Impermanence...

In Insight Meditation, investigation of our experiences in each moment as they present themselves to us through our six senses (five sense and mind in Buddhism) is key to developing insight and liberation.  So we investigate it all - sights, sounds, bodily sensations, smells, tastes, and mental arisings which encompasses every mental and emotional experience we have, thoughts, feelings, moods, mind states, memories, fantasies, projections, and on and on… 

Every single one of these experiences has three characteristics - impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and not self.  This writing will concentrate on  impermanence bringing in an introduction by Normal Fischer, poet, essayist, and Soto Zen Buddhist priest, and a deeper exploration by Andrew Olendzki, Buddhist scholar, author, practitioner, and professor at Lesley University and the director of its graduate program in Mindfulness Studies.  

We all have some understanding of impermanence.  The evidence is all around us.  Breezes arise, get stronger, cease, begin again.  The sun rises, passes through the sky, and sets.  Our hearts beat and pause, beat and pause. New Year’s Eve marks the passing of another year, the beginning of another.  

As Norman Fischer points out in  his Lion’s Roar article “Impermanence is Buddha Nature,”  "Practitioners have always understood impermance as the cornerstone of Buddhist teachings and practice. All that exists is impermanent; nothing lasts. Therefore nothing can be grasped or held onto. When we don’t fully appreciate this simple but profound truth we suffer, as did the monks who descended into misery and despair at the Buddha’s passing. When we do, we have real peace and understanding, as did the monks who remained fully mindful and calm.

As far as classical Buddhism is concerned, impermanence is the number one inescapable, and essentially painful, fact of life. It is the singular existential problem that the whole edifice of Buddhist practice is meant to address. To understand impermanence at the deepest possible level (we all understand it at superficial levels), and to merge with it fully, is the whole of the Buddhist path. The Buddha’s final words express this: Impermanence is inescapable. Everything vanishes. Therefore there is nothing more important than continuing the path with diligence. All other options either deny or short-shrift the problem."

Andy Olensky invites us to share in his exploration of impermanence, anicca**

"Let’s start by recognizing the roots of this word, anicca. Like many other important words in the Buddhist vo­cabulary, it’s constructed as a negative. The prefix “a-” reverses its meaning, and what is negated is the term nitya in Sanskrit or nicca in the Pali spelling (the two languages are very similar). This word nicca means everlasting, eternal, unchanging. In what sense was the word “permanent” being used in ancient India? What exactly were the Buddhists negating?

In the intellectual environment in which Buddhism evolved, the concept of something being stable and lasting was very important. Many religious traditions of the world take this view: clearly the world of human experi­ences is constantly changing, the data of the senses and all they reveal is in constant flux, but underlying all this change surely there must be something stable, something that it all rests upon…

This idea works on both the micro-cosmic and the macro-cosmic level. There is a sense that all the way out there, at the very limit of this world or world system, there is something per­manent (nitya) from which this world emerged—Brahman or God. And all the way in here, deep in the innermost world, there is also something stable—the soul or Self. In the profound mysti­cal intuition of the Upanishads these two are not separate, but are two mani­festations of the same reality....

This is the background against which Buddhism was working. And the Buddha, with his several excursions into the nature of human experience, basically came to the conclusion that this is an entirely constructed concept. The claim of stability articulated in these traditions is really just an idea that we project onto our world; it is not to be found in actual experience. So one of the principle insights of the whole Buddhist tradition is that the entire world of our experience—whether the macro-cosmic material world or the micro-cosmic world of our personal, inner experience—is fundamentally not per­manent, not unchanging. Everything is in flux...

Let’s be­gin by looking at this issue from its broadest perspective, as an idea of change or non-change, then gradu­ally, [moving] from the level of con­cept to the level of experience, becom­ing intimate with the details of look­ing at change in our experience, mo­ment after moment after moment...

A natural feature of all our experi­ence is that it’s accompanied by an af­fect tone or feeling tone. Everything we experience generally feels pleasant or unpleasant. Sometimes we can’t tell whether it’s one or the other, but that too is a natural part of our sensory ap­paratus. Unfortunately, because we have this underlying tendency for gratification, we want—we crave—for the pleasurable aspects of our experience to continue. We also have an un­derlying tendency to avoid pain, and so we yearn for the painful aspects of our experience to stop or to remain un­acknowledged. So this force of crav­ing, in both positive (attachment) and negative (aversion) manifestations, arises naturally (though, as we shall see, (not necessarily) from the appara­tus of our sensory experience.

The problem is that, when this crav­ing is present in experience, it prevents us from being authentically in the mo­ment. For one thing, this craving impels us to act, and in acting we fuel the pro­cess of flowing-on (Samsara).  It also prevents us from seeing our experience “as it is,” and inclines us to view it “as we want it to be.” This, of course, contributes to a sig­nificant distortion of reality. The wanting itself is the fetter, the tie, the attachment. Because of our wanting to hold onto the pleasure, and our wanting to push away the pain, we are both tied to craving and tied by craving.

You might think of it as a ball and chain that we’re dragging around with us. As long as we’re encumbered by this burden, it is going to influence how we confront each moment’s experience. The intriguing thing about this ball and chain, however, is that it’s not shackled to us—we clutch it voluntar­ily. We just don’t know any better.

It is important to recognize the way in which these two factors—ignorance and craving—support and reinforce one another. If we understood that the objects we cling to or push away are inherently insubstantial, unsatisfying, and unstable, we would know better than to hang onto them. But we can­not get a clear enough view of these three characteristics, because our per­ception of the objects is distorted by the force of our wanting them to be the source of security, satisfaction and substance. If we could let go of want­ing experience to be one way or an­other, we could see its essentially empty nature; but we cannot stop wanting, because we don’t under­stand these things we want so much are ephemeral.

And so we are cloaked in igno­rance and tied to craving; and we are also incapable of discerning a beginning or an end to the flowing-on known as saṃsāra. Taken as a whole, this passage is laying out the nature of the human condition and the limitations of our ability to see the impermanence of our own ex­perience. It shows how, from one mo­ment to the next and from one lifetime to the next, we are compelled to move on and on and on, continuing to construct and inhabit our world. And both the be­ginning and end of the entire process are entirely beyond the capacity of our minds to conceive...

So this passage sets the stage for us…No story is going to help us much in figuring out what we’re doing here. All we have is what is right in front of us, and that is obscured by the ignorance and craving we continue to manifest.

But this is by no means an insignificant starting point. The beginning and end of the process might be unknow­able, but we can know what is present to our immediate experience. Since there is no point in wasting energy on speculation about origins or destinies, our attention is best placed on investi­gating the present and unpacking the forces that keep it all flowing onward. This is really where Buddhism starts and where it thrives—in the present moment. We have no idea how many moments have gone before or how many will yet unfold—either cosmically or individually—but each mo­ment that lies before our gaze is, poten­tially, infinitely deep.

The critical factor is the quality of our attention. If a moment goes by unnoticed, then it is so short it might not even have occurred. But if we can attend very carefully to its passage, then we can be­gin to see its nature. The closer we look, the more we see. The more mindful we can be, the more depth reality holds for us.

The Buddhist tradition points out some of the dynamics of the present moment—its arising and passing away, its interrelatedness to other moments, its constructed qualities, the interde­pendence of its factors—and then we have to work with it from there. The only place to start is the only place to finish—in this very moment. And that of course is why the experiential di­mension to Buddhism—the practice of mindful awareness—is so crucial. You can’t think your way out of this. You just have to be with the arising and passing of experience, and gain as much understanding from the unfold­ing of the moments as you can.

Step by step, investigated moment by investigated moment, the illusions that obscure things and the desires that distort things will recede as they yield to the advance of insight and understanding. In this direction lies greater clarity and freedom.

**"The Context of Impermanence" (Insight Journal, Fall 1999) https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/article/the-context-of-impermanence/. 

Letting go...

Ajahn Chah writes: “If you let go a little, you will find a little peace. If you let go a lot, you will find a lot of peace. If you let go absolutely, you will find absolute peace and tranquility.”

Among Buddha’s earliest teachings was the Four Noble Truths - the truth of suffering, the truth of the cause of suffering, the truth of the end of suffering, and the Noble 8-fold path which is the path from suffering to liberation.  

The cause of suffering in the second noble truth is attachment, sometimes called greed, sometimes craving or wanting, sometimes striving.  It has been illustrated as a closed fist. We have all known moments of grasping and moments of letting go.  In our national scene recently, we may have been aware of our own deep wanting for things to be different from what they are. As meditators, we may have also experienced this deep wanting and the frustration of it as intense suffering.  And many of us have turned that wanting into action.  If this action is wise, it can be freeing.  It allows us to do what we can to bring a different energy to the situation.  We get caught, however, when we have expectations of a certain outcome.  Certainly, we may wish for a certain outcome but our expectations are what cause us sorrow.  If we can’t get what we want when we want it, we will suffer.

There are so many areas where this wanting comes to the fore.  Certainly around our basic survival needs - air to breathe, water to drink, food to eat, shelter from the elements, from dangers.  These are healthy needs and satisfying them is essential.  But these needs and their satisfaction must also be in balance. Wanting too much food, too much in shelter and safety can lead to suffering of a different kind.  

This applies to our meditations as well.  It is wholesome to want good things from our meditation, to want to be free of our entanglements of mind and heart, to be free of suffering.  And yet, we can get out of balance in our meditation by striving too hard which is a common pitfall for meditators.  The mind can be so stubborn, so flighty, so uncontrollable that we may bear down harder to concentrate on our breath, striving to force our minds to stay with the meditation object.

Ajahn Passano in his book on metta called Abundant, Exalted, Immeasurable, says it this way: “For the mind to settle, there needs to be an application of interested energy and ease.  If there’s too much forcing, it creates tension; if it’s too loose, the mind gets nebulous and cloudy and drifts. We need to balance the mind by working with what is.” (p.6)  He further advises, “Pay attention to what the mind is doing.  Balance is an important quality to bring to the practice.  How can you best sustain the continuity of awareness?  That’s where the mind becomes peaceful.  It doesn’t become peaceful just by forcing the mind onto the object and holding it there.  Even it you succeed in doing that, it doesn’t actually make the mind that peaceful.”  

So relaxing, allowing, being easeful, letting go of results, accepting - these are all words and expressions we can use to talk ourselves into letting go a little.  If we let go a little, we get a little peace.  We all know how this feels.  When we let go of our anger towards a family member… or let go of our desire to have what someone else has…or finally see through an obsessive thought pattern and let it go ….    We get a little peace.  And the peace feels wonderful.  And we might want more of that peace and begin striving to let go until we see ourselves grasping again.  Then we can sit back and allow just as much peace as there is.

This great attachment and letting go is nowhere more stark than in the dying process.  Wanting to live is hard-wired into our DNA since we were the smallest amoebae.  All beings want to live; all beings want to be happy, to be comfortable, to be peaceful; beings of all kinds don’t want to die.

Part of our practice of letting go is learning to be with what is.  When we sit in one position, we may be happy for 15 minutes or so.  And then our knees hurt or our back aches, or our foot goes to sleep, or we realize we are thirsty, hungry, or we have an itch.  Then we have choices.  We can change our position.  That may lead us to change our position over and over again looking for the perfect position.  We can turn our attention to our breath with greater diligence and sometimes the discomfort is forgotten in the concentration practice.  And we can choose to do nothing but to observe  the discomfort.  This takes some discernment.  We don’t want to injure our knees in meditation but we may find we can tolerate some discomfort without lasting harm.  Or we may discover the pain is mixed with fear and once we have allowed the fear, it dissipates and the pain is less noticeable.  

So our practice is not just about sitting blissfully.  It is also noticing what arises on our way to blissful sitting.  It is experiencing the frustration, the discomfort, the fear and anger of not getting the sit we want.  And it is finally remembering to let go, let be, not to get too involved in solving our transient wants and desires, aversions and discomforts.  

And this process is practice for the increasing pains and discomforts that the body and mind will experience on the way to dissolution.  Many people fear the ending of the body and the inevitable suffering that attends this end more than they fear the end of consciousness.  However it is for us, letting go is a practice.  Our mindfulness and meditation practices have been helping us relax into the vagaries of life all along.  Things will not always go our way.  What we like will not last long enough.  What we don’t like will come all too soon.  We learn to allow, to abandon our striving, to open our hands to what is.  It’s called practice for a reason.  

People often think the Buddhists are too pre-occupied with death.  Yet our elemental existence is at the core of all of our beings.  Some people live in such a way that they don’t think about it.  The Buddhist point of view is that if we live knowing our death can come at any time, we value each minute of our precious lives and do what we can to live each moment fully - up to our last breath.  And this may mean practicing to let go a little, a lot, and, if it is meant to be, completely.

"Compassion is a verb..."

The second of the sublime abidings or Brahma viharas is compassion - Karuna in the Pali language.  Compassion is what arises when the loving heart encounters suffering.  And out of this encounter arises the desire to help.  Thich Nhat Hanh famously said, "Compassion is a verb.”    
 “From his Love is Compassion in Action...Thich Nhat Hanh writes , “Compassion is a mind that removes the suffering that is present in the other. The essence of love and compassion is understanding, the ability to recognize the physical, material, and psychological suffering of others, to put ourselves ‘inside the skin’ of the other. We go ‘inside’ their body, feelings, and mental formations, and witness for ourselves their suffering. Shallow observation as an outsider is not enough to see their suffering. We must become one with the object of our observation. When we are in contact with another’s suffering, a feeling of compassion is born in us. Compassion means, literally, ‘to suffer with.’”  *From the Humane decisions website:  https://humanedecisions.com/thich-nhat-hanh-said-compassion-is-a-verb/

This is something we all have experienced - in hearing of the suffering of someone close to us or far away, an individual or residents of a city, from the youngest baby to the oldest adult, compassion is a natural response to witnessing the suffering of others.  This doesn’t mean that we always feel compassion when we encounter suffering.  Sometimes our own suffering blinds us to the suffering of others.  In that case, we need to offer compassion to ourselves.  This self-compassion may be an action if, for instance, we have overcrowded our schedules and need to decline to take on another project or turn over an existing project to others.  We may encounter adversity with a barrage of self-criticism or turn straight to solving a situation before acknowledging and caring for our own pain and confusion.  When we can stop and remember to offer ourselves self-compassion, this compassion has a quality of soothing and nurturing, caring for, holding, reassuring, and offering kindness.  It helps restore us to balance, to make us whole so that we can then move from a place of love and wisdom to solving, repairing, making the situation whole again as well.

