Ajahn Sumedho on “Going for Refuge”

By Other Teachers & Folks We Value

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.

Thanissara on “Don’t Worry, Be Angry: Buddhist Wisdom on Anger”

By Other Teachers & Folks We Value

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.

Greg Scharf on “Letting Go of Struggle”

By Greg Scharf

The heart of the Buddha’s teachings revolve around a wise understanding of what is called Dukkha in the Pali language. Dukkha is often translated as suffering, but this word is far too limited to capture the depth & breadth of this crucial term. On one level, Dukkha does point to suffering: to pain & painful feelings associated with bodily life, and the difficult mental & emotional states that arise for all of us at times. But suffering on this level represents only one aspect of Dukkha. On a more subtle level, Dukkha points to qualities of unsatisfactoriness & unreliability that are intrinsic to all conditioned experience whether pleasant or unpleasant.

There’s a basic fragility pervading all of life that is a direct reflection of the fact that everything is in a state of constant flux – a flow of changing conditions that are largely outside of our direct control. This leads to feelings of vulnerability & a subtle but pervasive inner anxiety. Pleasant experiences don’t last & unpleasant ones are unavoidable. Conditions are never fully amenable to our will, and we will never be able to get things to be way we want & then stay that way. Life is not, and never will be, controllable in this way, and the Buddha’s teachings do not offer us the key to this kind of agency.

Not that we are completely helpless in this regard. Opening to Dukkha need not lead us to a state of resignation & defeat. We do our best to live well – with grace, integrity, and care – and this does matter. At the same time, we will all experience the full range of joys & sorrows that characterize a life. Dukkha is deeply embedded in the very fabric of existence, and informs our lives constantly & profoundly. The Buddha’s liberation is not about escaping from life’s ups & downs. Life goes on with its joys & sorrows, but suffering in relation to this flow of change is another matter entirely.

Our usual strategy is to fight against or deny the truth of Dukkha but, of course, this never really works & leads to an exhausting & ultimately fruitless struggle. Luckily, the Buddha offers us a radically different strategy, one that enables us to start relating to the truth of Dukkha in a wise way, where we meet the changing conditions we encounter from a place of ease & balance of mind. We stop fighting against the way things are, and move towards harmony & alignment with reality. Through this shift of view & change in strategy, we let go of struggle & touch the possibility of a freedom of mind & heart that is to a profound extent independent of life’s changing conditions. This is true freedom.

Jean Smith on “Satipatthana in a Tangerine”

By Jean Smith

An engaging way to teach a course in beginning mindfulness is to hand each new yogi a tangerine when they arrive. They’ll sit down & gingerly hold the fruit as if it’s too hot, occasionally taking discreet glances at it to make sure it really is a tangerine, wondering what it’s for. They soon learn: It’s the object of a guided 30-minute mindfulness meditation. Even experienced yogis graced with Beginner’s Mind find this meditation unexpectedly intriguing. Briefly, this is the guidance:

*Hear & follow the meditation instructions.

*Lightly juggle the tangerine so your fingers can sense its firmness & weight.

*Look at the colors to see which are clear orange or mottled.

*Run your fingers over all of the fruit to feel where it is smooth or bumpy or creased.

*Smell the outside of the tangerine. Does this bring up memories such as the “smell of Christmas” or fruit in a holiday stocking?

*Bite the tangerine, smell & taste the inside & outside of the skin. Is either one pleasant or unpleasant? Do you want more tastes or none at all? Peel the tangerine.

*Break off a fruit section & put it in your mouth but don’t chew it. How do your taste buds react to the taste? Do you want more?

*Chew, swallow, and slowly finish eating the tangerine mindfully.

When the meditation is over, new students usually make comments like “Where did you find these tangerines?” or “This is the best tangerine I’ve ever tasted.” Their remarks are the perfect opening for the teacher to say, “Every aspect of your life can be just as delicious if you live it as mindfully as you ate this tangerine.” These students have just taken advantage of their amazing sense doors, sense discriminations of pleasant or unpleasant, and desire or aversion to eating more. They’ve probably also had short memories of holidays or picnics.

