MINDSPACE

A TASTE OF CHAH

I have at times read too much.  Too many books, too many magazines, too many cereal boxes . . . anything, it seemed, to keep me from . . . not reading.  Of course, there were always benefits to being seen reading. My friends thought I was "smart," my teachers called me "dedicated," but all the while, I was just reading. . . .  I still do read, although not as much as I did in the past, and I have noticed this falling off as any addict might notice, with anxiety, the gradual disappearance of his drug of choice. 

So it's not surprising that certain dharma books have served as empowerments to me.  Given the right book at the right time, I have reaped enormous benefit from simply sitting and reading, quietly, intensely.  When I find one of these books, and when I am absorbed by it, I feel an essential and undisturbed stillness of mind, the closest I ever get to this quality of mind that experienced meditators are always talking about; this quality of mind seems to hover around the book's subject, and it seems to be a quality that the book has uncovered for me. Having discovered it through the book, I'm better able to find it again while sitting on the cushion without the book.

In an earlier posting, I mentioned a book by Ajahn Chah, Food for the Heart: The Collected Teachings of Ajahn Chah, and as I indicated there, this book has been for me one of those books . . . an empowerment, a light, an inspiration.  Not every word, surely, nor every essay in it, but certainly enough power and light scattered between its covers to justify my typing out for you the first chapter in its entirety. It's only three paragraphs, but I reread them continually, and I have found them deeply useful:

About this mind--in truth there is nothing really wrong with it.  It is intrinsically pure. Within itself it's already peaceful.  If the mind is not peaceful these days, it's because it follows moods.  The real mind doesn't have anything to it; it is simply an aspect of nature. It becomes peaceful or agitated because moods deceive it.  The untrained mind is stupid. Sense impressions come and trick it into happiness, suffering, gladness, and sorrow, but the mind's true nature is none of those things.  That gladness or sadness is not the mind, but only a mood coming to deceive us.  The untrained mind gets lost and follows these things; it forgets itself.  Then we think that it is we who are upset or at ease or whatever.

But really this mind of ours is already unmoving and peaceful--really peaceful!  Just like a leaf which remains still so long as the wind doesn't blow.  If a wind comes up, the leaf flutters.  The fluttering is due to the wind--the fluttering of the mind is due to those sense impressions; the mind follows them.  If it doesn't follow them, it doesn't flutter.  If we know fully the true nature of sense impressions, we will be unmoved.

Our practice is simply to see the "Original Mind."  We must train the mind to know those sense impressions and not get lost in them, to make it peaceful.  Just this is the aim of all this difficult practice we put ourselves through.

There is much to say about this brief passage, but I'll refrain, except for this:  I find these three paragraphs particularly useful as they provide the essential focus of every other teaching or practice that we might encounter along the way.  A tantric empowerment, a disquisition on the nature of the mind, an offering to your guru, Green Tara's mantra--none of these will be as helpful as they might have been if we don't see them as somehow drawing us closer to the undisturbed mind that Ajahn Chah is talking about here.  

One more time:  "Our practice is simply to see the 'Original Mind."  

Precisely.  

We will take all the help that we can get in our attempts to see that mind--for 'help,' read:  'practices, initiations, empowerments, mantras, prostrations, etc., whatever draws us closer to it'--but the goal remains, always and everywhere, the same:  "to see the Original Mind."

The goal then is fairly simple--to see the Original Mind; the playbook, the various ways and means and practices that we deploy to achieve that goal, well, therein lies the complexity.  

ANAM THUBTEN RINPOCHE TO SPEAK IN FAYETTEVILLE

WHAT:  Dharma Talk

WHEN:  Monday, April 21, 7:00 P.M.

WHERE:  St. Paul's Episcoal Church, 224 N. East St., Fayetteville  AR  72701 (442-7373).  For directions, click here.

Fayetteville residents have an extraordinary opportunity to hear one of the most talented and perceptive teachers currently active in the United States today. 

