Resolutions for contentment

With the coming of 2012, Tibetan Buddhism is easily accessible, even in Adelaide! Here are some teachings from Khentrul Rinpoche to get us on the right track in the new year.

What is meditation?
Meditation is not just about being calm and quiet, it has a broader brush. When you meditate, do it to benefit all sentient beings (including yourself).

Meditate to develop:

• compassion
• wisdom
  
• love

If you are mindful, you will be more happy because you will be stronger and more stable. Being strong helps you to recognise and accept pain rather than denying it.

You need to understand and be mindful of the nature of impermanence. This will help you to stop predicting and to know reality.

In 2012?
Give your resolutions a sense of urgency. Every day we 'die' little deaths (we are always changing). Actually dying is a 'big death'.

• Do important things rather than silly things.
• Prepare for death and you will know what you are going to do with your life. This gives you motivation for your resolutions. Motivation is important because of cause and effect.
  
• Meditate on impermanence (What? So what!).

6 perfections
Practise the 6 perfections:

1. generosity - be mindful of opportunities
2. ethical discipline - right things you try to do (right intention!)
3. tolerance - patience (not following your ego)
4. diligence - inspiration, courage (not wasting time and energy)
5. concentration - you can control your mind
6. wisdom - increase as an outcome of the other 5 practices
   

Practising the 6 perfections will mean you always make the right decision! (and develop extraordinary mind)

When the 6 perfections become perfect they are bodhisattva.

Don't forget the purpose and motivation of meditation.

Our mind is universe. Hari om.

In the body, out of the mind

For an in the body and out of the mind experience, do a walk in Deep Creek, South Australia, like we did the other day. 14 kms of up hill (to a cliff overlooking the sea) and down dale (to a waterfall in a gully) in 33 degrees heat (that's the crazy bit). Actually it wasn't totally an in the body out of mind experience but was definitely physical.

Last bit of the recipe is to do it with other people, a lot of water, and carryable food (but not food that will go off). If you want to extend the experience you can camp, but we didn't. Instead we went swimming up the road (and some of us swam at the waterfall in rather swampy looking water) in the sea at Normanville. You can also have hot chips at the Victory Hotel, top of Sellicks Hill, and wash it down with a beer (my first for many years). Then home to see the effects of this huge effort (slightly sore legs the next day from the climbing up and down hills, including using your hands to pull yourself up on a very rocky path).

No photos to prove it, and no enlightenment (lots of heavy breathing), but it's a great end to the old year (2011) and a great new year's resolution for 2012 (more of the same). Let's all get outdoors and into it, doing natural things in a natural environment! Reads like an ad for living in South Australia, and it is!

View Deep Creek Cove the easy way (on Flickr)

Sogyal Rinpoche teachings

We need to take care of our minds and hearts. 'Mind' is also the 'heart'. Mind is the root of everything. Keep your mind and heart pure.

• Tame this mind
• Commit not a single unwholesome action
• Abandon negativity
• If you cannot help, at least don't harm
• Be wisely selfish
• Practice good heart

Your happiness is connected to the happiness of others (inter-being). All the happiness in this world comes from thinking of others.

Knowledge and wisdom are the antidote to ignorance.
Love and compassion are the antidote to negative emotions.

If you tame negative thoughts and emotions you can master and transform your mind and perception.

If you have a lot of anger, 90% of your perception is tainted by it.

All fear and anxiety comes from the mind that is untamed. Transforming your mind dissolves anxiety and fear.

'The mind can make a heaven out of hell or a hell out of heaven.' (John Milton)

Your true mind is much more than thoughts and emotions.

• Ordinary mind = clouds
• Ultimate mind = sky

Meditation
Meditation separates ordinary mind from the true nature of mind: it is the process of coming to know your mind:

• relax your mind
• allow your mind to be open, spacious, calm and completely aware
• let thoughts come and go
• be in the present moment
• allow (don't block, don't follow thoughts)

Presence of mind = centre of awareness
Thoughts are not you, emotions are not you

Remain in a state of non distraction. Distraction and worry will gradually disappear. Be relaxed and open (not defensive).

You will get less involved in what you perceive - rest your attention on the sensory information and disengage from the emotional information. You will accomplish more with less effort.

1. Slow down to become more aware of your reactions.
   Don't alter your mind - leave it in its own state. Allow your mind to settle (calm abiding). Peace will bring clarity will bring awareness will bring centredness (BEING).
   Slowly the ego will begin to dissolve.
2. Observe without judgement. If you grasp it you become it. Catch yourself before it catches you. 'In all my actions may I examine my mind.' Don't feel your emotions (eg anger); let them arise and dissolve. Thoughts are not you, emotions are not you. Once you realise this you are not afraid of them.
3. Listen to teachings again and again. Work with yourself.

Advice for daily living
Life is precious; don't waste it.

• Always forgive
• Develop good heart
• Pure motivation
• Abandon laziness
• Acquire wisdom

The true meaning of life is reflected in death. Your ordinary mind dies with death. Your true nature appears. The moment of death holds the possibility of enlightenment.

