Fear and the Upcoming Election

Posted on October 28, 2024 by EricKVanHorn

I have recently read a post on a Buddhist web chat about fear and the upcoming election. Here are my thoughts.

I understand the angst about the upcoming election, of course. We would like to live in a world of love, compassion, and wisdom. But the world has always had its problems. That is not to minimize them, just to put them into perspective. It’s the First Noble Truth. 100 years ago we were only six years removed from the First World War. What a hot mess that was.

My family is mostly German. I grew up in the 1950’s with the stigma of the Holocaust. This was despite the fact that my family members were pacifists who emigrated to Pennsylvania in 1754. My grandparents still spoke German. But I grew up hiding my ancestry. I was once told that Germans are inherently violent, and that is why the Nazis came to power. It was as if to be German meant you had a special violence gene. I had one modest benefit, and that is my last name is Dutch. It spared me some of the abuse.

Now, apparently, it may be America’s turn.

But let’s look at it from the Buddha’s perspective 2600 years ago. They had their problems, too. There was plenty of war and hatred and violence. There were three assassination attempts on the Buddha. Two of the most powerful kings of that time were friends and supporters of the Buddha. They were both killed by their sons. One of the murdered kings was King Bimbisara. He was a good, kind, and gentle man. He was starved to death in prison. The reign of Bimbisara’s son Ajatashatru started many generations of kings who propagated fear and violence throughout India. It wasn’t pretty.

But nowhere did the Buddha say that fear is beneficial except in one case. And that is the fear of wrongdoing:

“And what, bhikkhus, are the things that make one a recluse, that make one a brahmin? Bhikkhus, you should train thus: ‘We will be possessed of shame and fear of wrongdoing.’” – [MN 39.3]

Fearlessness is to be cultivated in the practice, and fear is a quality to be overcome. This is from the Dhammapada:

For one who is awake,
     Whose mind isn’t overflowing,
     Whose heart isn’t afflicted
     And who has abandoned both merit and demerit,
Fear does not exist. – [Dhp 38]

On the night of his enlightenment, the Buddha had to first overcome fear:

“I thought: ‘What now if this is the fear and dread coming?’ I thought: ‘Why do I dwell always expecting fear and dread? What if I subdue that fear and dread while keeping the same posture that I am in when it comes upon me?’” – [MN 4.20]

It was only after he had overcome fear that the Buddha could awaken.

The challenge of the Dharma isn’t that you be kind and patient when things are easy. The challenge is that you be kind and patient to someone who is yelling at you about politics.

The Buddha said this to his son Rahula about meditation:

“Rāhula, meditate like the earth. For when you meditate like the earth, pleasant and unpleasant contacts will not occupy your mind. Suppose they were to toss both clean and unclean things on the earth, like feces, urine, spit, pus, and blood. The earth isn’t horrified, repelled, and disgusted because of this. In the same way, meditate like the earth. For when you meditate like the earth, pleasant and unpleasant contacts will not occupy your mind.” — [MN 62.13]

It is easy at a time like this to get caught up in the moment. But in the Dharma, our marching orders are always the same. Be a good person. Follow the Precepts. Be kind to yourself and others. Be generous and grateful. Cultivate a peaceful mind. Be a lamp in the darkness. And no matter what happens, this, too, shall pass.

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Sex and the Buddhist Cosmology

Posted on October 7, 2024 by EricKVanHorn

A real hot button issue with me are so called Buddhist teachers who coerce their female students into having sex with them. Some of them are quite famous, like Richard Baker, Chogyam Trungpa, Joshu Sazaki, Dainin Katagiri, and Surya Das.

Without going into much detail, it should be obvious that the Third Precept specifically forbids this type of behavior. More deeply, according to the Buddha there are four stages to enlightenment. In the second stage you lose most of your sexual desire, and it goes away completely in the third stage of enlightenment. I once heard Surya Das—a notorious sex offender—state that he is enlightened. Obviously, he is not.

But apropos of some of my recent posts about the Buddhist cosmology, let’s look at this from a macro standpoint.

According to the Buddhist cosmology, as I have mentioned before, time is cyclical and infinite. There is a big bang, the universe expands, the universe contracts, and then there is another big bang. Science still has not quite caught up to Buddhism on this point, and we are patiently waiting. However, there are now at least theories about the existence of “a” previous universe based on “leftover radiation.”

The current universe is between 13 and 26 billion years. Our solar system is about 4.5 billion years old. And depending on how you look at it, the human race is about 300,000 years old, although the modern human race is probably something more like 60,000 years old.

According to Buddhist cosmology, we are tied to a world system. The Buddha often referred to world systems in his discourses. We have got one right here. Our non-human realms are likewise tied to this world system. So we won’t be reborn in a different world system.

One question is that given all this time without an Earth and without a world system and without the human race, what happens to all its beings? The Buddha never addressed issues like this because he was exclusively interested in solving one problem, and that is teaching us how to escape from saṃsara and suffering. He was not interested in explaining metaphysics other than to the extent necessary to help us accomplish this purpose.

But later theories say that some beings stay in their non-human realms during this time, and other beings—who would normally be born as humans—go into a kind of stasis or holding pattern. In this state they are genderless. And note that there are heavenly—deva—realms that are genderless as well.

The Buddhist cosmology goes on to say that genders are formed as the human race is formed. It is a kind of de-evolution. We go from a higher kind of being without gender to a lower form of being that includes gender and, of course, sex.

So think about people like Surya Das in this context. I mean, wow.

Now to be sure, who knows how much of this is true. But one reason this is such a hot button issue with me is that all those miscreants who manipulate their female students into having sex with them are not even in the same universe as the Buddha’s Dharma. They are clueless. On the micro scale are the Precepts. That is about as simple and straightforward as it gets. Don’t use sex to cause harm. Of course, you are not supposed to do anything that causes harm. That is karma. But on the macro level, wow. You are not even in the same league as the Buddha and the Dharma.

finis.

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Perception

Posted on September 30, 2024 by EricKVanHorn

One of the things that I love about Dharma practice is how it unfolds. On one hand, you must expend energy. You must be diligent. You must persevere. On the other hand, you must let go. You must be patient, and you must be kind to yourself.

Ajahn Chah was once accused of giving contradictory instructions to his students. But he explained that Dharma practice is like walking down the center of a road. If you veer too far to the left, you must move to the right. And if you move too far to the right, you must move to the left.

Dharma practice is like that. You can’t be lazy. You can’t just “be with whatever arises,” or that is all you will be able to do. But you can’t push too hard, either. My first practice was in Zen, and in retrospect, it felt like Marine bootcamp. It was miserable. So, you move to the right or you move to the left depending on where you are. You push harder, or you ease up, relax, let go, and exercise patience.

When you achieve the right balance, wonderful and unexplained things happen. They simply arise. You can never make something happen. You must put into place the conditions for something to happen. Then it will or will not happen when either of those is appropriate.

