Episode 92: The Paramitas: Challenging the False Promise of Security

[This episode originally aired on Oct. 23, 2023]  Many classical Buddhist texts on meditation say that the best place to meditate or to practice is a quiet place in the forest, free from distractions, pleasant and refreshing  •  but what if you're a busy mother? what if you're struggling to pay the bills by taking on three jobs? what if you're dealing with a chronic illness? what then?  •  if we spend all of our time resenting the circumstances we're in, we will be frozen and unable to do anything  •  at some point we simply have to surrender to the circumstances we are in  •  we might not have the time to go on retreat, or to practice, or even have a moment when we're not dealing with our life as it is  •  but we can always practice kindness to ourselves and others; that takes no time  •  we can also apply mindfulness and awareness to whatever we are dealing with  •  and we always have the possibility of opening our mind out beyond our particular personal suffering, to place our suffering in the context of the countless things other beings are going through  •  when we notice our mind freezing or imploding, we can find little openings, little breaks in the momentum  •  we can glimpse little gaps in the solidity of what we're experiencing, little rays of possibility  •  and from those little rays, we can reconnect ourselves over and over when we lose it in the harshness of the circumstances of our life.

[This episode originally aired on Oct. 16, 2023]  In Buddhist psychology, even large scale events and large emotional upheavals can be traced back step-by-step to simple little things  •  just a thought, just an idea, just a memory, just a little emotional undertone can quickly expand and expand until it's out of control  •  you could view this as bad news in seeing how quickly things escalate beyond our control, or you could think of this as good news in that even difficult and intense situations can be traced back and we can unravel them, get to the source, and thereby undercut their power  •  mindfulness practice is a way to observe this process in some detail  •  we can begin to discern what we're actually reacting to when we have our various reactions  •  is it something that’s actually happening? Is it a thought, a pre-existing emotion? Are we reacting to what's actually going on, or are we reacting to this knotty mix of thoughts and emotions we carry around with us all the time?  •  it's worth exploring; instead of being caught in a world of pre-existing conditions, we could begin to engage directly with what is actually going on here and now.

[This episode originally aired on Oct. 9, 2023]  The Mahayana path, the path of the Bodhisattva warrior of wisdom and compassion, has a great deal to do with how we relate to ourselves and to one another  •  what kind of others do we include in our world?  •  what kind of underlying feelings do we honestly have about the people in our lives and the people we encounter?  •  everybody is worthy of our attention, but usually we engage in a lot of picking and choosing: who is worthy of our attention and who is not  •  the practice I want to briefly introduce is the practice of exchanging oneself for others, which is the basis of tonglen practice — the practice of taking and sending  •  this practice is very simple: it's putting yourself in the shoes of another  •  you can do this for all sorts of possible scenarios, but a very common one is looking at how we relate to people we consider to be our superiors; how we relate to people we consider to be our inferior to us; and how we relate to those we view more or less as equal  •  when we can see situations from different perspectives, we can cultivate the ability to treat others respectfully and with the same regard, whether they're more powerful than us, whether they're less powerful than us, whether they're intimate friends, or whether they're strangers.

[This episode originally aired on Oct. 2, 2023]  The Mahayana, or open path, is the path of the Bodhisattva — the enlightened warrior of wisdom and compassion  •  at the core of the Mahayana path is an outrageous vow, called the Bodhisattva vow, where we vow to emulate the great Bodhisattvas of wisdom and compassionate action  •  the Bodhisattva vow, conventionally speaking, makes no sense at all  •  you vow to save all sentient beings as vast as they are throughout space and time  •  you might think, that's pretty darn presumptuous to make a vow like that; you might even call it absurd, impossible  •  nonetheless, you do it  •  it's crazy to think that you could save all sentient beings, or even hold that thought at all  •  but you keep going, and if you're fortunate, you might be able to save at least someone, or some being, from some level of suffering  •  the vow of the Bodhisattva is not dreamy or romantic; it is grounded in very gritty reality of life for sentient beings of all kinds who suffer greatly  •  but because you see this pattern so clearly, you also see the flip side  •  instead of saying, “Wherever there are sentient beings, there are conflicting emotions,” you could say, “And wherever there are sentient beings, there's wisdom, there's intelligence; there's love and kindness and compassion. There are efforts to help. There is a lessening of pain, sorrow, and suffering.” In approaching the Bodhisattva path, you recognize that both of these patterns are true.

[This episode originally aired on Sept. 26, 2023]  This period of history has been marked by incredible leaps in efficiency: things that used to take a great deal of time and effort can get done more quickly and easily than ever  •  but there are whole areas of reality that can't be accessed by efficiency, no matter how quick or clever or speedy we are  •  in fact, the harder we try and the speedier we get, the further away we are  •  there's a value, at least once in a while, of taking a break from trying to be efficient, from trying to get somewhere faster  •  I’m not talking about rejecting the idea of efficiency, replacing it with some other approach; it's more about recognizing the limits of that attitude and that approach, and our tendency to apply it where it doesn't really fit  •  I have an old dog who I take on “walks,” although they're very, very slow, and he's very, very stubborn  •  if I think of these walks as walks, as exercise, or as trying to get somewhere, accomplish something, I just get more and more frustrated and impatient  •  but when I just drop that whole concept and just relate to the dog sniff by sniff, it's actually quite enjoyable.

