Book 4 - Equanimity (The Four Divine Virtues)

Book 4 - The Four Divine Virtues - Equanimity
By Ajahn Amaro

“Who is pulling the STRINGS?’

There are forces at work in the universe which pull the strings, as if we were being operated like puppets. But what are the forces which may be manipulating our lives, and how does all this work?

The Five Nayamas or Laws of Nature

The first is utu-niyrama. Utu literally means ‘weather’ or ‘temperature, seasons and other physical events’. This is a physical universe. We experience the results of the way matter works.

The second is bija-niyama.  Bija literally means ‘seeds’, so as human beings, we are subject to the laws of biology, genetics, we have a human body, we need to breathe.

The third is kamma-niyama. This means causes and effects of our own acts. This refers to the laws that govern the way effects take shape as a result of the personal choices that we make.

The fourth is citta-nigayam. This is the laws of psychology, how the mind works, how we think, the way the memory works, the whole of the psychological realm.

The fifth is dhamma-niyama. This is the laws of nature. This is the laws of how the realms of form, time, space and mind all operate – including the unconditioned, the unborn, the unoriginated, uncreated, the timeless and formless – the all-encompassing and all-embracing laws of reality at its most fundamental level. Dhamma-niyama is how all these integrate and uphold the reality of the way things are.

“Who is pulling the STRINGS?”, the Buddhist answer would be: ‘Wrong question’. ‘Who?’ is the wrong question. It’s not a matter of who but rather of understanding how these different forces, these different laws that contribute to our experience, operate and function in relationship to each other.

The Buddha teaches that what happens to us is not up to the gods, their moods and their rewards or punishment, but more to do with the actions that we take, with directing our minds towards what is skillful, what is wholesome. The ethics of Buddhism are psychological, insofar as we are the ones who create our rewards and punishments.

Why do bad things happen to good people?

This falls to the laws of causes and effects, kamma-niyama.  In one’s past life, he or she might have done something bad such that in this life, bad things happen to him or her. The world is pre-conditioned but not pre-determined, and the future is conditioned by the choices we make here and now.

How can I use these ideas to improve my life?

Within that natural order, we have the capacity to make changes, to have an effect. We are able to choose, and this is what makes the possibility of liberation open to us.

The Buddha’s advice is rather for us to exchange trying to find happiness through getting what we like, for learning how to find happiness through liking what we get – or at least not finding fault with it. If we can make that shift in attitude and learn how to be open and at ease with that we’ve got, with how life is, then we can find a tremendous quality of harmony, peacefulness, and freedom. There is the vast serene radiance of upekkha or what we call ‘Equanimity’.

 

          ‘Who Is Pulling The Strings?’ - Forest Sangha

Book 3 - Appreciative Joy (The Four Divine Virtues)

Book 3 - The Four Divine Virtues - Appreciative Joy
By Ajahn Amaro

“Just one more …”

“Just one more …” is a desire or craving. ‘Because it’s a pleasant feeling, then, more of it would be better’ or ‘If this is followed, then, I would be happy.’ As we’re developing a consistent, comprehensive mindfulness around feelings, we are training ourselves not to believe those promises.  If the mind was once inclined towards resentment of the success of others, and the driving force of many of our desires was from seeing what they had and wanting the same, now the mind is more able to appreciate and consciously enjoy the happiness of others.

When we are feeling that restless, distressed, lonely, jealous, incomplete feeling, rather than seeking to get away from that or fill up that space with something that is pleasing, instead, the encouragement is to let it in, to let the results of that action, of that attitude be fully known. That opening to the painfulness of it is found to be what helps the habit to be broken, what helps the causes of the habits to dissolve and what strengthens the wisdom faculty – that clarity of mind that intuits’ I don’t have to be caught up in this.’

We first let the mind be as quiet and spacious as possible and then we deliberately drop a memory or a thought or a person’s name that we’re particularly averse to or obsessed with in order to trigger that emotion. When the emotion is felt, we take the attention off the stories and we bring it into the body; What does jealousy/anger/desire feel like? Where is it? What’s its texture?’

So we allow it in, let it be known in the body, let it be sustained for a few minutes, and then consciously let it go, using the out breaths to relax the body and to release that reactive pattern. ‘This is a feeling, this is something that has a beginning and an end. It’s not something that’s absolutely real and solid. It’s not completely who and what I am.’

