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| Monday, 23 February 2004 |
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Be not heedless in standing (at people's doors for alms) observe (this) practice scrupulously. He who observes this practice lives happily both in this world and in the next. Loka Vagga - The Dhammapada
The story behind On the day after His arrival in His birthplace Kapilavattu immediately
after His enlightenment, the Buddha went in quest of alms in the city.
King Suddhodena, His father, hearing that his son was begging alms in the
city, indignantly ran upto Him and said that He was disgracing him by
begging alms in the streets where He formerly used to travel in golden
palanquins. Thereupon, the Buddha remarked that it was the custom of His
predecessors to go seeking alms from door to door and he uttered these
verses. Logic and reasoning in Dhamma by Kingsley Heendeniya The great attractiveness of the Teaching of the Buddha in the West among intellectuals and thinking young people that we see today is largely due to the underlying reason and logic of the Dhamma. In more than 7000 discourses of the Buddha extant today, nowhere has he issued commandments or stated an arrogant opinion or dogma to be accepted willy-nilly without question. The discourses are replete with appeal to rational and clear thinking inviting anyone to investigate and scrutinize them, and gain a reflective acceptance of the teaching. The theme that runs throughout the teaching and upon which it is based is: Not this is mine, not this I am, not this is my self. The greatest difficulty in the Dhamma lies here in penetrating the meaning of those few words that anchor the entire teaching to the aim of liberation here and now, in this very life, not after death in some remote future. Immediate problem The first and immediate problem is that the statement goes against the grain of universal conventional feeling and thinking of a discrete 'personality' we each possess from birth, which everyone sets out to develop and maintain till death. The second difficulty is the limitation imposed by language to continue to use words such as 'I' and 'me' and 'mine' and 'you' in any discussion of 'personality'. The Buddha was eminently aware of them and he tackled both in a variety of ways using logic and reasoning to open our minds to a true understanding and penetration that there is in fact no one here. Teaching methods The methods he used to guide the earnest student of Dhamma from inferential thinking to insight are however subtle. Throughout the teaching, the exhortation he makes is this: Accept only when in you 'this is true'. Let me now give in outline some of the teaching methods used by the Buddha in regard to 'self'. 1. It is not by reasoning that we naturally come to regard, 'This is mine, this am I, this is my self''. The concept of a person, a self comes about affectively. The outstanding evidence of being is that we feel. From the moment of birth, feelings invade the consciousness and remain even fleetingly as evocations of sights, sounds, smell, tastes, touches and ideas. They cascade and change. Feelings tether us to self. Existential problem And this, the Dhamma says is the existential problem. The arising and cessation of feeling, the Buddha taught, is necessarily dependent on three things and their contact with consciousness or the mind. For example, the three things, the fleshy eye and its internal base, external percepts of form or shape or color, and eye-consciousness react together instantly when they make contact with the mind, the fundamental feature of which is that contact is with 'me'. There now arises feelings dependent on the eye. Thus we say, 'I like' or 'I dislike' or 'I neither like nor dislike what I saw'. But why cannot it be said 'There is liking...nor disliking' without reference to a person? Why cannot feeling be mere feeling without being labeled 'my feeling' or 'your feeling'? If in truth there were no 'person' or 'self' that is contacted by the confluence of the three things - eye, forms, eye-consciousness - would the benefit of the outcome be tremendous? Would there be neither sorrow nor joy? Inter-personal conflicts Would there be dispassion and not passion? All personal and inter-personal conflicts that arise within our experience from feeling in the seen shall now not arise because reflection would tell that feeling is feeling brought about by mere contact and not by contact with a person that feels. The Buddha generalizes, 'This world is tormented by contact [with self]'. When the 'self' is abandoned and not clung-to, there is peace. There is now no torment or agitation or reaction in the seen, the heard, the sensed and the cognized. There is insight of things as they actually are. In the seen is merely the seen, in the heard merely the heard, in the sensed merely the sensed and in the cognized merely the cognized. 2. This body of ours is continuously disintegrating. The parts and the total of them are relentlessly breaking down from the moment of birth till death. No single thing or the millions of processes that make this body a living monolithic whole is free from affliction. No feeling or perception or intention that arise from contact with 'me' lasts forever. Impermanence There can be no dispute about this characteristic of impermanence. So long as there exits 'me', feeling of impermanence is subjective. So long as we appropriate experiences by the five senses and the mind, and put mental constructions or intentions upon them, so long is there is disappointment, dissatisfaction, suffering, sorrow or dukkha. It follows therefore that disappointment, dissatisfaction, suffering, sorrow or dukkha arises because there is craving to hold to fleeting, fading, changing, impermanent feelings [and other things] from ignorance that there is in actual fact no one here that feel or