Thursday, January 31, 2013

Seeing - Knowing - Realizing Compassion

What is the view? It is nothing less than seeing the actual state of things as they are; it is knowing that the true nature of mind is the true nature of everything; and it is realizing that the true nature of mind is the absolute truth.
    Dodjom Rinpoche says: “The View is the comprehension of the naked awareness, within everything is contained: sensory perception and phenomenal existence, samsara and nirvana. The awareness has two aspects: ‘emptiness’ as the absolute, and ‘appearances’ as the relative.”
Glimpse After Glimpse
Sogyal Rinpoche



###
Perception… it can be called a point of view… I see it as viewing from a point and it starts from within at that point. Seeing myself as I am without the story line I have built up around that view. The story line is a cloud that obscures and confuses. I say I am bewildered but that the truth is that I know from within that there is no confusion when the connection is made with the sublime. This is where I am known and know the true nature of the Heart of Compassion (or God, if you will). It is in this place I see the sky above me and realize the infinite realm of the spirit of creation.
   Saint Paul wrote about the experience of meeting the Christ (or God, as you understand God) I Corinthians, 13:9-13: “But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then I shall know even as I am known. And now rests faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity (i.e., compassion).”
geo 5,248

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

The Moon Mooning

As the full moon rose before me, I spoke out; “Why… why can’t you show yourself as you did Saint John of the Cross or Dr. Fessler? Why do I have to be satisfied with hints and feelings? Where is my white-light?”
    I sat on the boulder above the creek. The sound of the water below and a wisp of a breeze wafting through the chaparral punctuated the musty aroma of the earth around me that spoke gently to my heart, “Isn’t this enough?”
    “Yes, it ought to be enough,” I admitted. As soon as I’d done so it was as though a blindfold had come off: No great revelation. No overwhelming sense of love in sentimental terms… just a sense of clarity. The rock was a rock being a rock. The creek was just a creek streaming. The moon was mooning, I laughed. Everything was just as it was meant to be. Smiling, I climbed down off the giant sandstone boulder. Remembering the monkey dream and the mama cat, I felt the wind softly say, “You’re home now, Max, go about your work.”
A Time Ago and Then
Chpt. 26: The Winds of Destiny
G.B. Couper
~ 
   Seeing things as they are, oughtn’t to be that difficult but it is. This is especially so when I look in the mirror. Why is it so difficult for some to see myself as a part of an evolutionary process in the grand accident of billions of years of becoming? Why is it so difficult to see that my nature is all the same as yours and our co-habitants on this planet in terms of science? Why does there have to be a conflict between what is apparent and what isn’t? These polarities are artificial boundaries and, even my resistance to this understanding, is part of the same DNA that created this ego in the first place. The grand paradox is that it is within an all inclusive acceptance of the polarity that I am finally free of the delusion of self-centered fear. It is the thousand forms of fear that drove me to avoid pain at all costs; to long for eternal love, to pine for eternal life; to seek approval of others; to seek security; to mark out boundaries of property and of faith. Aren’t these the ambitions, taken to extremes, which have brought me to my knees to pray to all these idols of human imagination? It is the Heart of Compassion that opens my spirit up to an infinite range of possibilities.
geo 5,247

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

You Can't Hustle an Old Hustler

… Ray hadn’t told me about the daughters but I was sure as hell not going to cross this woman. I tried to assure her, “I have a Bible and I have been reading it.”

   “Let me say one thing about that Bible, Max, it’s just another book you won’t ever understand without a change in your heart. I know scoundrels and bushwhackers of every race and creed. They know that Bible from Genesis to the last words of Revelations. But to them it’s just a tool they use to swindle widows and old-maids. Don’t try to blow smoke up my butt about the Bible. I was a bartender and barfly before I was ever a Christian. You can’t hustle an old hustler.”

    I dared not fidget because this woman’s eyes were still bearing down on me. I did look down at my hands in resignation and waited for her to change her mind and tell me to get the Hell out of her sight…
A Time Ago and Then:
Saintly Sinners,
G.B. Couper
###
Scripture, sutras and texts couldn’t convince me of anything as far as spiritual beliefs were concerned. I saw a lot of the content as confusing and undecipherable… historical or rhetorical exhortations and superstition of arcane spirituality that made no sense whatsoever. It wasn’t as though I hadn’t been exposed to them. The Catholic Mass has a break in it in which the Gospels and the Epistles are read. I loved the Gospels because they had a feel for something that had a deep resonance in my mind. However, for the most part, the rest simply held a mistaken and useless morality based on fear to me.

    So-called beacons of morality: hypocrites; pedophiles; cultists; and scoundrels of every sort; hiding behind leather clad Bibles, were everywhere. I saw Okie preachers from the pulpits of television, and Black preachers in store-front churches from the inner cities have the ushers pass the basket to pay for nice Cadillacs and expensive suits for the Pastor. When I looked to the East it was apparent that it wasn’t much different. Gurus sat on their asses in ashrams in poverty stricken India, or came over to the West, seeming to have no other motive than to exploit the vulnerability of an upwardly mobile, white, middle-class youth from the suburbs in search of a father figure to guide them. Even more disconcerting to my sensibilities were flocks of folks paying exorbitant fees to be humiliated by so-called native Shaman in sweat lodges, hoping to capture a romanticized spirituality that never existed.. at least in that form. It also goes on with crystals and aroma therapy... on and on infinitum in the  market places of spiritual vanity.

