Lama Surya Das Married

Lama Surya Das, the American founder of the Dzogchen Foundation

Confronting Uncertainty currently with Lama Surya Das

Every morning I wake to trust, nonrational as it may seem; hope for a additional civilized world, for kinder, gentler organizations as well as social systems, and concomitant best wishes for all our over-used, mistreated, in addition to slowly succumbing planet.

To help you muster the force expected to confront the difficulties of our own complicated globe, I depend on what Buddhist activists call the three freedoms: Independence from excessive hope & anticipations; Liberty from fear & anxiety; and Freedom from selfishness & prejudice. Ah, absolutely yes: even though it's hard for an old dog, lama or not, to discover fresh methods: undo old egocentric preoccupations and bias; as well as step away from the natural tendency to overlook and also deny the actual scientific as well as socioeconomic facts of life---while simple-mindedly dreaming about the best, voting with my gut, and also supposing it shall be and be well.

Action is required in addition to much better schooling, listening, communication, and also dialogue. We should instead focus on properly channeling our energy in addition to practical efforts towards transforming a lot of cracked social systems.

I personally hardly ever think about in on our difficult, self-indulgent political arena, but of late I feel a sense of despair with each and every offensive ad along with overzealous news report-- not that we've not viewed similar undignified sparring in the past. Yet they're to some degree dirtier, much more underhanded and also venal, it also seems to me; clouded by continual negative overtones, low innuendo and also mounting harmful voices. As my dear bubbe would likely say, "Oy Vey! Gott im Himmel!"

Buddhism shows that nothing is more unsafe than an unaccustomed or maybe unhealthy mind, certainly nothing more ideal for great wellness than just a well-trained, clear along with developed mind. Suitable action might be a way of reaching someone's targets. Practicing patient forbearance when confronted with harm and also abuse, without being exceedingly passive in our pacifism, we see that nonviolence is and could be a dynamic multi-dimensional way of persuasion, a procedure for political activism, along with a recipe for peacemaking along with harmonizing---a fearless and also intense lifestyle authentically as well as speaking truth to power. Suitable action is equal to right morality, it holds with it a sensation of discerning perception, precision as well as skilled means.

May consists of the full moon day when Buddhists typically celebrate the particular Buddha's birth, enlightenment and death. This could transpire today, or any day, for those who open their inner wisdom eye in addition to fourth ear of true listening to hear the actual plaintiff cries of our beleaguered world and confronted species, in addition to wake up jointly.

Buddha's well-known Eightfold Noble Path is the world's most seasoned extant business plan-the business being happiness, fulfillment and also well-being-- and would be properly applied to this particular destructive arena we call our political system.
But, oh-- Life's wonderful.
And yet, and yet...

With Love and blessings,
Lama Surya Das

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A Spirit of Respect Shared by Lama Surya Das with full credit to John Blofeld

A zen student articulates the distinctions between your visual and ritual elements of practice. This content has been brought to our notice by

f:id:lamasuryadasmarried:20160503194203g:plain

 who's an American lama in the Tibetan Buddhist traditions. He is a poet, chantmaster, spiritual activist and author of countless popular works on Buddhism; a meditation instructor and spokesman for Buddhism in the west. Lama Surya Das keeps us up to date about the different facets of buddhism along with meditation often with his own discourse and often via articles along with content that sheds light on buddhism. This piece on Buddhism originates from John Blofeld a scholar, writer, along with translator of Asian philosophy in addition to religion, specially Buddhism and Taoism. Continue reading to read more information about Buddhism as well as the variations between the conceptual and also ritual components of practice.

Due to the fact Buddhism came to the West, inevitably quite a few people have felt, “Zazen is nice, consideration is nice, self-discipline is great, but why all this bowing as well as incense? To whom would you provide incense as well as flowers?” To this all the Buddhists of the past and all Asian ?Buddhists currently could answer with 1 voice: “Dear friends, a spirit of reverence is really important to successful practice. Without it, enlightenment can not be gained!”

Prostrations and also offerings are generally admittedly simply forms-just a human strategy for expressing precisely what cats express by rubbing themselves alongside a much loved person’s legs. If this were natural for individuals to stand on their heads as well as stick out their rumps to show reverence, then Buddhists could stand on their particular heads or stick out their rumps as a matter of course. Kinds do not matter by themselves, however the attitude of mind represented by prostrations and so forth is of stupendous significance to followers of the Way.

My Tibetan lama said to me at a very initial phase of my training: “Ignorant people follow the perspective of subject to king before a Buddha statue. Higher-level practice is accomplished entirely in the intellect. Yet even if you reach the maximum level-hard without a doubt to arrive at in one lifetime-you have to daily alternate formless, wordless, above-conceptual practice with bowing down along with making offerings. Never ever fail in that.” My Chinese Chan (Zen) educator informed me: “In between your rounds of meditation, exercise bowing, offering incense, along with making circumambulations. When you have no spirit of respect, simply no feeling of amazement for all that lies beyond the constraints of that miserably circumscribed illusion you suppose to be your ‘me,’ you will make hardly any development. Why? Simply because whenever your practice improves, you will reflect: ‘I did much better inside my meditation just now’ and by so contemplating fall back to the minimum level of ignorance as a result of the actual consequent inflation of your devilish ‘I’!”

Those Zen monks who said, “Meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha” as well as advocated employing Buddha figures as firewood and so on had been talking not to Americans or to new Buddhists but to Chinese or maybe Japanese Zen followers that could possibly be counted upon to know the meaning of such instructions, which truly amounted to this: “Never for 1 moment suppose that veneration of sutras or even images is of much utilization in itself, so don’t let it replace the rest of your practice, as uninformed people typically do.” I doubt if it ever entered those monks’ minds that one day there'd be individuals in the world who would take these kinds of powerful (and also comical) injunctions actually!

If it's wrong to have and to symbolize perceptions of reverence, awe, as well as gratitude by prostrations in addition to offerings, then all Buddhists happen to be wrong since the dharma had been preached in this latest kalpa 2,500 plus much more years ago. Could it be possible that those hundreds of millions of people at all levels of dedication to the practice we so significantly value included no single man or woman of genuine understanding until finally Buddhism reached America?

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