I recently was trying to explain my thoughts to a friend in audio clips regarding preparing for a future of potentially ending up alone rather than with a partner and how one should spiritually approach sitting with oneself. I thought the audio clip was me at my best in terms of pulling together a variety of ideas from different sources and tying them together into something meaningful, so I wanted to share. It’s about 9 minutes long, so only jump in if you’re interested.
Philosophy Riffing | Valuing Yourself and Sitting with Being Alone
15 Aug 2021 Leave a comment
in Buddhism, Philosophy, Spiritual Path Tags: Acceptance, Alone, Ancient Philosophy, Anxiety, Foucault, Meditation, Pierre Hadot, Self, Zen
Tarot – Understanding Yourself Through the Major Arcana: Moon
26 Jul 2021 4 Comments
in Spiritual Path, Tarot, Warrior's Path Tags: Courage, Illusion, Intuition, Resolve, The Shadow, Wittgenstein
I’ve been meaning to write about the meaning of particular tarot cards and what they can say about the spiritual and existential journey of life since a deep dive into the classic Japanese RPG Persona 4 Golden last year. Since then, I’ve been reading the tarot off and on, more frequently recently, for guidance through some tough times in life.
I think it would be useful to write about my experience with Major Arcana cards that have shown up strongly and repeatedly in my readings – explaining what they mean/have meant to me as I try to traverse the challenges of my life.
This time, I’ll write about the Moon card which has been a repeat pull in many spreads in the last few months.
The simplest way to summarize the Moon card is that it is a stage of the path that is a journey through darkness. It often is represented as a traversal of water between two pillars which represent some gate to beyond on the other side. The moon hangs above it all as the light through the darkness.
Often when people speak of this card, they focus on dealing with illusions. Picture this: you travel through the darkness with poor lighting. What you experience is skewed from the darkness of the night air. This is where perception is distorted into illusion, where imagination can fill in the gaps of what’s really there.
However, this card represents more than that. It also represents intuition. When you are forced to follow your own path through the darkness without your standard senses as being trustworthy, you have to trust your inner light, your intuition, to guide you. In some senses, this matches up well with the Hermit card.
Finally, the aspect I see discussed least: there is a danger to this journey. Going through the dark is no small task. If there are challenges in walking a trail in daylight (which there are), these are compounded in the darkness, and there are varieties of night creatures who can see and prey on you in the dark.
Ultimately, we could summarize all of these aspects by describing this as a journey that engages with the unconscious terrains of your life (water and moon as symbols) that you generally have covered over or are unaware of: a journey into your internal shadow lands or “Shadow work” as some might call it. In a very real sense, it’s a long dark night of the soul (although I don’t believe in souls). There is a danger of failure, loss, confusion, or a certain kind of self-destruction in traversing the darkness, but there’s also great transformation and wisdom to be gained in the journey and getting to the other side (a gate and threshold to traverse).
I feel that this card has come up for me time and again personally as I’ve had a lot of feelings and experiences thrown into doubt in recent months, and I’m even left questioning my concepts of romantic love and partnership. It’s a deeply existential struggle to truly look at such things and question precisely what they are and how you’ve valued them, possibly reevaluating who you are and who you will be in the world in the process. If defining relationships become a place of doubt and possible illusion, then you’re left with deep questions of what is real and who you are within that reality.
Thinking about this for this post reminded me of a hypothetical scenario in Wittgenstein’s “On Certainty” in which he discusses doubt through a thought experiment where he talks about a simple statement of “I’m living in England” but then imagines a slew of people coming in, telling him he is wrong, and offering proofs that that is not the case (§419-421). If this were thorough enough, your ground conviction in believing something to be the case would fall apart. This is the kind of illusion and doubt that one faces in the trials of the Moon, in my experience: the feelings and perspectives you’ve taken for granted without much analysis suddenly come deeply into question, and you are pushed to explore shadowy, unexplored realms within yourself.
To put it the most dramatically in terms of relationships, I felt resonance with a chunk of dialogue in a favorite show earlier today:
Liv: Why are you doing this?
Major: Doing what?
Liv: Making me doubt the only thing in my life that I was sure was real.
iZombie, S2: E4
This is a stage of journey that takes more resolve and courage than most any other. One of the only other ones that pops to mind is the resolve of patience for the Hanged Man, but this card differs, in that it’s a resolve to keep stepping forward with conviction, courage, and the willingness to face self-destruction for deep truth, unlike the call to resolutely accept and surrender to process with the Hanged Man. Regarding this, I would like to link a post on resolve from my other blog about post-rock. It fits well with the consideration of walking resolutely through the darkness.
