As evidenced by the lack of blogs, I have been pretty busy in the past months. It's already Easter! Although I am still insanely busy, preparing and teaching a new course for first-year Artificial Intelligence students, I think it is time for a new blog, and a meditation retreat over Easter inspired me to write this blog.
I have had a few months to contemplate this slogan: "Seeing confusion as the four kayas is unsurpassable shunyata protection." That involves quite a few Buddhist technical terms! In my own very free translation, it concerns seeing wisdom in the midst of confusion and chaos. Quite appropriate for the last months...
So let's get going with the Buddhist terms. Shunyata is a term often translated as emptiness, but that translation is quite tricky, because it gives a nihilist connotation. During one of my recent travels I met a person who claimed to understand emptiness and explained his lack of productivity by his focusing on emptiness: if nothing exists, then why doing anything? I think this is the wrong understanding of the word. The way I have learnt it, shunyata refers to the idea that while things appear as quite solid, in fact they are impermanent, they depend on many causes and conditions, and while they appear to be completely distinct from other things, they can be decomposed into many other factors. So this means that while this delicious chocolate easter egg in front of me seems quite real and I really want it, it is actually quite impermanent (I became acutely aware of that fact this morning when my hot tea bottle was on top of a bag with Easter eggs--who ended up in a molten chocolate mess). Even our attachment to these Easter eggs is quite impermanent because if we eat too many of them, we no longer want them.
The four kayas are a term that refers to the different aspects of an enlightened being, the nirmanakaya being the physical level (the body of the Buddha), samboghakaya something like energy, dharmakaya the mind of the Buddha, and svabhavikakaya the union of all three. In other words, if confusion is the four kayas, it refers to recognizing enlightenment in confusion. One way to interpret this is that in all situations you can look at it with a confused perspective and with an enlightened perspective. For example, while anger is often harmful, it also has a quality of cutting through that is helpful.
Now how can shunyata be a protection in the confusion associated with stressful situations? Stress is tends to feel like a massive thing weighing down on you (at least, that's how it feels like to me). I often paralyzed by stress because there seems to be no place to breathe, let alone do something to regain my sanity, such as meditation. Now here there is good news, because many teachers actually say that the more confusion you have, the more chance there is to practice. So the more stress, the more you can just mediate on the stress: feel how it affects your body and mind, but crucially, try to not reject it. If you carefully think about it, while related to the massive amount of things to do, the stress is mostly a product of our minds. We can also decide to use the stress as an invitation to practise seeing how our feelings make the experience of having much to do massively worse.
And I know for a fact that however I feel, this too shall pass. Moreover, the stress is not a solid thing because it depends on so many causes and conditions: the state of my mind, the work that piles up, the reactions of other people and much more. So what and where is this thing called "stress" when you look for it? It is actually quite elusive, and realizing this creates space. It is sometimes even possible to see how the stress is just a manifestation of my cognizing mind that goes in overdrive when worring about the future. Every moment you can work with this feeling of stress is a great exercise, because anyone can be relaxed in calm situations, but can you also be calm in stressful situations? Anyone can see the empty nature of phenomena on their meditation cushion, but can you also have that humor in the midst of a stressful situation? I am working on it!
I have had a few months to contemplate this slogan: "Seeing confusion as the four kayas is unsurpassable shunyata protection." That involves quite a few Buddhist technical terms! In my own very free translation, it concerns seeing wisdom in the midst of confusion and chaos. Quite appropriate for the last months...
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| view from the retreat in the Amsterdam Rigpa centre |
The four kayas are a term that refers to the different aspects of an enlightened being, the nirmanakaya being the physical level (the body of the Buddha), samboghakaya something like energy, dharmakaya the mind of the Buddha, and svabhavikakaya the union of all three. In other words, if confusion is the four kayas, it refers to recognizing enlightenment in confusion. One way to interpret this is that in all situations you can look at it with a confused perspective and with an enlightened perspective. For example, while anger is often harmful, it also has a quality of cutting through that is helpful.
Now how can shunyata be a protection in the confusion associated with stressful situations? Stress is tends to feel like a massive thing weighing down on you (at least, that's how it feels like to me). I often paralyzed by stress because there seems to be no place to breathe, let alone do something to regain my sanity, such as meditation. Now here there is good news, because many teachers actually say that the more confusion you have, the more chance there is to practice. So the more stress, the more you can just mediate on the stress: feel how it affects your body and mind, but crucially, try to not reject it. If you carefully think about it, while related to the massive amount of things to do, the stress is mostly a product of our minds. We can also decide to use the stress as an invitation to practise seeing how our feelings make the experience of having much to do massively worse.
And I know for a fact that however I feel, this too shall pass. Moreover, the stress is not a solid thing because it depends on so many causes and conditions: the state of my mind, the work that piles up, the reactions of other people and much more. So what and where is this thing called "stress" when you look for it? It is actually quite elusive, and realizing this creates space. It is sometimes even possible to see how the stress is just a manifestation of my cognizing mind that goes in overdrive when worring about the future. Every moment you can work with this feeling of stress is a great exercise, because anyone can be relaxed in calm situations, but can you also be calm in stressful situations? Anyone can see the empty nature of phenomena on their meditation cushion, but can you also have that humor in the midst of a stressful situation? I am working on it!
