MountainZendoAndHealingCenter.com Blog

Little Pink Houses

by Jeff Brooks

In T’ang dynasty China, in the golden age of Ch’an Buddhism, a monk would typically describe himself as “a man of no rank.”  When we read this description now, it may sound like a quaint holdover from feudal society, when everyone, from peasant to Emperor, had an official rank.

It might seem like an irrelevancy to modern Buddhist practitioners. Especially for people practicing in the Japanese Zen tradition where American and European teachers now own million dollar Zen Centers and require constant displays of personal deference by their followers; a tradition in which the patriarchs in Japan were supported by the military dictatorships of Shoguns and samurai, in which many Zen monks were indeed men of very high social rank.  

So we do not immediately understand that the description – a man of no rank – was not just a pose.  Sometimes contemporary scholars explain this phrase as sociological – in China in the ninth century there were legions of men from poor families with no real hope of economic success, no likelihood therefore of marrying or establishing themselves as men of any status, and in this Marxist interpretation, as a result of their economic alienation they turned to monastic life – for material support, for social position, for something to do.

There may have been such people. But it is a misunderstanding of the significance of the phrase “man of no rank.”  And it prevents us from learning what our ancestors knew and what, through their words, they are trying to teach us.

Our relationships with others are permeated with an awareness of rank. No less than in a feudal society, and in a way more so, because instead of having a fixed and titled social hierarchy, our status is undefined and requires frequent signaling. The pursuit of higher status, or the means to signal higher status, is a chief motivator of the behavior modern people.  

The size of houses, the choice of car, the school you went to or need to get into, what you do to get a job or a promotion, the restaurants people go to, who you know, where you travel, how you get there,  the TV and movies people choose, the events you attend, the tickets you buy, your clothes and web life, electronics and sports equipment, where you sit in the Zen center, all these concerns – and all the marketing that influences them – are intimately bound to the impulse to signify one’s status.  Status signaling may not be the only motivator – the pursuit of money, food, leisure, sex and the impulse to human kindness also may play a role – but in the modern world it is the most manipulated motivator.

In this respect we are not different from the medieval people who were so concerned with social rank.

In the practice of Buddhism we let go of it.

The Dalai Lama often says “I am just a simple monk. All I own is my robe and bowl.” He is serious about this.  As sophisticated and skeptical modern people, who are lied to by marketers, actors and public figures of all types, and so fear being gullible that we maintain a stance of ironic disbelief even in the face of the truth, we might think that because he is a head of state, with a big place to live, followers, comforts and a plane that he is just striking a pose or quoting.

He is quite serious. And he reminds himself and his followers of this fact frequently.  We might think this is an easy thing for him to say, because he actually has high status. But if it was so easy the other high status people might say it too. And I do not hear them say it.

What is easy is to become accustomed to and eventually addicted to the attachments and props that begin to cling to you when you are a person of high rank. And which are not really yours, which will preoccupy you and distract you and intoxicate you, and which inevitably will be withdrawn, leaving pain far out of proportion to the pleasure they once provided.

The Dalai Lama knows this. He has trained himself to see it clearly and to bear it in mind. It is how he manages to keep his composure when his country is stolen, his people are killed, his heritage which is the light of the world is obliterated – all the while vigorously countering the forces of ignorance and destruction.

To practice dharma we let go of all the stuff that clings to us, that preoccupies us, that distracts us, that taxes our power, wastes our life and forces us – with the false promise of pleasure and status – to lose our lives and miss the chance to put an end to suffering for ourselves and others forever. 

Japanese Zen teacher Uchiyama Roshi described “opening the hand of thought” as his meditation technique. As a thought arises we simply do not hold onto it. This may be a provisional technique, not a complete path to the end of suffering, as many have said. But whether or not it is, it is a necessary and brilliant way to create the habit of releasing our attachment to the stuff that clings to us and the stuff we learn to cling to as we move through life.

There are many old roads that wind through the forest around here. Some of them are barely visible tracks through the mountains. It looks like no one has walked them in a hundred years. They are like old memories. They seem to have no end. I walk along them.  I think maybe every person who walked this road before has vanished from the earth. I cannot meet them face to face any more. But I can walk where they walked. I can walk the way they did, years ago.

It makes me think of a poem by Basho. Basho was a medieval Japanese poet who wrote haikus. There are a lot of fussy boring haikus in the world.  And many fifth grade teachers ask their kiddies to write haikus, because haikus are short and most ten year olds can’t write sonnets. But we would be wrong to dismiss all old Japanese haiku as a pretentious arty hyper-aesthetic tangent to true dharma. While some express a writer’s pose of simplicity as authentic as Paris Hilton’s blue jeans, some will echo through time and space and mind so beautifully they will arise unbidden and unstoppable as we go.

The autumn wind

Along this country road

Goes no one

Jeff Brooks taught karate in Northampton, MA, daily from 1988 to 2009, and led Mountain Zendo from 1994 to 2009. He now lives in a vast ocean of mist covered mountains rising to the sky, working in law enforcement. He can be reached through Mountain Zendo or at “jbrooks882@gmail.com.”  His articles and books are collected at www.jeffbrookskarate.com.

So Simple. So Difficult.

by Susan Downing

People often ask me whether I get tired when I do Reiki for other people, and they sometimes seem surprised when I tell them that I don’t, and that, rather than feeling depleted by my work, I receive tremendous joy and benefit from giving Reiki to others.  Maybe they ask because people talk a lot these days about how doctors, nurses and caregivers in general suffer from physical and emotional exhaustion, from compassion burnout.  So, how is it that I (and, I imagine, other Reiki providers) avoid this burnout?  At the heart of the answer lies… well, … the heart.  

In today’s blog post, I explain my understanding of how Mikao Usui understood the healing system he founded, and what his work with his students entailed.  Although we Reiki practitioners have been taught that what facilitates healing in a Reiki session is universal energy,  I have come to believe that Usui Sensei recognized that the key to facilitating healing with Reiki was in fact love, the love that we practitioners carry within our very own hearts, not a force which exists somewhere outside us.  

We know now (thanks to Bronwen and Frans Stiene, who wrote about this in The Reiki Sourcebook), that Usui Sensei (who was a Tendai Buddhist lay priest), taught Reiki as a spiritual practice, an enlightenment practice, and that  the healing which recipients experienced was a side benefit, not the primary goal.  Based on what I have learned through my own Reiki and Buddhist practices, and through my own research into what the elements of  Usui Sensei’s Buddhist training would have been,  I believe that the core of his teaching lay in helping his students cultivate and nurture love and compassion, so that they could both progress spiritually and bring greater joy and healing to themselves and others.

Cultivating love and compassion within our own hearts is a simple idea, but a difficult practice.  It requires patience, perseverance, effective techniques, and guidance and support.  But the payoff is giant, in terms of our happiness and others’. Through such a practice we really can get to a state where love and compassion guide our interactions, where we feel energized and joyful, rather than drained.   I am convinced that Usui Sensei recognized this and taught his students accordingly, and I have decided to work the same way.  Beginning in September, I will be offering an ongoing, monthly practicum, “Reiki as Spiritual Practice: Cultivating Love and Compassion.” My goal is to support Reiki practitioners by helping them develop and sustain an ongoing practice devoted to developing love, compassion. This practicum is the way I have decided I can best honor and carry on the tradition of Mikao Usui’s healing work as I understand it.

This week’s post tells you all about how I came to this conclusion, and I hope you’ll take the time to read it, below.  If you are interested in finding out more about the practicum, which begins on Saturday, September 18th and is suitable for Reiki practitioners of all levels and spiritual traditions, I invite you to contact me.  

