Author: barryschade@gmail.com

Every morning, I open my heart, my whole body to the universe. For me it is not just an attempt to hold the whole world close. It is more a bold gesture to align myself with it all. I want to allow the energy all around me to flow free freely through me, I want to be a conduit as well as a receptacle of the wondrous erotic energy of the universe.

For me to be aligned means no resistance. It means no holding on to my preconceptions of what is to be, what is about to flow into my day. I may make some plans, perhaps to plant begonias today. That is but a broad outline and it may or may not be what I will experience as the energy of the ages manifests in how my day progresses.

It is for me a generous letting go, of being prepared for what will flow through me today. Sometimes I think of it as a free fall into what comes my way. It may be more like allowing the current of the universe, the free flowing energy of the world around me to carry me along. I will not resist it. I will align myself with the gestures of the world, even those I do not welcome and prefer to change. Some I may even attempt to redirect. They will all carry me along as I align myself with them and the energy they carry.

My body, of course, is integral to this alignment. If I am to channel the eros of the universe, my body has to be attuned to that magnificent force all around me. It is for me a total gesture of allowing my body to fall into nothingness and become one with all that flows around me. I become a channel of the erotic energy that makes the plants grow, the winds blow, the water flow. I open to the leaping energy of squirrels in my trees, the flying birds, the emerging plants. I feel their energy with my whole body, I allow the same energy that moves them to become what propels me through the day.

It is happening all around me, and I want to be aligned with it all. First my body has to let go. All my senses have to forget what they know and be prepared for what is to come. They are prepared to be surprised, to be aligned

This is an outline of a talk given to the Blooming Heart Sangha on  4/27/2023

Close your eyes and remember.

• Remember what it was like to stare up into the dark sky, away from lights, away from anything blocking your view.
• Remember the strong attraction, the invitation to be pulled into the darkness, into the vastness; remember the invitation to experience the whole cosmos around you, to be swallowed up in the darkness.

A couple months ago, I got such an invitation from Rilke.

• Not from a night sky, but from a few lines of poetry:  

                        You see I want a lot;  maybe I want it all:

                        The darkness of each endless fall, the shimmering light                                              of each ascent.

Tonight, I want to pass that invitation on to you:  an initation  into darkness…….now you can open your eyes, but I still invite you to enter into the darkness.  an invitation to experience it all.

This is not easy:  First of all, I am aware that we have subtle ways of avoiding darkness.

• We call some of our history the “dark ages” because, frankly, we don’t know a whole lot about them.
• Only recently, within the last century, it was discovered that 96% of the universe is unknown, made of what we simply call dark matter and dark energy;   we only “see” the atomic part, 4% of what is there.  
• I have learned to dread the “dark night of the soul” some western mystics described.
• Most of us light up our streets and our yards because of the presumed dangers lurking in darkness.   

Like Rilke, I want it all, which means embracing the dreaded darkness.   

I’ve wondered how have I come to avoid the darkness?  There are numerous ways.

            –           I think that when I was born, my culture gave me a mask that                                                attempts to shield me from a fear of the Unknown, the                                                    Unseen, Unsafe

–           I have learned to live in an artificial atmosphere of hierarchy, racial stratification to keep me safe; I live with cultural blinders on.

–           Like most of us, I have learned to celebrate speed, action, productivity, attachment,         success, destination, linear time, rationality, logic. ….rather than relax in to the darkness. 

–           Sometimes we even engage in a kind of spiritual bypassing: to escape the messy world, seek transcendence, crave calmness, even celebrate out of body experience. The darkness is not a calm, energy-less place

            –           The bias is to the light over darkness; we seek enlightenment 

            –           All help me avoid the darkness.

I think that the opposite is my destiny; darkness is our destiny.

–           I can find freedom by turning to darkness, letting go of fear, turning to where my fears lurk.

–           Metabolizing, ommuning with, plunging into darkness opens me to an unwavering, luminous, inner light; enlightenment in darkness; everything is there.    

Examples: What does turning to the darkness mean in practice? 

–           I think it often means simply answering the question: ‘What would Thay do?’

–           Entering in to darkness means my deeply experiencing grief for the planet, its people, plants and animals.   Opening up to the possibility of a passionate, caring response to the plight of the planet, expanding my capacity to love, yielding to deep intimacy with the world.

–           Entering into darkness means deeply experiencing the trauma of my racism;  my own; it means I enter into the dark realm of my own racism.

