Karma, Suffering and Ego: Some Opinions from Contemporary Tibetan Buddhist Teachers

From “In the PRESENCE of MASTERS: WISDOM FROM 30 CONTEMPORARY TIBETAN BUDDHIST TEACHERS” by Reginald A. Ray

KARMA—Karma is “deed” or “action,” and the accumulated results of action…. Naturally these actions include those taken in previous lives.

—ENCYCLOPEDIA OF Buddhism by Edward A. Irons

HOW THE PROCESS OF KARMA WORKS

 

The volume contains instructions, originally given orally to Western students, on mediation and the spiritual life by contemporary Tibetan lamas.

[Our] fundamental consciousness can be compared to a ground that receives imprints and seeds left by our actions. Once planted, these seeds remain in the ground of fundamental consciousness until the conditions for their germination and ripening have come together. In this way, they actualize their potential by producing the plants and fruits that are the various experiences of samsara. The traces that actions leave in the fundamental consciousness are causes that, when favorable conditions present themselves, then result in a particular state of individual consciousness accompanied by its own specific experiences. In general, the collection of imprints left in this fundamental awareness by past actions serves to condition all states and experiences of individual consciousness, that is what we are and everything we experience. The linking of the different steps of this process, from the causes, the initial acts, up to their consequences, present and future experiences, is called karma, or causation of actions.

Kalu Rinpoche

KARMA DOES NOT IMPLY FATALISM

Within the concept of karma, there is no notion of destiny or fatalism; we only reap what we sow. We experience the results of our own actions.

Kalu Rinpoche

THE CAUSE OF SUFFERING IS OUR WAY OF PERCEIVING AND REACTING

If we can somehow change our way of being, our way of perceiving, if we can work on out habitual tendencies of being and perceiving an go beyond that to see exactly the way things are, and then work on that basis, maybe we can overcome the causes of our suffering….

Whether I am happy or unhappy, whether I am in a joyful state or in a suffering state, that is my own experience. What is happening when I have an unpleasant experience? I am perceiving the experience as something bad; I don’t like it; I have aversion to it. Any experience that I don’t like becomes suffering; any experience that I fear becomes suffering. Therefore the root of all suffering is aversion and fear. And because of aversion and fear, there is no wanting….

All our suffering and pain… [are] based on our not seeing clearly the actual way things are and who or what we are. From the Buddhist point of view, that’s the cause of suffering: it lies in our way of perception and our way of reaction.

So if—and this is the crucial understanding—if we can somehow change our way of seeing and of reacting so that we don’t have to keep running after or running away from things, if we can be without the fear and the aversion, then we will find peace.

Ringu Tulku Rinpoche

DESIRE ITSELF IS NOT THE PROBLEM

We do not really understand what desire means. In the West, desire seems to refer to sense gratification. However, in the Buddhist view, desire is not a craving of the sense, but the mental concepts and projections that we build up on an object, thereby bringing us problems. Desire misinterpret and distorts the object; we then hallucinate and drive ourselves crazy.

Lama Thubten Yeshe Rinpoche

THE ORIGIN OF EGO FROM CLEAR SPACE

From beginningless time there are no habits in unconditioned, natural mind. Still we create habit by dividing phenomena from clear space. Inherently a mirror does not have any dust. Still it attracts and gathers dust, which obscures its natural clarity. In the same way, our pure Wisdom Mind becomes obscured by ego when we become attached to its pure phenomena’s unobstructed display. If we can recognize our natural stainless mind, we will not become obscured through attachment, but if we do not recognize our pure natural mind, then our subtle elements’ phenomena gather like dust on our clear mirror mind.

Thinley Norbu Rinpoche

THE ABSOLUTE NATURE AND THE ARISING OF PHENOMENA

We looking at the light rays to create the notion of an object out there and a subject within.

Beings have forgotten the absolute, their own true nature. The absolute nature is like the sun, and phenomena are like the rays of light that emanate from it. To recognize that all these rays of light, phenomena, come from the sun, the absolute nature itself, is to be totally enlightened at that very moment.

       But unenlightened beings, not recognizing where the rays are coming from, turn their backs to the sun, and instead of looking at the light rays’ source they look at where they fall. They start to create the notion of an object out there and a subject within. Then, when the five senses connect the “object” to the “subject,” craving and aversion arise; the seeds of samsara have been sown, and from them grow the three realms of existence. But at no point have the phenomena of delusion been separated from the nature of Buddhahood, which always pervades each and every being, and all phenomena.

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

 

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Mindfulness: Be Simple and Easy, Just Rest in Awareness (II) – A lesson from Munindra, a Bengali Buddhist master and scholar

The Practice Is to Be Simple

Mediation can help us to gain the simplicity of life. (Photos by Wang Zhang)

Munindra highlighted simplicity and ease. Joseph Goldstein says he must have repeated thousands of times, “Be simple and easy. Take things as they come.”  Still, that is a challenge for many.

Sometimes students misunderstood Munindra’s  use of “simple.” When they saw him bargaining intensely, even for a bag of peanuts, they questioned his action and reminded him, “You said to be simple and easy. What are you doing?” He would pause, then respond, “I said to be simple, not a simpleton.” As Roy Bonney understands this, “Essentially, what I took form it is that it’s really important to have a practice and recognize the truth of world, but don’t be a fool in the world.”

