May each of you have a peaceful rest and holy day of gratitude.
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May be you be safe from harm and free from suffering.
The Fundamental Point
First Five Teachings
Click on the Monk
RETREAT ANNOUNCEMENT – 2023
A Single Thread is pleased to offer a Zoom Fall Retreat.
It is open to everyone – come when you can come…but we are asking you to make a commitment…you must Register so you can get the Zoom Links!
The Retreat begins with a weekend of sitting followed by four Sunday Dharma Talks.
The Retreat will start the evening of Friday October 20. And continues Saturday October 21 from 7:00 am to 3:00 pm. And Sunday October 22 from 7:00 am. to 10:15 am.
The Retreat will offer daily sitting Monday through Friday at 6:30 am and optional afternoon sitting at 4:00 pm
The Sunday Dharma Talks will be from 3:00 – 5:00 pm and will be a combination of teaching and meditation.
The Retreat will end Sunday November 19.
We hope you will seriously consider this more intense practice opportunity. To Register, send me an email by October 18. If you have questions, send me an email.
Best regards,
Marilyn
laodizhishakya@gmail.com
Chapter Seven – YOU!
Create the Condtions
We might mistake this instruction Create the Conditions to represent a makeover of our house, a clean out of things in the closets and dresser drawers or a pledge to fix things up. No. It is not like that at all. Although it is true, cleanliness is next to godliness, it is not the material conditions we need to focus on to make the spiritual climb. We can give a nod to order, and simplicity and even owning and having less but I assure you those conditions are not what we need to create.
We are encouraged to remember the path of Shakyamuni as the exemplar of what we need to do. Our struggles come to awaken us. Buddha struggled and it was in that struggle he began his search for God, the Dharma. He was a Hindu. A Prince. A father. A man saturated in a spiritual history. But he, himself, struggled. When we can see our struggle as a clarion, a loud and clear trumpet sound of something is amiss, we seek something to remedy it. We look within. We catch that wave and turn it. This turning is turning the Wheel of life and death. And it is, in fact, a matter of life and death.
Something changed Shakyamuni when he saw the suffering from his palace windows. What was it? He realized he, too, was subject to suffering. It was there he turned. He became a seeker. It is what we, each one of us, need to be. A seeker: a big, open-heart seeker.
Once he saw that something was amiss, he was willing to give up everything to find it. He left his wife. His newborn son. His palace. He followed through. Found teachers. Practiced. Awakened.
It was a big makeover. A big emptying out. Each seeker, in his circumstances does a similar thing. It may start small…it may begin with painful struggle that prompts you to seek, to hear and read the teachings. But even a small beginning of seeking requires an emptying out, a makeover of time, commitments, and activities. We must make room for contemplation like we make room to learn anything. Something must give, for the help to come.
We choose to create the conditions in our mind. Even before we learn anything, we must decide we want to learn. We must choose to want to hear and listen in order to turn and face the light. This step is a beginner’s step, but woe to those who skip it.
We take to heart the teachings. Assess them in our own way. We seek help. We study ourselves.
Here is an exercise you might try. Study what you find yourself getting involved in during the day. And pay close attention to the responses that show up inside of you as you meet the many things that come up.
Are your responses an array of attachment; hate and fear? If yes, you know the non-self (ego) is attempting to get hold of things. Stop and ask yourself if it was the non-self (ego) that got involved in the first place.
In other words, were there strings of attachment, hate and fear tied to your involvement from the get-go? If yes, then the effects will be coming accordingly. You may feel edgy, anxious, off kilter from even the tiniest grasp of the non-self.
This cause-and-effect cycle will continue on and on until enlightenment….in the meantime, turn towards the Light when the effects arrive which is a sure-fire way to dissipate the shadowy effects that have come. In a visual sense place your mind above, on the high bird until there is only ONE bird in the tree…which is after all is your True nature. STOP the mind reaching for or pushing away something you want or do not want. All happiness is in the High bird. And the High bird does not get involved with things with strings.
