The courage to stop

There comes a time when the pain of continuing exceeds the pain of stopping. At that moment, a threshold is crossed. What seemed unthinkable becomes thinkable. Slowly, the realization emerges that the choice to continue what you have been doing is the choice to live in discomfort, and the choice to stop what you have been doing is the choice to breathe deeply and freely again. Once that realization has emerged, you can either honor it or ignore it, but you cannot forget it. What has become known can not become unknown again.

-- Gary Zukav

Monday Meditative Picture Blogging

Photo by Cynthia Burgess

Falling apart gracefully

One of the most skillful and compassionate things we can do for ourselves in our meditative practice is to let go and allow our artificial "self" to be dismantled by the process so that we can see through the sham and the ego-clinging that have been built up over the years. John Welwood speaks to this in his book, Toward a Psychology of Awakening. Here's an excerpt:

Many of us recognize that life is a continual process of moving forward, and that it's impossible to move gracefully through life unless we can let go of where we have already been. Though we may know this rationally, it is still hard to let go, and still painful when old structures collapse on their own, without consulting us first. The crumbling of our own identity right before our eyes is especially painful. Yet since life is continual flux, this means that we must be prepared to go through a series of identity crises. Especially in this era of advanced future shock, when the meanings holding people's lives together erode ever more rapidly, identity crises inevitably escalate at an ever-increasing rate.

Meditation is a way of learning to accept and welcome this, by letting go and falling apart gracefully. As we sit, we can see that most of our thoughts are about ourselves; in face, they are our way of trying to keep ourselves together from moment to moment. When we no longer reinforce these thoughts, the self we've been trying to hold together in a nice, neat package begins unraveling right before our eyes. As soon as we stop trying to glue it together, it quickly comes unglued. This allows us to see how we are constructing and maintaining it, and how that causes endless tension and stress.

I realize there is often a lot of fear associated with letting go of the constructed, held-together self. What I want to say by way of reassurance here is that it is completely safe. Nothing bad will happen. In fact, what you will experience is relief and freedom. Think how wonderful it would be if you didn't have to keep propping yourself up all the time. You don't have to. You can just let go and be the stream of consciousness that you are: happy, joyous and free.

A picture of true freedom

Here's a marvelous little story as told by Anthony de Mello in The Heart of the Enlightened:

A King ran into a dervish, and in keeping with the custom of the East when a King met a subject, he said, "Ask for a favor."

The dervish replied, "It would be unseemly for me to ask a favor of one of my slaves."

"How dare you speak so disrespectfully to the King," said a guardsman. "Explain yourself or you shall die."

The dervish said, "I have a slave who is the master of your King."

"Who?"

"Fear," said the dervish.

Fearlessness is truly the greatest freedom. We can start by choosing to be unafraid of what we will find within when we do inner work. Regular meditation equips us for this work because we know what to do with any difficult material that comes up. We notice it, accept it without judgment, we let it go and we return to our meditative support. We can do this throughout our day by returning to the present moment and the task at hand. If we follow this practice, nothing can come up from within that will disturb us. Imprint this process on your consciousness: notice, accept, let go, return; notice, accept, let go return. Repeat it as a mantra and then apply it both in formal sitting and throughout your day. The resulting serenity is just amazing.

Going forward

Paul Rogers sent me the following poem by Nan Cohen. I think it's quite wonderful and appropriate for reflection.

Girder

The simplest of bridges, a promise
that you will go forward,

that you can come back.
So you cross over.

It says you can come back.
So you go forward.

But even if you come back
then you must go forward.

I am always either going back
or coming forward. There is always

something I have to carry,
something I leave behind.

I am a figure in a logic problem,
standing on one shore

with the things I cannot leave,
looking across at what I cannot have.

Friday Cat Blogging!

Well, I can't let Friday go by without some cat blogging. Here's Simon, Cynthia's cat. And I'm finally feeling a bit better so I think I'll be back to my normal blogging routine soon! :-) Hope everybody's well and that you've been able to make do with archives here.


Photo by Cynthia Burgess

Under the weather

Sorry for the lack of posting the last couple of days. I've been ill and quite debilitated. I hope I'll be back to my regular routine in the next couple of days! Thank you for your patience!

More on basic goodness

It's so very important to make friends with the parts of ourselves we don't like. If we don't, if we try to get rid of those aspects of ourselves, we may actually end up being destructive toward something that is very valuable. John Welwood discusses this in his book, "Toward a Psychology of Awakening":

The poignant truth about human suffering is that all our neurotic self-destructive patterns are twisted forms of basic goodness, which lies hidden within them. For example, a little girl with an alcoholic father sees his unhappiness and wants to make him happy so that she can experience unconditional love - the love of being - flowing between them. Unfortunately, out of her desire to please him, she also winds up bending herself out of shape, disregarding her own needs and blaming herself for failing to make him happy. As a result, she ends up with a harsh inner critic and repeatedly reenacts a neurotic victim role with the men in her life. Although her fixation on trying to please is misguided, it originally arose out of a spark of generosity and caring for her father.

Just as muddy water contains clear water within it when the dirt settles out, all our negative tendencies reveal a spark of basic goodness and intelligence at their core, which is usually obscured by our habitual tendencies. Within our anger, for instance, there may be an arrow-like straightforwardness that can be a real gift when communicated without attack or blame. Our passivity may contain a capacity for acceptance and letting things be. And our self-hatred often contains a desire to destroy those elements of our personality that oppress us and prevent us from being fully ourselves. Since every negative or self-defeating behavior is but a distorted form of our larger intelligence, we don't have to struggle against this dirt that muddies the water of our being.

So don't struggle. Accept without judgment. Let go. Bring the mind back to the present moment. Meditate on impermanence and know that because of impermanence we can change. We are skillful in our efforts to change when we practice unconditional friendliness toward ourselves.

Mental distortions

All of us, I imagine, have a preference for congenial relationships. Given the choice, we would rather not have the challenge of coping with difficult people or people who actually wish to do us harm. But if we only have congenial interactions with others, we won't grow or truly understand ourselves. B. Alan Wallace makes this point in a passage from The Seven Point Mind Training:

Again and again, think of mental distortions as afflictions, contrary to nature. When someone is hot-tempered, narrow-minded, bigoted, selfish, or thoughtless, we think, "What a disgusting person!" But all these qualities are afflictions, and that person is the first to bear the initial brunt of suffering from them. The more repugnant a person is, the more likely that person is to be suffering from the mental distortions that render him or her repugnant to us.
...
Having engaged in... Mind Training, we can recognize that a person who has harmed us thereby kicks us out of our complacency and pushes us into practice. If we are surrounded by friends, our mental distortions may rarely be triggered and we can easily exaggerate our sense of the progress we have made in our practice. But when hostility triggers animosity, it is like a bucket full of cold water in the face, making it very clear that we have something here to work on.

My own meditation teacher used to say of any difficulty, "It's material; we can work with it." It is amazing how we can alleviate our own suffering by taking this approach -- by seeing challenges (no matter how negative or full of hostility) as material we can work with.

Staying in the moment

Here's a great little story by Anthony de Mello in The Heart of the Enlightened:

The clock master was about to fix the pendulum of a clock when, to his surprise, he heard the pendulum speak.

"Please, sir, leave me alone," the pendulum pleaded. "It will be an act of kindness on your part. Think of the number of times I will have to tick day and night. So many times each minute, sixty minutes an hour, twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year. For year upon year... millions of ticks. I could never do it."

But the clock master answered wisely, "Don't think of the future. Just do one tick at a time and you will enjoy every tick for the rest of your life."

And that is exactly what the pendulum decided to do. It is still ticking merrily away.

It is simply magical what living in the moment will do for us in terms of happiness and the alleviation of suffering. One moment at a time. That is all.

Magical.

Unconditional friendliness

One of the big misconceptions about meditation that beginners tend to have is the belief that one is supposed to force the mind to remain on the meditation support. John Welwood describes the correct approach in his book, Toward a Psychology of Awakening:

In meditation practice, you work directly with your confused mind-states, without waging crusades against any aspect of your experience. You let all your tendencies arise, without trying to screen anything out, manipulate experience in any way, or measure up to any ideal standard. Allowing yourself the space to be as you are - letting whatever arises arise, without fixation on it, and coming back to simple presence - this is perhaps the most loving and compassionate way you can treat yourself. It helps you make friends with the whole range of your experience.

As you simplify in this way, you start to feel your very presence as wholesome in and of itself. You don't have to prove that you are good. You discover a self-existing sanity that lies deeper than all thought or feeling. You appreciate the beauty of just being awake, responsive, and open to life. Appreciating this basic, underlying sense of goodness is the birth of maitri - unconditional friendliness toward yourself.

