Exploring Buddhism and Zen Philosophy

Zen, truth means seeing reality as it is, without any projections. The sky is blue, grass is green, water is wet. Knowing that our experience is internal means that we are less attached to the external world which the Buddhists have never denied. They are not nihilist. They've never said that there's nothing out there. This conditioned thinking might compose of greed, anger and ignorance. So therefore when you see the world, perceive the world in this way, there's always a separation from the subject and the object. The word Buddhism comes from, bud means to be awake. So actually we would usually say buddha dharma, awaken to the truth. Buddha's teaching is so simple. His whole teaching we can just put in two lines. What he said, first of all, when he was dying and in his deadbed, he told his closest disciple, Ananda, be mindful. And when he started teaching, abstain from evil, do good, purify your mind. Buddhism, historically the religion of millions of Asians, is a name derived from the Buddha, a spiritual leader in ancient India. The term Buddha means a fully enlightened person. and Buddhism has become the religion and or a life philosophy of millions who are guided by this ancient tradition in seeking spiritual enlightenment. A child named Siddhartha was born in northeast India about 500 years ago. His father, Suttodana, was head of the Gautama family and chieftain of the Shakya warrior caste clan in the foothills of modern Nepal. The son would later be called Gautama Buddha, then Shakya Muni Buddha, the sage of the Shakya clan. Thus the birth of Siddhartha Gautama, like that of Jesus and Muhammad, has been the subject of much elaboration, even including an account of a supernatural conception. One night, Siddhartha's mother dreamed that when a white elephant's trunk touched her side, she became pregnant. The unborn Buddha, then existing four cosmic levels above the human plane of existence, in the heaven of the satisfied gods, had been waiting for a pure and worthy mother to appear on earth. Siddhartha grew up in splendid palaces, waited upon by bevies of pretty young women. When he reached the proper age, Siddhartha was married to a beautiful cousin, and the good life continued until his 29th year. Then a radical change occurred. Siddhartha saw that sickness and death await us all. His elation about life vanished. In particular, his upbringing taught him to believe in continuing rebirth throughout endless ages to come. In this context, the prospect of eternally repetitive sickness and dying became horrendous. Some Pali sources even involve the ancient Indian gods in a more dynamic account of Siddhartha's quest. Here the gods determine that the young Siddhartha must be freed from the cozy cocoon of a prince's life. Siddhartha returns to his palace in an agitated state of mind. His father immediately set up guards all around the palaces and added further luxuries. But the gods were not to be denied. They again approached Siddhartha, disguised as a sick man, then as a corpse, and finally as an ascetic who had found peace within mortal suffering. But die was cast. Siddhartha now decided to become an ascetic. He returned to his palace, at peace within himself, only to learn that his son had been born. Thus Siddhartha had become bonded to the ordinary life of man. But he refused to be bound to the ordinary world any longer. With the connivance of the gods, he silently bid goodbye to his sleeping wife and son, fled the palace, and became an ascetic. He became a disciple of two noted ascetic masters. Under their tutelage, he achieved the so-called trance of nothingness. Then he reached a trance that's called neither perception nor non-perception. For six years, Siddhartha practiced severe austerity and extreme mortification. Some observers reported that the gaunt and debilitated ascetic was dead. Later images by Buddhist artists make the ascetic Siddhartha look like a skin-covered skeleton. You have to be very, very fortunate enough and your practice should be so high that a day will come you'll be fortunate enough to meet a Buddha like our Gautama Buddha when he was practising. as a Sumedho, the ascetic. At that time he met Dipankara Buddha who gave him all the blessings and all the boon that, oh my son, you will be a Buddha one day like me. While holding his breath as it a technique to control his body, Gautama felt as though a strap were being twisted ever more tightly around his head. But to his surprise, this was the important clue. Clear mindfulness, not the pain of ascetic practice, is the key to spiritual understanding. It is a difficult thing to determine exactly how we should look at Buddhism. Some people see it as a philosophy, and there are certainly philosophical texts. But in many ways, when one reads the texts of Buddhism, we see that it is a psychology. It is almost a physiology. It talks about how we perceive the world, so that in some sense, some people would ask the question of whether or not Buddhism is, in our ordinary sense, a religion. I think the answer must certainly be that it is. It has all the attributes of religious practice. It does have the monasteries. the altars, the holy people, those people who are set aside to practice particular rituals and rites. Gautama made a key decision that would give Buddhists the basis for calling their outlook the middle way. To sustain his bodily strength, he took a small amount of food from the lay people who always hover around ascetics in India. Yet to avoid sensual desire, he continued to resist attachment to flavors or tastes. tastes. Here then are the beginnings of the Buddhist meditative pattern for those who wish to reach nirvana, an ultimate state of freedom from the unending and wearisome cycle of lives called samsara. According to the Buddha, Siddhartha now found himself emotionally indifferent to either joy or aversion. This is the key mood of Buddhist enlightenment. To gain detached mastery over both negative and positive emotions. The Buddhist way is to master both hate and love, fear and confidence, desire and aversion. The opposing emotions that keep the individual bound to the perpetual wheel of rebirth. It is a sharp, clear awareness of the thoughts, impulses and emotions that arise within one's own self. An enlightened one can judge situations without self-interest. He or she is unswayed by self-regarding emotions. Observe. ...clearly and dispassionately. The big question for every ascetic is always whether or not to become a spokesperson in terms of a teacher of others. Is it possible to teach someone something which they themselves have not experienced? Can I ever explain to somebody what a strawberry tastes like if they've never tasted a strawberry? So that many ascetics simply do not teach because it's so difficult. The question is, what is the difference between a strawberry and a strawberry? The fact that Shakyamuni decided to become a public teacher and to, in the best of his ability and with the use of words to describe the experience of his enlightenment, was a major event in the development of this religion. Had he not given his first sermon, had he not made this a public event, then of course Buddhism would not have become a world religion. But he made this decision, he put it into words. and it is his remembered words which formed the core of the first scripture for the Buddhist. According to tradition, the Buddha then delivered the Deer Park Sermon at a place near modern Sarnath in India. Gautama Buddha began his sermon by discussing the noble truth of pain, which is a deep... pervasive awareness that human existence is temporary and full of ills. Perhaps the most famous part of the Buddhist doctrine are the so-called Four Noble Truths. And the first truth is said to be usually suffering. A lot of people wonder what this means because it seems therefore that Buddhism would be a very pessimistic religion. Some people suggested that perhaps we should call this that life is unsatisfactory. That is I can