Images of the Buddha - actual pics!

I took some photos of Buddha today and they came out quite clear IMHO.

Here is one..



Do you see the Buddha?

Back in high school I was pretty stressed out. Everything was so raw, so deep and intense - as it usually is for most teenagers I guess. Back then, I was beginning to practice meditation even before I had ever really heard of Buddhism. I would get out of school [sometimes skip school before eventually dropping out altogether] and head for my "space". This was of coarse not "myspace" but my "space" - way, way before personal computers.

My "space" was a small, grassy, tree lined hill in a park not far from my home. I would lay down on the side of the hill which had the most open view of the sky.

Then, I would turn my head off, no thinking allowed. In fact though, I was still sort of thinking. I would just imagine that there was only me and the sky with no earth below. I would just fly through the sky as far and as fast as I wanted to go in any direction. Nothing could impede my flying or falling. I would just turn everything loose and fly, feeling the wind, feeling the sun and the occasional cloud. I was completely free for a while and my stress was really gone while this lasted.

"Sky Gazing" is a kind of meditation that comes from the Tibetan tradition called Dzogchen ("ZO chen"). Dzogchen means "great complete" or "great perfection". This tradition - like Zen Buddhism - puts an emphasis on your 'innate enlightenment'. Your "innate" enlightenment is also called your "Buddha nature" or your innate "natural nirvana".

What is natural nirvana?

Things are complete. Some might say it as things are "perfect", but to me that implies a sort of "goodness" within things and I think that what we're really talking about goes beyond goodness or "badness".

This "completeness" is an innate (natural) quality of all phenomena, of all experiences, but we miss it in our usual way of thinking.

When we "miss" the natural completeness of our experience we create this un-natural world of THING-NESS and THINGS to grab onto and in Buddhism this world is given the name of "samsara"

THINGS don't exist!

A "THING" is an isolation.

"Isolation" is impossible.

"Interdependence" is reality, but not as a THING called "interdependence".

Things appear, but they appear based on their emptiness. In other words, they appear as interdependence-emptiness. They are without THING-NESS. This is the concealed truth of all things and when this truth is no longer concealed, or when it is "cognized" the cognition is called "attained nirvana".

So natural nirvana (aka "your Buddha nature") is just (or exactly) the truth of phenomena that is concealed within our 'samsaric" experience of the world. It is a potential experience when we miss it. It is a realized truth when we see it.

We have to undo that "missing it".

This is where meditation as a "path" or a "practice" comes in.

Meditation as a "path" is the process of uncovering the innate truth that is exactly THE TRUTH precisely because things have ALWAYS or primordially been this way.

The unique path of Buddhist meditation is to take this truth, this innate state of THIS as THIS is, and use that potential as the path to realize the goal.

Meditation changes nothing.

The path IS the goal.

Meditation changes everything.

When we look at the world it looks like a pile of shit. But when a fly looks at a pile of shit that pile of shit is a feast.

The world is a pile of shit that has within it the potential to be a feast!

There is an innate completeness to things but it is only a potential until we actualize the potential as our truth. That is what Buddhism is about.

The world is a pile of shit.

Actualizing means ridding our experience of the THINGS that block the realization of the completeness.

The world is a feast.

Here is another shot of Buddha I took in the bus yard at work today..



Please go get you some "attained nirvana".

The "sky gazing" that I do has very few rules.

Find a place with a view

A viewless view is best, but anywhere will do

Look up, look out

Endless, boundless, infinite

Space, freedom, uninhibited

Not nothingness, which is something

Awareness is present

Nothing to be aware of

Emptiness is presence

Complete as it is

Nothing to add to or take away

Not future, not past, not even now

Just emptiness, awareness, emptiness

Just sky

Please feel free to use the photos you find here for your 'sky gazing' practice on your computer - it works well in lieu of the real thing.

"Rules" for sky gazing are as follows:

Don't become enthralled by the beauty of the sky, but don't suppress the beauty either.

Don't focus on one particular aspect of the sky, but don't look around and become distracted either.

The best sky's have some clouds, but clouds can't hinder the vast sky.

Don't think about the sky when sky gazing, but don't suppress your thoughts either.

Don't analyze your sky gazing, but do notice the emptiness and awareness that is present.

When you breath out when sky gazing sometimes say AHHHHhhh..., but most of the time don't.

Just sky gaze, let it all go and sky gaze.

