Category: Positivity Page 2 of 15

The Matrix of Mystery

On May 18, 2017

In Mindfulness, Positivity, Radiant Citta, Time, Space, & Knowledge

“(T)he thought of death is… a powerful stimulus that brings me back to myself as the unique occasion for the search for the meaning of life, and it makes me recognize the importance of this very moment, as it highlights the real possibilities that are still before me.” – Herbert Guenther.

I want to share some of the gift that contemplating death brings. Here’s how I experience something that seems to resonate with what Guenther wrote, in this passage.

I can be sitting at a my computer, I can be in a cafe, I can be driving my car, or talking to my partner – and a pristine, all-encompassing space opens. The thought of death can bring this opening. The certainty of my death, or the uncertainty about ‘when, where or how’ I will die – or, likewise, the thought of the certainty of the death of my loved ones – these contemplations can bring such openings. These ideas are one kind of “powerful stimulus.”

With the opening of that ‘space,’ my positioned (and positioning) ‘self’ dies, just like that. Dissolves. If I rest into the ‘gap,’ it is another dimension of being. A knowing is purely present, without any seeking or orienting. Acquisitions have ceased. I’m simply aware of the quality of openness itself, with its measureless ‘ing-ing’ (Gendlin’s expression). And, if I don’t scramble – that is, if I don’t make boundlessness a problem – if I relax and trust it, sigh into this unknowing knowing, then there is a meaningfulness that exceeds any of the phrases about it.

(We’ll look later at the designations in this. The ‘self’ dissolves’; so who is resting into the gap? What do ‘I,’ ‘self,’ ‘person,’ and so on, mean? It’s about the process of designation and it’s relationship to experiencing. Well explore it, later.)

Now, Guenther’s “…brings me back to myself as the unique occasion for…” is sweet, because the boundless, empty, still (paradoxical) presence is full of the magic of living. It’s called ‘ordinary mind.’ And this magic unfolds. Hence: “…the importance of this very moment…”

With this invisible matrix informing them, concepts can return, or function, to be a part of the unfolding, a servant of the bigger life, which is full of meaningfulness. This is a matter of ‘not two.’ It’s not about something on one side called the conceptual present which is different from the still, luminous, non-conceptual openness\on the other side. Not at all. The stillness doesn’t reject concepts, and concepts can serve the still field of possibilities.

This won’t make sense right now, but we’ll explore later: how the unfolding happenings (’time’) are never outside (or, never leave) the implicit, the invisible (timeless) womb of reality. (They never fully form, either, into ‘somethings’. In a sense we are experiencing virtual reality, already.) This will make sense of the Buddhist idea of ‘the Deathless’.

But, I’m getting ahead of our content. Returning to Guenther:

“…the real possibilities that are still before me.” So, this moment, purely present as it is, is full of possibilities, unfolding, “out of” this implicate matrix. It’s a poor metaphor, given what I’ve said about ‘not two,’ but refer back to your present, undivided momentary experience, and you’ll get a ‘feel’ for this. This ‘matrix’ concept is difficult to experience directly at first. Just get a holistic feel of it, be experiential about it, and in time it’ll gel. It will be integral to understanding how the Nikāya Buddha can say, “The attentive do not die.”

This no-inside/outside, always-happening unfolding includes the person who is aware, who is “the unique occasion” for the bigger life’s unfolding possibilities. What magic is that! I’m sometimes drunk on the wonder of it. It makes me laugh, and it calls Rumi to mind: “I didn’t come here of my own accord, and I can’t leave that way. Whoever brought me here, will have to take me home.” (Coleman Barks trans.)

Turning Toward the Unthinkable

By admin

On May 13, 2017

In Death, General, Meditation, Memoir, Positivity

Life is movement. As the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus said: “The river where you set your foot just now is gone — those waters giving way to this, now this.” (Fragment 41); and: “The sun is new again, all day” (fragment 32). – Heraclitus. Fragments. Translated by Brooks Haxton.

Japanese Zen artist, Sengai (1750 – 1837): “Even before I can say it is like a lightning flash or a dewdrop, it is no more.”

It seems counter-intuitive, to find more life through being in touch with life’s evanescence and the certainty of death; by turning toward the unknown. Nevertheless, rather than become dispirited by the thought of death, by practising A Year to Live – for nearly two decades, renewing it yearly – I have increased my commitment to life, and not distorted it. My energy has turned toward more meaningful activities, relinquishing energy-draining pursuits, while there’s more love of life – and all this through the seeming irony of doing daily practices which remind me of the certainty of death.

