Day 23 of 365: Gaps

Today's contemplation was originally going to be a Middle Way logic refuting the true existence of the elements.  That will be tomorrow's fodder.  This evening was a great reminder that life frequently offers us opportunities, direct invitations really, to jump right into the Middle Way.  As the organizer of the Open House Dharma talks, I have frequently had the thought "What if the speaker doesn't show?"  Well, tonight I had the opportunity to work with that fear mano-a-mano.  A dharma friend, who was originally going to give the talk, got stuck in traffic at the last minute.  Gap moment.  At these times, it really feels superfluous to contemplate anything really.  One already has a direct opportunity to work with emptiness.  Doing anything other than just staying there for a second is like trying to turn on the light in a room that is already bright to borrow a metaphor from Khenpo.  So, tomorrow I'll work with noticing and appreciating these moments, big or small.  If you don't have any moments, you can (at your own risk): run into a wall (yes, unfortunately I admit that I have done that unintentionally), try to startle yourself, eat chocolate syrup expecting balsamic vinegar (personal experience), or crank up your car stereo the night before and forget you did so the next morning.  Other ways might include visiting an art exhibit or a garden, telling someone you love them the first time, proposing, seeing a child walk for the first time.  What's your favorite?

Day 22 of 365: Stirring of Mind

Today's contemplation again involved working with the Mind Only School as a precursor to the Madhyamaka Schools.  The following verses sum up the reason, from the Mind Only perspective, for appearances:

The mind stirred by habitual tendencies
Arises as outer appearances.
They are not existent objects but mind itself.
To see external objects is mistaken.


-Lankavatara Sutra


Andy Karr's book Contemplating Reality, which includes this quote, is a great source to consult on the views of the various philosophical schools.  He mentions an example there which I felt was very helpful.  Consider the process of reading.  Due to our habitual tendencies, which we have cultivated, we nearly automatically interpret letters joined together as words which also have a sound.  So, the habitual patterns this verse is referring to are very deep and more than just our tendency to get sad or angry when someone pushes our buttons.  The words are really a product of our habit.  Could the same be said for shapes or color?  It seems that these habitual patterns could even be tied to our humanness.  In other words, the way that we relate perceive the world is due to the karma of having been born human.  Would a fly, as Andy Karr points out, see the world in the same way?  No, but other humans with similar karma may have similar experiences.  I have found a new respect for the depth of our habitual patterns...sort of like being in awe of a big monolith.

Day 21 of 365: Mind Your Own Business

Today's contemplation comes from the Mind Only School.  I'll keep it short and sweet.  Khenpo says: "Reflect on how one has no proof that the outer perceived aspect (or object) of a moment of conciousness exists independently of the inner perceiving aspect."  How does working with this shape your relationships with others?

Day 20 of 365: Cognition

Sunday and Monday offered up some good opportunities to work with conception and perception, which coincided very nicely with some reading I was doing on the Sautrantrika school.  Basically, the Sautrantrikas take genuine reality to be "what is direct perceived and things that can perform a function."  It is important here to take a look at the differences between conception (thinking) and perception and to try to see the difference.

This last weekend, I visited NYC, a city which I have visited many times and have may preconceived ideas about.  What was interesting was watching these ideas mix with the fresher experiences.  What was the difference between my ideas about the city, or the idea of city period, and the experience as it unfolded?  It was refreshing to allow some fresh air in and enjoy the city in a new more direct way.  Old thoughts swirled around with new labels and moments of more direct perception.  Some opportunities for direct experience included the smell of trash, some car horns, the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, and some delicious desserts.

Attempting to notice my conceptions about the ridiculously good carrot cake versus the perceptions. 

Someone's concepts about animals on the High Line in NYC

On a side note, I've purposely stayed away from any sort of heady discussions on the various philosophical schools. However, I did want to mention that, while neither the Sautrantrikas nor the Vaibhashika's (breaking experiece down into moments of the skandhas) are Middle Way schools (they are more in the Hinayana), understanding the view of these schools and the arguments that they use to poke holes in our solid reality seem to be very beneficial to work with.  Understanding the refutations between the schools offers approaches to unraveling my own doubts.  It has also been beneficial to look more closely at the perspectives behind the claims that the Middle Way schools refute.  And, one can always carry the heart intention of the Mahayana...

