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In Burma and in Thailand it is very common for a man, especially a young man, to ordain as a monk temporarily, often for just a few days. This constitutes a completely valid ordination, going through all the steps, including shaving the head and beginning to wear the robes. But in this case the intention is not to remain a monk for long. Almost all Burmese men are ordained temporarily at some point, and of course many permanently. I don’t think there is temporary ordination for women, since ordination for nuns is a different kind of thing (that is quickly changing in the West, and in Sri Lanka).

Last weekend I participated in a temporary ordination, and next weekend I will participate in another. Next weekend will involve three novices (under 20 years old) and five full monks (bhikkhus), and apparently they will live here at the Vihara for about a week. Interestingly I will be the senior monk from July 26 on, and so I will be responsible for offering them some training, scheduling meditation, etc.  An ordination is an Sangha Action, that is it is actually offered by a group of ordained monks, a sangha, who thereby accept new members.  So when I say I participated, it was as an existing member of a sangha.

I learned a couple of interesting new customs at last week’s ordination ceremony, which I would like to describe here. One is boat ordination, and the other is maidens offering the use of their hair.

A complicated aspect of ordination is that it, as an Act of a Sangha, has to take place within a clearly marked territory, called a sima. This is necessary because all monks within the sima are asked to participate, and monks outside of the sima are presumed to belong to other sanghas. It is all very legalistic. A sima can be a given monastery, it can also be something like the City of Maplewood, with its established boundaries. An ordination requires at least five fully ordained monks, so we generally need to assemble the sangha from more than one monastery, at least in the USA. One way to easily define a sima is simply to have the ordination on a boat, and declare the boat the sima. The acting sangha then consists of any monks who are on the boat. That is what we did last weekend for the temporary ordination ceremony.

We filled a power boat on one of Minnesota’s 10,000 lakes with monks, pushed away from shore and conducted the ordination in the boat. There is actually a part of an ordination ceremony  in which the ordainees and their teacher need to separate themselves from the existing sangha. This was accomplished by using a second boat, which is technically outside the sima of the first boat, but can be steered close enough for monks to hop from one boat to the other and back. Of course the whole scene was quite a curiosity for the other totally uninvolved people who had brought their boats to the lake to fish: a boat crowded with bald, burgundy-robed, chanting monks was more than they expected.

The second custom was enacted after the ordination, on shore. A lot of Burmese came to make offerings to the old and new monks. This takes the form of an alms round, with a long line of people offering various things like toothpaste, snacks, soap, flowers, finally culminating in a lunch lunch offered at a picnic table. The custom I had never seen before was enacted at the beginning of the alms round.

Three young women with long hair knelt, and leaning forward, their foreheads touching the grass, and their hair spread forward across the path the monks were about to walk on. The monks then began the alms round by walking on their hair!  I had to ask what this was about after the event.

Buddhist practice often involves many forms of ritual symbolic offerings. This is as true from my experience in Japanese Zen as in Burmese Theravada. A prime example is a food offering made to a Buddha statue. Such enactments in Buddhism, though symbolic, have a quite practical purpose: they bring forth positive states of mind which are reinforced through the mindfulness of ritual. So, for instance, although there is no Buddha actually there as a recipient to receive a food offering, the enactment of the donation creates merit for the donor. This means it actually helps the donors character develop karmically in a positive direction. This is the logic of symbolic offerings.

The maidens offering their hair in this way is apparently a reenactment of a Sir Walter Raleigh-like story of someone who did this with hair rather than with cloak, presumably for the Buddha so that he wouldn’t soil or dampen his feet. For the maidens it produces merit, as in a food offering. However in this case the offering is symbolic not because there are no recipients for the donation (we monks were the recipients), but rather because nothing was actually offered (our feet were in no real danger of becoming soiled for want of hair). Mostly the whole thing was fun.

