The impact of emptiness

  

Eight years ago I started the new year with the decision to have a word of the year, "abundance." 2015 was a good year.  But 2016, I went the other way and chose "emptiness."Looking back the emptiness year was a year that truly changed my life. 

That's the paradox of life.  If you want a sense of abundance, emptiness is the value that will generate that effortlessly.  If you focus on stuff, you just end up with more stuff. 

But the mind resists. Do I have the courage to truly value emptiness?

Read an article yesterday that claimed a focus on defined values it what gets people to stay motivated when their instrinsic motivation fails.  By definining emptiness as my value, I wonder if this is a quicker way to recharge than abundance. 

If I were to value and focus on emptiness, where do I see my life five years from now?

I'm enlightened, self realized, equipped to help others know happiness.  

 

The secret and science of compassion

I've been meditating for a long time, but there were many years, when I kind of kept this a secret  Mostly because I dreaded the question, why? Even if I was asked with genuine open curiosity what my motivation was for putting time aside every day for sitting quietly doing nothing,  I didn't really know how to explain why. This was especially true of compassion meditation. I felt very shy about volunteering the fact that I trained in becoming a  a more loving, and concerned person. Would people think I wasn't loving enough, or would they think I was being boastful about my goodness? 

Then I read Mingyur Rinpoche's book Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness. And I came across a line that really helped me have a better understanding and explanation for what I was doing.  He wrote that calm abiding meditation (the kind of meditation we do when we are meditating on breath, on a stable object, or in a natural, open awareness,  is like charging your mental and emotional batteries.  Compassion meditation (focussing on our innate desire to be free of suffering)  is the mental and emotional "technology" that uses the recharged batteries in a proper way. 

There was something so practical about this explanation. The reason why I meditated was simple. It made my brain stronger and it gave me the emotional tools to use that stronger brain to have an impact on my life and on other lives. 

Science supports this

Over the last twenty years there is an increasing amount of science to explain the mechanics behind the "technology" of compassion. For one, brain scans of advanced meditators show that compassion meditation, more than any other type of meditation activates and strengthens the part of the brain that produces dopamine, a chemical that manages motivation, learning, and motor control. 

Dopamine is involved when we act, but also when we don't act. People with addictive or obsessive personalies often have very high levels of dopamine and suffer alot when those levels start to drop.  People who suffer from Parkinson's disease have crititically low levels of dopamine, and so are unable to control their motor movements. 

Dopamine is very powerful. We can leverage it for learning, or we can leverage it to stay on a hedonistic treadmill. But we can also leverage it to motivate ourselves to more pro social and constructive behaviour, that creates well being for ourselves and people around us.  That's where compassion meditation comes in. 

Compassion meditation is really about recognizing this desire to be free from suffering, which is arguably our natural regulation system.  In doing this we train in harnessing and strengtheing our motivation and directing it to the right objectives and behaviours.

The power of compassion meditation 

Compassion is very powerful, so a couple of caveats before you start bingeing on it.

First, it's important to distinguish between compassion, the desire to be free from suffering, and empathy, the tendency to feel other people's pain. Empathy actually engages a different neural network, and if we spend too much of our time feeling other people's pain we can develop something called empathy fatigue.  When we spend too much time feeling other peoples stress and suffering, our bodies can actually take on this stress and the suffering and become increasingly depleted and demotivated. Compassion is not about feeling others suffering as much as it is feeling the desire to relieve the suffering. 

Though it's less likely to cause burnout, like all dopamine activitating behaviours, it needs to be balanced, with time to re-charge you batteries with practices like open awareness, or meditating on the breath. 

So feel free to explore its motivation charging qualities, but also feel free to take it slow.  

I would also recommend exploring the ways that compassion motivation and its dopamine management powers can also motivates us to not act. To not say and do things that cause suffering. 

In training in not doing, we're re-charging those dopamine levels. This is not about being passive, but about training in letting go of our tendency to act impulsively. By balancing calm abiding with compassion, what we're aspiring to is more effective behaviours that in the long run increase our drive because the rewards are ultimately more meaningful, more skilled and more rewarding. 

An interesting that that science is revealing is that compassion will change your brain more quickly and more significantly than any other practice. 

So compassion really is the great secret of meditation. 

But don't feel like you have to keep it a secret.

