Friday, August 31, 2012

Here/Now...There/Then... Were/When


GLIMPSE AFTER GLIMPSE
August 31, 2012
“Switch on the television or glance at the newspaper. You will see death everywhere. Yet, did the victims of those plane crashes and car accidents expect to die? They took life for granted, as we do. How often do we hear stories of people who died unexpectedly? We don’t even have to be ill to die. Our bodies can suddenly break down and go out of order, just like our cars. We can be quite well one day, then fall sick and die the next.”
Sogyal Rinpoche
*****
This would appear to be a morbid reflection to have on a road trip but, if I look at what the Rinpoche is saying, I have to agree. I tell myself that I have had so many close encounters with death that it is impossible to fear it. But there is a difference between an open acceptance of the inevitable and the sort of denial that tucks death away in a closet while I go about my business. The big difference is in how I meet the challenges of the day: a spirituality that looks not into the hereafter but into the present… the here and now. To breathe the air… to feel the gentle touch of love in the moment… to sense the gift of loved ones around me… to be here and in this place wholly… that is the acceptance I have as I sit this morning.
geo                                                                                                                                            5,098
P.S. My count is, as it is every year, off quite a bit. It is way off this year: Check the math: It’ll be 14 years since I started this journey and journal… Sept 15th, 1998…  (only the last year online)…365 days a year plus three extra days for leap years, minus the fifteen days  yet to come is 5,098… hey, how did I get four-thousand eight-hundred and seventy something… a couple hundred days off of the mark? Math hasn’t been my strong suite.

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Words... Words... Words!

There are sermons that are given without the sounds of words given that are enlightening to those advanced disciples whose minds have been disciplined in previous lives, but which are useless to novices who are dependent on words and definitions and style to keep their interest; the novice can not depend upon them for his attaining the essential nature of perfect accommodation.

*****
The keeping of the precepts is a necessary part of the practice of Dhyana, but the novice can not depend upon them alone to bring him to the nature of perfect accommodation.
 The Surangama Sutra
A Buddhist Bible
Edited by Dwight Goddard
(pp. 255-256)

~
 “Dhyana” is the practice of seeking instant enlightenment by means of a word or phrase. In Western culture there is a similar phenomenon we call “a white light” experience. Raised a Catholic, with so many saints held in high regard who’d claimed such an experience, I expected that the only way to hit that sweet spot would have to be instantaneous. But there is another way to do approach this experience and that is called by the philosopher, William James, “the educational variety” of spiritual experience. But just because it is called the educational variety doesn’t translate into me becoming a dictionary and concordance of the text. I often hear pedantic references to the Big Book or the Bible whereby words and phrases are defined and expounded on as meaning this or that without any understanding at all the spirit of the words. A word has no power at all until it is put into action and that action is sometimes bold and sometimes humble. But my action taken in the Spirit of Compassion is more powerful than all the words in all the dictionaries, scriptures, and concordances. One act of kindness is a step in the right direction above all those words... words... words... empty sepulchers for the dry bones of dead religions.
 geo 4870

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

The Elephant of the Mind

If this elephant of mind is bound on all sides by the cord
of mindfulness,
All fear disappears and complete happiness comes.
All enemies: all the tigers, lions, elephants, bears
    serpents (of our emotions);
And all the keepers of hell; the demons and horrors,
And all these are bound by the mastery of the mind,
And all by the taming of the mind, all are subdued,
Because from the mind are derived all fears, and
    immeasurable sorrows.

From the SHANTIDEVA



 Practice, it takes practice… to take the action necessary to do the next right thing. Armchair spirituality might do well enough for philosophers and theologians but the spirituality of recovery has demands for action. Does action mean that I run around like a chicken with its head cut off? Or does it does it mean I take first the action of non-action? Navel gazing isn’t thought of as an action by most of us. How does sitting on my ass thinking about my problems do anything about them? However, I don’t ever sit on a cushion all day. I get up off my cushion and make breakfast and grocery lists, pay bills or make phone calls… I don’t do these things while I sit but while I sit I make contact with the Spirit that moves me through the day with compassion most of the time. Granted, this isn’t always done as well on some days as others but, most of the time, I can reach out and give my full attention to the next right thing because of the early morning few minutes I sit.

Monday, August 27, 2012

Finger Pointing

DISCIPLINES OF MIND TRAINING
POINT SIX
31
Don’t malign others.

You would like to put people in the wrong by saying disparaging things. However pleasantly coated with sugar and ice cream, underneath you are trying to put people down, trying to get revenge. Disparaging people is based on showing off your own virtue. You think that your virtues can only show because other people are lessened, because they are less virtuous than you are. This applies to both education and practice. You might have better training in the dharma and say, Somebody’s attention span in his shamatha practice is shorter than mine; therefore I am better,” or “Somebody knows fewer terms than I do.” Fundamentally, these are all ways of saying, “That other person is stupid, and I am better than he is.” I think this slogan is very straightforward.
TRAINING THE MIND
and Cultivating 
Loving Kindness
by Chogyam Trungpa

~
 These “slogans” are essential to the “lojong” practice Chogyam Trungpa brought to Canada, the United States and Europe after the Chinese invaded Tibet. Lojong is Tibetan for “mind training”. Mind training that Trungpa spoke of was not instructions on achieving some sort of magical power (as I often thought of Eastern or especially, Tibetan, mysteries). The more I understand Buddhism the more I have come to see that it is not a religion in the sense that we think of as a religion. Unlike moralistic teaching, most practices are simply methods that help me to see myself as I am and to uncover the connection I have with universal compassion. Thinking that “I have it” and that anyone else doesn’t is counter-productive and useless. This attitude of “me against you” subtly dresses up the mask I am so proud of with another layer of delusion… carefully painted on to disguise that reality I fear the most… that what is under that mask is a demon of some sort. When I see myself as I am; the vices and weaknesses, the pride of righteousness, the self-centered pumping of ego I think of as this bag of skin I call George, I see they are nothing but thin air in face of the Spirit of Compassion they conceal. When we say that we are alcoholics or addicts of some sort we are not claiming the disease as another mask. Admitting my weakness is simply another way to take off that mask and to open my heart up to healing.

geo 4,868

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Acceptance Was the Answer

“And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation ---- some fact of my life unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly as the way it is supposed to be at this moment…. I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and in my attitudes.”

