Month: June 2021

Only now am I beginning to accept that it has been my destiny to be broken.    I was born into  an experience of separation and I have spent much of my life trying unsuccessfully to escape that experience of feeling separate.   When I was born human, I was fashioned for intimacy, but not in a way I could have imagined.   So I began a life of being seduced in a realm where I would always feel the unease and attempt to escape the disquiet of being broken.

For my heart to be open, I see that I must accept its being broken apart.    The protective wall of an imagined separate self has to be allowed to be broken.   The inner nakedness and exposure has to be not only allowed but be fully embraced and accepted.    I have to be willing to surrender to a world that might be hostile or intensely beautiful.  As I reach for intimacy with a blooming plant, with savory food, with another person, I must allow myself to experience being progressively and constantly broken.  

To accept being broken, I have to accept that I will never achieve what I most desire.   It must come to me.   I must allow the free fall into the Gap of separation.    This is the Gap that exists between my most ardent desires and the most attractive, beckoning objects before me.   Once broken open, my heart allows for more than I could ever imagine, even though my heart never quite touches or is joined with the object I most desire. 

To feel that I am crossing the bridge to what I most desire, I must abandon all hesitation and security.   I must become fully broken with full awareness.   Then I begin to realize that the bridge is only an illusion and I am actually plunging into the chasm below.    The Gap engulfs me and the bridge dissolves.   My broken grasp that once held on to a notion of a separate self, allows for a kind of intimate absorption never really imagined in my quest for intimacy with the world beyond me.

The Gap is where I belong, even while I struggled so much to bridge or escape it.   It is my true home.    But to get there I must first learn and experience what it means to be broken.   I have to abandon any notion of an intact heart and break open to an intimacy that always lies just beyond my reach.   I have to abandon all my imagined security of an intact self and be deeply aware how only a divested, naked and broken heart can enter into the deep experience of intimacy.   Deep intimacy will be experienced by descending and remaining in the Gap.  

I know that I am not alone on this quest for deep abandon and deep union.   It is a realm I invite my companions to experience and join me.   We can assist one another, gently helping one another to yield to the destiny of brokenness.  We settle into the Gap.   We serve one another in experiencing a life of being fully human.  

What may appear as intimacy is actually an invitation to go deeper, to become absorbed in the Gap of non-union.   The experience of non-union is like a step into emptiness.    The surrender to what appears as brokenness is only the beginning of something else.   

To me it feels like what Harry Potter must have experienced as he accepted his destiny and went to meet Lord Voldemort in the woods.   He accepted and entered the Gap, with the help of a few friends.   Only then did he become truly free.   

I am struggling to define what I mean by emotional intimacy. I intuitively know I want it. It is part of my self care, a support for my well being. The closest I get to defining it is that it feels like emotional skinny-dipping with a friend.

I think that emotional intimacy is possible when our circles of engagement overlap and allow for an intimate sharing of those places in us where we feel vibrant and live. There remains a clear distinction of those circles that define us as unique but also not separate. As I said, emotional intimacy is hard for me to define.

As time goes on, I realize how little emotional intimacy I experienced in my first two decades of life. My father, a victim of his time and an alcoholic parent, offered me neither a model or an engagement in emotional intimacy. It was only once I turned 20 that I felt the gap in my life, and that became a quest for the kind of emotional intimacy I wanted to both give and receive.

As I am feeling the significance of my search for emotional intimacy more deeply, I am wondering if someone not practiced in mindfulness can engage in the kind of emotional intimacy I want. I think that emotional intimacy requires a high level of self reflection and self awareness before intimacy can be shared in a meaningful way. It requires the confidence of self knowledge, an absence of doubt, and freedom from hesitancy.

It may not be the definition, but I think emotional intimacy requires being willing to no longer fear the plunge.

This week I am especially aware of my connection with all the people I love and who love me. It appears that strands of love have woven a net that connects us all. This has been my birthday week, and so many people have been effusive in acknowledging the assorted connections I have with each of them.

