Category: buddhism

Uposatha Day Essay for the New Moon (Index to Series)

We started last week to look at ways to start to empty what we normally think of our secular or lay-life values and activities of the self. Since the sense of self is the root of all suffering, this brings these elements more in accord with Buddhist practice. One way of doing this is to learn to treat these elements with Devotion, that is to learn to serve these elements rather than using them to serve us. We already have Devotion as a primary component of any religious practice, including Buddhist. This makes the most of it. I want to take up two categories of techniques for emptying out the self, first Ritual and Mindfulness, and second, Welfare.

Ritualization and Mindfulness. Mindfulness is something we here a lot about in Buddhism. It is one whole factor of the Noble Eightfold Path, it is the driving force in meditation and a part of almost all other practices. It has two closely associated meanings: One is to remember moment by moment what your task is and to return to it if you’ve deviated. The other is simply moment by moment awareness. Now in meditation it is common for your task to be to keep the mind on the breath. If it deviates, for instance, if you start thinking about bills or work or a funny joke, mindfulness is want remembers to return to the breath. Mindfulness has the property of awareness, but also encourages acute awareness, as most people experience in meditation.

Now, the same principle can apply easily to many daily activities. For instance, if you are brushing your teeth, keep the mind at the area of contact between tooth and brush. If you are chopping carrots, keep the mind on the chopping, on knife meeting carrot. In either case if something arises that is not tooth-brushing or carrot-chopping, bring it back to the task at hand. This works best with physical tasks, even driving. Now Mindfulness empties the self quite markedly, because the self is sustained in what has passed and what is yet to come, in our patterns of behavior that define our individual personalities and in our aspirations for the future. Mindfulness keeps us in the present moment in which only our moment by moment decision to do this or that is present. This is not where the human mind dwells when left on its own.

Mindfulness is hard enough when all you have to do something simple like sitting and following the breath. It gets more difficult with more complex tasks, for instance when two people are talking to you at the same time while you are chopping carrots, or even while you are measuring amounts in your mind and checking the recipe while chopping. The reason is that it is harder in the complex cases to pinpoint what your task is moment by moment. What this tells us is to cultivate situations in which your task is clearly defined, and then practice Mindfulness in those situations. In particular you should try to find strategies for doing this for every activity that is a chosen element of your life. Here are some suggestions:

• Avoid multitasking. This includes listening to music while cutting carrots, or driving, drinking coffee, smoking, talking on the cell phone and listening to music at the same time. When you chop wood just chop wood.

• Divide tasks or interests into well-defined subtasks and do them.

• Impose routine. That is, have conventional ways of doing things, do a set of tasks always in the same order, always do a certain task in a certain context. Basically this is a matter of avoiding decisions, which are just more tasks to compete with the physical task at hand.

Like Devotion, and like Faith, a lot of people misunderstand the role of Ritual in Buddhism. The Buddha, for instance, considers clinging to rites and rituals a “fetter,” but on the other hand the Suttas a full of ritual observances. What gives? The Buddha was criticizing teachings of the Brahmas that endowed rites and ritual with some kind of special efficacy, as a means to work magic and control the future. We actually have many rituals in our everyday life that for the most part we accord them no such powers, for instance, shaking hands, hugging, performing a high-five, ringing a door bell or knocking before entering, saying “thank you” and “please.” Rituals are simply, conventionalized behaviors in certain contexts that are or can become  highly habituated. They are the logical extreme of routine. Rather than say, “Impose routine,” we can say, “Ritualize your tasks.”

If you practice at a Zen Center, such as the San Francisco Zen Center or one of its offshoots, or the Zen Mountain Monastery, you have probably learned a complex set of rituals just to get you from the front door onto your cushion in the zendo. You may have learned oryoki, ritualized eating. Of course the Tea Ceremony is highly ritualized. You may have even discovered the selflessness of ritual, if you have gotten past the insecurity of not knowing the ritual well, or the tendency to show off once you do know it well. This is the point at which in Zen parlance, the bows do themselves, the appropriate foot knows when to take a step. There is nothing for the self to do, so it vanishes, quite noticeably and quite remarkably. In fact Zen meditation, zazen, is often described as simply the ritual of sitting like a buddha. But of course these practices are all in the Buddhist context. Dogen said that ritual conduct is the entirety of Zen practice! Even following the Precepts can be thought of as ritual, conventionalized behaviors.

There is no reason you cannot ritualize life’s other tasks, from getting up in the morning, through bathing to changing diapers and checking email. Develop conventions for ordering tasks, such as when done with one task, clean up completely before starting the next task. In Zen “Leave no Trace” is a common maxim. In fact cleaning and putting things into order are opportunities for ritualization. All of these things set up a context in which the mind can learn not to wander off and scatter, that is to practice mindfulness in your everyday activities. Life becomes  routine matter of doing what is to be done, rather than constantly grappling with desires and decisions and seeking some bit of personal advantage. Sound boring? This is what people also think about meditation, yet meditation is the only chance many people have for experiencing joy in their lives.

A good source on ritualizing your tasks is Dogen, both the Eihei Shingi (Pure Standards of the Zen Community) and the Tenzo Kyokun (Instructions for the Cook). Although these are manuals for monks, they are about housework and adminstration and how to make these into Buddhist practice. These are actually rewritings of traditional Chinese manuals, and I was surprised to find a long chapter in the Vinaya, from the Buddha, on how a junior monk cares for his teacher’s living space, that has much of the same flavor as the Zen manuals. This is worthy of study by all Buddhists.