Even though everything I’ve said here might have a dour ambience, I find few cards as empowering as the Moon card. There’s the real opportunity here for the fundamental investigation and hero’s journey to come through to great insight and growth. Being called to connect with intuition, face doubts, and throw your self-concept into danger are not things to shy away from. They are some of the greatest opportunities on the spiritual path and represent the greatest courage there is. This is the true vulnerability of the Warrior.
May this help others find their way through their own personal dark times.
Gassho!
The Difficulties of a Spiritual Path and of Writing about It
23 Jan 2021 Leave a comment
in Blogging, Buddhism, Spiritual Path Tags: Being-time, Gratitude, Losing way, Meditation, Writing
I just posted again on the Dhammapada. This is a project that I took up about a year and a half ago, planning on fusing a reading project of going through it again with an effort to post more often on this blog, hoping to inspire others into following along and digging into this gem of the world’s wisdom. At the time, I poured my heart into the effort and got about halfway through and then flagged in effort. I was frustrated that many of the posts were getting no views at all. After struggling to write some posts, I just lost focus altogether.
I regret this now. There are other efforts on here that I haven’t completed, but this particular story represents a time to me when I have fallen a bit off of my path and my approaches to life and to sharing them here. It’s been hard to recognize recently that I feel stagnant in my life in many ways, and part of that is that I have had a long pause away from things like reading the Dhammapada, writing about it, and meditating regularly. Unfortunately, I think this is a standard hazard that many fall to, no matter how passionate about the pursuit of wisdom or a more skillful, grateful, compassionate, and awakened life.
It is much easier to fall into the stupor of routines, cover over our hearts and minds, and just hurt deeply in the samsara of attachments (as I just wrote about). In fact, recently, my heart aches greatly from the challenges of job, partnership, and a stable home. It’s a big time of transition, but doing things like writing here, meditating, and reading the Dhammapada, or more helpfully for me of late — about Dogen’s Zen regarding being-time, are crucial for a life of engaged happiness in this moment precisely as it is.
I’m sorry, dear reader, but I hope to do better on writing more often for you in the months and years ahead. You’re also welcome to email me if you ever have any questions or needs for companionship along the way.
May this bring you your own resolve to continue along the way.
Gassho!
Running Scared – A Spiritual Experience
02 Nov 2019 Leave a comment
in Spiritual Path, Vulnerability Tags: Attachment, Attention, Gratitude, Heartmind, Mindfulness, Narratives, Vulnerability
My breath huffs in and out as my feet plop on the cold pavement. The darkness envelops me like a lonely secret, and the cold reverberates through my muscle fibers, much more strongly than the earbuds in my ears. All this, however, is par for the course — the course that is distance running in the evening in the depths of fall. None of it occupies my mind or senses. Not really. They float in the periphery. Fear grasps all of my attention. My mind focuses on my left knee, which stiffly resists my attempts to run. The left leg clomps along, like an awkward log attached to my hip, rather than the supple motion of the other leg.
In recent months, I’ve returned to a running regimen for the first time in a while. It’s been a journey in and of itself, despite the relatively short time. As I’m much older than my young running enthusiast self of the past, I’m much more prone to injury, and I’ve fended off a few on the path towards a marathon. However, now, with about a month till the race, I’ve been hit with an injury that may force me to put up the shoes for a while. It started with tightness in my calf, which was handled by a new pair of shoes, but then that pain moved to my knee. Minor at first, it flared up near the end of a long training run recently, and since, I’ve had to move to ice, rest, a knee brace, and much care.
Last night, I laced back on the shoes and tried to face the pain and the fear of this knee. I’m afraid that it will force me to stop running and miss the race — the goal that has pulled me along through the last few months. I’m also afraid that if I keep running that I’ll hurt the knee even worse and may never recover enough to have a really functional knee for these kinds of activities anymore. The plodding in the cold with many layers and the knee brace is a test. It’s a walk along a tightrope between these two fears. It’s also an existential journey where I look at my attachments to both body and ambition straight in the face — a spiritual delve into my internal darkness, alongside the darkness enveloping my body’s steps.
Thankfully, after years of working on mindfulness, I see my heartmind jump from concern to concern, being pulled along by attachments and stories. As I let them go and relax into the present moment of movement, of breath, my knee relaxes as well. I stop and stretch and readjust, but I also let go of all my plans and concerns. There is only this next step forward; come what may. The delusions of the rest merely pull away from that, and being with it is truly taking care. Sometimes, this care is recognizing the needs of the body and stopping before hurting it. Sometimes, its pushing to get up and move, feeling that the stiffness is superficial. Gratitude, vulnerability, and insight are the only things to grasp onto in the process.
