Jobs requiring the misrepresentation of the truth.
Butcher
Work in the Army
Although I had written many articles before talking about medical drug abuse, but still I am so shocked by the extent of substance abuse in America. I really go far beyond my imagination. It is said at least 1/3 of people in the U.S use substances. This is truly a manifestation of the crisis of lost faith. Compare with the Chinese Culture Revolution, now I just found out that the Beat Generations in the U.S.A for the same period is an understatement. Drugs: What does America get wrong about addiction and policy? Look at these teenager-affected numbers, to me, these are the best hide secrets.
We heard arguments about the ideology of “left” and “right”. We are bombarded with economic data, but there is no voice to be heard from those that are beaten. Maybe the sickness in the west is a mentality of separateness to all “non-me” as Master Thick Nant Hanh described. How come the Supreme court does not even consider overhauling marijuana’s legal usage and putting an end to substance abuse by taking some measures to help those needed? Has it ever occurred to your mind that we all might be those victims in some incarnation?
With Dependent Co-Arising, Buddha explores all the 12 links, Buddha reasoned: “Thus, Ananda, from name-and-form as a requisite condition comes consciousness. From consciousness as a requisite condition comes name-and-form. From name-and-form as a requisite condition comes contact. From contact as a requisite condition comes feeling. From feeling as a requisite condition comes craving. From craving as a requisite condition comes clinging. From clinging as a requisite condition comes becoming. From becoming as a requisite condition comes birth. From birth as a requisite condition, aging, death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, and despair come into play. Such is the origination of this entire mass of stress.” Thus, without ignorance, there was no more name, grasping, clinging, birth, aging, and death. Buddha, the Enlightened One, in his teachings pointed us to the same path to freedom — a path that requires daily practice.
One concept in Buddhism is Shunyata, variously described as Emptiness or Oneness. When the ego is removed, there is oneness. When the ego is introduced, phenomenon arise from the observer (with the ego). So Physicist John Wheeler put it this way: “Useful as it is under ordinary circumstances to say that the world exists ‘out there’ independent of us, that view can no longer be upheld.” In Albert Einstein’s view: “Our separation of each other is an optical illusion of consciousness.” Cognitive Scientist Professor Hoffman look at the issue in this way: “I call it conscious realism: Objective reality is just conscious agents, just points of view.” This video shows how the true reality deludes man from the quantum physics point of view.
So from the Twelve Links of Dependent Co-Arising, Buddha deducted The four noble truths from the cycle of samsara. He taught the path as the “eight-fold path” as the remedy for “Dukkha” or suffering. Buddha clearly taught in the context of belief in multiple lives.
In the west, we tend to accept concepts such as karma more as a “moral imperative” rather than a metaphysical concept, since often westerners have trouble with the concept of karmic seeds. Thus, stories such as the Jataka Tales: The Previous Lives of the Buddha—believed to be “pearls of wisdom” from the mouth of the Buddha himself —tend to be soft-pedaled as “children’s fables” to illustrate morality, rather than literal stories of Buddha’s previous lives. Whether the stories were meant to be fables or literal stories is irrelevant; what’s clear is that the Buddha Himself clearly believed in rebirth.
Another great Buddhist master who passed away in January this year is Thick Nhat Hanh. For about two decades, I had been visiting Ksitigarbha Vietnamese Temple in Lynnwood Washington. I have been really grateful for all the calming effects and peace I found in this temple. It is only until Feburary I realized that this temple I have been visiting for so long is actually under the guidance of Master Thick Nhat Hanh. Namo Amituofo Master Thick Nhat Hanh! Dear Thay, thank you for your unwavering support! You always do miracles with your wonderful words and teaching. Today I again found it from your teaching about overcoming fear and anxiety.
August 7- September 9 2022 is the Lunar Monkey Month in a Tiger Year. Because the monkey crashes with the tiger, there is a lot of nervousness about that. Recently U.S House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, visiting Taiwan triggered all kinds of speculations. One of these is about a 1968 Prophecy by 90-Year-Old Woman in Norwa recorded down by the evangelist Emanuel Minos. Relating to the regional political tension in the south pacific, the situation is putting people on edge about the trend going down. And so I found Master Thick Nhat Hanh’s teaching is so spot on for us to mindfulness meditation as well as mutual and self-understanding.
