Nun of Your Business

"I have been in retreat and attained the power to not criticise others... If only you weren't so self centred to see it!!"

The Basis of All Good Qualities: a review of the Graded Path to Enlightenment Tibetan: Yönten Zhirgyurma Commonly called: The Foundation of All Good Qualities Composed by: Je Tsong Khapa English arrangement for chanting by: Gelongma Losang Drimay First published 2008, slightly modified (first 2 verses) in May 2009 Right reliance on the kind guru— The basis of all good qualities— Is the root of the path. Bless me to See this and rely with great respect. Precious freedom of this one-time life Is so meaningful and hard to find. Bless me with the mind which day and night Always takes its essence without cease. Like a water bubble, this life is Fleeting—it decays and then death comes. After death, your good and bad karma Follow you around like a shadow. Knowing this with a firm conviction, I'll give up even small non-virtues, And take up all virtuous actions. Bless me to live conscientiously. Knowing how samsaric pleasures are Disappointing, unreliable— Seeking them just leads to suffer...

Well, July 2008 went by without a blog post. Anyway, here is what I've been thinking about lately. Carlos Castaneda's ideas of the double body and dreaming Vajrayana practices of generating an illusory body and dream yoga Castaneda's writings are an interesting resource for getting some ideas--outside of the Buddhist tradition--that might help us understand some of the Vajrayana practices. Castaneda's stories, which are so well-known among Westerners in my generation, bring to life the possibilities which might seem too theoretical from classical Buddhist texts. See Tales of Power , pages 43 - 51, for an anecdote about don Genero showing up in his 'double' body, which: can travel great distances in an instant "Genaro is a man of knowledge," don Juan said dryly. "And being a man of knowledge, he's perfectly capable of transporting himself over great distances." He reminded me that once, years before, the three of us had been in...

I live in a Buddhist subculture. I don't just mean the place where I live, but most of the people I interact with are at least nominally Buddhist. Because they have all had extensive teachings on karma and compassion and working with the mind, I have higher expectations of them than I do of the rest of society. However, those people--especially the ones who are involved in Dharma-center work--are often at the end of their rope, over-worked, stressed out. That stress shows up in the form of unfriendliness and short tempers. So, I started thinking, how can we change the system, the culture around our Dharma centers so that people have a better way to handle the stress. Should we make more structure so that their time is more protected--certain hours of the day that are silent or for formal meditation practice only? Or does some kind of training program need to be implemented to target these Dharma workers and show them how to practice Lo-Jong, Thought Transformation, i.e., how to tra...

In the class I've been teaching lately on Death & Rebirth, we were reading about the "miserable realms" (from a Buddhist point of view). Read teaching by Lama Zopa Rinpoche on this. Here are some of my picks for "Hell on Earth" from the recent pages of the newspaper. ________________________ May 17, 3:06 AM EDT Chemist gets life for killing husband in acid vat By GARANCE BURKE Associated Press Writer FRESNO, Calif. (AP) -- A biochemist was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole Friday for killing her estranged husband by knocking him out and stuffing him into a vat of acid, possibly while he was still alive. Larissa Schuster was convicted in December of murdering Timothy Schuster with the special circumstance that the murder was committed for financial gain. At the time of his death in July 2003, the Schusters were in the middle of a divorce after nearly 20 years of marriage. Just days after Timothy Schuster was reported missing, his h...

Below is a series of  posts I have added on the topic of omniscience , an key feature of buddhahood. Today I am adding one more. See way down at the end of the page. [ September 7, 2011] ------------------------------------------- Bibliotheca Buddhica: "That Buddha is omniscient does not mean that he knows the names of all plants and the names of all animals, etc., etc., but it means that he possesses a knowledge of the four truths, that is to say, he possesses in the highest degree philosophic intuition. It is the highest knowledge as conceived by Spinoza not the kind of omniscience imagined by unphilosophic minds." Doing some research on the Abhisamaya-alamkara , I found an old work by Levi and Stcherbatsky on Google Books . This particular comment (above) caught my eye, because it is something I wonder about. One of the distinctions between a Hinayana arhat (someone who has achieved personal nirvana) and buddha (a perfectly and completely enlightened being) is...