Welfare. With all his talk of renunciation, the Buddha’s principle discovery that led directly to his Awakening was that you cannot lean to far in the direction of deprivation. This is the Middle Way. For the monastic this is the expectation of the basic requisites necessary for maintaining health. For the Lay Life this means you should take care not to live on the edge, not to move from one crisis to anothers. You should be reasonably successful in what you undertake, in your marriage, in your business and so on. If you aim too high you will become entangled in self-enhancement and be miserable. If you don’t aim high enough, you will be caught in a self-protective mode and be miserable. Either puts the self in focus. If your life is relatively comfortable and secure you are in the best position for development on the Path. Plan your affairs to avoid crises, to establish a constant modicum of welfare. Here is some detailed advice of the Buddha from the Vyagghapajja Sutts (AN 8.54):

“Four conditions, Vyagghapajja conduce to a householder’s weal and happiness in this very life. Which four? The accomplishment of persistent effort, the accomplishment of watchfulness , good friendship  and balanced livelihood.
“What is the accomplishment of persistent effort? Herein, Vyagghapajja, by whatsoever activity a householder earns his living, whether by farming, by trading, by rearing cattle, by archery, by service under the king, or by any other kind of craft — at that he becomes skillful and is not lazy. He is endowed with the power of discernment as to the proper ways and means; he is able to carry out and allocate (duties). This is called the accomplishment of persistent effort.
“What is the accomplishment of watchfulness? Herein, Vyagghapajja, whatsoever wealth a householder is in possession of, obtained by dint of effort, collected by strength of arm, by the sweat of his brow, justly acquired by right means — such he husbands well by guarding and watching so that kings would not seize it, thieves would not steal it, fire would not burn it, water would not carry it away, nor ill-disposed heirs remove it. This is the accomplishment of watchfulness.
What is good friendship? Herein, Vyagghapajja, in whatsoever village or market town a householder dwells, he associates, converses, engages in discussions with householders or householders’ sons, whether young and highly cultured or old and highly cultured, full of faith, full of virtue, full of charity , full of wisdom. He acts in accordance with the faith of the faithful, with the virtue of the virtuous, with the charity of the charitable, with the wisdom of the wise. This is called good friendship.
“What is balanced livelihood? Herein, Vyagghapajja, a householder knowing his income and expenses leads a balanced life, neither extravagant nor miserly, knowing that thus his income will stand in excess of his expenses, but not his expenses in excess of his income. Just as the goldsmith,[5] or an apprentice of his, knows, on holding up a balance, that by so much it has dipped down, by so much it has tilted up; even so a householder, knowing his income and expenses leads a balanced life, neither extravagant nor miserly, knowing that thus his income will stand in excess of his expenses, but not his expenses in excess of his income….
“The wealth thus amassed, Vyagghapajja, has four sources of destruction: (i) Debauchery, (ii) drunkenness, (iii) gambling, (iv) friendship, companionship and intimacy with evil-doers. Just as in the case of a great tank with four inlets and outlets, if a man should close the inlets and open the outlets and there should be no adequate rainfall, decrease of water is to be expected in that tank, and not an increase; even so there are four sources for the destruction of amassed wealth — debauchery, drunkenness, gambling, and friendship, companionship and intimacy with evil-doers.

Modern society in many regions tends to create lives that in many ways are more secure than in centuries past, for instance in which sudden illness and death from infectious diseases, or starvation from drought is not a constant threat. On the other hand it creates conditions in which economic welfare can be very precarious. For instance, loss of availability of a functioning car, through accident, age or inability to make payments can result in immediate loss of livelihood. Illness when it does arise can result not only in loss of livelihood but in indebtedness or bankruptcy.

Uposatha Day Essay for Last Quarter Moon (Index to Series)

I hope in the last few weeks the advice I have conveyed has been useful in examining the elements of your life, what is or is not appropriate in the context of Buddhist practice, but at the same time what is or is not important to you. I would be interested in hearing from anyone who might have been inspired already to make some significant changes. However, in general this examination will be ongoing; what changes you make should be considered carefully and you will certainly come up with different answers at different times. And the answers should be satisfying to you before they are embraced. In the Dighajanu Sutta (AN 8.54) a group of laypeople approach the Buddha, and this is what they say:

“We, Lord, are laymen who enjoy worldly pleasure. We lead a life encumbered by wife and children. We use sandalwood of Kasi. We deck ourselves with garlands, perfume and unguents. We use gold and silver. To those like us, O Lord, let the Exalted One preach the Dhamma, teach those things that lead to weal and happiness in this life and to weal and happiness in future life.”

In response the Buddha does not dismiss them as unworthy, nor does he try to talk them out of what to them is important. Rather he respects that they are free to make their own choices, and uses what they have communicated as the parameters within which a Buddhist life can be built. This week I take up the third step in the Art of Lay Life, which I have called Balancing Elements. I will assume there is a set of elements that are important to you that have a potentially questionable relationship to Buddhist practice, then discuss how these are best integrated into a Buddhist life.

Let’s suppose, just by way of example, that the following are fixed elements for you:

• Watching Dr. Who (or some other weekly T.V. show)
• Drinking wine with friends
• Playing chess, or a competitive sport
• Oh, and Raising a family and hanging on to a Spouse

You can substitute your own list. These are important to you for reasons other than Buddhist practice. If you were a monastic you would be asked to give up these and things like them, at least substantially, sometimes at great sacrifice. But you are not, because as a lay Buddhist you choose to juggle these or things like them in your life along with Buddhist practice. It would seem that in making this choice you have bifurcated your life into life of practice + rest of life, thereby becoming a half-time or quarter-time Buddhist. However this need not be the case: You can turn almost any wayward elements into a Buddhist-like practice! The guiding principle is to empty each of these elements of the self, at least insofar as it is possible. Emptying of the self requires a shift in our relationship to things. Our human tendency is to use things with an eye to personal advantage, even our friendships and family relationships, to have a personal stake. We can even do this with Buddhist practice. But this is generally not necessary except for those elements which we have already tagged for rejection in the last two weeks. I’d like to consider three ways to help empty and element of the self: Devotion, Ritualization and Mindfulness, and Constancy.

