dung

you snap to consciousness, glance at the clock—4:30 a.m. -but it was not the tolling of the monastic bell which woke you: as your mind swims fully into consciousness you hear your dog scratching at your bedroom door and whimpering.

rising to let him outside into the brightening petals of the dawn, so reminiscent of the walk out towards the Sala for morning Pūja those mornings when your awareness of breathing was given a new, visual, aspect as your exhalations streamed about you as condensation, you resolve to put in an early sit in pleasant synchronicity to the Sangha.

 

your heart falls, and your resolve falters a little, when you finally herd the dog downstairs after chasing him round and over the bed, spinning as he goes, chasing his tail—hold on a minute: did he not wake you urgently a moment ago to go out?—resolve flickers and almost dies when you find the whimpering came a little too late as there’s a neat pile of dog dung lying in the hallway.

truthfully, you knew almost the moment you stepped out of the bedroom—the scent is propelled upwards by the heat of the dung, fresh from the dog’s body.

so after picking up, mopping up, bleaching up, rinsing up, when you finally peel off your rubber gloves, look out at the poor child with pathetic eyes now curled up in his kennel; feel the twinge of resentment melt away in instant of natural mettā, you can hear the voice of your preceptor saying: “it’s just the way it is”, and, “if you’re presented with unsatisfactory conditions, use them: use them as a reflection.”

Ajahn Brahm’s book title come’s to mind: Who ordered this truckload of dung?

So you go to sit and wonder at the potential for feeling gratitude for a dog dumping on your floor.

When life sends you shit, sit. OK maybe that needs a little work. (It’s a topic of discussion in our house whether ’shit’ equals a musāvāda and should be added to the swear-box list…) but the point’s there: even this can be used for reflection; all dhammas, if viewed correctly, lead you to realization of the three qualities of existence: dukkha (that one’s easy!), anicca, anatta: this thing, this object of reflection that life has dumped on your floor, is unsatisfactory, is impermanent, and has no permanent abiding self.

regarding the last, it can be easy to think: sure a steaming dog turd doesn’t have a self, but three minutes ago this faeces was part of an animal you know and love, was an integral part of him…

and as you cross your legs on the mat, you can feel the movement of the same matter within your intestines, as the natural process of peristalsis, of digestion, absorbtion and elimination continue.

maraṇa

a few days back, my endurance session of early morning pain was interrupted by a phone call informing me my father had died, suddenly.

there were certain practical matters to attend to in the moments immediately following (offering help with contacting relatives and similar tasks) and of course I was concerned for the welfare of my stepmother, who’d called with the news.

this death came hard on the news about ten days previous that my father-in-law has advanced prostrate cancer and there was an oddity to watching tears spring to my wife’s eyes—who wasn’t close to my father—my own remaining dry. A hard reminder of parental mortality seemed, on the surface, to affect her more—and in some ways, my own father’s death, though sudden, being peaceful in his sleep seemed preferable to a long and painful ride through the ravages of cancer and it’s treatment: if that was the outcome, a cure being possible, if unlikely.

after a brief conversation, mainly relaying the circumstances of his death, I was walking away and my wife stopped me, asking:

“are you sure you’re alright?”

“well, I wouldn’t be much of a Buddhist if I wasn’t…” was what I replied.

This wasn’t merely an offhand comment but indicated my true perspective at that moment. As we talked a little further I clarified what I meant, not meaning to imply I felt nothing but being aware through all of my adult life of the fragility of our human existence, it hardly came as a devastating shock, especially since my father had undergone heart surgery some ten years back.

over the ensuing days all manner of memories, feelings, and reflections would occur—my meditation practice was even more essential, and useful. I did dabble here and there with some maraṇasati and found that if I let my mind wander into recollection of my father a strong rush of emotion would follow. It was instructive to observe this with a quietened mind.

and there is an impetus towards practice, though we are surrounded with pale reflections of the four great signs, the media being saturated with death, yet we take little heed, the floods that wash away the possessions, the lives of others seeming not even to dampen our own security. It takes the immediacy of our own suffering or one close to us to really wake us up to the exigencies of existence.

so this post, no pictures—not even any links: any reader (including myself) will have to make their own connections, emphasize their own words.