Here are a couple more pics I found of the Buddha - these were already online so I guess I ripped them off.. PLEASE CLICK ON THE PICTURES TO SEE THEM FULL SIZE!





PS - Ive added one more image of the Buddha that I took to help you with your "sky gazing" meditation. Don't forget to CLICK ON THE PHOTOS (all of them) to see the FULL version:

Problems, Peace and Ecstasy

Buddhism says on one level, look, this situation, this experience here is unsatisfactory, and more than that, it cannot possibly be satisfactory when experience is on this level.

But then, on another level, it says, the nature of any experience is neither inherently satisfactory nor unsatisfactory, on this level it is 'what it is' without being definable as any-THING. On this level there is neither satisfaction nor non-satisfaction.

Finally, Buddhism goes on to say that this experience, right now, is completely, totally and purely satisfactory. In fact, on this level there is nothing but pure satisfaction itself.

How is this possible? How can we reconcile these three seemingly opposing views of reality?

Each of these "descriptions" are utterly true at their particular level of experience. When we cling to any of these three levels of truth we create a cognitive dissonance, a mental conflict - a kind of suffering.

We do have to recognize that in our usual way of life we have these problems - the fist teaching of Buddha was to point out the suffering or unsatisfactoriness in life.

But when we begin to look into this we discover something deeper.

Looking into the cause of these problems reveals that their source is groundless, their basis is baseless, their nature is emptiness. THING-NESS is something that comes from within. THING-NESS does not abide 'out there'. THING-NESS is the cause. There are no THINGS so let go of that.

We might be tempted then to leave it at that, to stay at that level, and why not, why shouldn't we? It is utterly the truth and it sounds pretty peaceful so why not just view it all as no-THING?

Because truth is not a THING, it can't abide as anyTHING, even as the profound truth of emptiness or interdependence.

In meditation, we can approach our thoughts as though they are obstacles to the object of our meditation. Thoughts arise, distraction, you notice this and correct, you return to meditation. That is like seeing life as a problem. This is good on one level.

Then, in meditation, we can also see these thoughts as empty, as relative, as nothing to be concerned about. Here you just sit with whatever appears knowing no THING is inherently there to be an obstacle. This also is good on one level.

But even this level of meditation gives way to something deeper.

Life is not just problems.
Life is not just peace.

Life is also ecstasy.

THIS as 'THIS IS' is more than something that needs to be corrected. THIS as 'THIS IS' is more than something that needs to be recognized.

THIS as 'THIS IS' is also pure being.

Whether you correct your experience or not (in meditation), whether you recognize the nature of your experience or not (in meditation), your experience is more than (beyond) correcting or recognizing in meditation.

Pure being is who we are in truth.

In Buddhism this is called our Buddha Nature.

THAT is exactly who we really are.

It doesn't need correcting. It doesn't need recognition. We are THAT whether or not we correct our experience or recognize our experience for what it is.

When we experience life as problem then we are problem Buddha. When we experience life as peace and clarity, we are peace and clarity Buddha.

This however is like making the body and mind of a Buddha, but without the feelings and without the speech.

Speech is expression, communication, feeling. Release and benefit always have to do with that, with the whole of our experience, not just correcting and not just recognizing.

Expressing pure being 'as it is' is actualizing who you are right now in totality.

When you take this experience of interdependence, of relativity and subtract the illusory need or desire to correct it, you arrive at the ecstasy of pure being - in other words bliss/emptiness. Bliss minus "bliss" as any THING to cling to.

This is our complete experience 'as it is' NOW.

It's not a matter of correcting, although you can make good use of correcting.

It's not a matter of recognizing, although you have to recognize this - "recognizing" is still removed slightly from this 'as it is'.

Reality goes beyond both body and mind. It is so present, so complete and total that you simply miss it in any attempt to 'attain' it. Buddhism helps, but you have to be ready to (have to develop the confidence to) ditch the raft you used to cross the river or it will weigh you down carrying it everywhere.

Pure Being is THIS, and THIS has always been the case.

Enjoy it.

The Intimacy of Death - practicing your life

Thing is, this is not bullshit. Not really bullshit at all.

It may seem like that, but any bullshit is all secondary. The bullshit is the "ism" in Buddhism.

The "Buddh" part is just to be awake, just to be fully alive in your experience - whatever shape it takes.

When we say "Im alive" that is a shape, a THING, a form. When we say "my death" that is a shape, a THING, a form.

