The big man and I spent a bit of time at Hsi Lai temple today.
A great way to end the weekend.
A trip out to temple
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Category Archives: Dharma
Tucking in meditation
Last night, I did my normal routine of tucking the big man in to bed then going into the office for my nightly meditation. I started and I believe about 10 minutes had gone by before I heard
Dad, are you already sitting?
Yes.
Can you come in here?
Sure.
So I go into his room and he asks if I can sit with him for a couple minutes. I always enjoy this. The way I saw it, I didn’t have to end my meditation, this was just an extension of it.
I kneeled down next to his bed and placed my hand on his head as I usually have when I get to do this. Instead of just my own breath to concentrate on, I also had his. I noticed the minute he fell asleep (his breathing makes an ever so slight change, I noticed that years ago), and figured I was done meditating for the night as well.
Parents, if you have the opportunity, I highly recommend a “tucking in” meditation session every once in a while.
the cricket
I sit down on my cushions for my nightly meditation, tucking my feet in, straightening my back, lowering my eyelids, putting in effort to have no attachment to thoughts.
A cricket chirps loudly.
I hear the sound of my son turn another page in his book.
A cricket is keeping me company during my sit.
I hear my wife move downstairs, and a plane make its journey across the sky overhead.
I notice the rhythm of the cricket are in time with the melody of the beating in my chest, my breath in sync. The sound is quiet yet massive all at once, 10,000 Buddhas in all directions, all in sync, with nothing to be in sync with. I am not separate from this cricket. Suchness. All as it should be, nothing more, nothing less.
I decide I am finished, join my palms, and take refuge as I do every night.
I smile and thank the cricket.
laundry and suffering
The big man and I were cleaning his clothes out yesterday and once we removed everything he had outgrow, decided it would be good to wash all his t-shirts. He had so many in his drawer that it was overflowing (and a side effect of the overflow was wrinkles). He’s been very helpful with folding, but this time he decided to sit on the couch and whine a little when I said it was time to help.
I took that opportunity to talk to him about his reaction and suffering.
“You know, how you react to this task is only affecting you”
“I don’t want to fold”
“It’s not my favorite thing to do either, but, how I react to it directly relates to whether it is hard to get through, or easy. You see, if there is something I don’t particularly enjoy doing, I can make a choice; do I decide ‘this is horrible, I hate this’, or, ‘this isn’t my favorite thing to do, but I can get through it pretty quick so no big deal’. If I choose the first reaction, I suffer. However, if I choose the second, I don’t, and I also usually get through the task much quicker. Which do you think would be the better decision?”
“Saying it’s no big deal.”
“Yep. Do you know where I learned that?”
“Your Dad?”
“Great guess, but actually, it was <I point my eyes up and to the left, towards our Buddha that sits in the front room>”
“From Buddha. <as he smiles>”
“Yep. That is one of the most basic, yet, most important teachings. It is also why I sit every night. So the mind I have when I sit, can be the mind I have when I work on a task that I don’t particularly care for.”
“<he smiles some more> OK”
And you know, we got through folding that laundry basket full of his t-shirts pretty quickly.
365 days of meditation
Image from a retreat conducted at Hsi Lai temple in Sept. 2012.
On Saturday, October 6th, I marked 365 consecutive days of consistent sitting practice. Obviously, being a Buddhist, I had sat before this, but like many I know I hadn’t found I was being as consistent as I would prefer. Sure, there were times when I would sit every day, but there were also times when I would sit once a week, and, occasionally less than that. I had always found that ‘life would get too busy’ to sit on a consistent basis. I would be tired, too busy watching a TV program, working, or just plain forget. After beginning this challenge I had made for myself (I believe I had only mentioned it to my wife, and maybe in conversation with my friend Rev Danny) I found something about my previous way of thinking I was too busy; I was wrong.
Most who read this will have likely heard the old Ch’an/Zen saying “you should sit in meditation for 20 minutes a day, unless you’re too busy; then you should sit for an hour.” In my own practice, I have found there is a lot of truth in this. This saying says a couple things to me.
One – Find the time! No matter what you are doing in life, there are always a few minutes in your day that are free to sit. Twenty minutes is great, an hour even better, but, who can’t spare 10, or even 5 minutes to sit and breath.
