Oil and Water

The mind and feeling are just like oil and water; they are in the same bottle but they don’t mix. Even if we are sick or in pain, we still know the feeling as feeling, the mind as mind. We know the painful or comfortable states but we identify with them. We stay only with peace: the peace beyond both comfort and pain.

Ajahn Chah;

Taste of Freedom

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The idea that the mind exists beyond the limits of that computer behind my ears is hard to grasp at first. As much as I don’t like pain, and have spent a good part of my life avoiding it, I have found that all the remedies for pain cause more trouble in the end than the pain itself. Most pain is temporary and is handled easily with a Motrin or an aspirin. However, having had a back injury at twenty-two, I have had to deal with persistent pain for most of my adult life and in doing so I have damned near killed myself self-medication of drugs and alcohol. Beyond physical pain lurked the invisible ogre of psychological suffering in the form of despair and depression. Applying the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous enabled me to tackle the more pernicious suffering of the spirit… the mind… the alienation of the mind from the Super-Mind. Deep within each one of us is a concept of God… this is the Super-Mind. The Heart of Compassion that lives everywhere includes everything and is the root of all science and mathematical precision beyond the limitations of the physical world.

Tapping into that Mind is the goal of every religious practice and spiritual discipline. In the West, we surrender to it in the form of salvation in Jesus. In the East, it is the result of practicing the non-practice of meditation towards Buddhahood. It doesn’t matter a whit to me how anyone got there but get there we must if we are to break the bondage of suffering in self-obsession.

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Meditation

It is crucial for you to understand what meditation is. It is not some special posture, and it is not a set of mental exercises. Meditation is the cultivation of mindfulness and the application of mindfulness once cultivated. You do not have to sit to meditate. You can meditate while doing the dishes. You can meditate in the shower, or roller skating, or typing letters. Meditation is awareness, and it is applied to each and every activity of one’s life.

Henepola Gunaratana: Mindfulness in Plain English

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It must be true because the author has a long Tibetan name! Ah, I laugh when it dawns on me that I should have known this in the first place. I remember that state of mind in cross country running in a competitive sense. Attention was relaxed; aware of my breathing and heartbeat, I could feel the runner coming up from behind me; the position of the other runners; the time of my pace at every marker. That was one kind of mindfulness. Another sort of mindfulness was Ice skating on Newman Lake away from everyone else. Alone, in the middle of the lake, I could hear the ice moving… groaning… creaking… and cracking.,, the freezing air crisp but I was warm. There was nothing dangerous about it. I was totally, intensely, aware of my surroundings as, like in a dream, the skates slid across the ice and it seemed that I floated above it: of the world but not in it.

            I see runners now with earplugs going by and wonder if it distracts them from the experience I had as a runner or skater. If so, they are missing out. Even listening to meditative music is a distraction that puts a wall against mindfulness. Meditation isn’t blocking out the world to me, it is about becoming completely aware of where I am, what I’m doing, in the here and now.

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Know Yourself

The purpose of studying Buddhism is not to study Buddhism, but to study ourselves.

Shunryu Suzuki;

Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

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It is always a challenge. This morning I checked my e-mail to see a notice from my bank that my account is overdrawn. It seems that Monday $42 was withdrawn and paid to Center Stage Theater. Maybe I bought tickets for someone in my sleep? I don’t know anything about it. I am on a very tight budget, down to the dollar by the end of the month. I do pretty well with this and am diligent about avoiding that $34 overdraft fee but when it happens I am devastated. I have to shave off expenses wherever I can to make up for any loss or extra charges.

            This is a case whereby I have done nothing wrong and, if the system works as it should, I will get a refund and the overdraft fee will be dismissed. So, my task today is to brace myself for the shock if the bank or the Center Stage Theater do nothing to remedy the situation. Take a deep breath and put out positive energy… know thyself. Can I allow such petty nonsense to upset the applecart of serenity in my heart? That is the challenge. Can I still grow compassion and deal with the problem sanely and reasonably? If I can accept that to do so doesn’t come naturally, I can rely on the Heart of Compassion, a Power greater than my own proclivities, to grant me the stability to do so.

