Taking time to stop and notice

Below is an excerpt from a Washington Post story printed two years ago. The reporter,Gene Weingarten, won the Pulitzer Prize for this piece and it shines a light on how people don't stop to appreciate or even notice the world around us. Dear readers, please take a moment to stop and take notice of this article. You can read the entire story here.

Washington, DC Metro Station on a cold January morning in 2007. The man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time approx. 2 thousand people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. After 3 minutes a middle aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried to meet his schedule.

4 minutes later:

the violinist received his first dollar: a woman threw the money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk.

6 minutes:

A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.

10 minutes:

A 3-year old boy stopped but his mother tugged him along hurriedly. The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. Every parent, without exception, forced their children to move on quickly.

45 minutes:

The musician played continuously. Only 6 people stopped and listened for a short while. About 20 gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace. The man collected a total of $32.

1 hour:

He finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days before Joshua Bell sold out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100.

This is a true story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people's priorities. The questions raised: in a common place environment at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context?

One possible conclusion reached from this experiment could be this: If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world, playing some of the finest music ever written, with one of the most beautiful instruments ever made.... How many other things are we missing?

Robe Ceremony TGN October 4,2009

Robe Ceremony 2009

Sunday, October 4^th, 2009

This is a traditional day of offering gifts to the monks.

Gifts can include food, household, bath and office supplies, and daily necessities.

You may also sponsor a monk with a monetary donation.

Schedule

10:00 a.m. Arrival

10:10 a.m. Metta Meditation

10:30 a.m. Dhamma talk

11:00 a.m. Offering to Buddha

11:15 a.m. Offering of robe to monks

11:30 a.m. Offering of lunch to monks

12:00 p.m. Lunch

1:00 p.m. End

Location: Monks residence Mankato MN

Lunch is a potluck; please bring a dish to share.

Sponsor A Monk or Nun: You are welcome to Sponsor A Monk or non by offering 50$ donation.

Wish Tree: A fascinating ritual associated with the Katina ceremony is the setting up of the "wishing tree", traditionally referred to as the kapruka, (legendary tree of bounties, which grants all that one would wish for) in the temple premises.

The idea is you offer what you wish to receive. In one hand this is a karmic action we perform on a special day. Buddhists believe that every action we take on this day will be multiplied. For example, if you wish for someone's good health or recovery, you may offer some medicine that is useful for monks. According to Buddha, this Event is a powerful meritorious event. You are welcome to bring any useful item.

For gift ideas or details on monk sponsorship, please contact the Monks' Residence at 612-216-4854. Monetary donations may be sent to the Monks' Residence by mail or delivered in person at our meditation classes. Also welcome to bring with you at Robe Ceremony.

This Week in Mankato

Meditation
7.00pm 8.30pm
Meditation Class (7 p.m.- 8:15 p.m.) At First Congregational United Church-Mankato

Meditation Group11
Wednesday
7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Location: Monks Residence
This is a meditation class for open thinkers. Open discussion followed by guided meditation. You are welcome!

This Sunday

Sundays October 4^th

Paramitha (perfection) Group

Sundays
4:15 p.m. to 5:45p.m.
Location: Monks Residence

This is a committed group meet and studies how to apply and practice Dhamma with day to day life. We shire certain document via e-mail and reed before come to the meeting. You are welcome to be part of this group. Contact Bhante Sathi for more information.
We will start to discuss Thirty-seven Factors of Enlightenment on October 4th. please check out the list by clicking the link below. And we will start from The Four Correct Endeavors

http://www.zhaxizhuoma.net/DHARMA/Tripitaka/37FactorsEnlightenment.htm

*** Mankato Monks-Residence Wish List (Click here)

Please visit our blog http://triplegemofthenorth.blogspot.com/ and feel free to share your valuable thoughts as we highly appreciate your insight.

For more info contact us at (612)216 4854

Fear and Meditation

Q: Lately I’ve been dealing with a lot of fear during my meditation practice. It seems to come from nowhere, and it either focuses on a specific attachment or it manifests as a more existential, nameless sort of thing. How can I deal with this?

A: Fear is what happens when reality collides with our personal fiction. Our practice is based on expectations—expectations about who we are, why we are practicing, and what our practice should be. As our hope disintegrates, it may be replaced by fear. Our characteristics, personality, all of our beautiful plans and ideas are like snowflakes about to fall on the hot stone of our meditation practice.

