ThePracticalBuddhist.com - The Practical Buddhist Blog - Practical Advice on Integrating the Practice of Buddhism in Contemporary Life

Self-Responsibility during the Pandemic

3/23/2020

Each of us has a responsibility to ourselves, our family, our friends, and everyone who comes across our path. It is only people who can either contain the virus or spread it. If all people acted responsibly, the virus would come to a halt.

Therefore all people should follow these rules:

1. If you have any of the following symptoms, stay home and call your doctor. If you can, get tested. If you are around other people, wear a face mask.
   - loss of sense of smell
   - diminished sense of food taste
   - fever
   - dry cough
   - difficulty breathing, shortness of breath

2. If you have been exposed to someone who is infected, stay at home for 14 days and check for the symptoms. The virus takes 2-14 days to incubate.

3. Regardless whether you are infected or not, wash your hands frequently for at least 20 minutes, or use generous amount of hand sanitizer.

4. Regardless whether you are infected or not, wear a face mask whenever you are in an enclosed space (store, office, public transportation) with other people. Although a regular face mask is not the best, it will help protect you from air-borne droplets.

Preparing a Child for Life

3/18/2020

How is a child guided through life so as to experience peace and happiness — which is different from financial success — rather than fear, anxiety, and other forms of mental suffering? Is that possible in the world we live in?

The answer is, yes. And it all depends on his upbringing, his family life.

The myth of childhood is that it is a happy, carefree time. But typically it is neither carefree nor happy; it is instead fraught with insecurity. I wrote a book several years ago, Raising a Happy Child, that seeks to change this fact of human development by fundamentally altering the quality of the relationship between parents and children.

Recently, when my niece and her husband had their first baby, I sent congratulations and offered the following “benediction” for their child.

“May the love and nurturing he receives from his parents and family provide him with the inner strength, security, and self-love to withstand the challenges he will face in the world we live in.

May he know from Kabbalah that his true self is the divine essence … light, goodness, loving ... and may he always return home to that essence throughout his life.

May he grow up to be a mensch, a credit to himself and to humanity.”

Let me address each of these points. First, what becomes of our lives is overwhelmingly a function of learned experience ... from our family, our peers, and the larger culture ... but first and foremost from our parents.

The vast majority of parents are good people and would not do anything intentionally to harm their child. But parents are people who are a function of their own upbringing and learned experience. They have their own fears, frustrations, angers, and desires. And they see things through the lens of that experience and those emotions, which in turn impacts how they interact with their children. The result is children who do not feel loved unconditionally, are as a consequence insecure, and grow up to become insecure adults who do not love themselves unconditionally. This is the primal basis of our fears and neuroses.

Bottom line, what we have is a dynamic of insecure parents raising insecure children who become insecure adults who raise insecure children who … It is a vicious cycle, and there are few things more important to the future wellbeing of mankind than breaking this cycle.

How can I say there are few things more important than this? Because all the world’s dysfunction … all the hatred, violence, prejudice, fear, whatever … is a function of people’s insecurity. (See my posts, “The Root of All Abuse and Violence - Insecurity,” “Insecurity Is the Cause of Social Conflict and War,” at PreservingAmericanValues.blogspot.com) For example, some people may exhibit huge egos, but they are in reality insecure children. Some are so overwhelmed by their insecurity that they turn to dark forces to protect themselves and become evil, divesting themselves of all their humanity.

I should note that when I speak of “unconditional” love this does not mean that parents should simply lavish praise on their children, give them what they want, or be uncritical of their children. Direction and criticism are important parental functions; the question is how they are given and in what context. The point is that children should never have any question that they are loved, even when they’re told they’ve done something they shouldn’t have.

The first benediction thus places the focus on parents’ responsibility to provide children with the nurturing they need to become secure, strong children and adults with good self-esteem and a clear understanding their inner ethics and morality. For more on how parents can achieve this, read Raising a Happy Child.

