Argh!!

In 2012, I began this blog to share some of my experiences as a long-time student of mindfulness, meditation, and spiritual practice.  For several years, one day a week I would spend as long as it took to sit at this same MacBook Pro to write, post, and share these musings.  Over the course of time I generated a couple of hundred weekly posts.  

 

Then, at a certain point, life being life, things shifted.  On one level, it seemed I had covered most of the "important points." I had spent hours and hours sharing the experiences, understandings, and practices that had brought my life into deeper harmony with the Sacred.

 

When friends suggested I compile the posts into a book, I thought "no way." It seemed too daunting.  My time and energy were already invested in a full and busy life. But, I did begin going back over earlier posts, week by week, looking back at what I'd posted that particular week in the past.

 

That process blew my mind.  I was often amazed at how helpful re-reading a post was to me!   Looking back, I saw patterns and cycles play themselves out through the seasons.  

 

At times, I recognized a deepening of my own understanding.  At times, I experienced a greater appreciation of the challenges and difficulties of being human.  The following post, originally published in 2013, did both.  Here is an updated and revised version.  I hope you, too, find it helpful.

 

Argh!!

Originally posted July 26, 2013.  Revised.

“We can suppress anger and aggression or act it out,

 either way making things worse for ourselves and others.

Or we can practice patience: wait,

experience the anger and investigate its nature. ”
---Pema Chodron

“Just because anger or hate is present does not
mean that the capacity to love and accept
is not there; love is always with you.”

---Thich Nhat Hanh

The Universe is exquisite.  

Once you hitch your wagon to Practice and roll out, you are going to get the lessons along the way that are needed to take you deeper --whether you like it or not!  

 

This might be especially true if you have the unbridled chutzpah to publicly ramble on about your experiences. 

More than once here in this blog, I've spent time presenting the notion that simply "cutting loose of the storyline," is an immediate fix to disturbing emotions.  When we have enough presence of mind to refocus our attention from the realm of discursive thought to explore what is going on in our breath, body, and heart, sometimes hell dissolves and heaven is revealed in the blink of an eye.  (See Your Courtesy Wake Up Call: Once Upon a Time...)   

The operative word here is -- sometimes.

As the years roll by and the Practice deepens, I have experienced such an instantaneous transformation quite often.  Yet, during the last past week, Life interjected a pretty dramatic bevy of upset apple carts and broohahas into the Grand Mix.  It seems a bit of Karmic Comeuppance was necessary.  Hopefully, getting my tail burned with my own anger will burnish my humility and compassion a bit.  It's certainly been enough to remind me that it can take a lot of work and a whole lot longer than a "blink of an eye" to learn something from a situation -- and regain a sense of wonder about it all.  

The lesson?  

Being a calm and kind, clear and compassionate, human being is NOT that easy.  It is a daunting discipline.  It takes commitment, courage, patience, skill, time and effort.  It takes Practice.

Then and Now

Long ago, I had an extremely bad temper.  Having grown up in the midst of a lot of anger and physical violence, I would react to things in my world with bursts of violent emotions -- and violent behavior.  Throughout childhood, I could fly into a rage and smash things and strike out with the worst of them.  My kid brother and I fought like cats and dogs.  This lasted into my young adulthood. Our last furniture breaking brawl took place when I was in college.  

It would still take years to quell those patterns.

Perhaps, the deepest gratitude that I have to the Practice is that I am no longer likely to get extremely angry.  Annoyance and irritation usually is about as bad as it gets.  I'm grateful that it usually doesn't spill out of my mouth without immediate recognition and re-calibration.

Yet, life being life, usually doesn't mean never.  This weekend, I hit a deep pool of anger for the first time in quite awhile.  I was angry.  Really angry.  Thankfully, after launching a few unkind words, I withdrew.  ( I wish I had withdrawn before I launched those misguided missles, but, obviously there were deeper lessons to be learned.)
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A Love Affair

“When you open yourself to the continually changing, impermanent, dynamic nature of your own being and of reality, you increase your capacity to love and care about other people and your capacity to not be afraid. You're able to keep your eyes open, your heart open, and your mind open. "

― Pema Chödrön,  Practicing Peace in Times of War

"The difference between self-love and love of others is very small, 
once we really understand.”
― Norman Fischer, Training in Compassion: 

Zen Teachings on the Practice of Lojong

 

First: The Good News.

 

As I've mentioned before, here and elsewhere, I think the Hippies actually had it right.  It IS all about Peace, Love, and Freedom.

In the Collective Kensho of that era, many of us were catapulted to the mountain top.  Whether we were deeply touched by the heart and soul of the civil rights and antiwar movements or the direct impact of psychedelics, whether we were zapped by the teachings of one of the Asian teachers who came to the West or by the communal baring of souls (and bodies) at Woodstock or elsewhere, our hearts were opened and our minds were blown.  

 

The Spirit was upon the land. 

 

In that era, many of us glimpsed directly, if only for a moment or two, the Real Deal.  We realized that not only are we all in this together, we are all this -- together.  In those days, we saw clearly that on the most fundamental level we were inseparable from all that has been, is, and can possibly be.  We saw that each of us were emanations of the One Love that permeates and transcends the Universe.  

 

We knew that Love was the answer.

And Then...

 

As time went on, it became quite clear that seeing it -- and even believing in it -- isn't enough.  The task of freeing the mind from it's deeply conditioned patterns, the process of opening the heart to actually BE a peaceful and loving human, is no mean feat.  It takes deep commitment, effort, discipline, courage, skill, time,  --  and patience.

It takes Practice.

In the Buddhist, Hindu, and Taoist worlds the term "Love" isn't generally used to refer to the Ultimate State of Being. They approach the Ineffable Oneness with different concepts and understandings. I think that is actually helpful to us Westerners.  We are incredibly sloppy with the word love.  The word 'love" has a wide range of meanings.

In English, love could be the word that attempts to describe the spiritual glow that emerges from the ethereal domain of unconditional, unselfish agape on the one hand.  Or, just as readily, the word love is used to indicate the self-absorbed attachment to the fiery emotion that erupts from the nether realms of green eyed monsters and wrathful, jealous gods.   

