Category: Writing

Posted on by joseph mauricio

SADNESS

SADNESS

 

The journey that unfolds through our meditation practice begins with acceptance. We accept where we are in the present and, returning to the breath, we are returning to the heart of our experience. In this way, we are accepting each moment. In time, with consistent practice, we train the mind to accept our life as it is. The heart of our present experience expands to all our experience. And in time, we see our life not in terms of the time we have, but how we can deepen the experience of that time.

 

Buddhist teachings regard time as elastic.  Our experience of time expands and deepens when we are growing and when we are aware. While our time is long or short chronologically, it can also be shallow or deep experimentally. We often cruise across the surface of our life, accomplishing, accumulating, and crossing off items on our ‘to do’ list.  But sometimes life stops us, and we experience the profundity of being alive. Sometimes this process is amazing as with the birth of a child, falling in love, or beginning a new life.  And sometimes being stopped in our life is simply painful, as with the death of a loved one, leaving a relationship or losing a job. But most of these profound experiences were accompanied by moments of fear and pain. If we fixated on the fear, we might never have contacted the depth of our life.

 

One of the ways we avoid fully experiencing our life is when are locked into the surface of our life. This materialistic approach is necessary but is not the entirety of our life. Yet, out of fear and anxiety we lock into the momentum of our ‘to do’ list trying to outrun the deeper feelings that threaten to block our momentum. But these very deep feelings grant access to the fullness of our experience. The fullness of experience is happening now and at no other time. It is only here and in no other place. Acceptance of the moment grants access to deeper understanding.

 

Therefore, we can see acceptance as an act of love.

 

It’s our work as mediators to deepen our experience and get more out of the time we’re gifted. This requires acceptance of the interruption. We learn to welcome the fear as a harbinger of a peak experience. In this way, we can develop the inner strength to see all experience as a possibility. Experience is a gateway to understanding.  One very potent gateway is the experience of sadness because if we allow ourselves to feel it, we can be subsumed into a very rich world. Of course, this is the very reason we will avoid sadness by picking up a drink, overeating, or trying to fill the resounding space sadness creates. “I don’t have time for this, I’ve got to get back to my list!” Perhaps we are afraid of a breakdown, or of falling apart. But if we develop the bravery of a compassionate heart, we can look into the chasm of sadness and touch something very real. Then the breakdown may become a breakthrough. And falling apart might lead us to a fresher more unencumbered relationship to ourselves.

 

Sadness is a potent gateway because it is very real. Trungpa, Rinpoche called it the most genuine emotion. Unlike anger, for instance, which often deflects outward into a defensive posture and fixation, sadness forces us to look inward and access our feelings.

 

Once we recognize sadness, we can look into the experience with acceptance, kindness, love, and patience. Pema Chodron always recommended we eschew intellectualizing and feel the feeling. This is hard with the reflective intensity of anger. But with sadness, all we need is   loving acceptance to get below the waterline of experience and investigate the experience of our feelings. This does not require narrative or explanation.  In fact, investigating our experience can lead to a wordless state of just feeling. Just sitting in the gentle embrace of our broken heart can be healing on a profound level.

 

But then it is important to honor the experience by letting go and allowing it to shift, change and perhaps become something else. The discipline here is that once we’ve contacted the gateway of sadness, we allow ourselves to pass through. This requires letting go. Letting g is not pushing away. Letting go is loosening our grip. It means the experience of sadness is as it is and that is more than enough. It is not about the ‘me’ I so stoutly defend. Sadness is.

 

With the power of love, we can open to sadness.  And with the power of acceptance, we can allow ourselves to be led. With the power of our wisdom, we can feel something new about ourselves in this very old human feeling. Then with the power of discipline, we can let go and step less encumbered into the next moment.

Posted on by joseph mauricio

WORKING WITH ANGER

WORKING WITH ANGER

 

Today we will discuss “anger” and their drama queen sibling “rage.” In the Buddhist tradition, we speak of the wisdom of anger because although anger elicits many unpleasant experiences, there is a clarity and precision at its core. In Buddhism, we see Anger as a manifestation of one of the “Five Wisdom Energies.” Despite how we may feel about anger, it is a powerful energy unto itself, and is neither good nor bad. Difficulties arise when we are uncomfortable with the intensity and so amplify its negative aspects by struggling with the feelings.

 

When working with any emotion we can follow some primary guidelines. The first is to open to the experience by remaining in the middle way between acting out and repressing. If we don’t act out or shut the anger inward, then we are left with feeling. That kind of sucks, usually. But it’s a great opportunity to learn. When we can feel what we are feeling regardless of how uncomfortable it is, we gain mastery over our emotions. This doesn’t require a lot of thought, or any narrative at all. This stage is about redirecting the attention from the grip of blame or judgment toward the actual raw experience.  In this way, we are fully honoring the emotion by allowing it to be as it is. In fact, we can bow to the energy for being such a potent teacher.

 

But how can anger be a teacher?  When we train the mind to step back and let the emotion be as it is, we see that it is just energy, and not about me. There is anger, yes.  But there is also wisdom, clarity and intelligence. Rather than take sides, we can hold our seat and see the emotion as a natural occurrence, just like the weather. We may not like the weather, but we generally don’t take it personally, nor struggle with acceptance of it. Simply speaking, it’s not about us.

 

When we are able to sit with the feeling without provoking or dampening it, we are allowing it to be in its own state. And once we accept it, like the weather, it will change. By training the mind in meditation we learn to hold our seat and rather than engaging the emotion we begin to feel it’s essential energy. In the case of anger, once the storm subsides, we might feel the natural intelligence and clarity at its core. The raging aspect of anger is like a stormburst. But a stormburst is a purifying energy that cleanses and clarifies – if we let it. If we run inside and cover ourselves up, we diminish the purifying effects.  On the other hand, as soon as we grab the energy, we are tossed around by its intensity. When we are overtaken by the energy, screaming, yelling and raging at the injustice, we are not riding the energy, the energy is riding us. Caught in the maelstrom, we lose awareness. This puts us in a dangerous situation, as lashing out blindly we can easily cause ourselves and others a great deal of pain.

