But you don’t believe it, so here’s the Buddhist logic:

• All conditioned things are impermanent because they are (by definition) creatures of emptiness

• Death is a conditioned thing; it doesn’t make itself, but depends on causes and conditions not of its own creation

• If death weren’t a conditioned thing, it would be permanent (fixed, unchanging)

• If you’re certain death is a permanent end, the only way you would know that for sure is if you’d died and stayed that way … which would make you unavailable to argue the point

But (you reply),

Just as firewood does not become firewood again after it is ash, you do not return to birth after death.
--Genjo Koan

So there! Dōgen disproves your headline!

No, he doesn’t. He goes on to assert that we are massively deluded about birth and death:

Accordingly, birth is understood as no-birth … death is understood as no-death.

In other words, the problem isn’t the emptiness – and therefore impermanence -- of birth (firewood) and death (ash). The problem is our insistence that the former is transient and the latter isn’t.

YES, the body, an impermanent creation of 10,000+ things, arises and fades away.

[Pause for that quintessential Buddhist exercise of imagining which parts of your body are “you,” and how much of it could be amputated and still be “you.”]

Most of us only have a vague sense, if that, of past lives: a place or a person that was instantly familiar, a habit pattern that feels ancient. But the Buddha remembered thousands of past lives and the karmic connections between them; that is, he knew his intention for being here. And some branches of Buddhism depend on that continuum of practice-knowledge to identify new spiritual leaders.

The Buddha acknowledged both death and continuation in his final words:

All conditioned things are of a nature to decay.
Strive on untiringly.
--Mahāparinibbāna Sutta

Which suggests that we might be able to break death’s delusive stranglehold by creating, focusing on, and living our intention for how we want to strive on. How we can develop habits now that reduce suffering and karmic detritus and practice those habits so they will continue regardless of form. How we can take the terror-gaze off death and view it more lightly as something that only lasts from nine to five or is just a jump to the left.

Know how much is enough.
--2^nd of Eight Awakenings (from Mahaparinirvana Sutra)

We’re on the hunt for ever more clever ways to do more/better. (We even have a high-tech name for this cleverness: hacks.) We measure our self-worth — and others measure it for us — by how much we get done. We look askance at the one who is not busy. The only acceptable performance review is ‘exceeds expectations,’ and we’re desperate to stay busy (or at least appear to be) so others will approve of us, like us, or not hurt us. We believe that vacation, or just sitting down, is a luxury we can’t afford, and we do it on pretext lest anyone think we’re goofing off. We greet our partners and children at the end of the day not with Welcome home, but with What did you do at work/school? Did you stay busy and get lots done?

In short,

We have no capacity to rest and do nothing.
--Thich Nhat Hanh

We don’t live in the present; we live in the should. We anesthetize ourselves with endless activity and ever-longer to-do lists so we don’t have to feel, and we retreat to busyness to avoid facing emptiness.

[Busyness] protects us from emptiness … People brag to each other about how busy they are with the clear implication that they are valued and indispensable to the unending projects that fill their waking hours. But should a little slit appear in the cloth of their densely woven consciousness, allowing an open space to appear, there’s a stab of panic.
Darlene Cohen, The One Who Is Not Busy

And in that panic, something dies: relationships; creativity; compassion; empathy; joy; appetite, health. Being busy is a major source of suffering for our bodies and minds. It turns us into hungry ghosts, the victims of endless craving caused by relentless moving of the goalposts of enough.

So, instead of a To-Do list, try a To-Stop list. Replace What should I be doing? with What can I stop doing? The stop doesn’t need to be long, just enough to discern skillful means from flailing, compassion from fixing, and presence from scorekeeping. Stopping gives us a chance to see our habit-patterns, and to remember that the vow to save all beings is the vow to save them from us, from our own greed, hate, and delusion.

To-Stop List: A Sample

1. Stop reading and contributing to the Comments section of news articles and blogs, for Right Speech is rarely found there.

2. Stop sleeping with my phone, for rest and spaciousness are not found in that little screen.

3. Stop doing anything else while I’m eating, for nourishment is not found in multi-tasking.

4. Stop building a fortress, and build a refuge instead, starting with a refuge for myself.

5. Stop accomplishment-doing, and focus instead on how I want to be* regardless of what I’m doing.

*Buddhism has myriad lists to help us here:

• Kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, tranquility (Brahmavihārā)

• Generosity, ethics, patience, energy, concentration, wisdom (Pāramitā)

• Not killing, not stealing, not misusing sexuality, not lying, not intoxicating, not gossiping, not self-praising, not hoarding, not raging, not disparaging reality (Precepts)

It is not like we need to become free. It is a matter of discovering that quality of being that is inherently unhindered and unbounded.
--Amaro Bhikkhu

A disciple of the Buddha does not misuse sexuality.
--3^rd Precept

Sexuality. A source of great pleasure and great suffering. A demonstration of love and of greed, hate, and delusion.