Acceptance Was the Answer

Alcoholics Anonymous: p. 417
(Or, for the old school, the3rd edition’s
title in Alcoholic Anonymous:
Doctor, Alcoholic, Addict
p. 449)

~

 Since around 1977 I have been receiving, every August near the 23rd of the month, a bit of a bonus check from the V.A. No matter how broke I am I can always afford to take my annual trip to Northern Idaho for a family get-together on Labor Day weekend. When the check wasn’t direct deposited in my account this last week I flipped-out. It was Saturday and I couldn't even call the V.A. to find out if there was a problem... whether the check would be deposited at all, or if it would be be there in time for the trip. Thanks to my mate, I came back down to earth after fussing, worrying and flying off-the-handle at the slightest provocation. She simply said, “Let go of it. It is in Gods hand and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it today.” The truth of that fact finally sank in… I was powerless to do anything at all and I just had to let go for the day. To tell the truth, I didn’t let go ‘til I got to a meeting. The topic was “Acceptance”. When called on to share, I heard myself, honestly let my fellowship know what was bugging me. I only have to let go for today… one day at a time. That is about all I can handle... a day at a time.


geo 4,867

Saturday, August 25, 2012

Spiritual Progress

The principles we have set down are guides to progress. We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection.
Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 60

~
 Yesterday, the topic at the Sundowners Meeting was “spiritual progress”. I’m not sure how it got started but people began sharing their experience with “God” or what their opinion of what “God” was to them. Little or nothing was said about spiritual progress. I listened regardless, even though at times I wanted to stand and stomp out of the door. I just hung on to the bottom of my seat and waited for the meeting to end, repeating to myself “Love and tolerance, George… love and tolerance”.

     Some of the people who shared are dear friends and have been in AA from ten to well over twenty years. If Jesus showed himself out of a cloud in the sky, that’s okay with me. I just believe it is more important to share, especially in an open meeting, about how we believe rather than what we believe.

     Finally, one of the last people to be called on, a young woman started off saying something like this; “I am an atheist but my experience has been that it isn’t important to believe anything. I sit every day in meditation to center my thoughts on a ‘higher principle’. After I meditate I go out and practice these principles I’ve learned through the Steps to my daily affairs. That is spiritual progress to me.”

     I thanked her after the meeting and assured her that, not only was she the only one to share on topic, but that she was not alone in her beliefs. Often times, after a meeting turns into a pep-rally for God, I go away feeling worse than when I went in. It isn’t that I don’t believe in God because, in my personal experience, something happened when I called on the Heart of Compassion to relieve me from the grip of alcoholism. My beliefs beyond that experience are nobody’s business but my own. Spiritual progress is about how well I apply that experience to my daily affairs and to always keep in mind that, though I aim for the bull’s eye of perfection, I am new at this sport of archery. I remain a student of the Spirit that guides me.
geo 4,866

Friday, August 24, 2012

Other's Opinions

Evaluation of Mind Training
20

Of the two witnesses, hold the
principle one.

"In any situation there are two witnesses; other people’s view of you and your own view of yourself. Of these, the principle witness is your own insight. You should not just go along with other people’s opinion of you. The practice of this slogan is always to be true to yourself. Usually when you do something, you would like to get some feedback from your world. You have your own opinion of how well you have done, and you always have other people’s opinions of how well you have done. Usually you keep your own opinion of yourself to yourself. First you have your opinions about something, and then you begin to branch out and ask somebody else: Was that right? How do you think I’m doing?” This is one of the traditional questions that comes up in the meetings between teacher and student."

TRAINING THE MIND 
by Chogyam Trungpa
~ 

 I live in a fellowship where I rarely have to ask this question of others. The  people I know are very quick to offer criticism: justified or not. This isn’t such a bad thing, however. After all, often times they also think I care enough about their opinions to be pleased at compliments. I confess, I do care… perhaps sometimes too much… fishing for compliments and resentful when I don’t get them. This dependency becomes especially glaring when I think I am disrespected and react accordingly. It is sometimes embarrassing… very embarrassing when the slight wasn’t intended at all. I practice meditation because I need to set a default… I can then automatically pause and understand the true nature of what it is that upsets me. When I sit I center on what is important and all that is trivial slips away. Awake, I see myself as I am without embellishment… assets or faults… because it is there that I break through and discover the stability that gives me assurance in the face of criticism or the laurels of praise. As a direct result of this practice I find that my opinions of others gradually… very gradually…take a backseat to the heart to heart power of love.


geo 4,865

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Tradition Two and Zardoz

TRADITION TWO

"For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority --- a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern."