There is nothing more tragic than to be in an adversarial relationship with oneself and, sadly, this is true for many people. Cultivate "unconditional friendliness" toward yourself by practicing the spacious, open approach to meditation that Welwood describes. The benefit is, quite simply, the alleviation of suffering and the arising of true happiness.

Friday Cat Blogging!

It's Henry, the old man, looking a bit irritated! As I post this, he's sitting in my lap just purring away.

Photo by Ellie Finlay

Happiness

Over the years, I've learned to simplify my objectives for working with myself and helping others. I want to be happy. And I want to help others learn how to be happy. Unfortunately, most people suffer from grave misconceptions about what will really make them happy. Anthony de Mello addresses this in a little story from his book, The Heart of the Enlightened:

Traveler: "What kind of weather are we going to have today?"
Shepherd: "The kind of weather I like."
Traveler: "How do you know it will be the kind of weather you like?"
Shepherd: "Having found out, sir, I cannot always get what I like, I have learned always to like what I get. So I am quite sure we will have the kind of weather I like."

De Mello concludes this story with a comment of his own:

Happiness and unhappiness are in the way we meet events, not in the nature of those events themselves.

How very true. But the ability to like what we get requires training. This is where the meditative principles are so powerful. When we meditate we practice accepting without judgment over and over and over. This slowly but effectively trains us to accept the way things are. And that deep acceptance is the key to true happiness.

Non-separation

Dan Nerren sent me this wonderful quotation:

A human being is a part of the whole that we call the universe, a part limited in time and space. And yet we experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical illusion of our consciousness. This illusion is a prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for only the few people nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living beings and all of nature.

-- Albert Einstein

We really are not separate. Einstein recognised that belief in separateness is a prison. When we realize that we then experience an awareness of our connection as liberation. We can be liberated at any moment by recognizing our connectedness with all beings - indeed with all things.

Wednesday life form blogging

Photo by Cynthia Burgess

Basic goodness

This morning I want to share with you a passage from John Welwood's book, Toward a Psychology of Awakening. This passage is about our attitude toward ourselves:

The Dalai Lama and many other Tibetan teachers have spoken of their great surprise and shock at discovering just how much self-hatred Westerners carry around inside them. Such an intense degree of self-blame is not found in traditional Buddhist cultures, where there is an understanding that the heart-mind, also known as buddha-nature, is unconditionally open, compassionate, and wholesome. Since we are all embryonic buddhas, why would anyone want to hate themselves?

Chogyam Trungpa described the essence of our nature in terms of basic goodness. In using this term, he did not mean that people are only morally good - which would be naïve, considering all the evil that humans perpetrate in this world. Rather, basic goodness refers to our primordial nature, which is unconditionally wholesome because it is beyond conventional notions of good and bad. It lies much deeper than conditioned personality and behavior, which are always a mix of positive and negative tendencies. From this perspective, all the evil and destructive behavior that goes on in our world is the result of people failing to recognize the fundamental wholesomeness of their essential nature.

What surprises me is the number of people I've encountered who actually believe it is somehow virtuous to hate themselves. Ironically this position usually results from the person having an idealized self-image which he or she is then unable to manifest perfectly. Letting go of that unrealistic ideal brings us into an appropriate humility and makes it then possible for us to accept ourselves unconditionally.

Paradise

Here's another great story from One Minute Wisdom by Anthony de Mello:

A disciple fell asleep and dreamed that he had entered Paradise. To his astonishment he found his Master and the other disciples sitting there, absorbed in meditation.

"Is this the reward of Paradise?" he cried. "Why, this is exactly the sort of thing we did on earth!"

He heard a Voice exclaim, "Fool! You think those meditators are in Paradise? It is just the opposite - Paradise is in the meditators."

I love this story. It is the same teaching as the one Jesus conveyed when he said, "The kingdom of heaven is within you." Let go of grasping and look within. It is truly the way to happiness and peace.

Monday Meditative Picture Blogging

Photo by Cynthia Burgess

Fearlessness

Here is a story from One Minute Wisdom by Anthony de Mello which moved me very much:

Fearlessness

"What is love?"

"The total absence of fear," said the Master

"What is it we fear?"

"Love," said the Master

Notice where you are afraid of love and what you substitute for it. Are you choosing control instead of love? Are you choosing to think of people as commodities rather than beings to relate to on the basis of genuine love? Are you choosing to seek to erase boundaries rather than loving another by honoring that person's boundaries? Are you choosing to try to merge with another, to possess another, rather than to accept another for what he or she truly is - in other words, to love that person for his or her own sake rather than how you can use that person?

Love does not cling or grasp. Love accepts the other, honors the other, respects the other. Most important of all is love for one's own self. This is not the same as gratification or indulgence. Rather it is about accepting who and what we really are without judgment and then making decisions that are truly in our own deep best interest. When we do that, we are able then to love others from that deep place within where we truly love and accept ourselves.

Growth

Here's a truly wonderful story as told by Anthony de Mello in One Minute Wisdom:

Tribulation

"Calamities can bring growth and Enlightenment," said the Master.

And he explained it thus:

"Each day a bird would shelter in the withered branches of a tree that stood in the middle of a vast deserted plain. One day a whirlwind uprooted the tree, forcing the poor bird to fly a hundred miles in search of shelter - till it finally came to a forest of fruit-laden trees."

And he concluded: "If the withered tree had survived, nothing would have induced the bird to give up its security and fly."

This is why we need to train ourselves to let go of attachments. If we have practice in letting go, then, when the calamity comes, we will be able to adjust and change and move on. If we are not able to let go, we will be trapped. It doesn't matter whether the attachment is to something "good" or not. It's the ego-clinging itself that traps us.

Letting life flow

Here's a passage from The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle:

To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness. This state is then no longer dependent upon things being in a certain way, good or bad. It seems almost paradoxical, yet when your inner dependency on form is gone, the general conditions of your life, the outer forms, tend to improve greatly. Things, people, or conditions that you thought you needed for your happiness now come to you with no struggle or effort on your part, and you are free to enjoy and appreciate them - while they last. All those things, of course, will still pass away, cycles will come and go, but with dependency gone there is no fear of loss anymore. Life flows with ease.

I agree that it seems paradoxical that outward conditions tend to improve when we let go of our dependency on outward conditions being a certain way. I think this works because our energy is then not taken up with resisting what is and so we then naturally take the kind of actions that end up benefiting us.

Friday Cat Blogging!

Here's Edgar. What a fine face!


Photo by Ellie Finlay

Receptivity to truth

Here is a powerful little story from One Minute Wisdom by Anthony de Mello:

"The trouble with the world," said the Master with a sigh, "is that human beings refuse to grow up."

"When can a person be said to have grown up?" asked a disciple.

"Oh the day he does not need to be lied to about anything."

Why don't we ask ourselves if we prefer to be lied to about anything. Is there any area of life in general or our personal life in particular about which we really don't want to know the truth? These are undoubtedly very beneficial questions for reflection.

Identity

I want to bring you another passage today from The Seven-Point Mind Training by B. Alan Wallace - this one about how identity depends upon something called mental designation. This principle helps us experience the fluidity of phenomena and keeps us from being locked into a constricted, rigid way of looking at existence whether of other beings, objects, or ourselves. This passage outlines a classic illustration:

A very practical way to integrate the meditative practice with the post-meditative practice is to refresh this awareness, again and again, of how phenomena are dependent for their very existence upon mental designation. Take the example of a cart. None of its parts is the cart itself. No one thing can simultaneously be the axle and the wheel and the flat bottom. These are totally different entities with their own defining qualities such as flatness or roundness. The cart is not the wheel, nor is it the flat bottom, nor the axle. Nor is it all of the above because one thing cannot be all of the mutually exclusive parts of the cart. The cart is not identical with any one of its parts, nor is it equivalent to the sum of the parts. But if you take away each of the parts, then there is no cart remaining. What is a cart? It is something that is mentally designated upon the parts. Does the cart that is so designated perform the function of a cart? Yes: it carries hay and people; it travels; it is pulled by horses.

Likewise, I perform the functions of a person. I speak, I think, I act. Yet I am not the speech, the thought, or the deed. I am not the body or the mind. I am designated upon the body and mind, and my self depends for its very existence upon this mental designation. Like all phenomena, both subjective and objective, my self does not exist in its own right.

Okay. Why is this important? Well, it helps us see that what we call the "self" is not solid or fixed and that's good news! If we had a fixed, solid self then we couldn't change; we couldn't look forward to transformation. Letting go of the idea of a solid self is an experience of wonderful liberation! It doesn't mean that we don't exist. It means that we are not stuck.