It seems pretty clear that as Jesus and Buddha used the word,  Frankie and Johnny were not Lovers. right?  

So, what's the deal? 

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Outside the Box

 "Around us, life bursts with miracles--a glass of water, a ray of sunshine, a leaf, a caterpillar, a flower, laughter, raindrops. If you live in awareness, it is easy to see miracles everywhere. " 

-- Thich Nhat Hanh

“You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather."

 -- Pema Chodron ​

  

It felt really good to wake up, refreshed, from a rainy day​, late afternoon nap​. 

As I rolled out of bed, my feet knew. I was headed outside. 

Without a moment's hesitation, I bundled up. (the temp was 49 degrees) and walked out onto High Street.

I had fallen asleep to ​peals of thunder and heavy rain. As I slept, the storm had exited stage right. In its wake, scattered gray black clouds scurried through an iridescent pale blue sky. The twilight glowed beyond the silhouetted trees and buildings as I headed south. Just a hint of sunset orange lingered on the horizon. 
     
Over the years, twilight walks have often brought with them a deep sense of connection to a vast and mysterious Presence. At these times, the eyes and mind are no longer constrained by the somewhat illusionary notion of objective clarity. Venturing outside as the sun's light recedes, I've often been amazed -- and grateful -- that the ethereal energy permeating reality is so readily accessible. In the twilight, the spiritual dimension of life glows, sometimes more brightly than in the brilliance of the sun at high noon. I blame that on the Practice.

Sometimes, all I have to do is remember to step "outside the box."

As I strolled down High Street, I quickly sensed that the numinous twilight sky to the south and west was whispering "ya gotta get a better a look at me!" I headed for the open sky -- at least as it presents itself near the center of town.  As I emerged from the line of tall trees and grand two story homes, the western sky opened a bit and the silhouette of Greenfield's 19th century public library acted as a visual portal to a realm where magic and mystery had not been squeezed out of our collective consciousness quite as thoroughly.  

Throughout most of its time on the planet, our species had communed with unseen energies. Myriad beings, sky gods and earth goddesses, devas and demons, fairies, the spirits of ancestors, and throngs of "other wordly"beings were woven into the fabric of daily life.  As my heart and mind opened more fully to that dimension, I could feel a knowing beyond the limitations of my rational mind.  Moment by moment, my feet and belly led.  I followed. They knew exactly where I was headed.

Of course, in Greenfield, the shortest distance between two points usually -- isn't. It exists only in our minds.  On the ground, right angles abound.  Hypoteni -- squared and otherwise -- are quite rare. Yet, in a matter of minutes, I had zigged and zagged several blocks, climbed four flights of stairs, and was perched on the top floor of the downtown parking garage. 

I wasn't disappointed.  With trees and buildings now below me, I'd accessed the Boundless Sky. Immensity embraced me. Enchantment was in the air.

Time for a Good Cry?

 

“Crying is one of the highest devotional songs. One who knows crying, knows spiritual practice. If you can cry with a pure heart, nothing else compares to such a prayer.  Crying includes all the principles of Yoga.”

― Swami Kripalvanandji

“In the Lakota/Sioux tradition, a person who is grieving is considered 

most Wakan, most holy."

― Tara Brach,

True Refuge: Finding Peace and Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart 

Emmett Kelly 1898 - 1979

 

Some time ago, I came across the quote by Swami Kripalvanandji cited above.  Following my intuition, I immediately emailed it to a dear friend who was having a rough time.

She called me later to tell me it helped -- a lot.  After reading it, she immediately headed out to her garden to have a good cry.  She said it was exactly what she needed. 

Big Boys (Girls) Don't Cry

 

It seems that most of us have learned to avoid crying like the plague.  Widely viewed in our society as a sign of unacceptable weakness and frailty, we are conditioned to keep a stiff upper lip.  Hardening our hearts, we learn to steel ourselves against this natural expression of human feeling.  Although this conditioning is considered to be a "male," thing, most of the women I know often fight back their tears as well.  (Strain's of the Four Seasons singing "Big Girls Don't Cry-yay-yay"just ran through my inner iPod)

Hmmmm.  Maybe I shouldn't plunge ahead here.  I might get in trouble... 

 

Although I'm an amateur and would never charge a fee for just sitting still and comparing notes with folks on our experiences, I might get sued by the Commercial Mindfulness $$$ Cartel.  Although the pro's may give a nod to Buddha's first noble truth, acknowledging that suffering is baked into the human condition, they tend to skip right ahead to Buddha's Third Noble Truth.  

 

The Cessation of Suffering is the major pitch of most of the marketing campaigns.  In the Western world, where the evolution of Buddhism (and other eastern mystical traditions) has taken place mostly among the most affluent sectors of society, the Upper Middle Way predominates.  Freedom isn't free. The priceless Teachings come with a price tag.  Some even promise a weekend retreat at a high priced resort somewhere may just do the trick!

 

Yet,  the Practice involves something much deeper than that. For sure,  you aren't likely to see any glitzy promotional commercials proclaiming:

Mindfulness Practice: Guaranteed to Make You Cry!   

 

It might be bad for business.

And yet...

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Love. Love. Love

"The moment we give rise to the desire for all beings to be happy and at peace, the energy of love arises in our minds, and all our feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness is permeated by love: in fact, they become love."

-- Thich Nhat Hanh, Teachings on Love

"All you need is love."

-- The Beatles

We have it on good authority. 

Buddha and Jesus, as well as many other sages and saints throughout the ages, seem to agree with the Hippies -- and the Beatles.  In the final analysis: All you need is Love.  

That seems simple enough.

So, what's the problem? Why are so many folks suffering?  Why does the world appear to be going to hell in the proverbial hand basket? 

First of all, what many folks have learned to believe is love, the terrain of much music and Hollywood Movies -- isn't necessarily the love that the wisdom teachings cherish.  What is presented as "love" is usually a very human blend of desire, biological attraction, suffering, and rigid attachment.  It's pretty clear that "I love you so much that I'll kill anyone who looks at you, then you, then myself!" is not exactly what JC, Buddha, and the others had in mind, right?