Where does A.A. get its direction? This too, is a puzzler for every friend and newcomer. When told that our society has no president having authority to govern it, no treasurer who can compel the payment of any dues, no board of directors who can cast an erring member into outer darkness, when indeed no A.A, can give another a directive and enforce obedience, our friends gasp and exclaim, “This simply can’t be. There must be an angle somewhere.”
Twelve Steps
and
Twelve Traditions

~
 If there was any one Tradition that gave me pause when I first became a member of AA, it was this one. I knew what my anarchist tendencies were and I doubted any two or more people could be cohesive enough about anything to be affective. My experience was that, no matter the stated ideal, there was always a leadership in the background of any organization, tribe or loose affiliation claiming such an egalitarianism. This idea of a “group conscience” seemed to me to be that the way AA enforced that leadership. I was painfully aware that any group can be manipulated out of fear or self-interest and the "group conscious" was the mechanism for control in the Fellowship. The movie Zardoz showed one example of how this would work: its ruling clique simply “vibed” miscreants out of the community. I watched and waited to see whether this would happen  in AA; not so much out of cynicism, but to sort out who it was that pulling the strings. I have been in the Fellowship less than one month away from fourteen years and I haven’t sorted out that covert leadership yet.

geo 4,863

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Nihilist/Anarchist...i.e., Hypocrite

I thought of myself as a “rebel” but nothing could have been further from the truth. I railed against the hypocrisy of our institutions and saw myself as outside of the machine… I called it the “meat grinder”. I thought I was acting so very revolutionary because I chose to do what I wanted to do when and where I wanted to do it. I was "Outside of society" (thank you Patti Smith). I got incredible juice from adopting an anarchism that decried the excesses of both capitalism and socialism.

Once I looked out the window of my rented apartment at my used car, in my second hand clothes that, at another time, I would have taken pride in, and I realized: The metals, the plastics and the engineering that put them together; the property bought and house that was maintained by my landlord; the carpenters, roofers, electricians and plumbers that built the house; the fabrics, designers and manufacturers of my clothing and shoes (used or not) had to be purchased by someone at one time or another… someone with a job; the food I ate had to be grown, harvested, butchered and presented in the market; all these and more depended on a system of some sort: capitalist or otherwise, because it was not going to be done by my destructive and self-centered philosophy of life.

Could it be that my so-called anarchistic way of living was a worse hypocrisy than that of the society in which I opposed so ardently? What was I contributing to the well-being of others outside of a very narrow circle of revolutionary friends like myself? Was there a set of principles I could live by that would be more creative than destructive? To love where there is hatred; to forgive than to be forgiven; to understand than to be understood; to choose harmony over discord… these seem now to be truly revolutionary ideals. This took a degree of acceptance I could not understand before. Could I find a society that extols these principles?

 Yes, I could.


 geo 4,862

Monday, August 20, 2012

Martyr or Sexual Predator?



“And so, to those brave people. I thank President Correa for the courage he has shown in considering and in granting me political asylum.
“And I also thank the government, and in particular Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino, who upheld the Ecuadorian constitution and its notion of universal rights in their consideration of my asylum. And to the Ecuadorian people for supporting and defending this constitution.”
Julian Assange
London England
Aug 19, 2012

Julian Assange stood on the balcony of the Ecuadorian Embassy yesterday to divert attention away from investigation of sexual predation in Sweden he has been evading long before the Wikileaks flap. He further insists that the USA is behind a conspiracy to kidnap him. He praised the dictatorship of Correa for its courage. The Human Rights Watch (not at all staffed by right wingers) thinks otherwise of the Correa Administration. What do you think?

Human Rights Watch
2012 Report

--- Ecuador’s Criminal Code still has provisions criminalizing desacato (“lack of respect”), under which anyone who offends a government official may receive a prison sentence up to three months and up to two years for offending the president. In September 2011 the Constitutional Court agreed to consider a challenge to the constitutionality of these provisions submitted by Fundamedios, an Ecuadorian press freedom advocacy group. A new criminal code presented by the government to the National Assembly in October does not include the crime of desacato, but if approved would still mandate prison sentences of up to three years for those who defame public authorities.
Under the existing code, journalists face prison sentences and crippling damages for this offense. According to Fundamedios, by October 2011 five journalists had been sentenced to prison terms for defamation since 2008, and 18 journalists, media directors, and owners of media outlets faced similar charges.

President Correa frequently rebukes journalists and media that criticize him and has personally taken journalists to court for allegedly defaming him. In July 2011 a judge in Guayas province sentenced Emilio Palacio, who headed the opinion section of the Guayaquil newspaper El Universo, and three members of the newspaper’s board of directors, to three years in prison and ordered them to pay US$40 million in damages to the president for an article the judge considered defamatory. In an opinion piece Palacios had referred to Correa as a “dictator” and accused him of ordering his forces to fire on a hospital, which was “full of civilians and innocent people,” during the September 2010 police revolt.



The High Sheriff


TRADITION ONE:

Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends upon A.A. unity.
"The unity of Alcoholics Anonymous is the most cherished quality our Society has. Our lives, the lives of all to come, depend upon it. We stay whole, or A.A. dies. Without unity, the heart of A.A. would cease to beat; our world arteries would no longer carry the life-giving grace of God; His gift to us would be spent aimlessly. Back again in their caves, alcoholics would reproach us and say, 'What a great thing A.A. might have been!'”
THE TWELVE STEPS
OF
ALCOHOLICS  ANONYMOUS
(p. 129)
 
~

 I have been near enough to spiritual and political movements that behaved as cults to know one when I see it. The first cry of any cult is the insistence upon unity. There is a distinct difference, however, from egalitarian societies and cults, even though all must insist on a common trust. Cults generally enforce cohesiveness through intimidation by a Leader or an elite group of overseers… and this is sadly, but often necessarily, true for societies whose purposes are more altruistic than lining the pockets of their the said Leader or leadership. What makes AA different from these and what is it that unifies its membership without a high sheriff of some sort (read Animal Farm by George Orwell)? How has AA been able to survive without putting reins on its constituents? The answer to this is not only found in the Traditions but in the tyranny of the dictators of our souls: the Bottle; the Pill; the Fix and the spiritual vacuum we were bound within that governed every part of our lives. We find unity in our Traditions but our “Maser at Arms” is our disease. WE are driven out of the Fellowship by the demands of our disease and we stay in the Fellowship with Love and Tolerance because of the freedom we have found from those same demands. Once those chains were broken we found that our survival depended on sticking together. This is the foundation of, not only our survival, but, the dynamic that we thrive within.

