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Superiority Conceit in Buddhist Traditions: Bhikkhu Analayo on Bridging the Dark Expanse Between Rivalries and Uniting for the Common Good

February 9, 2022 by Gavril Leave a Comment

Book coverThe more I learn about various schools of Buddhism — Theravada and Mahayana in particular — the more clearly I see their claim of superiority over each other. An ancient claim. An unavoidable claim. And also a very human claim that finds fertile soil in our Western culture that programs us to get ahead of the competition no matter what it takes. In our weakest moments, this tendency clouds our judgment and clear seeing.

In contemplating this tendency, I was reminded of new research by an eminent scholar Bhikkhu Analayo now published as Superiority Conceit in Buddhist Traditions: a Historical Perspective. (It’s worth noting the book also covers secular Buddhism, a phenomenon similar to secular Christianity, that aims to transform and adapt ancient teachings to fit the modern world; the world of both religious and scientific dogma — two unskilful extremes that keep us stuck in the dichotomy of science and religion, and which Albert Einstein described beautifully by writing that “mere thinking cannot give us a sense of the ultimate and fundamental ends,” and “to make clear these fundamental ends and valuations, and to set them fast in the emotional life of the individual, seems to me precisely the most important function which religion has to perform in the social life of man.”)

Image
The Buddha by Odilon Redon.

In the final chapter of the book, having examined the main types of superiority conceit in Theravada, Mahayana, and secular Buddhism, Bhikkhu Analayo writes:

Instead of appropriating the historical Buddha to authenticate one’s personal or group beliefs, the true seal of authentication for any Buddhist practitioner can be found by putting into practice the central discovery of the historical Buddha: emptiness, or not self. It is by diminishing ego, letting go of arrogance, and abandoning conceit that one becomes a better Buddhist, no matter what tradition one may follow.

We can find freedom from ego on the path laid out by the Buddha two and half millennia ago and expounded in his teaching on the Noble Eightfold Path.

This path becomes light in the darkness that bridges immense expanse between rivalries — light that leads us out of the cave of ignorance to see the very essence of the Sun, the ultimate truth of complete liberation.

Image
Olive Trees With Yellow Sky and Sun by Vincent van Gogh.

In consonance with deep ecologist John Seed’s insistence on going beyond anthropocentrism and echoing poet Wendell Berry’s call for realization that what is good for the world will be good for us, Bhikkhu Analayo writes:

The need to give up superiority conceit in its various Buddhist manifestations is required not only from the viewpoint of Buddhist doctrine, but also in light of the current crisis faced by humanity on this planet. The superiority conceit of human beings in relation to the natural environment, in the form of the assumption that nature can be exploited without concern for possible consequences, has led to a crisis: the repercussions of climate change and ecological destruction are threatening to escalate to a point at which human life on this planet can no longer be sustained. It is already too late to prevent mass extinction of species and a serious deterioration of living conditions. But it is not yet too late to prevent a total catastrophe.

In this situation, members of all Buddhist traditions need to collaborate in a spirit of mutual respect, in order to apply the medicine of the Dharma for maximum effect in countering the mental disease responsible for the current crisis. The historical Buddha’s teachings on ethics of the mind can be relied on to counter the irresponsibility of materialism and its rampant greed, together with employing the practices of Buddhist mental culture to find a middle path between the extremes of denial and despair. In this way, as an expression of the conjunction of compassion and emptiness as well as an implementation of internal and external dimensions of mindfulness, stepping out of various forms of superiority conceit could pave the way for a collaboration of members of all Buddhist traditions in doing the needful to ensure that future generations can still benefit from the liberating message of the Buddha.

Complement these insightful passages from Superiority Conceit in Buddhist Traditions with a short two-minute excerpt from the interview with Bhikkhu Analayo, where he talks more about how respecting all Buddhist traditions helps us overcome differences and gain a deeper understanding of the Buddha’s teachings.

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Filed Under: Buddhism

One Breath-Long Exclamation of Delight: Yoel Hoffmann on How to Read a Haiku

February 2, 2022 by Gavril 1 Comment

Book coverHow do we read a haiku? A surprising primer on this art comes from a slim volume by Yoel Hoffmann titled Japanese Death Poems: Written by Zen Monks and Haiku Poets on the Verge of Death. In the introductory part of the book, we learn that a haiku consists of seventeen syllables written in three lines and traditionally evokes an image of the natural world. It is the shortest verse form found in either the East or the West.

A good haiku may contain more than one sentence but always paints one picture, and the poet needs great clarity of vision to make it a masterpiece with only a few brush strokes on the canvas of his imagination. Yoel Hoffmann writes:

Since about the sixteenth century, three conventions have become universally accepted: 1) the haiku describes a single state or event; 2) the time of the haiku is the present; and 3) the haiku refers to images connected to one of the four seasons [of the year].

