A Year to Live

Everfresh in the Changing

Month: February 2016

Exploring Dependent Arising.

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On February 11, 2016

In Body, Death, Enquiry, Focusing, Mindfulness

The twelve processes of dependent arising.
(Source: http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/DBLM/resource/ebooks/102946/102946-223.gif)

 

Kent: “The things is, how would ‘self-cherishing’ work, to give us dukkha?”

Christopher: “Good question. Can I change the language, here, for my readers? Because, most of my readers don’t use the phrase ‘self-cherishing’ as a part of their model for the arising of dukkha.”

K: “To what?”

C: “Why don’t we use ‘narcissism,’ in the sense of ‘everyday narcissism’ – the variety that our species is afflicted by. The kind that the narcissus myth was expressing.

“Because, it’s likely that this was what your Eastern teacher was talking about, when he used the term ‘self-cherishing’ to describe the source of all our human ills.”

K: “Okay. So, exactly how does the process work? I want it in terms of a dynamic that I can see in my daily life.”

C: “Alright. Where to start? Perhaps I could ask you: If you could see it in your daily life, what would that seeing entail?”

K: “Well, having been in mindfulness training for a while now, I would expect that I won’t see it outside of the four placements of mindfulness.
I pay close attention to my actual body and mind.”

C: “In short you are talking about: body or form; feeling-tones (pleasant/unpleasant/neither); states of the psyche; and, the dynamics of these three. Great. In one’s own experience as it is presenting moment to moment.”

K: “That’s right.”

C: “Let’s notice that – if your motivation has been examined – you are already stepping out of everyday narcissism, because you are tracking the actuality of your life, which exceeds your conceptions of it, is more than your images and representations of yourself. And, you’re willing to stay with the suffering directly, to learn in it.”

K: “So, the first thing we notice is that the dynamics of my experience contains self-images. Is that what you are saying?”

C: “These will be involved, yes, in the state of the psyche. Usually the state of psyche can be explored in terms of the attitude of the ‘I’ which is working in the situation.”

K: “Is there a way I can access this, when it is often so subtle?”

C: “Sure. You can be curious – activating the awakened quality of investigation. Let’s say the situation is that you’re… I don’t know… what do you want to explore?”

K: “Let’s say I’m feeling aggressive in a conversation with my partner.”

C: “And, an alarm goes off, in you – which isn’t a critic, let’s say. Okay. You could ask yourself, then, “Who am I taking myself to be, when I have this attitude?” You could pretend that you are acting this part out on the stage, and once it is embodied sufficiently, then explore how you would describe this part of you, as a person.”

K: “Let’s say I notice that this one is belligerent toward the other person.”

C: “So, you’ve been born (11th process of dependent arising, on the chart), born as an attacker.”

K: “Yes. Even if it’s not too gross, even so my partner senses it, and she begin to react back.”

C: “Right. That’s how it goes. But with a mindful pause, you’ve also become curious about your process. There are lots of ways to go here. One that I like to teach is: to deepen the engagement with the state, explore: What sense perceptions come with this? What kind of contact do I make with objects and people – light, or heavy? Am I leaning in, or backing off? What intentions? How does my attention get placed – deployed – in this state? And in each case, you let your body participate in the condition fully; get the answer from your bodily disposition. Just let it be here.”

K: “Sounds full on. Is this explanation going to get technical?”

C: “A little. But, for this conversation now, we are not going to include the blocks to your curiosity. You can expect those to happen, and that’s another skill, to work with them. But, let’s keep it simple.”

K: “Oh, thank you. Simple.”

C: (Laughs).

K: “Sounds like we’ve included some points on the wheel of becoming, on that chart?”

C: “I think so. In just what I’ve suggested so far, we can probably find that I’m suggesting you can readily track: the 3rd process (consciousness); the 5th process (senses); the 6th process (contact); the 7th (feeling-tones); and with determined intentions, we are in the territory of the 9th process (becoming). And so on.

“And the 11th process is there in the fact that you find yourself born as an unpleasant person leaning in to win points over your partner. No fun. What’s worse, it doesn’t stay that way, the whole situation moves and you find that you’ve died to that incarnation (12th process), and are propelled into something you didn’t intend.”

