How Buddhist?
Three Poems & Commentaries
I often remind people that the historical Buddha, Sakyamuni, did not refer to himself as a “Buddhist,” and that the Dharma or “Law” he taught can be thought of simply as an exposition on “the way things go.”
Well – how do they go?
Most of us can attest that as Buddhism’s First Noble Truth teaches, things just don’t seem to stay in place – in fact, they often go in directions we hadn’t intended, at last falling apart and becoming otherwise lost, just as we ourselves will in the end lose our own lives. Despite our best efforts to make do, to make happy, to accent the positive and reject the negative, and even if our own lives turn out to be fairly satisfactory, when we look around, most of us will concur with the Buddha that suffering is unavoidable. But the Buddha Dharma also teaches that there is a solution to our problematic condition, practical measures we can take to avoid unnecessary suffering. What’s more, it points out a way to become free from the chains of cause and effect that bind us to painful rebirth in cyclic existence, or Samsara.
Of paramount importance to the Buddhist perspective is the impermanence, not only of our own human situation, but of all aggregates – that is, of all created things, material and nonmaterial. Modern science also attests to the composite nature of the universe and its inevitable dissolution, and at its leading edge, it searches for a thing, a particle that might be established as the most essential. “Higgs boson” is the current title holder. Sakyamuni proclaimed that such a search is in vain. Based on his deep observation of himself and of all things in the world, or dharmas, he concluded that the universe arises out of its myriad parts through an interdependent process often translated as “dependent origination” or “codependent origination.”
Buddhism doesn’t trouble itself too much with the theoretical question of what came before or what comes after the universe we know. This is because theorizing about such a before or after lands one in the realm of duality, which Buddhism regards as a flawed and partial picture of our actual condition; a delusion, in other words, from which reason is incapable of extracting us.
Moreover, Buddhism is eminently practical: it’s about living in the day to day world sanely and humanely. The Dharma teaches one to embody the paradox that the relative truths of ordinary existence can co-exist with a truth that transcends dualism and suffering. Mahayana Buddhism in particular posits that life’s highest aim is to actualize this awareness, which is called the Perfection of Wisdom. This unlimited state is “empty” of all describers, and it is referred to as “unborn.” It is a state free of becoming, birth, change and death. Blissfully free even of such concepts as transcendence or Nirvana, this is the source of all the Buddhas’ compassionate activity.
As a person practicing in this tradition, I don’t devalue earthly pleasures, or deny my wish for joy and the joy for others; nor do I pretend my pain and the pain of others is unfelt or unreal. I try to regard all phenomena as ephemeral and insubstantial – as the classical similes put it: like reflections in a mirror, like melting dew drops, like flashes of lightning in the sky.
ALL IS DREAM, MA
words I speak
holding a treasured keepsake,
the mirror itself holding her
reflected photograph
behind me.
This looking glass
in its blue beveled frame
that rested on her dressing table
where she combed her hair,
examined her profile,
and with lipstick, liner and mascara
dazzled me, her son who
saw her
transformation.
*Today is the day of her birth.
My own image
standing in my bedroom vanity
is doubled back,
while in her handheld mirror
I reverse familiar sights:
turning the glass just so,
under thinning hair
I see my skull.
*
Present is past, is a name
for looking back
at what sees me.
It’s no surprise
my mother’s words arrive:
Are any of the Buddhas women?
We were in a gallery, I was lecturing
about the statuary. She smiled, so like one of the images I could scarcely begin to answer.
They look like women to me, she said.
*Prajnaparamita,
Mother of the Buddhas,
source of all the wakened-up ones --
Buddha means that.
Of course they’re women, I wish I’d said.
I put down the glass, turn to face
her lovely face in the photograph.
***************************************
It’s become relatively common these days for people who are searching for a tradition of spirituality or ethics to wonder aloud if they “might be Buddhist.” Because of its non-dogmatic, non-theistic philosophy, because of its emphasis on karma and personal responsibility, because of what people have heard the Dalai Lama or another master say about kindness, compassion and tolerance, and have witnessed in the examples of these persons’ lives, Buddhism has a widespread appeal.
