I do not think that faith in and of itself is a negative thing, I see it more as a motivating factor; but I do think that faith without reason can be an unskillful motivating factor when it comes to our actions, i.e., acts leading to harmful results. People who kill thousands of other innocent people out of faith is certainly one example of how I think faith can be an unskillful motivating factor. Nevertheless, is faith, as opposed to skepticism, always going to lead to such behavior? On the issue of faith in Buddhism, for example, while there is certainly room for skepticism toward matters of faith, there is also a limit to that skepticism. The Buddha often stated that faith in a teacher is what leads one to learn from that teacher, to put their teachings to the test to see what results they will bring; and the only valid basis for faith is the instruction that, when followed, brings about the end of one’s own mental defilements (DN 11).

As Thanissaro Bhikkhu explains, “The Buddha never placed unconditional demands on anyone’s faith … We read his famous instructions to the Kalamas, in which he advises testing things for oneself, and we see it as an invitation to believe, or not, whatever we like. Some people go so far as to say that faith has no place in the Buddhist tradition, that the proper Buddhist attitude is one of skepticism. But even though the Buddha recommends tolerance and a healthy skepticism toward matters of faith, he also makes a conditional request about faith: If you sincerely want to put an end to suffering — that’s the condition — you should take certain things on faith, as working hypotheses, and then test them through following his path of practice” Faith in Awakening. In other words, one must have at least a modicum of faith that an end to suffering is possible, otherwise one will not bother working toward that goal.

One must also understand what faith means in this context. In the Pali Canon, the word saddha can be translated as “confidence,” “conviction,” or “faith.” More specifically, it is a type of confidence, conviction, or faith that is rooted in understanding as well as what we would conventionally refer to as faith in the West, i.e., confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing. To give an example, for one to truly take refuge in the Buddha (as a teacher), one has to take his awakening on faith until they too have achieved that particular goal. Until then, they have no way of verifying the experience of awakening until they have experienced it for themselves. Therefore, while saddha by itself is not a sufficient condition for arriving at the end of suffering, there are elements of faith that are important to the practice. The question is, does this type of faith lead to unskillful or negative behavior?

Biased as I am, for me the answer is no. For one reason, taking the doctrine of kamma on faith, as a working hypothesis, has the potential to lead to skillful actions. As Thanissaro Bhikkhu explains in Faith in Awakening, “…instead of an empirical proof for his teaching on karma, the Buddha offered a pragmatic proof: If you believe in his teachings on causality, karma, rebirth, and the four noble truths, how will you act? What kind of life will you lead? Won’t you tend to be more responsible and compassionate? If, on the other hand, you were to believe in any of the alternatives — such as a doctrine of an impersonal fate or a deity who determined the course of your pleasure and pain, or a doctrine that all things were coincidental and without cause — what would those beliefs lead you to do? Would they allow you to put an end to suffering through your own efforts? Would they allow any purpose for knowledge at all?”

To put it another way, if I ask a person who I feel to be wise, which should be determined by careful observation and analysis of their words and deeds per AN 4.192, “What when I do it will be for my long-term welfare and happiness,” and their answer leads me to place faith in putting forth the effort to abstain from killing, abstain from stealing, abstain from lying, abstain from sexual misconduct, abstain from intoxicating drinks and drugs which lead to carelessness; to cultvating wholesome mental states (e.g. compassion, equanimity, etc.) and abandoning unwholesome mental states (e.g., greed, hatred, etc.); to developing alertness, mindfulness, and wisdom through various forms of meditation, will this type of faith lead to unskillful actions that harm myself or others? In most cases, if the effort is genuine, the answer is no. Therefore, in a pragmatic sense, faith is not inherently detrimental to oneself or society.