Image
Autumn Flowers in Front of Full Moon by Hiroshige.

Matsuo Basho, foremost among haiku poets, once said, “About the pine, learn from the pine; about the reed, learn from the reed.” This famous dictum instructs the poet to become unconscious of himself to see the object of his craft with absolute clarity, as it is in and of itself. To clarify what this means, Yoel Hoffmann cites a modern haiku scholar Kenneth Yasuda who wrote:

When one happens to see a beautiful sunset or lovely flower, for instance, one is often so delighted that one merely stands still. This state of mind might be called “ah-ness,” for the beholder can only give one breath-long exclamation of delight, ‘Ah!’ The object has seized him and he is aware only of the shapes, the colors, the shadows… There is here no time or place explicitly for reflection for judgments, or for the observer’s feelings…. To render such a moment is the intent of all haiku, and the discipline of the form.

So a haiku attempts to say something without saying it. What remains unsaid tells more than the words but is unclear without them. Take, for example, the following haiku by Matsuo Basho (1644-1694). It is mid-winter, at twilight, and Basho stands on the seashore while patches of light on the waves reflect the setting sun and wild ducks call:

Darkening sea:
a mallard’s call
sounds dimly white.

Haiku poetry resounds with endless meanings because it often attains that perfect simplicity sought for in philosophy, religion, literature, and art. In the next haiku by Oshima Ryota (1718-1787), for a fraction of a second, the gap between reality and illusion, the eternal and the momentary, closes:

Moon in the water
Somersaults
and streams away.

A haiku poet observes what others scarcely see. How many of us would have noticed what Shiba Fukio (1903-1930) describes in the next poem — the split-second gap between the horse’s first step and the movement of the carriage?

A barley wagon
lags—then leaps
behind the horse.

And finally, some may say that a poem as short as the haiku can’t convey the depth and complexity of our feelings. But hasn’t Ochi Etsujin (b. 1656) captured, in the following lines, an entire “scene from a marriage?”

Autumn evening:
‘Isn’t it time,’ she comes and asks,
‘to light the lantern?’

Complement Japanese Death Poems, an enlightening and educational read, with the short three-minute video below that goes a bit deeper into the technical side of writing a haiku, and then revisit Mortimer Adler’s advice on how to read a book and Edward Hirches’ meditation on how to read a poem.

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Since I started this website 4 years ago my only aim was and still remains helping all of my readers to discover the path to inner calm through spiritual growth and cultivation of wisdom. I spend all of my free time and resources working on this project and your support plays a vital role in helping me to improve and make this website an invaluable resource for you. If my little virtual home uplifted your spirit or made your day a little bit better, please consider donating to support its further growth.

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Filed Under: Spirituality

Parable of the Mustard Seed: The Buddha’s Teaching on Overcoming Grief

January 30, 2022 by Gavril Leave a Comment

Book coverIt has been said that grief is love, it’s all the love we want to give but can not give. The grander the love, the deeper the grief. And because parental love is grandest of all, grief for a child becomes a bottomless well of pain, sorrow, and despair. This is a theme of a famous Buddhist “Parable of the Mustard Seed,” a version of which is included in an anthology Teachings of the Buddha edited by a renowned meditation teacher and writer Jack Kornfield.

Once upon a time, there lived a girl called Gotami, but because her body was very skinny and tired easily she was called Kisa Gotami or Skinny Gotami. When she grew up, she married, going to the house of her husband’s family. Being a daughter of a poverty-stricken house, she was treated with contempt. Only when she had given birth to a son was she accorded the respect she deserved. But that son, running hither and thither, while playing met his end. Overwhelmed by grief, she thought:

Since the birth of my son, I, who was once denied honor and respect in this very house, have received respect. These folk may even seek to cast my son away [into a charnel ground].

Taking her son on her hip, she went about from one house door to another, saying, “Give me medicine for my son!”

Image
Grief by Karis Upton. Follow @klsupton on Instagram.

Whenever people encountered her, they said, “Where did you ever meet with medicine for the dead?” So saying, they clapped their hands and laughed in derision. But hearing their words, Kisa Gotami had not the slightest idea what they meant. A certain wise man saw her and thought she must had been driven out of her mind by grief for her son. With compassion and kindness, he told her to see the Buddha who lived at a neighboring monastery. If anyone had a cure for the breathless body in her hands, it would be him. Upon meeting the Buddha, Kisa Gotami said, “Oh Exalted One, give me medicine for my son!” To which he replied:

You did well, Gotami, in coming hither for medicine. Go enter the city, make the rounds of the entire city, beginning at the beginning, and in whatever house no one has ever died, from that house fetch tiny grains of mustard seed. [They will cure your son.]

