Barry Garden Path

When I wake in the morning, I deliberately enter a sphere of engagement. I slowly begin to engage with myself and with the world around me. I knowingly explore a sensory adventure of stretching under the heavy covers, being aware of my moving arms and legs and the weight of the comforter. The chill of the room is present only in my mind for a time, but I soon become engaged with it with a bit of hesitation.

Slowly, I am aware of my sensory system turning on and I become very aware and engaged with my body, its extremes, its movement. Soon I am stretching on the floor, feeling the texture of the rugs, moving my arms and legs in my familiar and ritualized movements.

Along the way, my thinking is engaged as I become aware of the words and experiences of poets I read daily. I saunter off into thoughts of my own and become freely engaged in the labyrinth of my own mental and heart awareness. I hardly ever know where that might take me. Sometimes I plunge so deeply that I need to take a deep breath, as I just did.

Before I sit on my cushion, I welcome past and present companions into my evolving day, into my sphere of engagement. That sphere of engagement becomes wider and populated by those I love, an activity I will repeat many times though the day in real time.

My sphere of engagement has many portals into my surrounding world. I often check that those portals are open and that rocks, plants and people may freely pass through. I remind myself, and allow myself to feel that openness as I begin a new and welcoming day.

It is a beginning of resolve as I confirm that my heart is not dishonored with hatred. I assert my intention to be a guardian of nature, a healer of misery, a messenger of wonder, an architect of peace, a release from all suffering and a fountain of loving kindness. In this way, I define the contours of my evolving engagement in specific terms and with clear intentions.

Apart from these intentions, my sphere of engagement has few rules or defined limits. I deliberately make it something of a challenge, a hobby and a source of amusement to push aside or dissolve the limits society might put on how I should be engaged. There are so many social norms of engagement such as those associated with my age, my gender, my social status, my choice of companions, the appearance of my garden.

There are some social rules that I think are useful, such as not killing, not lying, not stealing. But there are so many limits and expectations society would place on my engagements that are not helpful to me and a distraction. I regard most of them with suspicion, distain or humor.

As I move through my day, I attempt to be aware of everyone and everything within my sphere of engagement. I welcome anyone who wishes to be so engaged. I take great delight in what is constantly becoming my real world.

Today I feel like I am surrounded by a lovely garden of delights, more or less like a circle. It is a garden of engagement. While it is a place that has arisen from my experience, it is also a circle into which I am constantly inviting others to enter.

I have been involved with the world in a way that creates great happiness. My garden of daily living has brought me much joy, and I am intent on sharing that happiness with others. I am deeply engaged with my garden, and I want others to find in it the same delight that has been my experience.

The circle is not a boundary but rather an open door into which others can enter. It reflects what has happened as I have become more attentive and aware of the world. The door of my heart clearly opens outward, open and wide, and others are free to enter.

The kind of engagement inside the circle into which I welcome others is a source of deep awareness and happiness, and people are free and welcome to enter. I try to place few restrictions, but some are more willing to step inside the circle than others.

The ground inside of the circle is soft and green. There are few rules. The air is fresh and mild. The light is bright and warm. I know because I have been living in this circle and it has become my garden home.

It is a pretense for me to say what I will do. A conversation with a close friend last evening reminded me that it would be untrue for me to say what future role I might play or take in someone else’s life.

It would be equally untrue and a mistake for me to rely on what pretense they might make of promising what they will do in the future. I want it to be enough for me and others to be totally present, anchored, immersed in the here and now. I do not want to live in a pretense of what the future might be.

This is not easy. It is often reassuring to tell someone that I will be always at their side. They might tell me the same. However, I think that reassurance is false and a big pretend. Better that I put my energy and attention into what is happening right now. That interaction is at least close to being real.

Dealing with the fundamental ambiguity and uncertainty of life is a constant challenge. I don’t want to rely on a pretend future. I want to rely on what I think is happening right now. I want to be able to spend time with someone, slowly unfolding and opening our hearts to one another. I want to pay attention to what is immediately in front of me and not be staring beyond the headlights, trying to see what cannot be seen. It should be enough that we put our focus and attention on the convergence, the relationship that is now.

