I've Been Busy...

As you can easily see, I've been neglecting this blog. In part it's because I found it difficult to post interesting content on a regular basis. However, I do have an excuse. I've been working on another book that you might find interesting. The book is called The Practice of Contemplative Photography: Seeing the World with Fresh Eyes, which I've written with my good friend Michael Wood.

I think this book really does bring Contemplating Reality into the 21st Century. Here is what photographer Jay Maisel had to say about the book:

This is not your usual “how to be a better photographer” book. It takes you into deeper water. It requires investigation and commitment to areas new to you. Among other things, you will think about perception in new ways. If you read this book with care, and without skepticism, it will radically expand your thinking, seeing, and photography.

You can browse inside the book by clicking here. Michael and I are also posting new photographs and other info on the The Practice of Contemplative Photography Facebook page. I hope you like it.

Images from the Gyalwang Karmapa

Recollecting the Gyalwang Karmapa’s four days in New York, my strongest images are of his presence: his warmth, his confidence, and most of all, his compete lack of fabrication or contrivance. That said, strong images from his teachings also spring to mind. In his first talk he spoke very personally about how we can deal with the difficulties we must face in life:

A lot has happened to me in this life. I have had a lot of challenges. In dealing with challenges, we must not let practical difficulties destroy our state of mind. For example, if you put a heavy object, weighing perhaps one or two hundred pounds, in front of a mirror, the heavy thing will be clearly reflected, but without the heaviness. In the same way, we can’t prevent ourselves from experiencing life’s difficulties, but we can experience them as if they are reflections in a mirror—clearly reflected without weighing us down.*

The next afternoon, he used another image to explain that the weight we usually experience comes from the way our fixations distort our interactions with the world.

Much of what we experience is not just mere appearance, but our fixation, what we overlay onto the appearances. For example, there is the way we divide things into “I” and “mine”. We don’t directly look at appearances, but see them through a frame, or window, which divides the world into I/mine, self/other. Something odd happens when we look out through the window of I/mine. When we try to reach out to others through this window, the window colors our interactions. The basic problem with that window is that we can’t really see through it.

We can imagine whatever we like. We want to look at something nice out the window, but if there isn’t anything nice there, we create a delusion instead. The window becomes a solid wall that blocks genuine reality. Genuine spiritual experience cannot be seen through the window of “I” and “mine”.*

There is a nice blog following the Karmapa’s visit called, His Holiness The 17th Karmapa’s 2008 U.S. Visit.

* These are not the Karmapa’s exact words, but a reconstruction from several people’s notes.

Karmapa Khyenno! (Hail Karmapa!)

There is a very nice story in the Times today about the arrival of the Seventeenth Gyalwang Karmapa in New York. I had the good fortune to attend the early-morning, traditional tea and rice welcoming ceremony for him at the NY Shambhala Center, because I have been working on the finances for his visit.

After the chants and the offerings of the tea and rice, the Karmapa spoke briefly. His words were tinged with humor and he was clearly delighted to be in America. He said something like, “Last night I had the thought that I was in India. This morning I think I am in New York. Looking at you, I believe it! I am in shock!”

Later in the day, my good luck held, and I was able to attend a meeting and a reception with the Karmapa. It was lovely to have time to observe him up-close. He is twenty-two years old, but honestly, they don’t make twenty-two-year-olds like that. It is his gaze that distinguishes him, and gives him away. It is so steady. It is not the gaze of an ordinary person, certainly not someone in their early twenties. This is someone to watch. Karmapa Khyenno!

Thinking VI

What are you thinking about? Watch the video.

Thinking V

To understand bondage and liberation, we need to see how we are bound by our thoughts. This is not just the discursive thoughts, but our projections, which are the objects of the discursive thoughts, and the emotions that link the two. This whole system of thoughts is bondage.

When we don’t recognize the nature of these phenomena, we are bound by them. We are taken in by the illusion or mirage, like thirsty people lost in a desert. When we recognize them, we are free from their compulsion. This is self-liberation: this freedom is not brought about by an outside agent, but by our own insight.

