Author: barryschade@gmail.com

I think there is a shadow in Buddhism.   Sometimes, it appears that the practice encourages a kind of withdrawal from the world.   Sitting quietly in a darkened place has the appearance of disengagement.   I know that this is not a true representation.   I am finding that the practice actually is making me more in touch and aware of the world, more concerned about issues, less distracted by lesser issues, more discerning about what is real.

However, one area I am still trying to work out is the position that teachers such as Thay take on sexuality.    Rather than promote engagement with this aspect of who we are, the practice seems to push sexuality to the side.   Rather than showing the path to engaged presence, the path seems to be one of withdrawal.

To me, this is most obvious for the monks who practice celibacy.   They are the ones I primarily listen to, and they clearly are disengaged from sexuality, at least in the lifestyle they follow.   For them sexuality is put aside in a box and they choose not to deal with the challenges presented by our sexual nature.

When sexuality is discussed for laypersons, it is also put aside in a box constrained by the cultural norms of marriage.   It appears that same-sex expressions of sexuality are off the mark in the writings of teachers I have read.    Sexuality is certainly complicated, hard to deal with.    Some teachers attempt to make it less complicated by putting it in a box.  Sexual engagements are narrowly defined and constrained.

The middle way of Buddhism does not advocate withdrawal from the world.   There is to be no excess, either in denial or indulgence.   The practice is based on the observation that suffering is the result of clinging and attachment.    There is a way out of this problem, and the path is the one of the middle way.

It is my intent to be totally present in whatever I do, drinking tea, washing dishes, touching someone, walking into Target.   What matters is how I do it, with a mind that is clear and peaceful, attentive to what is happening, and full of wonder at the present moment.   I intend to act in a manner that does not superimpose on reality any mental constructs such as clinging,  attachments or preconceptions.

Like all of my relationships with reality, I expect that the wholeness of sexuality is free of suffering when it rises from my being truly present, aware and fully engaged.    Non-attachment and non-clinging are characteristics of true sexuality just as they are characteristic of any other ways of relating to the world.

Withdrawal from sexuality or narrowly defining it is not the middle way.   Putting sexuality in a box is not the path of the middle way.  Rather, true sexuality  is a possible path to freedom and liberation.

Sometimes, it even feels uncomfortable to speak the word ‘body.’   It almost seems foreign, not part of our comfortable vocabulary.   It’s not as though I’m even referring to specific body parts which ‘shall not be named.’   It is unfortunate that for so long I have felt disassociated from my body, and I get the impression that this is true of many friends.

I am slowly reclaiming my body, and it as transformative as learning to breathe under water.    I have been stirring up energies in my body that have been under my radar for as long as I can remember.    My sensory apparatus is being rewired and reconnected, probably becoming much like it was 76 years ago.   When the bell rings, my whole body listens.    My taste of food settles into my arms and legs.   My mind has reclaimed many of the old nerve pathways that roam through my body from head to toe.

For all the shallow attention we give to our bodies in the media and in shaping our appearance, it is unlikely many of us actually live in our bodies.  We live in the abstraction of our mind.   The experienced relationship between what we know and what we can sense with our body is so disconnected from who we are.

I now realize what an insight it was for the book to be titled “Our Bodies, Ourselves.”   My body is me, and the more it comes back to life, the more I enjoy the energy flowing thru it.   My body is enlivened with soaring ideas, my mind tingles with delight with whatever I touch.

It is so unfortunate that human culture has evolved to regard bodies as commodities.   As we became disconnected from the energy of the natural world, we seemed to lose the awareness of the reality in one another as well.    In so many cultures, relationships were converted into contracts about rights over bodies, ignoring that the parties were people.   For many, especially women, their bodies were no longer their own.    My culture associated flesh with sin, and I was urged to distance myself from contact with my body.

I’ve turned around, and I intend to go in the opposite direction I was taught.   I am becoming more identified with my body, it goes wherever my mind goes, it contacts anything I can relate to.   My mind and body are learning how to merge together.    I see others as mind and body.    No more abstracted persons.    Wholly flesh and blood and mind.   All are one.

For about fifty-five years, I’ve been sorting out what it means to be in connection with other human beings.   In particular, I’ve been musing about what our culture calls a relationship.   I now am trying to figure out what it means to interconnect, be in a relationship without clinging or attachment.   I think this is a new insight for me.

I am now wondering if there can be an interconnection without anxiety about loss, without grasping for continuity, without surges of jealousy, without worrying fear.   I would like to interconnect without regard for the future, only attentive to being present, here and now.

It seems that my culture conspires to stir up all the anxieties and fears associated with grasping and attachment.    It seems intent on making me suffer.   I have been encouraged to make promises about the future and rely on promises someone else must make.   I live in a culture that puts the emphasis on relying on what another person will do, not on what is happening right now.    I am trying to answer “will you be there tomorrow” rather than are you here now.    I am encouraged to promise “I will be there tomorrow” rather than make the most loving statement “I am here for you now.”

