Month: November 2018

What if the universe once, and forever, was one entity.   It appears to have exploded, and we all seem to be parts to that once-upon-a-time entity.   For me, it is only perspective that things seem, appear as separate entities.    But actually, all of us items are just apparent fragments of the one timeless, spaceless whole

What if there was never a Big Band.   What is changing is not the whirling universe around us, but only our own perspective, our own interpretation.    The notion of an expanding universe is very recent , only “proven” or accepted within my lifetime.   It is a notion based on observations linked to our sensory perception of the world, which provides us with very limited  and personalized data.

What if the notion of  whirling, whooshing galaxies is simply an artifact of our limited powers of sensation.   It could simply be a notion, a projection and mere perception based on what we experience on earth.   All the inputs from what appear from distant galaxies are filtered through our limited sensory organs.    All the data takes on the form of sensory inputs.

All of our awareness of what is going on “out there” is based on very limited sensory awareness of what is happening now “down here.”   What is changing is not the expanding. whirling universe but only our perception.    Are we on the training moving away from the station, or is the station moving away from us?

As our consciousness, our awareness of the universe changes, so does our universe seem to change.    What we see and experience is a reflection of our collective consciousness, based on some very sketchy inputs we think we see coming from the world surrounding our little planet.    The sky we see is dramatically different from the sky my grandparents saw, and the generations before them.

Perhaps the universe we see out there is as much of an artifact as the canvas of moving stars and planets our ancestors once saw surrounding the earth.

What if I could see the same sky with the eyes of my children’s children?  What would I see?  Would I ever be able to see that one entity that now seems to be a vast mixture of separate parts?

I am now convinced that mindfulness is an affair of the heart.    That isn’t what the word “mindfulness” would typically suggest.    Even meditation sounds like an exercise of the mind, a form of concentration or contemplation.   For me, and as the Heart Sutra implies, insight and deep absorption are a lived and engaged experience of the heart.

There certainly is a role for a quiet and focused mind.   But it is the heart that teaches and engages.    The path to insight is not a cerebral adventure.   It is not an exercise in understanding.    Actually, it largely requires removing the disturbances and distractions of an active mind.    Understanding is helpful by removing obstacles that the mind might create by resisting the movement of the heart.

 

 

I only lightly touched her upper arm.    It was but a random gesture of communication.   But it had the awareness of her presence that shot through me and seemed to penetrate all of her.    If this is the stirring of eroticism, then I say “bring it on.”

This intense experience of someone’s presence is what I feel when I welcome people coming into a meeting of my Sangha.    It could be anything from a light, gestured touch or a warm hug.   I sometimes wonder what it is about touch that is so powerful, and for some so terrifying.

The apparent physicality of my world is something I know and experience primarily by touch.    Other senses are useful, but not nearly as penetrating as touch.   Touching a rock or a plant opens an opportunity of awareness no other sense experience can match or adequately describe.

The sensory intimacy of physical touch is a ready invitation to a deep sensory awareness.   Touch allows me to easily move to a reflective awareness, an absorption with the touched object.   The awareness that comes through touch seems so basic and fundamental.

More than other senses, touch allows me to approximately occupy the same temporal space as another.   It invites a oneness and absorption that no other sense can quite match.

As I move through each day, touch seems so fundamental to my intimate experience of my world.    And yet I am puzzled that I have not found much confirmation of this experience in the teachings of the dharma.    Touching my cup of tea is an object of my concentration and focus.    It instantly takes me from the strictly physical contact experience to one of reflection on the presence of the cup of tea.    The cup of tea and I are joined, mostly because of the sense of touch.

Feeling the movement of air through nostrils is such a common focus of methods of deep meditation.    Why not also focus on what it is like to touch another’s arm, their hand, the small of their back?    For me, it invites the same deep awareness as caressing the warmth and firmness of my tea cup.

Touching another person in this way creates an even deeper awareness because I am touching a sentient being, a being capable of a reciprocal act of deep awareness.

When I sit on a bus and am pressed up against an individual sitting next to me, I am aware of them in a deeper, more intense manner than if I only listen to them or look at them.    Touch may not always be a welcome path of mutual awareness.    However, when it is present, it offers a wide avenue of awareness.

 

It now seems to me that religion is to spirituality what landscaping is to gardening.   Religion imprisons the erotic nature of the contemplative experience much as landscaping attempts to contain and limit the wild and unpredictable nature of being immersed in plants.  It tries to restrict the essence of gardening.