I have been inspired all along, in my contemplation of death, by Guenther’s statement: “…the thought of death is rather a powerful stimulus that brings me back to myself as the unique occasion for the search for the meaning of life…”

What kind if meaning of life is there to find in the face of death? Is life meaningful, in itself – without the filter or buffer of belief systems? That’s a question I address experientially in this project.

Certainly, as a severely abused child, by the age of sixteen I tended toward the conclusion that there was no meaning to life. My companions all thought this. I became nihilistic; and, I often wished for death. Then, via the Beatles’ encounter with Indian meditation practice – which came at the very same time in which I found Socrates – I discovered the possibility of a more wholesome line of inquiry. The task became to find out for myself, the truth of consciousness.

Was there an uncharted land, I wondered, in my own mind? One which could confirm meaningfulness from within – not through the stressful activities of my outer world, with its prevailing industrial values, cut-throat competition, its genocides and wars? It seemed to me as a teenager that contemplation of life as it is in itself might be possible? Socrates, with his courage in the face of death, and his commitment to selfless values, was inspirational. And then, at seventeen, meditation presented itself, as a support for the actualization of this free, independent way of life.

Next, my encounter with Zen Buddhism at nineteen confirmed what Socrates had asserted, that a conscious practice of facing death is far from a wish for death; it is an affirmation of a reality greater than death. The Zen Buddhists speak of ‘the great matter,’ which is the inescapable presence of ‘birth and death.’ My reading of Zen suggested that, skilfully conducted, facing death brings an attunement to life. Zen writers suggested that one’s own wholeness was discoverable through facing death.

Such freedom is not to be found by merely believing some religious blather. There is no freedom in believing in some ideal fantasy of a heaven after death. For me, this freedom must be right here in this very difficult life of sickness, old age and death. We die. So, can we live creatively – not in immature defiance of death – but with open-hearted inclusion of death. The ‘historical’ Buddha (I’ll explain the apostrophes, later) suggested that we face these five things:
1. I am subject to old age. I am not exempt from old age.
2. I am subject to illness. I am not exempt from illness.
3. I am subject to death. I am not exempt from death.
4. There is alteration in, and parting from, everything that is dear and pleasing to me.
5. I am the owner of my actions, heir to my actions. They are my matrix, I am related through them, they are my mediator. I become the heir of whatever actions I do, good or bad.
– The Five Remembrances, Translated by Christopher J. Ash

Then, at some stage, during an instance of my A Year to Live practice I decided that this matter of being one hundred percent for death in life (while being one hundred percent for the life in death) was something worth unpacking slowly with others. So, I began a blog to share the enquiry into this irony that life is ephemeral, yet intrinsically meaningful. This series which you are now reading is an edited version of that sharing.

This Brief Candle, a Unique Occasion

By admin

On May 12, 2017

In Death, Enquiry, Mindfulness, Positivity, Radiant Citta

Herbert Guenther: “…the thought of death is rather a powerful stimulus that brings me back to myself as the unique occasion for the search for the meaning of life…”

What kind if meaning of life can Guenther be speaking about? Often people live as though death is the negation of meaning. The question is how to whole-heartedly include our consciousness of death, and to find what meaning is present in that inclusion. Of course, the meaning of life is itself a living, not at all satisfying as mere belief. When the Dalai Lama was asked, at a teaching: “What is the meaning of life?” he shrugged his shoulders and said: “I don’t know.” What kind of ‘don’t know’ is that? How do we live it, feel it, know it intimately? And, how do we relate to our loved ones, once this is digested thoroughly?

If it is truly living ‘don’t know,’ it is a luminous matter. If it is a ‘don’t know’ perfumed with avoidance, it’s a dull, and dulling, quality of awareness. But, lived, it is openness of Being.

This is something worth unpacking slowly, as I will do throughout this project. Perhaps, these aren’t two, the evanescence of life and life’s value. Avoid the thought of death, and we live a false version of life. When the haiku poet Issa Kobayashi (1763 – 1828) alluded to the traditional teaching that this is a “dewdrop world,” in his poem written on the death of his daughter, he may have been thinking of the Diamond Sutra’s famous last verse:

“This is how to contemplate our conditioned existence:
Like a dewdrop, a bubble; like a flash of lightning,
Or a flickering lamp, an illusion, a phantom, or a dream.”

Yet, Issa brought this great matter home to the ever-so-human fact that love always perfectly has a natural hurt implicit implicit in its vibrant life. He wrote:

this world of dew
is, yes, a world of dew.
And yet…

Issa’s poem was life living itself forward in a new way. He doesn’t recoil from intimacy with the dewdrop world. It suggests that even in the face of his daughter’s death Issa knows her life is (in Mary Oliver’s way of saying) “one wild and precious life.”

