Crossing Nebraska

By now all of us Buddhists have weathered well over a month of what is commonly referred to as “the holiday season.” It starts with the dominant culture storming out of the gate the moment the Halloween decorations come down and gathers momentum as Thanksgiving approaches. By Black Friday the sprint has begun. Whatever pace each individual can muster is then maintained by whatever means necessary until everyone collectively collapses into a physically and emotionally exhausted and overindulged pile of debt-burdened human wreckage on New Year’s Day! Jizo statue How are you holding up so far? Have you gone stir-crazy yet from hearing Christmas carols nearly everywhere you go? Is the ubiquity of wasteful and distasteful lawn art finally wearing you down? Has workplace pressure to pony up for an offering of useless crap for the “white elephant” gift exchange put your principles of simplicity to the test? And how many times have you lamented to friends and family the ...

I hope you’ve had the opportunity over the course of what might have been a busy week to reflect upon the view from atop the summit of the previous post – A Gestalt View of No-Self . It was quite an excursion, especially for those who might have been unfamiliar with the terrain. Such views as that revealed by “what is called the self is everything that is not the self” might leave one wondering whether their eyes are to be believed! After all, things are generally defined by that which they are , not that which they are not . And to say that something is both that which it is and that which it is not simply defies the logic that usually pertains to the way we think about “things”. Well, sometimes the meaning of a great truth only becomes apparent over time – upon reflection, meditation, or prayer perhaps. If truth were otherwise then I suppose we could simply read ourselves toward the wisdom of the sages! These next four excursions won’t be quite so challenging as the last – especia...

Where does the time go? It’s been all year long so far that I’ve been exploring the Brahma-viharas , the “Four Sublime Abodes” of compassion, equanimity, sympathetic joy, and loving-kindness (Sangharakshita, 1980, p. 141), and their respective “near enemies” of pity, indifference, comparison, and attachment (Kornfield, 1993, p. 190). Nonetheless, I think we’re ready to bring this series to a close. If you’ve had the opportunity to read the previous posts exploring attachment (all four of them!) you’ll know that it’s quite the near enemy of loving-kindness , the usual English translation equivalent of the Sanskrit word, metta , which is referred to by Rahula (1959) as the extension of “unlimited, universal love and good-will… to all living beings without any kind of discrimination, ‘just as a mother loves her only child’” (p. 75). The Buddha Calms An Enraged Elephant With Loving-Kindness Clearly, the universal and non-discriminatory nature of metta as spoken of here reveal...

Hello again! I apologize for the delay in getting this post online. As I stated in a comment following my previous post, the holidays, a meditation retreat, and a persistent (albeit minor) respiratory ailment all combined to knock my writing routine off track. All is well, however; I hope it is so with all of you. The previous post introduced those states of mind that comprise the brahma-viharas , the “Four Sublime Abodes” of compassion, equanimity, sympathetic joy, and loving-kindness (Sangharakshita, 1980). According to Schuhmacher and Woerner (1994), these are the states of mind that should be cultivated in order to aid in the liberation of others. Recall, however, that each of these states of mind – these “sublime attitudes”, as Thanissaro (2011) referred to them – has a near enemy or imposter, which, while appearing in the guise of spiritual advancement, is merely a more base karmic tendency dressed up in its Sunday finest. And so we have pity m...