Month: September 2017

I think that humans are social animals.    At least I think that I am.    We may not be sitting around like baboons grooming one another, picking off fleas.   However, we constantly meet one another with our eyes, and affirm one another presence.   With our eyes we say, “I see you.”    This can be a deep form of mindfulness, unity, affirmation .

Sometimes we do touch, and we take the opportunity to say “here I am, and I know you are there.”   Not exactly picking off fleas like baboons, but it is a social act.   How wonderful those times that we take the time to linger and experience one another’s presence in a deep way that recognizes the unity we share.

It is my nature to be social.   Why resist it?   Why not jump in with both feet, fleas or no fleas?

 

This is a first draft of a talk I plan to give at my sangha.    It is too long and needs editing;   I welcome any suggestions:

While I call this “True Sexuality”, I really mean “Good Sex.”

First of all, what is an old man doing talking about sex.    I want to remind you that while the body ages, diminishes and breaks down, the mind grows in understanding, strength and wisdom.    Sex is primarily in the domain of the mind.   It’s a mind thing.

When I joined the BH Sangha, I ran into an immediate stumbling block:  the third Mindfulness Training that deals with sexual misconduct.   I thought ‘here we go again, social custom trying to dictate spiritual practices.’   ‘Besides, what does sex have to do with mindfulness training!’

I’ve changed my mind, but it has taken over two years to change my attitude about the third Mindfulness Training.

I think that the training on sexuality, just like the other four mindfulness trainings, is a training in mindfulness just as sitting in meditation is a training in mindfulness.   This is what it feels like.  It 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.   It is taking mindful practice, the practice of mindfulness off the cushion and into my daily life.  Into the present moment.

If I eat, I can perhaps grow in mindful eating, if I am in the present moment.    If I act sexually, I can perhaps grow in mindful sexuality, if I am in the present moment.    Acting in a mindful way is what I want to do, and by practicing mindful action I become more mindful.   Sitting on the cushion teaches me ‘this is what mindfulness feels like.’

Like mindful eating, mindful sex has more than one aspect.    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.  Walking past the case of pies at Cub and choosing not to eat deepens awareness of what eating is about.    I go to class twice a week at the U of M, look around the room of 240 young students and, in the words once spoken by a monk, “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 is to be alive.

A second aspect of training in mindful sex is being attentive to the ideal.    This means opening my mind to what is possible with mindful sex.   It also means being aware of the harm of unmindful, unaware, unenlightened sexual conduct.  It means paying attention to both favorable and unfavorable consequences.    Have you ever been sexual with someone and felt ‘not so good’ afterwards.   Remember what it felt to eat 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 practice.   It means entering into physical contact with mindfulness, actually being fully present.    Take awareness from the first level of a sensory experience to the second level of unity.   Not just one flesh, but much more.   Mindfulness teaches us that there is more and allows us to experience it.

Mindful Sex is like mindful eating food.   Eating food can be primarily sensory, exciting, entertainment.   Sex can be primarily sensory, exciting and entertainment.   Food provides energy;   sex generates tremendous energy and allows me to feel the energy of my partner.   Eating mindfully increases insight.   Mindful sexual activity increases insight.    Both can be good practice or not-so-good practice.

We are all sexual beings, but that doesn’t mean we are monogamous by nature.   And being sexual beings is not the same as gender.   The culture of monogamy puts two aspects of our nature in conflict with one another:  our sexual nature and our nature to be true to our commitments, to tell the truth.   Not an easy conflict to resolve mindfully.

Loving, mindful, aware sex is good sex.   It reminds us that, in spite of what society tells us, we are all joined, we are not separate.  Physical contact reminds me that we actually  are interdependent, connected.  The rush of sexuality is a concrete experience of that connectedness.   It can nourish, comfort, inspire.   It can increase awareness.    Because it is a practice in awareness, the awareness can prevail, it can last.

 

 

I have to admit that I go back and forth on this.    I quibble about how important it is to do good things, take good actions.   Is it important to do the right thing?    Or is it more important to be aware, understand what is going on.    Today I think it is important to act properly so that I think properly.     Sounds like something behaviorists would like.

Maybe it is simply the unity of a circle.

I have been noticing that I can see things more and more clearly.   I am beginning to think that I see things, people, concepts as they really are.   There is more energy in my thinking, in my awareness.    I think I am becoming more aligned with what is.   Reality, in all its uncertainty, is becoming something I experience more frequently.    The more I practice, the more this is my experience.

I often feel my whole body just as it is.   This happens when I wake up, when I am sitting in my car, when I am walking into Trader Joes.    My mind, my awareness extends through my whole body.   I actually feel and see with my whole  body.     I hear my bell with my whole body.    My whole body seems to be aligning itself with whatever or whoever is present.   I remember why it felt like before and once again the energy flows.    I often feel it.    In the energy there is joy.

I practice awareness when I sit and meditate.    It is truly practicing.   I then remember how it was when I was practicing, and experience the same kind of awareness at other times.    I realize that I can also carry that same kind of practicing into my every day life.    I can act in a way that is aligning with what is, with reality.   I can act on my awareness, and my awareness increases as it is reinforced.   I know this is happening because I can feel the energy.