It seems to me that the form of "love"that our culture promotes has a lot more to do with fulfilling one's own individual ego needs for sex, security, status, and self-esteem than the quality of consciousness that the mystics of the world's wisdom traditions proclaimed.  True Love (the term used by Thich Nhat Hanh in book by that title.) is not the profound passionate grasping of deep attachment. It is much grander than that.   It is a deep Connection to all that is.

 
True Love emerges from what I've learned to call the Awakened Heart. (A grateful bow to Thich Nhat Hanh, and Pema Chodron for that.)  It is our human connection to the One Love that exists beyond the illusion of disconnection that characterizes the realm of relative reality.  Flowing from and returning to our Interconnection and our Oneness, True Love then can emerge in our relationships with others as the essential kindness, compassion, clarity and joy that glow in our heart of hearts. 

Unlike the common contemporary understanding that views love as something we just fall into and-- all too often -- out of, in the Buddhist tradition, love is seen as an inherent quality of human consciousness.  In fact, in the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, it is who we are at the deepest level. As such, True Love can be intentionally cultivated.  In our relationships, we may stumble into glimpses of Sacred Oneness through an intimate connection to "the other" in a romantic relationship -- especially in its initial honeymoon phase.  Yet, ultimately, True Love emerges from a fundamental choice to embrace Life itself in a different way. 

 

This is no mean feat. 

Although this realization can happen with the very next breath, the process of actually becoming a loving person generally doesn't just happen.  It is a Practice.  Erich Fromm characterized it as an art in his classic work, The Art of Loving.  Like any discipline, True Love takes commitment, a set of skills, effort, persistence -- and patience. 
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Being Real

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space.  He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.  This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.  Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
-- Albert Einstein

 
"Compassion and resilience are not, as we might imagine, rarefied human qualities available only to the saintly... In fact, these essential and universally prized human qualities can be solidly cultivated by anyone taking the time to do it." 

-- Norman Zoketzu Fischer,

Trainings in Compassion: Zen Teachings on the Practice of Lojong

Really, Dude?
 

"Yikes.  I did it again," I thought.  

Moments before, I had proclaimed with utter certainty that MY take on what was going on, was absolutely the truth of the matter.  I was even quite uppity about it.  

Then, quite quickly, Reality asserted itself.  

My certitude that my friend was "wrong," and that I was "right," disintegrated in the clear light of a sunny day.  

Duh.

Thankfully, my friend was gracious.  She didn't skewer me for my not immediately noticing the tightness in my chest -- and shutting the fuck up.  

Once again, I had missed the opportunity to pay better attention to the emergence of ego's hard headed clinging to its limited point of view.  I first noticed it in the tension in my voice. Yet, the momentum of ancient patterns had propelled me into a rather strident declaration of the facts at hand.  Then, to make matters worse, I immediately reacted defensively to her questioning my take.

Thankfully, the Universe -- and my friend -- were kind.  No 15 round knock down, drag out, battle ensued. Within a few moments,  I could see quite clearly that I was mistaken.  I had to give it up. 

Whew.  

At this stage of the journey, I actually was grateful for my "mistake." The Universe had pointed out, once again, that who I am at any moment in time can be nothing more, nor anything less, than a bad habit.  I've learned to appreciate those moments.

As a 5'2", 78 year old white, working class, cis, male (an Aries, no less), who emerged from a significantly chaotic and traumatic childhood, I can be a real jerk.  My supercharged need to be "right" is a deeply conditioned way to drive away the demons of existential angst -- and prove my worth.  Yet, these days I can bow to that reality with a grin more readily. It's easier to move on into the next moment with a bit more Presence.

I blame the Practice for that.

The Real Deal

Over the years, it has become more and more obvious to me that much of human life is dictated by habit.  Although it may not feel like it, who we are is not just a fixed, free standing, independently existing, subjective reality.  Our current "point of view" emerges from a cauldron of causes and conditions, many of them beyond our ken -- or control.  Experiencing life through what Albert Einstein called an "optical illusion" of consciousness, it seems that most of us hereabouts have learned to perceive ourselves as fundamentally separate from everything -- and everybody -- else. 

Spending much of our time lost in thought, adrift in conditioned moods, we are driven by a set of deeply ingrained, mostly subconscious (and often contradictory) beliefs about ourselves and the world.  Immersed in these states of mind, we rarely are present to the deepest dimension of life.  Yet, all the while, in the vast silence within and beyond each moment, a sacred reality calls to us.  A boundless expanse of support and potentiality, it's presence energizes all that is.

Yet, we rarely hear it calling.  There's too much noise. 

When we aren't distracting ourselves with one of the myriad external amusements readily available, our inner world is usually a cascading current of thoughts and emotional energies. For some, the restlessness embedded in this noisy jumble will even emerge as bodily fidgits.  

To make matters worse, the noise in our heads resonates with the prevailing noise in the collective consciousness of today's world.  It dominates our attention. Oblivious to the subtle energies dancing within the infinite space of each and every moment, we don't experience our fundamental unity with all that is, has been, and ever could be.  We don't experience our connection to the One Love that is the ever-unfolding source, sustaining energy, and destination of all life.  

Amazingly, this fundamental sense of disconnect is nothing more --and nothing less than -- a bad habit.  

Embedded in that habit is the deep disquiet of what some have called existential angst. Most often, a restlessness for relief creates layers of addictive patterns to fill the void. Each is a grasping, an attempt to find happiness in all the wrong places.  Buddha described this as the cause of all human suffering.

So, it's no surprise that we creatures of habit find ourselves in tough straits. Each of us is awash in a culture where capitalism, scientific materialism, and a dysfunctional religious dogma have been woven into most every nook and cranny of human life -- for centuries.  The individual and collective subconscious of generations of human beings have been increasingly conditioned to create and feed this habitual sense of separation.  This pervasive "us vs them"mentality creates our day to day life as the individual struggle it appears to be.

Yet, all the while, in the still and silent space of our Heart of Hearts, the fundamental connection exists.  As we come to rest in the warmth of an open heart and clarity of open awareness, it becomes mysteriously clear.  We are not separate from the One Love.  From there, moment to moment, emerges a way of being that is truly clear, calm, kind, compassionate and wise.  This basic goodness is our True Nature. 
 

