BUDDHISM
What’s (Not) In Your Mind?
All things come at first from MIND
Mind creates them, mind fulfills them
Speak or act with tainted mind,
You’ll drag around a cart of pain
All things come at first from MIND
Mind creates them, mind fulfills them
Speak or act with lucid mind
And joy will follow like your shadow.
The Dhammapada
• The whole aim of
Eastern religion is
to shift selfidentity from the
light bulb to the
light –
• Joseph Campbell
• Enlightenment
Big Questions
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
How can we be happy? What prevents it?
To Hell in a Hand Basket or Heaven on Earth?
Buddhism – A Raft out of Hell?
Did you know you’re my Hero’s Journey?
What’s funny bout peace, love and
understanding?
Dr. Buddha: Dukkhalogist - 8-fold Path
What’s (not) in your Mind?
The Jewel’s in the What?
WWBK – What would Buddha know?
Same Goal?
• “The only thing that is unqualifiedly
good is extended vision, the
enlargement of one’s understanding of
the ultimate nature of things” (8).
• What is the nature of things?
• What is the state of the world?
• Story – “Birdsnest”
Some say the world will end in fire.
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire,
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great,
“Fire and Ice”
And would suffice.
Robert Frost
Fear and Desire – The Only Way?
• “The Last Flower”
• Gandhi – “I know a way out of hell”
• Story – “Heaven and Hell”
• Buddha – “I teach suffering and the end
of suffering”
The Three Poisons
1. Grasping/Desire
2. Aversion/Hatred/Fear
3. Delusion/Ignorance
• Cause all suffering
• Reflect Personality types
Buddhist View of Life
• A. 6 senses - Sights, Sounds, Tastes, Smells,
Physical perceptions, Mental perceptions
• B. 6 accompanying consciousnesses –
Sight and the seeing of it, etc.
• C. 52 feeling/thought reactions/responses
(26 wise, 26 unwise) interplaying between
sense experiences and consciousness
Wise and Unwise Responses to Life
Unwise/Unskillful
Wise/Skillful
• Hatred
• Jealousy
• Fear
• Anger
• etc.
• Love
• Compassion
• Generosity
• Openness
• Tranquility
• Equanimity, etc.
Two Ways of Living
1. Unwise/Unskillful – Wandering about at
the whim of every desire, impulse,
emotion, like a stick in a river, moody
etc.
2. Wise/Skillful/Enlightened – intentional,
deliberate, skillful, wise, etc.
Quick Write - Name a person from your life, from a
story, or from history or news that you would
describe as “enlightened” or “wise” and give specifics
Repeat for someone “unenlightened” or “unwise”
Gandhi’s morning prayer
Let our first act in the morning be to resolve such as this:
I shall not fear anyone on earth
I shall fear only that which is sacred
I will not bear ill will towards anyone
I shall not submit to injustice
I shall conquer untruth by truth
I shall conquer hatred by love
And in resting in truth I shall bear all suffering
And bring freedom of spirit to my own heart and all
those that I touch
Others
• Love your enemies – Jesus
• Meet physical force with soul force – MLK
• Make me an instrument of your peace –
St. Francis of Assisi
• Buddhist Quotes – page 3 in packet
• Okay, but how?
“Buddhism is a voyage across life’s river –a
transport from the common sense shore of
ignorance, grasping and death to the further
bank of wisdom and enlightenment” (144).
Wisdom?
• “What is the wisdom we’ve lost in
knowledge?”
• Socrates = poster boy for Western
Wisdom – what did he know?
• “All I know is that I do not know”
• Oracle at Delphi – Know Thyself
• What did Buddha discover?
Goal – Mindfulness/Awareness/
Enlightenment
“The more deeply we pay attention the
more deeply we experience that we do not
exist separate from the sunlight or the
clouds or the earthworms…To the extent
that we have learned to grasp and identify
with this limited life, we suffer. The
amount of our identification with it is
our delusion, our suffering.” Jack
Kornfield
Big Ideas
1. It’s all in the MIND Consciousness/
2.
3.
4.
5.