Therefore, while I think that having a healthy skepticism towards matters of faith, or anything else for that matter, is an important thing to have, I also think that there are limits to that skepticism if we are sincere in following the Buddha’s advice to the Kalamas, i.e., there are times when one should be able to admit that they lack knowledge in a particular area and, in essence, be willing to place their faith or trust in others who do have that knowledge. Nevertheless, this kind of faith or trust should not be “blind” in the sense that one is willing to do anything whatsoever without a modicum of questioning because that kind of faith can have the potential to lead to unskillful actions. In other words, I think that it is healthy for people take an honest look at their beliefs and what their beliefs motivate them to do. I think that this kind of self-awareness can eventually dispel a lot of the harm that misguided faith can engender.

In the Suttas, the arising of sensory-consciousness is said to be dependent upon the meeting of one of the six sense-organs (salayatana) and its corresponding object. The process of seeing, for example, is described as a conditional process where “dependent on eye and visible forms, eye-consciousness arises” (SN 12.43). Without the presence of the appropriate sense organ (e.g., the eye) or the corresponding object of reference (e.g., rock), sensory-consciousness (e.g., eye-consciousness) cannot arise. Furthermore, dependent co-arising specifically states, “From the arising of name-and-form comes the arising of consciousness. From the cessation of name-and-form comes the cessation of consciousness.” Additionally, in DN 15, special attention is paid to the complex relationship between name-and-form (nama-rupa), i.e., mentality-materiality, and consciousness (vinnana)—with the Buddha detailing the mutual dependency of mental and physical activity and consciousness. In one analogy used to illustrate their relationship, consciousness and name-and-form act as two sheaves of reeds leaning against one another. In essence, the two sheaves of reeds support one another, and if one were pulled away, the other would fall (SN 12.67). Therefore, it is clear that sensory-consciousness is a dependently existing phenomena that cannot exist without a sense organ or its corresponding object of reference. As for the nature of consciousness itself, however, I cannot say for sure. Perhaps consciounsess is something that is fundamental to the basic structure of the universe; perhaps consciousness is purely a conditional phenomenon with nothing else underlying it; perhaps there is a separate type of consciousness that does not partake of any of the six senses or their objects—for me, the jury is still out on this one.

In terms of the aggregate of consciousness (vinnana-khandha), it is clear that consciousness is a dependently existing phenomena … However, there are a couple of sutta passages which could seem to suggest that there is a form of consciousness that does not come under the aggregate of consciousness. For example, Thanissaro Bhikkhu states in a note to his tranlsation of MN 109, “One form of consciousness apparently does not come under the aggregate of consciousness. This type of consciousness is termed vinnanam anidassanam — consciousness without a surface, or consciousness without feature. MN 49 says specifically that this consciousness does not partake of the “allness of the all,” the “all” being conterminous with the five aggregates. The standard definition of the aggregate of consciousness states that this aggregate includes all consciousness, “past, present, or future… near or far.” However, because vinnanam anidassanam stands outside of space and time it would not be covered by these terms. Similarly, where SN 22.97 says that no consciousness is eternal, “eternal” is a concept that applies only within the dimension of time, and thus would not apply to this form of consciousness.” While this view that there is a type of consciousness that lies outside of space and time, and therefore, outside the consciousness-aggregate altogether is not a view that is supported by the “classical” Theravada Tradition in which the enitre Tipitaka and its commentaries are considered authoritative, the imagery of consciousness that “does not land or increase” mentioned in SN 12.64 does seem to support such a possibilty, even if some might say that comparing this imagery of consciousness that “does not land or grow” to the consciousness of Nibbana is taking it out of context. At least I think so.

