One of my greatest challenges in life is maintaining an awareness of my ignorance. To some extent I do this "naturally" by feeling stupid and incompetent now matter how much I read and write, or how many people tell my I'm smart. But feeling stupid is a different thing from being aware of one's blind spots, skills deficits and rationalizations.
This week in my insight meditation in on perception and reality at work. Being aware of my ignorance, but also my wisdom is crucial as I go into some complicated negotiations with a specialist from a schoolboard.
I know that I am still ignorant of how to stay awake, and avoid being at the mercy of my cravings and a lifetime of poor emotional and work habits.
And I feel that keenly as I see my son take on so many of my worst weaknesses.
Maybe that is the motivation I need to awaken and stay awake.
Sunday, April 23, 2017
Monday, April 17, 2017
Easter 2017
So as I ask this question, "what do I really want," here are the paths it is taking.
Money, which when the question is repeated leads to a wanting a sense of security and also wanting a sense of adventure. Ask it again and I'm lead to that place in my tailbone, which is apparently where our sense of security is either weakest or strongest. And then from the energy awakening that would happen as it grows, the sense of adventure.
"What do I really want" also seems to be leading to "where do I really want." Do I want my desires to come from my head, from my gut, from my backbone? These are all interesting questions. Right now I'm feeling backbone.
Money, which when the question is repeated leads to a wanting a sense of security and also wanting a sense of adventure. Ask it again and I'm lead to that place in my tailbone, which is apparently where our sense of security is either weakest or strongest. And then from the energy awakening that would happen as it grows, the sense of adventure.
"What do I really want" also seems to be leading to "where do I really want." Do I want my desires to come from my head, from my gut, from my backbone? These are all interesting questions. Right now I'm feeling backbone.
Saturday, April 15, 2017
Easter Retreat 2
Any sense of agency I have is illusory. There is a self that has been programmed by my biology, my culture, my family. I am stepping outside of it from time to time, but it is still driven by that programming and the central drive of that programming is anger.
I can feed the peace, the happiness and joy. The mind is telling a story, a series of events. If I watch it, there's a possibility it will settle into a different rhythm. The Buddhist story is that these are the natural and essential qualities. I can't attest to whether this is true, but it's certainly a more pleasant story that the one where we are essentially angry and discordant.
In the meantime though, my most normal patterns are towards anger. And this anger is ultimately very rewarding, or I wouldn't keep going back to it like a rat on a wheel. It's my quickest and surest path to dopamine.
After going for an hour long walk, my meditations are focussing on that energy in the tailbone. I had a couple of interesting hours sitting in this energy, feeling bliss, feeling my anxiety and aversion to bliss, trying to hold it in equanimity by shifting between the bliss and open awareness. I started to feel that liquid warmth, even some uncoiling.
Is this what we lost from our Sapien past. This wonderful feeling around out pelvic floor back when we used to be more of a squatting sitting around species?
It didn't last. Eventually I started to feel a restlessness, a boredom, an urge to get it all done with. But the insight that remains is that this self really doesn't have as much agency as I want to believe. There is this self that is mostly motivated by angry parents, a greedy, hierarchical culture. I will never know if humans are basically good or basically bad, but I do know that when I feel good I am more generous and kinder to others.
In one meditation today, I thought about my family, and felt such anger towards them. That dissipated and for a while I felt good. When I though of each and everyone of them I had an entirely different feeling towards them. When I was a different person, they were different people, I was willing to cut them more slack. My perceptions of people are changed by how I feel about myself.
Nearing the end of day 2. I've watched a teaching by Mingyur Rinpoche on finding basic wisdom in "defilements." It feels like the entire weekend has been leading to this. There are five defilements, hatred, craving, ignorance, pride and envy. His meditation technique is to ask "what do I really want." It's possible that the answer to this will often be surface and related to these states of mind, states he believes have been created by culture. But if we keep asking we will find our true nature, our deep, true essence, which is pure, pristine, beautiful. Down there we want happiness, love, peace. And if we ask long, enough and deep enough we will get there Don't grasp at it, just get there and be there.
This is what the last two hours of my meditation will be.
And after that, the insight.
Yes my superficial, man, woman or parent-made desires, are strong. Maybe even stronger right now than the desires of my wisest level of self. But I am extremely fortunate to know that, and even more fortunate to have a reasonably well-worn path back to wisdom. I can look at my messy home and remember that this is happening because I'm letting my cravings take over again. I can sit with them and I can sit with my peace and get the energy and wisdom back that I need. I can look at the scale and realize that I need to spend an extra hour a day sitting with my healthiest drives. I know this.
And I know I can do it.