I am convinced that if I attempt to promise what I will do, I set up expectations I will never meet.   Promises lead to attempts to control, grasping, attachment.   All this leads to suffering.

Of course, this means that an interconnection can only be between people who are equal.    There is no possession, no ownership, no superiority, no dependency.   It means I have to be able to say, with true authenticity, “I am here.”   That is something I must first be able to say to myself.

I once tried to move through my life as though it were a three-legged race.   What I thought I wanted and would be helpful turned out to be not such a good idea.

 

I lie in bed in the morning, covers thrown back.    There is growing light under the shade and I wait for the full rising of the sun.   Soon that glorious, roaring ball of fire will show itself on the horizon and carry me into another day on an rolling wave of energy.

An immense ball of burning gas will spread its energy across my tiny world, bathing everything in its power.   It again will warm my cells, both with today’s rays and those stored from days past.   The sea of air around me will swirl with excitement, stirred into a frenzy by the energy pouring down from the sky.   It will become part of me and grow my connection to the energy of the universe.

It will penetrate plants with energy that will some day become part of me and energize my presence, further connecting me with the world.   Somewhere, the energy of the sun is penetrating plants that will become my food.   It is right now gifting me the future fire I will need to move and think and thrive.

The sun makes no distinction between good and evil, animate and inanimate.   It energizes everyone and everything alike, saints and tyrants, all are bathed in its rich abundance.   Its energy is shared by all.  It is a great equalizer until it becomes part of us and we take possession of all it can do.

I want to make experience my primary teacher.   I may rely on the experience of others from time to time, but only as a secondary source of information.   I depend on my own experience for gathering data, and those are the reference points I rely on most, the sources I trust most.   The experience of others can be interesting, but I take most of it in with a huge dose of doubt, even suspicion.

I would like to be able to perceive the world with the open mind of a child and the mind skills of a 76-year old.   I want my own eyes and ears, all my senses, to be my channel of information.  Then I want my discerning mind to observe what I sense.

I am trying to slowly rid my life of all the unreliable, untrustworthy teachers I have had for so many years.   I reject certainty and embrace an open mind unclouded by fear of the unknown.    I am realizing that much of my life has been filled with false information masked as truth in order to take away fear or create fear.

Sometimes I feel like I have been living behind the lead bars of stained glass windows.   In this way, mostly filtered light has penetrated my inner world.   From my birth, my perception of the world has been shaped by my family, my culture, my ancestors, all humanity.   While some of this teaching has been useful and kept me safe, much of it has been an unreliable representation of the world.    The teaching has been contaminated by fear of the unknown, the unseen and the unpredictable.

My birthright has been hidden away.   The fears and suspicions of my fellow humans, past and present, have muted my innate tendency to search and explore the unknown, to understand the voice of my heart, to live in harmony with my one world.

My inheritance has been tainted by my teachers.    I have been misled and betrayed by those who continue to teach and encourage me to live in an imaginary world.  I do not want to be taught to avoid the very world that I need to embrace to find joy, harmony and peace.

I want to rely on my own experience above all and question the rest.

I remember what it was like to have each moment planned.   I liked to live my life at the edge of the headlights, in anticipation of what would happen next.  As  I climbed stairs, I was looking at the steps before me and hardly noticed the feeling of tread beneath my feet.

I am becoming a bit more reckless about planning my ‘future’ life.   I am doing less planning and more paying attention.   My body seems more alive and less anxious.  Maybe I’m reprogramming my Aspergers brain.

It is but a small change because I still plan much of my day.   I still think I know what is going to happen, especially what I am going to do.   I often decide what I am going to have for dinner a couple of times before the afternoon is spent.

However, I yield to the current a little more.    I let moments wash over me without attempting to control and guide them.    I find that I leave unsaid many comments I was about to insert into a conversation, and it is OK.

More of my life is recklessly out of my control.   I am still far from being able to surrender to the flow of time, but I am learning to enjoy the waves rolling over me.   Playing in the surf can sometimes upend me.    But I am less touched by my anticipations, less fettered by my view of how things ought to be.

It is a reckless way to live, and admittedly more full of peril.    It is also a life with less fear and full of more potential than I could ever imagine.

I don’t know why this happened to me, but for much of my life I have rebelled against any renunciation of the desire to know.    It has gone against my grain to come up against any lazy refusal to want to know more.   Something has mostly had to have a rational thread running through it before I could embrace a pattern of  thought.    I have not been able to be satisfied with dead-end conclusions.

So why did I get involved in a life that eschewed reason and relied on faith to explain the world.   I now listen to words coming out of that church tradition and it seems like another planet.   Worse, it sounds shallow and wimpy.

As I look  back, I think I made it an intellectual game to create a construct that at least made internal sense.  I remember learning church law and its details so I could run through the maze of the law with out being hurt.    I made the parts work together, even if the parts were imaginary and the whole made no sense.    It was like writing a novel and making all the parts make sense together, never mind if the story itself made sense.

