1 Dharma Blogs 2016 Fourth Quarter By Michael Erlewine Copyright 2017 © by Michael Erlewine You are free to share these blogs provided no money is charged. 2 INTRODUCTION This is not intended to be a finely produced book, but rather a readable document for those who are interested in my particular take on dharma training and a few other topics. My thanks to Patti Singleton Williams for helping me to gather this all together. These blogs were from the fourth quarter of 2016, posted on Facebook and Google+. [email protected] Here are some other links to more books, articles, and videos on these topics: Main Browsing Site: http://SpiritGrooves.net/ Organized Article Archive: http://MichaelErlewine.com/ YouTube Videos https://www.youtube.com/user/merlewine Spirit Grooves / Dharma Grooves (join the group) https://www.facebook.com/groups/126511571262266/ ?fref=mentions 3 MYTH: CIVILIZATION IS THE CORRUPTION OF INFANTS October 4, 2016 By Michael Erlewine ([email protected]) We’ve all heard that old chestnut. It is a Western myth that the mind is clear and pure, just as we find it at birth. The American take is, were it not for our cultural “bad” habits, babies would all grow up to be rinpoches or the equivalent. This is something we may like to believe, but the Tibetan (and Asian) view does not support this, even a little bit. The Buddhist view is: when we are reborn (and take on a new body), we proceed to draw upon our karmic traces from previous lives and draw around us a personality based on that karma, not just one determined by our genes and cultural background. This is why identical twins can be so different, etc. Further, here in the West our take on the mind is that it is something that we use, like a flashlight or microscope, to study and look at the outside world. We are not trained (and have not been introduced) to using the mind to investigate or look at itself. In other words, we don’t use the mind to look at the mind. That is an Eastern concept. The average American has had zero training in looking at his or her own mind. In fact, the very notion is totally foreign (Asian) to most of us. 4 This fact alone makes turning this all around (flipping it), so that we use our own mind to look at itself not only an opportunity, but one of the last very real adventures. This is not what we have been brought up with. In fact, it goes against everything we know and have been taught. And it is not like we can just up and look at our mind whenever we should decide to. We are culturally so removed from it that we have to be taught HOW to look at the mind. And just to be clear to those of you reading this, the entire point of all of the scores of preliminary dharma practices is to prepare us to recognize for ourselves the true nature of the mind, once and for all. That is the whole point. There are many hundreds of techniques and practices that go under that name “meditation,” but only a very few of them are what the historical Buddha taught. Most are one form or another of relaxation therapies, which probably won’t harm us, unless we consider missing the opportunity to learn authentic meditation harm. And almost all the rest are purification practices of one sort or another. Then there are the very few methods (Insight Meditation and Mahamudra Meditation, etc.) for actually recognizing for ourselves the actually and true nature of the mind. The essential or pith texts state that Insight Meditation and Mahamudra Meditation, as taught by the Karma Kagyu Lineage, require a teacher who has themselves attained at least authentic recognition of the mind. It takes one to know one. 5 UNWAVERING ATTENTION October 5, 2016 By Michael Erlewine ([email protected]) The Karma Kagyu Lineage Prayer states: “As it is taught, unwavering attention is the body of meditation. Whatever arises is the fresh nature of thought. To the meditator who rests there in naturalness, grant your blessing that meditation be free from intellectualization.” Here, the “body of meditation” means the main body of meditation itself, the whole thing. Unwavering attention takes effort, but what kind of effort? It can be misleading and we can easily be misled. It is not that it takes great effort on our part to have unwavering attention or that effort alone will help, but rather that it takes effort to relax, which is an oxymoron. How do we “try” to relax? It is the same with the advice to have unwavering attention in our practice. How do we do that? How do we make our attention unwavering? It is not by trial and effort. We must first learn to relax and only THEN will our attention becomes unwavering or thereabouts. In other words, relax and the point of it all (call it unwavering attention) will appear effortlessly. Unwavering attention is what remains when we allow the mind to rest and not attempt to alter it. 6 In other words, we can’t make our attention unwavering by sheer effort, but it becomes unwavering when we rest our mind and allow it to naturally arise, as it actually is, unwavering. It’s we that do the wavering. We can stop trying and allow it to happen. 7 MYTH: CIVILIZATION IS THE CORRUPTION OF INFANTS October 4, 2016 By Michael Erlewine ([email protected]) We’ve all heard that old chestnut. It is a Western myth that the mind is clear and pure, just as we find it at birth. The American take is, were it not for our cultural “bad” habits, babies would all grow up to be rinpoches or the equivalent. This is something we may like to believe, but the Tibetan (and Asian) view does not support this, even a little bit. The Buddhist view is: when we are reborn (and take on a new body), we proceed to draw upon our karmic traces from previous lives and draw around us a personality based on that karma, not just one determined by our genes and cultural background. This is why identical twins can be so different, etc. Further, here in the West our take on the mind is that it is something that we use, like a flashlight or microscope, to study and look at the outside world. We are not trained (and have not been introduced) to using the mind to investigate or look at itself. In other words, we don’t use the mind to look at the mind. That is an Eastern concept. The average American has had zero training in looking at his or her own mind. In fact, the very notion is totally foreign (Asian) to most of us. This fact alone makes turning this all around (flipping it), so that we use our own mind to look at itself not 8 only an opportunity, but one of the last very real adventures. This is not what we have been brought up with. In fact, it goes against everything we know and have been taught. And it is not like we can just up and look at our mind whenever we should decide to. We are culturally so removed from it that we have to be taught HOW to look at the mind. And just to be clear to those of you reading this, the entire point of all of the scores of preliminary dharma practices is to prepare us to recognize for ourselves the true nature of the mind, once and for all. That is the whole point. There are many hundreds of techniques and practices that go under that name “meditation,” but only a very few of them are what the historical Buddha taught. Most are one form or another of relaxation therapies, which probably won’t harm us, unless we consider missing the opportunity to learn authentic meditation harm. And almost all the rest are purification practices of one sort or another. Then there are the very few methods (Insight Meditation and Mahamudra Meditation, etc.) for actually recognizing for ourselves the actually and true nature of the mind. The essential or pith texts state that Insight Meditation and Mahamudra Meditation, as taught by the Karma Kagyu Lineage, require a teacher who has themselves attained at least authentic recognition of the mind. It takes one to know one. 9 UNWAVERING ATTENTION October 5, 2016 By Michael Erlewine ([email protected]) The Karma Kagyu Lineage Prayer states: “As it is taught, unwavering attention is the body of meditation. Whatever arises is the fresh nature of thought. To the meditator who rests there in naturalness, grant your blessing that meditation be free from intellectualization.” Here, the “body of meditation” means the main body of meditation itself, the whole thing. Unwavering attention takes effort, but what kind of effort? It can be misleading and we can easily be misled. It is not that it takes great effort on our part to have unwavering attention or that effort alone will help, but rather that it takes effort to relax, which is an oxymoron. How do we “try” to relax? It is the same with the advice to have unwavering attention in our practice. How do we do that? How do we make our attention unwavering? It is not by trial and effort. We must first learn to relax and only THEN will our attention becomes unwavering or thereabouts. In other words, relax and the point of it all (call it unwavering attention) will appear effortlessly.