“Buddhism does not have the answer to your question . . . You do. Only you do.

The answer and the question are one and the same thing. Zen is a process, not an answering machine.”

- John Daido Loori in The Heart of Being: Moral and Ethical Teachings of Zen Buddhism

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{Photography by Mariano Kamp}

Taking refuge in the sangha means putting your trust in a community of solid members who practice mindfulness together. You do not have to practice intensively—just being in a sangha where people are happy, living deeply the moments of their days, is enough. Each person’s way of sitting, walking, eating, working, and smiling is a source of inspiration; and transformation takes place without effort. If someone who is troubled is placed in a good sangha, just being there is enough to bring about a transformation. I hope communities of practice in the West will organize themselves as families. In Asian sanghas, we address each other as Dharma Brother, Dharma Sister, Dharma Aunt, or Dharma Uncle, and we call our teacher Dharma Father or Dharma Mother. A practice community needs that kind of familial brotherhood to nourish practice.

Thich Nhat Hanh

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{Photography by Wonderlane}

“It isn’t what
happens to us that
causes us to suffer;
it’s what we say to
ourselves about what happens.”
~Pema Chodron

Nash: In competitive behavior someone always loses.

Charles: Well, my niece knows that, John, and she’s about this high.

Nash: See if I derive an equilibrium where prevalence is a non-singular event where nobody loses, can you imagine the effect that would have on conflict scenarios, arm negotiations…

Charles: When did you last eat?

Nash: …currency exchange?

Charles: When did you last eat? You know, food.

Nash: You have no respect for cognitive reverie, you know that?

Charles: Yes. But pizza – now, pizza I have enormous respect for.

From the movie: A Beautiful Mind.

The circle-triangle-square is Sengai’s picture of the universe. The circle represents the infinite, and the infinite is at the basis of all beings. But the infinite in itself is formless. We humans endowed with senses and intellect demand tangible forms. Hence a triangle. The triangle is the beginning of all forms. Out of it first comes the square. A square is the triangle doubled. This doubling process goes on infinitely and we have the multitudinosity of things, which the Chinese philosopher calls ‘the ten thousand things’, that is, the universe.

The trouble with us linguistically-minded beings is that we take language realistically and forget that language is of no significance whatsoever without time. In truth, language is time and time is language. We thus come to think that there is in the beginning of the world a something which is real and concrete, such as a world of galaxies which though formless and nebulous is yet real and tangible. This is the foundation of the universe on which we now have all kinds of things, infinitely formed and varied. It is thus that time itself begins to be thought of as something concrete and real. A circle turns into a triangle, and then into a square, and finally into infinitely varied and varying figures. In the same way the Biblical account of creation has turned into historical truth in the minds of many. But Zen is very much against such fabrications.

From Wikipedia: Sengai Gibon (仙厓 義梵^?, 1750 – 1837) was a Japanese monk of the Rinzai (臨在宗) sect (one of the ramifications of the Zen branch of Buddhism). He was known for his controversial teachings and writings, as well as for his lighthearted sumi-e paintings. After spending half of his life in Nagata near Yokohama, he secluded himself in Shōfukuji (located in Fukuoka), the first Zen Temple in Japan, where he spent the rest of his life.

Though the Rinzai sect is particularly known for its hard-to-understand teachings, Sengai tried to make them accessible to the public.

One of his famous paintings shows a circle, a square and a triangle. The English translation of the title is “Universe”.

Faster and bigger = better

You can subscribe to that, it seems everywhere you go everyone subscribe to that equation as their life’s philosophy. Just because something is pervasive and loud is not guarantee to be the “one size fits all” panacea.

Buddhism is about individuality, it’s about you within your true self, and it is just as pervasive as faster and bigger if you know how to look, and what to look for. Meet our friend Mies, as in Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who adopted “Less is More” as his mantra for his work as the Architect that brought to the world timeless icons like the Barcelona Chair and the Farnsworth House.

