Start Where You Are

“When you begin to touch your heart or let your heart be touched, you begin to discover that it's bottomless, that it doesn't have any resolution, that this heart is huge, vast, and limitless. You begin to discover how much warmth and gentleness is there, as well as how much space.”
― Pema Chödrön, Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living

“I’d like to encourage us all to lighten up, to practice with a lot of gentleness.”
― Pema Chödrön

I certainly was no "newbie" to meditation and spiritual practice back in 2006.

I was sixty years old, I had practiced daily meditation for large swathes of time over the course of 35 years.  I had also taken formal training vows, lived in several spiritual communities, and attended a number of intensive retreats with well known teachers.  

 

And yet...

 

Although I had had a number of peak experiences over the years -- on and off the zafu -- little did I know that my mind was about to be blown once again.  

I had never heard of Pema Chodron when a friend handed me a paperback copy of Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living that day.  This septuagenarian American female monk of the Tibetan Buddhist Tradition had me hooked with the very first sentence of the Preface:

"THIS BOOK IS ABOUT AWAKENING THE HEART."

The Heart!!??

 

As a inveterate bookworm, my introduction to Zen had been through Alan Watts, D.T Suzuki, and Shunryu Suzuki, back in the early 1970's.  It was pretty heady stuff.  Like many, I'd come to see the spiritual path as a matter of mind over matter.  It was all about Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, right?  

 

OMG! Awakening the Heart!? 

 

Duh.  

 

Something deep within me stirred.

Although I had read her teacher Chogyam Trungpa's classic works as a young man, and had spent a bit of time with Tibetan Buddhist communities in Madison WI and Woodstock NY over the years, my primary focus had never turned to Tibetan teachings and practices.  To be honest, after being drawn to the simple aesthetic of Zen, I was pretty turned off by the somewhat cluttered and gaudy opulence of Tibetan Buddhist Temples -- and by the notion of "guru-worship." The relative simplicity of the American incarnations of both Zen and Theravada seemed much more in tune with my own, working-class, moderately Marxist, sensibilities.

Yet, as I poured through Start Where You Are that day, I was transfixed.   Pema Chodron offered a fresh, accessible, down to earth presentation of the traditional Lojong Teachings of Tibetan Buddhism.  Chapter by chapter, her teachings helped me to establish a new and deeper relationships to the Dharma, to Practice -- and to my life.   

 

Although many of the concepts were familiar, something deep inside me shifted. 

Starting Where I Was

I had always considered myself a pretty compassionate dude.   I was dedicated to service.  I had taught school, worked with troubled youth, been a peace and social justice activist, a union activist, a mediator.  The four Bodhisattva Vows had been the foundation of my personal practice for decades.  I thought I was one of the "good guys."

 

Yet, I had also struggled through a series of severe burnouts all through my life.  Although the reality of our Essential Oneness was part of my own experience, it wasn't enough.  I really didn't have a clue about navigating my way through life in a grounded, balanced, and sustainable way.  

 

Sure. I could "be there" for others to a certain extent.  But, I was blind to the various deep-set patterns that prevented me from truly being there for myself. Again and again, this unexplored conditioning dictated the trajectory of my life and sent me into descending spirals of anxiety and depression.  This prevented me from being there for anybody in a consistent and sustainable way.
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Know What?

“Letting there be room for not knowing is the most important thing of all.  

― Pema Chödrön

 

"I vow to live a life of Not-knowing, 

giving up fixed ideas about myself and the universe."

-- The First Tenet of the Zen Peacemakers

 

 

The Summer of '62

 

" I know not, your majesty." -- Bodhidharma

Over the years, the assumption that I absolutely understand what is going on, and know exactly what to do about it, has tripped me up -- a lot.  

 

Even worse, the assumption that I know exactly what is going on and what someone else should to do about it, has wrecked havoc.

 

Assumptions, especially the one's buried in our subconscious belief structures, can cause a lot of unnecessary suffering.

