lotusinthemud

Three Short Teachings: Number One ~ Dharmavidya

Q: What do the wisdom traditions say about equality?

A: Individual karma being unique in each case, it is self-evident that no two people come into the world identically equal in any respect. Therefore, to expect that competition between them shall be fair and just is invariably unreasonable. It follows that in a good society, the fortunate must help the less privileged. Such help, however, should not be such as to make people more dependent or redundant than necessary. The best help is the kind that empowers the beneficiary to him or herself make a positive contribution.

However, while worldly or social equality is a fiction, there is a more profound equality in the sense that God loves all, no matter how unequally endowed they may be. The Buddhas are thus. The Dharma rain falls upon all alike without discrimination, helping each to fulfil its unique potential.

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Fragment Of A Conversation ~ Dharmavidya

This is out of context, but it contains some points that others might find interesting or might like to comment further upon thus enriching the conversation.

Correspondent: I never asked myself the question why fundamentalism exists.  You are right, it isn't just Christianity... It seems to arise everywhere.  I intuit that it has something to do with fear, possibly fear of death— some variant of the bargaining with God that can happen during grave illness or other life threatening situations.  A need to exert control in a world where none actually exists.  A desperate need for control can easily lead to violence.

Ah, interesting.  If this is the case then PureLand, as you conceive it, is the antithesis of Puritanism or fundamentalism in that it insists on acknowledging the fear, the lack of control, the foolishness right up front.  It doesn't need to be pushed into the subconscious where it can wreak havoc. There are rituals but they are performed as acts of love, without terrible worry about getting them wrong.  It is such a different thing performing ritual as an act of love.  

Which begs the questions of whether aspects of daily life, other activities, even lovemaking can be regarded or entered into as ‘ritual’, a kind of sacrament, an act of worship.  

Something about Puritanism seems like the diametric opposite of love.  

Love and fear as polar opposites—more fundamental perhaps than love and hate.  Dig under hate and I suspect you will find fear...

An rather big area to explore around life and death and fear and what it is to be human on this tiny planet hurtling through an infinitely mysterious universe.


Dharmavidya: I’d like to make some points about definitions. One of my hobby horses is the danger of losing important linguistic distinctions through the process of popularisation. Many old words need to be recovered and restored to their proper meanings or we lose the ability to talk about things with due care. 

Fundamentalism, puritanism and dogmatism, for instance, only equate in common usage. In the strict meaning of the terms all three have their separate positive aspects. Fundamentalism should mean adhering to what is fundamentally true rather than being superficial. Puritanism should mean being purified of inessential elements so as to concentrate on the one thing that matters. Dogmatism should mean staying close to the original message rather than temporising in order to accommodate popular prejudice. Dogmatics strictly speaking stands in contrast to apologetics. Preaching is a matter of creating a bridge between where the audience is and where the source of the teaching is. If you start from the audience end, that is apologetics. If you start from the source, that is dogmatics.

The point about whether everything in life could be considered to be a sacrament is very interesting and throws some light on the material about Dogen that I am translating and commenting on. In a certain sense all of life is ritual. The question is how you do it and how you regard it. Some ways bring out the spirit, some don't.

Going back to 'puritanism', I have found through my frequent travels back and forth east-west that the West seems much more moralistic than the East. We in the West are much more concerned about being justified which I supposed comes from the 'fear of God'. In the East, being personally justified is often regarded as a lost or hopeless cause. You try to fit in and do your duty, but humility is required because (a) you will never fully succeed and (b) the world isn't constructed to make it really possible anyway. In the history of the West it was often a life and death and then a salvation/damnation issue whether one had been righteous or not. But in reality, nobody really is, so what is really required is not punitive coercion, but fellow-feeling and sympathy.

Hence, in the East, there is more emphasis - as in Confucius - upon right performance than upon saving one’s soul. This has pros and cons, just as all philosophies do. It does, however, mean that all of life is a ritual. Much modern Western social thinking has been an attempt to get away from ritual. We are all much less formal than we used to be. I hardly ever wear a tie these days whereas when I was young one had to do so for many occasions. However, this does not mean that ritual has gone away - more that it has changed its form. Correct dress is now ‘casual’ in many situations where it used to be ‘formal’ but this is still ‘correct form’ in a new context. Much about modern life is like that - a kind of self-deception in which we pretend to be liberated but are really just as conformist and caged as before.

