Wake Up and Laugh!

Last Saturday, Mingyur Rinpoche gave a talk at a small temple in Suwon. His talk was centered around the Prayers for Long-Kindness and compassion. Near the beginning, he spoke a bit of Buddha-nature, and I thought it complimented Dae Haeng Kun Sunim’s teachings nicely;

We are all looking for our home. We are homesick. I think we’ve all got homesick, so we are trying to return to our home. Our home is Buddha-nature.

The Buddha gave one example; There is a bird and the bird has a nest. Sometimes the bird flies away, flies very far. But the bird doesn’t think he’s going to stay there. Always he’s going to return to its nest, because the real home for a bird is its nest. The real home for us is our true-nature, our Buddha-nature.

Because I wish to be happy and I don’t want to be suffering is a sign of Buddha-nature. And this is also the basis of Loving-Kindness and compassion.

You’d think, from the picture, that we are all in Seoul! But in fact this photo was taken last night in the best Korean restaurant in Bangkok, Jang Won on Sukhumvit soi 12. Twelve people came along to meet and eat with Chong Go Sunim and we were very kindly given a private room and the food and conversation was wonderful.

Earlier in the day some of us travelled down to Nackom Pathom to see one of the oldest and largest Buddhist structures in Thailand, a huge stupa with very beautiful shrine rooms around the outside. We also stopped off at Buddhamonthon, a large Buddhist park with a magnificent statue of the Buddha in its centre.

Today has been equally busy, with another magnificent lunch at the wonderful Indian restaurant Annapurna (on Tanon Pan, near the Hindu temple) with Chong Go Sunim, Phra Pandit Bhikku and a dozen or more people from Bangkok’s ‘Littlebang’ Sangha. At the prompting of the Brits in the group, deserts were had at the nearby British Library restaurant!

Food, and ancient sites, and great weather, form, of course, just a very enjoyable backdrop to the real business of this visit. People are getting to know each other better, friendships are being made, and made stronger, between Dharma brothers and sisters, and everyone is busy listening to and sharing the Dharma.

The full one-day workshop led by Chong Go Sunim takes place this Saturday and if you’re in Bangkok and haven’t already signed up, well, I’m sure we can squeeze in one or two more people! Click on the link on the sidebar for more details. And see everyone on Saturday!

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
For practitioners, there’s no such thing as a new year,
yet from time to time,
it’s worthwhile to reflect upon how
we can meet the demands of the world this body lives in
and to think about how we can go forward with wisdom and generosity.

 
The birth of this body is not our birth.
Our birth starts with this fundamental mind,
which has existed before our flesh.
Whether something arises from others,
or arises from within,
knowing that it is all being done by this Buddha-essence
is the foundation of spiritual practice.

 
If you use your body with a little care and concern
you won’t end up ruining this temporary house of yours.
Likewise, if we make just a small change in how we use our minds,
we can cure even the Earth.
Then, even when you think you’re doing something for yourself,
it actually ends up benefiting others.
Everyone and every thing are all working together,
so if you can help people live accordingly,
you’ll bring harmony, laughter, and love to your entire family.

 
Be sincere!
If you’re sincere, steadfast, and genuine,
there’s no reason for our life to be overly difficult.
Be wise, peaceful, and positive in your thinking.
This life lasts for only a season,
don’t be stupid in how you spend it.
 
 
If you would truly learn the teachings of the Buddha,
empty yourself while remaining upright,
remain upright while emptying yourself,
and harmoniously gather everything together in one place.
This is our true path.

      — Daehaeng Kun Sunim
 
 
 
 
 
copyright 2011, the Hanmaum Seonwon Foundation

I suspect many readers of this blog have been doing yoga for years. For me, it’s all new. And packed full of discoveries and surprises. It started about six months ago during a period when the ‘Littlebang’ Bangkok Sangha had a regular Monday night meditation session. Someone was offering a pre-sit yoga class and I thought I’d go along.

The weekly meditation sessions came to an end sadly (strange, there are stacks of great Dharma talks all the time in Bangkok, but there’s no regular Thai-Buddhist English-language meditation group), but the yoga continued. The teacher, I soon learnt, is amazing. Her name is Nat, she’s Japanese and she speaks great English and Thai.

I have a bad back, tending (after being involved in a collision with a car years ago and decades of neglect) to painful muscle spasm and having very little flexibility. Nat has helped me, in just the few months I’ve been studying with her, to understand my back a little better and work on strenghtening and lengthening it.

