Category: EVENTS

I am writing this on Juneteenth, a holiday in the US that has recently become a national observance, although many states have yet to institute that. The date marks the anniversary of the legal emancipation of enslaved people on June 19, 1865.  A day we not only celebrate the independence American slaves, but also acknowledge the great suffering that Slavery created, the reverberations of which continue to this day.

Today may remind us of the trauma humans inflict on each other when they are driven by economic pressure, racial prejudice, hatred and ignorance. Optimistically, it may mark an ongoing movement to attempt to address the wrongs committed by our national social and economic reliance on slavery and perhaps the wrongs instituted by racism and hatred then and since.

How could a country that longed to be a world leader have remained economically beholden to the enslavement of humans well past the point other nations had shunned the practice? How did something as ethically and morally dubious as slavery become an integral part of its social base? How could this society declare that all men (sic) were created equal, endowed with a God-given right to freedom when, in truth, the freedom of a few was secured by the oppression of others?  Perhaps, rather than saying “freedom for all”, they may have said, “freedom from all.”   The founding fathers may well have seen themselves as the God-chosen few, and others as … well, other.  As much as hatred or bigotry play significant parts in the hearts of extremists, it is the failure to recognize the humanity of those unlike them that allowed them to systemically turn a blind eye to such cruelty.  Cruelty is different when applied to property rather than humanity.  Whether it was slaves, women or children much harm was inflicted upon those deemed property. It is easy to justify cruelty when it is inflicted on property. Hence, educated and “aware” people could be blind to their actions. There were many who spoke against slavery as they dressed in the fine cotton clothing available at an affordable price. Many of us still do.

Are we so different today? Where are we blind to how, despite our best intentions, we might be contributing to societal imbalances?

The wrongs of slavery were historic, but also have created a human trauma that exists contemporaneously. The disparity between those we consider like us, those we see as other and those we believe are against us are standards very much embedded in our culture. While this exists along racial lines, it also happens along gender and religious lines, as well as and lines of sexual orientation and expression. Otherness is very common to our society. Seen as a spectrum, there are levels from the relatively innocuous to the egregious that manifest as appreciating a different culture, to shunning them, to actually seeing them as an enemy to your way of life. As explained by the character Demosthenes in Ender’s Game, the ability to accept another as an equal is not an acknowledgement of their spiritual evolution, but of our own.

Juneteenth, and the idea of reparations, are much debated. Maybe this is sparking a conversation we need to have right now. And maybe we can look at this from a personal point of view. What harms have I caused others that require some repair? The point of reparations is not self-denigration, but possibly self-liberation. How can I free myself from the entanglements of the past, by acknowledging when I have harmed others? How can I use that to try and assuage the damage? Amends to another is not always practical, or possible.  However, it is always possible to take responsibility for my own behavior and understand its effects. By acknowledging my own prejudices I can grow beyond bias and begin to see how I other others. When do I segregate my feelings into categories of “othering” – those I appreciate, those I appropriate, those I tolerate, and those I hate.

And when am I using this system of segregation as a moral high ground? For, looking down on another, is a very effective  way to other another. Looking down on those I feel are in the wrong (perhaps even wronging others) makes me feel good about myself and protects my cherished point of view from the threat of change. The truth is, we only see a fraction of what is just before us. Actually, we only see a fraction of what we actually see. We select and choose what is important to us before we are ever conscious of doing so. For the meditator, the antidote to ignorance is developing mindfulness. This is our very personal repairation. We recognize when our consciousness is ensconced in a thought, which is often a frame or a point of view.  And we release ourselves for the grip into a new and more creative way of being.

Maybe today is about beginning conversations as a way to step toward acknowledgement and reparation. Being willing to question ourselves is not demeaning. It’s not attributing guilt or fault. It’s just developing the strength to see what we are otherwise missing, especially when we believe we are right.

The practice of meditation allows us to uncover how we hurt others while we develop the compassion and kindness not to inflict harm upon ourselves. From a Buddhist perspective, any time we distance ourselves from aspects of our world, we are acting with aggression. We might do this by hating them, or what they stand for, but more commonly, we do this every time we lock someone behind a self-protective protective frame. How often has our internal dialogue dismissed someone with “oh there are so crazy today”? Are we listening to each other?