Sometimes it seems that we just pour the same wine from bottle to bottle and pretend that it is new.

:: link to original on La Ville au Roi (Eleusis)

Amida Pureland and Other Practices ~ Dharmavidya

QUESTION: I have been at an event this weekend led by a teacher of Tibetan Buddhism. The teacher taught about the four immeasurables, loving kindness, compassion and tonglen meditation. Today she is teaching about lojong mind training. I found some of the meditations very moving. Are these helpful auxiliary practises for Pureland Buddhists or should we solely concentrate on the Nembutal like Honen and Shinran?

SHORT ANSWER: Yes, they can be helpful.

LONG ANSWER: Each school of Buddhism centres its teaching on a particular perspective upon the Dharma, but these are like windows that all look into the one big Dharma room. If one's school is Pureland, then "the nembutsu is a window through which the whole universe of Buddha's teaching can be perceived in all its depth". If one were Zen, then zazen would be the window. If one were Nichiren then the Lotus Sutra would be one's window, and so on. First choose your window! Having chosen nembutsu, then other practices become auxilliary to that. Tonglen is about exchanging self and other and all the mind training of the Tibetan system is about enhancing one's capacity for compassion. In Pureland we do not see such enhanced capacity as itself being a road to enlightenment, we see it as the expression of faith in the world. If one has faith then one wants to be involved in Buddha's Great Work, so all manner of enhanced capacities can be useful.

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Obedience

Dharmavidya:

QUESTION: What did the Buddha say about obedience?

SHORT ANSWER: Pay heed to the Dharma

LONG ANSWER: The definition of a Christian monk is a person who lives a life of poverty, chastity and obedience. Poverty and chastity are important values in Buddhism too, but what about obedience? The word obey is closely related to a word for listen - to heed what you are told and carry it out. A disciple of Buddha is called a shravaka, which literally means a listener.  The basic duty of a Buddhist is to pay heed to the Dharma and put it into practice. In Buddhism, obedience is primarily obedience to the rules and principles. I remember talking to a person about their relationship to their teacher and this person said, “Rimpoche never told me to do anything, but from time to time, he would say, ‘Would you like to do so and so’. If you said 'OK, I’ll do it,' you found yourself more and more deeply involved. If not, not.” I think this exemplifies the matter quite well. As a teacher I make suggestions sometimes. I do not mind whether people take them up or not, but if they do then they get more deeply involved and if they don’t, well, things take longer. In Buddhism it is not a matter of surrender. You keep responsibility for your life and your sense of responsibility deepens. The teacher gradually gives you more. The teacher may be doing something and the good disciple notices and helps. The person who is wrapped up in himself does not notice and is too preoccupied to be able to do much in any case. That person needs more time. Thus, in real Buddhism there is no punishment except for collecting the natural consequences of one’s own actions. In a Buddhist community the teacher is like the Queen Bee. The Queen Bee does not give instructions, but all the other bees are dedicated to supporting her work and making it easier. In one sense, the Master is just another human being living in the community, but in another very important sense, the community is simply those people who want to help, learn from, support and be with that teacher.

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Was Buddha Self Power or Other Power? ~ Dharmavidya

QUESTION: As I read the sutras from the Nikayas much of what the Buddha teaches seems to be very self-power - try hard to concentrate, do this, don't do that - I'm having trouble squaring this with the Pureland teachings and wondered if you think they were just a later development in the Mayahana canon or if it's due to mistranslation of the original sutras, or something else?

SHORT ANSWER: It is a matter of how you interpret it.

LONG ANSWER: The Buddha catered to a range of different people. He taught ethics and mind training, but he was always at pains to say that there is something more beyond that. This is usually called prajna. People often take it that the ethical and mind training parts are the main substance, but in fact it is the prajna that takes one beyond. Prajna is seeing beyond all the relative things. Ethical behaviour is intrinsically good and it is what the outside observer sees, but it is always relative. Mind training goes deeper, but again it is relative. Buddha says that a person can master all the dhyanas and still be deluded. You can go on training your mind forever. Prajna is different. It is complete faith. Emptiness. All acceptance. It is not relative. You have it or you don't. However, the people who came to see the Buddha were not always ready for that so he employed skilful means tailored to the case. Take the case of the young Brahmins who come and ask how to get to Brahma. Buddha teaches them to meditate spreading love, compassion, joy and equanimity. These qualities are all expressions of faith. While one is fearful or cynical one cannot do it. Take the encounter with Angulimala. Buddha essentially says, just trust that it will be OK and you can change your ways. If we have deep faith we will do the best we can in life because there will be no reason not to. Faith takes away all one's excuses.

Of course, as you know, I do have issues with some of the translations and renderings of texts into English. To take a very topical item, I take 'mindfulness' to refer to having one's heart and mind full of Dharma. This is faith. The common contemporary way if taking it is as a skill to be practised by suitable effort and attention. In other words, it is presented as a self power practice or training, when, in fact, in my view, it is a matter of turning oneself toward other power. Buddha believed that right faith yielded good behaviour, good thoughts, good intentions and so on. He did not think that good behaviour etc on their own would do the trick. When we put ourselves into any kind of strait jacket - even a good one - we rebel. The path to true goodness lies through having a deeper faith.

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evil beings in the pure land ~ dharmavidya

QUESTION: I watched a TV programme recently that featured a rape. it really affected me and one thing that struck me was how would it be for someone who has faith in Pureland to contemplate that the perpetrator of violence against them could also enter Pureland. It is hard to imagine feeling delight or any sense of security being in the same place or realm as one's attacker but do we experience things differently after death or when in Pureland? Do we even have a body to be concerned about protecting when in Pureland? If you have any thoughts in response that might illuminate this issue, do please share them.

SHORT ANSWER: Faith heals.

LONG ANSWER: Religion heals. Christianity says to forgive, Buddha says to let go. In the Dhammapada he says: “He abused me, he defeated me, he cheated me, he robbed me… in those who harbour such thoughts hatred never ceases. He abused me, he defeated me, he cheated me, he robbed me… in those who do not harbour such thoughts hatred  ceases. Hatred does not cease with hating, with love alone it ceases.” Now hatred is very closely associated with fear. What we fear we want to exclude, avoid or destroy and this is aversion and one aspect of dukkha. It is a very central part of Buddhism that we learn how such feelings can be transformed into the enlightened path.

Of course, we are not necessarily very good at doing this. However much I may want to be an ideal Buddhist, I may still feel fear welling up, my blood temperature rising and my muscles going tense when the person or thing that i fear approaches or cannot be avoided. At such a time I find that our Pureland faith helps me a lot. It helps me to realise that I am not in control. Even though I want something different to be happening in me, I cannot make it happen. On the one hand, this leads me to realise that I am exactly the kind of creature that Amida saves. On the other hand, it enables me to realise that the person or thing that I fear is also not fully self-controlled. This may well enable me to arrive at a better understanding of the other which may change how I feel somewhat. 

Now, it is prudent to avoid being in proximity to danger. The tiger is not evil for wanting to eat me, but I am still well advised to steer clear of him when he is hungry. A Pure Land is a realm where the intention of Buddha prevails. I can be confident, therefore, that even though there be evil minded people there, harm will not come to me and that healing will take place. We all enter the Pure Land with hearts and minds that are corrupt in varying degrees and we trust that in proximity to the Buddha and bodhisattvas there we shall heal and this will be true for others too. Insofar as we can find compassion and fellow-feeling for others, this process will go quicker.

Those who enter the Pure Land full of greed, hate and delusion are not immediately in sight of the great Bodhi Tree and the Buddha at the centre of that land. They arrive inside a closed lotus because, as yet, they cannot stand the brilliance of the Buddha’s light. Inside their lotus chamber they learn love, compassion, joy and equanimity. When they have done so, even if it takes a hundred years, the lotus then opens naturally and they find themselves in a great pond of other lotuses, some open and some still closed. In due course they are able to go ashore and join the other beings enjoying that land and enter into the full presence of the Buddha.

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ritual and message - dharmavidya

QUESTION: A sangha member recently asked, 'if Honen's teachings are so simple, why are our services so complicated?' As the sangha member noticed, our services have lots of words, bells in the right places, and ritual. How does this fit with the simplicity of Honen's 'just say the nembutsu'? 

SHORT ANSWER: Ritual can be as simple or as complicated as you like. The simple message within it remains the same.