“K: “Because whatever advantage that I thought was present in being aggressive, it’s exhausted itself. Decay and death. And, now a new process of reactivity has launched itself upon the back of my birth as belligerent partner. It could be remorse, or embarrassment, for instance. Oh, my God, what an exhausting process.”

C: “Dukkha. ‘Samsāra is an ocean of suffering, unendurable and unbearably intense,’ says a Dzogchen prayer.”

K: “So the whole twelve links of dependent arising can happen in the blink of an eye!”

C: “Yes, but it has longer, more obvious waves, which, with training, you get to study. Oh, and by the way, I should mention that Focusing can help you burrow down under all that, and find the subliminal formative or shaping factors involved. (They are the 2nd process on the chart).

That Bad Ego

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On February 10, 2016

In Enquiry, Mindfulness, Positivity, Practices

Kent: “I was reading [a famous Buddhist teacher]’s comments on psychotherapy, and couldn’t believe the biases he was showing.”

Christopher: “Sadly, some well-known Eastern teachers are very, very conservative in their understanding of Buddhadharma. The one you are speaking of died about thirty years ago; but even today, with their commitment to orthodoxies, these teachers can make themselves irrelevant to most serious practitioners in the West.

“I met him, by the way, and am deeply grateful for his personal insights; but I do know what you mean. It’s a cultural problem.”

Kent: “He was saying that you’ll be a lot happier if you lose your ego. I thought you’d love that.”

Christopher: “In the seventies, I thought the same thing.”

Kent: “It does seem to me, though, that his definition of the ‘ego’ as ‘the delusion of separateness’ is a helpful idea.”

Christopher: “Whew! What a biggy!. It’s true, of course, that the kinds of knowledge processes which we could call ‘ego,’ these can’t know the silence, stillness, and vast space of the fundamental mind. How could they? They are about multiplicity, not wholeness. When wholeness is available, they’re out.”

Kent: (Laughs). “Meister Eckhart: “God’s in; I’m out.”

Christopher: “Yeah, but remember that he also said, ‘God is my truest ‘I.'”

Kent: “Paradoxes.”

Christopher: “Maybe. I don’t think there are any paradoxes – just things that can’t be said yet.

“Anyhow, what is termed ‘the ego’ is not a thing, right? It’s a set of activities. We are simply referring to the experience of certain mental processes. They can be purified of the illusion of separateness, and permanence.”

Kent: “And of inherent existence. That’s one problem he stressed.”

Christopher: “Quite rightly. That’s a core belief, yes.”

Kent: “So what I believe to be ‘I’ doesn’t exist?”

Christopher: “That depends on the frame of the question. Do I exist? Of course – by which I mean that there are contexts – including this one, where I am speaking now – where ‘I’ makes sense; that is, it’s functional. My body knows how ‘I’ fits the meaning of the situation.

“On the other hand, when my words are pointing us back to who (or what) I am in my beingness, then ‘exist’ and ‘not exist’ are not relevant; ‘I’ and ‘you’ are not relevant, then. Again, the body knows when ‘I’ doesn’t work.”

Kent: “Wow! ‘Beingness’ brings another Eckhart moment. He said ‘God is unrestricted isness.'”

Christopher: “That’s lovely.”

Kent: “But, what about when you say, in the Openness Mind process, ‘Tell me another name for the absolute?”

Christopher: “That’s interesting. Then I expect you to say ‘I’ or ‘Kent,’ or something like that! (Laughs) What’s the situation? Pointing to a non-dual experience, where Kent is non-separately the big life process.

“This illustrates the point. It’s about the aliveness and freshness of language. Because, as the Nikāya Buddha said, ‘However, you think a thing is, it’s otherwise.‘ We name experiences in situations, but the naming is in the situation, too; and changes it. Nothing stays the same.

“There is a problem in that people use the word ‘I’ without much examination of how they are using it. The question is not whether the ‘I’ exists, but what we want to mean when we use the word ‘I’ – or, more precisely, what effect it has in the speaker and listener. Similarly, we can liberate our way of using the word ‘ego,’ by explaining what experience we are pointing to, when we use it.”