Fruition as the Path

Not a rose apple, but close enough

There's a story about the Buddah that's useful for understanding the theory behind awareness meditation. 

You may, or may not know that the Buddah spent many years of travelling with a gang of pretty radical believers. They trained in extremely rigourous meditation practices intended to eradicate all desire, all ambition, all thoughts of anything that might possibly corrupt the heart or the mind. But one day on this path, he just hit a wall. 

At that point, he had this childhood memory. He remembered when he was a kid and he snuck away from a big festival in his village and discovered this beautiful rose apple tree. He sat down, and sitting there under this gorgeous fragrant tree, just being, with no pressure to be anything or do anything, he remembered this pure, sweet feeling of bliss. As the story goes, this memory was the gateway to his enlightenment.

The point of this story is the tree

It's important to understand that in awareness meditation the starting point for achieving happiness is not that quiet subtle feeling of being present that we might have had when we were kids. The starting point is the big beautiful amazing tree. The starting point is being able to see that tree as our mind, right now.  

The challenge is that we don't often see the spectacular beauty of our mind, and even in those rare moments that we do, we struggle to maintain that recognition. 

There are good reasons for this. First we often mistrust big experiences of happiness. This may be particularly true if you've come from any background where there was childhood trauma. You might have
developed a lot of mistrust of happiness, especially big happiness, because too often big happiness meant that big unhappiness was right around the corner.  

But awareness meditation invites you to consider the possibility that the kind of happiness that inevitably passes might be a different kind of happiness that we experience when we truly recognizee the power, clarity and natural wisdom of the mind.

Happiness and the causes of happiness

That said nobody is claiming this isn't a challenge. Awareness meditation does not ask or even recommend that you recognize the power of your mind, experience bliss and then try to lock into that as though your life and everyone else's lives depended on it.  It's perfectly fine, and even wise, that we start with brief glimpses of that big happiness, or what is called in some buddhist traditions "fruition as the path." In other words we start with a glimpse of the happiness that is actually available to us right now, get some energy from that, but then take a break a explore the kind of step by step path that might still feel more intuitive. 

The step by step path is described as using causes as the path. 

We all know the step by step path of starting with a seed and planting and watching it grow. So that might be the path more commonly understood as "mindfulness." The path of relaxing into subtly pleasant feelings like, just being, or gentle curiosity, or kindness.  For many of us that path feels more comfortable because society encourages us to think small, and likes us to work at things. 

Imagine, however, that you're a farmer who has never seen an apple tree, and someone tries to sell you some seeds, and convince you to make room for a pretty big tree, and then  plant and them and tend them and watch them for a year. That's a lot of work and diligence to expect from someone if they don't know what it is exactly that they are growing. 

The risks of taking the cause as the path

If your mind is anything like my mind, it might get excited for a little while about the project of tending tiny seeds for results long into the future. But then a week or two, or a month or two, the mind remembers those seeds and then re-discovers them all dried up, because it's way into some other seed project. 

So it's very important to keep coming back to this big vision of what your mind is. You don't have to lock into it. But you do need to make the space in your life for that recognition to become more intuitive, if you are going to experience the kind of sustained happiness that awareness meditation is promising you. 

The great news is that you don't have to wait until some day in the future to experience that happiness. You can do that right here, right now, anytime and anywhere that you want.

 

Compassion as technology

Krista Tipett TED talk on the launch of the Charter of Compassion.  Calling compassion "the technology we need." 

Body Appreciation

 I did this guided meditation today and ended crying like a baby, feeling so vicerally how little appreciation I have felt towards my body for so long. 

It's part of a trauma sensitive approach to mindfulness that I want to bring into my teaching practice

Intention for effortless stability

Cortland Dahl led a group of dharma geeks in a great meditation this week to explore effortlessness in the context of Mahamudra. 

We looked at the way that breathing meditation changed in the context of object oriented meditation, awarness meditation with no focus, and awareness meditation where intention was the reference point. 

It was clear that intention was the goldilocks level of awareness, not too tight, not too loose.  I will try to remember to put the recording here when it comes up. 

Meditation Teacher Program Week 1

1. Competencies and Assesments:

Envision yourself as a meditation teacher. What distinct qualities, characteristics, or values do you aspire to bring forward in your teaching approach? How do you believe these qualities will contribute to your effectiveness as a meditation teacher?