Devotion. Devotion shifts your relationship to an element from that of it serving you to you serving it. It turns that element into a hobby.

Family and especially spouse provides a good example. If you have a husband or wife, there are two quite distinct aspects to your marriage and one or the other might predominate. One is rather self-centered and calculating. Your spouse serves as a sink for sexual drives, is a hedge against loneliness, takes on some of the burden of maintaining a household and raising kids, is possibly a show-piece to enhance your own reputation, and so on. If this aspect predominates then the marriage becomes very dispensable: If you run across a more attractive, younger, healthier, less burdensome, harder-working or better-cooking man or woman, you might well abandon the old marriage in favor of enhancing personal advantage. This is because the marriage serves you. The other is selfless and faithful. The marriage is a refuge, a treasure, something you have chosen to bring into your life, preserve and enhance. It becomes meaningful in itself and personal advantage becomes beside the point. The marriage becomes an end in itself rather than a means to some other end. Of course selfish motives may threaten this attitude, very commonly sexual attraction to someone new, but a selfless and faithful marriage will withstand even this, maybe with a bit of fudging.

Form the perspective of Buddhist practice, devotion is great. It is a primary means of letting go of the drive for personal advantage, which contrary to the justification for that drive, never results in happiness anyway. Devotion is what we bring to the table when we begin Buddhist practice, devotion to the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha. I think of devotion as the mind of the hobbyist: the fly fisherman, the knitter, the bird watcher, the string collector. Have you noticed how useless most hobbies are, how hard they are to explain to the uninitiated, and when they have some use, how much incidental it is? A marriage is based on devotion when it becomes thoroughly a hobby. I think what attracts people to hobbies is that they provide quite palpable release from the tension of dealing with the relentless drive for personal advantage with which most of us are endowed.

Now, most things can be approached with devotion, even if that is not the original motivation, even drinking alcohol! How do you make wine drinking into a hobby rather than a greedy guzzling indulgence? Well, a lot of people do just that: They become connoisseurs. The learn all they can about the variety of wines, about the manufacturing process, they visit wineries and sample the bouquet and taste of each kind, they buy special bottles of wine which they place on special altars called wine racks. They take very seriously the ritual of pulling the cork out of the bottle, and often have very specialized equipment for doing so, then carefully aerate a red wine, chill a white wine, drink red wine with red meat, white with fish or chicken and so on. (I understand that the cork serves no practical function in preserving the taste of wine, the modern screw top actually works better. But the screw top lacks the ritual and therefore the cork endures as the seal of choice for the connoisseur.) One of the interesting things about all of this is that it holds the impulse to guzzle in check, that greedy impulse is actually frowned upon by the cultured wine connoisseur, even while a moderate buzz is appreciated.

Another interesting thing is that within our culture, particularly in “high society,” there are many practices similar to this and they are seldom considered religious practices, yet I think their motivations are identical. They are religious practices. As a generalization of this, I should point out that there is a big difference, which can be characterized as devotion, between the way a musician listens to music, the way a film maker or aficionado watches a movie, and so on. For most music and movies are matters of personal consumption, for the devotee they lose much of that quality.

So, how do you develop an attitude of devotion toward some element that you would like to include in your life? Religion, not just Buddhism, makes common use of these elements: Vows, Duties, Expressions of Reverence and Reminders. There may be others, but these occur to me just now.

Vow is an explicit statement of intention. The word has the same root as devotion. Commonly a marriage begins officially with the recitation of a set of vows:

I Bifford B. Bup take you Myrtle Quaddlebottom to be my wedded wife. To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness or in health, to love and to cherish ’till death do us part. And hereto I pledge you my faithfulness.

Interestingly Buddhism does not provide much structure for these kinds of lay vows. I don’t know why. Practically your whole life can be fixed in terms of vow.

Duties enumerate ways to realize devotion or a vow. For instance, in the Sigalovada Sutta (DN31) the Buddha gives a short list of the duties of a husband to a wife:

“In five ways, young householder, should a wife … be ministered to by a husband: by being courteous to her, by not despising her, by being faithful to her, by handing over authority to her, by providing her with adornments.

Notice the last one. The Buddha also gives a short list of the duties of an employer:

“In five ways should a master minister to his servants and employees … : by assigning them work according to their ability, by supplying them with food and with wages, by tending them in sickness, by sharing with them any delicacies, by granting them leave at times.

Even your relationship to employees can be substantially one of devotion rather than personal advantage.

Expressions of Reverence play an important role in Buddhism particularly in the form of bows and the gesture of anjali/gassho, and to standards of care to representative objects of devotion. These are not so developed in Western culture. The Sigalovada Sutta begins when the Buddha runs across someone doing prostrations and inquires:

“Wherefore do you, young householder, rising early in the morning, departing from Rajagaha, with wet clothes and wet hair, worship, with joined hands these various quarters — the East, the South, the West, the North, the Nadir, and the Zenith?”

“My father, Lord, while dying, said to me: The six quarters, dear son, you shall worship. And I, Lord, respecting, revering, reverencing and honoring my father’s word, rise early in the morning, and leaving Rajagaha, with wet clothes and wet hair, worship with joined hands, these six quarters.”

Rather than admonishing the young householder for practicing empty ritural, the Buddha gives him a useful interpretation:

“It is not thus, young householder, the six quarters should be worshipped in the discipline of the noble. . . The parents should be looked upon as the East, teachers as the South, wife and children as the West, friends and associates as the North, servants and employees as the Nadir, ascetics and brahmans as the Zenith.

Other expressions of reverence are taking care of and cleaning people or objects of devotion, or giving gifts. It is interesting that in Western culture such reverence is largely reserved for objects of material attachment, especially cars. When properly interpreted expressions of reverence are powerful means for maintaining a devotional attitude, one that empties the self.