Uposatha Day Teaching

During each of the last eight Uposatha Days we have taken up a successive step on the Noble Eightfold Path, the Buddha’s checklist for Buddhist practice, the path to the Perfection of the Human Character. Each step has been described concisely, in fact too briefly to do full justice. But I hope I have managed to convey three things: First is the reason behind each fold in the path. I’ve tried to make a clever concrete analogy with the training of a master craftsperson, a potter, wherever possible. Second is a handle on practice. The Noble Eightfold Path is very practical, and is almost entirely about action, action of body, speech and mind, which you can practice with and observe throughout the day, not just on the cushion. And third is an appreciation of the way all of the steps form an integrated whole, none working independently of the others. This appreciation should be an inducement to treat all of the steps as roughly equivalent in worth, not to neglect one in favor of another. This is the value of the checklist format of the Noble Eightfold Path; it is helpful to review the eight steps periodically and consider what you are doing to uphold each step. And continue to receive instruction and to practice diligently each of the steps.

How the trainings in the path work together.

The Perfection of the Human Character happens at three levels. Our actions form habit patterns, our habit patterns solidify into our character. Through Ethical Conduct we transform our actions directly, and through Cultivation of Mind we transform our habit patterns. However this will go only so far, because we generally continue to have very recalcitrant ways of cognizing and perceiving the world and our situation that will inhibit liberation at a very fundamental level. Through Wisdom we transform the most recalcitrant delusive views. For instance, and this is the most important instance, most of us have this very pronounced view that we are a separate self, and that is always an impediment to perfecting virtue. Most fundamentally this entails that we misperceive the world because of a consant bias in favor of this self. Nevertheless, through the practice of Ethical Conduct we can behave toward others as if that self were not there, by not stealing, by not harming, and so on. Through the practice of Cultivation of mind we can mitigate the affective mental factors that manifest that self and try to take control of our actions, that is, we can learn to put aside greed, anger and so on, that arise in the self’s quest for personal advantage. Now, all of this will tend to loosen the iron grip of the self, but not eliminate it. Through the practice of Wisdom we get at the most recalcitrant views, especially this view of the self.

How the path deepens Right View.

It is at this point we should reveal that the Eightfold path is not linear, and in fact among its many loops, Right Concentration brings us right back to Right View, from whence the path began. On the basis of a steady, pure and aware mind we gain Insight, a kind of Right View that is much more profound that the teachings we began with. To understand Insight, consider what the potter knows. The potter goes beyond mere conceptualizations of his domain and learns the materials and tools by feel or intuition, in ways that cannot readily be put into words. In fact, much of what the potter knows from experience is known not by the brain but by the fingers. By the same token, the greater part of Right View is a direct experience of the way things are, unmediated by conceptual thought. When we got into the path we found ourselves actually working with the material of life, just as the potter works with his or her materials and tools. Very prominent in the Buddhist path is the mind itself, which is the primary material we work with. This is made possible through the cumulative contributions of all of the folds of the Noble Eightfold Path that together support a mind that is utterly steady, pure, beyond manipulation and the filter of self-concern, beyond excuses , preconceptions or even opinions, simply open and aware.

What is it that the Buddhist practitioner becomes aware of? In short, the three marks of existence: impermanence, suffering and selflessness. We become aware of a world in constant flux, where changes propagate continuously through an ever evolving network of contingencies, in which we seek in vain for any semblance of solid ground, any constant we can grab onto. But as soon as we grasp something we think we can rely on it begins to melt away in the constant flux of existence. It is painful when our hopes and plans cannot keep pace with reality. What we seek more than anything in this flowing network of contingencies is a self, a constant reference point, a lasting identity, and trying to hold on to this becomes the most painful thing of all. No wonder we had always felt so insecure and anxious. The only way out is for our minds to become as open and as fluid as the world.

Where the Path Leads.

