Book: Pema Chödrön - No Time to Lose.

Snoopy said:
Chödrön says that there are three attitudes that prevent us from receiving a continual flow of the Buddha’s blessings. She compares them to three pots: a full pot, a pot with poison in it and a pot with a hole in the bottom.

- The full pot is a mind full of opinions; we know it all; our opinions and ideas are all fixed in place and so we are unable to receive anything new or question our assumptions.

- The pot with poison in is a cynical and judgmental mind that allows nothing to challenge our righteous, dualistic stance.

- The pot with a hole in it is a distracted mind; our body is present but our mind is not in the present, it is lost in thoughts elsewhere.
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Very helpful.
 
Netti-Netti said:
seattlegal said:
This part reminds me of The Five Buddha Wisdom Families.
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How do you mean?
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Snoopy said:
Essentially she points out that the practicing of “positives” can demonstrate to us the level of “negatives” still within us, to act as a barometer of our practice. So rejoicing in the happiness of others can highlight the envy that still resides within us. Likewise, practising generosity shows us how much we still hold back and practising patience illustrates to us the level of anger that we can still be holding onto.
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The link I referenced is about the transformation of envy/jealousy, pride, and anger, (as well as desire and ignorance.)
 
Snoopy said:
Attentiveness helps us to deal with our attachments. We can all be habitually attached to strong emotions, that invariably lead to suffering (such an emotion is known in Sanskrit as a klesha).
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Arguably, the unwholesome emotions ARE suffering.

Essentially she points out that the practicing of “positives” can demonstrate to us the level of “negatives” still within us, to act as a barometer of our practice.
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Hopefully we'll still be practicing the “positives” once the “negatives” have been extinguished.
 
Netti-Netti said:
Arguably, the unwholesome emotions ARE suffering.
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I would say that suffering, or more accurately dukkha, results from the mismatch between reality and what we might desire it to be.

Hopefully we'll still be practicing the “positives” once the “negatives” have been extinguished.
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Hopefully. :)

s.
 
Netti-Netti said:
Arguably, the unwholesome emotions ARE suffering.


Hopefully we'll still be practicing the “positives” once the “negatives” have been extinguished.
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If not, such a person might described as being emotionally deadened, or numb. Apathetic, at the very least. *shrugs*
 
Snoopy said:
I would say that suffering, or more accurately dukkha, results from the mismatch between reality and what we might desire it to be.
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The idea that a good thing should last forever is probably not realistic.

But I'm thinking that we do not directly suffer from our cognitions or out perceptions of incompleteness or impermanence. Rather, the suffering lies in the emotions triggered by these thought and ideas.

Probably different parts of the brain are involved. It seems emotions are handled by the amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex and cognitions[SIZE=-1] are handled by frontopolar cortex. Although the functions may be localized, these different parts of the brain interact.

My hunch is that memory activations are normally hard to avoid. But meditation and mindfulness can modulate the way the cognitions tend to stir up emotions.
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Taming the Mind (Ch. 5 verses 1 – 47).

There are six practices (paramitas) that characterise the Mahayana path; they are generosity, patience, exertion, meditation, wisdom and discipline (taming of the mind). The specific method used to tame the mind is shamatha (calm abiding) meditation. It uses the breath as an object of attention, to which one repeatedly brings the mind back when it wanders. Mindfulness is the means by which the mind is tethered to the present.

Taming the mind is not just an activity to be done during meditation, in our everyday life we can tame the mind by nurturing awareness (trenpa) and mental vigilance (sheshin).

In verse 12 Shantideva refers to the primary antidote to aggression: the paramita of patience. Chödrön says “Again, Shantideva points to the interdependence of our states of mind and our perceptions of the world around us. Thus, without anger, there is no enemy.”

Everyone wants to have true happiness but it will elude us for as long as we stay stuck in biased, dualistic thinking. “The deepest ignorance is our misperception of reality, our dualistic perception. This is the illusion of subject and object, self and other.” This creates the tension that leads to like and dislike, for and against and all our other sufferings. This is the second kind of ignorance, the ignorance of the kleshas. “Thus the ignorance of dualistic perception predictably leads to turmoil.” And so the kleshas need to be disarmed, like a band of robbers, before they can grow and cause harm:

“Defilements are a band of robbers
Waiting for their chance to bring us injury.
They steal our virtue, when their moment comes,
And batter out the life of happy destinies.”
- 5.28​

I found this a particularly interesting chapter, which I have of course only briefly outlined.

s.

 
Snoopy said:
The specific method used to tame the mind is shamatha (calm abiding) meditation. It uses the breath as an object of attention, to which one repeatedly brings the mind back when it wanders. Mindfulness is the means by which the mind is tethered to the present.
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Have you ever noticed how your heartbeat is directly tied to your breathing? ;)
 
The Three Disciplines (Ch. 5 verses 48 – 109).

Chapter 5 continues with the “three disciplines”: not causing harm, gathering virtue and benefiting others, focusing on the skilful ways that we can use our body and the proper way in which to regard our body. He speaks of the good fortune to have had a human birth, to have a human body. However, he then goes on to say that it is pointless to obsess over our bodies as we cannot prevent the process of dying and it can also make us vain and self-absorbed. Verse sixty says:

Why, O mind, do you protect this body,
Claiming it as though it were yourself?
You and it are each a separate entity,
How can it be of use to you?

Chödrön says that “When you die, you leave your body behind.”

This idea of the body and mind being separate entities seems to me to be contrary to Nāgārjuna and Dogen, thus:

“Body and mind were so inextricably interwoven that it was impossible to separate them…Dogen argued:

You should consider carefully that the Buddha-dharma has always maintained the thesis of the non-dual oneness of body and mind. And yet, how can it be possible that while this body is born and dissolves, mind alone departs from the body and escapes from arising and perishing? If there is a time when they are one and another time when they are not, the Buddha’s teaching must be false indeed.

It was fundamentally un-Buddhist in Dogen’s view to treat the body and mind as if they were separable and consequently to regard the former as perishable, changeable, accidental, and the latter as altogether otherwise. The permanence of mind or soul independent of the perishability of body was an illusion….The mind, body and world interpenetrated one another so inseparably that a hard and fast demarcation between them was altogether impossible.”

-Eihei Dogen Mystical Realist by Hee-Jin Kim.​
...and…​

“Nāgārjuna explains that having separate concepts coexisting as a unity is not a complete description of reality. Take for example the issue of body and mind. From the Buddhist standpoint there is something that is originally one, is never separated, and thus to try to do away with the separation by forming links between a mind and a body that coexist is, in the end, to emphasise their separateness. From the Buddhist viewpoint we can only experience oneness, we cannot construct it. Reality is neither the separate existence of things, nor their coexistence as a unity.

Buddhism believes in the oneness of body-and-mind. Nāgārjuna explains that oneness is not a combining of different things, but an original state where there is no difference, and therefore no sameness. Nāgārjuna points us away from our conceived combination of separate things into “oneness” towards a preconceptual undivided wholeness, where there is neither “one” nor “many.”

Dogen says: “We should realise that living-and-dying is just nirvana” and “How could we divide this one reality into body and mind, or into life-and-death and nirvana?” Echoing Nāgārjuna, Dogen is saying that everyday life (life-and-death) is identical to nirvana, the balanced state of body and mind in the state of action, when intellectual discrimination and sensual perception have been “snuffed out.” "

- Between Heaven and Earth From Nāgārjuna to Dogen – ​
A Translation and Interpretation of the Mulamadhyamakakarika​
by Michael Eido Luetchford.​


It is not until verse 102 of chapter five that Shantideva refers to the Mahayana path, the “great vehicle.”

As Chödrön says, “It emphasizes compassion and the wisdom of emptiness, the ultimate unfixated nature of everything.”


s.
 
Snoopy said:
This chapter has a lot about sin and confession in it, which in my ignorance of Tibetan Buddhism, I was quite surprised by. So a note of comparative religion there!
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Interestingly, in Buddhism the business of confession has no intrinsic moral significance to it. The reason to avoid "sin" is mainly to avoid the distracting effects of shame and remorse. These negative emotions interfere with clarity of mind and thus hamper spiritual progress.