I have had something like that happen within the last year. Like so many people, I read all about the five kandhas, “skandhas” in Sanskrit. And I never could connect with the kandha on perception. Of course, I read all the books. I heard all the Dharma talks. I could even give a lengthy and erudite description of perception. But I never really understood it. I could never—as a friend used to say—feel it in my bones.

Let me back up for a moment and talk about that. When I was a young software engineer—and this was in the days when you had to even write the code to do something as simple as draw a line on the screen—I read about a core technology called “b-trees.” And I read every description and every article there was on b-trees. And still, for a long time, I could not wrap my head around b-trees.

And then, finally, it all became clear to me. In fact, it became so clear to me that I was puzzled about why it had been so hard for me to understand it. It seemed obvious and clear. To be sure, there was a month or two when my initial clarity about b-trees took some time to become fully integrated, to “feeling it in my bones.” But suddenly the previously inaccessible technology of b-trees seemed as obvious and clear to me as the fact that a tree is a tree.

The Buddha went through a similar process. After his enlightenment, it took him some weeks to fully integrate what he had experienced. The account in the Vinaya is quite detailed and quite clear. In the mastering of anything complicated, there is the initial “ah, ha” moment. But then there is a period where you settle into this knowledge. It becomes part of your being.

Over the years, I have heard many people say that they understood this or that teaching of the Buddha’s. The most obvious example of this is dependent origination. Dependent origination is the quantum physics of Buddhism. It is by far his most complex teaching. And yet, I have heard more than one person say, somewhat casually, that they understood dependent origination.

My understanding of the Dharma is that the only people who understand dependent origination are arahants, people who are fully enlightened. And even among arahants, not all of them fully understand this teaching. It is this deep.

And yet I have met people who simply declare that they understand dependent origination. It is like meeting a freshman in college who thinks that they understand physics to the same extent as Neils Bohr.

The Buddha once said that if he met an honest person, he could teach them. I used to think that being honest meant that what you say is true. But I think what the Buddha meant is more about being honest with yourself. I have known so many delusional people in my life. I once knew someone who was adamant that her husband was healthy and did not need hospice care. He died six days later. This same person once declared herself to be healthy. She died sixteen months later.

But I go back to my original point, and that is how Dharma practice unfolds. It is like going 55 miles an hour. If you are too slow, you speed up. If you are too fast, you slow down.

This year, for me, has been about the kandha of perception. Perception has two aspects to it. The first is simply how we go from a raw sensory experience to identifying something. We see this object. It has a name and a form. This name and form is converted to a perception. We see a “tree.”

But then we also assign a value to what we see. That, too, is perception. We like that tree or we don’t like that tree. And how we perceive the world is how we experience it. I saw this article today about how people are working to save the California Condor. It really warmed my heart. But then, I always look for these types of stories.

I know people who are always miserable and dismayed by the state of the world. Of course. I get it. There are always terrible things happening.

But there are always wonderful, inspirational things happening, too. These tend to get overlooked. I saw a news piece recently about the suffering in Gaza. But all I could see was the people who had come from all over the world to provide relief for the people of Gaza. Some of them were even killed. They did not see people of this or that national origin or religion. They saw only suffering, and they wanted to help. I was inspired and uplifted. I only wish that my age and challenging health did not prevent me from being there, too.

But back to the issue of perception. This is a good example. You see a news story. What do you choose to see, the suffering, or the people who have traveled from every corner of the Earth to alleviate that suffering?

I have often wondered, why did the Buddha choose to specify the importance of the quality of perception? Off all the qualities that one can possess, why did he think that it is so important that he included it in the very qualities that make us how we are?

It is because how we perceive the world is how we experience the world.

So here is our challenge. Do we see the suffering, or do we see the extraordinary efforts of those who risk their lives to relieve that suffering? Do we see the sensationalistic stories about the ugliness of the world, or do we see the stories about the people trying to save the California Condor? Do we want to be saddened by the state of the world, or do we want to be inspired by those who strive to alleviate it? Do we see only suffering, or do we see our way out of it? Do we see how to help, or do we see only despair? We choose how and what we want to see in the world, and how we want to relate to the world and the people around us.

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Perspective Redux

Posted on September 16, 2024 by EricKVanHorn

In my last post, I gave an overview of the Buddhist cosmology. If you have not read it, you might want to. It will give you a good context for this post.

Here is a summary. In the Buddha’s Dharma, time is infinite and cyclical. The universe goes through a Big Bang, expansion, contraction, and then the cycle begins again.

Likewise, we go through the infinite cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth. We are reborn throughout infinite time in all the realms. Even if we are born in a heavenly realm, eventually there is a fall from grace. We became proud and vain, and oops, there we go again, sliding down the cosmic elevator. This is saṃsara, wandering endlessly throughout all the realms. It is risky and dangerous.

Now think about our current situation. There was a Big Bang. It happened about 13.82 billion years ago. The sun formed about 9 billion years after the Big Bang, and the Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago.

Obviously when there was no Earth, none of us were being reborn here. There are various accounts in Buddhism about where we go while we are waiting for our world system to form. But we go somewhere. We are waiting for the Earth to become habitable for humans. Given that the last iteration of the universe had to dematerialize before the current one began to unfold, if we add that amount of time to the age of the current universe, we have been waiting a long time.

Once the Earth becomes habitable for humans, then humanity must emerge and evolve. Then we hope that a Buddha will appear. All of this takes a long time, and when a Buddha does appear, it is a miraculous event.

In the Buddhist understanding, there have been many Buddhas. Given that time is infinite, this makes sense. Buddhas discover the Dharma. The Dharma is how things are. The Dharma is not a philosophy. Further, even when a Buddha does arise, some of them choose not to teach what they discover. These are called “Pacceka Buddhas.” This means that even if there is a Buddha, they don’t teach anyone what they learned.

This is because many people are not ready to hear the Dharma. Some of the most accomplished monks and nuns I know have had this experience. They have even been chastised and shunned by their own families. They have been mistreated by their friends. And these are some of the most accomplished Dharma practitioners in the world. So it is not surprising that a Buddha might decide that it is a waste of time to teach something that has such depth and breadth to people who cannot understand it. It would be like trying to teach quantum physics to a child.

The Buddha himself contemplated whether to try and teach the Dharma:

I have heard that on one occasion, when the Blessed One was newly Self-awakened, he was staying at Uruvela on the bank of the Nerañjara River, at the foot of the Goatherd’s Banyan Tree. Then, while he was alone and in seclusion, this line of thinking arose in his awareness: “This Dhamma that I have attained is deep, hard to see, hard to realize, peaceful, refined, beyond the scope of conjecture, subtle, to-be-experienced by the wise. But this generation delights in attachment, is excited by attachment, enjoys attachment. For a generation delighting in attachment, excited by attachment, enjoying attachment, this/that conditionality and dependent co-arising are hard to see. This state, too, is hard to see: the resolution of all fabrications, the relinquishment of all acquisitions, the ending of craving; dispassion; cessation; Unbinding. And if I were to teach the Dhamma and if others would not understand me, that would be tiresome for me, troublesome for me.”Just then these verses, unspoken in the past, unheard before, occurred to the Blessed One:

Enough now with teaching
     what
     only with difficulty
     I reached.
This Dhamma is not easily realized
by those overcome
with aversion & passion.