Unbeknownst to them, they have also had a short, guided tour of the Satipatthana Sutta, perhaps the Buddha’s most studied discourse because of its comprehensiveness in teaching the objects that are the best for cultivating mindfulness through meditation: the body, feeling tones of pleasant-impermanent-unpleasant, the mind, and Dhammas (teachings of the Buddha).

Why start new yogis here or invite experienced meditators to immerse themselves in the experience? Because every step of this meditation opens us to the absolutely amazing body we inhabit. After hundreds of millions of years, we beings have evolved exceptional color vision, hearing ability that would challenge the finest sound studios, tenderness of touch. We can perceive & identify through our senses most elements of the world around us, and usually know if we like or don’t like what we see, hear, taste, touch, and smell. And we can think about & experience emotional responses to this perceived world.

With the intention to cultivate mindfulness, we’re not merely setting off on a path of touchy-feely pleasures. As we meditate mindfully, we are directly & in the present moment exposed to the shifts of physical & mental sensations. These experiences condition our mind to wisdom: the ability to discern what is real. Even in the smallest increments, we are moving toward a wiser, kinder, more contented life.

To learn more about the Satipatthana Sutta, CLICK HERE
to read Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s description & excellent translation.

Jean Smith practiced Buddhist meditation in the Vipassana-Insight Meditation tradition starting in 1986 & led sanghas in New York City, the Adirondack Mountains & online from Taos NM. She published nine books on Buddhism, including The Beginner’s Guide to Insight Meditation (with Arinna Weisman) & Life is Spiritual Practice (the Paramis). She served from the very beginning on the board of The Mountain Hermitage.

Jean Smith passed away on January 3rd. There will be a Memorial/Celebration Gathering this coming Spring in Taos for Jean & her life – date, place & time to be announced.

Marcia Rose on A NEW YEAR…A NEW DAY…A NEW MOMENT

By Marcia Rose

As we enter into this ‘new year’… as we open to the morning of a ‘new day’… as we bring mindful attention to each ‘new moment’… through our practice, we learn to receive & be aware of each ‘new arising’ with what Suzuki Roshi called ‘beginners mind’. The GREAT GIFT of mindfulness is to learn to meet the year, the day, the moment with paying a kind of extra-ordinary attention: a non-judging, non-manipulative, non-grasping, non-rejecting orientation to our present moment’s experience.

This GIFT that we can give ourselves is an orientation to the present moment that creates an openness, a receptivity & a presence within our heart-mind & body that makes room for a spacious, clear & calm presence of being.

A truly mindful relationship to our present moment’s experience is what allows clarity & true understanding – insight/wisdom – to arise… to just simply & naturally arise, which it inevitably does. We don’t need to do anything to make it happen. The truth is actually not far away. It’s ever present, right here, right now.

Each & all of us want a happy new year. What is this… what is happiness? The Buddha spoke about happiness beyond our ordinary experience of pleasure. He said that true happiness arises when we are mindful. Our meditation practice cultivates mindfulness. Mindfulness happens when we bring our full attention without judgment or manipulation, with no grasping or rejection, to the present moment. This is not such an easy relationship to our body & heart/mind experience… and so we practice this over & over again… year by year, day by day, moment by moment.

A good question we might ask ourselves is, ‘What’s the importance of this? ‘ When we aren’t bringing a full mindful attention to the present moment, we are actually living at a distance from experience, living at a distance from life itself… which keeps the cycle of our conditioned habits, patterns & reactions going round & round… feeding & strengthening themselves. Like it is with our computers… you push a button & out comes what’s in there. Without a clear mindful presence, when our ‘buttons are pushed’, our old conditioned patterns & reactions pop out… automatically… and we’re not having a ‘happy new year, a happy new day, a happy new moment’.

