Now Is Never Gone - words

There is no refuge from this life
All that's dear
is slowly swept away.

My younger life's dreams
they are gone.

Scattered through the days;
never more to come.

My joyful hopes and plans
are withered and are dried
by the mounting years.

But that is how it is.

So what is it we are supposed to do
when our hopes and dreams
can never be fulfilled?

Need we live a life looking at a past
that is larger than what's left?

Why should that be all
that we have or all we'll ever be?


But this is what I've learned -
This moment is what you have.

It's all you ever had.

That is when your joy is found
For now is where you are.

If no joy exists right now
what hope is there in a time not come?

Corinthians and the Buddha

Christians are familiar with 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, which describes love's qualities:

4) Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5) It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6) Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7) It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

What about the Buddha? Did he teach of these highest types of love?

The Buddha said, "He who abuses the abuser is the worse of the two. To refrain from retailiation is to win a battle hard to win.

"If a person knows that another is angry, yet refrains from anger himself, he does what is best for himself and the other person. He is the healer of both.

"One should do no unkind thing that wise men might condemn. One should not harm another or despise anyone for any reason. Do not wish pain on another out of either anger or jealousy.

"Just as a mother would protect her only child even at the risk of her own life, even so, one should develop unbounded love towards all beings."

The Buddha taught, practiced, and encouraged others on these qualities every day of his awakened life.

Poisonus Speech

Can right-wing hate talk lead to murder?

In Buddhism the answer is yes.

Violent actions begin with violent thoughts. Violent words spread violent thoughts like a virus. Through mass media and the Internet, violence can become pandemic. The radio and television personalities who incite crimes may not be legally culpable, but there is a Karmic consequence to their wrong speech.

In the Dhammapada, the Buddha said,

All that we are is the result of what we have thought. It is founded on our thoughts. It is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him, as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the carriage.

It's useful to think of hateful and divisive speech as a poison. To some people, hateful rhetoric they are marinaded with gives permission to commit violence.

I clearly see the connection between the paranoid megalomania churned out by these radio and television cult leaders. And it seems to me that speech in mass media and the Internet is growing more extreme.

What can we do? As individuals we can keep our cool and not give in to the temptation to answer hate with hate. We can practice the Four Immeasurables and cultivate loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity. We can hope that, eventually, more people will understand that thoughts and speech really are connected to violence.

(This post is extracted from this article.)

Diamond Sutra

I put this together from National Geographic, Brian Dunning and of course, the Buddha's Diamond Sutra. Enjoy.

What do you hope for in this life?

I recently wrote to a friend that I hoped the Buddha was right about rebirth.

I wished for rebirth so that I would have more lives to do the things which I am not able to do in just one life. For example, I would like to write a great book, and play guitar masterfully, and take award winning photographs. Each of these things I do now, but at such a low level of quality. In other words, I wished for future lives so that I could accomplish the great things that I know I will never do in this one.

However, the last item on my list of things to accomplish was to devote the entirety of my days to the study and experience of Buddhism. Of course, I realized that if this goal had been the first on my list, I would not have wished for anything else -- much less to have wished for rebirth.

It is through living the life of Awakening that leads to Nibbana.

The Dhammapada says that Nibbana is "the highest happiness". This happiness is an enduring, transcendental happiness integral to the calmness attained through Awakening, rather than the happiness derived from impermanent things.

Therefore, my efforts should move me into a direction of permanence (Nibbana), and away from the craving for things which will perish.

The Karma of Choice

This is about abortion.

While the Buddha did not give a discourse specifically about this topic, I think the views expressed here are consistent with the Buddha's Five Precepts.

The First Precept is, "to abstain from taking life."

What life? All life.

Is abortion a violation of this Precept? I believe that it is; and as such it carries a Karmic consequence. However, I also believe that allowing executions (for which Texas is infamous), and murders with hand guns (16,000 annually) and deaths due to lack of health insurance (20,000 annually) and death due to an illegal occupation (in Iraq, hundreds of thousands) all carry Karmic consequence.

So people perform (or allow) unskillful and unbeneficial acts all of the time. Even those who rail about the "sanctity" of life, while ignoring many forms of "sanctified" killing.

So why is abortion the taking of life? From what I can gather, Buddhists believe that life begins at conception. (We also take a longer view that life began around 4 billion years ago, and that it has been manifested in many ways.)

However, Buddhists would not impose the First Precept exclusively on the female who is faced with this choice. The First Precept applies to us all, including the killing that we do nothing to prevent (by allowing an unjustified war for example).

All killing has a consequence. When someone we care about dies, we attend a funeral service. Perhaps all deaths should be viewed with this same solemnity.