Wednesday life form blogging

Photo by Lydie Meunier

Suffering and maturity

Does suffering automatically make someone a better person? I think suffering can be a catalyst but wisdom needs to be part of the mix for there to be real benefit. This point is also made by B. Alan Wallace in his book, The Seven-Point Mind Training:

If there is no suffering, then there is no renunciation, no aspiration to emerge from mental distortions and a way of life pervaded by dissatisfaction. I do not believe that suffering matures us by itself. My knowledge of history and my own experience persuade me that it is patently untrue that a person who suffers a lot automatically becomes a better person. Suffering alone is not sufficient: an intelligent, insightful response to the suffering is needed. With these two together, [the wisdom teachings] and suffering, we can definitely grow through a wholesome transformation.

One of the great benefits of meditating on impermanence is the realization that transformation is indeed possible because without impermanence we would be unable to change. But because of impermanence we can, indeed, change and so transformation can be ours. We only need to be faithful to our meditative practice and our commitment to cultivating compassion.

Hopping like rabbits

I subscribe to a daily email from Beliefnet called "Daily Buddhist Wisdom". Here's today's offering:

Encircled with craving,
people hop 'round & around
like a rabbit caught in a snare.
Tied with fetters & bonds
they go on to suffering,
again & again, for long.

Encircled with craving,
people hop 'round & around
like a rabbit caught in a snare.
So a monk
should dispel craving,
should aspire to dispassion
for himself.

-Dhammapada, 24, translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu.

This not only applies to monks, by the way! All of us will do well to "aspire to dispassion" - that is, non-attachment. This is truly the way to happiness.

Monday Meditative Picture Blogging

Photo by Cynthia Burgess

A skillful reflection

Body impermanent like spring mist;
mind insubstantial like empty sky;
thoughts unestablished like breezes in space.
Think about these three points over and over.

-Adept Godrakpa, "Hermit of Go Cliffs"

The search for truth

Here's another story from Anthony de Mello's One Minute Wisdom:

Doctrine

To a visitor who claimed he had no need to search for Truth because he found it in the beliefs of his religion, the Master said:

"There was once a student who never became a mathematician because he blindly believed the answers he found at the back of his math textbook - and, ironically, the answers were correct."

Think about that. Really think about it. And then remember that the appeal of fundamentalism has to do with an attachment to certainty -- and that's quite different from the search for truth.

Equanimity as respect

Today I want to offer you a single beautiful paragraph by Sylvia Boorstein from her wonderful book, Pay Attention, for Goodness' Sake:

To perfect my Equanimity, I need to accept every experience into my awareness. I cannot refuse to pay attention. Refusing itself, the mind tensing in withdrawal, is suffering. And turning the mind away, refusing to look, would preclude complete and clear seeing. When my mind greets all moments with equal respect, it maintains stature enough to see that causal connections set every experience into its lawful time and place, that everything is always - breathtakingly - the only way that it can be. My heart, resting in Equanimity, can respond with compassion.

I'm very moved by the idea of greeting all moments with equal respect. There's a certain reverence in that approach which settles the mind and calms the heart. Try visualizing a slight but sincere bow to each moment. How simple. How tranquil. How accepting.

Friday Cat Blogging!

Eureka Springs cats:

Photo by Cynthia Burgess

Do you really want a cure?

Here's a little story from Anthony de Mello's One Minute Wisdom that I've always appreciated:

To a distressed person who came to him for help the Master said, "Do you really want a cure?"

"If I did not, would I bother to come to you?"

Oh yes. Most people do."

"What for?"

Not for a cure. That's painful. For relief."

To his disciples the Master said, "People who want a cure, provided they can have it without pain, are like those who favor progress, provided they can have it without change."

Pain is part of the package. I want to remind everybody of the distinction between pain and suffering in the meditative tradition. Pain is part of life and it is definitely a part of growth. Pain is quite bearable if we stay in the moment and meditate on impermanence. Suffering, on the other hand, is pain plus non-acceptance. When we refuse to accept necessary pain we experience great suffering and that is the part that is optional. Let us be willing to go through the necessary pain in order to grow. This will truly bring us great benefit --- the "cure"!

The purpose of the spiritual path

Sylvia Boorstein, in Pay Attention, for Goodness' Sake, tells about being interviewed on the subject of authentic religion. At one point, the interviewer asked, "What's supposed to happen?"

Here is what she said:

What's supposed to happen? What's supposed to happen is that our vision becomes transformed. We begin to see, with increasing clarity, how much confusion and suffering there is in our own minds and hearts, and we also see the ways in which our own personal suffering creates suffering in the world. That part is heartbreaking. And totally daunting. But that's not all. We also get to see the extraordinariness of life, how amazing it is that life exists and continually re-creates itself in an incredible, spectacular, mind-boggling, lawful way. When we see clearly, our awe and our thanksgiving for the very fact that life is happening makes it impossible to do anything other than address the pain in the world, to try to heal it, to hope never to add one single extra drop of pain or suffering to it. As our understanding increases, our hearts become more responsive. We become the compassionate people we were meant to be. That's the whole point of practice. That's what's supposed to happen.

I'm glad she admitted that the awareness part can be heartbreaking and daunting. It is. Meditation is not for sissies. But the transformation part is real too. Never lose heart about transformation. It is happening all the time. We only need to be faithful to our practice and to persevere. And if we're truly compassionate toward ourselves, perseverance is not that difficult. We become the compassionate people we were meant to be by beginning where we are and that is with ourselves. Give yourself compassion every time you sit to meditate and you will surely experience the transformation taking place.

Wednesday life form blogging

Photo by Cynthia Burgess

Wisdom

There are, O monks, these four splendors.

What four?

The splendor of the moon, the splendor of the sun,

the splendor of fire and the splendor of wisdom.

Of these four splendors, this is the best:

the splendor of wisdom.

There are, O monks, these four radiances...

these four lights... these four lusters...

these four sources of illumination.

Of these four sources of illumination, this is the best:

illumination by wisdom.

--the Buddha

No complaints

Some people have the habit of complaining a lot. I'm not sure why. It must be gratifying on some level. Maybe it comes from a sense of entitlement about having one's own way all the time. I don't know. What I do know is that complaints poison the mind. Here's a passage from Pay Attention, for Goodness' Sake by Sylvia Boorstein that speaks to this:

I absolutely trust that I can refine the capacities of my own heart, and I inspire myself with stories I hear, and then tell, about people with incredible nobility of spirit. Like the story of the Zen teacher who, with her very last breath - in the tradition of Zen teachers who save their pithiest teaching for their last breath - said, "I have no complaints." I think about her when I hear my own mind complaining, annoyed that things aren't going the way I wanted them to. I know that not complaining doesn't mean not responding. I also know I could be proactive with a loving heart. But I still hear my mind being indignant or self-righteous, or telling itself sorrowful stories. All bad habits. All painful habits.

The best possible response to pain - to any pain - is compassion. Maybe the whole of spiritual practice rests on remembering - over and over again - that we are, after all, human beings.

Maybe if we acknowledged that we're human beings after all we wouldn't expect to feel perfect all the time and so it would feel more normal to let go of complaints. This is what it means, I think, to respond to pain - one's own pain as well as the pain of other beings - with compassion.

Monday Meditative Picture Blogging

This is a picture of Bright Angel Trail.

Photo by Cynthia Burgess

Dignity

The correct posture for meditation is often called a "self-supporting" posture. Jon-Kabat Zinn, in Wherever You Go There You Are, uses the word "dignity". Here's what he says:

Sitting down to meditate, our posture talks to us. It makes its own statement. You might say the posture itself is the meditation. If we slump, it reflects low energy, passivity, a lack of clarity. If we sit ramrod-straight, we are tense, making too much of an effort, trying too hard. When I use the word "dignity" in teaching situations, as in "Sit in a way that embodies dignity," everybody immediately adjusts their posture to sit up straighter. But they don't stiffen. Faces relax, shoulders drop, head, neck, and back come into easy alignment. The spine rises out of the pelvis with energy. Sometimes people tend to sit forward, away from the backs of their chairs, more autonomously. Everybody seems to instantly know that inner feeling of dignity and how to embody it.

Perhaps we just need little reminders from time to time that we are already dignified, deserving, worthy. Sometimes we don't feel that way because of the wounds and the scars we carry from the past or because of the uncertainty of the future. It is doubtful that we came to feel undeserving on our own. We were helped to feel unworthy. We were taught it in a thousand ways when we were little, and we learned our lessons well.

