The Eyes of the Elephant Queen April 5, 2009
Posted by Alan in sangha.Tags: Buddha, collective awareness, continuation, Earth Holder, environment, interbeing, Kingdom of God, mindfulness, Mother Earth, nature, Plum Village, present moment, Pure Land, samsara
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This week we read the final chapter, Chapter 10, of Thich Nhat Hanh’s The World We Have: A Buddhist Approach to Peace and Ecology. Here’s a summary.
During the last year of the Buddha’s life he spent the Rain Retreat near the city of Vaishali. As he was leaving, knowing it was his last time, he turned toward Vaishali and looking with “the eyes of an elephant queen,” gently taking it all in, he said to Ananda, “Don’t you think that Vaishali is beautiful?” We have the eyes of the Buddha and the elephant queen too if we see deeply into the beauty of nature around us.
We are the continuation of the Buddha. The Buddha in us is sitting, enjoying our breath, mindfully taking in the world and the beauty of nature. Knowing how to do this, we can’t say our life has no meaning. From this moment right now and in every moment of our daily lives we have the opportunity to transmit the Buddha to our children and their children in the way we sit, walk, look, listen, and eat. We are helping our parents, ancestors and children to evolve, and our teacher to fulfill his vow. Our life will become a message of love. Living this way, we can prevent global warming from harming our planet.
The Kingdom of God or the Pure Land of the Buddha is a reality, not a vague idea. When we recognize that all the wonders of nature – the flowing river, the blossoming tree, the singing bird, the animals, the sunlight, fog and snow, the beautiful, solid green pine tree, our child with her smile, ourselves – are part of the Kingdom of God, we will work to preserve and protect them so our children and their children can enjoy them. As life at Plum Village demonstrates, money and conveniences are not necessary to find joy and happiness. When we’re inhabited by mindfulness, breathing and getting in touch with the stars, moon, cloud, and river, we step out of samsara, the cycle of repeated suffering and take steps that lead into the Pure Land of the Buddha, the Kingdom of God.
Touching the flower, I’m touching the cloud, the rain, the sun. Looking with the eyes of the Buddha, we can see this is reality, not poetry. The flower must inter-be with the cloud, the rain, the sun. Being really means interbeing. This is true for me, you, and the Buddha. Interbeing and nonself are the objects of our contemplation. We have to train ourselves so we can touch this truth in every moment.
Mother Earth is a body that we have destroyed just like bacteria or a virus destroy a human body. But like beneficial bacteria, we can protect the body of Mother Earth. We must see that we inter-are, living and dying, with Mother Earth. We are a family, and as a family should take care of each other and our environment. Positive change in individual awareness brings positive change in collective awareness. This should be first priority. We should sit with our family and the Bodhisattva Earth Holder to decide how to act. “With your first mindful breath, healing will begin.”
Overcoming Fear, Part 1 February 16, 2009
Posted by Alan in sangha.Tags: environment, fear, impermanence, interdependence, nirvana, no-birth, no-death, non-self, Three Dharma Seals
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This week we read the first half of Chapter Five, “Overcoming Fear,” in Thich Nhat Hanh’s The World We Have: A Buddhist Approach to Peace and Ecology (Berkeley: Parallax Press, 2008). A summary follows.
When we keep in mind that everything is impermanent, we can avoid the trap that we are only this body or this life span. Like a human life, our civilization will end one day. The way we live and consume the planet’s resources will determine how quickly this happens. All things are in endless transformation. We may understand impermanence intellectually, but it’s hard to accept; we want things we love to stay the same. Only through daily stopping and looking can we accept the truth of impermanence. By looking at a flower, a leaf, a living being deeply we can see change taking place.
There are two kinds of impermanence: impermanence in every instant, exemplified by the changes in water when it is made to boil; and cyclic impermanence – when something reaches the end of its cycle of arising, duration, and cessation, exemplified by a noticeable growth spurt in a child.
