MIND TRANSFORMATION MASTER SERIES

A few of us in Pune have come together to form a group to hold a series of teachings based on Buddhist science and philosophy. Buddhist Masters will be invited from renowned monasteries and institutes across India to impart teachings by sharing the light of Sakyamuni's Dharma.


The group calls itself Group for the Outreach of Omniscient Dharma (G.O.O.D). NOV 6-7 is the first of this series by Khenpo Sonam Tsewang of Namdroling Monastery, Bylakuppe, S.India.


ALL ARE INVITED. Invitation with details appended. Please do attend. Convenors: Girish Deshpande & Ashwini Khare Dasgupta

PEACE V/S HAPPINESS

The other day a friend of mine and i were contemplating the larger meaning of life and living. He also wanted to know more of the solitary cave retreat in the Himalayas i was just back from. As the conversation was coming to an end, he said to me “So basically under any given circumstances we have to know how to be happy, isn’t it?” As i began to see a steady stream of customers entering his coffee shop, i could have just nodded in the affirmative, made him feel happy about it and melted away. But something inside me stirred and i went on to explain it thus to him.


It is commonly projected in spiritual teachings that the objective in this life is to be happy and keep other beings around us happy. Well, in Buddhist teachings the approach is a bit different.


Take any two situations in your own life. One that has been a pleasant one and the other which has caused you pain and unpleasantness. The reactions to both these situations by a siddha (accomplished one) and an ordinary being will be different.


While the ordinary being will sway between the extremities of being happy in one situation and sad in the other one that has been unpleasant, the accomplished one will be at peace in both the situations. Herein lies the fundamental difference. While peace is a constant state of being, having almost no contrasting opposite, happiness is subjected to a contrasting dual state viz. sadness. While the nature of peace is unchanging, the nature of happiness is subject to forces prone to change hence making it a temporary or transient state. Happiness also has the great possibility of being contaminated by desire, not so is the case with peace. To understand the difference better, let us take an example of a mother who has just lost her child. It would be foolhardy to expect the traumatized mother to be ‘happy’ in a heart—rending moment such as this, however accomplished a yogin she may be! However, if the same woman had even the basic understanding of the teachings on impermanence, she would certainly be at ‘peace’ with the given extreme situation. And this approach can be applied in several circumstances with us in day to day situations.


Sakyamuni’s intent was never to be happy himself nor did he lead people towards the false assurance of keeping them happy. His path does not lead to happiness either. It leads to nirvana, which is peace. A state free from the duality of being ‘happy’ and/or ‘unhappy’. This state is never ever to be confused with indifference. It is to be in total awareness of the situation and being at peace with it. This is very important to understand. Indifference can lead to a whole set of negative karma by itself and therefore must be abandoned sooner than later.


In an accomplished practitioner the very bedrock of being is peace, irrespective of the situation. There is no doubt that delusions of afflicted emotions arise in siddha’s just as in ordinary beings. However, the difference is how each of them reacts to them. While an ordinary being will immediately have a ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ reaction resulting in the corresponding negative karma arising from attachment or aversion; a siddha sees everything arising in its natural state without grasping entering his/her perception.


With relentless practice when these subtleties are realized, a deep sense of contentment arises within us. The mind becomes clear, vast and pure as it has been from the very beginning. It recognizes the alternating and unending dance enacted by samsara and nirvana. It becomes quite sky-like; not disappointed with the clouds nor excited over a rainbow.


Therefore, the words of ‘peace’ and ‘happiness’ cannot and should not be used loosely like synonyms as people – including few spiritual teachers of some faiths - are generally prone to using them. They must be used after their meaning is fully and deeply understood through the dedicated practices of contemplation and meditation. Let us therefore continue to create causes for peace...and happiness. :)

My Solitary Cave Retreat, Sikkim

October 2012 saw me retreat to the Himalayas for a fortnight of quiet contemplative and meditative break. I believe such solitary breaks to be very crucial for every one to take, irrespective of whether one is a practitioner or not. While for lay people such a break helps in 'seeing' the mental chatter arising from urban distractions and attractions, and quietening them down to some extent so as to understand the reasons better and perhaps develop antidotes to them; to a practitioner a break of this kind helps in the transformation of teachings into a continual mind stream through the undisturbed process of reading/listening, contemplating and meditating, better known as the Three Wisdom Tools.


As Lama Longchenpa once said: "Worldly pre-occupations never end; they end when we die or when we drop them. Such is their nature."


Go ahead, put in that leave application and go! The world will go on, anyway! :) May all beings benefit,

PATIENCE- Antidote to Anger

Speaking Tree, TOI, 23.09.2012 PRACTICE OF PATIENCE –


One of the Six Perfections in Buddhist Teachings. One of my students, a young girl then awaiting her medical entrance results, mailed to me. Her question was simple. Her mother asked her to be patient and the girl wanted to know the real meaning of the word.


