Few questions
misecmisc1
I am a HinduIndia Veteran
hi all,
few questions arose in my mind. i heard a talk on Dogen's Immo or Suchness.
what is there to know finally? or is there anything to know apart from that whatever arises, stays for a while and then passes away? just empty phenomena rolling on.
am i destined to suffer? means (even after theoretical understanding of heart sutra, or emptiness, or Dogen's teachings on enlightenment-practice in Genjokoan, or Immo teaching containing - when you want to experience suchness, be a person of suchness and when you are a person of suchness, then why would you want to experience suchness )- still there are defilements of anger, greed, lust, ego, aversion etc in my mind, so the meditation also has just become a daily routine activity, which i try to do daily, if i miss the morning time, then in afternoon i try to sit and if i miss in afternoon, then at tea i try to do some metta meditation before tea.
I also found a catch-22 or a deadlock situation. I read somewhere that in order that the mind be calm, the physical body should be at ease. But my physical body is having ache and pain in it, as i am physically not strong, rather thin, but i feel i am ok. On sitting the physical body is having pain in it, so the whole sitting time just goes by trying to adjust the body to sit with a straight back. So neither the pain will go from the body, nor the mind shall become calm, so ultimately will i just keep on going in circles without reaching anywhere near to a calm mind. From where the hell will wisdom arise then and what will that wisdom contain except for whatever arises, stays for a while and then passes away. What am I suppose to do then? Why cannot I let go?
may be whatever i have written above is not having any sense in it. if this is the case, then i will be grateful if someone can correct me. please suggest. thanks in advance.
Comments
The obvious solution is to find a position for meditation that is basically comfortable for you. Sitting on a chair is fine, but if you're still having problems then try laying down.
If you are puny or weak, try tai chi or yoga. Bodhidharma had to teach the feeble monks to exercise before they were physically able to meditate. Eventually they became superbly fit. Nobody messes with some monks . . .
Some Chinese accounts describe Bodhidharma as being disturbed by the poor physical shape of the Shaolin monks,[39] after which he instructed them in techniques to maintain their physical condition as well as teaching meditation.[39] He is said to have taught a series of external exercises called the Eighteen Arhat Hands (Shi-ba Lohan Shou),[39] and an internal practice called the Sinew Metamorphosis Classic.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodhidharma
But what are we trying to achieve or what are we finally trying to know from the wisdom which might arise from the still mind. If everything is ultimately empty and it is just phenomena rolling on and as heart sutra says no wisdom and no attainment of wisdom, then what are we finally trying to know at the end of the spiritual journey - what are we heading finally towards?
may be the objective is to realize this truth in our heart, so that we know it and do not think about it. then since everything is inherently empty, then there is no knower to begin with, who will be seeking to know something and also all attachment and aversion shall then fall away automatically, as the non-duality will eventually be realized at heart. But after that how will we live in this world? Will we be able to relate to our family members in the same way - will be work to earn our living and try to earn our living for our family? Can after this realization, will be able to lead our regular family life?
Please suggest. Thanks in advance.
@ misecmisc1
This is nothing that ones mental acuity can wrestle to the ground.
Conceptualizations are a fundamental hindrance to experiencing Immo.
Calm is just not pushing anything away or pulling anything towards you.
Calm (in meditation) is the acceptance of what is.
It is not determined by some phenomena that is yet to arise for you, but from your ability to stop trying to manipulate all phenomena.
This is not a mental trick or acquisition.
If you wish to learn about Dogen's Immo or Suchness, you will need to follow his advice.
Hmmm. I wonder what that would be?????
Yes, what is it?
The beginning of wisdom is when you decide to be more comfortable. The time will come when the body will not be a hindrance.
I'm glad you expressed your concerns, lots of people have similar concerns.
Regularity is sweet! "Habit is overcome by Habit"
Alright, here are some words:
The mind can know something so pin-pointedly that it is the entire field of your experience.
"Singlepointed concentration" is the usual translation in sources I have found online and in Theravada essays and so forth. Singlepointedness, what does that mean?
You want to experience suchness (a lot of people here will but in and say "oh hey there is the word "want" obviously that's your problem drop that word" .. maybe not the most effective medicine) ..