But there is another kind of compassion that Kristin Neff has called “fierce self-compassion.”  This kind of compassion is more action-oriented, as when a firefighter rushes into a burning building to rescue the terrified inhabitants.  And it often has an element of anger as that of the Mama bear protecting her young.  This fierce compassion seeks to protect and rescue.  There is no desire for revenge or destruction beyond freeing the suffering one from danger and harm.

Thich Nhat Hahn and other Buddhists in the Zen tradition called it “engaged Buddhism” which pointed towards the element of action to protect and aid suffering beings, often in the social justice arena, but also with help in the basics of living - food, shelter, safety.  In 2007 Bhikku Bodhi, a well known and revered American Buddhist monk, founded the Buddhist Global Relief with its primary mission that of relieving hunger.  
In July of this year, he circulated a beautifully written petition asking the president to stop the starving in Gaza.  His goal was 10,000 signatures.  It received 9,228.  And raised awareness in many individuals that more can and should be done.  

From this example, we can see that the compassionate actions can be large, they can be small.  But each one has an impact.  

Joseph Goldstein tells a story of a woman who made sandwiches and handed them out on the streets.  A local newspaper wrote an article publicizing her efforts.  She started getting checks in the mail from inspired well-wishers to help her enlarge her operation.  She returned the checks with a note, “Make your own sandwiches.”  

Her message was clear.  Do what we can, where we can, when we can.  Our efforts will naturally join with the efforts of others to multiply our impact on the world.  But the purity of our actions depends on the purity of our compassion.  If the anger is vengeful, more self compassion is needed.  Our actions have the greatest power of good when they spring from a place of love.

The many benefits of metta or loving kindness...

This week we’ll continue ourinvestigation of metta or loving kindness - the first and the foundation of the sublime abidings, or states of minds.  The other three are compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity and grow out of different conditions encountered by loving kindness.  

Each of these states can be confused with a mind state that has a great similarity to it but is not pure, that can distract from the development of the sublime abiding.  These similar states are called the “near enemy” and often take the form of the hindrances.  The near enemy of loving kindness is the love that tends toward attachment as in attachment to pleasurable sights and sounds.  Sometimes loving kindness and its near enemy can arise at the same time as in spousal or familial love which has the sincere wish for the well-being of the other but also the grasping for connection and attachment that can cause suffering.  

Metta or loving kindness is important to all aspects of the path to awakening.  Sean Oaks writes this about metta in the Spirit Rock Practice Guide*:

"As a fundamentally wholesome quality, mettā is woven throughout the path, expressed as sīla (ethics), samādhi (meditation), and pañña (wisdom). Because it is impartial and supports non-grasping, mettā has a strong wisdom aspect to it. Tending our relationships and communities through taking care with our actions is love as an expression of ethics. And mindfulness, which deepens our intimacy with ongoing experience, brings the quality of loving awareness to meditation and daily life.”

And metta or loving kindness brings wonderful benefits which are enumerated in the Buddha’s teaching called Metta (Mettanisamsa) Sutta (AN 11.16) as follows:

"One sleeps easily, wakes easily, dreams no evil dreams. One is dear to human beings, dear to non-human beings. The devas protect one. Neither fire, poison, nor weapons can touch one. One's mind gains concentration quickly. One's complexion is bright. One dies unconfused and — if penetrating no higher — is headed for the Brahma worlds.”

Whether or not we are swayed by protection by devas or heading toward the Brahma worlds, we can see that loving kindness can suffuse our lives and bring us many daily blessings. 

This week especially may have been a time when we were increasingly anxious and disturbed by the suffering of our neighbors far and wide.  Food insecurity is more pervasive in this country that is right and just considering how wealthy a nation we are.  And yet millions of people we learned this week depend upon federal assistance to buy enough food for themselves and their families.

So we might reflect that this week our open-hearted well-wishing for others may have encountered suffering and turned to compassion.  When our hearts encounter suffering, the natural arising is compassion - the second sublime abiding.  But sometimes the suffering of others overwhelms us and we may feel pain and suffering ourselves.  When this occurs, it is wisdom and a part of the practice to offer loving kindness and compassion to ourselves.  This turning towards ourselves is a necessary and wholesome first step toward lessening suffering in the world.  We are able first to sooth and mend our own hearts and then with our wholeness, we can reach out to help others with hearts filled with compassion.

Training the heart...

Daylight savings came to an end Saturday night. As the season deepens into darkness, anxiety and suffering rises with each day the federal shutdown continues.  The threat to SNAP benefits increases and access to food becomes more precarious.  Health insurance premiums are beginning to rise.  Tariffs are finally landed at home as manufacturers pass along increases to consumers.  Families in Venezuela grieve and their country waits with hearts in their throats, while we wonder what we have become.

Our small individual lives continue with the daily to-do list, family worries, friends in need.  We get up, brush our teeth, make coffee, go to work, hit the gym, shop for food, cook a meal, feed pets, write emails, read and avoid the news.  And sometimes the background worries just suck the vibrant colors out of our lives.   

The Buddha taught us how to be in the present moment, how not to catastrophize, how to breathe in and breathe out.  And we can stay afloat reasonably well.  But the Buddha wished more for us.  He taught us we could be free from suffering, we could be happy.  And we might need a little help from the sublime feelings  - loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity.  These are also sometimes called the Divine Abodes - divine dwelling places.  He taught the sublime feelings so that we might cultivate and dwell in these beautiful emotions.  

It starts with loving kindness or metta - an open hearted, open-handed well-wishing towards ourselves and towards others, extending to all beings around the world and in the 10 dimensions.  May we be safe from inner and outer harm.  May we be happy and peaceful. How does it feel to wish that safety and happiness for yourself and others?  Do you instantly feel a softening in your heart?  If not for yourself, perhaps you can wish safety for your pet, for a child, for yourself as a child?  We call up this feeling by bringing the image of our dog or cat or niece or other small, helpless beings into our hearts and wishing them safety.  

And once we know that loving kindness is present, we treat it like a vulnerable flame, blowing gently on it and feeding it small bits of fuel to help it grow.  As it grows, it warms our hearts and lights us up in all directions.  As we nurture this kind, caring heart, the light spills out onto wider and wider circles of beings in our awareness.  We can begin to see how loving kindness doesn’t distinguish between good and bad, worthy or unworthy.  At its best, it shines in all directions, illuminating and warming our hearts towards all.  This generosity of spirit takes practice and infinite kindness and patience with ourselves.  Our hearts may not open to those who have wounded us.  Nevertheless, we can begin to reflect that those who do the most harm were once helpless and vulnerable, deeply wounded and bring those unhealed wounds into the present moment with them - unaware that their injuries are showing.

Metta or Loving Kindness is the foundation of the four sublime feelings.  When the heart filled with loving kindness encounters suffering, it turns to compassion.  Compassion is not to be confused with pity which has a quality of looking down upon and not being with the pitiable.  Compassion has a flavor of empathy, of sitting with someone in their misfortune but not drowning in it.  Thich Naht Hanh said that compassion is a verb.  Compassion urge us to help when we encounter suffering.  And when that desire to help arises, it brings with it a joy that we want to help end suffering.  

This November is already becoming a time of increased suffering for our neighbors, our communities, our countrymen and women and children as food suddenly becomes unaffordable, health insurance premiums require impossible choices, when families dip into retirement savings to get by, and those on the edge fall out of living situations and become homeless. Our compassion can be aroused.  

Sometimes, however, it can feel overwhelming.  There are too many people who need help, too much suffering.  Equanimity helps us see we can’t do it all.  But we can do something.  We can help whoever is in front of us.  Paul Farmer, renowned doctor and humanitarian who founded Partners in Health, would cross mountains on foot for two hours to visit one of his patients.  His staff would plead with him to remember he needed to pay attention to this or that situation in several other countries.  He would say simply that he was helping the person in front of him.

Kristin Neff, researcher and teacher of self-compassion says this, "Loving-kindness is a traditional meditation practice that uses language and imagery to generate feelings of goodwill. It often involves using phrases such as "May I be happy," "May I be peaceful," or "May I live with ease" as a way to grow the muscle of goodwill toward ourselves and others. 

"Some mistake this goodwill for good feelings, but when loving-kindness encounters distress the feeling-tone changes. As one monk put it: 

'When the sunshine of loving-kindness meets the tears of suffering the rainbow of compassion appears.'"

Tonight we’ll spend some time in practice with loving kindness and compassion.  In succeeding weeks, we’ll turn toward sympathetic joy (or joy in the good fortune of ourselves and others) and equanimity - the sublime emotion that balances all the others.  When compassion turns into our own suffering, equanimity can restore our balance.  And yet when equanimity gets a little cool, compassion can warm it up, bring us back into intimacy with the suffering of others.

Happiness is an inside job

We live in extraordinary times.  The news recently has often been devastating bad, prompting feelings of shock, anger, grief, enough to take our breaths away.  With these continual onslaughts, our first action needs to be the fresh intake of breath - breathing through it.  Guy Armstrong urges stopping and breathing right after we’ve been exposed to shock of bad news, spending a few minutes right then in that moment experiencing, processing what we’ve read, heard, seen.  

At the same time, there is surprising goods news. I haven’t yet quoted Paul Krugman or Heather Cox Richardson (HCR) in these pages but there is a first time for everything.  HCR wrote this morning:  "In fact, as Krugman notes, solar and wind are unstoppable. They produced 15% of the world’s electricity in 2024 and account for 63% of the growth in electricity production since 2019. Green energy will continue to grow even if U.S. policy…” “Solar and wind are unstoppable.”  How amazing.

In addition, there are more resources than at any time in the history of the world to support us, to help us manage the barrage of news and the emotions that arise with it.  Ever since Covid sent us all indoors, mindfulness and meditation resources, teachers, courses, retreats have exploded on-line.  

Fifty plus years ago, our leading meditation teachers travelled to India, Thailand, Burma, Sri Lanka at no small personal cost to sit with the masters of Buddhist meditation.  These travelers returned home and started the great retreat centers we have today.  Suddenly, western meditators could travel to retreat centers without leaving the country.  And they did.  

Nevertheless, a meditator from Minnesota or Missouri might not even hear of these retreat centers or have the means to leave home to sit for 10 days at a center across the country.  

Now, since Covid and the rise of Zoom, the sincere meditator is faced with a plethora of choices - in person or on-line retreats and courses, sitting groups and study groups, marathon weekends of 20 or 30 distinguished teachers in a survey of health, wellness and resilience practices or a single teacher you’ve never heard before who has been quietly teaching advanced practice after years of study with great, but lesser known masters.  If there is internet, there is access to a vast dharma library.

All the different traditions of Buddhism which developed in so many different countries began rubbing elbows with each other.  Joseph Goldstein wrote about this in his book One Dharma examining the great and awe-inspiring mingling of teachings in the West that flourished in far distant regions for 2500 years, but also the perplexing and contradictory views on ultimate and conventional reality, whether enlightenment is impermanent or not, that these teachings presented when they collided here in the West.

Never before has the meditation student been faced with so many opportunities for practice - and so many traditions to practice with.  Never before have meditators been able to choose their own paths toward freedom.  Some may start out in Zen, move to Insight meditation (Theravadan), and eventually sink into Dzochen (Tibetan) or any combination of the three.  Even our most esteemed teachers have found their own personal practices conjoining different traditions and perhaps only then finding more of the whole of the Buddhist teachings.  

That which was split apart is being patched together in a new way, different for each culture, each region, and each student.

It can be bewildering and exciting, but also disappointing and frustrating.  A boon when the sincere curiosity of the student finds fulfillment in different teachings, different teachers or simply an extension of our habits of grasping and attachment if the student is continually distracted by a new and more famous teacher over here, a different teaching over there.  

In this, as in everything else, where ever we go, there we are.

So we are left with the same dilemma we’ve ever faced.  In the welter of opportunity, how to find the best resources without being led astray by our own desires and aversions.  The answer is always to start with ourselves.  Learning how to be happy is an inside job.  The key is listening to our own hearts.  

The practices of the Brahmaviharas can become trustworthy companions on all our journeys.  Cultivating loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity towards ourselves and others can ground us in our own deepest being - nourishing, healing, encouraging, and steadying our hearts in this very moment so that we can experience the next with all possible resources.  

These lines from Free and Easy, a Tibetan Buddhist spontaneous song, point the way.  The full poem is below:

Don’t search any further
looking for the great awakened elephant,
who is already resting quietly at home
in front of your own hearth.

Nothing to do or undo,
nothing to force,
nothing to want,
and nothing missing –

Emaho! Marvelous!
Everything happens by itself.

Full poem here:

FREE and EASY
A Spontaneous Vajra Song
By Venerable Lama Gendun Rinpoche

Happiness can not be found
through great effort and willpower,
but is already present,
in open relaxation and letting go.
Don’t strain yourself,
there is nothing to do or undo.

Whatever momentarily arises
in the body-mind
has no real importance at all,
has little reality whatsoever.

Why identify with,
and become attached to it,
passing judgment upon it and ourselves?

Far better to simply
let the entire game happen on its own,
springing up and falling back like waves
without changing or manipulating anything
and notice how everything vanishes and reappears, magically,
again and again, time without end.

Only our searching for happiness
prevents us from seeing it.

