heart : song

Bhagavad Gita

Perhaps like many people, I have never taken the time (until recently) to read through the sacred verses of the Bhagavad GIta . I highly recommend this to everyone. As a buddhist who loves vedic culture and bhakti yoga, I can now say that I finally "get' the profound nature of the Gita.

Once you understand the profound insight and perspective of Krishna ... it is very helpful in understanding the methodolgy of the Buddha. Sakayamuni gave us the dharma , the way .. but I feel Krishna ,gives us the perspective of Buddhahood ..... of God-consciousness.

I highly recommend the audiobook which Deepak Chopra recorded from the Bhagavad Gita, the music and the translation is quite wonderful.

Once you begin to get a true sense of what the nature of the conversation between Arjuna and Krishna , ... you will truly say "Hare Krishna".

world peace

We all wish for world peace.

Wouldn't it be nice if everyone in the world could just get along and all different kinds of people could just understand each other. It would be very pleasant indeed, but it seems very much like a far fetched goal.

And yet, I have just come back from a variety if trips, hoping on and off airplanes all over the country, and I almost uniformly find that when I step on an airplane, it is quiet peaceful. People are usually quite friendly and respectful. In some sense there is an unsaid ethos on a plane .... that is something like "we are all in this together and showing some discipline , following the rules and being agreeable is going to help us all get to our destination."

And if you have ever been on a plane where even one person is out of line or difficult, the atmosphere can change very quickly, the peace can be very easily disturbed.

I think our lives however can often be the antithesis of the plane ride. We are often not very focused on our destination and we tend to flounder in our attitudes and roles. And when this happens we loose our sense of peace.

For the bigger journey of all humanity to find the destination of peace, we must realize that we will only arrive there if each and every one of us remains focused and determined practice peace of mind in our daily lives.

If each of us  is willing to smile and to practice cheerfulness,  patience, determination, compassion , love, warmth, and understanding  ... then in reality, world peace is really very close at hand.

trust the love.

Life is complex at times and you will find that your experiences can be difficult. And when we are tested I think we have to ask, "what should I trust ?" .

Do we resort to anger, or to destructive behavior... like revenge ? Or do we tilt towards love, and forgiveness ?

When we look at who humans have revered over millenia, it is not those who are angry and vengeful, it is those who are loving. Some cultures have been forced to put up a statue of Hitler or Stalin, but within a short period of time ....the statues get torn down.

Gurus like Buddha, Jesus, Krishna .. etc .. these statues keep popping up and they stay a long time. Love is eternal, it is true, and it is where you should  place all of your trust.

I was at Krishna Das last night for a Kirtan and it was really wonderful, a beautiful evening of devotional singing.  Here is a video of Krishna Das, doing a chant for Durga , the embodiment of the divine mother. This is the kind of love you can really trust

your are love, so live that way

You were born into this world, and then many circumstances have come your way. And you have made a lot of choices about what you would do and who you have become. And this story you have in your head, and the way you behave day to day,  is really just a made up thing. Your karma and your choices have made this collection of concepts you call "me".

We say things like, "I am an American, a certain kind of religion, a tennis player, a chocolate lover, a parent" .. the list is very long. But we are really none of these things at all. We are acting out these roles only.

If we start to toss out all of these things and go back to the most essential essence of our beings, I think we find something very simple. Each of is a loving being, each of us is a quiet awareness. This  is who you really are, and this is who we must reveal. I think was what Jesus and Buddha were telling us.

Our actions need only reveal our essential love and that essential awareness. When we live in this "moment of love", we reside in real joy, in real happiness. When our love, joy and happiness are truly alive through our actions, it finds it's way to others. You are not the roles you thought you were , but rather you become a force of love that transforms the world.

