Month: January 2017

Today, I am very aware of how important it is for me to have companions and for them to walk side-by-side with me.   I want friends who are witnesses to my life, and who receive the same witness from me.   In becoming a witness, I think that we must not only be present to one another in an aware sort of way.   We must also have some understanding, some shared sense of having been in the same place, the same way.

I think that my life has turned out to be a great adventure so far.  I want to bring my friends along with me, to be a part of this adventure.    I want to walk along with them and share in the adventure they are living.   I want a mutual, deeply penetrating awareness.

I want to learn better how to do this without becoming so intently aware of them that I get pulled into an orbit around them.    The more I become sure and stable in my orbit, the less likely I am to falter.

The measurement of time is beginning to lose its meaning for me.   Apart from arranging for appointments or making plans with friends, the urgency of staying “on time”  or paying attention to time is weakening.   The past is becoming more of a blur, and it is becoming less important to remember just when it was I did something.   Like yesterday, I was trying to remember when I went to visit my brother, then decided the timing was totally incidental to the visit.

Some of this change in my perception, or non-perception of time is due to my developing an empty mind.  My attention to meditation is carrying over into my daily activities, and increments of time are fading.   I have less sense of the passage of time.   I am becoming more convinced that the progression of time or the breaking into sequential moments is an illusion.   There is simply the dimension of time, and the measurement of its progress is a useful artifact for my intellect.

This realization has been reinforced by my studying the development of life on earth, a process that has been going on over 3.5 billion years to the present.    Seen in a glance, as a whole, it is but one action.   The years stacked next to one another by millions, thousands or decades of measured years are but one singular event.    And I am part of that moment.

In concrete ways, the past is still taking part in me.   Even though I can impose measurements of time on snapshots of the past, the history of my origins, the emergence of my life is one event.   It is a singular event that is mirrored in my individual development, from the mergence of that egg and sperm to the breath I just exhaled.

To put things in order so that they make sense to my intellect,  it is useful to impose a grid of a day, a month, a year or an eon on the dimension of time.    But I can be aware of time without the aid of measurements.   First, I must develop the skill of an empty mind.   Then, in a flash, it makes sense.

I know there is a great storm coming, and I am curious what lies on the other side.  For decades, we have set in motion a worldwide process that will have great effects.   The earth is simply following the laws of physics and there must be changes in response to the actions we humans have taken.

The balance that has been dominant for the 20,000 or so years that humans have shown high intellectual power has been shifting.   The climate that humans have prospered in is transforming.  The conditions that were present for the rise of agriculture, the building of cities, the expansion of production, the achievements of science are changing.

The social structures humans have developed and relied on are changing as well.   The presence of wealth has expanded into many more sectors of our world in the past 60 years, and the effects are altering the existing  social arrangements.   In places where wealth has existed in the past, it is being concentrated in the hands of the few.   The shifting of wealth not only promotes dissatisfaction with existing social arrangements.   It also shepherds in new diseases as people change behaviors that have sustained them for many years.

Across the globe, the forces of change are stirring.    It promises to be a great storm.   I want to be around to witness and welcome the new world emerging.

I remember a time when I went to a zoo and the large and dangerous animals paced or lay on the other side of bars.   I wonder what the lion and panthers saw.   Were they able to see beyond the bars or did their attention go only to the vertical bars that defined the margins of their world.   Did they stare at me or at the bars that separated us?

So much of my life has been behind bars.   Many of the bars have been imposed by fellow humans and some I have put there myself.   It has been a struggle to see beyond the bars, and sometimes I contented myself to stay behind them even when I could easily pass through them.

Many of the bars have been cultural ones, society’s bars that defined what it means to be a man, to be responsible, to be married, to be a monk, to possess things.   The obvious ones in my life have been the bars of religion that attempted to define my world and keep me from looking beyond the limits imposed by my tradition and leaders.   Relations with individuals have imposed limits on me as they defined for me who I was or who I should be.

The irony is that I willingly accepted many of these bars.   Especially puzzling for me is how I have chosen to allow or even caused my world to be defined by relationships, especially those with women.

All the while, I have hardly been able to see beyond the bars around me placed by the likes of culture, religion and relationships.   I have never realized that the bars were an illusion, often nurtured by myself.   Now I know that they have been no more confining than a holograph, and at any moment I could both see and pass right through them.

