So, is it a religion?

Kuan Yin, my altar - for me, a symbol of the open heart and God

A question I often get asked: is Buddhism more of a religion, or a philosophy? However, the question really only brushes the surface of this discussion. Perhaps Buddhism is a faith. Perhaps it has a spiritual core which is ultimately free from religious doctrine. Perhaps it is a psychological approach, which greatly benefits people’s lives, yet still affirms an atheist and secular paradigm. So is Buddhism a religion? A philosophy? A psychological school? Or a spiritual path?

The short answer is: yes.

For the majority of Buddhists in the world, Buddhism is most definitely a religion. It operates as an organized spiritual practice and faith community of around 500 million adherents who pray and give offerings not only to the mytho-historical Shakyamuni Buddha - the founder of Buddhism - but often to multiple other supernatural beings as well. However, the degree of dogma and the need to hold correct beliefs varies throughout the branches of Buddhism, with some traditions seeing devotion offered as highly symbolic and others more deeply rooted in faith. For example, many Zen Buddhists regularly practice invoking the bodhisattvas and Buddhas, but they are de-emphasized philosophically and seen as symbols of liberation. On the other hand, Pure Land Buddhists believe in a literal god-like Amitabha Buddha who will save you if you have faith in him and call on his holy name.

In the West, the picture is equally confusing. The Insight Meditation tradition is hugely influenced by the Thai Forest Tradition and Burmese Theravada, but operates without the robes and incense and can be seen as more secular. This secularism is further completely emphasized in the Mindfulness Meditation movement, where the technique of mindfulness is extracted from the faith and applied in multiple life arenas. Secular Buddhists are skeptics and adopt a humanist, rationalist worldview, stripping the faith of any supernatural elements yes still embracing spiritual practice. Some Western Buddhists believe in rebirth and the Buddhist cosmology with all its heavens and hells, and others do not. For many, Buddhism fits with the sentiment “I’m spiritual, but not religious."

From a philosophical standpoint, Buddhism has an enormous number of schools that hold sometimes quite contradictory views. Discussion, education, and reasoning have a long history in the Buddhist world. Nalanda, one of the world’s first and internationally acclaimed educational institutions, was a Buddhist university which operated for 800 years and at its height had 2,000 teachers and 10,000 students. The philosophical and educational bent was encouraged in early Buddhism by the charter of free inquiry, the Kalamas Sutta, in which the Buddha states:

So, as I said, Kalamas: Do not believe things simply because of reports, legends, traditions, scripture, logic, inferring, analogies, debate, probability, or because you think your teacher is wise. When you know for yourselves that, 'These qualities are skillful, these qualities are wholesome, these qualities are praised by the wise; these qualities, when adopted and carried out, lead to wellness and to happiness,' only then you should enter and remain in them. (my paraphrase)

While not entirely rationalist, this sutra/sutta (scripture) certainly encourages the disciples to try things on for size. Through practice, they will determine for themselves what actually leads to wellbeing and what leads to suffering. As Buddhist philosophy continued to develop with this emphasis on personal experience, it embraced topics as widespread as the true nature of reality, the inner workings of psychology, and the existence (or not!) of God.

Buddhist psychology, while now a Western school, was first codified in the Abhidharma (Higher Dharma), one of the three traditional canons of scripture in Theravada Buddhism. The Abhidharma explores the study of experience and consciousness, ethics, and psychology. It mindfully attempts to discern the true nature of the mind. In modern times, Buddhist psychologists may employ methods such as Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, or Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, which both have their roots in Buddhist meditation.

So what exactly is Buddhism? I choose to see it as an experiment. I draw on the history of free inquiry within the Buddhist tradition and try things out to see what works for me. A great example: in a lot of lovingkindness meditations, my inner response to the guided words is sort of a internal “yuck." I’m not able to soften when the images I’m asked to use seem silly to me - I get too distracted by my judging mind. What I’ve learned to do in a guided meditation is to sit and notice my responses to the words of the teacher. With mindfulness, I am then able to learn what opens my heart, and what causes my emotions and body to contract. I’m able to listen to what has worked for others and try out their teachings, to see what fits and what isn't useful. For me, this experiment is an ongoing dialogue between all the Buddhist experiences - faith, practice, psychology, and philosophy - and my life.

