A Good Man, and Oy! What a Memory!

Posted on June 13, 2013 by EricKVanHorn

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The purpose of the Buddhist canonical literature is to preserve the teachings of the Buddha. To that end there is no intent to create a biography of the Buddha, or anyone else.

Having said that, one of the things I love about the canon is how human the people are, how real they are, and there are many lovely anecdotes that give us insights into the people of the Buddha’s time.

Without question one of my favorite people – perhaps my most favorite – is Ānanda.

The bare details of Ānanda’s life are that he was the Buddha’s cousin, although much younger (about 20 years) than the Buddha. When the Buddha started teaching, he had a series of attendants. Eventually the Buddha chose Ānanda as his attendant, and from there on until the Buddha died, Ānanda served in that role.

The more revealing facts about Ānanda are more interesting. Ānanda is in a certain sense everyman, or every person. He asks the Buddha questions that we might ask. He makes mistakes that we might make. He is wonderfully warm, mistake prone, and human.

To be sure, I don’t want to make him out to be some sort of bumbling idiot. In particular Ānanda was supposed to have an extraordinary memory. If you read the many thousands of pages in the Buddhist canonical literature, most of this literature is due to Ānanda remembering it. I used to think this was sort of a folk tale, but we have a modern version of Ānanda. During the Watergate scandal, John Dean remembered details from years and years of meetings: who was there, who said what, and so forth, and this was years after the events occurred. When the White House tapes were discovered, they confirmed absolutely John Dean’s extraordinary memory

It is also hard to tell how much of the characterization of Ānanda in the canon is the result of later revisionism. Ānanda is dealt with quite harshly in some places in the canon. This is most notable in the Parinibbana Sutta. The Parinibbana Sutta is the story of the Buddha’s final days. According to it, three times the Buddha gave Ānanda the opportunity to ask the Buddha to use his will and power to live longer. Ānanda is supposed to have sort of spaced out, not realizing what the Buddha was saying, and thus the Buddha came to die. In a certain sense the sutta accuses Ānanda of being responsible for the Buddha dying. Ouch.

However, when you read the whole of the literature this story seems terribly out of character for Ānanda. One reason that I love Ānanda so much is his completely selfless devotion to the Buddha. Ānanda even short-circuited his own practice in order to serve the Buddha. It is hard to imagine anyone being more devoted to another person than Ānanda was to the Buddha.

So in the context of the whole of the canon, this story does not make much sense. And since according to tradition, the Buddha’s discourses as we have them are largely a result of Ānanda remembering them, how did he come out so badly?

Well, there are two things that come to mind, and the canon itself gives some indication that both of these things are true.

First of all, as the Buddha’s attendant, he was the gatekeeper, like the White House Chief of Staff. If you wanted access to the Buddha, you had to go through Ānanda. And Ānanda, given his complete devotion to the Buddha, was not going to let him be disturbed unless absolutely necessary. Thus, without question there was a lot of jealousy about Ānanda and his privileged position.

The other issue has to do with the ordination of women.

As I have written in the past, the Buddhist tradition has at times been quite shameful in its treatment of women. However, the Buddha himself did ordain women as nuns, which in India at the time was quite revolutionary.

According to the canon, however, it was actually Ānanda who convinced the Buddha to ordain women. The whole issue of the ordination of women in Buddhism is somewhat complicated, but at this point we are concerned mainly with Ānanda’s role, which is as the champion of women in the Dhamma. For this women have always regarded Ānanda in a special way. Even after women started to ordain, Ānanda is supposed to have been particularly supportive of them in their practice, helping to train and instruct them.

However, just as this gave him a special place among them women of the Dhamma, this also served to earn him ill repute among many of the men of the Sangha. Thus, we have a little post-Buddha (and presumably post-Ānanda) revisionism.

I am happy to say that I am not the only person who has come to this conclusion. I have been told that Ajahn Sucitto believes this as well (although to be sure I cannot at the moment find any confirmation of that). Nonetheless it is my opinion (!) that some of the inconsistencies in the canon about how my dear Dhamma brother Ānanda is treated is due, in fact, to his impeccable character, his courage, and his devotion to “Dhamma as truth”. And I don’t think that is much of a stretch. I approached my reading of the canon with “beginner’s mind”. I didn’t have any choice. I came from a place of complete ignorance. That turned out to be a real blessing. I had a mind unsullied by knowledge or experience. Sometimes the things you “know” are the most dangerous.

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Honor… and Humility

Posted on May 25, 2013 by EricKVanHorn

ImageThich Nhat Hanh has this very beautiful teaching about our ancestors. He says that whenever we miss our parents or our grandparents or any of our ancestors, all we have to do is to look into our own hands.

Of course we know about genetics and how we inherit our ancestors’ genes. But we also inherit a tradition and a culture and certain values.

Shortly after I heard Thich Nhat Hanh give this teaching I heard this story that drove his point home. In England some years ago, a pre-historic skeleton was found. A local schoolteacher, as an exercise, had all of his students submit a DNA sample. The objective was to see if any of the students in the class were distantly related to this prehistoric man Almost as an afterthought the teacher himself also submitted a DNA sample, and sure enough, he was related directly to the prehistoric man. How remarkable.

I have this photo of my great-great-great grandmother. Her name was Sarah Boyer. The summer before my mother died she sent it to me. We shared the cost of having it restored. Thus I have both the water-damaged original, plus the version that was restored by a local photo studio.

My sister did a little research on Sarah, and found the census listing for Sarah Boyer from 1870. She was 22 years old then. It is quite something to think of the young Sarah Boyer in 1870. Like anyone who is young and fresh and full of life at that age, she must have been really something. I’ll bet she stole more than a few young men’s hearts.

According to the census data her father made $750 in that year. Even in 1870 that was not very much money. His profession is listed as “farm hand”. My family for generation after generation found life hard and unyielding. It is a story of persistence and forbearance. In the many family photographs I have, there are not very many smiling faces.

As I write this, I sit here having retired early to pursue the life of a spiritual seeker. It is a luxury of sorts. Gandhi used to joke about the fact that his benefactors always complained about how expensive it was to keep him in poverty. I am a college graduate in a family that has only known three of those (not including my children). My mother was only the second person in a family that came to the United States around 1750 to graduate high school, and she had to work as a waitress to pay her way through. My grandparents were very poor, and the only way they could afford to have my mother finish high school was to have her help support the family.

I often think of my ancestors, of how hard life was for them, and how much gratitude I feel toward them. The greatest aspiration in life is to become a spiritual seeker, but it is a luxury. Life has to be a certain way in order to support that life. And so when I practice and when I think of the difficulties of the life I have chosen, I think how much harder it was for my parents and my grandparents and so on back through time, and I am humbled by that memory.

When we practice, we practice for the benefit of all sentient beings. We do not simply practice for ourselves. The Buddha once gave a discourse in which he – in typically Indian fashion – gave a 2 x 2 matrix for the reasons for practice. One side of the matrix is whether we practice for ourselves – yes or no. The other side of the matrix is whether we practice for others – yes or no.

