believing
Posted by Clarity on 11 Jun 2007 at 12:53 pm | Tagged as: Buddhism
During the conversation with a friend yesterday she said, that one of the teachings of Ani Pema that has been popping up for her recently is something quite simple: “Don’t believe your thoughts”. And feelings of course.
It sounds like a good reminder for me too!
I thought you might enjoy a couple of postings from my MySpace blog, but I couldn’t see a way to contact you by e-mail… so here they are (in two parts):
Title: Yeah? So what’s your point?
Think about an ocean wave as it approaches the beach.
Is that wave a thing or an event?
If you were sitting on the beach, you could have seen the wave form, crest, and then dissipate on the beach. It is easy to think of the wave as merely an event, particularly because it has such a short duration.
However, while the wave consists of the same stuff as the rest of the ocean, it is behaving differently. A wave has characteristics that are decidedly different from something such as a current, an undertow, or a drop of ocean water splashing off a rock. We can study waves, we can point to waves, we can describe them, we can interact with them, etc. In many ways, a wave is also a thing.
Now think about a bird singing in a tree outside your window.
Is that bird a thing or an event?
We are tempted to say the bird is a thing, since the bird is easy to identify as different from the tree in which it sits and since it can be distinguished by its appearance and behaviors from other birds. Yet it also consists of many of the same things as the tree – or you, for that matter. Carbon. Oxygen. Hydrogen. Etc. In many ways, the bird is not fundamentally different from any other thing in the Universe; as that wave is the ocean behaving in a particular way at a particular moment, this bird is the Universe behaving in a particular way at a particular moment. In this sense, the bird is like an event. The bird is a wave in the ocean of the Universe. It is various elements of the Universe coming together and behaving in a particular way (forming feathers, internal organs, eyes to see with it, a voice box to sing with, etc.) for a duration.
A chair, in this sense, is an event. Like a wave, it will come and it will go. Even a mountain is an event. It is just a very long lasting event.
Are you a thing or an event? You came into being, you exist for awhile, and then you will dissipate. Yet the Universe itself will not have been fundamentally altered. Matter will have been neither created nor destroyed by your existence and your passing. The various elements that coalesced into you will depart and coalesce into other … events, into the ocean, a tree, a bird, a chair, a mountain.
It’s all the same stuff. And the various “things” we see and experience are just the Universe expressing itself or being embodied at different moments in different ways.
Here is the second part:
Title: So here’s my point
Two consequences of the event-or-thing meditation: impermanence and interdependency.
Impermanence. Everything is changing constantly. No particular form or shape lasts forever. This cannot be reversed or stopped. You think of a mountain as a thing, but it really is an event. It will come and it will go. You will come and go. The people you love will come and go. The moments that make you happy will come and go. It is easy to get sad about this. (Though it also is true that the things we dislike will come and go. The painful moment also will pass.) We may get sad about impermanence, but it is unavoidable; therefore, it should be accepted and not become the cause of sadness or suffering. Since nothing in this life lasts forever, become committed to enjoying it while you have it.
Interdependency. One consequence of the event-or-thing meditation is, possibly, the realization that we are all made of the same stuff. This is literally true. The stuff that is in me was once in some other person. The stuff that is in me was once part of a plant, a bird, a stone, etc. And since we are all made of the same stuff, we are in a sense all the same. We are all part of the same universe.
Thinking this way may make it easier to have compassion for each other. If you fight with someone, you are, in a sense, fighting yourself. If you kill someone, you are killing yourself. If you hate someone, you are hating yourself. If you help someone, you are helping yourself.
If we can accept that we are materially linked – made from the same stuff in the Universe – then maybe we can accept the idea that we are linked in some sense beyond the material. If you believe in a life force that animates humans, what we often call spirit or soul, then you might accept that even our souls are connected in some way, that they are all made from the same stuff. Just as are all part of the Universe materially, we are all part of the same fabric of spirit. (Some will say not just humans are animated by this life force/spirit; all life is – animals, trees, etc. Heck, the Lakota say that even rocks are alive.) And if we all have the same source, if we are all made from the same spirit-stuff, then to damage another person’s spirit is to damage your own; to help someone is to help yourself. If we can see this connection among all living things, it becomes easier to feel compassion for others and become concerned with their health and happiness.
Especially in light of the impermanence mentioned earlier.