So Simple. So Difficult.

When I was receiving my Reiki Level I training, my teacher taught that universal or divine healing energy facilitates any healing that occurs during a Reiki session.  Reiki practitioners are simply conduits for this energy. That is the standard explanation of how Reiki works, and that is what I myself have always told my students and those for whom I have done Reiki. But as I have gone deeper into my Reiki practice, I have become convinced that what does the healing is not some universal or divine healing energy, but our own love and compassion. I believe that it is the force of whatever love we have managed to cultivate within our own hearts – through taking care with others, through our spiritual practice, or both – which makes healing possible when we direct it to others and ourselves.

We have all experienced the healing power of love – whether in the form of a kind word, a loving glance, or the warmth of a compassionate embrace – and we have all given this to others, whether we have simply treated others with love and kindness or formally placed our hands on them and called it Reikii.  We have also felt the joy and healing which occur within us when we act lovingly toward those around us. So really, why say that in Reiki we promote healing by using a force outside ourselves, when each one of us can easily attest to the healing power of love? It is simpler to say that when we do Reiki, we are harnessing the energy of the love and compassion we feel for the recipients and sending that energy from our heart to theirs. 

It has been traditional to say that Reiki practitioners bring healing energy through themselves and into the recipient. But Mikao Usui, the founder of this healing system, said in an interview (published by Frank Arjava Petter in Reiki: The Legacy of Dr. Usui) that he was unable to precisely explain the healing mechanism.  He described his system as a spiritual healing “method of healing the body and mind”  in which “energy and light radiate from all the body parts of the person who is giving the treatment.”  But Usui Sensei does not say that practitioners are serving as conduits for any external energy.  What he does stress is that anyone who “lives according to the moral principles can certainly learn within a short time to heal themselves, as well as others.”  And the core of Usui’s work with his students, in addition to using his energy healing method with them, were the five principles by which he urged them to live: “Just for today, do not anger, do not worry, be humble, be honest in your work, be compassionate toward yourself and others.”  In other words, what I believe Usui meant by calling his method a spiritual healing method, was that it enabled people to heal themselves and others by developing their own spiritual potential, not by summoning some outside force.  As we become better people, Usui Sensei was saying, we become able to heal ourselves and others.  This is not surprising, since we know that Mikao Usui was a lay priest within the Tendai Buddhism sect. And at the core of the five principles he taught his students, and which reflect the spirit of the Buddhist precepts he would have followed as a Tendai lay priest, is the commitment to treat others with love and compassion.

Certainly, there are various ways to cultivate that love – for some, it may be their connection to what they see as divine presence, or Spirit, while for others, like me, it is an understanding of the Buddha’s teachings combined with acting according to vows and using specific meditation techniques. Usui Sensei’s teaching method, I believe, was to cultivate love through a combination of hands on Reiki healing and devotion to the precepts he taught.  Had Usui Sensei’s method hinged on serving as a conduit for an external healing energy, the focus on the precepts and on ongoing energy work would not have been key.  He would have known that consistent withBuddhist teachings, no self-existent external healing energy can exist.  But the practices he used can cultivate love within us - no matter what our spiritual tradition – and sharing that love enables us to facilitate healing in others by helping them feel our love and compassion.

I came to believe that love is what does the healing through the intersection of my own Reiki and Buddhist practices, and through my research into the teachings of Usui Sensei.  Buddhism came first for me – I began studying Tibetan Buddhism with Jeff Brooks and soon decided that I wanted to take Bodhisattva vows. You become a true bodhisattva only when you develop bodhicitta, a boundless love and compassion for all beings which prompts you to devote all your energies to relieving their suffering – in this and all future lives.  Until you develop bodhicitta, you are an aspiring bodhisattva, striving to cultivate bodhicitta in your heart through a variety of practices and meditation techniques. When I received my Reiki Level I training, I was in the midst of my study for taking the vows, and my practice included meditations designed to cultivate bodhicitta. I was also volunteering in hospice.  So, given this intersection of my spiritual and volunteer work, it is not surprising that Reiki and bodhicitta seemed inseparably intertwined to me from the start.  Perhaps that is why, as I continued my Reiki training and began practicing Reiki more deeply, I became convinced that the practitioner’s own love and compassion are, in fact, the key component in any Reiki session. That what does the healing is love. Compassion.  Bodhicitta. 

I came to this realization through my own experience: as I focused my spiritual practice on cultivating bodhicitta, I found that I was able to come to my Reiki work with great compassion for those I worked with.  When the compassion would well up within me as I gave Reiki, it felt as if this very love was pouring out of my heart, through my hands, and into the recipient.   And those to whom I was giving Reiki would feel that love, they would grow calm and relaxed, and healing would become possible. For both of us.  

That made sense to me within the Buddhist framework.  Mahayana Buddhism stresses that bodhicitta arises as we gain insight into the fact that beings have no fixed identity, no self-nature.  As our attachment to an intellectual feeling of boundaries between ourself and others fades, our love and compassion for them naturally arises.  Within my Buddhist study, I had seen the transformation that my own bodhicitta-focused practice had brought about in me and in my life.  My own growing insight into lack of self-nature and the resulting compassion and love I was feeling for those around me were helping me free myself of anger and resentment toward others. The compassion was bringing about healing in me.  It seemed only logical to me that when we pass love onto others, that transmission of love can also facilitate healing.

I believe that it was precisely this bodhicitta, this energy from his loving heart which Usui Sensei used in his healing work and sought to develop in his students.  This is my conjecture about how Usui came to use and teach Reiki the way he did:

While doing a 21-day retreat on Mount Kuramayama, Usui Sensei had some kind of profound spiritual experience, perhaps a direct perception of the true nature of reality, which caused bodhicitta to arise in him.  When he came down from the mountain, he felt drawn to share the overwhelming love and compassion he was experiencing.  Having at this point become a true bodhisattva, he probably felt drawn to those who were suffering, and when he interacted with them – whether he actually put his hands on them or not – they sensed his love and experienced healing as a result.  I surmise that he realized that the mechanism for achieveing this healing was very simple – to simply connect with the recipient with great feelings of love.  

I suspect that he also realized that the more he interacted with people in this way and the more he was able to help them, the stronger his own bodhicitta grew.  In other words, he saw that as he sent his own love out to others during healing sessions, not only were they healed, but his love actually grew as a result.  Having understood this, I bet Usui Sensei thought that if he could help others cultivate this feeling of love, they could also facilitate healing through interacting with others.  And so he set about figuring out how to help people develop bodhicitta and share it with others through the hands-on healing method.  So, I believe that the core of his teaching was the cultivation of bodhicitta through the use of reciprocal energy exchange, mantras, the use of precepts, and meditation. 

Once I came to the conclusion that Usui Sensei must have recognized love as the key component in a healing session and taught his students accordingly, I decided to work in the same way.  Honestly, saying that the love we bring makes healing possible challenges us to approach our Reiki practice differently. It gives us the opportunity to examine the state of our own hearts and gauge our own capacity to direct love to others.  We realize that if we want to deepen our Reiki practice – for our own benefit and others’ – we will need a reliable, consistent way to cultivate and nurture love within our hearts.    And so, I have decided to offer an ongoing practicum, “Reiki as Spiritual Practice: Cultivating Love and Compassion”. 