According to the Buddha, the best practice is the one where we practice both for ourselves and for others.

There is a tradition in Buddhism whereby at the end of a meditation session one dedicates the merit of the practice to all beings. It is a very wonderful and useful practice, and I do it every day. It is worth remembering, and to honor all of those who have made our very privileged lives possible.

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Oh, Those Unruly Monks! (Finale)

Posted on April 29, 2013 by EricKVanHorn

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I suppose that every human institution has its dirty laundry. The sutta about the monks at Kosambi shows that this was true even in the Buddha’s own time and even in his own community. So it isn’t too surprising that Buddhism today has plenty of dirty laundry, too. One of the dirtiest of these pieces of laundry is the way women are treated, particularly those remarkable women who ordain as bhikkhunis, nuns. (Bhikkhuni is the Pali word for nun.)

On the positive side of the ledger, the Buddha established, for the first time, an order of nuns. He was entreated by his step-mother, Mahapajapati, and his wife, Yasodara, to allow them to ordain. They must have been extraordinary women. Both of them became enlightened. The Buddha did, however, add extra rules for the nuns.

India, then as now, was an extremely sexist society. Any woman who was not traveling under the protection of her father, brother or husband was fair game. A man could do anything to her and there was no protection under the law. Thus, to allow for the full ordination of women was a very radical step. Some of the extra rules for women had to do with their own protection in such a society. For example, no bhikkhuni was allowed to travel alone, and bhikkhunis had to travel with at least one monk. [Note 1.]

Bhikkhuni ordination could only happen if both monks and nuns were present. If, indeed, this rule goes back to the Buddha, the intent may have been to make bhikkhuni ordination more palatable to Indian society. Remember that nuns as well as monks were dependent on alms food. The Indian people had to accept the idea of the full ordination of women to keep them fed.

So now we fast forward to the 21st century. The bhikkhuni ordination died out in the countries of southern Asia a long time ago. It never actually made it to Thailand, and it died out in countries like Burma and Sri Lanka. Because there are currently no existing bhikkhunis to give ordination to new bhikkhunis, according to the strict letter of the monastic code, this is no longer possible.

There is a lineage that continued unbroken in the Mahayana traditions, into China. This lineage has been used in recent years to ordain, once again, women in the southern Asia traditions. However many monks do not recognize this ordination, and this is where the story gets really ugly.

You might think that, well, this is an Asian problem. No self-respecting westerner would deny a woman the right to fully ordain. Sadly this is not true. Even very (and I mean very, very) prominent western monks, like Ajahn Sumedho and Ajahn Thanissaro, have refused to fully ordain women. Ajahn Sumedho even went beyond the restrictions of the old monastic code, adding news ones.

I can’t possibly go into all of the details of this dispute here. To be honest, I don’t even understand all of the arguments. It’s like listening to lawyers argue, which ought to tell you something right there. Once you start sounding like a civil suite, you have probably left the realm of anything remotely related to what the Buddha taught, things like love, compassion, wisdom, and an end to suffering.

That latter is, for me, a grounding centerpiece to any issue related to Buddhadhamma, Buddhism, Buddhist institutions, practice, or anything else remotely related to the word “Buddha”. The Buddha famously said, “I teach only suffering and the end to suffering.”. It is the Buddha’s Prime Directive. Everything else that he taught is a fuller explanation of that. Sometimes when I am confused about an issue, I try to remember to come back to that basic, most important premise

For example, take the issue of euthanasia. The first precept is quite simple; do not kill. But the basic premise is to end suffering, and you can certainly imagine circumstances under which the first precept is in conflict with ending, or at least reducing, suffering.

So when I start reading Ajahn Sumedho’s disturbing directive for the women of his own Sangha (http://bhikkhuni.net/perth/5%20Points%20for%20the%20UK%20Siladharas.pdf), and Ajahn Thanissaro’s almost equally disturbing legalese that describes Ajahn Brahm’s ordination of women in Australia (http://bhikkhuni.net/perth/Thanissaro%20Bhikkhu%20Vinaya%20Refutation%20of%20Bhikkhuni%20Ordination.pdf), I go back to the Prime Directive. How do their positions lead to an end of suffering?

(One thing that I have noticed over the years is that ideologues use whatever is the accepted platform to prove their own point. The U.S. Constitution gets twisted and mangled almost beyond belief sometimes. People who do this start with their own opinion, and then look for ways to make some document prove what they want it to. People like this are not trying to find the truth or to do the correct thing. It is – to use the Buddha’s phrase – a “thicket of views.” People who want something to happen find a way to make it happen; those who don’t want something to happen find a way to keep it from happening.)

This whole issue is like being invited to Thanksgiving dinner at a friend’s house, and then listening to his family argue all day. At a certain point, frankly, I don’t care any more. I just want to get away. It’s not what I signed up for.

However, there is a punch line, and it isn’t all bad. It relates to what happened at Kosambi. What ended up happening at Kosambi is that the lay followers got to the same point that I have. Really? You want us to give alms food to you guys? [Note 2.]

This is where being a lay person has its perks.

I have read a number of well-meaning articles and blog entries by monks advising lay people how to think about this dispute. One of them in particular is a monk I revere. And I say this with all due respect: If you guys can’t get this right, then we lay people need to be the ones to make you get it right. Your advice on how we should think about this is duly noted.

The Vinaya is 2400 years old. It is an amazing document. But we are not even sure what parts are original and what are not. There are multiple versions of the Vinaya that have survived.

Further, the more you study Buddhism around the world, the more you realize that hardly anyone follows the Vinaya. Even the ones who claim to have their own interpretation of the Vinaya. Not all of those interpretations are in agreement.

Around the world, very senior, learned monks have different opinions on full bhikkhuni ordination. Wouldn’t it make sense then to – gasp! – actually do the right thing? Wouldn’t that be easier? Better? More correct? Lead to less suffering?

Discrimination against women is illegal in many countries. The U.S. and the United Kingdom are two of them. It is against the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. It also happens to be wrong. Shouldn’t the Buddhist monastic sangha at least come up to speed with civil law?

The way the system was set up in ancient India has a mutually dependent relationship between the monastics and the lay people. The monastics devote their lives to pursuing the ultimate questions of life. The lay people support them, as long as the monastics do not abuse their privileges. In such a system, monastics are actually expected to meet the social standards.

So to all of you out there who are lay people, I strongly urge you to stop supporting monasteries that discriminate against women. I don’t want to name them here because some of them have changed their policies over the years, and I don’t want to commit their names to a permanent blog. But you ought to be able to find out by asking. But be prepared to be legalesed. You may get a very convincing and nice sounding response that basically says, “No.”

Part of the power to change this wrong is the same power that the lay people had in Kosambi. Let’s use it.