Kent: “It would take constant vigilance, to know what ‘I’ I am pointing to, when I speak.”

Christopher: “What ‘I’ did you mean, then?”

Kent: “When I said ‘I am pointing?”

Christopher: “Yes.”

Kent: “Um.. Me the individual, in general in my life – like, most times?”

Christopher: “I’d accept that. It seemed to work that way for me, when you said it. And, notice that you didn’t have to be vigilant. If you are present, if you are mindful, your body knows the answer if you are asked. But most times you won’t be asked, and you only have to check when it’s crucial.”

Kent: “Yes. I see what you mean. Otherwise, we’d go potty, checking all the time.”

Christopher: (Laughs) “So, to summarise: The existence (or not) of a central consistent and persistent ‘I’ only arises after negligent use, or misuse, of our human language capacity.

“That is, if I use the word to designate something fixed, I’m done. I’ve slipped into delusion. If I use ‘I’ – not to designate a permanent existent ‘me,’ but – to help me say some experience, then I have a chance of keeping in touch with the interaction, and moving on from there in the interaction.

“For example, ‘I am talking to you.’ The ‘I’ in that statement is purely functional. It doesn’t point to something that can be stopped, grasped and located as a thing. (The same argument goes for ‘self’ and for ‘ego.’)

Kent: “I get it. He says the West it not clear about what they mean, when they use ‘ego.'”

Christopher: “And, there I agree with him.”

Kent: “But then, he proceeds in his book to use ‘ego’ pejoratively.”

Christopher: “Okay, and if he has established what he means by ‘ego’ – he did tell us, remember? He said it’s the false sense of separateness. (A lot of writers on Buddhism don’t establish those important references, they just use the terms as though there’s an agreed standard) – then then we can take it from there.

“You can proceed to understand him, and use it with him in that limited way. But when the next person – like Jack Engler in my quote yesterday – talks about ‘ego,’ it’s best to find out how he is using it; because it may be radically different.”

Kent: “Doesn’t it help to standardise?”

Christopher: “That happens over very long periods, but we always need to use language in a way that is relevant to the situation we are in. We don’t want to be over-dependent on standardisation, or we lose language’s power. We tend to forget that this is how we learnt language in the first place – freshly, in situations.”

Kent: “Another thing he said is that ‘self-cherishing’ is the problem – that this is what his version of ‘ego’ does, exclusively.”

Christopher: “Again, what’s the context, because in English there is a positive meaning to ‘cherishing’ and negative meaning to ‘cherishing.’ English ‘cherish’ is not only ego-centric. There can be wise ‘cherishing.’ In fact, I’d say there should be wise self-cherishing, if we are to be healthy in mind.”

Kent: “Perhaps, in the context of spiritual work, It helps us more if we say ‘naricissism’ is our problem?”

Christopher: “Yes, or ‘egocentricity’ is our problem, or ‘egoism’ is our problem. It’s generally agreed that these carry the meaning of being excessive acts. But, ‘self-cherishing’ is more problematic.

“Nevertheless, if that’s how someone speaks, you can still make the adaption, and find out from them: ‘How does ‘self-cherishing work,’ in your view?’ You might then find that they are meaning something for which you already have a different phrase or term. And, you can join them in a meaningful way, that way.”

Kent: “If you didn’t quibble with the term, and wanted to go deeper with them…? Hmm… Sorry, I don’t know what my question is.”

Christopher: “How lovely. Something fresh has a chance.”

Grasping Creates Ego Distortion

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On February 9, 2016

In Enquiry

Something I’d like to do, before I die, is write a nice clear clarification of ways we can productively use the word ‘ego.’ ‘Ego’ is the Latin word for ‘I’ (Pali: aham), but it gets added weight when we use it in English. It seems to mean some central organising principle in the psyche of a person. However, its use is confusing.

The word is used pejoratively in some Buddhist books, especially those written by traditional Eastern-born teachers. Their Westerner students often take up this practice, and consequently are against a part of themselves they call ‘the ego.’