My purpose for offering the practicum – in which I will offer attunements and hands-on Reiki practice, and work with the Reiki precepts, symbols and mantras, as Usui did in his teaching – is to support Reiki practitioners by helping them develop and sustain an ongoing practice devoted to developing love, compassion, bodhicitta.  This practice will help us all develop our ability to bring love and compassion to ourselves, all those around us and our healing work. This is precisely what I believe Mikao Usui was doing with his students: giving them the opportunity to experience the benefits of this exchange of healing love, and to cultivate their love and compassion so that they could gradually bring more and more of it to all of their interactions. 

What I am suggesting is so simple, yet so difficult: let’s not focus on giving our Reiki clients universal energy which is somehow separate from us and perfect.  Instead, let’s recognize that the love in our own hearts is what makes healing possible. Let’s cultivate that boundless love and compassion within our own hearts and pass that on, not only to our clients, but to all beings around us.  That is what I sincerely believe Usui Sensei was striving to help his students do.  And that is what I will do my best to help my students do, too. Offering this practicum is the way I have decided I can best honor and carry on the tradition of Mikao Usui’s healing work as I understand it.

Life Is A Journey. (Please remain in your seats and enjoy the movie.)

by Jeff Brooks

The goal of Buddhism is to put an end to suffering for yourself and others, forever. Anything that does that is Buddhism. Anything that doesn’t isn’t.

The method to achieve this is training in three dimensions of human action: personal conduct, condition of mind, and understanding of how things exist.

The things you do to train in one of these areas will support the training in the other areas. They are not separate.

Avoid things like killing, stealing, lying, sexual misconduct, using intoxicants and indulging in disturbed states of mind like rage, envy or jealousy – your ability to meditate deeply and see phenomena without distortion increases. The three trainings happen at once.

But pursuing the goal of Buddhism and undertaking these three trainings are highly countercultural now. The most potent forces in the world conspire to prevent us from living a life directed toward training well and putting an end to suffering.

On the contrary we are continually urged – by human voices and our cultural and physical environment – to do things which increase our suffering and the suffering of the people around us.

How difficult is it to get a quiet half hour to meditate? It’s hard to fit into your schedule regularly, it’s hard to remember why it’s that important, it’s hard to sit undistracted with the sounds of the traffic and the televisions, the tension in your knees and to do list that keeps hopping around your mind like a caged kangaroo.

Of course you can go off to a meditation center for a $600 weekend retreat. Which is cool and everything but then you have to get back to reality and sell some more stuff and sit through all the meetings and the road trips and the conference calls and the power point presentations to do what you need to do to get back there again on your next vacation.

We stay informed about the thousand controversial issues of our day. We have consumer choices, and pick from a thousand flavors of soda, charming micro brews, chewy chunky goodness or sprouts and choose a channel to watch or a site to click or we glance at our phones like a bobble head doll in the window of a car rolling down a rocky road.

Watching is taken for granted. Body slack, mind slack, we engage in the imitation of action, watch other people pretend to do things – we forget that they are not actually doing the things we are watching them do but are pretending, and that they are not there but are recorded. We forget that we cannot influence them, that our response to them is irrelevant to them, that we cannot engage in a discourse with them in which our humanity will be significant but instead are relegated to an impotent passive consumer of their actions, with our only option to sit still and slack or change the channel and sit still and slack in front of another set of pretenders.

Most people do this for hours and hours a day. Most of us take for granted that we must live with minds churning, hearts unfulfilled, lives vaguely or profoundly dissatisfied. If we do not question this we are easy to manipulate, degraded in will and vision, overwhelmed with trivia, sinking deeper into physical and mental weakness, seeking for someone – some great leader, someone cool, someone powerful, someone focused, someone, anyone, who would help us dispel our unhappiness.

But no fuehrer – no matter how appealing, no matter how much we yearn for him or hope for her to do it – will put an end to human suffering. Only we can do it. Only by engaging whole heartedly in the three trainings of conduct, mind and wisdom.

Yes, it is countercultural.  We are like paratroopers, dropped behind enemy lines, surrounded, with no option but to do our jobs as human beings, with complete commitment, and no thought other than rescuing all those who can be saved.

In the past when I have questioned watching television movies computers and so on as a way of life people have said yeah well meditating is just sitting there wasting your time, so I would rather watch something.

This is a good misunderstanding because it points to the heart of the matter.  Achievers in all walks of life have powerfully focused minds. Watch a championship tennis player, a race car driver or for that matter a surgeon, musician, a Wall Street trader or a pilot. What you will see, as they perform, is focus. Part of the delight we get from observing their mastery is not the physical performance itself but the utter unification of body and mind in skillful, purposeful action. That is achieved only after years of intentional practice.

Watch someone watch TV who has watched TV relentlessly for ten or twenty years and the thrill will not be there.

But spend a moment with someone who has extracted themselves from the degradation of the modern cultural environment and who has spent a decade or two cultivating clarity of mind and you will never forget them for as long as you live.

Better yet, you can be that person.

Jeff Brooks taught karate in Northampton, MA, daily from 1988 to 2009, and led Mountain Zendo from 1994 to 2009. He now lives in a vast ocean of mist covered mountains rising to the sky, working in law enforcement. He can be reached through Mountain Zendo or at “jbrooks882@gmail.com.”  His articles and books are collected at www.jeffbrookskarate.com.

One by One

by Susan Downing

For the past few weeks little brown ants have been marching, one by one, across the top of the backsplash behind our kitchen sink and vanishing either behind it or into a tiny crevice beneath the windowsill.  If we leave any bit of food on the counter or in the sink, they will find it and begin carting it away.  Or on the floor. They are like land-piranhas.  Who knew a stray piece of popcorn, a tiny corn chip corner or a minute bit of chopped garlic would be such prizes?

And we have been tolerant of them.  While making sure to keep everything cleaned up.  I told my son the other day that I thought the ants were a blessing, because now everyone cleans up after themselves really well!  No dirty dishes in the sink or on the counter.  But I am feeling less blessed as we enter week four.  I think it was coming downstairs the other night and seeing the ants attack our (thankfully covered) butter dish on the hitherto unbreached counter of our island.

Even so, I have not put out ant traps or other poison.  I can’t bear to.  I went online to look at hints for getting rid of ants, and it made me sick to my stomach to read the suggestions – feed ‘em Cream of Wheat which will explode in their stomachs, or salt, which will also make them explode when they drink too much.  And on and on. I don’t want to kill them. I just want them to go away.  But even I have my limits.  Tonight, as I watched them massing in my sink, drawn by some faint traces of something, I addressed them.  “Ants,” I said sternly, “listen up!  You’ve been here long enough. You have until tomorrow to leave, or I bring out the boric acid.”

Why, you might ask, do I even hesitate to put out ant traps and kill the whole colony?  Well, for one, I took vows not to kill, and even little ants are live beings, so I don’t want to be cavalier in my treatment of them. You might wonder, does it really matter if I kill a few hundred ants, even a whole colony? They are tiny, they don’t do anything useful, and how smart can they be if they carry away a piece of popcorn that can’t possibly fit through that opening in the wall?  Buddhists say it certainly does matter: they assert that all beings were once our mothers, and even if these hundreds of ants were not my mothers, they still are just trying to eat.  I can’t blame them for that.  And Nagarjuna, the key 3rd century contributor to Buddhist understanding of dependent origination, wrote that if we felt our own ribs crack as we stepped on an ant, – i.e., if karmic ripening followed immediately on the heels of our harmful acts -we would quickly learn to treat others kindly.

All of that can seem a bit abstract and distant – vows, 3rd century writings… So here’s some motivation a little closer to the present moment: today I learned that an old family friend, who’s my age, 53, suffered a major stroke over the weekend. He was extremely fortunate and is expected – with time and rehab – to make a full recovery.  But we were all shaken by the news, and when I spoke with his wife, she told me that the doctors could find no explanation for the stroke.  Even so, she is relieved – we all know it could have been much worse.