whatever it is that I do ultimately it becomes unsatisfactory. So I can say if I'm tired and I sit down then I can say sitting is wonderful it's not suffering but if I sit on an airplane from London to Chicago, I'm going to say sitting is not satisfactory. So the Buddhists say whatever we do always turns out to be unsatisfactory and our suffering comes because we find that life is unsatisfactory and we long for it to be otherwise. So the Buddhists say that what we have to deal with is the fact that this is so. And how do we get out of it? How can we determine that if it's like this, what's the escape? For the Buddhists, it's the idea that we have to have insight. We have to know what is really the case. And so the Buddhists say that the experiences which we have, we have to understand those experiences are in our mind. And that that's where we live our lives. So if I look at my finger, I can say my finger hurts. And the Buddha said, no, the finger is not hurting. The pain is something which is recorded and experienced only in the mind. I could cut off my finger, and that finger would never again feel pain. Here we must realize that all aspects of life are impermanent. We must see that what we call the self is essentially unreal, and that the nature of life as we ordinarily live it is restless and dissatisfying. Buddha's first realization was life is suffering. And actually when I even heard it myself, it sounds so negative. But the fact that it's just a fact. It's not negation of life, but it's for us to realize what life is all about. Because when we come out of the womb, we start crying. It's the pain of being born. And that is the, we could say the dharma of being born, the law of being born. So it's not like it's a negative view, but it's a very close observation of what, how we're coming into life and how to prepare for this very life. So therefore we can be free from the suffering, we know how to be with it. The four remaining elements of the Noble Eightfold Path may be lumped together in the category of meditation. Though meditation is the final release from the cycle of life and death, Buddhist morality is not left behind when one meditates. During the emergence of Buddhism, the most important of the Indian caste groups was the Brahman. The Buddha proclaimed a way of life, ...of salvation that had two quarrels with the Brahmanical religion. First, Buddhist salvation does not require the elaborate rituals that were a part of Brahmanism. Rituals deal only with outward, physical matters, not the inwardness of the human spirit. Buddhists believe that rituals cannot deal with the real causes of human suffering, nor can they lead to salvation. Buddhists had a second quarrel about the sacrifices that the Brahmins offered to the gods. These sacrifices called for the violent taking of animal life, and Buddhism teaches that human beings may slip into animal existence. as a result of their evil deeds. This greed, anger, and ignorance is the key, and that actually pervades all human beings until it's been worked on. The small mind contains, the conditioned mind contains the greed, anger, and ignorance. And this is what has to be seen through. And when this is seen through, then you realize your harmony with your fellow man. And also objects, inanimate and inanimate objects, that you and them are the same. So you wouldn't want to kill anybody because you'd be killing yourself as well. This is the study and practice that... meditation that you begin realizing this very important aspect. Because we're very good at the other stuff. In fact, the whole society and cultures are like a conspiracy against the spirit. And my feeling is that as we're As we're approaching 2000, just the number 2000 people know that something is missing. The five precepts of Buddhism can be understood as a parallel to the ten commandments. They might be translated as follows. Don't take any human or animal life. Don't take what is not one's own. Refrain from slander and untruth. Don't engage in illicit sexual conduct. Abstain from intoxicating or mind-muddling drugs. Buddhist doctrine constantly emphasizes that one's fate is the result of one's actions. of one's past deeds. If one suffers from physical ugliness, deformity, disease or any ill fortune, it is due to one's own past action. Everything karma is basically action. It's about cause and effect. Everything has a cause and everything has an effect. And so in meditation practice, we try to free ourselves from this cause and effect, to make a loophole in it by seeing through it. So people talk about if you... Buddhism or the Buddha Dharma is different than becoming a good person because when you become a when you want to become a good person when you want to do good you become a purpose you have a purpose of being good, of what you think is good. So we even have to transcend that. So studying Zen is not becoming a good person, but becoming a human being. And when you become a human being, then you naturally realize your basic goodness. Even ourselves are basic goodness and then you realize the basic goodness of others. That's goodness. So it's not becoming, doing good things for people. But it's becoming selflessness and serving people. is one of the greatest rewards. Yet existence as a human being is a great privilege because only a human can produce karmic merit. A person should eagerly seize his or her priceless opportunities for producing good karma, but again only a human can ascend to nirvana. At least in popular Buddhist thinking, much more more than love or hate is carried on from life to life. Personal characteristics and subconscious memories also are transmitted. Genius may suddenly crop up in a family that seems ordinary. A loving married couple may meet again in a new life. A child closely resembling a deceased ancestor must be that ancestor's now reborn in this new form and so on and on. Buddhists cherish what they call the four great illimitables. These are four qualities of which there can never be enough. They are loving-kindness, compassion, joy in the joy of others, and equanimity. A good Buddhist thus gains a spiritual maturity that calmly and impartially loves and cares for others. Buddhist meditation clearly aims at reducing the emotional fever of life. It produces a clear calm-mindedness that sees things as they truly are. without the distortions of self-concern, hopes and fears, loves and hatreds. Meditation frees the meditator from the distortions that so often determine what we think, feel and do. The Deer Park sermon was the beginning of the Buddha's 45-year career as an itinerant spiritual teacher. He traveled about northeastern India as a mendicant teacher monk, followed by a band of disciples. The most notable of Buddha's disciples was Ananda, his constant companion and personal attendant. Ananda formally admitted others into the Buddha's presence, and he became the official rememberer of many of the Buddha's discourses. All this kept Ananda so busy that he had no time to achieve his own enlightenment. The Buddha's life eventually ended when he ate poisonous food that was offered accidentally by a smith named Chanda. Buddhist legend says that the wise Buddha knew the food was bad, but he was not willing to refuse food offered to him, and then ordered the remainder to be destroyed. The Buddha lay down on his right side in the so-called lion posture. He instructed the monks to let his lay disciples make all decisions about disposing of his ashes. These ashes were to become prized possessions. The Buddha said Chanda should not be blamed for the accident. His good intentions would produce good merit for his next rebirth. Besides, it was time for the Buddha to leave the world of men. But he did that so that he will be able to eradicate suffering from the human beings. That was his whole intention. His whole teaching was... time metaphysical. He was not at all trying to do any kind of intellectual teaching. He said, oh Bhikkhu, if you really love me then do the practice, not the