Although I imagine that I am living more and more of may life in free fall, not counting the risks or dangers so much any more. My grip on what I want for security is loosening, I am letting go. I know that there is a loving safety net to catch me if I falter.

It is such a wonderful thing to feel so alive after the long journey so many times around the sun. Today completes my 80th solar lap in our small corner of the universe, and I don’t think I have ever before felt so alive as I do these days. Parts of my body, especially my legs, want to slow down, but every fiber in me says otherwise. Every fiber says plunge ahead, feel the full expanse of the free fall you have entered.

I spent an evening last night with old friends, most of whom I have lived close to for dozens of years. We raised kids together , all of whom are now young adults. Everyone had an open and enthusiastic hug to share with me. Their presence was easy for me to absorb and I carry them with me as I continue my orbital trek around the sun.

I doubt that any of the friends present last evening would say it the same way, but I feel an abiding intimacy with all of them. For some, it is an intimacy that runs deep. We have shared so much of our life journey, even while we have lived in separated households. It was a treasure-filed evening to spend time with them, as it has been in assorted ways over many years.

The evening reminds me that I clearly have not fallen into a restful, sleepy time of life. Instead, I have become more vibrantly alive, more attuned to everything especially my own body and mind. I am so much more aware of those with whom I share the same orbital path, all of whom I share some degree of intimacy.

I like that as I become more awake, the future seems less daunting, less a concern needing to be addressed. My focus has become today, and I am more willing to shed the expectations and norms set by my training and my culture. Today is a repeating almost constant now that invites me to embrace it with high energy and deep desire.

Becoming alive has meant ignoring all that might constrain me. Becoming alive has meant relaxing my mind to accept a new and fresh world every single day.

It has been such a gift to still be alive and be completing my 80th orbit. It is an even greater gift to discover that being alive is an accelerating process, not one of slowing down. Each day I become a little more awake and I realize more what it feels like to be alive.

I grow sad every time I am reminded how our culture shapes and spits out emotionally impotent men. They seem to keep popping up all the time. I meet them in person and in the personal narratives I listen to when I sit with women friends. Most of the men who seem to me to be emotionally alive are gay.

It is a strange evolutionary twist that for millennia the culture has preferred and been dominated by emotionally impotent men. The culture obviously leans to something other than male emotional depth and presence, allowing that aspect of our humanity to be assigned primarily to women.

It has certainly been part of my own struggle, to put aside emotional shallowness and timidity, and lunge into my own emotional depth, scattering the traces of that untidy free-fall where ever I go. It takes shedding protective layers, yielding to naked vulnerability and surrender of an abundance of control to probe my emotional core. Becoming emotionally alive is not easy or consistent with being feint of heart.

For me, becoming more capable of focusing concentration has allowed me to relax my mind and allow all the feelings to come out of hiding. Without the jailer-mind in control, the feelings rise to the surface more easily. Without limiting myself by cultural forms and constraints and a notion of how things must be, my emotional life is free to move about. Without my grasping for predictability and a certain future, my inner life is able to breathe and surface.

I have much to do, but I am thrilled to be able to caress the uneven texture of my life without regret, to be comfortable with my emotional nakedness without looking back, to be able to hear and respond to the resounding heartbeat of the universe.

My day roams lazily among auspicious things. The wet grass, waiting expectantly for me to walk across the yard. The swirling gold fish in the pond waiting and then rising to be fed. The rumbling chatter of railroad cars traveling nearly a mile away. The stealthy light of morning sun creeping into the empty street below my window.

I love the auspicious soft touch of carpet on the floor that strokes my feet as I move from room to room. The surface of the cold hard granite that absorbs my attention as I approach the sink.

I meet auspicious elements of my kitchen. The kettle that shrieks for attention when it is prepared to become tea. The rolled newspaper on my front steps reminds me there are many others to be aware of. A friend walks up the steps to my back deck, proffering a soft smiled greeting. The chickadees in the bushes tend to the impatient demands of their young. I travel to the garden of a friend to water it in her absence. I step into a wildflower garden, a cacophony of cool green and a well traveled path, sometimes alone, sometimes not.

