The Lake Under The Moon – Metta Teachings

Winter is behind us now. This brings a feeling of light, hope and openness. We can look out of the window at trees and see them forming leaves. Golden Daffodils adorn our gardens once more. The snowdrops and crocuses are also bountiful. This year more than most! I like to think it is not only a new beginning but  also a time to ponder on what lies ahead. Although in the quiet moments  of a Spring day, reflection on what has past is often more on our minds.  Dare we expect more from this new year than the last?  In the old Pali dialect, the language of the Buddha (upanijjhāna),  “reflection” has the self-same meaning that it does in English—it means to be like a mirror or the surface of a deep pond, to receive an impression and hold it without adding anything else. It also means to contemplate or consciously consider. To listen to the inner voice of reason.

Years ago, at Chuang Yen Monastery in Carmel, New York, Bhikkhu Bodhi spoke of this, and of the Buddha’s advice to his 7-year-old son Rahula. The Buddha told his son about the importance of honesty, telling young Rahula to practice reflection—to reflect on the inner and outer consequences before, during, and after doing something. Please consider trying this. The results are subtle but quite amazing. Consider how you feel before you perform an act of generosity, during, and after. Also consider how it feels to do something less than noble or not do something. Let’s say, not to eat or drink too much or be angry or stingy, to un-grasp the hand of lifelong habits. What is amazing is that this type of practice of reflecting on the quality and consequence of our lives is a way to expand time by opening and deepening and enriching the time we have to spare.

In meditation or just being  alone with our thoughts , we allow ourselves to reflect on something that has already happened. We can allow a memory or experience to arise within us, and like the surface of a deep pond, reflecting the moon without fighting it or fleeing from it or freezing it or adding anything at all. Remember that the ancient root of the word, “understand” means to stand under, to allow the truth of something to soak in. It also suggests holding and supporting, standing under our own experience, receiving it. Think of the lake under the moon.

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Crocuses in the garden

Re-written from an article published in Parabola magazine.

Might be a good idea to subscribe. They need supporting.

Recommendation From Thich Nhat Hanh – Inspirational Quotations

Thay

 

In light of the terrible violence all around the world to both human and animals, I thought I would share this poem, with a friend’s encouragement. It’s called “Recommendation” and was written by this wonderful heart teacher Thich Nhat Hanh in 1965 during the Vietnam War, which was ripping his country apart and would only go deeper into violence in the decade ahead.

With his life and teachings, Thay has proved again and again that non-violence does “not” mean non-action, or “idiot compassion,” and that by rejecting violence we *can* skilfully and compassionately deal with even the most difficult issue of life, individually and collectively.

 

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RECOMMENDATION
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Promise me,
promise me this day,
promise me now,
while the sun is overhead
exactly at the zenith,
promise me:

Even as they
strike you down
with a mountain of hatred and violence;
even as they step on you and crush you
like a worm,
even as they dismember and disembowel you,
remember, brother,
remember:
man is not our enemy.

The only thing worthy of you is compassion –
invincible, limitless, unconditional.
Hatred will never let you face
the beast in man.

One day, when you face this beast alone,
with your courage intact, your eyes kind,
untroubled
(even as no one sees them),
out of your smile
will bloom a flower.
And those who love you
will behold you
across ten thousand worlds of birth and dying.

Alone again,
I will go on with bent head,
knowing that love has become eternal.
On the long, rough road,
the sun and the moon
will continue to shine.

I do hope this poem, short as it is, touches you as deeply as it has others with whom it has been shared..

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The glorious rendition of The Chant For Metta by Emee Ooi is gentle and soothing. It speaks of the need to spread love all through the world.  –  Metta, also means “Loving Kindness” which is the focused teaching of Thay.

I See You Mara – Metta Teachings

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We can be very hard on ourselves, can’t we? It’s as if, sometimes, we’re watching out for any tiny hint of a mistake, and then we pounce on ourselves, getting angry, or frustrated, or ashamed. I suspect it’s because we can be. When people are allowed or encouraged to be cruel, they often will be. There’s some inherent cruelty in all of us (to varying extents) and this is kept in check by social norms. Change the social norms so that cruelty is encouraged, and it soon emerges. Here’s the Buddha tells us of another way. We don’t need to be demons to ourselves or others.  We simple need to ask the demons to tea.