But, here's the rub.

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Taking It to Heart: Tonglen Practice

“You take it all in. You let the pain of the world touch your heart 

and you turn it into compassion. It is said that 

in difficult times, it is only bodhichitta that heals.” 

-- The Sixteenth Gyalwa Karmapa quoted by Pema Chodron, 

When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times 

 

"So, when we are willing, intentionally, with this kind of attitude, 

this vision, to breathe in the suffering, we are able to transform it 

easily and naturally; it doesn't take a major effort on our part, 

other than allow it."

-- Norman Fischer, Training in Compassion: 

Zen Teachings on the Practice of Lojong

A grin comes to my face as I remember her voice on the telephone.

"That's backwards isn't it? You meant breathe in the good and send out the bad, right?" she said, not unkindly. Being gracious, she was making a space for me to realize that my aging brain cells had gone dyslexic.

I had been chatting with an old friend for first time in quite awhile, talking about my continued wonder at the Lojong Teachings of Tibetan Buddhism in general, and Tonglen Practice in particular.  

After a moment's pause, to relax and reconnect with the basic openness of mind -- and to make sure that I really hadn't verbally zigged when I had intended to zag -- I continued.

"No, I actually did mean that I shift my attention from the thoughts running through my head to the feelings coursing through my body.  Then I breathe into my heart the difficult and challenging darker emotions that had emerged.  There in my heart of hearts I get in touch with the reality that countless people are feeling this same form of energy.  My heart naturally responds with the heartfelt aspiration that we all be free of such suffering.  Then I send out a sense of relief and healing with each exhalation.  It's in with the "bad." Out with "good.".

She paused for awhile (perhaps, to relax and reconnect with a basic openness herself? LOL)  Then she simply replied, "Oh?" 

She didn't sound convinced.

Hers was not an uncommon response.  Raised in a highly individualistic and materialistic society, the basic premise of this ancient Tibetan Buddhist system of mind training seems counterintuitive.  Instead of always grasping at the "good" and pushing away the "bad," with Tonglen Practice we choose to open our hearts to the entire gamut of human emotions.   Seems a bit crazy, right? It most certainly is. 

Crazy like a fox.

Transforming All Experience into the Path of Awakening

Lojong is an intricate system of training the heart and mind that emerged in Tibetan Buddhism in the 11th and 12 centuries. Grounded in the Mahayana doctrine of Two Truths,  it's goal is to cultivate the wisdom and compassion needed to embrace both the conventional truth of appearances and absolute truth of Reality in our own lives.  All experiences of our lives are seen as an opportunity to Practice.

Lojong's framework of 59 training aphorisms are supported by two meditation practices: basic sitting meditation (Shamatha-Vippasyana) and Tonglen.  I've seen that, over time, these three tools have changed my day to day life dramatically. With Practice, I've been able to navigate the inevitable ups and downs of life with increasing ease, kindness, clarity and compassion.  With time, energy, effort and patience, I've been able to be Present more wholeheartedly, moment by moment, to Life.

To wit:

As I sit here and pay attention, I become aware of a clear, bright, vast, and open sense of spaciousness beyond the tunnel vision of my thoughts.  

As I pause and expand my attention to become aware of my body, my breath, and the sights and sounds of the room that I am sitting in, and to the world outside the window, there a palpable shift in my consciousness.  As I come into the present moment more fully,  I can feel its expansiveness throughout my body. I can relax and rest in its embrace. 

Sitting here, breathing in, breathing out,  I'm aware of the dance of my fingers along the surface of this keyboard.  I see that milliseconds before the fingers move, thoughts emerge instantaneously, seemingly from nowhere in particular.  Although, these thoughts are most certainly prompted by my intention to write this blog post, they appear to be emerging by themselves, quite mysteriously.  

Although Western science claims that these thoughts are epiphenoma, merely brain secretions of some sort, at this moment they appear to be connected to something much grander than that.  My heart feels that connection.  I have come to trust that feeling.  A sense of wonder and joy emerges from the luminous silence that embraces me as I embrace it.   Aware of my feet on the floor, the clicking contact of my fingers on the keyboard, the soft humming of the computer, the wind outside the window, the vast, open spaciousness of a clear and boundless open mind, my heart opens.  I feel the Presence of the Sacred.

But, I digress -- sort of.
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Lighten Up -- Again!

 

"Get your mind unbound and free; and then from the loosest, highest, best place you have, with the fastest and most humorous mind you can get together, you can reach 

out and make a try at understanding Spirit."

---Stephen Gaskin, This Season's People

 

 

Stephen Gaskin (February 16, 1935 - July 1, 2014)

Sometimes the Universe really lays one on you.  The utterly inexplicable walks right up to you and whispers in your ear "There's magic afoot" -- and invites you to dance.  

 

At those times, the One Love that permeates and transcends each moment lets you know that there is much more to Reality than our rational mind can actually deliver.  That processing channel gets too bogged down in distinctions to grasp the bigger picture.

 

Of course, having Sat Still Doing Nothing (and Everything) for a good chunk of time most every morning for decades, I am often, at least momentarily, aware of the Presence of a dimension of being where magic, miracles, and mystery exist.  

 

Nowadays, even off the zafu, this dimension is more noticeable. It is embedded in the fabric of daily life.  A sense of wonder often emerges amidst the ordinary moments of ordinary days.  

 

In fact, when I'm truly Present, washing the dishes and taking out the trash are as much Ritual Connections to the Sacred as lighting incense, bowing, and taking my seat in meditation. When I'm on my game, the world glows. (When I'm not, Migdalia busts me for the glasses I washed that don't sparkle. LOL)  

 

As best I can tell, Life is just as Thich Nhat Hanh wrote years ago:

"Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child—our own two eyes. All is a miracle.” 

 

Yet, for sure, within and beyond the ongoing miracle, there are extra special moments.  There are times that the Grand Synchronicity turns up the volume. This happened ten years ago this month.  The Extraordinary concocted up an experience that still defies any attempt to rationally understand what had happened. 