Of course, there is no such time-space thing as ‘the ego.’ We’re talking about processes. So, ego processes (if we can identify mental processes worthy of such centrality) are not problematic per se. They are necessary to human functioning.

As Jack Engler said in Psychoanalysis and Buddhism:
“‘Transcending the ego’ […] has no meaning to a psychodynamically-oriented therapist for whom ‘ego’ is a collective term designating the regulatory and integrative functions.” He also said, there: “… it takes certain ego capacities just to practice meditation or any spiritual practice. […] Psychologically, this kind of practice [vipassana] strengthens fundamental ego capacities, particularly the capacities for self-observation and affect tolerance.”

Mark Epstein puts it this way, in Thoughts Without a Thinker (1995): “The work of meditation, in one sense, is the work of developing an ego that is flexible, clear and balanced enough to enable one to have such [insight] experiences.”

A lot of what I’ve been speaking about in my last two posts is ‘affect tolerance’ – staying put for uncomfortable feelings, until insight dawns. Directly inhabiting one’s experience means seeing how your emotionality gets exaggerated and ends up distorting experience. To do that mindfulness helps develop the space to hold discomforting feelings and realisations, until (what we call) mind is like space. In other words, skilled meditation develops a healthy ego.

So grasping at ego processes, conceiving them as indicating a separate, permanent, transcendent ‘me’ – that is problematic. If only we could just relax into spaciousness, free not to locate a ‘me’ anywhere, and allowing our ego-processes to move freely – without identification! There – in the craving and the grasping after identity – arises all this suffering, all this violence that we see in the world. Hence, we want to see how grasping at ego-processes happens, and now it ceases.

In the Jaṭāsutta of the Saṃyutta Nikāya, the Nikāya Buddha suggests:

“Where name and form
As well as resistance and the perception of form
Are completely cut off,
It is there that the tangle gets snapped.”
– Translated by Nanananda Bhikkhu, in: Nibbana – The Mind Stilled

Vomit, Orgasm, Sneeze or Die

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On February 8, 2016

In Body, Death, Enquiry, Mindfulness, Positivity, Radiant Citta, Resisting Death

I had an interesting response to my ‘mindful in vomiting’ image. It was proposed that one is really present when you are vomiting. The ensuing conversation brought out some very helpful distinctions, so… despite the fact that the word ‘vomit’ tends to make people uncomfortable, let’s talk further about it. (In what I say in this post about ‘Buddhist mindfulness,’ I mean the mindfulness which is taught in the Nikāyas, not the various ‘mindfulnesses’ taught in particular traditions. I am referring to the mindfulness, for example, which is taught in the classic ‘Mindfulness Sutta’ – the Satipaṭṭhāna
Sutta.)

To this suggestion that vomiting is by its nature an experience of real presence, my response initially was that in vomiting, the ‘present-moment awareness’ aspect of mindfulness might be forcefully present (at least bodily), but there is usually something missing. And, this process that is missing distinguishes ‘Buddhist mindfulness’ from the popular mindfulness being taught in modern industries; for example, in relaxation industry (and even in the army). In the Nikāyas, mindfulness couples present-moment awareness with remembrance. So, what kind of remembrance is possible, when I am vomiting?

In the Samyutta Nikāya there is a passage that echoes the Satipaṭṭhāna. It says, ‘One dwells contemplating the body in the body, feeling-tones in the feeling-tones, mind-states in the mind-states, and the dynamics of phenomena in the dynamics of phenomena, ardent, clearly comprehending, mindful, having removed hankering and aversion in regard to the world. This is called the faculty of mindfulness.” (SN V.198)

Notice that I am not averse to the vomiting, if I am mindful. I can vouch for this – vomiting can be really very interesting! By ‘the dynamics of phenomena’ we mean being aware of the dynamics of the following: the processes which block clarity of awareness, the seven factors of awakening, the four noble truths, the five sentient processes, and so on. In other words, mindfulness in vomiting will include the presence of mind which can look into how you are organised in the act of vomiting. You can learn from the experience, and realise nibbāna right there.