Thinking IV

The Lord of Yogis Milarepa sang in “The Six Questions”:

Mind has even more projections than there are dust motes in the sun;
Is there an accomplished yogi here or a yogini
Who sees the appearance of things laid bare in the very bed where it lies?

Thinking III

These concepts—the objects of that endless monologue—are as vague and general as drawings on water. They don’t come from anywhere and they don’t go anywhere. Suddenly it seems like a friend is present. In the next moment, it is a pickup truck or a presidential candidate. As obscure as they are, we are trapped by them like a deer trapped by headlights.

How are these concepts different from the objects seen in dreams?

Thinking II

What is thinking? Most of us tend to identify thinking as discursive activity: an ongoing internal monologue along with its labeling. We identify with the monloguer and consider the object of our discursiveness as “other.” These are the main features of our sense of duality, the split between “this” and “that.” Emotions link the two, and confirm the sense of separation.

But what are the objects of our discursive thoughts? Aren’t they our concepts? Isn’t that also thought?

Thinking I

When you think about something or someone, the object seems to actually be present. Whether it is a past thing or a future thing, something in the room or far away, an animal, a vegetable, or a mineral, it seems to be right there. Usually it seems to be in front. Sometimes it seems to be in some other direction.

When you think about something else, the first thing disappears and the new thing appears. How does that happen?

Lessons from a New Car

Last summer, when our 1995 Lexus developed an unhealthy affection for the repair shop, I started looking for something nice to replace it with. We finally got our new (to us) car at the end of last month. I had assumed that we would be in for the usual dharmic reminders that such major purchases provide: that an actual car never lives up to the anticipated dream-car; that what is new, fresh, and exciting, rapidly becomes a source of dukkha because of overlooked drawbacks and defects; that with the first scratch, impermanence would be rearing its ugly little head.

I had not counted on receiving a completely different type of teaching. It had been a really busy period when the car was delivered, and I barely had a chance to drive it around town. A week later, my wife Wendy and I headed out in the new car to Boston, New York, and Albany for two weeks of teaching, and visits with family and friends. After a couple of hours on the road, an intermittent squeaking sound from the heater fan became too obvious to ignore.

Wendy and I discussed whether to take the car into a dealership in Boston or New York, or wait until we got back to Halifax to get it repaired. I checked the Canadian warranty to try to figure out if the repair would be covered in the States. As we drove through New Brunswick worrying about what to do, Wendy observed that the irritating noise sounded like a bird chirping. For some reason, I said we should give the bird a name. Wendy said let’s call it Henry.

Soon we were talking about “Henry taking a nap,” when the sound disappeared; “Henry worrying about getting lost,” when we got off the highway and weren’t sure which way to go; “Leaving Henry at the motel parking lot,” when we started off the next morning with a quiet fan. Finally, we worried about getting the car repaired and hurting Henry!

It is amazing how changing our thoughts about a sound can completely change our experience of it. This is the principle behind the Vajrayana practice of visualizing oneself as a deity, and the environment as the deity’s palace: if we can get into the spirit of the game, we can transform our experience of samsara into the experience of a pure realm.

Are We There Yet?

Today is April 4th, 2008, the twenty-first anniversary of the parinirvana of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Twenty-one is the age when we are definitely considered to be adults in Western society, but have we students of Trungpa Rinpoche reached adulthood yet? I wonder.

I always imagined that there would be some clear experience of having arrived at spiritual maturity, a Buddhist bar mitzvah, or some sort of collective birthday party. Now I’m not so sure. I feel strongly connected with my gurus and the lineage, and surrounded by sangha, family, and friends, but I also feel very much alone, floating in space, with no planet in sight, and no umbilical cord to attach me to the mother ship.

Maybe twenty-one is the time to give up dreams of getting somewhere and just be. Maybe this is it.