Ritual reminders are things like wedding rings and golf keychains.

Continued next week.

Uposatha Day Essay for the First Quarter Moon (Index to Series)

We began the Art of Lay Life by Selecting Elements, prioritizing our values and obligations with particular attention to their costs alongside their appeal. I have appealed primarily to the reader’s own values in selecting what is most important. I have hopefully, however given you two nudges. The first is to be more deliberate, to examine more carefully the appeals and implications. The second is to begin to simplify, to be even more selective in Selecting Elements. Just a final word for simplicity: When we clutter our lives, we tend to clutters our mind. Also a cluttered life leaves little space for Buddhist practice, just as a cluttered workshop will hamper your ability to tinker together a bird house. Finally, if we think of Buddhist practice as a process of removing problems, that is, eliminating the conditions that bring suffering, and we consider that there are problems associated with ever element we bring into our lives, then getting rid of the clutter takes us a long was along the path of Buddhist practice all by itself. We will return to the theme of simplicity at the final step in the Art of Lay Life.

The second step in the Art of Lay Life is Rejecting Elements, shedding elements whose cost is too great, whose retention is inimical to Buddhist practice, which have no place in a Buddhist life. Here I will rely more on the wisdom of the Buddha, who gave some very clear advice on this. However, like Selecting, Rejecting is your choice and it also may require deliberation and examination before you have confidence in his advice. Also life’s circumstances might mean making compromises as you consider this advice..

Some of the clearest advice comes from Precepts. If there is an element in your life that entails violation of one or more of the standard precepts, it is problematic, especially if it entails habitual violation. The most standard set of precepts are the Pancasila, the Five Precepts:

Not to kill.
Not to take what is not freely given.
Not to misuse sexuality.
Not to tell falsehoods.
Not to consume intoxicants that cause heedlessness.

I give to my students the Eight Lifetime Precepts which includes three additional precepts regarding speech that I find are particularly problematic for Americans:

Not to speak maliciously.
Not to speak harshly.
Not to speak idly.

The Eight Lifetime Precepts also make reference to Right Livelihood, which we will consider in moment.

Now, the precepts are rules of thumb that approximate Virtue. There are two reasons why Buddhists follow the precepts. First, they are very effective in avoiding harm to others as pointers to where people have gotten themselves into trouble repeatedly for untold ages. Second, and more significantly in Buddhist ethics, they aid in the protection and development of the mind, moving it karmically toward and not away from the perfection of character in its three aspects of virtue, serenity and wisdom. These two reasons are closely related, since avoiding harm to others is a large part of virtue. The precepts should be fundamental to any Buddhist practice right from the beginning. However, they themselves often require a development of understanding before they are embraced whole-heartedly. For instance, many Westerners are used to consuming alcohol in moderation as a pleasant cultural habit and think of it as rather harmless. However as your practice deepens and you work with the mind at a very subtle level you begin to realize the important role of this precept in protecting the mind.

Now, the precepts can, all things being equal, be integrated into the the lay life without problem. If a bug annoys you, instead of squishing it put it outside. It your neighbor’s spouse is attractive, don’t try to seduce him or her. If someone expresses an opinion you disagree with in an on-line discussion, don’t flame. Just don’t do it.

However where the precepts present particular difficulties for the Lay Life is when some element of your life requires you to violate a precept over and over again. This is particularly likely in your choice of livelihood. For instance, if you work in a slaughterhouse you may be required to kill cows or chickens ’til, uh, the cows come home. This raises two important questions: If your livelihood requires that you kill, (1) are you really harming others and (2) do you suffer karmic consequences, that is, does it impair the well-being and development of your mind. After all, the killing is your boss’s decision, and if you were not there to act out his orders, wouldn’t someone else be called on to do so instead? Doesn’t this leave you off the hook?

The Buddhist answer is much like the decision of the Nuremberg Trial: You are not off the hook, orders are not just orders, you are the heir of your own deeds . It is a bit hard to argue on the basis of non-harming if the harm is done anyway by your coworker if not you, but it can be clearly observed that you suffer the karmic consequences. You can observe the long-term effects with regard to your own character, how you become desensitized to killing, how your feeling of well-being degrades, even how your sleep is disturbed. Studies of executioners, for example, people whose analogous task it is to carry out the death penalty in American prisons, reveal horrible long-term effects on mental health. Life becomes a living hell by the time they retire, even if they are sincere supporters of the death penalty and feel in their heart that they are providing a necessary public service. In the following interchange the Buddha makes a similar and explicit observation:

Yodhajiva: “Lord, I have heard that it has been passed down by the ancient teaching lineage of warriors that ‘When a warrior strives & exerts himself in battle, if others then strike him down & slay him while he is striving & exerting himself in battle, then with the breakup of the body, after death, he is reborn in the company of devas slain in battle.’ What does the Blessed One have to say about that?”
…
Buddha: “When a warrior strives and exerts himself in battle, his mind is already seized, debased, & misdirected by the thought: ‘May these beings be struck down or slaughtered or annihilated or destroyed. May they not exist.’ If others then strike him down and slay him while he is thus striving and exerting himself in battle, then with the breakup of the body, after death, he is reborn in the hell called the realm of those slain in battle.”
SN 42.3

This explains why Right Livelihood is important enough to occupy a whole step on the Noble Eightfold Path. The standard recommendation of Right Livelihood is as follows:

A lay follower should not engage in five types of business. Which five? Business in weapons, business in human beings, business in meat, business in intoxicants, and business in poison. – AN5.177

Notice that here three of the five wrong livelihoods have to do with killing. We could say that both a warrior (soldier) or an executioner deals in weapons. A slaughterhouse employee or a butcher deals in meat. A pesticide salesman or manufacturer deals in poison. Business in human beings refers to the slave or prostitution trade (think of Robert de Niro in The Mission for a good psychological profile). It should be observed that in general enabling or encouraging someone else to break a precept is regarded in Buddhism as a slightly lesser version of personally breaking the precept. So, providing intoxicants or poisons to others indirectly violates the precept against consuming intoxicants that create heedlessness or killing respectively. Business in weapons can similarly include arms dealing or forging of swords, also presumably writing software for missile guidance systems.

