Chaplaincy Services

National Chaplains' Conference,
June 2004

Reflection: Singing in harmony

Although I was born and baptized a Catholic, my religious education meant attending Protestant Sunday Schools in Ontario. High school proved fortunate for me: I was sent to Luther College in Regina where the College made sure that I passed. Anything else about religion I gleaned by a kind of osmosis, years later, as I traveled and worked in Europe.

When it was time for my spiritual awakening, it happened first in Greece, then in Hebron, Old Jerusalem, Canada, and, finally Nepal. There I met my first Tibetan teachers who were refugees from their homeland. Following an audience with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, I took ordination in Dharamsala, India, in 1970.

Singing the Lord's Song in a Strange Land describes the desolate and afflicted state of mind of the enslaved captives of Babylon. They had almost lost all hope, all joy, and hung up their harps. How they were insulted by their captors! "Sing us a song of Zion!" How great was the captives' attachment to their homeland and their city, Jerusalem! They felt a terrible judgement had fallen upon them. Some versions of the psalm express a satisfaction or a happy vengeance. (I gravitate to the verses that do not sound vengeful.)

This fall of a great tribe reminds me of the many stories told to me by my Tibetan friends and teachers about their forty years of incarceration in their own country, of the thousands killed, beaten, tortured, separated - so much loss, and still no end. I am sure many of you have heard some of these stories. The plight of the Tibetans seems to me similar to that of the captives of Babylon.

How shall one sing in a strange land?

Recently, I asked the inmates at Mountain Institution if they would like to ask a question of the Dalai Lama at the Roundtable Dialogue held at UBC's Chan Centre. And they replied that although they were imprisoned, they did not think that their situation could be compared to that of the Tibetan people, as the Tibetans were innocent political prisoners and their strength and fortitude was of a different quality from their own. The men imprisoned at Mountain, after all, were criminals. What message, what answers, could the Dalai Lama give them?

But there is a message, or if you like, an answer.

From the Tibetan point of view, their greatest spiritual and mental danger was to lose their highest ethical vow during torture; that is, to lose their compassion for their torturer and forget their vow to become fully enlightened in order to benefit all beings without exception, and especially to benefit their assailants.

During the television coverage of this Roundtable Dialogue held last April 20th, the Most Reverend Archbishop Desmond Tutu addressed a similar concern. What message? What answer? He told the story about a court case massacre in South Africa. He described the case in vivid detail: How police officers gave orders to their men to be vindictive in rounding up the victims, even harming a woman by placing her breasts in the drawer of a wardrobe and slamming it shut repeatedly. Desmond Tutu described how intensely electric was the anger and outrage which permeated the court room overflowing with former victims and their families. And then when the two black officers and the white officer who were charged with these atrocities were led into the court, there was a surge of such intense anger and hatred that even Desmond Tutu himself had never seen nor ever felt before. The courtroom atmosphere was strangely trembling, hot and quiet.

Then the white officer stepped forward and quietly breathed these words: "Forgive me". And as Archbishop Desmond Tutu told this story and said these two words … Forgive me … we in that Roundtable audience were completely stunned. Desmond Tutu gently told us how that growing hatred and craving for revenge in that courthouse suddenly deflated, evaporated into space. To our awakened silence, the Archbishop said that he realized, as did others, that in his words they "were suddenly standing on holy ground worthy of us taking off our shoes."

For the inmates of Mountain Institute, for the victims of injustices - for each of us: What message? What answer? I would now like to reflect on our theme for this Conference Day: Singing in Harmony. This brings me to my memory of my Root Lama, my mentor and teacher, my Guru who taught me to hear universal harmony.

As I encountered Tibetan Buddhism, I studied with Lama Thubten Yeshe, my first real chaplain who taught me Buddhist psychology. He taught me that this was scientific: the mind is mental energy and this energy has no beginning. This life is a perfect human rebirth, an opportunity to discover the true nature of the mind's dynamic intelligence: "It just knows", it has no size, no boundaries, no limits to feeling love and compassion, no colour, no form - though the ability to think might appear as form. He taught me that all our experiences throughout the eons of taking all kinds of life forms are imprinted on our consciousness and will colour our perceptions to the point of forgetting or ignoring our potential Buddha nature. We live in a virtual reality and not a real reality. Because our world view is this virtual reality and not the real truth, it is never fully satisfying. For mental suffering is based on wrong perceptions; therefore, it can be ceased. There are ways for any negative perception to cease by using one's wisdom of the absolute truth and pure unconditional love and compassion.