(This episode originally aired on Sept. 19, 2023)  In Buddhist psychology, a lot of emphasis is placed on the process of perception because the way we perceive —and misperceive — has tremendous consequences  •  in grade school we are taught an oversimplified view of what it means to have a sense perception: there's an object out there, and there's the eyeball, and the brain, and boom, just like that, a perception  •  you might say, I saw an apple, but of course you never just see an apple — you see everything around the apple as well  •  all of that came into your little eyeball, and you just decided to say, I saw an apple  •  you made a choice; that’s an example of a filter  •  in addition to filtering, we engage in framing: we place things within a particular frame — a frame of assumptions, a frame of agendas, biases, and prejudices, simple associations, or memories  •  and finally there are blind spots, which is when we just don't see things at all, and we don't realize we don't see them  •  as we look into patterns of perception and misperception, we can see how many of our troubles start out just on a simple level of how we first see things  •  by recognizing and seeing through such patterns, there's a chance that our perceptions might begin to be a bit more free and open.

[This episode originally aired on June 6, 2023]  There are many ways to look at the connection between spirituality and our everyday lives  •  in the Buddhist tradition, the basic components are very simple and straightforward: they are wisdom, compassion, and effective action  •  an image that  illustrates how theses three components work together is that of a wheel — a wheel with a hub, spokes, and a rim  •  the hub at the center connects the wheel to the energy source; it distributes that energy through the spokes to the rim  •  in terms of the Buddhist path, that hub involves working with the mind   •  the cultivation of mindfulness and awareness is central; everything that happens revolves around that central hub  •  the spokes of the wheel point to the skills and qualities we need in order to cultivate compassion action  •  the rim is the  point of contact with the grittiness of the road  •  this wheel is not up in the sky somewhere; it is connected with the ground of ordinary living, with the challenges and struggles of everyday life. 

[This episode originally aired on May 30, 2023]  When the Buddha spoke of being “a son or daughter of noble family,” what was he referring to?  •  in India, where the Buddha taught, there was a caste system with very clear distinctions between the noble castes, the less noble castes, and the untouchables  •  the closest thing in many Western societies is being born into wealth or being born into poverty  •  with extreme wealth comes access to extreme power; you basically enter a different dimension, one accessible to only the privileged few  •  but the Buddha completely redefined the meaning of “noble”  •  you are acknowledged as a son or daughter of noble family the moment you commit yourself to the bodhisattva path: the moment you dedicate your life to the service of others, to alleviating the suffering of sentient beings  •  the Buddha replaced the idea of nobility as status with nobility of character  •  and from that perspective, a noble one could be of any cast, any class, any culture, any gender  •  as a member of the noble family, you embark on a path of cultivating body, speech and mind, not just for yourself, but for the benefit of all beings.

[This episode originally aired on May 23, 2023]  Today’s topic is perception, how we see our world  •  each of us sees things a little bit differently, and optical illusions highlight this fact  •  in one well known optical illusion, some people see a chalice, while other people see two women facing each other  •  which is it?  •  you might see a chalice when everyone around you sees two women  •  the problem begins when we take our version as solid and real, when we clamp down on our particular way of viewing the world and close our mind to any other possible options  •  it's humbling to recognize that everything we see is from our particular point of view, but there's also something very liberating in recognizing the power of our perceptions: there's a freedom in knowing that how we perceive things is not fixed  •  when we begin to see through this pattern of assumptions being taken as reality, we see openings, we see possibilities  •  there's room to connect with others because we don't start with the assumption that they're in the same world as we are  •  we recognize that we're in different perceptual realities, and we can use that understanding to connect at a deeper level.

[This episode originally aired on May 16, 2023]  I find it inspiring to discover wisdom in the midst of so many ordinary stories, even simple children's stories  •  the Wizard of Oz is one such story  •  the main character is Dorothy, whose life changes completely when she is swept up in a tornado and lands in a magical place called Oz  •  there she embarks on a journey of discovery, accompanied by her little dog Toto and three companions: a scarecrow, who is looking for a brain; a tin man, who is looking for a heart, and a lion, who is looking for courage  •  together, they follow a path called the yellow brick road, said to lead to the wizard himself — someone who can can give them what they feel they lack  •  but when the trio finally gets to the abode of the Wizard, they discover he is not the savior they were looking for at all; it was all just a show, a circus act  •  however, what the Wizard offered was actually better: he pointed out that each of them already possessed what they were looking for  •  I refer to this kind of twist as Buddhist humor: you need to follow that yellow brick road, go through all of its adventures and challenges, to realize you didn't need to do it  •  that's a perfect example of Buddhist humor — and a perfect example of how a teacher points out to the student their own nature.