1. BUDDHISM

2. What’s (Not) In Your Mind?
All things come at first from MIND
Mind creates them, mind fulfills them
Speak or act with tainted mind,
You’ll drag around a cart of pain
Speak or act with lucid mind
And joy will follow like your shadow.
The Dhammapada

3. The whole aim of Eastern religion is to shift self-identity from the light bulb to the light –
Joseph Campbell
Enlightenment

4. Big Questions How can we be happy? What prevents it?
To Hell in a Hand Basket or Heaven on Earth?
Buddhism – A Raft out of Hell?
Did you know you’re my Hero’s Journey?
What’s funny bout peace, love and understanding?
Dr. Buddha: Dukkhalogist - 8-fold Path
What’s (not) in your Mind?
The Jewel’s in the What?
WWBK – What would Buddha know?

5. Same Goal?
“The only thing that is unqualifiedly good is extended vision, the enlargement of one’s understanding of the ultimate nature of things” (8).
What is the nature of things?
What is the state of the world?
Story – “Birdsnest”

6. “Fire and Ice” Robert Frost
Some say the world will end in fire.
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire,
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great,
And would suffice.
“Fire and Ice” Robert Frost

7. Fear and Desire – The Only Way?
“The Last Flower”
Gandhi – “I know a way out of hell”
Story – “Heaven and Hell”
Buddha – “I teach suffering and the end of suffering”

8. The Three Poisons Aversion/Hatred/Fear Delusion/Ignorance
Grasping/Desire
Aversion/Hatred/Fear
Delusion/Ignorance
Cause all suffering
Reflect Personality types

9. Buddhist View of Life
A. 6 senses - Sights, Sounds, Tastes, Smells, Physical perceptions, Mental perceptions
B. 6 accompanying consciousnesses –
Sight and the seeing of it, etc.
C. 52 feeling/thought reactions/responses (26 wise, 26 unwise) interplaying between sense experiences and consciousness

10. Wise and Unwise Responses to Life
Unwise/Unskillful
Hatred
Jealousy
Fear
Anger
etc.
Wise/Skillful
Love
Compassion
Generosity
Openness
Tranquility
Equanimity, etc.

11. Two Ways of Living
Unwise/Unskillful – Wandering about at the whim of every desire, impulse, emotion, like a stick in a river, moody etc.
2. Wise/Skillful/Enlightened – intentional, deliberate, skillful, wise, etc.
Quick Write - Name a person from your life, from a story, or from history or news that you would describe as “enlightened” or “wise” and give specifics
Repeat for someone “unenlightened” or “unwise”

12. Gandhi’s morning prayer
Let our first act in the morning be to resolve such as this:
I shall not fear anyone on earth
I shall fear only that which is sacred
I will not bear ill will towards anyone
I shall not submit to injustice
I shall conquer untruth by truth
I shall conquer hatred by love
And in resting in truth I shall bear all suffering
And bring freedom of spirit to my own heart and all those that I touch

13. Others Love your enemies – Jesus
Meet physical force with soul force – MLK
Make me an instrument of your peace – St. Francis of Assisi
Buddhist Quotes – page 3 in packet
Okay, but how?

14. “Buddhism is a voyage across life’s river –a transport from the common sense shore of ignorance, grasping and death to the further bank of wisdom and enlightenment” (144).

15. Wisdom? “What is the wisdom we’ve lost in knowledge?”
Socrates = poster boy for Western Wisdom – what did he know?
“All I know is that I do not know”
Oracle at Delphi – Know Thyself
What did Buddha discover?

