I have one more blip out of the Shambahala Sun issue and then it goes into the recycle bin. It is a small portion out of an interview between Andrea Miller and Thich Nhat Hanh.
Question: Can a ceremony make someone Buddhist?
Answer (partial) from TNH: No, it’s not by ceremony that you become a Buddhist. It is by committing to practice.
Image via Wikipedia
I finally finished reading the articles out of the most recent Shambhala Sun magazine. It had the usual article from current leader Sakyong Mipham, but this one rang a bell or two for me. Typically his articles don’t, so I thought since this one did, I would just copy out some of the quotes that jumped out at me. A lot of Buddhist lessons are taught in metaphor which lends itself to staying current with the times. The metaphors Mipham uses in this article resonate with my feelings I’ve mentioned before regarding life as a verb or a process. Other than that, I’ll just let the quotes stand on their own without editorial from me.
#1 ”Every society is a ceremony that reflects the attitude of individuals toward themselves and others. We have been participating in somebody else’s ceremony — a ceremony of being asleep.”
#2 “We are living in an atmosphere of heightened speed and superficiality, characterized by constant reaction. We are bombarded with stimuli telling us we need something else to feel complete.”
#3 “Thus enlightened society is characterized by constantly maintaining the ethos of awake, inherently acknowledging that if we do not maintain “awake,” we will be asleep. Sleep takes place when people either forget or ignore basic goodness. Then, acting on the insecurity, guilt, and fear that arise, people do horrendous things.”
#4 “”Complicated” cannot understand simple, but simple can understand complicated.”
#5 “Enlightened society can happen in any culture. The past offers examples. The future depends on our view.”
The lovely folks at Counterpoint Press sent me a copy of the latest translation by Red Pine for review. The Lankavatara Sutra is said to be the only Zen sutra given by the Buddha. It’s billed on the back of the book as being the ‘holy grail’ of Zen, passed down through Bodhidharma, etc. In the introduction, Red Pine goes through some fairly extensive historical data lending some power to this. I have no formal education on Buddhist history, so I’m ok taking it all at face value. It does certainly read very Zen like with a lot of pointing and nudging towards non dual thinking as being the highest drive fo the practice.
The sutra itself is very dense and it was a tough read. It is most certainly a text to study slowly. One reading barely exposes you to all it has to say. My first read through did not include the extensive notes either. Red Pine’s notes are included along with the text and often take full pages themselves. This is definitely a text I will have to go back through slowly taking and reading the commentaries with it. It is also written to an audience of serious practitioners. From my experience reading other shorter sutras, this one is not talking to casual practitioners. The concepts are not watered down and don’t end in dualistic examples. The entire thing is presented as 108 questions and 108 answers with extensive explanations and summaries presented in verse.
If I had any idea how much this text would make my head hurt trying to get through it, I would have thought twice about agreeing to reviewing it. Now that I’m through it, however, I do look forward to going back through it slowly including the notes and commentaries. It is not something you can rush through. Reading this as if the Buddha decided to explain the intricacies of the Heart Sutra and then smoked some crack before he got started.
Not to be excluded from this review is the introduction itself. Red Pine talks about his reservations on tackling this enormous translation and how it actually took time for him to mentally get to the place where he actually committed to taking it on. He also expounds quite a bit on the historical basis for the sutra itself. Normally I don’t find this kind of thing very interesting, but it actually held my attention and made the reading of the text feel more personalized.
So if you are up for a challenge and enjoy sutra reading, give the Lankavatara Sutra a spin.
*this is a repost from August of 2009 but it’s just as valid today as it was then. For whatever reason it popped into my head while I was meditating just now so I thought I’d stick it back up front since nobody ever goes all the way back to the beginning of a blog.
Why I meditate.
I want to be kind. I want to be compassionate. I want to be the person that makes others feel more peaceful and settled just by sitting in the same space with me.
I want be kind because it is the best possible, most clear, most sensible action to take. The goal is not to be ‘good’ or avoid Hell (whatever that is) or get extra points for Heaven (whatever that is). The goal is to have no goal and still be kind.
