The Heart of Mahayana Buddhism

"To say that you don't know, is the beginning of knowing."   
-- a Chinese proverb


Cultivating the Mind of Love is one of many titles written by Vietnamese Buddhist monk and teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh. Many think many things about practices originating from the East, some are interpreted accurately and some less so. Hanh makes it his endeavor to bring what he calls "engaged Buddhism" to the west. A prolific scholar-translator, writer and teacher, Hanh writes many things in his book. He wants above all to give instruction about Mahayana Buddhism.

Reminding readers that 'the raft is not the shore... we see many waves.... the wave is, at the same time, water..." Hanh continues with his teaching: "The first aspect of Buddhist meditation is samatha (stopping and calming), and the second is vipasyana (insight, looking deeply). If we study Mahayana Buddhism, we will see that vipasyana, looking deeply, is very much at its heart...'

' Its attitude of openness, non-attachment from views, and playfulness serves well as a dharma door to enter the realm of Mahayana Buddhism, helping us to see clearly that all the seeds of Mahayana thought and practice were already present in the early teachings of the Buddha."

The Beauty of Spring

"When you do, you will see that your "first love" may not really be the first..."  Thich Nhat Hanh, Cultivating the Mind of Love
Last night I returned home and heard something really wonderful. There were frogs singing in the night. Frogs, it seems, are one of the great harbingers of spring. They slumber over the winter, buried deep into the mud, protected by a sort of anti-freeze in their blood. When the very first warming of the spring temperatures commence to rain, they emerge from hibernation, as if magically, and serenade the night. Everywhere in the countryside one is treated to their song.
The frogs are singing! Their songs recollect the fine spring and summer evenings spent outdoors in the fresh breeze, the smell of grass, the wet of the dew and the arrival of song birds, creatures of all types. The Robin, a North American species of Thrush, arrived here a more than a month ago; the Cardinal which overwinters here, began its song in earnest weeks ago and now the Woodpeckers join in the busy merriment of spring song. The long winter is done over into the beauty of spring.

The Beauty of Spring is the title of a chapter in a book by Buddhist teacher and monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, Cultivating the Mind of Love. In a very personal and beautiful recollection he writes of first love, his own love, one which the French call the "coup de foudre" or the stroke of love, love at first sight.
This wise monk writes quite simply, "please think about your own first love. Do it slowly, picturing how it first came about, where it took place, and what brought you to that moment. Recall that experience and look at it calmly, deeply, with compassion and understanding. You will discover many things you did not notice at the time. There is a Kung An in the Zen tradition, 'What was your face before your parents were born?' This is an invitation to go on a journey and discover your true self, your true face.
Look deeply into your "first love" and try to see its true face. When you do, you will see that your "first love" may not really be the first, that your face when you were born may not have been your original face. If you [continue] look[ing] deeply, you will be able to see your true, original face, and your true first love. Your first love is still present, always here, continuing to shape your life. This is a subject for meditation."

Jim Elliot, Waiting On God

"Surely God is good to his Israel." Jim Elliot

In 1945 with the world war now behind, the nation turned herself to other matters; a young man, Jim Elliot commenced his studies at Wheaton College, an esteemable Protestant Christian bible college located in Wheaton, Illinois. Apart from Bible scholarship, Wheaton is perhaps best known for its conservative views, prohibiting drinking, dancing and smoking among its students.
As a protestant, Christian institution it offers a solid education in bible learning, Greek, Latin and other modern languages as well as subjects which support christian missionary activities and ministries. His education prepared him well for the experiences which were about to come to him.

Against this backdrop, Elisabeth Elliot edits her husband's journals, including their chronicle of his later work in South America in the high Andes, The Journals of Jim Elliot. She writes in the foreword that what becomes most prominent in these journals is his dedication to his Lord, his ministry and his "consuming thirst to do what he saw as the will" of the Creator.
He reminds us not to "bind down the word of God... it's (the Spirit of the Lord) free to say what it will." He also makes it clear that quiet and solitude are important to develop ones' spiritual, inner life.

