Buddhist Sangha of Bucks County

If your thoughts create the world, you are your thoughts
Watch how water is affected with just thoughts

It is impossible to control every thought that enters our minds. However, we can make the effort to patrol our mental environment. We have the power to accept or reject any thought that floats through our consciousness. The only trick is to be conscious.

What are your foundational thoughts? Which ones are you choosing to keep? Which ones are you willing to change? The choice is solely your own.

Through Meditation Practice this becomes easier.

This is an Excerpt from a Dharma Talk By Thich Nhat Hanh

Taking care of the present moment, you recognize the presence of the sunset, the morning star, the magnolia blossoms, and the person in front of you. When you practice this way, you will not be lost in your worries or anxieties about the future, or caught by the suffering of the past. The teaching of the Buddha is clear. You only have to practice it. With the presence of a loving Sangha, it is easy.

Buddhist meditation is, first of all, living mindfully. We practice precepts (sila), concentration (Samadhi), and insight (prajna). Being present helps us touch and look deeply into whatever is there. When you live deeply each moment of your life, you will have insight into yourself and also the person you think is the cause of your suffering. When insight is present, it is easy to love and accept, and you will see that the other person is not your enemy. He is yourself, and he needs you in order to be transformed. With that insight, the nectar of compassion is born in your heart. That nectar is the Buddha, the Holy Spirit, God, and it is available to us twenty-four hours a day.

After practicing taking ourselves as the object of love, we change the word “I” into “he” or “she.” (See The Nine Prayers, below.) We can do that only when we have some understanding, peace, and solidity within ourselves. Self-love is the foundation for the love of others. We begin with love for someone we have sympathy with; then for someone we are fond of; and then for someone who has made us suffer. The children in Somalia, the victims of war in the former Yugoslavia, the children in my mother’s native village may be considered first as neutral, people we don’t really know. But if we touch them deeply, looking into them, they are no longer neutral to us. We see that they are ourselves, and suddenly compassion and loving kindness are born in us. They become true objects of our love. Finally, we come to the person we consider our enemy, the person who made us suffer. With the practice of deep looking and deep understanding, that person can also become the object of our love.

But first, we have to learn to look at ourselves with the eyes of understanding (prajna) and love (maître). Many of us cannot accept ourselves. We are at war with ourselves and want to run away from ourselves. Practicing looking deeply into ourselves and seeing the nature of the joy and pain within us, gradually we are able to accept, love, and take care of ourselves. “Know thyself” is the practice of love. If we look deeply into ourselves, we discover the conditions that have formed us and then we can accept ourselves – both our suffering and our happiness. So first of all, we accept ourselves as we are. Then we can accept the other person as she or he is. Looking deeply, we see how that person has been formed. Just as a flower is made only of non-flower elements, that person has been made of elements that are not him – his ancestors, his parents, his society, and so on. Once we see the causes and conditions that have made him, we are able to accept him and take good care of him.

According to the teaching of the Buddha, love is made of understanding. With understanding, you can love. To understand is to see all the difficulties, pain, and problems the other person is having. If you ignore the suffering and aspirations of the other person, how can you say you love him or her? But to love and understand is also to see the aspirations and hopes of the other person. To understand him more, you can go to him and ask, “I want to make you happy, but I do not understand you. Please help.” If you want to love someone you don’t understand, you might make him or her suffer more. A father has to go to his son and ask, “My son, do I understand you enough? Or is my love making you suffer?” Husbands have to ask wives the same question. Otherwise our love can suffocate the other person. It may be just a person for him or her. The practice of mindfulness helps us be there, look deeply, and understand the other person. We need to say to the other person, “I really want to love you and make you happy, but I need your help. Tell me what is in your heart. Tell me your difficulties. Tell me whether my way of loving is making you happy or unhappy.” That is the language of true love. We need the other person’s help to love properly and deeply.

….

The practice of Buddhist meditation is the practice of true love. True love has the power to liberate us and bring happiness to ourselves and to living beings around us. True love is the love that retains liberty and creates joy. We cannot be peaceful and happy if we do not have true love in us.

The Nine Prayers

1. May I be peaceful, happy, and light in body and spirit.
2. May I be free from injury. May I live in safety.
3. May I be free from disturbance, fear, and anxiety.
4. May I learn to look at myself with the eyes of understanding and of love.
5. May I be able to recognize and touch the seeds of joy and happiness in myself.
6. May I learn to identify and see the sources of anger, craving, and delusion in myself.
7. May I know how to nourish the seeds of joy in myself every day.
8. May I be able to live fresh, solid and free.
9. May I be free from attachment and aversion, but not be indifferent.

NOTE: After practicing “May I be…”, you can practice, “May he (or she) be…”, visualizing first someone you like, then the one you love the most, then someone who is neutral to you, and finally the person whom thinking of makes you suffer the most. Then you can practice, “May they be…’, beginning with the group, the people, the nation, or the species you like, then the one you love, then the one that is neutral to you, and finally the one you suffer the most when you think of.