• Don't analyse and think too much
• Be intelligent rather than intellectual
• Rest if your mind is too active
• Use not just heart but reason
• Analyse ego and anger (they are your enemies)
• Examine your assumptions

We are not permanent.
We are not singular.
We are not independent.

Random notes - Value of values

My random notes from a recent meditation session run by Stephen Taylor (may my blog make you famous) go as follows:
What is your passion?
What light your heart?
Most of us are a living a lie
Help yourself to become free
Follow your bliss
Passion vs addiction
What is worth doing?
Here's a good one: AS WE RELAX THE GEM STARTS TO GLOW (why is relaxing so hard?)
Looking can get in the way
Cleanliness - means not just washing on the outside but also on the inside, and not just metaphysically but physiologically (great big words) - detoxing makes you more sensitive (found this with salt) and can also mean dropping judgements (one for me to work on)
Meditation = dropping, relaxation, quietness, naturalness and more
Pathway to self knowledge - be aware of the pattern but cast aside all else (garbage)

And finally, the 'value of values' - here they are, all 20 of them from the text of Srimad Bhagwad Geetha (courtesy of Krishna Prasad):
1. Amanitvam
2.Adambhitvam
3.Ahimsa
4.Ksanti
4.Arjavam
5.Acharyopasanm.
6.Saucham
7.Sthairyam
8.Atmavinigraha
9.Indriyartheshu Vairagyam
10. Anahankara
11.Janmamrtyujaravyadhiduhkhadosanudarsanam
12.Asakthi
13.Anabhisvangah Putradaragrahadisu
14.Nityam Samachittatvam Istanistopapattishu
15.Mayi Cha Ananyayogena Bhaktih Avyabhicarini
16.Vivikthadesasevitvam
17.Artih Janasamsadi
18.Tattvajnanarthadarsanam
19.Adhyatmajnananityatvam
20.Jnanam
As I get wiser I may say more about these - referring to my notes of course!

Being active

By active in this case I mean politically. Never has there been a better time in Australia to become involved in politics. It is even interesting enough to talk about socially! Now that we have a system which is not so blatantly lighter grey and darker grey (Labor and Liberals) but has green (The Greens), and shades of black and white (the Independents) we can all say hurray!

It may not work so well in practice but at least the debate will come back into the ring. More opinions will be heard and hopefully stuffy pollies will not assume to know (as Howard always kept saying and sadly, I think, occasionally Rudd) 'what the people want'. No assumptions please. We are all individuals, or independents, and as our independent MPs have shown, we can therefore be moved in mysterious ways.

So the Aussie Federal Election left me exhausted and in a heap once it was finally over. The lapse of time when we didn't know the outcome was a slide into emptiness brought on by an unfamiliar involvement in the affairs of the world (Australia). It was a very personal feeling for me, like what I felt when I graduated and there was a bit of a hole in my life. Then we found out the result, and I felt as elated as the day I graduated. Oh may politics always feel this personal!

Telecommunications and transport

Otherwise known as phone and car - the two hardest things to live without in the western world in my opinion. Even I can't do without them at this stage, yet at one time it was perfectly normal to live without them. I was a young child when we got a phone and car and can't remember which order they came in but suspect it was both at the same time!

I lived without a phone for a week, and when it was reinstalled the first two calls were from spruikers, which made me wonder why I had wanted it back on so badly. I deftly got rid of them, but know now why I wanted the phone back on. So I had the freedom to make contact with the world when I wanted to, regardless of whether the world wanted to contact me.

In the transition to peak oil when there will be implications for every one of us car owners in who knows how many ways, there may come a time when the car is no longer convenient or necessary. Whilst I am keen for that day to come on a number of levels, who can say what other implications are in that outcome, and how it will affect people?

Saving everything

It seems that everything needs saving now - whales, blue fin tuna, sharks, orang utangs, sun bears, the list is endless and that is before you start on rainforests, rivers, wetlands and other natural habitats. It is overwhelming and much as I dip in my pocket, it never seems to be enough. I am almost at the point of saying I don't care, simply because the statistics are so daunting and the task so great.

I went to a Transition Town workshop recently where we did an exercise initiated by Joanna Macy. One person (the future) listened whilst the other (the present) talked about what it was like to participate in saving the world (well not quite, but being part of a movement to bring change to a long-suffering world). Another exercise was to look at someone intently (not easy) and imagine their ancestors standing behind them. Afterwards I wondered whether the American Indians might have done this exercise when looking at the white invaders but in reverse - wondering what the future generations of this people would be like, and what world they would get from their ancestors.

I feel sorrowful that the creatures that least deserve it are suffering first, and the creatures that have brought on this world of turmoil and change are suffering least and will definitely suffer last. Why should it be this way? My neighbour apologised the other day for the inconvenience building next door had caused me. Nice as it was, I keep thinking of the people in Africa who have to walk miles each day... and for what? Brackish water. To survive.

My sole consolation in this world of shifting events is the Buddhist saying: Maybe good. Maybe bad. This great turning (Joanna Macy) may go either way, for better or for worse, and that is what we take on when we are born into this world. But now the world is Eaarth rather than Earth, less friendly than friendly, and we know not what we do or where we are headed.