Karma Thegsum Choling Minneapolis

As part of our routine meditation practice, many of us take a bodhisattva vow, a promise to live our lives and pursue our meditative development so as to benefit all sentient beings. It sometimes sounds rather abstract. Such motivation, however, can result in profound changes in the way we live.

Here are some thoughts by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, taken from the Buddhist Ecology Link, a newsletter distributed through the Network of Buddhist Organizations (NBO):

“I believe that to meet the challenge of our times, human beings will have to develop a greater sense of universal responsibility. Each of us must learn to work not just for his own self, family, or nation, but for the benefit of mankind. Universal responsibility is the real key to human survival. It is the best foundation for world peace, the equitable use of natural resources and, through concern for future generations, the proper care for the environment…The natural environment sustains the life of all beings in the world; it is important that we all take whatever steps we can to preserve and maintain it before it is too late.”

Properly applied the practices of Tibetan Buddhism facilitate shifts in consciousness to higher levels where true, far-reaching wisdom manifests. Real wisdom is so rare there’s almost no reason to mention it these days. Very few people know what it is, why we need it, how different things would be if, on balance, people had it or at least could connect to it. Given the set of challenges the human race faces NOW, not some time in the future, we urgently need problem solving based in transcendent wisdom. For this reason alone, everyone should engage in meditation every day. All people free to do so should be doing daily meditation practice. Start now. Adopt a daily meditation practice. WAKE UP.

Every region of space is awash with different kinds of fields composed of waves of varying lenths - each wave has energy. When physicists calculate the minimum amount of energy a wave can possess, they find that every cubic centimeter of empty space contains more energy then the total energy of all the matter in the known universe.

This is the energy of a trillion atomic bombs in every cubic centimeter of space. Space is not empty. It is full, and is the ground for the existence of everything, including ourselves.

Michael Talbot in The Holographic Universe

All energy has intelligence. What used to be e=mc² is now known to be e=i=m.
Deepak Chopra, M.D.

Human consciousness is stratified… layers that are wholes within wholes…

mind

photo by Graciela Laura

“Developmental psychologists have looked at scales of development for decades. And once you start understanding these, the first thing you want to know is: How can we help adults move through these stages? … And, interestingly, there is only one thing that’s been consistently demonstrated to move people, on average, about two stages - and that’s meditation…

…Amrit Sen, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, demonstrated that there’s never been a famine in a democratic country. A democracy stems from at least stage-five moral development. Since seventy percent of the world’s population is not there, the single best thing you can do to end world famine is to meditate. Meditation has a profound impact on the average level of consciousness in the world. It’s very, very important…

…meditation is a way to help you disidentify with finite objects and rest in that ground of being which is your very nature, your very SELF… meditation is extrememly important, and don’t ever let anybody tell you that it’s just not having any impact on the world. You’re changing the fundamental fabric of the cosmos when you meditate.”

Ken Wilber in what is enlightenment magazine, Issue 32.

It’s helpful to think about human consciousness as stratified and pluridimensional, with layers that are wholes within wholes, going from simple and rudimentary at birth, to increasingly complex and whole layers superimposed upon their predecessor in a way that includes the previous layer but transcends it. Formless meditation looks directly at the layer you are currently grounded in.

There are things to consider:

Buddhism is one of the great world religions. Buddhism is non-theistic. It is not about God. It is about the Tibetan word which points at the “ground of all being.” We translate that Tibetan word into English as “mind,” but the Tibetan word does not mean what that Enlish word mind means - not even close.

Our English word “mind” frequently means something as small as an epi-phenomenon of brain - not even close. Not even in the ball park.

We often use the word consciousness in place of the Tibetan word for what Buddhism is about. “Consciousness” comes closer, but the real issue is fundamental to the summit Buddhists wish to attain - words don’t go there.

