Ohh yea!

About a month ago I was invited by the Muslim Student Association at my school to attend a talk given by a professor of Islam. The professor proceeded to give a beautiful image of Islam, its practices and meanings, its encouraging of pluralism over evangelism, and its humanistic values.

I had asked why Muslims were to pray five times a day towards Mecca. The practice itself is awe-inspiring, that upwards of 1 billion people perform this act of faith each day. He said, and reminds me that he has always said, “The nature of humanity if forgetfulness. We need reminders.” Prayer was one way of reminding oneself throughout the day about one’s faith and service to God. That it is done by so many people around the world in common spirit must also be a reminder of the communal fellowship that they all share.

That was all I needed to hear.

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Sad Teen Writes Dukkha-themed Poem

I was asked to speak to a group of teenagers later today at a ‘Buddhist Family Night’ and, for a good long while, I was long about what to talk about.

Though I have worked with a few different programs targeted at Buddhist Youth, I have found a good number of roadblocks along the way. It seems that the concerns of Buddhism, that life is fundamentally unsatisfactory, that living a good life requires restraint and patience, are counter to a lot of what being young is about. I wondered if Buddhism really is applicable to young people, or if the role of these programs is instead to integrate people into the community so that, when problems do arise, they know where to turn to.

…Then I remembered, “Wait, being a teenager sucked.”

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An interview with Thanissaro Bhikkhu

So I was surfing the web the other day, looking up information on Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Basically I heard a personal anecdote about him from a friend in Boston, and I had to find out if it was true. Thanissaro Bhikkhu (or “Thaan Geoff”) is a Theravada Buddhist monk who lives at Wat Mettavanaram outside of San Diego. I first met him on a club field trip to Wat Metta in 2004. His writings have had a huge influence on many of my friends. I came across this delightful interview in the Oberlin Alumni Magazine, and I thought I’d share it with everyone: Being a Monk: A Conversation with Thanissaro Bhikkhu.

The interview is great in part because it asks many of the questions that I have always been too ashamed to ask because I know I’m not supposed to ask monks those types of questions. But it’s also always great to hear Thaan Geoff’s perspective on Buddhist practice. Here is one quote that really struck home for me:

The Forest tradition places a lot of emphasis on concentration practice, getting the mind to stay with one object. So that’s a lot of my time. And of course, if you’re sitting for long periods of time, pain is going to come up. Then the mind creates issues about the pain. Dealing with that is the Buddha’s First Noble Truth: There is pain in life. There is suffering in life. I think the reason he focused on that is that if you sit with your pains and suffering, if you have the tools of concentration and mindfulness, you start seeing these issues in your mind.

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A Funny Thing: Karma as Ontology and Ethics

Karma: it’s a funny thing.

I have been meaning to respond to my partner’s post on Karma for quite some time- aside from raising questions about whether the earthquake was a result of China’s karma or not, and whether it is proper to say that a disaster is caused by karma or not, I feel it begs the larger question about if this type of discussion is even productive.

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Delicious and filling

About a year ago, I went to visit a local temple for the first time. I was greeted by a friendly monk and he showed me the grounds. He had big ears and a warm smile of ease. Soft spoken as he was, the howling wind and chimes made it difficult to say much, so we decided to sit down. Settling in the main hall, I was struck by how simple it was. Nothing more than a small living room with a bare rug over a wooden floor. There was a moderately sized statue of Gotama against one wall, a bench and clock against another, and a short coffee table in the middle.

I sat and faced the venerable, who was no more than three feet away, as he gave a short dhamma talk. While his talk on the importance of kindness was good, he actually didn’t have to say anything. From the moment he let me in, showed me around, and sat down, his kindness and simplicity radiated. It seemed to me he lived and breathed with complete sincerity, just as he spoke. He was the very image of what he had taught. We could have just sat there and said nothing and it would have been just as nice.

The venerable then guided me through meditation. After tapping the bell, and throughout the meditation, he would occasionally utter the words, “May I be well, happy, and peaceful.” After some time, it would be extended to parents, teachers, relatives, friends, indifferent persons, enemies, and all living beings. For twenty minutes that’s all that mattered, sitting and hearing those words.

Wind blowing, chimes ringing, clocks ticking, my thinking, all subsided. All of it drowned out in the silence and in the soft words of love. I could not find anything like this in my books. Such lightness must have been what it was all about.