I recall some Zen master telling his students: I will die soon. If you grieve for me you have not understood a word of my teachings.

this seems inhuman, even harsh, repressive… But although we are bound to feel some grief upon these events, if we pursue that grief, indulge in it, enlarge it bury ourselves in recollection and regret—are we following the Majjhimā Paṭipadā?

Asalha Puja

today being Asalha Puja, it seemed right to sit a little earlier—and even manage a short sit at lunch, also to devote a little time to studying the Dhammacakka Sutta.

whether or not the sutta as we have it bears an resemblance to that which the Buddha taught to the pañcavaggiyā, or indeed whether the first desana was taught there and to those five I’ll leave to the scholars to argue: there are some curiosities over its placement in the tipitaka and the latter half has, perhaps, the feeling of being bolted on afterwards (at least to my western biased ears). But the core of the sutta is a solid gem containing each facet of the foundations of Buddhism (perhaps with the exception of paticca samupāda, but conditioned genesis might be said to be an expansion of the second noble truth and came in the second desana, if I remember correctly.)

but as an inspirational foundation for practice: both meditative and as a starting point for study, it has a special resonance—even down to the last phrases of the desana itself, where it’s recorded that Kondañña realized the truth of anicca and became a sotapanna, the first attainment of a disciple. (It’s interesting to reflect that with regard to historical veracity it can be noted that this first attainment of the first ‘Buddhist’ is not arahantship, which would have been more impressive, if less credible.)

Ajahn Sumedho, in the foreword to Dr Rewata Dhamma’s book on the sutta says: “…if you had nothing else but this sermon to follow, it would give you all the necessary information and instruction for profound insight into the truth of what ‘is’—which is, of course, enlightenment.” Although I’d think that a little optimistic, in my heart I agree and when he continues: “I have used this sutta as my main guide to practice over the past twenty-eight years, constantly referring to and reflecting upon the Four Noble Truths, the three aspects of each truth, and the twelve insights.” I’m heartened to read that, finding myself also drawn back again and again through the years to the simple purity of this sutta’s teaching

prog rock

earlier today, my neighbour decided on a hour of partying to 70’s revival music with their back doors open wide at the exact time I’d available to sit.

It was interesting to watch the mind’s reaction to this samādhic inconvenience, to see the difference in my ability to concentrate, to see how this distraction differed from the more home grown variety…

it’s not possible to do a statistical analysis, but I suspect there wasn’t much more distraction present than usual in my mind. What was present, however, was an element of  dosa—aimed at partying oldsters, and maybe a thirst for retreat, a taṇhā for seclusion and quiet.

the latter is, in a sense, a positive defilement, being a kilesa that could lead to an abandonment of the kilesa.

the former made me remember my feelings in similar circumstances when I was much younger—remember battling with a raging fire of loathing for the students playing the same ‘Frankie goes to hollwood’ track over and over well into the small hours while I sat battling my demons.

‘battling’—that’s not merely a stylistic device. The very battling against them gave them more fire, made them last much longer. Had that young meditator been able to practice what he knew he should do: observe but don’t act, don’t create kamma whether of body, speech, or mind, he would have suffered less.

suffered less—not been freed completely. It would always have been unpleasant, a combination of sleep deprivation and noise pollution of the sort used to soften up prisoners at Abu Graib, but it needn’t have been so internally painful.

what was needed was stronger sati , and a more developed mettāpractice. Easy words to write, hard practices.

sometimes it can be a real dhutangajust to live with other people’s quirks and lack of consideration without reacting in actions based on negative emotions.

but one shouldn’t forget to be realistic, as the Buddha himself advices, seek out a quiet place at the foot of a tree, an empty room. And hope the neighbours are out.

