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Mind Resting Undisturbed

1/30/2015

A central goal of my spiritual practice, it is this … for my mind to rest undisturbed. For then I am at peace and thus am open to all that the present moment has to offer, grateful, compassionate, and experience happiness in each moment. All else flows from this state.

And for my mind to rest undisturbed, I know I must be present, experience things directly, with dispassion, without labels, knowing that things are the way they are because it’s just the way it is. I know that if my ego-mind, my feelings and perceptions, my learned experience are brought into play, then I am lost in a whirlpool of doubt and confusion, fear and anxiety, anger and negative, judgment.

This has not been easy because my ego-habit energy is very strong and overwhelming. However, I have found a way. What I have found in the past few months is that when something comes up which might in the past have generated anger, if I just say “things are the way they are because it’s just the way it is,” I feel mentally and physically relaxed and I am indeed open to receiving all the present moment has to offer, be grateful, compassionate, and experience happiness in the moment.

The first time I experienced this was when I was returning from a trip to Mexico last June, On the way down, I reacted to all the annoyances of traveling in my typical way … I got angry regarding what I considered either unprofessionalism or bad planning. As a result, not only did I not enjoy the process, but it ruined the trip for my partner who was looking forward to it.

Before departing on the trip back, I meditated on “things are the way they are because it’s just the way it is.“ And resolved to adopt this as my mantra on the trip back … which I did. The result was that nothing that normally would have upset me, upset me. I was calm, my mind was undisturbed, and I was able to be open to all the things the present moment had to offer … whether it was a beautiful sky, an interesting detail of architecture, the companionship of my friend, etc. I thus experienced happiness in each moment and was grateful.

What a change. On the drive back home from the airport, my friend said that it was like traveling with a different person. He was relaxed and was able to enjoy the whole process.

That experience was very empowering for me. Not only because I saw the practical impact that was in my control, but it was surprisingly easy to adopt a different perspective than was my want. I just did it. And so I have adopted that mantra towards everything that I experience in life.

Personally, fear has always had a greater impact on my life than anger or negativity. That emotion goes far more to the core of my learned experience. So the question to myself was, would this mantra work as well with fear?

I am happy report that my experience to date is, yes. When I am aware of fear starting to rise, when I acknowledge it with compassion but say my mantra and return to the present and my true buddha nature, the fear subsides. I know that fear is just a product of the mind and that in truth I have nothing to fear for regardless what life throws my way, I will always return to my true Buddha nature and experience peace, gratitude, compassion, acceptance, and happiness in each moment.

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Fear v Common Sense

1/22/2015

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Even though we know that fear is a product of our mind, when we try to fight fear or ignore it, our mind comes back to us with some version of, “I’m here to protect you.” And we are so used to thinking that our fear does indeed protect us, despite the awareness of the suffering caused by our fear, that we desist in trying to walk away from it.

But does fear, in any way, protect us? The answer is, no. What protects us is our common sense. When we encounter a situation that presents a real danger to us, our common sense will alert us and we will take appropriate action to remove ourselves from the danger. Fear, on the other hand, by reducing us to a state of anxiety, actually weakens us.

Fear is an emotion. And emotion is the opposite of rationality or common sense. Fear may be based on some real event experienced years ago, but it is our emotional reaction to the event. Most likely, even at the time, the event viewed rationally would not have caused us to label it as danger and thus avoid it. But our emotions did.

That is why when we feel fear arising, we need to take the following approach. Acknowledge the fear, have compassion for it, but don’t engage it. Instead return to the present, to your breath, knowing that things are the way they are because it’s just the way it is. And knowing that if indeed there is some real danger, your common sense will let you know.

Postscript: I have now from within realized that fear and all skandhas are just a product of the mind and so their power has all but disappeared. See my post, "Proof of the Nature of Mind - Fear, Ego, and Buddha Mind,"

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Back to Basics

1/6/2015

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In conversation with a friend recently, I recalled a poem I had written at the end of a one-month Tricycle-sponsored at-home retreat I did in 2007. Reading the poem to my friend, I was aware of how far I had regressed since the end of that retreat.

During our conversation, I had said in response to a spiritual reading he shared that I’ve never really felt deeply at one with all beings. Intellectually yes, but deeply no. Then all of a sudden this poem came back to me with the realization that I did have a moment, or moments, once where I did truly feel deeply at one with all beings.

Who am I?

I am the tree I see,
The flower that blooms,
The morning rain,
And the cold night air.

