Many

Molly Brown, over at Destination the Journey, today broached something that is a strong component of my practice.

While you sit reading this, someone is giving birth, another is dying, another grieves the loss of a love one. Everything in the breadth and depth of daily human experience is happening right now.

As I move through my day, I do my best to bear this in mind, and honor all these beings and their experiences with my behavior. It doesn't always work, and I am constantly having to pull myself back to this thought, but I try to do my best.

When I begin to pity myself or my situation, I find remembering that many of my brothers and sisters are in far worse places returns me to center. I pray for peace and strength of heart for them, and then also for myself.

Awakening

One of the deep honors of being a parent is the opportunity to be present when another human being reaches a new understanding of the world. Sometimes these moments are cotton candy sweet, happy affairs. Sometimes they're not. In either case the blessing witnessing - or perhaps even occasionally midwifing - these moments remains the same.

The other evening one of these moments happened for my youngest, and all I could do was just wrap my arms around him and let him mourn.

See, we have a two diet family. My eldest so and I are vegan, my husband and younger two have not been. We coexist, and Warren and I very frank about where food comes from. Both of us believe its important to really understand the origins of what's on our plate. It's so easy in our society to divorce ourselves from this knowledge, and both the meat-eating husband and I believe that's an ethical slippery-slope. (I'm giving my other half a hard time, but he honestly doesn't eat a lot of animal products anymore, which I appreciate.)

So the other night my little guy didn't understand what the optional meat for his bean burrito was all about. When I finally got through to him that it was ground up cow meat that my husband had cooked to add to his, and not vegan he was absolutely horrified. He finally understood, and he was absolutely wracked with grief for all butchered animals. Watching him extend his new knowledge into a growing sense of compassion was so wonderful. Holding him while he cried for them in empathy was painful, but beautiful, too. I'm grateful I was allowed to be there.

The Sangha Metta Project

This film looks to be (as far as I can tell from the trailer) a really good look at the Sangha Metta Project of Southeast Asia, "which which engages monks in HIV/AIDS prevention and care." To learn more about the film project and also to find links relevant to this issue, check out http://aidsfrontline.org/.

Pain, Experience, Growth, Compassion

In Coming to Our Senses, Jon Kabat-Zinn points out to us that the part of us that experiences pain is itself *not* in pain. This is true for both emotional and physical pain. Trying to find an awareness of this - if even for a moment - has been tremendously useful to me. I think this speaks into the topic of tinythinker's recent posts. Liberation and enlightenment (to my thinking) are not ceasing to experience, not becoming numb, but letting pain or other experiences in our lives simply happen - not becoming a burden in our hearts and minds, but allowing us to grow instead.

What is the nature of liberation from suffering? For myself it didn't take long for me to realize that freedom from suffering didn't mean freedom from pain.

I've had plenty of unhappy things happen to me, frankly, running the gamut from (fairly "minor") molestation (at 4), to emotional and verbal abuse. And I've certainly experienced a variety of other difficulties in terms of situation and circumstance. But that hardly makes me unusual, and my struggles and pains are nothing compared to, say, those in Darfur struggling for their lives, or the many children in sexual slavery around the world, struggling with captivity and abuse. My "sufferings" are meager, I know that. Nonetheless, some days they have a deep impact on my heart and mind. Mindfulness and loving-compassion help me refocus, though I'm sure that some of the stuff stuck in my head will take years to sort out. Gives me something to do on sleepless nights, I guess.

In any case, while I struggle with the aftereffects of some of these experiences, I'm not sorry I had a single one of them. Each experience I've had has been an opportunity for growth. I've done my best - at least since I became an adult and started my own life - to never shirk from an opportunity to grow. Everything I've experienced has added to who I am, and what I understand.

