Author: joseph mauricio

Posted on by joseph mauricio

YES, and . . .

WAKING UP TO POSSIBILITY.

Meditation Master Chsunriseogyam Trungpa would frequently begin talks by saying “Good Morning,” regardless of the time of day, or night. It was not about time. It was about the idea of a fresh start, or clean slate. It was about saying YES to our morning in any state of mind.  In the Buddhist Lineage of Shambhala, “the rising sun of the great east” is a central metaphor for waking up.  Its not necessarily directionally east, but the idea of contacting the sun in all the freshness of its new ascent.  

We can do this at any juncture of our lives, in the gaps and breaks and places that open to empty space. For in the empty spaces we find platforms for a new beginning. Empty space sets the sacred stage of creative impulse.

The midday sun is grand, and the setting sun sad and beautiful, but the waking sun has yet to determine itself. Open to possibility, it is the fresh start on a spontaneous journey into our day. When we practice allegiance to waking, we are employing Warrior Principle. The pledge of the warrior is to open to life, seeing each moment as another opportunity to rise to its challenges and rewards. The warrior has the bravery to sit up, wake up and choose to open up to life in each moment.  

Conversely, we can choose to abdicate our seat of warriorship, closing our hearts to the pain that accompanies growth. In so doing, we fall into somnambulent patterns of indolence, slinking  from our bed each morning already ensconced in stories of defeat.

Think about it.

What you think determines your day. And, each day determines your life. At the least, thinking ourselves into tragic patterns and toxic psychologies is clouding the possibilities.  We’re protecting ourselves from our life by using stories we don’t even like. Its similar to when we can’t sleep and click mindlessly on bait at the bottom of the computer screen.  We actually have no interest in any of this, yet there is a compulsion to not sleep, not work, not live, and not choose to rest in ourselves as we surf this strange hypnogogic wave of a half-life. We drift over Brad and Angie, find out who’s gaining weight, who looked better then, who’s mad at whom now, eight steps to looking younger, why dermatologists hate her and one weird trick that is driving doctor’s crazy. All the while we’re adding more junk to our mind and more clouds to the inherently clear skies of our base operating system.

But like the first dawn, our base system IS inherently pure. There is a space in the mind free of doubt, confusion and turmoil. We can access that space in every moment. But, in order to do so, we can train the mind to rest in the present with meditation practice. That open space is accessed through the application of mindfulness. GENTLE mindfulness.

THE GENTLE PRECISION OF MINDFULNESS

Mindfulness has many applications. Generally, speaking it is the part of the mind that holds to an object. For instance, when we look at something of interest, mindfulness holds it in our short term memory long enough to know what is.  If we hold the mind a bit longer we’ll begin to know what it means.  If we instigate an inquisitiveness to the process, the mind can open to it and even rest there in order to synchronize with the object. In mindfulness meditation we endeavor to rest the mind on an object suitable to quieting and opening the mind. We rest the mind on the object, and beginning to glean information, we rest further, until we achieve a temporary union with the object. So, while we may begin by holding the object, in meditation we gradually let go into the experience until we become one with the object.

Interestingly, this is the same process as grasping or clinging that seem to have negative effects on overall understanding. You see, if we grasp the object, we only see what it means to ‘me’.  Meditation   assumes a certain quietude of mind.  If we are triggered emotionally and unaware of the feelings inside, we can have a physical reaction to the object of our inquiry.  We actually grasp the object – or more accurately, grasp the IDEA of the object – and either thrust it away, cling to it, or struggle against it. In any case, we become desynchronized from the flow of the moment and less inclined to see the object accurately, or understand the moment.  When we grasp and cling, we throw the mind off its natural flow and this creates an inner tension. When we grasp further, we actually fixate and lose any objectivity. The tension is no longer just psychological at this point, but unleashed into the environment, creates friction in our life. Fixation does no service to either you or the object of inquiry. In order to correct that, we often eschew the object. We leave the investigation because it has created a compulsion and fixation and drift away in distraction.

Thus, we play the game of fix and drift. We fix to things too tightly and as the tension in our body, mind and life reaches a critical pressure we repel from them into distraction.  In this way, we work too hard to not work hard enough.  Influenced by this strategy, our life supports these vicious mental cul de sacs.

The practice of meditation allows us to relax the process and unwind the ever tightening reasonings of the mind. The work of a meditator is to simply hold the mind on an object without the extremes of fixation, or distraction. But, should we employ gentleness and receptivity to the process, we are opening to the object, rather than holding to it.  We drift off, but there is no where to go. So the mind comes back, again and again until it settles into its body, sense and feelings.  When we are relaxed in body, mind and spirit, we can actually rest the mind in place. This is so much more effective than an assertive application of mindfulness, which militaristically holds the mind in place and lies dangerously close to the aggression of clinging and fixation.

In most traditions, a neutral object is selected specifically to diminish potential psychological investment and its attendant grasping and fixation. Like many, I use the breath as the object of meditation, as it is reliably neutral, boring and mundane.  Ironically, our breath is one of the most intimate, amazing and important functions in our life.  While simple breathing may seem boring to a mind conditioned to keep us off balance by searching for and acquisitioning objects it finds provoking, deep attention to the breath ultimately frees the natural flow of the mind.

In order to find this deep synchronicity, the mind must settle.  The body is a perfect tool for this. The FELT connection to the body connects us to the earth. As we FEEL our way in to a somatic experience of the breathing, we calm the frightened animal mind and are able to rest into our body, and through the breath, into a direct experience of the present.

AWAKENING NATURAL MIND

Meditation with the breath simultaneously bores the clinging mind into letting go as it simultaneously awakens the natural mind simply resting in its present experience. But, as our conditioned mind is prone to grasping and distraction, awakening runs counter to our conditioning. Each time we forget, become startled or otherwise interrupt the practice there is a subtle panic that urges us back into thinking, and desynchronization. To many, meditation practice is the arduous retraining of the mind to pay attention without distraction or its needy twin, fixation. Its like going to school. This is why many of us have resistance to the practice and yearn to skip out for a cigarette, imagine our lunch tray, or fantasize about of the cute person at the next desk.

But, when we relax the process entirely and simply learn to gently rest the mind on the object.  But, to rest AND wake up which is to say rest and open. We rest the mind in order to open the mind and see. At this stage, we stop looking and begin to see, we hear rather than listen and feel more than touch. We are training the mind toward a passive RECEPTIVENESS. We are not invading space, occupying space or containing space, but rather allowing ourselves to open into space.

In this way, we are learning to contact possibility devoid of preconceptions. Rather than map out the possible, and follow maps we’ve repeatedly followed into the same cul de sacs in the past, we can simply rest, open and see. Or, you might say, rest, open and receive. And, then instead of clinging to the information, we can train the mind learn to release into the experience.

Rest. Open. Receive. Release.

 

THE EMPTY SPACE OF CREATION

So, if we turn our mind to its inherent purity and, looking too hard, try and grasp at it, we lose the point entirely. Instead, we might open gently to the space in our mind and simply see without expectation, words, judgements or concerns. We are training the mind away from its addiction to form and beginning to become comfortable in open space.

This takes some effort, as the traverse through open space is a bit unsettling to the more defensive parts of our mind. The defensive nature will clamp the process closed halt the process.  Therefore it is important not to trigger ourselves as we enter into the sacred space of nowness. Thus we move gently without expectation, out of our mind and into our experience. Its like a game of operation. remember that one?

The idea is to move slowly – receptively – without triggering our reptilian defenses. Paying attention. So, rather than investigation, we are more inquisitive and open. There is some inherent risk here, however, as we are opening to possibility and not prejudicing that experience with what is familiar or safe.

