rarely seen among Buddhists in america

I don't really have anything important to say here on topic. It is refreshing to see a serious discussion between serious people go on for pages without a descent into childish behavior. This is the sort of give and take exploration that was common amongst monks trying to more fully understand the Buddhist teachings a few hundred years after the Great Decease. Out of those discussions, which were founded primarily on the Theravadan texts, Mahayana evolved and became a world-class religion. To discuss these matters is meritorious.

I would like to recommend H. Clark Warren's "Buddhism in Translation". Warren was a better than usual translator from the ancient Palil into modern English. He doesn't spend pages to justify his personal conclusions, but sets down his best understanding of what the Theravadan texts actually say. This tends to be tough sledding for dilettantes, but you folks should handle the material without too much pain. Remember that these texts are records of oral teachings tailored to a largely illiterate audience. Even complex ideas are kept simple (perhaps even too simple), and are repeated over and over so that they won't be easily forgotten. During the period when these materials were written and discussed there was also focus on categorization that to later Mahayana seems antithetical to Buddhist ?fundamentals". Even so understanding those teachings recorded during the Buddha's lifetime, or shortly thereafter, is important to greater understanding of the more world-encompassing Mahayana texts used by the Tantrics, Zen, etc. I'm guessing that there will be questions if you delve into these ancient Buddhist teachings directed almost entirely at the monastic community.

JL is a Master (don't press him on this point), and, though I believe he hasn't spent a whole lot of time with the Pali teachings, his interpretations can be relied upon. Cello, Cyracus, Asher ... you have shown yourselves serious people sincerely seeking to better understand Buddhism. You have all shown aptitude and I believe you have important roles to play in the spread of Buddhism in America. Your willingness to read, think about and discuss what Buddhist teachings are all about is laudable.

There is a danger that you need to be aware of. Buddhism, as I understand it, is less about thinking abstractions than it is about daily, constant practice of fundamentals. It is rewarding to think about and discuss Mindfulness and Non-attachment, but to be really useful you have to actually practice those things so constantly that you no longer even think about it. Attention to our own thoughts, words and action should be applied to even the smallest and most mundane activity. Opportunities to mitigate suffering can crop up in surprising ways, but often the best mitigation is not to interfere. We each of us have our own little garden to tend, and it shouldn't be neglected to become overgrown with weeds while we are off telling neighbors how to run their lives. The foundation of the Buddha's enlightenment was to understand the nature of suffering, and to prescribe like a good physician a treatment for its symptoms. You can heal thyself by following "directions", but it is much more difficult to be prescribing for others until and unless you've a good grounding in the "medical" arts.

Carry on, and pay attention.

Thanks again, Asherman, for another very helpful contribution.

Cryacuz, your comment on the traps unattentionally created by compliments is well taken. Like love, compliments are very susceptible to attachment. You are right to note that the Buddha's prohibition pertained not to love itself but to the inordinate difficulty in not attaching to love.
It really doesn't matter much what we think, do, and feel. But it should be noted that somethings are more difficult to deal with in our spiritual careers. I'm sure Asherman would agree that "attention" should be paid to ALL experience, whether we judge the content of that experience to be virtuous or unvirtuous. It's the state of consciousness rather than its content that matters. Everything is a potential trap, a siren for attachment. Picking and choosing between what the content of our experience should be is putting the cart before the horse. As Asherman often advises us, we should pay attention all the time to every experience.

Hi everyone

Thank you to all of you who have tried to explain things so patiently, I really appreciate all your thoughtful insights.

My picture of non-attachment is like when someone is near death and sees himself floating above his physical body. He is aware of everything around him, yet he is really away from his "body shell".

I know very little about Buddhism, but I remember that Buddha has taught non-attachment to everything, because if you have attachments, like love, or riches, you are happy when you have them, and when the object of your love or your riches disappear, you become unhappy because you are attached to them. So in order to avoid that state of unhappiness, you must not create attachments to start with. This, of course, is not for everyone to practice. Buddha did not expect family men to leave their families not to create attachments. :wink:

And I agree with Asherman and JL that we should pay attention to all our experiences. Buddha certainly taught us to live the present moment, not to think of the past, or the future, but the present. Thus, if we live intensively the present, we don't spend our time crying and regretting the past, and be unhappy, or to think that the future will be better. I think this is a very healthy attitude in life.

(I hope what I wrote about Buddha is right, if not, please correct me. Thank you.)

