Tranquility

Intently I watch the calm,
the still waters of a lake during sunset,
a quiet breeze gently caressing every leaf, every tree.
Gentle echoes emanate but wane,
chasing voices, rushing whispers,
the breath of tenderness across the landscape
as she peacefully slips below the blanket of dusk.
Colors fading, edges no longer seen,
but not into darkness, warmth,
embraced in the stillness of peace.
A distant bird's lonely song
is all that remains,
the quiet voice of life.
the overtone of tranquility.

There is peace all around us. There is tranquility everywhere. Nirvana is here, in the here and now, it is not somewhere waiting for us or hiding from us. What is Nirvana, and what is Buddha Nature if not true tranquility. The harmony of nature, free from judgment, free from worries, free from fear, free from our projections and our selfish manipulation, free from these notions, that is Nirvana.

A picture of a still lake can help remind us of that, it can be a "bell of mindfulness" - a term I borrow from Thich Nhat Hanh. It helps us realize the harmony and tranquility that is inherent in nature, it brings us home. In that sense artwork can embody the dharmakaya. In music you can hear the sounds of nature, the harmony of Nirvana. All of these forms of creative art can help heal us, can help transform our suffering into peace, they can all help calm the waters of our anger and our fear.

Even during a great volcano there can be tranquility. Like all things even rocks change. The molten lava is rock that has sustained us for millions of years, the lava is a part of us just like the sky is a part of us. It may seem angry, but lava soon cools and turns back into rock, once again at the service of nature. It is not consumed by anger, it doesn't seek revenge, it has no notions of good or bad. The lava is the rock, the lava is the mud, the lava sustains life and the lava transforms life. Like the sunshine it provides energy that is necessary to the harmony of nature, that is necessary to tranquility.

So long as we maintain our notions and opinions, we cannot see tranquility. The silent lake at dusk may be hiding fish feeding on aquatic insects, yet without our judgment this can be just as still as the lake itself.

The lake of life, samsara, is tranquil if we only let it be. Nirvana is here if we can only see it.

Kids Without Compassion

In both schools of Buddhism the emphasis seems to be on transforming human nature from what it is natural to a different nature where loving kindness is valued over selfish gain. The question I have though, is whether that is in fact the 'natural' human condition, to be selfish?

There was recently an article on NewsWeek about "kids who lack compassion". There was a study where children were told stories of other children, some of whom were lucky and others who were not. When asked who they would prefer to befriend, the answer was consistently the children who were luckier. Ergo children inherently lack compassion, and compassion is something they learn later in life. You can read the article here:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16286475/site/newsweek/page/1

Many people see this as sign of hopelessness, that there is no future for a compassionate humanity if by our very nature we are born to be selfish. Some even cite evolution as being the cause of this condition. However I disagree.

The problem is not with the children. Children are born, for the most part, as blank slates. Of course they have emotions that are based on selfish gain, that is a matter of survival, but when it comes to their values these are mostly learnt from their parents and environment. If the parents value a boy who finds $5 as being lucky, then so will the children. If the parents value beauty over personality then so will the children.

What if the child who found $5 then used it to buy his first pack of cigarettes? What if the boy who lost that $5 learnt a valuable lesson about looking after his money? Who is the lucker one? Learning values requires looking deeply, and children do have a natural capacity for looking deeply but only if it is nurtured by their parents.

In a nurturing environment children learn that survival can be attained without the need for aggressive behavior. Children learn values of compassion by seeing their parents value compassion, by seeing their children being mindful and looking deeply and not acting on impule and emotion.

This is not a matter of natural selection in evolution, it is not a matter of original sin as some may claim. To say that is dismissing the actual problem, and dispelling our responsibility as a society. This is a problem that can be solved and the solution is in our hands.

Reconciling Buddhism and Christianity

One of Thich Nhat Hanh's pet projects in life is to promote harmony between different religions. After befriending Thomas Morton, and living in the predominently catholic south of France, he was involved in a lot of discussion with Christians, and thus sought to help bring together both Buddhists and Christians so they could work side by side in peace.

The Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh has produced at least two books on this subject, "Living Buddha, Living Christ" and "Going Home: Jesus and Buddha as Brothers". They're good books and I highly recommend them.

