Tag: peace

Inherent Existence Part 2

We discussed inherent existence last week. Let’s continue on that topic to make sure we have a good understanding of this topic before we move on to the next subject. Most people take all phenomena as inherently existent. As we discussed last time, there is no inherent existence. All phenomena are imputed existence. During our discussions, we talked about examples of a flower and a car. We tried to find both of those objects within their parts or a combination of parts. To our amazement, we could not find either object. So today, we will try to find something different from scratch to bring this point home.

We all have a good understanding of what a forest is. I think we can say, we will know when we see one. Say one of our friends bought a house on a large tract of land – say 35 acres. They start planting some trees say 5 trees on their property. They call and ask us to come over to see their forest. We go there and see 5 trees and say well, this is not a forest. I have five trees in my backyard. It does not make a forest. So he gets disappointed. He starts planting more trees. Now he has maybe 40 trees. He calls us and says now I really have a forest, check it out. We go take a look and say still not a forest may be a grove but definitely not a forest. So he goes back to work and keeps calling us every few weeks to see. Every time, we see more trees but disappoint him when we tell him it is not a forest. A year or so goes by. He calls us and we go this time. We can’t count the number of trees on these 35 acres of land. We can’t figure out where the trees begin and where they end. We say this is a forest, my friend. You did it! When did this group of trees become a forest? Can we point to one tree that made this a forest? No, of course not. So forest we all agree that it is an imputed existence. It is a forest because we all agreed to call it a forest.

In some schools of thought, they call this a dependent existence because it depends upon the sense perception of the person who experiences the phenomena. Let’s look at things we see for example The images we see are made up of light reflected from the objects we look at. This light enters the eye through the cornea, which acts as a window at the front of the eye. Because the front part of the eye is curved, it bends the light, creating an upside-down image on the retina. The brain eventually turns the image the right way up. In other words, what we see is on our mind and not out there. Without the interpretation, there is no object. Similarly, when hearing music, we are hearing music in our mind and not out there. This is called dependent existence. So there is no inherent existence.

I know it is a profound subject and will take some time to get clarity on the subject but once that clarity comes, life becomes simple. We no longer grasp on anything and take things as they come without any attachment towards these objects. If we look at things that we grasp on a daily basis, it is insane. For example, some of us are attached to our cars, our homes, our computers, our 50 pairs of shoes, our money, and whatnot. But if we start looking at this and realize that there is no inherent existence our attachment towards these objects will gradually reduce. And at some level, we know the fragility of all this but we just are not ready to accept it or do not have the awareness to see it at the moment. Something to think about.

Inherent Existence

We talked about how Buddha gave two types of teachings. Compassion and Wisdom. For the past 22 episodes, we have been discussing compassion teachings or some version of it. Although we still have 5 or 6 sessions to go for compassion teachings, I thought I would introduce part of wisdom teachings today. We will talk about what is known as inherent existence. It is a deep topic so we may take a couple of sessions discussing this. So what is inherent existence? If you think about most of us take the existence of all phenomena as inherent. What does that mean? Well, let’s talk about any object. A car, or a house, or clothes, or a computer, and so on. We think it exists and does not think twice about it. As a matter of fact, we think exists inherently and cling to it. This grasping or clinging is what brings the most suffering in our lives.

I know this sounds crazy. So let’s break it down. Any existence is either inherent or it is not. What is inherent existence? A phenomenon that exits from its own side is considered an inherent existence. In reality, there is no such thing. No phenomena exist from its own side. For anything to exist from its own side, either it is the same as its part or collection of its part. There is no other possibility. Let’s take an example. Here is a flower. I think we all agree that it is a flower. If you don’t agree, please raise your hand in your participants’ window – I want to make sure this is an interactive experiment. As long as we all agree it is a flower, we will continue. Now, Is this a flower (removed one petal and only showed one petal)? How about this (showed another petal)? How about now (one more petal)? How about this (showing stem)? So we all agree that none of the parts of the flower are flowers themselves. Let’s look at the collection of the parts. All of these parts if I gave you, you would not call it a flower. So there is no inherently existing flower. Well, then what is this thing we called flower. It is nothing but imputation. It is a flower because we called it a flower. It has no inherent existence. Another way to look at this is that it is a dependent existence. Let’s say a blind person walks in the room – don’t worry this is not a joke! There is a flower on the table. For the blind person, the flower does not exist because it is not in their experience.

Let’s look at this pen. Can you point to the pen? Where is the pen? Is it on your screen? Is it in my hand? You see this pen because your eye senses look at a picture of the pen, your brain interprets that as a pen. In other words, the pen is in your mind. Without your brain interpreting this object like a pen, the pen does not exist for you. In other words, it is a dependent existence.

So there are people who believe everything exists inherently meaning from their own side. As we just discussed that is just not the case. There are people who believe nothing exists at all. That is surely not the case since we are experiencing these phenomena. There is a middle way. That says that all phenomena are imputed or dependent on existence. Nothing exists inherently and all existence is imputed.

Let’s look at another example, we all have a car parked in the garage. Let’s find if the car exists inherently. For a car to exist inherently, it can either be found in its parts or it is a collection of its part. So let’s begin with its tires. If someone gave us four tires, we will certainly not call it a car. How about if someone gave us a bunch of bucket seats? Well, that is not a car. How about a door, or an engine, or brake pads? None of these parts is a car. If you take all the parts of the car put them on the ground, we won’t call it a car. So there is no inherently existing car. It is a car because we all decided to call it a car. In other words, it is an imputed existence.

Again, this is a deep subject. I would like to pick this up next week on the same topic. So we can investigate a little more to make sure that we are all on the same page as to inherent existence.