The meditation part comes in because it is during that practice of intensified mindfulness, I get to begin to penetrate down below what my everyday mind is attached to (it’s one of the cool side effects of regular mindfulness practice). I recently heard a talk by Shinzin Young (see his youtube videos in the links to the left) in which he talks about the concept of No-self as being like an old CRT monitor displaying a pure white screen. It’s white when I look at it with naked eye, but if I put a magnifying glass up to it, it breaks down into the pixels of red/blue/green. So which is it? Red/blue/green or white? Well, it’s both depending on the perception, so we could also say it is both and neither. ..or to quote the Heart Sutra “form is emptiness, emptiness is form”.
So when I penetrate deeply enough into my own mind, and see this to be true, the notion of being disconnected from other people, places, things falls away and true kindness emerges. And true kindness is contagious like a virus, it has an energy of it’s own. Can you imagine a world infected with kindness? Kindness cooties…go get some.
Wow, so yeah, my brain was running off at the mouth and I had to get up out the bed and put this stuff down or I’d not be sleeping. I know I ain’t right. I was just down at Wanda June’s Hairdo Place and Taco Stand just a couple days ago and she said ‘boy, you ain’t right’, and I said ‘yeah, I know’.
Wanda June is insightful like that. She don’t meditate, she mostly just smells too many hairdo chemicals. She got the tallest hair in three counties, ya’ll. They say the higher the hair, the closer to God. Maybe she’s got her own enlightenment gig goin’ on.
In 1992 I graduated with a Masters degree in counseling. I had a piece of paper and a passion to help people. That personal mission carried me through 12 years of counseling on the front lines of HIV (back when all we had was AZT), addictions and childhood trauma. I started really young, before I had any life experience to back up all that book learning and it lead to a fairly intense burn out for me.
In 2004 I left the field of mental health and took a job doing anything else. I’ve been doing that job in corporate administration for nearly 8 years now. It was supposed to be a way station until I found my next life passion, not a place to drop anchor.
Eight years later, you could not have told me I would be where I am now. It has been a strange and painful journey for sure.
Near 6 years ago I would not have believed I would be moving back to Texas with my tail between my legs, bruised and depressed from living with a man deep in his addictions.
Five months ago I would not have predicted that a shy, introverted, chubby white guy with no rhythm would be nervously stepping into an aerobic dance class
Five months later and thirty pounds released unto the universe while shakin’ and booty poppin’ to Latin, Hip Hop, and popular dance music, I could not have predicted that I would be sweating and laughing and gasping for breath three times a week and loving it.
Even though I was burned out on counseling, I’ve never felt any sense of fulfillment unless I was helping people. Working a job that makes a buck does pay the bills but it does not fill up my soul.
So who could have predicted that in the next couple months I will be getting my Zumba instructor license? I couldn’t have, but I am.
Apparently my next life passion was there all along, right where I left it, I just had to shake the dust off.
This time of year always has me at some level of reflection on myself, where I’ve been and where I’m headed. Some years are more intense than others. This one feels pretty intense. I realized that I’ve had this blog for over two years and I’ve been practicing Zen for over four years. I started this blog as a public journal with a side light hope that if I found something that was useful to you as a reader that I had done a good thing. I don’t have any illusions about impacting millions, I just hope that my little flashlight circle of illumination might help a person or two as we all stumble along in the dark of life’s mystery.
Along those lines, I started a list of things I’ve learned. They are not shocking or revelatory by any means. What makes them significant to me is that I feel like thru Zen practice, I’ve actually got these at a cellular level, not just an intellectual one. I guess the better way to say it is that these are not lessons I figured out so much as they are answers I lived my way into. Now if I just knew what the hell to do with them J
Here they are in no particular order:
PS, no one has told me what to be when I grow up. Come on, slackers.
It’s been a while since my last post but I’ve not been idle by any means. Back in August I was feeling the need for a change in my health. I had tried running earlier in the year but despite my success with it in my early 30’s, my knees were still not willing to participate for very long and there wasn’t much of a shift in my weight either. At 205 pounds on a 5’8” frame, I was not feeling so great.
This causes anxiety for me not because I’m a single gay man and we all have to look like Adonis to be acceptable but because I’m an only child with aging parents and I know first hand from taking care of grandparents that when I enter my time as caretaker, I’m going to need my health to be good and my body strong.