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Fear of Failure

FEAR OF SUCCESS

Fear that we will lose whatever good things come to us is one of the classic explanations for the origin of [1]dukka, the Second Noble Truth. When we come to understand that making our happiness dependent upon something impermanent and clinging to it can only bring suffering, we can acknowledge impermanence, use our understanding to try to avoid clinging, and probably not do the things that would force loss.

12 Steps on Buddha’s Path;

Bill, Buddha

and We,

by Laura S

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Fear of success? I would like to have some: at least where my novels are concerned. 

              Fear of failure is a bigger boogieman for me. Those of us who have chosen the creative arts know rejection and fear that our shit just isn’t good enough; that there is a reason we are starving artists and that the reason for failure is that rejection is telling us to go get a day job. I don’t know any artist of any ability and promise that doesn’t express this fear privately or publicly... most are driven by it! I can admit that sometimes I fall into anger and jealousy over the success of my fellows when I ought to be glad for them. I have gone to an opening, looked at the work, said secretly or openly to myself, and privately, to anyone who will listen; “This is shit, I do far better work and I can’t get my art displayed anywhere!” Ah, the duplicity! Especially when I then purposely cross the room and shake the artist's hand saying, "Interesting work, congratulations."

Fear, in such cases, causes me to add a two-faced character trait to the defects compelled by fear. While this is true some of the time, thank God, I’m not like that all of the time. I can actually take joy in the success of others when I am spiritually fit.

Fear of rejection is strong for artists and it is mostly the fear of losing our vocation… that we are not good enough for it and are wasting our time… that no one will accept and publish our manuscript or hang our paintings in a prestigious gallery… this fear haunts me at such times but I can’t allow it to snuff the muse. The secret is to let fear compel me rather than block my creative drive. I meditate today to center my intention and hit the keys…. I will not allow fear to stand in the way of success. It is more important to sculpt the sentence, find the perfect words for myself than to worry about promotion or acceptance from others. It is enough that I enjoy... love the work.

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[1] Dukkha (Pali, Sanskrit) the quality of underlying stress, dissatisfaction, discomfort, and impatience that is part of everyday life and can cause suffering when there is no wisdom; most often translated as “suffering”.

Dhamma

The value of Dhamma isn't to be found in books. Those are just the external appearances of Dhamma, they’re not the realization of Dhamma as a personal experience. If you realize the Dhamma you realize your own mind, you see the truth there. When the truth becomes apparent it cuts off the stream of delusion.

Ajahn Chah; Living Dhamma

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The Second Jewel of the Three Jewels of Buddhism is the Dhamma. The Three Jewels are: The Buddha, The Dhamma, and the Sangha. I don’t pretend to know deeply the Eastern mind and I don’t call myself a Buddhist. I find it more useful to understand these concepts on Western terms. Buddhist don’t consider the Buddha to be a God: he is but a man and the word, Buddha, refers to the enlightened state of consciousness; i.e., the enlightened One. We use a similar term, Christ, in the West meaning, the anointed One. My understanding of the Dhamma is best understood by the path that Jesus, the man, took throughout the pages of the New Testament. From the Sermon on the Mount to the hour of his death, Jesus, the man, demonstrated the power of the Dhamma in his fully realized actions. He told the religious scholars of his time that The Law was made for man and that man wasn’t made for The Law. We do these things to uncover the joy of the inner-self, the spirit within… to be born again. Simply put, the Sangha is the fellowship of like-minded folks encircled around the path; the Church (from the word, circle). Those of us who have found freedom in the Fellowship of AA understand the Sangha as the Fellowship. We see the Dhamma as the Twelve Steps and Traditions and our Higher Power as the Enlightened One… however we define it.

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Pain, Grief, Loss, and Ceaseless Frustration

Pain, grief, loss, and the ceaseless frustration of every kind are there for a very real and dramatic purpose; to wake us up, to enable, almost force us to break out of the cycle of samsara and so release our imprisoned splendor.