But the commentaries gloss the term “vinnanam anidassanam” in a way that denies such a possibilty. Using the Kevatta Sutta (DN 11), for example, Suan Lu Zaw, a Burmese lay-teacher of Pali and Abhidhamma, explains that according the the Kevatta Sutta Atthakatha [DN 11 commentary], vinnanam does not refer to the usual meaning of “consciousness” here, but instead defines it as, “There, to be known specifically, so (it is) “vinnanam“. This is the name of Nibbana.” He also explains that the following line of DN 11, “Here (in Nibbana), nama as well as rupa cease without remainder. By ceasing of conscousness, nama as well as rupa ceases here” illustrates this point. He states that, “Nibbana does not become a sort of consciousness just because one of the Pali names happens to be vinnanam.” And finally, he concludes by using a quote from a section of the Dhammapada Attakatha [Dhammapada commentary], which apparently states that there is no consciousness component in parinibbana after the death of an arahant. This, of course, is in direct contrast to Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s note to this particular sutta which suggests that this term refers to a consciousness that lies outside of space and time, and therefore, outside the consciousness-aggregate altogether. Basically, what this controversy boils down to is the experience of Nibbana and the nature of that experience. The general tendency is to either describe Nibbana as the ending of all consciousness, all awareness, or in other words, to stress the cessation aspect of Nibbana, or to describe Nibbana as a state of purified awareness, “consciousness without feature”, or in other words, to stress the transcendent aspect of Nibbana. The “classical” Theravada Tradition favors the former view of Nibbana while others, like the Thai Forest Tradition, favor the latter.

That being said, rebirth is essentially renewal of existence. As with most Eastern philosophies and religions, Buddhism does not view death as the final end of phenomena. In Buddhism, only Nibbana is said to be the final end of phenomena in regards to the arising and passing away of beings (AN 10.58). According to the teachings on dependent origination, if there are sufficient conditions present, those conditions with inevitably result in future births (SN 12.35). Along with consciousness, craving (tahna) plays a vital role in the renewal of beings and the production of future births. To illustrate how craving could result in future births, the Buddha used a simile in which he compared the sustenance of a flame to that of a being at the time of death. Essentially, a flame burns in dependence on its fuel, and that fuel sustains it. When a flame burns in dependence on wood, for example, the wood sustains that flame. However, when a flame is swept up and carried away by the wind, the fuel of wind sustains that flame until it lands upon a new source of fuel. In the same way, a being at the time of death has the fuel of craving as its sustenance (SN 44.9). The last consciousness of a being at the time of death, with the presence of craving, is the cause for the arising of a new consciousness. In the human realm, this would be in combination with the union of a healthy sperm and egg, although the Buddha often mentioned various other forms of birth in other realms of existence—none of which are free from suffering. Hence, the Buddha states, “Wherever there is a basis for consciousness, there is support for the establishing of consciousness. When consciousness is established and has come to growth, there is the production of renewed existence” (SN 12.38). The Buddha never really got more specific than that, though.

Finally, to remove one of the more common misunderstandings in regard to consciousness, in response to the view that “it is this same consciousness that runs and wanders through the round of rebirths, not another” put forth by Sati, a bhikkhu that was the son of a fisherman, the Buddha rebukingly said, “Misguided man, have I not stated in many ways consciousness to be dependently arisen, since without a condition there is no origination of consciousness” (MN 38). This eliminates the idea of consciousness as “self.” Coming back to the teachings on rebirth, the “re” implies that something happens again, and that something is birth, i.e., the appearance of the aggregates, which takes place again and again. As such, this process of birth, death, birth, et cetera will continue as long as the requsite conditions are present. The word for “rebirth” in Pali is punabhava, which literally means “re-becoming” or “renewed existence.” Although the aggregates are impermament, they are conditioned by causes anterior to birth, and act as causes for future births. Kamma is what makes entire this process possible. In Bhikkhu Bodhi’s words, “When ignorance and craving underlie our stream of consciousness, our volitional actions of body, speech, and mind become forces with the capacity to produce results, and of the results they produce the most significant is the renewal of the stream of consciousness following death” (Anicca Vata Sankhara). Therefore, while there is a type of continuity invloved in this process, it should not be mistaken for something substantial. As such, this “stream of consciousnes” should not be understood as a static thing, but simply a complex and uninterupted process of arising and ceasing in which both consciousness and craving play an important role. The term “rebirth” is merely a convenience.