Our meditation practice is about bringing everything into clear, sharp focus…. to see things as they truly are…. as though for the first time….”moving from innocence to innocence” as Krishnamurti said. When my grandson was 2 ½ years old he saw a pine cone for the first time, with a mind & heart that was fresh. He turned it round & round several times, looking at it very carefully. He smelled it. He licked it. He put it up to his ear. His mother & I said,” It’s a pine cone.” He dutifully repeated ‘pine cone’.… and then went on mindfully investigating this new object.

This is a state of mind that we can learn or re-learn to bring into our life. Our meditation practice is the perfect vehicle for this… and it’s transformative. It transforms the entire context of our life. We learn to touch the ‘radical acceptance’ & ease of simply being present in the moment. We have stopped trying to manipulate, shape or change our inner experience. For the moment, we’ve renounced the habit of restlessness, which is amazingly refreshing. It’s a moment of stillness… a resting place… a refuge.

As we begin to learn & allow ourselves to rest in this stillness more often, a great healing begins to take place… an unbinding, an unwinding of all the conditioning we’ve taken on as ‘me & mine’, as who I think I am. A great dismantling begins to happen as we begin to allow ourselves to rest in this silence & spaciousness… simply within the clarity & lucidity of present moment mindful awareness.

MAY YOU HAVE A HAPPY NEW YEAR.

With love, Marcia

From Wu Men – Ancient Chinese Chan Master:

“Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn,

A cool breeze in summer, snow in winter.

If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things.

This is the best season of your life.”

Ajahn Amaro on “Renunciation and Joy”

By Other Teachers & Folks We Value

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

Brian Lesage on “Taking Out the Thorn”

By Brian Lesage

The Buddha lived in a deeply troubled world. Kings ruled through violence, armies decimated villages, and slavery threaded daily life. Even those close to the Buddha suffered: his supporter Bimbisara was imprisoned by his own son & starved in his cell; his clan was nearly wiped out by King Viddhudabha; his cousin Devadatta tried to kill him. In this context, the Path took shape: a clear, compassionate way to meet a world on fire without adding more flame.

In the early texts the Buddha speaks of samsara as beginningless: a beginningless wandering, where the tears shed from separation & loss exceed the water in the four great oceans. Anyone attuned to today’s tragedies recognizes the tide. He names that tide, then shows how not to be swept away.

Samsara is often taken to mean the world itself. More precisely, it points to patterns of heart & mind: the habits of greed, aversion, and confusion that recreate suffering. The cycle isn’t only outer; it begins with inner patterns that shape speech & action.

One early discourse pictures the Buddha-to-be witnessing violence & shaking with fear: “creatures flopping around, like fish in water too shallow, so hostile to one another!” He longs for a place unscarred by conflict & cannot find it. Then he notices a thorn lodged deep in the heart, the hidden point that drives us to run in all directions & perpetuate harm. “If that thorn is taken out, one stops running & settles.”

It is a radical response. Instead of fastening on enemies or quick remedies, he turns toward the engine of violence itself.

That thorn has familiar names: greed, hatred, and delusion, and it does not come out with a single tug; it is layered & habitual, resurfacing in thought, speech, and action. The Buddha’s image of the bamboo acrobats, each caring for their own poise so they can truly care for the other, is fitting & precise. Mindfulness is that balance. Guarding one’s steadiness also protects others.

This is not passivity. It is the groundwork for wise action. We pause, feel the tremor of fear or heat of hatred, and soften around it. The emotion may not vanish, but space opens; in it, listening, patience, and clarity return. From that steadiness, engagement becomes medicine rather than contagion.

The civil rights leader Rev. James Lawson modeled this union of action & inner freedom. He trained protesters to endure abuse without retaliating, testing whether nonviolence had reached bone & breath. Those who lost balance weren’t sent into the hottest fires. “We started the public desegregation of the nation, and we did it without hating anybody,” he said. That is what a real revolution sounds like.

When the world’s troubles feel endless, the Dharma offers something essential: a way to stop spinning the wheel. Take out the thorn. Act, yes, but from a heart that knows its currents & trusts the possibility of a freer response. In doing so, we help this troubled world through true, steady, wise compassion.

