Archive | Reflections on Practice

Depending on your quality of mind,
the object may be perceived
differently & the view changes.

Your watching mind must be strong & purified, with less defilement. If your mind is ready, understanding arises. So take care of your mind, take care of your practice & take care of your watching mind. Cultivate it so that it is stronger & stronger.

Our duty is to make the quality of awareness stronger. Stronger awareness means awareness & wisdom are working together continuously. This is awareness with the right view, right attitude, right idea, and right thought. If this is continuous, then the mind is stronger & stronger. We only need to do this. If the mind becomes stronger it can do its job. Dhamma does its job & nature does its job.

We are not trying to see the object. We are not trying to look for something. We are trying to make the meditating mind stronger & stronger.

How do we make the mind stronger? When we are aware, with the right attitude & right understanding, then the mind has wisdom & it becomes stronger. This is not because we are putting in a lot of energy; if we use too much energy the mind will become tired. If we try to see something, the mind becomes tenser. We are cultivating the quality of awareness to make the mind stronger & stronger. If we have awareness with wisdom & continuity, then the mind becomes stronger & stronger. When the mind becomes stronger it can do its job.

There is more understanding. It should be like this. When we have more understanding, we have less resistance & fewer reactions. Because of reactions, we suffer. Because of learning, we understand. With understanding comes confidence.

For someone who has been meditating or practicing for a long time,
the mind must be of a better & better quality. The mind is more aware,
more stable & more peaceful.

Excerpt from Sayadaw’s book “Dhamma everywhere: Welcoming each moment with Awareness & Wisdom.” [Entire book available on-line]

Sayadaw U Tejaniya began his Buddhist training as a young teenager in Burma under the late Shwe Oo Min Sayadaw. After a career in business & life as a householder, he has been a permanent monk since 1996. He feels that his experience developing his practice while living as a householder helps him understands both the challenges yogis face in integrating their meditation practice with their everyday lives & how to overcome them.

It’s a strange phenomenon how difficult people find it to love themselves. One would think it is the easiest thing in the world, because we’re constantly concerned with ourselves. We’re always interested in how much we can get, how well we can perform, how comfortable we can be. The Buddha mentioned in a discourse that “oneself is dearest to oneself.”  So with all that, why is it so difficult to actually love oneself?

Loving oneself certainly doesn’t mean indulging oneself. Really loving is an attitude towards oneself that most people don’t have, because they know quite a few things about themselves which are not desirable. Everybody has innumerable attitudes, reactions, likes & dislikes which they’d be better off without. Judgment is made & while one likes one’s positive attitudes, one dislikes the others. With that comes suppression of those aspects of oneself that one is not pleased with. One doesn’t want to know about them & doesn’t acknowledge them. That’s one way of dealing with oneself, which is detrimental to growth…

The only thing that is real is that we have six roots within us. Three roots of good & three roots of evil. The latter are greed, hate & delusion, but we also have their opposites: generosity, loving-kindness & wisdom. Take an interest in this matter. If one investigates this & doesn’t get anxious about it, then one can easily accept these six roots in everybody. No difficulty at all, when one has seen them in oneself. They are the underlying roots of everyone’s behavior. Then we can look at ourselves a little more realistically, namely not blaming ourselves for the unwholesome roots, not patting ourselves on the back for the wholesome ones, but rather accepting their existence within us. We can also accept others more clear-sightedly & have a much easier time relating to them…

Clarity of thinking comes from purification of one’s emotions, which is a difficult job that needs to be done. But it can only be done successfully when it isn’t an emotional upheaval, but clearcut, straightforward work that one does on oneself. When it is considered to be just that, it takes the sting out of it. The charge of “I’m so wonderful” or “I’m so terrible” is defused. We are neither wonderful nor terrible. Everyone is a human being with all the potential & all the obstructions. If one can love that human being, the one that is “me” with all its faculties & tendencies, then one can love others realistically, usefully & helpfully. But if one makes a break in the middle & loves the part which is nice & dislikes the part which isn’t nice enough, one’s never going to come to grips with reality. One day we’ll have to see it, for what it is. It’s a “working ground,” a kammatthana. It’s a straightforward & interesting affair of one’s own heart.

