Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh, now 83 years old, is a Vietnamese Zen Buddhist teacher, author, poet, and peace activist. During the Vietnam War, he started the School of Youth for Social Service (SYSS), a neutral corps of Buddhist peaceworkers who went into rural areas to establish schools, build healthcare clinics, and help re-build villages. Because he refused to take sides during the war, he was subsequently exiled by the Vietnamese government. Later, in 1967, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

My introduction to Thây, as he is often called, was in 1996, when I transcribed some of his talks for Parallax Press. At first I could hardly understand a word he said, but after a while I began to attune to his accent and found the act of transcribing his words became a meditation in itself.

This quote comes from one of his first books, Peace Is Every Step (Bantam Books, 1991).

We must be aware of the real problems of the world. Then, with mindfulness, we will know what to do and what not to do to be of help. If we maintain awareness of our breathing and continue to practice smiling, even in difficult situations, many people, animals, and plants will benefit from our way of doing things. Are you massaging our Mother Earth every time your foot touches her? Are you planting seeds of joy and peace? I try to do exactly that with every step, and I know that our Mother Earth is most appreciative. Peace is every step. Shall we continue our journey?

Our friend Maia Duerr at the brand new, super-cool blog The Jizo Chronicles brings us the news that “the European Parliament overwhelmingly passed a resolution condemning the violence against Bat Nha monks and nuns and calling on Vietnam to curb its violations of freedom of expression, freedom of religion and freedom of assembly and respect its human rights commitments and Vietnam’s own Constitution.”

For those unfamiliar, here’s the story again, very quickly: The Bat Nha Monastery outside of Hanoi was until recently housing members of Thich Nhat Hanh’s Order of Interbeing.  The temple itself is not affiliated with Nhat Hanh’s movement, however, but with the official Buddhist Church of Vietnam. Following Nhat Hanh’s return to his homeland in 2005, the abbot at Bat Nha invited Order of Interbeing members to study and teach at the temple. The Order spent upwards of $1 million on new land and buildings at the monastery so that they might have appropriate space to do their work and not interfere with the other trainings taking place at Bat Nha. Then, presumably upset with some of Nhat Hanh’s outspokeness on several hot-button political issues, local authorities cut off water, electricity, and telephones to the group. Then things turned violent. International concerns about religious freedom have long confronted the Vietnamese leaders, who responded to criticism about the situation at Bat Nha Monastery, saying they only want to “manage” Nhat Hanh’s community, not “control” it.

In addition to this news from Maia, our dear friend Erica Hamilton points us to the following video:

Since June, 400 monks and nuns at Bat Nha Monastery in Vietnam have been harassed by the government. The situation has gotten worse of the past few months, with more than 300 of the monks and nuns (many of them followers of Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh) violently expelled from the monastery in September. More background on the situation is available here.

According to a press release issued on November 26, “the European Parliament overwhelmingly passed a resolution condemning the violence against Bat Nha monks and nuns and calling on Vietnam to curb its violations of freedom of expression, freedom of religion and freedom of assembly and respect its human rights commitments and Vietnam’s own Constitution.”

If you want to take action on this issue, take a look at this page from the Help Bat Nha Monastery website.

A dear friend gifted me this wonderful Michael Hunt Bandana Pottery mug while I was on the road.  Nice to have it home and pressed into service.

My collection continues to bring me joy.  I’ve just added a healthy handful of pots to the stacks and they make me so thankful to be a part of our clay world.

The studio is a bit creaky these days – here is a little investigation from the past couple days:

I also wanted to share this bit of a poem with you today:

How marvelous is the reality of the present moment!  Each leaf is a universe of taste, scent, and memories.  Each one is a unique world, both spiritual and temporal.  A single leaf encompasses the entire universe.  We tremble at this revelation that inspires great devotion.  We bow in front of the miracle of this manifistation.  We no longer dare neglect the smallest thing: leaf, stone, or fragrence.

from The Little Buffalo in Pursuit of the Sun

~Thich Nhat Hanh

Listening with the heart of a Buddha

One of the practices that my heart teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, stresses is listening deeply.  This kind of listening involves the whole heart and complete presence.  It means really being there for the other person, putting aside all our self-defenses and self-interests, and really listening.   Of course, this requires great empathy, but also mindfulness, so that we do get caught up in or overwhelmed by what is said.

