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. 

Writing from flow

This has been a big week.  I started a mindful eating program that has me digging deep into my food cravings, and as a result, my other cravings.

The program is designed by a Psychiatrist at Brown, Judson Brewer, and listening to him on a Podcast, he says that he wrote a book in two weeks, while he was on self-guided retreat, deciding that he would only write from a state of flow.

I'm making the same vow, which means that I'm in flow right now.  Finished a productive meditation where I diligently rested my awareness in the center of my chest, where the energy is contracted, hard, like a clenched fist.

I know what it's protecting, layers and layers of disappointment and heartbreak. But I don't have to protect myself anymore. I've long ago locked away any desire I once had for companionship. Or at least that's what I've told myself.

Maybe it will come back, but for the moment my heart is feeling more expansive than it has for a very long time. I'm okay.  I have the courage to open that tender spot to the world. I can offer my heart like an open palm, welcoming anyone who has felt despair.

I can resist that craving for self-hatred

Hugs

I'm back to standing.

I've been reading Christopher McDougal's book Natural Born Heroes, and I've re-discovered my fascia, the weblike elastic casing that is stronger than any muscle. I suppose I've wandered off the path for a few years with running and sitting, but it's time to come back to this root practice.

Sitting has helped me to build the emotional component of my standing practice. This morning while I was holding the ball, I felt a connection to what we feel when we hug someone we love, and what we feel when we are hugged.

This loving kindness is woven throughout the fascia which is all memory, all awareness. Like the membrane of the fetal sack, it's the thin border between our soul and the world.

The logic of loving kindness

In Tibetan Buddhism loving kindness is one of the four immeasurables.  It is a quality associated with happiness and in cultivating it one prays for happiness and the source of happiness. But it is a quality that is in us, whether we realize it or not, so what we're really praying for is the constant awareness of the lovingkindness that lives in each of our hearts. From that seed of awareness it can be cultivated beyond any measurement.

The traditional loving kindness prayer is something of a sleight of mind, because happiness is there, always. Even our awareness of this desire for happiness is always there.  What we often lack is the awareness of this awareness.  To be happy in a sustainable way, first you need to know that you want to be happy. A surprising number of people don't know they have this unconscious longing, or won't admit to having it. Their lives, they say to themselves and others, are about more important things than happiness. Or they know they want happiness, but they confuse happiness with the object of happiness. They fall into the delusion that their happiness is dependent on the having a loved one, or the making that  loved one happy. This is why we say that attachment is the "near enemy" of loving kindness. Why family relationships are such a tangle, because we can't separate the healthy longing to understand ourselves better, and the unhealthy longing to have and control others.

It's the ability to remain curious and  rest in the longing for happiness that is the one most significant cause of happiness. Rest in that and happiness quite simply is.

And soon, within moments really your prayers are answered because happiness is familiarity with the healthy desire for happiness.  We have what we're asking for all along.

Gentleness

Mingyur Rinpoche write of three stages of meditatve experience: the waterfall, the river and the lake. I'm starting to understand the river.

This is a stage where thoughts don't get stuck. My sense of self is not entirely determined by the rush of memories and painful images and feelings. Because I can watch them slowly move through my nervous system, a natural gentleness and tenderness begins to emerge. Lovinkindness, not as an exercise or a concept but as a natural quailty of mind; the first of what in Buddhism is called The Four Immeasurable Qualities.

The challenge this week is to develop the skill of resting in this state of being without becoming over attached to it. I don't want to turn lovingkindness back into a concept.

I would love to turn this gentleness into a habit.  A habit that steps in when the other habits I'm trying to let go of--anger, envy, fear, pride--begin to overwhelm me.

The trick I discovered last week is to locate that part of me that still wants to be overwhelmed, that part of me that doesn't want to see what life could be, or could have been like if I'd lived with more gentleness. But if I can feel and live the gentleness, then I'm more likely to remember the gentleness of people who were more often than not harsh with me.  I can see how their harshness came out of fear, and misery and had very little to do with me. I can forgive fully, not for them, but for myself.  And maybe in doing so I can help them find the gentleness in their own hearts.

Happiness and The Causes of Happiness

Last week I started working on compassion.  But I think this week I will focus on loving kindness. It's easier to be generous to yourself and to others when you're happy, than when you're feeling depleted and driven by suffering.

May I have happiness and the causes of happiness.