Before continuing, I should note that this child-rearing advice is contrary to much advice and certainly common practice. If we are honest, we will admit that the commonality of most families is not an ambiance of love and respect but rather stress and various forms of dysfunction. Modern parents often seek to prepare their children for life in a hostile world by making sure they have talents which they can weaponize to defeat the competition and have barriers to block both perceived attacks on themselves and thought of the interests of their fellow man. Such people grow up lacking humanity.

The second benediction speaks to the potential importance of religion in our lives. But not organized religion, unfortunately. All the mystical traditions of the three Abrahamic faiths … Gnosticism/
Christianity, Kabbalah/Judaism, Sufism/Islam … plus of course Buddhism and Hinduism teach the same basic spiritual premise: that all men are born with the divine/Buddha essence as their true self and that the true nature of man is thus peace and goodness. The lesson of organized religion is quite different.

They all further teach that what happens once they are born is that they become exposed to life experiences that form the ego, neurosis, and mental suffering. His true self becomes hidden from him. Only man can save himself, and he does that be reconnecting with his heart, his divine/Buddha essence.

The final benediction prays that the baby grows up to be a “mensch.” Mensch is a Yiddish word that basically means a decent human being, someone who acts with kindness towards his fellow man and leads an ethical life. This has in modern times become more of a social inheritance than a religious one. For example, I definitely learned to be a mensch from my parents, not from my involvement with Judaism as a youth. This is basically why most Jews are Democrats; they tend to have a more liberal, caring disposition to the lot of their fellow man.

But anyone can be a mensch, regardless of religion or ethnic background. Because to be a mensch really means to be a human being, not just in form/body, but in substance/heart.

Being a mensch all comes back to how we are raised. We will not act with kindness towards our fellow man and lead an ethical life if we are insecure and beset by neuroses. If we do not know that our true self is our heart, and that our heart is light, goodness, humility, compassion, gratefulness, love, faith, joy, contentment, strength, courage, and wisdom. If we do not reconnect with the divine/Buddha essence within us.

What we have come to accept as the human condition is not human nature, it is human nurture. It is how mankind has developed, how we have been raised, the culture we live in.

We have to live and work in the culture, we have to interact with it daily. But that does not mean that we have to live our lives on its terms. We can be true to our true selves, to our divine/Buddha essence, and still function in this culture, Actually, from a mental perspective, we will function much better in this culture with this changed persona, our true self, than with our old persona.

Being Present - No What If’s or Imagining the Future

3/10/2020

I have written a number of posts in the past about the importance of being present in the moment, of its centrality to finding peace and happiness in the moment … which is really all one has.

One of the greatest obstacles to being present in the moment is our fear or anxiety about the future. Why do we have that fear? The future obviously cannot be known with certainty, and that is a source of anxiety.

Because our ego-mind cannot accept that. It wants control; it wants certainty. And so it bombards us with an endless series of “what if’s,” trying to imagine the future. For many of us, the ego-mind always seems to imagine the answer to these questions negatively. It has no faith because something or many things in our life experience has robbed us of faith in ourselves and certainly of others.
And so when the ego-mind starts this process, one must stop. Take a few moments and take some deep breaths. Center yourself. Bring yourself back to the present.

Be aware that all of this ego-mind chatter is just thought, not reality. The only thing one can have regarding the future is thought, conjecture. The fact that such thought is based on past life experience does not make it reality-based. How often have you thought negatively about the future, only to find out that something positive occurred? The past is not a guide to the future. Because the future is unknowable, such thought is classic mental masturbation.

So don’t let yourself go there. Say “no” to the ego-mind’s never ending questions.

But as always, when you stop something, when you free yourself from some negative action of your ego-mind, your most replace it with something positive. That means connecting with your heart and offering yourself joy in the moment. By taking pleasure in the moment regardless of what is going on. By being in touch with the positive energy in your heart. By releasing all desire that your life be different in any way from the way it is right now at this moment. By being aware of all you are grateful for. By loving yourself unconditionally and having compassion for yourself.

This is not easy. The ego-mind is very powerful and persistent. One must remember that you have identified with your ego-mind your whole life. Only recently have you begun knowing that your heart is your true self, not your ego-mind. So it will take a great deal of discipline and strength to say “no” to the ego-mind. But ultimately, if you want to be at peace and happy, if you want to free yourself of the anguish that you have experienced throughout your life, you just have to do it … say “no” to your ego-mind.

