William Wordsworth: The world is too much with us

 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45564/the-world-is-too-much-with-us

Rumi on charming others

 Half of life is lost in charming others. 

The other half is lost in going through 

anxieties caused by others. 

Leave this play. 

You have played enough. 

~Rumi

Eight Worldly Winds

 

What Are the Eight Worldly Concerns?

The eight worldly concerns classify the attachments and aversions that yoke us to samsara—the four hopes and four fears, which we cycle through endlessly.

LION’S ROAR

13 FEBRUARY 2016

Illustration by Ray Fenwick.

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The eight worldly concerns classify the attachments and aversions that yoke us to samsara, the cycle of suffering. They are the four hopes and corresponding four fears, which we cycle through endlessly—until, that is, we discover enlightenment (which includes liberation from the eight worldly concerns). This list is from the Indian philosopher Nagarjuna, with comments by Buddhist teacher Judy Lief:

1 & 2: Happiness vs. Suffering

Once we have happiness, fear arises, for we are afraid to lose it. When suffering arises, no amount of wishful thinking makes it go away. The more we hope for it to be otherwise, the more pain we feel.

3 & 4: Fame vs. Insignificance

We are obsessed with fame and afraid of our own insignificance. When it dawns on us how hard we need to work to be seen as someone special, our fear of insignificance is only magnified.

5 & 6: Praise vs. Blame

We need to be pumped up constantly or we begin to have doubts about our worth. When we are not searching for praise, we are busy trying to cover up our mistakes so we don’t get caught.

7 & 8: Gain vs. Loss

Just as we are about to congratulate ourselves on our success, the bottom falls out. Over and over, things are hopeful one moment and the next they are not, and in either case we are anxious.

See also: Judy Lief explains how to work with the eight worldly concerns in “The Middle Way of Stress.”

Zenju Earthlyn Manuel - Sweeping My Heart

Sweeping My Heart

When Zenju Earthlyn Manuel was assigned to clean the Zen temple, she felt generations of oppression rise in her. Conversing with her ancestors about what this work really meant helped her see how it could be healing.

ZENJU EARTHLYN MANUEL20 FEBRUARY 2024

Zen practice is a return to the ordinary.

It is only in the secular world that Zen is perceived by some as a high and holy practice. The robes are seen as holy, but there is no holiness in Zen. Everything that is done in the temple is of an ordinary nature, including washing dishes, cleaning toilets, mopping floors, cooking, and doing laundry.

The teacher is also ordinary. There is nothing for the teacher to be or show other than the ordinariness of life and how to embrace it. If there is any status thinking and being, that is an inevitable tangling of our worldly views and the path of enlightenment.

For me, a dark-skinned person of African descent, cleaning the temple as Zen practice felt inappropriate and uncomfortable when I was at the beginning of my training. When you are an older black woman and a young white man tells you how to mop the floor during work period, the experience is akin to being a maid or a reminder of slavery. Ordinary temple work is the kind of labor often relegated in this country to folks of color and poor people. It is work that can ensure a lower rank in society.

The memory of my black ancestors and slavery was visceral.

In my early days as a student, I felt the prescribed daily bowing was not for me as a black woman. Because so many of the work leaders were white, in the beginning I could only see the work as what my ancestors did as slaves, sharecroppers, wet-nurses, and maids. The memory of my black ancestors and slavery was visceral.

Of course, Zen students of many ethnicities were also working. Did their experience remind them, as it reminded me, of oppressive conditions of labor? Did women feel they were just continuing what folks call “women’s work”? Were there immigrants who felt they were doing menial work imposed on them because they were not considered citizens?

On the other hand, did the white male students feel the work was beneath them? That, I believe, was traditionally the point of work practice in Zen temples. Part of Zen practice is to recognize the consciousness of superiority and inferiority, the dangerous explosive line between “us” and “them.” The temple experience of young Japanese men was intended to humble and prepare them to take on jobs and families in the world. But as the prescribed work of Japanese Zen temples was passed on to white American practitioners, did they consider that the cultural context of the practice would change as different folk embraced the Buddha Way?

Many people of color, and especially black people, come to Zen practice with unavoidable past experiences of strenuous and demeaning work. In essence, they have done the work long before they arrive. In fact, they have overworked to survive blatant discrimination and rejection.

