Author: barryschade@gmail.com

This is a talk I gave to the Blooming Heart Sangha on April 21, 2022. It was titled “My Body, My Bedrock of Intimacy”. It was followed by a discussion among those present of how the senses are part of their practice.

As we begin, I invite you to touch the wooden frame of your chair

• Feel the hardness, the texture of the wood, the coldness or warmth.
• Then touch the fabric of the seat, noticing the softness, the uneven texture.
• Then touch your cheekbones, the flexibility of your skin, the warmth, the softness.   Lightly tap on your cheekbones.
• Be attentive to touch.
• That is the essence of what I have to say.
• My Body, My Bedrock of Intimacy

A few months ago, I shared with you my aspiration to become intimate with the world.

• I counted off seven observations about becoming more intimate, and I’ve talked about a couple of those observations.
• The third observation is that intimacy relies on my body, on my sensory experience as a bedrock, 
• Intimacy is built on a concrete sense of self , the self as present  and that relies on the body.
• What I experience with my body, with my senses is foundational for experiencing intimacy.  
•  This is a bit abstract:  Being mindful of the experienced sensation, such as breathing, gives me an internal object of concentration, an experience of intimacy.   The sensation experience becomes the object of concentration, intimacy.

For me, no sense is as powerful as touch.

• I see my whole body as a sense organ, my whole body becomes a foundation of intimacy.
• There are many ways of experiencing sensory awareness with my body.   Outside and inside the body.
• My practice makes great use of the sense of touch in my hands
• My mindfulness bell rings every hour and invites me to touch anything with my fingers.
• For a moment, I focus on what something feels like; my fingers touch, but my whole body senses.   Then I may experience intimacy with that object.
• I think I am slowly developing a growing habit of sensory awareness, and that makes it easier to be open to intimacy as a habit.   
• It can involve anything I am touching……touching mindfully.

This is not much of a surprise:   I think that our senses remind us we are naturally intimate with the world

• Intimacy with the world is the reality, and our senses remind us of that.
• The body is integral to the practice taught to us by Thay.
• Our senses are foundational to mindfulness;   they are front and center.
• Walking meditation is highly encouraged.
• We quiet our body into a feeling of relaxation for meditating.
• Sometimes we do hugging meditation.   
• The sensation of breathing induces an experience of mindfulness and that awareness opens deep concentration.

For me, nature calls me into my senses…….all of my senses.

• Mindfulness arises when I yield to that call from nature.
• Remember all the experiences you have had;   how, thru the senses,  nature invited you into awareness and deepening mindfulness.
• For me, I think of the view of vast landscapes, mountains, gullies, trees.
• I think of the sound of flowing water, chirping birds, booming thunder.
• I remember the fragrance of fresh dirt, blooms on flowers, 
• I know the taste of so many natural flavors of food.
• Above all, I remember the feel of rough bark, the soft wetness of grass on my skin, the touch of plants as I walk thru my garden.
• Nature awakens the senses, and mindfulness can follow.

This pivotal, foundational role of the senses is not without conflict, not without questions.

Conflict  

• Seeing and employing body sensation as an avenue of mindfulness is somewhat counter-cultural.
• So much of our culture seems caught up in the senses as an end in itself.    Sensation is the object, the goal.  Not mindfulness.  
• I was brought up in a culture where senses, the whole body, was suspect, to be feared, to be avoided.    Sensation was even wrong and even sinful.
• This sounds like an echo of the Second Noble Truth.   Both grasping and avoidance are a root of suffering. 
• There is a middle way of building mindfulness and intimacy on a foundation of sensory experience.

Questions

• Pain:  Mindfulness and Pain;   how are they related?
• Can imagination have a role in mindfulness, in intimacy?
• I think that Imagined sensation has some value, but even that seems to rely on actual, realized sensation.   What do you think?
• I sometimes find it insightful to imagine a time when I no longer have a path to follow, when I have reached the other shore.  I imagine what it would feel like.     That imagined experience significantly opens my mind.   

What about you?

• How do you use your senses, your body?
• Can mindfulness manage pain sensation?
• Does imagination serve as a foundation for mindfulness, even intimacy?
• How do you use your senses?

