More fun than a Temple full of Monkeys.

(Shocked Monkey can't believe this post.)

I attended a "mini-retreat" on Friday night. This is a small get away, three hours of meditation (with little breaks) from 7-10 at night. It is also more traditional then we do as regular service, we face the wall and don't talk during the breaks. I had a great time all the way through. The first meditation period I was getting a little sleepy, but was wide awake after that first one.

Part of what was good, is I am still focusing my time on the thoughts I had the previous weekend (see the pineapple post). This also was the fodder of a good conversation on that idea with Cindy, a professor of psychology and student in my Iai class. It is very interesting to me how close science, psychology and Buddhist philosophy come on these issues...I may have to ask her if I can post that conversation to some degree on here someday...

It is always a good idea to pull yourself away from your daily grind and focus on controlling your crazy-ass mind.

Today in service a new family came to visit for the first time, with a six year old. This was prompted by a religion class (we have a lot who come to the temple because of that reason), but they determined that they were interested in general and wanted to come. We don't have a kids group anymore (we are working on it) and I was at first stammering a bit when they showed up because I had a feeling this would be hard for a six year old...

So they went through the beginning of the service, with the cha nting and that all seemed fine, then the meditation period started (30 minutes). Now, its hard for a lot of adults to sit still for 30 minutes. For a six year old, that is nearly impossible. So almost instantly, probably three minutes in and the poor kid is already bored out of his mind and started to sigh heavily, within 10 minutes he was asking his mom in a loud whisper "how long do we have to do this" and just five minutes later, "I'm tired of sitting here".

So this type of thing used to really bother me. My thoughts on this is usually how people don't discipline their children anymore. They want everyone to treat them like special snowflakes no matter what, and let them get away with murder. Its "new parenting" gone haywire...

However, what I was really thinking this time was to not laugh out loud. This little kid was probably mirroring the same thing that was going through all of our heads - he was the reflection our our wondering minds in meditation. Our minds, no matter how old, act like a bored six year old during meditation. They call this the "monkey mind" at times, but its the same thing (you can see a lot of similarity between a six year old boy and a monkey, actually). Its hard to keep focused on the task at hand, keeping the mind still. Much like a six year old sitting on a mat (or fidgeting mostly) our minds are constantly trying to get our attention and distract us. That is why we practice. That may not excuse parents for not teaching children how to behave, but it does say a lot about adults. If we can't focus for five seconds as adults, how can we teach our children how to focus? By the way, we are the examples for them if we forgot that.

(Thoughtful Monkey Agrees with the paragraph above)

So, overall it worked out just fine. I hope we in time do get a children's group together. I think it is important to teach these values and techniques when kids are young. Not many people think to do that...

Pineapple Origination

So, I had an interesting thing happen today during the meditation period at our Sunday service. I was starting to drift away a little bit and a random thought came into my head, as they do. It went something like: "Wow, you are not very hungry right now even though you only had a few pieces of pineapple this morning." At that point I saw a piece of pineapple in my head clear as day and within a few minutes, my stomach was growling my body trying to digest that piece of "mind pineapple" I was just thinking about.

(Reenactment)

Now - anyone who has tried meditation on a regular basis, or been to a longer practice period, or really has just sat with other people know that this type of thing can happen. No sooner then it gets quiet in the zendo that the stomach thunder starts rolling in. So, not really so amazing...

But what struck me, was that the shear idea of pineapple caused a reaction in my body - I reacted to an imaginary piece of pineapple even tried to digest that sucker. My body reacted, my mind reacted (by visualizing said piece of pineapple, etc). It wasn't real, I made it up, yet acted as though it was. For the most part I reacted whether it was real or not.

How often do we do this with other things in life? We question ourselves in our mind, we create scenarios; doubts, fears, objections and without really knowing it our body reacts, our mind reacts we bring these things from nothing into something. But just like the pineapple - they don't exist. So we think we can't get through those prostrations, or live our lives, or make do with less, and viola - we don't. Think out our stress - it is like the pineapple - totally self induced, totally self created, the sum of all those fears, doubts, etc rolling around in our heads making our stomachs rumble. Its not real, we just make it so.

