Bush Fires in the Mind

I had the good kamma of staying with the nuns at the Dhammasara Nuns Monastery in Perth during my visit to Australia. The 3 days I spent with the nuns was a humbling but a profound experience. Part of the daily schedule of those at the monastery is to do some light work for about an hour or so in the morning soon after b'fast. Since I was staying the monastery I too had to do some work. My duties were to rake the leaves from the drive ways and cut eucalyptus bushes from the garden.

On the first day at the evening drinks, Ven. Seri explained to me why I was doing what I was doing and its importance. As you may know, Australia has lots of bush fires. Sometimes they not only cause harm to wild life but also to human lives. So, people prepare well in advance to protect themselves of bush fires. Ven. Seri explained that raking and removing eucalyptus bushes which contain the Eucalyptus oil, helps to minimize the spread of fires and to keep the monastery safe. Though I initially felt bad about cutting the bushes, once she explained, it made sense why they do what they do.

Why am I talking about raking and cutting bushes? What has an Aussie bush fire to do with the mind? Well, I find that our minds have bush fires as well. What are the fires that our minds burn with? Anger, ill-will, resentment, jealousy, envy, passion, desire for what we want and don't want, restleness and worry are some of the bush fires that sweep us over from time to time. But what is most interesting is that we hardly prepare ourselves for such fires. Most of the time we are not aware until a bush fire in the mind has swept over us and we are almost burned to death. Most of the time we are left with the ashes. For example, anger sweeps over us without us even knowing and all that is left is broken friendships, relationships, hurt and resentment. And we wonder why and how? Most times we blame the other person or get depressed.

How do we prepare for bush fires in the mind? First and foremost its important to keep the five precepts (to refrain from taking lives, to refrain from taking what is not given, to refrain from sexual misconduct, to refrain from lying and to refrain from taking intoxicating drugs and alchohol). They can act as a buffer, a wall when we are swept over by anger, envy, restlesness etc. For example, it could be jealousy and desire that makes us want to steal. It is hatred that makes us want to destroy another life. It is ignorance and desire that makes us want to take drugs and alcohol. But when we have made a determination to keep the five precepts, to some extent, we are keeping the fires of anger, ignorance, envy, desire from burning in the mind.

Another way of tackling bush fires in the mind is to cultivate loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, equanimity and generosity. These wholesome qualities in the mind help remove or at least keep at bay ill-will, selfishness, jealousy, ignorance and the endless movement of the mind. Removing unwholesome qualities is like raking the leaves and cutting the bushes. By doing that you don't add more fuel to the fire. Cultivating wholesome qualities is like putting a fire emergency plan into place. So that we your mind is burning with anger, you can immediately bring out loving-kindness to put out the fire before it gets out of control.

Development of mindfulness is a key point in overcoming bush fires in the mind. Being mindful is being on the watch out for things that can cause bush fires. So when you are mindful you can stop a bush fire even before a single spark has started or in the least can put out a spark before it becomes an unstoppable fire. You will notice that your mind too acts in the same way. Once unwholsome qualities take over, unless you have developed enough mindfulness and wholesome qualities, they can become unstopabble. For example, it's resentment that ultimately turns into anger. It's anger that eventually turns into hatred. By this time it's gathered it's own momentum and you cannot stop it. Everything has a start and that starting point is not noticeble unless you have developed mindfulness and wisdom. Like a bush fires our mind fires need to run it's own course before its exhausted, unless properly intervened. In the process so much damage is done. Our unwholsome qualities have the same fate.

Unfortunately, we are not trained to tackle our mind fires like we are trained to tackle bush fires. In fact, most of us go through life without even noticing bush fires in the mind. But yet we keep burning and burning. Everytime we burn we run away from it, only to find that the fires have caught up with us again. Some people think, this is something to be done in the old age. Because when we are young we need to enjoy life and live life to the fullest. Somehow I am not convinced.

It's like not removing the rust from metal when it is just forming. If you don't remove the rust, you would find that after a while it cannot be removed. In fact, the metal might be corroded after a while. This is the same with our unwholesome qualities. After a while we will realise that it's difficult to get rid of our unwholesome qualities. They are sticking to us like glue and it hurts. So we give up.

