Hasta Luego!

I will not be teaching during January and February so I will not be posting dharma talks during that time. And I will probably take even longer than usual to remember to check and publish any comments.

During this hiatus I invite you to explore the 85 dharma talks posted on this blog, or revisit them. If you have been meditating, attending classes, reading this blog and other sources on the subject, you are in a very different place than you were when you first heard or read these talks. You will find something that feels new, or something familiar that now makes more sense to you.

I also encourage you to attend classes, day longs or retreats at Spirit Rock. If you are not sure what teachers might resonate with you, you can listen to dharma talks by most of the teachers there on dharmaseed.org. You can download the talks for free and donate to the organization out of appreciation for what is freely given. The beauty of dana!

I am happy to say that the Tuesday class will continue in my absence. This is the nature of sangha. A class at first is about the concepts and finding the teacher most suited to share them with us at any given time. But eventually the sangha, the community of meditation practitioners becomes strong enough to want to keep meeting, with or without the teacher. This happened in our Friday class at Spirit Rock, when our original teacher Anna Douglas moved away. She assumed the class would cease, but we insisted on continuing and we found another teacher. Anna has been helpful over the years since she left in helping us to find the right teachers for our class, but the sangha has sustained itself throughout.

The past 80+ weeks of sharing the dharma with this dear group of meditators has been a true growth opportunity for me as a teacher, and also as a practitioner. I had not taught in many years when I began this class, and I have felt supported and encouraged at every turn by this sangha’s enthusiasm for the subject, dedication to attending class, wisdom, generosity and sense of caring for me.

I am also grateful to those blog followers who have shared their appreciation of the posts, both verbally and through dana.

Upon my return to teaching, besides the Tuesday class, to which all of you have an open initiation, I plan to do another 6 week series for beginners. Let me know if you are interested in either of those. Students and non-students alike are always invited to request one on one coaching in meditation to help fine-tune the practice or clear up any misunderstandings.

When I look back at the first post in this series, the one that explains the name of this blog and set my intention, I feel such gratitude that I have undertaken this way of exploring the dharma. When I teach, I learn in an in-depth way that is very satisfying to me. I was tentative at first, but I see clearly now that teaching is my path, and that the dharma is what I feel most compelled to share with others. May it be for the benefit of all beings.

But everyone needs a little time out, and so these next two months I will let the whirring wheels of my teaching mind rest and renew, while I learn the lyrics to my favorite mariachi tunes and savor the moments in my adopted town of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico and the friends we have made there.
I will still be available by email, so please feel free to contact me.
Many blessings, Stephanie

The Wisdom of this Season

On the recent retreat I attended, Teja Bell, who led us in Qi Gong twice a day, would teach us a gesture and once we got the sense of it, he would ask us to feel what it was like to use just 70% effort. Dialing it back a bit. What a concept! Not part of our cultural construct, the idea to try not giving 100%, or even 110%. More is always better, is it not?

I was reminded of when I used to do Nia, an aerobic dance exercise class, and we were taught to work from the core and not over-extend.

Both of these recommendations are based on body wisdom. What does the body need to be strong, resilient, healthy and comfortable? It needs to be listened to instead of dictated to by mental constucts of competitive goal setting and ideals of perfection. It needs a regular pattern of movements that keep the muscles, joints, tendons and bones healthy. When we over-do and over-extend, we break the pattern. We then have to stop doing what the body likes to do in order to recover, and that sets up the possibility of decline. While we are nursing our injury, we may get out of shape and out of balance, as we make accommodations for functioning with an injury. And once we’ve stopped our routine, getting started up again is always challenging, and there’s always the chance we just won’t bother. So this idea of not pushing it too far, not over-efforting, even when it runs counter to the ‘no pain, no gain’ ethic, is really best in the long run. The body knows this and we benefit when we honor its inherent wisdom.

The mind also benefits from body wisdom. When we sense in to the body and trust what it tell us, we find we are able to be more peaceful, kind, generous, resilient, balanced and happy.

The human body is an ambulatory extension of the earth. As Wes Nisker, another teacher on the retreat pointed out, we are earthlings, made of the same complex substance as the rest of our precious planet and all that grows on it. We are deeply connected, not just spiritually but in a very science-based physical way, to our earth, our Milky Way galaxy and our universe.

Thinking of the body in this larger context, we tap into the wisdom of the earth, sensing in to the seasons and taking our cues from them. And what is this wisdom of this season? What does every little burrowing animal know that we, in our distraction and busyness, often ignore?

All over the northern hemisphere the rest of the animal kingdom is slowing down, nestling in and in some cases hibernating. We think because we can click on the heater and flip on the electric lights that we have conquered seasonal variations. But is this really true? Theoretically we could pop No Doz or some comparable stay awake pill every night to keep us from feeling the need for sleep. But would that mean we don’t need sleep? Research has found that people who don’t have the opportunity to dream develop extreme mental conditions.

Perhaps our skipping the seasonal slowing down that comes with the winter solstice does similar damage. It’s possible. We might each want to do our own personal research to see what’s true for us. For most of us, we know that our body wisdom asks that we slow down, nestle in, be cozy, do less, consume less, expend less energy and use less effort. But it is often over-ruled by the corporate-driven cultural imperative to get busy shopping, hustling, partying and over-indulging!

It’s no wonder that so many people dread this time of year. For some it is simply dealing with so much darkness, so much stale-air indoor time, and the resulting sense of disconnection from nature, resulting in boredom and even depression. But for most of us it is more likely the result of this convergence of a biological need on the one hand and thoughts that we ‘should’ be doing more on the other.

Our sense of inadequacy comes into full flower in this season. Did I give enough? Did I buy the right things? Did I remember everyone? Am I over-doing it? or Why do I have so few people in my life to buy gifts for or close enough to spend the holidays with?

With seasonal over-indulgences, our bodies, usually so reliable all year long when treated in a reasonable manner, suddenly rebel. Too much dessert! Too much liquor! Too much talking! And so at the very time we want to feel our best to meet this challenging time, we sabotage our physical well being, and end up either sick or grumpy.

Illness is our bodies’ last resort to enforce a slow down. I certainly learned that the hard way back in the early 1990’s when I came down with chronic fatigue and was forced to quit my career as an ad exec and quiet down enough to hear this body wisdom. After returning to wellness, I felt compelled to remind others of the importance of listening in, and so I published some of this inner wisdom, accessible by all in a slowed down and open state, in my book Tapping the Wisdom Within, A Guide to Joyous Living.

And even having ‘written the book’ I still find myself occasionally in periods where I am in a state of over-doing. This is one of those periods. Preparing for holidays, preparing for being away for two months and applying for an educational program, all put on hold for ten nights while I went on retreat, so that upon return I must work twice as fast – just crazy! So I am definitely speaking to myself here. The teacher teaches what she needs to learn. Isn’t that what they say? I have been making a case for the slows everywhere I go in order to remind myself of the importance of this message.

Sometimes the culture -- the combined energies of all human interaction -- will itself create conditions to enforce a slowing down, a dialing back of over-efforting in pursuit of amassing material wealth. Although no one would wish upon the world an economic downturn, still when one comes, people discover they have more time for each other, more time to take care of their bodies, their minds and their relationships, more time to devote to causes that have meaning for them, more time for satisfying creative pursuits, more time to discover who they really are and what really matters. If they are not spending all their time freaking out, that is!

So when the economy turns around, what happens? Is the body wisdom forgotten and the race begun again? Or do we allow that wisdom to inform us regardless of causes and conditions?

When it comes to this season so rich in traditions, this cultural shift offers an opportunity to implement some of the changes in the way we celebrate. We may see that some aspects of our traditions are really just collective habits compounding our collective misery. Others bring us real joy. Knowing the difference, we can refine our rituals and make them even more meaningful for us.

I know for me this time of year, I feel the need to slow down, to linger longer in the cozy nest of my warm bed, to take longer baths, to have longer conversations with loved ones, to linger over meals, to take slow walks and be available for any delights that show up – whether out in nature or walking along the main street of my town. I enjoy sensing in to the season by eating more root vegetables and winter fruits – apples, oranges and persimmons. I like to spend more time in the kitchen making soups and stews and the occasional batch of my grandmother’s oatmeal cookies. Yes, I want to spend time with family, enjoying being together without too much agenda.

Implementing what Teja Bell said, can I set my efforting at 70%, so that my body and mind can be healthy, resilient, responsive, rested and joyful?

This is my wish for my holidays and yours. May we slow down and sense in to our burrowing animal nature. May we give from our hearts in the form of time to really listen, to really laugh, to really treasure this finite gift of life in this magical season.

Bells, Bowing and Buddhas

Looking over this blog, you may have gotten it that I’m gaga over bells. There’s a bowl bell at the top of the blog and two big bells represented by photo and painting on the side and bottom. The one on the top is the bell I ring at the end of the meditation I lead every week in the class I teach in my home. It was purchased at the end of a retreat a few years ago, after Howie Cohn led a listening meditation ringing a variety of these bells. When we went to Mexico I took my bell bowl and left it in our casa, thinking I would buy another one for our home in San Rafael. But all bell bowls are not alike and I never found one as perfectly sonorous as the one I had. So on our next trip I brought my bell bowl back and my students enjoy its tone at then end of our meditation together.

