The Third Fetter

Yesterday I took a class at Still Point called Understanding the Heart Sutra. The class was great. I will post about it a little later. So many things became clear to me as a result of this class. One of the things I'm starting to look at because of this class is my relationship to Intensive Practice.

Buddhism is full of lists including the Three Jewels, Four Noble Truths, Five Precepts, Six Paramitas, Seven Factors of Awakening, and the Noble Eightfold Path. I pulled out some study materials this morning that I could consult as I reviewed my notes from yesterday's class. In one book, I found another list—the Ten Fetters:

Ordinary, unenlightened people are said to be bound by ten fetters. They are:

1. Personality View
2. Skeptical Doubt
3. Reliance on Ethical Rules and Religious Observances
4. Craving for Things of the Senses
5. Hatred
6. Craving for the World of Archetypal Forms
7. Craving for the Formless World
8. Conceit
9. Restlessness
10. Ignorance

Traditionally, it is believed that the person who is able to break the first three fetters achieves 'Stream Entry' — in other words, enters a stream which is bound to carry him or her to Nibbana. One who can break all ten fetters achieves enlightenment.

[... from Teach Yourself 101 Key Ideas: Buddhism, pg. 28. Names of each fetter are presented but descriptions found in the original text (where present) were excluded.]

The description of the Third Fetter explains that...

Whilst  Buddhism certainly encourages ethical awareness and does not dismiss religious ceremonies, it holds that they are of benefit only in terms of the mental state of those who perform them. There is no inherent value in obedience as such, nor should religious rites be taken as a guaranteed method of making spiritual progress.

I take this to mean that it is important to learn how to practice (whatever your practice is) without being attached to specific outcomes and without being attached to the practice itself. I tend to have an "all-or-nothing" perspective about my practice... the way this unfolds for me is either I'm doing everything on the Intensive Practice schedule at the suggested times or I'm not doing it at all. If I miss the morning sitting or the morning bows, I don't practice at all before bed. Thus, my mental state around my practice is very rigid and limiting.

How's Your Practice?

After Tuesday, I didn't practice this week. There was really only one prevailing reason... I really hurt myself doing prostrations. It was kinda like having a good workout in the gym only to wake up the next morning in excruciating pain and not quite understand why. I didn't feel like I was overexerting myself while doing the bows, but the next day my thighs were just killing me. I walked around and got out of chairs like an old woman all week long. The pain was pretty intense until yesterday when there was just mild soreness when I applied pressure to certain muscles.

Forgiving the Unforgiveable

My inbox contained this request for submissions:

TRUTH & RECONCILIATION PROCESS
FORGIVENESS WORKS BETTER THAN PRAYER:-)
REDEEMS BOTH VICTIM AND OPPRESSOR
ITS WAKE-UP TIME

FYI - From Johanna Montgomery:
I am producing a documentary for a major Canadian broadcaster about
extraordinary acts of forgiveness. I am looking for individuals who have faced great loss or harm and who have chosen to forgive the wrong (not condone it). Often people make this choice because their own anger and negativity is causing harm to THEMSELVES as well as to those they love [or hate]. Cases where individuals have come face to face with the person who caused the wrong or who are ready to do that, are of particular interest.

People who participate in this documentary do so as a volunteer. There is no financial remuneration.

All stories will be treated confidentially and with respect. Please respond to:   jlmthunder@gmail.com

Desmond Tutu on Forgiveness and Justice
Interviewed by BeliefNet after 9/11

"Forgiveness is not to condone or minimize the awfulness of an atrocity or wrong.  It is to recognize its ghastliness but to choose to acknowledge the essential humanity of the perpetrator and to give that perpetrator the possibility of making a new beginning.  It is an act of much hope and not despair.  It is to hope in the essential goodness of people and to have faith in their potential to change.  It is to bet on that possibility.
Forgiveness is not opposed to justice, especially if it is not punitive justice but restorative justice, justice that does not seek primarily to punish the perpetrator, to hit out, but looks to heal a breach, to restore a social equilibrium that the atrocity or misdeed has disturbed."

Johanna Lunn Montgomery
Wild  East Productions
5174 Bishop Street
Halifax, Nova Scotia
B3J 1C9  Canada
Tel: 902.221.2634

It's an interesting inquiry... When did you forgive the unforgiveable? Is anything really unforgiveable? Is forgiveness always in our own best interests?