    It took a spiritual awakening in the deepest part of my heart for any of it to make sense to me. The sweet spot of surrender and recovery opened the texts. It is an especially poignant truth that preaching abstinence or moderation has little or no impact on the thinking of an alcoholic or addict. What had the power to change my mind was a personal and direct act of unselfish compassion of one alcoholic helping another. Until then our beliefs are just words on paper.
geo 5,246

Monday, January 28, 2013

Shelter From the Storm

Before the meal started, the Rancher asked everyone to introduce themselves going around the table clockwise. Nodding to me he asked, “Do you know the Lord’s Prayer?”
    “Eh, yes… yes sir, I do…” I wanted to explain that I don’t believe in Jesus and was certainly not Christian but I would be caught off-guard by the rancher’s courteous request.
    "Good, then I’d be honored if you would lead us in prayer.”
    I felt an oddly familiar warmth as I recited the prayer. I hadn’t said that prayer out loud since I was sixteen. I felt in the deepest part of my soul, that it no longer mattered what I believed or didn’t believe. I sat at a table where people were bound by a spirit of generosity and peace that had been missing in the midst of the chaos of the previous week.
A Time Ago and Then
Chpt. 4: The Pillow Shack,
G.B. Couper
<<<>>>  
Shelter from the storm, which is sometimes the absolute best I can offer the wanderer. I am always surprised at how generous and compassionate people have been in my life and because of those people it is imperative to remember those times in my life when I was waylaid and taken into homes where the grace and peace that abided there gave me respite from my troubles. I don’t believe that I would have taken more than that in those times because I wasn’t ready. Had I been offered a job and a place to live, it is most probable that I wouldn’t have taken it. Those would have been acts of charity beyond my grasp. However, what's more important for me to remember is that I can be available and willing to give shelter from the storm to the wanderer momentarily even if I can’t offer more. That grace can amount to nothing more than a kind word. The truth is, I can’t remember what we had for dinner that evening over four decades ago but I do remember the kindness served at that table.  The example of God’s grace was more pertinent than what was said and it was that example that has staying power in my life today.
geo 5,245

Sunday, January 27, 2013

A Matter of Form

THE LAW OF FORGIVENESS
Excerpted from:
Around the Year
With Emmet Fox, p. 27


.....The vital importance of forgiveness may not be obvious at first sight, but you may be sure that it is not by chance that every great spiritual teacher from Jesus Christ downward has insisted so strongly upon it..
    You must forgive injuries, not just in words, or as a matter of form, but in your heart … You do this, not for the other person’s sake, but for your own sake. Resentment, condemnation, anger, desire to see someone punished are things that rot your soul. Such things fasten your troubles to you with rivets. They fetter you to many other problems that actually have nothing to do with the original grievances themselves.

<<<>>>
This forgiveness business is the hardest task I am confronted with… period. Yes, it is easy to do so as a “matter of form”, but “from my heart” is another story altogether. What kind of doormat am I expected to be? There were deep wounds inflicted from my past and I am inclined to blame the offender and hold deep resentment when I feel I have been grievously harmed. Frankly, I don’t want to forgive some offenses and, because I don’t want to forgive them, every relationship I enter is affected in ways that are mysteriously subliminal. Furthermore, if I only forgive as a matter of form, the hypocrisy of it fumes deep inside, like a dormant volcano, and is libel to explode at the slightest provocation. Still, I believe that forgiveness in form is a good starting point as long as I don’t convince myself that I am done with the matter.
    So, what am I to do about it? Sometimes it takes work, patience, prayer, and meditation, not just because I am imperfect but because the wounds are real. Therefore, the process of helping another alcoholic has been a good way to defuse the resentment, condemnation and anger. In doing so, I can easily see where the reluctance to forgive can be such a stumbling block for recovery in the friend I am helping; i.e, I can see myself in others. So many times it has been a saving grace to see myself in the foibles of my compadres in recovery and am witness to the consequences and troubles that seem to arise from nowhere.

geo 5,244

Saturday, January 26, 2013

Nature - Activity - Silence

O Spirit, I worship Thee as beauty and intelligence in the temple of Nature. I worship Thee as power in the temple of activity, and as peace in the temple of silence.
Metaphysical Meditations:
Universal Prayer,
Paramahansa Yogananda
<<<>>>
The beauty of Nature is its own intelligence and the intelligence of Nature is beauty. Whether that intelligence and beauty is in the spiral pattern of an artichoke or a far away galaxy, the perfection of a crystal’s growth or the asymmetrical glory of the landscape from my window. There is much to wonder at and worship that isn’t an abstract vision of God. Where there is activity in the loving kindness of touching another human being, or the purr of a cat on my lap, my God is revealed. All of this is growth from that sweet spot of silence… the quieting of mind where I can appreciate fully the beauty of the Spirit.
    This experience is available to everyone although, I have to admit, I had to come to a personal crisis from alcoholism to launch me on this path. For others who have not been so afflicted it might not be as easy to get to the point where it is possible to be so compelled to the Spirit but anyone can do it if I could. All it takes is to sit before a waterfall, to find peace in contemplation within a temple or cathedral, ladling soup in a soup kitchen, being responsible as a father, giving birth as a mother, a brother to your sisters, or being a true friend… all of these, and more, touch on the Heart of Compassion that is the Creator of all that is good and holy.
geo 5,243