So the idea is that the mind must be calm for you to experience suchness
And without suchness, your mind can't be calm?
That is not a catch-22, that is simply a circle of words.
Trees fall from leaves
Rains fall from oceans
Volcanoes fall from islands
Those words are meant to be abstruse. You must relinquish the word in order to taste the meaning.
Cyclical despair is nothing new, it's been here with us always (thank you Trungpa Rinpoche)
Bringing your old mind to Dharma is a treasure. We are working with a flexible situation. If it was inflexible, if it was solid, if it was immovable like concrete obelisks in a desert, it would be worth wailing, weeping, moaning.
And when you wail and weep and moan, something opens up.
So first, you gotta break down the separation of life and you. "Your job is not to find love, but to tear down all the barriers you have built against it" says Rumi.
Then practice seeing yourself as other people, because that is the truth. The truth is free of error, free of mis-stepping, free of suffering.
Your physical body will always hurt, it's made up of elements (earth fire wind water space) that are constantly trying to return to balance, to homeostasis, to equilibrium.
So if the natural world is constantly re-balancing, the only thing left to balance is the mind.
The mind is the basis, the mind is the root of everything everything everything you experience, so to know the mind is to know it all. But to know it all is to know that you are everyone, and everyone is you, and that there are not just two "everyone and me" but "jim and jane and joe and susan and kelly and chip and samantha and tashi and roman and ...etc"
With everyone in the universe included, ant people bug people whale people cat people dog people fish people human people.. how much of that picture is "me" ?
Interesting, because everyone has "me"
Practice including everyone in your practice. It's hard right? There is anger, frustration, that person took the apple pie you wanted to eat, what a jerk. But then you are her or him, and the apple pie was eaten by you, over there, and it was delicious.
Somewhere in the universe someone is happy. When you see yourself in everyone you will see selflessness
And when you see yourself in everyone, you will want to practice metta not as a routine, but because you want you to know that you want you to be happy, to be healthy, to be free of suffering and its causes, to be always with joy and its causes. You will want this not because you are selfish, you will want this because you know what it's like to suffer, how anger burns and sucks, how jealousy wraps and wraiths, how ignorance is like charging full speed into a gritty wall.
We have been picking up stuff for a long time. So long that it's become second nature. It's like we are walking through the forest for many years and every time we see a blue pebble we pick it up. It's rare, it's a blue pebble! Obviously it's more special than the rest of the forest, we pick it up.
Years later, hundreds of pebbles later, we have quite a heavy load we carry. This is like the emotive engine that has built up.
But the most beautiful, most amazing, most refined and excellent news is the Three Jewels. In a single moment of clarity, all that crazy baggage can dissipate. It's like realizing that your backpack was on fire the whole time so you drop it. It's like we have our fist clenched so hard all the time and when we let it open we see, it is empty, relaxed, ready to give, ready to receive.
Consistency is key, but the words become a hindrance after a certain level of experience.
Recommended reading and study: Satipatthana Sutra (Joseph Goldstein has an unparalleled translation and guide in my simple person's opinion)
Yes you must relax the body to relax the mind.. You must relax the mind to relax the body. That is not a catch twenty two, it's not a see-saw. One end up one end down. It is a balance, and the balance brings you from the extremes to the middle.
Clean your house
Make offerings, water glasses (read about it).
There is a well-known teaching that states very simply that It is more meritorious (good and good in a karmic way) to throw a single flower into the sky and thinking of it as an offering to the Buddha than to give celestial (read: "super amazing ambrosia like") offerings to independently-awakened (pratyekabuddhas) as numerous as the motes of dust that compose the earth.
Here is the original rendering:
from http://www.lotsawahouse.org/tibetan-masters/dodrupchen-III/offering-flowers (please read this)
Your outside world reflects your inside world in a very intimate, non-obvious way. Respect that, and cultivate a mind that wishes to give.
Even if it's hard at first, the Dalai Lama once wrote that you can start by cultivating the thought "How good it would be to want to give" .. you can use this for all the paramitas, I have found it incredibly valuable in practice.
Snowballs turn into huge rolling thunderous spheres of magnitude. Be humble about it, the process is both instantaneous and gradual.
No impediment to lead a functional everyday life.
All the contrary.
