My teacher, my Kalyana Mitra

Five years has gone by, the fig tree at the front yard is still blooming. I am standing next to it and am thinking about you. You used to look for figs from this tree. You told me you had a great feast of figs somewhere in Turkey while you did your morning walk.

You just don’t know how much I have missed you. I cannot find someone to discuss my love within. I remembered I told you I love all sorts of pebbles and stones. You didn’t say a word but showed me you have lot of stones in your pocket. We could spend hours talking about stones (thunder eggs and geodes), travelling, Buddhism, books, music, religions in general and anything that happen during the day.  Now I am into Hetian pebble and who I can discuss with about this?

Life is different without you. I have no longer to have someone listens to my whinge and swear, to have someone to challenge me to think deeper and wider, to have someone to tell me off when I am mischief. I remembered there was one occasion that we discussed the topic of the first precept ‘Not to kill’. You told me something that you had done and I said you had no compassion. You didn’t rebuttal back but few months later, I went to India. You asked me how I spent my first night in India. I told you I committed into killing. I killed more than fifty mosquitoes inside my hotel room. You asked me under what circumstances did I commit the killing. I said to prevent my son to get sick. You then brought up the first precept and the compassion concept. You made sure I understood the first precept and the correlation between compassion and wisdom. I apologised to have said you ‘lacked compassion’ and you laughed. You then challenged me to reveal my killing to the world, especially to all the monks who lived in my state.

Today is the day you said farewell to all of us five years ago. Thay TP said in 10 years’ time he can start looking for a young boy who needs accommodation or his help in Dharma. To tell you the truth, I don’t want to see you in this samsara, but I will never know whether you might come back and continue your preaching job.

At the suffering deep and wide sea you preach

Beyond preferences we ought to see

Here and now is where we dwell

Inside ourselves happiness and joy we should seek

No enlightenment button that we can press to be free

Yin-Yang, the symbol of balance and harmony should be indwell

Alive is the biggest of our achievement we should reach

Not a super-monk you keep retell

Around you go to give the wake up speech.

20/04/2013

无生法忍/ Anutpattika-dharma-ksanti

What is Anutpattika-dharma-ksanti? In 2000, I asked a young monk about this question. He gave me a load of Buddhism jargons which made me utterly confuse. Then another young monk stepped in and gave me another load of Buddhism jargons which made me more puzzled. I’ve read many books and Buddhist dictionaries and still couldn’t understand. I’ve gave up on this until last Sunday when Thay talked about Anutpattika-dharma-ksanti.

Ksanti means to endure, but this endurance is different from the worldly endurance. My mother used to tell me: “Endurance is gold.” What she meant was we don’t fight with others, we just accept and tolerate/endure. I told my mother if we just accept and endure when someone is doing bad things to you; we will explode when we surpass the level of toleration. A good example was how my aunties used to make my mother suffer by telling something bad in front of my father. My mother told me she endured it,  but until now she is still holding the grudge on my aunties. All her stories were more than 50 years ago but when she re-tells her stories, she is ignited with anger. I told my mother to let go of them. This kind of endurance is not Anutpattika-dharma-ksanti because she couldn’t see the nature of all these hurtful words from my aunties.

Anutpattika-dharma means no arising and no perish. It is stated in the Heart Sutra that all phenomena are expressions of emptiness or the interconnection relationship of nature. Because phenomena are empty nature, they are neither born nor destroyed; neither pure nor defiled; neither coming nor going. 

So all phenomena are impermanent and non-existent that is why we should not grasp on the worldly things (material, and verbal praise and criticism). Once we understand the impermanence and the nature of all phenomena (forms, sounds, smells, tastes, touches and thoughts), we should accept these truths. This acceptance is called Anutpattika-dharma-ksanti. By accepting these truths, we come out of misery. We are no longer chained by the phenomena around us; this includes our most treasurable body. Anutpattika-dharma-ksanti can also mean equanimity.

Notes: The following are the definitions from different website.

Japanese English dictionary: Anutpattika-dharma-ksanti is the recognition that nothing really arises or perishes.( http://www.eudict.com/?lang=engjpk&word=%28Buddh%29%20anutpattika-dharma-ksanti)

The Zennist: Anutpattika-dharma-ksanti, that is, the acceptance that inevitably all phenomena are illusory and nonexistent, is realized by the Bodhisattva in the eighth bhumi (acalâ, i.e., immovability) being completed at the stage of Buddhahood according to some accounts (cp. Yogacarabhumi Shastra).  (http://zennist.typepad.com/zenfiles/2011/07/accepting-the-illusory-and-nonexistent.html)

From an introduction to MadhyamakaPhilosohpy by Jaideva Singh : Anutpattika-dharma-ksanti means capacity to endure and sustain the truth of the unborn dharma, then he enters the true status (nyama) of the Bodhisattva.

From the classification of Buddhismby Bruno Petzold, Shinsho Hanayama: The state of acquiescence with the insight of the non-origination of dharmas; the insight of which acknowledges non-arising of psycho-physical phenomena.

The Art of Equanimity

My friend asked me why I haven’t written something about mastering our anger. Last week my son made me a ring for Valentine’s Day. It has a Chinese word - 忍 (endurance/toleration). In 2004 he also gave me a Happy Buddha statue for Christmas. Happy Buddha’s big fat tummy represents equanimity (大肚能容 容天下难容之事 慈颜常笑 笑世间可笑之人).

What are these two words (toleration and equanimity) mean to me? As a person who has a hot temper, it isn’t easy to practice on these two words. When something or someone that make us upset or angry; when the condition does not fall into our will; when someone says something hurtful to us, we become aggravated. There are few things we will do:

• We will say something bad to the person who upsets us 
• We hold onto the grunge and will take revenge in the near future. There is a phrase in Chinese – It’s not too late for a gentleman to take revenge in 10 years’ time. 
• We torture ourselves because we will repeat the event again and again in our mind 

I told my son these are the habits that we like to hold onto and react to things. To break this habit we need to understand why we become angry. Who aggregates us? Why we are angry? We need to analyse our emotion. To be angry or not to be angry, it’s all up to us. Most of the time, we choose to be angry. In most cases we become angry because someone has shattered our ego. If we see things in a different angle then we might not be upset nor feel angry. Here are some ways to cool down our anger:

• Take some deep breathes 
• Don’t say anything because words from an angry person are hurtful and that will make you regret later on 
• Ask yourself why you are angry? Try to analyse it. 
• Have something to remind us to calm down. In Thich Nhat Hanh’s ‘Pebble in a pocket’, he used pebbles as an object to remind him not to become angry. 
• Feel sympathy for the person who has made you angry. Anger takes up lot of energy and creates harmful toxin in our human body. 
• Keep oneself in equanimity like the Happy Buddha 
• See thing as it is, not as what you want it to be - Yathabhuata 

A way to prevent one from getting angry before we explode is by observing ourselves closely. We can practise this daily. We just need to spend 15 to 30 minutes to listen to our mind daily. During this time, we can observe our emotions and feelings, and not react to them. We can acknowledge them but not react to them. The more we practise there will be more chances that we can catch our anger before we let it out. My son and I have a lot to learn on these two very important words – equanimity and toleration.

Note: Anger/upset from defame/bad repute, loss/devastation, blame/ridicule and pain/suffering is the negative emotions and feelings; gain/benefit, fame/acclaim, praise/approval and pleasure/happiness are the rest worldly conditions. A true equanimity is we can deal with all these worldly conditions with ease.