Category: Performances

The unreliable narrator is a technique used by writers to tell their story from a point of view that is changing, altered, or diminished in some respect. This creates a sense of un-ease in the reader. However, despite its temporal unreliability, this technique often reads as organic as it feels closer to how our minds actually work. One mistake uncreative the writer makes is to try and force the organic flow of reality into a two-dimensional, linear narrative. There is a sense of comfort in aligning the forces of our life inside the lines, but it is simply not the way our mind naturally flows. Nor, is it how the reality around us actually works.

Meditation Master Chogyam Trungpa would sometimes tell his students, “You are not a reliable witness.” Simply said, life is organic. It flows, changes, and develops. Navigating life requires a great deal of letting go. Life also returns to themes. So, by watching our own mind at work, the meditator learns to recognize patterns rather than grab on to specifics. Specifics become real to us as we cling to them, but that interrupts the organic flow of our mind, and it decreases our ability to see the space around that to which we cling. We lose context. And the clinging builds a sense of expectation. We try to straighten the wavering lines of the narrative into a form we find comforting.  Then we make up our version of the details.

Our version of the details often coalesces around themes we find self-identifiable. “We are at fault and the world is punishing us”, “we are misunderstood and always alone”, “we are amazing, and life is great.” Perhaps each morning we shout in the mirror “I believe in myself, and life is what I make it”, but then end our day in despair because we’ve turned into the same dissatisfying game again. We all have central points around which we build the (false) narratives of our lives. As this is not how we really are, nor how reality works, our self-story creates a cognitive dissonance with life. It is as though we are always fighting upstream. Trying to fit square pegs into round holes, we end up pounding our way through life. But our meditation experience suggests our journey through life might be much more elegant. Through the self-awareness we develop in meditation practice, we see the stubborn attachment we have to make our story fit the circumstance.  It seems we have it turned around. Maybe we’re going about it backwards.

Letting go of our attachment to having life make sense, we find that life is about discovery. Any given moment is its own thing. Each moment is not obligated to our interpretation. Reality just is.  In the Vajrayana tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, they refer to “just so”, “life as it is” or “things as they are” as the highest understanding. The comedian Lenny Bruce startled his milieu by asking his audience to see ‘what is’ rather than ‘what should be.’ This shift in narrative requires us to look beyond the solid points in our story and see what is truly there. This means seeing beyond our looking. It means seeing beyond our expectations. Our meditation practice gives us the familiarity with our patterns, narratives, and stories to be able to recognize them and to let them go. So, it is our work to recognize the patterns, let go and see beyond. Perhaps what we see is less definable than we find comfortable. Maybe, ‘what is’ is unclear and yet to be revealed. But, if we smile at our story, and continue to let go and see beyond, this journey through life becomes a discovery rather than a rote striking out of the things we think we should be doing. Maybe today our world will be revealed as more alive than we think.

The writer who follows the flow and patterns of their story as it reveals itself to them allows the story to tell itself.  A creative writer is, at their base, simply an observer.  They may be a chronicler or even a director of the narrative flow. But it is essential for the story to have integrity and for the story to reveal itself as it develops. It is said, believe half of what you see and less of what you hear. Mediators might add none of what you think. This is not to say, we go through life blind. Far from it. We are removing the blinders of ego-warped misperception and beginning to see what is there.

The great playwright Harold Pinter grew up in the rough east end of post-World War 2 London. He endured violence, antisemitism, and poverty. He said the most frightening experience was the blank page inserted in his typewriter each morning. While many of the dangerous elements in his life led to predictable outcomes, with the blank page anything might happen.  And so, Pinter might have shuttered his eyes and written formulaic drawing room comedies that reiterated familiar story lines. This would have made him financially comfortable, but would have robbed us of the perplexing, unsettling explorations of moment-to-moment existence that perplexed audiences and transformed modern theater. His plays eschewed stage description, backstory, and character explanation in favor of moments on stage that simply led to the next moment. And in this way, without over-explanation, the story was revealed as it happened in a way that made little sense, but felt absolutely real.