So, what would happen is you were to adopt the Less is More mantra? Will a gift to yourself be to donate some of your possession to reclaim some space in your home? What if for the upcoming holiday season you give the gift of love to your friends and family by marking on your calendar some special time to spend together enjoying their company, their presence, their conversation, and just the sense of BE-ing?

Let Less is More sit with you like a Kōan, let it be part of your vernacular, and try it on for measure, it might fit funny at the beginning, but you might find out that – as you progress in your journey to the center of yourself – it might grow on you, you might find out that it was always a part of you, you were born with it and enjoyed it, it was only obfuscated by the faster and bigger habit. Time for new habits, time for the real you.

Related readings: Minimalism

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{Photography by Aussie Gall}

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{Photography by Masterh Sintao}

When asked by people how His Holiness the Dalai Lama sees himself, he replies that he is a simple Buddhist monk. Even in his daily life, His Holiness remarks that he spends 80% of his time on spiritual activities and the other 20% on Tibet.

His Holiness is often out of Dharamsala on travels both within India and abroad. During these travels, His Holiness’s daily routine varies depending on his engagement schedule. However, His Holiness is an early riser and tries as far as possible to retire early in the evening.

When His Holiness is at home in Dharamsala,

• he wakes up at 3.30 a.m.
• After his morning shower, His Holiness begins the day with prayers, meditations and prostrations until 5.00 a.m.
• From 5.00 a.m. His Holiness takes a short morning walk around the residential premises. If it is raining outside, His Holiness has a treadmill to use for his walk.
• Breakfast is served at 5.30 a.m. For breakfast, His Holiness typically has hot porridge, tsampa (barley powder), bread with preserves, and tea. Regularly during breakfast, His Holiness tunes his radio to the BBC World News in English.
• From 6 a.m. to 8.30 a.m. His Holiness continues his morning meditation and prayers.
• From around 9.00 a.m. until 11.30 a.m. he studies various Buddhist texts written by the great Buddhist masters.
• Lunch is served from 11.30 a.m. until 12.30 p.m. His Holiness’s kitchen in Dharamsala is vegetarian. However, during visits outside of Dharamsala, His Holiness is not necessarily vegetarian.
• As an ordained Buddhist monk, His Holiness does not have dinner.
• Should there be a need to discuss some work with his staff or hold some audiences and interviews, His Holiness will visit his office from 12.30 p.m. until around 4.30 p.m. Typically, during an afternoon at the office one interview is scheduled along with several audiences, both Tibetan and non-Tibetan.
• Upon his return to his residence, His Holiness has evening tea at 6 p.m.
• He then has time for his evening prayers and meditation from 6.30 p.m. until 8.30 p.m.
• Finally, after a long 17-hour day His Holiness retires for bed at 8.30 p.m.

Source: DalaiLama.com

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{Photography by Mr. Patterson Sir}

Buddhist meditation is fundamentally concerned with two themes: transforming the mind and using it to explore itself and other phenomena. The historical Buddha himself, Siddhartha Gautama, was said to have achieved enlightenment while meditating under a Bodhi tree. In Buddhist mythology, there were twenty eight Buddhas and all of them used meditation to make spiritual progress. Most forms of Buddhism distinguish between two classes of meditation practices, samatha and vipassana, both of which are necessary for attaining enlightenment. The former consists of practices aimed at developing the ability to focus the attention single-pointedly; the latter includes practices aimed at developing insight and wisdom through seeing the true nature of reality. The differentiation between the two types of meditation practices is not always clear cut, which is made obvious when studying practices such as anapanasati which could be said to start off as a shamatha practice but that goes through a number of stages and ends up as a vipassana practice.

Theravada Buddhism emphasizes the meditative development of mindfulness (sati, see for example the Satipatthana Sutta) and concentration (samadhi, see kammatthana), as part of the Noble Eightfold Path, in the pursuit of Nibbana (Nirvana). Traditional popular meditation subjects include the breath (anapana) and loving-kindness (mettā).