This is what I wrote back to her.


The Oxford dictionary defines patience (noun) as: "the ability to stay calm and accept a delay or something annoying without complaining." Maybe this fits quite perfectly into the expectations most mothers have of their children!


In the Buddhist teachings, however, the explanation is a bit more deeper. It is something like this:


As we know afflicted emotions (pride, wrong views, greed, jealousy, anger, desire) originate in our untrained mind, play havoc with us and lead us into all kinds of suffering. Infact they are the root cause of our suffering. They are the very reason why we continue to wander in samsara for many many lifetimes. And now that we have this precious human rebirth, there is a way in which we can train our minds to rid ourselves of these causes of suffering, purify our minds of them, generate antidotes for these afflicted emotions and try and abandon these afflictions totally.


Each of these five poisons have the capacity to push us into lower rebirths where suffering is far far greater than we have in this human realm. In particular, anger, is such that is pushes us into the lower most realm of rebirth called the hell realm. Unimaginable suffering awaits us there.


So obviously, it would be unwise to conduct ourselves in a way that will land us down there. So the wisest thing to do is to control our anger. But how do we do it? Just as when a person is bitten by a snake, the doctor administers an antidote to fight the poison, so also in the case of afflicted emotions. Each of these emotions have an antidote given elaborately in the teachings. In order to overcome the poison of anger we develop, through practice, an antidote.


This antidote is Patience.


 A great Indian Buddhist master of 16-17th century C.E., Shantideva, says:


All the good work gathered in a thousand ages,
Such as deeds of generosity,
And offerings to the blissful ones,
A single flash of anger shatters them.
And further advices us by saying:
No evil is there similar to anger,
No austerity to be compared with patience
Steep yourself, therefore, in patience, I
n various ways, insistently.


And how do we develop the antidote of patience? There are several ways suggested in the teachings depending on the students' capability. One of the easiest ways is by watching our mind when anger arises. When we 'see' it arising we immediately turn our focus towards our breath. Controlling our breathing when anger arises helps in settling anger to some extent. Developing compassion, release of expecting things to always go our way are other ways we can train ourselves in. This antidote can also be applied to various minor afflictions such as irritability, anxiety, over-excitement, undue hurry etc. Other skillful methods based on identifying the base nature of mind and treating all arisings to be sport of the mind are also mentioned in the teachings. However, such techniques require years of training under the guidance of accomplished masters.


Go on then. Get yourself to live a life without anger. It is an assured step towards nirvana!


(The girl referred to in the article, Axxxx (name withheld), hails from Bihar and used to follow my blog and Speaking Tree pieces. She wrote to me one day pouring out all her personal problems. I responded over email to try and sort them out for her. There was lull for many months thereafter and i thought all was well. Until one day an email landed in my inbox. She said she was on the verge of taking her life following a failed love affair and failed medical entrance test. Although keen to pursue medical studies, Axxxx did not wish her parents to cough up huge money towards a donation seat although they were willing to. An email in the nick of time (just one night before she would have taken that disastrous step), followed by several more, guiding her thru a traumatic life seems to have worked. Axxxx got over this phase and has since begun living a far more peaceful and confident life, ready to face the world boldly with all its vagaries. This year she cracked the exam and now studies medicine at Manipal University as a merit student.)

RAKSHA BANDHAN - Reflecting on Protection

SPEAKING TREE, TOI, 05.08.2012


A young boy of a middle class family, all of 5yrs, is sitting on a chair in the drawing room of his parents’ modest apartment. He’s wearing a crisp and well fitting pyjama-kurta bought specially for the occasion of Raksha Bandhan. In the pocket of his kurta he safeguards an envelope with some content of cash. Proudly sporting a ‘tilak’ on his forehead, just under the Anna cap, he waits impatiently for his mother and elder sister, aged 12yrs, to get the pooja thali ready. After all today is the day his sister and he had been waiting for.


This perhaps is quite a familiar situation that we can visualize in millions of households across socio-economic sections of India. Perhaps among NRI’s too. Chances are that we may have even gone through these situations in our growing years, whether or not we had a sibling; cousins and neighbours’ ‘bhaiyya’ or ‘didi’ happily filling in.


The pooja thali arrives. The older sister goes through the rituals of lighting the lamp, moving the thali clockwise around the innocent face of her brother and showering him with coloured rice. The boy places the envelope on the pooja thali, as a gift for his sister, which she eyes expectantly. The ritual ends with the sister tying a rakhi or sacred thread of protection around her brother’s right wrist, signifying the assurance of protection the brother heaps upon his sister as commitment.


