Author: barryschade@gmail.com

I notice how so many men seem lost without a woman in the center of their life. I don’t think that this is exclusively true of men, but it seems much more common among men than women. I remember my own intense anxiety each time I became separated from a prominent woman in my life. I quietly wondered whether I could survive on my own. My confidence in myself was weak. Each time, as it turned out, I did just fine.

I experience a great cultural divide between men and woman. In spite of all the apparent male bravado around me, I mostly see my male friends dependent on a central woman in their life. The dependence may even extend to their being taken care of by a woman. However, it mostly has more to do with what I think is an acute dependence on feminine virtues and strengths present in women. The men don’t cultivate or rely on those aspects in themselves.

Exceptions to this pattern are those men who are more in touch with their own feminine aspects. These aspects are those parts related to the liberal arts. These exceptions are those men who have learned to rely on their own hearts for guidance and strength.

I find it interesting that I spent 17 years immersed in an all-male culture, and their lasting impact on the living part of me is minimal. The real and significant impact on my living self has predominantly been by women I have known outside that male environment. Each day I invite the presence of specific men and woman into my life, people I know now and have known in the past. The women out-number the men 5 to 1.

I am grateful for all the individuals, mostly women, who have been my teachers, guides and inspiration. I am especially grateful that so many of them have influenced my life without creating a lasting bound of dependence, even when I might have desired it.

I have grown up in a world that has encouraged me to rely on an emotional and spiritual dependence on women. I have resisted that pressure, and fortunately I have known a number of women who have not encouraged that kind of dependence.

I am grateful that I am very comfortable in an atmosphere of feminine virtues and strengths. It is a world that I both admire and constantly venture into. Above all, I am grateful that I am slowly uncovering, discovering and encouraging my own feminine side.

I remember very well what it use to be like each morning. I fumbled for my glasses, managed to get them arranged on my face, and the world instantly came into focus. The blur sharpened into sharp outlines, what had seemed a haze became distinguishable and recognizable objects. Thanks to my glasses, my vision improved and my world came into focus.

I had a similar experience when I had cataract surgery a little over three years ago. Every day became a new kind of experience. Now, even without glasses, it seemed as though a new world had come out of the fog. Book titles on the spines of books across the room became readable. The three-dimensional aspect of the room seemed to be deeper and more intense. What had appeared as creamy-white was all of a sudden a brilliant white.

As I was becoming accustomed to the new vision gifted to me by cataract surgery, my mind was also changing how I saw things. Actually, all my senses seemed to find a new sensitivity as the awareness of my body and the reality I came up against shifted and grew. As I became more skilled and at ease with being present and aware, everything I was aware of changed. The way I saw and experienced the world changed.

This change in vision has not come from any special effort or work on my part. Mostly, I have simply let go of my usual way of seeing the world and relaxed in the new experience.

It is what happens when I wake up in the morning now and I slowly welcome the experience of the walls of my bedroom. I may see the walls with my eyes, but it is as though my whole body is aware of the walls and ceiling. I feel the covers on top of me just as they are and allow the sensation to settle into an awareness that fills my whole body. The rough but soft texture of the carpet meets my feet with a new awareness of the floor I never experienced three years ago.

It is a slow, unfolding process that may go on for tens of minutes. Gradually, it brings my whole body into an alertness that will follow me through the day. It is a different world I now live in, that I am at ease with. I meet it in a different manner in the morning now. It is an easy world to settle into as I sit on my cushion in front of a candle, bell and incense burner.

When I sit this way, I am instantly aware of a formless dimension that my at-ease body no loner resists. I quietly slip into an awareness that no longer relies on the sensations that brought me here. My nearly-formless body is aglow with ease and joy. The memory of that formless aspect of reality lingers at the margins of my attention hours later, ready to come back into focus when I remember to summon it.

My vision has definitely changed, and continues to change. I don’t think that the world around me has changed, but my encounter, my experience certainly has. I see people, rocks and flowers differently. I look at them with more penetrating, welcoming and aware eyes. Perhaps, in that sense, my reality has changed. I like my changing vision, my evolving world .