I reflected tonight on my friend’s stroke and stroke of luck – and this during a seven day period in which another of my friend’s father died, a second friend was knocked out cold in a golfing accident, and a third friend lost her second beloved dog in two weeks.  And I called to mind the words I recite as part of my opening prayers before each meditation period: “The negative karma

I have accumulated since beginningless time is as extensive as the boundless oceans.  Although I know that each negative action leads to countless eons of suffering, it seems that I am striving to create nothing but negative actions.  I lack the ability to purify these faults so that no trace of them remains. With these negative imprints still in my mind, I might suddenly die and find myself falling to an unfortunate rebirth.”

It is to remind myself of the possibility of just such occurrences that I recite those prayers every day.  To set my motivation.  Not my motivation to live life to its fullest, or to seize the day to get all out of life that I can, as some urge. Rather, to set my motivation to take as much care as I can in my actions with others.  I need to keep reminding myself, because otherwise it might be easy to slip into thinking that it doesn’t really matter how well I keep my vows, that I can always keep them better tomorrow or just do some purification ritual later on, if keeping them as perfectly I can today is too difficult, or I am tired, or annoyed by pesky people around me.  Or by pesky ants.  What my prayers – and my friends’ experiences – help me keep in mind is what the Buddhist scriptures all stress:  that death is certain, and that we cannot know the time of our death.  At any moment we might find ourselves suddenly falling into death and wishing that we had done all we could in every moment to act kindly and ethically to all beings around us, before it was too late.

Which is why I felt extra motivated today to make sure that those I love know I love them, to treat everyone around me with love and compassion- because tomorrow I might not be around to offer that, or they to receive it. It is also why I am hoping the ants will be nowhere in sight tomorrow.  Because I don’t want them to realize I was bluffing.

How To Save The World

by Jeff Brooks

Prince Charles said last week that his job was to “save the world.” Even if he can’t do it, by setting himself the task he may think he can help restore relevance and high purpose to an institution (British Royalty) that is suspect and expensive.

What is interesting about his statement is not that it is so grandiose but that it is so common.

Untested, immature and self-regarding people often think it is up to them to save the world. Sitting in their dorm rooms at midnight, minds afire with righteous reading and unfulfilled desire; sitting on the bed at Mom’s house approaching middle age, minds afire with failed projects, desperate for one-step vindication; sitting in the reading room of the British Museum covered in boils, conspiring against people who wouldn’t give him a second thought; trashing SUV’s, people and houses so animals can be happy; fantasizing about their own annihilation and emergence into paradise embraced by a blossoming flower of destruction that will consume hundreds, thousands, millions of non-believers; with minds reaching across empires thousands of years old, teaching the necessity and virtue of murder.

They all think they are destined to save the world.

But what world is it they think they will save? Not the one they look around and see. That is the world they will need to wreck. The idea that appeals to them places them at the center of creation. Like an infant, they do not see other people as deserving of respect and consideration, but rather as either obstacles or avenues to the easing of their own unhappiness.

They inhabit an imaginary world, and it is that imaginary world they imagine saving.

This is not to say that there is nothing to be done to save the world. It is to say that no good will come from forcing the world to fit a fantasy. Being selfish and impatient all one can do is disturb people and cause them harm. What can we do?

There is a list of six things which you can do to save the world.

The first one is to help people out. Help them get what they need to be safe and happy. They might not notice you are doing it. They might not appreciate it. But it will bring more happiness into the world if you do it.

The second is to behave decently. That means don’t kill people, don’t lie to them, or steal from them, even if you can rationalize it or make excuses for it. Don’t smash your brains with drink and drugs because you will waste your life if you do. Don’t pursue wrong sexual activity as a road to happiness because you will ruin your relationships, cut yourself off from others, and be distracted from what it is that actually can bring lasting happiness.

The third one is refuse to be roused to anger. This does not mean that you should tolerate cruelty or injustice or cultivate a meek good nature that is just okay with all the crap of the world. It means that you maintain courageous calm when faced with difficulty or crisis, and proceed with skill where you can be of help. Sometimes this will mean you take the time to persuade jerks that it is not in their interest to persist in their harmful acts. Sometimes it means you act decisively and vigorously to stop harm.

The fourth is joyful effort – making consistent effort to do what’s right despite difficulty, disrespect or danger.

Fifth is cultivating a calm, clear mind.

Sixth is learning to see the world as it is without the distorting filters and limited perspective we are stuck with as a result of our past non-virtuous acts.

A while ago while on patrol I had a call for two people fighting. It was not a fair fight, a schoolyard scuffle, or a sporting match. The smaller person was getting hurt and although I did not know why they were doing this I did not need to know why to know it was not okay. And as an officer on patrol I did not have the option of turning away, thinking oh well that’s just their karma, or calling the cops.

 If we hesitated the smaller of the two could get killed. When commands did not stop the fight we grabbed the big fellow and pulled him away. While he was being assisted to the ground his opponent began to yell at me about why we were always harassing them, and to get the fuck out of there.

At times like that you really have to know what you are doing. Not just when to move in or when to wait for more back up, not just how to apply a joint lock and get the cuffs on before someone pulls a bat out of the car and takes a swing. Although, yes, tactical skills are important, and at that point it’s too late if you have not studied and practiced well. 

But equally important: you have to know for sure that you are right in taking risk to save someone’s health or life; that you are right in thinking that vigorous action to prevent harm is justified and that standing by when harm is being done is not admirable; that being appreciated is nice but not necessary.

We did a generous thing for them. The big fellow did not collect the karma (or the prison sentence) for murdering the smaller one. The smaller one did not die or spend weeks recovering or a lifetime disabled.

It’s not that people should always be permitted to exercise unlimited freedom of choice. It is that if you are going to save the world you will have to at least be able to save real people, nice or not, with skill and energy and decency. Maybe they will learn. I do not know if those two will but I do know that now they have a chance.

Grandchildren steal from their own grandparents. Thugs prey upon the vulnerability and kindness of their neighbors. Marketers exploit the desires and credulity of an audience of passive, needy viewers. Oceans get fouled. Water gets rationed.

Somehow real human beings – noble in reason, infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action like angels, in apprehension how like gods, the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals – are confined in asphalt and concrete prisons, cities that seem the inevitable vessel of human culture, as if they had sprung fully formed from the black heart of le Corbusier.

Disrespecting people will not save the world. Forcing people to conform to an imaginary ideal of perfection will not do it. Blowing them up will not do it.

But it can be done.

Jeff Brooks taught karate in Northampton, MA, daily from 1988 to 2009, and led Mountain Zendo from 1994 to 2009. He now lives in a vast ocean of mist covered mountains rising to the sky, working in law enforcement. He can be reached through Mountain Zendo or at “jbrooks882@gmail.com.”  His articles and books are collected at www.jeffbrookskarate.com.

Filling the Gap

by Susan Downing

I make a weekly Reiki housecall to Neil, my friend Heather’s husband -we have been friends for a long time, and now Neil is bedridden, suffering from a host of neurological conditions which render him unable to speak or control his physical movements.  In the past couple of months he seems to have gradually been getting close and closer to finally letting go of being here in his physical body.  Both Heather and I have sensed that, and the Reiki seems to be helping the process along.