In Buddhism, this kind of listening is exemplified in the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara.  One of most widely revered bodhisattvas in Mahayana Buddhism, this Buddha is also depicted in female form as Guan Yin, or Kwan Yin.  In Tibetan Buddhism, this compassionate listener to the suffering of the world is called Chenrezig.

Anyone can learn to be a skillful listener

By whatever name, this bodhisattva exemplifies a kind of skillful listening that anyone can aspire to and learn how to do.  Even if we are a lousy listener, this can change. All it takes is the aspiration to be able to listen in a healing way and to then to practice.

If we find it difficult to listen compassionately and patiently to the woes of others, we can almost be certain this is because we haven’t been able to sit still and listen to our own heart’s cries.  If we don’t listen to our own needs, if we don’t listen deeply to the cries of our own hearts, how can we do that skillfully for others?

Listening to others, listening to ourselves—one thing

So while we shouldn’t put off the practice of listening deeply to others, we should also make sure that we practice listening to ourselves skillfully in our meditation and metta practice.  You will find, as I have, that love for ourselves enables love for others, and that love for others, helps us love ourselves.

At the deepest level, there’s no difference between the two—love of self is love of others; love of others really is love of oneself. Listening deeply to our own hearts is listening to the cries of the world; hearing the cries of the world is listening to our own hearts.

In the excerpt below, Thich Nhat Hanh focuses on how family members can learn to listen deeply to each other, but the skill can be practiced in any relationship.

~

Living together in Harmony

by Thich Nhat Hanh

“Listening deeply is something we have to learn to do—we can’t do it just like that. When the other person is talking he or she is trying to express his or her difficulties and sufferings, and needs us to listen to that. But if we are not capable of listening, then the person who is speaking will not feel any relief in his or her suffering, and will finally give up talking.”

“People who have suffering, who have feelings hidden deep in their hearts, which they have not been able to express, they need an opportunity to express this suffering, and if no one sits to listen to them, how can they have that opportunity to express these hidden feelings of suffering? Therefore we need to practice looking deeply into that person, and that is the way to show that we love them.”

Deep listening in a family

“If we are a father and we want to listen to our children, we can sit alongside our child in silence, and then we say: ‘My dear child, please tell me, do you have any difficulties? Do you have any suffering? Please tell me. I want to listen so I can see if I can help you at all.’ So the father says this with his heart.”

“And if we are a wife, and we know our husband has sufferings and difficulties which he has not been able to talk about, we go to our husband, and sit silently, very freshly, alongside him, and then we say: ‘My dear husband, do you have any suffering? Do you have any difficulties hidden in your heart? Please let me know about them.’ The wife must say that.”

“If we are a husband or a father and we have suffering—and we all have suffering; some of us have a great deal, some of us have a little—when the other person says that to us, we see we have an opportunity to say what we want to. At first it’s difficult for us to say it. No one has tried to listen to us before, and now when somebody invites us to speak like that, we’re not sure if we really believe it.”

“But the wife, or whoever asks the question, should be patient and say, ‘Please, please tell me. It may be because of my un-skillfulness, my foolishness, that you suffer, and I want to hear this. Please tell me if I do anything foolish or clumsy which makes you suffer. I promise that I will sit by you very calmly and silently and listen, because I am practicing as a student of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara. I will not judge, I will not react, I will not be angry.’”

“We all have to practice in the family: mother, father, and child. We can’t just listen deeply because we want to do it, we have to practice first…”

Excerpts from a talk called “Living Together in Harmony” given on July 19, 1998, Plum Village, France

‘If in our daily life we can smile, if we can be peaceful and happy, not only we, but everyone will profit from it. This is the most basic kind of peace work.’

