A Daily Practice for Anyone Who Wants One!

My daughter is working this summer at a local and wonderful bakery here in Salt Lake. I went over there tonight to see her and have something to eat (by the way – the food at the Avenues Bakery is great!).

So anyway, I walk in and come across a fellow Buddhist practicitioner who had previously asked me for a suggested a basic daily practice. Since we had not ever gotten together for me to provide her with a practice, we decided that now was a great time put it together. The great part, for me, is that I did not have advance warning to think about the perfect daily basic practice. I pulled it together right from the heart!

So I just started to write out a daily practice. Maybe it is my deluded thinking - which is very likely if you know me – However, I am still really happy with what I wrote down while my soup awaited me.

It might be worthless but I decided to put it down here for my own future benefit. I am getting older and at some point, I am likely to loose my memory. So as long as the blog remains on the web, I can look it up and remind myself of what I need to do. Assuming that I can find it on the web.

So here it is:

1) Get on your Seat – find a time every day to sit down – same time every day is the best and it’s a great way to get some discipline. Set a place in to sit everyday. Start with maybe just 15 minutes – you can extend this as time goes by but the most important thing is to do it every single day. Got it? Don’t do 2 hours one day and then nothing for the next week. Such inconsistency will accomplish nothing.

2) Settle your Body, quite your words, and relax your thinking (your mind, if you prefer) – After sitting down, it is time to rest into your time to practice. I lik to start with my feet and move up my body. Go from your feet to your ankles to calves, to your knees. Eventually you get to your head where I work on each sensual intake separately. My mouth, my nose, my face, my ears, my eyes, the forehead, my crown chakra. If I am lucky, I come out of this practice calm and ready to go into deeper practice.

3) Purify your channels – I did not put this one down tonight because sitting in the restaurant was not the best place to teach someone how to do the 9-Wind Cleansing. But if you know what this is, do it at this time. It is the process to cleanse out negative energies of hatred/anger/aversion (the first three), the negative energies of desire/greed/attachment (the second three), and the negative energies of ignorance/delusion/wrong thinking (the final three). They are stored in your left channel, right channel, and central channel respectively (reverse the first two for women – it’s a mirror image).

4) Shamata – Meditate using your breath as the focus of your thinking. I like Khenpo Choga Rinpoche’s suggestion to do three (3) sets of seven for a total of 21. This is to train our mind in one-pointed focus and attention. Many texts or teachers say that if your mind wanders, you are suppose to start over. However, I feel that if we were really honest with this “rule,” we would never get through all 21 breaths. So don’t be too hard on your self. Just do the best that you can. With time, it seems that there is improvement. Maybe I will be able to get all 21 done without distraction before I die. By the way, the reason we work on this is because it helps with all of the rest of the practice. The better we have trained our mind to focus, the greater the power and force our practice will have.

5) Take Refuge in your Teachers/Guides – Whoever you regard as your teacher or teachers, place them in front of you. Visualization seem strange but it is amazingly powerful. I think that you should put whomever you regard as your teacher/guide/advisor. In fact, I load up every single teacher that I have or have had in front in front of me. There is no reason to leave any of them out. Jesus, Ghandhi, Buddha, our living teachers, our grand parents, put them all there. If they can help me, I don’t want to leave them out. For a Buddhist, we take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, The teachers are the Buddha. They are the messengers of the path to awakening (the Dharma). There are others that are traveling the same path (the Sangha).

6) Offering to your Teacher - Visualize wonderful and magnificant things of beauty and offer these to your teachers. We do this to practice the generosity of giving all to them. We are training to realize that there is nothing in this world as sacred and great as the teachings to reach full awakening. Everything we have, everything that we would like to have, see, or hold can never compare with the sacredness and importance of the teachings. We therefore, offer all that we can imagine to our teachers.

7) Purify your Mind/thinking. Recall a situation over the last say 24 hours that you regret which might be an action, something that you said, or simply something that you thought – This is the purification practice but taken to a very personal level. Rather than dealing with it on a conceptual level we are bringing it right down to the real thing: Something that you really did, said, or thought.
a. Confess it in front of your teachers and guides including deities if you practice with such practices.
b. Regret it.
c. Promise not to do this again for a set period of time. If you can only commit for a few hours, then do this. If you are prepared to do forever, that is even better but mean it!
d. Commit to do something, anything, that you feel is appropriate to make amends – Its your confession, create your own amends. Maybe it is simply to give a homeless person 50 cents. Maybe you should let someone cut in front of you on the freeway and you are happy to let them in. You have to decide what you should do. (By the way, after you have completed the task let go go of your regret! You are done with it. Let it be over!)

8) Rejoice in your good deeds. Recall a good action, words, or thought over the last 24 hours – take your pick and hopefully you can find something.
a. Rejoice in whatever you have recalled
b. Dedicate the merit of this to all sentient beings, don’t keep it for only yourself.