Anam Thubten Rinpoche was born in Tibet and entered into Buddhist training in the Nyingma tradition at young age.  Among his teachers, he had a special affinity toward a very inspiring Dharma teacher named Lama Tsurlo, who became his main mentor.  Lama Tsurlo's kindness and wisdom gave him the firm base to advance in his dharma practice, and still serves as a source of inspiration in his ever-unfolding love of true Dharma, as well as his work as a teacher.  Anam Thubten was recognized as the reincarnation of Anam Lama, when he was quite young.

Rinpoche will give a general dharma talk on the nature and availability of spiritual truth.  More specific descriptions of his teachings often narrow the scope of his message--you simply have to hear him to appreciate the full dimensions of his capacious mind, his generosity, and his compassion. 

Simply put--this is a talk that is not to be missed.  All are welcome, and a $10 donation for adults and $5 for students are suggested to help defray the costs of travel.  No one, of course, will be turned away.

It is traditional inTibetan culture for students, after the teaching, to line up for a blessing from the teacher.  This is entirely optional, of course.  But if you would like a personal blessing from Rinpoche, it is easy to do.  You simple bow, and present him with a kata, or white scarf, draped over your hands, which he will take, bless, and place around your neck.  If you have a kata you may bring it.  If not, we will have several for you to share with others.  It is also traditional that you present the teacher with your donation in a white envelope at this time.  We will have white envelopes available for you to use as well.

We look forward to seeing you on Monday, 21 February, at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, 7:00 p.m.

SPECIAL NOTE:  RINPOCHE WILL ALSO BE LEADING A RETREAT IN LITTLE ROCK, APRIL 18-20.  CONTACT KAREN WISDOM FOR MORE INFORMATION (501-681-2895).

NEW ARTICLE IN THE TRAVELER FEATURING GESHE DORJEE

Have a look at the following article in The Traveler, which came out today, on Geshe and his life and teaching mission at the University and the community of Fayetteville.  Thanks to Pam Acosta who did a wonderful job both on the research and the writing.  We also had a successful lecture & vigil last night for the Tibetans in Tibet.  I'll post on that later, but thanks to all who attended.

TCIA'S FIRST ORGANIZATIONAL MEETING

The Tibetan Cultural Institute of Arkansas held its first organizational meeting on March 12, 2008, at the Pat and Willard Walker Meeting Room at the Fayetteville Public Library.  Over thirty people attended.  By the end of March, Geshe la and the officers will appoint a Board and convene its first meeting soon thereafter.  Everyone who attended shared with us helpful ideas for our future growth, and we are looking forward to working with everyone as we begin to formalize our plans.  James Owenby, our secretary, has provided minutes of the meeting, and they can be viewed on this site under "TCIA Minutes" and under the same heading at TIBETSPACE.

THE DALAI LAMA ON BUDDHISM IN AMERICA

Have a look at the 8:00 minute video below.  His Holiness last summer gave a talk in Carmel, New York, and during the talk he addressed some very important issues regarding the practice and development of our spirituality as Americans.  He also had some very simple and wise comments regarding our goals and aims.

GESHE LA & RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY IN NORTHWEST ARKANSAS

For those of you who missed the wonderful piece that Christie Storm wrote in The Democrat Gazette last Sunday (27 February 2008), you can have a look at it here.  Thanks to Christie--she does remarkable work covering religion and spirituality in our state, and she and her paper have been extraordinarily generous to Geshe la, Rinzin, and the Tibetan Cultural Institute. 

Also on a distantly related topic . . . I stumbled on the following site through a newsletter I received.  It's a very brief and helpful discussion, particularly for beginners, of the proper leg positions in seated meditation.