What is the privilege of our sex and gender, and how do we wield it? Buddhism is not immune to the ethical-monetary bankruptcy that plagues spiritual (and secular) organizations. One would hope that precepts (or commandments in other traditions) might put the brakes on predatory behavior, but alas…

When bodily autonomy is violated even in sacred space, one of the victims is the Dharma itself. How can we expect practitioners to trust a word of the Dharma when they can’t trust the speaker? When the Buddha’s suggestion to find out for yourself doesn’t include keep your hands to yourself?

There is no scenario in which a sexual predator can be said to be an asset to sangha, regardless of their other skills. Such people are not practice opportunities for others; they are causes of real suffering, and when they are allowed to remain unchecked, it is a sangha-wrecking affront to all the precepts. (Try imaging how misusing sexuality: kills, steals, lies, intoxicates, covets, etc. – you get the idea.)

So, why do we allow predators to stay? I heard some astonishing rationales in my monastic years, from They’re too valuable to the organization to The Dharma is wide and vast and includes all.

A hard ‘No’ to the first one, and a ‘Yes, but’ to the second. Yes, but why are we so skittish about confronting the violation of this precept, in particular? It seems to be the most difficult one to address directly, perhaps because it is the quintessential mirror of our insecurities about love, control, worth, identity. And for some people, even the Dharma won’t help them look in that mirror (and they’ll blame us – sometimes violently -- for suggesting they look).

But we can turn that light inwardly. We can use the tools of the Dharma – patience, equanimity, compassion, attention, intention, and all the rest of Buddhism’s helpful lists – to investigate rather than prey. And even if we’ve bowed out the predator, we can still use those tools to investigate the ghost that remains, the ghost that shows us where we don’t trust bodies in other ways, where we choose some characteristic of appearance and then justify our predation on that, when we deliberately choose to not look in the mirror that others hold up to us.

We can either treat other people and other elements of our environment as objects of our calculation, exploitation and consumption, or we can see other people as we see ourselves.
--Winton Higgins
https://www.buddhanet.net/winton_s/

There are two important days in your life, the day that you’re born and the day you find out why.
--David Johnson

Why are we here? What was the intention that brought us to this moment?

As told in the Jataka Tales, the Buddha remembered hundreds of past lives and the intention with which he came to them. But I’m not here to try to persuade you of reincarnation (a misleading misreading of dependent co-arising, as Dōgen explains in Genjo Koan -- “firewood becomes ash and it does not become firewood again.”)

But our intention creates us, nevertheless. And if it’s a stretch to accept that an intention created the form of you that was born, then try out the idea that intention creates the form of you in this (or any) moment. Our intentions are part of dependent co-arising; we are not observers of emptiness, but participants in it. The Buddha asserted that the only free will we have is how we respond; that is, what form we decide (intend) to make of each moment, including our own form.

I can hear the rebuttals already: It’s ridiculous to say that my intention made this tree or this table or this homeless person. I’m just responding to what’s already here.

Au contraire (Buddhism replies). We decide to separate out a piece of flow and give it a label (tree, me), and we then respond to what we put there and what we called it.

This is Dōgen’s whole point (and inside joke) in that firewood passage. Ash doesn’t become firewood again and we don’t return to birth after death … because all of those are labels created by our intention to control through linear separating labeling. In other words, the firewood and ash are our labels, and so are birth and death. Dōgen is reminding us to be careful about assuming labels are true.

So, instead of obsessing about a labeled end we imagine (death), how about creating an intention (and thus a form) for right now? How about birthing ourselves in each moment with the intention to reduce suffering regardless of the label/thing/person that presents itself?

Buddhism makes a distinction between discrimination and discernment. The former is the (often instantaneous, knee-jerk) application of a label, and then an intention based on the label. The latter is the selection of appropriate response based on wisdom and compassion.

In short, we choose our form: a jerk or a bodhisattva.

And we make that choice not once but in every moment with our intention. I seriously doubt that most people get up in the morning with the intention of being greedy, hateful, and deluded. But we sometimes end up there because of our inattention to intention and to the consequent form we become.

Our intention creates us, birth and death notwithstanding. It’s OK to take the long view.

For as long as space endures,
And for as long as sentient beings remain,
May I too remain
To dispel the suffering of the world.
--Shantideva

Whence this monstrousness?
--St. Augustine

It is an interesting conundrum that humans are teaching AI, which we then ask to teach us (or more likely, just do the work for us). But the Turing test doesn’t apply to AI, which does not know or care that there is a human on the other side of the conversation. Still, what we teach AI matters greatly, if not for humanity’s survival (but maybe so), then for our own karmic fallout. AI won’t clean up karmic messes because it only recognizes logical errors, not ethical ones — and sometimes neither (e.g., self-driving cars). Right Intention doesn’t compute.

“Garbage in, garbage out” never had such appalling and terrifying implications.

After the Buddha explained his teaching to the Kalamas of Kesaputta (Kalama-sutta), the listeners asked why they should believe him over the myriad other spiritual teachers wandering through the area. The Buddha’s surprising reply -- don’t take my word for it, find out for yourself - had nothing to do with algorithm and everything to do with experience, relationship, and reflection. That same teaching applies to our use of AI; don’t take its word for it, find out for yourself.