I can feed the peace, the happiness and joy. The mind is telling a story, a series of events. If I watch it, there's a possibility it will settle into a different rhythm. The Buddhist story is that these are the natural and essential qualities. I can't attest to whether this is true, but it's certainly a more pleasant story that the one where we are essentially angry and discordant.
In the meantime though, my most normal patterns are towards anger. And this anger is ultimately very rewarding, or I wouldn't keep going back to it like a rat on a wheel. It's my quickest and surest path to dopamine.
After going for an hour long walk, my meditations are focussing on that energy in the tailbone. I had a couple of interesting hours sitting in this energy, feeling bliss, feeling my anxiety and aversion to bliss, trying to hold it in equanimity by shifting between the bliss and open awareness. I started to feel that liquid warmth, even some uncoiling.
Is this what we lost from our Sapien past. This wonderful feeling around out pelvic floor back when we used to be more of a squatting sitting around species?
It didn't last. Eventually I started to feel a restlessness, a boredom, an urge to get it all done with. But the insight that remains is that this self really doesn't have as much agency as I want to believe. There is this self that is mostly motivated by angry parents, a greedy, hierarchical culture. I will never know if humans are basically good or basically bad, but I do know that when I feel good I am more generous and kinder to others.
In one meditation today, I thought about my family, and felt such anger towards them. That dissipated and for a while I felt good. When I though of each and everyone of them I had an entirely different feeling towards them. When I was a different person, they were different people, I was willing to cut them more slack. My perceptions of people are changed by how I feel about myself.
Nearing the end of day 2. I've watched a teaching by Mingyur Rinpoche on finding basic wisdom in "defilements." It feels like the entire weekend has been leading to this. There are five defilements, hatred, craving, ignorance, pride and envy. His meditation technique is to ask "what do I really want." It's possible that the answer to this will often be surface and related to these states of mind, states he believes have been created by culture. But if we keep asking we will find our true nature, our deep, true essence, which is pure, pristine, beautiful. Down there we want happiness, love, peace. And if we ask long, enough and deep enough we will get there Don't grasp at it, just get there and be there.
This is what the last two hours of my meditation will be.
And after that, the insight.
Yes my superficial, man, woman or parent-made desires, are strong. Maybe even stronger right now than the desires of my wisest level of self. But I am extremely fortunate to know that, and even more fortunate to have a reasonably well-worn path back to wisdom. I can look at my messy home and remember that this is happening because I'm letting my cravings take over again. I can sit with them and I can sit with my peace and get the energy and wisdom back that I need. I can look at the scale and realize that I need to spend an extra hour a day sitting with my healthiest drives. I know this.
And I know I can do it.
Friday, April 14, 2017
Easter retreat--day 1
I don't know where to begin.
This retreat is not unfolding as easily as it usually does. Maybe because I stopped doing my insight practice a couple of years ago. But also some things in my life.
Easter dinner canceled because my parents had a blowout. Ben doing poorly in school. My work seems to be going well. Though little progress with my book. Also, I've let my running really fall off in recent months.
The end result after hour four of meditation is that I feel like I've got a few tons of impacted anger in me. Hour one was nice. Hours two and three were bearable, if unfocused. Hour four is like sitting with a burning rock of coal in my tailbone.
Something's got to give.
Also, I've been reading Sapiens, a book about how destructive our species is, with our too often self-rationalizing stories. It's hitting me how much suffering there is in the world, and around me. And how much my own life has been a repeated effort to justify the narrative of progress, when there isn't much evidence that we are progressing. At least, according to Sapiens.
Apparently, Yuval Noah Harrari author of Sapiens meditates at least two hours a day and goes on a two-month long retreat every year.
Hour five was, again, more anger; but something interesting happened. It began to pulsate and grow and I could feel very clearly the pleasure that anger, particularly the anger I feel towards my mother was. Anger does give pleasure when we reach a certain state. If can make us feel strong and make us feel clear. It can alleviate fear. At least for a while.
In hour six I returned to this anger I felt towards my mother and had an interesting insight. I see my mother as an object that I think I know, that I think produces these burning aversive feelings in me as a matter of course, as though she were some kind of poison rock that necessarily produces a particular side effect. But of course, she isn't. She's a multiplicity of values, drives, states of being, sometimes hateful, sometimes kind. I'm the one that is producing the poison in my ingrained reaction to thoughts of her and memories of her. I don't have to feel this way if I don't want to. I don't have to see her as one solid reality and I don't have to experience her as that. This was very liberating and soon enough I started to feel that magnetic, solid feeling peace. And then it got really interesting. I could feel myself rejecting the peace, as though some kind of aversion was magnetized into me to reject this peace at a certain point. I could see how this was habitual and that if I were to choose to recondition my response I could live more easily and more sustainably with peace.