Coming back to the breath we leave our frame and step into the openness of the naked present. We can step back within ourselves and see our tendency to push away, or drw closer in order to avoid intimacy. Coming back to the breath is very intimate. It’s a way of accepting ourselves in the present, which will allow us to accept others. By accepting ourselves we can begin to accept how we have caused harm to others. By acknowledging that, we can learn how to be more conscious and more kind in the future.

Reparations, amends and forgiveness do not change the past. But they may change our future.

Last week we discussed letting go from the point of view of releasing our grip. We spoke about this as not being getting rid of anything, but releasing our grip on a few things so we can gain access to everything else. This doesn’t mean we dont touch on things we need or appreciate, but that we are willing to let go of our grip, so we can move on to what’s next. We’re  effectively touching in and then letting go as a process of moving forward.

In my coaching, I use the analogy of rope climbing. We move up our life-cliff one hand at a time, reaching forward and then releasing as we go. Holding is actually an important part of this process. Mindfulness is, after all, holding to an object (Tibetan: Trenpa). We do this to stabilize the mind so it relaxes into awareness. This allows us to see more clearly. We call the fusion of awareness and clarity “presence” or “presently knowing,” as in being presently aware (Tib: Sheshin). This presence allows us to relax into the flow of life.

Once we come back to the present, it’s important we remember to let go. In the Shambhala tradition they call this “touch and go“.  If we don’t let go then mindfulness becomes fixation. The point of our meditation isn’t to become experts at breathing. It is to use the breath to synchronize with the present. We do this so we can let go into the flow of life. Fixation obscures awareness by closing down on an object. We lose objective awareness and see our own projections as real. Rather than a point in actual reality, our mentally imagined projection becomes the reference point.  When this happens, we become fixated on our mind, rather than connected to our life. Instead of using a taut rope to pull ourselves upward, once we intuit that our rope is not real, we become frozen. Our reference point becomes more important than our life. We become stuck on the cliff face afraid to let go.

However, the rope of our mindfulness is always there if we remember to come back to it. We touch into the present and then let go into the flow of life. LIfe is not static. Life is dynamic and in constant motion. This is why I’m not comfortable with terms like “being in the Now.” It’s as though now is a thing we can possess. But the only things we truly possess are the imagined fixations and attachments of our mind. Reality is much more fluid. The present moment is an exciting place as anything might happen. However, that can also be unsettling. It’s like looking down from the cliff. As we said, our tendency is to freeze (fixate) in response to fear. This is how fear forges attachments. Attachments are things we cling to when we are afraid to let go into the flow of life. However, the good news is that the remedy for fear-based clinging is to let go. Just return to the breath. When we do this, we are no longer locked in the mind. And the mind becomes able to perceive the world. 

A common technique in developing mindfulness is to use the breath as our reference point – in the case of the cliff analogy, it is our rope. When we connect to the rope (Tib: Tendril), we are stabilizing our awareness.  We can connect to the breath in formal meditation as well as on the spot in life when we become triggered. When we become triggered, we feel attacked and our reflexive tendency is to shut down or fixate in defence. However, connecting to the breath we can actually breathe though this mental panic and relax back into the presence of real life. As the breath always happens in the present, when we become mindful of breathing we are becoming present.  Mindfulness of the breath is also a natural relaxant, so connecting to the breath allows us to relax into the present. Relaxing into the present we are developing presence, the power of presently knowing (Tib: Sheshin).

When we relax into the present we have what Trungpa, Rinpoche referred to as panoramic awareness. We are able to see the space around things rather than attach to those things as things we attach to. As we ascend the cliff and are able to see more of the life around us, our attachments become appreciation. Rather than closing our eyes to the world, we are learning to open them without distraction. It is said, we begin to “see pain and pleasure alike as adornments, which are pleasant to wear.”  We are able to touch on the wonderful things in life without having to own them. By developing mindfulness, we learn to touch and then let go into awareness. In other words, we come back to the present in order to let go into the flow of our life.

