A Single Thread

June 22, 2016June 25, 2016

The Wheel of Suffering: A Story in Many Parts PART TWO: The Center by Getsu San Ku Shin

THE WHEEL OF SUFFERING:

A STORY IN MANY PARTS

PART TWO: The Center

A senior teacher at Shasta Abbey, whose website I often visit for Zen teaching, provided a key to the Wheel of Suffering when he noted that if you find yourself caught in a place of suffering, you are ignorant of something. The key is to discover how ignorance is keeping you in a place of misery and craving. As I make my way through the many images and facets of The Wheel of Suffering, I come upon my ignorance over and over again. Being surrounded, as I now am, with my own take on some of the Wheel images, I often find myself using the cards as clues to discover where the truth is hidden under the flotsam and jetsam of ignorance.

As my sangha slowly, deliberately contemplated the original Wheel, my creative attention moved from the outer rim of the Wheel to its innermost circle. In the Wheel mandala, greed hate and delusion live at the hub. These “Three Poisons” are at the center of Buddhist thought as well, the reasons for suffering boiled down to their purest essence.

Figure 1 Credit below — Figure 1 The Wheel of Birth & Death

http://shop.dharmapublishing.com/products/the-wheel-of-life-060006

https://thecloudmountains.com/2013/04/25/garden-of-liberation-suan-mokkh/greed-hate-delusion/

Figure 2 Greed-Hate-Delusion

Just as the hubs of our bike and car wheels hold the spin of those wheels together, so the three primary human emotional drives of delusion (a pig), greed (a cock) and hate (a snake) bind our suffering with such force that everything on the Wheel, moving out from the middle, is held together by their power.

Getsu San Ku Shin 2016 Delusion….Greed……and Hate in the card game of life

In my re-working of the Wheel mandala, these three poisons are the orange card suit, hence, each of the playing cards have the color orange featured in its design. They are the “bullseye,” the core of the teachings, and not unlike the card of Ignorance at the top outermost edge of the Wheel, seeing that one is caught up in the 3 Poisons is to see everything. It is an arrow to the heart of the beast called suffering.

Greed and hate are strong words. They don’t mess around in describing the lengths to which we humans will go to manipulate the world so that we may realize our self-centered dreams.

These are toxic, poisonous impulses in human beings. These twin drives reach far back into evolutionary time, and allowed our oldest ancestors to know instantly whether to move towards, or away from, sensate experiences. They were, and are, survival drives, and our success as a species reflects in part the success of greed and hate at showing us how to navigate challenges in our environment. And yet, unedited survival responses have gotten the world, and each of us, into a mess of trouble. They are the craving of the second Noble Truth: the cause of all suffering.

Greed

Contemplating my own manifestation of the basic human drive to want more, better, different, I began to notice a tendency in my eyes, in my posture and also in my mind to reach. My eyes reach into my visual environment, looking for problems to be solved. My mind too is relentlessly seeking, driving, re-working the past hour or day, cleaning things up, dreaming of the next minute or hour or day’s work to be done. And my torso urges me forward, always forward. As I settle into a period of sitting meditation, often the settling comes as a relaxation of my torso from urging myself forward to resting back into the center of my pelvis. It always feels like coming home, a great relief. I began to recognize that the reaching habit has greed at its core.

Getsu San Ku Shin 2016

The Greed card illustrates this reaching as the deep imbalance it is. The sitting figure reaches for a piece of unripe fruit (the future is never ripe enough for picking, yet we can’t seem to stop reaching for it anyway), and/or for a pile of dry bones, those aspects of our lives that have already been lived, are gone forever, but which we, with our re-hashing, try in vain to keep alive and malleable.

Getsu San Ku Shin 2016

When the sitting figure on the greed playing card can organize not around the reach but around the gathering of all experience into the here and now, then her true center, binding her to heaven and to earth, becomes manifest.

I make use of this image frequently to help me let go of the reaching mind, and settle into my own centered stillness, especially while I meditate. The “clunk” of body and mind and spirit into that pure quality of presence is dear to me. It is worth practicing to find. Grounded down, lifted upwards, fully here, wanting nothing, feeling my own connection to everything above and below through my own mind, heart and gut.

Meditation is a strong antidote to greed, for the simple though profound act of sitting still sends instant signals to the wanting mind that there will be no going after anything for the duration of the meditation period. This can make the mind frantic with desire, as we all know. But to be physically still in the face of a greedy mind lays a foundation for deep practice.

Next time, while in meditation, when you find yourself overwhelmed with the unrelenting desires of the mind, try bringing your attention to the stillness of your body. Make your eyes still. Let the frantic mind run its course as you hold your ground with your sitting posture. Accept that this stillness you have achieved, so foreign in our culture, so contrary to the workings of the grasping ego and our survival instinct, is understandably difficult for your mind to surrender to. Honor your body’s capacity to lead the way for the mind.

HATE: THE FLIP SIDE OF GREED

We like to soft-pedal hate. We call it anger, frustration, dislike, irritation. Do you know that all these words have hate at their core? Do you know your own hate? I was not very familiar with my hatred as I began working with this playing card. I was much more in touch with anxiety, fear, dread. My teacher said to me over and over again, “Underneath fear is hate.” It took me a long time to realize the truth of her words, but eventually I saw that my anxiety is built on self-hatred and self-condemnation. Somebody inside me hates who I am and what I do.

The hate playing card shows a fearful woman with missiles trained at her. Two hate-filled male figures, squeezed into the bottom of the frame, fuel the spark that can ignite the missiles. The hatred, buried and held back, also burns like a slow fire, licking up the left side of the image, and eventually releasing fiery venom from a very pretty, though lethal, snake. Image by Getsu San Ku Shin 2016

Which is more dominant in your internal world, hate or fear? Do you know of the connection between fear and hate from your own experience?

My deeply hidden anger first manifested as left side body pain. Eventually, with study, contemplation and meditation, the physical pain transformed into long-held emotional memory.

When anger or fear show up, whether sparked by the present or the past, the key is to recognize their fundamental emptiness. Do not believe that what you feel is true. Do not identify with it. Let this strong energy come, up through your still body and mind, then let it go. This capacity, to be present to strong emotions with acceptance yet without letting them define you, comes with practice and the good guidance of a teacher.