At the core of my approach to teaching is the belief that the role of the teacher is to create the conditions for creating knowledge, and be more than just a provider of ready-made knowledge.  This takes generosity, patience and joyful effort and the willingness to see oneself honestly. 

As one's meditation practice progresses, it becomes easier to tell the difference between a concept and the kind of knowledge that we've really made our own, through our experiential learning, through having put in the time in a wide range of situations, through the insights that have changed our beliefs, and the work it takes to test those beliefs until we are certain they reflect reality.

The challenge in teaching awareness mediation is not just to provide knowledge of what  awareness meditation is and about how to practice it, but to help people experience, early on,  the potential of small shifts to create huge impact. The first shift is for them to see meditation as something they can enjoy, that can be woven into their life effortlessly. The next is to experience those moments of liberation that drive and develop enthusiasm, and that will  turn those small shifts into positive behaviours and ultimately the wisdom and fruition of a mature meditation practice. But the most profound shift of all is the one in which the meditator sees themselves differently. A good teacher is a catalyst for that shift. 

I would hope to be able to embody the joyfulness, the light touch, the charm and the humour that we've all seen in Mingyur Rinpoche.  I would also hope to convey the confidence and stable energy of someone with a strong meditation practice. I would want to help people to discover a sense of calm, openess, and optimism based on an embodied experience of presence that is there for them, and will allways be there for them, whether they realize it or not. Above all, I would want them to tap into and sustain the qualities of loving kindness, compassion and wisdom that are their birthright. 

2. Self Care:

What are the top 3 strategies you will apply to ensure that you prioritize your well-being while adding the demands of the MTP program in your daily life?

First and foremost is to bring awareness into my informal practice, applying it to those self care routines that are essential for building and maintatining energy, eating, exercising,  housework, etc.   

Next, work on my sleeping meditation practice  to ensure that I'm getting enough good quality sleep. 

Finally, schedule self care into my day, prioritizing whatever areas might seem at risk of slipping, be it exercise, creative learning, or just finding time to have fun. 

3 Motivation: 

Reflect on the initial reasons that motivated you to embark on this path. Considering the significant investment of time and energy demanded by this MTP, what do you think are the underlying values that continue to drive your commitment? How do these core values align with your aspirations as a meditation teacher, and how do they contribute to your resilience in the face of the program's challenges?

I've been a Tergar student since 2013, about a year before I embarked on a new career and helped to build a new company that from the ground up that eventually employed over 50 people across Canada.  The program and these teachings have supported me through so many challenging periods. Through good times and sad. Through COVID, through my father's diagnosis of late stage lung cancer and death in August 2021.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yCfPbceIZ_T-vz8oogN6EgojqJVI3RMb/view?usp=share_link

Reflection 3 (video recorded response):  Motivation

Reflect on the initial reasons that motivated you to embark on this path. Considering the significant investment of time and energy demanded by this MTP, what do you think are the underlying values that continue to drive your commitment? How do these core values align with your aspirations as a meditation teacher, and how do they contribute to your resilience in the face of the program's challenges?

Reflection 2: Self-Care

What are the top 3 strategies you will apply to ensure that you prioritize your well-being while adding the demands of the MTP program in your daily life? 

More self liberation

 Rinpoche: Self-liberation and liberation upon arising are not characteristics of thought: they are what happens when the nature of thought is recognized. So it’s not the case that you either recognize the self-liberation or don’t; self-liberation is the result of recognition. Normally, thoughts are anything but self-liberated. A thought arises, and it takes us over, and that produces another thought, and so on. On the basis of these thoughts, we generate further confused projections, on the basis of which we experience pleasure and pain. Now, when the nature of a thought is recognized, what happens to thought is very much like, as is traditionally said, what happens when a snake untangles or unties the knots it's tied itself into. The snake does it itself; no one has to come along and help the snake out. In the same way, when you look at the thought directly, for example, a thought of anger, and you see its nature, then the thought does not generate a further thought; the anger is not prolonged. As soon as the nature is seen, at that moment, the poisonous quality of the anger just disappears and dissolves; and that is self-liberation or liberation upon arising.