For those who suffer from internalized “isms” like racism and sexism, to be humbled by spiritual practice is counter to their task of wellness and healing from dehumanization. If anything, they are looking to emerge from the place of submission. They are looking for a place to speak rather than be silent, to communicate the suffering of all “isms” being played out while sweeping the temple’s floor.

Yet, I stayed with Zen practice, doing the mundane, and years later I scrubbed the toilets when I was head student, in order, they say, to remain humble. The more I bowed, the more I scrubbed. Eventually, I felt my ancestors moving my body, back and forth. They told me this work was good. I was skeptical.

Me: “Really? I don’t need this.”

Ancestors: “Exactly. You feel you have become better than us.”

Me: “I went to school because you said education was the best thing for black people. I got a Ph.D. so I don’t need to do what black folks have always done.”

Ancestors: “Your pride is no good to us. Your degree is no good to us. We need your heart to be healed. Don’t let intellect take the place of love. You must love more.”

I swept longer, breathing, listening, crying. This is true, I say to myself.

Me: “But I worked so hard not to be oppressed as you were. I worked for justice. I prayed. I ate well. I did good deeds most of my life.”

Ancestors: “We need more than that from you. We don’t need you to be a good Buddhist, Muslim, Christian, follower of African Orishas, or whatever. We need you to remember the dust from which you came. We need you to remember a time before things went crazy, when they sold Africans like us. There was something before. It is still hidden from you. Find it. Keep sweeping—not to clean but to see and hear where your heart is blocked from what we see for you. We put you in a place where you would be bothered enough to change.”

What would Zen training (not just temple cleaning) look like for those who come from a lineage of ancestors who were mistreated and exploited? Mistreatment in the past will create mistreatment in the future, even within our spiritual sanctuaries, if we are not aware of such a consciousness within all of us.

If ancestral memory of slavery arises in our practice, as it might for dharma practitioners of African descent, it must be acknowledged and used to open our eyes to the consciousness of hatred. If we ignore what is stored in any of us, then how can we know what paths we have already suffered?

I know that temple cleaning is the motion arising from sitting meditation, not history repeating itself.

Today when I clean the temple, I know it is my ancestors calling. I know that the memory within me of their existence as slaves is being understood and transformed. I know that temple cleaning is the motion arising from sitting meditation, not history repeating itself.

If I am fortunate enough to be offered a chance to sweep, it is a profound time with my own heart—to use the broom as a ritual connecting this life and the lives of those in my past. I am not replicating what my ancestors did as slaves. On the contrary, they have brought me to this moment. How else would I appear in such a temple?

In sweeping, I had to climb down from who I thought I had become. The practice was to move beyond easily-accessed, well-served black pride into seeing the ways I suffer. I began to see the ascendance from enslaved Africans as a sanctioned and gifted walk toward the very liberation the Buddha spoke of, and what the ancestors saw for me and everyone else. While economic reparation for enslavement is true and relative justice, the ultimate reparation is true freedom from the poison of our oppression. We need both.

ZENJU EARTHLYN MANUEL

is a Soto Zen priest, author, and poet. A dharma heir of the late Zenkei Blanche Hartman in the Shunryu Suzuki Roshi lineage, her practice is also influenced by Native American and African indigenous traditions. Her most recent book is The Shamanic Bones of Zen: Revealing the Ancestral Spirit and Mystical Heart of a Sacred Tradition.

Silencing the Inner Critic - Christina Feldman

 

Silencing the Inner Critic

The nagging, negative voice of self-judgement, says Christina Feldman, is a powerful affliction best met with courage, kindness, and understanding.     CHRISTINA FELDMAN12 JANUARY 2018

Unruly beings are like space. 
There’s not enough time to overcome them.
Overcoming these angry thoughts.
Is like defeating all of our enemies.
—Shantideva

The Buddha sat beneath the Bodhi tree on the eve of his enlightenment and was assailed by Mara, representing all of the afflictions we meet in the landscape of our minds: worry and restlessness, dullness and resistance, craving, aversion, and doubt. The one affliction that did not make an appearance in this story is the powerful voice of the inner critic—the inner judge that can torment us on a daily basis, undermining our well-being and distorting our relationship with life. The inner critic is the voice of shame, blame, belittlement, aversion, and contempt. To many of us, it is so familiar that it seems almost hardwired into our hearts.

