Barry Garden Path

For me, dogma and devotion are aspects of the same thing. In my world, I attempt to avoid both. Each interferes with concentration, each interrupts an attitude of mindfulness . Concentration and mindfulness are best experienced when there is no content, no form to perceive, no shape to fill my mind. Dogma and devotion provide content, form and shaped perception.

Dogma is all about shaping my thinking . It tells me how to think and how to act. A teaching is laden with the burden of content and form. When a teaching becomes a go to reference, it takes on the role of dogma. Anything that offers me assurance of truth is dogmatic. I am never sure. I try to keep a shapeless mind that allows all perceptions to pass through without leaving a lasting inprint.

I do not want my mind to be shaped by dogma. I have never experienced a dogma that was not a reflection of someone else’s imagination. I want my mind to be shaped by my own experience, not someone else’s. I think that even the most fundamental notions of “truth” are shaped by the perceptions of others, not my own. They do not represent my own experience.

Devotions include any actions that are done for their own sakes. Any habitual action can become a devotion. Actions that are devotional can be body movements, bowing, chanting, pouring of water, burning of sage or incense, etc. When done without an internal movement of mindfulness, actions can become nothing more than devotional. The same actions taken with an internal experience of concentration and mindfulness can be a deep spiritual practice.

Without concentration and mindfulness, repeated actions of devotion can lose their meaning and significance. Done out of habit or repetition, the actions become devotional, done for their own sake. They become a shell of experience and not the actual experience itself.

Dogma and devotion have been part of my life in the past. Now, I do not want to make them part of my daily experience. I have routine actions and expressions that I do and say, but I often stop and make sure they are an expression of an internal disposition of awareness.

I want what I do and say to be more than simple actions and gestures. I want them to be a genuine expression of who I am. For that to happen, I have to totally let go and become what I am doing. I want to be intently aware and part of what I say or do. For me, that means avoiding dogma and devotin

I think I want to be an everyday mystic. There was a time that, because of my Catholic heritage, I thought that mystics were monks kneeling in their monastic cell bathed in a beam of light. Mystics were also the nuns who were recognized by the way they levitated or clasped their hands together. Mysticism was not an every day experience but something reserved for the isolated few.

I don’t think this is so. I think we are all capable of mysticism. I certainly think it is something I’m not only capable of but routinely experience for brief moments. It is not unusual for me to experience rapturous moments when walking thru my garden in the morning. That moment lasts until I am distracted by some plant needing special attention and my rapture vanishes.

My mindfulness bell rings on the hour and invites me into a moment that I see as mystical. I touch whatever is near, and when I know that I know, all thought vanishes. I absoutely let go. I don’t experience a beam of heavenly light shining down on me, but it could easily be interpreted as that. My whole self vanishes and I have a moment of floating in a blissful, unattached space. Then I return to whatever I was doing before the bell summoned me to rapture.

I really don’t see this as something special or out of the ordinary. I consider it perfectly normal and part of being human. For me, it is all about letting go. It is an endless fall into darkness. It is a brief reminder that I am not a self and that I am not separate from all that exists. For a brief moment, I enter a space that is beyond form and perception.

For now, this is good enough for me. I accept my brief encounters with mysticism. I get to be a mystic multiple times during the day, and it opens my body to experience the moment to moment world around me. Bering an every day mystic, I have refined eyes to see the plants in my garden. I have ears that hear music in a slightly altered way. I touch others with a meaningful expression of our joined presence. I am not upset by the careless driver who cuts in front of me on the freeway. My food has a different savor and feeling in my mouth.

Everyday mysticism is not just a series of isolated experiences for me. Mysticism conditions me to be more awakened to the world around and inside me. Being a mystic brings me the joy of being alive.

When I truly look inside, there is nothing there. My body supports sensation and awareness, but it often seems separate from what I am truly experiencing. My inside experience experience goes bveyond the sensation and resides at a place I am not aware even exists. But I am also aware it is there.

Sometimes when I look inside, there is the vastness of a formless universe. It’s all there. It goes on and on and on. It’s the closest I get to imagining what infinity is like. People sometimes speculate about what the edge of the universe might be like. When I look inside, I suspect there is no outer edge. The universe I sense when I look inside is infinite.

This is the completely open field I experience when I look inside. This looking inside is the kind of concentration I experience. I don’t concentrate on anything. I see myself as concentrating on nothing. There is nothing inside.

Without this concentration, I do not have insight. I have to erase the complete blackboard before I can delve into the mystery of insight. For me, concentrationn is all about going inside and finding nothing. I am concentrating when I am no longer thinking about anything. Concentration happens when I am able to look beyond the clutter of my thoughts.

Going inside this way is how I discover there is nothing. I discover nothing.

With everyone else, I sometimes seem to live mainly in a seen world. All that is external is our focus and object of attention. I suppose it is a matter of survival. We need to pay attention to the seen world to survive, but there is so much more. I want to experience more of the internal world. Not just my own, but the internal, unseen aspect of everyone and everything around me. I want to know and experience what is happening inside.