Get in touch with Johanna if you're so inclined. I might come back and blog a bit on forgiveness tomorrow. As for now, I'm going to bed.

Stuff that Comes Up when Sitting

The past couple of times I've done sitting practice, I've had strange physical reactions that I've never had before.

At the temple last week, I kept getting these spasms in my lower back. This morning, when I got close to the 20-minute mark, I felt like I was hyperventilating. My mental reaction in both cases was to adjust... shift my back a little... slow my breathing a little... DO something about it.

I'm smiling as I write this because the last Dharma talk I heard mentioned something about not giving in to the need to itch because there's always another one that follows... once you scratch that itch, within minutes another comes in its place.

I guess my urge to "do something about it" was because these sensations were sp foreign to me. Normally, I sit without any discomfort in my back. Normally, my breathing is steady. My legs fall asleep. My feet fall asleep. My mind wanders at times. Those are the things I am used to. Is it strange that this "other stuff" brought up a sense of panic... an urge to stop?

That's why I wanted to review the six points of posture in today's Daily Dharma entry. I have a hard time remembering them... Legs I remember because mine always fall asleep. Hands... sitting zazen we hold our hands in the dhyani mudra... Eyes I remember. I get fuzzy on the other ones.

I don't ever expect to be completely comfortable when sitting... maybe remembering these points will resolve some of the recent strangeness. Maybe not.

Daily Dharma

The Six Points of Posture

Sitting meditation begins with good posture. Awareness of the six points of posture is a way to be really relaxed and settled in the body. Here are the instructions:

1. Seat: Whether you're sitting on a cushion on th floor or in a chair, the seat should be flat, not tilting to the right or left, or to the back or front.
2. Legs: The legs are crossed comfortably in front of you--or, if you're sitting in a chair, the feet are flat on the floor, with the knees a few inches apart.
3. Torso: The torso (from the head to the seat) is upright, with a strong back and an open front. If sitting in a chair, it's best not to lean back. If you start to slouch, simply sit upright again.
4. Hands: The hands are open, with palms down, resting on the thighs.
5. Eyes: The eyes are open, indicating the attitude of remaining awake and relaxed wiht all that occurs. The eye gaze is slightly downward and directed about four to six feet in front of you.
6. Mouth: The mouth is very slightly open so that the jaw is relaxed and air can move easily through both the mouth and nose. The tip of the tongue can be placed on the roof of the mouth.

Each time you sit down to meditate, check your posture by running through these six points. Anytime you feel distracted, bring your attention back to your body and these six points of posture.

[...from Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Teachings by Pema Chödrön, pg. 15]

Four Points of Reflection

Time spent in idle chit chat

Today was a quiet day... no e-mail banter, no personal calls... Just the necessary conversation to get through the work day.

Particular resistance(s) to my practice

Yesterday, it was fatigue. I couldn't get out of bed to do this practice. Today, everything clicked. I woke up early and wasn't tired. I did all 108 prostrations. I sat. The practice was good today.

What troubled me most today

This was the rare day when nothing really bothered me at all.

What made me happy today

The fact that I woke up this morning and did my practice made my day.

Intensive Practice Begins Again

Last year, I started an online journal to sort of chart this journey that is my practice. Back in September of last year, I started to use my website as my Intensive Practice journal. Eventually, it became too difficult and time consuming to journal in hand-coded HTML, and that's how I arrived here.

Intensive Practice is a program at Still Point that is designed to support practitioners who want to engage in daily practice. I've written before about how I think moving towards daily practice is a process. I've been excited about today all week because I wanted to attend the Intensive Practice orientation for motivation... I thought I needed a boost to get back on the cushion. The time I spend sitting outside of temple has been at an all-time low this past month, so I thought I needed all the encouragement I could get.

Well, I didn't make it to the temple today. There wasn't even any really good reason why I didn't go.

So, I didn't get the adrenaline pumping about my practice. I didn't hear any encouraging words (if any were said at the meeting) because I wasn't there. What I'm left with is just a simple choice...

Either I'm going to do Intensive Practice or I'm not.

Moving from an occasional practitioner to a daily practitioner IS a process, but not because we need to figure out how to simplify our lives enough to make space for the practice. The process is moving from thinking about it and wanting to do it to actually doing it. Whether you are sort of half-heartedly doing it or "actually doing it" probably just depends on two things: choice and conviction.