As my angry memories emerged, I could see how attached I was, and am, to having things go my way. My teacher’s words echo in me, “What are you going after?” Ask this of yourself. Whatever it is we are driven to have, aversion and its many guises can be kindled when our cherished aspirations fall apart.

Fear and hate drive us towards fighting against, or running from, that which we perceive as a threat, while greed propels us to reach for, in order to grasp, that which we perceive as insuring our wellbeing. Whether we are caught in like or dislike, we create what feels like a solid state made up of running from, pushing against, and reaching toward. This sense of solidity is a delusion. A house of cards!

DELUSION

Delusion is the third and final drive at the hub of the Wheel. Delusions are the stories we tell ourselves that help us to know the world and how to operate in it. These stories are delusions because they arise out of the likes and dislikes that condition our understanding. They are created by, and they also feed the creation of, greed and hate, the pushing away of experiences and people and the reaching for more, different, better.

Getsu San Ku Shin 2016

The false sense of being a solid somebody is illustrated in the Delusion playing card with a New Yorker cartoon that assigns names and personalities to two waves rising up in the ocean. We can see the hilarity in this……yet we are deeply attached to our own identities, easily forgetting just how fleeting and fluid our self-ness really is, and how completely interpenetrated with everything else this thing called “me” actually is.

The second cartoon depicts my personal favorite, the delusion that lives at the core of my belief system. Here, at the heart of my conditioning, stunning is an imperative. I MUST be stunning, be perceived as stunning, strive relentlessly to be stunning. It is a deep drive. My very survival seems at stake. Stunning, and the striving required of it, are imbedded in my personality. Despite many attempts to slow down, relax, let go of my ambition and perfectionism, I remained caught and in pain because of this drive until I committed to a Buddhist practice. I still find myself striving towards an ideal all the time. It remains a pervasive influence on me. But I have tools now that have helped me to stay present to this impulse long enough to know how exactly it is false.

One such practice tool is represented by a “trap door,” on the Delusion playing card, an opening through which to escape the falseness of the world that delusion creates. Opening this door, we find a mirror, showing us a reflection of…….what? The way to freedom from the ignorance of our delusions lies in opening to what may be outside this self-contained reality, staying in the question, “what is really here?”

Image by Getsu San Ku Shin 2016

But even before we can bring mindfulness to our suffering, we need to see where we are. We have to wake up to the truth that we are caught in a false sense of self. The original Wheel mandala illustrates the Three Poisons as three beasts eating each other’s tails, showing us that these drives co-exist, are co-created. If you can identify one, the other two are INEVITABLY running also. I have found this such a valuable tool. Now I know that whenever I am angry, greed and delusion are somewhere close at hand. I know that whenever my perfectionism is driving me, that it is greed and hate I am giving birth to. Here is an example from own experience:

When, through my Buddhist practice, I encountered a tight knot of anger within a chronically painful left hip and neck, I was brought face to face with the whole trio of drives. The rage inflaming my hip and neck arose from a time in my life when I helped to create and manage a business that, in my mind, represented the pinnacle of stunning-ness. It was everything I had ever dreamed of. In order to get it and keep it, I worked harder than I had ever worked, denying myself sleep, time with family, self-care…..in other words, the greed-filled reaching was manifest. Eventually, the pressures of managing a successful business took their toll, and the business relationships began to fall apart. It was not pretty. When I finally walked away from the whole enterprise, it was with a deep sense of failure, my dream of stunning shattered. Depression ensued, remedied only by my eventually plunging into new projects.

It was not until I had enough skill as a meditator, as well as a mentor to guide me, that I discovered the rage I had suppressed, and that my body still carried. I saw that my hatred was sustained by my belief that the business was the only thing that would ever truly complete me. A decade or more later, I continued to crave being the stunning owner of a stunning enterprise. Because it fell apart, I was furious with both myself and my business partner for how things had actually unfolded.

Staying still within the experience of the hatred, I began to remember that I did not really enjoy the process of running a business. I did not like being in charge. I did not really want to show up in that way. It didn’t actually suit me. It was, if I was honest with myself, a relief to walk away, to get a rest from the effort it took to be stunning. The impulses for less busy-ness, for less notoriety, for a more solitary life, had been completely ignored and denied by my drive toward fame and power. The solid sense of myself I thought I had was indeed a delusion built of desire and culminating in aversion. Seeing this clearly, I could step out of ignorance.

The anger fell away. It was painful to realize how little I had actually known of my true nature, but I also felt joy at having discovered a world within, beyond the delusion of stunning. I was grateful that the partnership had fallen apart and freed me to have a different kind of life.

The example above illustrates the poison that can manifest when we don’t get what we want. But it also speaks to what can happen when we DO get what we want. It took me years to realize it, but having this business, for which I had fought and reached mightily, was not a pot of gold at the end of the proverbial rainbow. Now that I had it, I had to keep it…..which made me more anxious, more stressed. I found I was fighting all the time to keep what I wanted, to control its outcomes, to make it a continuing success. I truly felt mostly aversion for the project, though this was paved over with my habitual determination to succeed. Looking back, I can see that typically when I get the thing I strive for, it is nothing like the pleasure and nourishment I expected. Fool’s gold.

Greed hate and delusion do not represent our true nature. Who we really are remains hidden until we can see through our habits, and stop believing them. My Buddhist practice, and the wisdom tradition so beautifully illuminated on the Wheel of Suffering, are the tools I am using to lead me inward and homeward.

Written by Getsu San Ku Shin 2016

June 18, 2016June 18, 2016

Coming Around by Angela Just

Editor’s Choice

COMING AROUND
The soul just wants to be left alone
in the car with the moon-roof open
and the seat rolled all the way back.
She locks the doors and squints through
space at quiet stars and winking planes.
She is dropping out of pulse, that hard

pentameter. She turns her unlined face
from drying bones and skin. Asleep
at the wheeling starry sky, she looses
her lips like an opening rose. The soul
lets her eyes roll to a darker side, tunes
the radio to no sound at all. A rose is red

in her hair: a flare, a tropic. She warms
to this climate, slips away. The rose
opens to hold her dreams. Then lets them
go. The soul wakes with a chill, closes
the roof, shifts into time and place.
Shakes a clot of petals from her lap.

