Surrender

Achieving this state of pure awareness is getting easier as the days where I begin with one hour of mediation accumulate.  But living, writing, being from this state is a different challenge all together.

How do I write from a place that is empty of thought? Who is doing the writing when I've let go of self narrative?

Running from this place makes sense.  I just move my body. Cleaning house from this place makes sense, I just do the basic tasks.  But writing?  Writing is complex.

But is it?  Maybe the problem is that writing from the place of self-generated suffering is complicated.  And so I expect writing to be complicated. I resist the possibility that wisdom has something brilliant to say and that all I need to do really is listen.

I resist the possibility that this is enough.

Words are tools, my brain is a tool, my consciousness is a tool. Natural intelligence and creativity come through me and my brain and vocabulary and reasonable facility with language are the tool that it uses.

Letting go of this writing self is a process of familiarity.  Feeling the tightness, the anxiety, the bad habit energy that sabotages my progress. It's all part of writing practice.

It's all part of living practice.

Basic goodness as basic income

Equanimity is the most precious resource that I have.

Even six months ago, I don't think I would have understood that. Equanimity has always seemed something neutral, dull, baseline.  It's only very recently that I've understood its true power.

To have sanity, the ability to care about ourselves and others, to feed ourselves enough, but not too much. To exercise our bodies when we'd rather sit on the couch and have our feelings mediated through the television, these are things that are essential riches, but it's rare that we see them that way.

Equanimity is the power that grows slowly and surely through attention to these basic things. It keeps the anger and obsessions in check.  It allows compassion to trump envy and it allows for sympathetic joy towards people I would normally feel alienated from.

I've had a very emotional weekend re-connecting with an old friend who is in a lot of pain. My hope is that I can build and use this equanimity that I've been cultivating to help both of us.

I had a good insight yesterday while I was running. I often think of energy as something inside me, something I might not have enough of to make it through a run.  But energy isn't inside us.  It's all around us.  We have the mechanism to convert that energy for ourselves and others.  What we build when we run, when we love, when we connect with our bodies and others and the world, is the capacity to use that energy.

Whether we're able to take advantage of that comes down to belief.

Belief and commitment to that belief.  That we have enough, that we will always have enough, food, housing, time, money to take care of ourselves and others.

This is how we generate a decent world for ourselves and everyone.

Sufficiency

"May we be free of hunger and discord,
 And have joy and a world at peace."

I quote the same lines as last week, because this week I want to focus on the second line. Last week I focussed on the hunger I feel, emotionally, spiritually as well as physically.  And I've learned a few things. Like, when I'm angry, it's usually because I'm feeling emotionally hungry and needy, and that if i stop for a moment, I can trace that feeling back to the trigger, calm myself down and then focus on what I really need, which is not usually to win a fight or argument.

If I weren't hungry any more.  If I had what I needed, and knew deep in my being that I will continue to have what I need until I leave this body, how might my life change? How might all our lives change if we knew that.

Or let's start a step back from that.  If I spend more time focussed on what I have, on the fact that I have enough to eat and a roof over my head, and this month at least enough money to pay the rent, how would my life change.

I can have joy and peace now.  Or at least many moments of profound joy and peace thanks to my meditation practice. I don't need to make that permanent for myself, and perhaps it's better that I don't if I want to spend a life in service towards a bigger goal of joy and peace for others. I want to feel the pain and anxieties and hungers of others. I want to feel it, so that I can understand it, and help others to understand it.

But I'm also most helpful as someone who can help others understand joy and peace, and how to get there. Being in that joy and peace, being someone who manifests that, maybe that's the best way for me to move people forward.

Hunger

"May we be free of hunger and discord,
 And have joy and a world at peace."

This is a line from the aspiration I always start my meditation with.

Last year I became conscious of the amount of discord in my life. This year I'm going to focus on the hunger.

Not so much physical hunger because I rarely let myself get hungry. But the many other kinds of hunger in my life that keep me in a perpetual state of lack. Or so it feels sometimes. Trying to avoid feeling this hunger doesn't work. Just rewards it and makes it deeper and more entrenched. Denying it is why I'm so afraid of emptiness. Because in the emptiness of meditation I see and feel it.

Or so it seems.  To paraphrase Tsoknyi Rinpoche. the feeling is real, but is it true? Am I in a state of actual need? Or is this feeling just the result of the constant narrative in my head that keeps me there?

This week I will just be with this hunger, and do Rinpoche's essence love meditation. Sink deep, deep into my gut where the hunger seems to live and see how love responds.

