peace – Page 4 – Meditative Man

How To Access Peace Within Us

We have talked about in the past that within every one of our hearts exists this potential for total freedom from ignorance, complete bliss, and pure happiness, known as our Buddha nature. So today, let’s talk about how to access that peacefulness within us.

We need to learn to experience that nature. We are not able to because we have been habitually caught up with our delusions such as our greed, our anger, and our attachment and we think that’s me. But that’s not us. Those are our delusions.

They are defilements of our minds, our tendencies, our habits, but that is not us. They may be ruining our life but that is not us.

Buddha gives an example of seawater. We can all agree that the sea water is salty. It is salty water. He says no. Water is water. It is the salt that makes it salty. And nowadays, science tells us that we can have a desalination plant and the water is no longer salty! So the water itself is water. It is the salt that made it salty.

In the same way, it’s possible to get rid of the delusions from our mind and leave that clear, pure nature of our mind, which is already there. It’s just that the delusions are making it salty, but it doesn’t mean our mind is salty.

By nature, we are pure. Our nature is completely peaceful, joyful, and even actually, blissful.

We all have Buddha says our continuously residing minds. Which is the deepest level of awareness. It is completely pure. It is always there. All other minds come and go. So our continuously residing mind is like a clear sky. And delusions and all other conceptions are like clouds that temporarily arise.

We must remember that all the time. That deep down, we are a peaceful person, a joyful person, a blissful person. It’s just that we have all this sand or dirt on top of our golden nugget. But it is a golden nugget and not some dirty rock.

So, therefore, the first step to accessing our pure nature is meditation so that our mind can settle down to its pure nature.

So we are letting the waves die down by focusing on the breath. We’re allowing the waves of our delusions to just die down. This is all we do, to begin with, we just don’t follow our delusions. The way we don’t follow our delusions is by following our breath instead, can only actually our mind can only single-pointedly focus on one thing at a time.

So we like to think we can multitask and stuff. But generally, what’s happening in our mind is just moving all over the place all day exhausting. Trying to do many things at once. Our mind is only actually ever doing one thing at a time. But just moments before it does the next thing in the next thing. Our mind is very much in the nature of the movement. And this is like, go back to the ocean analogy. It’s causing all that disruption. Just the fact that we can’t focus on one thing very well. Sometimes we can. But insofar as we can make lots of things at once, we can’t. But when we focus on breath, then we are focusing single-pointedly as we can one point of focus on the breath. At that point, we’re not projecting any of our other deluded thoughts. You know, what happens to a thought when we stop thinking about it? They go away.

Our delusions are just thoughts. When we stop thinking, those deluded thoughts subside, like the waves sliding into the ocean, that just happens. And we discover that we are actually peaceful, that our mind is actually peaceful, relatively to begin with, right, because it’s quite hard to let our mind completely let go of all the delusions dissolve into this endless deep bliss, okay, that takes some time. But we get a little bit of a taste of the waves dying down, to use the other metaphor, the clouds, clearing a little taste of the blue sky.

And now with meditation, we’re learning to master our mind, control our mind, which is absolutely essential, because if we don’t master our minds, our mind is always going to be in control of us. And when I say our mind, I mean, our delusions are going to control us because they’re what’s running the show at the moment. Right? So if we want to experience peace and happiness, we need to learn to master our minds.

And first step is just making a decision to stay with the breath. We can do a lot based on our decision. If we decide to do something, then there’s every chance we can do that thing. If we don’t decide to do it, then of course, you know, if we just kind of enter our breathing meditation, quiet half-heartedly, and think, Okay, it just seems like something quite peaceful. But we’re not really haven’t made any strong decision to stay with the breath, then we’re going to naturally follow every thought that comes up. Because that’s what we do. That’s what we are used to doing. We’re used to just following every single thought that comes up. But no we’re going to make a decision. I’m going to focus on my breath.

And if a thought comes, we say OK, we are going back to focusing on our breath. If we do this for a while, then what happens is that as the mind starts to settle down, even if it’s just a little bit, turbulence, and delusions, start to die down even a little bit, and we start to sense that depth in that space, that ocean, clarity within our mind, continuously residing, mind our Buddha nature potential, we start to just glimpse it. And that’s why we need a glimpse enough for us to then change the object of meditation from the breath to the peace itself. Again, focus on this peace, I’m going to enjoy this peace the abide by this peace. And focus on that single-pointedly.