 

But holding our seat through the turmoil of anger takes practice, patience and perseverance. We are training in our meditation practice to allow a buffering space to manifest between our triggers and our reaction.   We are not trying to live without anger. Heaven forbid. We need the energy of anger. We need our anger to wake us out of indolence and inertia. We need anger to wake us up when we are lost in the fog of unknowing. As Anger is an essential human emotion, we need it to be fully human.  But our meditation training offers us a way to train ourselves to sit in the storm until anger becomes our teacher.

 

Like the weather, our emotions come and go. They are a natural part of our human experience. The problem with the emotions happens when we judge ourselves for having the experience.   This creates an internal struggle that actually turns the energy painful. When we are holding our seat anger is like striking with a sharp blade that causes little harm and gets right to the bone. When we are not mindful, and are overtaken by its energy, anger is like hacking with a dull blade. It makes a mess.

 

So, to illustrate this, we can use the R.A.I.N. template. When you feel anger – look at that. RECOGNIZE that it is just energy. ACCEPT that and don’t push it away by acting out or repressing inward. Just let the energy be. Then look INWARD, INVESTIGATING how it feels. And once the energy shifts, let it go and NURTURE the part of ourselves that has been bruised in the process. Remember we are not suppressing the feeling. In fact, we are liberating anger by allowing it to be as it is. Finally, NON-IDENTIFY or NO BLAME means to remember that it’s not about us. And it’s okay to let go.

 

What we’re angry about is not the point. Nor are any of the stories we regale ourselves with. Acting out on Anger prevents us from feeling what we’re afraid to feel. It is much easier to act up than give in. But if we can hold to the middle way, anger keeps us going, doesn’t it? It helps us feel safe. It helps us feel as though we are doing something. It makes us feel strong to fight something even when the fighting is eroding us. But while we are busy fighting, we are losing sight of what it is we really need.

 

The practice is to pause – drop down into our felt sense – and realign with a deeper purpose. “I am here to awaken, and this energy is waking me up.” Are we just protecting ourselves by lashing out blindly trying to get away from the feeling? Are we just trying to make ourselves feel safe at someone else’s expense? Are we trying to become powerful in our own mind?  Are we trying to prove we are right?

 

Or are we working to wake up?

 

The Investigation step in RAIN is to realign with our purpose. If our aim is to wake up then we will want to minimize the harm and the drama so we can access the wisdom.

 

Posted on by joseph mauricio

THE POWER OF HUMILITY

THE POWER OF HUMILITY

 

The word humility conjures the idea of humiliation. This judgement stems from a defensive ego-mind that sees any diminishment to its powers as a threat. If we quiet the shouting and listen, are we giving up ground that can allow the enemy to advance? But what enemy is that, exactly?

 

The psychological defenses we employ become an end in themselves. At some point, we don’t even remember what it is we are fearful of, yet we nonetheless identify with compensating for our perceived weakness. To ego mind, we are what we struggle against.  These constant complaints about life are comforting to a wounded part of us,but they are stifling to our spirit.  In my experience, these defenses only support belief in our weakness. The compensations, and overcompensating of ego become so reflexive, and so pervasive, we feel the need to engage everything. We do this in combative ways such as judgements, arguments, or outright quarrels. We do this in seemingly positive ways such as clinging, coercion or manipulation. But, even when our intentions are neutral and largely unnoticed, many of us have a constant narrative about experience. Good, bad, or neutral, seen or unseen, it seems we are always commenting on – and frequently arguing with – our life.  This “subconscious gossip” prattles on unabated to the detriment of our wellbeing.

 

When we are triggered emotionally, our body experiences a neurological spasming and our mind becomes hijacked. Sometimes this is obvious. But frequently, this hijacking happens unconsciously as we unwittingly indulge internal dialog. This “gossip” running on autopilot, surreptitiously drains our energy and ability to pay attention as it clouds our experience.   It’s like Pig-Pen, the Charles Schultz character from Peanuts, who was depicted walking around with a swarm of messy static around him. We are ensconced in a cocoon of complaint. How much attention to our life is impeded by this internal static? And how draining is that on our life force and confidence?

 

Unconditional confidence comes from a direct and practical connection to our life. When we are mindful of our experience, we begin to develop a sense that we can live life as it is instead of shutting our eyes and bitching about what it isn’t. Our meditation practice is the means in which we slowly emerge from the protective fantasy worlds in which we isolate. There is a beautiful quote from the renowned Tibetan teacher, poet, and scholar Dilgo Khyentse, Rinpoche that I find inspiring:

 

“The everyday practice is simply to develop a complete acceptance and openness to all situations and emotions, and to all people, experiencing everything totally without mental reservations and blockages, so that one never withdraws or centralizes into oneself.

This produces a tremendous energy which usually is locked up in the process of mental evasion and a general running away from life experiences.”

                                                                         –  H.H. Dilgo Khyentse

 

Rather than live in the protective fantasy world of our judgement and diminishing self-narration, we can stop the chatter, and turn our attention to the world around us. This takes humility. The world around us is not there to support our way of believing. It is not here to debate our judgments. The world around us is not for us to conquer or manipulate to our own ends. The world is there for us to join. It is our journey and our path. Sitting back in the smug superiority of judgment, we are isolating inside ourselves and so support the addiction to our habits. Habits that keep us enslaved in the repetition of what we already know. Iterating and reiterating what we already know is stultifying and many of us begin to feel stifled by our own lives.

 

The way out is to have the humility to just stop. Pause. STFU as is said. Pay attention to life. What is happening out there is more important to our spiritual growth than reiterating what is in here. Our judgements keep us from growing. And the alternative is not to reframe the judgement or admonish ourselves for doing that which most of us do much of the time. The alternative to living in the Pigpen static of self-narrative is to just stop. STOP.