Walking along the Dhammapada — Chapter 10: The Rod/Violence
04 Apr 2019 1 Comment
in Buddhism, Spiritual Path, The Dhammapada Tags: Deleuze, Hate, Nietzsche, Nirvana, Ressentiment, Retaliation, Samsara, Self-development
I’m taking another journey through the Buddha’s lessons on the path of the Dharma (one way you could translate the title Dhammapada). A few years ago, I wrote posts on a handful of chapters, but I didn’t go over every chapter. This time, I’m challenging myself to post on every chapter and share them here.
In my commentaries, I’ve tried to focus on the Buddha’s proposed practice, one which might be called a cognitive-behavioral approach of sorts, of reframing one’s mind as well as taking up new patterns of speech and action. I’ve tried to emphasize that the mindful approach to new speech and action help with the cultivation of the new wise frame of mind, and the wiser frame of mind helps with choosing and sticking to better, more wholesome forms of speech/action. For a refresher, see my commentary on the 1st chapter, which truly holds the structure of everything that comes after in terms of the path of Dharma presented by the Buddha.
We see this proposal of change lined out clearly in this chapter about the negative outcomes of violent mind, speech, and action. The opening lines tell us to reframe our mind for empathy. This cognitive reframing is done indirectly by appealing to the reader’s emotional experience rather than making a straightforward logical argument that you need to change the way your mind sees the world. We’re told that as we feel pain and suffering, so do all other things, so do not harm them. This is a key piece of what is later known as the “hinayana”, or what we might more respectfully call the early teachings of Buddhism: do not harm others. From cultivating empathy for them, we will choose not to speak harshly or act with violence. Precisely these, speech and action, are covered in the lines after the call to empathy.
In another call back to the first chapter’s lines about hatred ending through non-hatred, we’re given a key metaphor to our understanding of what the path is ultimately about.
If, like a broken bell,
You do not reverberate,
Then you have attained Nirvana
And no hostility is found in you.
-Trans. Fronsdal (134)
The end of the line previous to this points out that harsh speech generates harsh retaliation. This metaphor of the bell follows. The bell, then, indicates that much of our action is automatic, and the retaliation from the pain and threat imposed by another flows as a reaction as automatically as the bell rocks back and forth when we hit it. It’s almost a law of human psychology presented as similar to the causation seen in physics. Here then, we see that Nirvana truly is a breaking down of the standard, a taking away rather than an achievement of something on top of what we already have/do. In other metaphors, Nirvana is a blowing out of the burning fire that is our experience of the poisons and clinging; here, it’s a breaking of the bell that is our instrument of perceiving and reacting to samsaric stimuli. Notice, the broken bell isn’t numb to the strike. It simply doesn’t react by reverberating and ringing. It doesn’t retaliate.
In order to break the bell, we must reframe our mind. This comes from recognizing the unwholesomeness of violence, hatred, and retaliation. Again, in the first chapter, we were told that one who blames others for hurting us is stuck in samsaric hatred that cycles onward; whereas, for one who does not blame and judge like this, hatred ends. So, finding empathy for others and not inflicting pain back, even when they do it to us, is the view we need in order to step beyond retaliation and end hatred. The path is about taming ourselves, shaping ourselves to react differently. We do this by utilizing the one true freedom we have: focusing our insight on a new perspective and mindfully attending to our speech and actions, over and over again, in order to cut off the automatic nature of our lives. This is liberation.
I will point out two final things in closing this discussion. First, line 144 has a list of the qualities that the one focusing on taming the mind, speech, and action in this way will have. Second, the final line reiterates the task of the sage from our previous chapter:
Irrigators guide water;
Fletchers shape arrows;
Carpenters fashion wood;
The well-practiced tame themselves.
-Trans. Fronsdal (145)
May this help you break the bell.
Gassho!
As a side-note, all of this talk about changing one’s reactions and getting beyond the seething anger of retaliation fits well with Nietzsche’s focus on “Ressentiment”. He also wrote that Buddhism was like a psychological cleansing of these sentiments, and I wonder if it was passages like this that brought that assessment. Deleuze’s book on him is great for this topic, if you’re interested in that as well.
Living in the Light of Death
07 Mar 2019 Leave a comment
in Buddhism, Death, Existentialism, Spiritual Path, Warrior's Path Tags: Change, Dream, Emptiness, Heidegger, Ken McLeod, Life, Narratives, The Dhammapada, The Heart Sutra, The Zhuangzi, Understanding
In a few days, it will be a year since my dad died. It’s been a very interesting and ponderous year. I’m reminded of the first book I read about existentialism, which explained the idea of an existential crisis in relation to Heidegger’s Being and Time as an event bringing a heightened awareness to our mortality in such a way that the experience of life is fundamentally altered for a period. That’s what this has been.