Before exploring the nature of the judgmental mind, it is essential to mark the distinction between the voice of the inner critic and our capacity for discernment and discriminating wisdom. Discriminating wisdom is what brings us to our cushion to meditate and inspires us to act in ways that bring suffering and harm to an end. Discriminating wisdom is the source of every wise act and word. Discernment draws upon ethics, compassion, and wisdom and teaches us moment by moment to discover the Buddha in ourselves and in others.

The judging mind is optional; it can be understood and released.

The inner critic is a creature of a different nature. With the inner critic, we may still come to our cushion but we come accompanied by a story that tells us we are unworthy or inadequate. With the inner critic, we still act, speak, and make choices, yet moment by moment we feel endlessly criticized, compared, and belittled. The judgmental mind draws not upon all that is wise but upon Mara, the patterns of aversion, doubt, ill will, and fear. Rarely is the judgmental heart the source of wise action or speech, nor does it lead to the end of suffering. The judgmental mind is suffering and compounds suffering. It suffocates ethics, the guidelines of kindness and care, and it wounds our hearts and lives.

Discriminating wisdom is essential and must be cultivated. The judging mind is optional; it can be understood and released. Thomas Merton, the great Christian mystic described the essence of the spiritual path as a search for truth that springs from love. Beneath the Bodhi tree, Mara’s power over Siddhartha ended the moment he was able to look Mara in the eye and simply say, “I know you.” These few words were a reflection of a profound shift in Siddhartha’s heart: the shift from being intimidated and overpowered by Mara to having the courage to open a dialogue of understanding with Mara, and bringing intimidation to an end.

The judgmental mind that causes so much pain in our lives cannot be exempted from our practice. The judgmental mind needs to be met with the same courage and investigation we bring to any other afflictive emotion. The judgmental mind does not respond well to suppression, avoidance, or aversion. It needs kindness and understanding. The late Jiyu-Kennett Roshi, a Zen teacher, said the training of liberation begins with compassion for the self, and that cultivating a non-judgmental mind toward ourselves is the key to a genuine compassion for all beings.

We begin this process by asking what a non-judgmental mind looks like, and what it means to be free of the burden of the inner critic. To understand these questions experientially, we need to turn our attention to the judgmental mind and embrace its pain with the same mindfulness we would bring to a pain in our body or to another’s sorrow.

The essence of mindfulness is to see, to understand, and to find freedom within everything that feels intractable and clouded by confusion. Mindfulness is a present-moment experience, concerned with embracing and understanding the entirety of each moment with tenderness, warmth, and interest. In the light of this engaged attention, we discover it is impossible to hate or fear anything we truly understand, including the judgmental mind. We begin to see that the greatest barrier to compassion and freedom is not the pain or adversity we meet in our lives but the ongoing tendency to criticize and fear the simple truths of the moment. Instead of just wanting the judgmental mind to go away, we could begin to ask what it is teaching us. Abhirupa Nanda, a nun from the time of the Buddha, suggested meditating on the unconditioned. Liberate the tendency to judge yourself as being above, below, or the same as others. By penetrating deeply into judgment, you will live at peace.

Looking closely at the judgmental mind, we see that it is rarely truthful or able to see the whole of anything.

Although it may seem so, we were not born with a judgmental, aversive mind. It is a learned way of seeing and relating, and it can be unlearned. Looking closely at the judgmental mind, we see that it is rarely truthful or able to see the whole of anything. Instead, the judgmental mind is governed by seizing upon the particulars of ourselves and others and mistaking those particulars for the truth. A friend neglects to return a phone call, and this triggers a cascade of anxious thinking that convinces us they are an indifferent person or we are unworthy of their attention. We arrive late for an appointment and in moments the inner critic determines we are a mindless failure. The practice of meditation, of discovering what is true, suggests there is another path that can be followed.

In the Sufi tradition it is suggested that our thoughts should pass through three gates. At the first gate, we ask of our thought, “Is it true?” If so, we let the thought pass through to the second gate, where we ask, “Is it necessary or useful?” If this also is so, we let the thought continue on its way to the third gate, where we ask, “Is this thought rooted in love and kindness?” Judgmental thoughts, which are neither true, helpful, nor kind, falter at the gates.

