Murmuration

The Buddha

Lama Surya Das discusses what the Buddha is in a brief essay at HuffPost. He cites Karen Armstrong on the Buddha as achetype:

As an archetype, Buddha represents what is actually possible for each of us -- our full flowering. It's helpful to think of the message of this archetype on three different levels. On the external level of form, Buddha is the historical teacher. On the internal level, Buddha is innate and ever-present awareness -- which is typically obscured by discursive and repetitive thoughts. On the innermost or secret level, Buddha is our deepest nature: radiant Being or Nowness-awareness, beyond gender, nationality, religious affiliation, or other local distinctions. This is what the historical Buddha meant when he said, "I am awake": awake to the radiant Buddhaness within himself and every sentient being.

Buddha means the "enlightened one" or Awakened Wise One -

For Buddhists, wisdom is not merely a form of belief or a particular truth or historical attribute but a living, breathing, functioning quality inherent in the mind of each of us, waiting to be explored, exploited and developed and in the pursuit of liberation, healing, and happiness. Anyone can become a Buddha...Anyone can develop oneself through practicing the two Buddhist wings of wisdom and compassion and be transformed by mindfulness and other loving practices, regardless of religious persuasion -- even agnostics and atheists.

Enlightenment means to awaken out of illusion's dream and the snares of conceptual thought, and into a directly lived moment-by-moment experience. 

And how do we do this? "Practice makes perfect" -

Who then is Buddha for us here and now? He/she/it is the one who practices resting in, as, and eventually realizes that all is luminous awareness and nothing else. This can be called meditation practice, and includes the cultivation of mindfulness, a lucid moment-to-moment vigilant state of intentional attention. What is mindfulness, really? It is simply an alert presence of mind, the opposite of and antidote to mindlessness. Mindfulness is the key ingredient in Buddha's recipe for wisdom's development and conscious evolution.

With properly practiced mindfulness, we can practice such virtues as non-attachment, compassion, personal integrity, patience, loving-kindness, respect for others, and living according to our deepest principles. By such a practice we are called not to just be Buddhists, but to be Buddhas!

Mindfulness

Larry Yang on Huffpost has a great essay on the Buddhist concept of mindfulness, "Now More Than Ever We Need Mindfulness." He speaks of the need for this Buddhist practice now, especially as the divisive presidential campaign revs up and intensifies over the coming year. Even in the midst of such terrible and angry times it seems we can find a place of serenity, one that helps, not just ourselves, but the society and world at large:

We need the Freedom that Mindfulness invites for us -- the freedom that we do not have to follow the unconscious patterns of acute reactivity. We need to remember that it is possible to notice deeply what is happening, understand it with some wisdom, treat it with some of the compassion inherent in our humanity, and move into responses and actions that are of benefit -- that is, to move toward that which lessens suffering and creates happiness, not just for us as individuals, but us as a collective world.

Our Mindfulness practice, whether it is on the cushion paying attention to the emotions and thoughts that weave between the breath and bodily sensations, or whether it is in the world paying attention to our actions and behaviors which emerge from our emotions and thoughts, is always a reminder that in order to change any unhealthy or harmful patterns -- in order to transform any suffering -- we have to first become aware of the patterns themselves. We cannot change anything that we are not aware of. This is also true of our collective transformation into a culture that meets the needs of greater numbers of people and beings: We first have to become deeply aware of the conditions that we are living within, and then that will guide us into transforming the world into a better place to live.

I recommend the entire essay, as it goes into both the psychological and social implications of this practice, and ways to put it into effect.

Poem of the Day

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

 

- Emily Dickenson

Courage

 Peter Hitchens on his brother, Christopher:

Here’s a thing I will say now without hesitation, unqualified and important. The one word that comes to mind when I think of my brother is ‘courage’. By this I don’t mean the lack of fear which some people have, which enables them to do very dangerous or frightening things because they have no idea what it is to be afraid. I mean a courage which overcomes real fear, while actually experiencing it ...

