A Fistful of Sand

by   Sensei Mui When speaking of emptiness there seems to be a distorted sense of what that term means. It often comes across as some incredibly deep metaphysical reality separate from the day-to-day humdrum of modern ‘civilized’ being. It’s an easy belief to develop. It’s all empty and I am the co-creator of reality. It is easy to fall into the belief but having the belief does little good for us. It’s just a belief. There is no one, vast emptiness ‘out there’ somewhere. Emptiness is one, vastness you create by letting go. Emptiness is a way of approaching perception, a way of looking at experience. In this approach nothing is added to and nothing is taken away from the raw data of physical and mental events. We simply look at events in and of themselves as they appear in the mind and the senses without evaluation or assessment of whether there’s anything lying behind them. This approach is called emptiness because it’s empty of the conjectures and beliefs we usually a...

“What more does the community of bhikkhus expect from me, Ananda? I have set forth the Dhamma without making any distinction of esoteric and exoteric doctrine; there is nothing, Ananda, with regard to the teachings that the Tathagata holds to the last with the closed fist of a teacher who keeps some things back.” —Mahāparinibbāna Sutta, Digha Nikāya 16                     A Note : Pāli is the language most likely used by the historical Buddha so, the                          author has opted to use Pāli terms in this article. The term  vipallāsa  sounds innocent enough. It sounds like you can walk into any ethnic restaurant and buy an entrée of vipallāsa and have a nice glass of red wine to wash it down with.  Yet to partake in vipallāsa is a very dangerous thing and bring years of pain and suffering into one’s life.  You see, a vipallāsa is ...

Going To All the Wrong Places I am not complaining, I merely state an observation: most people are knowledgeably ignorant. The pseudo-spiritual say that in order to understand reality “you have to go inside” but they never tell you inside of what. I’m already inside my office so where else is there to go? Well, maybe to the bathroom after I finish this cup of coffee.   Shades of the pop culture "New Age Gurus”, who teach people to keep telling us to go inside ourselves. Students and well meaning “spiritual people [whatever the hell that means], shout “Go inside yourself and you will find all your answers”. You can hear them militantly shouting from the highest rooftops [in Chicago that would be Willis Tower, formerly the Sears Tower].   If you don’t understand what is inside and what is outside then you go to all the wrong places.   What or where is “inside” exactly? Is it your body? Your body accumulated over years of time. What is accumulated can b...

Asevana ca balanam panditanañca sevana,  "Don't associate with fools. Associate only with wise people." "Fools" are people whose minds and actions are unskillful and "evil". They are unskillful in their actions - killing, stealing, having careless sex - and unskillful in their words: telling lies, creating disharmony, deceiving other people, engage in gossip. They are unskillful in their thoughts - judging others, conceptualizing, lost in drunken fantasy. Fools are the enemy of society because unskillful behavior makes us the enemy of society. Gossiping, for example, makes us the enemy of those we tell tales about, enemies of the persons we share our filth with, enemies of ourselves as we spew our half truths and lies. That's one example of a fool. Serving one's self over serving others is yet another. Being willing to harm others is one of the prevalent   examples of foolishness in the world today. The foolishness of feeling mo...

Contemporary Pure Land Buddhism has come under much scholarly critique over the past two to three decades. This is especially true of the Japanese Jōdo and Jōdo Shinshū presentations. In fact, the entirety of the model of populist Buddhism in its many guises has come under question as to whether they can be accurately called “Buddhisms” at all.   While few take such criticisms of Zen to heart there is open criticism of all of the major sects in the Buddhist world.  Western forms of Buddhism have come under especially intense scrutiny even if they are direct transplants from Asia. It is even the case that some sects do not recognize the validity of those ordained in other sects.  Prior to my ordination  in Sōto Zen my Zen teacher, for example, told me the story that that beginning in 2000 the Sōto Zen headquarters in Kyōto Japan formally complaint to the American Sōto Zen lineage of the San Francisco Zen Center and others that they was not actually...

For the past 3 weeks the Hongaku Jōdo Sangha in Chicago has been going over the “Short Medicine Sadhana” with a fine tooth comb — not literally, of course. An in depth study of any of the writings or practices making claim to be one advocated or even stated, i.e., taught directly by Siddhartha Gotama, deserves particularly close scrutiny. Both Theravāda and Mahāyāna contain apocryphal sutras; indeed, Mahāyāna is saturated with them. We accept the teachings as being consistent with the intent and spirit of the historical Buddha’s message. We also accept that Dharma is Dharma and it really makes no matter who is teaching it, be it the most unscrupulous teacher imaginable or the noblest human being alive. Truth is truth and truth can be found in the most surprising places. The mature mind does not dismiss the teaching because they disapprove of the source. Today the Internet is saturated with “Fake Buddhist Quotes”. Do we simply dismiss the teaching behind simply because they are n...

Being Overwhelmed The Buddha taught that I person willing to hate is willing to commit any atrocity. He called it an “evil mind”. It corrupts all of our motivations, even those that are quite honorable. Hatred creates in us the ultimate narcissist.   It broods the illusion in the mind of the angry hater that their views, opinions and beliefs are so important that everyone must listen and obey them and believe as they believe. “He who hates his brother is a murderer and a murder does not have eternal life.” The line is from 1 John 3:15 in the New Testament, the Christian Dharma. I used it in an interfaith teaching not long ago. I was admonished by a couple of ministers who were also presenting who told me that John, the spokesman for God in this case, meant this verse only to refer to hating Christian brothers and not persons outside that faith. So, is it okay to hate everyone else? It seems a legalist interpretation of a universal truth. Unfortunately, I have heard s...