Sad but True

This world - 
absolutely pure
As is. 
Behind the fear,

Vulnerability. 
Behind that,
Sadness, 
then compassion
And behind that the vast sky.

 --Rick Fields

 “Real fearlessness is the product of tenderness. It comes from letting the world tickle your heart, your raw and beautiful heart. You are willing to open up, without resistance or shyness, and face the world. You are willing to share your heart with others.”  

― Chögyam Trungpa 

Sometimes, insight and healing emerge slowly during the course of our lives. 

Like spring unfolding across the palette of April and May, our Practice deepens, and the world slowly greens and blooms.  What was tan, stark, and frigid, slowly brightens, softens and warms.  Green shoots appear.  Buds opens.

At a certain point we notice.  Nothing has changed, yet everything has changed.  It's different now than it was before.

At other times, Zap! Insight and Healing emerge like a bolt of lightning!

Sometimes, this bursts forth with a torrential downpour of tears. Sometimes not. Yet, in a heartbeat there is a Grand Gestalt.  In a flash, in an instant, there is Crystalline Clarity.  We really get It! Or perhaps -- more accurately-- It gets us.  

Everything has changed, but nothing has changed.  Yet, it's different now than it was before.

The Genuine Heart of Sadness

A few years ago, I had the good fortunate to stop by Himalayan Views, a nearby spiritual gift shop/bookstore, to hear a woman describe one of those moments.  She was sitting in the back reading area of the store, and as is often the case, I made the effort to say smile and hello.  (A childhood rebel, I never agreed with "don't talk to strangers.")  Soon, I  found myself chatting with a her about the book she was reading, and comparing notes on our lives and spiritual practice.  

Her eyes were clear and kind.  Her voice was gentle, yet powerful and strong, as she shared her story.  

She was in her mid-thirties at the time of her Awakening.   Suffering from what had been diagnosed as "clinical depression," medicated since adolescence, she had come across a book of Pema Chodron's teachings.  When she read of what Pema's teacher, Chogyam Trungpa had called "the genuine heart of sadness," her life was transformed. 

Zap!

As the woman read that passage that day, Reality asserted itself.  At that very moment, She knew. 
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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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