Month: August 2017

I have noticed something quite remarkable.   Compassion and loving kindness may be part of my daily intention, but it is not something that happens because I decide to do it.   It simply happens when my awareness expands and grows.   I don’t push it in any direction.    It naturally flows when I remove any mental obstacles I have.

For me, it all begins with noticing someone or something.    As my awareness increases, the barriers between us diminish.   As I pay attention to any aversion or grasping I may be experiencing,  I begin to share the presence of someone or something.   As those dams melt away, the flood of compassion and loving kindness seems to flow naturally.   It is like water rushing down a hill.   There is no stopping it.

That is what I thought, and experienced until this past week.   I realized that when aversion and avoidance show up in my attentive mind, they can  readily block the flow of compassion.    This week, the dam became firm and solid, and nothing changed.  Nothing flowed.

It happened in me when the hurricane was approaching Texas.    All my attention was focused on the years of awareness I have of how Houston has resisted city planning and had no zoning restrictions.    Most infrastructure needed to deal with natural disasters likely to occur on a costal city were rejected as anti-development.

I also saw that the magnificent hurricane approaching the coast was just a manifestation of the changing climate, something that anyone paying attention would have been aware of for at least 20 years.    It was just something easily anticipated and expected.    In fact, I saw it as a powerful expression of natural forces that struck me with awe.   It also validated what I have been saying for years.

The resulting devastation was, in my mind, simply the natural consequences of a leadership obsessed with greedy, uncontrolled development.    Being unprepared was again the natural consequence of turning away from the science of climate change.   I was very attached to my ‘scientific’ point of view.   I had a disdainful aversion for an unresponsive leadership so inattentive to what was obviously happening in their city these many decades.

I was only slightly aware of my own attachment to my point of view and opinion.   Still I was puzzled that for days, I felt little compassion for anyone.    This was true not of only how I felt about the Texans, but just about anyone else as well.   The dams of attachments and aversions were blocking just about any flow of compassionate energy.

I have now been stepping back and paying attention to my opinions about Houston and Texans in general.  I’m not particularly critical of my opinions, but I am gradually less connected to them as I stare at them, as I recognize them for what they are.   Today, the floodgates that constrain compassion are slowly opening.

It has been a week of learning.   I am struck how my lack of skill in managing my mind in just one area had a huge effect on so much more of me.  My ability to be present was significantly diminished.   No matter what I wanted to do, my awareness became loose and unfocused.

I also think I now understand better why it is good for me to avoid listening to the news.    Too much of a challenge.

I am amazed that I have missed something for all these years.   I never realized that I have a natural intimacy with everyone who has ever been a part of my life.   All the struggles to achieve intimacy were based on a persistent illusion.    I have lived my life under the illusion that we were all separate.   All the time we were actually united in a most intimate way, and I was unaware.

I think I am starting to wake up, and I realize how different my life would have been if I had been immersed in the closeness I actually had with all my many companions but didn’t really experience it.   There were those few, of course, with whom I even had a close physical intimacy, and I now realize it could have been much more.    There were many with whom I simply experienced an intimacy that was part of the vague  awareness of one another and the energy we shared.   How different that could have been.

Now I know.    I am now aware that there is a unity present before even getting next to someone.    Sometimes, I feel the joy of that unity before we even meet.   Then there is the energy of contact, if we actually experience one another in any way.    It can be a look, it might be sounds, sometimes it is pressure on skin, a hug.   There are many ways of affirming the presence I already know and feel.   There is joy in the contact, whatever form it takes.

Any form of physical closeness that affirms the deep feeling of presence is intimacy.   It is an intimacy built on the awareness of unity.    A physical look, touch or sound is more than simple contact.    It is a conduit of the flow of energy from the core of myself.

First I have to take my hands off my eyes and come face to face with someone’s presence and with my own.   Awareness is the first step and it gives meaning to anything that follows.    The second step is unity, an expression and awareness of the oneness that arises from my being wholly present.   Subject and object become one, the boundary dissolves.    Only when we become one do I understand the reality of the moment.

Touching someone’s shoulder is now an act of intimacy for me.    Their skin becomes as my skin.  There is no separation, no isolation.   There is only unity.

I smile when I remember my past.  I now know that so much of my life would have been a different experience if I had known and could have experienced the unity, the absence of barriers.   The good and joyful news is that the option of experienced unity is now available to me and anyone I meet.

 

 

I spend time reflecting on what it would feel like to be in a relationship with a companion without grasping or attachment.    I  am convinced that it is possible, I just am not sure what it feels like or looks like.   As I look around me, there are plenty of examples of relationships based on grasping, but not much evidence of relationships with open awareness and presence without constraints and without suffering.