Some Surprising Inspirations

By admin

On May 11, 2017

In Death, Memoir, Positivity, Practices

Biological life doesn’t stand still. Our bodily health changes through illness and accident. The healthy may easily have a conceit of good health, unaware of how close death can be. I suffered three special corrections to such a trance, all in 2014. Two accidents, then cancer. My long-standing practice of including death in my daily awareness turned these occasions into gifts.

The gift in these occasions was the confirmation of traditional wisdom that peace of mind is our greatest treasure. During this time the forms – such as reminding myself with rituals that this could be my last day – were far less important than actually living in mental ease. I found I was naturally more present in each breath. The formal ‘practice’ came into alignment with my everyday life.

In April of 2014 (four months before the cancer diagnosis), in the dark pre-dawn and in the rain, I fell down the steep stairs at the front of our house. I was alone that weekend, and so I guided my bruised body around without support from my family. It was a lesson in the humanising quality of vulnerability. It turned out that I had broken a rib in the fall – something I didn’t find out until we were doing a bone scan for cancer months later.

Next, in the beginning of June, I am coming back from an ultrasound (checking for the possible cancer), and – bang! – a head-on collision with a ute, on the highway in my hometown. The incident was instructive: it told me how my practice was going. My calm during and after the collision and my kindness toward others were notable.

The car was written off, though, and I could see how, without warning, in a brief and unexpected moment, your life could be finished. One doesn’t know one’s lifespan.

The results of that ultrasound showed that there was a suspicious shadow, so soon after I spent a night in hospital for a biopsy, which gave the unambiguous diagnosis. I am glad that I had been meeting the fact of death via the Third Remembrance for many years. Now, too, all those years of practising Stephen Levine’s A Year to Live (introduced by Stephen in his book of the same name) bore striking fruit.

I was less shocked about the diagnosis than I was of the car crash. (I had much more conceit around my driving!) In relation to the cancer I said, “Of course.” I said, “Biology means vulnerability. Biology means old age, sickness and death – and accident!” There was no, ‘Why me?’ The absence of which makes action much easier and wiser.

And, so, even though my ‘A Year to Live’ practice felt (for the rest of 2014) somewhat less formal, it felt like the most powerful year of practice yet – so much aliveness in the midst of ‘misfortune.’

But, isn’t our condition always one of vulnerability? That is exactly what this ‘A Year to Live’ practice is for – to wake us up, to show the bleeding obvious; that vulnerability is in every moment of human life. And the development of constant mindfulness is at its core.

As Stephen writes: “You have to remember one life, one death – this one! To enter fully the day, the hour, the moment whether it appears as life or death, whether we catch it on the inbreath or outbreath, requires only a moment, this moment. And along with it all the mindfulness we can muster, at each stage of our ongoing birth, and the confident joy of our inherent luminosity.”
― Stephen Levine, A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last, (p. 24)

(Here’s a good interview with Stephen, by the late Michael Toms, called Learning to Die in Order to Live. I recommend you browse the wonderful interviews from the New Dimensions site. Stephen himself died during the year I was writing this project. More of that soon.)

The biggest reason to do this practice, though, comes in health as much as in sickness. It is about meaning. Herbert Guenther writes, in his introduction to Book I, chapter two, of the fourteenth-century Tibetan meditation master Longchenpa Rabjampa’s Kindly Bent to Ease Us:

“…the thought of death is rather a powerful stimulus that brings me back to myself as the unique occasion for the search for the meaning of life, and it makes me recognize the importance of this very moment, as it highlights the real possibilities that are still before me. It is in the light of death that I am prompted to act in such a way that, should death strike, my life may have had some total significance. The thought of death prevents me from losing myself in the fictions with which I tend to surround myself in order to escape from Being…”

In this spirit, for more than fifteen years, I’ve used ‘A Year to Live’ practice to turn toward the certainty of my death, as a means of growth and deepening into life; and especially, as an inspiration to keep in touch with the luminous mind, the mirror of the ground of Being. The practice enhances connection to who we really are.

What ‘practice’ means in actuality changes from year to year (and I will share the kinds of experiments in living which one can do), but in general what the practice means, for me, is: daily reminding myself that this is possibly my last year, living more fully in the present, and practising all kinds of exercises that confront me with the both the certainty of, and the process of, death. In general it means plumbing the depths of aliveness – to be open to, and appreciative of, the inexplicable wonder that anything is going on at all.

