The Five Hindrances

They are ill-will, sensual desire, laziness, restlessness and anxiety, and doubt. Usually the one closest to me is restlessness and anxiety, but amazingly lately it has been laziness; may be it is because I am on vacation in India and don't feel like doing much..;-p. Which hindrance you identify most with?

Witness the process of death...

A bunch of us "jukai(formal precept taking ceremoney in Zen) brothers and sisters", went to visit one of our brothers, who is very sick. He has a terminal illness and might not live long. We sat zazen with him and chanted heart sutra. He is not able to talk any more but he was talking with his eyes. I have never been in presence of a terminally sick person before. It was a first one for me and brought out lot of emotions. I really admired his presence, his strength and his acceptance. There he was - trying to be present in every moment, trying to just be and he was doing it beautifully. It made me wonder how would I behave in face of such a situation. However much we might study or practice, I don't know if any thing can really prepare us for our own death. From my little life experience, even after sitting for so long, as soon as there is a threat to "my self", my defenses go up. Sometimes I am aware enough to see the process and let the defense drop but more often, I fight. Habit energy is there and it is there strong. Well, I should be thankful that I can witness the process some times at least, if not all times..:).

Must practice!!!

Long time, no post! Lots of things were happening and did not have a chance to come to blog site. Actually, did not sit on the cushion much either and saw a clear affect on mental state because of that. Well, at least that made it clear that sitting is important, very important, even if just for 10 minutes a day! I guess I needed to learn that. That is all I want to say today that I have come to know that continuity is important and if I think I can do it every now and then, it doesn't cut it! I had started to lose my fundamentals, mind was getting delusioned more and more and as a result stress just spirals upwards. It was a great learning experience to see how mind plays games if I slack in my practice. With deep bows to Universe.

What is Suffering? - The First Noble Truth

The first noble truth is - Life is suffering. Does it mean Buddha was preaching pessimism and telling every one life is not worth living because it is full of suffering?!? In my experience - nope - that is not what he was saying at all. What he is asking us to do is to analyze what is the so called happiness after which we run so vehemently? We chase happiness so fervently without ever stopping and thinking about its definition and characteristics.

We think of suffering as mental, physical, emotional or financial suffering - times when we are crying out of pain. Other times are either happy times because our ego is getting what it needs to feel good or they are neutral times - times when we don' care. And to us - life is a mixture of these three kinds of experience. However, the suffering when we are crying out of pain is the extreme form of suffering, one we cannot avoid. We endure the unhappy and sad times in hopes that good times will come again and that is what keeps us going.

Now, lets see what Buddha said about suffering --

"Birth is suffering, ageing is suffering, decay is suffering, death is suffering, sorrow, lamentation, pain, sadness, and discontent are suffering, being joined with any disliked is suffering, being separated from any liked is suffering, not getting what one wants is suffering, & getting what one not wants is suffering.." (http://what-buddha-said.net/drops/II/The_1st_Noble_Truth_on_Suffering.htm)

Lets analyze this a bit - see the pattern - anything we "don't" want is suffering. This is also the reason why your suffering is different from my suffering because our wants are different. It is not just anything we don't want, it is also the feeling that comes when we want something, get it and then we are bored of it!!! Now, we want something else. In effect, the happiness that you get by getting something leads to suffering again because either eventually you get bored of it or the thing gets destroyed for one or the other reason. This constant dissatisfaction is what is suffering. It is a subtle form of suffering, not so extreme and obvious which will make us cry, but it is always there, pricking like a thorn, like never quenching thirst - no matter how much water you drink.

When you sit zazen, you become witness to this dissatisfaction. You see for the first time if suffering is driving you or you are driving it. You see how your happiness almost always depends on gaining something, achieving wealth, fame, power, recognition, approval from others etc. Sitting zazen does not give you any magic pill to convert suffering to happiness nor does it result into some kind of "high" that makes you immune to pain. What it does is that it gives you a tool to analyze your definition of happiness and suffering. Hopefully, sooner or later, your definition will change, chase will stop and it will bring peace and contentment which results in true happiness (as per my definition of happiness, yours might be different..:)). It allows you to see the futility of running after impermanent things and renounce both extremes - getting and loosing.

What is Zen?

So, what is really Zen practice? When I did not know much about Zen and started my practice, it did appear something incomprehensible and mysterious to me but over time my understanding of Zen is that is simply awareness. Be aware of what you are doing and why you are doing it. It sounds very simple and we tend to think that we are already doing it. We think that before we undertake any action, we know the what and why behind it. But do we really know? How many things we do because of peer pressure or because of habit or because of social conditioning or simply because of convenience? And how many times do we realize that everything that we do has an effect and it matters, howsoever trivial it might look. Every breath that we take results in CO2 that feeds the plants.