So, when we take our seat in meditation and remind ourselves to sit with dignity, we are coming back to our original worthiness. That in itself is quite a statement. You can bet our inside will be listening. Are we ready to listen, too? Are we ready to listen to the currents of direct experience in this moment, and this one, and this...?

What would happen if we reminded ourselves of the principle of dignity throughout the day? Just let that be a true value. I imagine it would prompt more mindfulness in addition to improving our posture!

When you awaken

Over the years I have benefitted enormously from the works - mainly the tapes - of Ram Dass. Here's a quote I found this morning on a site called Best Spirituality.

When you awaken, you are no longer a Buddhist or a Hindu or a Christian or a Jew or a Moslem. You are love, you are truth. And love and truth have no form. They flow into forms. But the word is never the same as that which the word connotes. The word "God" is not God, the word "Mother" is not Mother, the word "Self" is not Self, the word "moment" is not the moment. All of these words are empty. We're playing at the level of intellect, feeding that thing in us that keeps wanting to understand. And here we are, all the words we've said are gone. Where did they go? Do you remember them all? Empty, empty. If you heard them, you are at this moment empty. You're ready for the next word. And the word will go through you. You don't have to know anything: that's what's so funny about it. You get so simple. You're empty. You know nothing. You simply are wisdom not becoming anything, just being everything.

Letting go of concepts helps us to experience reality directly. That's the emptiness he's talking about, I believe. Just be willing to empty out. Let go of the attachment to ideas and simply experience what is.

The ego

Ego could be defined as whatever covers up basic goodness. From an experiential point of view, what is ego covering up? It's covering up our experience of just being here, just fully being where we are, so that we can relate with the immediacy of our experience. Egolessness is a state of mind that has complete confidence in the sacredness of the world. It is unconditional well being, unconditional joy that includes all the different qualities of our experience.

--Pema Chodron

Friday Cat Blogging!

This is Peppa, the wonderful cat that belongs to my friends Rosemary and Steve Williams in Manchester (England). Peppa kindly posed for me!

Your best friend

Jim Mulcahy sent me this story:

A man and his dog were walking along a road. The man was enjoying the scenery, when it suddenly occurred to him that he was dead. He remembered dying, and that the dog walking beside him had been dead for years. He wondered where the road was leading them.

After a while, they came to a high, white stone wall along one side of the road. It looked like fine marble. At the top of a long hill, it was broken by a tall arch that glowed in the sunlight. When he was standing before it he saw a magnificent gate in the arch that looked like mother-of-pearl, and the street that led to the gate looked like pure gold.

He and the dog walked toward the gate, and as he got closer, he saw a man at a desk to one side. When he was close enough, he called out, "Excuse me, where are we?"

"This is Heaven, sir," the man answered.

"Wow! Would you happen to have some water?" the man asked.

"Of ! course, sir. Come right in, and I'll have some ice water brought right up."The man gestured, and the gate began to open.

"Can my friend," gesturing toward his dog, "come in, too?" the traveler asked.

"I'm sorry, sir, but we don't accept pets."

The man thought a moment and then turned back toward the road and continued the way he had been going with his dog.

After another long walk, and at the top of another long hill, he came to a dirt road leading through a farm gate that looked as if it had never been closed. There was no fence. As he approached the gate, he saw a man inside, leaning against a tree and reading a book."Excuse me!" he called to the man. "Do you have any water?"

"Yeah, sure, there's a pump over there, come on in."

"How about my friend here?" the traveler gestured to the dog.

"There should be a bowl by the pump."

They went through the gate, and sure enough, there was an old-fashioned hand pump with a bowl beside it.The traveler filled the water bowl and took a long drink himself, then he gave some to the dog. When they were full, he and the dog walked back toward the man who was standing by the tree. "What do you call this place?" the traveler asked.

"This is Heaven," he answered.

"Well, that's confusing," the traveler said. "The man down the road said that was Heaven, too."

"Oh, you mean the place with the gold street and pearly gates? Nope. That's hell."

"Doesn't it make you mad for them to use your name like that?"

"No, we're just happy that they screen out the folks who would leave their best friends behind."

The meditative principles are about compassion for all beings. That's all beings - not just human.

May all beings be happy and create the causes of happiness...

A parable

Yvonne Perez sent me the following story this morning. It's worth our attention.

William Clark wrote:

Once upon a time there was a rich King who had four wives. He loved the 4th wife the most and adorned her with rich robes and treated her to the finest of delicacies. He gave her nothing but the best.

He also loved the 3rd wife very much and was always showing her off to neighboring kingdoms. However, he feared that one day she would leave him for another.

He also loved his 2nd wife. She was his confidant and was always kind, considerate and patient with him. Whenever the King faced a problem, he could confide in her, and she would help him get through the difficult times.

The King's 1st wife was a very loyal partner and had made great contributions in maintaining his wealth and kingdom. However, he did not love the first wife. Although she loved him deeply, he hardly took notice of her!

One day, the King fell ill and he knew his time was short. He thought of his luxurious life and wondered, "I now have four wives with me, but when I die, I'll be all alone."

Thus, he asked the 4th wife, "I have loved you the most, endowed you with the finest clothing and showered great care over you. Now that I'm dying, will you follow me and keep me company?"

"No way!", replied the 4th wife, and she walked away without another word. Her answer cut like a sharp knife right into his heart.

The sad King then asked the 3rd wife, "I have loved you all my life. Now that I'm dying, will you follow me and keep me company?"

"No!", replied the 3rd wife. "Life is too good! When you die,I'm going to remarry!" His heart sank and turned cold.

He then asked the 2nd wife, "I have always turned to you for help and you've always been there for me. When I die, will you follow me and keep me company?"

"I'm sorry, I can't help you out this time!", replied the 2nd wife. "At the very most, I can only walk with you to your grave." Her answer struck him like a bolt of lightning, and the King was devastated.

Then a voice called out: "I'll go with you. I'll follow you no matter where you go."

The King looked up, and there was his first wife. She was very skinny as she suffered from malnutrition and neglect.

Greatly grieved, the King said, "I should have taken much better care of you when I had the chance!"

In truth, we all have the 4 wives in our lives: Our 4th wife is our body. No matter how much time and effort we lavish in making it look good, it will leave us when we die. Our 3rd wife is our possessions, status and wealth. When we die, it will all go to others. Our 2nd wife is our family and friends. No matter how much they have been there for us, the furthest they can stay by us is up to the grave.

And our 1st wife is our Soul. Often neglected in pursuit of wealth, power and pleasures of the world. However, our Soul is the only thing that will follow us wherever we go.

Think about it. How much care and attention do you give to your spiritual practice? Why not examine your priorities today and give more attention to that first wife?

Wednesday life form blogging

Here's another one of Cynthia's amazing pictures - this one of a man working on a Navajo reservation:

Photo by Cynthia Burgess

In Praise of Non-Doing

Here's another passage from Wherever You Go There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn:

If you sit down to meditate, even for a moment, it will be a time for non-doing. It is very important not to think that this non-doing is synonymous with doing nothing. They couldn't be more different. Consciousness and intention matter here. If fact, they are key.

On the surface, it seems as if there might be two kinds of non-doing, one involving not doing any outward work, the other involving what we might call effortless activity. Ultimately we come to see that they are the same. It is the inward experience that counts here. What we frequently call formal meditation involves purposefully making a time for stopping all outward activity and cultivating stillness, with no agenda other than being fully present in each moment. Not doing anything. Perhaps such moments of non-doing are the greatest gift one can give oneself.

I agree. I'm so saddened by people who have their identity caught up in doing, doing, doing. It's an addiction, really. If you're like that, train yourself gradually in non-doing. Try just five minutes at a time. When you realize it won't kill you, it will truly get easier and your quality of life will vastly improve!

Experiencing awareness

Here's another helpful passage from Wherever You Go There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn:

Awareness is not the same as thought. It lies beyond thinking, although it makes use of thinking, honoring its value and its power. Awareness is more like a vessel which can hold and contain our thinking, helping us to see and know our thoughts as thoughts rather than getting caught up in them as reality.
...
Meditation does not involve trying to change your thinking by thinking some more. It involves watching thought itself. The watching is the holding. By watching your thoughts without being drawn into them, you can learn something profoundly liberating about thinking itself, which may help you to be less of a prisoner of those thought patterns - often so strong in us - which are narrow, inaccurate, self-involved, habitual to the point of being imprisoning, and also just plain wrong.

I believe the critical point being made here is that meditation is not changing our thinking by thinking some more! I know many people try to change their thinking by analysis. Although analysis has its place, it is not helpful in developing pure awareness. Just notice and accept without judgment. Keep doing that over and over, coming back to the meditative support each time.