However, I personally do not believe there is much room for any true reconciliation between these two religions. There are fundamental differences that I think many followers of both religions would have difficulty reconciling.

For one, Christianity is a fundamentally mystical and mysterious religion. It requires a lot of faith to believe in both the anthropomorphic nature of God and many of the stories in the Bible, not least the resurrection of Christ and his ascention into Heaven.

Buddhism requires very little faith from its followers. Many of its teachings are quite practical, at least those centering on the more practical 'engaged buddhism' that Thich Nhat Hanh promotes. Many of its central teachings on inter-being become evidential with simple meditation.

But that is not the main problem. The main problem is that Christians, like Jews before them, have this fundamental view that man is the center of the universe. Earth, all planets, all animals, all trees and everything in the environment was created purely for the benefit of man. According to Genesis, even women were created for men.

Buddhists, however, believe that there is no self. Not only is man not the center of the universe, but men, women, dogs, trees, grass, planets... everything is part of the one consciousness that is Buddha Nature. Everything is connected and everything is one. Nothing was created for the purpose of anything, and the revelation of these truths is the focus of meditation in Buddhism.

Now in his books Thich Nhat Hanh says that he has met Christians that are more Buddhist than some of the so called Buddhists he knows. The problem here is that these Christians probably are not true Christians. More than likely they have their own beliefs but continue to go to church because they don't fully understand their faith. I actually think there are a lot of Christians in this situation, and it's great that Thich Nhat Hanh's books are helping people to see the differences more clearly.

These concepts are so totally opposite one another that it is impossible for a true Christian to accept the Buddhist way of seeing the universe. There cannot be a personal omniscient God in Buddhism. There cannot be a Christ who was exclusively sent from God to save us from our sins. There cannot be exclusive paths to God through sacraments when Buddhists believe that God, if you can call it that, is everything and everywhere without preference. Thich Nhat Hanh shows us a way to see these aspects of Christianity through the lens of a Buddhist world-view, which is wonderfully revelational, but I doubt it will do much to convert many true Christians.

I think there is hope though. There seems to be to be a growing trend of next generation Christians who seem more open to the less disciminatory beliefs of Buddhism. Call it Gnostic Christianity if you like, there is definitely a trend emerging, possibly influenced by various new movies popular among kids. I think movies like Star Wars (written by the Buddhist George Lucas), the Matrix, Da Vinci Code and several others are all helping shape and open the minds of young Christians to new metaphysical concepts beyond a judgemental God.

I don't think there is much hope for Christians and Buddhists to develop a joint theology. But there is perhaps hope for some Christians at least to look beyond their church for a religion that is less entrenched in dogma, discrimination and often hypocrisy.

Understanding Karma

When you honestly accept emptiness and rebirth, when you fully understand interbeing, it becomes obvious that the actions we take have far reaching consequences. This instills a critical sense of responsibility in our every day lives. The force that drives actions and the consequences that occur is the basis of karma.

It should be noted from the outset that karma is not intended to be some kind of mystical force, some grand judge or divine justice. For a start Buddhism has no such concept of a personified God who would enact that kind of power for his own entertainment.

Karma emerges from the concept of action and consequence, emptiness and rebirth. If we are all not selves but instead part of a universal self, part of Buddha Nature or God, then what we do will have repercussions in a future life or future manifestation. However it shouldn't be viewed as a materialistic or mathematical concept. Karma isn't involved in the material world, but instead manifests in the consciousness as intentions to act.

It is this understanding of interbeing, emptiness and consequences of actions and the intentions that drive those actions that forms the development of compassion in Buddhism.

This is the simplest explanation of karma, but of course there is a lot more. For a start, what does it mean to have good karma or bad karma?

Good deeds do not result in fortune for you in a future life. There are two things wrong with thinking that. Firstly if you honestly believe in noself you will not be thinking in terms of future lives, rather you will be thinking in terms of future manifestations as there is no concept of soul or continuation of soul, there is inter-being and continuation of Buddha Nature. Secondly good karma has nothing to do with fortune.

Remember that the first of the four noble truths tells us that the world is full of suffering. This is unavoidable. Good karma does not eliminate suffering. However good karma can transform suffering and thus eliminate fear and distress.

