Thinking About It...

I think I know I will apply for the Dharma Student program at Still Point at some point. I'm thinking that after six months of consistent Intensive Practice I will be ready for the challenge. Maybe I'm just thinking too much or trying to come up with a strategy when there is none... Maybe there's only just doing it.

A couple of days ago I was surfing for information on our temple's lineage so I could answer a penpal's question. During the browsing session I reviewed some information about the Maitreya Buddhist Seminary. I was particularly moved by the Everyday Admonition for Dharma Students:

1. Please perform your formal morning practice faithfully Monday through Friday. Your morning practice is the place of your awakening that you are the living embodiment of the Buddha through your response to the Buddha Shakyamuni and spiritual communion with His tradition of wisdom and compassion. Always begin your day cheerfully with your morning practice and examine yourself before you retire and give thanks to all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas of the day. (Yebul)
2. Follow your weekly Dharma schedule, be fully accountable for your duties and do your utmost. (Sense of Duty)
3. Enlightenment and truth are always before your eyes and within your reach. Enlightenment is the pure and sincere heart of practice itself, and the truth is the spirit of practice that all sentient beings are Buddha. Accordingly, there is no enlightenment or truth apart from the common ordinary person and the everyday task. You should know that it is delusion to run around looking for truth and enlightenment, and to seek or anticipate them from the outside. Let go of your delusion. The mind of the Dharma student should be one of fortitude with the faith and power of the Bodhisattva Vow and free from fear, angst and worries.  So keep your mind in alignment everyday. (Life of No Delusion)
4. Repent, seek forgiveness and restore yourself right away if you caused trouble to others, committed wrongdoings or made blunders through carelessness and inattention.  Keep your mind free from guilt and remorse through sincere repentance and avoid retribution such as hatred and enmity. Constant repentance is constant awakening.  (Repentance)
5. The body-and-mind of the Dharma student should be poor and pure. Care for goods and  articles. They are the properties of the Three Jewels. Use them clean and sparingly so that they last.  Recycle them when they are no longer useful. Clean utensils and implements after use and put them where they belong. Try to manage with less or loss, if possible, but be generous and helpful to others as much as possible. (Hidden Virtue)
6. Always keep your dwelling and environment clean and tidy.  To take good care of your dwelling place and temple environment is to take good care of the body-and-mind of your Dharma student training.  To take good care of the body-and-mind of your Dharma student training (purity of heart) is to transform this world into the land of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.  Cleaning and keeping our environment free from pollution is the Pure Land movement. Be on your guard and diligent. (Environmental Movement)
7. It is conduct unbecoming to a Dharma student to pick on others and blame them in order to build a self-defense or reinforce one's position.  It is the downfall of a Dharma student to become jealous of the other people's prosperity and gloat over others' misfortunes. If such a feeling or thought arises you should perform prostrations right away and surrender your weakness, and renew your Bodhisattva vows and pray for the happiness of all beings. (Renewal and Kido)
8. All Dharma students should be happy and energetic Buddhists ready to lend a helping hand.  (Three Stars)

Granted, you don't have to be a Dharma student to do any of this. Or maybe a different way of saying it is that lay practitioners are dharma students in a manner of speaking. So much of this is good medicine for me right now. I could say more... maybe I will over the next week or so. For now I just wanted to share this in the hope that it would be a source of inspiration/food for thought for you online Buddhas and Bodhitsattvas.

Minor Site Update

I've been meaning to do this since I posted them initially... I added links for the Golden Wind Zen Group's chants to the Korean Zen page of this site. To share these mp3s with friends, please point them here:

http://zenundertheskin.typepad.com/zenreflections/koreanzen.html

On Being A Buddhist Parent at Christmas

This time last year, I was chided by a girlfriend for not having a Christmas tree. She looked at my daughter and said, "Poor baby... you are so deprived."

This afternoon, one of the members of my parents church called and asked if my daughter could be in the Christmas program. Maybe she hasn't noticed the fact that we haven't attended there in over two years. Maybe my mother put her up to it because she hates not seeing her granddaughter on stage in a cute red or green dress reciting the lines of a Christmas speech. I've had numerous discussions with my parents about how I'm doing a disservice to my daughter by taking her to a Zen temple every week.

"All they do is play," my father shakes his head. "At our church she would be given opportunities to do things... to join in the service... to stand in front of people and speak... to sing in the choir. These are important skills for young people to learn." (Nevermind the fact that my daughter is wrapping up her participation in the school play this week, which I would say is comparable).

My parents know that we practice Buddhism. They know that we've been going to Still Point for a couple of years. They know that we are members there. But the attempts to make me feel guilty somehow, to make me feel like a "bad parent" because I choose to be Buddhist don't stop. Perhaps they never will.

I get tired of the distance I see between the "true meaning of Christmas" and the commercial message of Santa Claus. You've been good this year? Let me reward you with a bunch of toys you won't play with once the afterglow wears off. You've been bad this year? No GameBoy for you.