Thrangu Rinpoche

“Pointing Out The Dharmakaya: Teachings on the Ninth Karmapa's Text," p. 110

Self Liberation

In the essence of Mahamudra course that I'm talking YMR explains the three levels of transformation, the view (cognitive), meditation (emotional), and application (habitual). 

We first approach the idea of buddah nature with the intellect.  Then through meditation we bring develop an emotional relationship with it, sometimes enjoying it, sometimes not. Finally, through application in life, to our problems, we have the kind of direct realization that is self-generating. We become one with Mahamudra. 

That is transformation.

When eating, cleaning, living, sleeping become Mahamudra, that is retirement from Samsara. 

Path of Liberation Level 3-4

I am doing path of liberation level 3 & f Spontaneous Presence and Liberation. Interesting that YMR characterizes the recognitions achieved in these levels as retirement from Samsara. I am semi retiring from my job and retiring from suffering in the same weekend. Do I have enough spiritual wealth to retire?

Wouldn't that be nice.  If only I weren't still struggling financially.  But I've made progress.  Not as much as I'd like, but I'm going in a better direction than I was before. 

Some notes from Day 1: 

• Horizontal is seeing the gap, seeing stillness.  Vertical is seeing the river. Even if you are overwhelmed with thoughts and feelings as long as you are conscious that you are seeing them you are in awareness. Resting in awareness doesn't have to be horizontal. 
• Recognition of emptiness dispels ignorance. When ignorance is gone, grasping, fixating, craving dissolves.  As does hatred. 
• Level 1-2 is inward looking (movement, stillness) 3 -4 is outward looking.

Day 2:

Last night for the first time that I'm aware of I had an almost dreamless sleep.  It feels pretty good!

Big takeaway.  In Kagyu there is no energy out there from which we draw because energy doesn't actually exist.  It's all manifestation and emptiness. 

Innate clarity is:

•  beyond 6 conscioueness, always open through the ten directions
•  the truth that dispels ignorance, grasping
• not the thing that is reflected in it.  
• not the anger, or the sadness, or the fear.   It remains when those things dissolve. 
• not the energy. It's what the energy arises from and dissolves into.  It's not even the light. 

George: Englightenment happens in the present moment. 

Day 3:

How do we know that we are seeing union of emptiness and clarity? Being with it after we have familiarized through analysis (JOL 3) and 1 & 2 we experience it beyond concept. 

Anger can't exist without object. Innate clarity can exist without object.

Emotions, negative and positive need an object. But innate clarity doesn't need an object to be sustained. 

If you are conscious you are in innate clarity.  No need to do anything, no need to create anything.  

Sleep by resting in nature of mind, luminous clarity. 

after transformation

grasping become loving kindness

aversion becomes compassion

Day 4

Two ways to deal with kleishas:

• resting in the lucidity
• hosting the kleisha until it dissolves into lucidity

Post retreat

Slept well last night. First deep sleep in a while. Listening to YMR every night is a 2 minute habit I want to develop. 

I feel re-committed to the foundational practices. In particular I've found a new curiosity and interest about the third thought, the consequences of karma. 

I feel so clearly the positive results of extended mediation. Less action, less thought feels better. I feel like I have a wisdom body to rest in. 

But there are still emotional challenges. I'm going through a very stressful family situation. 

I feel the stress as empty lucidity vibrating through my body. I want to remember to add compassion to it.

Otherwise it's just old stale karmic imprints 

Self directed retreat Day 2

Slept well last night. For the first time in a while. Body scan slows down the thoughts, which increases the conditions for sleep. Listening to YMR sleep meditation instructions establishes the view. Also wonderful to wake and listen the gong on YMR waking instructions. I really feel like I'm in retreat. 

Meditation on the 3rd thought (dreamlike nature of samsara)

Essentially this is a contemplation of the reality that there is suffering.  But in directly contemplating the suffering, there is an untangling, and ideally recognition of the causes of the suffering being painful habits built on delusions. 

It's though our friends have been chasing us around in tiger costumes, and they might as well be tigers, because we are traumatized and will see tigers even when we know they aren't really tigers. 

The only way out is to gently let the trauma loosen. Recognize the feeling of recognizing reality and relax in that regularly enough that it starts to become it own habit energy.  That is the wisdom body.  The habit energy that develops from recognizing truth. 