16. Goal – Mindfulness/Awareness/ Enlightenment
“The more deeply we pay attention the more deeply we experience that we do not exist separate from the sunlight or the clouds or the earthworms…To the extent that we have learned to grasp and identify with this limited life, we suffer. The amount of our identification with it is our delusion, our suffering.” Jack Kornfield

17. Big Ideas
It’s all in the MIND Consciousness/ Awareness/Mindfulness/Enlightenment
Life is suffering caused by 1) Selfish Desire/ Grasping, 2) Fear/ Aversion, and 3) Ignorance/ Delusion
Empty Self thru 8fold Path, Middle Way
The Jewel is in the Lotus
Buddha nature and the Nirvanic World

18. BUDDHA "What are you"? "I am Awake”
"Buddha" = the Awakened, the Enlightened
Siddhartha Gautama
B.C.E.
Nepal/India
Sakyamuni (silent sage)
“Wisdom Incarnate”

19. The Man Who Woke Up
A man “judged by hundreds of millions of people, from Ceylon [Sri Lanka] to Japan, and throughout large sections of the Asian mainland, to have exerted by his intellectual integrity, moral persuasiveness and spiritual insight, the most pervasive influence on the thought and life of the human race.” – Del Byron Schneider
"The rest of us dream the dream known as the awakened state of human life"

20. Classic Hero’s Journey
I. Prince, 4 Passing Sights, Great Going Forth – Quest, find the cause of suffering
II. Finds Middle Way, Temptations
Enlightenment under Bodhi Tree – finds cause and end of suffering
III. Returns with a mission to preach a religion of wisdom and compassion

21. Four Passing Sights Journal –Mindblower old man - aging
sick people - disease
corpse - death
monk - withdrawal
"Life is subject to age and death - where is the realm of life in which there is neither?"
Fleshly pleasures lose their charm, so at 29 goes into forest

22. The Great Going Forth Learns Raja Yoga w Hindu Gurus
Tries austerity of ascetics - didn't work to bring enlightenment, but did lead him to principle of
The Middle Way – like a string on an instrument

23. Enlightenment
Sits under peepul/Bo tree (bodhi=knowledge) Gaya in NE India
Vows - “Let my skin and sinews and bones become dry…. all the flesh and blood in my body dry up, but never from this seat will I stir, until I have attained the supreme and absolute wisdom.”

24. Temptation (like Christ’s on the eve of his ministry)
1. Kama - desire - babes
2. Mara - death - empties finite self
Mara challenges his right to be there - Buddha touches the earth to bear witness
Lost in rapture for 7 days, tries to get up, overcome by waves of bliss, stays 7x7 days
3. Mara appeals to reason, don't go back - "How show what can only be found, teach what can only be learned?” Buddha replies – “Some will understand.”

25. Mission Lives message Preaches 50 years - withdraws
6 yrs, preaches 45.
3 mos, preaches 9.
3x/day
Dies c.483 B.C. at 80
Last words - "Work out your own salvation with diligence."

26. The Silent Sage Sakyamuni - silent sage of the Sakya Clan
“One of the greatest personalities of all time” – Smith
“Wisdom incarnate” - cool head/ rational (like Socrates) and warm heart of “infinite compassion”(like Francis)
transforming presence - moved among kings and villagers with equal ease, took no notice of caste

27. The Rebel Saint
Unlike Hinduism, Buddhism sprang fully formed as an Indian Protestantism against Hindu perversions
6 Common Elements of Religion that were corrupted
1.      Authority
2.      Ritual – (“People danced out their religion before they thought it out”)
3.      Speculation – metaphysics
4.      Tradition
5.      Grace
6.      Mystery
What started was a religion almost entirely devoid of each of these ingredients without which we would suppose that religion could not take root.

28. Original Buddhism Empirical - know for yourself, validate
Scientific - cause and effect experiments
Practical - not speculative
Therapeutic - suffering and its end
Psychological – v. metaphysical - began with human problems instead of universe
Egalitarian - women equal, caste breaking
Individuals - Be lamps unto yourselves, work out your own salvation with diligence

29. Numerical too and Useful
2 Ways of Living
3 Poisons
3 Marks of Existence
3 Jewels
4 Noble Truths
4 Foundations of Mindfulness
5 Precepts
5 Skandhas
5 Hindrances
6 Senses
6 Accompanying Consciousnesses
6 Moments of Dukkha
7 Factors of Enlightenment
8 Fold Path
52 Skillful and Unskillful Responses To Life
"Suffering have I explained - for this is useful“
its cause, destruction and path that leads to its destruction.