It’s like a vivid rainbow which you pursue
without ever catching,
or a dog chasing its own tail.

Although peace and happiness
do not exist as an actual thing or place,
it is always available
and accompanies you every instant.

Don’t believe in the reality of good and bad experiences;
they are like today’s ephemeral weather,
like rainbows in the sky.

Wanting to grasp the ungraspable,
you exhaust yourself in vain.
As soon as you open and relax
this tight fist of grasping,
infinite space is there –
open, inviting and comfortable.

Make use of this spaciousness,
this freedom and natural ease.
Don’t search any further
looking for the great awakened elephant,
who is already resting quietly at home
in front of your own hearth.

Nothing to do or undo,
nothing to force,
nothing to want,
and nothing missing –

Emaho! Marvelous!
Everything happens by itself.

The Fourth Tetrad: Insights Leading to Freedom...

The Buddha’s teaching on Mindfulness of Breathing is one of the most important teachings in Buddhism and the fruits are implicit in every breath awareness meditation you have ever heard and are ever likely to hear - in yoga studies, on meditation apps, in therapist’s offices.  Mindfulness of breathing can lead to complete freedom.  As the Buddha said - and I paraphrase, “If this were not so, I would not have told you."

Venerable Analayo’s Mindfulness of Breathing guided meditation series on the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies website follows the 16 Steps of Mindfulness of Breathing that the Buddha offered. Earlier, we had touched on the first three tetrads, each tetrad composed of 4 instructions for moving the Mindfulness of Breathing practice along the path.  I have included the entire teaching below.  

It starts with the instruction to find a place of seclusion, then to adopt a posture that promotes stillness and alertness, then it launches into the 16 steps.  In the first four lines, the focus is on breath and body.  You might remember this is the first foundation of mindfulness - mindfulness of breathing and of the body of which breathing is a part.  

The second four lines are on feelings - rapture, pleasure, and mental formations.  This corresponds to the second foundation of mindfulness - positive, negative, or neutral feeling tones.  

The third tetrad focuses on the mind - experiencing the mind, gladdening the mind, tranquillizing the mind, liberating the mind.  This corresponds to the Third Foundation of Mindfulness - mindfulness of mind.  

Then we come to the fourth tetrad.  After calming the body, calming the feelings, gladdening and tranquilizing the mind, deeper states of concentration are possible.  And the deeper states of concentration prepare the mind for deepening insights.  This is the focus of the fourth tetrad - the deeper insights that arise when the mind has freed itself from the hindrances and is able to see clearly.  And in seeing clearly, the first insight is impermanence.  Everything arises and passes away.  Good things, happy states arise and pass away.  Bad things, miserable states arise and pass away. 

When we are finally able to see deeply into the irrefutable fact of impermanence, we begin to realize the futility of holding on the the good states, happiness, good fortune, all of it, and the futility of continually battling to keep out bad states, bad fortune, bad feelings.  It’s like trying to stop a waterfall or a landslide.  Lasting happiness is not to be found in the passing pleasant experiences of the body, feelings, and mind.   

These states, happenings, phenomenon - every single one of them - will arise and pass away.  Impermanence.  This realization leads to dispassion, loosening our grip of attachment to the good feelings and aversion to the bad feelings - the fading away of passion.  This leads us to begin to see, not just the beginning of things, but the end of things - cessation.  This ends, that ends.  This minute ends.  That day ends.  This coming together with friends ends.  That relationship ends.  This person’s life ends.  That country’s existence ends.  The stars explode.  Suns burn out.  Our universe is constantly changing.  That is the only constant we can count on - whatever it is, it will change.  And we begin to let go of our useless insistence that things stay the same - relinguishment.  The end of the path laid out in the 16 steps of mindfulness of breathing that began with being mindful of this long breath, this short breath culminates in letting go or relinquishment into freedom, into the unconditioned, that which has never been born and never dies.  This is called, among other names, enlightenment and is possible in every human life.  We may or may not find our way to this ultimate freedom but we can experience small moments of freedom, of the unconditioned, all along the path.

To end, I want to just add another word about retreats.  I may take up the subject of retreats again later as I received several emails from teachers this week alone talking about retreats.  I suspect it is because the retreat experience can take us deeper into our practice to places where real change manifests, where deeper acceptance can be cultivated and realized, where equanimity and compassion can be fostered and take hold as bulwarks to help us live in these times joyously and productively.  And retreats can effect changes which are more lasting, increased insights into our stuck places, increased ability to see the ego-I, to see our own propensity to think and act from the place of I and mine, to begin to recognize the freedom of letting go of the concepts of self that were never intrinsic in the first place.

On this recent retreat, I began to slip into another way of viewing the world - a bit more cosmically.  It was prompted by a form of meditation called awareness meditation - which basically means we start to shift our focus in meditation from an object (the breath, the body, emotions, mind states, a mantra, a color, feather, flame) and turn our attention to the awareness itself, with consciousness itself.  By asking the question, am I aware? you can settle back a bit and acknowledge the fact of awareness.  You can explore the awareness that is seeing, hearing, feeling, cognizing, without getting tangled in the object of the seeing, hearing, feeling, cognizing.  It goes straight to the heart of the inquiry, how did you get in there?  Another way of asking the questions is Who is knowing?  or even What knows?  As Ajahn Sumedho, well-known monk and meditation teacher said, it’s akin to trying to see your own eyes.  Another way of exploring it is to begin to imagine boundless space and then realize that consciousness is as boundless as any imaginings of boundless space we can have so then you are contemplating boundless consciousness. 

It opened up a lot of space around current and global events including the rise and fall of civilizations.  

On retreats...

As most of you know, I have been on a meditation retreat for a month.  The retreat experience is relatively new and unfamiliar to most of Western society.  But it was commonly referenced in the Buddha’s teaching and still widely practiced in Buddhist countries where it was and is also known as the rains retreat.  During the rainy seasons, monks were not welcome wandering around the flooded rice paddies messing up the newly planted beds, so they retired to the monasteries to meditate and the villagers committed to supplying food.  In return, the monks offered teachings, meditations, and rituals.

Retreat time allowed monks to deepen their meditation practice by going into seclusion and removing themselves from the activities and influences of daily life.  Today this includes separation from work, household duties, jobs, family pressures, community involvement, and input from the wider world - news, cell phones, computers, television, blogs, posts, papers, magazines, etc.

All this sensory deprivation from our everyday lives can be quite challenging.  With fewer distractions, the mind has nothing to feed on but itself.  As my meditation teacher Larry Rosenberg would say, the mind empties itself of its own content.  So in the solitude of retreat life and meditation, the mind obligingly coughs up any and every memory, feeling, mood, belief, conversation, song - recently heard or decades old - it can think of, some of it to entertain, some of it to distract, and some of it to allow the airing and resolution to knotty and/or painful unresolved stuff buried under the mountain of trivial input. 

What is interesting to me is that, while on retreat, I did not ruminate or obsess about the news all that much.  It faded without the steady every day reinforcement.  What persisted was all the uniquely personal unresolved stuff we all know so well.  It often surfaced as quite challenging feelings, mind states, moods, beliefs, emotional darkness. Beneath the ruminations, it was intensely visceral.  And then it would dissipate.  

Much of the worst stuff our minds have to offer is kept in place by a thick layer of thinking, rationalizations, imaginings about what we would say or do.  In the silence of retreat, the thinking weakens, sticky knots are loosened, and the bonds begin to fall around our feet.  The hardest stuff emerges, threatens to overwhelm, and dissipates in the space of a day or so.  We have gained some measure of freedom.

And it is this freedom from some of our deepest entrapments that allows us not to be so caught by the exhaustingly incessant external news.  It triggers deeply held fears and beliefs that isolate us by catching on the rough edges of our vulnerable, unresolved deep past junkyard.  

We may not have the ability to change the news but we always have the ability to change how we relate to it.  MBSR grads will remember this.  And the more balanced and resilient we can be, the better, healthier, and more effective our response will be.

Meditation teacher Shaila Catherine writing in her book Focused and Fearless (and excerpted in Wisdom Experiences’s "Joy of Seclusion," https://wisdomexperience.org/wisdom-article/joy-of-seclusion/ ) has this to say:  

“... ‘seclusion' does not imply repression or denial; it is not a state of alienation, loneliness, or division. The seclusion that supports a meditation practice is rooted in wisdom and clarity. Knowing what leads to suffering, you wisely choose a path that leads to happiness. The Buddha addressed this point quite simply:

          If, by giving up a lesser happiness,
          One could experience greater happiness,
       A wise person would renounce the lesser
          To behold the greater.”

"Sparked by this basic instinct toward happiness, we follow the trajectory of training that will eventually carry us beyond conceivable delights.

"The Buddhist teachings describe three kinds of seclusion: (1) physical aloneness that is experienced as we remove ourselves from complex social dynamics; (2) mental seclusion that describes the aloofness of the mind while it is absorbed in jhana [deep meditation] —this marks a separation from unwholesome states and sensory pleasures; and (3) liberation as detachment from the root causes of suffering. This implies a suspension of conceptual proliferations.

"...Physical solitude creates a temporary separation from the distractions and activities that fill daily life, but true external simplification involves more than renunciation of material possessions. It is a process that divests the heart of the activities and roles upon which personality relies. The Buddha suggested, “A bhikkhu resorts to a secluded resting place: the forest, the root of a tree, a mountain, a ravine, a hillside cave, a charnel ground, a jungle thicket, an open space, a heap of straw.”  We could, of course, expand that list to include the modern option of a formal retreat center.

"At the rudimentary level, this detachment may be likened to a spiritual vacation. A retreat may be for any length of time, from a single day of silence to many years. It can be a relief to take time away from the exaggerated responsibilities of your routine. Most people need some degree of periodic solitude to learn to calm the anxious heart and quiet the distracted mind. Alternating time for inner retreat with time fully engaged with career, family, and social concerns makes for a balanced approach to the lay lifestyle. Ultimately, silence supports depth in meditation, but it is through our social interactions that our understanding matures and is tested. The Buddha’s life is an exemplary model for balancing seclusion with the compassionate engagement with society. There were periods in his ministry when he remained aloof from his disciples, and many times when he taught, led, and served the community.”

I read recently that our reactions of anger, anxiety, irritability, sadness, grief, horror, and overwhelm are actually quite appropriate reactions.   They are understandable and very normal human feelings to what we see and hear.  This is a time of horrible happenings.  This is how human beings respond to horrible happenings - at least human beings with functioning hearts and minds.  

Normal and appropriate as these reactions may be, they can unbalance us.  And it is not healthy for us to be in extended unbalanced states.  

Hence, retreats  - and other forms of separating ourselves from the persistent irritation and assault of bad news.  Retreats can help us restore balance.  They also deepen the foundation and stability of that balance for increased resilience.  

There are other means to those ends but they all involve some period of separating from the ordinary and extraordinary input of our lives.  

As Shaila Catherine put it, "A little while alone in your room will prove more valuable than anything else that could ever be given you.”

One point I want to emphasize which may be obvious is that it is not just physical seclusion that is pointed to in the retreat idea.  It is creating conditions in which mental and emotional seclusion can occur on a deep level.  It is possible to find temporary seclusion of a deep sort in other circumstances such as a busy NYC street.  The mind turns inward when conditions are right and can access the silence within any number of situations.  But this kind of seclusion depends on a greater stability of mind that may be harder to find if the mind is stirred up to begin with. 

So finding available paths and conditions to offer the mind this respite is becoming more and more critical to balancing the extremes of assault to our perceived safety and well-being.  

"I shall breathe in gladdening the mind..."

For the past several weeks, we have been exploring Mindfulness of Breathing, one of the fundamental meditation practices.  Most meditators are familiar with mindfulness of breathing in some form.  It is available and rewarding to beginning meditators and also presents a rich path forward for experienced meditators toward liberation from suffering.  It is accessible to every one, convenient, portable, and can be practiced on a crowded elevator or a deserted mountain top.

The basic instructions are to pay attention or to bring mindfulness to the “in" and “out" of breathing.  It can be as simple as observing the physical sensations of the breath to contemplating the impermanence of each breath and its connection to the very process of our living. 

As I have written before, mindfulness of breathing as a practice predates the Buddha.  But the Buddha’s Discourse on Mindfulness of Breathing (the Anapanasati Sutta) with its 16 steps of instruction, lay outs out the entire path to freedom in four tetrads.  We began our exploration with the first tetrad which instructs the meditator to discern the length of the breath as long or short, to train oneself to breath in (and out) sensitive to the entire body and to calm the entire body.

Thus, the first tetrad is about mindfulness of breathing while contemplating the body.  This practice calms and tranquilizes the body. 

The second tetrad instructs the meditator to breathe in sensitive to different feelings as they arise in the calm of the first tetrad - rapture and pleasure.  These pleasant feelings are precursors to the deeper absorptive states of practice.  Then the meditator is instructed to become sensitive to mental fabrications or in Bhikku Bodhi’s translation below “mental formations” which refers to our own volitional formations and to calm these volitional formations, to see our motivations at work and to calm them.  This second tetrad addresses the second foundation of mindfulness, mindfulness of feelings, our perception of positive, negative, or neutral feeling that accompany very experience we have. All the while contemplating the “in” breath and the “out” breath.

We now turn to the third tetrad which speaks to mindfulness of mind through our awareness of breathing.  Meditators train themselves to “breathe in (and out) experiencing the mind", “breathe in (and out) gladdening the mind", concentrating, and liberating the mind.  I have switched translations here and below having finally found Bhikku Bodhi’s translations which I first learned and prefer. This tetrad brings the contemplation of the objects of mind into direct awareness with the breath practice.  Objects of mind are thoughts of past or future, plans, memories, moods, emotions, mind states of wanting or aversion - all the proliferations of mind pointed to in the Third Foundation of Mindfulness, Mindfulness of Mind.  These are all progressively calmed and the mind begins to experience temporary freedom from these distractions.  With this freedom arises gladness of the mind which leads to concentration and liberation of the mind in a deeper way.