We must look deeply at impermanence in order not to be surprised or made to suffer, or not to see it as negative because it takes away the things we love. It is neither positive nor negative. It is just impermanence. Without it, life would be impossible. Without it, how could we transform suffering into happiness? How could we change the destructive path we have set for our Earth?
Impermanence and interdependence are related. Nothing can be independent because all things change all the time. At every instant there is input and output. For example, a flower is a stream of change, always receiving non-flower elements, such as air, water and sunshine. All things depend on one another for their existence. Wave and water are another example of the nonself nature of all things. A wave can be high or low, arise or disappear, but none of these things are the essence of water. We suffer if we only see the manifestations of birth and death of the wave, but when we see that all waves return to the water, which is the basis of the wave, we see there is nothing to fear.
We feel insecure because life and reality are impermanent. Whenever things change we suffer. But when we look deeply in the present moment at impermanence and the nonself nature of things, they become the keys to opening the door to reality, or nirvana, and fear and suffering disappear. We see that all life is ongoing transformation. “Impermanence, nonself, and nirvana are the Three Dharma Seals.”
We must deal with our own fear, anger and despair, not running away from them but looking deeply into them, before we can deal with global warming or other environmental issues. We must heal ourselves before we can heal the planet. Fear of dying is always deep in our consciousness. We struggle with it for a long time, but when we finally accept it, we find peace. Some people with AIDS or cancer live far beyond their expected years when they accept their situation, live every moment wholeheartedly, and find peace.
Like a wave, rising always brings about falling, birth gives rise to death. A wave may die as a wave, but she will always be alive as water. She may die smiling, without fear or anger. A drop of rain falling on the ground disappears, but is still there in another form, in the soil or as vapor. A cloud can become rain or snow or ice, but it cannot die. Meditation helps us understand our true nature of no-birth and no-death. Birth and death are just notions. This insight removes fear. Understanding that we cannot be annihilated releases us from fear, gives us peace, and helps our civilization find peace.
Bells of Mindfulness January 12, 2009
Posted by Alan in sangha.Tags: awakening, climate change, ecology, environment, mindfulness, sustainability
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This week we began reading The World We Have: A Buddhist Approach to Peace and Ecology (Thich Nhat Hanh, Berkeley: Parallax Press, 2008), Chapter One: “The Bells of Mindfulness.” A summary follows.
The floods, droughts, hurricanes, wildfires, disappearance of forests, growth of deserts, melting of polar ice, and extinction of species are all bells of mindfulness that we are ignoring. We know our Earth is in danger but we are like sleepwalkers, living our lives as though our steps do not influence the plants and animals. If we continue living in this way, devastating climate change accompanied by new wars and outbreaks of disease is inevitable. The future of all life – our own, our children’s and our grandchildren’s – depends on us learning to walk mindfully.
Although some are now awakened, most people are asleep. We need a large-scale collective awakening. We sacrifice our time and our lives for houses, refrigerators, TVs; we have become slaves to our own systems. We have no time to enjoy tea, friends, or “a party to celebrate the blossoming of one orchid in our garden.” As the rich become richer and the poor become poorer, we cannot afford to be aware of what’s happening in our human family or on our planet Earth. In 25 years the population of China will be 1.5 billion, each person wanting to drive their own car, requiring 99 million barrels of oil per day when today’s daily oil production for the entire world is only 84 million barrels. The people of China, India, Vietnam and other countries want to live the “American dream” when the world cannot even support Americans living the “American dream.” This economy is not sustainable.
The American dream must be replaced by a dream of brotherhood and sisterhood, of loving kindness and compassion: a dream that is possible right now. We don’t have to sink into despair; we can act now, at both the individual and collective levels. We have the desire, but not the organization and the concrete ways of committing to sustainability. We can’t just blame the governments and the corporations. Each of us must wake up and take responsibility for our own lives. Mindfulness and breathing here in the present moment are at the heart of awakening. Learning to live with responsibility, compassion, and loving kindness, each practitioner should be a protector of the environment. If we awaken to our true situation, we can help the Buddha wake up those living in a dream and change our collective consciousness.