Awareness/Mindfulness/Enlightenment
Life is suffering caused by 1) Selfish Desire/
Grasping, 2) Fear/ Aversion, and 3)
Ignorance/ Delusion
Empty Self thru 8fold Path, Middle Way
The Jewel is in the Lotus
Buddha nature and the Nirvanic World
BUDDHA
• "What are you"?
• "I am Awake”
• "Buddha" = the Awakened,
•
•
•
•
•
the Enlightened
Siddhartha Gautama
563-483 B.C.E.
Nepal/India
Sakyamuni (silent sage)
“Wisdom Incarnate”
The Man Who Woke Up
• A man “judged by hundreds of millions of
people, from Ceylon [Sri Lanka] to Japan,
and throughout large sections of the Asian
mainland, to have exerted by his intellectual
integrity, moral persuasiveness and spiritual
insight, the most pervasive influence on the
thought and life of the human race.” – Del
Byron Schneider
• "The rest of us dream the dream known as
the awakened state of human life"
Classic Hero’s Journey
• I. Prince, 4 Passing Sights, Great Going
Forth – Quest, find the cause of suffering
• II. Finds Middle Way, Temptations
• Enlightenment under Bodhi Tree – finds
cause and end of suffering
• III. Returns with a mission to preach a
religion of wisdom and compassion
Four Passing Sights
Journal –Mindblower
1. old man - aging
2. sick people - disease
3. corpse - death
4. monk - withdrawal
• "Life is subject to age and death - where is
the realm of life in which there is neither?"
• Fleshly pleasures lose their charm, so at 29
goes into forest
The Great Going Forth
• Learns Raja Yoga w
Hindu Gurus
• Tries austerity of
ascetics - didn't work
to bring
enlightenment, but did
lead him to principle of
• The Middle Way – like
a string on an
instrument
Sits under peepul/Bo tree
Enlightenment
(bodhi=knowledge)
Gaya in NE India
• Vows - “Let my skin
and sinews and bones
become dry…. all the
flesh and blood in my
body dry up, but never
from this seat will I stir,
until I have attained
the supreme and
absolute wisdom.”
Temptation
• (like Christ’s on the eve of his ministry)
• 1. Kama - desire - babes
• 2. Mara - death - empties finite self
• Mara challenges his right to be there - Buddha
touches the earth to bear witness
• Lost in rapture for 7 days, tries to get up,
overcome by waves of bliss, stays 7x7 days
• 3. Mara appeals to reason, don't go back - "How
show what can only be found, teach what can
only be learned?” Buddha replies – “Some will
understand.”
• Lives message
• Preaches 50 years -
withdraws
–6 yrs, preaches 45.
–3 mos, preaches 9.
–3x/day
• Dies c.483 B.C. at 80
• Last words - "Work
out your own salvation
with diligence."
Mission
The Silent Sage
• Sakyamuni - silent sage of the Sakya Clan
• “One of the greatest personalities of all
time” – Smith
• “Wisdom incarnate” - cool head/ rational
(like Socrates) and warm heart of “infinite
compassion”(like Francis)
• transforming presence - moved among
kings and villagers with equal ease, took
no notice of caste
The Rebel Saint
Unlike Hinduism, Buddhism sprang fully formed as
an Indian Protestantism against Hindu perversions
6 Common Elements of Religion that were corrupted
1. Authority
 2. Ritual – (“People danced out their religion before they
thought it out”)
 3. Speculation – metaphysics
 4. Tradition
 5. Grace
 6. Mystery
What started was a religion almost entirely devoid of
each of these ingredients without which we would
suppose that religion could not take root.
Original Buddhism
1. Empirical - know for yourself, validate
2. Scientific - cause and effect experiments
3. Practical - not speculative
4. Therapeutic - suffering and its end
5. Psychological – v. metaphysical - began
6.
7.
with human problems instead of universe
Egalitarian - women equal, caste breaking
Individuals - Be lamps unto yourselves,
work out your own salvation with diligence
Numerical too
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2 Ways of Living
3 Poisons
3 Marks of Existence
3 Jewels
4 Noble Truths
4 Foundations of Mindfulness
5 Precepts
5 Skandhas
5 Hindrances
6 Senses
6 Accompanying
Consciousnesses
6 Moments of Dukkha
7 Factors of Enlightenment
8 Fold Path
52 Skillful and Unskillful
Responses To Life
and Useful
• "Suffering have I
explained - for this is
useful“
• its cause, destruction
and path that leads to
its destruction.