I have been in a couple of conversations recently where I discovered myself using words I hardly ever hear said out loud. In fact, I hardly ever hear myself saying them. But that may have changed. I found myself breaking through some kind of social seal that keeps some words unspoken. I may have violated some kind of taboo or perhaps I have simply failed to get an imprimatur. I said them out loud.

Not too surprising, those unspoken words, now spoken, are related to sex. They also point out the amazing power of words, now unleashed for me.

Even in the midst of three men, I found it a bit awkward, surprising and strange to say the word masturbation. I felt I had suddenly wandered into a forbidden zone of words when I wondered, out loud, whether buddhist monks or nuns ever masturbated. I then segued into a spoken reflection on how masturbation would once send me into hell, it being a mortal sin for a young Catholic boy. I never learned what masturbation did to young Catholic girls. That part certainly was left unspoken.

I have also been in conversations with women where the word vulva was actually spoken. It led me to query whether women spoke to one another about such things as vulva. I once heard in a very popular movie a reference to vagina, but never vulva.

Which causes me to wonder whether men use the word penis in normal conversations. There are multiple substitutes. We appear to use oblique references that only indirectly identify that specific part of male anatomy. Penis does not quite roll off the tongue as easily as other words that hint at the reality.

We seem to prefer using terms like family jewels or lady parts that euphemistically or indirectly refer to words that must remain unspoken.

I will take my lead from Harry Potter who ignored the admonition against speaking of He Who Must not be Named. For Harry, Voldemort did not remain unspoken. He claimed the power of the word when he spoke. I too am choosing to ignore the admonition against using unspoken words. I am choosing to claim their power.

I don’t know that I am actually broken. But I am sure that I am imperfect. I certainly am less than I can be. For the moment, that is enough. I like the way I see myself in he mirror, maybe not exactly broken, but evidently lacking wholeness.

It helps me to presume the same of everyone I meet. They are in some sense broken too. There is no need to expect them to be totally okay. Just like me, everyone is lacking in some ways. It is better for us if I acknowledge and accept that from the beginning.

Someone said it is a good practice to recite one’s faults when meeting someone new. It is a kind of full disclosure, and sets realistic expectations. I have not tried that overtly, but it is in the back of my mind. “I’m not quite OK, and neither are you.”

Like everyone, I guess I am a little bit broken. Not that I need to be mended or fixed. But I have unrealized potential. Perhaps that appears as a fault. I prefer to see it as room to grow. Perfection might even be boring. Growing into my potential could even be exciting.

A crescent moon can be lovely. With patience, it can also gradually appear in its splendid fulness.

It is not so unusual to wonder what happens when we die. I am finding it more interesting and intriguing to discover what happens when I live. What will this day bring? How will this next moment unfold?

I know that I routinely plan and I normally sketch out how my day will go, and I find that the moments still arrive with their own surprises. I might sit on the side of my bed in the morning and think through the day, check my calendar for events I have scheduled, think what I will eat later on. I still run into unplanned moments and I uncover them in surprising ways if I approach them with patience.

It is so much more satisfying when I accept whatever presents, whatever unfolds than to feel disrupted and have to surrender unmet plans.

I prefer not to rush into the day filled with expectations and great plans. As much as I take enjoyment out of accomplishing what I intended to do, I also take delight in those many surprising turn of events that have little to do with what I previously had in mind.

Even showing up late for a scheduled zoom call, one that I scheduled but thought was a half hour later, can be a moment of unplanned excitement and merriment. Things not going as I planned take me down paths I might never have experienced and I enjoy the surprise totally unprepared.

I think I can wait to find out what happens when I die. In the meantime, I want to savor the excitement of what it means to be alive and constantly be surprised by moments unplanned and unforeseen. It requires patience for me to become fully alive.

Once again, I am surprised how something so great and wonderful can lie hidden right in front of me. I think it is such a cliche to speak of living in the “present moment”. It has become so common place, and it holds such a deep reality. Deep and often hidden.

Only now, I am becoming aware how the present, the here and now, is such a deep and available refuge from the haunts of the past and the terrors of the future.

It has been no small task to learn even a small portion of what it truly means to enter into the present moment. The present, so apparent, is also so elusive. Such a simple concept and simple reality is so difficult to embrace. The baggage of the past and the allure of the future have become such a constant companion for me that I have a difficult time entering into what is present, what is here and now.