I’ve described the path as leading (in spite of its loops) to the perfection of human character. It has been described in alternative ways, but these are equivalent. It has been described as the path that leads to the end of karma (and thereby of the cycle of rebirths), to the realization of emptiness and to the end of suffering. These descriptions are respectively from the behavioral, cognitive and emotive perspectives associated with the trainings in Ethical Conduct, Wisdom and Cultivation of Mind. The difference between these perspectives sometimes raises the question of whether we practice for ourselves or for others. The answer is that we always practice in spite of ourselves, the practice always mitigates the influence of the delusion of a separate self. This has consequences at the same time for the harm one does to oneself and the harm one does to others. If I advise you to drive carefully, to make sure your windshield is not frosty, to make sure your breaks are in order, to avoid cell-phone or intoxicant use while driving, and so on, I can justify this in either of two ways, by adding either, “… or else you might injure yourself,” or, “… or else you might injure someone.” The fact is, a car not in control is a dangerous thing, and a mind not in control is a dangerous thing (in road rage we find both). This is why we follow the Noble Eightfold Path.

I just posted a new essay, or actually a collection of essays at this site. Please see:

Up to the Land of the Chopstick and Over to the Land of the Fork

• India.
• China
• America
• Future

Also, you might want to check out my last essay:

Science and Vinaya

Uposatha Day Teaching for the Full Moon

Right Mindfulness is perhaps the best known of the Eight Folds of the Noble Path. But few understand exactly what mindfulness is.

Let’s look in on our master potter once again. There he is spinning a pot on the potters wheel, with his eyes fixed on his fingers, and his fingers carefully and slowly shaping the clay. We notice that he is not listening to music in his studio. His cell phone rings and he ignores it, in his mind just notes that it rang and lets it go. Suddenly there is a loud pop, the door of his kiln flies open and flames shoot out. He carefully removes his fingers from the clay without disturbing what he has acheived so far, carefully detaches the fire extinguisher from the wall and advances to the site of the new mishap.

Mindfulness is simply to remember what it is you are doing, it is staying on task or taking up a new task at the proper time. It is an extremely important skill , in fact it underlies almost any other skill. In Buddhist training we cultivate mindfulness as the basis of all of the other factors of the path. The opposite of mindfulness is distraction, so we can think of mindfulness as a kind of guard for the senses and for what arises in the mind. It is the nose in the little slot on the door of a speakeasy that demands a password. Many people think of mindfulness as awareness, but actually it is more a matter of choosing what to be aware of.

How do we train ourselves to be mindful? Seated meditation is the simplest way. In meditation you are given a task, most generally to focus the attention on some object. For instance, your task might be to focus on the breath. We quickly discover that this is difficult, because the mind wants to wander off to more interesting or pressing things. We forget, sometimes for minutes at a time, but when we remember we bring the mind back to the breath. We are practicing mindfulness, or failing to practice it as the case may be. The breath is the only thing that should know the password, but we get distracted. With practice we actually get very good at it; we still get distracted but only for seconds rather than minutes at a time, and less and less frequently.

The beginning meditator is surprised and delighted to discover that the ability to stay mindful carries over to other tasks off of the cushion, generally to simple clearly defined physical tasks which do not require much thought. In fact, a lot of the things a potter does. For instance, if you are cutting potatoes that can be a mindfulness opportunity. Keep you mind on the cutting and nothing else for the few minutes you are engaged in this task. In fact, make the task a little more challenging: try to cut the potatoes into pieces of equal size; if you drop your mindfulness the sizes will drop their uniformity.

Mindfulness becomes difficult when there is too much going on at once: when the kids are barking at you, the dog needs a ride to his piano lesson, the TV is trying to sell you something that is whiter than white, your cell phone is ringing and you don’t know how you are going to pay the mortgage. So, we cultivate simplicity wherever we can. This tends to reduce potential distractions. One way we can do this is by actually simplifying our lives: don’t make too many commitments, don’t live beyond our means (don’t have debt), don’t own a lot of things that just clutter up our living spaces, and require cleaning and maintenance. Another way is to make a habit of doing one thing at a time; yes you can give up your addiction to multitasking. If you are working in the kitchen, DON’T listen to the radio. DON’T leave the TV on all the time. DON’T talk on the phone while driving. The basis of Soto Zen meditation is shikan, “just.” Shikantaza, for instance is meditation, just sitting, and in fact in this technique we simply let go of everything that arises that is not sitting, even the breath. For many a daily task X we can practice shikan-X: just walking, just chopping potatoes, just brushing teeth, even just driving when you get good at mindfulness. This is great mindfulness practice.

