Another "Will Smith" waiting to happen: Are you uprooting the defilements?

A few weeks ago, I was urging a friend to do some meditation. I have known him for many years. He is a Buddhist and have been doing lots of philanthropic activities for most of his adult life. He is an active member of Tzu-Chi Buddhist Merit Society. I know they don't do meditation and I was thinking it is timely that he incorporates some meditation into his daily routine. He then explained that "their" (meaning Tzu-Chi) style of meditation is to behave well from moment to moment, being aware of our behaviour and tasks at hand that we are doing at every single moment. Basically, being mindful of ourselves and keep our emotions in check.  

There are quite a number of schools of thought with this way of thinking. Not just Tzu-Chi. I am not saying what they are doing is wrong. Not at all. Instead, I am saying, there is MORE that you need to do.  

Venerable Ashin Tejaniya had this advice, which is also the title of his book: "Awareness Alone is Not Enough". I had this realisation a few years back that what I am doing so far, even with my meditation, it simply was not enough to deal with my negative emotions. I realise that what we are doing is simply akin to sweeping the defilements "under the carpet" of our mind. They are basically all still there. The truth is we think we have dealt with our negative emotions but seriously, and you're be surprised when it popped its "ugly head" one day, that all the potentials of your negativities are all still very much inside you. It is frightening actually, especially when you think you are such a nice guy and most people think you are. But one day, in one moment of carelessness, out springs the "tiger of anger" or jealousy or any other negativities. Then the next moment, when you have come back to your senses, you wonder where does that emotion come from? Then you start to look on who or what to blame? It's probably this. It's that thing, ... that person. etc etc etc. BUT IT IS REALLY ABOUT YOURSELF. YOUR OWN DEFILEMENTS WHICH YOU HAVE BASICALLY NOT UPROOTED.

Very recently...at the recently concluded Oscars award 2022, the whole world witnessed Will Smith walked up on stage to smack Chris Rock on his face and then twice shouted vulgar words at the latter. And it is a shame that this was telecast live internationally. It is such a shame that the world has to be witness to such abusive and violent behaviour. And I have seen video of movie commentators commented that those actors that have worked with Will Smith will testify that he is such a good person. Has always been. He was not known to be a violent person. So, what happened? It's the same answer. The defilements are lurking somewhere inside his mind, waiting for your moment of weakness to arise. 

Just to side track and comment about this incident, in case anyone thinks it is okay to slap another person who had joked about your family, think again. Firstly, presenters at such award shows are expected to joke about everyone and anything. That had been the case in all previous Oscars. So, such jokes, even if inappropriate are not out of line. Second, many commented that there are worst jokes than that, and yet, the person who joked did not key assaulted on stage. Third, it is not a criminal offense to joke about someone else. But to physically hit someone is a CRIMINAL OFFENCE. Do you know that? At most, even if it was inappropriate (which it was not), the joke may only be unwise. But the physical assault was wrong! Do you now understand the difference between being unwise and committing a wrong action? It is not both are wrong. Nay, only the person physically hitting another was wrong.  You may watch the video attached here. 

When I realised this, I began to question the meditation method that I have been doing all the while. I asked whether there was something deficient in it. I always knew that the measure of our religious practice has been the reduction of defilements, i.e. reduction in greed/ desire, anger/hatred and delusions/ignorance. I started to check. I started to question the various Buddhist techniques available. And finally, I made a tactical switch in my meditation method to incorporate Vipassana to investigate the arising of fetters through the six sense doors. I believe the Buddha taught Vipassana in quite a few scriptures. One of them being Maha Satipatthana Sutta. You do not need to give up the meditation method whatsoever it is that you are currently doing. Only that you need to incorporate some principles based on Vipassana on observation of your defilements. Also, if the meditation technique is purely samatha, then it will not be able to uproot any defilements. You have to incorporate vipassana for uprooting of defilements. 

Okay. That's all for now. There are many "Will Smiths" around actually. Perhaps waiting to happen. Do you want to bet it won't happen to you? That you would not just snapped and do something stupid? Don't bet on it. Deal with your defilements now. Don't sweep it under the mind carpet!

