True study of the Way
Does not rely on
Knowledge and genius
Or cleverness and brilliance.
It is an easy thing,
Just cultivate a
Keen and sincere desire
To seek the Way.
– Dogen (1200-1253) | quote courtesy DailyZen.com
Seeking the Way
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ARTICLE: On a Buddhist retreat 8 Days After 9-11
The Buddhist magazine Tricycle published on its website today a blog article that Meditation Circle co-founder Douglas John Imbrogno wrote 20 years ago, about being on retreat led by Bhavana Society co-founder Bhante Gunaratana right days after 9-11:
“An airplane buzzes across the sky as we sit in strange silence. The monastic retreat center lies in the flight path to the airports of Washington, DC, several hours due east. Usually, planes pass one right after the other. But the planes come only intermittently this night, and the single engine poses a greater challenge to concentration than mere noise … We are guided to direct metta, a loving-kindness meditation, to the tens of thousands of shattered family members. The haunted survivors. The Ground Zero eyewitnesses up and down the land. Not to mention the shocked millions upon millions of us who followed along on TV around the planet.”
READ ON: tricycle.org/trikedaily/on-retreat-after-911/
Be your own witness
People may look at you and feel your way of life, your interest in Dhamma, makes no sense. Others may say that if you want to practise Dhamma, you ought to be ordained as a monk. Being ordained is not really the crucial point. It’s how you practise. As it’s said, one should be one’s own witness. Don’t take others as your witness. It means learning to trust yourself. Then there is no loss. People may think you are crazy, but never mind. They don’t know anything about Dhamma.
Others’ words can’t measure your practice. And you don’t realize the Dhamma because of what others say. I mean the real Dhamma. The teachings others can give you are to show you the path, but that isn’t real knowledge. When people meet the Dhamma, they realise it specifically within themselves. So the Buddha said, ‘The Tathāgata is merely one who shows the way.’ When someone is ordained, I tell them, ‘Our responsibility is only this part: the reciting ācariya have done their chanting. I have given you the Going Forth and vows of ordination. Now our job is done. The rest is up to you, to do the practice correctly.’
Teachings can be most profound, but those who listen may not understand. But never mind. Don’t be perplexed over profundity or lack of it. Just do the practice wholeheartedly and you can arrive at real understanding; it will bring you to the same place the teachings are talking about.
AJAHN CHAH
(Excerpt From ‘The Collected Teachings of Ajahn Chah’)
Don’t Be a Meditator
“Don’t try to become anything. Don’t make yourself into anything. Don’t be a meditator. Don’t become enlightened. When you sit, let it be. What you walk, let it be. Grasp at nothing. Resist nothing. ”
Turn to the Ocean
I explain to you matters
Pertaining to enlightenment,
But don’t try to keep
Your mind on them.
Just turn to the ocean
Of your own essence
And develop practical
Accord with its nature.
~ Yangshan
Recipe for Contentment
“If one’s life is simple, contentment has to come. Simplicity is extremely important for happiness. Having few desires, feeling satisfied with what you have, is very vital: satisfaction with just enough food, clothing, and shelter to protect yourself from the elements. And finally, there is an intense delight in abandoning faulty states of mind and in cultivating helpful ones in meditation.”
~ H.H. the Dalai Lama
Invisible turmoil
Withdraw now from
the invisible pounding and weaving
of your ingrained ideas.
If you want to be rid of this
invisible turmoil, you must just sit
through it and let go of everything.
Attain fulfillment and illuminate thoroughly.
Light and shadow altogether forgotten.
Drop off your own skin,
and the sense-dusts will be fully purified.
The eye then readily discerns the brightness.
~ Hongzhi Zhengjue (1091–1157)
Bhante G on meditating via ZOOM, daily mindfulness and facing death
This Q-and-A was featured in the April 2021 issue of WestVirginiaVille.com magazine
By Douglas John Imbrogno | WestVirginiaVille.com | april15.2020
It is not as well known as it should be that a much-beloved, 93-year-old global figure in Buddhism has called West Virginia home since the latter decades of the 20th century. Bhante Henepola Gunaratana — better known around the planet as “Bhante G” — is abbot of the Bhavana Society, a Theravada Buddhist monastery and retreat center near High View WV, in Hampshire County, which he co-founded in the early 1980s.