- Thich Nhat Hanh

This is something I wrote out this time last year and I wanted to post it again! Enjoy…

Around the holidays our daily lives tend to become chaotic, plans don’t materialize the way we had foreseen, and unexpected events always pop up to put a kink in our flow. It’s also a time when the media is harder to escape. Our minds are flooded with advertisements and all kinds of marketing pulling us out of balance while we already have so many tasks to think about. All this dispersion of the mind can really begin to show itself as the holidays near and company arrives. What is supposed to be a warm and festive few months with family slowly evolves into a headache. 
I just finished reading Thich Nhat Hanh’s “Miracle of Mindfulness” and it was the perfect read for the moments before the holiday season. The book is about a type of meditation Hahn has named “mindfulness”. Before you begin to think, “There’s no way in hell I have time to pull out a cushion and candles to meditate when I have SO MANY THINGS TO DO!” just hear me out. This meditation isn’t about sitting for hours in silence contemplating rainbows and rivers, although Hanh certainly offers mindful exercises in stillness. Mindfulness is all about ACTIVE meditation, the kind of meditation we all need right? Because our lives are busy but we still deserve sanity! Okay so how do you become mindful? Hanh says… start with being present in each moment. Because, “each act is a rite”
“The Miracle of Mindfulness” is all about making the most important moment the present moment. If you are washing dishes then you should wash the dishes with purpose and only think of that action. Don’t think about what you’ll be doing afterwards or what might have occurred in the past. Stay in the present moment and if you find your mind wandering…focus on your breath! The book really emphasizes listening to your breathing at any time during your day to calm your mind and stay alert and aware in each moment. The goal is to minimize dispersion of mind and make life a little less chaotic. Don’t we all want that for the holidays?! Or EVERY DAY for that matter! Below I have posted an excerpt from the book, but it really is just one of the many golden nuggets! I hope you all have a pleasant and mindful holiday season!

While washing the dishes one should only be washing the dishes, which means that while washing the dishes one should be completely aware of the fact that one is washing the dishes. At first glance, that might seem a little silly: why put so much stress on a simple thing? But that’s precisely the point. The fact that I am standing there and washing these bowls is a wondrous reality. I’m being completely myself, following my breath, conscious of my presence, and conscious of my thoughts and actions. There’s no way I can be tossed around mindlessly like a bottle slapped here and there on the waves(4).

Embrace it, Don’t Fight it!

“You have to generate the energy of mindfulness, which is also you, and that positive energy will do the work of recognizing and embracing. Every time you embrace your habit energy, you can help it to transform a little bit. The habit energy is a kind of seed within your consciousness, and when it becomes a source of energy, you have to recognize it.”

“You have to bring your mindfulness into the present moment, and you just embrace that negative energy: ‘Hello, my negative habit energy. I know you are there. I am here for you.’ After maybe one or two or three minutes, that energy will go back into the form of a seed, in order to re-manifest itself later on. You have to be very alert.”

excerpt from: Taming Elephants-How To Transform Negative Habit Energies

A new archive of dharma talks by Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh

• http://tnhaudio.org/

- – - – - – - -

For other dharma talks and transcripts archived, check out:

• http://dpcast.org/
• http://langmai.org/
• http://plumvillage.org/

Thank you to Thay and the wonderful Sangha for continuing to turn the Dharma wheel always, in all ways!

A deep bow for the nourishment I receive in hearing the Dharma…

Santi,

Jnaseh

How Buddhists Give Thanks at Meals

Every day Buddhists all over the world recite “The Five Contemplations” at mealtime.  These five simple sentences have endured for over twenty-five centuries because of the depth of compassion and wisdom inherent in them.

These verses gently remind us to be fully present in the moment.  They remind us to walk lightly on this earth and to consider our purpose for being here. They remind us to be virtuous in body, speech and mind. They remind us to be mindful of unwholesome acts, such as greed, anger, and delusion.

In a way, you could say that “The Five Contemplations” convey the very essence of the Buddha’s teaching.

Here is the version that students of Thich Nhat Hanh use.  I offer it as a Thanksgiving grace for this holiday season:

This food is the gift of the whole universe—the earth, the sky, and much hard work.

May we live in a way that makes us worthy to receive it.