You can see through impermanence but still will need to earn a living and put food on your plate.
And go on living here and now.
Respect that, and cultivate a mind that wishes to give.
Even if it's hard at first, the Dalai Lama once wrote that you can start by cultivating the thought "How good it would be to want to give" .. you can use this for all the paramitas, I have found it incredibly valuable in practice.
Snowballs turn into huge rolling thunderous spheres of magnitude. Be humble about it, the process is both instantaneous and gradual.
>
@sova ~ your whole post was incredible, but I hit the lol button and not the insightful by mistake.
@silver you can change your laughing button to something else.
Oh, okay. I'll fiddle with it and see if I can figure it out, then. Ty, Jeffrey.
Thanks @how and @sova for your replies.
Hi @how / all,
What does this acceptance really mean? I have read in Hsin Hsin Ming that it also says to accept everything. But if I am not able to understand what does this mean in a practical world situation. Let me take an example of my office work. Suppose my boss gives me a task and gives me 1 day to complete it. In office we work for 9 hours. Let say that when i try to do the work, it takes me 11 hours to complete the work, so should I just work for 9 hours on the first day and on next day morning tell my boss that i still need 2 hours more to finish it, but he will expect me that I complete it in 1 day, so my performance appraisal will get affected - so should i just accept this thing, or should i strive to work extra to get a good appraisal?
Another example - suppose i have to put my daughter in a school. now I have 2 to 3 schools to put my daughter in it, in which 1 school is having good reputation of having good education in it, but it is very hard to get admission in that school. On the other hand, there is a school in which getting admission is very easy, but the study environment is not good in that school. Should I strive extra hard to put my daughter in the first school, but for that i may need to give bribe to ensure that my daughter gets admission in that school - So should I just take it easy and try for both schools and just accept that even if my daughter gets admission only in second school, then also it is ok. Or worst case scenario, if i am not able to admit my daughter in any school because of me not wanting to give bribe for admission or using any unethical means to ensure admission - then even if my daughter does go to school in coming year and her 1 year of study gets missed, should I be ok to accept this thing also?
There are hundreds of questions like this in practical world. So the question is to what extent, should this acceptance of things need to be done or can actually be done?
If we strive hard to ensure these practical world activities are done in a proper manner, then what difference would be there between a person who does not know anything about spirituality and a person who knows about spirituality?
may be these are idiotic questions, but since I am not able to figure it out, so asking these questions. please suggest. thanks in advance.
Buddhism does not deter you from changing the things that are within your reach to change, but rather learn to accept or bring yourself to accept those that does not depend on you to change.
Equanimity.
It's not that just from meditating hours on end every day, the light bulb in your head will turn on and you'll automatically come up with a solution for every tiny problem in your life.
Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
I don't dare advance you an opinion on your predicament above because only you can figure out exactly what to do.
Daily life presents us with myriad problems of the sort. That's life. That's the dukkha component.
The important thing for every action we choose to undertake, whether it seems an ethical response or not, is to learn to live with the consequences.
If your action is skillful or not, learn to accept that so will be the consequences.
But this is life, @misecmisc1. It works this day. Nobody said things were easy.
An idea that helps me is the "6 choices" idea (doesn't have to be 6 - whatever works for you).
So, my boss sets me a task to do in one day that is going to take longer than one day's working hours. I find 6 choices:
I have no crystal ball. I don't know which of these will give the better result. Often I have bust a gut to meet a deadline to find that, when the deadline arrives, the work I have slaved over has become irrelevant. Other times my rattiness from over-working so much to meet the deadline has resulted in a poor review anyway as I am so exhausted that I do not treat my colleagues who have hampered me during the work quite as I would have liked to.
For me, it's about not clinging. Yes, I have choices. But the result is beyond my control. My choice is to accept the result for what it is.
Namaste
There is no Buddha or Patriarch who can answer your hundreds of practical questions for you.
The question is not what you decide in all those situations, the question is how you relate to the situation; to any situation.
For me it helps to think that meditation largely is a process of dropping off identification. Instead of “being” the thoughts and feelings, the thoughts and feelings just come and go. I am like the sky above. The events are taking place in this space, under this sky, but the space is not affected by them.
