Devotion

"Our buddha nature remains unawake until we break the cycle of samsara; until then we remain like bees buzzing around in loops."

Mingyur Rinpoche is back!  Four years ago he set out on a wandering reatreat, left Tergar,  the thriving international non-profit that he had set up, left behind the proceeds of a bestselling book, grew his hair a beard and set out to spend at least three years as a wandering anonymous monk.  From what he's told us, he spent the first year ill with unexpected health problems, so what was supposed to be three years turned into four.
   We've been living off the videos he made before he left, but he's back.
   As it turns out, the morning that we were notified of his return, I had started re-reading the chapter in his new book about guru practice. As he explains it our devotion to our guru accelerates our practice because it engenders the kind of inspiration and longing that eventually becomes automatic. One we realize that we share the same buddha nature, student and guru, pure perception become spontaneous.
  It sounds so simple.  But supplication and surrender to spritual teachings are not easy things in a society that has conditioned us to supplication and surrender to material success.
  The way out of this cycle for me is the concrete experience of how well it works. This morning I did most of practice with the image of Rinpoche in my head. Civilized Rinpoche, shaved and shiney Rinpoche.  It was good, I felt the warmth of enlightement shining on my head and then becoming the liquid that starts to snake it's way down.  I began to taste the purification and everything from the neck upward seemed to melt away. I  was simply the space in and around me.
  For my next practice though I'm going to imagine wild Rinpoche, the way he is now with is hair and his beard, skinny from begging. And practices after that will use and recite the prayers that he wrote for us. Can I rest and submit to these?
  It's hard.
  But it's urgent.  I've passed the halfway point of my life. Liberation for myself, for Ben, my family, and everyone I currently share the planet with is an urgent concern.  Not a reason for panic, but certainly a reason to give this my all.

Happy Tibetan New Year

Today is Tibetan New Year. I'll be heading out to the Tergar Centre to celebrate. But this morning I think of what I want for myself and for others this year.

Peace.  That profound thriving peace that I feel in the centre of my brain when I've been working steadily at my mediation practice. That palpable magnetic energy that is always available to me when I need it. That thing that I still use too rarely in my life.

All people have this. Few people are aware of it. In my current practice it is called Buddah Nature.

This is what I want for myself and everyone.

One of the ways I'm going to stay close to this over the next month, the first month of this year of The Horse, is to re acquaint myself with Lent.  My old Catholic practice of renunciation before re-birth.

Television.  That's what's going for the next forty days. Television.

No more courtroom dramas. No more Girls.  No more Netflix.

Just for this month my greatest entertainment is going to be this peace. Maybe some reading.  But this peace. This peace, if entered into playfully, can be a profound source of entertainment. The human body,and psyche is an endless roller coaster.  Like a video game with blocks and challenges that once met and dissolved bring you to the next level.

No sugar. No television.  Just peace.

Though it might not seem like one, this is another adventure.

Shining Wisdom

After five months following level one of the Tergar program I'm starting to feel the fruits of my practice. I've weathered a challenging week with a difficult person, and managed to come out of it with nothing more than a few scrapes and bruises.
  The pond outside my bedroom shines with morning sunrise, and I recognize this as the wisdom that we all have access to if we can only cultivate the skill of being.
  Last night, I happened to flip to my favourite clip from the Karate Kid 2010, the one where they see the nun mirroring the snake. She controls the snake because her mind is still, and as Jackie Chan explains "there is a big difference between doing nothing and being still."
  One of the most profound insights I've had this week is that all the irritation and controlled rage I feel when I'm around my mother is really just my desire to be happy. These are strong feeling because my mind is so strong. But that same strong mind that has these uncomfortable feelings is the mind that is capable of happiness and wisdom, of profound and sustainable peace. This deep and joyful comfort and wisdom that I have moments, minutes, sometimes hours of, is really just the flip side of all the pain and discomfort.
  Yesterday morning I saw a beautiful painting by the 19th century America painter William Homer.

When I first saw it, I believed it was sunset. But this was painted at Prout's Neck, not far from where I am right now, so I know it must be sunrise. Beneath all that turbulence and the signs of an upcoming storm, beneath the blood red beginnings of the morning light, there is a calm. 

There is a beautiful day on the horizon. 

Objects

I had a crucial insight this week.

In Tergar's Joy of Living program we're meditating on neutral objects.  Mingyur Rinpoche suggests something in the distance like a patch of color on a wall.  He also describes a process by which our sense of distinction between self and object dissolves after a while.

I wasn't sure what he meant until I experienced it myself. For one meditation I picked a boring white square pattern on the apartment building outside my window. I steeled myself for what I was sure would be the dullest meditation I'd ever experienced.  But in time something happened.  I began to see the contrasting bricks and then the bricks that were diagonal to it. In time, I saw that pattern as a symbol of myself.  Solid, negative space around me, brick upon brick, held in place by gravity but able to hold people up way above the ground. The next day I had a similar experience with the excess cord on a clothesline.  I saw myself in time as that piece of cord, suspended in the sky.  Not heavy enough to fall.  But strong enough to stay in place.  I saw the perfect tension of the clothesline as the tension I need to maintain in my practice.