So tomorrow, I start Intensive Practice again... Not because Still Point says it's September and this is when we start Intensive Practice, but because I really want to do it... and I really need to do it for myself.

Pardon the Dust, Again

I'm going back to a two-column layout. I just think the page is too crowded and too hard to read being three columns AND fixed width. To do this, I've got to edit a bunch of code... I'll be republishing the site frequently until I'm done. Please be patient... this might get messy. Sorry for the inconvenience. I hope the end result is worth it!

Rage, Rage Against the Rising of the SHAM

I don't know anything about punk rock and I don't particularly like monster movies... but for some reason I kept looking at this book in the Still Point Bookstore called Hardcore Zen. The subtitle, Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality, was the source of my hesitance. I wondered if I was going to be able to relate to anything Brad Warner had to say.

I'm about halfway through the book and I have to say... this is one of the best books on Zen I've read thus far. Early in the text, here's what Brad says about questioning authority:

No matter what authority you submit to—your teacher, your government, even Jesus H. Christ or Gautama Buddha himself—that authority is wrong. It's wrong because the very concept of authority is already a mistake. Deferring to authority is nothing more than a cowardly shirking of personal responsibility. The more power you grant an authority figure the worse you can behave in his name. That's why people who take God as their ultimate authority are always capable of the worst humanity has to offer. Zen does not accept anything even resembling that kind of God.

If you aim to tear down authority, doing so honestly means doing so completely. Really tearing down authority means more than just opposing the big government and big business. You need to tear down the very roots of authority. This can never be done through violence of any kind—not ever—because the ultimate authority is your own belief in the very concept of authority. Revolt against that first. You need the courage to take responsibility for your own life and your own actions.

I've been thinking a lot about Warner's comments on anarchy, authority, and and society. I've also been thinking about a book review in the current issue of Shambhala Sun about a book called SHAM:  How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless.

A few years ago, self-help books dominated my shelves... owning at least 33% of my shelf real estate. I've also written in past entries about how drawn I can be to infomercials... especially the ones about improving your skin and obliterating your fat cells. Today, the self-help books are still in the boxes I packed them in last time I moved, and I can safely say I've spent my last dollar on the latest, greatest workout craze. I've started to incorporate exercise into my routine again, and I do use some workout DVDs. I've just learned that my desire to move, to exercise, is not what draws me to the infomercials... it's that small sadistic voice inside that says, "There's something wrong with you and this will fix it."

Patton Dodd, author of the SHAM book review , begins his review by introducing us to (or reminding us of) Walker Percy's book. Steve says:

The book's title, Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book, registered both Percy's dismay at the cultural condition and his hope that the movement would soon self-destruct.

Millions of diet books, thousands of relationship seminars, and one Dr. Phil later, it's clear that Percy's hope was in vain. The self help and actualization movement (the acronym for which, uncannily, is SHAM) is still with us, and with us in force.

I've been asking myself a question in the midst of all of this reading and reflection. Is it really wrong to want to be a better person? On the surface, there seems to be some nobility in it. As I think about it today, though, I think it is egocentric and I think SHAM feeds the ego's need to respond, respond, respond to dukkha—the sense that things are just unsatisfactory, that things would be better if we could just _____ or if we only had _____ or if someone else would just _____ or if we weren't so _____. (I could go on for days with this but I won't. You get the point.)

SHAM tells us that the insidious voice of dukkha is right about it, then tries to give us the tools to address everything that voice is right about... relationships, parenting, life at work, emotion management, our bodies, even our minds... SHAM tells us if we only had the right affirmation, if only we understood this particular rule or shared this certain outlook or followed the right seven point plan, our lives would be better.

I came to Buddhism like I came to most other things in my life... I thought that it would fix me. I thought Buddhism was about learning to be calm in the midst of chaos. I thought being Buddhist was about being good. The more I practice, the more I start to see that good and bad are irrelevant. Buddhism is about being real... about getting right with reality instead of running away from it. Getting right with reality begins with seeing and accepting it. We will never get right with reality if we are constantly trying to change it.

 

Katrina's Lesson of Impermanence

I've stepped away from blogging for the past few weeks for a lot of reasons...

I've been completely taken aback by the devastation in the gulf coast region. I've found myself glued to CNN, MSNBC, and other news sources looking for a glimpse of the landscape that consumed my summer months for most of my life.