When our delusions are not manifesting strongly, our mind is naturally relaxed, actually peaceful, and naturally happy.

Developing Compassion – Affectionate Love

We have talked about how it is best to try and develop compassion towards all living beings. It is easy to develop compassion towards people in our immediate circle (our family, our friends, etc.). But it is much harder to develop compassion towards someone we do not know. Ans harder still for someone in a faraway place. It’s like this when we hear about a natural disaster half a world away, we feel bad for sure but not enough to do something about it and help them. It happens in our region, we actually want to do something about it—maybe we send some money or consumables, etc. If that happens in our neighborhood, we roll up our sleeves and help as many people as we can. So how do we develop the same high level of compassion for all living beings?

Well, before we develop compassion toward everyone, we first need to have a love for them. If we have a love for someone in our hearts, developing compassion towards them becomes easy. So how do we develop love towards other random people and even people who do not care for us? Well, let’s start with types of love. There are three types of love. Affectionate love, cherishing love, and wishing love.

Here is from the book Universal Compassion: We can understand these by considering the following example. If a mother is reunited with one of her children after a long separation, she is very happy and feels great affection for her. This special feeling of affection is affectionate love. Out of affection, the mother considers her child to be very precious and wants to take special care of her. This special feeling of caring is cherishing love. Because she has affectionate love and cherishing love for her child, if she sees that she is unhappy she immediately wishes to restore her happiness. This wish for others to be happy and to help them to achieve happiness is wishing love.

So let’s break this down. In simplest terms, affectionate love is to like someone. If we are in a family and we have affection towards each other, life would be much smoother. Similarly, if we have affection towards our community, we will try to make sure that everyone in our community is free from suffering. This affectionate love brings harmony and peace to the community. The easiest way to develop affectionate love is to think about how no one wants to suffer. We know that we don’t want to have any suffering in life. Similarly, no one wishes to suffer for themselves. Once we understand that all beings want to be free from suffering, we will develop affectionate love toward them. A warm feeling in our hearts towards them. It is difficult to practice this by trying to show affectionate love towards everyone at once. So one should start by showing affectionate love towards a select few that would be easier – members of your family or close friends. Then expand the circle once you are comfortable.

Now, we need to be careful because a lot of times what people call love is more like attachment. For these people more the “love” increases, the more desirous attachment they develop. If the object of their “love” even talks to someone else, they get jealous or angry. This is not love. This is the attachment. Real love does not make one angry. So what is affectionate love? In the book How To Transform Your Life, Geshe Kelsang Gyatso outlines: when from the depths of our heart, without attachment, we feel very close, warm, and happy towards someone, this is affectionate love. It makes our mind peaceful and balanced, free from anger and attachment. Thus it is called “equanimity”.

Developing equanimity is like plowing a field—clearing our minds of the rocks and weeds of anger and attachment. That will make it possible for true love to grow. So how do learn to develop affectionate love? One way to develop this is to make an effort to be happy to see everyone. Whenever we see someone, we should be happy to meet them and try to generate a warm feeling towards them. If we are starting a meeting just before we get into the meeting room, we imagine all the people who are going to be in the meeting and try and generate a smile on our faces.

There are many benefits of meditating on affectionate love. Nagarjuna a great Indian scholar said that the biggest benefit of meditating on affectionate love for just one moment is that we accumulate greater merit than giving food three times to all the hungry people in this world! How wonderful!

Why Meditate?

I was at a party over the weekend. During our idle chatter, someone asked me why I meditate and what is the purpose. They continued if that brings 10 minutes of peace in one’s day. I thought it’s been a while since we looked at why we are getting together every Tuesday so it would be nice to look at that again. Surely, we want to find that peace within us on a daily basis for however long that we can find it. But the purpose of practice is never the practice.

What do I mean by that? Let’s say you decide to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. Now unless you are used to climbing fourteeners, climbing Mount Kilimanjaro is no small feat. Especially, on the last day. The first few days it is relatively easy but on the last day, you are supposed to start climbing around 9 or 10 pm. You will reach the peak just around dawn. You take a few pictures and then continue with the descent for about four hours or so before getting to a camp. This is not an easy day for anybody. You will be essentially on your feet for 10 hours or so. In this case, you will start conditioning your body before you head out to Tanzania. You begin a daily exercise routine and probably weekly climbing practice. The purpose of this conditioning is not to get good at conditioning but to prepare yourself for the climb on Mount Kilimanjaro.