geo 4,861

Sunday, August 19, 2012

The Stoop

TRAINING THE
MIND

POINT TWO
The Main Practice
Slogan:4
“Self-liberate even the antidote”

Some people say that they do not have to sit and meditate, because they always “understood.” But that is very tricky. I have been trying very hard to fight such people. I never trust them at all --- unless they actually sit and practice. You cannot split hairs by saying that you might be fishing in a Rocky Mountain spring and still meditating away; you might be driving your Porsche and meditating away; you might be washing dishes (which is a more legitimate in some sense) and meditating away. That might be a genuine way of doing things, but it still feels very suspicious.
--- Chogyam Trungpa

~

      The kind of meditation that is seeking a peaceful place where the mind relaxes as an antidote for stress is a fine way to start. On long highway drives; swimming laps; long-distance running or simply doing the dishes: I get into a groove where I am totally alert but almost in a trance. However good these are, they are only the doorsteps to the creative and liberating mind. It is though I approached that door through a wonderful and serene trellised arbor, but once at the door I hesitated or paused on the stoop a minute or two… turned away and said, “Navel gazing might be a good thing but I just do it just as well my own way.”

    Even if I do sit for a ten or twenty minutes... even an hour.... every morning. I can avoid going further and think that I have achieved something. Actually, it is true that such meditation and/or hypnotism... visualizations and chants, will reduce blood-pressure and a variety of stress related ailments... but I am suggesting, because I have found it true for myself, that this is only the beginning of the adventure that broadened and deepened the channel between myself and the Heart of Compassion.

     When I sit I can go further, with a calm alertness and assurance that sees through my deep deceptions. The fear of what lurks behind that door is the very essence of what I desperately tried to avoid through a dazzling plethora of diversions; from adrenaline addiction to alcoholism. I raced around trying to get away from myself when there was nothing behind that door to fear: nothing at all.

Sit and breathe and then...

geo 4,860

Saturday, August 18, 2012

To The Sea

“.… Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear in every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off ---- then, I account it high time to get to the sea as soon as I can. This is my only substitute for pistol and ball.”

MOBY DICK
Chapter 1: Loomings
By Herman Melville

 Melville’s Ishmael went to the sea and it damned near killed him. His “hypos”… I like that word… would have… well; it was either suicide or homicide. Some go to the sea for adventure while others go to escape. I went to the bottle for adventure but it really doesn’t matter why or what drove me there. Had I not gone there, who knows how I would have ended up? My neurosis, or “hypos”, led me to randomly knock “people’s hats off” regardless and I had to somehow escape the grip of my neurosis. I tried to excuse my excesses and blame my drunkenness for them. Sometimes I would black-out with little or no memory of what had gone down.  I did know deep down, however, that whatever I did do drunk, whether it was in a blackout or not, those outbursts were what I wished to do in the depths of my heart… sober or drunk. Jack Daniels merely put me to sea. The leviathan of my impulses ranged free there and were completely out of my control.
    When I sit in meditation I am in contact with the innermost reality that sees and admits and observes what is there lurking in the depths. If I see that reality as an evil that must be conquered I have lost the battle already. Let go of it… put the harpoons to rest… this isn’t a battle won by will power at all. Leave the leviathan alone, go to a safe place and let it go. It is a simple admission that I am what I am and then turning it over wholly to the Heart of Compassion. The hunt is over and I am merely whale watching.

geo 4,859

Friday, August 17, 2012

Unborn Awareness

Ecclesiastes (5:2)… let not thine heart be hasty to utter anything before God: for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth

Examine the nature of unborn awareness.
The Main Practice 3. Look at your basic mind, just simple awareness which is not divided into sections, the thinking process that exists within you. Just look at that, see that. Examining things as they are, in the ordinary sense.
TRAINING THE MIND
And Cultivating
Loving Kindness
by Chugyam Trungpa

*****
 I picture that my mind is behind my eyes… thoughts and dreams float around in there and bubble up… grocery lists… laundry that needs getting done… appointments… and on and on from things into people… sometimes it is loved ones and sometimes not… sometimes it is about what I want to write about after I’m done.  It races, sets traps, plays dodge-ball with visions and fantasies but I try to observe it when I sit… until I get a glimpse of what I cannot possibly attain… I get a glimpse of where it is that there is nothing to hold onto. I say nothing to myself for a brief second. What is it I am observing? This is what Chogyam Trungpa refers to the “unborn” mind. Simple awareness… I wait like a hunter for its prey.

geo 4,858

Thursday, August 16, 2012

The Mosquito

13
BE GRATEFUL TO EVERYONE

"This slogan also is dealing with conventional reality. That is to say, without this world we cannot attain enlightenment, there would be no journey. By rejecting the world we would be rejecting the ground and rejecting the path..."

“Training the Mind
And Cultivating
Loving-Kindness”
By Chogyam Trungpa


*****

    It is the world I was hoping to escape in some manner… through drugs, drink, or any other variety of excesses, including religious rigidity. We think of the duality of materialism vs spirituality as though there is something beyond what we have in our laps that we are trying to attain. I can use meditation as an escape too… to go to a quiet place where I can be calm and serene.

   Above it all at a mountain spa/retreat, sitting in a yurt on a $75 cushion with ebony prayer beads and saffron robes… calm and serene… a mosquito can interrupt my peace. Swat… Just like that! I have murdered another sentient being.