Both of these are just elaboration on a theme.

The essence of the theme though, is not anything speakable, completely beyond words. In Buddhism they still try to express this though with words like "thus" or THIS.

You start to notice "thus" (THIS) when the doctor tells you that you only have weeks to live. THEN you pay attention to thus.

Mostly, we're not fully alive. We even die before we live usually. But then death puts this all into the proper perspective.

You and I are dying right now. We have terminal life disease.

Because we are born we get to die, we get to experience this great loss of utterly every aspect of our experience. Nothing really is analogous to what we will go through.

But this is right now how all this is.

How long do you have to live?

When are you going to die?

We fill our experience up with distractions, but the very nature of all this is itself un-distractedness. The very nature of this experience we are having right now is awakeness. We don't notice.

Dying brings this message home if we pay attention to our dying - which is right now.

There is no right way or wrong way to die.

I knew this guy who died of AIDS and he was extremely scared and angry almost to the point of insanity right up to the end. I felt sad for him because he couldn't accept his condition at all but then I also thought maybe I might be crazy like that as well someday.

I didn't however, think he was dying in a "wrong" way. He had the right to die in what ever way he needed to. We all do.

I witnessed a murder one time on the streets of Seattle. This man was stabbed (randomly by a crazy homeless person) in his heart and he basically died in my arms. He even looked in my eyes as he went. I felt that with him, in his case, there was some acceptance, some sense of "resignation" [as my old zen teacher once put it] as he went.

He earned his right to die in that way, but it wasn't right or wrong. Some people are quietly resigned, others fight as much as they can, who are we to interfere in such a moment with our judgments.

When will you die?

Is that a long time away?

Buddhism has a lot to do with death because death is completely intimate, completely sacred, completely personal, completely unyielding, completely real, and completely now.

There is a Tibetan saying that partially goes, "We are born alone, we will die alone". That hits home.

Just think about that for a second. Not about the philosophy behind it, because Buddhism also says that we are never alone. But just contemplate these words for a bit, not whether or not it is correct from a philosophical perspective, just let it sink in as it is..

We are born alone
We will die alone

Death is touching truth. Life is too, we just don't notice it. We need to find a realistic way to relate to this most intimate of experiences.

I new this other guy who died. While on his death bed his friend kept telling him to "follow the light, let go and follow the light..."
That really IS just bullshit! No one should "command" someone to do something while they are dying! The process of dying is too serious and too intimate for that. The dying guy finally yelled at him to shut up at one point.

Reading to someone who is dying or suggesting something yeah, that's ok in my book, simply listening to them is best of coarse, but trying to impose your phony beliefs on someone as they are going through the purest moment of their experience is a crime.

When you study Buddhism you study your death. Practicing Buddhism is practicing your death. Switch the word "death" to "life" and you see what I mean from a different perspective. Regardless of the words, either perspective is true.

WE ARE DYING

You think this is not the case but it is.

Buddhism is not bullshit because life-death is not bullshit. We make it bullshit by wasting it.

YOU ARE DYING

I read this story on line about the Dalai Lama:

"When the Dalai Lama turned 58 years old, a reporter asked him what he was going to do next with his life. He answered that he was going to prepare for death. The interviewer inquired about his health, and the Dalai Lama replied that he wasn’t sick, but that his body was impermanent."

It really is amazing that humans have come up with Buddhism.

Each moment of our experience includes every other moment. We just don't notice this! Meditating on our death removes the bullshit from our experience and replaces it with the "notice" part.

You don't have to necessarily "visualize" your dying process to meditate on death. Really, any Buddhist meditation, any Buddhist method is a meditation on death because Buddhism points toward truth - no matter what you name it.

Death is truth because it's opposite is usually avoidance, distraction, pre-occupation. Death rips this all away, or it removes it in a control manner if we face this moment as it is now by paying attention to our dying-living. Either way, truth gets revealed.

And because truth gets revealed this is why we almost universally, intuitively respect death as being so intimate, so sacred - at least we should.

Shutting down, letting go of, seeing thru, eliminating the cognitive distractions we so cling to is what Buddhism is about. Don't be fooled by the appearance of it as "just another religion", this is not bullshit unless we make it into bullshit.

WE ARE DYING NOW

What are you going to distract yourself with?

I know you don't want to face this (life-death), neither do I, but here we are, right now, what should we do with this? What should we do with our experience?

