Blog Archives

As a Buddhist ... Revisited - Planning without Thinking

12/27/2013

As human beings, it is our nature to make plans for the future, to move forward; it is an inescapable part of a layperson’s life. As a Buddhist, this creates a vexing challenge, and so I wrote a post about how do that while remaining present. But in the post that I wrote, “As a Buddhist, How Does One Think About the Future?” I fell into a trap, unaware.

In that post, I basically said that the key is to stay present, unattached to one’s plans. When you think about the future, make your decision as mindfully as you can, gather information about what you have to do to accomplish your goal, and then forget about the future, focusing just on doing what you can in the present to advance your goal.

That’s good advice as far as it goes, but it is flawed. We cannot make any decision about the future that is in our best interest if we “think” about the future.

The problem is that if we “think” about the future, even if we try to be as mindful as possible, listening to our heart, it is unavoidable that our ego thinking-mind gets involved. That means that our learned experience ... our feelings, perceptions, mental formations, conscious-ego ... gets involved.

But those aspects ... the clinging skandhas ... are not only empty of any intrinsic existence, we know from our past experience that listening to our ego-mind leads to nothing but frustration, fear, and anxiety. We cannot make a decision about anything that is in our best interest if we are under that influence.

Since we know that, and yet find ourselves powerless to separate ourselves from that influence, we obsess about the future with fear and anxiety because we know in our gut that we are not making a good decision, or at least that we have no way of knowing whether we are making a good or the right decision for us.

And so we are on an endless treadmill throughout our lives. Because we have doubts about the decisions we make, we obsess about the future with fear and anxiety. And because we obsess about the future with fear and anxiety, we continually revisit our decisions, questioning them.

“OK,” you say, “but how can one plan for the future without thinking about the future?” The answer is to not “think” about the future, but instead, while being present in the moment, experiencing it with dispassion, free of labels, free of the intervention of your thinking mind, make a decision and act based on what you are experiencing at that moment. That is the only way to make a decision about the future that you know is in your best interest and in which you can thus rest assured.

(Once you make your decision, you will need to determine how to get from point A to point B, how to achieve your goal. To the extent that these are objective matters, you can use your thinking mind. But to the extent that here too judgmental questions arise, then you have to again make those decisions based on being present free of the intervention of your thinking mind.)

Let me give you a personal example. For several years, my friend and I have known that it would be in our best interest to move to a different location. It would be better to live in an environment that presents more opportunity for human interaction and expression. In an attempt to move forward, we’ve had discussions ... endless discussions, always the same, always without any clear result, or when we thought there was clarity one day, breathing a sigh of relief, finding that the next day we thought clarity meant something else (see my post, “Real Clarity v the Delusion of Clarity”). The problem was that we were using our thinking mind. We were engaging in mental masturbation.

But when I took the awareness I expressed in that post to its next logical step, I realized that when I was present, aware of the emptiness of all five skandhas ... appearance of form, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, consciousness-ego ... I knew without any question what I had to do right then to move my life forward. I did not engage in any thought about how it will work out or what will happen in two months, etc. because I knew that is just thought, it is just imagination that has no foundation in reality.

And the next day, and the days since, I have been relaxed, at peace, free of fear and anxiety and doubt about the future as I have never been before. I feel positive energy in a way that I haven’t experienced before. And that is because my decision was made in the present, free of my thinking mind.

This time I have no doubts or fears. As the classic Chinese poem, “Affirming Faith in Mind,” says, “With single mind one with the Way, all ego-centered strivings cease; doubts and confusion disappear, and so true faith pervades our life.”

0 Comments

Beyond Dispassion - The Next Step

12/21/2013

0 Comments

The other day I realized as I was going about my day, that although I was experiencing myself and the world around me with dispassion ... again, that is to say impartially, free of bias, objectively rather than subjectively ... I was sufficiently aware to realize that my mind was still applying labels, good ones, yes, and mild ones but still labels.

In reflecting further, I realized that there was almost nothing that I experienced, even in a state of dispassion, that my mind didn’t apply a label to. For example, the weather was lovely, rather than the temperature was moderate and there was a breeze. Or the light was special, rather than the light was crisp and clear. Or that a painting was pretty, rather than the painting was in harmony rather than discordant and the artist knew how to use and reflect light.