Glimpse After Glimpse

Sogyal Rinpoche

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Pain, grief, loss, and frustration have a why attached to the beginning of the phrase until I break through to where pain is pain because it is pain; grief is grief because it is grief; loss is loss because it is loss; and frustrations of every kind are frustrations because they are frustrations. It really is as simple as that. Isn’t it better to ask what caused the pain rather than why the pain and the rest are there. Once that is understood something can be done about them. I’m stepping out of the spiritual corral when I say this but the basis of Western science is that asking why is useless; that solutions arise from understanding causes. It just might be that the why of a flat tire is nothing more than what caused it; that the air leaked out and not that God wanted me to stop and smell the roses or find an arcane higher purpose. Or, as the Zen saying goes; when I am hungry I eat; when I am tired I sleep; when I am thirsty I drink.

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Pre-emptive Gratitude

THE SUNSHINE OF GOD’S LOVE

Behind every problem or difficulty lies the Truth of Being. This means that in spite of the appearance, you must believe that divine Mind is already healing the situation. Jesus said that when you pray, believe that you have received. Often we are so close to a problem that, spiritually speaking, we accept the cloudy day as a permanent state of climate, forgetting that the sunshine of divine Love and Power has never ceased to shine, although obscured for the moment.

In prayer we remind ourselves again that, no matter how bleak or overcast the picture may be, we believe that in divine Mind there is nothing but good and therefore only good can express itself in these circumstances. The important thing is to raise your consciousness above the level where the difficulty seems to be, and put God there instead.

Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father (Matthew 13:43).

Around the Year with

Emmet Fox, 296

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Practically speaking, the universe appears to be indifferent to my plight no matter how serious, or petty, the difficulty might be. One Native American told me that his prayers are not petitions or pleas for help but rather they are prayers of gratitude. His example was: “Father Creator, thank you for the rain; thank you for a good corn crop; thank you for the harvest.” He then said that he just walks away from it because he has already put his difficulties in the hands of the Great Spirit and, whatever the difficulty, from that point on it is none of our business.

I call it pre-emptive gratitude and pre-emptive gratitude is of little affect if I hold onto expectations. Pre-emptive gratitude has the additional quality of mind that grants me the ability to let go of any obsession which takes itself so damned seriously.

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Pain & Suffering

What is a great spirit, usual practitioner? A person lives always in the presence of his or her own true self, someone who has found and who uses continually the springs and sources of profound inspiration. As the modern English writer Lewis Thompson wrote: “Christ, supreme poet, lived truth as passionately that every gesture of his, at once pure Act and perfect Symbol, embodies the transcendent.”

            To embody the transcendent is why we are here.

Glimpse After Glimpse,

Sogyal Rinpoche

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Before I read this, I had been feeling a little depressed. The past few days back pain has enveloped my consciousness and it is difficult to practice, let alone imagine, transcendent embodiment. I know… I know… there are cults of self-flagellation and voluntary punishment for sins and transgressions. They claim to reach transcendent states… like the, Flagellants of the middle ages, the Sun Dance of the Sioux, or even the practitioners of S & M. However, whatever kicks one gets out of these, the pain is short lived. Wear it a while and you can even get accustomed to the annoyance of a hair shirt worn by the so-called devout. These have no attraction to me. As far as I’m concerned, there is enough pain in a normal life to suffice and I don’t have to go looking for wood to be used as an added cross.

            Transcendent-self shines through when I let my pain take a back seat. When it is severe and constant I can think of nothing else but that vertebrae the pain radiates from. Number one on my priorities is the idea that the most spiritual thing I can do is to take care of what is in front of me… the acme of my awareness. I go get help… a chiropractor, an orthopedic specialist: or an epidural? In the meantime, do I feel transcendent…. Hell no! But feelings isn’t what it is about. Transcendence and the act of being spiritually centered is about eating when hungry, drinking when thirsty, sleeping when tired, and so on. Meditation and prayer might help me skip through the tulips but, when I can’t do that, it helps me trudge the road of happy destiny.