Knowing I am alive is the same as knowing that death is present: there’s no difference between living fully in the present, and living in the light of death. You can come at the miracle of existence through either door. However, the doors are the same door. They are both perspectives on reality, which imply each other.

So, a normal healthy life can benefit from this practice. We live differently – more consciously and kindly in the light of death.

Deep Bows to Gene Gendlin

By admin

On May 7, 2017

In Death, Focusing, Gendlin, Positivity, Radiant Citta

My dear hero Gene Gendlin has died, naturally at the age of 90. It was several days ago, and I have been unable to write a word during this time. Now I’ve found something to say, and want to share it with you. (Apologies to those of you who may get a double posting.)

A week ago, I heard that he was dying, so I was readied for the final word. But, when that news came, I suddenly felt something I didn’t expect. Of course I cried, and felt the inevitable loss. But I felt something else, and when I checked in, I heard myself say with gentle certainty, “I’m standing on my own two feet, now.” And, I felt them connected to the immeasurable earth. I want to share a little of the background to that moment.
About twenty years ago, I said to a Buddhist friend, “I’m going to explore what the West has to offer.” He said to me, “Do you really think they have anything?” He meant ‘anything worth while.’ Now, these years later, I can say to my friend, “Oh, I’m so happy that, with the help of Eugene Gendlin’s amazing ‘Philosophy of the Implicit,’ I feel I’ve come home to the West, where I began, and where, culturally speaking, I belong.
My philosophical journey began as a seventeen-year-old, where I discovered Socrates and meditation, in the same year. Socrates’ love of wisdom and his bravery blew me away. But then, very soon after, I discovered Buddhism, and so – because they had accessible methods (with mindfulness and meditation), I began a (so far) fifty year excursion into Buddhist practice; and at some stage became a Buddhist teacher. So, it was significant to want to go West. I eventually felt the call of the culture that I had stood in, as a child, unknowingly.
‘Going West,’ for me, initially meant studying psychotherapy, and becoming a psychotherapist. Something practical. But that introduced me to Focusing. And, with the help of Bev Stevenson, Nada Lou, and my trainer Ann Weiser Cornell, I became a Focusing trainer.
Then, about twelve years ago, came one of the first teleconferences I did with Gene. It was organised by my (later) mentor Rob Parker, and its topic (if I remember rightly) was on the primacy of the body. There Gene said something which viscerally turned my reality inside out. I suddenly experientially realised that perception doesn’t give me a basis for ‘being.’
Someone said to me, today, that they hadn’t realised that they had a particular dependency, until the object of that dependency was suddenly not there. And that was what it was like, for me, in respect of perception. Gene said something about perception being derived from a more fundamental interaction-first life-process; and suddenly (in this little pokey office in North Sydney), I literally ‘saw’ without any dependency on perception. I felt released.
To explain a eye-sight seeing which rests on a felt ocean of implicit knowing would take an entire essay, but that’s what it was like. That says it. (That experience helped me understand many of the historical Buddha’s enigmatic comments.) I contacted Mary straight away, and she passed my joy and gratitude on to Gene, and conveyed that he was delighted. That was the beginning of my immersion in A Process Model.
From then on, I realised that I had two spiritual paths; two completely complementary paths. And that has remained so. So, it’s with this gratitude to a spiritual mentor, that I live in the memory of Gene.
Again and again, since then, in the teleconference courses that Ann has run, I have put the ‘alone edge’ of my expanding understanding to Gene, and his ‘Amen’ had me sighing with relief each time. They were like the checking questions the Zen teacher asks:
There’s a deeper presence than perception. “Amen.”
At the limit, stillness and movement are not two. “Amen.”
‘Body-en’ is a way of saying ‘mind.’ “Amen.”
(This last one, only a few months ago, settled a puzzle for me that had been around since I was four years old! It has opened up vistas for me.)
So, I got to depend on those courses. Was it my need for the good male authority, given the appalling violence of my upbringing? Sure. Compared to what my father said about my mind, to hear Gene say with affection how he loved my questions – of course that was healing. And, Gene’s kindness, his humour, his concern for the welfare of humanity – all that, too, I came to depend on it. And, Gene also introduced us in a very practical way (Focusing) to some of finest of the riches which the West has to offer.
He did this by pointing us back to the primacy of body. This is a very healing thing to do. Gene was a supreme healer. He sent us back to our own experience, encouraging us to inquire there, and especially to inquire kindly; to love philosophy, and to find in our own bodies the body that Socrates learned from.
Last week, in the days before he died, I watched (yet again) the TAE video that Nada gave me twenty years ago, where Gene says:
“There is the absolutely best laboratory – as far as we know, at least – in the whole cosmos; which you can have access to; because the absolute best laboratory in the whole cosmos – which has a direct line into… whatever everything is… that’s a human being.”
– Eugene T. Gendlin, at the opening to Gems from Gene, Tape 5 of Thinking at the Edge (a five tape VHS series)
May the exhausted world find this ever-available refreshment. (I hear him saying, “Amen.”) Thanks, Gene.

Some Thoughts on Everyday Narcissism

By admin

On February 23, 2017

In Death, Dukkha, Enquiry, General, Memoir, Positivity, Resisting Death

A few decades ago, I had a friend who died of cancer. Let’s call her Milly. From the first, we had a basic kind of respect for each other; though we would clash occasionally. I didn’t understand it, then, but now I know that my arrogance triggered her. As a result, though we learnt to accept our differences, for some years we weren’t very close. Then, when she got cancer and she was dying, the relationship changed. Our conversation became real and beautiful. The presence of death brought out honesty and vulnerability in both of us.

I am reminded of her, because I’ve been reading a account of a mother screaming at her daughter during an argument, “How could you love a man who doesn’t love me?!” The narcissism of that attack is so obvious that I’d like to think that it’s a caricature. But, no – it really did happen.

So, what of Milly? On a summer day, months before she died, we were walking along a bushland track, reflecting. She shared that she had recently told her mother that she was dying; and through her tears she said that her mother had exclaimed: “How can you do this to me?!” I was shocked. No doubt her mother thought that she spoke from love; but I couldn’t see it. I still don’t. Why do we mistake narcissism for love?

A related instance is given by author Jeanette Winterson. Jeanette was sixteen, and her Pentacostal adoptive mother was evicting her – throwing her out for taking up with her second lesbian girlfriend. During the argument, Jeanette declared her wish for happiness – she wanted to be with her beloved, a female, because she wanted to be happy. Her adoptive mother’s response was, “Why be happy, when you could be normal?”

When I read that, I laughed. But, then I thought something like: “Hey. Hang on. That actually happened. A person was actually in such a condition of mind that could say such utterly ill-fitting words, and think them right.” Right where his youth Janet deserved understanding and care from her adoptive mother – right when she needed to be listened to – she got narcissism.

It might seem that these three vignettes are extreme; but what of less obvious reactivity in the face of the unwanted facts of life? We all have some level of narcissism. Milly’s other friends didn’t say out loud, “How can you do this to me?” No, instead, she told me: “They dropped away. They disappeared.” Without a word of explanation.

Milly was dismayed at the loss. Their reactions were a reflection of a self-absorbed mindset; and it wasn’t what she needed, right then. It would seem that they avoided her because of cancer and death. Sure, they didn’t say, “Why are you doing this to me?!’ but they may as well have. (Several years before, someone very close to me, when dying from cancer, told me: “Cancer tells you who your real friends are.”)

All these instances are on a continuum which reveals narcissism to be terribly normal. By normal, I mean statistically so. A glance at any newspaper, any day of the week, alerts one to the ubiquity of deluded self-centred views – narcissistic read-outs on life – which capture people and lead them to harmful behaviour. Look at our politicians’ grubby self-interest, their blatant fabrications and their grandiosity. The parliament is filled with selfish individuals, who can only read things through their biases.

The Buddhist analysis of this problem says that the problem is much bigger than a small class of ‘crazy’ people: it’s a species problem. A direct, contemplative investigation of ‘mind’ reveals everyday forms of narcissism; and, it has its roots in a lack of direct awareness of our organism. Due to this ignorance, we misperceive the nature of the mind. Hence, we live our normal lives on the basis of delusions about the organism’s reality. We see through filters, through a ‘glass darkly,’ and our relationships suffer concurrently. “How could you love a man who doesn’t love me?!”

Was it mentally ill for Milly’s friends to abandon her? Not conventionally so, of course. It’s merely fear; misshapen perceptions formed their fickleness. But we could ask, why aren’t such fears (with their attendant mental structures) considered, in this society, a form of mental affliction? That’s how the Buddhists see it. These distortions – aversion to a friend who has cancer, for instance – are not intrinsic to the mind. Why aren’t we addressing this at the national level? Well, simply because the delusions are statistically normal.

If a whole community has such delusions, one loses perspective; you find it hard to identify fear as mental concocted. Your perceptions present as real, and your fear and your hatred appear justified. Racism and homophobia are two areas where this analysis is powerful.

What what kind of sickness can it be then, when you are scared of people who have different skin colour, or a significantly different culture? Or, what kind of a sickness is it, when you are afraid of a person who has cancer? The answer that Buddhist is that we are sick with greed, hatred, and ignorance.