[T]he contemplative must first grasp the objects through cognition born of listening, ascertain them through reflection based on reasoning, and finally cognize them through meditative cultivation. This leads to valid perception.
-- Florin Deleanu, citing Dharmakīrti* (emphasis added)

AI might be able to explain karma, but it won’t feel the consequences of action. It could define the precepts but not apply them in relationships. Using AI might be expedient means, but not skillful means (upaya) because AI doesn’t know the difference.

But we do.

Ven. Ananda said to the Blessed One, “This is half of the holy life, lord: admirable friendship, admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie.”

“Don’t say that, Ananda. Don’t say that. Admirable friendship, admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie is actually the whole of the holy life. When monks have admirable people as friends, companions, & comrades, they can be expected to develop & pursue the noble eightfold path.”
--Upaddha-sutta

*Florin Deleanu, “How Gnosis Met Logos: The Story of a Hermeneutical Verse in Indian Buddhism,” The Journal of the International College for Postgraduate Buddhist Studies, 2019.

When Bodhidharma first met Emperor Wu, the Emperor asked, “I have built temples and ordained monks; what merit is there in this?” Bodhidharma said, “There is no merit.”
Blue Cliff Record, Case 1

Emperor Wu had two problems that still plague us:

1. He wanted something back

2. He thought that making and giving things (temples, priests) was the way to get #1

The greatest problem with giving (dāna) is that we keep score. There’s a calculation, no matter how subtle, that if I make gifts, I should get something in return. (The advice columns are full of givers lamenting the death of the Thank You note – or any acknowledgement.) This leads to a spiral of more and frantic giving (co-dependence), and sooner or later, resentful exhaustion.

But according to Buddhism, the only way to get any merit (beneficent karma) is not by stuff, but by behavior; that is, it doesn’t happen by the things we make, but by how we do them, starting with Right Intention. Specifically, we accumulate merit by practicing the first five Perfections (pāramitā): giving, ethical conduct, patience, effort/energy and concentration/meditation – a beneficial brew of Right Action and Right Effort. The sixth Perfection, wisdom (prajñā), is knowing what these are and when to use them.

Wisdom + action=/__u/kyoshozen.substack.com/appropriate response

A monk once asked Yunmen: “What is the highest, most profound teaching of all the buddhas and the patriarchs?” Yunmen replied, “An appropriate response.”
Blue Cliff Record, Case 14

But we still want something back from our appropriate response! And Buddhism says, You can have some merit … but you can’t keep it, because that perpetuates the cycle of wanting something back, which is greedy, leads to hoarding and counting and calculating and competing for the largest merit-pile.

So, we give even the merit away. We dedicate the merit of our actions to other beings who could use the encouragement. Dedicating the merit counteracts the greed of wanting something back.

May all awakened beings extend with true compassion their luminous mirror wisdom.
With full awareness, we dedicate the merit of our practice to all beings.
May they do what they can freely and from their heart, including giving to themselves.

It is not my intention to anthropomorphize Peace. It is my intention to see Peace as a mirror.

As the Buddha and Buckminster Fuller (and countless others between them) have observed, conflicts spring not just from our delusion of scarcity, but (worse) from our belief that what’s scarce is ours.

So, we start wars, steal, hoard, build gated communities fortresses, gerrymander, insider-trade, and — in perhaps the ultimate act of insanity — we follow, like and up-vote others who do those things.

No wonder Peace doesn’t stand a chance.

And yet … those actions and our accumulated stuff have a very long history of failing to bring about what the Metta verse says we can be (and what Buddhism says we naturally are): happy, safe, free from fear, free from suffering.

The solution isn’t to give away all our possessions (but see the Buddha’s myriad teachings on me-mine), nor to deprive ourselves:

Renunciation means giving up what you don’t need anyway.
--Zoketsu Norman Fischer

Renunciation is not giving up the things of the world but accepting that they go away.
-Shunryu Suzuki

What else can we do?

• have few desires and know how much is enough (the first two of the Eight Awakenings)

• investigate why we think we need the thing we’re about to order for same-day delivery (two-day shipping is now too slow)

• accept what is offered (and perhaps investigate why we have such trouble doing so)

In the Buddha’s sangha, only the Four Requisites were considered necessary: food, clothing, bedding, medicine. The Mahabuddhavamsa describes how Prince Shakyamuni cut his hair (an act of renunciation in many traditions), then accepted the four (in some versions, eight) requisites from a friend, Ghaṭīkāra Brahmā.

As the Prince then discovered, with more mental and physical space, awakening has a chance to show up. Peace has a chance to live.

Contentment is the greatest wealth.
--Dhammapada

A disciple of the Buddha does not slander.
--6th Precept

To not speak ill of others is perhaps the most difficult Buddhist precept, not only because derogation is worth $$$ on social media (and elsewhere), but also because that habit brings with it our relentless penchant to speak ill of ourselves. The inner critic Just. Won’t. Shut. Up.