I think part of this is just the mind’s laziness ... it’s easier and quicker to say something is nice or pretty, rather than objectively state what you are actually observing. But a large part of it is the mind’s habit-energy of applying labels to everything. These weren’t negative, and they weren’t romanticizing or demonizing, but they were still labels, and I knew that if I wasn’t vigilant on freeing myself from all labels then other harmful labels would continue to arise as well.

I decided that as an experiment, I would consciously try to only use objective facts in describing or noting my experience of things. I was surprised at how much extra effort it took, and for some things how I really had to search for ways to describe my experience without using judgmental rather than factual labels.

This is an experiment that I will need to continue. Judgmental labels need to be discarded from my mental and verbal vocabulary. They of course will still arise, as with all thoughts, but I will hopefully be aware, present, and stop and reflect on what really is.

The Buddha said, “this teaching leads to dispassion, to fading of lust, to cessation, to peace, to direct knowledge, to enlightenment.” Being able to experience things with dispassion is an important step, but it is not the last step.

0 Comments

The Mystery of the Ego - An Answer

12/14/2013

0 Comments

For years I have wondered, as I’m sure many Buddhists have, why it is that the ego-mind, rather than protecting us from suffering, is not just the source of our suffering but impervious to any attempts to change its perspective and stop its constant attempts to lead us down a path that brings nothing but frustration, fear, anxiety, and insecurity. Why, in short, is the ego our tormentor, the giver of bad advice, rather than our protector, our friend?

Recently, a friend was reading me an entry from a novel he is writing. In this entry, the protagonist reflects on the side of her that has views of herself and those around her that are not based in reality but in the perceptions of a child. That gets her in trouble because of the actions and reactions these views continue to cause. She refers to that side of her as “little Marie,” herself as a child.

When I heard those words, I literally sat there stunned. A central truth had been revealed to me through my friend’s writing. The part of my ego-mind that has to do with self-image is not some ephemeral specter in my mind, it is “little Ronnie,” myself as a child.* And it is because of the insecurity of that child that my ego-mind has been so receptive to all the messages it has received about life from family, peers, and the larger culture. I resolved then and there to meditate on little Ronnie the next day.

As I meditated on little Ronnie and felt his pain as it developed through his childhood experiences, I came to two realizations. The first is why my ego-mind, the little Ronnie within me, acts as it acts. When little Ronnie experienced as a young child (age 5-8) what he interpreted as being unloved and what he correctly saw as rejection by some of his peers, he developed a defense mechanism pattern to protect himself.

He determined that if he could not receive people’s (specifically his father’s) love because he was unworthy or unloveable, he could gain their respect through hard work and excellence. And if he was going to be rejected, he was going to reject first ... the “better the dumper be than the dumpee” perspective ... and walled himself off from most everyone other than those few he felt a close affinity towards, saying that he was better than them.

And when he arrived at the age when sex stirred within him and his desire to be loved added a sexual element, he decided after many unhappy attempts that if he couldn’t have the real thing (and he couldn’t trust it even when he had it, so insecure was he), he would receive validation and at least the pleasure of intimate contact through casual sex. He felt that this would somehow protect him when a relationship ultimately failed ... and he/I became a sex addict.

These were all actions that the little Ronnie within me took to protect himself and me, not knowing that these actions were in fact very harmful to our wellbeing (of course striving for excellence is not in and of itself negative, but when that striving comes from a lack of equanimity, then it is a craving, unskillful and harmful) and would continue to negatively impact my attempts to find peace and happiness for most of my adult life. And that is why my ego -mind is so impervious to my efforts to surrender it to my true Buddha nature and to not follow the path it wants to lead me on. My ego-mind, little Ronnie, is in fact trying to protect me, never mind how misguided and harmful his perspective may be.

And so, while our ego-mind may indeed be our tormentor and give us bad advice, it is not some droid-like our-of-control function of our brain but instead our childhood selves trying to protect us, with tenacity. Pima Chodron’s advice about having compassion for your thoughts as they arise should thus be even more compelling.

