Walking along the Dhammapada — Chapter 4: Flowers

23 Mar 2019 2 Comments

by zeuslyone in Buddhism, The Dhammapada Tags: , , , , ,

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.

The title for this one and its associated metaphor are striking. I tried my best to succinctly unpack the meaning of this metaphor to encapsulate the meaning of this particular chapter. This is what I came up with: “flowers” is related to properly viewing and acting in the world. As a skilled gardener selects a flower, a follower of the Buddha who has caught sight of nirvana will select a well-taught Dharma-teaching. In other words, an insight of the goal of the end of suffering will lead to proper living in this world.

One who does not see things clearly will simply try to gather as many flowers as possible, which is lusting after sensory pleasures and clinging to them. Such people waste their lives, and continue along the samsaric path of further death and rebirth.

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In contrast, one who sees that the body is ephemeral will live wisely and will not be drawn to Mara’s flowers — cutting them away, thereby becoming undetectable to Death. This undectability repeats in the chapter, and yet again, we have a great simile for how transitory the body is: it is like foam.

Instead of clinging obsessively to sensory pleasures, one with such wisdom doesn’t cling — moving from experience to experience, and living life with the skill of simply engaging. Our example: we should move like a bee moves from flower to flower, gently gathering nectar without harming the flowers.

All of this so far more or less reiterates the messages of the first 3 chapters. Where this chapter furthers and expands the teaching thus far is from lines 50 to 59.

Do not consider the faults of others
Or what they have or haven’t done.
Consider rather
What you yourself have or haven’t done.
-Trans. Fronsdal (50)

Here, we’re not only reminded that our efforts alone are the key to walking the path and realizing nirvana, but it’s further stated that in becoming a walker of the path, one should let go of the judgments of others’ shortcomings. This is the positive corollary of letting go of the hatred of victimhood in the first chapter:

“He abused me, attacked me,
Defeated me, robbed me!”
For those carrying on like this,
Hatred does not end.

“She abused me, attacked me,
Defeated me, robbed me!”
For those not carrying on like this,
Hatred ends.
-Trans. Fronsdal (3-4)

Furthermore, in focusing on your efforts, the chapter then lines out that not only your mind and your actions should be in alignment, as in other chapters, or that your mind and your speech should be. It posits the next step: your speech and your actions should be in alignment. Early Buddhist teachings focus on purifying mind, speech, and action, and that’s exemplified here.

Like a beautiful flower,
Brightly colored but lacking scent,
So are well-spoken words
Fruitless when not carried out.

Like a beautiful flower,
Brightly colored and with scent,
So are well-spoken words
Fruitful when carried out.

Just as from a heap of flowers
Many garlands can be made,
So, you, with your mortal life,
Should do many skillful things.
-Trans. Fronsdal (51-53)

Well-spoken words should lead to associated well-done actions. Otherwise, the words are empty, lifeless, and life in itself is empty, as it doesn’t amount to anything but another cycle of death and rebirth, lacking the beautiful scent of the garlands of the noble path.

There’s one more passage that is worth highlighting directly with a quote because it is simply beautiful, one of the most artful, poetic, and inspirational in the text so far. It is the closing lines of the chapter. We too shall close this commentary with them, pointing out only that once again we have the emphasis that nirvana can be found in the daily mess of the life we’re already in: even when surrounded by the common clinging and delusion, wisdom can grow and flourish.

As a sweet-smelling lotus
Pleasing to the heart
May grow in a heap of rubbish
Discarded along the highway,
So a disciple of the Fully Awakened One
Shines with wisdom
Amid the rubbish heap
Of blind, common people.
-Trans. Fronsdal (58-59)

May this help you grow wise amidst the challenges of delusion.

Gassho!

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Musings of an Aspiring Oneironaut: Emotional Insight

29 May 2017 3 Comments

by zeuslyone in Dreams, Oneironaut Tags: , , , , ,

Intention:
Tonight, I will remember my dreams.
Tonight, I will have many dreams.
Tonight, I will have good dreams.
Tonight, I will wake up within my dreams.
— Modified from Holecek, Dream Yoga

One of the most difficult parts of travelling through dreams, studying them, understanding them, is encountering them with an open mind. We are all raised in cultures with a long history of trying to understand dreams because they’re such an integral aspect of human experience, and furthermore, because they are ostensibly laden with symbolism and emotion – i.e. personal and cultural meaning.

From my own Western cultural background, for instance, Freudian and Jungian interpretation dominate the hermeneutic playing field. Not to shortchange these approaches, but if we are to ever really understand dreams — dance with them and explore the dreamscape — we have to let go of the simple authority of such dogmatic and rigid culturally historied interpretations (without the self-reflective ability to trace out the cultural and historical developments that led to these interpretations). In this line, I’ve found a phenomenological approach to understanding dreams to be very helpful because instead of positing universal, ontological symbols and then muting the dreamer when he or she disagrees, it relies on pushing the dreamer to tease out his or her own understanding of the elements in the dream based on his or her daily waking life. Dreams are taken as meaningful here, but they are personally meaningful rather than asserting tropes that are universally of the same significance, independent of the mind at hand.