The painting on the bottom of the blog is of the bell that sits outside the Community Hall at Spirit Rock, where classes and day longs are taught. I painted it so long ago that there was no bench or signage, and the foliage was less dense so you could see the golden hills through the trees. It is the bell that Jack Kornfield had us take turns ringing 108 times after the attack on the World Trade Center September 11th, 2001. It is the bell that first called me to Buddhist meditation practice and is very dear to my heart. Occasionally while on retreat we can hear that bell ringing down below as a call to practice to those attending a day long class. It rings out a lovely connection of well wishing between the retreatants above and below, a sending of metta and support each way.

The photograph on the right side of the blog is of the main retreat bell that sits outside the beautiful Spirit Rock Meditation Hall. It frames the ever-changing view of the valley where the Center is nestled. This is the bell I have developed a deep relationship with over the past years of going on retreat and having the honor to ring it.

Why am I gaga over these bells? Well, first and foremost because they call me to practice. They ring out across the silence of the valley and remind me and all of us in the sangha of the importance of meditative practice. It is so easy to forget! Especially in the early years of the practice, but even in later years if one gets very busy, we can forget to make room for meditation, forget how much of the calm, kind and often joyous way we feel is due to this regular practice. We might think we are just like that naturally! Until we go without it for a few weeks or months and whoa! We discover that our inner life has been taken over by a hoard of nasty squatters digging up the dirt and flinging it at us.

The bell calls me to practice, and as bell ringer I am very aware and appreciate of being a part of that call to practice of the sangha. While I am not a particularly ritualistic person, I do have a very formal way of ringing the bell. This was never taught to me but I can’t imagine doing it any other way. I stand four feet in front of the bell, pause a moment to really be present, to relax into gratitude, to take in the wonderful way the thick metal ring from which the bell hangs frames the view. Then I bring my hands together and bow to the bell. This bow sets my intention to be fully present for this experience. I then remove the banger from its holder, step to one side and begin to ring the bell.

Because Spirit Rock is a large campus and people go on hikes, we are asked to ring this bell as loud as we can, so I really swing that hammer-shaped ringer. The sight of a retreatant swinging with such gusto in the slow, peaceful quiet of a meditation retreat can be quite surprising. I ring it eight times, allowing about five waves of sound to play out between each striking of the bell. Then I replace the ringer, move in front of the bell again, pause, listening to the waves soften, never knowing for sure when they really end, or if they end at all. Then I bow in gratitude.

When the bell calms and quiets, it reminds me to do the same, and to notice that that’s how this calm experience is, of being repeatedly struck out in the world, by the to do list, the expectations, the rushing, the forgetting to be mindful, all culminating in huge waves of big noise, and then on retreat, the feeling of coming to stillness, settling in to a deep bottomless quiet.

On the last day of this recent retreat, it happened that I was the last bell ringer, calling the sangha to the closing meeting. And when I bowed to the bell the last time, I didn’t feel the sadness and sense of impending loss that I had felt on the August retreat. I just said, “Until we meet again,” because this is now a solid ongoing relationship I am in with this bell!

The 2:20 bell ringer on this retreat was a severely physically challenged woman who rode around in a motorized wheelchair plastered with bumper stickers full of messages of joy. There were some things on retreat that she couldn’t do, like the walking meditation, the Qi Gong and hiking in the hills. But she would just set her wheelchair up to face out at the view as the rest of us walked back and forth across the patio; or she would read a book. She couldn’t open doors and she struggled with her crippled hands getting in and out of her outerwear in the cloakroom. Over the ten days we all spent together, she became the heart of the sangha, sharing her impish joy as she sprung her arms open to let you unzip or zip her sweater. Whoever was closest to her helped with whatever was needed at the moment. She was the only one with whom we had eye contact, the only one we could touch, so she became very dear to us all.

Given her physical limitations, her volunteering to be a bell ringer was quite amazing. She positioned her chair in just the right place to make connection with the bell, and worked her hands around the ringer until she had a firm grasp. The first few rings were soft as she adjusted her stroke, but soon she was able to really bang that bell. It made my heart soar to hear those gongs, knowing what a triumph it was for her to be able to perform this very physical energetic task, and knowing from my own experience what an honor it is and joy it is to do so. True delicious mudita.

Bowing
I mentioned that I bow to the bell. I also bow at the end of meditation with gratitude for having taken the time to meditate and for whatever teacher has led the meditation. On retreat I bow when I first enter the Meditation Hall in the morning, setting my intention to be as present as possible for whatever arises during the day, and when I leave after the last meditation at night, my heart full of gratitude for the gift of a day full of spaciousness, mindfulness and peace, even if it also contained physical, mental or emotional pain.

I bow to anyone who bows to me, and I bow in gratitude to anyone who has performed a service or kindness, since we are all in silence. This all feels very natural to me.

Toward the end of the retreat, I found I was bowing at the beginning and ending of my yogi job, setting my intention to be mindful and ending with gratitude for the insights received while working and well-wishing for anyone who would be using the facilities I had just cleaned. Since I was the bathroom cleaner for my dormitory building, I am sure there was some wonder or amusement for anyone who happened to notice me bowing at the door of the bathroom!

I remember many years ago when I first observed people bowing, I didn’t understand it and I was very uncomfortable with it. Fortunately bowing is a totally optional personal choice! My resistance came from my background of attending church as a child. From a Christian perspective, putting ones hands together in front of the chest and lowering the head is a sign of prayer. One prays to God, so doing this position to non-Christian altars and to people seemed to be making them gods.

And in one way that is so. There is the Sanskrit greeting ‘namaste’ that basically means ‘the god in me greets the god in you.’ This Hindu-based but multi-religious greeting is done with this bowing gesture. From a Christian viewpoint this could seem heretical to some, but I believe Jesus would have understood, for he saw the holy fingerprint of God in every being, regardless of their social status. His devotion to the poor and outcasts exemplified this recognition that we are all children of God. And that is the same with this expression and with bowing.

Coming from a Christian background, it is hard to see an altar and not be uncomfortable if God, Jesus or Mary are not upon it. Altars are to pray to, are they not? Well not in Buddhist practice, even though with the bowing it certainly looks that way. With a statue of Buddha on the altar (and at Spirit Rock the altars have both Buddha and Kwan Yin, the Asian goddess of mercy and compassion), it certainly looks like prayer and supplication.

But Buddha is not a god, and he made that very clear from the start. The first person Buddha met along the road after he had his great awakening was a man who was stricken by the illumination emanating from this stranger. “Are you a God?” he asked. “No,” the Buddha replied. “Are you a man?” “No,” he replied. “I am awake.”

The word ‘Buddha’ means awakened. It is a state of awareness possible in any given moment for any of us, rare though it may be to be able to sustain it indefinitely. The Buddha deflected all attempts to make him into a god. Therefore Buddhists don’t pray to him. They aspire to walk the path he taught in order to be present and compassionate beings.

On retreat I did notice a great variety of bowing. Some people bowed every time they entered and exited the meditation hall all during the day, and some bowed much deeper than others. There is in some Buddhist traditions ritual prostration, not something that I with my hip replacement would ever get into! But even without that physical limitation, it would not be in my nature to do so. Some people are just by nature more devotional. This is often called a bhakti path, and one of the teachers on this retreat, Robert Hall, says he is very much of the devotional path, the path of surrender.

I am not on a devotional path, except in the sense of feeling a welling of gratitude for sensing connection to all that is (what some might call divinity) when it comes. But surrendering to another person, which is the path some people take when they follow a master or guru in some religious traditions, is anathema to me. It’s just not in my DNA. I appreciate that Spirit Rock teachers deflect any attempts by students to be devotional towards them. They protect themselves by team teaching retreats, by staying very authentic and honest, often using their human foibles for dharma teachings, and by remembering that the Buddha himself deflected all such attempts.

Fortunately there is plenty of room for non-devotional types like me in Buddhism and for devotional types as well. That’s part of what I like so much about being part of a Buddhist sangha. We are not all alike either in our beliefs, in the way we look or anything else. What we have in common is our intention to be present as much as we possibly can be, and to be as kind to ourselves and others as we can be. That is a lot to have in common really, and the subsequent sense of community, trust and loving-kindness that arises naturally out of that shared intention is a treasure of great value.

Buddhas Everywhere!
So, one might ask, if Buddha is not a god, then why are there statues of him all over the place? At Spirit Rock there are not just statues on altars. Outside there is a blue-ish Buddha statue in the reflection pool and a huge stone one just above the dining hall with a nice curved bench for you to sit in the shade of an oak tree and have a private session. On many hiking paths all over the vast property you will come across Buddhas, sitting or standing. In the dormitories there are lying down Buddhas. And there are lots of Buddha statues of all sizes in the Spirit Rock bookstore that you can buy and take home with you if you are so inclined.

So what are they for, these Buddha statues? They are a reminder to be present, to access our inner Buddha nature, that part of ourselves that knows its connection to all beings everywhere. Spending time with one of these statues, one might be inspired to ponder the life of Siddhartha Gautama and his awakening under the Bodhi tree after a long night of being taunted and tempted by Mara. But even without that story, the statues with their warmth, calmness and serenity will either resonate and increase our own inner calm, or make us aware of the degree to which we are tense or feel disconnected, and bring us back to the practice in order to make room for that peace and deep connection in our lives.