–           It means I allow myself a more relaxed relationship with those MAGA , sleazy politicians or family members.

–           Entering into darkness means welcoming the trauma of my childhood; it means befriending those troubling seeds that Thay speaks of, those seeds that frighten me, that I don’t want to grow.  

–           It means embracing my shadow side; all the things Jung spoke of.

–           Entering into darkness means deeply experiencing my fear of “other”, entering into my fear of anything different.   Fully absorbing the awareness of the binary nature of our culture.

How do I do this?  How do I enter into darkness:   for me, the doorway is not a bunch of concepts, but the doorway to darkness is through the body. 

–           I begin by allowing myself to feel the vast spaciousness within my body;  the darkness within, the vast storehouse of energy within my body.

–           It means I slow down; allow the feeling of spaciousness to open inside; feel the darkness of each endless fall.

            –           It means that I accept there is no need to find answers; let go of pursuits.

            –           It means that I become open and curious; cultivate and develop “beginners mind”

            –           I Trust what I experience within; no resistance; no                                                        preconceptions;  embrace my internal authority.

            –           I be patient with the arrival of darkness; remember that                                               I have been conditioned otherwise.

            –           I abandon convictions and beliefs; rely on my intuition of                                             the present.

            –           I be gentle on myself; allow myself to feel fully what                                                     arises in the moment.

In summary: For me, it is a transformation of consciousness, 

            –           To enter darkness allows everything to enter with me:                                                  fear, aversion, joy, illumination.   

            –           There is a deep form of intimacy in darkness.   a deep                                                 form of awareness.   

–           For me entering darkness is the key:  I want to become intimate with everything. 

–           I offer you the invitation to enter darkness.    

Questions:

            –           What is it like for you to walk in the woods in the dark?

            –           What waits for you in the darkness?

            –           Is there an alternate way of understanding Darth Vadar’s attempt to draw Luke into darkness?

–           Are there ways of embracing fear rather than be controlled by it?

–           What do you want to metabolize in the darkness?

I absorbed many books and many classes as I was training to become a theologian. I read, I listened, I wrote papers. Eventually, I was recognized as a master of theology, of religious science. But under all that effort, a different frame of mind was developing and evolving. Rather than becoming a theologian, I was slowly emerging as a geologian.

My frame of reference gradually was becoming not what was theoretically above my head, but was perceptively under my feet.

Even though I had the credentials of a theologian, I was becoming aware that the God of western christianity had died, had lost relevancy. It was not so much the work of Neitzche that sent me in that direction. It was the urging I got from Teilhard, the theologian who dug into the earth for fossils, that brought me to that realization.

Teilhard has, of course, not been my only teacher. There have been many others, including the two professors who taught me the mysteries of earth dynamics this past semester. The plants in my garden constantly bring me to a deeper kind of awareness, as well as a growing assortment of scholars in the buddhist tradition.

The books on my shelves do not exclude the world of western christianity; I continue to be interested in the work of modern biblical scholars like Elaine Pagels. But my reading has become more focused on poetry and earth science. I am constantly inspired by a deepening understanding of the mind, guided by skilled writers and my own reflection on how my mind works.

It all is centered not on what was the realm of theology, but on earth science as I open my mind to the reality of the world which presents itself to me directly . I walk on it, I touch it, I see its reflection. My own body speaks to me more clearly than the theologians ever had and with greater validity. I am becoming a happy geologian, discovering the world that enthusiastically unfolds all around me. I am finding my true home, as it always has been.

It seems to happen a lot. I will be talking with a friend, and the conversation takes a turn in a way that causes me to say, ” I was just thinking that!” I sometimes explain this by calling it a coincidence. Perhaps it is a logical turn based on what we had been discussing. I think it is more often an example of convergence. Our minds, already in harmony, simply are turning to a convergent connection with the universal intelligence in which we live.

You see, I think the universe is a vast pool of awareness. Call it intelligence if you want; I regard both as aspects of the same reality. Humans, like all animate and inanimate entities, have evolved to be able to tune into that intelligence. My physiology has a developed, nurtured ability to share in that universal intelligence in a human way. How much I can share in it, or in which way I share in it, is a result of my innate physiology and how I have trained it. A lot depends on my physical body. It also depends on how I have practiced to use my physical body to be aware.

