No Time To Lose

No time to lose – a timely guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva
PEMA CHODRON

From the Buddhist point of view, human birth is very precious. Shantideva urges us to contemplate our good situation and not to miss this chance to do something meaningful with our lives. We have intelligence, the availability of teachers and teachings, and at least some inclination to study and mediate. But some of us will die before the year is up, and in the next five years, some of us will be too ill or in too much pain to concentrate on a Buddhist text, let alone live by it. Moreover, many of us will become distracted by worldly pursuits – for two, ten, twenty years or the rest of our lives – and no longer have the leisure to free ourselves from the rigidity of self-absorption. In the future, outer circumstances such as war or violence might become so pervasive that we won’t have time for honest self-reflection. Or, we might fall into the trap of too much comfort. When life feels so pleasurable, so luxurious and cozy, there is not enough pain to turn us away from worldly seductions. Lulled into complacency, we become indifferent to the suffering of our fellow beings.
The human birth is ideal, with just the right balance of pleasure and pain. The point is not to squander this good fortune.


When we get hit hard, we look outward and see how other people also have difficult times. When we feel lonely or angry or depressed, we let these dark moods link us with the sorrows of others. We share the same reactivity, the same grasping and resisting. By aspiring for all beings to be free of their suffering, we free ourselves from our own cocoons and life become bigger than “me”. No matter how dark and gloomy or joyful and uplifted our lives are, we can cultivate a sense of shared humanity.

When we have our emotional upheavals, there is no need to indulge in them. For they are like clouds in the sky, ephemeral and fleeting. When we understand that, we don’t have to feel stuck or definitely believing that they are all “me”. It is just weather, it will pass.

Most of us want to share what we’ve understood with others. Yet in trying to do this, we see even more clearly the work that still needs to be done on ourselves. At some point, we realise that what we do for ourselves benefits others, and what we do for others benefits us.

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Let’s say you’re stuck in grasping or craving; you know that you collect and hoard, that you panic when something is taken from you or you have to let it go. How do you work with unreasonable attachment, for your own sake and for the happiness of others?

One way to would be to cultivate generosity. We aspire to give away something we’re attached to; we train our fearful mind to let go. And in time to come. The ability to really give away will come. If we equate “giving” with “freedom from craving” then we become more eager to act, even if it causes some pain.

According to the teachings, there are three types of generosity, three ways of helping others by giving of ourselves.
The first kind is giving of material things.
The second is giving the gift of fearlessness. We help those who are afraid. If someone is scared of the dark, we give them a flashlight; if they’re going through a fearful time, we comfort them; if they’re having night terrors, we sleep next to them. This may sound easy, but it takes time and effort and care.
The third kind drives away darkness of ignorance. Although no one can eliminate ignorance but ourselves, still, through example and through teachings, we can inspire and support one another.
The inconceivable wish to help all sentient beings always beings with oneself. Our own experience is the only thing we have to share. Much of our realisation comes from the honest recognition of our foibles. The inability to measure up to our own standards is decidedly humbling. It allows us to empathize with others’ difficulties and mistakes.

Most of us living in cities with homeless people do this. We come up with a plan – like giving to the first person who asks us – in hope of relieving our guilt for the rest of the day. Of course, giving in this way is beneficial, but we could definitely stretch further. When we give money to homeless men or women we could aspire them to be free of all their pain. We could aspire to extend our own comfort and happiness to them and to homeless people everywhere.

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Harbouring hatred toward anyone produces an anguished frame of mind. We remain in this hellish state for ages equal to the moment of our wrath – in other words, for as long as we hold on to our hatred, instead of letting it go.

Virtuous thoughts, on the other hand, bring happiness. Instead of separating us and making feel more cut off and afraid, they bring us closer to others.
If someone insults you, you may long to retaliate, but you know this won’t benefit anyone. Instead, in the very grip of wanting to get even, you can say to yourself ‘may the rage that I feel towards this person cause both of us to be liberated.

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Prostration overcomes arrogance. We don’t have to hang on to our accomplishments or good fortune. We can afford to be humble and bow down to those who embody wisdom, those courageous ones who worked hard so that the teachings still remains alive today.

2nd prostrations connect us with our own sanity. In the presence of an extremely open and compassionate person, we can feel these qualities unfold in ourselves. Some seemingly separate person or object of veneration can awaken the clarity and freshness of our mind. As a gesture of respect, love and gratitude to those who show us basic goodness, we bow down and prostrate.

3rd it is a way to overcome resistance and surrender our deeply entrenched neuroses and habits. Each time we bow, we offer ourselves: our confusion, our inability to love, our hardness and selfish ways. It’s like opening our hands and saying “with this gesture I willingly acknowledge how stuck I am. I surrender it all to the vast and compassionate heart of bodhichitta. Until attaining the essence of enlightenment, I take refuge in awakened mind.”
With all these in mind, we prepare ourselves to experience the heart of bodhi.

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Confession

Whenever we do something we wish we hadn’t, we give it our full compassionate attention, rather than hiding our mistakes from ourselves and others, we forthrightly declare them. By acknowledging them to ourselves we avoid self-deception. In certain circumstances we may also declare them to someone else, as witness to our wise intention.
To see how clearly we strengthen or weaken crippling patterns we have to bring them to light.
Is it enough to acknowledge my regrets to myself? It does help but not enough to completely dissolve self-deception. It allows us free ourselves of a burden of shame to start afresh. To lay aside our neurotic crimes and move forward without guilt. We connect with the openhearted tenderness of regret.


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Long after our friends and foes are gone, we still carry the imprints of our positive and negative reactions. Our habitual patterns remain in place long after the objects of our attachment and aversion cease. The problem is not our friends or foes, per se. The problem is the way we relate to them or to any external circumstances. What habits are we strengthening when we get enmeshed in our attachments and aversions?

It is futile to get worked up about those who, just like us, live fleeting, momentary lives.

Understand that everything we do has consequences, and they won’t always be comfortable. Each day, we’re either strengthening or weakening negative patterns. But as Trungpa Rinpoche once said” Karma is not a punishment; it is the consequences that we’re temporarily stuck with. We can undo it by following the path.”

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For those who spend their lives learning to relax with groundlessness death is liberating. But if we live our lives trying to hold on to this brief and transient existence, we’re going to be scared, very scared, when we die. Death is the ultimate unknown that we are forever avoiding; it’s the ultimate groundlessness that we try to escape. But if we learn to relax with uncertainty and insecurity, then death is a support for joy.

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If we spend our lives searching for outside help – through looking good, shopping therapy, addictions and so on –we will look for something to hold on to when we die. When we find ourselves seeking help with panic-stricken eyes, we’ll discover too late that this habitual response will not help. So in what do I seek refuge?

Even though we can’t possibly hold on to anything, clinging remains one of our strongest habits. Useless though it may be, we devote much of our energy to grasping at that which is elusive and impermanent. In this present moment, there is nothing left of the past but memories. Our nostalgia for the good times, our fear of the bad times: that’s all that’s really left. Instead of getting hooked further by nostalgia and fear, we can simply acknowledge these tendencies and question the intelligence of continuing to harm ourselves for the sake of such transient concerns.

What are our criteria for telling friend from foe? A friend might be the cause of emotional upheavals and negative habits, while a so-called foe might profit us immensely. It is often when someone hurts us that we have a breakthrough in understanding. Friends and enemy are common concepts; but it’s hard to say who will help or hinder the process of awakening.

It is extremely difficult to resist the seduction of habits, even knowing how unsatisfying the end results will be. We persist in the same old patterns which illogically hold out the promise of comfort. To rid ourselves of inevitable suffering, it’s crucial to acknowledge on the spot how we repeatedly get hooked. Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche refers to it as “nausea with samsara”
Having fully acknowledged past and present actions, Shantideva wholeheartedly aspires never again to be deceived by the false promise of addictions and rote responses. By cleaning the slate, he creates the opportunity for his basic sanity to emerge.

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Rejoicing

Rejoicing in the good fortune of others is a practice that can help us when we feel emotionally shut down and unable to connect with others. Rejoicing generates good will. Each of us has this soft spot: a capacity for love and tenderness. But if we don’t encourage it, we can get pretty stubborn about remaining sour.

I have a friend who, when he begins getting depressed and withdrawn, goes to a nearby park and does this practices – directing your attention to strangers, just wish them all to be happy and well- for everyone who walks by. He finds this pulls him out of the slump, before it’s too late. The tricky part is getting out of the house, instead of getting in to the seduction of gloom.
When you rejoice, you will encounter your soft spot as well as your competitiveness and envy. Sitting on a park bench and wishing well for others is relatively easy to do but when good fortune befalls those we know better esp. those we dislike, it can give us an up-close look at our jealousy.
When we realised that uglier side of ours, our usual response would be that we blew it but this isn’t necessarily the case. We should rejoice as much in seeing where we’re stuck as we rejoice in our loving-kindness. This is our opportunity to understand what others are up against when they do the same, generating compassion for others. For their sake and ours, we can let the storyline go and stay present with an open heart and we can rejoice that we’re even interested in such a fresh alternative.

