Let's Go Shopping!

The most important thing is not to get trapped in what I see everywhere in the West, a “shopping mentality”: shopping around from master to master, teaching to teaching, without any continuity or real, sustained dedication to any one discipline. Nearly all the great spiritual masters of  all traditions agree that the essential thing is to master one way, one path to the truth, by following one tradition with all your heart and mind to the end of the spiritual journey, while, of course, remaining open and respectful toward the insights of all others. In Tibet we used to say: “Knowing one, you accomplish all.” The modern faddish idea that we can always keep all our options open and so never need commit ourselves to anything is one of the greatest and most dangerous delusions of our culture, and one of ego’s most effective ways of sabotaging our spiritual search.

Glimpse After Glimpse,

Sogyal Rinpoche

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Single-mindedly, I focus my meditation on “loving kindness” and walk away from my session with an elevated perspective that dwindles as the day wears me down. However, as I practice, my mind adapts reflexively to it and gradually it becomes the first reflex rather than the second or third when confronted with a problem or an annoying situation.

    My greatest challenge was when I dealt with bureaucracy. The slightest delay or insane question on a form would set me off on a rage. But, as I practice with singleness of purpose, I have found love and tolerance gradually becomes first. Had I been shopping around; seeking spiritual power towards wealth, healing… even these along side of the mindfulness of loving kindness… instead of the single-purpose of one path, I would most likely have reacted to old tapes. 

    The other day I was being examined by a doctor evaluating my VA claim for a service related back injury. One of the questions on the doctor’s form asked: “After diagnoses, would you recommend amputation?” No kidding! It is peculiar that at one time I might have most probably gone away seething… seeing little humor in the question… but instead I asked Bon-Bon, “Do you have any need the lower half of my body?” and the three of us laughed. It felt good to laugh.

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What’s not being taught about the Iraq war

What’s not being taught about the Iraq war

Forgiveness: A Healing Salve

LOVE AND TOLERANCE

Love and tolerance of others is our code.

ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 84

I have found that I have to forgive others in all situations to maintain any real spiritual progress. The vital importance of forgiving  may not be obvious to me at first sight, bur my studies tell me that every great spiritual leader has insisted strongly upon it.

I must forgive injuries, not just in words, or as a matter of form, but in my heart. I do this not for the other person’s sake, but for my own sake. Resentment, anger, or the desire to see someone punished, are things that rot my soul. Such things fasten my troubles to me with chains. They tie me to other problems that have nothing to do with my original problem.

DAILY REFLECTIONS, p. 88

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Forgiveness is the most difficult spiritual concept of all for me because it can be the most subtle in its snares. This is especially so in matters of the heart where letting go is the hardest. Strings there are attached, buried so deep that it takes some effort to dig them up and cut them off. Speaking from personal experience, I thought that all I had to do was to say I forgive my ex and that would be it. Then I thought that when I saw my part in our separation and divorce, I would no longer have these very private feelings of rage and despair whenever an incident would remind me of something she did, or didn't do, so very long ago. Resentment stewed and sometimes surfaced in whatever relationship I was in at the time and, even though I could see the beast up front and personal, it still had a grip on most of my affairs. This business of forgiving from the heart takes commitment to every aspect of it and persisting in forgiving others as well as my self. The healing begins in the wholehearted and enduring practice of forgiveness. 

   A touch from the Heart of Compassion brought about by prayer and, especially, meditation helps but it takes time to root it out. I then begin to prefer to think back on all  wonderful gifts she brought into my life; like the birth of our daughter,intelligent conversation at the dinner table, the love we once had for each other and thousands of good qualities we shared. Then, instead of hating her, I am reminded of the love I had for her when we stood at the altar and the resentment recedes. The adage that says time heals all wounds holds true in direct proportion to the quality of care I give it. Forgiveness mustn't be a bandage but it must be a salve to help heal.

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The Murky Fog

After groping around the murky fog of rebellion, stinking thinking, and despair, we will come up with our answers. Honest and sincere as we try to make them, they are usually most confusing. When we overlook the fact that we are ill, it is easy to see only moral offense in our conduct and decide religion is the answer to our problem. But those of us who have tried to exclude A.A. generally end up drunk.
The Little Red Book;
A Hazelden Publication,
Step Three, pp. 36-37

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If religion were enough there would be no drunken preachers, priests and nuns. I know from personal experience that religion worked for a while but with it came a feeling that, because my drinking was morally reprehensible, all I needed was forgiveness and to “sin no more”. This sort of morality and atonement boomeranged into guilt and shame when I eventually returned to old behaviors. The fact was, I found, that these weren’t old behaviors. Returning to drinking and drug use, in spite of the consequences;… lost jobs, ruined relationships, failed marriage… and on and on, were all signs of denial of a mental illness that wasn’t being treated. Once in AA I began to see the layers of self-deceit unravel and I took the first steps on the road to recovery. I had turned my will and life over to a Higher Power before but I had always took that will back because I had no program that would assure that I wouldn’t do so. The Third Step of surrender was followed by a Fourth one, whereby I started to understand that my will and my life had to be turned over to the process if I was ever going to be able to keep the commitment I had made from the altar of despair.
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The Christ/Buddha Beggar

