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?
(READ MORE)

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.

(READ MORE)

Space: The Final Frontier

"When we are mindful, deeply in touch with the present moment,
our understanding of what is going on deepens, 

and we begin to be filled with acceptance, joy, peace and love.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh

“Delight in itself is the approach of sanity. Delight is to open our eyes 

to the reality of the situation rather than siding with this or that point of view.”
― Chögyam Trungpa, The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation

When I growing up, being called a "space cadet" was not a good thing.  Unless you were an astronaut-in-training at NASA (or, perhaps, a Trekkie), the term was a put-down.  The folks who didn't pay a lot of attention to the seemingly endless concerns and activities of high school and college life, just weren't cool. 

Although I didn't realize it at the time, some of these space cadets were actually marching, perhaps even dancing, to the beat of a different drummer.  In doing so, they had a leg up on the rest of us.

Why?

Our legs were fully engaged spinning the hamster wheel of an invisible, but very captivating, mind cage.  Scrambling to conform to the rat race of the "real world," we couldn't afford to just space out.

Compelled by our thoughts and feelings about doing it right, going for the gold, being all we can be, etc., most of us were continually trying to get with the program presented to us in a culture steeped in capitalism, scientific materialism, racism, and all the other "ism's" that serve to oppress the human spirit.

From the time we woke up until the time we fell asleep, we were being conditioned by the world around us to disregard the spiritual dimension of life.

Sadly, most of us internalized the values and norms the mainstream society long before we had the experience or the skills to realize what was happening.   We didn't see that our society's "conventional reality" was a house built on the ever-shifting sands of what the Buddhist call the eight worldly concerns.   Rather than taking the time to "consider the lilies" as Jesus had counseled and explore the spiritual dimension of our lives, we became increasingly fixated on the material and psychological "needs" presented to us by the mass culture.

The space cadet seemed not to take such things that seriously.  It seemed that he or she could frequently let go, relax -- and journey elsewhere.  

Aboard the Starship Enterprise

These days, I will gladly accept the title of space cadet.  I've found that space, what some folks call "inner space," is the final frontier.  In fact, as we voyage in the present moment to the precise edge of this ever-unfolding frontier, we see there is actually no such thing as elsewhere.  We come to see that inner and outer space are merely concepts, two sides of the same coin.  And that coin is flipping eternally though a boundless and infinite universe of awareness.  In this realm there is no winning or losing.  The coin never lands.

Once I got a taste of the boundless and infinitely forgiving space at the heart of reality, I knew that I was all in.  Although I've had some crash landings and have encountered some space monsters along the way,  I'm grateful to have signed on for the voyage.  Most every morning, I choose to step off the hamster wheel for at least an hour -- and go into free fall.  I simply sit still for about an an hour.

Some people call what I do meditation. 
(READ MORE) 

Visible to the Naked Eye

“If the doors of perception were cleansed 

every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. 

For man has closed himself up, 

till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.”
― William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell 

“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.”

 ― Thich Nhat Hanh

 

I've been a Geek all my life.

As a kid, I was curious.  Extremely curious. I was fascinated by the critters, trees, flowers, rocks, winds, clouds, the moon, the stars.  I wanted to know the names of everything.   

I wanted to understand it all.

I loved the hands-on exploration of science and technology, too.  I wanted to know how it all worked. 

Whenever the opportunity presented itself, I took things apart to see how each part related to each other part.  I wanted to know how something did what it did. 

In elementary school, I found a discarded box camera in the alley, scurried home, and promptly took it apart.  I then wondered why the world looked upside down as I gazed through one of the lens.  So, I grabbed my science textbook and skipped ahead to the chapter on light.  Soon, I had figured out how to use two of the newly freed lenses, some cardboard and scotch tape to make a telescope. Then, each evening, I charted the position of Jupiter as it moved through the sky outside my bedroom window -- until another interest took center stage.  (I think it was baseball.)