Bhante G, who was born in rural Sri Lanka, ordained as a monk at age 12 and took full ordination at age 20, as he recounts in his entertaining biography “Journey to Mindfulness.” He came to America in 1968 and earned a PhD. in world religions at American University in Washington D.C. where he also served as chaplain.
Long desirous of establishing a Buddhist forest monastery in America, Bhante G and supporters found and purchased a 60-acre plot of land about twenty minutes from Wardensville, WV. The seed of his idea took root and became the Bhavana Society, a monastery and retreat center that has attracted thousands of lay Buddhists, monks and nuns from around the world in the years since its establishment.
Bhante G has written a number of books, including the now-classic meditation manual “Mindfulness In Plain English,” which has been translated into more than two dozen languages, and its companion “Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness.” He regularly leads retreats on meditation, mindfulness , concentration, and other topics at the Bhavana Society and around the world.
With the onset of the COVID pandemic in 2020, the Bhavana Society suspended in-person retreats. In March of that year, he began to lead guided meditations on ZOOM, followed by in-depth talks on Buddhist teachings. Bhante G spends the first two months of every new year in solitary retreat at Bhavana, which led to a pause in the ZOOM sessions. He recently resumed them. They take place promptly from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m., on most Saturdays and Sunday.
TO ATTEND BHANTE G’s ZOOM MEDITATION SESSIONS: Log into the meeting at this link a few minutes before 10 a.m. on most Saturdays and Sundaythose days. Type in the password ‘metta,’ (a Pali word that signifies ‘loving-friendliness’). On Saturday, the half-hour guided meditation is followed by a talk on Buddhist teachings. On Sundays, people in the ZOOM session can ask questions on spiritual practice directly of him.)
To mark the recent resumption of the ZOOM meditations, I asked Bhante G to take part in WestVirginiaVille’s “5 Questions” series, which focuses on intriguing people in West Virginia doing interesting things. For more questions-and-answers with him, see the book I edited of highlights from 50 years of his responses to common questions he receives: “What Why How: Answers to Your Questions on Buddhism, Meditation, and Living Mindfully” by Bhante G” (Wisdom Publications 2020) | PS: Thanks to Brian Chamowitz at Bhavana for his assistance in making this Q-and-A. happen.
Continue reading Bhante G on meditating via ZOOM, daily mindfulness and facing death
Why don’t you touch your nose?
Then spring now autumn,
the four seasons revolve.
Then young now old,
you see the hair turn white.
Then wealthy and nobility,
now a long dream.
Years and months go by,
Carrying ten thousand pecks of sorrow.
In the path of suffering,
The wheel of rebirth rolls endlessly.
In the river of passion,
We swim like bubbles
forming and popping.
Now coming to the right place
To learn the Way,
Why don’t you touch your nose?
See that this is your very good
Chance of a million lifetimes.
~ Tue Trung Thuong Si (1230-1291)
KNowing
Knowing others is understanding;
Knowing self is wisdom.
Force can master others;
But only strength can master self.
~ Lao Tzu
Essential Worker News
The Same Deep Activity
“To cook or fix some food, is not preparation; it is practice … Whatever we do, it should be an expression of the same deep activity. We should appreciate what we are doing. There is no preparation for something else.”
~ Dogen (1200-1252)
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PHOTO: Chinh Le Duc, unsplash.com
This Cup Is Already Broken
One day Ajahn Chah held up a beautiful Chinese tea cup:
“To me this cup is already broken. Because I know its fate, I can enjoy it fully here and now. And when it’s gone, it’s gone.” When we understand the truth of uncertainty and relax, we become free. The broken cup helps us see beyond our illusion of control.
~ From “The Wisdom of Uncertainty” by Jack Kornfield
Abandon COnceit
“It is by diminishing ego, letting go of arrogance, and abandoning conceit that one becomes a better Buddhist, no matter what tradition one may follow.”
~ Bhikkhu Analayo, “Superiority Conceit in Buddhist Traditions”
No Squandering
“Life and death are of supreme importance. Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost. Each of us should strive to awaken. Awaken! Take heed, do not squander your life.”
~ Dōgen