The futile pursuit of perfection, and the critic’s reminder that we’re never good enough, leaves us damning our every action and pining (or whining) for a do-over.

(One of my favorite definitions of enlightenment: Giving up all hope of a better past.)

Perhaps we strive for perfection so others will admire/envy us, or love us, or not hit us. Perhaps we believe that next time we won’t make a mistake (but our critic will find one, guaranteed). So, we labor on, making the biggest mistake of all: believing that we’re not worthy until we’re perfect. And since we’re never perfect, we’re never worthy.

I suspect this is why we don’t believe Buddhism’s premise that we’re buddhas already, that we already have/are Buddha nature (Tathāgatagarbha, busshō). It seems easier to believe that we’re originally bad and will probably never get ourselves out of that self-dug hole.

When the inner critic is on the loose, more than the 6^th Precept gets crushed:

• We kill our ability to accept, to create, and to take a chance (Precept #1)

• We’re robbed of our own worth (Precept #2)

• We deny ourselves some (any) pleasure until we get it right (Precept #8)

• We get angry with ourselves, and leak that anger onto others —Why didn’t you save me from myself? (Precept #9)

But worst of all, we fail to see that speaking ill of self (and others) is most often a lie (Precept #4). Yes, of course, we make mistakes and inadvertently cause harm. But when we want to undo-redo every stitch in the fabric of our lives, we’re buying into the big lie that pretty much everything we do is wrong or not up to snuff. It’s almost as if we believe we need to cause our own suffering because that’s what we deserve.

According to whom?

Might be time to take the advice of the Sandōkai:

Don’t set up standards of your own.

Perhaps instead of lying in wait for our next mistake, we could catch ourselves doing something good, kind, and helpful. We could express thanks and appreciation to ourselves. And we could remember that the Lovingkindness gāthā begins with us:

May I be happy
May I be safe
May I be free from fear
May I be free from suffering

To set up what you like against what you don’t like is the disease of the mind.
--Jiànzhì Sēngcàn

It’s difficult to practice these days. Greed, hate, and delusion devour the world. We’re cooking ourselves, with other beings as unwitting sauce. Deliberate harm – and glee in watching the resultant destruction and suffering – has become acceptable, even encouraged.

And any history book will tell us that it’s always been like this.

The Buddha tried thrice to prevent warring armies from slaughtering each other; he succeeded twice. King Ashoka was a genocidal maniac before he was a Buddhist. One of the Buddha’s relatives plotted regicide to grab a throne.

The problem isn’t the times; it’s us. External factors aren’t the biggest impediment to our practice; we are.

So, you might think that, with that introduction and the title of this post, I’m about to say that our main practice-problem is choosing where to apply our prajna (wisdom) and metta/karuna (kindness/compassion) among the myriad candidates. We can’t spread compassion everywhere, so what’s our preference?

But the real test of our practice isn’t the world condition. The real test is when we have to do something we don’t want to do, when we understand that No truly isn’t an option, when we can’t back out because trust or hope or health or relationship would be compromised, perhaps irreparably.

The true test of our practice is how we choose to show up when we don’t wanna. When the retributive option -- to sulk or bang or huff or go silent – feels so good and signals to the offender to never ask such a thing of us again.

Or we can surrender to the reality that Yes, like all conditioned things, is impermanent. That the teeth-grit situation will end. That we’d like to not carry around its corpse afterward. That this situation teaches us something about what we need next time and helps us find our voice to say so.

In other words, the most important application of compassion is to ourselves, always, and especially when we don’t want to be doing what we’re doing.

Everything can be taken from a [person] but one thing: the last of human freedoms ― to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.
--Victor Frankl

And in our desperate, misguided attempt to find refuge (more like ‘any port in a storm’), we break the Second Precept. We steal.

No, not that kind of stealing. Not grand theft auto. Not robbing a bank. Not shoplifting or dine-and-dash (unless that’s the only way to get the next meal.)

We steal in more subtle ways, robbing our attention, our compassion, our patience from each other and, ultimately, from ourselves. We steal ideas and credit at work while our own creativity and energy are stolen by the pressures to keep stock prices up and expenses down. We steal spontaneity and safety from our partners. We rob our elders of respect (and ourselves of their accumulated wisdom) with our boomer jokes. We steal time to just be a kid by over-scheduling our children.

The list goes on:

• Staying late at work (including in our home office with the door closed)

• Eating meals alone, standing, by the kitchen sink

• Taking calls/texts when a real person is in front of us

• Making others fit into our schedule

• Believing that providing a home is more important than being there

In short, the Second Precept is less about the stealing of things, and more about stealing in our relationships, and it’s usually stated in the negative:

A disciple of the Buddha does not take what is not given.

But it seems that a significant cause of our stealing (and therefore suffering) is that we don’t know how to receive what is given.

• We’re given vacation, and we fill every minute (because FOMO).

• We’re given friendship, but only make contact when we want something.

• We’re given love, and sure that the giver will always be there, we spend a few more minutes away.

• We cling to work-related time because, as pressured as it is, in some ways it’s less messy than real life.