Shantideva rejoices in those who long to place all beings in the state of bliss and in those of us who even glimpse such an expansive aspiration and commit to training our minds. Likewise he rejoices in those actively engaging in relieving suffering for the benefits of all.
The reference to all beings may sounds unreasonably vast but really, it’s just a way of looking out at the world to see if there’s anyone we detest, anyone we fear or can’t stop resenting. To include all beings seriously challenge our usual tendency to choose whom we like and dislike whom we wish to see prosper or fail. These old habits die hard. So, while holding the intention to benefit all beings excluding none we take one step at a time.

The practice of rejoicing overcomes jealousy and competitiveness. This is accomplished by heightening our unbiased awareness of those very qualities we wish to deny.

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Overcoming the transient ‘me’

The practice of dedicating merits overcomes self-absorption. Instead of hoarding good fortunes, we give it all away – to specific people or to sentient beings everywhere. Accumulating merits depends on letting go of our possessiveness altogether with an attitude of letting whatever happens happen. We aren’t’ collecting anything for ego to hold on to; it’s quite the opposite. The main point is to not hold back for fear of ending up with nothing yourself.
The journey to enlightenment is a continual process of opening and surrender, to overcome clinging and the “I want, I need” of self-absorption. It’s as close as we can come to giving up everything that’s “me” or “mine”.

Shantideva vows to surrender the three main bases of self-importance: attachment to possessions, body and merit. The Tibetan word for attachment is shenpa, describing the feeling of getting hooked, a non-verbal tightening or shutting down.

Possession evokes shenpa all the time: we’re afraid of losing them, breaking them or never getting enough. It doesn’t have to do with the things themselves. To get hooked in this way is completely unreasonable, as if the objects of our desire could provide security and lasting happiness. Nevertheless, shenpa happens. It’s that sticky feeling that arises when we want things to go our way.

Our bodies also provoke shenpa. This manifests in various ways. It’s the anxious feeling that’s triggered by our health, our appearance, our desire to avoid physical pain e.g our willingness to help others may fall apart at the slightest discomfort. This body is a precious vessel, our ship for reaching enlightenment. But if we were to spend all of our time painting the decks, we’ll never leave port and this brief opportunity will be lost. Moreover, our body, like everything else, is impermanent and prone to death and decay. Perhaps it’s time to see it for what it is and stop strengthening our shenpa.

But perhaps the most difficult to give up is our merit. Can you imagine willingly letting go of your good fortune? Would you be able to relinquish your good qualities, pleasing circumstances comforts, and prestige so that others may be happy? It means letting go on the most profound and difficult level even our clutching to security and the illusions of certainty would go.
Imagine the civil rights workers who, for the greater good, entered into dangerous situations, they know they will be the butt of mockery, be beaten, insulted and perhaps killed. We can draw inspiration from Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, Aung San Suu Kyi and Gandhi to name a few.

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Awareness

When we’re young, we have a natural curiosity about the world around us and a motivation to learn, as well as a fear of becoming like some of the older people we see: stuck in their ways, with closed minds and no more spirit of adventure. It’s true that as some people get older, they begin spending more time in pursuit of comfort and security. But Shantideva is passionately determined to keep his youthful curiosity alive, He aspires to continually stretch his heart beyond his cocoon, he wants to grow in flexibility and enthusiasm. The bodhisattva path is not about being a “good” person or accepting status quo. It requires courage and a willingness to keep growing.

Attentiveness is a significant component of self-reflection. By paying attention when we feel the tug of shenpa, we get smarter by not getting hooked.

When to apply attentiveness? When bodhichitta arises before we make a commitment, after we‘ve made a commitment; when relating with the cause and effect of karma or consequences of our actions; and finally when we are seduced by our kleshas – which is a strong emotion that reliably leads to suffering. It may also be translated into neurosis, afflictions or defiled emotions. In essence, kleshas are dynamic, ineffable energy, yet it’s energy that easily enslaves us and causes us to act and speak in unintelligent ways.

If you ever had the impulse to be generous and then changed your mind, chances are you were influenced by greed or attachment. Shantideva asked himself: what would be the outcome of taking a vow to benefit all beings and then failing to maintain it?
Reneging on the bodhisattva vow doesn’t mean sometimes not feeling up to the task, it means opting for your own comfort and security on a permanent basis. Having made the commitment, there is no question we will sometimes feel inadequate and doubt our ability to be of benefit. These temporary lapses should be expected. But if we decide to let the bodhichitta spark go out, if we repress our appetite for challenge and growth, the consequences will be sad indeed. Bodhisattva is said to be like a golden vase, very valuable yet easy to mend when broken. We can renew our bodhichitta commitments at any time. Inherent in the vow is kindness for our human frailty and the encouragement that it’s never too late to start fresh.
But of cos, if we continually renew and break our commitments, we will long be barred from progression along the bodhisattva path although not for forever.

The Buddha’s blessings shine upon us without bias. But three attitudes prevent us from receiving a continual flow of blessings.

1) as a full pot with a mind full of opinions and preconceptions. We already know it all. We have so many fixed ideas that nothing can new can affect us or cause us to question our assumptions.

2) a pot with poison, with a mind so cynical, critical and judgmental that everything is poisoned by this harshness. It allows no openness and no willingness to explore the teachings or anything else that challenges our righteous stance.

3) as a pot full of holes with a distracted mind. Our body may be present but our thoughts are lost thinking of our dream vacation or what’s for dinner that we are deaf to what’s being said.
Nothing will improve unless we become intelligent about cause and effect.

There is a repeating pattern to our behaviour that we somehow seem to miss. When we’re challenged, our habitual reactions are especially predictable: we strike out or withdraw, scream or weep, become arrogant or feel inadequate. These strategies for seeking security and avoiding discomfort only increase our uneasiness. But they seem addictive; even though results are unsatisfactory we use them again and again. Attentiveness functions like a guardian who protects us from repeating the same mistakes and strengthening the same patterns. We can catch ourselves getting hooked and avoid being swept by shenpa.
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When we are comfortable it’s relatively easy to open your hearts to another’s suffering. But in states of intense misery, it’s very difficult. If we are starving and someone gives us a bowl of rice, do we share with someone else in the same boat? Because of our fear of starvation and death, we might find this extremely difficult. When we’re enmeshed in misery, we just want relief from our pain. That’s the message: when suffering is intense, it’s harder to think of others and harder to access bodhichitta. If we have a good birth, cherish it for it may not be so easy next time.

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Kleshas: aggression, cravings, ignorance, jealousy, arrogance, pride and all their offspring. From moment to moment we can choose how we relate to our emotions. But habitual reactions can be strong and long-standing, making it difficult to choose intelligently. We don’t intentionally choose pain but we may just do what’s familiar, which isn’t always the best idea.
1) We can be enslaved by our kleshas. This insight alone would undercut their power if we were attentive to it. Emotional reactivity starts as a slight tightening. There’s the familiar tug of shenpa and before we know it, we’re pulled along. In just a few seconds, we go from being slightly miffed to completely out of control. Nevertheless we have the inherent wisdom and ability to halt this chain reaction early on. Just as we are about to step into a trap, we can at least pause and take some deep breaths before proceeding.
2) We welcome kleshas. They are familiar and give us something to hold on to, and they set off a predictable chain reaction that we find irresistible. When we realise we like our kleshas, we begin to understand why they have such power over us. Hatred can make us feel strong and in charge. Rage makes us feel even more powerful and invulnerable. Craving and wanting can feel soothing, romantic and nostalgic: we weep over lost loves and unfulfilled dreams. It’s painfully and deliciously bittersweet. Ignorance is comforting: we don’t have to do anything; we just lay back and don’t relate to what’s happening around us.

Each of us has our own way of welcoming and encouraging the kleshas. But we need to realise that they harm us in order to be able take actions. Self reflection is impt here and do not indulge. For example, when you are about to say something mean or indulge in self-righteousness or criticism, just reflect on the spot: if I strengthen this habit, will it bring suffering or relief? Based on your own experience, answers these questions yourself.

Shantideva warned us not to be naïve with the kleshas. We cannot afford to be ignorant of their powers but to be attentive and get to know them better. Being ignorant about emotions only makes matter worse while feeling guilty and ashamed does the same. Struggling against them is equally nonproductive. The only way to dissolve their power is with our wholehearted, intelligent attention so that we can connect with the underlying energy and discover their insubstantial nature.

It will be difficult at first as we withdraw from our habitual response but our lives become increasingly more relaxed and free in the end. Its take courage and perseverance.
We build up fantasy worlds in our mind, causing kleshas to escalate, then like awakening from a dream, we discover this fantasy has no substance and the kleshas have no basis.

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Taming the mind

Many of us have the tendency to start things and then get distracted. Our minds jump from one thing to another and our bodies follow. In this age of multi-tasking, Shantideva’s instructions to start something and pursue it to the end is radical: calm the mind to doing one thing at a time! Afflictions will not multiply if you are fully present and you can test it out yourself.