The irony of willpower is that it requires willpower to develop more of the same. The most obvious case in point is that meditation is an exercise of willpower that requires willpower. Willpower is what I’m missing most and it’s the thing I have the hardest time working on.

The most damning part is that willpower is something for which you can’t get a personal trainer, and which all the inspirational words in the world won’t change.

Step one is acceptance, right?

So I’m a Buddhist. Which means I do Buddhist things like meditating and practicing loving kindness, patience, equanimity and so on. There are a million different ways to practice this Path and lots of important things to keep in mind while doing so like impermanence, suffering and not-self. But lately I’ve caught myself doing something very unlike ‘me’, something that is helping me in a tremendous way, something I never would have thought of doing if I hadn’t started studying and practicing Buddhism. I’ve been watching my mind and reminding myself not to believe everything I think.

This may n0t seem to be a big deal to some but to me it’s monumental because over the course of my life I’ve given a great deal of trust and belief to my thoughts and feelings. I’ve always believed that my feelings and ideas were very important and meant important things. I’ve relied on my mind to tell me the truth all my life and it’s only now, at the age of forty, that I understand how big a mistake that was.

It’s a mistake to put our trust in our thoughts and feelings because our minds are very good at playing tricks on us and our minds are in the habit of reinforcing what we want to believe instead of what the truth actually is. We really are deluded beings and the more we watch our minds the more that truth becomes apparent.

So lately I’ve noticed myself automatically correcting my mind. I’ll be sitting doing some needlepoint and thinking about things and notice how my mind starts to react to the thoughts I’m thinking. For example, I’ll start thinking about something in my life that’s not going as planned and I instantly start feeling angry. At first my mind will trick me into believing that whatever thoughts I’m thinking are worthy of making me angry, of making me suffer. Then I’ll catch myself. I’ll start thinking, “These thoughts that are making me angry, and the anger itself, isn’t important in the grand scheme. They’re not worth the suffering. They’re not solving the problem, they’re only making it worse. Don’t believe your mind when it tells you these thoughts are important to think. They’re not. They’re impermanent and will come and go. They hold neither importance nor solutions, just more suffering. They’re not important enough to hold on to, so let them pass.”

I’ve never done anything like this before in my life. I’ve always been a brooder to a certain degree and believed all my thoughts and emotions had great validity. This has caused me great suffering in the past. In fact, when very bad things happened in my life I had a tendency to get lost in my thoughts about them. It felt like being caught in a loop of painful thinking and I couldn’t, or thought I couldn’t, drag myself out of it.

But that never happens anymore. I don’t nurse my anger or sadness or fear anymore. I don’t sit and saturate myself in thoughts of being hard done by or injured by someone. I still find myself starting to nurse some of these thoughts but now I’m able to nip them in the bud, before I get caught in the loop and before they escalate. I’m learning how to let go. Finally.

The thing that strikes me is that I feel like a child again. As a child I was resilient and I naturally lived in the moment. It was only as I got older that I lost my way and started imprisoning myself in my negative thoughts, living in the past, nursing sadness or anger or feelings of self pity. It feels to me that I got in my own way and once I got out of my way my mind naturally went back to its healthy way of experiencing the world. I’m learning how to get over myself and get out my way so the resilience of childhood and the natural tendency to live in the moment can resurface on its own. As it does.

I’m still at the beginning of this Path and I know there’s much more work to be done. But the simple fact that I’m catching myself when I’m putting too much faith in my thoughts is a sign of progress to me and it renews my energy and encourages me to keep going, keep practicing. I know results aren’t always what they’re cracked up to be and there’s no use in getting caught up in them. But a few signs of progress here and there go a long way and I’m grateful for them. In Buddhism it’s always a new day, another opportunity to do better, to be better and to get better. My heart is full of gratitude for the Buddhadhamma.

Brigid

Yesterday I attended a conference in Phoenix at Arizona State University put on by the Arizona Coalition to end the death penalty. It was quite illuminating as they had speakers who fell on both sides of the fence, from prosecutors to Quakers. Mostly it was from the legal side of the issue - how the death penalty works in Arizona, what are the legal arguments for and against the death penalty. There was very little on the moral and ethical consequences of putting people to death, which itself was very revealing.