Continue Reading The Practice of Loving Kindness By Thich Nhat Hanh

The greatest gift we can make to others is out true presence

This is an Excerpt from a Dharma Talk By Thich Nhat Hanh

When you love someone, you have to be truly present for him or for her. A ten-year-old boy I know was asked by his father what he wanted for his birthday, and he didn’t know how to answer. His father is quite wealthy and could afford to buy almost anything he might want. But the young man only said, “Daddy, I want you!” His father is too busy – he has no time for his wife or his children. To demonstrate true love, we have to make ourselves available. If that father learns to breathe in and out consciously and be present for his son, he can say, “My son, I am really here for you.”

Spiritual Support

Why meditate?   Why pray, or participate in a pilgrimage, or live alone for a year in the woods?  Sometimes it’s because you are at your wit’s end, and sometimes you just need help.

Jack Kornfield, who  co-founded the large western Vipassana Buddhist practice center in Barre, Massachusetts, once said that when the center opened in the late 70’s, their focus was on the first Noble Truth, that ‘In life, there is suffering;’ in other words, bringing clarity to the pervasiveness of suffering until one can’t stand it anymore and must make a change.  In the Buddha’s view, even pleasant things pass away and so spiritual life must push beyond both pain and pleasure. “But,” Kornfeld added, “We were young and had a lot of energy then.”

I find deep suffering in my life and the lives of others, also.  I find the ‘marks’ of the conditions of life:  It’s transience, the lack of permanent definition, and I find dissatisfaction.  These truths have inspired me to practice, to sit alone with reality and to sit together with others in spiritual pursuit.  As a person who is growing older, I also appreciate more and more the third and fourth Noble Truths of there being a way for suffering to cease, and the path of its cessation.

I also forget.  I am carried by habits of avoidance, distraction, ignorance, weariness, anxiety, selfishness, fear, envy, anger and on and on. I become blinded to the fact that I am the only thing standing between myself and liberation.  I forget the fire that once burned in me to open up, no matter what, to the truth of life.

So it is a two-fold question that I ask myself.   What influences or helps me to practice, and to practice deeply and correctly?   I’d like to offer four things that may be helpful, hopeful, and peaceful in motivating, continuing, or deepening practice.

1. Teachers. When I go to sit with a teacher who has dedicated a significant portion of their life to practice, I hear the words of the Buddha come alive.  Usually, meditation instruction is included, so being with a teacher is good practice in and of itself.  One hears so many ideas from so many people about life and what to believe in.  The television and internet are telling us to believe in acquisition and material satisfaction.  It’s nice to spend time with someone who embodies the spiritual side of things.  It’s inspiring, like “Wait, he’s a human being and I’m a human being, so therefore…..” Being near a teacher, even for an hour, is supportive and offers a refuge.
2. Relaxation. This seems to be a theme among contemporary teachers.  Perhaps it was always there, but it really applies to our stressed out lifestyle.  I don’t think it’s a lethargic thing at all, just a positive way of letting go of stress in the body and mind so that one can concentrate or practice insight meditation. While calm is one result of concentration on an object, it’s a good admonition as well.  Sometimes I ask myself  “Where am I tightly wound?” in body or thinking, then I can relax a little, stop feeding into the tightness, practice some acceptance, which clears the way for paying attention.
3. Letting go. Have you experienced under times of great stress a sense of something much greater and more important and liberating? Not that we should forget the importance of tasks, meetings, celebrations, operations, and the like, but I think the Buddha would ask us if our attitude toward the events of life is leading us toward liberation or just getting us more wrapped up.  He said: “Whatever is not yours: let go of it. “  None of it, within or without is ‘ours’. The Buddha said that it is very hard to let go of the mind because it is sort of composed of holding on.  Training the mind in concentration helps to clarify this useless process so that we can let go of it.
4. Dealing with fear. I notice fear in letting go.  I feel like I am losing myself. Even in breathing meditation there are a lot of ways to recreate my own world, like “I am breathing” and “I am experiencing a clear mind” and so on.  Then when I get closer to just the breath I can feel my definitions slip away and it is uncomfortable, it is scary.   Thanissaro Bhikkhu suggests to : “Have good will toward your breathing, compassion, appreciation, equanimity towards your breathing. In other words, allow the breath to be comfortable so that you can have a foundation. Where it’s not comfortable, work at making it more comfortable: That’s compassion. Where it is comfortable, appreciate it.”  Fear is underneath a lot of negative emotions.  It is difficult to stay put for a while and gain the confidence and objectivity needed to work kindly with fear.

The Buddha emphasized the help that a Sangha can give.  He said: “The Sangha of the Blessed One’s disciples: worthy of gifts, worthy of hospitality, worthy of offerings, worthy of respect, the unexcelled field of merit for the world. . .  when you have recollected the Sangha, whatever fear, terror, or horripilation is will be abandoned.”

It seems that the spiritual journey has a quality of not turning back, and therefore of leaving much that is held on to behind.   It is good to go forward with the help of others, and with kindness in our efforts.

So, wishing you good practice from Boston (or is it Antarctica, I can’t tell anymore), and peace.  Missing everyone.

James Reis

http://www.lionsroar.com/pema-chodron-what-to-do-when-the-going-gets-rough/

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