As the Zen monk who trained me always said, “The choice is yours.” Whether you suffer or not does not depend on what is going on around you or what situation you find yourself in, it depends on your attitude, on your state of mind.

But beware! Don’t blame yourself for suffering. Buddhists do not participate in the blame game. You do not blame the world for your suffering and anxiety. Neither should you blame yourself. As I have often written, blame or guilt requires that you do something of your own free will. Because our ego-mind is programmed by our life experiences to be the way it is, we have only a small area of true free will. As Ernestine, the Flip Wilson drag persona used to say, “The devil made me do it!”

We only expand that free will when we disassociate ourselves from our ego-mind and connect with our heart, our true self. Then we have the choice the monk spoke of. But again, we should not blame ourselves for not taking such action, for not disassociating ourselves, because the ego-mind is so powerful and deeply rooted. All we can ask of ourselves is that we do the best we can.

A Buddhist Trinity - The Core Path to Peace and Happiness.

2/18/2020

Staying on the path every day, throughout the day, is a task requiring great awareness and discipline. To help the reader with this process, I have from time to time written posts that boiled the process down to what I considered to be its basic elements. (See “The End of Suffering Cheat Sheet” and “12 Steps on the Buddhist Path.”)

This post (a revision of a 2013 post) goes even further in reducing the process of finding peace and happiness, and establishing the platform of serenity needed to delve deeper into the Buddha dharma and your heart, to its most essential elements: acceptance, being present, and believing that regardless what life throws your way, you will be ok, safe.

This does not replace the other posts, or any of my posts, but its focus is more narrow and thus suited to be used as the core of your daily meditation practice, both on and off the cushion.

1. Acceptance

As the saying goes, “Acceptance is the answer to all my problems today.  If I am disturbed it is because something is not the way I want it to be and I can find no peace until I accept that that’s exactly the way it is right now at this moment.”

Without acceptance of ourselves and the world around us, we approach everything from a lack of equanimity which turns even otherwise skillful desires into unskillful desires and cravings.  Without acceptance, we can never be present because our ego-minds will not allow us to be present.  Truly, without acceptance one can find no peace, no end to suffering.

This presents a conundrum, for in order to fully accept ourselves and the world around us, we need to be free of our ego-mind. But being free of the ego-mind is a central task of the Buddhist path and it takes time … anything from years to a lifetime.

So how do we start the process while not being free of the ego-mind?  You start by introducing affirmations into your daily meditation practice.  By stating your intent daily, it begins to take root.  It empowers you.  You will feel the difference.

   Affirmation #1:  I know that my life is exactly the way it is at this moment because it’s just the way it is.  And it’s all ok.  I have faith that things will work themselves out.

   Affirmation #2:  I release all desire for my life to be different in any way from the way it is right now at this moment.

It is important that you say the affirmations firmly, with conviction.   The first time you say them, you may well react, “No way.”  Because your ego-mind won’t be in agreement.  But when you sit with the affirmations, and repeat them, you will feel a relief rather than a fear wash over you; you will feel unburdened. That is the feeling that will empower you to stay the course on this path.

2. Being Present

As noted in my post, “Being Present Is the Key to Peace and Contentment,” without being present, focused on the now, one cannot be free of thought, free of suffering.  Because your ego-mind will instead carry you away, obsessing about the past or the future, imagining what if or what was.

When you are in that state, there is no freeing yourself from suffering because it is your ego-mind that is the repository and protector of your cravings and emotions.  Even if you are aware of the emptiness of all five skandhas, at those times when your ego-mind is in control, all is lost and your are at that moment subject to the suffering brought on by your emotions and cravings.

Since this has been your default mode for your life till now, you must clearly form an intent to be present every moment of the day.  Don’t worry when you find that you are not able to be present for much of the day, let alone all; this is not a failure.  Making progress on the spiritual path takes time and requires great discipline.  Always keep it at the forefront of your practice. As the saying goes, “When faith and mind are not separate, and not separate are mind and faith, there is no yesterday, no tomorrow, no today. There is only the present moment, all else is thought.

