Barry Garden Path

A tremor went through my universe yesterday when I opened the email with the attached divorce decree.

The decree was no surprise.   In fact, I had been expecting it since the attorney filed the papers weeks ago.   It was something I wanted, to bring some resolution and finality to a break-away process that had been going on for years.   It was needed, and in many ways it was a completion that was welcome.

I wasn’t ready, however, for the tremor that went through me and all the foundation on which yesterday rested.   All the years of work, of joy-filled days, of hopes and dreams, of struggles and painful times, of raising two boys together.    It was in a moment set in concrete and set aside.     A chapter had come to a final sentence and the court placed the period at the end of that sentence.    It was all done, and truly time to turn the page.   I paused.

My head didn’t know about any of this, but my body sure did.    The memory of my past 30 years was all summed up in a moment, and my body felt the full force of those years.    In the opening of an email attachment, my whole person took notice, and my body was moved by the tremor.   It is done, and the whole universe nodded in agreement.

I have been surprised how I can walk through my living garden, even in winter, and the urge to weep bubbles up from somewhere inside.   It is a feeling that comes from joy, not sadness.   I am suddenly alert the the dam could burst, and the feeling could flow out for the world to see.   I fear embarrassment and having to explain something that I am not sure anyone else is feeling.

I looked around the room at the individual members of my Wednesday night Sangha, and I nearly wet myself with tears.    Quick, I found the dam, then recovery.     I was hanging lights on the edge of my roof, and as I began thinking of the death of my neighbor, Jet, tears crept out at the corners of my eyes.    There was no stopping them.

I watched a U-Tube video of a staged exchange on racism.    It embodied so much vicious ugliness and inflicted pain.    The weepy feeling rose to the surface again, wanting to be released.     My whole body resonated with the urge.

Weeping is new and a bit raw for me.    I’m not sure if I’m learning how to weep, or if I am unlearning how to not-weep.

The past couple of days, I’ve noticed myself announcing to friends that I’m retreating from Christmas.    Now I’m trying to figure out what that means.

The desire and need to retreat from Christmas seems to be rising from inside me for a number of reasons.    I certainly have been imprinted with many pleasant emotional links to the holiday.   I think I want to stay in touch with them, but with some modifications.   I am also aware that there are unpleasant, disturbing resistance and rumblings rising from inside me.

I notice this year that I am repulsed more than ever before by the consumerism of gift-giving.     I have tried to address this in the past by making many of the gifts that I give to people.    But the dynamics of reciprocity are still troubling to me and often a source of tension.    I even get anxious about getting gifts ready in time if I am making them.  The idea of going out and buying gifts is so troubling that I don’t think I can do it, except perhaps for my two sons, who will always be my kids.

Black Friday was an extreme turn-off, merchants attempting to stampede consumers into a frenzy of buying, getting good deals.   The ads alone were reason enough for me to want to retreat from Christmas.   If this is Christmas, I want out.

About an hour ago, I got an email from a relative encouraging me to pledge to say “Merry Christmas.”    I am horrified how a pleasant greeting has been turned into a statement of intolerance for non-christians ……. of which I probably am one.     I’ve noticed that Trump has hijacked the   greeting as a way of expressing his bigotry and creating a rallying call for intolerance..

If saying “Merry Christmas” has become a way of announcing someone’s insistence that this is their time of Christian dominance, that may be my best reason for not using the expression.     If this is what putting Christ in Christmas means, that alone is a good reason to retreat from the holiday.  I hope no one wants me to have a Merry Christmas just because that is what they are celebrating.

I wonder if I will have the courage to say “I’m not Christian” if someone wishes me a Merry Christmas.   How can I have a Merry Christmas if I have retreated from celebrating Christmas.     How could I have a Happy Super Bowl if I don’t particularly like football?

I have a friend who suggested we not deal with gifts but instead do something together to celebrate the season.    Perhaps we will go to a play, music or dance.    That makes so much sense to me, and I will try to put this into practice for just about everyone else.    I’ll invite people to come, eat cookies with me, drink something.    I like making cookies, so that will fit nicely.

I love this time of lights, and that probably is my greatest excess.    Lots and lots of lights on the trees outside.    Lots of lights inside my home.    And of course there are all the lovely ceramics from my sister and many years past.     They all come out, and get arranged in a new way this year.    I love the greenery of Fraser firs, and the branches are getting spread liberally all around outside and inside the house.    Of course, there is a live tree standing in the living room.   I never did get the idea of a fake, plastic tree.

Baby Jesus and the shepherds aren’t on display this year.   I have so many other things to celebrate.

