Buddhism 101

by Arnie Kozak

  Buddhism is not exempt from such concerns. Just look at any issue of Lion’s Roar (previously Shambhala Sun), a bimonthly magazine devoted to the Buddhist viewpoint. It is filled with beautiful and enticing ads for teachings and dharma paraphernalia—meditation cushions, bells, statues, you name it. If not careful, you can become attached to nonattachment. You can become identified with nonidentification. You can get lost in spiritual materialism. A cartoon depicts a mother and her child exiting a burning house via an emergency ladder. The mother urges, “Simon, don’t forget Mommy’s yoga mat.” Buddhist monks have been spotted wearing Gucci slippers and gold Rolexes. No one is immune from the allure of having things; the problem arises when your sense of okay-ness is dependent on having these things. Everyone must proceed with eternal vigilance in order to be free.

  The sheer abundance of teachings that are now available in the West may be both a blessing and curse. The blessing is the accessibility of the dharma in unprecedented ways, including the Internet. The curse is that such abundance may encourage consumerist attitudes. You may find yourself dining at the spiritual smorgasbord, taking a little of this and a little of that and creating a pastiche of teachings that serve your ego’s needs and not the needs of true awakening. Instant gratification can be a trap. In today’s world, you don’t have to work hard to get access to the teachings. You don’t need to walk across a high Himalayan mountain pass; you don’t need to sit waiting outside the gates of the Zen temple for days. You are a consumer with spiritual “dollars” to spend. In urban centers the choices can be dizzying and the customer is always right. One danger is that if you don’t like what you see in yourself by working with one teacher, you can just go down the street to another teacher. Another danger is idealization. The honeymoon period can be ecstatic, expansive, and promising. But just like a good marriage, to get any spiritual attainment you need to stick around once disillusionment sets in. All teachers, including the Buddha, are human.

  Convenience is another consideration for spiritual materialism. Consumer culture is designed to make life more convenient or more of something (faster, cooler, healthier, and so forth). When you are in distress you may recognize the increased need for practice, but can you sustain this commitment without a crisis? Meditation is hard. It takes time and if you practice for prolonged periods, it can be physically uncomfortable and, mentally, may bring up things you’d rather not face. There is no quick fix and you need to be careful about seeking shortcuts.

  If you do put in the effort, a final aspect of spiritual materialism to consider is what might be called “spiritual Olympics” or “the one with the most spiritual toys wins.” You can identify with how prodigious your sitting practice is, how many retreats you’ve been on, and how many vows you’ve taken and teachings you’ve received. Is this any different than showing off your BMW to your neighbor? Is this any different than keeping up with the Joneses? Henry David Thoreau warned us not to identify with the “clothes” of any new activity but to try to be different in how we engage with activity. He said, “beware of any activity that requires new clothes, rather than a new wearer of clothes.”

  DIVING IN

  The Silent Meditation Retreat

  The traditional way to learn Theravada-style meditation is by way of a ten-day silent meditation retreat. If you go to one of these retreats, you will experience both shamatha and vipassana. The first three days are devoted to shamatha, focusing on the breath. Depending on the teacher’s tradition, this focus may be very narrow (for example, just on the tip of your nose), or the focus may be broader and examine any aspect of the breathing process.

  Regardless, the instructions will be clear and straightforward: whenever you find your attention moving away from the sensations of your breathing, bring your attention back. This is what you should expect to happen whenever you meditate. You will place your focus on your breathing, but within a few moments your focus will be somewhere else—into the future or past, or engaged in a commentary about the present. Your mind might become engaged with talking thoughts, or get lost in images, or be awash in emotions, or might entertain sights and sounds, or could fixate on other bodily sensations. This is quite normal.

  It can be a source of frustration if you think your mind should be perfectly behaved and never wander. So don’t be frustrated. It will wander. The method for controlling this wandering is to keep repeating the process: notice that your attention has moved away from the breath and then bring it back (without adding any criticism of your mental focusing powers).

  In the retreat environment, this exclusive focus on breathing will be maintained for three days. You arise early in the morning and engage in multiple meditation periods throughout the day. Depending on the tradition and the instructor, walking meditation may be interspersed with sitting meditation. Breaks are taken for meals, and these meals are a continuation of practice, the practice of mindful eating.

  You may also have the opportunity to do work practice where you do a yogi job such as sweeping floors or washing dishes. The invitation is to be mindful as you do these activities. A typical retreat day may involve over ten hours of formal meditation practice with the remainder of the day engaged with informal practice.

  In the Burmese tradition as was taught by the late S.N. Goenka, only sitting meditation is practiced. On breaks, you can walk, but this is not slow walking meditation practice. Goenka asked participants to give up all other practices for the ten days of the retreat so that they can intensify their experience of mindfulness. He will encourage you (still even after his death through videotaped dharma talks) to “work diligently, ardently, patiently and persistently, and you will be bound to be successful.”

