Category: Buddhism

October 16, 2017

Buddhism, fearlessness, Happiness, Mindfulness, Thich Nhat Hanh, Uncategorized

Dumfries Hills, Scotland ~Photo by Barbara Richardson

“’Breathing in, I see myself as a mountain. Breathing out, I feel solid.’ Solid as a mountain, that is our practice. You learn to be solid in your sitting position and then you will learn to be solid in your way of walking. You will be solid in your way of driving. You will be a solid driver. When you cook your dinner, you can practice your solidity, also.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

“Don’t hate the circumstance, you may miss the blessing.” ~Marshall B. Rosenberg

“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you- A joy.” ~Rumi

“Classifying and judging people promotes violence.” ~ Marshall B. Rosenberg

Dear Friends,

Autumn is happening. It’s so human to assign a separation to the cycles of the year when really, there is no beginning of Autumn. Autumn would begin with the birth of the trees and the first rotation of the planet. When we look at what we think of as Autumn, falling leaves, cooler temperatures, shorter days, we see the origins in the inevitability of creation. Truly there is no start and end date, only constant transformation. In the words of the French scientist Lavoisier, “nothing is born and nothing dies.”

We want to separate and make solid. This can give us the feeling of ground beneath our feet in this fluctuating world. One aspect of this that came up for me this week was control. I am working on a group project and found myself wrestling with the demons of wanting to control the finished product. There’s a rigidity and a correctness when we want to control. There is a lack of trust and release. Holding onto control when the events and situation are beyond our jurisdiction is incredibly painful, so why do we do it?

As far as I can tell, it is part of our primitive biological adaptation. In the primitive mind, there are only two states, safe and not safe. When our senses tell us, there is anything remotely painful or concerning, we have a strong reaction and resist. We believe that we can protect ourselves from annihilation since that’s what unsafe means. For me this week, unsafe means compromising on a written report, certainly not a life-threatening event, but my mind doesn’t see it that way. When we get sucked into the vortex of wanting to control, we forget that we do have a choice. A dear friend of mine told me years ago, “It’s my habit to be a victim. I forget that I always have a choice, even if it is to do nothing. That’s still a choice.” I need to remember that.

When I recognize that I have a choice and see the reasons for engaging in the activity I am in, it releases me from victimhood. I have agency. I can always say no. I can always choose to do something else, or recognize my desires and needs beneath the task that seems to be thrust upon me. The creator of Non-Violent Communication, Marshall B. Rosenberg, Ph.D. writes, “As you explore the statement, ‘I choose to . . . because I want…,’ you may discover the important values behind the choices you’ve made. I am convinced that after we gain clarity regarding the need being served by our actions, we can experience those actions as play even when they involve hard work, challenge, or frustration.” When we remember our sovereignty over ourselves, we recognize that we are not powerless children and despite all the vastly changing conditions and uncertainty, I do have a choice about the quality of my mind. If I can release the grip of what is outside my control and come back to choosing to be peace, choosing to be aware of the tension and relaxation in my body, and this breath. In that moment I become a free person.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

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How to be a True Friend

September 9, 2017

Activism, Buddhism, Dharma, fearlessness, Happiness, Mindfulness, Relationship, Reverence for Life, Sangha, Thich Nhat Hanh, Uncategorized

Standing Buddha, BlueCliff Monastery

“If we live according to the Five Mindfulness Trainings, we are already on the path of a bodhisattva, one who lives for the sake of others. Knowing we are on that path, taking each step with our spiritual family, we are not lost in confusion about our life in the present or fears about the future.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

“The only reason we don’t open our hearts and minds to other people is that they trigger confusion in us that we don’t feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with. To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves, we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else’s eyes.” ~Pema Chödrön

“I consider non-violence to be compassion in action. It doesn’t mean weakness, cowering in fear, or simply doing nothing. It is to act without violence, motivated by compassion, recognizing the rights of others.” ~The Dalai Lama

Dear Friends,

I hope you are well and peaceful as we step into this season of change. We are witnessing big shifts in life, season, and dramatic environmental and political events. In New England especially, the fall is time to reflect upon change and impermanence. We see the green leaves turn yellow, red, and orange, ultimately leaving their homes, and returning to soil. We watch formations of birds flying to warmer weather and our bodies give us the message that we are vulnerable beings that need protection. As practitioners, we are heir to powerful protection when we live with the global ethical foundations of the Five Mindfulness Trainings.