The second realization is how to ultimately free ourselves from our ego, possibly even to the extent that our ego-mind ceases to arise. When I was meditating, I thought that what I needed to do was practice tonglen towards little Ronnie. That by receiving his pain and giving him my love and compassion he might be healed, and if he was healed then he would see the truth (e.g., that all five skandhas are empty of intrinsic existence), drop his “protective” efforts, and be one with our true Buddha nature.

Later that day, I recalled my following Sogyal Rinpoche’s advice regarding practicing tonglen on myself many years ago, in what for me was a breakthrough at-home retreat. Rinpoche, in The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, suggests, for the purpose of this exercise, dividing yourself into two aspects … one is the aspect of you that is whole, compassionate, etc., the other is the aspect of you that has been hurt, that feels misunderstood, bitter or angry, “who might have been unjustly treated or abused as a child, or has suffered in relationships or been wronged by society.”

As you breathe in, the first aspect opens its heart completely and receives all of the other aspect’s pain and suffering. As you breathe out, the first aspect gives the other aspect all its healing love, warmth, trust, and happiness. In response, the other aspect opens its heart to this love and all pain and suffering melt away in this embrace.

When I followed Rinpoche’s advice that day many years ago, it was a breakthrough because it resulted in not just removing the power of my sex addict, but stilling its voice so that it ceased to arise with any regularity. It’s still there, I’m still recovering, I feel it at times, but it’s more like a whisper from far away.

And now I know why. Because I practiced tonglen on little Ronnie ... he was the “aspect that has been hurt” ... and he was healed. I continued this practice for a while after the retreat but at some point for some reason I unfortunately stopped. And so, while my sex addict has remained quiescent other aspects of my neuroses have remained active causing me, as the reader of my blog will know, not-infrequent suffering amid a general pattern of peace and happiness.

I know the healing of little Ronnie will be a long-term process. There is no quick fix, just like my healing and learning to walk the path is a long-term, incremental process. And so I will return to practicing tonglen on myself, on little Ronnie. And we will see.

But I have also discovered that practicing tonglen on little Ronnie is one thing, focusing on my "failings" that result from the wall that little Ronnie built … that I don't offer joy to everyone … is another. That just feeds my thinking mind and drags me down, regresses, takes me back to a place where I do not accept and love myself as I am.

And so while practicing tonglen I must also remain clear that little Ronnie is the past, he is no more. I am living in the present aware that this is the only reality and that all else is thought, and thought is empty, not the truth, not reality, and only leads me to frustration, fear, and negativity. I am aware that my life is the way it is right now because it's just the way it is, and I accept myself as I am and love myself unconditionally and have compassion for myself.

*Note: Little Ronnie is a later stage of development than the picture of the smiling toddler filled with love and feeling nothing but love from his family, totally innocent, in which, as I related in an early post, I saw reflected my true Buddha nature.

0 Comments

Dispassion - Enter the State of by Becoming Aware of the Emptiness of Our Ego-Mind

12/8/2013

0 Comments

At the end of my last post, “Dispassion - Unlocking the Doors,” I raised the natural question of how one goes about entering the state of dispassion. The bottom line answer can be found in the opening verse of the Heart Sutra, which says:

The Bodhisatva Avelokiteshvara,
Practicing the perfection of wisdom, going deep
within,
Was illuminated and perceived that
All five skandhas are empty of intrinsic existence.
Thus being at one with all things,
Experiencing things directly without the intervention
of thought,
All suffering and doubt ceased.

The key is perceiving that all five skandhas ... the appearance of form, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness-ego ... are empty of intrinsic existence because they are all dependent on your specific learned experiences. As a result, someone else with a difference set of learned experiences has different perceptions, etc. And to perceive that truth, one must first be present so that one can go deep within.

That’s the bottom line. But to understand why and how let me go back to the beginning. In my book, Scratching the Itch: Getting to the Root of Our Suffering, I devote two chapters to this question. In the first, “Why Do We Crave,” I say that we have no equanimity, we cannot accept ourselves and our lives because of the fears and insecurities that developed within us, usually during childhood. These fears and insecurities in turn were learned experiences, were the result of experiences we had interacting either with our family, our peers, or the larger society and culture. We ended up defining ourselves and the world around us through a bundle of learned labels, which blocked our mind and heart from the knowledge of who we, and what the world around us, really were.