Friday, January 25, 2013

The Cheer of All Hearts

In the cheer of all hearts I hear the echo of Thy bliss. In the friendship of all true hearts I discover Thy friendship. I rejoice as much in the prosperity of my brothers as I do my own prosperity. In helping others to be wise I increase my own wisdom. In the happiness of all I find my own happiness.
Metaphysical Meditations:
On Material Concerns,
Paramahansa Yogananda 
#

Years ago, a customer in my cab, a young man, started bitching about this or that as soon as he got in. I listened as best I could although it was very tiring. Before long I found that I was starting to think of all that I had to bitch about. When we got to where we were going he asked me a question in which the speed and wisdom of my answer to it, still resonates in my heart: he griped, “How do the people become such bitter old men?”

    “We start out young,” came out of my mouth.


    My response stopped him where he sat. It was as though a Zen Roshi had hit him against the side of the head with a bamboo bat and I was equally impacted. Before he left the cab he thanked me but didn’t leave a tip. I didn’t care about that because I had gotten my tip for the night and, though I hardly realized it then, that simple conversation would influence my thinking to this day. I know for sure that the answer came from a special place in my heart where the Heart of Compassion dwells because it woke me too. 


    It is one of the most consistent spiritual axioms: when I help someone else I am helping myself.

geo 5,242

Thursday, January 24, 2013

The Fragile Rope


Monks, I say there is no wicked deed that may not be committed by the human being who has transgressed in one thing. What one thing? I mean the intentional uttering of a falsehood.
Itivuttaka 25
#
     I have had an awakening based on humility before the mirror of truth. I had to admit my own inability to break free of the bondage to self by standing alone and naked before a power greater than myself. Call it what you will, but I knew instinctively that I could not lie to, or ABOUT, the Heart of Compassion. I had to break down my experience to the minimum… reduce what I knew and distill it from what I thought I ought to know. All I know about this experience is that I faced the truth and it was the truth that set me free. I knew then that I wasn’t going to make up anything… intentionally color or put robes and sandals on this experience in order to convince anyone else of my faith. This awakening also makes it harder to intentionally bear false witness about anyone else. As I look in the mirror I am able to see myself as an image… a reflection… persona the mask of who I am and this opens up the possibility to see others as a mask of myself. How can I lie and add to my own suffering.

P.S
    On another somewhat related subject: I awoke last night with my back screaming in pain. I channel surfed into Milos Forman’s flick, Goya’s Ghosts. Great performances by Natalie Portman and Javier Bordem were matched by Stellan Skarsgard portrayal of Goya. Part of the story had much to do about the brutality imposed by faith in the denial of the Big Lie…the lie that the ends justifies the means and even the ends are a lie. Walking that tightrope of faith is Nietzsche’s Superman and the inevitable fall of false faith is the fragile rope above the fickle crowd. A must see if you can get it on Netflix orwhatever.
geo 5,241

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Mental Vigilance

And those who have no mental vigilance,
Though they may hear the teachings, ponder and meditate,
With minds like water seeping from a leaking jug,
Their teachings will not settle in their memories.
Santadeva Bodhicaryavatara 5.25

<<<|>>>
I love the experience of “getting it”… hearing for the first time verses or teachings that, almost without explanation, suddenly dawn on me. It is as though a veil is lifted and I laugh along with God’s sense of humor. It is the giggle of an infant’s glee at touching running water from the faucet. It is the pure and simple joy of discovery that takes me through the day. Having the teachings to ponder, having the discipline to meditate and so on, are all useless compared to this dawning. How this is accomplished takes a degree of guarding against that which robs the joy out of my life. In AA we have Rule 62 which is: "Don’t take yourself so damned seriously!" That goes for my outlook at the behavior of other people too. My first sponsor in AA would say when he saw other people acting up, “There goes God again!” I had no idea what he meant until I laughed… yes, indeed, there goes God again.
geo 5,240

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

The Charmer of Souls

Thou unseen Charmer of Souls, Thou art the fountain flowing from the bosom of friendship. Thou art the rays of secret warmth that unfold buds of feeling into blossoms of endearing, soulful words of poetry and loyalty.
Metaphysical Meditations:
Devotion and Worship,
Paramahansa Yogananda
### 

Creative activity that centers on intellect is often dry and uninspired; like reading a phonebook, such writing is more often than not a catalogue of words. Even the Einsteins of physics or mathematics sense that their equations have more to do with the poetry of the cosmos than it does with dry chalk on a board. There is a feeling when I am on the mark that I am being moved by a Spirit that transcends; when a surfer catches the perfect wave; when I am making love and it rises above having sex; when I am having coffee with a friend and the sharing takes on a higher level, it goes beyond the normal chatter; when I sit in meditation and hit that sweet spot, I am in the presence of God. Seeing, touching, senses awake and alert, I am here in the now of an eternal moment. This is where and when I am awakened to the eternal flow of life. How can I not love when my soul has been so charmed?
geo 5239

Monday, January 21, 2013

The Polestar

I am the captain of my ship of good judgment, will and activity. I will guide my ship of life, ever beholding the polestar of His peace shining in the firmament of my deep meditation.
Metaphysical Meditations
Creative Activity
Paramahamsa Yogananda
###
What is it I am surrendering when I surrender my will to a Power greater than myself? Can it be that I am mistaken to believe that, by taking the action of surrendering my will to God, I no longer have to impress my will on anything... that I abdicate all responsibility? If it worked that way I would be okay with it and I could blame all my problems on God or fate. However, it isn’t that simple. If I don’t take responsibility for how I act, how I treat others, how my thinking and actions reflect madness and floundering with no direction, how can I ever straighten it out and steer towards safe harbor?