Shantideva says we can waste a lot of time distracting ourselves with mindless chatter. Very easy to talk but very difficult to talk mindfully.
We should not doodle too because the reason we doodle is because we aren’t very interested in being present. This is basic mindfulness training; to do away with meaningless distraction or dunzi we can waste a whole life with dunzi.

Mindfulness: from time to time we take a fresh look at what’s going on with our body and our actions. Without being critical or proud about what we observe, we simply pay attention to what we’re doing. It can be helpful to create certain times to practice mindfulness in a undistracted way, being alert to any tendency to get too tight or too loose. There are times for tight practice but there is also the need for warmth and awareness of one’s environment. When it is appropriate to look around and be friendly, one should just do that. If someone comes along wounded you don’t walk by with downcast eyes. If a child tickles you, you’re not so serious that you can’t laugh. The point of this training is to not be distracted by our conditioned responses but instead see clearly what needs to be done and act accordingly. Tame your mind without losing your sense of humor.

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Vigilance

Instructions for deescalating klesha by “remaining like a log”
Emotional turmoil begins with an initial perception – a sight, sound though –which gives rise to a feeling of comfort or discomfort. This is the subtlest level of shenpa. Energetically there is a perceptible pull, like a want to scratch an itch. This initial tug of “for” or “against” is the first place we can remain as steady as a log. Just experience the tug and relax into the restlessness of the energy, without fanning this ember with thoughts. If we stay present with the rawness of our direct experience, emotional energy can move through us without getting stuck. Of course, this isn’t easy and takes practices.

The second chance is when our thoughts are underway but haven’t gained momentum. By interrupting the thoughts before we get worked up, we diffuse the intensity of emotions. Emotional intensity can’t survive without our thoughts, so this is a pivotal instruction.
Still we can let the storyline go even after emotional heat has started to rise.
Lastly is before we take the fatal step of speaking or acting out.

When you feel the sting of an insult, for example, you don’t have to magnify it with your thoughts or buy into a storyline that works you into a rage. Just acknowledge the thoughts and let them fade away.
The practice of “remaining like a log” is based on refraining, not repressing. With this practice, it can be helpful to gently breathe in and out with the restlessness of the energy. This is a major support for learning to stay present.

We tend to get provoked by childish people’s quarrelling. The energy of negativity is very seductive and draws us in. Shantideva’s instruction is to diffuse the charge by reflecting on why people do what they. People who quarrel are slaves to their emotions. They don’t choose to get angry and yell, but like all of us, they get overwhelmed by their kleshas and carried away. If we too get caught in the negative undertow, doesn’t that put us in the same boat? Thus when others get snared, we treat them lovingly, just as we’d want to be treated in the same predicament. Without being condescending or disapproving, we realise our sameness and communicate from the heart. We can also make too big a deal about doing things right. Identifying oneself as the virtuous one can be a problem. Make no big deal about the doer, no big deal about what’s being done and no big deal about the result.

This body will eventually waste away and decays no matter how much health food or vitamins we consume, Old age and death are inevitable so that is no need to be too attach to the body. You and it are separate entities. Regard the body as a short-term rental: take care of it and keep it clean but not to the point of absurdity. Treat your body with respect but not with a sense of ownership.
So why continue pampering our bodies when we know they will surely stop functioning? The real problem here is self-importance. Obsessing about how we look and feel wastes precious time and cause us to lose touch with the difficulties of others. If you’re able to do, you should pay this body due remuneration but draw a line about how much time you spend at the gym. Taking pride of our appearance is alright. Upliftedness is a way of expressing our human dignity while obsession is a way of wasting our life.

Rejoicing in the good qualities of others takes us out of self-centeredness and expands our views of the world. This is a way to gather virtue, which helps us as much as others. But often we have difficulty accepting compliments. We gather virtue when we can accept praise straightforwardly, without getting all puffed up or refusing to believe it. We gather virtue by letting ourselves be touched by someone else’s appreciation of our good qualities.

The bodhisattva’s acts aren’t limited to rigid moral guidelines. We do whatever inspires people to help themselves and whatever it takes to remove suffering.


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Working with Anger

Because striking out in anger can become a habitual response to stress and discomfort, Shantideva passionately encouraged us to unwind this old habit rather than continue to strength it. There are times, Dalai Lama said, anger is appropriate but hatred is never justified. Anger can be motivated by compassion by hatred is always accompanied by ill will.

To work with anger, you need to work on patience.
When we are angry about something, most of us think about it feverishly; we can’t sleep at night or find any peace of mind.

First, get in touch with how anger feels in your body. We don’t’ usually pay attention to the physical anguish anger causes. Sensitize yourself to that pain can motivate you to work more eagerly with aggression.

Another practice is to do it during mediation. Replay the whole scene and pay attention o your feelings and thoughts. Are they obsessive and repetitive? Do they fuel your grudges and judgments? Breathe in and out gently with the feeling of anger as your focus of your meditation. Do not move away from it by repressing or acting it out. Just get to know it and lessens the sense of struggle.
Also, stay with your soft spot. Below anger is a lot of tenderness which most of us quickly cover over with hardness of anger. It can keep you from exploding and destroying everything in sight.

What triggers anger? According to Shantideva, it’s getting what we don’t want and not getting what we desire. When we heavily invested in our likes and dislikes, tiny reactions can escalate into violence and war. When we’re afraid of getting stuck with something we don’t want or deprived of what we need, our thoughts come in as reinforcements and escalate our anger and pain.

There are three categories of patience:
1) patience that comes from reframing our attitude toward discomfort.
2) patience that comes from understanding the complexity of situation
3) patience that comes from developing tolerance.

Even when you refrained kleshas from escalating by not acting out or interrupting the thoughts, the energy needs to be dissipated and we need patience in that even though it may be uncomfortable.


No matter who behaves improperly, enemies of friends, don’t get heated up and opinionated. Be calm and practice patience, in this case, by reflecting on the fact that they do what they do is not so obvious. It arises from a variety of causes and conditions.

Until we start working with our mind, we are ruled by our emotions. They take us over until we’re no longer in control. When we get angry with others, we could remember that, just like us, they do what they do for complex reasons, not the least of which is being controlled by their emotions. At times, we may feel completely justified in being hateful. Yet when someone harms us, we might ask ourselves this: why aren’t we just as enraged by failing branches. If we reply that “the harm that person caused me is intentional,” we might want to question our logic. For all of us, unpleasant feeling arise uninvited and quickly pull us in. If we don’t see it happening, we won’t refrain from acting out, and inevitably we’ll cause harm.

A neutral even such a falling branch can result in various reactions: an emotional explosion, relaxation, or even laughter. Our response depends on how we’ve worked with our emotions up to that point. We don’t set out to be angry, and likewise anger doesn’t set out to be experienced. But when causes and conditions come together, we impulsively get caught up and swept away. Patience, Shantideva infers, is the antidote: in particular, the patience that comes from having sympathy for the complexity of our current situation.

We don’t have to spend a lifetime building up a case about the wrongness of our emotions. In this very moment, we can work with our mind and develop patience.

Tolerance: develop tenderness for the human predicament and if that is not possible, at least realise that anger increases our sufferings.

Hostile words are merely sounds coming out from someone’s mouth. If they were in a foreign language, we wouldn’t even react. But because of our past history and present state of mind, we interpret these sounds in a way that causes us to fly into rage. Perhaps we resent hostile words because we fear that if people dislike us, they may prevent us from acquiring the possessions and wealth we desire. But this, Shantideva acknowledged, doesn’t make sense because when we die, we will leave all our property behind, only karmic consequences will keep us steady company. So it is wise not to strengthen negative propensities, no matter what their justification.

We might claim we need the wealth in order to do virtuous deeds. We try to justify retaliating against those who would keep us from getting rich. But Shantideva makes it clear that our negative actions far outweigh any wholesome deeds we might perform in hope of gathering a bit of merit. We could always use dharma logic to justify our anger: I am angry because Mary is harming herself. When she slanders me, look at the painful consequences she creates for herself! Such an argument might make us feel quite virtuous. But Shantideva replies” In that case, why don’t I see you getting angry about Mary’s bad karma when she slanders someone else?” Perhaps we feel we could justify anger if someone harms the teachings or sacred images but Shantideva disagrees. The Buddhas themselves would not get upset; in fact they would only feel compassion. So how can we presume to get self-righteous on their behalf?

Shantideva’s instructions on how to cool off:

To remove the tinder of wanting things our way.

When we look closely at our mind’s attachment, we can see they don’t hold together with our storylines. When it comes to the fiery flames of hate, we could cool them down by acknowledging obssessive thoughts and letting them go.
In meditation we recognise when our mind wanders and simply return to being present. To facilitate this process, we can label the thoughts “thinking”. This technique gently and objectively dissolves the stream of habitual chatter and its underlying beliefs.
It is painful to refrain from anger; it takes courage. When the hook of shenpa is strong, we long to talk indignantly among our friends, to yell at our foes and to fuel the anger with our thoughts. But the pain of refraining is well worth it – it allows us to calm down and avoid the pains of hell.


Developing patience when enemies are praised.
It isn’t easy when someone else gets the compliments – or job, perks or lover –we want. We can’t pretend it doesn’t get to us. When the talents of others are being praised Shantideva asks, : why O mind, do you not find joy, likewise, in praising them?