 

As I sat staring at the blank screen of this very same, now much older MacBook Pro that day, a ringtone on my iPhone may just as well have been Gabriel's trumpet.  At that moment, Stephen Gaskin, who had passed away 11 days before, the worldwide web, and Google conspired to proclaim the existence of a dimension where magic, miracles, and mystery will always have the last laugh!

 

The memory still brings a grin to my face and a glow to my heart.

 

With another deep bow to Stephen -- and to this Most Amazing Universe -- I want to share the post from that day.   It's encouragement to "lighten up" bears repeating.

Lighten Up!   
Originally Posted July 12, 2014

A couple of night's ago, unable to get back to sleep after a nocturnal "nature call,"I had tried to write a memorial piece on Hippie Spiritual Teacher Stephen Gaskin, whose Life -- and recent Death -- touched me deeply.   I got nowhere.  After struggling with it for a while, I gave up and read a bit of a Tenzing Norbu Mystery before finally stretching out to meditate into sleep once again.

Still on the mend from the events of the past month, I've been mostly laying low these days, staying away from the computer and cell phone as much as possible, allowing myself to Heal.  A couple of false starts had showed me quite clearly how energy depleting my addiction to these devices can be.  

 

Scrolling for the next dopamine hit takes its toll.

This morning, I was quaffing my first cup of coffee in a couple of days (another addiction under modification) watching bubbles of confusion and angst float through my awareness.  I wasn't quite sure what to do about this week's commitment to Your MMM Courtesy Wake Up Call.  My attempt to express the profound impact that Stephen had had on my life was going nowhere.  I'd made a few false starts. but the back space key had wiped the slate clean each time.

 

I was first introduced to Stephen when a friend handed me a copy of Monday Night Class, a collection of his talks, questions, and answers delivered to the thousand or so hippies that gathered weekly at the Family Dog to meditate and compare notes on the community spiritual exploration that had emerged and mushroomed in San Francisco in the 1960's.  That book propelled me on a journey that included a daily meditation practice, a couple of extended visits to the Farm, my own attempts at a communal "back to the land" lifestyle -- and a number of conversations with Stephen over the course of a couple of decades. 

Sitting here at a picnic table outside my favorite local farm store on a brilliant, blue-skied morning, I continued to stare at a blank screen.  Then, (probably with a furrowed brow), I reached for my cell phone to check my email -- then, perhaps, just fall back and select an old post to republish this week.

At that very moment the phone "dinged"with an incoming email. Peering down I read the notification

"Your MMM Courtesy Wake Up Call:

 Lighten Up! 

Posted 18 January 2014"

WTF!!!???

I have no idea what strange permutation of the space time cyber continuum at that moment could have possibly have had Google generate and deliver to me an email version of a post I'd written six months ago.  This had never happened before.  (and still hasn't happened again ten years later! -- L.)

How could I not lighten up?  

I broke into a bemused grin as I clicked it open.  The Serendipity of receiving this unsolicited and inexplicably"cosmic" reprint of a blog piece at that moment was magic enough. The decision was made for me.  I'd just read and tinker with it bit, write an introduction describing what had happened and re-pubish it.

 
Then, I began reading the post...

It got even more mind blowing!

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Judge Not and ...

“The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.”
― J. Krishnamurti

“We sow the seeds of our future hells or happiness by the way
 we open or close our minds right now.”

 ― Pema Chodron

I don't think there is any greater freedom than being Present -- engaging life as it is -- without the distortion caused by Judgment Mind.  

Growing up immersed in a society that is highly judgmental, most of us have been deeply conditioned to experience our lives in terms of good/bad, right/wrong, should be/shouldn't be.  

 

In fact, our ego sense, with its perceived separation and isolation from "the other" is maintained by emotion laden thoughts, opinions, and various mind states that emerge from this conditioning.  Even in its mild form of liking/disliking, Judgment Mind can generate thoughts and feelings that serve to separate us from the peaceful, calm, and caring Presence we have access to in every moment.  

 

If we are overly self-absorbed, distracted, stressed, moving too fast, it's easy to get lost in our conditioned reactions to the events in our lives.  Adrift in Judgment Mind, we loose Presence.  We get lost in the alternative reality we have created -- and forget that the world is really not as it appears to us at that moment.  The deeply ingrained process of evaluating what we experience as bad, wrong, condemnable is a strong and on-going element of our society's collective unconscious, and has had a deep and ongoing effect on most of us.  It appears as discontent, diatribe, enmity, blame, and self-blame.  If we aren't paying attention, it can and will dominate our lives, moment to moment.

 

Seeing For Yourself

 

One of the fruits of meditation is that we can see how that process works directly.  We can see for ourselves that Judgment Mind isn't only the thoughts going through our heads at the moment.  It's deeper than that.  It is embedded in the emotions we are experiencing.  It's embodied in the tightnesses and discomforts of our body.  It directly effects the quality of our consciousness, our state of mind.  

 

It is actually quite amazing to see for yourself how that plays out on the meditation cushion.  

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Mama Said There'll Be Days Like This

"Our thought now being no-thought, even our singing and dancing 

are the voice of the Dharma."

-- Hakuin-zenji, Song of Zazen

 

 "Mama said there'll be days like this

There'll be days like this mama said."

-- The Shirelles

 

For decades now, silent meditation and mindfulness practices have been the central focus of my spiritual life.  Yet, me being me, I've continued to explore a number of practices from a variety of traditions.  

 

In the early 70's, I was introduced to the Chant of Chenrezig by a friend of mine who had absorbed it as he pushed a huge prayer wheel with a group of Tibetan Buddhist practioners in Northern India months before.  Looking into his eyes, standing about five feet away, I could feel the energy of Om Mani Padme Hum as he related the experience.   Coming across the chant again in Ram Dass's spiritual classic Be Here Now a few months later, I filed it away for future reference.  

Later that year, I had the means and opportunity to Practice this chant a bit more deeply.  Unlike my friend who experienced it in India, my prayer wheel was the steering wheel of a canary yellow VW camper.  I was cruising along the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado on Interstate 25 at the time.  Using the mile markers as visual reminders to re-focus, I chanted Om Mani Padme Hum for several hours.  At a certain point, I experienced a Shift.  I connected with the larger pool of energy and the Presence. Reality asserted itself.  