Later: I sat in this repulsion place for a while, informally. And gradually it seemed to shift from a repulsive energy to a magnetic attraction energy. I know I'm sounding annoying new age, no doubt. But I suddenly felt all kind of new things could be possible if the core of my consciousness was pulling in peace and love, instead of repelling it.
Something to continue working on tomorrow.
This retreat is not unfolding as easily as it usually does. Maybe because I stopped doing my insight practice a couple of years ago. But also some things in my life.
Easter dinner canceled because my parents had a blowout. Ben doing poorly in school. My work seems to be going well. Though little progress with my book. Also, I've let my running really fall off in recent months.
The end result after hour four of meditation is that I feel like I've got a few tons of impacted anger in me. Hour one was nice. Hours two and three were bearable, if unfocused. Hour four is like sitting with a burning rock of coal in my tailbone.
Something's got to give.
Also, I've been reading Sapiens, a book about how destructive our species is, with our too often self-rationalizing stories. It's hitting me how much suffering there is in the world, and around me. And how much my own life has been a repeated effort to justify the narrative of progress, when there isn't much evidence that we are progressing. At least, according to Sapiens.
Apparently, Yuval Noah Harrari author of Sapiens meditates at least two hours a day and goes on a two-month long retreat every year.
Hour five was, again, more anger; but something interesting happened. It began to pulsate and grow and I could feel very clearly the pleasure that anger, particularly the anger I feel towards my mother was. Anger does give pleasure when we reach a certain state. If can make us feel strong and make us feel clear. It can alleviate fear. At least for a while.
In hour six I returned to this anger I felt towards my mother and had an interesting insight. I see my mother as an object that I think I know, that I think produces these burning aversive feelings in me as a matter of course, as though she were some kind of poison rock that necessarily produces a particular side effect. But of course, she isn't. She's a multiplicity of values, drives, states of being, sometimes hateful, sometimes kind. I'm the one that is producing the poison in my ingrained reaction to thoughts of her and memories of her. I don't have to feel this way if I don't want to. I don't have to see her as one solid reality and I don't have to experience her as that. This was very liberating and soon enough I started to feel that magnetic, solid feeling peace. And then it got really interesting. I could feel myself rejecting the peace, as though some kind of aversion was magnetized into me to reject this peace at a certain point. I could see how this was habitual and that if I were to choose to recondition my response I could live more easily and more sustainably with peace.
Later: I sat in this repulsion place for a while, informally. And gradually it seemed to shift from a repulsive energy to a magnetic attraction energy. I know I'm sounding annoying new age, no doubt. But I suddenly felt all kind of new things could be possible if the core of my consciousness was pulling in peace and love, instead of repelling it.
Something to continue working on tomorrow.
Sunday, April 9, 2017
Insight and writing
You'd think as I cultivate insight I would want to write more. But I don't. Maybe it's because insight practice moves you beyond concepts and writing is so conceptual.
Of course, writing doesn't have to be conceptual. And the best writing usually isn't. So maybe that will change as I settle more regularly into that place of clarity.
Woke up this morning at 4:30 and just sat in feelings of aversion, loathing, hatred. Much bringing this on. A mostly miserable evening at my parents, which I probably contributed towards somewhat. I was supposed to show up for jury duty on Monday. Relieved to discover I didn't. Then found out that the reason the trial had been cancelled was because the court system was so backed up that the supreme court forced them to let go of the accused. He had been in jail for almost five years. Too long, obviously. But the case against him was strong. He had spent time in prison twice for spousal abuse and was on trial for slitting his 21 year old wife's throat. It has hit me this morning how much work there is to do to make the world more livable for so many people who are suffering.
I've been sitting in aversion and grief and some sadness. The sadness feels good. I don't feel it enough. But sadness is an essential ingredient of insight. Without it are you really aware of the impermanence of life?
That said I don't want to feast on death. I'm a human, not a crow.
Of course, writing doesn't have to be conceptual. And the best writing usually isn't. So maybe that will change as I settle more regularly into that place of clarity.
Woke up this morning at 4:30 and just sat in feelings of aversion, loathing, hatred. Much bringing this on. A mostly miserable evening at my parents, which I probably contributed towards somewhat. I was supposed to show up for jury duty on Monday. Relieved to discover I didn't. Then found out that the reason the trial had been cancelled was because the court system was so backed up that the supreme court forced them to let go of the accused. He had been in jail for almost five years. Too long, obviously. But the case against him was strong. He had spent time in prison twice for spousal abuse and was on trial for slitting his 21 year old wife's throat. It has hit me this morning how much work there is to do to make the world more livable for so many people who are suffering.
I've been sitting in aversion and grief and some sadness. The sadness feels good. I don't feel it enough. But sadness is an essential ingredient of insight. Without it are you really aware of the impermanence of life?
That said I don't want to feast on death. I'm a human, not a crow.
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