Keep letting the out-breath have its effects, gently, steadily, supporting the quality of release, relinquishment, relaxation.

We’ve watched that mood, that emotion born from nothing, born from the arousal of a memory, bust into being, rise up, flower and fade away; the flowers bloom and fade, the fruits fall, the leaves drop, sink back into the earth, and then it’s all gone. It comes out of nothing and returns to nothing.

… Whatever feeling they feel …they abide contemplating impermanence, fading, cessation and the relinquishment of those feelings. Contemplating thus, they do not cling to anything in the world. When they do not cling, they are not agitated. When they are not agitated, they personally attain Nibbana.

Culatanhasankhaya Sutta (‘The Shorter Discourse on the Destruction of Craving’) M 37.3

      ‘Just One More...’ - Forest Sangha

Book 2 - Compassion (The Four Divine Virtues)

Book 2 - The Four Divine Virtues - Compassion
By Ajahn Amaro

‘DON’T PUSH – Just use the weight of your own body’

Barry Kapke said:
Don’t push, just use the weight of your own body’  (just offer your presence)
Don’t diagnose, just be aware.
Don’t try to help, but also don’t turn away, just be with the person.

That is all you have to do.

The primary quality of compassion, the root of compassion, Ajahn Amaro would suggest, is learning how to listen, to attend to what is here, to what is present. And from that attending, a capacity to do the appropriate thing arises.

Pay attention to where the other person is and attune to that as much as you can and be ready to lay aside your own anxieties or concerns or agendas. Then, mysteriously, this helps in the very best way.

When we notice some kind of difficulty or imbalance, some sort of distortion or discord within others or ourselves, we bring the quality of awareness to bear on it. The effort is to be aware; then things will adjust on their own.

If action is energized and guided by mindfulness and wisdom, rather than ‘me trying to do something for you’, lo and behold, it all lightens up.  When Right Effort is engaged, the process of helping is stress free.

Natural Attunement
By a Taoist teaching in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in the north of England.

Close your eyes and you will see clearly
Cease to listen and you will hear truth
Be silent and your heart will sing
Seek no contact and you will find union
Be still and you will move forward on the tide of the spirit
Be gentle and you will need no strength
Be patient and you will achieve all things
Be humble and you will remain entire

Compassion for Yourself

The more we are able to feel our emotions, such as the feeling of fear, anger, or our charged thoughts, the more helpful it is to know them as physical sensations.  Where do you feel fear in the body? Is it in the throat? Is it in the belly? When you do this, you can consciously relax with fear. You recognize that it is only impermanent impression – it arises, it ceases.

There is awareness. There is the flow of feeling. And it is like this. In that way, you are learning to develop the refuge of wisdom, the refuge of Buddha; Buddha wisdom – being that knowing. You are not suppressing the feeling, blanking out or trying to get rid of it.

“…finally it was fully clear that fear was just a passing experience. It was a strong habit, but it was not who and what I was...” – compassion for yourself – why would you want to make yourself so miserable? Why would you want to harm yourself like this?  So, just let it go.

 ‘Don’t Push – Just Use The Weight Of Your Own Body’ - Forest Sangha

 

 

Book 1 - Loving-Kindness (The Four Divine Virtues)

Book 1 - The Four Divine Virtues - Loving-Kindness
by Ajahn Amaro

I’m RIGHT, you’re WRONG

When one acts like “I’m RIGHT, you’re WRONG”, then, he or she lost in a childish reaction. We need to therefore learn how to recognize the feeling or rightness and explore it, so that even if we feel we are 100% certain, we can reflect on that feeling before we decide how to handle the situation.

One might be “Right in Fact, but Wrong in Dhamma” when handling the situation without loving- kindness.  

Loving-kindness does not always mean you need to endure in everything that others do wrong to you. Instead of holding your grudge or anger, you just need to establish loving-kindness firmly in your heart, and then you go ahead to give them a fierce response back, again with loving-kindness in your heart and intention to make the situation better for yourself and them.

One who repays an angry person with anger
thereby makes things worse for themselves.
Not repaying an angry person with anger,
One wins a battle hard to win.

One practices for the welfare of both,
One’s own and the other’s
When, knowing that the other is angry,
One mindfully maintains one’s peace.

