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.  

Taking Refuge

Last weekend I travelled to Boston to take refuge.

I have a new name, Karma Rangdrol Lhamo.  In English: Self-liberated goddess. 

Taking refuge means another level of committment, beyond anything I've done before in the almost 15 years since I started this journal.  I'm not sure exactly when this root really took.  In part it's a pre-requisite for studying Dzogchen, which is something I've been wanting to do for a while.  In part it's grown out of the night my father died and I had no way to spiritually honour him than to read chapter 10 of The Way of the Bodhisattva. Something clicked deeply for me when I read the lines "as long as space endures, and beings are to be found, may I remain to drive away the sorrows of the world." 

My father gave me my love of religion, but he also grew disenchanted with Catholicism in the end, as I have. But I need devotion in my ife. 

Whatever the cause, this feels right...

The Adventure of not knowing

If you don't expect to know what's going to happen, if you have no expectations, life can always feel like an adventure.

Like any adventure you need to have your supplies, otherwise it's an adventure in hell. You need to have maturity and skills and good instincts. You need the right attitudes, like patience, negotiation skills and you need compassion for yourself and the people you will meet.  And you need above all the ability to signal love, calmness, open heartedness.

To survive and thrive in adventure, above all, you need to know that place of refuge within you. There are things you can know and carry with you throughout all the places and events that you do not know.  You need to be able to access your refuge on call and know deep inside you that it is always there. 

Survival brain

One of the themes of this journal since the beginning has been growth and recovery from trauma.  I go back again and again to the idea of traumatic sprouts, re-growth that is at high risk of early death because of a major trauma that cut off the mature and healthy boughs.

I've been reading a book this week about using mediation for trauma recovery.  The author sees the danger in two systems, the thinking brain and the survival brain being out of balance.  She pointed to gratitude as too often being a positive thinking scheme by the thinking brain used to control the intensity of the survival brain.

Re-reading my post last week on creating a "gratitude algorithm," I realize I might have been in danger of one of those poor thinking brain band aid solutions.  A better solution might be using the algorithm of the precious refuge. The three gems, buddah, dhamma and sangha. In contemplating how precious these places of safety are, gratitude arises naturally from the survival brain and growth comes from a deeper place.

I had a chance to put this into practice this weekend.  I had another one of my work spats that set in motion the intense ball of insecurity, anxiety and shame that gets released every time I get into any kind of work conflict.

Trying to do a lot of breath watching to bring back that sense of how precious refuge in the dhamma is.

Refuge

I have made a religion of writing. And this, I suspect, is not a good practice. Editors, publishers, the book industry is not a refuge.

Or, not a wise refuge. And neither is the world of technology.

Take refuge in the things that have lasted, and will continue to last. The pith instructions of the great religions, love, surrender, be kind and compassionate and find, build and maintain communities dedicated to true peace and true wisdom.

This spot in Maine where I have vacationed with my family for 50 years has been both a refuge and a hell.  I have had my most mystical moments here, and my most violent.

I have treated every summer here in the last few years as my last, knowing that when I leave, I say goodbye to an intimate, healing relationship with the sea, the sky, the falling stars. But I also say goodbye to what still feels like a hopeless cycle of emotional discord.

This summer has been better than most. I've been less reactive and have been able, for the most part, to protect myself better than I ever have, which means that I've made progress in my emotional stability.

And I leave with a beautiful picture of the dawn.

But I now prepare to grieve this place.  Because nothing lasts. Nothing. Not beach houses, or books.  Not bodies, not the people we love most, or the people who love us most.

What I learned from the place though, the space, the grandeur, the smell that I will never forget. That will last deep in me to my last breath.  Because that is the awareness that is no different with breath. I am one with tis place until I am gone, and after.

The continuum

I'm reading Tim Parks' book Teach Us to Sit Still. He's in the middle of an intense meditation retreat and is considering giving up writing.  It's all so clear to him how language is the problem.  It's all so clear to him that books are not life.  That the writing life is not really the reality that one sees in meditation, a life.

