Vajrasattva

Just something I wrote today:

O, Great One,
Because I, weak and deficient
In all aspects of my conduct,
Prone to all types of non-virtue
And lacking all good qualities,
Have created unbearable pain
For myself and other sentient beings
Out of persistent ignorance
Of true and appropriate objects of refuge,
Please grant me shelter within your celestial palace
Until I am bound inseparably to your mind of enlightenment
And my actions are fully devoted to the welfare of others,
Who provide the basis for my every comfort and happiness.

Although I have always been motivated by self-interest,
And have thus squandered every opportunity
To be of assistance to others,
Choosing instead to neglect the gift of Dharma
In favour of my own fleeting desires and enjoyments,
Out of compassion, please restore my commitment
And allow me to work solely
To alleviate their suffering.

Teach me to remain firm,
So that I may carry out my duties
In the face of every illness and misfortune;
Teach me to rejoice in the goodness of others,
So that the vows I have taken
Do not lose meaning;
Teach me to value the advice of my Guru above all,
So that his essence may bless me
For time without end.

Completely oblivious to the consequences of self-cherishing,
Lacking all knowledge of the great path and its undertaking,
I must rely on you fully for protection:
Take pity on me, even as I wander within an inch of hell,
And set me again on the path to liberation
When I, like an infant, lose my way.

Grant me the ability to train without ceasing
In developing a pristinely clear mind,
So that wisdom may spontaneously arise
To infuse my mundane and spiritual activities
With great meaning and power
To accomplish my and others’ well-being.

In this way, may I completely turn away from negative actions
And experience the flowering of altruistic intention
As the gateway to sublime bliss.

- H

Space needed for community event (Medicine Buddha)

Cross-posted from my Facebook page:

Sometime in April, my meditation group will be holding a public event for all who wish to attend. I was asked to help find a suitable venue for it, and I figure the best way is to ask around as much as possible, so here is the scoop from an email I plan to send to Carleton U’s Housing and Conference Services department:

I’m a Carleton student who practices Tibetan Buddhism in the tradition of the Dalai Lama. Currently, I’m in the process of sussing out a wheelchair-accessible location for my teacher to be able to give initiation and commentary on a set of practices relating to Medicine Buddha, who represents the development of qualities that help people to actualize mental and physical health in themselves and others.

My teacher has had decades of experience in teaching various Buddhist practices. Coming from a Western background with strong medical and scientific training, he knows and responds to the challenges facing people in the context of modern society, and his dedication to improving the welfare of others in all areas of his life has earned him the endorsement of high-ranking Tibetan practitioners.

At some point in April of this year, he would like to make the Medicine Buddha teachings available to interested people in the community. This is intended as a service to others, and, although donations are traditionally accepted in appreciation of this type of activity, no one undergoing financial hardship is turned away on that basis.

Additional info:

Currently, we expect to need a wheelchair-accessible venue capable of housing fifty people for four hours. I was asked to see about finding space at Carleton, but it doesn’t have to be there.

Anyone from the Ottawa area who is interested in the event itself, or who has better ideas than I do about who to contact to get it set up, should feel free to get in touch with me.

Thanks for reading

Harry

Good karma?

Every blogger has probably done this already, but I couldn’t resist. I received this in my email today (not even the spam folder!), and I had to share it:

EXXON MOBIL MALAYSIA
G.03B, Ground Floor
Jalan Pantai
71009 Port Dickson
Negeri Sembilan Darul Khusus, Malaysia.

OFFICIAL WINNING NOTIFICATION!

It is obvious that this notification will come to you as a surprise but please find time to read it carefully as we congratulate you over your success in the following official publication of results of the email electronic online Sweepstakes organized by Exxon Mobil in Malaysia. Wherein your electronic email address emerged as one of the online winning emails in the 1st category and therefore attracted a cash award of USD$850,000.00 USD  Eight Hundred and Fifty thousand United States dollars only.
For verification purpose is sure to include:

Your mailing address:
Your Telephone Mobile:
Your Nationality/Country:
Your Full Names:

To file for your claim, please contact:

Name: Mr.Kenneth Lee
PHONE: (removed)
E-mail: (removed)@kimo.com

Yours Faithfully,
Anita Khalid Announcer

I’ll just leave this here, for now. All the jokes are probably already in your head.

Thanks for reading,

Harry

Returns

(I wrote the bulk of this post a long time ago, and some of the sentiments in it are dated, but I felt like it was worth sharing anyway. Apologies to those who didn’t want to see my dirty laundry.)