Imagine a man who has lost his right arm, who was robbed and so lost all his money, was short, had no hair and never married. It might be easy to say that he has bad karma, inherited perhaps from a past life.

However if that man was at peace, despite all the afflictions he suffers, because he is able to have a deep understanding of the nature of the suffering and see through those things to the Buddha Nature, to God, then he probably has better karma than the richest man alive. He is able to take his afflictions, the mud or compost, and transform that into a beautiful lotus flower.

Interbeing tells us that sometimes just a simple smile at a stranger can have far reaching implications. The deeds may not necessarily have any effect on karma, but it could be good karma that caused the intention in the first place.

In Buddhism the consciousness is seen as a garden of seeds, some bad seeds and some good seeds. By watering, by nurturing the good seeds we are able to develop intentions driven by compassion for others and seeing the Buddha Nature in others. This creates good karma. However if we give in to our own selfish needs and water the bad seeds, then we develop bad karma, and interbeing and noself tells us that karma doesn't stop at our self.

Karma is a difficult, if not impossible, concept to fully comprehend. Yet, while easy to dismiss certain events in ones life as being caused by 'bad karma', is a mislead notion. Rather one should meditate on the event and try to gain a deeper understanding of both the event and ones reaction to the event. What is discovered will tell us a lot more about the karma involved in the event.

Rebirth: No Death, No Fear

I have an absolutely wonderful two year old daughter. In her more focused moments she likes to play with lego. However, she doesn't call it lego, she instead calls it 'Abat'.

This comes from the first time she was playing with lego, and we'd show her how to make a robot from the lego. We'd add a head, some eyes, stiff looking arms and feet and voilla - we have a robot. Her eyes and face lit up. She would fondly refer to it as "abat". She would hug it and kiss it, and moments layer completely destroy it and start the process again.

Each time she would put together a few bits of lego and, with the help of her imagination, she would enthusiastically run with the construction over to her Daddy and exclaim "abat! abat!".

She has been doing this for months now, and every time 'abat' looked completely different. No matter what form it takes, even when it's just the components of lego spread out all over the floor, it was still her beloved "abat". If she happens to find a bit of lego under the sofa, she would still say "abat!".

My little Buddha Baby is clearly quite elightened: Our dear Abat is empty of self. She knows that she would never lose Abat, no matter what hardship he experiences, what mutilation he suffers, even faced with total anihilation. In any form of even formlessness therein lies the Buddha Nature of Abat.

When discussing emptiness in the previous post, it's sometimes easy to underestimate its importance. I think you have to understand emptiness before you can have a true understanding of any of the other concepts in Buddhism.

Rebirth is no exception. Yet, again the name can be quite misleading. Thich Nhat Hanh explains this very well, and coins the term 'continuation' rather than rebirth. I think it's fair to say that it is more a matter of transformation or re-manifestation than it is rebirth.

If you truly understand emptiness then you realize that there is no birth. There is no death. The essence of the self that you know cannot be pinpointed to one location, to one entity. Interbeing means that the true essence, the Buddha Nature of an entity is connected to every form in the cosmos. While one leaf may wither and fall to the ground, it feeds the roots of a tree and so the forest, which is the true self, continues.

Our dear Abat cannot die. He is reborn, or continued, in each of his manifestations - each time he is rebuilt in different forms. In the same manner, the broomstick in the previous post will also never die: the brush is replaced, the handle is replaced, and eventually it will take on another form - perhaps as ash, forming compost from which grass grows, feeding a cow and producing a glass of milk. With mindfulness you can drink a broomstick the next time you are drinking a glass of milk.

There is a certain comfort in understanding rebirth. Our fear of death drives us in so many deep ways. We need to have kids before it's "too late", we need to accomplish this because "life is too short". Yet when you remove the constraints of birth and death,you are liberated. When you understand your interbeing, your arms stretch out over all of humanity, all of nature, and you touch everything in the world. You do not see things die but merely transform, and support and love, the true self.

As wonderful as this seems, you may be thinking that it's easy to pinpoint things that are seemingly lost between lives. Transformation seems fine when applied to the physical, but when personalities and knowledge are concerned, it becomes more difficult to accept.