In order for the mind to fashion a new pattern, or just create a new synaptic connection, it has to move through the open space of the mind. In this open space of creativity, there are no reference points. Nothing that leads back to YOU or ME. There is no you or me. It seems, well, empty. Openness IS emptiness. It is experience devoid of reference point, framework, or content – at least until that content happens. It takes a great deal of the aforementioned stability to enter this space undisturbed. But, if we can do this, we open into a pure space of potential, where we can spontaneously respond to our world without conditioned programing.  Rather than scripting our experience, we are co-creating.

 

YES AND… AWAKE!

Among other things, I am trained as an improvisational actor. One of my current aspirations is to work with actors and creative artists who yearn to experience the taffy pull of pristine awakening into the creative moment.  I am particularly interested in the confluence of improvisation and meditation, where the conjoining experience is the spontaneous expression of the present. This is the essence of creativity. Like the birth of the universe. Pure creative improvisation. First there is nothing and from that, everything possible occurs.

In improv, if you fail to pay attention the scene breaks down. Conversely, if you try and script the experience the scene can become lifeless. So there is an implicit connection to heaven and earth. We have enough structure to stabilize our experience, and enough possibility to allow it to go anywhere. The key lies in the oft quoted maxim “YES, AND….”  We clear the space of the detritus of past experience. Then we release the narrowed vision of expectation and open into the moment, as it is. We wipe the sacrificial ground clean, sacrifice intention and then open into the natural flow of the moment. We learn to partner with whatever circumstances are naturally taking place.  If someone says, “Good morning, Doctor”, as you enter the stage, the scene will fail as soon as you say “I’m not the doctor.” However, if you say “Yes! Good morning, nurse” then you’ve fully accepted the offering AND created a step towards the next sequence.  An audience feels this is natural and flows according to some “plan”. But that plan is no plan, but simply employing the idea that if we open to our moment without trying to control it, we can step through the curtains and come into deep synchronicity with the present.

In his Dharma Art lectures, Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche  called the empty space which precedes a creative impulse, square one. It was a space of purity devoid of preconception, akin to the Peter Brook’s evocation of the “Empty Space” on the black box stage.   Both are akin to the original space of theater as a primordial human sacrificial art. Sacrificing the ego, and its ambitions, in order to gently rest in the present and be of service to the moment. The idea is that when we clear out all preconceptions, we create a space of potential and possibility that allows an open and spontaneous interplay with reality.

Yes, and …

In this way, each moment can be an opportunity to tune into the receptive nature of the mind, and open in to our experience, authentically. We can simply BE and just ALLOW reality to partner with us, to co-create our experience.

Morning is a metaphor we use in meditation training to conjure the purity of our essential natural mind. But we can wake up to a new morning at any point in our day. And we can wake up to a new day, at any point in our lives. In fact, we can do so in EVERY point in our lives.

Posted on by joseph mauricio

Crying To the Sky

A Grace Stronger Than Hate

11215152_10153302971246140_3496759016855973036_nNine people lay in final silent prayer on the floor of the church that had been a place of solace, safety and strength to their families for over a century. The victims, those who died, and those left to suffer for them, prayed as the gunman – just a boy, really – reloaded as many as 5 times methodically acting out his own suffering. With an eerie steadiness he shot and shot again. Finally, he left a woman unharmed instructing her to tell the world of his actions, and his hatred.

And we watched this boy in the strange hair, waving his pistol – a gift from his father – parading in night ranger gear emblazoned with white supremacist logos, and the rebel flag. His hatred buried deep within strangely half sketched ideologies and a belief system as old as the ground on which he stood. And the ubiquitous flag of rebellion in nearly every photo. The flag that flew in defiant full mast even as the nation’s flag was lowered to half. A flag. An ideology half baked, half formed. A symbol of something for that frightened child, who wrapped himself in cloaks of hate, who became bigger than his pain and, in the mania of self-proclamation, falsely witnessed and falsely accused.

The pain of his abuse, relayed in vengeance to unprepared and unsuspecting victims, set off waves of anger and violence in its turn. I was beside myself, and even now, days later, have to edit and rewrite notes of invective as I try to find words of reason. Anger at that flag, anger at the shooter, and anger at our still divided country and its tenacious denial of cruelty, anger at a God who seemingly answered with compliant silence. Anger at the futility of prayer.

Anger is an understandable feeling, but not a platform for understanding. Yet, how can we understand something this insane? How to find meaning in absurd acts of violence? Anger can lead me to the threshold, but only inquisitiveness and interest can lead me through to understanding.

Prayer is futile when it is the incessant blathering of self-confirmation. But, it can be a powerful tool in opening out hearts to an experience greater than our ability to comprehend. Instead of relying on crude scenarios of good vs evil, we can have a conversation with God, the cosmos, our higher power, whomever or whatever exists to allow us the space to disengage from the harmful and access the possible. Prayer is meaningless when we reiterate what we’ve known. But, essential when we don’t know.

Regardless of the god one prays to, the act of simply opening to a deeper understanding brings us closer to our truth. As we move farther away from the truths we are expected to hold, communion with the unknowing brings us closer to how we feel, which is our experience of the truth.  In the Buddhist tradition, we think less of a specific God and more in terms of the personal responsibility we all have to bring goodness into the world. Prayer in a non-theistic tradition is crying to the sky itself, opening to the unknown and having the strength to align our intentions toward goodness, clarity and understanding.

Pain, anguish and longing are powerful motivators. They can so easily drive us into darkness. The anguish in our guts can forge toxic philosophies that keep us locked in patterns of hated. However, we can choose to halt the process, and allow the energy of our broken hearts to open us. In this way, we can use the power of our suffering to touch the goodness inherent in the universe. The goodness that understands the long view. The goodness that recognizes decency in others and speaks to their higher purpose.  When word came that the parishioners of the church, families and friends of the victims were praying for forgiveness, I was stunned. These wounded, angry and brokenhearted people were choosing to align themselves with a power greater than hate. Through their tears, they gained an authority over the violence and spoke for heaven itself.

I am a small man, easily carried to extremes. Greater people knelt in prayer and forgiveness. Greater people opened their hearts in prayer, and torn apart in misery, cried to the sky for the end of suffering that begets suffering and ignorance that spawns only darkness. To them prayer is not futile. It is all there is. When taking arms against arms only breeds war, and the hatred in our own hearts casts darkness on our senses and reason, there is nothing to do, but raise to the sky and open our hearts in aspiration.

Hate breeds hate. The wheel of anger turns from victim to perpetrator to victim to perpetrator, and the only way of stopping this lineage of evil is to stop the lineage of evil. Just that. Stop. To choose grace. To choose to forgiveness and to, in all irrational outrageous courageousness, choose love. Love in the face of anger. Understanding in the face of ignorance. Grace in the face of hatred.

By channeling our anger, hurt and pain to the possibility of openness we align ourselves with the wisdom of the universe, and its inherent compassion and goodness. In this way, we speak to the long game, to the very evolution of humanity from the vicious survival modes of our upbringing, to the thriving and grace of a future based on respect for ourselves and for all of life. Ironically, the survival games, now outmoded, will serve to hasten our extinction. The adaptation required for our race – the HUMAN race of many colors and faiths –  to survive, is to move beyond survival, and learn to thrive.  For our own survival, we’d do well to join our fellows in prayer and open to the possibility of peace and understanding in the world.

So, rather than doing what we always do and inadvertently or intentionally propagating cycles of abuse, we can turn from known, rigid concepts, half investigated ideas, unrepentant flags and statements of hate.  And, in the silence of opening, we can turn broken hearted to the sky. We can choose grace over hate.

