How Best To Give

Yesterday I made a small donation to the Humanitarian Coalition for disaster relief in Haiti (why do these things seem to happen to people who are already suffering so much ?) I wonder if “adversity’s sweet milk” is to see such an outpouring of compassion and solidarity for victims of this natural disaster.

I also made a small donation to a Buddhist monastery and I was considering two questions: “how much should I give?” and “to whom should I give?”. What is more beneficial? The practices of liberation of the heart or helping to feed hungry children in a disaster zone?

The 13th Mindfulness training of the Order of Interbeing says, among other things:

[I] will practice generosity by sharing [my] time, energy, and material resources with those who are in need.

But it doesn’t make any recommendations about how much time, energy and resources to devote to those in need or which needs are more important than others. In that way, Buddhism is, as a monk I know once put it, a “do it yourself” religion. You need to figure out these details for yourself.

One contributing factor is: what is it possible for me to do, under the circumstances? I live in Canada, and I earn a good living, so I can help Haitians best by donating money to organizations better equiped than I am. But at home, perhaps, I can better donate my time and energy to help others with information and experience.

But the question – one that haunts us as western nations as well as individually – is how much is enough? Clearly selling my house, donating the proceeds and leaving me and my family with no shelter is not a sensible extreme. Nor is the extreme of not caring at all and not making any effort to contribute to relief organizations.

So what should it be? A percentage of your income? If you make a high wage, should it be a higher percentage (as implemented in the tax system, perhaps)?

Then there’s the question hinted at above: how does one compare one noble cause with another: people seeking to end greed, fear and delusion for the benefit of all sentient beings vs. creating sanitary conditions and homes for homeless people here and now? What if, by promoting the practice of Buddhism you were nipping a budding tyrant in the bud? The beneficial consequences are immeasurable! Helping a few people out of poverty or hunger temporarily could seem quite small in comparison.

I think the answer may simply be – we just don’t know. Perhaps a “mutual fund” approach is the middle way: giving for the “long term” (full and complete Buddhahood) and the”short term” (here and now helping homeless people).

Or perhaps it doesn’t really matter. Maybe it’s just the act of giving itself – however you do it which is important. Important for the recipient who needs the help but also important for the donor who also needs to express a natural generosity in the human heart.

Personal Identity

One often hears Dharma teachers talk about how we all take on “identities” – as a son or daughter, as an employee, as someone from a generation, as a mother or father. In other words, we often construct ourselves with “I am X” or “I am Y” or “I am not Z” – the constant here being this sense of “I” which gets fed by these identity constructs.

I was thinking about that today because I have several friends who have been children to their parents for 30+ more years than I have.  My mother died when I was 20.  I had barely ended childhood and I knew her for only 20 years. That’s one kind of “being a child”.  But my 60+ year-old friends have their parents in old age homes or are their care-givers for them at home. In what sense are they still “children”?

What I’m getting at is – “being X” or “being Y” itself changes, sometimes dramatically, over time. Being a parent, for instance, is quite a different proposition when your child is in diapers than when your child is learning differential calculus.The sense in which you are a “parent” is quite different in each situation.  Whatever identity you gleaned from “being X” shifts quite quickly – it’s not at all a rigid construct.

Furthermore, I think that our very ideas of what it means to be X (white-skinned in a North American culture) or Y (a Buddhist in Canada) also changes as our environment changes. “Being white” in a post-Aparthied world or during Obama’s presidency is less problematic, I think, less fraught with guilt, anyway, than it perhaps once was.

This dualistic sense of “me” is still a problem, naturally. But if we look closely at what the things are that define one’s personal identity, they are clearly not ridged or fixed, however much we may want it to be. Everywhere we look impermanence stares us in the face. It could be that exporing our very sense of who we are and how our identity is made up is one path toward freedom from the labels that they impose and the “I” that is in the middle of them.

Past, Present and Future

I have noticed that my relationship to time changes as I grow older.  A few months ago I heard a nonagenarian being interviewed on the radio about his recent skydiving adventure.  When asked “what are your plans [to do this again] in the future?” he answered “you know, at my age, you stop planning for the future.”

Conversely, at a young age you believe you are immortal, that the possibilities in the future are limitless, that summers are endless and there isn’t much in the past – yet.

So how does this change one’s perspective of time shift one’s Dharma practice?  In a lot of ways, I think.  With an awareness that “tomorrow” may not be a possibility, “here and now” becomes much more clearly all that there is.  And a focus on the present moment and taking refuge in awareness of the present moment leads to freedom.

Because “time” and “self” are bound up.  A sense of who you are in the historical dimension gives definition to this sense of identity – I am a father, I am a son, I am from Switzerland, I was like this and I am now like that and I will become the other thing.  But awareness of the present is outside of time – it is in that sense “eternal”.  It has no beginning and no end.

So while it is possible to be burdened by your history as you grow older, it is also more possible to let go of the past and not be so concerned with the future.  To take refuge in the here and now. To be free.

Unmistaken Child

The film “Unmistaken Child” is remarkable in many ways. As a cultural record it documents the process of discovering, (or is it “choosing”?) and testing the re-incarnation of a Lama in a young child. As a transformational story it movingly depicts the fulfillment of a personal destiny — that of Tenzin Zopa, the young monk who seeks and finds the reincarnation of his deceased master Konchog Rinpoche.