As your acceptance practice begins to take root you will notice that you have an easier time implementing your intent to be present.

3. What about the future?

Ok, so you have formed the intent to truly accept your life and the world around you as being exactly the way it is at this moment, and to be present free of your ego-mind, but “What about the future?” the reader will undoubtedly ask.  Your ego-mind is still there, and always will be (it is part of you), and it has the desire to control your future

But the future cannot be controlled.  Not by you, not by any spiritual work, not by prayers.  You can implement a well-thought-through plan, always being present, but that does not guarantee it will all come out as you hope.  All you can control is how you react to whatever occurs in the future.

This becomes a question of faith … faith in the Buddha dharma, faith in your true Buddha nature, faith in yourself, not in the universe or the actions of others.  Because when you return home to your true Buddha nature, you know that regardless what happens, because you view things with dispassion not emotion, because you live each moment well in accordance with the Five Precepts, you will be ok.  Which is to say that regardless what happens you will have the spiritual strength to find peace and happiness because you are capable of being present in the moment, free of your ego-mind.

This probably sounds very circular, which is not uncommon in Buddhist teaching.  Like, we’re comfortable planning for the future because we know that if nothing changes or even if “bad” things happen, everything will be ok in the sense that we will be spiritually safe and will be at peace and happy.  Part of the exercise of meditating on what you need or don’t need to be at peace and happy is precisely to come to that realization.

Two points.  We are human beings and human beings have a natural desire to grow.  The point of acceptance and the Buddhist path is not to negate that desire but to let it come from a place of equanimity so that it is a Right desire rather than an unskillful desire and craving.  So that when we plan for the future we do not obsess about it and implement our plan while firmly grounded in the present.

Second, the world is often a hostile environment where anything can happen, whether it’s an illness or something that is done to us.  The point of the Buddhist path is to insure that regardless what life throws our way, we will be at peace and happy because we have returned home to our true Buddha nature and are free of the control of our ego-mind. We will be aware of the “problem,” but because we view things through the eyes of our true Buddha self, our unwounded heart, we view things with dispassion, with equanimity.

This is not to say that you won’t walk away from a situation feeling, unemotionally, that something needs to be done to change the situation you encountered or keep such things from happening in the future, if that is feasible. But you will not obsess on this observation. And so you will not feel frustrated and will not suffer. You will take action if possible with equanimity.

Trauma Begets Trauma

2/10/2020

When I wrote my book, Raising a Happy Child, a major impetus was the realization, as I stated it in the book’s PR, that there is so much violence and dysfunction in the world, whether in the family, the workplace, or the larger world, because “insecure people are raising insecure children who become insecure adults who …” in a never-ending cycle. I wrote the book in an attempt to break the cycle, to change this fact of human development.

More recently, I have given much thought to the phenomenon of trauma (see my post, “Trauma”). And I realize that insecurity a result of trauma. We experience something negative in our lives, are traumatized by the incident, and become insecure.

Regarding adults, there is a difference between the incident which is the catalyst for re-experiencing trauma and the trauma itself. (All adult trauma is based on childhood trauma.) How we react to the incident, whether through our heart and true self or through our ego-mind, determines whether we re-experience trauma as a result of the incident, or whether it becomes just another fact of life which we experience, which is to say we experience it directly, with dispassion. Of course for most people on this earth, they have no choice because they know nothing other than their ego-mind and so they are re-traumatized.

Regarding children, while the distinction between the event and the trauma are technically still applicable, in fact they merge. For example, when a new-born baby is taken away from its mother to sleep in a layette rather than constantly being in physical contact with its mother, as would be the case in nature, that incident always results in trauma because the child has no ability to act with dispassion. One of its primal needs is not being met. When a baby cries for a long period with no one coming to comfort him, the same results. These are the beginning of the trauma we call “insecurity.”