   Actually, in such a serene state of agitation the mosquito becomes a bodhisattva. How desperate do I have to be to get where I am in this space and time? Awake at last, the mosquito points the way at greater expense to herself than I had paid with all the accoutrements of spirituality. Now, if some guru came down from an impoverished squat somewhere in the Himalayas and proclaimed his mosquito as the vehicle of his enlightenment, a gaggle of spiritual seekers would follow to acquire a mosquito for them selves.

Awake, I put a    
   mosquito net on my yurt's
   door and go nowhere.


geo 4,857

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Lead Us Not

Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen  

THE LORD’S PRAYER
(Continued… Matthew 6:13)
 This phrase is a puzzling one: Why would God tempt us? Isn’t that the vocation of the other guy? The idea that the Lord could be tempting me is a confusing one if I look at it in terms of the duality of good vs evil. Does the good Lord tempt me to murder, rape, rob and otherwise pillage? I think not… This excuse holds less water than “the Devil made me do it.” If I make contact in the depths of my heart with the Heart of Compassion, how is there room for temptation unless I am playing games with myself? The Buddhists would call this samsara… the world of illusion, and quite frankly, temptation is a self inflicted wound.

    I have another take on this and it seems to be free of any contradiction. It is asking the master of my heart; “don’t allow my altruistic intentions to cause more harm than good.” How many times have we seen governments and people on the personal level cause more harm than good with programs and charities that undermine the motivations of the underprivileged they propose to assist? How often do we attempt to help our loved ones by warding off the consequences of their foolish decisions? How often do I sabotage myself with the charade that I am behaving selflessly with what is often called “tough love”?

    In essence, this part of the prayer recognizes that I need to touch on a power and glory that transcends the confusion of a limited vision. For myself, through this prayer, I can rekindle my relationship with the Heart of Compassion through forgiveness and an awareness that the answers come from within where the kingdom of the Holy Spirit abides.
geo 4,856

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Our Daily Bread is Forgiveness

Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

THE LORD’S PRAYER
(Continued… Matthew 6:11-12)



 Gratitude… it is about gratitude. Gratitude creates a karma… a vibration of spiritual wellness that forgives and is gracious. Our daily bread is what sustains me and forgiveness gives me the peace of mind that is reciprocal. What is a plea but a self-centered wish for something I don’t have? The key is appreciation that evolves into acceptance of the forgiveness and the daily provisions I have been graced with. Transferring the guilt and remorse of wrongs I have done to loved ones, as well as those I had little or no respect for, to the dynamics of forgiveness creates the aura of grace that provides. Because I have made an attempt to wear the shoes of others I had been able to be free of that burden and see my daily challenges clearly; thus widening the circle… the support from family or community I would otherwise be isolated from by resentment, jealousy or contempt. Seeing God in you, and respecting you as a vessel of God, is how I let go of a destructive self-centeredness and create an aura of grace that provides and expands.


geo 4,855

Monday, August 13, 2012

Hallowed be Thy Name...

Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. (Matthew 6-10)

 What is it we mean when we use the name of God? Do we know the meaning of such a name as we ascribe to the concept of a Higher Power? Didn’t Moses query God on the mount asking just exactly who it was that was commanding him to go back into Egypt? Didn’t God answer, “Just tell them that I am,” and wasn’t that all Moses needed to know? The once commonly spoken  name of God became sacred a hundred or so years after the priests got a hold of the name... YHWH. From then on YHWH was considered so sacred that to mention it was blasphemy… blasphemy so severe it required a death sentence to anyone foolish enough to speak it in front of the wrong sanctimonious dunderhead! It is obvious to me that folks made too much of God’s name and not enough of what it meant to be liberated by this power Moses tapped into by going to the mountain top.

    When I sit in meditation I go to the mountain top to make conscious contact with the “I Am”. I don’t go there thinking of making a big deal out of it. But it is important to me to be open minded enough to surrender to the will of the heart of compassion (or Heart of Compassion, if you will). Using a name for God is sacred enough for me to make sure I don't take it in vain. The term “to take the Lord’s name in vain” actually means to use God’s name uselessly. I.e., when I use the name of God to curse someone or something. Goddammit! (except maybe when I hit my thumb with a hammer) it is simply uselessly throwing God’s name about. If my description of God is the heart of compassion, it is silly to think the Heart of Compassion would or could damn or curse anyone or anything. It is far more useful for my own inner peace to bless instead. Therefore I sit and bless the ones I love and the ones I would otherwise hate because it works and is liberating. It takes me out of the symbolic use of God’s name into the active principle of God’s grace. The realm of the spirit is the kingdom this prayer speaks of… “in earth as it is in heaven”. Surely, I'd rather go there than the hell of my own resentments.

geo 4,854

Sunday, August 12, 2012

The Lord's Prayer

Matthew 6.9-13 K.J.V.

After this manner pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come: thy will be done in Earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.


    There is no more common prayer throughout Christendom than what is traditionally called “The Lord’s Prayer”. I had to come to some understanding and tolerance regarding this prayer if I was to wholly participate in any group’s prayer. Thus, I had to look at it closely in order to ascribe to it some of my beliefs that are compatible without sapping this wonderful prayer of its power. This is not an impossible task. What does Our Father mean to me? Is he merely the angry voice we hear outside of the comfort of the womb?

