Rebirth in Every Moment

Rebirth does not relate just to past and future lifetimes. Every moment of our life we experience rebirth. Every day, we can begin anew through the thoughts we have. So even if we are still uncertain about "Rebirth," we can still see how it works within just one lifetime.

During Monday night's class, I read a short meditation to be done in the morning. Essentially, we pause before rising and consider how we want to spend our time that day: wisely or wastefully. We can consider the good things of the moment be they the sounds we hear in the early morning or the thoughts that arise. With positive thoughts thus reinforced, we will face the day in a better frame of mind.

By focusing our thoughts, we can positively direct them. By cheerfully greeting those we encounter as the day unfolds, we plant the seeds for happiness. We don't have to wait for these seeds to mature in some distant lifetime. When we smile, we feel better. Right away. Instant rebirth. Instant cause and effect.

One moment we didn't quite feel like smiling because we were wrapped up in replaying what happened yesterday or in worrying about what might happen tomorrow. But remembering that we had opted to be reborn that morning, we smile and our act of smiling manifests as happiness. And the happiness is shared as it is now felt by the one we smiled at.

Face each new day as a new beginning, a day in which to plant seeds and instantly receive some of the results.

Cinderella Returns

 

I've had a song from the 1957 television production of Cinderella playing in my head for most of the day. "Impossible things are happening every day," from the song named "Impossible." Rogers and Hammerstein wrote the musical for television. Only broadcast once, it was a live production, something that was the norm when I was growing up.

Periodically, my mother and I used to go in to New York City. We'd go for Broadway and off-Broadway shows, the Metropolitan Opera, the museums, and all the other wonderful things one could afford to do in the city in the 1950's and 60's.

Mom would usually buy me the musical sound track (on records in those days). She must have bought me Cinderella because a few night ago, I sat happily glued to the television, in the warm glow of happy memories, thinking how much Mom would have enjoyed watching this rebroadcast, the first one in fifty years. 

I say she must have bought the sound track because although it was only broadcast one time, I knew every song. By heart. Perfectly. Wow. Talk about long-term memory!

I listened to the sound track fifty years ago, and I still remember it so clearly.

We need to be careful of what we imprint on our minds. Fortunately for me, what I had imprinted that night fifty years ago watching television with my mother was a child's morality tale with wonderful music, each song more beautiful (or funny, like the "Stepsisters' Lament") than the previous one. The world today is sadly different from the one I grew up in. We need to be vigilant and choose those imprints carefully. We never know how long they will stay with us. 

First to Last: Chanting "Amituofo"

In the Avatamsaka Sutra , we read about Sudhana, the young seeker of truth in the sutra. Under Manjusri Bodhisattva’s guidance, Sudhana eliminated a part of ignorance and attained a part of Dharma Body, thus gaining fundamental wisdom. The Zen school calls this state complete enlightenment. The sutra-study schools call it perfect understanding. At this time, Manjusri allowed Sudhana to travel around to visit other teachers. The purpose was for Sudhana to attain acquired wisdom. What followed is the famous “Sudhana’s visit to fifty-three wise teachers.”

The method used to cultivate fundamental wisdom is completely different from that used to cultivate acquired wisdom. To cultivate fundamental wisdom, the practitioner must delve deeply into one method. The practitioner has to be immersed in that method for a long period of time. His mind must be focused. Through deep meditative concentration, he lets go of wandering thoughts, discriminations, and attachments, and uncovers his true nature.

After he has uncovered true nature, the teacher will permit him to come into contact with anyone and get involved in anything. Instead of delving deeply into one method, the practitioner can now learn extensively from many teachers. This will help us understand the Four Great Vows of Bodhisattvas.

Sentient beings are innumerable,
I vow to help them all.

Afflictions are inexhaustible,
I vow to end them all.

Ways to practice are boundless,
I vow to master them all.

Enlightenment is unsurpassable,
I vow to attain it.

The second vow, “Afflictions are inexhaustible; I vow to end them all” is to cultivate fundamental wisdom. The third vow, “Methods to practice are boundless; I vow to master them all” is to cultivate acquired wisdom. Having attained fundamental wisdom, one does not study with just one teacher. Everyone is one’s teacher. Everything can be learned, so we will know everything.

The first teacher that Sudhana visited was Cloud of Virtues Bodhisattva. What was the method this teacher practiced? The method of being mindful of the Buddha!