Monday Meditative Picture Blogging

Another one of Cynthia's stunning pictures:

Photo by Cynthia Burgess

The question of getting it right

I'm aware that many people, especially beginning students, are very concerned with whether or not they are doing what they're "supposed" to be doing when they meditate. Jon Kabat-Zinn speaks to this in his marvelous book, Wherever You Go There You Are:

Try being aware of all the times in meditation when the thought comes up: "Am I doing this right?" "Is this what I should be feeling?" "Is this what is 'supposed' to happen?" Instead of trying to answer these questions, just look more deeply into the present moment. Expand your awareness in this very moment. Hold the question in awareness along with your breathing and with the full range of this particular moment's context. Trust that in this moment, "This is it," whatever and wherever "this" is. Looking deeply into whatever the "this" of the present moment is, keep up a continuity of mindfulness, allowing one moment to unfold into the next without analyzing, discoursing, judging, condemning, or doubting; simply observing, embracing, opening, letting be, accepting. Right now. Only this step. Only this
moment.

It strikes me that the words, "only this moment" would be a good mantra for maintaining mindfulness throughout the day. We could simply go about our daily routine and regularly say to ourselves, "only this moment," and let those words bring us into the here and now.

The most delightful tea of all

Here's a story from The Heart of the Enlightened by Anthony de Mello:

There was a group of elderly gentlemen in Japan who would meet to exchange news and drink tea. One of their diversions was to search for costly varieties of tea and create new blends that would delight the palate.

When it was the turn of the oldest member of the group to entertain the others, he served tea with the greatest ceremony, measuring out the leaves from a golden container. Everyone had the highest praise for the tea and demanded to know by what particular combination he had arrived at this exquisite blend.

The old man smiled and said, "Gentlemen, the tea that you find so delightful is the one that is drunk by the peasants on my farm. The finest things in life are neither costly nor hard to find."

I drank a lot of ordinary tea while I was in Ireland and England these past two weeks. And yes, it was delightful! I'm so glad to be back home in Oklahoma, though, and back to updating the blogs. I hope everyone is well. Blessings to all.

Saturday cat blogging!

Hello, everyone! I'm back from my wonderful vacation in Ireland where it was so easy to stay utterly in the moment and just be. I also went to England briefly (Manchester to be precise) to see my friends Rosemary and Steve Williams. And there was this wonderful cat statue on the dresser in the guest room:

Vacation

I will be away from June 30 - July 16. Blog posting will continue when I get back.

Many blessings to everyone!

Wednesday life form blogging

Camaflouged chimpmunk!

Photo by Cynthia Burgess

About generosity

Here's a good quote from the works of Jon Kabat-Zinn. I don't know what book this is from as I got it off a website called Best Spirituality .com .

Generosity is another quality which, like patience, letting go, non-judging, and trust, provides a solid foundation for mindfulness practice. You might experiment with using the cultivation of generosity as a vehicle for deep self-observation and inquiry as well as an exercise in giving. A good place to start is with yourself. See if you can give yourself gifts that may be true blessings, such as self-acceptance, or some time each day with no purpose. Practice feeling deserving enough to accept these gifts without obligation-to simply receive from yourself, and from the universe.

I like the idea of starting the practice of generosity with ourselves the same way we're taught to practice compassion. When we start with ourselves then generosity does not become an occasion for personal deprivation but rather a way for everybody to benefit.

Monday Meditative Picture Blogging

Photo by Cynthia Burgess

Another approach to loving kindness practice

Here's a process for practicing loving kindness meditation as suggested by Jon Kabat-Zinn in Wherever You Go There You Are:

TRY: Touching base with feelings of loving kindness within yourself at some point in your meditation practice. See if you can get behind any objections you may have to this practice, or behind your reasons for being unlovable or unacceptable. Just look at all that as thinking. Experiment with allowing yourself to bathe in the warmth and acceptance of loving kindness as if you were a child held in a loving mother's or father's arms. Then play with directing it toward others and out into the world. There is no limit to this practice, but as with any other practice, it deepens and grows with constant attending, like plants in a lovingly tended garden. Make sure that you are not trying to help anybody else or the planet. Rather, you are simply holding them in awareness, honoring them, wishing them well, opening to their pain with kindness and compassion and acceptance. If, in the process, you find that this practice calls you to act differently in the world, then let those actions too embody loving kindness and mindfulness.

Pay attention to Kabat-Zinn's advice, "Just look at all that as thinking." What he's saying is to treat your inner obstacles as thoughts -- that you can notice, accept without judgment, let go and then bring your mind back to the practice.

Freedom from grasping

Stephen Levine makes a very interesting observation in this passage from A Gradual Awakening:

Ironically, when we experience the depth of dissatisfaction in the wanting mind there follows a great joy. Because when we see that no object of mind can in itself satisfy, then nothing that arises can draw us out and we begin to let go because there is nothing worth holding onto. The more we see how the mind wants, the more we see how wanting obscures the present. To realize that there is nothing to hold onto that can offer lasting satisfaction shows us there is nowhere to go and nothing to have and nothing to be - and that's freedom.

I think everyone has experienced the freedom of letting go at some point in his or her life. The problem is that when we're untrained we often only let go only by accident or through extreme desperation. Cultivating a trained mind enables us to let go because we choose to do so. That's the freedom Levine is talking about.

Saturday dog blogging

Well, I'm going to be out of the country next Friday so I just couldn't wait to show you my big dog Izzy. Here she is:

Real happiness

Here is another passage from The Essence of Buddhism by Traleg Kyabgon:

Spiritual practice is about being, or becoming, a different person; having a different experience of our own being. It has scarcely anything to do with what we have in terms of job, family, and so forth. This does not mean that we should reject our family in order to be spiritual, or that we should stop working and live in the jungle in order to be spiritual. Even the happiness that we may feel in the jungle will turn into unhappiness when the mosquitoes and the snakes start biting! Real happiness has to come from within, from having a greater understanding of ourselves. As our inner struggles and conflicts gradually lessen and we become more integrated, we gain a sense of peace. We will not stop having problems in life, because many problems come from the external world. However, the inner sense of integration enables us to deal with whatever arises in our life. This is the kind of thing we have to work with on the path of preparation.

We begin to realize where the real source of happiness lies, and this makes us keen to pursue the path. If we are not convinced, if we are not looking forward to our destination, the journey cannot take place.

What he's talking about, of course, is aspiration. We aspire for our true nature to be realized. It is important for us to have an unshakable conviction that this is, indeed, possible. Such a conviction will sustain us through every kind of challenge imaginable.

Cat blogging bonus

Well, folks, I just got a digital camera so as to keep up with the need for Friday cat pictures. Here is my very first attempt. It's Henry the Great!

Friday Cat Blogging!

This is a blurry picture scanned from a print that I found the other day. But I love the expression on Leroy's face!

A settled mind

Here's a passage from The Essence of Buddhism by Traleg Kyabgon about tranquility:

The meditation of tranquility teaches us how to become settled and calm and to concentrate so that our minds are not always reaching out, grabbing on to this and that, and becoming scattered. We learn how to focus our minds, to become centered. We also learn how to be present and not dwell on our past achievements, failures, regrets, or guilt associated with all kinds of things that we may have done or failed to do. Likewise, we learn how not to dwell on or feel anxious about the future: what we would like to achieve, the possibility of not being able to achieve our goals, the imminent obstacles that we can foresee, and so on. We can learn how to be in the present and remain focused. If we indulge in all these mental activities without focus, we lose our perspective and start to react to things more and more from habitual responses rather than from clear understanding. Through the practice of meditation, we can learn how to be attentive and in the present.

It's wonderful to have a strategy for interrupting habitual tendency. Without mindfulness we are taken hostage by habitual tendency, aren't we? But the mindfulness practice frees us and gives us access to our choices. At the end of the day, it's all about alleviating suffering. It's worth the work because this way we can find another way of living besides being imprisoned by repeated suffering.

Keen mindfulness

Here's a wonderful description of what happens when mindfulness is present. This is from A Gradual Awakening by Stephen Levine:

When mindfulness becomes very keen we can begin to see thoughts in a new way, literally experiencing them arising and passing away as though they had a frame around them. It's as though we'd taken a movie film, which we had been watching projected on a screen, and examined it frame by frame, investigating the discrete elements of what had previously been imagined to be a single, continuous flow. We see the arising and passing away of consciousness, of everything that we considered to be self. It allows a microscopic examination of moment-to-moment mind, of being, as it unfolds. Then, what is unconscious becomes conscious. Nothing is blocked and nothing is added, the whole universe presents itself as it will and we are graced to perceive it.