 

 

Posted on by joseph mauricio

Love in Every Teardrop – Celebrating the Strong Force of the Universe

Animals-Mother-LoveMy mother was a singer in church, around the house and, after her customary half glass of wine, at parties. Her father was a preacher, and with fingers crippled on his right hand, nonetheless learned to play piano without learning to read music. Music was the most important thing in their house, after God and the bond of love that created and held them. My mother wore Mary Janes and stood pigeon toed in pictures on sidewalks in Bayonne. She dreamed of broadway, and knew all the songs. She married a wild boy from across the bay who soon left to fight for freedom, and found it, repeatedly. I was the first son, and the first grandson and the first cousin within kissing distance of anyone. It was just me and mom a lot of the time, and she’d sing to me – which I loved.  But, then, as the spirit of Sondheim moved her, would burst into song in broad public. And I hated that. I was an old guy for a kid. And, mom lived in her own musical.

She was very pretty and men would always try and talk with her. She would blush and brush her shoes together, knock things over, and make Fannie Brice look composed. She was married, she’d say. I’d be the guy who took her home. And sometimes, she’d cry, and sometimes she’d scream and curse. And sometimes she’d want to give up. But, she never let me go, and never turned me away.

Her dreams of being a singer had to go on hold, I suppose.  An old little boy is still a little boy who needed a mother.  She gave up everything, for me and never questioned it.

When dad came home, I didn’t know him. He got a job that had him traveling a lot of the time and so we got into a rhythm. He’d drop in and rule the roost, then leave again we’d go back to our musical. Dad turned out to be a decent man as he settled into his life. But, it was his life. And, he moved us from place to place following his dream. My mother had three kids, and I was the little man, I guess. I would dress up like a dad in a smoking jacket. I was always dressing up. I held theatrical performances with my brother and sister forced to play menial parts. I’d be Captain Hook. Mom loved to play Maria. My brother and sister would clap their hands and jump around. We’d all do the Jets song, from West Side.

But, there was never enough money.  My mom would have to work, and so would pawn us off to her mom and dad during the week. We’d have to sing God songs then, which were not nearly as fun as Bye Bye Birdie. Then my mom got a job working for a broadway critic named Irving Hoffman in Manhattan. And, I was old enough to go in with her sometimes. Irving loved me. Well, looking back, he may have loved mom a bit more than me, but he always treated me to candy and comics and a good story.  He was very funny and he was so New York. I was in love wit the city. I met Soupy Sales, and my mom twisted Irving’s arm to get me a picture to autograph. Soupy was a sour dude, but my mom shamed him into giving the autograph. She was a tiger when she wanted to be. And she was my champion, always. She got Irving to twist more arms and got me on Romper Room. I was a star, and she was my manager. We were both in twisted arm heaven.

But, then my dad moved us out of the sate this time. And she left what was left of her dreams to follow his. And she always had to work help support us. When they finally broke up, she had to become a live in maid, as she had no where to go. Then I left college and become her roommate for a while. BUt, it wasn’t long before she was lending me money. She always gave everything to her kids. And she never resented it. She lived to care for others. And, she loved more truthfully and deeply than anyone I ever knew.

Her love held us together, and many many times, held me together. It still does. She’s in her 80’s and still supporting her kids on $11 an hour. I got $200 for my birthday. I asked my sister where she got it from. She just shrugs. Maybe she gambles on the side. She’s always got something for me.  And, if she didn’t? She’d still have that all out no holds barred great love. The love of the universe. The strong force that holds all life together, and keeps us from drifting apart into waves and particles.  We lived in so many places. I was embarrassed by many of them, but never felt unloved or unwanted. But, she would also cry. Her life was lonely.  Sometimes, when I was a kid, I’d catch her crying and come up and hug her.  And I knew there were times when it felt impossible to her. But she never faltered. She never fell. And her love kept her together, even as it helped keep us together.

The strong force: love. The love born of tears. The love born of pain. Even as happiness, drunkenness and frivolity keep us shunned of our suffering, so love actually grows from our suffering.  In this way, we become strong. And as all beings suffer, we become bonded with our planet through our suffering.

Pain is the essence of communication. It is the absolute currency of existence. We have  to be present in our life in order to take a place in the world. In order to be present, we have to be willing to embrace pain, heartache and sacrifice. But, its the great love of the universe, the love of a mother, the love of a family, the love of someone who has taken the outrageous step to steward the life of another, that is the force that binds us to to ourselves and all humanity. The Buddhists have a belief that all beings have, at one time, been our mother. And sometimes those bonds were beautiful and sometimes they were harsh. But, throughout time, our connection to our family of beings, lies in our ability to see beyond the particular insults we experience in our life, in order to care for those who have cared for us. The great practice of equanimity – seeing all beings as equal, and equally, worthy of love – is an outrageous statement. That we will care for the world, as a mother cares for its child is the ultimate vow.

And, aside from being patently absurd, this sacrifice is a great empowerment. The willingness to see others as our own, and to care for them is key to our own liberation. If we can learn to turn our minds from addiction to ourselves toward the benefit of others, our world would be complete.  Tapping into that great bonding force, we would want for nothing, except the comfort and safety of all beings. And, in that way, we would have a connection to the greatest power in the universe.

Once, I asked my mother if she resented giving up her dreams for me. She looked sad for a moment, as she sometimes did. Then she said that, along with my brother and sister, I  was the most important thing in her life.  It sounds like an obvious thing to say, almost a cliche, but it was the truth. And like all truth, it rang in the air and cleared everything else away. She sat there, already growing older, pigeon toed in her silly slippers, tears flowing from her beautiful eyes.

Posted on by joseph mauricio

Bringing Meditation to Life

b87fd812-85fe-4567-872a-4a064786e01eIt was a long day preparing for the Sakyong’s arrival. Shambhala Mountain Center was abuzz with activity. The driveway was chalked with the auspicious symbols, and strewn with flower petals. The kitchen was readying the welcome feast. However, it would be false to say that all was joyful in anticipation. And while most were joyful much of the time, the truth is, all of us were crazy some of the time.  The coming of the teacher brings a heightened sense of panic and neurosis. Everyone’s dark side was on display at some point in time.  It seemed as though the environment was being purified for his arrival. And, it wasn’t just the emotions. The facilities would break down. In the days leading up to a “visit” anything that could go wrong would. It was as though Murphy himself were coming, whoever Murphy was.

Only, it wasn’t Murphy. It was the Guru. Our teacher. The man who had given up the dream of an ordinary life in Colorado in order to take over his father’s business. A business far from ordinary. A business that would demand a king-sized ransom, a twenty-four hour a day commitment, for the rest of his life. When the announcement came that he had taken the role of leader of the community he would later call Shambhala, I was sitting in a full tent at the end of a large program at Shambhala Mountain Center. The room of 300 people stood and cheered. I understand there was cheering across the international community. It was like a new day. Like the dawn of Vajrasattva. And, over the years we watched as that man who had been raised and trained as a leader all his life, realize that his father’s wishes for him. There would be no prom, no college, no fraternity, no regular job with weekends to spend with the dog at the lake. Instead, there would be further intensive study with the greatest teachers in his lineage, more protocol meetings with tutors, endless meetings with boards of trustees, more tours to raise awareness for the community and the great work of turning his father’s vision into a reality. A life of service.  A life spent living meditation.

He came nearly every year to visit the centers. And, each visit, in all of the centers, the chaos rose in preparation, and then fell with his presence. That spring the chaos of our world was coming to a head in the hours before his arrival. I had time to go home and change, but no time to shower. When I came into my trailer it was a wreck. I had not had time to clean, or straighten. It didn’t seem right. I took the time and tore through the trailer. It seemed, even though he’d never come to visit my place, that to honor him, I had to honor myself.  I threw out old magazines and covered the bed. Then I almost threw out a lily that was given me as a gift months before. Well into spring, it was only a twig that stubbornly had refused to bloom. It looked ridiculous, but I left it. I grabbed my jacket and tie and ran to the welcome line to await his arrival.

Despite the heightening of our craziness, a barrage of miscues and the slight drizzle that has chosen the very moment to begin, the whole day seemed to open when he arrived. All of us just relaxed. It was as though all of our neurosis had simply evaporated. He was with us, and at that moment the world seemed right. Heaven, earth and humanity fell into alignment.