I’m still working out how this retreat from Christmas is going to work out for me.   My feelings, both positive and adverse seem to be stronger this year, so the struggle is challenging.   I want to lean more to the things that genuinely give me joy and stay away from what doesn’t .    I want to plunge into joyful things and mindfully let go of things that have lost their meaning and luster.

I have a little over three weeks to work out the details, but already it is beginning to be a pleasant, happy holiday season.   Retreating really is growing in appeal.

Presentation given November 29, 2017

Four Noble Truths – Tight and Release, Not That Easy

For me, the Four Noble Truths are both counter-intuitive and, surprisingly, a kind of golden nugget of the dharma.

4NT sound like a hard teaching, and also a wonderful golden thread, a theme that is woven into the teachings of Thay, Pema, Mark, Jack.

What are they: The Four Noble Truths are a gift from the Buddha Himself.   They are really quite simple, the message is not:

• There is suffering
• The origin of suffering is attachment / aversion
• There can be cessation of suffering
• The path is the middle way.

 

A Buddha Story:

The Four Noble Truths, simple as they are, did not come to the Buddha easily. He had to first go through many years of searching.

He first had The Four Encounters, Four Sights.

He spent years of asceticism with 5 companions, starving, mortifying his body,

He was very emaciated when he finally said “This isn’t working out.”

He left his companions, had something to eat, and sat under the Bodhi tree.

 

There he had the great insight that shaped the rest of his life and teaching:

He went searching for his 5 companions. Their first reaction was “Here comes that quitter!”

But they noticed something special, radiant about him and so they sat down to hear him out.

He gave the first dharma talk.

 

Which is really the centerpiece of his teaching. The Four Noble Truths.

 

Not everyone got it.

He went on to say, “Don’t take my word for it. Don’t believe me.”   In fact, you must find it out for yourself, but here are some guidelines,

given by the Buddha, woven into the Tradition, the teachings for about 2500 years.

 

I have read various interpretations of what he said in those Four Noble Truths, simple as they are.

I keep coming back to the simple insight:

• There is suffering
• The origin of suffering is attachment / aversion
• There can be cessation of suffering
• The path is the middle way.

 

These have been the guidelines, which helped many generations of teachers and students to experience something like what the Buddha experienced.

Again and again, generations have discovered that the Four Noble Truths actually work.

 

For me, there are four easy steps:

#1

Recognition: ‘Hmmm, I seem to be out of sorts,

someone is burdened with suffering,

I seem to be tight”

 

#2

Realization:   “This tightness is coming from my attachment (clinging) or aversion (avoidance).

I want things to be different. ”

 

#3

Technique: “I can be released from this suffering by just accepting what is,

by not getting attached to pleasantness, not avoiding unpleasantness.”

So this is how you do it. (doesn’t mean it’s easy)

#4

The way: This is the way out.

Neither too hot or too cold.

Neither grasping or aversion.

 

Simple version; For me, the 4NTruths are about tightness and release;   tension and relaxing.

 

I don’t do anything.

I don’t make suffering go away.   I live with it.

Trying to make it go away just reinforces it.

I simply recognize it and then, patiently, realize that it has gone away.

It just doesn’t seem right that the solution is so simple.

 

The Four Noble Truths remind me of holding a glass of water:

I feel the disquiet:

I watch the movement in a glass of water in my hand;

I can hold the glass of water to quiet it, makes it worse, or I can sit it down.

 

Sometimes, it helps to give the mind something to do other than focus on the problem of suffering, of wanting things to be different.

For me, if I can’t feel all my body, it is useful to simply feel the breath.

Give the mind something else to do.

Use the body to focus the mind.

 

Simple but hard teaching.

“embrace suffering” is not an inviting dharma talk.

Buddha Himself reserved it for those who were ready to accept it.

 

I think there is nothing transformative about suffering.   Transformation comes in how I experience suffering, how I experience what is.

 

It is a paradox. Suffering releases me if I embrace it.

Counter-cultural, counter-intuitive.

A new teaching for me.

I’ve heard the song: all I need to know I learned in kindergarten

Cute, but so wrong

I have had many learnings since then. Mostly wrong.

Even the Buddha didn’t get it right the first time.

 

I keep in mind: Over a hundred generations have been guided by what he did figure out under the Bodi Tree.

 

,

I take refuge in knowing that this treasure has been passed to us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I suppose religion is  good place to start if one wants to live a good life.    But there is so much more.   They didn’t tell me about that in the first grade.    I think that I learned enough to keep me on a straight path.    But I’ve been riding my bicycle with training wheels for much, much too long.   I have spent years attempting to shake loose from so much of my religious conditioning.