These are exciting times we live in. Science has now been able, through the use of Functional Magnetic Resonance Imagining (FMRI), to demonstrate in real time that the brain reveals certain patterns when one is engaged in acts of compassion. As many of you know, the brain is flooded by electrical energy to the middle left-prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain previously known to be associated with feelings of bliss and wellbeing. This flood of energy far surpasses that found when the brain is engaged in anger or hatred. And FMRI also demonstrated that when the brain is in this state of blissful compassion, the mind can not be distracted by loud noise or physical discomfort.

It's nice that science has caught up with what you all already know.

Is there a place for Chaplaincy to offer programs of our ancient and modern religious traditions? Certainly, I have witnessed these being offered by psychologists.

But these are a few of my reflections … What message? What answer? I thank you all for this honour of having an opportunity to offer them. May they be of benefit to all beings without exception.

I'll close now with a favourite closing prayer of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, followed by a Bob Marley rendering of Psalm 137.

Generating the Mind for Enlightenment

With a wish to free all beings
I shall always go for refuge
To the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha
Until I reach full enlightenment

Enthused by wisdom and compassion
Today in the Buddha's presence
I generate the Mind for Full Awakening
For the benefit of all sentient beings

As long as space remains,
As long as sentient beings remain,
Until then, may I too remain,
And dispel the miseries of the world.

Psalm 137 (Bob Marley)

By the River of Babylon
Where we sat down,
There we wept,
When we remembered Zion

But the wicked
Carried us away to captivity
And required of us a song
How shall we sing the Lord's song
In a strange land?

Let's the words of our mouths
And the meditation of hearts
Be acceptable in thy sight O Lord.

GLOSSARY

Book: Buddhist Himalayas
15 BN -0-8109-3489-2

Actions, negative and positive:

an action is said to be positive when it benefits another, and negative when it harms others and the doer. Every physical, mental or verbal action is like a seed which will produce a fruit, a consequence which will be lived at some later date, often even in a future existence.

Appearances:

the worlds of external phenomena. Although these phenomena appear to us to have a real existence, their true nature is void of inherent reality. The gradual transformation of our way of perceiving and understanding these appearances corresponds to different stages on the path towards Enlightenment.

Attachment:

its two principal aspects are attachment to the reality of the self (ego) and attachment to the reality of external phenomena.

Awareness:

nature of a mind that is not dual and is totally liberated from confusion.

Bardo:

Tibetan word meaning "intermediate state". It can refer to various states, including the states of dreaming and waking, and the moment of death, but most often it signifies the intermediate state between death and rebirth.

Bodhisattva:

one who follows the path of compassion and is dedicated to reaching Enlightenment in order to be able to deliver all living beings from the cycle of existence, samsara.

Buddha:

one who has dispelled the two veils - the veils of afflictive emotions and of dualistic perception - and developed the two knowledges - the knowledge of the ultimate nature of all things and the knowledge of the multiplicity of phenomena.

Buddha-nature:

not an "entity" but the ultimate nature of pure consciousness, totally free from the veils of ignorance. Each being of mind. In a sense, it is Buddhism's concept of the "original goodness" in all beings.

Compassion:

the desire to liberate all living beings from suffering and the causes of suffering (negative actions and ignorance). It is the complement of love (the wish for all beings to know happiness and the causes of happiness). Of altruistic joy (rejoicing in the qualities of another) and of equanimity, which extends these feelings to all beings without distinction, friends, strangers and foes alike.

Consciousness:

Buddhism distinguishes between several levels of consciousness; manifest, subtle and very subtle. The first corresponds to the functioning of the brain; the second to what we intuitively call consciousness, in other words the ability to examine our own nature and exercise free will, and the third, and most important, is called the "fundamental luminosity of mind".

Dharma:

a word of many meanings. At its broadest, it signifies everything that can be known. Most often, it denotes the totality of the teachings of the Buddha's and great teachers. There are two aspects to this, the dharma of the scriptures, which underpins these teachings, and the dharma of realization, which is the outcome of spiritual practice.

Duality/dualism:

In Buddhism, these terms, refer to the distinction between subject (consciousness) and object (mental images and the external world) between oneself and another. The disappearance of duality is one of the characteristics of Enlightenment.

Emptiness:

the lack of intrinsic reality of animate and inanimate phenomena, their true nature, but not nothingness. True knowledge of emptiness goes hand in hand with the emergence of compassion towards all living beings without exception.

Enlightenment:

synonymous with the condition of being a Buddha. Enlightenment is the ultimate accomplishment of spiritual growth supreme inner knowledge, allied to infinite compassion. Perfect understanding of both relative existence (the way things appear to us) and of ultimate existence (their true nature) of the mind and of the world of phenomena. This knowledge is the fundamental antidote to ignorance and therefore to suffering.

Idealism:

a group of related ideas according to which the phenomenal world is only a projection of the mind.

Ignorance:

erroneous manner of conceiving of beings and things attributing to them real independent, solid and intrinsic existence.