Of course, I have meditated on change at length prior to this. It’s evident in a large number of the posts here over the last few years, but being confronted with the situation of having to personally sort out one’s own story and relationship with mortality is different than cerebrally breaking down the sweeping, subtle, and slow changes of matter, mind, and heart.
Ironically enough, recently, I’ve been reading chapters in a meditation manual about meditating on change and death, and the writer/teacher emphasizes two phases to the sessions — one for thinking on ideas or images about change/death and the other to let the emotional depth of meaning really sink in and be understood, not just conceptually. This experience has been something like the second part of that process. For the last few years, I could have quoted on a whim a passage that struck me in the first translation of The Dhammapada that I read: “All states are without self*”, but what does that mean when a life ends? I’ve been slowly piecing that together over time.
I dream of him often. In the last few weeks, I can think of a time when he appeared in our lives again — a Doppelgänger, and I was the only one in my dream who remembered he had died and didn’t trust this imposter, and yet, I didn’t want to inflict loss on my family again by convincing them of the truth. In another, he wandered around a former city I lived in with me, but he had some sort of handicap and lacked the wit and mental acuity he had in life. I think I was imagining what his survival might have meant as a tradeoff, and it was tragic in other ways — “he” was still gone, but then again, all states are without self. Finally, I had a dream where he was a cold, heartless man, driven by greed. He was an ambitious entrepreneur, somewhat like the small business owner from my childhood but fully consumed by it as his only pursuit. He seemed dead to me in his cold grimace and methodical drive. This made me realize that there are other ways we describe people as dead — when their emotions seem to lack the humaneness of connection, of the passion and compassion of a beating heart, thumping out a song with the lives of others, always already around us. Just as change is a constant and identity is an abstraction, rather than an essence (“All states are without self”), we are always already born into a universe, billions of years old, on a small rock populated with other humans — as well as all their culture, history, language, minds, and hearts…
My dad in life was a warm man, very much unlike the cold, driven, hyper-capitalist in my last dream, but at this point, I don’t know how much more there is left of him other than the stories of those who remain. I hope to still learn from him like this in dreams and musings, and I hope that these thoughts of him continue to bring insights into what it means to live and how death is related to that living presence in this world. I can’t claim to understand what the process of life is about, as I’m convinced there isn’t some permanent essence, a soul, behind it, but going through all this has sharpened the sense of mystery to existence. In many ways everything has felt just as hazy and ethereal as a dream, and sometimes, I feel that I’m not sure if I’m dreaming of a butterfly or if I’m the butterfly dreaming of Z, so to speak, but I do as that meditation teacher suggests: rest in the looking — look in the resting. What else is there to do? I’m already in the thick of the mystery and there’s no way out. There’s only the ongoing path of being on the way.
A much more succinct passage from The Dhammapada’s opening chapter could get at the heart of all this much more quickly:
Hatred never ends through hatred.
By non-hate alone does it end.**
This is an ancient truth.Many do not realize that
We here must die.
For those who realize this,
Quarrels end.
– Chapter 1, (5-6), trans. Fronsdal
Maybe we’re better served by a statement about the nature of that mystery from The Heart Sutra:
‘Gate gate, paragate, parasangate, bodhi svaha.’
– Gone, gone, beyond gone, completely beyond gone, great awakening.***
May this provide comfort and camaraderie to others who experience the mystery of being.
Gassho!
*The point of this quote is that everything lacks essence. Another way I say this, riffing on Buddhism, is: “All composite things are impermanent, and all things are composites.” Our greatest spiritual battle is overcoming an unreflective, ego-protective sense in which we posit some permanent essence behind us, an unchanging self. I take this quote to mean that everything lacks essence and that “the self” is an emergent process, not a set entity. Here are a couple other translations of this passage to compare:
“All things in the world are insubstantial.” – trans. Ananda Maitreya
“All things are not-self.” – trans. Gil Fronsdal
The second translation is particularly exciting because one could possibly see the way that the Prajna Paramita tradition of emptiness (shunyata) is already indicated in these pithy remarks, and this particular quote also points to interdependence — if all things are not encompassed as a static entity in and of themselves, they’re in relationship with everything.