May we transform our unskillful states of mind, especially our greed.

May we take only foods that nourish us and prevent illness.

We accept this food so that we may realize the path of practice.

May you, your family, your friends, your neighbors and my neighbors, our country, the nations of the world, the creatures and plants of this beautiful world—may all beings everywhere—be happy, satisfied, and safe!  Steve

“When we enjoy eating an orange, we might feel grateful to the orange tree, which has spent a lot of time making a beautiful orange for us. So by thinking of giving and receiving, we can establish a deeper sense of relationship to the orange tree. We know that the orange tree also receives a lot of things from the clouds, the sunshine and the earth.

In fact, everything that is has to rely on everything else in order to be and to grow. That is why I not only feel grateful for the orange tree, but I am also grateful for the clouds, the sunshine, the earth, and so on. We like the idea of being thankful to the cosmos, to everything that offers itself to us as food.”

Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh

This post is a follow-up to:

Can the Power of Love Stop an Elephant?

What do we do about our own raging “tuskers?”

One of the skillful tools used by my heart teacher, Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, is the concept of habit energies, called vasana in Sanskrit.  Habit energies, as the name implies, are the cumulative mental and emotional imprints of prior habitual thoughts and actions.  They can be positive or negative.

Negative habit energies are like ticking time bombs. These powerful imprints lie dormant in consciousness until triggered by our own or others words or actions.

Unleashed, negative habit energies tend to make us do what we don’t want to do and say what we don’t want to say.  Boom!

Doing What We Don’t Want To Do

As Thich Nhat Hanh (or Thầy as he is affectionately known by his students) writes: “We know how strong, how powerful the habit energy is.  We notice that there are times when we are not ourselves.  We cannot be ourselves.  We are carried away by our habit energy. We did not want to say that, we knew that saying that would create damage in our relationship with the other person.”

“But finally, we said it.  We knew that we should not do it.  We knew that if we went ahead and did it we would create damage in our relationship.  But finally, we did it.  We said it was stronger than us. What is stronger? The habit energy.  So we felt helpless, powerless.”

Happily, negative habit energies can be transformed by mindfulness and compassion.  In this excerpt from a talk given at Plum Village, France, Thầy explains how.  If you are used to battling with yourself or beating yourself up over your negative habit energies, this gentle, wise approach will probably be both a surprise and a relief!

Transforming Negative Habit Energies

“Our joy, our peace, our happiness depend very much on our practice of recognizing and transforming our habit energies. There are positive habit energies that we have to cultivate, there are negative habit energies that we have to recognize, embrace and transform. The energy with which we do these things is mindfulness. Mindfulness is a kind of energy that helps us to be aware of what is going on.

“Therefore, when the habit energy shows itself, we know right away. ‘Hello, my little habit energy, I know you are there. I will take good care of you.’ In recognizing it as it is, you are in control of the situation. You don’t have to fight it; in fact the Buddha does not recommend that you fight it, because that habit energy is you, and you should not fight against yourself.

Embrace it, Don’t Fight it!

“You have to generate the energy of mindfulness, which is also you, and that positive energy will do the work of recognizing and embracing. Every time you embrace your habit energy, you can help it to transform a little bit. The habit energy is a kind of seed within your consciousness, and when it becomes a source of energy, you have to recognize it.”

“You have to bring your mindfulness into the present moment, and you just embrace that negative energy: ‘Hello, my negative habit energy. I know you are there. I am here for you.’ After maybe one or two or three minutes, that energy will go back into the form of a seed, in order to re-manifest itself later on. You have to be very alert.”

The Transforming Energy of Mindfulness

“Every time a negative energy is embraced by the energy of mindfulness, it will lose a little bit of its strength as it returns as a seed to the lower level of consciousness. The same thing is true for all other mental formations: your fear, your anguish, your anxiety, and your despair. They exist in us in the form of seeds, and every time one of the seeds is watered, it becomes a zone of energy on the upper level of our consciousness.”