Most people I know want to be given strong guarantees before they are willing to be intimately present and unconditionally connected.   In this society, we speak of a committed relationship as an expression of this intent to be unconditionally present.   This takes a number of forms, but there is usually a tension and discomfort about the uncertainty even in a committed relationship.

The notion of a committed relationship is usually built around expectations of exclusive, maybe unconditional presence and connection. People go to great lengths to guarantee that they will not experience loss. People grasp onto a relationship with whatever social guarantees they can conjure.    It is all about wanting to ensure a predictable future.

I think it is hard to experience the physical aspect of a deep relationship without the fear of loss showing up.   The momentary and exhilarating experience of connection, of unity, immediately reminds most people that this too is passing.    The experience of connection is hard to sustain without maintaining a deep awareness of the true connection that already exists naturally.

The inability to maintain a continuous awareness of connection feeds the feelings of fear, grasping and attachment.   In an attempt to remedy this, society provides promises and guarantees that there will be some kind of continuity.   Unfortunately, it is an illusion.   And it often doesn’t work.

People make promises to one another about the future, but in reality they can only express the intention that they have here and now.    They cannot give a guarantee.   I can say, “I am here for you right now,” but there is no possibility that I can say, “I will be here for you tomorrow.”

Grasping for assurances that cannot truly be given creates a false sense of stability and security.   Worse, the grasping leads to attempts to control one another so that expectations might be enjoyed.   The imagined image of a future relationship leads to grasping and attachment to an unreality and to great suffering.   It is a setup for disappointment.

I want relationships with my companions to be based on the here and now.   I intend to develop my ability to be truly present to anyone I am with.   Whatever flows from that I would like to be free of grasping and free of social expectations.

I think this is an option for everyone.

 

My human culture has done much to foster my sense of separation and isolation.   Independence and strong personality are virtues praised in my culture.   I have endured much suffering because of this mindset and I have struggled to overcome it.

The notion of separateness is a strong social force.   We live in separate cities, we identify with tribes and races, we fence our yards, we celebrate the nuclear family, we hold up the ideal of one life-long partner.  The forces of culture have conspired to make me feel separate, against the reality of the natural connection I have with everyone, everything.

The desire to feel connected is frustrated in so many ways.   In human relations, a hug is a momentary, touch-and-go event.  A lingering embrace can be alarming, or at least uncomfortable.   It has been a long journey for me to find companions who welcome the closeness and awareness a warm embrace allows.

Even Thay, with his cautious roots deep in eastern society, has taught his followers how to do hug meditation.   I embrace this teaching, but it has not come easily.

For most of my life, touch of others has been an exceptional thing, reserved only for those few with whom I had an intimate relationship.   Perhaps, as I am growing in awareness, I have become less stingy with intimacy.   I am comfortable to say to more and more people, “I am present.    I am here for you.    I see you, you are here.”

I know I am present, I feel it through my whole body.    I am able to be more aware of someone else and feel their presence through my whole body.    It is natural to touch them, to hug them, to make that physical connection that expresses what I already feel.

The barriers between us seem to melt as I become aware.   The awareness blends our presence.   I am not grasping, I am not thinking of the future.   I am very aware of what is happing right now.   Even with “casual” friends, I have a sense of becoming one.     Sometimes, touching someone’s arm or shoulder is almost like touching mine.

All this for me is simply natural.   It is not very thought out or planned.   It simply happens.    I guess that I am intentional to the degree that I decide not to resist what simply takes place.    I am aware, I discern what the situation is, I allow the natural energy to flow.   In favorable situations, it flows in both directions.

Contact was once an infrequent part of my life.    It is slowly becoming more natural and normal, but still not nearly frequent enough.

 

 

I think I finally  found words to describe something I’ve been experiencing  for about two years now.   As I have practicing what I have called ‘awareness,’ it has seemed to happen in more than one way.    There was a simple awareness, perhaps more appropriately called attention.   I concentrated my attention on something, like the keyboard or a candle.

There were also those times when I felt very different as I stared at something.   Everything else around seemed to drop into the background or periphery.   A deep feeling of relaxation rose in me and the keyboard or candle took on great importance.    Sometimes it seemed that I was studying it not as a flat visible surface but as a three dimensional object.   I could experience its insides, its history, what it did.   Touching the granite surface on my bathroom counter was like reaching back in time and I felt the surface of something that has been through eons of change.

I now have just read that there can be two steps of awareness, and I think this is what I have been stumbling into.    The first step is becoming aware of an object.   It is something that happens when I see the keyboard, notice a burning candle, touch the granite counter or hear the ringing bell.   For me, it is simply paying attention to something.