following dukkha

uideo meliora proboque, deteriora sequor. (Metamophoses VII.20) Ovid, that witty chronicler of desire, was perhaps being just a little more than witty when he wrote that—no doubt with a wry shrug of the shoulders.

something like: “I see the better course, and approve, yet follow the worse”, it’s hard to think of an adult, or even a child past the earliest years, who hasn’t felt that guilty wavering of the needle, as intention, saṅkappa, flicks from one course to another finally settling the way of pain, the way you know is inferior or downright wrong, the course you know is heralded by a rushing breath as every deva within a thousand yojana sighs in a sudden access of domanassa.

framed in a Buddhist schema, the thought could be paraphrased as “why do I follow courses of action that I know result in dukkha?” Certainly, the phrase leads a Buddhist mind directly to the question? Why do we persist in behaviours we know to be detrimental? Or, put another way, why don’t we cease actions we know result in dukkha?]

this behaviour can be seen at its clearest in the frantic last phases of addiction, where the actions are continued when any real pleasure, or sukkha, has long vanished from the activity. Whether drug use, pornographic obsession, the so-called ‘buzz’ that comes from “risk-taking” activities such as boosting cars or climbing mountains: the actions are continued—almost as if with a mind of their own.

If these behaviours issue forth from obsession and attachment, taṇhā or lobha, then there can be only one result.

so how is it that even when we can apparently perceive the cycle of dukkha, or at least one phase, one revolution, that we persist?

to say that we lack the right intention, sammā saṅkappa, in some ways is just restating the problem.

perhaps part of the explanation might emerge from an examination of the division of right view, sammā-diṭṭhi, into two types: ‘mundane’ and ’superior’.

when one has attained mundane sammā-diṭṭhi, or perhaps it is better to say, are practising mundane sammā-diṭṭhi you recognize the principle of kamma, you see that kusala kamma results in sukkha, akusala in dukkha. You also understand the mula, or roots—i.e. the roots from which these actions spring up, our old friends lobha dosa moha.

actions springing from roots of these three are invariably akusala, resulting in suffering, not tending to liberation, the phala or vipakha resulting is laden with dukkha.

actions springing from volition based in alobha, adosa, amoha, free from greed anger and delusion, are kusala , leading to happy results, tending to a fortunate rebirth.

but even full understaning of this entire cycle of kamma, from root to fruit, mula to phala, is still only mundane right view.

although as one voyages deeper and deeper into the understanding of this universal law you will tend less and less to towards akusala
kamma, you will still be vulnerable to Ovid’s paradox, even seeing the better way, you might take the worse—seeing clearly the good path, the Ariya Magga, you step forward, pierced with infinite regret, upon the muddy trail to torment.

the imprint of this unfortunate pattern will only finally be erased with supramundane sammā-diṭṭhi.

through the diligent application of vāyāma in samādhi and sati, insight can arise. No longer a mental cogitation on dukkha and its causes, no longer an intellectual view of kamma, insight or pañña can arise, the noisy chatter of the intellect quieted, a direct apperception of dukkha pierces the thickest veil of avijjā.

only then can we finally say farewell to stubborn stain of regret that each of us has felt as we turned our face from the good and moved into the shadow of ignorance.

as the Buddha said in his first sermon, the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, a part which always moves me deeply:

Cakkhuṃ udapādi ñāṇaṃ udapādi paññā udapādi vijjā udapādi āloko udapādi.

Vision arose, insight arose, discernment arose, knowledge arose, illumination arose within me with regard to things never heard before…

note: I’m indebted to Bhikku Bodhi’s ‘The Noble Eightfold Path’ for his very clear explanation of sammā diṭṭhi.

a life without ice cream

it’s hard to imagine a life without ice cream. I don’t mean a life without ice cream every day, I don’t mean a life without ice cream occasionally—I mean, it’s hard to imagine a life where you’re never tasted ice cream, not once.

