Author: bondjanet

LIVE AND LET LIVE

“There ain’t no good guys. There ain’t no bad guys. There’s only you and me and we just disagree.” (Dave Mason, “We Just Disagree”)

I’ve had a few-days-old earworm of the above lyrics, the result of hearing the song repeated too often on our car stereo system, such that I’ve now decided to base today’s blog on it! Why not? It wasn’t where I was consciously intending to go, but, as fate would have it, it segues nicely into the next section of Trungpa’s Shambhala Warrior: “Overcoming Arrogance”, which I haven’t visited since veering away from his “drala principle” shortly before August’s month-long hiatus from blogging.

One of the first lines I read when back to Shambhala was the following: “One of the important points in invoking drala [the extraordinary in the ordinary] is to prepare a ground of gentleness and genuineness. The basic obstacle to gentleness is arrogance. Arrogance comes from hanging on to the reference point of me and other.”

What we fail to register when caught in this dichotomy of me-and-other is the degree to which we project onto others what is in fact our own shadow, our own neurotic patterns of thought. These thought patterns get projected onto others and we react to them accordingly, and counterproductively. When I first understood the power of projection I said to my husband: “Does this mean that when I think you’re being a jerk, it’s actually me that’s behaving “jerkily”? He was happy to get on board with that!

Our nature and nurture (ergo our survival instincts) are built around this dichotomy, which is defined as “the division or contrast between two things that are represented as being opposed or entirely different.” (Oxford Language Dictionary).

When we operate from this sense of self vs other we tend to view any sort of threat as coming from outside ourselves. What generates this sense of vulnerability is fear of pain, of rejection, of abandonment, and, in the extreme, of being ostracized from our tribe, forced out into the wilderness to suffer and die. Few of us realize that these compelling ideas come not from outside ourselves but from our own minds. As Swami Radha wrote:

“You want to survive also in your own mind, in your own judgement, in your own criticism. The idea in your mind of what you should be is a very complicated thing in itself. That you should be beautiful, intelligent, wise, six feet tall, have this nose or that colour of hair, these are all very primitive ideas, but they are very, very powerful. You want to survive in your own mind, and your own mind sets the criteria by which you want to survive. That’s a very dangerous trap. It makes difficulties and creates a lot of absolutely unnecessary pain.”

How to free ourselves from this self-created trap? How to step away from our ideas about who we are and what we believe? And how the world should conform to meet our wants and needs?

In reality, we are not so different from other people, despite the superficial layers of status, gender, language, age, and race etc. In the majority of cases it’s safe to assume that the person opposing me is, in some way, feeling as threatened and vulnerable as me. Feeling the same sense of scarcity, the “lack-and-attack SOS” that our lizard brain telegraphs on a regular basis. To accept that our own mind generates these insecurities requires the willingness — indeed the fortitude — to see ourselves and others objectively. This is the purpose of spiritual practice: to transcend our limiting beliefs and habitual patterns of behavior, behind which we hide our perceived inadequacies from other people. This purpose is one of fulfilling our potential as truly human (God-embodied) beings. Some call it achieving liberation, enlightenment, nirvana.

There are many options for “stepping away” or freeing oneself from the limiting beliefs of the psyche. We can meditate on a regular basis. Label the flotsam and jetsam of our thoughts as “thinking” and let them pass like corks bobbing on water. And then, with a clear mind, be open and receptive to what’s actually happening.

Having a mantra practice allows one to funnel emotional energy into a specific set of notes and syllables that balance our mental and physiological energies. If you’re interested I’d happily help you cultivate that new habit.

Reading inspirational literature and/or consistently keeping a spiritual journal are both excellent ways to gain a fresh, unbiased perspective. When we record our “stories” on a paper or electronic journal, it’s possible to achieve a degree of detachment or objectivity that can be lacking in the heat of an emotional reaction. By reviewing our journal we can see the place where what’s actually happening ends, and where our story about it begins.

If we’re honest with ourselves we can see our twisted thinking by asking questions like: “Is this true? Is it really true, or just my version of reality? If it didn’t have to be this way, how else could it be?” Carrying on this dialogue with oneself, in writing, creates a frame of reference to which one can look back after some time has passed. Often in that extended time-frame something will come to our awareness that helps clarify our thinking or point it in a more constructive direction.

Having companions on the spiritual path is another invaluable asset. The purpose of such a friendship is not to collude with each other’s neurotic patterns of thought, but to give and receive candid feedback when we’re getting off track, or straying into our old self-destructive habits. Looking into the mirror that is another person, we can choose to own our “jerkiness” with gentleness and humility, and ultimately transcend the limiting personality that we believed ourselves to be.

