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little reflections on life

Realizing another “western year” is coming to an end, I personally like to reflect on the past year. It feels good to get an idea on positive and negative things I was confronted with, what I learned out of it, how it influenced me, what I adopted or abandoned…

All the little pieces put together will sum up to one big piece, which is living and following your way. It always is good to reflect and learn, but we only can experience real life in the present moment. We all know that the past already happened and the future is not taking place yet. Being tentative in the current moment is what really counts – that means living.

Happy new year!

life and daily challenges

To simply living life in presence, while being tentative is a difficult but important buddhist practice. If you live with your eyes open, there is so much you can learn from your every day experience – you just have to be open minded for it!

Since I’m getting more and more in to Buddhist’s philosophy, it puts a smile on my face, when I realize new challenges arising. To give you an example, some one I know is currently with the army in a war territory. First that was a big chock to me, but getting deeper in to it, it helped me practice love and compassion. Further more I learned a big deal out of it in terms of death – realizing what an important issue it is and facing that death always can happen. Since ever I’m trying to live my life having in mind that you never know when it might be your last day. That is a great gift, cause you tend to do things straight ahead and do not postpone it. It makes your life more focused, real and straight.

Another experience I recently had was how near by opposites really are – this one is difficult to explain. But it reminds me in a phrase his Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama once said “we can not practice patience and compassion without our enemies”.  A few days ago I was in a very emotional and sad mood. I guess I haven’t felt that bad for a long time. While analyzing what I’m going through, I realized that it is this weakness that gives me the strength to go on, and it is the sad feeling making me happy, because I know what it is for. And while realizing that I have to develop even more patience, so I simply continue… this based on my impatience as well.

To conclued these thoughts: you never know what your karma is like, but you have to be open for it and for the every day challenges… this will take you a good portion further on you way!

Maybe I Am Wrong: karma can’t be avoided

So I had this talk with someone before, but I wanted to clarify this thing to myself by jotting down here. Can you eliminate karma by purifying your sins? An example would be chanting a mantra that would relieve you from a karma of killing a bug.

In my opinion sin can be get rid of, but not the karma. Karma can be get rid of only by facing and going thru it. To make it less confusing, let’s define and distinguish the two – sin and karma. Sin is more virtual and karma is more physical.

Let’s go back to the example where I killed a mosquito fly in my previous life. This year I can eliminate the sin I acquired from doing so by chanting and doing good deeds. But regardless how good of compassionate person I turn myself into this year, I will still have to face the karma eventually by taking birth and getting killed by that bug (most likely in a human form and me as a bug).

Sin, IMO, is like a token that leads you to having bad moments; it is nothing specific. You may have committed a sin in one situation but you can suffer in a totally unrelated one. On the other hand, karma is very specific – i.e. what you do is what you get.

cultivating patience

I recently read a few lines of “lam rim chen mo” and came across the following quote, taken out of “garland of birth stories”:

From the sky to the earth is a long way. From the distant shore of the ocean to the closest edge is also a long way. From the mountains of the east to the mountains of the west is an even longer way. But from the ordinary person to the sublime teaching is longer yet than that.

Hopefully one day we will be a better students. And meanwhile let’s continue our way…

Intention is more important than the act itself

In Buddhism, I think the most important thing to consider in any kind of situation is the intention. There are times in our lives when we mean to do something but people see it differently. A pure Buddhist wouldn’t care about what other people think, the only thing he or she would care about is carrying a pure, good heart intention.

To give a real life example, a parent gets rid of cable television at home so that the child could focus more on their education, which in the future would help this child achieve a successful career. On the other hand, the kid’s friends and the neighbor might consider the parent’s act as a way to save money or worse make the child’s life less entertaining and enjoyable. But see the parent doesn’t care what others are saying because their intention is for the betterment of their child.

I once heard this old story from cwmenturies ago where a Buddhist guru killed a bug. Now we might accuse him of committing a sin and having to face that karma in the future live, but his intention was a pure one. Because of his high spiritual achievement he could tell that bug was his mother in one of his past lives; and he was so bothered about this bug suffering that he killed her to make her free of this suffering. What a pure compassionate intention for he didn’t care about him committing a sin as long as he was able to help get rid of someone else’s suffering.