Parents are like all human beings, people who have experienced trauma in their lives. The severity of their trauma determines how much of an impact it has on their raising their children. But impact them it surely does. Ways in which parents interact with their children may seem to have no connection with insecurity or trauma. But if you look deeply you will see that the nature of all parent-child interactions, just like all parent-other interactions, are based on deep insecurities which in turn are based on childhood trauma. All of the reactions to our life-experiences … the emotions, judgments, cravings, attachments … are all a function of our insecurities and thus of our childhood trauma,

And so the revised wording for the statement I used in promoting my book would be “traumatized, insecure people are raising traumatized, insecure children who become traumatized, insecure adults who …” Trauma is the elephant in the room when we sit with our suffering. Until we identify and face our childhood trauma, embrace it, and allow the pain caused by the trauma to rise up and express itself (see again my post, “Trauma”), we cannot be fully healed, we cannot be free of our suffering.

The Devil Is Alive and Well

1/27/2020

God may indeed be dead (in the sense of the God of our forefathers), but the devil is alive and well.

These days one hears little about the devil for the same reason that most people don’t talk much about God. The existence of these deities as external forces that control our lives, to whom one can on the one hand pray for deliverance or on the other hand bargain with for what one desires, just flies in the face of both our life experience and scientific knowledge. God has thus been declared dead by many.

But another concept of God is very much alive for those who walk the path of spirituality/mysticism … whether it’s Buddhism, Hinduism, Islamic Sufism, Jewish Kabbalah, or Christian Gnosticism. Their truth is that the Buddha/God essence is within each of us from the moment of our birth and remains there throughout our life. Our salvation comes from within us, not from some outside force.

But while we learn, for example, that the Buddha was tempted by Mara, a Buddhist version of the devil, I have never, I believe, heard that word used when speaking of the challenge of healing ourselves, protecting ourselves from suffering. The reference is rather to freeing ourselves from the control of our ego-mind. As the Buddha said, to free ourselves of the conceit “I am” is the ultimate freedom.

A few years ago, however, (as related in my post, “Wounded - Our Ego-Mind Becomes the Devil”) I felt the presence of the devil. I was having dinner with a friend who knows he has to limit his consumption of alcohol. But he said he wanted a second glass of wine that night. And that after dinner he wanted to go to some bars and have a beer like he does when he travels with other friends of his. Knowing I would disapprove and say “no,” the expression on his face when he talked was a mocking one, sly. I was aware of the strangeness of it at the moment, but I didn’t recognize it. Only when I meditated the next morning, did I realize that I had been in the presence of the devil.

I now understand that just as in some religions the devil is thought to be a fallen angel, in Buddhism, as well as the mystical traditions, the devil can be equated with our ego-mind, which is our internal fallen angel/Buddha/God nature. We have been so wounded repeatedly over the years that the ego-mind has no trust, no faith, and is consumed by fear; it has become cynical of the world around us. It has overpowered our true self to “protect” us; we are in its control. And so the Devil, our own Devil, is inside each of us; it is the nature of our ego-mind. But at this stage, we still hear the voice of our true Buddha nature, even if it is often ignored.

When Ernestine, the Flip Wilson drag character, would say, “The Devil made me do it!” or when in a comic strip a person is portrayed with an angel sitting on one shoulder whispering in his ear and the Devil sitting on the other doing the same, being confused by the competing advice … we have all experienced that … these are an acknowledgment of our internal Devil as well as our internal God. So the concept is not foreign to our culture or experience.

At some point though, some of us become so wounded, so lost to our trauma, that we unconsciously turn to the darkness, to the devil, for our strength, not the light or our true Buddha nature. When one sells his soul to the devil in exchange for strength and survival, one become the devil incarnate. At this point one is irredeemable. One no longer hear’s the voice of your true Buddha nature. One is evil.

In navigating our lives, it is very important to be able to distinguish whether one is dealing with someone who is still human, who despite the force of the devil still has the capacity to hear and respond to his true Buddha nature, or whether one is dealing with the Devil incarnate, with evil. For how to deal with evil, see my post “Evil - How Should a Buddhist Respond.”

