Ask The Lama

Odiyana Buddhist Center June 15-16, 2012 Melbourne, Australia

Live Your Life…

“So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.

Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, even a stranger, when in a lonely place. Show respect to all people and grovel to none.

 

One Spirit Learning Alliance 4/13-4/14/2012

Who Made God?

Big questions sometimes come from little people.

Q. My four-year-old son has asked me “who made God?” How do I answer him? A: Thanks for your son’s excellent question which reminds me that 2,200 years ago the Chinese philosopher Mencius said: “The great man is he who does not lose his child-like heart.”   The direct answer is to your child’s question is: No one made God. However, I would not necessarily respond to my child that way. I might say—and I am just finger painting here, not working on the elaborate oil canvas that such a universal discussion really deserves—the same thing that made us, made God. This may seem like circular reasoning, but remember to whom we are talking. If lovingly and attentively offered, this answer will be understood far more by the child than by either you or me! Let’s not underestimate the natural spirituality and wisdom of children. But the question—Who created the Creator?—is intriguing and one of the principle questions the Buddha asked before he became enlightened. Buddhism continues to explore and debate it today. In Buddhist thought, everything has a cause. Karmic causation—the Law of Cause and Effect—creates all. Buddhism takes an agnostic stance on the existence of any creator or ultimate deity. (However, Buddha was an agnostic, not an atheist, as the Pope mistakenly writes in “Crossing the Threshold of Hope.” That’s an important difference.) Judeo-Christian scripture tells us that God created everything, and that nothing comes before God. That is all well and good. But let us reflect for a moment on the nature of God, and what scripture actually says, and see if we can’t get closer to what it might mean for us today. The first line of the Gospel according to John in the New Testament says, “In the beginning was the Word.” In the original Greek language, it was: “In the beginning was the logos.” It doesn’t say God. So what does this passage refer to? In the beginning was WHAT? Logos can mean word, verb, law, fundamental principle, energy, and so forth. Contemporary rabbis such as David Cooper tell me that God is a verb: “God is not what we think It is. God is not a thing, a being, a noun. It does not exist, as existence is defined, for It takes up no space and is not bound by time.” God is seen by mystical Kabbalists, like my friend David, as a process, an endlessly radiating and interactive manifesting, rather than an entity that once upon a time begat all things. This is not contradictory to Buddhist thought, although I must say that Buddhist philosophy makes a subtle distinction between the kind of monism that such mystical theists profess and the radical nondualism that the Buddhist Middle Way represents. So, perhaps we should ask ourselves: What is the most fundamental, primordial, and underlying substratum of our existence right here and now—the very bedrock of reality? Let’s try to inquire so deeply, honestly and persistently, and with an intense passion for truth that we contact and connect with THAT. For if it is everywhere and eternal, as Western Scriptures say, it must be also here, now. In this way we are drawn closer to the mystery of creation.

The Golden and Diamond Rules: Essential Jewels of Heart and Mind, Body and Soul

As the song goes, “Be kind to our four-legged friends,” but what about our siblings, other relatives, neighbors, friends, or mere acquaintances?