What moved me most, besides the grief of a peasant mother loosing her young child to monasticism, was the devotion and love of Tenzin Zopa for his deceased teacher.  His unwavering conviction that it is his duty to nurture the forces of goodness and kindness in his master, now a child, is never explicitly pitted against the raw separation of the child from his parents, but it is clear at every turn that he knows this is for the child own good and the welfare of all other beings to be taken from his home and raised in a monastery.

The transformation of Tenzin Zopa doesn’t end with finding the child or having him “unmistakenly” identified as a reincarnated lama.  It is clearly also the beginning of his new role as a parent, teacher and mentor.  In a certain way Tenzin Zopa himself is the reincarnation of Konchog Rinpoche and now has the task of transmitting to the child what he has learned from his former master.  Beginning with humility and devotion, which he has in abundance.

Monastics in Vietnam Evicted from Monastery

The Vietnamese authorities have been threatening Thich Nhat Hanh’s monastics in Vietnam for months now and they have finally acted out on their threat.

According to the the release from Associated Press:

Followers of a world-famous Buddhist teacher say Vietnamese police and an angry mob have forced 150 monks from a monastery in Vietnam’s Central Highlands that has been the center of a monthslong standoff.

The Buddhists say an angry mob descended on the site Sunday morning, smashing windows and knocking down doors in an effort to evict followers of Thich Nhat Hanh, an exiled Vietnam-born monk who has sold more than 1 million books in the West and now lives in southern France.

About 230 nuns remained hunkered down inside a dormitory and a courtyard at the Bat Nha monastery in Lam Dong province on Sunday night, said Brother Trung Hai, a close associate of Nhat Hanh’s, speaking from the Zen Master’s Plum Village monastery in France.

There is legitimate speculation that this move by the Vietnames government was in fact motivated by a desire to placate the Chinese government over a Chinese company’s interest in a bauxite mine nearby.

For those who live in Canada, please help by signing this petition to the Prime Minster of Canada, and to the Ambassador of Vietnam in Canada: Petition against Violence in Bat Nha Monastery Vietnam

For more information about how to support the peaceful monastics go to: www.helpbatnha.org

Ajahn Sona Retreat Oct. 25-30, 2009

RESIDENTIAL MEDITATION RETREAT
WITH AJAHN SONA

Seven Factors in Five Days:
A Brief Excursion through the 7 Factors of Enlightenment

October 25-30, 2009

enough left over to give some away!

The focus here is on the upper end of the 8 fold path…how to cultivate the garden of mind to receive ongoing nourishment…and possibly have enough left over to give some away!

Location:Galilee Centre, 398 John Street North, Arnprior Ontario:

Cost: $435.00

• Full Poster in PDF
• Registration Form in PDF

Burma VJ

I didn’t learn anything I didn’t already know by watching Burma VJ (which can be viewed on YouTube). But witnessing, even second-hand, the police brutality of a repressive military dictatorship regime is eye opening – and heart wrenching too, of course. The Burmese people are aching to be free.

I was rather distressing to learn that a Canadian mining conglomarate Ivanhoe Mines, is, according to Canadian Friends of Burma,

in a 50/50 joint venture with Burma’s ruling junta [and] operates the biggest foreign mining venture in Burma.

It appears our former Prime Minister, Jean Chretien, was appointed only just last month as “senior international adviser to the company”.  I hope his advice is beneficial to the Burmese people.

Understanding Interbeing

The idea of “Interbeing” – introduced by Thich Nhat Hanh into the North American Buddhist vocabulary – may be viewed as a formulation of the doctrine of  ”dependant co-arising” in the Paticca-samuppada-vibhanga Sutta.  

In the Heart of Understanding – Thay’s commentary on the Heart of the Prajnaparamita Sutra – he writes:

If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are. “Interbeing” is a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix “inter-“ with the verb “to be,” we have a new verb, inter-be.

The observation that we “inter-are”, while true and poetic is not really the most important element of “Interbeing”.  The important part is the realization that there is no independant self – that the perception of self, of “me”, of “mine” is an illusion.  Awareness that “I” am made of “n0n-I” elements leads to the understanding of non-self and it is the realizaton of non-self that brings an end to suffering.

Death

A few days ago my spouse went to hear Joan Halifax Roshi give a talk to paliative care workers in Ottawa.

Which got me thinking about death and about the Five Subjects for Frequent Recollection. Normally, these subjects (the first four anyway) are evoked to induce non-attachment.

 

I am subject to aging,
I am not exempt from aging.

I am subject to illness,
I am not exempt from illness.

I am subject to death,
I am not exempt from death.

There will be change and separation from all that I hold dear and near to me.

I am the owner of my actions (karma), Heir to my actions, I am born of my actions, I am related to my actions and I have my actions as refuge. Whatever I do, good or evil, of that I will be the heir.

I haven’t read it yet, but I am confident in recommending Larry Rosenberg’s book Living in the Light of Death explores these reflections in detail and also offers meditational practices on death. I also know of at least one MP3 recording of a guided medtiation on death by Ayya Medhanandi.

Eco-Buddhism

It is so wonderful to at last see a site and a book (“A Buddhist Response to the Climate Emergency”) and a declaration (which you can sign) that reflects a thoughtful and heart-felt Buddhist response to the climate change problem.  The contributors are so eminent and across all traditions.  Here are a few:

His Holiness the Dalai Lama
His Holiness Gyalwang Karmapa
Bhikkhu Bodhi
Robert Aitken
Joanna Macy
Joseph Goldstein
Matthieu Ricard
Thich Nhat Hanh