Good Practice
Take a little time to reflect on the universe. No need to be a scientist, just be
aware of its vastness and some of the many things it holds, such as people
you know, our earth and sun, atoms and galaxies. Then ask yourself: Is this
all there is? Your answer might be “yes,” “no,” “I don’t know,” or “none of
the above.” No matter what your answer is, see what it’s like to really own
it. To stand in it and face the implications, whatever they are. How does or
how could your answer affect your day-to-day practice?
Bhikkhu Bodhi writes: Through the practice of the Buddha’s path, the practitioner arrives at the true knowledge of conditioned phenomena, which disables the generation of active sankharas [compounded experiences], putting an end to the constructing of conditioned reality and opening the door to the Deathless, the asankhata, the unconditioned, which is Nibbana, the final liberation from impermanence and suffering.
Eddies of matter and eddies of mind have the same nature. They are impermanent and compounded, and they arise and pass away depending on their causes. They are patternings of their substrate that never change the substrate itself. At the front edge of now, they continually emerge from a field of effectively unconditioned possibility.
As the signals moving through the neural substrates of consciousness quiet down, we become more aware of the effectively unconditioned capacity to represent the next experience, and less engaged with any particular experience arising and passing away.
The mind is the information and experiences represented by the nervous system. The neural substrates of consciousness can represent an infinite variety of experiences. Every experience depends on a brief dynamic coalition of many synapses. An experience is an eddy of information mapped to an eddy of neural activity. For any experience to emerge, there must be unused neural capacity to represent it. The substrate of noisy neural activity is fertile with potential. It takes just milliseconds to form the coherent assembly of synapses that underlies an experience. Once a neural assembly eddies into existence, it is conditioned and unfree. The experience remains what it is until its synaptic pattern disperses, usually within a second or two. Then those synapses become available for representing new eddies of experiences. Experiences rise out of and fall back into a field of infinite possibility
For the time being the highest peak, for the time being the deepest ocean For the time being a crazy mind, for the time being a Buddha body For the time being a Zen Master, for the time being an ordinary person For the time being earth and sky Since there is nothing but this moment, “for the time being” is all the time there is. DŌGEN
They do not grieve over the past, nor do they yearn for the future. They live only in the present. That is why their faces are so calm. SAMYUTTA NIKAYA 1.10
Consciousness is like a windshield as you move forward through time— or as time streams through you—and the process of alerting and orienting is the leading edge of that windshield. As you become more mindful of this, you can move closer and closer, experientially, to the front edge of the subjective now. This is as close as ordinary experience gets to the emergent edge of the objective now—and perhaps to the instant of creation of new time in our universe.
If we don’t have now, we don’t have much. It’s actually all we’ve got. JAN HANSON
Uprightness in the body supports wakefulness in the mind.
“All conditioned things are impermanent.” Seeing this with insight, one becomes disenchanted with suffering. DHAMMAPADA 277
Observe the endless arisings of the next experiences.
Get a sense of the earth beneath you, still here, still solid, still reliable. For example, rub or tap your feet on the floor, or go for a walk. I love the folktale about the Buddha’s night of awakening, which says he was assailed by forces of evil and delusion but then reached down to touch the earth for comfort and strength.
Enjoy simple pleasures, such as a bite of food or a sip of water. These are naturally soothing, and they tend to calm down the body’s stress response systems. Also focus on basic feelings of warmheartedness, perhaps talking with people you care about.
The profound realization that underlies the Buddha’s awakening…[is] that neither a self nor something belonging to a self can be found at all, at any time, anywhere. BHIKKHU ANĀLAYO
THE VIEW OF LIFE It’s so obvious that it’s easy to overlook and not really feel it: each of us is a living animal, the result of nearly 4 billion years of biological evolution. Life expressing itself in a particular species; a species expressing itself in a particular body. Our parents had parents who had parents…reaching back eventually to hominid parents a million years ago…who had primate parents 10 million years ago…who had mammalian parents 100 million years ago…all the way back to the first life…from which we have descended in an unbroken line. The human body contains about 40 trillion cells, each one guided by DNA molecules shaped over billions of years in the forge of evolution. It also contains about ten times as many microorganisms. To live, we harbor life and consume life. Life passing through us as we pass through life. More from Thich Nhat Hanh: There is no phenomenon in the universe that does not intimately concern us, from a pebble resting at the bottom of the ocean, to the movement of a galaxy millions of light-years away.…
Precisely because there is an unborn, unbecome, unmade, unfabricated…an escape from the born, become, made, fabricated is discerned. UDANA 8.3
Who Are you? Whose Silence are you? THOMAS MERTON
This holy life is not for the sake of gain, honor, and fame, or for the attainment of virtue, concentration, or knowledge and vision. Rather, it is this unshakable deliverance of mind that is the goal of this holy life, its heartwood, and its end. MAJJHIMA NIKAYA, 30
Indeed the sage who’s fully quenched rests at ease in every way; no sense desire adheres to one whose fires have cooled, deprived of fuel. All attachments have been severed, the heart’s been led away from pain; tranquil, one rests with utmost ease, the mind has found its way to peace. CULLAVAGGA 6.4.4
Let go of the past, let go of the future, let go of the present. Gone beyond becoming, with the mind released in every way, you do not again undergo birth and old age. DHAMMAPADA 348
Twirling electrons, dancers in a club, freeway traffic, a person’s life, moons and stars, clusters of galaxies, and our own blossoming universe surrounded by mystery—all eddies in the stream. Every eddy is compounded of parts, dependent upon causes, and impermanent. All eddies disperse. All eddies are empty. Clinging to eddies is suffering.