This is a time of year when the invitation to be present can be so very strong. Paradoxically, it is also a time when the distractions and disruptions of the same seasonal celebrations can keep me from being truly and authentically present.

I am trying hard this year to be more intensely present to myself and to those with whom I spend time. This is a time of remembrance, especially a time to remember what I have done in the past. Decorations tell stories of years past, and the memories of past times and ancestors seem more vivid and fresh.

It has also been a time of heightened distractions when I struggle with thoughts of what to buy, preparations to make, activities to schedule, visits to make. It seems that this year I am especially aware of all the emails and advertisements that urge me to buy one thing or another before it is too late.

More than anything else, I think it is a time for me to be present to myself and those around me. For some people, it is a time to live a time of intense presence with family members. For me it is especially a time to experience the intense presence of friends, including the members of my sangha.

I see myself as an intense island of presence. I want to be fully present to myself and to those I choose to encounter. In some ways, I want to be an island of resistance to all the forces of society that would distract me from being present. I want to be a refuge of presence and seek out others that are islands of presence. Together, we will resist the current of society that pulls at attention and creates distractions.

Simply by present, I will be a source of light, like the returning sun. When I sit in a restaurant that offers few options for vegetarians I will ask them to expand their menu offerings. When I look into my closet, I will resolve to go another month without buying more clothes that I know I really don’t need or can go without.

Not only will I be a refuge and island of presence to my friends, I will also be an island of authenticity as I brush up against the winds of my culture. It is not always easy to know what it means to be fully present, but I will attempt to do only those things that feel authentic to me, that allow me to feel like I am really present.

While I use concepts like heart and mind to explain what happens in me, I think they are both the same reality.    Each notion is simply a different aspect of what I think is my core essence.    Perhaps my heart is like the vast, throbbing, energetic part of me, like water is the ocean.     My mind and constant thoughts are the waves on the surface that give an apparent shape to the water below.   

When I think of how my mind and heart relate to one another, I remember what it is like to stand on my cabin dock at night.    When the night is cloudless, and there is no wind, the lake is without ripples.    The surface is as smooth as glass and it reflects the sky above.     The moon and stars are all reflected with clarity.   When everything is still, the lake is a perfect and a clear reflection of the sky.

My heart is similar to my lake.    When it is calm and the surface is smooth, I can see with clarity.    When my mind is in repose, it is easier for my heart to be engaged with my world.    All becomes clear.   

For my heart to be engaged in this way, my mind must be free of disturbances and distractions.     There can be no ripples.    If there are ripples, then I see a fragmented image of reality.     Things are not so clear.    

Clarity comes when my mind is still.   When my heart is relaxed, it sees and understands better and with more clarity than when it is rippled and disturbed.     

Like my thoughts this morning, my life is spent wandering.    I have a sense of where I have been, but only a vague sense of where I am.    It is my hope to be of some help to my companions as we wander together in the virtual darkness.   I rely on my companions to be of help to me and discover what lies beyond my senses.

What appears to my eyes and other senses as light is but a small window into the unseen.    For now, the rest is darkness.    There is so much that I do not see that I might as well be wandering in darkness.    What lies beyond my senses is a world of reality I have only begun to discover.    So much remains unseen.    

Some people speak of us living in an illusion.     I think that what we see and directly experience is real.    It is no illusion, unless we mistake it to be all of reality.   Like me, many others wander in a world of darkness.    We have the illusion that I can see, but what I see is only a fragment of reality.    I rely on a very limited sensory experience, and I might as well be a blind man stumbling and wandering through a world I can only partly sense.    

With my eyes, I can only see the visible spectrum, a fraction of the wavelengths surrounding me.   It is so illusory that I think I can see all of reality that I inevitably stumble.    There is so much more that exists beyond  my field of vision, and I could see only a small part of that even if my field of vision were  doubled.    

The unseen is vast and beyond anything I can come to understand, even with the assistance of devices we use to convert some of the unseen waves into something I might understand.    