So in the last four and a half months, I’ve been doing Zumba three times a week and counting calories through My Fitness Pal. As of this morning, I hit my initial goal of 30 pounds released unto the universe. I learned from an old friend years ago to never say you “lost” the weight because that means you can always find it again. Oh, I also had my annual blood work done and my numbers are all really good. After watching the documentary called Forks Over Knives, I also made a diet change and I’m eating about 97% vegan now. I recommend watching that film if you have the chance (I rented it thru iTunes).
Zumba dance has become my zazen of late. I need to get back on the cushion, but as you know, sometimes the Dharma is wiggly…and booty poppin. Though, I have to say, I ain’t got much of a booty right now. I’m down to size 34 pants and as soon as I’m able to get into a store that isn’t packed with last minute Xmas shoppers, I want to try on a pair of 32’s just to see if there’s a snowball’s chance I might fit into those.
I also realized in the process of releasing this weight that it’s also a marker for getting my life back. Almost 10 years ago I chose to walk a path with my ex partner that ultimately contained many painful life lessons. I have repaired or transformed most of what was damaged from that relationship, but the last piece was my body. I am now back to the weight I was when I took that path 10 years ago.
Now, more than ever in the past 10 years, I’m asking myself again what I want to be when I grow up. If you have any ideas, let me know.
Happy National Coming Out Day
Hi, my name is Shane and I’m gay. DUH! Yeah we know.
I came out over 23 years ago, but there are those who still struggle for various reasons with their comfort around their sexual orientation. Everyone of us who come out and are public about it help open the closet door a bit more and let in more light for those who are still in the dark.
If you are LGBTQ and have come out, I thank you and I’m proud you are part of my tribe. If you are LGBTQ and have not come out, I hope you find the strength of spirit from the rest of us to make the journey out of the closet. The tribe needs you. The tribe wants you
Equally important, to everyone else, if you are an ally, I want you to come out today too. Let those around you know that you are an supportive and affirmative of LGBTQ people. If it helps, you can give me as a resource to someone(s) who need a tribal member to lean on.
We make strides every year to not just opening the closet door, but breaking down the closet entirely.
A year ago this month, Asher Brown, a 13 year old boy here in the Houston area, committed suicide after being repeatedly bullied for being gay. Like many others last year (and every year), the daily pressure from bullies overwhelmed him to the point of feeling there was only one way out of the situation. He also identified as Buddhist, another reason he was picked on.
Asher’s mom, Amy, writes a blog at www.ashersparents.wordpress.com and would like to let you know that there will be an anniversary event at a local Buddhist temple here in Houston to honor his life and legacy. I have posted the details below.
WHEN:
Friday, September 23, 2011
7:00 – 8:00 pm
LOCATION:
Jade Buddha Temple
6969 West Branch Drive
Houston, Texas 77072
(281) 498-1616
www.jadebuddha.org
Last weekend I spent a few days in Joplin, Missouri. If that name rings a bell to you it’s because in May of this year the town was cut in half by an F5 tornado (that’s as big as they get). I spent time there because we had a sudden and unexpected death in the family with the loss of my cousin’s youngest son due to health problems.
My cousin and I spent our earliest years together next door to each other. We were more like brother and sister at the point. So when I heard the news about her son’s passing, there was no question about going to her. I had no words of wisdom, but I could offer my presence. That’s all there really is in times like this where all sense of reality goes out the window and you’re lost in a fog. Just presence. The words don’t matter yet anyway. That comes later.
But there were words
And tears
And silence
And remembering good times
And laughter
And mainly trying to remind ourselves that we are ok
Bad things do happen
And life is still ok
As these things go, our talk turned to spiritual issues. We talked about the stories we tell ourselves about what happens here in the solid world we can see and what comes after.
Wendy and I drove around early one morning so I could take some pictures in the morning light of the destruction and damage. While I slowly drove waiting for inspiration, she remarked on a batch of sunflowers growing spontaneously from the overturned dirt beside the road. No matter how bad things get, we decided, life finds a way to carry on. The sunflowers showed us what our words could not find.
And with that, I leave you with the only picture that really mattered that day.