Note 1. There is a particularly gruesome story in the Vinaya of a nun being raped while traveling.

Note 2. : This part of the story isn’t in the Majjhima Nikaya sutta. It is in the Vinaya, the monastic code.

Note 3. The Dalai Lama has been quite proactive in his support of the full ordination and full rights for women. I personally know of one bhikkhuni monastery in Nepal (http://thrangutaraabbey.org) that in a fairly short period of time has gone from being almost hopelessly poor to having fine – beautiful, even – accommodations, and first class training for the nuns.

Note 4. If you want to support the pioneering efforts of women to fully ordain as bhikkhunis, there are two places in the U.S. I recommend are The Saranaloka Foundation (http://www.saranaloka.org) and Dhammadharini (http://www.dhammadharini.net). There are many others, as well.

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Oh, Those Unruly Monks! (Part 2)

Posted on April 28, 2013 by EricKVanHorn

When we last left the story, the Buddha had quietly slipped out of the monastery (really, just a park). He paid a brief visit to a friend and bhikkhu, Bhagu, and then went on to the Eastern Bamboo Park.

It is worth mentioning here a little about the life and infrastructure in India at that time. Every city had land set aside outside of the city gates for a park. It is in these parks that the wandering spiritual seekers stayed. Once the Buddha became better known, some kings set aide land specifically for him and his followers, and these became the first monasteries. But the infrastructure had been there for quite a long time.

Except for the rainy season, however, most of the monks – and later the nuns as well – would not stay in one place for very long. Their daily routine would start with the alms rounds in the morning, which came after the morning meal of the people in the city. (The monks basically ate leftovers.) In the afternoon the monks would walk to the next park.

The road system was set up with places to stop every “yojana”. The exact distance of a yojana is the subject of some debate, but essentially it was the distance that an ox could go without needing food and water and rest. I have my own pet theory about the length of a yojana. I think it may have been a measure of effort rather than distance. So if the terrain were more difficult, the actual distance would be shorter. However, I would warn you that I am not a scholar, and this is just a guess. In any event, in actual length a yojana is believed to be between 8 and 10 miles (15 kilometers).

Thus, at every yojana there was a place for the wanderers to stop, rest, and presumably get alms food the next day. One of the things the Buddha always touted about the life of a monk was how healthy it was. They did not overeat, but only took in what was necessary to sustain them. They walked significant distances every day. Then in the evening they would gather, meditate, practice, have Dhamma discussions and debates, and then retire for the night. You can imagine that such a simple life, especially when led together with Dhamma brothers, could be very peaceful, very stress free, and very rewarding.

So back to the story, the Buddha was now traveling as the wanderers did to the next park, the Eastern Bamboo Park, which was not too far from Kosambi. What follows is one of those little details that makes the canonical literature so endearing.

These parks had park keepers. They were there presumably to keep order and to care for the park. The park keeper at the Eastern Bamboo Park had apparently developed an affection for and somewhat protective feelings towards three of the Buddha’s monks who were staying there and living together.

So when the Buddha approached the park, the park keeper tried to fend him off. “Do not enter the park,” the park keeper said, “There are three clansmen here seeking their own good. Do not disturb them.”

Clearly he did not know who the Buddha was.

One of the monks, Anuruddha, hears the exchange, and what he says and the way in which he says it is wonderfully affectionate. “Friend park keeper” – Friend park keeper – “do not keep the Blessed One out. It is our teacher, the Blessed One, who has come.” It is so gentle. You can imagine Anuruddha putting his arm around the park keeper’s shoulders.

Next comes one of the most beautiful passages in the whole of the Pali canon. Remember the context. The Buddha has just left this group of contentious, unruly monks. He has come to the Eastern Bamboo Park, where he finds these three monks, all followers of his Dhamma. Naturally he asks them how they are getting along. He says:

“I hope, Anuruddha, that you are all living in concord, with mutual appreciation, without disputing, blending like milk and water, viewing each other with kindly eyes.”

…blending like milk and water, viewing each other with kindly eyes…

The Buddha then asks Anuruddha how it is that they live together. Anuruddha’s response is this:

“Venerable sir, as to that, I think thus: ‘It is a gain for me, it is a great gain for me that I am living with such companions in the holy life.’ I maintain bodily acts of loving-kindness towards these venerable ones both openly and privately; I maintain verbal acts of loving-kindness towards them both openly and privately; I maintain mental acts of loving-kindness towards them both openly and privately. I consider: ‘Why should I not set aside what I wish to do and do what these venerable ones wish to do?’ Then I set aside what I wish to do and do what these venerable ones wish to do. We are different in body, venerable sir, but one in mind.”

How beautiful. How simple. How poetic.

In a previous blog entry I talked about how in Buddhadhamma, the understanding is that there are three types of actions: body, speech and mind. Here you see that in practice. Anuruddha is saying that at all times he maintains feelings of loving-kindness towards his fellow monks in his bodily actions, in his speech, and in his mind. As to the latter, he is not, therefore, acting one way, but thinking something else. He has taken his feelings to heart.

Next, according to the sutta, Anuruddha’s companions say likewise, affirming what Anuruddha has said.

Next the Buddha asks them if they “abide diligent, ardent, and resolute.” I read this to mean that the Buddha wants to now know if they are just hanging out having a good time, or are they working diligently at their practice. Once again, Anuruddha responds:

“Venerable sir, as to that, whichever of us returns first from the village with almsfood prepares the seats, sets out the water for drinking and for washing, and puts the refuse bucket in its place. Whichever of us returns last eats any food left over, if he wishes; otherwise he throws it away where there is no greenery or drops it into the water where there is no life. He puts away the seats and the water for drinking and for washing. He puts away the refuse bucket after washing it, and he sweeps out the refectory. Whoever notices that the pots of water for drinking, washing, or the latrine are low or empty takes care of them. If they are too heavy for him, he calls someone else by a signal of the hand and they move it by joining hands, but because of this we do not break out into speech. But every five days we sit together all night discussing the Dhamma. That is how we abide diligent, ardent, and resolute.”

Compare this to the situation at Kosambi. Here the monks do not think of themselves. They think only of what needs to be done. When something needs to be done, whoever is most appropriate does it. And they do it out of loving-kindness for each other.

There are lessons here, I think, for all of us. In these simple paragraphs is a blueprint for how we can live together. It’s not that complicated, but that also doesn’t mean that it is easy. Perform actions that arise from loving-kindness. Think of others first. Think only of what needs to be done.

I can almost hear some of you thinking, well, yeah that works great if everyone agrees to be like that. What happens when you are not around people who buy into the whole loving-kindness thing? What if you are around people who will just take advantage of you, may even want to hurt you?

Well, of course, as always, life requires some wisdom. But let me tell you a story that isn’t from 2400 years ago. It happened about 15 years ago.