Self directed retreat

Alongside the empliness and clarity I tap into when I feel my self hatred, I have to recognize my innate compassion.

When I do this, I see how wise action can be triggered. 

Today I did a self-directed retreat in the foundational practices, the four thoughts, the three jewels, some guru yoga. I am supposed to do this before I do my next level of path of liberation. But I also need it because I'm facing a stressful situation with my family. 

Or maybe I'm facing the stressful situation because it's been such a long time since I did a full day of meditation.  My retreats recently have been mosty dharma talks with a few hours of meditation. 

At the end of the day today, I feel the impact. There were some times during the day when I felt the suffering. Particularly when I was contemplating karma. I felt deeply the results of bad actions and poor decisions, patterns of addiction I've had since childhood.  There was a full hour today when I felt like the embodiment of a hungry ghost. 

But this evening my belly feels full of strong magnetic vitality. 

I came across a concept today "joyful remorse." That seems like such a contradiction, but there is joy in seeing reality clearly, seeing where we are creating suffering with our automatic habits. 

There is also joy in seeing the wisest action we can take, preparing for rest. 

Tiger transformation

Re-watching the Song of Liberation retreat videos.

YMR ended on a teaching that is a golden nugget. 

If your friend hides outside your house in a tiger costume, scares you, and then reveals the prank, you will be less likely to be fooled by other friends in tiger costumes. 

Same things with emotion.  In Nature of Mind practice we learn to see the empty clarity in an emotion. This is a progression from Joy of Living, where we simply looked at emotion.   If you see the empty clarity in one emotion, all the other emotions will transform. 

Trust the clarity.

Song of Realization wrap up

 It's hard to put my finger on what feels different. 

Maybe it's having that different understanding of clarity.  Yes there is luminosity, the clarity is in the recognition of the luminosity.  You don't have to shine a flashlight on the candle to see it, but you do have to open your eyes. 

Today I rest comfortably in the awareness that there are things I can't find, myself, my mind, a thinker, a dreamer, a hater.  I see that I can be comfortable in reality. The bonds loosen. 

Teaching:

Interesting that over 90% of people taking this course say they learned something different from other pointing out experience. 

Mingyur Rinpoche teaches exactly what I experienced in my practice.  Feel the clarity in one difficult emotion, trust it and allow it to transform all negative emotions. 

I have mine. Self hatred. My best, best friend. 

The message that resonates with me. "Trust the clarity."

Song of realization Day 3

Transformational meditation last night. 

I sat with my self hatred and saw, as if for the first time, how solid it felt.  But also how clear. If I can dissolve the illusion of solidity then my self hatred is the gateway to Mahamudra (the union of emptiness and clarity).  

I dissolve it by resting in the knowing. 

I'm going to ask a question today. 

"I grew up with a lot of emotional violence. Last night while practicing, the habit energy of self hatred felt very solid in me, but also very clear and lucid. I felt that if I could dissolve this energy, my chronic self hatred could be my friend, bringing me closer to Mahamudra.  Like anxiety did for you.  This solution seems so simple, but I'm aware that I live with complex trauma.  Is there anything I should be careful of?" 

Teaching:

Emptiness is the fact of no self.  Clarity is the recognition of this fact. 

So look for self that I hate, or that hates me.  I won't find either. Recognizing this non-existence of self is clarity. 

Rest in this and the mind becomes a safe place. 

Mingyur Rinpoche answered my question! Thumbs up. Lots of nodding.  Says I'm on the right track on the path to transfromation. . If I get overwhelmed do some physical exercise.  Will wait for recording and get exact quote. 

Interesting to go back to my insights from the "Difficult Emotions" retreat of two years ago

Practice:

Cortland Dhal leading us through a practice in which we see the nature of mind as a huge container that can never be improved on or corrupted by our experience, dharma, thoughts.

Q&A

Cortland makes an interesting distinction between the experience of clarity as a meditative state, which is impermanent, and clarity of recognition of the NOM. 

This is my takeaway for the day. 

Song of Realization Day 2

 

7 a.m. 

Morning meditation.  Feeling the flow of repulsion and attraction.  Surf this for a while and gradually it becomes balance and stillness. 

This is a precious few days where I get to just hang out in my mind.  I get to feel its power, and its entanglements. I let it sing its own song. 

2 pm.

