Month: August 2024

On renunciation…
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On renunciation…

The weakness of samsara is impermanence. That is the key observation that allows us to cultivate renunciation. Everything flows; everything changes; nothing remains the same. Why be attached or averse?

Venerable Tashi Nyima

i. What does this mean to me?

I grew up in the Bronx in New York state. By the time I was in high school, I was going into ‘the city’ (Manhattan) on the subway by myself. When I was in the city, I was a total tourist. My favorite place to go was the touristy part of Times Square, especially at night.

At night Times Square came alive with marquees full of flashing lights. All the stores lit up. It was a little magical. There was always something bright and shiny and new going on. Not to mention the smell of street foods and the strains of music. There were people walking down the street offering cards or flyers for the latest Broadway show, or the newest place to buy some touristy “I Love New York” t-shirt.

Times Square is a microcosm of samsara. There’s always the next new thing. There are always shiny new houses, shiny new cars, shiny new jobs. All this glitter hides the truth of samsara. It’s like going to Times Square in the daytime. The streets are dirty and littered, and in the bright light of day, the shiny objects of the night are merely dull and uninteresting.

As the writer says, “The weakness of samsara is impermanence”. Nothing stays the same in samsara. The shiny new house comes with a thirty-year mortgage that will turn you gray eventually. The shiny new car comes with eye-watering payments, not to mention insurance.

The writer talks about cultivating renunciation. Renunciation of what? It’s not so much the bright shiny things, it’s how they enthrall us almost to the point of legitimate concerns fading away. The writer isn’t suggesting that we go around in hair shirts and ashes. That would serve no purpose. It would be just another form of attachment. Rather the writer is pointing out that all bright shiny things will one day turn to rust. And knowing this, “Why be attached or averse?” Instead, shouldn’t we renounce the enthrallments of samsara and turn our minds to the true bliss, true permanence, true being, true purity that is the Dharma?

ii. How would I explain this to someone else?

Renunciation comes with a negative connotation in our society. We think of hermits on mountaintops or out in the desert wearing rags, having ‘renounced’ the world. Our local friendly AI tells us that renunciation means, “the formal rejection of something, typically a belief, claim, or course of action.”

Renunciation is simply a rejection or a knowing choice to stop doing something or to stop believing something. In this case we’re talking about formally and consciously rejecting the idea that samsara has anything to offer. So many times, we make the mistake of believing what we experience in samsara and taking that for the truth of things.

This inevitably leads to unhappiness because, as the writer reminds us, “Everything flows; everything changes; nothing remains the same”. Whenever we accept anything in samsara at face value, we are placing causes for suffering into our lives. How many outfits do we have in our closets that are pushed all the way to the back, just a car ride away from Goodwill? Not only is everything we experience an internal mental representation, but “Everything changes; nothing remains the same”. What is it that remains the same with no retrogression? The Dharma. While in these limited bodies with our limited senses, the Dharma is the only reliable, unchanging thing we have.

Samsara, like Times Square at night, is very seductive. It appeals to the senses, attracts the mind, dominates our thoughts. It’s hard to remember that samsara is merely superimposed upon ultimate reality – the truth of how things are.

iii. How do I bring this into my life?

For me, the lure of samsara used to be nearly irresistible, like some powerful addiction. Like any addict, I was lost in the delusions of samsara, drowning in an ocean of misery. Now, after having had the good fortune to encounter and study the Dharma, I understand samsara for the illusion it is.

I won’t be running out and buying a hair shirt anytime soon though, but I will use the teachings of the Dharma, through wisdom and compassion, to help others. Helping others is the only true cause for happiness in samsara.

In my day-to-day life, what hooks me the most into being lured by samsara are my comforts. I like air conditioning. I like shopping for yarn, and knitting. I like, overall, being comfortable. I think we all do. But at what cost does our comfort come? Does it make us so indolent that we don’t ‘feel’ like studying the Dharma? Or acting compassionately? Or we feel like ignoring our own Buddha Nature when it becomes uncomfortable to help others?

As I study, meditate and practice, samsara becomes more and more transparent. The tricks of seduction become clear. Knowing these things, and having seen samsara for what it is, what is the best way to behave to bring me closer to expressing my Buddha Nature and recognizing it in others?

The writer reminds us that “The weakness of samsara is impermanence”. So, we know samsara is an illusion that will fade away like mist in the trained mind. Knowing this, we must turn to our conduct. We must move through samsara with wisdom and compassion for those caught up in the illusion. We must be patient and compassionate with our own progress on the path. We must cultivate renunciation and peace and renounce attachment and aversion. We must do these things because, as Shantideva reminds us, the Lord of Death is always at hand. We don’t know when his scythe will fall, only that it will inevitably fall. Knowing this, shouldn’t we do what we can for as long as we can?

On all the Buddhas. . .
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On all the Buddhas. . .

Contemplate all phenomena as devoid of inherent nature.

The same is true of their arising and cessation.

False  designations are merely used to describe them.

All phenomena do not come into being; all phenomena do not cease to exist.