What is abstruse, subtle,
     deep,
     hard to see,
going against the flow —
those delighting in passion,
cloaked in the mass of darkness,
     won’t see.

As the Blessed One reflected thus, his mind inclined to dwelling at ease, not to teaching the Dhamma.
— [SN 6.1]

The Brahma Sahampati perceived what the Buddha was thinking, and he knew the magnitude of this decision by the Buddha:

Then Brahma Sahampati, having known with his own awareness the line of thinking in the Blessed One’s awareness, thought: “The world is lost! The world is destroyed! The mind of the Tathagata, the Arahant, the Rightly Self-awakened One inclines to dwelling at ease, not to teaching the Dhamma!”
— [SN 6.1]

Fortunately for us, Brahma Sahampati convinced the Buddha to teach:

Then the Blessed One, having understood Brahma’s invitation, out of compassion for beings, surveyed the world with the eye of an Awakened One. As he did so, he saw beings with little dust in their eyes and those with much, those with keen faculties and those with dull, those with good attributes and those with bad, those easy to teach and those hard, some of them seeing disgrace and danger in the other world. Just as in a pond of blue or red or white lotuses, some lotuses — born and growing in the water — might flourish while immersed in the water, without rising up from the water; some might stand at an even level with the water; while some might rise up from the water and stand without being smeared by the water — so too, surveying the world with the eye of an Awakened One, the Blessed One saw beings with little dust in their eyes and those with much, those with keen faculties and those with dull, those with good attributes and those with bad, those easy to teach and those hard, some of them seeing disgrace and danger in the other world.
— [SN 6.1]

This passage about beings “with little dust in their eyes” is one of the most iconic in the Buddhist Canon.

So here we are, on a little planet that is about 4.5 billion years old. It has been 13.82 billion years since the Big Bang. A Buddha has not only arisen, more importantly, he decided to teach. And here we are, not only with the Dharma available to us, we have more Dharma resources available than you can imagine. There are thousands of Dharma talks online. The Pāli Canon is online. We have wonderful English translations of the Buddha’s discourses available to us. Even when I started practicing a little more than 30 years ago, none of this was true. It is an incomprehensible miracle.

The Buddha himself addressed what a miracle the appearance of a Buddha is:

“Monks, suppose that this great earth were totally covered with water, and a man were to toss a yoke with a single hole there. A wind from the east would push it west, a wind from the west would push it east. A wind from the north would push it south, a wind from the south would push it north. And suppose a blind sea-turtle were there. It would come to the surface once every one hundred years. Now what do you think: would that blind sea-turtle, coming to the surface once every one hundred years, stick his neck into the yoke with a single hole?”
“It would be a sheer coincidence, lord, that the blind sea-turtle, coming to the surface once every one hundred years, would stick his neck into the yoke with a single hole.”

“It’s likewise a sheer coincidence that one obtains the human state. It’s likewise a sheer coincidence that a Tathagata, worthy & rightly self-awakened, arises in the world. It’s likewise a sheer coincidence that a doctrine & discipline expounded by a Tathagata appears in the world. Now, this human state has been obtained. A Tathagata, worthy & rightly self-awakened, has arisen in the world. A doctrine & discipline expounded by a Tathagata appears in the world.

“Therefore your duty is the contemplation, ‘This is stress… This is the origination of stress… This is the cessation of stress.’ Your duty is the contemplation, ‘This is the path of practice leading to the cessation of stress.’”
— [SN 56.48]

Being able to practice the Dharma is priceless beyond compare, and to say that it is an unlikely event would be the greatest understatement possible.

Wishing you joy, peace, and happiness.

 

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Perspective

Posted on September 12, 2024 by EricKVanHorn

Most of us—even as Buddhists—live with our minds in the weeds. There is nothing wrong with that, but at a certain point it is useful to get out of the weeds, to soar up to 10,000 feet, and to look at life with the breathtaking, cosmic view of life that the Buddha gave us. It gives us an awe-inspiring perspective on existence. It puts everything into a much larger context. And here it is.

A Life of the Universe

Let’s start with the Sanskrit word “kalpa.” In Pāli the word is “kappa.” The word “kalpa” is usually translated as “eon.” In the modern-day Buddhist understanding, this means a life of the universe.

It is only in recent decades that modern science has come to embrace the notion that there is not a single Big Bang. There is a Big Bang. Then the universe expands, and eventually it contracts. Ajahn Brahmali calls this contraction the “Big Crunch.” Then there is another Big Bang, and the process repeats itself.

This takes a long time. There are estimates that the life of the universe will be between 1 trillion and 100 trillion years.

In this understanding, time is cyclical, and time is infinite. To be sure, these are more modern Buddhist interpretations of time, but I think they reflect language that is more evolved than the Buddha had available to him. In the India of the time, they did not have a word for infinity. He called it “time without discernable beginning.” There is a chapter in the Saṃyutta Nikāya that is devoted to this subject. It is chapter 15, the Anamatagga Saṃyutta, “Connected Discourses on Without Discernable Beginning.”

The Buddha reflected on this in the first watch of the night when he became enlightened:

“When my concentrated mind was thus purified, bright, unblemished, rid of imperfection, malleable, wieldy, steady, and attained to imperturbability, I directed it to knowledge of the recollection of past lives. I recollected my manifold past lives, that is, one birth, two births, three births, four births, five births, ten births, twenty births, thirty births, forty births, fifty births, a hundred births, a thousand births, a hundred thousand births, many eons of world-contraction, many eons of world-expansion, many eons of world-contraction and expansion: ‘There I was so named, of such a clan, with such an appearance, such was my nutriment, such my experience of pleasure and pain, such my life-term; and passing away from there, I reappeared elsewhere; and there too I was so named, of such a clan, with such an appearance, such was my nutriment, such my experience of pleasure and pain, such my life-term; and passing away from there, I reappeared here.’ Thus with their aspects and particulars I recollected my manifold past lives.”
— [MN 4.2]

This puts our lives into a different perspective. Ajahn Chah once used this simile. He compared our current lives to holding a hand in front of your face. All you can see is the hand. This is how we normally view our lives. All we can see is this life. We can see our jobs and our relationships and our bank accounts.

But if you hold your hand as far away from your face as possible, you can see all sorts of other things. You can see the sky. You can see the mountains and the forest. The hand looks small and everything else dominates your field of vision.

It is not as if these worldly things do not matter. Of course they do. But the reason that they are important is not because they have inherent value. They don’t. They are important because they are the context in which we live. What is important is how we relate to these things and how we interact with them. They are—as they say in Zen—the scenery of our lives. And how we think, speak, and act is what is important. They have consequences. They determine our future.

And that brings us to the second word that we will discuss, sīla.

