Author: barryschade@gmail.com

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.

When I was growing up, it was easy to know what was holy. It was a special designation applied to things that had been somehow blessed. We even gave some of them names, such as holy water. I learned that water was considered holy because it had been blessed by a priest. It was simply called holy water to distinguish its special status.

I also learned from the nuns whom I helped in the sacristy, that in time of shortage more water could be made holy by adding ordinary water to what had already been made holy. I was cautioned not to add more than half, lest the holiness be too diluted. I figured out that once such a mixing was carefully done, another half could be added to what I had just made holy. The waving hands and words of a priest’s blessing could be made unnecessary.

In my young mind, some cynical, doubting seeds were being planted at an early age.

Those early seeds have grown into a full-blown conviction that I make nothing holy. I am convinced that holiness is a given. All things are holy, if only I have the eyes to see. I have begun to reclaim the sense of holy that once was commonplace. I am in my small way retracing the steps that humans took to move away from the holy. I am remembering a time when my ancestors considered all things holy, especially the earth.

I think that my ancestors once woke up in the morning with a sense that the world around was holy, a manifestation of the divine. There were certain places where the experience of that holiness was especially strong. These were hills, streams, mountains and caves. There were some living things like trees and even some structures which were more evidently holy. Some people were more clearly manifestations of an ultimate reality. But holiness was ubiquitous, widespread, in all things.

Unfortunately, some of my ancestors sought to separate holiness from common, day to day experience. The sense of the divine was pushed away from the tangible earth and became a fixture “out there” in a separate place. Birth and death became extraordinary events, no longer part of the routine cyclical order of reality. Immortality became wishful thinking when a sense of the timeless here and now was abandoned. What was once a sense of all of reality became lost. My ancestors reached out in desperation for escape into a future imagined reality.

My own dualistic way of thinking is part of my impoverished inheritance from my ancestors who no longer saw all things as holy. I want to reclaim what they lost. I want a ripening sense of the here and now, my way of experiencing the holy. I want the earth to be a living entity for me, glowing with all the radiance of what is holy.

Neither I or anyone else can make anything holy. Everything around me is by nature already holy. I may uncover or discover that holy nature, but it is already there.

Without intending, the nuns in my grade school may have sparked a latent awareness in me by telling me to just add more water to make more holy water. They too may have had the intuition that the water was actually already holy. All the water.

To want. To want is such a marvelous gift. Instinctively I know what it means to want. It was part of me from my first manifestation as an infant. The universe conspired and converged to form this bundle of want, this rich mass of focused desire. The universe has summoned me to respond with an energized Yes. The call is in the marrow of my bones. I want. I have always wanted.

All things are driven by want, and I am no exception. Like the parts of atoms, I am naturally drawn to want, to be connected to all that surrounds me. Will I yield to the pull? Will I say yes?

For me it has become enough to want deeply, knowing I will never possess what I want. It is both enough and most intense to want, yet not possess. To attempt to possess extinguishes want.

I see around me that there are those who may seem to want, but they are in fact driven to possess. For them it has become an illusion and unnatural state to hoard, to only posses. And they have spent, lost the intense energy of want.

When I first manifested in the world at my birth, I was a child of great latent want. That rich want grew more bountiful and powerful as I grew.

But want is not the realm of youth alone. I can grow with passing time and the edge of want can sharpen. I could have joined those whose want is allowed to be blunted, but that certainly is not my intent. I have instead chosen to sharpen my want on the steel of aging. I intend to give myself to the sharp edge of want, allow myself to feel want deeply

I will be someone who wants. For me, to want is to become radically authentic. To want is the sweet and intoxicating essence of being alive.

This is an outline of a presentation I gave on January 8, 2022 of two chapters in “Awakening of the Heart,”  Dependent Co-arising,  & Walking the Middle Path.

Finding out about, understanding the middle way & how to walk the middle path

I was glad to spend some extra time mulling over these two chapters

• “dependent co-arising’ has always been obscure words
• Now see it is trying to describe the indescribable
• Barry’s view:  mycelial network in reality; touch one thing and you touch it all.;   the dendrites in our brain, neurons being phenomenal manifestations.
• Holding a paradox in focus, two contradictory notions at the same time.
• Using language to explain what is beyond language; language is essentially dualistic.  Dependent co-arising is about unity.

What I think Thay has to say about dependent co-arising

• Payoff:  meditate on dependent co-arising, end of suffering
• All wrong perceptions no longer exist
• “that’s not it” shifts to “it is something like this”
• How to learn the middle way

Causes and conditions; think about it in a non-linear way

• Not the way I learned causality
• Which came first:  chicken or egg?   Yes
• Everything is the result of multiple causes and conditions
• Cause = principal condition
• Conditions = necessary but subsidiary
• Not only true that various conditions cause suffering to arise; true of all phenomena

Everything comes to be because of multiple ( infinite? ) causes and conditions

• Constantly changing; not linear
• Buddha (and Thay) “ experience it your self”   (‘I can’t explain it;  but I can give similes”)
• See for yourself:   not revelation; not what the early bishops liked
• Not a “truth” but the truth is there; in the dharma realm
• Beyond phenomena;    ?? conditioned vs. ultimate??;  Is dependent co-arising at the junction of condioned and ultimate??  hold paradox in hand
• Think beyond being and non-being;  death and birth = the middle way;  neither and both
• This is because that is:   like mono vision in my experience
• Examples don’t really explain; they soften the mind to accept what is beyond concepts, language.

12 links of dependent co-arising

• Ignorance “causes”, informs the others;   but they are all inter-related.
• Not see in a linear fashion.   
• All depend on one another to exist;  concepts help me to understand the dynamics of causality.
• 12 links of dependent co-arising help see the teaching on emptiness.
• I like: Dependent co-arising sometimes called the “great emptiness”
• For me it is the reverse:   reflecting on emptiness helps me look into the notion of dependent co-arising.

Payoff:  meditating on dependent co-arising allows us to go beyond all other questions 

• Overcome all our wrong perceptions;  notions of self, living being,etc no longer exist. ( eg. Thay’s latest book )
• No longer suffer because of our wrong views.

This has been about how to understand the Middle Way

Walking the Middle Way

What are the practical implications

• Besides meditating on dependent co-arising, how to apply to our daily lives

Don’t be attached to the teachings

• Teachings are not revelation.
• Teachings are to help us, but have to be handled skillfully.

Ignorance gives rise to habit energies, many are unhelpful

• Repeat the same thing, the same suffering over and over again.
• Transform this habit energy by the energy of mindfulness; 
• Energy of mindfulness leads to the energy of concentration, and that to the energy of insight.
• This has been my experience.
• Is there a “good” habit energy??;   can be helpful, but it is a problem if, it is not used mindfully.
• Main point:   Ignorance, ignorance of the Middle Way, ignorance of dependent co-rising , no longer pushes us to act in negative ways.

Affects how we relate to others

• No longer react in a non-mindful way, based on habit energies.

Habit energy of suffering is inherited

• Resmaa agrees with Thay
• Mindfulness allows a practice of liberation; of freedom. 
• Insight of the Middle Way helps us know how to relate to others.   Neither this or that.  ;   see situations with understanding of dependent co-arising.   
• Learn to see others with insight;   w/o conventional designations.
• See how we are linked to them:   the benefit of meditating on dependent co-arising.
• See true nature of self and others:   become free;  experience the freedom of the Middle Way.
• We get to try, like Thay, to explain dependent co-arising to others because we have experienced it, a little perhaps.