Two weeks ago, as I finished Neil’s session, Heather came in with a folded piece of fabric, a batik. She said that she and Neil had gotten it for me in May at the Cummington fair, and she had been waiting for the right time to give it to me, without knowing when that would be.  I unfolded it and immediately recognized that it was a batik of Tara, an important Tibetan Buddhist deity.  (One story tells us that Tara was born from a tear that fell from the eye of Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion.)  There is White Tara and Green Tara and there are also the 21 Taras – 21 different forms that Green Tara can take to help us conquer various dangers and mental afflictions.  White and Green Tara are pretty easy to tell apart, for obvious reasons, but the 21 Taras are hard to tell apart.  And that is why I was amazed when as soon as I laid eyes on this Tara, I had the feeling she was Tara, Destroyer of Grasping.

I don’t know what the artist’s intention had been – Heather said there had been a whole stack of different Tara batiks, and she had taken a long time in choosing the one that felt right to give to me.  What a coincidence: you see, a print of Tara, Destroyer of Grasping, hangs on my wall at home.  I got it at the end of April from Joan Bredin-Price, the artist, who painted a series of all the 21 Taras (you can go to Joan’s website to see all 21 of these beautiful, non-traditional thangkas – Tibetan devotional paintings of deities.)  This Tara is my favorite of all the 21, because reducing grasping is a big focus of my own practice.  You can imagine how surprised I was to unfold that batik and see my favorite Tara there!

Heather remarked that she had no idea why she had held onto it for two months before actually giving it to me.  But then it struck us that Neil probably needed to have Tara around for a while.  Heather and I thought back and realized that Neil had begun his letting go just about the time she’d come into the house.  And during this day’s session, I had felt him release what seemed like some very old pain.  Evidently he was feeling free enough to let Tara move to me.

I held the batik in my hands, folded up, and as I stood there thinking about how best to display it, I felt a sudden rush of energy from it.  I am someone who is sometimes skeptical of this kind of thing, but there was no doubt – the energy was coming from the folded Tara, not my hands.  A powerful, sacred image.  And I decided I wanted make a thangka out of it to hang up in my Center.

Four traditional thangkas – images of Buddhas and bodhisattvas painted on thick paper and then surrounded by sewn brocade frames – hang in the Center’s zendo, and I knew Tara would be the perfect addition, even though the batik is a non-traditional representation. And Heather, when she came by the Center the next day, pointed to the empty wall across the zendo from the altar, and said, “That would be a perfect place for her.”  And she was right. It is a twelve-foot wall, and a traditional thangka would be dwarfed there. But the batik itself was the size of the other thangkas, so the finished piece would be very large, of a size proportionate to the wall.

Even so, I was a little nervous.   Would it be in any way disrespectful or inappropriate for me to sew a thangka? I consulted Jeff Brooks.  This is his view: “Authentic dharma practice does not depend how well we Westerners imitate Asian cultural forms. An American holding a horse hair fly whisk while speaking in a zendo may signal authenticity to some people; it may signal pretending to be Japanese to someone else. Having a practice space that is austere may support a kind of dharma practice. A space that has aesthetic reminders of dharma teaching and experience may support another kind. The environments we create for practice can help us be better human beings, better dharma practitioners and better bodhisattvas. What matters in them is not how well we imitate our imaginary ’pure’ Asian traditions but whether or not we know what we’re doing — and how deep our knowledge, understanding and practice is.”

And so, I felt that what was most important was approaching this task with the proper motivation and care.  For starters, it seemed that I should be very careful with the actual batik – not to let it touch the ground, or let my cats lie on it!!  But aside from that, I’d have to carefully choose the fabric to make the frame around it.  Without a doubt, the place to go for that was  Osgood’s in West Springfield, so I took my folded Tara and headed down there.  Osgood’s is textile heaven – or hell, depending on your perspective.  You walk in and see literally thousands and thousands of rolls of fabric, many just lying piled up much higher than you can reach, or standing upright in bin after bin.  Finding fabric there can be an overwhelming experience if you don’t know exactly what you are looking for. And even if you do!

On this day, with Tara in my hand, I knew only that I was looking for medium weight brocade.  And so, having found out where I could find the brocades, I paused, asked Tara to help guide me.  Then I started walking.  Silk brocades  embroidered with flowers were lovely, but didn’t go well with the batik.  Others were too thick.  Still others I found appealing, but somehow lackluster.  Then I came around a corner and saw before me a row of bins with fabric bolts sticking upright. All, that is, except for a roll of blue brocade which bent over and out into the aisle.  I wondered whether it was meant for the thangka – it was certainly putting itself right in front of me – but it didn’t really grab me.  A quiet, but sophisticated bolt of gold did.  And as I unrolled it and lay Tara atop it, I knew the gold was right.  But I needed a contrasting color.  Still the blue bolt waited patiently, leaning silently toward me as I stood with my back to it and held Tara up next to every other fabric in the adjoining bin.  But finally I listened.  Pulled that big, thick bolt out, laid it next to the gold, with Tara on top.  Yes. A perfect combination.  What really appealed to me was that while the regularly-patterned gold was elegant and deity-appropriate, the blue had an almost homespun look to it – the raised contrasting shiny pattern looked hand-sewn and very alive, as if in motion.  The two together seem to me now to express both the calm gleaming beauty of the quiet mind that Tara helps one attain and the more chaotic impulses we hope to tame during practice.

My fabric choices made, I headed to the cutting table, where one woman was cutting fabric for the line of us who were waiting.  Then suddenly a second young woman (whose name is Brandy, I later learned) appeared. She cut some samples for the woman ahead of me, and then asked what she could cut for me.  I gave her the blue and gold bolts, plus the buttery yellow fabric I’d chosen for the shade to go on top, and told her how much I’d need of each.  Silently, she took each bolt, rolled it out on the table, slowly smoothed it and then, with what seemed to me unimaginable  care and attention, cut each length of fabric.  As she finished, she glanced at Tara, who was lying folded up in front of me.  ”Are you making a flag?” she asked. “Of sorts,” I answered.  I explained what I was planning.  She smiled in what seemed to me a kind and thoughtful way as she passed my fabric across the table.  I left Osgood’s so happy – not only had I easily found the right fabric for the thangka, but the young woman who had cut it could not have been more respectful or mindful.  It felt auspicious.

It was only over the weekend that I was able to get down to cutting the fabric and actually sewing the thangka.  I knew that I should sew it all by hand, using the shiny rayon thread I’d gotten at Osgood’s – a color named Temple Gold, believe it or not!  So I cut out the pieces for the frame, using my traditional thangkas as a rough template, only lots bigger!  When I actually sat down to sew, in my room at home, it felt so peaceful, the motion of the thread going through the fabric and the accompanying sound so soothing.  And right away it occurred to me that it would be good to chant the Tara mantra as I worked: “Om tare tuttare ture svaha.”  (It is meant to help liberate one from worldly dangers, from the three poisons of greed, aversion and ignorance, and to spur one to compassionate deeds.) Don’t know why I thought of it, but I did, so that’s how I worked:  over the four days I was sewing, I sang that mantra as I stitched, and thought about what a blessing it would be to be able to bring Tara’s presence into the zendo to join the Buddha, Avalokiteshvara, Manjushri and the Medicine Buddha who already hang there.

I found it very moving to work that way.  On two of the afternoons, as  I sat and sewed,  singing that mantra, my daughter Emily was there with me, too, sitting at the computer, playing The Sims. We joked about the seeming incongruity of the two activities, but I appreciated having her there – and she provided valuable consultation, too, helping me choose the right fabric alignment for the bottom of the thangka.