For Those Who Know the Story of Angulimala – Remember: What did Buddha STOP when he encountered the finger necklace thief? Buddha stopped the pleasures and pains of the non-self, leaving only the flow of Light which shines on everything without discrimination.
CAUTION: If you pretend to be the High bird, trouble of all sorts will follow.
Author: FaShi Lao Yue
If for some reason you need elucidation on the teaching, please contact the editor at: yao.xiang.editor@gmail.com
All One Cloth
We all are powered from somewhere else. Consider it.
All one power grid or separate bits and pieces of power grids?
Are you a separate being or part of a whole?
Do we share the power of existence or not?
We act as though we are separate, different and worst of all, measurable. This type of separation and discrimination leads to what we call the rat race.
Competition follows.
The rat race requires competition for power, wealth and the various trophies of success. We view the other as a rival. This race is not based on how you play the game, no, it is based on the desire to win the prize of the game no matter what.
It is a terrible way to live.
We have been conditioned to think that there is not enough to go around and that there is never enough power and wealth. We are conditioned to train and compete for as many prizes as we can get.
It rests on an every one for himselfattitude.
The question to ask is “to what end?”
Ambition is a desire to achieve and attain something in the material world over and above the the other. We seek to be triumphant; to get a piece of the pie. We are conditioned to use our innate desire to achieve and attain some type of success. Thinking otherwise, one is labeled as lazy, negligent, slothful.
There is another approach. An approach that relies on the recogntion of the truth of the human condition. It is hard for us to imagine living a life without a desire to achieve, attain and acquire, but it is not impossible.
There is a way to live that rests on a purpose that is a rational and spiritual understanding of our existence and not on the three ambitions, to achieve, attain and acquire material and ego-centered success. It rests on an understanding of our situation that is everpresent but overlooked and buried by the predominance of human ambition and conditoning.
The other way requires that we humans turn away from the controlling ambitious-seeking lifestyle. It requires that we study ourselves with a serious consideration of the reason for our existence.
Is it really to live to achieve, attain and acquire or is there a reason, an intention and a different motivation that is buried beneath this main principle of getting and having things and dominating others?
This turning away requires a willingness to study our life against the stream of acquisition and acheievements. A willingness to purify our mind is most important.
It requires that we realize the four truths of our existence. These truths are everpresent and obvious.
The Inevitables: Birth. Aging. Sickness. Death.
A body is born of life, changes over time, gets sick or injured and eventually dies.
What part of life suffers the inevitables? All of life suffers from these powerful forces. No life exists outside them. Existence is all one cloth. Our failure to know this for ourselves rests on the covering of conditioning. We are conditoned to seek from the external world – the apparent reality. Our focus is on the surface and outward appearances. But in so doing, we fail to realize the importance of the inevitables and think of ourselves as separate from existence.
Our true nature does not suffer from the inevitables.
We are not manufactured although the current view is to see life as one would see a machine; but we are not mechanical, digital or artificial.
The Essence: Spiritual. Whole. Nonmaterial. Immutable. Unborn. Undying.
Our death and rebirth come in every moment, but we may miss it because we attend to the unreal, material things. We hurry and worry about in reckless wishes that we will go on here forever. We flop into a hazy, laziness simply because we forget to listen, to understand and to know that there is THAT which is spiritual, whole, nonmaterial, immutable, unborn, and undying.
There are a few simple questions worth asking and studying for ourselves.
Do you know that you suffer birth, aging, sickness and death? Or do you ignore it?
Do you know that all life suffers birth, aging, sickness and death? Or do you not care?
Do you know your true nature? Or do you think of yourself as a mechanical body and mind that is a single entity made of manmade material that disappears at death?
The work is to give your very best without seeking a reward.
We are one cloth, powered from somewhere else. Consider it.
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If You Do not Think There Are Demons…Just Wait ‘til Someone Slights You?
Demon-ghosts: Torments in the Mind
Watch how you blame the world and other for your misery.
Although I have been practicing Buddhism for a long time, I am continuously amazed to know that there are others who are not aware of the torments in the mind known as demon-ghosts.
