Sunday, January 26, 2014

Who is this self that I want happiness for?

This morning I did a mini-retreat at the Tergar Centre. In the second video Mingyur Rinpoche said something that hit me in a totally new way.  Who is this self that we want happiness for when we do lovingkindness meditation? When I think back to all the times I've done this meditation it seems to me that this self I wanted happiness for is usually a wounded, weak self that is very needy for a joy it hasn't had.  For the first time, however, I realized that this would be a much more effective practice if the self that I wanted happiness for was my natural, unconditioned, buddha nature self.
  Lovinkindness, especially for myself, too often feels like pity. Wanting happiness for an already complete self is less of a grasping process. And this already happy, good self, so clearly wants happiness for the self that is meditating. So it's a recursive activity. An activity that reinforces my best and deepest nature.
  When I'm only extending love to a "flawed" self, I'm actually reinforcing this perception of myself as incomplete, needing love.  When I'm extending love to a self that is already complete, I am reinforcing a sense of completion.
  I'm curious how a week, a month, of this kind of meditation will influence my motivation to act in my best interests.  Perhaps it's been hard to keep up the will to take responsible, nurturing action for a self I have to work so hard at loving.
  And if I were to start to see myself as this naturally good self, how will this affect the way I see others?

Sunday, January 19, 2014

Why is mindfulness so hard!!!!

Ah, it was all going so well last Sunday. I managed to get my enthusiasm under control, but now I've lost that golden thread of peace that was holding things together. Obsession with problem at Ben's school.

There was a moment in formal practice today when I started to get the presence back. But it's gone now. Or maybe it's better if I just write that I've surrendered.

I don't want to surrender to suffering. I want to surrender to the reality of our natural awareness.

I need to find a way to make a fresh start.

Last night while I was up late, I found myself clinging to the first noble truth. There is suffering. There is some kind of pleasure to this obsessive mind wandering or we wouldn't do it. But I know it's not the good, healthy pleasure of mindfulness.

So I repeat to myself this morning. There is suffering. And once I'm sitting with my suffering for a bit, I remember the next truth, that there is a cause to this suffering. Then I remember that last night I went to my parents where there were baby back ribs and red wine, and then a drunken late night Twizzler and Dr. Pepper binge. And now I know that my digestion is probably not the best, and that I never quite got around to making yogourt during this busy week and that I need some bread and some fresh vegetables. Maybe the freshest start is with a big glass of water, and then a green smoothie, and then a mindful walk. And then a re-reading of Mingyur Rinpoche on the first noble truth.

As I cycle through the four noble truths I remember that there is a cure to this suffering, the sublime presence that I feel at the core of my brain and my soul.

Why am I so blessed to know this presence? Oh yeah because I'm human and we are all blessed, though some of us have the tremendous luck of realizing this blessing.

I remember that and then I look at the title of my post, and I remember that it's not mindfulness that's hard. It's suffering that's hard. Hard on us and hard on everyone around us. Mindfulness is soft and easy in the best way, and it protects our birthright, a life of abundance and joy.

I need to remember that by cultivating it, I'm protecting not just my birthright, but Ben's too.

Sunday, January 12, 2014

Mindfulness Sundays

So last week I made a resolution that I would work on making the present my default mode.  I want to get out of the normal default network of mind trawling around in the future and the past, cultivating a buzzing host of anxieties about the future and a dark chaotic maze of resentments, shames and guilts from the past.  I want to keep my mind as much as reasonably possible in the fresh air and vitality of the present moment.
 This has been especially hard last week because I have taken advantage of an opportunity to do something I've been wanting to try out for a long time.  I'm going to be teaching coding to fifth grade students and their teachers and I'm going to be learning first hand about the challenges of bringing programming literacy into the classroom. My enthusiasm from this now has me constantly wrapped up in the future building expectations and anxieties about public speaking, how much time this will take from my book and other plans, etc.
  The house is a mess, I'm less focussed on Ben, and then I find myself anxious about that.
  So today I decided that I would try and make this Sunday and every Sunday  a day of presence. A day when I'm largely focussed on simple tasks and pleasure that can be done with the maximum amount of presence. My reading will be largely devoted to spiritual and contemplative texts. There will be many standing and breathing practices.
 If  I've committed myself to presence as the mode in which I do all of my activities on this day, then I will become naturally more conscious of Default Mode Network (DMN, or Damn DMN, which I've decided to now call it.) My hope is that this will carry forward into the next week.

Saturday, January 4, 2014

The Year Ahead

It's a Saturday morning. I've just completed a two hour meditation. I feel connected to the magnetic energy of mild happiness. The now energy that is always available to me.  The energy I want to set as my new default mode.
My friend Jeff Warren wrote a fascinating article in Psychology Tomorrow about a man who after several decades of meditation discovered one day that his self-referential self had just disappeared.  Got up and just walked away.  He was no longer in the default mode that the vast majority of people live in, that place where our minds wander around bumping into the past and future, rarely settled in the present. He was now just present all the time.
 It was great.  Problems got solved effortlessly. He was free of all self created suffering. There seems to have really been a happily everafter.
 I've been accepting this all day. Revelling in it.  But the minute I write it down, skepticism sets in.  How can we be happily ever after. We can't. He didn't stop solving problems, which means he didn't stop having problems to solve.  But the problems weren't coming from him anymore. They weren't coming from this "self."  His whole "I" just disappeared.
I want to live that way.  I'm sick of the constant "I."  I love the energy of the now. I love the stillness of life without all this restless, anxious energy leading me around like a dog on a leash.
So, it's decided.  My year ahead is living from this energy.  This now energy, which I'm going to program into my life as my default state. When I don't know what to do, I just rest in this state of being.  Once I've decided on the next task, I do it from this place of quiet attention. My mind is no longer a self propelling machine.  It is my tool, and I use this tool to bring me to this place of being outside the mind. This place right at the cusp of awareness.