Category Archives: Buddhism

Morality From Your Inner Buddha

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Morality From Your Inner Buddha

 

It seems that a lot of our culture is divided into black and white opinions regarding morality.  Morals seem to be a stress point for people of all creeds.  Most people give up in exasperation and end up saying, “I am a good person, I don’t need to be told what to do.”

 

In my blog today I want to say that such a statement isn’t fair off from the truth — though I will interpret it in a different way.  You don’t need to be told what to do because you have innate wisdom within you.  You have your own inner Buddha!

 

The precepts of virtue within Buddhism are helpful reassurances and a loose guide to developing your own system of morality.

 

The first level of virtue is called non-harming / limiting harm.  It really means, that as far as is within your power, you won’t harm another sentient being.

 

1.  Don’t kill

2.  Don’t steal

3.  Don’t speak untruthfully

4.  Don’t use sex in a way that harms another

5.  Don’t do things that decrease your awakening and awareness (drugs)

 

So the first level is to limit harm.  There is a true story of a monastery that was infested with roaches and the roaches were in the food and it was really out of control.  The monks asked their teacher if they could possibly kill the roaches.  The teacher smiled and said, “I’m not going to tell you.”  What is meant by this is that these are guidelines and there may be exceptions to the rules.  No black and whites!

 

The next level is to develop compassion for other sentient beings.

1.  Not killing becomes actions that save others, actions that promote life

2.  Not stealing becomes being generous and charitable

3.  Not speaking untruthfully becomes speaking things that nourish another’s soul

4.  Not harming with sex becomes valuing Eros and intimacy in a sacred way

 

The last point on virtue is that we need to do things that nourish our own Spirit and connect us to our inner Buddha.

 

I hope you learned something from this brief post on Buddhist morals and virtue.  I hope you’ll seek the Tao and Dharma within yourself and within the world in which we live.

 

Namaste

Unscathed

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our lives have been

lightning rods

reaching like skinny wrists

up into ominous greying skies

~

our hearts have been

granny’s plump pin cushion

that feel the needles prick–

starting to lose our stuffing

like all voodoo dolls do

~

our minds have held

too many words–

too many pictures–

dark grey matters?

eroticized by trauma’s perverse

~

our souls have been

dragged to hell

flung up to heaven

through many births

and rebirths

~

we are so old

we are so battered

we are so worn

we are crusty and stale

more so, some-days;

and we don’t even know–

yet,

our spirits remains unscathed

Something Meaningful

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Something Meaningful

Cover of "A Path with Heart: A Guide Thro...

Cover via Amazon

 

I try to transmit emotion and meaning through my poems, it’s also important to find meaning in the writing’s of others.  In the same way that I read many blogs and either feel an impact or not, I haven’t abandoned books — yet.

 

I like to keep my poetry gritty and cathartic.  Whatever mess is going on in my head, throughout, but mostly at the end of the day, get’s spilled out here; hence the subtitle “Poems at Midnight”.

 

When I write the darkest, deepest, and most shockingly obscene poetic vignettes before I slumber, I have better dreams at night.  Occasionally, I’d like to offer something inspirational.  There isn’t a huge demand for inspirational blogs, there are enough.  Facebook, too, is littered with photos and captions to a sickeningly optimistic level.

 

Here is an inspirational excerpt from the book A Path With Heart :

 

 ”I was called to visit a man in a San Francisco hospital by his sister.  He was in his late thirties and already rich.  He had a construction company, a sailboat, a    ranch, a town house, the works.  One day when driving along in his BMW, he blacked out.  Tests showed that he had a brain tumor, a melanoma, a rapid-growing type of cancer.  The doctor said, “We want to operate on you, but I must warn you that the tumor is in the speech and comprehension center.  If we remove the tumor, you may lose all ability to read, to write, to speak, to understand any language.  If we don’t operate, you probably have six more weeks to live.  Please consider this.  We want to operate in the morning.  Let us know by then.

 

I visited this man that evening.  He had become very quiet and reflective.  As you can imagine, he was in an extraordinary state of consciousness.  Such an awakening will sometimes come from our spiritual practice, but for him it came   through these exceptional circumstances.  When we spoke, this man did not talk about his ranch or sailboat or his money.  Where he was headed, they don’t take the currency of bank-books and BMWs.  All that is valuable in times of great change is the currency of our heart—the ability and understandings of the heart that have grown within us.

 

Twenty years before, in the late 1960s, this man had done a little Zen meditation, had read a bit of Alan Watts, and when he faced this moment, that is what he drew on and what he wanted to talk about: his spiritual life and understanding of birth and death.  After a most heartfelt conversation, he stopped to be silent for a time and reflect.  The he turned to me and said, “I’ve had enough of talking.   Maybe I’ve said too many words.  This evening it seems so precious just to have a drink of tap water or to watch the pigeons on the windowsill of the medical center fly off through the air.  I’m not finished with this life.  Maybe I’ll just live it more silently.”  So he asked to have the operation.  After fourteen hours of surgery by a fine surgeon, his sister visited him in the recovery room.  He looked up at her and said, “Good morning.”

(Kornfield, 1993, p.16-17)

 

 

 

Full Reference:

 

Kornfield, J. (1993). A path with heart: A guide through the perils and promises of spiritual life. New York, NY: Bantom Books

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