My brother emailed me the other day, prompting me to go off on a tangent about the Buddhist idea of impermanence.

He said:

“[When living on a boat] you really learn to appreciate the small things. Like grapes. They taste better when you’re on a boat. Because you realize once they’re gone, you don’t get any more until you pull in again.”

His statement illustrates one positive result of a well cultivated understanding of impermanence—because you know something won’t last forever, you can appreciate it more while you have it.

Some of my older posts, like the ones about suffering and attachment or the Four Noble Truths, mention impermanence without going too deep. Since impermanence is one of Buddhism’s core concepts, I thought I should give it a closer look.
Read the rest of this entry »

The focus of Buddhist teaching, as we’ve discussed, is on suffering—from where it originates, and how it can be overcome.

Suffering

My understanding is that the suffering with which buddhism is concerned is generally of the mental variety rather than the physical. Certainly physical pain isn’t merely some illusion of the mind (though the point is probably open for argument), but results from some specific internal or external cause. Whether you’ve stubbed your toe, broken your collarbone, or have some painfully debilitating condition, physical suffering can be difficult or nearly impossible to escape from or ignore.

Read the rest of this entry »

I am not certain of the pedigree of the Koan, but am familiar with it primarily as a feature of Zen practice. Essentially, a koan is a word, phrase, anecdote, or story which is intended to illustrate a particular point, or which is intended to, by virtue of it’s profundity or logical disconnection, trigger at least a momentary glimpse of awakening in the student.

Obviously, there is quite a bit of context underlying the above paragraph, which I am not going to get into in this post, but I do encourage you to investigate Zen further if you are so inclined. Zen is a fascinating branch of Buddhism in it’s own right, and is probably one of the more “commonly known” forms here in the States.

What I do want to do here, is feature one of my favorite koans. It takes the form of a story:

Read the rest of this entry »

Of all the teachings of the Buddha, the core and seed is the Four Noble Truths. These comprise a statement of the problem, the nature of the problem, the hope of a resolution to the problem, and the means of reaching that resolution.

As a religion born out of the Hindu tradition, Buddhism’s chief concern is with ending the cycle of rebirth—of reaching nirvana. This might also be expressed as enlightenment, or the universality or end of self.

Simply stated, the Four Noble Truths are these:

1. There is suffering;
2. there is a cause or origin of suffering;
3. there is an end to suffering;
4. and there is a path to the end of suffering.

Read the rest of this entry »

A friend commented on my Facebook link to the last post Why I Can’t Be Buddhist, saying that pretty much everyone could benefit from a bit of “mindfulness” in their daily lives.

I’m going to write more about the idea of mindfulness later, both generally, and specifically as something to be cultivated through a meditative practice, but I was struck by something a little while ago as I was reading a magazine article, that I’d like to share. Think of it as a little introductory nugget for you to ruminate on.

Mindfulness is essentially self-awareness, and specifically self-awareness within the present moment. As I was reading the article, initially I was fully involved with it, digesting the words and meaning as is kind of the whole point of reading. I didn’t realize, however, that at some point, I had stopped paying attention–my eyes were still scanning the page, seeing the words, but my mind was wandering, thinking along some tangential path the text had sent it down. Suddenly, I noticed that I wasn’t paying attention, and my focus snapped back to the words on the page while my brain re-routed itself back to the present moment.

It was in that moment, those few seconds when my brain yanked back on its own chain, that I was experiencing mindfulness–a non-judgmental self-awareness of myself as a thinking being. That kind of mindfulness, of course, is fleeting, and it evaporated as soon as I’d labeled it and moved on to thinking about writing this post.

So, there’s a shallow taste of what it means to be mindful. Perhaps you’ll catch yourself in several such moments today as well.