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Dr. Geoffrey Dice, DMD, RYT 200 is a yoga teacher, mindfulness educator, and Buddhist practitioner, trained in Vipassana, empowered in Tibetan Buddhism, and currently studying Soto Zen. He brings years of practice in many spiritual traditions, and a love of alignment, anatomy, breath, and mindfulness in asana to his classes. In his spare time he is a dentist

On March 17, 2016, join Geoffrey for an evening workshop with chanting, bowing practice, meditation, and asana practice on the principles of Buddhist Mindfulness Yoga. We will explore the First Foundation of Mindfulness, Mindfulness of the Body, in a movement and meditation focussed class. Register at http://www.eventbrite.ca/e/buddhist-mindfulness-yoga-the-first-foundation-tickets-22300930684?aff=eivtefrnd

Buddhist mindfulness yoga: A primer

Form is emptiness, and emptiness is form. (Heart Sutra)

Yoga and Buddhism - two practice methodologies which are increasingly popular in the West in myriad forms - are distinct yet interrelated dharma traditions which arose in conversation in the Indian subcontinent. Individually, many modern yogis blend the traditions - go to a hatha yoga class one weekend and a Buddhist meditation workshop the following. Indeed, many teachers now offer yoga classes employing Buddhist metaphysical principles, or teach yoga during mindfulness meditation retreats. I believe this is a field ripe for conversation, which is why I teach Buddhist mindfulness yoga.

While these two traditions are distinct, the history of Buddhism and the yoga tradition are intimately intertwined. Siddhartha Gautama, who would become known as the Buddha, learned from the foremost yoga teachers of his day before he broke away to form his own distinct yoga school which later evolved into Buddhism. One might understandably make the mistaken assumption that Yogacara (the practice of yoga), a prominent philosophical tradition originating around the 4th century CE, was a Hindu yoga school. In fact, Yogacara was one of the most influential Buddhist schools which focussed on how the mind constructs reality as we experience it. On the flip side, Patanjali borrowed a number of Buddhist meditative techniques and philosophical ideas in his writing of the Yoga Sutras, even outright appropriation of entire Buddhist doctrines, such as the Brahma-viharas (divine abodes), four mind-states conducive to enlightenment.

So for those of us Buddhist yogis or even those just tantalized by Buddhist philosophy - where do we begin exploration of this hybrid?

In the Satipatthana Sutta, a highly revered scripture especially in Theravada (Southern School) Buddhism, the Buddha lays out a system of meditation which is still followed by Theravadans and Western Buddhists in the insight meditation/vipassana movement. It teaches four foundations for meditation - mindfulness of the body, mindfulness of feeling-tone, mindfulness of the heart-mind, and mindfulness of the dharma. In sitting meditation, the entrance point to mindfulness of the body is the breath - being aware of the sensations of the body as we inhale and exhale:

Breathing in a long breath, the meditator knows, "I am breathing in a long breath;" breathing out a long breath, they know, "I am breathing out a long breath;" breathing in a short breath, they know, "I am breathing in a short breath;" breathing out a short breath, they know, "I am breathing out a short breath.” (Satipatthana Sutta, author’s paraphrase)

Ujayi breathing and other hatha yoga pranayama (breathing techniques) use a conscious control of the breath, rather than the observation of the autonomic breathing reflex that mindfulness meditation espouses. However, it is possible to bring mindful attention to our more effortful pranayama as we bind the attention, body, and breath together, such as when mula bandha (root bind) automatically engages at the bottom of the breath. To practice this, find a comfortable, tall seat, and begin a very slow round of ujayi pranayama, creating a rushing sound in the back of your throat. As you inhale, imagine an energetic line of breath starting at the base of your spine and travelling all the way up to your soft palate. On the exhale, the energy descends from the soft palate back to the base of the spine. Even as you visualize this flow of prana (breath), if you exhale completely, you will notice the pelvic floor musculature - particularly the pubococcygeus muscle - automatically engage and lift. In this way, we can mindfully observe prana and the engagement of the pelvic floor musculature simultaneously. In other situations, such as yin yoga and sitting, it might be more beneficial to completely let go of control of the breath and bring mindfulness to its natural rhythm in order to enter into greater stillness.

