A Fistful of Sand

Illumination or Elimination Many people who go to a formal meditation retreat want to get something. That something might be relaxation, stress relief, a sense of community, simple silence or even some kind of illumination leading to special insight. There are many things to get out of a meditation retreat, but meditation isn’t so much about getting something, not even illumination, as it is about elimination. We are trying to eliminate the sense of self that keeps getting in the way of our happiness. It gets in the way by presenting a huge array of “goodies” for us to attach to: goodies like a happier relationship, better job, more money, a new car, bigger house, a new smart phone, the biggest, best and latest anything. It is little wonder that this world is sometimes called the “Candy Store World” or  Saha  World. The Sanskrit word saha  means endurance and choices we feel we must make among the goodies is often hard for us to bear. Sometimes we attach to the stu...

In spite of it being the currency of the Mahayana Movement, getting a strong and hard definition of “emptiness is very difficult. If one asks fifty teachers one gets roughly fifty answers. The word is as vaguely applied as are the terms “mindfulness,” “vipassana,” and “organic.” When emptiness becomes a philosophy instead of an experience problems in understanding the term often arise.    Many people write entire books about emptiness, and in so doing, they tend to fill pages with absolutely nothing. With all that said, an article by Lewis Richmond published in the Post, says, “‘Emptiness’ is a central teaching of all Buddhism, but its true meaning is often misunderstood. If we are ever to embrace Buddhism properly into the West, we need to be clear about emptiness, since a wrong understanding of its meaning can be confusing, even harmful. The third century Indian Buddhist master Nagarjuna taught, “Emptiness wrongly grasped is like picking up a poisonous snake by the wr...

Visit the Hongaku Jodo Website Click here to subscribe to our newsletter. People in Vain ________________________________________________ Quite often in the West we use the words “awakening” and “enlightenment interchangeably. This is a misinterpretation on our part. They are not synonyms but clearly represent two distinct stages on the Path. Awakening is often referred to as the “Great Awakening” in the Canons of both Pali and Mahayana. Awakening can be seen as a process, indeed it is the process leading to the attainment of Enlightenment.There are many degrees of Awakening and Enlightenment. Attaining the Enlightenment of the Arahants, Pratyekabuddha (Pali, paccekabuddha, literally "a lone buddha", "a buddha on their own" or "a private buddha" ), Bodhisattvas, and others. It need to be awake in order to see clearly. That clear seeing allows us to at least have the possibility of gaining Enlightenment. To experience a Great Awakenin...

Visit the Hongaku Jodo Website Click here to subscribe to our newsletter. The experience of stress, pain, suffering is not a simple thing. The Buddha once observed, we respond to its complexity in two ways: And what is the result of stress? There are some cases in which a person overcome with pain, his mind exhausted, grieves, mourns, laments, beats his breast, & becomes bewildered. Or one overcome with pain, his mind exhausted, comes to search outside, ‘Who knows a way or two to stop this pain?’ I tell you, monks, that stress results either in bewilderment or in search.  — Anguttara Nikaya 6:63 The problem is that the bewilderment often guides the search, leading to more suffering and stress. To resolve this dilemma, the Buddha devoted his life, after his Awakening, to showing a reliable way to the end of stress. In summarizing the whole of his teaching, he said: Both formerly & now, it is only stress that I describe, and the cessa...

“Deny the passport, throw it away and make a great decision that you will not leave this shore until and unless you have liberated all the human beings." — The Buddha This quote is all over the internet, usually without citation. There is a good reason why there is no citation showing the source of the quote. It is virtually impossible for the Buddha to have said this. First because it contradicts everything the Buddha said, but it also ignores the nature of mind. The quote is said to come from the Diamond Sutra. Well, what does the Diamond Sutra really say about this?  “If a Bodhisattva announces: I will liberate all living creatures, he is not rightly called a Bodhisattva. Wherefore? Because, Subhuti, there is really no such condition as that called Bodhisattvaship, because Buddha teaches that all things are devoid of selfhood, devoid of separate individuality. Subhuti, if a Bodhisattva announces: I will set forth majestic Buddha-lands, one does not call him a B...