Giving up Gossip

Seven Tips for Giving Up Gossip September 21, 2009

Posted by Philip Ryan in : Buddhism, Buddhist Teachings, Tibetan Buddhism , trackback

by Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron

1. Recognize that gossip doesn’t undo the situation you’re talking about. It only puts in motion another situation based on negative feelings.

2. Know that comparing yourself to others is useless. Everyone has his or her own talents. In this way, give up jealousy and the wish to put others down.

3. Be aware of and transform your own thoughts, words, and deeds rather than commenting on those of others.

4. Train your mind to see others’ positive qualities and discuss them. This will make you much happier than gossiping ever could.

5. Forgive, knowing that people do harmful things because they are unhappy. If you don’t make someone into an enemy, you won’t want to gossip about him.

6. Have a sense of humor about what you think, say, and do, and be able to laugh at all of the silly things we sentient beings carry out in our attempt to be happy. If you see the humor in our human predicament, you’ll be more patient.

7. Practice saying something kind to someone every day. Do this especially with people you don’t like. It gets easier with practice and bears surprisingly good results.

(from Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron’s “The Truth About Gossip,” Tricycle, Summer 2006 )

The Katamari Principle

Sandy explained to me about The Katamari Principle. And, on further reflection, I see how it applies to many, many areas of living.

As she prepared to go to Costa Rica, to teach English to children, she wondered (with some anxiety) how she would teach them everything they needed to know. English is so complicated, so irregular, and teaching… a challenge.

Then, with calm, she explained The Katamari Principle.

[NOTE to Readers -- If you have not played Katamari on PS2 (or whatever), well, you will not understand this at all. Maybe the picture will help.]

The Katamari is a sticky ball. As you roll it over things (in the video game), it picks things up. It starts as a small, sticky ball. It can only pick up small items. It will pick up a paper clip, but roll right over an eraser. As you pick up small items (paper clips, thumb tacks, etc.) the ball grows larger. As it grows larger it can pick up larger items (erasers, juice boxes). It grows larger still, and you can pick up even larger items (buckets, dog houses). And as you pick things up, the ball grows larger, and can pick up houses, and factories, and elephants (who are never injured).

Well, teaching English, she explained… would be like that. She might be just teaching them simple, small things (like the paper clips in Katamari). But they need those things in order to (later) absorb larger things (like verb conjugation, or … dog houses in Katamari). Yes. So Sandy discovered a peace and comfort in knowing that teaching those simple things, while not the entirety of their need for English understanding, is foundational, and essential for them to proceed to learn the more complex things.

And in that, she found comfort, knowing that she would be able to give them what they are ready for, even though there would still be much to learn.

And as I go through my days, with challenging situations galore, and so much to learn and do. I realize that, in many ways, I utilize The Katamari Principle.

When making a change, I sometimes need to implement it in small steps… because the audience (or me) can only handle those small (paper-clip-like) steps initially.

And often, in my work and life, I get frustrated because I (in the all American way) want complete results quickly (as shown on TV!). I try to reflect on The Katamari Principle, and realize that my results now are small, but that is what I can accomplish now. While they are small, they are important predecessors to larger results, which may take time (and many, many paper clips of learning).

The big problems of the world — health care, peace, an end to genocides and ethnic cleansings and civil wars (whatever name you apply to mass extinctions of cultural groups) — I can do less than a paper-clip level of impact on these problems. But, in the Katamari ball of life on our planet, the accumulation of paper-clip actions prepares the world for a larger action (eraser, dog house, factory). And collectively, we are building a Katamari world that may (one day) actually fulfill the larger tasks of peaceful, safe, healthy living.

Yes. The Katamari Principle. It’s a good metaphor for life, for learning, and for action. It is an infrastructure that encourages patience, and recognizes the value of tiny, tiny, steps. Those tiny steps are the ones we can actually take to change our world.