This list is not complete, of course. Elsewhere the Buddha states:

And what, monks, is wrong mode of livelihood? Trickery, cajolery, insinuating, dissembling, rapacity for gain upon gain.

This would characterize much of modern business practice and involves habitual wrong speech and taking what is not given. The important thing is to know your mind, become intimate with your mind, understand its moods and leanings and its responses to various influences. How does your mind feel at the end of the day? For instance, in a recent documentary on the health insurance industry in America a woman was interviewed whose job is was to assess applications for private policies in terms of existing conditions and she would frequently have to inform people that they do not qualify, that they, who are most in need of insurance, are uninsurable. She was visibly upset, almost in tears, when she reported this, the she added, “When someone comes in, I don’t want to be friendly, I don’t want to know them, I try just to look at their application.” Now imagine how that will bend her character over five, ten, fifteen, twenty years! Her livelihood does not fall under any of the above, yet it plainly is taking a karmic toll on her. That is what makes it Wrong Livelihood.

For the reader, I think it is important to look frankly at your livelihood. Maybe you are off the hook, but in this day and age Right Livelihood is probably the exception. I used to write software sometimes under Defense Department contracts, including for a project in missile guidance. It ended up being a major factor in why I now do what I do. In complex modern times you have many more reasons for Ejecting certain Elements from the lay life, such as extremely high levels of workplace stress, or mindless zoning out in front of the T.V. (sometimes the two go together). Next week I want to try to wind the Buddha’s concerns forward to the Twenty-First Century.

Last Quarter Moon, July 23 (Index to Series)

As for the qualities of which you may know, ‘These qualities lead to dispassion, not to passion; to being unfettered, not to being fettered; to shedding, not to accumulating; to modesty, not to self-aggrandizement; to contentment, not to discontent; to seclusion, not to entanglement; to aroused persistence, not to laziness; to being unburdensome, not to being burdensome’: You may categorically hold, ‘This is the Dhamma, this is the Discipline, this is the Teacher’s instruction. – the Buddha to Mahapajapati, AN 8.53

If you are like most people your life is a bit busier than you would like: You are passionate, fettered; you have a lot of Stuff, try to be important, are restless, entangled, a bit lazy and possibly a bit of a pain. And since you are reading this essay, you are probably also trying, or intend to try, to fit in a Buddhist practice to top it off.

It should be clear that some pruning is called for if adequate time and energy for Buddhist practice is to be available, both to give space for Buddhist practice and in itself for the very piece of mind that Buddhist practice also encourages. Unfortunately many Buddhist practitioners fail to do much pruning if any, but just add a meditation practice or morning chanting to the top of everything else they do in their frantic lives. This is a mistake: First, it leads to more stress as your life becomes even more cluttered, and, second, it is likely to make your life more fragmented since much of the clutter of your lives is most likely inimical to Buddhist practice. The key word is “Simplify.”

Now monastics are people who go off the deep end over this issue and simply dump the whole mass of entanglement. Lay people are those who need to be more selective, and this is the topic of today’s and next week’s essay. I strongly urge all lay people take this step very seriously. I think someone wise once said, “An unexamined life is not worth living.” Selecting elements to include in our lives is the first step of this examination. What elements of your life are really essential to you? What obligations do you need to keep? What options are there for clearing up the grosser vexations that seem to impinge on your life? In short, how do you want to live your life with Buddhist practice as a prominent element? These choices are up to you and every person will make them differently, even monastics who invariably manage to cling to something. (In my case it is coffee. Oh, and I like to keep in touch with my aging parents and three grown children occasionally.) This is not a one-time task but one that should be visited again and again throughout your practice career. As your practice develops you will find a desire to shed more and more.

Your life is a combination of things you have included because they are important to you, of obligations that you have inherited or that carry over from past decisions and of many many things that though not necessarily desirable to you in themselves are there to support or simply are entailed by the other things you have included in your life. Studying Samsara is a major part of developing Buddhist wisdom. However, most people can begin by making quick progress right away because with bare consideration a lot of things will simply defy rational justification for inclusion in any life. Let’s begin with what should be easy to justify.

Buddhist Elements. Let’s start with the Buddhist values which might be included in the Lay Life.

“Four conditions, Vyagghapajja, conduce to a householder’s weal and happiness in his future life [that is, spiritual rather than material progress]. Which four?

“The accomplishment of faith (saddha-sampada), the accomplishment of virtue (sila-sampada), the accomplishment of charity (caga-sampada) and the accomplishment of wisdom (pañña-sampada).

“What is the accomplishment of faith?

“Herein a householder is possessed of faith, he believes in the Enlightenment of the Perfect One (Tathagata): Thus, indeed, is that Blessed One: he is the pure one, fully enlightened, endowed with knowledge and conduct, well-gone, the knower of worlds, the incomparable leader of men to be tamed, the teacher of gods and men, all-knowing and blessed. This is called the accomplishment of faith.

“What is the accomplishment of virtue?

“Herein a householder abstains from killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, and from intoxicants that cause infatuation and heedlessness. This is called the accomplishment of virtue.

“What is the accomplishment of charity?

“Herein a householder dwells at home with heart free from the stain of avarice, devoted to charity, open-handed, delighting in generosity, attending to the needy, delighting in the distribution of alms. This is called the accomplishment of charity.