It turns out that even if you view the death penalty in cold economic terms it makes absolutely no sense at all. In Arizona it costs on average $31 million (yes, million) to prosecute a death penalty case to completion. It also takes on average 18-19 years from arraignment to execution. However, only about 1% of death penalty eligible cases ever lead to execution. Important factors in deciding whether to pursue the death penalty in a case are race and economic status. Someone who can afford an attorney (i.e. who can afford competent representation) almost never gets the death penalty. And yet there are those - including the county attorney from Maricopa County (Phoenix) who spoke at the conference - who vociferously claim that the death penalty serves as a deterrent. However, the death penalty in the US as it is currently carried out meets none of the requirements for deterrence, such as quick punishment, certainty of punishment, and so forth. In fact, currently in Arizona, all but a scattered few death penalty cases are in Phoenix. Other municipalities and counties rarely attempt death penalty cases due to the cost and difficulty of winning such cases. Currently in Arizona all the death penalty cases are in Maricopa county except for 3 in Yavapai and one or two in Pima counties. Note that Phoenix is not the only large city in Arizona. Tucson is also over a million, yet there are few if any death penalty cases brought there. It is also questionable if someone who kills out of rage would ever think about the consequences beforehand.  So the argument for deterrence has no basis.

Someone asked the prosecutor about why it was that in the EU (and all other civilized countries on earth) where they didn’t have the death penalty, their crime rates were so low. If the death penalty was a deterrent, one would expect these countries to have soaring murder rates while the US should be virtually free of them. However, the opposite is true. The prosecutor’s response was that these countries historically had low crime rates, so it wasn’t a valid question! I wonder what his opinion would be if he understood the law of cause and effect as taught by Lord Buddha. Could it be just the opposite, that the reason these countries have low crime rates is that they don’t practice institutionalized violence in the name of their citizens?

Several members of the American Friends Service Committee presented information they had gathered on how death row inmates are treated while awaiting execution. In Arizona they are held in administrative segregation, only allowed out of their cells for an hour or two three times a week to exercise and shower. The rest of the time they are held in their cells, including eating meals. Such isolation has been proven to cause worsening of psychological problems if already present (according to DOC data, about 16.8% of inmates have significant psychological problems) or cause them if not already present. In fact, the last execution to take place in Arizona - in 2007 - occurred after a Death Row inmate dropped all his appeals and demanded to be executed because he found life on Death Row to be so much worse than the prospect of death. In fact, there are over 1600 prisoners in Arizona who are on long-term administrative segregation, meaning over 3 months but in reality meaning at least 5 years. Last year alone 750 inmates were released from DOC directly from administrative segregation. Pleasant to contemplate, isn’t it?

Of course, there is also the problem of executing innocent people. Recently a long-time resident of Death Row was exonerated when DNA evidence showed that he did not commit the crime for which he was convicted. There are numerous stories about men who were executed who were later found to be quite innocent. Ooops!

All in all, the conference showed the futility, cruelty and ineffectiveness of the death penalty as a means of punishment and deterrence. The same sort of analysis has caused other states to abandon the death penalty, states like Minnesota and New Jersey. But the bottom line is that the chances of repealing the death penalty in Arizona are virtually nil.  The good news is that executions are on hold in most states which still maintain the death penalty (36 of them) after the recent Supreme Court decision on the unconstitutionality of lethal injections.

As Buddhists we are taught not only not to take life but to do everything in our power to promote and sustain life. Yet some of us live in states where the state has the power to take life. It is a dilemma. No one is saying that the people who commit these murders are good people or that they should be just forgiven and sent on their way, but to kill them for killing another also makes no sense and should be stopped for we all share in the karma of killing when the state does it in our name.