theories. An ounce of practice is much more superior than tons of theories. Gautama Buddha was born into a Brahmanical religious tradition which says each of us is perpetually reborn in a way that's governed by our karmic deeds. He cast aside the dependence upon priestly ritual and sacrifice, and he said that the aid of the gods is futile, because the gods also need release from the cycles of rebirth. The key to nirvana... is within oneself. And Buddhism has repeatedly emphasized this core belief during its long and diverse development. During the last centuries BCE, a new sectarian name had first appeared in India. In centuries to come, this name would designate a major new type of Buddhist doctrine and practice. Mahayana, meaning the great or universal means of salvation, would be the name of the Buddhism adopted in China, Korea and Japan. Mahayana Buddhists began to produce new scriptures. They used the Pali scriptures in much the same way as Christians use the Hebrew scriptures. Mahayana Buddhists believed that the Theravada scriptures had set forth many of the real truths of Buddhism. Buddhas come to earth to save men from their passions, from their appetites, from the ills of samsara. Mahayana scriptures continue to refer to the earthly life of Gautama Buddha. For many people in East Asia, this selection came to be the Lotus, so-called Lotus Sutra. It was this text that has so dominated Japanese Buddhist life, has been extremely... ...important for both Korea and China. And it is a Mahayana, Sukhamahayana text. Which teaches the major doctrine behind it is that the Buddhist tradition and the work which the Buddha has done is something which is available to all individuals. So there's a kind of universal salvation doctrine in the Lotus Sutra which has had enormous appeal through the centuries. The lotus flower is a type of water lily, and it is a widespread and popular Buddhist symbol. The lotus grows up out of the slime and muck in the bottom of a pond, and it blossoms into a very beautiful flower on the water's surface. The lotus is the perfect symbol of a life of purity lived in the midst of a defiling world. The Lotus Sutra, written in Sanskrit probably during the 3rd or 4th century CE, was translated into Chinese during the 4th and 5th centuries. The Lotus Sutra became the most influential scripture of Mahayana and it is full of themes that are central to Mahayana beliefs. The main thrust of Mahayana Buddhism was to expand and reinterpret the old Buddhist doctrines, beliefs and practices. Now was the goal. Desire. to progress spiritually. And if you really want to elevate your higher grades of consciousness, then you need to do something. You need to discipline your life, purify your mind. Something like if you want to grow a vegetable or flower, you need to cultivate a piece of land. So in the same way, if you want to practice the Dharma, you have to cultivate your mind. The Mahayana Bodhisattva is willing to remain in samsara, to be born again and again, endlessly, always striving for the welfare of his fellow beings, until these beings too attain release. The Bodhisattva, bodhi means enlightened, sattva means being, enlightened being. And her, or his vow was to not enter Nirvana until everyone was enlightened. So now this is very important, because we're always doing things for ourselves. But she's waiting for everyone, the whole humanity, to be enlightened before she enters Nirvana. So, in the front part, you look at her face and she's pretty calm. And then the three faces above her face are pretty calm. But as you go clockwise around, the faces become more and more filled with anger, frustration, anxiety, horror, until you come to the last three. And that's devastation, despair, and hopelessness. And this is the part where most young people or even just people, but I'm thinking of the young people, that's where they kill themselves or commit suicide. But what the Bodhisattva wears is a crown, because this is part of life. And because we have a mind and a body, we're going to encounter this, whether you're a Buddhist or not. So she wears it as her crown, as her path. Though monks and monasteries were still needed, a lay person... no longer had to hope to be reborn as a monk. Anyone could follow the bodhisattva path of benevolence, and the highest of all lives became the life of self-giving in the ordinary world. Within Buddhism, a person's karma represents the power of his or her voluntary deeds to shape a rebirth in the next life. The evildoer is reborn into unpleasant or painful destinies. And the doer of good is reborn into pleasant effects. Karma is nothing but volition. So karma is something that all the different actions that we perform through our speech, our deed, and our mind, and those actions they accumulate different kinds of forces. Some are good, some are bad, some are superior, some are neutral. Good deeds and meditational attainments receive equally fabulous rewards in the higher realms of enjoyment. Life in the very highest level of all, that of neither perception nor non-perception. ...lasts for 84,000 ages, or kalpas. Even though such a long existence may seem to last forever, it does come to an end at last. A hundred years in the heavens of enjoyment seems to last no longer than a human day. So the years slip by rapidly until the enjoyer of bliss, a deva or god, is reborn in human form. This happens when one exhausts the store of merit produced by good deeds as a human being, just as purgatorial sufferings end when one exhausts the evil karma that produced them. Buddhists believe that all world systems like the one we've been discussing sooner or later must come to an end. This is caused in part by the declining level of moral and religious life among its inhabitants. Theravada Buddhists understand this lower level of living to be inevitable, as are its consequences. Every so many eons, the earth universe is destroyed by fire, water and then wind. Indeed, all of the physical world disappears, as well as 20 of the 31 planes of existence, including that of the completely lustrous gods. Unless residents of these planes have already escaped through repentance or righteous deeds, they apparently are cast into other world systems at their current levels of existence. Eons later, its particles may form a new universe. Like the Hindus, Buddhists do not recognize any absolute beginning to the appearance of these world systems. This series of cycles is considered to have always existed, just as it always will exist. So for the Mahayana school in Buddhism, the Bodhisattva ideal or the Bodhisattva vow is one of the most important things. So it's not just doing good or saving people, but it's her life. And it's her way to be shared with everybody. Okay. In Mongolia and Tibet, the word that means high priest is lama. A new Dalai Lama is chosen by a slow and deliberate process. A few years after a Dalai Lama's death, a search committee of respected elder monks is chosen. These monks gather certain articles, including the information on the Dalai Lama. including some used by the just deceased Dalai Lama. Then they tour the countryside to search for young boys who were born after the last Dalai Lama died. The true successor, the reborn Dalai Lama, is the one who unerringly picks out the genuine articles belonging to the deceased Dalai Lama. He is then taken to the great central monastery at Lhasa, where he is trained for his new role as the Buddhist god-king. To create and use a mandala, a tantric disciple puts himself under the guidance of his spiritual master. Then he slowly and painstakingly creates, or goes over, the mandala pattern. This is done step by step. using one's total attention. This might be called the Tibetan Buddhist style of psychoanalysis. To Buddhists, it is in keeping with the Buddhist message that within ourselves, each of us finds salvation from the restless suffering, the impermanence and the emptiness of human existence. Tibetan Buddhists also use the mantra which means sacred utterance in