Illusion:

all ordinary perceptions, distorted by ignorance.

Impermanence:

there are two kinds, gross and subtle. Gross impermanence refers to visible changes. Subtle impermanence is the fact that nothing remains the same for more than the shortest conceivable moment of time.

Intrinsic existence:

a property attributed to phenomena, allowing them to be independent objects, existing on their own, and endowed with properties belonging wholly to them.

Karma:

Sanskrit word meaning "action" usually translated as "causality of actions". The Buddha taught that the destinies of beings, along with their joy, their suffering and their perception of the universe, are not due to either chance or the will of an all-powerful entity, but are the outcome of their past actions, words and thoughts. Similarly, their future is determined by the positive or negative quality of their present actions. Collective karma defines our general perception of the world, while individual karma determines our personal experiences.

Liberation:

liberating oneself from suffering and the cycle of existence. It is a step towards the ultimate achievement of Buddha hood.

Logic:

means of valid knowledge (pramana in Sanskrit - Tsema in Tibetan). "Conventional" valid knowledge is distinguished from absolute valid knowledge. The first informs us about the appearance of things and the second allows us to apprehend the ultimate nature of things. Both are valid in their own contexts. Their domains cover everything that can be perceived directly or deducted by inference, and everything that can be concluded on the basis of valid testimony.

Meditation:

process of familiarizing oneself with a new perception of things. Analytical meditation can take as its subject something on which to reflect ( the notion of impermanence, for example) or a quality one wishes to develop (such as love or compassion). Contemplative mediation allows us to recognize the ultimate nature of mind and to remain in that nature, beyond conceptual thought.

Middle Way:

(Madhyamika): the highest philosophy of Buddhism, so-called because it avoids the two extremes of negation and affirmation of the reality of phenomena.

Mind (see also consciousness):

for Buddhism, mind, in its ordinary form, is characterized by illusion. A succession of instants of consciousness gives it an appearance of continuity. In its absolute form, mind is defined by three- characteristics: emptiness, clarity faculty of knowing everything). And spontaneous compassion.

Negative emotions or disturbing emotions (klesha in Sanskrit)

every mental event, born of attachment to the self, that troubles our minds, clouds it and makes us lose control of it. The most important of these are desire (greed), hatred, ignorance, pride and jealousy, and they are the causes of suffering.

Nirvana:

the end of ignorance or illusion and consequently of suffering. There are several levels of nirvana, depending on whether one adopts the teachings of the Lesser Vehicle or the Greater Vehicle.

Path:

The spiritual journey which allows us to liberate ourselves from the cycle of existence and then to attain Enlightenment.

Phenomena:

the things that appear to the consciousness by way of the senses and the mind.

Rebirth, reincarnation:

successive states experienced by the flux of consciousness, states punctuated by death, bardo and birth.

Samsara:

the cycle of existence, marked by suffering and frustration engendered by ignorance and the afflictive emotions it causes. It is only by knowing emptiness and thus dispelling all negative emotions that one my recognize the nature of mind and free oneself from samsara.

Self-ego:

despite the fact that we are a flux in constant transformation, interdependent with other living beings and with the world, we imagine that an unchanging entity exists within us which we need to protect and satisfy. Analysis of this "self" reveals that it is a fiction.

Suffering:

the first of the Four Noble Truths, which are: 1) the truth of suffering, which we need to recognize as omnipresent in the cycle of condition existences: 2) the truth of the causes of suffering - the negative emotions we need to eliminate; 3) the truth of the Path (spiritual development) that we must travel in order to achieve liberate: and 4) the truth of the cessation of suffering, resulting from spiritual training, or Enlightenment.

Sutra:

the words of the Buddha transcribed by his followers.

Truth - absolute or relative:

relative, or conventional, truth corresponds to our empirical experience of the world, and absolute truth to the result of final analysis, whereby phenomena are stripped of intrinsic existence.

Veils (two):

these obscure duality. The veil of disturbing emotions, the obstacle to liberation, is the effect of the poisons of ignorance, desire and hatred; the cognitive veil, the obstacle to omniscience, is ignorance of the ultimate reality of phenomena.

Vision, meditation, action:

vision is direct, nonconceptual understanding of the empty nature of all phenomena. Meditation is the action of familiarizing oneself with this emptiness, integrating it with one's mind-stream. Action is the altruistic behaviour that results.

Wisdoms (Five):

five aspects of Enlightenment: equalizing wisdom, mirror-like wisdom, discriminating wisdom, all-accomplishing wisdom, and wisdom of ultimate reality. These five wisdoms can only be actualized after the two veils which prevent Enlightenment have been dispersed; the veil of emotions that cloud perception and the veil masking knowledge of the ultimate nature of phenomena.