LONG ANSWER: In Pureland, ritual is not a means of achieving something, but of celebrating. In that sense it is a kind of party and you can have a big party with lots of activities or you can have a little party with not many elements. This is the fundamental point. Tangentially, nonetheless, ritual does achieve various things. It acts as a focus for the community, bringing people together in ways that promote harmony and enable us, in a variety of ways, to express our faith together. Hopefully there will be elements in the ritual that reach a variety of people - singing, praying, reading, bowing, offerings. Secondly, it acts as a training ground for character development as people learn to co-operate, follow, take the lead, and even compensate for each other’s errors as the performance unfolds. Thirdly, while the ritual revolves around a single, simple message, it also speaks a range of sub-texts that act as auxiliary practice, supporting our primary faith. Thus chi quan and nei quan deepen our appreciation of the meaning of “Namo” and of “Amida Bu” respectively. Making offerings reminds us of the beginnings of Buddhism when the Buddha would arrive in a village or town as a guest and people would receive him and hear his teaching. The offerings we make are the things one would give to an honoured visitor. Doing walking nembutsu reminds us both of the spiritual path journey and also of the earliest tradition of circumambulating the stupa. People went to stupas to pay respect to the Buddha’s relics. This was both to remember and honour the great sage and also, by presence and association, to receive his blessing and grace into one’s life. Each element of ritual has some deep meaning or history encoded in this way. Participating becomes a way of enriching our lives. When we do not understand the code it may seem unnecessarily complicated, but when we do understand the meaning it becomes a wonderful way of immersing oneself in the richness of the tradition and associating with all the great figures who have, down the ages, spoken these time-honoured words.

We should also note that it is up to us individually or collectively how we perform our rituals. They are not an imposition. Each temple and each community will do it a little differently, but they all draw on a common stock of ancient meanings, most of which are common to the whole Buddhist world and not merely to one school.

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buddhas exist - dharmavidya

QUESTION: ”Buddhism is the belief that beings do get enlightened. Arhants and Buddhas do exist. "How can we truly know that? I don't know that I've ever met an Arhant or a Buddha. Am I even capable of knowing if I have?

SHORT ANSWER: Seeing is believing.

LONG ANSWER: The Buddhist movement began with and was spread by people who had met a Buddha called Shakyamuni. The whole tradition is a transmission of that particular charism. The truths taught be Buddhas are universal and are still true whether a Buddha appears to teach them or not, but the establishment of an actual tradition depends upon a Buddha appearing. Therefore, one evidence that a Buddha has appeared is the existence of this remarkable tradition that has transmitted the Dharma through 85 generations to the modern age.

When Dogen went to China he came back inspired because he had met a teacher who he thereafter referred to as an old Buddha. My own teacher, Kennett Roshi would say that when she went to Japan she saw some good practice and some awful practice, but along the way, “I met some real saints, and that is good enough for me.”

People are attracted to Buddhism primarily because they see there people who have something that inspires them, liberates them and encourages them. I know people who, because of their Western education, are highly skeptical of much Buddhist doctrine, who, yet, attend Buddhist events because they have met Buddhists who have something that they want - a happiness, inner strength and tranquility. 

Faith, in Buddhism, does not stand opposed to experience. It stands upon a foundation of experience. Seeing is believing. The Buddha set out to create a cadre of people who would be a light. Their influence would bring peace, compassion and wisdom to the world. Of course, not every person who espouses Buddhism immediately lives up to this ideal. Nonetheless, I have met many great teachers and great souls. I did not agree with everything every one of them said, but I felt the quality of inspiration - the charism of Buddha - that flowed in their veins. It is that living faith that matters, not assent to intellectual propositions.

If I had not met Chogyam Trungpa, Kennett Roshi, Ato Rimpoche, Thich Nhat Hanh, Minh Chao, Saiko Sensei and others, then I would only know of Buddhism as an interesting theory in books. Buddhism is a living transmission. However, all of these great figures living the Noble Way in the midst of samsara are enlightened beings inasmuch as they are living the Dharmakaya. Their existence leads us to the unavoidable intuition of the Buddha as a property of this and all possible universes - the Cosmic Buddha, if you like. Each nirmanakaya great soul is different, has different character and different upaya because this is the conditioned world and we live here amidst diverse circumstances, but all are part of the same work. To worship one Buddha is to worship them all. 