Maybe there is only one thing worth having on our bucket list. To allow life to reveal itself.

SADNESS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WORKING WITH ANGER

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or are we working to wake up?

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

THE NEXT STEP

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, … it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope…”  

In perhaps the greatest run on sentence in literary history, Dickens painted the picture of the modern epoch. This is a precariously magnificent time, a time of unfiltered hatred and burgeoning compassion. Humanity is waking up slowly, but the raging hangover of past indulgences is nonetheless clashing awkwardly with the beauty of a bright new day.

But, are we awake or asleep?

Buddhist texts refer to these times as the dark age; a time when good and bad rise to a head. It is not dark as in ‘dark obscuring the light’, but, dark illuminated by light. If we are able to leap into believing in the inherent goodness of humankind we can see this as a time when our resistsnce and neurosis become more apparent.  And, hence a time when healing and resolution are most accessible. Rather than leaving darkness sequestered in the night, we have an opportunity to bring this to the light and work with the defensive urges that have been motivating human behavior for so long.

Unlike Christian stories of Armageddon where good and evil square off in a movie directed by Michael Bay, the Buddhist version has more to do with a knitting of fabrics, a coming together of elements into a new compound. Maybe more like a film by Daron Aaronovsky. Which means a psychic blending of tendencies that never resolve into easy answers – or a simple movie.  On one hand, we have good and evil becoming more opposed until one – presumably good – wins out. Perhaps the modern definition of good is that which wins out. On the other hand, we have good and evil – light and dark – entwined in a dance fantastique that will spin until the pieces blend, the bubble pops, and a new agency is formed.

Tantric master Trungpa Rinpoche likened these times to a cosmic pimple popping – a heightening of neurosis and wisdom that leads to an opening from which new possibilities are formed. One doesn’t defeat the other so much as their clashing brings about greater awareness of pain and the suffering caused by an inapropriate relationship to pain.

It is my belief that we can navigate this confluence and take agency in the coming singularity. By training the mind in mindful awareness we gain control of impulses, by slowing down the point of impact and creating a buffer that allows us the time to RESPOND consciously rather than REACT reflexively. By learning to learning to guide ourselves from one trigger to the next without fistraction or reaction we can possibly learn to help  humanity through the turmoil into its next phase. Whether that phase is a greater sense of space and understanding leading to a flowering or its much predicted demise, may be in our hands. And the time to gain MANUAL control of the micro steps of our destiny may be right now.

In order to navigate this grand confluence we might have to slow down and begin to unpack the presumptive reasoning of being right. How do we see beyond our framed thinking into an acceptance of all that is coming toward us without losing ourselves? Well, maybe we can stand to loose some of ourselves. Or even a lot of ourselves. Maybe we can begin by recognizing all that keeps us from assimilation, and simply relax into the convergence, turn off our aggression and float into change WITH OUR EYES OPEN.

Working with synchronicity is a process of letting go and yet navigating the flow. Unlike other traditions that imply we can either resist or comply with a script, the Buddhist point of view  is that once we awaken – that is when we become conscious – we can navigate rather than aquiece or resist and in effect co-create the script of exustence with the universe. The universe, in this case, is the karmic web created by past actions moving in various vectors into future space. It is like an ocean of currents, each with thier own momentum. Navigating these currents means accepting thier existence and sitting up above the water line, being able to see where we are heading, and having the resolve to move away from the momentum of self interest into the undefined waters of discovery.

Navigating the white water confluence of past actions into future possibility takes letting go of our aggression, self-interest and resistance and allowing the natural change of things to take place. By keeping our eyes open during the change we can move into the open space of possibility, discovery and communication. Looking into the fear, darkness and aggression of our ancient pain, we can see our suffering in others. Understanding how misunderstanding our pain has caused us to act blindly, hurting ourselves and others, we can see how others have done the same to us. We are all fighting ancient demons snd blaming each other for our pain. We are all human and we are all suffering by our own hand. If we see this, pethaps the possibility of repairing that cycle of aggression is possible.