My daughter made a Christmas list this year. We talked about it. I told her how I felt about it.

"We've got to stop feeling like we have to have more and more things to make us happy. You have a room full of past Christmas gifts that you don't play with, things that you will never use. This year I want to use the holidays... the time we have off from school and work to get rid of things. Think about who could use the stuff you don't play with anymore... Like the time you were in the hospital and they had all those toys and books for you. Maybe you could give some things to the hospital. I'm not going to pull the plug on Christmas completely, but don't expect to hit the toy lottery on the 25th."

I wonder if I'm sending a mixed message by exchanging gifts at all. It is impossible to be in my family without Christmas, though.

I'd like to hear from other parents (really anyone who has an opinion or a thought to share). Am I the only one who goes through this with my family? How do you deal with being Buddhist at Christmas wit your children? Do you have a tree? Do you have Christmas decorations? Do you exchange gifts? I've heard that some communities celebrate Bodhi day in a manner somewhat similar to Christmas... that gifts are exchanged. Is this true for your community?

It Could Be Worse...

I think there is a continuum of grateful, thankful thinking... Maybe the continuum moves from "It could be worse..." to "I have only thanks... no complaints." Tonight I want to start with "It could be worse..." I think if I can think of at least five reasons why it could be worse, I will be more grateful for what is... for what I have right now. Anyone who wants to is invited to join in. Be serious. Be silly. Be outrageous. Be funny. Be sarcastic (I have a special love for sarcasm). Let's blog our way to gratitude. I'll begin.

1. It is very cold. It is snowing outside. I don't like winter but It could be worse. I could be sitting outside in the snow instead of sitting here in my warm apartment.
2. Certain things about a certain coworker really irk me but it could be worse. I could be spending my mornings in the unemployment office, cruising the want ads and struggling to make ends meet.
3. My parents have been irritating me lately. Sometimes I wish they would support me more and criticize me less but it could be worse. My father's parents are no longer alive and I'd be willing to bet he would be happy to be irritated by one of them just once.
4. I have no idea what the writers of Alias are thinking this season but it could be worse. I could be living without Lost.
5. I have the worst headache right now but it could be worse. The fact that I can feel anything means my body is functioning. That's a good thing even if I don't like how it is functioning.

Your turn. Whatever is going on in your world... think about it. Couldn't it be worse?

Stop Whining

I've been getting in touch with the fact that I'm holding on to upsets. I'm upset because I choose to be. I don't let go of my upsets because I don't want to. This practice... holding on... directly clashes with what Intensive Practice requires of me... a thing called Gratitude practice.

Gratitude practice is simple on the surface. All you have to do is lie in bed and think about what you are grateful for as you fall asleep. Sounds really easy, doesn't it? It's only easy if one condition is true... if you are not holding on to anger, hatred, or upset. It can be easier to follow the upset, easier to fuel the hatred, and easier to stoke the anger than it is to sit for five minutes and think about everything you have to be thankful for.

My message to myself lately has been "Gosh, Chalip... Stop whining." It's not sexy. It's not even cute. I'm getting to the point where I can see my whining mind and just notice it... being present to the fact that I am having an internal tantrum. Then I remind myself there is another way... a way that champions loving-kindness and compassion. I can't say that I gush with pink, happy energy at that point. I can't say that I become a perfect poster child for love and peace. But I notice that I'm whining less today than I was a week ago. I notice that I notice when that switch flips in my head that wants to autoplay my complaints. I notice that my complaints and upsets are on autoplay and autoreverse... it's the same stuff over and over again.

I admit it... on days when I've had a good day for my practice... when I've done everything else on the list... I often forget to do Gratitutde practice. I fall into bed and I just forget about it. In order to stop whining and start touching gratitude, I need to get active.

Golden Wind Zen Group

The wonderful people over at i-Sangha have allowed me to share these Korean Zen chants. They can be distributed freely. The abbot reports that the group plans to provide even better recordings in the future which will be available for purchase on CD.

Transliterated text for these chants can be found in the Kwan Um School of Zen Chanting Book and Temple Rules. A nice spiral bound copy of the Kwan Um chanting book can also be purchased online from Dharma Crafts.

Please take note of the file sizes... High speed connection (or great patience) highly recommended.

• Download Morning Bell Chant (19315.2K) (mp3)
• Download The Great Dharani (4263.8K) (mp3)
• Download Heart Sutra in English (5068.9K) (mp3)
• Download Heart Sutra in Korean (3235.1K) (mp3)
• Download Homage to the Three Buddhas (Ye Bul) (8530.6K) (mp3)
• Download Kwan Seum Bosal Chanting (7831.1K) (mp3)
• Download Thousand Hands and Eyes (9246.2K) (mp3)
• Download Evening Bell Chant (2225.0K) (mp3)

I am so grateful to the Golden Wind Zen Group for these recordings.  I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Starting Over

For the third time in two years I've completely overhauled my computer. I reformatted the drive, reinstalled Windows, and will spend my evenings over the next week reinstalling my software. Why? Not because it's fun... simply because if nothing else in my life drives it home, my computer exists to teach me the nature of impermanence.