I am aware that the words I use affect the way I think. Someone wants to set up a meeting in March. It would be a pretense to predict the future, so I do not say “I will be there.” Instead I say “I intend to be at the meeting.” I hear myself correctly say what is happening right now, not pretending to predict what I will do in a couple of months. There is no future that I can correctly or reliably disclose.

I hear people making marriage or relationship promises to one another and I cringe. They must be pretending, otherwise they would acknowledge that their good intentions have an uncertain likelihood of being fruitful. Better to say what they are experiencing and deeply feeling at the moment rather than making pretend predictions of an unpredictable future. Many of us have built our lives around such shaky promises and pretenses, then been deeply disappointed and wounded when things don’t go as promised.

For me, this issue of not living in the pretense of a future is unresolved, but I am working on it. While I try to plan wisely for the future, I also try not to live there. I try not to allow my feelings to be guided by frequent thoughts of what will happen days and months from now. I try not to put too much energy into paying attention to a pretend future.

In practice, that means paying attention to today as much as I can and not paying too much attention to next week. I want to be very focused on what is going on right now, and I seem to be slowly escaping the pretense of being in the future. I am slowly improving my ability to pay attention to what is happening now without keeping an eye on the uncertain future. After all, any awareness of my future is nothing but a pretense.

As a human, I have this awesome ability to reciprocate awareness. I suspect that other creatures have a similar ability, but mostly among their own kind. I best reciprocate awareness with my own kind as well.

I can open my heart to rocks and plants, and for a moment even share mutual awareness. This awareness, however, is remarkably different from the shared awareness I have had with other persons. It is a recognition and acknowledgement of each other. It is a gift we give to one another, and nothing we can take back. It endures, whether I choose to experience it or not.

When I relax and open my heart to someone, it is an invitation for them to do the same. It is an invitation to reciprocate, to be aware, to be present with me at whatever level we might be capable. We signal that connection in myriad ways, but the open heart is always involved. Even if the heart is open but a small crack, that instance of shared awareness never passes, it is never lost.

I allow myself to feel connected to all those with whom I have had those moments of shared awareness. Those were the moments when we conspired to look or listen and we entered into the same moment of time, we entered the same sphere of space. I think that those are moments of timelessness, a time of stepping out of the normal reckoning of the passage of time. They endure, they never go away.

I continue to experience those moments of reciprocal awareness, not as a grasping for some lost treasure but as an enduring expression of mutual awareness and joy. I don’t know if there was a beginning, but I am sure that there has been no end.

There have been many ways that other persons and I have opened our hearts to one another, but it seems all of them have endured. They are not experienced as memories, but as enduring instances of love.

Maybe that is what love does and why so many people resist entering that realm of awareness. I now know that those loving moments of love endure, especially those marked by reciprocity. Once I have opened my heart, that moment never goes away, even if I resist continuing to experience it.

That moment exists outside normal time. I may later resist that same form of openness. We may no longer reciprocate that instance of strong openness. But that open time of awareness and joy is still present. I have a choice whether to experience that reciprocated awareness.

So I routinely choose to continue to experience that awareness. I allow my heart to experience those reciprocated moments at least once a day. I knowingly invite all those I have loved to be present with me. I might as well do that because they are part of me, and they are waiting there to share in my awareness and joy.

I choose not to resist entering into that timeless embrace. It is not just a memory. It is allowing myself to feel an experience of reciprocated awareness that took me out of time. I meet that experience again and again, whenever I choose to allow it.

I want to experience what it means to be happy. That should be no problem because the ability to be happy comes naturally with being human. As a child, I experienced happiness just by being myself. Happiness is just part of my human mechanism, and not much of that has really changed since I was a child.

However, society has conspired to encourage me to want to be something else. As I learned to interpret the world around me, layers upon layers of cognitive patterns have been developed that interfere with my being deeply happy.

I was promised happiness in many ways and that enticement continues. Most of those promises were simply encouragement to conform to what others want of me. To be a conforming and welcome member of society, I had to learn to think in a certain way. It wasn’t long before I learned to be woven into an elaborate social fabric, part of which taught me to be a faithful consumer.

