The Truth of Silence July 31, 2010
Posted by Monty McKeever in : Buddhist Teachings, Tricycle, Vipassana , add a commentToday’s Daily Dharma:
Many people have some ambivalence about silence; they fear it, or don’t value it. Because we only know ourselves through thinking and speaking and acting. But once the mind gets silent, the range of what’s possible is immeasurable. So first you taste the silence. Then you realize that it’s not a vacuum or dead space. It’s not an absence of the real stuff; it’s not that the real stuff is the doing, the talking, and all that. You get comfortable in it and you learn that it’s highly charged with life. It’s a very refined and subtle kind of energy. And when you come out of it, somehow you’re kinder, more intelligent. It’s not something that you manufacture—it’s an integral part of being alive. And it’s vast. We’ve enclosed ourselves in a relatively small space by thinking. It binds us in, and we’re not aware that we’re living in a tiny, cluttered room. With practice, it’s as if the walls of this room were torn down, and you realize there’s a sky out there.
Larry Rosenberg, The Art of Doing Nothing (Spring 1998)
Read the complete interview here.
Me me me July 30, 2010
Posted by Rachel Hiles in : Humor, Random Notes , 2 commentsEver feel like sometimes we don’t really listen to one another? Wild Fox Zen recently posted this cartoon: 
Allan Lokos begins his Tricycle Retreat
Posted by Philip Ryan in : Buddhism, Tricycle, Tricycle Retreats , 1 comment so far
Rev. Allan Lokos, the guiding teacher of New York City’s Community Meditation Center and author of the popular book Pocket Peace, begins his Tricycle Retreat Monday, August 2nd. It’s called “Seven Steps to Enlightenment,” and as the name implies, it consists of seven teachings to lead you to greater peace.
Watch the first video, “Developing Patience,” here. The message or mantra of the video is “Only I can destroy my peace, and I choose not to do so.” The first video in our retreats are always free, To view subsequent videos, become a Tricycle Community Sustaining Member.
We’d like to thank Bonnie Myotai Treace, Sensei, for her wonderful retreat, “Whole Life Offering” with its cleansing message of paying attention to water. Suzuki Roshi said, “Water is inside our physical body and in plants too; there is water all over. In the same way the pure source is everywhere.” The pure source is in us—it is us. Our Earth needs us to pay attention now more than ever, and we thank Myotai Sensei for her compassionate and crucial teaching. You can watch her Week 1 video here, and read her beautiful answers to viewers’ questions here.
To Be Born Human
Posted by Monty McKeever in : Buddhist Teachings , add a commentToday’s Daily Dharma:
To be born as a human being is a glorious privilege. Man’s dignity consists in his capability to reason and think and to live up to the highest ideal of pure life, of calm thought, of wisdom without extraneous intervention. In the “Saimanna phala Sutta” Buddha says that man can enjoy in this life a glorious existence, a life of individual freedom, of fearlessness and compassionateness. This dignified ideal of manhood may be attained by the humblest, and this consummation raises him above wealth and royalty.
Anagarika Dharmapala (Spring 1995)
Read the complete article here.
Strict Practice July 29, 2010
Posted by Philip Ryan in : Buddhism, Meditation, Zen , 1 comment so far
Student: Would you explain more what you mean by “strict practice”?
Suzuki Roshi: Strict practice? Things are already going in a very strict way. There is no exception. Wherever there is something, there is some rule or truth behind it that is always strictly controlling it, without any exception. We think we care for freedom, but the other side of freedom is strict rule. Within the strict rule there is complete freedom. Freedom and strict rule are not two separate things. Originally we are supported by strict rules or truths. That is the other side of absolute freedom.
Student: Could you give us more examples that apply to our individual lives?
Suzuki Roshi: When you get up you should just get up. When everyone sleeps you should sleep. That is my example.
- from Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness: Zen Talks on the Sandokai.
Also see Suzuki Roshi’s Dharma Talks blog.
How to Rebuild Your Attention Span and Focus
Posted by Sam Mowe in : Meditation, Mindfulness, Tricycle , 21 comments
It seems like it’s pretty much common knowledge at this point: Technology makes us impatient and forgetful. So, what’s the best way to build your attention span back up?
Find one training technique at Lifehacker in an article entitled, “How to Rebuild Your Attention Span and Focus.” From the article:
So how do you train to focus? I’ve been using interval training with great success. Modeled after how I trained to run my first marathon using Jeff Galloway’s technique, I practice attention interval training. I got this timer installed on my computer. It’s an excellent interval timer based on a technique called the Pomodoro technique — but I’m primarily using it based on its ability to make sound, set good intervals, and support logging. I started small: 10 minutes of work with two minute breaks. My strategy has been to keep it so when the timer goes off that tells me it’s time to take a break, I feel like I can keep going. I’m up to 35 minutes now with 2 minute breaks.
How do people think this technique compares with good ol’ shamatha meditation—a meditation practice designed to increase attention and concentration? In a brief description of shamatha in his Tricycle article “Do Nothing,” Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche advises the reader:
If we have ambitions—even if our aim is enlightenment—then there is no meditation, because we are thinking about it, craving it, fantasizing, imagining things. That is not meditation. This is why an important characteristic of shamatha meditation is to let go of any goal and simply sit for the sake of sitting. We breathe in and out, and we just watch that. Nothing else. It doesn’t matter if we get enlightenment or not. It doesn’t matter if our friends get enlightened faster. Who cares? We are just breathing. We just sit straight and watch the breath in and out. Nothing else. We let go of our ambitions. This includes trying to do a perfect shamatha meditation. We should get rid of even that. Just sit.