I now realize how commonly this side road off the path of rationality has not just been unhelpful.    It has set back the development of western civilization by thousands of years.   People developed an intellectual malaise that allowed them to be satisfied with their own ignorance for thousands of years.   Religion played a prominent role in the subjugation of intellectual advancement as it was, at the same time, complicit in keeping certain groups of people in power.   The alliance between Church and State has been with us for centuries.

Long ago, the Greeks made great advances in pursuing an understanding of the world through observation and rational thought.   There were those who found joy in the pursuit of knowledge, never being content with  today’s answers.   Ignorance was a springboard to discovery.  They expressed a joy in rising from today’s unknown to better, but never complete knowledge.

Then the Romans came and disrupted the Greek culture.   They were the engineers who built arenas for people to take delight in the death of gladiators.   The works of the Greeks were also suppressed and hidden by new religion that preferred to  solve mystery by faith and allegiance to doctrine.  The middle east gave us  three great religions, all relying on a combination of suppressed reason, ignorance and faith to explain the world.

We may be catching up with those Greeks in relying on reason to figure things out, only 2,500 years late.    I am convinced that I can know, and that sometimes it is hard work.   I reject the limp and feeble reliance on faith that may allow me to feel certain, but know it is not true.

I am pained by the satisfaction I see in the dim eyes of those who walk in ignorance, guided by faith.   How will they ever have compassion for what they are unable, or unwilling to understand.   I rebel against our social complacency with ignorance.

 

When I tell my two boys that I was a monk, it sounds like a thing of the past.    Actually, I am still a monk, and much of what I started years ago still continues.   My home and garden are my monastery.

To be sure, I have shed the trappings of a monk.   Most of the appearances of a monk are long gone, but much of the internal monk remains.   The monk is still a persistent part of me.    Situations and activities of a monk show up in my dreams, and the feelings, especially anxieties, of that life hover inside me when I wake.   Some things go on and on, and some of them my memory holds too well.

I notice that I have a certain affinity or soft spot for the images of monasteries.   I clearly have turned away from and have little connection with images of religion.   There is little of the idolatry left in me.   I cannot easily sing the words, even though I love the spirit of the music.   The sound of chant stirs a whole litany of sensory associations.   I easily move into the smell of beeswax and incense, the feel of cloth and wood, the sight of dimly lit walls.

I think that the inner energy of a monk is still part of me.    As much as I enjoy the company of my companions, I still seek the feeling of complete isolation.   Perhaps it is this part of me that I neglected for so many years and why I found it hard to live with someone else.

I still find myself constantly exploring my inner life.   I now recognize that I am someone who wants to live in and explore the unseen and unknown.   I am so grateful that I am learning to make friends with my body because it is such an integral part of my plunge into the inner me.   Who knew that my body would be a gateway into a world I have wanted to enter for so many years.   What I was seeking has not been outside me, but  inside and part of me.

It has been a struggle as I attempt to put aside much of what society has taught me and given me.    I am trying to be selective about the use of tools, inventions and technologies of my culture.   Some of them are quite useful, but I choose not to be attached to them.

I doubt so much of what I have simply accepted as true for many years.    The values I have embraced are no longer what they seemed.   So much is a product of someone’s imagination.  I am much happier now that I try to accept a life of uncertainty.    I am embracing a free-fall into the unknown.    That, for me, is the life of a monk.

I have developed a fully-functional planning mind.   As soon as I sit on the side of my bed in the morning, my mind jumps into thinking of “what’s happening today, what’s next.”   My planning mind has served me well.   It allowed me to function well in a work position that required that I anticipate the future and prepare for it.   I have the ability to design objects or actions in my mind.    I sometimes spend as much time planning a project as I do in executing the plan.

My planning habit has begun to seem strange.   I am aware how much I seem to run from the future as soon as it becomes the present.    The purchase of a model railroad car is not nearly as enjoyable as the anticipation of the purchase.  So much of my energy is put into a future that may never come.    I now know this, and the planning habit is now having less influence.

I know that the only reality I have is the one that is actually happening right now.   However, my planning mind has conspired with my active memory to lure me away from what is most real.   They constantly call me to venture into an imaginary world that has already vanished or is yet to appear.   It is a world that exists only in my imagination.

The present is where  I find the most ease, respite and joy.   However, my undisciplined mind resists the leash of staying in the present.

I find that even when my mind attention is focused on what is happening right now, there can be a tension to leap forward into what is yet to be or wallow in a past memory.    My attention often pulls me into the past or into what might happen next.  In that instant the present moment, with all its energetic reality vanishes, never to be repeated.

I think that is this planning mind with its great ability to fabricate a possible future and regurgitate a memory of the past that has allowed my human species to dominate the world.    Unfortunately, it often functions so well that people like me lose contact, awareness of what is going on right now.   We have learned well how to interact with an imaginary future or past world and sacrificed much of our ability to live in the present.

I love my planning mind.   I just want to keep it on a short leash so I can pay attention to what is happening and have a real life in a real world.