Josh Bartok - Daily Doses of Wisdom: A Year of Buddhist Inspiration

DAILY DOSES OF WISDOM

Wisdom Publications

199 Elm Street

Somerville, MA 02144 USA

www.wisdompubs.org

2013 Josh Bartok

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photography, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system or technologies now known or later developed, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Daily doses of wisdom : a year of Buddhist inspiration / edited by Josh Bartok.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 1-61429-111-X (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Buddhist devotional calendars. 2. Buddhist meditations. I. Bartok, Josh, editor of compilation.

BQ5579.D33 2013

294.34432dc22

2013004725

ISBN 978-1-61429-111-4 eBook ISBN 978-1-61429-132-9

17 16 15 14 13 5 4 3 2 1

Cover design by Phil Pascuzzo. Interior design by Gopa&Ted2, Inc.

Set in Mr. Eaves San OT 12/16.2.

Wisdom Publications books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

Printed in the United States of America.

This book was produced with environmental mindfulness. We have elected to print this title on 30% PCW recycled paper. As a result, we have saved the following resources: 24 trees, 11 million BTUs of energy, 2,077 lbs. of greenhouse gases, 11,262 gallons of water, and 753 lbs. of solid waste. For more information, please visit our website, www.wisdompubs.org. This paper is also FSC certified. For more information, please visit www.fscus.org.

For Liz Roemer,

with love and gratitude.

Publishers Acknowledgment

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous contribution of the Hershey Family Foundation toward the publication of this book.

Table of Contents

Shakyamuni Buddha is often called the Great Physician, and the liberating medicine he offers us is his teaching. Similarly, the bodhisattva of compassion holds out a medicine jar; she responds with breaking heart to the cries of the world by dispensing the healing balm of Dharma. How lucky are we all to be under the care of such transcendently skilled healthcare professionals! Steeped in luck, as the poet Seamus Heaney says, steeped, steeped, steeped in luck.

For each of the 365 entries here, we can imagine the Buddha himself, Guanyin herself, lovingly offering us a single luminous spoonful of wisdomthe exact dose we need to meet our day a little more choicefully, to take one step closer to being the person we aspire to be, to find just a little more freedom right here amid the fires of being human. You might want to receive this treatment before you sit down to meditate or as you stand up from your cushion, before you go to sleep or right after you wake up. Indeed, there is no wrong time for the Dharma and no wrong amounttruly the Dharma is, as the Buddha says, good in the beginning, good in the middle, and good in the end.

Please enjoy Daily Doses of Wisdomlet this book and the teachings in it be part of the way you appreciate your life and care for all beings.

The process of bringing any book into being makes clear just how interdependently connected we all areand how much more so a book like this, distilled from so many sources, so many teachers, so many bodhisattvas. Each of Wisdoms authors and all of Wisdoms books have become teachers to me, companions and trusted friends to me on my own Dharma pathand I offer a deep bow to each of you. After almost thirteen years editing Dharma books for Wisdom Publications, I dont really feel I can adequately express the depth of appreciation for this great gift.

Even so: Tim McNeill, Wisdoms publisherthank you for this opportunity, thank you for your trust and support these many years, and thank you for sustaining Wisdom for so long in the service of so many. David Kittelstrom, thanks for first opening the door for me. I also especially want to thank Laura Cunninghamthank you for doing so much so cheerfully for this book (and many others!). I want to offer appreciation as well to the incomparable Phil Pascuzzo for the magnificently perfect cover design, and Gopa&Ted2 for yet another lovely interior. And finally, I offer thanks also to all my colleagues at Wisdompresent and former (Im looking at you, Rod Meade Sperry!)who are working to save all beings, one great Dharma book at a time.

Borrowing words from Zen Master Dogen, let me conclude by saying this: Please treasure yourself.

JOSH BARTOK,
Greater Boston Zen Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts

by Lama Zopa Rinpoche, in How to Be Happy

How can you develop compassion for someone who hates you?

First of all, you have to see that the person is completely overwhelmed by ignorance, anger, and the dissatisfied mind of desire. It is important to immediately recall that the person has no freedom at all but is completely overwhelmed, almost possessed, by delusionsjust as Tibet was overwhelmed and possessed by the Chinese. The person who hates you is surely overwhelmed by not just one delusion but many.

Rather than thinking that the person is the same as their anger, is one with their angerwhich is not the realityyou have to see that the person and their delusion, their anger, are separate. Even if the person hallucinates they are one with their anger, they are not. Whats more, thinking that they are one with their angerrather than sufferingly afflicted by it themselveswill only make you more upset. Whereas if you think that the person and their anger are different, as they are indeed different in reality, then there is some space in your mind for compassion to arise.

Even if this person who hates you experiences pleasure in hating you, their pleasure is really suffering that is just appearing as pleasure. The person who hates you may call their hatred pleasure, but it is still only suffering. It is just a question of whether the person notices that. This is the second reason why the person who hates you is an object of compassion.

The third reason is that he or she, just like you, also experiences the suffering of sufferingwhich means rebirth, old age, sickness, death, meeting undesirable objects, separating from desirable ones, and all the other countless problems of life. How painful for that person!

On top of all these sufferings, out of delusion the person who hates you creates the karma to suffer yet moreto be born yet again into the suffering realms.

And then, if you do not practice patience in response to that anger, do not cultivate compassion for this suffering being, and instead return anger to that person, by requiting that anger, you are pushing that suffering being toward still more harming karma. You are throwing him or her over the precipice into the unimaginable suffering of the lower realms.

When you reflect on all this, there is no real choice: you have to feel compassion for each personeven for the one who appears to you as an enemy!

by B. Alan Wallace, in The Attention Revolution

The Vajra Essence emphasizes above all that there is no consistency in the specific experiences from one individual to the next. Everyones mind is so unimaginably complex that there is no way to predict with confidence the types of experiences each person will experience. Here is a list of just some of the kinds of meditative experiences that may arise during this training, especially when it is pursued in solitude for many hours each day, for months on end: