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#2250 - Sunday, September 4, 2005 - Editor: Gloria Lee
Endless Ages
Through endless ages, the mind has never changed
It has not lived or died, come or gone, gained or lost.
It
isn’t pure or tainted, good or bad, past or future.
true or false, male or female. It isn’t reserved for
monks or lay people, elders or youths, masters or
idiots, the enlightened or unenlightened.
It
isn’t bound by cause and effect and doesn’t
struggle for liberation. Like space, it has no form.
You
can’t own it and you can’t lose it. Mountains.
rivers or walls can’t impede it. But this mind is
ineffable and difficult to experience. It is not the
mind of the senses. So many are looking for this
mind, yet it already animates their bodies.
It is theirs, yet they don’t realize it.
Bodhidarma
"One mind is not-moving, empty mind;
clear mind is using this mind meticulously
from moment to moment.
One mind is like pushing "CLEAR" on your
calculator to return to zero;
clear mind means using your calculator:
1 + 2 = 3... CLEAR."
~ Zen Master Seung Sahn
From the book; "Only Don't Know," published by
Shambhala
posted to Daily Dharma
The tonglen practice is a method for
connecting with suffering ours and that which is all around us
everywhere we go. It is a method for overcoming fear of
suffering and for dissolving the tightness of our heart.
Primarily it is a method for awakening the compassion that is
inherent in all of us, no matter how cruel or cold we might seem
to be.
- Pema Chodron
Transforming Confusion into Wisdom
Pema Chodron
Berkeley Shambhala Center
Fall 1999
In order to have compassion for others, we have to have
compassion for ourselves.
In particular, to care about other people who are fearful, angry,
jealous, overpowered by addictions of all kinds, arrogant, proud,
miserly, selfish, mean you name it to have compassion and to
care for these people, means not to run from the pain of finding
these things in ourselves. In fact, one's whole attitude toward
pain can change. Instead of fending it off and hiding from it,
one could open one's heart and allow oneself to feel that pain,
feel it as something that will soften and purify us and make us
far more loving and kind.
The tonglen practice is a method for connecting with suffering
ours and that which is all around us everywhere we go. It is
a method for overcoming fear of suffering and for dissolving the
tightness of our heart. Primarily it is a method for awakening
the compassion that is inherent in all of us, no matter how cruel
or cold we might seem
to be.
We begin the practice by taking on the suffering of a person we
know to be hurting and who we wish to help. For instance, if you
know of a child who is being hurt, you breathe in the wish to
take away all the pain and fear of that child. Then, as you
breathe out, you send the child happiness, joy or whatever would
relieve their pain. This is the core of the practice: breathing
in other's pain so they can be well and have more space to relax
and open, and breathing out, sending them relaxation or whatever
you feel would bring them relief and happiness. However, we often
cannot do this practice because we come face to face with our own
fear, our own resistance, anger, or whatever our personal pain,
our personal stuckness happens to be at that moment.
At that point you can change the focus and begin to do tonglen
for what you are feeling and for millions of others just like you
who at that very moment of time are feeling exactly the same
stuckness and misery. Maybe you are able to name your pain. You
recognize it clearly as terror or revulsion or anger or wanting
to get revenge. So you breathe in for all the people who are
caught with that same emotion and you send out relief or whatever
opens up the space for yourself and all those countless others.
Maybe you can't name what you're feeling. But you can feel it a
tightness in the stomach, a heavy darkness or whatever. Just
contact what you are feeling and breathe in, take it in for all
of us and send out relief to all of us.
People often say that this practice goes against the grain of how
we usually hold ourselves together. Truthfully, this practice
does go against the grain of wanting things on our own terms, of
wanting it to work out for ourselves no matter what happens to
the others. The practice dissolves the armor of self-protection
we've tried so hard to create around ourselves. In Buddhist
language one would say that it dissolves the fixation and
clinging of ego.
Tonglen reverses the usual logic of avoiding suffering and
seeking pleasure and, in the process, we become liberated from a
very ancient prison of selfishness. We begin to feel love both
for ourselves and others and also we being to take care of
ourselves and others. It awakens our compassion and it also
introduces us to a far larger view of reality. It introduces us
to the unlimited spaciousness that Buddhists call shunyata. By
doing the practice, we begin to connect with the open dimension
of our being. At first we experience this as things not being
such a big deal or so solid as they seemed before.
Tonglen can be done for those who are ill, those who are dying or
have just died, or for those that are in pain of any kind. It can
be done either as a formal meditation practice or right on the
spot at any time. For example, if you are out walking and you see
someone in pain right on the spot you can begin to breathe in
their pain and send some out some relief. Or, more likely, you
might see someone in pain and look away because it brings up your
fear or anger; it brings up your resistance and confusion.
So on the spot you can do tonglen for all the people who are just
like you, for everyone who wishes to be compassionate but instead
is afraid, for everyone who wishes to be brave but instead is a
coward.
Rather than beating yourself up, use your own stuckness as a
stepping stone to understanding what people are up against all
over the world.
Breathe in for all of us and breathe out for all of us.
Use what seems like poison as medicine. Use your personal
suffering as the path to compassion for all beings.
Source: http://www.shambhala.org/teachers/pema/tonglen1.php#
___
Pema Chodron's Biography and Teachings
http://www.shambhala.org/teachers/pema/biography.php
photo by Alan Larus http://www.ferryfee.com/bluesky/light&dark.htm
Buddha Within
Jamgon Kongtrul
The ultimate luminosity of Dharmakaya, absolute truth,
is nothing other than the very nature
of this uncontrived, ordinary mind.
Don't look elsewhere for the Buddha.
It is nothing other than the nature of this present awareness.
This is the Buddha within.
There are innumerable Dharma teachings.
There are many antidotes
to many different kinds of spiritual diseases.
There are many words
in the Mahamudra and Dzogchen nondual teachings.
But the root, the heart of all practices is included here,
in simply sustaining the luminous nature of this present
awareness.
If you search elsewhere for something better,
a Buddha superior to this present awareness,
you are deluding yourself.
You are chained,
entangled in the barbed wire of hope and fear.
So give it up!
Simply sustain present wakefulness,
moment after moment."
posted to Dzogchen Practice by Jax