Students often wonder why the judgmental mind does not appear in the traditional list of afflictions that Siddhartha met under the Bodhi tree. Perhaps it is because the judgmental mind is not one affliction or hindrance but a compounded hindrance. If you explore just one moment during which the inner critic is operating, you sense how the winds of all of the hindrances flow through it. There is craving, which takes form in the expectations and ideals we hold for ourselves and others. There is restlessness and worry — the shoulds and expectations generating endless thought and emotion as we struggle to avoid imperfection. And there is aversion and ill will, directed toward ourselves and others when our shoulds and expectations are disappointed. Doubt makes a powerful appearance too—doubt in our worthiness, goodness, and capacity. Then there is the affliction of dullness, which makes a disguised appearance in the form of despair, resignation, and numbness.

Holding all of these afflictions together are the beliefs we have regarding who we are and who we are not, which continually fuel the afflictive emotions. But the path of awakening invites us to understand this compound of the inner critic, to learn how to loosen its hold and power, and to rediscover all that is true within ourselves and others. The path invites us to extend kindness, rather than harshness, to ourselves and all beings and to learn to see a thought as a thought, rather than as a description of reality. On the path, we can begin to see that self-judgment or judgment of another is no more than a thought that is laden with ill will and aversion. There is a profound liberation in knowing this so deeply that we can let go of ill will.

Nurturing our capacity to be mindful and present is the first step to understanding and disempowering the identity and power of the inner critic.

The Buddha taught that what we dwell upon becomes the shape of our mind. If we dwell on ill will, directed outwardly or inwardly in the form of blame, disparagement, or aversion, it will become the shape of our mind until all that we see is that which is broken, flawed, imperfect, and impossible. In India there is a saying that when a pickpocket meets a saint in the marketplace, all he sees are the saint’s pockets. Habit and awareness do not co-exist. Nurturing our capacity to be mindful and present is the first step to understanding and disempowering the identity and power of the inner critic.

We can learn to pause and to listen deeply to the voice of the inner judge, with its endless symphony of blame and shame, and we can surround it with the kindness of mindfulness. We can investigate the truth of its story. We can begin to sense that the inner critic truly warrants compassion, as does any suffering and affliction. Instead of fleeing the painfulness of the judgmental mind we can turn toward it, sensing that everything we are invited to understand in the journey of awakening can be understood within the judgmental mind. Letting go, compassion, the emptiness of self, equanimity, and wisdom are the lessons we are invited to explore with this most powerful of afflictions. The alchemy of mindfulness is to nurture a sense of possibility. We are encouraged to imagine a life free from ill will, blame, and shame. To imagine a life and a heart of compassion, wisdom, and peace.

CHRISTINA FELDMAN

Christina Feldman is the author of Compassion: Listening to the Cries of the World. She is cofounder and a guiding teacher at Gaia House, a Buddhist meditation center in Devon, England, and a senior teacher at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts.

Self-acceptance

Ten thousand flowers in Spring

Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn,

a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter.
If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things,
this is the best season of your life.

________________

“Ten Thousand Flowers in Spring” by Wu-Men, The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry. © Harper Perennial, 1993.

Pensée de la semaine - Aug 15, 2022 - 8 Worldly Winds

Pensée de la semaine Au regard de la mort et de l'impermanence de toutes choses, Nos projets ordinaires ne sont que duperies. Comment se fier aux huit préoccupations mondaines Aussi évanescentes que les couleurs de l'arc-en-ciel ? Drigung Jigtèn Gonpo, Rinchen Pal, ('jigs rten mgon po rin chen dpal, 1143-1217, également connu sous le nom de Drigung Kyopa et Drigung Palzin ('bri gung dpal 'dzin), extrait de snying gtam gces bsdus, p. 88. DRIGUNG JIGTEN GONPO (1143-1217)

Doing, Being and the Great In-Between

Doing, Being and the Great In-Between
by Christina Feldman (published in Tricycle Magazine)

We all want our lives to have meaning—but sometimes we’re unsure what that is. This question of meaning has many significant threads: it’s a question that touches upon our sense of identity and worthiness, and asks us to explore what we’re committed to in this life. George Eliot once wrote, “It seems to me that we can never give up longing and wishing while we are alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good and we must hunger for them.”

