A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions
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Being Dharma
Being Dharma – The Essence of the Buddha’s Teaching by Ajahn Chah
Buddhism as we know branched out into 3 main followings, depending upon the inclination of the followers. The Theravada or the path of the elders is considered to be the original teachings of the Buddha, probably because the monks who follow it stick to the same rules as set during the time of the Buddha. They live in the forest, go to the town to beg for food and spend the day and night in solitary meditation. Other major branches include the Tibetan Buddhism, which takes Buddhism even beyond the teachings of the Buddha and Zen Buddhism, which makes no bones about its intention of pointing to the reality directly and nothing else.
Ajahn Chah was a renowned teacher of the Theravada school. He lived in the forests of Thailand and is the teacher of many western Buddhist monks. The hallmark of a good teacher is his ability to make complex theory into simple ideas and Ajahn Chah is one of the best teachers in this.
The book Being Dharma is a succinct exposition of the whole teaching of the Buddha. It covers just enough for any sincere seeker to grasp the insights. Ajahn Chah does not spend time in metaphysical discussions but directly addresses the heart of the matter. In this regard, he resembles a zen master.
The book is organized in the following chapters – hearing dharma, understanding dharma, practicing dharma, seeing dharma and being dharma. The contents are also as easy as the chapter titles.
Just like in the meditation practice, you are told to return to the breath whenever the mind is distracted, this is one book, I return to whenever I get lost in multiple other books. It always helps me to regain my center.
Quotes from Being Dharma
First one learns Dharma, but does not yet understand it; then one understands it, but has not yet practiced. One practices, but has not seen the truth of Dharma; then one sees Dharma, but one’s being has not yet become Dharma.
When there is no person, there are no problems. There is no need for solutions, because there are no problems to solve anymore and no one to solve them.
No matter where you are, no matter what your situation, it is possible for you to be practicing Dharma well
We are called Joe or Alice or perhaps Prince so-and-so, but if we realize the Dharma then we too are Buddha, no different from him.
That which we are talking about does not arise and does not cease. It abides as it is. Or to put it simply, it is not born and does not die.
People are born with physical form and mind. In the beginning these things are born, in the middle they change, and in the end they are extinguished. This is their nature. We can’t do much to alter these facts.
Wake Up!
Life is a dream. Wake up from this dream.
Come to your senses and get in touch with reality.
What you think of reality is an illusion.
Watch carefully and apply yourself with your full being
to understand in what sense it is called an illusion.
If this is an illusion, is there anything real?
Know for yourself without depending on any authority – scripture or teacher.
Know it without any doubt. Know it directly, not through some explanation.
A ZEN KOAN
If you ask a question it will obstruct the answer. If you don’t ask the question, you will never find the answer. What will you do?
Renunciation – The Last Step
The most debated topic when it comes to spirituality is renunciation. No wonder, there are many misconceptions about it.
Renunciation, the way it is understood by most people, is the act of leaving home and family life in order to pursue the spiritual life – to live the life of a wandering hermit in search of the ultimate truth. The central question is whether it is necessary to renounce worldly life in order to achieve enlightenment.
Before we enter the debate on the pros and cons of renunciation, we must understand some basics about enlightenment. Enlightenment is the same for all human beings. In fact self-realization is about discovering your true self, beyond the illusory person that you think you are. So the question is about the approach – whether leaving family is going to help you to achieve that.
Let’s pause for a moment and reflect on the situation. We know that we have to be born in a family setting. No human being is born without a mother and a father and if he has grown up to get enlightened, then we can be sure, he or she has spent significant time in the care of the family and society. If there was no family, no society, then there would be no enlightened individuals also.
Society at times or rather at all times is a place full of chaos, where every individual is seeking his self-centered happiness and does not hesitate to harm others and cheat others to get what he wants. Children are prepared through education to get ready to enter the society and sustain its existence. Customs of marriage and rituals of coming of age are all significant for the sustenance of the society.
One cannot force anyone to exit the society, except as an outcast for breaking some of the agreements of the society. So by default, everyone is condemned to live in the society despite its cruelties. All one can do is to further one’s own goals, hoping one gets through life without serious incidents. The whole desire for enlightenment has no place in this structure. Society does not encourage the seeking for truth. Its existence depends on the illusion of progress and civilization.
A PRACTICAL SOLUTION
When an individual who perceives these illusions promoted by the society, he tries to understand what is going on. He comes across other individuals who talk of a true life, self-realization, etc and he is intrigued. He tries to find answers in the society but quickly comes to the conclusion that nobody knows anything about it.
His mind is boiling with the question and he is not finding any outlet because he has to fulfill the responsibilities of his life. He cannot focus on anything unless he gets an answer and therefore needs time and space to go within to explore. However, life has no mercy. It is unrelenting in its demands for survival and sustenance of the family and societal institutions.
Therefore, the only practical way out for a person is to renounce the family and go off to live alone in search of the truth. This has been happening in India throughout history. All those who had this inner calling have promptly renounced their worldly life and went into the forest. Whether they were successful in their search or not is another question.