The “ground of all being” can be looked at directly - but words, with their extraordinary limitedness, can not be used to label it; especially in the West where we have no experiential cultural habits. We value the intellectual. We value the material. We imagine ourselves to be separate. We believe our shadow belongs to what it’s projected on… everything is out there… This whole package is a long, long, non linear ways from looking directly at the ground of all being.

But still, we can use the word consciousness to talk about what Tibetan Buddhism… all Buddhism… is about.

The Field
The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe
By Lynne McTaggart

Ms McTaggart has molded a creative synthesis of explorations by scientists that point to the existence of an ocean of microscopic vibrations called the Zero Point Field (”ZPF”) which exists in the space between things. The scientific findings include:

These are just a few of the conclusions and hypotheses embedded in Ms McTaggart’s skillful narrative that describes results of the search by a number of scientists for the existence and implications of the Field.

This is a stimulating read — one that opens the mind to new ways of looking at our universe. Ways that fit very well with Buddhist teachings.

Stu Webb

Fraser Boa quoting Joseph Campbell in The Way of Myth, Talking With Joseph Campbell, Shambhala, 1989.

As I deal with what are called primitive mythologies, or with Oriental [Tibetan Buddhism goes in this category - KtcBlog] mythologies, I see that nature is regarded as a manifestation of something that’s basically divine and marvelous and miraculous… But when I turn to our Western mythologies - as they exist in our spiritual traditions - I find a totally different point of view… Where does this come from?

Well, the first stage in the transformation comes from a system of religions that appears around the first millennium BC in the Near East - not the Far East, but the Near East. Its principal representatives …the Judaic-Christian line, and Zoroastrianism… have dual creation - good and evil, light and darkness, virtue and vice, truth and hypocrisy, and so on… we are invited to make the decision to align ourselves with the good. Now we are not asked to put ourselves in accord with a split nature like that; rather we asked to correct it! … This accounts for the tremendous accent on action in our culture. That’s one of the big, big problems.

The second problem is that the origin of this tradition is Semetic… and one of the characteristics of the Semetic religions is that the main deity is a personificaton of … the principles and ethics and history of that society. … When your main deity is your tribal deity … you get a basic exclusivism … from nature … And this exclusivism is built right into us because it is fundamental to the Judaic-Christian tradition.

A third force is that our mainstream religions in the West are scriptural and were formulated a little over two thousand years ago in another place. Therefore, we have been unable to sanctify our land. Our land doesn’t speak to us of the divine. Divine land is only over there in the Middle East. We make pilgimages to the Holy Land, or people go there to claim it from another people and make it their own again. This is a historical misinterpretation of spiritual symbols. The Holy Land isn’t in some other place. It’s right in here - right inside each of us.

Matter is made of molecules are made of atoms are made of an extremely small point of matter (nucleus) and IF we collpse their position by observation, by comparison far away electron(s) in an enormously vast and enormously powerful field of subtle energy… There is no such thing as empty space… It is FULL OF THIS FIELD.

“… there is a profoundly intimate correlation between the elements within our bodies and the natural elements in the outside world.”

H.H. Dalai Lama in The Universe In A Single Atom

“What moves is mind.
Its nature is awareness.
If primordial purity is realized
They are said to be one.
Wisdom is the primordial purity of consciousness.”

From The Vajra Garland
The Lotus Garland
Translated by Yeshe Gyamtso Published by KTD Publications ISBN 0-9741092-6-6

We could use a much, much greater abundance of wisdom. Each of us, if we want to, can deliberately grow wisdom.

“… to do that you have to access the innate capability of the brain, and the tools, the key, to really develop the brain holistically is to experience the holistic reality, the meditative state, so-called spiritual experience, the experience of the unified field at the source of thought.”(my bold)

Quote from What tHe Bleep Do wE (know)!? the book. ISBN 0-7573-0334-x

Shamata Meditation is precisely the experience of the unified field at the source of thought.

Buddhism is a verb. It is the deliberate pursuit of the higher, non-ordinary states of consciousness.

Lama la