As reviewed in our March 2010 issue, Mu Soeng’s new book “helps us understand the seminal Heart Sutra and its intuitive view of the nature of ultimate reality, and has an ultramodern twist, focusing on the place where quantum physics and Mahayana Buddhism converge.”
In this exclusive excerpt, Mu Soeng sheds light on the Buddhist view of the self. Continued
Many thanks to the many people who wrote here and privately to ask about my wife. Her surgery went well. It was never life threatening, although there were some serious risks. Fortunately, it looks like she is on the mend, and we hope to have her home in about three weeks if all continues like this.
Today’s Zazen ‘sit-a-long‘ was recorded while she was still in the operating room. During the operation, my mind would sometimes turn to “what if’s,” worst case scenarios, thoughts of what life might be like without her or if the doctor’s “could happens” came true … and I felt worry. Some people might think that long time Zen folks are supposed to be beyond all fears and worry. But I do not think that is true for most that I know, and in fact, I do not think it would be a good thing even if so.
Rather, I find that Zen Practice offers ways to be totally free from fear and worry even amid healthy fear and worry … both ways of experiencing life experienced as one.
(Click through to watch today’s talk, and to “sit-a-long.”)
Via Ocean of Dharma:
“The path of dharma, the dharma marga, provides all kinds of problems, and we work along with those. Without that path, we would fall asleep. Suppose highways were without any bends, just like Roman roads, a one-shot deal straight from New York to Washington, 100 percent straight. The drivers would fall asleep. Because of that, there would be more accidents than if the road had bends in it with road signs here and there. The path is personal experience, and one should take delight in those little things that go on in our lives, the obstacles, seductions, paranoias, depressions, and openness. All kinds of things happen, and that is the content of the journey, which is extremely powerful and important.”
From The Path is the Goal: A Basic Handbook of Buddhist Meditation
According to Edward Espe Brown in the March 2010 issue of the Shambhala Sun, mindful cooking is not about being detached while you’re de-boning or or being subdued while you’re sauteing. Rather, mindful cooking is about letting your passion cook. Here’s an assortment of books to help us get another taste of mindfulness.
The Complete Tassajara Cookbook
Recipes, Techniques, and Reflections From the Famed Zen Kitchen
By Edward Espe Brown
Shambhala Publications, 2009; 526 pp., $35 (cloth)
The Complete Tassajara Cookbook is a collection of Zen chef Edward Espé Brown’s best work. Thirty-five years ago, when Brown wrote Tassajara Cooking, he shied away from giving recipes in the usual sense, preferring to list ingredients without specific quantities in hopes of encouraging experimentation. Some of the recipes in this new volume are likewise refreshing loose, but Brown has come to realize that more specific instructions allow people to add to their repertoire, so most of the recipes are more precise. The one constant is that he always conveys his delight in vegetarian cooking. It’s not just about working on food, he says, but working on yourself, and awakening your capacities for living in the moment.
After the jump, seven more books for the mindful cook (and eater) in you. Continued
Yesterday we shared a link to His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s statement on the 51st anniversary of the Tibetan Uprising. US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi released a statement of support as well; you’ll find it after the jump. Continued
These Basic Buddhist Teachings are for right in the heart of life, today in a hospital room with my wife, the night before surgery. Times like these are the true proving ground.
This Practice has no purpose or value… and it is at moments like this one that its value and purpose are crystal clear.
In life, there’s sickness, old age, death and loss… other very hard times… But that’s not why ‘Life is Suffering‘. Not at all, said the Buddha.
(Click through to watch today’s talk, and to “sit-a-long.”) Continued
Shepard Fairey — he of the ubiquitous Obama poster, the ubiquitous Obey Giant street-art campaign, and countless other works, has now portrayed the Dalai Lama in this new portrait, Compassion.
You may recall that Fairey recently portrayed Aung San Suu Kyi as well.
Created to celebrate His Holiness’s 75th birthday, Compassion is available from Fairey’s website, and net proceeds will be split between Tibet House and LA Friends of Tibet. (The Dalai Lama’s birthday is on July 6th.)