 

The Universe hummed along in harmony with the mantra as I drove down the road.

In the eternal now, this moment embraces that moment.  In the seamless whole of One Love, Time and the Timeless dance as One.  There is no separation.

Om Mani Padme Hum

Even Our Singing and Dancing

 
Over the years, I've practiced various other forms of mantra meditation.  I've chanted with Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Native Americans, and Christians.  I've come to see quite clearly that words can ring with meaning and power well beyond their conceptual content.  Whether vibrating in sound or in silence, when we experience words we attune to, and resonate with, a  larger pool of energy and connection -- whether we realize it at the time or not.

And then -- although certain fundamentalist strains in many religious traditions may frown at the idea -- it gets even better for me when those words dance in the arms of music. Over the years, I've sung (and danced) bhajan and kirtan with the Hare Krishna's, Neem Karoli Baba's folks in Taos, NM, and a number of local Kirtan walahs.  I've drummed and sang with Native Americans.  OMMM'd with 10,000+ Hippies at Rainbow National Gatherings.  I've sang, danced and drummed with Sufi Universal Dances of Peace gatherings and with other Spiritual Circles.  In full confession, I've also danced freely at Dead shows and Raves (sometimes with, sometimes without medicinal herbs or concoctions in my system. LOL).  In all those times, places, and spaces I've often felt the Grand Connection to my fellow human beings in the embrace of Universal One Love. 

 

Yet A Different Tune

 
Ten years ago, when I was still blogging as weekly mindfulness practice, the Universe graced me with an unexpected, deeply healing, musical incantation just before I sat down at the laptop to begin.   Then, like now, I had recently returned from an unsuccessful attempt to help my older brother through a life crisis in Oklahoma.  It was a tough time in my life.

 

The source of this healing music wasn't one of the mystical spiritual traditions.  This music didn't come from one of compositions of New Age music that I sometimes use to inspire me or chill me out either.  Emerging spontaneously in my mind's memory lane theater were the voices of a quartet of young women from New Jersey. singing the refrain of a 1961 recording.  It just as well may have been a heavenly chorus of angels.

 

Instantaneously, a grin emerged on my mug.  My heart glowed. The quality of my consciousness became brighter and lighter.  The Mystical Magical Musical Chant that altered my state of mind was the from the Shirelle's:

"Mama said there'll be days like this

There'll be days like this mama said."

"Duh," I thought with a grin.  "Of course!  It's just Life being Life as it is.  I can live with that!"

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Blowing in the Wind

"O-o-o-klahoma, where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain,
And the wavin' wheat can sure smell sweet, 

When the wind comes right behind the rain."

― from "Oklahoma" by Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein

"The water’s waves are churned up by the winds, which come and go and vary in direction and intensity, just as do the winds of stress and change in our lives, 

which stir up the waves in our minds.”
― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life

 

I don't know how much research Rogers and Hammerstein did as they wrote the musical, "Oklahoma,"but they sure nailed one thing: the winds in the South Central Plains are amazing.

 

Unlike the powerful winds that show up for a good old New England Nor'easter, or the intense but relatively brief blasts accompanying the squall lines and whizzbang thunderstorms of the Midwest, the Oklahoma prairie winds even sweep their way through high pressure systems -- for days and days at a time!

 

The National Weather Service characterizes this type of weather as "fair and breezy." Without a cloud in the sky, steady winds often clock in at 20+ mph.  With gusts ranging 35 to 45 mph, "fair and breezy" seems like an understatement.  After chasing my hat down the street a number of times, I finally learned to secure it more firmly to my bald head before stepping outside.  

 

And to be sure, the South Central Plains of Oklahoma sweeps numerous severe thunderstorms and tornadoes across the landscape as well.  It may well be that the Answer is blowing in the wind down there.  Most everything else is.

 

The Winds of Fate

 

A few weeks ago, I returned from a three week long stay in suburban Oklahoma City attempting to support my older brother.  At age 86, Skeets (his family nickname) had spiraled down into living in filth and squalor as a hermit.  For a long, long time, it appears that he'd spent most of his days and nights laying on his couch either sleeping (often with his C pack mask on), watching TV, or listening to NPR.  No longer preparing meals, his daily bread faithfully delivered to his house by the local meals on wheels program, he eats on the very same couch.  Sometimes he'd jump in his car and augment his food intake with hamburgers from a nearby drive-in.   

 

When I arrived, several inches of paper and plastic bags, cardboard food containers and decaying food covered the coffee table --and the wall to wall carpeting of his living room.  Misha, his somewhat feral cat, hadn't been confined to using a cat box for ages.  The windows were closed. The shades and curtains drawn.  The air in the shuttered house stung my eyes.  Skeets resisted my attempts to open the windows.

 

As I had discovered in a series of telephone calls before I came, my brother had been hospitalized, then referred to a rehab center.  My brother's longtime next door neighbor, friend -- and landlord for the past seven years -- was quite concerned.  Skeets appeared no longer willing or able to take care of himself.  He had trashed the house and property.  Steps were underway to evict him.

Yikes.

 

As fate would have it, I blew into town just in time.  I arrived at my brother's once beautiful, now trashed, four bedroom home in a rural/suburban cul de sac of high priced  homes and large lots just about fifteen minutes before two workers from Adult Protective Services knocked on the door.  The Sacred Serendipity gave me a chance to, perhaps, forestall what my brother characterized as his "worst nightmare" -- spending the rest of his days in a nursing home.  

 

In my dreams, I thought I could actually be enough of a Bodhisattva to forestall that nightmare.  Yet, as it turns out, when called on to be my brother's keeper, I don't know if I'm able.  Skeets started raising Cain whenever I appeared to be "telling him what to do."  

 

My attempts to help him face his situation, get his affairs in order, and move into a safer and healthier living situation usually evoked agitation and anger.  Like many deeply wounded men in our culture, my brother  can't readily see past his own ego-sense of "independence." His arrogance and intellect are his ancient shield against feeling sadness, insecurity, or confusion.  His anger is his sword. 

 

My time in Oklahoma was exhausting, frightening, frustrating -- and profoundly sad. 