These traits are typically known as the dharma. The dharma of an individual is extended through teaching. What we learn from a personality or from the wisdom of a beloved, we are accepting into our own selves. A part of them is being immortalized in us.

Buddhism helps us, through meditation and practice, to enjoin the mind and the body. And in this our thoughts become actions - whether physical actions, speech, writings... the dharma can be transmitted and extended in so many ways, just like giving someone a gift except that the gift never depletes. Instead it just grows further. And with this growth comes its immortality, its new life.

Christ was ressurrected after dying on the cross. Yet, in Buddhist fashion, he actually never died. His dharma was instilled in his following, the body of Christ was already present in his disciples. The rebirth of Jesus happened in every sermon, every healing, every time he touched the life of another. And still today is Jesus reborn in every moment.

Christ truly is immortal because Christ is empty of self, yet like Abat, manifested in so many ways. And that is the true understanding of rebirth and resurrection in Buddhism.

Emptiness: The Cup is Empty, Long Live the Cup!

Emptiness is a fundamental teaching of Buddhism, and one of the most difficult to accept. At face value emptiness seems like a very negative word. If I'm drinking coffee and my cup becomes empty then I have run out of coffee and it's no reason to celebrate. If my wallet is empty then I have no money and there's no reason to celebrate. If I open a present to find an empty box, I would not be happy.

Emptiness is a translation from the word Sunyata, which can also be translated to voidness. But, as always, language is rarely capable of depicting meaning. In Buddhism, emptiness is a very positive word as it defines the love of life and existence itself, and membership to the family of the universe, to the family of God. Emptiness promotes objects, it doesn't demote them or deny them. It puts objects away from loneliness and into the arms of God.

There was once a man who swept roads for a living. One morning he was sitting down with a friend and said "You know I've had this broom for 17 years, this broom is my best and oldest companion". The friend was amazed, "17 Years? That's a long time!". The road sweeper explained, "Yes it is! I've only changed the handle 8 times and the brush 5 times.".

So we can see that the broom is not really a broom of 17 years. Yet if we were to look even more deeply into the broom we would see that even the brush is not really a brush. It is wood from a tree, that arose from the dirt in which it was planted. The bristles come from a horse perhaps, that was fed on grass and water. Somebody looked after the horse, his love for the horse perhaps was taught to him by his father. A horse, grass, trees, sunshine, water, people and their ancestors: You can say the brush is all of these things. If you take away all the components of a brush you are left with nothing, so the brush itself is empty yet at the same time full of everything.

What makes this a wonderful concept is that it means that the brush shares its existence with everything else in the universe. It is not just a brush, it is a part of a family, the family of God. It is inter-dependent. As Thich Nhat Hanh would say, it inter-is.

In being mindful we can look deeply into the existence of everything in our daily life and see its true nature, we can see that it touches everything in the universe. By being mindful of this we understand the family nature of the universe, and that everything we do effects this family. Every action has a result or consequences. This is the basis of Karma in Buddhism, a topic for another post.

The fact that everything effects members of this universal family is the basis of the Buddhist code of morality, true compassion. You see that when another is suffering, you are suffering. When another is happy, you are happy. It is really not that different to the Golden Rule, of altruism.

However it should be noted that this view of emptiness does go against some schools of Buddhism, in which the concept is seen a negative against the self. These schools are quite nihilistic in their perspective. It was the Mahayanan tradition that brought balance to the teachings by emphasizing emptiness as being empty of atomicity, of autonomy, not just empty of existence. In this sense Mahayana has compassion as a basic fundamental, derived from the simple concept of interbeing. Mahayana Buddhism is life affirming, not life denying. Every part of life is a part of the universal family, the one consciousness, and every part of that family is as important as the family itself.

Emptiness, of course, goes beyond what a Christian can accept. Christians believe that the universe was made by God as a gift to man. Under this belief you can say that man is justified in doing anything with these gifts as they are his. The morality in Christianity stems purely from following the life of Jesus and of the ten commandments.

Christians do not believe that humans are born purely from components, but that each human is instilled with a divine spirit. So humans are not empty in that sense. The Christian view of emptiness therefore constitutes mortality, that life can indeed end, and only the divine spirit can live on in heaven.