exist. It follows that there is escape from all feeling when the holding to a belief in 'me or self that feels' is abandoned. That is what the Buddha teaches. How to escape is what he teaches us to practise. How to escape is more than mere reasoning, logic and intellectual acceptance of the deception of a 'self'. Reasoning, thinking and pondering leads to escape or liberation from dukkha if the instructions of the Buddha in this regard are rigorously practised. He gives firm assurance from his own experience and additionally tells us, 'There is no reason why I should want to deceive you.' Three different selves 3. Is feeling self? While feelings change, fade and disappear, is there an unchanging permanent self that monitors feeling? Feelings can be pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. Feelings arise from data streaming in from the five senses and the mind. Since all three feelings are not present at one and the same time, and if feeling is self, should there not be three different selves, one at each time? If self on the other hand is not feeling but some independent entity, and if it is this unchanging permanent self that receives and monitors feelings, should this self not have mastery over these feelings [and over other things]? Should this self not be able to command 'Let me have this feeling, let me not have this feeling? But if it actually is not the case that there is such a master, would holding to a belief in a master that is undermined by change, fading and impermanence not be a mockery? Reasoning and logic when thus applied to all feelings that are necessarily impermanent, on reflection, leads to acceptance that holding to a belief in an unchanging permanent self is not rational. Provisional faith The above three instances of reasoning applied in Dhamma are given as a sample albeit in outline. There is more in many of the discourses that is outside the scope of this article. The Buddha is the only teacher to boldly invite scrutiny of his teaching. He presented himself as a teacher who merely points the way. And he says, before you examine his teaching, [or any thing else], it is wise to begin with at least provisional faith in the teacher. No blind faith thereafter is required. Intelligent study and examination of the meaning of the Dhamma rationally without bias or pre-determined view leads to wisdom and insight and there is no doubt. That is the method and style of the Dhamma. Popular German ' Stern' Magazine reports explosion of interest in Buddhism in Germany The weekly 'Stern' Magazine in Germany is the equivalent of 'Time' or 'Newsweek' magazine in U.S.A. Its latest issue dated February 13, 2004 carries a series of articles on the phenomenal increase in interest in Buddhism among Germans. It reports that several millions of Germans have their sympathies with Buddhism and are displaying growing interest in learning the doctrine and practising it, particularly meditation. There are over 100,000 Asian Buddhists. Several new Centres catering to the growing demand have opened in Germany and almost all schools i.e., Theravada, (Sri Lankan, Thai, Burmese), Mahayana (Chinese), Tibetan and Japanese Zen Buddhism are represented in the country. The charismatic personality of the Dalai Lama and his teachings have contributed toward making Tibetan Buddhism the most popular form of Buddhism in Germany. Buddhism has been introduced as a subject in some schools in Berlin. Meditation classes are booming with students. The Report on Buddhism in ' Stern ' also pays tribute to German philosophers and writers such as Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1890), Herman Hesse (1877-1962), and celebrated music composer Richard Wagner (1813-1883) as having played a pioneering role in drawing public attention to Buddhism among Germans. Replete with over 15 photographs the Magazine has published a large photograph spread over two full pages of the first German Buddhist Temple (Das Buddhistsche Haus) established in 1924 in the Berlin suburb of Frohnau by the German Physician Dr. Paul Dahlke (1865-1928). It was the centre of German Buddhism during Dr. Dahlke's time and currently the seat of Theravada Buddhism in Central Europe. It is owned and maintained by the German Dharmaduta Society based in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Stop blaming civet cats and chickens for our woes by Dr Tan Chek Wee Singapore - The cause of SARS and, now, bird flu, was blamed on the civet cat and the chicken respectively. So we were treated to an added dose of violence on TV showing civet cats being drowned and chickens being stomped to death. And we were made to believe that this massive killing is the right move because we, human beings, are at risk. Schoolchildren applauded the shooting of crows in their school compounds, saying that crows spread the bird-flu virus.
We should stop blaming other species for our woes. If only we had been less indulgent in our gastronomic pleasures, more compassionate in the farming of animals, and less arrogant and not think that we are the masters of this fragile planet, then perhaps there is still hope for this earthly home we share with other living beings. We want to live. So does every other living being on this planet. Courtesy: Buddhist News Network (BNN) Mind liberated (from the Chabbisodhana Sutta) This the Blessed One has proclaimed, * * * "Friends, by what I see and what I hear, U. Karunatilake |
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Produced by Lake House |
The
Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority is investigating if migratory
birds could spread the virus. We have killed pigs. We have killed civet
cats. We are now killing birds. We have also killed our sense of morality.
Impressionable children will grow up thinking that killing is the answer
to any threat to our survival. Is this the future we want?