I'm not ready to give up writing. I like my tools, I just don't want them to be in control of my mind and my soul.  I want to see beliefs as beliefs, thoughts as thoughts.  The goal of my life is not simplicity, it is the grace and skill to handle complexity.

I love Mingyur Rinpoche's story about the man who decided he was just going to stop saying "I".  As though somehow giving up language, or the concept was going to bring us closer to selflessness. No, says Rinpoche, that will just bring us closer to madness.  There will always be people who renounce technology in favour of maintaining the old skills. Artists who renounce the new techniques.  Portrait painters who would never paint from photographs.  And our society is richer for those people, because we need the old skills.  It's good to have some refuge from the stresses of constant change. But life's richness is also a function of change and complexity. We can't shy away from that.

Confusion

This week I continue to explore the path of refuge.  As I try to create a refuge that is healthy and sustainable, I become conscious of the habitual refuges that are not healthy and sustainable.

There are the obvious one: television and food.  But one thing I don't consider is how emotional states are used as refuge. Anger, irritation, petty bickering are a refuge for me.  Anger brings a sort of clarity, however illusory.  But confusion is a refuge as well.

Feeling confused and helpless is a refuge from taking action because if I don't know what to do I can't act. And then I avoid all the risks that come with acting. That I might fail, that my actions lead to a worse situation. But inaction is a refuge.

To have clarity in my life, I have to act. And I have to act in consistent ways. Routines, meditation, cleaning, shopping, preparing and eating healthy foods.  These bring clarity. Writing brings clarity. If I really want clarity I need to surrender to these.

Does this mean, I never have uncertainty?  No I don't think so, but I can't make it a refuge. I can't make it a comfortable place that supports inaction.  I have to feel that uncertainty and chaos deeply and learn its lessons and then move on.

Clarity

This morning I started my practice feeling confused, hungover, angry after a very painful and infuriating conversation with my mother last night.

There was little I could bring myself to do but sit in this pole of energy.  I had no will left, really.

Yet by the end of this meditation that passed quickly, almost effortlessly, there was a pervasive state of clarity in my body, in the room around my body.  Just clear, empty, lucid peace.

I saw that my mother just wants to be happy, and I saw how sad her confusion really was.  And I saw how fortunate I am to have this energy in my life.  This awareness of awareness.

This awareness that awareness is always aware of awareness. Like breathing.

As I focus on that, I kind of feel that pineal gland, or whatever it is that allows us to feel this pervasive, pure awareness.

I am running more.  My home is clean.  I am conscious of my desire for happiness, and for the effort that brings about happiness.

I feel closer to that place of liberation.  I feel solid in this place of refuge.

Choice

I have chosen refuge in my meditation practice.  And in doing so, I have chosen a different sense of "self."

Where my self was once the random generator of thoughts and beliefs that propelled me in ways of which I was only half conscious.  Now it's this quiet, powerful energy that is snaking itself throughout my whole body and brain.

Last night while I was meditating, I felt more profoundly safe than I've ever felt in my life. It didn't last, but it was a glimpse of the kind of safety I wish I'd felt more of as a child, and that I wish I could give to Ben.  It struck me this intense difference between refuge and escape.

Television, social media, dumb arguments in my mind, daydreams in which I am more important than I am in actual life, these are all escape. Refuge is a place to be safe and renew. It's a place that is genuinely empowering.

It also hit me last night, how desperate I am for approval. I pretend it's not important to me, but it haunts my ruminations constantly. Right now for instance I had a terror that I might not be able to write out of the new "self." Maybe my writing wouldn't be as good coming from this silent energy.  What I was really anxious about was whether or not my writing would be impressive. Elegant.  All the things that are about approval, and not really about love of language.

In fact the space that this other self creates between thoughts, between words, between insights, will inevitably make my writing better.

I know this. So I choose it.