Latest Posts by zengriff-v2 - Page 3

Four Noble Truths

Life on planet Earth will always have an element of unsatisfactoriness. This may range from full-blown hellish suffering to simply wanting more despite having so much already. There is no creature on this Earth that is without some form of suffering.

The cause of the unsatisfactoriness is existential confusion. Because we don’t know what we are, we take ourselves to be what we are not: a body, a mind, an agenda, a history with an intended future, a personality. All creatures seek happiness and avoid suffering. But what we think will bring us happiness and what we think will cause us suffering both depend on who we think we are. If we do not know who and what we actually are, we will never know how to really be happy and how to truly be free from suffering.

Existential confusion is not permanent and can be ended. Over the millennia, there have been humans who have realized enlightenment and became free. There is nothing preventing you from doing the same.

There is a path available that features deliberate practice to end existential confusion: the Dharma. Dharma is the no-nonsense, just-the-facts approach to finding insight into your existential condition and enjoying freedom from its limitations. More information and guidance is available today than any other time in history.

Some people suffer too much and it makes it almost impossible to practice the path. If you are one such person, do not give up. There are adjustments you can make to support you. And it is our job to find ways to help reduce your suffering so that you can practice.

Other people suffer too little. Due to their privilege and/or immense good fortune, they have not suffered enough in this life to allow them to realize something is wrong. They haven’t noticed this sense of unsatisfactoriness even though it drives much of their daily activity.

However, the majority of humans fall in-between those extremes. So why are they not on the path?

Either they haven’t encountered clear and true teachings, they were never told freedom is possible, they have yet to see clearly their own suffering, or they have yet to clearly discern the cause of their own suffering.

These Four Noble Truths of the Buddha are The Good News that buddhists offer the world. Contemplate each for yourself:

Are you suffering? Are you unsatisfied? Do you feel a lack of wholeness? What elements of your daily life trouble you? Why?

Regarding your answers to #1, ask yourself how your identity plays a role. How might your sense of self, your sense of being an individual, be a cause behind your suffering?

Have you ever tasted freedom from your sense of self? Or tasted a freedom that is beyond this human world and its unsatisfactoriness? Think about what that was like and how it differs from your ordinary feeling of pleasure or happiness from daily life.

Ask yourself what you are doing to free yourself. Is it working? Does it make sense in light of the contemplations of #1-#3? Are you feeling enthusiastic about your path and practice? If you lack energy or motivation, it can help to return to these contemplations.

The Noble Truths were the first teaching of the Buddha and you can see why. It establishes the reasons to practice the path in earnest. 🙂

May all beings be free.

LY

“When you have Yin you must have Yang, when you have Yang you must have Yin, they mutually kind of compliment each other. For instance you cannot succeed without failure. If you always succeed you can’t succeed any more. You’ve got to have some failure in order to succeed, it’s all relative. So then perhaps a good way to relieve anxiety. Today for instance, we are so much troubled with anxiety. Perhaps this is the way.”

~ Gia-fu Feng

If we are completely present to whatever is arising, we can stretch beyond our self-imposed limits; we can endure what may seem unendurable.

- Shinge Roko Cherry Shayat Roshi

So therefore, if you understand perfectly clearly that you can’t do anything to find that very, very important thing—God, Enlightenment, Nirvāṇa, whatever—then what? Well, I find—you know—it’s so stupid, because even if I tell myself, “Well, there’s nothing I can do about it.” Why did I say that? You see? why did I say that? Why did I go out of my way to tell myself there’s nothing I can do about it? Because in the back of my mind there’s a funny little feeling that if I did tell myself that, something different would happen. See?

Alright, so even that doesn’t work. Nothing works. Now, when absolutely nothing works, where are you? Well, here we are—I mean, there’s a feeling of something going on. The world doesn’t stop dead when there’s nothing you can do. There’s something happening. Now, just there: that’s what I’m talking about. There’s the happening. When you are not doing anything about it, you’re not not doing anything about it; you just can’t help it, it goes on despite anything you think or worry about, or whatever. Now there is the point. Right there.