There was a man who was going through a contentious divorce. One of the main reasons for the divorce was money, and in the process of creating two households from one that meant that money got stretched even further. The man’s wife did everything she could to get as much money as possible from the man, and he was living a very poor existence already.

After a couple of years the man got a little bonus from his job and he did something quite unexpected. He gave most of it to his ex-wife. He just sent her a check. And do you know what? Well, I won’t say that fixed everything, but for a while things got better between them. You can imagine her surprise after they had been arguing about money for so many years. This check just showed up in the mail.

The best thing you can do for your worst enemies, sometimes, is something generous or kind. It reminds me of what Mark Twain once said. He said, “Always speak the truth. It will impress some, and astonish the rest.” The same can be said of generosity and kindness.

Always be kind and generous. It will impress some… and astonish the rest.

As for those quarreling monks at Kosambi? At this point they are still quarreling, but that, too will end. I will cover that in the next blog entry.

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Oh, Those Unruly Monks! (Part 1)

Posted on April 26, 2013 by EricKVanHorn

There are many remarkable stories in the Pali canon. One of my favorites is the Upakkilesa Sutta. “Upakkilesa” translates to “imperfections”.

Yeah, I know. It doesn’t sound like a page-turner. But bear with me.

This discourse has several sections. I won’t go into all of them. If you want to read the full discourse, it is here at http://www.yellowrobe.com/component/content/article/120-majjhima-nikaya/302-upakkilesa-sutta-imperfections.html [MN 128].

This is one of those stories that makes me feel such affection for the Buddhist literature. It is painfully honest. It certainly doesn’t make the Buddha out to be all knowing and all-powerful, and that is one of the things that I like about it. The Buddha was not a god. He was a human being. To be sure, later Buddhist traditions recast him into something more divine, but that was a later development. In the earliest traditions, the Buddha was always understood to be a human being.

The story starts out in a city called “Kosambi”. Kosambi was a prominent city in India at that time. The Buddha is staying there with a large number of monks when a dispute over a violation – or alleged violation – of the monastic code takes place. The dispute escalates to the point where all of the monks have lined up on one side or another, According to the sutta, the Bhikkhus (monks) “had taken to quarrelling and brawling”, and were “deep in disputes, stabbing each other with verbal daggers.”

Ouch. Not exactly the kind of behavior you would expect from Buddhist monks, especially when they were in the presence of the Buddha himself.

One of the monks went to the Buddha and asked him to intervene. What happens next is rather astonishing. He is basically blown off. Three times the Buddha asks them to stop quarrelling, and three times he is told to go away, that the monks will handle things themselves. “We are the ones who will be responsible for this quarrelling, brawling, wrangling, and dispute.” In other words, we’ve got this old man, bugger off.

Really? You said this to the Buddha?

The next day after alms rounds, the Buddha recites this lovely poem:

When many voices shout at once
None considers himself a fool;
Though the Sangha [community] is being split
None thinks himself to be at fault.

They have forgotten thoughtful speech,
They talk obsessed by words alone.
Uncurbed their mouths, they bawl at will;
None knows what leads him so to act.

‘He abused me, he struck me,
He defeated me, he robbed me’―
In those who harbor thoughts like these
Hatred will never be allayed.

For in this world hatred is never
Allayed by further acts of hate.
It is allayed by non-hatred:
That is the fixed and ageless law.

Those others do not recognize
That here we should restrain ourselves.
But those wise ones who realize this
At once end all their enmity.

Breakers of bones and murderers,
Those who steal cattle, horses, wealth,
Those who pillage the entire realm―
When even these can act together
Why can you not do so too?

If one can find a worthy friend,
A virtuous, steadfast companion,
Then overcome all threats of danger
And walk with him content and mindful.

But if one finds no worthy friend,
No virtuous, steadfast companion,
Then as a king leaves his conquered realm,
Walk like a tusker in the woods alone.

Better it is to walk alone,
There is no companionship with fools.
Walk alone and do no evil,
At ease like a tusker [elephant] in the woods.

And with that, he bids them adieu, and he leaves for greener pastures.

This ends the first thing that I take from this story. The Buddha himself was unable to resolve a dispute among his own monks. It isn’t like this is a dispute between kings or a husband and wife or a couple of merchants. These are people who have voluntarily taken up “the holy life” under his direction and teaching. And they won’t listen to him.

I think like most people I sometimes get frustrated with my inability to have a more positive affect on the world. It’s no secret exactly that there is a lot of pain and suffering going on, and most people I know would like to make a difference, and would like the world a better, happier place. I would like to be able to convince people to be more kind, more loving and more compassionate, certainly less angry.

Minus the theism, I think the Buddha would agree with this:

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

And that is what the Buddha did. He made his effort to solve the dispute, and once it became clear that he could not, without anger or any unnecessary over-reaction, he packed up and left. In Buddhist terms, he was acting with wisdom and equanimity.

Sometimes when I am feeling frustrated at my own attempts to get something done, I have to remind myself of this sutta.

I will talk more about this discourse in my next post. May you all be happy, and free from quarreling monks!

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The True Boston Brahmans

Posted on April 18, 2013 by EricKVanHorn

As I write this it is 3 days since the bombings at the Boston Marathon. I used to live in Boston, and I still go back there at least once a year. It’s a great city, like one, big small town with lots of traffic. Copley Square, where the bombings took place, is iconic. It is the site of the Boston Public Library, an architectural and cultural monument, and the Trinity Church, which is likewise. Copley Square is named for John Singleton Copley, a painter who lived during the American Revolution. He painted one of my favorite portraits – the one of Paul Revere – that now hangs at the Museum of Fine Arts just up the street.

I also used to be a runner, of sorts. I have never been particularly athletic. I have bad joints and a bad back, and had to give up running some time ago. But one of the things that surprised me when I took up running is how positive and supportive the running community is. In almost every other physical sphere of life – including some surprising ones like hiking – people tend to be pretty competitive. Runners aren’t like that. If you run, you are part of the community. I never got anything but encouragement for my slothful 9½ minute miles.

So you can imagine that it was pretty painful for me to see two of my families torn apart by those bombs.

However, as widely reported, the image that I am left with is the extraordinarily humane response to what happened, even in the seconds that followed the blasts. I think everyone has heard about them, so I won’t list them here. And so despite the tragedy that occurred, I am left with a deep feeling of gratitude for – as Jon Stewart put it – uplifting my faith in humanity.

I take some pride in the path that I have chosen for my life. Perhaps “pride” is the wrong word, but I certainly feel gratitude for finding a path. It speaks to my inherent belief in basic goodness, and that the way to happiness is not through fear and anger and self-centeredness, but in generosity and kindness and altruism.

But sometimes – just sometimes – it is easy for a little arrogance to creep into your mind. You can begin to think that your club gives you some superiority over members of some other club. And then I see someone, or a lot of someones, do things that make me feel humble, that makes me wonder how I would respond in a situation like that, and I am brought back down to earth.