I also find that some people say "Oh, I know how to handle myself when the time comes". I think it's stupidity. It's like some of those people who stayed in their homes when bush fires were burning in Victoria. What happened to them? They all burned to death. It's stupid to think that we can control these qualities in the mind. It's like putting breaks on a car that is travelling at 100km/h. Would is stop immediately? No. Why? Because it has enormous momentum behind it. The car will come to a stop once that momentum has been exhausted. Our mind is just like that.

So please don't wait for the time to arrive because when the time arrives you will find out that you have no more time left. Somewhere I read or heard that our past and our future rests on this moment called 'NOW'!

With metta

Chasing the Flashing Red Dot

We have a cat. A few days ago we found an excellent substitute for her love of 'chasing the ball'. A laser pointer!

Instead of a ball, which we have to pick up every time we throw it for her, we found that the laser pointer gets us to stay in one place while our cat runs around like a mad hatter chasing after the little red dot. It's amazing to watch! She never wants to give up. She runs after it again and again but always to find that it has moved on to a new spot. She gets to the new spot and finds it has moved again. Once again she chases after it. Never a moment of rest for her little legs. Her little heart beating fast she chases for about good 20 minutes and she drops on the floor in sheer exhaustion.

Watching my cat chasing the red dot, it came to my mind that we live our lives more or less in the same fashion. Of course, we don't chase a red dot but instead we chase after something we call 'Happiness'. If you look at what you do in your life, don't you find that you do what you do to be happy. You want to earn more money so you can maybe have a happy retirement or go on holiday or have a big house and fancy furniture. You fall in love and get married so you can live happily every after. You get a cat so you can watch her chase balls and be happy. Listen to music, go to the night club, buy new clothes, get a makeover and many more things. What for? Just to be happy!

Don't you find that no matter what you do, happiness, is elusive. You think you have it, to find that it's lost again. You go on holiday and you are happy but when you have to get home, it makes you less happy. You find that you have bought the house of your dreams to find that you have to worry about paying the mortgage or getting furniture or protecting it from thieves. You may even have the dream job, but it makes you get up everyday early morning so you have to get to work. You get a make over and find that you age anyway no matter how many makeovers you do.

I find this quite ironic. Why is it that when we finally think we can relax and be happy, we find 'oops' we need something else to be happy. We buy a new house and get a new couch, do up the garden so that we can relax. But when we finally sit on our new couch, in our new home, watching the garden, we think 'hmmm...I should get a glass of wine' or 'hmmm...I wish my best friend were here' or 'hmmm.....I should change the drapes'. What we have is no longer good enough. Our happiness lies in the next object: in having a glass of wine or our best friend being there. Why is it we can never find happiness and make it everlasting. Why is it so elusive?

It is because we are looking for happiness in the wrong place. Just like my cat can never get hold of the red dot, we keep chasing after red dots we call friends, money, clothes, house, car, food, love and all the other wonderful things we see when we go shopping or see on television or we have acquired from our up bringing. None of these things can bring happiness (maybe fleeting hapiness but not long lasting) because they are all subject to change. Friends can betray us, money can be stolen, house can be burnt down or re-possessed by the bank and my cat may find chasing balls is not fun for her anymore. How can you expect for something that constantly have the potential to change, especially the way you don't want it to, can bring you long lasting happiness? It cannot.

Now I don't mean to say that you should not have a house, a car, lovely clothes or get married but what I am saying is NOT to depend on them as your source of happiness. If you do, you will find that you get disappointed more often than not. Life and all that it contains is in constant flux. It ebbs and it flows.

So how do you find this long lasting happiness? That happiness has to be found within you. It's amazing how the world has conditioned us to look outside of ourselves for happiness. But nothing that is outside of ourselves will ever get you there. It is like my cat chasing the dot and finally lying on the floor exhausted. You can chase after all the wonderful things the world can offer you and still not find happiness and one fine day you will drop dead because of the chase. As Ajahn Brahm says the only people who rest in peace are the ones in the cemetery! Well that won't do you much good, would it now?

Start looking for that source of happiness from within. It takes time, effort and lots of patience to get to even have a glimpse of it. Even if you don't find it at least know that there is something more to life thatn what we see and what we can get hold of. But if you get a glimpse of it and most importantly find it, it can make vast changes in your life for the better and also for those around you. Most of all it can sustain you through ebbs and flows of life and all that it contains.

