Touching Our Suffering September 11, 2009
Posted by Alan in sangha.Tags: First Noble Truth, Four Noble Truths, Four Nutriments, intentions, mindful eating, mindfulness, Second Noble Truth, sense impressions, suffering, turning the wheel of the Dharma
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On August 30 and September 6 we read Chapter 7, “Touching Our Suffering,” from Thich Nhat Hanh’s The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching. Here’s a summary.
In the Discourse on Turning the Wheel of the Dharma, the wheel is turned twelve times: three times for each of the Four Noble Truths. We have to experience the turnings in our practice.
First Noble Truth: The first turning is called “Recognition,” in which we sense something is wrong but can’t say exactly what it is. We need to identify the suffering as physical, physiological, or psychological. With courage, we show the wounds in our hearts to the Buddha, meaning we show them to ourselves, and we treat them with kindness and nonviolence, not running from them, but telling them, “I am here for you and I will take care of you.”
During the second turning, “Encouragement,” we look deeply into our pain to understand its causes. We practice sitting and walking meditation, and ask for support from our friends and our teacher. Like a doctor looking at an illness, it may take time and many tests, but we are determined to understand.
The third turning, “Realization,” refers to our realization of the efforts to understand begun in the second turning. We can now call our suffering by its name and identify its characteristics, and this alone brings some joy. But even with the successful diagnosis, we continue to pour gasoline on the fire with our words, thoughts and deeds, continuing to create suffering for ourselves. This brings us to
The Second Noble Truth, with the “Recognition” that I continue to create suffering, and need to look deeply at the four kinds of nutriments that feed it. The Buddha identified these four nutriments as edible food, sense impressions, intention, and consciousness.
What we eat or drink can bring about mental or physical suffering, and we need to practice Right View when shopping, cooking and eating. As an example, the Buddha tells the story of the parents who choose to consume their child in order to survive a crossing of the desert. The couple were horrified and miserable. “Yet,” the Buddha said, “many people eat the flesh of their parents, their children, and their grandchildren and do not know it.” We have to look deeply to avoid toxins and learn ways to grow our food and eat that preserve the health and well-being of our body and spirit, allowing the earth to continue to be a source of life for us and all species. If we destroy living beings or the environment while eating, we are eating the flesh of our own sons and daughters.
The second kind of nutriment is sense impressions. The contacts between our sense organs and sense objects – articles or ads in magazines that we see with our eyes, for example – become “food” for our consciousness. We know we have been in contact with toxins if we feel anxious or worn out after reading the newspaper, hearing the news, or being in a conversation. Both children and adults need to be protected from violent or unwholesome films, TV programs, books, magazines, and games. With the practice of mindfulness we can learn what to be in contact with and what to avoid. The Buddha offered the image of a cow with a skin disease being painfully devoured by insects and parasites to illustrate how we are exposed to invasions of images, sounds and ideas that feed the craving, violence, fear, and despair in us. Mindfulness can be a sentinel posted at each of our sense doors. We can look at each nutriment before ingesting it to determine whether it is toxic or safe. To protect individuals, families, cities, a nation, mindfulness practice has to be collective.
The third kind of nutriment is volition, intention, or will – the desire in us to obtain whatever we want. There is a strong energy in us pushing us toward what we think will make us happy: position, wealth, fame, possessions; and this can bring us much suffering. With some time of mindful sitting, walking, and looking deeply, a vision of reality and the capacity of being there in the present moment frees us of these impulses and brings us happiness. A farmer once complained to the Buddha about the loss of his cows. The Buddha explained to the Sangha how happy they are that they have no cows to lose. “Release your cows and become a free person.” In another image two strong men throw a third man into a pit of fire. The Buddha is advising us to look deeply at our volitions, our habit energies, to see if they are pushing us toward liberation and compassion or toward suffering and unhappiness.
The fourth kind of nutriment is our consciousness composed of all the seeds of our past actions and the past actions of our family and society, creating our body, mind and world. We have to be careful with which nutriments we feed our consciousness: greed, ignorance, suspicion and pride or love, compassion, joy and equanimity. The Buddha offered yet another dramatic illustration: a murderer sentenced to death by three sequences of 300 stabbings. Every time we ingest toxins into our consciousness, we are stabbing ourselves 300 times.
With the first turning of the First Noble Truth, we recognize suffering and our practice is to take good care of it. With the first turning of the Second Noble Truth, we look at our suffering over the last months and years to identify and determine how the nutriments we have ingested have contributed to our suffering. Without practicing the Second Noble Truth, we tend to blame others for our unhappiness. During sitting meditation, you can write down a symptom of your suffering, and then ask what nutriments have fed this suffering. This requires courage, and may be an emotional experience; be present and embrace your suffering like a mother holding her baby. You also have the wisdom of friends on the path or your teacher; ask for their observations and insight. If you keep your suffering to yourself, it might just grow bigger every day.