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I see you Mara, stay for Tea!

“One of my favorite stories of the Buddha shows the power of a wakeful and friendly heart. On the morning of Buddha’s enlightenment Mara, the fearsome demon who symbolizes the shadow-side of human nature, fled in defeat and disarray. In Sanskrit “Mara” means “delusion” – that craving and fear that obscure our enlightened nature.

But it seems that he was only temporarily discouraged. Even after the Buddha had embarked on his teaching career and become a revered figure throughout Indian, Mara continued to make unexpected appearances. Instead of driving him away, however, the Buddha would calmly acknowledge the demon’s presence saying, “I see you, Mara.”He would then invite him for tea and serve him as an honored guest.

Offering Mara a cushion so that he could sit comfortably, the Buddha would fill two earthen cups with tea and place them on a low table between them. Mara would stay for awhile and then go, but throughout, the Buddha remained free and undisturbed.

You see, when Mara visits us in the form of troubling emotions or fearsome stories, we can say, “I see you Mara,” and clearly recognize the craving and fear that persists in each human heart. The objective is to see what is true and to hold what is seen with kindness….

Our habit of being a fair-weather friend to ourselves – of pushing away or ignoring whatever darkness we can – is deeply entrenched…. We truly befriend ourselves when, rather than resisting our experience, we open our hearts and willingly invite Mara to tea.”

From Tara Brach’s, Radical Acceptance

beautiful sharing!!♥!

You Don’t Have To Be Perfect – The Value Of Kindness

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The Dalai Lama stands for achieving peace and kindness by way of peace and kindness, and since Gandhi and Martin Luther King aren’t around, he’s a placeholder for that kind of position. He describes himself as  a ‘simple monk,’ but that’s wishful thinking. He’s a monk that’s been saddled with the responsibility of shouldering the hopes and dreams of millions of Tibetan people. … He’s doing the best he can with that, and frankly, these are the kind of people we admire. Recently another good soul entered  on to the world’s  arena,  taking on the herculean task of restoring the hopes of millions of Catholics.  I am speaking of the new pope, Francis..

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His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Aung San Suu Kyi during their meeting in Prague, Czech Republic on September 15, 2013. Both Nobel Peace Laureates are in Prague to attend the 17th Forum 2000 Conference on Societies in Transition. (Photo by Jeremy Russell/OHHDL)

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An excerpt from You don’t need to be perfect to have a happy life!

A Happier Life by Tal Ben-Shahar, PhD

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When the Dalai Lama and some of his followers began to work with
Western scientists, they were surprised to find that self-esteem was
an issue, that so many Westerners did not love themselves and that
self-hate was pervasive. The discrepancy between self-love and love
for others—between miserliness toward ourselves and generosity toward
our neighbors—simply does not exist in Tibetan thought. In the words
of the Dalai Lama, “Compassion, or tsewa, as it is understood in the
Tibetan tradition, is a state of mind or way of being where you extend
how you relate to yourself toward others as well. ” When the Dalai
Lama was then asked to clarify whether indeed the object of compassion
may be the self, he responded:

Yourself first, and then in a more advanced way the aspiration will
embrace others. In a way, high levels of compassion are nothing but an
advanced state of that self-interest. That’s why it is hard for people
who have a strong sense of self-hatred to have genuine compassion
toward others. There is no anchor, no basis to start from.

There is much research pointing to the importance of self-esteem when
dealing with difficult experiences. Recently, however, psychologist
Mark Leary and his colleagues have illustrated that especially in hard
times, compassion toward the self is actually more helpful than
self-esteem is. Leary explains, “Self-compassion helps people not to
add a layer of self-recrimination on top of whatever bad things happen
to them. If people learn only to feel better about themselves but
continue to beat themselves up when they fail or make mistakes, they
will be unable to cope nondefensively with their difficulties.”