    God as our father is the aspect of paternity that relates to God as being a provider of our needs. As it is seemingly separate from being called our nurturing Mother, the father’s role is still important to the family. Most of us have had a mother or father at one time and, traditionally, the father’s love is expressed by protecting, disciplining and providing for us. The mother’s role has been (up ‘til the late twentieth century) to nurture and comfort us by creating a safe and warm environment... preparing and cooking of what the father provides and making a home of for us to abide in: Father sky (in heaven) and Mother earth (our home). Protecting, disciplining and providing for us prepares us for a life after we leave the nest and his sometimes harsh instruction is best tempered by the nurturing and gentle instruction by example of the Mother principle. The Lord’s Prayer is not a prayer to Our Mother. That prayer would go differently. But it ought not to be excluded because we all have impossible needs to be met. And, of course, we all ought to express gratitude for the nurturing and comfort Our Mother provides but the "Our Father" is a prayer of entreaty: we ask dad for help.  A prayer to God as Our Mother would be a prayer of gratitude... she provides, instructs and protects too. An ideal family has both; a union of “earth as it is in heaven.” If we are, indeed, brothers and sisters, we have both a father and a mother in God.

geo 4,853

Saturday, August 11, 2012

Did I Step In Something?

    I can think of so many instances in which I could smell that unmistakable odor of dog-shit following me. I’d check the soles of my shoes without my glasses, and wipe off what I could see, but perhaps miss a trace. It didn’t take much really. All it took was a smidgeon of it hidden in the treads of my shoe to follow me wherever I went. I’d get in the car and it got smeared on to the gas peddle. I’d walk on a carpet and it got on it too. No matter where I went it went with me. There is no mistaking the odor. Finally, I’d take off the offending shoe and scour it good. However, once that was accomplished, there were those places I’d have go back to, hold my nose, and clean them up.

This is one way how karma can be explained. It doesn’t have to be any mumbo-jumbo about past-lives other than the life I am living. It is no sin to step in something. But to carry it around and stink up whatever I touch is karma. It takes putting on my glasses; practicing some introspection; cleaning my own shoes and covering my tracks; thoroughly accounting for my past, and then cleaning it up too. Cleaning up the list of people I have harmed are opportunities for growth… making those amends to get rid of the stink is what we in "Twelve Step" programs call the 4th through the 9th Steps.

Besides my obvious addictions, the stink I speak of are my character defects that follow me wherever I go. With the help I get from the Heart of Compassion, those areas that cause me the most trouble are lifted and I get help doing what I can about the messes I have made. What isn't lifted I have to work at. Fortunately, my Higher Power is capable of doing the heavy lifting.

geo 4,852

Friday, August 10, 2012

Mindfulness

THE HEART
OF THE
BUDDHA
By Chogyam Trungpa

Mindfulness is the basic approach to the spiritual journey that is common to all traditions of Buddhism. But before we begin to look closely at their approach, we should have some idea of what is meant by spirituality itself. Some say that spirituality is a way of attaining a better kind of happiness, transcendental happiness. Others say that it is a benevolent way to develop power over others. Still others say the point of spirituality is to acquire magical powers so we can change the world through miracles. It seems that all of these points of view are irrelevant to the Buddhist approach. According to the buddhadharma, spirituality means relating with the working basis of one’s existence, which is one’s state of mind.
The Four Foundations Of
Mindfulness (pp. 21-22)

*****

   One of the greatest impediments to this whole bit about spirituality for me was what I thought of as all the garbage I thought went with it. Indeed, I do find all kinds of New Agers in the Fellowship that bring to the practice their crystals, meditation cushions, aura readings and so on. I can’t really criticize these things because I see these things work for them. However, I find it enough to simply touch on some clarity of mind. Maybe I will walk on water… but for now it is enough to simply be able to treat others as I would like to be treated. Tapping into this clarity has tremendous power that can best be seen through practice. Humility, grace, awareness or mindfulness is where and when I am present… no longer practicing but becoming… being: here and now. To breathe… to see… to smell… to hear… to feel the air around me and to be aware of my pulse and my connection to the cosmic dance… that is the essence of meditation and spirituality to me. These open me to the suffering of others; an open awareness that is the Heart of Compassion not because I pity them but because others are not separate from me.

geo 4,851

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Courage and Humility


What most of us need, almost more than anything, is the courage and humility to really ask for help, from the depths of our hearts: to ask for the compassion of enlightened beings, to ask for purification and healing, to ask for the power to understand the meaning of suffering and transform it; at a relative level to ask for the growth in our lives of clarity, peace, and discernment, and to ask for the realization of the absolute nature of mind that comes from merging with the deathless wisdom of the master.
GLIMPSE 
AFTER GLIMPSE
Sogyal Rinpoche (August 9)


*****

 Everyone seeking spiritual growth needs someone to bounce off of. Those of us in recovery have a sponsor and fellowship to get us started but some of us need something more. It is important to have a path. The meaning of religion to me is direction and a distinct discipline for guidance. We have churches, priests and ministers in the Western traditions but we don’t have much beyond the confessional for our spirituality. We either, approach “God” through the intercession of “the Saints” and priests in Orthodox and Catholic Christian churches, or we do so directly, as in most Christian Protestantism. I believe that this is why there are so many confusing sects and denominations interpreting the scriptures of the Bible. The twentieth century also brought us the development of various psychiatric therapies… some of which have elements that resemble spiritual awareness. We speak of athletes excelling through rigorous training but we resist going to someone, or teachings, in a fellowship that can actually help us with the most important thing in our lives… our conscious contact with the Heart of Compassion.

    I confess that I am somewhat of a hypocrite along these lines because I have my own meditation practice that I have gleaned what I can understand from the writings of a few Tibetan masters… but I am getting there and, at least, have chosen a path. When challenged to choose this or that guru I can ask: Who was the Buddha’s master?

geo 4,850


Wednesday, August 8, 2012

The Rules

THE BOOK

It is increasingly difficult to take a walk in such “reservations of wanderers” as state parks. But the nearest state park to my home has, at its entrance, a fence plastered with a long line of placards saying: NO FIRES, SMOKING PROHIBITED, NO HORSE RIDING, NO FIRES, NO DOGS, NO HUNTING, NO CAMPING, NO SWIMMING, NO WASHING (I never did get that one.) PICNICS RESTRICTED TO DESIGNATED AREAS. Miles of what used to be free-and-easy beaches are now state parks which close at 6 P.M., so that one can no longer camp there for a midnight feast. Nor can one swim outside a hundred-yard span watched by a guard, nor venture more than a few hundred feet into the water. All in the cause of “safety first” and foolproof living.