“He trains thus: ‘I shall breathe in experiencing the mind’; he trains thus: ‘I shall breathe out experiencing the mind.’ He trains thus: ‘I shall breathe in gladdening the mind’; he trains thus: ‘I shall breathe out gladdening the mind.’ He trains thus: ‘I shall breathe in concentrating the mind’; he trains thus: ‘I shall breathe out concentrating the mind.’ He trains thus: ‘I shall breathe in liberating the mind’; he trains thus: ‘I shall breathe out liberating the mind.’ (Bhikku Bodhi Translation)

This is what one of my teachers Shaila Catherine wrote about the first three tetrads in her article for The Lion’s Roar, Aug. 2, 2022 https://www.lionsroar.com/all-you-need-is-breath/:

The practice of mindfulness of the breath gradually exposes all areas where attachments might fester—to the body or meditation object, mental functions, mind, or insight knowledge.

The first tetrad corresponds with mindfulness of the body and refines the meditation object—breath. Beginning with “breathing in long, one knows: ‘I breathe in long,’” the first four instructions emphasize skillful attention by knowing the long and short breath, experiencing the whole body (of breath), and tranquilizing the bodily formations. In this tetrad, you can learn a variety of ways to attend to the breath and discover how to know breath so that the perception produces calmness, clarity, and the conditions conducive to concentration and insight.

The second tetrad recognizes and strengthens the wholesome qualities that develop in conjunction with mindfulness, such as joy, pleasure, volition, and attention. As you focus on these qualities, you can come to understand how feeling functions, allow joy to refresh interest in the breath, recognize the powerful role volition plays in directing attention, and tranquilize mental activities.

The third tetrad spotlights the mind’s clarity, purity, and readiness for deep concentration. The experience of the mind at this stage will reveal a remarkable absence of hindrances. Having directly seen the profound purity of your well developed mind, you can confidently let go of excessive effort, attachment to spiritual gains, or the habitual tendency to manipulate the meditative process. The stability, gladness, and confidence that is evident at this stage of practice matures as the mind inclines toward deep concentration and temporary liberation from obstructive states.

At the same time, the mind is developing the wholesome qualities of mindfulness, investigation, energy, tranquillity, joy, concentration and equanimity, the seven qualities the Buddha called the Factors of Enlightenment.  Each of these factors creates the conditions for the next to arise.  They all support each other and they lead to enlightenment.  You can see for yourself that paying attention to the breath immediately calls mindfulness into being, which supports investigation as we look at the length of the breath, and energy as our curiosity grows about the length of this breath.  Tranquillity follows as the mind calms in this focused attention to the breath.  And joy arises…

"Always mindful, one breathes in..."

Last week we embarked on a journey into the wonderful teaching of Mindfulness of Breathing or in Pali Anapanasati as taught in the Anapansati Sutta (MN118).  This practice, referred to variously as mindfulness of breathing, paying attention to the breath, breath awareness, is where this practice began for many meditators and is where the ground of practice rests - with the simple in and out of the breath. 

This is an ancient practice - probably older than the Buddha’s time, but its grounding in the present moment makes it as fresh and alive as this bright moment of experience.

The 16 steps of this teaching describe the path from sitting down to observe the first breath all the way to enlightenment.   It is a very compact, rich teaching in which each phrase encompasses elements of practice that take years to develop and yet, can also be found in this very moment of practice.

Beginners and experienced meditators alike find this practice accessible and filled with wisdom and insight, tranquillity and joy.  In fact, the Buddha himself was practicing Anapanasati when he died.  And it encompasses the two basic forms of meditation found in early Buddhism - concentration practice including the jhanas and insight practice.

The Anapanasati teaching is structured on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness as found in the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta.  It is composed of 16 steps divided into four tetrads.  Each tetrad is devoted to one of the foundations of mindfulness - mindfulness of body, mindfulness of feelings, mindfulness of mind, and mindfulness of the way things are, or mindfulness of dharmas.  These foundations will be familiar to many of you.  

The instructions begin very simply: 

"Now how is mindfulness of in-&-out breathing developed & pursued so as to be of great fruit, of great benefit?

"There is the case where a monk, having gone to the wilderness, to the shade of a tree, or to an empty building, sits down folding his legs crosswise, holding his body erect, and setting mindfulness to the fore.[1] Always mindful, he breathes in; mindful he breathes out.

In this first instruction, we learn that finding a physical space of seclusion and assumed an erect posture are important.  Then we set mindfulness to the fore.  And keeping mindfulness to the fore, we breathe and breathe out.  

One thing to note carefully throughout the teaching is how the Buddha teaches us to practice.  In this first tetrad, the first two instructions are to “discern", the second two to "train oneself…”  So the first two tetrads are about simply observing whereas the second two tetrads have a bit more instruction to practice in a certain way.

"[1] Breathing in long, he discerns, 'I am breathing in long'; or breathing out long, he discerns, 'I am breathing out long.' [2] Or breathing in short, he discerns, 'I am breathing in short'; or breathing out short, he discerns, 'I am breathing out short.' [3] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in sensitive to the entire body.'[2] He trains himself, 'I will breathe out sensitive to the entire body.' [4] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in calming bodily fabrication.'[3] He trains himself, 'I will breathe out calming bodily fabrication.'

These instructions seem simple but a world of practice opens up as we learn to pay closer and closer attention to the present moment with each breath that arises.  We can perhaps see that an instant later than the present moment is already the past and an instant before the present moment has not arrived yet.  When we are in the present moment, we might see it as a pinpoint of time, an instant of experience.  Impermanence.  But we might also begin to experience how this moment of awareness expands into an entire universe of vibrant being, ephemeral and memorable.

Last week we listened to Venerable Analayo’s guided Meditation I in his six meditation series Mindfulness of Breathing.  I listened to it again this morning and, even though I had heard it many times before, the present moment of listening and following the guidance came alive for me with a rich intensity.  This week we will listen to his Meditation II which moves deeper into the teaching.   https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/resources/breathing-audio/ 

One of the beauties of Ven. Analayo’s guided meditation is that he interweaves the seven factors of enlightenment throughout the meditation so the practitioner can experience for themselves how these beautiful qualities of mind manifest in this basic, all encompassing process of meditation by mindfulness of breathing.  These factors are as follows:  mindfulness, investigation, energy, joy, tranquillity, concentration, and equanimity.  And they develop along with our meditation, each one conditioning the arising of the next as we touched on in the Transcendent Dependent Origination - mindfulness being the condition for investigation to arise which is the condition for energy to arise.  Mindfulness, investigation, and energy condition the arising of joy.  And all condition the arising of tranquillity, then concentration, and equanimity.  We may not experience them is an orderly progression as they manifest in more or less subtle ways.  But they all condition each other and all condition awakening.

As I said before and reiterate here, we have arrived at this teaching inevitably - at the very teaching that instructs us how to meditate using awareness of our own breath.  And as we practice with the simple mindfulness of the “in" and the “out" of breathing, we encounter the four foundations of mindfulness and create conditions for the seven factors of enlightenment to arise which leads us step-by-step out of suffering and to awakening. 

This teaching, thus, is an essential guide to practice from the very beginning all the way to the ultimate freedom from suffering.  And as the Buddha said, it is good in the beginning, good in the middle, and good at the end.

I have included the heart of the Anapanasati Sutta below for your reference this week as well.

Mindfulness of In-&-Out Breathing

"Now how is mindfulness of in-&-out breathing developed & pursued so as to be of great fruit, of great benefit?

"There is the case where a monk, having gone to the wilderness, to the shade of a tree, or to an empty building, sits down folding his legs crosswise, holding his body erect, and setting mindfulness to the fore.[1] Always mindful, he breathes in; mindful he breathes out.

"[1] Breathing in long, he discerns, 'I am breathing in long'; or breathing out long, he discerns, 'I am breathing out long.' [2] Or breathing in short, he discerns, 'I am breathing in short'; or breathing out short, he discerns, 'I am breathing out short.' [3] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in sensitive to the entire body.'[2] He trains himself, 'I will breathe out sensitive to the entire body.' [4] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in calming bodily fabrication.'[3] He trains himself, 'I will breathe out calming bodily fabrication.'

"[5] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in sensitive to rapture.' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out sensitive to rapture.' [6] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in sensitive to pleasure.' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out sensitive to pleasure.' [7] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in sensitive to mental fabrication.'[4] He trains himself, 'I will breathe out sensitive to mental fabrication.' [8] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in calming mental fabrication.' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out calming mental fabrication.'

"[9] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in sensitive to the mind.' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out sensitive to the mind.' [10] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in satisfying the mind.' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out satisfying the mind.' [11] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in steadying the mind.' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out steadying the mind.' [12] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in releasing the mind.' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out releasing the mind.'[5]

"[13] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in focusing on inconstancy.' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out focusing on inconstancy.' [14] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in focusing on dispassion [literally, fading].' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out focusing on dispassion.' [15] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in focusing on cessation.' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out focusing on cessation.' [16] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in focusing on relinquishment.' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out focusing on relinquishment.'

"This is how mindfulness of in-&-out breathing is developed & pursued so as to be of great fruit, of great benefit.

MN 118
Anapanasati Sutta: Mindfulness of Breathing
translated from the Pali by
Thanissaro Bhikkhu
© 2006

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.118.than.html

It is August already - and hardly seems the time to start a new project.  And yet the next logical teaching in the Buddha’s many teachings is the all important mindfulness of breathing - where it all began for many of us - with the simple in and out of the breath. The process of meditation by paying attention to the in and out of breathing is called in Pali Anapanasati and is found in the Anapansati Sutta (MN118).

In embarking on a journey through this teaching, we are going back to the roots of the basic practice of mindfulness of breathing.  It is a relatively short teaching that describes in 16 steps the path from mindfulness of breathing to enlightenment.  This teaching is appropriate for all personality types with whatever tendencies toward craving or aversion or delusion, in all locations and circumstances.  It is suitable for beginners all the way through the most experienced meditators.  In fact, the Buddha himself was practicing Anapanasati when he died.  And it encompasses the two basic forms of meditation found in early Buddhism - concentration practice including the jhanas and insight practice.

The Anapanasati teaching is composed of 16 steps divided into four tetrads.  Each tetrad is devoted to one of the four foundations of mindfulness as found in the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta.  So the four foundations of mindfulness of body, mindfulness of feelings, mindfulness of mind, and mindfulness of the way things are will be familiar to many of you.  

This practice and this sutta can be well supported by Venerable Analayo’s series Mindfulness of Breathing as found on Ven. Analayo’s resource page on the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies website.    https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/resources/breathing-audio/ 

One of the beauties of Ven. Analayo’s guided meditation is that he interweaves the seven factors of enlightenment throughout the meditation so the practitioner can experience for themselves how these beautiful qualities of mind manifest in this basic, all encompassing process of meditation by mindfulness of breathing.  These factors which we have spoken of on these pages are as follows:  mindfulness, investigation, energy, joy, tranquillity, concentration, and equanimity.  And they develop along with our meditations, each one conditioning the arising of the next as we touched on in the Transcendent Dependent Origination.

So we have arrived at this teaching inevitably - at the very teaching that instructs us how to meditate, how to practice the four foundations of mindfulness, how to meditate with the seven factors of enlightenment, and how to continue our meditations step-by-step out of suffering and to awakening. 

First we begin.  And then we continue.

I have included the heart of the Anapanasati Sutta below for your reference with Thanissaro Bhikku’s translation as found on Access to Insight.

Mindfulness of In-&-Out Breathing

"Now how is mindfulness of in-&-out breathing developed & pursued so as to be of great fruit, of great benefit?

"There is the case where a monk, having gone to the wilderness, to the shade of a tree, or to an empty building, sits down folding his legs crosswise, holding his body erect, and setting mindfulness to the fore.[1] Always mindful, he breathes in; mindful he breathes out.

"[1] Breathing in long, he discerns, 'I am breathing in long'; or breathing out long, he discerns, 'I am breathing out long.' [2] Or breathing in short, he discerns, 'I am breathing in short'; or breathing out short, he discerns, 'I am breathing out short.' [3] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in sensitive to the entire body.'[2] He trains himself, 'I will breathe out sensitive to the entire body.' [4] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in calming bodily fabrication.'[3] He trains himself, 'I will breathe out calming bodily fabrication.'

"[5] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in sensitive to rapture.' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out sensitive to rapture.' [6] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in sensitive to pleasure.' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out sensitive to pleasure.' [7] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in sensitive to mental fabrication.'[4] He trains himself, 'I will breathe out sensitive to mental fabrication.' [8] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in calming mental fabrication.' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out calming mental fabrication.'

"[9] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in sensitive to the mind.' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out sensitive to the mind.' [10] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in satisfying the mind.' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out satisfying the mind.' [11] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in steadying the mind.' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out steadying the mind.' [12] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in releasing the mind.' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out releasing the mind.'[5]

"[13] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in focusing on inconstancy.' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out focusing on inconstancy.' [14] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in focusing on dispassion [literally, fading].' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out focusing on dispassion.' [15] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in focusing on cessation.' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out focusing on cessation.' [16] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in focusing on relinquishment.' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out focusing on relinquishment.'

"This is how mindfulness of in-&-out breathing is developed & pursued so as to be of great fruit, of great benefit.

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.118.than.html

Seeing Patterns of suffering in daily life...

This week’s email contains three lessons or reflections - the previous two weeks and this week.  They seem a part of a sequence and may be valuable to reflect upon them as a group, each leading to the next.

It began two weeks ago with the reflection on anger and hatred, emotions that can take root especially now as we witness the suffering of so many people in our own country and because of our own country in ways that seemed unimaginable to us a few years ago.  Last week we viewed a Youtube called ?The Spiral Path on Transcendent Dependent Liberation" (see below).  Ajahn Kovilo of the Clear Mountain Monastery describes this path from suffering to liberation as based on the foundational principle that each step on the path to freedom conditions the arising of the next step, just as water flowing down a mountain fills the pools at the top until these overflow and cascade down to lower pools. 