I should add the proviso but I mean it’s hard to imagine a person like you. Of course it’s quite easy to imagine a tribal person, perhaps in the Amazonian Basin, who has never come into contact with western civilisation sufficiently to encounter the product. But to imagine a person in the west who has never once been offered and accepted this common delicacy is almost unimaginable.

yet this product is totally supererogatory to life’s needs. In terms of fat and carbohydrate delivery it is both unbalanced and unhealthy. Aside from nutrition, chilling the stomach is probably not a very bright idea physiologically.

the multiplicity of ingredients and almost certainly non local manufacture can be added to this list of undesirable qualities.

yet imagine a childhood in the west without once the simple and wide eyed delight an ice cream on a hot day he can provide. It’s hard, isn’t it?

as I ate some ice cream that emerged from our conveniently located freezer, I reflected upon this. How easy it is to take whipped up pleasures of fantastic complexity utterly for granted. How hard to imagine even the simple renunciation of giving up the sweets and the sugary foods that dissolve our teeth and often result in extended agonies of dental pain.

even when an anāgārika and receiving all food items for one main meal into a single bowl, I sometimes was offered ice cream—whether or not it was dumped in with all the other food items, melting into the curry, it was still a supremely delicious food. Hardly renunciant fare.

the point of this rather overextended examination, is to wonder if we are not so far over the line into sensual pleasures that treading the Ariya Aṭṭhaangika Magga requires a massive shift to what would seem like asceticism. Too many pleasures are taken far too granted in the west, we are spoilt children liable to scream and kick when the smallest of our toys and pleasures is taken from us.

whether we adopt some upāsaka dhutanga, or try to practice some simple form of non discrimination in our everyday lives, we must surely recognise that the culture of plenty which surrounds us—the culture that we all deserve so much more—is a huge burden on the mind of someone who attempts to practice any kind of simplicity of living. A necessary factor if one is to have any chance of the slightest penetration into that most simple and deceptive of truths: the ever present fact of pain in our own lives, the unsatisfactoryness at the heart of all forms of existence.

a spoonful of ice cream is not dukkha, but attachment to it, and attachment to the sensation resultant, inevitably leads to dukkha. How easy it is to overlook the simple fact of these subtle mental processes, the habitual actions of mind that result from exposure to pleasant sensation.

tick the box

after removing a tick from our dog, I was given pause by the question of what to do next.

what, after all, is the very first precept of the five considered the minimum requirement for Sīla in lay practice?

as an Theravadin upāsaka you repeat the tradition formula: Pāṇātipātā veramaṇī sikkhāpadaṃ samādiyāmi—I undertake to avoid killing or injuring living beings.

this tick, after removal, was happily crawling about, apparently undamaged & hardly discombobulated by its forcible removal from its food source.

open any veterinarian book and the likely prescription is to drop into a container filled with alcohol, resulting in a fairly swift death and one which can be imagined highly unpleasant or throwing in a fire, even worse.

one site recommends wrapping in toilet paper and flushing—the potential for escape and reattachment in a particularly inconvenient place makes me marvel at this advice.

simply releasing the beast is problematic—apart from the possibility of reattachment to your own animal, numerous other wildlife species can be harmed, not only in the immediate sense but in serious diseases for which the tick is a vector.

to put the tick in a box, and leave there? Is slow starvation a more or less painful death and is the quibble that the intention is not to kill but merely to confine sustainable?

two factors are possibly key here: one that kamma is not some mechanistic trait in some clockwork universe. This was specifically rejected in the suttas though it was believed by large numbers—notably the Jains in the Buddha’s own time. kamma is predicated on cetana, or intention. Accidental injury does not affect kamma and result in vipāka, or kammic results.

the other factor is less clear and relates to how far it is permissible to go in potential harm to one being in order to safeguard another. (in relationship to harm to oneself, the simile of the saw comes to mind.)