We'll leave the Buddhist view of rebirth to another post, suffice to say that it is quite obvious how rebirth arises from the simple concept of emptiness.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Thich Nhat Hanh describes his ascent into Buddhism as beginning with him seeing a depiction of the Buddha on the front of a magazine cover. At a time of great suffering for himself he saw how peaceful and serene the Buddha appeared and thought to himself, "I want to be like that".

For Thich Nhat Hanh it was a simple thought that led him to change his life, and the lives of so many others throughout the world.

A few years ago I was standing with my wife at the bookstore, we were going to look for books on raising children because we were thinking of starting a family. For some reason right next to the pregnancy and child rearing books there was the section on self-help books. While my wife was reading I momentarily looked over and picked out a random book, 'No Death, No Fear'. The title intrigued me. I thought "hey, that sounds like a good idea.".

My wife is Vietnamese, with some exposure to Vietnamese names I did at least recognize that Thich Nhat Hanh may in fact have been Vietnamese. I asked my wife and she confirmed. I started flipping through the pages and soon found tears in my eyes as his words of poetic compassion filled my heart. The very essence of his message is a healing peace that is difficult to explain. I showed the book to my wife and she was very interested and so we bought that book.

And so with that moment came a great change in my life - a definite change in my spiritual path from waning Catholic to Buddhist. It has been a bumpy ride - not for any fault of Nhat Hanh's, but more because my own ignorance has blinded me in the path.

But it was Nhat Hanh's own peaceful voice that gave me faith that the answers I was seeking were waiting to be found. While I typically arrogantly jump to conclusions and cynically assume that the answers will fall short, it was just his voice that kept me going. His words, his poetry, his intellect, his message all told me that he knew something that allowed him to be at peace. It was the first time I had really felt a true faith in someone I did not know. Perhaps this is how people felt when they first heard Jesus preach?

It has only been relatively recently that I have discovered the poetic beauty and practical compassion of Mahayana Buddhism and of Thich Nhat Hanh's own Engaged Buddhism.

In true interbeing fashion, the things that led me to the book - my wife, the decision to have a family and the causes of that, the fact my wife is vietnamese, the fact that 'no fear' appealed to me - it is humbling to know that all of these things which originated outside of 'me' brought the book to me, and that in itself is confirmation of the teachings of the Buddha.

I cannoy say enough about how truly wonderful and Holy Thich Nhat Hanh is. His striving to bring religions and people together, not just through speech but through practical means - his retreats for Palestinians and Israelis, his published books on bringing together Christians and Buddhists. Every word, every utterance, each thought he has seems to be for promoting peace and happiness in this world. He truly is the Buddha incarnate.

And we are so blessed to have him as our teacher.

New Blog

Around 2500 years ago a man had an epiphany of his life, and realized that our very perception of the world is thoroughly immersed in illusory concepts constructed by the ego. By seeing the true nature of things he claims we are able to see that we are all connected, that we are all one, and only the one consciousness is truly permanent. In inter-being we are able to practice true compassion and transform suffering through deep understanding. By transcending the causes of suffering we expose a reality of peace, and touch what some might refer to as God. This man was the Buddha.

Just over 2000 years ago a man was born to apparently fulfill a prophecy, he lived a life teaching peace, equinimity in the face of God and healing the sick. He claimed to be the Son of God and was crucified for fear that his teachings would incite a revolt against Jewish law. Many believe he was ressurrected, and in doing so brought salvation to all of mankind. This man was Jesus.

I have an interest in both Buddhism and Christianity. I think many people have only a superficial understanding of their faith, and it's my aim here to delve just a little bit deeper than that. :) My aim is also to highlight the differences and the similarities between the two spiritual paths, and to reconcile some of my own doubts about my faith. As a disclaimer I should point out that I have absolutely no credentials by which to make authoritative claims, merely to put forward my own ideas which of course may have no merit whatsoever.

In the course of the discussion I will reflect on writings by one of my teachers, the Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh, along with many other sources of Buddhist wisdom. I will also draw on many sources of Christian theology from Aquinas to Ratzinger and CS Lewis.