In Buddhist circles this inability to recognize demon-ghosts is known as ignorance.
This ignorance has nothing to do with acquiring an education or the number associated with one’s IQ. It is not about how much we read or learn. It is more close-up and biting than a lack of knowledge about the world. It is a lack of knowledge about one’s mental formations.
This ignorance, friends, is a fundamental problem because it is this inability to recognize the roots of our suffering where the demon-ghosts take hold and run us around by the nose.
The demon-ghosts seem to like to chant self-centered mantras to fire us up and keep us going around in circles.
“It’s not fair!” “That’s not right!” “I can’t believe he’d do such a thing to me!” “He is wrong! I am right!” “What a thoughtless thing to do!” “No one loves me!”
Whether the rant is plain and clear or full of expletives it often is accompanied by a sense of outrage, indignation, and ire that keeps the wounded self-interest raw and bitter. Both the demon-ghost choir and the emotional displeasure are the weapons that keep us ignorant and miserable. We fall prey to these thoughts as much as if we were taken hostage by an armed bandit.
This state of our ghostly possession takes place in the mind and comes in the form of thoughts, images, memories, and speculations that have a repetitive loop that mesmerizes us into following it into a hellish misery.
Let us take for an example a slight, one of the countless injuries thrown our way as we navigate through life. In general, someone in silly ignorance does not recognize and does not understand how even a feeble injury arising in the mind is accompanied by a demon-ghost. There are numerous counterfeit excuses that the ignorant mind finds when slighted. Mostly the thoughts are evaluations of the external world of others who are to blame for the damage to our selfish mad ego.
A sizable number of demon-ghosts thrive and rejoice when we spend our life blaming others for the snub, slur or rebuff tossed our way. “But…” we say thinking it is wise to argue and defend an untenable decision to support and reify the self delusion.
“But” is often the first rebuttal to an insult.
We are doing it so it must be the way to respond to an injury. Defend the self is what is often recommended by family and friends unless of course it is family or friend who has done us harm.
We tend to go on after we say the word but with everything that makes us right and whoever slighted us wrong while the demon-ghosts celebrate making them victorious and our mind ignorant. The demon-ghosts flourish in the ignorant mind whereby we begin to believe in the delusion of a separate self.
It is laughable. AND…painful.
There is a simple, direct path to ignoring the demon-ghosts versus our usual reification of them. It requires a contemplation of our actions that contributed to the slight flung at us in the first place.
YES! We are involved in some way or another. We need to be honest about our part.
Our unawareness of the cause explains why so many now-a-days do not think there are demon-ghosts. Those of us still on this roller coaster of trying to reify the self-into-a-somebody are not to be reviled but to be encouraged to begin to understand their actions from the inside out.
When we are able to stop and take a look at our actions, how they arise, and what is arising we are able to begin to brush away all the tendencies to make something out of nothing. We begin to see the demon-ghosts are making every effort to blockade our ascent to the boundless vastness.
It requires a willingness to study ourselves and to practice in such a way the demon-ghosts are no longer an internal threat.
www.asinglethread.net www.zatma.org
If you want to chat or ask a question, write to yao.xiang.editor@gmail.com.
May you be willing to study your actions and practice.
Accept and Appreciate
Acceptance
No matter what you think about anyone else’s mistake
Keep it to yourself.
Don’t mention a word of it even into your own ear.
You are not flawless.
You keep trying to build up merit by stabbing the backs of others.
How high do you think you’ll stand in that bloody place?
Wash your hands of it.
Walk around outside. Sniff the Spring air.
Withdraw your get-even claws.
Mimic the ancient buddhas – Stay still.
Watch the flow of clouds pass over head without harming the wings of a bird.
If there is too much hot air, find the source and cool it down.
Spray it with oceans, cover it with mountains.
There are no trophies to win.
No showcase for your mouthy exhibitions.
Don’t even consider a retort.
Shake out your witty insults.
Fall down at once and drop your self-importance.