Day 19 of 365: The Whole Kitchen Sink

What about the self as everything that arises in all the aggregates?  I don't want to spoil the punch line, but Nagarjuna refutes this as well:

If the self were the aggregates, 
It would be something that arises and ceases.
If the self were something other than the aggregates, 
It would not have the aggregates' characteristics.


If we are convinced that the aggregates constantly arise and cease, then the self couldn't be the aggregates.  We experience the self as something continuous that doesn't arise and cease.  Since the aggregates speak to everything in conditioned experience, the self couldn't be outside of the aggregates.  Clearly, the potency of this argument will be driven by the depth to which we are convinced that the aggregates account for everything and indeed arise and cease.

Day 18 of 365: Who's driving the bus?

Before getting into today's Middle Way merriment, I wanted to put a plug in for yesterday's contemplation.  Looking naively for the self for a very short time and repeatedly throughout the day is really interesting and can be powerful in a really ordinary sort of way.  Personally, it gave me more of a feeling for how I really feel myself to be real on a daily, habitual level.  And, it helped habituate these contemplations in a good way.  Try it if you have time.  At least then I will know that there is at least one other person out there stopping and perhaps drawing curious stares from coworkers as they look at their watch on the hour and stop what they're doing for 30 seconds.

Today's inquiry is into the nature of who exactly is making all these decisions we think we're making and how the skandhas take that into consideration.  Who's driving the bus so to speak?  Well on my journey into that question, I found myself looking more closely at the 51 samskaras.  Skandhas 2 and 3 are actually in the 51 samskaras, but there are additional samskaras, or mental factors, which seem relevant to help look at this notion we have of the "driver".  In particular, the 5 Omnipresent Mental Factors and the 5 Mental Factors that Cause the Discovery of Objects stood out.  I've listed these below.  The 5 Omnipresent Mental Factors are "necessary in all aspects of cognition -- they accompany all conciousnesses". (SMR)  The 5 Mental Factors that Cause the Discovery of Objects "cause one to discover further what one is experiencing". (SMR)  Today's contemplation will involve looking at this process of steering the ship from the perspective of these 10 samskaras.  We often take things like intention as deeply personal.  Somehow, looking at this as a mental "event", raises questions about how solid this is.  How do these samskaras play out in a moment of deciding?

5 Omnipresent Mental Factors

1. Feeling (tshor-ba; vedana) is the basis for experiencing an object of the six senses (including the mental sense) as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. Without sensation mind could not experience its object.

2. Discrimination ('du-shes; samjna) apprehends the particular marks of an object of the six senses. Without discrimination mind could not distinguish the characteristics of the object. It could also not link it with further mental processes like giving a name to the object.

3. Intention (sems-pa; cetana) which directs the mind towards an object of the six senses. Without intention mind could not go towards an object.

4. Contact (reg-pa; sparsha) which is the coming together of all three — object, sense faculty and perceiving consciousness. Without contact mind could not encounter the object and establish a relation with it. Contact provides the base for a sensation within one of the six sense fields to arise.

5. Application (yid-la byed-pa; manaskara) which is the continuous, repeated movement towards a certain object of interest. Without application mind could not remain fixed on an object of the six senses. There would be no stability.

5 Mental Factors that Cause the Discovery of Objects

1. Aspiration ('dun-pa; chanda) causes one to integrate the desired object and serves as the support for initiating exertion.

2. Interest (mos-pa; adhimoksa) apprehends the ascertained thing just as it is and causes one not to be captured by some other thing.

3. Mindfulness (dran-pa; smrti) keeps the already familiar object present in mind and protects against forgetfulness and distraction.

4. Meditative stabilization (ting-nge 'dzin; samadhi) is the ability to focus or collect the mind one-pointedly and continuously on any given mental object, not being distracted by any other object.