You would think that after all the bad luck I've had, I would've invested in a good external hard drive... you know, the speedy USB 2.0 or Firewire ones that have hundreds of gigs of space just waiting to receive all of my digital photos, mp3s, and documents. I did pick up an external storage toy on Friday, but ironically my Windows installation was so corrupt I couldn't get the damned thing to plug and play properly.

No big loss.

Around two years ago my hard drive failed... completely died to the point where it wouldn't even spin anymore... technicians told me I would have to send it off to a clean room and have the hard drive doctors open it up to see what (if anything) could be salvaged from it. I lost probably six years of work. I was just about to finish my degree, so there went the past four years of my academic life, my web development projects,  documentation for a youth program I mentored, resumes, cover letters, correpsondence, e-mails, pictures of my daughter... everything gone. They wanted to charge me somewhere between $200 and $1,000 to retrieve any portion of 80 gigs of data. I decided it wasn't that important.

After that experience, I started to look at my habit of accrual. I kept everything... I probably had every non-spam e-mail I received since 1997 stored on that machine. Why? What was I saving it all for?

Since then, my habits have changed. So this time when I realized I would have to reformat because the repair tool for XP decided to do everything but its job, it didn't impact me that much. The most critical stuff I had is stored on CD. As for the rest? I just begin again.

It's actually quite nice... I have a clean machine and a speedy profile now... the computer boots up in less than a minute which hasn't happened in a very long time. Rather than worry about losing web design work, Flash files and graphics I did two years ago, I have a clean slate to work on... ready to hold whatever new, fresh ideas might spill forth.

Answering my own question, I was so devastated the first time around because I associated those bits and bytes of data with myself... those files were mine... my work product... my thoughts committed to hard drive space... But none of that stuff was really a representation of who I am, whatever this I-ness is... If anything it was a representation of who I was at some given snapshot in time.

So, I can't even be mad. I'm just starting over. It's good for me. If impermanence in this digital world becomes too intolerable, maybe I'll just switch back to Mac.

Daily Dharma

If you do not wait until the end for the knowledge that you will die to sink in, and you realistically assess your situation now, you will not be overwhelmed by superficial, temporary purposes. You will not neglect what matters in the long run. It is better to decide from the very beginning that you will die and investigate what is worthwhile. If you keep in mind how quickly life disappears, you will value your time and do what is valuable.

Everyone tries to remove superficial pain, but there is another class of techniques concerned with removing suffering on a deeper level—aiming at a minimum to diminish suffering in future lives and, beyond that, even to remove all forms of suffering for oneself as well as for all beings. Spiritual practice is of this deeper type.

[...from Advice on Dying and Living a Beter Life by His Holiness the Dalai Lama pg. 51-52]

Lest We Forget

It seems like a lifetime ago, but I was robbed and sexually assaulted by a man who had AIDS. He was drugged out and broke, needing a fix. He was a stranger to me. But when I later saw him on the street and called the police, when I completed the visual and the voice line up, when I met with the attorney and the detective and told them my story for the 100th time, they told me he had AIDS.

AIDS became very real for me that day. It hit home in ways that it hadn't quite hit me before. And in certain ways, I've never been the same. I knew how lucky I was to walk away from an experience like that HIV negative. I also knew that people all around me were dying. People were losing loved ones. It broke my heart. It still does.

Today I was moved by these blog entries by Terrence and J, and I thought about someone I loved who lost his mother, and someone else I loved who lost his father. I thought about the alarming rates at which people in the Black community continue to contract the disease, and I thought about the terrifying months I spent waiting for the results of my HIV test.

AIDS is real people. Be mindful.

Friendly Dragon made some valid points in response to my last post:

We tend to 'demonize' disease want to 'cure' aids, cancer - whatever by 'doing battle' with them. Is it not a vain aspiration to believe we can fix samsara? Old age, sickness and death are natural phenomena. The cause of death is birth. We all die.

Her words reminded me of Buddha's words quoted in the Dalai Lama's book Advice on Dying:

A place to stay untouched by death
Does not exist.
It does not exist in space, it does not exist in
   the ocean,
Nor if you stay in the middle of a mountain.

[... from pg. 40]

These are truths we cannot avoid even if we try. Suffering and Impermanence surround us. And while Buddha taught us these things, he never suggested that we should throw our hands in the air when we cross paths with people who are sick or suffering. Buddha taught by example that we should care for the sick and dying... that we should do whatever we can to help them. Buddhists understand that they will grow old and die, but they don't deny themselves medicine or medical treatment to speed along the process.

That some people right now, every day, choose to apply Right Action and Right Effort towards a cure for AIDS is not vanity. It is service. It is compassion. One medicine won't cure all of the ills in the world, but if it could help alleviate some suffering where is the wrong in that? If wanting a cure for AIDS is greedy and grasping, maybe I'm just greedy and grasping. I want to see a cure for AIDS in my lifetime. And I am not alone.