30. Kalama Sutta
"Do not accept what you hear by report, do not accept tradition, do not accept a statement because it is found in our books, nor because it is in accord with your beliefs, not because it is the saying of your teacher. Be lamps unto yourselves. Those who either now or after I am dead, still rely upon themselves only and not look for assistance to anyone besides themselves, it is they who will reach the topmost height.“

31. The Four Noble Truths Buddha’s First Sermon

32. Dr. Buddha - Dukkhalogist
Symptom: Dukkha – suffering, transitory, finite existence, life out of joint
Diagnosis: Tanha – cause of suffering is desire/selfish craving based on egoism. Private fulfillment increases separateness. Tanha - always present when suffering is present, always absent when suffering is absent
Prognosis: To cure Dukkha, get rid of Tanha - release from the narrow limits of self-interest into vast expanse of human life – How?
Remedy/Prescription: The Eightfold Path

33. Mindfulness Journal Quick Writes
1. Who do you surround yourself with? List people who enlighten you, people who drag you down.
2. Write about a moment you had today when you felt
Anxious, stressed, nervous, dissatisfied, wanting, etc. OR
Peaceful, calm, relaxed, fulfilled, happy, etc.

34. More Mindfulness Journal Quickies
Stop and listen – what are you aware of about yourself or your surroundings of which you weren’t aware until you paid attention?
4. What is most on your mind?
5. What are you aware of about yourself or your world at this point of your life of which you were not aware as a child?

35. Dukkha = life out of joint
Trauma of birth
Sickness
Aging
Fear of death
Being tied to what you hate
Being separated from what you love

36. The Remedy - The Eightfold Path
intentional living, rather than pulled and pushed by impulse and circumstance
series of changes designed to release the individual from ignorance, impulse and Tanha
Preliminary - Begin with Right Association - yoke wild elephant to tamed

37. The Eightfold Path – Right…
Belief – Noble Truths – make up mind, then…
Intent - …Make up our hearts, dedicate
Speech –3 switches control us, become aware of what our speech reveals about us, of how many times and why we deviate from truth or kindness, of motives
Conduct - understand motives before trying to change behavior - how generous/selfless, follow 5 Precepts
Livelihood - what occupies our time. Promote life
Effort – Middle Way, slow and steady, like an ox
Mindfulness – Be aware, awake, conscious
Concentration - Raja Yoga regeneration - change into a new creature who experiences the world in different way.

38. Five Precepts Buddhist version of the Ten Commandments (2nd half)
Knowing how deeply our lives intertwine, I undertake the training to abstain from:
Killing living beings
Taking things not given
Sexual misconduct
False speech
Intoxicating drinks and drugs

39. All in your Mind?
The Dhammapada: "All we are is the result of what we have thought." "All things can be mastered by mindfulness.“
“There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so” – Hamlet
For Buddha ignorance, not sin, is the offender - sin is prompted by fundamental ignorance of our true nature

40. Continuous self-awareness/examination - freedom from unconscious, robot-like existence
See everything as it is - "If we maintain a steady attention to our thoughts and feelings, we perceive that they swim in and out of our awareness, and are in no way permanent parts of us…."
"We should witness all things non-reactively, especially our moods and emotions, neither condemning some nor holding onto others."

41. Ways to practice Mindfulness
Meditate on fearful and disgusting sights until they no longer bother us or repel us
Pervade world with thoughts of loving kindness
become aware of every action - when sleep takes over, whether breath is in or out
special routine for complete withdrawal
Packet page 17 and 18
Mindfulness Experiment - Speech and Action

42. Buddha's Insights
1. Every emotion, thought or image is accompanied by a body sensation and vice versa
2. Obsessive patterns arise in mind and these constitute misery/dukkha
3. Every mental and physical state is in flux, none is solid and enduring, even pain - each is comprised of series of discrete sensations that can suddenly change.
4. We have little control over our minds and physical sensations
5. There is nobody behind the mental/physical events
No Self? No Observer? What up wit dat?