How do you recognize whether someone has, what I will refer to as “the Devil Syndrome” and what psychiatrists refer to as, “Narcissistic Personality Disorder?” I think that the standards of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders are helpful. This is a sociopath who is dangerous to themselves and others: 1) has significant impairments in personality function such as exaggerated self-appraisal and requires excessive admiration to support self-esteem; 2) impairment in interpersonal function such as a lack of empathy; relationships are largely superficial and exist to serve self-esteem; little genuine interest in others; exploits others for personal gain; 3) pathological personality traits such as antagonism and grandiosity, believing one is better than others; condescending, arrogant, haughty; excessive attempts to attract the attention of others.

Think of any of the tyrants of this world, whether Donald Trump, Hitler, Mussolini, or Stalin or seriously deranged people like Charles Manson or Jim Jones, and you know how an evil person, a person with Devil Syndrome, acts; how they present. But beware, just like inhumanity is not restricted to horrific atrocities, so to the Devil Syndrome is not restricted to large-scale evil.

A person with DS can be the person you are dating, your spouse, a parent, a boss … really anyone in your life. And their evil can be masked by a banality, even by charm. That is part of their method of seduction. But in all cases, their goal is to suck the life force out of you.

The importance of being aware of the distinction between someone who is under the devil’s influence as opposed to someone who is the devil incarnate is the differing advice for how to deal with the two situations. If someone is just under the influence of their devil ego-mind, one can appeal to their humanity, you can reason with them. If someone is evil, the devil incarnate, the advice is to remove yourself from the situation (for there is no way to reform a person with DS) or if there is someone with DS who is trying to get a position of power, doing what you can, working with others, to prevent the person from obtaining that power.

While it may no longer be fashionable or even considered reasonable to talk of the devil, we had best get over this barrier. It serves only to give the devil free reign in his pursuit to control humanity. Denying the devil’s existence does not in any way remove his power to destroy.

Manifestation - DANGER, DANGER!

1/21/2020

Recently I watched a video on manifestation. The psychic presenting was very good; it sounded appealing, a good idea, practical. As described by her, the idea is to project yourself into the future to where you have what you desire, and by saying, “yes, I have it,” having the energy to do what’s necessary now to in fact achieve it in reality

This morning I woke up and as I lay in bed I said to myself that I was going to manifest today. Afterwards I had a very hard time getting out of bed, which is unusual for me. When I went down to make coffee, I felt somewhat depressed … again, very unusual for me.

Something wasn’t right. When I went to start my morning meditation, I realized immediately what it was. The idea of manifestation runs counter to the very core of spirituality, certainly Buddhism.

It runs counter to being present, releasing all desires that my life be different in any way than it is right now, knowing that I have everything I need inside myself to be at peace and happy, knowing that I will be ok regardless what life throws my way because I have returned home and will always return home to my true Buddha nature and be at peace and happy. It runs counter to wisdom of being patient. Instead it prescribes delusion.

As I sat, I realized that in watching that video, I had been exposed to the devil. It was like offering a child sweets to lure him into your control. Assuming the guise of spirituality, he was in fact undermining the very foundations of spirituality … faith and being present in the moment. And I was taken in, unaware of the devil’s presence.

It was an unsettling moment to realize that I had been exposed to the devil and that he had enticed his way into my mind. And that it was only by the good grace of my Buddha nature and/or my angels that I realized very quickly what was going on.

So obviously no manifestation for me. If you have seen such a video and have likewise been enticed to manifest, think about your mental state since that time. You will undoubtedly discover that you have been overcome with doubt and fear because whatever you manifest, you are very aware that right now you don’t have what you desire and you know you have no control over whether you achieve it.

You have lost the blessed state of being present, of releasing all desire that your life be different in any way than it is right now. You have lost the state described in an ancient Chinese poem, “When faith and mind are not separate, and not separate are mind and faith, this is beyond all words, all thought, for here there is no yesterday, no tomorrow, no today. There is only the present moment, all else is thought.” Let go of all thought of manifestation and return to the present.

A word about the devil. You may be surprised to hear me speaking of him. But I have mentioned the devil in many posts, for example, “Wounded - Our Ego-Mind Becomes the Devil,” and, “Evil - How Should a Buddhist Respond?”