At sangha, we recite the Five Trainings every month. Those who wish to may receive the transmission of the Five Trainings in a formal ceremony. This is an opportunity to receive the support of the community that does their best to live with compassion for all beings. Taking the five trainings, or individual trainings, is not a promise of perfection but setting an intention to live in a way that does not harm ourselves or others. We step into the ancestral stream that dates back thousands of years and access the solidity and strength of our spiritual ancestors. For the next five weeks, I’d like to examine these trainings one by one.

To dispel the myth that mindfulness is passive, we need to look at the commonly used definition of mindfulness that comes from Jon Kabat Zinn (1994), the originator of MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction), “Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally.” The word “non-judgmentally” can be problematic. Often folks hear this as a move towards indifference as if they are asked to observe events without context or principles. That is not mindfulness. That is numbing out from the reality and escaping the moral responsibility of humanity. More recently Zinn (2014) states, “When we use the word mindfulness in MBSR, we mean right mindfulness…. Woven into mindfulness is an orientation towards nonharming…. It is a nondualistic perspective from the very beginning, resting on an ethical foundation.” It is this ethical foundation, the Buddhist principles of sila [ethics], that are integral to mindfulness practice. The role of sila includes five aspects of conduct:1. non-harming, 2. generosity, 3. sexual responsibility, 4. loving speech, and 5. mindful consumption (not ingesting toxins). Thich Nhat Hanh and members of the monastic community took these early precepts the Buddha gave and present them in modern and relevant language. The introduction and full list of the mindfulness trainings are found at: https://plumvillage.org/mindfulness-practice/the-5-mindfulness-trainings/

The Five Mindfulness Trainings

The Five Mindfulness Trainings represent the Buddhist vision for a global spirituality and ethic. They are a concrete expression of the Buddha’s teachings on the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path, the path of right understanding and true love, leading to healing, transformation, and happiness for ourselves and for the world. To practice the Five Mindfulness Trainings is to cultivate the insight of interbeing, or Right View, which can remove all discrimination, intolerance, anger, fear, and despair. If we live according to the Five Mindfulness Trainings, we are already on the path of a bodhisattva. Knowing we are on that path, we are not lost in confusion about our life in the present or in fears about the future.

The First Mindfulness Training: Reverence For Life

Aware of the suffering caused by the destruction of life, I am committed to cultivating the insight of interbeing and compassion and learning ways to protect the lives of people, animals, plants, and minerals. I am determined not to kill, not to let others kill, and not to support any act of killing in the world, in my thinking, or in my way of life. Seeing that harmful actions arise from anger, fear, greed, and intolerance, which in turn come from dualistic and discriminative thinking, I will cultivate openness, non-discrimination, and non-attachment to views in order to transform violence, fanaticism, and dogmatism in myself and in the world.

Looking at this training, we see our personal violence and the world’s violence growing from roots of anger, fear, greed, and intolerance. These mind states exist when we forget that we are part of each other. We believe the delusion of a small, ego-centered separate self and believe we are form instead of formation. When we touch the insight of Interbeing, we see that we all contribute to creating our present and future in each moment. This week, I invite you to contemplate this training. Can you notice when your anger, fear, greed, and intolerance come up? What thoughts trigger those feelings? For many of us it’s scarcity, believing that there’s a finite amount of good stuff and if you get, that means none for me. Most of us are not big-time killers, but we participate in small acts of violence, hard-heartedness, and judgment that close us down and divide.

The beginning of any transformation requires noticing. We notice what our mind is doing without negative assessments and added violence. We all come with history and conditioning and have good reasons why we think the way we do. We can examine killing in our diet and our interaction with Mother Earth. Are we connected to the act of killing involved with eating animals and fish? Do we want to change our relationship with living beings from a dominating one to one of caring? Knowing that the habits of mind are just that—habits, we can look at the roots of violence, anger, and killing that lives in us, gently and compassionately. When we live with kindness towards ourselves and the rest of the planet, we lose our fear.