 

My first boss, Charlie Winchester, foreman of the maintenance department at a small factory in a small town north of Chicago, had, perhaps, a less delicate way of making the point.  The memory brings a smile and warm glow to my heart.

In the summer of 1962, I was able to get a relatively good paying union job at the factory where my dad worked.  At that point in my life, I was drawn to become a public school teacher.  So, it was time.  

 

I couldn't rely on family wealth.  I had to start saving money for the college education that would, perhaps, propel me up a notch in social status, if not in income.  

 
Charlie was a kind and able mentor.  His spirit pervaded the maintenance crew.  During the seven summers I worked there, I was well supported by a small team of guys willing to show "the kid" the ropes.  They taught me a lot about how things work -- on many levels.

One particular lesson emerged when Charlie came around the corner to find me standing in front of a piece of production machinery.  I'd been trusted to replace the belt that connected it's electric motor to the drill assembly.  I assumed it would be a simple repair. 

 

It wasn't.

Belching smoke, the entire machine was lurching erratically and making threatening noises.  As soon as I saw him, I began to explain what I had done and why.  Interrupting me mid-sentence, he walked past me to shut the machine down. (Duh!) 

 

Then, with the ever-present cigar stub clenched in his smile,  Charlie took a pencil and a small spiral bound notepad from the plastic pencil holder that always rode in his front shirt pocket.  He opened the pad to a blank page, and then, in large, capital letters, he wrote the word "ASSUME."

"You know what happens when you assume?" he asked.
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All You Need Is Love

 

"Hatred never ceases by hatred. It is healed by love alone. 
This is the ancient and eternal law."

-- Buddha

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul

and with all your strength and with all your mind. 
Love your neighbor as yourself.”

--  Jesus of Nazareth

As the candy-coated, commercialized carnival of Valentine's Day fades in the rear view mirror, I still find myself musing about True Love. 

I don't know how it plays out in other languages, but it seems to me that in English the word "love" is astonishingly imprecise.   

The very same word is used for both the ultimate self-sacrifice that Jesus spoke of when he proclaimed, "Greater love hath no man than to lay down his life...,"AND the most possessive and jealous form of desirous, grasping imaginable.  The very same word, love, casts a net that includes both the enlightened activity of the Bodhisattva Green Tara -- and the painful, jealous flailing of folks ensnared by the Green Eyed Monster!

Yet, we have it on "good authority" (see introductory quotes above) that the key to the Real Deal is Love.  So, what does the word "love" really mean? 

Mean?

Yikes.  Here we go again: What does the word "mean" really mean?  

Its "meaning" runs the gamut from ultimate significance and purpose, to simply being nasty!?  It reaches from the perfection of Aristotle's (and Buddha's) Golden Mean to the obnoxious underwater antics of the Blue Meanies.!?

WTF?

It's Only Words...

Love? Meaning? 

 

These words certainly seem important.   Conditioned as we are in a culture that stresses the importance of conceptual thought, much of our awareness is tied up in the stream of words that dominate our attention.  Yet using these word to get at the Truth can be problematic, no?  Words can be quite sloppy. Their meanings even paradoxical.  Perhaps, words are not always that useful in our quest for fundamental clarity.

The Zen tradition points this out.  Repeatedly. 

During a teisho in sesshin years ago at the Rochester Zen Center, Bodhin Kjolhede Sensei asserted, "Every time I open my mouth, I'm lying!"  He had obviously -- and very passionately -- just opened his mouth.  

 

I sat there bemused. 

Was Sensei telling the truth in that assertion -- or was he lying?
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In It for the Long Haul

"As the mind becomes a little more quiet the sacredness of everything 

within and without becomes clear to us.”

-- Zen Teacher Norman Fischer

 

 “Be still.  Stillness reveals the secrets of eternity.
When there is silence one finds the anchor of the universe within oneself.”
― Lao Tzu

In the midst of the scurry of the past couple of weeks, I was especially aware of how precious each morning's meditation was to me.  

