3 Poisons of Buddhism

This week we had the honor of having John Daishin Buksbazen from the Zen Center of Los Angeles speak about the 3 poisons in Buddhism: greed, anger, and ignorance. We all suffer for one reason or another. In Buddhism, it is believed that suffering comes from these three poisons. Daishin elaborated on these three poisons and opened the discussion up to questions.

Greed can be seen as desire. "I want" the new iPhone 5, when it comes out. It can also be seen as clinging -- clinging to youth, for example. Anger is aversion. Daishin spoke about a pattern he noticed: people seem to get angry about the weather often. Sometimes it is too cold and sometimes it is too warm. Why is this? It was brought up in small-group discussions that perhaps all of this anger stems from the fact that we are not in control of everything. The last poison is ignorance, or ignore-ance. We choose to ignore feelings that make us unhappy. "I'm just not going to think about it" is a very common mantra when it comes to embarrassing moments or uncomfortable experiences.

In order to overcome these three poisons, Daishin spoke of the act of sitting (meditation). Just as a dirty glass of water becomes clear after settling, the human mind can reach purification after sitting. He proposed that in order to awaken ourselves to the truth and therefore be free of suffering and poisons, we need to look inside of ourselves via sitting.

Daishin also mentioned that the Buddha proposed an 8-fold-path to lead anyone who wants to out of these 3 poisons. To read more about the 8-fold-path, go to: http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma14/budcourse.html and click on the "Noble Eightfold Path".

You can read more about the Zen Center of Los Angeles at: www.zcla.org