And our life is always happening here in the present, whether we are aware of it or not. Our job is to return to it so we can move on with it.  This essential existential synchronization can happen anytime we remember. It doesn’t matter how long we were lost in our mind. Once we return to the present, we are back. The rope is always there. When we fixate, we become stuck in our mind. But no matter how long we were gone, or how compelling our fantasies were, when we come back to the present, we synchronize with the flow of our life, already in progress.

Then instead of being stuck in our life, we can learn to move on.

 

(PIcs are the remarkable banksy, of course… )

When we talk about letting go we usually think of getting rid of something or pushing something away. But this negative is perhaps more work than necessary. From a positive point of view, rather than struggling with anything, we can see letting go as adding space by releasing our grip. Letting go can be seen as opening up and relaxing into the flow of our life instead of grasping and clinging to the straws on the shore.

When we attach to something we distort our perception of it and ourselves.  We imbue the object with qualities it doesn’t necessarily have and open up a number of programs in our deep psychology, such as fears of failure or abandonment, that only cloud our understanding. Hence, Buddhists look at attachment as causing “obscurations” to clear seeing or true understanding. Rather than strangling things we love so they will never leave us, we can actually honor them by stepping back and seeing them more clearly.

The same is true of the things we fear and those we wish to avoid.  While it’s obvious to see our clinging to things we love, it’s harder to understand that hatred or disinterest are also forms of fixation. When we keep arguing with someone in our minds, we are clearly attached to them. The more we try and push them away the more stuck with them we become. Similarly, dissociation and procrastination can be the result of attachment to avoiding underlying, unregarded fears.

I used to speak at the Shambhala Center of New York and there was a student who came regularly and regularly had a list of complaints about community founder Trungpa Rinpoche. I always honored his point of view because critical intellect is so important to true understanding. But at some point his point was made and made again and yet the complaints continued.  Finally, I told him that I wished I had as much devotion to Trungpa as he had. His one-pointedness was impressive. Yet, if he was willing to let go just a bit, he may have experienced other points of view.  Letting go is not an admission that we are wrong, or that our affection was misplaced, it’s simply that maybe we can understand more fully if we step back. I call this offering a “loving space.” It’s not a dismissal, it’s a way of understanding.

When we become attached, we actually identify some aspect of our experience with the object. One aspect of this is when we become dependent upon a relationship of any kind.  We might lose perspective and get lost in a tug of war of need. I need this or I need that. This doesn’t allow room for either partner to be themselves.  We call this codependent.  Some people look at codependency as two people who co-trigger each other. But from a Buddhist perspective, we understand that it’s our attachment not someone else’s. The work for us is to avoid blaming anyone or expecting them to change, but to recognize that trying to fix things is still fixation. The remedy is easier than we imagine.  All we need to do is loosen our grip and take a step back.

Again, letting go is not pushing anything away. That is another form of fixation. “I don’t want it!” doesn’t mean we are seeing clearly. It’s about perspective. Stepping back need not be dismissive. In fact, it can be loving. It’s adding loving space.

From an experiential point of view, we are talking about the difference between gripping and opening. With regular meditation practice we develop mindfulness of body. We can actually feel our body gripping as it happens. Our stomach tightens, our jaw clenches, our brow furrows. All of these are ways of closing down and fixing. I had a student who was actually frowning when we were discussing joy. I asked her about this, and she said she was thinking about what I said. But it felt more like blocking. It seems joy is an experience that begs us to open. The same is true of so much of life. Whether we love it, hate it or just want to get away, if we cling to it, we are shutting down and making everything more important than it needs to be.

Letting go can be seen as releasing the grip and opening the loving space within our life.

 

RAIN

I.ve been thinking about the rain. Rain is lifegiving. It can be cleansing, healing, and rejuvenating. The sound of falling rain is a natural relaxant. And yet, it is a frequent nuisance and under some circumstances, deadly. From a grand perspective, rain is inherently neutral. Yet, its manifestation could be a blessing or a catastrophe depending on circumstances.

In Buddhist Five Wisdom psychology we draw parallels between the natural elements of the world we live in and the emotions that live within us.  Sadness and depression are as natural as the rain. Emotions can be joyous or painful depending on our interpretation. And any feeling can be healing if we allow it. The key is to avoid taking it personally. This depersonalization is easier said than done, particularly with regard to strong emotions that sometimes feel so very personal. The stronger we feel, the more it feels like something is happening to me.