I would suggest that it is the beautiful and the good that we aspire to and value above all else. In the midst of the beautiful and the good, we feel most alive, most awake, and most present. The Buddha’s teachings are about cultivating the beautiful and the good, the seeds of possibility that live in every human heart: generosity, kindness, and compassion. These qualities ennoble our hearts and leave no residue of regret in our minds.

A few weeks ago I was in a conversation with a woman I mentor, a woman who has achieved many things. She develops mindfulness treatments for cancer patients, writes books, and teaches. She lives an incredibly worthy life by any standard. She talked about being of an age at which it is time for her to pull back and to give up some of that activity, but she found herself questioning how much meaning her life would have as she retreated from her essential work. It became apparent how complex the word meaning is—how that longing to live a meaningful, creative, fulfilling life is such a powerful aspiration.

In our culture, the idea of meaning is weighty. We ask children what they’re going to do when they grow up rather than who they’ll be. Early in our lives, the seeds are planted to imagine that the meaning of our lives is going to be defined by what we do or by how we are perceived by others.

I’ve met so many people who, when they wake up without a plan or project for the day, feel that this renders their life meaningless. At the same time I’m increasingly aware of how we live in a culture of exhausted people. This includes dharma teachers! I’m embarrassed when we get together and everybody reports how tired they are. Some of you may sense this when you go on retreat. It feels as if the reservoir is empty. You spend the first two days of retreat simply recovering from life. Thomas Merton spoke about the contemporary violence of our times: being answerable to too many people, saying yes to too many things, taking on too much. But in our culture even the exhaustion can seem admirable because we’re so needed. For some the luxury of waking up to a “don’t-know” day, a day empty of projects, is a distant memory. (I do appreciate that for those who are prone to low moods, “don’t-know” days can feel very bleak and depressing.)

In the Buddha’s teaching, desire is a very interesting word. In fact, it’s not one word alone; there are a number of words in Pali that might be translated as “desire.” The Buddha teaches that there are many wholesome desires: the desire to serve, the desire to give, the desire to be free, the desire to cultivate qualities of heart that ennoble our lives and lead us to connect with others. It’s desire that causes us to seek depth and understanding. It is desire that brings about wholesome social change and justice. Our desires are catalysts for all change and transformation, both outwardly and inwardly. They are at the root of skillful effort.

Yet there are also desires that aren’t so noble. These are the insatiable appetites that create stress. One of the subtlest of these desires is called bhavatanha, which may be translated as “the craving to become.” This is the endless desire to become the kind of person who only has pleasant experiences, who is admired and applauded and loved. It’s a desire to become the kind of person who is secure and safe; a person without blemish or imperfection; a person who never fails, who’s never criticized, who’s never judged. Often we’re barely aware of how powerful and compulsive this craving to become is, the degree to which it organizes our world, our relationships, and our choices. It makes us really busy. In order to become this person, we have to engage in many activities and rearrange the conditions of our lives. The pursuit of this desire is equated with success. It’s about finding an identity, which in turn is about worthiness. If I become a person who has only good meditations, who gets only positive feedback, who is successful, and who manages to defend against the unpleasant, then I’ve reached a state of worthiness. I believe my life will have meaning.

If we look at bhavatanha from a reasonable point of view, we might ask, “Is it possible?” From a rational perspective, we would say “No.” None of us has the power to control and re-arrange the conditions of our lives so that we have only pleasant experiences. The Buddha suggested that bhavatanha, the eternal quest for perfection and the ideal self, is the source of the greatest suffering in our lives. But we may find ourselves wondering: What would we do without bhavatanha? What would motivate us? What would give meaning to our lives if we weren’t always striving to become?

From the angle of contemplative practice, it’s really helpful to release the word “meaning” as we usually understand it and to explore the word “meaningfulness.” There’s a vast difference between these two. Meaningfulness is not about great achievement or success; it’s not about grand identities or roles. It’s about how we live our moments. It’s about how we attend to the details of our lives. As I was sitting in conversation with my mentee, the thought came to me: “Why isn’t it considered meaningful to look out my window and appreciate the camellia blooming? Why isn’t this as meaningful as finishing a grand project or becoming someone?” It was clear to me in that moment that if I attended to the camellia wholeheartedly, the moment filled with appreciation and beauty. Right then, there was no sense of lack and no need to improve upon the moment. There was no need to be anyone. The camellia didn’t affirm a “me,” but by observing it with my whole being it affirmed a capacity for stillness, receptivity, and appreciation. It didn’t mean that I was going to sit in that chair forever. I wasn’t going to tell my publisher that my book would never be finished or my children that I’d retired as a mother. But it pointed to the way we dichotomize doing and being.