I naturally shake my unbelieving, disappointed head at those who cannot or refuse to see what to me and to others seems so apparent.   Right now, that is especially the case for all the indications I see of the changing world climate.    Then I realize that we are all wanderers making our way in a darkness that we can neither grasp or understand.     With many others, I wander in a darkness that has yet to reveal what reality lies beyond what I can clearly see.   

It is hard for me to remember that the unseen is as real as the lights on the tree outside my window, which I think I can clearly see and discern.   I have simply not yet figured out how to see that reality.  

 I sometimes call “spiritual” those parts of me and my world that I cannot see.    It is as though that unseen reality is something unlike the people, plants and rocks I can see and touch.   The unseen is simply a reality beyond my sensory array.    It is as real as anything I can see and touch.   

I may be a wanderer in a sea of sensory darkness.    That, however, does not limit my field of awareness.    The darkness holds many secret realities, and I think there may be ways to experience them.    

I can’t imagine what it would be like otherwise.    Each day is so conditioned by all the days that have gone before.    Any openness  I have to a spiritual world has not suddenly happened.   It has been developed for as many years as I can count.    My comfort with walking in an unseen aspect of the world is no new discovery.    This is not a recent development.    It is the result of having visited that familiar place so many times and in so many ways since my youth.    

Being able to be absorbed in to the unseen essence of things is a conditioned awareness.   It is not the product of some mental construct, or figuring something out.     It is a conditioned experience, a familiar encounter.

I have been in touch with a saved, unseen aspect of reality since I first smelled the scent of incense in a church.    Now, when I light an incense cone in the morning before I meditate while sitting on a cushion, I know I am about to enter familiar territory.   It is somewhere I have visited often since I was a young boy.   My heart lightens up.  This is a familiar place.   

My open gesture to the world when I bow to others is anchored in and is a repetition of all the times I entered into an unseen reality with ritualized gestures as a monk.   I often allowed my self to feel the hidden reality then and allowed it to penetrate and soften my heart.    The path is well-worn.

Now it is becoming an easy and familiar thing to open my inner self, my vibrant heart, to someone else when we exchange a bow.   It has become a gesture that is more deeply felt since I focused more on it during a retreat this past summer.    The path to that intimate place now has deeper grooves.  

These are not just learned motions I am able to make with ease, like having learned to ride a bicycle.   It is more of a felt expression of openness to a familiar reality only implied and not so obviously present.

I have been conditioned to have an open acceptance, awareness and absorption with the unseen.    I continue to be conditioned  more day after day.   

What is it about trains moving on a track that stimulates the feeling of absorption for me?    I have the same penetrating feeling when I think about or actually watch my model train move along the track as I do when I get absorbed in the essence of my night stand.   It is the same feeling I get when I am absorbed in the presence of a plant in my garden.    When I am intensely aware of someone, I feel the same sensation of being totally absorbed.     The feeling just comes more habitually with my trains.

In each of the situations, whether with trains, plants or people, I find myself standing by them in a solitude that seems without limits.   I am not sure if I am absorbing or being absorbed.    There is a felt unity that drenches my whole presence.

I may be aware of their solitude and mine, but I feel bathed in a permeating glow of benevolence.   I want them to be all that they are.    There is no resistance, no expectations, no reservations.     I do not want them to change except to unfold.    Their wholeness and mind are merged.    In that instant, we share a fate.

With rocks, plants and people, I have discovered the same feeling of letting go and being absorbed as I have when I feel wholly engaged and absorbed in the movement of my train along the track.    There is the same thrill of being part of a reality I do not fully understand, but in which I am immersed, absorbed.

Between me and my train, my garden, my deck, or my friends the absorption in awareness seems to be dominated by my consciousness.    Even while awareness may be natural, I am the entity that seems more engaged.    With another person, however, I am often fortunate to feel the awareness as a mutual experience.    Our consciousness meets at a more engaged, reciprocal level.   We can be jointly aware as only humans can.

The absorption feels like a blending of the heart, not something only physical or cognitive.   It is a blending of inner life, a sense of our mutual desire to protect, enjoy and benefit.

As much as I can feel absorbed in the presence and movement of my train, it is in no way equal to my absorption in my companions.

 

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.