Yeah this idea of non-attachment as being a POV or perspective through which experience is seen rather than an action of some kind is really interesting. Cyracuz has mentioned love, I'm not sure I've ever looked at it in the same way since I read what Krishnamurti said on the matter. The normal usage of the word seems to be loaded with conditions and attachments to the extent that I'm unsure of what "unconditional love" would even constitute. I've looked at love as somewhat synonymous with compassion for a little while now. In a relationship between people, no matter what happens, I think there's room for an unconditional compassion which isn't bound by individual relationships and "things" but is more of a general isness, like the emergent property of a state of mind or something, we naturally and effortlessly promote a positive environment for those around us and "want" peace for others. I remember reading about Tibetan buddhist torture victims whose biggest concern during captivity was that they'd lose their compassion for their torturers. I guess we can love another person like no other on the earth but seeing that affinity for what it is, taking that step back, illuminates the dynamic relationship it constitutes rather than the static elements that can win or lose others or that things happen to etc.

I actually feel in some ways I've meditated for years while listening to music, I guess it's maybe more of a "working meditation" because it involves an activity but I rarely listen to music while doing something else. Sometimes I don't consider the lyrics or ponder over problems or positives but just let the music, the sounds happen. The barrier between "me" and the "music" really breaks down, there really is just experience. It's just unbiased, passive experience of the moment. There is a certain wholeness to it that's tough to describe. You can think critically in another setting about people and what they represent, who they are, our similarities, what binds & drives us, our common causes and frailties but in comparison to the experience of the moment itself, it's all just subdivision after subdivision which I guess highlights something important.

Cello, I like your near death analogy. I'd suggest attachments are like thoughts in the mind or digestive juices in the stomach as JLN was talking about, they're natural in this reality. It's the same reason I take issue with repression. Meditation, direct experience, non-attachment, non-self, it all seems to revolve around central issues regarding the inter-connection between "things" and the grasping to a consistent self. I say positive and negative in terms of bias or change. For instance, attachment being a positive bias because we attempt to promote the relationship between ourselves and the thing in question, detachment, the opposite. Non-attachment on the other hand transcends, in the frame of mind sense, the constituent, static parts of a relationship, it exerts no influence because it neither wants nor pushes away the "thing" because we are no longer merely trapped inside a relationship if you like (the "body shell" of your example). I guess the future and the past are just more abstractions that are manifested with good and bad values assigned to them to create more relationships between ourselves and things which promote or demote our happiness. I was speaking to someone earlier about Bill Hicks, I really like this quote...



...I think I like it because seeing the performance itself when he tells the audience adds something extra (the reaction of the audience I always feel makes for a beautiful moment) but also because it just cuts to the chase fullstop.

Asherman, thanks for the book recommendation, I've noted it down, I was also looking at the Dhammapada online as I read your post. Also for the word of warning, I think truth be told, as to Cyracuz' question on the previous page, no I'm not yet brave enough for "unconditional love" but a big problem I see is not in how I treat others but in how I act generally because of some perceived threat from others. So I'm not interested in attacking other people but truth be told, maybe still afraid of what others have to say about "me" etc.

A lot of very interesting insights and considerations on this thread.

JL and Asherman, your last posts hit the mark for me. Don't know why entirely, but I needed to hear that part about paying attention to all experience, be it virtuous or unvirtous. Despite my efforts not to try and control everything I sometimes find myself doing just that and failing miserably...

Ashers

I have heard that quote from Bill Hicks before, and I remember how much I liked it. Thanks for posting it. Hicks was a strange, strange man, and his comedy had so much more to it than just laughs.

Asherman once wrote that for buddhism to find it's western guise it will need it's own expression, formulated by people in the west; grown out of our civilization. (At the risk of misquoting here, Asherman. Feel free to correct me if needed) The ancient and eternal concepts need a modern suit of clothes, so to speak. I would not say that Hicks was a buddhist, but I do think that his ideas and acts contributed towards this, even though it may not have been intentional.

Thing is that we have our own customized problems, and it's sometimes hard to see how buddhism applies to them. Years and decades will hopefully bring individuals who can bridge that gap and help show the daily application of buddhism in this busy world of ours.





It's like master Yoda said. Train yourself to let go of that which you are afraid to lose...

This is all very helpful. I will add the notion, however, that we can also become attached to the ideas of enlightenment and non-attachment. Meditation takes a step forward in you evolutionary path when it ceases to be "meditation."
Ashers, I too appreciate Krishnamurti. My major influences consist of a combination of Soto zen and Krishnamurti. But for me it took many years of meditaton before I could (at least partially) "understand" K. And I must confess that understanding comes and goes. It's not like information (facts or principles) that I can archive in my "memory banks." Mystical perspective is more like a living effervescent state of mind strongest during meditation (when one is almost totally non-grasping) and variable during the day. There are moments when I am very ego-centered, where my "small mind" seems to be all there is. Then when I remember to "just look", it vanishes and I breathe deeply and live effortlessly.