I am trying to reboot my mind and get back to that original state. My method is actually rather simple. I am working to develop a relaxed, attentive and bright mind, something I think I once had. I have to let go of so many patterns of thinking, but I am slowly discovering that a relaxed mind is happy and a source of happiness. A relaxed mind also allows me to be aware of everything in a new and deep manner. When my mind is relaxed, I actually experience moments of deep awareness.

This kind of happiness is not just for myself. It is the kind of happiness that we all can share with one another as we help one another to be happy. I am willing to share my happiness. It doesn’t actually require much effort because it simply means that I be openly happy.

I like to affirm the wonder I see in others, a wonder that I am beginning to see with more clarity. I want to share the pleasure that comes from the felt experience of being who we are. Just by doing what I do best, embracing the happiness of being who I am, I encourage others to do the same.

I regret all the times in my past when I was part of a toxic reciprocity in which we wanted one another to be something other than what we were. I would rather that those had been times that I chose to be around someone who helped me be in love with myself, and I had done the same.

It is a joy for me to be aware of who / what I am and share that realization and happiness with others, especially those who can reciprocate. It is the joy of an affectionate and loving bow with a close friend. Being aware of the world, including people, around me is part of my own self awareness. It works well when that awareness is reciprocated.

I am only beginning to discover this kind of happiness. I am beginning to allow it to sink in. I am beginning to allow the recognition of others to sink into my relaxed, at-ease heart. Reciprocity takes time. So does my learning the happiness of a relaxed, attentive and bright mind.

Entering the realm of focused concentration has been such a subjective experience for me. The approach changes from time to time for me, the outcome is highly unplanned, and I am often uncertain where I will go.

There are constant subtle shifts in how I am enveloped in concentration. My heart / mind keeps finding new ways of passing into that arena of deep awareness. Even while I often seem to be moving along a familiar route, no two incursions are exactly the same.

It probably should be no surprise to me that I am hearing different explanations on how to find my way into deep concentration. There have been many schools of thought around how to be mindful, and I think it is because the experience is unique for each individual.

People who have entered deep concentration draw maps for us to explain how to get there and what the experience is like. While there are common patterns, there are many subtle differences. While one teacher may urge joyful movement into these deep realms, others give warnings against the methods they have suggested.

I have pleasantly been a current student of jhanas, the realm of deep concentration. I am noticing that my teachers and commentators have different views and different ways of explaining what jhanas are about. There are common patterns of explaining what the experience of jhanas is like, but the outlines of the pathway and the experience differs from person to person. Each draws a slightly different map of where they have been, where students might go, and what contours shape the jhanas realm.

It is something like asking someone to draw a map of my garden and explain what it is like to walk along the brick paths. Everyone has their own unique version of a walk through my garden. They explain it in different ways, even while it seems to be the same garden.

The realm of concentration seems no different. I am struck how the maps are, after all, an abstraction. The map is not the way. The way is changing, unknown and unpredictable. I may sometimes take refuge and put my trust in someone’s map, but I can only know the way if I walk forward. I walk one foot before the other on ground that is both familiar, and unfamiliar.

I am aware that every meditation sitting has the feeling of a new beginning. The experience is fresh, uncertain, unpromising. Yet I feel like I have somewhat been here before. Trying to repeat a past experience, however, only leads to grasping, and that is neither effective or successful.

There is a basic map that I follow. I clearly outline my intention, I open my senses to my surroundings, I invite my body to be fully present in movement, I notice my place in the midst of my room and in the midst of people who have entered my heart, I surrender myself into a realm of deep feeling, I focus on my breathing.

I always yield to the uncertain flow and undulation of the landscape I occupy. Some experiences are familiar, but they seem to emerge on their own accord. They are invited but not compelled or pushed. There always is a point at which I put the map and familiar practice away, and I trust in a new way to go.

The new convergence of concentration may be subtly new and different, but it is almost always bright, relaxed and full of energy. Typically, a flow of pleasure and joy emerges, often with surprise and without notice.

I have received maps and they are useful and beneficial. However, they are not enough. They are not adequate to take me deeply into the realm of concentration. I think there is another guide.