Sweeping the mind

I make it a point to sweep my house everyday or at least once every other day. I've swept my house for years and everytime I sweep I think to myself, "will it ever come a day when I don't have any more dust to sweep?". Would it not be cool if on one fine day I find that I have finally swept off all of the dust that I don't have to sweep anymore. Maybe wishful thinking!

It was while I was sweeping that it came to my mind, "aren't our minds just the same?". Like our houses it has dust and it keeps accumulating dust. By dust I mean 'unwholesome thoughts'. To name a few unwholesome thoughts:- anger, greed, aversion, desire, jealousy, resentement. Well how do we sweep the dust off of our minds? Well for that we use Sila (moral conduct), Samadhi (concentration) and Panna (Wisdom). While we have brooms, vaccum cleaners, wipes and many other cleaning products to clean our houses, to clean the dust out of our minds we need the three brooms:-sila, samadhi and panna. Actually it's like having one broom with three different functions. Anyway, we have to use the three aspects to sweep the unwholsome thoughts from our minds. Like we clean our houses everyday, we have to clean our minds everyday as well.

Don't you find that some people hardly clean their houses. And because of it not only they have dust on the floor but also they have cobwebs and insects, accumulation of unwanted things from years ago and sometimes people even get sick because of their uncleanliness. It takes enormous effort and time to clean up such messes. Of course some people give up or even rationalize "Oh well cleaning everyday, what's the purpose, it will go back to being the same old dirty place, so why bother cleaning at all". So they come to live with the dust and the mites and the cobwebs. Dirty becomes "invisible" to them.

I find that this is exactly what we do with our minds. It takes effort and time and brutal honesty to open the doors to the inner house, we call the mind, and clean up its messes. But rarely will someone undertake such an enormous task. It's almost as we've given up because it's too much a pain to clean and therefore we'd rather leave it "undistrubed". What happens as a result is that over time, the dust (unwholesome thoughts) get so accumulated that our minds get festered with mites, insects, cobwebs that are much harder to clean. Mind insects and cobwebs are:- greed, ill-will, ingnorance. They become deeply rooted in the mind. In the end we get sick. By sickness I mean:- becoming miserable, getting angry, become jealous, depression, never being satisfied, complaining, being mean to others.

What is most sad to see, is that people tend to live with such illness despite suffering from them incessantly. It almost becomes a way of life, a way to be because "it is so" or becasue people think that "this is life happening". It's NOT life happening. It's what's we are doing to our lives, unfortunately. Don't you also find that it's easier to see the "other person's dirty house" than your own "dirty house"?. In the same manner, we are also extremely clever at 'seeing the dirt in the other person", than the "dirt in us"! Perhaps you can use this to do some soul searching!

Anyway, the questions arises, "OK let's say we start clearning our minds everyday, with all of our might, does that mean we have to keep sweeping forever, like we sweep our houses?". Well that's the point. We DON'T!

Unlike our houses, we don't have to keep sweeping our mind's unwholesome thoughts forever. You will find that the more you sweep off the dust in your mind, the less it tends to accumulate. But gurantee that you will find dust (lots of it) and you will find insects and also some illness. But I will also gurantee that you will find, overtime, that you get rid of some illnesses, some insects and that the accumulation becomes less and less. I am also sure that, unlike in our real houses, there will come a day when one sweeps the last bit of dust from the mind and finds that one can just relax without anymore sweeping. I believe this is what the Buddha called 'Nibbana".

Prisoners of our own hearts

Ajhan Brahm always says that 'doors of hell are open for us to walk out at anytime', but we choose to stay locked up!!

A story my mother told me today, strongly reminded me of that simple but profound truth. This story was related by a Buddhist priest who frequently visits the Bogambara prison in Sri Lanka to talk Dhamma to the inmates. One day he had spoken with an older prisoner who was imprisoned for life. The stroy unfolds that this particular inmate had taken the life of a man who had killed his wife and son. With witnesses and evidence to support the fact that he committed the crime the man was setenced to life in prison. It was while he served his term, that he had started to practice loving-kindness meditation. By the time the priest met the prisoner he had not only fogiven the person who took the most beloved people from his life but, he had also forgiven himiself. His heart bore only metta; his heart was free.