Virtue

The word “sila” is often translated as “ethics” or “morality.” But I prefer the word “virtue.” In the Noble Eightfold Path, it is right conduct. The reason that I prefer the word “virtue” is because the words “ethics” and “morality” have so much cultural baggage. We think that they are a burden. But in the Buddhist way of thinking, they are the path to happiness.
A simple way to think about this is to remember when you did something nice for someone. How did that make you feel? I am guessing that it made you happy. This is the Buddhist notion of virtue. You not only do something nice, you feel good about it.

In the Buddha’s teaching, a healthy sense of self comes from the practice of virtue. Now you may know that the Buddha taught non-self, which he did. “Non-self” means that there is nothing in you that is permanent and unchanging. There is no soul. You are a process, more like a weather system than a rock. But before you can have any insight into non-self, you must have a healthy sense of self. That comes from virtuous behavior. And virtue is one of the four factors that the Buddha said leads to stream entry, which is the first of the four stages of enlightenment:

“Bhikkhunīs, a noble disciple who possesses four things is a stream-enterer, no longer bound to the nether world, fixed in destiny, with enlightenment as her destination. What four? Here, bhikkhunīs, a noble disciple possesses confirmed confidence in the Buddha thus: ‘The Blessed One is the teacher of devas and humans, the Enlightened One, the Blessed One.’ She possesses confirmed confidence in the Dhamma. She possesses confirmed confidence in the Saṅgha. She possesses the virtues dear to the noble ones, unbroken, untorn, unblemished, unmottled, freeing, praised by the wise, ungrasped, leading to concentration.”
— [SN 55.11]

And then, there is this:

Happiness is virtue lasting through old age.
— [Dhp 303]

Karma

This brings us to the issue of karma.

You may know that the Buddha taught the phenomena of emptiness. Emptiness means that in the physical world, we live in an endless stream of causes and effects. Things only exist if the causes and conditions are in place for their existence. Galaxies merge. Stars are born. Stars explode into supernovas. One day our sun will go supernova. Earth will disintegrate. Such is the cosmic dance of the universe. It has been going on throughout time “without discernable beginning.”

Emptiness is the principle of cause and effect as it applies to the physical universe. Non-self is the principle of cause and effect coupled with sīla. This applies to us as living beings.
See what a contrast this is to the idea of a creator God. There is no creator because there is no creation. There is no God to make decisions about where you end up when you die, either. There is no Judgment Day because there is no end of time, and there is no one to judge. There is no Rapture. There is not even the notion of death. There is simply the infinite cycle of rebirth. Death is just the next moment. And for what it is worth—and I must get this in here—even if there were a powerful God, that being would not care about your football team. I mean, really? Have you seen the photographs from the James Webb Space Telescope? No one overseeing all that would care who scores next.

To be sure there are some powerful gods in Buddhism. They don’t care about your football team, either. And they are subject to the same laws of rebirth as human beings are. They live their lives as gods, then they, too, are reborn in another realm.

So, in a cosmos of rebirth and infinite time, what determines our rebirth? What determines where we end up next? The answer is karma. And this is why our actions in this existence are so important.

We are constantly creating new karma. All of us have good and bad karma. If we did not, then we would not be reborn, but we will come to that.

So when we do something nice, we create good karma. And when we do something harmful, we create bad karma. When we die, some aspect of our karma manifests. If good karma manifests, we have an auspicious rebirth. If bad karma manifests, we have an inauspicious rebirth.

Karma is not deterministic. A good person can manifest bad karma and vice versa. But the more good karma you have, the more likely it is that you will have a good rebirth. You are playing the lottery with a lot of numbers. And while this is a bit of a technical point, if you die with gratitude and an aspiration to practice the Dharma, you will be in good shape. Your next moment will be sweet.

Dying is suffering. But once you die, if you are a good person, that suffering ends, at least for the moment. Ajahn Brahmali says that for a Buddhist, death is a pleasant experience.

The backdrop to all of this is the Buddhist view of the cosmos. There are what I like to call the six categories of realms. It is more complicated than that, but this explanation will do for our purposes. There are 1) the hell realms, 2) the animal realm, 3) the hungry ghost realm, 4) the human realm, 5) the deva heavenly realms, and 6) the Brahma heavenly realms. The hungry ghost realm is for beings who have insatiable craving, like the billionaires who are always trying to make more money and are never satisfied, no matter how much they have.

According to the Buddha, if we do not become enlightened, we are destined to go up and down through these six realms. No matter how good you think you are now, if you do not become enlightened, inevitably you will fall from grace. You will do bad things. You will cause a lot of suffering. You will even be reborn in one of the hell realms.

I recently saw a YouTube video in which a rock band made fun of going to hell. But if you read the graphic descriptions of hell in the Buddhist texts, you would never make light of that. Think of terrifying torture. Imagine your limbs being cut off with a chainsaw or your eyes being burned out with a torch. Then imagine that this goes on for thousands of years. It is not something to joke about.

And if this sounds too punitive and Christian, then so be it. It is just a description of reality. The good news is that this can all be avoided.

And this is why becoming enlightened is so important. This endless round of rebirths up and down through the realms is saṃsara. This is why if you do not devote yourself to Dharma practice, not only will your life inevitably be miserable, you won’t be doing much good, either. You will be a part of the problem. You will be adding to the suffering.

If you think about this, you will see that this is the problem with the idea of a Boddhisatva. According to the Buddha, you have two choices. One choice is that you become enlightened. Even attaining the first stage of enlightenment means that you will become fully enlightened in no more than seven lifetimes, and you will not be reborn in one of the three lower realms:

“Those who have cognized the noble truths
well taught by the one of deep wisdom,
even if they are extremely heedless,
do not take an eighth existence.
This too is the sublime gem in the Sangha:
by this truth, may there be safety!

“Together with one’s achievement of vision
three things are discarded:
the view of the personal entity and doubt,
and whatever good behavior and observances there are.
One is also freed from the four planes of misery
and is incapable of doing six deeds.
This too is the sublime gem in the Sangha:
by this truth, may there be safety!”
— [Sn 2.1.203-204]

(The “four planes of misery” include the three lower realms plus one called the “asuras.” The asuras exist in something of a no-man’s land.)

So if you do not become enlightened, inevitably you will not be a good person. You will be reborn in one of the lower realms. And even if you are born in the human realm, you will suffer and so will those around you.

There is one more important aspect to this cosmology, and that is if you do become enlightened, what happens? Is enlightenment just a selfish way of escaping the rounds of rebirth and suffering? What happens to everyone else?

There are two answers to this question.

The first answer is that pursuing the Dharma is like training to become a mountain guide. Mountain guides have a lot of skills. They know how to fend for themselves. They know how to take care of you. And they know how to get you from one place to another. This takes skill. It takes training, and it takes work.

Becoming a disciple of the Buddha is like that. If you want to help others, you must become more skillful yourself. You must become more kind. You must become more patient. You must know how to think, speak, and act in a beneficial way.