Another way to create opportunities for mindfulness is to have something to be mindful of. Mindfulness is remembering what we are doing, so it is important to be able to define exactly what it is we are doing. We actually spend a lot of time not knowing what we are doing and hoping something important will come to snatch us away from it. Instead, ritualize your activities. Religious rituals are very good for mindfulness practice, that is probably their main function: in a religious ritual there is no doubt about what you should be doing when (unless you have not learned the ritual functions, in which case you are on the spot because you know others have no doubt about what you should be doing when). However everyday activities can be ritualized: Get up at the same time, do the morning things in exactly the same order every morning, etc. A blanket rule is often taught in Japanese Zen: Leave No Trace. This means, if you cook, then you have to clean up. If you sit down to write letters then you have to put your things away before you move on to the next things. This creates automatic clarity about what your task is, and how thoroughly you should perform that task: NO trace. Cleanliness is Next to Godliness, as many Christians are aware. Why? Because it gives a great opportunity to cultivate mindfulness. If you finish sleeping, it is time to make the bed. At the completion of every task, check to make sure it is really complete. This means that if you open a door, walk through it and close the door, you should make sure the door is really securely closed. You can use your own imagination to find ways to ritualize your day.

We live in a culture that actually discourages mindfulness. We love to multitask and think that life is boring if a lot of things are not going on at once. We get addicted to the dispersed mind. This is not a Buddhist way of being, which is to relish simplicity. We love to drink alcohol, which disperses the mind so much we forget our cares, often while fostering new ones. Most of what we call modern conveniences are actually just ways to avoid being mindful. For instance, we have different buzzers that go off to remind us of something we would otherwise have had to be mindful about, such as fastening a seat belt. We think ritual is boring in our culture. When we walk through a door our minds are already on the other side before we even touch the door. Where did our task go?

One of the most important of the Buddha’s teachings is the Foundations of Mindfulness Sutta, which is the basis of Insight Meditation or Vipassana. In this the Buddha recommends the cultivation of mindfulness in attending to specific objects of meditation that foster penetrating insight into the nature of reality, that is a direct experience of Right View. These include mindfulness of breath, mindfulness of elements, of skandhas, of states of consciousness, of phenomena and so on, particuarly with regard to arising and falling.

An Uposatha Day teaching for the First Quarter Moon.

We don’t like to think Buddhist practice takes effort. Buddhism abounds with metaphors that might suggest it doesn’t, some traditional images and some new marketing slogans such as being already enlightened, realizing your own nature. It is true that our characters are bursting with possibilities many of which come forth when left alone. Our task is like that of a gardener, one pulls out the unskillful weeds and waters the skillful flowers, shrubs, vegetables and herbs and thereby give the desired shape to the garden. Right Resolve and Right Effort are the bookends to the Ethical Conduct Group. Right Resolve is the outline of how we conduct ourselves in the world, selflessly, with kindness and with compassion. Right Speech, Action and Livelihood are our proper verbal and physical activities. Right Effort drops down to the level of intention, the mental qualities we bring into our activities. These mental factors, like the actions they may give rise to, are sorted in terms of skillful and unskillful.

We have seen that actions of body and Speech fall under the term Karma. We need to learn a bit more about karma, in particular that there are purely mental actions as well. Karma comes in three flavors, those of Body, Speech and Mind. Actions of mind do not directly work on the world, but always work on shaping character. For instance, you might be angry at someone, so you daydream of all the ways you can gain revenge, through malicious gossip, by stealing their cell phone, and so on. Even if you do not put these things into verbal or bodily action, these thoughts are Karma and have karmic consequences for the shaping of your character. You can turn yourself into a vengeful person simply by entertaining such thoughts if you do so habitually enough. Right Effort is itself manifested in Karma, in weeding and cultivating the mind, mental actions which have intentions behind them.