Hearing this story I realised that, though his body maybe in a prison cell, he was not. He had long set himself free from the prison. He had walked out of 'doors of hell'!

Don't you think it's ironic that some of us, though not prisoners, live locked up in the prisons of our hearts?! That we sit in hell realms of anger, greed, jealosy and ignorance burning day-in-day-out for days, years and sometimes until the day we die?! Can you look into your heart and see whether you have locked up your heart in a hell realm? If so, will you want to walk out of it and can you walk out of it?

I have found that most of us, including myself, choose to be locked up. We choose not to walk out of the hell doors that are open to us 24x7. When I first realised this I was shocked. Why do we wish to be in hell realms? Why do we refuse to walk out of hell doors that are open to us all of the time? Why do we want to suffer? I have come to understand that this is because forgiveness and acceptance come hard for some of us at some of the times. Sometimes it's hard to forgive someone who has done wrong to us. Sometimes it's hard to accept that someone else is doing better than us. Sometimes it's hard to forgive and accept ourselves. But without forgiveness and acceptance it's not possible to walk out of the doors of hell though they maybe open.

Why is it that we find it difficult to forgive and accept in certain situations, with certain people? I think it's because we think that if we were to forgive and accept we would become 'less', that our importance is dimished in our own eyes or perhaps the other person might think we are weak and that we are surrendering ourself or giving in, or sometimes we think that we have to be the one to bring justice upon the situation or the person i.e. that we have to 'right the wrong'. The society we live in has also not helped much. In the Western world we are taught to 'take the fight to the other person' whereas in the Eastern world we are taught to tolerate. Fighting is open and tolerance is hidden. Either way it gets ugly. Neither is right. Neither gives the heart the freedom.

Instead what is required, in my opinion is that, we have to see the situation with clarity, understand it as it is and let it go. In other words, through understanding we learn to forgive and accept. This is neither fighting nor tolerating. It's a whole new way of looking at things. However, it frees the heart. Through this we can walk out of the prison cells of our own hearts. Through this we can find liberation. Even if it is only for a moment, the heart will get a taste of the freedom and will rejoice in it.

May you find that freedom!

Reflective Mind

I was recently on vacation with my husband in Jasper. It was my first trip to Japser. Lakes in Jasper are so beautiful, so still and so vivid. I guess the weather helped it too. During our trip we went kayaking one morning in lake Patricia. It was the first time that we had gone tandem kayaking. So we were able to take turns to enjoy the scenery and the quietness surrounding us. We were amazed by how still the water in the lake was. The water was so still that it reflected the surrounding trees and mountains with such clarity.

It was then that I realised that this must be what the mind of a Buddha is like. I recalled reading in a book somewhere that the Buddha/enlightened beings had reflective minds. The mind of a Buddha or an enlightened being do not identify with or grasp at sensory impressions/objects. All sensory impressions/objects upon such minds are mere reflections. Their minds are so still that any impressions that arise of the six senses or encountered by the six senses get reflected in the mind. Think about it.....the lake without any ripples reflects all that it surrounds with such clarity that you can look at the water and know what was around. The lake was not the object nor did it hold the object but it was like a mirror that reflects what was around.

Then I contemplated a little bit more. So what was the big deal.

Well I have come to understand that when one identifies with sensory impressions/objects that one loses the balance of the mind becasue it becomes I, me and mine. The moment this happens we get into the duality of "I like" or "I don't Like". Once this happens all our actions become conditioned upon "I like" or "I don't like". Therefore, our actions become biased based on a personal view rather than the actual reality. It becomes our 'individiual reality'. However, if one had a reflective mind, then one will see/look at an object without the duality of "I like" or "I don't like". When this happens the mind does not move in the continum of 'I like" and "I don't like". Therefore, it sees things as they are rather than the way one would like to see things i.e. either in a positive frame or a negative frame.

I have come to understand that perhaps this is the reason why we are so moved by the vicissitudes of life and a Buddha or an enlightened being is not. I also realise that if we are mindful we maybe able to identify moments in our life that we are not moved by the duality of "I like' and "I don't like" and vice versa. If we are mindful we will realise that when the mind does not move in the duality that it gives us a sense of clam, peace and an acceptance of things as they are. I believe that in this lies a tiny glimpse of Nibbana that Buddha expounded.

With Metta