The first step in the process of finding dispassion is to acknowledge this basic fact of our lives. Once we acknowledge that our perceptions are all a function of our family, peer-group, or larger society and that it is these perceptions that make it impossible for us to truly accept ourselves and our lives as they are, which in turn makes it impossible to approach our lives with equanimity, which in turn causes us to attach to what we do and thus crave those things, which is the cause of our suffering … once we acknowledge all of this, then we have positioned ourselves to address the next steps.

It is one thing to acknowledge that all of our perceptions are based on learned experience. It is quite another to acknowledge and understand that those perceptions are illusory, that they and our learned experience are empty of intrinsic existence and thus do not reflect reality … that we have no way of experiencing reality through the faculty of our mind. This is explored in the book's next chapter, “Discovering the Emptiness of Thought.”

Whether you think about how you relate to the weather or yourself or other people or whatever ... it all comes down to the labels that our learned experience automatically places on things and people.

To be clear, this assertion does not dispute the fact, for example, that it has been gray and raining for days on end, or that we or others are unemployed, or making a certain amount of money, or tend to be introverted … it disputes the label our mind places on those conditions ... nasty, failure, nerd. And the fact that our culture supports that label makes it no less illusory; it makes it seem very real and makes it harder to free ourselves from that perception, but it is still just a creation of our mind based on our learned experience.

When you come to understand this, even at first intellectually, this opens the door to start the process of freeing ourselves and finding dispassion. What you must do is to be aware, which is to be present, so that one is able to observe how our thinking-mind places labels on things that create a barrier to experiencing what really is. And as I’ve noted in many other posts, the key when being aware of the thinking-mind arising is to choose not to follow it’s lead, to follow instead your true Buddha nature. That is the beginning of exercising dispassion.

As time goes on and your understanding of the emptiness of the five skandhas is absorbed by you and comes from your gut or your heart, you will be in conscious contact with your true Buddha nature and you will feel dispassion as a matter of course. It will become the default reaction, not the application of labels.

In this post, I have just been able to touch on this difficult and important subject. For more, see my book, Scratching the Itch: Getting to the Root of Our Suffering.

0 Comments

Dispassion - Unlocking the Doors

12/3/2013

0 Comments

Recently a friend described how he had begun to ask himself various questions regarding matters that had been trapped in the confusion of his thinking mind. One day, when he was able to be aware and answered those questions objectively, he was surprised by the answers, and that led to a different conclusion than he had anticipated.

When his experience came to me in my meditation the next day, I realized that he had stumbled upon an important truth. Dispassion is the key to clear vision. Indeed, when commenting on another's teaching or his own, the Buddha's first criteria was whether it "leads to dispassion." That was the first in the list of stages that lead to enlightenment.

One could say that this is no different from what I and others have taught about being free of the intervention of our ego thinking-mind, of seeing one’s life and the world around one through the eyes of your true Buddha nature. While that is true, I have always felt that how one presents something, the words one uses, can make a big difference as to how it is perceived, accepted, and implemented. I think there is something of real potential usefulness in focusing on dispassion.

First, let’s define what we mean by “dispassion.” To be dispassionate is to neither romanticize nor demonize something. It is to view something impartially, free of bias ... objectively rather than subjectively.

This definition is consistent with the Buddha’s statements when he set rolling the wheel of the dharma,. He described the path he would define in the dharma as “the middle way.” The path would avoid the two extremes of the pursuit of pleasure in sensual desires on the one hand and self-mortification on the other hand.

It is just as important to state what dispassion is not in this context. It does not mean to be devoid of personal feelings. It does not mean to be emotionally uninvolved.

For example, it is possible for you to love someone dispassionately. This may seem like an odd juxtaposition, an oxymoron, but it is not. To love someone dispassionately is not to be uninvolved emotionally, it is to love someone and not be attached. To be able to say, “If it works out, great. If it doesn’t, that’s ok too.” It is to love someone from a place of equanimity, not from craving. It the same as the difference between a skillful desire and an unskillful desire (see my post, “How To Desire Yet Not Crave”).

The interesting thing is that in English, certainly in our culture, to be emotionally involved implies that one is biased, that one is attached to something or a point of view. The reason being that people generally can’t separate themselves from their emotions. But that does not mean that it is not possible.