The second foundation, mindfulness of feeling-tone, refers to the sensory experience of the categories of pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. Every stimulus our mind receives automatically gets shuffled into these three general categories, and each of them has a felt sense we can engage with mindfully. Fear, for example, might be an unpleasant inner contraction, a clenching of the muscles of the face, an unsettling feeling in the stomach. The mind automatically reaches for things which are pleasant and tries to push away unpleasant sensations, and in general it ignores the neutral ones. This establishment of mindfulness of feeling-tone opens the way to the third foundation, mindfulness of the heart-mind, which is the awareness of thoughts and emotions. We observe the thoughts but don’t become entangled in them.

Practicing these three foundations together moves our yoga practice into a meditative depth that is impossible without mindfulness. Sarah Powers (www.sarahpowers.com), founder of Insight Yoga, teaches a brilliant and simple use of inquiry in posture to establish these foundations. As an experiment, move into any asana and first notice the sensations arising in the body while in the posture. Ask yourself three questions: what am I feeling? (mindfulness of the body); what does it feel like? (mindfulness of feeling-tone); and how am I relating to this experience? (mindfulness of the heart-mind). As we practice these observations, we can learn to discriminate between the subtle, distinct unfolding of sensations which the mind normally lumps together: I am feeling a stretch in my right hamstring. This stretch feels like pulling, familiar. This sensation of a line pulling on the outside of my right thigh is pleasant, this sharper sensation closer to the midline feels vaguely unpleasant, and my left leg feels neutral. I am reacting by wanting to deepen the stretch. I am telling myself a story about how my right side is so much tighter than my left side.

The final foundation, mindfulness of the dharma, can either specifically speak to particular doctrinal concepts within Buddhism (ex: mindfulness of the Four Noble truths), or the meditation on the various phenomena which make up our sensory/psychological system (ex: mindfulness of the senses). In the Mahayana (East Asian) school of Buddhism, the fourth foundation is mindfulness of sunyata or emptiness. Emptiness can be a difficult concept to grasp: all phenomena are empty of independent existence - that is, everything that exists only does so in relation to everything else. Everything is connected, and our concept of discrete objects is actually false. The opening of the dharma eye is the experience of becoming aware of the essential interconnectedness of all things and the fading away of the distinction between self and other. As we meditatively investigate the dharma, we begin to see that there is nothing observable that is permanent, unchanging, completely satisfactory, or possesses a quality we could call “self.” (It is important to note that there are some atypical schools which teach a positive expression of sunyata called Buddhadhatu - Buddha-nature - where the entire universe is permeated with the capacity for enlightenment, and is by some teachers upheld as the True Self).

It is this fourth foundation which may be the distinguishing mark of Buddhist yoga. Popular yoga spirituality teaches a path to understanding our True Self. In the traditional advaita vedanta (non-dual) Hindu philosophy, our True Self is identical with the True Self of God. By and large, Buddhism teaches that our Selfing Project actually gets in the way of the divine experience which cannot be expressed in human words or to fully grasped with the cognitive mind. Any fundamental quality that could be called an individual self only exists in relation to other objects. All things inter-are. Form - the world of symbols, names, and concepts - is emptiness. Emptiness - the interpenetrating nature of all phenomena - is form. The actual meditative experience of this paradox is profound and ineffable.

So how does this unexplainable concept of "form as emptiness, emptiness as form" apply to our asana practice? As we establish mindfulness, we can begin to let go of our notions of the forms of postures having any inherent meaning or “right way.” When I’m in downward facing dog, there are alignment principles which can keep me balanced and safe, but ultimately even balance and safety are concepts constructed in the world of form - useful, but without inherent meaning. What is the form of the posture? There is no essential significance to any asana, and yet I weave a story which gives it some meaning: look at me, I’m in handstand for the first time! As normal thought drops away, I can begin to observe that I am as much the contact between my hands and the mat, the mat itself, the people around me sharing this same form, as I am what I think of as “me.” In fact, nothing about the posture or the body or even the sensations and thoughts that accompany it have any substance which I can call truly me or mine, as convinced that I am that they belong to me.