 

He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother -- Not.  (Sigh)

When I was a kid, Father Flanagan's Boys Town was quite famous.  An orphanage founded in 1917 by a Catholic priest with five boys in a house in Omaha, Nebraska  grew to a village of hundreds of boys and staff on a farm outside of town. Then, in 1938,  a fictional story inspired by Father Flanagan's effort became a blockbuster Hollywood movie.  The movie provided Spencer Tracy with an Oscar, a young Mickey Rooney with a role -- and brought Boy's Town to international prominence.

 

For decades, the centerpiece of its quite successful fundraising campaign was a painting of a child carrying a younger child on his back.  The caption read, "He ain't heavy, Father. He's m' brother."  By the time the Hollies recorded a song with a similar title and theme in 1969, most Americans knew of Boys Town.

I sure did.  

 

As I grew up, it seemed like a utopia. I yearned to experience something approximating the idolized form of brotherly love and supportive community that was portrayed.  

 

I didn't.

 

Instead, my three siblings and I careened through an ever-changing kaleidoscope of tenement buildings, apartments, hotels, detention centers, and the unofficial "foster homes" that my father found to care for us as my mother was swept into the Hell Realms of state mental hospitals in Elgin and Chicago.  

 

Throughout our childhood, my mother disappeared from our lives, then reappeared to take custody for a time, then disappeared again in the grips of a rotating list of diagnoses and treatments.  Our childhood was chaotic -- and traumatic. 

 

Obviously, a secure sense of home and belonging was not part of our physical or emotional reality.  As best as I can recall, Skeets, the oldest and seven years my senior, first went to live with my dad when he and Mom separated as I entered kindergarten.  My younger brother and I went to live with a family in nearby a nearby town. Mom had been hospitalized and then, I believe, was sheltered in a Catholic convent as my younger sister was born.   Then, Skeets returned to live with Mom and the youngest three for awhile when she surfaced from the hospital.  Then he left to be with my dad again.  Then he joined the Navy.  

 

Later, after living in Alaska as a communications radio tech rep,  then fixing TVs and being a theater lighting tech in Greenwich Village in NYC, then in the Hyde Park neighborhood on the south side of Chicago, Skeets circled through to live with us again.  By then, Dad had rescued the three younger siblings from a detention center near St. Louis, MO in the summer of 1959.   Moving us to Lake Zurich, a small town about 35 miles northwest of Chicago, dad got a factory job, and our life began to approximate some semblance of working class normalcy -- at least in outward appearances.

Each of us bears the scars of our collective trauma. Each of our personalities were formed as adaptations to a lack of fundamental emotional stability.

 

I'm grateful that I stumbled into the practices and the support that I have at this stage of my journey.  The spacious graciousness of the Universe has  allowed me to encounter my conditioning with an increasing degree of compassion, insight, and skill.  My heart aches with the realization that Skeets appears to be still driven by his demons -- and there appears to be nothing that I can do to help him.

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Day by Day

"In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion."

-- Albert Camus

“Every day and every hour, one should practice mindfulness. That's easy to say,
but to carry it out in practice is not."
-- Thich Nhat Hanh
from "A Day of Mindfulness", The Miracle of Mindfulness

Taking the time each morning to Simply Sit Still has been the foundation of my own spiritual journey for a long, long time.  It's like drinking a tall glass of cool water.  I generally arise refreshed, at ease, and ready for the day.

It only makes sense.

Who we experience ourselves to be, how we think and feel about the world is largely a result of our conditioning.  In fact, even how we see the world emerges as a result of the set of interactions we've experienced in our lives. That is the view of most modern psychology -- and the view held by most Buddhists for two thousand five hundred years.

I think many people recognize, sometimes quite acutely, the existence of their so-called "bad habits." The whole ritual of New Year resolutions generates lists and lists of commitments to change these aspects of our lives.  Yet many of us haven't quite realized that, in actuality, our "normal " everyday, egocentric way of being in the world is, itself, just a "bad habit." 

 

Encountering our lives through what Albert Einstein called an "optical delusion" of consciousness, we experience ourselves as isolated beings, fundamentally separate from the rest of the Universe.  Lost in our thoughts and feelings, all too rarely actually Present to the deeper dimension of life that exists in every moment, the noise in our heads and the noise in the world around us consumes our attention -- and we suffer.

Yet, all this is nothing more, and nothing less, than a habit.  Each day, we reinforce patterns that continue to operate consciously and subconsciously to dominate our awareness.  We have spent years feeding that habit.  It creates our day-to-day life as the struggle it appears to be in a world propelled forward by a competitive, capitalist economy, religious institutions that prioritize judgmental attitudes, and a militaristic socio-political culture that glorifies violence. 

 

Many of us have been harmed and limited by this conditioning.  Wounded puppies, believing that we live in a dog eat dog world, we are habitually barking up the wrong tree.  And all the while, in the Still and Silent Space that lies deep within us and infinitely beyond us, we are all connected in Sacred Unity to what some wisdom traditions call the Tree of Life.

 

Many names are used over the years to identify Ultimate Reality.  I've communed with people that conceptualize it as God, the Tao, the Great Spirit, Buddhanature, Allah, Yahweh, Jesus, Krishna.  These days One Love seems to work best for me.  By whatever name it is known, it has become mysteriously clear to me that there is an infinite source of unlimited potential.  From that, flows a Way of Being that is truly clear, calm, kind, compassionate and wise.  

Mindfulness Practice offers us the opportunity to see that for ourselves.  Through Practice we can connect with, and increasingly maintain, this open-hearted and clear-minded quality of consciousness.  Being a Compassionate Presence can become our habitual way of being.  

 

This is largely a matter of time on task.  It's just like going to the gym. Over time, the discipline and effort of a regular daily meditation practice releases the knots and rewires the pathways of our conditioning.  It's as simple as that.

 

Yet, simple doesn't necessarily mean easy.  Over time we will have to face a lot of emotional energies and subconscious belief structures that we have repressed. avoided, and denied. Fortunately, the Practice affords us the opportunity and skills to do that with increasing ease.  Simply Sitting Still each day, we learn to embrace the entire gamut of the human experience.  In doing so, we gain the freedom and agency to live life wholeheartedly.