There is food in my kitchen, promising nourishment and a time to be mindful, experience joy. The stairs auspiciously challenge me to rise to another level in spite of a reluctant leg. Soft covers invite a quick descent into an unseen world where auspicious things lie just beyond my reach. I have left a day shimmering with auspicious things.

There is a sweet spot. The sweet spot thrives between past and present. It waits between desire and desired. It hovers between up and down. The sweet spot has no left or right. I find where the sweet spot resides by letting go and allow myself to fall freely into the Gap between.

The sweet spot shows up when I spend pleasant time with a friend, wanting it go on or repeat, but grasp neither continuance or repetition. We may want to get together again, even make plans. But the sweetness is in the experience of here and now, and not in the grasping for what might arise in the future.

The sweetness is in what is commonly called the present moment. However, a key to the treasure of the present moment is seldom offered. My key is in not clinging, not grasping for what is yet to come. The key is in not grasping for what might be pleasant or avoiding what might be unpleasant.

The sweetness is in understanding and feeling the force of desire without regard to hanging on to what is desired. It is a sweet spot to be.

This is a talk given at Blooming Heart Sangha on June 16, 2021

It is a huge challenge to walk the path of desire.  While challenging, it is also a path to deep awareness and enlightenment.  Desire creates a place where our inner life can prosper and grow.  Rather than cause suffering, desire can be very useful and a great resource.  Desire has great power even while it can be the occasion of great pain.

Actually, I think it is quite complicated.  That complicated nature of desire is reflected in the divergence I’ve read about in Buddhist traditions.  Some traditions embrace desire as a source of insight and enlightenment.  Some traditions attempt to suppress desire;  desire is often referred to as sensuous desire.     I think you have heard this.   I hear it often.  It is coupled with “sensuous” because desire can easily lead to clinging and grasping…..the Second Noble Truth.  That IS sensuous desire.

Suffering arises from desire because of our inclination to grasp and cling to the object of desire.  Problem: desire can never be satisfied because the object of desire can never be possessed.    The preoccupation with possessing the object of desire inevitably causes suffering.   Understanding and entering that gap ( between desire and object of desire) and entering into the Gap is the path of insight and enlightenment.  Some monks recognized this and embraced desire;   Some thought it was too difficult and attempted to avoid desire altogether. 

Desire, the strong inner attraction we experience, is natural and unites us all.   The moon is drawn to the earth, the earth is drawn to the sun.  I am drawn to other people, to trees, to dark chocolate.   There is a hum in all of us that reaches out for union;  it yearns for a union that I think only comes with enlightenment.  That potential for enlightenment is not always apparent when desire stirs a deep longing;  seeing the potential requires insight; also, the opportunity for enlightenment comes at unexpected times.  

Desire is a learning opportunity, a chance for insight.   I had one such opportunities of insight in my young days as a monk.   Once I was ordained, it was my practice of going to churches nearby and conduct morning services on Sunday, which included giving a sermon.  On one occasion, when I was putting things away after the service, a woman my age approached me.

We talked about my sermon, and then she looked right at me and said “It would be nice now if we could just go make love.”   I had been well-trained in the skill of controlling desire and said “Yes, that would be nice, but No.”   We hugged and never again spoke to one another.   

I’ve thought about that incident, not so much then as in recent years.  I don’t much think about the decision, whether it was a correct decision or not; (keeping in mind Lori’s frequent reminder “Are you sure?”)  I do think of the dynamics of desire, the pursuit, the inevitable frustration of not enough.  How that felt.   The incident, with all its raw starkness and power, continues to be a teaching moment, a source of understanding and insight.  

And that is one of the great values of desire.  Besides the power that desire creates, it always forms a Gap between desire and the object of desire.  The two will never meet, desire will never be fulfilled, union will never occur.   …….it can be a painful Gap.   Understanding that Gap is the way of insight and enlightenment.   