Of the piece, Fairey says:
“I’ve always had great admiration for His Holiness and his non-violent approach to the plight of the Tibetan people. When I was approached with the opportunity to work with this beautiful image as a sanctioned source and create a work that evokes the Dalai Lama’s presence as I feel it, I was thrilled. I hope His Holiness remains a presence of compassion in the world for many birthdays to come!”
Compassion goes on sale at “a random time” today, here. Only 500 will be available, so hurry. UPDATE: all 500 copies have already sold out as of early this afternoon.
See also:
And being that today is the 51st anniversary of the Tibetan National Uprising , here are some current links that shouldn’t be missed (these open in new windows):
By Teresa Burns Gunther
Dani Shapiro is the author of five novels and the bestselling memoir, Slow Motion. In her new memoir, Devotion, Shapiro takes a literary journey into the essential questions of her life. Finding herself at midlife, she was troubled to realized that she still had more questions than answers. Her questions, and those of her young son — tell me about God, tell me what is true, what happens when we die — propelled her on a quest for what she believes.
Through yoga and meditation, Shapiro explored the questions and answers that haunt her. Devotion gives voice to the bewilderment and painful awareness that comes of middle age, losing one’s parents, reconciling one’s past with one’s present, and the terrifying world of parenting a seriously ill child.
Teresa Burns Gunther: You’ve said this book is from your son Jacob, and because of Jacob. You write with such honesty and openness, yet when Jacob was the subject I felt a protective distance between the reader and your son. How much did the idea of an adult or teenaged Jacob reading this book influence your writing?
Dani Shapiro: The idea of an adult or teenaged Jacob reading any of my books always influences my writing. I’m very aware of that right now, he’s still quite young, and he enjoys seeing his name in print. In fact, whenever I do radio or television interviews, he gets mad at me if I don’t mention him by name. But that may not always be the case, and I am sensitive to that. It’s a strange thing, being the child of writers — he gets this from both ends, since my husband Michael is a screenwriter — and I would never want him to feel that he doesn’t have a private life. That said, Jacob is indeed the beating heart of Devotion, and I wouldn’t, couldn’t, have written the book without telling the story of his childhood illness and recovery, and my own responses as they related to my anxiety and the emergence of a spiritual hunger. Continued
As the Tibetan Review has published today:
China said Mar 7 that any future reincarnation of the Dalai Lama must meet four criteria laid down by it but that there was no need now to excessively talk about the issue, according to the official Xinhua news agency Mar 7.
Another Xinhua report Mar 7 quoted Qiangba Puncog (pronounced as Jampa Phuntsog), chairman of the Standing Committee of the TAR People’s Congress, as saying at the same press conference: the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama must meet all the traditional requirements in four aspects: irreligious (sic) rituals, historical conventions passed on since the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912), lot drawing from the Golden Urn in the face of the Buddha Sakyamuni and the approval from the central government.
“Any claimed reincarnation that fails to meet all these requirements will be illegitimate and invalid,” Qiangba was quoted as adding. Continued
Sozan arrived at Isan’s and asked, “I’ve heard that you say, ‘To be with or without words is like a vine dependent on a tree. When suddenly the tree falls, the vine withers, where do the words return to?’” Isan laughed aloud, “Ha, ha!”
Recently I had a conversation with a sincere practitioner that began with the question, “Do you know of a Buddhist teaching that specifically talks about humor and how important it is?”
I laughed.
I don’t know a specific teaching about humor, but I can laugh. We all can. And that is the teaching. It’s important that we not mistake the teaching for the truth, because the teaching only points to the truth that we already embody.
All of my training in the Rinzai system of Zen koans is to bring me to the point of laughter, or the point of tears, the point of immediate and intuitive response, the very point when I liberate myself from intellectual entanglements – the vines on a tree – and come alive.
Laughter is the activity of a buddha.
