Things as they are

In illness, there is the profound opportunity to relate with things as they are and let go of the idea that we need to fix or change anything, precisely because illness can bring about the story that we won't survive unless we keep fixing things. I wrote this prose just today, about a moment some years ago:

Sometimes, as is life, things we want to last forever, break.
In one of these moments
as I stood in front of the mirror
I knew that time had moved on,
and I was swimming backwards.
This seeing brought me a vow:
That delight, would now be drawn from
things as they are.
Brokenness is a word that steals the
curves and branches of beauty
from the nowness of our souls.
Now, on the cusp of a brand new life,
where things live brightly
I give myself again to
the mysterious voices
so loving and tenderly
attuned.

Getting Smushed

I have been contemplating anger, since I have my fair share of it. I have someone in my life who likes to put me down, and unfortunately for now, I am stuck dealing with this person. Lately I have been trying to look deeply into the situation of my response. Feeling the tightness in my being, the judgment toward this other person and also toward myself for judging, and for being angry, has been painful.

I just wanted to share about seeing into anger, and how intense it is. I have at times been very afraid of anger. It is difficult to see oneself in a positive light when one feels anger on a regular basis. Especially if you have low self esteem, or tend to beat yourself up, anger can be something that is hard to acknowledge or look at. This is understandable, especially if you grew up with an angry parent. But it really is safe to look at anger. It isn't a monster, it is just thought and energy, and when looked at deeply with awareness, one can see that it is okay to feel anger in oneself and other people.

For me my struggle has been with being put down by someone. I did not want another person to carry with them the belief that I was bad. In looking deeply I see that it is okay that they felt that way, and that I don't need to defend myself. Why don't we need to defend ourselves? Isn't it important that we stop other people from abusing us? Yes, that is in fact important. If someone is abusing us we have to tell them to stop. But it is not the abuse I am concerned with, since that can be stopped in an instant. It is the consecutive thoughts and feelings that linger in both people. And those are the things that can be left alone. It really is okay to let go of what someone else is thinking of you, even if they hate you, or believe that they do. Even if you will have to see them every day. This is because awareness is supreme over the ego. Even though ego feels that it is the center of the universe, it is like a pool with no reflection. Ego thinks that it is solid, and if it looks in the mirror it will see itself, solid, reflected back. But when one actually looks there is no reflection at all. So one can be put down, and smushed, and this is okay. We can focus on what is important which is our own connection, development of stillness and love. Part of that development is feeling everything including our own anger, rage, and hatred.

What to do with loneliness and pain?

It has come to me recently that we all have within us the knowledge of what our deepest desires are. Our deepest desires are obscured by things we believe we want for ourselves. Because we think that these things will bring happiness and will satiate our true inner desire for freedom. When we become quiet, it seems that we can see our deepest desire for freedom, and the things that will lead us there and the things that will not.

Loneliness is a pervasive suffering that has saturated our world. This is something we all feel at times, and some more than others. We have created so many barriers to love and acceptance that we feel cut off and separate in new ways. What to do about it? It appears that surrounding ourselves with people is not the answer. Nor is filling the space with television and radio, internet and phone. In fact, anything we do to try to escape it is actually making it worse, because it is like we are placing a bandage over a disease that cannot heal. And so the disease festers while we continue to look away.

An antidote is to acknowledge our truest desire to be free, and this way, every loneliness and pain can be used as an opportunity to practice awareness. Every moment that we think we are alone, we can use as a moment to be present without distraction, or to love without obscuration. So loneliness is actually of great benefit, and takes us closer to the freedom of our deepest heart's desire. Let us be the people we really are, and not conform to what societal pressure tells us to be.

Generosity

I have been contemplating for many years the nature of the teachings on generosity that are found in all the wisdom traditions. Most of them say the same thing. In Buddhism, compassion is the highest state, and the most fruitful for all. In Tibetan Buddhism, the practice of tonglen, or exchanging one's self for others, in all situations, is said - if one can accomplish this completely - to bring total and complete enlightenment, and the most benefit for all beings. AsDilgo Khyentse Rinpoche said, "For those who can practice generosity like this, there is no suffering at all." (Taken from his teachings on Logong slogans from the comprehensive website,lojongmindtraining.com).

In Christianity, Jesus was clear, generosity is the key to the finding of one's genuine life, and connection to God, "He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it" (Matthew 10:39).

Rumi, the Sufi poet, said it succinctly for anyone who has ever owned a dog: "There are love-dogs no one knows the names of. Give your life to be one of them." In watching my dog, she embodies an incredible generosity that I cannot even begin to imagine in myself...