Without a culture of mindfulness and compassion, we can imperceptibly slide into mass delusions. Then, destructive attitudes become so widespread that they passes as normal. Nazi Germany is a case in point; and, Trump’s ‘America.’ (Notice, even the name ‘America,’ as a designation for the U.S.A, is a narcissistic insult to all the other nations of the Americas, north and south.)

So, where do we go with such a widespread problem? A significant portion of people throughout the world are currently under the sway of xenophobic afflictions. These attitudes are the stuff of minds – we have to investigate what it means to have good mental health. Why aren’t the policies of far-right’s (such as One Nation, in Australia) being discussed as a matter of our community’s mental health? Is it because we might have to begin at home? It is far harder to look at one’s own mind, than to blame other’s for our dissatisfaction.

I thought Milly was a hero, given the brave way she approached her death. Moreover, she spoke without ill-feeling, when addressing the reactions of others to her disease and impending death. A warrior; and one of my teachers.

Though one conquers in battle
a thousand times a thousand men,
one is the greatest war-hero
who conquers just one’s self.
– Dhammapada, verse 103. Translated by Christopher J. Ash

“The darkness around us is deep.”

By admin

On November 10, 2016

In Enquiry, Mindfulness, Positivity, Practices

I didn’t meet the poet William Stafford, but of all the wonderful poets the United States has produced, his voice is closest to my heart. I’ve been thinking during the night that I’m glad that Bill didn’t live to see what happened this day, in his land – how a majority of his fellow citizens failed humanity (yet again) by electing an empty shell of a man, a man that (as Little Tree’s grandma would say) has “a soul the size of a pea.” In electing as their leader, not really a man but, a machine, the citizens of the United States followed the wrong gods home.

With all of us who care about human qualities nobler than self-serving dishonesty, vengeance, lust for power, material greed, misogyny, and war on nature – who regard Donald Trump’s election as an instance of mass delusion – I join my voice, in encouraging peace-loving activists to see the coming years of darkness as an opportunity to get clear about deep and true values; and, to ensure that our actions are in alignment with those values.

Mass delusions such as this, and such as we regularly witness on our small blue planet, can only happen because people don’t know themselves. The values which Socrates called forth in those who could hear – of self-knowledge, goodness, truth and beauty – can’t be lost, though they can be lost sight of. We know this happens, but we don’t always or readily recognize it happening in ourselves, as well as in others. We need to commit to waking up to the ways of delusion.

We mustn’t forget, too, a virtue praised by the Buddha: fellowship with the good; specifically, community with those who are awake and awakening – the ‘noble’ community. While developing and nurturing our personal integrity, we need to seek such people out and reach out to them; to grow, thrive and to act in noble company.

May you be safe and well, in these dark times.

∞

A Ritual to Read to One Another

If you don’t know the kind of person I am
and I don’t know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant’s tail,
but if one wanders the circus won’t find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider –
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give – yes or no, or maybe –
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

William Stafford

Coming Home to Completeness

By admin

On August 1, 2016

In Death, Enquiry, Positivity, Radiant Citta

A Fictional Conversation

“What does that mean, that you’ve ‘done what had to be done’?”

“You sound like you mean, ‘Because, after all, in life there is always more?’ And, of course, I’d agree with that.”

“I was thinking something like that.”

“Yes. I didn’t mean in my personal life. As you say, it’s onward leading. To say what I mean might be difficult, but… nevertheless, I stand by it.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“It’s because I sense it, that I mean it.”

(Laughs). “In your body.”

“So… I know I mean something like this… It’s important in life, and it makes sense of our being born, that there needs to be a fundamental change in the mind during one’s lifetime – a change at the root. It’s a change which makes sense of everything.

“When I was a young person, as I became an adult, I couldn’t accept the values of our forebears. I could no longer accept their traditions and explanations. Their beliefs in rituals and gods couldn’t satisfy my inquiring mind. Why is life the way it is, so full of frustration and difficulties? Why were we born into the situation we are in?”

“Like, ‘Why is there birth?’”

“Well, that wasn’t a big deal, for me. Rather, why is one person beautiful and another not. Why are some poor and others not? Or, some are without limbs, while others have their bodies entire. These things even started to bother me when I was just a little child. I couldn’t make sense of it.”

“But, that’s because of karma isn’t it? Do something ugly, you end up ugly.”

“Well, I don’t accept that; and that’s part of what had to be ‘done.’ To see our opinions, ideas, views, and theories and speculations in perspective – to see their limited nature.”