  After establishing a firm foundation of concentration (shamatha) through three days of breathing practice, the remainder of the retreat will be devoted to exploring sensations arising in the body (Burmese tradition) or any arising of phenomena, especially bodily sensations (Thai tradition).

  The ten-day retreat is an arduous undertaking. It might be one of the most difficult experiences of your life and the most valuable. It’s hard to sit for all those hours without physical discomfort and even pain. However, the retreat becomes a crucible for self-knowledge. Each time you practice mindfulness meditation, you cultivate an intimacy with your own experience and doing so intensively on retreat will give you a very rare opportunity to get to know yourself that is difficult to achieve in everyday life with all its distractions. For this reason, the retreat environment employs what is called “Noble Silence.” This means no unnecessary talking (for example, you can talk to a staff member if needed; some retreats have question-and-answer periods and interviews with teachers).

  The goal is to disengage from typical discourse, and this includes engaging in eye contact and other nonverbal interactions with others. The retreat environment is an opportunity to, as the Buddha said, “become an island unto yourself.” Also suspended for the duration of the retreat are writing, reading, and of course there are no televisions or telephones, and in today’s environment, no laptops, cell phones, iPods, or tablets. The wisdom of Noble Silence is that it closes all the escape routes and keeps your focus squarely on practice. After a while, even imagination gives up and you will find yourself dwelling in the present moment and experiencing the world in, perhaps, a way that you never have before. On a retreat you can have a taste of monastic life without having to make those commitments.

  As mentioned earlier, a traditional retreat length is ten days. However, retreats come in many lengths, and they can be residential or nonresidential. For example, at the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, retreats are nonresidential and may be one or two days on a nine-to-five schedule. Other retreats can be three months long, and in one tradition there is a three-year-three-month-three days-long retreat! Better clear your calendar for that one!

  Concentration provides the foundation for insight. And morality provides the foundation for everything. In addition to be
coming intimate with your experience, meditation provides you the means to change your internal landscape from one characterized by dukkha to one characterized by freedom. Mindfulness is an integral component to every Buddhist tradition and is, in fact, the method Siddhartha Gotama used to become the Buddha.

  AWAKE AT WORK

  Being Fully Engaged

  If you are like most people, you spend at least forty hours or more each week at your job. You also spend time commuting back and forth to that job. The time devoted to work is roughly half of your waking life. How do you want to spend this time? If you live your life waiting for the weekends and vacations to “really live,” then you are spending most of your life waiting and not living. The Buddha’s message provides you a way to be fully engaged with whatever you are doing and this means, most of the time, your job. Being awake at work is one of the more challenging places to be awake. There are petty tyrant bosses, mindless colleagues, and not much evidence of the Noble Eightfold Path in action. If you are not awake at work, work will be stressful.

  Stress is one of the most pervasive and insidious problems facing the workplace today. It is estimated that stress costs American corporations $300 billion annually, or $7,500 per worker per year when lost hours due to absenteeism, reduced productivity, and workers’ compensation benefits are considered.

  If you approach your work life as a necessity and an obligation, you might neglect its “soul” elements. The poet, corporate consultant, and Zen practitioner David Whyte suggests that connecting with your soul at work is a responsibility, not a luxury. In his three books on work life, The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America; Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as Pilgrimage of Identity, and The Three Marriages: Reimaging Self, Work, and Relationship, he identifies work as a place of sacred visibility. It is the expression of the public, community-serving self. It is the reflection of core values of competence, effectiveness, and accomplishment. If you are disconnected, dissatisfied, or disgruntled with your work experience a significant portion of yourself may be compromised.

  * * *

  “Human beings must, in a sense, always, in order to create meaning, in order to create an ecology of belonging around them, must bring the central questions of their life into whatever they are doing most of the time.”

  —David Whyte

  * * *

  The workplace is the source of many conditioned reactions. Greed, hatred, and delusion are frequent visitors. Generosity, lovingkindness, and wisdom are perhaps less frequent. Today’s workplace is also a place of great uncertainty, and each moment at work may be a reflection of impermanence. Mindfulness can help you to steel yourself against this uncertainty.

  Work may be an unavoidable intrusion into life. For some, there is great joy in work. A New York Times article featuring mindfulness for physicians described one surgeon who said, “Time in the O.R. is not work; it’s play.” That’s the Buddha at work!

  Meditation is often practiced by Buddhist monks. Meditation clarifies the senses, concentrates the mind, and calms the emotions. All of these aspects of meditation are part of the path to enlightenment.