Finally, on Wednesday night, I finished the thangka.  And when I went to Heather and Neil’s yesterday for my regular housecall, I took it along.  I hung it up  on Neil’s IV stand, so Tara could look down on him as I gave him Reiki.  It seemed the right thing to do, bringing her back for a visit before hanging her in the zendo, to share her with him again. Especially since our experiences with this beautiful Tara had a common thread:  she had helped him let go of some of his anxiety about moving toward death.  She helped me loosen my grip, too – during the process of designing and sewing and chanting, I gained a liberating new perspective on a situation I’d been struggling with. It was like pulling loose the threads of an old, constrictive seam and restitching the pieces together in a new, beautiful way.

Tara is now hanging in the zendo on the big wall. (See the photo below.)  Thank you, Heather, Neil and Brandy, for making that possible.  The room feels somehow complete now.  My friend Karen and I meditated there last night, and we felt fully surrounded by the presence of the deities.  All gaps filled.

Giving Back

by Jeff Brooks

In Massachusetts if you do not return your library books you can go to jail. (Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 266 sections 99a and 100.)

A wide variety of personal choices are tolerated and encouraged by the Commonwealth. But clinging to your library books past their due date is not acceptable. You may have forgotten. You may have become accustomed to their presence on your shelves. You may be busy or lazy or possessive or forgetful but the harder you hold on to them the more vigorously they will be removed from your grasp. Most people let go of their books in plenty of time. Willingly bringing them back so other people can enjoy the books we can avoid the fines and the piquant tartness of the librarian. And why hang on to them anyway? They take up space, we already read them and if civic virtue and social sanction aren’t motivation enough there is always the bedrock of self interest.

Which is a good dharma lesson for us because everything we have – whether James Patterson, Shakespeare, Milton or the Bible – it’s going to come due and it’s going to be returned.

Everything we have is borrowed. Whether we love it or loathe it, protect it or neglect it, we will be separated from it sooner or later.

Our bodies will be returned. We slipped through a narrow opening into life and we may walk upon the earth proud and powerful but no matter what we think along the way that body will slip back through another portal, briefly opened, into death. Someone else will borrow it. It will be food, molecules, memories for others.

Your clothes, your house, your car, your tools, your friends and family, your rank and position, your achievements and regrets, all the scripts that form the volumes of our life will be returned. They are on loan to us, and no matter how accustomed to their presence we are they are not ours.

This process of separation is a source of unimaginable suffering if we are not prepared.  This suffering is commonplace. But it is not inevitable. The way to avoid it is offered to us through practice. The tighter we cling to the components of our lives, the more we hold to the mistake of their permanence, the more we suffer. The more we are accustomed to practice, to behaving decently toward ourselves and others, to developing a calm, clear mind that does not project or linger, the more we cultivate the wisdom to see the fundamental dharma teaching that all things that have been assembled from parts – our bodies, our minds, our lives – will eventually be disassembled, the more suffering will cease and an opportunity to achieve great things will arise in its place. (Dhammapda, The Path, chapter 5-7)

So we can borrow our wonderful or terrible stories. We can read them, explore them, learn from them, live them out, take care of them, ignore them or revile them. We can make them our own for a while. But eventually we will have to return them. And if we do not do so willingly with wisdom they – and we – will be taken away by force.

The monk meditating at midnight, with nothing to his name but a robe, a bowl and the moonlight, is an image we might view with sentimental yearning, like a lifestyle piece in Real Simple magazine. Or we might see it as unimaginably impoverished – a life defined by deficiency – a life without a sweetheart, the internet, friends, stuff to do or a cool job.

There is another way to see it. That monk is not so different from those of us who live our lives in other ways. Only he is focused on doing the work he needs to do – not by neglecting the important things of this life, but by putting them in context of eternity, where everything will be returned, and our choice is not between pastimes or genres but between imprisonment or freedom.

Jeff Brooks taught karate in Northampton, MA, daily from 1988 to 2009, and led Mountain Zendo from 1994 to 2009. He now lives in a vast ocean of mist covered mountains rising to the sky, working in law enforcement. He can be reached through Mountain Zendo or at “jbrooks882@gmail.com.”  His articles and books are collected at www.jeffbrookskarate.com.

What Should I Do About Living?

by Susan Downing

On Monday I took my daughter Emily on the first of her college visits, to Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York.  Back in prehistoric times in Illinois, when I was applying to colleges, I never did any visits.  I just chose.  I thought I wanted to study linguistics, and the linguistics department at the University of Wisconsin at Madison had a good reputation, and so I went there.  Don’t remember where else I applied, but that was my first choice, and once I got in, I just went there, sight unseen.  Well, at least consciously – I was born in Madison, but we moved when I was a baby, so I had no conscious memories of the city where I ended up my freshman year with 35,000 other undergraduates.

Emily, on the other hand, like most other high school kids these days, has already done more research on colleges than I ever thought of doing.  Small, liberal arts colleges appeal most to her now, and so we’ll be touring a number of them.  Skidmore’s special Open House this week was a perfect opportunity for her to get a glimpse of the campus, hear students talk about their experiences, see the dining hall she’d be eating in and try to ferret out what the academic program there is really like.

After we had toured the library, arts building, museum, dormitories and dining hall, our guide – a senior psych and sociology major – took us into one of the academic buildings and began explaining how their First Year Experience program works.  Each freshman takes a special first year seminar, and whichever professor teaches the seminar also serves as faculty advisor for the students in that class, helping plan classes for the first one or two years.  But, our guide explained, “They serve as your mentor really.  You can ask them things like, ‘What should I do about living?’”

I’d been listening to her all along, but that remark really caught my attention.  As the tour continued and the group walked into an auditorium, Em and I consulted and decided that our guide had probably meant that you can ask your faculty mentor how to deal with Living, as in the Residential Life department, the folks you’d talk to if you have problems with your roommate or dorm neighbors.  But the way I understood our guide, the mentors were there to answer your big questions about Living. As in Life.  And to me, that seemed as it should be. Especially your first year in college.

When I was a college teacher, I regularly served as an advisor for first-year students, and I certainly got my fair share of questions about Life.  As well as a larger share of questions about Living.  I would do my best to listen, ask follow-up questions, dispense answers (in the case of Residential Living questions) and the best suggestions I could (in the case of Life questions.)  But usually, I only rarely saw my advisees, which meant that there wasn’t much continued communication about the burning questions of Living or Life.  Any ongoing discussions of Life tended to happen with my major advisees, the students who were Russian majors.  We would definitely talk about Life, as in What am I going to do with my Life once I graduate??!!, less about Living.  I was very close to some of these students, the ones who went to Russia with me in 2003 for five months when I was the group leader for the Mount Holyoke study program there.  On that trip I was a 24/7 combination parent (actual parent for my own two kids, who also came along), teacher, tour guide, translator, and consultant.

Daily life with that wonderful group of students included a constant stream of questions about Living and Life and everything in between, from “We want to go to Estonia for fall break. What time does that train leave?” to “My host family walks around in their underwear. Is that normal?” to “What do I do about the guy I was supposed to meet for my internship who didn’t show up?” to “Do you think I really look more Russian without my glasses?” to “I lied to my host mother and said I liked red caviar and now she’s started giving it to me for breakfast every day.  What do I do?”  All, basically, versions of “What should I do about living?”  And I had to answer them.  Of course, I am not a walking train schedule, so I had no way of knowing when the train for Estonia left.  That time, I smiled and replied that although I appreciated their confidence in me, they would have to go to the train station and look at the schedule themselves.  It would be good practice.  They did.  It was.  And a whole group of them made it to Estonia and back in one piece – although late to class that first day back – and they nervously enlisted the student they thought I’d be least likely to yell at to call me from the train about 9 a.m., saying they were still en route, but would try to be there for afternoon classes.