 

And there's more...
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How Sweet It Is

"Love is the only reality and it is not a mere sentiment.
It is the ultimate truth that lies at the heart of creation."
 --  Rabindranath Tagore

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek 

and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
― Rumi

When I woke up that morning almost 60 years ago, I had no idea that the trajectory of my life would be profoundly influenced that afternoon.

It was the summer of 1965.  I had just finished my freshman year in college and was back home in a small town north of Chicago, working in a factory again for the summer.  

 

As I had done since my sophomore year in high school, on Friday I cashed my paycheck, pocketed $5, and deposited the rest in the bank to help fund a college education. 

 

As it turned out, I spent three dollars of that week's "personal entertainment" budget in a matter of minutes the next day at the annual Lion's Club White Elephant sale in the park near the center of town.

 

For years now, I've been quite aware that two of the books that I bought that day had a profound influence on me. The first, The Wisdom of Buddha, published by a Buddhist organization in Japan was my first introduction to Buddhism.  When I flipped it open and scanned a few pages, I thought, " Wow. That's interesting. This sounds like what Jesus was teaching in the Bible." It was my first introduction to the Buddhist teachings and practices that would later inspire and sustain me over the years.

Pawing through the stack of books on the table, I then came across  The Wisdom of Gandhi.  I had been deeply touched by by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement in High School.  I had discovered in a history class, that Dr. King had been influenced by Gandhi's Satyagraha Movement in India.  That was good enough for me.  

 

I picked it up and flipped it open.

 

One of the first passages I read described an encounter between a British journalist and the Mahatma.  When Gandhi was asked if he was a Hindu, he replied, “Yes I am.  I am also a Muslim, a Christian, a Buddhist, and a Jew.”   

 

I got goosebumps.  Something stirred deep inside me.  His words rang True.  It was definitely worth another dollar.

It was only today, after a compelling experience yesterday, that I remembered that there was a third book that I bought that afternoon. 

Connecting the Dots

If you've been reading this blog for awhile, you probably know that the Lojong teachings of Tibetan Buddhism have been part of my path for the past ten years.  I've read and re-read a handful of commentaries, and spent countless hours in the study and practice of the 59 slogans that comprise this system of mind training.  

 

Each morning, I cast a slogan to focus on for the day. (See Your Courtesy Wake Up Call: Lojong:Training the Heart and Mind).  

 

Yesterday, I was back to square one.  I cast slogan 1: Train in the Preliminaries.  As well as the cultivation of a meditation practice, the preliminaries include a contemplation of the Four Reminders:

1. Maintain an awareness of the preciousness of human life.

2. Be aware of the reality that life ends; death comes for everyone.

3. Recall that whatever you do, whether virtuous or not, has a result; what goes around comes around.

4. Contemplate that as long as you are too focused on self-importance and too caught up in thinking about how you are good or bad, you will suffer. Obsessing about getting what you want and avoiding what you don’t want does not result in happiness.  ( -- as presented by Pema Chodron in Lion's Roar)

Although the horror of the COVID pandemic has put the Second Reminder, "Be aware of the reality that life ends for everyone," front and center since 2020, I was reminded today of the importance of the First Reminder.  

 

What would my life look like if I really did maintain an awareness of how precious life is?  Sitting at the computer, allowing my mind to flow gently down the stream of this contemplation, relaxing to focus on and soak in the Preciousness of Life, a title for this post emerged: "How Sweet It Is!"

I had no idea where that would lead.
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Silence is Golden

 

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

 "Never miss a good chance to shut up."
― Will Rogers

Sometimes the magic happens when you are sitting alone in silence.  The thin veil dissolves. The Connection is made.  

Sometimes the magic happens when you are meditating with others.  In the silence, the illusion of our fundamental separateness evaporates.   The "I" becomes "we" -- and we know it.

I think it's even sweeter when it happens that way.

I remember one of those times distinctly.  Sitting here now, it seems like it happened in a different world, a long, long time ago.  I guess it was.  The year was 6 B.C.  Six years Before COVID. 

There were fifteen of us gathered to Simply Sit Still during the Wednesday Evening Mindfulness Circle at the Recovery Learning Community's Greenfield Center that night.  As was our Practice, I rang the bell three times and we sat in silent meditation for twenty minutes.

At a certain point, it happened.  It got really quiet.  Really, Really -- Quiet! 

In the silence,  a Presence emerged.

When I rang the bell to end the meditation and begin the Heart Council, the air was electric.  I knew that what I had just experienced wasn't just a subjective personal event occurring within the confines of my own skull.  I could see it in people's eyes.  

As we went around the Circle to compare notes on what we had each experienced during our meditation, the first person exclaimed, wide-eyed, "you could actually hear the silence!" 

"Yes.  The Silence was deafening!" a second added.  Others nodded.  

The magic had occurred.  In the silence, what my first Zen teacher called the Soundless Sound had emerged as a shared experience.   Whenever that happens, even for a  few moments, our Essential Oneness within the embrace of the One Love becomes less theoretical.   Reality Asserts Itself.  You can feel it in your bones.  In the stillness our shared silence, we know:

                             We are not only in this together -- we are this together!

I love it when that happens.

And yet...

Scurrying Through the Matrix

In a society that places a high value on individualism, competition, speed, achievement,  and acquisition, Simply Sitting Still can be challenging.  We have been conditioned to experience our world through mental and emotional states that manifest a lot of mental activity, a feeling of restless motion -- and, whether we are aware of it or not,  a profound sense of separation.   

As the profit motive and the technology of late stage capitalism increasingly captures and commodifies our attention, it's only gotten worse.  With the proliferation of cellphones and video screens, We are bombarded with incessant visual and auditory stimulation.  Our minds are habitually filled with incessant noise and chatter -- inner and outer.  

In today's world, most of us have spent much of our lives being constantly distracted and disconnected from our True Nature. 

The direct experience of what Thich Nhat Hanh calls Interbeing, our fundamental interconnection with one another and the entire Web of Life , is rarely encountered on a conscious level.  Yet it is always there -- always here, more correctly -- in the embrace of what contemporary spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle and others have called the Eternal Now.
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