It is no small achievement to find the refuge of the present moment. For me, it has meant to learn what it means for me to truly let go. It has meant that I rid my mind of the chatter that distracts me from what is present. I am finding that I can clear my mind by a simple act. The sensory experience of the moment has become my key to the present.

The sensory experience is for me the easiest connection with what is truly real, what is present in the most easily perceptible manner. Throughout the day, I am reminded to touch the table, the cup, the keyboard. I am reminded to touch the present world in a totally undistracted way.

Touch has become for me the easiest way to connect to the present. It is a simple yet effective way for me to enter into the present, for me to become present. For a brief moment, I am no longer riding a turbulent wave of the past or being drawn into an unfathomable, uncertain future. I am for the briefest time, part of the present.

Sometimes, I enter into the skin of my whole body. I might feel with my head, my hands and my feet all at once. My whole skin feels what the present is like. For a moment, I am present, I am everywhere, I am nowhere.

Senses other than touch can have the same effect, but not as easily. I can look at the moving tree branches, listen to the sound of traffic, taste the savory fresh bread. All can bring me into a close alignment with the present. But none are as effective or engaging as touch. The chill of the granite vanity, the warmth of skin, the hard surface of my desk. All are becoming effective ways to be present.

For an instant, all sense of passing time vanishes. I lose awareness of what I was about to do, about to experience. The echoes of the past, especially my distant past, lose their power to overwhelm me. The only thing that envelops me is the present.

My thirst is a tribute to the river. My ardent thirst beckons me to the river from which I have come. I long to be absorbed once again in that vast river out of which I have emerged. I thirst to return.

I was born with the natural desire to return to the river that flows through all things. Culture has cloaked that ardent desire, made it hidden and contained. Diversions such as possessing, fear and hoarding have dulled my expression of longing and desire. The thirst has been thwarted by my cultural accommodations.

I am slowly learning to thirst and return to give tribute to the river of existence. I am gradually unlearning much of what I have so passively been taught. I am ignoring the conceptual limits of a learned reality.

My natural thirst is for the ultimate, for the surging river that flows through all things including me. I feel the pulsing flow of the erotic energy that rises in the whole world in which I live. My thirst is becoming free and it grows.

I put aside the constraints that limit my vision and my reach. I ignore the limits that seem to exist all around me. I carry a cup in my expectant hand as I prepare to take deep drinks from the flow of energy all around me. My thirst is becoming greater, and the flow rises to satisfy my desire.

I draw closer and closer to the source of my arising. My thirst gives tribute to the river of my origin. I will be possessed by it and fully enlivened.

Mindfulness or Intimacy?

I gave this talk at Blooming Heart Sangha on 2/16/2022

I invite you into a question I’ve been asking myself:

• It actually is kind of a retraction; certainly a clarification
• In October, I talked about Mindfulness and Intimacy as though they were somehow the same.
• I even said they were two sides of the same coin.
• Now I’m not so sure.    
• Lori often reminds us “Are you sure” and now I’m not at all sure I agree with what I said in October.
• I think something like a real distinction can be made between mindfulness and intimacy.
• I often think and talk about these things and I’ve lived a few months and I notice that my experience has changed.

It’s not a two-way street;   I think I can be mindful without experiencing intimacy.

• I can’t experience intimacy without being mindful.
• I realize these are just words, concepts; they are not a thing.
• This is more than a simple distinction of words; I think the two words point to a qualitative difference in experience.
• Intimacy is not just experience of more mindfulness, it is qualitatively different.

I know this is my distinction, my choice of definition.

• It is not what Ben Connelly seems to say. In “Mindfulness and Intimacy”
• It is my experience
• It’s an important distinction, because it says “there is something more than mindfulness.”  
• Old saying: “ First there is a mountain; then there is no mountain; then there is.”
• Mindfulness and intimacy are at the opposite ends of that saying.
• The opposite ends of the saying also reflect a difference in experience, and I know I am clearly not at the ultimate end of the intimacy…..not yet.
• It is a continuum, and my experience is somewhere along it.  

Problem: I often talk with an English major friend of mine about how language is essentially dualistic.