#satipatthana #mindfulness #defilements #WillSmith #Oscars2022

If you like this post, do consider reading this one https://buddha-and-me.blogspot.com/2012/11/dont-let-your-character-shy-you-from.html   Take care!

LBGTQ: The Correct Way to Change One's Gender

First of all, allow me to explain that this post is intended to provide proper advice to future potential (or, would-be) transgenders and not so much for existing transgenders. It is meant to provide them guidance from the viewpoint of what I understand of the Buddha's teachings. Hopefully it is correct. You may check with other Buddhist teachers. However, I noted that there are very few Buddhist teachers who is willing to talk about this subject. Moreover, I suspect they may not know much about what a transgender has to undergo. After all, most of the Buddhist teachers have been monks most of their lives. Because I am a layperson, and I do read a lot of these "things", I am more in a position to provide my views on this issue. I can tell you there are very little Buddhist insights on such issues. Buddhist teachers are generally very reluctant to go into these subjects. As a result, many of these affected persons have few persons of religious knowledge to turn to. I am not a Buddhist teacher, but at the very least, I am laying down the points for you guys to consider and check further on your own. This is also in line with the Kalama Sutta taught by the Buddha. As advised by the Buddha in this Sutta, he advised us to check ourselves. What I am going to say below may disappoint some transgenders, but it is meant to provide the Buddhist viewpoint and in the long term, to do what is more in line with the Buddha's teachings. It's time someone says it as it is.  

Referring to this news recently, I do sympathise with her situation. 

https://malaysia.yahoo.com/news/lifestyle/thai-beauty-pageant-finalist-denied-213503571.html

While I understand and sympathise with the LBGTQ cause, I am not an advocate of gender change. I do not advise the change of your original gender of birth through medical operations and surgery. I feel that one should accept the karma that you are born with and not try to force things to change, especially things that cannot (or should not) be changed. Your human physical body is one such "thing". I am not referring to any physical defects. If your body has no defects and fully functioning, I do advise people to accept the body you are born with, and do the most with it to benefit yourself and others. Do not subject your body (and mind) to unnecessary surgeries and hormone pills. 

If you have a problem accepting the gender of your birth, from my understanding of Buddhism, it is mostly due to misconceptions in your mind. The reason is that mind itself has NO GENDER. There simply isn't any gender to begin with. So, how can anyone says, you are born in the wrong gender body. Usually this is the reason given by people who want a sex/gender change. 

Does eye consciousness have gender? Does ear consciousness have gender? Does smell consciousness have gender? Does taste consciousness have gender? Does your touch consciousness have gender? Does thought consciousness have gender? You ponder and contemplate whether any of these have gender? In Buddhism, what makes up your so-called "soul" is actually an illusion that you create of your own. From the interactions of the six sense consciousnesses (note: each of these function separately but they can be very spontaneous and simultaneous as well), you amalgamate them as they do appear to function from one single unit or entity. However, there is actually no entity. At any time, one of these sense consciousnesses will arise and within a micro-split second, another will arise. And it continues that way seemingly endlessly arising and falling. One time you see something. Then a sound is heard. Your consciousnesses keep shifting from one to another - all within the same physical body. And that is due to the mind is attached to the body. Without the mind, the body is a dead flesh and bone and blood. It will not function at all. The heart will not beat. Without the body, the mind cannot function wholly. Its tendency is to attach itself to a body. Even after death, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, once explained, that the consciousness attach itself to a subtle air-body in order to go to the next rebirth. This is the bardo body. 

Therefore, if you explore deeply both the mind and body, you will find that only the physical body has a gender. Not the mind. Your so-called "soul" or "spirit" is an illusion. That is the theory of "non-self" (or, more commonly referred as "emptiness" in a broader context). If you understand all this, you will accept that you are WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE. In psychology field, there is such a thing as learned concepts. Somewhere along your life, you probably "learned" or "pick up" INCORRECTLY that "you" are a female in a male body, or vice-versa. If you are really serious to fix this misconception, you need to explore and think backwards, what really happened in your life. What is the thing (or things) that had affected you psychologically? Contemplate in this manner. There are relevant mindfulness meditations that you can do, if you are interested. 