There are 4 joys of practicing patience
1) patience is stainless
Compared to happiness: when we achieve happiness, our gain is intentionally or unintentionally someone else’s loss. It’s not that we are malicious or in any way at fault. That’s just the way it is. However, patience is stainless; no one loses and everyone gains.

2) it brings happiness. It isn’t always instant and sometimes it is the great relief of lessening our burden of rage. Just being able to pause and relax instead of retaliating gradually brings unshakeable well-being. We find that very few people provoke us and the world is a friendlier place.

3) it is praised by buddhas. In the most profound sense, this means it brings us closer to our buddha nature or basic goodness

4) it enables us to communicate sanely. It allows us to be heard and is thus the perfect way of winning others. We can our messages across because no one feels threatened or accused.

Sometimes we’ve had enough of hearing about the virtues of patience. On some level we might buy it but on a gut level we prefer the conventional logic: what about me? Why shouldn’t I feel envious when others get all the praise? Why shouldn’t I feel left out, lonely, or miserable when they’re the ones surrounded by friends? Samsaric reasoning says that someone else is going to get all the happiness, not me. Shantideva’s rebuttal may not be easy to grasp but worth considering: not practicing patience is like not paying wages or returning favours. In general, people won’t like us very much; in terms of our kleshas, strengthening meanness and jealously won’t bring us any happiness. No matter how we look at it, we lose.

When praise is heaped upon your merits,
You’re keen that others should rejoice in them.
But when the compliment is paid to others,
Your joy is oh so low and grudging.

How can we say that we want others to get enlightened when we don’t even want them to get compliments? Again, justifying resentment or feeling guilty about it stifles the bodhi heart.
When rewards are given to those we feel are unworthy, we can let it destroy our peace of mind or let it go.

When we obliviously rant on about others’ good fortune – how come they got the job? The pay increase? The winning lottery ticket – we forget it may be due to their previous virtuous actions. Our resentment and gossip won’t bring us positive results.

Things that we think will make a significant difference in our lives – fame, praise, status, a new house, the partner of our dreams – don’t seem to remove unhappiness for very long. After the immediate gratification, we’re usually back we started.
This simple truth rarely penetrates even with clear-cut evidence to the contrary, we continue to relying on possessions, relationships, reputation, or wealth to significantly alter our state of mind, No matter how successful we are at getting what we want, it won’t increase our life span, long-term contentment, or merit. Expecting lasting happiness from a shift in outer circumstances will always disappoint us.

Why is it futile to continually seek confirmation –

Praise and compliments disturb me
Sapping my revulsion with samsara
I start to covet others’ qualities,
And thus all excellence degenerates.

1) we become dependent on praise and compliment, relaying on the whims of other people’s opinions to feel good about ourselves.
2) If we do manage to become esteemed and respected, we might start believing this feel-good state is equivalent to lasting happiness. We might kid ourselves into thinking we don’t have any more foibles to work on, not even humility.
3) Our envy of others’ good qualities increases. We may think we no longer need compliments, but watch out! When the praise we’ve gotten used to goes to someone else, envy kick in.

Those who give us a hard time, who are difficult to be around or who constantly blow our cover are the very ones who show us where we’re stuck. Troublemakers show us things we don’t want to see. They show us how we get trapped and continually create our own sorrow.

______________
Heroic Perseverance

Trungpa Rinpoche encouraged us to lead our lives as an experiment, a suggestion that has been very important to me. When we approach life as an experiment, we’re willing to try it this way and that way because, either way, we have nothing to lose.
For Trungpa Rinpoche, his enthusiasm enabled him to accomplish an amazing amount in his life. When some things didn’t work out, Rinpoche’s attitude was “ no big deal”. If it’s time for something to flourish, it will; if it’s not time, it won’t.
The trick is not getting caught in hope and fear. We can put our whole heart into whatever we do but if we freeze our attitude into for or against, we’re setting ourselves up for stress. Instead, we could just go forward with curiosity, wondering where this experiment will lead. This kind of open-ended inquisitiveness captures the spirit of enthusiasm, or heroic perseverance.
There may be no time to lose, but not to worry, we can do it.


From a conventional point of view, the practices of equality appear foolish. Whoever suffers should take care of him or herself. This rationale makes sense from our ordinary perspective:I’ll take care of me and you take care of you. Shantideva use the analogy of the body. The hand will protect the foot from harm. If we accept this as reasonable, why would we dismiss the idea that separate beings could also relate as parts of a whole?
This kinds of interdependent thinking makes perfect sense, When we don’t take care of one another, I suffer, you suffer the whole world suffers.

忘了。。

若执着此生 则非修行者
若执着世间 则无出离心
若执己目的 则失菩提心
若执取生起 则失（无）正知见

Joyful Wisdom

Joyful Wisdom
Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche


Left to its own, the mind is like a resless bird, always flitting from branch to branch or sweeping down from a tree to the ground and then flitting up into another tree. In this analogy, the branches, the ground, and the other represent the demands we receive from our five senses, as well as thoughts asnd emotions. They all seem very interesting and powerfully attractive. And since there’s always something going on in and around us, it’s very hard for the poor restless bird to settle. N owonder so many of the people I meet complain of being stressed most of the time! This kind of flitting about while our senses are overloaded and our thoughts and emotions are demanding recognition makes it very hard to stay relaxed and rested.

Most of us, when we look at something, hear something, or watch a thought or emotion, have some sort of judgement about the experience. This judgement can be understood in terms of three basics “branches”: the “I like it” branch, the “I don’t like it” branch, or the “I don’t know” branch. Each of these branches spreads out into smaller branches : pleasant, not pleasant or I like it because…. Could be good or bad branch…..the possibilities represented by all these branches tempt the little bird to flutter between them, investigating each one.

Practice letting go of our judgements and opinions and just looking at, or paying attention to, what we see from whatever branch we’re sitting on. Attending to our experience this way allows us to distingusih our judgements and opionions from the simple experience of seeing.

In most cases, our experiences are conditioned by the branch we’re sitting on and the screen of branches before us. In that momemnt of pausing to just be aware, we open ourselve not only to the possibility of bypassing habitual ideas, emotions, and responses to physical sensation, but also to responding freshly to each experience as it occurs.

心灵寄语

心灵寄语 （刘济雨著）

1. 一有时候， 我们要［用智慧取舍时间］，［用速度换取时间］ 甚至 ［用技巧妙用时间］
   
   
2. 人只要心念一偏差， 业障就跟着来。
   
   
3. ［君子求诸己， 小人求诸人］: 先检讨自己，要求自己， 不要责怪别人， 抱怨别人。
   
   
4. 一个人不被人家了解， 甚至误解，被冤枉， 却还不急着解释， 也不怨天， 不尤人， 这种修养很难。 这就是修行的功夫了。
   
   
5. ［求于人者畏于人］ － 对别人有所要求， 就会常常受制于人， 会害怕别人。不求于人者， 则不畏于人。如此我们才不会受别人影响， 心灵保持宁静。
   
   
6. 我们不能要求别人不给我们创伤， 侮辱，痛苦，嫉妒， 批评等等， 但却能要求自己转个心念， 将这些困顿当作修养的教材。
   
   
7. ［人到无求品自高］－ 心中无欲或少欲的人， 面对误会或冤枉就比较能解怀与看开， 因为名利， 地位， 财富， 甚至是与自己不同之知见， 都一看开了。
   
   
8. ［心迷万物转， 心悟转万物］
   
   
9. ［转念快的人， 烦恼不会旧置心中； 转念慢的人， 烦恼如影随行。］－ ［逃避不一定躲地过， 面对不一定最难受］
   
   
10. 缘生时就提起， 缘灭时就放下， 心中常存无常观与因缘观， 这样面对悲欢离合时才会轻安自在。－ ［境缘看得开， 万缘才防得下。 心不贪恋， 意不颠倒］
    
    
11. 有时候问题能否解决，与我们的［能力］ 或［实力］ 无关， 而是我们的［业力］ 或［关系］。［关系］。属［广结善缘］

The Quantum and the Lotus

fr The Quantum and the Lotus - for the science students..
Matthieu Ricard and Trinh Xuan Thuan


When we organize the remarkable harmony and precision of the universe, it is tempting to imagine that there is an all-knowing Creator, from the secular view, some sort of principle of creation that finely adjusted the evolution of the universe. The omnipotence of such a Creator would explain everything, and there would be no need for us to wonder about the origins of our astonishingly complex universe, or about how life arose, or how inanimate matter can be compatible with the animate matter of life. This question of whether of not there is a creating God is a key point of distinction between the world’s great spiritual traditions. For Buddhism, the notion of “first cause” does not stand up to analysis. Some scientists also dismiss the need for a God, arguing that the exceptional fine-tuning of the universe arose by chance. Others, however, believe that there is some kind of an organizing principle at work in our world. Can this notion of such a principle stand up to analysis? Is it necessary and logical?



