Month: August 2022

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.