However we go about leading an examined life, if our motives are pure and our intentions sincere, we will not go empty-handed. As the saying goes: “Seek and you will find; ask and you will receive; knock and the way will be opened for you.” This I know to be true.

P.S. We went to Tonga. It was awesome.

USE YOUR WORDS

“I want to create a luminous mind. We spend so much time identifying with the busy mind, the monkey mind, the restless mind, all the names we label it with. We focus on the limitations, rather than the potential. We try to control it, overcome the negative tendencies, but what if we let the light in? What if we recognized our minds as light?” (Swami Radhananda Living the Practice 2010)

For close to three months I’ve been swimming every day in a pool, ocean or lake. Never alone, at least not without someone spotting me, and, except for in a pool, I tether a neon green inflatable “swim buddy” around my waist that has, on one occasion, been a lifesaver. A couple of Fridays ago I was swimming (alone but watched from shore) in Whistler’s glacier-fed (aka COLD) Green Lake, when the wind whipped a big glug of water into my mouth, leaving me choking and coughing and panicking for fear of taking in more water. Grabbing my swim buddy, I hauled my torso onto it and floated there until my hacking subsided and I could calm my breathing — and my nerves — enough to finish the swim. I was there long enough that my family, watching from the dock, had fired up the motor boat, preparing to come to my rescue if necessary. Thankfully, it wasn’t.

Fast forward to today, and a blog in which I struggle to distill what Trungpa is saying in his Shambhala philosophy, into more commonplace speech. In order to better understand his “wind horse” and “drala” (really too confusing) I bounce between Swami Radhananda’s “sky like mind” and Michael Singer’s “maniacal inner roommate”, from whom I can’t seem to get away. All of this in aid of finding my own words to explain what these and other luminaries are saying. I want to discern what resonates as true for me, culled from countless accumulated volumes of spiritual knowledge. Why? Because as lost and confused as I can get in a sea of words, I always find some insight that puts my current experience in a greater context, providing me with a different point of view than what I’d been subscribing to. And tools. Something that throws me a life-line, as it were, allowing me to float awhile in the ocean-of-emotion that can, at times, overwhelm my psyche.

Now is one of those times. Without going into detail, I’ll just say that the words “dread”, “doubt”, “resistance” and “anxiety” have popped up more frequently than I’d like in my spiritual diary. As I would to a child who is having a tantrum, I tell my agitated self to “use my words”. Name what I’m feeling so as to step back and get a clearer look at what’s happening. Take the time I need to respond calmly, vs being propelled into a fight, flight or freeze mentality. In no particular order I take time to steady my breathing, sometimes synching the breath with a phrase or affirmation: “all is well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well”.

Sometimes a visualization comes to my aid. While laying in a claustrophobia-inducing MRI machine recently I closed my eyes and visualized an infinite blue sky, a smooth turquoise sea and white sand (I typoed “sane”) beach. Inspirational reading, mantra chanting, invoking the Light, doing a walking meditation or journal-writing are other ways I stay afloat in my daily life. This week’s life preserver came in the form of Swami Radhananda’s commentary on the inner light:

“When the Light lights up your mind, first you may have to address what it reveals – all the fears hidden in the dark, the issues left unaddressed – and clean up the clutter. And with the space that emerges, you may then experience a different kind of fear, what you could call a holy fear, a fear of the unknown, luminous mind.”

The truth is, I’m the one choosing how I experience what’s happening around me. An hour of lying on my back in a tube barely bigger than my body can be a cause for extreme panic, or for a seaside siesta in my mind. It all depends on not getting dragged away by what Singer’s maniacal roommate has to say. The genius of Swami Radhananda, Michael Singer or Chogyam Trungpa is that they ventured so deeply into that MRI of the psyche that they came out the other side with a crystal clear mind. A mind that is free of the subjectivity and conditioning that prejudice my perceptions. It is from the perspective of this unbiased, unblemished witness that one can respond to the world and it’s problems. The way to “get there” is to not leave one’s center of awareness in the first place. By one’s center of awareness I mean that space of objectivity and detachment from which I can see the proverbial forest for the trees. Through a combination of expressing my emotions in writing and then doing some spiritual practice I was able to calm my roiling anxiety, letting it move through me without running away or ruminating.

That “place” is our natural state. As T.S. Eliot said: “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our searching will be to arrive where we started and know the place [and our true selves] for the first time.”

There but for several decades of conditioning go I.