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Everything I Own by Angela Just

June 13, 2016

A Fish Out of Water…is a Dead Fish

A Fish Out of Water…is a Dead Fish.

Imagine, if you will, a Mistress Master with such strength and weight that she is able to stand on creation itself. She is potent. Her potency is felt in the work Ming Zhen Shakya declared to me in a rather subtle voice; ‘Writing’ she said, “is your master and the devotional path for you towards the transcendent.” It was, and still is, a bit surprising but I have come to accept it. My acceptance comes in the form of experience, not in the form of an idea or concept regarding the act of writing. Although I must admit that I began with a head full of ideas when it came to this new, potent Master and practice.

Before I begin to explain let me first exclaim my true master is writing and ‘Writing is not an easy master; it tends to use a gut hooking approach.‘

I suspect, however, whenever we meet our true master it is never easy. I suppose it’s the nature of masters. After all, their job is to show us that we need to burn up our old seeds of stupidity. The difficulty seems to always arise because we (and I speak from experience) are attached to our stupidity. Also, as far as I am able to tell a Master is looking to club us with some provocative reality in order to stop us from yet again making another fabrication from one of those terribly, unwholesome seeds that gets us into trouble. It’s been my experience that this is so.

”Gratitude follows when you surrender to the master.‘

For anyone who has not met a master who is willing to point out the necessity to burn up the seeds of karma this article may be of little interest; except it might light up a need within to search for someone or something that masters you in such a way as to burn up those ugly seeds (greed seeds, hate seeds, delusion seeds). All I might do is suggest that finding a master might be a consideration, especially for those who are searching for God.

If you have found a master, then you know what I mean.

It may seem I have strayed from the title of this piece but I felt as though I needed to explain where I am otherwise it might be more difficult to get a grasp of what a fish out of water…is a dead fish means for a spiritual aspirant.

Working with a Master is a spiritual experience unlike any relationship I have ever known. It is a constant awareness of the devotional demand of the Master. Writing is the form my master takes which means I am forever drawn upon to devote my life right where I am to writing. I say this in order to suggest that you might want to look at the form your spiritual master takes.

Wait! I am sorry but I must add another comment. Masters in the form of human beings are vulnerable to error, but masters that are ideals are not.

This above comment is important. Oftentimes we meet up with a teacher and think they are our master. It might even go along pretty smoothly for awhile but because this human master is fallible we might give up, get disgusted, disappointed rather than see the obvious flaw in our choice of a master. To be very clear…a human master is not such a good choice, but a human master who points to a true, ideal master is an excellent choice.

Master Ming Zhen Shakya is my human master who diligently with great resilience pointed me towards the ideal master of writing. Master Ming Zhen Shakya holds no positional power in the material world as a master, but she is the sine que non master of pointing to the true ideal, to the true master for me.

I am very lucky. I wish every person such luck.

But do not think your master comes to console, comfort or make everything sweet. Writing from my experience is agony; mostly agony with brief moments of joy. I am speaking of writing as an inner devotion. Writing, the actual task of writing, is not easy. But when I write from this inner shift to a devotion to writing I am in quite a different place. There is no ambition, no desire for a result, no prospects or pursuits of any kind. I am tending to my master.

Yet, it still makes me nuts, sometimes.

Being nuts arises when I think. Yep. That’s it. When I think about how I am devoting my life to my master. When I measure my devotion. And all the other ego-obstacles that I fabricate. Then I am nuts.

Since I have made the commitment (I want to whisper that commitment since I get shaky thinking God hears this commitment and will hold my feet to the fire)…nonetheless, I have made the commitment and the commitment as a vow sparks something that goes beyond my ego. MAking a commitment is lighting candles all around the altar of my master.

This next part is important.

The True Master always goes beyond the ego. When I realize this truth and see it, then I feel stronger in my commitment. It only makes sense. The ego is a burden that weighs down my efforts. But when I slay the ego, my commitment is stronger. It comes from slaying the ego.

The way this Master works is that it is constantly making an effort to get my attention and to use what shows up in my life as an offering and devotion to/of God (God being the true master in the disguise of a writing master.1)

Here’s the example in the form of experience.

When I am beset by misgivings about writing I get stalled and fall prey to the legions of Mara (those devilish demons of self-centered interest). My moods begin to shift and for some time I thought that I could NOT devote my time to writing when in such and such a mood because (this is important) I had an IDEA of what writing is. I had an idea of what writing should be! I had ideas of how I should write! All these ideas were in league with Mara. They blocked my attention to use whatever shows up as the devotion to writing in the moment. When in a mood, write! This means I stay in the water and move in it to the end. I stick with whatever shows up.

To close I’d like to tie together the title in a more precise, clear way.

A fish out of water…is a dead fish refers to the Zen teaching of a fish (you and me) needing to be in our element (our life) to the end (which means fully experiencing our situation and place) before we can begin practice. When we distract ourselves, when we get distracted we fall prey to losing the Way and fall into all sorts of delusions.

That’s a mouthful!!! Let me repeat it differently.

If I do not live this life right here where I am, I am not able to practice. Practice requires we give up our wishes, dreams, desires for things to be otherwise; to go off somewhere to get away from what is happening right where we are.

As long as we have those sorts of wishes, we can’t begin to practice with a master.

In other words, I am dead in the water, much like a fish out of water. I am dead to being alive in the elements of life right in front of me. I need to be fully attending to what’s showing up before I am able to offer devotion to my master, to my true master who is disguised in the robes of a writing master.

We all know a fish out of water…is a dead fish, but somehow we fail to see that it refers to us, to our spiritual efforts, our spiritual experiences, right where we are. When we are in pursuit, when we are on the hunt, when we are in the minefield of concepts, when we are becoming somebody we are a fish out of water; more dead than alive.

June 5, 2016June 5, 2016

Looking Beyond the Profane

We may own things, we may do things — without suffering as long as we do not rely on the profane world as real. It’s like a fun house. Made of crazy mirrors showing distorted shapes.

June 3, 2016June 10, 2016

Undertow

Submerged in the rippling water,

My toes gently sink into the sand.

I step into the next wave,

And feel a strong pull as it recedes.