However, it seems to be the case that I am responsible for keeping an eye on the benevolence of the Heart of Compassion. If I start my day as a navigator did before GPS by doing what was called “shooting the stars” to get a fix, I can find where I am and where I need to go instead of willy-nilly caroming through life with no direction or purpose. I sit to focus my mind and surrender my will to that direction. When I get confused, angry, disoriented or mired in the squalls that come my way, and no longer can see God’s will, I can take a fix on that direction by checking with my internal compass, the charts and taking on the spot inventory of the circumstances of my despair.

geo 5,238

Sunday, January 20, 2013

Walk Over the Bridge

You do not live on the bridge. You walk over the bridge. In meditation there is automatically some sense of the absence of aggression… Because there is no rush to achieve, you can afford to relax, because you can afford to keep company with yourself, you can afford to make love with yourself, be friends with yourself. Then thoughts, emotions, whatever occurs in the mind constantly accentuates the act of making friends with yourself.
.... Another way to put it is to say that compassion is the earthy quality of meditation practice, the feeling of earth and solidity. The message of compassionate warmth is not to be hasty and to relate to each situation as it is. The American Indian name “Sitting Bull” seems to be a great example of this. “Sitting Bull” is solid and organic. You are really definitely present, resting.
Cutting Through
Spiritual Materialism:
The Open Way,
 Chogyam Trungpa
###

In the Eleventh Step of AA, we pray and meditate to supposedly improve our conscious contact with God. When I call God “The Heart of Compassion”, I am by name defining the aspect of an infinite quality that is comprehensible and personal to a limited mind in the same manner Christians use the name Jesus. Otherwise the term God is almost meaningless to me and is not a quality but an abstract concept, a title, or a mental image. Not that I shun anything others wish to call their Higher Power but, when I sit, I am placing myself before the power of compassion in an earthy and solid manner. I am sitting with no preconceived idea of what I am doing other than sitting… relaxing and taking it easy on myself. Just as the ocean is where a fish swims and breathes, the grace of God is the ocean in which I live and breathe when I sit quietly a few minutes each day. However, meditation and prayer are but the bridge. Relax… cross the bridge to the Heart of Compassion... to solid ground... and then I go about my business knowing...
geo 5,237 

Saturday, January 19, 2013

But For Jack Kerouac

“…we’re at home; I can go anywhere in America and get to know what I want because I know it is all the same in every corner, I know the people, I know what they do. We give and take and go in the incredibly complicated sweetness zigzagging every side.” There was nothing clear about the things he said, but what he meant to say was somehow made pure and clear. He used the word “pure” a great deal. I never dreamed Dean would become a mystic. These were the days of his mysticism, which would lead to the strange, ragged W.C. Fields saintliness of his later days.
Jack Kerouac
On The Road
←↑↓→

Jack Kerouac is getting a lot of attention with this generation… On The Road is made into a movie today after decades have passed since its first publication in 1957. The places and things; the cars and the girls; the drugs and alcohol, compare little with crack, meth, X-tacy, and the potpourri of drugs available today. They had not yet come to be nor had  the word Beatnik. There were no; I-phones, laptops or 150 + channels via satellite on flat screen T.V.s, giant malls, or Wall-Marts in every town. Words were pounded out on typewriters and corrected with white-out… scribbled corrections with pencil on coffee and wine stained paper manuscripts that were sent off to publishers in vanilla envelopes along with dreams of fame and fortune. People made contact with each other via snail mail and long distance from pay-phones from San Francisco to New York… the inner cities left cheap decaying hotels and apartments for poets and painters as suburbia and tract houses mushroomed out from them like atomic clouds… Eisenhower was president and a poem by Alan Ginsberg “Howl” was in court charged with obscenity. North Beach and the trolleys had not yet become tourist attractions, complete with the alley between the Vesuvio and City Lights bookstore named after Jack Kerouac. So much has changed but so much is the same. You can go anywhere in America and it is all the same in every corner.
    Jack was an alcoholic who died of liver failure at the age of forty seven in 1969. He wrote about the longing for the mysticism of his Dean Moriarty. The disenfranchisement of post World War II industrialist America that these writers lived in was the first step towards where we are now in the world now… with no purpose other than surviving as long as we can, accumulating the most stuff that we think of as our “quality of life”. But the truth that haunts us is that the one thing we have in common from birth; we eat, we sleep, we shit, and then we all die. Somewhere in between is the fulcrum that levers us into the spiritual awakening poor Jack missed out on. He was on the doorstep of despair outside of immersion into the purity and clarity of that awakening. Until I passed that threshold I almost stayed there too. I love Jack Kerouac.

geo 5,236

Friday, January 18, 2013

On Gossip

Abandoning gossip, he abstains from gossip; he speaks at the right time, speaks what is fact, speaks on what is good, speaks on the * Dhamma and the Discipline; at the right time he speaks such words as are worth recording, reasonable, moderate, and beneficial.
Majhima-Nakaya i. 180

۞۞۞۞۞

     Gossip is damned near impossible to shy away from and most of it is passed on, at the least, as second hand information. One of the first guards I’ve been able to employ when someone is “dishing the dirt” has been to ask whether or not the information spoken of is first hand. In legitimate journalistic practice, before the "net", it was asked, “Do I have a reliable source that can be verified?”
 