I am the bird in flight,
The wounded bear,
The howling wolf,
And the dog lying before the fire.

I am the laughing child,
The old lady begging,
The dope addict,
And the forgetful old man.

I am all things,
And I am nothing

How did I lose that feeling? I had often thought, after the retreat, that it would be good to do a mini at-home retreat one week each month to stay in that special place I had found, but out of shear laziness I never implemented that plan. I realize now though that I lost that feeling because my meditation practice had largely become a practice of finding answers to current issues by reciting mantras that focused me on the Buddha’s teaching. This was the same type of meditation practice I had before the retreat … reminding me of the truth, rather than finding it fresh every day. And that made it less real. As my friend commented, I’ve been too much in my head,

And so, I returned to a basic meditation practice as I did during that at-home retreat (for a complete description of the retreat and my experience, see my book, The Self in No Self). After several days, I could already feel a subtle difference within me, something was shifting, I was coming home, just as I did when I started the at-home retreat. I was finding it fresh.

Then one morning, my ego-mind attacked me with a vengeance when I started meditating. It found an opening, a weak spot, in something I said in a discussion the previous evening about having what I need, what’s important to me, right here, right now, each moment of every day, regardless of my circumstance.

My mind used my fear of not having enough money, to being forced to live in a way I never have, to being poor, destitute to scoff at that thought. It dug it’s claws into me and would not let go. I tried repeatedly to return to my breathing and be present, but to no avail. I found myself agreeing that it was silly if not stupid of me to think that I didn’t need a certain amount of money to be happy. I was in the process of being carried away by fear.

I finally stopped this spiral by purposefully shifting to another part of my meditation practice. Once I was refocused, I recalled several events from the previous day. It started off with my friend saying that we would spend the day being present, accepting that this is where we live now, this is our home, and not have any thoughts about the future or our move. Instead of feeding the feeling that we needed to get away from here, we would be at peace and relaxed. And it worked, of course.

Later in the day, he verbalized what he had to be grateful for. And not one word was mentioned that concerned material things. It focused primarily on having someone to offer joy to, someone to love.

And then that evening before we went to bed, he read a page from Pima Chodron’s The Wisdom of No Escape. That reading about being satisfied with who we are, and where we are, right at the moment, that we have everything we need within ourselves to live life joyously, brought such a feeling of peace over me.

After recalling these events, I found I had the strength to return to my breathing and just be present. My ego mind with it’s fears subsided. I was aware that all I needed to be happy was to offer others joy, be in the company of loved ones and friends, respect my mind, respect my body, be in touch with nature, and live within my means. And that regardless what life would throw my way, I had faith that all would be well because I would always return to my true Buddha nature, be at peace, and find happiness in the moment.

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Ritual Burning of the Past

1/1/2015

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As you know from my posts, despite my years of disciplined practice, elements of my past and my ego-mind continue to plague me, not incessantly but sufficiently to cause me some suffering on a somewhat regular basis. While the various tools I use … primarily not engaging such feelings when they arise and allowing them to subside by returning to my breath and being present, knowing that things are the way they are because it’s just the way it is …have been effective in protecting me, I still experience the occasional pull of these feelings. And if I’m unaware, or until I become aware, I experience anxiety, suffering.

The other day I thought of an experience I had many years ago with a teacher who had me write things that were bothering me on pieces of paper which I then burned, the idea being to free myself from these thoughts. I thought that ritual-like practice warranted another go in my present circumstances.

And so one morning after meditating I wrote the various feelings … fear, anger, anxiety, insecurity, etc. … that I feel, and also the perceptions … that something will hurt me or harm me or cause me unhappiness … that lie behind those feelings on slips of paper. I kept it rather general, not describing things in detail. For good measure, I included slips that just said, “the past,” and “consciousness-ego,:”

The point was that I wanted to further free myself from all five skandhas, something that my awareness of their being empty of intrinsic existence had not completely accomplished. Several key areas of insecurity have remained.

I then put them in a bowl and burned them to ashes, intoning as they burned that I was letting go my attachment to the past and all five skandhas.

I then buried the ashes, intoning that treating myself with loving kindness, I was returning the ashes of the skandhas to the earth.

It may sound silly, but there was something profoundly peaceful about this symbolic act. Letting go of primal elements of our character is a very difficult thing to accomplish. It is one thing to say you are letting things go; it is quite another to actually do it, consistently. This is perhaps a very gentle way of helping the process. As always, time will tell.

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