MAGIC IN THE MUNDANE
July 24, 2023

“Any perception can connect us to reality properly and fully. What we see doesn’t have to be pretty, particularly; we can appreciate anything that exists. There is some principle of magic in everything, some living quality. Something living, something real, is taking place in everything.” (Trungpa 1984)

Gazing out the rain-streaked window of the Langdale ferry, en route to an old friend’s “new” restaurant, I am aware how my mood threatens to take its cues from the gloomy environment around me. To take my mind off the weather, it helps to have been studying Trungpa’s teaching on invoking magic, or the dralas. I confess to having some difficulty understanding what Trungpa means by the dralas, but suspect I’ve come across similar teachings in other traditions, with their own ways of explaining the magic in the mundane. As luck would have it, a recent Daily Om reading offered another way to discover magic, the extraordinary in the ordinary.

 “There is a perceptible energetic shift that takes place when we choose to see the good in all. Our perception shapes the lives we lead because the universe adjusts itself almost instantly to our expectations. When we look for negativity, we are bound to come across it in abundance. Conversely, we create positive energy when we endeavor to see the goodness around us."
 (Daily Om July 14, 2023)

Seeing the goodness around her is what artist Paola Luther does, seemingly effortlessly. I was fascinated by her recent Instagram video showing how to painterly create realistic looking droplets of water on a window, through whose blurry surface one sees a landscape much like the one I’m observing today. What could be more magical than turning a gloomy view into a captivating, atmospheric painting?

Connecting with what Trungpa calls the “fundamental magic of reality” is a commitment I make in order to transcend the fickle shifts in mood and attitude that pervade a setting sun mind. He explains that an attitude of sacredness towards my environment will invite ‘the external dralas’, the “je ne sais quoi” of places we yearn to visit again and again. We might think back to a time when we’ve experienced the ephemeral quality of a warm and welcoming home. A clean and well-ordered space, pops of colour in fabrics and furniture, vases of wildflowers on tables, a candle or a cozy blanket, any little touches that contribute to a sense of comfort and beauty. Try to recall the satisfaction you’ve felt after doing a major spring cleaning. Or having set an attractive table. Or having prepared a nourishing, appetizing meal. All of these small but significant actions invite Trungpa’s magic:

 "You may live in a dirt hut with a dirt floor and only one window, but if you regard that space as sacred, if you care for it with your heart and mind, then it will be a palace.”..and “In summary, invoking the external drala principle is connected with organizing your environment so that it becomes sacred space. This begins with the organization of your personal household environment and beyond that it can include much larger environments, such as a city, or even an entire country.”

Beyond external drala, we learn about internal drala. The basic idea of invoking internal drala is that you can synchronize, or harmonize your body and your connection to the phenomenal world. Invoking internal drala is, according to Trungpa, a matter of treating your body as a temple, a sacred vessel.

The way to invoke internal drala is through your relationship to you personal habits, paying particular attention to what you think and feel, do and say. Even to how you dress and eat and sleep. All of these behaviors reveal how you see yourself, whether positively or negatively, and from this internal attitude, how you manifest a particular environment or energy around you. The all-too-prevalent habit of criticizing or downgrading oneself leads directly into a setting-sun world of “lack and attack”, a world based on competition and greed, and on satisfying the ‘hungry ghost’ of the ego.

Trungpa’s teachings on the dralas are the antidote to the setting sun’s mantra of need and greed. We make this shift by simply paying closer attention to the mundane details of our day to day existence. By showing respect for ourselves and bringing this reverence and dignity to whatever we do. There’s magic in shifting one’s perspective from that of ‘lack and attack’ to one of cooperation and abundance. As William Hutchison Murray of the Scottish Himalayan expedition wrote:

“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too.

“All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.”

And that, my friends, is the magic of the dralas.

July 17, 2023

NOWNESS IS NEXT TO GOODLINESS

“Even though you may be living in a city in the [21st] century, you can learn to experience the sacredness, the nowness of reality. That is the basis for creating an enlightened society.” (Trungpa 1984)

We have an ant infestation in one (or more?) of our planters. My sister-in-law pointed that out in the midst of a family dinner that consisted of sushi bought from the Japanese gourmet market, accompanied by salad and ice cream treats brought by the aforementioned family member. Dealing with an ant infestation did not fit into my vision for this impromptu dinner, so like any good sun-setter, I shot the messenger. (We’re still friends).

When, at al fresco lunch the next day, I had to guard my sandwich from being hauled away by the aforementioned ants, I realized I could no longer ignore the problem. Right then, in the moment, I donned mismatched and holey rubber gloves (which I’ve since replaced), grabbed a couple of compostable bags, wrenched the most obviously ant-covered plant from the soil and sealed it up for disposal. There’s more to do about the problem, but I got started on it. And I need to stay on it until the problem is solved, no matter how it interferences with my lofty vision for this week’s blog. As John Lennon famously said: “my life is what’s happening while I’m busy making other plans”. Becoming a Shambhala warrior is not about talking — or blogging — the talk, but about dealing with the ant problem. Now and now and now.

