Excerpt of image of “Buddha’s Blue Meditation” by Paul Heussenstamm from mandalas.com

What is anger? As Tulku Urgyen taught, a deluded emotion like anger is a movement of the mind not knowing its own nature. Anger is a strong aversion in the mind, reacting to a negative image that the mind has constructed of someone or something, unaware that it is reacting to its own image. We may get slightly or more intensely angry every day, in many little moments.

What are anger’s roots? Anger as we normally experience it occurs when our sense of self and its world feel threatened. Someone does something that makes it hard for one’s mind to maintain its concept of self and its world, triggering a painful mental feeling. With that arises an image of the other person as loathsome, not fully human. The mind then blames the other person for its painful feeling.

It’s important to note that anger is a form of fear. Someone does something, and suddenly the mind feels ungrounded and reacts with anger, trying to reestablish a firm ground by reaffirming one’s narrow sense of self. Anger’s aim is to establish safety in that deluded way.

The problem is that real safety is not found within such self-centered fear and anger. Real safety is available only in the depth of our being, our underlying buddhanature. Love and compassion are, among others, fundamental qualities of the deepest nature of mind. In those unchanging qualities is the actual source of safety for self and others. To realize this is to recognize our own deep worthiness and potential for inner freedom and goodness, and to recognize the very same in all other persons … | Read On

- John Makransky, from “Aren’t We Right to Be Angry?” at Tricycle.com

- Charlotte Joko Beck, from “Attention Means Attention”
Read the whole article at Tricycle.com

By Rodney Smith | Tricycle Winter 2012 |The constant inquiry among meditators is how to maintain awareness, but the question is being considered from the wrong end of the suffering continuum. The anxiety associated with the continuation of awareness is suffering, and becoming more worried about how we practice does not move us in a wise direction. We can begin to see how our personal struggle to be mindful is misplaced when we observe the sense of self arising within our effort to maintain mindfulness. The harder we try in this, the more forgetful we become. Since the sense of self is the embodiment of the absence of awareness, forgetting to observe is inevitable as we try harder to be aware. The problem of how to be mindful is actually resolved not through strenuous effort but by relaxing, allowing, and observing what is already here. Within the framework of relaxation, the sense of self has a diminishing power center, making space for awareness to be revealed.

If we place an emphasis on “me” entering the here and now, the here and now becomes a project, when actually the “me” is the real project. The “I” state is the unnatural component, but from the sense of self’s twisted logic the moment becomes the problem and needs “my” effort to enter it. This inherent contradiction— of trying to enter something that already is—limits access to the here and now and takes away what is naturally here already. An authentic spiritual practice begins to reverse this perception by abiding with the natural and dismissing the artificial.

If we think of ourselves as outside the moment needing to get in, this is working our practice from the wrong view, intention, and effort. If we want to move from thinking to stillness, we have to relax and see what was there before we created the storybased assumption that we were outside anything. It dawns on us that we are powerless to make freedom happen because our efforts only disconnect us from our intended goal. We exist as a thought believed, and it is not within the power of a thought to control awareness. When this is realized, we stop trying to be mindful and relax into the awareness that existed before thought instead of holding to the mindfulness driven by thought. One is eternal, the other temporal.

We give up the “doing” of mindfulness to fully participate in what mindfulness is attempting to do—that is, to allow a full abiding presence. Mindfulness has a way of both advancing and retracting that cause. It can maintain the observer and the observed and straddle the fence between these two. Mindfulness tries to have it both ways by proclaiming full participation in the moment even as it applies a fail-safe plan to pull out if the experience gets a little frightening. The observer or watcher is the part of our mind that likes to know what it is getting into, the contained and controlled part that maintains an escape route “just in case.” At a certain level of understanding our practice, this is all fine, but we soon tire of holding ourselves in reserve. The observer and the observed must eventually merge into a single abiding presence if there is to be spiritual fulfillment. | Read on (must be a Tricycle.com member)

Green Mountains and White Clouds, detail of scroll by Wu Li (1632-1718)

“A person of the Way fundamentally does not dwell anywhere. The white clouds are fascinated with the green mountain’s foundation. The bright moon cherishes being carried along with the flowing water. The clouds part, and the mountain appears. The moon sets, and the water is cool. Each bit of autumn contains vast interpenetration without bounds. ”

- From ‘Cultivating the Empty Field:  The Silent Illumination of Zen Master Hongzhi’
translated by Dan Leighton and Yi Wu

Come to the Meditation Circle, a Buddhist meditation group that meets every Tuesday, with sitting meditation starting promptly at 6 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Charleston, W.Va. We sit for a half-hour followed by a little stretching and discussion. In 2012, our theme is ‘Getting to Know the Breath’

“It is important to sit with the clear intention to be present. At the same time, we need to let go of expectations. In a very real sense, what happens when we sit is none of our business. The practice is to accept whatever arises instead of trying to control our experience. What we can control is our wise effort to be present with what is.”

