But then the Japanese came down the Malay Peninsula, and all the artillery was useless. It was pointed in the wrong direction. So you need to develop an all-around view of your mind, and have a good range of techniques at your disposal. As the Buddha said, there are essentially two main techniques. One is just watching a particular cause of stress.
The British were sure the Japanese were going to come via the ocean, so they pointed all their guns out toward the ocean and set them in concrete. Then, of course, the Japanese came down the Malay Peninsula from behind the guns. The guns couldn't be turned around, and that was it. If you just hope that one technique of noting or one technique ...
And sure enough, the Japanese came down the Malay peninsula, and the cannons were useless. So don't let yourself be stuck with cannons pointing in just one direction. You've got four directions that you've got to watch out for: learning how to prevent unskillful habits or unskillful qualities from arising, and if they have arisen ...
It makes it easier to deal with the ups and downs as they come. You don't have to go up with the ups, or down with the downs. You learn how to keep the mind on an even keel. Like that story they tell of, I think he was a Korean monk or a Japanese monk, accused by a woman of getting her pregnant. When the accusations came, he said, "Is that ...
the Japanese were going to come from the sea, so they pointed the cannons out to the sea ahd set them in concrete. But it turned out that the Japanese came by land, down the Malay peninsula. The cannons were useless. In other words, your deflements, once they see you doing one thing all the time, will fnd some other angle to attack you from.
when we compare, say, Japanese Buddhism, Tibetan, and Thai, and for the variety of social roles to which many women Buddhists in different countries have found themselves relegated. The true practice of Buddhism, though, has always been counter-cultural, even in nominally Buddhist societies. Society's main aim, no matter where, is its own ...
Singapore. They thought that if the Japanese attacked Singapore, they would come by sea, so they set the cannons in concrete pointed out to the sea. And then it turned out the Japanese came down the Malay Peninsula and the cannons were useless. We're working on concentration. You're trying to bring your awareness to fill
then the Japanese came down the Malay Peninsula and the cannons were useless. All that money, all that time spent on the cannons that could have been spent for better defense, just went to waste. In the same way, a lot of our thoughts and worries about the future are a waste.
The Japanese Zen master Dogen had a phrase for this; he called it "de-thinking thinking": the questions you ask that take apart your assumptions. He has a nice passage where he says, "Is the body sitting in the mind, or is the mind sitting in the body?", "Is the sitting sitting in the sitting?" ...
And even though there's that popular conception of Theravada as a selfish path, as someone who had studied Buddhism both in Japan and in Thailand once said, you won't find that Thai people are any more selfish than Japanese people. In fact, it can often be the other way around. The example of the Buddha in the Pali Canon is not a selfish ...