On this retreat I began seeing Buddhas everywhere, even when there weren’t statues! In the meditation hall, while sitting on a chair in the rear of the room for a change of position, I saw the hunched shape of a retreatant leaning forward and somehow her brown patterned shawl took on the look of a curly-haired flat-faced Buddha head, like a large stone head sitting on the ground.

Then one morning at breakfast, looking out the double-paned window, pierced by the sun rising over the hills, the dancing reflections of the leaves against the glass revealed the small smiling face of a gentle Thai Buddha.

I felt incredibly supported in my practice by these lovely encounters. Having taken hallucinogens in my youth, I understood that the mind has the ability to create images out of patterns, so I wasn’t at all alarmed. I just realized that Buddhas are everywhere in every moment. The only time they don’t exist is whenever you strive too hard to find them.

So that’s what I know so far about bells, bowing and Buddhas! Bells are a call to practice. Bowing is a greeting, a setting the intention to practice and an expression of gratitude to others and for the practice. And representations of Buddha are the ever-present inspiration that spacious awareness is possible in any moment.

May it be so for you in this moment.

The Sweet Silence of the Sangha on Retreat

In an August post I gave a pretty thorough accounting of the retreat experience at Spirit Rock. This late November retreat was ten nights instead of six in August, we had Teja Bell teaching Qi Gong instead of Janice Gates and Anne Cushman teaching yoga, it was a Thanksgiving retreat so we had a lovely celebration in silence, it was winter instead of summer, we had totally different teachers, and I cleaned toilets instead of vacuuming halls. Other than that it was very much the same! Okay, it was totally different!

But the main thing about any retreat I have attended was the same: the sweetness of the sangha in silence. Here are some thoughts I wrote down about that aspect of my experience:

The sweetest thing in all the world, besides babies and small children, is a sangha (community of retreatants) in silence. The quiet itself is delicious.

Internally the release from interaction is restful. I imagine it’s like the difference between a big box of 100 ping pong balls, bouncing off the walls and also bouncing off each other; and one ping pong ball in a small box, still bouncing off the walls (interior conversation) but able to come to rest more easily because there aren’t all the other surfaces to interact with.

The silence is like fine wine becoming more mellow as it ages. Each day of the retreat the sangha becomes more synchronized and sensate. No one bumps into anyone, as if the energy field around each person is more strongly sensed, and we all weave our way around each other, aware of each other without eye contact.

Slowing down in the silence, there’s presence, awareness and what arises out of that is a civility that feels incredibly loving and supportive. Doors are held for each other because we are aware of the others in a way that moving at a faster pace and in the blur of being caught up in conversation, we might not.

Silence is golden. And like gold, it’s value is determined by the collective. If people stop valuing it, it loses its value, because it can’t really be partially held in a close-knit sangha. It has to be universally valued and protected. Some people on this retreat were challenged in this regard. Once you start talking, it can be like starting back smoking or drinking for an addict. It’s impossible to have just one. And your behavior affects everyone, though you think you are being discreet. It’s like a small pin prick at first, but grows as more people succumb to the temptation. Still, for the most part, the sangha was in silence and it was magical.

Apparently not all retreats everywhere hold the same traditions around silence. My roommate Yun from LA had not been to Spirit Rock before and her experience of retreats was that you could have eye contact and use ‘functional talk.’ I told her that there were some yogi jobs in the kitchen, where functional talk might be necessary, but other than that, no. She was shocked! But at the end of the retreat, she was quite blissful and grateful for this stricter interpretation of silence.

On the last evening of the retreat we were told to experiment talking for the dinner hour. The first thing I noticed about talking is that the questions we ask each other automatically take us out of the moment. ‘How has the retreat been for you? Where do you head off to tomorrow?” Suddenly we’re in the past or the future instead of the present moment.

Released from the cocoon of the silence, I was amazed how incredibly unskillful I became in my actions, forgetting to do things like eat! like take my pills! like go to my room to get my coat because it was getting cold! I also noticed we all started bumping into each other. “Excuse me” and “Oh, sorry” were suddenly necessary. It became then even more clear that the silence had energetically connected us in a symbiotic union, like cells that know they are in the same body, not separate beings. And the talking made us think of ourselves as separate again.

In this state of symbiotic union it was easy to understand how birds fly en masse, turning all at the same time. Now this could be creepy (think of the Borg on Startrek Next Generation), but this was not a one-mind situation. We were all very much our own individual selves, making individual choices, but in our interactions things became very simple and slow.

Last night, a week after the retreat had ended, I went to my circle singing group taught by the extremely talented singer and gifted teacher Pollyanna Bush. When the time came for us to take turns singing impromptu solos, I created an ode to the sweet silence of the sangha. The others in the group were so grateful to have that glimpse into the restful quality of retreat life, they didn’t want to change the mood, so the next singer, the extremely talented painter Jane Wilson, asked for the same tune (Pollyanna plays the piano for us) and sang a thank you song. Lovely!

Often people who haven’t sat a retreat say they could never go that long without talking, especially people who consider themselves talkative. But surprisingly it is the people who are most talkative who find the greatest relief and release in the comfort of silence. I consider myself talkative, and that has certainly been the case for me. The silence is the absolutely best thing about a retreat, as wonderful as the teachings, the food, the setting and the care of the staff are, the silence is the greatest teacher, the softest comforter and the pure sweetness of any retreat.

On Retreat

I am off to Spirit Rock for a ten night Thanksgiving retreat, so I posted the gratitude dharma talk early, and recorded it for my students to listen to when they gather together this Tuesday.

If reading that I am off on retreat makes you feel envy, it's an invitation to yourself to make time in your life for, if not a ten night retreat, perhaps a seven, four or one day retreat. There's a link to Spirit Rock right on this page. Check it out! Or if that doesn't feel possible, just take ten minutes right now to close your eyes and listen in.

I wish you all a very happy fully present Thanksgiving where you fall in love with the very foibles that usually drive you crazy about your families! Just knowing that all of this is fleeting reminds us of how precious these times together are, even fraught with tension or disagreement about politics or anything else. Why not set the intention to simply be present, simply listen, let go of the need to take a stand, change a mind, prove anything, or be heard? You may be amazed at how it changes the family dynamic.

As we lose the ones we love, we begin to see it is those very foibles, the things that drove us crazy, that we chuckle about in the end. So chuckle now! And enjoy them in the flesh.

Many blessings,
Stephanie

Gratitude for Everything

We come together this time of year in a celebration of giving thanks. Many of us have cherished traditions. Probably just as many would be happy to skip the whole season. But whatever our feelings about the holiday of Thanksgiving, most of us enjoy feeling gratitude and the act of counting our blessings even if the rest of the year we are complaining about our lack of blessings. This one day is a day of accounting, checking in and doing a little tally. We tell ourselves that even though we lost a job, got ill, lost a loved one or any of a myriad of other situations that might befall us in any given year, still, at Thanksgiving we seek out those things that are going well, polish them up, list them and take comfort in them.

And there’s nothing wrong with a little comfort. But this kind of gratitude is finite and conditional. What if the balance sheet doesn’t come out? What if the awful things that have happened cannot be compensated by any small comfort we may have? What if we have tried and tried to look on the bright side of seeming disasters, and have just not been able to find it? Then where’s the gratitude? Gone!

To have nothing and then not to even have gratitude? That really sucks! It feels better not to even go there! Forget gratitude. It’s unreliable.

I’ve talked before about the value of noticing when we are operating from a finite source, how the results are shallow rooted, unsatisfying and unreliable. So then, let’s look to see if we can discover gratitude from a deeper source.

Gratitude from that deep source, that sense of connection to all of life becomes gratitude for everything. Everything. This is not just reflecting back and saying well, this bad thing happened, but now good has come of it, so now I am grateful for it. This is deep complete gratitude for everything. Everything!

Suddenly a resounding ‘No!’ is proclaimed across the land. We can’t be grateful for the horrors of the world, for the evil that is done, for the devastation that is wrought, for the injustices – the list is long of all the things we refuse in any way to acknowledge one iota of acceptance, let alone gratitude. Really, Stephanie, you’ve gone too far this time.

Maybe so. Let’s investigate. I’m sitting with it now and asking in deeply. You do the same. I am asking myself, ‘How can I be grateful for the horrors of the world?’ Well, I can be grateful they are not happening to me in this moment. But that is clearly a self-serving, blind, finite answer. So what is the infinite answer?

It begins, as always, with coming fully into this present moment, this spacious awareness. In this relaxed state we can sense in to our bodies and all sensory experiences become illuminated. We notice sounds and sense into the rhythms, the volume, the tones, the pitch, the pulsing, the beat, the variety, the layering. We look around and notice light and shadow, color, texture, distance, shapes and the interaction of all of these in space. Closing our eyes we sense in to the pressure where our body meets whatever is supporting it. We feel the texture of whatever clothing or furniture comes in contact with our skin. We feel the temperature of the air, and the stillness or movement of it. We feel whatever is going on inside our body -- pain, tension, energy, pleasant sensations and numbness. We taste the inside of our mouths. We smell the air. Some of our senses in this particular moment may be subtle, but still present if we stay with them. We become aware of our breath, rising and falling.