This small example illustrates the difference between Trungpa’s setting sun world and his vision for enlightened society. In a setting sun world the ants are somebody else’s problem (ideally the person’s who spotted them in the first place). As I’ve said before, in Trungpa’s rising sun vision, groups and individuals clean up their own back yards, with reverence for nature, and gratitude for the inventions and innovations that make life easier in our modern day. Like purpose-built gardening gloves and effective ant traps.

It was satisfying to visit the garden center, choosing more replacement plants than strictly necessary, and finding a powder to proactively treat the ant infestation.

The reward for my efforts was to be had in strolling through the Eden that is Maple Leaf Garden Center. Engaging all of my senses in a life-affirming way. Marveling at the incredible natural variety of shapes, and colors and sizes. Inhaling the sweet-vanilla scent of the Heliotrope, feeling the velvety silver-green leaves of the Lamb’s Ears, hearing the faint trickle of fountains dotted all around the property. And finally, feeling the sense of accomplishment for having addressed a problem while restoring a touch of beauty to my own back yard. It doesn’t take a complicated process to create a sense of contentment. A sense of basic goodness. Of being fully engaged in the present moment. Seeing and doing what needs to be seen and done from the moment I wake up to the time I crawl into bed at night keeps body and mind synchronized and well-occupied. And on the path to enlightenment.

As the old Zen proverb states: “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.”

July 10, 2023

The Fickle Horse of the Mind

“From the echo of meditative awareness, you develop a sense of balance, which is a step toward taking command of your world. You feel that you are riding in the saddle, riding the fickle horse of the mind. Even though the horse underneath you may move, you can still maintain your seat. As long as you have good posture in the saddle, you can overcome any startling or unexpected moves. And whenever you slip because you have a bad seat, you simply regain your posture; you don’t fall off the horse. In the process of losing your awareness, you regain it because of the process of losing it. Slipping, in itself, corrects itself. It happens automatically. You begin to feel highly skilled, highly trained.” (Chogyam Trungpa Rimpoche 1984)

Last week I attended a horse show at Thunderbird Arena in Ft. Langley. There is so much to take in at such an event, with the main attraction being the power, speed, beauty and agility of these magnificent steeds, and the poise, strength, stamina, and technical ability of their riders. The higher the jumps, the more challenging the course, the more distracting the hardscaping (one arena had a statue of a grizzly bear holding a fish in its mouth — which certainly unnerved me) the more synchronized must the horse and rider be. A graphic illustration of this necessity came when a young rider set the wrong pace, causing the horse to crash into the jump and dump the rider over the bars to land in a heap on the soft ground beneath. The horse then went on a rampage, running and kicking wildly to free it’s leg from the now-dangerously dangling reins. Horse and rider escaped unharmed, but it was frightening to witness.

My mind gets like that some days. Maybe not to such an extreme, but I do note times when I can’t seem to control my racing thoughts or knee-jerk reactions. I see this as a struggle between my conditioned, unconscious mind — my lizard brain — and the part of me that knows how misleading and counterproductive this frantic mental activity can be. My first line of defense is to scribble down my reaction in my journal in order to prevent taking hostages of the people around me. This gives me the “count-to-ten” detachment from which to observe what’s actually happening. Then, from a calmer, more centered place, I am able to make changes to my thoughts and behavior.

I think this is what Trungpa is saying with his horseback riding metaphor. After a lifetime of living more or less mechanically via old coping mechanisms or via unhelpful examples, we need tools and training to synchronize horse and rider, body and mind. I use my journal, and/or mantra, meditative breathing or a centering method like ‘functioning from my heart center’ to restore the equanimity I need to speak and act calmly and constructively, compassionately and empathically.

As psychologist Eric Maisel offers: “…there are many strategies and techniques available to you that can help you achieve and maintain a reasonable level of calmness. There are breathing techniques; relaxation techniques; cognitive techniques; detachment techniques; reorienting techniques (turning away from the stimulus that is agitating you); mindfulness techniques; discharge techniques (like “silently screaming” to release anxiety); and many more. There are also excellent books that can help you deal with the lifelong consequences of adverse childhood experiences.”

The point is, we do not have to stay caught in a vortex of emotional upheavals and anxious or avoidant behaviors. We can take the reins of our minds and stay centered and upright in our responses to the hurdles in our lives. You no doubt have books or websites that have offered insights or strategies that served you in days gone by. Or you know of books or courses that have come to your attention at one time or another. Maybe you’re saving them for a rainy day. Now is the time to revisit these books and strategies. To take your inner growth and development seriously so you have the tools ready and waiting when needed.