Life is suffering. Life is stressful and unsatisfying. Life is fleeting and ever changing. Life is loss. Life is death.

But because it is all these things it is precious too.

Life is that tree, that cloud, that smile, that taste, that joke, that comb by the sink in the bathroom.

WE ARE BORN ALONE
WE WILL DIE ALONE

We die each and every moment. We live each and every moment. We die each and every moment.

Right there
Right there exactly

Natural Being - a deeper meditation

Because words are conceptual assertion, they always fail to directly communicate reality.

As they say in the Madhyamaka as well as in Zen, "to assert anything about the nature of reality is to miss the mark".

Both the beautiful Madhyamaka reasoning which is full of insight, ideas and concept, and which ultimately yields a non conceptual fruit, as well as the beautiful art of Buddhist meditation which is filled with calm stability and realization, necessarily meet us at some point "in real time".

You will never be satisfied with philosophy.

If you see meditation as a means you will practice quietude as a drug.

And poetry, I will add, is quite the subjective medium.


Buddhism is about relationship.

If there are philosophies and poems connected to Buddhism they are all expressing the necessary step of returning to relationship. Relationship is our Buddha in action. This is called our "Sambhogakaya" Buddha.

We can "appear" like a Buddha, we can realize or "think" like a Buddha too, these are important and are given a rightful place in Buddhism. But the best Buddha is the one practice/realization of relating, of communicating our experience the way it is, as who we are, as what we do (what ever that is), as our life.

We are not in isolation. Nothing is that way. Everything is in flow and every moment brings the next experience. We have to relate to that.

Meditation might look like sitting sometimes, enlightenment might sound like a lot of big words and high ideals, but things are still in flow, the world is not still, beings are interacting.

We work with what we got.

I can't put the words below into any kind of context really so get what you can from them or just disregard them.

In the midst of what ever is

Just this

Without directing the mind

Without distraction

Just this

Neither meditation

Nor non-meditation

Just this

Without searching

Without confusion

Just this

Without setting up

Without neglecting

Just this

Letting it be

With no effort

Just this

Whether me

Or you

Just this

However the body

However the mind

Just this

Whether grasping

Or rejecting

Just this

Without enduring

Primordially present

Just this

Unobtainable

Indistinguishable

Just this

Neither this

Nor not this

Just this


I hope you can see that you're Buddha.

The World in a Grain of Sand - being a communication buddha

THINGS appear but THINGS are empty

What does it mean that things are empty?

Reality is really our experiencing of it. Outside of our experiencing of it, it is incoherent and abstract. A universe that lacks experience is meaningless.

Buddhism is about our experiencing of.

The significance is in HOW this experience is - not in the "what it is" aspect.

When we say "what" we reveal a certain way that we approach our experience. We take the "how" and turn it into a "what" or a "that". This shows clearly that for us, this experience is filled with THINGS, subjects, objects, events, moments, memories etc..

But look again at your experience, is this how it really is?

We can deconstruct this assumption - as Ive shown in other posts - and see that in actuality no matter where you turn there is not a single THING that exists.

Of coarse, this also means nor is there a single THING that does NOT exist as well.

If things existed, then they could not be produced (they would always have been) and they would never change. And in so far as "not existing" is the dependent co-relational opposite of "existing", because things don't exist, they don't "not exist" as well.

THINGS appear but THINGS are empty

Go ahead and point to something, anything. THAT is empty. Empty of what? Empty of it's own THING-NESS, it's own self. And this even applies to "emptiness" itself as a THING. Even emptiness is dependent upon THINGS to be empty of their THING-NESS - that is what emptiness means.

So where does this leave us?

The nature of experience is ineffable.

When you look at any experience you are looking at all experience.

"To see the world in a grain of sand.."

Take time for example;

Every moment of what we THINK of as time expresses every other moment of time - stretching forever back and forever forward. "NOW" is not an incalculably small amount of time, NOW is every moment, is ALL moments of time.

When do we experience the past? NOW.

When do we experience the future? NOW.

NOW is ALL time.

NOW IS EMPTINESS

Emptiness (voidness) is our experience as it really is. Although you cannot THINK of this conceptually. Why?

Because concepts are limited in both time and space. Concepts define, they are mental boundaries. Your experience is unbounded. Your experience is too close, too sudden for concepts.

It's important to understand that concepts are a language - or perhaps more accurately, language is concept. Conceptual language is assertion and this is also communication.