Maybe you’ve poked through boredom and have had a first taste of spaciousness. Until your experience has become stable, the fear remains that your dreams, your life, and your base could fall apart. The more you contemplate space, the more you are aware of the dissolution of everything you have assumed to be real, lasting, and reliable—including your motivation and your practice. Now it all feels transitory and unreliable. This crisis, rooted in dissolution, translates as fear.

This is a seminal moment in our practice. Each time it manifests, each time we are aware of fear, we have a choice: we can acknowledge our problem and work with it, or we can run away from it and seek refuge elsewhere: distractions, pharmaceuticals, weekend feel-good-about-yourself workshops, whatever. We are free to refuse the disappointment and the dissolution. We don’t have to put ourselves back into the situation where the foundation of our being is shaken by the experience of impermanence and emptiness.

But if we decide to continue, if we’re convinced of the sanity of the Four Noble Truths and decide to take refuge in the dharma that the Buddha taught, we need to be courageous. We can choose to take refuge in the brilliant sanity of enlightenment, the Buddha; trust the process of the path, the Dharma; and rely on the experience of those who guide us along the path, the Sangha. We can choose to explore our mind, learn about its problem areas and hidden treasures, but it won’t be comfortable. The guidance of a spiritual friend or teacher is crucial at this stage of our practice.

At the same time, we can be nice to ourselves, accept ourselves as we are and let go of what we are pretending to be. Our crisis is a normal phase. We all enter the spiritual path as ego-based beings, and as such we have ego-based hopes and fears. Practice is virtually never what we expect. We feel like we’ve got it all wrong, thinking, “The more I meditate, the worse I become.” My teacher, Gendun Rinpoche, always responded to this by saying, “When you see your own shortcomings, it’s the dawn of qualities. If you only see your qualities, there’s a problem.”

It’s true that if we continue to try to create our personal nirvana through our practice, we’re going to suffer even more. If we use the practice tools that develop intelligence and clarity with a confused, selfish motivation, reality is bound to collide with our fiction. This is where practice is supposed to bring us. This is the proof that the dharma works. It’s the end of our confused, fictive world, and the dawning of truth.

When fear arises within our meditation, we apply an antidote. Recognizing what is happening at each instant as mind, we remain in the present. It is important to remember that patterns don’t have to repeat themselves. Through remaining in the present, we can let go of the past and the future - the headquarters of our fears. We recognize and then we let go, whether coming back to the focal point of our meditation - posture, breath, visualization - or nonconceptual space. Through motivation, honesty, and confidence you can practice with your fears and go beyond in them in a way you never thought possible.

Lama Tsony is head of the monastic community at the Dhagpo Kundreul Ling hermitage in Auvergne, France. He travels throughout the U.S. and Europe, teaching and leading meditation retreats.

Robe Ceremony TGN October 4,2009

Robe Ceremony 2009

Sunday, October 4^th, 2009

This is a traditional day of offering gifts to the monks.

Gifts can include food, household, bath and office supplies, and daily necessities.

You may also sponsor a monk with a monetary donation.

Schedule

10:00 a.m. Arrival

10:10 a.m. Metta Meditation

10:30 a.m. Dhamma talk

11:00 a.m. Offering to Buddha

11:15 a.m. Offering of robe to monks

11:30 a.m. Offering of lunch to monks

12:00 p.m. Lunch

1:00 p.m. End

Location: Monks residence MankatoMN

Lunch is a potluck; please bring a dish to share.

Sponsor A Monk or Nun: You are welcome to Sponsor A Monk or non by offering 50$ donation.

Wish Tree: A fascinating ritual associated with the Katina ceremony is the setting up of the "wishing tree", traditionally referred to as thekapruka, (legendary tree of bounties, which grants all that one would wish for) in the temple premises.

The idea is you offer what you wish to receive. In one hand this is a karmic action we perform on a special day. Buddhists believe that every action we take on this day will be multiplied. For example, if you wish for someone's good health or recovery, you may offer some medicine that is useful for monks. According to Buddha, this Event is a powerful meritorious event. You are welcome to bring any useful item.

For gift ideas or details on monk sponsorship, please contact the Monks' Residence at 612-216-4854. Monetary donations may be sent to the Monks' Residence by mail or delivered in person at our meditation classes. Also welcome to bring with you at Robe Ceremony.

The 31 Flavors of Craving

This article is from Tricycle Magazine addressing the issue of craving.