In one way or another, many of you have heard of the Buddha’s teaching on Dependent Origination which lays out the entire cycle of our earthly suffering starting with ignorance which conditions our habit patterns, unconscious choices, karmic knots.  It too is based on that same foundational principle that one step on the path to suffering conditions the next.  It is therefore encouraging to know that the conditions that lead to liberation condition each other, support each other, and create movement toward freedom as well.  Once we can place our feet on the path to freedom, the path has a movement all its own.

In Dependent Origination, the path to earthly suffering, a critical point arises when we experience a contact with our world through our eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body or mind called the six sense spheres.  We experience that contact, that sight, sound, etc. as positive, negative or neutral. If the contact is positive, wanting arises.  If negative, not wanting or aversion arises.  If neutral, we are deluded and according to Ajahn Kovilo engage in repetitive habit patterns to not feel (binge watching, doom scrolling, procrastinating, whatever behavior shuts us down).  The wanting, not wanting or deluded behaviors lead to attachment and clinging to having good experiences and avoiding bad experiences.  

Ajahn Kovilo points out - as have other teachers - that this point of experiencing the positive, negative, or neutral feeling tone is one very favorable  point for escape from the wheel of conditioned suffering.  The key is wise attention - becoming aware that the unpleasant sensation has arisen and that  aversion may quickly follow and tangle us up.

We often experience suffering non-verbally, through our bodies and our feelings, or through different reactive thoughts or thought patterns.  Connecting our non-verbal suffering with the words in these ancient teachings may be challenging.  The Buddha always encouraged a process of hearing the teachings and pondering and reflecting upon them as well as sitting in meditation.  This prescription has been key to finding the connections between these wisdom teachings and our every day suffering.  Suddenly through reading, listening, and reflection, they come alive for us.  

As the heat and humidity settled in last week, I found myself thinking of vacations in Seattle or Nantucket or Canada - anywhere cool.  I also found myself despairing that global warming was rendering all cool places not so cool.  The heat and wildfire smoke in Seattle over several years tarnished its image in my mind of the great escape from oppressive heat.  I recognized that I go through this every August (now July) remembering late summer  escapes from the heat of NYC for a few precious weeks.  It was a conditioned reaction and arose predictably every summer.  I just had to wait it out.

This week, remembering Ajahn Kovilo’s urging to look for examples of pleasant, unpleasant, neutral in our daily lives, I saw it with fresh eyes - not as a memory of the past, but as suffering in this present moment fueled by one simple arising.  I didn’t like the heat.  It was unpleasant and I wanted it to go away.  The aversion was strong and persistent and had been operating out of conscious awareness for several days.  As wise attention was finally aroused, I could see the aversion, the dislike.  Mindfulness awakened, it was clear I had been avoiding these unpleasant experiences and trying to escape them by fantasies of leaving town.   I also noted strong selfing.  “I" didn’t like this heat.  “I" needed to get this heat out of “my" life, find better conditions for “myself."  

As I turned toward the unpleasantness and allowed it to be seen, the self weakened.  There was warmth, humidity, stickiness, sweatiness, unpleasant sensations. And that’s all.  It was a relatively neutral experience - not so overwhelming in reality.  

The obsessive thoughts and aversion disappeared.  It turned out to be a persistent habit pattern, operating under the radar until Ajahn Kovilo encouraged us all to look for the positive, negative or neutral feeling tones leading to attachment or aversion in our daily lives.  

These patterns abound.  We have only to know where to look.  

Ajahn Kovilo recapped the spiral this way - wise attention (or mindfulness) leads to seeing the arising of positive, negative, or neutral experiences which gives rise to joy (just being mindful is a condition for joy) which gives rise to delight which gives rise to calming the body which gives rise to happiness which gives rise to concentration which gives rise to a collected mind which can see things as they really are which gives rise to disenchantment with chasing after pleasure and avoiding pain as the recipe for happiness which gives rise to dispassion and liberation.  The later steps are more clearly visible in our meditation practice but it starts with our awareness of positive, negative, or neutral.

Our challenge these days - and all days - is to rise to whatever  pressures are causing us to suffer, to turn toward them, investigate them, understand how they operate upon us, and just put them down.  And to do so with kindness and compassion for ourselves and others.

  *  *  *  *  * 

From July 14th, 2025

Last week we spent some time reflecting on anger and hatred and how destructive these emotions are - to ourselves as well as others.  What is being destroyed by anger and hatred is our own happiness and our own capacity for tranquillity, calm and concentration.  Many of you have tasted these beautiful states and learned to cherish them.  When we allow anger and hatred to take hold, we are cut off from the beautiful and wholesome states of mind that we turned to meditation for in the first place.

Tricycle Magazine is currently offering a movie called Honeygiver Among the Dogs.  Set in the Buddhist country of Bhutan, a beautiful spiritual woman is suspected of murder and tracked by a policeman who comes to believe in her innocence.  It turns out she is using the policeman to lead her to the people who wrongly accused her and who are trying to steal land from the nunnery.  Her mission is based on compassion as she wants to talk to the perpetrators and help release them from the torments of greed and anger.  Toward the end, one of the perpetrators says he has given up trying to steal the land from the nunnery as the greed itself was exhausting and making him unhappy.  

Only a movie and only in a Buddhist country perhaps, but the message is an enlightening one for us.  The beautiful spiritual woman evinced such peace and calm throughout the movie in her serene expression, her unhurried movements, her tranquil demeanor as she stopped to take in the beauties of the countryside, that the denouement was totally right when it came.  Rather than experiencing anger and hatred at the men who framed her and tried to steal the land of the nunnery, she felt immense compassion for them knowing how lost they were in their greed.

Tonight I want to share with you Ajahn Kovilo’s teaching of Transcendent Origination.  Ajahn Kovilo is one of two Ajahns who lead the Clear Mountain Monastery in Seattle.  His bio includes the following:  "Ajahn Kovilo first encountered meditation through the Goenka tradition and entered the monastery in 2006, receiving full ordination from Ajahn Pasanno and Ajahn Amaro at Abhayagiri Monastery in 2010.”   He studied in the Thai Forest tradition with senior disciples of Ajahn Chah whom I have mentioned in the pages many times.  More can be found on their website below.  

I wrote about the teaching on Transcendent Origination last week and have included that email below.  What Ajahn Kovilo’s teaching highlights is the path out of suffering, a path of joy, rapture, tranquillity, happiness, concentration all the way to liberation, a path in which one quality flows out of the presence of the one before as naturally as water flowing downhill.  

But the other reason I want to share this with you is the joy and happiness that flit in and out of Ajahn Kovila’s face and being as he talks.  His joy and happiness are infectious and, at least for me, reminded me of the wonderful qualities of mind that I experienced in my concentration practice as I walked the path he described.  These wonderful emotions are also a reminder of what we become separated from if we allow anger and hatred to take root in us.

One thing that I want to stress here is that while the Buddha was teaching a path from suffering to liberation or enlightenment, there is the overall path and journey and there are many such smaller liberations along the way.  These smaller liberations are available to us all as we practice and many of you  have experienced these liberations often.  So allow yourself to open to the joy and happiness that radiate from Ajahn Kovilo.  You may have a memory of such feelings in your practice and you may also notice how his joy and happiness inspire similar feelings in yourself.  

Much of what he says will be somewhat familiar to you but you may notice some variations in how he teaches vs what I have shared here.  Nevertheless, everything he says supports the power and beauty of the teaching and communicates his genuine delight in the both the teaching and practice.

This teaching is about 30 minutes long but includes an opening meditation after a brief introduction.  So we will start our evening with this teaching, break for a brief period of mindful movement, and then sit for the remainder of our time.  

  *  *  *  *  * 

From July 7th, 2025:  

When the Dalai Lama escaped from Tibet, many of the monks left behind were captured by the Chinese and subjected to imprisonment and torture.  One such monk escaped and found his way to the Dalai Lama.  In his conversation with the Dalai Lama, the monk confessed that he had been in very grave danger.  The Dalai Lama nodding acknowledging the danger of the monk’s time of imprisonment.  But the monk demurred saying that he had been in grave danger of hating his captors.  The danger the monk spoke of was not to his life or his body but to the purity of his mind.  He understood that hatred and anger only beget more hatred and anger and do grave harm to the individual who is captured by hatred and anger.

This is not new news.  The great religions have all pointed to the vicious cycle of hatred and anger.  We only have to read the news or history books to see how hatred and anger can be manipulated to cause whole peoples to annihilate or attempt to annihilate other peoples - usually of a different religion or ethnicity.  This hatred is learned, passed on from generation to generation, transmitted through lies and manipulations from leaders to followers. If all ills are blamed on a certain group of people, if those people are belittled by slurs and comparisons to sub-human or non-human beings, if those people become perceived as threats to the dominant group, hatred and anger grow.  Hatred and anger can be habitual, can become negative habits.  

The Buddha called anger the poisoned arrow with the honeyed tip.  The honey of anger is self-righteousness, being right, being better than other people.  Maybe that translates into the momentary safety of belonging to a stronger or dominant group.  Maybe it’s fueled by seeing something or someone cared for threatened or destroyed and blaming a certain group for the threat or destruction.  But hatred or anger has a blindness to it, an unreasoning quality.  It doesn’t stop to check the facts.  It doesn’t stop to feel compassion for the individual caught in hatred or anger or the human beings who are its targets.  In fact, it objectifies its human targets.  

And to add insult to injury, it does not even make us happy.  In fact, hatred and anger interfere with our attempts at happiness by perpetuating a deep restlessness upon us.  Hatred and anger interfere with our peaceful meditations, with tranquility, joy, happiness, all the qualities that support our progress on the spiritual path, that support our concentration and insight.  We know hatred and anger as one of the five hindrances along with desire, agitation, sloth and torpor, and doubt.  

There is a corollary teaching related to the chain of dependent origination which shows us how ignorance takes us step by step to birth, death and all the misery that goes along with it.  This teaching is Transcendental Origination or Dependent Libration.  It starts at the end of the chain of dependent origination, at suffering, and shows how faith or confidence can arise out of suffering.  That faith or confidence leads to gladdening which leads to joy which leads to tranquility which leads to happiness.  It is often said that concentration is dependent on happiness.  Many meditators understand this who have tried fruitlessly to bear down hard to concentrate.  Concentration arises naturally when conditioned by happiness.  Out of concentration comes insight, seeing things are they really are which leads to dis-enchantment with seeking happiness in worldly pleasures which leads to dispassion, freedom, and knowledge of the destruction of the taints.

Some of the teachings on Transcendental Origination place the beginning point on virtue rather than suffering and faith.  This virtue gives rise to non-remorse and gladness and is developed by a life of non-harming, both in speech and action and also in our minds.  This non-harming stands in direct opposition to hatred and anger.  

So hatred and anger are important obstacles to our own happiness.  Bhikkus Bramali in his tract “Dependent Liberation” (https://samita.be/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/dl.pdf) considers our habitual tendencies around hatred and anger to be a major area of our spiritual path to be considered.  He says, “To overcome anger we need to ask ourselves how we can look at the world around us in a different way.  Is there a way of looking at it so that these negative states don’t arise?  You will find that if you put effort into such reflection then over time you will gradually change - you will start to see things in a new way; you will start to see the world with more compassion and kindness.”

He goes on to say, “Often people think that will-power is the way to deal with harmful mental qualities.  They think they can force themselves to be kind, that they can crush the anger, crush the negativity. …But what the Buddha is really saying is that the best way to overcome negative states is to use wisdom (MN19).”  

One of the most powerful tenets of wisdom we can use to soften anger is to see deeply and completely how destructive anger is to ourselves and to others, to everything we value on our spiritual path.  Seeing through anger is a critical first step to weakening its influence in our lives.

Dr. Judson Brewer’s analysis of habit loops can be helpful here as well.  If a habit is composed of a trigger, a behavior, and a result, one place we can begin to look to weaken the habit pattern is at the result.  What are we getting out of this habit pattern?  He found in his studies of smoking that when people took a long, intense, non-judgmental look at what the results of smoking were, they were surprised to find how completely negative the results were.  It didn’t taste good, it didn’t smell good, it was disgusting to look at (imagine crushing out the cigarette in unfinished food as we used to in college).  Basically there was a whole lot of Yuck!  People quit smoking in much larger numbers and for longer periods of time when they looked closely and dispassionately at the results of the habit.  

It wouldn’t be surprising if many of you have already seen many of the less pleasant results of hatred and anger in your own lives.  Most of us don’t go around popping off at friends and neighbors, family and pets very often - because it doesn’t feel good, because we inevitably pile a greater wrong on top of the misdemeanor we were angry about in the first place, and because then we have to go through a very uncomfortable process of remorse and apology.  Better to avoid it in the first place.  

But these times have piled onto us circumstances that are dismaying, painful, heartbreaking.  And sometimes our response is a reaction - anger and hatred at those who perpetuate the horrible conditions we are witnessing and hearing about.  

What then?  

First is to recognize that the anger and hatred we may be feeling are more destructive to ourselves than they are helpful to the situation.  Not only can we ourselves see that the anger and hatred doesn’t make us happy, we can take heart that the Buddha’s teachings show us that these negative mental factors directly interfere with our happiness, our tranquillity, our ability to concentrate, in short, in our ability to meditate and regain a peaceful mind that we came to meditation for in the first place.  Now, as well as supporting a happy and pure mind, we find that meditation depends on a happy, pure mind to begin with.

So we are turned and turned again to the task of investigating our anger and our hatred.  We might understand that watching the news is the trigger, the behavior is the arising of anger and hatred and the result is angry thoughts, angry speech, angry actions.  We are poisoning ourselves and the atmosphere around us when that habit pattern gets activated.  