 

Pema Chodron likened the idea of space as when a refrigerator, or air-conditioner which had been running in the background turns off. Though we did not notice its running, we immediately notice the silence. There is a gap. That openness is a very profound experience. However, it is often overlooked in our materialistic society that is geared more to recognize “things”. We think the space that is the genesis of al things is inconsequential because it does not affirm our ego interpretations of life. Meditation practitioners begin to learn to value that space, for it is within its silence that we hear the world speak. Our life is not dependent on our interpretation. Nor is it subject to our needs and approval. Our life is an ongoing process, happening right now. And we can join that life, already in progress, whenever we have the confidence to step out of our protective fantasy.

 

This is the power of humility. Not humiliation, which is another egoic fantasy play space.  But power. Spiritual humility is empowering. It is having the humbleness to set aside judgments long enough to see what is actually here.  This is how we develop confidence. And this is how humility is the gateway to great power. No longer fighting within ourselves, we can actually become functional and productive in our world.

 

So, the main practice that Dilgo Khyentze mentions is to OPEN the mind, QUIET the heart and RELEASE the body. The practice is to come back to complete comprehensive openness of body, spirit, and mind. Like placing our hand over our heart and saying “it’s okay” or “come back” or maybe “shut up! If we need.” But this process can be very quick. It is not the psychological alchemy a cognitive behavioral approach, as much as the loving thwack of a Zen master’s stick.

 

Humility means you can just come back to the open silence without the protective patina of an air-conditioned mind. Humility is the power to say, “it’s not about me”. And just stop and pay attention.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The picture for today’s post is of a water tiger. In the Shambhala teachings the tiger is used an image of a being that has the power of humility, that is referred to as “MEEK.”  The meek tiger is at ease with itself and sees what is happening as it rests in the present unclouded by judgment and expectation.  

Posted on by joseph mauricio

THE NEXT STEP

THE NEXT STEP

I was waiting at the top of the steps leading down to the front door at Gampo Abbey Monastery. It was a typically cold wet March Nova Scotia morning. A number of us had been lined up waiting in the rain for some time. Finally, we got the call that Sakyong Mipham was about to arrive for a retreat.  As a new student, I was chosen to open the door to his car as it pulled to a stop. I’m not sure if I was shaking more from the cold and or my nerves, but I managed to get the door open and stepped back bowing.  Sakyong walked to the head of the stairs and stopped.  He turned and looked back at me.  I came beside him.  “Sir?” I asked. But he just stood there. Then clearing his throat, I saw he was looking toward his outstretched hand. I looked to him and he took my hand and wrapped it around his arm for me to steady him as we walked down the slick stairs. 

 

At that moment, I became his attendant. And each careful step led to a new world for me.

 

On our journey through life, we sometimes falter, looking for the next right step. With a profusion of information in our lives today, there are so many choices. It’s good, then, to have a sense of where we are heading.

 

In order to lead a full and joyous life, humans need to feel connected. Yet, we often pursue the wrong avenues to that end. We frequently mistake material gain as a means of spiritual fulfillment. While material gain is fine for what it is, it will never lead to lasting fulfillment, and it often throws us off track. We often mistake trying to connect to the world by competing with others. The things we do to impress others often pushes them away. When we are bigger, faster, louder, and better than everyone, it’s hard for them to connect. In this way, we end up feeling unaccepted and not good enough.  And so, we try harder.

 

Naturally, this makes the problem worse because as long as we feel “less than” we find ourselves wanting. As long as we’re wanting, we have greater compulsion to fill ourselves up.  The more we want, it seems, the less we have.

 

And the less we feel we have, the more we cling. This creates a lot of sidetracks to our path, especially as we will cling to some dangerous and unsatisfying things, just to feel connected to something. We will jealously hold on to suffering because we are strangely comforted by the familiar. This fear-based clinging is self-referential and emotionally self-defeating. It makes us feel valueless and inadequate. The more we cling, the more we wrap ourselves in fantasy and the less we are part of our actual life. We end up in cul de sacs of confusing confluences. It’s hard to flow down the river of life when we’re holding on to every branch.

 

This is all very entertaining. But it is also very lonely. We’re cut off from the sustenance we receive with an accurate and honest connection to the world.

 

On the other hand, when we are authentically connected to our life, we are naturally a benefit to others. Although frequently overlooked, feeling helpful to others is a great value in life. This simple feeling of being useful is simple and direct. It is an authentic connection that is not about being better than anyone, nor lowering ourselves to anything.  An authentic connection to the world is about being equal to everyone and hence, a part of the world. I have a teacher that refers to this as being “right sized”. We are not trying to manipulate the world into loving us, fearing us, or being impressed by our pretensions. This humble and very ordinary connection to reality brings a natural feeling of enrichment that panic inspired clinging will never afford.

 

Mahayana Buddhists hold the idea of the Bodhisattva as one who places the needs of humanity above all. This inspiration is a wonderful guide star for a spiritual path. And although being a benefit to others is inspiring and rewarding, we are nonetheless instructed to work with ourselves first. Instead of clinging to others as a way of filling ourselves up, we turn the attention to ourselves in order to understand what we are up to. In time, we come to know ourselves enough to be able to authentically connect to others. We see that we are all very much the same. It’s about meeting our world in a way that is appropriate and direct. We are not smaller than anyone, nor grander than anything. We are face to face with the world and can organically take the next right step.

 

This honest and accurate connection to our world is easier than we think. Without the bells and whistles we use to manipulate our world we can relax and be ourselves. Then when we are accepted, it is more rewarding. And it is accessible through very humble means.  We learn to be ourselves, even if we’re still discovering what that means.  It is said that we are “the working basis” for the Bodhisattva path.  By refining our understanding of ourselves, and how we behave, we are able to help others naturally and effectively. Some of us will do this through kindness to friends and family. Others through our art, poetry, or music. Some by caring for the earth, and others through leadership and service.  Once each of us finds our truth we will discover how that truth might inspire others.

 

Therefore, the path of the Bodhisattva begins with the humble step of knowing ourselves.

 

Yet as we work to know ourselves, we will naturally become aware of the places that bind us. And the places that bind us, often serve to blind us. These obscurations usually stem from fear-based clinging. We are gripping too tightly to aspects of our world that we feel define us, protect us, or even save us. These attachments skew our perception of the world and our relationships. Gripping in our body creates shadows in the mind that manifest as blockages in our perception. In order to be of service to the world, the journey of a Bodhisattva consists of the hard work of parceling through the places that obscure our perception, so that we can develop healthy interactions with the world.