“What is the accomplishment of wisdom?

“Herein a householder is wise: he is endowed with wisdom that understands the arising and cessation (of the five aggregates of existence); he is possessed of the noble penetrating insight that leads to the destruction of suffering. This is called the accomplishment of wisdom.

AN 8.54

Often meditation is absent from traditional descriptions of Lay Life, but never excluded. I think the reason is that it is quite time-consuming and produces the best results with sustained uninterrupted effort. The suttas are full of references to monks and nuns who plop themselves down day after day after their noon meal “for the day’s abiding,” a luxury few lay folks could afford. It is surprising that in the busy modern West meditation has become the end-all and be-all of Buddhist practice. I certainly don’t want to discourage it one bit, but would like to underscore the four elements here, which, you will notice, require no particular time commitment, but are to be brought to mind over and over again in the midst of other activities.

Faith is more generally expanded to include the Triple Gem, Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha. We have just completed a series of postings here on faith and its role in Buddhism. Taking the Refuges, spending time with the wise and various devotional practices support the development of faith. Suffice it to say that it will supercharge your practice, for instance, making the other three factors listed here easy to sustain, and make you very pleasant for others to be around.

Just as a large banyan tree, on level ground where four roads meet, is a haven for the birds all around, even so a lay person of faith is a haven for many people: monks, nuns, male lay followers, & female lay followers.– AN 5.38 (Saddha Sutta)

Virtue is most generally defined in terms of precepts for ethical conduct. Accompanying these are the development of kindness and compassion, motivations for benefiting others. These are qualities too rare in our modern age.

Charity, or dana, is probably the most fundamental Buddhist practice. If you want a short-cut to happiness, this is it, just go out and start doing things for other people. It quickly becomes addictive because it feels so good. Most people think they feel they have to take care of their own happiness before they can worry about others, but this is exactly backward.

Generosity is traditionally the life-blood of the Buddhist community and makes temples and monasteries uplifting places to visit. In Buddhism generosity has an institutional form, expressed above in the reference to “alms,” in the uncoersed lay support of monastics. This is what allows monastics to practice full-time, and also supports lay people as well in periodic intensive practice retreats. It expresses the sentiment, “I believe in what you are doing and I want to support it.” Monastics do provide a return in offering teachings and inspiration to lay people — Buddhism would not long survive without that concentrated flame of practice that keeps others heated up — but most lay Buddhists find their offerings are best repaid simply by practicing sincerely, intensely and deeply. The reciprocal is true of monastics. As a monk and a teacher my greatest reward is not in receiving alms but in witnessing that someone has listened to the teachings I offer and then put them to use in their practice.

Wisdom can represent the highest accomplishment of Buddhist practice, in which it is best developed in conjunction with a strong meditation practice. But it is also something that can be developed in everyday life through constant reflection on impermanence and out response to it. Life is full of peril, eventually we lose everything we hold dear, yet the world is renewing itself all the while. We need to learn not to hold on so tightly.

All of these four Buddhist values are supported in a one-stop shopping experience by visiting traditional Buddhist temples, which traditionally also supports the qualities of family outings. This is one of the primary functions of the Uposatha day, to bring the kids, enjoy a potluck, renew the Refuges and Precepts, listen to a Dharma talk, bask in the flow of generosity, and even meditate with the monastics and strong lay practitioners. This piggybacking of Buddhist practice with community life and fun makes for easy integration into the busy lay life. Unfortunately the traditional Buddhist community, which is as far as I can see universal in Buddhist Asia, has been largely neglected in pay-as-you-go Western Buddhism. Part of the reason may be the scarcity of monastics like me, who are generally the spark that sets the community engine into motion. I think Gils Fronsdal, a lay Buddhist teacher in Redwood City, California, seems to have an understanding of the proper role of dana in the Buddhist community and reports delightful results from implementing it. So it may be that developing healthy Buddhist communities is a matter of education. My suggestion for the reader is to encourage your own center to become dana-based, and to become friends with Asian-oriented monasteries near you, in spite of possible linguistic and cultural challenges.

Obligations. These are things you at least feel you do not have a choice about. Nonetheless they can be strong determinants of the way you live your life, and even lock the aspiring monastic into Lay Life against her will. Examples are marriage commitments, support of children or elderly or infirm parents and other relatives, military service and debt. Many people are shocked when they first learn the life of the Buddha that he abandoned a wife and infant son to pursue the holy life. The exact circumstances as opposed to legend may never be clear, but I think this story persists because it functions to open up the possibility of turning your back on obligations in order to pursue a greater value. It is rare for a Buddhist to completely abandon family especially when the family depends on him, but Buddhism opens such things for consideration. Of course the long arm of the law could well put a stop to that. It is notable that in order to ordain as a monastic you have to be free of all debt and also have your parents’ permission.

Fundamental Values. Aside from Buddhist practice, what is really important to you? No, really? This, of course, is a deep question, and also a very personal question. Probably on most people’s short list is:

• Family
• Wealth
• Reputation
• Friendship, romance
• Entertainment
• Luxury

At least common on many people’s list are certainly:

• Football
• Power tools and/or hi-tech gadgetry
• Charitable and compassionate actions and projects
• Intellectual and artistic pursuits
• Celebrity
• Eating
• Sexual conquest
• Alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, etc.
• Sleep
• Communing with Nature
• Hard work, Hard play
• Personal responsibility
• Loyalty to nation or ethnic group
• Honor, courage and being all that you can be, to those drawn to armed service

It might be a helpful exercise to draw up your personal list of values. Keep in mind, these are values, not habits, things that you feel have a critical role in giving your life meaning and zest.