Finally, and impossible to stress enough, Buddhism, like yoga, prescribes ethical living. It insists that for our meditation to be useful, we have to live a life which causes no harm and serves the entire community. Bodhicitta, the mind practice which is the path to enlightenment, is the desire to find compassion, empathy, and awakening for the benefit of everything and everyone everywhere. It requires that we live a life of service and justice. It requires effort to end the oppression of the world. This is the Engaged Buddhism taught by Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, vipassana teachers Kittisaro and Thanissara, and many others. It is the Buddhism of this new age, born in a time of globalization in a new home outside of Asia. Buddhist yoga demands that we step off the mat and take our practice with us wherever we go, so that we become the kindness and compassion that will ultimately liberate the world. It demands that we make our living honestly and that we treat everyone with equal respect and dignity. It demands simple living in such a way that we are aware of social justice and environmental consequences. Buddhist yoga is a tool for bringing positive transformational change to the whole world.

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Geoffrey Dice, DMD, RYT 200 is a yoga teacher and Buddhist practitioner, trained in Vipassana, empowered in Tibetan Buddhism, and currently studying Soto Zen. He brings years of practice in many spiritual traditions, and a love of alignment, anatomy, breath, and mindfulness in asana to his classes. In his spare time he is a dentist

On March 17, 2016, join Geoffrey for an evening workshop with chanting, bowing practice, meditation, and asana practice on the principles of Buddhist Mindfulness Yoga. We will explore the First Foundation of Mindfulness, Mindfulness of the Body, in a movement and meditation focussed class. Register at http://www.eventbrite.ca/e/buddhist-mindfulness-yoga-the-first-foundation-tickets-22300930684?aff=eivtefrnd

Angry Little Boy

There's this

angry little boy

inside, somewhere next to my spine

and sometimes he sneaks out

like smog

around the corners of the eyes

maybe its in the vow of nonviolence to myself

that i'll have to let it go

because wanting

begets the little scared boy

because this wanting mind will

leave me in pain

this

bruise

on

my hip

this

bruise

on my

heart

Basic goodness

“O Nobly Born, O you of glorious origins, remember your radiant true nature, the essence of mind. Trust it. Return to it. It is home.”
- The Tibetan Book of the Dead

The concept of “basic goodness” is a thread through many of the spiritual traditions of the world, but until recently, I only understood it on a very superficial, intellectual level. Yes, I comprehended the idea that everyone is supposed to be basically good – that at the core of our being, regardless of all of the terrible and neurotic things we do, we have a good centre. For someone who adopted at a very early age the idea that my core identity was that of a sinner, it's refreshing to explore a contrary view. Basic goodness, as opposed to the old concepts of original sin staining us – wicked at a deep level – is an idea that is becoming more popular even in the Christian tradition: Archbishop Desmond Tutu, for example, has written extensively on how we are basically good creatures and made in God's image.

And yet, we do some really awful things, to ourselves and to each other. We kill each other, we wage war, we rape, we molest and abuse each other. We are addicts, seeking out temporary relief from shame through any number of behaviours which have long-term negative consequences - and yet we continue to pursue them, overeating, overshopping, overusing in a ravenous attempt to find transient comfort. It's easy on some level to understand why the Christian tradition has understood and in many cases continues to see human beings as totally depraved and in need of external salvation.

Humans really suck sometimes.

Still, there is another vision of human nature. For example, in the Buddhist tradition, a central notion is the inherent nobility of each person – we are all “nobly born,” as the Tibetan Book of the Dead puts it - and heirs to the Buddha within. What opened the door for me to understand this concept at a heart level was this quotation by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, a nondual Hindu teacher:

“You are perfect, only you don’t know it.

Learn to know yourself and you will discover wonders.

All you need is already within you, only you must approach yourself with reverence and love.

Self-condemnation and self-distrust are grievous errors.

Your constant flight from pain and search for pleasure is a sign of the love you bear for yourself;

all I plead with you is this: make love of yourself perfect.

Deny yourself nothing – give yourself infinity and eternity and discover that

you do not need them; you are beyond.”