5. Wisdom (shes-rab; prajña) is the sixth paramita. It distinguishes the faults and qualities of an object and dispels doubts. It analyses the object from every angle. It is a mental state where one is able to distinguish completely and precisely all phenomena.

Day 17 of 365: Skandhas in Everyday Life

I'll be bringing the 5 skandhas together in practice for the next couple of days.  For today, the plan is to spend 30 seconds (or more if I have it) on the hour, every hour, looking at where I think "I" am.  I've found myself getting caught up in intellectual notions of where I think I am, which seem to have little to do with where I feel I am in daily life, in some of the contemplations.  So, this contemplation is an attempt to bring this back down to earth.  Every time I look, I will flash naively on where the sense of me is and then why I take it to be me.  Is it in the body or conciousness (in the sense of skandhas 2-5)?  What about this moment of conciousness do I take for a self?  What part of the body am I identifying with?  How do the stories I'm telling myself contribute?

Day 16 of 365: Conciousness

Today's Middle Way mischief involved looking at conciousness, the last of the skandhas.  I have had a growing sense that I was sort of passing the buck with the other skandha contemplations, the contemplation on form aside.  There wasn't a strong sense, again the skandha of form aside, that I took the others to be a self.  Naively, we tend to either identify with our body or our conciousness.  When we're not absorbed in one, we're absorbed in the other. So, this contemplation was definitely "high stakes".  In a very gut sort of way, I tend to take my underpinning awareness as "me".  It seems to be always there, not really changing even though the objects do, and independent in the sense that nobody else seems to be in control.  What does Khenpo think about this?  Well, he suggests that we take a look at each moment of experience.  Any moment of experience, which we sense as bounded by space and time, is defined by the object of experience and the thing experiencing.  Since, in each moment, conciousness has a different object, these moments of conciousness must be distinct.  Indeed, the moment of conciousness that has passed and the moment of conciousness that is to come do not exist so all we have then is this moment of awareness.  How could these distinct momentary phenomena count as a self?

This argument, as presented, didn't really seem to hit home.  I seem to strongly feel this conciousness through a stream of related experiences.  But, how could these moments of conciousness be related at all?  In order for there to be a relationship, they would have to at least overlap in some moment of time which is not the case unless they are the same moment of conciousness.  What about the similarity of experience?  Similarity doesn't point at anything real, since the moment we are comparing something to is already gone.  The same can be said for the objects of the conciousness as well.  Remember the flowering bush?  Does this shake things up?

Day 15 of 365: Skandha of Feeling, Reprise

Today was originally going to be a contemplation on the last of the five skandhas, rounding out my excursion into these teachings for the moment.  Instead, it seems fully appropriate to take what the world has served up as the path: the skandha of feeling, piping hot.

Today was a travel day during which I returned from Shambhala AD Training in Atlanta.  Coming back from a great experience of delving into teachings and opening up with the fellow ADs in training, I knew some practice opportunities would arise in living color as the week began.  This morning's excitement involved an early morning metro ride to the Atlanta Airport which did not disappoint.  Arriving at the airport, there were more people than I have ever seen in an airport.  Frequent travelers were even remarking on the crowds.  Not being a fan of big crowds or airports, opportunity 1 immediately presented itself - dislike (aversion).  There were certainly some other kleshas flying around, kind of like sprinkles on a cupcake, but an intense sense of aversion was undeniable.  Opportunity 2 arose as I began to weave my story line about the situation.  Wouldn't this be better if I had already had some coffee?  Opportunity 2: passion (intense like) for the idea of the cup of coffee.  What was really interesting was watching these two feelings interleave with one another as I made my way through the security check point, rode the train to the concourse, and stumbled around as I looked for some place to get coffee.  Every now and then some indifference dropped in for one reason or another.  With ample time before I made it through the check point and the coffee materialized, there was time to look.  Where is my like and dislike?  Where is the object of either?  Do I dislike each person in the crowd?  Not really.  So, how could I dislike this "crowd" without disliking the individuals?  If I took away 1 person, would I still dislike the "crowd"?  What about 2 people?  Where is the crowd?  What about the cup of coffee?  I didn't even have the coffee yet, and I knew it probably wasn't going to be that good.  Who desired the coffee?  Where in my body exactly did I feel the pull of passion for the coffee coming from?  Could I pinpoint it?