43. 3 Marks of Existence Anicca - transitoriness/impermanence
Dukkha – suffering
Anatta - absence of permanent identity/soul

44. “All Things Must Pass” by George Harrison
Sunrise doesn’t last all morning
A cloudburst doesn’t last all day
Seems my love has up and has left you with no warning
It’s not always going to be this way All things must pass All things must pass away
Sunset doesn’t last all evening A mind can blow those clouds away After all this, my love is up and must be leaving It’s not always going to be this grey

45. Anicca - Impermanence All Things Must Pass Regard this world:
“As a star at dawn,
a bubble in a stream,
a flash of lightning
in a summer cloud,
a flickering lamp –
a phantom - and a dream.”
This applies to the self too – hence:

46. Anatta – No Soul doctrine
No soul/permanent self. What gets reborn?
“Bad habits” – Desire/Fear threads each life to past and future
No spiritual substance/soul transmitted - but ideas, impressions, feelings, consciousness, memories
Desires and dislikes influencing my mind have lineages
Not bound by personal history - can break the chain through will

47. Karma, Tanha, Samsara,
Buddha's reincarnation differed from Hindus who attribute rebirth to Karma
Buddhists to Tanha - "as long as the wish to be a separate self persists, that wish would be granted. Desire is key - it is possible to step permanently out of the cycle of rebirth whenever one wished wholeheartedly to do so."

48. Nirvana?

50. Arhat who extinguishes all desires - reborn doesn't apply, not reborn doesn't apply.
Response to disciple: You ought to be bewildered - this is "profound, recondite, hard to comprehend, rare, excellent, beyond dialectic, subtle, only to be understood by the wise."
Supra-sonic?
"blow out/extinguish" boundaries of finite self, left w/ boundless life
Nirvana

51. Far transcends the power of words - individual awareness is eclipsed in the blazing light of total awareness like a star at sunrise
"Some say the dewdrop slips into the shining sea - others prefer to think of the dewdrop opening to receive the sea itself.“
"life of the Arhat is of increasing independence from the causal order of nature“
Spiritual freedom brings largeness of life - Buddha "embodied more of reality.“
If increased freedom brings increased being, total freedom brings BEING itself.

52. Big Raft and Little Schism (split) btw Mahayana + Theravada
Two Schools - both Yana - raft or ferry - both claim to carry people across life's shores to enlightenment
Maha - great, (Mahatma - Great souled), Hina - little
Mahayana - "Buddhism for the people" - Big Raft - linked to the Buddha's "Great Renunciation"
Hinayana - Little Raft - Theravada - Way of the Elders - linked to teachings in text

53. “There Are Two Kinds of People?”
1. Are people dependent or interdependent
2. Is the universe friendly/helpful or indifferent/hostile
3. Is the best part of a human being the head or the heart? -Classicists rank thoughts above feelings, Romantics the opposite
“There Are Two Kinds of People?”

54. Theraveda / Hinayana Mahayana Where
Sri Lank, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia
China, Korea, Japan, Tibet
How
Buddha’s vision of society: Monarchy, monastic community (Sangha), laity
Grafted onto pre-existent civilizations
Focus
Wisdom
Compassion
Buddha’s
Example
Entering Nirvana
Great Renunciation of Nirvana to preach
The Ideal
Arhat – holy monk who remains in Nirvana after death
Bodhisattva (wisdom being) who passes up Nirvana and vows to help all beings achieve enlightenment
Goal
Attainment of Nirvana requires constant attention of monks, support of laity
Religious practice is relevant to everyone

56. Bodhisattva One whose Being – (Sattva) is Illumination – (Bodhi)
Focus on Buddha’s renunciation of Nirvana to teach – on his compassion
Buddha as saint