Back to the story in the article, you may realise by now that you can surgically change your body, but you cannot alter (or find it difficult) to alter certain documentation provided by your government authorities. Also, there is the question - can you alter the DNA that you had at birth? Does thumb prints tell gender? I am not sure but can you change the thumb prints? Perhaps, thumb prints do not tell gender, but DNA does, I think. In any regards, you may change the physical appearance, but a person born as a male, cannot truly be a fully functioning female no matter how good the surgery went. You can splice the dick (and you lose it forever), and use only the dickhead skin as your "vagina", but will it be the same as that of a natural woman? You probably know the answer. It's the same for a woman who surgically turn into a man. Will he have a natural dick? A natural man have morning erections. A transgender does not. A natural woman does not need to lubricate artificially. A transgender need to do it often, otherwise the "hole" may close up. At least, this is what I understand. Hopefully I have not understood wrongly. It will never be the same. IT WON'T. IT NEVER WILL. I do not mean  to sound cruel, but in reality, a transgender has become a "freak", i.e. neither a whole man nor a whole woman. An unnatural person. But if you are already a transgender, there is no turning back. You have lost your natural private parts forever and have to live and accept the artificial ones that you have installed on you. Again, for this, there are mindfulness meditations that you can do for this situation. I do hope that society will not discriminate against transgenders. Treat them as you would a normal person.  

Rather than suffer (and continue to suffer) in a self-perpetuated lie and self-delusion, it is much better to accept reality and live to ACCEPT the body you were born with. If you have a male body, learn to accept your male body. But if you like another person of the same gender, that is a different issue altogether. But we're dealing with transgender issue here. Don't let your friends or doctors mislead you that it is okay to go under the knife to transmute your physical body. Yes, it can be done, but your life will continue to suffer and there will still be problems faced in society. You may need to continue to take hormone pills, which will likely have an adverse effect on your health later on. Therefore, it is best to learn to accept the genderlessness of the mind and utilise the impermanence of the body to practice the dharma and benefit the society at large. Don't have too much attachment to the gender of your body. The body is just a "temporary house" for the mind. Very soon we will have to leave the house anyway. 

There is a reason why we are born as males or females respectively. We may not understand the karma we have behind the reason, but we need to live fully our own karma. If we try to change our karma forcefully, we only will end up creating more negative karma. And we will again face the same issue in our future rebirth. So, it is better to live and accept our present karma and utilise our present karma for the benefit of ourselves and others. That is also the bodhicitta practice that we can do. Have compassion on your physical body. DO NOT MUTATE YOUR BODY IF IT IS NOT NECESSARY!  

A better way to change your gender, if you are a male but wish to be a female (and vice-versa), is to go pray before a BUDDHA. Make some offerings and then make your aspiration. If you believe in Tibetan Buddhism and do have faith in the deity TARA, that is who you should make known your aspirations of your preferred gender. Tell TARA that you are a male currently but want to be a female in your next life. Yes, aspire for your next life. Not in this present life. In this present life, you need to have patience and plant good merits. That's what you need to do. And hopefully, you may get your wish fulfilled in your next rebirth. HENCE, YOU CHANGE YOUR GENDER IN THIS MANNER. The natural way, that is more in line with Buddhist practice. However, I must point out that even this sort of aspiration is not correct. By right, we should not be wishing for such "things". If you aspire for a female body, for example, you may not get back into a male body for many aeons of lifetimes. So, be careful what you wish for. In any regards, one should be wishing to liberate oneself from the cycle of birth and death and other such noble aspirations! The latter aspirations are definitely much better.

Last but not least, I do hope you will learn to have your peace of mind. Learn to unravel the misconceptions you may have with regards your gender. Do some mindfulness meditation as I have mentioned above. Drop me a comment if you have any question. May Buddha always bless you with a healthy body and a peaceful mind!