When I offer friendliness, and understanding to someone I disagree with, someone who is clearly acting from delusion, I notice a softness and openness in myself. Dropping my armor of judgment and separation, I feel curiosity and kindness towards this other person, who just like me, does not want to suffer. The way they go about it looks very different, but I can see that their motivation is the same as for all living beings. When I look with the eyes of connection, I stop attacking in my mind. I become harmless and when I can do that, I don’t need to be afraid. I put down my weapons of judgment and condemnation. The first mindfulness training teaches non-harming towards animals and all species we cohabitate with. When we give up practicing anger, violence, and hatred, we become a true friend.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

Calligraphy by Thich Nhat Hanh

References

Gates, B. & Senauke, A. (2014). The thousand year view: An interview with jon kabat-zinn, Inquiring Mind 30(2).

Kabat-Zinn, J. (1994). Wherever you go, there you are: Mindfulness meditation in everyday life. New York: Hyperion.

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Walking, Sitting, Speaking, with Patience and Humility

August 15, 2017

Activism, Buddhism, Dharma, Mindfulness, Thich Nhat Hanh, Uncategorized

Monk picking a pear for a waiting fawn. BlueCliff Monastery

On one occasion, a monk asked Sekito: “How does one get emancipation?”

Sekito: “Who has put you in bondage?”

Sekito Kisen (Ch. Shitou Xiqian, 700–790)

Those who see worldly life as an obstacle to Dharma
see no Dharma in everyday actions.
They have not yet discovered that
there are no everyday actions outside of Dharma.
~Dogen

“The activist should change himself first; he should have a lot of understanding and compassion in his way of thinking and speaking. Then instead of criticizing and demanding, he can begin to help.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

Dear Friends

The weekend’s events in Charlottesville are extremely disturbing on many fronts. From the president’s tepid response to bigotry, racism, and terrorism, to the ongoing denial of the role this country played in the slavery and continued systematic discrimination of African-Americans. This country has never acknowledged or apologized for the theft of land from indigenous peoples and the ongoing role in their oppression. America has moved away from the idea of a melting pot and forgotten that she was born from the desire for religious freedom and tolerance. The promise of liberty and justice and the belief that all beings are equal and worthy, seems like a childish notion that is out of step with reality.

The issues of race, entitlement, fear, and separation are not going away, nor seeming to get any better. In fact, they feel like they are getting worse. As people of conscience, what can we do to help heal the separation and injustice we see? We can start with the idea of non-blame and taking care of our determination for a peaceful solution. Thây teaches us that the enemies to peace are despair and the energy of righteousness.

We may think we are the only ones on the planet who believe that there is basic goodness in all beings and that for the shift of circumstance, I too could be born into conditions that support racism, sexual orientation discrimination, and violent oppression of minority groups. If I grew up in a different home and had different conditioning, I too could be that angry and full of hate. The need to dominate others is a form of suffering. When I see hatred and discrimination, I want to remember that suffering creates more suffering and my desire to punish others is the same impulse as the desire to defeat another. Acting with compassion requires humility and understanding that I am not separate from those who seem so different st first glance.

Thich Nhat Hahn gives us some essential teachings about working for peace, when there is no end in sight. At the question and answer session in 2013 at The Art of Suffering Retreat a practitioner asked, “What is the hardest thing that you practice?”

Thây answered:

“Not to allow yourself to be overwhelmed by despair; that is the worst thing that can happen to you. When the war in Vietnam was going on, it seemed it would last forever. Young people asked, ‘Dear Thây , do you think that the war will end soon?’ It was very difficult to answer because if Thay said, “I don’t know,” then the seed of despair would be watered in them. So Thay had to breathe in and out a few times, and then say: ‘Dear friends, the Buddha said that everything is impermanent, so the war must be impermanent also. It will end someday. Let us continue to work for peace.’ If you are surrounded by friends and co-workers who have the same kind of vision and understanding, you will succeed. You cannot do it alone., he responded that not allow yourself to be overwhelmed by despair; ‘that is the worst thing that can happen to you. When the war in Vietnam was going on, it seemed it would last forever.’”

Thây told the people of a village that was destroyed by bombs and rebuilt seven times:

“Dear friends, the Buddha said that everything is impermanent, so the war must be impermanent also. It will end someday. Let us continue to work for peace.” If you are surrounded by friends and co-workers who have the same kind of vision and understanding, you will succeed. You cannot do it alone…If you have a lot of anger in you, you cannot achieve peace. You have to be peace before you can do peace. You need to know how to write a love letter to your president and your congress, to tell them that you don’t want the war. If you write a strong, angry letter, they will not read it. Thây was able to help end the war in that way. If you understand suffering and can help compassion to be born in you, you will be free from despair and anger, and you can help the cause of peace.”