The Pali word for craving is tanha, which means “thirst.” The Buddha identified three distinct kinds of tanha that you repeatedly experience; they are often unnoticed, because they arise and then are quickly preempted by yet another and then another. First is your craving for the six kinds of sense desires, or kama tanha: craving for certain food tastes or for pleasing sounds or for silence; craving for sexual, affectionate, or comforting touch or simple physical comfort in your body; craving for attractive, pleasant, comforting, inspiring sights as well as for pleasant, refreshing smells; and finally, craving for thoughts that are confirming, useful, stimulating, and reassuring to you. Just think of how many different sense desires you have in any given moment!

The second type of craving is the desire for existence and for becoming what you are not. In Pali this is called bhava tanha. You may want to be wealthy, or more athletic, or sexually desirable, or a better musician. The craving to “become” can be wholesome—to be a good parent or a better friend to others, or to be more generous, healthier, or more disciplined—yet still cause suffering. Even your longing for spiritual growth can be bhava tanha! It, too, can create suffering in the untrained mind: Will you get there? Are you going about it the right way? And it can result in greed, uncontrolled wanting, envy, impatience, selfjudgment, temptation of all sorts, and unskillful words and actions.

Bhava tanha is one of the most common causes of suffering in modern culture. You are exhorted to achieve and to accumulate to the point that you take birth as “one who does and gets.” Thus what might be healthy goals decay into obsession and compulsion. A tragic example of this is a story that was widely reported in the media in which a tennis father was so desirous of his children winning their matches that he drugged the water bottles of the young people with whom they competed. The dad could not stand the possibility of his children losing; it was torturous and drove him to act unskillfully. His behavior continued until one young man had an extreme reaction and died. It is easy to say the father was just crazy, but you, too, can become obsessive in a manner that causes suffering, only not as extreme. When you take birth in outcome, it is so torturous to you that even if you can refrain from acting unskillfully, the mind is still tormented.

The third type of tanha arises when you are so disillusioned with something in your life and want to get rid of it or want it to cease with such intensity that you crave nonexistence. This state of mind is called vibhava tanha. For instance, you may be so overwhelmed by chronic back pain or a difficult emotion that you are flooded with aversion to life itself. Or you have such antipathy toward your physical appearance, aging, or disease that life seems unbearable. In each of these instances, your nervous system is overcome by the energy generated by the craving, and it seems as if your whole being is rejecting existence. Vibhava tanha is annihilation. If you have ever felt suicidal, even briefly, then you have had flashes of vibhava tanha in the extreme. In its milder manifestations, vibhava tanha is part of everyday life. For example, you can feel so humiliated when you make a big mistake in front of others that for a brief moment your mind is filled with this craving.

Often students discover that before starting a vipassana practice they had been aware of cravings associated with sense desires but much less aware of suffering coming from the other two tanhas. One meditation student told me that upon hearing about the types of craving, he quickly realized that he was organized around bhava tanha— always judging himself on the basis of wanting to be someone he was not. He could see that it had caused him endless, needless suffering that he had been aware of without knowing its source.▼

From Dancing with Life: Buddhist Insights for Finding Meaning and Joy in the Face of Suffering, © 2008 by Phillip Moffitt. Reprinted with permission from Rodale.

Calendar Events for September and October 2009

***October 4th- Robe Ceremony (Katina) 2009

keep the day open for this annual activity.

This Week in Mankato

Meditation
7.00pm 8.30pm
Meditation Class (7 p.m.- 8:15 p.m.) At First Congregational United Church-Mankato


Meditation Group11
Wednesday
7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Location: Monks Residence
This is a meditation class for open thinkers. Open discussion followed by guided meditation. You are welcome!

This Sunday

Metta Meditation Group

Sundays

10:00 a.m. to 10:40 a.m.

Location: Monks Residence

We will practice Metta meditation about 40 minutes followed by Dhammapada studies. Dhammapada is a collection of verses delivered by Buddha which contains deep Dhamma teachings and lessons on the proper way of life.

Paramitha (perfection) Group

Sundays
4:15 p.m. to 5:45p.m.
Location: Monks Residence

This is a committed group meet and studies how to apply and practice Dhamma with day to day life. We shire certain document via e-mail and reed before come to the meeting. You are welcome to be part of this group. Contact Bhante Sathi for more information.


*** Mankato Monks-Residence Wish List (Click here)

Non Self

by Bhante Sathi

Twenty years ago my mom and dad used to argue constantly. It was painful to watch. There were many times in my life I wished my father was dead because he made everyone unhappy and we would be better off without him.