 

 

Uncovering obscurations can be galling and embarrassing.  We might fight against them and hold more tightly to our clinging until we have become embarrassed enough and developed enough confidence to let go. It’s important to understand that these obscurations were devised to protect us. They were a way for our child mind to try and arrange the world in order for us to feel accepted. And while crying for our bottle worked when we were babies, it is not so effective as adults. Yet, I have spent unretrievable hours in dark bars still yelling for my bottle. Frequently, we are seeing from the eyes of hurt children. Growing up means becoming self-aware. Self-awareness brings self-compassion. And self-compassion brings the self-confidence we need to let go of our fearful clutching at the things we think will save us.

 

On the path of a Bodhisattva, we learn to heal ourselves in order to heal our world. But it begins with that next right step. And that next step is not someplace else. The next right step happens right here.  It is humble as it is not about self-proclamation. But it is definite, as it is a statement of our innate human goodness.

Posted on by joseph mauricio

CHARIOTS OF DISAPPOINTMENT

CHARIOTS OF DISAPPOINTMENT

 

Pema Chodron tells the story of a wedding that was officiated by Chogyam Trungpa. Trungpa often used a Japanese hand fan during his talks. And in this instance, as the couple were kneeled before him he hit the would be groom on the head with the fan and said, “pain is not a punishment”.  The startled couple sat there. Then he tapped to the bride-to-be on the forehead saying, “pleasure is not a reward.” There was a pause and then Rinpoche tapped them on the heads again. “Pain is not a punishment.” “Pleasure is not a reward.” Then again. He continued alternating and, as Pema told it, the intensity of the tapping increased each time.

 

Pain is not a punishment. Pleasure is not a reward.

 

And in fact, either can be an opportunity.

 

When things go wrong in. our life we tend to believe it’s a reprisal for some mistake we’ve made, or some lack of character we have. When things go right, we feel rewarded as though the universe was confirming our innate awesomeness. In this way, we develop a bipolar codependency with life. When we allow feelings to become dependent upon external circumstance, we lose our agency and let things beyond our control dictate how we feel. Rather than pausing to check in with ourselves in order to see how we can address our feelings, we often try and manipulate the environment to get what we want. Sometimes we don’t even know what we want, but that doesn’t stop us fixing, fixing, fixing. This is ultimately fruitless. We employ so much effort to address childhood fears that we not only exhaust our spirit but lose the confidence to stand in our own truth. Over time, this confidence atrophies and we become more and more dependent on what everyone else wants.

 

But how do we actually feel?

 

And how do others feel?  Or are we just pawns in each other’s game?

 

Mindfulness practice allows us to stop the momentum of our racing minds so we can include ourselves in the process of our life. Therefore gaps in our mental momentum afford the possibility of synchronizing with ourselves and our life.  Synchronization is not manipulation. It is cooperative, rather than coercive. In order to gain a symbiotic relationship with our lives, we have to interrupt the momentum of the manipulation dance. In order to do that, our mindfulness practice allows us to see gaps and honor them. We come to see the value of having our momentum interrupted long enough for us to become present. And while these gaps are always present, we generally buy into the momentum of habit patterns so fiercely we fail to see opportunities to include ourselves in our life.

 

Since we live in a material world, our minds are programmed to cling from thing to thing. The momentum of moving from thing to thing keeps us from ever feeling how we feel, and this keeps us from developing confidence in who we are. Everything in material life becomes dependent upon what we get. And this addictive cycle keeps us from ever seeing what is actually there. The more we cling to what we want, the less we see what is there, and so the less we have and then more we cling. Buddhists call this addictive process samsara. The good news is that this addictive momentum is not solid. In fact, there are natural gaps that interrupt this process of occlusion all the time.  Mindfulness happens in the gaps. So, from the point of view of developing awareness, anything that interrupts samsara can be seen as a blessing.

 

Then why is it so hard to let go?

 

We become so addicted to the blind momentum of samsara that interruptions actually hurt. Out of fear, we cling so tightly to our projections, we lose any awareness of who we are as we become engulfed in what we think we want.  In this way, we begin to forge a false identity for ourselves based on that clinging.  Therefore, gaps in our clinging feel like little deaths. But, as you know, little deaths can be a beautiful thing. Those little deaths may be the gateways to our life. And so, anything that interrupts the momentum of our mental constructs offers an opportunity to connect to our life.  This is why Buddhists say, “disappointment is the chariot of liberation”. Whenever we are disabused of the me-fusing, ignorance-producing, based momentum, we have an opportunity to step back and see ourselves. Once released from the bi-polar codependency of samsara we can make a genuine relationship to our world.

 

In this way, we may find that interruptions – while they are anathematic to the aforementioned self-identity – give us a way out of ourselves and into our world. So not only do disappointments to our ego-plans open up the space for new opportunities, but it is in the very discouragements and disappointments that we find common ground with others. Samsara wants us to believe that we can find perfection. This just develops isolation, as no one is perfect. On the other hand, we all make mistakes, so connecting to imperfections is a more efficient way to connect to others. And connection is the remedy to addiction. And samsara is based on addiction. Every time we allow the gap of disappointment to interrupt samsara, we have a way back to our life.

 

Rather than changing the environment, mindfulness practice encourages us to see what is actually here and to honor how we feel so we can actually become part of our life.

 

Posted on by joseph mauricio

SEEKING REFUGE

These are frightening times.

It would be reasonable to want to run and hide.  But, there is an alternative. That alternative is not our usual strategies.  It’s not stand and fight.  It’s not medicate our way past it. It’s not checking out till someone else handles it.

The way out is the way in.  It is the completely outrageous alternative of facing the present with openness, dignity and grace.

Surrender to now.

It is an outrageous idea. Instead of taking refuge in our anger, addictions, or delusions, we can take refuge FROM checking out in ignorance by turning instead TO the present moment.  Perhaps we cannot singularly change the dire circumstances of our world, but we can change ourselves into instruments of sanity. In this way, we help the world by being a moment of peace in all the crazy.  There will be times when that will be enough.

