Buddhism 101 -- making the road by walking

Danish footpath

Last Wednesday evening we had our second class of the Buddhism 101 series.

This time we focused on the second two marks of existence, impermanence and no-self.  Through guided inquiry and contemplation, we looked into the reality of change in our lives.  When good times come, we realize they won't last.  And when bad times come, we have to remind ourselves that even these things will pass.

From this awareness of change comes the first hint of the malleability of the self itself.  Even the person we think we are changes moment to moment, breath to breath.

Suffering without the understanding of change, and how this awareness even applies to our precious self, leads to rigidity.  The path to awakening is one of fluidity.

Dharma Holder Diane Fitzgerald gifted us with this poem by Antonio Machado, translated by Willis Barnstone.  

"You walking, your footprints are the road, and nothing else; there is no road, walker, you make the road by walking.  By walking you make the road, and when you look back, you see the path that you will never step on again.  Walker, there is no road, only wind trails in the sea."

Buddhism 101 -- The Anxious Quiver

Danish anthropology museum -- Chinese musician

Last night we had our first Buddhism 101 class, taught by the guiding teachers of Boundless Way Temple:  David Dae An Rynick, Roshi, Dharma Holders James Cordova and Diane Fitzgerald, and myself.

This particular 3-part series is about the Four Marks of Existence, and last night we explored the first mark, which is the Sanskrit word "dukkha,"  commonly translated as "suffering."  The word is onomatopoeic:  it sounds like what it is.  It refers to a wheel on a cart that's out of alignment, and so makes the sound "duk, duk, duk" as it heads on down the road.  One of the discoveries in our discussion was that suffering is almost certainly the wrong word for this constant, out-of-balance accompaniment to our life.

Some Buddhist teachers posit that there can be moments when dukkha disappears, but our contention is that it persists, as a "mark" of existence, sometimes in an extreme fashion that could be called suffering, but most often as a "the anxious quiver at the core of our being" in Ezra Bayda's wonderful words.  To be able to settle in to the granular quality of this subtle quiver is the beginning of our practice of waking up.  We meet the experience granularly by becoming as intimate to it as possible, noticing any sensations in the body that accompany it, any emotions, and any thoughts churned out by our endless internal narrator.  
And in this way, we discover the second mark of existence, anicca, which means "impermanence."  Even suffering, or the more quiet version of dukkha we might call "unsatisfactoriness" or "imbalance" has a life of its own, constantly changing, intensifying and diminishing.  This is the beginning of finding our freedom, leading to the last two marks of anatta (no-self) and nirvana (awakening in the midst of everything.)

The Daffodils

The Daffodils

After spring snow has melted
some are bent and broken down
some are blooming oblivious
to the weight of the past
open to the present good luck
of being able to show up fully to the day
and some are budding,  yet to be born
all equally daffodils
greeting life just as they are