• That is a problem.
• For me to talk about Mindfulness or Intimacy, I use dualistic speech, dualistic terms.
• But intimacy experience moves beyond dualism, beyond dualistic speech, beyond concepts.   
• Your language in describing your experience likely has a different meaning than mine;
• Mine will be different in four months.
• But we have to use words to talk about it, and here goes……

 First, Mindfulness; For me, Mindfulness is less juicy, but focuses on some aspect of experience

• Usually means being aware of some aspect of experience I am not typically conscious of.
• Mindfulness is a first step; typically focuses, brings my consciousness to some kind of sensory or mental experience.   
• Mindfulness is foundational; Thay says it is an antidote to many things such as suffering, anger, loneliness.

For me, Body is foundational for most experiences of mindfulness.

• Mindfulness often rises from sensation.   Clapping hands to feel the tingling energy.
• Mindfulness can be focusing on breathing, sitting, walking, eating, and so on.   
• Body scan is a help in becoming familiar with mindfulness.
• For me, there is a point when I become aware of my whole body at once; ready to step over into intimacy.

Second, intimacy; That movement into intimacy is harder to describe

• Mindfulness is like watching rain run down the window pane; intimacy is running out into the rain, putting whole self into the experience.
• Intimacy is beyond knowing about something, but meeting it with an open heart, an open mind, a sense of wonder
• I know, I can be mindful of the granite top in my bathroom:  its hardness, its coolness, its 200 million years in the ground.
• Intimacy is merging with the granite without being aware of any of those things.   A step beyond dualism, beyond concepts.   It simply is and I am connected to it.
• “First there is a mountain…….”

I have a harder time launching into intimacy with the shungite stone around my neck.

• It is a great exercise in mindfulness.   I often focus on its 2 billion years in the ground; I feel its hardness and sharp edges, its black shiny surface. 
• But I have a hard time feeling any kind of intimacy with it
• Perhaps not enough sensory data to launch me.
• Since I began thinking about this, the sense of intimacy has grown. 

What about senses:  Intimacy involves and depends on a launch beyond sensory

• For me, it includes abandonment of sensation;
• Requires that I go beyond the conventional, beyond habitual views.
• An experience that may reach toward the ultimate.   …..still thinking about that.
• I know it demands a surrender to a feeling of free-fall, absolute letting go
• That is beyond mindfulness.

What About people: Mindfulness can be independent of other people, but other people often play a huge role in intimacy for me.

• Families teach a lot about intimacy; certainly true for me 
• for some that means learning that intimacy is inviting and juicy; for others that means learning that intimacy is a scary and dangerous place……it is better remaining alone.   I got a lot of the latter.
• Lovers are often associated with thoughts of intimacy, and they too can teach the dangers or the wonders of intimacy.  I’ve experienced both.
• I am still thinking about ancestors and wonder what you think: how have they affected your ability to experience intimacy?

Last thought; I am convinced that I can be mindful without intimacy, but I cannot be intimate without mindfulness.  However there are things I’m trying to figure out

• Intimacy is beginning to seem something like absorption to me, but I’m not sure.
• For me it is a kind of boundary-less merging
• Experiencing no distinction.
• Not the same as possessing; I think there is nothing that involves self.
• Something like a small taste of nibbana, emptiness
• “First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is”
• That is about as close I get to understanding intimacy.

I still have more questions; but I also have some for you:

• What do you think intimacy is?
• Is it part of mindfulness or different and distinct?
• What is your experience of intimacy”
• What has been the role of family, ancestors for you?

What I see and what I write is only the beginning. I can tell that the Goddess is gently nudging her way into my life. She has been doing this for many years as the feminine has called to me in sometimes subtle and sometimes striking ways. What I am waking to is mostly inside of me, but it is encouraged by the feminine all around me.

It could be that what I have been calling the feminine leanings in me and in the world are actually the energy and power of the Goddess. The two are one, feminine and Goddess. My culture has largely declared that the sacred and divine is male. The sacred and divine are separate, somewhere unseen, unheard and ‘out there.’ While I have been convinced of the immanence of the sacred, I am mainly recognizing the feminine attributes of that immanence. The Goddess has stirred from beneath the covers of my male-dominated, male-god dominated culture.