While his life was cut short, in his 29 years, he demonstrated a remarkable young faithfulness and other character traits such as determination and sensitivity to the working of the Spirit as he recognized them.
Indirectly, he asks the questions of trust or mercy, faith or belief which many before and many after him have also pondered.
And he addresses the great question of love.
Like many others before, he met his end steadfastly and ignominiously as a Christian, martyred in the wilds of the Andes by members of the Auca Indians, natives to the region in which Elliot felt called to minister.

Contrasting the sincere devotion of Elliot there are those persons, past and present who represent a different face of Christianity. Some may come to accept their particular views, while others may not.
Recently this Simple Mind had the occasion to hear the speech of a radio preacher.
Clearly a person involved in a segment of the Protestant Christian tradition as opposed to the Orthodox-Catholic Christian traditions, he was in the midst of espousing the abhorrence of "meditation as an evil" due to its apparent complicity with the evil spirits and demons of the world.
Using a bible verse and applying an interpretation of said verse, this man claimed that the Bible was clear, that meditation was evil due to its tendency to free the mind of extraneous thoughts, thereby giving evil the opportunity to enter and possess a soul.

Now, is one to accept this thinking because "we say so," or is one to further study its source or implication to determine true motive? Will Relativism or political correctness accept his thinking because it's his thinking, thus one can't judge, or are we to act to discern the meaning and intention of such a claim?

If this claim is true for the limits of the particular individual, then it is not unreasonable to presume that this person is also contemptuous against all denominations of Buddhism, much or all of the mystical Judeo-Christian tradition and Hinduism, for starters. Well, what's does that leave off the list? His speech sounds like an exercise in Calvinism, possibly or Puritanism, also related to Calvinists.

The take away for this Simple Mind is that truly there are those of many different stripes; the prime commandment for the Christian is not to demonize but to "love your neighbor as yourself, to love one another -- even your enemy." Anything less falls short of the disciples which the Christ called for and commanded. A Simple Mind questions this preacher and his (lack of) education. Ironic, isn't it?

Chod, the Cutting Through

 "Chod belongs to both sutra and tantric teaching; it's origins are in the prajanaparamitra teaching."  -- Unbounded Wholeness by authors Klein and Tenzin Wangyal, Rinpoche

The authors continue, addressing the notions of expectation and disappointment they say are central to the teaching. Chod follows the 'fourth presentation' in which emptiness and clarity are represented in the 'middle way.' The integration of these elements is indispensable to comprehension of one's own nature. Chod practice is a powerful form of 'merit' through the offering of one's own body. Dzogchen training includes emptiness as a central theme.

Many misinterpret emptiness. It is more akin to the idea "to be empty is to be full." It is Sunyata.
While this seems contradictory, it is so that without space there is no fullness nor is there emptiness. Dzogchen teaches just that, the middle way, and emptiness as one of its vehicles. Its aim is to probe deeply into a sense of "just-this-ness." The present moment, is a moment unhindered by any other. "To recognize that indefiniteness and 'confidence in oneself during practice' are in fact, splendidly complementary, is to move towards a clearer understanding of the magical inclusiveness attributed to unbounded wholeness."

Unbounded wholeness is indefinite. Arising from the Bon comes the notion that open awareness is not a union of clarity and emptiness. However, the base that is open is unity. "Emptiness is not separate from the clarity of awareness." And the base itself, is unbounded wholeness. This base, as it is spoken of, is a part of eastern philosophy which states that for anything to have awareness, it must also have observation and a thing to observe.
Observation, to focus on a thing requires effort; yet open awareness is free of effort. It is likened to the 'Buddha-mind" itself. Since Buddha nature is viewed as the first, open, primordial nature, then Dzogchen seeks to teach that the openness of awareness is to be the first, the original self, an unbounded wholeness.

Now that this all has been written, and words may be the source of misunderstanding, a caution to you, the reader: In discovering who you are through meditative principles, you may find what words cannot adequately express--you are most simply yourself, unbounded. Yours to discover.