Thây teaches us that we need to keep our courage and desire alive. We are not alone in striving for peace. We have come a long way and those who have gone before must have felt that things would never shift. Those who continue to live in marginalized circumstances, to be threatened and feared because of their religion, color, or sexual orientation understand we are in this for the long haul. Knowing that our words make a difference and not letting anger or weariness strip away our determination, we can do what we always do. We can walk mindfully, speak the truth, engage to help those who are vulnerable and afraid. We can do all these things kindly, gently, and with great care for ourselves and for all beings.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

Please Call Me by My True Names

Do not say that I’ll depart tomorrow—
even today I am still arriving.

Look deeply: every second I am arriving
to be a bud on a Spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings,
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,
to fear and to hope,
the rhythm of my heart is the birth and death
of all that are alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing
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 the grass-snake
that silently 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 twelve-year-old girl,
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 all over the Earth.
My pain is like a river of tears,
so vast it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughter at once,
so I can see that my joy and 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. ~Thich Nhat Hanh

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My Secret Double Agent: Judgement

August 6, 2017

Buddhism, Dharma, Happiness, Inspirational, Mindfulness, Relationship, suffering, Uncategorized

Lotus with Honey Bee

“Fear is born from arming oneself.

Just see how many people fight!

I’ll tell you about the dreadful fear

that caused me to shake all over:

Seeing creatures flopping around,

Like fish in water too shallow,

So hostile to one another!

— Seeing this, I became afraid.”

~The Buddha, Excerpt from the Attadanda Sutta: Arming Oneself

“The wild geese do not intend to cast their reflection. The water has no mind to receive their image.” ~Zenrin Kusho

“Not by harming life

does one become noble.

One is termed noble

for being gentle to all living things.”

~The Buddha, Excerpt from the Dhammatthavagga Sutta: The Judge

Dear Friends,

This past week, I’ve had a few conversations about the habit of judging. Addiction seems like a more accurate word since judging feels like an unstoppable force that arises despite all efforts to let it go. As tender and vulnerable mammals, we did not get to the top of the food chain without a legacy of vigilance and judging. It’s hard-wired in our neurobiology to assess situations and individuals to determine safety or risk. Looking at my judgement this week, I had a few thoughts about this very active part of my mind. I would wager, that most of us have an unacknowledged movie that plays continually in our minds. It’s called, What the World Should Look Like, According to Me. When someone bumps up against this vision of how things should be, there’s an immediate reaction. I’ve realized that my judgement, which looks like it’s doing some good work–keeping me safe, is actually a double agent, working for the side of continued suffering.

An example of the hidden working of judgement could go like this: if my world view values generosity, my judgement may say, “Look at that! She took all the credit for that work and didn’t acknowledge anyone else. She’s out for herself.” Or it may go in the opposite direction, “Wow, they gave their car to charity. I’ll never feel comfortable giving a big donation like that. They are so much better than me.” No matter what judgement I have, the act of judging separates me out from the other and actually encourages fear. When I judge someone as less than myself, there is the thought that I am not safe, my world view is challenged. I need to get away. When I judge that I am less than, I am vulnerable to the same judgement from someone else and I am not safe either. If there is a feeling of equality, then there is an identification we are the same and joined in a fragile bubble together. The idea that you feel what I do, leads to disregarding the individual physical and emotional differences every unique being possesses. The double agent of judgement, who seems like a friend, in reality, gives us more fear, more anxiety, takes us out of ourselves, and brings more suffering. One thing I’ve learned about judging is that it doesn’t change anything, it only makes me righteous, doubtful, or delusional.

The Buddhist scriptures are very clear about judging. Judging is called, Attachment to Views. The Buddha is reported as saying that all views, “equal, superior, or inferior,” are all flawed (SN IV.9). “Those who seize at perceptions and views go about butting their heads in the world” (SN IV.9). Attachment to views is one of the mind states that must be abandoned if we are to become unbound and wake up to reality.