In some idealistic universe one might somehow feed it on an artificial blood substitute until it’s wretched life came to its brief conclusion. Or be so overcome by karunā that the tick was fed by one’s own blood—no doubt some Jātaka tale describes similar events; Lyme Disease is a sufficiently cogent reason to reject this course even if in the mood for experimentation.

needless to say, my universe is very far from ideal and my development of karunā very minimalistic, at least in comparison.

at this stage my partially fed tick is resting in captivity—I doubt I’ll follow up this post as we each have to make our own ethical choices, and live with the consequences. I will say that I feel that at times our attitude to these small events can be significant indicators of how far we have come to grips with the potential for raging violence within ourselves.

mala three—skull

the mala most precious to me, and perhaps most meaningful in my stumbling steps along the Ariya Aṭṭhaangika Magga is the simplest and roughest—crudely hewn bone disks on a course string (thread seems too fine a term).

having said a couple of things previously that could be misinterpreted as snippy, concerning Tibetan practices—it’s good to balance it with an expression of sympathetic admiration.

the dedication, or faith, shown in the origin of this, and similar, malas is extraordinary. As far as the limited information I’ve so far come across, It has long been a tradition for Buddhists in Tibet to offer their body to be used in the manufacture of ritual implements after their death.

Historically, Milarepa’s drinking cup is famous and there are numerous other examples of skull caps being used by eremitic monks through the ages.

The genesis of such traditions stretches back to the Buddha himself and ascetic practices prevalent in his day. The ‘cemetery’ and other paṭikkūlamanasikāra meditations are obvious reflections on this and among the permissible dhutangas are paṃsukūla or wearing a robe made from cast off cloth, of which one made from scraps collected at the charnel-ground was considered the ‘best’, and sosānika—dwelling in a charnel ground itself.

a direct descent can be seen in the use of bone to manufacture malas. in this instance, Buddhist practitioners of Tibet or Nepal have donated their corpses so the skulls can be used either in the manufacture of kapala, the skull drinking caps, or as skull bone malas, as illustrated.

outside an autopsy room or cancer ward, it’s hard to think of a more immediate tap on the shoulder from a devadūta—but it comes in a pleasing form and much more subtle reminder.

I often hold this mala when I sit and afterwards, when going through a round of mettā recitations, the stirrings of impatient kilesas are tamped down by the thought of the people, passed on to another rebirth, whose very bones are passing through my fingers.

heroes

heroes. There must be more to the success of this television series than just the plot–amusing though it is, or the acting—even though it might be exceptional for the genre.

perhaps it reflects a deep desire in each (or at least many) of us to embody a heroic nature.

I know people who profess to abhor both science fiction and comic books who have yet watched all episodes avidly, if not oblivious (difficult, as they’ve pursued media studies) then they’ve somehow managed to ignore the series being largely bolted together from left over pieces of both genres.

although possessing an avid fan following, neither of these genres has really hit the mainstream, fantasy, a close relative of SF though with quite different basis, is much more firmly embedded and comic book heroes make successful transitions but rarely seem to break out of the niche they seem to inhabit.

in Heroes, comic book content and constructional quirks are integral to the plot of the first series and an unmistakeable stylistic influence on the whole concept at well as mcuh of the detail Apart from the basic SF premise of humans evolving into a new, futuristic species, there are considerable nods to SF technical whackery through the imagery is mostly held back to a cornflake box 70s America where the summum bonum of ambition is cheerleading for the giirls and chasing cheerleaders or baddies for the boys. This is in deliberate contrast to the apocalyptic and historical sections: both SF standbys.

but i think it’s not necessarily an idle question to ask what has caught on here, having discussed it’s comic book and SF basis precisely to rule that out.

From the premise of the series into the intricacies of the week by week plotting, the driving force is the hero and antihero but more specifically the struggle within the principals to find the heroic in themselves. And not only that, to ensure that the heroism is not misplaced—it is in this that Heroes lifts itself fractionally above the heaving multitude of other story arcs where Mr. Hero struggles with his imperfections before realizing his heroic nature (& getting the girl). Heroes does, even in it’s at its most ridiculous twiddling with time paradox dilemmas and the limits of fatherly protective love, insists on showing the difficulty of knowing the right side to choose, the right path to take.