I am learning that the bars are not real and I am slowly venturing into my larger world.   Much of it is unfamiliar and does not offer the same security I found behind bars.   It is also exciting and inviting.    It is a garden of beauty and delights, and it is all mine if I choose to enter it.

This morning, I am amazed how little I have been paying attention to my own biology.   Even as an educated biologist, I’ve been able to avert my eyes from my own biological nature.   I’ve paid scant attention to that long, drawn-out process that has, over millions of years, resulted in an organism that has been shaped by its surroundings, and is capable of being aware in a manner not shared by any of my visible world.

I am only now beginning to notice how humans have used their high intelligence to break away from harmony with the world in which we have developed.   Intelligence has allowed me and my  fellow humans to construct cities, machines and societies beyond anything my basic biology had ever achieved.    But not without a biological cost.  The trajectory of intellectual achievement has become detached from its biological foundation.   If I’ve been paying attention to my biology, the results certainly don’t show it.

I know that every breath I take relies on my harmony with the plants of the earth.   My survival depends on a level of oxygen in the air determined by the activity of plants and a world-wide system that is in balance with that level of oxygen.    Together with the rest of my biological world, I produce an amount of Carbon dioxide that has been relatively steady for many thousands of years.

Now, within the last hundred years, I have joined my fellow humans in changing that balance.    My biological world is cascading toward great changes caused by our decision to put more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.    The whole biological world is being required to change, to adjust.    Some will manage, some will not.   I think human survival is something of a question mark.

Another human innovation that is changing my biology is the food I have become accustomed to eat.   A little over fifty years ago, my fellow humans figured out how to make food that was convenient for the many and profitable for the few.    The value added changed from the farmers who grew the food to the industrialists who manufactured the food.    My biology took another hit.    A body and internal biome  that had evolved to one kind of food was asked to adjust, inside of decades, to food it did not recognize as food.   Preservatives meant to combat biology and improve shelf-life became an arsenal of assault on the biology inside of me.    All manner of ailments have resulted, diabetes, obesity, autism, allergies etc.

Intelligence has given me the power and ability to add to my basic biology.   Now I have to figure out how to get back in harmony with that same biology.

 

I heard someone else describe what they were doing as a “news fast.”    That’s pretty much what I have been doing since mid-October 2016, and I am very pleased with the results.   I seem much more able to focus on what is important to me and on things I can actually do.

It isn’t that I am not interested in what is going on, whether it is my neighborhood, the country or the world.   I am very interested and want to be aware of what is happening, at least as much as I can be.  However, I came to the decision that the “news” I was getting from radio MPR and from the newspaper was not shaped by an interest in informing me as much as it was an attempt to keep my attention.   I abandoned TV news a long time ago.

The BBC came closest to reporting some real aspect of what was actually going on. All the other sources of news were doing their best to lure my attention with images that evolved from someone’s creative imagination.    I have always realized that some part of the news was created or at least inaccurate.    Now the imaginary aspect simply became dominant.

The news had come to excite me, not enlighten me.  It offered me little chance to have  an effect.  So I have been ignoring the “news”.   My daily life is not only OK, I think it is better.

I am now better able to focus on doing things that will have a real effect, maybe bring about a small change in my world.   Even though the headlines tell me enough about what is happening, I hardly ever fret about how to stem the national tide of hatred and injustice.   I’ve decided to spend my emotional energy getting excited about changes I can actually bring about.   I sometimes think about the big causes, but I try to focus on the local ones.

This Friday, I’m helping a group of people who are serving a meal to hungry guests of Loaves and Fishes.   Also,  I promote the sexual health of young people by helping out the Annex Teen Clinic where I can.   I am determined to be a refuge for my companions, especially the members of the Blooming Heart Sangha.   I attempt to establish an open-hearted, loving relationship with my friends and with many people I meet.

I will focus on being a gardener and a messenger of the wonders all around me.   I will build a loving community by gardening and by encouraging other gardeners.   I think most of the problems in the “news” will be taken care of eventually if I do my best to take care of the world closest to me.

I must constantly remind my heart of the vastness of the world in which I find myself.    This is my main path to being at peace with my world and loving it.    I want to free myself from any pretense that the world is benevolent, kind and disposed to take care of me.   It is a wild place, and while it may be aware of me, it gives me a kind of indifferent attention.

My world is what it is, and at most it waits for me to be aware of it, embrace it and love it.