DOCUMENTARY: WHEEL OF TIME, WEDNESDAY, 20 FEBRUARY, 7:00 PM, GIFFELS AUDITORIUM

For those of you in the Fayetteville area:  On Wednesday, February 20 at 7:00 pm in Giffels Auditorium, Old Main, on the campus of the University of Arkansas, the Tibetan Film Series will present Wheel of Time, the third of its four-film series.  A documentary by internationally renowned director, Werner Herzog (Aguirre:  Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo, and Grizzly Man), Wheel of Time chronicles the 2002 Kalachakra Initiation in Bodh Gaya India.  Attended by over a half-million pilgrims from all over Asia and Tibet, this particular Kalachakra initiation held special significance because it took place in Bodh Gaya, where the Buddha found enlightenment, and because, of course, it was presided over by the Dalai Lama.  For those of you who know Geshe Dorjee, there is an added incentive for viewing the film:  Geshe la was invited by the Dalai Lama to a debate concerning tantric Buddhist philosophy at Bodh Gaya, and so, under the Bodhi tree, we see Geshe Dorjee making a brief cameo appearance, defending his conclusions against all comers!  You don't want to miss this extraordinary scene.

Even without Geshe la's appearance, Wheel of Time is an extraordinary film, and in my opinion, the best film in our series, and perhaps my favorite Tibetan documentary . . . it's easily the one I'd take to the deserted island.  Herzog's eye is unfailing:  we see and feel the hustle and bustle of Tibetan pilgrimage, the potent texture of their spiritual lives, the immense charisma of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and the vast and sprawling spirituality that is India's legacy to the world.

DEATH & DYING: THE BUDDHIST PERSPECTIVE

My holidays were productive, but not always in the ways that I would have imagined.  I spent a good deal of time in rooms like the one pictured to the left.  You know the drill--impersonal, clean, too cold or too hot, odd beeps, ucomfortable chairs, and the interminable waiting for the doctor . . . my mother was addressing a few health problems of a potentially severe nature, another person in my life was diagnosed with cancer, and I was reading again the book I'd recommended earlier, What Makes You Not a Buddhist.  The passage that struck me as I sat by the hospital bed waiting for my mother's doctor to arrive concerned the Buddha's revelation about his family, about all families, and in fact about the family that he'd left in order to gain this realization.  Here's the passage, from p. 42 of the book:

As his meditation deepened, Siddhartha began to see the essentially illusory quality of all phenomena, and with this understanding he looked back upon his former life at the palace, the parties and peacock gardens, his friends and family.  He saw that the so-called family is like a guesthouse or hotel where different travelers have checked in and temporarily bonded.  Eventually this conglomeration of beings disperses--at the time of death, if not sooner.  While together, the group may develop a connection that involves trust, responsibility, love, and shared measures of success and failure, from which all sorts of dramas arise.

The family as guest house or hotel, a "conglomeration of beings . . . "  How much sense this makes!  And how logical it is!  But it's equally difficult to internalize its essential lessons, to convert the intellectual force of the argument into an intuitive reaction against our continual struggle for permanence at the social or family level.  As I watched my mother recover from the anesthesia, I realized that had things not gone well for her--as one day they won't, as they won't for all of us--then she would pass out of this guest house alone, just as she'd entered it.

Of course we all "know" this.  But analyzing just how we know it reveals many things.  First, knowing that we are born and will die alone is a way of conceptualizing this fact, and by so conceptualizing it, hiding it away from our intuitive, heart-knowledge, the reservoir of information on which we model our behavior.  We might know that we are going to die, but we certainly spend a great deal of our time acting as if we won't, busily attaching ourselves to people, places, things, and events, all in a concerted effort to avoid what's imminent.  Second, knowing that we will die is the first step on the path to fully responding to our deaths productively, through meditation and study, but it's a very difficult path to follow, and American culture does nothing to make following it any easier.  Third, and finally, transforming ourselves in the face of our mortality is a task that is ultimately done alone, by our own methods, our own disciplines, and our own strategies.  Teachers can't do it for us, families can't carry us there, countries can't facilitate our passage to this place.

A Buddhist monk, Tenzin Sherab, comments on his own work with the dying:

All we can do, I suppose, is to learn what we can from qualified teachers wherever they may reside, share what we've learned when we feel qualified to share it, and minute by minute, hour by hour, remind ourselves of our life in the guest-house.