“If you don’t know how to take care of it, it will cause damage, it will push us to do or to say things that will damage us and damage the people we love. Therefore, generating the energy of mindfulness, to recognize it, to embrace it, to take care of it, is the practice. And the practice should be done in a very tender, non-violent way. There should be no fighting, because when you fight, you create damage within yourself.”

Non-Duality, non-violence

“The Buddhist practice is based on the insight of non-duality: you are love, you are mindfulness, but you are also that habit energy within you. To meditate does not mean to transform yourself into a battlefield, the right fighting the wrong, the positive fighting the negative. That’s not Buddhist. That is why, based on the insight of non-duality, the practice should be non-violent.”

“Mindfulness embracing anger is like a mother embracing her child, big sister embracing younger sister. The embrace always brings a positive effect. You can bring relief, and you can cause the negative energy to lose some of its strength, just by embracing it.”

(Excerpt from a Dharma Talk given by Thich Nhat Hanh on August 6, 1998  in Plum Village, France.)

“Because we are human beings, we cannot avoid making mistakes. We might have caused someone else to suffer, we might have offended our beloved ones, and we feel regret. But it is always possible for us to begin anew, and to transform all these kinds of mistakes.

“Without making mistakes there is no way to learn, in order to be a better person, to learn how to be tolerant, to be compassionate, to be loving, to be accepting. That is why mistakes play a role in our training, in our learning, and we should not get caught in the prison of culpability just because we have made some mistakes in our life.”

Thich Nhat Hanh

True Home – Thich Nhat Hanh

Who do you discriminate against?

Who do you wish suffering on? Who do you suffer for? What arbitrary characteristic calls for discrimination and suffering?

Individuals with different politics? Other races? Genders? Cultures? Religion? Education levels? Sexuality? Species?

See yourself in others. Then whom can you hurt? What harm can you do?
- Dhammapada

Carefully carved puppet heads, simple monks robes, two dimensional lines of villagers, a burning paper woman who dissolved into ash, blocks of wood stacked as a school, bombs knocking them over and over and over, village houses toppled and replaced by flames.

My friend Sue and I saw a puppet show about Thich Naht Hahn’s life.

A single line melody on a simple stringed instrument. Simple songs from Plum Village. A bowl bell rings three times.

He said that at the monastery, first he resisted then he learned that planting is a meditation, washing begging bowls is meditation, “Bring me more bowls,” he then said.

Two moons appear and disappear—one held from a string at the top of the puppet stage, the other a simple rectangle of rice paper with a loosely fastened circle of bamboo held in front. A bowl of water was lit like blood. The water rained down on the burning woman. Vietnam in the time of war

His companion said she did not yet know of hugging meditation, so they just looked at each other.

 photo by Bruce Silcox: In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theater

“When you breathe in, you bring all yourself together, body and mind; you become one.”   – Thich Nhat Hanh

I’ve been thinking A LOT about breath and breathing ever since I attended that horse demo, during which the clinician had to remind us (every ten minutes) to breathe.  I guess it was an “a-ha” experience for me, and I’ve been applying it to my entire life, not just my life with horses.  What I’ve discovered is that conscious breathing (not just the instinctual thing you do to stay alive) is powerful.  In a crazy world, when emotions are flying all over the place, it is incredibly grounding to just stop and take a conscious breath or two.  All the far-flung pieces of yourself seem to reassemble.  Suddenly, you are whole and rational again.

How simple of a statement this is, and yet, how incredibly difficult to understand it and live it. YOU ARE HERE. That’s is! There is nothing in the past, because there is no past! There is nothing in the future, because there is no future. Everything that you are exists ONLY here and now.

Do not be afraid. There is nothing in this present that can harm you. So take a deep breath in, get in touch with your body, then take a long deep exhale out, releasing any tension you might be carrying within your body.

I was wondering around in the Boulder Bookstore and my feet took me to this shelf, full of books that inspire and calm the spirit, and give it the guidance it needs. I extend a hand toward the shelf, and pick up this pretty (yes it is quite pretty) book, a calm yellow, with the you are here letters written in a yet another calming tone, red this time. I pick up the book and start reading.  When I lift my head out of this book next, 3 hours have passes, and I’ve read and re-read about 11 pages of the book. No, this is not a commentary on my reading skills. This is a commentary on the depth of this little book, and the intensity of thought that envelops you as you read it.