Religion holds the spiritual experience at a distance by attempting to contain it in forms that people have developed and imagined.    Landscaping does something similar, imposing a contrived order on the vital and energetic nature of plants.    It is only by letting go and putting my trust in the unpredictable, uncertain spiritual experience that I can enter into what the mind and body can really do.

I want to trust my nature, as I trust the nature of the plants in my garden.

Just like my mind and body, plants have great potential and are free to show their deepest radiance and joyful nature when allowed the freedom to be outside the forms I might try to impose on them.

I trust my mind and awareness to know what is best and possible.    I try to garden with a similar abandon and minimal control.

I find that the comparison of the deep happiness that comes from meditation practice with the transitory pleasures of the senses is instructive.  However,  I am not about to dismiss the value of sensory experience and awareness.

The rich taste of dark chocolate, the soothing warmth of my cup of tea,  the hard touch of the desktop next to my keyboard all reignite the deep pleasantness I felt on my pillow this morning.   Sensory experiences remind me through the day of how to find the experience of abundant pleasure.   The memory is stirred.

None of my senses have as dramatic and effective consequence as touch.   Being aware of shared awareness with any entity is a delight that goes beyond any simple sensory contact.   Shared touch with any sentient being, especially humans, is an entry into great happiness, pleasure and joy.

Today I am feeling overwhelmed by the difficulty I have in establishing deep  and meaningful relationships with people.   It is probably an exaggeration to say that I feel immersed in some kind of relationship poverty, but I am aware that anything beyond a casual interaction seems very difficult.

Even in my Sangha, where there could be penetrating interactions, people seem so reluctant to go beyond much more than cerebral exchanges.    That presumes that they even bother to show up.

I am taking an on-line course on deep concentration, “Focused and Fearless”, and the exchanges between students seem anything but fearless. At least 80 percent of the comments are totally in the cerebral area and sadly not at all revealing of where people live and breathe.    Two comments I’ve made, which I considered rather revealing,  received no response .

I don’t understand it.     I feel like I am drifting on some alternate plane, and most everyone else is some where just beyond.    I think I often extend opportunities to connect with others, even to plunge into those places where we really live.     But others seem so reluctant to reciprocate.     I wonder what I am doing that keeps me in this impoverished arena.

Am I alone in wanting and working for deep and meaningful exchanges?   Are other people also taking steps to make that kind of connection happen, but I’m not picking up on the clues?  Maybe I’m simply being too obtuse in what I say.    I have this feeling of being in a relatively stable place, but stable and isolated.

I have this sense that my showing open vulnerability, those places where I really live, receives such an impoverished, faint response.     Reciprocity is only occasionally part of the interaction.    I’ve just about given up on men being able to sustain a conversation on anything but a surface level.     I’m sadly finding that most women also seem to interact in a cerebral arena and not so much on a feeling, more revealing level.

Neither men or women seem able to get beyond the few of showing where they really live.    There is such a reluctance to be really present.    The caution over their vulnerability is so distancing, stifling and disappointing.    I hear so little of their inner workings, their inner struggles.    And so we do not connect.

The poverty of this situation is leaving me sad.

I have lived in a culture where any mention of pleasure is sure to raise suspicious eyebrows.    Any engagement with pleasure is at least suspicious and probably should be avoided anyhow.    Pleasure and hedonism seem like second cousins and, for good measure,  I have learned to be wary of each.

It is quite a surprise to learn that pleasure is the topic of the third module of my deep consciousness class.   A deep absorption in pleasures is in fact inherent in jhanas,  and the pleasures of jhanas are an essential element of liberating insight.

While the absorption in pleasure is part of the meditation practice, any sensory delight can be a source of pleasure when done with mindfulness.   Throughout the day, normal daily experiences of sensory delight can be an echo of the deep pleasure experienced in the concentration methods.   The pleasurable moments spent sitting on my pillow can follow me through the day.

Pleasure is a good thing and not to be  avoided, but is a problem if it becomes a source of attachment.     That works out well because most sensory pleasures are brief and transitory, but the pleasures that come from absorption and deep concentration are lasting.    Mindfulness can create a state that prevails beyond the transitory experience of sensory delight.

It is a state that can stay with me during much of the day.     It is a pleasure that can infuse itself into many sensory experiences.     I am aware that distractions and disturbances can remove mindfulness and interfere with concentration.    When this happens, the pleasure, joy and rapture fades.