What a gift from the lineage of teachers that tody's ripe experience could start seeming less personal, that the felt sense could actually be kind of interesting, and that the whole situation could really provoke a smile in the midst of a caffeine deprived haze.  What revs your skandha of feeling?

The Atlanta Airport - Past the practice opportunity of the security checkpoint

The object of my fixation about to materialize.

Day 14 of 365: Formation

The skandha of karmic formation, sometimes called just formation or mental construction, generally speaking, contains all the other mental events besides conciousness itself which is the last skandha.  This includes our thoughts, happiness, sadness, joy, devotion, and jealousy.  These are referred to as samskaras, which to quote Khenpo, "...also has the meaning of predisposition in the sense of tracks left by former deeds that condition one's present thinking and behaviour."

Do we take this stream of juicy stuff to be a self?  Can we find anything singular, lasting, and independent in this stream of stuff?  Sometimes our emotional habits seem quite strong and very predictable.  Does this mean there's something real there which could constitute us?  Not taking this skandha to be at least self confirming, let alone defining a self, seems tied quite closely to our overall conviction in the workability of our own mind.  We may seem convinced that every time, as predictable as the sunrise, we will get angry when someone presses our button.  But, over time, as the button gets pressed and we hold that in the awareness, the button can wear out and we can develop greater wisdom.

It seems very appropriate that this contemplation would come up during Shambhala Assistant Director Training this weekend.  We can use this stream of flotsam and jetsam in the samskaras to weave a tight, dank little web of protection (our cocoon) from our own tenderness and the brilliance of the world.  Or, we can develop the bravery to rouse ourself, look at this with love and curiosity, and rest in any space of non-finding.  Developing trust in the results of our investigation and bravery seem to go hand in hand.

Day 13 of 365: Discrimination/Perception

Discrimination, also called Formation, is the moment of recognition of input through the senses.  Khenpo uses the example of perceiving the color blue.  When we experience the color blue, we notice (we recognize that it is the color blue).  When we hear a baby cry, we know very quickly and not really with any thought that it is a baby crying.  As with feeling, the stream of recognition is continuous.  How do we identify with this skandha?  This skandha is changing so much that, again, I don't really feel I identify with it as "me", which I experience as singular, lasting, and independent.   I do, however, take perception just as personally as feeling.  We can look at both the perception itself and examine it closely, and we can look for the one doing the recognition.  How do we take the perception itself as real?  How do we take ourselves as real as we are doing this labeling?  We can deconstruct either or apply a causality argument between the sense object and the perception.  The process of feeling and perception is so habituated and so earnest--almost paranoid actually.  We feel we must maintain the fortress of ego by shoring up any possible ambiguity in experience.  And, it seems, personally speaking, that this happens very automatically through our habituated attitude towards the process of feeling and discrimination.  Our habit is to feel uncertain when we don't know how we feel or what something is...and to immediately want to cover up the uncertainty.

Does anyone feel like looking for the self in the skandhas is like finding the ball under the cup?

Day 12 of 365: Changeability of Feeling

We experience a continuous evaluation of our experience through our habituated, karmic reactions to things. How does this define the self?  Are we convinced that we are our feelings about things?  Our feelings are so fickle that I personally have a hard time feeling that they define me in any really strong way.  However, I do seem to take them personally in a very instantaneous way.  After they arise, why does the mind take so much care to weave a story or jump to conclusions after a feeling arises?  Why go through this trouble unless it we think it is personal?  I think, among other reasons, we tend to take the feelings so personally because we think we exist already and need to do something with them because they are real.  Where is the experiencer of the feelings (we already looked for it in the body)?  Where is the feeling itself?  If we take the feelings personally because of a causal relationship (feeling and experiencer), apply the causality argument to both and see what happens.  Can we relax enough for there to be an experience of feeling without an experiencer?