Many of these things will be quite wholesome from a Buddhist perspective, others will be considered unskillful, prone to harm and unhappiness. We’ll try to weed some out and adjust others when we consider Rejecting and Balancing Elements in the Art of Lay Life. As a rule of thumb you can identify the ones that are most problematic in terms of how self-absorbed they are. I can imagine that some of you might have the urge to write down what a first seems like a fundamental value, like gossiping about other people’s hair, only to discover your own embarrassment that you even engage in such a thing. Be aware that you will probably find ways of justifying what is pretty petty in terms of a higher value, such as Truth with specialization in people’s hair. It is probably not one that belongs on your short list.

The point of knowing what your values are is that you can then begin to consider them, then reconsider them, with regard to their advantages, their disadvantages, how they make you feel when you live up to them, what implications they have for other parts of your life, and what motivates your interest in them in the first place. This investigation can, and should, go on for many years in conjunction with the peace of mind and discernment that develops in the course of Buddhist practice. This is the beginning of the study of samsara. Over time you will certainly discover fewer and fewer of these elements that are worth sustaining, as they drop away like old toys from an emerging adolescent. Buddhist wisdom is that there is little worth sustaining, the disadvantages of most things, the pain of attachment, the way they enmesh you further in samsaric existence, in obligation, is just too great a price to pay. All is Aflame, painful to the touch.

If you are like most people there will be some values that stand firm under close scrutiny. Sustaining them is your choice, and that can be a confident choice if you have examined those values closely and find they still speak to you. However there is another dimension of samsara to explore, the dependencies among elements in your life. Everything we bring into our lives comes at a cost, sometimes at an enormous cost, financially, socially, in terms of mental health and so on. Like a well-run corporation we tend to externalize costs in our own minds, that is we see only the attractive side of things but living with the costs. Much of the additional clutter of our lives is the cost we pay for what we value. Renunciation will probably sound like a welcome relief for things like long commutes, debt, chauffeuring of adolescents, the constant ringing of the phone, bills, nagging neighbors, threat of law suits, divorce, keeping up with never-ending housework, but they might not be so easy to remove from your life one by one. Next week we will look at these incidental elements.

In the meantime consider, “What are my most fundamental values in life?” But combine the question with this mantra: “Simplicity.”

New Moon Uposatha, July 15 (Index to Series)

Whether it be a householder or one gone forth, it is the one of right practice that I praise, not the one of wrong practice – SN 45.24

In summary of last week, Buddhism is practiced be different people at many different levels. It is most coherently defined for an endpoint on the scale of practice intensity. That endpoint is represented best by the Buddha. Those who fall short of the Buddha’s practice are not bad Buddhists or lousy practitioners, and should not feel guilty if they have failed to leave their family in order to “go forth” into monastic life, have not given up their livelihood, go to show or even drink a beer.

This is important to understand. In Buddhism our lives should incline toward the endpoint, few will actually get anywhere near the endpoint, at least in this life. This is different from more common religious practice. Islam, for instance, can require good Muslims to bow toward Mecca each day, because although inconvenient virtually everybody can do it and it is wholesome, so it asks people to do more than incline in that direction. Buddhism cannot require that good Buddhists dwell in emptiness for hours every day, because virtually nobody can do it, so it demands of people less than an immediate obligation to do it.

Now there are a variety of Best Buddhist Practices probably all readers have already brought into your lives, such as meditating, chanting, practicing generosity, following precepts, studying and listening to Dharma talks, reading essays like this. However, these compete with everything else in your busy lives that are not inspired by Buddhism, like having fun or working for a living. This raises an important issue in light of the most basic principle of Buddhist practice:

I am the owner of my actions (kamma), heir to my actions, born of my actions, related through my actions, and have my actions as my arbitrator. Whatever I do, for good or for evil, to that will I fall heir… – AN 5.57

This means that your development toward the perfection of character is a product of your actions, all of your actions, of body, speech and mind. Now, practice is actions, including actions of mind during meditation, but everything else you do is also actions and you are heir to that as well. Your path of development does not differentiate one bit what you are doing at work from what we are doing at the local Buddhist center. It is enormously important to be aware of this because our lives easily overwhelm our practice. This can not be overemphasized, so I will belabor this point for the second week in a row with another analogy.

Suppose you are knitting a sweater. You have maybe an hour every evening to work on it, so it takes a number of weeks to complete. You put it aside when you have other things to do and you pick it up again when you return to resume where you left off, and so you make steady progress and never backslide. Practice does not work like this.

Suppose instead that you are knitting a sweater, but you are never allowed to put it aside, you have to wear it, or that part of it that exists, while you are not knitting it. So, if you are washing dishes. making a presentation to the board, changing a flat tire, it is on your body. That is how practice is. This means that practice is easily soiled or unraveled by what you do with the rest of your day.

As Buddhists you can make a very radical choice, and that is to simply empty your lives of everything else in order to devote ourselves purely full-time to Best Buddhist Practices. This is the basis of the monastic life, the renunciate’s life. The reason many make this radical choice is that the Buddhist path is sophisticated, difficult to master, penetrates deeply, really does ask intense and consistent effort, and brings enormous reward. However, this radical choice appeals to relatively few people. Although lay life is a less radical choice it can support a comparably intense and consistent effort, …, if it is implemented properly.

Notice I refer to “monastic life,” rather than “being a nun or monk.” Living a monastic life is different than formal ordination. Formal ordination provides a social context which makes it easy to live a monastic life and plays other critical roles in Buddhism, but life-style is the key consideration in the Art of Lay Life. In fact, there are many formally lay people who live strictly monastic lives and many ordained monastics who manage to avoid a strictly monastic lives, and the fruits of their practice correspond observably to these circumstances. So “monastic life” is relative; some people live more monastically than others; chances are you already live more monastically than your next-door neighbor.

The Art of Lay Life is in essence that of living as monastically as possible with the understanding that your lives will include some elements that are not Best Buddhist Practices. With skill and careful planning the lay life can nonetheless make rapid progress along the Path.