A riptide can be dangerous,

But it is I who make it so.

My fear of disappearing,

Of leaving all behind,

Keeps me from the joy of the deep water.

I cling to the shoreline,

To what I imagine it offers.

Let me possess the calm and faith

To go instead with what I know.

To go out willingly with the riptide,

To swim in the swells of deep waters.

Zhong Fen li Bao yu Di 2016

Comment on “Undertow”

During a recent retreat, I asked my teacher for help in understanding what emptiness is. She requested that I write about it, which I did. Then she sent me this.

” The experience of emptiness is enlightenment..to want nothing..to know nothing..have nothing. Completely empty even words cannot express. All hindrances are gone.”

I wrote back that I did not understand, but would reflect upon her words. I stopped trying to understand the words. Instead, I tried to “feel” my response to them. In doing so, I recalled vacationing in the Outer Banks as a young man…the feeling of swimming in the ocean…being on the edge of rip tides…of swimming in very deep waters. Her words about emptiness brought back many feelings associated with those experiences. I then wrote this poem.

Zhong Fen li Bao yu Di
June 3, 2016

June 1, 2016November 11, 2016

Tell the Truth

Tell the Truth

In order to tell the Truth we need to know what it is. In Zen there are the facts or our views associated with the material world often known as the conventional point of view. Opinions and views are troublesome and often lead to more trouble.

This precept does want us to tell the truth and nothing but the truth regarding the material world as we know it. Here’s an example: “Did you eat the apple?” Truth be told…I did or I didn’t. We might be reticent to say if there was damage done or some forthcoming blame. In the face of God, Adam and Eve seemed to equivocate. Fudging is apparently an ancient human tendency.

The truth is often exaggerated or minimized, twisted and turned in order to suit our self-interest. And in fact, we are conditioned to present ourselves in the best possible light. We do it in order to get a job, get the guy, get the girl, get the raise, get something…so we can see how this truth is tainted with self-interest.

When you speak without self-interest, the truth might be told.

May 31, 2016

Mutiny on the Bounty: A Spiritual Remix

Mutiny on the Bounty: A Spiritual Remix
by Rev. Yao Xiang Shakya

Ignorance gives birth to Mara.
Mara gives rise to armies.

Buddha speaks to Mara.
“Your first squadron is Sense Desires,
Your second is called Boredom, then
Hunger and Thirst compose the third,
And Craving is the fourth in rank,
The fifth is Sloth and Torpor
While Cowardice lines up as sixth,
Uncertainty is seventh, the eighth
Is Malice paired with Obstinacy;
Gain, Honor and Renown, besides,
And ill-won Notoriety,
Self-praise and Denigrating Others:
These are your squadrons Namuci.”

Access to Insight

If we are not in union with our Buddha nature, we are up against the squadrons of Mara. If we are unable to withstand these attacks, we are the pitiable in spirit and open to mutiny.

Most assuredly, the “me” struts about with words, acts of all sorts and mental mulling. We mull over our lot with stories that sink us more and more into a bog, whether it be a heavenly bog or hellish one. We go over and over the accumulations of mental composting, thinking we can turn the scraps of thought into gold. This propensity of the swaggering, blustery me is the way of suffering. It’s guaranteed. Every realm, from the hungry ghost to the deva realm is marked by this guarantee.

Suffering…

Any one of the armies mentioned above can lay us low and sink us into the swamp of selfishness, self-cherishing, self-ambitions, self-pride, self-hate and all the taints and traps of the self. We are poor in spiritual wealth and are very much like the mutineers on the notorious ship, the Bounty. We, like the mutineers, are spiritually pitiable.

Our inability to remain disciplined, which requires that we are trained enough to remain focused on our Buddha nature, leads to endless suffering for ourselves and others. We weaken with the attacks of boredom, craving, uncertainty, and self-praise. We fail to remain loyal to our spiritual authority within.

In the historical story of Lieutenant William Bligh, the commander of the legendary British ship, the Bounty, and his iniquitous Master’s Mate, Fletcher Christian, we may recognize our own ill-fated and dismal ruin in the sea battles of Mara’s troops. The sensual desirous mind is the lead battalion which can rock us to such a point we lose faith. We may find ourselves falling into rebellion when our sensual nature overwhelms our trained and skilled navigator; it is where we give way to the lusts of the world despite the presence of a seasoned commander. It requires an onslaught of the squadrons to dislodge our superior nature. We buckle much like Fletcher Christian. We mutiny. We refuse to obey the wisdom of discipline and mistake discipline and correction for the enemy.

The Bounty, the mutiny on the Bounty, misread as a romantic drama of swaggering love against a cruel commander, is a strong reminder of the heartaches that follow when we do not heed the way of disciplined wisdom. Bligh, a brilliant seaman, able and expert in sailing the unchartered waters of the late 1700’s, is portrayed and remembered as an evil and malevolent commander. No one wants to be compared to Bligh. Surely this portrayal is the fabrication of a romantic public. Bligh was a virtuoso of the sea. It is Fletcher Christian who, in the midst of unbridled lust, swamps not only him, but many of the crew and the ship itself. It is Fletcher Christian who is guilty of attempted murder by the very fact he forces 19 men into a small boat without provisions and navigational instruments some 3000 miles from land. Who is the bad guy here?

It’s those times when we rebel against the blockades of what we want. We may experience a correction, by life’s circumstances or another person who reproaches us, as an adversary rather than a caution or warning that we are getting close to an inner uprising by the strikes of Mara.

Spiritual insurgence may not happen to every spiritual aspirant but it does occur. If we are fortunate, we wash up on the shores of another chance to set sail for the true destination of a spiritual life. Whether we rebel or remain a disciple, whether we imagine the spiritual voyage as a cruise ship or the Bounty, the armies of Mara board with us. We can be sure of it. We must take notice and protect our spiritual treasures against the onslaught of sensual desire, boredom, craving, laziness, insolence, indolence, cowardice, malice, self-importance, and self-promotion.

The Bounty, was commissioned in 1787 by Britain’s Royal Navy to travel to Tahiti to acquire and transport breadfruit plants for commercial profit to the West Indies. Lt. William Bligh, the commanding officer, offered his former friend, Fletcher Christian, the position of Master’s mate, a post Christian eagerly accepted. With a crew of officers and able seamen, totaling 46, his Majesty’s ship, the Bounty set sail on 23 December, 1787 from Spithead, England to Tahiti.