The Buddha spoke to this issue often, especially with his teachings on karma. At the time of the Buddha, there were lots of theories about how the law of karma works. The word “karma” literally means “action”, and the Buddha had two things to say about it. One was that it is the quality of your actions that determines the karmic affect of what you do. The other is that it is the intention behind the act that determines the skill of the action.

In other words, two different people can do the same thing, and the act of one person would have a negative karmic impact, and the action of the other person can have a positive karmic impact.

A simple example is giving a donation to a charity. One person may be giving in order to achieve notoriety; another person may give completely anonymously, purely out of the goodness of their heart. There is even a practice in Buddhism to commit an act of charity without letting anyone find out about it. Try it sometime. It isn’t as easy as it sounds. When we do something nice, we like people to know about it. We like to get something out of it other than the pure satisfaction of doing a good thing.

This teaching flies in the face of what I was always taught. I suppose it’s a western thing; the road to hell is paved with good intentions. But I think how the Buddha would define “good” is different than the way “good” is used in that saying. In Buddhism something that is “good” is selfless and skillful. It comes from generosity, compassion, love, kindness. It isn’t a misguided attempt to boost our own ego.

The upshot of all this is that whatever you choose to call yourself, that label doesn’t really buy you anything. I don’t get special karma points just because I call myself “Buddhist.”

There is a wonderful discourse in the Digha Nikāya that speaks to just this issue. It is the Soṇadaṇḍa Sutta: The Qualities of a True Brahman (DN 4). The discourse itself is full of lovely little tidbits about Soṇadaṇḍa, his son, his friends, and the town where they lived. It reads like a good TV script.

Soṇadaṇḍa was a prominent Brahman. Brahmanism was the predominant religion of that part of India at the time. (It was pre-Hinduism.) But Soṇadaṇḍa must have been quite an interesting fellow, someone with an open, inquisitive mind. He would have been at home among the philosophers of Greece. He clearly respected good minds and clear thinking.

He goes to see the Buddha, who happens to be in town, despite the fact that Soṇadaṇḍa’s buddies think that is beneath him. They think that the Buddha ought to come to him. But Soṇadaṇḍa really wants to meet this person who has achieved some fame.

Soṇadaṇḍa is a little timid about asking the Buddha a question, because he is afraid that he will say something that will embarrass him. The Buddha bails him out by asking him about what he knows about the Three Vedas, a topic on which Soṇadaṇḍa is well versed. The Buddha says to him:

“By how many qualities do Brahmans recognize a Brahman? How would one declare truthfully and without falling into falsehood: ‘I am a Brahman?’” [DN 4, 11]

Soṇadaṇḍa replies as follows:

“Reverend Gotama, there are five such qualities… What are they? A Brahman is well-born on both the mother’s and the father’s side, of pure descent to the seventh generation,… he is a scholar versed in the mantras,… he is handsome, pleasing,… he is virtuous,… he is learned and wise, and is the first or second to hold the sacrificial ladle. These are the five qualities of a true Brahman.” [DN 4, 13]

The Buddha than says to him, well, if you were to leave out one of those qualities, could someone still be a true Brahman? To which Soṇadaṇḍa  replies:

“It is possible, Gotmama, We could leave out appearance, for what does that matter? If a Brahman had the other four qualities, he could be recognized as a true Brahman.”

The Buddha then says, OK, how about any others?

“It is possible, Gotama. We could leave out birth, for what does that matter?”

You can see where this is all going. The Buddha eventually gets Soṇadaṇḍa down to two qualities, those of wisdom and virtue. And those are the qualities of the true Brahman.

The Buddha was a wonderful linguist. He is using the word “Brahman” here to his own advantage. He often did this. He took a word’s conventional usage and rephrased it to take on a new meaning. The word “Brahman” – in its usual case – refers to someone’s social status. But the word “brahma” also means “divine” or “sublime”; it is sometimes translated as “noble”. In this context the Buddha is defining how to tell if someone is noble.

Nominally I define myself as a “Buddhist”. It’s a shorthand, a way of communicating something without having to give my own discourse. But ultimately my own future happiness, and my usefulness to those around me, will be defined not by a word, but by the amount of love, compassion, kindness and generosity that I am able to cultivate. And I really hope that if I am ever in a situation like that at the marathon last Monday that I have the skill and courage of the people who were there.

Note 1. The phrase “Boston Brahmins” usually refers to the the people of Boston’s upper class, especially those who are descended from the Plymouth colony and the early Massachusetts Bay Colony.

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Meditation Can Be Habit Forming

Posted on April 9, 2013 by EricKVanHorn

My daughter, in her usual thoughtful way, gave me a book for my birthday on the nature of habits. It is called “The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business”.

The word “habit” is one way to describe what we are up against in Buddhist practice. Something happens, a feeling, a thought, an emotion, and we react in a habitual way. One of the purposes of mindfulness is to become aware of these habits, and eventually to be able to intervene and respond more skillfully. Another purpose of practice is to retrain ourselves, substituting more wholesome habits for less wholesome ones.

The Buddha compared habit energy to the ruts created by a cart. Every time a behavior manifests, it makes the ruts deeper, just as every time a cart travels on the same road the ruts get deeper. So a bad habit at the age of 20 is twice as ingrained at 30 and twice as ingrained again at 40. The importance of mindfulness in this context is clear. Awareness is the only way to put the brakes on this process.

In “The Power of Habit” they describe several decades of research into the nature of habits. Some of this has to do with what happens in the brain. A particularly interesting case is that of a man code named “Eugene”. Eugene is one of the most famous people in the history of the study of habits. He suffered brain damage from an infection. He lost a lot of his memory, as well as his capacity to remember. He could not remember his children.

Nonetheless Eugene was capable of remembering some things. He started taking walks, and no one could figure out how he knew how to get home. If you asked him the route he took, he couldn’t tell you what it was. Nonetheless, like clockwork he would take his walk and find his way home.

There were exceptions. If something changed on his route, if there was something like construction going on, he would get lost and couldn’t find his way back.

The book goes into some detail on Eugene’s case, but what struck me most was a brief anecdote about what happened the day he died.

Eugene’s daughter, judging by the accounts in the book, was nothing short of a saint. She really cared for her father in a loving and disarmingly charming way. There was very little in it for her short of her own gratification. He couldn’t remember her from one day to the next, much less the many kindnesses that she showed him.

Still, on the day he died, just as the sun was setting, in a rare lucid moment he looked at his daughter and said, “I’m lucky to have a daughter like you.” He died several hours later.

It is a touching story, especially for me because of the way I feel about my own daughter. And I am sure that for Eugene’s daughter, it was probably a single moment that made up for years and years of what must have seemed like thankless effort and attention.

But what really stands out to me is the implications for the relationship between “mind” and “brain”. People who do neurological research love to study meditators. Meditators brains change over time. The pleasure center at the top center of the brain can go into overdrive, especially in people who do jhana (tranquility) practice. Neurologists also see changes in the main center of activity in the brain. Meditators have a center of energy in the left frontal lobe. Negative energy tends to be located in the right frontal lobe. The fact that meditation can change the nature of brain activity is itself pretty interesting.