Sanskrit. Indeed one must concentrate upon the mantra if it is to be effective and Tibetan Buddhism has sometimes been called Mantrayana Buddhism because of its extensive use of mantras. Mantras are ritual chants, and they had earlier been used in connection with Brahmanical sacrificial rituals. Mantras were viewed as power-filled words to help one achieve various results. And Tibetan Buddhism easily adapted them to its own non-sacrificial use. One prominent mantra is a famous six syllable phrase, chanted ritually over and over. Om Mani Padme Hum. Om Mani Padme Hum. Om Manipadme Hum Om As with the sacred circle of the mandala, the sacred syllables of the mantra are to be made a part of oneself. They are used to rid oneself of impurities, to attain higher and higher spiritual status. and finally to achieve spiritual liberation. One last special feature of Tibetan Buddhism is Bardo, a Tibetan Buddhist teaching about the process of dying. Here, as with the mandala, a dying person confronts various shapes, such as demons, gods and bodhisattvas. These are understood to be that person's own internal good-bad traits in graphic form. In Tibetan Buddhism, death is considered to be a gradual transition to a new life, lasting perhaps as long as seven days. A spiritual attendant repeats directions and encouragements in the ear of the individual. individual who is dying. Thus Tibetan Buddhism ensures a safe passage to a new and good existence. Buddhism originally had entered Japan in the mid-6th century from Korea, where it had been active since the late 4th century. A Buddha image was given to the Japanese Emperor, along with some monk priests who could give ritual performances. performances. From this small beginning, Buddhism became a major religious and cultural force in Japan for about a thousand years. So by incorporating all of these local deities, all of the local spirits, they were were able to incorporate the people of that place into the Buddhist tradition. By accepting and by being extremely tolerant of local religious traditions, it's one of the reasons I think that Buddhism has never been involved in religious warfare. They do not require people to give up their local spirit in order to become a Buddhist. One of the new, uniquely Japanese sects was called Shingon, which means true word. Shingon was established in the early 9th century at a great temple center on Mount Koya, some 50 miles from Kyoto, in the southern half of Japan's main island of Honshu. Shingon, or true word, is not a scripture so much as it is a group of mantras from two Indian scriptures. The proper use and meaning of these mantras are revealed only to Shingon initiates, so Shingon is called esoteric or secret teaching Buddhism. An esoteric Buddhist sect had once been located on these mountains at the time of Saicho, founder of Tendai Buddhism. Saicho, a devout 8th, 9th century Japanese monk from Nara, was seeking to escape the influence of Japan's nearby royal court when he moved far away to Japan's Mount Hiei. overlooking the modern city of Kyoto. But in 794, Japan's royal court moved to Kyoto, and Saicho was no longer isolated. Indeed, Saicho became a person of consequence at the court, and he was allowed to go to study at the Tien-Tai headquarters in China for some eight months. The Japanese monk Honen founded what's known as Jodo, or Pure Land Buddhism. Japan's Pure Land Buddhism gets its name because its followers believe in the existence of many Buddha lands, which are created by the vows, merits and virtues of various Buddhas. Their special Buddha land is called the Western Paradise, or Pure Land. The splendors of this Pure Land, sometimes portrayed by artists and visualized by meditators, are unbelievably grand. In the Pure Land, There will be no more rebirths as man, beast, godling or demon. Through the eons to come, one can work toward final nirvana in the pure land atmosphere. The 13th century monk Nichiren was the latest of the great Buddhist reformers. For Nichiren, the Lotus Sutra was not only the supreme scripture, it was the only true scripture. Nichiren believed himself to have been a leading disciple of the Gautama Buddha in a prior life, and now he saw himself as the one true interpreter of Buddhist enlightenment. Though he was popular with the common people, Nichiren considered them unable to understand the mysteries of the Lotus Sutra, so he proposed a radically simplified version for their use. Nichiren predicted foreign invasions, and he saw his prophecies fulfilled. When the Mongols attacked Japan in 1274, when Nichiren proclaimed that certain recently deceased government notables were in the Buddhist hells, he was exiled for a time and he spent his last years in seclusion. Zen is very popular in the sense that... You could say the reason, it's very simple and very direct and very methodic. A popularity does say something, but at the same time when people begin practicing it, they begin encountering themselves. And most people didn't expect that. That's when they leave, but actually that's when they should stay. Zen Buddhism has become one of the most familiar forms of Buddhism in Western countries. The 12th century monk Eisai has been called the founder of Zen Buddhism in Japan. But this is only partly true. While studying in China, he met some Chan teachers, and upon returning to Japan, he sought to introduce more of the Chan teachings about meditation into Tendai Buddhism. But he was ejected from the Tendai sect for his pains. He went to Kamakura, where the new military class regents were controlling Japan. And there he found favor. So Zen became prominent as the religion of the samurai. And it seemed to suit them. Empty has kind of a negative connotation again. It's very misunderstood, but there's a traditional way of looking at emptiness. Okay, there's three parts to it and one is theoretical. We call it theoretical Zen and that's when form is emptiness and emptiness is form. And that's just the thinking mind, that things become one. And the second part is the Tathagata Zen. And here is where there's no emptiness and no form. That's the second part. And basically nothing can be said at this point. No words can describe it. Just quiet. And the third part is form is form, emptiness is emptiness. So these three things are very important and you will go through that kind of spectrum in studying Zen. And the third part is the highest value in the sense that the sky is blue, grass is green. We come back The seeing reality just as it is. And the first couple of parts is negating reality, because we've already conditioned ourselves to be separated from reality. And this is how emptiness plays a major part in Zazen or meditation practice. The philosophical emphasis of Japan's Zen Buddhism was based on Nagarjuna's doctrine of emptiness, the idea that words and doctrines are not ultimate truth. But overall, the central objective of Zen Buddhism is to attain the Buddha mind. The immediate goal of Zen is seeing into one's true nature as a human being, to see that it is Buddha nature. Here one attains enlightenment by realizing the ultimate reality of our daily existence, when it is rightly perceived. Buddhist meditation clearly aims at reducing the emotional fever of life. It produces a clear, calm-mindedness that sees things as they truly are, without the distortions of self-concern, hopes and fears, loves and hatreds. Meditation frees the meditator from the distortions that so often determine what we think, feel and do. Here the world and the self are seen in a refreshingly new way. The very essence of reality and existence cannot be confined to intellectualized statements about it. Life's vital force is to be experienced in every moment and every action, no matter how ordinary or trivial. Zen enlightenment is a state of mind freed from its cultural confines, and it becomes free and spontaneous in all its actions and awareness. The total self is fully engaged in every act and every experience. In Zen, every action is a truly Buddhist action.