According to the Buddha, the problem isn’t “out there.” It is “in here.” You cannot manipulate the world to become perfect. Now of course, when we can, we do what we can to make the world a better place. Certainly. That is part of being a virtuous person. But the world is a big place, and it is going to be the way it is. As I write this, there are 6.5 billion people in the world. Imagine how many beings there are in the entire cosmos. Now think about the worst people you know. Politicians are a good place to start. There are nazis. There are violent, misguided people everywhere.

And even if we could somehow manipulate the world to be the way we want, what does that even mean? Do we have the skill to make the world perfect? We would be in conflict even with people with whom we largely agree, much less those who hate us.

So we turn our attention inwards. We become the best people we can. We become beacons in dark places. We become mountain guides of goodness. We become compassionate, loving, and—this is the big one—wise. We know how to get people through the mountains, especially those around us who are going through a tough time.

Thich Nhat Hanh used to tell this story. In an incident that has been somewhat lost to history, in 1976 and 1977 many refugees fled the tyranny of the political regime in Cambodia. They left in overloaded, flimsy, rotting boats, many of which sank, and many thousands of people died.

However, some boats survived, and afterward someone studied why certain boats made it and some did not. There was one common denominator, and that was if there was just one person on a boat who did not panic, that boat had a very high chance of success.

I think that one reason that people shrink from this perspective is that it puts the responsibility squarely on our shoulders. This seems daunting. It is easier to blame everyone else. It is easy to blame what is going on “out there.” To be sure, virtue is enormously rewarding, but it may take some time to see the happiness that comes from simply being a good person. Do something nice for someone and see how that makes you feel. Now, keep doing that. This is karma manifesting not in some future life, but here and now. Good deeds bring good results.

To be sure, things don’t always work out. You will do something nice for someone with the best of intentions, and the result will not be great. Of course. This is not some sugar-coated version of reality. Things did not always work out for the Buddha, either. So keep your expectations in check, and go easy on yourself.

So that is the first response to those who think that this is a selfish path.

The other answer is something that I have only heard referenced a few times in my decades of Buddhist practice. I think that there are subjects that many advanced disciples of the Buddha avoid because they seem too exotic. To be sure, I have discussed some of them here. But I have noticed in recent years that some of these formerly taboo subjects are now being taught more frequently.

I have heard both Ayya Khema and Ajahn Brahmali talk about this, and that is that when we become enlightened, we become part of a fabric of goodness in the universe. It is the cosmic ether. This is nirvāṇa. Evil rises and falls. But evil is like blips on the radar screen. Goodness is what is permanent and constant. It is always there, and it is always available. It is also—in the classic teachings of the Buddha—unconditioned. In a universe of emptiness and impermanence, it is the one thing that is always there.

You will hear that nirvāṇa and saṃsara are the same thing. But that is not what the Buddha taught. Saṃsara is conditioned. Its root cause is ignorance, especially of what we have been discussing here. If everyone knew the consequences of their actions, the world would be a different place. And no one would make light of being reborn in hell.

But Nirvāṇa is unconditioned:

“There is, monks, an unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned. If, monks there were not that unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned, you could not know an escape here from the born, become, made, and conditioned. But because there is an unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned, therefore you do know an escape from the born, become, made, and conditioned.”
— [Ud 8.3]

When we awaken, we contribute to the cosmic ether in a way that benefits all beings. We make the whole of existence better. This is the ultimate way to be of service and to make things better. This is the final answer to why enlightenment is far from being selfish. You cannot do anything better. It is perfection.

If all this blows your mind, you are in good company. It blows my mind, too. It is a lot to digest. But it is a valuable thing on which to reflect. The stakes are high. Of course. But they could not be more rewarding. The happiness and joy that the Dharma promises is beyond compare:

“Bhikkhus, suppose there were a man with a life span of a hundred years, who could live a hundred years. Someone would say to him: ‘Come, good man, in the morning they will strike you with a hundred spears; at noon they will strike you with a hundred spears; in the evening they will strike you with a hundred spears. And you, good man, being struck day after day by three hundred spears will have a life span of a hundred years, will live a hundred years; and then, after a hundred years have passed, you will make the breakthrough to the Four Noble Truths, to which you had not broken through earlier.’

“It is fitting, bhikkhus, for a clansman intent on his good to accept the offer. For what reason? Because this saṃsāra is without discoverable beginning; a first point cannot be discerned of blows by spears, blows by swords, blows by axes. And even though this may be so, bhikkhus, I do not say that the breakthrough to the Four Noble Truths is accompanied by suffering or displeasure. Rather, the breakthrough to the Four Noble Truths is accompanied only by happiness and joy. What four? The noble truth of suffering, the noble truth of the origin of suffering, the noble truth of the cessation of suffering, and the noble truth of the way leading to the cessation of suffering.

“Therefore, bhikkhus, an exertion should be made to understand: ‘This is suffering, this is the origin of suffering, this is the cessation of suffering, and this is the way leading to the cessation of suffering.’”
— [SN 56.35]

Wishing you peace, joy, and happiness.

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Peace

Posted on August 29, 2024 by EricKVanHorn

I heard a Dharma talk recently by Ajahn Brahmali—the vice-abbot of Bodhinyana Monastery—in which he discussed how simple and accessible the Buddha’s teachings are. To be sure, that is not always the case. The teaching on dependent origination is particularly deep. It is the quantum physics of Buddhism. Nonetheless, most of the Buddha’s teachings are quite simple and straightforward.

But because something is simple, that does not mean that it is easy. The idea of hitting a baseball is about as simple as it gets. You see the ball and you hit the ball. Yet the most accomplished major league baseball players only get a hit 30% of the time.

The Buddha’s teachings are like that. And because they are so straightforward and direct, it is easy to trivialize them. When you speak, speak the truth. How often do we tell little white lies? Do not speak harshly. How often do we violate that one? Do not cause discord in the community and do not speak idly. How much of our speech is unnecessary? Most of it.

So putting the Buddha’s teachings into practice requires wise intentions to do the right thing, and it requires skill and practice. Old habits die hard. We must respect the depth of our conditioning while working patiently and persistently to change it.

One of the teachings to which I return repeatedly is that the greatest happiness comes from peace. It is a curiously simple statement. Really? Not a new car? Not a great job? Not an attractive partner?

This is from the Dhammapada:

There is no fire like lust,
No misfortune like hate,
No suffering like the aggregates,
And no happiness higher than peace.
— [Dhp 202]

There is… no happiness higher than peace.

Most of us have experienced peace in our lives, even if it is momentary. I am fortunate to live in New Mexico, where there are some extraordinary places in which to experience peace. Jemez Falls. The Gila Wilderness. Chaco Canyon. You can look them up. This is the Land of Enchantment. You have probably been places like these, too.

And in those rare moments when we do experience peace, the mind will pull back. The mind’s sense of self is under attack. Its existence feels threatened. The mind is not used to that, and it fights back.

But the Buddha encouraged us to cultivate this sense of stillness and peace. He encouraged us to work against our normal conditioning. Our conditioning runs deep, and it is powerful. Anyone who has tried to stop the mind from thinking knows this.

