Photography

Migraines

I had a wonderful weekend leading the "Buddha and Body" retreat at Kripalu Center.  About ten minutes after the program ended I hopped in the car and made my way to Connecticut for our annual meditation festival at Watering Pond Yoga hosted by my dear friends Dorothy and Michael.  After a wonderful gathering, a great meal and a good sleep I headed back down to DC in pouring rain in the morning.  The tension of driving in such driving rain kicked in a headache which led to a migraine. I'm grateful for those rest areas on the New Jersey turnpike and for a car (Honda Element) which can be converted into a nap zone.  In the midst of the rain and a free floating migraine I found myself entranced by this image of rain falling on the sunroof.  Kind of trippy.

rain-on-sunroof

Call Me By My True Names

A reflection of clouds at the river's edge.

The reading from class this week exploring 'self and world.'  From Thich Nhat Han.

Call Me by My True Names

Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow because even today I still arrive.

Look deeply: I arrive in every second to be a bud on a spring branch, to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile, learning to sing in my new nest, to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower, to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry, in order to fear and to hope. The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that are alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river, and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time to eat the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond, and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence, feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones, my legs as thin as bamboo sticks, and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat, who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate, and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my hands, and I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to, my people, dying slowly in a forced labor camp.

My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all walks of life. My pain if like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names, so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once, so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names, so I can wake up, and so the door of my heart can be left open, the door of compassion.

The Life of the Buddha

It's easy to forget, when we are caught in the busy-ness of our lives, that we are on a journey.  Though we may not realize it, we are constantly growing, adapting and refining our understanding of what is around us and our relationship to it. In reflecting on the Life of the Buddha and how it mirrors our own journey, I was thinking about how plain and straightforward I could make it. This is probably an over-simplification, but here is my thinking:

  1. We start off feeling protected and part of the whole. Womb service is great.  Everything we need.  As children, many (certainly not all) of us have for some period of time a certain degree of safety and sense of feeling loved.  A time of innocence.
  2. Something goes wrong. We don't get what we need.  We have what in the Forum training is called "A Break in Belonging."  The sweetness of a protected life is shattered and we realize we are on our own.  For many, this happens early and gets reinforced when we hit the big disappointments: failed relationships, unrequited love and the self-doubt that settles into our psyche.
  3. We shift to a strategy of austerity.  We resolve to fix what's wrong. We focus on self-improvement. We decide to 'whip ourselves into shape.' We bear down on the degree we want. We make huge sacrifices of time and energy toward our job or career.
  4. We start to wake up. We begin to pause and question our motivations and ask ourselves what is most important.
  5. We surrender to what is. Rather than chasing something 'out there,' we begin to explore what is already here.  We begin to unravel the tensions and stress that hold us back from being fully present.
  6. We awaken. To some degree, we begin to recognize the power of shifting from the realm of thinking to engaging into moment-to-moment awareness.  We begin to live from an intention of cultivating greater presence to what is actually going on.
  7. Life goes on. From a place of greater inner freedom, we move through the world less bound, more prone to happy attacks and surges of gratitude.  We engage into action less driven by greed, aversion and delusion, and more from compassion.

Many of us are familiar with the story of the Buddha.  (I wonder how many people think the Buddha actually looked like Keanu Reaves?)

The first part of his life he was carefully and thoughtfully protected from the suffering of life.  His "rude awakening" was encountering the Four Visitors of Sickness, Old Age, Death and Renunciation.  He went off and engaged into six years of austerities, ultimately realizing that austerity would not lead to liberation.  He realized the Path of the Middle Way - neither indulging nor denying the senses.  Neither grasping nor pushing away anything that arises.

His practice was what we practice today:  bringing awareness and presence to the play of feeling, thought, moods and states, noting what arises, what falls away and to our relationship to this constantly shifting constellation of phenomena.

After his awakening he travelled and taught for forty years, freely engaging all who sought his teaching, summing his message as 'teaching about suffering and the end of suffering.'

In that same way, I think each of us is waking up to the suffering in and around us.  We are coming to know more and more intimately the painful result of greed, hatred and delusion.

Each of us in our own way is called to pause, slow down and ask ourselves what, truly, is most important.

little-buddha

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Working with Desire

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  Trying a little too hard?

Buddhist psychology speaks to cultivating healthy desires, minimizing unhealthy desires and ultimately going beyond desire.

Willpower determines how energy flows. Healthy desires lead to gratitude, joy, generosity, stewardship and service.  Unhealthy desires lead to greed, compulsion, self-centeredness and suffering.