My challenge to you this week is to take from your own resources, or investigate new ones, and experiment with one or two practices that you can perform consistently, and track in your journal to see how well or how differently you handle any new or ongoing difficulties. Being a spiritual or Shambhala warrior simply means making a commitment to become and excellent mind-rider.

Heigh-ho Silver, away…

July 3, 2023

CHOICES OVER VOICES

“Don’t SHOULD on yourself. Understand what happened. Let it go. And keep on swimming.” (John Maitland)

The other morning I noticed the above-quoted on a white-board hanging beside my pool lane. I can imagine the swim coach urging his youthful competitors to figure it out when something goes wrong, shake it off, and get back in the water. As an avid swimmer, I find the quote applies both literally and figuratively. There are times when I get seasick, or caught in a current, or suffer a mild case of hypothermia, or get disoriented in the murky pea-soup water off Jericho Beach, and just have to keep swimming until I’m safely back on land.

As with all good metaphors, the quote applies figuratively to daily life, to the times I have to coach myself to keep going despite whatever obstacles I encounter. But I’m shocked at how often the obstacles that I have to overcome are created by my “inner saboteur”. If I understand Trungpa correctly, this inner saboteur is, if not the same thing, then a close cousin of his setting sun mind:

"When we are afraid of waking up and afraid of experiencing our own fear, we create a cocoon to shield ourselves from the vision of the Great Eastern Sun. We prefer to hide in our personal jungles and caves. When we hide from the world in this way, we feel secure. We may think that we have quieted our fear, but we are actually making ourselves numb with fear. We surround ourselves with our own familiar thoughts so that nothing sharp or painful can touch us. We are so afraid of our own fear that we deaden our hearts."

Perhaps it is a function of age, but I encounter this aspect of myself more often than I want. The good news is that I catch it at all. As awareness increases, so too are an increased number of times when I find myself not in my “right” mind. My spiritual readings and practices are all aimed at restoring my inner light or sunrise mind. A very useful tool that I acquired while studying Yasodhara Yoga, is a meditation on light, with light symbolizing the highest and best that I would offer myself or anyone else. In many religions the light is associated with the divine, the sublime, universal intelligence or whatever terms refer to the mystery from which we derive our existence. The following is taken from an article written by Swami Radhananda, past president of Yasodhara Ashram and my spiritual guide of many years, as an antidote to the darkness of setting sun mind:

 "This is a meditation on light, to help you expand the limits of your imagination. Only go as far as you can. As you practise you will naturally be able to expand the light beyond your original limitations.

"Sit in a comfortable position with your ankles crossed. Close your eyes, softly focusing them on the space between your eyebrows. Let your body be still and quiet. See a point of light. Concentrate on the point of light.

"See the light expand, filling your body, surrounding you, expanding out and out until it reaches the sky and beyond. See yourself and everyone and everything in the light. See this light spreading as far as you can imagine, and beyond. Then begin to draw the light back to the space between your eyebrows. Stay quiet and still, absorbing the Light."

The purpose of focusing on light is that it distracts attention from our habitual identifications and, thereby, our typical way of relating to the world around us. Chogyam Trungpa, Swami Radha, Hillevi Ruumet, Pema Chodron, Sharon Salzberg, Ram Das and a host of other spiritual luminaries recognize this drawback to our growth as “enlightened” beings, this tendency to think and live mechanically — sleepwalking around the planet. Trungpa insists that meditation, the synchronizing of mind and body, is essential to awaken the sunrise mind.

 “In the practice of meditation, the way to be daring, the way to leap, is to disown your thoughts, to step beyond your hope and fear, the ups and downs of your thinking process. You can just be, just let yourself be, without holding on to the constant reference points that mind manufactures. You do not have to get rid of your thoughts. They are a natural process; they are fine; let them be as well. But let yourself go out with the breath, let it dissolve. See what happens."

Incorporating Swami Radhananda’s visualization on the light with a meditation centered on balancing the breath, engages more senses and enhances the effectiveness of the practice. The better and more thoroughly we synchronize mind and body, the more of ourselves we involve, the more ably we can step away from our inner saboteurs and begin to fulfill our potential.

I’ll buy a ticket to that. Oh. Wait. I already have a ticket to that. Practice, practice, practice!

