Top insights of 2021

1. The most difficult emotions contain the seed of deep compassion.  I discovered this in a self-directed retreat, and later in retreat with Mingyur Rinpoche.  In fact, if I really have the courage to sit with self hatred, it starts to move around become three dimensional, reflect the space around and inevitably becomes joy.  Joy on tap. 

We are of the universe and the universe is always well, even if every part of it is dying.

2. Emotional understanding requires repetition, says Tsoknyi Rinpoche

...repeating a teaching is not just for your conceptual mind. Once your conceptual mind understands, you think you understand. But that kind of understanding is not enough because repetition is for your mind's emotional understanding.

3. If emotions are predictions as Lisa Feldman Barrett convingly theorizes, then joy is the prediction of wellness.  Both relative and absolute.  

4. By this logic equanimity is the prediction of balance. 

5. Intentions are more stable than emotions. This helped me through the worst days of my father's death. 

6.  I was struck by the idea that gratitude is the cause of happiness not the effect. Feeling grateful for what is going to happen is a prediction feeling that is tied to intention. 

7.  I developed new words to describe my feelings: incrementum, the feeling of maintaining a small change that will in time create well being. Remomentum, restarting a habit that will restore well being. Being aware of these feelings is driving in second gear. Noticing they have become automatic is third gear. 

8. I had some peak meditation experience from fasting.  It's possible that  skillful fasting can contribute to longevity. 

9. Reading the last chapter of the Way of the Bodhisattva to my father before he died has created a bond with that text that will last for the rest of my life. 

 As long as space endures, and being are to be found, may I remain to drive away the sorrows of the world

10.  Confusion is responsible for my mistakes not "me." 

 

 

 

Intention part 3

 I am re-reading the first chapter of WOB to deepen my intention. I am struck by the attitude he takes towards this text. That it was something that he constructed to keep his own intention steady, that he never dreamed that it would be something for others.

And now it's this classic.  

I started this blog first with the intention of writing it for others, but now it has become something that has been the anchor in my own journey.  I struggle sometimes with the intention of this blog. Is it only for myself, is it meant for others?  It's been a wonderful tool in my own development and I will keep it up for that reason.  But whether it is useful for others does not feel like something within my power. 

For it to be useful to others maybe what it needs is the clarity of intention.  For this to be the expression of my bochichitta and to embody the energy that is engaging.  

My intention is to live in non-duality.  To move beyond the struggle.  To truly and deeply understand the value of just being. 

To just be my true self, to recognize that I don't need to change.  And then to change.

Intention pt. 2

Since I wrote my last post about the stability of intention, compared to emotions, my father died. 

I can remember so vividly how important that insight was during one of the most difficult weeks of my life.  The week I thought my father was getting better, until he turned so quickly for the worse.  In the end he had a more peaceful death than any of us could have hoped for.  I owe that, I believe, to my grounding in The Way of the Bodhisattva. 

And now as long as space endures,

As long as there are beings to be found, 

May I continue likewise to remain

To drive away the sorrows of the world. 

It has been my intention in the last three months, to tranform my grief into strength. I think I'm getting there.  But it's also ok to let that grief be.  Stability is a good goal, but it's not the objective.  That is balance and balance means having the equanimity to stay poised in difficult situation. 

To drive away the sorrows of the world, it's good to have a light. But it's essential also to be able to see in the dark. 

intentions are more stable than emotions

This truth has been transformative for me in the last week. 

I rest in the heartspace (am I really saying that?), but I don't search anymore for sensations, or even emotions as much. I rest in my intention to achieve enlightenment for all beings. The fruit of that intention is not a sensation, a mood, a hormonal shift, all those these things happen, it's ultimately a stillness, and enduring truth. 

It feels like emptiness, but it is as full as the cosmos is of stars. 

This is liberation. 

The body of a Bodhisattva

The body, used to practice sacred teachings,

Should not be harmed in meaningless pursuits.

By acting thus the wishes of all beings

Will swiftly and completely be attained.

