Month: September 2017

I once thought it was enough to see and feel my world in three dimensions.   It was wonderful.    Now I know there is more.   No, I don’t mean another dimension, like the fourth dimension.   I simply understand that there is something  beyond sensory.   I am learning to touch and see that something with my mind and body.

My days are different now.   Last evening, I dipped my hand into the bag and pulled out a handful of tasty chips, the multigrain type with salt and a rich nutty flavor.   I slowly put the chips into my mouth, one by one.    I chewed each chip, feeling it break apart slowly in my mouth.   Each chip got more than 20 chews of my attention.    Each chip was all I was aware of until I swallowed it and moved a new chip in its place.

It took me quite a while to eat a small handful of chips, but I think I must have tasted and felt each one of them with my whole body.    When I had eaten the last one, that was enough.    Each chip had made its full presence felt.    I tasted more than the salt and nutty flavor.   I went way beyond the sensory impressions.    I was aware what I was doing in a very intimate way.

Other nights, I would have had many more than one handful, munching through each chip as I put another in my mouth.    The taste demanded more and more chips, and I distractedly shoveled them in.   The salt wanted the sensation of more salt.    Finally, I would stop, mainly when I realized that my taste hunger had filled my stomach with chips.   Eating had become, at best, simple entertainment.

I want each chip encounter of my life to stir that same intimate, penetrating awareness.   I want the distinction between me and each chip to melt away.   I want to penetrate the distinction between me and every chip I see or touch.    I want to savor not only what I put into my mouth, but every other being or thing I touch or see.

I want to know the slimy bodies of the fish I see when I feed them each morning.   I want to be absorbed by the hardness of the pavement as I walk across the parking lot.    I want to experience the living presence of the woman I spoke to as we entered Target.

I love the beauty of the world I see around me.   I am also in awe of all that lies beyond what I see.    There is more than meets the eye, and it is exciting to explore.

 

The Ten Mindful Movements are a wonderful way of connecting the mind and body in mindfulness.    Here are the first five:

MINDFUL MOVEMENT #1

Begin with your feet slightly apart, arms at your sides.  Breathing in, keep your elbows straight as you life your arms in front of you until they’re shoulder level, horizontal to the ground.  Breathing out, bring your arms down again to your sides.  Repeat the movement three more times.

 

MINDFUL MOVEMENT #2

Begin with your arms at your sides.  Breathing in, lift your arms in front of you.  In one continuous movement, bring them all the way up, stretching them above your head.  Touch the sky!  This movement can be done with your palms either facing inward toward each other, or facing forward as you reach up.   Breathing out, bring your arms slowly down again to your sides.  Repeat three more times.

 

MINDFUL MOVEMENT #3

Breathing in, lift your arms out to the side, palms up, until your arms are shoulder level, parallel to the ground.   Breathing out, touch your shoulders with your fingertips, keeping your upper arms horizontal.  Breathing in, open your arms, extending them until they’ve stretched out to a horizontal position again.   Breathing out bend your elbows, bringing your fingertips back to your shoulders.

When you breathe in, you are like a flower opening to the warm sun.   Breathing out, the flower closes.   From this position with your fingertips on your shoulders, do the movement three more times.  Then lower your arms back down to your sides.

 

MINDFUL MOVEMENT #4

In this exercise, you make a large circle with your arms.  Breathing in, bring your arms straight down in front of you, centered between your hips, palms together.   Raise your arms up and separate your hands so your arms can stretch up over your head.  Breathing out, continue the circle, arms circling back, until your fingers point toward the ground.  Breathing in, life your arms back and reverse the circle.  Breathe out as your bring your palms together and your arms come down in front of you.   Repeat three more times.

 

MINDFUL MOVEMENT #5

Start by putting your hands on your waist.   As you do this exercise, keep your legs straight but not locked, and your head centered over your body.  Breathing in, bend forward at the waist and begin to make a circle with your upper body.  When you’re halfway through the circle, your upper body leaning back, breathe out and complete the circle, ending with your head in front of you while you’re still bent at the waist.  On your next in-breath begin a circle in the opposite direction.   On your out-breath, complete the circle.   Repeat the series of movements three more times.

 

Each of these mindful movements can be accompanied by an illustration.    For a copy, contact:  barryschade@gmail.com

Five more mindful movements will be described on another page of  barrygardenpath.com

(This is the current draft of a talk I plan to give at the BH Sangha on October 18)

When I joined the BH Sangha, I ran into an immediate stumbling block:  the third Mindfulness Training that deals with sexual misconduct.