One of my favorite quotes is:

"I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened"
- Mark Twain

The idea of dependent origination is similar to the pineapple piece. All things are the effect of something that caused it to be, thus causing new effects and new results, all intertwined, all linked together. The point is: you can't separate the parts, you can only respond to the cause or the effect. You can also be the cause, you can be the effect and in the process you effect the entire net. A lot of times people mistake the idea of Karma to mean the effect - something happens to you and we say "That's Karma!" but karma is actually the cause, not the effect - it comes from the beginning. all the way back to the intent of the action. Good or bad intention causes good or bad karmic effects.

So we can create sweat pieces of fake pineapple to bring into the world, or we can imagine all sorts of things - like unhappiness, mistrust, anger, doubts, fears and bring those into the world - it all comes from the same mind, all the same place.

Gate, Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate bodhi svaha!

Happy Birth-and-Death-day Buddha!

Today we celebrated Vesekha Puja, also know as "Buddha's Birthday". The birthday aspect is actually a western focus, since we are so much about birthdays. Vesekha is also the celebration of the Awakening of Siddhartha Gotama, the birth and the death. "Happy Buddha's Death Day" doesn't have such a nice ring to it however. Interestingly enough, the man known as "The Buddha" was actually not called that in his lifetime. He was called the "Tagathata" (one who has come, or found truth) or "Bhagava" (one who is blessed). Once he died, he was freed from the attachment of being a human and all that goes with it. Once he was freed, he was known as the Buddha. Vesekha celebrates all of those things that made Siddartha Gotama into the man we know now as "The Buddha".

It was interesting that during the Dharma talk today, Sunim spoke about the story of Siddhartha's birth he spoke about the difference between the reality of the story and the fictional version, or the poetic version of the story. The fictional story was from the Buddhacarita which was writen by a poet and dramatist. The fictional story goes something like: His mother was visited by a white elephant in her dreams, the elephant had six tusks, and a lotus in his trunk and he put the lotus into her womb. Later, as she is heading to her parents house while pregnant, she give bith in the Lumbini garden, and the tree branches bend to help support her, and when Siddhartha is born, flowers fall from the sky and it rains sweet tea over his head and a stream of water flows to wash Maya (his mother). Siddhartha takes sevens steps and lotus flowers bloom under his feet and he says in a clear voice "I have arrived to bring truth to the world". Then I'm sure more flowers rained from the sky and dogs and cats started living in harmony and the moon is in the Seventh House and Jupiter aligns with Mars, then peace will guide the planets, and love will steer the stars. Oh, whooops, that is the age of Aquarius...my bad.

The reality is actually that Maya was a real person, who was married to King Suddhodana of the Shakya clan (Kapilavatthu was the place, now in Tibet). She was pregnant and did travel to her parents house and along the way, gave birth to Prince Siddhartha in the Lumbini Garden (this is a real place). She most likely did hang onto a branch of a tree as standing birth was the custom of that time. These were real people, in a real kingdom in a real place 2553 years ago.

So why all the added hooha?

I think its hard for people to hear of great accomplishment and think they can do it themselves. Its hard to achieve big things. When people can't live up to the expectation, they have to believe that those who do are somehow above them, somehow destined to do so, otherworldly, god-like. It takes the burden off of ourselves. Its much easier to believe that Siddhartha was destined to be awakened, was blessed by spirits of white elephants, rained on by the heavens. Since that shit didn't happen to us at our births, we are somehow let off the hook. That can't be me, I didn't walk the minute I was born, lotus flowers didn't bloom under my feet, must not be me.

The truth is the Buddha was a man, a regular person like us all. He worked hard to understand the truth, worked with many teachers (was not self taught), went through great hardship (lived in the jungle with no food and clothes for years) and ultimately, through his own trials became awake. It wasn't easy and it didn't happen overnight. By the way, once he achieved awakening, he struggled the rest of his life, he lived for 80 years. Awakening was just the start, it took the rest of his life to explain and teach. He was a man, he made mistakes along the way. That is the nature of being a person, including the nature of Siddhartha. Once his body died, and he was freed from his final attachment, he was able to be a Buddha.

We all have the ability to wake up, all have the ability to be a better person. It doesn't take elephant visits in the night or flowers under our feet.

So as we celebrate this weekend the birth, life and passing of Siddhartha into Buddha-ness, I think its important for us all to stop for a moment and wonder: "what the hell have I have done lately?"