if one is sufficiently bound up in the story one can ignore the time these super-heroic beings spend agonizing over moral dilemmas but looking at it from a different perspective an immense amount of suffering, of dukkha is represented in these struggles and much of the time the outcome is more dukkha to follow.

whilst being at the nub of why tis series has such a wide appeal, at least in my view—from a Buddhist perspective, most of the problems faced by the protagonists would be avoided if they were Buddhist. Why? Because even lay Buddhism, in its commitment to follow the pañca-sīla,, would remove most of these moral dilemmas, substituting a clear choice.

moreover, the wild emotional thrashings those with heroic abilities suffer in trying to come to terms with them and find a use, a purpose for them, would be alleviated by the perspective of anicca, and solved by the necessity for heroic struggle on the ariyamagga in the long road to liberation.

here the true hero (and heroine) is the bodhistta, bound for arahantship, moving towards a state where there a no more moral dilemmas to trouble the writers of comic books and tv series.

mala two—ānāpānasati

in case it seems a little bit perverse in a blog named ānāpānasati for the second post proper to veer into malas and mantras we’ll brings things back home—touch the earth, so to speak.

I wear a mala much of the time, most often on the wrist where it seems a little less like jewellery (confession time: I tend to wear a turquoise mala when I happen to be wearing blue to match—now I’d agree that probably is perverse…). But the reason for my wanting the mala available through the day isn’t to pile up recitations—even when I use it (as designed?) for mantra recitation I don’t count beyond one round.

instead I mostly use the mala as an aid to everyday ānāpānasati. Just as a useful technique (usually prescribed for beginners) is to count the breaths from one to ten then start over or similar methods, This is because novice meditators often find it hard to keep any kind of focus.

Likewise, when in a distracted situation, I use a mala to count breaths—not up to 108, or any other number, but just one bead, one breath. Holding the mala in the usual manner, I grasp the next bead on the inhalation and move it on the thread to lie against those already counted on the exhalation.

to go against tradition in using a tool or technique in an innovative way is something that deserves a cautious approach even, or especially, when the tradition seems wrong-headed. At risk of repetition: to attempt the cultivation of a deity through mala recitation seems if not against the Dhamma (which I suspect it is) then a papañca at best a distraction if not a serious straying from the ariyamagga. This might indicate that the practice is best left where it originated—simply note one’s suspicions that the practice is a distraction, and confine oneself to an admiration of the vāyāma (which is often exceptional).

this is not an attack on the Tibetan School—but if you wish to practice as a Theravādin you will become hopelessly confused if you import this and that from other schools as the mood strikes. ‘Cultivating a deity’ might well be a useful tool under the guidance of an experienced Rinpoche but is wallowing in the hot mud of saṃsāra for a follower of Theravāda.

if this point seems laboured, it is to attempt clarity on where respect for another tradition ends and the appreciation of some of its techniques can be cautiously developed.

so in counting breaths on a mala, a string of beads as an aid to ānāpānasati, one isn’t really counting at all. Faced with the whirling distractions of the physical world with the quotidian battering against the senses that even a quiet life produces, the physical activity of moving a bead along a string maintains sati where otherwise it would be swept away. One bead, one breath—one breath, one bead.

the feeling of this practice to me is close to walking meditation. A particular advantage is that it can be applied even while in conversation. Speech is, after all, an out-breath, a vibration of the vocal cords produced generally through exhalation. One can maintain close attention on the breath while talking—whilst the activity of counting the mala is not, I hope, distracting or off-putting to others.

it is also useful when overwhelmed by physical pain or tiredness—as a line cast into the waters that keep you from drowning in a sea of suffering, the small motion of the fingers keep bringing the attention back to the breath, to this moment, now.

(while at the same time obviating the danger of interference with the natural process of the breath itself—the focus is given detachment through the mala, the shifting tide of the beads through one’s fingers leading to a sati standing just one step away, developing upekkhā.)

so an item that could lead to endless papañca, a proliferation of distractions, an embedding of wrong-view, can instead be turned to sustaining a level of sati and samādhi otherwise impossible.