9) Consider those that are suffering. Think of someone you know who is suffering right now or a group of people that are suffering – this is the arousal of the mind of Bodhicitta if you want the formal term for this part of the practice.
a. Wish that they be free from suffering (this is compassion)
b. Wish that they be happy (this is love/loving-kindness)
c. Wish that they never be separated from the unchangeable and indestructible happiness/bliss (this is Joy)
d. Wish that that they remain forever in equanimity beyond hope and fear (this is equanimity).

10) Ask your teachers to remain with you for the day – This is where you can place your teachers in your heart (heart chakra). They can stay and guide you throughout the day. Anytime you need their assistance, they are there to help.

11) Spreading the light of love and compassion - Once your teachers have been safely place in you heart chakra, we can then visualize waves of light coming from our heart chakra. The rainbow of lights are in the colors of blue, green, red, yellow, and white (representing the 5 Buddha families, their attributes, and wisdoms), the rays of light pass through the world spreading love, compassion, and enlightened prayers to all beings. With some practice, such visualizations become more and more a reality that you are truly sending waves out to the entire world and all beings.


12) Rejoice in whatever merit you have accumulated through today’s practice – You can increase this bundle by rejoicing all the merit created by all sentient beings and accumulated by all enlightened beings in the past, present, and future. Load up the pile of merit.

13) Give the Merit away for the swift awakening (aka the Enlightenment) of all sentient beings – If you keep all this merit for yourself, you will lose it in a single moment of anger, greed, pride, envy, or ignorance. So give it away and then it will never be lost. This is for certain.

14) Close your practice and Smile – Keep your piece of your mind. When you mess up: reflect on the error, regret, forgive yourself, and get back to being that wonderful and amazing person that you are.

Many Dharma Blessings,

Geoff

Masters Consider Anger

For this posting, I am mostly going to quote some of my most favorite words and lessons on anger from great Masters whom I regard as my teachers along my path to hopefully and eventually awaken. I have a long long way to go so I need to repeat often. I hope that eventually all of this really sinks in and become part of my wisdom.

Patrul Rinpoche ( 1808-1887) in “The Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones - The Practice of View, Meditation, and Action – A Discourse Virtuous in the Beginning, Middle, and End” (no. 35) writes (Padmakara Translation Group):

Overcome your enemy, hatred, with the weapon of love;
Protect your family, the beings of the six realms, with the skillful means of compassion;
Harvest from the field of devotion the crop of experience and realization.
Consumating your life’s work, recite the six-syllable mantra (Om Mani Padme Hung).

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche (1910-1991) composed a commentary on this great work, writing:

It is said that there is no greater evil than hatred and no greater virtue than patience. While a single moment of anger destroys countless aeons of merit and leads to unmitigated suffering in the hell realms, patience toward those who harm you and the sincere wish to bring them happiness will bring you swiftly onto the path taken by all the Buddhas.

There is no better way to deal with enemies than to feel great love for them, realizing that in former lives they have been your loving parents….

The great Indian Master Shantideva (8th century) wrote an entire chapter in the Bodhicharyavatara (The Way of the Bodhisattva) on Patience (Chapter 6). The entire chapter is really about eliminating anger through the application of patience. However, I won’t type out the entire Chapter here. You can go buy a great copy of this text from numerous sources. I have taken the following verses from the translation of the Padmakara Translation Group:

[6:3] Those tormented by the pain of anger
will never know tranquility of mind –
Strangers they will be to every pleasure;
Sleep departs them, they can never rest.

Here as elsewhere in the chapter, we are reminded that it is the person who is angry who shall surely suffer.

[6:39] If those who are like wanton children
Are by nature prone to injure others,
What point is there in being angry –
[For this is] like resenting fire for its heat?

[6:40] And if their faults are fleeting and contingent,
If living beings are by nature wholesome,
It’s likewise senseless to resent them –
[Might] as well be angry at the sky for having clouds?

I love these lines. Verse 39 says to me that if the person is evil at their core, then how can we be angry for them being who they are. Verse 40 says to me that if a person is good but had a fault that is only temporary, it would be senseless to resent them, as well.

And my all-time favorite verse of the entire Bodhicharyavatara:

[6:41] Although indeed it is the stick that hurts me,
I am angry at the one [who is holding it], striking me,
But he is driven and impelled by anger –
So it is his wrath I should resent [and not the person].

For me this always reminds me that I should not get angry at the person for whatever they have done to harm me. Rather I should resent the negative emotion that has engulfed their thinking. In this case the verse refers to his wrath (anger) but it could just as easily been his greed, envy, pride, or ignorance. Being angry at the person is just not getting to the source of the problem.

This whole chapter is worth memorizing. In fact the whole text by Shantideva is worthy to put to memory, contemplation, and reflection. My wonderful and gracious teacher Khenpo Choga Rinpoche has begun preparing a comprehensive commentary. You can obtain the introduction and first five chapters here.