They are not nihilist. They've never said that there's nothing out there. This conditioned thinking might compose of greed, anger and ignorance. So therefore when you see the world, perceive the world in this way, there's always a separation from the subject and the object.

The word Buddhism comes from, bud means to be awake. So actually we would usually say buddha dharma, awaken to the truth. Buddha's teaching is so simple. His whole teaching we can just put in two lines.

What he said, first of all, when he was dying and in his deadbed, he told his closest disciple, Ananda, be mindful. And when he started teaching, abstain from evil, do good, purify your mind. Buddhism, historically the religion of millions of Asians, is a name derived from the Buddha, a spiritual leader in ancient India.

The term Buddha means a fully enlightened person. and Buddhism has become the religion and or a life philosophy of millions who are guided by this ancient tradition in seeking spiritual enlightenment. A child named Siddhartha was born in northeast India about 500 years ago. His father, Suttodana, was head of the Gautama family and chieftain of the Shakya warrior caste clan in the foothills of modern Nepal. The son would later be called Gautama Buddha, then Shakya Muni Buddha, the sage of the Shakya clan.

Thus the birth of Siddhartha Gautama, like that of Jesus and Muhammad, has been the subject of much elaboration, even including an account of a supernatural conception. One night, Siddhartha's mother dreamed that when a white elephant's trunk touched her side, she became pregnant. The unborn Buddha, then existing four cosmic levels above the human plane of existence, in the heaven of the satisfied gods, had been waiting for a pure and worthy mother to appear on earth. Siddhartha grew up in splendid palaces, waited upon by bevies of pretty young women.

When he reached the proper age, Siddhartha was married to a beautiful cousin, and the good life continued until his 29th year. Then a radical change occurred. Siddhartha saw that sickness and death await us all. His elation about life vanished.

In particular, his upbringing taught him to believe in continuing rebirth throughout endless ages to come. In this context, the prospect of eternally repetitive sickness and dying became horrendous. Some Pali sources even involve the ancient Indian gods in a more dynamic account of Siddhartha's quest. Here the gods determine that the young Siddhartha must be freed from the cozy cocoon of a prince's life. Siddhartha returns to his palace in an agitated state of mind.

His father immediately set up guards all around the palaces and added further luxuries. But the gods were not to be denied. They again approached Siddhartha, disguised as a sick man, then as a corpse, and finally as an ascetic who had found peace within mortal suffering. But die was cast.

Siddhartha now decided to become an ascetic. He returned to his palace, at peace within himself, only to learn that his son had been born. Thus Siddhartha had become bonded to the ordinary life of man. But he refused to be bound to the ordinary world any longer. With the connivance of the gods, he silently bid goodbye to his sleeping wife and son, fled the palace, and became an ascetic.

He became a disciple of two noted ascetic masters. Under their tutelage, he achieved the so-called trance of nothingness. Then he reached a trance that's called neither perception nor non-perception. For six years, Siddhartha practiced severe austerity and extreme mortification. Some observers reported that the gaunt and debilitated ascetic was dead.

Later images by Buddhist artists make the ascetic Siddhartha look like a skin-covered skeleton. You have to be very, very fortunate enough and your practice should be so high that a day will come you'll be fortunate enough to meet a Buddha like our Gautama Buddha when he was practising. as a Sumedho, the ascetic. At that time he met Dipankara Buddha who gave him all the blessings and all the boon that, oh my son, you will be a Buddha one day like me.

While holding his breath as it a technique to control his body, Gautama felt as though a strap were being twisted ever more tightly around his head. But to his surprise, this was the important clue. Clear mindfulness, not the pain of ascetic practice, is the key to spiritual understanding.

It is a difficult thing to determine exactly how we should look at Buddhism. Some people see it as a philosophy, and there are certainly philosophical texts. But in many ways, when one reads the texts of Buddhism, we see that it is a psychology. It is almost a physiology.

It talks about how we perceive the world, so that in some sense, some people would ask the question of whether or not Buddhism is, in our ordinary sense, a religion. I think the answer must certainly be that it is. It has all the attributes of religious practice.

It does have the monasteries. the altars, the holy people, those people who are set aside to practice particular rituals and rites. Gautama made a key decision that would give Buddhists the basis for calling their outlook the middle way. To sustain his bodily strength, he took a small amount of food from the lay people who always hover around ascetics in India.

Yet to avoid sensual desire, he continued to resist attachment to flavors or tastes. tastes. Here then are the beginnings of the Buddhist meditative pattern for those who wish to reach nirvana, an ultimate state of freedom from the unending and wearisome cycle of lives called samsara.

According to the Buddha, Siddhartha now found himself emotionally indifferent to either joy or aversion. This is the key mood of Buddhist enlightenment. To gain detached mastery over both negative and positive emotions.

The Buddhist way is to master both hate and love, fear and confidence, desire and aversion. The opposing emotions that keep the individual bound to the perpetual wheel of rebirth. It is a sharp, clear awareness of the thoughts, impulses and emotions that arise within one's own self. An enlightened one can judge situations without self-interest.

He or she is unswayed by self-regarding emotions. Observe. ...clearly and dispassionately. The big question for every ascetic is always whether or not to become a spokesperson in terms of a teacher of others. Is it possible to teach someone something which they themselves have not experienced?

Can I ever explain to somebody what a strawberry tastes like if they've never tasted a strawberry? So that many ascetics simply do not teach because it's so difficult. The question is, what is the difference between a strawberry and a strawberry?

The fact that Shakyamuni decided to become a public teacher and to, in the best of his ability and with the use of words to describe the experience of his enlightenment, was a major event in the development of this religion. Had he not given his first sermon, had he not made this a public event, then of course Buddhism would not have become a world religion. But he made this decision, he put it into words. and it is his remembered words which formed the core of the first scripture for the Buddhist. According to tradition, the Buddha then delivered the Deer Park Sermon at a place near modern Sarnath in India.

Gautama Buddha began his sermon by discussing the noble truth of pain, which is a deep... pervasive awareness that human existence is temporary and full of ills. Perhaps the most famous part of the Buddhist doctrine are the so-called Four Noble Truths. And the first truth is said to be usually suffering. A lot of people wonder what this means because it seems therefore that Buddhism would be a very pessimistic religion.

Some people suggested that perhaps we should call this that life is unsatisfactory. That is I can whatever it is that I do ultimately it becomes unsatisfactory. So I can say if I'm tired and I sit down then I can say sitting is wonderful it's not suffering but if I sit on an airplane from London to Chicago, I'm going to say sitting is not satisfactory. So the Buddhists say whatever we do always turns out to be unsatisfactory and our suffering comes because we find that life is unsatisfactory and we long for it to be otherwise.