**Most translations say “love” or “loving-kindness” here instead of “non-hate”, and while those are more poetic, I prefer this more literal translation. The word has a negative prefix on hate, meaning the negation of hate, not another word that means the opposite. Negation in language can mean a returning to zero, so to speak, and I think that fits the meditation practice and ideas in the early texts better rather than telling people to react in the opposite. One must let go of the clinging and reactivity that gives rise to hatred. Only then can loving-kindness be cultivated as a new relationship with the world.
*** I pieced this together from reading several commentaries and translations.
Reiki: The Five Precepts (Gokai – 五 戒) – 4th Precept: Actualization
31 Aug 2018 1 Comment
in Buddhism, Practice, Presence, Spiritual Path, Taoism, Usui's Five Precepts, Usui's Reiki Tags: Actualization, Compassion, Dōgen, Tao Te Ching, Upaya, Water, Wu wei
Just for today:
Don’t hold on to anger
Don’t focus on worry
Honor all those who came before
Work hard on self-improvement
Be kind to all living things
– Reiki Center App, Windows PhoneNow:
Peace
Faith
Gratitude
Actualization
Compassion
– My shortened mantra of the precepts
It’s been a couple years since the last entry in this series. To be honest, this current post daunted me, and at the time, I put it off as I had a lot of other ideas to write. However, my reiki posts have resonated a lot with followers of this site. There are regularly many who read these posts, and for them, I will continue discussing the last two precepts of Usui-sama’s practice. May this help guide them with their own engagement with the path.
The fourth precept is usually translated as something along the lines of “work hard” or “work diligently”. This has always seemed the clunkiest of the precepts to me. The term “work” seems like an earthy, money-driven concept, or one of bodily toil, rather than commitment to spiritual improvement. In this, I merely observe from my own perspective — outlining my own understanding and associated concepts with the term “work”. It may or may not be lighter or heavier of a concept for you, but I have a sense that there are many who would share my hesitance at this translation.
So what do we make of this? An engaged practice is difficult. It is work in that sense. We could think of this then more as: practice diligently. Ane what brings diligence to a Buddhist practice (recall that Usui was a Tendai monk)? Mindfulness, commitment, continuing to try moment by moment throughout the day without judging yourself for when you come up short. Instead, you merely refocus on the task at hand, when your mind or attention wanders. Thus, we could rephrase this as: practice mindfully with engagement and an open heart.
If we add one more piece of understanding to this, we’ll get to what I mean by “actualization” in my shortened form. Buddhism speaks often of upaya — skillful means. It’s an engagement that fits the situation, responding to it with connection and compassion. This responsiveness does not necessarily fit some greater theoretical technique handed down by a master; rather, it’s a pure presence of being one with the situation. I find this to shed light on the related (in my view) idea of wu wei from Taoism. Wu wei is often translated as inaction, non-action, or not doing. However, in delving into Taoism, it becomes clear that it’s better understood as action that conforms with the natural flow of situations; it’s in this sense that we can get closer to being like water, as Lao Tzu counsels us to do in an early chapter.
“The best are like water” – Lao Tzu (trans. Red Pine)
“Actualization” is a term that I got from a translation of Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō from the famous passage Genjo-koan . I was struck by an enigmatic passage at the end in which a monk explains the nature of wind being everywhere around the world while fanning himself. This is the true koan aspect of this chapter, and I honestly cannot say that I’m certain I understand it still. However, I take from it that the situation at hand is a hot summer’s day, and though in the abstract, the wind is an ongoing thing of the world that will never end and goes everywhere, in the concrete of this moment, the summer heat and still calls for the engaged action of fanning. If we take this metaphorically, our lives come up with moment after moment for awareness, connection, and compassion, but this requires us being present and mindful within each of those moments, not grasping onto any ideology or conceptual system with our heads in the clouds; rather, here, in this moment, we can be open and responsive instead of active (which I think of as controlling events to meet one’s own ego-driven desires). This is what it takes to actualize, and in actualizing, one responds to each moment — this is that diligent practice above.
May this discussion bring you new understanding of the precepts and how to practice them.
Gassho!
Previous Reiki: The Five Precepts Post – 3rd Precept: Gratitude
For those compelled by that connection with wu wei and water from the Tao Te Ching, here is chapter 8 from Red Pine’s translation. Read this with all the ideas of this post in mind; it resonates well with them all:
The best are like water
bringing help to all
without competing
choosing what others avoid
thus they approach the Tao
dwelling with earth
thinking with depth
helping with kindness
speaking with honesty
governing with peace
working with skill
and moving with time
and because they don’t compete
they aren’t maligned
Mindfulness: The Great Challenge
03 Dec 2015 2 Comments
in Buddhism, Mindfulness, Spiritual Path, Tao Te Ching, Taoism Tags: Impermanence, Practice, Prajna, Presence, Unfolding
Mindfulness doesn’t live and die on the cushion.