When we are able to release fully into this moment, savoring each sensation with a beginner’s mind, really noticing how this moment, the very one we thought was so ordinary, is in fact extraordinary because of our attention.

In this open spacious moment where we experience all that arises with a freshness we didn’t even know we were capable of experiencing, we feel gratitude.

This isn’t a gratitude conditioned on whether what we are seeing and hearing and sensing is pleasant, ordered in the way we like things to be. We have access to a less critical noticing. The impulses we might normally have -- to tidy up the mess of newspapers on the floor or to bang the broom on the ceiling to get the loud radio upstairs to stop, or any other fault-finding rescue mission we might think up -- all that falls away. In this moment, everything is just fine, even the mess, the noise, and all the things that usually irritate us.

We feel gratitude for simply being alive in this moment. Because this moment is the only thing that is real. Everything that has passed, both our personal history and the collective history of the world is just memory turning to compost. Whatever is in the future is currently simply potential, trending toward possible directions, always subject to the unseen and unknown, thus beyond our ability to imagine with any useful accuracy.

But this moment, this is our one and only reality. On a finite level we can enjoy it and wish it would last, or dislike it and rush to get past it. When we pause and release the tension that has us so tightly wrapped, we tap into the infinite: This moment, fully relaxed, is the gateway to our sensing the infinite.

From this deep connected place, we bring forth an authentic response to whatever arises in our experience. This is the only place where we can interact with the world, to sow peaceful seeds that might nourish the world of our great grandchildren. We can’t do that from the past or the future. There’s no power there. We can only be effective right here and now, by staying present and connected in deeply rooted moment. From this singular point of power, the present moment, when all our preferences and judgments have fallen away, we can see the universal dance and our place in it.

Raging at the horrors of the world we are stuck in a finite limited powerless rant. We feel like helpless victims in a storm of intense chaos. Going deep and quiet, touching the infinite, that is what makes real change possible. It is where Gandhi went and where Martin Luther King Jr. went before taking powerful peaceful action that changed the world. It is where Nelson Mandela and Aung San Suu Kyi have gone time and again, both able to draw sustenance and even freedom in physical incarceration – turning inward to the silence, finding patience and compassion instead of bitterness – and then allowing that sense of connection to inspire wise action.

From this place we are able to spot leaders who are authentic and deeply rooted. Instead of ranting at these leaders as if they singularly hold all the power and we, who were powerful in our ability to work to elect them, are suddenly cranky demanding children angry at mommy. We encourage our leaders to remain unseduced by the shallow-rooted calls to finite power that surround them, and to stay deeply connected both to that deep wisdom and to the community that elected them in order to make wise decisions that affect us all. And we continue to stay connected, using that access to be the change we want to see in the world.

Whatever injustices we face in the world can be met from this deep place in a truly transformative way. So first on our Thanksgiving list of gratitude might be our own ability to access this font of quiet connected wisdom, grateful that it is possible in any moment to access this place.

But what if we are new to the practice and this access to the moment is just a pipe dream? Be with the pipe dream, see it for what it is. Let it inform your experience of this moment. Keep practicing being present with whatever is. Stay focused on the senses, noticing. Notice everything. Notice the judgments, notice the emotions, notice the thoughts. Just notice. Maybe it feels like a big tangle, a tight knot, inaccessible. Be with that! Notice and notice again.

When we begin to meditate it is like any new skill. At first paying attention to the present moment feels as if staying present is like trying to balance on the head of a pin. The moment we realize we’re on it, we fall off. But with patience, intention, compassion and consistent practice, we begin to notice the head of the pin getting larger until we feel present for longer and longer periods.

This sensing in to this moment is the practice that gives access to the infinite source within ourselves, the connected place that has gratitude for everything. There’s no hurry to get there. There’s just the practice. Wanting to be there, rushing to get ‘there’ only seals the door and locks us out of the possibility of accessing it. For there is no ‘there,’ only ‘here.’ Just this experience. Can you feel gratitude for the rise and fall of your breath?

We don’t have to feel grateful for the Holocaust, 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, or the sexual predator living near the neighborhood playground. But finding wise ways to respond to them includes recognizing that the world is now, has always been and always shall be full of what the Tao calls ‘the 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows.’ Without the sorrows, there are no joys. That is the nature of earthly existence.

Over and over again in our lives we see that good times can cause bad things. A booming economy is perceived as a good thing, but it also causes overworked people to feel they don’t have time for each other and then they fill their sense of lack with purchasing material things.

And we’ve all had the experience of bad times causing good things, bringing strangers together as one people to address the challenge or weather the storm together. The yin and the yang freely flow from black to white and back again, and that’s the nature of life.

As we observe this flux and flow in our own lives and in the world around us, we may find we have a more open ‘don’t know’ mind about things. When I was younger knowing seemed so important. Now that I’m older, not knowing feels even more delicious!

There’s that wonderful old story told in Buddhist and Taoist traditions, of the farmer whose neighbors told him he was so unlucky because his horse ran away. They were surprised when he replied, “Maybe yes, maybe no.” Then the horse returned with a lot of other horses to fill his corral, and his neighbors said, “Oh, what great fortune!” He still answered, “Maybe yes, maybe no.” When his son fell off one of the horses and broke his leg, the neighbors said, “What terrible luck!” And even then the farmer said, “Maybe yes, maybe no.” Well, the neighbors thought him very strange indeed. But then the military came to the village seeking young men for conscription into the army, and the farmer’s son was exempted because of his broken leg. The neighbors now saw that healing leg differently, as their sons marched off to war. “You are so lucky,” they told the farmer. And he said, of course, “Maybe yes, maybe no.” And so the story goes on throughout life.

While taking full responsibility for our own behavior and vowing to do no harm to ourselves or others, with a don’t know mind we can be less outraged at the poor choices of others, and certainly at the inconstancies of nature. Events we might perceive as good fortune, we can vest with less power to enslave us. (Enslave us? Yes, because we say, “Now that I have this great job, this great relationship, this great house, how can I keep it? How can I make this happiness last?” And suddenly we’re caught up in fear and suffering again.) It is said that the greatest suffering is caused by striving for a perfect world or by running away in fear from the imperfect world we see around us.

Here’s a thought! Let’s just stop striving for a moment! Let’s stop running away from what is! Instead, let’s simply focus on our breath and the various senses. Fully present in this moment, we feel gratitude for just this, whatever form it takes in this moment. We access the place deep within ourselves that is beyond the 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows. Each moment, with all its sensory offerings, offers access to this vantage point, from which we recognize the fleeting gift of the wild, the monstrous and the wondrous nature of earthly existence. And we have ringside seats!

On this fine fall day, we might enjoy looking at this idea as a multitude of leaves flying around in the wind, each leaf in some state we call beautiful autumn foliage or dried up, dead, and ugly.

And we see ourselves in this turbulent swirl, sometimes in our leaf nature being acted upon and sometimes in our wind nature, causing a stir. But only when we are able to stand in the middle of the whirl, in the quiet stillness of the eye of this ongoing storm of life, can we relax into a state of gratitude for everything.

In this centered stillness we can see with fresh eyes the multi-layered dimensions of all things. We can see into the fearful hurting heart of the being who hates and hurts others in turn, and we can see the strength and resilience of the being who has been hurt but is able to access connection and compassion for all beings, spreading joy. We see those who would divide to conquer, and we recognize their fear and how they are conquered by it. We see those who see the unity and act out of that sense of unity for the well being of all. We see the natural disasters and are awed by the power of nature, and the fragileness of our brief lives, and the strength of the human spirit when challenged.

This rich alive moment that until we relaxed into it seemed so ordinary fills us with a sense of abundance. From this perspective, everything that brought us to this point softens in its wake.

We see that all those events we would not have chosen are now just stories, stories that we have clung to as proof of the veracity of our tightly held beliefs, stories that have left us scarred but still standing, or perhaps lessons we are still trying to learn from. They exist, along with cherished memories, only in our minds. And we can hold them lightly, letting them go when they no longer serve us, feeling gratitude for whatever gifts they brought us. Or we can cling to them tightly, empowering them to define and confine us.

When we relax into simple awareness of this moment, we fully inhabit our bodies and minds in a way that enables us to live an authentic, heartfelt generous and meaningful life. Accessing the infinite wisdom of simple presence, simple awareness, brings clarity and gratitude for everything.

Mudita, Sympathetic Joy: Yet Another Gift of Meditation Practice

This exploration of freedoms we have been doing for the past couple of months has much in common with the Four Brahmaviharas, or ‘heavenly abodes.’ These are states that are the gift of the practice, just as our freedoms we’ve been discussing are gifts of the practice. They are states that can’t be achieved by goal setting, by trying to be ‘good,’ or by pretending to be kind, compassionate, happy or wise. They arise out of the practice of being present, and in that being present, guided by the wisdom of the Eightfold Path, we may find ourselves in these states of connected authentic generosity of spirit: happy, kind, truly compassionate and well-balanced.

We have explored two of these Brahmaviharas in this class: Metta, loving-kindness and Karuna, compassion. Now we turn to Mudita which means sympathetic joy.

Sympathetic joy is feeling happy for the happiness of others. Not because we think we should feel it in order to be a nice person, but because we sense our underlying unity. From this deep rooted sense of connection, we feel their joy as if it were our own. And then we drop the ‘as if.’ Because the shared joy melts the possessive edges that can never adequately contain true happiness.