T: Another scientific argument against the existence of God is that the very idea of cause and effect loses its meaning when applied to the universe. The notion presupposes the existence of time, so that cause reliably precedes effect. But according to the Big Bang, time and space appeared simultaneously with the universe. If time didn’t exist before this, then what does “and God created the universe” mean? The act of creating the universe is meaningful only in time. Is God in time, or outside of it? Time isn’t absolute, as Einstein said. It’s elastic and is stretched (or contracted) by accelerating motions or fields of intense gravity, such as those around black holes. A God contained in time would no longer be all-powerful, because he would be subject to the laws of time. A God outside time would be omnipotent, but unable to help us, since our actions happen in time. If God transcended time, then he would already know the future. If he knew everything in advance, why would he bother to become involved in the struggle of humankind against evil?


M: God must be either immutable, and thus unable to create, or else inside time and thus not immutable. This is one of the contradictions that the notion of a prime cause leads to. What are the justifications behind this argument?

First, if there is a prime cause, it should be immutable. Why? Because, by definition, it has no other cause than itself, so it has no reason to become different. Change would imply the intervention of another cause that wasn’t part of the prime cause.

Second, how could an immutable entity create something? If there is an act of creation, is the creator involved or not? If he is not, why call him “creator”? If he is involved, then because creation inevitably occurs in stages, the something or someone involved in theses stages is not immutable. One could agree with Saint Augustine that God created time and the universe. But even so, creation remains a process, and any process, whether temporal or not, is incompatible with immutability. This point did not escape Saint Augustine himself, who said that the notion of beginning involves an act of faith. Buddhism contends, by contrast, that such an act of faith in unnecessary provided one doesn’t cling to the position that there must be a beginning.
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The concept of interdependence lies at the heart of the Buddhist vision of the nature of reality, and has immense implications in Buddhism regarding how we should live our lives. This concept of interdependence is strikingly similar to the concept of nonseparability in quantum physics. Both concepts lead us to ask a question that is both simple and fundamental: Can a “thing” or a “phenomenon,” exist autonomously? If not, in what way and to what degree are the universe’s phenomena interconnected? If things do not exist per se, what conclusions must be drawn about life?

M: In Buddhism, the perception we have of distinct phenomena resulting from isolated causes and conditions is called “relative truth” or “delusion”. Our daily experience makes us think that things have a real objective independence, as though they existed all on their won and had intrinsic identities. But this way of seeing phenomena is just a mental construct. Even though this view of reality seems to be commonsense, it doesn’t stand up to analysis.
Buddhism instead adopts the notion that all things exist only in relationship to others, the idea of mutual causality. An event can happen only because it’s dependent on other factors. Buddhism sees the world as a vast flow of events that are linked together and participate in one another. The way we perceive this flow crystallizes certain aspects of the nonseparable universe, thus creating an illusion that there are autonomous entities completely separate from us.
In one of his sermons, the Buddha described reality as a display of pearls – each pearl reflects all of the others, as well as the palace whose façade they decorate, and the entirety of the universe. This comes down to saying that all of reality is present in each of its parts. This image is a good illustration of interdependence, which states that no entity independent of the whole can exist anywhere in the universe.


T: This “flow of events” idea is similar to the view of reality that derives from modern cosmology. From the smallest atom up to the universe in its entirety, including the galaxies, stars, and humankind, everything is moving and evolving. Nothing is immutable.


M: Not only do things move, but we see them as “things” only because we are viewing them from a particular angle. We mustn’t give the world properties that are merely appearances. Phenomena are simply events that happen in certain circumstances. Buddhism doesn’t deny conventional truth – the sort that ordinary people perceive of the scientist detects. It doesn’t contest the laws of cause and effect, or the laws of physics and mathematics. It quite simply affirms that, if we dig deep enough, there is a difference between the way we see the world and the way it really is, and the way it really is, we’ve discovered, is devoid of intrinsic existence.


T: So what has that true nature got to do with interdependence?


M: The word “interdependence” is a translation of the Sanskrit pratitya samutpada, which means “to be co-emergence” and is usually translated as “dependent origination.” The saying can be interpreted in two complementary ways. The first is “this arises because that I,” which comes down to saying that things do exist in some way , but nothing exists on its own. The second is “this, having been produced, produces that,” which means that nothing can be its own cause. Or we could say that everything is in some way interdependent with the world. We do not deny that phenomena really do occur, but we argue that they are “dependent,” that they don’t exist in an autonomous way. Any given thing in our world can appear only because it’s connected, conditioned and in turn conditioning, co-present and co-operating in constant transformation. Their way of “being” is simply in relation to one another, never in and of themselves. We tend to cling to the notion that “things” must precede relationships. This is not the case here. The characteristics of phenomena are defined only through relationships.
Interdependence explains what Buddhism sees as the impermanence and emptiness of phenomena and this emptiness is what we mean by the lack of “reality.” The seventh Dalai Lama summarized this idea in a verse:

Understanding interdependence, we understand emptiness
Understanding emptiness, we understand interdependence
This is the view that lies in the middle,
And which is beyond the terrifying cliffs of eternalism and nihilism.

Another way of defining the idea of interdependence is summarized by the term tantra, which stands for a notion of continuity and “the fact that everything is part of the whole, so that nothing can happen separately.”
Ironically, thought we might think that the idea of interdependence undermines the notion of reality, in the Buddhist way of thinking, it is interdependence that actually allows for reality to appear. Let’s think about an entity that exists independently from all others. As an immutable and autonomous entity, it couldn’t act on anything, or be acted on itself. For phenomena to happen, interdependence is required.
This argument refutes the idea of distinct particles that are supposed to constitute matter. What’s more, this interdependence naturally includes consciousness. The reality of any given object depends on a subject that is aware of that object. This is what the physicist Erwin Schrodinger meant when he wrote: “Without being aware of it, and without being rigorously systematic about it, we exclude the subject of cognizance from the domain of nature that we endeavor to understand. We step with our own person back into the part of an onlooker who does not belong to the world which by this very procedure becomes an objective world.”

Finally, the most subtle aspect of interdependence, or “dependent origination,” concerns what we call a phenomenon’s “designation base” and its “designations.” A phenomenon’s position, form, dimension, color, or any other of its apparent characteristic is merely one of its “designation bases.” This designation is a mental construct that invests a phenomenon with a distinct reality. In our everyday experience, when we see an object, we aren’t struck by its nominal existence, but rather by its true existence. If we analyze this “object” more closely, however, we discover that it is produced by a large number of causes and conditions, and that we are incapable of pinpointing an autonomous identity. Since we have experienced it, we can’t say that the phenomenon doesn’t exist. But neither can we say that it corresponds to an intrinsic reality. So we conclude that the object exists (thus avoiding a nihilistic view), but that this existence is purely nominal, or conventional (thus also avoiding the opposite extreme of material realism, which is called “eternalism” in Buddhism). A phenomenon with no autonomous existence, but that is nevertheless not totally inexistent, can act and function according to causality and thus lead to positive or negative effects. This view of reality therefore allows us to anticipate the results of our actions and organize our relationship with the world. A Tibetan poem puts it this way:

To say a thing is empty does not mean
It cannot function – it means it lack an absolute reality
To say a thing arises “in dependence” does not mean
It had intrinsic being – it means it is illusion-like.
If thus one’s understanding is correct and certain
Of what is meant by voidness and dependent origin,
No need is there to add that voidn ess and appearance
Occur together without contradiction in a single thing.


T : I find everything you’ve told me about interdependence striking. Science, too, has discovered that reality is nonseparable, or interdependent, both at the subatomic level and in the macrocosmic world. The conclusion that subatomic phenomena are interdependent was derived from a famous thought experiment conducted by Einstein and two of his Princeton colleagues, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, in 1935. It’s called the EPR experiment, from the initials of their surnames.

To follow the experiment, you need to know that light (and matter, too) has a dual nature. The particles we call “photons” and “electrons”, as well as all the other particles of matter, are Janus-faced. Sometimes they appear as particles, but they can also appear as waves. This is one of the strangest and most counterintuitive findings of quantum theory. Even stranger is the finding that what makes the difference about whether a particle is in the wave or particle state is the role of the observer – if we try to observe the particle in its wave state, it becomes a particle. But if it is unobserved, it remains in the wave-state

Take the case of a photon. If it appears as a wave then quantum physics says that it spreads out in all directions through space, like the ripples made by a pebble thrown into a pond. The photon in this state has no fixed location or trajectory. We can then say that the photon is present everywhere at the same time. Quantum mechanics states that when a photon is in this wave state, we can never predict where the photon will be at any given position. The chances might be 75 percent or 90 percent, but never 100 percent. Since Einstein was a committed determinist, he couldn’t accept that the quantum world was ruled in this way by probability or chance. He argued famously that “God does not play dice,” and stubbornly set about trying to find the weak link in quantum mechanics and its probabilistic interpretation of reality. That’s why he came up with the EPR experiment.
The experiment goes like this: First imagine that you have constructed a measuring apparatus with which you can observe the behaviour of particles of light, called photons. Now imagine a particle that disintegrates spontaneously into two photons, a and b. The law of symmetry dictates that they will always travel in opposite directions. If a goes northward, then we will detect b to the south. So far, so good. But we’re forgetting the strangeness of quantum mechanics. Before being captured by the detector, if quantum mechanics is correct, a appeared as a wave, not a particle. This wave wasn’t localized, and there was a certain probability that a might be found in any given direction. It’s only when it has been captured that a changes into a particle and “learns” that it’s heading northward. But if a didn’t “know” before being captured which direction it had taken, how could b have “guessed” what a was doing and ordered its behavior accordingly so that it could be captured at the same moment in the opposite direction? This is impossible, unless we admit that a can inform b instantaneously of the direction it had taken. But Einstein’s cherished theory of relativity states that nothing can travel faster than light,. The information about a’s location would need to travel faster than the speed of light in order to get to b in time, because, after all, a and b are both particles of light and are therefore traveling themselves at the speed of light. “God does not send telepathic signals,” Einstein said, adding “There can be no spooky action at a distance.”