So the Buddhists say that what we have to deal with is the fact that this is so. And how do we get out of it? How can we determine that if it's like this, what's the escape?

For the Buddhists, it's the idea that we have to have insight. We have to know what is really the case. And so the Buddhists say that the experiences which we have, we have to understand those experiences are in our mind.

And that that's where we live our lives. So if I look at my finger, I can say my finger hurts. And the Buddha said, no, the finger is not hurting. The pain is something which is recorded and experienced only in the mind.

I could cut off my finger, and that finger would never again feel pain. Here we must realize that all aspects of life are impermanent. We must see that what we call the self is essentially unreal, and that the nature of life as we ordinarily live it is restless and dissatisfying.

Buddha's first realization was life is suffering. And actually when I even heard it myself, it sounds so negative. But the fact that it's just a fact.

It's not negation of life, but it's for us to realize what life is all about. Because when we come out of the womb, we start crying. It's the pain of being born.

And that is the, we could say the dharma of being born, the law of being born. So it's not like it's a negative view, but it's a very close observation of what, how we're coming into life and how to prepare for this very life. So therefore we can be free from the suffering, we know how to be with it.

The four remaining elements of the Noble Eightfold Path may be lumped together in the category of meditation. Though meditation is the final release from the cycle of life and death, Buddhist morality is not left behind when one meditates. During the emergence of Buddhism, the most important of the Indian caste groups was the Brahman.

The Buddha proclaimed a way of life, ...of salvation that had two quarrels with the Brahmanical religion. First, Buddhist salvation does not require the elaborate rituals that were a part of Brahmanism. Rituals deal only with outward, physical matters, not the inwardness of the human spirit.

Buddhists believe that rituals cannot deal with the real causes of human suffering, nor can they lead to salvation. Buddhists had a second quarrel about the sacrifices that the Brahmins offered to the gods. These sacrifices called for the violent taking of animal life, and Buddhism teaches that human beings may slip into animal existence. as a result of their evil deeds.

This greed, anger, and ignorance is the key, and that actually pervades all human beings until it's been worked on. The small mind contains, the conditioned mind contains the greed, anger, and ignorance. And this is what has to be seen through. And when this is seen through, then you realize your harmony with your fellow man.

And also objects, inanimate and inanimate objects, that you and them are the same. So you wouldn't want to kill anybody because you'd be killing yourself as well. This is the study and practice that... meditation that you begin realizing this very important aspect. Because we're very good at the other stuff.

In fact, the whole society and cultures are like a conspiracy against the spirit. And my feeling is that as we're As we're approaching 2000, just the number 2000 people know that something is missing. The five precepts of Buddhism can be understood as a parallel to the ten commandments.

They might be translated as follows. Don't take any human or animal life. Don't take what is not one's own.

Refrain from slander and untruth. Don't engage in illicit sexual conduct. Abstain from intoxicating or mind-muddling drugs.

Buddhist doctrine constantly emphasizes that one's fate is the result of one's actions. of one's past deeds. If one suffers from physical ugliness, deformity, disease or any ill fortune, it is due to one's own past action.

Everything karma is basically action. It's about cause and effect. Everything has a cause and everything has an effect. And so in meditation practice, we try to free ourselves from this cause and effect, to make a loophole in it by seeing through it. So people talk about if you...

Buddhism or the Buddha Dharma is different than becoming a good person because when you become a when you want to become a good person when you want to do good you become a purpose you have a purpose of being good, of what you think is good. So we even have to transcend that. So studying Zen is not becoming a good person, but becoming a human being.

And when you become a human being, then you naturally realize your basic goodness. Even ourselves are basic goodness and then you realize the basic goodness of others. That's goodness.

So it's not becoming, doing good things for people. But it's becoming selflessness and serving people. is one of the greatest rewards. Yet existence as a human being is a great privilege because only a human can produce karmic merit. A person should eagerly seize his or her priceless opportunities for producing good karma, but again only a human can ascend to nirvana.

At least in popular Buddhist thinking, much more more than love or hate is carried on from life to life. Personal characteristics and subconscious memories also are transmitted. Genius may suddenly crop up in a family that seems ordinary. A loving married couple may meet again in a new life. A child closely resembling a deceased ancestor must be that ancestor's now reborn in this new form and so on and on.

Buddhists cherish what they call the four great illimitables. These are four qualities of which there can never be enough. They are loving-kindness, compassion, joy in the joy of others, and equanimity. A good Buddhist thus gains a spiritual maturity that calmly and impartially loves and cares for others. Buddhist meditation clearly aims at reducing the emotional fever of life.

It produces a clear calm-mindedness that sees things as they truly are. without the distortions of self-concern, hopes and fears, loves and hatreds. Meditation frees the meditator from the distortions that so often determine what we think, feel and do.

The Deer Park sermon was the beginning of the Buddha's 45-year career as an itinerant spiritual teacher. He traveled about northeastern India as a mendicant teacher monk, followed by a band of disciples. The most notable of Buddha's disciples was Ananda, his constant companion and personal attendant. Ananda formally admitted others into the Buddha's presence, and he became the official rememberer of many of the Buddha's discourses. All this kept Ananda so busy that he had no time to achieve his own enlightenment.

The Buddha's life eventually ended when he ate poisonous food that was offered accidentally by a smith named Chanda. Buddhist legend says that the wise Buddha knew the food was bad, but he was not willing to refuse food offered to him, and then ordered the remainder to be destroyed. The Buddha lay down on his right side in the so-called lion posture. He instructed the monks to let his lay disciples make all decisions about disposing of his ashes. These ashes were to become prized possessions.

The Buddha said Chanda should not be blamed for the accident. His good intentions would produce good merit for his next rebirth. Besides, it was time for the Buddha to leave the world of men. But he did that so that he will be able to eradicate suffering from the human beings. That was his whole intention.

His whole teaching was... time metaphysical. He was not at all trying to do any kind of intellectual teaching.

He said, oh Bhikkhu, if you really love me then do the practice, not the theories. An ounce of practice is much more superior than tons of theories. Gautama Buddha was born into a Brahmanical religious tradition which says each of us is perpetually reborn in a way that's governed by our karmic deeds.

He cast aside the dependence upon priestly ritual and sacrifice, and he said that the aid of the gods is futile, because the gods also need release from the cycles of rebirth. The key to nirvana... is within oneself.

