“We are all the same…”: My Journey to Gillette Stadium to Listen to His Holiness The 14th Dalai Lama speak

From l to r: Me, Amber, Pete, Elaina and Naomi

This past Saturday, May 2nd 2009, I was lucky enough to have been given the opportunity to join a group of friends and dharma practitioners (Cape Cod Dharma Collective representin’) in a journey. The journey from Cape Cod to Foxborough, MA to witness the teachings of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama.

Our day started simply, we met up at the International House Of Pancakes for some breakfast. Due to the fact I own a couple piece of junk cars, one of them out of commission, my wife and children drove me to the meeting spot and joined us for breakfast. My son Colin, the aspiring Buddha to be, dazzled everyone with his “oh wow” every couple minutes, leading us all into this mindframe of amazement and wonder for the day to come.

We hopped into the van and it was a little over an hour drive. There was much talk on the way of how excited we all were, it was everyone’s first time to witness an event of this magnitude. We could hardly contain ourselves, Destination: Dalai Lama!

We arrived early enough and walked toward the stadium. The only “off” thing we encountered all day were the entrance lines, they were “segregated” into lines of “men only” and “women only”. Other than that, everything else was as it should be. The stadium was packed with over 15,000 in attendance. At times you could barely move, but due to the fact everyone was in great spirits noone complained or got angry with a little bump as we passed through. We had enough time to hit the restroom, take a very small walk through all the mini-shops that were setup everywhere (it felt like a small Tibetan village, minus the fact we were in Gillette Stadium). Then it was 9:30am, time for the first talk.

“Dharma Box” Week 5

Right Effort (taken from Big View)

Right effort can be seen as a prerequisite for the other principles of the path. Without effort, which is in itself an act of will, nothing can be achieved, whereas misguided effort distracts the mind from its task, and confusion will be the consequence. Mental energy is the force behind right effort; it can occur in either wholesome or unwholesome states. The same type of energy that fuels desire, envy, aggression, and violence can on the other side fuel self-discipline, honesty, benevolence, and kindness. Right effort is detailed in four types of endeavours that rank in ascending order of perfection: 1. to prevent the arising of unarisen unwholesome states, 2. to abandon unwholesome states that have already arisen, 3. to arouse wholesome states that have not yet arisen, and 4. to maintain and perfect wholesome states already arisen.

“Dharma Box” Week 4

Week four of our “Dharma Box” training is “right view/ understanding”. It took the following information from Buddhanet.

The first element of the Eightfold Path is Right Understanding which arises through insights into the first three Noble Truths. If you have these insights, then there is perfect understanding of Dhamma – the understanding that:

‘All that is subject to arising is subject to ceasing.’ It’s as simple as that. You do not have to spend much time reading ‘All that is subject to arising is subject to ceasing’ to understand the words, but it takes quite a while for most of us to really know what the words mean in a profound way rather than just through cerebral understanding.

To use modern colloquial English, insight is really gut knowledge – it’s not just from ideas. It’s no longer, ‘I think I know’, or ‘Oh yes, that seems a reasonable, sensible thing. I agree with that. I like that thought.’ That kind of understanding is still from the brain whereas insight knowledge is profound. It is really known and doubt is no longer a problem.

This deep understanding comes from the previous nine insights. So there is a sequence leading to Right Understanding of things as they are, namely that: All that is subject to arising is subject to ceasing and is not-self. With Right Understanding, you have given up the illusion of a self that is connected to mortal conditions. There is still the body, there are still feelings and thoughts, but they simply are what they are – there is no longer the belief that you are your body or your feelings or your thoughts. The emphasis is on ‘Things are what they are.’ We are not trying to say that things are not anything at all or that they are not what they are. They are exactly what they are and nothing more. But when we are ignorant, when we have not understood these truths, we tend to think things are more than what they are. We believe all kinds of things and we create all kinds of problems around the conditions that we experience.

“Dharma Box” Week 3

Week 3 of our “Dharma Box” training is based on Right Speech. I took the following from Buddhanet in hopes we can all better understand the concept.

Right Speech
by Thanissaro Bhikkhu (taken from Buddhanet)

As my teacher once said, “If you can’t control your mouth, there’s no way you can hope to control your mind.’ This is why right speech is so important in day-to-day practice.

Right speech, explained in negative terms, means avoiding four types of harmful speech: lies (words spoken with the intent of misrepresenting the truth); divisive speech (spoken with the intent of creating rifts between people); harsh speech (spoken with the intent of hurting another person’s feelings); and idle chatter (spoken with no purposeful intent at all).