     I put the plumb line of integrity to it after I can attest that it is true; I ask, “Is it necessary to know this item?" Or, in this instance, "why am I being told this juicy item?… what are the motives behind the rumor." Then I can determine to some degree whether what I hear, or read, will help, cause harm, be productive or divisive?”

     Is it kind? Most often the excuse is that I must know this in order to be informed… to help my brother in when it is merely to tear down someone for the appearance of having superior information… to be a busy-body.

     The old adage goes; the noisy hive is the most dangerous.

     By this I don’t mean I ought to stick my head in the sand. I hear folks proudly proclaim that they don’t read the newspaper, news feeds on the “net” or watch the news on T.V. because it bums them out. Regardless, it is none of my business to know idle gossip. But I can watch the twists and turns of world events, or gossip about other people, with the same detachment as watching weather reports. It can be helpful to know that I am in the path of a hurricane or tornado… that I can send a dime or two to a disaster area, visit someone in the hospital etc. The rest is nothing more than a sickening curiosity that I have no power to do anything about with no good ends in mind.
geo 5,235
* Buddhist terms translate universally and easily to any spiritual practice. Dhamma, or Dharma, can be the tenets, the actions, the practices, or the religion I adopt as my spiritual path.

Thursday, January 17, 2013

The Simplicity of Mindfulness

… Going on, as we do, obsessively trying to improve our conditions, can become an end in itself, and a pointless distraction. Would people in their right mind think of fastidiously redecorating their hotel room every time they checked into one?
Glimpse After Glimpse
Sogyal Rinpoche


۞۞۞۞۞

Sogyal Rinpoche wrote that the “word for body, “lu”, means ‘something you leave behind,’ like baggage”. Whether I believe in a life after death, reincarnation, or that this life is the only shot at it, the concept is the same.  I am compelled to make choices about how I want to live it. Do I want to go to bed at the end of this sojourn at last leaving the most toys or do I want to live a life of meaning and purpose?

     Today, in the modern world, I need to have a few things beyond a roof over my head and food in the larder if I am going to pay the rent and put food on the table. Unless I choose to live monastically, collectively, or in a cloister of some sort, it is most difficult to survive low-tech. I must work at it even if that work is as basic as panhandling for food and I sleep in a cave. The rest of my stuff is extra: i.e., a desktop or a laptop computer for work or play, a cable connection, a smart-phone, a car with all the extras and so on. I can still live simply. and it takes some focus, but, if my aim is to be of use in the world, I can consider these things as tools rather than distractions and put them to use:full purpose... to inform, communicate and even to play. The idea is to enjoy this life I live as fully as I can whether or not I believe I am going back into the dark night or into the light. I have found that there is more of that joy in the simplicity of mindfulness.
geo 5,234

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Bottoming Out

How hard it can be to turn our attention within! How easily we allow our old habits and set patterns to dominate us! Even though they bring us suffering, we accept them with almost fatalistic resignation, for we are so used to giving in to them. We may idealize freedom, but when it comes to our habits, we are completely enslaved.
    Still, reflection can slowly bring us wisdom. We may, of course, fall back into fixed repetitive patterns again and again, but slowly we can emerge from them and change.

Glimpse After Glimpse
Sogyal Rinpoche


۞

Old tapes, old patterns and addictions are often how I define myself and there does seem to be no escape from my hardest dependencies. Having the desire to break free of them is fine, but it takes more effort than I can muster on my own to do so. Just as it was with alcohol and drugs, there is a bottom I must hit in order to move on from their grip. It seems to be the case that I will be unable to find the resolution to do so without an extra push from bottoming out. Hitting bottom doesn’t require that I lose everything and end up on the streets. Hitting bottom is simply where I throw all my excuses away and surrender, everything, even my will-power, in all humility; to the mystery we call God in Western culture. In Eastern traditions, however, it could be just as well called the all encompassing transcendent Self.

     Essentially, we surrender everything to this higher Power no matter what tag we put on it. In this sense, even the Zen Buddhists aren’t atheists as we think of atheism on this side of the Pacific (even though there is no belief in a supreme being in that particular practice). If I don’t surrender my will
I am doing nothing more than adopting a set of rules, a morality or a religion that will succeed at doing little more than burdening me with guilt and shame. Guilt and shame helped to take me to the bottom but guilt and shame can’t be my primary directive if I am to find the freedom from the stifling bondage to self.
geo 5,233

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Spiritual Make-Believe

Those of us who have spent much time in the world of spiritual make-believe have eventually seen the childishness of it. This dream world has been replaced by a great sense of purpose, accompanied by a growing consciousness of the power of God in our lives.
Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 130