Many wisdom traditions begin with the premise that we are powerless to control our lives. The immediacy of this condition begs the question why go forward at all?  What is the point?  With no payoff?, no reward, no purpose?  What if there is no point, at all, but to simply be here in the thick?

Backed against this existential wall, with nowhere to turn, where do we go, but here?

Choice defines us.  Perhaps whatever we choose, thus we create, and so we become.  If we turn toward anger in an attempt to find strength, maybe we only create hatred. If we escape into the passions of our spirit and flesh, perhaps we create further addictions? If we fold ourselves in the fabric of time and space sucking the teats of our depression are we not just biding time until death?  What kind of world are we creating when we are choosing to create ourselves by not choosing?

The outrageous alternative is the proposition that if we turn toward waking up, regardless of outcome, payoff or relief we are taking the first step of deciding to BE in our life, as it is.  And, if nothing else, maybe this will help us to be a little more awake.

Faith in a non-theistic tradition is faith that present moment affords every opportunity to awaken. It is the faith that as long as we are awake then we are living OUR life. And living our life awake, is living the best life we can. Perhaps that makes it the best life possible for all concerned.

The Buddhist path begins with the assertion that, although powerless over the outcome of our life, we nonetheless have a choice as to how we live that life. When we are triggered by fear we can so easily succumb to the habit patterns of generations blinded by fear. Or, we can choose to wake up and re-establish agency in our life by accepting that fear. It is about abandoning all the escape hatches that lead only to death. It is about smiling in the face of fear, and cheering up in the face of unknowing. It is about bravery on an existential level.

The method for waking up in difficult times is to continually to take refuge in awakening and the avatars of wakefulness. For instance, Buddhists take refuge in the Buddha. While there are many interpretations of that, most traditions take the term “Buddha”, which means awake, to be quite literal. In the Vajrayana tradition we take refuge with our complete being (body, spirit and mind) in the full realization of the present moment (life).  It is a kind of super-actualized version of the four foundations of mindfulness. So, rather than change the world, we first turn to training ourselves so we can contact that world more completely.

The first step is admitting powerlessness.  Admitting that suffering is real and very much a part of our present experience. Once we accept that, we can look beyond and see what is actually there.  Seeing things as they are, we can respond to our world, rather than react to shadowed projections.  Then instead of dishing out aggression born of fear simply because it’s what we do out of reflex, we can pivot and turn directly into our fear and find an honest and true expression of ourselves in every moment. Fluid body, open heart and clear mind resting in the present moment.

The faith here is that if we can work on ourselves to the point that we can be a true help to those around us, then we are living our best life and sometimes that will be enough.

The practice of meditation is actually training in how to take refuge in the present. It’s not a belief in the spirit. It’s not an idea of the mind. It’s not a law set down by courts of man. It is a practical and tangible connection to our world in real time. Its being here now – not as a book title, or an idea to chew gum over. It’s about being here now, despite the danger, in spite of the fear, and because we care more for this world than we do for our own comfort.

And, really – how comfortable is it to simply mark time until we die?

The pot of gold at the end of this rainbow is simply the world as it is. And, the more bruised that world is, the more it needs us.  We have simply got to train ourselves away from becoming discouraged because the world is not the one we intended and begin instead in to participate in the world there is. This is not easy. It takes a lot of encouragement and support. But, you might find as we offer that support to each other, we begin to feel that support for ourselves.

Posted on by joseph mauricio

WAKING UP

It’s like the song says, “waking up is hard to do.” Or maybe that was breaking up. In either case, the process is as painful as it is necessary. It’s about change. And who doesn’t love to hate change?

Growing hurts. This is why the teachings of the Buddha begin with the Truth of Suffering. Because until we see how prevalent pain is in our lives, we keep our eyes closed to life otherwise. If we avoid hurt, we avoid love. If we attach to comfort too much, we avoid growth. Waking up implies the possibility of change. And change is painful. But it is also necessary for our mental, physical and spiritual health. When we are willing to change, we are willing to grow, to learn and to listen. And, if we are unwilling to change? Well, ask a dinosaur. Or, an Edsel.

The idea of waking up is that having committed to listening, learning and changing, we can look beyond our limited parochial viewpoint, and begin to see a greater expanse to life. It hurts to let go of the ties that bind us, and blind us, but if we begin to open to our experience we might begin to see vistas that had heretofore been secondhand. The more we awaken, the more we see feel taste touch and hurt. The more we awaken, the greater our capacity for love.

Meditation Master Chogyam Trungpa was asked by a student if the Buddha felt pain. His answer was “Oh, yes. Much more than we do.” You see, the more we awaken, the more we see. The more we see the greater we feel. The deeper we feel the more we know pain. When the Buddha left his life and began his journey to awakenment, he gave up all attachment to the comfort of his well appointed life. He had been a prince who grew up in his father’s estate. The king had kept him captive in golden chains, so to speak. The young prince wanted for nothing in that rarified life. He had all the things many of us are living our lives to have. One might say, giving our lives to have. We throw ourselves away in pursuit of the very trappings he felt imprisoned by. The Buddha had what many of us long for. And yet he still suffered. He looked beyond the walls of his life at people freer and more spiritually realized than he, and yet they suffered as well. There was more he yearned to understand about his life. When the teenage prince snuck out his window and escaped the castle walls, he began to see life as it really was. He saw suffering, fear, poverty, sickness and death. What the Buddha saw was life on life’s terms.

Once bitten by the bug of truth, it wasn’t long before he left altogether and set out on a journey to find truth and an honest relationship to life. His story, was one of walking through veils, of meeting and parting until he finally abandoned every crutch, and in exhaustion, simply sat. He just sat. His exhaustion stemmed perhaps from a series of disappointments that finally led to this state of noble hopelessness. Chogyam TRungpa suggested that we are very fortunate that the Buddha turned out to be a bad yogi. He tried everything, but nothing worked. Finally, he surrendered.