Excerpted from “All of Us Beset by birth, decay, and death”
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/khema/allofus.html

Ayya Khema (1923-1997), the first Western woman to become a Theravadin Buddhist nun, served as a model & inspiration for women from all the Buddhist traditions who have sought to revive the practice of women’s monasticism in modern times. In 1987, she co-ordinated the first international conference of Buddhist nuns in the history of Buddhism, which resulted in creation of Sakyadhita, a world-wide Buddhist women’s organization. https://www.buddhanet.net/khema.htm

In the usual iconography of the temple or the local Wok
you would never see him doing such a thing,
tossing the dry snow over a mountain
of his bare, round shoulder,
his hair tied in a knot,
a model of concentration.

Sitting is more his speed, if that is the word
for what he does, or does not do.

Even the season is wrong for him.
In all his manifestations, is it not warm or slightly humid?
Is this not implied by his serene expression,
that smile so wide it wraps itself around the waist of the universe?

But here we are, working our way down the driveway,
one shovelful at a time.
We toss the light powder into the clear air.
We feel the cold mist on our faces.
And with every heave we disappear
and become lost to each other
in these sudden clouds of our own making,
these fountain-bursts of snow.

This is so much better than a sermon in church,
I say out loud, but Buddha keeps on shoveling.
This is the true religion, the religion of snow,
and sunlight and winter geese barking in the sky,
I say, but he is too busy to hear me.

He has thrown himself into shoveling snow
as if it were the purpose of existence,
as if the sign of a perfect life were a clear driveway
you could back the car down easily
and drive off into the vanities of the world
with a broken heater fan and a song on the radio.

All morning long we work side by side,
me with my commentary
and he inside his generous pocket of silence,
until the hour is nearly noon
and the snow is piled high all around us;
then, I hear him speak.
After this, he asks,
can we go inside and play cards?

Certainly, I reply, and I will heat some milk
and bring cups of hot chocolate to the table
while you shuffle the deck.
and our boots stand dripping by the door.

Aaah, says the Buddha, lifting his eyes
and leaning for a moment on his shovel
before he drives the thin blade again
deep into the glittering white snow.

Billy Collins, called “the most popular poet in America” by the New York Times, was Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003. He recently retired from 50 yrs teaching at Lehman College of the City University of New York. This poem appeared in his 1998 book “Picnic, Lightning.”

“Utter only speech that neither torments oneself nor harms others.” (SN.8.5)

If we’re serious about liberation, meditation practice doesn’t end when we leave the cushion-it just gets more real. There are countless ways to bring these teachings to life. One of the most powerful (and frequently overlooked) vehicles for transformation is that of “Right Speech.” The Buddha spoke regularly of the power words have to heal or harm, as well as to play an active role in our awakening individually & collectively.

As social creatures, speech holds a crucial place in our lives. Many of our deepest joys & sorrows come from our relationships, where verbal communication can determine the quality of our connection. Internally, thinking & perception continually shapes experience. Externally, language has the potential to bridge the gap between us & connect our inner worlds. What’s more, from the Buddhist perspective, speech is one of the three doors of action by which we create kamma, intentional acts that affect our wellbeing & shape future habits.

The classical definition of Right Speech is clear enough: abstain from false, harsh, divisive & idle speech (SN 45.8). Yet to implement this requires careful attention not only to what we say, but to why we speak, as well as how & when we speak. Practicing with these guidelines shapes our mind for our welfare & steers our conversations towards more harmony & meaning.

The teachings on speech go far beyond this basic definition. At the core, Right Speech means using language in service of awakening. It is to use our words-internally & externally-to cultivate skillful qualities & reduce unskillful qualities of mind. How often do our conversations (& our thoughts) enhance healthy states like patience, generosity, kindness, truthfulness, simplicity? How often do they instead reinforce unhealthy habits or stimulate impulses that only entangle us further?

The more I study these ancient teachings on speech, the more I see them as a dynamic template meant to inform our lives. They provide guidance to orient our intentions & to navigate an increasingly complex world. Where they lack specific instruction on how to implement their wisdom, we can rely on more modern disciplines to fill in the gaps. (E.g., I’ve found great benefit in Nonviolent Communication as an adjunct).

When we take up this practice of Right Speech as a core part of the contemplative path, we gain a tremendous arena for training the mind, and create more opportunities to give voice to our deepest values. As we witness the extreme polarization in the world today, the absence of real dialogue in so many sectors of civil society, we need these tools more than ever.

Oren Jay Sofer teaches meditation & communication retreats & workshops nationally. A member of the Spirit Rock Teachers Council, he is a Certified Trainer of Nonviolent Communication & a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner for the healing of trauma. Oren also holds a degree in Comparative Religion from Columbia University & is the author of a new book, Say What You Mean:  A Mindful Approach to Nonviolent Communication.