And that’s like blaming ourselves for the rain.

Of course, we can look at ourselves for not checking the weather before we left the house without an umbrella. This is to say that although the rain is not happening because of us we can use our rational intelligence and some investigation to work with the weather. The same is true of our feelings. They are immensely powerful, and they have the potential to be our teachers or agents of chaos depending on if we are willing to work with them. And my favorite way of working through emotions is a process described in the acronym RAIN. I love the elliptical reasoning here.

Thinking about emotions, when we are caught in their downpour (or upheaval) we are sometimes swept away in a torrent.  Pema Chodron famously refers to this as being “hooked” by the feeling. If we look at emotions as being as natural as the weather, we can regard the experience as natural. If we are willing to work WITH the feelings, we can turn a neurotic reaction into a wisdom experience. The essence of Buddhist transformative psychology is turning our neurosis into wisdom. That always felt inaccessibly academic to me until I was taught that we are not transforming the emotion, we are transforming our reaction to it. In order to do this we recognize that we are hooked by a feeling and immediately accept the emotion as a natural occurrence. Then without judgement or recrimination we can look at the feeling and learn from it. This is a step-by-step process in letting go of our personal attachment to the energy and allowing the energy to be as it is.

RAIN.

RECOGNITION is the first step.  It is important  that we avoid judgement here and simply see what is happening. Not, why or how, but just what is happening. This is akin to the parable about the Buddha and the soldier. The Buddha pointed out that when struck by an arrow, the first step is to address the arrow. In the 12-step tradition, the first step is the recognition and admission of our addiction. We identify the problem before we endeavor to fix anything.  We are recognizing the essential quality of what’s going on right now without looking getting ahead of the game.  Recognition of being stuck or caught  is all we do here. But the next step comes quite quickly on its heels.

ACCEPTANCE is letting go of any judgement or concept we have about the feeling. It’s just feeling the feeling.  It’s important that this step comes before the third step of investigation because we are accepting before we investigate. Otherwise, when we get to investigation, our investigation is compromised because we’re trying to fix something.  We’ve all done that with another person when we’ve jumped the gun and tried to fix them out of our own impatience, ego aggrandizement or our control issues. This makes a mess because we’re not actually taking the time to listen.  Acceptance is about pausing and allowing yourself to feel (listen). In some cases, all we need is recognition to reduce the emotional inflammation. But sometimes, we need to go further, and dig a bit deeper.

The next stage is INVESTIGATION. Instead of lashing out with our projections, we turn inward.  Instead of acting out we’re touching in. When it comes to this self-reflection, we’re still not trying to fix anything. We are just trying to relate to what’s there. And we will learn from experience that this will evolve as we go further. So, we don’t have to ‘get it right’. We take our first thought and then as we look / feel further into the experience, we might discover another layer. Commonly, anger is actually masking sadness underneath.  When we recognize ‘this is anger’ without judgment or recrimination, we can see how it actually feels. This is another step-in depersonalizing. We are taking a wider view. This is inquisitiveness. We are investigating what we are here to discover.  When we uncover layers of truth, they are usually different from our preconceptions. That’s the distinction between an amateur pandering in conspiracy theories online and a real investigator. The real investigator may never reach a convenient truth as they endeavor to look cleanly at the facts without popular interpretation. In this way, we are avoiding clickbait in order to experience what we are feeling.

Often what we discover is that this process diminishes the experience. And sometimes that is disappointing. Are we willing to allow the inflammation of our egoic reactions subside so we can see clearly. Often when we are triggered, we react as though we were unwilling to heal. It’s as if our ego thinks that we are giving in. But surrender in this case is letting go of the personal struggle so that we can return to balance. If we’re honest we’d have to admit that sometimes we don’t want to heal. We’d rather be right or gain retribution. We want justice! But are those not ego designations that actually keep us locked in samsara – that endless loop of retribution and salvation?