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Bread or Freedom

I no longer need to use psychedelics, but I love what Terrence McKenna had to say about the liberating power of them. I don't encourage anyone to run out to take them because people react differently. Some have f*cked up their brains with so many designer drugs (Exstasy, LSD, crack cocaine, meth and so on), that to take a mind expanding compound which promises to open the doors of perception is often a near fatal proposition and sometimes can be a fatal one.

In AA I find far too many robotic people adhering to the program as though it were a religion of must do's and must not don'ts rather than a series of Steps towards a cosmic reality; i.e., God or the Heart of Compassion. In Dostoyevsky's, Brother Karamazov, my favorite chapter is the one where the Ivan relates to his naive younger brother, Alyosha, his take on the Grand Inquisitor meeting the Christ on his Second Coming. The Bishop gave a convincing argument that the Church did a good thing for humankind by taking away the Freedom Christ offered and that if Christ would have taken the option in the desert of "Choosing 'bread,' thou wouldst have satisfied the universal and everlasting craving of humanity --- to find someone to worship!"

Whether it is a man with a mustache on a white horse or a Lofty Idea, humankind is always chasing after the comfort of idolatry for a symbol over the freedom of being "in the now". Dostoyevsky tells me here that the spiritual path is not for wimps. The fact that governments almost universally pounce on anyone with the balls to step off the beaten path and prohibits natural psychedelics says more about oppression than any jail or mental institution. We cling to our politics and to our arbitrary boundaries with abstract walls to keep out the fear of the forest in the false security provided by social networks and material accumulation of I-phones, twitter, facebook, power and prestige. Next thing ya know governments will figure out how to ban sex!

Life is Short

Thursday, October 10, 2013:

FIXING ME, NOT YOU

If somebody hurts us and we are sore, we are in the wrong also.

Twelve steps and twelve traditions, P. 90

What a freedom I felt when this passage was pointed out to me! Suddenly I saw that I could do something about my anger, I could fix me, instead of trying to fix them. I believe that there are no exceptions to this axiom. When I’m angry, my anger is always self-centered. I must keep reminding myself that I am human, that I am doing the best I can, even when that best is sometimes poor. So I ask God to remove my anger and truly set me free.

DAILY REFLEXTIONS, p. 292

                      &

Doing something about anger takes discipline but it works better than otherwise. There are just too many loose cannons careening over the decks of the collective consciousness and it does absolutely no good for me at all to add my confusion to the mess. Life is incredibly short… far too short to twist myself into a knot over offenses, real or imagined. I do, however, wish that the word, wrong, would be exchanged for the term, error, in our literature. Right and wrong are strong words and ought to be used more judiciously. It is important to me that I assign no unnecessary guilt towards a thorough inventory. The key word is “unnecessary”. When going through the day I can slip into damned near uncontrollable anger and I blow up on people I sincerely care about. I believe that it is my priority to free myself from any defect of character that stands in the way of the Heart of Compassion from shining through my actions but that is sometimes far too high of a bar to set for myself. Being somewhat of a perfectionist, I am apt to beat myself to a pulp if my actions don’t meet my goals. Thus, perfectionism can lead to painting myself into a corner where my options are to say fuck it and, either justify or quit altogether, the pursuit of a transcendent happiness because of failure. The idea here is to free myself from the bondage of self and not get tangled up in crap I have no business of trying to master on my own.

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Compassionate Listening

Friday, October 4, 2013:

In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert mind there are few.

Shunryu Sizuku, Beginner’s Mind

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It is a simple idea that can be difficult to put into action. So much of what happens in debate isn’t communication at all. Usually it amounts to anticipating what the other one is going to say and how to rebut it. There is no listening… no one wants to hear what anyone else has to say unless, of course, we agree with each other. Even then it hardly ever occurs that anything sinks in past our eardrums because our minds are busy thinking of what we can add to whatever is being said. To be quiet and listen takes a beginner’s mind. To still the mind… shut off the chatter and listen… to hear with all our attention… to all our senses. That is where I find compassion. That is where solutions come from: Compassionate listening.