June 27, 2023

“The dawn of the Great Eastern Sun is based on actual experience. It is not a concept. You realize that you can uplift yourself, that you can appreciate your existence as a human being. Whether you are a gas station attendant or the president of your country doesn’t really matter.” (Trungpa 1984)

Sunrise Vision vs Sunset Mind

At breakfast the other day I asked my friend a question that I gleaned from reading Walt Whitman, who asked his friends: “What has become clear to you since last we met?” It cuts through some of the shallower stuff we can get preoccupied by, and strikes me as a better use of our precious, shared time.

Her answer didn’t surprise me. She expressed disenchantment with her fellow humans, having too often encountered what Trungpa would describe as the setting sun mind: a self-serving attitude that lacks honesty, reliability and/or integrity. In essence, this mindset has its roots in fear, first and foremost of death, and secondly, of pain in its many iterations. Much human behavior stems from attempts to avoid this basic truth: death and suffering are intrinsic to human existence. In other words, you’re going to feel bad, sad, angry, lonely, alienated and frightened etc some of the time.

As I understand it, having sunrise vision means having the courage and willingness to directly acknowledge and embrace what one sees and feels, whereas the sunset mind is fearful and strives to avoid or escape these realities.

This begs the question “How does one cultivate courage?”. If nothing else, one has to exercise one’s power of choice, which is so often lost in the heat of knee-jerk emotional reactions.

Trungpa has this to offer

 "We can give in to our fear and anxiety, or we can surrender to this great mystery with courage. When we see people on a roller coaster, we see that there are those with their faces tight with fear and then there are those that smile broadly, with their hands in the air, carried through the ride on a wave of freedom and joy. This powerful image reminds us that often the only control we have is choosing how we are going to respond to the ride.

 "There are, of course, constant challenges, but the sense of challenge is quite different from the setting-sun feeling that you are condemned to your world and your problems. Occasionally people are frightened by this vision of the Great Eastern Sun. Not knowing the nature of fear, of course, you cannot go beyond it. But once you know your cowardice, once you know where the stumbling block is, you can climb over it—maybe just three and a half steps.”

To help you climb over, I offer a walking meditation that serves to calm and synchronize body and mind.

Choose a spot where you have room to walk without obstacles. Stand in a relaxed but erect posture, with your hands gently cupped, palms up, fingertips touching lightly, and held level with your navel (the navel in shakti yoga is the location of the third chakra, the seat of the emotions). From this position slowly raise your palms up to the center of your chest, approximately level with your physical heart. Slowly describe a circle by moving the hands forward and down to the navel, then scooping them back up to the heart center. Continue this circular motion – arms widening as you reach forward and then narrowing at the navel – while repeating the affirmation: I am functioning from my heart center, I am functioning from my heart center…” as you let your feet choose a meandering route. Do this for a few minutes and then return to your journal.

The scooping motion is symbolic of raising your troubled emotions to the level of love, compassion, patience and understanding that are associated with the spiritual heart center. As you spread your arms in front of you think of expanding your sense of things, dissipating whatever darkness your mind is harboring (the setting sun’s dread and despair) as you come back to the best that you would offer yourself or anyone else.

Take a few minutes to sit quietly absorbing the effects of the practice, then note in your journal any insights or shifts in perspective that arise in this quiet, reflective time. Repeat the practice, if only by saying the affirmation in your mind, whenever you find yourself sinking into the darkness of the setting sun mentality. As the Buddhists say, pain is inevitable; suffering is optional.

You have the power to choose, to move. Even three and a half steps are great progress.

Besides, what have you got to lose?

SUNRISE MIND

“The way of cowardice is to embed ourselves in a cocoon, in which we perpetuate our habitual patterns. When we are constantly re-creating our basic patterns of behavior and thought, we never have to leap into fresh air or onto fresh ground.” (Chögyam Trungpa, 1984)

Lately the temptation to crawl into a cocoon has been all too compelling for me. I’m hoping you can identify with such times as make one want to crawl under a rock or escape to a desert island, or whatever metaphor floats your boat!

Whether or not this urge is familiar to you, I am fairly certain we all have times when our coping skills don’t rise to the challenge in a way that would make us proud. As Trungpa put it earlier: “If you feel bad when you come home because you had a hard day at the office, you can tell the truth about that: you feel bad. Then you don’t have to try to shake off your pain by throwing it around your living room.”

Well, the other day I threw it around the living room. And splattered a few innocent bystanders while I was at it.

