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How to Find Your True Self, Your Heart

11/30/2018

Someone said to me recently that they don't know what their heart is, and so they can't go to it or sit with it. I understand perfectly.

I have always believed since I was exposed to the teachings of the Buddha that we are all born with the true Buddha nature inside us, that that is our true essence, our heart, our true self. But although I had absolutely faith in that, I wasn’t able to find a way in my meditation or otherwise to connect with that true self, with my heart.

And so for years, I really didn’t make much progress on the path. I knew that the feelings and perceptions of my ego-mind were not my true self, they were just a product of the mind and caused me suffering, but I had nothing else to turn to. My true Buddha self was not palpable.

Then one morning when I was meditating, the image of me as a smiling toddler from a photo my mother had recently sent came to me. And I knew when I saw that beaming, innocent face, smiling for absolutely no reason other than just being, that that child was my true Buddha self, the manifestation of my unwounded heart. And I cried.

That connection was a turning point for me. The concept of my true Buddha self, of my heart, was palpable. Looking into those eyes, I saw light, love, faith and trust, and joy.

But although I had this experience, it would be many years before I was able to make use of this discovery in my practice. Why? I really can’t say. I guess I just wasn’t far enough along in my practice to apply the lessons of my heart.

Then one day, when I was walking and saw things that disturbed me, I opened up my heart to embrace all aspects of my experience (“the heart’s embrace” practice), and all of a sudden, I felt I was that smiling toddler, and I smiled at the world around me and said, “Hello.” He just came to me. After that point, as I’ve written, I’ve often either conjured up my smiling toddler when I needed to pull myself back from the reaction of my ego-mind, or he began coming to my aid when I needed him, holding my hand.

And so I strongly recommend that you find a photo of yourself as a smiling toddler. Or if you don’t have one, try and remember such a photo or what you were like as a toddler, before your life experiences separated you from your light.

If you just cannot picture yourself as a smiling toddler, then while you’re meditating try doing Thich Nhat Hanh’s mouth yoga exercise. Gently relax your facial muscles and smile. Although done purposefully, if done properly this is a real smile, not forced. It come from within. You will feel yourself lighten; emotions will dissipate.

While you’re in that space, visualize yourself seated on a meditation cushion dressed in a white robe. Feel the peace that is within you; your mind rests totally undisturbed. Visualize a white or golden aura emanating from you, the manifestation of the positive energy that is within your heart … the light, love, faith, trust, compassion, humility, gratefulness, joy, contentment, strength, courage, and wisdom. Just sit with that for at least 10 minutes, observing and absorbing.

Whether by visualizing your smiling toddler or your aura, you have made contact with your true self. How different it is from the dark world of your ego-mind with its fears, anxieties, negative emotions, and doubts. Let your true self literally lead you away from the dark world of your ego-mind back to the world of light that is your birthright. Visualize your true self extending a hand to you, take it, and let your true self lead you to the “other shore” where the physical you and your true self are one.

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My Road to Peace

11/26/2018

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On this Thanksgiving, I was most grateful for the spiritual path I am on because it is only that path that allows me to experience peace and happiness. I could have no end of wonderful things in my life, and that thankfully has indeed been my experience in life, but if I were still in the grip of my mind I would not be at peace and not happy. Instead I would be, as I was for most of my life, full of fear, worrying about the eternal “what ifs,” insecure. Forget about the facade I presented; inside things weren’t pretty.

So on this Thanksgiving holiday, I want to share with you what has brought about this transformation. I and others have written many books on this subject and I certainly have written many posts, but I thought it would be helpful to concisely state my experience.

I was first introduced to Buddhism by a friend 25 years ago. I recognized immediately that there was something very different here and as I learned the teachings of the Buddha I had total faith. They made sense; they explained why the world and my life were the way they are. But it has taken decades of disciplined, daily meditation and practice, together with the teachings I received from monks and books and the daily spiritual conversations I have with my partner, to be able to know these spiritual truths from within and so bring me to the spiritual place that I am now.

And what is that place? Briefly stated there are several components. First, I know that what is most important to me is peace and happiness. Nothing else my mind or culture urges on me has any value without peace and happiness.

Second, I know that all my mental suffering is a function of my mind … its emotions, perceptions, cravings, attachments, doubts, etc. Not the actual things that I experience. Of course I experience pain, physical or mental, but it is what my mind does with that pain that causes me suffering rather than being able to experience it with dispassion. The Buddha said, “If it causes you suffering, it is not you, it is not yourself, for yourself would not cause you suffering," and so I have said to all these feelings and perceptions, “Not me!” I have disassociated myself from my mind (the ego judgmental part). It is not my true self.