It's like standing on a stream bank, watching all the thoughts float downstream like bubbles. And. as we watch, it becomes increasingly clear that some of the bubbles are us watching the stream, that even the watcher is just part of the flow, and awareness simply experiences all that is.

This is very beautiful, very freeing. I really like the expression "keen mindfulness". Let that be your aspiration in your meditation today!

Wednesday life form blogging

Notice the little ants!

Photo by Cynthia Burgess

Metta Prayer

May all beings be happy, content and fulfilled.
May all beings be healed and whole.
May all have whatever they want and need.
May all be protected from harm and free from fear
May all beings enjoy inner peace and ease.
May all be awakened, liberated, and free.
May there be peace in this world and throughout the entire universe.

Turning inward

One of my favorite slogans from the Seven Points of Mind-Training is this one: "Liberate yourself by examining and investigating." Jon Kabat-Zinn, in Wherever You Go There You Are, offers an exercise consistent with that teaching to be used when things aren't going just right or when we're not feeling just right. Here it is:

The next time you feel a sense of dissatisfaction, of something being missing or not quite right, turn inward just as an experiment. See if you can capture the energy of that very moment. Instead of picking up a magazine or going to the movies, calling a friend or looking for something to eat or acting up in one way or another, make a place for yourself. Sit down and enter into your breathing, if only for a few minutes. Don't look for anything - neither flowers nor light nor a beautiful view. Don't extol the virtues of anything or condemn the inadequacy of anything. Don't even think to yourself, "I am going inward now." Just sit. Reside at the center of the world. Let things be as they are.

This is a very powerful practice in acceptance. I recommend it highly.

Monday Meditative Picture Blogging

Photo by Cynthia Burgess

Observing the mind poisons

Here's a great quote about the mind poisons of anger, greed and delusion:

Q: I can observe anger and work with greed, but how does one observe delusion?

A: You're riding a horse and asking "Where's the horse?" Pay attention.

-Ajahn Chah

Encouragement for self-acceptance

Sometimes beginning meditation students think that a meditative practice will eliminate all uncomfortable feelings. They want everything to be peaceful, blissful, serene. But that's not only unrealistic, that's a form of grasping for the pleasurable states. Meditation, rather, gives us the skill to accept ourselves utterly as we are. Stephen Levine speaks to this in his book, A Gradual Awakening:

Coming mindfully into the moment is accepting ourselves fully. We know that there are feelings we don't know the root of, feelings we're not in touch with: "I feel a certain way, but I don't know why; I have this uneasiness, but I don't know where it's coming from - and, here I am, just open to it, just sitting with it." We can allow ourselves to stay soft with that, not to close in on it, not to cause resistance in the mind and body. It's all right not to know - it leaves room for knowing.

We can experiment with our practice to see what's going on inside ourselves. We can observe what anger feels like, what joy feels like, what separation from the flow feels like, what fear or worry feels like. We can see what letting go does. We can experience all of ourself. We make room for all of ourself and return wholeheartedly into the flow with a self-accepting mind not caught in judging other mind states.

I love that sentence, "We can experience all of ourself." This is why meditation is so profoundly healing if we let it be. Whatever aspect of ourselves we may have rejected in the past, we can now accept through meditation. May this happen for everyone who reads these words!

Everyday mindfulness

I often recommend that people select prompts from their everyday routine to help bring them to mindfulness. Jon Kabat-Zinn has the same advice in his book Wherever You Go There You Are. Here's how he expresses the suggestion:

Try: To use ordinary, repetitive occasions in your own house as invitations to practice mindfulness. Going to the front door, answering the telephone, seeking out someone else in the house to speak with, going to the bathroom, getting the laundry out of the dryer, going to the refrigerator, can all be occasions to slow down and be more in touch with each present moment. Notice the inner feelings which push you toward the telephone or the doorbell on the first ring. Why does your response time have to be so fast that it pulls you out of the life you were living in the preceding moment? Can these transitions become more graceful? Can you be more where you find yourself, all the time?

Also try being present for things like taking a shower, or eating. When you are in the shower, are you really in the shower? Do you feel the water on your skin, or are you someplace else, lost in thought, missing the shower altogether? Eating is another good occasion for mindfulness practice. Are you tasting your food? Are you aware of how fast, how much, when, where, and what you are eating? Can you make your entire day as it unfolds into an occasion to be present or to bring yourself back to the present, over and over again?

Notice the ordinariness of these suggestions. This is about real life - not going off to meditate in a cave away from everyone and everything! These are practices we can apply right here, right now.

Friday Cat Blogging!

Here's a picture that Char Stone sent me. Char writes:

Here is E.T., my Devon Rex, who likes to make copies on my printer. He touches the buttons on the printer until it starts a copy and then watches it come out.

Wanting mind

Here's another way of looking at true freedom as expressed by Stephen Levine in his book, A Gradual Awakening:

At the base of the conditioned mind is a wanting. This wanting takes many forms. It wants to be secure. It wants to be happy. It wants to survive. It wants to be loved. It also has specific wants: objects of desire, friendships, food, this color or that color, this kind of surrounding or some other kind. There's wanting not to have pain. There's wanting to be enlightened. There's wanting things to be as we wish they were.
...
When we see the depth of wanting in the mind, we see the depth of dissatisfaction because wanting can't be satisfied: when we get finished with one desire there's always another. As long as we're trying to satisfy desire, we're increasing wanting.

Ironically, when we experience the depth of dissatisfaction in the wanting mind there follows a great joy. Because when we see that no object of mind can in itself satisfy, then nothing that arises can draw us out and we begin to let go because there is nothing worth holding onto. The more we see how the mind wants, the more we see how wanting obscures the present. To realize that there is nothing to hold onto that can offer lasting satisfaction shows us there is nowhere to go and nothing to have and nothing to be - and that's freedom.

The joy of simply experiencing the present moment as it is cannot be adequately expressed. I think Levine has come close, however. This is a beautiful passage.

Knowing ourselves

If we can reach the understanding of what we actually are, there is no better remedy for eliminating all suffering. This is the heart of all spiritual practices.

-Kalu Rinpoche, Luminous Mind

The power of meditation

In the ongoing classes right now, we are studying a book called Awakening the Buddha Within by Lama Surya Das. Surya Das is a practitioner in the Dzogchen school of Tibetan Buddhism. Here is a Dzogchen teaching on meditation that emphasizes the importance of regular practice and long term perseverence:

In the beginning, meditative awareness is like a small flame, which can easily be extinguished and needs to be protected and nurtured. Later, it is more like a huge bonfire, which consumes whatever falls into it... Then the more thoughts that arise, the more awareness blazes up, like adding logs to a bonfire! Emaho!* Everything is food for naked enlightened awareness!

-- Dzogchen Master Jigme Lingpa

*"Emaho!" is Tibetan for "How wonderful!" or "Hallelujah!"

The contemplative attitude

Happiness is an inside job. That's often hard for people to accept because we are easily conditioned to believe that if only we could change our outward circumstances we would be happier. Jon Kabat-Zinn speaks to this in his book, Wherever You Go There You Are:

Dwelling inwardly for extended periods, we come to know something of the poverty of always looking outside ourselves for happiness, understanding, and wisdom. It's not that God, the environment, and other people cannot help us to be happy or to find satisfaction. It's just that our happiness, satisfaction, and our understanding, even of God, will be no deeper than our capacity to know ourselves inwardly, to encounter the outer world from the deep comfort that comes from being at home in one's own skin, from an intimate familiarity with the ways of one's own mind and body.

Dwelling in stillness and looking inward for some part of each day, we touch what is most real and reliable in ourselves and most easily overlooked and undeveloped. When we can be centered in ourselves, even for brief periods of time in the face of the pull of the outer world, not having to look elsewhere for something to fill us up or make us happy, we can be at home wherever we find ourselves, at peace with things as they are, moment by moment.

This is so true. It's the reason I really value taking a meditation break during my day - especially when things get hectic. Through meditation I always know that I can "touch what is most real and reliable" in myself.

Monday Meditative Picture Blogging

Photo by Cynthia Burgess

So you think you don't have time.

I think people often don't believe me when I tell them that 5 minutes of meditation a day will change their lives. But it's true. Jon Kabat-Zinn agrees as he explains in this passage from Wherever You Go There You Are:

For those who seek balance in their lives, a certain flexibility of approach is not only helpful, it is essential. It is important to know that meditation has little to do with clock time. Five minutes of formal practice can be as profound or more so than forty-five minutes. The sincerity of your effort matters far more than elapsed time, since we are really talking about stepping out of minutes and hours and into moments, which are truly dimensionless and therefore infinite. So, if you have some motivation to practice even a little, that is what is important. Mindfulness needs to be kindled and nurtured, protected from the winds of a busy life or a restless and tormented mind, just as a small flame needs to be sheltered from strong gusts of air.