The Mountains Rolling Upon Us

Then King Pasenadi approached the Blessed One in the middle of the day and, on arrival, having bowed down, sat to one side.

"What do you think, great king? Suppose a man, trustworthy and reliable, were to come to you from the East and on arrival would say: 'If it please your majesty, you should know that I come from the East. There I saw a great mountain, as high as the clouds, coming this way, crushing all living beings in its path. Do whatever you think should be done.'

"Then a second man were to come to you from the West... Then a third man were to come from the North... Then a fourth man were to come to you from the South and on arrival would say: 'If it please your majesty, you should know that I come from the South. There I saw a great mountain, as high as the clouds, coming this way, crushing all living beings in its path. Do whatever you think should be done.'

"If, your majesty, such a great peril should arise, such terrible destruction of human life, what should be done?"

The king replied, "What else should be done but Dhamma-conduct, right conduct, skillful deeds, meritorious deeds?"

The Buddha said, "I inform you, great king, I announce to you, great king: aging and death are rolling in on you. When aging and death are rolling in on you, what should be done?"

"As aging and death are rolling in on me, Lord, what else should be done but Dhamma-conduct, right conduct, skillful deeds, meritorious deeds?"

The Buddha said, "One who practices the Dhamma in thought, word and deed, receives praise here on earth and after death rejoices in heaven."

Buddhist Consumption

This week I encountered in two separate articles the same individual. These articles were published about 30 years apart.

The articles, and this individual, go to the heart of one of the globe's biggest problems: wasteful consumption.

E.F. Schumacher argued in the 1950s that economic production was too wasteful of the environment and non-renewable resources. But even more than that, he saw decades ago that ever-increasing production and consumption -- the foundation of the modern economy -- is unsustainable. He criticized policy makers who measure success by the growth of GNP, irrespective of how the growth comes about or who it benefits.

Mr. Schumacher's economic gospel has two planks: First, he believes in the simple life. He also regards economics as a discipline which should subordinate to the needs of a life guided by moral intelligence.

The least possible consumption consistent with decency and health is his idea of the way human beings need to live.

Economic progress is good only to the point of sufficiency; beyond that, it is evil, destructive, and uneconomic. Schumacher promoted the idea of "enoughness." Instead of ever-increasing consumption, the emphasis should be on meeting human needs with no more consumption than is necessary.

From a Buddhist perspective, it is unwholesome to have an economic system that sustains itself by stoking desire and reinforcing the notion that acquiring things will make us happier.

We end up with a heaping pile of entertaining consumer products that are rapidly discarded into landfills. Wasteful consumption.

And Men Do Not See It

Jesus reconciles mankind to God. Upon the cross is where God and man meet. The cross is where man gives up his animal nature, and becomes Divine.

However, Christians tend to see themselves as one thing and Jesus as another. But in the Thomas gospel, which has all of the flavor of the other four Gospels, a slightly different view is given.

For example, Thomas verse 113: His disciples said to Him, "When will the Kingdom come?" Jesus said, "It will not come by waiting for it. It will not be a matter of saying 'Here it is' or 'There it is.' Rather, the Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it."

In other words, the Kingdom of God is here, now.

Or consider verse 108: Jesus said, "He who will drink from my mouth will become like Me. I myself shall become he."

Jesus is talking from the point of view of the Being of beings, which we call the Christ. Anyone who lives in relation to that is as Christ.

In other words, you are the radiant vehicle of the Christ spirit. And if you are, then you recognize that same radiance in your fellow man, and indeed in all living beings.

That is basic Buddhism.

The Ladder

Our practice requires a lot of letting go.

We prefer to think that it involves letting go of things that we don't like, while allowing us to hold onto the things we do like. But it requires more letting go than that.

The Buddha's strategy in teaching us to let go is to give us better and better things to hold onto. He teaches us to get attached to more and more refined states of well-being, and to become disenchanted with everything else.

It's like climbing a ladder. To climb up the rungs of the ladder, you already have to be holding onto a higher rung before you can let go of a lower one. Finally when you get to the top of the ladder, when there's nothing higher to hold onto, nowhere else to go: That's when you get off onto the roof or where ever you're headed. That's when you can totally let go.

The same principle holds true in the practice: You let go of lower attachments only when you've got something higher to hold onto.

All things in life are impermanent, and attaching yourself to impermanence will lead to suffering.

Therefore, move up the ladder from impermanence to that which is unchanging, and then step off into Nirvana.

Skillful Actions and Karma

Things will get better despite our efforts to improve them. - Will Rogers

A layer below the obvious humor here, there is a sublime Buddhist truth.