And Buddhism has repeatedly emphasized this core belief during its long and diverse development. During the last centuries BCE, a new sectarian name had first appeared in India. In centuries to come, this name would designate a major new type of Buddhist doctrine and practice.

Mahayana, meaning the great or universal means of salvation, would be the name of the Buddhism adopted in China, Korea and Japan. Mahayana Buddhists began to produce new scriptures. They used the Pali scriptures in much the same way as Christians use the Hebrew scriptures.

Mahayana Buddhists believed that the Theravada scriptures had set forth many of the real truths of Buddhism. Buddhas come to earth to save men from their passions, from their appetites, from the ills of samsara. Mahayana scriptures continue to refer to the earthly life of Gautama Buddha.

For many people in East Asia, this selection came to be the Lotus, so-called Lotus Sutra. It was this text that has so dominated Japanese Buddhist life, has been extremely... ...important for both Korea and China.

And it is a Mahayana, Sukhamahayana text. Which teaches the major doctrine behind it is that the Buddhist tradition and the work which the Buddha has done is something which is available to all individuals. So there's a kind of universal salvation doctrine in the Lotus Sutra which has had enormous appeal through the centuries.

The lotus flower is a type of water lily, and it is a widespread and popular Buddhist symbol. The lotus grows up out of the slime and muck in the bottom of a pond, and it blossoms into a very beautiful flower on the water's surface. The lotus is the perfect symbol of a life of purity lived in the midst of a defiling world.

The Lotus Sutra, written in Sanskrit probably during the 3rd or 4th century CE, was translated into Chinese during the 4th and 5th centuries. The Lotus Sutra became the most influential scripture of Mahayana and it is full of themes that are central to Mahayana beliefs. The main thrust of Mahayana Buddhism was to expand and reinterpret the old Buddhist doctrines, beliefs and practices. Now was the goal.

Desire. to progress spiritually. And if you really want to elevate your higher grades of consciousness, then you need to do something.

You need to discipline your life, purify your mind. Something like if you want to grow a vegetable or flower, you need to cultivate a piece of land. So in the same way, if you want to practice the Dharma, you have to cultivate your mind.

The Mahayana Bodhisattva is willing to remain in samsara, to be born again and again, endlessly, always striving for the welfare of his fellow beings, until these beings too attain release. The Bodhisattva, bodhi means enlightened, sattva means being, enlightened being. And her, or his vow was to not enter Nirvana until everyone was enlightened.

So now this is very important, because we're always doing things for ourselves. But she's waiting for everyone, the whole humanity, to be enlightened before she enters Nirvana. So, in the front part, you look at her face and she's pretty calm. And then the three faces above her face are pretty calm.

But as you go clockwise around, the faces become more and more filled with anger, frustration, anxiety, horror, until you come to the last three. And that's devastation, despair, and hopelessness. And this is the part where most young people or even just people, but I'm thinking of the young people, that's where they kill themselves or commit suicide. But what the Bodhisattva wears is a crown, because this is part of life.

And because we have a mind and a body, we're going to encounter this, whether you're a Buddhist or not. So she wears it as her crown, as her path. Though monks and monasteries were still needed, a lay person...

no longer had to hope to be reborn as a monk. Anyone could follow the bodhisattva path of benevolence, and the highest of all lives became the life of self-giving in the ordinary world. Within Buddhism, a person's karma represents the power of his or her voluntary deeds to shape a rebirth in the next life. The evildoer is reborn into unpleasant or painful destinies. And the doer of good is reborn into pleasant effects.

Karma is nothing but volition. So karma is something that all the different actions that we perform through our speech, our deed, and our mind, and those actions they accumulate different kinds of forces. Some are good, some are bad, some are superior, some are neutral.

Good deeds and meditational attainments receive equally fabulous rewards in the higher realms of enjoyment. Life in the very highest level of all, that of neither perception nor non-perception. ...lasts for 84,000 ages, or kalpas.

Even though such a long existence may seem to last forever, it does come to an end at last. A hundred years in the heavens of enjoyment seems to last no longer than a human day. So the years slip by rapidly until the enjoyer of bliss, a deva or god, is reborn in human form.

This happens when one exhausts the store of merit produced by good deeds as a human being, just as purgatorial sufferings end when one exhausts the evil karma that produced them. Buddhists believe that all world systems like the one we've been discussing sooner or later must come to an end. This is caused in part by the declining level of moral and religious life among its inhabitants. Theravada Buddhists understand this lower level of living to be inevitable, as are its consequences.

Every so many eons, the earth universe is destroyed by fire, water and then wind. Indeed, all of the physical world disappears, as well as 20 of the 31 planes of existence, including that of the completely lustrous gods. Unless residents of these planes have already escaped through repentance or righteous deeds, they apparently are cast into other world systems at their current levels of existence.

Eons later, its particles may form a new universe. Like the Hindus, Buddhists do not recognize any absolute beginning to the appearance of these world systems. This series of cycles is considered to have always existed, just as it always will exist. So for the Mahayana school in Buddhism, the Bodhisattva ideal or the Bodhisattva vow is one of the most important things.

So it's not just doing good or saving people, but it's her life. And it's her way to be shared with everybody. Okay.

In Mongolia and Tibet, the word that means high priest is lama. A new Dalai Lama is chosen by a slow and deliberate process. A few years after a Dalai Lama's death, a search committee of respected elder monks is chosen. These monks gather certain articles, including the information on the Dalai Lama. including some used by the just deceased Dalai Lama.

Then they tour the countryside to search for young boys who were born after the last Dalai Lama died. The true successor, the reborn Dalai Lama, is the one who unerringly picks out the genuine articles belonging to the deceased Dalai Lama. He is then taken to the great central monastery at Lhasa, where he is trained for his new role as the Buddhist god-king.

To create and use a mandala, a tantric disciple puts himself under the guidance of his spiritual master. Then he slowly and painstakingly creates, or goes over, the mandala pattern. This is done step by step. using one's total attention.

This might be called the Tibetan Buddhist style of psychoanalysis. To Buddhists, it is in keeping with the Buddhist message that within ourselves, each of us finds salvation from the restless suffering, the impermanence and the emptiness of human existence. Tibetan Buddhists also use the mantra which means sacred utterance in Sanskrit.

Indeed one must concentrate upon the mantra if it is to be effective and Tibetan Buddhism has sometimes been called Mantrayana Buddhism because of its extensive use of mantras. Mantras are ritual chants, and they had earlier been used in connection with Brahmanical sacrificial rituals. Mantras were viewed as power-filled words to help one achieve various results.