For about three years, I have noticed my sensory relationship with the world changing. I’m not aware that my actual senses have changed, but my awareness of what they tell me has certainly evolved. I simply experience the information I get from my senses in a more lucid and penetrating manner.

Right now, I hear the music playing from my computer with a depth that goes way beyond what I once experienced. I am listening to the choral music of Dan Forrest with my whole body. I respond in a manner that approaches tactile.

Walking in my garden last summer was similar. I felt the plants, whether I was simply looking at them or brushing my hand across them. The sensory experience had apparently gone beyond my senses.

I now wonder what that experience has been about. Sometimes, I thought I was simply being aware that I was listening or seeing. That awareness of the sensory was what I was now more acutely experiencing. But now I am not sure.

I have been participating in an on-line course about deep concentration. It is a general introduction to jhanas, the deep absorption that results from focused and undisturbed concentration. The path to this absorption is lined with jhana factors that involve very pleasant experiences of joy, happiness and glee. That same path to absorption also includes a gradual withdrawal from sensory experiences.

Except for requiring a strong intention, it seems that all this happens with little or no effort of pursuit. It is the natural outcome of a relaxed, energetic and focused mind. Once isolated, secluded and free of distractions, the mind finds its way along the jhana path to a place of deep repose and contentment.

While I am only in the beginning stages of this adventure, I suspect that I have begun learning how to step back from a purely sensory experience and take joy in being aware that I am receiving sensory input. My mind has begun to experience people, plants and rocks as they really are, beyond the simply sensory level.

My more relaxed and focused mind is better able to hear the experience of Dan Forrest’s music with an awareness that is more than the simple listening to beautiful sounds and harmonies. My mind /heart is more engaged, and I can feel and deeply experience the beauty of the sound. I am more aware of the essence of the singing voices. The same is true of the flowers in my garden. I have visited them with more than sight and touch, and have experienced them with my whole body, my mind and heart.

I think that my sensory relationship with people, plants and rocks is but the beginning and gateway of my awareness. I am learning that there is so much more to experience in that relationship and reality. As my mind becomes more focused, I am distilling more and more of the sensory aspect from my relationship with the world.

My balance between purely-sensory and beyond-sensory is shifting. It is a relaxed, bright and joyful change.

I woke up this morning, and no one seemed to be sounding an alarm. So many things seemed seriously close to disaster, and there was no alarm. Even I, so aware that so many things could have gone wrong, am not alarmed.

I am once again amazed that my body still functioned through another night of sleep. My heart still pumps, my lungs have been taking in air, the blood vessels in my brain have stayed intact. All the rogue cells of my body have been kept in check such that I have no apparent problems.

All my essential systems, any one of which could have failed or might soon fail, are apparently working. I am strangely not alarmed of the danger pending or momentarily avoided.

Today, none of us seem alarmed that the earth is spinning so fast that people at the equator are swishing along a thousand miles an hour. The earth is madly rushing around the sun at tens of thousands miles per hour. And everything goes on as normal.

All over the earth there are people who know how to make atom bombs, and could in a moment’s whim release the destructive force. There are thousands more who, given the chance, would in an instant turn that awesome power against their fellow humans.

We wake daily into an environment more hostile than the day before, aware that humans have put into motion a chain of climatic events that will make it more difficult for them to survive. I am aware that my generation has enjoyed favorable relationship with my environment, and the generation after me is already unaware of that perilous loss. I seem scarcely alarmed.

All across the earth, humans have become so numerous that they no longer live side by side without killing one another. In cities, on borders, we push up against one another, in constant peril of being killed by our neighbors.

Small groups of individuals, all around me, are constantly taking more than their fair share. They suck resources from their fellow humans, much as ants tend aphids so that they might devour their honeydew. None of us are sounding the alarm that most of us surrender the fruits of our efforts to feed the greedy appetites of the wealthy and powerful.

Each morning, like today, I have been awake for awhile and no one has sounded the alarm, not even me. Instead I sit on my pillow, fully aware of my perilous situation. I absorb it all, one breath after another. My mind is focused, energized, balanced beyond disturbance. I enter into the peril , aware but without alarm.

I sometimes wonder about this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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