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faith beyond despair - dharmavidya

QUESTION: Dear Dharmavidya, I just read your essay on the first of the 12 Steps in Running Tide number 33. In it you say, "In Pure Land Buddhism we admit that we do not have the power to enlighten ourselves.In this there is a kind of despair and a kind of faith."I certainly know the despair; but, how does that engender faith?

SHORT ANSWER: There is only room for faith in Other Power when we give up (despair of) faith in self-power.

LONG ANSWER: Self-power, jiriki, is the belief that one can achieve one's own salvation (however one conceives that) by one's own effort. All schools of Buddhism seek to demolish this kind of arrogance, but they go about the task in different ways. In some schools, such as Zen, the strategy is often that of having you try as hard as you possibly can until eventually you give up. That giving up is called kensho or satori if it is genuine. It is genuine when you know in your blood and bones that what you have been doing up to that point is futile. This is in imitation of Shakyamuni Buddha who, on awakening, realised that what he had been doing up to that point had been "vain ignoble and useless." In other schools, such as some branches of Theravada, the method is to deconstruct the idea of self, partly analytically and partly by such experiential exercises as the charnal ground meditations. In other schools, notably the Pureland ones, the emphasis is more upon making a choice and turning to the Buddhas from a position of acknowledging one's inherent incapacity. This is very similar to the 12 step method. Obviously,  different approaches tend to suit different personalities, which is to say, different initial koans. However all of these and other methods derive directly from the teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha who, in his great compassion, provided something for everybody. To some people practising Pureland the fact of personal incapacity - bombu nature - is pretty obvious whereas to others it takes some arriving at. The latter often practice some other form of Buddhism first. Many of the great Pureland masters in history did so. They came to Pureland in the end after years of trying to enlighten themselves by strenuous meditation of rigorous vinaya discipline or profound textual study in some other branch of Buddhism. A relatively modern example of somebody who did the same thing within the Pureland tradition is Kiyozawa Manshi who drove himself to the limit trying to find out if it was really true that he could not do it himself. We should remember the example of Shakyamuni Buddha. He had his self-power period, which was his period of asceticism. It was at the point when he despaired and took the rice milk offered by Sujata that faith awakened, dependent origination was understood and flowers fell from the sky.

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the so-called marks or signs of being: dharmavidya

QUESTION:  I am new to Pure Land Buddhism and would be grateful for information and references on the place within those traditions of The Three (or Four) Marks of Buddhism:

• Impermanence (anicca)
• Suffering (dukkha)
• No-self (anattā)
• Liberation (nirvāṇa)

SHORT ANSWER: I'm not aware of a distinctively Pureland treatment in the tradition, but I can offer one.

LONG ANSWER: I think it is a mistake to take the original three, anitya, anatma and dukkha as equivalents. I'm using the Sanskrit forms here. The original text says

sarva samskara anitya
sarva samskara dukkha
sarva dharma anatma

Now it must be apparent that there is an intended contrast between the first two sentences and the third one. All samskaras are impermanent and are dukkha, but dharmas are anatma. This is not, therefore, a list of things to be taken as all descriptive of the same thing. In fact, samskaras are readily identified in the Buddha's teaching as a source of trouble and Dharma as a source of salvation. So, I submit, the virtually universal normal interpretation is wrong.

What are samskaras? D.T.Suzuki translates the words a "confection", most other commentators as "mental formation" or something similar. Confection is closest etymologically. They are the things we cook up in our head, the stories we tell ourselves, the complexes of our mind. What is Dharma? Dharma is the truth, what is fundamentally so. I suggest that this text tells us that the stories we tell ourselves - which are redolent with self reference - are ephemeral and cause trouble and that the truth has nothing to do with self.

Liberation and nirvana are the result of deeply realising this and having faith in it.

Is there anything Pureland about this interpretation? Pureland is, in many ways, a very practical application of the non-self teaching. All Dharma is non-self makes sense. Different Buddhist schools try to bring us to it by different routes, Pureland simply by having us accept hat salvation is not self-generated, but is an Other Power. This statement of Buddhist central doctrine is wholly Other Power in its main import.

From Dharmavidya's 'Questions in the Sand' :: link