Obviously, this is very different from the idea of forgiveness/absolution of sins in Christianity, which emphasizes the need to be cleansed in order to become acceptable to the L-rd.
 
Netti-Netti said:
Interestingly, in Buddhism the business of confession has no intrinsic moral significance to it. The reason to avoid "sin" is mainly to avoid the distracting effects of shame and remorse. These negative emotions interfere with clarity of mind and thus hamper spiritual progress.
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Yes, guilt about being basically bad and sinful is baggage that just isn’t an issue. It is simply about trying not to repeat our mistakes by using our inherent goodness (that has been covered up).

s.
 


Working with Anger (Ch. 6 verses 1 – 51).

The klesha of anger is the subject of chapter six, verses 1 to 51. Shantideva presents the paramita (practice) of patience as being the most effective means of combating it. He begins by pointing out that one episode of anger can destroy countless amounts of virtuous life. Chödrön gives the example of one blazing argument that can sour a relationship indefinitely and all the past happiness of the relationship may be effectively lost. The worst kind of anger is not simply anger that we then regret but anger that with hindsight we still condone to ourselves and to others. Shantideva says that “No evil is there similar to anger” and so he passionately encourages us to “Steep yourself, therefore, in patience”.

Anger is triggered by getting what we don’t want and by not getting what we desire. Full-blown destructive anger begins with uncomfortable feelings that things aren’t going our way but can quickly build if we do not recognise the signs and find the patience, not to speak, or not to act, in anger. At any point in the process, one can pause and practice patience. But the earlier we spot the signs and “nip it in the bud” the easier it is to defuse.

It is also important not to identify with anger. Anger is not “me”. It is dynamic psychological energy which we can deal with - as long as we don’t let it escalate based on our “wants” and “don’t wants.”

If you associate yourself with your anger, you are (by definition) moving towards being an angry person. Angry people see causes of suffering everywhere, they are easily provoked and the older they get the worse they get. The world is not as it should be to an angry person and this is expressed through angry words and actions. But in reality it is not the situation that is “angry” in some way but the perception and the response. Another person in the same situation would not react with anger.

Shantideva then goes on to classify patience: the patience that comes from reframing our attitude towards discomfort, from understanding the complexity of all situations and from developing tolerance.

Shantideva also asserts the three values of suffering: it humbles us, it helps us to feel compassion and it assist us in understanding karma.

The chapter ends with a recap of the essential message: it is Shantideva’s attempt to undermine the “common sense” view, the knee-jerk view, that retaliation makes the most sense when the world doesn’t seem to be giving us what we want, or is giving us what we don’t want:

“If I repay them harm for harm,
Indeed they’ll not be saved thereby;
And all my noble actions will be spoiled,
Austerity of patience brought to nothing.”
-6.51​
s.
 
Specific Situations for Practicing Patience (Ch. 6 verses 52 – 134).

Shantideva next moves on to various scenarios where we have the opportunity to practice patience rather than give in to anger; for example when we are scorned, criticised or treated in a condescending manner.

The attachments in our mind are held together by the story lines that we weave. The storylines that involve anger and hatred Shantideva says can be addressed by the practice of shamatha meditation discussed earlier (Chapter five). Each time our mind wanders in such meditation, Chödrön says that we can further the practice by labelling our thoughts simply as “thinking” to gently dissolve the stream-like storylines that we generate.

With verse 99, Shantideva begins a section on the value of the troublemakers in our life:

“Those who stay close to me, then,
To ruin my good name and cut me down to size
Are surely there protecting me
From falling into ruin in the realms of sorrow.”

As is often the case, this may not at first sight seem to be the common sense view or logical. But Shantideva explains that such “troublemakers” are the very people who show us where we are stuck in our practice, they perhaps show us aspects of ourselves that we would rather not see. So rather than obstacles, such people are essential to providing opportunities for practicing patience.

“So like a treasure found at home,
Enriching me without fatigue,
All enemies are helpers in my bodhisattva work
And therefore they should be a joy to me.”
- 6.107​
​
s.
 
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