Wait a minute. It’s not over yet.


The boy innocently asks his sister “Akka, every morning when we walk to the bus-stop to go to school, it is you who holds my hand while crossing the road.”
“Yes, so?” enquires the sister with a tinge of irritation.
“It is you who takes care to ensure whether i’ve eaten my dabba or not, right?”
“Yes, baba! So what?” the girl looks at her mother with a quiz on her face.
“And it is you, who ensures that i have got everything back from school”.
“And continues sheepishly “it is also you who speaks to the supervisor in my defence when i’m pulled up for mischief!”
“Yes, yes...now you better tell me what you’re getting at else i’m going. I don’t have time for such kid stuff”, the sister sounds an ultimatum.
“If all the time it is you who are protecting me, then why should i also not tie a rakhi to you?”


The household is stunned into silence.


Each looks at the other with no real answers. The parents’ eyes turn moist. The sister laughs it off as some childish gibberish and chides him “Stupid, it is meant to be so. Now go.”


In walks grandma. “Wait a minute, Akka. Putta has raised a question for all of us to reflect upon.”


Her wisdom tumbles out. And everybody listens in rapt attention.


Grandma continues: “It was okay in yesteryears when it was just men who had to earn and provide for the family. It was they who had to fight wars and battles and so it was their duty to protect the family. Women largely stayed at home, seldom ventured out and engaged mostly in household chores. Even i did it. So by that logic it was fine that sisters tied the thread of protection and took a vow from the brother to protect her from all harm. But now, times have changed and so should traditions that have outlived their time. The ‘wars’ to be fought are those of self and social responsibility, of economic and emotional challenges, those of equality and self-respect. Gone are the days of physical wars and masculine domination and male one-upmanship. Today, as parents you are educating your daughter as passionately so that she grows up to be self-sufficient and independent. You are empowering her into emancipation so that she will look after herself and her family - where she gets married into - with compassion, self-dignity and as much responsibility as her husband would. While the brother is certainly expected to come to his sister’s aid, it could well be that in times of difficulty for Putta, it would be Akka who will come to his rescue. It would be a situation of mutual protection. Then what is wrong in what Putta has asked? He should certainly be allowed to tie the rakhi – the thread of everlasting protection – on Akka’s wrist too!”


Friends, give this a good and honest thought. On Raksha Bandhan day this year, i have decided to also tie rakhi to my sister. And you?

WHAT ABOUT PURGINGS OF THE MIND?

SPEAKING TREE, TOI, PICK OF THE WEEK!


Recently i was watching a popular cinema star anchoring a show wherein the suffering and humiliation of night soil carriers and sewage cleaners were depicted. It was really heart rending to see that. Surely, the nation cringed at the visuals they saw of those workers doing that wretched kind of work; of having to clear up the mess other people have left behind. Some may have also directed their disappointment and anger at the government for not being able to bring an end to such miserable work after sixty years of attaining sovereign status. We thought: Why should others do the dirty job of clearing the mess we leave behind?


It got me thinking.


Although the body is important to us, acting as the support for our mind, it is the lowest form of our being if we were to consider the body, intellect and mind combination of existence. This can be understood by considering this fact. The world has so many different kinds of cuisines. Almost each one of them has its own charm in terms of aromatic flavours, visual appeal, touch and ofcourse taste. But when the food gets digested, it is expelled out in such an impure, foul smelling and repulsive looking form. Even the insides of our body, when we see it under an X-ray is full of blood, bones and flesh in one mass of something that is not really appealing. And we cannot improve this condition whatever we may try to do. On the other hand, we can develop our intelligence and train our minds to the best possible level we want. We expel impurities from our body day after day. We tend to accept this condition and situation and seem to get on with life, considering it to be a matter of fact situation.


But what about the purgings of our mind?


Quite ironical, i thought. On one hand we dont want others to clear the ‘visible’ mess we have created, yet we have no shame, no remorse when we it came to more intense sort of things we easily inflict upon people day in and out! For the latter, however, we urge our buddha or god to clear the mess. This seemed so hypocritical. Every day, almost all the time we are generating all kinds of garbage from our mind in the form of negative emotions, impure thoughts, destructive habits and non-virtuous actions. Unmindfully we expel these negativities and heap them upon others in the form of body, speech and mind actions. And most of the times we donot seem to have any remorse for these actions. We also try and justify them! I have even witnessed on many occasions people who are publicly corrupt, most uncivilized and insensitive going to a place of worship an beseeching their gods to rid them of their negativities! If it were to end here, it would be fine. But the same person would step out of the place of worship and the very next moment indulge in all his/her old ways.