I now think that the more insight I have into what I am doing, the more I understand the consequences of what I a doing.    The insight I get by practicing then becomes the insight I bring to the next experience.    I can become aware of the way of no harm.     I can become aware of the harm of lying, eating, consuming, sexual misconduct, stealing, etc.

The Five Mindfulness Trainings are simply a practicing.

It is the insight, the awareness that allows the energy to flow.   It is the awareness that opens me to enlightenment, and enlightened action.    I become more aligned with what is, and the energy can flow.

I think I want to practice “good” actions because I know they are a practice of enlightenment.    If I see things as they really are, with an enlightened mind, I will know how to act in a way that is aligned with reality.

I really don’t think there are any right or wrong actions.   Whatever I do, is somewhat neutral.  I can say that there are good or bad consequences, but the important thing for me is whether the actions are aligned with my awareness of reality.   I want my awareness to be correctly aligned with reality, with what is.

I want to learn to feel the energy, the joy in right actions.    Just as mindful movements can put me in touch with the energy in my body, so can right actions allow me to experience the energy, the joy in being aligned with what is, with reality.

So it is a circle, perhaps.    Being mindful is what I want, but it is both a cause and a result of right action.    Being mindful means being aligned with, being fully present with what is.    And that includes people.

 

I’m watching some of the winds and water rushing onto the Florida coasts.   My amazed eyes see the forces of nature reclaiming dominance over a land that people have been trying to alter for decades.   Humans have done surgery on an ecosystem that would not willingly support the lifestyle that has been imposed on it.   Now the winds and water are changing some of that.

There are many places that forests and fields have reclaimed land abandoned or neglected by humans.     Many human civilizations have been buried under the advance of sands and trees.   Nature has patiently reclaimed even those places spoiled by humans.   Time is on the side of nature.

Insects evolve to reclaim their interest in eating plants grown by humans. The poisons invented and used by humans have only for a brief time been able to block the advance of forces of nature interested in consuming food.      For humans working against nature, it is a losing battle.

So many humans have believed in the myth of “taming nature.”   Nature can be cooperative, but will not be controlled.   Nature is unyielding, uncompromising, untamed by whatever humans concoct.   We will eventually be subdued by nature and yield to the forces of which we are a part.

Our efforts to resist or go against nature will fail.   Nature will eventually reclaim dominance.   It always has.   It is in our own best interest to cooperate.   The time is now to blend our consciousness with that of nature.

 

I seem to know so little about the emotional life of most of my friends.  I’m not even sure that I have much of an idea what is going in their mind. There are a couple of exceptions, but there is a veil that keeps me from being aware of what many are feeling and thinking.

I have contact with friends, but my intuition is limited, my awareness is out of focus.  I think I talk about what moves me in the things I read, the talks I listen to, the experiences I have.  I don’t know how to summon the same transparency from them.   I want to know more what they are experiencing in life.   I want a deep and revealing answer when I ask “how are you?”

I would like our conversations to be punctuated by their recollections of how they felt when this or that happened.   I want to hear more about their uncertainties, their worries, their apprehensions, their joys.

I don’t know how to ask the right questions.   I’m not sure I am listening well.   Maybe I talk and share too much.   I want there to be fewer boundaries and greater transparency between us.  How can I know them unless I can see them?

What a difference a few moments make.   The change that took place this morning would scarcely have happened two years ago.   For the first few minutes, I stumbled across my bedroom, then grabbed for covers that offered some protection from the chilly room.   I was partly alive in my head, and only dimly aware that I had a body.    The only reminder that my body even existed was the chill that stabbed at my skin for attention.

I was only dimly alive in my head, a faint light on top of a dark, cold and silent body.  I felt chilly waves lapping at the edges of my awareness, splashing for attention, but not really rushing in.

I read a few lines from Rilke and Ellen Bass, and my inner world suddenly came alive.   Within seconds of my allowing Ellen’s words to sink in, everything changed.    I sank into my body again, awareness rushed to the tips of my fingers and toes.   The feeling of wholeness returned, like a balloon being  blown up again.   My edges stretched out until they suddenly disappeared.

In just a few moments, nothing concrete existed excepted the touch of sheets, the glare of a lamp through my eyelids, the sound of a passing car.  But I was aware of so much more, as everything became a part of me and my expanding body.

My mind relaxed its cautious and lonely vigil as it settled into the exuberance of  a body that wanted to extend to the margins of everything. I became focused on the lively welcome going out to everything inside and outside of my skin.

The initial tiny flame of my weak and feeble alertness had burst into a roaring blaze of awareness that consumed all of my body and reached out to embrace everything it could  experience or imagine.

Thank you, Ellen.  Once again, a few words from you have helped transform my morning.    I have emerged from an isolated, narrow corner of my mind into a throbbing body alert and aware of this new day.   My steps from my bedroom have been infused with life.   It had only been a few moments.   In that time, my sun and world had risen.