For many of us, this journey to now will not be about discarding our lives, w0rk or families. Romantic gestures reap further attachments. It’s easy to let go of a job we don’t want anyway. But, more to the point is letting go of systems of belief that keep us lulled into delusional states we feel we can control. The difference between the delusional states we normally inhabit and the awakened state is that the delusional life is a dream. The experiences we have are analogous to life, but they are not life, directly. They are archetypes, metaphors and symbols, a translation informed by mind’s prejudice. But they are not the direct contact to reality as it is. When the 12-step traditions refer to “life on life’s terms” they mean that becoming truly sober is letting go of all the ways we manipulate what we see feel taste and touch in order to distance ourselves from the sharp edges and possible disappointments in life. So often we squint and begin to see a version of the world that suits our own point of view and supports ego comfort. Yet, what is comfortable to the ego is sadly inadequate to our spiritual growth and survival.

Ego is ignorance. It is a version – or a series of versions – of reality that support our points of view, by limiting our access to what is actually there. It is like marshal law. Often enacted when we are triggered (and ironically in need an honest assessment), the ego takes over and monitors the system by limiting access to information, replacing news with propaganda. It also imprisons the creative force within us, shutting down arts, magic and poetry because we need to hunker down and protect ourselves. Nose to the grindstone. I never got how that protects anyone.

We live in a police state of mind and our only recourse is to do the same set of things again and again in a misguided attempt at finding freedom through limiting ourselves to these sets of circumstances we think we can control. The fact that it ends badly again and again doesn’t seem to dissuade us. We are so change-averse, we choose the devil we know again and again. That is why it is said that “disappointment is the chariot of the path.” Once we are forced to face life not going our way, we eventually have little recourse but to let go. And letting go, as painful as it is, is key to waking up.

The young prince sat beneath the tree. He was exhausted from his journey, but also from intense fasting. It was the latest in a series of spiritual things he had tried to find enlightenment. But, even spiritual things, though well intended, are just “things”. So even our methods of attainment, must be let go. Maybe especially our spiritual ambitions. Ego absolutely loves using its own destruction as the purpose of its aggrandizement.

Finally, he accepted a small bit of gruel and milk. AAS the story goes, that that was when, seated beneath the Bodhi tree, he attained the awakened state.

It is possible that it was not a glorious event. It is very possible that his enlightenment occurred when he simply stopped looking for answers and simply saw what was there. It must have been quite sad, heart broken and lonely. There was this amazing moment of grand synchronicity, but, who could he tell? Who would understand? Nonetheless, people began to notice. A woman passing by stopped and asked who he was. He looked to her, but had no need for his name, his title, his position. He said simply “I am awake.”

“How do you know?” she asked.

He touched the ground. “The earth is my witness,” he said.

All he had at that moment was his connection to now. Right now. He touched the earth, his home and destiny, but all importantly his present moment. Now.

We will NOT wake up someday. We can only wake up now. And it might not be an awesome event. It might be lonely and empty. But in that emptiness lies the greatest richness of all. Once we give up everything, we gain a great synchronicity with all of life. We own what the trees and rocks and flowers own. We are life itself. Once we own nothing, we owe nothing. And we are free. Awakened and free.

I’m making this sound quite regal and dramatic, which would have been a cool way to end a post. But, maybe that misses the point. Waking up, like breaking up, is very hard and painful. And the journey is so exhausting, there will likely be no one there at the end to applaud. There may be no one there at all. Only the earth. And the singular moment we call now.

Posted on by joseph mauricio

O B S E S S I O N

 We are not always healthy.  We are sometimes broken and easily triggered.  We are sometimes depleted and feel we need to fix something, add something, change something or devour anything. What is actually devoured is our capacity to satisfy our needs. The more our wants cannibalize our needs, the more our wanting becomes an obsession.

 

Humans are funny. To a great extent we have everything we need. Yet, there always seems room for us to want more. In our healthiest moments, that ‘room for more’ can be left as is. A space where ‘more’ can come to us, rather than reaching for the same old tropes, to which we seem hopelessly attached. It’s odd, but actually waiting a beat, can help us connect to spontaneity.  We think leaping into the pit blindly is living in the moment, when actually it may be escaping the moment. When we pause – even for an instant – we allow the space to see what comes next. Then we have the power to step into our next moment and the lateral space to see alternatives. Then we can let life come to us, rather than grasp blindly at the same old patterns.

 

Naturally, this creative space is dependent on feeling balanced and content. This is where a daily meditation practice comes in. We learn to become aware of ourselves and our tendencies. We see the moment of our panicked gripping – eventually before it comes – and we can relax into space, rather than react in programmed panic. Then, rather than needing to fill the open space with our wanting, we can simply appreciate what is already there.

 

With space we see more clearly. Intriguingly, this allows things beyond our contextual frame to dawn. For instance, the phenomenon we call an “a-ha moment” usually comes from open space.  It’s not that these moments appear out of nothingness so much as when the mind is released from its obligation to look for answers, it has the capacity to see what is already there.

 

Maybe these “ah-ha moments” are everywhere, just waiting to be recognized.  Maybe the same can be said of all of life’s genuine moments. These are the fresh takes that bring a sense of awake to the mind. We can’t figure out these moments, nor can we strategize our way to them.  They simply come as gifts to an open mind and vibrance to life.  And though these moments are often a result of having trained the mind toward an objective, it is not in the tension of training, but in the release that follows, that authentic contact comes. In our healthiest times, we can allow ourselves the room to open to authentic experience. In order for that to happen we need to not fill every space by compressing our life around objective “things.” When we are healthy and balanced we are not gripped with need and we can wait for the game to slow down and come to us.

 

But we are not always all that healthy, are we?

 

When we lose balance and become lost in the mind, we loose awareness and, now blinded in the carnival swirl, have no recourse but to rely on familiar memory patterns. We fall for the same reflections in the mind’s hall of mirrors again and again. As they are not real, these images provide little sustenance. This only increases our neediness. It’s as if the universe only understands verbs. We pray to a higher power “I want this, I want that.” But, all we get back is WANT.  So we grab harder to what we want. Only there is no substance to what we get. We have bartered our needs for what we think we want. In this way, we become ever more depleted as we reach out in panicked loneliness and cling to baseless imaginings that return us only further wanting.