Each koan tells the story of an encounter between a teacher and a seeker earnest enough to have a question and brave enough to ask it. Over and over, the great masters prove to be comedic geniuses. They don’t make light of the truth. Their laughter shows how very seriously they take delusion. Their words and gestures are like punchlines to leave you gasping in the face of reality, much like a stand-up comedian who has an audience helplessly convulsing in laughter on a very good night. Jokes aren’t funny if you stop to think about them.
Our sincerity alone, our search for understanding, is what stands in our way. An understanding of humor isn’t nearly as funny as the barb of a brilliant one-liner that pierces the barrier of dualistic thinking.
A monk asked Ummon, “What is the Buddha?” Ummon replied, “A dried shit-stick!”
Rev. Taigu again take the reigns to lead us through the next of the Ten Oxherding Pictures. He writes:
“Taming the bull is the story of discipline. One has to take the lead and establish a regular and steady practice. That is, at least, the traditional reading of this image. I would like to come forward with something very different: taming the bull can also be giving a specific direction to sitting, having goals and aims, and therefore we loose the original freedom of practice trying to make it fit our plans.”
(Click through to watch today’s talk, and to “sit-a-long.”) Continued
A founding member and the executive director of the All Burma Monks’ Alliance, U Pyinya Zawta, who spent ten years of his life behind bars for his pro-democracy activities, was one of the leaders of 2007’s “Saffron Revolution”—the nonviolent demonstration by thousands of Buddhist monastics calling for economic and political justice in the military-ruled country.
He’s also an integral part of “Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country,” which was honored with a nomination for this year’s Best Documentary Feature Oscar. (In the end, the award went to “The Cove.”) Directed by Anders Østergaard and distributed by Oscilloscope Laboratories, which is headed up by Beastie Boy and Tibet activist Adam Yauch, the film features the work of citizen journalists inside the Saffron Revolution as well as stylized reenactments of key moments.
U Pyinya Zawta and I spoke before the Oscars through translator Aung Moe Win, a graphic designer for the exile magazine The Irrawaddy who also made our interview possible. (Aung Moe shared his own remarkable story with PBS’s Frontline for their episode “Burma: State of Fear”.) Continued
“Buddha can’t be avoided. Buddha is everywhere. Enlightenment possibilities are all over the place. Whether you’re going to get married tomorrow, whether you’re going to die tomorrow, whatever you may feel, that familiar awake quality is everywhere, all the time. From this point of view, everything is a footprint of Buddha, anything that goes on, whether we regard it as sublime or ridiculous. Everything we do — breathing, farting, getting mosquito bites, having fantastic ideas about reality, thinking clever thoughts, flushing the toilet — whatever occurs is a footprint.”
– Via Ocean of Dharma, and found in The Pocket Chogyam Trungpa.
See also: the Shambhala Sun’s collection of teachings of Chogyam Trungpa.
A guest post by Linda Lewis
How can we as meditators turn tragic events — such as the earthquakes in Haiti, the more recent one in Chile, or the floods that have recently drowned so many in Western Europe — into opportunities to open more rather than to close, to give rather than to grasp, to be patient rather than to blame? Continued
This is a special talk for all the Zen idealists out there, looking for perfect Zen teachers without a fault or failing, who think that “Enlightenment” means never making a mistake in the words out of one’s mouth, and never having a “bad hair day” again. TIME TO COME DOWN FROM THE CLOUDS! Bring it down to this mud-covered earth which, if we open our eyes, is the “Pure Lotus Land” right here.
I believe that the only “perfect” masters are those that may exist in the the pages of old Zen stories, written when the real folks were long dead, scrubbing them clean of every blemish and failing. In fact, if we might travel back in time to meet these fellows “in the flesh,” we would find that each and every one was probably just “people” like you and me, with good points and (likely) a few rough edges and minor bad habits… like all people. Okay, maybe extra-ordinarily Wise and Compassionate and Enlightened, sure … but people.
Of course, “Enlightenment” is a realization that there is no place to fall, no self to stumble, no “mistake” that can ever be made. That is true. But it is just as true that there is no place to fall, no stumbling or possible mistake… even as we may fall and stumble and make mistakes!
(Click through to watch today’s talk, and to “sit-a-long.”) Continued