What are the skillful and unskillful mental factors? How do we recognize the weeds? The answer is in the roots: The unskillful mental factors are those rooted in Greed, Hatred or Delusion, the infamous Three Poisons in Buddhist doctrine. However, you don’t need to take the Buddha’s word for this, in fact you shouldn’t. It is important to study the various mental factors that arise in the mind until you understand why the Buddha classified them in this way. The fact is, in many cases you will almost certainly disagree at first, and maybe never fully agree. For instance, Anger falls under the category of Hatred. Most people think of Anger as necessary as a motivator to fix what needs fixing (Where’s the Outrage? Alright, no more Mr. Nice Guy.). Consider this, because it is not the view of the Buddha or of untold generations of Buddhist practitioners throughout the centuries. Or lust, including for instance sexual or culinary delight, falls under Greed. Most people think of lust as the spice of life, as necessary to keep life from being dull. The Buddha himself reported that it was particularly difficult for him to see the downside of sensual pleasures, yet he finally came to regard these too as unskillful. Basically, when you look at these things, and this is a matter of developing Right View, consider two things. First, when the mental factor arises, is there suffering around it, that is, does stress or anxiety arise inseparably with the mental factor. You will be surprised how ubiquitous suffering is when you start looking, even when you think you are having fun. Second, when you allow that mental factor to give rise to an action of body or mind, are the consequences of that action desirable? How does the action play out in the world, is anyone hurt? How does it feel to yourself? Do you regret the action, does it feel right? Become an ardent student of these issues! Italian opera is a particularly useful resource in examining the unskillful qualities of lust. Unless you are a monk or nun you will probably set your own parameters around the range of Right Effort then focus on those unskillful mental factors that are particularly vexing in your life and on those skillful mental factors that you value when you see them in others.

Right Effort provides the energy of practice. Every time there is resistance to Right Anything, then Right Effort is called for. If it is time to meditate and you are just to lazy, laziness is to be weeded out and ardency needs to be watered. If you really want to eat Ted’s cookie and are about to snatch it when he is not looking, greed is to be weeded, contentment watered. Often the effort required is enormous; you may be dealing with ingrained habits or natural instinctive behaviors. There are some standard mental techniques involved in Right Effort, but you will probably discover some of your own, from substituting another thought for the one you are entertaining, to deconstructing your present thought, from changing your perspective or conceptualization of the situation, to bringing the thought into the focus of attention until it dissipates of itself. By the way, Guilt is always considered unskillful in Buddhism; Shame is OK, but Guilt is a form of Hatred. Don’t be guilty about what arises in your mind, but do recognize if for what it is and try to move it in a more skillful direction.

Right Effort is the first member of the Mental Cultivation Group of the Noble Eightfold Path. The other members of this group are Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration. Each of these folds is best practiced in seated meditation, walking meditation or one of the recognized postures of meditation. You can think of each of these postures as a laboratory for working with mental factors in a pure state, free from most worldly concerns and from the demands of verbal and bodily actions. In fact if you can embed this little laboratory in a remote and quite setting where you can dwell for days, weeks or months, perhaps with other meditators, that is ideal. However, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration are also practices you can engage in throughout your day. This is particularly important for Right Effort, since the everyday activities and interactions present abundant situations in which factors such as anger, lust, deluded views, fear, stress, envy, jealousy, spite, restlessness, anxiety, arrogance, pride, and on and on, will arise. At the same time, Right Effort is the basis of the Mental Cultivation Group and of seated meditation. Meditation is often hindered by out thoughts of lust and anger, by sloth and torpor, by restlessness and be moments of doubt in the efficacy of practice. All of these are unskillful factors that call for some light weeding as one settles into meditation.

On this First Quarter Moon day, take a few minutes, sit down in a quiet spot and close your eyes. What thoughts come up? Is there anger, anxiety, restlessness? Is there an unsatisfied longing? Is there joy, appreciation, kindness? See if you can catch one of these thoughts and hold it for a moment. Does it feel painful or unsatisfying? Is this thought asking anything of you? Then try to catch another and another, answer the same questions.