This non-attachment to views does not mean that all views are fine—Go ahead and act badly; it’s all concepts. Buddhist Monk and scholar Thanissaro Bhikkhu, writes, “An important point to notice is that attachment to views must be abandoned through knowledge, and not through skepticism, agnosticism, ignorance, or a mindless openness to all views” (1993, p.62). The knowledge is gleaned from personal experience and confidence in the path of truth and beauty, The Ennobling Eightfold Path. This path contains, morality, practice, and wisdom. We know that not all actions, beliefs, and words are kind, useful, or contain wisdom. Not judging doesn’t mean we become blind to this. We become aware of how judging pulls us out of our own experience and arms us. Judging gives the ammunition to start wars, both large and small. For me, the first step is recognizing the harm I do to myself when I judge, that going along with this cozy, familiar, judgy path is going to take me to an unsafe place.

This week, I invite you to practice awareness of judgement with me, to recognize the duplicitous nature of this habit and to reject the conditioned pull to judge. Returning awareness of the body is a great antidote to the judging mind, asking, what am I doing now? What do I feel in my body? Sending loving kindness to myself and wishing for my safety and freedom, when I catch myself judging, is another way to be kind to myself and my addiction. Bringing my mind to this long-standing pattern is going to be a challenge for me, but I am confident, it will pay off.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

References

Bhikkhu, T. (1993) The mind like fire unbound: An image in the early buddhist discourses. Barre, Massachusetts: Dhamma Dana Publications. Retrieved from: file:///C:/Users/rick/Documents/mindlikefire00thanmiss.pdf

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A Gift for our Ancestors

July 31, 2017

Buddhism, Forgiveness, Happiness, Meditation, Mindfulness, Reconciliation, Relationship, Thich Nhat Hanh, Uncategorized, Zen

Mini Mushroom Family in Moss

Very little grows on jagged rock.
Be ground. Be crumbled,
so wildflowers will come up
where you are.

You have been stony for too many years.
Try something different.
Surrender.

~Rumi, excerpt from A Necessary Autumn Inside Each.

Stop trying to be somebody.

Just be whoever you are,

Mindfully sitting, walking, eating.

Just practice mindful awareness.

Don’t be concerned with being someone.

Because you are someone already,

Just as you are.

Who needs to be aware of this.

~William Menza

“If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of these people.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

Dear Friends,

It’s very important in our culture to be somebody. Not just anybody, but somebody who embodies our highest values, does brave things, transcends the past, someone we can be proud of. We are schooled from an early age, there are no limits to what we can accomplish if we put our minds to it. Relying upon ourselves, we can go wherever our dreams take us.…. That is so much responsibility. It is a huge burden to be faced with creating our life’s worth, as this small, single person…alone. Whatever we are is up to us. Talk about pressure, no wonder teens are stressed out and anxious.

What I am noticing is the spinning, twisting in the wind experience that people who are young, and those who are old, and those in between, experience as a feeling of separation. We are cut off at the roots. We do not have an ancestral lineage to hold us. We are up against the whole world. In the Plum Village Tradition, I learned a practice, called Touching the Earth. This involved prostrating to my ancestors. That means to bow and touch the Earth with gratitude for all my ancestors, including the Earth, the water, the sun, the air, all the conditions that gave me life and continue to do so.

I grew up in New England where we did not do much bowing, let alone, lying on the floor, or ground to show reverence, but this practice showed me a way to join with a larger presence and shifted my perception of who I am. I learned to bow with humility and thanks to my blood ancestors, the ones who gave me life. Thanking them for the beautiful qualities in myself and allowing the Earth to hold the energy of the not so beautiful qualities I inherited as well. My blood ancestors are still alive in me; I inherited their DNA, their traits and genetic material. I am their continuation. In this way, I see them alive in me right now.

I learned to bow and give my thanks and my regret to the Earth and all my land ancestors. The one’s who came before me, who cultivated the soil, the ones who fled from injustice, the ones who were exploited, the ones who were cruel and ignorant to indigenous people, or who were kind. I acknowledge the people I will never know, who make my existence possible, who lived in this place, this state, this country, with all their skills and weaknesses.

I touch the Earth for all my spiritual ancestors, the Buddha, my teachers, the lineage that goes back thousands of years, for my parents’ spiritual teachers, for Moses, and Jesus, Abraham, Mohammad, Allah, and God, who are all part of the stream of wisdom and love that manifests on Earth. When I do these practices, I am not a small separate self, a weak, little me, who needs to find their way in the world. I am a tsunami, a crashing wave of inevitability. I come from the depths of the universe and encompass the highest and best teachings of understanding; how can I be small? How can I be lost? When I touch my connection to my ancestors, I am found and there is no wandering, but a homecoming.