Appreciating our troublemakers…

Be Grateful to Everyone

 
Work on taking and sending with these considerations in mind:

In general, all methods for attaining buddhahood rely on sentient beings. Therefore, to the individual who wishes to awaken, sentient beings are as worthy of gratitude as buddhas. Specifically, all sentient beings are worthy of gratitude since there is not one who has not been my parent. In particular, all those who hurt me are worthy of gratitude since they are my companions and helpers for gathering the accumulations of merit and pristine wisdom and for clearing away the obscurations of disturbing emotions and conceptual knowledge.
Do not be angry, not even at a dog or an insect. Strive to give whatever actual help you can. If you cannot help, then think and say:
May this sentient being (or troublemaker) quickly be rid of pain and enjoy happiness. May he come to attain buddhahood.

Arouse bodhicitta:

From now on, all the virtuous acts I do shall be for his welfare.

When a god or a demon troubles you, think:

This trouble now occurs because I, from time without beginning, have made trouble for him. Now I shall give him my flesh and blood in recompense.

Imagine the one who troubles you to be present in front of you and mentally give him your body as you say:

Here, revel in my flesh and blood and whatever else you want.
Meditate with complete conviction that this troublemaker enjoys your flesh and blood, and is filled with pure happiness, and arouse the two kinds of bodhicitta in your mind. Or:

Because I had let mindfulness and other remedies lapse, disturbing emotions arose without my noticing them. Since this troublemaker has now warned me of this, he is certainly an expression of my guru or a buddha. I'm very grateful to him because he has stimulated me to train in bodhicitta.

Or, when illness or suffering comes, think with complete sincerity:

If this hadn't happened, I would have been distracted by materialistic involvements and would not have maintained mindfulness of dharma. Since this has brought dharma to my attention again, it is the guru's or the jewels' activity, and I am very grateful.

To sum up, whoever thinks and acts out of a concern to achieve his or her own well-being is a worldly person; whoever thinks and acts out of a concern to achieve the well-being of others is a dharma person. Langri-tangpa has said:

I open to you as deep a teaching as there is. Pay attention! All faults are our own. All good qualities Are the lords', sentient beings. The point here is: give gain and victory to others, take loss and defeat for ourselves. Other than this, there is nothing to understand.

From The Great Path of Awakening : An Easily Accessible Introduction for Ordinary People by Jamgon Kongtrul, translated by Ken McLeod. Copyright 1993 by Ken McLeod.
Published by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston.

How to be angry….

[This post is quoted from the blog at Wildmind.org, where they have wonderful online meditation courses, and inspiring resources. I found it a real paradigm shift to consider HOW to be angry, rather than find ways to annihilate anger. I hope you find it useful as well. -- your blogger pal]

Once when I was listening to the Dalai Lama talk in Edinburgh, he was asked a question that went something like this: “You keep talking about changing the world through meditation and compassion, but isn’t anger faster?” His Holiness answered to the effect that it’s precisely because anger acts so swiftly that we have to be wary of it.

His Holiness’s reply reveals Buddhism’s ambivalent attitude to the emotion of anger. Anger’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fact it can accomplish a lot of good in the world. Anger can simply be a passionate response to something that we know in our hearts is wrong. His Holiness has himself admitted that he frequently feels angry when he thinks about injustice, and particularly the way that the Communist Chinese have treated his homeland and his people. It’s natural — and even right — for us to feel anger in such circumstances. We’d scarcely be human if we didn’t.

At the same time, anger can be such a powerful force that we lose our mindfulness and find that
the heart has become filled with ill will or hatred, which is a desire to hurt others. We move from being angry to wanting to punish or wanting revenge. Just as the Dalai Lama says he experiences anger towards the Chinese, he also says he holds no hatred for them in his heart.

Hatred, with its inherent desire to hurt and damage others is never seen in Buddhist practice as being an appropriate response. Anger may be passionate and fiery, but it simply wants to remove an obstacle or to change things for the better, not to hurt.

Yet although anger and hatred are different emotions — one potentially skillful, the other very definitely unskillful — many people fail to see the distinction. The experience of being angry — the sense of physical arousal, the quickened pulse, the tingling in the hands as we prepare for action — is in many ways very similar to the experience of hatred. And anger, once aroused, can easily lead to the less healthy emotion of hatred, just as a campfire can lead to a forest conflagration.

So how can we teach children — and ourselves — to experience anger in a healthy way? Here are seven steps to a healthier relationship with anger.