When I went back to my trailer that night, I was elated and exhausted.  I sat on my couch to take off my boots, but was too tired to undo the laces. I looked up and the lily had bloomed. A flood of warmth came over me. This is what it means to live in a kingdom of sanity. In the mythical Kingdom of Shambhala, it was said that all beings were regarded with respect and dignity. If we recognize and actualize the goodness in others, we activate their great human potential. In this way, we are seeing the best of them and allowing their best to be supported. And, when we do that, we see the best in ourselves. I sat with tears in my eyes, stupid in love with that flower and the moment that surrounded us.

I was fortunate enough to be on duty with him a few days later. He stood at the window of his room, looking out, hands clasped behind his back, surveying his world. It seemed perfect, this man, so humble and so wise helping to make sense of the world simply because he showed up. Simply by saying yes. Simply by being present in his life, he made our lives present, vibrant and real. And standing next to him, holding a glass of water on a silver tray, the world seemed just as it was. Perfect.

Then he turned and in all seriousness said, you know, if people are wiling to hire trainers for the body, they should be willing to hire trainers for the mind. We could start a gym for the mind, he had later said. Mental fitness. In his classic meditation manual Turning The Mind into an Ally, he said that people never think to look at the very tool that informs everything about life, the mind. We’ll train our body, obsess over our weight, and change our hair color monthly, but we seldom regard the actual instrument that is assessing, discerning and running our world.  For him it was clear, his mandate was to bring meditation to life and to the lives of others. He envisioned a living, authentic practice that would actually be part of everyone’s daily life. In its way, the simple warrior’s practice of sitting still until the mind quieted, might be the most potent way to bring sanity to the world.

And, over the years, I’ve seen that living meditation in the Sakyong. With no separation between himself, his life and his practice his statement to the world is his presence. Present in his running practice, present in golf, present writing poetry, and giving talks. Present, as I have had the honor to have seen, in his daily life with his children and his family. Presence is gentleness. It is compassion, in that there is no aggression, or the thought of competition.  With no reason to go elsewhere, the bodhisattva warrior is simply awake and available to the world.

As the chaos and cruelty of the world seems to heighten, as it sharpens its defensiveness and does its best to demean, delineate and destroy itself, the waking warrior can make a gentle, but definite, statement by LIVING meditation in every breath. We proclaim sanity each time we return to our body and make ourselves available to the world. Simply sit and train the mind to be present. And in the perfect quiet of each moment, that gentle stillness comes to life.

Posted on by joseph mauricio

The Fires of Baltimore

Baltimore burned last night.

Ravaged neighborhoods long left for dead lie in the shadows of the award winning, highly praised, renovation of the waterfront, the jewel in Baltimore’s charm bracelet. The influx of money, people and life that filled the harbor and its adjacent neighborhoods, had faltered by the time it reached its east and west flanks.

 

As if to safeguard this precious revitalization, a “zero-tolerance policy” toward crime was initiated. In time, these neighborhoods of hope squandered in neglect became little more than internment camps where residents were guarded and intimidated into compliance. The blind eye of justice turned, and allowed black to kill black, as the runoff from the massive influx of heroin from the docks held families enslaved. I‘ve traveled through the neighborhood that erupted in flames last night many times. Once, I saw a police car with flashing lights stopped in the street and I turned the corner where, in plain sight, drugs were being sold only feet away. Police cars, searchlights from police helicopters, the ubiquitous “blue lights” demarking crime zones, sentries like shadows, the gangs and the kids are all common, and commonly intermingle, here. Less seen, but very much present, are the grandmothers. With their Sunday hats and lace, they the Baptist churches they attend and the clergy are the heart of these communities, reminding us that people live here. People love here. And people do their best to live the best lives they can.

 

The message in those churches is of non-violence, community and love. If God is love, then love is our only option. The message given by Dr. King and the leaders of the civil rights movement was of assertive nonviolent engagement. Violence, whether it be the violence of the streets, violence within the home, or violence toward oneself can only destroy. But, love can communicate. Compassion understands and so creates a deeper bond than intimidation. Dr. King famously told his followers, that the bible said to LOVE your enemy. But, it didn’t say you have to LIKE your enemy. So, even with those for whom we have little trust, love is the best means to communicate. If we attack them, he warned, they will win.

 

From a Buddhist perspective, each of us is love itself, and each has an inalienable right to life. Yet, each of us is interconnected to everyone else. So, while we have a personal right, our life affects those around us. We are all in this together. So, when we learn to love ourselves, we learn to love others. And, we can do that, even if we fear them, or are angry. In fact, as love is the basis of empathy and understanding, it is imperative that we love that which we fear.

 

The funeral for Freddy Grey brought city state and federal dignitaries together in a service filled with hurt, love, faith and anger. Rep. Elijah Cummings was quoted as saying “I’ve often said our children are the living messages we send to a future we will never see, but now our children are sending us to a future THEY will never see…. There is something wrong with that picture.” And, the messages became clear. It is time to stop. It is time to regard all life as sacred. It is time to respect that black lives matter, because ALL lives matter.

 

But, for too long, too many black lives didn’t matter enough. The “lets go get some scumbags” mentality of an understaffed, poorly-trained and ill-equipped police force fostered the dehumanization of a populace they were conscripted to protect. Often they did what they could with what they had. An impossible task, they almost had to objectify the populace as the enemy. So, who were the police protecting? Perhaps things have devolved to the point where police are, in fact, only safeguarding wealth. It seems that much of the world has adopted a corporate mentality. Corporations have no inherent conscience. Its up to the people within to add the humanity. The corporate structure itself lacks empathy. Its purpose is to provide for its shareholders. These structures are fiercely powerful, and while they may be very sophisticated in their acquisitional efforts, they are ultimately very crude. They act primarily for their own advancement or protection. They run much of our world and, in so doing, have created a world much like they are: benevolent as it serves them, but protective against danger and largely ignorant of things that don’t further their charter. Many of us stay out of their way, stepping in the shadows between their lumbering legs. We snuggle up to our flat screens and pretend the world out there is someplace else.

 

In this way, entire communities are ignored and locked into combustible environments that inject aggression internally. Held in place by a force that uses the crime inherent to that situation as justification for using whatever means is expedient, the point isn’t to communicate, but to control. Young men, who in another world would be rising up into the prime of their life, walk with eyes down bundling that energy within.

 

Unfortunately for Freddy Grey, he looked up. Unfortunately for Freddy Grey, he made eye contact.

 

So, it seems the seams in the machine broke open last night. The ill-fitting dissonance of the protectors and those they claim to protect, clashed and Baltimore burned. The wounds opened into the streets. And, now the Governor is here like a dad home from business to scold mom for being too lenient with national guard take control of this family. And now we all get a time out. And, there is blame, not the least between the Governor and the mayor, and there are shouts and there are schisms between haves and have nots, between while and black, between social conservatives and the socially conscious.

 

But, so many of us feel that this could be – perhaps MUST to be – the pivot point of change. In the churches there were calls were for “justice, not vengeance”. Vengeance is short sighted and acts to obscure reason, while justice might presage a change that enables communication and understanding. Perhaps this is that point.

 

But, justice is not passive. Justice CANNOT be passive.

 

And while we now wait, will the world slowly turn back to business as usual? The news outlets are describing a death from “mysterious circumstances” while videotapes clearly show a man severely injured, dragged and pushed unsecured into his unpadded steel battering cell. As days pass in this “thorough investigation”, we wait until the shouting dies down, until the mothers stop crying, until the state decides as it did in Ferguson, as it did in Staten Island, as it has done repeatedly in Baltimore, not to prosecute. And, the system decides, as it has many times before, not to change. The national guard will be in place more quickly then. And, good people everywhere will go on believing their lives matter. And others, whose lives matter a little less, will go back to holding eyes to the ground, holding down the rage, until it blows open again.