Thich Nhat Hanh’s “You Are Here” is an instruction on meditation, mindfulness, and fully living in this life, in this body, in these circumstances, living in the PRESENT. The book starts with:

Happiness and Peace are Possible.

I know, your automatic answer is: Well, of course happiness and peace are possible! You say you believe this statement, and you might for an hour or so, but the moment your attention is shifted away to the bills, the childrens’ schedule for the month, the deadline at work, or what ever other thing the universe brings in your path, you forget. You forget that Happiness and Peace is indeed Possible.

So, for the next few minutes, go back to that place in your heart where you KNOW that you are entitled to happiness and peace, and allow your breath to come in slowly on the inhale, long on the exhale. And as you inhale, say to yourself (like our friend Thich Nhat Hanh says):
“Breathing in, I know that I am breathing in.
Breathing out, I know that I am breathing out.”
“Breathing in, I know that I am breathing in.
Breathing out, I know that I am breathing out.”
“Breathing in, I know that I am breathing in.
Breathing out, I know that I am breathing out.”
“Breathing in, I know that I am breathing in.
Breathing out, I know that I am breathing out.”
“Breathing in, I know that I am breathing in.
Breathing out, I know that I am breathing out.”
“Breathing in, I know that I am breathing in.
Breathing out, I know that I am breathing out.”
“Breathing in, I know that I am breathing in.
Breathing out, I know that I am breathing out.”
“Breathing in, I know that I am breathing in.
Breathing out, I know that I am breathing out.”
“Breathing in, I know that I am breathing in.
Breathing out, I know that I am breathing out.”

__________________________________________________________________

If you are thinking about getting this book, do so. It truly is a little gem of a book, and I look forward to the path through its pages. May we all find the happiness and the peace that Thich Nhat Hanh talks about.
Namaste

In Present Moment Wonderful Moment, Thich Nhat Hanh gives us 49 gathas, verses you can repeat to yourself during the day to enhance mindfulness.  It was inspired by an ancient Chinese text that was written for monks many centuries ago.   During the summer of 1982 at Plum Village,  he and his students compiled their own, contemporary gathas that were published in the above referenced book in 1991.  This inspiring book can be read on google.

He suggests that readers write new verses or revise the gathas in his book to make them more relevant to their own situation or disposition, and send them it to the publisher so they can be included in future editions.  Well, the collection was published in 1990 and hasn’t changed since then,  so I don’t think it would be inappropriate to undertake a variation on his project at this point in time.

The gathas are usually 4-line verses with names like “Brushing Your Teeth”, “Entering the Meditation Room”, “Washing the Dishes”, and “Driving the Car”.   Here is an example called “Serving Food”:

In this food,

I see clearly the presence

of the entire universe

supporting my existence.

I love the directness and compactness of that.   I am going to try saying it to myself every time I sit down to eat this week and see if it has some impact on my compulsive eating.  Will let you know how that goes.

I am working on my own gatha  about riding the train and hope to be able to post it soon.  In the meantime, it would  be great if anyone out there wants to join me in a gatha writing experiment, and write one on a topic that is special to you.  I guess if you are here that “Surfing the Web” would be a meaningful topic I don’t imagine has been done before.  No doubt the process of writing one’s own gatha will reverberate and resonate within you as I expect it will for me, and could be beneficial to  all of us.

OK, I am off to work on my gatha…

.

.

Drink your tea slowly and reverently,

as if it is the axis

on which the world earth revolves

– slowly, evenly, without

rushing toward the future;

Live the actual moment.

Only this moment is life.

.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

.

Over the weekend I was involved in several diverse and lengthy discussions about the needed shift from religious to spiritual (Shifting trom Religious to Spiritual). During these discussions there were two themes that had general agreement. The first was that this shift is imperative because the lack of this shift is producing severe threats that are imminent to humanity and even the environment of life on our planet. The second was that making the necessary shift is very difficult to do and is happening much too slowly to address the dire problems that we face. Everybody in these discussions agreed on these main issues. I am happy to establish why these points are true and to deal with disagreement to them in the comments section. This post will address the question of how to effect this change more quickly.