With our eyes open into the turmoil we can keep our balance and begin to pull each other from the roil. Or, with eyes and fists clenched against the current we will drown ourselves and each other. Maybe the duality isnt between good and evil, left and right or right and wrong. Its about seeing or ignoring. Either we wake up communicate and learn to stabilize the world of compassion, or shut down and solidify a world of hate, pain and aggression.

So, is this the best of worlds ir the worst?

Yes. It is both and because of that it is a magnificant time to be awake.

Stress is considered a detriment to health. Lowering stress is a commonly stated  motivator bringing people to meditation. There we escape into interior landscapes of calm. We have apps that guide us into internal relaxation free of stress. This is all well and good until we get out in the street and someone buried in their smart phone slams into us, spilling our chill all over our shirt.

While these various  forms of escapist meditation bring relief from stress, they dont address the actual problem: tension caused by stress.  We can go to a yoga retreat in Kuai, a medicinal a salt bath in Utah or a deep chakra cleansing in Oregon. Still, three days later that tenacious stress is there. Maybe we should move, get a new job or softer shoes. But, all of that is so stressful. So there’s Xanax. Xanax works, but pills are cheating. And we know they’re cheating so they’re not really working. There’s Zen. And thats better than pills, but soon that all that Zen makes us so bored we start getting stressed thinking of how to bring more stress into our life.

So, maybe stress gets a bad rap.  Its clear that some stress is important for us to learn and grow. And each of us respond differently to different stress points. One person is paralyzed at the thought of public speaking, while another may thrive on the opportunity. Some may love physical thrills and extreme sports while others freeze on the way up a diving board. So, maybe stress gets a harsh rap. I mean, if you didn’t value stress, even a little bit, what are you doing in New York City? Or, Baltimore? Or, anyplace in the current United States, for that matter?

I believe its not stress that does the harm, as much as the tension we create in relation to it. Tension is a refexive / reactive physical gripping within the body. Its like putting on imaginary breaks while sitting in the passenger seat. Things are not going as we want them to, and mistaking this as a threat, we clamp down and avoid the opportunity to work WITH the situation. Its this gripping in the body that creates discomfort and injury.

On the other hand when we thrive on stress its because we have learned not to fear the opportunity and we meet stress with relaxation instead of tension. Serena Williams or Aaron Rodgers navigate stress for a living. They do it through relaxation born of mind and body training. Its about training. Training the mind to see how the body feels and training the body to open to the experience. In this way, we navigate past stress by turning tension into attention by actually leaning in to the stress points.

This is so counter to our conditioning, which has programmed us to avoid suffering by a process of aquisitional bandaidery. We apply one “healing” modality atop the other until we are fitter, happier and healthier, pigs in a cage on antidepressants. (Appologies Mr. Yorke.) Societally, We are driven to buy, buy, buy until we are spinning so quickly, we no longer see how our life is robbed. This is stressful. So we clamp down on ourselves, stomping in a frenzied river dance trying to stop that wheel so we can breath.

But breath happens as we relax. And relaxation happns as we become aware. Awareness happens as we alliw ourselves the space and time to relax and tension, and pay attention to the life unfolding before us. Our life. What kind of blessing is that? Not only is stress instructional, it is elemental in creating enough tension in the body for us to wake up, release the tension, and relax into attention.

So, not only is stress not the problem, but even tension is not a problem if we use it as a reminder to release ourselves from its psycho/somatic imprisonment and open back into our life. It may not be as selfie-potent as that chakra cleansing in Kauai, but mindfulness training is a sustainable way to teach the body to bring itself back to balance in pressured times.