But there were many other times I thought he was the best man in the world because he worked hard and was a good provider.

Today I am flying back to Sri Lanka for my dad’s funeral. Even as a monk who spends so much time developing my mind, I find myself clinging to the loss.

Who am I? Am I the person who thought my father should die, or am I the person who thought my father was the greatest? What do I really want? Why did I want it both ways?

I wanted to see my dad alive. But as I tried to hide my tears from the other passengers I realized there was an opportunity to really understand myself and my relationship with the man I hated and loved at the same time.

Then for a moment at 35 thousand feet I felt a sense of relief. The present seemed more important than what happened 20 years or 20 minutes ago.

I asked myself what is real and permanent? Am I permanent? Of course not, nothing not even my body is permanent. Then if nothing is impermanent, what is the answer?

Once there was a group of the priests who approached the Buddha and said, “It is better to be a fox in the Himalayan forest than to be an Arahant because an Arahant does not experience pleasure. Desiring pleasure builds the self." But talk about permanent happiness in heaven is an attachment because no one will want to go if it is unpleasant.

The thoughts of being trapped in the cycle of "I,me, mine" began to melt. Suddenly, my past is not me anymore. Today will be past by tomorrow and tomorrow is not here yet. So who am I?

Non self.

I'm good. How are you?

When you ask accomplished teachers how they are, they always say, “Good, good, very good” — always good. Many people say that they feel dishonest saying they are good when in fact they have problems. But what we are talking about here is developing a fundamental sense of strength and well-being. Wouldn’t it be better to associate our mind with that rather than with all the fleeting emotions and physical sensations we experience throughout the say? What is the point of being honest about something so fleeting and impossible to pin down? If your well-being is so dependent upon emotions and physical sensations, you will have little opportunity to say, “I am well.” So when people ask how you are, say, “Good!”

— Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche

Yoga practice helps the body and mind

Here is a piece written by a fitness trainer based in California. I saw it on Facebook and wanted to share it with you.

Although Yoga is practiced by many Buddhists and is part of many Triple Gem retreats, sometimes we forget how powerful it can be in helping us overcome anger, stress and find our way in the present moment. I hope you enjoy this:

Last Saturday I found myself in a very bad way. I've been having some repair work done on my house to fix sketchy construction by the original builder. The problem is, my beautiful home leaked like an old fishing boat. A company repaired this issue 3 years ago, but this past winter, water found it's way back in. Nothing like spending thousands of dollars on something that didn't work. This time around I was going to get the best guy in the city. Turns out the water proofer was a rock star (the place is as tight as a drum) but the construction company hired to put the place back together again was pathetic. Shoddy work, lame sub contractors, overcharging me at every turn, and turning a 3 month job into 8. This project has been the bane of my existence... again!

Last Saturday the frustration cup runneth over. After endless delays and screw-ups I exploded all over the owner of this construction company. I haven't been that angry or yelled that loud in 20 years. In that moment I understood crimes of passion. Luckily my outburst was over the phone, because if this guy had been standing in front of me, I surely would have driven my fist through his brain. Even as I write this I feel my cortisol levels rise. Anger IS one letter short of danger. When I hung up (slammed down) the phone after my verbal combustion, I was shaking. The other thing I couldn't shake was this toxic feeling I had coursing throughout my entire body. In that moment I completely understood how anger can make you sick.

This hate outburst occurred at approximately 3:15 last Saturday afternoon and I was planning to go to my yoga class at 4:00 PM. If my friends Brian and Shawna hadn't joining me I would have certainly blown it off. Yoga was the very last thing I wanted to do after that confrontation. Hitting a heavy bag for an hour seemed like the only logical release for what I was suffering from. The verbal shrapnel was still flying on our way to yoga and prior to class the heat coming off of me was so intense that the girl next to me got up and moved to the back of the room. I'm not kidding. I was about to turn a simple sweet Hatha Yoga class into Kill And Destroy Yoga.

For the first 45 minutes of class every pose, every asana was executed like a Vulcan Robot. Perfect emotionless linear intensity. I didn't even break a sweat for the first 45 minutes. Between minute 45 and 50 everything changed. The anger was gone and the sweat started pouring out of me in buckets. The first thing I did after class was call the guy (I screamed at) and apologize. Even with the wrong intentions the physical movements of yoga helped me find balance again. I was transformed. A miraculous thing, really. It's possible that any physical movement could have helped me, but it was Vulcan Robot Yoga that made everything right again. Namaste.