Mindfulness, clear seeing of what is happening is the first step.  What are the results of our anger and hatred?  Do we see deeply into the harmful nature of these mental states?  Accessing, practicing, calling upon compassion and kindness are powerful solutions.  As the Dalai Lama said, the religion I practice is kindness.  

None of this is new.  None of this is surprising.  But the circumstances of our world have brought news of harm, images of harm, plans for continued harm closer to us, into our news feeds, into our conversations, into our plans for resistance.

Our task is to recognize the power of these harmful occurrences to corrupt our minds and to prevent us from accessing our usual sources for peace and tranquillity.  As Joseph Goldstein said and I have quoted before, “Our practice is only as strong as the challenges we have met so far.”

And we can all understand and be inspired by the Dalai Lama’s monk who said he was in very grave danger of hating his captors.  We also are in danger, and our task is to see anger and hatred, not as useful responses to circumstances, but as threats to our ability to combat these circumstances with compassion and kindness and to replace hatred with love and joy.

The Path includes joy and happiness...

Last week we spent some time reflecting on anger and hatred and how destructive these emotions are - to ourselves as well as others.  What is being destroyed by anger and hatred is our own happiness and our own capacity for tranquillity, calm and concentration.  Many of you have tasted these beautiful states and learned to cherish them.  When we allow anger and hatred to take hold, we are cut off from the beautiful and wholesome states of mind that we turned to meditation for in the first place.

Tricycle Magazine is currently offering a movie called Honeygiver Among the Dogs.  Set in the Buddhist country of Bhutan, a beautiful spiritual woman is suspected of murder and tracked by a policeman who comes to believe in her innocence.  It turns out she is using the policeman to lead her to the people who wrongly accused her and who are trying to steal land from the nunnery.  Her mission is based on compassion as she wants to talk to the perpetrators and help release them from the torments of greed and anger.  Toward the end, one of the perpetrators says he has given up trying to steal the land from the nunnery as the greed itself was exhausting and making him unhappy.  

Only a movie and only in a Buddhist country perhaps, but the message is an enlightening one for us.  The beautiful spiritual woman evinced such peace and calm throughout the movie in her serene expression, her unhurried movements, her tranquil demeanor as she stopped to take in the beauties of the countryside, that the denouement was totally right when it came.  Rather than experiencing anger and hatred at the men who framed her and tried to steal the land of the nunnery, she felt immense compassion for them knowing how lost they were in their greed.

Tonight I want to share with you Ajahn Kovilo’s teaching of Transcendent Origination.  Ajahn Kovilo is one of two Ajahns who lead the Clear Mountain Monastery in Seattle.  His bio includes the following:  "Ajahn Kovilo first encountered meditation through the Goenka tradition and entered the monastery in 2006, receiving full ordination from Ajahn Pasanno and Ajahn Amaro at Abhayagiri Monastery in 2010.”   He studied in the Thai Forest tradition with senior disciples of Ajahn Chah whom I have mentioned in the pages many times.  More can be found on their website: https://www.clearmountainmonastery.org/community/.  

Ajahn Kovilo’s teaching highlights the path out of suffering, a path of joy, rapture, tranquillity, happiness, concentration all the way to liberation, a path in which one quality flows out of the presence of the one before as naturally as water flowing downhill.  

But the other reason I want to share this with you is the joy and happiness that flit in and out of Ajahn Kovila’s face and being as he talks.  His joy and happiness are infectious and, at least for me, reminded me of the wonderful qualities of mind that be found in concentration practice.  These wonderful emotions are also a reminder of what we become separated from if we allow anger and hatred to take root in us.

One thing that I want to stress here is that while the Buddha was teaching a path from suffering to liberation or enlightenment, there is the overall path and journey and there are many such smaller liberations along the way.  These smaller liberations are available to us all as we practice and many of you  have experienced these liberations often.  So allow yourself to open to the joy and happiness that radiate from Ajahn Kovilo.  You may have a memory of such feelings in your practice and you may also notice how his joy and happiness inspire similar feelings in yourself.  

Much of what he says will be somewhat familiar to you but you may notice some variations in how he teaches vs what I have shared here.  Nevertheless, everything he says supports the power and beauty of the teaching and communicates his genuine delight in the both the teaching and practice.

On Hatred and Anger in our time...

When the Dalai Lama escaped from Tibet, many of the monks left behind were captured by the Chinese and subjected to imprisonment and torture.  One such monk escaped and found his way to the Dalai Lama.  In his conversation with the Dalai Lama, the monk confessed that he had been in very grave danger.  The Dalai Lama nodding acknowledging the danger of the monk’s time of imprisonment.  But the monk demurred saying that he had been in grave danger of hating his captors.  The danger the monk spoke of was not to his life or his body but to the purity of his mind.  He understood that hatred and anger only beget more hatred and anger and do grave harm to the individual who is captured by hatred and anger.

This is not new news.  The great religions have all pointed to the vicious cycle of hatred and anger.  We only have to read the news or history books to see how hatred and anger can be manipulated to cause whole peoples to annihilate or attempt to annihilate other peoples - usually of a different religion or ethnicity.  This hatred is learned, passed on from generation to generation, transmitted through lies and manipulations from leaders to followers. If all ills are blamed on a certain group of people, if those people are belittled by slurs and comparisons to sub-human or non-human beings, if those people become perceived as threats to the dominant group, hatred and anger grow.  Hatred and anger can be habitual, can become negative habits.  

The Buddha called anger the poisoned arrow with the honeyed tip.  The honey of anger is self-righteousness, being right, being better than other people.  Maybe that translates into the momentary safety of belonging to a stronger or dominant group.  Maybe it’s fueled by seeing something or someone cared for threatened or destroyed and blaming a certain group for the threat or destruction.  But hatred or anger has a blindness to it, an unreasoning quality.  It doesn’t stop to check the facts.  It doesn’t stop to feel compassion for the individual caught in hatred or anger or the human beings who are its targets.  In fact, it objectifies its human targets.  

And to add insult to injury, it does not even make us happy.  In fact, hatred and anger interfere with our attempts at happiness by perpetuating a deep restlessness upon us.  Hatred and anger interfere with our peaceful meditations, with tranquility, joy, happiness, all the qualities that support our progress on the spiritual path, that support our concentration and insight.  We know hatred and anger as one of the five hindrances along with desire, agitation, sloth and torpor, and doubt.  

There is a corollary teaching related to the chain of dependent origination which shows us how ignorance takes us step by step to birth, death and all the misery that goes along with it.  This teaching is Transcendental Origination or Dependent Libration.  It starts at the end of the chain of dependent origination, at suffering, and shows how faith or confidence can arise out of suffering.  That faith or confidence leads to gladdening which leads to joy which leads to tranquility which leads to happiness.  It is often said that concentration is dependent on happiness.  Many meditators understand this who have tried fruitlessly to bear down hard to concentrate.  Concentration arises naturally when conditioned by happiness.  Out of concentration comes insight, seeing things are they really are which leads to dis-enchantment with seeking happiness in worldly pleasures which leads to dispassion, freedom, and knowledge of the destruction of the taints.

Some of the teachings on Transcendental Origination place the beginning point on virtue rather than suffering and faith.  This virtue gives rise to non-remorse and gladness and is developed by a life of non-harming, both in speech and action and also in our minds.  This non-harming stands in direct opposition to hatred and anger.  

So hatred and anger are important obstacles to our own happiness.  Bhikkus Bramali in his tract “Dependent Liberation” (https://samita.be/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/dl.pdf) considers our habitual tendencies around hatred and anger to be a major area of our spiritual path to be considered.  He says, “To overcome anger we need to ask ourselves how we can look at the world around us in a different way.  Is there a way of looking at it so that these negative states don’t arise?  You will find that if you put effort into such reflection then over time you will gradually change - you will start to see things in a new way; you will start to see the world with more compassion and kindness.”

He goes on to say, “Often people think that will-power is the way to deal with harmful mental qualities.  They think they can force themselves to be kind, that they can crush the anger, crush the negativity. …But what the Buddha is really saying is that the best way to overcome negative states is to use wisdom (MN19).”  

One of the most powerful tenets of wisdom we can use to soften anger is to see deeply and completely how destructive anger is to ourselves and to others, to everything we value on our spiritual path.  Seeing through anger is a critical first step to weakening its influence in our lives.

Dr. Judson Brewer’s analysis of habit loops can be helpful here as well.  If a habit is composed of a trigger, a behavior, and a result, one place we can begin to look to weaken the habit pattern is at the result.  What are we getting out of this habit pattern?  He found in his studies of smoking that when people took a long, intense, non-judgmental look at what the results of smoking were, they were surprised to find how completely negative the results were.  It didn’t taste good, it didn’t smell good, it was disgusting to look at (imagine crushing out the cigarette in unfinished food as we used to in college).  Basically there was a whole lot of Yuck!  People quit smoking in much larger numbers and for longer periods of time when they looked closely and dispassionately at the results of the habit.  

It wouldn’t be surprising if many of you have already seen many of the less pleasant results of hatred and anger in your own lives.  Most of us don’t go around popping off at friends and neighbors, family and pets very often - because it doesn’t feel good, because we inevitably pile a greater wrong on top of the misdemeanor we were angry about in the first place, and because then we have to go through a very uncomfortable process of remorse and apology.  Better to avoid it in the first place.  

But these times have piled onto us circumstances that are dismaying, painful, heartbreaking.  And sometimes our response is a reaction - anger and hatred at those who perpetuate the horrible conditions we are witnessing and hearing about.  

What then?  

First is to recognize that the anger and hatred we may be feeling are more destructive to ourselves than they are helpful to the situation.  Not only can we ourselves see that the anger and hatred doesn’t make us happy, we can take heart that the Buddha’s teachings show us that these negative mental factors directly interfere with our happiness, our tranquillity, our ability to concentrate, in short, in our ability to meditate and regain a peaceful mind that we came to meditation for in the first place.  Now, as well as supporting a happy and pure mind, we find that meditation depends on a happy, pure mind to begin with.

So we are turned and turned again to the task of investigating our anger and our hatred.  We might understand that watching the news is the trigger, the behavior is the arising of anger and hatred and the result is angry thoughts, angry speech, angry actions.  We are poisoning ourselves and the atmosphere around us when that habit pattern gets activated.  

Mindfulness, clear seeing of what is happening is the first step.  What are the results of our anger and hatred?  Do we see deeply into the harmful nature of these mental states?  Accessing, practicing, calling upon compassion and kindness are powerful solutions.  As the Dalai Lama said, the religion I practice is kindness.  

None of this is new.  None of this is surprising.  But the circumstances of our world have brought news of harm, images of harm, plans for continued harm closer to us, into our news feeds, into our conversations, into our plans for resistance.

Our task is to recognize the power of these harmful occurrences to corrupt our minds and to prevent us from accessing our usual sources for peace and tranquillity.  As Joseph Goldstein said and I have quoted before, “Our practice is only as strong as the challenges we have met so far.”

And we can all understand and be inspired by the Dalai Lama’s monk who said he was in very grave danger of hating his captors.  We also are in danger, and our task is to see anger and hatred, not as useful responses to circumstances, but as threats to our ability to combat these circumstances with compassion and kindness and to replace hatred with love and joy.

Transendental Dependent Arising...forward movement on the path

I want to deepen our exploration of Dependent Origination by introducing Transcendental Dependent Origination.  

Dependent Origination takes us through the determinative cycle of ignorance to "the origination of this entire mass of suffering” - through the 12 steps of samsaric existence.  Most of the Buddha’s teachings take us through these 12 steps forward and backward.  The cycle begins with ignorance which leads to volitional formations (karmic formations/habits) to consciousness to mentality-materiality (body and form) to the six sense spheres to contact with phenomenon to feeling tone (positive, negative, neutral) to craving, clinging, becoming, birth, aging and death.   Ignorance conditions all experiences which lead by causes and conditions to the suffering of aging and death.  In the words of the teaching, "with birth as condition, aging-and-death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair arise. Such is the origination of this entire mass of suffering.” ~SN12, passim  

The reverse cycle begins with the entire mass of suffering and through its elimination leads backwards to the elimination of ignorance.

Last week we looked at the middle sequence from the six sense spheres to contact, feeling tone, craving clinging, becoming to show that when we can bring awareness to any one element of the progression, we can change, even interrupt the forward momentum of the cycle through causes and conditions - because awareness is a condition that alters everything.  In MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction), we learned that if we can bring awareness to the first arising of the positive or negative or neutral feeling tone, our awareness has the great power to head off the development of craving, clinging, becoming…the entire mass of suffering.  With the cessation of ignorance, all the successive stages cease one by one down to the entire mass of suffering. 

I want to quote Bhikku Bodhi who continually astonishes me with his power to express these concepts in a way that is both clear, vibrant and alive. 

This is his introduction to the teaching of Dependent Arising  (Transcendental Dependent Arising:  A Translation and Exposition of the Upanisa Sutta by Bhikkhu Bodhi, © 1995 [https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/bodhi/wheel277.html]):

"Dependent arising (paticcasamuppada) is the central principle of the Buddha's teaching, constituting both the objective content of its liberating insight and the germinative source for its vast network of doctrines and disciplines. As the frame behind the four noble truths, the key to the perspective of the middle way, and the conduit to the realization of selflessness, it is the unifying theme running through the teaching's multifarious expressions, binding them together as diversified formulations of a single coherent vision. The earliest suttas equate dependent arising with the unique discovery of the Buddha's enlightenment, so profound and difficult to grasp that he at first hesitated to announce it to the world. A simple exposition of the principle sparks off the liberating wisdom in the minds of his foremost disciples, while skill in explaining its workings is made a qualification of an adroit expounder of the Dhamma. So crucial is this principle to the body of the Buddha's doctrine that an insight into dependent arising is held to be sufficient to yield an understanding of the entire teaching. In the words of the Buddha: "He who sees dependent arising sees the Dhamma; he who sees the Dhamma sees dependent arising." [1]

…

"Its phrasing, as terse as any formulation of modern logic, recurs in the ancient texts thus: "This being, that exists; through the arising of this that arises. This not being, that does not exist; through the ceasing of this that ceases."[2]

…

"The twelvefold application accomplishes precisely this. In its positive or direct aspect (anuloma) it makes known the causal chain behind suffering, demonstrating how the round of existence arises and turns through the impulsions of craving, clinging, and karma, working freely behind the shielding screen of ignorance. In its negative or reverse side (patiloma) it reveals the way to the cessation of suffering, showing that when ignorance is eliminated by the rise of true knowledge all the factors dependent on ignorance likewise draw to a close.