It’s a journey, an opportunity,
In every moment.
I can be here, present:
Composed and compassionate
Serene and serendipitous
Open and observant
Or I can be lost, confused:
Reactive and restricted
Selfish and selective
Dormant and dogmatic.
The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step
-Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching §64, Trans. Jonathan Star
The Sage worries not about the journeys or tales of yesterday. Nor does he lose sight of the beginning step while looking at the future destination beyond the horizon. Knowing both, he steps forward, feeling every inch of ground in this step–right here, right now. The Sage’s secret wisdom?–This step is the only step. Each step is the beginning step. Each step is the whole journey. The only step to take is the one underfoot right now. The only journey is the current movement of the leg and foot, and there is no greater miracle than this. The Sage takes this step with awareness and gratitude–not lost, elsewhere, and not attached to any outcome.
The present is direct and straightforward. Your experience of it is heightened through mindfulness. When you are mindful of your breath in meditation, when you mindful of your thoughts, or when you are mindful of going from the practice of meditation to dealing with the kitchen sink, all those situations are in the present. You don’t borrow ideas from the past, and you don’t try to fundraise from the future. You just stay on the spot, now.
That may be easy to say, but it’s not so easy to do. We often find it satisfying to have a reference point to what might happen in the future or what has happened in the past. We feel more relaxed when we can refer to past experiences to inform what is happening now. We borrow from the past and anticipate the future, and that makes us feel secure and cozy. We may think we are living in the present, but when we are preoccupied with the past and future, we are blind to the current situation.
Living in the present may seem like quite a foreign idea. What does that even mean? If you have a regular schedule, a nine-to-five job, you cycle through your weekly activities from Monday to Friday, doing what is expected of you and what you expect of yourself. If something out of the ordinary occurs, something that is completely outside of the routine of your Monday-to-Friday world, it can be quite disconcerting.
We are bewildered when something unexpected pops up. A flea jumps on your nose. What should you do? You swat at it or you ignore it if you can. If that doesn’t work, then you search for a memory from the past to help you cope. You try to remember how you dealt with the last flea that landed on you. Or you may try to strategize how you’ll prevent insects from bothering you in the future. None of that helps much. We can be much more present if we don’t pay so much attention to the past or expectations of the future. Then, we might discover that we can enjoy the present moment, which is always new and fresh. We might make friends with our fleas.
-Chögyam Trungpa, Mindfulness in Action, pp. 46-47.
May this inspire you to mindful presence in this moment.
Gassho!
Visit to the Tsubaki Grand Shrine
06 Sep 2015 2 Comments
in Adventure, Shintoism, Shrine, Spiritual Path Tags: Nature, Unfolding
Recently, I went to the Tsubaki Grand Shrine–the 1st Shinto shrine built in North America (although moved from its original location in California to the current one in Washington State). It’s only about an hour drive from my place, surprisingly enough.
It’s located in some serene woods northeast of Everett, WA. It sits nestled amidst trees, alongside a soothing river. I can think of no better location for a religious shrine of a tradition that praises nature in all of her rhythms, cycles, blessings, changes, and unfoldings.
There were many altars, laced with traditions and rituals, speaking to the genuine Japanese heritage of this shrine–not some second-rate American attempt. For instance, there was a column with the animals of the Chinese zodiac carved around it, chasing each other endlessly through the ongoing years of the calendar.
There was also a basin with long-handled wooden ladles for cleansing one’s hands and face before entering the nearby door to the shrine proper. The basin lay below an awning, keeping the water from being fouled by falling leaves, and a wise, kindly dragon stood above and behind it, his stony visage protecting from spiritual impurities.
A few steps away, a thick rope hung from another awning, attached to a large bell. This implement for announcing oneself at the temple entrance was above another basin–this one empty of water, but the open space was meant to collect offerings from visitors.
I’m standing at the entrance in the background, and the washbasin is in the foreground to the right. The description of the shop that follows is hidden behind the washbasin area.
To the right, a window displayed many small amulets and talismans that visitors can purchase for blessings in the year ahead.
My companion and I asked questions about the amulets, and the middle-aged, Japanese woman called out to her “sensei” to help us. She disappeared behind a partition and was soon replaced by a white-haired, Western man in his later 50s who answered our questions with gusto and greeted us to the shrine. He even let us inside to use the restroom despite the entrance having been cordoned off for the day already.
He pointed out a “portable shrine”–a large, golden relic atop wooden struts with colorful supports holding the shrine in place–and explained there are festivals which will require this. One is in Bellevue in September. We immediately agreed to go.