We can use physical awareness when we are attacked, when we are being mistreated or misunderstood. Rather than letting the mind go into verbal reactions or some kind of escape strategy, we can instead bring the attention into the body and feel: “What’s it like, the sense that I’m feeling attacked?” Rather than letting the mind buy into that self-justification, self-affirming habit, come back into the body and ask: “Where do I feel that? What’s it like? Where I feel that sense of indignation, fear or threat?”

It is very helpful to explore where in the body we feel these different emotional states and then to develop mindfulness of the body. Bringing the attention to that part of the body and fully knowing that feeling of being frightened, under pressure or criticized.

When those feelings, those painful sensations are held with a genuine, open unbiased awareness, that is when letting go, genuine relaxation can begin. “It is really not that big a thing. It’s just a feeling. Why do I do this to myself?” And then, we relax.

Hatred is never conquered by hatred.
Only by love is it conquered.
This is a law
ancient and inexhaustible.

‘I’m Right, You’re Wrong!’ - Forest Sangha

A Day Retreat at Wat Phramahajanaka, Griffin, GA

Yesterday was my day off which I spent part of it to prepare food and flowers to bring to Wat Phramahajanaka. Today, Saturday July the 2nd marked the day 10th of summer retreat at the temple, and I went to the temple with Sirinad and Varunee's family.  I got up at 6:00 a.m. to cook "Larb" and rice and got everything ready to go.  We left Sirinad's house around 8:15 and we got there at the temple around 9:40.

There were about 30 Thai monks today who came from around the US. One of the head monks already started Dhamma talk in the chapel when we showed up. After setting up our food on the main long and big lunch table, Sirinad and I were busy arranging the flowers.  Then, we followed the event schedule below.

10:30 - Chanting
11:15 - Giving alms to the monks
11:30 - Lunch break 
1:30 - 2.5-hr walking and sitting meditation
4:00 - Dhamma talk
5:00 - Closing Chanting

There were also evening chanting and other merit activities to do until midnight. Sirinad decided to spend overnight there. I left the temple with Varunee's family around 5:30.

Today, i got to learn one simple technique for walking meditation. I also learned that starting with walking meditation first really helps the mind to calm down before coming to sit down for sitting meditation.

Chanting before lunch

Giving alms to the monks

Lunch

My friend talking to a monk

Buddha Statue

    

Walking Meditation

Dhamma talk with a head monk

Wat Phramahajanaka
498 Steele Rd, Griffin, GA 30223 

Diamond Heart Book One - Elements of the Real in Man by A.H. Almaas

This book was introduced to me by a friend participating in Diamond Approach group. With determination to understand what was "Diamond Approach", I was so happy to receive the book and I started to read the book the following day. 

After reading 6 of the 17 chapters, it was time to start to summarize each chapter here. The summary was what each chapter communicated to me. It may or may not be what was intended to communicate to the readers by the author.  Also, I might just copy and paste from the book, or I might also write based on my understanding. 

1. In the World but Not of It.

You are in the world and in it when you allow the world around you to drive and guide you. You pursue your career, your roles as a mom, a dad, a husband, a wife, and so on by just letting your life goes along with the flow of outside values believed to be great or outside critics against you believed to be horrible by the world around you.

You are in the world but not of it when you pursue your career, your roles as a mom, a dad, a husband, a wife, and so on but you do not let the world designate or shake your true value, your Personal Essence. Instead, you live your life by trying to understand that part of it, your true value, your Personal Essence, in yourself and actualize it. 

2. The Theory of Holes

Everyone was born with his/her true value, his/her Personal Essence. Love, Peace, Value, Strength, Will, Courage, Humility, Truth and so on are aspects of Essence. Through the process of childbearing and growing up in the world, the essence got lost and instead was replaced by HOLES. 

The holes originated during childhood, partly as a result of traumatic experiences or conflicts with the environment. Perhaps your parents did not value you, did not treat you as if your wishes or presence were important. They ignored your essential value. Because your value was not seen or acknowledged, perhaps even attacked or discouraged, you got cut off from that part of you, the part of your true value, and what was left was a HOLE, a deficiency.

Emotions like sadnesses, hurt, jealousy, anger, hatred, fear, all of these are the result of holes. If you stay with the hurt and the pain of loss, without trying to cover it or fill it with something else, it is possible that you will feel the emptiness. 