But if we can tune into those rare moments when we experience peace, we get a glimpse into the promise of nirvana. We can cultivate and grow this greatest happiness. The sense of self disappears. It is replaced by freedom from suffering. There is only joy. There is only stillness, silence, and serenity. We are in harmony with the world. And if there is no self, there is no one to suffer.

Wishing you peace.

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Happy New Year

Posted on January 2, 2024 by EricKVanHorn

As we start a new year, I have seen a lot of angst from various sources, emails, online forums, and so on. And I get it. The world is a mess. Of course. I just checked the news, and Rick DeSantis wants to blow up the Bahamas. Mercy.

But I am wondering… has the world ever really been any different? I know that a lot of people think this time is the worst it has ever been. But we can never have a historical perspective on our own time. I often invite people who think that way to read Barbara Tuckman’s book A Distant Mirror. If you think things are a mess now, check out the Middle Ages. And even within the last century, what have we seen? My second decade in this life saw three major assassinations: John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy. There was the Viet Nam War. People were killed trying to register voters in Mississippi. There was the Cuban missile crisis. I was in elementary school, and I remember sitting on the bus on my way to school and wondering if we were all going to die that day.

My mother was a child of the Depression. That was hard enough. But I also remember her telling me about being in a car driving down the road one day. She was listening to the radio when the broadcast was interrupted by the news that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. She was shocked and terrified. My father was from a previous generation. He was 12 years old when the United States entered the First World War. What a hot mess that was. Look it up.

And so it goes. But from a Buddhist perspective, this is all business as usual. It is called the First Noble Truth, the Noble Truth of stress and suffering. This is the inevitable reality of the human realm. Now, it isn’t all terrible. Those who say that the Buddha taught that “life is suffering” do not properly understand the Buddha’s teaching on dukkha. The Buddha never said that “life is suffering,” only that there is suffering. There is a big difference. Life can also be full of joy, and… we will get to that.

For Christmas this year my daughter got me a book called Humans. It is what it sounds like. It is photographs and stories of people from around the world. And as I flipped through it, I was reminded of something I often say. I have lived in many different places, I have visited many different places, and I have met many people from many different backgrounds. And when I think about those experiences, I am always struck by how many good people there are in the world.

Most of the people I have met pretty much want the same things. They want to be able to live comfortably. They want to have a good family life. They certainly want peace and stability. They are good people, and that has held true no matter what their gender, sexual preference, nationality, religion, height, weight, eye color, or any other way you want to differentiate between people.

For people in the U.S. our favorite punching bag in recent years has been Muslims. But some years ago I went to a retreat at the Omega Institute in New York. There were actually several different retreats going on at the same time, and one of them was a group of Sufi Muslims. I still remember them as being one of the most beautiful groups of people I have ever been around. They were so kind and so loving and so peaceful. And it so happens that one of the most enlightened periods in India’s history was when the Sufi Muslims were in charge. The same was true in Spain. The Sufi Muslims in Spain even sent a Jewish ambassador to Germany. So when I hear people intimate that somehow Muslims are inherently violent, all I can think of is those kind, loving Sufis, and I think a lot of Buddhists have something to learn from how those Sufis go through life.

Sometimes in life we ask the wrong questions. I listened to a New Year’s Eve talk by Ajahn Brahm on Sunday. Ajahn Brahm is the abbot of Bodhinyana Monastery in Serpentine, Australia. He made the point that it is more important to be harmonious than right. That is a very Buddhist perspective. We get so caught up in proving we are “right” that we forget what the consequences of that are. There has been war in the Middle East since before I was born. Many people have died and many people have suffered. But the race to be “right” is overwhelmed by a larger and more important question. How long do you want this to go on? For how many more generations do you want people to die and suffer? If you care more about being right than you do about living in peace and harmony, then knock yourself out. This will go on indefinitely. And if you think that what you have been doing will somehow have a different and better outcome in the future—whatever that looks like—remember Albert Einstein’s famous quote: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” Your choice.

I recently saw a video from someone on one side of the Middle East conflict. I won’t even say which side he is on because it doesn’t matter. He said that he wanted the “other side” to know how much he had suffered. That is the wrong perspective. He should be saying, “What I can I do to make things better?” We don’t have control over what others think and do. We only have control over what we think and do. If other people act in a harmful way, that is on them. But we can always act with kindness and compassion and wisdom and patience and generosity. That is on us, and that is a very good thing.

The world is the way it is. It is going to be however it is going to be. And of course I don’t know what the future holds. Maybe climate change will wipe out the human race. But maybe the human race will be replaced by something better. The Buddhist texts have some rather interesting discourses about beings at different times in the course of history. Sometimes beings have very short lives. Sometimes they are unimaginably long. In the Buddha’s teachings, time is not linear. It is cyclical. It is infinite. The Buddha called it “beginningless time.” We have already lived an infinite number of lives, and unless we become enlightened, that cycle will continue.

Now I am not normally one to make New Year’s resolutions. But given all this angst about the situation in the world, it made me think. What is a proper New Year’s resolution for someone like me? What is an appropriate New Year’s resolution for a disciple of the Buddha?

The answer is to do what any disciple of the Buddha always tries to do, and I will put it into New Year’s resolution terms. By this time next year, I hope that I will be a better person. I hope that I will be more kind and be more generous. I hope to continue to live my life with gratitude. And I certainly hope that I am wiser, happier, more contented, more joyful, and more at peace.

Life isn’t about what happens “out there.” In Zen they say that world events are the scenery of your life. But there you are, center stage. What kind of a performance are you going to give? Are you going to pay attention to the person who bags your groceries? Are you going to give something to the homeless person at the next intersection? Are you going to be patient with someone who mistreats you?

This is the way the Buddha taught, and it isn’t just some arduous task where virtue is a terrible burden. A good person is a happy person.

Some years ago I was feeling a little flush financially, so I went out to GoFundMe. There was a teenage girl trying to raise money so that she could apply for DACA—Dreamer—status in order to become a United States citizen. I did not know this until then, but in order to apply for DACA, there is an application fee of $500, and there are legal expenses that run to another $300. Now as you can probably imagine, coming up with $800 for an undocumented teenager is a pretty tall order. I saw that she had raised some money from small donations. But those donations had dried up about 8 days before I went out to GoFundMe, and she was $393 short. So I gave it to her.

It is funny that I still remember how positively gleeful I felt about this. For most of my life I have had to be careful with money. But now, at this late stage of my life, I am a little more comfortable financially, and this lets me give some of it away. And few things in life have given me more pleasure than thinking about that young lady and how I was able to change her life. How often do you get to do something like that?

And I am not telling you this to make you think what a great person I am. In fact, doing things like this bring me so much joy and happiness that I almost consider them a guilty pleasure. And if I have one additional resolution for this year, it is to once again make a difference in someone’s life.

If you live in this way, if you put your effort into being the best person you can be, and if you are always on the lookout to make a difference in someone else’s life, I don’t know how you cannot be happy. The issue is not what is going on “out there.” It is what is going in “in here.”