@ misecmisc1
Your opening post was about sitting meditation and what you thought was preventing you from reaching the calm that you equated with meditation.
I responded mentioning that calm (in meditation) is the acceptance of "what is" and is notabout trying to rearrange phenomena to suit ones idea of what meditation should be.
You now respond asking how that "calm" would work in daily life.
Start** first** with formal meditation. Allow all phenomena to arise, live and fade without molesting any of them. Phenomena comes and goes as form, sensation, thought, activity and consciousness of eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind.
Your ability to allow this to occur will largely depend on how much of a priority you give to your practice over everything else.
With the evolution of such a practice platform, the resulting meditative equanimity that develops in your formal meditation can then be applied to daily life.
^^^ well said @how
Practice may not come easy, as a quick fix. Dharma is an ongoing deepening process. @how describes it in another post as 'aspirin dharma/zen'. Why doesn't Buddhism solve all my problems (instantly) or at least after a couple of years of practice? Boo Hoo.
Calm and equanimity is an ongoing commitment, that in time does feedback. Many will attest to that. We are I hope trying to engage with that calm and its beneficial spread into our experience. If you know of a better path, my bags are packed . . .
That one looks good to me - have you tried it, and if so what reaction did you get? A good manager will have an idea of what is realistic, and how to get the best out of people, but sadly not all managers are good managers.
If you don't say something you could be in the same over-worked rut indefinitely.
Acceptance of the world as "just like this" is a big part of learning inner calm in my practice. Let me use your illustrations. In the first example - the boss that throws too much work at you with not enough time to finish it - accept that you either work for a boss that doesn't know how to manage or supervise, or for a company that in turn is demanding results from his organization without providing the resources needed. Accept that it's not just you, but a lot of overworked, overstressed workers out there facing this. Then do your best, while accepting that you're not able to do the impossible and probably the most you can do is write that down in the tiny box in the performance report reserved for your comments. Accept that this is what your job is, and that your work isn't going to provide the satisfaction of a job well done many times.
Acceptance. If forgiveness means letting go of that anger that consumes your thoughts, then acceptance means letting go of that tight ball of frustration at the imperfect, idiotic, and sometimes even tragic elements of your life the world throws at you. Both are hard to do.
Acceptance doesn't mean you don't work to change life for you and everyone for the better, though. Just like forgiveness doesn't mean you pretend people won't repeat their bad behavior. Acceptance also means understanding that things can change for both good and bad. You can work to make things better, but accept that it might be a long, hard effort and there's no guarantee. See how it works?
Acceptance is letting go of frustration. The world is "just like this". And if you make it a little better place for you and everyone, it will still be "just like this" and a different set of problems and faults will pop up to test your patience.
Isn't life wonderful?
@how: so first formal meditation practice should generate calm, then that calm can be used and tried to be enhanced in daily routine activities of life.
So ultimately it comes to formal sitting practice. Does these methods of trying to being mindful in activities like drinking tea, mindful of how the steps are put while walking etc do not really lead to that calm? Means the core essential practice is sitting practice and these other daily activities of being mindful while drinking tea, trying to feel the breath at any random point of day, after lunch when having a walk then trying to feel the weight at feet which is felt while walking when the feet lands on earth at each step etc - these activities are just side-activities or add-ons or support to the core practice, but they are not the core practice in themselves and will not lead to the calm state of mind?
@Cinorjer : Another question may be a stupid question, but still asking - Dogen taught that each moment of life is complete and enlightenment-practice is one word - so does these things become relevant only after a person actually has realized these things? - meaning Dogen (after his satori) knew these things as any awakened person may know, but for a lay person, there is still a way to enlightenment from his current delusional state and the lay person has to actually realize awakening within himself to know the above things and then for the lay person, the teachings become applicable, like enlightenment-practice as one word?
please suggest. thanks in advance.
@how: so first formal meditation practice should generate calm, then that calm can be used and tried to be enhanced in daily routine activities of life.
So ultimately it comes to formal sitting practice. Does these methods of trying to being mindful in activities like drinking tea, mindful of how the steps are put while walking etc do not really lead to that calm? Means the core essential practice is sitting practice and these other daily activities of being mindful while drinking tea, trying to feel the breath at any random point of day, after lunch when having a walk then trying to feel the weight at feet which is felt while walking when the feet lands on earth at each step etc - these activities are just side-activities or add-ons or support to the core practice, but they are not the core practice in themselves and will not lead to the calm state of mind?