So, what does awareness do? How does it affect the bottom line? Let me tell you, it is one of the most difficult tasks to observe oneself...:) It is lot more easier to watch TV or listen to music than to just sit silently with only oneself for company. My experience is awareness is the key that unlocks the door to contentment and peace. Mind you, I am not saying the door to happiness. Happiness is whole another post. Awareness allows one to judge consequences of one's actions prior to performing it and observe how mind interprets pleasure and pain and attaches itself to these. It allows one to see real nature of phenomena and its life. This in turn leads to more and more wholesome action and less clinging to things that are impermanent - they may give short term please but they will disappear eventually.

Emptiness - what the hell is it?

When I started sitting at the Zendo, I was handed the Sutra book and we were all supposed to recite certain sutras together. It was considered voice zazen - becoming one with voice. I was at a point where I did not want to take part in anything that would even remotely resemble any kind of ritual. In my search, I had found Zen centers to be the least ritualistic institution and since I needed a place which could provide me company for my sitting practice, I figured I would play along with a little ritual.

I chanted the heart sutra for the first time and it made no sense at all!!!! What do they mean when they say everything is empty? All phenomena are empty? There are no eye, ears, nose, tongue or that there are no perceptions and feelings? I have all of these and I feel and touch them, how can they be empty???

Answer came to quite a long time after I started sitting with this question of emptiness. A big part of misunderstanding had to do with the translation of the word in English. By being empty, we usually mean an object to be empty of something. A cup is empty of tea, a glass is empty of water etc. The emptiness that is mentioned in Heart Sutra is not this kind of emptiness. It essentially means that any object does not have an independent existence by itself, it is empty of an independent existence and hence it is subject to impermanence. An object comes into existence based on conditions, for example, an unpleasant feeling happens when conditions such as these are present - criticism, not getting what one wants etc. In the physical world, if we take example of the cushion - we can say that it exists because of cotton, cloth and sewing.

Once we start seeing that objects or people do not have an independently existing self, we stop associating attributes to an object and start to look into conditions instead. This is a big shift in paradigm - to be able to look into contents and understand then rather to look at a certain object as one single thing existing by itself. Looking into contents enables us to understand the "why". Why a certain object or a certain person is behaving in a certain way. With this shift, it is not possible to call anything good or bad. Everything happens as a result of conditions that came together. There is no absolute identity that creates itself.

In search of answer - part II

Well..so here is the second part..As I said, I could not find answers in the space and figured that this method was not going to work for me. It is interesting that I was trying to find if any one else had a similar experience as me and I could not find any one. It is puzzling to me but oh well..BTW the method that I was using was Deepak Chopra's method of meditation.

So, after this, I stopped meditating for a long time. However, I could not stay away from it. Nothing else gripped my attention and made sense. In the meanwhile, I had married my loving hudband and moved to New York from Peoria, IL. Since I could not stay away from the question, I started looking into different meditation techniques again and one choice that seemed obvious was Buddhism. I explored Tibetan method but could not stick with it because of ritualism. I looked some more and came across something called Zen. I had no clue what it was but I figured I would try. So, I went to the Empty Hand Zen center(http://www.emptyhandzen.org/) in New Rochelle for an introductory session. And I was thrilled!! This is a place where the teacher gave simple instructions, did not promise any nirvana or any other kind of magic, just instructed me to sit with myself and observe.

Now, one may ask, so how is this different from what I was doing before? The big difference was "to observe". I was not supposed to stop my mind or manipulate it in any manner but to observe its workings. This to me was the key to the lock. Observe the mind and understand what it is about, how it functions and how it drives. This in my experience is true meditation. It is very easy to get lost in thoughts rather to observe them and that is where the breath comes into picture. It allows you to stay focused in the witness mode. Later I came to know that this is called Vipassana in Buddhism. Samatha or focusing the mind is also important because without that, you can get into witness mode. Now, in my sitting, I fluctuate between Samatha and Vipassana, getting into Samatha so that Vipassana can happen.

I wanted to put this out there for people like me who are exploring. I could not find any resources or any one to talk about what I experienced when I was trying to get into the "space" of mind without any thoughts and how dangerous it can be. I am sure there are people who have gone through a similar experience. Anyways, the bottom line - mind's function is to think and nothing is gained by stopping the thinking process. One needs to focus the mind and get into concentration, in order to be able to observe but it is not healthy to try to "stop" the mind processes.