The Game of Black and White
By Alan Watts

*****

 It seems that the most revolutionary thing I can do is to think for myself. This is especially so if I launch out on a spiritual path that has any meaning or power. The rules are made to protect us from ourselves and I can see why because people have no respect for each other. We are so egocentric that fires are lit where they can get out of control and burn down forests; we fear gangs of thugs that patrol beaches at night to catch, perchance,  unwary lovers; dogs are so abused by bad training that unleashed they attack anyone encountered; people camping abuse campsites so badly they chop down trees, crush bushes, and scatter litter. I don’t get the NO SWIMMING restriction in Lake Cachuma (our local reservoir). Hell, fish piss in the water… how much more bacteria can a handful of swimmers contribute to the microscopic fellows that isn’t wiped out through the fluoridation process?

    It would seem that respect for nature without being commanded to do so is a revolutionary act. In an ideal society we wouldn’t need all of these rules. State and national parks were created to protect areas from private ownership with the intention to protect them from exploitation…to keep these areas as pristine as possible for the enjoyment of the people. Then the rule makers made it damned near impossible to do so. I have to be careful to not do so in order to protect whatever spiritual path I am on against the reprobates. If my Higher Power has strength enough to be the dynamo in my life, this God doesn't need my help to keep the path clear of pollution.

    I heard this tsk...tsk  from a good Christian Friend: Jesus and Satan were having lunch in Heaven before creation. Discussion turned to how the creatures on earth would conduct themselves best. Jesus was led to say, “I would propose people treat each other as they would be treated.” Satan responded enthusiastically, “Great idea… we’ll need someone and a set of rules to ensure they do!”


geo 4,849

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

THE BOOK
By Alan Watts
Chapter titled;
So What?

… For there is no fate unless there is someone or something to be fated. There is no trap without someone to be caught. There is, indeed, no compulsion unless there is also freedom of choice, for the sensation of behaving involuntarily. Thus when the line between myself and what happens to me is dissolved and there is no stronghold left for the ego even as a passive witness. I find myself not in a world but as a world which is neither compulsive nor capricious: it just happens, and all happenings are mutually interdependent in a way in a way that seems unbelievably harmonious. Every this goes with every that. Without others there is no self, and without somewhere there is no here, so that --- in this sense --- self is other and here is there.

*****

 This selflessness idea didn’t really matter all that much to me until I saw how damaging to my own well being it was to see myself in terms of an ego separate from the rest of the world. If I take the idea that God is a divine baby-sitter instead of an active participant in every cell of my body there is no sense that I can be a co-creator of reality. Alcoholism, drug addiction, and every kind of sorrow and crime can be seen as the inevitable outcome of the will of God. Everything I do is my destiny and, if God deals me a bad hand, that is the hand I am forever doomed to play out unless God changes His mind about me. Even when I am relieved of all obsessions and addictions, an undercurrent is always there that I am saved because I am somehow the apple of God’s eye and you other unfortunates are not. The idea that I am as much god as God is me is considered blasphemy and egocentric when it is in fact the ultimate confession of humility because it recognizes your divinity too. This is why a Hindu greets others politely, bowing respectfully, and putting hands together says, “Namaste”. This awareness gives me the courage and strength to see life in terms of harmony with the divine order of the universe because I am not merely a spectator of the dance but I am one of the dancers.

geo 4,848

Monday, August 6, 2012

Not a Theory

A student of Tendai, a philosophical school of Buddhism, came to the Zen abode of Gasan as a pupil. When he was departing a few days later, Gasan warned him: “Studying the truth speculatively is a useful way of collecting preaching material. But remember that unless you meditate constantly your light of truth may go out.

ZEN FLESH ZEN BONES
101 ZEN STORIES

*****

“The spiritual life is not a theory. We have to live it.”(Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 83)

 Sit in meditation emptied. It is what I do to equip myself for the day. The first few minutes are occupied with a parade of thinking. Thinking about this or that… things I want to get done… an idea of what I want to write in my morning meditation for this blog… grocery lists and so on. My mind gets muddled and stagnates… I fight off sleep…It is useless to fight it with my mind only. This is my experience… I let go and breathe…clear the stale air from my lungs… the simplest things are there for me to do to awaken me. Straighten my back… keep my eyes open… raise them… stay vigilant and as watchful as I can
.
    I love Google Maps. I can peer into places I have never been. I can even get street level views in some places. It is almost as though I have been there but I haven’t. I believe it was the words of Marshall McLuhan that apply here; “The map is not the territory.” I have to go there and take to the road if I am to know it at all, referring to the map only as a guide and not a Bible.

Experience trumps theory or opinion every time.
   

Sunday, August 5, 2012

My, My, oh My!

Most of us have the sensation that “I myself” is a separate center of feeling and action, living organisms and bounded by a physical body --- a center which “confronts” an “external” world of people and things, making contact through the senses with a universe both alien and strange. Everyday figures of speech reflect this illusion. “I came int this world.” You must face reality.” “The conquest of nature.”
    This feeling of being lonely and very temporary visitors in the universe is a flat contradiction to everything known about man (and all other living organisms) in the sciences. We do not come into this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean “waves,” the universe “peoples.” Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe. This fact is rarely, if ever, experienced by most individuals. Even those who know it to be true in theory do not sense or feel it, but continue to be aware of themselves as isolated “egos” inside of bags of skin.