Contemplating Reality 10 Week Course

They say that meditating without studying the view is like trying to travel to a distant city with no eyes, no guide, no map; and studying the dharma without practicing meditation is like trying to make that journey without arms and legs. We need both study and practice to make the journey to enlightenment. That's basic to the logic of the path.

I wrote Contemplating Reality to help practitioners join study and meditation. Now, Deborah and Joe Szostak have created an excellent syllabus for a ten week course based on the book. Teachers can use the syllabus to present weekly classes on the stages of the view. Students can use it to organize study groups of that material.

Please feel free to download the syllabus and see if it meets your needs.

The Seventeenth Gyalwang Karmapa is Coming to America

The first visit of the Seventeenth Gyalwang Karmapa to the United States was officially announced this week by my guru and friend, Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche. His announcement, and the tentative schedule of the tour, is available here.

In 1974, at the invitation of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, the Sixteenth Gyalwang Karmapa hoisted the victory banner of the Tibetan Buddhist teachings on Western soil. At the time of his first visit, I was a clueless twenty-five year old student of Trungpa Rinpoche’s living in Boulder, Colorado. I can confidently report that I was dazed and confused by the spectacle. Trungpa Rinpoche’s sangha, “the scene” as we called it, was turned on its collective head. Our brilliant, folksy guru suddenly manifested the dignity and humbleness of his tradition, basking in the Karmapa’s radiance. I felt more insignificant than ever!

With time, intimidation gave way to appreciation. The warmth of the Dharma King was irresistible. Friends who traveled with the party recounted that even stony-faced state troupers escorting him, eventually melted in his presence, and asked for his blessings at his departure.

Years later, my appreciation of the brilliance of the lineage of Karmapas deepened when Khenpo Tsültrim Gyamtso Rinpoche taught a group of us mahamudra from the Ninth Karmapa’s instruction manual, Mahamudra: the Ocean of Definitive Meaning; gave extensive teachings on the Third Karmapa’s Profound Inner Reality; taught us madhyamaka from the Eighth Karmapa’s Chariot of the Dakpo Kagyu Siddhas; and periodically dipped into the Seventh Karmapa’s Ocean of Texts on Lorik to teach us Buddhist theories of valid cognition and perception.

For Buddhists everywhere, the 21st Century began dramatically when the Seventeenth Karmapa suddenly surfaced in Dharamsala, at the side of the Dalai Lama, after a dramatic escape from Tibet. Nearly three years later, I had the great good fortune to be included in a small delegation that met the Gyalwang Karmapa at Gyuto Monastery in India.

When we entered the room I had some unusual experiences. There were no fireworks, visions, or flowers falling from the sky, and the Karmapa did not tell me my mother’s social security number or anything like that, but the experiences were unusual, nevertheless. The most memorable one was feeling that I was sitting at the feet of all the Karmapas, not just the seventeen-year-old who was the Seventeenth in that line.

The first thing he said to us was, “For a long time it has been my wish to meet the students of Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche. This is a great and joyful occasion. It has fulfilled my aspirations.” He went on to say that he looked forward to working with us when he made his first visit to the West. That was more than five years ago.

Well, here we go!

Some Diet Advice for Myself

Other than the exceedingly rare story of someone’s humble and virtuous actions, one of the few enjoyable experiences reading the daily newspaper is seeing the mighty get their comeuppance—obviously the Sheriff of Wall Street’s self destruction, and Lord Black of Crossharbour’s arrival at a Florida prison, come to mind.

Righteousness is a tasty emotional treat, but an unhealthy diet. Less appetizing, but much more nutritious, is recollecting your own failings. When I remember to chew on the bitter morsels of recollections of my own crimes, misdemeanors, and deceits, my projected bubble, in which I am always virtuous and right, gets a little punctured.

One nice thing about this diet is there are all sorts of opportunities to fill up. If a friend, colleague, or relative harms you, try a bite of your own imperfections. It is not as tasty as schadenfraude (pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others), but it will definitely deflate your ego. That’s the point of dharma, isn’t it?