You can try to know phenomena by knowing the nature of each and everything in the world.  Or you can know the mind, which is that by which we know each and every thing. 

4 pm. 

We practiced the three styles: 

1. Body style, which is a light looking at what is happening in the mind when thoughts arise.
2. Speech style, which is like a combination of analytical and noting. We name what kind of knowing or response is happening, and ask who the "worder" is. 
3. Heart or mind style.  We tap into the experience of simply knowing. 

I resonate strongly with last type. I felt very at ease just resting in the knowing. 

7 pm. 

Many reminders of the dangers of getting attached to blissful, clear and non-conceptual states. And reminders that the rough times are part of the process.

Tim spoke about the wisdom that is at the core of each of the three afflictions.  Craving = discrimation. Aversion = clarity.  Ignorance = non-conceptual. 

So I guess we can allow these to unfold naturally.  

Song of Realization retreat Day 1

Day 1:  

8 am.

I prepare.  This is a momentous event in the unfolding event that is the mind. I want to put into place the conditions that allow me to have a recognition that is going to take, a direct experience of clarity that is a tipping point.  

For this weekend I renounce all my wordly concerns and obsessions. I feel the craving, fear, resistance as support. Cloudy, muddy waters that over the course of the weekend will settle. Causes have outcomes. Non meditation will open the mind to clarity. 

But I need to stay devoted.

5:30 pm

Using space as a metaphor for the nature of mind, everything inside as well as outside feels empty. 

Earlier in the day I am reminded of my first lucid dream, and that sudden shock of total clarity and luminosity.  This is more subtle and gradual. 

At the end of the meditation self hatred rises up.  But as I explore it, I realize there is no real boundary. The heart is just space too. 

6:30

How do I live in this freedom? I want to be careful that I'm not asking "how do I keep living in this freedom." Yes, I want to sustain it, but I don't want to become fixated on maintaining states.  Just see this as a gentle exploration of the world outside the tiny box my mind has been shut up in. 

Open Awareness

 The moment you realize how tired your thoughts are making you. 

Truth body

The wisdom or truth body is the union of emptiness and clarity. The dharmakaya.

I am feeling the flow of this grounded groundlessness more and more every morning.  I feel the gentle urge to clean so that I can see the natural purity of my mind reflected back to me. 

But I feel the resitance. I worry that I'll lose my old, wordly self. I feel a certain nostalgia for my confusion. 

This week I turned 60.  I'm entering my golden years. 

I know what I want to feel: joyful wisdom.  Happy for no reason.

Maybe one path to the dharmakaya is being able to look back on our past confusion with gentle affection. Like being our own grandparent. 

Seriously

When I was a kid my family had a cottage in Maine on the beach, and the summer I turned eleven, one morning I was walking by myself on this beautiful beach, with the vast sky above me, and waves crashes and the seagulls swooping, and it was low tide, so I was far from people.  And I felt this massive huge connection to something, this vast energy, which as a 10 year old practicing Catholic, who had gone through all the rites of communion and confirmation and who went to mass every Sunday,  I understood as God. And I walked with it and felt it in every part being, and eventually it manifested in very clear vision of what I was going to do with my life.  I was going to become the first woman pope.

I didn't tell my family about this right away. I think I may have actually spent a couple of days planning it out, and visuallizing all the resistance I would face. I figured first I'd probably have to become a nun, but over time I would build a revolutionary army of nuns. 

But eventually I told my mother, and she laughed a withering laugh that cut to the core of my soul. 

I was so angry, because of course she was laughing at me. I didn't realize how she was laughing at the harshness of reality. 

This week Sinead O'Connor died. 56, only a few years younger than me. 

I remember how I felt when she tore up the picture of the Pope on SNL.  I wasn't a fan of the pope, and I'd long since given up my fantasy.  But it irritated me, because it felt immature and the wrong kind of danger. It was women taking themselves too seriously in a world where sometimes it's not really worth it. 

But she gave her heart. 

In the end that's what we need to remember about each other. 

Subtle Body Retreat

There are two paths into the subtle body.  The path through the body, exercise, body scanning, anything that nurtures, or throws into relief what the body is experiencing and feeling.  Then there is the path through the mind, visualization, deity practice, tummo. 