Kalama Sutta
• "Do not accept what you hear by report,
do not accept tradition, do not accept a
statement because it is found in our
books, nor because it is in accord with
your beliefs, not because it is the saying of
your teacher. Be lamps unto yourselves.
Those who either now or after I am dead,
still rely upon themselves only and not
look for assistance to anyone besides
themselves, it is they who will reach the
topmost height.“
The Four
Noble Truths
Buddha’s First Sermon
Dr. Buddha - Dukkhalogist
1. Symptom: Dukkha – suffering, transitory, finite
existence, life out of joint
2. Diagnosis: Tanha – cause of suffering is
desire/selfish craving based on egoism. Private
fulfillment increases separateness. Tanha always present when suffering is present, always
absent when suffering is absent
3. Prognosis: To cure Dukkha, get rid of Tanha release from the narrow limits of self-interest
into vast expanse of human life – How?
4. Remedy/Prescription: The Eightfold Path
Mindfulness Journal Quick Writes
1. Who do you surround yourself with?
List people who enlighten you, people
who drag you down.
2. Write about a moment you had today
when you felt
– Anxious, stressed, nervous, dissatisfied,
wanting, etc.
OR
– Peaceful, calm, relaxed, fulfilled, happy, etc.
More Mindfulness Journal Quickies
3. Stop and listen – what are you aware of
about yourself or your surroundings of
which you weren’t aware until you paid
attention?
4. What is most on your mind?
5. What are you aware of about yourself or
your world at this point of your life of
which you were not aware as a child?
Dukkha = life out of joint
1. Trauma of birth
2. Sickness
3. Aging
4. Fear of death
5. Being tied to what
you hate
6. Being separated
from what you love
The Remedy - The Eightfold Path
• intentional living, rather
than pulled and pushed by
impulse and circumstance
• series of changes designed
to release the individual
from ignorance, impulse
and Tanha
• Preliminary - Begin with
Right Association - yoke
wild elephant to tamed
The Eightfold Path – Right…
1. Belief – Noble Truths – make up mind, then…
2. Intent - …Make up our hearts, dedicate
3. Speech –3 switches control us, become aware of what our
speech reveals about us, of how many times and why we
deviate from truth or kindness, of motives
4. Conduct - understand motives before trying to change
behavior - how generous/selfless, follow 5 Precepts
5. Livelihood - what occupies our time. Promote life
6. Effort – Middle Way, slow and steady, like an ox
7. Mindfulness – Be aware, awake, conscious
8. Concentration - Raja Yoga regeneration - change into a
new creature who experiences the world in different way.
Five Precepts
Buddhist version of the Ten Commandments
(2nd half)
Knowing how deeply our lives intertwine, I
undertake the training to abstain from:
1. Killing living beings
2. Taking things not given
3. Sexual misconduct
4. False speech
5. Intoxicating drinks and drugs
All in your Mind?
• The Dhammapada: "All we are is the result
of what we have thought." "All things can
be mastered by mindfulness.“
• “There is nothing either good or bad but
thinking makes it so” – Hamlet
• For Buddha ignorance, not sin, is the
offender - sin is prompted by fundamental
ignorance of our true nature
• Continuous self-awareness/examination
- freedom from unconscious, robot-like
existence
• See everything as it is - "If we maintain a steady
attention to our thoughts and feelings, we
perceive that they swim in and out of our
awareness, and are in no way permanent parts
of us…."
• "We should witness all things non-reactively,
especially our moods and emotions, neither
condemning some nor holding onto others."
Ways to practice Mindfulness
• Meditate on fearful and disgusting sights until
they no longer bother us or repel us
• Pervade world with thoughts of loving kindness
• become aware of every action - when sleep takes
over, whether breath is in or out
• special routine for complete withdrawal
• Packet page 17 and 18
• Mindfulness Experiment - Speech and Action
Buddha's Insights
• 1. Every emotion, thought or image is accompanied by a
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body sensation and vice versa
2. Obsessive patterns arise in mind and these constitute
misery/dukkha
3. Every mental and physical state is in flux, none is solid
and enduring, even pain - each is comprised of series of
discrete sensations that can suddenly change.