If we understand in this way, all the Buddhas appear before us.

Avatamsaka Sutra

i. What does this mean to me?

So far in this scripture we’ve come to understand from the previous lines that all our experience of phenomena is an internal mental representation. We can see this if we imagine things that are not in the so-called real world. For instance, if we think of a pink and white striped elephant, the mind will immediately ‘create’ an image. The mind is very accommodating that way.

When we look at the lines of scripture we’re contemplating today, they are merely describing our experience of ‘reality’. Let’s go back to the striped elephant. Can we say the elephant came into being? No. It’s simply a thought we made up. Can the elephant cease to exist? No. Because the only existence the striped elephant has is as an internal mental representation. The moment we turn our attention to something else –poof!—it’s gone. An internal mental representation can neither be said to “come into being” nor “cease to exist”.

Striped elephants are one thing. But what about our day-to-day existence? How is that different? Our experience of the world is the same coming and going of internal mental representations. After all, do we go around and think ‘I have to hold on to this image so that…” No. There’s no realistic end to that thought. We have to hold on to the thought so that…what? A striped elephant is going to come through the door just because we keep thinking about it? Literally, the only place that happens is in a dream. Why is that? It’s because, like a dream, the elephant is a mere transformation of consciousness, which is to say it’s an internal mental representation.

ii. How would I explain this to someone else?

There’s a story my teacher, the Venerable Tashi Nyima, first told me. It’s the story of the snake and the rope. If you go into a dark shadowy place and a rope is coiled up in the shadows, it can look very much like a big, coiled snake. All sorts of things happen if we experience this. The heart rate goes up, adrenaline is released, the fight or flight instinct kicks in. Before you know it, you’ve run from the dangerous coiled snake, feeling lucky to escape with your life.

Now comes the daytime, bright and sunny, and you go to the same place. There you find a harmlessly coiled rope in the corner. So where did the snake come from? The same place as the elephant. It was an internal mental representation caused by the mind misunderstanding reality.

Can we say that the snake came into being? Or that it ceased to exist? No. The snake was only happening in the mind. Most importantly here, notice that the snake didn’t come out of thin air. There was an actual rope there. The mind simply misinterpreted reality based on our limited senses. Buddhism does not claim that there is nothing there. Rather, the thought is that some ultimate reality (like the rope) is there, but with our limited senses in a limited body, we misinterpret what is actually there

iii. How do I bring this into my life?

I bring this teaching into my life by realizing that absolutely nothing is as it appears. That’s not the same as saying there’s nothing there. It means I’m not understanding what’s there. The mind is simply projecting and superimposing my thoughts on ultimate reality.

When I’m feeling stressed at work, I take a step back and take a couple deep breaths. And for a quick moment, I ask myself is there really anything to be stressed about? We all have Buddha Nature, it’s just covered over by samsara and lifetimes of habit. We will all realize liberation and enlightenment eventually.

Samsara tricks us into believing that everything we see is real. It deludes us into thinking that everything has an arising, and everything sooner or later ceases to exist. This is not true. Existence is an unceasing ebb and flow. The mind chops this flow into pieces like days, years, months, even lifetimes.

When I take a few moments at work (or whenever I’m stressed) I slowly become aware that all I experience is a superimposition of my own mind’s internal mental representations onto ultimate reality. When we can understand phenomena and ultimate reality this way, “…all the Buddhas appear before us”. If we can notice the relationship between our thoughts and ultimate reality, we can realize we are all awake, we are all Buddhas.

On false designations…
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On false designations…

Contemplate all phenomena as devoid of inherent nature.

The same is true of their arising and cessation.

False  designations are merely used to describe them.

All phenomena do not come into being; all phenomena do not cease to exist.

If we understand in this way, all the Buddhas appear before us.

Avatamsaka Sutra

i. What does this mean to me?

Last time we looked at this scripture, we talked about phenomena being devoid of inherent nature. In these two lines, the scripture asks us to consider that phenomena has no “arising” and no “cessation”. We merely use “false designations” to describe phenomena that arise in the mind as internal mental representations.

Although we perceive phenomena as ‘real’, the truth is that all phenomena are internal mental representations. We understand this by using our reason and experience. We know we can’t physically fit actual objects into our head, but yet we ‘recognize’ objects and people by their designated names.

When does an internal mental representation arise? When do they cease? They actually don’t truly arise or cease. They ‘arise’ when we turn our attention to them. And they cease when we turn our attention away. This being the case, can we say that a phenomenon has an “arising” or a “cessation”? It’s almost like a dream. Can we say when a dream arises or when it ends? No. The dream arises in the mind, and dissipates once we wake up, or in other words, when we withdraw our attention.

ii. How would I explain this to someone else?

When we break down or ‘analyze’ any phenomenon in our experience, we’ll soon see that we end up with atoms and molecules made up mostly of space. What does this mean? ‘Seeing’ is a trick of the mind. Our experience seems very real to us because for uncounted lifetimes we have relied upon and accepted what our senses report without question.