۞

The Spiritual Carnival of wishful thinking is going on at all times and everywhere I look in the spiritual materialism of our times. I would like to think this was true of myself before I had an awakening but it would be a fantasy to believe that I can’t slip back into it now that I am sober. I guard against such thinking as best I can by taking responsibility for what I do each day and refrain as much as I can from dictating what others do unless I am pushed against a rock and a hard place. I am not a healer… I am not a shaman… I am not a seer or anything else my ego wishes me to believe of myself. I am simply treating the disease of alcoholism and treating this disease depends on a spiritual awareness that focuses on motivations and how I can maximize the potential for mindfulness in all my affairs. I have found that I cannot even imagine doing this free of self-aggrandizement without yielding to a Power greater than myself. This is the power of the Heart of Compassion that transcends all definitions. The Heart of Compassion is approached through humility and willingness to be led into the world of a great sense of purpose, a worker among workers, and a consciousness of the untapped power within.
geo 5,232

Monday, January 14, 2013

Spiritual Acendance

He that has no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down, and without walls.
Proverbs 25: 28

۞

I am looking at Brueghel’s painting, The Fall of Icarus, and am seeing the plowman plowing, the shepherd shepherding, the fisherman fishing, the ships shipping and whole cities in the distant horizon with a world of activities of their own while in the ocean is a small and insignificant set of legs splashing into the sea while the sun glows over the whole scene… the sun that so enchanted the young and adventurous Icarus. These workmen and the activities of the world were of greater significance to the painter than the fall of Icarus. 

In case it is a foreign parable to my friends, this is a story in which Icarus and his father, Daedalus, escaped imprisonment with wings attached by beeswax to their arms. These wings were to created by his father... teacher... guru... guide... sponsor, to escape captivity and not to adventure so near the sun. Meditation is a fragile vehicle employed to ascend ... elevate our consciousness, in order to escape the bondage to self. It is hazardous to use it for thrill-seeking and the ego gratification of spiritual ascendance to high spiritual planes. Rather, meditation is for grounding the spirit. Or, as made so clear in the text, The dream world has been replaced by a great sense of purpose, accompanied by a growing consciousness of the power of God in our lives. We have come to believe He would like us to keep our heads in the clouds with Him, but that our feet should be firmly planted on earth (Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 130). 

I have witnessed far too many of my friends become deluded and fall because they aspired to fly too close to the sun.
geo 5,231

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Preparing

Human beings spend all their lives preparing. Preparing, preparing… Only to meet the next life unprepared.
Drakpa Gyaltsen
from, Glimpse After Glimpse,
Sogyal Rinpoche
ΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩ

    How do I prepare for the next life without preparing for this one? All the spiritual paths involving reincarnation and religious concepts of an afterlife leave my brain numb. I can’t honestly believe them; otherwise, why do we mourn the dead? Still, I know that these are essential to most religions. This does little to salve the fear of death in most of us. I can see it as being absorbed back into the cosmos but even that is too cold and difficult to wrap my brain around.
    Then I see it. It is now. Now is eternal and eternal life is in this moment. Preparation for anything other than now is an exercise in futility and an evasion of sorts. Even the Carpenter is said to have spoken of it (replacing the word God to words more to my liking) in Matthew 22:32; “The Heart of Compassion is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” Being in the moment, open to compassion, and able to act spontaneously is what takes the sting out of death and whatever physical pain I suffer. I can’t do this scurrying about looking for solutions or gathering beliefs that have little or no foundation in personal experience.
    I believe in the Heart of Compassion because I experienced compassion when the obsession to drink was lifted and not because I have created opinions to explain that experience; especially not the opinions of the experience of others and this is true about whatever the next life is proposed to be about.

geo, 5,230

Saturday, January 12, 2013

A Stranger with Gifts

Let there be nothing behind you; leave the future to one side. Do not clutch at what is left in the middle; then you will become a wanderer and calm.
Sutta Nipata 949
۞۞۞۞

Isn’t it true that when I meet someone I have met before that I am not really meeting that person but the person I imagined to meet before? It could be that there have been so many changes in that one’s life since the last time we met that it is impossible to know him or her in the same way again. I am often in the mind to seek permanence and wish so badly to be secure that I forget the basics of the path. I want love to last forever and I want to be always in the state of grace on which I am on a pink cloud. But there is nothing in my life that says anything is always going to be the same tomorrow as it was yesterday. So, because nothing stays the same, isn’t it better for me to see that person in the very moment we are in? This moment is the sacred moment that will pass and every opportunity for joy and sharing is in this very pause between birth and death. “The wind blows where it will,” says the Carpenter, “so it is with one that is born of the spirit.”
   The sunsets and sunrises of yesterday are but a memory... a picture implanted in memory. I can never expect a sunset to be the same as yesterday nor the sunrise to have the same clouds in the same glory. Therefore, I am encouraged to enjoy every moment I am in, and every person on the path, as though I am meeting a stranger with gifts.
geo 5,229

Friday, January 11, 2013

Turning the Juggernaut Around

Whether or not you believe that the emotional power of religion truly emanates from the divine, the power itself is real.
The Evolution of God,
Gods of the Ancient States,
Robert Wright
~
I am a consummate “Doubting Thomas” and I have trained my mind in the school of hard knocks over the decades to be doubtful, distrustful of all good intentions, argumentative, jealous, anxious, depressed, grasping and selfish. How do I get out of this prison of thought before I am completely overwhelmed by it? 

   It makes sense that it would take a little effort to turn a lifetime of training around by subtly changing course. Or, in the words of Sogyal Rinpoche, “Devote the mind to confusion and we know only too well, if we are honest, that it will become a dark master of confusion, adept in its addictions, subtle and perversely supple in its slaveries. Devote it in meditation to the task of freeing itself from illusion, and we will find that with time, patience, discipline, and the right training, the mind will begin to unknot itself and know itself and know its essential bliss and clarity.”