On the basis of these thought-experiment results, Einstein concluded that quantum mechanics didn’t provide a complete description of reality. In his opinion, the idea that a could instantaneously inform b of its position was absurd: a must know which direction it was going to take, and tell b before they split up; a must then have an objective reality, independent of actual observation. Thus the probabilistic interpretation of quantum mechanics, which states that a could be going in any direction, must be wrong. Quantum uncertainty must hide a deeper, intrinsic determinism. Einstein thought that a particle’s speed and position, which defined its trajectory, were localized on the particle without any observation being necessary. This is what was called “local realism.” Quantum mechanics couldn’t describe a particle’s trajectory because it didn’t take other “hidden variables” into account. And so it must be incomplete.

And yet Einstein was wrong. Eventually, physicists showed that exactly what Einstein thought couldn’t happen in the EPR experiment did happen. Since its invention, quantum mechanics – and its probabilistic interpretation of reality – has never slipped up. It has always been confirmed by experiments and it still remains today the best theory that we have to describe the atomic and subatomic world.


M: When was EPR effect confirmed experimentally?


T: EPR remained only a thought experiment for some time. No one knew how to carry it out physically. Then, in 1964, John Bell, an Irish physicist working at CERN, devised a mathematical theorem called “Bell’s inequality,” which would be capable of being verified experimentally if particles really did have hidden variables, as Einstein thought. This theorem at last allowed us to take the debate from the metaphysical plane to concrete experimentation. In 1982 the French physicist Alain Aspect, and his team at the University of Orsay, carried out a series of experiments on pairs of photons in order to test the EPR paradox. They found that Bell’s inequality was violated without exception. Einstein had it wrong, and quantum mechanics was right. In Aspect’s experiment, photons a and b were thirteen yards apart, yet b always “knew” instantaneously what a was doing and reacted accordingly.


M: How do we know that this happens instantaneously, and that a light bean hasn’t relayed the information from a to b?


T: Atomic clocks, connected to the detectors that capture a and b, allow us to gauge the moment of each photon’s arrival extremely accurately. The difference between the two arrival times is less than a few tenths of a billionth of a second – it is probably zero, in fact, but existing atomic clocks don’t allow us to measure periods of under 10-10 seconds. Now. In 10-10 seconds, light can travel only just over an inch – far less than the thirteen yards separating a from b. What is more, the result is the same if the distance between the two photons is increased. Even though lighe can dfinitely not have had the time to cross this distance and relay the necessary information, the behaviour of a is always exactly correlated with that of b.
The latest experiment was carried out in 1998 in Geneva by Nicolas Gisin and his colleagues. They began by producing a pair of photons, one of which was then sent through a fiber-optic cabel toward the noth of the city , and the other toward the south. The two pieces of measuring equipment were over six miles apart. Once they arrived at the end fo the cables, the two photons had to choose at random between two possible routes – one short, the other long. It was observed that they always made the same decision. On average, they chose the long route half the time, and the short route half the time, but the choices were always identical. The Swiss physicists were sure that the two photons couldn’t communicate by means of light, because the difference between their response time was under three-tenths of a billionth of a second, and in that time light could have crossed just three and half inches of the six miles separating the two photons. Classical physics states that because they can’t communicate, the choices of the two photons must be totally independent. But that is not what happens. They are always perfectly correlated. How can we explain why b immediately “knows” what a is doing? But this is paradoxical only if, like Einstein, we think that reality is cut up and localized in each photon. The problem goes away if we admit that a and b are part of a nonseparable reality, no matter how far apart they are. In that case, a doesn’t need to send a signal to b because these two light particles (or, rather, phenomena that the detector sees as light particles) stay constantly in touch through some mysterious interaction. Wherever it happens to be, particle b continues to share the reality of particle a.


T…Some physicists have had problems accepting the idea of a nonseparable reality and have tired to find a weak link in these experiments or in Bell’s theorem. So far, they’ve all failed. Quantum mechanics had never been found to be wrong. So phenomena do seem “interdependent” at a subatomic level, to use the Buddhist tem.

Another fascinating and famous experiment in physics shows that interdependence isn’t limited to the world of particles, but applies also to the entire universe, or in other words that interdependence is true of the macrocosm as well as the microcosm. This is the experiment often referred to in short as Foucault’s pendulum.
A French physicist, Leon Foucault, wanted to prove that the Earth rotates on its axis. In 1851 he carried out a famous experiment that is reproduced today in displays in many of the world’s science museums. He hung a pendulum form the roof of the Pantheon in Paris. Once in motion, this pendulum behaved in a strange way. AS time passed, it always gradually changed the direction in which it is swinging. If it was set swinging in a north-south direction, after a few hours, it was swinging east-west. From calculations, we know that if the pendulum were placed at either one of the poles, then it could turn completely around in 24 hours. But because of the latitude of Paris, Foucault’s pendulum performed only part of a complete rotation each day.
Why did the direction change? Foucault answered by saying that the movement was illusory. In fact, the pendulum always swung in the same direction and it was the Earth that turned. Once he’d proved that the Earth rotated, he let the matter drop. But Foucault’s answer was incomplete, because a movement can be described only in comparison with a fixed reference point; absolute movement doesn’t exist. Long before, Galileo said that “movement is as nothing.” He understood that it exists only relative to something else. The earth must “turn” in relation to something that doesn’t turn. But where to find this “something”? In order to test the immobility of a given reference point, a star for instance, we simply set the pendulum swinging in the star’s direction. If the star is motionless, then the pendulum will always swing toward it. If the star moves, then the star will slowly shift away from the pendulum’s swing. Let’s try the experiment with know celestial bodies, both near and far. If we point the pendulum toward the Sun, after a few weeks, there is a clear shift of the Sun away from the pendulum’s swing. After a couple of years, the same happens with the nearest stars, situated a few light-years away. The Andromeda galaxy, which is 2 million light-years away, moves away more slowly, but does shift. The time spent in line with the pendulum’s swing grows longer and the shift away tends toward zero the greater the distance is. Only the most distant galaxies, situated at the edge of the known universe, billions of light-years away, do not drift away from the initial plane of the pendulum’s swing.

The conclusion we must draw is extraordinary. Foucault’s pendulum doesn’t base its behavior on its local environment, but rather on the most distant galaxies, or, more accurately, on the entire universe, given that practically all visible matter is to be found in distant galaxies and not in nearby stars. Thus, what happens here on our Earth is decided by all the vast cosmos. What occurs on our tiny planet depends on all of the universe’s structures.
Why does Foucault’s pendulum behave like this? We don’t know. Ernst Mach, the Austrian philosopher and physicist who gave his name to the unit of supersonic speed, thought it could be explained by a sort of omnipresence of matter and of its influence. In his opinion, an object’s mass – that is to say, the amount of its inertia, or resistance to movement – comes from the influence of the entire universe. This is what is called Mach’s principle. When we have trouble pushing a car, its resistance to being moved has been created by the whole universe. Mach never explained this mysterious universal influence in detail, which is different from gravity, and no one has managed to do so since. Just as the EPR experiment forces us to accept that interactions exist in the microcosm that are different from those described by known physics, Foucault’s pendulum does the same for the macrocosm. Such interactions are not based on force or an exchange of energy, and they connect the entire universe, Each part contains the whole, and each part depends on all the other parts.


M: In Buddhist terms, that’s a good definition of interdependence. It’s not a question of proximity in time or space, or of the speed of communication and the physical forces whose influence wanes over great distances. Phenomena are interdependent because they coexist in a global reality, which functions according to mutual causality. Phenomena are naturally simultaneous because one implies the presence of the other. We are back with “this can only be if that also exists; this can change only if that also changes.” Thus we arrive at a n idea that everything must be connected to everything else. Relationships determine our reality, the conditions of our existence, particles and galaxies.


T: Such a vision of interdependence certainly agrees with the results of the experiments I’ve just mentioned. The EPR experiment, Foucault’s pendulum, and Mach’s inertia can’t be explained by the four fundamental physical forces. This is extremely disturbing for physicists.