Day 11 of 365: Looking at Feeling

The skandha of feeling refers to those of liking, disliking, and not caring either way.  Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche explains in the 99 Seminary Transcripts that there are essentially two main categories of skandhas: form and conciousness.  Moving into the second category, we may notice that these later skandhas occur as fast as the blink of an eye.  For example, you cannot make feeling and discrimination into separate entities because they are happening very quickly.  The Sakyong makes the point that separating feeling out emphasizes its central role in karma.

Feeling is what initiates karma. Feeling is what initiates causes and conditions.  Feeling is what initiates the individual.  -SMR


This is a profound quote really and is making me take a closer look at the seemingly innocuous moments of like, don't like, don't care that happen countless times a day--many times a minute really.  What karma am I creating by buying into these feelings and what are they spawning in my life and mind as I take them to be real?  It seems very important then to understand their true nature.  In meditation practice, do I like the present moment or not?  Where is that feeling of liking?  How does that solidify how I practice?  How does it solidify myself?  Do I identify with that feeling?  I plan on paying extra attention to how these arise and how I relate to them in my life tomorrow.

Day 10 of 365: Happy Mother's Day

I'm going to take a quick detour from the skandhas today to celebrate Mother's Day Middle Way style.  We often solidify our world by defining our relationships to other people.  But, the teachings suggest that we take a closer look and see whether we think those definitions have any more substance than a dream.  Take a look at the mother to child relationship and apply the causality argument.  There are three possibilities: the mother came first, the child came first, or they arose at the same time.  If the mother came first, then there was a moment in time when they were a childless mother, which cannot occur since mothers have to have children by definition.  If the child came first, there would be a motherless child which is really strange to think about.  If they came into existence at the same time, then there would be no causal relationship which is not the case.  Does this mean I don't need or want to call Mom today?  Not really.  It does open up opportunities for our relationship to grow and change though.  Happy Mother's Day!

Sunlit peony
To all mothers and children
This rich, fleeting gift

 

Day 9 of 365: Identifying with Form

How do we identify with form?  When I was in school, I recall a period during finals where I must have worn the same sweater for over a week.  I don't know that I shaved either.  When I finally did switch it up and wear a different sweater and shave, there was a little shift my experience and to be honest I had started identifying with the sweater in a way.  I was, after all, wearing it every day.  I have found it interesting to contemplate what this may imply about how we relate to the body in general.  After all, why do we call it my body?  Because we are in our body every moment of every day (unless we are spaced out), we tend to take the experience of body as a confirmation of our existence.  I think we do this with little things all the time: favorite sunglasses, a watch we never take off, etc.  What happens when we lose those?  What happens when we move to a new home and our external world changes?  We may feel some sort of change in us.  What's to say that our body is any more "me" than our clothes?  Anybody see Invasion of the Body Snatchers?

Day 8 of 365: Form

Sometimes the skandhas seem abstract and incomplete.  I picked up Progressive Stages of Meditation on Emptiness today to read another description of the skandhas to develop more of a certainty that they do indeed capture everything that I experience in mind and matter.  This text has quite a good and down to earth presentation of them and I recommend it.  Khenpo presents form first as body and the environment.  In a very straightforward way, we take the world to be out there with us in here.  We can look for truly existent things in this skandha (ie, singular, lasting, and independent).  What is really the strongest thing we're convinced of?  Ourselves.  In looking for what we call "me", you can look at your body.  How do we identify ourselves with our body?  Where in the body is the self?  Is it in our head, our toe, our brain?  Where exactly is it?  If you were to remove that part of the body would "you" still exist?  We can examine the external world similarly and rest in any non-finding.

Many people suspect that all the negation in these teachings may lead them to nihilism or at least a sense of indifference about the world.  Somehow the phenomenal world just won't be ignored.  I recently have started training with Olympic weightlifting (snatch, clean and jerk).  Working on front squats the other day, the coach loaded up the bar with kilo weights.  Being slow on conversion, I didn't know exactly how much I was lifting and the coach didn't give me a chance to process it.  After being commanded to lift, I did--and in fact it was a personal best.  So, loosening our concepts of things can bring possibilities into a situation.  The phenomenal world snapped back rather rapidly though as I clocked myself in the nose while I was practicing the snatch.  At that moment, the skandha of form was the only thing on my mind.