So when the scriptures say that phenomena has no “arising” and no “cessation”, it’s describing our experience of reality through our internal mental representations. To keep confusion to a minimum, we name what we believe we see, or as the scripture puts it, we give them “false designations” to “describe them”.

Does this mean that we dream reality into being? No. It means that, just like a magic show there’s a trick and simultaneously there is an underlying reality. Buddhism understands that there is an ultimate reality, but with our limited bodies and senses, we’re only able to perceive the ‘trick’, not the underlying reality.

iii. How do I bring this into my life?

In the end, when I contemplate this scripture, it means that we do not have to be swayed by so-called reality. Once we understand that, relative reality is exactly that – relative. We don’t have to be dominated by reality. In my day-to-day life reality can sometimes feel overwhelming. When this happens, I take a mental step back and breathe. After doing this, reality kind of fades and seems more tenuous, less solid. It seems, in other words, like exactly what it is: an internal mental representation.

Looked at this way, there’s no question that our experience is internal to us, not external. When the mind is trained, this understanding can lead to a kind of peace. When the mind is at peace, we can plainly see that we don’t have to go with the emotions that reality evokes. Having realized this, we can experience the world in a kind of neutral gear. We can let phenomena come and go with the clarity that our experience is an internal mental representation, and we are free to step back, breathe, and question the experience. This eventually leads to a less agitated and more peaceful mind. Don’t we all want a little more peace in our days?

On phenomena…
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On phenomena…

Contemplate all phenomena as devoid of inherent nature.

The same is true of their arising and cessation.

False  designations are merely used to describe them.

All phenomena do not come into being; all phenomena do not cease to exist.

If we understand in this way, all the Buddhas appear before us.

Avatamsaka Sutra

i. What does this mean to me?

If we were to “contemplate all phenomena” as having no “inherent nature”, what would that look like? We can start with the most basic of teachings about phenomena: all phenomena are internal mental representations. What does this mean? It pretty much means you can’t fit an elephant inside your head. It’s too big, right?

But yet, most people know what an elephant looks like. Why?  Because we’ve seen many, many elephants on television, in movies and in online media. Disney even has a flying elephant. At some point in our past, we saw an elephant or someone identified an image for us, and we labeled that phenomenon as ‘elephant’. This is why we don’t need to fit an elephant inside our head. All phenomena are internal mental representations from our past.

Have you had the experience of seeing something you’ve never seen before? Immediately, your mind will say something like, “That looks like…” and the mind will ‘flip through’ thousands of internal mental representations from our past, looking for the closest match.

If we stop to think about it, do any of the internal mental representations have an existence from their own side? Or, as the scripture puts it, can an internal mental representation have an “inherent nature”? It couldn’t, right, otherwise we’d all have thousands of things rattling around inside our head.

No. That’s not how things work. Instead the moment we turn our attention to something else, the previous internal mental representation is simply no longer there, replaced by a new thought, a new idea, a new phenomenon.

If, as the scripture suggests, we contemplate “all phenomena as devoid of inherent nature”, our reality becomes much more malleable. That doesn’t mean that we can imagine things into being. But it does mean we become aware that there must be an ultimate reality. Our internal mental representations do not describe ultimate truth, they reference ultimate truth.

ii. How would I explain this to someone else?

I would ask if they’d ever seen a magic show. As an adult, I find magic shows fascinating. It’s one of the few times we are aware that we’re experiencing two realities at the same time. There’s the ‘magic’ of a woman being sawed in half, and there’s the reality of a contortionist in just one side of the box completely unharmed.

None of us in the audience cringe in horror at the sight of a human being sawed in half. There’s no blood, no gore, nothing like that. Why not? Because it’s ‘magic’, an illusion.

Our experience of the world is the same way. There’s a reality that we ‘see’ , but like a magician’s trick it masks an underlying reality. If we contemplate our experience, realizing that all “phenomena are devoid of inherent nature”, then what we consider ‘reality’ becomes much less fixed and we realize that ‘reality’ arises wherever we focus the mind.

iii. How do I bring this into my life?

Ever have one of those days where reality feels like it weighs you down? Those days when you feel the weight of the world on your shoulders? This happens to me mostly at work. Some days it can feel like a Twilight Zone episode where one day takes a year to go by. I find that on these days reality seems particularly dense and unyielding.

When this happens I take a few slow deep breaths. This helps me to experience reality as less dense. I take a few moments to realize that reality has no meaning from its own side, no “inherent nature”. This doesn’t magically make my day better. Outwardly nothing has changed. The emails are still there, the phone still rings, and my teammates still message me.

But the point is that there doesn’t need to be any change in external circumstances. What changes is how I internally experience reality. I can zoom out from the emails and everything else.

This makes a slow but steady change in my life. The more often I do this practice, the less I feel caught up in samsara. We all have the capacity to do this. Why? Because all that we experience is an internal mental representation that has no “inherent nature”. The more we can realize this, the less caught up we’ll feel in samsara. Like any magic show, we are always free to disregard the trick and contemplate the underlying reality.