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

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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).”

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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

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   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.
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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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 

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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.

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