Category: Teaching

PATIENCE, THE KEY TO SYNCHRONICITY

Learning to work with anxiety is an important practice for anyone trying to maintain mindful balance in their lives. How often are we thrown off-course in life due to reacting unmindfully when prompted by our fear. Something feels wrong, and before we can look into what that may be, we spring forward as if to escape the discomfort. I can’t count the times I have made missteps in my life by lurching blindly.

The alternative is to breath out and take a moment to break the blind momentum. Learning to live mindfully requires this application of patience.

Anxiety prompts us to move. And although we register being anxious as a problem, anxiety is natural to anyone with a nervous system. It’s the inflammation of our largely unseen neurological system. In spiritual and wellness traditions this energy system is seen as our lifeforce. Whether we call it “prana”, “Chi” or “Windhorse” this lifeforce is how we feel. Although it holds sway over a good portion of our experience, it remains a silent partner to our consciousness. When we are in balance that life force flows evenly, buoying our spirits. But when the lifeforce is impeded or provoked in a defensive response, we feel uncomfortable. Anxiety has a triggering effect that causes programmed places in the body to seize up and grip in a neurological reaction. This is interpreted as signaling danger. These places of gripping in the body distort the flow of our lifeforce, which in turn, channels our thinking and wellbeing.   Anxiety registering in the body triggers what Jon Kabat-Zinn referred to as catastrophic thinking. We go immediately to the “nuclear options” of fight, flight, or freeze.

This unease might register with a tapping of the foot or a clicking of the pen. But before we know it, we are moving. As if trying to shed this reactive skin we need to run, drink, eat, dance or lash out against someone we love. We are barking at the shadows in our mind in blind attempts to free ourselves. Anxiety moves us more surely than any inspiration or aspiration. Yet, the blindness of reaction means that we are not mindful of this movement. So, we often jump further into the fire.

Meditation practice works to calm the nervous system. In time, consistent daily practice will create a buffering space between impulse and action – and specifically between anxiety and reaction. We can train ourselves to feel uneasy and not react in animal action but to pause, just a moment, in order to allow our higher functioning to inform the process.  We allow ourselves to feel uneasy long enough to make a beneficial decision.

Buddhist teachings refer to the paramita of Patience as an important practice in allowing us to develop mindfulness. But in our culture, we place a moral spin on this otherwise practical tool. We mistake the tool of patience for resignation as we ‘grin and bear it’. However, in Buddhist Paramita Practice Patience is seen as a pause in our reactic=ve momentum that leads to greater tolerance, understanding and offers us a fresh start free of habitual reactions. Rather than reacting, we are responding. And if our view is to develop mindful awareness in our life, anxiety can be seen as a prompt to take a beat and see what is actually happening. In this case, employing the breath to calm the nervous system is a very simple but effective tool.  When in the throes of a panic reaction, the idea of taking a beat, or taking a breath seems innocuous. When we are in an anxiety state we mistake our panic for reality. And we become very important to ourselves. This brings about the catastrophic thinking Kabat-Zinn referred to. The more important we feel our problems are, the more important we seem to become. Ironically, this disconnects us from ourselves as our mind and body become desynchronized and we enter a very impacted state of being.

Yet, the remedy is simple. We ignore our inflammed ego and simply pause and connect to the experience of our breathing. Our breathing is largely happening in the body and our awareness will allow the nervous reaction to settle. As the body relaxes it releases some of its gripping tension and the mind can rest in the present where it can do its best, most effective work. In meditation parlance, this is called synchronizing mind and body. And when mind and body are in synch, our lifeforce returns to balance and flow. We are synchronizing with our life in the present. Rather than agitating our life by reacting to anxiety, we are accepting the anxiety with patience and responding to life accurately.

The practice of meditation is the basic template for developing the patience that leads to a mindful understanding of ourselves that is deeper than the reactive worlds we inhabit when fueled by anxiety.  In this way, when we sit like a Buddha we are learning to wake up.

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.