As you continue to meditate on compassion, when you see someone suffer, your first response becomes not mere pity but deep compassion. You feel for that person respect and even gratitude, because you now know that whoever prompts you to develop compassion by his or her suffering is in fact giving you the greatest gift of all, as you are being helped to develop that very quality you need most in your progress toward enlightenment.
That is why we say in Tibet that the beggar who is asking you for money, or the sick, the old woman wringing your heart, may be buddhas in disguise, manifesting on your path to help you grow in compassion and so move toward buddhahood.
Glimpse After Glimpse,
Sogyal Rinpoche

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I admit this is a hard one because there are so many panhandlers in this town that it gets downright annoying to try to get from one place to another on State Street. I suppose a buddha would say that each one offers an opportunity to open up to the Christ within but I have my doubts. There are times I can see that going as far as offering a kind word or smile rather than contempt or pity can be the least compassionate thing I can do. Besides, perhaps it might have been because of my own experience and have been where most of these people are, it was contempt and pity I imagined or saw in the eyes of passers-by that goaded me towards action… action enough to put down the jug and go get a job. There are so many places to find food and shelter in Santa Barbara, I feel relieved of the responsibility to yield to the demands for money that, for the most part, would only perpetuate an unhealthy dependency. However, when I do see someone disabled by mental illness or physical impairment, there is room in my heart for a more apparent display of compassion. The important thing for me is to stay centered and in staying centered comes an ability to see the Christ nature in the buddha before me and to give the most compassionate response to his or her needs. I’m still working on this.
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Egoless-ness

Lifetimes of ignorance have brought us to identify the whole of our being with ego. Its greatest triumph is to inveigle us into believing its best interests are our best interests, and even identifying our very survival with its own. This is a savage irony, considering that ego and its grasping are at the root of all our suffering.
    Yet, ego is so terribly convincing, and we have been its dupe for so long, that the thought that we might ever become egoless terrifies us. To be egoless, ego whispers to us, is to lose all the rich romance of being human, to be introduced to a colorless robot or a brain-dead vegetable.

Glimpse After Glimpse

Sogyal Rinpoche

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   I spent some time, after my discharge from the Navy in 1969, tending goats on the mesa at Morningstar Commune above Arroyo Honda New Mexico. A celebration of some guru’s death or birth  was being held across the other side of town on the mesa above the Rio Grande Gorge at New Buffalo. I can’t remember which guru, or what we were celebrating. It didn’t matter to me back then… the whole idea was that we were celebrating something. We participated in a group meditation in the guru’s honor, the beginning of which, each of us was handed little stick. The middle of the guided meditation paused as the guide told us the stick represented our egos and, when we were ready, we were to burn the stick. I looked at the stick and the more I thought about it the more the idea became repulsive to me because my whole philosophy of life at that time was based on protecting and asserting my ego. Everyone else dutifully went to the fire with their sticks while I stayed seated feeling quite righteous.
    I mention this experience because that incident reminds me of how tricky the ego is. Now the words of the Saint Francis Prayer come to me: “It is by self-forgetting that one finds…” It is so easy to see in that context what it was that burning that stick meant and how easily I was tricked into feeling righteous by hanging on to it. Ohhh… how clever is the monkey mind!

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Dance with the Muse

 THE GOD IDEA

When we saw others solve their problems by a simple reliance upon the Spirit of the Universe, we had to stop doubting the power of God. Our ideas did not work. But the God idea did.

ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 52

Like a blind man gradually being restored to sight, I slowly groped my way to the Third Step. Having realized that only a Power greater than myself could rescue me from the hopeless abyss I was in; I knew that this was a Power I had to grasp, and that it would be my anchor in the midst of a sea of woes. Even though my faith at that time was miniscule, it was big enough to make me see that it was time for me to discard my reliance on my prideful ego and replace it with the steadying strength that could  only come from a Power greater than myself.

DAILY REFLECTIONS, p. 83

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I try to keep my faith simple by staying with the basics of my own experience and running as far and as fast as I can from preconceived notions of God delivered second hand. If God is anything, God is approachable by anyone, under any and all circumstances, regardless of my character or frame of reference. A mustard seed of faith is all it takes to leap but leap I must… leap where no logic or human power would suffice. And now, after more than a few years, I am faced with problems, albeit quality ones, but they are problems nonetheless. Health and financial difficulties are nothing compared to creative dilemmas. Sometimes I wonder why I bother at all until I step into the realm of the Spirit. Once there, it all makes sense, but before I step into the temple of faith there is no logical reason to go on. Once there, humility and self-forgetting lifts my spirit into the mystery of God. All I have to do is get up and dance with the Muse.

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