If you can only manage five minutes, or even one minute of mindfulness at first, that is truly wonderful. It means you have already remembered the value of stopping, of shifting even momentarily from doing to being.

What happens when we meditate for just five minutes is that we have interrupted the flow of habitual tendency that typically controls our minds throughout the day. That is a major shift. This is why five minutes a day everyday is much better than a hour once a week.

On loving-kindness

The Dalai Lama frequently says, "My religion is kindness." Here's a beautiful passage by Stephen Levine from his book A Gradual Awakening about just that:

The power of loving-kindness is so great that when we concentratedly send it out to another, they often can feel it if they are in a quiet place at that moment. It is a tangible but subtle energy which can be consciously directed, much like that quality of care which is the principal element in healing.

As practice continues to cultivate an openness of heart, we begin to experience the incredible power of this love. And we see that with all our imagined unworthiness and fear, with all our doubt and desire, it's hard to be loving all the time. But it's harder not to be loving.

I really like that last sentence. If we realize that choosing not to love is actually hard on us in a deep way, perhaps we will not choose that unloving path. Just let go of resentment and wish for the other what you wish for yourself: happiness and well-being.

Making our "self-talk" skillful

I often recommend something I call self-coaching. That's a way of making the way we talk to ourselves wholesome and skillful. Many people have an unhelpful habit of negative self-talk. David Harp speaks to this in his book, The Three Minute Meditator:

Often we are not even completely aware of all of our thoughts. Many of us suffer from an internal monologue that runs intermittently, a critical, judgmental, internal voice that seems to love to offer gratuitous and usually negative comments. These comments slink through our mind half-noticed, and, like small leaks in the bottom of a large boat, often have a long-term or cumulative effect, which is not a pleasant one.

I used to use the first line or two of The Beatles song, "I'm A Loser" to berate myself with. Anytime I did anything that didn't work out perfectly, I'd subconsciously croon "I'm a looo-oo-ooser..." to myself, thus reinforcing my negative feelings.

Once I began to clear and to watch my mind through meditation, I was able to see what I was doing (at least sometimes), and began to let go of this self-hating habit. Before I started meditation I couldn't see it happening. I couldn't catch myself in the act, so I wasn't able to deal with this behavior.

I feel a lot better now that my mind is no longer singing that darn tune! You'll feel happier and more positive when you begin to quiet the chatter or your mind, too.

That's a good story, isn't it? Start noticing what you're saying to yourself and let go of critical and self-berating messages. Try saying, "Accept without judgment, accept without judgment," when that critical voice starts up. Make the commitment to give yourself lovingkindness and compassion in this way.

Friday Cat Blogging!

This is Kato of Colorado Springs. Sent to me by Paul Rogers.

Learning not to judge

Here's a paragraph from The Feeling Buddha by David Brazier. It points out the problem with trying to make ourselves special or different:

When we are able to see our own negativity clearly we will be less complacent and we will not stand in judgment over others. We will know that we too have all the seeds in us to be every possible kind of saint or sinner. We are not made of different stuff from the people we might choose to scorn. To be proud of ourselves while devaluing others is simply self-deception. If we have some special talent or some particular virtue, then we have it for a purpose, which is to benefit the world. If we see it as a platform from which inwardly to assert our superiority, we defeat our real purpose immediately.

Humility is an important aspect of meditative practice. That means not thinking we are less than others and not thinking we are more than others but simply being willing to take our place as a member of humanity - simply one of others. It has been aptly said that humility is not thinking less of ourselves but rather thinking of ourselves less.

More about anger

Here is another passage from The Three Minute Meditator by David Harp. This passage speaks to the importance of compassion for ourselves when we're overcome with anger:

For me, frustration often leads to anger. When business dealings, relationships, or other events don't go the way I want them to, I first feel frustrated, then threatened by my own lack of control. Almost instantaneously the feelings of frustration and fear turn into anger, as my mind attempts to cover up these insecure and painful feelings with more aggressive ones. Acting upon these aggressive feelings, I may then lash out at myself, or at loved ones, without even knowing why.

But when I can recognize the initial frustration and fearful feelings as they arise, I can meet them with compassion. A moment of compassion meditation will often break the chain of frustration-to-fear-to-anger, and allow me to face the frustration and fear directly. It's not easy to face up to my own inability to control people, events, and things. But I'd rather directly face these feelings and the pain that they bring, than encounter the far greater pain of the misdirected anger, with its warlike attack on myself or others.

Even if I do get angry, I may be able, after a moment, to remember to be compassionate towards myself, both for my pain, and for having become mad. All humans feel anger and must somehow learn to deal with this emotion. Feeling compassion for my anger is far more healing in the long run than feeling guilt for my anger, or feeling angry at myself for my anger. Feeling compassion for myself allows me to "watch the movie" in my mind and step outside my old knee-jerk reaction of pain, anger, and self-hate.

I so agree with this. When I feel strong emotions like anger I coach myself with the words, "Accept without judgment." Of course, by the time I remember to do the self-coaching, I may well have already judged the emotion. That's when it's important to remember not to judge the judgment! Whenever mindfulness returns, that's when we stop judging. Accept whatever came before and give yourself lots of compassion. Remember, compassion is the sincere wish that suffering be alleviated. You can give yourself that, no matter what. It helps if we remember that continuing to judge is a sure fire way to prolonging the suffering.

Wednesday life form blogging

Photo by Cynthia Burgess

Conscious driving

Today, I picked up a book I haven't looked at for some years but that I've always really valued. It is The Three Minute Meditator by David Harp. Thumbing through it, my eye fell on this exercise:

Driving is one of the most hazardous things we do on a daily basis. Yet often, as we drive, our mind is lost in the past or the future, far from a clear focus on the manipulation of tons of iron at high rates of speed. We talk, listen to the radio, eat, drink or smoke, keeping "half an eye" on the road and other traffic.

In conscious driving, we focus our attention exclusively on the elements important to automotive safety, asintently as though we were Monte Carlo racing drivers, participating in the race of our lives. But intead of concentrating on speed alone, we pay attnetion to many factors: the road in front of us, the positionsof other cars near us, our speed, driving conditions, and road conditions.

Should any thoughts not germane only to safe driving enter, we notice them and gently return our attention to our driving. If this exercise seems, for any reason, to be unsafe, please don't do it. but I am convinced that if more people did focuse their attention exclusively on their driving, that the highways would be much safer places.

Of course, this was written before cell phones hit the scene so today we have that distraction as well as the ones Harp has mentioned here. What would happen if we all decided to practice conscious, or mindful, driving? We would actually get in a lot more mindfulness training quite easily and we would be safer as well.

Tuesday meditative picture blogging

I forgot to do Monday Meditative Picture blogging yesterday. So I'm making up for it today! Here's one that I really love:

Photo by Cynthia Burgess

Wisdom words

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it.
Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations.
Do not believe in anything because it is spoken and rumored by many.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books.
Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.
But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason, and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.

~~ The Buddha

Steadfastness and clear seeing

I often remind classes that mindfulness meditation is not the same thing as going into a trance. We don't want to lower our awareness but rather help it to become clearer - more finely tuned. Pema Chodron speaks to this in her marvelous book, The Places That Scare You:

So whenever we wander off, we gently encourage ourselves to "stay" and settle down. Are we experiencing restlessness? Stay! Discursive mind? Stay! Are fear and loathing out of control? Stay! Aching knees and throbbing back? Stay! What's for lunch? Stay! What am I doing here? Stay! I can't stand this another minute! Stay! That is how to cultivate steadfastness.

Clear seeing. After we've been meditating for a while, it's common to feel that we are regressing rather than waking up. "Until I started meditating, I was quite settled; now it feel like I'm always restless." "I never used to feel anger; now it comes up all the time." We might complain that meditation is ruining our life, but in fact such experiences are a sign that we're starting to see more clearly. Through the process of practicing the technique day in and day out, year after year, we begin to be very honest with ourselves. Clear seeing is another way of saying that we have less self-deception.

That's so important. When we let go of self-deception and deeply know that this is not something we will intentionally choose, we lose all fear of what may come up in our meditation. Then we will know a freedom possible no other way.