Also, I’m compelled by Tibetan dream yoga’s understanding which delineates different types of dreams, indicating more depth and terrain to the dreamscape. There are three types: samsaric, insight, and primordial light. The interesting thing is that the vast majority of dreams in this categorization is of the first type: samsaric. This means that they’re dreams animated by the delusion in which we live our lives — the delusion of not being awakened, of not seeing the true nature of the universe. As such, these dreams, though laden with personal meaning, don’t have any more profound revelation to share — they are our thoughts, feelings, ideas, and half-cognitions writ large and allowed to fully express themselves. This doesn’t make them meaningless, rather a story about ourselves to ourselves without revealing the greater truth of the world. The other two levels of dreams are required for that greater scope of insight and are rarer.

These aspects, different perspectives on dreams, have led me to reevaluate my dreams on a more personal and intimate level — taking them to reveal much about myself but not jumping to greater conclusions just due to the fact that they feel very compelling. Holding them with this dynamic of piqued interest but only light seriousness has left me wondering what to make of the more charged emotional undertones which can pull and color the whole experience of a dream.

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I recently had a dream that had a very strong emotional message which stays with me, even still coloring my daily experience several days later. It reveals feelings that were pushed aside, not actively engaged in my waking life. What does an onerionaut make of such personal, emotional insights? The dreamscape offers the opportunity to recognize them and address them well — integrating them into daily life with reverence and respect (as maybe they were withheld for some good reason and couldn’t readily be skillfully integrated without some effort and care). There’s such opportunity even in samsaric dreams, to better know ourselves in our lives and to better engage in our worlds. The only question is how to do so when these opportunities come up.

May this help you in your own interpretation of dream and investigations of your dreaming life.

Gassho!

Savoring the Moment

31 Mar 2017 2 Comments

by zeuslyone in Mindfulness, Peace, Poetry, Practice, Presence Tags: , , , , ,

Rushing
Exhausts
But gives meaning
Excitement about the next:
Thing
Event
Experience
Time ticks by
So quickly
Hardly experienced at all
Each moment passed over
For the next
A succession
No calm
No focus
Just consumption
With an ongoing
Indigestion
Not savoring any moment
In its fullness
…

Stop
Just breathe
Just be

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May this help you pause and attend to your ephemeral existence in its fullness.

Gassho!

Heartbreak Wisdom Journal — Entry 11: Just Live

27 Jul 2015 6 Comments

by zeuslyone in Buddhism, Heartbreak Wisdom Journal, Practice, Presence, Warrior's Path, Zen Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

The following is a long quote from Dainin Katagiri’s You Have to Say Something: Manifesting Zen Insight. When I read this for the first time a couple of months ago, it took my breath away. It’s been a guiding principle for practice and daily life, by that I mean practicing through the moments of daily life, ever since. If there’s something that has gotten me through the difficulties apparent in my last two Heartbreak Wisdom Journal entries, it’s wise teachings like this. If you don’t find a way to handle each day well and with equanimity, you’ll yearn for escape, and when going through negative emotional terrain, this yearning for escape can be most dire and dark. I hope that you too will be inspired by this and use it as a compass in your daily life as well.

As I mentioned, it is easy to become fed up with daily routine. You do the same thing, day after day, until finally you don’t know what the purpose of human life is. Human life just based on daily routine seems like a huge trap. We don’t want to look at this, so we don’t pay attention to daily routine. We get up in the morning and have breakfast, but we don’t pay attention to breakfast. Quickly and carelessly, we drink coffee and go to work.

But if you don’t pay attention, you will eat breakfast recklessly, you will go to work recklessly, you will drive recklessly, and you will go to sleep recklessly. Finally, you will be fed up with your daily routine. This is human suffering, and it fills everyday life.

The important point is that we can neither escape everyday life nor ignore it. We have to live by means of realizing the original nature of the self right in the middle of daily routine, without destroying daily routine, and without attaching to it. When it is time to get up, just get up. Even though you don’t like it, just get up. Getting up will free you from the fact that you have to get up.

Even though you don’t like your life, just live. Even though death will come sooner or later, just live. The truth of life is just to live. This is no attachment. Zen practice is to be fully alive in each moment. Only by this living activity can you take care of your everyday life.

-Dainin Katagiri, You Have to Say Something: Manifesting Zen Insight, pp. xv-xvi.

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Being fully alive in every moment–even in that of washing the dishes

“Zen practice is to be fully alive in each moment.” This does not mean indulgence, chasing your desires, or trying to set up a string of moments you want. On the contrary, this means to fully be with whatever is at hand: for instance, fully present to washing the dishes, even if you don’t like it. Instead of an endless array of likes and wants–Katagiri says in this book that desires are endless: not the goal of a practice of nonattachment–just live in this moment, whatever arises. Being fully alive in this moment doesn’t mean yearning for something else and attaching to that yearning. Not that yearning is bad; if it comes up, let it be, but don’t invest in it. Don’t spin it. Don’t attach to it. That’s wishing for this moment to end, to be dead. That’s being dead in this moment.

May this inspire you to find the strength to just be in your life, to just live. May your practice allow you to live fully in each moment, without attachment, without mistaking presence in every moment with only showing up to the moments you want to have happen/trying to acquire as many of those moments as possible. May this help you smile at every moment, liked or disliked, without escapism.

Gassho!

Previous Heartbreak Wisdom Journal Entry– Entry 10: Echoes/Grief
Next Heartbreak Wisdom Journal Entry–  Entry 12: Heartmind’s Abundance