This week, I invite you to make an offering to your ancestors. Perhaps that will be a whispered, “thank you,” to a tall white pine, a letter of thanks to those who risked their lives to flee from a war, or a beautiful shell laid on your altar. This practice reminds us that we don’t need to craft a new identity. We don’t have to forge a future that is built on Teflon. We have deep roots. They are holding us to this Earth, to this body, this breath, to all those we love. We are connected in more ways than we can see. The universe is holding our place; it’s always been here, in the midst of those who love us and made this life for us, with their lives.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

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It’s Not Personal

June 26, 2017

Activism, Advice, Buddhism, Mindfulness, Relationship, suffering, Thich Nhat Hanh, Uncategorized, Zen

Bee Fountain photo by Barbara Richarson

“Be kind to every person, because each person has been asked to carry a great burden.” ~Attributed to Kabir

“When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help. That’s the message he is sending.”

~Thich Nhat Hanh

“There is no such thing as justifiable anger in Buddhism, for if one is in the right, one should not be angry, and if one is in the wrong, one cannot afford to be angry. Therefore, under any circumstances one should not become angry.” ~ R. Bogoda

“It is not enough to be compassionate, we must act.” ~ H.H. The 14^th Dalai Lama

Dear Friends,

Many of us in this country have taken up new roles because of the political climate in our country during and post-election. More and more often, we are called upon to respond to injustice or discrimination and take stands, or protest governmental policies that devalue the earth and other living beings. For many of us it is difficult to take action and remain loving and peaceful while in the presence of those who march or speak out with the energy of righteousness and anger.

I recall Sister The Nghiem sharing the teachings she learned from Thây (Thich Nhat Hanh). He warns us about the energy of righteousness. When we act from a place of judgement, we go to war with ourselves and them. We separate ourselves out and practice discrimination and there is no peace inside of us. When we are right and the other is wrong, there is always a battle. Thich Nhat Hanh lived through two wars, the French, Vietnamese war and the American war, which we in the US call the Vietnam war. He witnessed the brutality and destruction of that comes from hatred, greed, and delusion. His students were killed; he saw his city destroyed and the multi-generational suffering that war brings to both conqueror and conquered. He has dedicated his life to peace and his greatest aspiration is to build a beloved community where peace is possible. You might say he is an expert on peace, because his life was shaped by war.

News reports stoke the fires of indignation and righteous outrage daily, no matter which side of the political aisle you are on. Many people wonder, if I don’t feel righteousness, Will I become a passive doormat? Does it mean that I must be meek and a dispassionate Buddhist, not showing any emotion? Am I supposed not to care?

I had an experience seven years ago while on retreat, that really showed me the difference between acting out of compassion and out of anger. On retreats, we share rooms with many other people and we were seven women together—with one bathroom. I had my ear plugs, the good silicone ones, and my melatonin, because it’s always hard for me to get to sleep in a strange place. I had just drifted off the first night, when I was awakened by the movements of the woman in the bunk below me sorting pills by flashlight. Someone else was crinkling a cellophane bag and during the night, the bathroom door opened and closed perhaps a dozen times. It seemed that no one actually believed this was the time to sleep. Keep in mind that we were observing noble silence.

As the retreat continued, I started to feel I was coming down with a cold and sleep became something of an obsession. I took little naps and tried to beat my roommates to bed for a half hour of actual sleep before the long night of rustling, flickering lights, alarms for medication, coughing, and bathroom visits began. The fourth night of the retreat was not a silent one. Because several of the women in the room were being ordained in the morning, they got up extra, extra, early and began showering. I lay in my bunk and steamed. I was sure I was getting sick. This was terrible. I would never do another retreat with these roommates. No one cared about me. Didn’t they realize how inconsiderate they were? This was supposed to be about mindfulness and no one was mindful of me! I was too mad to go back to sleep and there was too much buzzing and nervous excitement in the room. I got up, dressed, and hoped my roommates could see how much they made me suffer, but of course, we were still in silence.