• We don’t think we’re worthy of being given to, so we steal ourselves away from generosity.

Thus, an urgent question for our practice is:

How receptive are we to what is given?

The First Pāramitā (dana) has an oft-unexamined implication:
Generosity includes the willingness to see what’s being offered.

And when we can receive what’s offered (friendship, kindness, help, accompaniment, guidance, truth, beauty, love), then there’s less need to steal to fill the hole inside.

The zendo of Tassajara Monastery burned down last night.

We can go on about how Buddhism tells us that everything is impermanent, and that we shouldn’t expect anything or anyone, including ourselves, to be there in the morning.

All conditioned things are of a nature to decay, the Buddha taught.

The next logical leap is easy and absolving: If everything falls apart sooner or later, what’s the point of caring for it, loving it, relating to it? That cavalier shrug we do — and not just for an ancient Gandharan Buddha now lying shattered in the ashes — willfully ignores the interconnectedness (by definition) of all impermanences. We’re blind to an epidemic of loneliness mirrored by video-game wars.

We don’t see that in shrugging off some impermanences, we abandon ourselves.

We don’t see that in denying (or frantically trying to prevent) other impermanences, we’re carrying a corpse (the iconic figure for the last step in the twelvefold chain of causation).

In When Bad Things Happen to Good People, author Harold Kushner writes that the most important question to ask when faced with impermanence isn’t Why me? The most important question is, Now what? And this is where the second half of the Buddha’s teaching comes in: All conditioned things are of a nature to decay, strive on untiringly.

Will the Tassajara monks’ practice end because their zendo burned down? Of course not. It’s the practice that continues, and precisely because that practice itself is impermanent, it can respond, it can adapt, to a zendo-less monastery.

The important part of the Buddha’s teaching on impermanence is about our actions (“strive on untiringly”) in relation to conditioned things.

How we are with impermanence directly correlates to our suffering (or mitigation thereof).

The Tassajara zendo will be rebuilt, just as the two hotels that sat on the very same foundation during the hot-springs-resort days were rebuilt after they burned down. Just like the first Tassajara zendo was rebuilt after it burned down. The monks will be tired, but they will strive on.

There is no thing that clings to us,
and nothing that is left behind.
—Hsin Hsin Ming (Verses on the Faith Mind)

“Well,” karma replies, “you get back what you put out. The second precept (To not take what is not given) implies that if you steal, you will be stolen from. Remember -- I’m not a punishing entity; I’m just a mirror. But go ahead; knock yourself out.”

Tactical victories often produce strategic complications.
Gen. Mark Hertling (Ret.)

The poison-problem of taking what is not given is twofold:

1. We think we know what we want (greed, desire)

2. We think having it will be good for us (delusion)

Years ago, when I studied the second precept for the first time, I suddenly woke up to the fact that I was stealing from my daughter … and what I was stealing from her was me. What I wanted (#1) was to be seen as a competent multitasker so that (#2) I wouldn’t get fired, because if I lost my job, I wouldn’t be able to provide for my daughter. I was bringing work home, taking work calls at home, filling up my calendar -- all of which robbed her of me.

I got the tactical victory of keeping my job and my home, and the strategic complication of being not-present (even when I was there) for the most precious person in my life. And we both suffered (her homework, my health, our relationship).

The situation gets worse when we steal from groups. “They” have something “we” want, and our desire for it trumps any consequences for them (and us).

I lived in a Buddhist monastery for a dozen years, and one night at dinner we had fresh asparagus, grown in our very own garden and thus exquisitely fresh. But there wasn’t much of it and fifty residents were coming for one large platter of asparagus. The third person in line took a quarter of it, oblivious (or maybe not?) to the long and hungry line behind him. The meal was silent, but the collective outrage was palpable. (The food safety regulations would have prevented him from putting some back if he’d tried, which he didn’t.)

He got the tactical victory of getting to taste all that lovely asparagus (under our resentful gaze), and the strategic complication of the sangha distrusting him thereafter, and not just with food.

(That story is about hoarding, a close cousin of stealing, which has the same effects of deprivation, anger, resentment, and maybe even violence — see pandemic toilet paper.)

But perhaps the worst (and most pernicious) stealing is when we steal from ourselves. When we ignore our own nourishment, our own moral compass, our own joy. When we concoct some reason to hate, thus justifying our desire to steal. We chase the delusion of control when we steal — and kill — the agency, the hopes, and sometimes the bodies of others to get what we want.

There is a direct and tight correlation between the second precept (not stealing) and the first precept (not killing): When we take what is not given, something dies.

We may get the tactical victory of getting resources, power, and dead enemies. But we will also surely get the strategic complication of the death of our relationships, our vows, and our safety. Friends will wonder if we’re reconnoitering them, and will begin to lock up their valuables – both mental and physical -- when we’re around. Trust will be replaced by transaction where only the last one counts (and not for long). Even acts of compassion and generosity will be viewed with suspicion (is there a quo with this quid?)

And if our stealing is followed, cavalierly, by the expectation that our victim will figure out what to do after the theft, we cannot be surprised when their solution is to rob (and kill) us.