This is another quote I like. I guess a western expression of buddhism will have possessions and luxury at the forefront of discussion. Walking on the green earth in the present moment, surrounded by products we should buy, things we "need", things we want, advertising that creates our own self identity and with whom we are at the mercy of at a moments notice should we become out of fashion...walking amongst all of this with a calm smile, a knowing smile. It seems like there is often a touch of one step back to take two forward. I was thinking about societies and culture when profit and competition are emphasised. I could look around me and realise how privileged I am, of that there can be no doubt, security, opportunity etc but with every system of course there are problem areas. I remember reading about the different realms of existence, I'm not sure if it was Buddhism or Hinduism but there was an emphasis placed on the human realm being of the best for learning and growing if we use the surroundings to our "advantage". Taking advantage of the opportunity for learning and prosperity in a culture, regardless of how the system created such opportunities and the flaws involved, to rise above the issues that plage people of said culture seems almost like taking a step back to take two forward to me if that makes sense. We sometimes have to use the system, take on board some of the negatives to move beyond the system itself.

You could also say something similar regards to ideas in general and the risk of attachment, which ideas aren't open to attachment? They seem to be intrinsically so. Often you have to discriminate between ideas, pick and choose even when you might not have a clear realisation of the impact these ideas will have, the attachments that may form. If they are the "right" or at least "positive" ideas though, in time, you can work to move beyond even them. It's doing what you can to develop, you can't always jump straight to the end of some queue, and the methods to get to a certain point may not always be "ideal" in some ultimate sense but hopefully there is a stream of progress in the right direction.

JLN, I can't say I "understand" Krishnamurti, maybe I get some of it, sometimes. I really appreciate what you say about ebs and flows of "understanding" dependent on your state of mind though. The biggest thing to stay with me from what I've read wasn't necessarily some specific idea about love etc but a realisation that hit me when I finished reading a particular excerpt from a book of his. I remember it as if it were yesterday, I finished reading this text and sat back in my chair and just thought, "huh", not in a dumbfounded way, it was weird, I just suddenly felt like he was talking on a completely different level to me. That was quite a revelation in some ways, I'd talked to people or read stuff that I could bracket or label into some box and say well that's currently beyond my knowledge in area X, Y or Z but I'd always still felt like we were on the same line of communication in some way. With this though, it was like the words made sense but the meaning was outside my box of thought processing. It was thinking outside of the box but on a whole new level something that as you say, goes beyond memory banks, facts and principles. It's incredible how we can get so boxed in to a certain way of thinking or narrowing our own scope of investigation without even realising it. Anyway, it forced me to take what seems like a crucial step back.

Ashers, I remember not understanding Krishnamurti or Shunryu Suzuki (Asherman's teacher) and saying to myself "that doesn't ring any bells for me." Eventually I realized that I didn't have the bells to ring. Meditation developed such "bells." Later I'd read them and understand (or have a private understanding of) more of their offering.

Yes exactly, the words are there but the listener cannot hear them, different level of communication I guess.

In the army, during my one-year mandatory service (that is the way it works here in norway), I was taught that you never tell scouts what to look for when you send them out. Even though you might have a pretty good idea of what lurks ahead, you don't tell the scouts to look for it, because many things may go unnoticed if they are told to look for something in particular.

Later I realized that to apply this principle in all aspects of my life would offer great rewards. And I think it has. Expectations, be they expectations of difficulty or oportunity, may just as easily blind us as make us ready for what comes.

And I agree with JL's statement that it is very easy to become attached to ideas of enlightenment and non-attachment. It is such a subtle issue that it almost escapes articulation...

Yes, Cryacuz. What a wise army. As Krishnamurti used to point out, it's the expectations, the "known", that most obstructs true openness and learning. In meditation a posture of unknowing provides a clear, intensely open attention (shikantaza), a continuous/flowing/non-grasping fresh-eye awareness of immediate (and in a sense absolute) reality.

I am a Nichiren Buddhist. Nothing has ever brought me more mental clarity and joy than chanting Nam Myoho Renge Kyo. Enlightenment is a potential that each human being possesses.

Ah. "Freedom from the known". If I listen very carefully, I think maybe I hear the faint ringing of a bell in the distance beyond those hills.