Change comes from within. When change is attempted only externally it does not work. This is why dealing with global climate change is so difficult to deal with. It requires us to each change how we relate to ourselves and the way we each live our lives. It requires us each to change to become more ethical in our own lives when it is easier not to do the right thing. This requires internal change. When this problem is approached with from an external solution point of view it is not even clear what to do to solve the problem. There are some general ideas, maybe even some general agreement on a good day, but no clear path out of the mess. This paradigm can be applied to any of the imminent problems facing humanity. This is because the solutions that are proposed for these problems attempt to impose change from outside on the problem, rather than approaching the issue as needing deeper spiritual responsibility and development from within. These exterior solutions have the effect of medicating the symptoms of the problems but never getting to or dealing with the root of the problem.

Blogs about global climate change: Top 10 worst effects of global warming, Vancouver Unitarians for Climate Change, Eating and Climate Change, Pachauri claims Indian scientific position arrogant, A World War II-Scale Effort

The war in Afghanistan is a prime example of how solutions that are imposed from outside do not fix the problems within. There are huge problems with the way that the folks within Afghanistan have in dealing with each other involving everything from violence to corruption. Until those issues are dealt with by them, no solution that is applied from an exterior source will work. Where they are not taking responsibility for their own problems no outside aid or force will work. David Rohde is very articulate on this topic also (Spiritual Conflict Resolution).

Blogs about David Rohde: A war reporter’s story, One Journalist’s Capture and Escape from the Taliban, An Element of Danger, A Taliban haven inside Pakistan?, Are we there yet?

How to develop the spiritual growth needed in these cases is the realm of expertise of Spiritual Teachers. Spiritual Teachers are those rare individuals among us that have learned to address their own internal corruption and manipulative behaviors and understand that serving this spiritual growth in others is the path of their lives. In this day and age Spiritual Teachers tend to be objects of suspicion and mistrust. This is because  no distinction is made between them and religious leaders and they are therefore considered to be as corrupt as their religious counterparts. The big distinction betwen the two is that the job of a Spiritual Teacher is to take the student to the point of spiritual independence while the religious leader is continually tries to increase their own authority and that of their religion. While Spiritual Teachers can be affiliated with a religion, they recognize that religion is just a vehicle to present spirituality. The Spiritual Teacher’s responsibility is to the development of spiritual understanding and not to the religious participation of the students.

Another misconception is that Spiritual Teachers are considered to have lived long ago and are not thought to be around today. Religions revere Spiritual Teachers like Moses, Buddha, Yeshua (Jesus), the Prophet Mohammad, and the Sikh Gurus religiously and mostly ignore the presence of Spiritual Teachers in our own time. To confuse things even worse, posers promote themselves as Spiritual Teachers which makes it seems as if true Spiritual Teachers are the same as these posers. They are not.

What makes Spiritual Teachers so vital for us at this time is that they alone have the understanding of the spiritual changes that we each need to go through individually, and teaching others who are then capable of teaching others is the only feasible way to multiply the numbers needed to have sufficient impact on our most serious problems.

In order to help validate that real Spiritual Teachers are with us today there is a page on this blog entitled “How I Met My Teacher” that contains real life experiences of people meeting Spiritual Teachers. This page is for everyone to post in the comment box their own story of how they recognized their Teacher as a Spiritual Master. It is also OK to challenge the validity of these experiences and the Spiritual Teachers associated with them in the spirit of investigating and actually defining what a Spiritual Teacher really is and is not.

Spiritual Teachers that I have personally identified in this lifetime are:

Yogi Bhajan

blogs: Kundalini Connection, Kundalininow’s Blog, Who is Yogi Bhajan?, Recipe by Yogi Bhajan, Be the Lighthouse

Sant Guru Dev Singh

blogs: Sat Nam Rasayan Canada, Guru Dev is in Town!, Healing and Shuniya,

His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama

blogs: Tibetreport’s Blog, The most important thing we can do, Chinese angry on India, Pay it Forward, The Buddhist Tradition, Khamerlogue

Thich Nhat Hanh

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Preah Maha Ghosananda

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Eckhart Tolle

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There is a great book of quotes compiled from Thich Nhat Hanh’s writings called Taming the Tiger Within. I just want to note the marked pages in this book before I return it to the library, so here is a string of quotations from this book about anger, each worthy of its own contemplation.