Survival and happiness, can these two things go together? while struggling to survive, we have to destroy, to kill. And the deep motivation inside is not only to survive but to have pleasure. And looking deeply into the present situation, we can see very clearly people are killing each other. Many believe that the others are the obstacles on their way to survival and sensual pleasures. On one hand, we try to fight in order to survive, and on the other hand, we try our best in order to get sensual pleasures. And both kinds of action are bringing a lot of suffering to us and to our victims. The one who has to perish in the cycle of course suffers. But the one who wins also suffers. And that habit, that seed is so deep in us: The drive to kill, the drive to get as much sensual pleasure as possible, When we look into the teaching of the Buddha, we can see a way out. Budha does not speak about survival, he does not encourage us on the path of seeking sensual pleasure. Buddha’s message is centered on how to cope with our suffering, and how to transform our suffering.
Below is part of the new translation of Heart Sutra by Master Thick Nhat Hanh. Relating to the concept of empty, here is what he illuminated:
In every school of Buddhism, there are three doors of liberation: emptiness, signlessness, and aimlessness…… Empty is empty of what? Full is full of what? Like ‘consciousness’ is the consciousness of something. So Bodhisattva tells you that the flower is full of cosmos. The only thing it is empty of is a separate existence. A flower cannot be by herself. A flower does not have a separate existence, a self-nature(svabhava). Everything contains the whole cosmos. but is empty only of separate existence, of a self-nature. If you remove the non-flower elements from the flower, there is no flower left. the flower, according to Buddhist teachers, it is only a name, a conventional designation.
In the same light, the dollar doesn’t have a self-nature, it is only a conventional designation. It doesn’t have a self-nature at all. If everything has a self-existence, everything has a self-nature and does not need others to be there, then everything will remain the same forever.
A child does not have self-nature, he is non-independent existence. without father, mother, sunshine, water, the food, a child cannot be. A child is a conventional designation. That is why a child cannot remain a child forever. He will grow into an adult. Otherwise, he will remain a child forever.
Nothing has a self-nature, nothing has a self-existence. Nothing can be by itself. Human being is a conventional designation. Man is only made of non-man elements. we have human ancestors, and we have animal ancestors as Vegetable, and mineral ancestors. If we remove all these non-man elements, animals, and plants, minerals, there is no man left. Man can not be himself alone. Man has to inter-be with animals, plants, and minerals. That is why when you protect man, you have to protect animals, vegetables, and minerals. That is the teaching of the Diamond Sutra. That is the most ancient text on deep ecology. Man is made of only non-man elements.
When you look into the son, you see the father, the mother, you see the ancestors. A son cannot exist by himself alone, a son or a daughter can only inter-be with parents, ancestors, and so on. That is not difficult to see. As a biologist, you can look into the body of a person, and you see that person is the continuation of his parents. All the cells and all genes have been transmitted by many generations of ancestors.
If a son got so angry at his parents. They are something wrong in it. There are young men who are so mad at their father, that they declare this: “I don’t want to have anything to do with him: But it is nonsense. Your father is in every cell of your body. You cannot remove your father out of you. the fact is you are the continuation of your father, and you are your father. You can not take him out of you. You have no private, separate existence. That self, the self (atma) does not exist. A separate existence, some permanent, non-changing entity sometimes we call it ‘soul’, is not there.
There is nothing unchanging. When you look deeply into the five skandhas: form, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness, you see everything is flowing, everything is changing. you don’t see anything that can remain the same in two consecutive moments, and therefore a self, a soul, that remains always the same, does not seem to be something real at all. There is no unchanging self. You are empty of a self. you are empty of a separate existence.
When we look into the brain, we see a lot of neurons. They are firing, they are working together, exchanging information every moment. There is no neuron that plays the role of the conductor, the role of the president, the role of the commander. That is a community of cells that operates like a symphony orchestra, but there is no conductor. Neuroscientists has found out, that there is no conductor, there is a symphony, In our body, there are billions of cells that are working together. There is no cell that plays the role of the president, of the boss, of the one who is giving orders. Therefore, a decision is made, but there is no decision-maker.
A decision is made, but there is no decision-maker outside of the decision. There is a feeling taking place, but there is no feeler. There is a perception that happens, there is no perceiver existing outside of the perception. Practitioners of meditation and scientists can sit together, work together, and discover together. Modern science has found out the truth of no-self.
Suppose you talk about the wind, And you say the wind blows. It looks like there is the wind that does the job of blowing, It is funny to say that the wind blows. If it is not blowing, it is not the wind. And we say the rain falls. Imagine rain that does not fall. But you can not find a Rainer. The same thing is true with our feelings, perceptions, and decisions. There is a decision that is made, there is no decision maker existing outside of the decision. There is a feeling of sadness or of joy, but there is no feeler standing outside, in the background. Because there is no self, there is no self-nature( svabhava).. Everything is a conventional designation. Everything depends on everything else in order to express itself. And that is the teaching of interdependence and interconnection. You can not be by yourself. It is impossible. It is possible to inter-be, but it is not possible to be.
