Buddhist Sutras and the Profound View of the Madhyamaka-Prasangika

It is necessary to distinguish various sutras.  Some are definitive; others require further interpretation. 

Definitive sutras are the wisdom sutras, such as the Heart of Wisdom Sutra, in which the Buddha spoke of the ultimate nature of all phenomena, and the Tathagata Essence Sutra from the third turning of the wheel.  This is the scriptural source for Maitreya's Uttaratantra and Nagarjuna's collection of praises.

Interpretable sutras cannot be taken literally or at face value.  An example is the Guhyasamaja Tantra, wherein the Buddha says that the Tathagata (the Buddha) is to be killed, and that by killing the Buddha, you will be able to achieve supreme enlightenment.  Similarly, in certain sutras, it is said that one must kill one's "parents".  "Parents" here refers to contaminated actions and attachment, which result in future rebirth.

Madhyamaka-Prasangika proponents speak of phenomena as being empty (having an empty nature).  This does not mean phenomena do not exist at all.  They just do not exist by themselves, in and of themselves, inherently.  Because phenomena possess the characteristics of existing and occurring and are dependent on other factors..., they are devoid of an inherent independent nature.  When Madhyamaka-Prasangika proponents speak of emptiness, they speak of  the empty nature of phenomena in terms of dependent origination.  This view of emptiness through reasoning of dependent origination is very profound:  it dispels misconceptions of the two extremes, nihilism and existential eternalism.  In Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamakakarika (Fundamentals of the Middle Way), he says that in a system where emptiness is not possible, nothing is possible. "Since there is no phenomenon that does not arise through dependence, there is no phenomenon that is not empty."

Source:
The 14th Dalai Lama.  The World of Tibetan Buddhism:  An Overview of Its Philosophy and Practice  (Boston, MA:  Wisdom Publications, 1995). pp.41-46.

Anapannasati

Examine your senses (eyes/seeing, ears/hearing, nose/smelling, tongue/tasting, body/touching) and the processes in which they interact with external factors (sight, sound,taste, smell, tangible objects), and how your perceptions/mental formations arise from these interactions.  

Focus on your breathing in and out, so that your mind becomes clear and calm, and not disturbed by torpor, sleepiness, agitations, or doubt.  

Gradually, in calmness, you can realize the formation and the disappearance of the concepts of "self" and " phenomena."  You'll come to realize their true nature: impermanence and emptiness, without any substance.  With this realization, you know the cause of life and death, and the cycle of samsara---all sources of suffering arise from your tangled and unclear mind.  Once the cloud of ignorance has been lifted or unveiled, you know that this is the Truth or the Path, the only way that leads to liberation from the cycle of birth and death.

Sources:
http://www.buddhistdoor.com/OldWeb/bdoor/archive/nutshell/teach11.htm

"...quán chiếu, minh sát sự duyên khởi của căn-trần-thức, không có trong, không có ngoài, vì cả trong cả ngoài đều cùng duyên khởi, tương sanh. Đấy là cách nói khác của thiền Tứ Niệm Xứ thân, thọ, tâm, pháp. Người hành thiền định là cốt để cho tâm yên lặng, là cốt làm cho 5 triền cái lắng dịu. Khi 5 triền cái lắng dịu rồi, ta mới ngắm nhìn sắc thân, cảm thọ, tâm và pháp rõ ràng, chân thực hơn. Chúng đều vô thường, vô ngã; và vì chúng sanh không thấy rõ sự thật duyên khởi ấy, vô thường, vô ngã ấy nên mới đưa đến khổ. Chính chúng tạo tác lăng xăng khi lạc, khi khổ, khi vui, khi buồn, khi ghét, khi yêu, khi thương, khi hận, khi đố kỵ, khi ganh tỵ... mới là vấn đề, là nguyên nhân của sinh tử và luân hồi. Sinh tử và luân hồi từ tâm niệm của chúng ta! Luân hồi, sinh tử ấy có gốc từ vô minh, vô minh sinh hành, hành sinh thức, rồi lục nhập, xúc, thọ, ái thủ hữu, sinh, lão tử, sầu bi ưu não... Phải minh sát rốt ráo, tận căn sự vận hành duyên khởi luân hồi vô tận nầy mới chấm dứt, diệt tận tất cả khổ được. Cắt lìa được một khoen thì toàn bộ 12 khoen không kết dính với nhau được.