I perpetuated a pattern of thought and behavior that no longer serves me. But there was a silver lining to seeing the mess it left, to stepping back, reflecting on how things got that way, and discerning what needed to change. Trungpa would call that cleaning up our world:

“In this world there are always possibilities of original purity, because the world is clean to begin with. Dirt never comes first, at all. For example, when you buy new towels, they don’t have any dirt on them. Then, as you use them, they become dirty. But you can always wash them and return them to their original state. In the same way, our entire physical and psychological existence and the world that we know—our sky, our earth, our houses, everything we have—was and is originally clean. But then we begin to smear the situation with our conflicting emotions. Still, fundamentally speaking, our existence is all good, and it is all launderable. That is what we mean by basic goodness: the pure ground that is always there, waiting to be cleaned by us. We can always return to that primordial ground. That is the logic of the Great Eastern Sun.”

In contrast to Trungpa’s “setting sun world” — a closed loop of conditioned actions and reactions that create and perpetuate our problems — his rising sun vision is one of original purity. Other spiritual writers would perhaps refer to it as our soul or essence, over which is built up a lifelong dross of misunderstandings and coping mechanisms that Trungpa would have us scrape away in order to embody the pure gold that remains.

Put more simply, we can enact our desire to purify our minds (however vague and theoretical that sounds) by taking a very practical approach to cleaning up our surroundings. I call this cleaning up my own back yard. Whatever I do, literally, towards home maintenance and improvement, can be seen symbolically as a desire to clean up my karma, my thoughts and actions, and the effects of these on the people around me. Same with my physical appearance. I can develop habits of dress and personal hygiene that reflect both my self-discipline and the integrity of my beliefs. Beliefs that what I think and feel, say and do are either part of the problem or part of the solution. In order to discern which is which, I apply a method that was given to me long ago.

Generating a calm, receptive state with a simple centering meditation (as described in blog 4) I ask these questions:

What is the core issue here?
What am I contributing to the problem, and how can I change it?
What am I contributing to the solution, and how can I keep doing it?
Protect me from the problem, because I’m in it.
And I surrender it now.

I then spend time reflecting in my journal about the possible causes and solutions to the problem in question. Following that I surrender these musing to whatever higher intelligence is available to me (what I call my divine committee) and get on with my day. Throughout the day I then hold the thought gently that I want to see what’s really happening. At day’s end I go back to this reflection and see if anything has come clear to me.

By applying Trungpa’s advice to “perceive the world directly” and “see on the spot with wakefulness” I begin to see beyond my personal opinions and priorities to a much bigger picture. Granted it can come as a shock to register my relative insignificance in this bigger picture, but it also deprives my ego of thinking I’m the center of the universe.

The beginning of spiritual warriorship is marked by this profound shift in focus from a “me-centered” attitude to a “we-centered” reality. The reality that it’s NOT.ABOUT.ME. Needless to say, no offense, but it’s not about you either. It’s about all of us, working separately and together, to clean up the mess.

June 12, 2023

BE.HERE.NOW.

“Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn,
a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter.
If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things,
this is the best season of your life.”

“Ten Thousand Flowers in Spring” by Wu-Men, The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry. © Harper Perennial, 1993.

Years ago, at a yoga retreat, we were given an exercise which effected me profoundly. It came back to me today as I sat outdoors in a sheltered, sunny spot watching the world go by. The exercise we were given at the ashram was broken into four parts. We were first asked to reflect on what we would do if we only had a year to live. We then went off for an hour or so to ponder that question. After writing about a hundred things I wanted to do with the time I had left, I returned to the classroom and was asked to reflect on what I would do with six months to live. In the next hour I whittled my list down to half. Following that the class was given a week to live. My list consisted of writing letters to special people in my life. Maybe the odd phone call. Thereafter our final assignment was to choose what we would do with one hour to live. Shelving all my hasty plans, I walked around to the sheltered lee of an isolated cabin and sat in the sun, watching the light shimmer and dance on the waves of Kootenay Lake. Did not think, plan, scheme. Silently absorbed the sights and sounds, the smells and sensations of that quiet, peaceful space. Nothing to do, nowhere to go, no one to be. Simply bearing witness to my surroundings.

Reflecting on those “final” moments, I suddenly understood on a visceral level what Trungpa meant by basic goodness:

“When you experience the goodness of being alive, you can respect who and what you are. You need not be intimidated by lots of bills to pay, diapers to change, food to cook, or papers to be filed. Fundamentally, in spite of all those responsibilities, you begin to feel that it is a worthwhile situation to be a human being, to be alive, not afraid of death.”

According to Trungpa, a prerequisite to experiencing this goodness of being alive is meditation, which in turn is meant to synchronize body and mind. Meditation doesn’t come easily to me. At least not what I think meditation is supposed to be. Nor is it easy to explain in a blog. So I thought I’d take the memory of that peaceful hour by the lake and see if it fit Trungpa’s description.