 

I’m lucky.    I look around me, and I seem to be surrounded by people for whom I have a warm affection.   I have the joy of being with them.  So many people have entered my life in different ways, and many of them are still actively present.   I want to gather them all together in my arms and pull them along into my changing life experience.

I know none of them will be left behind, but I want them to experience some of what has become a regular part of my life and such a source of joy.

As I sat and talked with a dear friend of mine, I wanted to say “Jump in, the water’s great!”  In some ways I did say it, but I am also aware that everyone has to find their own way, and they may be different from mine.    It could be that reality is different for each of us, because each of us has our own way of experiencing it.

I know that I am experiencing reality in a way I never have before.    The richness fills me with joy and enthusiasm.   Everything is so much more present, brilliant, alive.   Even the table under my typing hands seems to be energized and sharing that with me.   I want everyone I know and love to walk through this wonderland that has sprung up around me.

Being a messenger of wonder is a delicate thing for me.   I know that for everyone I know, they are finding their own ways.    I think many of them are already in touch with an experience similar to mine.    I try to be careful and not presumptuous when I invite.   I want to use less words, give less directions, listen more.

It may be enough to allow them to simply experience what it is to share presence with me.   The most inviting invitation may be to simply be here.  I have concluded that one of the most loving actions I can take is to say, with words or actions, “I am here for you.”   That may be the most welcoming thing I can do to invite friends into my evolving reality.

I wonder if I am becoming scary at times.    I am aware that my boundaries are getting much more flexible and misty.   I have less caution about being transparent as I get more skilled at being present.   At least that is how it feels to me.    I don’t know how this affects the world around me.   Is this welcoming or scary?

I think that as I learn to become really present, to feel it through my whole body, my boundaries become less distinct.   I simply put more of myself in whatever I do, including walking down the sidewalk.   The distinction between me and the sidewalk becomes less apparent to me.

Do others feel this when I am talking with them or standing in front of them?   Just because I feel very present to them and absorb their presence, does that mean that they notice or perhaps have the same experience?   Or is it simply scary?  Maybe I should just shut up.

As I feel more present, it means that I feel more real and the energy flows more freely.   I don’t know if that is a problem for others.    I feel that I am revealing more of who I am, and I no longer fit into the definition of who or what others thought I was.   In some ways, it is both an invitation and a challenge for them to relate to me as I actually reveal myself.    No more pretending, no more facade.

I would like to think that mutual awareness goes beyond the first step of simply noticing and observing.    I would like everything and everyone to join me in dissolving the boundaries and go to the next step of becoming one with each other.   I would like us to experience the unity that we actually share.   I don’t want it to be scary.

This is something I am beginning to do but I don’t know about others.    I sometimes feel one with the sidewalk, one with my flowers, one with my friends.   I don’t know if anything or anyone feels the same oneness.    Perhaps I’m just scary.

For a couple of years, I’ve been musing about how the language of buddhism and modern physics is similar.   There are many times I have been reading and the concepts in one sound very much like ideas in the other.   I have been seeing this as a sort of convergence on the same reality by two disciplines from two different directions.   Today I think both may be starting at the same place, but  use different disciplines to explain the insight.

The traditional story about Buddha is how he had his inspiration sitting under the bodhi tree.    I think Einstein had his own bodhi tree, and that is where he “discovered” relativity and all that flowed from his mind in the following years.  The stories about Einstein tell how he first imagined himself riding on a photon at the speed of light, and he then had the insight that allowed his discoveries.    Einstein was actually not much of a mathematician but he had to use math to “prove” his ideas.     He then left it to people of science in subsequent years to gather observable data that supported his ideas.    This is something that is still continuing.

I have lamented how history has not been kind to us westerners.    The Greeks, 2500 years ago, had ideas that were forced underground and were essentially forgotten until Einstein happened on the same thoughts.   In the east, similar thoughts appeared around the same time as they did in Greece.   Buddhism carried forward and constantly massaged ideas about reality, such as  interdependence, that have emerged in the west only during the past century.   Now I find myself making comparisons between these two traditions of thought.

I think it is small wonder that western science and buddhism seem to be examining the same realities.   Small wonder that the language of quantum physics sounds a lot like the contemporary monks I read.   I think that the basic inspiration of each discipline is essentially the same.   People used their skills of observation and consciousness, and the understanding of the reality flowed naturally the more intimate they became with what is real.   Einstein and Buddha were cut from similar cloth.    They were sitting in the shade of the same bodhi tree.

Einstein no more discovered relativity than Columbus discovered the Americas.   He had the basic insight.   Then, like Columbus, he opened minds and others were able to explore the path he had marked out.   Other people knew about the Americas many, many years before Columbus.   Of course, Columbus was wrong in the identity of what he had discovered.   It was up to others to gather the data to explain what was really there.   Einstein too was wrong in some of his conclusions, as scientists subsequently figured out, based on their own experience.   But his basic insight has prevailed.

I guess that I am using my own experience to test what the experts are telling me.    I will continue to read what the physicists and the monks have to say.    I take some comfort in the convergence I see in their descriptions of reality.  My ultimate convergence, however, is when I experience the same thing that they have.