4. We have little control over our minds and physical
sensations
5. There is nobody behind the mental/physical events
– No Self? No Observer? What up wit dat?
3 Marks of Existence
1. Anicca - transitoriness/impermanence
2. Dukkha – suffering
3. Anatta - absence of permanent
identity/soul
“All Things Must Pass” by George Harrison
Sunrise doesn’t last all morning
A cloudburst doesn’t last all day
Seems my love has up and has left you with no warning
It’s not always going to be this way
All things must pass
All things must pass away
Sunset doesn’t last all evening
A mind can blow those clouds away
After all this, my love is up and must be leaving
It’s not always going to be this grey
Anicca - Impermanence
• All Things Must Pass
• Regard this world:
“As a star at dawn,
a bubble in a stream,
a flash of lightning
in a summer cloud,
a flickering lamp –
a phantom - and a dream.”
• This applies to the self too – hence:
Anatta – No Soul doctrine
• No soul/permanent self. What gets reborn?
• “Bad habits” – Desire/Fear threads each life
to past and future
• No spiritual substance/soul transmitted but ideas, impressions, feelings,
consciousness, memories
• Desires and dislikes influencing my mind
have lineages
• Not bound by personal history - can break
the chain through will
Karma, Tanha, Samsara,
• Buddha's reincarnation differed from
Hindus who attribute rebirth to Karma
• Buddhists to Tanha - "as long as the wish
to be a separate self persists, that wish
would be granted. Desire is key - it is
possible to step permanently out of the
cycle of rebirth whenever one wished
wholeheartedly to do so."
Nirvana?
• Arhat who extinguishes all desires reborn doesn't apply, not reborn
doesn't apply.
• Response to disciple: You ought to
be bewildered - this is "profound,
recondite, hard to comprehend,
rare, excellent, beyond dialectic,
subtle, only to be understood by
the wise."
• Supra-sonic?
• "blow out/extinguish" boundaries
of finite self, left w/ boundless life
Nirvana
• Far transcends the power of words -
individual awareness is eclipsed in the blazing
light of total awareness like a star at sunrise
• "Some say the dewdrop slips into the shining
sea - others prefer to think of the dewdrop
opening to receive the sea itself.“
• "life of the Arhat is of increasing
independence from the causal order of
nature“
• Spiritual freedom brings largeness of life Buddha "embodied more of reality.“
• If increased freedom brings increased being,
total freedom brings BEING itself.
Big Raft and Little
• Schism (split) btw Mahayana + Theravada
• Two Schools - both Yana - raft or ferry -
both claim to carry people across life's
shores to enlightenment
• Maha - great, (Mahatma - Great souled),
Hina - little
• Mahayana - "Buddhism for the people" Big Raft - linked to the Buddha's "Great
Renunciation"
• Hinayana - Little Raft - Theravada - Way
of the Elders - linked to teachings in text
1. Are people dependent or interdependent
2. Is the universe friendly/helpful or indifferent/hostile
3. Is the best part of a human being the head or the heart?
-Classicists rank thoughts above feelings, Romantics the
opposite
“There
Are Two
Kinds of
People?”