Two – Sitting will, more often than not, have a positive effect on everything else you do. In my own experience, having a consistent sitting practice develops many things, concentration and calmness are two that come to mind now that help in daily life. Another that I experienced was an overwhelming sense of acceptance. Not in the sense of just accepting things as they are and forgetting about them, but, the ability to accept situations in one’s life, evaluating them with whatever wisdom one can muster up, and moving through. Mindfulness.
Developing a schedule for myself to sit was key to being successful in this personal challenge. I incorporated it into a nightly routine we already had in place for my son. Most nights, as he would do his nightly reading, I would go into the office and sit. However, this was not always the case, if I was out of town, I would sit beside my bed before going to sleep. If I was at a friends home, I would find a quiet place to sit (and yes, this got interesting at times). There were even a few times when my wife and I would be out late and she would drive us home so I could sit in the car. Meditation in a moving car is a challenge to say the least, but, I’m very grateful she allowed me to do this. In summary, I didn’t allow my location to become an excuse for myself to not sit, I looked at it as a tool to work on my practice. I can always use improvement.
There is an old story that i would like to end with;
A monk, coming out of a monastery under the leadership of Rinzai, met a party of three travelling monks belonging to another Buddhist school over a river on a bridge.
One of the three ventured to question the Zen monk:
“How deep is the river of Zen?”
The Zen monk, fresh from his own interview with Rinzai, who was noted for his direct actions, lost no time in replying.
“Find out for yourself,” he said, and offered to throw the questioner from the bridge.
I’m no Zen monk, but I will offer to throw you from the bridge, into the river of daily meditation.
I would also urge you to read words from Venerable Master Hsing Yun on the topic. A great place to start is his ‘Buddhism in Every Step’ series, booklet 41 ‘Meditation’, which is available for free, or for a small donation, at http://blpusa.com/41-meditation.
(I wrote this for an upcoming edition of our Buddha’s Light Magazine, offered at Hsi Lai temple. As we are not yet launching the electronic edition, I decided to also post here. I hope you enjoy.)
Happy Birthday your Holiness. My birthday wishes to the Dalai Lama.
Years ago when I was searching for a path I picked up a small book on Buddhism and remember thinking ‘wow, I’ve always thought this’ & ‘this makes perfect sense’. From there I started reading your books, which further deepened my interest in the Dharma. Then I found out you would be giving a public talk soon, but it was sold out by the time I had found out. Well, I drove up to UCLA anyways. When I arrived, I happened to find a man outside selling a single ticket at face value. An auspicious sign if I may say so. 
When I tell friends of this day, the only way I know how to express it was that I could literally ‘feel’ you walk into the room. And even though I was way up in the back of the audience, it was as if you and I were alone and you were speaking directly to me. This changed my life. I went home that evening, shaved my head, and knew I was to set foot on the Buddhist path.
Soon after, I took refuge and accepted the 5 Precepts under Venerable Master Hsing Yun of the Fo Guang Shan order. There is a wonderful picture of you and my Master in one of the offices at Hsi Lai Temple that I enjoy seeing any chance I get.
I have been fortunate enough to have found my way to the Dharma, and am thankful to you for being a big part of that.
May the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas in all directions continue to shine their light upon you.
…joining palms, bowing head to floor.
Kris
Kris
Had a great day out at Whittier Narrows Park on Sunday celebrating Vesak….
see the full collection of pictures over on Google+
Kristopher Freedain – Google+ – Had a great day out at Whittier Narrows Park on Sunday…..
Training the Untrained Mind – An Excerpt from The Misleading Mind by Karuna Cayton
Training the Untrained MindAn Excerpt from The Misleading Mind by Karuna Cayton
Mind training is essential to Buddhism. In essence, it is the path the Buddha advocated in his Fourth Noble Truth. And yet, as I’ve said, mind training is not necessarily a religious or spiritual practice. It does not rest on accepting certain religious beliefs or adopting particular terminology. It can be used successfully as an entirely secular practice, or it can be incorporated as a deliberate spiritual practice within any religion, whether you are Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, or something else. You can be a businessperson, schoolteacher, or a stay-at-home mom or dad and still practice mind training. Naturally, the ideas behind mind training, or the explanations of mind the Buddha presented in his first three Noble Truths, are equally essential no matter our place in life. Training and theory go hand in hand. So, as you read the rest of the book, keep practicing the mind training methods this chapter describes, and as you practice, keep reading to steadily improve your understanding and success.