“It’s a desire to become the kind of person who is secure and safe; a person without blemish or imperfection; a person who never fails, who’s never criticized, who’s never judged.”
What do I mean by being? In the exhaustion of our busyness, the thought of “just being” sounds attractive. I hear people say, “I don’t want to expend any more effort to settle my mind, to be mindful, to be awake. I just want to be.” I understand why this sentiment arises, but we need to be careful. The Buddha’s teaching is a profoundly aspirational one. It points to the deep and transformational possibilities that live in every human heart. The Buddha pointed out that the seeds of liberative understanding and clarity, of kindness and compassion, lie within each of us. And the path to their fruition lies in our commitment. These intentions translate into an embodied way of being. It’s said that the whole of this path rests upon the head of the pin of intention, but “effort” is one of the most frequently used words in the Pali canon. Effort sets us on a path to awakening.

And yet in our practice, we discover how our intentions can slide into becoming another project. So often, I hear the word “work” mentioned these days. Everybody’s working on something! Is this what the practice is about? Be aware of how we translate this desire “to become” into our practice. Have you ever wondered where the end of that work is? If the core sense of self remains unquestioned, it’s always going to find something new to work on. We arrive on retreat with a project of what we have to work on and find ourselves engaged in another quest for identity, worthiness, and meaning with a capital M. We want to be a good meditator. We want a perfectly collected mind and to be eternally mindful, compassionate, and kind. When it’s elusive, we tell ourselves to sit more. But just sitting won’t bring aspiration to embodiment and fulfillment—only understanding and commitment can do that. This includes the commitment to relinquish the endless search for becoming that governs our lives. When that desire “to become” remains empty and unfulfilled, we think, “Maybe it’s just not possible for me.” When we collapse into that exhaustion, then “just being” suddenly looks good.

But we need to be aware of this ideology of “just being,” too. With an attachment to “just being,” how easy it is to yield our hunger for the beautiful and the good. “Just being” can be a yielding to doubt. The toxic companion of the craving to become is the craving for non-becoming. This is when we push away everything that delivers an identity we don’t want: difficult thoughts, bodily experiences, events, and even challenging meditations. We try to annihilate the identity we don’t want, annihilating our sense of aspiration in the process. We flounder and despair, convincing ourselves of impossibility and meaninglessness.

It’s difficult to find an equivalent word for being in Pali. Instead, there are phrases that point to a way of being present and inhabiting this life. One phrase the Buddha uses is “calm abiding” [shamatha]. Another is “equanimity” [upekkha]. He uses the word stillness [passaddhi]. as a way of being present within all moments when there is de-centering of “me,” of self, of identity. These phrases are worthy of deep contemplation and exploration.

When I looked at the camellia, for example, a door opened. I saw what it meant to rest in a quality of profound easefulness where I’m alive and dynamic. There’s a clear sense of not-wanting and sufficiency. The meaningfulness is not in the object—the meaningfulness is in the seeing. Buddhist practice is constantly inviting us to explore that calm abiding. In this way, we may discover that doing and being aren’t so polarized. They work in unison, cooperating to allow a wakeful presence in all the moments and details of our lives. This presence is responsive and creative, a way of being that isn’t born of wanting or not wanting, but of stillness.

Craving “to become” is an impulse that makes us lean forward, away from here, into a better moment, a better self. When we do so, we separate that idealized moment from the actuality of what is just here. It’s only when we learn to end the separation of the possible and the actual that we also learn to end this dichotomy between doing and being. Calm abiding is a present-tense phrase, a way of being in the midst of our lives. We learn to calmly abide in the body, in the mind, in the midst of reactivity. Nothing has to go away. It’s the camellia blooming outside the window again. It’s the shift from the object orientation to the seeing orientation. All of our likes and all of our dislikes, our wanting and not wanting, are born of object orientation. This object orientation—defining identity by objects (including the contents of our consciousness)—limits us. We’ll always have a sense of unease within it.