The other day I was driving home from Spirit Rock and was descending White’s Hill into Fairfax behind two cyclists. Usually bicycle riders stay to the side of the road in their designated lane, but these two rode in the middle of the car lane, and since they were descending at a pretty rapid rate, they weren’t causing me to slow down.

I was coming home from a lovely morning of yoga, meditation and dharma, more relaxed and connected than I might have been, so it felt quite natural to purposely keep my car at enough of a distance so they would not feel I wanted them to get out of my way.

In fact, I wanted them to feel that they truly had the road to themselves, as a reward for all their uphill exertions. Then I enjoyed watching them and I relaxed into feeling in my body the sympathetic sensation of their hunkering down to be aero-dynamic, their leaning left or right on the curves. I relished the whole rich sensate experience of speed and freedom.

And that is a form of mudita: Letting go of any sense that the cyclists were obstructing my ability to get home to eat lunch, I allowed myself to share in the pleasure they were experiencing, to be truly happy for them having this lovely ride on a beautiful autumn day.

But sometimes we are faced with situations that don’t easily inspire mudita. Even in that fairly benign situation, I could just as easily have fallen into a story of personal loss, since I love bike riding, a childhood joy I had to give up many years ago as it is too hard on my knees. I could have felt envy, sadness, depression. I could have mourned the feel of the wind in my face, instead of enjoying it through sharing in their experience. And maybe on another day, in a different situation, my thoughts might have gone there. But on this day, they didn’t. On this day, I was delighted to find myself in the state of mudita.

Each of us has our personal losses and unfulfilled dreams that have the capacity to haunt us whenever we are confronted with someone who seems to be living that dream or still has what we have lost. Perhaps we weren’t able to have a child, or lost a child, and when we see someone with children or a pregnant woman, we may not feel sympathetic joy at all. The sight only stirs up our story, causing emotions and thoughts that unsettle us. If we weren’t caught up in the story, we could enjoy all the children we meet, delight in the sight of babies in strollers or trick-or-treaters in their costumes. But because they aren’t ours, because we can’t tuck them into bed at night, because they don’t call us mommy, we can’t appreciate them. Maybe we can see that it would make sense to reach out to other people’s children as teachers, care givers or aunts, but we just can’t do it. The story seems to be so tightly woven that it feels solid, impermeable, and we are caught in the middle of it, as if a spider had wrapped us up for dinner.

Most of us at some time have been in a position of hoping for a job, a promotion, a relationship, acceptance in a program or a competition of some kind. And most of us know what it is like to be denied the prize we sought. What happens then when we meet the person or persons who received whatever prize it was we wanted. How does that feel? Maybe we want to feel happy for them because we don’t want to be a sore loser. Maybe we feel embarrassed by the strength of our aspirations and the way we feel sucked out to sea by the undertow of that great wave of hope we had been surfing.

We have all experienced this to some degree at some time in our lives. We can all remember how it feels. Maybe we don’t even have to remember, maybe we have some experience of it in our current situation. Whatever it is, we need to be present with it, noticing the arising thoughts, emotions and sensations; noticing any harsh judgments that arise; holding ourselves with compassion, remembering that we are only human, vessels through which these kinds of emotions, thoughts and sensations flow.

Because it is so normal to feel envy, it comes as a surprise when mudita arises within us. What a delight is this unexpected gift of feeling joy at the sight of a child not our own! How sweet to truly feel happy for the person who receives recognition, knowing that that person too was hungry for acknowledgment, worked hard, suffered, feared failure – just as we did, and we are the same in that way. And many other ways as well. So the joy is simply joy, simply happiness, simply a celebration we can attend without feeling we weren’t invited.

If sympathetic joy seems unachievable it’s because it is. Totally unachievable! Like all the freedoms we’ve been discussing and the other three Brahmaviharas, this sympathetic joy for the happiness of others is a gift, not a goal. Mudita is not a practice so much as a fruit of metta and awareness practice. If we try to treat it as a goal or try to don it like a garment, draping ourselves in the pretend glow of happiness for others, we fail in our true practice: to be present for whatever arises.

Noting whatever feelings arise – envy, jealousy, anger, then noticing the disappointment we feel at discovering them in ourselves, then noticing any shame or sense of failure: That’s the practice. We begin to see the previously unconscious habitual patterns of thought and the reactive behavior they trigger. Making the patterns conscious starts to dissolve the tightly wrapped threads, so that there seems to be more time and space to see and make wise choices.

Instead of battling our thoughts and trying to change them, we just bring full awareness to them. We see them for what they are and begin to feel less threatened by them. We see that they are not us. We are not defined by them.

These thoughts and emotions are simply a part of the universal human condition, and conditioning. When we are able to be compassionate with our feelings we are less likely to feel the need to express these emotions through our words or actions. We might share our noticing of feelings arising, but we do so in a conscious way that doesn’t make the other person responsible for them.

As children our parents were made responsible for all these unacceptable situations and emotions. My mother saved a note I wrote when I was eleven in which I described everything that had gone wrong that day and how it was ‘ALL YOUR FAULT!’ Why did she save it? Years later I found myself saving a similar note from one of my own children. Strangely mothers often find these rants endearing.

But they are really only endearing in children, these tantrums. In adults not so much. Archie Bunker used to say, ‘Stifle!’ to his wife Edith whenever she was expressing her emotions. But that’s not what we are going for in our practice. Instead, when we discover these volatile emotions throwing a tantrum inside ourselves, we want to bring the compassionate bemusement of a mother whose child is ranting. The mother knows she is not really responsible for all the awful things that happened in her child’s school day, so there’s no reason to get caught up in defending herself. She can recognize the humanness, and the dearness of this loved one, struggling with her emotions.

So we don’t stifle our emotions. Instead we create a place for them to play within our spacious mind. We watch with loving curiosity, noticing, listening, even asking questions, but not scolding or trying to shut the process down. (When we notice we are scolding or trying to shut down the process, we simply note that as well.) We feel as much compassion and understanding as we are capable of feeling, but, just like my mother and mothers around the world when dealing with an exhausted child on a rant, we don’t succumb to the story that’s being told. We don’t need to react, or bring it out in the world, making others responsible for the internal chaos we are experiencing. We don’t have to be harsh or indulgent. We simply sit with the experience until the tantrum passes.

If we slip into unskillfulness and do act upon these feelings, we acknowledge them as soon as we recognize them, and apologize for our behavior to whomever we may have hurt in the process. We silently send metta to those we have harmed and to ourselves. Ultimately this metta practice has the capacity to bring the experience of sympathetic joy for all beings, as we become attuned to the bountiful nature of the universe and see that another person’s good fortune does not deplete our own.

On a very practical level, we can bring into question the very idea that what the prize-winner has is actually the source of happiness that we imagined it to be. Does any event, possession or relationship truly have the ability to make a person permanently happy? We know from our own lives that that is not the case. And knowing so, we can see if we are making the mistake of projecting happiness onto these ‘winners’ when, in fact, they are suffering in ways we might not have imagined. We dehumanize them by making assumptions that they should be happy because of what they have. They should be happy, damn it, because they are now holding the stuff of our dreams and they better appreciate it! If they were to complain about anything, we would get out our air violins and play a few notes for them, the universal sign of, “I am SO not sorry for you, you little whiner.” But with just a little sensing in to the nature of things, we can see that they are still beings deserving of our compassion. And seeing that the prize they have is not happiness incarnate helps to put our loss in perspective.

Feelings of envy or schadenfreude, the German word meaning enjoyment of the misfortune of others, sometimes especially those we may have envied, since now they have been brought low (where we apparently feel we are,) offer us the opportunity to explore strong emotions. We can ask questions of them as if they are messengers with important information to share. We can personify them if that makes it easier to do inner dialog work, giving them a recognizable personality and nickname so that we will easily recognize them in the future. With curiosity and compassion, we can ask, ‘What do you really want?’ ‘What are you trying to tell me?’ “What are you afraid of?” ‘What do I need to know?’ Taking a little quiet time for this kind of inner exploration helps to release the tight threads that are making us a spider’s dinner instead of aware beings.

We can also use the good fortune of others to clarify a path we ourselves would like to embark upon. Perhaps we are surprised to feel a spark of envy at someone’s receiving an award for something we had no idea we were interested in. Perhaps a path is illuminated by their experience, and we recognize that if it is possible for them, it is more likely to be possible for us as well. And if we feel otherwise, we can question in to see why we don't believe this to be true. If we do want to pursue the path they are on, we can take the bold step of asking them how they did it, find others who also did it and learn from their inspiring stories as well. Throughout the process, we continue asking in to see if it is the direction itself that is of interest or craving similar acknowledgment in another area, perhaps one we can't even bring ourselves to name, so unworthy do we feel to have these aspirations.

Whenever we are experiencing any distressing emotion, we can send ourselves metta, loving-kindness. And from this practice, when we least expect it, mudita surprises and delights us, as it did for me that beautiful autumn day, feeling the thrust and lean of those cyclists on a joyous downhill run.