  Photo Credit: © Getty Images/Jacob Wackerhausen

  About 2,500 years ago and according to legend, Siddhartha, an Indian prince, meditated beneath the Bodhi Tree for three days and nights. He achieved enlightenment and became the Buddha. Some 300 years later, the ruler of a vast Indian empire, King Ashoka, converted to Buddhism and ordered the construction of the Mahabodhi Temple on the site of Siddhartha’s enlightenment. Today, in addition to being a Buddhist temple, the Mahabodhi Temple in Bodh Gaya, India, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

  Photo Credit: © Getty Images/kunphel

  The lotus flower is a symbol of Buddhism. Because it grows in muddy water, it shows that the purity of enlightenment can arise out of murkiness. It is the aim of Buddhists to attain a state of enlightenment through meditation and lovingkindness. Water slips off the flower’s petals easily, mirroring Buddhism’s notion of detachment from the desires of this world.

  Photo Credit: © Getty Images/coffeekai

  This 112-foot-high statue of the Buddha at the Po Lin Monastery in Hong Kong is characteristic of many representations of the Buddha. Here, as in most other images, the Buddha is seated, radiating an atmosphere of calm and lovingkindness. The statue was completed in 1993.

  Photo Credit: © Getty Images/Michael_tattat

  A Buddhist tea ceremony (chanoyu in Japanese) is an elaborate ritual designed to give its participants an opportunity to meditate and focus their minds. The tea is made in a series of predetermined steps, as the host concentrates on each aspect of the preparation. Each of the guests in turn drinks from the bowl in which the tea has been prepared. After all the guests have drunk, the host washes the bowl in cold water.

  Photo Credit: © Getty Images/DavorLovincic

  Buddhists often use prayer beads during worship to keep track of the number of times a mantra is said. Generally, a string of beads is looped around the wrist for convenience. In most cases, 108 beads are in a string, and they are said to symbolize the number of desires to which humans are subject. When all of the beads have been counted, the devotee is considered to have said one hundred mantras (the other eight are if she loses her place and misses some beads). The beads can be made of various materials, including wood, precious or semiprecious stones, or seeds.

  Photo Credit: © Getty Images/guenterguni

  Candles, incense, and a singing bowl are often used by Buddhists when meditating. Singing bowls create a range of sounds that can calm the mind of the person meditating, helping him or her relax and focus on the immediacy of the moment through regular breathing and concentration. The steady, unwavering light of the candles and the smell of the incense also provide calming influences.

  Photo Credit: © Getty Images/VeraPetruk

  Frescoes from the Lankatilaka Vihara Buddhist temple in Sri Lanka. The temple dates from the fourteenth century and is considered one of the most architecturally significant structures of its period. It is unique in that it was constructed atop a great rock; the foundations are of granite on which bricks were laid to create the temple. The frescoes depict worshipers at a statue of the Buddha.

  Photo Credit: © Getty Images/fmajor

  Mandalas are intended as maps of the spiritual world. The patterns within them represent the sacred space where the Buddha resides. A mandala can serve as the focal point of a meditation. The person meditating concentrates on the colors and shapes in order to exclude everything else from her mind. Many mandalas are created from different colors of sand. When the meditation is complete, the sand is swept away, reminding those meditating that nothing is permanent.

  Photo Credit: © 123RF/Ekaterina Gerasimov

  In ancient times, a great Buddhist school and monastery existed at Nalanda in India. Scholars who studied there helped shape Buddhist doctrine. At its height, Nalanda had a vast library that included books not only about religion but about grammar, mathematics, history, and many other subjects. As well, the library included key Buddhist texts such as the Prajnaparamita Sutras and the Guhyasamaja Tantra.

  Photo Credit: © Getty Images/werusq

  Gardening is particularly connected to Japanese Zen Buddhism. The garden provides a peaceful place for meditation. In gardens such as this one in Japan, ponds often contain floating lotus flowers symbolic of Buddhism.

  Photo Credit: © Getty Images/davidmartyn

  The Tiger’s Nest monastery in Bhutan is situated 3,000 feet above the Paro Valley and more than 10,000 feet above sea level. The prayer flags in the foreground are typical of Himalayan Buddhism. They are hung in long strings; the five colors appear in the same order: blue, white, red, green, and yellow. Blue symbolizes the sky; white the air; red, fire; green, water; and yellow, earth.

  Photo Credit: © Getty Images/narvikk

  Yoga has become widely popular in the West. The Buddha was a practiced yogi, seeking to yoke mind and bod
y, future and past together. Because Buddhism is concerned with promoting mindfulness of all actions, Buddhist yogis concentrate on being aware of their bodies and their breathing much more than getting a workout. Through yoga, by focusing on sitting calmly and being aware of all their movements, Buddhists find ways to explore their inner being and consciousness.

  Photo Credit: © Getty Images/shironosov

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ARNIE KOZAK, PHD, took the bodhisattva vows from His Holiness the Dalai Lama in 1985 and is on the teaching faculty of the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies. He is the author of many books, including 108 Metaphors for Mindfulness and Mindfulness A to Z. Dr. Kozak is a licensed psychologist and clinical assistant professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of Vermont College of Medicine. He lives in Burlington, Vermont. ExquisiteMind.com.

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