The value of patience

When I was in the convent, the older nuns used to offer some really valuable advice about spiritual development. They would say, "Don't pull yourself up by the roots to see how you're growing." Often those of us new to the life would yield to the temptation to engage in an unskillful kind of introspection. I observe that now sometimes with people who get impatient about their progress. Lama Surya Das speaks to this issue in his book, Awakening the Buddha Within. This passage is from the chapter on "Right Effort":

We all have instant-coffee mind today: What we want, we want now. Just add hot water, and it's ready. But in the spiritual dimension, however urgently you may feel the need to progress - hasten slowly, and you will soon arrive. Pulling upon the flowers with your hands every day does not help them grow more, and may even harm their natural blooming process. On the other hand, skillful nurturing with the right combination of water, air, sunlight, and fertilizer can maximize their innate growth potential. This wise gardening method is not unlike the appropriate effort that is just right for individual spiritual growth and personal development.

One of my own meditation teachers, Rob Nairn*, often emphasized the importance of meditating just to meditate - not to gain any results. It's true that results will slowly happen but attachment to results sabotages the process because it focuses on the future instead of letting the mind rest in the moment. Just be with what is and accept what is. Then let the progress take care of itself.

*All of Rob's books and videos are available at the Center

Impermanence

In all the classes this week we've taken a look at the importance of meditating on impermanence. The passage I'm offering you today is from A Guide to Tibetan Buddhist Practice by Ringu Tulku Rinpoche. Unfortunately I'm not able to link to a source for this book as it is not formally published but rather photocopied and spiral bound. The book is a transcript of talks given by Ringu Tulku. We can get copies at the Center by ordering from a Buddhist book store in Albuquerque, however. Here's the passage:

How do you meditate on impermanence? There are many different ways or different methods. First, contemplate the impermanence of the outside world, and then contemplate the impermanence of the beings living on it. In respect of the outside world, you can think of two more levels, that is the impermanence of the world in general, and then the impermanence of objects in it.

Firstly, think of the world, how it has changed since the beginning of time, how it was formed and how it will disintegrate in the end. This great earth, which we inhabit; the sun and the moon which we know so well, there will come a time when they too will disintegrate and vanish. Even within this universe, the solar systems, the planets and the stars - not one of these things is permanent.

Secondly, there are not only these great changes, but there are so many small changes, like the changing of the seasons, the change from day to night, from sunshine to rain. There is no pause in time; every moment brings change. Therefore, think of these things, that nothing stands still in space, everything is changing all the time. Try to think of these things and understand that this is how to meditate on the impermanence of the outside world.

Now think about the beings on this earth; they are also impermanent. We can look around us and see other beings changing, we can see them growing older, we can see them dying. Things like that should remind us how impermanent everything is. We can also think of our own death, our own impermanence. In these two ways, we gain understanding and make ourselves more conscious of the nature of impermanence.

I find this to be a very consoling practice. Whenever I catch myself worrying about what is going on in the world and what is happening to the earth, I meditate on impermanence in this way. It is a very effective antidote to anxiety and it brings true perspective and equanimity.

Friday Cat Blogging!

This picture of Leroy was taken some years ago in the old Center - in the sun room which was my office at the time.

Photo by Ellie

Anger and self-acceptance

I suppose the most difficult task I face in working with people is inviting them into radical self-acceptance. I don't know why people think that they will improve themselves if they don't accept themselves. But many people do think that way. Of course all that does is keep them stuck because it reinforces judgment and the only way to make effective changes is to let go of judgment. Stephen Levine speaks to this in A Gradual Awakening:

We don't have to be afraid to see anything. In a clear seeing of anger or fear or insecurity or doubt, each thing is defused, it doesn't beg for expression, its reactive power is dissipated. Mindfulness will cut through it. And the mindfulness weakens the force of its arising in the future, even though it may have such potency that it stays for a while. As we experience alternate moments of mindfulness and anger, we begin undermining the power of the anger.
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The nature of the mind is such that when awareness is present it displaces the kind of grasping that breeds frustration. We cannot have awareness and grasping active in the same moment. They don't fit in the same space. When we're not mindful, when we're identifying with the thought, which is forgetfulness, the opposite of mindfulness, we spin out. When we're mindful, each thought arises and passes away, to be followed by another - there's no stickiness. So when we're mindful of anger, it won't stay. We don't suppress it, we don't act it out. We're just mindful of it, experience it, and watch it come and go.
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Coming mindfully into the moment is accepting ourselves fully. We know that there are feelings we don't know the root of, feelings we're not in touch with: "I feel a certain way, but I don't know why; I have this uneasiness, but I don't know where it's coming from - and here I am just open to it, just sitting with it." We can allow ourselves to stay soft with that, not to close in on it, not to cause resistance in the mind and body. It's all right not to know - it leaves room for knowing.

Leaving room in our consciousness is so liberating. Having our mind crowded with judgments is just the opposite: it restricts and imprisons us. Complete self-acceptance truly is the way forward because it is non-grasping. Think about it. Refusing to accept yourself is an intense form of grasping. And that will only drive our afflictive emotions in deeper.

True peace of mind

Today I picked up a book I've shared with you before: How to Meditate by Kathleen McDonald. I found a wonderful passage explaining just how and why ego-cherishing is such a problem. Here it is:

It is self-cherishing that motivates us to take the biggest piece of cake or the most comfortable chair in the room; to push to the head of the queue or drive as if ours were the only car on the road; to do what we feel like doing without considering how it might affect others. Self-cherishing operates more subtly, too; it lies behind our irritation, pride, jealousy, anxiety and depression. In fact, just about every time we are unhappy or uneasy it is because we are overly concerned with me. We feel that unless we take care of ourselves we will not be happy. In fact, the very opposite is true. Ego's appetite is insatiable - trying to fulfill its wishes is a never-ending job. No matter how much we have, ego continuously grows restless and looks for more. We never reach a point where we feel ultimately satisfied, when we can say, "Now I've had enough."

If, on the other hand, we can turn our mind around to think of others and put their needs and desires first, we will find peace. There is a serenity that comes from truly cherishing others. By acting always according to what is least disturbing for others, ego is gradually subdued and our life and relationships take on a new dimension.

But the attitude of cherishing others is not based on disliking oneself or suppressing one's feelings. It is developed by gradually coming to recognize that everyone needs love and wants happiness, just as we do: that every being in the universe is part of one big family, that we all depend on each other, that there is no such thing as an outsider; that self-cherishing brings problems and cherishing other bring peace of mind.

That last paragraph is so important. Please notice what this is not saying. It is not saying that we should become martyrs and put ourselves down and cherish a self-image of always helping others. That is just another ego-trip. No, McDonald is talking about the real thing: wanting the same love and happiness for others that we naturally and rightly want for ourselves.

A great meditation to help us cultivate a sincere interest in the well-being of others is metta or loving-kindness practice. Start with yourself by saying, "May I be happy. May I be well. May everything be well in my life." Then think of someone you love. "May s/he be happy. May s/he be well. May everything be well in her/his life." Then slowly expand the circle of lovingkindness until you are able to include even difficult people in your well wishing. Finally include all beings. This is a powerful way of interrupting the dynamic of ego-grasping and can provide nearly instant relief from suffering. It is a way of both appropriately taking care of ourselves and others.

Wednesday life form blogging

Photo by Cynthia Burgess

Transformation

It's very important in the meditative process not to become attached to a particular outcome. But it's seductive to do so. One of the things I remind myself of is that my life will simply unfold and, if I accept this, it will unfold without my suffering over it. Charlotte Joko Beck speaks to this in her book, Nothing Special:

Transformation is allowing ourselves to participate in our life right this second. That's scary business. There is no guarantee of comfort, of peace, of money, of anything. We have to be what we are. Most of us, however, have other ideas. It's as though we are a tree that produces leaves and fruit of a certain kind. We want to produce this because it's comfortable. Transformation, however, is to produce what life chooses to produce through us. We can't know what this is going to be. It might mean any kind of a transformation -- in the work we do, in the way we live, in our health (it might even get worse, not better.)
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The way of transformation requires an impeccable warrior - which is not the same as being a perfect warrior. Instead, we constantly do our best, working with specific care. Instead of resolving, "I'm going to be aware," we need to resolve, "I'm going to be aware specifically when I do that." Instead of trying to work with everything at once, we work on one or two items at a time, maybe for two or three months, and just keep pounding away. If we let even one thought go by, such as "Oh, I'm really a hopeless person," without being aware of it until afterward, then we want to sit up a little straighter and try again. We need to apply ourselves steadily, to build up muscle for the long, hard journey. In the end, we realize that it's not a long, hard journey, but we won't see this until we see it.

This second paragraph reminds me of the slogan from the Seven Points of Mind Training, "Always meditate on what causes resentment". That's what it means to work specifically. This way we cultivate observer consciousness about how our mind really works - not our fantasies about how we wish it would work!