PS. That reminds me of a quote that my friend Derek Kolleeny is fond of: “Before you criticize someone, try walking a mile in their shoes. That way, you are a mile away from them and you have their shoes.”

Materialist Metaphysics, Continued

The old DuPont slogan, “Better living through chemistry,” expressed the Twentieth Century’s faith in material progress. At one point, Prozac and other new antidepressant drugs seemed to be the crowning fulfillment of this dream. Why be depressed when you can take this little pill and feel better? I could tell that things were getting a little out of hand when I discovered that my sister was feeding chicken-flavored Prozac to her cats.

Faith that brain chemistry determines our mental experience is being challenged by new research that shows that antidepressants do not have more clinically significant effects than placebos. Both placebos and antidepressants have an effect on the mind. Antidepressants also effect the brain. These new studies show that only the mental effects are significant. Curiously, in both cases, the mental effects are produced by illusions—the illusion that the substance will cure your depression.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if there were some way to work directly with the mind…. How about, “Better living through view, meditation, and conduct.”

“Training the Heart”

There is a nice article by the late Ajahn Chah in the current issue of Buddhadharma (Spring 2008) that reminds me of the famous Kadampa slogan, “All dharma agrees at one point.” Whether we call it mahamudra, ordinary mind, buddha nature, dharmadhatu, mind itself, prajnaparamita, empty cognizance, rigpa, or wisdom, that point is the heart-essence of all dharma paths, the guide to the ultimate goal.

Here is how Ajahn Chah describes it:

The Buddha taught that we should cultivate clear knowing for ourselves. Whatever arises, arises in this knowing. When that which knows, knows in accordance with the truth, then the mind and its psychological factors are recognized as not ours…. The mind is free, radiant, and unentangled with any problems or issues. The reason problems arise is because the mind is deluded by conditioned things, deluded by this misperception of self. So the Buddha taught us to observe this mind. In the beginning, what is there? There is truly nothing there. It doesn’t arise with conditioned things, and it doesn’t die with them. When the mind encounters something good, it doesn’t change to become good. When the mind encounters something bad, it doesn’t become bad. That’s how it is when there is clear insight into one’s nature.

There are countless Buddhist teachings, practices of meditation, and methods of training, but unless they lead to this vital point, the fruition will be a long way off. When you get this point, it is called receiving “buddhahood in the palm of your hand.”

Books & Movies: Madman and Angry Monk

If you would like some profound insights into the meaning of the Middle Way, Tibetan political history, and the challenges of the traditional East meeting the modern West, look into the life and teachings of the remarkable Gendun Chopel.

Donald S. Lopez Jr.’s The Madman’s Middle Way includes a fascinating biographical sketch, an elegant translation of Chopel’s Adornment for Nagarjuna’s Thought, and an excellent commentary that draws out the key points and provides much needed background information on the doctrinal conflicts that the text addresses.

The Adornment deals with core questions about the validity of knowledge in an experiential way, using ordinary language. Here is an example from the beginning of the text:

All of our decisions about what is and is not are just decisions made in ac¬cordance with how it appears to our mind; they have no other basis whatsoever. Therefore, when we ask, “Does it exist or not?” and the other person answers, “It exists,” in fact, we are asking, “Does this appear to your mind to exist or not exist?” and the answer is simply, “It appears to my mind to exist.” In the same way, everything that one asks about—better or worse, good or bad, beautiful or ugly—is in fact merely asked about for the sake of understanding how the other person thinks. That the other person makes a decision and answers is in fact just a decision made in accordance with how it appears to his or her own mind; there is no other reason whatsoever. Therefore, as long as the ideas of two people are in disagreement with each other, they will argue. When they agree, the very thing that they agree upon will be placed in the class of what is, what exists, what can be known, and what is valid, and so on. Thus, the more people there are who agree, the more the point they agree upon becomes of great significance and importance. Contrary views are taken to be wrong views, mistaken perceptions, and so on….