All things found in the world are illusions created by one’s own concepts.
Grasping at them but further distorts perception.
-Dalai Lama

Yet we fail, poignantly, for two reasons:

1. We’re trying to get it, forgetting that when it happened the first time we weren’t trying.

2. We’re trying to get it back, to replicate a moment that in its very emptiness cannot come again (Firewood becomes ash, and it does not become firewood again, Dōgen reminds us).

But the main reason it doesn’t come back is because it never left.

It’s not lost; we are.

Buddhism’s favorite metaphor for this (no)thing is the ocean, vast, deep, able to hold all, and the source of us (both literally and figuratively). It not only includes and supports us all the time, it is us all the time.

We just forget. We cling. We desire. We hate. We conjure and then wallow in alternate realities. All to preserve our self and its fortress of preferences.

And yet …

The rivers, having arrived at the great ocean,
Give up their former lineages and names
And are then designated as the great ocean.
-- Udāna

“Well, of course,” you say, “we don’t use a river’s name once it reaches the sea. But it’s still water.”

Please listen to yourself! That argument you just made about the rivers and their names applies to us in relation to the ocean of existence. We are the rivers. We bumble along, navigating around – often smashing into -- the boulders of our preferences (‘lineages and names’).

Until the moment we realize that we make the boulders, and we can stop doing that (aka the Four Noble Truths). The moment we surrender to the ocean that’s always right here, the ocean we always are. The moment we realize that giving up the fortress doesn’t erase us; it frees us. The moment we decide to listen instead of rebut, to connect instead of control, to flow instead of drown.

The stream of the awakened mind always flows into the ocean of emancipation.
--Diamond Sutra

1. James Hilton, Lost Horizon

The hate gets more powerful with more hate. The only thing that is more powerful than hate is love. So, we need to be different. If we fight, we have to do it with love.
--Bad Bunny

Our reaction to violence and our reaction to hatred is that we throw more love at it.
--Leonard Bernstein

It all started with some angry citizens tree spirits who thought the place – even the trees! – belonged to them, was their home, that they had the rights to it because they were from there, born there. So, when the aliens monks showed up to spend the four months of their rainy-season retreat in quiet contemplation under those trees, not harming or bothering anyone, the spirits assaulted them with noise and scare-tactics and bad smells to get them to go back where they came from.

In despair, the monks went to the Buddha and asked for another place to do their summer practice period. No other venue was available, so the Buddha sent them back, but not before delivering a teaching on lovingkindness (Karaniya Mettá Sutta — the source of the well-known chant — not to be confused with the Mettá [Mettanisamsa] Sutta). The monks returned to their arboreal practice place, reciting and contemplating the verses the Buddha had taught them. And when the tree spirits heard them, their own grinchy hearts were changed, and they provided for the welfare of the monks for the rest of the practice period.

Zenkei Blanche Hartman, the first abbess of San Francisco Zen Center, often said we had two choices when the emergency vehicles dashed past our temple, sirens blaring. We could curse the interruption. Or we could say, May they arrive in time. My own mantra when I feel the first prick of irritation is, May you be safe and well.

So, pick a line, any line, from the sutta. Do nothing that is mean or that the wise would reprove is a succinct reminder that mitigates karmic clean-ups.

Turn the universe into the metta-verse.

And if you can’t think of anything to say, trying singing.

In English:

In Pali:

In Spanish:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cEKK-2ILkiyJFUAYgf6m8O16Vi9CwJIh/view?usp=sharing

(The precepts in Buddhism are not Commandments, as there is no Authority who issues them and then punishes us when we break them. The punisher in Buddhism is karma, an energetic non-entity that is simply a corollary of the physics principle that for every action, there’s a reaction; we get back what we put out. Thus, the creator and receiver of karma is us. Karmic consequences are, by definition, self-inflicted.)

This precept has other versions:

• Do no harm

• Don’t take life

• Refrain from destroying living beings

But let’s stick with the version heading this essay. It’s straightforward and visceral:

I vow not to kill.

And let’s stick with human life here. We can debate food sources and insect pests and invasive plants another time.

Which brings us to two questions to investigate when we decide (or not) to keep this precept:

1. Which lives matter?

2. How do we kill?

The two questions are intimately, sometimes shockingly, related because our answer to #1 directly influences #2.

And before you protest that “all lives matter” and “I’d never shoot anyone,” please recognize that this precept, like all the others, asks us to focus less on the extremes and more on the subtle gradations. Because gradations so easily and insidiously harden and metastasize into extremes.

We’ve already decided which lives matter (an action of mind), because it shows up in our actions of body and speech when we:

• Kill the creativity of a child who draws outside the lines

• Kill the speech of someone who should be seen and not heard

• Kill good ideas that come from across the aisle or from the other side of the tracks

• Kill connection by gaslighting, denigrating, and ghosting

• Kill the dreams of those who have followed the rules we made

None of these may involve stopping a heart. But history – including recent history – has myriad examples of exactly that result, of a life that was considered less than, hence expendable.