Do we really believe in karma and in rebirth?

Pretty often I find myself asking if we believe in karma (the law of cause and effect) and in rebirth?! Do we really believe in it or are we just saying so?

…if we really do believe in it, what makes us better than the stranger? Why do I have the impression that in our society it mostly is the “me” and not the “us”? Why does it seem to be easy to kill “my so called enemy” or a mosquito? Isn’t it right that we have lived so many lives before, and it is our personal and our shared karma that we are experiencing? So this “enemy” or mosquito could have been a dear person before, with whom we share a special karma?!

If we really do understand that there are no such things existing as country boarders, the attachment to something which we call “mine” or “me” and so on – won’t it be easier then to practice loving kindness without questioning it?!

Starting your day while taking your first steps in consciousness…

Walking on the earth
is a miracle!
Each mindful step
reveals the wondrous Dharmakaya.

This poem can be recited right as we get out of bed and our feet touch the floor.
It can also be used during walking meditation or any time we stand up and walk.
 
Dharmakaya literally means the “body” (kaya) of the Buddha’s teachings (Dharma), the way of understanding and love. It also is the ground of being manifested as mountains, rivers, stars, moon, and all species. Before passing away, the Buddha told his disciples, “only my physical body will pass away. My Dharma body will remain with you forever.” That statement turns out to be “the essence of all that exists”. All phenomena – the song of a bird, the warm rays of the sun, a cup of hot tea – are manifestations of the Dharmakaya. We, too, are of the same nature as these wonders of the universe.
So remember: walking on earth is a miracle! We do not have to walk in space or on water to experience a miracle.
The real miracle is to be awake in the present moment – reach out for those clear moments, cherish them and let them grow in your heart!
Walking on the green earth, we realize the wonder of being alive. When we make steps like this, the sun of the Dharmakaya will shine.

//excerpts taken from Thich Nhat Hanh’s book “Present Moment Wonderful Life” – since ever I bougt that book it is with me, as it helps me to open up my eyes and cherish the things we tend to take for granted. I’m trying to be more tentative and if I have the sun smiling into my face, I enjoy happiness at least for a short while – until it is time to move on…  Thanks for taking those first steps with me.

An Important Story My Father Once Told Me

So believe me this story is real, but it happened centuries and centuries ago. There was a highly spiritual teacher who once performed a weird thing to prove his point to an ignorant person who didn’t believe in spirituality, of course in this case it was Buddhism.

This teacher was washing the outer part of a basin that has feces inside, so this ignorant guys goes onto make fun and laugh at him for just washing the outside and not the inside, which was more important. The teacher was doing this to prove a point that physical rituals such as cleaning your body or being nice verbally or nworshipping Gods isn’t really as important as keeping our inner self clean and following Buddha’s teachings such as compassion and concept of interdependence.

This could be one of the reason why I don’t greet as often as other people do, but this should be actually totally irrelevant to the above story since it doesn’t ask you to stop being nice or remain positive outside; I think the purpose of the story is to acknowledge that our inner mindset and emotions are of more importance. We are drawing a comparison, in a sense.

An Inspiring Cartoon of His Holiness The Dalai Lama

Uncle Gray, a Danish advertising agency has created some remarkable cartoons depicting some of the most famous personalities doing things that they were famous for – Nelson Mandel carrying surfing on a beach, remember during old days African blacks can’t go to place white Europeans go to. His Holiness the Dalai Lama is shown as skiing in snowy Himalayan Mountain. Take a look at this:

Decluttering My Desk

Why is it important to get rid of all the clutters laying on the desk? Simple answer would be that it lessens the stress. I personally use my desk to put all the stuff that needs to be done within a day to few weeks. Such tasks include bills, assignments, projects, readings, and some other small things. But rather than having all these to-be-done tasks laying right in front of me while working on a thing, I realized it is better if I take care of one thing at a time with none of these clutters staring at me. It really helps and makes myself feel more reliable and not like a person who likes to procrastinate a lot.

For some reason, I feel like this post fits under Buddhism category.