Earlier this week I had a night of insomnia. Nothing I did could unclench my mind, it seemed. So somewhere around 2 a.m. I sat.
And I sat, and at some point, I had one of those transformative moments I seem to only have in these evenings of jittery desperation. It was as though my mind suddenly re-settled into my gut, and I found this forever loop of serotonin. I could feel the flow take center stage in my psyche.
Serotonin is known as the social neuromodulator. It accounts for feelings of well-being, but also feelings of power. Monkey studies show that alpha males have more of the stuff than beta males. Who knows whether serotonin makes you more powerful, or power unlocks the serotonin. But I know that in recent weeks I've become conscious that I have more of it in my belly. This may be the result of this month's intense retreat. It may be the increase in money and responsibility in my professional life. Or it may be the result of all the kombucha I've been drinking. I can't say. But I can feel a profound change.
This is I think, what might be meant by "Buddha Nature." That feeling that Mingyur Rinpoche describes as the feeling after a concerted effort. That feeling of competence, of success, or relief from whatever suffering was in the process of working. It's not quite enlightenment. That I don't believe I've attained until I've come closer to absolute bodhicitta, the insight that everyone is not the jumble of relative qualities that we project. That everyone is as perfect in each moment as a newborn baby. We see each other differently because of conditioning, not because of any true immutable reality.
For now, I'm still on the path of relative bodhicitta, trying to simply like more people more, and take more action towards being and feeling like a better person. The intriguing truth of bodhicitta is that if I could see everyone as equal, I wouldn't have to worry about status.
Wouldn't that free a rather large node of working memory!
Sunday, August 27, 2017
Sunday, August 20, 2017
Pith fear
In my meditation this morning I revisited one of the most groundbreaking insights of last weekend's retreat. At the pit of all my suffering is the fear that I won't get what I want. But if I rest calmly in that subtle knot of fear, I connect with the deepest reward of living, that complex loop and flow of neurotransmitters in the limbic area of my brain, serotonin, dopamine and neuropeptides.
This is the mechanism of the grasping. The reptilian brain fears that it won't get what it wants, the body responds with anxiety, the brain reaches for any of the multitude of options that exist in my current landscape. And the next thing you know I'm eating cake and watching Game of Thrones.
More and more my formal meditation is about reaching down into my gut, feeling the displeasure and restlessness that trigger this fear, and sitting with it until absolute well-being sets in. The serotonin starts to flow from the source, my limbic system starts to loosen up and soon I'm sitting in the bright clear pond of calm and pleasure.
Of course, then the fear sets in because my first thoughts are a) will I be able to make this feeling permanent b) if this feeling were to become permanent, would I lose the motivation to want anything? And the loop starts again. I rest in the fear as the object of meditation until absolute well being starts to flow back again.
Will this absolute well-being become more intuitive?
Are there any reasons why it wouldn't? Maybe the fear becomes deeper and more reactionary because I'm spending too much time trying to cram a lifetime of wellbeing into the painful hole of a life motivated more by depression.
Be diligent, but also, be patient.
This is the mechanism of the grasping. The reptilian brain fears that it won't get what it wants, the body responds with anxiety, the brain reaches for any of the multitude of options that exist in my current landscape. And the next thing you know I'm eating cake and watching Game of Thrones.
More and more my formal meditation is about reaching down into my gut, feeling the displeasure and restlessness that trigger this fear, and sitting with it until absolute well-being sets in. The serotonin starts to flow from the source, my limbic system starts to loosen up and soon I'm sitting in the bright clear pond of calm and pleasure.
Of course, then the fear sets in because my first thoughts are a) will I be able to make this feeling permanent b) if this feeling were to become permanent, would I lose the motivation to want anything? And the loop starts again. I rest in the fear as the object of meditation until absolute well being starts to flow back again.
Will this absolute well-being become more intuitive?
Are there any reasons why it wouldn't? Maybe the fear becomes deeper and more reactionary because I'm spending too much time trying to cram a lifetime of wellbeing into the painful hole of a life motivated more by depression.
Be diligent, but also, be patient.
Sunday, August 13, 2017
Construction Retreat
A couple of years ago, I started Joy of Level 3 with a meditation that felt literally groundbreaking. I forgot that the fire escape outside my window was being replaced, and ten minutes into my meditation I was meditating on jackhammers. Fortunately, my enthusiasm was such that by the end of my meditation it had become a blissful metaphor for a feeling of complete reconstruction and renewal.
I had a similar experience on this two day retreat, which I did while Ben was visiting his father in Israel. I forgot about the ongoing construction that is being done on the road outside my house. This is not jackhammers for half an hour. This is screechy old backhoes, scrapping metal and massive road digging. It was ceaseless and unpleasant, and I got through it with construction earplugs and white noise. But still, it felt like a very powerful metaphor for what was happening in this meditation. Nothing less than a complete rebuilding of the old and crappy roads in my mind, so that I can have a quicker and easier ride to absolute reality.