Bligh, a young commander at age 32, was nevertheless a skilled and competent seaman. His prior experience included an impressive position with the then celebrated Captain Cook, the English explorer noted as discovering the Hawaiian Islands. Bligh was, as some accounts suggest, an ambitious man, who wanted to sail the Bounty around the most dangerous waters around Cape Horn. Historical records indicate Bligh on the outward bound trip did attempt the Horn and kept the ship in stormy, rampant seas in a 31 day attempt to clear it. Many historians propose Bligh’s insistent attempts to clear the Horn and his rumored vulgar language were the catalyst for the eventual mutiny. But the mutiny took place not on the outward bound trip to Tahiti, but on the return voyage back to England. It is also rumored that the men mutinied out of fear of a return trip around the Horn. This rumor is also quite unlikely. A capable and loyal Naval Officer such as Bligh would be unlikely to risk losing his cargo “the breadfruit plants,” on the return trip through the cold and stormy waters of the Horn where both crew and cargo were in grave danger of not surviving. Before leaving England, Bligh promised the very influential Joseph Banks that he could be assured of safe passage of hundreds of breadfruit plants.

Bligh, it seems, felt the long stay on Tahiti where men, long at sea, found a sailor’s paradise. Bligh’s crew “…learned that the stories that had filled their ears throughout the long, hard outward voyage—about the island’s beauty, its sexually uninhibited women, its welcoming people—were not tall tales, or sailor’s fantasy.” C. Alexander

It is on Tahiti, this island haven, where discipline, although upheld by Bligh, was undone during the crew’s 23 week stay. It is next to impossible to reconstruct with certainty the specific reasons why 19 men took control of the ship under the leadership of Fletcher Christian. No one can say for certain, but what we can say is that mutiny lends itself to those who suffer from the onslaught of Mara. The story lends itself to many spiritual explorations and reflects the powerful tug of desire that leads to mutiny, needless affliction and impulsive acts of the ego. This historical event reflects the truth of the Dharma. We must be single-minded and one-pointed in order to be buoyed up by whatever occurs in life as Dharma, otherwise rather than sustained by it, we will take it personally and sink into our own fabrications. The spiritual aspirant relies on single-minded training and discipline, because the material world is far too potent, as the mutineer, Fletcher Christian, finds out.

Historical records are not definitive, but what is definitive is, that the Bounty left on a mercantile voyage from England for Tahiti and did not return. The crew mutinied on the return trip to England. The mutiny took place after a long stay on Tahiti where the seamen lived among the Tahitians. On the journey home, Fletcher Christian led the mutiny.

In the Pacific far from land, Fletcher Christian forced some of the loyalists to remain on board while the mutineers compelled the remaining 18 of the loyal crew into a 23′ open launch with Bligh. Without charts of any kind, a quadrant, a pocket watch and meager provisions, Bligh navigated 3,618 nautical miles to the safe harbor of Timor. William Bligh landed in the Dutch colony of Timor 47 days later. He lost all but one crew member who was murdered by natives on an island where they attempted to obtain needed supplies. Bligh was trained, he knew the sea, navigation and how to plot a course and get this loyal band of sailors to dry land.

We, too, need certain basic skills to plot a course out of the clutches of internal squadrons of suffering. We need to know how to deal with mistakes, authority and the myriad encounters which challenge us. And we need to know how to distinguish what leads to more ignorance and suffering and what leads to liberation. But some of us get carried away and we mutiny. We begin to get too interested in the swamp, in lust and defiance. We resist authority. We promote our self-interest. We even gather others to join us. But like Fletcher Christian, who by all accounts was swept up in self-indulgence and dissipating discipline, we squander our life effort on pitiable, worldly fruits.

When we embark, and we do embark, on board a spiritual ship we drag along all kinds of things which we believe will help us make it to our destination. We pack our intellect, our physical strengths, wit, and toys of every sort and of course, let us not forget our sense of who we think we are. Often we pack our dreams. Foremost, but often carelessly, we jam somewhere in the bottom of the knapsack or stuffed and crammed in at the last minute what we are going to need in order to reach our destination.

We need our will, a will to train, to stay the course, to continue, to trust and to get up when we fall. It is this one thing, our will to find the truth that sustains, when every temptation under the blazing sun will challenge our decision to stay the course. We will want to give up if we have not unpacked our will and surrendered it to a greater source. Dreams, wishes, fantasies and desires collapse and surrender to the obstacles of such a journey when the will remains separated.

We may not be too savvy in recognizing what’s in the baggage until we run into storms. The storm itself may be our first encounter with the journey not going as we had planned. We may have walked the gangway thinking the journey will be nothing but blue sky and warm breezes sitting on deck chairs being served by solicitous wait staff. It’s reported that those who joined the crew of the Bounty enlisted in order to experience the sensual ecstasy of Tahiti. They did not consider the arduous voyage, the skills and will that would contain the fiery legions of Mara. We do not realize we have enlisted in a disciplined, demanding and a high venture. Many Zen temples use iconic warnings at the front gate alerting the newcomers of the “life and death” matter of Zen. Shadow guardians are stationed to ward off and show strength against any malevolent spirits. It is very important to pay attention to what type of venture we have signed on to and protect the mind from self-serving glories.

Those of us who have ridden the ocean waves for a time can spot the remarkable, earnestness of those joining the voyage on any one of the numerous ports-of-call who mistakenly believe this Zen ocean vessel is a cruise ship.

Even some of us who have been through many a storm can begin to hope for a cruise ship experience where luxury and comfort are the hallmarks. If we are able to stay aboard, we soon discover this ocean liner is more like an aircraft carrier where one is a crew member and not a touring passenger. When we are fortunate enough to recognize our rank as a crew member all sorts of possibilities open. But it may take some strong sea gales before we realize our place on this exquisite and working vessel. We may for a long time be a reluctant, recalcitrant and indolent passenger who hides out amid our mercenary ideas. In other words, we remain motivated by personal gain. But it is not to worry the ocean voyage itself finds those who are hiding selfishly in desires of personal profit. These passengers often make the same mistakes and secretly plot schemes of mutiny against the hardworking often exhausted and seasoned crewmates, jump ship at the next port or are thrown off by a commander with savoir-faire. Their schemes are endless from dalliances to seditions; they rarely go unnoticed.