“Ah! So you’re talking about realising the non-conceptual dimension. But, to ‘do what is to be done’ – these two things don’t seem to go together.”

“Say more.”

“To ‘do what has to be done’ implies a law of some sort. And it implies some personal responsibility. All that’s culture. Whereas, what can’t be conceived seems to negate that.”

“When I was in the King’s Court, and long before I left for a life of freedom myself, it seemed that way for me.”

“What changed?”

“Perhaps it was that I had all my needs worldly needs satisfied – that is one thing. But more importantly, with his being a contemplative, my son presented me with an entirely different way to think of my life. And, I saw him living the life that kept him in harmony with what is.

“I saw the change in him, and I listened. I reflected long (mostly silently) upon his words; and that, most of all, because he was speaking from experience, not tradition. I had the privilege of access to someone who had done what had to be done.”

“That is, whenever he came home, you had that access.”

“Which he frequently did. He didn’t forget us. But then when he wasn’t in our country, I had the opportunity to look around me and reflect in myself, for myself – on my own. There is a saying that ‘little trees don’t grow well under big ones.’ It was helpful, to me, that he would wander.

“But to return to your question… And the matter of doing what has to be done. The non-conceptual neither affirms nor negates. It doesn’t stand against the personal. Only concepts can do that.

“But, let me pause… I think this line of thought takes us away from the field of ‘this’; ‘this’ which we have here, which can lead us. So, let us come back to this: the sense of completeness. That’s it. That’s what I mean. The non-conceptual has its own unfolding order; and part of what ‘has to be done’ is that the seeker turns away from self-interest and puts herself under that – that intimate kind of law.”

“Living it in the body.”

“Then, also, another part of ‘done what had to be done’ is to not give up on the tasks that such an enquiry presents you with. Once begun, you’ve got to walk the road all the way, and not give up on what you know inwardly to be the way.”

“Oh. I see what you mean.”

“Maybe you do.”

The Mind of Freedom

By admin

On July 30, 2016

In Body, Death, Enquiry, Meditation, Mindfulness, Positivity, Practices, Radiant Citta

You are a lay follower in the time of Buddha, and you’re dying. You have a terrible illness, which has gotten worse in the last day. The splitting head, the gut pains. It’s clear which way it’s going.

During this week, a group of friends regularly gathers at your home. Some weeks ago, your peripatetic teacher, arrived from up north, from Kapilavatthu. He was happy to find your years of practice are serving you well. You talked about how you’re working with the pain of parting; how this deepens your inner work. He stays in your household, frequently joining your friends in their enquiries.

You understand that everything which you call the ‘world’ is of just such a nature that it breaks up – continuously; and, of course, that our bodies are always prone to change. Bodies are nature, and so they are vulnerable. Indeed, just last year, the great ascetic himself died, at age eighty – when his digestive system fell apart. You have no quarrel with nature.

With your friends, you’ve reflected during the week, on the teachings of the flourishing one. Together you recalled the time that he advised the arahant Girimananda. It was thought that Girimananda would die, but he didn’t; though he was perilously ill.

The founding teacher recommended that Girimananda be mindful of ten perceptions, and these included remembering how natural it is to be ill and die, because bodies are by their nature vulnerable.

You have done what you can medically, as your wisdom in the form of love would do. You’ve already made the effort to see that those you are responsible for – family and servants – will be cared for. You’ve reviewed your life, and are satisfied that you’ve completed what needs completing. You’ve ‘atoned.’ (That is, you are ‘at one.’) This way, you don’t wish for some other world, at all; either one to come, or one that could have been.

You company concurs that by remaining with what is actually present, rather than wishing for various kinds of ‘world,’ just in this way the deathless is near. Wishing for a world of any kind resists what is. It warms you to think of your friends’ love of the great way.

In the ten insights which were shared with Girimananda, you note to your friends, there is a lot of emphasis on how things are ever-changing. You look into form, vedanā, perceptions, fashioning tendencies, and consciousness, only to find an insubstantial play of experiences. Just as Anathapindika saw as he lay dying. That meditation – Anathapindika’s meditation, you call it – you feel joy to have such support.

You’re aware of breathing with your whole body, from top to toe, as you engage with them. And sometimes when the pains are intense, you breathe more particularly into the painful places, returning to your ‘whole-body’ breathing, when you can. Daily you and your friends meditate on emptiness, in the way taught by Sariputta to dying Anathapindika.

Each morning, as you meditate with them, you delight in the marvellous freedom of: ‘What is arising, is ceasing.’