Noble Eightfold Path: Right Speech

To bring the new reader up to date, the Noble Eightfold Path is the Buddha’s master checklist on the path to the perfection of character. The eight folds fall into three groups or trainings, the Wisdom Group, the Ethical Conduct Group and the Cultivation of Mind Group. In the past two posts I have described the Wisdom Group, and today I will begin the Ethical Conduct Group.

On the Noble Eightfold Path we are acquiring skills, the skills to live a virtuous life. In analogy, a potter also needs certain skills. Among these are the actual actions to take in making a pot, for instance, shaping the pot on the potter’s wheel, adding an ornamental handle, firing, putting on the glaze, and there are skilled ways of doing these things and unskillful ways. These are like the Buddhist Ethical Conduct Group

In the last episode we discussed Right Resolve. Right Resolve is the factor of Wisdom that gives the character its basic shape. It is a character of Virtue, that is, of Renunciation, of Goodwill and of Harmlessness. This is one’s resolve. Ethical Conduct, also called the training in Virtue or Morality, is the steps one takes in actually fashioning the shape of one’s character, through Right Speech, Right Action and Right Livelihood.

Under Right Speech one undertakes:

• not to lies,
• not to slander,
• not to speak harshly and
• not to chatter idly.

These are stated as abstentions. This is typical in teachings on Buddhist Ethical Conduct, but instead, out of kindness and compassion one tells the truth when someone needs to know it, one speaks well of others, one uses kind words, and one observes Noble Silence otherwise..

The Conduct Group presents in outline form a moral code. It should be understood that morality in Buddhism has a different foundation than morality in the Abrahamic religions, in which morality comes down from God, for instance, through the Ten Commandments given to Moses. In Buddhism morality is always a personal choice, it is a matter of vow. There is a recognition that one will continue to suffer and cause suffering for others to the extent that one’s character has yet to be perfected. But morality is not something imposed, but rather is a matter of personal commitment, and that is where the focus is, on one’s own actions, not on others’, which you cannot really control in any case. The world is not a battleground of Good and Evil, it is people doing what they can. Every person has the potential to be skillful or to be unskillful in conduct. If my resolve is to be a person of Renunciation, Goodwill and Harmlessness, then Right Speech, Right Action and Right Livelihood are how I manifest this. In practice this is surprisingly effective in producing virtuous behavior even without God or Santa Claus watching one’s every move: Buddhist counties tend to have very low crime rates. In Burma I was impressed by how safe you and your possessions are. There is very little violent crime, for instance, providing you don’t get in the government’s way. It is relatively safe to leave a bicycle unlocked, and that in a desperately poor country with little police presence.

It is important to appreciate how much emphasis he Buddha places on Right Speech: a lot. This is true in many of the Suttas and in the Vinaya, and this is probably why it comes as the very first in the Conduct Group. In is easy to think that speech is relatively harmless when compared to actions. We all know expressions like, “Sticks and Stones may Break my Bones but Words will Never Hurt me,” and “Actions Speak Louder than Words,” But consider that racism, sexism, nationalism and eventually war and ethnic cleansing are all driven by many acts of Wrong Speech. We use speech as vengeance, to turn one person or group against another, to deceive and manipulate, and get people to buy things. Lying in particular undermines our trust in each other, which a society requires to function. In this modern Communication Age Right Speech has become even more critical as it finds expression through so many media and the speech of each of us can easily reach mass audiences. Given a few advances in technology since the Buddha’s day, “Speech” now includes the written word, blogs, videos, radio broadcasts and maybe even pantomime. Speech can also be passive; watching talk shows generally constitutes being a party to idle chatter.

Unfortunately Right Speech in the Communication Age seems to be rarer than it should be. Lies, often quite blatant, distortions and exaggeration, slander and character assassination, harsh speech and insult, frivolous chatter and gossip are matters of daily consumption. There is a simple principle if you want to live in an environment of Right Speech: Turn It Off!

Throughout this uposatha day, the day of the full moon, I suggest you pay attention to your speech and the speech of others. If you are like most people you will begin to catch yourself speaking badly of others, really for no productive reason and with a bit of anger or hatred, or at least as an reflection of the endless chatter of a very busy mind.