Mindfulness – mindful walking, breathing, sitting, eating, looking, and listening – is the energy that can help us determine which nutriments to resist. “One mindful step can take us deep into the realization of beauty and joy in us and around us.” With the third turning of the Second Noble Truth, we not only vow but actually stop ingesting non-beneficial nutriments. This doesn’t mean stopping everything. “When hungry, I eat. When tired, I sleep.” At this stage, one has lightness and freedom; what she wants to do is in accord with the mindfulness trainings, causing no harm to herself or others. “This is the action of non-action. Suffering no longer arises.”
Diet for a Mindful Planet, Part 2 February 2, 2009
Posted by Alan in sangha.Tags: Buddha, climate change, deforestation, Four Noble Truths, Four Nutriments, global warming, mindful consumption, mindful eating, pollution, suffering, vegetarianism
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This week we completed our reading of “Diet for a Mindful Planet” from Thich Nhat Hanh’s The World We Have.
To nourish compassion toward animals, Buddhists have practiced vegetarian eating for more than 2000 years. Since raising animals for food is responsible for one quarter of greenhouse gas emissions, it turns out that vegetarianism may be one of the most effective ways of fighting global warming as well as world hunger.
Mother Earth suffers deeply because of our way of eating. Raising animals for meat is the world’s biggest source of water pollution when waste from farms and slaughterhouses flows into rivers, streams, and drinking water, and has led to the destruction of hundreds of millions of acres of forests in the U.S., as well as the tropical rainforests and the plant and animal species living there, for livestock grazing. According to the National Corn Grower’s Association, 80% of all corn grown in the U.S. is consumed by livestock, poultry and fish production. Tens of thousands of children die every day when this corn, or the tremendous amount of grain and water used to make alcohol, could have been given them to eat. When we eat meat or drink alcohol, we are eating the flesh or drinking the blood of our children. If we stop, these industries will stop producing. We share responsibility for climate change, deforestation, and poisoning of the air and water. By cutting meat out of your diet for even five or ten days a month, you will be performing a miracle. When we ask, “What shall I eat today?” we are making choices that help or harm the Earth.
In many Buddhist traditions, monks and nuns are vegetarians, as are many lay practitioners. American practitioners are following this pattern as well, or vowing to eat 50% less meat. This vow can bring peace, joy, and happiness from the moment we take it, and can bring worldwide change. Children, teachers and parents, leaders of organizations and communities can all practice mindful consumption, and can set an example for others. A mayor would want to protect the people in his town from the violence and suffering that come from unmindful consumption. Even the president has Buddha nature – the seed of understanding and compassion. When we get out of our shell we can see that we are interrelated with everyone and everything, that our acts affect all humankind and all the cosmos. Maintaining health, both bodily and mental, is an act of kindness toward ourselves, our ancestors, parents, children, future generations, and society – the entire planet.
In the Discourse on the Four Kinds of Nutriments, the Buddha speaks of food as only one source of consumption. The second source is sensory impressions: when we look at films, read magazines, see advertisements and listen to conversations, we are consuming. Sometimes we consume relaxing music, fresh garden smells, or the beauty of the world. But sometimes we consume toxins, through advertisements or conversations full of hate or violence. The average child has seen 8000 murders and over 100,000 acts of violence on television by the time she finishes elementary school. These poisons destroy the body and consciousness transmitted by parents and ancestors. This toxic sensory consumption is illustrated by the Buddha in the story of the cow with a skin disease who suffers as her flesh is eaten by tiny creatures in the trees, the soil and the water. We are like this cow without skin when we allow toxins to penetrate and destroy us.
The third nutriment is the food of our intentions and volitions to do things with our lives. The Buddha illustrates this with the story of a young man pulled toward a pit of burning coals by two strong men. The strong men represent our cravings for fame, honor, praise, sex or money. These cravings pull us along and consume us, leaving no opportunity for mindfulness or awareness.
The fourth nutriment is the food of consciousness. The Buddha illustrates this with the story of a criminal sentenced to being stabbed 100 times; when he didn’t die, he was sentenced to 100 more stabbings, and when he still didn’t die, yet 100 more. When asked by the Buddha whether the man suffered, the monks responded that to be stabbed 100 times must have been unbearable, but 300 times unimaginable. We have been stabbed many times in the deepest levels of our consciousnesses. This is the First Noble Truth: that life involves suffering (dukkha), including sickness, anger, despair and depression. The suffering of our ancestors is within us, represented by the stabbing of the criminal. It continues in our daily lives, stabbing us many times every day.
It is not just our suffering. It is the suffering of all previous generations, human and non-human, our collective consciousness. This is the Second Noble Truth. We inter-are with all species, and receive the effects of those suffering the consequences of war, even if we are not in a war zone. Our unconsciousness is aware of the suffering occurring everywhere. As long as we blame others for suffering, we cannot transform. But if we see our suffering as part of a greater consciousness, our own individual pain is eased and our suffering can cease. This is the Third Noble Truth, well-being and the end of suffering.
The Fourth Noble Truth is that suffering can be ended by following a mindful path. If we don’t practice mindful consumption of the four nutriments, we cannot save our planet. Our practice should produce collective enlightenment, collective awakening. We have to touch the Buddha inside us every day, so that awakening can manifest in us and save our planet.