Palzang

I’ve been practicing Kung Fu since October. My sifu is a bit rare, as I understand it, in that he absolutely insists that meditation be part of our practice, holds 5-minute meditations before every class, and has weekly 20-minute meditations on Thursday nights following a talk.

Out of my six months of practicing Kung Fu, I’d say I’ve actually done four months. Twice I allowed myself to become tied up with life and excuses and didn’t make it to the dojo for almost a month. This sort of behaviour is one of my stated reasons for starting to practice in the first place - I get ginned up for things and taper off; rinse and repeat.

Last week at meditation class, the topic was regularity and loyalty to practice. I felt the talk was directed at me specifically (30 or more people attend every week, so this is unlikely) and it started to dig at the root of my problem, I think.

This week I was thinking about how to start mediating on my own successfully. I’ve been a regular at the meditation class (when I’ve been active), but I’ve been wholly unsuccessful at meditating on my own. I’ve made half-hearted gambits, trying 3-minute meditations and such, but I could never continue with them. I’d do it once, then forget for several days or “not have time”, then take another stab, and then give up. I was preparing to go in this weekend and ask one of Sifu’s assistants for a really low-ball target that I could hit for meditation. Something just enough to get me started without giving up.

Then, last night, I once again felt like he had prepared a talk to address directly at me. The topic was meditation itself, which, oddly, isn’t much discussed during meditation class. He spent the duration talking about what a meditation schedule should consist of: short (3-5 min.), medium (20-30 min), and long (45+ min) meditations. Medium, he said, are the “bread and butter”: at least once a day EVERY DAY, preferably two; morning is the best time if you can only do one. The short ones are for interspersing throughout your day, maybe three times, at moments when you need it: closing your eyes while waiting in line, sitting in a back room at work, or even locking yourself in a restroom stall. The long meditations are for once a quarter, once a month, or once a week; whatever you can do.

And he was absolutely serious. Dead serious. A “I better not ask for a low-ball from anyone this weekend because holy crap he just told me what’s up” serious. And he drove home the idea of the long meditations being an endurance test for your will power. Of course, I knew that just a “medium” meditation would be such a test for me.

I was up too late last night; I had put off a trip to the grocery store and went to the 24-hour store around 11:30pm, when I should’ve been heading for bed. I knew I would have trouble getting up, but I got it in my head I was going to meditate in the morning. This morning, I sat up with the first noise of my alarm clock and was ready. As someone who typically hits the snooze 5 times, that was a novelty.

I reset the alarm for 20 minutes, and sat.

And sat.

Then I was too warm.

My sleeves were uncomfortable.

I was too warm again.

My legs were in a bad position.

Back wasn’t straight.

Back started getting really tired.

Then I wanted to jump up and run from the room. I wanted to stop SO BADLY. I had things to do. I WANTED TO YELL and jump up and say “good enough”. I was positively bursting to get up. BURSTING. My mind was screaming to let it go. Screaming. This never happens during a group meditation, but I’m surprised it took even this long to happen on my own - usually I can’t make 5 minutes!

But this time I sat some more. I refused to get up.

Then my legs started to go to sleep so I moved them.

Then I could barely keep my back straight it was so tired, so I quietly scooted back a few inches to the wall.

My mind calmed a little.

And then the alarm went off. I opened my eyes and wanted to hit the snooze alarm so I could meditate longer, but I had to get ready for work!

I find this to be a pattern: if I can stick with it long enough, suddenly it becomes a positive thing. I found myself wishing on Thursday night that I hadn’t missed my opportunity to go to class on Wednesday because now I just plain missed it. Sifu said that’s when you know you’re doing something right: you stop having to meditate and start wanting to meditate. I’m almost there for Kung Fu, but I’m nowhere near it for meditation. I hope I can make it there, though.

When I decided to meditate in the morning, I knew it I needed to do it the next day too. And the next. And keep going… forever. Forever is a long time, but I think that’s the decision I need to keep in mind. I’m not doing it “tomorrow”. I’m doing it. Maybe that’s where I’ve been falling short.