I had my first taste of freedom.

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What we get from Grandparents

I do not think it is an uncommon story that many Buddhists develop their spiritual leanings from their grandparents. The grandparent/grandchild bond is a special one – grandparents are wizened with knowledge without the day-to-day responsibilities of child-rearing, which seems like just the right combination to imbue an appreciation of peace and a proclivity to contentedness.

I also see grandparents as muddling that already terrible “heritage Buddhist” definition – where children grow up encountering the Dharma from their grandparents even through their own parents had rejected that very series of influences.

I am not part of that muddled category as neither my parents nor my grandparents are Buddhist. Still, I would not have ended up a Buddhist without the opportunity to know my grandparents. They taught me generosity, always being willing to give what they had simply for the reason that it was there to give. I learned patience, temperance, and that doing what is right for your family requires doing what is right by your family.

That being said, I only terrifiedly came out about my wacky religion to my grandparents this last year.

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What does it mean to not be Buddhist?

This past summer I visited my main spiritual teacher, and he naturally inquired how my practice has developed since we last met three years ago. When I first met my teacher, I told him that I was Buddhist, and he asked me what that meant. I was still active in a college Buddhist association, and for me that was the chief example of what it meant to be Buddhist. I was Buddhist because I was in a Buddhist club.

My perspective on Buddhism has almost entirely been framed by my American upbringing, whether I like it or not. I classify Buddhism as a religion, on par with Judaism and Christianity (among many others). I call myself “Buddhist”, and I wear a symbol of my faith around my neck and wrist. I even use it as an excuse to avoid drinking (“It’s against my religion”) or to justify my behavior (“I’m Buddhist, I don’t kill bugs”).

But I recently stumbled across an interview with SN Goenka, a famous teacher of vipassana meditation, where he says, “I don’t teach Buddhism. I am not a Buddhist.”

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Meditation Pains

I’m on day three of my third recovery from a meditation lapse this year, and by that I mean having fallen off of my daily meditation routine. This time around, I’ve decided to extend my meditation from thirty minutes to an hour every morning and night. The first obstacle this change brought was pain.

Pain is no news for me. I remember the excruciating pain from when I first meditated at temple. The abbot, Sayadaw U Kesava, placed me on a wood floor in front of a statue of Lord Buddha, we prostrated three times (Buddham pujemi – Dhammam pujemi – Sangham pujemi) and then he told me to sit and note the passing of my breaths. I suppose he wanted to sit for an hour, but after 40 minutes I was in so much pain that I had tears flowing down my cheeks. I whimpered. U Kesava laughed.

Many years later, I’m much less flexible and the pain is still just as real.

I begin by sitting down on a carpeted floor in Burmese position (maybe I should invest in zafu after all). After thirty minutes the numbness sets in, then the pain, then the extreme pain.

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Gandhi: incredible non-Buddhist, incredibly non-Buddhist

Recently, I have been reading Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj and, while reading it, I realized it was something that I very much enjoyed which had nothing to do with Buddhism.

I feel like Buddhists, myself included, frequently try to ‘claim’ Gandhi – to express our love for his ideals by scuttling him under the Buddhist umbrella. But I’m not sure that’s best for Buddhism, or for expressing a sincere respect for Gandhi.

I realize that this same kind of behavior happens in the larger Buddhist landscape, both when any old thing is shoehorned into Buddhism and when the Dharma is made to be compatible with any given thing.

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Throwing away your Buddha: Epilogue

I am at my parents’ home for the weekend, and aside from (1) marveling at the amazing interior decoration that they’ve done in the past six months and (2) not meditating for over 24 hours, I’ve noticed that there’s one thing missing. What happened to that statue that I left behind when I moved to Los Angeles?

Apparently, it was never fixed. My dad just chucked it in the trash. In case you’re jumping to any conclusions about my father, it was his mother who inspired my Buddhist practice (as well as that of my brothers). So he knew how important the statue was to me, but I’m guessing he just didn’t want to fix it.

This conclusion is pretty disappointing for me. I would have rather gone with Plan A and placed the statue behind one of the downtown temples. Maybe not so much because it’s a “Buddhist” thing to do, but because there is some comfort in knowing that there’s a time-tested tradition you can follow when you don’t know what to do. Maybe next time…

Sabbe sankhara anicca, sabbe sankhara anatta…

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