First I have to deeply feel the desire, then I can examine the Gap it creates.  That is where insight arises; in eastern thought, it is what is sometimes called the left-handed path.: experience desire, then enter into the Gap.

It’s complicated:   desire creates the space where inner life can grow.   Actually, I think the Gap is the same Gap between past and future, space and time.  The Gap is “the other shore, emptiness, unconditioned, unchanging, shelter”…….all the synonyms for Nibbana.   There is always a Gap between desire and the object of desire, between desire and another person, a tree, dark chocolate.  The desire will never be satisfied, union will never occur.    Being able, with an enlightened mind, to fully see and enter that Gap between desire and the object of desire is the union of Nibbana.   

Again, I acknowledge that there are different schools of Buddhist thought on this issue.  Thay says that monks avoid the problems of desire by following the monastic life.   I think, however, that Thay often taps into the energy and power of desire.   I especially think he captures the Gap in his poetry and writing.   Unfulfilled longing is interupted and dealt with by settling into the Gap, into the vast expanse of the present moment.  

I’ve obviously been thinking lately how desire livens up in my life and how it stirs mindfulness and insight.  Desire energizes my relationships with people I love, the plants in my garden, the food I eat at meals, and dark chocolate.  I eat food because I have built up a desire and anticipation, so that when I sit down at the table, I am more intensely aware of how I relate to what I am eating…….  I experience more mindful eating.

I open the energy of desire when I walk in my garden so that I am more deeply aware of the plants.  When I pull out my one piece of dark chocolate, I am very aware of the coming experience of melting bitter cocoa. 

It has become a frightening adventure for me to explore the gap between desire and object of desire. It seems a place of infinite risk and total letting go. There is no resolution or surcease of longing in the gap. Still, the gap also becomes an expanded space of insight and absorption.

The gap is a middle place filled with all the power of desire and longing without the possession of the object of desire. It is a place of unmeasured letting go and deep emptiness that spontaneously arises. The trappings of self have been stripped away in the gap and the burning ardor of desire is given full experience.

The gap is a place between an unrealized past and a longed-for future. Neither past or future can enter the gap. Regret and longing are cleansed of their meaning and lose their hold on me.

The gap is where all is revealed, the deep chasm of feeling is probed and everything is possible in an instant. For me it is where discontent is both accepted and resolved. The gap is both uncomfortable and a joy to savor. It reminds me of dark, bitter chocolate.

I had been thinking about being open to desire, and so I began re-reading Mark Epstein’s book by that same title. He helps me sort out the power and paradox of desire. I appreciate his sharing his multi-year account of how he struggled to sort out the dynamics of desire. The first time I read his book, I was pleased and gratified to find my intuition about desire put into words by Epstein. I resonated with the reflections of someone like him who had been schooled both in eastern thought and western psychiatry.

Both in the east and in the west, there is a strong tendency to suppress desire, push it out of the way, ignore it. To me this seems such a waste of dynamic energy and misses the opportunity for enlightenment. To my buddhist mind, it ignores the invitation to walk the middle path.

I would rather befriend desire and not push it away. I want to invite Mara to tea. The power of desire is in its energy and its relentless pursuit of the beloved, whether the beloved is a person, plant or piece of rock. The paradox of desire is the importance of not grasping the beloved, not clinging to some outcome. The middle path requires giving up any notion of possessing the object of desire. Desire invites free-fall without any grasping for recovery.

Desire has often been associated with the sensory alone, and so it has been held in a prison of mistrust and suspicion. In the east and west, desire has been kept at a distance, typically under the control of a monkish mind that does not want to deal with desire. Fortunately, there have been hidden traits in both eastern and western thought which did not regard desire as the enemy but as the sacred. That is the path I choose to follow.

Desire is part of the natural energy of the universe. It is the attraction between the earth and the sun, it is the dynamic activity contained in an atom, it is the pursuit of an object of love. Resistance to desire is against the nature of things, as is clinging to the object of desire. Desire is a power and a paradox I joyfully embrace.