Self-compassion includes being understanding and kind toward oneself,
mindfully accepting painful thoughts and feelings, and recognizing
that one’s difficult experiences are part of being human. It is also
about being forgiving toward ourselves if we perform poorly on an
exam, make a mistake at work, or get upset when we shouldn’t. Leary
notes that “American society has spent a great deal of time and effort
trying to promote people’s self-esteem when a far more important
ingredient of well-being may be self-compassion.”

http://www.kripalu.org/article/1357/

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Metta – The Value Of Kindness

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I have always felt that kind people are the most down-trodden. They seem to have a certain way of attracting the most unkind to them.   

It all comes down to something called the “Law of Effect”, which refers to the way people interpret and understand the behavior of others. For example, if someone treats you poorly and you treat them kindly, the effect produced by their bad behavior is your affection. By being nice to mean people, you’re essentially creating a reward system for bad behavior. It is true Kind people often end up as doormats for those with less than good intentions.. Perhaps though,  as the image suggests, being kind to unkind people is a lesson in itself.  Although I would not recommend anyone be a doormat for long, best to walk away, knowing you have done your best. Just remember that each kindness changes the world a little. And who knows perhaps one day, the unkind person you spent time on, just might change..   

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Linnaea Bohn wrote in Tiny Buddha the following:

When I’d started an MBA years before, I’d dreamed of changing the world in some significant way by helping others. There was no major in that, so I did an independent major: marketing for not-for-profits.

It was hard to find a job after graduation, since arts organizations in the mid 1970s didn’t see the need to hire an MBA. I realized that if I wanted to share knowledge and skills to change the world in some way, and do it while being kind, I had to go solo.

I went on a solo trek to the Himalayas to clear my mind and spent a month meditating at a small monastery near Kathmandu. I then journeyed to India for a healing purification retreat.

Months later at a Buddhist initiation, I heard the Boddhisattva vows. They were about putting others before self, being kind, keeping’s one’s word, and more. I breathed a sigh of relief. I felt like I’d come home.

I wanted to put those vows into practice in a practical way. At first I thought I would return to Hong Kong as an entrepreneur and send my earnings to Tibetans to start refugee schools. I learned, however, that it would be more beneficial to help refugees create opportunities for work. So I did.

I made the Himalayas my home, and volunteered to help Tibetan refugees develop small enterprises based on their skills and suited to their temperament and culture. This way they could become economically self-sufficient, eliminating the need for charitable donations.

My neighbors in the village where I lived were Punjabi widows—refugees themselves, without any income. Yet they could knit well. I helped them turn their lives around by teaching them designs, colors, and sizes that were in style. I also showed them how to sell these sweaters locally on their own.

It felt so natural to be kind and help others there. Kindness was a way of life for many.

A story that comes to mind involves a woman and a dog.

Dogs that are not used as shepherds in the Himalayas are feral. They look for scraps and fight a lot. People are terrified of the packs.

One day I heard a puppy whimpering. Village children, who had taken it as a temporary toy, helped me retrace their path to place the pup near a sibling. The mother dog came out of hiding to wash and feed the pup. Her bony body somehow produced milk for five puppies.

From that day I cooked brown rice and eggs for her, concerned that she herself would starve from feeding them. I would leave the food near the home she’d dug for her family under a log in a small wooded area.

One day that spring there was a long, slow snowstorm that prevented me from feeding her.

At daybreak the next day I placed some food near her shelter, but she didn’t come out. I waited and then slowly approached the hole. There was a snow-covered burlap sac covering the mouth of the shelter, but not one dog. Someone had been kind to protect the family from the storm, but the dogs were gone.

As I walked though the small woods looking for them, I noticed a house. A woman came to the door. Using hand signs and imitating the whimpering sounds of pups, I asked if she had seen the dogs.

She took me by the hand to a tiny abode. On the veranda of this one room structure was a woman cooking a small copper pot of rice on a stick fire. Around the fire were the mom and pups, lying comfortably and soaking in the warmth. The woman’s own children and husband were inside under a blanket on the single rope cot.

This frail bodied woman from Rajastan, in her thin cotton sari and shawl, shared her family’s only pot of rice with the dog family.

She and her husband were day laborers, carrying boulders on their heads as roads were being excavated through the mountains.

They earned less than a dollar a day for their combined work. In a bare room with a doorway as the only opening, they lived with clothes suited for the 120 degree heat of the desert, eating one meal a day.