I was conditioned to live in a religious imaginary world from an early age, and it did add to the richness of my life, unreal as it was.   I lived a good life out of fear of imaginary hell, or hope of future bliss.    I watch my son Nathan and how his world is populated by the imaginary characters of Marvel comics.   His imagination is powerful.    While he knows these characters are all made up out of someone’s imagination, they are present in his life because he makes it happen.

I suppose that is what has happened for a long time with humans.    Our imaginations have filled in the blanks left when experience could only go so far.    The picture drawn from experience has always been incomplete, and the roles of gods and goddesses were easily filled.    Christians filled the ancient roles with new faces and outfits, but not much else changed.

I have spent so much energy reading texts and solving theological problems, not so much unlike the video games played by my sons.   It was a good mental exercise, but in the end so incomplete.   I knew nothing more about how the world worked nor how my own mind works.   My insight always came back to my own experience, and for many years I have been skeptical of unfounded leaps of faith.

Relying on the experience of others, such as the writers of scriptures, always took me back to a reliance on illusion or imagination.    The world is illusory enough without adding on additional layers from someone’s fertile imagination.   Even the stories of the experience of mystics have suffered under the veneer of the imaginary world of religion.     How else would the stories have survived!

I have to admit that I like the advise of the Buddha:   When he taught about his insight, he said don’t take my word for it.    Don’t believe me.    Rely on your own experience.   Here are some guidelines you may want to consider.  Try them.    See if they work for you.

I don’t need a religion to fill my mind with an imagined, incomplete view of reality.   Even if I seem to stumble from time to time, I like finding my own way.    It’s a pretty exciting world once I get rid of the stage props and scenery of religion.

 

I haven’t really understood the use of the breath as a technique of mindfulness.    After thinking about The Four Noble Truths, I think I better understand what I have been experiencing.

Before I knew about the technique of using the breath to improve my state of mindfulness, I simply used my body.   I am beginning to appreciate how much of an accidental gift that experience has been.

Feeling the breath, especially in my torso, is like striking a match.     It is reliable almost all the time, and it ignites a fuller experience that includes my whole body.    Especially if my body is not able to respond to a situation with awareness, I turn my attention to my breath.     That only lasts a moment, as I allow the awareness to ignite my whole body.    My breath is very reliable;  my whole body sometimes needs to be reminded by my breathing .   But it is best for me not to allow my attention to linger on my breath.

I breathe, I turn my full attention to the sensation of air flowing in and out of my nose,  I feel my torso moving in and out as I breathe.   My whole body gets the message: time to come alive.   Time to relax into the moment, time to pay attention with full open internal vision.

It takes only breathing when I need to and I am soon absorbing the energy of the moment, the touch of the counter, the ring of the bell, the Troubles whirling in my head.    I absorb whatever presents.   It is good to be able to observe and not be alarmed or tossed about.

To be able to breathe is more than simply taking a breath.     It is the ignition of experience far beyond the breath.    I think it is because my body knows what to do,  I am learning to breathe my path beyond my breath into attention and awareness.    I love to breathe.

 

Being relaxed applies to many things for me, but especially to sight and touch.    I am learning the pleasure of a relaxed gaze.    It is not a calm gaze.   It is not a gaze that gathers all the nuances, texture, color and shape of something like a chair.   A relaxed gaze is one that settles into and absorbs whatever I am seeing.

A relaxed gaze brings the Niagara  Falls effect to whatever I am looking at.   I am so totally connected to what I see that there no longer is a separation between us.   It is the same for touch.    The touch, the gaze could be only of the pen in my hand, the keys under my fingertips.    There is no distinct separation.     My body extends out and absorbs what I see, what I touch.

While I feel the pen or the keyboard keys through my fingers,  I am aware of it with my whole body.    Perhaps, it is more accurate to say with my whole heart, because my heart extends to the full margins of my body.    My heart is where I actually see and where I actually feel, not my eyes or fingers.

My awareness often begins as the action of an observer.    It begins when I notice the shape, the color, the firmness, the temperature …… all the attributes of sight and touch.   When I relax into the experience, I have more than the awareness of a round writing tube in my hand or hard keys under my fingertips.    What I touch or see has a willingness to share its essence, and I experience that essence when I relax.  I’ve noticed that I also know what to do.