A Buddhist will say that things get better or worse depending on our skillful or unskillful actions. Too often, despite our best intentions our unskillful actions hinder improvements.

Mindfulness and concentration provide insight into the present moment, and of how you continually contribute to your present experience and to those in the future.

For example, when others cause us pain, we're intensely aware of what they are doing.

However, often we're not looking at what we're doing which is influencing their painful behavior.

Many times you can't avoid the way others are behaving toward you -- it's past karma. But with mindfulness you can avoid the unskillful ways you're reacting to their behavior. You find that the way you are reacting to the situation feeds back into the situation, influencing what those around you are doing, and making a painful situation worse.

Therefore, the goal is to respond to this moment with mindfulness, and work just with that moment with skillful actions and attitudes. By doing this you are creating new karma to both help the current situation and to feed into a better one in the future.

Eternity is Now

The Buddha represents the power of life in the field of eternity -- to be eternally alive.

Eternity isn't some later time; eternity isn't a long time; eternity has nothing to do with time.

Eternity is that dimension of here and now which thinking and time cuts out.

This is IT; if you don't get it here you won't get it anywhere.

The experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life. - Joseph Campbell

What Do You Lose?

Thus said the Lord Buddha, "If beings knew as I know the results of sharing gifts, they would not enjoy their use without sharing them with others, nor would the taint of stinginess obsess the heart and stay there. Even if it were their last and final bit of food, they would not enjoy its use without sharing it, if there were anyone to receive it."

“Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” (Matt 19:16) Jesus told him, “If you want to be perfect, go and sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

But when the young man heard this, he went away sad, for he had many possessions. (Matt 19:21, 22)

What is it you lose by clinging to your possessions?

On the Origin

This week marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of two men: one an observer, the other a visionary.

Here I will address the observer, Charles Darwin, and what the Buddha taught of the subject of origins.

Darwin was a mild-mannered Englishman who, through observation, revealed a way for scientists to explore the glorious complexity of life, rather than merely accepting it as an impenetrable mystery.

A recent survey indicates that 39% of Americans believe in evolution.

For some, Darwin's work seems to challenge their religion, morality and social tradition.

Why should that be the case?

Let's look at Buddha's view. His teachings have as a central role the concept of skillful and unskillful thoughts, words, and deeds.

He refused to address many metaphysical questions, such as the origins of the universe. He saw them as irrelevant or counterproductive to the task at hand: that of escaping from the stress and suffering inherent in all of our lives. This knowledge is not required for living a skillful life, nor leading a person to Awakening. (That's not to say that scientific discovery is irrelevant; it is very much so. It just isn't relevant to understanding the Four Noble Truths.)

Jesus provided the same general view, when He spoke of the two commandments.

If those of faith focus on these by bringing them into their daily life, how could any scientific pursuit be a threat?

What Do You Fear ?

There's so much fear in our lives.

If there's greed for something, or passion for something, there's the fear that you're not going to get it; or the fear that once you have got it, you're going to be deprived of it.

Then there's the fear based on anger. You know that if a certain thing happens it's going to hurt, you're going suffer, so you're afraid of it.

Lastly, there's the fear of delusion, of what you don't know. There's the sense of fear that there may not be any meaning or purpose to life; that it's just pointless suffering.

The purpose of meditation is to dig into the roots of these fears. Ask yourself "What exactly does my happiness depend on?" People will allow their happiness to depend on a whole lot of conditions; their health; the economy, the climate, the political situations, the continued beating of certain hearts.

So what do you do? You learn to look inside. You learn to develop a happiness less and less dependent on things outside, and more and more inward qualities. Since much of our happiness depends on undependable things, meditation points to a dimension beyond the reach of things that could harm our happiness.

The teachings of the Buddha takes you from the ordinary miseries of human life and leads you beyond, to a dimension where there is no misery.

The practice of this learning helps you remove the greed, passion, anger and delusions of your life.

When these are gone, you are left only with happiness.

The Grain of the Wood

An important part of the Buddhist practice is discernment. That is, which qualities in the mind are skillful and which are unskillful. The skillful ones help make your knowledge clearer, make you see things more clearly -- things like mindulness, concentration and discernment, together with the qualities they depend on: virtue, morality and persistence. These are the good guys in the mind. These are the ones you have to nurture, the ones you have to work at. If you don't work at them, they won't come on their own.

The Buddhist practice is like polishing wood. The grain is already there in the wood, but unless you apply the oil, unless you polish it, it doesn't shimmer, it doesn't shine. If you want to see the beauty of the grain, you have to apply the oil, you have to work at it. You don't create the grain, but applying the oil is what brings out the grain already there.