Every painful experience I have allows me the opportunity to understand another viewpoint. For instance, it is very easy for me to extend my compassion to people struggling with abuse, past or presence. What I have been struggling with lately (and this partially relates to my lack of serious posts, recently) is learning how to extend that mindful compassion beyond where that compassion is comfortable or easy. Tengu House had a post on this recently, wherein he (?) ponders how to extend that compassion to the folks that kidnap, harm and abuse. This is a difficult but essential question, I think.

Whether or not reincarnation is a reality, I think that there is no question that Wrong Action a person undertakes will lead their future suffering. Reincarnation makes this easier - a person's wrongful act will be something they suffer with in the future. To my thinking, reincarnation means there's no escape.

On the other hand, if you don't believe in reincarnation the answers can be less straightforward, and extending compassion to a violent, "monstrous" person becomes a greater leap of faith. In this case it may be that you simply have to start by letting your "hands lead your heart." Making a deliberate, conscious decision to always extend compassion moves us all towards the emptying of samsara, towards world peace, towards the end of suffering.

In The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching, Thich Nhat Hanh speaks of the Five Powers (see chapter 24, pp. 184-191): faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration and insight. With these wonderful tools we can grow both our own Buddha nature, and also begin to see that we all have Buddha nature - villains and victims alike. When we choose to feel compassion for someone who has committed great harm we are mindfully applying what we have learned about compassion and loving-kindness, Buddha nature and co-arising. Compassion without hesitation frees our own mind from suffering and waters the seeds of our own Buddha nature.

The first of the four noble truths is that suffering exists. Unenlightened beings can cause suffering and frequently do. Shantideva made a really good point when he said: "It is natural for the immature to harm others. Getting angry with them is like resenting a fire for burning." Perhaps one can view the Wrong Actions of human predators the same way one views the actions of a rabid grizzly bear. There is no point in being angry at the bear, and it isn't very hard to have compassion for her/him. However, the bear must be dealt with for everyone's safety and be at least imprisoned, if not put down. (Note - I am strongly opposed to the death penalty and do not mean to imply that killing is the best way to deal with human predators. In addition, I am a vegan, so of course I am highly interested in fair and compassionate treatment for all of our fellow creatures.)

Anger can be understood as a strong aversion to someone or something. Aversion is the opposite of attachment and is no more useful. Acting from anger is not acting in wisdom. By deliberately choosing compassion we do not poison ourselves, and we also help to break the cycles of violence and hatred that keep us from achieving the end of suffering for all beings. There is no point in me not forgiving former abusers. It may be hard, but forgiving them allows me to not identify myself with the past's painful events. As Master Cheng Yen said: "To be angry is to let others' mistakes punish yourself. To forgive others is to be good to yourself."

Flower (Lapsana apogonoides) image courtesy of jam34.

Brother Karma Needs Help

With no money in their hands and little or no help coming from the state, family of 23-year old Karma Lama is finding it very difficult to save their young son.

DIAGNOSED WITH Nephrotic Syndrome a year back, the condition of the young monk has now worsened and he has progressed into the End Stage Renal Disease. Doctors need to replace Karma’s kidneys fast or else he is staring at certain death and in between he needs to have regular dialysis sessions to keep the system working.

For more information, there is a blog about his situation. Let's pass this on, y'all, and spread the word. I'll bet between all of us, we can help Karma out....

Interesting Thought

"If you don’t heed the cries of a dog on a chain, how do you expect God to heed your cries?" -- Kerouac

Please Get Involved

Consider joining the ONE Campaign to Make Poverty History at http://www.one.org.

Love

Via Entering the Path I found a quote by Brad Warner:

“Transcending emotions doesn’t mean you have no feelings. You have them. But you recognize them for what they are and respond appropriately without letting them develop into what we call emotions, which are really just feelings that have been blown way out of proportion.”

To an extent I agree with this. However, in my humble, unschooled opinion, he's oversimplifying things. The breadth and depth of the palette of human emotion is a good thing, with a potential for great beauty. It's an essential part of what it means to be human, I think. If a human incarnation is to be viewed as a precious thing - an opportunity not to be wasted - it seems to me that human emotion is something not to be wasted, as well.

