Archive | Reflections on Practice

When people ask: ‘What do you have to do to become a Buddhist?’, we say that we take refuge in Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha. Long ago, I remember superstitious people coming to my teacher, Ajahn Chah, wanting charmed medallions or little talismans to protect them from bullets & knives, ghosts & so on, and he would say: ‘Why do you want things like that? The only real protection is taking refuge in the Buddha.’ As we begin to realize the profundity of the Buddhist teachings, it becomes a joy to take these refuges.

Even simply reciting them inspires the mind. When we say: ‘I take refuge,’ what do we mean by that? How can this simple phrase become more than a repetition of a few words, but something that truly gives us direction & increases our dedication to the path of the Buddha? It’s a lovely word, ‘Buddha’. It means ‘the one who knows.’ When we take refuge in the Buddha, it doesn’t mean we take refuge in some historical prophet; we take refuge in that which is wise in the universe, in our minds & not something separate from us. Taking refuge in the Buddha, in wisdom, means we have a place of safety. The future remains unknown & mysterious, but by taking refuge in the Buddha we gain presence of mind in this moment, learning from life as we live it.

The second Refuge is in the Dhamma, in ultimate truth or ultimate reality. We may think that Dhamma is ‘out there,’ the Dhamma is something we have to find elsewhere. Really, it is immanent, it is here-and-now. One does not have a personal relationship with Dhamma; one cannot say, ‘I love the Dhamma!’ or, ‘The Dhamma loves me!’ We only need a personal relationship with something separate from us, like our mother, husband or wife. But we don’t need to take refuge in someone to protect us & say: ‘I love you no matter what. Everything is going to be all right.’ The Dhamma is a refuge of maturity in which we don’t need to be loved or protected any more; now we can love & protect others. When we take refuge in the Dhamma, we let go of our desire to have a personal relationship with the truth. We have to be that truth, here & now.

The third Refuge is Sangha, which refers to all those who live virtuously. Taking refuge in the Sangha means we take refuge in that which is good, virtuous, kind, compassionate & generous – doing good & refraining from evil with bodily action & speech. The refuge of Sangha is very practical for day-to-day living in the human form, in this body, in relation to the bodies of other beings & the physical world we live in. When we take this refuge, we do not act in any way that causes division, disharmony, cruelty, meanness or unkindness to any living being, including our own body & mind.

So reflect on this – consider & really see Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha as a refuge. It is not a matter of believing in Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha as concepts but in using them as symbols for mindfulness, for awakening the mind, here-and-now.

American-born Ajahn Sumedho, a monk of over 30 years, was abbot of Amaravati Monastery near London from its consecration in 1984 until his retirement in 2010. Regarded as Ajahn Chah’s most influential Western disciple, Sumedho is considered a seminal figure in the transmission of the Buddha’s teachings to the West.

This piece appears in the book, Ajahn Sumedho Anthology, Volume 5—The Wheel of Truth.

It is important to feel upset, remorse, and anger at what humans have done. It means we have a conscience. In Buddhist understanding, the force of conscience is the guardian of the world.

It is important to let ourselves feel outrage rather than sanitize this raw emotion with spiritual speak or shame it as ignoble. Yet if we harbor or act out of anger, it almost always poisons us, diminishing our credibility and harming others. The late Thai Buddhist teacher Ajahn Chah recommended we “catch emotions in the net of mindfulness, and then examine them before reacting.” Anger is a warning that something is invading and overwhelming us. If we don’t take heed, disorder and destruction will follow.

Holding onto anger, however, is not sustainable. There is a fine line between feeling anger and being blinded by its energy. Anger can sometimes arise when we activate early patterning. This kind of upset needs careful tending.

Anger as a healthy response to injustice has a different quality. It is clarifying. In Buddhist teachings, particularly in Vajrayana Buddhism, so-called negative emotions mask pure essential energy. Once the coarser emotion is transmuted, the finer energy is distilled.

Anger is traditionally thought to be close to wisdom. When not projected outward onto others or inward toward the self, it gives us the necessary energy and clarity to understand what needs to be done.

If we prematurely condemn or repress anger because we think it unworthy to feel, then we will fail to transform it. The fullness of its embodied energy will remain unavailable to us. We won’t be able to protect what needs to be protected; we will let what is most precious slip away.