As we begin, I want to share a wonderful and amusing historical anecdote that captures what the practice is all about and how transformative it can be. From the seventh century, Buddhism flourished in Tibet, but in the ninth century, it declined as a result of a ruthless Tibetan king who aimed to destroy Buddhism in his country. Then, in the early eleventh century, Tibetan Buddhism began a regeneration. This was marked by increased travel between Tibet and India, as key Tibetans traveled to India for instruction, and many Indian masters were invited to Tibet. Foremost of these Indian masters was Lama Atisha, a well-known scholar and practitioner who was one of India’s principal teachers of mind training. Lama Atisha was invited personally by the current king to spearhead the reestablishing of Tibet’s rich Buddhist cultural and religious tradition. Initially, Atisha committed to staying in Tibet for three years, but he was so well-loved by Tibetans that he remained for a total of twelve years, finally passing away in Tibet.
One reason for Atisha’s long initial commitment was because travel from India to Tibet was not easy. You had to negotiate hot, disease-infested jungles, eighteen-thousand-foot Himalayan passes, and inhospitable tribes and bandits. The trip took months to prepare and months to complete, involving dangers and hardships we can barely imagine today. Among the party traveling to Tibet was Atisha’s personal cook, who was known as a very difficult person to get along with. And indeed, the Tibetans found him rude, crass, and unfriendly. But even worse, the cook’s terrible behavior did not merely extend to the Tibetans but even to Atisha himself. The Tibetans just could not understand why Lama Atisha would keep such an unsavory person as his cook. Wasn’t travel hard enough?
However, Atisha never showed any sense of intolerance, anger, or embarrassment over his cook’s behavior. Then as now, traveling can sometimes bring out the worst in people, and the Tibetans were impressed that Atisha showed only affection for the cook.
Finally, though, they couldn’t stand it, and they asked Atisha why he did not fire the man and send him back to India. Lama Atisha replied, “He is not just my cook; he is my teacher of patience.”
With that one simple statement, Lama Atisha demonstrated to the Tibetans and to us the entire concept of transforming one’s inner experience through mind training.
Embracing Our Problems
It would be a mistake to interpret Lama Atisha’s remark as a glib attempt at humor. He was not making the best of a bad situation. Atisha was speaking the truth: he regarded the cook as his teacher, and he deliberately chose to keep this difficult man close to him. Amazingly, Lama Atisha chose to make his life harder than it needed to be.
This exemplifies the first aspect of mind training. Rather than being another way to avoid or escape problems, mind training freely embraces problems. Not only that, as Lama Atisha indicated, we must actively seek and engage our problems, rather than wait for them. Only in this way can we learn how to avoid suffering. In his case, Lama Atisha’s “problem” wasn’t the cook; it was his own feelings of anger or frustration stimulated by the cook’s behavior. In his response to his Tibetan traveling companions, Atisha did not deny that the cook was insufferable. Instead, he was indicating the primary thrust of mind training: it is a method of handling any emotion that disturbs us so that we retain our balance and sense of inner peace.
There are numerous techniques to help us do this, but they revolve around a few basic principles: training our mind not to be “attached to” or “influenced by” our emotions, desires, or perceptions, and learning to transform negative emotions into their positive counterparts. In Lama Atisha’s case, through his cook, he was practicing replacing anger with patience.
An important distinction with mind training is that it is not “reframing” or just a faith-based feel-good trick. Therapists, for ex-ample, use reframing as a common technique in therapeutic practice, and sometimes it can be quite helpful for the client. Looking on the bright side, seeing the glass as half full, identifying the beneficial lessons in an otherwise hurtful relationship: This can be a good, positive approach. But this is not mind training, and “reframing” has limited long-term usefulness. Oftentimes, reframing can feel contrived. Someone, some other, higher authority or code of belief, tells us how to feel, and so we try, even if we lack real conviction. Reframing can sometimes be illogical; it denies the truth of one’s experience. We may be asked to imagine that a person who deliberately hurt us didn’t really mean to hurt us. In mind training, the intentions and motivations of others, although relevant, are not the primary focus. We are concerned with our point of view and its accompanying response.