-Shantideva 

I'm going to write a new chapter in my meditation journal on my experience learning and following The Way of the Bodhisattva. 

A large part of this, I know, will be renouncing activities that have been draining me of my spiritual energy.  Specifically internet streaming.   

                        

Self directed retreat 2021

Today's my birthday, and the gift that I've given myself this year is a week of adapted retreat, ending in a three day virtual retreat on The Wisdom of Emotions, led by Mingyur Rinpoche. 

This was not the kind of deep meditation retreat I've been doing since I went to Dhamma Sutta in 2018. This year, I've had to adapt it to the realities of my father dying and be available for the support, emotional and other that my mother and my brother needed.

The most important thing I learned on this retreat is there is a sea of distance between believing in basic goodness at an intellectual level and believing in it truly and intuitively. This is the whole purpose of meditation, to know deeply in our heart, throughout our body and beyond, that we are good. Only when we do, will we intuitively see the good in others. 

In my retreat of 2019, I had peak experiences, but I'm not sure I really saw the way out of the prison.  And in the end I went back to many of my bad habits, although I did maintain my meditation practice. 

In retreat of 2020, I moved down to the heart, and learned more about non-duality, but I'm not really sure that I understood then, or truly developed an understanding of  what it was to live from the heart. 

In one sense what had been missing from all of them is this simple practice of open awareness, which I let go of when I took the time to explore Theravada.  But taking this time to experience concentrative meditation has had its learning benefits. I know have a felt understanding between the difference of object oriented and subject oriented meditation. And from that, I now have the felt experience of non-conceptual awareness, which I started to really feel and understand in the Mingyur Rinpoche  teaching. 

But it was in my exploration of my self-hatred, this thought and feeling that has been dogging me for as long as I remember that I feel like I finally found the key. No amount of concentration, or theory, is going to change the reality that I still believe, and thus feel that there is a fundamental badness in me. That needs to change if the bell of my "hate myself" mantra is going to decrease in number and intensity.

Rinpoche teaches there are three levels of mind, the emotional, the conceptual and the habitual. This lines up nicely with Lisa Barrett's theory of emotions.  At the first level we have affect, the basic sensations. The conceptual mind sorts these into pleasant and unpleasant sensations and makes guesses and applies concept, words, labels to explain these sensations. The habitual mind makes them automatic so that we don't have to keep repeating the process. 

If we want to change our habitual feelings from negative to positive, then we have to go down, find those bad guesses, and labels, and then make those positive emotions habitual. 

Easier said than done. But Rinpoche believes that every habitual emotion, even the negative ones, contain the key to their transformation. Every sensation is a desire to be happy, or cease suffering. Our basic impulse is towards this state of joy and equanimity. We don't have to go in and re-label and conceive every emotion. We need to make intuitive this basic truth, that we are basically good and have access to a powerful transformative energy. 

Meditation both formal and informal makes this transformation happen. 

If I go back to my top insights of 2021, I remember the first one is that in knowing we don't have to change, we change. 

Acceptance of our own mind, and of the powerful synergy of all minds together is the thing we need to make habitual, if we are to be liberated. 

The Way of The Bodhisattva

This month I started a year long course that I expect to be transformational. 

I will be reading and reflecting on Shantideva's Way of The Bodhisattva, guided by Mingyur Rinpoche. I was struck right away by Shantideva's statement that he has written this book for himself, to strengthen his practice and had no thought to whether it would benefit others. And yet it has, helping countless spiritual devotees and leaders cultivate bodhichitta, the aspiration and practice of enlightenment. 

It is so challenging to aspire to enlightenment, but if we can't do it for ourselves, then how can we truly believe that it is possible for others? It is in that tenderness, that actual physical and neurological tenderness around the longing for liberation that bochichitta is awakened. 

The more I can be there, the more I can relax into the pain, the more I can root my concentration there, the more I will thrive in every way.  And the more strength and wisdom I will be able to bring to the enlightenment of others.