What is it like to be a tree? What is happening inside all those people who walk past me as I hurry down Nicollet Avenue.? What enjoyment does a rock experience in its stability ? I speak of actions and movements, but I want to know more of what is happening inside everyone around me.

It is easier and more familiar to talk of falling down than what it feels like to lose control and stability. I am told of members of my Sangha being ordained, of the actions they are taking, what they are doing. But what is the interior change taking place in them as they go through those seen actions.?

Like most, I seem to have become so habituated to focus on the external and we have lost touch or ignore what is taking place inside. Maybe that is because there is actually little taking place inside, we have become so adept at the external, seen aspect of everything including ourselves. All is done externally, or at least mostly externally, and very little internally. We live in a seen world, and so much possiblity lies in the vast unseen.

Weddings are especially such an expression of that sad divide. So much energy and attention is placed on the external trappings that little seems to be seen or felt on the inside. The same happens as we become absorbed in the ritual and actions, the words and the motions we encounter in my Sangha. Without deliberate attention, we begin to lose touch with what we are actually experiencing or capable of experiencing. Without practice, we do not have the skills of describing what is happening inside, in our unseen world. Sometimes there is little going on internally because we are so adept at focusing on what is external.

My morning walks through my garden can be no different. There are moments that I can truly focus on what I am experiencing and what it is like to be a plant in my garden. There are moments when I can focus on what it is like to be this plant and that plant. These are the monents when I am aware of the inner life that I have and am part of. For a few moments I am able to stroll joyfully in an unseen world. In those moments, my inner world expands without limits.

Rosemerry, once again you have reminded me of something essential. I don’t need to bend into the world. I am most effective in absorbing the world when I invite it to bend into me. The world comes to me when I am receptive, accepting, hugging the world around me. I am most a part of it when I am inviting.

By invitation, I allow plants, animals, rocks, people, stars to become part of me. I don’t have to bend, I have to do nothing but be receptive and I absorb whatever I am aware of. All I have to do is accept, and the world becomes part of me. The world is my invitee, and it comes to me by my letting go and allowing it to approach. It becomes a loving part of me by invitation.

The invitation is most effective when I have no concept of what is before me. I am most inviting when I put aside all formed perceptions of what I experience. I do not know what I am inviting, so the world can come as it is. This applies must acutely to people. People feel the invitation most clearly when I have no notion of who they are, when I am open to them just as they are. My invitation to them has no specified name or address.

Presenting this open invitation is mostly how I walk through my garden in the morning. In a short while, I often begin conjuring up my expectations and my preconceptions about my garden. But my garden is most a part of me when I walk through it with an open invitation, when I am most receptive to my garden just as it is.

Becoming who I am has not been my own doing alone. I am aware, as I look around me and inside me, I have been transformed by many peoople. These are the many individuals who have loved me and been loved by me. It is a transformation that continues each day and constantly evolves.

I am aware how I have been transformed by those who love me. I have not evolved alone. I am a collage of all my lovers, some of whom are dead and some are alive. All are with me, and for this I am grateful and mindful how they have such a profound effect on me and continue to do so.

Sometimes when I have been loved I have been able to respond in kind. Sometimes I did not respond so well. Still I am a collection of all these lovers and I have been shaped and molded by them. All are part of who I have become and are part of my future as certainly as they have been part of my past. Many are eminently part of my present.

The transformation process continues. I am enriched and changed daily by my sweetie and the loving circle that surrounds me. I look at my parents before they had children, I look at gifts given to me so many times in the intervening years and I am reminded how I have been transformed by those who have loved me. I am also attentive to how poorly I sometimes responded to that love. I have often resisted acceptance of that love. But now I give myself more fully to it.

My transformation continues daily, shaped both by those who love me and whom I love. It is a process it has taken me decades to sort out, oftentimes resisted. But now I know I want it all. I embrace each endless fall and each shimmering ascent. I will be both transformer and transformed.

I think I struggle less when I learn how to struggle. I get less done, but what I do is easier. This especially is true in how I approach gardening. If it doesn’t give me joy, I typically don’t do it.

I admit to being one of those drivers who drive at or slightly above the speed limit. I am less intense, even though I realize I may frustrate more ambitious , anxious drivers. I may take note and even comment about drivers who do dumb or outrageous things . But they bother me less. I struggle less.

Much of my life has been supported and helped by academics. A structured way of thinking has given shape to my exploration, my ruminating and my actions. I have benefited greatly by the role of academics as my life took on structure and a pattern. The woven way of my life has given me identity and stability. Now I am entering more and more into the spaces between the threads of the academic weaving.

I recognize that I am learning how to enter into the chaos, the realm of the formless. I am plunging beyond academic structure into the unstructured. Like my garden, I am living more and more in a realm of controlled chaos.

My personal form of academics has given shape and structure to my life. I have followed the structure of a belief system, of a way of organizing my life, of entering every day. I have lived in the realm of the structured known, and the adventure lay in the realm of the chaotic unknown.