Similarly, when a terrible accident occurs, we are sometimes asked to see it as “God’s will” or “punishment for our sins” or the workings of “karma.” Not only does this fail to explain events, but it overlooks the real problem: how we should deal with our feelings of grief, rage, and disbelief. I consider it “reframing” when we are asked to take the goodness of the universe on faith. Don’t get me wrong: faith is important. Indeed, the reasons for events often escape human understanding, and the world is unpredictable. Ultimately, these difficult, existential truths are what mind training helps us to cope with. Ultimately, in Buddhism, mind training is a spiritual practice in the sense that its goal is to awaken our inner potential.
However, that is not where the beginner starts. Instead, we start by accepting the counterintuitive notion that we must use our problems to solve our problems. Problems provide the resistance that helps us exercise our minds. When problems appear, instead of avoiding them, we confront, understand, and eliminate all of those unhelpful emotions and thoughts that arise because of them and that have run our life since the day we were born. In truth, we are merely “retraining” the mind. Just the idea that we can change and transform our everyday existence is quite encouraging by itself. It is in this way that, in training our mind, we become our own therapist and are, by my definition, spiritual practitioners. When we work with transforming our mind at more advanced levels, we actually look forward to confronting our problems, just like Lama Atisha. Why? Because we understand that the problematic conditions of the world will never go away. It is simply the nature of life. All we can do is get better at handling them. We understand that even if we are calm and happy today, something will happen tomorrow to challenge us and throw us off. Perhaps it will be an unexpected bill, or a medical problem, or a painful buried memory lying under the surface of our conscious mind that arises at the drop of a hat…like a rear-end collision that comes out of nowhere while we sit at a red light. The rather unconventional, “in your face” Buddhist approach of mind training is to courageously confront all of our dirty little secrets and difficult emotions whenever they come up until we’ve changed the nature of our relationship with them. Then, instead of being bossed around by our worst tendencies and disturbed emotions, we become the boss of our own mind.
KARUNA CAYTON, psychotherapist and author of The Misleading Mind, spent twelve years working with Tibetan refugees in Nepal and studying with Buddhist masters. His Karuna Group practice applies Buddhist psychology to individual and organizational clients. He lives in Northern California. Visit him online at www.thekarunagroup.com.
Excerpted from the book The Misleading Mind: How We Create Our Own Problems and How Buddhist Psychology Can Help Us Solve Them ©2012 by Karuna Cayton.
Printed with permission from New World Library.
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I am currently reading ‘The Misleading Mind’ by Karuna Cayton and can tell you this, so far, it is a great book. It seems like the author will be able to reference real life scenarios for the 4 Noble Truths, and I have hopes he will lead that same process into the Noble Eightfold Path; something that seems rare for non-monastic authors these days. High hopes for the rest of the book!
I plan on my own review as soon as I am able to get through the rest; life has not been allowing me to read as much as I would like to lately. I will do my best to post the review soon.
Buddha Vacana ~ a highly recommended app for your smartphone
88. And how do disciples conduct themselves towards a teacher with love, not hostility? Concerning this, the compassionate teacher teaches the Dhamma to disciples, seeking their welfare, out of compassion, saying: “This is for your welfare and happiness.” His disciples listen to him, lend an ear, prepare their minds for profound knowledge, they do not turn aside or move away from the teacher’s instructions. Thus do disciples conduct themselves towards a teacher with love, not hostility.
Therefore, conduct yourselves towards me with love, not hostility, and it will be for your welfare and happiness for a long time. I shall not treat you as does the potter damp clay. Repeatedly admonishing I shall speak, repeatedly testing. One who is sound will stand the test.
Majjhima Nikaya III.117-118
Shared via Buddha Vacana for Android
www.buddhavacana.net
This is from an app I have enjoyed for years on my iPhone and am very much enjoying on my Droid as well. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the Dharma.
Equanimity
Sitting at the park today while the little man plays with a couple of kids he just met. I’ve always found it completely wonderful how children have this ability. At the same time, I can’t help but be baffled by how as adults, more often than not it seems, we somehow lose this ability. There is an old saying that goes something like ‘put kids in a sandbox and they’ll play together regardless of race, gender, religion, or anything. It’s not until outside influences come in do they begin to care or see differences.’
Our children can re-teach us a lot about equanimity.