Bhikku Bodhi then articulates the other related principle contained in this teaching. 

"Above and beyond its specific instances, dependent arising remains an expression of the invariable structural relatedness of phenomena ….(my italics)

From the perspective this teaching affords, things are seen to arise, not from some intrinsic nature of their own, from necessity, chance or accident, but from their causal correlations with other things to which they are connected as part of the fixed order obtaining between phenomena. Each transient entity, emerging into the present out of the stream of events bearing down from the past, absorbs into itself the causal influx of the past, to which it must be responsive. During its phase of presence, it exercises its own distinctive function with the support of its conditions, expressing thereby its own immediacy of being. And then, with the completion of its actuality, it is swept away by the universal impermanence to become itself a condition determinant of the future."

I have to highlight that last sentence as it illuminated for me as a shooting star the skies the essence of the teaching grounded in the bedrock of our existence.

 Each transient entity, emerging into the present out of the stream of events bearing down from the past, absorbs into itself the causal influx of the past, to which it must be responsive. During its phase of presence, it exercises its own distinctive function with the support of its conditions, expressing thereby its own immediacy of being. And then, with the completion of its actuality, it is swept away by the universal impermanence to become itself a condition determinant of the future.”

Worth a pause and a breath….

And here is the turning point of this particular version of dependent arising - that of Transcendental Dependent Arising:  

One particular exemplification of dependent arising...shows the basic principle to serve as the scaffolding for the course of spiritual development issuing in final emancipation.[3] It figures in these suttas as the architectonic underlying the gradual training, governing the process by which one phase of practice conditions the arising of the following phase all the way from the commencement of the path to the realization of the ultimate goal.

In Transcendental Dependent Arising, the sequence has been shifted into a positive iteration - what happens when suffering meets the way out of suffering, when some amount of awareness penetrates the depths of suffering to ask, inquire, insist, “Is there a way out of this suffering?”  "There must be a way out of suffering!”  

The first step of Transcendental Dependent Arising is when suffering meets faith.  The conditions of faith (sometimes called ‘confidence’) are embedded in suffering, arise out of suffering, are conditioned by suffering.  The arising of faith out of suffering takes the energy of suffering and uses it to fulfill its expression and to condition the next arising - that of joy. 

It is said that the faith that arises out of suffering occurs when suffering encounters the dharma or the Buddha’s teachings.  Like a match lighting the dry tinder in the forest, the dharma lights the energy of suffering into a blaze of awareness, curiosity, energy, investigation, into forward movement along the path that moves from conditioned arising to conditioned arising until full liberation has been attained. 

We’ll end with this from Bhikku Bodhi:

As living experience, the advance to emancipation cannot be tied down to a series of mere negations, for such a mode of treatment omits precisely what is most essential to the spiritual quest — the immediacy of inner striving, growth, and transformation. Parallel to the demolition of old barriers there occurs, in the quest for deliverance, a widening of vistas characterized by an evolving sense of maturation, enrichment, and fulfillment; the departure from bondage, anxiety, and suffering at the same time means the move towards freedom and peace. This expansion and enrichment is made possible by the structure of the gradual training, which is not so much a succession of discrete steps one following the other as a locking together of overlapping components in a union at once augmentative, consummative, and projective. Each pair of stages intertwines in a mutually vitalizing bond wherein the lower, antecedent member nurtures its successor by serving as its generative base, and the higher, consequent member completes its predecessor by absorbing its energies and directing them on to the next phase in the series. Each link thus performs a double function: while rewarding the efforts expended in the accomplishment of the antecedent stage, it provides the incentive for the commencement of the consequent stage. In this way the graduated training unfolds organically in a fluid progression in which, as the Buddha says, "stage flows over into stage, stage fulfills stage, for crossing over from the hither shore to the beyond."[4]

Again, a long deep breath….

The notes that apply above are references to the teachings as follows:
1. MN 28.
2.Imasmim sati idam hoti, imass'uppada idam uppajjati. Imasmim asati idam na hoti, imassa nirodha idam nirujjati. MN 79, MN 115 etc.
3.SN 22.23; AN 10.3-5.
4.AN 10.2.

"When this exists, that comes to be...

We’ve moved through the Satipatthana Sutta - the great teaching on Mindfulness - from the First Foundation of Mindfulness to the teachings and practices contain in the Fourth Foundation of Mindfulness.  It is a great and deep teaching.  Perhaps we’ve gotten an overview and dug a bit more deeply here and there.  But this overview is not to be confused with a deep dive into the practices, meanings, implications, that a more rigorous examination would reveal.  Joseph Goldstein’s book Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening, Venerable Analayo’s three books - Sattipatthana: The Direct Path to Realization, Sattipatthana Meditation: A Practice Guide, and Perspectives on Sattipatthana are all great resources for a closer look at this teaching.  Bhikku Bodhi’s book The Noble Eightfold Path: Way to the End of Suffering is a wonderfully readable journey through this bedrock teaching contained in the Satipatthana Sutta. I urge you all to take a peak at these and other sources to explore a bit more.

However, there is an important teaching embedded in this sutta that I would like to introduce here - that of dependent origination.  The essence of it is contained in this paragraph found in "Setting in Motion the Wheel of the Dhamma" in this paragraph: 

This is what the Blessed One said.  Elated, the bhikkus of the group of five delighted in the Blessed One’s statement.  And while this discourse was being spoken, there arose in the Venerable Kondañña the dust-free, stainless vision of the Dhamma:  “Whatever is subject to origination is all subject to cessation."

Whatever arises will pass away. 

 In other teachings, it is stated this way:  

“When this exists, that comes to be; with the arising of this, that arises. When this does not exist, that does not come to be; with the cessation of this, that ceases.”   

The Buddha taught that all things are conditioned and therefore impermanent.  They arise when causes and conditions come together and they cease when the causes and conditions fall away, cease, aren’t sufficient.  

Take fire - it needs heat, oxygen, and fuel.  Striking a match in our atmosphere supplies the heat from friction, the fuel from the point of the match and then the wood or paper of the match, and oxygen from our atmosphere.  

The acorn is necessary for an oak tree to grow.  But it is not sufficient.  Conditions sufficient for the acorn to germinate and grow include air, soil, warmth, water.  

Our bodies came to be from a complex interaction of egg and sperm, fertilization, warmth, moisture, a place to attach that will provide nutrition, protection from harsh elements, etc.   Our continued existence is conditioned on our obtaining oxygen, water, food.  Our bodies will cease when a vital organ fails and any number of other conditions. 

The Buddha called this teaching Dependent Origination and in some of the suttas it is described as a 12 step process that begins with ignorance which leads to volitional formations (habits, tendencies, automatic reactivity) which leads to a kind of consciousness which leads to name and form (the body) which leads to the six sense spheres (eyes, ears, etc.) which leads to contact (with an experience such as sight or smells) which leads to feeling tone about that contact of positive, negative or neutral from which arises desire or aversion or confusion, grasping, clinging, pushing away or overlooking which leads to becoming (forming an identity) which leads to birth which leads to old age and death with all the suffering and misery that entails.   

In the Buddha’s world this had a reference to the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth with some of the factors pertaining to the past life, some to the present, and some to the future.  

There is much more to be said on this topic but for our purposes, we will focus on the overall principle of one thing leading to another and to a specific sequence which is familiar to many of you.  Out of our bodies (name and form) arise the six sense spheres - eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind.  With the six sense spheres comes contact with experiential phenomena - sights, sounds, smells, tastes, sensations, and perceptions, thoughts, mind states, emotions.  Each of those experiences has as feeling tone of positive, negative and neutral.  Out of that feeling tone arises wanting, not wanting, and delusion.  When we want, we reach out and grasp.  When we don’t want, we push away.  When it has a neutral tone, we often overlook the experience in confusion.  With our grasping arises actions like grabbing a cupcake which leads to becoming a person who likes cupcakes and grabs them - a form of birth of the self - which leads to suffering, aging, and death of that cupcake loving self.

And as many of you learned in MBSR, awareness at any point of the cycle changes the whole inevitability of the cycle.  But awareness that arises at the feeling tone point of experience just as we experience positive, negative or neutral is especially effective at breaking the cycle of suffering.  This awareness at the feeling tone point interferes with the arising of desire or craving, aversion or confusion, and thus the rest of the cycle of suffering.  

Dependent origination says that one thing leads to another but if our awareness arises at the beginning point of experience but before our positive experience turns into wanting and craving, we can experience the positive experience without getting caught by it.  Awareness is the condition that breaks the inevitability of cycle of dependent origination.

Awareness doesn’t change the over all conditioned nature of our existence but it is the necessary condition to break the cycle of suffering.  

Guy Armstrong teaches that we learn from our sitting practice but we also learn from hearing and speaking about the teachings and also from reading and studying the teachings.  So our gatherings are a place where all of these forms of learning are possible.  Asking questions, sharing experiences, hearing the journey others are going through can be enormously helpful to our own explorations.  Sometimes it can be uncomfortable when we realize we may have gone a bit astray, sometimes energizing when we have another insight about our practice.  Reading a teaching before practice can prepare our minds and spark our curiosity during our next sit.  These different forms of practice are a three-legged stool supporting and energizing our explorations.

On "Setting in Motion the Wheel of the Dhamma"...

I found reading and sharing last week’s teaching on Setting in Motion the Wheel of the Dhamma*  inspiring - for a number of reasons.  The teaching is deep and wide - encompassing the fundamentals of the path the new Buddha had understood - the Middle Way, the Four Noble Truths, and the Noble Eight-Fold Path.  *Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta SN 56.11  

The young Buddha, newly enlightened, was uncertain that he could impart to anyone else what he finally understood to be true.  This teaching culminates by one of his previous cohort of ascetics understanding.  "And while this discourse was being spoken, there arose in the Venerable Kondañña the dust-free, stainless vision of the Dhamma: 'Whatever is subject to origination is all subject to cessation.’” 

 The Buddha’s joy at this is expressed in the final words of the Sutta, "Then the Blessed One uttered this inspired utterance: 'Koṇḍañña has indeed understood! Koṇḍañña has indeed understood!' In this way the Venerable Koṇḍañña acquired the name 'Añña Koṇḍañña—Koṇḍañña Who Has Understood.’"

It was over a year ago that I realized how greatly I wanted to teach meditation grounded in the teachings of the Buddha from which it arose.  Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), the program many of you took and which inspired your practice of meditation, is firmly grounded in the Buddha’s principles of meditation.  It is not a system of belief as much as practice and the way things are - the way the world is as it meets the way our minds and hearts truly are.  I have often said the Buddha was the first behaviorist. But he came to all his realizations from his subjective point of view - from intense study of his own mind and heart as they met experiential phenomena.  And this understanding is accessible to all of us.  

As I wondered how I would begin to teach from the Buddha’s teachings, I too wondered if anyone would understand what I might impart other than those who had heard it from other teachers.  And I too looked around for people with less dust in their eyes and was moved to bring the teachings to this group of MBSR grads and others drawn to meditation through their own paths.  This may sound a bit over reaching on my part - to compare myself to the Buddha.  But I don’t think the Buddha would feel that.  It is simply a reflection that these teachings can be heard, learned, and practiced by anyone with a sincere heart and mind, that the Buddha was a human being with all the human vulnerabilities and foibles human beings have, that he shared the human story of suddenly understanding deeply the truth of aging, sickness and death, that he was determined to find “an answer,” and that, having understood what he understood, he wanted to share it and worried that it might not be understood.

My understanding of the teachings is more humble than the Buddha's, my path with many more steps to go and includes the vast uncertainty of achieving the Buddha’s level of understanding in this lifetime.  Nevertheless, the path can continue to be traveled and it can be shared at different levels of understanding.  And as there is time and opportunity to practice, we practice and move along the path as we will until we no longer can.

But I can also see that this is the path many, many teachers and practitioners have also traveled and will travel.  As we gain understanding and a little bit of freedom, the wish arises to share that understanding with others.  And simultaneously, the question arises who in our acquaintance might be open and receptive to these teachings and this understanding.

The Buddha shared the teachings out of compassion for the suffering in the world.  And that is where the Four Noble Truths begins.  There is suffering.

As I read this powerful teaching, I realized the teaching on the First Noble Truth was deeper and more comprehensive than I remembered.  

“Now this, bhikkhus, is the noble truth of suffering: birth is suffering, aging is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering; union with what is displeasing is suffering; separation from what is pleasing is suffering; not to get what one wants is suffering; in brief, the five aggregates subject to clinging are suffering.”

Sometimes the Buddha’s teachings can seem archaic.  And the last line “the five aggregates subject to clinging are suffering” is one of those occasions.  We encountered this teaching as one of the list of teachings in the Fourth Foundation of Mindfulness, Mindfulness of the Dharmas or the Way things are. The five aggregates are one of the Buddha’s many models for engaging his listeners and explaining the way things are.  In the Buddha’s day as in our own, aggregates refer to discrete items of stuff that are stuck together but do not dissolve into each other, do not blend like milk and water might.  They refer to our entire experiential selves which are made up of our physical body, our feelings positive, negative, or neutral, our perceptions, our volitional formations (which refer to habits, to our formation of wishes and intents), and our consciousness.  The Buddha used this model so that his followers could begin to understand that wanting, craving, greed, grasping could arise in any one of these areas.  As we encounter an experiential phenomenon, our consciousness does the encountering, our perceptions do the identifying, our feeling tone kicks in in response to those perceptions, desire or craving arises in our bodies, and our volitional formations produce the will or intent to reach out for the desired object.  The opposite process occurs with undesirable objects.