While in the case of the night soil carriers, atleast an external mechanism like a government or laws and regulations that can be put in place to end the practice. But who can we turn to to rid ourselves of the horrendous things we excrete through our mind? Things which are far more harmful to the wellness of society. Things which are far more dangerous to our own selves than to others for the baggage of karma they create for us. Things which will certainly come back to haunt us in this or next lives, depending on the ripening of causes and conditions.


We can at best only take support of the teachings of our faith and our diligent practice to rid ourselves of these negativities. We can only wish for the blessings of our guru and god to rid us of these delusions. However, all the work for actually getting rid of the poisons such as anger, greed, envy, wrong views, desire and ego - the very basis of our wandering in samsara for many lifetimes - we have to work upon them ourselves. No buddha or god is going to do it for us. We have to endeavour hard at overcoming them ourselves. In effect, we have to clear up our own mess. We have to lift our own load.


So, one one had it is really very fine to feel sorry for the headload carriers and work for their benefit too, but it would do us and all those around us more good if we began by feeling sorry for ourselves and aimed at improving our own condition. As HH Dalai Lama says “Let us be wisely selfish."

AN INSULATED COOKER, A NON-STICK PAN AND NIRVANA!

(The Speaking Tree, 17.06.2012, ToI)


Just the other day i was invited to the launch of restaurant by an old B-School friend. The concept was new, a micro beer brewery cum resto-bar. The brunch spread was indeed elaborate. But what particularly caught my attention was that the food warmers were a departure from the conventional and a series of induction cookers with compatible pots and pans were used instead. Finding the idea novel, i chose to contemplate on the merits of their use.


Besides the fact that heat load from induction heating devices over conventional food warmers would reduce the need for additional air-conditioning in the restaurant, saving precious energy bills, what occurred to me actually corroborated with the process we undertake to discover nirvana!


Nirvana in Buddhism is defined as release of suffering. Gyatrul Rinpoche’s commentary describes it more precisely as like this: ‘Nir’ means suffering and ‘vana’ is beyond. So nirvana means to go beyond suffering of samsara or cyclic existence. All teachings and practices in various religions and in particular Buddhist tradition are aimed in training the mind towards this singular objective.


So, what’s this got to do with an induction cooker? Two specific and very important approaches towards discovering what practitioners set out to do. Release from the grasping nature of our ordinary mind and insulating the mind. Please note that words such as ‘attaining’ or ‘achieving’ are not used as there is nothing really of this kind to do, but merely to unearth or re-discover what has always been within us. The seed of buddhahood or ‘tathagathagarbha’ in Sanskrit.


The root cause of our continuing to remain in cyclic existence is the ability of the mind to get distracted easily. Now, this is not some simple distraction that we’re talking of but something that gives rise to causes and conditions for more severe impact. This is the grasper and the grasped; the subject-object dual imposters that have been responsible for our endless misery and endless re-birth in samsara. Grasping does not mean attachment to things which we like. It is to do with the very concept of judging an arising thought, emotion or phenomenon with the intent of categorizing it in terms of attraction or aversion, like or dislike and so on. As practitioners develop awareness through meditative practices, both these gradually get reduced. Repeatedly and single-pointedly observing the arising thoughts and emotions not just during meditation but all the time – with special treatment to the non-virtuous and destructive ones - their tendency to stick reduces. This happens not because the nature of afflictive thoughts and emotions reduce in stickiness but because of the ‘non-stickiness’ that we come to develop in our mind from practices. Much like the same non-stick pan in which food was being heated.


How often we have blamed circumstances, people, situations and everything external to us for our misery. It is utterly foolish to even think, much less believe, that something external can cause us to be in a situation that is bad or good. If we were for even a moment think in this way, we have no idea of karma and its forces. All these situations have been totally self-created. This is the very basis of the law of karma. So then, if this is so, what do we insulate ourselves from? Clearly we need to insulate ourselves from creating those causes and conditions that will come around and bear upon us harmful effects including unpleasant situations ahead in this life or even poor quality of re-birth and greater suffering therein. These are elaborated in Buddhism as the ten negative actions, five poisons and five aggregates. There are thousands of external influences and internal arisings that compel us into negative actions and it is hardly possible to stop them from coming on to us. However, what is definitely possible is to insulate our minds from their sinister plans taking shape. As the Buddha said “If you want to walk the earth without getting your feet dirty there are two ways of doing it. Either you can cover the whole earth with cloth or you can wear a pair of sandals”. Insulating our minds is like wearing a pair of sandals. Very much the same as the well-insulated induction cooker which was safe even with kids around the restaurant.


By generating awareness through simply watching one’s mind in meditation it is possible to release our minds from grasping and insulating it from influences. And this is really what nirvana is all about!


It is really amazing how simple situations around us can provide us with profound teachings that lead us to nirvana. Only if we cared to contemplate!