Image
Grief by Karis Upton. Follow @klsupton on Instagram.

“Very well, revered sir,” she said and glad of mind entered the city and went about from one house door to another, saying, “The Buddha bids me fetch tiny grains of mustard seed for medicine for my son. Give me tiny grains of mustard seed.” But she found no house where death had not claimed a family member. And finally, she understood: in the entire city this must be the way. The Buddha, full of compassion for the welfare of mankind, must have seen. Overcome with emotion, she carried her son to the burning ground and cast him away into the fire. Then she uttered the following stanza:

No village law, no law of market town,
No law of a single house is this —
Of all the world and all the worlds of gods
This only is the Law, that all things are impermanent.

Another version of the “Parable of the Mustard Seed” is included in the album Ghosteen by Nick Cave. In the track “Hollywood” he retells the story in his own words as a way to process the tragic death of his son.

PARABLE OF THE MUSTARD SEED
from Ghosteen by Nick Cave

Kisa had a baby but the baby died
Goes to the villagers says my baby’s sick
The villagers shake their heads and say to her
Better bury your baby in the forest quick

Kisa went to the mountain to ask the Buddha
My baby’s sick! Buddha said, don’t cry
Go to each house and collect a mustard seed
But only from a house where no one’s died

Kisa went to each house in the village
My baby’s getting sicker, poor Kisa cried
But Kisa never collected one mustard seed
Because in every house someone had died

Kisa sat down in the old village square
She hugged her baby and she cried and cried
She said everybody is always losing somebody
Then walked into the forest and buried her child

Complement the “Parable of the Mustard Seed,” an integral part of Teachings of the Buddha, with the art of jisei, a Japanese death poem, and then revisit symbolist painter Gustav Klimt’s art meditation on death and life.

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Since I started this website 4 years ago my only aim was and still remains helping all of my readers to discover the path to inner calm through spiritual growth and cultivation of wisdom. I spend all of my free time and resources working on this project and your support plays a vital role in helping me to improve and make this website an invaluable resource for you. If my little virtual home uplifted your spirit or made your day a little bit better, please consider donating to support its further growth.

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And Miles to Go Before I Sleep: Robert Frost Recites Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

January 28, 2022 by Gavril 1 Comment

Book coverRobert Frost (March 26, 1874–January 29, 1963) is perhaps one of the few poets who needs no introduction. Author of many enduring and iconic poems in American letters, he continues to enrich and ennoble our literary lives. But few of us know that behind the public persona of a celebrated poet and winner of four Pulitzer Prizes, is a man whose life was laced with tragedy, entwined with loss, and twisted with grief.

His father, a newspaperman, died of tuberculosis when Frost was eleven, leaving the family destitute; his mother, whose Swedenborgian mysticism was a major influence on her son, died of cancer when Frost was twenty-six. His younger sister Jeanie had to be committed to a mental hospital in 1920, and Frost himself feared at times for his own sanity. Mental illness ran in his family. His daughter Irma was also committed to a mental hospital, and his son Carol committed suicide. Another son died of cholera at age eight, and two of his daughters also died young.

Yet despite all this pain — and more so because of all this pain — he was able to write the most memorable and life-giving poems we know today. One of them sprang to my mind after a recent loss of someone whose teachings have influenced my meditation and mindfulness practice for years. It’s titled “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” and included in the collection New Hampshire. Recited here by Frost himself in his warm aged voice. Please enjoy!

Image
Winter Night by Edvard Munch.
https://mindfulspot.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/robert-frost-stopping-by-woods-on-a-snowy-evening.mp3

STOPPING BY WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING
by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” an integral part of New Hampshire collection of poems, remains a monumental work of poetic genius. Complement with Henry David Thoreau on why he went to live in the woods, Richard Louv on the spiritual necessity of nature for the young, Deborah Underwood and Cindy Derby’s water color meditation on our inseparable link to nature.

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Since I started this website 4 years ago my only aim was and still remains helping all of my readers to discover the path to inner calm through spiritual growth and cultivation of wisdom. I spend all of my free time and resources working on this project and your support plays a vital role in helping me to improve and make this website an invaluable resource for you. If my little virtual home uplifted your spirit or made your day a little bit better, please consider donating to support its further growth.

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Donate & Support

Since I started this website 4 years ago my only aim was and still remains helping all of my readers to discover the path to inner calm through spiritual growth and cultivation of wisdom. I spend all of my free time and resources working on this project and your support plays a vital role in helping me to improve and make this website an invaluable resource for you. If my little virtual home uplifted your spirit or made your day a little bit better, please consider donating to support its further growth.

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Mindful Spot has a free weekly newsletter where I share my findings across Buddhism, philosophy, literature, art, and other sources that allow us to expand our inner world and feel greater connection to each other. Subscribe below:

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