Yesterday, I experienced frustration when I was attempting to hang lights on a tree in my garden.    The lights seemed to resist getting untangled.    They stubbornly kept getting stuck on branches.    My first notion was to pull harder and force them apart.    Instead, I simply relaxed, looked at the situation, and slowly untangled, released the string of lights.

I was able to get involved in the tangled lights in a deeper manner than simply experiencing their tangled-ness.  I didn’t actually do  anything, like stop acting impulsively.    I simply relaxed and observed what is, and the rest happened naturally.   I became intimately aware that yanking the tangled lights was likely to fail and would likely cause damage.    I knew instantly that I could not force, control the lights to untangle without the chance of damage.  It actually was easy once I relaxed.

This was not a thought-out conclusion and controlled action.    It was not a resistance to the impulse to yank.    It was a deep observation I felt with my whole body, and my whole body relaxed into the appropriate solution.  After doing this a couple of times, I simply fell into the pattern of relaxing and untangling.

My body doesn’t always respond in such a calm manner.   Probably because I am sometimes not so skilled in absorbing the whole situation.   In a paradoxical manner, the relaxation that I feel through my body sometimes releases a deluge of energy.    This relaxed, total absorption of the situation often has the effect of tapping an energy that flows into a surge of action.    I feel the action with my whole heart / body.

This energy flow didn’t seem to be much of a problem when I was more “in control” and when it was weaker.    Because I can relax readily, the energy flows readily as well.    I’m trusting that as I become more skilled in my ability to observe, the energy may be expressed in appropriate ways.    For now, it seems more like an enthusiastic, energetic puppy at times.

When I relax, I know I am surrendering control and the tightness of control.    I also know that tightness is an indicator of suffering.    I am committed to rid my life of suffering as much as I can.    To do that, I am learning to relax, to abandon my attempt to control.   I settle into whatever there is.   I accept it as it is.   I relax.

 

I have to give Trump credit for the singular time I think he was truthful.    For once, he actually spoke the truth when he said, “Women let you do it when you’re a star,” or something like that.    He could have just as well have said, “….when you have star power,” because I think that is what is happening.    Shared sex and shared power have gotten so mixed together that our culture is a real mess in gender relations.

Sadly, bartering for sex has become a coin of the realm in our culture.  Sex, and most forms of touch, are exchanged for shared power, resources, stability, safety, etc.    People, mostly men, who think they have power and resources to offer make a mistake.   They often  think they can easily make a deal for sex and touch.  And they have reasons for thinking so.

I think that both men and women have had a role in this unfortunate, painful confusion.  Men who assault women are blatantly wrong, but they have their reasons too.   Women who use sexual energy to get what they want may act unskillfully.

It has gotten very confusing when sex and touch are given similar currency as power and resources.   In our tradition, women have been schooled in the role of providers of progeny, sex and touch.    Men have been schooled in the role of  resource providers and power.   Since WWII those roles have become fluid, and it should not be a complete surprise that men misinterpret social signals, that they step over the line, that they misuse their learned roles of bringers of resources or power.

We humans got  ourselves in this situation beginning about 10,000 years ago.   With the introduction of agriculture, men and women began to say to one another, “Let’s make a deal.”     It was a one-to-one deal that we now call marriage.    In one dramatic move, men and women abandoned over 200,000 years of evolved stability and a communal hunter-gatherer society.    Power had been shared between the sexes as well as the role of provider of resources.    Exclusive coupling was an oddity.

At the introduction of agricultural settlements, goods and power became almost synonymous .  More significantly, men took that role to themselves.  Men agreed to provide resources and stability.    They would be the bringers of goods and power.    Women agreed to provide a hearth and yield to the power bringers.     Men would be assured of known progeny to whom they could pass their goods and power.    Women promised exclusive access to the wombs where those progeny would be produced.

This bartered arrangement was not in the genes that had guided human relationships for over 200,000 years.     It was a new deal, invented by humans attracted to power and stability.    It is the deal many people still make today.    Human contact, physical contact is something often bartered for.  The bringers of resources and power mostly have the upper hand in the deal.

As women share more power, the bartering gets confusing.    The football star may not now be as attractive because his star power now has a little less currency.  But he doesn’t always know that.

The stability of a hearth based on a resource-provider contracting for exclusive access to sex is a shaky model to younger people.    Men who attempt to use personal power in exchange for sex from less-powerful women are being correctly challenged.

I think it is a hopeful time, because the bartering model is losing its momentum.   The marriage model is fading, slipping, evolving.    I doubt our society will go back to a pre-agricultural model, but it is a good time to  allow for new models of how to relate to one another to develop.