Mingyur Rinpoche defines AR as emptiness, a condition in which perceptions are intuitively recognized as an infinite and transitive flow of possible experiences. Most of my life is still spent in relative reality, "the sum of experiences arising from the mistaken idea that whatever you perceive is in and of itself real."
And so I live with this entrenched fear that I won't get what I want or need to have the happiness that I believe can only come from the things my society says will bring happiness. It's not that these societal values won't bring me pleasure or satisfaction, it's that because none of these things are inherently real, i.e. lasting, they can't be the basis of lasting happiness.
What lasts and what can only last is the flow presence, the flow of perception and also the emptiness and clarity in and around it. To recognize absolute well being more intuitively, I have to build a quicker, wider, better infrastructure.
Roads aren't built in a day, or two days. But I believe this weekend I have made a very good start. I have come away with a better understanding of the onion layers of reactivity. What I've been watching with calm abiding is not the pain, the thoughts, the feelings, but more importantly the mind's reactions to the pain, the thoughts the feelings. I am cultivating a bare awareness of bare awareness, hoping to catch the thoughts, feelings, sensations as they arise, and then once caught, do nothing much more than greet them with equanimity.
Hey nice to meet you, self-hatred that is really fear that I won't have what I want, even, especially absolute well-being! The more I recognize this fear, the more misguided it so obviously is. Absolute well-being isn't something you can have, hold, preserve. Absolute reality is a flow, an unfolding of events. The well-being is our ease with that flow. Self-hatred is a major pothole.
The emptiness I experience when my thoughts and fears and reactivity has settled down is wordless and indescribable. It has always bothered me that something wordless is something that can't be passed on. If you can't share it, what is the use of having it? But then I had the insight that this wordless experience is like my spiritual capital. The fruits are like the interest that grows from it. The fruits can be passed on. The joys and pleasure and transient things that I can enjoy more because I have the capital that is permanent, those I can pass on. The capital is something that I can inspire others to have. But I can't give it away. Everyone has to earn their own. Or better yet, everyone has to realize on their own that it is simply there for the taking. But I can't make them see it, take it, or have it.
I had a similar experience on this two day retreat, which I did while Ben was visiting his father in Israel. I forgot about the ongoing construction that is being done on the road outside my house. This is not jackhammers for half an hour. This is screechy old backhoes, scrapping metal and massive road digging. It was ceaseless and unpleasant, and I got through it with construction earplugs and white noise. But still, it felt like a very powerful metaphor for what was happening in this meditation. Nothing less than a complete rebuilding of the old and crappy roads in my mind, so that I can have a quicker and easier ride to absolute reality.
Mingyur Rinpoche defines AR as emptiness, a condition in which perceptions are intuitively recognized as an infinite and transitive flow of possible experiences. Most of my life is still spent in relative reality, "the sum of experiences arising from the mistaken idea that whatever you perceive is in and of itself real."
And so I live with this entrenched fear that I won't get what I want or need to have the happiness that I believe can only come from the things my society says will bring happiness. It's not that these societal values won't bring me pleasure or satisfaction, it's that because none of these things are inherently real, i.e. lasting, they can't be the basis of lasting happiness.
What lasts and what can only last is the flow presence, the flow of perception and also the emptiness and clarity in and around it. To recognize absolute well being more intuitively, I have to build a quicker, wider, better infrastructure.
Roads aren't built in a day, or two days. But I believe this weekend I have made a very good start. I have come away with a better understanding of the onion layers of reactivity. What I've been watching with calm abiding is not the pain, the thoughts, the feelings, but more importantly the mind's reactions to the pain, the thoughts the feelings. I am cultivating a bare awareness of bare awareness, hoping to catch the thoughts, feelings, sensations as they arise, and then once caught, do nothing much more than greet them with equanimity.
Hey nice to meet you, self-hatred that is really fear that I won't have what I want, even, especially absolute well-being! The more I recognize this fear, the more misguided it so obviously is. Absolute well-being isn't something you can have, hold, preserve. Absolute reality is a flow, an unfolding of events. The well-being is our ease with that flow. Self-hatred is a major pothole.
The emptiness I experience when my thoughts and fears and reactivity has settled down is wordless and indescribable. It has always bothered me that something wordless is something that can't be passed on. If you can't share it, what is the use of having it? But then I had the insight that this wordless experience is like my spiritual capital. The fruits are like the interest that grows from it. The fruits can be passed on. The joys and pleasure and transient things that I can enjoy more because I have the capital that is permanent, those I can pass on. The capital is something that I can inspire others to have. But I can't give it away. Everyone has to earn their own. Or better yet, everyone has to realize on their own that it is simply there for the taking. But I can't make them see it, take it, or have it.
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