The second step is more engaging and mysterious.   I take this step when I look deeply into an object.   I touch it deeply, I absorb the sound with my whole self.   The feeling is as if I am shedding light on the object, extending my illuminating awareness deeply into it.

This second step is where the subject and object become one.   The boundary between me and the item dissolves.   The item and I are no longer separate, but we seem to merge.   Part of me seems to extend out and enter into the keyboard or candle;  the keyboard or candle seems to move inside of me and be absorbed.   I understand it in a way I never did by simply observing it.

I’ve noticed that this two step awareness is not just about objects and people.    It also applies to my own body.    It is a deep awareness that is not restricted to one part of my body but is felt throughout my whole body.    The palm of my hand is observed in a way that radiates through my whole body.   My feet touch the ground in a way that my whole body experiences.

At first, it frightened me when I felt the boundaries dissolve.    It felt as though I was part of an alternate reality because everything, everyone became different whenever it happened.    Now it is becoming rather common, even though I often have to remind myself to turn on the second step of awareness.

I often feel radiant and have to be attentive to the flow of energy.   My enthusiasm can bubble over, and other people aren’t quite sure what that is about.    When the boundaries dissolve,  the experience can feel intense and energy flows between whatever or whoever is before me.

I like it when the boundaries dissolve.

 

There is nothing mysterious, nothing revealed , nothing tricky about mindfulness.    It is perfectly natural.   More important, because it is based on the natural order of things, it works.    The mind is allowed to do its natural work and the tension of life relaxes.   The tightness of life lets go.  Natural energy flows.

Mindfulness and the pursuit of the middle way cultivates non-attachment, non-clinging, and non-aversion.   It is the way of release and freedom.   Mindful practice reduces tension, fear, anxiety and suffering.   Mindfulness recognizes and releases natural intelligence.   I don’t need supernatural inspiration or secret tricks.   I just have to wake up and pay attention.    The intelligence is revealed naturally.

Gods and Goddesses may be standing by and witnessing what I do, but they do not need to intervene.    In fact, an intervention would disrupt, disturb nature and go against the order of things.   Mindfulness relies on the innate energy and true nature of humans.   It allows my energy to flow and move to natural consequences.

Mindfulness relies on no promise of future happiness or relief.    In a strange way, the promise of future reward would create a tension and be a repeating source of suffering right now.    Waiting is frustrating.  I want it, I can’t have it yet, I want it and it is nowhere to be seen.    Pie in the sky is worse than no pie at all.

Joy and freedom result from mindfulness right now.    A good life naturally can bring passing joy and happiness.    A generous person experiences the joy of giving while they are being generous.    But then the joy is gone.

Mindfulness avoids the discontinuity.   It is a different way of experiencing and interacting with the world.   It is what naturally happens in an attentive mind.    It does not rely on the satisfaction of good acts, even while that joy is present in good acts.   Every act and every experience becomes a neutral action.    Action is neither good or bad, but it is the mindful awareness that makes it joyful.

That does not mean that every act is without harmful consequences.   However, the consequences of mindful actions taken with discernment, based on the natural intelligence in human energy, are likely to be beneficial.    Done mindfully, even actions that have negative consequences, can be a source of learning and discernment.

Harm is much less likely to occur from intentional, mindful acts.   By knowing the nature of what I am doing, by mindful attentiveness, I am less likely to cause harm.   My natural human  energy and skill in understanding it makes it possible for me to act in an appropriately human way.

For me, this especially means learning the skill of using my mind in a natural way, free of the distortions and constraints I have placed on it.   I aspire to become more skilled in acting with loving kindness because it is the natural way.

There’s nothing special about this.   It is simply the pragmatism of natural consequences, guided by a skillful mind.

 

 

I think there is a shadow in Buddhism.   Sometimes, it appears that the practice encourages a kind of withdrawal from the world.   Sitting quietly in a darkened place has the appearance of disengagement.   I know that this is not a true representation.   I am finding that the practice actually is making me more in touch and aware of the world, more concerned about issues, less distracted by lesser issues, more discerning about what is real.

However, one area I am still trying to work out is the position that teachers such as Thay take on sexuality.    Rather than promote engagement with this aspect of who we are, the practice seems to push sexuality to the side.   Rather than showing the path to engaged presence, the path seems to be one of withdrawal.

To me, this is most obvious for the monks who practice celibacy.   They are the ones I primarily listen to, and they clearly are disengaged from sexuality, at least in the lifestyle they follow.   For them sexuality is put aside in a box and they choose not to deal with the challenges presented by our sexual nature.