And since this reference to the aggregates of clinging appears in this, most seminal teaching, I wanted to highlight it and underscore that even though a teaching may sound archaic to our ears, it nevertheless refers to a fundamental understanding of the way things are.

I want to share some clarity I gained about volitional formation - the fourth aggregate - from my teacher Guy Armstrong.  I had read that Ajahn Chah considered volitional formations to be habits.  Guy clarified this process this way:  he said, out of our experiences, thoughts arise which can harden into intent which can become habits which form character.  This character, these habits often direct our actions with some degree of automaticity.  Mindfulness brings this tendencies, habits, character to light and adds choice.  

I also discovered that Guy Armstrong read this important teaching aloud where it can be found on YouTube.  I hope you will access Guy Armstrong reading of “Setting the Wheel of the Dhamma in Motion”, Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta SN 56.11.  I found this hearing deepened by appreciation for the teaching.  I hope it will deepen yours.

"Koṇḍañña has indeed understood!"

Having progressed through the teachings of the Four Noble Truths which we did a year ago and having traversed the Satipatthana Sutta or the Four Foundations or Establishments of Mindfulness through Mindfulness of the Body, Mindfulness of Feelings, Mindfulness of the Mind, and now Mindfulness of the Way Things are (the Dharmas or Teachings of the Buddha), we arrive back at the Four Noble Truths which are the last of the teachings of the Fourth Foundation of Mindfulness.  We have reviewed three of the Four Noble Truths in these last weeks - the Noble Truth of suffering, the Noble Truth of the causes for suffering, the Noble Truth of the cessation of suffering, and now we arrive at the gate of liberation, the Noble Truth of the way to the end of suffering, the Noble Eight fold Path.

When the Buddha was first enlightened, he spent some time delighting in his newfound state.  He believed that no one would understand what he had discovered if he shared what he had learned.  The story goes that a being from one of the higher realms urged him to teach, impressing on him the suffering in the world and arousing his compassion to help suffering beings.  The Buddha’s argument was that beings on this earth were so attached to their pleasures and the way of the world that they couldn’t see through the delusion that lasting happiness could only be found through pleasures of the body.  The visitor from the higher realm assured him that there were human beings without much dust in their eyes and that he should start by teaching them.  The Buddha considered this entreaty and then remembered the five ascetics he had been traveling and practicing with before he went off on his own to become enlightened.  He thought perhaps they might be able to understand and set out to find them.

When he did find them, they resisted and even mocked him at first because he had given up on his extreme asceticism of eating one kernel of rice a day and had become healthy.  But they also noted the glow emanating from him and decided to listen to what he had to say.

The first full teaching that the Buddha gave to his friends has become known as the Turning of the Wheel and is a central discourse in the Buddha’s teachings.  As Ajahn Sucitto says in "Turning the Wheel of Dhamma”, this discourse sets out the four noble truths [including the Noble 8 fold path] and the ‘Middle Way’ – the teaching structure that is the heart of his Way of realization. (Samyutta Nikaya 56).”  

The ‘Middle Way’ was the Buddha’s teaching that two extremes should not be followed by "one who has gone forth into homelessness" - the pursuit of sensual happiness in sensual pleasure and the pursuit of self-mortification.  This teaching of the ‘Middle Way’ has relevance for us as lay people in every aspect of our lives and practice. (SM 56, translating by Bhikkus Bodhi).

He goes on to say that the hub of the wheel of Dhamma represents the discipline needed to walk the path, the spokes represent the eight path factors of the Noble Eight Fold Path, and the rim of the wheel represents Samsara, the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth and is often referred to as the wheel of Samsara or Suffering. The wheel is often depicted with a hand at the center, either turning the wheel or holding it steady. Lion’s Roar, “Buddhism A to Z,” https://www.lionsroar.com/buddhism/dharma-wheel-dharmachakra/

The eight spokes of the wheel, elements of the path to awakening, are right (or wise, or skillful) view, intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and concentration.  They are divided into three broader groupings - ethical conduct (sīla) which includes wise speech, wise action, and wise livelihood, the training of the mind (samāhi) which includes wise effort, wise concentration, and wise mindfulness, and wisdom (pañña) which includes wise intention and wise view.  

As Matthew Brensilver says in his article entitled "Sīla, Samādhi, Pañña" (which is an excerpt from a talk at Spirit Rock), "Ajahn Chah said that sīla-samādhi-pañña, ethical conduct, mind training, and wisdom, are not three separate activities, they are part of the same fruit. They are the mango pit, flesh, and skin. ...these three cultivations are one and the same: inextricably bound." https://www.spiritrock.org/articles/sila-samadhi-panna

He goes on to say this:  

"To be mindful of goodness brings love, and to be mindful of pain brings love. That is something like a miracle. This weird asymmetry, that to attend to goodness brings love, and to attend to suffering also brings love. That’s not something that we should take on faith. But this is the laboratory.

The more attuned we are to our hearts, the clearer our ethical behavior becomes. So the more we actually become embodied, start to feel our body fully, to feel our heart, the clearer ethical conduct becomes. It’s like we become attuned to our own system in such a way that we begin to see that doing good feels good. And the kind of karmic loop, when we act out of alignment with our own deepest integrity, that feedback loop gets shorter and shorter, so we really feel it. And this clarity breeds more careful, non-harming behavior.

The steadier and more unified the mind gets, the deeper the love can be. Sometimes the mind gathers so singularly around an object — the breath, a mettā phrase, the body, sound, sight, looking into the eyes of another person — the mind just becomes unified. And all the static, fragmentation, and division collapses. And in that mind state, it’s like a drop of love reaches everywhere.

The mind is said to to be boundless. That’s not making a statement about the nature of mind, but the actual experience is that in this moment there is love without end, without discrimination, without preference.

And then lastly, the more clearly we see, the more effortless the love becomes. Clearly we see the less tenable hatred becomes.”  https://www.spiritrock.org/articles/sila-samadhi-panna

When the Buddha completed his teaching, one member of the five ascetics around him was enlightened, an ascetic named Koṇḍañña.  And this passage completes the teaching:  

"Then the Blessed One uttered this inspired utterance: 'Koṇḍañña has indeed understood! Koṇḍañña has indeed understood!' In this way the Venerable Koṇḍañña acquired the name “Añña Koṇḍañña—Koṇḍañña Who Has Understood.” SM 56

Nuggets from retreat...

There were many little nuggets of gold from the retreat I just sat that I would love to share with you.  But two stand out in particular.

The first is that we often can’t tell the benefit of our practice in the here and now.  I came home from the retreat exhausted by the packing and moving, by the early hours I keep on retreat, and by stopping to attend to a sick friend on the way home.  It takes time to emerge from any retreat - concentration retreats even more so.  But I felt a little at sea, a bit of “what’s it all about, Alfie?”  

Then yesterday, I woke up and decided to have lunch with a friend rather than go on a rally. (No, I haven’t given up on rallies.  I just took a break.)  And as a pleasant lunch outside in the sunshine and breeze neared its end, I decided to spend the afternoon cleaning out my files.  So I did.  The process is still ongoing.   

That’s when I knew the retreat had had a profound effect on my mind.  If my mind is overstuffed, then the files are too.  So it was both a relief and a joy to wade into the files on a beautiful Sunday afternoon.  My mind delighted in the task of clearing out my physical space.  (May it continue.)  The best thing is that the files are in the garage so I could do this with doors open, breeze blowing by, and a beautiful sunny day in attendance.

The second little nugget happened this morning as I sat to meditate.  We’ve been looking at the Four Noble Truths recently.  The first noble truth says there is suffering.  The Buddha understood that we don’t actually look at suffering if we can help it.  We look away, distract ourselves, pretend it’s not happening, reach for food, our phones, tv programs, whatever distraction helps us ignore our suffering. The second noble truth says there are causes for suffering - namely attachment.  Attachment to wanting things to be our own way, not wanting bad things, wanting good things, being deluded about what brings us happiness.  The third noble truth says there is a path out of suffering.  We’re not stuck, trapped, hopelessly mired in our own tangled net of attachment.  The fourth noble truth says the Noble 8-Fold Path is the way out of suffering - wise view, wise intention, wise speech, wise action, wise action, wise livelihood, wise effort, wise mindfulness, wise concentration. We’re review these in a little more depth later.

As I approached my meditation bench, I realized I had forgotten to make tea which I habitually have before I sit to meditation.  I decided if I didn’t remember to make it, perhaps I didn’t desire it so much and could go without.  Then, as I sat, I remembered what had triggered my remembering the tea - a sensation in my arms and hands of placing the tea near my bench and reaching for it to drink. Then I became aware of a tingling in the tip of my tongue, then the sides of the tongue.  The tongue had a physical memory of tea, desire manifested in the tingling.  I was slightly annoyed by the distraction until I realized these sensations were not a distraction.  They were a present moment manifestation of “desire.”  I was being handed an opportunity to investigate “desire" right in the moment of its arising.  

Some of you may remember from Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction that desire rises out of the positive feeling tone we experience when we make contact with an experience that we like.  In my case, it was the thought - or more specifically, the  memory - of tea that led to the positive feeling and then to desire. The desire for tea increased to a craving of the tea which manifested in the physical memory of reaching for and tasting the tea.  That led to memories of how to make tea, the calculation of how long it would take to make, the tea kettle, the tea bag, etc.  The mind quickly reviewed the possibility of getting up from meditation to make tea.  Frustrated in that desire by my determination to keep sitting, the mind began investigating memories of how long I had been making tea before meditation and realized there was a time before tea.  For years, I would sit in the morning before making tea.  The tea always came after meditation.  So what I was looking at was a habit pattern created by desire and craving - a deeply engrained habit pattern based on years of repetition and satisfaction of that desire.  The result was suffering when I didn’t have that tea.

That habit pattern contained the attachment the Buddha referred to as the cause of suffering in the second noble truth.  As I continued to sit, I watched the sensations in the mouth lessen, disappear, then return again and disappear again.  The desire weakened as well when my mind turned to the breath and the rest of the meditation process.  

This spontaneous awareness and reflection too was a process strengthened by the retreat, I realized.  Other little nuggets may continue to appear. Some  will get lost in the tumult downstream but will alter the flow nevertheless. When we become aware of and investigate a negative habit pattern, we weaken the habit.  When we practice, we strengthen the positive habit of training our minds and turning our trained minds to investigating what leads to suffering and what leads to the end of suffering in our lives.

Concentration meditation calms and steadies the mind.  It sharpens the focus and trains the mind to stay on a single object of investigation for longer.  The concentration object is often the breath although it doesn’t have to be.  But training the mind to return again and again to a single object strengthens the capacity of the mind to engage in a more focussed way.

The purpose is not concentration for concentration’s sake although there is some of that as well.  The purpose is to investigate how we meet the experiences of our lives with a better, sharper investigative tool - the concentrated mind.  How do we relate to wanting something and not being able to have it?  Are we aware when it is happening?  Or conversely how do we relate to experiences that arise that we don’t want - an unpleasant encounter, a negative health diagnosis, burning our hand on a hot pan, hearing about adverse circumstances that affect our community or our country?

The steadiness and focus of the concentrated mind - one that is free of clutter - enables us to see more deeply and with greater clarity into how we relate to what we want, what we don’t want, what delusions persist.  This greater clarity allows a calmer, more appropriate response to whatever arises that is not encumbered by the suffering of attachment.  

On retreat...

I arrived a day early for this retreat to unpack, get my bearings, and begin to settle my mind and heart after weeks of anxiety building news, dire warnings, and wonderful energizing rallies.   A handful of people arrived yesterday, a few more this morning and the bulk of the retreatants will descend this afternoon.  It has been a lovely peaceful morning getting to know a few of the early arrivers before we go into silence this evening.  We all feel the peacefulness of the place seeping into our bones.  Thousands of meditators have sat and walked here and at the two related retreat centers up the hill and down road since the late 70’s.  It reminds me of going into churches in Europe and feeling the power of hundreds of thousands of people over the centuries praying and lifting their hearts for solace.  

And yet, it’s completely different - open, spacious, with lawns, meadows, gardens, many varieties of daffodils and flowering trees, and a huge stone stupa - a round stone structure about 20 feet high that houses relics of Buddhism - built by the founding director with his bare hands.  The first time he built it, he didn’t use cement.  It eventually fell down.  So he built it again using cement.  

Just like practice.  We begin and then we continue.  Something happens and we fall away.  We wake up and begin again.  The patience needed for stupa building and practice is the same.

As I write this, I am filled with gratitude - gratitude for this place and this opportunity to engage in intensive practice, gratitude to the support staff here who feed and house us, to the teachers who guide us, to the sangha who gather here from far and wide to practice together in community, to all the people at home who watch over my fish, the birds, the plants, the house, to my family and friends who support me with their well wishes...and especially, to all of you who have given me the gift of your presence, your attention, your interest, your feedback over the years.  

I was reflecting while telling a fellow retreatant about our sangha how you have all grown in your interest and understanding of mindfulness meditation and the Buddha’s related teachings, how each of you has reached out to make the teachings relevant to you, have practiced, have read, and have begun to share your journey with others.  Some of you have related how you and your families have noticed a difference in you, a lightness, more openness.  Some of you have tried retreat life that has enriched and deepened your practice and your contemplations.  Some of you have moved into teaching in a more formal way.  

I am moved and deeply grateful to have been a part of your journey and to see how the teachings I have been given have moved through me to you to enrich your journey on this earth as they have enriched mine.