Fickleness and Indecision

Many of us experience episodes of fickleness; we have varying moods and opinions on any given subject, about any particular relationship or about a task. Often we feel mixed, divided or its near cousin, indecision. While not deciding, may be a decision--to sit on the fence and do nothing-- fickleness and indecision in the mind of some, like Thomas Merton, may be an indication of something else.
Merton, a man who has a lot to say about so much of the spiritual life, both east and west, is easily read and invites his reader into his world with simple clarity. He, as some may know, was a friend of the 14th Dalai Lama, who sometimes speaks of him still.

Writing in New Seeds of Contemplation, Merton says, "Fickleness and indecision are signs of self-love." The person who cannot make up their mind about what the Divine calls them to, often trailing from one opinion to the next, engaged in one practice then another, maybe then these are the indications that you shirk the will of the Divine, instead preferring and substituting it for your own, self-centered spinning. Possibly, you wish to go by your own will with a quiet conscience.
 As soon as you arrive at one spiritual center or monastery, you wish to go to another; as soon as you taste one form of prayer, you seek still others. Resolutions you do make, and resolutions you do break. Counter-resolutions abbreviate or eliminate prior thoughts; the spinning goes on. You spend much time in the religion or self help section in a bookstore, reading many things and settling on little. Soon Merton says, "you have no interior life at all. Your whole existence is a patchwork of confused desires and daydreams."

 You or your ego mean to resist the works of harmony or grace; it is an elaborate, subconscious method to play defeat in the face of the Divine, to not see what is in the way for you, to take up no method, nor any way at all.

To know all that you are, be still and allow the work to proceed!

Love of the Contemplated

"The contemplation of the saints is fired by the love of the one contemplated..."   Saint Albert the Great of Paris

Writing about Aescetics and meditation, Thomas Aquinas, disciple of Saint Albert the Great wrote: that "our knowledge of the deus is arrived at, on this earth, by the light of burning love."
In contrast, the contemplation of philosophers is " merely intellectual speculation on the divine nature... the beauty of mental prayer and of mystical contemplation is in the soul's abandonment and total surrender of itself... to bear witness to God. The rest is silence," wrote Thomas Merton.

Other traditions also have much to say about meditation and prayerful contemplation; however in the west, it is the aescetics and the 'desert fathers' who have perhaps spoken most loudly.
Most, east and west, will likely agree with the words of Merton, "meditation does not have to be colorful or spectacular. The effectiveness of our mental prayer is not to be judged by the interior 'fireworks' that go off inside us when we pray. On the contrary, although sometimes the fruit of a good meditation [practice] may be an ardent and sensible love springing from vivid insights into truth; these so-called 'consolations of prayer' are not to be trusted without reserve, or sought for their own sake alone.'

'We should be deeply grateful when our prayer really brings us an increase of clear understanding and felt generosity, and we should by no means despise the stimulation of sensible devotion when it helps us to do whatever we have to do, with greater humility, fidelity and courage."
Thus it is quite possible that meditation practice which at times seems 'cold,' can actually be valuable because it is without feelings and this may be, for some, the most profitable. It can be a source of strength, bring us out of our immediate sense-reactions and to a point of contemplation where we may hold the idea or the contemplated up for more careful and detailed consideration. It may assist us to spiritualize our interior self, quieting the emotions, rising above the mundane, towards a place of reason and faith.

For this reason, Merton asserts that at this point, ignorance can make progress in mental prayer difficult; "those who think that their meditation must always culminate in a burst of emotion, fall into one or two errors...either they find their emotions run dry... or else they can almost always weep at prayer... in the beginning when our senses are easily attracted to created pleasures, our emotions will keep us" from turning to anything greater [more in depth], unless they themselves give continued joy and pleasure; pure, untempered emotion tends to eat itself up and we risk "resting in these things which are by no means the end of the journey." Here, Thomas Merton a Trappist monk writes in the true vein of an aescetic.