I remember years ago on a retreat going through the food line and realizing that what I'd choose to eat would have three potential qualities.  Anything I ate would either give me energy, be neutral or drain my energy.  I'd either feel uplifted, the same or worse.

I started to slow down my food selection.  I'd look at the dish in front of me and ask my body if it was going to give me energy, be neutral or be a drain.  (I soon realized it wasn't just what I chose, it was how much as well.)  That slowing down helped me quite a bit.  I learned more about the difference between satisfying my mind and listening to my body.  

The choices we face each day have the same possible outcomes, though the results may not be so immediate. 

One of the most striking things about the potency of Buddhist psychology is how much emphasis there is on cause and effect.  

We are invited to reflect on the consequences of any action.

If I restrain from a habit I know is not life-enhancing and pay attention, I notice some kind of compulsion or need arise.  When I pull myself away from getting lost in internet surfing, for example, I notice a restlessness ... a desire for entertainment to satisfy a hungry, unsettled mind.

Stepping away from addiction reveals a 'hungry ghost,' some form of craving that gnaws from inside.

The Buddha put it this way: 

Everything is based on mind, is led by mind, is fashioned by mind. If you speak and act with a polluted mind, suffering will follow you, as the wheels of the oxcart follow the footsteps of the ox. Everything is based on mind, is led by mind, is fashioned by mind. If you speak and act with a pure mind, happiness will follow you, as a shadow clings to a form.

I heard Joseph Goldstein make a nice distinction about this quote.  When we act from unhealthy desire, just like the wheel of the oxcart, suffering will follow.  But there can be a little lag time.  When you speak or act from healthy desire, happiness follows like a shadow.  Less lag time.  The experience of  happiness is more immediate. --------
Ultimately we can go beyond desire altogether.  When we release grasping and greed the opposite states can arise:  generosity and abundance.   When we desire nothing other than what we already have, the moment, in it's fullness and emptiness, is complete.

Happy for No Reason, Part VII

  Hanna and Allison dancing at our wedding

And 

 

For no reason  I start skipping like a child. 

And  For no reason  I turn into a leaf  That is carried so high  I kiss the sun's mouth  And dissolve. 

And  For no reason  A thousand birds  Choose my head for a conference table,  Start passing their  Cups of wine  And their wild songbooks all around. 

And  For every reason in existence  I begin to eternally,  To eternally laugh and love! 

When I turn into a leaf  And start dancing,  I run to kiss our beautiful Friend  And I dissolve in the Truth  That I Am.

- Hafiz

 

Hat tip to Ellen.  Thanks!

Fear is My Friend

jf-miserable1 The topic this week in the Monday and Thursday class is “Working with Fear.” I am not teaching this week but the topic has been on my mind recently.

I’ve always been prone to anxiety. As a child I worried about everything. At about age seven or eight I decided if I imagined the worst outcome for anything that frightened me then I would not be surprised when it happened. My parents would drive off to go play pinochle for the night. I would assume something terrible would happen and they were not coming back. When I would wake up the next morning and they were there, well, good for me. This time.

Fear and anxiety are all wrapped up with the desire to be in control.

When I moved down to Washington DC a few years ago my arrival corresponded with an article I read which stated there were a number of suitcase bombs that were unaccounted for in Russia and Chechnya and were already placed in US cities. I grew up on a farm and had always lived in the country - with regular access to wilderness.  When I moved to Bethesda and had my first experiences in DC traffic, I started to freak. What would happen in an emergency - surrounded by so many people?

I started doing research on safety and disaster preparedness. I got pretty sucked in. (The web can be a terrible thing when you start looking at doom and gloom scenarios.)

I found out is important to have:

  1. A personal bag
  2. A “get out of town bag’ and
  3. A home survival kit

I could not find suitable information that summarized everything so I wrote up my research which you can view here.

As much as I may have spent a bit too much time hyperventilating and indulging in worst case scenarios, I got a really good insight out of my hours of obsessive thinking. I began to discern what I had control over and what I did not.  I do have some control over my personal safety. I don’t have much control over what could happen externally.

That distinction has made a big difference in my life. While I still habitually go to fear and anxiety, something in my awareness is just a little more quick to wake up to the conditioning. I spend less time on the hamster wheel of circular, negative thinking.

And ... My car is stocked with food, water and supplies in case I’m stuck in it for some reason. I do have a bag I can grab with supplies for a few days and our house is now stocked with enough to ensure we’ll stay warm, dry, fed and hydrated for a while.

I feel a lot happier than I did before. More relaxed.

Having sat with that fear, I have found a balance between being responsible and increasing my capacity to savor what’s right in front of me.

If you’d like to like to read a summary of my research with some links, click here.