In mindfulness you remember why you’re here. Not to reject experiences, but to be awaken to the nature of experience itself; from transiency, no permanent self, and no ultimate satisfaction in what passes, to the total Unbinding. It’s possible to truly see. That is, from contingency to freedom – right there. You could be remembering to keep your breath in view, while vomiting, or you could be remembering not to lose sight of the vast, luminous ground of Being. It depends on you.

This can go very deep when you are vomiting, because you are almost purely present. You can likewise see very deeply into reality in orgasm, which is similarly a bodily super-present state – or in sneezing! (I had a friend in high school who said you could tell about people’s orgasms by the way they enjoyed a sneeze. She was very insightful, at a young age.) It can also happen in bodily falling, this remembering of your practice.

If you don’t recall your spiritual tasks in the midst of vomiting, the other factors of an awakened mind are missing. Buddhist mindfulness brings them into play. So, the curiosity is missing, usually, when vomiting. That lack means there is something present which is not mindful; that is, an unrefined ego process.

What is usually present in vomiting is the patina of ‘me as experiencer.’ There is the sense that a separate witnessing ‘me’ is watching as the owner of the experience. It believes it has some rights, so it believes it should be able to control the experience: “Is this really happening?” “This shouldn’t be happening!” “I don’t want this to be happening.” “Oh, No!” “I hate this.” “Oh, my God. I’ll die.” And, so on.

These attitudes (states of mind, as defined in the Satipaṭṭhāna) signal that there is a falsely-transcendent ‘I’ watching – a bystander. When the ‘bystander self’ is present, then true mindfulness is not present – true mindfulness complete with remembering to look into the nature of experiencing, right there; with clear comprehension of the nature of experience.

Try it. If not with vomiting, with the other states that grip your body entirely. This is why sickness and physical pain can be great opportunities, too. I’m not suggesting flagellation, which is a degrading extreme rejected by the Nikāya Buddha. Don’t deliberately cause yourself pain. No cutting into the flesh, to feel more alive.

Just take every opportunity that life offers in the natural course of things, to look deeply into the present moment and see truly – whether it be pleasant (as in orgasm) or unpleasant (as in vomiting) – or variable (as in sneezing). And, of course, the full-bodied mindfulness in these activities is a good preparation for death, because dying, too, is a full-bodied activity; where the ego-process must relinquish all its pretensions to ownership and control over experience, and let the body have its nature.

Practice When Sick or Dying

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On February 7, 2016

In Body, Death, Enquiry, Meditation, Memoir, Positivity, Practices, Time, Space, & Knowledge

There are several suttas in the Nikāyas where the recommended practice for one who is ill is to rest in, trust, or make contact with the awakened qualities of the mind. Nothing much more than that (which is sure a big ask). For example, when, on separate occasions, Mahā Kassapa, Mahā Moggalāna, Mahā Cunda, were each gravely ill from disease, the Nikāya Buddha visited them. (All reported in the Samyutta Nikāya.) On finding that, for each, their pains were not subsiding, but indeed increasing, he reminded them of the qualities of awakening (bojjhanga).

He recommended these qualities because they support perfect understanding and the perfect peace of nibbāna – even while ill, even while dying. His advice to these senior disciples was that they use the opportunity well. From the healing point of view, it makes perfect sense, of course, that we will be better able to tolerate our illness, and we will have a better chance of recovery, if we are positive. (Traditionally they are given as seven, but of course there are more than these seven.)

All the qualities of awakening are positive. They support intimacy with our condition, whatever it is. In the cases of illness and dying these qualities (of being awake to one’s situation) support not turning away from suffering, and not turning one’s illness or death into an occasion for egoism (“Woe is me!” “This shouldn’t be happening!”) They support peace and enquiry, calm and healthy attitude. And, they reveal a dimension of life called  ‘unailing,’ and ‘undying.’ These qualities are mindfulness, grounded enquiry, perseverance, joy, calm, contemplative presence, and equanimity.

(I’m smiling. I am remembering my discovery in my twenties that mindfulness and peace could be fully present in vomiting!)