Last week I stated the Art of Juggling. Here is the Art of Lay Life in brief:

The Art of Lay Life.

Select. Choose carefully what elements you want to juggle in your life. Remember that a lay life is a compromise between best Buddhist practices and whatever else you value, feel obligated, or just think of as cool. If you are like most people you already feel your life is too crowded and busy, and now you are trying to find room for Buddhist practice as well. Prune this down and select what is really important.

For instance, “family” is a core value and obligation for perhaps most people. “Success in business,” “personal appearance,” “romance,” “opera,” “football,” might be others. Upholding core values might entail bringing other elements into your life: To support a family you need your job, which maybe happens to be manufacturing landmines for foreign export. When you think about it, you really don’t need to play video games endlessly.

Reject. Now toss everything to the side that you think is important but has no place being juggled in a Buddhist life. Some things do not belong there for ethical reasons; they are significantly harmful. Other things do not belong because they make the mind dangerously vulnerable, either destroying serenity and leading to confusion and ignorance.

For instance, your job manufacturing landmines is clearly Wrong Livelihood, and will weigh on you karmically. Obsessive concern with personal appearance serves an unwholesome sense of self. Start by considering what elements of your life result in violations of precepts, for instance, killing, stealing, lying. Then consider what peace of mind requires. In our modern culture we typically juggle elements that are quite toxic to practice that were totally unknown at the time of the Buddha, such as the unskillful use of electronic media. Some clear choices are critical at this level.

Balance. The remaining elements are reasonably compatible with development along the path if they are skillfully juggled. Now, they can generally actually be shaped into objects of Buddhist practices themselves by tuning your relationship to them.

For instance, we can learn to treat some of the remaining elements in a less self-serving way. Aside from valuing family for its own sake, you may think of family as a means of personal advantage. For instance, having a beautiful wife or husband and children, and a children that has been admitted to Harvard enhances your prestige. A beautiful husband or wife might also improve the level of your sexual pleasure. Often, if your family, especially spouse, fails to meet your needs, divorce ensues. However, you can take all this self-centeredness out of your relation to your family — and similarly out of each of the elements of your life — by developing a sense of complete devotion to your family, which is to treat it as valuable in itself, unquestioned, to rival refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha. Also you can learn to do daily tasks with mindfulness, as a meditation practices and with full awareness of ethical consequences. In short, the things you have chosen to include in your life for other than practice reasons can be turned into practices.

Simplify. In every other way, live like a monastic. Get rid of the clutter, the chatter, the habits and impulses that you would otherwise be juggling with your toes that don’t directly support what you have, through the above process wise reflection, decided to include in your life.

For instance, try to be more of a recluse and don’t spend so much time gossiping, don’t shop impulsively, reduce your expenses and allocation of time for errands, organize your life with these things in mind. You might want to move to a small house in the city to avoid the commute from the suburbs and the heating/air conditioning costs. Give attention to avoiding everything that has the small of “me” in it. Free up time and money by living on less.

In the next weeks we will look at each of these steps — Select, Reject, Balance and Simplify — in turn and in detail.

The key ingredient of any Buddhist life-style, and to the Art of Lay Life is Renunciation. “Renunciation” is not a popular word in Western Buddhism, and most American Buddhist teachers will avoid it. I believe this is because almost everything else in our culture inclines us the other way, to such a degree that the word suggests something subversive. Everyone knows monastics are renunciates, but lay people?

There are two forms of renunciation, mental and physical. We know about letting go of attachments; that is mental renunciation, which can also be described as releasing any personal stake you have in things. What I have been describing above is physical renunciation, giving up actual things and activities. Physical renunciation is what many find most disagreeable. Some teachers will tell you that you don’t need to worry about physical renunciation, it will follow once you master mental renunciation. This has the order reversed.

First, if you read through the monastic precepts, which define what it is to be a monastic, you will find something interesting: They are only about physical renunciation; there is no precept that is about letting go of some thought. This does not mean that beginning monastics have mastered mental renunciation, only that they better do so, or they will be unhappy in their new life.

Second, renunciation in life-critical non-Buddhist contexts do not postpone physical renunciation. Consider giving up a drinking or a smoking habit. It is hardly possible to begin the long process of recovery without first giving up actual physical drinking or smoking at the outset. You don’t begin by working with the mind to first remove all desire to drink or smoke first, all the while continuing to drink or smoke, then expect drinking or smoking to fall away by itself. I think of Buddhist practice as a kind of recovery from generalized substance abuse, as Samsara Anonymous.

Third, physical renunciation is far easier than mental renunciation, and aids the latter. This is actually why monastics and alcoholics first give things up physically, then focus on getting their minds to follow the body’s example. Mental renunciation can be very very hard, and it requires physical help. The same thing is found in meditation practice, in which we mentally renounce the monkey mind, the endless business of thoughts. Notice that it does not work, at least for beginners, to just stop thinking so much, one begins by stilling the body, by finding a comfortable, stable posture, by sitting, for instance, rather than walking or running around. The mind quickly follows the body’s example.

If this is disconcerting, keep in mind that Buddhist practice is as gentle and forgiving as you want it to be. It is not necessary to master the entire Art of Lay Life all at once. The four steps of the process should be gradually iterated into. At first there may be resistance to renouncing wild parties or the enormous prestige you know you are getting from your BMW, as well as a lack of understanding that you might benefit from renouncing these. Well, then at least give up your job working as a hit-man for the mob and become a cobbler. You will notice your meditation improve with time and a sense of well-being settle in. Later on you can revisit the wild parties and the image-enhancing car with a more stable, clearer, more developed mind. My own experience is roughly that I iterated over many years so much that nothing was left, so I became a monk. You don’t have to go that far, but beware that it could happen.