1. First, we can learn to accept that anger is a normal, healthy, and potentially creative form of energy. Too often we’ve been taught, as Abbott suggests, that anger is something to be avoided and believe that we’ve failed when anger has stirred. When we try to confine our anger it’s inclined to burst out uncontrollably, or to gnaw us away from the inside, as resentment. When we accept our anger we can relate to it in a more healthy way.
2. Second, breathe! Create a sense of space between you and your emotions by breathing deeply into the belly. Connecting with the body helps stop our emotions spiraling out of control, keeps them in perspective, and helps us to calm down so that we don’t do or say anything rash. If you’re angry when you receive an email, don’t reply at once but wait until you’ve had time to quiet your mind and reflect more calmly.
3. Third, we can appreciate that our anger is our anger. Other people don’t make us angry. Our anger is not their fault. Our anger, rather, is our response to our interpretation of our experience. We need to own our anger and to see that it’s something we’ve given rise to, ourselves.
4. Fourth, we can learn to recognize the difference between anger and hatred. To do this requires a great deal of introspective practice, especially since it’s harder to be mindful when our energy is aroused in anger. We have to examine our motivations, our thoughts, and our words: Do we have a desire to hurt? Do we use belittling, condescending, or insulting language? Are we fixated on winning at any cost? Do we distort the truth? Do we still feel a basic sense of sympathy, friendliness, and compassion towards our opponent?
5. Fifth, we can acknowledge our hurt. Often anger arises in response to a sense of hurt. Even when someone else has suffered an injustice, this can lead to a sense of hurt arising in our own experience. And that in turn can lead to anger. When we mindfully acknowledge the sense of hurt that we ourselves are experiencing we find that we’re less inclined to lash out.
6. Sixth, we have to be prepared to let go of our anger. Healthy anger arises quickly and departs quickly. It doesn’t hang around and fester.
7. Seventh, and lastly, we can cultivate lovingkindness in our meditation practice and in daily life. As we go about our daily activities we can repeat phrases such as “May you be well; may you be happy; may you live in peace.” The basic sense of sympathy that this practice helps cultivate makes it easier to avoid anger in the first place and makes it possible for us to experience anger “cleanly,” without it slipping into hatred.

These seven steps can help us to experience anger less frequently, less intensely, and more cleanly. Rather than experiencing anger as a destructive force we can use it creatively. Rather than our anger hurting people it can become a powerful tool for putting our compassion into action.

Hidden wealth?

Imagine a very poor man living in a decrepit little shanty, the only thing he owns in the world. What he does not know is that just beneath his shanty, but hidden in the dirt, is an inexhaustible vein of gold. As long as he remains ignorant of his hidden wealth, this pauper remains in poverty; but when he attends more closely to his own dwelling, he is bound to discover his own fathomless wealth. Similarly, all we need to do is unveil our own nature, and we will find an inexhaustible source of wisdom, compassion, and power. It is nothing we need to acquire, from anywhere or anything. It has always been there. Seen in this light, the Buddha-nature requires no additions. One does not have to memorize sutras, recite prayers or accumulate virtues to create it. All one needs to do is unveil it.

 

–B. Alan Wallace, Tibetan Buddhism from the Ground Up

When the flood comes….

Even if your house is flooded or burnt to the ground, whatever the danger that threatens it, let it concern only the house. If there's a flood, don't let it flood your mind. If there's a fire, don't let it burn your heart, let it be merely the house, that which is external to you, that is flooded and burned. Allow the mind to let go of its attachments. The time is ripe.
–Ajahn Chah

Special Combo: Faith AND Wisdom!

The Buddha compared faith to a blind giant who meets up with a very sharp-eyed cripple, called wisdom. The blind giant, called faith, says to the sharp-eyed cripple, "I am very strong, but I can't see; you are very weak, but you have sharp eyes. Come and ride on my shoulders. Together we will go far." The Buddha never supported blind faith, but a balance between heart and mind, between wisdom and faith. The two together will go far. The saying that blind faith can move mountains unfortunately omits the fact that, being blind, faith doesn't know which mountain needs moving. That's where wisdom is essential, which means that a thorough understanding of the teaching is crucial.
   –Ayya Khema

A Metaphor for MIND…

Recently, I was watching the buzz of activity in my mind. Thoughts racing around, chasing each other. Crashing. Oooofff. Slam.