Diet for a Mindful Planet, Part 1 January 28, 2009
Posted by Alan in sangha.Tags: Buddha, Dharanimdhara, individualism, mindful eating
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This week we began reading Chapter 3, “Diet for a Mindful Planet,” from Thich Nhat Hanh’s The World We Have: A Buddhist Approach to Peace and Ecology. A summary follows.
The Buddha once told his monks the story of a refugee couple who, upon finding they had insufficient food while fleeing across a desert, decided to kill and eat their child. Carrying his flesh on their shoulders, eating small amounts each day to retain their energy, they cried to each other every night, “Where is our beloved son now?” Eventually they arrived in the new land. Reflecting on how horribly these parents suffered, the Buddha concluded that we must learn to eat mindfully with compassion in our hearts to avoid eating the flesh of our own children. To safeguard our future, we need to make changes in the present. Due to our unmindful production and consumption, we face not only catastrophic global warming and climate change; we also create an environment of violence, hate, discrimination and despair.
People believe their bodies belong to them and they can do whatever they want with their bodies. The law supports this as individualism. But the Buddhist view is that all things – clouds, trees, soil – come together to make up the body, so one’s body belongs to ancestors, parents, future generations, society, all living beings. Our bodies are like the Earth, held together by the bodhisattva Dharanimdhara, Earth Holder. Keeping the body healthy is an expression of gratitude to the cosmos and a practice of a bodhisattva precept (the Fifth Mindfulness Training).
We often eat to cover up uneasiness, to forget worries and anxiety. Instead of consuming, the Buddha recommends that we practice breathing or walking to manifest energy of mindfulness at these times of suffering. Mindful eating helps us know how much and what to eat. If we take only as much as we can eat (or less), chewing carefully, eating only what is healthy, we will not eat the flesh of our children.
When we touch our food mindfully, we touch it in gratitude to nature, living beings, the cosmos. Eating mindfully, we pick up our food, look at it for a few moments, put it in our mouth and chew carefully fifty times. There are two kinds of joy, between which we need to learn to distinguish:
- One is healing and nourishing, bringing us calm, comfort, peace, freshness, clarity, lucidity.
- One is destructive, bringing us suffering, from alcohol, sweets and other toxins.
Each bite of food we eat contains the life of the sun and the Earth, and can reveal the meaning and value of life, the interconnectedness of all things. The opportunity to share food with our family and friends is precious and we are fortunate. Holding a bowl of rice or piece of bread, we know this and remember with compassion those who are hungry or without friends or family. We don’t need to go to a temple or church to practice this.
Two Final Commentaries, Heart Sutra December 7, 2008
Posted by Alan in sangha.Tags: Avalokiteshvara, dualistic ideas, fear, gate gate, Heart Sutra, illusion, interbeing, mantra, mindful eating, mindful hugging, mindfulness, peace, Prajnaparamita, skandhas
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This week we read the final two of Thich Nhat Hanh’s commentaries on the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra in The Heart of Understanding. Summaries follow:
Freedom
The obstacles which are our dualistic ideas and concepts about birth and death, increasing and decreasing, inside and outside, Buddha and Mara, are no longer obstacles when we see them with the eyes of interbeing. Seeing this way, we are free of illusion and fear.
Svaha!
When you dwell in deep concentration of body, mind, and breath, you can look into and see things clearly. Avalokiteshvara looked deeply into the five skandhas, saw the nature of interbeing, and overcame all pain. During his state of joyful liberation, he provided us with a mantra. A mantra is a statement which, when uttered with one’s whole being, has the power to transform the world.
Avalokiteshvara’s mantra is, “Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha.” One translation of this is “Gone, gone, gone all the way over, everyone gone to the other shore, enlightenment, svaha! “ Gate means gone, from suffering and forgetfulness to liberation and mindfulness; paragate means gone to the other shore; sam means everyone. Bodhi means light inside, enlightenment, or awakening. Svaha is a cry of joy or excitement, like “Welcome!” or “Hallelujah!” Study of the Heart Sutra with all body, heart and mind, accompanied by recitation of the mantra with all your being, will bring you real communication with Avalokiteshvara and will help to transform you in the direction of enlightenment. It is not just a chant or object of worship; it is a gift of Avalokita, a tool for liberation of all beings. This gift of non-fear is the heart of the Prajnaparamita.
The Prajnaparamita provides ground for making peace with ourselves. Peace and happiness in yourself help you begin to realize peace in the whole world. If you cannot give yourself peace, how can you share it with the world? When we do something as simple as eating a tangerine in genuine mindfulness, we work for peace. We do not struggle for enlightenment five or ten years from now. Each moment becomes real life. We eat a tangerine for eating a tangerine. We sit for sitting. We walk for walking, alive for each step in real life. This kind of mindfulness can be practiced when we eat breakfast or hold a child or look at another person. When we hug a relative, a spouse, or a friend, we should add conscious breathing to it. Three conscious breaths during a hug will multiply your happiness ten-fold. When eating, we can be happy to have such wonderful food, but we should also be mindful that many people, especially children, are suffering for lack of food. Seeing this way makes us sane, because it shows us that we can make peace with ourselves and the world.
“Each breath we take, each step we make, each smile we realize…is a necessary step in the direction of peace for the world.”