Here it is as well as the shrine’s reverend. This was found on the Northwest Public Radio’s site: nwpr.org.
After this, we walked outside and looked at the other altars for blessings and contemplation below the main shrine. There was a small enclosure, overgrown with moss and populated by some kami. Nearby, there was a board to hang small plaques with wishes for the kami to read and bless.
Here are the guardians sitting atop a boulder in that small enclosure.
Further down the past was a large stone orb on a pedestal with instructions for a prayer that should be said three times while rubbing the orb. It is supposed to bring overall well-being to one’s life and relationships. This pedestal overlooked the peaceful course of the river below, which we walked down to and admired after each struggling to pronounce the Japanese prayer (written out for us poor gaijin in Romaji, so it was possible to phonetically sound out) three times. 🙂
Here I am saying the prayer and rubbing the orb.
Near the pedestal, there was a simple post with the wish that peace prevail on Earth written on it in numerous languages…
The peaceful post with the river in the distance…
Finally, at the end of the path below the main shrine was a small shrine adorned with statues of mystical, white, Japanese foxes–those magical creatures of Japanese lore. This shrine had several of the iconic Japanese arches before it–in red and gold.
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Just beyond the arches, before ending at the fox shrine, there was a large stone in the shape of what looked like the yin from a yin-yang symbol. A plaque explained its meaning as well as the tripartite Shinto symbol made of three of these swirling icons. The plaque said that Shinto beliefs hold that the entire universe down to the structure of subatomic particles is composed of spirals. Thus, the spiral is a symbol for revering the myriad and mysterious unfoldings of nature. I was awestruck by this simple yet profound praise of Nature in a quaint forest glade. Here was a simple pointer to the wonder of All rather than “my” mastery of it.
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“I am sure everyone who visits the shrine is struck by the mysterious and undeniable beauty and the peaceful atmosphere that surrounds it. These are things I still notice everyday when I arrive. I find the earlier mornings at the shrine to be a true treasure because these are the times I can feel the world awakening around me. I love walking down the main path, listening to the birds and the river while seeing the morning sunlight shining through the trees. I can’t help but feel connected at these moments.
I’ve noticed while helping to maintain the shrine grounds it can often feel like you’re fighting an unwinnable battle against the forces of nature. You can pick up hundreds of leaves but more are constantly falling onto the ground, areas that have been cleared of weeds all of a sudden have weeds again a week later, and areas that have been raked soon need raking again. However it has dawned on me that maintaining the shrine grounds is not a struggle with nature but is instead an important part of the natural order of the shrine. Leaves fall and I pick them up; it’s part of the cycle. In a way it’s a balancing act between nature’s chaos and the human need for order. By clearing the shrine grounds, you get to be a part of the process.” — Teddy Rodriguez, a volunteer who helped maintain the shrine for some months–taken from the Shrine’s newsletter
May this adventure inspire you to see your engagement and interaction with nature. May it help you see your place within it, not different, not separate–but a piece of the whole; spirals all the way down.
Gassho!
Path of the Dharma: Dhammapada–Chapter 23: The Elephant
25 Aug 2015 Leave a comment
in Buddhism, Spiritual Path, The Dhammapada, Zen Tags: David Loy, Elephant, Grasping, Liberation, Metaphysics, Nirvana
Note: I’m going to move forward in the book to this late chapter and then skip back to a couple earlier sections. Also, the passage below, although long, is not the complete chapter, rather about 2/3 of it. I chose this particular selection from it to emphasize one point of content, honing the Manjushri sword of wisdom.
Patiently I shall bear harsh words as the elephant bears arrows on the battlefield. People are often inconsiderate.
Only a trained elephant goes to the battlefield; only a trained elephant carries the king. Best among men are those who have trained the mind to endure harsh words patiently.
Mules are good animals when trained; even better are well-trained Sind horses and great elephants. Best among men is one with a well-trained mind.
No animal can take you to nirvana; only a well-trained mind can lead you to this untrodden land.
The elephant Dhanapalaka in heat will not eat at all when he is bound; he pines for his mate in the elephant grove.
Eating too much, sleeping too much, like an overfed hog, those too lazy to exert effort are born again and again.
Long ago my mind used to wander as it liked and do what it wanted. Now I can rule my mind as the mahout controls the elephant with his hooked staff.
Be vigilant; guard your mind against negative thoughts. Pull yourself out of bad ways as an elephant raises itself out of the mud. — Trans. Easwaran
The well-trained mind will take you along the path like the well-trained elephant carries the rider.