You are not the small story, you are the big story of love .. I encourage you to live and an embrace who you truly are.

freedom and love

Most often we define ourselves by what we believe, but equally, often we disassociate ourselves from what we do. We know that certain precepts are proper, like "don't harm other sentient beings". But then, we might go out for a steak dinner. We say we love someone, but then when our feelings are hurt, we behave in a less than loving way.

What we actually have to do in life, is disassociate ourselves from our beliefs and realize that our "our actions are our only true belongings".  This is a teaching from Thich Nhat Hanh, and it is so very true. We have to realize that things like truth and love exist not because we believe in them, but because we bring them into existence through action.

We must  become "truth" and we must become "love"  as opposed to being just believers in these things.

An old joke about faith goes like this.

Little Johnny is in church and the preacher says , "Johnny what is faith ? " . And Johnny says "Faith is believing in something you know ain't true".

We each need to know what is true and false and about ourselves, and we do this by honestly evaluating the actions we take. When we actually "love" and actually are "truthful" we experience real freedom.

true love

Love is the medium of goodness in our lives. If we experience something absent of love, it is very unpleasant and it is counter to the essence of our being.

When we experience and express love in varying degrees then our happiness, tends to vary accordingly. If we can get a better sense of what "true love" is , then I think, we can also find an easier pathway to true happiness.

In romantic visions of love, our true love is envisioned as a kind of  "ultimate puzzle piece" to our souls. It is this one person who can fulfill us and make us happy. But in reality true love is nothing like that at all.

True love is unconditional love. It is accepting and loving in all circumstances. True love does not say, "well if you behave, if you fulfill certain conditions .. then I will love you". True love says "in any kind of condition or circumstance I love you." A person who can express unconditional love will naturally also experience unconditional happiness.

Krishnamurti had brilliant teachings on this subject, and he said essentially (and I paraphrase here) "love with any kind of pre-conditions or requirements is in fact.... not love at all , it is just conditional flattery or vanity".

If you begin to delve into this clear notion of love I think you will find it be quite transforming. It asks you to really  look at yourself and say, "am I serious about real love, or am I just going to remain mystified by an idea of love that has conditions ?". I have found that when you start to remove all the conditions and express love truly and unconditionally, happiness flows for you and all others.

In the end these conditions we like to extract on love are false and illusory. They are based on cultural concepts, false notions or misconceptions we hold solely due to our own ignorance.

Take the time to objectively examine all of the conditions you place on love, ... and then... one by one, ... throw them away. It is only then that you will actually experience love as it truly is. An "idea of love" is not love, and thus an "idea of happiness" is not happiness.

If you just live out the reality of "true love" then you will also find that you will begin to be "truly happy".

own your happiness

A spiritual journey, in whatever modality you choose, is really a process of transforming into a truly happy being. Whether you like or not , over however many lifetimes it is going to take, you are becoming the kind of person who is going to be unaffected by circumstances and there to help out and love all
others.

But we don't want to own that happiness, we want it in the abstract, but when it comes down be being happy and peaceful every god damned day .. well who wants that ? We like to convince ourselves that it is better to suffer along, to keep it interesting with drama, needs, wants, pleasure, judgments ... all the stuff we know we are already good at. But, no matter how much we try to mystify our goodness with things like self sabotage.. our essential goodness refuses to leaves us.

I like this metaphor. We like to pave over our happiness and our Buddha nature, but no matter how hard we try, a plant of some kind of happiness finds a way to sprout up . Does your happiness look like this photo ?

I think mine does sometimes. I like to cover it with guilt or the feeling of unworthiness or judgment. And when I don't like the look of my happiness I will try to just pave it over a few more times with some bad habits I have,... then I don't have to face my goodness for a while. I can use the mask of clean pavement as some kind of temporary fulfillment.

We end up with all of these cracked layers of hard stuff trying to coat the beautiful Buddha that you actually are.