 

And there’s the rub.

 

Three years ago the ‘Arab Spring’ caught world leaders off-guard. The NSA, with fingers in so many pies, were unaware of the significance of the movements stirring beneath. Will we learn from this? Or instead, will we do business as usual until something blows open things to restore the balance? Until we meet the next Arab Spring in the form of a much closer, and more immediate Black Dawn?

 

I’m sure there are neo-cons planning to further secure our borders. The NRA claiming the need for the populace to arm themselves from the threat. But, the threat here cannot be met with violence. The threat is a lack of empathy. And, while it falls on both sides, it seems like the onus would be in those with the guns to lay down their arms. The onus is on the leaders to lead by understanding. Empathy is what makes us human. Resilience, firepower, intelligence, strength and adaptability have allowed our species to thrive. But without empathy, compassion or understanding we are standing at the top of a junk heap. Compassion is the flower of evolution. Once we understand the other and begin to see their humanity, we proclaim our own. Opening to our world in strength and dignity, and doing the work within, BEFORE we expect others to follow.

 

Compassion need not be weak. The time for weakness is well past. Compassion simply rests on the premise that if God is Love, then love is our only option. From a Buddhist perspective, if we are fundamentally good, and goodness is our birthright, then understanding the goodness of others is the only option. But love can be strong. It can be true. It can go right up into the danger and not flinch. It can hold itself to itself as it is stronger than hate, it is deeper than hurt, it is greater than fear. Compassion is not weakness of giving in, or relenting, or surrendering. It is standing up and proclaiming. It is saying I am alive and I matter. And you are alive and you matter. And together, we can build a work that makes a difference to ALL of us.

And, in order to do that, we have to let go of our Darwinian impulses to take only for ourselves. We have to let go of our pain and fear and be willing to see clearly, without flinching. For, the truth is NO ONE here is without blame. We have all compounded the problem with our ignorance, or greed. So, we al do the work of opening and the work of remaining open through the change. And the change will come. Oh, yes. Its up to us to wake up and guide the process toward the light, to stand with our hearts open and strong in the face of the clampdown, to open to others and learn from their struggle and to return the planet to those who matter. The people.

 

It is a stunningly beautiful day in Baltimore today, the day after the fires. Among the many images in the paper this morning, the most powerful for me was of the Pastors and congregation facing the police after the funeral. After leaving the church, they walked in line toward the police. Then they stopped and knelt in prayer for a moment. It was a gentle and definite assertion that love, contemplation and connection to higher principles are what is important. Yet, we know that. We know that that is what they, and many of us, believe. But, what happened next was amazing. The congregation rose without hesitation, walked up to the police and just stood there face to face. Look into my eyes. I am human. Look more closely and you won’t see the skin, you won’t see the home I live in or which school I send my children. Look closely enough and all you see is me. And we are all the same. We are all frightened, unsure, doubtful and capable of great understanding. We are human. And we matter.

 

This is where compassion begins.

 

 

 

Posted on by joseph mauricio

TRUNGPA

images-4That winter was thick, frozen and bleak.  We spent long nights at the main house huddled around the woodstove, drinking sake and singing Scottish sea shanties.  The students would trade broken-hearted stories of a teacher whose passing, nine months prior, was still fresh in their hearts.  A man of outrageous warmth and brilliance, Trungpa, Rinpoche shot through their lives like a meteor; there without warning, then gone too soon.  Afraid to leave the fire, and brave the cold walk home, we’d sit till the early hours, forestalling the inevitable with deeper incursions into the heart.  When the sake finally transmuted loneliness into aloneness, and only solitude seemed appropriate, we’d wrap up and venture out past still shadowed deer, into the frozen beds of cabins silhouetted against blue-lit moonscape.

There was a picture of him holding a calligraphy brush on my dresser.  I would light a stick of incense and place it before the picture with a perfunctory wish for goodness to descend on the world. That would be followed by a more immediate yearning to meet his mind through his teaching.  Then I would have a drink of what would be ice cold sake in his honor. Cheers!

———–

The first night I dreamt of him he appeared as a mountaineer named Phil Hillary. I came across him on a narrow Himalayan mountain ridge that descended on both sides into steep valleys.  He wore a dark green flannel Trilby hat with a feather in its band and lederhosen suspenders.  The expanse of the Himalayas opened behind him.  An off-panel personage introduced us and said, “He’ll show you the way”.  He tilted his head and looking above horn rimmed glasses, smiled.  His eyes, like the eyes in the pictures I had seen, were dark, empty and seemingly endless.

———-

Joan was curled on her couch on twelfth street.  She let out a groan, looking up from a Village Voice.  I was cooking.  As it was a New York apartment, the stove was about three feet away from the living room. It was April fourth, 1987. “A famous Lama was just cremated in Vermont.  They can’t let the poor guy rest.  They’re complaining that he drank and slept around. What the hell do they want?  Its Buddhism.  They don’t have saints.  They have people.  Why is our culture scared of real people?”  I was intrigued.  I had been reading Dharma Bums and Chuang Tsu and wanted to meet people who dared to be real.  I wanted to travel the world and meet people no one would ever know, or have ever heard of, but lived their lives for themselves without apology.  People who knew that “finding oneself” was a noun, that seekers need not find, and that sitting still, alone on the floor, was a very good way to travel.

Throwing down the magazine, she lit a cigarette.  Dinner’s ready, I reminded her, indicating the smoke.  Ignoring me, she said, “Allen wrote a nice piece on him.  You should read it.” Allen Ginsberg, the de facto poet laureate of a generation, lived on our block.  We used to see him having brunch at Odessa with William Burrows, Iggy Pop or any number of young men looking into his great grey beard for confirmation of their burgeoning talents.  In public, Allen often spoke of his teacher.  In one such story, he mentioned that on retreat he would write lines in his notebook during meditation.  He felt sitting opened him to a new level of writing.   At one point, Trungpa had asked him to put the notebook away.  Who knows what treasures were denied world literature, but letting go of those potentially great lines opened his heart, mind and poetry to something he hadn’t seen before.  That simple sacrifice opened a new level of creativity.

My nighttime day job was cooking at a burger joint in Greenwich Village. They had a club downstairs where I managed comedy evenings a few times a week.  I was lucky to meet many up and coming would be, wanna be, used to be stars, reiterating brilliant jokes on their way to private bowling lanes in Jersey mansions.  Or, Malibu. Or, wherever. In a world where truth is suffering, I yearned for something real.

———

I ended up in the kitchen of a retreat center in Colorado, with the bravest, most open group of people I had ever known. It was a magical time.  A time of sadness and delight. A time of endless sorrow and great joy.  I understood, in time, that sadness and joy were not opposites, but both sides of one point.  Nowness, he called it.  In nowness, we are complete with a full range of present experience–not needing to avoid, grab or define anything.  Nowness is without occupation, other than full participation in the moment.  In this way, these moments connect us to a life beyond the limitations of judgment and speculation. It was maddening to think that a vibrant, awake and present world lay just beyond the glass ceiling of self-importance. I could see it, but not contact it.

So, I dedicated myself to the work of understanding. I learned more about this man who loved authenticity above all.  I read the books that opened my mind like the vast winter sky, inspired me like the endless summer sun and ignited my soul like forest fires that encircled the community each fall.  He was inseparable from the environment.  And, walking on the land at Rocky Mountain Dharma Center, I came in contact with his presence.  He was the mountains, the steams, the sky, of this community that slowly pulled itself together in his wake.  It is said that when a great guru dies, his spirit rises and invites blessings to descend from the sky.  Blessings like sparks from bonfires rising to meet the endless stars as we’d search each other’s shadowed faces until an older student told us stores of the teacher and brought him down to life among us.  More than stories, this was transmitted experience. We were there together with this great, harrowing, exasperating and brilliant man.  They would effortlessly morph into his peculiar speech, which was part Tibetan, Indian and Oxford educated.  His voice was extremely high pitched, filtered through constrained vocal chords due to paralysis from a car accident.  The students would imitate his singing, in that shrieking improbable voice, completely off-key and unabashed.  He had no embarrassment.  So, we learned to have no embarrassment.