This woman unflinchingly shared her food with this female dog and her puppies. She didn’t have much to give, but that didn’t stop her from giving what she could.

I had come to India to help others, with a vision to change the world in some small but significant way. Yet without intent, education, or desire, this woman changed my life in a very significant way. Her instinctive kindness that received no appreciation, let alone results or rewards, softened my heart.

 I see that being a kind human has value in any walk of life. This is what I took with me into future work. Even though I many not be the manager other people want me to be, I am valuable in any organization because I am kind.

I care about the people who work around me. I care about each individual client, customer, and colleague. This may not be a prerequisite for a successful career, but it’s my prerequisite for a successful life.

Each kindness changes the world. Being kind is what makes my world significant.

Whatever values you hold dear—whether it’s kindness, gentleness, calmness, or honesty—live it. Be it, even if the people around you don’t seem to value the same things; especially if the people around you don’t seem to value those things. That might be the very reason you came into their lives.

p.s. want to thank all you people that like my posts.. I do appreciate it and your kindness is helping me over quite a serious illness. So hugs from moi… Merci.  Might add, that I have changed the theme, so will have to go through back posts and delete all photos that are too large or bold for the new layout… bear with me…

Precious Treasure – Metta Teachings

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Karma means we have had many former lives and many more will follow. Each lifetime could well see us born into an entirely different culture, and if the culture is evolved, then it can serve us by helping us to develop our own evolution to become a free being, rather than dominating us to produce or die for the culture itself. Unfortunately, this dark age goes against the grain, and has mostg of the planet striving for all the wrong ideals. We see ourselves as hopelessly lost in a world that is constantly urging us to worship only money and power.

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Human life itself is a precious treasure. The metaphor of the Buddhist sutras is that the human embodiment, especially with all wits intact, and especially in a country where there’s a teaching and the idea that evolutionary liberation is possible, then such a life is the precious jewel of the human embodiment. And the Buddha said, if you lose through suicide your precious human life, endowed with liberty and opportunity, that precious jewel that you have now, it’s like throwing a jewel in the trash.

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And, to get it back, to work your way back through generosity, morality, patience, wisdom, meditation, to achieve these virtues and come back to be a human, will be as likely as if the old turtle, (who lives in the great ocean and surfaces once every hundred years,) were to surface and put his neck through the hole in a golden yoke that just happens to be floating in the ocean. So, what a treasure it is to have a human life.

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There is the idea that there are treasures everywhere if we had the wisdom to see. There’s the story about the great adept Padma Sambhava in one of his biographies. Someone gave him a bag of gold dust. He took the bag and scattered it to the wind, and the person was really shocked because he had spent a long time collecting this – it was his offering. Then Padma Sambhava snapped his fingers and shared his vision for a moment with that person: they perceived all of the mountains and sky and everything as solid gold, they saw that there was no difference between the earth itself and the gold.

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Enlightened vision sees everything as a treasure anyway, and the only thing that makes us not see everything that way is our ignorant self-obsession which makes us feel that the universe is an alien thing, separated from us, that we’re against it and we must conquer it. By this way of thinking, we are fighting a losing battle with the universe. That’s the notion of ignorance in Buddhism. And the ignorance is what makes us unable to find the hidden treasure right in our own cells, right in our own atoms, right in our own brains…

-Robert Thurman

The Buddha of Great Compassion – Metta Teachings

http://web.singnet.com.sg/~alankhoo/Avalokitesvara.htm

The Bodhisattva of Great Compassion

The Sanskrit name “Avalokiteshvara” means “the lord who looks upon the world with compassion”.

Translated into Chinese, the name is “Kuan Shih Yin”or Quan Yin.

Kuan: observe
Shih: the world / the region of sufferers
Yin: all the sounds of the world, in particular, the crying sounds of beings, verbal or mental, seeking help

Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva is the embodiment of great compassion. He has vowed to free all sentient beings from suffering.

Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva is has great powers and can help all sentient beings.

His skilful means are limitless and he can appear in any form in all the six realms of existence to relieve the suffering of the sentient beings who live there. He vowed to rescue those who call on him when they are in suffering, for example, when caught in a fire, shipwrecked or facing an attack.