Loving actions and empathic compassion are both wise and desperately needed in this violent, competitive world. Just how is it that each of us can live in such a way to contribute toward a happier, healthier, and more loving and sane home, school, community, and world? This is a big question, yet the answer is not out of reach.  I well remember a young child once said to me “Martin Luther King was a great leader — he had big words.  When some people said hate he said love.” Somehow this young being already had an idea about what it takes to live in such a way that brings happiness to ourselves and others at the same time. The Dalai Lama of Tibet reminds us, “If you want to be happy, make others happy. Happiness and well being is the purpose of this life. My religion is loving-kindness.” It is said that in Tibet, every village, valley, and clan had its own red-and-gold robed Lama to act as priest, healer, teacher and wise man. And also every village had its day-lok, or returner from the beyond, the bardo, land of the dead, or intermediate state. These returners understood reality andoften came back with hair-raising tales of the “no-good-niks” who had done evil things on this earth, and as a result, were undergoing pain and travails in the world to come. Occasionally the day-lok alsoreported on the rewards of the honest and generous ones who would reap excellent rewards from their good karma (actions and intentions) in the next life. However, the fire-and-brimstone-like oral day-lok literature is mostly comprised of vivid cautionary tales meant to inspire common folks to follow unfailingly the Five Buddhist Moral Precepts of: no killing, stealing, lying, intoxicants, or sexual misconduct — and to live a good, honest, productive, and nonviolent life. My late friend, the lama Chakdud Tulku used to tell stories about his mother Ama-la, who was a day-lok. A humble, pious, shy and quiet woman, she devoted herself daily to caring for her family and neighbors, and especially her reincarnate lama son (tulku) who was the apple of her eye.  Never did she raise her voice or gossip and criticize anyone. Unlearned in books, she was skilled in the arts and crafts of traditional Tibetan home and family life. One day a terrible epidemic spread among the villagers, and carried Ama-la off along with some of her neighbors. She breathed her last breath with the Dalai Lama’s mantra-prayer of compassion and loving kindness on her lips, wishing her family and friends well “Om Mani Pedme Hung!” — the jeweled spiritual light is in the lotus of each of us! Whispering the mantra ever more gently, she breathed her last and then, relaxing back into herself, with the final seed-syllable, “Hung,” she was gone. A family lama was called to oversee her final arrangements, pray for her and strive to ensure a higher rebirth. How amazed was he to find that she woke up the next morning and seemed to be alive and cured! The entire family rejoiced. But Ama-la was a transformed person, a day-lok, having returned from the land of the dead with tales to tell. Ama-la told whoever would listen that the obnoxious, drunken, old wife-beating Uncle Dorje’s ongoing spiritual being had become stuck beneath a rocky road and was constantly being run over by trucks, and that the spiteful, acid-tongued old Grandmother Cheutso was reborn as a spider in the gloomy, dank local police station basement. Moreover, she’d seen the infamous thief Puntsok reborn as a sore-covered snake, armless, legless, and slippery, being beaten with sticks by local villagers. “How could this be?!” asked more than a few of Ama-la’s neighbors. The day-lok patiently explained to them again and again that she herself had voyaged there and had seen reality. She knew beyond a doubt that the basic fundamental and ethical teaching from Buddha concerning the law of karma, cause and effect, was undoubtedly true. Ama-la saw that we each reap the results of our actions. While once she had been a meek and mild-mannered woman who kept in the background as tradition required, Ama-la now spoke with great authority, in a calm and clear, Lama-like teacher-Elder voice. “The flowering, wish-granting Tree of Virtue and Morality,” she exclaimed in an orator’s voice which completely amazed her listeners, “wafts its heavenly fragrance to all who shelter under it, and it is like a blissful and serene flower-garden heaven all around them. The gods and angels themselves are spawned by good karma’s fragrance of this wonderful virtue wafting all the way up to the highest heavens, and delighting the Ultimate Judge of All Karma (actions). Join together with me in this virtuous celebration!” And so Ama-la regaled them with life-valuable parables about what goes around comes around. We shall reap what we have sown, as many of the Good Books say. This is universal truth, timeless yet timely, good for today and good for tomorrow. Be good and do good, and goodness shall follow you like a shadow follows the body. Wreak havoc and evil, and you shall reap the whirlwind, or at least bad karma… and no one wants that! This karmic law, what goes around comes around, can help us to understand that for every action there is a reaction. (Science also now tells us this, too.) Things reproduce in kind and not at random. Just as apple trees come from apple seeds and not from lemon