To say anything about the way this all is is to assert something conceptually. But because the way this all is is completely ineffable, completely non-conceptual (un-bounded) it seems that we cannot possibly communicate or make sense out of it - even to ourselves.

That's because we try to communicate THINGS, we try to relate to THINGS.

THINGS DON'T EXIST

Relationship exists, communication exists.
Or better yet, these appear.

It's all in the HOW of it.

When you meditate, there should be no THING called meditation. Meditation should be THING-LESS. It is pure relationship whether youre sitting or doing other than sitting. It is how you communicate, how you relate to every experience.

Sitting is a good practice, but you shouldn't sit too much

Everywhere is truth. Every experience is nothing but communication of truth. In zen they say "take care" a lot. This is why.

A Buddha is just a mind that sees this as truth, directly, non-conceptually. A Buddha is a mind that knows emptiness directly, non-conceptually.

You already know this, you just have to notice that you know this to give expression to your Buddha-self.

Your Great Perfection - who you are

When you take the THING-NESS out of all your experience you are not left with nothingess (which is still a THING) you are left with THIS as THIS IS.

This is not a mere play on words.

This experience right now is utterly pure - it is purity itself.

In Buddhism this is called various names such as enlightenment, nirvana, Buddhahood, Buddhaness etc....

These are just names for something that is really not nameable - although it is experience-able. This is your experience as it really is right now, YOU ARE BUDDHA!

I don't say that to be clever or sound important. Every experience you have reveals this to be the case but you (we) usually miss it.

We're entangled in our thought-THINGS, our concepts. Our mind is only partially aware of reality. We miss the significance of our experiencing.

And because of all that, we are completely given over to anxiety, to worry, to greed for some-THING that we can conceptualize into a "meaning" for our own existence.

Living like this is unrealistic and chaotic and we make a lot of unintended consequences from how we relate to others and to our environment.

All of this because we are only partially aware. In fact, we're partially aware Buddhas!

And we're pretty clever Buddhas at that.

Look at how science [specifically the field of particle physics] keeps chasing smaller and smaller particles (objects) as though they are examining real "THINGS" that are truly some existing objects "out there".

Im a big fan of science, so don't get me wrong here, I think we should be digging into the nature of objects.

But what do they keep finding? What are the patterns that emerge?

That each level of "fundamental-ness" is in fact not so fundamental after all. Every particle is arisen from other THINGS, from other particles, from other conditions.

As long as we keep developing the technical capability to dig deeper and deeper into the "objective" world, I will make the prediction that we will just keep finding more and more emptiness, more interdependence, more lack of fundamental-ness.

Reality is just this way. Our experience is just this way.

What Buddhism is telling you and me is just to..

PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR EXPERIENCE

In your experience, THINGS are not found. Interdependence is found - which is what I call "voidness". You could also call it (your experience) "relationship".

But this is not the idea we might have of some kind of "nothingness" - like in the thought that all of this is meaningless. Buddhism is not existentialism, not nihilism.

PAY ATTENTION TO EXPERIENCE

All of life and death is just your experience, how could THAT not be sacred?

When we make up THINGS or a "THING-NESS" in this our ever changing experience we destroy the sacredness of our experience. Everything is sacred. you already have a sense of this. But don't grab onto it that way - as sacred - because you then destroy it by making it into a THING.

I found something online that struck me as conveying the essential point of all this - it's from a western teacher of Tibetan Buddhism named Lama Surya Das:

"This luminous View of the Natural Great Perfection transcends the dualism of perfect and imperfect. It implies that everything is primordially complete as is, and uninhibitedly, inexhaustibly, spontaneously manifesting. We don’t have to inhibit, alter, or adulterate anything in our experience; we can simply appreciate it as it as, and make more wise and informed decisions about how skillfully to work with things according to conditions and circumstances. We don’t have to try to become perfect or stop thinking and feeling--not to mention try to make others change according to our own notions of how they could or should be! The nature of the mind is primordially perfect as it is, and all its myriad manifestations are as well--thoughts, feelings, perceptions, memories, or whatever arises in the body-mind complex."

I'm not saying this all is easy, but I am saying it is profoundly simple.

What stops us from recognizing how all this is, from actualizing our potential is simply that we freeze our experience into THINGS. When we unfreeze our experience, when we release the THING-NESS, we can see that it has always been this way - from the very beginning.

You know, when you consider Buddhism, given all that we're up against, it's pretty amazing that people have actually realized this, don't you think?