The search for one’s true self requires meditation for long periods so if you are sitting and doing nothing while at home, other people will think you are lazy and a shirker. They do not appreciate the inner calling of the person. On the other hand, if you are in the forest, away from the home life, then there is no one to disturb you in your meditation. You have voluntarily retired from all responsibilities so you can focus singlemindedly on your goal.
The Buddha used to say that going from the home to the homeless life was the fastest way to self-realization. Hundreds and thousands of young men left their homes to join the Buddha’s Sangha. Even today, many people leave their homes and join a spiritual order, whether Buddhism or Christianity or Hinduism.
Point to note is that if a person is leaving home just to avoid the arduous responsibilities, then that is not the right renunciation. It is right renunciation only when the individual’s intention is to realize his true self. Only then is the renunciation a practical choice because there is no other way to live in the society and seek the higher reality.
So the question naturally arises. Is enlightenment impossible without this renunciation of worldly life? It is not impossible. There have been many cases of family people getting enlightened by hearing the teachings of masters.
In fact Gurdjieff actively promoted the fourth way, a way of self-realization while living the ordinary life. He was of the opinion that the situation one finds oneself in in one’s life is the most appropriate situation to start the struggle against sleep in order to awaken.
The truth about awakening is one of conditions. If a man is living in conditions that are conducive to enlightenment, then it will happen whether he is living at home or in the forest. And if the conditions are not suitable, then awakening will give him a slip even if he has renounced worldly life.
THE MIDDLE WAY
So is there a middle way between renouncing and not renouncing? Yes, definitely there is a way for the intelligent person who knows the conditions to be created. These conditions include first and foremost unobstructed time and space for meditation. If a man is able to organize this time wherein he is able to devote time to meditation with the sincere aim of awakening, then he will be in a much better position than a man who has renounced the world and is living troubled with the thought of where to get his next meal in the forest.
True renunciation is the renunciation of the idea of ‘I’. This can be done anywhere. The only problem of living in the society is that others remind you of being you all too often for you to practice the inner renunciation of ‘I’. However, for a person who is able to maintain self-awareness in all his worldly interactions, he will not be troubled. Within his mind, he has renounced while he is still performing ‘self’-less actions in the world outside.
If at some time, the awakened person wants to really change his way of life and live away from society, then the outer renunciation is only a formality. True renunciation has already happened when the person stopped identifying himself with his body and mind.
Therefore, it can be said that renunciation is the last obvious step rather than the first courageous step.
Prisoners of Philosophy
Are we truly free or freedom is an illusion? Aren’t we all prisoners of our own philosophies?
You wake up in your house, use a toothpaste of your choice to brush your teeth, a soap of your choice to take bath, drive in a car, walk freely in the market, go to office, travel freely to places of your choice, watch television programs when you want and eat and sleep when you want. Can anyone say you are a prisoner? No way. A prisoner is locked in his cell, gets to eat only limited food, has to do work he cannot refuse to do and cannot do anything to get out the prison. The prisoner and you are not the same. Yet, at the level of the mind, we are all prisoners – prisoners of our own philosophy.
We are all philosophers whether we accept it or not or whether we speak philosophically when we are down a couple a drinks. What we think about our life is our philosophy. It consists of our beliefs, ideas, and assumptions of all kinds. There is no question we live our life with hundreds and thousands of beliefs. Some of them are conscious beliefs and many of them are tacit, hidden below our normal perception. Some beliefs are useful to live in society while some don’t make any sense.
For instance, you do believe that cleaning teeth with a toothpaste prevent bad mouth odor because you have some experience to back it up.
But you do not necessarily believe that the toothpaste will make your teeth sparkle like a diamond as the advertisers would like you to believe. You might have many more things to say about a toothpaste and brushing of teeth and all those ideas form your philosophy.
That was a simple example but as we live life, there are many things which are more complex than a toothpaste. Say for example, your philosophy about your work, how much should employees work in the office, what should be their attitude to work, what you think about your spouse, about men or about women in general, about politics, about economics, health, etc, etc. We all have come to certain conclusions about everything in life and we debate it out with our friends and colleagues. Despite the wide variety of positions and opinions about things and people, everyone believes that his opinion is the right one. We accumulate all these ideas and opinions and then because we are so imprisoned by them that all our actions that follow must be consistent with our previously formulated conclusions, even if we have lot of evidence to the contrary.
Lets say, that your job is not working out. It was good for the first 2 years but then it is no longer enjoyable. Yet because you want to show to the world that you love your job, you continue in it. Same with relationships.
So what starts as a mere opinion in the mind has the power to lock you physically into a pattern of action. Isn’t that living like a prisoner. You might have a choice but the options are limited so it is a pseudo choice. And most of us are happy with that variety. We are happy to live as prisoners because we get to watch a movie once a week or go out on a vacation once a year. And the situation becomes worse because everyone else is also a prisoner of his own philosophy. So very few even thinks of escaping or living a free life.
Life is meant to be lived in freedom. Yet we are afraid of that freedom. We create a pattern in our life. That pattern creates familiarity. In that familiarity, we feel secure and so continue in that. So even though we are free from the beginning, we enclose ourselves in to limited notions and ideologies. The one idea is especially very harmful, which keeps people in their prison is the idea of putting efforts to be free from the prison. There is no more ridiculous thing than that belief.