~Alan Watts

"Imagine the idea that the moment you were born you were kicked off the edge of a precipice, and you are falling. As you fell, a great lump of rock came with you, and it’s traveling alongside you. And you’re clinging to it for dear life! And thinking, ‘Gee, I’ve gotta hold onto this.’ You see? Well, it doesn’t do a thing for you. And it’s only making you anxious, and as soon as you understand that it doesn’t do a thing for you that you let go and relax. So, everybody’s in this situation. We’re all completely insecure! We’re all headed straight for death, as if we had been condemned by a judge. And yet here we are all clinging onto things. And we have all sorts of alibis for doing this. We say, ‘Well, I have responsibilities for my dependents, and I’ve got to cling on.’ But all you’re doing is you’re teaching your dependents to cling the same way as you are and making them miserable by learning to go on surviving compulsively.

So the thing is, the same way you’re caught in a torrent, and you try to get out of it by swimming against it, you’ll just wear yourself out, and you’re still carried along with it. So the sensible thing to do is to turn around and swim with it! And if you want to get out of it, swim towards the edge. But go with it! Same way when you’re sailing. Always keep the wind in your sails. If you want to go against the wind: tack! But use the wind. So it’s this way, you know, we’re all in this great stream of change which we call life, we ARE the stream! If you imagine you're separate from it, and you're being carried along by IT as if you were a cork, that's a delusion. You're a wave of the stream itself, so get with IT!”

~Alan Watts

- A message from 23 nights temple -

“In times of hardship, there is actually hope and joy. When things are easy, actually trouble and suffering increase.”

-二十三夜堂からのメッセージ-

“苦労しているときには、却って希望や喜びがある。楽をしていると、却って悩みや苦しみが増える。”

Today, I found myself heading to a Buddhist temple for an addiction recovery meeting and meditation session. Initially, I was overwhelmed with anxiety, my mind racing with all the ways things could go wrong. Why? Because the mind, though a powerful tool, is just that—a tool. It should be used only when needed; otherwise, it will create problems simply to justify its own activity, becoming an addiction in itself.

As I made my way there, I became aware of the vibrations of the music resonating in my ears, the wind brushing against my face, the comfort of my seat—each moment was rich with joy. Yet, we so rarely tap into the immediate joy available to us in the present.

Awkwardness is natural when you don’t fit into the choreography of the consensus.

Meet awkwardness with mindfulness; keep your sense of humor but do not conform.

Be at ease amidst discomfort. You’re good.

Therein can be found a lovely balance between charming and subversive.

Tulku Lobsang 

Every time you want to quit but keep going, you pass a checkpoint in life.

Steven Handel, The Emotion Machine: Self-Improvement in the 21st Century

“Whoever is happy will make others happy, too.”

— Mark Twain (via psych-facts)

These are links to some documentaries I enjoy.

Andrew Marrs: History of the World

BBC: Planet Earth with Sir David Attenborough

The Buddha by David Grubin with Richard Gere

500 Nations: Complete History of the Native Peoples of America

The Elegant Universe with Brian Greene

The History of God by Karen Armstrong

BBC: Today I died - Near Death Experiences

From Jesus to Christ: The First Christians

War and Civilization: With Historian John Keegan

Was Jesus a Buddhist Monk?

Journey to the Edge of the Universe

Mathematics Explains the Universe

The Story of Earth

Secrets of the Human Brain

PBS Nova The Mystery of DNA (five parts)

PBS Nova Secrets of the Pyramids of Egypt

PBS: The Historical Origins of the Bible

BBC: Did Jesus Die on the Cross?

Bart Ehrman Lectures: The Historical Jesus

Nat Geo: History of the World in Two Hours

The Science of the Mind - Sacred Teachings of Tibetan Buddhism

The Dawn of Religion: Beliefs of First Humans

Alan Watts: The Nature of Consciousness

“Listening is loving”

—

“A Brief History of Us”

We are the universe trying to understand itself.

- mindfulness in plain english by Ven. Henepola Gunaratana

A philosopher and a scientist come to the same, beautiful conclusion.