Third, what then is my true self? It is my heart, my true Buddha nature. The Buddha taught that we are all born essentially perfect, with the Buddha nature inside us. Actually the mystical traditions of all 3 Abrahamic faiths … Kabbalah, Sufism, and Gnosticism … all teach that we were born with the divine essence in us, that is our true nature; but that our mind has separated us from that essence and it is our responsibility to rediscover it. That is our task, to reconnect with the light, love, faith, trust, compassion, humility, gratefulness, joy, contentment, strength, courage, and wisdom that is our heart.

How did I find my heart? For years I struggled with this but could not connect. Then one day while meditating, a photo of me as a smiling toddler came to me and I knew right then that that child was my true Buddha self. That opened the door to understanding that these qualities really are my essence, not the darkness, fear and anxiety that was bred in my ego-mind from its reactions to my life experiences. Outwardly, people saw light in me, but the darkness in me controlled much of my life; I was in turmoil.

How does this all apply to my life in a practical way? I know that regardless what life throws my way I will be ok, safe, (mentally) because I have returned home to my heart, my true Buddha self, and am at peace and happy. I know that my life is the way it is right now because it’s just the way it is (free of any judgment, so it’s not resignation) and I am free of desire that my life be in any way different than it is at this moment. And so I am happy and content and at peace in the present, free of all frustration; my mind rests undisturbed. I know that all things are impermanent and so I release all attachments, even to life itself, and take joy in each passing moment, free of all frustration.

That in a nutshell is where my life is today. I am truly free of all agitation; virtually nothing presses my buttons; I view all things with dispassion (I’m very aware of all the dysfunction in the world out there but react to it free of emotion). I am at peace and happy. I have even begun to experience true joy, taking simple pleasure in each passing moment.

I wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving and much love in your life, especially for yourself!

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Why Is It So Hard to Be Free of Your Ego?

11/20/2018

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In my post, “Ego - Changing Your Relationship With It,” I described the steps one needs to take to free yourself from control of your ego-mind. Yet there is no question that even if you follow these steps, it is a real challenge to consistently be free of the control of your ego-mind.

Why? Why is the power of the ego-mind so great? The simple answer is that we’ve identified ourselves with our ego-mind for our whole life. We have thought of it not just as our identity but as our protector. To change that paradigm is thus no small matter.

It’s important to realize what you’re up against. It’s not just your identity; we have been programmed by our ego-mind. It’s responses to our various life experiences have caused synapses, connections, to be formed in the brain that determine how we react to various stimuli.

We are taught and think that we have free will, but in fact we do not. Or at least the free will we have is available only within a very small range of options. What we are trying to do in walking the path is to create new synapses that will in time become our default response.

So if one is going to have a chance of freeing yourself from the control of your ego-mind, the first step is that you must have the intent to do so. There is no progress without the requisite intent. But a point of frustration for many practitioners is that even though they say they have that intent, it doesn’t work.

Part of the reason why is that often they really don’t have that intent … not fully. They may want to free themselves from the control of their ego-mind in certain areas, but they have not completely renounced their ego-mind, not on core issues; they have not disassociated themselves from it. And it takes that complete break to have the necessary intent to free oneself from control of the ego-mind.

For most people, this is a scary thought. And that’s precisely the point. It is a thought. Obviously this is not something one can “think”oneself through, because thought is a function of the mind and the mind will not help you here.

The only way you can reach the necessary intent is through meditation. By just observing yourself, your thought process, going deep within to your heart (see my post, "Your Unwounded Heart”), remembering the Buddha’s teaching that “if it causes you suffering, it isn’t you,” going through the “Not me!” exercise (see my post, “Not Me - Peeling Off the Layers of Our Ego-Mind”), aware of the distinction between pain and suffering (see my post of that title), and finding clarity regarding your true self v your ego-mind.

Once you realize from within that your ego-mind is not your true self, that your heart is, and that the ego-mind causes you nothing but suffering, you should be ready to disassociate yourself from it. Even then, your ego-mind will not disappear or slink away defeated. It will still pop up and when it does it is your responsibility to say to it, “no,” and return to the positive energy of your heart and the neutrality of your senses.

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Reincarnation - An Unorthodox Take

11/8/2018

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In traditional Buddhist teaching, reincarnation is something that the soul/spirit/consciousness must go through till we are enlightened, with the form/realm of reincarnation being determined by the karma we have generated during our life. If your karma is really bad, you are reincarnated in the realm of ghosts, If it is somewhat bad, you are reincarnated as an animal. If it's good, you are reincarnated as a human.