I should note first that in these two articles I am referring to the devil at different stages. In the first, the point was that when we are repeatedly wounded, our ego-mind becomes the devil’s advocate, whispering in our ear the advice of the devil… lacking trust, faith, and consumed by fear; cynical of the world around us. As Flip Wilson’s drag character Ernestine would say, “The devil made me do it!” … but there is nothing cute or funny about it. At this stage, while the devil is in us, we have not become the devil incarnate, we have not lost our soul to the devil. We are still human. We still hear the voice of our true Buddha nature whispering in our other ear; we just tend to not listen to it often.

But when we become so wounded that we unconsciously sell our soul to the devil to find survival and strength, then we become the personification of evil, the devil incarnate. The example of this is someone with, what is termed, “Narcissistic Personality Disorder.” Such a person is totally lost. He is irredeemable. He does not hear his true Buddha nature anymore and is not open to any teaching of self-awareness. For more on the devil, see my next post, “The Devil Is Alive and Well.”

All our life experiences, and indeed we ourselves, are on a continuum from light to darkness. As things become darker, the devil gains more power. When things have reached the far end of the continuum, we or someone has become the devil incarnate. At this point, one becomes like a vampire, living off the life force, the humanity, of others.

Buddha Nature, Gentle and Serene

1/5/2020

One after-thought on my post on the revelation that the elemental nature of my true self is serious.

One thing that I had always been aware of previously was that there was a dynamic difference between the smiling toddler who I saw as the avatar of my true Buddha self and the image I had of my unborn Buddha nature, which I’m somewhat embarrassed to say came from Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T., (see my post, “Returning Home - Returning To Your True Buddha Nature”).

That image was serene and gentle. This was not your laughing Buddha. I was very aware when in my daily mantra recitation I return to my heart, to my unborn Buddha mind, and turn my will and my life over to its care, that this image of my unborn Buddha mind was very different from the image I had of my true Buddha self. It was confusing, but I would just let it pass.

Now of course I know why I sensed this difference. The smiling toddler was not the avatar of my true Buddha self. Rather, the new photo I found, showing me with a more serious mien, is the avatar of my true Buddha self and it is gentle and serene. There is no more inner conflict. All is harmonious.

Newly Discovered Trauma

12/29/2019

After 25 years of introspection and disciplined meditation, you think you know everything about yourself. But in a recent post, I indicated that I had come to the conclusion that there was some unknown trauma that was still reeking havoc in my life.

Recently I have become aware of some memories that raise questions whether there is some trauma connected with my mother, with her often not being there when I needed her. This was trauma I had not been conscious of. Quite the contrary. I had always viewed my relationship with my mother as being the rock which kept me sane, brought me happiness throughout my life, despite the problems I had with my father.

Numerous things were raised in my memory. I remembered that when my mother and grandmother used to go out to play cards with friends at night and I was left alone, at age 8 or 9?, I would sit at the top of the stairs, waiting till they got home, usually after midnight. I asked myself why I did that? Was there some abandonment trauma in my infancy? When really bad things happened to me, I’m pretty sure I didn’t share those incidents with my mother. Why didn’t I go to her for solace? When my father regularly got very upset with me or at times said very negative things about me, e.g. he’s not normal, my mother never intervened. Why? I have no memory of my childhood before age 6. Why? And at the end of my meditation when I am thankful for those who have loved me in the past, I have always thought of my father and my former lover. Oddly, only relatively recently did I even become aware that my mother wasn’t included, not on purpose, she just didn’t come to mind, and so I added her to the list. I felt guilty. Why hadn’t she been on the list? My father was included despite all the grief he caused me because I had made my peace with him and I had written proof that he loved me.

And then recently I read Alice Miller’s The Drama of the Gifted Child (this has nothing to do with “gifted” children in the usual sense of the word) which made me quite certain these questions were revealing a previously unknown trauma. A major theme is how a mother’s communicating to the child what she wants results in the child repressing his own emotions in order to obtain the mother’s love. I have already begun to sit with that trauma and embrace it.