   I don’t necessarily have to believe in meditation, any God, any guru, or any approach to God at all to do this; but it does take faith to just sit and allow the mind to arise from the primordial stew. Knowing that others did so (and became at peace with them selves) encourages me in the knowledge that I can turn this juggernaut around. We do this together because we have found that we can’t do it alone.

geo 5,228

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

The Tree of Life

As you begin to think more and more about the tree, you will discover that everything in the universe helps to make the tree what it is; that it cannot at any moment be isolated from anything else; and that at every moment its nature is subtly changing. This is what we mean when we say things are empty, that they have no independent nature.
Excerpted from:
Glimpse After Glimpse,
Sogyal Rinpoche
~
I believe mindfulness, arising out of a personal crisis and deflation of ego, was necessary for me to recapture the intuitive and instinctive relationship with the world around me. The first relationship restored from the experience was that with my innermost self when I was forced by this crisis to admit my powerlessness and to accept it; that it was a dead end in the truest sense of the word. Total surrender to a Power, still mysterious, opened up when I began to trust that I wasn’t alone in the universe; that it wasn’t a cold, chaotic and dangerous place. This sense was at first intuitive but it developed into a thorough awareness of power as I opened my heart to the Heart of Compassion. This wasn’t a churchy submission to a belief; a preacher; a sponsor; a group; or any earthly power. It was in this place… the humility to surrender… that I got the first glimpse of a connectedness to us all. Everything in the universe is a vital dynamic in this realization… you… me… the tree… and this rock I sit on… all are one in the holy place of compassion. We are the Tree of Life…
geo 5,226



Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Power Tools

DO I HAVE A CHOICE

The fact is that most alcoholics, for reasons yet obscure, have lost the power of choice in drink. Our so-called will power becomes practically nonexistent.
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 24

My powerlessness over alcohol does not cease when I quit drinking. In sobriety I still have no choice --- I can’t drink.
    The choice I do have is to pick up the “kit of spiritual tools” (ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 25). When I do that, my Higher Power relieves me of the lack of choice --- and keeps me sober one more day. If I could choose not to pick up a drink today, where then would be my need for A.A. or a Higher Power.
 
DAILY REFLECTIONS, p. 16
~
One of the hardest points to pass on to non-alcoholics is the concept of alcoholism as a disease. At the time Alcoholics Anonymous was formed, little was known about how brain chemistry worked and how some of us are predisposed towards addiction. Personally, it didn’t matter to me one whit whether or not I had a disease:  I was beat up enough to surrender. In fact, I didn’t believe any of the malarkey about that at all. I was simply out of options and no longer cared what others thought about addicts/alcoholics. It didn’t matter to me what I believed either. I was no longer embarrassed about being naive enough to believe in a Power sufficient, and necessary, to relieve me of the obsession to drink. I no longer shirked at the notion I would need to adhere to spiritual principles if I were to be stay sober. It was simple enough to me: I had to pick up the “Kit of Tools" laid at my feet and plug them in. Using them skillfully was another matter altogether.
geo 5,225

Monday, January 7, 2013

Our Sameness

One powerful way to evoke compassion is to think of others are exactly the same as you. “After all,” the Dalai Lama explains, “all human beings are the same --- made of human flesh, bones, and blood. We all want happiness and want to avoid suffering. Further, we have an equal right to be happy. In other words, it is important to realize our sameness as human beings.”
Glimpse After Glimpse
January 6
Sogyal Rinpoche
~

It is easy for me to see that those who agree with me are human beings with the same desire for happiness and the avoidance of suffering; and, furthermore, that we are made of the same flesh, bones, and blood. However, it is entirely a different story when I go deeper than these platitudes to consider those whose opinions are not in agreement with mine. A few months ago I took this position of salving rifts on facebook and determined to post about healing instead of the adrenaline addiction to opposition. Of course, I have occasionally slipped from this position; but, when I extend it to politics or disagree on other social issues, once I withdraw from the egoism of trying to dominate a losing debate with demonizing the other side; I become more human and see others as motivated by the same humanity as I am. Can I prefer being human, being happy, and free of suffering, than being so fixed on my opinions that I see others as evil, greedy or ignorant beings? Can I make the connection between my head and my heart? Can I make today about healing over the predisposition to self-righteous anger and polarization that is our bane today in the dialogue on every level. Can I still apply compassionate criticism; seeking commonly agreed on solutions without sinking into blame and finger pointing? It is a hard pill to swallow but I believe I must... for my own sanity’s sake.
geo 5224

Friday, January 4, 2013

Active Laziness

Sogyal Rinpoche talks about “active laziness”. His comparison of the East to the West on this subject demonstrates that, in the East, active laziness amounts to “hanging out all day in the sun, doing nothing, avoiding any kind of work or useful activity, drinking cups of tea and gossiping with friends”. Western “active laziness” is another thing altogether. In the West we tend to rush around looking busy… doing important things and cramming our lives with “compulsive activity”.

    I'm reminded of the bumper sticker that reads: “Jesus is Coming – Look Busy!”