He was crippled, overweight, nearsighted, and unafraid. He was open to anyone, anywhere at all times of the day and would flirt with his world openly and without apology. The left half his body was paralyzed when he missed a turn and drove into a joke shop. At that point, he was wearing monk’s robes as a Lama in Scotland, but otherwise living a very secular life. His contemporary monks and colleagues urged him to see this as a wake up call and reconsider his actions. So, he did just that. He removed his robes.

I wanted to be with this man, but his time was gone. I yearned for a teacher. Even as I immersed myself in his mind mandala, all of his teachings, and indeed Tantric teachings in general, bespoke the need for a real living teacher. I had found my teacher, and he was telling me to find a teacher.  A few months later, I met Trungpa’s son, Osel Rangdrol Mukpo, then referred to as the Sawang, or Earth Lord,who had yet to change his name to Sakyong Mipham.  He had a powerful grace, humbleness and presence.  I knew he had the stillness to become a reference for my spinning. I became his student, without hesitation.

———–

I had a dream. I was at a large table in the dining room of a well appointed home. Beyond an arch, the rest of the house sat in darkness from which here was laughter and music and people talking. I couldn’t see them. I just sat there and eventually stood up and wandered toward the arch. A man came in and asked me to sit back down and wait. It seemed I waited for ages. Just sitting there as everyone had fun in the rooms above. Then I turned and Trungpa, Rinpoche was sitting beside me, sans the mountain Trilby. He tilted toward me and looked above his glasses. “This is the transmission”, he said. And his eyes seemed to be endless pools of black, blacker than black and as deep as an ocean. I awoke and lay in darkness in my cabin.

———–

Later that month, I got a call from the Sawang’s personal service, inviting me to cook for him on a month long retreat. I accepted, again without hesitation. Afterwards, I was amazed to find that there was only he, myself and one other guest. I was the primary attendant. I spent a lot of time in the kitchen.

During that time, my mind moved beyond itself, losing its nowness and looking for attainment, satisfaction, solace. I became immersed in the indignity of cleaning, washing, sweeping. I had visions of what time with the guru would be, but it turned out to be time with my own mind instead. And that mind was decidedly unhappy.  Time that might have been with the teacher was blocked by my mind. There is a great cognitive dissonance between what we think a thing will be and what it is. A teacher shows us what is.

I would feel cut off and dejected. Maybe this wasn’t my teacher, after all.  I fell inside myself, just as I had at the comedy club, thinking that truth was someplace else.

So, I had Trungpa’s books to curl up to in my cabin at night.  I was taken by the fact that his surname was a Tibetan lineage name that meant “one who serves”.  I read about him as though he were an action hero: his daring escape from Tibet, his trials coming to America and building a community.  His wife, Diana, had written that he was depressed after leaving the British Isles, because he hadn’t yet created his community. He was meant to teach and to serve.  Yet, even after he found that community and created a great world around him, that sadness remained.  There was still much to teach. There was still the world to serve.

And then I understood.  This was my opportunity to be part of that noble lineage, a lineage of those who served. And, who better to serve than this man, who had dedicated himself to shaping his father’s tremendous vision into a practical reality?

That night he called me into his room before he slept.  We sat talking about Alexander the Great.  He asked me questions, as though I was the teacher.  He wanted to know how people of my social background felt about leaders, kings and loyalty.  I told him we were skeptical.   I went on further about my theories on social needs and structures, gleaned mostly from what other people said.  I wanted to be well-regarded by him, of course. So, I was trying to impress him. At some point, I realized that he was just sitting there, in silence.  I looked up to him. He turned and looked right into me.  His eyes had that endless black depth that seemed to invite passage to the universe. I don’t know if it was a family thing, or a guru thing, but it shut me right up. I sat there and the silence seemed to ring through the room.

Then he smiled and said, “How about a big breakfast of eggs, sausage and greens tomorrow?”  Of course, I said.  And then he nodded in that way of dismissing me for the night.  I bowed deeply and left.

Back in the kitchen, I prepared his table and the things I needed for the morning.  Then, I turned to the shrine, to offer my closing chants for the day.  On the shrine was a picture of his father, looking straight out at me.  Reflexively, I stood at attention.  In that moment, I was connected to nowness, and to the lineage of those who serve.

 

April 4, 2015

 

 

Posted on by joseph mauricio

Taurus Winter

taurus_fotoStars exploded across the night sky. Among them the giant V, the horns and nose of the bull, an arrow pointing to the earth you’re heir to. Oh, Taurus slave to this winter, lonely, driven, dark and chained to your domain, even as you dream of Venus, ruled by her, but shunned, a beast of burden of the dirt and rocks and dust of the earth. Born in May, I was always lonely. And I carried a load as though I had to save the world itself. But no one knew. My burden. My story. And, yes, Venus always above me, just out of reach. My grail. My love unloved.

I had been assigned a tutor and a meditation teacher. Both patient, and hard working. I had left New York, and a girl to come to this place and find myself. All I found were fragments of a picture I couldn’t see. Images of someone I knew and glimpses of a stranger waiting in the shadows of a future that now seemed far behind. I ran a comedy club, and had some incredible roster of talent. I fell in love with the waitress there, and she and I dreamed of finding something deeper in our world than the canned laughter of that Greenwich Village stage. We read Kerouac, and the Dharma Bums thrilled us. She introduced me to the man who introduced me to the Dharma for real. I walked into the New York Shambhala Center and was given a tour. There were pictures of men on the shrine from a lineage of teachers who al had teachers back to the time of the Buddha. I wanted peace in my life. I wanted depth. I realized looking at the pictures that I would have to go to the source. If not, Tibet, then Colorado at least. And I knew as I stood there that my time in the city had closed. Only when I decided to leave, she balked. I’ll never move to Boulder, she said. What would I do there? Become a hippie? Sure, I said. Learn to relax. I imagined us baking bread, eating vegetarian, barefoot in the garden, drinking homemade wine. Only, she had other dreams. She moved to Paris to dance. I moved to Colorado to grow a beard.

I lied about my name when I came to the meditation center. I didn’t want hippies following me. I wanted no part of a cult. But, a hippie lady to take my pain away, and help me forget Joan, would be okay. That led me to a roominghouse. I lied about my tenure in meditation. Sure, for about three years now. Only, I had dabbled a bit here and there after seeing a demonstration from a Zen priest, but really knew nothing about meditation. I liked the idea, though. And, I wanted what those folks seemed to have. I became the kitchen manager for a summer and fulfilled a dream by studying with Alan Ginsberg and Anne Waldman at Naropa. But, I wasn’t long for Boulder. I was too restless. I needed something else. I lied again about how much meditation I had been doing, and got a job as a cook at a retreat center in the Rocky Mountains. Step by step closer to something. Step by step farther away from everything else. And, here now in this wild country far away from everyone I knew, from show biz and the wild streets of 80’s New York noise to this open and quiet, oh so quiet space high above the world.

Problem was I was asked, and agreed to, dong a “dathun” a month long meditation retreat. It was nine hours of meditation a day, very basic meals in held in silence, work in quasi-silence, with no drinking, or parties, except one day off in the middle.  I had joined that community right after a three foot snow fall in the worst winter they had seen in a decade, learned to work my wood stove, and where the spices were in the kitchen, and had to jump into the most challenging month of my life, where in that awesome silence, I learned how loud my mind could be.