This will not be a “Buddhist” post, exactly. I’m writing it primarily for my own benefit—simply because I have to sort out some stuff in my head, and I don’t know another way. (Thanks to my Health Psychology prof for pointing me to the work of James W. Pennebaker, a “positive psychologist” who is known for his research on the impact of expressive writing on emotional and physical health.)

Here’s the deal: every time I start moving in a positive direction, something else inevitably drags me away, and I’m back where I started. It doesn’t help that I’m always making promises to myself, either. If they gave an award to the most optimistic-sounding, yet secretly neurotic and out-of-control Buddhist blogger, I could probably win that in my sleep with half of my attention devoted to having sex with Marilyn Monroe¹.

Attention, and my inability to self-regulate it in order to do the things I want or need to do to take care of myself and accomplish goals, is the real killer. My tolerance for the mundane things in life is extremely low, but not because I get bored, per se. My gut says that, when I run into any kind of roadblock, I get frustrated and move on  to something else before I can figure out what the problem is.

Come to think of it, I don’t usually acknowledge feeling frustrated about daily life in the first place—part of my brain probably kicks in and convinces me not to worry about it. Or maybe it’s because. since I’m so sensitive about what other people think, I’m constantly having to minimize the concerns I express to people. It could be that this pushes the problem out of my mind just long enough for me to ignore it completely. Later, when it hits me, I might not have the energy to do anything about it, and so it continues.

I sometimes lie about doing things I haven’t done on a given day, just to reduce the pressure I feel when people ask me about my various obligations. Although I understand that I’m not necessarily a bad person for doing this, I do wonder whether lying to others contributes to a false confidence that makes me less likely to complete a task at all—or whether doing so causes me to feel a loss of control that has the same effect.

Part of the problem must also be that I haven’t found my purpose yet. School currently retains a certain level of importance in my life, but it feels, at best, like just another thing to do. At worst, it’s more like a never-ending panic attack. I have no idea if I’ll even be able to finish, let alone where I will end up when I do, but I can’t do much without a degree, and that’s why finding something I actually like would be a huge blessing. I’m not even going to get into all the disability-related crap that I have to deal with on the side… I just want to be able to do my work like any other student, and move on to another part of my life. This shit is getting old.

In any case, I feel like nothing big can happen until I learn to express more of what’s on my mind. Writing it down should be a way of leaving a trail to remind me where I have been, and what patterns not to repeat. Anyway, if I forget, the universe will just beat me into the ground until I remember again.

As always, thanks for reading.

– Harry

¹ Based on true events

Movember: Day 12

I think I need a trim. Pic: http://ow.ly/i/l8KT

Movember Greetings

I’m not known for keeping in touch very well. I hope things are going well for all of you, and that all your ducks are in a row.

In case you are feeling generous and want to support a good cause (namely, prostate cancer research/awareness), I wanted to let you know that I’m participating in Movember with a team from my university. Any donations are very much appreciated, no matter the amount. My “Mo Space” is here:

http://mobro.co/hazzbot

I’d like to say that I’ll be back around here in not too long, but I don’t know when that will be; school is giving me a bit of a beating, for the time being.

Somehow, though, I’ve found the time to meet a lovely lady who I rather fancy…

Saturday at the Canal

Thanks for reading

Harry

Apologies

I have realized that I was being premature when I announced on Twitter that I would start blogging again soon. All this time, I’ve been using the pursuit of universal truth to mask my personal problems. Right now, I’m not naked at all: I’m wearing the same one-piece snowsuit, rose-tinted goggles and thick earmuffs that I always have, and somehow I’ve tricked myself into believing that I’m comfortable, even though it is plain to see that I’m not. I am suffering, and I have quietly been spreading my suffering to others through a false sense of entitlement to trust I never earned.

It’s common for me to think things like I’m a nice guy or I’m generous or I’m there when people need me and then wonder why I always get the short end of the stick. In reality, this is because I’m not doing it for them–I’m doing it for me, and all I accomplish in the process is to feed the delusions of my ego. When I tell myself that people need me, what they really need is for me to back the hell up. The truth is that I will never deserve anything that I’m not willing to freely give to others.

I like playing the part of the wounded hero, if only because the pain involved is easier to handle than the effort required to find a solution. In Jewish numerology, my name even corresponds to the words “Pyrrhic Victory.” If a solution ever presented itself, would I take it? Where would that leave me but in unknown territory? These are questions I need to answer, and I’m not going to feel right until I do.