Q: When I meditate, before I can even label the thought, the next one comes in. So there is this constant flow of thoughts that does not allow me to concentrate.

A: This happens when our mind is agitated and we have not settled down in our hearts. The best way to approach this is to stop and go back to the sensation of our breath. If your mind is muddled for some reason, spend more time on breath sensations. This will allow the mind to settle down. Just like when you have a muddy water glass, you need to let it sit for the soil to settle down at the bottom and the glass to be clear.

Stress Less

As the holidays are fast approaching, we are getting into the most stressful season of the year in the Western world. So today let’s discuss how to keep the stress at bay and more importantly, how to make sure that you keep your mental peace amid all the chaos.

Before we talk about tackling stress, let’s discuss how stress originates in our body. Stress comes from trying to control people and situations. Getting other people to behave our way is not really working and is never effective. The only thing we can control for sure is our mind. There will be always things to worry about. So if wait for things to settle down, we will be waiting for eternity. Our thoughts carry us all over the place and they bring stress in our lives. If we gain mastery over our mind and thoughts, we find deep peace. Our mind is like a crazy wild elephant. It destroys everything on its way, it thinks about scary thoughts that will most likely never materialize. Someone put it nicely, anxiety and worries are misuses of the imagination.

But we live in the real world so there will always be things out of our control. If we learn to control our reactions to situations, we will be able to avoid stress and bring happiness and peace. In that spirit, I found this stress handling quadrant. I am going to share this document on the screen. This document is courtesy of Tashi Nyma a Buddhist Monk out of Dallas, Texas. No need to copy this document – I will email you a copy at the end of this session. Those of you who are watching this on our YouTube channel or on LinkedIn, please email meditatedenver@gmail.com and I will email you a copy of this document.

As you can see, this is called the Four Quadrant Practice. The first quadrant is Avoid. We want to avoid as many situations as we can that can create stress in our life. For example, is looking at our phone 10 times an hour really necessary? Once people start looking at their phones, all kinds of stressful situations arise. They say an average American looks at their phone 96 times per day. That is insane!! Going on social media all day is another one of those things that we can avoid. What I found helpful was to limit my social media interactions to twice a day. And I am trying really hard not to get into an argument on social media. I limit checking my emails three or four times per day. Again, it is different for everyone but no one expects you to respond within minutes.

The next quadrant is Adjust. Let’s adjust our behavior to avoid stressful situations. For example, because I am in a High-Risk COVID group, I started getting stressed out when COVID increased in the last two months about shopping. So we adapted to a 100% online or curbside pickup model for the last 6 weeks. It eliminated all the unnecessary stress. You might want to limit the duration of meetings if that stresses you out.

The next quadrant is to Adapt. We adapt to the situations that we can avoid or adjust to. For example, you may not be able to avoid a meeting with that annoying coworker. Take some deep breaths before you begin the meeting. Go for a walk if you have an option.

The last quadrant is Accept. This is if all fails kind of category. Accept that you have to take that meeting and it may go bad. Prepare yourself and change your attitude towards it. There is no reason an external situation should give you stress. Train your mind. Essentially, this is what we started the session with.

So as you can see, there are ways to stay out of stressful situations. We must make sure that what the world brings does not need to disturb our internal peace. Hopefully, with some practice, we can all experience that peace within. I would like you to do this exercise as homework with the worksheet. It would certainly make you think if nothing else.

Mindful Speech

Some people talk a lot and others tend to be quiet. But all of us have a constant chatter in our mind this inner speech. So let’s discuss mindful speech both inner and outer. We briefly talked about asking ourselves Is it True? Is it Necessary? Is it Kind? Before we post anything on social media in Episodes 7 and 9. So let’s take this a little further. When we have any kind of communication with someone else, we must ask ourselves; is it True? Is it Helpful? Is it Necessary? Is it Kind? The answer to any one of these is negative, we should try and refrain from that speech. A speech can be any communication method be it social media, email, verbal, nonverbal, etc. This will help us bring a level of kindness to the world. More importantly, it will allow us to be less judgmental as we tend to judge everyone except ourselves all day long. It will also hopefully help us avoid exaggerated language. Because of the influence of marketing in modern society, we have all adopted this language of exaggeration. Either it is the best or the worst nothing in between. Do we really “love” that slice of pizza? Without that our life is somehow going to be incomplete? Is it really a slice of heaven? Do we even know what heaven looks like? If someone does not give us something, is it really ruining our life? My personal favorite is To Die For. Really? Will you die for that sweater? If we begin to pay attention to what we communicate, we will be able to avoid a lot of this.

Paying attention to our communication is great. But, if you think about it, the majority of all of our speech is internal. We talk to ourselves more than we talk to anyone else. We think about things that happened or things that may never happen. So let’s start to develop a habit. When we catch ourselves having an internal dialogue, we should ask ourselves; is it True? Is it Necessary? Is it Helpful? Is it Kind? And again, if the answer to any one of these is No, let’s just stop that internal dialog and try to just be without thinking anything. Personally, I find it helpful to ask Is it Necessary? Every time, the answer seems to be No and I stop that internal dialog. One useful tip is to use our MAC technic here as well. If we are alert looking out for this internal dialog, we will then can be mindful in asking the question so that we can stop that internal dialog. You will be amazed at how your day improves just by keeping a tab on your internal dialog. Some people ask if we should continue if the dialog is positive. In general, we want to avoid that internal dialog as it may start out positive but as you all know, our mind wonders and can get the negative drift anytime. If we make a sincere practice to scan for our internal speech, we will be able to tame our mind a lot faster and our meditation practice will improve as well.