In the Lotus Sutra, Shakyamuni Buddha said that if a suffering being hears the name of Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva and earnestly calls out to the bodhisattva, Avalokiteshvara will hear the call and relieve that being from his suffering.

According to the Huayen Sutra, Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva transforms himself into forms that suit the nature of those to be helped. His manifestations or transformation bodies are countless.

e.g. if a boy or girl is about to gain some enlightenment, Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva transforms himself into a boy or a girl to teach the child.

e.g. If a monk is about to attain some enlightenment, Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva transforms himself into a monk.

In short, he can appear as a monk, a nun, or a normal person like you and me. The purpose of such transformations is to make people feel close to him and willing to listen to his words.

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In China, Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva is represented in female form and is known as Kuan Yin. Probably because of Kuan Yin’s great compassion, a quality which is traditionally considered feminine, most of the bodhisattva’s statues in China since the Tang Dynasty (A.D. 618 – 907) have appeared as female figures. In India, however, the bodhisattva is generally represented as a male figure.

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In her hands, Kuan Yin may hold a willow branch, a vase with water or occasionally, a lotus flower.

The willow branch is used to heal people’s illnesses or bring fulfillment to their requests.

The water ( the dew of compassion) has the quality of removing suffering, purifying the defilements of our body, speech and mind, and lengthening life.

In Buddhist art, Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva is sometimes shown with eleven heads, 1000 hands and eyes on the palms of each hand (Thousand-Armed Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva). The thousand eyes allow the bodhisattva to see the sufferings of sentient beings, and the thousand hands allow her to reach out to help them.

Sometimes, he is represented with one head and 4 arms. This is the Four-Armed Avalokiteshvara, worshipped by all Tibetans as “Chenrezig”, the Holder of the White Lotus. It is in the male form which has two hands in the praying gesture while the other two hands hold his symbols, the Crystal Rosary and the Lotus Flower.

There is a sacred place for the worship of Kuan Yin in China – the Putuo Mountain. It is actually an island located near the city of Ningpo, in Zhejiang Province. There are many stories of Kuan Yin’s miraculous appearances at Putuo Mountain.

Actually, anyone can be like Kuan Yin. You may say that you don’t have a thousand eyes or a thousand arms or that you lack skilful means, but it is your compassion that can transform you into a Kuan Yin. With your eyes and hands, you can help others. With your compassion, you can bring peace and tranquility to this world.

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The Mani Mantra (The Mantra of Universal Protection) : OM MANI PADME HUM

 

would like to add a great big thank you to those people who like – it helps me enormously to know just what you all like and would like to hear more about… thanks ~ 🙂

Why Fear When I Am Here – Metta Teachings

from a very old scanned photo

 One of the most powerful skillful means one can bring to feelings of fear is skillful *attention.* To bring attention, and even curiosity to feelings of fear, can help us break through our aversion to dealing
with what we fear. The key is developing a curious “what is this?” mind, for fear is never what it seems to me on the surface. And if we go all the way to the roots of our fears, we find nothing *intrinsic* about our fears—that is, in Buddhist terms, fear is “not self” and without our self-identification with fear it *can’t* stick to us, or stick around.

So whether we feel our fear is rational, or irrational, the point is to begin to “own” the fear by consciously embracing it in our thought. (Well, if not embracing it; at least taking an *attentive” peek at it.    Maybe even give it a little poke! Take your time. Facing dragons takes courage, for sure!

Just remember that, paradoxically, while fear is, absolutely speaking, “not self,” in terms of the ego and personality, it’s actually *your* fear, *your dragon.* You own *it,* however much it may now seem to own you! And therein is your secret to your power over fear).

So, in the end, it’s our aversion to fear, our avoiding of looking into fear, that gives fear its hypnotic power over us. The more we can
pay mindful attention to fear—which is by the way different than being possessed by fear or obsessed by fear—the more we can begin to
dissolve the tight knot of energy and release what binds us.

Yes, it takes courage, but the if you look deeply, you will find, right in the midst of the fear, the very courage you need to do so. No
one need be a victim of or slave to fear. But as is often the case, the only way out is through. “What is this?” “Is that so?”

piece written by my Buddhist friend, Steven.

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