And perhaps the saddest part of the first precept – because usually realized too late, if at all – is that when we kill others, we kill a part of ourselves.

We want to punish someone, so we destroy ourselves
in order to make the other person suffer.
-Thich Nhat Hanh

Buddhist practice is applicable in every moment. It encourages us toward [insert your favorite Buddhist list here] patience, equanimity, tranquility, generosity, kindness, accompaniment, etc.

It also encourages us to be honest when we can’t be those qualities (this is known as self-compassion). But it doesn’t give us a pass to then behave badly, to take out our frustration on others (especially those closest to us), to retaliate, to deliberately cause suffering (Buddhism’s definition of evil/sin), and especially not to acquiesce for the illusion of peace.

You need to nurture yourself. This can be challenging if you mainly view your worth through your martyrdom to others.
--Amy Dickinson

In other words, Buddhism doesn’t condone door-slamming, especially on our own fingers.

As one of my teachers often says during meditation instruction: If you’re doing zazen with your face, it’s OK to move.

There’s a lot of bowing in Buddhism, and one of the best times to use that gesture is when we need to leave a situation that we don’t have the skills to meet, when we’re clenching our jaw at the mere thought of the encounter, when we know we need to move. This isn’t self-condemnation, but rather an acknowledgement that we’re human, that we have limits and buttons, and that we’re not going to be the bodhisattva in every realm.

Fortunately, Buddhism isn’t an all-or-nothing practice. Enlightenment/awakening is a process, not a state. The Japanese term ‘kaizen’ is helpful here, a nice short word for ‘continuous incremental improvement.’

You are perfect just the way you are, and you could use some improvement.
—Shunryu Suzuki

This is a helpful perspective (Right View) when we’re in those situations where we don’t have the skills for an appropriate response. We can acknowledge that we’re doing our best, that it’s not working, and that we won’t have space for improvement (learning) if we stay.

So, Buddhism gives us an out: Instead of a kleśa-infested door slam (with its inevitable karmic splinters), we can bow out. We can acknowledge that we don’t have the skills for the situation, and that we can’t develop those skills if we stay. (And develop them we must, as those situations will keep showing up until we learn how to meet them non-sufferingly.)

Merely remembering that we have the option to bow out immediately creates space, perhaps before we’ve even taken any action. In that opening, we have a chance to see alternatives, to imagine bow-out variations that aren’t for all and forever, but for now, for this event, for this task.

• “Never” becomes “Not now.”

• “I can’t/won’t” becomes “But I’ll put you in touch with someone who can.”

• “Your timeline is too short” becomes “Here’s the piece I’m willing to do.”

• Resentful silent treatment (a particularly insidious type of door-slam) becomes “Let’s only meet in ceremonial space.”

(I used the last tactic with someone when I lived in the monastery. We agreed to keep our interactions to a minimum and bow in and out of each one. Adhering to that form for a year gave us the space to interact more peacefully thereafter.)

And if we really do need to make it a rest-of-this-life goodbye, the act of bowing out rather than slamming the door will keep us on the eightfold path and keep the karmic clean-up to a minimum.

The vow to learn appropriate response isn’t limited to one lifetime.

Bowing out is an act of space-creation within the reality that there’s nowhere to go. What we’re actually bowing out from is a fixed, tired, counterproductive idea of who we are and how we relate. When we bow out of a past-its-expiration-date habit, we bow into kaizen.

It is basic self-care to know where your “no” is at all times and be courageous enough to use it — even when it costs you a relationship. Because not using it might cost you yourself.
--Carolyn Hax

This is a recipe for laissez-faire Buddhism, for doing nothing in the face of suffering (or worse, refusing to see suffering) because we mistake as-it-is for not-a-problem.

We offer dismissive reassurance (Just go with it; it’ll be fine). If the problem deteriorates, we’re unprepared, and angry-baffled by others’ stress. If the problem abates, we chide (See, it turned out OK!), not realizing that while we were blissing, others were sweating the details that made the OK.

The habit of believing It’s all good is actually a habit of willful blindness to either the suffering around us or others’ efforts to create the good.

In short, believing “it’s all good” isn’t practice; it’s abdication.

Faith without works is dead.
--James 2:14-26

Buddhism is not a hermit practice. The truly enlightened don’t withdraw. The bodhisattva vows to offer support until all beings are free from suffering – which means being willing to see the suffering, to see the not-good, to be prepared with and apply the appropriate Right Effort (sammā-vāyāma), and to resist the shrug of our cherished detachment or strategic incompetence.

This doesn’t mean we always need to have the solution before we can act. Skillful means (upāya) is sometimes more about accompaniment (sangha/kalyānamitra) and whole-body listening (dhyāna) than it is about fixing.

When we accompany and listen – that is, when we participate rather than bystand – we become active contributors in emptiness, enabled and ennobled to show up prepared and knowing our part. Practice helps us embody and enact compassion, perhaps still not making all good, but alleviating suffering by balancing the physical and mental load among innumerable hands and eyes, including our own.