Cleaning out a box of old papers recently, I came across some pages that I had pulled out of an old copy of You Can Heal Your Life , by Louise Hay. Do you remember that phenomenon? It was popular in the 1980's--saying affirmations to counteract negative thinking that can show up as physical problems. So the pages that I saved were the index that lists 1) the ailment, 2) the psychological cause, and 3) the affirmation to turn it around. For example, for Chills it says the cause is "Mental contraction, pulling away and in. Desire to retreat. Leave me alone." And the affirmation is " I am safe and secure at all times. Love surrounds me and protects me. All is well. " For Colds, it says, "Too much going on at once. Mental confusion, disorder. Small hurts." And the affirmation is " I allow my mind to relax and be at peace. Clarity and harmony are within me and around me. " For Back Pain, it depends on where the pain is. There are different causes ...

I've been telling my friends that I'm interested in something I'm calling 'the symbolic process,' these days. So someone gave me the book American Gods , by Neil Gaiman (2001). This fictional adventure is about a show-down between the ancient gods, led by the old Norse god Odin, and the gods of modernity--the ones who run the internet, and so forth. One of my favorite parts was when they (the main character, who is human, and the god Odin) take a sharp right turn off the highway and take a shortcut through the backstage of reality. In order to evade their pursuers, they walk in this realm that has a black, slick ground. When they arrive at their destination--a cabin in the countryside--it turns out that a month has passed in this ordinary reality, even though it didn't seem that long in the black, slick backstage shortcut. That reminds me of explanations we hear from Buddhism (and other traditions) about how time passes differently in various realms. For example...

Do you know Rumpole, the British barrister (lawyer)? While I was home recently, my dad loaned me a book to read about this fictional character, well-known through the TV serial that airs on PBS. In this particular book, Rumpole was being interviewed for a possible promotion and was asked why he chose to defend people who were always getting into trouble. I don't have the exact words in front of me, but his answer was something like "People who don't get into trouble don't need defending." That made me think of the bodhisattva mission to save suffering beings. Sure I want people to be free of suffering, but I don't want to be bothered by the annoying ones, the ones who really have a lot of problems. Also, I don't really want to help the ones who hurt me. So which ones am I going to work for? to lead them from suffering into everlasting happiness? Only the good ones? They probably don't even need my help. That would be like a lawyer who only defended peo...

I saw a documentary on the Ballet Russes, two Russian dance troupes who fled to the United States during World War II. After several years of hard travel, performing together every night, the troupes eventually broke up because of finances. Even the best ballet troupes in the world were not economically viable. The individual dancers ended up scattered throughout the world--one in each place--teaching dance in places like Oklahoma, California, New York, Venezuela, Australia, and England. It seemed that even big cities could not support more than a few world-class dance teachers. The dancers perfected their art during the rigorous years of working in a close group. But eventually they had to split up. This reminded me of the situation of sangha communities, even the major Tibetan monasteries and what happens to the individuals who go through that system. The Tibetan monks, for example, gain their expertise while living in a crowded monastery following a demanding schedule of classes, de...

"Blastity-bleep, freezin' cold. No hot running water. Have to go out back to use the outhouse. I can't be expected to live like this!" Those were my thoughts on frosty mornings the past couple of weeks while on personal meditation retreat at a remote hermitage. Fortunately, the book The Lawudo Lama was in the cupboard. It's the biography of Lama Zopa Rinpoche's past life and the early part of this life focusing on the mountainous area of Nepal where he is from, Lawudo, Solu Khumbu. Pictured here is Rinpoche in front of his cave at Lawudo, inherited from his previous incarnation. (The cave has been closed in on the front.) I was reminded of all the meditators--and just plain people--who have to live like that all the time, no running water at all, let alone hot water. Right now, not just people in the ancient past. And so I took some consolation that having creature comforts was not a requirement for having a successful meditation retreat. Moreover--and I have...