However, when mindfulness prevails, even the smallest sensory delight can be accompanied with intense and lasting pleasure.

It is with a deep feeling of vulnerability that I invite others into my living space.   As I descend deeper into those realms where I am truly alive, I am somewhat surprised by the instability I feel.    As I let go of control, as I allow myself to relax, I am aware how much feels totally out of my control.

I’m not at all use to that feeling of things being out of control.    I am not accustomed to allowing others to enter into that out-of-control part of me.  But I just keep moving forward.

Living with the notion of impermanence seems to allow for little stability or predictability.    I’m not surprised to figure that out.    I suppose it is a logical thing to conclude.    I am surprised how vulnerable it makes me feel.   This is especially true of my relationships with others where I seem to want reassurances on at least an occasional basis.

As much as I entrust my vulnerability to my Sangha, my fellow mediators, I am not sure they are capable of being the kind of stabilizing group I would like to have.     I am still waiting to see if they are capable or wiling to go to the scary places I am beginning to explore.   As a group, we still typically dabble in the theoretical arena more than we dive into the personal places that we live.   I am not assured that I can rely on them to be present.

It seems to come with being vulnerable that there really is no safe place.    Safety only comes with the predictable, and there is little that is predictable in vulnerability.    I still have a tendency to grasp for assurances of what the future will be like, even while I have learned to rely on the future less and less.

All around me, I seem to be moving into an uncertain and different future.   Fortunately, I am able to relax about that at least a couple times a day.     Small assurances come into my living place, and for now that will have to be enough.

To live with vulnerability I want to stay as closely focused on the present as I can.    Grasping for a certain future may offer ephemeral assurances, but it is not at all stabilizing once the veil is pulled back and I realize that the future is only an imaginary realm.     I am especially not sure who will be there as a companion in my future.

It is not easy to yield to being vulnerable.

 

It seems that I am constantly being encouraged to think of many ways of becoming aware.   The class I am taking, “Focused and Fearless”, has so many comments from people all over the world expressing what being aware means to them.    They come at it from so many different angles.

I suppose that I also regard being aware from many different aspects.    Each of them seems to serve me in different ways.   There is, however, one fundamental way of being aware that is a routine foundation and cornerstone for me.   In fact, it is my gateway to awareness.   I am constantly returning to awareness of my body.    I become more aware when I am first of all aware of my  own physical presence.   Then wonderful things happen.

Simple body awareness is how I first began to meditate.   It is how I began my meditation practice.   It has continued to be the basis of my deepening concentration.    The physical presence of my body has been the launch pad to deep contemplation.

When I totally relax into the presence of my body, my whole self opens.    I feel deeply.    I see clearly.    I understand in marvelous ways .

I first had to learn the sensations in all parts of my body.    I had to disperse the cultural conditioning that lead me to be wary of my body and all it experienced.    For a long time, it was the palms of my hands that were the focus of my awareness.   I learned to feel the aliveness and vibrancy of my hands.    That awareness then gradually spread to other areas of my body.

Right now, the feeling of my breath is a pivotal experience of awareness, but that is not all.     The breath is an easy, go-to pivot for wandering concentration.     But it is the relaxed, whole body awareness that takes me into the deepest concentration.    It is my whole body that radiates bliss and joy.

Having this feeling of being body aware allows me to easily become aware of the world around me.    When I am body aware, that same awareness readily extends to people I meet, flowers I touch or see, the ground beneath my moving feet.

When that awareness slackens, I instantly return to my own body awareness.    It could be my hands or my breath.   But mostly it is my awareness of my whole body:   arms, head, legs, torso.    It is as if I become a sponge, an open door of attention.   I invite the world.   I am ready to meet and absorb whatever or whoever is before me.

All this body awareness I have learned in solitude.    I wonder what the role of being touched by someone else would do to expand body awareness.    I am often reminded how a simple hug can bring on a wave of concentration and awareness.   I wonder how the impact of massage might have a more beneficial effect beyond the simple sensation of touch and pressure.

Being able to fully absorb the sensation of being touched while remaining in the present moment, seems likely to awaken awareness on a deeper level.    It seems to me that inviting such an experience would require a significant amount of trust.

I suppose that  trusting myself and my body has allowed me to not fear the sensations of my body.    It has taken years, but I now rely on my awareness of my body to make me aware of the world of which I am part.