@misecmisc1
Thinking that one can live or practice anywhere other where you now are in this immediate nano moment is the antithisis of Dogen's "core essential practice".
And...
Creating a discriminate mind of what is a higher or lower practice is not condusive to meditation if it simply has you devalue 90% of your potential practice..
Oh my. An invitation to pontificate.
First, please notice this disclaimer that I don't necessarily agree with old Dogen a hundred percent. Nor am I a scholar about the man or a follower of the Soto Zen school of Buddhism.
Now, Dogen would say there is nothing to realize and that efforts to "deepen" your understanding miss the point. To him, Zazen was enlightenment and it's hard to remain enlightened only because it's hard work. It takes a lot of practice. But hey, so does learning to swim, but we don't all stand on the shore or wade around in the shallows admiring the occasional great swimmer while telling each other we couldn't possibly do that.
And now we probably should talk about Dogen the man, his history and where he's coming from. And for that, I have to let everyone in on a secret. Don't tell everyone. Not everyone is ready for this secret, but I know you folks can handle it.
The secret is, not a single monk has ever been taught to be enlightened in any temple or school or Sangha since Buddha began the whole thing. It's not what the temples are for. It's not what they're designed to do. The temples are designed to teach you to be a monk and help take care of the temple. The monks running the temple don't want you to be enlightened, because enlightened people are unpredictable, don't follow orders, and upset the smooth running of the temple. If you're serious about learning to be enlightened, the last place you want to be is inside a temple.
Dogen didn't know this, and his questions and inability to shut up and accept what he was told caused the temple to suggest he take his troublemaking butt to China, which was a dangerous journey where if the boat didn't sink getting there, bandits would be waiting. I don't imagine the monks anticipated seeing this man on their doorstep again and went back to making sure the floors were swept.
Dogen found his answers, and survived, and so impressed a few other discontented monks and laypeople that he started his own school of Buddhism. And within a few generations, the monks there began dreading it when a young man newly robed began asking questions and not accepting their memorized answers. And so it goes.
So I guess my little Zen lecture has to conclude with, Dogen said Zazen is enlightenment, there's nothing out there to realize, and that's all there is to it. But if you don't like that answer, maybe you're not wrong or not trying hard enough. Maybe like Dogen himself, you're destined to find your own answer.
Hope this helps.
Become one with your cushion. Take it everywhere . . .
hi all,
so from Zen perspective as far as my understanding goes, every moment of life is practice. even enlightenment is not a big thing, as even after awakening the remaining life still needs to be practiced on a moment by moment basis - so does it not make the practice impossible to do - i mean whole life each moment - is this not extremely hard or too tiring, if not impossible? Moreover can something be finally known except for some experience which the mind is experiencing during the daily routine in life, when the eyes are open and we are functioning in the world as a layman - or will the whole life pass by and at the moment of death still the answer will be - don't know. Moreover, on a moment by moment basis, which is so small, in which practically nothing can be done, how can wisdom arise?
may be my questions are idiotic in nature, but i am still asking. please suggest. thanks in advance.
I think all we have is this present moment. If we live in the future eventually we will come to our death and never have lived the present moment. By then it's too late.
E v e n t u a l l y
Why would it be impossible?
If most of your day goes by on automatic, with your attention diffused and diverted in monkey-mind mode, why would it be impossible to live more in awareness, more mindful, actually in your body as you go about your routine through a slight rebooting?
To actually stoop and think before you act, choose rightly, instead of reacting back as if someone else had chosen for you?
It's just a change of chip.
When you learn to drive, you overthink every move before changing gear.
After a while, it gets second nature.
What kind of wisdom are you actually expecting?
Cessation of suffering is the point here.
The wisdom that arises is a homeshift wisdom that allows you to lead a more self-fullfilled life.
You don't get swayed by either the good nor the bad life has to offer.
You develop equanimity in your outlook on life.
Inner peace. Acceptance.
The moment by moment basis, which seems to you so small, is the only time you actually have at your disposal and everything can be done in it.
It's the basic building unit your life is made of.