Đây mới là chánh pháp. Đây mới là con đường duy nhất, độc lộ, độc đạo đưa đến chánh trí, giác ngộ, Niết-bàn."

“Tự do là ung dung trong ràng buộc. Hạnh phúc là tự tại giữa khổ đau.”
Viên Minh 
from NHỮNG BÀI PHÁP THOẠI TRONG BA THÁNG AN CƯ by Most Ven.Giới Đức (Minh Đức Triều Tâm Ảnh)

http://thuvienhoasen.org/a23749/nhung-bai-phap-thoai-trong-ba-thang-an-cu-11

Obama on Mass Shootings

"We are not the only country on Earth that has people with mental illnesses or want to do harm to other people.

"But we are the only advanced country on Earth that sees these mass shootings every few months."

Obama (Oct. 1, 2015)

My Hometown

I have visited  my hometown several times,
though not in person (what a shame!).

I am unable to smell or taste it,
only watching and listening
from afar.
I shared the eyes and ears with others
whom I know not.

My virtual hometown
has a special place
in my mind and heart.
My beloved hometown,
where I was born and grew up,
learned to love and to hate,
and finally became indignant
at what I saw and experienced.

My beloved hometown
I once left behind
together with all past memories
both sweet and bitter,
both enriching and impoverishing,
always has a special place
in my mind and heart.

I saw unrolling before my eyes:
streets after streets,
almost no trees,
bicycles, buses and cars,
and streams of people,
worried parents with innocent children,
carefree youths on motorbikes,
a few poor vendors pushing their carts--

some old, some middle aged,
and all types of foreigners with backpacks on,
wearing shorts, flip flops or sandals.

I noticed occasional odd hairstyles and attires,
risky behaviors, reckless pedestrians,
impatient motorcycles and honking cars,
magnificent, luxurious hotels, crowded sidewalk restaurants,
and flashy boutiques in empty malls,
decorated with white Roman Venus replicas
or red-yellow Chinese lanterns.


In the downpours I saw
streams of people,
face covered to avoid the polluted air,
wearing black helmets and colorful rain ponchos,
waddling with their legs in grey waters
on unruly motorbikes.
I saw water splashing everywhere
as the jammed traffic of humans and vehicles tried to move on
inch by inch along the narrow winding river streets.

They have learned to live with water
years after years,
so I heard.
They are silent and resilient,
for nobody can do a thing!
So they have learned to live with water
up to their chest,
only trying to block water from the streets
with whatever they have
against the currents--
their household objects
all piled up, barely above the undulating water level.

Stagnant waters.

Frustrating.
Hopeless.

I turned off the screen.
The unbearable scenes
of my fast-expanding hometown
are still haunting my mind and heart.

Every day and night,
and even right now,
I am still seeing
my beloved hometown drowning itself
in the spinning currents of stagnant grey water.


    

  

Refugees

The little child’s lying motionless on a Turkish beach.

Waves after waves come to ask him

why he does not respond.

His red shirt, blue shorts and black sneakers,
all soaked wet, still on
his limbs dangling from the rescuer's arms.

Somewhere along the same beach

lying the bodies of his mother and his brother

waiting for him.

Another journey home
The whole family
ready to return to Kobani,
where war and deprivation is still ravaging.

Refugees in overloaded small rubber boats,

seeking a better life,
found tragic deaths.

A blurry line lies

between the good and the bad,

blocking the refugees’ blurry tearful eyes.

A blurry line lies
between the good and the bad;

Life and Death,

so intertwined.

Thursday Sept. 03, 2015
In memory of all refugees lost at sea

-----

The body of 3-year-old Syrian Alan Kurdi was found on a Turkish beach after the small rubber boat he, his 5-year old brother Galib and their mother, Rehan, were in capsized during a desperate voyage from Turkey to Greece.  They were among 12 migrants who drowned off the Turkish coast of Bodrum that day.  Alan's body was discovered on a Turkish beach in sneakers, blue shorts and a red shirt on Wednesday.