While some schools of Buddhism take this literally, others treat it more as a parable, thus this does not mean that you dwell literally in the realm of ghosts or the body of an animal, rather that your psychological state is being in hell or behaving as a beast, rather than a human being … your karma follows your soul. You are reborn over and over again in an endless cycle of samsara until you finally get it right and find enlightenment, This is an oversimplification, but the general point is made. (Note: There has always been much debate in Buddhist teaching about what exactly floats free of the body, but for purposes of this post I’m referring to it as the soul.)

I have never believed in reincarnation. It just seemed too fantastical and too much like a Buddhist version of the Christian admonition of hell and limbo.

Yet I always have believed it when Tibetan Buddhists would find the new reincarnated lama by, among other things, placing before the child items that belonged to the previous lama together with other items, and the child would pick out the right items. I also have always believed when someone is told that they are an “old soul” that that is true; that their soul has been around for a long time. And when my partner Marty died, I remember thinking that at the moment he died, a new baby was born somewhere with Marty’s spirit inside him.

I focused on this issue recently during a meditation because of a reading we did the previous evening about our spirit/consciousness lasting an eternity. When I did, I arrived at a modified theory of reincarnation.

It is Buddhist teaching that we are all born essentially perfect with the true Buddha nature inside us. Until we are impacted by our experiences of the world around us and our ego forms around age 3, we are full of light and love.

That teaching is inconsistent with the idea that our karma travels with the soul/spirit/consciousness from one life to another. A self* burdened with karma at birth would not be your true Buddha nature. Instead, that teaching would be consistent with karma remaining with your body when you die. And that makes sense, because karma is a function of the ego-mind, not your true self or soul. It is a manifestation of your earthly existence and so it should be shed together with the body when you die and your soul passes into another person who is born.

Karma in this view of reincarnation does not determine how you are reincarnated, how the soul will suffer in the next manifestation. Rather karma just determines whether you are reincarnated or not. If you have bad karma and are totally unliberated, your soul will continue to be reincarnated until you progress on the path. If you have freed yourself from the lower fetters then your rebirths will be limited to those necessary to achieve enlightenment. If you are an arahant, an enlightened one, there is no rebirth because you have freed yourself from all the fetters and rebirth is not necessary.

In this view of reincarnation, rebirth provides an opportunity for the soul to free itself if we haven’t in our current life. It is a fresh start. The state of your karma just determines whether and how often it is reincarnated. Even if one has very bad karma, it is possible to become enlightened in the next life. Indeed, there are many stories of people who had terrible karma but who saw the light after being exposed to an enlightened one and were almost instantly transported to the stage of arahant. So even in one life you can go from having the worst karma to becoming enlightened.

This modified view of reincarnation also removes the “do this or else you will suffer for eternity” teaching that is so common to the world’s religions. That teaching shows no faith whatsoever in human beings; Buddhism on the other hand shows great faith in human beings and in their potential to free themselves from the control of their ego-mind, their life-experiences.

So in my modified theory of reincarnation, when a person dies, their soul migrates to a newly born person, free of karma. But what about population increase, all the people who are born who can’t be inhabited by an old soul? Each day there are 19 births per 1,000 population, but only 8 deaths. Ah, they are also born essentially perfect with the true Buddha nature inside them, just a newly minted one, not an old soul. That’s why most people are not old souls.

Because this vision of reincarnation will be considered heretical by many, I did what I have often done which is to go back to The Life of the Buddha by Bhikkhu Nanamoli, the authoritative text of the Buddha’s life as related in the Pali canon, or tipitaka.

In this text, there is no mention of the cycle of reincarnation. There is indeed only this one reference to “rebirth:” “There are some monks and brahmans who assert and believe that purification comes through some particular round of rebirths.” The implication is that the Buddha did not believe that version of reincarnation.

Instead the Buddhist teaching of reincarnation or rebirth developed over the course of several hundred years after the Buddha lived. And there are variations in this teaching among the different lineages of Buddhism.

So while my theory of reincarnation is not in keeping with Buddhist tradition, it is in keeping with the teaching of the Buddha. And for the reasons I have stated here, is more consistent with that teaching.
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* Please note a difference between my teaching and most Buddhist teaching. The teaching of “no self” is taken as meaning there is no self. Period. But as I explain in my post, “The Misleading Teaching of No Self,” this is a misstatement of the Buddha’s teaching of “not self.“ What the Buddha said was that various things … mental formations, clinging aggregates, feelings and perceptions … are not self; they are instead just a product of the ego-mind, they are of dependent origin. What we think of as our “self” in fact is not and has no permanence. He never said there is no such thing as a true self, such as your true Buddha nature. Indeed, he absolutely avoided saying that. See also my book, The Self in No Self. I have since found that various schools of thought in both Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism make the same point.

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