Sakyamuni Buddha attained enlightenment and Buddhahood at the age of thirty. After he had attained Buddhahood, he started to propagate the Dharma and benefit all beings. He did so for forty-nine years until he entered nirvana at eighty.

During the forty-nine years, Sakyamuni did not have a day off. Why? Because what he taught—ending the cycle of rebirth and transcending the Three Realms—was very important. So he could not take any day off. Had he done so, his students’ learning would have been interrupted, and they would have regressed. Learning is like going upstream in a boat; if you do not move forward, you go backward. It is the same in cultivation; if one does not make progress, one immediately regresses.

To ensure that one does not regress, one has to keep making progress. One should overcome one’s afflictions and residual habits. How does one do so? By being eager to learn. When one has a strong will to learn, one will not regress, and it will be easy for one to learn the teachings.

Cloud of Virtues Bodhisattva diligently chanted the name of Amitabha Buddha, and vowed to attain rebirth in the Western Pure Land. He made a strong first impression on Sudhana. After this first visit, Sudhana visited other wise teachers, and every one of them practiced different methods.

It was the fifty-third teacher, Samantabhadra, who taught Sudhana the Ten Great Vows and urged him to vow to attain rebirth in the Western Pure Land. The first teacher taught the method of being mindful of Amitabha Buddha, and the last teacher vowed to be reborn in the Western Pure Land. So from the beginning of the Avatamsaka Sutra to the end, Sudhana practiced the method of being mindful of Amitabha Buddha and vowed to be reborn in the Western Pure Land.

~ Based on Ven. Master Chin Kung's 2003 lecture series on the Amitabha Sutra 

Seeing with Real Insight

 

If you see things with real insight, then there is no stickiness in your relationship to them. They come—pleasant and unpleasant—you see them and there is no attachment. They come and they pass. Even if the worse kinds of defilement come up, such as greed or anger, there’s enough wisdom to see their impermanent nature and allow them to just fade away. If you react to them, however, by liking or disliking, that isn’t wisdom. You’re only creating more suffering for yourself.

~ Ajahn Chah

A Matter of Conscience

Greed, anger, and ignorance—the three poisons. The first and the third have landed us in a “muddle” of epic proportions. We’re overwhelming the fragile planet we live on and living as if there’s no tomorrow.

I don’t want to come across as so negative that readers become overwhelmed at the enormity of our situation and give up even trying. Nor do I want to make light of our situation and have the message dismissed as not urgent yet. So I’ll try for the middle, the balanced approach:

We need to start changing, and we need to start today.

From the Buddhist perspective, every cause will have a result. If we treat others with thoughtfulness, we will in turn receive thoughtfulness. If I conserve water and food, I will have water and food in my future. If I consume and continue to toss the product’s containers, wrapping, and earlier models they are replacing into the garbage, I’m going to have a lot of garbage in my future. And we don’t have to be Buddhist to understand this.

Hearing about climate change and all its resultant evils can, very frankly, become overwhelming. We can easily get to the point where it seems that we’re too far down the road to change our direction. But we know from the butterfly effect in chaos theory that small changes do matter.

According to Wikipedia, in the Butterfly Effect “small variations of the initial condition of a nonlinear dynamical system may produce large variations in the long term behavior of the system.” In other words, small causes can have major results. Very Buddhist. And very true. A flutter of a butterfly’s wings (a small cause) can produce a hurricane on the other side of the world (a large result). So small actions can have large results.

Acting out of ignorance, not understanding that our actions will come back to haunt us, and greed, thinking we can buy happiness, has to stop. It’s our responsibility to try our best to undue what we, in blissful ignorance, began. Just buying CFLs for our lights and recycling a bit more and stopping there won’t do it. We can’t buy ourselves out of this one.

What can we do? A whole bunch. The Internet can be a wonderful tool. Instead of using it as the Cyber Monday version of Black Friday, we can use it to educate ourselves. There are wonderful blogs and websites written by people who have decided they would make a difference. I invite you to spend some time reading and learning. I’ve listed some of my current favorites in the sidebar to the right under the heading: A Matter of Conscience.

We have no way of knowing exactly what will come of our efforts. But if we each try our best to live more simply and wiser, we’ll at least be part of the solution instead of the problem.