I have become open to a whole new aspect of reality. The universe is now considered to be 6 percent known matter and 94 percent dark unknown something. My life feels that way as I open to what lies beyond the known and structured.

This is what entering the realm of darkness means to me. I still maintain a certain amount of structure in my life, but I let go and open to the unknown more each day. My notion of time gives way more to the every present now. I let go of structures that could give meaning and embrace the nothing that lies between the fabric threads of my life. Academics are less important when I am in free fall. I embrace the adventure. I want it all.

I think I have struggled all my life to live an authentic life. Mostly my attempt to be authentic has shown up as “doing it my way.” What I now realize is that I was actually paying attention to what I felt deep inside. I was giving secondary value to what others were telling me. I agreed with what my teachers or my culture told me, but only if it felt right.

I now consider that awareness, mindfulness is not a key to understanding everything. Mindfulness is a key to feeling everything. Feeling is a reliable way of connecting with everything. Feeling is my reliable path to authenticity.

Being attached to a way of thinking is a disturbance to authenticity. Learning to pay attention to my experience allows me to become more authtentic. Paying attention to my experience is something I feel with my whole body. Being authentic requires being immersed in feeling.

Men have a hard time being authentic, immersed as they are in the expectations of our culture. Raised on a diet of patriarchy, their ability to be authentic humans is stiffled. Their experience is clouded by patriarchy. Being authentic requires clear experience of feeling, and many men are hampered by notions of patriarchy, by social notions of what it means to be male.

Being a Buddhist can interfere with authenticity. Attempting to follow my or someone’s notion of the Buddhist path will cause me to ignore what I already know by paying aettention to my own inner guidance. My inner humanity is a more reliable guide. I trust my feelings more than I trust the notions of someone else, even the Buddha. To be authentic, I immerse myself in concentration on my inner feelings, my inner guidance.

Following any model can only get me so far, and then I have to be guided by my own authentic guidance. I experienced this as I followed the path of Catholicism. The guidance of the Catholic path only got me so far, and along the way I kept nudging my awareness to what was going on inside of me. The Catholic way, and the Buddhist way, may give me guidelines that are like safety railings along the path. But my own internal guidance shows my authentic way.

I have learned that I could become a good Catholic or a good Buddhist without ever becoming a good, authentic Barry.

I resist the urging of some people around me who speak of being compassionate in the Buddhist way to perpetrators of harm, such as the leaders in our government. My whole inside rebels to that notion. My whole body is aware that these people are a danger and are harming many. They are a danger to me. Ignoring that danger and harm is spiritual bypassing, a lack of being immersed in the suffering being caused. My body, with all it feels, tells me to pay attention to those harmed and extend compassion to them and their suffering.

Not being in touch with my own suffering and that of others is a lack of being in touch with my inner human guidance. I cannot be authentic, I cannot be authentic Barry without being in habitual touch with what I feel. Shielding myself from my feelings, ignoring what I feel, is not helpfu. I want to pay attention to my guidance to authenticity and wholeness which comes from inside.

I am ready to touch and be touched by my world. For me, my sense of touch is pivotal in how I relate to everything. More than any other sense, touch is the avenue for me to enter into a deep connection with everything. I imagine that my first awareness of my surroundings as a newborn was through my touch. The world I became aware of awaited my touching it, and I entered into my first intimacy with all that is.

My sense of sight is highly important to me. It brings me joy and awareness of all my surroundings. Even as it is a critical sense for me , sight is constantly telling me information about what I might touch. I more deeply understand the shape of things I see, like the tree on the boulevard. Seeing the tree has meaning for me because sight reminds me of the times I have touch the roundness, roughness and hardness of that kind of tree. I see my garden plants, and I know what it feels like to feel the texture of their leaves, the softness of the petals of flowers. I see a friend, and I am instantly reminded what it feels like to embrace them in a hug.

When I am eating my cereal, I pause after each spoonful and feel the shape of everything in my mouth. My son tells me that his reaction to food is more to its texture than to its taste. I tell visitors to my garden that touching is a feature of being in my garden. I teach kids how to touch anything in my garden using one finger. The bell sounds hourly on my phone, and I am reminded to touch whatever is near and become connected with the essence of what I touch.

All my senses tell me the assorted characteristics of things. But for me they all hint at what it would be like to touch and be intimately connected. I think that I am already part of everything and everything is part of me. Touch is the most efficient way for me to experience that connection. It is the hub of all my sensory experiences.

Maybe it is the hub because I mostly experiece my connection with my whole body. I may be touching my chair with my hips, but it is my whole body that is aware of the chair. I may be holding someone’s hand, but my whole body typically is aware of their presence. Perhaps touch is like the main stem of my sensory connection with all that is. Deep awareness is internal to me, but that intimate level of concentration embodies a foundation of touch awareness.

For me, everything is waiting to be touched. Everything is waiting for me to realize deep my connection. Touch is so important to make that happen.