The first has many advantages. It is grounding. It is nurturing for the body. It is real.  But it is the body.  It is impermanent, it is relative, its joys and realizations will not last 

The second has the advantage of the absolute. It is the mind and as such is connected to the bigger mind that will outlast the body. But the mind is very powerful.  Enter first through this pathway, without a good foundation, without a healthy, skilled horse (body), and you can lose your way, become overwhelmed and disconnected. 

I come out of this retreat feeling deeply rejuvenated by the middle way.  I am doubly committed to resting in the nature of mind as my main practice, with tantra and tummo as the boosters. What is essential is the recognition of the union of emptiness and clarity. 

But I am also more enthusiastic about getting back to my tai chi and chi kung practices. And running. The body is impermanent. The window that I have for enjoying my strength, and building it to enjoy a healthy old age is closing. Next week I turn 60! 

The gros body needs attention too! 

What am I excited about? And who am I excited for?

Saw Elizabeth Gilbert a couple of months ago. 

She set a challenge to herself over her last book tour to ask everyone she met what they were excited about. The answers were funny, touching, but also insightful. Especially the answer from the cab driver in London, a stressed, angry despairing overworked father, who was insulted by the implication that everyone should be able or willing to answer that question. 

When she stopped asking that question regularly, she shut down. Stopped remembering events.  Stopped feeling present in life. 

I asked that question of myself that evening. It was my tantra practice, in particular White Tara. I want to make this my main practice. I want to see what impact that will have on my life.  I want to see what impact it will have on the lives around me. 

Other takeaways from that evening.  Write to one person.  And write for an hour every day, no less and no more. 

I'm trying to get my writing practice back.  So who would I be excited about writing for? 

Anytime Anywhere

This weekend I attend the launch of the Anytime Anywhere Meditation program, which I've committed myself to teaching. 

I'm making this a retreat weekend, so last night no streaming.  I sat with my insomnia, my desire to sleep, my anxiety at not being able to sleep. 

And then it hit me. AAN is about letting the default mind do what it wants to do, and just being present with that. I let go of the need for clear mind, tummo, all the things I've been bearing down on and just let my mind go. I was asleep within the hour. 

It was a bit of a spirograph moment, this realization that I'm really not trying to shut down the PFC. The yada, yada, yada can just keep yada-ing. 

My job as a teacher is to convey that moment. 

Meanwhile, I can feel distraction and bliss at the same time! 

Dream Yoga

Last night I had my first success with dream yoga. I woke up at 3 a.m. Did the guided meditation, fell asleep feeling a strong connection my subtle body.  I struggled a bit to fall asleep, but ultimately I focussed on compassion as a trigger, sinking deep into the desire for sleep and how connected this was to the desire to be liberated. 

When I realized I was dreaming I was walking along a busy city street. I looked for a building and flew up to a room where a woman, Maggie, who I haven't seen for a long time, gave me the list of things to do in dream yoga. She seemed a little stand offish, but I didn't care.  I was doing dream yoga!

I don't think I followed the list.  I had several subsequent, vivid dreams after that in which I felt very open and connected and compassionate towards people, a young child, a white taxi driver from South Africa who broke down when we passed a sign that announced the population of South Africans in Canada.  He was deeply touched by the gesture, even though the sign was a thank you to the black south African fire fighters. The message though was that Canada was the most welcoming, compassionate country.   He had to stop the car he was crying so much.  I comforted him. 

This morning I felt excited, but kind of discombobulated. Dream Yoga really shakes up our sense of self and sense of reality. Andrew Holocek points out that the ego hates dream yoga. So there's a lot of resistance. I certainly feel it. 

Tummo

 

Dakini meditation

 

Maintaining interest in evening practice

I watch too much TV.  

It's hard to maintain a practice when there is so much pleasant dullness that we can engage in. 

I'm going to start with just getting curious about the quality of this dullness I experience in the evening. I watch TV because I don't want to be with unpleasant dullness, boredom. But in doing that I deprive myself of the gift of boredom.  Non-conceptual clarity.  That place where inspiration can be born. 

Dullness is the pathway to pure perception. And that is the pathway to inspiration, surprise, adventure. 

Tantra: Completion Stage with Concept

This week I enter the final course of The Heart of Tantra Transmission

I'm going to try to maintain a commitment to journalling throughout the week. This has always been the way that I maintain inspiration in my practice.  This blog is how I record and remember my moments of inspiration.  And those moments have helped me to stay on the path. 