Day 7 of 365: Beginning with the Aggregates

Khenpo moves on to begin working with the five skandhas to eventually show their emptiness.  He says they are everything included in matter and mind.  They are: form (material phenomena), feelings (experiences of sensations we find pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral), discriminations (sometimes perceptions; thoughts of things as hot or cold, clean or dirty), formations (catch all category for all the other thoughts and emotions that I experience, sometimes called karmic formations), and conciousness (six primary conciousnesses; one for each sense and then also for mind).  He begins with the skandha of form.

Form is empty of form.

-Prajnaparamita Sutra

Before even considering this statement, a preliminary contemplation on the path to deconstructing the entire world is to contemplate the skandhas as everything.  Do I believe it?  Do these five categories encompass all that I take to be matter and mind?  If not, then the emptiness arguments against them will have less potency.  How does looking at my being as the five skandhas affect how I relate to myself?  If I am a bunch of parts, then how real am I?  Do I sense categories of things within each skandha?

Day 6 of 365: Emptiness of Perception as Validation

One of our reactions to emptiness of things is to think, "But, I can see it with my own eyes!"  That is often my gut reaction.  Nagarjuna deals with this method of solidification next.  He essentially looks at each of the six inner sources of conciousness (eye conciousness, ear conciousness, etc) and the six outer sources of conciousness (visual objects, sounds, etc).  If you are unfamiliar with this, just think of looking at an orange.  The orange would be the visual object.  The eye organ senses the orange, and this is registered by our visual conciousness.  This is sequentially, in a relative truth sort of way, how we take in the world.  What Nagarjuna asserts is that this doesn't really prove anything.  There are three possibilities for the arising of our perceived sense object and perceiving sense conciousness: the perceived sense object arose before the perceiving sense conciousness, the perceiving sense conciousness arose before the perceived sense object, or they arose at the same time.  The first case is the hardest.  We often think that there is something out there which we are perceiving.  However, how can there be an object of perception before the actual perceiving?  Without yet perceiving it, how would you prove it is there?  We are in fact always one step behind.  The orange we're looking at in this instant is not really the same orange as exists in this instant.  The orange we're looking at in this instant is from the last instant.  We mistake them for the same because they are so similar in appearance.  The second case is easier.  How could a perceiving sense conciousness exist before the perceived sense object?  There would be no object to perceive.  The third case is also fairly straightforward.  We experience these sense objects and sense conciousnesses as being causal, so they cannot arise at the same time.

If we are, as the teachings suggest, always one step behind, then why not just relax?  After all, there isn't a present moment to relax in either.  What's the harm in just opening your heart?

Day 5 of 365: Where is the Present Moment?

Does the present moment exist in the way that we think it does?  We often say things like, "This is happening right now" and we experience things as happening in the present moment.  Khenpo presents the example of the finger snap.  We think of that as happening "now".  But, when we look at the moment of the finger snap, we could divide that subtle moment into smaller and smaller moments.  The process doesn't stop.  So, there's no moment in which there could be a snap.  Personally, this argument didn't do too much for me as is.  I had to really reflect on how I experience the present moment as oppose to how I think conceptually about the present moment.  I experience the present moment as something pregnant with perception.  Things seem three dimensional in the present moment.  When I start thinking about the smallest moment in time, I begin to think about the present moment as almost two dimensional--kind of like a frame in a movie reel.  So, working with this argument helped me loosen hard and fast ideas of the present moment as something tangible.

Relaxing the mind,
I reach to the azure sky.
Know we are the same.