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Love and Tolerance is Our Code

Wednesday, October 2, 2013:

For Today:

“Never since it began has Alcoholics Anonymous been

divided by a major controversial issue. Nor has our

Fellowship ever publicly taken sides on any question

in an embattled world.”

12 Steps & 12 Traditions, pg. 176

Tradition Ten

(courtesy of Tim W.’s Daily Rx email)

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I can understand the purpose of this principle where it concerns the cohesiveness of the Fellowship. However, this one is the most difficult to apply in my personal life. My observation has been that most of the principles of our Twelve Traditions have a personal application too.  They don’t necessarily dictate that I have no personal commitment or take no action of my own accord but that I hang my hat at the door when I enter the rooms of AA so to speak. One of the things that attracted me to AA in the first place was that it didn’t preach for or against anything… not even alcohol. The history of AA is unique in that AA's principles stood for tolerance long before the cultural upheavals of the thirties to the present day. Racial inclusion; religious tolerance; the welcoming gays and lesbians into the Fellowship, and so on: all these were practiced nearly universally in our groups in the years since AA’s publication of the Big Book in 1939.

            What is so beneficial to me about this tradition... if I take it seriously... is that, when I walk out the doors and put my hat back on, I am more balanced and clear. I can be more prone to make an honest attempt to see where I might be able to adjust my opinion and to respect to the opinions of others before I jump into any controversy. I have some trouble with wild conspiracy theories and far left or far right ideologues but I am grateful for them because the example they display helps me check the holes in what I believe. Essentially, it boils down to mutual respect as recommended in the Saint Francis Prayer: Make me an instrument, or channel, of your peace… that where there is hatred, I bring compassion; where there is wrong, I bring forgiveness; that where there is discord, I bring harmony; that where there is error, I may bring truth; that where there is despair, I may bring hope; that where there are shadows, I bring light; that where there is sadness, I bring joy. It is a tall order but it isn’t so difficult if I begin my day offering myself to the will of the Heart of Compassion: love and tolerance is our code.

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Slaying Dragons

Tuesday, October 1, 2013:

You can have no greater ally in the war against your greatest enemy, your own self-grasping and self-cherishing, than the practice of compassion. It is compassion, dedicating ourselves to others, taking on their suffering instead of cherishing ourselves, that, hand in hand with the wisdom of egolessness, destroys most effectively and most completely that ancient attachment to a false self that has been the cause of our endless wandering of samsara. That is why in our tradition we see compassion as the source and essence of enlightenment and the heart of enlightened activity.

Glimpse After Glimpse

Sogyal Rinpoche

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Laugh… choose your battles and don’t allow the battles to choose you. That is the theme of the Serenity Prayer: Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. 

   People are very upset at this time in American history. It isn’t the first time and it won’t be the last. Frankly, it has worn me down and I leave the fight to others most of the time. Politics were once my forte and, even in the most peaceful times, I was angry and frustrated because I couldn’t see where my cause was undermined by my own lack of insight. I darted about with my fist in the air over any cause that seemed suited to my concerns. Though I had the courage to man the ramparts, I had little wisdom about which rampart was worth sacrificing my energy and time. I came to a point where I had to ask myself whether what I’m outraged about is worthy of my discontent or is my discontent an outrage of its own merit?

    My spiritual detachment doesn’t prevent me from engaging in society. I believe that compassion compels me to action with compassion I have found in my heart what moves me instead of an outwardly influenced sense of self-righteousness. We all are aware that dragons are mythical creatures. My Saint George the Dragon Slayer or Don Quixote have only chimeras to tilt when reality would suggest that the dragons I must fight are in my soul. The confusion and fear raging in my mind creates more discord than anything I would have hoped to resolve. I need to have the serenity to accept that which I can’t change, or to simply understand the courage to change what I can with clarity and wisdom.

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