I was the first person in the meditation hall that morning. I sat and felt some spaciousness and my irritation began to cool. When we have big reactions to present events often there is history that conditions our reactions. The feeling of anger calmed and I sat with what came next. It was saddness and the feeling that no one saw me, no one cared. There was long ago suffering from my childhood that was manifesting at this present moment. I held the little girl who felt overlooked so many years ago and told her that I would not abandon her. We were grown up now and I promised to take good care of her and make sure she was looked after. I could take care of the feeling of not being seen and cared for in this very moment. With a deep wish to care for myself, I realized that I needed to get sleep on retreat and I could camp in my own tent, tell the office and switch rooms, or go to a hotel. My realization that morning, was that the action I would take was the same action as when I was angry, but the motivation was a world apart. I had only love and concern for myself when I listened to my suffering. I could act without the sting of anger and hatred. I saw that my anger was the result of my unacknowledged suffering; the actions of my roommates were nothing personal. They weren’t doing it to me.

When we act from a place of care and compassion, we may call our representatives, march in a protest, write letters, or run for office. Our outward acts may look the same as others, but there is a different energy that motivates us. We all get triggered when we see or hear accounts of injustice, or hear that our friends and family have been slighted, hurt, or misunderstood. We all have the seeds of anger in us, but it’s what we do with them that matters. It’s how we care for our suffering that creates the ability to act without hatred and anger. Caring for our suffering gives us the spaciousness to act from compassion and freedom from taking it all personally. We absolutely can act in the world. We can take a stand and speak our truth and do so with the energy of love, of caring deeply for ourselves and others, with no desire to punish.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

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What’s Yours is Yours

April 3, 2017

Buddhism, Inspirational, Mindfulness, Relationship, Thich Nhat Hanh, Uncategorized

The last of March snow at Tranquility Farm

“The fact is that when you make the other suffer, he will try to find relief by making you suffer more. The result is an escalation of suffering on both sides.”~ Thich Nhat Hanh, Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames

“When you say something really unkind, when you do something in retaliation your anger increases. You make the other person suffer, and he will try hard to say or to do something back to get relief from his suffering. That is how conflict escalates.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames

“In true love, there is no pride.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames

Dear Friends,

One of the hardest things for me to do is refrain from responding when I perceive I am being insulted. There is an overwhelming desire to convert the mind of someone who thinks ill of me and let them know they are mistaken. I am not who they think I am. That person is selfish and nothing like me. You’ve got it all wrong. I know many people have a difficult time when they feel insulted by others, especially from a mistaken perception.

I recently read the Akkossa Sutta, also known as, The Insult. The sutta recounts a discourse between the angry Brahman, Akossa, and the Buddha. Hearing that a fellow clansman had renounced his possessions and become a follower of the Buddha, Akossa seeks out the Buddha and delivers a verbal dressing down, complete with cursing and abuse. This in itself was surprising to me. I had imagined that the Buddha’s magnificent calm, which protected him from a raging elephant and a murderer, would disarm the hostility in any person before they could utter an angry or disparaging word. But no, an angry person is apparently harder to subdue than an elephant. Hearing the insults, the Buddha does not respond by defending, empathizing, or explaining, instead he begins to teach.

The Buddha asks Akossa when acting as a host, if your guests do not eat the food you offer, who does it belong to? Akossa answers that the food remains the possession of the host, not the guest. The Buddha uses this visual metaphor to underscore his next statement, “That with which you have insulted me…that with which you have berated me: that I do not accept from you. It is all yours, brahman. It’s all yours.” The Buddha’s example shows the ownership of abuse. If one does not meet anger with anger, but remains aware that there is a choice, the insulting words remain the possession of the one who spoke them. This is an enlightened way of saying, “I am rubber you are glue.” When we do not accept the validity of the negative words offered, there is no need to defend ourselves.

The Buddha goes on to say:

You make things worse when you flare up at someone who’s angry. Whoever doesn’t flare up at someone who’s angry wins a battle hard to win. You live for the good of both—your own, the other’s—when, knowing the other’s provoked you mindfully grow calm.

These words were so wise, they calmed the angry Brahmin and he renounced his worldly life and became a monk on the spot.

My initial reaction was Wow! The wow is from what the Buddha calls, winning “the battle hard to win. It is hard to not respond when we are provoked and not accept the negative criticism offered by an angry person. This involves renouncing the habit of being offended.

What we are invited to reject is abuse and angry tirades that have nothing to do with us. We do not need to take them personally. It sounds delightful to be free from others’ anger and judgement, but why is it so hard to not grasp onto the harsh words, even when we know they don’t reflect truth? One reason is our innate biological protective nature calls us to respond, to protect our bodies and our territory. When someone’s words contradict the self-image I want to project and that I am attached to, it can be intolerable. My conditioned reactivity is powerful and following the Buddha’s example requires practice.