The Problem with 'Positive Thinking'

We have been talking for a while about the freedoms that arise naturally out of the simple daily practice of meditation: Freedom from struggle, freedom from fear, freedom from the fortress of defensiveness. But it could sound as if we are actively trying to get away from struggling, fear or defensiveness, instead of just noticing them as they arise in our experience and fall away. So I want to be sure we are clear that when we try to escape, when we try to push away, when we try to achieve freedom, or try to hold onto fleeting glimpses of freedom we may experience, then the freedom is gone.

This is frustrating, I know. It's like some kind of fun house mirror set up, where when we go after what we see, it disappears! This is not how it should be, we say. Things should be clear cut and straight forward. And perhaps we know from personal experience that we can achieve things by setting goals, that that is in fact the way life is. I certainly have set goals and achieved them. The very house we are sitting in was imagined, found and purchased in just that way. And there’s nothing wrong with undertaking such a project, experiencing it fully. It can be exciting, invigorating and fun.

But where we get into trouble is when we expect achieving any goal to set us free, make us truly happy or change the way we experience life in any fundamental way. We are just pouring our way of being from one container into another. Maybe the new container is bigger, prettier, more comfortable, or better in some other way. And perhaps the ways in which it is better cause us conditional happiness, that may last a while or may not, depending on our basic temperament. But no house, job, geographical setting or personal relationship will alter to any degree our conditioned set of responses to whatever experience arises in our lives. Changing the conditions is like changing the wallpaper on our prison cell. It doesn’t really change anything! And when we achieve a goal and then discover that nothing has changed on the deep level that we crave, we can sink into despair. This despair is only amplified if we believe that plastering positive messages all over our cell will set us free, when really they just mask the truth of our situation.

We can pour ourselves from one container to another, but we need to notice if we are vesting the experience with powers it cannot deliver. Setting goals and achieving them can deliver some degree of physical comfort and material well being, and these are valid uses of it, but to rely on it habitually for all our needs, emotional and spiritual, is setting ourselves up for suffering. Once we have a modicum of material stability, what we really want beyond that is the kind of freedom or happiness that comes from a different source.

So yes, pour all you want from one container to the other. Pour yourself into that new dress or pair of shoes and dance around in front of the mirror. Enjoy your cute self! But understand that what we are talking about when we look at real freedom is dissolving the container itself. This a joy that can’t be purchased, that can’t be achieved through goal setting or positive thinking.

We are all aware that there is a whole huge industry of motivational speaking set up to promote these principles of positive thinking. It promotes dreaming big, getting what we want by setting our sights, taking aim and achieving our goals. Sometimes people assume that Buddhism is about positive thinking. It’s easy to make assumptions and lump all the various self-help streams of thought together. But Buddhism is most definitely not about positive thinking. Buddhism is quite specifically about facing the truth of things head on. Whatever it is. Not in a confrontational way, but in a way that never shies away from the tough stuff – the uncomfortable, scary thoughts and feelings that can leave gun-toting musclemen quaking in their boots.

When we face whatever arises in our experience head on, we are interested in the facts of the situation. We have no interest whatsoever in changing the facts. A ‘positive thinker’ may look at the situation and immediately spot the silver lining. That’s fine. It’s there too, but Buddhists don’t want to skip over anything in a rush to get to the happy bits. Neither do we want to dig around in the muck. And if we have a tendency to focus on the negative, we can benefit from challenging ourselves to 'incline our mind' (as the Buddha says) toward what is that in our current experience that is pleasant, since otherwise we might not notice it. We really are just opening to whatever is, noting pleasant and unpleasant alike, and staying curious.

Our method is not to rush to judgment, sum up the situation, say, ‘Well, that’s that,’ and move on. We stay present for the whole experience. We sit with it. We make room for all of it in our awareness. We notice the subtle complexities, the multiple layers, the threads that run through it, the light and the shadow, and the truth. And even when we perceive the truth of something, we don’t dismiss it, saying ‘case closed’ with a sense of satisfaction. Instead we continue to stay present with whatever is until it changes or leaves of its own volition. Then we stay present with whatever arises in that moment. In each moment we simply stay present with the rich unfolding of experience.

You may say that the positive thinker cuts to the chase, gets to the good stuff, catches the gold ring. No argument there. But it relies pretty heavily on the positive thinker’s ability to recognize ‘good stuff’, doesn’t it?

Positive thinking puts energy behind embracing an ideal vision of how we want to change ourselves and our world to conform to that vision. That’s not Buddhism. Buddhism sees ideal visions as too rigid, too narrow, too limited, even if that vision is world peace and harmony. Now if you know anything about Buddhism, you will say, but wait, what about all the metta - loving kindness you send out into the world, “May there be every good blessing,” “May all beings be well,” and all that?

Strange, isn’t it? It’s not necessarily that we don’t recognize that there is energy that can be directed. (Though Buddhists disagree among themselves about the existence of such energy, and belief in it doesn’t seem to be an absolute requirement. You can be ‘a secular Buddhist’ like teacher/author Stephen Batchelor.) The majority of Buddhists acknowledge the existence of a universal energy, but see the problem with directing the energy in a narrow selective way instead of generous universal well wishing for all life. It’s just way too limiting! It sets up a narrow trough of possibility. We do not send out phrases such as, “May my daughter do well on her test today, may the stock market rise, may I get that job.” We say “May the merits of our practice be for the benefit of all beings, may all beings be well, may all beings be happy.”
Buddhists value all of life, the great manifestation of life in all its myriad forms. Yet most Buddhists also sense that there is more than just this earthly human existence, that this existence is a gift in whatever form we receive it, that to be born into this life is a rare and wondrous experience to be savored, appreciated and then released when it is over. For this life that seems finite is just a phase we’re going through in the infinite dance of universal energy of which we are all an integral part. (And if you are aren't comfortable with the idea of universal energy, you can still recognize that in nature, death is not the end of any life form's existence as it cycles through and is transformed into more life.)

Because we value the experience of earthly life itself, we recognize that preconceived judgments about what makes a successful life are limited, erroneous. The positive thinking movement is often focused on becoming wealthy. Grasping at wealth is one of the habits of mind Buddhists notice when it arises in our experience, and we notice also how much suffering arises out of any assumption we may have that great wealth brings great happiness. (Did I just hear you say, Oh good, Buddhists like to be poor! More for us!?)

Stop and think about your own experience, whether the course of your pocketbook’s fullness or emptiness has matched your own sense of fullness or emptiness throughout your life. For most of us, the two have no correlation. Our happiness is not dependent on our bank account. Yet, even so, because it is so easy to go unconscious, we may still buy into the idea that adding extra zeros to our bottom line will make us happy. It’s an assumption that corporations enforce at every turn, because corporate workers are operating under the same delusion.

Positive thinking is considered a transformative power. No doubt it is. Yet focusing our energy on the power to change ourselves or our circumstances from what they are to what we believe to be better camouflages the truth. The truth is, as Jon Kabat-Zinn so aptly coined, ‘Wherever you go, there you are.’

All the positive thinking in the world may change things but when we get to that changed place, we will still be us, still interacting with the world in the same way, still finding it unsatisfactory and in need of changing, because that is our habit of mind.

Buddhists instead prefer to sit with what is, noticing our habit of mind. As compassionately as possible, sitting with the causes and conditions of our lives, the flow of emotions, thoughts and sensations, and from that deep place of sitting performing actions that are loving and compassionate: that’s the Buddhist way.

Positive thinking gets in the way of the great unfolding of life. That is mostly because none of us really have sufficient imagination to set a goal to positively think into being anything that would be near so wondrous at what actually happens in our lives. The narrow focus of the goal keeps all other wondrous avenues through which we might stroll out of our view. We’re on a specific track, a specific wave length, and nothing else appears within our scope. With our eye on the prize, we miss a world of wonder for the sake of the end destination that we may not be able to enjoy when we reach it because we are out of the habit of enjoying what is.

We are limited by our view of ourselves, who we are in the world. We want something: happiness, freedom, love, and we set our sights on it. A.H. Almaas, the (non-Buddhist, but respected by Buddhist teachers) Diamond Approach™ founder, gave a wonderful analogy. Think about the larva that transforms into a butterfly. How could such a creature ever conceive of becoming a butterfly? That would be absurd to imagine anything so completely different! Maybe if it were into imagining the future, into goal setting, it would imagine being a bigger larva, a happier larva. But a beautiful flying creature? How absurd!

Just like that larva, we are inherently limited in our ability to imagine the transformation possible within ourselves. And the striving, goal-setting mind set is really an encumbrance. If we don’t allow our lives to unfold naturally, giving whatever arises our full attention, then we are likely to be clinging to the chrysalis that held so much promise, not realizing that if we let go, we could fly.

Daily Meditation Practice: A life saver not just a life enhancer

We’ve been talking about the freedoms that arise naturally out of the regular practice of meditation. I could go on in this vein indefinitely, but I think you get the idea. Meditation has real value. It can enhance your life in every moment. Yay, for meditation! Isn’t that nice!

I have noticed that the most committed meditators are those who come to it out of crisis. They know first hand that meditation is not just a life enhancer, but a life saver.

Many years ago I came back to daily meditation after several years away. I returned to it because I was desperate. I was in a health crisis brought on by stress and mourning. In this state, the value of meditation was crystal clear. I took refuge in it and as my practice grew, it supported me.