Yeah. They’re crashing around like a bunch of hockey players. Then, one of the players goes out of the rink. Into the penalty box? (or the hospital?) Vanished. Just like the thoughts in my mind… vanished… what was I thinking about?

So my mind is like a bunch of hockey players crashing around.

No. Wait a minute. My mind isn’t the hockey players… My mind is the rink. Yeah. Sure. It’s the rink. It contains the wild, crashing hockey players, but it is NOT them.

The rink. But the rink is in the building. My mind must be the building. It’s bigger than the rink. It contains the rink, and the crashing hockey player thoughts, but it’s much bigger! Yeah. It’s the building.

Hold it. Hold it just one minute! The building is in the town… (my mind is the town) on the planet… in the solar system… in the universe… Yes. My mind is the town… the planet… the universe… And just like the universe, which is incomprehensibly large (with or without boundaries), the mind (consciousness) is incomprehensibly large (with or without boundaries?). And now, those crashing thoughts seem like tiny hockey players in a small rink in a huge universe of consciousness.

Like any good hockey mom, the mind watches the action, moderately pleased, sometimes a bit ruffled, knowing that, in good time, the Zamboni machine will slide through and smooth everything over.

What’s in your Wallet? … What’s in your MIND??!!

We are daily advised to think about “what’s in your wallet?” Do you have the right card? With the best benefits? lowest interest? many details to think about, because in our modern society, “what’s in your wallet” is really important.

So, recently, my train of thought jumped the track and began to ask “What’s in your MIND?” Do we pay any attention to what we cram in there? After listening to the Wicked soundtrack on the way to work, I would be “Dancing Through Life” all day. The music infused my mind, and infused my day. Somedays, I “Couldn’t be happier”. The melodies saturated me, affected my mood, and my response to the various challenges that came to me.

I began to consciously choose what song would play before I arrived at school. I realized that last song would color my whole day. I made a point of hearing “Defying Gravity”, “Dancing Through Life”, “Thank Goodness”, or “Changed for the Better”. I chose the one that seemed to offer the energy I needed. And, “Who can say if I’ve been changed for the better… but I have been changed for good.”

Now, I have (as you loyal readers know) switched over to Bliss. I deliberately “Come Into The Light” before arriving at school. It is grounding, and as the melody plays through my mind during the day, it also washes over the conflicts and tensions that come my way.

But, what’s in YOUR mind? I watch our world, and see that so much of what we’re immersing ourselves in (as a culture) is lust without respect, violence without compassion, anger expressed through physical and verbal aggression. There are a LOT of contemporary lyrics that are essentially a verbal assault. And, if that’s the last thing a kid hears before going into school, it’s no wonder the response to tension begins with F…k and proceeds with obscenities and violence.

Yes, I am convinced that we can retrain our minds in phenomenal ways. As I experiment with Buddhist practices, I find that I have learned to respond with compassion to situations that once aroused rage. Not always, but I’m just a beginner. I am also convinced that our music, and media, are constantly training our minds.

My question is “Are you training your mind for the qualities you want?” Are you creating peace and confidence and compassion through your immersion in music and media with that tone? Or, are you creating violence, anger, and aggression by saturating yourself with lyrics and images that lead you that way?

What’s in YOUR mind? If it’s not giving you the best results, doesn’t have the best success, doesn’t help you navigate through life’s challenges, consider switching to a new channel, a new card with some better benefits for you.

We should all give our minds AT LEAST as much attention as we give to our wallets.

Walking the Labyrinth of Life

The Labyrinth is a metaphor for life.

I walked the labyrinth in Concord slowly this evening. When I began, I could see the center (the goal?) not far ahead. The path led left and curved round, and twisted back and after walking about 50 yards, I had progressed the four feet to the center!

Isn’t life just like that? You’re right next to some objective, and you start working on it, and then the path curves round and miles later, or days later, you seem so close again. Then, there is a sharp curve and miles later, you reach the goal.

The main thing is to enjoy the walk. Slow down. See the path, and what it brings to you. You could just clomp over the brick barrier, straight to the center, but what fun would that be? You would have missed the WHOLE labyrinth!

Is the winner the one who gets there first? Or is the winner the one who gets there calmest? Or is the winner the one who enjoys the walk?