Infinite Life: Awakening to Bliss Within - Brossura

Thurman, Robert

Brossura

ISBN 10: 1594480699 ISBN 13: 9781594480690

Casa editrice: Penguin Publishing Group, 2005

Riassunto

Furnishing a life-changing series of lessons, a guide to understanding the human role in the universe and the path to true fulfillment introduces the Seven Virtues, which integrate the power of the body and mind to reduce negative consequences and enhance the positive. Reprint.

Su questo libro

L'autore:

Robert Thurman, a college professor and writer for 30 years, holds the first owed chair in Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies in America at Columbia University. A co-founder and the president of Tibet House New York, an organization dedicated to preserving the angered civilization of Tibet, he is the author of the national bestseller Inner Revolution. Thurman was the first Western Tibetan Buddhist monk and shares a close, 35-year friendship with the Dalai Lama.

Robert Thurman, a college professor and writer for 30 years, holds the first owed chair in Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies in America at Columbia University. A co-founder and the president of Tibet House New York, an organization dedicated to preserving the angered civilization of Tibet, he is the author of the national bestseller Inner Revolution. Thurman was the first Western Tibetan Buddhist monk and shares a close, 35-year friendship with the Dalai Lama.

Estratto. © Riproduzione autorizzata. Diritti riservati.:

Praise for Infinite Life

“Among the riches offered here is the insight that we do not become faceless blobs as we realize our selflessness and the infinite nature of our lives but true individualists. Liberated from a fear of death and isolation, confident that we are in a long-term relationship with life that can never be severed, we can begin to help ourselves and others to happiness.”

—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Thurman delivers life-changing lessons.”

—Snow Lion

Praise for Inner Revolution

“An inspiring guide to incorporating Buddhist wisdom into daily life. Thurman shows how self-examination, far from miring the seeker in navel-gazing, can lead to an expanded sense of connection with others.”

—USA Today

“This book, both testimonial and invitational, addresses in a compelling . . . argument the palpable desires of an exhausted culture eager to go on pilgrimage from ‘me’ to meaning.”

—The New York Times Book Review

“Part spiritual memoir, part philosophical treatise and part religious history, Thurman’s book is a passionate declaration of the possibilities of renewing the world.”

—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Thurman’s lucid teachings infuse the concepts of liberty and happiness with cosmic significance and do much to illuminate the reasons for Buddhism’s blooming in the West.”

—Booklist

Most Riverhead Books are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchases for sales promotions, premiums, fund-raising, or educational use. Special books, or book excerpts, can also be created to fit specific needs.

For details, write: Special Markets, The Berkley Publishing Group, 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

ALSO BY ROBERT THURMAN

Inner Revolution: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Real Happiness

The Holy Teaching of Vimalakīrti

The Central Philosophy of Tibet

The Tibetan Book of the Dead

Essential Tibetan Buddhism

Wisdom and Compassion: The Sacred Art of Tibet

(with Marylin Rhie)

Worlds of Transformation: Tibetan Art of Wisdom and Compassion

(with Marylin Rhie)

Mandala: The Architecture of Enlightenment

(with Denise Leidy)

Circling the Sacred Mountain

(with Tad Wise)

Acknowledgments

I deeply bow and sincerely thank all the many wonderful people who have inspired and helped me with this book. My ancestors, foremost my mother, Betsy, and father, Beverly, who gave me my body and cared for it with much love and generosity and intelligence. My spiritual ancestors in the Dharma, foremost the Buddha Shakyamuni and the great archangelic bodhisattvas, Manjushri, Tara, and company, the great sages and siddhas such as Nāgārajuna, Aryadeva, Asanga, Chandrakirti, Shantideva, and Dharmakirti, and the immortal lamas, such as Jey Tsong Khapa, who shaped my mind in ways I don’t remember in previous lives and ways I somewhat remember in this life, though there seems to be no limit to the growth of my appreciation. My root teachers, formal and informal, foremost His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the Venerable Geshe Wangyal, Kyabje Ling Rinpoche, Serkhong Tsenshap Rinpoche, Tara Tulku, Locho Rinpoche, and good friend Gelek Rinpoche, who continue to instruct me, even when it is only when I remember and belatedly understand some long-past teaching, the depth of which I had not fathomed—probably still don’t completely. My kind friends and capable students, such as Joel and Joe, Sarah, Bobo, Lava, and Louise, who always stir my brain and tongue to produce something more meaningful. My beloved close family, Nena, Ganden, Uma, Taya, Dechen, Mipam, Dash, Caroline, Max, Maya, and Levon, who don’t even imagine how much they help me just by being there. And all my Mother Sensitive Beings, who have cared for me in countless lives and continue to help me to someday come to share with them the nexus of infinite bliss I have sensed at the core of all, in timeless moments.