But there is a significant difference between how science views the relationship between “Mind” and “brain” and how Buddhism views this relationship. Scientists would typically say that “mind” is a manifestation of the brain. Buddhism would say the opposite, that the brain is a physical manifestation of something greater, what we call “mind”.

In the West we have a particular reverence for science. Calling something “scientific” is to give it merit and substance.

But we are discovering serious limits to science. Science itself has begun to stumble onto what used to be the realm of mystics. Science now says, for example, that The Big Bang was just One Big Bang, one in a never-ending cycle of birth, expansion, contraction, and “death” of the universe.

Science also has embraced to some extent some very mystical ideas, such as the fact that the physical universe only comprises about 5% of the whole of reality, and that the physical universe itself exists in dependence on consciousness. The latter is the kind of thing you only used to hear from skinny guys sitting in a lotus position on some mountaintop in India.

It is also very interesting to hear someone like Stephen Hawking grapple with the limits of science. He gets to a point in his own thinking where he reverts to being an English Christian, allocating certain unexplainable phenomena to God for lack of any better understanding.

Buddhism understands that there is some process that we call “me”. This process takes physical form in a body at birth, then moves to another realm – possibly this one once again – when the body dies. This process carries impressions and imprints, sometimes even actual memories, from one lifetime to the next. Young children are known to be particularly prone to remembering events from previous lives.

In Buddhism there is the especially compelling case of Dhammaruwan, who as a young boy started spontaneously chanting Buddhist suttas. His father recorded them and they can be heard here: http://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=8532&start=0.

At the other end of the life spectrum is Near Death Experiences, where there are people who for a short time are brain dead. There is no measureable neurological activity, and yet they have clear memories of what was going on around them.

Another example is people in comas. People who come out of comas can have clear memories of people reading to them or singing to them or simply talking. It is one reason why people who take care of patients like this – including people who do end-of-life (palliative) care – have become increasingly sensitive to the kind of environment they create for comatose people.

Many years ago I worked at the Pennhurst State School, an enormous – 2,000 resident – institution for the mentally disabled. I worked in a unit where the residents were at all levels of mental disability, and also had additional handicaps. One ward, for example, had quadriplegic and paraplegic residents. Some of them were at a very poor level of function. All they could manage was to sit in a chair and rock. But even then, at a young age, I could see that while their intellectual capacity was quite limited, they had an awareness of their situation. They knew, for example, that they were not the same as “normal” people. It is an interesting distinction, the difference between intellectual capacity and awareness. While we all differ in intellectual capacity, our capacity for awareness is the same. We are in that sense equal, and it is one of many reasons to treat all people with dignity and respect.

In the case of Eugene, despite the fact that on the surface he could not remember his daughter on a mundane day-to-day level, clearly there was some awareness that kept track of what was happening. And on that last day when he was preparing to cross over, his mind was momentarily freed from its bondage to the damaged brain, long enough to express his gratitude for the kindness of his daughter.

In Buddhism the idea of mind is more like “heart-mind”. The word in Pali is citta. It is a more expressive term about what is going on here. When Eugene told his daughter how grateful he was, he was truly expressing citta. It wasn’t just an intellectual awareness of what she had done for him, but a heart-felt appreciation for her kindness. While intellectual capacities differ, the capacity for citta is a level playing field. It is all a question of who we choose to be and what we choose to cultivate.

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The Business of Buddhism

Posted on April 9, 2013 by EricKVanHorn

One of the things that I have always enjoyed about the Buddhist tradition is that from the time of the Buddha the teachings were always offered freely.

India must have been quite something around 2400 B.C.E. when the Buddha lived. To this day India is a country where spiritual seekers are revered and admired. Even given the tensions between Hindus and Muslims there are still more Muslims living in India than there are in Pakistan. When I was in India I experienced admiration for the fact that I had traveled from the U.S. on a spiritual pilgrimage, despite the fact that there are very few Buddhists in India today. I got the impression that anyone who has a religious path is respected there, even if you are from a different tradition.

At the time of the Buddha there was a kind of religious infrastructure for spiritual seekers. The mainstream religion at the time was Brahmanism, the precursor to Hinduism. The counter to the mainstream religion was a motley group of seekers called samana. They represented a wide variety of views. The Buddha was a samana. The Jains, who still exist, were another. A number of samana groups and teachers are mentioned in the Buddhist canonical literature.

The samana were part of a religious pact with larger Indian society. Outside of each city was a park in which the samana could stay. Each morning after the morning meal the samana went on alms rounds. The samana asked only for this one meal a day – leftovers from the morning meal – a place to sleep, and basic requisites like robes and medicine. In return they dedicated their lives to spiritual seeking. It was a sort of low budget version of the philosophers in Greece. (See note 1.)

Parts of that tradition remain in some Buddhist schools today. In particular the Forest traditions of Thailand still eat only one meal a day, take vows of poverty, and only live on the four requisites: clothing (an allowance of three sets of robes), shelter, food and medicine.

In return for their one free lunch they dedicate their lives to the spiritual life, and when asked, they teach. It is also part of the Buddhist tradition that when asked, no monk or nun may refuse a request to teach. It is a beautiful and simple arrangement that brings honor to both the monastics who live this life and the lay people who support them. (See note 2.)

On one of the very first meditation retreats that I attended I was given a talk on this tradition, on how the teachings have always been freely offered. I’m not sure when it began to dawn on me – it may have been at this retreat – that since I was paying about $800 for the retreat, and then being told that the cost of the retreat only paid for a portion of the actual cost, and further that the teachers were not being paid out of that amount, that somehow this didn’t feel like the teachings were being freely offered. At the end of these retreats you are always given this talk and asked for donations for the teacher and the retreat center.

I have attended most of my retreats at the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) and the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies (BCBS), sister organizations in Barre, Massachusetts. As I write this I believe that the median cost of a retreat is about $95 a day. This does not, as I said, cover the full cost of the retreat and it does not pay for the teachers. In addition, in order to keep costs down you are assigned a work job. I think what IMS and BCBS charge is probably average in the Buddhist industry. All in all I could stay at a Motel 6 and get a veggie sub for less than half the cost per day of going to IMS, and I would get maid service and cable to boot.

The local Zen center here in Vermont charges what amounts to a tithing fee. When you join you are given a form on which you pledge how much you are going to give the center every month. And I can tell you from direct experience that when you miss a payment or two, you will hear about it.

To be sure there are a few places that still operate in the traditional way. The Bhavana Society and Monastery in West Virginia does not charge for retreats and they do not ask for donations when you go there. This is true as well for the Metta Forest Monastery in California and Arrow River Hermitage (See note 3) in Ontario. They exist solely on donations that are freely offered, and they do not do fund raising.