The point I’m making is essentially the difference between the attribute/skandha “feeling” and the clinging attribute/skandha “feeling”. The former is not a problem. It is the latter, the attachment to feelings, that the Buddha said was the source of cravings and suffering.

So being dispassionate does not imply that one is a cold fish, that one has no feelings. It just means that one doesn’t attach to ones feelings, that one views all things with equal mind, something that certainly requires great discipline.

With this definition in mind, let me proceed. What is useful about the concept of dispassion is that it defines in an accessible, understandable way what it means practically to surrender one’s ego to your true Buddha nature, to turn your life and your will over to your true Buddha nature, to be free of the intervention of your ego thinking-mind.

These last phrases, which I have certainly used consistently and are correct, do not give the practitioner much to wrap their heads around as to what exactly is meant. Especially since one can never be free of one’s ego or thinking mind; it’s always there, one just has a choice not to follow it. And how do you know if you are doing it? It’s easy to be fooled.

But to be dispassionate is a concept which I believe is easier to grasp and can be easily applied to practical, everyday situations. Also, it is much easier to “call yourself” on not exercising dispassion, as opposed to not following your true Buddha nature, or of following your ego thinking-mind. The distinction is much clearer and thus more easy to be aware of.

The more I have meditated on being dispassionate, the more I understand that it truly is a stand-in for turning your will and your life over to your true Buddha nature, surrendering your ego, experiencing things without the intervention of your thinking-mind, exercising nonattachment. As such, to be dispassionate about all things is the co-condition with being present to accepting your life and the world around you as it is at this moment, and abiding in a place of equanimity from which one can practice the Five Precepts and the Six Paramitas.

As in several other instances I have discussed in posts, the question may be raised which comes first, being dispassionate or being present, accepting, and abiding in equanimity. As for being present, it is both a pre-condition and a co-condition. One cannot turn your will over to the care of your true Buddha nature and be aware of the emptiness of all five skandhas without being present. You cannot go deep within yourself without being present. Thus you cannot view things with dispassion, at least initially, without being present.

However, once one has received this awareness, it is possible to view things with dispassion without being present, hence the apparent contradiction of being dispassionate and yet the mind is still applying labels and presenting "what if" scenarios. Thus being present and being dispassionate are co-conditions to accepting and abiding in equanimity, being free of labels and your thinking mind, to being free of fear and anxiety, doubts and confusion, anger and negativity.

“O.K.,” you say, “but how does one achieve the state of dispassion?” For the answer, stay tuned to the next post.

0 Comments

Shall We Dance? - An Invitation to the Dance of Death

12/1/2013

0 Comments

We have all been at the point where we are totally exhausted by the stress caused by our samsara. It can be very debilitating. Recently, a friend of mine told me that he has come to think of his interaction with his ego-mind as being an elaborate dance, and that he has decided he is no longer going to be available for that dance.

This is in essence the same as the teaching I’ve presented, based on Pima Chodron’s, of having compassion for your thoughts and feelings, acknowledging them, but saying firmly that they represent the past and that you aren’t going there anymore; you are seeking guidance now instead from your true Buddha nature. But I found the imagery of the dance to be a powerful one.

And since it is a dance which leaves one exhausted and weak, it reminded me of the St. Vitus Dance, which was a phenomenon in the Middle Ages where hundreds or thousands of people would gather and dance wildly and uncontrollably for hours and days until they collapsed, and at times died on the spot. Beyond being physically and mentally exhausting, the dance that we engage in with our ego is a dance that kills our spirit by pulling us ever farther away from our true Buddha nature, which represents a threat, the only threat, to its supremacy. Ultimately, it is only our faith in the teachings of the Buddha and in our own true Buddha nature that provides us with a path to freedom from our ego-mind.

And so I have added to my friend’s thought and refer to the call of our ego-thinking-mind as an invitation to the Dance of Death. If we want to experience peace and happiness. if we want to lead a spiritually-grounded life, if we want to follow the Noble Eightfold Path, we must be aware when our ego-mind arises, have compassion for it for we know where it is coming from, it is a captive of our past, but we must respectfully decline its invitation to take its hand and engage in its deadly dance.

0 Comments