Anger has roots in nonanger elements. It has roots in the way we live our daily life. If we take good care of everything in us, without discrimination, we prevent our negative energies from dominating. We reduce the strength of our negative seeds so that they won’t overwhelm us.

Before we can make deep changes in our lives, we have to look into our diet, our way of consuming. We have to live in such a way that we stop consuming the things that poison us and intoxicate us. Then, we will have the strength to allow the best in us to arise, and we will no longer be victims of anger, of frustration.

If you see elements of garbage in you, such as fear, despair, and hatred, don’t panic. As a good organic gardener, a good practitioner, you can face this: “I recognize that there is garbage in me. I am going to transform this garbage into nourishing compost that can make love reappear.”

The Buddha never advised us to suppress our anger. He taught us to go back to ourselves and take good care of it.

Anger is like a howling baby, suffering and crying. Your anger is your baby. The baby needs his mother to embrace him. You are the mother. Embrace your baby.

Mindfulness means to be present, to be aware of what is going on. This energy is very crucial for the practice. The energy of mindfulness is like a big brother or big sister, holding a young one in her arms, taking good care of the suffering child, which is our anger, despair, or jealousy.

When we embrace anger and take good care of our anger, we obtain relief. We can look deeply into it and gain many insights. One of the first insights may be that the seed of anger in us has grown too big, and is the main cause of our misery. As we begin to see this reality, we realize that the other person, whom our anger is directed at, is only a secondary cause. The other person is not the real cause of our anger.

People who use venting techniques like hitting a pillow or shouting are actually rehearsing anger. When someone is angry and vents their anger by hitting a pillow, they are learning a dangerous habit. They are training in aggression. Instead, a wise practitioner generates the energy of mindfulness and embraces her anger every time it manifests.

Inside every one of us is a garden, and every practitioner has to go back to their garden and take care of it. Maybe in the past, you left it untended for a long time. You should know exactly what is going on in your own garden, and try to put everything in order. Restore the beauty; restore the harmony in your garden. If it is well tended, many people will enjoy your garden.

The energy of mindfulness contains the energy of concentration as well as the energy of insight. Concentration helps you to focus on just one thing. With concentration, the energy of looking becomes more powerful. Because of that, it can make a breakthrough that is insight. Insight always has the power of liberating you. If mindfulness is there, and you know how to keep mindfulness alive, concentration will be there, too. And if you know how to keep concentration alive, insight will come also. So mindfulness recognizes, embraces, and relives. Mindfulness helps us look deeply in order to gain insight. Insight is the liberating factor. It is what frees us and allows transformation to happen. This is the practice of taking care of anger.

In taking good care of yourself, you take good care of your beloved one. Self-love is the foundation for your capacity to love the other person. If you don’t take good care of yourself, if you are not happy, if you are not peaceful, you cannot make the other person happy. You cannot help the other person; you cannot love. Your capacity for loving another person depends entirely on your capacity for loving yourself, for taking care of yourself.

When you get angry with someone, please don’t pretend that you are not angry. Don’t pretend that you don’t suffer. If the other person is dear to you, then you have to confess that you are angry, and that you suffer. Tell him or her in a calm, loving way.

When you get angry with the other person, you have the tendency to say, “Don’t touch me! I don’t need you. I can manage very well without you!” But you have made the commitment to take good care of each other.

When we hate someone, and are angry at her, it is because we do not understand her or the circumstances she comes from. By practicing deep looking, we realize that if we grew up like her, in her set of circumstances and in her environment, we would be just like her. That kind of understanding removes your anger, and suddenly that person is no longer your enemy. Then you can love her. As long as she remains an enemy, love is impossible.