On the practical level, my helpful friend Diana, my agent, Lynn Nesbit, my editors, Amy Hertz and Marc Haeringer, my editorial assistant, MeiMei Fox, and all the kind professionals at Riverhead Books.

To all of you, my main thank-you is my effort to reflect your kindness to our Mother Beings by channeling these teachings that come from higher beings while trying to minimize the channel’s many imperfections. On top of that, I will not forget your kindness, and I say thank you, thank you, thank you!

To Nena

THE DALAI LAMA

Foreword

I am very happy to introduce my old friend Bob Thurman’s new book, the title of which he derives from the name of one of the buddhas, known in Tibetan as Tsepamey, meaning Infinite Life, which denotes the qualities that buddha principally embodies. He represents the Mahayana view that perfect enlightenment is not merely a peaceful state of cessation, almost like nonexistence. Buddhahood involves a state of complete awareness that finds blissful expression in a compassion that tirelessly embraces all living beings, manifesting whenever necessary to help them reach their own freedom from suffering.

Professor Thurman describes this vision in the context of the vast and extensive practices of bodhisattvas, the transcendent virtues or perfections. He also tackles an important ancillary aspect of this vision, the notion of the past and future lives of all beings. This is based on the Buddha’s explanation of the principle of cause and effect, which states that no thing arises without cause, there is no uncaused cause, and no cause loses its effect. Thus, we say that consciousness is always preceded by another consciousness, and always gives rise to further consciousness, much in the manner of the continuity of physical energy. The idea that we live many lives before and many after this present one, the quality of which is affected by our own conduct and motivation, provides the context for appreciating the great rarity and value of life as a free and fortunate human being. Moreover, understanding that all beings have already lived countless lives allows us to accept our interdependence and appreciate that at some time every being has been kind to us in some way.

Most spiritual traditions relate their systems of ethics to some sense of continuity of life after death because the potential consequence of our deeds is what gives meaning to our lives. Understanding actually how this continuity works is considered to be extremely difficult, something accessible only to the mind of a buddha. On the one hand, it is difficult for us to check the existence of past and future lives for ourselves. However, a clear distinction should be made between what is not found and what is found to be nonexistent by science. What science finds to be nonexistent, we should all accept as nonexistent, but what science merely does not find is a completely different matter. On the other hand, the Buddha stated clearly that our awareness of both the impact of our previous lives on this life and the consequences of our present deeds on our future lives is an essential way to motivate a proper sense of ethical maturity and spiritual development.

The question of past and future lives can be difficult for people brought up in the modern world, used to adopting a view that accords with what can be physically proven. But even modern science still does not know with certainty what the facts of consciousness actually are, how it functions, or what its complete nature is. Therefore, I am glad to see that Bob Thurman has addressed some of these issues straightforwardly in this book with his usual vigor and wit.

July 18, 2003

Introduction:
Invitation to the Infinite Life

I was twenty-one years old and a novice monk studying with the Reverend Geshe Wangyal at his tiny Lamaist Buddhist Monastery of America in Freewood Acres, New Jersey. The small settlement consisted of Mongolian, Russian, and Eastern European refugees living in tract houses in the Jersey Pine Barrens. At around 10:15 on a spring morning, I was walking along East Second Street to a corner store up on Route 9, sent to buy a quart of milk for midmorning tea. I was moving briskly west, passing on my left a faded white picket fence that surrounded a small house. As I crossed the driveway, something amazing happened to me.

I experienced a disorienting sensation that I can only describe as the feeling of a push-pressure on my tailbone suddenly dislodging itself. The pressure gone, I immediately saw that I had always been feeling as if I were being pushed along from behind toward my destination, not only to the grocery store on Route 9 but to my destiny in life, to the future in general. The change in sensation gave me a pronounced feeling of relief, a sense of release. I became vividly self-aware of my posture—my brow had been clenched slightly, shoulders hunched up, torso leaning forward, pelvis retracted, and lower back arched. I spontaneously slowed my pace and straightened up my body. A ripple of relaxation moved down my frame, and I felt buoyed by the released momentum.

Looking around me as if for the first time, I noticed the flowers planted beyond the fence I had just walked past, the broader street on my right, and the blue sky filled with fluffy clouds. Then I became aware of a deeper layer of thoughts in my mind, well beneath my thinking about getting to the store, getting the milk, and getting back to Geshe-la and his guests to serve the tea. These deeper thoughts had been circling intently in my head around the Buddhist concept of “beginninglessness.” I had first encountered the notion as Geshe-la read to me the Tibetan translation of Nāgārajuna’s “Friendly Letter” to the South Indian King Udayi of the Shatavahana Dynasty (circa second century CE). What a funny expression, I’d thought, to talk of “from the beginninglessness.” In Western books, “in the beginning” is all we ever hear about. What was this “beginninglessness,” I wondered?

