The following encapsulates my personal
response regarding Buddhism. “Personal” is a key qualifier. Buddhism is roughly
2,000 years old, and has flowered diversely. There are many ‘schools’ of
Buddhist thought, and the Buddha himself insisted that doctrine must yield to
personal experience; that there might be as many different ways to understand and
practice Buddhism as there are different types of people.
This does not mean that Buddhism is
whatever you want it to be. Certainly there are core Buddhist beliefs about the
nature of reality, the nature of suffering, and the nature of liberation, or enlightenment.
That said, Buddhism embraces wide variation in its emphasis and in its paths.
So what follows must be qualified: while
my practice is rooted in traditional Buddhism, I admit to other influences and
idiosyncratic notions. Thus you cannot judge Buddhism at large by its
expression in me. What I share below is merely my personal version of Buddhist
practice; Buddhist at the root, but personal and unique in important particulars.
My Personal Practice
My friend asked the right question: am I
a practicing Buddhist? Buddhism
cannot be fathomed except through “practice.” You might read many books about
its history, philosophy, and principles, but your apprehension will be very
superficial, until you begin to practice. So I shall describe my practice,
which I first undertook in March of 2005.
Meditation
The key is meditation: usually while
seated, but often while walking, or even standing still, looking upon nature.
Meditation is a river … a baptism that renews me daily, and on the best days, even
hourly.
Meditation is letting go. Letting go the
noise, anticipation, scheming, rehearsing, fear, pondering, reminiscence, regret,
desire, wishing, envy, analysis, wanting, striving, politics, economy, trivia, and so on and so on and so on …
Meditation is arriving home, here, now,
in this place, in this time, in this moment …
Impermanence, Acceptance, Detachment
Through meditation, I become more
observant of, sensitive to, and accepting of flux, change, impermanence
... the very essence of the cosmos … the
very essence of our condition.
I am more willing and more able to let
go, especially of what I can’t control. Of course I practice “prudence,” and
expend effort when it seems likely to yield a positive result. But while I do
attempt to promote the good, I am detached from the ultimate result. Should it
not pan out, that’s OK; no recriminations after the fact, and no undue stress
or worry along the way. I accept impermanence and the lack of ultimate control
as universal principles. Genuine acceptance and detachment bring genuine peace.
Contentment
Meditation promotes contentment. Beyond
the necessities, I do not want what I do not have, and do not strive after
such. Why would I? As you come to know authentically the here and now, what
else is there? Only the inferno of artificially manufactured desires, stoked
continuously by television, movies, the internet, magazines, and society: the whorl
of brand name clothes, shiny new vehicles, expensive new homes and furnishings,
exciting vacations, activities and experiences, the latest gadgets and other
trivia, and so on and so on and so on … Manufactured, inauthentic desires with
no claim on a practicing Buddhist.
Not to say that Buddhists don’t desire
and buy such … Of course they do, no one is perfect. But worldly, material impulses
are borne and executed somewhere in the inevitable lapses and gaps that
accompany unperfected Buddha nature. And with more “practice” come more contentment
and fewer lapses.
Reading, Misunderstandings, and ‘Emptiness’
A central tenant of Buddhism is that
“you” are really not who or what you believe yourself to be; that you misunderstand
the true nature of your existence; that your belief in an inherent “you-ness”
is fallacious. Frankly, I cannot adequately explain these ideas in this short
essay, but it is important to note that these ideas, imperfectly understood,
are the root of enormous misunderstandings about Buddhism. This confusion is compounded
by language about “emptiness” which one often encounters in Buddhist writing. Just
be warned that a superficial encounter with these ideas will likely be fatal to
a genuine understanding of Buddhism.
The only solution I know is to engage a
first-rate text on Buddhism (or a guru), and to patiently and deeply meditate
on these concepts. My favorite book is “Essentials
of Insight Meditation Practice: A Pragmatic Approach to Vipassana,” printed
and donated for free distribution by The
Corporate Body of the Buddha Educational Foundation, Email: overseas@budaedu.org, Website: www.budaedu.org
I initially read widely on Buddhism, Zen,
Yoga, Hinduism, Taoism, and meditation, but have read much less in recent
years. Reading is good in that, as noted above, there exist a wide range of
Buddhist theory and practice, so reading can be helpful, if not essential, in
settling on the style most suited to you. But it can also be very confusing and
frustrating. Ultimately there is no substitute whatsoever for disciplined,
personal “practice.”
Self and Ego
Through practice, my understanding and
insight continue to grow. Embracing impermanence and detachment have come
relatively easy. The big struggle is with ego.
That doesn’t necessarily mean I believe
I am wonderful, though the sad fact is that yes, all too often I do catch
myself thinking such, despite so much evidence to the contrary. No, the more
profound problems with self and ego are more subtle.
I see, interpret, and judge too much
through the unenlightened prism of Me. I am not empathetic enough to honestly
see or understand the people standing directly before me. My biases and
prejudices often clothe the public in grotesque costumes and masks. Too often
my compassion shrivels just beyond the embrace of my own family. I interpret
every slow-moving vehicle as a personal affront to my own sense of time. Best
to stop here, you get the idea, unfortunately.