What are the causes of happiness?

One a firmly rooted aspiration to be happy.
A strong meditation practice.
The recognition of emptiness.

This week, I keep it simple.

Suffering and the Causes of Suffering

Yesterday I did a mini-retreat at Tergar.

We did more talking than meditating. But we flirted with the possibility of doing a silent retreat, a Friday overnight and all day Saturday until dinnertime.

In our last meditation session, we recited the compassion and loving kindness mantras:

May I be free of suffering and the causes of suffering. 

May I have happiness and the causes of happiness. 

I realized that while I was feeling the desire to be free of suffering, I was feeling a certain numbness when I thought of the causes of suffering. When I brought this up Minjur leapt on it. Breaking through to a clear understanding of the causes of suffering is a tipping point. Though she clearly stressed the mental causes, over the external causes.

Earlier in the day Johann gave us each a gift. A prayer Mala.

This week I will use it often, praying to be free of the causes of suffering. Praying to be conscious of them and free of them.

Who is this self that I want happiness for?

This morning I did a mini-retreat at the Tergar Centre. In the second video Mingyur Rinpoche said something that hit me in a totally new way.  Who is this self that we want happiness for when we do lovingkindness meditation? When I think back to all the times I've done this meditation it seems to me that this self I wanted happiness for is usually a wounded, weak self that is very needy for a joy it hasn't had.  For the first time, however, I realized that this would be a much more effective practice if the self that I wanted happiness for was my natural, unconditioned, buddha nature self.
  Lovinkindness, especially for myself, too often feels like pity. Wanting happiness for an already complete self is less of a grasping process. And this already happy, good self, so clearly wants happiness for the self that is meditating. So it's a recursive activity. An activity that reinforces my best and deepest nature.
  When I'm only extending love to a "flawed" self, I'm actually reinforcing this perception of myself as incomplete, needing love.  When I'm extending love to a self that is already complete, I am reinforcing a sense of completion.
  I'm curious how a week, a month, of this kind of meditation will influence my motivation to act in my best interests.  Perhaps it's been hard to keep up the will to take responsible, nurturing action for a self I have to work so hard at loving.
  And if I were to start to see myself as this naturally good self, how will this affect the way I see others?

Lovingkindness

I feel vulnerable writing about love.But I'm learning this week that it's that very vulnerability that is our greatest source of power.

Pema Chodron writes about locating that tender spot and using it as a crack to let the energy of bhodicitta enter. Earlier this week I listened to a talk by Edward Kelley on Tergar. When he asked Mingyur Rinpoche how it is his life seems to unfold so effortlessly, Rinpoche said "motivation." I know that the happiness of all beings is his point of motivation.

If I use this point of vulnerability as my motivation, and turn it into an omnipresent desire to build happiness for myself and everyone, then perhaps my life will unfold with more ease.

It all seems so simple, but we spend most of our lives running away from that vulnerable point.The trick is to find a way to lock in to the fear, loneliness and alienation in a way that the lovingkindness becomes second nature. Becomes something that our brain produces without thought.

I will approach this slowly, like open awareness. Rest in lovingkindness for moments throughout the day.

This is a good day to start this practice. My son's thirteenth birthday. My desire for him to be happy is already naturally strong.

May this be the foundation for both our happy lives.

negative mantra

I still have a very negative voice in my head. A voice rooted in longstanding depression and self-loathing. It tells me regularly throughout the day "I'm depressed." "I hate myself". And it asks regularly "what do you want?"

I'm experimenting this week with using these entrenched chronic thoughts as triggers to consciousness. When I hear "I'm depressed" I look up at the sky. I connect as much as possible with my natural openness and remember how vast and full of potential the word is. When I hear "I hate myself" I take a moment to feel some loving kindness towards myself, and anyone else who comes to mind. When I hear that question what do I want? I reply authentic happiness, for myself and for everyone.

Today I try to focus as much as possible on just what that means for me, authentic happiness. I'm trying to visualize a procession of dawns where the chi grows in my body, heart and mind. I'm trying to imagine a clean, tidy house that stays clean and tidy. I'm trying to imagine enough money in the bank to maintain a simple life with a few meaningful luxuries. I'm trying to imagine work that inspires other people towards happiness as well.

Above all I try to catch myself when I'm drifting off towards meaningless anger and negativity and I try and nip that in the bud.