When sexuality is discussed for laypersons, it is also put aside in a box constrained by the cultural norms of marriage.   It appears that same-sex expressions of sexuality are off the mark in the writings of teachers I have read.    Sexuality is certainly complicated, hard to deal with.    Some teachers attempt to make it less complicated by putting it in a box.  Sexual engagements are narrowly defined and constrained.

The middle way of Buddhism does not advocate withdrawal from the world.   There is to be no excess, either in denial or indulgence.   The practice is based on the observation that suffering is the result of clinging and attachment.    There is a way out of this problem, and the path is the one of the middle way.

It is my intent to be totally present in whatever I do, drinking tea, washing dishes, touching someone, walking into Target.   What matters is how I do it, with a mind that is clear and peaceful, attentive to what is happening, and full of wonder at the present moment.   I intend to act in a manner that does not superimpose on reality any mental constructs such as clinging,  attachments or preconceptions.

Like all of my relationships with reality, I expect that the wholeness of sexuality is free of suffering when it rises from my being truly present, aware and fully engaged.    Non-attachment and non-clinging are characteristics of true sexuality just as they are characteristic of any other ways of relating to the world.

Withdrawal from sexuality or narrowly defining it is not the middle way.   Putting sexuality in a box is not the path of the middle way.  Rather, true sexuality  is a possible path to freedom and liberation.

Sometimes, it even feels uncomfortable to speak the word ‘body.’   It almost seems foreign, not part of our comfortable vocabulary.   It’s not as though I’m even referring to specific body parts which ‘shall not be named.’   It is unfortunate that for so long I have felt disassociated from my body, and I get the impression that this is true of many friends.

I am slowly reclaiming my body, and it as transformative as learning to breathe under water.    I have been stirring up energies in my body that have been under my radar for as long as I can remember.    My sensory apparatus is being rewired and reconnected, probably becoming much like it was 76 years ago.   When the bell rings, my whole body listens.    My taste of food settles into my arms and legs.   My mind has reclaimed many of the old nerve pathways that roam through my body from head to toe.

For all the shallow attention we give to our bodies in the media and in shaping our appearance, it is unlikely many of us actually live in our bodies.  We live in the abstraction of our mind.   The experienced relationship between what we know and what we can sense with our body is so disconnected from who we are.

I now realize what an insight it was for the book to be titled “Our Bodies, Ourselves.”   My body is me, and the more it comes back to life, the more I enjoy the energy flowing thru it.   My body is enlivened with soaring ideas, my mind tingles with delight with whatever I touch.

It is so unfortunate that human culture has evolved to regard bodies as commodities.   As we became disconnected from the energy of the natural world, we seemed to lose the awareness of the reality in one another as well.    In so many cultures, relationships were converted into contracts about rights over bodies, ignoring that the parties were people.   For many, especially women, their bodies were no longer their own.    My culture associated flesh with sin, and I was urged to distance myself from contact with my body.

I’ve turned around, and I intend to go in the opposite direction I was taught.   I am becoming more identified with my body, it goes wherever my mind goes, it contacts anything I can relate to.   My mind and body are learning how to merge together.    I see others as mind and body.    No more abstracted persons.    Wholly flesh and blood and mind.   All are one.

For about fifty-five years, I’ve been sorting out what it means to be in connection with other human beings.   In particular, I’ve been musing about what our culture calls a relationship.   I now am trying to figure out what it means to interconnect, be in a relationship without clinging or attachment.   I think this is a new insight for me.

I am now wondering if there can be an interconnection without anxiety about loss, without grasping for continuity, without surges of jealousy, without worrying fear.   I would like to interconnect without regard for the future, only attentive to being present, here and now.

It seems that my culture conspires to stir up all the anxieties and fears associated with grasping and attachment.    It seems intent on making me suffer.   I have been encouraged to make promises about the future and rely on promises someone else must make.   I live in a culture that puts the emphasis on relying on what another person will do, not on what is happening right now.    I am trying to answer “will you be there tomorrow” rather than are you here now.    I am encouraged to promise “I will be there tomorrow” rather than make the most loving statement “I am here for you now.”

I am convinced that if I attempt to promise what I will do, I set up expectations I will never meet.   Promises lead to attempts to control, grasping, attachment.   All this leads to suffering.

Of course, this means that an interconnection can only be between people who are equal.    There is no possession, no ownership, no superiority, no dependency.   It means I have to be able to say, with true authenticity, “I am here.”   That is something I must first be able to say to myself.

I once tried to move through my life as though it were a three-legged race.   What I thought I wanted and would be helpful turned out to be not such a good idea.