When I went through another loss a few years later, my meditation practice was firmly in place and I noticed that instead of being lost and tossed on the waves of emotional turmoil, instead of gasping for breath and feeling like I was drowning, I was able to surf the rough waters, fully present as I rode the waves of my many emotions as they arose and fell. I didn’t escape pain or sorrow, but I didn't add more suffering. I found in each moment a way to hold sadness, joy and whatever else arose as they arose, neither dreading, nor clinging, nor grasping. What a difference!

So when I hear people say they to want to fit a regular daily practice of meditation into their busy lives, but haven’t managed to do so yet, I can't help myself from wondering what could I say, what could I do, to get them to take that next step toward a daily practice. How can I get them to see its akin to putting a well stocked life on board to be there for them when hard times come?

For hard times come to us all. Life deals up a panoply of challenges indiscriminately. Suddenly we are facing a loss – of a loved one, a way of life, our health, a relationship – and if we don’t have that life boat chances are we sink into the sea of misery, denial, fear and guilt that rises up around us. We lose perspective, we lose faith, we lose so much more than just that which we initially lost. We can’t seem to find a way to be with what is happening and not be crushed by it. And when we do eventually recover, it’s like having been out at sea for a long time before the life boat comes to the rescue. Yes we survive, but our recovery from the experience is hindered by the fact that we went for so long exposed to the sun, the cold, the lack of drinking water and food to eat.

In that crisis state many of us get the bright idea to take up meditation. Suddenly we see where we could fit regular practice into our daily schedule. But at that point it’s like rebuilding a house that’s lost its very foundation, instead of having done regular maintenance all along to keep the house in good shape. It is hard! So hard! Imagine trying to sit in silence with a storm raging in your mind, with your body feeling the weight of overwhelming emotions! It is so much easier to train our minds now when we are dealing with the little emotional ups and downs, the little judgments, the little irritations that make life seem less than pleasant.

So today I want to do more than paint more rosy pictures of all the enhancements brought on by meditation, these freedoms we’ve been discussing. I want to really confront the resistance to regular practice, to look at the reasoning that arises when we decide to put off putting this life boat aboard.

Perhaps we don’t believe anything bad will happen to us, even though we know that we are human and subject to all the challenges life brings to us all.

Perhaps we are concerned that daily practice will change us somehow, make us different from who we are, and we are very comfortable with who we are, thank you very much.

Perhaps meditation seems boring compared to other more stimulating choices of activity.

Perhaps we just don’t see where we can fit it into our busy schedules.

Perhaps we get started on a practice but haven’t been able to make it a habit because our schedule varies a great deal.

Perhaps we don’t want to be a ‘meditator,’ whatever that means to us.

Perhaps we like to meditate in a group and it’s not the same when we are alone.

Perhaps one of these reasons resonates with you, if you don’t have a daily practice, or perhaps some other reasoning arises as you sit quietly and ask yourself, “What is keeping me from developing a regular daily practice of meditation?”

I don’t want to rush in and offer rebuttals to any of these thoughts that might arise, but I do ask that you sit with them, and question them a little more deeply. Ask for more clarity. Ask “Is this true?” Ask “What am I afraid of?” And as in every process of this nature, be compassionate and respectful of the answers. If this are the honest feelings, then there is no arguing with them. Accept the truth of them.

Then perhaps you may find that openly expressing these feelings give you the opportunity to see them more clearly. If you hear yourself saying, “Meditation is boring,” you can ask what it is you want to be distracted from, what could possibly be richer and more interesting than this moment with all its sensory options?

If you have a scheduling challenge, you can ask if there are any activities during your day that are less nourishing than a regular practice of meditation. (Sometimes we think we need to have periods of watching mindless television or internet surfing as a way to relax, when if we were meditating daily we wouldn’t have gotten so stressed or exhausted in the that we needed that escape in the first place!)

Clearly I believe that meditation is a powerful and easily accessible tool that offers impressive benefits. But I also know that there are other forms, other ways that we can come home to our quiet inner spaciousness. Perhaps there is some way you are already accessing this spaciousness, or some way that with slight adjustments you could make an already existing activity more meditative – walks in nature, swimming, gardening, knitting, yoga, etc. Look for solitary activities that you could infuse with more mindfulness, practicing staying fully in the moment. It might simply be removing the iPod, creating an agreed upon period of silence in a nature walk with friends, or pausing before beginning a physical activity to set the intention to be present and to really sense in to the body.

But in all honesty, nothing I have ever seen can truly take the place of a regular sitting practice. So I urge you to give it a chance in your own life if you haven’t done so already. If you already have a daily practice, then you understand exactly what I’m talking about. If you had a practice, then let it go, then discovered yourself struggling again, you really know the benefits first hand. And if you started up again and found the benefits again, what a wondrous homecoming to this moment.

Freed from the Fortress

We have been looking at the freedom that rises out of the regular practice of meditation. These are not things we have to strive for or changes that we need to make in ourselves. These are the naturally arising benefits of spending say, a half hour each day in meditation. I mention all these freedoms not as commodities to be acquired or goals to be reached, but as gifts that you might notice receiving as you continue to practice.

We each receive these gifts in different orders, in different ways, to varying degrees, and there are probably many gifts that I cannot tell you about, because they are not my experience. All Buddhist teachings come from the direct personal experience of its teachers. There is an established framework of concepts and terms to help interpret the experience, but there must be the experience. It is through this encouragement of direct experience that Buddhism has stayed a living teaching rather than desiccated dogma. It’s like sourdough bread making. Buddha provided the initial starter, but each of us adds our own flour, our own practice and intention, to make the dharma dough fresh each day.

The Buddha ended his dharma talks by saying, “Don’t believe me. Go find out for yourself if this is true.” And every Buddhist teacher’s greatest hope is that students will question the ideas proposed in dharma talks, take them out into the world for a test drive, take them into their own lives, their own experience, their own hearts, and ask “Is this true?”

Teachers speaking from direct experience end up sharing their lives in anecdotes as grist for the mill of sharing the dharma. And the freedom I share with you today is certainly the one that is most intimate to me and that has probably made the biggest difference in my relationships with others. It is the story of being freed from the fortress of my defensiveness.

When we were first married forty years ago this week, Will told me I was the most defensive person he had ever met. It seemed that he couldn’t say anything without me bristling with hurt feelings.

It is hard for me to imagine now, yet I know it was true. If you had asked me about my childhood memories back then, I would recount every experience where my feelings had been hurt, where I had been humiliated, slighted or made to feel stupid.

I remember being teased, and it is easy to see in retrospect how I used all these experiences as building blocks for the fortress. Every comment that anyone made, no matter how benign or light-hearted or even loving, I took in and interpreted through complex filters that turned everything into slights, criticisms, or name calling that somehow made me wrong, stupid, naïve or ugly. Then every time someone DIDN’T say something, I would interpret that negatively as well. For me at that time, silence was not golden, it was leaden and toxic.

Thus experienced, it’s not surprising that my relationships with others were difficult. To befriend me was to walk through a mine field and try not set off any of the millions of land mines I had planted as tests of your love for me. Agh! That anyone bothered is amazing to me now.

How fortunate that I came upon meditation when I was still relatively young, in my twenties. And how surprised I was to suddenly see that fortress for what it was, and to watch as it crumbled away with regular meditative practice. Over the course of years as I continue to meditate, I still on occasion find more leftover bits of the fortress, lone walls standing with no foundation or purpose, but still sending little messages into my system that might, if I’m not noticing, prompt a habitual reaction. My awareness of them lets them disintegrate, at least for now. These walls are leftover unquestioned assumptions that, under the light of insight, can’t justify their existence. As long as I keep the light of insight shining, this freedom from defensiveness is a gift to myself and all around me. (Trust me!)

So what is it that actually happened to me? What is it that happens to meditators in general? Why does a simple practice of meditation produce such radical changes in our psyches? Scientific studies show some of the physiological changes that happen with meditation, including the raised levels of gamma waves. Studies show that during meditation, a flux in blood flow and activity excites certain neurons. The act of maintaining attention sustains activity in designated regions. The brain’s grey matter begins to grow, actually changing its physiological shape.

Of course scientists can’t put a value on whether this change is for the better. But as meditators, we know the value from our own felt experience of living our lives with the benefits of meditation.

Now, I didn’t know about the physiological aspects of any of this, but I suspected there was a chemical component. When I lived in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury in 1966, not surprisingly I had a few chemically-induced psychedelic experiences. I called my experience ‘losing my ego.’ In sharp contrast to my normal life as a typical disgruntled, critical, judgmental adolescent, suddenly I was simply delighted to be alive and engaged in the senses. I recognized the gift of life, the humor, the beauty, the complexity and the simplicity. In that state, I seemed to have none of the bristly, defensive qualities that usually plagued me.

But even as great as it was, at some point I would turn to a friend and say, “Remind me not to do this again.” I could feel the extreme and unnatural strain on my body, suddenly flooded with an overload of mind-altering chemicals.

A pivotal point for me was one ‘trip’ when I had a vision of a mountain with many paths going up it. Some of the paths were vertical, some gently switch backing up the mountain. Some were rocky, some lush -- all different, but all eventually went to the top of the mountain. I observed people on these paths, earnestly plodding, one footstep after the other. It looked boring, and I noticed that I was already at the height of the top of the mountain, already experiencing what they were seeking. But then I noticed that they were on solid ground and I was in a balloon that was deflating and descending. I may have been experiencing the benefits of this heightened perspective where I could see the wholeness of life, the interconnection and rejoice in that awareness, but I was losing altitude rapidly. There was no way I could sustain my mountain top experience. I realized the only thing to do was to set the intention to climb the mountain myself.