Thankfully, I was usually acknowledged by various adults in my world for my zeal to learn.  

 

Yet, like many of us, my earliest perceptions of the spiritual dimension of life were not supported.  Instead, they were consistently ignored, dismissed -- or squashed.  In a society that mostly doesn't believe in the existence of a subtle realm of unseen, formless entities and energies, it seemed clear that my parents, foster parents, social workers, and teachers didn't seem to have a clue.

I suppose that should come as no surprise.  

 

The dominant culture in the western world has been immersed for centuries in a worldview increasingly shaped by capitalism and scientific materialism.  What has been presented as spirituality has been saturated with a distorted, often white supremacist, highly judgmental, dogmatic form of Christianity, relegated to horror stories about unseen malevolent spirits, or dismissed as mere superstition.   

 

The way most folks view and experience their lives has been shaped in the cauldron of these cultural forces.

 

Scientific materialism denied the existence of a spiritual dimension of life.  Capitalism presented the world as a competition among separate individuals over limited resources.  And, rather than support an exploration of the spiritual dimension that exists in the midst of each moment, Christianity taught that the primary spiritual goal was an eternal life in a Heaven that existed only for those who have died.  Furthermore, entering Heaven demanded conformity to a specific set of beliefs  -- and obedience to an authoritarian power structure that enforced a restrictive set of rules, sometimes violently.  (I attended Catholic school for five days before I bailed.) 

 

Even worse, perhaps, Christian Heaven was presented as an exclusive club -- reserved for members only.  According to the prevailing doctrine, the rest of humanity was doomed to spend an eternity in a cruel torture chamber called hell.  For some Christians this horrible fate included Christians from other denominations!

WTF?

 

As a kid, this version of a God of Love never made sense to me.  Yet, my heart was drawn to something.  I was drawn to something in early childhood at Passover Sedar as I gazed at the empty chair set for Elijah.  A few years later,  after my mother had converted to Catholicism, I felt something at the first Mass I attended.   Then, as the chaos of my childhood years continued, I felt something at the chapel services of the Baptist children's home and summer camp my younger siblings and I lived in.

 

Yet, there was an energy embedded in the belly of the Christianity I experienced in those settings that rang tilt.  The fire and brimstone Fall and Redemption focus of the gatherings didn't reflect the Love that I read that Jesus was teaching.  In fact, I came to think that Jesus would still be turning over in his grave at such blasphemous bullshit -- if only he had stayed there.

Beyond Belief

 

Now, at age 78, I'm still a Geek.  For more than half a century, I've focused a lot of time and attention on the exploration of the spiritual dimension of life.  Over the years this exploration of spirituality has included decades of meditation, time in residence at several spiritual communities and handfuls of intensive retreats with a number of teachers. 

 

I also continue to pour through volumes of the spiritual literature, humanistic psychology, philosophy, neuroscience and modern physics.  I've got stacks of books in various stages of reading, re-reading, and research notes strewn around my apartment.  When my eyes tire, the internet delivers dharma talks, interviews and discussions.

Perhaps, most importantly I've sustained a personal daily meditation practice for decades, and now meet with a small circle of kindred spirits for meditation and support every weekday morning on Zoom.

 

In doing so, I continue to make a committed effort to cleanse the doors of perception.  

 

I'm grateful to be able to say that I get at least a little taste of the open, spacious, miraculous nature of life most every day -- on and off the zafu.  When I remember to come into the present moment with an open heart and a clear mind, I am aware of an infinitely expansive dimension of being.   From what I've seen, it's clear, luminous, benevolent Presence embraces all that is, ever has been  -- and could possibly ever be.  In the vast expanse of open awareness, Reality asserts itself -- and it glows.  It's beyond belief.  

 

Contrary to what some folks say, you don't have to die to go to Heaven.  The Sacred exists right  here in our midst.  

 

Although I didn't have a way to express it, I sensed this as a kid.  (You probably did, too!)

(READ MORE)