Something about the metaphor in this chapter struck me profoundly. The image of the well-trained elephant is very clear, and yet again, we have a comparison that distinguishes the path to nirvana from the other. In this first passage, the Buddha makes clear that the best quality to cultivate is a well-trained mind. This echoes the main message in the other sections we’ve discussed so far. He emphasizes here, however, that the only thing that will allow you passage to nirvana is a well-trained mind. The previous sections didn’t emphasize this destination.
Perhaps, we should take a moment here and question what exactly nirvana is. Otherwise, we run the risk of falling into undefined terms and elaborate concepts without understanding the intention of this message, rather falling prey to our own fancies and preconceptions. This task of considering nirvana may sound easy, but it isn’t and could be written about at much greater length. The word “nirvana” has a certain exotic and fantastical feel to it, at least from my perspective. I remember using it as a child to indicate having reached some ideal and unassailable state–a perfection of sorts that once attained never falls away. Such an understanding reiterates familiar metaphysical dichotomies of being fallen and transcending our state of lack to a completion in the ideal. The two phrases I just used indicate two familiar examples of this–Christianity (transcending fallen state–the lacking nature of sin–through the perfect grace of the ideal: God and Christ) and Western philosophy’s metaphysical systems in general from Plato onward (contrast of the lacking living world with the ideal one which is the Truth, the Real world behind the shadow one that we are in–appearance vs. essence). While there may be arguments for such an understanding of nirvana from passages in the Pali canon, it does not fit well with this section from the Dhammapada.
This passage makes clear that the path to nirvana is the path of the well-trained mind. The examples here show that the well-trained mind is not swayed away from the good, selfless presence in the world (as discussed in my first selection from the Dhammapada) by lust, laziness, etc. We’re shown through the metaphor of the trained elephant that the mind can be trained so that it does not wander about, and this, just this, is the path to nirvana. It’s not acquiring some special state (which wouldn’t fit with the Buddha’s emphasis on impermanence anyway) or going somewhere else outside the “ordinary” world (Where would such a place be anyway???). Rather, it’s being fully immersed in the world with our mind as it is underneath all the constant layers of distractions and compulsions.
We often think of nirvana as the result of enlightenment, highlighting the profound wisdom in this path/practice (to be enlightened is to have seen the Truth), but we could also cast it as liberation; that is another, if not equally emphasized, “attainment” (there’s really nothing to attain, more like something to lose) of Buddhist practice, and with that re-thinking, we can see that the path of the trained elephant is simply that–liberation from the myriad sufferings of a confused mind. This regal animal can bear us to the core of our own happiness, revealing our own basic goodness beneath the desire, aversion, and ignorance of our untrained mind.
Walking the path step by step…
In case we conclude that a capitalized Mind is something other than our usual one, Huang Po deflates all delusions about its transcendence.:
“Q: From all you have just said, Mind is the Buddha; but it is not clear was to what sort of mind is meant by this “Mind which is the Buddha.”
Huang Po: How many minds have you got?
Q: But is the Buddha the ordinary mind or the Enlightened mind?
Huang Po: Where on earth do you keep your “ordinary mind” and your “Enlightened mind”?”A familiar implication is the Chan/Zen insistence that enlightenment is nothing more than realizing the true nature of the ordinary activities of one’s everyday mind. When Hui Hai was asked about his own practice, he replied: “When I’m hungry I eat; when tired I sleep.”
The Pali texts of early Buddhism do not emphasize “everyday mind” in the same way, for they often contrast the consciousness of an ordinary person (puthujjana) with the liberated mind of an awakened arahant. Yet there is the same focus on not-clinging, a notable example being in the “Book of the Six Sense Bases” in the Samyutta Nikaya. There the Buddha repeatedly teaches “The Dhamma for abandoning all.” He emphasizes that practitioners should develop dispassion toward the six senses and their objects (including the mind and mental phenomena) and abandon them, for that is the only way to end one’s suffering.
“Through dispassion [his mind] is liberated. When it is liberated there comes the knowledge: “It’s liberated.” He understands: “Destroyed is birth, the holy life has been lived, what had to be done has been done, there is no more for this state of being.””
Listening to this discourse, “the minds of the thousand bhikkus were liberated from the taints by nonclinging.” The absence of grasping is what liberates.
“Truly, is anything missing now?
Nirvana is right here, before our eyes.
This very place is the Lotus Land, this very body, the Buddha.”–HakuinPassage taken from David R. Loy’s A New Buddhist Path, pp. 50-51.
May this inspire you to train your mind and release the mind that grasps so that you too may achieve liberation–the well-trained mind will bear you on the path to nirvana.
Gassho!
On the Way 
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