It is, of course, true that the commander of such a large seagoing vessel can also be incompetent or be viewed by the crew as harsh, intolerant and merciless. Bligh may have seemed a harsh taskmaster leaving Tahiti, but he had just leniently corrected 3 deserters with the lash and he knew how loose the discipline had become. He needed his crew taut, skilled and ready for the 12,000 mile return voyage. He attempted to help the crew regain discipline and skill for the long journey ahead hoping to end the indolence and disorderly conduct. We must hope and pray that the discipline meted out is enough to strengthen the moral fibers of the crew to reach the hoped for destination.

We might know the taste of the rigors of such a voyage and the exquisite contentment that comes from the commitment of a commander such as Bligh. And we are reassured by our love, our disciplined love for such a commander, for ourselves and for others. Disciplined love which comes from a trained and selfless master of the way is beyond explanation and words. The commander helps the crew stay the course, but only if the crew unpacks their will. Disciplined love results when the will is surrendered to the greater Source on a spiritual voyage. It’s an adventure beyond the adventures of time and space.

The most we can say with any certainty is that the mutineers of the Bounty were captives of selfish dreams of the kind from the likes of Mara’s squadrons. It does not mean they are hopeless. It may mean a confession, followed by an ability to bring to an end their foolish belief that freedom is found in an insurgence against disciplined love. If they are unable to stop, they remain shackled by their own self-centeredness.

Reference and Recommended Reading:

The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty

Caroline Alexander

May 10, 2016

The Wheel of Suffering: A Story in Many Parts

http://www.quietmountain.org/dharmacenters/buddhadendo/wheel_of_life.htm — Wheel of Suffering Figure 1

The Wheel of Suffering:

A Story in Many Parts

PART ONE – The Beginning

Three years ago, my teacher offered members of the sangha support and guidance to create a personal artistic expression of the Wheel of Suffering, an ancient Buddhist mandala comprised of images that map how we humans create and re-create our own suffering. The Wheel of Suffering also brilliantly offers an imagistic map of liberation. It is a one-stop guide into the entire panorama of Buddhist wisdom.

Wheel of Suffering

It is said that the Buddha originally drew this series of images in the dirt to explain the origins of suffering to his monks. Subsequently, the Wheel could be found on the walls of every monastery, as a teaching in symbols, not requiring literacy, just a willingness to contemplate the fullness of what is presented.

But the symbols are ancient, and sometimes difficult to translate into modern culture. Could we, could I, re-work the images to speak to this time and place? Could I do so in a way that would speak to others, that would be a universal as well as a personal, guide to liberation from suffering? My sangha embarked on an in-depth contemplation of the Wheel images and their spiritual significance.

The Wheel of Suffering is comprised of three main ideas/images: At its center is the wheel itself, actually four separate and nested wheels. These four wheels together contain close to 30 separate images, each describing yet another way we manifest self-centered pain and disappointment.

The nested wheels are held by a fierce creature who fixes the viewer with a steady, piercing stare. This creature, Yama, represents impermanence. Impermanence, embodied by Yama, is spinning the Wheel—AND devouring it. Can you see how the constant change in your own life is spinning your wheels, how change itself and the friction thus manifested can leave us wanting something other than what is?

Yama is in turn suspended within a frame of sky, from which a Buddha stands nobly in a cloud. So, all of our suffering, AND impermanence itself are held by something bigger, something that isn’t suffering, and isn’t impermanent. Something represented by sky, and by the Buddha, who points at the wheel as if to say, “This is important, study this!”

Study it I did. At first, to have enough understanding that I could choose an artistic medium of my own to express the many ways we humans are on the wheel, running in circles looking for something we never find. I settled on an overall concept of a deck of cards, a card for each image contained in the Wheel, to be rendered using collages of mixed media.

The Card Game of Life

My deck of playing cards has four “suits,” one for each of the four nested wheels, signified by a color. Rather than clubs, diamonds, hearts and spades, my Wheel deck has orange, black/white, blue and green suits.

The cards we’re dealt on the Wheel of Suffering…

Stepping Onto the Wheel Along with other sangha members, I was engaged in a careful contemplation of each of the drawings contained in the ancient wheel mandala, using these images as a map with which to discover the precise and varied ways I myself created suffering.

We began our study of the Wheel not at the center, but at the top of the outermost circle, represented by the color green in my cards. Beginning here, one is given, first and foremost, a tool for getting off the wheel. If one is going to study suffering…it is quite beneficial to enter onto the Wheel with an “out.” The twelve images of this outer wheel begin, at the top, with a blind man, feeling his way in the world with a cane. He is IGNORANCE, and in spiritual terms, this ignorance blinds him to the causes of suffering. He is blind to his innate ability to apply the brakes and turn towards the cessation of suffering.

As I contemplated the root of my own ignorance, I was also searching for how to depict on a playing card this fundamental blindness and the truth it obscures. This exercise of beginning with inner contemplation, followed greater self-awareness, followed by the creation of an image for the playing card, has become a powerful tool in my spiritual practice.

Zen master Eihei Dogen taught, “To study the Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the Self is to be actualized by myriad things.” To let go of the hold our ego has over us requires going deeply into our personality, understanding it thoroughly…..so that it slowly loses its grip, and the one who studies, who sees the ways she is conditioned to keep the spinning wheel spinning, and who chooses not to perpetuate those habits…….that one begins to take up more space. That one is NOT on the wheel. That one is sky, and like sky, is not separate from everything.

Each card can take weeks of constant attention to what I am doing, thinking and feeling, moment to moment. Such mindfulness, I have come to know from my practice, leads to clear comprehension. Clear comprehension leads to wisdom. Once some clear comprehension of my habit or tendency in each realm of the wheel is reached, the way is opened to let an image for the playing card arise. Each of my cards reflects my own quest for such wisdom.