Bhikkhu Bodhi writes: Through the practice of the Buddha’s path, the practitioner arrives at the true knowledge of conditioned phenomena, which disables the generation of active sankharas [compounded experiences], putting an end to the constructing of conditioned reality and opening the door to the Deathless, the asankhata, the unconditioned, which is Nibbana, the final liberation from impermanence and suffering.
Eddies of matter and eddies of mind have the same nature. They are impermanent and compounded, and they arise and pass away depending on their causes. They are patternings of their substrate that never change the substrate itself. At the front edge of now, they continually emerge from a field of effectively unconditioned possibility.
As the signals moving through the neural substrates of consciousness quiet down, we become more aware of the effectively unconditioned capacity to represent the next experience, and less engaged with any particular experience arising and passing away.
The mind is the information and experiences represented by the nervous system. The neural substrates of consciousness can represent an infinite variety of experiences. Every experience depends on a brief dynamic coalition of many synapses. An experience is an eddy of information mapped to an eddy of neural activity. For any experience to emerge, there must be unused neural capacity to represent it. The substrate of noisy neural activity is fertile with potential. It takes just milliseconds to form the coherent assembly of synapses that underlies an experience. Once a neural assembly eddies into existence, it is conditioned and unfree. The experience remains what it is until its synaptic pattern disperses, usually within a second or two. Then those synapses become available for representing new eddies of experiences. Experiences rise out of and fall back into a field of infinite possibility
For the time being the highest peak, for the time being the deepest ocean For the time being a crazy mind, for the time being a Buddha body For the time being a Zen Master, for the time being an ordinary person For the time being earth and sky Since there is nothing but this moment, “for the time being” is all the time there is. DŌGEN
They do not grieve over the past, nor do they yearn for the future. They live only in the present. That is why their faces are so calm. SAMYUTTA NIKAYA 1.10
Consciousness is like a windshield as you move forward through time— or as time streams through you—and the process of alerting and orienting is the leading edge of that windshield. As you become more mindful of this, you can move closer and closer, experientially, to the front edge of the subjective now. This is as close as ordinary experience gets to the emergent edge of the objective now—and perhaps to the instant of creation of new time in our universe.
If we don’t have now, we don’t have much. It’s actually all we’ve got. JAN HANSON
Uprightness in the body supports wakefulness in the mind.
“All conditioned things are impermanent.” Seeing this with insight, one becomes disenchanted with suffering. DHAMMAPADA 277
Observe the endless arisings of the next experiences.
Get a sense of the earth beneath you, still here, still solid, still reliable. For example, rub or tap your feet on the floor, or go for a walk. I love the folktale about the Buddha’s night of awakening, which says he was assailed by forces of evil and delusion but then reached down to touch the earth for comfort and strength.
Enjoy simple pleasures, such as a bite of food or a sip of water. These are naturally soothing, and they tend to calm down the body’s stress response systems. Also focus on basic feelings of warmheartedness, perhaps talking with people you care about.
The profound realization that underlies the Buddha’s awakening…[is] that neither a self nor something belonging to a self can be found at all, at any time, anywhere. BHIKKHU ANĀLAYO
THE VIEW OF LIFE It’s so obvious that it’s easy to overlook and not really feel it: each of us is a living animal, the result of nearly 4 billion years of biological evolution. Life expressing itself in a particular species; a species expressing itself in a particular body. Our parents had parents who had parents…reaching back eventually to hominid parents a million years ago…who had primate parents 10 million years ago…who had mammalian parents 100 million years ago…all the way back to the first life…from which we have descended in an unbroken line. The human body contains about 40 trillion cells, each one guided by DNA molecules shaped over billions of years in the forge of evolution. It also contains about ten times as many microorganisms. To live, we harbor life and consume life. Life passing through us as we pass through life. More from Thich Nhat Hanh: There is no phenomenon in the universe that does not intimately concern us, from a pebble resting at the bottom of the ocean, to the movement of a galaxy millions of light-years away.…
Precisely because there is an unborn, unbecome, unmade, unfabricated…an escape from the born, become, made, fabricated is discerned. UDANA 8.3
Who Are you? Whose Silence are you? THOMAS MERTON
This holy life is not for the sake of gain, honor, and fame, or for the attainment of virtue, concentration, or knowledge and vision. Rather, it is this unshakable deliverance of mind that is the goal of this holy life, its heartwood, and its end. MAJJHIMA NIKAYA, 30
Indeed the sage who’s fully quenched rests at ease in every way; no sense desire adheres to one whose fires have cooled, deprived of fuel. All attachments have been severed, the heart’s been led away from pain; tranquil, one rests with utmost ease, the mind has found its way to peace. CULLAVAGGA 6.4.4
Let go of the past, let go of the future, let go of the present. Gone beyond becoming, with the mind released in every way, you do not again undergo birth and old age. DHAMMAPADA 348
Twirling electrons, dancers in a club, freeway traffic, a person’s life, moons and stars, clusters of galaxies, and our own blossoming universe surrounded by mystery—all eddies in the stream. Every eddy is compounded of parts, dependent upon causes, and impermanent. All eddies disperse. All eddies are empty. Clinging to eddies is suffering.
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