I cringed: ‘Here we go again, social custom trying to dictate spiritual practices.’

‘More Monk talk.’

‘Besides, what does sex have to do with mindfulness training!’

 

It has taken nearly two years to change my attitude about the third Mindfulness Training.

It has taken reading much of what Thay has said about love and sex.

It has taken listening to and reading other teachers.

I can give you references, but now I am going directly to my conclusions

At this point, I think that, like the other 4 mindfulness trainings, #3 is about gaining insight

Mark Nunberg and thers taught me this.

The path of true sex, good sex, is about insight.

 

I think that the mindfulness training on sexuality like the other four mindfulness trainings,

Training on sexuality is a training in mindfulness, in insight

 

Sitting in meditation is a training in mindfulness.

It’s where I learn: This is what it feels like.

Such is so with the third mindfulness training.

 

The third mindfulness training is not a standard of right and wrong, but a suggestion of how to act to become more mindful, more aware, more insightful, more enlightened.

This mindfulness training is my own personal sex education.

Sex training is taking, the practice of being mindful off the cushion and into my daily life.

Into the present moment.

 

Let me make this more concrete.

 

Just like practicing mindful eating, I think practicing mindful sex has three aspects.          The most obvious one is restraint.

We all choose to be celibate at various times, and that restraint is an opportunity to grow in awareness of our sexuality.

Walking past the case of pies at Cub and choosing not to eat deepens awareness of what good eating is about.

 

I go to class twice a week at the U of M, look around the room of 240 young students.

in the words once spoken by a monk in a similar situation, “I like but I do not want.”

At that moment I am in touch with and very aware of my sexuality.

I know very well what it feels like to be alive.

It is practice.

 

A second aspect of training in mindful sex is being attentive to the ideal.

I think this means opening my mind to what is possible with mindful sex.

It also means being aware of the harm of unmindful, sexual misconduct.

It means paying attention to both favorable and unfavorable consequences.

Maybe, after being sexual in a not very mindful way, you’ve felt ‘not so good’ afterwards.

Remember what it felt like after you know you ate too much.

I remember that I could expect a fight, a row with my partner after we were sexual.   I never learned from it.

 

And the third aspect of training in mindful sex is the practice.

It means practicing actually being fully present.

As Thay describes, I take awareness from the first level of a sensory experience to the second level of unity.

Not just one flesh, but much more.

Like all mindfulness practice, I learn, have the insight that there is more and opens me to experience it.

 

Mindful Sex is like mindful eating of food.

Eating food can be primarily sensory, exciting, entertainment.

Sex can be primarily sensory, exciting and entertainment,

Eating mindfully increases insight into eating.

Mindful sexual activity increases insight

 

Mindful, aware sex is natural, good sex.

It is loving sex, naturally.

Reb Anderson taught me, in spite of what society tells me, we are all joined, we are not separate.

It reminds me that we actually are interdependent, connected.

Mindful sex can be a natural, concrete experience of that connectedness.

It can nourish, comfort, inspire.

Good conduct sex is practice in awareness.

It can increase awareness

 

The energy I feel in my body almost always comes from a sense of unity.   Foremost, the energy is associated with an awareness of my body and ‘where’ it is, where I perceive my body to be.   An electric response in me is always part of whatever awareness I am experiencing.   The awareness can be from a simple sensory awareness to deep insightful presence.

This sense of unity can arise from the flowers I pass as I walk through my garden.    It can be in the light touch of my hand on the bathroom counter.    It often is in the touch of someone’s hand or shoulder.   It is what arises in a deep, lingering hug.

The natural energy wants, is anxious to flow.    When it does flow, I experience a flood of joy.

I have heard that Freud had a notion that sexual energy was the basic energy.   I think that this can be true, except that “sexual energy” is usually too narrowly defined.   Like the debate over whether something is ‘a particle or a wave,’ it depends on what you are looking for.

Whether the experience of unity and the flow of energy is ‘sexual’ or not depends, I think, on the angle from which it is viewed.    The reference is in the mind of the individual, but the energy is the same, the sense of unity is the same.   To consider the unity and flow of energy as either sexual or not sexual probably obscures the vastness of the reality.

Sexual images are symbols, reflections of the unity I seek with all people, all things.  The symbols can become a distraction, and an invitation to grasping or aversion.   I prefer to see the basic, intense and core energy as reaching for unity with all that is.    The energy creates a force that wants to join all things, all people, the visible and the unseen.    It wants unity, it wants to flow.