Day 4 of 365: Looking at Movement

On the path that has been traveled, there is no moving,
On the path that has not been traveled, there is no moving either,
And in some other place besides the path that has been traveled and the path that has not,
Motions are not perceptible in way at all.
-Nagarjuna


We often think things exist because they seem to move from here to there.  Trimming my trees today, I was quite convinced that the branches existed as I moved them from the back yard to the front yard.  But, Nagarjuna is asking all of us to consider a different possibility.  There is no movement on the path that has been traveled because that path is no longer here.  There is no movement on the path that will be traveled because it is not here yet.  And, in between, there is no place for movement to happen at all.  At any given moment in time, where is the movement?  How do I relate to this on a small time scale (small movements)?  Can I understand this on a larger scale (getting from here to work)?  Sometimes thoughts seem like they are moving which seems a bit strange on a relative level.  We couldn't point to our thought relative to something else and show that it is moving.  Yet, we label that as movement.  If, at an absolute level, there is nothing different between a thought and a tree branch, why treat them differently?

Day 3 of 365: Water Moon

Since the contemplation for the last couple of days has been about causes and conditions, I decided to work with an example that the Khenpo uses in the book.  To explain dependently arisen mere appearances, he says:

The best example to help us understand what this means is the moon that appears on the surface of a pool of water.  When all the conditions of a full moon, a cloud-free sky, a clear lake, and a perceiver come together, a moon will vividly appear on the water's surface, but if just one condition is absent, it will not.


How is my experience any different from a water moon?  How am I any different from a water moon?

Day 2 of 365: Causes and the Four Extremes

Not from self, not from other,
Not from both, nor without cause:
Things do not arise
At any place, at any time.

-Nagarjuna, Funadamental Wisdom of the Middle Way

Today's contemplation had to do with taking a look at arising from the perspective of the four extremes.  The argument against the first case basically says that if something arose from itself then the object would have to exist before it arose.  Conventionally, we think and experience arising as sequential, so that doesn't feel right.  The next case felt more challenging.  If something arose from something else, then cause and result would have to exist at the same time.  This cannot be since it contradicts our notion of arising--how could something arise from something else if they already existed together?  This sort of felt fishy to me, so I tried to think of an example that felt contradictory.  Take a bush from our garden.  The flowers seem to arise from the bush, but the bush is still there and so are the flowers?  Feels right!  Thinking some more, I think Nagarjuna might ask if the bush that has flowers on it is the same as the bush from which the flowers arose.  Indeed it isn't.  I can't compare this bush with the old bush because they don't exist together.  Hmmmm...  :-)  The third extreme is taken care of by the first two.  The fourth extreme seems a little stickier.  Could something feel like it is arising without a cause?  We say sometimes, "This just popped up."  What about thoughts?  I think that in these cases we don't see and appreciate causes on a relative level.  Nothing really, truly seems to arise without a cause, even if they are subtle.  Even inspiration and insight arises because of the causes and conditions we bring together...space, relaxation, etc.  Am I convinced?  Wash, rise, repeat.

Day 1 of 365: Causes and Conditions

I'll be starting with the Sun of Wisdom by Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso and for the subsequent postings until I make it through the book.

Whatever arises from causes and conditions does not arise. (Sutra Requested by Madropa)

Looking at a particular result, we can recognize the multitude of causes and conditions leading to that result.  We can then look at the causes and conditions for those causes and conditions, going back and back.  Realizing that there really is no limit to this and nothing exists independently with a nature of its own, we realize that there is nothing truly there.

I took my morning coffee as the object of contemplation and moved on to thoughts and feelings after a while.  I believe that was the most appreciated cup of coffee I've had in a while.  What a rich reality.

Day 0 of 365: Aspiration

Since I first heard about the Buddhist Middle Way teachings, I had a strong desire to delve in and submerse myself in the logics designed to confound logical mind and bring one to true understanding of the nature of our beings and reality.  After reading several books on the view of the various philosophical schools of the Middle Way, I find myself longing to jump in further but lacking that last push to crack the books and apply myself again.  Recently re-inspired by a wonderful weekend program by Jay Lippman, I've decided to devote myself to a contemplation a day for 365 days.  I'll be posting the contemplations here with perhaps some comments about them.  They may not be done on consecutive days, but we'll make it through all 365.  My aspiration is to bring these these teachings to bear as a support for my practice and path as a practicioner.  You're invited to post comments to describe your experience working with these contemplations if you wish and to engage in respectful dialogue.