HEALING & AWAKENING – Prescription: Immersion in Nature

By Marcia Rose

The blessings of Autumn are unfolding here in northern New Mexico as is currently happening in many places around the planet. This time of year, the natural world all around us offers abundant Dharma practice opportunities in ordinary & profound ways.

Here in my garden, the huge & magnificent Chinese lilies whose intense smell was permeating their nearby environment have now all fallen off their sturdy stems. Pea vines, finished producing the sweet pea pods they offered all summer, are withering & turning brown. The prolific peach tree has given up hundreds of peaches to the birds, squirrels & humans fortunate enough to eat & pick them off its laden branches. The air is cooling. I have donned a sweater for the first time in many months.

In this fall season, we see the undeniable workings of Anicca/change/impermanence… the basic unpredictable & uncertain details of its timing and the challenging & beautiful ways that it relentlessly shows up. Bringing a deep interest & opening our heart/mind in the midst of this process is an incredible practice opportunity. The nature of life & death is clearly & obviously revealing itself again & again as we mindfully observe, acknowledge & accept what we are sensing & seeing… letting it all in without resistance, judgment or criticism.

Human cultures & organizational structures wherever we may live, like the structure & cultures underlying all natural life forms… animal and plant, are rooted in the processes of Anicca/change/impermanence. Our bodies, our ideas, likes & dislikes, our emotions… our very life is basically grounded in these same processes that underlie how the natural world shows up & expresses itself. Can you even imagine what it would be like if there were no change? In truth, without Anicca/change/impermanence there would be no life.

Through our practice we can learn to meet this perfectly natural process of change, impermanence & uncertainty with acceptance rather than resistance. Instead of reacting to manifestations of Anicca with anger, fear, aggression, pretending, clinging or hiding, we can learn to respond with clarity in appropriate, helpful, compassionate and wise ways.

Fall is the perfect time to make a resolve to go deeper in our practice, as we explore opening to, observing & accepting Anicca… in the world around us & within our own body, heart & mind. Orienting & rooting our Autumn meditation practice in the world of nature, especially during these challenging times, helps to reduce stress & anxiety, offering moments of quiet presence, calm & healing.

As a prolific gardener & one who spends as much time out-of-doors as possible, I love the lessons this time of year offers me. In its natural & simple way, it profoundly helps to put everything into perspective.

With love, Marcia

 

Joannna Macy on “Healing Begins with Gratitude”

By Other Teachers & Folks We Value

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.

Annie Nugent on “Aspiration”

By Annie Nugent

Some time before the Buddha was about to die, he gave his disciples a word of encouragement and  advice.  He said this – and I’m putting it into my own words:  “Freedom from suffering is available to you if you practice by the proper means of mindfulness, but not without having the aspiration to  learn, and that will bring  freedom.”

Like any undertaking in the world, it is helpful to know why we are doing it. For example, if we exercise we know what our purpose is – to get fit. That is our aspiration. 

Similarly with our dharma practice. Aspiration is the wholesome wish to free ourselves from suffering by diminishing the unwholesome and strengthening the wholesome qualities of mind. This is our purpose in the dharma.

 The downfall comes when we misunderstand this word “aspiration” to mean striving and grasping  for happiness. This is not aspiration, but the unwholesome aspect of craving, the very source of suffering.  Notice the tightness and contractedness in the body when there is craving and how open hearted, light and uplifted the body feels when there is genuine aspiration.

 Many of us live busy lives out in the world. We have families, jobs, homes to tend and sometimes we can begin to feel that we have lost touch with the dharma or that we “should” be doing something else to realize our aspiration. Right here we can remind ourselves that our job is to do what the  teachings require of us, working with mindfulness in this moment. Anything more than sincerely doing the practice is a hindrance to it’s unfolding. The wondering when, if, how soon and what else we can do to speed up the process  – this is all worry and agitation.

So we put it down, relax and simply do the practice right here; there isn’t anywhere else to do it. When we have this deep aspiration for freedom we find the willingness to bring mindfulness to all situations, using what life has offered us as a path to awakening – to stretch and train the heart not to  react, but to slowly come to understand what our human existence is all about.