The natural affinity I feel for all beings and inanimate things is like gravity between two natural objects, the moon and earth, the sun and planets, an apple and the ground.  I see it as an underlying attractive force that draws us together.    It is the natural unity that already exists, and it can be intensified by my expanding consciousness, by my greater awareness.   Then the energy can flow and I experience it.

I am grateful that I am drawn to unity and that I can be aware of the attraction that I often feel.   I am grateful that I am learning to deepen awareness and experience the joyful flow of energy.

 

 

Sitting on a cushion meditating is called ‘practice.’   It is a practice at being mindful.   Really, I think my whole life is constant practice.    It shapes my mind, I get insight, I understand the nature of things, I learn how to act.  I teach my mind.

To make it happen, however, I need to be aware, really in the moment.    Otherwise my life turns into one mindless, habit-forming step after another.

When my mind is present, I am gaining insight.    I  am learning how not to base my life on ‘should’ but on awareness, insight, understanding.   When  my mind and heart are present in this time and  space, I know what is happening in this time and space.

By practicing, by acting according to the nature of things, I gain greater insight into their true nature.   A tool is of use only when I use it, and it is in the use of the tool I learn more about its true nature and potential.  My mind can be my tool.  Everything I mindfully experience is my tool.

Such is so for all of my human nature.    By being present in the moment, by being aware of what is happening, I gain insight in my nature.   By acting according to the insight, I am practicing being human.    And so I gain further insight, if I am paying attention.   Then I can have more insightful, skillful practice.

I think I have multiple portals into my world, and the portals primarily are through my senses.   These are points of connection that allow me to have awareness, an awareness that can with practice create unity, oneness.   These portals can be a simple glance, a deep listening, a touch.    These portals open an awareness that can plunge me into deep insight, a deep place of connection.

There are many ways of describing these portals, and one of them is sexual.   What I identify as sexual awareness, through sight, touch, smell, etc., can be a portal to a deep awareness and insight into another being.    It can be a very facile portal, making me instantly and intensely aware of another being.  Sexual awareness can put me very much in the moment.   It is full of energy and intensity.

In fact, the level of sensory intimacy and energy can be so overwhelming that it can dominate, pull me out of the moment, encourage grasping.   Want the moment to last.  It is easy to grasp at the sensory excitement and miss the opportunity to experience the oneness of the deeper awareness.

Sex can be an intense taste of what it is like to be in the moment, an opportunity to plunge into the deeper insight and awareness of union.   Grasping at that moment, however, is not the same as staying in the moment.   I can be quickly aware that the moment of intensity has passed unless I have let go, stopped grasping and plunged deeper.

This same dynamic can be experienced in a simple touch when my hand senses skin on skin, and my awareness can either linger there or plunge into a unifying awareness of the being I am touching.   The energy of this moment of awareness can flow freely if I am in the present moment, not grasping for that moment to stay.   The energy of illumination flows if I allow it.    The oneness becomes real for me.

I think that what teachers like Thay call sensual love can be mostly neutral.   It is a momentary opportunity to choose the way of deep awareness or choose to remain in dark ignorance.   The experience can be so intense that it lures me to stay with the sensory aspects, not learn.   This is a missed opportunity to choose the insight and unity commonly called love.

Practice leads to a desired outcome.   Repeated choices of a familiar portal into deeper awareness makes it more likely that unity and insight will result.

The portal involving sexuality  is powerful.    It can be a distraction into narrow, unskilled thinking and behavior.   It can also be a vast opening into skillful  thinking and skillful union.

Last night I dreamed of being in the workshop of my old school.    At one point, I was aware that I was constructing the situation out of past experiences.   For a moment, I was watching my dream.    I was  aware, in that moment, that I was making it all up.

I  once heard of such a thing, perhaps a year ago.    Someone described dream yoga, which taught one to manage and construct their dreams.   It springs from the practice of being aware that when we are awake, we are walking through situations that we are actually constructing.   It is possible to take this same awareness into sleep and apply it to dreams.

The awareness we have is shaped by our past experience.  We carry constructs in our mind and these shape our encounters.   Even when awake, we are walking through our own dream.   We have a role in creating our interactions, and it is at that juncture that reality occurs.

I am today wondering if this is what is happening to me, that as I become aware that reality is not what it seems, I am tuned in more to the dream world that I live in.   I understand it better as it actually is.  I am becoming aware that the ‘world’ that I see around me is constructed by me out of my past experiences and my mind.

Perhaps I am realizing that this is all a dream being played out my me, given meaning by my training, by my practice.   It is my reality.   Even while awake, I am part of creating it.   The deeper I enter into the dream, the more I understand it as it is.  And it feels like home.

