Author: barryschade@gmail.com

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.

My two kids taught me this. Gratitude is more than simply saying “Thank you,” or giving thanks in the many ways the culture encourages us. Gratitude is a genuinely felt experience that comes only after a deep awareness, after truly paying attention. Gratitude is not in the words or kind gestures but in the experience that proceeds.

I noticed this as my young adult kids were opening gifts on Christmas. Their whole manner reflected a growing ability to experience gratitude and how to express it. All this has developed independently of the customary expressions of saying “Thanks”.

This Christmas, each one took the time to examine each item, mostly kitchen tools for the apartment they are about to occupy. They took turns explaining how they might use the gift. They showed a maturing understanding of how to manifest gratitude. They were attentive to each others gifts as well as their own. They showed an ease and freedom to react in genuine and insightful ways.

I think they each actually experienced a level of gratitude and were able to express that gratitude.

I don’t think this was an accident. It came from years of practice and paying attention. As young kids, they often would open gifts one at a time, taking turns. They might then proceed to play with a new toy for an hour or more.

They learned to be attentive, to pay attention to each item before rushing to open the next gift. We sometimes would urge them to move on with gift opening as the hours of the day passed by. Because they took the time to pay attention, their experience was richer and the feeling of gratitude, of true appreciation was able to develop.

Paying attention is not easy and has to be practiced. I think it is not natural and has to be learned. Attention has to develop before gratitude can be experienced. Gratitude is a natural development that arises out of attention.

Solstice is a fine invitation to allow myself to slide into darkness. Yet I resist, and think mostly about light and its return, as do many others. I am aware that most animals, seventy percent of them, are nocturnal and are more active during the time of darkness. I am an animal that typically shields himself from the grasp of night time. I even tend to want to escape darkness.

I shutter myself from the night that surrounds a large part of my day, and I attempt to avoid the peril other humans introduce into darkness. My home glitters with many tiny lights during this winter time of darkness, helping me to avoid my feeling of discomfort. I imagine they bring me joy. The trees in my garden are dressed in light that I can see as I look out the windows.

Today, I light candles as a reminder that light will truly return to fill a larger part of my days.

Darkness is an uncomfortable stranger to me and most of my species. Friends tell me of the sadness that creeps into their life during this darker time of the year. They blame it on the lack of light. There is much resistance to what feels foreign to those of us who seem to thrive better in light. There is a feeling of security and safety that light seems to bring.

I don’t understand it all, why darkness is so much less comfortable than daylight. I wonder about it. For me, it is a mystery that goes beyond simple explanations of biological human evolution.

Wanting to become friends with darkness is for me somewhat similar to my inclination to plunge into emptiness . Darkness holds some of that mysterious quality of emptiness. Like emptiness, darkness involves the shedding of what I think I know, the dissolving of familiar notions of reality, the release of curiosity into a realm of unfamiliar dimension.

Today, on Solstice, I want to become just a little more comfortable with darkness. Even while I will walk in light for part of the day and light candles to bring illumination into the darkened evening, I will allow the darkness to creep a little more deeply into my felt presence.

I will let go of the focus light brings into my life today and get a little more cozy with the unseen, the undefined. I will attempt to settle more into the darkness and all its undiscovered mystery.

I walked in the garden this morning though I never left the soft warm covers of my bed. Outside, I am surrounded by the unmistakable signs of winter. The ground is frozen, there is snow wherever I look, the air has a sharp edge of icy cold. Winter lights glisten from where I hung them on trees in my garden.

But the garden remains alive and and verdant in my whole body. It is a wonderful lingering experience.

I see the gentle movement of the green leaves and touch the gentle petals of blooms. The scent of the earth rises to welcome me as I move along the uneven contours of the brick path. From time to time, I hear the faint murmur of the wind in the leaves of hostas. I am aware of the soft sound of birds.

Branches of bushes reach out to touch my skin and brush against me as I pass. I feel the luxurious carpet of long green grass and smell its fragrance as I cross the yard. I observe what has changed and what remains the same. The old and the new blend in my walk.

It is, of course, a walk in my imagination. It is a vivid memory of what has been. It is also a preview, a premonition of what is yet to come. The garden is simply with me. The clutches of time have been relaxed for these moments. It is a place of untime. What was and what will be have become one in a moment of luscious presence. Knowing garden presence has taken me out of time.

I roll over in my soft bed, still in the embrace of blankets, no longer feeling the touch of leaves. The garden slowly fades away. But the ardor of its presence remains and lingers in my body. I carry it with me as I step into my timely routine.

I have grown up with movies where tea pots had eyes, brooms freely moved about on their own and animals spoke to one another. The whole world seemed animated in the imagination of the movie story-tellers, and so it has become for me. There is animation in all things, whether they be trees, people, rocks, stars or spoons.

The threshold of being alive sometimes has seemed to be related with movement. But I know now that movement only tells the easily visible part of reality. Not only do I now see that plants move, something I once saw as a distinction I once reserved for animals. Now I know there is movement in rocks and water and stars. I see animation in all things in my material world and I realize that I have simply been limited in my ability to perceive it.

It is perhaps a broad notion of animation to attribute aliveness to all things. But it is how I see my world. There is movement within all things, even if my senses are unable to grasp it easily.

Perhaps it is enough to see the movement simply as energy, although I also see animation as having many other characteristics as well. I recognize it as having many faces. It is the deep power that surges in all material reality, contained and constrained by structures I scarcely understand. It appears as love which courses through all things and unites us all. It gives us unity and oneness with all that exists. It pours out as expressions of compassion, wisdom and loving kindness.

It is life that oozes through all the crevices of everything I see and touch. For some, it is the face of a deity that is alive and so animates all things.

I prefer to focus on the nature of this animation as a manifestation of love. I like this way of absorbing and embracing the nature of aliveness in all things. This notion allows me to feel the force of compassion that compels me into a loving unity with everyone and everything I experience.

I like a world that is naturally animated by a principle of love, uniting us all. It is the alive source of fountains of loving kindness. All I have to do is jump in.