Theraveda / Hinayana
Mahayana
Where
Sri Lank, Burma, Thailand,
Cambodia
China, Korea, Japan, Tibet
How
Buddha’s vision of society:
Grafted onto pre-existent
Monarchy, monastic community civilizations
(Sangha), laity
Focus
Wisdom
Buddha’s Entering Nirvana
Example
Compassion
Great Renunciation of Nirvana to
preach
The Ideal Arhat – holy monk who remains Bodhisattva (wisdom being) who
in Nirvana after death
passes up Nirvana and vows to help
all beings achieve enlightenment
Goal
Attainment of Nirvana requires
constant attention of monks,
support of laity
Religious practice is relevant to
everyone
Bodhisattva
• One whose Being – (Sattva) is
Illumination – (Bodhi)
• Focus on Buddha’s
renunciation of Nirvana to
teach – on his compassion
• Buddha as saint
• School of Buddhist thought and
training in Japan
• Zen = Japanese mispronuncing of
Ch’an = Chinese mispronuncing of
Dhyana = Sanskrit for
contemplation
Zen
• Special transmission outside
scripture –
• from Buddha mind to
Buddha mind – a succession
of teachers
•
Buddha
holds
a
The Lotus Sermon
golden lotus –
understood by
none except
Mahakayapa –
passes down in
India through 28
patriarchs and
carried to China
in 520 A.D. by
Bodhidharma
Words, Words, Words
• like stepping through Alice's looking glass -
topsy-turvy wonderland
• Designed to break limits of normal human
reason/logic, (Logic is a ladder), to blast
through limitations of language – words are
inadequate,
• Beyond words and ideas to experiences and
realization (Enlightenment) =
• Satori
• 1. Zazen – seated
meditation
• 2. Koan – logicbreaking riddles
• 3. Sanzen –
conference with
master – validates,
encourages,
corrects
Three aspects of
Zen Training
Koan
• shortest one night, longest 12 years.
• “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”
• Reason is limited, a ladder too short to
reach to truth’s full heights and must be
supported by another way of knowing
• Zen intends to upset the mind, unbalance
it and eventually provoke revolt against
limits of logic. Koan provokes, excites,
exasperates and eventually exhausts the
mind, reducing it to an impasse – must
count on a sudden flash of insight
Satori - Enlightenment
• See “being’s amazingness”
“each equally a manifestation of
the infinite” – trees, leaves, *%#@stick
• Life is Beautiful
Jewel is in the Lotus, (X in O)
• Unity of Buddha nature within
w/ Nirvanic world without
• “widen the doors of perception so that the
wonder of the Satori experience can flood
the everyday world.”
Zen’s Influence on Japan
• Landscape
painting
• Landscape
gardening – rock
gardens
• Martial arts
• Tea Ceremony
• Haiku
I look in a dragonfly’s eye
And see the mountains
Over my shoulder
The flower I saw
Drift back to the branch
Was a butterfly
Haiku
• Exp. of oneness with all,
bliss thru self-emptying,
transformative experience of
seeing world differently
• “The Art of Attention”
• Kobe, Curt, Caddyshack,
Karate Kid
• “Love, and do what you
will” – St. Augustine
• If you can’t find
enlightenment in
doing the dishes…
Conduits
Tibetan Buddhism
• Mandala
• Nirvana in single life-use all hum. energies
• Sounds, sights, motion can distract, but it
doesn’t follow that they must.
• Channel physical energies into currents that
carry spirit forward instead of derailing it.
1.Mantras – convert noise and distracting
chatter into holy formulae
2.Mudras – choreographed hand gestures
3.Mandalas – treat the eyes to icons whose
holy beauty draws the beholder in their
direction
Mantra
• Om Mane Padme Hung
• The Jewel is in the Lotus
• Also a form of the name for
the Bodhisattva of compassion
Prayer
Flags
• Bodhisattva – not pope
or god-king
The
• Incarnates compassion
• Uninterrupted current of
spiritual influence –
• “As rainforests are to the
earth’s atmosphere,
someone has said, so are
the Tibetan people to the
human spirit in this time
of its planetary ordeal”
(144).
Dalai Lama
The Three Jewels (Vows)
1. I take refuge in the Buddha
2. I take refuge in the Dharma (8-fold path)
3. I take refuge in the Sangha (community
of Buddhists)
The Crossing
• After reaching the other shore – leave raft, 5 precepts,
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8fold path, dukkha, karma, nirvana – all vital to those
crossing, but lose relevance to those who have arrived as
a raft does on land.
World is an activity of Nirvana itself – not the slightest
distinction exists between them
good and evil disappear
Earth is the lotus land, this body is Buddha’s
Bodhisattva’s vow not to enter Nirvana “until the grass
itself be enlightened.”
River connects the banks, rather than divides them
Buddhism prominent in all Asian lands except India,
which subsumed it, Buddhism sank back into the stream
Thich Nhat Hanh
• Vietnamese Zen
Monk
• Nominated by
MLK in 1967 for
Nobel Peace Prize
for work rebuilding
villages destroyed
in Vietnam War