And as the Bhagavad Gita says, in the passage that Gandhi meditated on morning and night for the entirety of his adult life, "They are forever free who have broken out of the ego-cage of "I" and "mine" to be united with the Lord of Love. This is the supreme state. Attain thou this and pass from death to immortality."

In the reality of our daily lives, to practice this level of generosity is quite difficult. Our identities are so strong, and the fear of what will happen to us if we sacrifice our most dearly held qualities, can be too strong to overcome. In fact, the line between more ego clinging to a "selfless self" which is a form of aggression, and actual self exchange, can be quite blurry at times. And make no mistake, in exchanging self for other, there is an actual sacrifice. It is not that we will be so immediately rewarded for generosity that our ego will be sufficiently fed. It is true that in certain moments of exchange, when we realize that we actually have the power to help another being, at the expense of ourselves, we do stand to lose something. And perhaps the point is that the "something" that we stand to lose, must be examined more closely.

But also, there is an important point about generosity. To make this exchange, to trust so completely in the emptiness of the self, can be tricky. We don't really know how much we have integrated emptiness, sometimes, until we freak out about a perceived loss. Dilgo Khyentsesays it this way:

"Now, when training in giving away your happiness to others, it is unwise to try to give to all beings right from the start. For beings are countless and your meditation will not be stable, with the result that you will derive no benefit from the practice."

He is making a point that we must actually benefit from practice. Benefiting ourselves is actually an aspect of exchanging self for others. Self development, or rather, self-less development, which could also be called the accumulation of wisdom, is necessary as well. In my own life, there have been times when I did much more for the good of all, by ignoring the cries of suffering of certain people whom I loved very much, in exchange for healing my own being, so that I have a hope of possibly being available to them sometime in the future.

What happens, though, when we feel bereft of wisdom? Do we cease to feel that we can give? Rumi said,

"Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment is intuition." Certainly the wisdom that Buddhists talk about is not akin to cleverness, however, Buddhists are clear that bewilderment is a klesha, a defilement, one that is replaced in enlightenment (enlightenment in the momentary sense, not the permanent) by non-conceptual knowing. I bring this up, because inevitably, an aspect of the path of awareness and awakening, will bring to light, just how confused we really are. This can feel overwhelming at times, the extent of our own ignorance!! How in light of this, and the immense fear that can come from knowing how unable we are to help ourselves and others, do we practice generosity? Could Rumi be right, that our very bewilderment, is an opening to others, to ourselves?

In contemplating the Buddha's words in the Nikaya -

"This Bhikkhus [this was how the Buddha addressed his monks, literally meaning, "one who sits with fear"], is The Noble Truth of the Cause of Suffering: It is that craving - compelling, intoxicating - which causes us to be born into things again and again, ever seeking fresh delight now here, now there; it is namely the craving for sensual delight, the craving to be something, and the craving to feel nothing."

- I am forced to step a tentative foot out onto the ice pond of my new found confidence in this teaching. It does seem true, that actually suffering, ALL suffering, is a result of attachment, specifically attachment to an illusory self, and therefore illusory accumulation of a pleasureful experience of self. And in light of this, any way that I can act on the illusory nature of the self, and experience, and this CONSTANT craving feel for pleasure can be seen as the cause of SUFFERING rather than the cause of joy, as the craving itself would have me ("me" - or the craving and craver as one) believe, that this would be a good thing.

But let's not cut off desire at the root. There will be some way, as the Tibetans say, that desire's root hairs will sprout again, stronger, as the one's left growing were more able to survive. In addition, desire is in truth our connection to the movement of things, how we move, flow, grow, expand, shift into non-dual awareness ultimately. I think the point is is to actual see how suffering comes about, the simple truth of it. Suffering is from craving, attachment, wanting. The subtle "no"; the subtle "please." And so we watch ourselves choose this suffering over and over again, living a lie that someday we will have what we want.

Looking more deeply at what we want, we find that it may have nothing to do with what we continuously crave, what we are addicted to grasping at. We all want the same thing: happiness, peace, freedom, release. So I am suggesting that in having contemplated these teachings on generosity and overcoming selfishness, that there is a key, a golden key, one that unlocks the door which we have been knocking on, as Rumi says, for a long time, as long as we can remember. "It opens. I have been knocking from the inside." It isn't that we want to be free from grasping, from attachment, or desire. It's that ultimately, we are free from these things, because we don't want delusion, we want reality. Real, ultimate truth. It is the only thing that satisfies. This is an aha moment. One that comes when we see how day in and day out, we want to become something else, and we never will be anything other than what we are.