Helping others is a good thing but the business of helping others isn’t necessarily so. If I am too busy to search my motives and give freely, with no strings attached, how am I ever going to be useful to anyone… least of all myself?
geo 5,221
   

Thursday, January 3, 2013

I Guard My Mind

In the same way that someone in the midst of a rough crowd guards a wound with great care, so in the midst of bad company should one always guard the wound that is the mind.
Santideva; Bodhicaryavatara 5.19
From: 365 BUDDHA
~
Since I have abstained from alcohol and drugs, I am sometimes asked how I cope with people at parties and still maintain my integrity. This is an important question and a challenge to most mendicants. First off, I don’t believe I am on a superior spiritual path. For most people; toxins, such as alcohol and drugs, are vehicles to the same end: to relax and enjoy life in it's fullest. Just as I don’t see one religious belief as superior to another, I can’t allow myself to get self-righteous about drugs and alcoholic consumption. Yes, I used them to get out of my mind and anyone that uses a cocktail or takes a toke off one’s bong after work to relax, is essentially doing the same thing to a lesser degree: the same end as meditation and prayer. As Frank Zappa sang in 200 Motels: "I gotta be out of  it before I get into it." A drink after a hard day brought my mind home. Another, released my mind of grasping and I relaxed. Isn't that what meditation does for me? The difference is that my mind absorbs alcohol and drugs differently than most people. One toke or one sip isn’t enough for me and, because I have chosen sobriety for my own mental health’s sake, I know I have an addictive mind; and thus, I know that I can’t imbibe. However, when I am in a situation where folks are drunk, and even belligerently obnoxious, it is counter-productive to look down my nose at them. I guard my mind. If there is no productive purpose to stay and it is possible to leave, I do. I can stay whenever, and wherever, it is useful to be there. If not, I go.
geo 5,220

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

The Odyssey

Eumaios – the Swineherd

"Tell me now about your trials and troubles.
And tell me truly first, for I should know,
Who are you, where do you hail from, and where is your home
and family? What kind of ship was yours,
and what course brought you here? Who are your sailors?

I don’t suppose you walked here on the sea."
The Odyssey of Homer
Book XIV
Verses, 222 - 227
Translated by Robert Fitzgerald
~
This ancient epic is attractive to me because it is about coming home. Born a noble, Odysseus makes his way home after a long sojourn. His most humble servant, the swineherd, interrogates him just as my innermost Self, would demand answers of me. It is not as though these answers are not known by the Heart of Compassion, the faithful servant, but they were not known by me… as though my memory was blocked by amnesia. I did know my name and address but, in a more profound way, I believe I had forgotten the nature of the noble mind I was born with. 

   Meditation is said to be akin to returning home. In meditation I am asked to relate my trials and troubles. To know exactly where I came from… my home and family… the constellation of neurosis… the ship I arrived on. What course did I take… what wanderings… what shoals did I navigate that got me where I am now? Most importantly, gratitude for the crew that helped me get where I am today… who were those anonymous angels and protective spirits, and simple kind souls with a helping hand? Then, even with a sense of humor, I remind myself that I didn’t just walk here on the sea. It is a beautiful place of sincere thankfulness in which I abide a few minutes of the day. In a more important sense, I am the swineherd and the noble Lord. I am the Heart of Compassion and the most humble of servants. I have arrived on the island of Ithaca, my home, at last.
geo 5,219

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Spirituality, Politics and Opinion

 HAPPY NEW YEAR

If it’s going to be a “happy” New Year, I am determined to not get sucked into the political divisiveness that is steering the debate in our national policy.

   I’ve already read a headline today... an article in Salon, the online magazine, titled: “Why 2013 is going to be awful”, by Alex Pareene; “Here's to a year of austerity, dysfunction, lousy Obama negotiations -- and no ‘Louie’.”
the caption reads (bemoaning the cancellation of a Television show). In the article he talks about the political scene with the insight of a high-school locker-room gossip: i.e., Susan Rice was deposed from the Obama administration’s trial balloon as Secretary of State because John McCain “hates her”. And from the other side he comments; the Republican consideration for Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, is unacceptable to the Right because he is an “anti-Semite”… all personal accusations and not at all based on differences these opposing parties have on policy matters. I have read enough of Alex Pareene to know he seems often to be what he accuses others of: pro-Islamic in his articles and an anti-Semite. He could also easily be accused of hating Republicans (and specifically, John McCain). This is the kind of divisiveness and polarization I will try very hard to transcend this year.

    If I will heal this year, instead of brooding over our differences, I can see what we have in common and, if I argue at all, I am determined that the debate is based on policy and not personal biases. I would (rightly) get flack if I propose that Republicans are evil purveyors of greed, racism, homophobia and environmental destruction. I would also (rightly) get dismissed proposing that Democrats are anti-American wimps that have a socialist agenda with the intention of sapping our national defense of its strength, and destroying the Constitution by taking away our guns. 


   I have opinions on the issues of the day but I am determined to seek solutions and that translates into the promotion of healing rather than the polarization that is so very prevalent in the national dialogue. It is ironic that my two favorite commentators are comedians and not pundits: i.e., Jon Stewart and Dennis Miller. They both look at the issues with a sense of decency and open-mindedness most of the time that is unique. One thing that laughter does that my intellect doesn’t, is that it draws my opinions from the head and brings them to the gut without hatred when the humor isn’t demeaning. It is hard to hate someone that makes me laugh. Today, I base my opinion on the issues and policy and not on hatred.
geo 5,218