Resolution

My resolution for this year is to meditate on emptiness every evening before I go to bed .

Last year, my focus was on abundance.  This year I move to the other side of the spectrum and familiarize myself with emptiness.

I'm nervous about this resolution, because I know that I'm fundamentally afraid of emptiness.  It's like the glass bridge I read about in Tsoknyi Rinpoche's book. I know that meditating on emptiness can't hurt me, but letting go of expectations, plans, thoughts, memories, feels like a loss of self.  And how do we live without this constant self-building?  If we stop for an hour or a day, will we have less of a self to be proud of and to make us feel powerful?

Meditating on emptiness is where I really test my belief. Conceptually I believe that selflessness is key to true happiness. Or I believe that I should believe that.  But experientially when I'm not working on the self, I feel at risk. If I'm not planning, hoping, worrying dreaming, what am I creating?

Yet, meditating on emptiness doesn't mean an empty life. I'm sure.  It's not about creating an empty head. Or a life empty of action. It's about creating space, and cultivating the power to let go of the things in life that don't really give us joy, or aren't truly useful.  A painting or picture that is too busy is not necessarily creative, it can be cluttered and complicated.

I've spent too much of my life holding on to things, people, situations, places, behaviours that haven't brought me real joy. This year is about discovering the source of true, stable, enduring joy.  Emptiness is potential, a fresh start. Yes it's a little frightening, but so is any change.

It's a risk I take for myself, and for the people I care about.  And for everyone I touch in my life.

Here goes.

Happy New Year.

Impact

What is the impact of my practice?

A year has passed and it's time to pay attention to what I've achieved, accomplished, learned.

I've maintained a longer morning practice, an hour in the morning ever since doing the silent retreat. I feel the impact of that practice on my energy level.  I feel a very concrete connection to pure awareness, much stronger and solid than I have in the past.

I have more willingness and courage to face emptiness. But it's still hard. Time and the self have their grip on me.

I've realized how strong my addiction to anger is, and how much it's an escape from sadness and anxiety. I'm very afraid of giving it up. But I also know that sadness is magic.  It's the sign that blocked energy is loosening up and it's the earth and moisture that joy grows in. So I will try to stay open to any sadness of grief that happens this year.

My book is getting better. My challenge this year will be to trust in that as my mission and to have faith that the funding I need will come.

I've decided next year, to make emptiness my mission, my word, my challenge.

My Gratitude

December 2012, three years ago, my life was in crisis.  I’d lost my job, I was out of savings, I had a twelve year old son to support, and I felt terrified and alone.

This, after decades of meditation, tai chi, a wide ranging curiosity about eastern philosophy and many, many hours of practice.  But I’d never really had a teacher.  I come from a highly intellectual, emotionally intense and chaotic Catholic family, and while I’d always been very interested in Buddhism, I had a deep resistance towards taking on a whole new complicated set of concepts and rituals. I did, however, benefit greatly from the sitting and mindfulness practices. Though not, apparently, to the point where I was immune from disaster.

In a moment of desperation I turned to someone who I don’t usually turn to, my younger brother.  As the older sister, I’m usually the one giving him advice, telling him how to live his life, and rarely, but occasionally, the one he turns to for wisdom in his own times of crisis.  My brother, while not an expert in how to live a perfect life, had much more experience with crisis. I noticed that he seemed happier and more relaxed than he’d been in a while. Maybe he had some kind of lifeline he could throw me?

He did.  He pointed me to Mingyur Rinpoche’s introduction to meditation video.  The moment I heard the “secret” to meditation, that listening to sound is closer to the true spirit of meditation than “meditating” on sound, I knew I’d found my teacher.

I’d never looked for a teacher because I didn’t feel like I needed someone to teach me more meditation.  I didn’t know that I needed someone to teach me less meditation, and how to slowly start letting go of the accumulated emotional and intellectual clutter of a very privileged and concept rich upbringing.

I needed a teacher who could give me a glimpse of beginner’s mind, so that I could take some refuge in that, and start re-building real clarity and peace.

I still have challenges in my life, but I also have place within me of refuge, that I now know is enduring and nurturing and there for me no matter what external circumstances arise.

So I thank you Rinpoche, for your books and videos, and for Tergar. For your light touch, and the tremendous courage you’ve shown in taking your wandering retreat.  You are living proof of the power and strength of your peace and joy. And even though I may never be or become a Buddhist, I know I will remain your student, however, wherever and forever.