My awareness is different from that of a wolf, an eagle or a tree. We have physical structures that are capable of tuning into the universal awareness in different ways. My awareness is similar to other humans because we share similar neurological structures. But it is also different from other humans because I have learned to use those neurological structures in different ways than that have.

But there are some people, notably close friends, who have trained their physiology, their neural networks, in ways similar to what I have done. We have learned to be connected to the universal awareness in similar ways. The universal awareness, intelligence expresses itself in similar ways in each of us. So when our conversation takes a similar turn, it isn’t that we are being logical, or that we can read one another’s minds. We simply, out of training, converge on similar awareness.

I like being able to experience this kind of convergence with friends. I wish I could also converge more with the intelligence, awareness of a wolf, an eagle or a tree. To do this, I think I must first shed much of the training unique to humans, my training on how to be aware as a human. It means shedding the dualistic way of thinking that otherwise serves me well, but interferes with my ability to enter the universal awareness with few constraints. I have to learn better how to let go, how to skinny dip in the universal awareness.

I think I want to float into the universal endless darkness that has no limitations of conventional human thought. I want a greater kind of convergence that allows me to experience how I am connected to all things.

Being human with my given physiology has been a wonderful adventure. Practicing expanded ways of human convergence has given me delight. I am trying to step beyond into a deeper convergence. And I have no idea what that will be like.

Yesterday, I stood for forty-five minutes on the corner of 9th and Nicollet, waiting for the number nine bus to arrive and take me home. It was cold and uncomfortable standing all that time, sometimes leaning against the stone building. It was, in looking back, a bit of immersion in reality. A chance opportunity to be real.

The elderly white woman next to me repeatedly stepped forward into the middle of the sidewalk. She looked down the street to see if the bus was approaching. When I tried to tell her it was still over 15 minutes away, she shook her head and pointed to her ears. I smiled and nodded.

There was a flurry of activity off to my left and a couple of young black men quickly hurried around the corner up Nicollet. Suddenly there was a chorus of angry voices. I couldn’t understand a word, but the loud shouting continued for a long time. I resisted the urge to walk to the corner and see what was happening. I was afraid.

A white woman huddled against the building to my right, clutching a pair of Yaktrax in one hand. Her stocking cap was pulled over her forehead down to her glasses. She had on a mask up to her glasses. I would not recognize her if I ever saw her again. She was hunched up quietly.

Trucks came and went, taxis dropped off people, individuals shouted across the street to someone.

A middle-aged black man and I joined in joking about the long wait for the bus. He kept dancing around on the sidewalk between the building and the curb. He had to pee he said, and was resisting going a little way up the sidewalk to get relief. He joked about not wanting to wet himself and we both laughed. He pulled a brown bag out of his satchel and took a drink. We kept up our exchange until the bus arrived.

My bus finally showed up and I gingerly stepped onto the ice in the gutter, not wanting to slip as I got on the bus. I scanned my card and found a seat, surrounded by a cluster of people I did not recognize and would likely not see again.

This has been my real world on a Tuesday morning.

It is frustrating for me that discussing sexuality is so absent or off-base in our culture.   Talking about sexuality and “private” body parts is routinely shrouded in shame-based avoidance or denigrated by exploitive humor.   

Something so natural and pleasant as sexuality is typically avoided or danced around in our culture.    It is something of a paradox since our bodies are so emblematic of who we are and how we see ourselves.   Yet we are so reluctant to genuinely share what would otherwise be expressive of what is and who we are.   

Speech mirrors cultural behavior. It is interesting to me how men and women play peekaboo with breasts.   We play a mutual game of going to great lengths to display and observe the shape of women’s breasts or reveal an abundance of skin.   We only stop at the ambivalence of how much nipple to display.   

The poverty of our sexual language in the culture reflects this ambivalence about bodies.   I am happy that some friends and I choose to embrace and even redeem sexual language.   This freedom of speech has begun to flow into my casual conversation with friends and we sometimes bravely talk about issues related to our sexuality. Speech need not be hamstrung by culture.

Soon after I was born, I learned to live in the world as I interpret it.  That activity is largely the work of my imagination.   How much I actually come close to seeing things as they are depends on my skills of observation, sometimes called mindfulness. 

It is easier to live in a world as imagined because it corresponds to my wants and fears.  It allows me to reach what I want and avoid what might harm me. I routinely grasp and avoid based on what I imagine, not on what I might observe if I ignored my wants and fears.  