Yunyan asked Daowu, “How does the Bodhisattva of Great Compassion use those many hands and eyes?’ Daowu answered, ‘It is like someone in the middle of the night reaching behind their head for the pillow.’ Yunyan said, ‘I understand.’ Daowu asked, ‘How do you understand it?’ Yunyan said, ‘All over the body are hands and eyes.’ Daowu said, ‘That is very well expressed, but it is only eighty percent.’ Yunyan said, ‘How would you say it?’ Daowu said, ‘Throughout the body are hands and eyes.’
--Blue Cliff Record, Case 89

That’s my response when people tell me, Buddhism sounds great, but it’s not how the world works.

Of course, it’s not. The world runs on greed, hate, and delusion. On the 108 kleśas. On the twelvefold chain of causation. You can find all of the six realms within a block of your home … or inside it. Hungry ghosts, fighting gods, fearful animals. They’re right there in the mirror.

Buddhism isn’t wrong nor blind about how the world works and who is responsible. The descriptions and details in the texts – with all their infuriating repetition – leave no doubt. We’re the ones doing the killing, stealing, sexting, lying, numbing, gossiping, self-inflating, hoarding, raging, and disparaging of our true nature.

And yet, I am quite sure that most of us don’t wake up in the morning and vow that we’re going to spend the day wrecking our lives and the world. We’re not being willfully complicit in the way the world works, we’re being habitually complicit. And we’ve gotten away with it for so long, and been so rewarded for those habits, that changing course seems like a monumental, exhausting, and possibly futile, effort. The Middle Way looks less like a solution and more like the rack.

But despite the myriad suggestions Buddhism offers for creating a less-suffering world, the remedy begins with none of those, and it’s so obvious we often miss it. It was the Buddha’s core practice and his first suggestion to many sufferers.

Stop.

For those who heeded this simple teaching, the world changed, including for the Pali Canon’s most famous serial killer (Angulimāla) and a slightly later genocidal warrior (Ashoka). In the space created by their stopping, their world became the Middle Way, balanced, upright, with intentional habits of ethics and compassion.

If they did it, so can we, starting not with a list of do-good New Year’s resolutions, but with the vow each morning, I will not cause suffering today. And in the space thus created by our stopping, a different world just might have a chance to show up.

By means of the knowledge that has no teacher,
one produces the marvelous function of non-doing.
By means of unconditional compassion,
one acts unasked as the excellent friend.
--Yuanwu Keqin, Blue Cliff Record

It’s a ‘yes and’ with the calamities of the world. Go placidly amid the noise and haste* suggests how to be that has nothing to do with what to get. Moving in the world burdened by stuff (especially mind-stuff) makes for embarrassing stumbles, bad falls, expensive collisions, self-serving faux-fixes, and an inability to see both the path before us and where we are on it. (Do you know where your feet are? is a classic mindfulness question.)

The less we carry, the more we connect. Or as Rumi so succinctly advised:

Open your hands if you want to be held.

Surrender gets a bad rap in our corrosively competitive, insistently individualistic culture. It seems weak. It seems passive. It seems like giving up.

But the surrender we’re talking about here is the type defined by Kōshō Uchiyama’s** statement of the obvious:

Reality doesn’t care what you think.

So, Buddhism suggests that we ride the horse in the direction it’s going, that we surrender to reality and to our own active — and unavoidable — part in it, by intentionally deciding that we will:

• Recognize and renounce the siren song of desire, anger, and magical thinking

• Act with good will, harmlessness, kindness, and compassion (starting with ourselves and our own mental actions)

According to the Buddha, this surrender is the basis of both ethics and peace, thus making them inseparable. And since we aren’t very good at surrender, the Buddha gave some specifics about how to do it in his final teaching (Parinirvana Sutra):

Eight Awakenings

• Have few desires

• Know how much is enough

• Enjoy serenity

• Make diligent effort

• Do not neglect mindfulness

• Practice meditation

• Cultivate wisdom

• Do not engage in hollow discussions

*Desiderata, Max Ehrmann

**in Opening the Hand of Thought

Don’t set up standards of your own.
—Sandokai

As the season of giving and receiving (and maybe gratitude?) approaches, it’s a good time to pause and remember that bodhisattvas do not require others to have a certain appearance or to act/think a certain way before they can receive whatever is being offered.

We are not the arbiters of others’ value.

Most of us do not have the means to be materially generous to all. Nevertheless, we can be generous in wishing that all beings, without exception, be free from fear and suffering. That wish alone is a powerful antidote to calculations of worth.

So, please give only with the intention of reducing suffering, without layering on those unnecessary and exhausting calculations, and (hardest of all) without wanting or expecting anything back (like changes in behavior).

If we give nothing else, we can give others the benefit of the doubt. We can find the courage to see their suffering, however warped and self-inflicted it seems to be. And if we can’t do anything to alleviate that suffering, at least we can refrain from deciding that others don’t deserve our help until they meet our standards.

Both the natural and social worlds [are] orchestras of interdependence, of survival as an essentially collaborative and cooperative business.
--Rebecca Solnit