Wishing you joy, peace, and happiness in the coming year.

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Wesak 2022

Posted on May 16, 2022 by EricKVanHorn

Today is Wesak day, which is the most important day in the Buddhist calendar. It is the first full moon day in May. According to the Buddhist tradition, the Buddha was born on this day, he attained enlightenment on this day, and he passed away on this day.

Somewhat in honor of Wesak 2022, I have rewritten a paper I wrote years ago called “What the Buddha Taught“. It is a tribute to the depth and breadth of the Buddha’s teaching that this topic is not easily described. Some years ago I wrote a completely different paper with this same name, but I was never happy with it.

I think this one is somewhat better. Let me know what you think. You can also access it from the Papers and Project tab.

Happy Wesak.

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Turning 70

Posted on January 25, 2022 by EricKVanHorn

I turn 70 next month and this seems like a particularly auspicious birthday. Of course, for me that is not saying much. Birthdays have not had much meaning for me in the past. I remember one year I was at work preparing to go home when I suddenly realized that it was my birthday! So needless to say, birthdays have not been a big event for me.

Bur turning 70 feels different, and I think that is because it feels like a real cause for celebration. I have had an extraordinary life, one that I could not even have imagined when I was a child. I grew up in a rather sheltered way, and yet I have gone on to a great life with great adventures.

But having said that, it could have gone terribly wrong.

Yesterday I was driving through the Cottonwood district of Albuquerque. I go through there a lot, and there are often homeless people there asking for help. Curiously the Pāli word for monk is “bhikkhu,” which literally means beggar.

So I was stopped at a red light and I offered up a $5 bill to just such a homeless person. But when I looked into his eyes, I did not see an “other” person. I saw myself. I felt like I was looking into a different manifestation of me.

This is, of course, what the Buddhist teachings tell us. Whatever person or animal or any being you see, you have been that person in the past. You may be that person in the future.

Like most people my life has had its ups and downs. Life can be like walking on a narrow plank. If you step one way you fall into misery and despair. If you step the other way you land in joy and happiness. And I have had times in my life where it all could have gone terribly, disastrously wrong.

I think that is why when I see someone like my homeless friend, or someone who is in despair—even committed suicide—or in prison, I think about what my Christian brothers and sisters say: “There but for the grace of God go I.”

But for whatever reason, whenever I was on the brink of disaster, something happened to save me. And the greatest thing that saved me was the Dharma, and the Dharma is the greatest savior of all.

The world is a very uncertain place. Does anyone not believe that? This is the Buddha’s teaching on impermanence, inconstancy.

Look at where we are now. The pandemic. Political instability. Climate change.

But has the world really ever been different? When I hear people talk about how bad things are, I invite them to read Barbara Tuckman’s book A Distant Mirror. If you think things are bad now, take a look at the Middle Ages. Even in our recent past we had Nazis and the First World War. It goes on and on and on back through time. And someday the sun will go supernova. The whole planet will blow up. That is really going to ruin your day.

But inside of all this incredible chaos is shelter from the storm. In Buddhism we call them the Three Refuges: the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Saṇgha.

I have always loved the image of a refuge. I lived in New England for most of my life, and New England is largely a story of the sea. The coast is full of refuges, safe harbors. Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Portland, Maine. Salem, Gloucester, Marblehead, and Boston in Massachusetts. There are the iconic whaling harbors of Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, and New Bedford.

When you see these places from land, they look one way. But when you see them from the vastness of the ocean, they look quite different. If you were a sailor in the 19th century, you may have spent two or three years on the uncertainty of the oceans. It is quite the metaphor for life.

But then you arrive home. There it is, the glassy stillness, serenity, and safety of Salem Harbor.

This is what the Three Refuges are. They are the one place of safety in a dangerous, uncertain world.

There is a great deal of comfort in that. But it isn’t some superficial kind of comfort. It is substantial. We look around at all of the uncertainties of life. It is just as the reflection on the Five Subjects for Frequent Recollection [AN 5.57] tells us:

I am of the nature to age, I have not gone beyond aging.

I am of the nature to sicken, I have not gone beyond sickness.

I am of the nature to die, I have not gone beyond dying.

All that is mine, beloved and pleasing, will become otherwise, will become separated from me.

I find that last line particularly poignant. Everything you know will disappear. Everyone you know will die. The planet itself will vaporize.

And yet, there is this great big, warm security blanket. And it is reliable. It is constant. It is the glassy stillness of Salem harbor. And ultimately it brings us to final liberation and release from the relentless wandering through the uncertain existence that is saṃsara.

But as the infomercials tell us, wait! There’s more! And that is the unimaginable joy that Dharma practice brings us.

Because of the way that the Dharma is sometimes couched, it feels rather negative. We hear a lot about renunciation. We see monks and nuns who are celibate. They only eat one meal a day. They live in little huts and only wear simple robes. It seems pretty dismal, from the outside, at least.

But as your practice deepens—and I truly hope that you get to experience this if you have not already—there is a joy that goes way beyond anything you can experience in the conventional world. The pleasures of the conventional world seem gross and even revolting. The Pāli word is nibidda. It means “revulsion.”

A way to understand this is through food. Suppose you ate at this wonderful, world class restaurant and you had this amazing meal. And the next day your only option was to eat at McDonald’s.

This world class restaurant is the joy of a deep Dharma practice.

The Three Refuges are also called “The Three Jewels.” I remember years ago reading a description of The Three Jewels by a Tibetan lama. I think he was a tulku, a reincarnate lama. And the way in which he described The Three Jewels was so vibrant that it felt to me that this was not just some metaphor for him. He really saw The Three Jewels as literal jewels. They were overwhelmingly bright and dazzling and sparkling. They dominated his space like bright sunlight.

Ayya Khema uses this image to practice metta, lovingkindness. She invites us to imagine a bright sun glowing in our hearts and minds, our citta. This light is metta. It fills our whole being. We are completely immersed in it. It shines on everyone without discrimination. It makes us radiate with lovingkindness. We are lovingkindness. In fact, we disappear. There is only metta.

And as your practice deepens, you may experience metta in just that way. You may experience The Three Jewels in just that way. And the world, with all of its uncertainties, pain, anger, hostility, violence, and greed… it all falls away.

A lot of people criticize this as being escapist. Yes! It is! It is escaping from the prison of saṃsara. If you were in an actual prison, wouldn’t you want to get out?

And when you do escape, as Ayya Khema once intimated, you enter the world of nirvāṇa. Nirvāṇa lies beyond time and space. It is the very fabric of being, or perhaps more properly, non-being. In entering that world, your boundless love, compassion, and wisdom also become part of the fabric of being/non-being. And from that, all beings throughout time and space benefit.

In this context, wearing robes and eating one meal a day and abstaining from sex hardly matter. I mean, crikey.