All at once, I grasped the concept with full clarity. “Aha!” I thought, “when we say ‘in the beginning,’ we implicitly assume that there is an absolute beginning behind us in time, as if our being and doings were pushing off from a back boundary. I have been driven by that sense of push my whole life, without even realizing it. Amazing! But if life is indeed beginningless, this means that my past has, in fact, been infinite. The future will be too. So there is no big rush to get somewhere. I am mistaken in my compulsion. I can take my time, and take more care, to make sure to go where I want to go. What a thrill! A bit of release, a taste of freedom, no more involuntary pressure—so this is beginninglessness.”

I was delighted to begin to understand the Buddhist world I was so drawn to, and amazed to actually feel that understanding in my body. I experienced a physical release from a hitherto unrecognized but now obviously bothersome pressure. Returning to the business of the moment, I practically skipped to the store, each step fresh and spontaneous.

A weight was lifted from my body, a clamp removed from my heart. I had begun to break free from my inherited life of bondage to enter a new life unbound, an infinite life.

A Blissful Vacation

Is it not everyone’s deepest wish to be profoundly and securely happy, joyfully and lovingly able to share that happiness with friends and neighbors as well as all the world’s people and animals? To feel an inner bliss that does not depend on this or that circumstance, fortune, or success, but springs from deep within our hearts, from a place of fundamental well-being? To experience a grounding sense of the deep goodness of reality, which fills us with an unconditional joy that energizes our lives? I believe it is. Yet our culture constantly tells us that such joy is not possible, even that it is suspect. It tells us that the world is evil or inadequate and needs fixing. It tells us to think that we need this or that thing or relationship or leader or accomplishment in order to experience even a moment of contentment. They say that deep, unconditional happiness is not just unrealistic, but illegal, immoral, and unhealthy.

Often Buddhist teachings—the Dharma bequeathed to us by so many enlightened ones, which as I grow older more and more has a lifesaving effect on me every day—are misunderstood. They are falsely taught as if the Buddha agreed with all these naysayers, as if he were in fact the ultimate naysayer, the all-time champion of killjoys. “Life is suffering,” he seems to have said, “so better to escape from it.” How gloomy and sad!

But the truth is, the Buddha definitely did not condemn us to the unhappiness that many conventional societies and cultures, including our own, make us feel is inevitable. On the contrary, he discovered and proclaimed that total freedom from suffering—exquisite, enduring joy—is extremely possible for every sensitive being. It is only the unenlightened, self-centered, and self-constricted being who is temporarily incapable of real happiness. Most of us have a strong yet unwarranted sense of having a fixed, unchanging, limited “self” that is totally separate from all other beings. This combines with our narrow view that our existence is random and terminal; it only starts when we are born and ends abruptly when we die. Fixed and alienated, random and terminal—together these form a vicious combination. In the end, we are left feeling bereft and slightly depressed, living a life seeming to be utterly devoid of meaning. I call this “terminal living.”

We can free ourselves from such a terminal existence simply by becoming aware of our misconceptions and their impact on our way of being. Once we have accepted the fact that we ourselves may be the main cause of our own unhappiness, we become determined to understand the problem fully and to solve it as soon as possible. With simple guidance, we easily discover the limiting force to be our own misunderstanding of the reality of the world and of ourselves. The first step toward true contentment lies in confronting the fundamental problem of our rigid self-sense. When we look carefully for our “self,” we cannot find it. We discover the error that is the cause of our problem, and we begin to grasp the concepts of selflessness, interconnectedness to others, and infinite life. Now we can set ourselves free to experience the full satisfaction with ourselves, others, and our world that Buddhists call “enlightenment” or “awakening.”

The great kindness of the Buddha (and many other enlightened beings who have shared their teachings with us) is that he created a method whereby we can use reason to get ourselves away from the imprisoning “self.” That is why we sing Buddha’s praises. He has invited us to join a lifelong blissful vacation from our domineering selves.

I began studying Buddhism forty years ago and became a monk precisely to go on a blissful vacation. Sometimes I wish I had spent these many years on such a retreat. Maybe after forty years, I would have actually achieved something. Who k...

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Penguin Publishing Group
• Data di pubblicazione: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1594480699
• ISBN 13: 9781594480690
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 336