Although I still laugh when my own kids ask questions to which I could not possibly know the answers, replying, “That’s a Russia question!”, part of me is happy when they ask.  I’ll explain why:  one weekend on that trip, I was taking the whole group to visit Tver, a town on the Volga River.  We all met at the train station to catch an early train – and thank heavens for cell phones, because I had to guide one student in as if by instruments (”Susan, I got off the subway, but I don’t know where I am.”  ”What do you see around you?  Do you see the arch?”  ”No.” “Turn to your left. Do you see it now?”  ”Yeah.”  ”Okay, go straight.”  etc.). But once we were all there, standing on the platform, ready to board, an announcement came over the speakers that that train was cancelled.  Just like that.  No reason.  Just cancelled. Ah, Russia!  But right away, one of the students piped up, “Don’t worry. Susan’ll figure it out.”  And I did.  (Okay, it didn’t take too much figuring.  Just looking at the board to see when the next train was leaving, and making sure no one got lost in the intervening two hours.)

But I never forgot that student’s confidence in me. And I never stopped appreciating it, because all 16 of those young folks, including my own kids, seem to trust me implicitly, to have total faith that whatever happened, I would get them to the right train, whether literally or metaphorically.  (Yes, even W., who shortened my life by a couple of years when he stepped onto the overnight train to Petersburg literally 30 seconds before it began pulling out of the station.)  And their trust meant that even though I might have been a lot less certain than they were in my ability to always “figure it out”, they were able to relax in any situation we faced together, knowing that they could rely on my support, that they weren’t going it alone, responsible for figuring everything out in a foreign country, foreign culture and foreign language.  In fact, I think it was after that weekend trip that the question about the train to Estonia came up.  And so, although I teased them a bit for asking me about that, I was also pleased to have that kind of bond with my group. Blessed to have their faith in me, grateful and honored that their parents had entrusted them to me for those months.

Maybe that is why I heard the tour guide’s question the way I did: because during that trip to Russia, I was a walking spravochnoe biuro (Information bureau) on all topics. And because I saw how much it meant to both my students and my own kids to have someone they could go to with any question under the sun or snow or vodka.  But it was also because once my own son went off to college four years ago, I really understood how important it is for freshmen to have someone they can turn to in a new and foreign town and culture, someone who will patiently answer questions.  Not only the easy ones, like “How many science classes do I have to take?” or “Can I stay on campus during break?” but also the tough ones, like “My parents want me to major in economics, but I love literature.  What should I do?” or “I am so scared and lonely here.”  In other words, questions that may not even sound like questions, but are.  Countless versions of “What should I do about living?”  Important questions, all of them, all in need of answering.

So, I hope that Skidmore’s faculty mentors really are open to questions about both Living and Life.  Because we all need to have at least one person we can go to with any question about living, someone who will try to help, someone we trust and have faith in, even if they don’t always have the answers.  College students are no exception. Perhaps they are even more in need of this than folks at other life stages.  So, I know what question I’ll be asking the guides as Emily and I continue our touring: “Who do you go to when you need to ask, “What should I do about living?”

To Protect and Serve Everyone

by Jeffrey Brooks

Indra, the guardian god of the Buddha’s teaching, asked in the Maha Prajna Paramita Sutra, how he could protect the dharma. Subhuti, the character in the sutra speaking for the Buddha, replied “Do you see any dharmas you can protect?”

Subhuti’s question implies that Indra understands something but not everything about prajna paramita – about transcendent wisdom, the great insight into the nature of reality which alone, according to Buddha’s teaching, puts an end to ignorance and so puts an end to suffering.

Now with his question, he pushes Indra, a great god of traditional Indian culture in that time, to consider the implications of his understanding more deeply. If, as the prajna paramita teachings prove, all dharmas – all existing things – are contingent upon other things, then they cannot exist themselves as self-standing, unchanging entities with properties inherent in themselves.

This means that all the existing things which we experience subjectively as separate entities actually exist as a function of the causes and conditions which bring them into existence and sustain these things until they cease. It means that dharmas are contingent upon the parts which comprise them and each of those parts also are temporary constructions upon which our minds impose a label, an idea and a self-nature. It means that all dharmas therefore are contingent upon the mind of the observer – someone who lays upon the shapes and colors of visual reality, for example, labels, ideas, memories, expectations, and so on. This is not to say that there is nothing out there in the world. It is to say that there are no fixed things in existence, no things, as Subhuti’s question implies, to protect.

Indra understands and then asks, well then how do I protect Bodhisattvas – the enlightening beings who practice the teachings of the Buddha and who live their lives according to the three trainings of proper personal conduct, deep mental stability and clarity and deep insight into the nature of reality – prajna paramita, as described in the Maha Prajna Paramita Sutra.

The previous question gave Subhuti the chance to point out the sunyatta or emptiness or lack of self-existence of objects. This new question is an opportunity for Subhuti to point Indra’s mind to an understanding of the sunyatta – emptiness or no-self-nature – of persons. Subhuti explains in this sutra that if the bodhisattvas truly practice their insight into the nature of reality deeply they are in no need of protection – that insight itself is the only true protection, the only means by which any mind can be freed from ignorance and the suffering that arises from it.

The only way Indra can protect the dharma, the only way he can protect people, is to himself become a practitioner of the dharma – that is, become someone whose life is itself a manifestation of the practice of the three trainings, developing the insight into the nature of reality, and so putting an end to suffering for himself and others.

Having taken the bodhisattva vow I vowed to save all beings. Having taken the law enforcement oath of office I am sworn to protect and serve the public. In neither case does it say “except for jerks,” or “if you like the person.” No exception. You need to act with skillful means, with appropriate action in every case – not the same action in every case. If I run toward the sound of shouting and violence to save someone is my action inconsistent with Subhuti’s advice to Indra? Should I just let the person get beaten up?

Is there really no one to protect? Should I yell at them to start meditating now! Because only insight into the nature of reality can ultimately save them or anyone else!!

In the heat of the moment there is no time for anyone to prepare. In each present moment my skillful means, acting on the basis of my vow, means I do step in to remove the person from danger or remove the threat to the person.

It would be ignorant to think that I have saved that person permanently, or to think that the person I did save temporarily had fixed properties that defined him or her for all time, in relation to me or others. Because the next day I might be putting that same person in handcuffs after they shot the person they were fighting with the day before. It is compassionate to do that, because it will help the murderer avoid collecting bad karma from doing more murders, protects the other victims and their families, protects many anonymous and uninvolved members of society because they do not have to continually encounter predators stronger than themselves running wild and unchecked.

Do I stand by and tell them I cannot save them? Do I fall into the belief that I have?

Or do I understand that there are no dharmas to protect and that ultimately there is no way to the end of suffering besides living a life that manifests the skillful compassion and transcendent wisdom of the Buddha dharma?

Jeff Brooks taught karate in Northampton, MA, daily from 1988 to 2009, and led Mountain Zendo from 1994 to 2009. He now lives in a vast ocean of mist covered mountains rising to the sky, working in law enforcement. He can be reached through Mountain Zendo or at “jbrooks882@gmail.com.”  His articles and books are collected at www.jeffbrookskarate.com.

  

Kickin’ It Old School Some More

by Susan Downing

Those of you who read my post from a couple of months ago, “Kickin’ It Old School”, will recall that I’ve made a conscious decision to practice Reiki in a way that’s as close as possible to how Mikao Usui, who developed this healing modality, practiced it.  Just how did Usui practice Reiki? That’s been a tricky thing to determine, but thanks to one of my students, Lydia, I came in contact with a fabulous book that really unlocked Usui’s approach for me.  (It’s The Reiki Sourcebook by Bronwen and Frans Stiene.)