57. Zen School of Buddhist thought and training in Japan
Zen = Japanese mispronuncing of
Ch’an = Chinese mispronuncing of
Dhyana = Sanskrit for contemplation
Special transmission outside scripture –
from Buddha mind to
Buddha mind – a succession
of teachers
Zen

58. Buddha holds a golden lotus – understood by none except Mahakayapa – passes down in India through 28 patriarchs and carried to China in 520 A.D. by Bodhidharma
The Lotus Sermon

59. Words, Words, Words
like stepping through Alice's looking glass - topsy-turvy wonderland
Designed to break limits of normal human reason/logic, (Logic is a ladder), to blast through limitations of language – words are inadequate,
Beyond words and ideas to experiences and realization (Enlightenment) =
Satori

60. Three aspects of Zen Training
1. Zazen – seated meditation
2. Koan – logic-breaking riddles
3. Sanzen – conference with master – validates, encourages, corrects

61. Koan shortest one night, longest 12 years.
“What is the sound of one hand clapping?”
Reason is limited, a ladder too short to reach to truth’s full heights and must be supported by another way of knowing
Zen intends to upset the mind, unbalance it and eventually provoke revolt against limits of logic. Koan provokes, excites, exasperates and eventually exhausts the mind, reducing it to an impasse – must count on a sudden flash of insight

62. Satori - Enlightenment
See “being’s amazingness”
“each equally a manifestation of
the infinite” – trees, leaves,
Life is Beautiful
Jewel is in the Lotus, (X in O)
Unity of Buddha nature within
w/ Nirvanic world without
“widen the doors of perception so that the wonder of the Satori experience can flood the everyday world.”

63. Zen’s Influence on Japan
Landscape painting
Landscape gardening – rock gardens
Martial arts
Tea Ceremony
Haiku

64. Haiku I look in a dragonfly’s eye
And see the mountains Over my shoulder
The flower I saw
Drift back to the branch
Was a butterfly

65. Conduits Exp. of oneness with all,
bliss thru self-emptying, transformative experience of seeing world differently
“The Art of Attention”
Kobe, Curt, Caddyshack, Karate Kid
“Love, and do what you will” – St. Augustine
If you can’t find enlightenment in
doing the dishes…

66. Tibetan Buddhism
Mandala

67. Nirvana in single life-use all hum. energies
Sounds, sights, motion can distract, but it doesn’t follow that they must.
Channel physical energies into currents that carry spirit forward instead of derailing it.
Mantras – convert noise and distracting chatter into holy formulae
Mudras – choreographed hand gestures
Mandalas – treat the eyes to icons whose holy beauty draws the beholder in their direction

68. Prayer Flags Mantra Om Mane Padme Hung The Jewel is in the Lotus
Also a form of the name for the Bodhisattva of compassion

69. The Dalai Lama Bodhisattva – not pope or god-king
Incarnates compassion
Uninterrupted current of spiritual influence –
“As rainforests are to the earth’s atmosphere, someone has said, so are the Tibetan people to the human spirit in this time of its planetary ordeal” (144).
The Dalai Lama

70. The Three Jewels (Vows)
I take refuge in the Buddha
I take refuge in the Dharma (8-fold path)
I take refuge in the Sangha (community of Buddhists)

71. The Crossing
After reaching the other shore – leave raft, 5 precepts, 8fold path, dukkha, karma, nirvana – all vital to those crossing, but lose relevance to those who have arrived as a raft does on land.
World is an activity of Nirvana itself – not the slightest distinction exists between them
good and evil disappear
Earth is the lotus land, this body is Buddha’s
Bodhisattva’s vow not to enter Nirvana “until the grass itself be enlightened.”
River connects the banks, rather than divides them
Buddhism prominent in all Asian lands except India, which subsumed it, Buddhism sank back into the stream

72. Thich Nhat Hanh Vietnamese Zen Monk
Nominated by MLK in 1967 for Nobel Peace Prize for work rebuilding villages destroyed in Vietnam War