What do you guys take from "truth is a pathless land"? Is this to do with "personal understanding" and direct experience rather than some well thought out response to a tradition of some kind. Ultimate truth is an experience of the moment itself? As opposed to some truth dependent on facts, figures and conditions. I guess you have to let go of the idea of a path altogether because a path signifies going from A to B, truth is within A, B and all in between.

Did you ever see the film, "Predator"? The american indian who was the scout of the team was aware of being followed long before the rest of the team near the start but couldn't put his finger on just what was following them. Regards to hearing words you might ordinarily miss, I guess it is a case of acclimatising to your surroundings. Like when you leave the dark theatre of a cinema complex and enter the sunlight of the day, it takes a little while to adjust and take in all the finer points of the world around you.

Ashers:
"What do you guys take from "truth is a pathless land"? Is this to do with "personal understanding" and direct experience rather than some well thought out response to a tradition of some kind. Ultimate truth is an experience of the moment itself? As opposed to some truth dependent on facts, figures and conditions. I guess you have to let go of the idea of a path altogether because a path signifies going from A to B, truth is within A, B and all in between. "

Wish I had said that.
Truth in that sense must refer to the enlightenment perspective which is always personal (not public; it can't be easily shared) and of direct, immediate experience (which IS your true self).
One must let go of the notion of a path or means to an end. That's very hard to do since it is very deeply engrained in Western culture that GOALS are ACHEIVED (grasped) by an AGENT (ego) who applies MEANS to GAIN something in the future.
Meditation becomes refined when there is "noone" not gaining (not grasping at) anything, because all is present. We are already "enlightened" even in our suffering. We just don't know it so we struggle by working, performing, striving, even meditating to gain something we think we lack. Eventually we awaken to the immediate sense of our completeness.
Zen has a phrase similar to the pathless land: "the gateless gate". My own private understanding is something like: entering into the place of enlightenment only to realize we're still in our original place; we've passed through no gate (or traveled no path?), but we all trust that there is a gate or path that awaits our passage. That is the illusion of enlightenment by means of meditation. Real meditation is very different, but one only realizes it with meditation, of some sort. It's fundamentally ineffable. We can only talk around it.

Sorry to be so preachy, but it's your fault You guys are so encouraging; I treasure your insights and curiosity.

Well I don't really see any preaching, just ideas and possibilities. I love to listen to new ponderings & meanderings, it's just a pleasure to read along like this with you guys, there's so much to learn and it's a great alternative to the internal dialogue in my mind. Reading about the 'gateless gate' and allowing such ideas to rest in the consciousness, awaiting an intuitive, explosive outburst of imagination that might occur to suddenly "get" them on a whole new level etc.

Regarding the pathless land, I guess there is also the whole issue of what it actually is that travels a path or becomes a more enlightened person. If you see it in terms of a non-static self, dynamic and always in change, there is only the immediate moment for a "self" to act (the true self you mention). I'm sure I remember Krishnamurti talking about how a "bad" person becomes a "good" person, how such a transformation might happen, telling others to act now, in the moment, for there is nothing else as such. This seems to get back to an ineffable change rather than some step by step plan, awakening to your surroundings in each moment a new as opposed to planning for the future, a good person IS a "good" person through immediate, momentary action, not through past or future deeds. I always remember, "Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today", how about, never put off till a future self what you can do now, in the moment.

By the way, I love the idea of already being "enlightened", it reminds me of the "buddha nature" concept, a state of mind, always accessible in each and every waking moment via all sentient beings etc. Beautiful, that's what you call hope.

But watch out with hope. It's one of the furies not released from Pandora's Box--in order that Man continue suffering (with the attachment of hope). Joko Beck, one of my zen teachers used to say: give up hope and be totally with what is, as it is.

I agree but I think you have to differentiate between people and circumstance, many, most in fact, surely aren't ready for such a message. I suppose it's highly debatable as to whether a school of thought should have certain messages which need to ultimately be transcended, yet, in the beginning, serve as sources of attraction for newcomers. See comparisons with other religions that place an emphasis on appeal to authorities or outside salvation etc.

People see what they are ready to see, and are blind to all the rest. One can no more rush to Enlightenment than to expect fruit from a sapling. Those who need society, will have it and those who are ready for solitude shall find it in the middle of the marketplace. Toys are outgrown, but remain a fascination even when they consist of nothing more than an abstract idea.

Yes, right now I'm alone in my study, but I have your society. A2K, along with painting and my fiddle are my perennial toys.