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Archive for category Momentary Buddhahood

Harsh Speech and Worthless Chatter

Aug 11

Posted by SarahJ in Benefitting Others, Mindful speech, Mindfulness, Momentary Buddhahood, Uncategorized | 16 Comments

The last two of the four verbal acts to be avoided, as described in Words of My Perfect Teacher by Patrul Rinpoche, are harsh speech and worthless chatter. The meaning behind these two is fairly self-evident. Harsh speech is disrespectful and insulting to others, such as pointing out another flaws – physical or otherwise. Worthless chatter is distracting to others and may include gossip or speaking without a purpose. As we have seen in the previous actions to be abandoned, performing these actions to the detriment of a spiritual teacher or the Sangha is the most serious transgression.

Many times we feel a powerful need to express our feelings or opinions about one thing or another. We could have an uncomfortable amount of activity in the mind and think that if we could just share it with someone else, we would feel better. And yet we have all been on the receiving end of these verbal eruptions, with the accompanying distress and energy depletion which can be passed on. Many times when we feel the need to vent, it may be better to say nothing at all. Rather take the time to consider not only your own motivation, but also the potential impact on the other person.

In his book Momentary Buddhahood, Rinpoche quotes a Tibetan proverb which says “Speech is like a lamb’s fleece, while the mind is like a vat of poison.” Rinpoche is pointing out an alternative extreme we can easily fall into. We can become so focused on outer conduct (such as our speech) that we overlook our inner conduct. If our outer conduct creates the appearance of a kind, diligent, compassionate individual, but our inner conduct is actually is one of strong anger, desire or ignorance we are being inauthentic. We should strive to keep our inner and outer conduct congruent and purposeful through mindfulness and self-examination.

We are all connected and our words are powerful. An entire Sangha’s accumulation of merit can be diminished by one individual’s distracting, aimless or caustic talk. Can you think of an instance in your own life where you became acutely aware of the power of your own words? What examples are there of the negative or positive influence of one individual’s words upon many other people?

In the Dharma,
Sarah

Dedication

Apr 5

Posted by AnyenRinpoche in Anyen Rinpoche Biography, Benefitting Others, Bodhichitta, Mindfulness, Momentary Buddhahood, Personal Transformation, Uncategorized | 15 Comments

Dedication has its own meaning in the context of the Dharma, but it is nicely complimented by a second more colloquial meaning of dedication in the English language.  For practitioners, dedication refers to dedication of merit…in other words, dedicating any good we accomplish or any virtuous activity or motivation, to the benefit of others.  In the English language, dedication has a religious meaning (that of setting something aside for a sacred purpose), but it also has a second meaning of “committing onself to a particular thought or action.”   This is a lovely addition to our normal use of the word, it reminds us of the commitment it takes to develop spiritually and, especially, to walk the bodhisattva path.

I’m reminded of the act of dedicating because we finished another year of shedra teachings yesterday.  Our marvelous sangha has nearly completed a fairly detailed study of Ju Mipham’s Beacon of Certainty.  For those not familiar with this text, Anyen Rinpoche describes it as “the bridge between the sutra and tantra, which makes the view of Atiyoga Dzogchen accessible and meaningful.”  At the end of yesterday’s talk, Rinpoche reminded us to dedicate any merit we had attained through our practice and study this year to for the benefit of all beings.  Although most of us normally do this after each session of practice, how wonderful it is to do this together as a group and focus our energy outward on others, when we are normally focusing so hard on inner development.

Wisdom Publications has published one commentary on Beacon of Certainty that you may like to review.  The extremely lucid commentary we have been studying (favored by most Tibetan scholars) was written by the great master Khenpo Kunpal and has not yet been published widely in English.

http://www.wisdompubs.org/pages/display.lasso?-KeyValue=103&-Token.Action=&image=1

How do we remember to practice dedication in our daily lives?  Rinpoche and all the great masters tell us that this is something we should do when we complete each session of practice (it is generally said that we follow three principles: starting with the generation of Bodhichitta, reflecting on impermanence, emptiness or the perfectly pure view in the middle, and dedicating the merit to seal the practice at the end).   But shouldn’t dedication also be an engaged action as well?  Of course it should be, but isn’t it one of the aspects of Dharma that is easily neglected?  I’d love to hear your thoughts about dedication…

In Momentary Buddhahood, Anyen Rinpoche spent over a hundred pages discussing how we can use mindfulness to bring any virtuous action to the level of engaged manifestation, and how this same mindfulness would lead us to direct experience of and realization of the Dharmakaya through moments of the experience of Buddhahood (hence the title Momentary Buddhahood).   So I guess the real question is, how do we train in mindfulness so that we remember to dedicate all that we do for the benefit of sentient beings?