[IMAGE] The Meaning Between Doing and Being
Beyond the View, No. 2, 2009. © Helen Sear, courtesy Klompching Gallery, New York.

We find ourselves feeling that praise will make me a better self and blame will make me a worse self. A good meditation, whatever that is, says something important about who I am. And a so-called bad meditation really is that: just affirming a sense of unworthiness or failure in capacity. We see how easily we define ourselves by the contents of experience and our minds. In the search for this idealized self, we look at the world through self-referential eyes: “What does this mean to me?” If it means something positive based on the past, my life somehow becomes meaningful. If I look at the world and receive something that challenges or shakes my identity, life becomes impossible and bleak.

Calm abiding is something different. It’s a deep knowing of the ways in which events come and go, both unlovely and lovely. It’s knowing that we can’t control or define ourselves by those events. It’s learning to rest in a non-preferential, non-reactive relationship that is sensitive, receptive, and free from the demand that things go one way or another. Calm abiding is established through intention and commitment. It limits the tide of events and experience. As the Buddha put it, it is knowing “This does not belong to me. This is not who I am. This is not me.”

As we learn to rest in that state of calm abiding amid the river of events and experience, we learn to attend to the details. Leonard Cohen once said, “There is a crack in everything / That’s how the light comes in.” By learning to rest in this caring, sensitive, friendly seeing, we get a taste of upekkha, equanimity, which the Buddha uses interchangeably with nibbana, or liberation, in the Udana Sutta. In the Pali canon there is discourse in praise of equanimity where the Buddha says, “For one who clings, motion exists, but for one who does not cling, there is no motion. Where no motion is, there is stillness. Where stillness is, there no craving is, there is neither coming nor going. Where no coming or going is, there is no arising or passing away. There is neither this world, nor a world beyond, nor a state between. This verily is the end of suffering.”

When we rest, we begin to see the interwoven nature of how events and identity bind together through misperception and clinging to create suffering. We learn to unbind from that perpetual contractedness through awareness. We are less prone to launch ourselves into the compulsive and agitated activities of doing and fixing, getting rid of, in the endless search for the ideal self. We learn to befriend not-knowing, to be still and learn responsiveness, and to foster an intention to bring to each moment just what is needed. It doesn’t mean that there are no objects or events, but that we explore the landscape of meaningfulness. Meaningfulness is found not only in the dramatic and the intense but also in the small moments, illuminated by a curious awareness. We discover that meaningfulness is in our being present. We don’t need to seek meaning, but to understand our capacity to be present in this responsive, still way. It’s in how our foot touches the ground, how we meet another person, how we meet ourselves. The camellia is actually enough. There’s nothing as impoverished as the deeply unawakened heart; and nothing enriches us more, and brings more life and meaningfulness, than the awakened heart.

Intention & Shantideva

 

It is always wonderful to see people coming to Buddhism, but it’s just as sad to see how many lose their way, become disillusioned, and abandon it. My own lamas have frequently mentioned to me how surprised they are by the number of Western students who fall away. Of course, one must acknowledge that the supportive social environment that exists in Asian Buddhist cultures is not present here in North America or Europe, where there is no prevailing consensus or expectation that will keep people within the Buddhist fold.

The causes for disillusionment, however, may go deeper than this and derive from the set of motivations operating when people engage with Buddhism in the first place. Renowned Buddhist masters have always recognized the need to instruct would-be practitioners about the importance of cultivating the appropriate motivation to ground their study and practice of the dharma.

One can see this point stressed again and again both by Indian masters such as Nagarjuna, Shantideva, and Atisha, and by their successors in all four schools of Tibetan Buddhism. It is made succinctly in the famous cycle of teachings known as Parting from the Four Attachments, spoken by the bodhisattva Manjushri to Sakya master Sachen Kunga Nyingpo back in the 12th century CE, when he declared:

If you have attachment to this life, you are not a practitioner of dharma.
If you have attachment to the realm of samsara, you don’t have renunciation.

The point is simple but radical, and one we must not evade if we are to benefit from our involvement with Buddhism. It means that we can buy thousands of Buddhist books, join countless organizations, receive initiations, attend retreats, and still not be practicing the dharma.