The Buddha shows us the fruit of “mindfully grow calm” in the face of an attack. This calm is not just for our own benefit, but for the “good of both.” If we do not engage and pick up the other side of an argument, there is no argument. As in so many examples, when we care for ourselves and our consciousness, we care and protect the other. Non reactivity is a path to caring for ourselves. This involves awareness of the body’s responses, caring for our thoughts, perceptions, and feelings, so when the heat is on and there is the energy of anger present we can choose to come back to ourselves, to our breath and stability instead of lashing out. This is the way of creating peace through our cultivated mindfulness. Developing our equanimity and strengthening our resolve to care deeply for our consciousness and for the welfare of others is the path of peace.

With three breaths,

Celia

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To Tell The Truth

March 20, 2017

Buddhism, Dharma, Inspirational, Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen

The Bodhisattva Jizu, or Ksitigarbha, from the Yale Collection

“Someone avoids false speech and abstains from it. He speaks the truth, is devoted to truth, reliable, worthy of confidence, not a deceiver of people.” ~The Buddha

“In the case of words the Tathagata knows to be unfactual, untrue, unbeneficial, unendearing and disagreeable to others, he does not say them.” Abhaya Sutta (MN 58)

“Speak the truth, but not to punish.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

Dear Friends,

Speak the truth. When the Buddha spoke about right speech, the first component he included was abstaining from false speech. This seems straight forward, as in don’t tell a lie, but then there’s the truth and there’s our subjective truth and maybe there’s the truth the way we would like it to have unfolded. How do we tell the truth?

Another component of right speech is abstaining from harsh speech. The Buddha describes this as using “such words as are gentle, soothing to the ear, loving, such words as go to the heart, and are courteous, friendly, agreeable to many” (AN 10:176) This does not mean the Buddha wanted folks to walk around spouting pleasantries and avoiding being direct, or saying things that may be hard to hear.

The Buddha tells Prince Abhaya that there are three criteria that one must use to decide if something is worth saying. Is the statement true, is it beneficial, and is it rooted in kind speech? A critique that points out damaging ingrained habits may be hard to hear. The Buddha had a sense of what was the right time to deliver criticism that was true and useful, but was not agreeable to the recipient. The Buddha also told the Prince, if the words were true, endearing, but unbeneficial, I do not say them. This rules out empty praise or flattery that inflates someone else’s ego and perhaps benefits our greed. If the words were true, beneficial, and endearing, there is a sense of timing, knowing when to say them. This is kindness.

Only words that are useful are spoken. We do not ridicule, use sarcasm, or detract from someone to recompense ourselves for a slight. There is no place for words that do not move the speaker and recipient towards the path of true liberation. Everything is done with timing and an eye towards the receptivity of the listener. Is the recipient capable of taking in this message? When is the optimal time to say the difficult or the unwanted but necessary?

Societies where there is truth telling and reliability create trusting environments. When the truth becomes covert, subjective to interpretation, and there is confusion and doubt, there is a break in the community. There is no trust. Scholar monk, Bhikku Bhodi writes:

People can live together in society only in an atmosphere of mutual trust, where they have reason to believe that others will speak the truth; by destroying the grounds for trust and inducing mass suspicion, widespread lying becomes the harbinger signaling the fall from social solidarity to chaos. (Bhodi, The noble eightfold path: The way to the end of suffering, p. 27)

When we as a society doubt that others are speaking the truth, we have a problem. Sadly, it appears this describes the time we live in. There is a cloud of diversion, deception, and impenetrability on the political stage. Daily, we hear conflicting news stories and reports that lead to greater doubt and mistrust. Trust is essential to move forward in unity.

Each individual is sovereign over their own dominion of right speech. We may work to instill this virtue in our children, bring compassionate truth telling into our professional and on-line life, but we do not control another’s right or wrong speech. This is out of our jurisdiction. During this time of fuzzy truth and distrust, part of our practice is to remain a beacon of right speech. Our practice calls us to be devoted to truth, reliable, and worthy of confidence. We strive to follow the fourth mindfulness training, “Knowing that words can create happiness or suffering, I am committed to speaking truthfully using words that inspire confidence, joy, and hope” That is the practice. To continue to use kindness, to grow hope and to be a light of truth shining through the darkness of doubt.

May we all walk in the light of truth,

Celia

Buddha’s footprints, from the Yale Collection

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