Of course, there are many kinds of Buddhism and many kinds of Buddhists, but for me, the essence of the Dharma is in the knowledge of my own Real Nature. My practice, whatever the outward forms it might take, is to relax in that unchanging, indefinable self-awareness. Out of this unified state, sometimes called Samadhi, wisdom and compassion spring naturally – just as they do for every Buddha, and can do for every being. The facts of impermanence, the universal facts of decay and suffering, these become a constant incentive not only to actualize my Real Nature, but also to respond to others with whatever means I have available.
MOSQUITO CONTROL
-- but isn’t all that mantra stuff
rather artificial?
Little girl’s eyes,
I thought, holding me a moment
at the shore where we were whispering.
Along the floor, a river of black stones pooled before a muslin scrim
that rippled with an ocean breeze.
Or you can sing it, I said. Visualize
a chain of mantra spinning -- Chain,
she said, I don't like that word.
She was standing now, was tall,
her feet in black ballet flats.
She gestured to a painting, one of hers,
and on a stand, a chunk of ebony she’d carved,
a breaking wave. Then she was
pecking someone’s cheek goodnight. Dengue, I overheard. Laughter and,
Don’t get bitten by the bug.
I took another sip of golden liquor,
essence of the blue agave.
I helped myself to purple chips --
addictive, I’d been warned.
Sitting at a marble countertop,
the scent of jasmine at an open window. Or was it her perfume?
The friend with whom I’d come was leaving.
I stood to thank my watchful, woozy host. I felt an itching on my ankle, swatted, with a tissue quickly mopped the blood
and spoke some syllables.
Why? Why do you do it?
Birth and death, I said.
***********************************************
The Dharma teachings assert that very little has changed over the millennia in how homo sapiens are “wired” -- except that today it seems that our “circuitry” is more overloaded with tensions, distractions and illusions than ever before. Consequently, many people today turn toward meditation and yoga practices, and a person can learn quite a lot of Buddha Dharma from the classical literature and the guides written by contemporary masters. Best of all is to work personally with a true teacher; that relationship guides and motivates our efforts to be unstintingly honest with ourselves.
Tibetan Buddhism identifies Five Afflictions that typically beset us: ignorance, grasping, aversion, self-love, and envy. Buddhist Tantra or Vajrayana is concerned with the transformation of these deluded energies into aspects of transcendent wisdom. According to the Vajrayana teachings, mantra – the power of speech, its sacred vibration – can expedite our progress on the Path, but it must be orally transmitted from master to student in order to activate its transformative energy. Therefore, it is considered a great blessing to have the karmic affinity that enables one to receive a mantra and be introduced to the Buddha form or “diety” who embodies it.
Since the wisdom by which Buddhas realize themselves is inherent in all beings, insight into one’s own unlimited essence, blissful and “empty” of all qualifiers, is always possible. But staying awake is something more. It takes a sustained effort to be present with skillful means to meet the circumstances of one’s life. The Buddha said that he gave his followers a Path, but that each of us must walk it for ourselves.
Yet we don’t walk it alone. We have 2,500 years of a tradition (much longer, from a more mystical perspective) and it includes countless fellow practitioners and enlightened teachers to accompany us. We even have the Perfection of Wisdom scriptures that became embodied as a loving mother -- the goddess Prajnaparamita – from whom we are never apart.
FROG WATCHING
Buddhist practice --
Prajnaparamita Mother --
walking wet morning
surprise: at my feet
a big frog squatting,
big green Buddha,
dark eyes, golden ringed,
unblinking, watery lamps.
I sit before her
not directly face to face
but for propriety’s sake
slightly off to her right
in the weeds.
Silence.
A veery sings unmistakable
whistle whispering
invisible spirals,
a cardinal calls clearly,
and it must be several sparrows
twittering, hopping about
the shiny leaves overhead,
poem now making its way into the light,
frog watching me always.
Small bow, rising
drawing near, I prod her broad girth
just a finger tip to urge her
safely off the soon to be busy trail.
She puffs up and glares.
Sitting there.
All right.
Just sitting there.
Peter Fortunato holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of North Carolina –Greensboro, and is certified as a hypnotherapist by the New England Institute for Neurolinguistic Programming. He has taught at Cornell and Ithaca College for many years and has been a Buddhist practitioner for most of his life. He can be reached in Ithaca at 607 273 6637. His public Facebook page is <facebook.com/peterfortunatopoet> His recent book of poetry,