If I  see myself in nondescript objects, then surely I must see myself in everyone I meet.  If I'm feeling vulnerable and stressed and angry and closed hearted, then I'm going to see everyone as that.  But if my mind is strengthened and renewed by compassion and gratitude, then I'm more likely to see everyone around me as compassionate and generous.

Now the dedication I do at the beginning of my meditation makes sense. This meditation really is work I do for all beings. I'm more likely to see the good in people as a result of this practice, and in seeing the good in them, I'm more likely to feel good.  It's a positive feedback loop that in time develops its own momentum.

One day I will not have to work so hard at this.  And when I say I work for the welfare of others I will mean that I "work," in the sense of I function mechanically how I'm supposed to.  Like the clothesline, like the bricks, which I rarely notice, but for which today I am deeply grateful.

No news is good news

This month, in the Joy of Living program, the focus is on the body. We move from open meditation to object meditation, with the specific object being the bodily sensations. Mostly my meditation this week has been a body scan starting with the forehead and moving down to the feet. In Tergar, before we move on to more potentially distracting objects like thoughts and emotions, we spend a month with the body.

It's good for me to stay with a structured program for a while. Especially as I work on something as challenging as a book. I know I've felt stuck in this intermediate stage for a while, and sometimes the way out of that is to go back to beginner's mind.

One thing I became very conscious of this week is the effect of charged information on my mind.  Last Sunday was the Boston Marathon, and this week has been a manhunt. I found myself, like many people, drawn into the spectacle of seeing this young younger brother, captured. Despite everything he'd done, I felt a tremendous empathy for him. It seemed from his story that he was a dependent younger brother caught in the web of a dominant brother, and a terrible ideology. I couldn't stop clicking the New York Times site. I got into stupid Facebook arguments about whether he should be read his rights in the interest of public safety.

I felt my whole body tense and manic.

Last week I read a very interesting opinion piece about the toxic effects of following the news. It seemed a little extreme at the time, but I'm starting to open my mind to the possibility that he's right. There's not much I can do for this young man, other than hope he escapes the death sentence, and that his story in some way gives us insight into how fanatics are formed. But following this constant flow of factoids make us feel powerless, jumpy, helpless and distracted. News is the information equivalent of sugar. I wonder how much of the depression I struggle with is related to it.

I would probably be just as well informed if I read good magazines and recently published books, and my mind would be clearer.

If I want to write high quality information, I need to consume high quality information. And I need to believe that there is purpose, meaning and wisdom in doing this. I'm not going to feel this way, or believe that this pursuit is meaningful if I spend the rest of my life hooked up to the news machine.

This week I lean into this and keep to a resolution to not to follow this case anymore. And while I'm at it, I'm going to give news a break. I'll read about it eventually in the New Yorker, once the facts and the details emerge.  I don't need to be kept abreast of every detail.

And truth is I don't need to be kept abreast of every detail on anything. I can stay informed without being up to the minute. And in that way, I hope, I can stay more in touch with the present moment.

Open awareness

I'm two weeks into this cleanse now.  Last weekend I did a two day meditation workshop at the Tergar centre in Montreal. This was the closest I've ever come to a meditation retreat and I'm feeling calm, focussed, ready for six months of Tergar style practice.  This is a very light, secular form of Tibetan buddhism. The basic practice involves alternating between object oriented meditation and open awareness. Mingyur Rinpoche, the leader of Tergar calls it shinay. He describes it as the gentle feeling of peace one gets just after a vigorous run, the end of the work week, or any activity that results in a moment of "phewf, now I can rest."  This feeling is the seed of rest you want to feel when you do shinay.
  I'm feeling calmer and lighter. I am lighter.  I've lost a few pounds on this cleanse so far, and it's nice to feel so much less compelled by my addictions. I feel the urge to eat a cookie, but I don't have to struggle with that urge.  I did have a sliver of apple pie on the weekend.  But I was happy with a taste and didn't feel deprived when I didn't eat more.  It's nice to feel in touch with a basic sense of power. A natural power, not a willed power.
  Mingyur Rinpoche has a really nice framework for practice: using your resistance or suffering as support for practice.  When I feel a resistance to a routine I want to instill, usually a cleaning routine, or a healthy eating routine, instead of struggling to over come it, I simply rest in my awareness of this resistance. I allow myself to become curious, to breathe, then to watch what happens to this resistance as I continue with the action I've chosen.  In this way, almost any routine I'm trying to establish becomes a meditation. I've always known this, but it helps to know that there will be a community to support these small, but important observations.