I am able to control my wild world only by my ability to be aware of it.  The more I am attentive and understanding of my world, the more I am able to accept it for what it is.   It does me no good to deny what is in front of me, no matter how threatening or distasteful it is.   There are lions in the jungle, and they are both majestic and dangerous.    There is abundant suffering caused my humans all around me, and it is not in my interest to deny that humans can be mean, malicious and dangerous.

Today I can only ask my heart to become aware of a small part of the danger and suffering in the wild world around me.    For me it is a beginning, and I am choosing to ignore the vast dangers and suffering I am not ready to absorb.   But I will pay attention to a small part of the suffering.   I will change what I can and accept that my world is beyond any of my control. First I have to learn to embrace and love my small part of the wild world.   Today will give me adequate opportunities without my picking up the newspaper.

I really don’t think about death very much.   However, this morning Rilke reminded me of the significance of death.   In a strange kind of manner, my thought of death has brought me into a greater awareness of my current experiences of joy, love, sorrow, pain.   Even before I die, death can play a pivotal role in my life and give a deeper awareness of everything that precedes it.  Death can walk with me as a friend.

Death is the exclamation point at the end of my life that gives nuanced meaning and special emphasis right now to all that goes before it.   As I think about this, I am resolved not to wait until death to realize all that might have been.  I do  not want to find myself grasping for a life never experienced, never lived.

I am determined not to hear myself mumble, “So that’s what it was all about!”   I fondly hope that my death will be a moment when I look forward with curiosity and not back with regret.

I think that my death may possibly be a moment when I realize with clarity just what has been happening and what might have been if I were more awake and attentive.   That is when there will be no more distractions, no more living in the imagined future or the remembered  past.   I expect my death will be a confrontation with reality unlike anything I have experienced before.   It may be my closest encounter with certainty.  It will be reality in bold print.

I think my death has already  taught me something today, without my having to experience it yet.   I now want to be even more awake and more attentive to each passing now.   I want to do the dishes with awareness, and experience the rinsing of pots with an attention and presence that gives joy.    I want to love every moment that passes with all the open-heartedness I can muster.   I want in this next moment to be as ardently attentive as I will be in my last.

 

I am glad that there are times that my eyes can tenderly release what they see.   In those moments, my mind takes a break and no longer tries to impose order on what my eyes see.   My mind stops trying to fabricate a world that makes sense and has some connection to what I previously experienced.   In those moments and for the first time,  I see someone, a plant, a cloud.   I am able to look past all the offerings coming from my mind, and come face to face with what is before me.  It is a totally new and fresh experience.

I know that my mind is active any time that I have my eyes open.   It is constantly working to make sense of anything that I am looking at.   Mainly, my mind is relating the image to what I have experienced before, imposing on the image all that I can recall of my past experience that most closely matches the image.

What I experience is often something that my mind makes up on the spur of the moment, on the instigation of what I am seeing.   It interprets what my eyes experience and gives meaning to all those photons registering on my retina.   I often get a feeling of recognition when my mind tells me that I have seen this chair before, I know what it feels like, I know what it can do.

Sometimes my mind goes into fibrillation mode when I see a confusing scene, and I have to make a snap interpretation.   My mind responds to my eyes and tells me what I am seeing.   Often, I have to revise that interpretation of what I have seen.

It is hard to constantly tell my mind to take a break and just let me see things “for the first time” without any reference to my past experience.   For me, this is what mindful awareness is all about.    Awareness is being able to look beyond the mind-enhanced image and have a fresh and new experience, without the thought limitations.

When I am able to set aside my mental images, I am better able to experience someone, a plant, a cloud with an open heart.   Reality is something my heart is best at grasping.    My heart is so much more reliable than my mind.   But first, my eyes have to release what they think  they see, and I can then see beyond.

 

 

I intend this to be a year of ‘everywhere joy in relation, nowhere in grasping.’  These seven words were put in my mind by Rilke this morning, and they are very fitting for so much of my daily struggles.   I have a strong desire to create relation with the world around me, including my garden and many people.  This is how I create my reality.  I establish relation when I maintain mindful awareness.

Relation happens when I  keep an open heart and is a source of great joy.   It is so attractive that it is hard for me to avoid grasping.   I want to give permanence to a reality that is not lasting.    The moment passes and is gone.   The relation is there and quickly makes way for the next.  The joy is real, it surges throughout my body.   And it too makes way for the next.

I want the intensity of relation, and I want it without attempting to grasp it.   I want to constantly plunge into the new.