For weeks now, I have been noticing the flow of energy grow through my whole body.    The strange thing is that I seem to be getting more and more skillful at turning it on and stepping into the flow.    Sometimes, I even turn it aside, just by deciding to do it.

This experience has caused me to wonder just where the center of my energy is.   For me, it is very much a physical experience.   I can feel the flow in my head, arms, legs, abdomen……all of it.   There was a time I could mainly become aware of the energy in my hands.   Now it seems to be flowing everywhere.

I am aware that my navel was once the source of energy for me in the form of nutrition and oxygen.    I was connected in multiple ways through my navel, and one of them the flow of energy.

I have  recently been reminded how breathing in and breathing out is not just felt in my air passages, but in the movement of my lower abdomen.   Like a bellows, my abdomen pumps air in and out of my body.   It is useful for me to pay attention to my abdomen as I strengthen and expand my awareness.   With my bellows I literally pull in the world around me and breathe into the vastness of which I am a part.

My voice teacher constantly insisted that I breathe in and out with my abdomen.    She more delicately referred to the proper use of my diaphragm.   Any singing still comes not from my throat but from the depths of my abdomen.    The column of air continues to be like a pedestal on which the sound is supported.  I am conscious of singing with my abdomen when I am singing.   It is a habit from training and I am reminded  where the sound is actually coming from.

Of course, the abdomen is an obvious seat of sexual energy.  Any energy of a sexual color clearly flows from my abdomen.   I think that what I call sexual energy is just one of the manifestations of the life energy stirring inside of me.   Like all the sources of energy it is not something that I would want to ignore or allow to go fallow.   It is my natural energy.

My life force has various manifestations, but the center of it all seems to be linked to my abdomen.   Its motion and flow is something I encourage and not restrain.   I want to be acutely aware of my energy when it is in motion.   It moves me, and it has its own intelligence.   My energy offers insight and when I remain aware of it, it is a source of joy and deep awareness.   When I am aware that my energy is in motion, I can skillfully decide if this is what I want to become.

My energy center can be the source of recklessness or unskillful behavior.   If I grasp it, the energy can burn and destroy me.    It can also be the source of great insight and joy.   I am happy, and I take that as a sign that I am in the flow of the strong forces of my nature.

*        *       *       *       *      *      *      *      *

I’m not exactly sure how the expression “staring at your navel” fits in this, but I think it is something I will give thought to.   

 

The world around me has changed so much.   Actually, I think the way I approach it has evolved.   For me, the world has changed.

I feel like I am beginning to look through a kaleidoscope.    Nothing is distinct.    Everything is becoming an assemblage of ambiguous parts.  So much simply is, and the edges are blurry.

All my life I have been living with relatively clear constructs of reality, and I now think they exist mainly in my mind.   Many of those constructs are dissolving.

I have greater ability to focus on sensory awareness.    Things, including my own body, are striking assemblages of sensory engagement.  It seems, however, that the lines that define everything are getting more blurry.   As the lines dissolve, so do the distinctions that define and separate us fade away.

It’s actually quite exciting to watch my world curiously fade away.

Like layers of varnish on an old painting, my culture obscures the beauty of what is real.  The innate aspects of beauty fade away, hidden by the constructs that human culture, my culture have layered on my experience.

For me, religion has obscured more of the beauty of my world than any other aspect of my culture.   Rather than rely on my experience of ‘what is’, the role of a God has been layered over my experiences.   Images from someone’s imagination have put layer upon layer of unreality such that it has become difficult to be absorbed, to become one with what is natural, what is.

I have been urged and taught to look for the unseen hand of an imagined God when I have simply needed to see what is.

My culture, influenced by religious imagination, has taken sexual activity, physical contact, human closeness and covered it with all manner of rules that obscure the simple joy of people being wholly present to one another. Thanks to my teachers, I’ve missed the point for years.

The layers of my culture have become such a demanding distraction that I can scarcely see what is actually there.    In the Smokey Mountains, my culture builds a roller coaster on the side of a “natural” hill, turning a thing of beauty into a distracting entertainment.   I am surrounded by rules, norms and entertaining distraction.

Does a sculptor ever look at a block of raw stone and penetrate, absorb its natural beauty before chipping away to represent an image that until then only existed in her imagination?   Humans have made idols of gold and clay when it would have been more joyful and unifying to stare in wonder at the unshaped gold and mud.

I am daily removing more of the varnish that has kept me at a distance, kept me from the joy of being part of what is actually present.  I know that what I have created in my imagination has been keeping me from being at home in what is real.