At first, I was deeply uncomfortable with spending so much time in “don’t know,” in an absence of images and understanding. I had to accept that I could not think these understandings into being. To bring forth an image requires a willingness to sit still in the empty space. I came to trust the something that would inevitably emerge from nothing, often when I would least expect it. Each card reflects my practice with this kind of patience, this equanimity with the moment-to moment unfolding of everything.

IGNORANCE

As I pondered the blind man on the road, I came to see that my own ignorance comes from getting caught up in the identities and activities of my everyday life as if they will provide me with ultimate nourishment. What I go after inevitably creates pain, stress and disappointment—-even when it is initially pleasurable. When I can see the suffering I create, and recognize that I am looking in the wrong place, I step out of ignorance. Seeing that I am suffering gives me another choice.

The stuff we fabricate, and take as real, blinds us to the truth of suffering

When we can see that we want the material world to make us happy…the blind snaps open, something crumbles, the wise grandmother comes out of the basement, and Truth sets us free

Practicing with Ignorance

Two winters ago, deeply immersed in my study of the Wheel, I experienced a flare-up of a chronic pain pattern in my neck and head. The least wrong posture or poor eating/drinking choices aggravated the pattern, and I would be on the couch, in severe pain for a day or two. I could no longer practice yoga, I could not tolerate even one glass of wine in the evenings. I began to judge every activity in terms of its potential contribution to pain. I feared for my future, I was irritated with myself for the least little slip-up that seemed to make things worse. And I agonized about whether and where to look for help.

By this time, my “Ignorance” playing card was complete. I had included “joint pain” on the window shade as I knew that physical pain caused me to suffer. But I had not yet lived the experience of “pulling up the shade.” Often, waking up to ignorance comes only after much suffering. We are conditioned to carry on within the narrow confines of our own misery. We are conditioned to believe that the solution to our suffering lies in finding answers outside of ourselves. This is indeed a kind of blindness, and it is a profound turn when we begin to see that we ourselves are causing our own unhappiness. This “turn” is the waking up from ignorance as depicted by the blind man on the Wheel’s outer rim.

The moment when I saw that my neck pain could be part of my spiritual practice was a moment of having my own blindness illuminated! The teaching of the Four Noble Truths is encapsulated in the image of the blind man and in my personal experience with chronic pain:

First Noble Truth: There is suffering. Do you know when you are suffering? Do you know that the pressure, anxiety, and irritation you cope with daily is caused by YOU? When I was able to see how much pressure and anxiety I had created around my neck pain, my suffering became evident to me. Every life has physical pain. It was my emotional reaction to the physical pain that was creating my suffering.

Second Noble Truth: The cause of suffering is craving. What do you crave? I just wanted my neck pain to go away. I wanted my life back. I wanted to go to yoga, enjoy a glass of wine, and experience myself physically in ways that assured me I was strong, fit and able-bodied.

Third Noble Truth: There is an end to suffering. This is a truly amazing message! Your suffering can end, IF you can see the fallacy in placing your hopes and dreams in the material world. When my neck pain became a part of my spiritual practice, everything changed. This was not easy or quick. It required walking the Eightfold Path, as we are instructed in the Fourth Noble Truth. With the help of good teachers, and the discipline of a regular meditation practice, I began to accept my pain and the resulting physical limitations as a given. Moment by moment I learned to precisely and kindly be with the pain. Moment by moment I began to see clearly the ever-changing nature of the human bodily form.

Once I could stop bringing so much negativity to my experience of the neck pain, the pain itself began to change. Pain is a message from the body. If we expend all our energy to resist that message….it will get louder. Stillness and acceptance can allow for the energy and information contained within pain to move through.

There is liberation, wisdom and a surrender of the delusion of control in this way of practicing with chronic pain or other forms of suffering…such as in the realm of relationships. Relationships get me into trouble quite often. How about you?

It was after having dinner with a friend one night that I found myself caught in the agony of anger and judgement toward this person. They had spent our time together recounting numerous tales of woe. For them, life was hell. For me, it was so clear that this hell was self-induced. I could see clearly how they could feel better. Why couldn’t they see it? How could I kindly tell them the truth? How could I help them to see the error of their ways? I am not proud of it, but this is a stance in which I often find myself: knowing the solution to someone else’s pain, then feeling responsible for “helping.”

On the drive home, I was able to see that my reaction to this person’s hell was to enter hell with them. I was miserable. Closer to home, I saw that I deeply wanted this person to be free from their suffering so that I didn’t have to suffer with them. To fix them was to fix me too….or so I thought. By the time I reached home, I knew that neither their pain nor my pain for them was fix-able. I was ready to send an email saying, “Thanks for our time together. I am so sorry it’s so very hard right now. You are a good person. You are doing your best.”

Such a crisp, quick snapping open of the window shade is a great blessing. Often, the quest to “see the light” is a much longer and more arduous process. Often, I spend days, weeks, hanging out with the stuff on the shade, unable to see through it. But it is always amazing grace, and a sign of diligent practice no matter how long it takes, to be lost, then to be found.

Written by Getsu San Ku Shin 2016

Photo Credits
Figure 1 http://www.quietmountain.org/dharmacenters/buddhadendo/wheel_of_life.htm
Figure 2 http://www.quietmountain.org/dharmacenters/buddhadendo/wheel_of_life.htm
Figure 3 Getsu San Ku Shin 2016
Figure 4 http://image.slidesharecdn.com/thewheeloflife-110613131946-phpapp02/95/the-wheel-of-life-11-728.jpg?cb=1308046106
Figure 5 Getsu San Ku Shin 2016
Figure 6 Getsu San Ku Shin 2016

May 7, 2016May 9, 2016

Reaching for the Light

The harm that we cause travels out from its impact.
It moves deeply through us, between us.
Neither space nor time halts its flow.

It can bring on a darkness.
As we seek to protect ourselves
From inner demons and the living.
This blackness may conceal even our essence.

reaching for the light 2 — Photo Credit: Esteban Biba/EPA

If we are lucky, others may arrive,
Who, like angels or shepherds,
Seek to care for, comfort, and guide us.

reaching for the light4 — Reaching for the Light Zhong Fen li Bao yu Di, ©2016

From their expressions of love and compassion,

And our own efforts to let go.
We may regain the strength and faith
To again stand next to one another,
To open and reach for the Light.