She has been practicing and teaching yoga for years and is a breast cancer survivor, and she sometimes talks about how yoga helped in her recovery, physically, mentally and spiritually. And she smiles. She really smiles. And gets her students all smiling too. “Lift”, she says, “higher, higher, and smile”, and we can’t help but grin!

Last month she helped me with something called the tree pose (my apologies to all you yoga practitioners out there, but this is all new to me) in which you stand on one leg and lift your arms above your head! I practiced for a week and then tried again in class. Of course, I wobbled all over the place – even despite using a wall.

“Don’t forget to breathe”, Nat said. “Breathing will bring you stability and balance.” I tried again. It did. Later Nat showed me how to place my feet and said that as well as breathing I had to grow deep roots, that energy and connection comes from those roots. The connection to the Dharma here is obvious to most no doubt, but for me it was a revelation!

Because the tree exists, you can know the root; because the fruit exists, you can know the seed. Likewise, even though the body is only a temporary, karmic combination of the four elements, through it you can know the fundamental place, Hanmaum Juingong, which is the source of all life and all phenomena.
 – Seon Master Daehaeng Sunim

Links:
Nat’s blog: A summer day in the city of Angels
The Bangkok Sangha: Littlebang

“O monks, if people knew, as I know, the result of giving and sharing, they would not eat without having given, nor would they allow the stain of stinginess to obsess them and take root in their minds. 

 Even if it were their last morsel, their last mouthful, they would not eat without having shared it, if there were someone to share it with. 
 
But, monks, as people do not know, as I know, the result of giving and sharing, they eat without having given, and the stain of stinginess obsesses them and takes root in their minds.”

(It 26; 18–19)

Quote:  This great quote comes from “In the Buddha’s Words:  An Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon” edited by Bhikkhu Bodhi, p 169. 

There is an on-going merciless holocaust taking place, across the entire world, involving torture, brutality and death on an industrial scale. It’s partly hidden, partly just accepted, and though trying to do what little I can about it has been an important part of my life for the past three decades (since first becoming vegetarian), it’s not something I’ve brought up here on this blog – until now.

And even now, I’m not going to trot out the usual arguments and Buddha quotes supporting the non-killing and non-eating of animals. Rather, I just want to help publicise a campaign against one recent aspect of this daily nightmare which specifically concerns Korea, and which I’m sure all readers, vegetarian or otherwise, will also support.

According to the Asia-Pacific branch of PETA, since the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in late 2010, approximately 1 million animals have been killed in Korea, many of them buried alive in mass graves. Large numbers of pigs have been dumped from trucks into pits and then covered in soil, where they slowly suffocate to death.

Some animals remain alive in air pockets but are unable to move, sometimes for days, before they eventually die from trauma, starvation, or dehydration. Using live burial as a disease-control method violates both the domestic animal protection law and Korea’s obligations under the World Organization for Animal Health’s Guidelines on the Killing of Animals for Disease Control Purposes.

PETA has contacted the relevant Korean authorities to ask for a more humane death for these animals but has received no response. And so are now asking for individuals around the world to contact South Korean embassies to ask officials to pressure the South Korean government to immediately stop burying animals alive and implement humane ways of dealing with the disease.

A suggested letter follows, but it is always better to personalise it, especially the subject line:

I was so disappointed and outraged to learn that a country like Korea, which is known for its forward thinking and modernity, is trying to contain foot-and-mouth disease in such a barbaric way.
Burying innocent animals alive is simply cruel, immoral, and illegal!
These animals slowly suffocate to death in the absence of air.
Worse still, improper burial often allows for air pockets to form, and many animals remain alive, sometimes for days, but are unable to move.
Until this cruel practice is stopped, I will tell my friends and neighbors not to visit South Korea.
Please use your position of influence to help those in need.

I personaly will be emailing the Korean embassy here in Thailand (where I live) this afternoon. And I urge all readers of Wake Up and Laugh to contact the Korean embassy in their countries as soon as possible too. It is, surely, time to speak out.

——-
Link:
PETA: Tell Korea to Stop Burying Animals Alive!

Updates:
1) Thanks to Chong Go Sunim and Adam at Fly Like a Crow, here’s a report of a memorial service for the 1.9 million animals killed, held at the main temple of the Jogye Order in Seoul. One of the banners read “It must have been painful and you cried a lot. I hope that you go to a good place and enjoy happiness.”

2) There’s another report of the same memorial service on the website of the Jogye Order with some excellent photos, including one I’ve used here. During the service Ven. Hyechong said “Lord Buddha taught us to consider all sentient beings as our parents. If beings were to understand that we are born in different circumstances according to our karma, then we could create a Pure Land where we recognize each others’ value.”