Constrained and constricted by vows, rules, rituals and tradition my life became controlled by a pre-dawn  morning conch, the freezing 15 minutes walk down from my cabin to the shrine room in the main building, a calling gong inviting us to line up in silence outside the shrine, the gong that invited us in, the clack that invited us to sit, and then a series of conches, gongs, clicks and clacks that described the rhythm of the day. Day after day. I worked in the kitchen for breakfast and work period after lunch.   I tired to work in the near silence that was the custom, and to keep my eyes down and my heart open and attuned to my feelings. But, I hadn’t had the requisite training others had. I was still feral, and slumped around like a caged beast all day in that lonely frozen silence. Trapped in the rhythm of the routine and surrounded by mountains that b=eckoned but were still off-limits to me. Days were hard.

But,it was the nights that came alive for me.  Free of the relentless blue blanket of the colorado winter, the sky would open in an amazing display, star studded, as they say, from horizon to horizon.

The nights without moon were so dark here. Stars everywhere. Unbelievable in dimension. And like ancient mariners, I learned to wander away and find my way home by the stars. Taurus pointing the way. I was so alone then, only then I realized, perhaps for the first time, that I always had been. Searching the earth, one step after the next. Looking for home, for love, for a place I never found.

The truth of the seeker is that we will not find. If we found, we wouldn’t be seekers. The Buddha left his home, his wife his child and his country to learn and search. He moved through compounds, communes and communities, learning from each, but carrying on when he’d seen what he needed to see, knowing there was still more to learn. Finally, in exhaustion and hopelessness he sat. And, then he left himself.

Without the blanket of knowing, of “me” the Buddha finally understood. He saw finally that his seeking had led him to travel inward. And that travel inward led to the vastness of the open sky beyond.  Without himself, all that was left was everything else.

Seekers only stop seeking when they learn finally, there is nothing to find. And this gives them everything.

But, I was still looking. Still believing there was something there. The vastness of the night sky called, but I still fell prey to the shadows and the dim lights of expectation. Once, I was hiking in these woods in daylight and saw an eagle. That was thrilling beyond anything New York had shown me. I got excited and told my tutor, how I wished I could just move someplace in the mountains and just meditate until I knew the secret of an eagle. He laughed. I was insulted. What’s up with that?

“Where do you think you are?” he said.

Oh, yeah. I was so used to looking I hadn’t even seen that I was already where I had wanted to be. Of course it didn’t seem to be where I wanted to be, as I was here. And where I wanted to be was always someplace else. Even when all I wanted was where I was. Except a girl. But, when I was with a girl, I wanted to be free. So, I began to learn to love the loneliness. To love the sadness, and the darkness. I began to love everything about this wild land, which was loneliness itself. It was so dark on a moonless night here. And that Taurian arrow in the sky pointing home. Here. Only here. There is only this.

The teacher had been a lonely man. He had many loves, and many students, but in his heart his loneliness was always with him. He had said, enlightenment wasn’t a big deal, as we’d imagine it would be. In fact, it might be more of a cosmic shrug. “The lowest of the low”, he said, debunking, as he would do, all of our grandiose ideas about spirituality. Spirituality to Trungpa Rinpoche was right here, with all the hereness of right here. Here with all the shit and dross, and mud and dirt of the earth. Here with the gold and the greatness and the joy of the sky. Here with our actual experience, moment to moment in every breath. Nowness, he called it. Being in community with the present means nothing is excluded. And none of it means anything at all, except it is as it is. And that’s it. Here. Now. The ultimate sacrament is our own expectation. Once that is offered, the deity is revealed as quite ordinary, and here all along.

Here under the stars in the vast darkness of this wild land, shadows reveal all. I would love to walk this earth in the utter dark, without flashlight or device. Listening to the silence. Emptiness is the great equalizer. It removes the expectation and leaves only the shadowed reality of a becoming world, becoming on its own terms. How exciting to let go into this. To allow the world to become as it does and to find yourself in synchronicity with creation in each moment. In each breath.

And in the vast dark of the moonless night, its easy to see what’s beyond. And in the bright blue sky of a Colorado day, its easier still to become distracted and believe again and again the illusions that befall us. Believing somehow that we exist in a way that supersedes creation. To chase our own tail even as we chase the tails of others who elude us again and again. And to forget that beautiful sacred aloneness, and believe the lie of loneliness that somehow we are incomplete alone. And so grasp, rather than seek, and believe again in the blurring daylight the myth of our freedom as we sell ourselves into slavery on the wheel of samsara again and again.

I remember passing a town in the winter with a senior student. We were walking together and trying to fall in love for want of a better conversation. It didn’t really happen, as we both wanted to be in love with someone else. We looked into windows of the houses off the dirt road, all seemed warm and complete with families and furniture tucked inside.  “They are all trapped”, she said. And I looked at her. I had been thinking how I wished I lived in each of these places. Each home another fantasy of what my life might have been.Each fantasy another dim light of hope for a home I would never find.

“They are all trapped”, she said. And in that way these folks had, looked right at me and nodded her head without further explanation.

But, in the goddess darkness again, safe from the patriarchal oppression of logic and light, I learned to sense my way home under the exploding night sky. And the shadows reveal the truth. Everything is as it is. And there is nothing else, but here.

The cabin always appeared out of nothing sooner than I expected. I’d walk up the steps and open the door, and enter into the cold dark space.

Home.

 

 

 

Posted on by joseph mauricio

Across a Night So Wide

images-2Snow had covered the ground and frozen bright, reflecting trillions of diamonds in the night. The sky was clear, ringing into an aura of a full moon. Stars nonetheless stood out in that amazing black and completely ice lit sky shining above the glistening earth, reflections of a moon reflecting its sun 93,000,000 miles behind us.

The air was so brisk it seemed to cut. Clean and sharp and energizing despite my weariness. I stood in the doorway of the cabin, my back hot from the fire within. A fire I built, with only a little lighter fluid cheating. My mom and sister had cried when they dropped me there three weeks earlier. “He’s an actor from New York,” they tearfully told each other as they drove away leaving me to the worst winter the Rocky Mountains had seen in a decade. “He can’t build a fire.” But, I learned. I lost some facial hair and had my eyebrows singed together a few times, but I learned. I was determined. I had come to face myself in the ice castle of the sky at Rocky Mountain Dharma Center. I had learned to build a fire, grow a beard, drink sake and hold my mind to the breath. And every day there I became not more enlightened, but more broken and raw.

I had moved to this small meditation outpost only months after the passing of the teacher, Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche. The community, a rag tag bunch at once harden and softened, sat around the wood stove in the common room of the main building trading swigs of sake, snippets of songs, anecdotes, teachings and stories about the master. Their hearts were torn and they were worn and tired from the winter. But there was heartiness to them, and a richness I admired. It was the first time I had ever seen adults cry in a way that seemed not only natural, but inevitable. It made me feel uneasy and very deeply settled.

Shivers bolted down my spine with each razor breath as I stood in my cabin doorway that night. It was hard to take in, and hard to take. Something stirred in me so deep I couldn’t stand still. I wanted to run into the cold. I wanted to roll in the crystal snow. I wanted to scream, to rip my heart open, to cry and to die right there in that endless night.

Danny sat drinking sake on the badly unstuffed couch just inside. I turned and tried to explain. It’s so beautiful, I said. Look at that. “Yeah”, he said. But really, it’s heartbreaking. What am I supposed to do? I feel like I must do something with all this. What am I supposed to do?

“You’re supposed to do nothing”, Danny said.