What I took from this was a sense of the simple purity that lies at the core of our being. We want what is best for ourselves – we are constantly shying away from pain and seeking out pleasure. Even a hurtful or addictive behaviour originates from a place of love for the self, which gets contorted so that we seek out comfort in harmful ways. Perhaps even the cruelest forms of self-hatred come from a twisted sort of desire to be better – the irrational logic of punishing ourselves until we become good.

When we start to understand our own basic goodness, it causes a shift in how we see everyone around us. Every other person is acting out of this same, simple, pure impulse to seek comfort and avoid discomfort. Overtop of that impulse is a thick layer of conditioning which torques our inner love towards trying to find satisfaction in all the things which can't ever truly satisfy. We will never find true peace when we cling to the temporary things of the world.

At the heart of each person is the same essence of wanting to be happy – a wish that is so simple and profound that it can be understood as divine. As Thomas Merton said, if we really truly understood who we are, we would “fall down and worship each other.” At the core of who we are – who we all are – is a profound holiness, a spark, a flame, and a goodness that connects us and is shared with all of life.

Touching the edge - letting go of our limitations

I'm running, and my breath is rapid and shallow. My heart is racing. My running buddy has pulled ahead of me yet again, and the chatter in my head starts up once more, full speed ahead: “You're no good at this, why are you even bothering to try? You're a failure at running, you haven't trained enough, race day is coming up and you're going to be awful at it, you're going to hurt yourself.” The physical sensations of running when I hit this point are frighteningly similar to panic attacks. I blink to hold back tears and keep running. Foot, foot, foot. The sensations, the thoughts, and the experiences eventually pass. I return to gratitude at the end of the run.

Running has been both a liberating and a painful experience for me. It takes me to places of shame and it gives me a sense of joy and an adrenaline-rush like no other. I delve right into the feelings of body shame – that I'm not good enough, that my body is failing me – and right into the feelings of exhilaration – the power of the determined mind, the feeling of “I can do this,” the chance to let my brain unwind, and the joy of accomplishment.

The flip side of the coin with coming to peace with our bodies is letting go of the limiting stories we have with regards to them. Olympic-level athletes often speak of how the biggest competitor they face is not the person they are racing against, but their own minds. One possible trajectory for the spiritual journey with the body is to listen to and accept the stories created by our minds around what we believe is possible, and then to safely unlearn these stories and get more in touch with the direct experience of what is happening as we move, stretch, and strengthen.

When we encounter something unpleasant in the process of moving our bodies, our instant reaction is often to shrink away from it. Sometimes if we're able to push at the edge, however, we realize that “unpleasant” is nothing more than a category our mind creates for uncomfortable sensations. I'm certainly not advocating for pushing oneself to a place where there is pain or damage to the body, but it is possible to investigate at the edges how our mind creates limiting stories surrounding uncomfortable experiences. As we say in yin yoga, take it to your edge and then sit with the experience of the sensation. You may be surprised to learn that you're not as small as you thought you were.

Living In the Moment: The Body

A large part of the spiritual journey is the integration of the whole person – that is, when we stop compartmentalizing our selves into separate categories of “body,” “mind,” “emotions,” “spirit,” and so on. In particular, the body is a site of extreme dis-integration, in a world where unhealthy concepts of the body abound. Whether it's the flesh-hating bent of some organized religion, or the flesh-selling culture of consumer capitalism – I think it's really important to unpack how we think about our bodies.

Being a gay man in Vancouver - “Hollywood North” - it's pretty easy to get caught up in the marketplace of bodies. The pressure to conform to a particular body type – to be the muscled, hairless, perfectly manicured, and tanned dude wearing all the right clothes – can be overpowering at times. Hidden just beneath a thin veneer of “living a healthy lifestyle” is a deep pressure to conform to a particular way of looking. As our society has become more embedded with “marketplace consciousness,” we commodify and sell our bodies. We spend enormous amounts of money modifying and rebuilding them, trying to fit an aesthetic that is virtually unattainable.

Body shaming is so widespread in our culture. In the past, gender theory and feminism focussed on how women are required to manipulate their bodies – often in extreme and unhealthy ways – in order to fit into a specific body type. Of course, that same pressure exists for men – and speaking from the experience of being queer – it can be particularly intense for gay men. Value and worth is assigned based on body shape rather than looking to the beauty which exists at the core of each person. The fact that humanity is blessed with an enormous variety of body shapes and sizes, and that “healthy” doesn't look the same for every person barely registers. There's always something “wrong” with our bodies that we need to “fix.”