In addition, Western Buddhism in particular has a tradition of dubious merit, and that is of the lay teacher. Lay teachers teach meditation as a way to earn a living. This puts lay teachers in a precarious position. In order to earn a living, they have to attract students. To attract students you need to have a certain entertainment value. Students have to feel as if they are getting their money’s worth.

I have even noticed that meditation students have a peculiar way in which they refer to a “good retreat.” A “good retreat” is often a code word for an entertaining and charismatic teacher, one who is funny, tells good stories, and who has “presence”. It often has little to do with whether the student made good progress on the path, something that – while it can be – is not always fun, entertaining or pleasant.

One of my favorite teachers – who shall remain nameless – is not very charismatic or entertaining. But I have great respect for his practice, his knowledge, and his ability as a teacher. His retreats routinely draw 6 or 8 students where 30 or more is the norm. He apparently does not give very “good retreats”.

The Buddha himself warned people about the problems of being charmed by a religious teacher who is – to use Robert Thurman’s words – “too cute.” Just because someone can give a good speech doesn’t mean they know what they are talking about.

I read an interview years ago with a monastic – I think it was Pema Chodron – who said that when she goes to a conference of lay teachers, their main topic of discussion is how to make money, and when she goes to a conference of monastic teachers the main topic of discussion is how to teach the Dhamma.

Even Joseph Goldstein, who co-founded IMS and BCBS (as well as the equally expensive Forest Refuge) calls this the Upper Middle Way.

This is all very unfortunate. I don’t see anything wrong with people teaching meditation who are not monastics. But it is in my mind disrespectful to the Buddha himself as well as the tradition to be charging for it. If you want to teach the Dhamma, the first thing you should do is figure out how to support yourself. That would be something to respect.

You don’t need private rooms and three meals a day – or even one fancy one – to practice meditation. There are ways to live simply, very, very simply. And perhaps in situations like this, people worry a little less about their food and accommodations and the entertainment value of the retreat, and a little more about their practice.

Note 1. Curiously, as Rupert Gethin points out in his outstanding book “The Foundations of Buddhism”, over time what happened in Buddhism was that the more sincere and austere the monk, the more gifts were offered to them. The monasteries that often became the biggest were the ones where the teachers and the monastics initially lived in the greatest poverty and the poorest conditions. It was the law of reverse effort in affect, where the poorer the monk the more money came their way. Some monasteries acquired a great deal of land and this became a serious problem. Some great monks ended up fleeing the big, affluent monasteries to seek out greater simplicity, only to attract a new legion of admiring lay people who wanted to support them. Perhaps there is a lesson in this for Western meditation teachers.

Note 2. It is also worth noting that when Buddhism got to China, which did not have same religious support system as in India, Buddhist monks adopted the credo “A day without work is a day without food.” Monks and nuns there were expected to earn their keep. The monasteries supported themselves.

Note 3. When Arrow River first opened they supported the center by building furniture. Unfortunately their wood shop burned down. Nonetheless this is a good example of how to support a center, more on the Chinese model.

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Putting Your Story To Rest

Posted on April 3, 2013 by EricKVanHorn

Everybody has a movie, starring me, directed by me, produced by me, written by me… it’s all about me –

Larry Rosenberg, Cambridge Insight Meditation Center

Everybody has a story and we like to spend our time and energy telling and adding to that story. But ultimately, Buddhist practice is about doing an end run around the story. The story goes from being in the foreground to being in the background, what one Zen teacher called “the scenery of your life.”

I went to a retreat some years ago with Larry Rosenberg. About halfway through the retreat he said that in the personal interviews half the people reported that they were in relationships and wanted to be out of them, and the other half of the people were out of relationships and wanted to be in one. (I always tell that to people who are suffering from relationship angst.)

He went on to tell this story. Jack Kornfield was running a retreat, and in one of his talks he said something like, “All of you have a story. But I can tell you that everyone one of us who teaches this stuff (meditation), we don’t care.”

This, of course, elicited a laugh, but it is a point worth making.

Meditation is often used as a way to make our story better, or at least more comfortable. We have a job we don’t like, a bad marriage, trouble with our kids or parents, whatever it might be. That’s the story. And we don’t want to feel quite so stressed out about it. That’s understandable. So we take up meditation.

This makes meditation a form of psychotherapy. As has been noted many times, the purpose of therapy is to take people who are dys-functionally neurotic and make them functionally neurotic. Now there is nothing wrong with that. If you are not functioning, becoming functionally neurotic probably looks pretty good.

But the purpose of the Buddhist path is to become free from suffering altogether. In that sense it does an end run around the story. And by “end run” I don’t mean avoiding the story. The story is where you start, and everything in your story has to be at ease. That is the main intention of the precepts, to get your moral house in order. But in meditation ultimately you are not trying to make a better story; you are trying to end it.

It is like an old house that has a crooked roof and sagging walls. You can straighten out the roof and the walls after a fashion, but the real problem is in the foundation. What you really need to do is jack up the house, straighten out the foundation, and then put the house back down. You don’t have to straighten out the walls; that will happen on its own.

Now a lot of people – and I am one of them – start out in practice just trying to find a little more peace in their lives. There is certainly nothing wrong with that. The Buddha himself used to give advice to people in all walks of life to help them find a little more peace and happiness. He had advice for kings, merchants, husbands and wives, and it was all to help them lead happier, more skillful lives.

However, it is very helpful if at a certain point you can leave that motivation behind and set your sight on a new prize. Even before you feel you can do that, it is helpful to keep in mind that there is something much better than learning how to create more frequent instances of conditioned happiness. The end game in the Buddhist path is unconditioned happiness.

The story, of course, does get better along the way, but not because you are trying to make it better. It happens because that is a side affect of straightening the foundation.

I know of at least one very prominent Buddhist teacher who says that in the West Buddhism has found its voice (my words, not his) in psychotherapy. In his view the obvious path for Buddhism to take in the West is by forming an alliance with Western psychotherapy.

I think that would be unfortunate. It is certainly fine if therapists find some useful tools in Buddhist meditation. But there is a much greater path out there. It is the path of complete freedom.

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The Buddha Wasn’t Kidding – Really

Posted on March 28, 2013 by EricKVanHorn

When I first started to meditate it was in a Zen practice. We were told mainly to “just sit.” If any question or problem came up, the instruction was the same, to “just keep sitting”. To this day the words “resume zazen” pop into my head, and that was 20 years ago.

After 5 years of not really getting anywhere, I started the switch to what is commonly called “Vipassana” or “insight” meditation. (Note 1.) Here I was given instructions to follow the breath and to try not to move for the duration of the sitting, which was typically 45 minutes. This is very hard for an inexperienced meditator, at least it was for me. Mainly I remember a lot of knee pain. If you had asked my honest definition of meditation at that point it would have been “knee pain”.