In 1982, one of the bloodiest years of Guatemala’s 36 year civil war, military officers killed and raped Mayan peasants in the tiny hamlet of Sepur Zarco. Subsequently, eleven women from the village were forced into domestic and sexual slavery. This bondage lasted as long as six years for some of the women. A case was brought against the officers after a long and painful process. This year the Guatemalan courts tried two of the officers in charge, found them guilty, and sentenced them to 340 years in prison. The accompanying photos are of the women who brought the charges prior to their testimony and during the reading of the verdict.

April 13, 2016April 13, 2016

Going from Horizontal to Vertical

Going from Horizontal to Vertical by Yao Xiang Shakya

My fundamental nature is to do nothing, to have nothing. I am to be. Yet, again and again I am fooled into thinking and then doing things that bring about disappointment and dissatisfaction followed by regret. I regret what I thought and what came to be what I did, after what I thought. This inane cycle seems endless because I spin it around and around again.

Somehow, perhaps with some luck, I know when I let the burn I feel cool down, the thoughts and actions show me once more the silly nonsense of my involvement in the material world. It is full of silly nonsense of looking after and going after things, whether the things are mundane, extraordinary or alive. This is life in the horizontal position.

I notice when I want to think about and do things associated with being, just being, I don’t find this same silliness. The most restful place is when I contemplate God (the true nature of being). There is nothing else that seems to be as satisfying. Nothing. This is life in the vertical position.

Quite honestly it’s taken a fair number of years for me to see this truth. I have known for a long time no thing in the material world was satisfying, a thing to be counted on but I kept thinking it was me and my bad luck in finding the thing that was satisfying. All my complaints and angst and restlessness are evidence that I knew through my experience that material things are unsatisfying, yet I remained stupid. I kept trying to make the material world into something satisfying. You know, like the right place to live, work that kept my attention, a healthy body; or more daily things like ‘what now, what’s next?’ Finally one day not that long ago I listened to my dissatisfaction and really understood that it’s a message of truth about the material world. All along my mind, the big, wise mind of being had been telling me this for years and years. I confess I am a numbskull or was. But now like the sound of a trumpet I hear this message as truth because it’s my experience of the material world. And the great part of it is I clearly comprehend it without an aftershock of disappointment or dissatisfaction.

This cycle leads me to question why I am not able to relate the material world as part of to be…just to be. One thing that comes to mind is the hardships of the material world and other beings. The hardships seem to center on a conflict between my inner desire to stay in just being with God and the pull to be involved with the moronic rules of the material world. When I come to terms with the nature of the material world I change. I sit upright right in the middle of the variations.

I remember my seventy year old neighbor going on and on about how she hated the street signs in our neighborhood. The rule asked her and each one of us to move the car to the south side of the street on Thursday and back to the north side on Friday. It does sound ridiculous; but we both knew that it was to make way for the street cleaners. I have to admit even knowing that it was to allow the street cleaners to have a clear path to clean each side of the street the rule does sound, burdensome and stupid. It’s a simple hardship, I know, but a hardship nonetheless. And for my neighbor it was tough. She had to remember to do it and sometimes got a pretty big fine when she’d forget. She was on a fixed income and a fine was a pretty big dent in her monthly income. Of course everyone knew she had a garage but she preferred to park on the street in front of her house. I’m not sure, but I think it was because she lived alone and if something happened to her in her garage it might take longer to find her in the garage as opposed to falling on the street. Besides her husband fell in the garage and lay on the cold cement for two days. It didn’t kill him right away but it led to his death.

The garage, the street, the car and the rules are all hardships when you really think about it. And not only are they physical hardships, these things take up a lot of our mental energy as well. We have to keep these things in mind. Keep tabs on them. Make decisions about them. We think about and do what we do with material things. There’s not a lot of just being and I wonder how much of these things we think about and handle lead to knowing just being. I suspect much of what we do with things is a distraction. So I come back to just being, a joyful shelter.

This miscreant of thinking about things and doing something with them is not new. I’ve had it going on in my mind for years; it lurked, prowled through the possibilities of reshaping and handling the material world. It is a deadly trap; laid me out flat again and again. And it is all a distraction.

But it’s not enough to know it’s a distraction because we need to know what it distracts us from. And we need to know about how to discriminate which is a secret code word for non-attachment. And this non-attachment is no ordinary dismissal of things in the world like a clear out or downsizing. God no! It’s means that I have to continuously be alert to what I am thinking and doing in such a way that I ask myself in some form or another why I want that__________, what permanent advantage do I gain from_________and how would gaining it help liberate the soul?

I am going to make a sweeping generalization about my situation and non-attachment. For the most part, everything except for God is impermanent and therefore everything in the world is not of much help to my quest to know God. But…there’s always the but…some things I need to stay alive in order to find God. Food, water, and shelter come quickly to mind. I also know it doesn’t mean having things is bad or good, but some things add to the hardship of my life. I know a thing adds hardship to my life when I find myself clutching it with attachment. It’s those times when I am sucked up into some afflicted state.

Here’s where discrimination comes in. I need to see what is permanent versus impermanent. When I am able to clearly discriminate I am able to sort out my daily life in such a way I have a shot at just being free of the nonsense of dissatisfaction. I realize there is very little I can do when it comes to the rules of the material world, very little I can do when it comes to other beings, but there is something I can do with what I call ‘my’ life. I can choose to live a horizontal life of entanglement or a vertical life of just being.

I used to fight rather than read the messages that contact with the material world was offering. For the most part, the fight is over. I listen and heed the messages. More and more I am able to stay in what I call just being; it is a place of rest like no other. And more and more I want to be there. I also see that it requires more and more time alone and even though that is the case I am able to tend to the demands of the material world which are necessary and at times demand my attention.

Habits hound me at times but less and less. Which simply means a disciplined approach to relinquishing what is impermanent for the real deal. Discrimination is to know not to become attached to things, not to become dependent on things as a substitute for knowing God.

It’s going from a horizontal life to a vertical one. It’s a life with less and less dependence on how things should go and how others should be. I forfeit willingly the idea that my advantage does not rely on the help of others nor is it impeded. This renunciation of this dependence ends resentment and antagonism. And I am left in a vertical position of knowing there is nothing but God, here and now.