Random Ramblings

This chapter talks about two types of meditation. Samadhi is concentration when you learn to concentrate; you can then look deeply into problems and that is insight meditation. “First we are aware of the problem, focusing all our attention on the problem, and then we look deeply into it in order to understand its real nature. “

"The bell of mindfulness is the voice of the Buddha calling us back to ourselves. We have to respect that sound, stop thinking and talking, and go back to ourselves, with a smile and breathing. It is not a Buddha from the outside. It is our own Buddha calling us. If we cannot hear the sound of the bell, then we cannot hear other sounds, which also come from the Buddha, like the sound of the wind, the sound of the bird, even the sounds of cars are babies crying. They are all calls from the Buddha to return to ourselves. Practicing with the bell is helpful, and once you can practice with a bell, you can practice with the wind and other sounds."

The chapter starts with a Gatha: “body, speech, and mind, and perfect oneness, I send my heart along with the sound of the bell. May the hero awaken from forgetfulness and transcend all anxiety and sorrow. “

He also talks about walking meditation as a form of resistance. This is because it's an act of mindfulness, a resistance against losing ourselves.

I can't decide if I think that's very profound or if it's like the liturgical movement, that believed the world would be transformed if we just perfected the Catholic liturgy. I mean, on a symbolic level I get it, but it's hard to see any impact on the external world.

Seventh: do not lose yourself in dispersion and in your surroundings. Learn to practice breathing in order to regain composure of body and mind, to practice, mindfulness, and to develop concentration and understanding.

Eighth: do not utter words that can create discord and cause the community to break. Make every effort to reconcile and resolve all conflicts, however, small.

Ninth: do not say untruthful things for the sake of personal interest or to impress people. Do not other words that cause division and hatred. Do not spread news that you do not know to be certain. Do not criticize or condemn things that you are not sure of. Always speak, truthfully and constructively. Have the courage to speak out about situations of injustice, even when doing so may threaten your own safety.

These three are all challenging in their own way, but perhaps not as challenging as the ones I talked about yesterday. I think in general, these are some good aspirations that would nevertheless be hard to live up to. Interestingly, I think "do not lose yourself in dispersion and in your surroundings" is the hardest? But the habit of mindfulness is a good one to get into.

Speak out against injustice, even if it threatens your own safety, are wise but hard words in this particular political moment. I'm thinking of the work meeting yesterday where we were talking about our own contradictions, boycotting Target while working for an organization that isn't exactly speaking out about DEI right now.

This is the chapter where he talks about the 14 precepts of interbeing. I’m probably going to do this over a few days because it’s a lot of material.

He starts with the translation of the name of the movement, Tiep Hien, where tiep means to be in touch, which he glosses as to be in touch with oneself, and to be in touch with the Buddhas and the Bodhisattvas in a long-lasting way; and then hien means the present time. “We have to be in the present time, because only the present is real, only in the present moment can we be alive. We do not practice for the sake of the future, to be reborn in a paradise, to, but to be peace, to be compassion, to be joy right now. Hien also means “to make real, to manifest, realization. “

So interbeing is a new word they invented to try to express those concepts. And people who join the order of Interbeing take 14 vows and want to practice 60 days of retreat annually, which would include generally every Sunday and then eight additional days. At least once every two weeks, members come together and recite the 14 precepts. They begin with three refugees and the two promises for children. The first promises “I vow to develop my compassion in order to love and protect the life of people, animals, and plants. The second promise is “I about to develop understanding in order to be able to love and to live in harmony with people, animals and plants.“ After reciting those to the children go out to play, but the adults then recite the 14 precepts

So the first precept is the one that has always been most interesting to me. It is “do not be idolatrous about or bound to any doctrine, theory, or ideology, even Buddhist ones. All systems of thoughts are guiding means; they are not absolute truth." And then to this he says in commentary “this precept is the roar of the lion. Its spirit is characteristic of Buddhism. It is And then to this he says in commentary “this precept is the roar of the lion. Its spirit is characteristic of Buddhism. It is often said that the Buddhist teaching is only a raft to help you cross a river, a finger pointing to the moon, do not mistake the finger for the moon. The raft is not the shore. If we cling to the raft, if we cling to the finger, we miss everything. We cannot, in the name of the finger of the raft, kill each other. Human life is more precious than any ideology, any doctrinea". And then he points out that this order was born in the aftermath of the war, which was a conflict of ideologies.

The second and third precepts are very similar. Second: “do not think that the knowledge you possess presently is changeless, absolute truth. Avoid being narrow minded and bound to present views. Learn and practice non-attachment from views in order to be open to receive others view points. Truth is found in life and not merely in conceptual knowledge. Be ready to learn throughout your entire life and to observe reality in yourself and in the world at all times. “And the third is “do not force others, including children, by any means whatsoever, to adopt your views, whether by authority, threat, money, propaganda, or even education. However, through compassionate dialogue, help others renounce fanaticism and narrowness.“

Today I’m reading about the necessity of not taking sides. This is probably the hardest one for me. It’s interesting; I never used to think that to be the case, but I guess I didn’t have a strong sense of enemies before. It's so much harder for me to empathize with the people in power who are trying to destroy the institutions society relies on.


