A student once asked Shunryu Suzuki, “Why do we meditate?” “So you can enjoy your old age,” the Zen master answered.
Last Sunday was the four-hour block sitting at our local meditation group, so, lacking our usual discussion topic, I’ll offer some of my own thoughts about aging, and about regrets that show up as we age—i.e., I wish I’d done this, I failed at this, I hurt these people, etc. When we meditate, we begin to see more, and with more clarity. We see the things we did when we...
It wasn’t quite so spring-like yesterday here in Northern Michigan, back to slightly more “normal” temperatures. It’s spring break week around here, which may account for a smaller group for meditation last night.
We’re reading “Nirvana,” the second-to-last chapter of One Dharma, by Joseph Goldstein. The concept of Nirvana is easiest for me to see with images. The one that stays with me is the Buddha’s description from his discourse to the nuns in the Pali Suttas. He describes a...
The weather here in northern Michigan is amazing! Scary but amazing. We should have several feet of snow, still, but hyacinths are pushing up, trees budding and starting to leaf, peepers going crazy in the smaller lakes. Today should be in the 80s again. It’s no wonder we had only about nine at our weekly meditation and discussion. I hope everyone else was having a good time . . . . .
We started together the chapter of One Dharma called “Nirvana.” The concept of Nirvana (or Nibbana...
I left off last week’s post quoting Joseph Goldstein, where he says that some people think the recognition of suffering makes for pessimism. Then he says: “Actually, it is quite the reverse.” I guess that sounds as if we’ll be all joyful if we only see our suffering. My teacher, Sokuzan Bob Brown nudged me on this. I shouldn’t have stopped Joe before he finished. He goes on to say that if we deny the truth of impermanence, for example, we live our lives in delusion and enchantment (being...
Our local sangha wasn’t able to have our four-hour sitting yesterday because of a huge snowstorm, which knocked out power at the Unitarian church where we meet.
I just got back from a writers’ conference in Chicago. While I was there, I ended up having enough free time to spend hours at the Art Institute, something that gives me great pleasure. I stood for long periods in front of the images of the Buddha, Kartikaya (God of War Seated on a Peacock), and Avalokiteśvara.
I was...
We had a class in Eastern Religions from the local college our sangha yesterday. It was a treat to have these newbies to the practice get a sense of what it is to sit and to participate in a sangha. Thanks to their teacher, Misty, for bringing them.
It was an interesting time to have guests, since we got into talking about rebirth—the subject that leaves many people confused about Buddhism. What does rebirth mean?
But first, backing up a bit . . . we were finishing a section...
Yesterday our local meditation group read together a pitifully small portion of our book, One Dharma, because we got so interested in the topic and kept talking instead of reading. The section is “Attachment to Self.” What is “self?”, Goldstein asks. If we go into the body with a tiny video camera and look at the organs, what part of that is “self”? And if all the space were removed from the body, what remains would be the size of a particle of dust. Our identification with the body is very...
This is my arrangement of a transcription of the conversation/dharma talk with Zen priest Sokuzan Bob Brown last Sunday at our local meditation group. Bob began by describing the basic technique of “bare awareness”—very different from Shamatha, a stabilizing practice which requires “trying to do something, labeling or deliberately following the breath.” He says the bare awareness approach is not as easy, but it cuts to the chase:
Basic meditation instruction: Keep the eyes open, gaze...
Our local sangha had our four-hour block meditation yesterday--people coming and going, with a number of us staying and sitting the whole time. Plus our 30-minute snack time afterward, which is gradually creeping into the realm of an actual meal, so much food!
Since we had no discussion group to tell you about, I thought for today I’d offer a few more poems you may not know. Here are two from Ryokan (1758-1831), a Japanese Buddhist hermit who spent much of his time writing poetry and...
We had a small group in our local sangha for our discussion last time, but a larger one when it was time for meditation, with a light and dry snow drifting down outside, which is what it’s doing now. I’m thinking of Billy Collins’s poem, “Shoveling Snow with the Buddha,” You can hear him read it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCrDVIfoKYY
We read and discussed the chapter, “Liberation Through Nonclinging,” in One Dharma.