And I have arrived at peace with my mother as well. Both my parents loved me as best they could. They were victims of their own childhood trauma and so interacted with me based on that trauma. I have compassion for them and forgive their shortcomings. They may have each loved me for what they saw in me, what I provided them, rather than who I truly was, but nevertheless they loved me. I see things as they were; I see the pain repression caused and the negative impact it has had on my life. But I have no quarrel with them.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall - A Revelation

12/20/2019

All my life, even as I have walked the path and made much spiritual progress, I have, as often noted in my posts, felt that there was a grey cloud hanging over me, that there was a blahness to my life, that I felt the frown that was my default facial pattern was a sign that there was something still not well within me, that there was some significant trauma which I had not yet identified and thus could not heal.

The other day, I went to see a well-respected psychic, clairvoyant, transformational therapist because I thought this trauma was taking over my mind on a regular basis, creating much suffering for those around me and myself. Nothing that I was doing, including the trauma exercises I have written about in a prior post, was having any impact on this.

I learned many things during that initial session, but perhaps the most eye-opening was that as a Capricorn, it was my nature to be serious, perhaps even melancholy; there is a joyful side to me, but it is not dominant. This has nothing to do with my life experience, my trauma; it is not an indication that there is something dark inside me. It is just the way I am. It is how I was born. It is what I have described in other writings as my elemental nature, which is part of my true Buddha self, my unborn Buddha mind.

What a relief. As I reflected on this information, I started connecting many dots. The first was my belief that the image of myself as a smiling toddler is the avatar of my true Buddha self. And indeed that is part of my true self. But it is not the whole picture, and by focusing on being in touch with that smiling toddler, seeing things through those joyful eyes, I was denying that other part of me. I was looking to be something other than I am. I wanted that to be my true Buddha self.

Since I was convinced that this grayness, this frown, was not my natural state and indeed evidence that there was still something dark unresolved inside me, I was determined to free myself of this frowning visage. Since I can no more change my natural state than the color of my eyes, having this feeling and determination created unresolvable conflict and tension inside me. It was an act of aggression.

I had also come to realize recently that this image of the smiling toddler was one that my mother and father both fostered and desired. Like most parents, they wanted their child to be happy, which is communicated to the child in many ways, To obtain their love, my inner child did everything possible to deny my inner feelings of seriousness, melancholy; to repress them. To deny myself. And so I did not express those feelings; I did not even cry, not even in private, when I felt great psychic pain.

I also realize now that my desire to succeed, to make my parents proud, was not just a result of a desire to gain their respect, if not their love, because of the trauma I had experienced, but it is a natural asset of me as a Capricorn. So this natural drive of mine fitted very well with the psychic need I had because of the conditional nature of love that I had discovered.

How sad that throughout my life, until my conversation with this psychic, I did not understand an important aspect of who I was and so rather than cherishing it, I labeled it as something unhealthy, undesirable. I was so focused on what was wrong with me that it cancelled out much of the positive feelings I had about myself. I have always been aware of the very positive things about my life, and yet the often less-important negative things grabbed my focus and dominated my self-image.

And so I have begun to sit with myself as being the Capricorn I am. With my elemental nature being serious while also having joyfulness inside me. It is the yin and yang of my life. I am embracing it, seeing it as my true Buddha self. Seeing it indeed as evidence of the deep humanity that is my true self. I have often said, how can one not be serious when one is acutely aware of all the suffering in the world.

This is a very positive development; a break-through. But switching from feeling that an aspect of me is troublesome and unhealthy to knowing that it is part of my elemental nature and to be cherished, while easy intellectually and welcomed, will be a challenge to incorporate into my sense of being. Revised affirmations will help the process. And lots of self-hugging.

And I have gone back to my baby book to find a toddler photograph that is more reflective of the serious side of my true self ... innocent, serious, loving. I look at that photo and it gives me great comfort; I cherish it and embrace it. I feel how the two aspects of my true self fit together. It grounds my new affirmations.

This does not mean that I have no other traumas left inside me to discover. But this internal struggle, this self-denial, has itself been a major trauma in my life. Perhaps the central trauma thread that ties the others together.

NOTE: I have written many posts that mention my smiling toddler, beginning with my first discovery of him and feeling that he was the avatar of my true self. I am not going back now and changing all those posts or "correct" them. They reflect my state of awareness at the time.