Of course, this body shaming has enormous implications when it comes to our mental and spiritual wellbeing. Rather than living in a healthy, integrated way – where the focus is on creating balance within our bodies, our minds, our whole person – we create artificial goals of how we think we should look and pursue it with a self-judging aggression. In addition, we spread hate by mocking or judging those who don't look like we think they should. And in the perpetual journey to lose weight, we forget that the scale and waist-size is just a metric, just a number.

How much better off would we be if we could come to live at peace with our bodies, just as they are, right here and now? We spend so much time being unhappy with ourselves – when we really could spend time practicing a healthy attitude free of shaming where we're actually happy with the way we are. When I'm old, I hope to have spent more time being happy with myself than standing in front of a mirror worrying that I don't have bulging biceps.

In a recent yoga class, one of my teachers said, “live in your body right now. Not the body you had last week. Not the body you had ten years ago. Not the body you want to have. The body as it is, right here and now, as you're sitting and breathing on the mat.” We need to stop inhabiting the body in our minds and learn to live in the body that actually exists – with all its scars, belly fat, the hair that grows in strange places, the loss of flexibility as a result of growing old, the cellulite on our butts, and all of our beautiful imperfections. This doesn't mean we will end up stopping exercising or eating healthy – those things are part of the spiritual journey too. As we let go of the limiting stories which prevent us from fully expressing our bodies, with dedication and practice we may also discover the ability to do things which we never thought possible.

I recently injured my right upper hamstring attachment. As I worked through the injury, I realized that my mind would immediately jump to “fixing the problem” as I practiced forward folds. It takes an intentional mental shift to stop thinking about the soreness and aching as a problem, and see it rather just as it is – a sensation of soreness which the mind judges as unpleasant and tries to push away. We need to stop the war against our bodies, and learn to celebrate ourselves just as we are, even as we stretch and build balance into our physical selves.

Starting fresh all over again

Lately, I've been pondering how much of my life has been spent where I feel as though I'm not really present as it's happening. Perhaps it's my tendency to focus on the negative - and I know I can ruminate on "time wasted," and so need to be mindful when examining this aspect of my life - but I also know a lot of life has passed me by when I've felt really disengaged and disempowered. Time and energy spent in cycles of anxiety and depression, hours spent pursuing distractions from my anxiety but also keeping me from truly living out my passions, too much time spent unhappy with my place in life, and a feeling like I'm lacking real dedication to any particular goal. These feelings crystallized and changed this weekend when I travelled with my partner to his ten-year reunion for musical theatre school - in particular, when I heard about the year he spent intensively developing his skills as a performer: six days a week dedicated to pursuing his dreams, and putting his whole life into his passions. I realized that I've never really had that level of dedication or self-discipline in my life. I want to - no, I need to develop a plan to re-engage with my passions in life.  I've never really felt like I've given anything my all - so often, I feel like I'm just "floating." The moments of my life when I've felt most fully alive have been when I've really been pursuing my calling – that is, really engaged in work towards something bigger than myself.

After some soul searching, on July 9 of this year, I decided that this year would be a “year of personal growth” and marked the day on my calendar. I've scrambled a little bit to figure out what exactly that means, but I think it will involve intentionally engaging myself in my life's work, and really following what Baron Baptiste calls my “true north” - which for me is a spiritual focus on embodying lovingkindness. To that end, I want to pursue it to my fullest ability. I want this next year to be a “life boot camp” as it were. I'm going to start fresh all over again. Work on mental health so that I can truly love myself with all of my flaws. Work on being gentle and disciplined with myself in such a way that I can really blossom and flourish. Work with my body, and really practice my yoga and physical wellbeing so that I can live in a balanced, integrated way.

I want to learn to put my whole heart into living. I want to learn to take care of myself – body, soul, and mind – to be able to fully live in the present moment in a healthy, loving way. I want to celebrate myself. I want to end the cyclical judging voice that plays so continuously in my head.

To this end, this is my prayer this evening:

May I embody lovingkindness.

May I love myself.

May the benefit of this be for everyone, everywhere.

May it be so.