Goldstein touches somewhat lightly on the skandas, or...
“This compassion thing is so much more complicated than I thought,” said Mary Elizabeth as our local group continued with the chapter in One Dharma on “Compassion.” We think we’ll just “be compassionate,” but then, as Michael said, there’s the question of how little or how much—and how— we need to be supporting behavior that’s hurtful to the other person or to us, personally. Goldstein brings up other big questions: “How can our hearts stay open given the magnitude of suffering that exists...
Yesterday was very cold and blowing light snow, but we had 11 of us sitting together, anyway! We’re into the chapter, “Compassion,” in One Dharma. The core question that leads to large philosophical ones in this chapter is “Do we purify ourselves first, so that we can then take care of others? Or is it by taking care of others that we purify ourselves?
In Buddhist terms, shall we be arhants (the former) or bodhisattvas (the latter)?
During the history of Buddhism—one tradition...
We had 17 people for for our weekly local meditation group this week, including some faces we haven’t seen for a while! We read the last section of the chapter “Lovingkindness” in One Dharma. Goldstein begins with the questions most of us are asking about our anger: “How can I work it? How can I work with my aversion? I have almost instantaneous reactions, a habit of reacting in certain ways. What do I do about that?”
What we often do, he says—and we had a knowing...
The lake-effect snow was lovely yesterday afternoon as we began a new year with our four-hour meditation. We had ten people, maybe seven at the end. We stayed long enough afterward to make some headway in Shelley’s warm spinach dip, and by the time we were ready to leave Bill had shoveled individual paths to each of our cars!
I have four poems for you to start the new year. The first two are by long time Buddhist practitioners:
Jim Harrison describes his practice of...
Our local group didn’t meet on Christmas Day, so instead of talking about our discussion, I get to free-range-think! I’m thinking about the relationship between all art forms and meditation. There doesn’t seem to be exactly a “relationship.” They seem like the same thing to me. Take visual art, for example. Ever since photography became widely available, visual art has turned toward attempting to mirror the way the mind filters and interprets the “exterior” world (this is...
Our local sangha began Chapter Eight inOne Dharma, “Lovingkindness”—or metta in Pali. Before Goldstein attempts to define that word, he finds it necessary to help us see the two “principles of relative and ultimate truth.” We’ve talked about this before, but my experience has been that as my practice deepens, my understanding of those terms changes—so they’re always worth returning to. Relative truth, says Goldstein, is “the world of our conventional reality . . . . the world of subject-...
It was a happy thing that many of us brought our cushions Sunday night, since our local group had to sit on the hard floor of the back classroom of the Unitarian Church. We couldn’t use the carpeted sanctuary because of a concert. It was a good group, though,12 or 14 of us—I didn’t count—and the conversation was pretty lively. Diane got us focused on two pages of One Dharma, the section called “Courage: Strength of Heart.” Goldstein mentions that usually the Pali word viriya is translated “...
Here’s a photo of our local group at our 5-day retreat downstate, which went great, thanks to my co-facilitator Karen’s hard work. I wish we were all in the photo, but a few managed to escape the camera.
Sokuzan Bob Brown’s retreats are not silent—the point being to watch the transition from silent sitting to talking at meals and in hallways, etc. Bob‘s dharma talks led us through some traditional writings. We started with “On Trust in the Heart,” by the first century (C.E.)...
I’m thinking of this week’s discussion in our local meditation group through the lens of Joseph Goldstein’s quote in his book, One Dharma: “As awareness becomes steadier and concentration stronger, the quality of bare attention begins to reveal deeper insights into the world and into ourselves.” So, how does this happen? What is “bare attention”? This is what we talked about.
Goldstein says—and we agreed—that often we have the idea that thinking itself is something to be gotten rid...
We had 12 people last Sunday night in our local group for our regular meditation and discussion. We spent our time talking about about the nuts and bolts (yes, sometimes sitting makes us nuts and we want to bolt) of sitting meditation, prompted by a section of the book we’re reading, One Dharma, by Joseph Goldstein. The section is on “Four Foundations of Mindfulness:” mindfulness of the body, mindfulness of feelings, mindfulness of the mind and mental states, and mindfulness of the Dharma...