M: I think that we have a good example here of the difference between the scientific approach and Buddhism. For most scientists, even if the global nature of phenomenon has been demonstrated in rather a disturbing way, this is merely another piece of information, and no matter how intellectually stimulating it may be, it has little effect o their daily lives. For Buddhists, on the other hand, the repercussions of the interdependence of phenomena are far greater.
The notion of interdependence makes us question our basic perception of the world and then use this new perception again and again to lessen our attachments, our fears, and our aversions. An understanding of interdependence should demolish the wall of illusions that our minds have built up between “me” and “the other”. It makes a nonsense of pride, jealousy, greed, and malice. If not only all inert thins but also all living things are connected, then we should feel deeply concerned about the happiness and suffering of others, The attempt to build our happiness on others’ misery is not just amoral, it sis also unrealistic. Feelings of universal love (which Buddhism defines as the desire for all beings to experience happiness and to know its cause) and of compassion (the desire for all beings to be freed of suffering and its causes) are the direct consequences of interdependence. Thus knowledge of interdependence leads to a process of inner transformation, which continues throughout the journey of spiritual enlightenment. For, it we don’t put our knowledge into practice, we are like a deaf musician, or a swimmer who dies of thirst for fear of drowning if he drinks.
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Why is Buddhism interested in the science of elementary particles, given that studying them does not apparently have any particular effect on our daily lives? Well, if we ask questions about whether the world around us has a solid existence, it is important to study the nature of what are supposed to be its basic “building blocks.” Buddhism is not alone in raising doubts about the “reality” of phenomena. The dominant explanation of quantum physics, known as the Copenhagen Interpretation, also suggests that atoms are not “things” but are “observable phenomena” This is a fascinating topic, because it places the human mind, or human perception, in the midst of what we call “matter” and “objective reality.” If doubts can be raised regarding their “solidity,” then many other conceptual barriers will fall down as a result.

M:…Alan Wallace wrote,” Human beings define the objects and events of the world that we experience, Those things do not exist intrinsically, or absolutely, as we define or conceive of them. They do not exist intrinsically at all. But this is not to say that they do not exist. The entities that we identify exist in relation to us, and they perform the function that we attribute to them. But their very existence, as we define them, is dependent upon our verbal and conceptual designations.”


T: I agree with this view because quantum theory backs it up. The discovery of light’s dual nature was certainly a great surprise for the physicists. But what’s even stranger is that matter has exactly the same duality. What we call an electron, or any other of the elementary particles, can also appear as a wave. Thus the particle and wave aspects cannot be dissociated; rather they complement one another. This is what Niels Bohr called the “principle of complementarity.” He saw this complementarity as the inevitable result of the interaction between a phenomenon and the apparatus used to measure it. According to him, it isn’t so much reality that is dual, but the results of experimental interactions.

The act of observing also introduces quantum fuzziness. This is expressed in Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which tells us that it is impossible to define precisely at the same time an electron’s position and its speed. To determine the position of an electron, we have to shed light on it. But the photons in the light relay their energy to the electron in this process, and the higher the energy, the more they disturb its movement. We are thus up against a dilemma; the more we decrease the uncertainty of the electron’s position by shining light on it, so that we can see it, the more we increase the uncertainty of its movement. On the other hand, if we use only low-energy light, we don’t disturb its movement much, but we increase the uncertainty of its position. The act of determining the one aspect of the electron eliminated the possibility of determining the other. Thus, talk of an “objective” reality without any observer is meaningless, because it can never be perceived. All we can do is to capture a subjective aspect of an electron, depending on the observer and the apparatus. The form that this reality then takes is inextricably bound up with our presence. We are no longer passive spectators faced with a tumult of atoms, but full participants.


M: But this still tells us nothing about the ultimate reality of this particle – if such a reality exists. Neither the particles nor the wave, nor, for that matter, any other entity, exists inherently. For example, I suppose that we can’t affirm that the particle existed before it was observed.


T: Before measurement, all we can talk about is a wave of probability.


M: If when we say “particle” we mean something with an intrinsic or even permanent reality, and if it didn’t exist before it was observed, nothing could bring it to life. How could an entity that contains all the qualities we usually attribute to a particle abruptly pass from nothingness to existence? When a particle appears, either it does not exist independently as an entity, or it has been created ex nihilo.


T: And yet before, there was a wave. There was something, not a complete vacuum!


M: Buddhism doesn’t talk about a complete vacuum- that would be nihilistic- but “lack of intrinsic existence.” It is for this reason that, depending on the circumstances and on the experimental technique, an unreal phenomenon can appear to be either particle or a wave.


T: Our debate here is precisely the one that went on between Einstein and the originators of the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Physics, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, and Wolfgang Pauli. The interpretation is given this name because the institute run by Bohr, where Heisenberg and Pauli were frequent visitors, was in Copenhagen. In simpler terms, it says that “atoms form a world of potentials and possibilities, rather than of things and facts.” According to Heisenberg, “in quantum physics, the notion of a trajectory does not even exist.” This view could not be further from Einstein’s dogmatic realism.

This is how Heisenberg summed up Einstein’s counterargument: “This interpretation does not describe what actually happens independently or in between the observations. But something must happen, this we cannot doubt….The physicist must postulate in his science that he is studying a world which he himself has not made and which would be present, essentially unchanged, if he were not there.” We could cal this position of Einstein’s one of material realism.
Heisenberg’s response to this objection of Einstein’s is complex, but I think it is important to offer in his own words:

It is easily seen that what this criticism demands is again the old materialistic ontology. But what can the answer from the point of view of the Copenhagen interpretation be?...The demand to “describe” what “happens” in the quantum-theoretical process between two successive observations is a contradiction in adjecto, since the word “describe” refers to the use of classical concepts, while these concepts cannot be applied in the space between the observations…The ontology of materialism rested upon the illusion that the kind of existence, the direct “actuality” of the world around us, can be extrapolated into the atomic range. This extrapolation is impossible, however.


M: A Buddhist philosopher would be in complete agreement with his answer.


T: Personally, I also agree with Heisenberg. As I’ve already said, quantum mechanics has always been confirmed by experimentation and has never been caught out. Einstein got it wrong, and his material realism cannot be defended, According to Bohr and Heisenberg, when we speak of atoms and electrons, we shouldn’t see them as real entities, with well-defined trajectories. The “atom” concept is simply an image that helps physicists put together diverse observations of the particle world into a coherent and logical scheme. Bohr also spoke of the impossibility of going beyond the results of experiments and measurements: “In our description of nature the purpose is not to disclose the real essence of phenomena but only to track down, so as far as possible, relations between the manifold aspects of our experiences.

T:….macroscopic objects, such as table, or this book, are made up of particles governed by quantum uncertainty. So why can’t the book suddenly vanish and reappear outside in the garden? The laws of quantum mechanics state that such an event is possible in principle, but it is so improbable that it could happen only if we waited for all eternity. Why is it so unlikely? The reason is that macroscopic objects consists of such a huge number of atom that the effects of chance cancel each other out. The probability of finding this book in the garden is infinitely small, because a large number of atoms also implies a large mass and so high inertia. Ordinary objects are not really disturbed when observed under light, because the energy relayed by the light is negligible. Thus the speed of such objects can be accurately measured along with their position. Quantum uncertainty is eliminated. But where does the borderline lie between the microcosm, ruled by quantum uncertainty, and the macrocosm, where it fades away? Physicists are unable to define this frontier, even though they are daily rolling back the limits of the quantum world. A molecule of fullerene, made up of sixty carbon atoms, is the largest object that had so far been seen to behave in a wavelike manner.

T:….Before Rutherford’s experiment, physicists thought that atoms occupied almost all the space inside a solid object, like apples in a barrel, with only a tiny gap between them. If that was the case, then none of the particles Rutherford sent toward the gold leaf should have been knocked back. The explanation must be that atoms had a hard, dense nucleus capable of reflecting particles. This nucleus must occupy a tiny space in comparison with the total volume of the atom, since the majority of the projectile missed it and continued their journey unaffected. We now know that an atom’s nucleus occupies the same space as a grain of rice in a football stadium. Thus, all of the matter around us, that sofa, the chair, the walls and so on, is almost completely empty. The only reason we can’t walk through walls is that atoms are linked together by the electromagnetic force.


The entire book is interesting and there were many interesting experiments that were included. If you are interested after the excerpts above, do check out the book. There are just too much to type for me so I am only drawing some parts of it out.

The Path to Tranquility

fr Dalai Lama's Daily Wisdom: The Path to Tranquility

1. I love friends, I want more friends. I love smiles. This is a fact. How to develop smiles? There are a variety of smiles. Some smiles are sarcastic. Some smiles are artificial - diplomatic smiles. These smiles do not produce satisfaction, but rather fear or suspicion. But a genuine smile gives us hope, freshness. If we want a genuine smile, then first we must produce the basis for a smile to come.

2. To develop patience, you need someone who willfully hurts you. Such people give us real opportunities to practice tolerance. They test our inner strength in a way that even our guru cannot. Basically, patience protects us from being discouraged.

3. Laziness will stop your progress in your spiritual practice. One can be deceived by three types of laziness: the laziness of indolence, which is the wish to procrastinate, the laziness of inferiority, which is doubting your capabilities; and the laziness that is attachment to negative actions, or putting great effort into nonvirtue.