I hope we can throw power out of the deal and, if bartering is to occur, I’d like it to be on equal-footing of power.  Whether the arrangement is exclusive or not will be up to the deal-makers.

 

 

For a little over two hours Friday evening, I felt what it is like to be a stranger in a large, closed-in gathering.

Close to 100 of us gathered for a sit and talk at the Common Ground Meditation Center, and the only exchange I had was with a person of whom I asked a question.    As I look back, I am aware that I was fine at the time with the experience, but this morning I am puzzled.

How is it that in a large community that cultivates awareness, no one acknowledged that I was odd, a stranger, a guest?

I arrived early, stood around quietly by myself.    At the end of the evening, I was not among the first wave to depart.   I am someone who easily and readily makes eye contact.   I can say that I was very attentive to a dozen individuals, not one of which  reciprocated that awareness in a manner I recognized.    None were moved to acknowledge my presence or strangeness.    I am amazed that no one acknowledged that I didn’t fit in.

This is more strange for me than a criticism.    However, it does raise the question of whether there is something in the practice that actually can cultivate separateness and distance rather than closeness?    Is closeness, awareness reserved for members only?   Are the illuminati a closed circle?

It is puzzling for me not just that that no one person spoke to me, but that there was little evidence that anyone was wiling to make eye contact, be overtly aware of me, share a moment of awareness.     And I was paying attention.

I recently went to performances at the Ordway and Gremlin theaters, and my experience was different.    I experienced more interaction, more conversations with those strangers than I experienced at Common Ground.   Maybe it is easier to share awareness with other strangers, who are strangers like me.

I am not faulting Common Ground or being critical of all those who shared that evening with me.    I am mostly puzzled by what I experienced.    I know it is not what I want others to experience in any group of which I am a member.   It is a experience I will take back with me to my home Blooming Heart Sangha.

It is also a reminder that it is my intention to live a way of active awareness. For me awareness is not sitting back and paying attention.    It is an engaged awareness that reaches out and connects.     It is my intention to allow unity, oneness to happen.    That doesn’t occur if I simply observe.   It doesn’t happen unless I allow the barriers, the separation to dissolve.

It will be bliss when there are no more strangers in my life.

 

 

I don’t try hard much anymore.   I realized this last evening when a woman in the audience of a lecture expressed her frustration at trying unsuccessfully to change.   I thought, “Try a little less hard.”   I too  would be tight, anxious, frustrated, constrained if I tried to change my habits, my way of doing things.

Instead, I have chosen a gentler, more relaxed path.   I pay attention to my habits, and I also embrace them, hold them close to my heart.   I tenderly examine them.   Some of them I notice are a source of kindness to myself or to others.    Some are a little less effective or skilled, and so I casually let them float on their way.

I don’t shoo them away, but I allow them to go.    Sometimes I smile when they assert themselves again and again.    I gently pat them dearly on their little behinds and softly let them pass on.   Gradually, they recognize they are less welcome, and they seem to show up less.

I know they are part of me, and there is no reason to be mean to them. I am patient.  There is no need to rush.

I don’t really try to change myself, but I do allow myself to change.  It is a dance, and I try to stay loose and fluid.   I am not so anxious to rearrange the chairs properly in my personal dining room.   I prefer to allow the chairs to find their own places.    I put less energy into defining my relationships with people, and my life seems so much more pleasant and richer.    Things seem to work out, especially if I am paying attention and being present.

I trust the learnings and leanings of my heart, and I allow it to guide me.   My heart  has grown a little wiser over the years, and has become more open, softer, less brittle.

My heart knows that I set my intentions a couple of times each day.    I remind my heart that I do not intend to dishonor it with hatred.    I also tell my heart that I commit it to be a guardian of nature, a healer of misery, a messenger of wonder, an architect of peace, and a fountain of loving kindness.    That seems to be enough, and then I relax.    My heart knows the way, and I allow it to lead.   I don’t even try to follow;  it just happens.

I don’t stray into much self-criticism.    There is no examination of conscience, detailing what I’ve done wrong.   There is no morning-after review.    I save that for the rigor of work meetings.     My heart is aware, I trust it will have adequate insight if I can keep  “me” out of the way.

I occasionally need to apologize to others if I think I have over-reached with excessive enthusiasm and perhaps given offense.    I hardly ever apologize to my heart.

I find that the notion of “trying harder” is almost  amusing.  It is awkwardly unskillful and often ineffective.   It is so self-defeating.    The natural current in my heart is so trust-worthy, all I have to do is keep my eyes open and my body awareness alert.   When I stay unclouded, the rest happens naturally.    I hardly ever have to try.