- Narayan Liebenson Grady from “The Refuge of Sitting”
Read more at Tricycle.com

For many people who desire to learn meditation, it’s a struggle. Having a community of fellow practicioners can be essential, which is why sitting groups like the Meditation Circle of Charleston can be helpful. Yet it’s also highly helpful in this interconnected day and age to have regular support and reminders a click away. Which is why we encourage any beginning meditators or folks trying to revive and revitalize their sitting practice to join the online community around the Buddhist magazine Tricycle.

The month of February is Meditation Month at Tricycle.com, so we pass on the e-mail note we got in today’s e-mailbox and encourage you to consider signing up and bolstering your practice. You can do so at Tricycle.com — you can join for free but joining for $25 gets you access to all the premium offerings on the website and $30 gets you the print magazine at your home, too. And, no, we are not being slipped free meditation cushions to thump for Tricycle. The online site has been a help to both Thad and I and may be an aid to your own practice. | Douglas

A Message to All members of the Tricycle Community:

People often say to us, “I’d like to meditate, but I don’t know where to start.” We’ve heard this from college students, business people, passengers on the subway, and family members. Usually, we might offer some words of wisdom, such as the old meditator’s saw: Start where you are. Good advice, to be sure, but perhaps a bit too cryptic for a beginner looking for specifics. That’s why this month’s theme on tricycle.com is establishing and maintaining a meditation practice. With this quarter’s e-book, Tricycle Teachings: Meditation, we offer you heart advice and practical tips that will help you to stick with your practice. It’s not meant for hermits and yogis, but for lay people like us who aspire to apply Buddhist wisdom in their busy everyday lives. For the beginner, this e-book will help explain what meditation is about and why you should bother to try it at all (there are more benefits than you might guess!). Experienced meditators will appreciate the depth and nuance of the various techniques and traditions presented here.

In addition to the meditation e-book, we have meditation and yoga teacher Jill Satterfield leading an online retreat (“Meditation in Motion”), Zen teacher Brad Warner taking questions as the “Meditation Doctor,” as well as guided meditations from Tricycle’s wisdom collection and retreat archives.

“Getting to Know the Breath” is the ongoing theme for 2012 we’ll be considering in the weekly 6 p.m. Tuesday gatherings of the Meditation Circle of Charleston at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation building in Charleston, W.Va. In past weeks. Thad and I have mentioned some of the core teachings of the Buddha on breath-centered meditation. We are not qualified to teach suttas, but we’re all qualified to absorb and discuss them as they relate to our ongoing lay meditation practice.

To that end, we encourage Circle members and others to take a dip into the Buddha’s direct teachings on meditation instruction in the following suttas (We’re borrowing these links and their descriptions with our thanks from the Washington D.C. Buddhist Studies Group).

• MN 10 Satipatthana Sutta: Establishing Mindfulness aka The Foundations of Mindfulness, The Frames of Reference. or
• DN 22 Mahasatipatthana Sutta: Is approximately identical with a fuller description of the Four Noble Truths.
• MN 118 Anapanasati Sutta: Mindfulness of Breathing.

One day the world looks so beautiful; the next day it looks terrible. How can you say that? Scientifically, it’s impossible that the world can change so radically. It’s your mind that causes these appearances. This is not religious dogma; your up and down is not religious dogma. I’m not talking about religion; I’m talking about the way you lead your daily life, which is what sends you up and down. Other people and your environment don’t change radically; it’s your mind. I hope you understand that. Similarly, one person thinks that the world is beautiful and people are wonderful and kind, while another thinks that everything and everyone is horrible. Who is right? How do you explain that scientifically? It’s just their individual mind’s projection on the sense world. You think, “Today is like this; tomorrow is like that; this man is like this; that woman is like that.” But where is that absolutely fixed, forever-beautiful woman? Who is that absolutely forever-handsome man? They are nonexistent-they are simply creations of your own mind …

No matter which of the many world religions we consider, their interpretation of God or Buddha and so forth is simply words and mind; these two alone. Therefore, words don’t matter so much. What you have to realize is that everything-good and bad, every philosophy and doctrine-comes from mind. The mind is very powerful. Therefore, it requires firm guidance. A powerful jet plane needs a good pilot; the pilot of your mind should be the wisdom that understands its nature. In that way, you can direct your powerful mental energy to benefit your life instead of letting it run about uncontrollably like a mad elephant, destroying yourself and others. | READ ON