It turns out that the way of practicing Reiki that came to America through Hawayo Takata from Dr. Hayashi was quite different from what Mikao Usui had developed, and not just in one way. But in one big way:  Usui was using the energy connection between himself and his students, and between his students and each other as the core of a spiritual practice.  The Stienes write that the point of Usui’s work with his students “was to provide a method for students to achieve enlightenment.” (p. 58, for  those of you who like citations!)    And the healing that took place in the course of these interactions was a marvelous kind of side effect, rather than the purpose of practice.  But once Dr. Hayashi began practicing and teaching Reiki, he broke off from the traditional Usui practice, following Usui’s death, and he secularized the practice, placing the emphasis squarely on the healing rather than the spiritual.  And it is this non-spiritual version of Reiki which Mme. Takata spread here in America.

Well, when I read that Usui’s aim was to use Reiki as part of a spiritual path, I got really excited, because it wasn’t just any spiritual path he was on, it was a Buddhist path: Usui was a lay priest within the Tendai Buddhist tradition, which meant that I felt an even stronger connection between my Reiki practice and my Buddhist practice.  It suddenly seemed natural that the two feel so connected to me, and dt first I didn’t really think so much about how the Reiki practice could be an enlightenment practice.  But last weekend, something happened that gave me insight into what I think Usui must have been doing…

I’ve been writing a lot in this blog about the 3-day-in-a-row Reiki sessions, and I’ve done them and received them with a number of clients and friends.  And three of my Reiki friends in particular were intrigued by the possibility of doing a series as a share.  So we decided to do it: last weekend, for three days in a row, the four of us took turns giving each other Reiki.  The first person would like down on the table, and the three others would give her Reiki (only a 20-minute session, since there were three of us giving.)  We’d sit for 10 or 15 minutes, and then we would rotate, so that the second person would lie down and the other three would give her Reiki. And so on.  So, on each of these three days we spent about 2 hours giving and receiving Reiki.

And under these intensive and intense practice conditions, we experienced exactly what I now believe Mikao Usui was hoping his students would experience.  And what was that?

Anyone who does Reiki enough and with sufficient focus and intention will at some point feel what I described in my October blog “Reiki Heaven”: “Sometimes we lose awareness of any distinction between our hands and the body of the person we’re working on: because we move our hands and then let them settle and rest in one spot for a minute or two, and because the action is so meditative, the opportunity arises for this distinction to fall away as if we were in deep meditation.  Rather than having a sense that I am giving Reiki to someone, there is simply the calm, happy presence of energy flowing, just flowing, not from or to anyone. Receiving Reiki during the share, we can experience the same thing: it begins to feel that the hands resting on us are part of us, that they are us and we them, without boundary.”

This is precisely what happened over the weekend.  Almost immediately, someone on the table or one of the practitioners would talk about feeling so connected in this boundary-less way, feeling that either we couldn’t feel a body beneath our hands, or hands on our body.  And then, after each session, one of us would inevitably turn to one of the others of us and remark, “I was working at her head and was just thinking I really needed to move to her hip, and then you went there.”  It was as if we were all so focused on the recipient and so in tune with her energy and with each other that we all just knew what to do and just did it.  Silent dance after silent dance. And at some points we practitioners were intertwined above the person on whom we were working. But how does this explain Reiki as a spiritual practice?  Keep reading…

At one point, during our Saturday sessions, one of us wanted to lie on her side for her session. I was at her front, one of us was at her feet, and the other was at her back.  The two of us at front and back had our arms draped across our friend’s side, each of us reaching over her, forming what she later said felt like a comforting cocoon.  And as we stood there, silently, I happened to glance down at her face, and was overcome with sweetness and tenderness. She looked just like an angel to me, and I felt so grateful at that moment, felt it was an honor to be able to bring her this healing energy together with our other friends.  I glanced at the one who was at her feet, and she smiled, and then at our other friend, and realized that she and I were feeling the same thing – there were tears in her eyes, too.

And that is when I understood what Usui must have been getting at: that is where Reiki becomes a spiritual practice. You see, Usui’s Buddhist practice would have focused not only on individual enlightenment, but on bringing benefit to all beings, with the bodhisattva ideal of leading others to liberation, too. And the Buddhist traditions with this ideal (the Dalai Lama’s Mahayana tradition falls into this category) focus intensely on both achieving wisdom (insight into the nature of reality – see Jeff’s last post, “Buddhism and the Three Trainings” on this) and compassion.  Tibetan Buddhism offers a whole set of meditations to develop compassion, but I am now convinced that what Usui did was use the body-based practice of Reiki as a powerful tool for both erasing our ignorant sense that we possess a fixed, separate self-nature and helping us develop compassion.  I think he was brilliant, and this is how it works:

When we give or receive Reiki, if we are very open and still and focused, we can experience that sense of lack of separation between practitioner and recipient that I refer to above.   When the recipient’s and practitioner’s (or, in this case, practitioners’) energies are connected and they both have that sense of loss of separateness, that produces a feeling that combines both strong compassion and tenderness for the other person and intense well-being and happiness in oneself.  Of course, the Reiki recipient often feels this, too, and this is the reason we all feel great after Reiki, whether we’re giving or receiving it. To put it another way, experiencing the loss of separateness elicits strong joy and compassion, which is precisely the goal of many of the Mahayana or Vajrayana Buddhist meditations or ritual practices.

But how does this help us, aside from helping us feel great?  Let’s say you receive this wonderful sense of well-being and tenderness toward the recpient or practitioner during a Reiki session.  Ideally, when you walk out of that room, you will carry that sense of tenderness and well-being with you. But that’s not all.  In addition, back out in the world, you will be able to remind yourself that it is possible to feel that connected to another human being.  Toward all beings, human or otherwise.  And ideally, reminding ourself of this enables us to be as loving and kind to every being we encounter as we feel toward the person with whom we experienced Reiki.

So, what I am pretty sure now is that Usui was using the practice of Reiki to enable his students to consistently and repeatedly experience this state of non-separateness (while receiving or giving Reiki) as well as to continually share the happiness and love (through giving Reiki to others), because within the Buddhist tradition, it is crucial to take the loving feelings generated by the practice and pass them on to others, rather than focusing solely on one’s own happiness.  And so, Reiki turns out to be a perfect combination of receiving and giving.

That is exactly how it worked for all of us this weekend. What I saw was that my friends, who are already very sensitive to each others’ needs, became more finely attuned to each others’ needs as the hours passed, steadily more concerned with each others’ comfort and happiness, fussing with pillows, paying close attention to every toe, smoothing out locks of hair and wrinkles in the sheets, so that each one’s experience would be optimally enjoyable.  And as we talked about how the sessions were affecting us, it became clear that we were all leaving each day and feeling much more tender and solicitous about those around us, even strangers.

That is how Reiki practice becomes a spiritual practice – and you don’t have to be Buddhist in order to do it.  Repeatedly and consistently practicing – or receiving! – Reiki makes it possible for this great happiness to arise, and if you can then have the conscious intent to carry that happiness with you and shower every being around you with it, then you are establishing a habit of viewing others more compassionately,  of treating them with tenderness.  If you’re working within a Buddhist framework, and you combine this practice with pursuing insight into wisdom, and you are on the path to enlightenment.  If you are not Buddhist, you can still use Reiki experiences in this way to bring infinite happiness to both yourself and others.  This is exactly what I strive to do: to carry on Mikao Usui’s work of teaching people to create that happiness through Reiki.