The paradox of shamatha meditation, that you gain more control over thoughts by loosening your grasp to them, has always been attractive to me. And it works. But maybe there’s something to just buckling down and plowing through intense, timed periods of work. That might especially be true if the goal is to do more work. In shamatha meditation the idea is, as I understand it, that you are building up concentration in order to be better equipped to engage in proper vipassana meditation—insight meditation meant to wake up the practitioner to the true nature of reality. This, perhaps, a loftier goal than being able to work 35 minutes straight.
What do people think? What’s the best way to increase attention and focus? And should the intended use of that increased attention span inform the techniques used to build it?
“Oldest man in Tokyo” has been dead for 30 years
Posted by Rachel Hiles in : Buddha, News, Random Notes , 2 comments
When Japanese officials arrived at Sogen Kato’s house to congratulate the elderly man on his 111th birthday, they were in for a big shock. After family members chased officials away claiming that Kato did not want to see them, police were able to break into the house where they found Kato’s remains covered in his bed. According to his family, Kato shut himself up in his room three decades ago to “become a living Buddha.” Japanese authorities speculate that Kato—thought to be the oldest man living in Tokyo—may actually have been dead for 30 years. Police are now investigating the family for possible fraud charges.
Read more about this story here.
Image: chestofbooks.com
China’s pollution worsens, prominent Tibetan conservationist arrested
Posted by Rachel Hiles in : Environment, Health, News, Politics, Tibetan Buddhism , 2 comments
Four years ago, China overtook the US to become the world’s biggest emitter of carbon dioxide. Now International Energy Agency (IEA) has announced that China tops the list as the biggest energy consumer in the world. What does all this mean? Lots and lots of pollution. A report in yesterday’s New York Times painted a dispiriting portrait of China’s environmental problems:
In recent days, the state media have provided a grim sampling of China’s environmental woes, including a pipeline explosion that dumped thousands of gallons of oil into the Yellow Sea, reports of a copper mine whose toxic effluent killed tons of fish in Fujian Province, and revelations that dozens of children were poisoned by lead from illegal gold production in Yunnan Province.
Two weeks ago, the state media reported on thousands of residents in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region who clashed with the police as they protested unregulated emissions from an aluminum plant.
Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs in Beijing, said many of the government’s efforts to curtail pollution had been offset by the number of construction projects that spit dust into the air and the surge in private car ownership.
The IEA’s report comes hot on the heels of the high profile arrest of a Tibetan environmentalist and conservationist Karma Samdrup (pictured below). Samdrup, a Buddhist and founder of the award-winning Three Rivers Environmental Protection Group, was jailed in China on charges of robbing tombs and then dealing looted relics. Samdrup’s wife and lawyer both claim that he was falsely accused and then tortured by Chinese authorities. A recent article published in the New York Times suggests that Samdrup’s arrest is part of a crackdown on Tibetans in the wake of 2008 protests:
Human rights advocates say the prosecution of Mr. Samdrup and his brothers are part of a worrisome crackdown on Tibetan artists, intellectuals and students, among others, that has intensified since March 2008, when rioting in Tibet stunned Chinese leaders in the midst of their preparations for the Olympics in Beijing.
Some speculate that Samdrup’s arrest was a response to his defense of his two brothers, who Samdrup tried to protect from torture after they accused a local police chief of illegally hunting protected animals at a Tibetan nature reserve. Samdrup has been sentenced to 15 years in prison.
According to the World Health Organization, 16 of the world’s 20 most polluted cities are in China and it is estimated that a quarter of China’s lakes, rivers, and streams are too contaminated to be used for drinking water. With a prominent conservationist in prison and energy consumption at an all time high, China’s environmental future looks grim.
Images: nytimes.com and lfslessonsasia.com
Two Poems by Patrice Mason
Posted by Monty McKeever in : Art, Buddhism , 8 commentsI was very happy to find these two poems by Patrice Mason waiting for me in my inbox this morning…
To all you practitioner poets, writers, and artists out there, please feel free to submit creative offerings for the blog at tricycle@tricycle.com
Don’t Go It Alone
Posted by Monty McKeever in : Buddhist Teachings , add a commentToday’s Daily Dharma:
Aristotle said that in order for people to become virtuous, we need role models—others who have developed their capacities for courage, self-control, wisdom, and justice. We may emphasize different sets of virtues or ideas about what makes a proper role model, but Buddhism also asserts that, as we are all connected and interdependent, none of us can do it all on our own.
Acknowledging this dependency is the first step of real emotional work within relationships. Our ambivalence about our own needs and dependency gets stirred up in all kinds of relationships. We cannot escape our feelings and needs and desires if we are going to be in relationships with others. To be in relationships is to feel our vulnerability in relation to other people who are unpredictable, and in circumstances that are intrinsically uncontrollable and unreliable.
-Barry Magid, “No Gain” (Summer 2008)
Read the complete article here.