Notice the focus on intent: this is where the practice of right speech intersects with the training of the mind. Before you speak, you focus on why you want to speak. This helps get you in touch with all the machinations taking place in the committee of voices running your mind. If you see any unskillful motives lurking behind the committee’s decisions, you veto them. As a result, you become more aware of yourself, more honest with yourself, more firm with yourself. You also save yourself from saying things that you’ll later regret. In this way you strengthen qualities of mind that will be helpful in meditation, at the same time avoiding any potentially painful memories that would get in the way of being attentive to the present moment when the time comes to meditate.

“Dharma Box” Week 2

Week 1 of our “Dharma Box” practice has come to a close, which was “right intention”. I honestly learned quite a bit, the biggest part I learned was how the intention, not necessarily the action, is what really plants the karmic footprint. Example, while out mowing the yard you un-”intentionally” run over a worm. This does not create negative karma, as it was not the “intention” to kill the worm. Now, if you stomped on the worm out of malice, with the intention of killing it, of course this would bear negative karmic fruit. Yes, there’s more to what we learned but I came away this week with a whole new attitude toward my “intentions” in life.

Week 2 is all about “right action” and I found this description online:

Right Action

Right action is also called “right conduct,, and involves how to behave in the physical world from day to day. Some examples of the “rules” are to avoid killing, stealing and sexual misconduct.

right intention?

so I’ve been participating in this meditation group the last few months… not with any real consistency to start, but I’ve been getting quite a bit out of it despite myself, and now look forward to it. this blog and another site I’m a member of, Cape Cod Buddhist Network, are the brainchild of a great guy named Nate. he’s sent me links for all this, so, technically he’s responsible for my rambling.

one of the things we’ve done is decide to practice different aspects of the 8-fold path over the two weeks between meetings. this last week we spoke briefly about “right intention.” this has fit in nicely with another ‘project’ I’ve been working on, the practice of mindful eating. basically, I’ve been (for a number of reasons, I’m sure I’ll go into them in detail at some point) working on thinking about what I eat before I eat it. now, if you’ve never struggled with your weight or food issues, this may seem like a pretty common sense approach. I’ve always had a problem with eating, your average ‘emotional eater.’ so I started this workshop, then decided I was going to incorporate it into an honors project, and here I am mindfully eating.

so. getting to the point.
I think the whole mindful eating thing fits in with right intention in that, since I’ve begun this process, my intention when eating is no longer to numb out or escape something. rather than eating pointlessly to fill some bottomless void, I’ve been practicing eating to nourish my body. what a concept.

it has not been easy. I’m thinking it’s a worthy endeavor though… physically I feel better than I have ever felt. I’ve got so much more energy. my workouts feel more intense. mostly, I’m feeling content, which was what I was seeking in food.

I guess there’s something to be said for that adage, the one about seeking and never being able to find what is right in front of you, and then, when you stop looking, it’s there…

The “Dharma Box”

At a recent group meeting we were once again throwing around ideas, and a great one was brought up by Amber. Her idea was a “dharma box” and I’ll explain…

Each week, at the end of the session, someone will reach into the box and pull out a piece of paper. On that paper will either be a word or saying of some sort. The idea is to take that word or saying and incorporate it into our daily practice for the two weeks leading up to the next meeting. We will then discuss the ways we incorporated it during that time and any effect it seemed to have had on our personal lives.

We’ve had some small issues with topics of conversation at the meeting and we think it’d be a valuable tool to at least bring one topic per week to the table. I’ll update this post or make a new one as we start to see how it works.

Encountering Truth

I originally posted this at my personal blog, Precious Metal: the blog, but thought I’d share it here for you as well.

It’s been over three years now since I started studying and practicing the teachings Buddha left behind, the principles of a moral humanity. I often struggle with some of them, but compassion and understanding has been at the heart of what I try to expel in every encounter with another person, no matter how large a scale that encounter may be.

As you may or may not know, I work for a TV cable provider. My job involves a hands on approach with nearly every customer for the work I do each day. Some day it’s just climbing a pole and connecting or disconnecting lines, but for the most part I am in people’s homes trouble shooting issues or installing/ upgrading new services. Of course for some this may take a person out of their comfort zone being in someone elses home, but I am there to do the job I was asked and have no issues with it.

Welcome!

Thank you for dropping by. This blog is very new, and our intention is to keep those that are interested, up to date on the events from the Cape Cod Dharma Collective group.

Many of the members of the group will be posting here. Whether the posts are just about our experiences in the group or situations outside the group that have had positive effects on our practices.

We hope you enjoy this blog and feel free to comment at any time.