I guess what I’m saying is, my break from this site is going to be longer than I first thought. I’m tired of pretending everything is okay when it’s not–at least, not here on Earth. Reveling in the Buddha fields every now and then is nice, but if I’m going to keep coming back to life on this planet, I have to get my shit together. I should be capable of more than this.

Feel free to contact me if you feel the need. However, it may take me a while to reply. In the meantime, I’m thinking of starting a private journal, and would consider inviting close friends to read it.

Webs

I had a wonderful (if disjointed) dream, last night. In it, I was given a very profound teaching by a friend who appeared not to realize it. Instantly, I recognized what it meant and I was enlightened. So I said,”You have just given me a profound teaching. Now I want to kill you!”

The teaching was the first line of this poem—I just filled in the rest because someone else wouldn’t have the benefit  of seeing what accompanied the words in my dream.

Why are you afraid, new web?
Having been woven, you will become laden with dew
And then the wind will carry you away.

Time

“This breath is the one that counts.” – Sufi proverb

I’m not even a “real” Buddhist—I haven’t taken refuge vows yet—so don’t kill me if I get this wrong, but I wanted to share my thoughts based on something that I read somewhere.

The author was confused about the relation between the Buddhist concept of “no-self” and the idea of subsequent rebirths. How could someone be reborn, he wrote, if there is no self?

I think the idea is that, although we don’t have any inherent reality, our true self (that is, the base of awareness before which all phenomena arise) exists beyond the concept of death. From this point of view, the death state does not exist, per se. Although we may experience various changes in terms of what arises in front of us, there is nothing to be afraid of, because what we sense is not “real” in itself. The word death is our way of imposing order on certain patterns of sensations, but the experiencer is unaffected by things like birth and death. You only have to step inside your mind to see it.

Before you start thinking that I’m morbid, let me remind you that thinking about death doesn’t make it come more quickly—the only thing that varies is how well prepared you are. Even then, I’m suggesting that there is actually nothing for which we should be prepared. It’s all a sham, folks. All of existence has been a perpetual unfolding without beginning or end, and without dividing lines of any sort.

Call me crazy, but I’m beginning to see life as a continuous multisensory light show, with my mind providing a running commentary in the background. However, I am not strictly a solipsist; although I can only be sure of my own awareness, I have experienced moments wherein I was aware of the existence of others. I really don’t know what to call myself, anymore, but Buddhism seems to have all of the bases covered, so I think I’ll stick with that, for now.

I was meditating, earlier today, because I was sitting on the pool deck at a swim meet with nothing else to do at the time (I was a volunteer, rather than a participant), and I spontaneously entered the “Fruition” stage of insight meditation (vipassana). For what seemed like a brief moment, everything ceased to exist. I did not feel anything, hear anything, smell anything… nothing. Utter nothingness, as though someone had flipped a switch to turn the world off. Then, just as quickly as it had come, it vanished, and everything was back to normal. This is supposedly the final stage, and yet I did nothing special in order to achieve it. This leads me to believe that life is no more than a revolving series of stages that we have all experienced before and will continue to experience forever; there is no use in trying to control anything, but there is also nothing to fear, assuming that time will never just suddenly stop.

In more than one sense, this moment is the only moment. The only thing to do is watch what is in front of your face (if I’m not mistaken, Jesus said something like that).

An Abundance of Leslies

Hi, folks.

I just got back from my first Tai Chi class at the Y. It was great, because, with only two or three other people in the class, I got a lot of one-on-one instruction from the teacher… not so great because I’m beginning to think that I’m wired to be an attention whore.

I hate to say it, but I think I got more out of that one class than I did from two years at the local branch of the Taoist Tai Chi Society (which uses a large group setting).

On top of Tai Chi, I’ve started doing Yoga; I’m also swimming again, and I have a personal trainer. It seems as though physical activity is the key to beating my depression. If only I had figured that out earlier, I might not have quit swimming in the first place and saved myself a lot of heartache. What’s done is done, though. The point is, as Herman’s Hermits will tell you, “I’m into something good.”

If the title seems strange, there’s a reason for it. My personal trainer/Tai Chi instructor is named Leslie. One of my classmates is a Leslie.  Several of my friends are named Leslie. So is my mother. Whether this is just a happy coincidence or it indicates some deep-seated psychological issue of mine, I don’t care to know. I have to be grateful, though, because all of the Leslies in my life have helped me tremendously at various stages of my journey.  I wouldn’t be where I am, loving every second of life, without them. Thank you, all of you. I’m off to practice some more Tai Chi, talk on MSN a little, pass out and do it over again.

(When my mom sees that I actually wrote something nice about her, she will shit bricks. I’ll take it as a good sign.)