Take this as a sample. When a hole developed by lacking love from your parents during your childhood, you tried to fill the hole by finding someone to love you. Filling the hole this way is not permanent yet could result in a much bigger hole or different holes. 

The loss of essence like this actually can regain but not by filling the holes from external objects, ideas, words or other feelings. 

The first thing to start is to allow yourself to feel the holes and not fill them so you can see what they are all about. You work to tolerate those feelings, to stay with them and not try to fill the holes with something else.

3. The Diamond Approach to the Work

Everyone was born with his/her true value, his/her Personal Essence. Love, Peace, Value, Strength, Will, Courage, Humility, Truth and so on are aspects of Essence. These aspects of Essence are just like facets of Diamond. Diamond Approach offers the Work of which participants, after joining, could gradually and eventually actualize their own personal Essence and should be able to fill their holes from within instead of external force. But how does the "Work" work?

First, you must learn to sense yourself, to pay attention to yourself, so that the necessary information is available. You must not avoid self-awareness. You must feel the holes, the emptiness, the falseness, the something-is-wrong feeling. 

Next, the Work uses various forms of the old techniques, such as meditation, to strengthen different parts of the Essense. The Work also uses psychological techniques to understand the blocks against the issues around the aspects of Essence. 

In the Work, you will see how different qualities of Essence are related to specific issues from the past. The relationships between the essential state, the hole that resulted from the loss of that state, the emotions and beliefs we create to fill the holes, and the conflicts that arise from the resulting false personality are all understood. These relationships and patterns are the same for every human being.

You have to see through all your conflicts, your fears, your guilt, your anger, your love, everything, so that in time, more and more essential qualities will be realized in you. If you can do this work thoroughly and completely, in time, you will be complete. No hole, just solid Essence. 

4. Faith and Commitment

Faith is seen more on the emotional level than as something that has to do with knowledge. It has to do with devotion or trust. Commitment is essentially dedication, bringing yourself closer to what you want to do. You use will to push yourself closer to what you want, to your aim. At the essential level, there is no such thing as faith; there is only knowledge. There is no such thing as commitment; there is just being. When you are your essence, you are not committed to yourself, you ARE yourself.

5. Nobility and Suffering

To be noble is to not let your superego or other people's superegos sway you, but to act according to the real truth. If you value anything over what is true in you, there is suffering. We can become deeply content simply by being in harmony with the truth. 

6. Value

Value is an aspect of Essence. You are Value yourself. When you experience Value in yourself, you will see that Value is the ground, the basis, of what is called the Personal Essence, what is in you that is you. You are based in Value.

7. Truth and Compassion

Compassion leads to truth, truth to compassion. When you see the truth, you feel hurt, when you allow yourself to feel the hurt, compassion comes. The hurt or suffering is just something in between that we go through and us irrelevant to the Essence. The important part is truth-the truth about who we are-no matter how much hurt, suffering, and fear it takes to get there. Sometimes the pain is there so that the person will learn the truth.

8. Trust

Compassion leads to trust, trust leads to compassion. Both are linked to truth. Hurt and vulnerability are what happen in between. They are some of what people to through in going from trust to truth or from truth to trust. 

The deeper level of compassion is to see the way things happen as truth and allow people to feel hurt so, they learn to be compassionate which later on, they can also get to the deeper level of compassion which is seeing what happens in life as truth. 

9. Essence is the Life

Essence is Ridhwan. Ridhwan is a verbal noun in Arabic that not only means "satisfied," "fulfilled," "contented," but also means "satisfying," "fulfilling," "making content."

The satisfying can only be owned by you only if it comes from inside. As long as you hold onto wanting something from the outside, you will be dissatisfied. 

To protect, nourish, and nurture Essence, or to really live the life of Essence, you have to take the responsibility, the will to actualize the truth. The will and the truth need to be objective and universal.  Objective means not influenced by your emotional state or your unconscious. It has to do with how things are, how they function which are facts.  Universal means not only the truth about you, but the truth about the whole situation, about everything and everybody. 

When the will and the truth are in harmony and both are objective and universal, they become citadel to protect Essence, the Ridhwan, the true values. 