4. Everything has its limits. Too much consumption or effort to make money is not good. Neither is too much contentment. In principle, contentment should be pursued, but pure contentment is almost suicidal.

5. A nagging sense of discontent, a feeling of being dissatisfied, or of something being not right, is the fuel that gives rise to anger and hatred. This discontent arises in us when we feel that either we ourselves, or someone we love, or our close friends are being treated unfairly or threatened and that people are being unjust.
Also when others somehow obstruct us in achieving something, we feel that we are being trodden upon, and then we feel angry. So the approach here is to get at the root, appreciating the causal nexus, the chain, which will ultimately explode in an emotional state like anger or hatred.

6. Human potential is the same for all. Your feeling, "I am of no value," is wrong. Absolutely wrong. You are deceiving yourself. We all have the power of thought - so what are you lacking? If you have will power, then you can do anything. It is usually said that you are your own master.

7. At the moment when strong feelings of anger arise, no matter how hard one tries to adopt a dignified pose, one's face looks rather ugly. The vibration that person sends is very hostile. People can sense it and it is almost as if one can feel steam coming out of that person's body.
Indeed, not only are human beings capable of sensing it, but pets and other animals also try to avoid that person at that instant.

8. Happiness is a state of mind. With physical comforts if your mind is still in a state of confusion and agitation, it is not happiness. Happiness means calmness of mind.

9.The image we have of ourselves readily tends to be complacent. We look at ourselves with indulgence. When something unpleasant happens to us, we always have the tendency to cast the blame on others, or on fate, a demon, or a god. We shrink from descending into ourselves, as the Buddha recommended.

10.If an individual has a sufficient spiritual base, he won't not let himself be overwhelmed by the lure of technology and by the madness of possession. He or she will know how to find the right balance, without asking for too much, and know how to say" I have a camera, that's enough, I don't want another. The constant danger is to open the door to greed, one of our most relentless enemies. It is here that the real work of the mind is put into practice.

11.If in a competitive society you are sincere and honest, in some circumstances people may take advantage of you. If you let someone do so, he or she will be engaging in an unsuitable action and accumulate bad karma that will harm the person in the future. Thus it is permissible, with an altruistic motivation, to take counteraction in order to prevent the other person from having to undergo the effects of this wrong action.

12.People who fight with other human beings out of anger, hatred and strong emotion, even if they gain victory over their enemies in battle, are not in reality heroes. What they are doing is slaying corpses, because human beings, being transient, will die. Whether or not these enemies die in the battle is another question, but they will die at some point. So, in reality, they are slaying those already destined to die. The true hero is the one who gains victory over hatred and anger.

13.Ideals are very important in one's life. Without ideals, you cannot move - whether you achieve them of not is immaterial. But one must try and approximate them.

14.I myself still occasionally become irritated and angry and use harsh words toward others. Then, a few moments later, when the anger has subsided, I feel embarrassed; the negative words are already spoken, and there is no way to take them back. Although the words have been uttered and the sound of the voice has ceased to exist, their impact still lives on. Hence, the only thing I can do is to go to the person and apologize, isn't that right?

15.While you are engaging in the practice of giving, you should do so with great happiness and radiance on your face. One should practice giving with a smile and with mental uprightness.

16.Compassion can be roughly defined in terms of a state of mind that in nonviolent and nonharming, or nonaggressive. Because of this there is a danger of confusing compassion with attachment and intimacy.

17.In one sense, we can say it is delusion itself - in the form of the wisdom derived from delusion - that actually destroys the delusions. Similarly it is the blissful experience of emptiness induced by sexual desire that dissolves the force of sexual impulses. This is analogous to the life of wood-born insects: they consume the very wood from which they are born. Such utilization of the path to enlightenment is a unique feature of tantra.

18. I am sometimes asked whether this vow of celibacy is really desirable and indeed whether it is really possible. Suffice to say that its practice is not simply a matter of suppressing sexual desires. On the contrary, it is necessary to fully accept the existence of these desires and to transcend them by the power of reasoning. When successful, the result on the mind can be very beneficial. The trouble with sexual desire is that it is a blind desire and can only give temporary satisfaction. Thus as Nagarjuna said:" When you have an itch, you scratch. But not to itch at all is better than any amount of scratching."

19. When we are able to recognize and forgive ignorant actions done in one's past, we strengthen ourselves and can solve problems of the present constructively.

20. The main cause of depression is not a lack of material necessities but a deprivation of the affection of others.

21. A very poor, underprivileged person might think that it would be wonderful to have an automobile or a television set, and should he acquire them, at the beginning he would feel very happy. Now if such happiness were something permanent, it would remain forever. But it does not; it goes. After a few months, he wants to change the models. The old ones, the same objects, now cause dissatisfaction. This is the nature of change.

22. Guilt. as experienced in Western culture, is connected with hopelessness and discouragement and is past-oriented. Genuine remorse, however, is a healthy state of mind - it is future-oriented, connected with hope, and causes us to act, to change.

23. As far as your personal requirements are concerned, the ideal is to have fewer involvements, fewer obligations and fewer affairs, business or whatever. However, so far as the interest of the larger community is concerned, you must have as many involvements as possible and as many activities as possible.

24. Rather than being unhappy and hateful, we should rejoice in the success of others.

25. When others insult, rebuke, and speak unpleasant words to us, although an intolerance pain arises like a thorn at the heart, if we comprehend the teachings then we can recognize the essenceless nature of these words which resemble an echo. So just as when an inanimate object is scolded, we will experience not the slightest mental turmoil.

26. When things are not going well for someone we dislike, what is the point of rejoicing? It does not make his present suffering any worse and even if it did, how sad it would be that we should wish such a thing.

27. Regarding intergender relationship, I see two principal types of relationships based on sexual attraction. One form is pure sexual desire in which the motive or impetus is temporary satisfaction, a sort of immediate gratification. But it is not very reliable or stable because the individuals are relating to each other not as people, but rather as objects. In the second type, attraction is not predominantly physical. Rather, there is an underlying respect and appreciation of the value of the other person, based on one's feeling that the other person is kind, nice and gentle. One can therefore accord respect and dignity to that other individual.

28. Since we have a natural compassion in us, and that compassion has to manifest itself, it might be good to awaken it. Violence done to an innocent person, for example, can make us indignant, scandalize us, and in so doing help us to discover our compassion. By its very violence, television might keep us in a state of alert. However, it is very dangerous if violence leads to indifference. Thus, a central point of our teachings is how to reach nonattachment without falling into indifference.

29. Longing for eternity exists because we cherish ourselves, provided our daily life is happy. But if it is miserable, then you want to shorten life.

30. The mind can and must transform itself. It can get rid of the impurities that contaminate it, and rise to the highest level. We all start off with the same capacities, but some people develop them, and others don't. We get very easily used to the mind's laziness, all the more easily because laziness hides beneath the appearance of activity: we run right and left, we make calculations and phone calls. But these activities engage only the most elementary and coarse levels of the mind. They hide the essential from us.

31. Ordinary compassion and love give rise to a very close feeling, but it is essentially attachment. As long as the other person appears to you as beautiful or good, love remains, but as soon as he or she appears to you as less beautiful or good, your love completely changes. Even though your dear friend is the same person, he feels more like an enemy. Instead of love, you now feel hostility. With genuine love and compassion, another person' appearance or behaviour has no effect on your attitude. Real compassion comes from seeing other's suffering. You feel a sense of responsibility, and you want to do something for him or her.

32. If you help others with sincere motivation and sincere concern, that will bring you more fortune, more friends, more smiles and more success. If you forget about others' rights and neglect others' welfare, ultimately you will be very lonely.

33. If one feels very profound compassion, this already implies an intimate connection with another person. It is said in our scriptures that we are to cultivate love just like that of a mother toward her only child. This is very intimate. The Buddhist notion of attachment is not what people in the West assume. We say that the love of a mother for her only child is free of attachment.

34. No matter who are are with, we often think things like "I am stronger than he," " I am more beautiful than she," " I am more intelligent," "I am wealthier," "I am much better qualified." and so forth - we generate much pride. This is not good. Instead, we should always remain humble. Even when we are helping others and are engaged in charity work, we should not regard ourselves in a haughty way as great protectors benefiting the weak.

35. To be angry at hearing other people speaking highly of one's enemies is totally inappropriate, because at least in the mind of the person who is praising this enemy, there is some sense of fulfillment, some satisfaction. That person is doing so because he or she feels joyous and happy, and one should rejoice in that because one's enemy has caused someone to be satisfied. If possible one should also join in the praise rather than trying to obstruct it.

36. Overall I found much that is impressive about the Western society. In particular, I admire its energy and creativity and hunger for knowledge. On the other hand, a number of things about the Western way of life cause me concern. People there have an inclination to think in terms of "black and white" and "either, or," which ignores the facts of interdependence and relatively. Between two points of view they tend to lose sight of the gray areas. Also, with thousands of brothers and sisters for neighbours, so many people appear to be able to show their true feelings only to their cats and dogs.