fredag den 27. maj 2011

Om oplysning

Emnet for den konference jeg i øjeblikket deltager i, er ’oplysning’. Se, det er jo et emne der er til at tage fat i! – mange er mulighederne, men her er noterne til det foredrag jeg netop har holdt:

When the Buddha sat under the bodhi tree and attained enlightenment, he didn’t invent the Dharma. He realized the timeless truth that is always present, whether or not a Buddha is around to see it. He saw the true nature of all conditioned and unconditioned phenomenon; saw the truth about dukkha and its end. What he saw, brought about a radical transformation in him. He was, after his awakening, no longer a man – he was a Buddha; an awakened. In Dona Sutta, Dona the brahman asks the Buddha: ‘Are you a deva?’ and the Buddha says no. Dona then asks if he is a gandhabba, a yaksha or a human being – and the Buddha again answers no. In his frustration, Dona then asks ‘what sort of being are you?’, and the Buddha answers ‘you can remember me as awakened’.

Again: what he realized at his awakening was a timeless truth. This truth, the true nature of things, is in all of us – or rather; it is what we really are. It is not only found in humans. There are no restrictions on truth, so of course it is found in all sentient beings and in insentient beings too. All we need to become like the Buddha, to become awakened, is the wisdom to realize this truth. Intellectual understanding might be helpful, but only the movement of the heart, the personal experience, can set us free.

When the Buddha sat under the Bodhi tree, he was challenged by Mara. Mara asked him: ‘With what right do you sit at this seat of enlightenment?’ The Buddha then called the earth as his witness – he had every right to sit at the seat of enlightenment. The seat of enlightenment is found everywhere the teachings of the Buddha are kept alive, and we all have the right to sit there. It’s here - now, and we have every right to sit here. We should sit here, because this is the only way to make this world a better place.

What we need to do is not to create the timeless truth, to create Nirvana. It is here. We just need the wisdom to realize it. And to attain that wisdom, we need practice. We need to challenge all we ‘know’ about life, because knowledge gets in the way of wisdom.

Meditation

From the early history of Buddhism, two different strands of meditation were identified; meditations to cultivate calm, and meditations to cultivate insight – samatha and vipashyana. The practice of samatha is directed at developing concentration, while the practice of vipassana is aimed at developing wisdom. In other words: we need to stop the mind’s chatter, and we need to cut off our delusions. We need to stop and see.

Concentration

In concentration meditation, we practice letting go of the idea of pleasure and pain and just stay with our chosen meditation object. We discipline the mind, and in the process, we purify it. The mind can only hold one thing at a time, so when we keep bringing it back to our meditation object, we’re also keeping out of trouble, so to speak. Our meditation object could be anything, but often we use the breath. The breath is very suitable as a meditation object because it will change during a meditation session – it will become finer and almost imperceptible as your concentration deepens, forcing you to focus even more.

To make it easier, we can start by counting the breath; breathe in, breathe out: count one. In, out: two – we count this way up to ten, then going back to one. If we’re distracted, we just start over at one again, no big deal. After a while, the counting is no longer necessary, and so we can start following the breath. We follow the air from the rim of the nose, down through our breathing channel, to the tan-tien in the middle of the body – and all the way up and out again. At some point, we will be ready to keep our attention fixed at one point – perhaps the rim of the nose, or the tan-tien – and just wait attentively there for the sensation of the breath.

When our concentration is well developed, we can then use this concentration to investigate the true nature of reality: to do insight meditation.

The practice of concentration meditation is common to both Buddhist and non-Buddhist systems, whereas the next step; insight meditation, is unique to Buddhism, because it builds on the Buddha’s realization; his awakening.

Insight

In Buddhist insight meditation, we seek insight into the true nature of reality, or the true nature of the mind, which is basically the same. As I said; this true nature of reality is what we are really are. How could we be apart from the true nature of reality? We are right here, right now – but we’re deluded about what we are. When realizing this truth, we fulfill the path of the Buddha, and free ourselves from suffering permanently; we attain Nirvana. Nirvana is not a place that we have to ‘go to’ or create – Nirvana is the unconditioned, that which is beyond time, space and all concepts. Samsara is our conditioned reality, obscuring, and at the same time manifesting, the true nature of all phenomena.

There are three basic poisons of the mind, which bind us to samsara; anger, desire, and ignorance.

Anger

Anger is easy to recognize, and also quite easy to dissolve; the difficulty lies in realizing that anger is in fact unwholesome. Most people will cling to their anger, very reluctant to let it go. They’ll feel that it’s dangerous to let go of anger, because anger is their defense against a threatening world. As long as we see the world from our small, limited ‘Self’, it is rather threatening. But try to remove ‘I’, ‘me’ and ‘mine’ from the picture. What is really dangerous, if there is no Self that can be threatened? Without the limitation of the Self, we have no hindrances – and as the Heart Sutra says: “no hindrance, therefore no fear.”

Sometimes we carry anger with us from the past. We will not let go of our anger, because “this person did such a horrible thing, and I will not forgive that.” Carrying anger around is not pleasant, but it can be hard to convince yourself to let go of it. This is because we don’t understand our emotions. We take our emotions very seriously, and we identify with them: “I am very sad / angry / hurt.” We forget that emotions change all the time – there is no substance in them, they are dependent on causes and conditions, and they don’t necessarily show the truth of any given situation. They only show how we chose to react in the situation.