So practicing the Buddha's path is like polishing away at the mind to see what's of real value there within the mind. That's what the mindfulness, the persistence, the ardency, and all the other terms the Buddha uses that suggest effort and exertion.

Exposing and beautifying the grain of your mind, and ultimately the grain of a skillful life, requires the daily effort of the Buddha's practice.

Meditation May Protect Your Brain

For thousands of years, Buddhist meditators have claimed that the simple act of sitting down and following their breath while letting go of intrusive thoughts can free one from the entanglements of suffering.

Now, scientists are using cutting-edge scanning technology to watch the meditating mind at work. They are finding that regular meditation has a measurable effect on a variety of brain structures related to attention.

A team of Emory University scientists reported that experienced Zen meditators were much better than control subjects at dropping extraneous thoughts and returning to the breath.

The Emory team tested Zen meditators and non-meditators.  They discovered that the meditators, once distracted were able to quickly return to focus.  The non-meditators were easily distracted and had difficulty returning to and maintaining focus.

It is widely known that people lose neurons (gray matter) and have more trouble concentrating as they age, the study published last year by the Emory team found this wasn't true of the Zen practitioners.

What they saw in the meditators was pretty much a straight line. There was no decrease with age in their gray-matter volume.

So meditate today; your mind is a terrible thing to waste! 

A Buddhist's Merry Christmas

Let's explore how a Buddhist can wish you a Merry Christmas.

First let's recognize two secular things about the holiday:  1. Through the centuries (even before Jesus), winter festivals were the most popular festival of the year; and 2. The Christmas season has become a major event for many retailers.

For Christians, it marks and honors the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, and all the promise found by his living, dying and resurrection.

What is the spirit of Christmas?  Many would say that it is being with family and friends, exchanging gifts, aiding the less fortunate or those who are suffering, and being generous.

This agrees with the Buddha, who taught that what we own or have should be used for the benefit and happiness of others. 

When giving, we should not perform charity as an act of our body alone, but with our heart and mind. There must be joy in every act of giving.

We give because we realize that we have enough. We give to express loving kindness or compassion for another's suffering. 

There are many things which we can give. We can give material things: food for the hungry, and money and clothes to the poor. We can also give our knowledge, skill and time to projects that benefit others. We can provide a sympathetic ear and good counsel to a friend in trouble. We can give our blessings for peace, wellness and happiness to all beings.

We can joyfully give these each minute of every day.

So I say to everyone, "Merry Christmas" every day!

Impermanence in Everything

A grandmother visited the Buddha in the middle of the day, her hair, face and clothes wet. Her beloved grandson had just died.

The Buddha asked, "Visakha, would you like to have as many children and grandchildren as there are people in Savatthi (the nearby city)?"

"Yes, Lord," Visakha replied.

"But how many people in Savatthi die in the course of a day?"

Visakha answered, "Sometimes ten people die in Savatthi, sometimes nine... eight... seven... Sometimes one person in Savatthi dies in the course of a day. Savatthi is never free from people dying."

"So what do you think, Visakha: Would you ever be free from wet clothes and wet hair?"

"No, Lord."

The Buddha replied, "Visakha, those who have a hundred dear ones have a hundred sufferings. Those who have ninety dear ones have ninety sufferings. Those who have eighty... seventy... Those who have one dear have one suffering. For those with no dear ones, there is no suffering. They are free from sorrow, free from stain, free from lamentation, I tell you."

The sorrows, and lamentations, the many kinds of suffering in the world, exist dependent on something dear. We can love a wonderful person, or a enjoy a beautiful view or a field of colorful flowers, knowing that all of these things are impermanent. Our pain in life comes to us when we expect a permanence that doesn't exist.

Being Thankful

The most basic area in which to be thankful is in having this human life.  It is only through this life that a human learns of the truth of karma, and can affect the karma in this and future lives.

The Buddha has mentioned that there are thirty-one planes of existence within the universes. They are: 

4 States of unhappiness or sub human realms (life in hells, animal life, ghost-worlds and demon-worlds) 

1 Human world 

6 Heavenly realms 

16 Realms of Fine-Material Forms 

4 Formless Realms  

Therefore, every Buddhist is encouraged to mold his or her life according to the Buddha's teaching. One who adjusts one's life according to this noble way of living will be free from miseries and calamities both in this life-time and in the hereafter. 

So you may discount the Buddha's teachings or the other planes of existence. 

But you can ask yourself how your daily conduct shows your thanks for this precious life.