Actually, the Goddess has been there all the time, sounding the sweet harp of her presence. She has appeared to me in so many art forms and in many of the women I know. My own natural affinity for the feminine has in reality been an affinity for the Goddess, for the manifestations of her wise, life-giving fecundity of her sacred presence.

It is a continuing revelation as veils are drawn back. I am noticing the feminine attributes of the deep and erotic energy that is present in all things. No separate entity, the Goddess alive is in the whole world around me. She is more obvious in some places, but she is present in everything, everyone willing to manifest her.

I am learning not only how to recognize her but also how to express her power and energy, her attributes and her presence. I am fortunate to have teachers who are around me and who speak to me in art and books. I am fortunate to have a garden where the Goddess is alive and manifests an alluring presence. I am fortunate that I can feel the Goddess coming more alive in me.

Around me, there is a circle of engagement. It follows me around. Sometimes it grows in size, sometimes it shrinks. I suspect its size has something to do with my mood. More likely, it reflects and is affected by how present I am to myself and my surroundings.

The circle of engagement also depends on the intention of the world around me. My sense of presence engages only with willing participants. For the inanimate world, their intention to be present is simply a given. The rocks, the hills, the wet waves are all totally inclined to be part of my engagement circle.

Plants and animals are perhaps more passive, but each in its own way is available to be engaged. I need to lean more actively to the plants in my garden, but they casually accept my presence with radiance. They present in such a manner that they are somewhat easy to welcome into the circle of engagement.

Animals are more wary. Only the more boldly brave are willing to join me in feeling the kind of engagement I might offer. Perhaps it is the times that I present more of a passive presence that they are more willing to be engaged with me. I sometimes think they can sense my calmness and are less wary of joining my presence.

Humans are an even more challenging dance of engagement. As I grow older in confidence and the sense of my own presence, I am more expressive in how I invite other humans into active engagement. Sometimes I even use words that make it clear that I am inviting someone into my circle. Other times it is much more subtle. Always, the invitation is coming from my own sense of being present.

I am aware that my focused eyes or a smile is usually an invitation to someone to enter into my circle. Sometimes the invitation is more obvious in the form of a touch or a hug. Always it is my presence reaching out and saying “Join me.” The circle is open, but never broken by coming and going.

I am aware that in all instances, the binding connection with the other, with others, is already present. What remains to be done is experience the reality that exists. What remains is to feel the connection, to experience the circle of engagement that I naturally have.

That is my intention, to experience being deeply intimate with the world around me. It is my intention to experience the intimacy that I already have with all that is. That involves being very aware of every thing and every one that enters my circle of engagement. It also involves my openly inviting all who would be inclined to actively be engaged. I feel that circle expand.

There is a danger in seeing things as they really. There is a real danger that, piece by piece, I might dismantle the culture surrounding me. There is a danger that, if I see the world as it really is, I might ignore, maybe even destroy all the limiting constraints that would otherwise confine me.

The fabric of a self-perpetuating society has covered and attempted to disguise the naked reality of the world. For its own purposes, my culture has altered the appearance of many things so that is hard for me to see things as they really are. All the human-made fabrications and alterations attempt to obscure the natural beauty of what exists without human intervention. There is a danger that I might fling aside these self-glorifying enhancements and embrace the naked realities.

Humans have built temples to a reflection of themselves and called them holy. The temples themselves have become cultural objects of adulation, and have directed the gaze of their acolytes to an imagined universe. All the while, the real universe has been underfoot and ignored. There is a danger that the temples will crumble and become insignificant as I direct my attention more to what is truly real. There is a danger that the edifice and walls of human culture will dissolve.

There was a time when humans had a deeper sense of realty and were engaged with the sacred world in which they lived. Religion itself, as it has developed in the last several millennia, has directed attention elsewhere from the vibrant reality in which I now choose to live. Cultures have projected images of themselves, real or imagined, and declared those reflections real. All the while, cultures have lost touch with the real world they left behind or ignored.

There is a danger for me in seeking what is real. There is a danger that the aspects of culture I carefully dismantle will leave me with little surrounding support.

Perhaps at that time, I will simply walk in my garden. Perhaps that will be enough and the danger will pass. I will walk through what I truly sense as real. Perhaps, there will be companions to walk with me. Perhaps the danger may not be so threatening after all.