The fact is, I may not make it to 70. It is still nearly a month away as I write this. This, too, is a teaching of the Buddha. We are only, perhaps, ever a moment away from this life ending. But it is not really an ending, is it? It is just a transition from this life to the next. But the good news, especially if we have found and practiced the Dharma, is that we take that with us. In fact, it is the only thing we take with us. Whatever good qualities we have developed, our kindness, our compassion, our wisdom and generosity, they go with us. The goodness we have received from good friends, that we take with us. And that is a cause for joy, not grief. It is a cause for celebration.

And so as I face 70—ailing, creaky body and all—I celebrate.

Posted in Buddhist practice, Teachings of the Buddha | 2 Comments

Thich Nhat Hahn

Posted on January 25, 2022 by EricKVanHorn

Thich Nhat Hahn—“Thây” to his students—died a few days ago on January 22. He was one of the great Buddhist monks and figures of the 20th century. And I was very blessed to have had him as one of my earliest teachers when I started practicing in the 1990’s.

In any life, you have to feel blessed to have just one person in your life like a Thich Nhat Hahn. I have been extremely blessed to have had more than one of them. That is why it is impossible for me to live even one day without boundless gratitude.

There is a famous passage in the Pāli Canon in which the Buddha’s attendant Ānanda says that good friendship is “half of the holy life.” The Buddha replies that it is, in fact, the entire holy life:

[Ānanda:] “Venerable sir, this is half of the holy life, that is, good friendship, good companionship, good comradeship.”

[Buddha:] “Not so, Ānanda! Not so, Ānanda! This is the entire holy life, Ānanda, that is, good friendship, good companionship, good comradeship. When a bhikkhu has a good friend, a good companion, a good comrade, it is to be expected that he will develop and cultivate the Noble Eightfold Path.”
— [SN 45.2]

In a Buddhist sense, good friendship is friendship with an arahant, someone who is fully awakened. This is because an arahant opens us up to the possibilities of life. We can see a living manifestation of the Dharma. “Oh,” we say, “life could be like this. I could be like this.” All those ideals of the Dharma go from being vague possibilities to being living realities.

Thây was like that. He was a living embodiment of the Dharma. He didn’t express lovingkindness, he was lovingkindness. The Dharma didn’t come from him, it flowed through him.

I watched his funerary rites last evening on YouTube, and I was struck by several things. First and foremost was simply how beautiful it all was. The monks and nuns were wearing pristine robes. The Dharma Hall was immaculate. The lay people were neat and clean and reverent.

But I also did not detect any sadness. This was not grief over something lost, but the celebration of something great. Death has a central role in Buddhist practice. There is this old joke that Buddhists spend their entire lives preparing for death, and there is some truth to that. It was the contemplation of death that led, in fact, to the Buddha’s own spiritual quest.

The Buddha famously was born into a life of wealth, power, and privilege. But when he considered the inevitably of his own death, all of this seemed meaningless:

But I too am subject to death, not safe from death, and so it cannot befit me to be shocked, humiliated and disgusted on seeing another who is dead.’ When I considered this, the vanity of life entirely left me.”
— [AN 3:38]

Ajahn Brahm says that when he was in Thailand, his monastery was the only place in that area that could perform funeral rites, so he got to see a lot of them. But he also says that in the many years he was part of those rites, he never saw anyone express grief.

For a Buddhist death is simply a part of the cycle of life. According to the Buddha’s teachings, we are born, we live, we die, and then we are reborn. To mourn death is like mourning the winter. Spring always follows. There is nothing to mourn.

And when someone passes out of our lives, no one can take away from us the goodness and kindness we received from that person.

There is this lovely story in the Pāli Canon that speaks to this issue. It is an exchange between the Buddha and Ānanda after Sāriputta died. Ānanda and Sāriputta were very close. They famously solved a dispute at the monastery at Kosambī. And Ānanda revered Sāriputta. He was very devoted to him, But Ānanda—at the time of Sāriputta’s death—was “only” a stream-enterer. He was not fully awakened. He still had defilements. And when Sāriputta died, Ānanda was overwhelmed with grief.

This is from my biography of the Buddha:

“
Once when the Buddha was staying at Jetavana, Sāriputta’s younger brother Cunda came to visit him. He gave the Buddha the news that Sāriputta had died. Ānanda was particularly distraught. The Buddha gave Ānanda some particularly compassionate but poignant advice:

[Ānanda] “Venerable sir, since I heard that the Venerable Sāriputta has attained final nibbāna, my body seems as if it has been drugged, I have become disoriented, the teachings are no longer clear to me.”

“Why, Ānanda, when Sāriputta attained final nibbāna, did he take away your aggregate of virtue, or your aggregate of concentration, or your aggregate of wisdom, or your aggregate of liberation, or your aggregate of the knowledge and vision of liberation?”

“No, he did not, venerable sir. But for me the Venerable Sāriputta was an advisor and counselor, one who instructed, exhorted, inspired, and gladdened me. He was unwearying in teaching the Dhamma; he was helpful to his brothers in the holy life. We recollect the nourishment of Dhamma, the wealth of Dhamma, the help of Dhamma given by the Venerable Sāriputta.”

“But have I not already declared, Ānanda, that we must be parted, separated, and severed from all who are dear and agreeable to us? How, Ānanda, is it to be obtained here: ‘May what is born, come to be, conditioned, and subject to disintegration not disintegrate!’? That is impossible. It is just as if the largest branch would break off a great tree standing possessed of heartwood. So too, Ānanda, in the great Bhikkhu Saṇgha standing possessed of heartwood, Sāriputta has attained final nibbāna. How, Ānanda, is it to be obtained here?

“May what is born, come to be, conditioned, and subject to disintegration not disintegrate? That is impossible.

“Therefore, Ānanda, dwell with yourselves as your own island, with yourselves as your own refuge, with no other refuge; dwell with the Dhamma as your island, with the Dhamma as your refuge, with no other refuge… Those bhikkhus, Ānanda, either now or after I am gone, who dwell with themselves as their own island, with themselves as their own refuge, with no other refuge; who dwell with the Dhamma as their island, with the Dhamma as their refuge, with no other refuge – it is these bhikkhus, Ānanda, who will be for me topmost of those keen on the training.”
— [SN 47.II.3]

The word translated here as “island” is the Pāli word dipa. It can also mean “lamp.” This passage works equally well either way. Be a lamp unto yourself. Be an island, a refuge unto yourself. The Buddha may have once again used the double meaning of a word to poetic effect.

In this particularly beautiful passage we see Ānanda’s reverence for Sāriputta. But the Buddha gently reminded Ānanda that this is the way of the world. Sāriputta’s “attaining final nibbāna” did not deprive Ānanda of any of the merit he had gained through his own efforts. The Buddha urged Ānanda to be his own island, to be a refuge for himself, and to use the Dharma as a refuge. This is one of the most famous passages in Buddhism.
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It was very beautiful for me to see that Thây’s funeral was just such a celebration. He influenced the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Mine was one of them. Thây may be physically gone, but the great gift that he gave to me and so many others can never be taken away. Thank you, Thây. Safe travels.

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