 

When we are healthy, our awareness rides within us.  We are not split apart and we are able to rest in the flow.  In this way, our life force moves evenly within us and we are able to see into the creative space and touch genuine moments of life.  But, we are not always healthy.  We are sometimes broken and easily triggered.  We are sometimes depleted and feel we need to fix something, add something, change something or devour something. The more we actually need, the more our wants become an obsession. The feeling of obsession is initially soothing. Rather than fall into the dark corners of mind we reach for straws until we’ve constructed a strawperson savior.  We teach for the junk, chase that dragon and swoon into a sense of false euphoria. We become enveloped in a protective batting that promises to save us from the sadness of life. In this way, we fill all the space and leave room for little beyond our obsession. At some point, we turn ourselves over to the power of our desire, lose our present, and so doing, loose our mind and our life.

 

And all the while life is going on nonetheless. Bills are piling, friends are leaving, life is calling but we are too obsessed to listen.

 

I call the opposite of “ah-ha moments our  “aw-shit” moments.  Aw-sit is when we CHOOSE – knowingly or not – to abandon ourselves, abdicate authority over our life and hand ourselves over to obsession. Obsession can be a momentary thing, as when we stuff the pain in our heart full of chocolate.  It can be a bowl of shut-the-fuck-up, it can be a mind-set we cannot shake, or it can be an addiction that controls our body spirit and mind. But, whether it be large or small the obsession is gripping to a false image that eclipses the rest our life.  The reality is never what we think. But in that moment of clinging we shut out the lights, lose the space to see and choose the fantasy of escape over the reality of what is actually there. Its like squinting our eyes shut and jumping off a cliff in order to save ourselves. In the words of the guru Bugs Bunny, “that trick never works.”

 

Whether our obsession has become the raison d’etre of life, a recurrent escape or a toxic philosophy that lies sleeping in the shadows of mind, we have taken a simple experience in life and fetishized it into an object of disproportionate importance.  We loose context and completely blind ourselves in a misguided attempt to save ourselves.

 

Save ourselves? From what? Our life? Is it that bad? Or has it simply become bad because we’ve mistaken the rush of dopamine for the value of actually commanding our life?  And, of course, the great irony is that the more we escape our life, the harder it becomes.

 

The alternative is to wake up into the flow of our life. By training in mindfulness of body we can feel the moment of gripping. By developing mindfulness of spirit we begin to gain contact to our emotional world, understanding wants and needs. Mindfulness of mind is the awareness of our thinking, the past layers of programming to the momentary blips that refocus – or unfocus – reality. Once we understand the difference between projection and reality, we can relax the body past grabbing onto projections and into the space of choice.

 

With synchronicity of body, spirit and mind we can relax into a healthy and productive connection to our life.

Posted on by joseph mauricio

SUFFERING

The cessation of suffering is a possibility on the path of awakening.  It is a continuously occurring experience that indicated that suffering is not permanent or solid.  A classically western application is to take any statement to its extreme, as though the cessation of suffering indicated a permanent solution, a rainbow at the end of our journey.  Many theistic systems posit their version of an end to suffering as a reward for compliance to their system.  The Buddhist path is non-theistic.  Rather than salvation it suggests that we have to do the work ourselves, learning each step of the way how to free ourselves from suffering.  It relies on a path to liberation and is, hence, process oriented.  The path shies away from blanket statements of finality.  Even it’s base premise, that suffering exists, is posited against the fact that it also does not exist.  

 

This cessation of suffering is possible at any time.  We experience this in glimpses we refer to as gaps.  There are gaps in the constant pressure of suffering that are cracks in the walls of imprisonment where sunlight shines through.  In these gaps, we see beyond the suffering to the world beyond.  These moments do not imply a finality to the end of suffering but simply a changeability that denies the finality of suffering altogether. Pain and the cessation of suffering are not mutually exclusive.  In fact, they are bound into a counter reactive interplay.    The cessation of suffering happens concurrent to pain and difficult situations.  Pain is a natural experience in life.    Suffering is caused by a reaction to the natural experience of pain.

 

To be free of suffering we might look directly at the pain in its center.  Suffering is caused by a reaction to the natural experience of pain.  It is said that the experience of sentience is an experience of pain.  Like it or not, pain is part of life.  It marks the passage of time, as well as the important moments within.  Whether it be birth, old age, sickness or death pain is a constant reminder that we are alive.  Once we acknowledge this truth, we might develop an appropriate respect for our life and all of its experiences.  Perhaps we will slow down and stop disregarding our existence by rushing past it like a drunk driver speeding to outrun accidents and police.  Acknowledging pain and learning to love ourselves we are brought back to the present and are released from the suffering we generate trying to hide from our life. 

 

THE MECHANICS OF SUFFERING

Desire can lead us into the vastness of the natural world, or it can boomerang back into the mind in a spinning compulsive prison.  If we open to beauty we can connect to the present free of regret and speculation.  But, we’d expose ourselves to the heartbreak of that naked moment.  So we might try and hedge our bet by appropriating the moment in a psychological selfie. This moment is mine.  However, if we are truly open, the world we are seeing is bigger than we.   This is frightening.  So, we will frequently choose to flee this discomfort by trying to cling to some part of our experience.  As soon as we say this part is mine, the whole thing feels more manageable.  However, nothing could be farther from the truth.  In fact, we are off to the races on the wild carnival ride of samsara.  And then, the more tightly we cling, the less we actually see.  It’s as though, in the panic to be free of pain, we squeeze our eyes shut, grab the bar of the cart and hope for the best.  

 

If pain is the necessary discomfort of life, suffering is the impacted environment around that pain.  Whether physical, societal or psychological, suffering is caused by a panic-fueled gripping to the things in life.   Our panic causes us to blindly adhere to things in order to avoid the pain of existence.  One characteristic of clinging is lack of sight.  We cling so tightly to things outside of ourselves, that we lose ourselves to them.  Clinging is a process of gripping that turns fluidity into density throwing us out of step with a universe characterized by movement and change.  The fiction of the self created by this clinging creates friction between ourselves and the natural movement of the universe.  We become alien to our actual experience and a pathogen to the natural order.  With great hubris, we pretend to the gods and believe the strength of our clinging can create permanence.  Yet, no matter how strongly we grip, this clinging is not strength.  It is desperation.  This gripping makes us feel solid, dense and protected.  In fact, we are all the more vulnerable, ignorant and adrift.  Cut off from our fundamental goodness and connection to all, we find ourselves needlessly desperate and alone. 