That is why the teaching of the Buddha on Genesis is very simple. – How the world comes to be is very easy, very simple: This is, because that is. This is not, because that is not. Everything is connected to everything else. And that is the meaning of emptiness.
There is nothing so disobedient as an undisciplined mind. And there is nothing so obedient as a disciplined mind. We are shaped by our thoughts, we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves. Whatever a person keeps pursuing with his thinking, that becomes the inclination of his awareness. Nothing can harm you as much as your own thoughts unguarded. So it is so important to know who we are. Here is what Master Thick Nhat Hanh says about rebirth and non-fear, and how we can get freedom from wrong views and fear itself.
There is a view of eternalism, which means you have a soul that is eternal, and after you die the soul remains intact and goes to another body and continues like that. That is eternalism and the other extreme is that after you die, there is nothing left – nihilism.
Nirvana is the extinction of these two views, eternalism, and nihilism. Even in the lifetime of a person, say when you grow to 10 years old, you are no longer the same as when you are 5 years old. So you at 5 and you at 10, you are neither the same nor a different person. So the notion of ‘same’ and ‘different’ should be transcended also. So if you don’t see it in that light, you don’t really understand the rebirth in Buddhism.
You might in the view of eternalism, then you are not different from traditions who hold a view that there is an immortal soul. In the light of the teaching, everything is impermanent. Nothing in the five skandhas can remain the same, exactly the same in two consecutive moments. But nothing is lost, and creation in Buddhism means manifestation and from nothing you cannot become something. So creation is really a continuation of manifestation. If you don’t manifest in this way, and then you manifest in that way, like the cloud and the snow. So when you get that wisdom, you are no longer afraid. When you are non-fear, you are quite different from other people because they are subject to fear, fear of dying, fear of being nothing. With non-fear in you, with that deep wisdom in you, you become supernatural. You are no longer a mortal.
you don’t need to be a god. To say the Buddha has a supernatural power is true also. But he does not need to be a god in order to have that. he need only to have freedom, freedom from wrong views, and freedom from fear.
Birth and death are like waves and you are riding on the waves, birth and death and you go without fear, it is wonderful.
Master Chin Kung’s commemoration continues. More clips of videos here. Master Chin Kung often said the modern propaganda tools, the media – Internet, TV and smartphones nowadays bombard people with killings, misinformation, disinformation, stealing, and sexual misconduct. With technological advancement, media are corrupting the mind of people, resulting in the degradation of morals of the whole society, from children to adults in the modern world. Such a situation is similar to a computer’s operating system constantly being attacked by viruses. When people are physically killed, they are only hurt for one life cycle, but when people’s minds are damaged, you take away their good karma accumulated from unaccountable life cycles. Master Chin Kung warned about the far-reaching consequence relating to humanity’s evolution.
Trumping to the same tune, India’s spiritual teacher Sadhguru spoke of the greatest evil on this planet. what really matters at the end of our life is whether we lived an enhanced life. This is why it is important that we invest the time to know and live a life beyond thought and emotion. The picture below illustrates how our consciousness interacts with the environment through the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind.
To remove that pollution from our minds, and to reduce our dukkha, we have to reverse the flow in the direction shown below.
There is a famous story about Buddha and a farmer that illustrate the point of carefully directing our energy to createa future we desire. There was once Buddha came across a farmer on his way to collect a meal, the farmer complained about why Buddha do not grow his own food. Here is what Buddha reason to the farmer:
"My seed is faith,
My rain is austerity,
My yoke and plough are wisdom,
My plough's pole is modesty,
My strap is the mind,
My ploughshare and goad are mindfulness.
Restrained in speech and conduct,
Self-controlled in food,
With truth I cut the weeds.
My liberation is compassion.
My beast of burden is exertion.
Without turning back, it carries me to Nirvana
Where one does not suffer.
Thus ploughed, the fruit of Immortality is produced
And one is free of pain of all kind."
As they say, where focus goes, energy flows. Make sure ourenergy is contributing to creating the future we desire. We all want to have liberation, but true liberation takes courage, and discernment of wisdom to overcome our ignorance, greed, and hatred. The famous Hong Kong movie star Chow Yun Fat ( 周潤發) took Master Chin Kung’s teaching to the heart, he recently Donated all his fortunes to Buddhism work is a case in point. We may not be as rich as Chow Yun Fat, but we can all be capable of pursuing the level of consciousness he arrived at.