NON-IDENTIFICATION happens when we are willing to heal by allowing ourselves to let go. And when we gain perspective and begin to see clearly.  This is not my sadness.  It’s just sadness. This is the rain. It’s not my rain. The rain falls on everyone at some point. This is not my anger it is just anger. When we are brave enough to really be with how it feels to be human, we see below the story into the feeling, and we are able to stop clinging for or against the experience. We begin to glean that as personal as it feels, it is not about me.

Thus, investigation serves to disabuse us of taking it personally.  Because we’re starting to look more and more clinically, we’re able to step back and see the situation as it is.  In time, we are less inclined to be caught up in these otherwise natural energies and no longer allow ourselves to be tortured by them. Instead, we are able to ride their considerable energies, let go and allow the natural elements of life to nurture us.

Tara Brach teaches the “N” as nurturing. I love that, and I love the relationship of Nurturing, to letting go to non-identifying. When we learn to love ourselves, we no longer need to cling to others, and we become less fearful of our feelings and more able to let go into the flow of our lives. So, nurturing our heart is the way we gain the strength it takes to ride the energy of our feelings. And then we are on the horse that rides the wind, as the Tibetans would say.

We are riding windhorse.

 

Yesterday was Mother’s Day. I’m missing my mother. Trudy was an angel and someone who loved me unconditionally. Each mother’s day seems to echo in the silence of her absence. Yet, my promise to her is to develop my heart to love as hers did.  With that view, it’s not helpful to wallow in my sadness. The root of our meditation training, points to the possibility of holding our hearts open even as they break.

Yesterday was the anniversary of the racially motivated shootings in Buffalo. And if that tragedy takes a moment to mentally reboot, perhaps it says a lot about the morbid new normal we’ve come to live with. And I am moved to think of the mothers who have lost children in senseless gun violence that plagues our homes, neighborhoods and schools. And all mothers who have loved unconditionally despite their loss. We live in a difficult and violent society that nonetheless needs our love and attention.

The Mahayana Buddhist teachings liken compassion to the experience of a mother bird who’s chick has fallen from its nest into a flowing river. Her heart breaks with no recourse but to love and experience loss. When faced with tragedy she could shut down in a vain attempt to protect herself, or she could open up despite the pain and care for the life still around her.  Her reason for being is the life that depends on her.  Of course, this is an ideal look at a mother. Many have had complicated relationships with their mothers and some may not equate their mother with selfless care and love. But the experience of compassionate love is available to us all. We can’t fix anything. But we can train ourselves to love someone somewhere unconditionally. With that foothold we can work to develop that feeling of love for all sentient beings. That is the view. But, will this help?  Will it fix a sick world? Maybe not. But when a child is sick we don’t love it less. If the child dies, we don’t stop loving them.

Our hearts breaking inthe open space of sadness is a profound experience. The Mahayana Buddhist system regards service to the world as our prime directive despite our pain.  We are not here to squeeze all the joy out of life that we can.  Nor are we here to continually nurture our wounds. Healing comes as we learn to find joy in our broken world as it is. We find authentic joy when we remain true and loving despite our wounds. We become strong when we stay true and loving despite our doubts. We become mothers of the world when we decide to let ourselves love unconditionally.

Another ideal statement of Mahayana Buddhism is for us to regard all beings as our mothers. The classical reading of the teachings refer to the fact that we are all part of the continued recycling of life in our realm. The ancient texts say that we have lived every conceivable life countless times over. Included in that reincarnative dance was that all of us have been everyone else’s mother and because of that, we owe all beings a debt of gratitude. A more progressive reading of the teachings might suggest that we are all part of the loving regeneration of life. We are interconnectedly woven as part of the fabric of life. Although life dies in its corporeal form, it is connected to the life from which it came even as it continues in the regeneration of life to come. The idea that we are connected to all other life is a very compelling thought. The fact that all life ends is accompanied by the truth that life is continually reborn. Thus sadness and joy are the experience of all sentient life. Love is large enough to encompass both. Love encompasses all experience.

Perhaps we are mothers of our world right now. If we turn away in judgement or disgust, we renege on a responsibility to care for our charges. As we are interconnected to that life, when we turn from our world, we turn from ourselves as well. Maybe today, we can remember the love of a mother whether literally or figuratively as an inspiration for developing  selfless love. Will that selfless love change the world?  Possibly not. But with the development of great compassion, we might transform ourselves.