Next, I offer Verse 20 from the equally powerful and great writing from the magnificent Gyalse Togme (1295-1369) know in English as “37-Practices of a Bodhisattva. The translation I am using here is that of Dr. C.T. Dorji from Bhutan. I like this translation because it seems to be the most authentic direct translation of the Tibetan:

If anger that dwells in our hearts lies neglected
And, turning instead to our external foes,
We try to destroy them and even kill thousands,
Then thousands of others will plague us still more.
So seeing this action is not the solution,
Let us muster the forces of mercy and love.
Turn inwards and tame the wild flow of our thinking –
The Sons of the Buddhas all practice this way.

Destroying our external foes – even killing them – will never solve the anger within. Rather it is the negative emotion within us that is the true enemy to be eliminated.

I pray that I and all beings can someday turn our focus on these internal enemies and stop looking to the external foes as if they were the cause of our pain and suffering.

Finally, I would like to recount one of my favorite teachings on anger from my teacher, Dzogchen Khenpo Choga Rinpoche:

[Khenpo-la] If you were standing on a balcony and someone told you to jump, would you do it? Why not? What would you do if they tried to ‘help’ you off the balcony?

[Response] I wouldn’t jump. I would not jump because I would surely be hurt. Even if someone tried to help me off the balcony, I would resist, in order to avoiding harming myself.

[Khenpo-la] Anger will surely harm you just like falling from the balcony. This, I promise you! So likewise, if someone tries to make you angry, no matter what, you should do everything you can to avoid the anger. Exactly like you would to use all of your mite to avoid going over the balcony.

May you avoid falling off the balconies whether by choice or with the assistance of others.

Many Dharma Blessings,

Geoff

More Thoughts on Anger

Tonight I just went over to a good friend’s house. This friend is feeling upset about an unfortunate breakup. This friend is Buddhist. However, despite being Buddhist, my friend told me that it was actually beneficial to feel angry. It was GOOD for them to feel upset.

What?

Where had this come from and where did they learn this? My friend told me that they are quite certain that the Dali Lama gets angry - like, at the Chinese!

What?

I still contend that the Dali Lama does not feel anger towards the Chinese.

So I came home thinking about this support of Anger…again! At least for me, our Western thinking continues to think that there is some benefit and value to anger. I am confident in saying that there is no good from anger. None. Nada!

However, people just look at me like I am crazy. This thinking is contagious. It is so entrenched in our society and education system that I realize I do not have the ability to even persuade a single person that they just might be mistaken.

I would like sign out of this angry society. I will be happy to retreat into my isolated meditation cave and let everyone, at least for the time being, get angry and hate each other. I am not interested in joining in.

After I have hopefully come to some level of stability to not be affect by such anger, I promise to come out and try to help. But right now, I see lots of people that are thinking that it is good to get angry.

My next writing, which I am separating in order to avoid having a paper too long will talk on the Masters words on Anger. For those that might doubt that the “Anger is Good” Club is correct and might be looking for some support against anger, you might enjoy reading it.

However, if you are part of the Anger is Good Club (the AGC), I might suggest that you don’t bother to read the writing entitled Masters Consider Anger. I do not want to try to convince that you might be mistaken.

I am not sure that joining AGC is a good idea. I know that I am trying to get me off their recruitment list.

Many Dharma Blessings,

Geoff

Remembering to Sit

Everyday seems to go by so quickly. It is very easy to have the whole day pass by without taking the time to sit and reflect. However, my teachers and all great masters repeatedly remind us that there are not results without meditation.

There are lots of good reasons to make meditation part of each day. Do you want to have peace and happiness for yourself? Do you want to be of aid to others? Do you want a calm and content thinking? Then sit every day!

How about downsides? Can you think of any? So far I have only heard of one. It takes some time. Any more? Look deeply. I bet you cannot find another.

There are some items of advice that I have adopted to assist me. First, I regard meditation/sitting the most important thing that I do every day. I have placed it number 1 priority. Second, I follow the advice to set the time of day to sit. I have a set time. Further, I have a set place. This is when I take my seat and meditate. If for some reason, I cannot sit at this place and at that time, I will think of it often until I am able to sit.

Hearing teachings plants the seeds of our awakening.

Contemplating these teachings (a form of meditation of its own) provides the nourishment for the seeds of enlightenment to sprout.

Sitting in calm meditation provides the nourishment for the awakened mind to blossom.

I find the greatest obstacle to continuing my sitting practice are those times when repeated sitting seems to be having no effect. Sometimes I go for weeks without any noticeable results. It is easy to start wondering if I am just wasting my time. At these times, it is only my discipline to keep sitting that keeps me showing up. Then in one instant, in one sitting, I can gain a glimpse of the other side. I like to think that I am experiencing a bit of what it would be like to be total free of the delusions of samsara ( the world that has been fabricated by my grasping and confused thinking). Maybe this too is just deluded thinking. However, these small glimpses and the small breakthroughs provide the inspiration to keep returning to my seat and to my practice.

Many Dharma Blessings,

Geoff