Can I cry, I asked. “Sure”, he said and filled another glass. But I couldn’t cry, as my face was frozen. Can I scream? “Sure” he said, “no one will hear.” And I yelled from the porch, but my pain was muffled in the snow filled emptiness. I felt alive and dying, virile and impotent, greater than myself and vastly unimportant. I stood shirtless in the below zero night, panting. This world was bigger than I was. I wanted to fill it. But I never would. I never could. I stood there ruined, sad and somehow happier than I had ever been. The knives of cold had become crystal swords down my back. I turned to Danny who sat in the darkness. He had been a model and actor heartthrob in LA. He was very smooth, and very processed in the ways of meditation. Patient, quiet, kind and, like all Trungpa’s children, cutting when need be.  I was a comic from New York, a brutally dull sword hacking through the world with little regard for my own sanity or other’s safety. I had been hired as the camp cook. But, I was more like a mascot to them, a wild beast in need of taming. Danny was the first of many patient teachers, themselves students, who took the time to sit by me, as I ranted through my paces, snorting and pawing the earth until I found my true teacher.  But, that night, I had little sense of that. I stood beneath the frozen sky panting. I turned to Danny, but it was so bright out, I couldn’t see inside the cabin. I felt a million feet tall and still not able to touch this night. His voice called from the warm darkness, “come back inside you idiot.”

I came in. My face was numb. My feet were numb. He poured sake. What should we do? I asked. Cards? “Do nothing”, he said.“And sit.”

Sit?. “Meditation”, he said and pointed to my cushion. It had to be three in the morning. Now?

“Of course now. Now is all there is.”

imgres-1And, I looked to him. He had to be joking. But, his eyes were like coals, dark and cold and even and looking right into me.  He looked for a moment like a picture of his teacher I had seen. So, I sat and turned my mind back to myself and the breath. And, I just sat.

The night was very still, save the occasional gust of wind and the hiss and crackle of the slowly dying fire.

Posted on by joseph mauricio

Waking Up To The Change

IMG_2570You wake up and its another day. Its beautiful, fresh, alive and a new start. Yet, you can sense the zombies out there, just beyond the fence. The asteroid approaching. The other shoe about to drop on the landing, the economy or the environment. Our egostasis is threatened and we gear up for battle, even as our hearts begin to soar. This odd dissonance between holding on and jumping off is the best of times and the worst of times.

Or, perhaps more accurately, it is the next of times. Liminal times. Changing templates of time. And, as uncomfortable as it is, these moments may be the perfect time to wake up and drop IN to our life. The key to understanding times of flux, when our view is skewed by fear of change, is to find balance and learn to ride the wave.  In order to do this, we have to find a strong, but flexible, stance and protect ourselves without defending our territory.  We need to know that as important as we are in the movie of our life, the movie is, ultimately, not about us. The movie of our life is created by shifting pictures that give the illusion of consistency. In fact, the defining theme of our movie is, well, movement. Change. And while each change demands an adjustment, its our nature to reagin balance and poise. But, then we grow roots and begin to cling. We are driven to create a nest protected from danger. The problem is, once invested in establishing the nest, we are reluctant to leave when the time comes.  But nests are, by definition, temporary. They are landing pads on our journey through life.

Yet, once we identify with the nest, we find it hard to let go. When we take ownership of the protective patterns we weave, they become more important than the life they are supporting. We dig in and foster an identity rooted in our neighborhood, home or friends. This happens with the places we live, but we also in the ways we think and the things we believe. We weave nests of thought and behavior in order to cloak ourselves in a protective robes of “ME”. We grip to this sense of ourselves with a tenacity that strangles the life from our life. Each time we are forced to leap, we feel the need to gather all our baggage for the trip. And, when we get there, we see how much stuff we don’t need.  As Stephen Wright said, “You don’t know what you’ve got until you have to move it.” All at once, our baggage defines us. We have become the burden we carry.

That’s why meditation master Chogyam Trungpa likened the psychological nest we create to a cocoon. Its an identity forged of patterns and reactions that we create to navigate a changing world.  Yet, each nest leads only to flight. Or, should. The only thing more painful than leaving the nest is refusing to leave the nest.  Remember that wonderful quote by Anais Nin: “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” In fact, the nest like, a womb or cocoon would become poisonous should the birth not occur.

Once we wake up, we see that our nest is actually a next. The ground of  our evolution. It is the next stage jettisoned. And while that moment of release is exhilarating, the moments before can agonizingly provoke our deepest defense systems. Even as we see the new dawn, we are pulled by the undertow to the perceived safety of stasis in our cocoons.Yet its these moments of change that are so bright, so clear, so crisp and new. When we think back on our lives, the times we recall are likely to have been challenging.  I’m not sure how much we remember that pizza, the beer or that pint of ice cream that seemed to compelling, unless we had them after a mountain hike, camping in the cold, or during a winter storm.So, if the movie of our life is not about us it is still OUR life. And, the irony is, by gripping to that life, we actually lose our ability to be part of it. The secret is to know that it is the best of times and the worst of times, the nesting time and time to fly. Stasis and change are part of the systolic and diastolic rhythm of creation. And creation is change. When we are aligned with that, we engage our warrior heart, fully awake to the danger and the joy. If we refuse to hurt, we refuse to love. if we diminish ourselves in fear, we diminish our ability to feel. If we fight the change, we limit our ability to land on our feet.

So, from a meditators point of view, we are talking about balance. And each time we fall, we learn from the fall. Each time we lose, we gain the next thing. And in this way, we live forever. If we let go of our life – and our self importance – and allow life to guide us, then we are part of the change of time and space that has always been. We are linked to the eternal. We are part of something so much bigger than our comfort. That is our Warrior heart. A heart strong enough to care for those in need. A heart brave enough to face the changes with dignity and poise.

Posted on by joseph mauricio

Welcoming the Wood Sheep

We’re well into winter. Its becoming brighter and colder. There is a confluence of energies as the days getting longer bringing a sense of hope and newness, as the temperature stubbornly clings, even drops in defiance. The old year grudgingly moving on, as a new one takes its place.  The tides of time.
And this brackish plane is at once unsettling and invigorating. Losar, the Tibetan new year, is Thursday. The energetic yang of the wood horse, succeeded by the gentle nurturing yin of the wood sheep. Our building has come to roost and rest. Its a time of creativity and family. Time to open to our experience with warmth and forgiveness.

The weeks preceding the new year are, by tradition, considered to be the energetic culmination of the passing year. This intermediate phase – or bardo, in Tibetan –  is a strange and dangerous time. Our defenses become compromised by these shifting seasonal, emotional and energetic templates. Its akin to the early morning, or late afternoon, liminal phases when our sensitivity is heightened and we become more receptive. Its considered a mystical time because of our receptivity. Its also considered a dangerous time. As the shifting exposes gaps in our defenses, we become open to any number of influences. We are more impressionable and vulnerable.

The best protection is awareness; paying attention to how we feel, what we are doing and applying precision to the details of our life.  It is naturally a time of conscientious prudence and reserve. But prudence is difficult when we are longing to fill our frozen hearts with carbs and wine, trying to find that serotonin buzz. But, temporary fixes only serve to swing the system wildly, exhausting us finally, into sadness and depression. It is important, instead, to maintain a stout body mind balance with exercise, long walks and meditation practice. The Tibetans talk of rousing “Lungta” – or windhorse – our inner life energy. The appropriate way to rouse windhorse is to open up to our experience and reduce the resistance and allow inner and outer movement to occur naturally. Flowing like water, we take the path of least resistance, filling up every crevice and valley. It is not aboutexaggerating the energy, or cranking anything up. To the contrary, windhorse is best cultivated by relaxing into our body so our life energy evens out and we are able to open into our experience with clarity and poise.

Our life force energy is already there. The work is simply to release blockages and re-align the system.  In this way, our “lungta” is sustainable.  It flows gently through us like a warm river on a frozen morning.Its February. We will be slower, stiffer and more cranky. That’s how the world is on the extreme latitudes. There’s no need to fight that constriction. Instead, we can relax into the flow of the coming spring, gently opening to our experience and perhaps open a new (or old) book.

So, welcome to the year of the WOOD SHEEP where warmth and safety is the culmination of your hard work.

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