Thanissara started Buddhist practice in the Burmese school in 1975. Inspired to ordain after meeting Ajahn Chah, she spent 12 years as a Buddhist nun. She has facilitated meditation retreats internationally for the last 30 years & has an MA in Mindfulness-Based Psychotherapy Practice from the Karuna Institute in the UK. With Kittisaro, she co-founded Dharmagiri Sacred Mountain Retreat in South Africa & Sacred Mountain Sangha in California. Her latest book is Time To Stand Up, An Engaged Buddhist Manifesto for Our Earth.

Read full article in Tricycle 2017.

I used to be a big music fan & listened to it all the time. Now that I don’t deliberately listen to it, I find that when I do happen to hear music, it’s as if I’m hearing it for the first time. Music used to be such a constant presence in my life that it had lost its power. If I hear it now, it has an astonishing quality of freshness. I am with every note, every phrase.

When we adopt the renunciate life we aren’t condemning the world of the senses, per se, because that leads to aversion & negativity. Instead we are learning to accept whatever is offered to us with full appreciation. Whatever arrives is received & cherished, but we don’t try to add anything. I think many people listen to music because they love the place that the music takes them to, which is the present moment. You are not thinking about anything else; you are experiencing the harmony, balance, and rhythm that the music suggests. But all of those qualities are present in a meditative mind. If we need music in order to get us there, then when there isn’t music (or delicious food or beautiful surroundings or whatever it might be), we are likely to feel bereft. We immediately start to look for another experience that will take us to that place of beauty.

What the precepts do is to shut the door on all our habitual sources of satisfaction so that our entire attention is directed inward. That is where we discover a beauty & clarity, and a vastness of being which is unshakable, independent of circumstances and conditions. Then when we hear a piece of music, or see a beautiful blue sky or the fine shape of a tree, that’s an extra.

 But remember that the joy only comes after the self-surrender & sacrifice. I think as a culture, we are afraid of sacrifice. We feel that we must own & accumulate things in order to be complete, and not just material objects but people & relationships as well. It is hard for us to understand that letting go is not a loss, not a bereavement. Of course, when we lose something that is beautiful or dear to us, there is a shadow that crosses the heart. But we enlighten that shadow with the understanding that the feeling of loss is just the karmic result of assuming that we owned anything in the first place. The renunciate life is based on the realization that we can never really possess anything.

Read full Interview with Ajahn Amaro: The Happy Monk
by Terry Vandiver & Wes Nisker in Inquiring Mind Fall 1995

We have received an inestimable gift. To be alive in this beautiful, self-organizing universe—to participate in the dance of life with senses to perceive it, lungs that breathe it, organs that draw nourishment from it—is a wonder beyond words. It is an extraordinary privilege to be accorded a human life, with self-reflexive consciousness that brings awareness of our own actions & the ability to make choices. It lets us choose to take part in the healing of our world.

Gratitude for the gift of life is the primary wellspring of all religions, the hallmark of the mystic, the source of all true art. Yet we so easily take this gift for granted. That is why so many spiritual traditions begin with thanksgiving, to remind us that for all our woes & worries, our existence itself is an unearned benefaction, which we could never of ourselves create….

That our world is in crisis—to the point where survival of conscious life on Earth is in question—in no way diminishes the value of this gift; on the contrary. To us is granted the privilege of being on hand: to take part, if we choose, in the Great Turning to a just & sustainable society. We can let life work through us, enlisting all our strength, wisdom, and courage, so that life itself can continue.

There is so much to be done, and the time is so short. We can proceed, of course, out of grim & angry desperation. But the tasks proceed more easily & productively with a measure of thankfulness for life; it links us to our deeper powers & lets us rest in them. Many of us are braced, psychically & physically, against the signals of distress that continually barrage us in the news, on our streets, in our environment. As if to reduce their impact on us, we contract like a turtle into its shell. But we can choose to turn to the breath, the body, the senses—for they help us to relax & open to wider currents of knowing & feeling.

The great open secret of gratitude is that it is not dependent on external circumstance. It’s like a setting or channel that we can switch to at any moment, no matter what’s going on around us. It helps us connect to our basic right to be here, like the breath does. It’s a stance of the soul. In systems theory, each part contains the whole. Gratitude is the kernel that can flower into everything we need to know.

Excerpted from article in Lion’s Roar, November 2021
Joanna Macy was a scholar of Buddhism, systems thinking & deep ecology. As the root teacher of the Work That Reconnects, Macy created a ground-breaking framework for personal & social change that brings a new way of seeing the world as our larger body.