Catching Up on My Reading
Four Buddhisty book reviews. Gotta knock these four out in brief, so I can catch up on other stuff.
“The Karma of Questions”, Thanissaro Bikkhu
This was one of our dhamma book club selections. It was my first time reading Than Geoff, although his books are everywhere. He’s written (∞-1) of them, and he gives them away for free. Unfortunately, quantity doesn’t assure quality, and this book was sporadic in its usefulness. Actually, it reads more like the blog of a rant-prone idealogue than a commercially viable author, probably due to lack of editorial guidance. On the other hand, there were a few interesting nuggets that I’d like to retain.
One is the following admission: “While skillful thinking leads to no harmful actions, long bouts of it can tire the mind.” This confirms my felt sense that devoting all that meta-level thought to how one relates to everything really does consume mental energy. That helps me understand why I often feel utterly exhausted by the end of a retreat.
One of his snarkier bits is when he utterly slams the Mahayana bodhisattva ideal of staying behind in samsara to work for the enlightenment of all, rather than passing into nirvana. Mahayana practitioners often criticize vipassana practitioners as selfish, because they focus on themselves and their own enlightenment. That would make sense, he says, if nirvana was a place or a thing. But it’s not; it’s a process, something you do. “If samsara were a place, it might seem selfish for one person to look for an escape, leaving others behind. But when you realize it’s a process, there’s nothing selfish about stopping at all. It’s like giving up an addiction or an abusive habit.” So staying in samara until all beings are enlightened is kind of like vowing not to go to rehab until everyone else goes.
Another interesting bit is that one can fully understand and embrace the Buddhist concept of non-self and still not be perfected. In his words, even after the question “Who am I?” falls away, “the only question still concerning you is how to dig out the remaining roots of unskillfulness still latent in the mind.”
Perhaps the biggest revelation I took from the book has to do with where intentions come from. Intentions are vitally important in Buddhism, because they’re where karma comes from: someone who knowingly does an unwise act accumulates negative karma, while someone who performs an unwise action with wise intention does not.
According to Buddhism, the chain of conditionality goes like this: one’s intentions determine one’s actions, and one’s actions produce immediate and deferred results. So it’s pivotal to cultivate wise intentions. But what factors influence/condition one’s intentions? Than Geoff mentions two things: one’s state of mind and the results of past intentions and actions. So to produce positive intentions/actions/karma, one must cultivate a positive mind state and observe and learn from one’s previous actions.
There were also numerous interesting pointers on practice. For example, one doesn’t do breath practice in order to observe the breath, but to observe cause and effect, and especially to question your assumptions about breathing and how you relate to your perceptions. Another is thinking of concentration as two separate practices: the first skill is getting the mind settled down, and the second, completely different skill is staying there. See if you can try to keep that degree of stillness going in all situations, and examine the things that get in the way.
“The Compassionate Life”, Dalai Lama
I picked up this little book as part of my karuna practice, interested in seeing what the grand master had to say on the subject. Largely this was a discussion of two important Mahayana texts: Shantideva’s 8th century “Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life” and Langri Tangpa’s 12th century “Eight Verses for Training the Mind”. I took away three interesting ideas.
The first is that patience is considered to be an antidote to both anger and hatred. This works well for me, because I consider myself a patient person, and someone not especially prone to anger and hatred. However, the times when I feel the most irritation with people are usually instances where I’m being impatient about them doing something.
On the topic of compassion, old man Gyatso asserted that it’s not necessary to actively cultivate compassion for every single person. Instead, he suggested realizing the general case: that all beings seek happiness and avoid pain, and have an equal right to do so.
He also offered this offbeat question: if human hatred exceeded human love, then why has our population grown so hugely? Yes, humanity has suffered immense self-inflicted wars and pogrommes, but that hasn’t stopped us from loving even more, as evinced by world population growth.
“Compassion: The Key to Great Awakening, Thought Training and the Bodhisattva Practices”, Geshe Tsultim Gyeltsen
Ironically, while I was in the library looking for the above Dalai Lama book, I accidentally found this one. Although the title promised to further advance my karuna practice, it was (like the Dalai Lama’s book) mostly a commentary on two Mahayana base texts; in this case, Togmey Zangpo’s “Thirty-Seven Bodhisattva Practices”, as well as the “Eight Verses” that were already cited in the Dala Lama’s book.
I really didn’t gain a lot from this book. The major point I gathered echoed the Dalai Lama: that patience is greater than anger.
Other than that, the whole Tibetan cosmology thing kinda left me feeling that Mahayanans are a little bit more than cuckoo.
“The Best of Inquiring Mind: 25 Years of Dharma, Drama, and Uncommon Insight”
I was delighted to find a copy of this book in the library, as it was already on my Amazon wish list. Despite being a low-budget, seat of the pants operation, Inquiring Mind has been a key publication in American Buddhism for more than 25 years, as evinced by their list of contributors, which includes Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, S.N. Goenka, Ajahn Amaro, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Jack Engler, Ram Dass, Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg, and John Cage.
As such, the book was very useful to me in terms of charting the lineage of American Buddhism, especially noting the people involved in the founding of IMS and Spirit Rock.
Although it was very interesting to read, the only meaningful passage for me was in Ayya Khema’s article on jhana practice, which described the first four jhana in terms that sound a lot like my own personal experience. It’s a fascinating article which gives me an idea that it would be useful for me to sit down and have a talk with someone who has done and can teach jhana practice, so that I can confirm form myself where I’m at and where to go from there. As well as seeking out her other publications and dhamma talks, of course.
Now, after all that I can relax and read the newest Pratchett paperback before diving back into some more meaty material after the holiday!