And Tibetan Buddhism easily adapted them to its own non-sacrificial use. One prominent mantra is a famous six syllable phrase, chanted ritually over and over. Om Mani Padme Hum. Om Mani Padme Hum. Om Manipadme Hum Om As with the sacred circle of the mandala, the sacred syllables of the mantra are to be made a part of oneself.

They are used to rid oneself of impurities, to attain higher and higher spiritual status. and finally to achieve spiritual liberation. One last special feature of Tibetan Buddhism is Bardo, a Tibetan Buddhist teaching about the process of dying. Here, as with the mandala, a dying person confronts various shapes, such as demons, gods and bodhisattvas.

These are understood to be that person's own internal good-bad traits in graphic form. In Tibetan Buddhism, death is considered to be a gradual transition to a new life, lasting perhaps as long as seven days. A spiritual attendant repeats directions and encouragements in the ear of the individual. individual who is dying. Thus Tibetan Buddhism ensures a safe passage to a new and good existence.

Buddhism originally had entered Japan in the mid-6th century from Korea, where it had been active since the late 4th century. A Buddha image was given to the Japanese Emperor, along with some monk priests who could give ritual performances. performances.

From this small beginning, Buddhism became a major religious and cultural force in Japan for about a thousand years. So by incorporating all of these local deities, all of the local spirits, they were were able to incorporate the people of that place into the Buddhist tradition. By accepting and by being extremely tolerant of local religious traditions, it's one of the reasons I think that Buddhism has never been involved in religious warfare. They do not require people to give up their local spirit in order to become a Buddhist. One of the new, uniquely Japanese sects was called Shingon, which means true word.

Shingon was established in the early 9th century at a great temple center on Mount Koya, some 50 miles from Kyoto, in the southern half of Japan's main island of Honshu. Shingon, or true word, is not a scripture so much as it is a group of mantras from two Indian scriptures. The proper use and meaning of these mantras are revealed only to Shingon initiates, so Shingon is called esoteric or secret teaching Buddhism. An esoteric Buddhist sect had once been located on these mountains at the time of Saicho, founder of Tendai Buddhism. Saicho, a devout 8th, 9th century Japanese monk from Nara, was seeking to escape the influence of Japan's nearby royal court when he moved far away to Japan's Mount Hiei.

overlooking the modern city of Kyoto. But in 794, Japan's royal court moved to Kyoto, and Saicho was no longer isolated. Indeed, Saicho became a person of consequence at the court, and he was allowed to go to study at the Tien-Tai headquarters in China for some eight months.

The Japanese monk Honen founded what's known as Jodo, or Pure Land Buddhism. Japan's Pure Land Buddhism gets its name because its followers believe in the existence of many Buddha lands, which are created by the vows, merits and virtues of various Buddhas. Their special Buddha land is called the Western Paradise, or Pure Land. The splendors of this Pure Land, sometimes portrayed by artists and visualized by meditators, are unbelievably grand.

In the Pure Land, There will be no more rebirths as man, beast, godling or demon. Through the eons to come, one can work toward final nirvana in the pure land atmosphere. The 13th century monk Nichiren was the latest of the great Buddhist reformers.

For Nichiren, the Lotus Sutra was not only the supreme scripture, it was the only true scripture. Nichiren believed himself to have been a leading disciple of the Gautama Buddha in a prior life, and now he saw himself as the one true interpreter of Buddhist enlightenment. Though he was popular with the common people, Nichiren considered them unable to understand the mysteries of the Lotus Sutra, so he proposed a radically simplified version for their use. Nichiren predicted foreign invasions, and he saw his prophecies fulfilled.

When the Mongols attacked Japan in 1274, when Nichiren proclaimed that certain recently deceased government notables were in the Buddhist hells, he was exiled for a time and he spent his last years in seclusion. Zen is very popular in the sense that... You could say the reason, it's very simple and very direct and very methodic.

A popularity does say something, but at the same time when people begin practicing it, they begin encountering themselves. And most people didn't expect that. That's when they leave, but actually that's when they should stay. Zen Buddhism has become one of the most familiar forms of Buddhism in Western countries.

The 12th century monk Eisai has been called the founder of Zen Buddhism in Japan. But this is only partly true. While studying in China, he met some Chan teachers, and upon returning to Japan, he sought to introduce more of the Chan teachings about meditation into Tendai Buddhism. But he was ejected from the Tendai sect for his pains.

He went to Kamakura, where the new military class regents were controlling Japan. And there he found favor. So Zen became prominent as the religion of the samurai.

And it seemed to suit them. Empty has kind of a negative connotation again. It's very misunderstood, but there's a traditional way of looking at emptiness.

Okay, there's three parts to it and one is theoretical. We call it theoretical Zen and that's when form is emptiness and emptiness is form. And that's just the thinking mind, that things become one. And the second part is the Tathagata Zen. And here is where there's no emptiness and no form.

That's the second part. And basically nothing can be said at this point. No words can describe it.

Just quiet. And the third part is form is form, emptiness is emptiness. So these three things are very important and you will go through that kind of spectrum in studying Zen.

And the third part is the highest value in the sense that the sky is blue, grass is green. We come back The seeing reality just as it is. And the first couple of parts is negating reality, because we've already conditioned ourselves to be separated from reality.

And this is how emptiness plays a major part in Zazen or meditation practice. The philosophical emphasis of Japan's Zen Buddhism was based on Nagarjuna's doctrine of emptiness, the idea that words and doctrines are not ultimate truth. But overall, the central objective of Zen Buddhism is to attain the Buddha mind.

The immediate goal of Zen is seeing into one's true nature as a human being, to see that it is Buddha nature. Here one attains enlightenment by realizing the ultimate reality of our daily existence, when it is rightly perceived. Buddhist meditation clearly aims at reducing the emotional fever of life.

It produces a clear, calm-mindedness that sees things as they truly are, without the distortions of self-concern, hopes and fears, loves and hatreds. Meditation frees the meditator from the distortions that so often determine what we think, feel and do. Here the world and the self are seen in a refreshingly new way.

The very essence of reality and existence cannot be confined to intellectualized statements about it. Life's vital force is to be experienced in every moment and every action, no matter how ordinary or trivial. Zen enlightenment is a state of mind freed from its cultural confines, and it becomes free and spontaneous in all its actions and awareness.

The total self is fully engaged in every act and every experience. In Zen, every action is a truly Buddhist action.

Transcript for:Exploring Buddhism and Zen Philosophy

Transcript for:
Exploring Buddhism and Zen Philosophy