Do support my blog by exploring my other posts. https://buddha-and-me.blogspot.com/2012/12/anti-blessings.html

#transgender #lbgtq #sexchange #bodhicitta 

Dharma talk on Dhyana by HE Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche

This is a talk I want to share given by His Eminence Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche on 15 Nov 2021. Even though he did not talk in detail the specifics of meditation, you can still benefit from his dharma talk. It is a three-hour talk. 

#meditation #dhyana #DzongsarKhyentse

If you like this talk, do refer others like this https://buddha-and-me.blogspot.com/2010/09/monkey-god-pilgrimage-to-west.html

Buddhists Must Be Careful Not to Simply Create Concepts

 Some concerns I would like to highlight here:

1. There are Buddhists who have the tendency to come up with their own theories and conclusions and then attribute it to the Buddha. Apparently he said that the Buddha said that the samadhi from walking meditation is stronger than the samadhi from sitting meditation. So far I am not aware of any Buddhist scriptures in which the Buddha said so. If anyone is aware of this, please share it with me. However, it does not make sense because samadhi is samadhi and it should be the same regardless of the posture. As Buddhists, we must be careful not to attribute something to the Buddha if it is your own conclusions. It could be tantamount to creating negative karma, even though you are not saying anything bad (theoritically). 

Updated note: Subsequently I managed to find out that in the Anguttara Nikaya, there is a verse that says, if a person can enter and maintain samadhi during walking meditation, then it means when that person is sitting, lying down or doing whatsoever, he will be able to maintain his samadhi. However, if you are only able to maintain your samadhi during sitting, but not in other postures, then your samadhi will weaken, say when you start to get up to walk, for example. The quality of samadhi is the same no matter the posture. What this verse is saying, is that it is best to be able to enter into samadhi while walking. If you can do that, the quality of your samadhi will not diminish when you shift your movement to another posture, be it sitting, lying, etc. Hence, there is a difference between this verse in the Anguttara Nikaya and the earlier statement that samadhi from walking is stronger than samadhi from sitting meditation. Theoritically, it also does not make sense that samadhi during walking should be stronger than any other posture. There is no dharma basis for this proposition. Samadhi is a state of mind and it depends on the person who strong or what level of Jhana he achieves. It is not depending on postures. What that AN verse is saying is only to encourage being able to achieve samadhi while walking, because then it means your samadhi will not diminish its strength whatever you are doing. Hope it is clear now. 

2. No matter what religion you profess, you cannot merely rely on faith alone and disregard the need for conventional reality. What I mean is, for example, if you have accidentally hurt yourself, you would need go to a clinic to check and treat your physical body. You cannot disregard this and just put your faith in God to heal you. I mentioned this because I saw someone posted in his social media exactly this. It is such a wonder that his other social circles just support him. No one, except for me, dared to tell him that he still need to go check if he has hurt himself or not. In this instance, faith has gone over to being fanatical. It is no longer faith, when common sense no longer function. It is a pity. Even for Buddhists, I always shake my head in disbelieve when people put their faith in dharma that is impractical. I saw someone wrote about "bodhisattva nature". What "bodhisattva nature"? I am aware of Buddha nature, but not Bodhisattva nature. Buddhists must be precise and to the point. You cannot create terms like this according to your whims and fancy.

3. It is a waste of my time to participate in any discussion that tries to re-create the 8 pairs of states of mind for the contemplation of mind. After learning from Mahasi Sayadaw on this section of the Satipathana Sutta, I am of the opinion that the Sutta as it is IS correct. There is no need to recreate a new "8 pairs" of states of mind for contemplation. I think Mahasi Sayadaw interpretation of the Pali terms used in the Sutta showed his vast knowledge of the subject matter. It makes sense. Anyway, from his teachings, I realise that at the moment, most people can only do the first two pairs of mind states, at best. We have not yet reached the other state of mind yet for us to contemplate them. Hence, are we even able to discuss them? I have looked at the other Buddhist sources where states of mind are also mentioned. No, I do not think there is overlapping or confusion on the part of the Buddha nor the scripture compiler. At this juncture, I will just say that these are other ways of saying the same thing. 