seeds; our good habits and excellent character and destiny arise through repeating good, wholesome and helpful deeds, including our actions of body, speech, and mind. This is why it’s important, as my own late grandmother Anne taught me, to practice what you preach, do what you say you’re going to do, keep your agreements, and walk your talk. Our thoughts and intentions are also very important. If we can train our brains and open our hearts, we become masters rather than victims of circumstances and conditions. For it’s not what happens to us, but what we make of it that makes all the difference; this is what defines our experience, our character, and our destiny. Understanding this, our inner strength and power, helps us to train ourselves into following the good path in life and to assume the high ground. And we find that we do not to have to travel very far from home in order to find the holy land. It lies within and all around us, always. Heaven and nirvana, happiness and well being, love and truth can be discovered in our own backyard if we dig deeply enough into our own heart and mind, and examine our body, soul and spirit to find out who we are, where we come from and how we fit in to this entire marvelous and miraculous universe. We uncover, recover, and discover the god or goddess, the Buddha, the divinity within everyone and everything. If we can dig deeply into ourselves, we will reach the water table where we are all one, all invisibly joined, the common ground. Then we can both learn and practice naturally The Golden Rule, treating others as we would ourselves be treated. The enlightened teacher named Buddha said, long ago: “What is hateful to you, don’t do to others; what is delightful to you, do for others, too.” As we mature and wise-up, we can graduate to the second rule, which I lovingly call The Diamond Rule: seeing the Buddha, the divine light, the sacred in everyone and everything. Through this path of self-inquiry and discovery, we grow in insightful awareness, discernment, and unselfish love. We reduce selfishness, and increase altruistic compassion and empathy, and positively transform our inner attitudes in order to be an edifying light and a caring steward — rather than a dark cloud and exploiter — in this, our world. “To know the world is knowledge; to know oneself is wisdom,” as the aged Chinese sage Lao Tzu once said. The mature wisdom of self-knowledge is the universal panacea, the universal remedy. So let’s awaken together from the sleep of separateness and illusion, and lighten up while enlightening up. Wisdom and compassion, the Buddhist words for truth and love, are like the two wings of a great bird. As a bird cannot fly with only one wing, we need wisdom to know truth and warmhearted loving compassion to live closely together and get along in this world. The word “religion” implies uniting and bringing together, and should not become a divisive force in this world. Each of the world’s major religions has their own version of the Golden Rule, to “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” And there is only one person we can ask to do this: ourselves. Each of us must focus on our own behavior and let it be good. Let’s learn to love and accept ourselves and each other with patience and tolerance before it’s too late to save this, our endangered planet. Each of us is unique and significant, and has our role to play in this great pageant. Everything we do makes a difference, whether large or small. It’s not how large our works, accomplishments, and deeds are, or even if they are recognized, seen, and appreciated. It’s how much love we put into them that makes them meaningful and even great in the long run. Even something as simple as being polite is connected to morality and self-discipline, steadying and easing the societal and family wheels. Politeness requires patient attention, alert presence of mind, and conscientious care for others as well as oneself — all factors of contemplation, meditation, prayer, and awakening. Pay attention, my dear friends. If we are not here now, we won’t be there then. This I can guarantee. Developing present awareness by consistently remembering to integrate mindfulness into our actions, rather than mindlessly sleepwalking through our days, helps bring us all that we want, need and aspire to, a better quality of life for ourselves and all our connections. Let us think globally while acting locally, beginning with ourselves and each other, helping, connecting, wishing others well and acting on the best impulses of our better nature. Let us care for our own garden, as well as the entire environment. Pick up litter, recycle garbage, and refrain from waste. Give the gift of your time and good energy to someone in need, or lend an ear, a shoulder, a helping hand. There are a million-and-one ways and places to kneel and kiss the ground, not just in church. This world of ours is like an altar, and all who walk on it are like gods and goddesses, Buddhas and angels. This we can see through awakening to reality, opening our wisdom eye and practicing with simple clarity these two essential teachings for the heart and mind, body and soul. May these jewels, The Golden Rule and The Diamond Rule, adorn each of us and beautify the world. Be kind to one another. Lama Surya Das (Jeffrey A. Miller)  