No one is unique in choosing to live in a world as imagined.  It is a common practice. I think it takes becoming vulnerable to see the world as it is.  It takes letting go of our wants and fears to experience the world as seen and not as imagined.  

For me to surrender to the full force of a hug, I have to let go of my fear. If we each surrender, we both became vulnerable as we step out of our imagination. 

I no longer have a Path To Follow.

Perhaps it is the result of aging, of my approaching the end of my physical presence.

• I have noticed that some common themes have entered my life as I entered my 80’s 
• So many things are compressed, particularly time and space.
• Months ago, I read a quote from The Pearl Garland Tantra and it has become a daily theme of mine.
• It is an ancient text: “I no longer have a path to follow, I have gone to the other shore, I am all alone, but I am connected to everything.”
• It has become an often-repeated intention of mine:  “May I find that I no longer have a path to follow; may I recognize that I have arrived at the other shore; alone, may I see that I am connected to all things.”

It is a theme I have noticed showing up in Thay’s words.

• I hear him saying, “you no longer have a path to follow”, “you have arrived at the other shore,” “you are connected to all things.
• All is compressed into a deeply engaging now.
• For me, it is an invitation to enter into deep intimacy with the world.   To embrace a deep engagement with all things, with all beings, with all my friends, with you.

I no longer have a path to follow.

• So much of our practice references being on a path.
• Perhaps that is true in the historical sense;  minutes follow minutes, hours follow days, days follow days.
• But in a perspective of the ultimate, I have no more path to follow, my feet need not move, I have arrived.
• In the practice, the path seems like a tightrope; I want to lean neither to the side of grasping nor the side of aversion;  I am moving forward to some goal.
• In my experience, I am also standing still on the tightrope, I no longer have a path to follow;   this is IT.

I think Thay summed up his deep engagement with life when he wrote his book, “The Other Shore.”

• He wrote as one who has fully experienced what it is to stand on the other shore, of having arrived.  
• His experience of the other shore comes out in the Heart Sutra, as he translated it.  This is what it is like.  This is IT.
• You are standing on the Other Shore, and all you need do is experience it, open yourself to the reality.  You have arrived.
• That is an experience I aspire to; I sometimes get a small taste of it.

I think that for the ancient Buddists who wrote those words of The Pearl Garland Tantra,  it was an ultimate retreat into oneself, into one’s physical presence into one’s body.  

• While it was a retreat, at the same time it represented an immersion of inner clarity and bliss.
• It was combined with a seamless and unconditional immersion in the world.
• There is no need to seek for anything else;  it is all here;  this is IT.

Rilke echoes for me both the aspiration and the formula for attaining what it means to have no path to follow, to arrive at the other to shore, to realize I am connected to all things.

• “You see, I want a lot.   Maybe I want it all:  the darkness of each endless fall, the shimmering light of each assent.”
• For me, Rilke describes what it is like to experience absolute surrender and total engagement.
• Like Thay, Rilke wrote from the other shore, from an experience of having no path to follow, of feeling connected to all things.

I think of this when I walk in my garden when it is -5 degrees, or when I (more often) look out the windows.   

• It is all here: Winter and spring are one; the flowering plants are there under the blanket of snow;  the rotting debris of last fall is part of it all.
• My garden may seem asleep, but it is also wildly blooming.  Everything is happening right now.
• Rumi had this to say about my garden: “And I don’t think the garden loses its ecstasy in winter.  It’s quiet, but the roots are down there riotous.”

Rumi may be writing about my garden in an historical sense, but, for me, and maybe Rumi, the ultimate, timeless / spaceless aspect is there as well.

• The ultimate is there when I talk to Molly who, like me, was born 81 years ago.
• It is a small nod to the ultimate when I tell her that, for me, she is 81, and 55, and 90, and 23, and 35.    All here and now.  That is how I experience her.

All this is a hint of what I think it is like to no longer have a path to follow, to stand on the other shore, to (alone) feel connected to all things.  

• It is what I aspire to experience; what I sometimes experience in a small way.   It is a good reason for me to practice.  

This is a talk given at the Blooming Heart Sangha on September 15, 2022.

Cultivating the state of Jhana joy – take two

Last week, Karla gave a lovely talk on breathing.