Emotions like forgiveness or forbearance are very pleasant and wholesome: they’re good for us. That is not always obvious to us because we often only look at the short-term effect. Developing such emotions requires us to go against our natural response, which is often fear and anger. Going “against the stream” is not always immediately pleasant, but in the long run it is definitely worth it. When we want to work with anger, we must first realize that anger is in fact unwholesome. Until we reach that realization we will be helpless in the face of overwhelming emotions. We also need to work up the courage to let anger go and try a few approach. It’s not that we can’t see how much harm we bring to ourselves by choosing fear and anger over forgiveness and forbearance – it’s just that we forget the importance of letting go when we’re swept away by a rush of emotion. When we’re in the middle of strong emotions choosing forgiveness or forbearance feels like giving up or surrendering. It is giving up, and it is surrendering – but it is giving up the anger and it is surrendering to the thusness of reality.

In meditation anger can of course show itself as resentment or as memories about how upset we are with this person or the other – but it can also take more subtle forms, so we have to pay attention. If anger shows itself during a meditation sometimes it is enough to just recognize it and the anger will dissolve. But if anger is returning again and again, it may be better to apply an antidote, which is metta or loving kindness.

Metta is a movement of the heart, unconditioned and unattached love and kindness. We all know how to love and be kind; it is the ‘unconditioned’ and ‘unattached’ part that is difficult. Metta is the perfect antidote to anger, because as we develop metta in meditation, we can draw on its qualities in everyday life. Metta meditation is typically done in steps, going from the very easy to the relatively difficult. Traditionally we first send out metta to ourselves, and then to someone we feel love and gratitude towards, to a stranger, an enemy (or a perceived enemy), and finally to all sentient beings. It’s definitely easier to wish happiness for someone you love and care about than for someone you don’t know – or even don’t like. Maybe it will help to remember that when we look at human beings from a far distance, we’re all pretty much alike. When we look at us real close, in a microscope, we’re also pretty much alike. It’s only when we focus somewhere in between these two extremes that we find a lot of differences. But why focus so much on the differences? We all want to be happy; we all want to be safe.

The metta meditation is quite simple, but it may take some practice before you really feel each step, so do take your time. If you have to work with only steps one and two for a full week, so be it. Do what needs to be done.

Desire

Another well-known poison is desire or craving. For some reason, desire seems to be less socially acceptable than anger. Ask 20 people sitting in a room together how many of them feel anger or resentment more than once a week and they’ll probably all raise their hand. But ask the same question about desire, and they will look away, shift uncomfortably, and just watch the others around them. But we all know desire. Desire is at the root of human suffering. The Buddha taught that desire causes suffering, and that by uprooting desire we can permanently end suffering.

In meditation, desire will show itself in a number of ways. A very common way is boredom. “I’m bored” people will complain, “I want to learn another, more effective meditation, one that’s not boring.” Boredom is nothing but desire; a wish for something better to happen – rather than paying attention and beings content with what really is. Recognizing desire as desire is the first step to uproot it. Watching the movements of the mind, recognizing desire as it arises, is often enough. If not, the classical antidote to desire is meditation on impermanence.

When meditating on impermanence, we visualize any kind of material form that we desire or are attached to. That can be one’s own body, the body of a loved one, or even chocolate cake. We look closely, as the object of our desire transforms and disintegrate; dies, rots away and disappears. The aim of this meditation is not to stir up disgust for the human body or for material form in general, but rather to awaken our insight into the impermanence of all conditioned phenomena. The meditation shows how form is empty – there is no substance in form, nothing to hold on to, and if we seek pleasure in form, we will experience suffering.

Ignorance

The final poison is ignorance. This is of course spiritual ignorance and has nothing to with worldly knowledge, education or understanding. Spiritual ignorance is what causes us to create suffering for ourselves and others, over and over again. At the most basic level, ignorance is what supports the illusion of an independent, permanent, lasting, peaceful and controllable Self.

We do not understand the true nature of reality, we do not understand life and death, and we do not understand how things come to be. The Buddha taught about Dependent Origination; how things arise and cease dependent on causes and conditions and that nothing exists in and off itself. But even if we accept this teaching in theory, we still have to realize it for ourselves. The words of another can never set us free.

We forget, again and again, how the world really is. We make up all sorts of stories about reality, but we rarely relate to reality itself. It’s like going to Paris, not ever really seeing Paris because we have our nose in a guidebook all the time! Some people decide to change the way they look at the world; they use ‘positive thinking’ or ‘affirmations’ – they decide to see the world through pink glasses, rather than grey ones, so to speak – but why not lose the glasses entirely and just look at what’s there?

Spiritual ignorance is that which prevents us from seeing the true nature of reality. If we paid attention, we’d know that things arise and cease according to causes and conditions.

Ignorance is also what prevents us from seeing what our choices really are. We often fool ourselves about our choices, thinking we have a choice when we don’t. There are some things that we can’t change even if we want to. The only choice we have left in these situations is to accept reality or suffer. Acceptance or suffering… it doesn’t sound like a hard choice to make but for many it is. When we’re deluded about our options, we cling to anger or sadness. We feel that acceptance is somehow defeat and we do not see that it’s the only alternative to suffering. The Indian monk, Shantideva, puts it very accurately: “If there is a remedy, then what is the use of frustration? If there is no remedy, then what is the use of frustration?”

The antidote to spiritual ignorance is contemplation of the core teaching of the Buddha: Dependent Origination.

At some point, the poisons will loose their power, at least momentarily. Then meditation is very simple, just sitting, paying attention to present experience, observing phenomena as impermanent, without a Self, and thus ultimately not satisfactory.

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