So I have been climbing the mountain ever since, first on a path fueled by an eclectic variety of teachers and books, then for a while with Dances of Universal Peace, then a more intensive period of group and independent meditation that resulted in my book Tapping the Wisdom Within, and for the past couple of decades I have been plodding along on the Buddhist path. I have found it to be a path that is well-traveled over the past 2500 years, but always fresh, not worn out. I travel in silence but feel surrounded by a loving and supportive sangha (community) of practitioners, with teachers who, if I get lost, shine a light on the path so I can find my way again.

Do I feel the way I did when I was tripping? Sometimes. One time on a retreat I even had some of the visual effects I remember while walking in the woods, not the patterning but the luminosity of life shining so brilliantly, even in the shadows; that same day I remember hearing a symphony in the clattering sounds of utensils on dishes and chairs scraping in the dining hall. On my most recent retreat I became intensely aware of the mystery of all that is, how so much is hidden, and it’s absolutely okay. I relaxed into the delights of the don’t know mind.

But these experiences are so much better than those brief trips from back in the day, because these are naturally arising rather than ingested, and my body is comfortable, wholesome and cared for. Even when I don’t have that same intense experience, I feel the awareness, the clarity and the sense of connection. In my daily life this has become a constant presence, this feeling of being very present. I can trust in these gifts of joyous awareness as long as I continue to meditate on a daily basis. I am on the mountain path, and it hasn’t been boring at all!

Thanks to dedicated meditation practice, I no longer see myself as the object of others perceptions but as the universal life force expressing itself through this perspective from this particular point in space and time. When I do think of myself as a unique and separate being, I feel compassion for my humanness as I would for any other unique and separate being I know or see in the world. I am more in touch with my child self than before, and therefore more in touch with creativity, fresh eyes, carefree laughter and pure pleasure.

The fortress of my defensiveness has crumbled, for there is nothing left to defend. Instead there are all these universally shared experiences and traits to be curious about, and the shared joys and challenges of this human experience. The fear of being judged seems to have fallen away. I admit I have not been put to any real test. I am surrounded by the kindest of family members, friends and colleagues who have no intention to harm me. But I subject my creative work to critique, my speeches to evaluation, and my commercial writing and design work to committee, so I have many opportunities to get my feelings hurt or receive confirmation of any negative belief I might hold about my lack of ability. Now if people love something I do, I thank them but don’t feel the same kind of relief I used to feel. When people have negative comments, I appreciate their interest, their creative assessment, and consider their comments seriously, but don’t feel they have attacked me in any way. What a difference! Now I have a sense of collaborating to increase clarity and connection through these various forms of expression. Much more fun!

Being freed from the fortress of my defensiveness is a sweet surrendering of all that had seemed so vitally important for my own survival. I thought I had to be smart, pretty, clever, talented, skillful, savvy, knowledgeable, etc. in order to be acceptable. In order to be loved. What a set up for misery that was! I didn’t stop to notice that what I loved about people, the traits I found most endearing, were often the least ‘perfect’ aspects, and certainly the least striving.

Freed from the fortress of my defensiveness, I am happier, safer, more supported and enriched. I am acceptable in my imperfection. I am fine with saying “I don’t have a clue!” I am fine with being totally uncool. Because cool or uncool, in this moment I am free.

Freedom to See Fear & Its Manifestations Clearly

Recently we discussed how fear is believed to be useful, but in every case we could come up with it was either useless or harmful. We talked about how it is contagious and is a self-fulfilling prophecy. I shared a little bit of how through the regular practice of meditation we eventually relax into a spacious fearlessness that is not acting out as a daredevil, seeking danger, but is opening to a deeper truth about the nature of the world and life itself.

In my book, Tapping the Wisdom Within, A Guide to Joyous Living, I talk a lot about fear, saying that all negative emotions arise out of fear, as all positive emotions arise out of love. This book was written in deep meditation, and people reading it resonate with it because it rises up from the same source of universal wisdom that they themselves have access to when they are able to quiet down and listen in.

This book was written in the early 1990’s, before I began to study Buddhism, so do not take it as a transmission of Buddhist philosophy, which in general I try to share here with my own take on it. But Sylvia Boorstein, Buddhist teacher and co-founder of Spirit Rock Meditation Center, many years ago called this book ‘jargon-free dharma,’ so apparently it isn’t un-Buddhist! Which makes sense, since when I came to Spirit Rock and the Buddhist teachings, it was like coming home.

I haven’t read or heard anything in Buddhism to suggest that fear is the root of all negative emotion, but there is a valuable Buddhist-style question contained in the concept. Whenever a negative emotion arises, we can ask, “What am I afraid of?” and find a very useful answer.

Last week when discussing the self-fulfilling nature of fear, one student mentioned a jealous boy friend from her distant past. His jealousy was rooted in his fear of losing her, his fear that he was not enough in some way to keep her. So it’s easy to see that jealousy is rooted in fear.

It’s not surprising that so many of us feel we are not enough somehow, given how saturated our lives are with messages that tell us we could be so much more if only we would use this or that product. We remind ourselves that these messages are not about us but simply corporate efforts to reap profits, but it is very challenging to let go of the belief that has been so long instilled. When this message comes from an individual, if we pause to think about it, we realize this individual has been duped into believing that they are not enough, and are trying to make themselves enough by the unskillful means of making us feel unworthy in comparison.

As we come into more steady consciousness, these kind of messages are seen for what they are and begin to fall away, or at least loosen and clarify. When we see clearly, we see that we at our core are fully acceptable, worthy of being loved, and if we open to it, we can sense that there is a universal loving-kindness that loves us, with a love that does not have to be earned. When we can fully relax into that understanding, quite quickly we can see our patterns of behavior and belief that have been disrupting our lives and probably the lives of those around us. We are able to see these patterns of behavior as misguided attempts to gain what we believed we were lacking. We can see they arose out of a fear that we were not enough.

Once we access that spaciousness, that Right View (see post of 1/14/09), then when these left-over beliefs and behaviors show up again, we can acknowledge them, as Buddha acknowledged Mara the tempter again and again under the Bodhi tree the night of his great awakening. “Oh Mara, I know you.”

“Oh pattern, I know you,” we can say to an addiction, a reaction, an erosive belief. “I know you, and in knowing you I am not afraid of you. I know you, and in knowing you, I know you are not me. I know you, and in knowing you, I can be curious about you. I can sit with the experience of you and learn all your ways, so that I will recognize you as Mara even sooner next time we meet. Not so that I can run the other way, but so that I can greet you by your true name.”

Whatever we encounter, we can remind ourselves that this is not the only ‘voice’ present for us. When I fall into an old habitual pattern of circling around to graze in the kitchen, I can open to the inner spaciousness of my mind and recognize that there is more than one ‘voice’ present, more than just the “ooh, ooh, yummy, yummy, gimme gimme” chant. I can take a relaxing breath, slow my pace, and open to an inner wisdom that questions whether I am really all that hungry for food right now, whether I wouldn’t find a walk in the garden or a phone call to a loved one even more satisfying. The first time I recognized that there was not a monologue but a dialog inside me, I was amazed. It opened such possibilities for breaking the chain of my habitual behavior. But that wise voice is so quiet and calm, I really do have to slow down and listen in.

When we feel a negative emotion arising and we think to ask, ‘What am I afraid of?” we have a tool for coming in to the present moment. We can sense into the body to see how this fear is manifesting itself. When we find a particular sensation – a tight chest, jaw or a pain somewhere, for example – we can let that sensation tell us how it feels. It may speak of sadness, loss, anger, depression, confusion, impatience, judgment, envy, jealousy, etc. Whatever emotion it tells is fear mixed in with story. As we sit with the sensation and the emotion, keeping our attention as much as possible in the present moment, the emotion gets clear of the story and appears as the pure fear it is.

Once we have touched pure fear we can hold it in an open loving embrace, just as we would hold a terrified child, with great kindness and compassion. If we try to nurture ourselves when we have only touched the sadness or the anger, we will most likely get involved in the story they embrace. Instead of simple kindness and compassion, we will probably use excuses, explanations, accusations, justifications and dramatic plots. None of this is useful. It just entangles our thinking mind in a tighter knot. When we relax, breathe, and sense in to the physical sensation of the fear, we can give it our full loving attention and acceptance in a quiet spacious deeply loving way that is transformative, without judgment or expectation.

Given the unconditional love of metta, fear may soften its grip on us and pass away. For now. We accept that this is a life long condition, awakening to what is true in this moment frees us enough to see clearly. But if we believe, ‘ah ha, now I’ve conquered fear,’ we get sucked into yet another delusion, believing ourselves to be immune to fear in all its forms. Instead it is more useful to be open and curious to whatever arises, to develop meditative techniques that enable us to more easily access the present moment, where we see clearly. We remember that Mara visited the Buddha all through his life, even though he was awakened. His awakening was not being free of Mara, but being free to see Mara in all its many aspects, and to hold it in an open embrace of curiosity and compassion.