As Shakyamuni Buddha said, “Everything rests on the point of intention.” What prevents a performance of dharma from being dharma practice is precisely that our intention or motivation for practicing is contaminated by the eight worldly concerns, the ephemeral goals that render impossible any glimpse of the transcendental freedom that is the proper goal of Buddhist practice. In this sense, the eight worldly dharmas, as they are also known, are the very opposite of buddhadharma. Distinct from it, they comprise four pairs of motivating factors: determination to acquire pleasure and not pain, gain and not loss, fame and not notoriety, and praise and not blame.

The pull of the eight worldly concerns drives us to attempt to manipulate our experience of the world, to seek worldly pleasures and avoid pain, pushing our continually discontented mind forward. It should be no surprise that when we first encounter Buddhism, the eight worldly concerns simply shift their focus from gross objects such as acquisition of property to the more subtle worldly rewards to be gained through Buddhism, like the apparent mastery over emotional unsteadiness and enhanced powers of concentration.

It is for this reason that another great Sakya master, Drakpa Gyaltsen, declared, “When one is attached to this life, even his ethical discipline is contaminated by the eight worldly concerns.” He also said, “The meditator who is focused on this life is still busy even when he is in retreat.” In this respect, to understand the Buddha’s teaching as merely a method for improving our samsaric situation, whether in this life or the next, still falls far short of the freedom to which the dharma summons us.

The remedy to the eight worldly concerns, taught in Parting from the Four Attachments and similar cycles of instructions, is to “turn the mind to dharma” by systematic contemplations of the preciousness of our human life, impermanence and death, action (cause and effect), and the defects of samsara. Without the transformation in our values brought about by these four contemplations, any engagement in dharma activities will only serve to strengthen our self-centeredness.

The first contemplation exhorts us not to squander the precious opportunity we have been given. Right now, poised between birth and death, we possess a freedom to reflect that is characteristic of human life and also the fortune to have met the dharma. We thus possess an indispensable working basis by which our potential for Buddhahood can be fulfilled. Yet the inspiration generated by attentiveness to this precious moment of our human life must be tempered and simultaneously strengthened by acknowledging the fact of impermanence, the second contemplation. This is not the casual acceptance of impermanence of externalities so useful to a consumption-driven society where everything is disposable, but an acknowledgment in our very bones that there is no conditioned thing, including and especially our present existence, that escapes death. To know this through deep contemplation is to awaken to the possibilities inherent in this very life, in this very moment, and to not get lost in pursuit of the ephemera of the eight worldly concerns.

At this point, although we may have engaged to some extent with dharma, we may still be mistaking it as a means to some temporary improvement, whether a more refined state of consciousness or a higher rebirth. To overcome such a dilution of the dharma and its purpose requires that we analyze all states of samsara available to us. From top (the realm of the gods) to bottom (the hell realms) and everywhere in between, samsara is suffering. And what brings about its various forms of suffering are our choices and consequent actions, the third contemplation. The final two contemplations that turn the mind to dharma focus on the defects of samsara (the fourth) and the causes of samsara, that is to say, our actions (the third).

As long as our intentions of dharma practice remain untransformed, we only settle for more of the suffering of samsara, for life in the same old cage. Through attention to these themes we come to understand that to practice the dharma with a mind that is not imbued with dharma values is to sell the dharma short, and to settle for less than freedom.

Join Lama Jampa Thaye in his March 2014 online retreat, "Parting from the Four Attachments."

Lama Jampa Thaye is a scholar, author, and meditation teacher from the UK.

Image: Manjushri (Bodhisattva & Buddhist deity) - Arapachana. Courtesy of Rubin Museum of Art.

Reply by mike k on October 16, 2015, 6:42 am

The article expresses extreme disdain for "samsara" - that is, this beautiful world we have been gifted with. One wonders why anyone would wish to return here to help others - as in this view it would seem to betray some lingering attachment to this supposedly hellish realm and those who inhabit it. If love of this realm and it's beings, however "unenlightened " they may be, is taken as simply another attachment to be ruthlessly cut away, maybe this harsh absolutist thinking is one reason some people give up participating in this world denying, austere version of Buddhism?

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