Wednesday May 8, 2013
The Third Noble Truth is about the cessation of dukkha (unease, stress, suffering). In his first sermon the Buddha said, "And this, monks, is the noble truth of the cessation of dukkha: the remainderless fading and cessation, renunciation, relinquishment, release, and letting go of that very craving."
I found a poem by Phra Ajaan Mun Bhuridatta Mahathera (1870-1949) called "The Ballad of Liberation from the Khandhas [Skandhas]" which contains these lines --
The crucial thing: the ending of desire.
Labels stay in their own sphere and don't intrude.
The mind, unenthralled with anything, stops its struggling.
This is a restatement of the Third Noble Truth, seems to me. I am interpreting "labels" as "mind objects," if that makes it clearer.
Read More...
Tuesday May 7, 2013
In commentaries on the Third Noble Truth, words like liberation and emancipation come up frequently. This begs the question, who is being liberated from what?
Possible answers (assuming we're going with a subject and object here) -- the mind liberated from delusion; the being liberated from suffering. Somewhere there's a Zen teacher saying that liberation is liberated from liberation; or, at least, from all thought of a self being liberated and all concepts of liberation.
There's a Zen chant called "Verse of the Kesa" that calls the monks' kashaya robe (and its mini version, the rakusu) a "robe of liberation." Here's the version I know best --
Read More...
Thursday May 2, 2013
I've been reviewing the Second Noble Truth and want to share what the Theravadin scholar Walpola Rahula wrote about it in his book What the Buddha Taught. If you've got a copy of the Grove Press edition, you can find this on pages 30 to 32.
In his first sermon after his enlightenment, the Buddha said that dukkha (stress; dissatisfaction; suffering) arises from tanha, which means "thirst" or "craving." And craving arises from belief in a permanent, separate self. This belief is a function of mental volition or will.
According to Walpola Rahula, the terms craving, volition, and karma all denote the same thing. "They denote the desire, the will to be, to exist, to re-exist, to become more and more, to grow more and more, to accumulate more and more." He noted also that all of these things are functions of the fourth skandha, mental formations.
Read More...
Tuesday April 30, 2013
Via the Rev. Danny Fisher, see the Washington Post's portrait of Wirathu, a Buddhist monk being called the "Burmese bin Laden" because of his hate speec against Muslims. He is head of a movement in Burma that promotes Buddhist supremacy and segregation of non-Buddhist ethnic minorities, primarily Muslims.
The most comforting thing in the article is that a majority of the Burmese sangha does not approve of what Wirathu is doing. But a substantial and visible minority are, essentially, giving moral cover to violence. Not exactly Right Action or Right Speech, it seems.
Tuesday April 30, 2013
The Second Noble Truth explains the origins of dukkha, or unsatisfactoriness. And the usual rendering of the Second Truth into English is something like "suffering is caused by desire." This leaves us with the question, Does this mean all desire? Or are some desires (like a desire to realize enlightenment) okay?
I've heard the explanation that it is all right to desire wholesome and beneficial things, but after a closer look at the Buddha's first sermon I think that's not the best explanation.
Here is what the Buddha originally said about the Second Noble Truth --
Read More...
Thursday April 25, 2013
Here are a couple of articles offering perspective on the violence in Burma, which involves Buddhists monks and laypeople. Please note that I have no personal knowledge of what's happening in Burma, but these articles seem plausible.
Aung Zaw, founding editor of the news organization Irrawaddy Publishing Group, writes in the New York Times that "the deadly anti-Muslim riots are no accident but the product of an effort led by army hard-liners to thwart both the reforms and Myanmar's opening to the world." Aung Zaw says hate speech from the hard liners has infected many of Burma's Buddhists and driven them to violence against Muslims.
Aung Zaw also says that corruption of the sangha is a legacy of the brutal military regime that ruled Burma for so many years. "Some monasteries have become breeding grounds for extreme nationalism," Aung Zaw writes. "Many senior monks are corrupt, including those in the state-sponsored Buddhist council, the Sangha." (See also earlier blog post, "Understanding Buddhist Violence in Burma.")
Read More...
Wednesday April 24, 2013
I've written before about the Ven. Ajahn Sumedho's booklet on the Four Noble Truths, which I'm finding very helpful. For example, according to the booklet, the Pali word dukkha -- which so often is translated as "suffering" -- actually means "incapable of satisfying" or "not able to bear or withstand anything." To me, to say "life is incapable of satisfying" is very different from "life is suffering."
The Venerable Sumedho stresses that dukkha is not about you; it's about life. All of us living beings are affected by it. It's important to not think of life's slings and arrows as your personal tragedies or faults. Dukkha is how it is for everybody.
Read More...
Tuesday April 23, 2013
The first step in solving a problem is acknowledging there is a problem. And this takes us to the First Noble Truth.
In a culture that prizes -- nay, demands -- positive thinking and happiness, the First Noble Truth seems out of step. I can't tell you how many times I've sat through an intro-to-Buddhism lecture and observed the audience recoil when told "life is suffering." Nearly always, someone stands up and proclaims (sometimes angrily) that life is happy, dammit.
The result is that sometimes people are in denial of their own unhappiness. They bury emotional discomfort and will themselves to believe that everything is just fine. This is not healthful, physically, emotionally, or spiritually.
Read More...
Wednesday April 17, 2013
No doubt you've read news stories about Buddhists, including monks, attacking Rohingya Muslims in Burma. I have written about this only a little, because I have no particular insight into what is happening in Burma. As they say, I only know what I read in the papers.
Now I've found an article in the New York Times by Swe Win, a freelance journalist based in Yangon, that makes the situation a little clearer for me. Swe Win writes that during the recent decades of military rule, the monastic sangha became less of a refuge in the Three Jewels and more of a way for young men and boys to escape poverty. As a result, many wearing the saffron robe really aren't that keen on dharma.
Read More...
Tuesday April 16, 2013
In our Zen Center, the Kannon who usually greets us inside the front door has been moved to the zendo, where she sits on an altar for those suffering from yesterday's Boston Marathon bombing. Kannon is the Japanese name for Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion.
One way to think of Kannon is as the activity of selfless compassion in the world. By many accounts, yesterday in Boston people ran toward the sounds of bombs and cries instead of away. The urge to help was stronger than the urge to flee from danger. This is the activity of selfless compassion.
Although I am far from Boston, I can appreciate what those present at yesterday's tragedy are feeling now. I was an eyewitness to the collapse of the World Trade Center towers, so I know what it feels like when the veil of normalcy is suddenly and violently ripped apart.
Read More...
No comments:
Post a Comment