kindly reprinted from www.kidspiritonline.com

Lama Surya Das in Seattle, January 2012

Lama Surya Das in Costa Mesa, CA January 2012

Blesseatitudes

Holiday Prayers & Wishes from Lama Surya Das
Winter Solstice, December 2011

[dropcap]Blessed are the flexible[/dropcap], for they shall not get bent out of shape.
Blessed are the patient, for they shall be waited on and attended to.
Blessed are the generous, for they shall receive abundantly.
Blessed are the grateful, for their life shall always be bountiful.
Blessed are the wise, for they know not in excess.
Blessed are the lovers, for love is theirs for the asking.
Blessed are the healers, for their world and they too shall be healed and well.
Blessed are those who listen, for they shall be heard and understood.
Blessed are those who choose to be kind rather than right, for they shall have long-lasting beautiful relationships.
Blessed are those mates who have made two lives as one.
Blessed are the open-minded and warmhearted, for they shall receive all they need.
Blessed are the learners, for they shall be edified and fulfilled.
Blessed are those who know how to receive as well as to give, for inexhaustible richness is theirs.
Blessed are the goodhearted, for they shall live long and harmoniously.
Blessed are the curious, for wonderment is theirs.
Blessed are the awakeful, for they shall see things as they are.
Blessed are those who don’t know it all, for they shall discover truth through doubt and inquiry.
Blessed are those without many expectations and appointments, for they shall not be disappointed.
Blessed are the content, for they have arrived and shall be completed.
Blessed are the underdogs, for their loyalty and purity shall be rewarded in all walks of life.
Blessed are those who need little for they shall find simplicity and ease.
Blessed are the forthright, for they shall right the world and speak truth to power in love.
Blessed are the altruists, for they shall usher in the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are the leaders who inculcate leadership instead of followership.
Blessed are the servants, for they shall be served and attended to.
Blessed are the pray-ers, for life is fragile, fleeting, precious and needs to be handled with prayer.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall find peace and well being.
Blessed are the joyful for joy and happiness is theirs.
Blessed are the co-meditators, for they shall arrive together.
Blessed are the first rays of the morning, for they bring the gift of awakening.
Blessed are those who notice, for they shall find small delights around every corner.
Blessed is the reader who brings the writer’s creativity alive.
Blessed are the first light rays of each morning, for they convey the gift of awakening.
Blessed is this life we share together; handle with prayer!
Blessed be.
Blessed is.
Blessed does.

Words Of Wisdom From His Holiness the Dalai Lama

“Today the human soul asks the question: What can I do to preserve the
beauty and wonder of our world and to eliminate the anger and hatred and
inequality that inevitably causes it— in that part of the world which I touch?

What can you do TODAY, this very moment?”

— The Dalai Lama, Sept. 11, 2001

My Washington Post On Faith Article

On Faith, the Washington Post’s religion website (http://www.washingtonpost.com/onfaith) invited me, along with a diverse group of the country’s most prominent religious leaders, to reflect on the spiritual impact of 9/11, and share what we have learned about religion in the past ten years.                                          

REMEMBER TO REMEMBER

by Lama Surya Das

A wise Zen master once gave his meditation students the almost unanswerable koan, or existential riddle: “What is the most important thing?”

September 11, 2001 was such a Zen teaching moment, a fit koan for our time. As Americans sought answers and spiritual solace, church attendance across the country rose notably in the months following this national tragedy.  That was a good thing, as questioning is the gateway to wisdom. But, ten years later, have we been asking the right questions? How many of those seekers actually became finders?

On that terrible day, when the buildings and airplanes – and our hearts — sheared open, we were offered an unprecedented moment of intimacy, of a new, shared vulnerability.  Our mutual confusion and grief during those intensely felt days of shock created powerful solidarity and empathy.

We realized how interconnected and interdependent we all are, both at home and abroad. This is how heartbreak can evolve into openheartedness, how we can gain through loss.