okay. That's all for this post. Do read other earlier posts, such as this - https://buddha-and-me.blogspot.com/2015/10/a-little-donation-goes-long-way.html

#cittanupassana #fanaticalfaith #samadhi #mahasisayadaw

Anti-asians hate: The Buddhist perspective

This is a recent video by CNA that just came out yesterday. It showcases the anti-asian hate crimes around the UK particularly. The senior correspondent by the name of Wei Du (who is of Asian descent) went to the UK to investigate this issue and even talked to a person who appears to be prejudiced against people of colour ("POC"). By the interview, she does not regard herself as a racist, instead she sees herself as a nationalist. She has this prejudiced view that the UK should remain a country that consists only of whites and that people from other countries should not immigrate to the UK. She also thinks that marriage should only be of people from the same race. This is the kind of wrong views that people can have that really stirs up all this anti-asian hate prevailing in the western countries. Even though she acknowledges that it is wrong to incite hate on the basis of one's race, still, because of her incorrect concepts, she and her kind are perpetuating hate in this world. 

This is terrible and I want to use my platform to highlight this issue. By highlighting this issue, I hope some sense of responsibility to protect others in this situation and if you are one of those people with similar views as this particular woman, then you should do something to correct it. Interestingly, the video also highlighted a group to train people what to do if they come across any cases of racial hate going on. For example, if you are in a public train and you overheard someone saying abusive words on an Asian lady sitting next to you, then what do you do? What can the Asian lady do? Well, there is this "active bystander training" workshop where people facing this issue can gather and discuss and help one another. I would also say that similar movements to the "Black Lives Matter" in the US is also a good movement to raise awareness of this issue.  

Actually this issue is not confined to race alone. It can also happen in any community that is predominantly of one particular religion. If there is a sudden rise in persons of another religion coming in to stay within the same community or society, naturally, the first group will have feelings of insecurity and suspicion. Very soon thereafter, there will surely be cases of fighting, crime or violence, etc. Even in normally peaceful Buddhist country, such as Myanmar, there were reported cases in the past of Buddhist monks turning violent and angry against the Muslim people that slowly grows in their community. If it is the other way around, it will be the same. That is why in some countries, which is predominantly of another religion, Buddhists cannot just simply built their places of worship there. It is meant to control. In a way this is good to avoid long term issues such as the anti-Asian hate that arises due to growing Asian community in those countries. 

While there is not much concrete solutions suggested by this video, I think it is a good effort to document what is going on in the UK. But it is also a problem in the US and some other countries. The last part of the video highlighted that around the time after the Second World War, many Chinese people were rounded and deported by the UK government at that time. The Chinese came to the UK before the war and they had helped the UK fight during the war. But after the war, they were rudely rounded up and deported. Most of them originally came from various parts of China but when they were deported, they were instead sent to Hong Kong and Singapore. So, some of the Singaporeans today, are perhaps descendants of these deported Chinese immigrants. But some of their family members were not deported and remained in the UK (such as Peter's mother in the video and Peter who is a descendant). His father was apparently deported back to either HK or Singapore when he was very young. He does not remember his father at all. 

Lastly, I would like to point out that the Buddha was certainly tolerant of people of all races. You can see from the Buddhist scriptures, often his Dharma assemblies were not just humans from all other the places in India who came to listen to his teachings but also non-human beings (such as dragons, gods, goddesses, ghosts, gandarvas, kinnaras, goblins, etc). You don't expect all of these beings are from the same "race", do you? Certainly not! That being the case, we can conclude that in Buddhism, we are supposed to look beyond the skin colour as that is only the body (or outer appearance). What's more important is to recognise the colourless MIND inside of each and every being - humans and non-humans! 

So, we all should strive to live together in peace and respect one another's culture and religion. 

#antiasiancrime #antiasians #RaceMeToo 

You may want check other posts too, such as this https://buddha-and-me.blogspot.com/2012/11/urging-rakhinees-to-live-peacefully.html