Our daily meditation practice is supposed to condition us for our daily worldly activities. For example, let’s say you buy a 10,000-piece Lego puzzle. That’s a lot of pieces and would take you a few days to complete for sure. Now you begin to organize your pieces in different piles first. Then you begin to build the puzzle. You spend say 30 minutes doing this. If you spend the next 23 ½ hours breaking what you have already built and mixing all the pieces you had separated what is the result? The next day, you will have a bigger challenge on your hand.

So when we meditate, we are trying to find that peace within us for sure. The bigger purpose however is to make sure that we carry that with us throughout the rest of our day. We want to be centered no matter what life throws at us. That is the real purpose of our meditation. Getting grounded within ourselves. If during our meditation practice say you had a rough time concentrating on a particular day. But after meditation is complete, you can be kind and loving towards everyone you come across. That is a successful mediation session. On the other hand, if you had a peaceful meditation where you came close to enlightenment but after the meditation session you have difficulty showing compassion towards anyone, that was an unsuccessful meditation session.

And of course, there are actual health benefits of meditation that we have discussed before. They include reduced stress, lower anxiety, improved self-awareness, and so on. In a nutshell, meditation leads to a peaceful mind. It puts us in a relaxed state of being both physically and mentally.

Before we begin our meditation I just want to remind everyone about the 10 x 10 practice we have discussed in the past. Try to take 10 deep breaths approx. 10 times every day. Each breath comes from your diaphragm. Put your hand on your stomach. As you breathe, your stomach should expand. So take a deep inhalation. You will feel your stomach expand. When you exhale, you deflate your stomach – they say to try to reach your spinal cord with your stomach.

Even if you are in the middle of a project, just stop and take 10 deep breaths. You can do this every hour – the easiest way to do this is to put an alarm on your phone so you have a reminder. When you take these breaths, be sure to focus on the sensation of your breath in your nostrils. I believe this will help you calm down in the middle of the day and will bring you can to your center if you are having a difficult day.

Karma

Continuing on our Karma series, let’s talk about the severity of negative Karma. Sometimes we feel that the response to our negative action is not proportional to the action itself. Not every negative Karma results in similar suffering. The degree of suffering depends upon the power of our actions.

This power depends upon six factors including 1) the nature of the action; 2) the intention; 3) the method; 4) the object; 5) how often the action is committed, and 6) the application of the opponent. Now let’s look at each one and understand what it means.

First the nature of the action. Some negative actions are more severe than others. We briefly touched on this during our previous sessions. For example, killing is a lot more severe than idle chatter. So if you recall the ten negative actions: killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, divisive speech, hurtful speech, idle chatter, and so forth; the degree of severity among them is in descending order. Meaning killing is the most severe and idle chatter is the least severe.

The next factor in suffering is intention. For example, to kill in a violent rage is more harmful than to kill in mild anger. But then I don’t who would kill in mild anger right? If we are lying for the sake of lying or lying to hurt someone has a different response when it comes to suffering. One is a lot more severe than the other.

The method is the next factor affecting suffering. How we perform that action. For example, killing an animal swiftly has less suffering attached to it than killing sadistically applying slow and painful death.

The object is also an important factor. If one kills someone who has been kind to them versus someone who is a total stranger, it has more severe implications. Similarly, if someone repeatedly commits the same offense, it has higher consequences as compared with a one-time offense.

The last factor is the application of the opponent. This means that when one commits negative action but along with that one also performs positive actions, then the severity of suffering is reduced.

Now let’s talk about the effects of our negative actions. There are three effects; 1) the ripened effect; 2) the effects similar to the cause and 3) the environmental effect. Let’s look at each one individually.

The ripened effect of a negative action is rebirth in one of the lower realms. For example, if a living being takes rebirth in the animal realm then the ripened effect of that particular negative action has occurred and will not show up again.

The effects similar to the cause have two types; a) tendencies similar to the cause and b) experiences similar to the cause. Tendencies similar to the cause is a compulsion. For example, we know that we are prone to certain types of negative actions even when realize it is wrong but instinctively, sometimes we end up committing those. This in turn creates more negative actions and creates this vicious cycle. Essentially, this effect makes it difficult for us to avoid rebirths in lower realms in the future. We essentially have a compulsion to certain negative behavior. You may have noticed that some kids tend to kill bugs and other insects. Tendency similar to sexual misconduct is being attracted to someone else’s partner. What we have here are tendencies that make one create negative actions that in turn will ripen in future sufferings.