[T]he word ‘courage’ is often misused today. People sometimes tell me that I have been ‘courageous’ to say something moderately controversial in a public place. Not a bit of it. This is not courage. Courage is deliberately taking a known risk, sometimes physical, sometimes to your livelihood,  because you think it is too important not to. My brother possessed this virtue to the very end, and if I often disagreed with the purposes for which he used it, I never doubted the quality or ceased to admire it. I’ve mentioned here before C.S.Lewis’s statement that courage is the supreme virtue, making all the others possible.

It should be praised and celebrated, and is the thing I‘d most wish to remember.

Christoper Hitchens: R.I.P.

Christopher Hitchens, "Hitch" to us admirers, died today at 62. I have to say, right out, that he was one of my heroes - and one of my few living heroes. There will be many obituaries and postmortems, so I won't go into everything one can say about him (who could?), restricting myself to how he affected me.

What I most admired about him - how he inspired me - was his unrelenting dedication to truth, and the witty, engaging, and graceful way he went about it. He was fearless, and didn't shy from confronting the vicious stupidity, mediocrity, cruelty, and hypocrisy which mark so many in power and who would wield power over others. But he also had something substantial to offer in the place of the cowardly cant which passes for wisdom in our society: the rigorous search for truth, no matter where it takes one; a zest for life; the humanist love for a truly liberal society and the blessings it bestows on us all; the courage to be himself whatever the conventional wisdom may demand; the intellectual and moral knowledge that, as Socrates put it, the "unexamined life is not worth living." He formulated one of the ideas which remain, for me, a guiding light: "That which is asserted without evidence may also be dismissed without evidence." He will remain, for me, a model of living in the world to which I aspire.

Zen and the Art of Landscape

Music and Life - Alan Watts

Christless Christmas

At Slate.com, Torie Bosch has a fun and insightful essay explaining a Christmas joy without the accoutrements of religion: "No Reason for the Season: the joy of celebrating a godless Christmas." This notion, so boldly stated, has been slightly liberating. Indeed, why can't I just enjoy the fun parts of the season without the need for Christian "meaning" ruining everything. Sure, for Christians, this is the primary "reason for the season," but the rest of us can also enjoy it, guilt-free - no matter what the screaming, indignant, religionist pundits think! -

There was no one moment that crystallized my thinking or relieved me of my guilt. Rather, it was a series of observations: Most of the classic songs and movies that celebrate Christmas don't even mention God or Jesus. Santa doesn't check church attendance to decide whether he's going to give a child a present—he checks whether she's been naughty or nice. He's the perfect secular judge of moral fiber. To say that the secularists injure the Christmas spirit is much like the claim that two men getting hitched will besmirch the sanctity of marriage. Why should the way I mark Christmas bother anyone? Christians appalled by my secular holiday will no doubt argue that I am depriving myself of the greater joy that comes with accepting Jesus into your heart. But I'm not attempting to take away anyone's right to go to church or to display a Nativity scene. All I need to celebrate Christmas is a tree, stockings, baked goods, some people I love, and some gifts to give (and, yes, receive).

And, of course, there's the idea that so-called "pagan" festivals preceded the modern Christmastide, and that symbols we now associate with it (eg, the Christmas tree, yule log) also had other origins. So, I say enjoy the holiday season any way you want (I recently reread Dickens' "A Christmas Carol), and practice tolerance of the ways others celebrate. It's a time for fun and reflection...and presents!

Mind At Peace

When the mind is at peace,

the world too is at peace.

Nothing real, nothing absent.

Not holding on to reality,

not getting stuck in the void,

you are neither holy or wise, just

an ordinary fellow who has completed his work.

P'ang Yün (龐蘊 Hõ Un) (The Enlightened Heart 34)

 

Quote of the Day

"As I approve of a youth that has something of the old man in him, so I am no less pleased with an old man that has something of the youth. He that follows this rule may be old in body, but can never be so in mind. " - Marcus Tullius Cicero