(here’s a link to Momentary Buddhahood…)

http://www.wisdompubs.org/pages/display.lasso?-KeyValue=33086&-Token.Action=&image=1

When we do remember to dedicate the merit, it causes us to experience joy and meaning in our conventional lives, such that we almost forget we were aspiring to give away what we “have” to others…

Allison

www.anyenrinpoche.com

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Imperfection

Mar 22

Posted by AnyenRinpoche in Anyen Rinpoche Biography, Benefitting Others, Bodhichitta, Mindfulness, Momentary Buddhahood, Personal Transformation, Teachings | 13 Comments

Have you noticed your imperfections yet today?

Perfectly imperfect!

Perfectly imperfect!

Anyen Rinpoche often tells his students that if we are not noticing our imperfections, then we lack mindfulness, introspection, and insight into our all-so-human personalities and behavior.  Noticing our imperfections is not easy though–it takes patience to see our flaws and learn from our mistakes.   This is obviously, like everything else in our samsaric wilderness, a painful experience.

Some students first experience with meditation is the sense that their minds have become even wilder as a result of practicing meditation.  This perception, Rinpoche tells us, is the result of increased mindfulness and introspection, which cause us to see ourselves more objectively–or less like we are used to seeing ourselves.  The same phenomena occurs with respect to seeing our imperfections.  The more mindful we become, the more we notice our flaws, our habits, those same things we do over and over again without noticing.

Spirituality is truly a humbling experience.  The more we practice, the more we realize how far we have to go.  In fact, Anyen Rinpoche and other great masters tell us that too much confidence can actually be arrogance in disguise, and be a sign that we’ve taken a turn downhill.  This is always a difficult thing to discern.  Looking outward through the very small window of afflicted, conceptual mind, how do we know when we have crossed the line from self-assurance to arrogance?  How do we know when we are falling in love with our imperfections rather than working with them?

Obviously, I lack the answers to these questions.  My way is all about trial and error, and (of course) feedback from the Lama.  Those of you who are close to a Lama know that Lamas are quite skilled at discerning authenticity from arrogance–usually much sooner than we do.  There must be some infrared beam (unseen by us) that we emit…

What to do with imperfection?  Some would suggest that we celebrate it, as an aspect of humanity.  I’m not really a fan of this school of thought–why celebrate something that harms ourselves and others?  Some of us deny it.  That definitely won’t work–that’s what got us enmired in all this suffering in the first place.

Notice it?  Mindfulness is usually a surefire tool to rely upon it.  Get tired of it?  Getting tired of a harmful behavior is a crucial step towards moving past it.  Regret it?  Regret is a pure form of guilt.  Whereas with guilt we just feel bad, with regret we aspire to transform oursevlves and make a strong determination to change.   Do something new?  Yes, that usually helps, though it feels a bit crazy at first.  Do anything new?  Probably not–we might be wise to actually reflect on a better course of behavior and try it out than just to do something random.

Compassion anyone?

www.anyenrinpoche.com

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Enlightened Speech

Jan 14

Posted by AnyenRinpoche in Bodhichitta, Mindful speech, Mindfulness, Momentary Buddhahood, Personal Transformation | 13 Comments

No matter what activity we take up, the first thing to do is reflect on and examine our motivation.  If it is not the virtuous motivation of bodhichitta, then we should work to release whatever afflictive emotion has caught our mind.  This could be done by reflecting on the impermanence of the situation, or on the dissatisfactory nature of samsara, which is always full of suffering, as well as any other method we have been taught by our Spiritual Friend.  As long as we do that, we have at least laid the foundation for pure activity.  This is how we actually bring bodhichitta into our actions.

Say we are out in the world and something is bothering us.  We feel like saying something about it.  If we are not sure of our motivation for speaking, it might often be a better choice to say nothing at all.  It might be better to be quiet and reflect on why we are going to say a particular thing, on what our subtle motivations are, and whether we are acting from grasping, aversion or selfishness.  Alternately, we could try to clarify our motivation for speaking so that we can do our best to make sure that our words will have a harmonious effect or truly be in the best interest of others.  Sometimes we speak because we just want to “get something off of our chest” without any thought for how the person we are addressing might perceive what we have to say.  Sometimes we just want to make ourselves feel better, and we do not think about whether there is someone else with whom it will be better to share particular thoughts and feelings.  We should balance our own needs with those of others, and we should not be selfish in our need to express ourselves.

bookcover-momentarybuddhahood-sm

–Momentary Buddhahood, by Anyen Rinpoche

http://www.wisdompubs.org/Pages/display.lasso?-KeyValue=33086&-Token.Action=Search&image=1

Reflect on this: The Buddhist style of speech sometimes contradicts with our Western ideas of self-expression.  How do you balance the need to express with the proper motivation for speech?

We’d love to hear about your experiences!

Allison

http://www.anyenrinpoche.com

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