THE BOOK
By Alan Watts
Inside Information
(Chapter One pp. 8-9)

*****

 Isn’t it alarming that I possess problems as though they are mine? I have alcoholism… my financial distress… my cancer… my fears, my obsessions, my weight problem, my anger, my, my, oh my… even my loved ones. The truth is that cancers, alcoholism, fears and all others are expressions… a way of the universe reminding me that I am a part of the big scheme of things. This is not to say that the universe goes about reminding anyone of anything but rather, it is a fact that all of these have a prognosis… a source and a predictable way of winding … entwining within and without me. Of course, I understand that all of us have different fingerprints/DNA and all of us have distinctive faces etc.; but, we all (all that I know of) have fingerprints and, most definitely, DNA.
    When the universe looks at itself through the eyes of this bag of skin beholding the stars through devices such as an orbiting telescope, I can understand that this solid ground I stand on is but a speck surrounded by a vast sea of the cosmos. Just as a micro-organism in the ocean is as much the amazing wonder of the whole of what it swims in, the problems… the illnesses… the human interactions are not mine but are all just the sea I swim in and am a part of. The grace of God is the humility that heals and moves me through suffering. I don’t own it either. It is that which empowers me to let go of it. It is no longer my disease but merely the ocean I can swim through. When I say, “I am an alcoholic” I don’t own it. I am admitting that it has qualities that are recognizable and predictable in everyone who admits to alcoholism… whether or not they are actually an alcoholic is irrelevant at this point. It is not so much a confession as it is an observance. I no longer have to face this reality because I am it.

geo 4,846

Saturday, August 4, 2012

The Water Bottom

One Hundred Famous
HAIKU
Translated by D.E Buchanan

Minasoko wo
   Mite kita kao no
    Kogamo kana.

---- Joso


“The water bottom
   I have seen and come back,” says
    the face of the teal.


Joso (1662-1704) was one of the ten special pupils of Basho. In this verse the poet seems to indicate that hidden things are often not so interesting as they may first appear to be.
---- D.E. Buchanan

 I get a double meaning from this Haiku. One is the picture that Buchanan draws and the one I interpret from his commentary is that the inner-self… the depths of the pond… may be “not so interesting” to the teal but they are profound to me. As I explore and dive deeply and become as familiar as the teal to the terrain of the bottom through the practice of meditation, the less interesting I become and the more my attention goes outward as I “come back”. The first phase of my spiritual development is to get to know myself just as the teal gets to know what is under the surface. We see the lotus blossom while the teal sees how the lily draws its nourishment at the very bottom of the pond. The next phase of my spiritual development is what I see above… to “come back”. I have been to the bottom and I have returned. Now I must get to work tending the garden if I wish to sit and enjoy it as the sun sets at the end of the day.


geo 4,845

Thursday, August 2, 2012

Haiku


One Hundred Famous
HAIKU
Translated by
Daniel C. Buchanan

Asagao ni
Tsurube toratete
Morai mizu.
-Chiyojo

The morning-glory
Has captured my well-bucket.
I will beg water.

This is a poem written by the first woman to be recognized by the Japanese as a legitimate Haiku poet. I don’t know the qualifications for this distinguished acknowledgement but I do get a glimpse of reality in her lines as I read the translation and Buchanan’s commentary. He writes: It (the Haiku) illustrates the Japanese love for blossoms and nature in general. Rather than break the flower entwining the well-sweep bucket, the peasant girl goes to a neighbor for the needed water.
A Haiku leaves explanations to the reader just as appreciation of a painting or sculpture evokes a contemplative experience in us. It almost seems profane to ascribe any meaning to it because to do so is akin to explaining a dream. However, something Buchanan wrote illuminated a vivid picture of this poem for me.
The appreciation for beauty becomes more profound as I progress spiritually. Seeing a flower or a pebble on the beach the way it is with patterns in the sand washed into ripples and forms around, it can’t be plucked or disturbed to be taken home. Just the same; friends, family, spouses and lovers are not mine to horde but are to be appreciated for the beauty of the relationship we have with each other. These relationships always change and that is the quality that lasts. I twist, contort and warp them when I try to keep them for myself.
geo 4,843

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Compassion and Openness


2. Regarding all dharmas as dreams:

This slogan is an expression of compassion and openness. It means that whatever you experience in your life --- pain, pleasure, happiness, sadness, grossness, refinement, sophistication, crudeness, heat, cold, or whatever --- is purely memory. The actual discipline or practice of the bodhisattva tradition is to regard whatever occurs as a phantom. Nothing ever happens. But because nothing happens, everything happens. When we want to be entertained, nothing seems to happen. But in this case, although everything is just a thought in your mind, a lot of underlying percolation takes place takes place. That “nothing happens” is the experience of compassion.

TRAINING THE MIND
And
Cultivating Loving-Kindness
Chogyam Trungpa
(p. 29)


*****

It would seem that compassion would be a rather simple matter to project but it is harder than I thought. Isn’t compassion a natural human attribute? I suspect that it is more easily accessed by women because of the maternal experience and/or instinct. Is it possible for the rest of us to open up to it? Chogyam Trungpa thinks so and so do I. But, because of all that which keeps me so damned busy, it takes training. I also believe that the reason most of us shun religious discipline is because it is easy to see that dogma and ritual can make us too busy to see each other’s needs. We think that getting it right (God’s name, political beliefs, scripture, mantra, prayer or guru, etc.) is how we access whatever it is that we think is “the way”. In our minds, we dismiss and even damn those who have taken a different path than us or none at all. It is because I think of myself as “us” that separates or can unite me to others of my family, clan, clique or nation. But, it is a concept that is ultimately divisive and as detrimental to union with the Heart of Compassion as my own skin.
geo, 4,842