In the Vipassana style of meditation the awareness is initially focused on the rising and falling breath and then (when respiration is almost suspended and the mind and heart still) on either some simple symbol (candle flame), body part (thumb or tip of the nose) or concept (provided any of these is unlikely to evoke emotional or intellectual disturbance).

One particularly influential school of Buddhist meditation in the 20th century was the Thai Forest Tradition which included such notable practitioners of meditation as Ajahn Thate, Ajahn Maha Bua and the Ajahn Chah.

In Japanese Mahayana schools, Tendai (Tien-tai), concentration is cultivated through highly structured ritual. Especially in the Chinese Chán Buddhism school (which branched out into the Japanese Zen, and Korean Seon schools), ts’o ch’an meditation and koan meditation practices allow a practitioner to directly experience the true nature of reality (each of the names of these schools derives from the Sanskrit dhyana, and translates into “meditation” in their respective languages). The esoteric Shingon sect shares many features with Tibetan Buddhism. The Japanese haiku poet Basho saw poetry as a process of meditation concerned with the art of describing the brief appearances of the everlasting self, of eternity, in the circumstances of the world. We get a sense of this ethical purpose in his writing at the commencement of his classic work Narrow Roads to the Deep North. In a more lonely and perhaps more profound pilgrimage than Chaucer depicted in the Canterbury Tales, Basho reflects on mortality in intermingled poetry and prose as he journeys north from shrine to shrine.

Tibetan Buddhism (Vajrayana) emphasizes tantra for its senior practitioners; hence its alternate name of Tantrayana Buddhism. Many monks go through their day without “meditating” in a recognizable form, but are more likely to chant or participate in group liturgy. In this tradition, the purpose of meditation is to awaken the sky-like nature of mind, and to introduce practitioners to the true nature of mind: unchanging pure awareness, which underlies the whole of life and death.

The gift of learning to meditate is the greatest gift you can give yourself in this life. For it is only through meditation that you can undertake the journey to discover your true nature, and so find the stability and confidence you will need to live, and die, well. Meditation is the road to enlightenment.- Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

Most Buddhist traditions recognize that the path to Enlightenment entails three types of training: virtue (sīla); concentration (dhyāna); and, wisdom (paññā). Thus, meditative prowess alone is not sufficient; it is but one part of the path. In other words, in Buddhism, in tandem with mental cultivation, ethical development and wise understanding are also necessary for the attainment of the highest goal.

It has been argued that meditative traditions of Buddhism (which predated the recorded birth of Jesus by 500 years and were present in Asia Minor and Alexandria during Jesus’ life), influenced the development of some aspects of Christian contemplative faith (Buddhism and Christianity).

Source: Wikipedia

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{Photography © 2009 by Toscana Enterprises Corporation, all rights reserved}

What Zen is about

We say to study the Budda’s way is to study the self

To study the self is to forget about the self or drop the self

To drop the self, is to become awaken by all things

Zen: to become one with

one with our life

one with our karma

one with our true self.

When you read the blog, read the blog

When you write the blog, write the blog

When you watch the movie clip, watch the movie clip

When you drink the water, drink the water

When you read your book, read your book

When you are talking with your friend, talk with your friend

Enjoy the moments, each and every one of them, one at a time.

The 10 Precepts:

• To abstain from taking life;
• To abstain from taking things not given;
• To abstain from misconduct done in lust;
• To abstain from lying;
• To abstain from intoxicants, taken to induce heedlessness;
• To not talk about the faults of others;
• To not praise myself and put down others;
• To not be covetous and to be generous;
• To not give way to anger and to be harmonious;
• To not slander the three jewels (Buddha, Dharma, Sangha).

We can surely modify the last one to read: To not slander anyone else’s spiritual beliefs, symbols, and practices.

Is here any organization, company, community, or ever Religion who doesn’t promote any of the above principles? So are these Buddhism principles or just plain old common sense of peaceful living?