• Moreover, she gave us the guided experience of what it feels like to breathe and become aware of our breath.
• Pause to be aware of our breath…….
• I expect that we all have experienced moments of joy, pleasure and delight.
• I want to talk about my practice of cultivating and expanding those moments if joy.   Based on breath.
• It is the practice of the 5 jhana factors, the precursors and precondition for the deep state of absorption:  Jhana
• The 5 Jhana factors are the path of deep concentration leading to: Jhana, samadhi. 
• I talked about this several years ago, and said I had a 6 month plan to explore the 5 jhana factors.
• I’m still exploring.   I’m still on the path, I’ve experienced lot, but still practicing.  I now see the path differently.  This is my current experience.

Summary: The 5 Jhana factors are steps along the path to cultivating deep concentration.

• A path of deepening joy.
• I’ve seen Thay refer to Jhana, but I haven’t seen him discuss the 5 steps I’m talking about.
• He talks about the factors and about the state of absorption.
• I have relied on authors like Shaila Catherine for identifying the path as the 5 steps.

First Step: Connecting

• I direct attention to a chosen object: the breath as known
• Connecting begins with the intention to know and become aware.
• Connecting relies on relaxed, natural awareness of the physicality of the breath.
• A focus on the breath as known.  On the occurrence of breath.  
• Equivalent:  the striking of the bell.

Second Step: Sustaining

• Sustained attention on the chosen object:  sustained attention on the breath as known
• Starts getting harder
• This sustaining of attention allows concentration to deepen
• Equivalent:  the reverberating bell, the steading hands of a potter.
• Next step is easy: do nothing

Third Step:  Rapturous interest

• Surrender to inner bliss; allow it to happen naturally. 
• Natural feeling of lightness and pleasure when the first two steps occur.
• I said it is easy, BUT:  the first time it happened to me it scared me so much I was in my Doctor’s office the next day talking about the possibility of a stroke.   
• I’ve decided that this surrender to rapture is a developed skill;  I now do it multiple times a day, without fear.  It is easy.
• Not some kind of random rapture; it is rapture out of attention to a specific object (for me: breath as known or some other tactile experience as known:  eg. Momentary touching the chair fabric)

Fourth Step:  Joy

• Enduring deep ease, pervasive contentment
• Mind is bright and undisturbed
• Sustain rapturous, but at lower level; not as intense
• Equivalent: settling into a warm bath.
• No urgency to finish…..nice

Fifth Step: One-pointedness

• A feeling of intimacy that rivets attention
• Sets the stage for absorption
• 5^th step has a feeling of certainty; stability of concentration. 
• I think: A summary of all 5 steps in one.  

These five are the 5 Jhana Factors

• Set the stage, are prerequisites for Jhana absorption……absorption that can support insight or action, but it is not the same as insight or action. 
• I linger on these 5 factors;  They are where I am; still working on them, getting familiar with them.
• Jhana absorption is mostly out of my reach, though I sometimes think I see it in a distant mist.   
• I talked about the five as steps, and some authors, like Shaila,  present them that way.
• In true Thay fashion: I think if you really experience any one of them, you experience them all. All at once. And that is very  nice.
• Like 5-sided dice. 

The 5 Jhana factors are a way of deep concentration; also a way of deep joy.

• 5 Jhana factors rely on awareness of the breath that Karla taught us about.   
• In my practice, I add other tactile experiences that I become aware of as known.   
• However, for most, the breath is pivotal, the breath is foundational.   

This is how I use the breath;   What about you?

• How do you use your breath?
• How does the breath fit into your practice.
• Experience?

I want to presume it is a benevolent world. It is my world after all and the only world I have. I try to make my default attitude to see the world as a welcoming place filled with welcoming people. I, in turn, want to carry that attitude to all encounters with the world, especially people. I want the person in the check-out line to feel validated and seen. I want the people walking by my home to feel at ease and enjoy being close to my presence. I want to taste the joy of being present to others.

It doesn’t, however, always work that way. As much as I want to presume that everyone around me has a benevolent attitude toward me, I am also aware that is not always true. I do have my moments of caution. I am alert to the malevolence of others as I pull into my garage late at night. I am aware that others who live very near to me have been assaulted with guns. I am aware that there is a clear profile of those who have assaulted my neighbors.

So how do I balance this? I guess that I don’t always presume that I live in a benevolent world. There are others who are willing to harm me and others. So I mix a token of attentive caution in my presumption of benevolence.

I still open and close my days with an open heart, aspiring to connect with the world in a deep and intimate manner. This I aspire to, in spite of the lurking dangers. I still default to presuming benevolence, at least until I see signals of something else.