, the powerful? My friends, don’t be fooled. Even famous and successful people suffer because there is a part of their self-image that is insecure. They may have been told their entire life how smart or talented they are, but they know how precarious their position is and how fast and far they could fall. That is in fact what drives them, creates the craving, the obsession, to be so successful.

Being aware of this truth, that all our emotions, judgments, and cravings are a product of our ego-mind and are the cause of our suffering, is an essential part of the healing process. Think about it carefully.

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