 

Sitting here at this aging MacBook Pro, mindful of my breath and body, relaxing into the space that surrounds these sensations, I come to rest in this moment's open awareness.  

 

Sitting Still, torso erect, feet firmly planted on the floor, breathing long and slow,  my belly, then rib cage, expand. Pausing, releasing, they contract. 

 

Eyes see.  Ears hear.  Thoughts emerge.  Images emerge.

 

In my mind's eye, I can see light at the end of the tunnel.  I am 78 years old, after all.  In the long haul of human of human life, I'm probably somewhere in the final lap.

 

Taking another full, conscious breath, continuing to relax and open, the tunnel and the light dissolve into the clear, luminous brilliance that is beyond endings and beginnings. I'm at peace at hOMe Sweet OM.  

 

Home is where the Heart is.

 

Touching Stillness, even for a few brief moments, is like feeling the warm glow of a fireplace, snuggling at home on a snowy evening peering through the window at the moon.  Paradoxically, Touching Stillness also like sipping clear, crisp spring water on a steamy summer day.  In Stillness, a Presence emerges.  In a silent whisper, it sings of the Ineffable, that infinite space where the fundamentally mysterious and completely ordinary meet to form the fabric of Life itself.  

Simply Sitting Still

 

Although I use a variety of meditation techniques, have an active prayer life, and practice a set of daily spiritual rituals, the foundation of my personal practice for decades has been shikantaza.  I simple sit still with what Zen teacher Norman Fischer calls "the basic feeling of being alive."  Seated erect, my attention is allowed to rest in the moment to moment experience of my breath and body.  Simply Sitting Still, I relax into the embrace in the expansive spaciousness of what contemporary spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle calls the Eternal Now.

 

Of course, this is often easier said than done.  It takes Practice.

Conditioned as we are in this society, our attention is usually drawn into the thoughts and images and memories and daydreams cascading through our mind.  Rather than sitting still, observing the experience of the present moment with a relaxed open gaze, we find ourselves lost in thoughts and images of the future or the past.  (My "go to patterns" often have included reliving scenes of unsatisfactory events, either fretting or rewriting those scenes to put myself in a better light -- or fretting about fear-based worst case scenarios of future events. Oy ve. LOL )

 

This happens, again and again and again.  

Yet, the moment we simply notice this, a moment of Practice emerges.  If that noticing is clear, open, calm, and non-judgmental, we have engaged Mindfulness, a qualitatively different mode of consciousness.  Mindfulness becomes the Gateless Gate to Pure Awareness.  

 

As Practice deepens, there are times that Reality Asserts Itself.  In a flash, we are Present in a qualitatively different way -- and we know it.  Ultimately, we come home to our True Nature.  We realize that that we are all inseparable from the Universe, embraced by a mysterious, boundless, Love.  This Sacred Unity is the source and the destination of all that exists and could ever be.

 

At times, it is just that simple.  Yet, simple doesn't necessarily mean easy.

Throughout our lives, we have developed complexes of thoughts and emotions that have a great deal of power over us.  They arise, unbidden, to dominate our attention.  Without Practice, we are unconsciously propelled into each moment by our past, again and again. 

 

We are, literally, creatures of habit. Much of who we are at any one moment, the way we "see" and react to our experience, is primarily a result of our conditioning.  Most of the time, we don't choose to think what we are thinking or to feel what we are feeling.  It just bubbles up from our subconscious.  

 

Without Practice, without a conscious commitment to put in the time and effort to discover who we really are, we are held in bondage by our past.  Without Practice, moment to moment, who we perceive ourselves to be, is mostly just a bad habit.  We are likely to continue to create a future that contains the same old, same old, suffering that characterizes much of the human condition.   

 

Thankfully, there is Practice.

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