My grandmother lives in a small town on the gulf coast of Mississippi called Bay St. Louis. We would drive down every year during summer vacation and stay in her house. We would pack the car until it was overflowing with luggage, pillows, blankets, travel games, books, snacks and anything else that would keep us occupied. After leaving Michigan, we would drive for two days... stopping in Kentucky or Tennessee for an overnight stay at a Hampton Inn or a Howard Johnson's or whatever else was convenient when my father got tired of driving. We knew we had arrived when we saw Highway 90. Somehow the sense of restlessness and cabin fever that built up from hours on end in a car would start to dissipate when the car found that small stretch of road that ran parallel to the beach telling us we were almost there.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the area, Highway 90 sits right next to the sand and takes you from Biloxi through Gulfport and Long Beach to a bridge (that no longer exists) that crossed the bay to Bay St. Louis. Along that stretch of highway you could see restaurants, shopping malls and strip malls, souvenir shops, piers and docks, fishing boats and leisure boats, huge plantation-style mansions mixed in with modern homes, houses on stilts (which I still don't understand) and more recently the casino boats. Having passed these landmarks annually for eighteen years, certain things were burned in my memory. From what I can tell watching the television screen, most of them are gone. The only thing I've been able to discern is a boat that washed ashore during Hurricane Camille that was converted into a souvenir shop. Everything else, even the highway itself, appears to be in varying states of disrepair.

Miraculously, my grandmother's house is still standing with all of the windows intact. She lives less than a mile away from the beach in Bay St. Louis, but her neighbor reports that the garage door was the only thing Katrina took from her. We can all live with that. I was extremely relieved to know that she was safe, staying with a couple of my aunts in Jackson, watching Katrina on television like the rest of us until their power went out. Reports on members of our extended family have trickled in. Cousins, second cousins, and other "numbered" or "great" relatives in the region are all alive and well.

It has been difficult to watch it all unfold... the storm, the aftermath, the hospital slayings dubbed mercy killings, the flooding, the filth, the starvation, the devastation, the agonizingly slow response. While most of us sit and watch from the comfort of our homes where we can still shower, prepare meals, store food, wash clothes, and enjoy our accumulated positions, it seems that the common responses include anger, sadness, compassion, charitable giving, and heaping spoonfulls of blame.

Blame Bush. Blame FEMA. Blame state and local governments if you must. If you are inclined towards blame, there is always a lot of it to go around. I don't really want to go there right now... plenty of other blogs are covering those angles if you need to read them. What I do know is that this storm is one of the great tragedies of the century. Ninety-five years from now when some reporter or historian reflects on the significant events of the past 100 years, Katrina will be remembered.

When I look at what Katrina did to the gulf coast region, I don't think about blame as much as I think about impermanence. My hope is that it becomes a great lesson in impermanence for all of us. Those who have lost everything cannot choose to learn this lesson. They are living it. As for the rest of us? Let us be mindful:

The woman who gathers the flowers of desire,
whose mind clings to pleasures,
is carried off by death in the same way
that a sleeping village
is swept away by a great flood.

[...from Chapter 4 FLOWERS in The Still Point Dhammapada, pg. 23]

It shouldn't require a storm... but since we have one so readily available let's use it. Let's use it to look at all the things we cling to, all of the things we desire... and let's see those things as hurricanes that are not seasonal. Be they category two, four, or five... these things that we cling to ravage and destroy us as efficiently as Katrina took out the gulf coast.

You can just look
at a beautiful person
who has died
now a heap of bones
and see that nothing lasts.
Nothing.

[...from Chapter 11 OLD AGE in The Still Point Dhammapada, p. 73]

So whatever it is you think you require for your existence... a high speed internet connection, cable television, a hot shower... realize that it can be taken from you. It could've been you sitting in a stadium turned cesspool without plumbing, food, water, soap, tampons or medical care. Would you sit in anger and lament about the tragedy that has befallen you or could you be grateful for that next breath? Could you take it all on (with smiles or laughter) as a great lesson in impermanence? I don't know if I could meet the situation with that level of calm, humor or stillness... but I think that is the sign of a great master, a great bodhisattva warrior, the stuff of kong'ans and other zen legends... I think that's what we strive for when we do this practice... the ability to meet life as it comes, to accept the cards we are dealt, and be skilled in letting go.