If you are in an open field, you are free to walk in any direction. Now somebody has created a pattern of roads and you cannot leave the road. In that sense you are prisoner of the road. But at the same time, you are free to wander off the road into the field anytime. That is freedom. You have always been free. The story of being a prisoner of philosophy is told just so that you recognize your eternal freedom once again and not be limited to be on the road forever. Then it does not matter whether you are on the road or in the field, it is just that in the mind you have no philosophy to get bound to. And that is awakening, enlightenment. Here is wishing that all of us live a free life with awareness and insight.
Two Realities
There are two realities going on simultaneously. One is the reality of which we cannot speak and EVERYTHING happens in THAT reality. Actually it is the only reality. However, there is the second reality which is the superimposed reality – the one created by thought, name, concept and description. It attempts to describe and understand the first underlying reality. However, the second reality is made of the same substance as the first one. It is the second reality only from the perspective of the second reality. From the perspective of the first reality, the second superimposed reality does not exist.
For example, a chair or a tree exists in the first reality as atoms, molecules and process. This cannot be described. It is a mystery, just nameless BEING. In the second reality, we call it the tree, the mango tree, the wooden chair and so on.
Now we must understand the overlap between the two realities. The tools used by the second reality – sounds, letters, names, images – are all expressions of the first reality. That means that the second reality cannot exist independently of the first one. It is made of the first reality.
Here is the funny thing. The first reality can only be known through the medium of the second. It is not right to say that the first and the second do not intermingle. From the very beginning, it is only the first reality and will always be. The second exists only to know the first.
People do not realize that the second reality, the superimposed reality, is nothing but the original source reality. They think the superimposition is a separate reality and by constantly forgetting that, they only live in the second reality R2.
Sometimes, R2 is in sync with R1. It can describe it well and goes together with it. At other times, it is not in sync, does not overlap and is incapable of describing whats going on. At this time, for a person, who is only living in R2, there is stress, conflict, anguish and suffering.
The nature of R1 is impermanence, change, dynamic while the nature of R2 is permanence, static, same. Again, this distinction is only from the perspective of R2, not from R1.
Remember R2 is nothing but R1 and has always been so. If a person realizes that, he comes back in sync. In other words, he accepts R2 … whatever description he has of R1 … and stays with it. The effort to modify R1 to meet R2 or R2 to meet R1 causes suffering.
A wise man, or one with this insight, knows both R1 and R2 and can distinguish R2 from R1 or know the limitations of R2 to describe R1 and at the same time accept that R2 fully as R1 itself and not run away from R2.
One lives one’s life only to the extent of one’s understanding of what is life
Isn’t this something you observe around you. It does not matter what one says. It does not matter what lofty ideas one has. Observe the way a person lives his life and you will understand what he thinks about life. Compare what you think life is with the way you live your life and see if there is a difference in understanding and action.
Life – A Fancy Dress Competition
As children we used to take part in fancy dress competitions. I remember having dressed up as an air force pilot in my 2nd or 3rd standard. Sometimes I wonder why we have those competitions – I guess grown ups like to see how their child will look in an uniform or how she would enact a specific role. So fancy dress competitions are somewhat like role plays. You get into the uniform and you kinda get into the character also. Such experiences tend to leave a deep impression. For a long time after that, my dream was to become an air force pilot.
Most fancy dress competitions are a one time event. You participate and once it is over, you return to your normal life. But if I may take a leap into the world of fashion, I pretty much see the same thing there. All fashion is about coming up with new fancy dresses – new materials, new design, new colors, new this, new that.
And then people live an elaborate fancy dress competition – going for a party, choose a party dress – going for a wedding, wear a fancy dress – going for a funeral – wear a plain dress – going to office, wear formals – going on a vacation – wear trendy clothes – and so on and on. Then there is summer fashion, monsoon fashion and winter fashion and spring wear too. Not to forget the festivals which all require a specific type of dress – Navratri, Diwali, Christmas, Halloween, et all.
Hear some women talking and conversations are mostly about what someone was wearing the other day. And why not? The clothes we wear make a statement about who we are. They create an impression in other’s minds about us. So on one hand, we become very conscious about what we wear and how we look and on the other, we tend to draw some conclusions about people based on what they wear and how they look.
Just note what you are wearing today and what made you wear that – what were you thinking? Look at people around you and note what they are wearing and listen to what conclusions your mind draws about them.
So in this real life fancy dress competition, in which we are not supposed to be aware that we are participating or judging, we are actually all participants as well as judges.
You cannot know the purpose of the journey until you have completed it.
Isn’t it obvious? Say you plan a vacation to Goa with the intention of having a good time but you miss your flight and then have to hitch hike your way, wouldn’t you get new experiences on the way? When you actually complete your trip, you will realize what that trip taught you. But if you are cursing yourself for missing the flight and are complaining of all the trouble you went through, maybe you will not learn anything new. Similarly in life. Welcome everything what happens in your life.
Big Picture Zen 