But don’t despair for humanity or me. My
2013 practice will confront these problems. I’ve already told my wife Kathy
that this year I intend to deconstruct and dissolve my ego. She thinks it is a
great idea!
Mindfulness and Awareness
Beyond peace, contentment, equanimity and
such, are dimensions of mindfulness and awareness: powers of being all but annihilated
in the cauldron of contemporary life.
Jobs, schedules, meetings, deadlines, appointments,
clocks, calendars, television, internet, phones, text messages, email,
Facebook, children, your spouse, your boyfriend, co-workers, commercials,
billboards, traffic signals, news, radio, CDs, ipods, Muzak …
People run day and night on automatic
pilot, reacting subconsciously, with little genuine, authentic mindfulness or
awareness, let alone the deep
mindfulness and expansive awareness of
which we are all capable!
The great gifts of Buddhist practice
include not only peace, contentment, and equanimity, but also deep mindfulness
and expansive awareness: the very prerequisites of freedom!
You can only be free when you are
mindful and aware; otherwise there is no possibility of authentic choice.
Of course these powers wane and even
vanish throughout the day, but their habits are cultivated and strengthened
through the practice of Buddhist meditation.
Where Am I
and What is This Place?
Meditation is not an end unto itself.
Yes, it is usually gratifying, at least once you get the hang of it, and I often
feel “baptized” and super-aware at the end of a session. But its principal
value depends on the extent to which its awareness and insights persist
throughout and color, shape, and modulate the balance of my
day, beyond the typical thirty minute session. After all, that’s where most of
life transpires. And frankly, meditation’s baptism and awareness can fade fast with
the day’s first rude jolt.
But one can cultivate a habit of
“returning” throughout the day. I don’t mean that you will or should return to
the meditation cushion throughout the day, but rather you can develop a habit
of often pausing momentarily, for a minute or even just ten seconds, to
reconnect with your Buddha nature. For instance, when I catch the sunlight
through a window, I am often reminded to “touch base.” Or when I am frustrated,
that in itself can prompt me to slow down, touch base, and reboot.
Some of my most effective prompts are
triggered when something unexpectedly catches my attention; for instance, a
bird’s shadow flits by, or I notice a design on a cup or in wallpaper that
somehow strikes my fancy. In these unexpected moments of awareness, I have
trained myself to ask “Where am I and
what really is this place?” Then the key is to answer the question
at a deeper-than-normal level; or at a bare minimum, to at least touch base and
reboot yet again.
Through meditation I have learned to see
many places, objects, relationships between things, etc, quite differently … with
fresh eyes. These fresh views often reinforce other insights about
impermanence, emptiness, ego, etc, so calling myself throughout the day to
answer this fundamental question (Where
am I and what is this place?) in different contexts continues to shape the
rest of the day, yielding value far beyond that which my typical thirty minute meditation
alone would afford.
Nature and Paganism
To my mind, traditional Buddhism falls far short with respect to nature. Yes, many Buddhists have
loved nature, as is evident in their art, but their writing seems, at least to
my modest scholarship, to utterly ignore nature. Maybe nature in Buddha’s day
was a given; always there in the foreground.
After all, Buddha’s enlightenment
famously occurred beneath a bodhi tree. Whatever the reason, I require a primary focus on nature. I
simply would not want to live otherwise.
So my every day consciousness is
saturated with nature and pagan sensibilities. Throughout spring, summer, and
fall, I meditate primarily out of doors (we have three acres and hundreds of
trees I planted in 1997). Winter meditations are mostly indoors, but still I
will meditate outdoors perhaps once every week or so, and walk at least some
distance outdoors often.
I find no support for this need in
Buddhist writing, and imagine urban Buddhists might suppose my need to be a
non-Buddhist attachment. So be it. I am unabashedly a Pagan Buddhist, and
proximity to nature is at least as important to me as any Buddhist principle.
Refuge
There is a saying in traditional
Buddhism: “I take refuge in the Buddha, the
Dharma, and the Sangha,” where the Dharma is the body of Buddhist teachings
and the Sanga is the community of practicing Buddhists. Unfortunately, I am a
lonely Buddhist, as must be most rural American self-styled Buddhists. In this
entire, dispersed world I personally know but six other people who have any Buddhist
inclinations whatsoever. So my practice is decidedly deficient in this respect.
Conclusion
For me, Buddhism is a radical way of experiencing
the world and my place in it. But it is an understanding that is difficult to
communicate directly. How can you explain “red” to someone? You may point to
something red, but you can’t explain it in words, and you cannot know if someone
else experiences red in the very same way that you do.
Hopefully though, I have communicated at
least some sense of what it means to me to be a practicing Buddhist. Greater
understanding requires that you yourself “practice.”
I hope to write a series of shorter and much
more interesting “explorations” in the months to come, so stay tune if you are
interested. Unfortunately this output will be very irregular, so if you are really interested, let me know and I
will send you notice as the explorations are published here at www.Zen-Clock.blogspot.com.
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