To be sure, and to be fair, I was given lots and lots (and lots and lots and lots) of instruction on how to handle this and other situations when they arose. But it is like that old line about draining the swamp:

“The objective of all dedicated [meditators] is to thoroughly analyze all situations, anticipate all problems prior to their occurrence, have answers for these problems, and move swiftly to solve these problems when called upon. However, when you are up to your ass in alligators, it is difficult to remember that your initial objective was to drain the swamp [a.k.a. follow the breath].”

It was actually worse than that. I was in many group interviews when someone would describe – finally! – attaining some peace and calm and tranquility, and inevitably they would be sternly warned “not to get stuck there.” Certainly no one was ever encouraged to explore and cultivate that territory. Not ever. Not once.

By the time I started reading the Majjhima Nikaya – the Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha – I had been practicing about 7 years as I recall. I got quite a different picture of Buddhist practice and the Buddhist path than what I had been taught. For one thing, I kept reading over and over about “jhana”. In all my years of practice I had never even heard the word.

The word “jhana” means “absorption.” (Note 2.) It is a calm or tranquility practice. In the original texts the word jhana applied only to what later became known as the “four material jhanas”. The jhanas are simply numbered 1 through 4. Each jhana has “jhana factors” that defined it. For example, the first jhana has five factors: applied thought, examination, one pointedness, rapture and happiness.

There were also four “immaterial states” that came to be known as the “immaterial jhanas”, and were numbered 5 through 8. In the immaterial jhanas, the meditator loses the sense of a body. Jhana 5 is the “base of boundless space”, jhana 6 is the “base of boundless consciousness” and so forth.

The Buddha really emphasized jhanas 1-4 as being the important ones for becoming enlightened. But all of the jhanas were well known and practiced by the Buddha’s followers. This is quite clear from reading the texts.

So having read the Majjhima Nikaya I became interested in jhana. It certainly seemed to me that attaining liberation was done through first mastering the jhanas. I went looking for any books I could find and at that time I could only find one. It was Bhante Gunuratana’s book The Path of Serenity and Insight. Even though it was in English, the only publisher was in India. I ordered a copy and two weeks later a rather battered volume showed up in a bubble wrap package with lots of stamps on it.

I couldn’t really make much sense of it. To be sure, it has been quite a while since I read it, and the problem is probably mine and not the book’s. I was in a little over my head at the time, jhanically speaking.

Years passed and it started to dawn on me that jhana was sort of the Buddhist equivalent of gay marriage. Teachers who knew the jhanas were actually afraid to teach them. Ayya Khema, in the 1980’s, would only teach them if her students stumbled across them. One of the Buddhist magazines (I think it was Buddhadharma) devoted a whole issue to jhana, and I can remember thinking, “Uh, oh.” Sure enough, in the next issue the letters to the editor were full if vitriolic letters warning everyone about the dangers of practicing jhana. It was like listening to Fox News describe Democrats.

But I knew what I had read, and I knew this was an important teaching. Fortunately over the years teaching jhana started to come out of the closet somewhat. A few more books were published, a few more articles in magazines were published (and subsequently hammered), and occasionally you could even find a retreat at which jhana was taught.

Unfortunately this was not the norm. There is a tradition – I think it comes from Burma – that teaches “dry insight”. “Dry insight” is enlightenment without jhana. There is an obscure rationale for dry insight that has to do with a particular reading of a sutta by Ananda in the Anguttara Nikaya. But even that interpretation has been largely disputed. It seems rather clear that to the Buddha the path to enlightenment went through the jhanas.

I started trying to do the practice on my own, using what I had read, talks I found on the Internet, and so forth. Unfortunately the way jhana is taught varies widely, and many teachers teach an approach that is attainable by very few people and requires months on retreat. This didn’t quite jive with what I had read either.

Nonetheless, I started to see some of the benefits of the concentration practice. While I didn’t (or didn’t think I did) attain jhana, I was much calmer, more tranquil, happier. I enjoyed sitting more, much more. And further I came to believe that the distinction between concentration practice and insight practice was somewhat arbitrary. In fact, I now know that on some occasions I was attaining jhana, but I did it through doing what are nominally insight practices. Conversely, I found that when I was very concentrated, insights would arise.

Finally I went to a jhana retreat where I was able to learn how to enter and recognize most of the jhanas. I also found a small handful of other meditators who were doing jhana. To a person they all agree that the boogey-man status of jhana is unwarranted. In fact, I don’t think I have ever heard someone who does jhana practice who made any of the criticism of it that people who have never done it do.

In fact, this is a very beautiful practice. The Buddha made a distinction between sense pleasure, which he said gets us into all kinds of trouble, and “pleasure born of seclusion.” This was the pleasure he allowed himself. It is very beautiful and very beneficial. The first time that I experienced true equanimity it was in jhana. The first time that I experienced true metta (boundless love for all beings), it was due to jhana. The first time that I got a true sense of what dukkha is and what liberation is was in jhana.

Further, I began to read from teachers who know this practice that the only people they know who are enlightened got there by doing jhana.

For me personally this was quite a sense of relief. After well over a decade of chasing the ideas that I had read about, I was beginning to see it show up, nipping at the edges of mainstream Western Buddhism. I didn’t feel stuck on an island quite as much.

Just this past February Thanissaro Bhikkhu published a book called “With Each and Every Breath”. This book, better than any other, describes the path as I understand it was meant to be. I highly recommend it. It is available for free as an eBook (http://www.dhammatalks.org/ebook_index.html) or you can write the monastery and they will send you a free copy of it. And jhana is certainly one of the centerpieces of what he teaches.

I also recommend Thanissaro’s article One Tool Among Many (http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/onetool.html). The (first big) paragraph always makes me laugh because it is such a perfect summary of what I was taught for so many years. Thanissaro goes on to make the case for jhana much better than I can.

It is time for jhana to come out of the closet. You know, when the Buddha taught something, he wasn’t kidding. I know that sounds funny, but I am amazed at how many intelligent, educated, “qualified” people read something the Buddha said, and simply blow right past it. When he said something, he meant it, and he was a pretty wise person.

1.) As Thanissaro Bhikkhu points out, the Buddha never taught anything called “Vipassana” or “insight” meditation. He used the terms samatha and vipassana as two qualities of the mind to be developed together.

2.) Thanissaro Bhikku gives a particularly poetic description of the word “jhana.”

The word [the Buddha] uses for going to meditate is “to go do jhana”—jhayati is the verb in Pali. It’s a homonym with a verb for burning, as when a flame burns steadily. They have lots of different words for burning in Pali—words for raging fires, words for smoldering fires—but the verb for a steady burn, as in the flame of an oil lamp, is jhayati. And the same verb is used for doing jhana. As you practice concentration, you try to make the mind burn steadily, with a clean, clear flame.

http://www.dhammatalks.org/Archive/Writings/CrossIndexed/Published/Meditations2/040717%20M2%20Go,%20Do%20Jhana.pdf

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