10. The Value of Struggling

Genuinely grappling and confronting whatever issues, whatever problems, whatever conflicts whatever situations you have in your life. Completely embrace them. Do your best to observe and experience what is happening and to understand it. Ultimately, the struggle with yourself leads to what is called "Black Death."  When you get through the center of "Black Death," you will recognize that the heart of this death is pure compassion.

(My comment - and the compassion also leads to truth - see 7. truth and compassion. This also resembles Buddhist the Four Noble Truths and the Four Divine Virtues.)

11. Truth

The truth will set you free. Facts are not the truth. Facts are just like atoms that when putting them together, they form the whole situation, the truth. If you understand the facts and the causes of your fears, angers and hurts, and you are able to relate them together to form the whole situation, the truth, this truth with set you free. Your personality that used to be developed under the influence of your fears, angers and hurts without understanding the truth, will eventually have less influence on you. Instead, you will be more free in your actions and your interactions with others.  

When you seek truth, you seek yourself, the truth will set you free by allowing you to be yourself. 

(My question - free from ?)

12. Allowing

To allow the process of growth, you need to allow that anything can happen. Anything is possible. The attitude of trusting without knowing what will happen, of allowing things to emerge, is needed at all levels and stages of the process of inner development. 

Allowing is not passivity, and it not an act of determination. It is neither of these. It is between passive and active. In a sense, you are actively passive to your experience.

When we allow the natural process of growth, there is expansion, happiness and joy. 

(My comment - I do not quite understand this part.)

13. Growing Up

Growing up means to become an adult and not a child. To be an adult, it means;

_to become aware, to become conscious

_to do the best you can do in the situation. If something does not go right, an adult will look at the situation, see what to do to get out of it if the situation is not desirable

_to learn how to give yourself love, compassion, approval, recognition, support, and strength and stop believing that you need those things from the outside

There are two main ways of working with it. One is the theistic approach and the other is the nontheistic approach. 

The theistic approach is the main approach in the West. These traditions say that if you look toward God. What is needed is complete faith, complete surrender toward God. God is the essence of the Essence. 

The nontheistic approach is for example, the Buddhists and Taoists. The Buddhists speak of the Four Noble Truths; dukkha (suffering), samudaya (the cause of suffering), nirodha (there is a way to out of that), and magga (the path to come out from suffering).

Buddhists also speaks of the Four Divine Virtues; metta (loving kindness), karuna (compassion), mudita (sympathetic joy or empathy) and upekkha (equanimity). 

14. The Student's Relationship to the Teaching

The relationship between student and the teaching cannot be forced. If you want to be connected to the teaching, you need to put effort into understanding the relationship and actualize it.

15. The Impeccable Warrior

Uncertainty is the enemy of the impeccability. Uncertainty is due to incomplete awareness, incomplete knowledge of what is there. Impeccability is concerned with now, with complete presence at every moment. 

(My comment - Buddhist meditation is the teaching of Now, of being mindful.)

16. Curiosity

Curiosity is the joy of the truth. Just like children, their curiosity is spontaneous, in the present, full of joy, and not goal oriented. You need to be like a child. Curiosity is the motivation from the Essence itself. 

17. Gathering Honey

In the work, you work individually most of the time just like collecting nectars, of whatever quality and density you can collect. Then, it is necessary for everybody to get together and engage in a certain activity that, at its deepest level, is the gathering of these nectars in one place, so that by a certain process, the nectar can be purified and distilled, made as concentrated as possible. 

Bīng Dūn Dūn in Winter Olympics 2022

I loved watching Winter Olympics as much as watching Summer Olympics. In February 2022, the Winter Olympics was hosted by China. Asking me what my 3 favorite moments at this Winter Olympics were, then, I would say:

1. Nathan Chen's short program and free skating program gold medalist. Both were stunning. He made us felt like skating was just a piece of cake. It was so smooth, flawless and very relaxing. 

2. Eileen Ailing Gu who helped China won 2 golds in halfpipe and big air, and 1 silver in slopestyle. Wow! She was so amazing to be able to flip in the air like that.  

3. Women's Monobob with Kaillie Humphries, gold and Elana Meyers Taylor, silver This was the first Olympics to begin Monobob competing. It was Kaillie's first competing for USA instead of Canada. Elana breast fed her baby boy at the Olympics. 

But the moment that would always make me laugh when thinking about it could not be anything else but 👇

冰墩墩  Bīng Dūn Dūn