All three of the disciples – despite their physical pain – are said to have affirmed the teaching, saying: “Most assuredly, Blessed One, Well-Gone One, these are qualities of awakening!” When you see these qualities in extreme situations is indeed inspiring. May all beings everywhere find their way to the realization of these qualities in themselves, finding grace in sickness and death.

The Responsive Space

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On February 5, 2016

In Body, Mindfulness, Positivity, Practices

Have you noticed that human life is always an adjusting process? That’s all it is ever going to be. There’s no arrival at any destination, and no zero to start from. It’s adjust, adjust, adjust. Or, respond, respond, respond. This is the flow of life. When I let my body feel that this is so, I feel a part of something immeasurable – with no beginning, and no ending; no going from, or to. This indeterminacy is liberating. “The readiness is all,” as Hamlet said.

I have often likened it to being a surfer. A surfer can’t choose to go just anywhere she wishes. Her movement it constrained by the unfolding of the wave’s movement toward the beach, and other factors like the speed and height and shape of the wave, the wind’s direction and speed, and so on.

The surfer’s freedom is found in the space which is a responsive consciousness interacting with the totality of the contingencies of her situation. There is one-pointed concentration in her situation. She’s present, but in this space the ‘I’-belief is absent. Pure and total presence.

I used to experience this in unarmed combat as a young man. If an ‘I’-thought entered in, I left an opening for my opponent. No ‘I’-belief: responsive, intimate spaciousness.

What is the ‘I’-belief? A reflection on oneself which mistakes oneself as a findable, locatable, ‘something’ in a world which is itself a ‘something,’ and which is also a world of ‘somethings.’ Ch’an masters of old affirmed, “From the beginning not a thing is.” Hence, as with our surfer, interaction is possible.

Cut off narcissism, like you would an autumn lily with your hand.
Cultivate the path to peacefulness, the Unbinding taught by the Well Gone One.
– Dhammapada. Translated by Christopher J. Ash

Bodhisattva Parents

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On February 4, 2016

In General

I’m in admiration, tonight, of parents of babies and pre-schoolers. Last night, in my motel, a baby cried much of the night in the room next door. I was glad that the tones of voice I heard from the parents were soothing sounds. They must have been so very tired this morning, and they might have to stumble on into their respective activities for the day.

Now I’m settling in at home as a carer for the foreseeable future, I remember all those times, when, as a dad, I was dead tired and ready to drop on my feet, and yet, after work the evening meal needed to be cooked, and I had to be present for precious bedtime sharing time with my child. Most times it was a joy, but there were times when all I wanted to do was make it to bed myself! Yet, we do it, don’t we – our love carries us through, giving us reserves that we can marvel at, later.

Deep bows to you all, parents of the world. I’m falling asleep as I write, so just this, today.

On the Opportunity of Uncertainty

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On February 3, 2016

In Death, Enquiry, Focusing, Meditation, Mindfulness, Positivity, Practices, Time, Space, & Knowledge

“In the space of light there is the pattern of the body’s fragility, which embraces old age, illness, and birth.”

The greatest difficulty about having cancer for most people is that the process from the beginning is full of ‘not knowing.’ There are the unknowns thrown up by the diagnosis process; and dependent on this, there are unknowns about treatment. Decisions start out in the dark. Finally, when the tests point to surgery, and the surgeon physically accesses the cancer and removes it, even then you have a wait while the final biopsies happen. More not knowing. The most confronting of the unknowns, of course, can be ‘Is this going to end my life?’ And, “Will I be able to stand the treatment?” “What functionality will I lose?”

However, I’ve found that my mindfulness practice has made the not-knowing much easier. Over the years of embracing not knowing as present-moment experience, including not knowing who I am, then I have found peace with the dynamism of situations. The more that I can stay in touch with the fact that, regardless of the specific situation, I really don’t know anything – that I ultimately don’t know anything at all – then the more I can be at peace with the relative ‘not-knowings’ of daily life; including those which present in the cancer journey.

Not know anything? I mean that when I ‘know’ through my senses and intellect, my world is already ‘categorised.’ But, if I acknowledge the limits of that knowledge and don’t stake a personality on the already-known, while not rejecting the known, then I discern a over-arching presence which the ordinary forms of knowing can’t limit.