 

Yet, rather than stopping this wheel of confusion, and finding strength within, we redouble our efforts and sell ourselves to the nearest prophet that promises to alleviate our pain.  The more we run, the greater our suffering.  We grasp at projections of the external world for salvation and sustenance and fall into subservience becoming defined by that to which we cling.  Our identity becomes a zip code, wardrobe, car or job.  Rather than serving us, the things of life have become our masters.  And like American slaves of the 18th century, we take on the names and identities of our masters.   We’re a Bud drinking, Democrat who wears Nike, Levis and a Giants T-shirt who drinks Coke, but never Pepsi.  Perhaps, we have also become a thing.  And, we cling to this thing we call me with the most tenacity of all. 

 

 

THE WEIGHT OF SAMSARA

Strangely, we try and escape pain by clinging to it.  The fact that this doesn’t make sense doesn’t seem to deter us.  I mean, why make sense when your already bucking the universe? 

We cling to our pain by clinging to our desire to be rid of pain.  All this binds us further into servitude and suffering.  When we fight pain, or run from its possibility, we create an unnecessary suffering around the pain.  Like muscles clenching around a wound, the reaction to pain can actually cause more damage and long term suffering than the initial wound.  While that initial layering is protection, only by eventually exposing the wound can it heal.  And while we know this instinctively with regard to physical pain, we don’t seem to understand this psychologically very well.  We rarely think to expose the trauma beneath the layers of psychological obfuscation and touch the actual pain.  And so this pain never really heals.  In fact, it becomes more and more inflamed like an emotional sore toe, causing more pain each time it’s touched.  In time, this clenching reaction not only fails to heal the wound, it becomes systematized in body and mind and is triggered by the most innocuous circumstances. Therefore, through fear of pain we cling for dear life, and squeeze the life out of living.  This is the ground by which the pain of living becomes a life of suffering.  The vicious cycle of our mental suffering is a fractal of a larger global experience referred to as samsara, or as Kerouac so coined, “the wheel of quivering meat conception.”  

 

Samsara has the weight of the entire line of sentient existence, it’s patterns deeply rooted in cosmological, personal and societal experience.  It would be daunting to try to undo this karmic momentum.  But, rather than turn this heavy wheel backwards, suppose we supplant the erroneous view at the very root within ourselves?   We can begin the process of unraveling by admitting that we are human.  This admission implies that we are not perfect, that we fail and are frail and broken experience much pain in our lives.  But, we can learn to own our pain by eschewing judgement and aggression and looking directly into ourselves with kindness and love.  We can leave useless judgments at the door, and enter into the inner sanctum of our fear with care and caution.  Instead of panic fueled by ignorance and past injury, perhaps we can train the mind to awaken and experience the confidence to redirect, that karmic stream at the very outset?

 

LIBERATION WITHIN

In order to do this,  we need to proceed carefully.  An overly assertive incursion would be 

knee without hitting the walls around the incision?  Its like that.  Slowly, with great love, so we learn to trust.   Then we can see, feel, taste and touch the wounds that are generating so much confusion and perhaps empower them the strength of our compassion.   Maybe, this would give that frightened part of ourselves enough of a sense of confidence that it might let go of the wound and open.  And what will we find there?  Maybe the process itself is the answer.  Perhaps there is nothing to find, nothing to be and no problems to solve.  Perhaps, by caring, enough to look and developing awareness into the darkest places, we find strength.  Maybe we are enough as we are.  Enough at our core.  Enough in our very being. 

 

When we connect to our basic sense of goodness, we develop a wholesome attitude toward life.  Pain is not a punishment and pleasure is not a reward.  Our existence becomes a blessing and our desires are not a needs but rather compliments.  Without the intensity of need, we’d have no reason to cling as though our life depended on it.  And, generally our life does not depend on the things to which we cling.  In fact, our life might depend on letting some of them go.  By acknowledging our ill-ease or discomfort, we can release the clinging and find thespace around pain, allowing it to change and become a learning experience.  When we let go, we allow experience to supercede the object.  When we enjoy something, the enjoyment is enough, the object only an avatar.   When we get in touch with our basic goodness, we know, quite naturally, that we are enough.  Therefore, we could enjoy that dress if we don’t have to have it.  We could love that car if it didn’t define us.  We could appreciate our job if we knew that it was there to serve us and not the reverse.  We are more important than the job, or the money or the things that serve us.  We can sit back and enjoy our food because we aren’t starving.  We might even look around and regard the company at dinner with appreciation and something of a smile. 

 

CESSATION 

We become liberated from the bondage of suffering when we release our grip on that which we feel will alleviate our pain, accept the pain as it is.  And then we can look outward to the rest of the world.  This happens intermittently throughout our life.  In fact, it happens intermittently throughout our day as little gaps of silence within the suffering.  By opening our heart to the pain, we can begin to see the space around it, and the gaps within the density.  These gaps have no weight, and so cannot compare to the tremendous intensity of suffering.  But, they represent the way beyond suffering nonetheless.  It is about training the mind to the gentle subtleties of life.  The moments we can feel beyond the panic into the fullness of the truth of existence.  In time, we begin to trust this silence more than the screaming.  We begin to know that we are enough right from the outset and don’t need to change a thing. Even pain.

 

Pain is our entry into life.  The work is to convince ourselves that it is not a punishment and rather than check out, we can check in.  Pain is the gateway. I have a supplication I use for my internal work. 

 

I am blessed by this pain.  I feel because I am alive.  May this moment connect me to my own life and to the lives of all who are experiencing pain.  May I not run from this moment, but use this opportunity to become more deeply connected to my life. 

 

Or, as a friend of mine suggested “Damn yo’ bring it on!”