Munindra taught that true meditation can have a refreshing or relaxing effect:

When mind comes to a silent state, then we recoup our energy again. Meditation is not forcing, not straining oneself. It is harmonious wok with the whole being, not fighting. If we understand the process of meditation, it is so simple. As long as we do not understand, it is an extraordinarily difficult task because our mind is not trained not to cling, not to condemn, not to judge, just to be with what is at the moment. But once you understand the Law [Dharma], then it is the most simple thing—it is a way of life. As one develops mindfulness, after some time it takes care of itself; it becomes effortless, automatic.

Appreciating Munindra’s free-form approach, Sharon Salzberg says, “His view of meditation was very big—live mindfully—it’s OK if you go to the bazaar for a cup of chia [tea]… He left me with a very big sense of , as he put it, ‘living the life,’ of not being so prescribed and formalistic or stylized about practice, but really understanding its roots in transforming one’s mind.”

Jack cornfield puts it succinctly: “He didn’t divide life from meditation,” and that is why he was such a vital model for people East and West.

The Benefits of Seeing the Truth of Each Moment

Mindfulness is an opportunity to experience everything anew. Munindra said,

People can do things better when they are mindful. It is not only beneficial on a spiritual level, it is also beneficial on a physical level. It is a process of purification too. When mind is purified, many psychophysical diseases are cured automatically. People understand their own anger, hatred, jealousy—all these unwholesome factors which arise in the mind and which we do not understand generally. So many psychophysical diseases, which we accumulate unconsciously or by reflex action emotionally, [can] come under restraint, but not by suppressing. By coming close to and seeing them, people become free from many physical ailments, many mental ailments. They become more sweet, more loving.

Sati always provides the brilliance of a lamp in shadowy places, a way out of the stress and darkness in life, wholesomely and clearly. He described how:

All the  dirt accumulated in our unconscious, subconscious, we are just following life after life. So when you observe silence, all kinds of thoughts come up on the surface. It is not somebody sending it to us; it is part of our life. You get caught up with the thought because, say, somebody scolded you in the past but you suppressed it. But when the mind is silent, not talking, not busy, anything can come up. At that time, you see things because of awareness. You are asked to develop mindfulness because sati illuminates [the] whole mental field.

Resting in the awareness of each fresh moment is not asking someone to live nothing but meditation. As Munindra put it, it is a way of life, “a beautiful way to live and die”. Says Sharon Salzberg.

This is the direct path for the purification of beings, for the surmounting of sorrow and lamentation, for the disappearance of pain and grief, for the attainment of the true way, for the realization of nibbana—namely, the foundations of mindfulness.

–THE BUDDHA, MN 10.2

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Mindfulness: Be Simple and Easy, Just Rest in Awareness (I) – A lesson from Munindra, a Bengali Buddhist master and scholar

MINDFULNESS (SATI): Awareness. An alert state of mind that should be cultivated constantly as the foundation for understanding and insight.

—A Dictionary of Buddhism, Oxford University Press

This article is edited from the book, “Living This Life Fully: Stories and Teachings of Munindra”(Shambhala Publications, 2010) by Mirka Knaster.

For many students, Munindra’s best  teachings took place outside the meditation hall in a very ordinary and detailed way.  According to his students, “he was the epitome of mindfulness all the time.”

“We’d be walking along, and my mind would be running.” Says one of the master’s students, Akasa. “He would say, ‘Oh, look! See the little flower!’ he would bend to look at it and say, ‘See, it grows like this.’ He would lightly touch it, taking me out of my head and back to the earth, back to what was right there. You could say he distracted me back to the present moment. He was very good and very soft with that. Munindra would say, ‘Pay attention. Be mindful of all the details.’ He would stick the word mindfully into just about every other sentence he uttered.”

Michael Liebenson Grady, who was Munindra’s attendant at Insight Meditation Society (IMS) for a time, adds, “ Munindra had the ability to see the Dharma everywhere, in everything, including all the ordinary experiences of daily life. This attitude is helpful to lay practitioners.”

Mind and Mindfulness

Anagarika Munindra i Bodh Gaya 1968

“Mind and mindfulness are two different things,” Munindra used to explain.

Mind by nature has no color. When it is colored with greed, we call it “greedy mind.” When anger arises, at that moment, it is called “angry man” or “angry mind.” If there is no mindfulness, mind is influenced by this anger. Anger has the nature to pollute the mind; it created poison. But mind is not anger; anger is not mind. Mind is not greed; greed is not mind. Please remember this. Mind has no nature of liking or disliking. “Mind” means “knowing faculty”, “cognizing faculty.”

Mindfulness is a different thing: alertness, awareness, remembering, heedfulness. It means not to forget, just to be aware. To be mindful of what is going on. When you are asked to walk on a [narrow] one-bamboo bridge over the river, you have to be so careful on every step. Once you forget, there is every possibility of falling down. If you lose your mindfulness, you will hurt yourself or kill yourself. So, in reality, mindfulness means not to forget what is going on at a present moment—in thought, in word, in deed.

Munidra noted that though the mind is “always there, always working,” we are not always mindful. He said, “many times you will see that mind is not with you, you are not with the mind. Mind is somewhere else, thinking something else, while [the] eating process is going on mechanically, unmindfully.” According to Munindra, there is only one way to conduct all activities—with moment-to-moment awareness.

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