There’s no explaining this, for the very reason that the unfolding edge of this present moment can’t be encompassed by the old categories. Saying that they have no-where to attach themselves, no where to land, is another way of saying that this presence I am speaking about is always more than our concepts (our categories, our ‘kinds.’) It exceeds them. If I grasp after ideas, to escape uncertainty, I miss the openness of Being.

Can you see how ‘not knowing’ is an opportunity to live in the light of the present flow? That I can’t even try to say what this not knowing is, this is a completely brilliant thing. Why? Because it leaves me with only the experience and study of its ‘how’; not its ‘what.’ How it works is my living. Its what is only my thinking, a mere part of living. (This is why the eightfold path of living in Buddhism is actually the path of awakening; not the path to awakening.)

This not knowing – powerful enough to surmount fear in the cancer journey – works as the most dependable knowing of all. It seems to be a kind of knowing, but it doesn’t know in any way rational; it’s not a reasoning faculty. It has no signs that can define or limit, or measure it. This is all you are left with, when you don’t resist – when you become totally intimate with illness, old age, and death; because, intimate with the fragility implicit in living, I am not separate from living. I am Life.

The Wonder of the Centreless Centre

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On February 1, 2016

In General

I’m too tired to write much, today. While sitting in the light-filled atrium of the hospital, I was held suspended in the open dimension of life. We were awaiting the hoped-for news that our loved one had survived her surgery; and at the same time, young parents were passing by with their tiny newborns.

In the space of light there is the pattern of the body’s fragility, which embracies old age, illness, and birth. And bigger than the specific patterns of birth and death is the sheer luminous actuality of the whole, which defies being known as a pattern, a self, or any comparable thing at all.

I’ll try and put something down tomorrow.

 

How is it?

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On February 1, 2016

In General

When tasting occurs, it’s difficult for the untamed mind to distinguish between the raw pleasure which is integrally a part of a healthy tongue’s process, and ‘taste’ when owned by a ‘me,’ grasped at by a ‘me.’ The untamed mind unconsciously contributes its colouring to the natural process of taste, and so it is incapable of pure taste.

Likewise, for pain. Once we make a home inside our conceptual shells, constructed out of ‘me and mine,’ it’s difficult to distinguish, then, between the ‘raw pain’ which is an inevitable part of conscious life, and the ‘me-shaped’ pain. This second pain is the pain of a mind which colours unbounded experience with preferences. These are markedly different kinds of pain. One is freedom, and the other bondage.

Another way to say this: without subtle training, it’s hard to distinguish between pleasure and pain as integral processes, necessary to human life, inseparable from human life, and pleasure and pain as interpreted through the lens of the ‘personality-belief’ (sakkayaditthi).

My beloved wife is ill. Provided the wholeness of my ‘pain’ is not blocked (and here, the pain is not exactly the pain, because it’s a multi-levelled process, not a thing), then I am feeling pain, and I am doing fine. I can be here for her (and myself, when needed.). I am not saying ‘No’ to the reality of this situation.

In the dimension of multiplicity, I support her to do everything possible to eradicate this cancer. And, in the dimension of unbounded wholeness, I accept it. It doesn’t make sense to say, “I would prefer this is not happening.” That would be like saying, “I refuse to feel the pain which is integral to loving her in this situation.” How could I then think clearly, and so be a benefit to both of us, if I shut down my sensitivity? Instead, “This is very, very painful.” (I might add, it’s a very different, even more intense, pain than when I had cancer.)

Every animal tries to free itself of painful situations. That makes sense. But, to be aggressive toward, or shut down, the raw fact of the experience is only to distort consciousness, to distort life. On the dimension of multiplicity, pain comes with loving someone. On the plane of unbounded wholeness, there is unbounded love. These dimensions are not opposites. They co-exist in reality.

I keep breathing, soft belly, keep aware of my process, and I don’t waste my energy in the surface things. Then I am ready, in case I’m needed. I hope this helps those who – out of their great kindness – have been asking how it is for me.

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