“Synchronizing mind and body is looking and seeing directly beyond language. This is not because of a disrespect for language but because your internal dialogue becomes subconscious gossip. You develop your own poetry and daydreams; you develop your own swear words; and you begin to have conversations between you and yourself and your lover and your teacher—all in your mind. On the other hand, when you feel that you can afford to relax and perceive the world directly, then your vision can expand. You can see on the spot with wakefulness.”

Bearing witness to my surroundings at the ashram on Kootenay Lake, without my usual stream of internal chatter, is about as close as I’ve ever come to synchronizing mind and body. From that experience, I can suggest a beginner’s way to meditate:

Take a comfortable seat in a quiet corner of your home, in or out of doors. Start by spending five or ten minutes simply observing your surroundings. Just observing. What do you see, feel, hear? If your mind fixates on anything — maybe you see a cobweb you hadn’t noticed before and have an urge to clear it, or hear an ambulance screaming past and wonder what’s happened — just acknowledge that. Let it pass. You’ll get to that. For whatever length of time you decide to sit in silence, relax and perceive the world directly.

“In that way, synchronizing mind and body is also connected with developing fearlessness. By fearlessness, we do not mean that you are willing to jump off a cliff or to put your naked finger on a hot stove. Rather, here fearlessness means being able to respond accurately to the phenomenal world altogether. It simply means being accurate and absolutely direct in relating with the phenomenal world by means of your sense perceptions, your mind, and your sense of vision.”

To me, this translates as acknowledging my immediate experience of and engagement with my surroundings, with what’s happening in the here and now. Bringing my undivided attention to where I am, to what I am feeling and perceiving from moment to moment. Bringing full awareness to what I and others are doing, and responding accordingly, if a response is called for. Fearlessly.

It means giving the inner narrator a break. Try it. You’ll thank me one day.

Blog 3
June 5, 2023

“As a man thinketh, so is he [or she, or them]”. (James Allen, among others…)

The logical sequence of this blog should follow what Trungpa is saying in Shambhala, which would mean a focus on both meditation and synchronizing mind and body. In fact, his approach to synchronizing mind and body is via meditation, so I should say a word about all that before I plunge into the topic that interests me today. But having used two “shoulds” in the first two sentences, I’m just going to dive in to something more relevant to me in the here and now. I figure if I can apply what I’m learning in my studies, I will be practicing what I preach. Otherwise, I might as well just tell you to buy the book. I’ll get back to the other stuff eventually, or you might get there ahead of me. No biggie.

So this is what I want to focus on:

“In working with ourselves, cleaning up begins by telling the truth. We have to shed any hesitation about being honest with ourselves because it might be unpleasant. If you feel bad when you come home because you had a hard day at the office, you can tell the truth about that: you feel bad. Then you don’t have to try to shake off your pain by throwing it around your living room. Instead, you can start to relax; you can be genuine at home. You can take a shower and put on fresh clothes and take some refreshment. You can change your shoes, go outside, and walk in your garden. Then, you might feel better. In fact, when you get close to the truth, you can tell the truth and feel great.” (Trungpa)

That well-describes my day yesterday. I came home saddled with various disappointments and frustrations that would normally be projected onto the people or things around me. But having just read the above, I took a page from Trungpa’s notebook and made up a charcuterie board, quickly hopped into the shower, put on clean clothes from top to toe, and took this mini feast outside to share with my hubby on our freshly landscaped balcony. The result was nothing short of miraculous, or at least wonder-full.

By the time I was ready to share my truth, I was well past the frustration, sadness and negativity that had clung like burrs to my psyche.

From this “stepping away” I could better see what was happening in and around me, and communicate my truth clearly and succinctly. Which turned out to be unnecessary, because in the absence of any action on my part, the problems that dogged me were solved. As some part of me knew they would be!

Which brings me to James Allen’s observation: “As a man thinketh, so is he.” I had initially let my thoughts run away with me. I had witnessed a problem that tugged at my heart strings, and from which I wanted instant relief. I found that relief in a change of pace: a shower, clean clothes, some charcuterie, a glass of something pink and bubbly. Relief came with this simple engagement in the minutiae of my life. And with this change of pace came a shift in perspective. As I sat outside observing the world around me — the people coming and going along the sea wall, the boats and freighters swinging slowly around their anchors — I sensed a shift in me. It seemed that all of nature was telegraphing a message that there is a natural order to the world, an ebb and flow, and that I can trust in that natural order and let go. Trust in the basic goodness of Trungpa’s rising sun vision (more on that later) and let those natural rhythms shift the tide of emotions in my mind.

Om shanti, shanti, shanti. Peace, peace, peace.