Therefore, our statements about what does and does not exist are in fact classifications of what appears before our mind. Our statements that something does not exist or is impossible are classifications of what cannot appear before our mind. The reality [dharmata] that is neither existent nor nonexistent does not belong to the former class, it belongs to the latter.

There is also a great documentary about Gendun Chopel called Angry Monk: Reflections on Tibet, that mostly describes political and social aspects of his life, and has some amazing interviews and archival footage of old Tibet. The film was an official selection of the Sundance Film Festival in 2006. You can watch the trailer on the film’s website, or order a copy of the DVD by writing to dvd@angrymonk.ch.

Cheerful New Year!

Best wishes to all of you, as Buddhists around the world celebrate Losar, the Tibetan New Year, the Chinese New Year, the Lunar New Year, and Shambhala Day (as it is known in the Shambhala community).

Trungpa Rinpoche, founder of Shambhala, made a point of wishing people a cheerful New Year, and cheerful birthday, instead of a happy New Year and happy birthday. He explained that happiness depends on circumstances, while cheerfulness is unconditional—we can always tune into our inherent well-being even if our circumstances are not happy.

It is our alienation from this basic well-being, buddha nature, our true nature, that keeps samsara spinning. By tuning into our true nature we can cheer up on the spot.

So, Cheerful New Year to you!

Eureka!

There’s an article about innovation in today’s New York Times that offers parallels to the process of progressing along the Buddhist path and provides important lessons for practitioners. It’s called “Eureka! It Really Takes Years of Hard Work.”

The point of the article is that the popular myth that innovation depends on “eureka moments,” great breakthroughs, is a fiction. Innovation depends on a slow process of hard work with many little improvements and small insights.

The same thing could be said about the Buddhist myths of sudden enlightenment and transcendental visions. Progress on the path is always gradual and almost imperceptible. It comes from a slow process of study, contemplation, and meditation, with small insights and a gradual decrease in delusion and kleshas.

Hoping for sudden enlightenment is as debilitating as trying to find the innovation “that will ‘revolutionize the industry,’ create a ‘billion-dollar business’ or ‘make one rich overnight.’” Many people find it difficult to sustain their practice because, either they doubt that they have the “special talent” it takes to make the “big breakthrough,” or they gave it a try and “nothing happened.”

As Suzuki Roshi says in Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, “After you have practiced for a while, you will realize that it is not possible to make rapid, extraordinary progress. Even though you try very hard, the progress you make is always little by little. It is not like going out in a shower in which you know when you get wet. In a fog, you do not know you are getting wet, but as you keep walking you get wet little by little. If your mind has ideas of progress, you may say, ‘Oh, this pace is terrible!’ But actually it is not. When you get wet in a fog it is very difficult to dry yourself.”

Buddhist Bible Thumpers

I would love to be a peaceful bodhisattva who has completely seen through delusion and overcome all conflicting emotions, but I have to admit I am not that guy. Among other things, I am irked by Buddhist fundamentalism. For example, yesterday evening, I read this in an article by a well-known Buddhist teacher: “Read up on what the Buddha had to say on the topic and don’t settle for books that put you at the end of a game of telephone. Go straight to the source, the words of the Buddha himself.”

This is silly and misleading. First of all, what are purported to be “the words of the Buddha himself” cannot possibly be his actual words. The Buddha’s words were not recorded or transcribed (See my post “Books: Basic Teachings of the Buddha” for details.) The sutras are not first-hand reports, like watching CNN, broadcasting live from Bodhgaya.

Second, where I come from, the source is the tathagatagarbha, or buddha nature. It is accessible to all of us. It is not words in ancient books. Buddhism is a living tradition that depends on a lineage of transmission for its vitality. Each generation of teachers must make a direct connection to the source, by realizing, in the words of the great Tibetan master Milarepa, “There is no other buddha apart from your own mind.”

The point of the path is to taste the truth of the Buddha’s words for ourselves, not just repeat them.