Experiences similar to the cause are different for each negative action. For example, an experience similar to the cause of killing is a short life full of sickness. By killing, we shortened another being’s life so we are experiencing ill health or shortened life as a result. Experience similar to stealing is a lack of wealth and possessions. Experience similar to sexual misconduct is separation from friends and family. Experience similar to cause for lying is that no one trusts us; divisive speech is difficulty creating harmonious relationships, hurtful speech is people say bad things about us; idle chatter is that no one takes us seriously. Experience similar to covetousness is that our desires are not fulfilled; malice is that we are prone to fear, and holding wrong views is that we have great confusion.

The third effect of a negative action is the environmental effect. This means that it is our living environment that is affected. For example, the environmental effect of killing is poverty; stealing is we live in a barren area; sexual misconduct is we live in unsanitary conditions. The environmental effect of lying is that we live in a place where people cheat and are deceptive; divisive speech is that we live in a place that is hard and inhospitable; hurtful speech is that we live in an area with dense undergrowth that can sting our body; idle chatter is that we live in a place where crops don’t grow. The environmental effect of covetousness is that we live in a place where resources are easily destroyed; malice is that we live in a war zone; holding a wrong view is that we live in a place that lacks water and other basic necessities.

So as you can see negative actions ripen in different ways. To sum up, the worst way it can ripen is birth in lower realms such as the animal realm. Effects similar to cause give us tendencies to perform similar negative actions or provides poor life experiences. The environmental effect makes our surroundings difficult. So that concludes our discussions on negative Karma. Next week, we will begin to look at positive Karma and its effects.

Dealing w Chaos

We all have been through times when nothing seems to go our way. Everything is going in a different direction and it all feels chaotic if you will. Well, the chaos theory states that within the apparent randomness of chaotic complex systems, there are underlying patterns and interconnectedness. So that chaotic situation we find ourselves in actually may have a deeper reason behind it. I know, at the time it sure doesn’t feel like it.

Why do I bring this up? Because often when we find ourselves in a difficult situation we are not able to see the forest for the trees. We are so bogged down in our problem and granted it could be a serious problem—I am not trying to minimize the situation at all. But unless it is a life-and-death situation, it often blows over in time. Some problems take more time to resolve than others.

Here is an exercise I would like you to do within the next few days. Go back to your calendar or emails for 2021. Come up with a list of eventful reflections for each month of the year. For example, when I created my 2021 reflection, everything fit into one page. For each month there was maybe one or two things that were memorable—three at the most. When I was putting that list together, I realized going through the records that there were times I was upset about something and it felt like a really big deal at the time but it did not even make it to my list. So obviously it was not that important in the scheme of things. Once you complete this exercise you will find what is important for you—what you put the most value on. Now, as you come across difficult situations in the new year, try to remember that not everything is going to make your list for the year. So before you get all worked up about something, ask yourself, would it make your own reflection list? If the answer is no, you can just relax.

Have you noticed after all the chaos, things almost always work out? Maybe not exactly the way you wanted but not so bad that you could not carry on. If you were paying attention, you could actually learn a lot from the experience. I have developed a habit of telling myself that things always work out for the best. I may not see it that way at the time, but they do. Now, this does not mean that if you find yourself in a difficult situation you try to do the best you can. Of course, you do. Well, actually there is a value in surrendering yourself but that is a topic for another day.

Another thing is that when you are going through chaos, you begin to appreciate little things in life. You are grateful for what you have. And as we have discussed repeatedly, a gratitude attitude is essential for a happy and fulfilling life. As we all know, the human body and mind are very resilient. There were people in the Nazi concentration camps who found hope in the middle of quite possibly the gloomiest place in human history. If they found hope, our problems are nothing compared to that.

Why does chaos so chaotic? It is quite simple. It feels chaotic because we are not able to see the answer right away. You see, if the answer was right in front of us, it would not feel chaotic at all. So how do we handle this? It takes time for us to see the bigger picture in these scenarios. Once we are able to take some time and reflect on it, we will hopefully see the grand plan. And if you are stumped, ask someone else whose opinion you value. Sometimes all you need is a second set of eyes to get things into perspective. I have often found that it is a matter of change of perspective and it is no longer chaotic.

I hope this resonates with some of you. As you begin the new year, I am sure there will be times that feel chaotic. Please remember this too shall pass.