Unfortunately, those moments of openness and vulnerability passed all too quickly. America seemed more humiliated than humbled. It was soon apparent that we, as a nation, lost little of our hubris and sense of exclusionism. Instead of identifying more closely with those, globally, who have suffered similarly, we fell once more into old habits: working hard and shopping, hurrying and complaining, competing and arguing in our partisan and self-centered dogmatic ways. As we sought desperately to regain our footing and sense of security, both outer and inner, in this new world, fear and anxiety replaced openness, caring, kindness and curiosity.

As a teacher and mentor, over the decades I’ve learned to recognize extraordinary learning opportunities like 9-11. They leave plenty to build upon, so long as we maintain our clarity and goodhearted aspirations. And 9-11 was a wakeup call, above all.

The world has changed since then, but I’m not sure we have. The word religion originally comes from the idea “to unite”. Yet today, religious beliefs have become a divisive and even belligerent force in our turbulent world. I feel quite certain that this is not what the original founders and prophets, sages and saints intended! I see little evidence that we’ve learned much that is useful about religion and spirituality since 9-11. Many of us have learned a little more about Islam and that the word itself means peace, something many of us long for. But we still have much to learn about tolerance, and how to meaningfully integrate true spirituality into our daily lives.

Until recently, American wealth, power and prestige – providing us with a false sense of progress and security —grew by leaps and bounds. Meanwhile, countless others in foreign lands suffered from terrorism as hideous as our experience of 9-11. The Dalai Lama has dubbed this recent period “a century of bloodshed” while calling repeatedly for “a new century and era of dialogue”. Worldwide, others still face genocide and ethnic cleansing, war, poverty, hunger, epidemics, and environmental degradation.

We need to keep our hearts open, not only to one another, but to those far away from us, those who practice different faiths. This is the Diamond Rule.

Since September 11^th, we’ve also learned that vast numbers of people adhering to other religions face their own internal struggles between extreme and moderate believers. They, too, struggle with modernity, science, reason and faith, and have their own brands of courage, and faith. We still know very little about other peoples and their beliefs – and 9/11 showed us the costs of that ignorance. Nor has our marginal newfound interest in global religion and cultures genuinely refined and deepened our grasp of the essence of transformative spirituality inherent in them all. We have not yet learned to turn the spotlight, the searchlight, inward, to help redress the imbalances caused in us, individually and collectively, by our extreme materialism, relentless outward orientation and lack of genuine self-knowledge.

Extraordinary learning opportunities like 9-11 aren’t always appreciated for their lessons. But we have plenty to build upon if we remember that original clarity of ten years ago, that extraordinary initial burst of empathy, cooperation, resilience, and our shared hopes for peace.

I believe we need to see the light, the divine, the buddhaness in everyone and everything, day-to-day and moment-to-moment.

We must ask ourselves what kind of people we really want to be. What sort of world will we create and leave for our children and the generations to follow?  One important lesson of 9-11: it’s now or never. This is our time, our moment, to remember this timeless verity and act upon it.

How to extract meaning from memory? What is worth enshrining and memorializing in monument, verse and song? We Americans, hell-bent on deciding what to do, often forget why we do it, although intention is crucial.  As global citizens we can and must choose to live mindfully and consider the implications and origins of all our actions: words, thoughts and deeds. It’s easy to mistake mere action for meaningful purpose and an authentic commitment to changing our ways. It is essential for our well-being and others that we forgive and remember, become better listeners, and learn the lessons.

Let’s use this weekend’s many memorial services as opportunities to awaken and open ourselves, to deepen and re-connect with one another, to reunite, to re-empower ourselves — and our good hearts.

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”- Mohandas Gandhi

Note: Lama Surya Das will be in Washington D.C. on September 10 & 11 at the BuddhaFest 9.11 Remembrance: A Weekend of Peace, Compassion and Forgiveness, where he will join other prominent teachers in sharing his wisdom and compassion. For more information about the BuddhaFest 9.11 event please visit www.buddhafest.org.