Mind Like The Sky

For the mind of Man alone is free to explore the lofty vastness of the cosmic infinite, to transcend ordinary consciousness, to roam the secret corridors of the brain where past and future melt into one…  And universe and individual are linked, the one mirrored in the other, and each contains the other.
– Michael Moorcock

Body like a mountain
Breath like the wind
Mind like the sky
– Tibetan Meditation Instruction

One of the first things I do in the morning is step outside and look up at the sky.  It seems to be a sure fire way of lifting me out of whatever thoughts are spinning in my head  and putting me in touch with the wider world.  Breathing in fresh air is probably a part of it, but there is something about the vastness of the sky that seems to open my mind out beyond my usual everyday preoccupations.

Apprenticed to Silence

“Listen closely… the eternal hush of silence goes on and on throughout all this, and has been going on, and will go on and on. This is because the world is nothing but a dream and is just thought of and the everlasting eternity pays no attention to it.”   — Jack Kerouac

 “In Silence there is eloquence. Stop weaving and see how the pattern improves.” – Rumi

When I was younger, a good friend of mine spent a week walking in northern Finland.  After a few days he noticed that his mind quietened and thoughts and questions just seemed to stop.  There was nothing special he had done, although the physical exertion of walking might have been in some way responsible.  Rather, it was what was not happening.  His mind was no longer receiving so many new stimuli.  Sure, the scenery was constantly changing as he walked but the snowy hills and birch trees were sufficiently similar to not be jolting.

Renunciation

In chapter 12 of Seeds of Contemplation, the Cistercian monk Father Thomas Merton wrote the following lines:

“You will never find interior solitude unless you make some conscious effort to deliver yourself from the desires and cares and the attachments of an existence in time and in the world…  It should be accepted as a most elementary human and moral truth that no man can live a fully sane and decent life unless he is able to say “no” on occasion to his natural bodily appetites.  No man who simply eats and drinks whenever he feels like eating and drinking, who smokes whenever he feels the urge to light a cigarette, who satisfies his curiosity and sensuality whenever they are stimulated, can consider himself a free person.”1

The Well Spring of Experience

Reading Katagiri Roshi’s book ‘Return to Silence’ recently, I was struck by the following passage:

“Whatever question you want to study, you cannot study it from your own shallow viewpoint.  Finally, you will come to a vastness that is like spring water endelessly coming up out of the earth.  The more you study something seriously, the more you will realize that everything is boundless.

From where does this spring water come?  Not from anyone’s small, individual territory.  The water that comes from your territory is limited, not deep.  The original nature of your life, or of your study, or of your personality or character is the spring water that comes up from the vastness of the earth.”

Although Buddhism does deal with issues such as what happens after death and cosmology, it differs from many other religions in placing the observation of experience and what we can actually perceive at the centre of its spiritual curriculum.  Meditation is the primary method for observing experience and while shamatha (calm abiding meditation), such as breath awareness, aims to still the mind, vipassana (insight) techniques build on that stillness of mind to look directly at the nature of what we see, feel, hear and think.

Comfortable With Uncertainty?

On retreat last week I noticed myself behaving in such a way to try and influence the opinion people had of me. This could certainly be viewed as attachment/aversion to good reputation and bad reputation in the eight worldly dharmas schema but I found I was more influenced by the ‘not knowing’ aspect of how people perceived me, than how they actually did. Once I (near the end of retreat) noticed this and was able to sit with the uncertainty of not knowing, my actions were far less influenced by worrying what others were thinking.

As my practice develops I find myself returning again and again to this notion of not knowing as it seems to underlie much of my reactive behaviour. Even within the formulation of the eight worldly winds we can see why this might be the case, as the certainty of a bad situation is often seen as preferable to uncertainty. If there is upheaval at our workplace and we learn that a certain number of employees are going to lose their jobs, anxiety often results (unless, of course, we don’t like our job, but even then, the thought of having to find new employment is rarely comfortable). However, imagine, if you will, the state of not knowing whether you are going to lose your job against the state of knowing you are going to be made redundant. In the latter case, although there may be sadness associated with loss, at least you can begin to make plans to find a new job and move forward. In the scenario of not-knowing, people are often paralysed from taking action in that state of uncertainty.

Thoughts on The Heart Sutra

Most Buddhists know the brief prajnaparamita (perfection of wisdom) text, The Heart Sutra. Many can recite it by rote. Who among us really know what it is saying, though, especially on an experiential rather than intellectual level?

The Heart Sutra (THS) is part of my daily liturgy and some days it speaks to me. Other days it is a more or less uninpenitrable wall of words! Of late, though, I have been realising how it works, for me at least.

Some wise person (it might have been Descartes) once said that accepting everything or accepting nothing are similar states as they require no thought whatsoever. Likewise, in the sense of THS, accepting experience as either solid (eternalism) or empty (nihilism) are both unthinking states. By pointing this out (‘Form is emptiness, emptiness is form’) the sutra moves us away from either extreme, into the middle ground where experience is neither solid nor empty but both and neither. As the dharma teacher Ken McLeod (author of the commentary on THS ‘Arrow to the Heart’) often points out, by holding two ends of an extreme simultaneously we can then open to all points in between.

So, away from the edges of eternalism and nihilism, the mind still tries to grasp onto certainty, like a person adrift in the ocean reaches out for anything solid. In this case, the ocean is a sea of experience and, finding the groundless nature of reality, we look for any solid concepts with which to anchor ourself. Most of the rest of THS is about removing all these easy handholds with respect to ideas of skandhas, senses, four noble truths, twelve links of existence and even the notion of pristine awareness itself. It is like a swimming instructor removing any solid object from the student’s grasp when they try to grab hold. A more spiritual analogy is that in Greek Orthodox Christianity in which it is said ‘whatever you think God is, it is not that’.

With all of the easy options taken away from us, we are left with nowhere else to turn except the sea of experience itself. Experience, or God in the above example, must be perceived directly. For me, this is the purpose, beauty and function of The Heart Sutra. Your mileage may vary.

“One, seven, three, five -
The truth you look for cannot be grasped.
As night advances, a bright moon illuminates the whole ocean;
The dragon’s jewels are found in every wave.
Looking for the moon, it is here, in this wave and the next.”
- Xuedou

Karma Revisited

This is a follow-up to the previous post ‘What is Karma?’ and elaborates on that.

The way one of my teachers explains karma has three aspects:

1. Karma as an explanation for current events

2. Karma as the consequences of our current actions

3. Karma as mental conditioning

In the west, the first aspect of karma is the one we usually think of – karma as the fruition of past actions.  When something significant happens, either to us personally, to someone we know, or of national or international significance, this is often viewed as the result of past actions coming back to haunt us.  Such events are usually, although not exclusively, negative ones.  Examples include getting sick, losing money and, by some, natural disasters.  Many people saw the terrorist attack of 9/11 as karmic retribution for America’s actions in Middle Eastern politics, some Buddhist teachers explain war zones and disaster areas as resulting from the terrible behaviour in past lives of those who are affected. Survivors can be said to not have that bad karma.