Problems arise when emotional experience becomes an attachment. Recently, just as I was ending my meditation practice, I had the thought that emotional pain can very easily become an attachment if one is unable or unwilling to move beyond past experience. However, not all emotion is pain and not all emotion is attachment. One can experience intense pain, one can experience intense emotion. I don’t believe suffering is dependent on either. It’s all in how you greet your experience.

There is much emphasis in Buddhism on loving-kindness and compassion. Compassion - the root of lovingness and kindness – is an emotion. I can’t think of another way to describe it. When one practices compassion and – as a consequence – kindness, one experiences great joy. This is not (should not be) the end result of practicing loving-kindness, but it’s a wonderful lagniappe. The emotional rewards of being loving are the fruit, not the tree.

The context of Mr. Warner's blog entry relates mostly to romantic love, so I'll focus my comments on love, specifically. To truly know and love someone - once one has moved beyond romantic love and on to the deeper realities of everyday love - can be one of the great joys of life. Within the structure of real love (whether it be filial, marital, or what-have-you), there is a great deal of room for mindfulness, compassion and understanding. Love can provide a fantastic context for one's daily practice - great opportunities for growth are to be found in our daily interactions. One might even argue that they are necessary for love to continue to ripen and expand.

I am a humble (I hope.), unknowledgeable student of Dharma. So perhaps I simply don’t understand the Truth of what Mr. Warner is saying. I also am not as well-read in Zen thought as I am in the other branches of Buddhism. So perhaps my lack of understanding lies there. In any case, for now, I’ll have to disagree. In my mind a feeling is an itch, and an emotion such as love - while a much “larger” issue – is still a useful experience.

Sunyata

Lately I've been focused on deepening my understanding of Emptiness. It's been slow going - this is where it is obvious to me that being able to participate in a local sangha would be good.

I started my exploration of sunyata after reading an excerpt from Bodhi magazine (Vol. 8, No. 3) in Buddhadharma's Spring 2007 issue. There's an article there by Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche called "Emptiness First, Then Compassion." He writes:

When we try to practice compassion without the view of egolessness, or emptiness, we are often not really helping because we ourselves are so confused. Our own lack of clarity only produces further confusion. If we have an idea that we think will help someone, it is usually based on our own interpretation of what we think they require or want. We are not looking at their situation from their point of view. Instead of giving them what they truly need, we give what we think they need. There is a difference between the two. Furthermore, we have value judgments about how they should accept our help, and so we "help"them further by imposing conditions and guidelines.

Compassion and loving-kindness that is free from ego clinging allows us to see the suffering of others from their own perspective. We can see beyond our own ideas and beliefs. We can see what they need from their point of view, and we can apply our own wisdom at the same time. with this more open and clear view, we can see more realistically what will meet their actual needs and be truly beneficial.

I do understand what he is saying. However, for myself, I come to the idea of egoless compassion and loving-kindness through my attempts to broaden my ability to be compassionate. There was a point when I realized that to be truly compassionate and loving I needed to move beyond my own concepts and try to understand the needs and feelings of others in order to better "serve" them. (I wish I could think of a better word than "serve" - the best thing I can think of is my own crudely-realized idea of bodhicitta, though it is only in recent years that I've come to have a (beginner's) understanding of this concept.)

I guess it's a matter of perspective. For me, the idea of linearly studying one concept before another does not work as well as a more holistic approach studying many aspects of Buddhism at one time. I'm not suggesting a scattered approach leading to little understanding. It's more about the concepts of interdependence extending into my understanding of the Dharma - no one concept being free of others.

Perhaps the Venerable Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche and I have different styles of thinking. Or perhaps I am just not knowledgeable enough to have a separate perspective, and I am just deluding or confusing myself. ^_^

Links I've recently been looking at on the topic:

• Emptiness Is Form
• Emptiness ('Sunyata')
• Shunyata - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia