According to Mingyur Rinpoche in Joy of Living
Bliss is pure undiluted happiness. As it grows stronger it seems like everything is made of love.
Clarity is being able to see into reality. Everything makes sense.
Non-conceptuality is total open mindedness. No distinction between self and other.
These are the fruits of meditation
Tuesday, September 5, 2017
Sunday, August 27, 2017
The first drips of bodhicitta
Earlier this week I had a night of insomnia. Nothing I did could unclench my mind, it seemed. So somewhere around 2 a.m. I sat.
And I sat, and at some point, I had one of those transformative moments I seem to only have in these evenings of jittery desperation. It was as though my mind suddenly re-settled into my gut, and I found this forever loop of serotonin. I could feel the flow take center stage in my psyche.
Serotonin is known as the social neuromodulator. It accounts for feelings of well-being, but also feelings of power. Monkey studies show that alpha males have more of the stuff than beta males. Who knows whether serotonin makes you more powerful, or power unlocks the serotonin. But I know that in recent weeks I've become conscious that I have more of it in my belly. This may be the result of this month's intense retreat. It may be the increase in money and responsibility in my professional life. Or it may be the result of all the kombucha I've been drinking. I can't say. But I can feel a profound change.
This is I think, what might be meant by "Buddha Nature." That feeling that Mingyur Rinpoche describes as the feeling after a concerted effort. That feeling of competence, of success, or relief from whatever suffering was in the process of working. It's not quite enlightenment. That I don't believe I've attained until I've come closer to absolute bodhicitta, the insight that everyone is not the jumble of relative qualities that we project. That everyone is as perfect in each moment as a newborn baby. We see each other differently because of conditioning, not because of any true immutable reality.
For now, I'm still on the path of relative bodhicitta, trying to simply like more people more, and take more action towards being and feeling like a better person. The intriguing truth of bodhicitta is that if I could see everyone as equal, I wouldn't have to worry about status.
Wouldn't that free a rather large node of working memory!
And I sat, and at some point, I had one of those transformative moments I seem to only have in these evenings of jittery desperation. It was as though my mind suddenly re-settled into my gut, and I found this forever loop of serotonin. I could feel the flow take center stage in my psyche.
Serotonin is known as the social neuromodulator. It accounts for feelings of well-being, but also feelings of power. Monkey studies show that alpha males have more of the stuff than beta males. Who knows whether serotonin makes you more powerful, or power unlocks the serotonin. But I know that in recent weeks I've become conscious that I have more of it in my belly. This may be the result of this month's intense retreat. It may be the increase in money and responsibility in my professional life. Or it may be the result of all the kombucha I've been drinking. I can't say. But I can feel a profound change.
This is I think, what might be meant by "Buddha Nature." That feeling that Mingyur Rinpoche describes as the feeling after a concerted effort. That feeling of competence, of success, or relief from whatever suffering was in the process of working. It's not quite enlightenment. That I don't believe I've attained until I've come closer to absolute bodhicitta, the insight that everyone is not the jumble of relative qualities that we project. That everyone is as perfect in each moment as a newborn baby. We see each other differently because of conditioning, not because of any true immutable reality.
For now, I'm still on the path of relative bodhicitta, trying to simply like more people more, and take more action towards being and feeling like a better person. The intriguing truth of bodhicitta is that if I could see everyone as equal, I wouldn't have to worry about status.
Wouldn't that free a rather large node of working memory!
Sunday, August 20, 2017
Pith fear
In my meditation this morning I revisited one of the most groundbreaking insights of last weekend's retreat. At the pit of all my suffering is the fear that I won't get what I want. But if I rest calmly in that subtle knot of fear, I connect with the deepest reward of living, that complex loop and flow of neurotransmitters in the limbic area of my brain, serotonin, dopamine and neuropeptides.
This is the mechanism of the grasping. The reptilian brain fears that it won't get what it wants, the body responds with anxiety, the brain reaches for any of the multitude of options that exist in my current landscape. And the next thing you know I'm eating cake and watching Game of Thrones.
More and more my formal meditation is about reaching down into my gut, feeling the displeasure and restlessness that trigger this fear, and sitting with it until absolute well-being sets in. The serotonin starts to flow from the source, my limbic system starts to loosen up and soon I'm sitting in the bright clear pond of calm and pleasure.
Of course, then the fear sets in because my first thoughts are a) will I be able to make this feeling permanent b) if this feeling were to become permanent, would I lose the motivation to want anything? And the loop starts again. I rest in the fear as the object of meditation until absolute well being starts to flow back again.
Will this absolute well-being become more intuitive?
Are there any reasons why it wouldn't? Maybe the fear becomes deeper and more reactionary because I'm spending too much time trying to cram a lifetime of wellbeing into the painful hole of a life motivated more by depression.
Be diligent, but also, be patient.
This is the mechanism of the grasping. The reptilian brain fears that it won't get what it wants, the body responds with anxiety, the brain reaches for any of the multitude of options that exist in my current landscape. And the next thing you know I'm eating cake and watching Game of Thrones.
More and more my formal meditation is about reaching down into my gut, feeling the displeasure and restlessness that trigger this fear, and sitting with it until absolute well-being sets in. The serotonin starts to flow from the source, my limbic system starts to loosen up and soon I'm sitting in the bright clear pond of calm and pleasure.
Of course, then the fear sets in because my first thoughts are a) will I be able to make this feeling permanent b) if this feeling were to become permanent, would I lose the motivation to want anything? And the loop starts again. I rest in the fear as the object of meditation until absolute well being starts to flow back again.
Will this absolute well-being become more intuitive?
Are there any reasons why it wouldn't? Maybe the fear becomes deeper and more reactionary because I'm spending too much time trying to cram a lifetime of wellbeing into the painful hole of a life motivated more by depression.
Be diligent, but also, be patient.
Sunday, August 13, 2017
Construction Retreat
A couple of years ago, I started Joy of Level 3 with a meditation that felt literally groundbreaking. I forgot that the fire escape outside my window was being replaced, and ten minutes into my meditation I was meditating on jackhammers. Fortunately, my enthusiasm was such that by the end of my meditation it had become a blissful metaphor for a feeling of complete reconstruction and renewal.
I had a similar experience on this two day retreat, which I did while Ben was visiting his father in Israel. I forgot about the ongoing construction that is being done on the road outside my house. This is not jackhammers for half an hour. This is screechy old backhoes, scrapping metal and massive road digging. It was ceaseless and unpleasant, and I got through it with construction earplugs and white noise. But still, it felt like a very powerful metaphor for what was happening in this meditation. Nothing less than a complete rebuilding of the old and crappy roads in my mind, so that I can have a quicker and easier ride to absolute reality.
Mingyur Rinpoche defines AR as emptiness, a condition in which perceptions are intuitively recognized as an infinite and transitive flow of possible experiences. Most of my life is still spent in relative reality, "the sum of experiences arising from the mistaken idea that whatever you perceive is in and of itself real."
And so I live with this entrenched fear that I won't get what I want or need to have the happiness that I believe can only come from the things my society says will bring happiness. It's not that these societal values won't bring me pleasure or satisfaction, it's that because none of these things are inherently real, i.e. lasting, they can't be the basis of lasting happiness.
What lasts and what can only last is the flow presence, the flow of perception and also the emptiness and clarity in and around it. To recognize absolute well being more intuitively, I have to build a quicker, wider, better infrastructure.
Roads aren't built in a day, or two days. But I believe this weekend I have made a very good start. I have come away with a better understanding of the onion layers of reactivity. What I've been watching with calm abiding is not the pain, the thoughts, the feelings, but more importantly the mind's reactions to the pain, the thoughts the feelings. I am cultivating a bare awareness of bare awareness, hoping to catch the thoughts, feelings, sensations as they arise, and then once caught, do nothing much more than greet them with equanimity.
Hey nice to meet you, self-hatred that is really fear that I won't have what I want, even, especially absolute well-being! The more I recognize this fear, the more misguided it so obviously is. Absolute well-being isn't something you can have, hold, preserve. Absolute reality is a flow, an unfolding of events. The well-being is our ease with that flow. Self-hatred is a major pothole.
The emptiness I experience when my thoughts and fears and reactivity has settled down is wordless and indescribable. It has always bothered me that something wordless is something that can't be passed on. If you can't share it, what is the use of having it? But then I had the insight that this wordless experience is like my spiritual capital. The fruits are like the interest that grows from it. The fruits can be passed on. The joys and pleasure and transient things that I can enjoy more because I have the capital that is permanent, those I can pass on. The capital is something that I can inspire others to have. But I can't give it away. Everyone has to earn their own. Or better yet, everyone has to realize on their own that it is simply there for the taking. But I can't make them see it, take it, or have it.
I had a similar experience on this two day retreat, which I did while Ben was visiting his father in Israel. I forgot about the ongoing construction that is being done on the road outside my house. This is not jackhammers for half an hour. This is screechy old backhoes, scrapping metal and massive road digging. It was ceaseless and unpleasant, and I got through it with construction earplugs and white noise. But still, it felt like a very powerful metaphor for what was happening in this meditation. Nothing less than a complete rebuilding of the old and crappy roads in my mind, so that I can have a quicker and easier ride to absolute reality.
Mingyur Rinpoche defines AR as emptiness, a condition in which perceptions are intuitively recognized as an infinite and transitive flow of possible experiences. Most of my life is still spent in relative reality, "the sum of experiences arising from the mistaken idea that whatever you perceive is in and of itself real."
And so I live with this entrenched fear that I won't get what I want or need to have the happiness that I believe can only come from the things my society says will bring happiness. It's not that these societal values won't bring me pleasure or satisfaction, it's that because none of these things are inherently real, i.e. lasting, they can't be the basis of lasting happiness.
What lasts and what can only last is the flow presence, the flow of perception and also the emptiness and clarity in and around it. To recognize absolute well being more intuitively, I have to build a quicker, wider, better infrastructure.
Roads aren't built in a day, or two days. But I believe this weekend I have made a very good start. I have come away with a better understanding of the onion layers of reactivity. What I've been watching with calm abiding is not the pain, the thoughts, the feelings, but more importantly the mind's reactions to the pain, the thoughts the feelings. I am cultivating a bare awareness of bare awareness, hoping to catch the thoughts, feelings, sensations as they arise, and then once caught, do nothing much more than greet them with equanimity.
Hey nice to meet you, self-hatred that is really fear that I won't have what I want, even, especially absolute well-being! The more I recognize this fear, the more misguided it so obviously is. Absolute well-being isn't something you can have, hold, preserve. Absolute reality is a flow, an unfolding of events. The well-being is our ease with that flow. Self-hatred is a major pothole.
The emptiness I experience when my thoughts and fears and reactivity has settled down is wordless and indescribable. It has always bothered me that something wordless is something that can't be passed on. If you can't share it, what is the use of having it? But then I had the insight that this wordless experience is like my spiritual capital. The fruits are like the interest that grows from it. The fruits can be passed on. The joys and pleasure and transient things that I can enjoy more because I have the capital that is permanent, those I can pass on. The capital is something that I can inspire others to have. But I can't give it away. Everyone has to earn their own. Or better yet, everyone has to realize on their own that it is simply there for the taking. But I can't make them see it, take it, or have it.
Sunday, July 30, 2017
Definition of Happiness
"It's an experience of absolute well-being that radiates through all physical, emotional, and mental states--even that that might be ordinarily labeled as unpleasant."
I've been trying to convince my son, Ben, that there is such a thing as happiness. He has read Camus and believes that the rock is always going to be falling back on him.
So I started re-reading Joy of Living and came upon the above quote as something to work with in advancing my argument. It's a tricky and interesting quote because it's easy to misread it and think that happiness is the absolute well-being. In fact happiness is the experience of this state of peace. It's not being in a continuous state of blissful calm that constitutes happiness, it's the intuitive knowledge that this state is there.
Many people who meditate, myself included much of the time, have an intellectual, conceptual grasp of this ideas. Formal meditation, regular practice, is what makes it truly understood at the physical and emotional level.
But note, this definition also encompasses the unpleasant sensations. Happiness can actual radiate from and radiate through stress. This morning I read this really interesting article in the NYTimes on How To Be Better At Stress. The theory is that perceiving the stress response as something that makes you stronger, as part of a thriving body, makes people both physically and psychologically stronger.
My goal in the next month, and in the next year (birthday on Tuesday) is to work on having an intuitive of how deep abiding calm and stress can work together to make me stronger and healthier. The trick is to be able to experience both at the same time. To be able to thrive from the benefits of both.
I've been trying to convince my son, Ben, that there is such a thing as happiness. He has read Camus and believes that the rock is always going to be falling back on him.
So I started re-reading Joy of Living and came upon the above quote as something to work with in advancing my argument. It's a tricky and interesting quote because it's easy to misread it and think that happiness is the absolute well-being. In fact happiness is the experience of this state of peace. It's not being in a continuous state of blissful calm that constitutes happiness, it's the intuitive knowledge that this state is there.
Many people who meditate, myself included much of the time, have an intellectual, conceptual grasp of this ideas. Formal meditation, regular practice, is what makes it truly understood at the physical and emotional level.
But note, this definition also encompasses the unpleasant sensations. Happiness can actual radiate from and radiate through stress. This morning I read this really interesting article in the NYTimes on How To Be Better At Stress. The theory is that perceiving the stress response as something that makes you stronger, as part of a thriving body, makes people both physically and psychologically stronger.
My goal in the next month, and in the next year (birthday on Tuesday) is to work on having an intuitive of how deep abiding calm and stress can work together to make me stronger and healthier. The trick is to be able to experience both at the same time. To be able to thrive from the benefits of both.
Sunday, July 16, 2017
36 hours to joy
Good strong meditation this morning. I started when I woke up in the middle of the night with an overwhelming feeling of disappointment. I sat with it and let it decompose into its granular bits of pain and agitation, and then slowly I dissolved layers of pain and agitation in my body until I settled into my gut, finally feeling the freedom of a forever loop of calm and pleasure. The opposite of disappointment. A profound feeling of hope and true power and success.
It didn't last forever, or I'd be sitting there now on waves of peace. But I knew that it could.
Shinzen Young says that we really only need to penetrate unpleasant emotional patterns a "few dozen" time for them to be released permanently.
If that's true, why am I watching Netflix? I could be binge releasing unpleasant, unproductive patterns of feeling, coasting on true success, instead of watching one more disappointing season of House of Cards. Why do I self-sabotage? Or rather, since I don't really believe in "self" anymore, why do I sabotage these loops of calm and pleasure?
I suppose it's mostly because I keep forgetting that this choice exists.
If it is true that it would take me about 36 hours of work to release all this shittyness, and instead I'm putting in 10,000 hours of Netlflix, then my life has been on a sad trajectory. But if it's true that I'm 36 hours away from freedom, then there's a lot to rejoice about.
It didn't last forever, or I'd be sitting there now on waves of peace. But I knew that it could.
Shinzen Young says that we really only need to penetrate unpleasant emotional patterns a "few dozen" time for them to be released permanently.
If that's true, why am I watching Netflix? I could be binge releasing unpleasant, unproductive patterns of feeling, coasting on true success, instead of watching one more disappointing season of House of Cards. Why do I self-sabotage? Or rather, since I don't really believe in "self" anymore, why do I sabotage these loops of calm and pleasure?
I suppose it's mostly because I keep forgetting that this choice exists.
If it is true that it would take me about 36 hours of work to release all this shittyness, and instead I'm putting in 10,000 hours of Netlflix, then my life has been on a sad trajectory. But if it's true that I'm 36 hours away from freedom, then there's a lot to rejoice about.
Monday, July 3, 2017
Self, no-self
This week I’ve been thinking and reading about the self and about the idea of no-self.
Enlightenment, according to Shinzen Young is the paradigm shift where we see the no-self and never go back to believing in self again. He compares the shift to going from a tribe that believes that there’s a monster that eats the moon, to one that understands the solar eclipse. Enlightenment doesn’t mean that there isn’t darkness, it’s the understanding of the causes of the darkness.
The cause of much of the darkness in our lives is this attachment to self. I write those words and I feel a sudden despair that I will ever be able to write about Buddhism in any way that doesn’t sound dry and intellectual. What I want to convey is the sense that it is really living from this “self” that dulls the mind. The self is a flickering fire that is kept alive on the kindling of time, the slow burning past, the dry twigs of the future. It burns up so much energy. To live with non-self is to be a surfer on vast and powerful waves of abundant calm and pleasure.
That’s what my meditations on non-self have felt like this week. Like, I have a choice. I can live in this puny little sense of self. Or I can tap into this awesome power that’s always there for me. But there’s this life, as a mother, as a non-profit executive that pulls me away from my true ambition: to coast on waves of bliss.
The trick I suspect is to make intuitive that each of these paths is a manifestation of awareness. I’m not sure I would have been able to sustain any of these insights without a basic understanding of feedback loops that I got from programming, and that is what I want kids to know from a very young age, that they can build things--toys, bridges, selves--and then take them apart. That they can decompose problems and emotions down to the component parts of calm and agitation, pleasure and displeasure. That they don’t have to be caught up in all these manifestations from the past.
I can do both. I can be an executive of a flourishing non-profit and I can surf on the waves. The trick is to not get attached to the theory that I have to be one of these things.
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