This is also the chapter with the poem that is so famous, "Please Call me by My True Names."

Do not say that I’ll depart tomorrow.
Because even today I still arrive.

Look deeply: I arrive in every second.
To be a bud on a spring branch,
To be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile,
Learning to sing in my new nest,
To be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
To be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
In order to fear and to hope,
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and
Death of all things that are alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosisizing on the surface of the river,
And I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time to eat the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily in the clear water of a pond,
And I am also the grass snake who, approaching in silence, feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
My legs as thin as bamboo sticks,
and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the 12-year-old girl, a refugee, on a small boat,
Who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate,
And I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo with plenty of power in my hands,
And I am the man who has to pay his debt of blood to my people, dying slowly in a forced labor camp.

My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom, and all walks of life.
My pain is like a river of tears, so full it fills up the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
So I can hear all my cries and my laughs at once, so I can see that my joy and my pain are one.
Please call me by my true names,
So I can wake up,
And so the door of my heart can be left open,
The door of compassion.

Even though it’s a weekend, I felt like I needed to read Buddhism this morning because I was so angry about the political news yesterday. And it just so happens that the passages on perception from today actually mentioned anger, so that was timely.

“To sit is not enough. We have to be at the same time. To be what? To be is to be as something, you cannot be in nothing… When you are sitting you sit and you are. You are what? You are the breathing. Not only the one who breathes-you are the breathing and the smiling. It is like a television set of 1 million channels. When you turn the breathing on, you are the breathing. When you turn the irritation on, you are the irritation. You are one with it. Irritation and breathing are not things outside of you. You contemplate them in them, because you are one with them.

If I have a feeling of anger, how would I meditate on that? How would I deal with it, as a Buddhist, or as an intelligent person? I would not look upon anger as something foreign to me that I have to fight, to have surgery in order to remove it. I know that anger is me, and I am anger. Non-duality, not two. I have to deal with my anger with care, with Love, with tenderness, with non-violence. Because anger is me, I have to tend my anger as I would tend a younger brother or sister, with Love, with care, because I myself and anger, I am in it, I am it. In Buddhism, we do not consider anger, hatred, greed, as enemies. We have to fight, to destroy, to annihilate. If we annihilate anger, we annihilate ourselves. Dealing with anger in that way would be like transforming yourself into a battlefield, tearing yourself into parts, one parts, taking the side of Buddha, and one part taking the side of Mara. If you struggle in that way, you do violence to yourself. If you cannot be compassionate to yourself, you will not be able to be compassionate to others. When we get angry, we have to produce awareness: “I am angry. Anger is in me. I am anger. “This is the first thing to do…. irritation as a destructive energy. We cannot destroy the energy; we can only convert it to a more constructive energy. Forgiveness is a constructive energy. Understanding as a constructive energy. Suppose you were in the desert, and you only have one glass of muddy water. You have to transform the muddy water into Clearwater to drink, you cannot just throw it away. So you let it settle for a while, and Clearwater will appear. In the same way, we have to convert anger into some kind of energy that is more constructive, because anger is you. Without anger you have nothing left. That is the work of meditation.”

This is helpful, because I was just remarking to someone who asked me about what I’ve been reading that I felt like the Tibetan Buddhists had more specific techniques for meditating through anger than the Zen Buddhists, but here we have a Zen response. I’m not sure meditation is quite enough; I wish he had also talked about other strategies for converting the energy of anger into something more positive, but meditation is at least a start.

Chapter 2 is on the 3 refuges: Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. "The root word buddh means to wake up, to know, to understand; and he or she who wakes up and understands is called a Buddha. It is as simple as that. The capacity to wake up, to understand, and to love is called Buddha nature. When Buddhists say "I take refuge in the Buddha," they are expressing trust in their own capacity of understanding, of becoming awake. The Chinese and the Vietnamese say, "I go back and rely on the Buddha in me." Adding "in me" makes it very clear that you yourself are the Buddha." And then later he says "Buddha is in everyone of us. We can become awake, understanding, and also loving."

Then he tells Siddhartha's story of awakening (and I definitely must have read this before, because of the "one sesame seed a day" part--though he says it was actually one piece of fruit a day, and his companions shunned him not only for taking milk but one bowl of rice a day).

"When we say, "I take refuge in the Buddha," we should also understand that "The Buddha takes refuge in me," because without the second part the first part is not complete. The Buddha needs us for awakening, understanding, and love to be real things, and not just concepts....We are all Buddhas, because only through us can understanding and love become tangible and effective....For Buddhism to be real, there must be a Buddhakaya [literally, Buddha body], an embodiment of awakened activity. Otherwise Buddhism is just a word."