This week the challenge in the course is to bring the practice into different routines in the day.  The rituals we rarely miss, waking up and eating. 

I have set my waking alarm to Mingyr Rinpoche guding us through waking.  

I could do the same with the eating meditation. There's a beautiful chant that I could learn as well. 

I put it in my browser so that even if I eat at the computer, I can bring some mindfulness to the ritual. 

After the new ice storm

 A sort of enforced retreat through a three day power outage. 

I had already planned to do a Fast Mimicking Diet, and it had occurred to me that I could twin that with a mini retreat. But I'm so addicted to screens and streaming, I'm not sure I could have maintained the will. This outage was horrible for many, but it is something of a gift for me. 

Let's not forget that the post traumatic sprouts were the driving metaphor of the first part of this adventure. 

And let's not forget my visit to the Last of Us Cafe! 

I'm on day 4 now, and I'm wondering if I could extend this into a month long dopamine fast. Well yes obviously I could. The question is will I?

Gary believes that the brain prefers liberation, so it will dopamine reward the mind that stays grounded in awareness and weakens cravings and aversion.  From what I'm learning about the science of dopamine this makes sense. 

"There's so much bandwidth consumed by self-referential "blah-blah"--98% of most people's bandwidth.  The good stuff, the inspirations, problem solutions and the insights could hardly find their way through that maze to get recognized.  Now you've got all this open bandwidth, and you're much more stilll, so you're more likely to be able to see one of these inspirations when they arise." 

Awareness is as effortless as fear and terror

 "The experience of awareness is like being frightened or terrified. It is that kind of intense non-conceptual experience."

This from the commentary on Creation and Completion.  

It has hit me light a bolt of lightening. If pure awareness is as effortless as fear, or any other intense emotion, then those emotions are the gateway to enlightenment.

When I sit with fear, it gives way to fearlessness.  The concept that the fear was based on has burned off.  All that remains is for the fear to burn off. 

Lucid awareness, everywhere and always

An insight this morning. 

Just as I awoke in my dream, back in my 20s by recognizing that I was dreaming, I can awaken every time I recognize that I'm thinking. 

There is no fundamental difference between thoughts in what seems to be waking life, and thoughts in what seems to be a dream.  They are both made of the same clear and powerful substance of mind. 

The One Taste

Had an insight this morning that the "taste of purification" is not so much developing a taste for what is pure, but is a recognition of the purity that is always here in the nature of mind. 

I choose to sustain the recognition of this purity for the rest of my life.  The recognition of purity has a physiological response, like the taste of a strawberry. Everytime I recognize it, I have that response and the recognition is embodied. 

This is taking fruition as the path. 

Laurie Anderson "Be Happy"

Feel the sadness, don't be the sadness

I can apply the consciousness practices to this. 

And I can be the happiness. 

Top 5 insights of 2022

 1.  My Happy Losar insight. Taking refuge and becomming a Tibetan Buddhist creates the conditions of being "locked in."  Like RRSPs, like marriage, like any lifetime or longterm committment, there is an accumulation of resources and rewards. Having a Sadhana practice bears emotional fruit, and strengthens the subtle body in ways that a more variable practice probably doesn't. But the real driver is devotion. The increasing sense of inseperablity between my essence and that of all the buddahs, gurus, and deities, is what created the condition for sustained non-duality. 

2.  The paradox in the Way of the Bodhissatva of the something that doesn not exist, and yet is not nothing, creates the conditions for rest.  The result is the ground of wisdom and an understanding of the true nature of mind. 

When something and its nonexistence

Both are absent from before the mind 

No other option does the latter have.

It comes to perfect rest from concepts free  

3. The mind is not a thing, but an event.   If we can see it this way then we can see feelings as events, and "clarity as an infinitely expansive state of awareness." This helps us see the mind as a flow, not a fixed thing.  And as a result everything is simply part of this flow. 

4.  It is a very powerful practice to remember a dream and ask "who is dreaming this dream?" Stay with it and any sense of integrated self soon dissolves.

5.  If the key to sustaining wisdom seeing yourself as pure, or purifiying how you see yourself?.  Or maybe both.  During Tantra immersion I will toggle with both these insights.