Afterwards, someone asks about Girimananda’s perception of the ‘unattractive,’ and you reply, “When I see that all is transient, with no substance or own-nature, then I see that there is nothing of the six senses that can brings completeness. That’s the perception of unattractiveness. But, when that’s seen, neither does the functioning of senses obstruct anything. There is nothing to be added to the ‘now,’ nor could be taken away from ‘now.”

Indeed, what is this ‘now.’ These observations lead to a lively conversation about bhikkhu Arittha’s views on desire. He said that desire is not an obstruction. While normally you’d love to go into this, today you ask that they might finish this one later, at someone else’s home.

You are ill, your pains increasing, and you muster all the energy you can to be consciously present for the reality of your condition. Oh, yes, sometimes, your heart has some longing for abatement. But, still you mean it, when your closest friend, in a quiet moment, the two of you alone, asks, “If you died today, how’s that for you?” “I’m content,” you say. “I’ve done what had to be done.”

Single-Minded For Freedom

By admin

On July 15, 2016

In Body, Death, Mindfulness, Positivity, Practices, Radiant Citta

What is the Nikāya Buddha’s focus, when he speaks of ‘death and dying’?

I think he gives two answers, each according to the maturity of the people to whom he is speaking. If people are ready for it, or asking for it, he goes straight to the core matter of development of the awareness of vast openness. He uses different terms, at different times – such as voidness, suchness, the deathless, the unborn, and nibbāna.

To the Nikāya Buddha, to be mindful is to live free from death. Mindfulness culminates in knowing what he called ‘the deathless element.’

Awareness is the place of the deathless;
Unawareness is the place of death.
The aware do not die;
The unaware are as though dead already.
– Dhammapada, verse 21. Translated by Valerie Roebuck.

If they aren’t ready for the subtle teaching, he advises them to develop in character, because that brings less suffering and an opportune rebirth.

Realisation of the core truth takes a fierce commitment. In the Anguttara Nikāya there are two suttas together, each called the Mindfulness of Death Sutta (Maranassatisutta, 1 and 2), which reflect the intensity of the commitment, and the extent of the bravery needed.

In the first one, the Nikāya Buddha powerfully says:
“(W)hoever develops mindfulness of death, thinking, ‘O, that I might live for the interval that it takes to swallow having chewed up one morsel of food… for the interval that it takes to breathe out after breathing in, or to breathe in after breathing out, that I might attend to the Blessed One’s instructions. I would have accomplished a great deal’ — they are said to dwell heedfully. They develop mindfulness of death acutely for the sake of ending the effluents.” (Translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu).

That is, the practice which aims at realisation of the unborn, the un-ailing, the undying, the deathless has the character of a continuous presence.

“For the interval that it takes to breathe out after breathing in…“

Awareness can be present in the tiniest gap. The gap between the breaths is a powerful, still point – and that tiny fraction of a second, someone can realise the deathless.

If I can develop mindfulness in each breathing instant, I am dwelling in the world with heed for what most deeply matters. When a person fully awakens in the Nikāyas there is usually a line which says, “And she (or he) had done what had to be done.” This accomplishment means a life fulfilled, having come home to the core of one’s being.

In the other Mindfulness of Death Sutta in the Anguttara Nikāya he says, further of this commitment: “Further, there is the case where a monk, as night departs and day returns, reflects: ‘Many are the [possible] causes of my death. A snake might bite me, a scorpion might sting me, a centipede might bite me. That would be how my death would come about. That would be an obstruction for me. Stumbling, I might fall; my food, digested, might trouble me; my bile might be provoked, my phlegm… piercing wind forces [in the body] might be provoked. That would be how my death would come about. That would be an obstruction for me.’” (Thanissaro)

Not, “Oh, crap! I might be bitten, and that would be rotten luck”; but, “I might be bitten, and that would obstruct my realisation of truth.” That’s loving truth!

In this sutta, he also gives a striking image of a practitioner with their heart set on liberation: “Just as when a person whose turban or head was on fire would put forth extra desire, effort, diligence, endeavour, undivided mindfulness, & alertness to put out the fire on his turban or head, in the same way the monk should put forth extra desire, effort, diligence, endeavour, undivided mindfulness, & alertness…”

Mindfulness makes it possible to feel and accept our greatest fear: voidness; that is, when supported by the other six qualities of the awakened mind – joy, grounded inquiry, perseverance, calm, contemplative presence, and equanimity.

If we meet voidness with mindfulness, confidence follows; confidence in groundlessness, because we don’t conceive or interpret voidness as having existence of its own. We don’t project onto it. We know it directly, and when the mist of ignorance dissolves, this very voidness is the source of all true value in life.