Related Links:
http://www.bbc.com/vietnamese/world/2015/09/150903_china_military_parade_socialmedia

https://www.youtube.com/embed/YURQY9xCJ8c

 

 

The Significance of Knowledge

"Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people, being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties; and as these depend on spreading the opportunities and advantages of education in the various parts of the country, and among the different orders of the people, it shall be the duty of legislatures and magistrates, in all future periods of this commonwealth, to cherish the interests of literature and the sciences, and all seminaries of them...."
John Adams and colleagues, The Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, ratified in June 1780.

"I think by far the most important bill in our whole code is that for the diffusion of knowledge among the people.  No other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom and happiness."
Thomas Jefferson (in 1780s) quoted in Meacham's Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, p. 469.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Thomas Jefferson

"Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own governours must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."
James Madison (1832) in Gaillard Hunt's The Writings of James Madison, ed., 9:103.

"A nation's present well-being and future destiny are no longer constrained only by its 'givens' (its geography, its population, its natural resources).  Knowledge has become the prime mover; science and technology represent the new driving force.  Economic prosperity, energy supplies, manufacturing capacity, personal health, public safety, military security, and environmental quality --all these and more will depend on knowledge."
Frank Rhodes, Creation of the Future: The Role of the American University. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), 229.

"Knowledge is our most important business.  The success of almost all our other business depends on it, but its value is not only economic.  The pursuit, production, dissemination, application, and preservation of knowledge are the central activities of a civilization."
 "Knowledge is a form of capital that is always unevenly distributed, and people who have more knowledge, or greater access to knowledge, enjoy advantages over people who have less."
Louis Menand, The Market Place of Ideas: reform and Resistance in the American University. (New York, NY: Norton, 2010), 13.

Source:
Michael M. Crow & William B. Dabars.  Designing the New American University (Baltimore, MD: Joghs Hopkins University Press, 2015).  ISBN 978-1-4214-1723-3

Anandwan and Equality

Anandwan* today cares for more than two thousand leprosy victims and more than a hundred of their children, another several hundred blind or deaf-mute children, plus orphans and those born to unwed mothers.
"When I visited there," the Dalai Lama said, "everyone was full of self-respect and dignity, everyone equal.  They all had jobs, a livelihood.  When they became old and retired, they were still looked after.  They were handicapped but full of spirit.  I was really very much impressed."
Baba Amte** put it bluntly: "Charity destroys; work builds."
The residents of Anandwan support themselves by making products ranging from carpets, school notebooks, and greeting cards from recycled paper, to metal bed frames, crutches, and special protective footwear for those with leprosy.
Though Baba Amte passed away in 2008, his two sons, both physicians, carry on his work.  At last report, Anandwan --and two sister communities-- employed over five thousand residents.  (p. 122)
"Their mental attitude makes a big difference," the Dalai Lama recalls from his visit to Anandwan.  "Their work gives them self-confidence and self-respect, so they are full of enthusiasm."
When it comes to helping those in need, the Dalai Lama --like Baba Amte--emphasizes people helping themselves.  Here attitude is crucial.  "Sometimes poor people feel they cannot do much to help themselves."
...it's the root causes of their difficulties that need to change.  They have the same potential as anyone else.  But they need to believe in their own ability and to make an effort.  Then, given the same opportunities, they can be equal.
....some hard-liner Chinese Communist officials had spread propaganda saying that the Tibetan brain was "inferior," and...some Tibetans had adopted that self-defeating view of themselves.  But when given the same schooling and chances in life, Tibetans did as well as anyone else --and that convinced many Tibetans that they were not inferior after all.
[The Dalai Lama] had used this example with a post-apartheid resident of a shanty town in Soweto, whose home he was visiting.  The man told him that African brains were inferior and so Africans could not be as intelligent as whites.
The Dalai Lama was shocked and saddened by this.  "I argued that this is totally wrong.  If you ask scientists if there are any brain differences due to color, they would definitely say no.  The real point is equality.  Now that you have the opportunity, you must work hard.  You can be equal in every way."
The Dalai Lama argued energetically to convince the man that Africa had great potential and that long colonial rule had created a lack of self-confidence in Africans, which could be overcome --as with the Tibetans--with social equality, opportunity, and education.
After a lot of argument, the man sighed and in a low voice said, "Now I'm convinced: We're the same.  I believe we are equal."  (p.123)

Sources:
*Anandwan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anandwan
**BabaAmte
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baba_Amte
Daniel Goleman.  Force for Good: The Dalai Lama's Vision for Our World.  (New York, NY: Bantam Books, 2015)