It is much better to stop the paving process and just let the plants grow. If we train ourselves to refrain from our destructive ways, (like craving and being critical) then the paving people eventually give up. In music or poetry a "refrain' is a repeated lyric or group of notes that is the reference point of the piece. Our "refrain" of practice are things like meditation, non-judgment , service to others, kindness, wisdom. If we engage in this kind of "refrain" we come to just let things be, we realize that though we thought we had to control the world, we could just witness it and care for it , as it is. By doing this we learn to own our happiness and we make real friends with that Buddha inside and our spiritual journey moves along towards it's goal of real joy.

the power of affection

I think far too often we underestimate the power of affection and gentleness. We feel if we need to get things done we need to be tough and harsh. We feel the world is against us and for us to survive we must have some guts and be forceful.

But real transformation and real power is the opposite, it is gentle and it is permeated through affection for others. Here is a quote form the Dalai Lama that I love.

"In education, it is my experience that those lessons which we learn from teachers who are not just good, but who also show affection for the student, go deep into our minds. Lessons from other sorts of teachers may not. Although you may be compelled to study and may fear the teacher, the lesson may not sink in. Much depends on the affection from the teacher."

How true this is. I know I have learned much from the harshness of coming to terms with my own mistakes. But I don't think I have ever learned much from harsh people. I have only learned from people who express love and affection.

As a parent to 2 young girls, I know how important it is to balance firmness with love. I grew up around many Hindu families in Canada where the parents had such anatural sense of overriding affection. They seemd to be absent of any harshness, and this is something I have always admired greatly.

So I think if we can embrace the power of affection, as a method for mediating the world, our being can quite quickly be transformed.

having yourself on.

Sometimes when we are playing a joke on someone, we let them in on it and say , "relax, I was just having you on" . We were just playing with the person, we create a little false reality to enjoy seeing how the comical drama will play out. We don't want to harm our friend, we want them to laugh and we want others who are in on the joke to laugh.

This is a really good analogy for what each of us is doing with our own subjective identities. We are essentially "having ourselves on" and we like to cling to the delusion of the joke we are playing on ourselves, and this is called suffering.

In order to get a little deeper understanding on this we have to realize "who" is the one who is suffering the joke and "who" is the one who occasionally realizes the joke and laughs at it.

In this case I would like to use the word "God" to explain the who. Not the kind of external  man in the sky  God,  but rather the  universal Brahma. The sort of sleeping interrelated universal ground of being of which we all are apart of. Being a Buddha is essentially fully awakening to that God nature that each of us is.

So here are both sides of the joke. You are God and you have decided to try out this incarnation of Bill, Mary, John ... whatever. You want to see what this perspective is, so you play out the little karmic drama. It's like when you are in the movie theater and you are totally absorbed in the drama, it's all very real, you loose yourself in the flickering projections. But when it's over you  go  "wow that was an interesting little show ".

As a Buddha to be, you are playing out this joke of personhood and you can see that it is just a delusion, but it is such an interesting movie, .... you just don't want to leave the theater. And what is more, all of the other beings you meet are doing the same thing, and the ground of who they are is the same stuff that you are. It is a complex grand delusion.

So the more you can just relax and realize, that you... "God",... are just having ... John, Mary or Bill on, the more you can laugh and awaken to the God nature that you truly are. If you so choose, you can step into the bigger role of Bodhisattva, or saint or deity or Buddha, any time you decide you are ready.

I think as Jesus said, this is "good news" . Realize that the idea of your "self" is truly a put on. Try to remain in the perspective that enjoys the little comical drama playing itself out and not suffer in the false drama of the joke you have chosen to play on yourself.

calm mind

I love the simple clarity and advice that his Holiness The Dalai Lama offers us. One his most simple teachings is that of "calm mind".

He stresses that if we meditate and practice, we will develop some inner strength. Once we have this, we can more easily retain a calm mind.

Many things we are angry or sad about today,.... we will laugh about tomorrow. With a calm mind, we have a better chance to laugh about our situations as they happen.

Remember, the Buddha always has a soft smile.

one love,