the ABC WEB LOG

the Path of I

the American Buddhist Center — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 18:54:00 +0000

by Stephen Locke

I watched as my partner began pushing my buttons. - Again!
I reacted with anger. -Again!
"I hate you, you just love to push my buttons!"
"Well, maybe you, are to damn sensitive, why are your buttons so easy to push?"
"I hate myself when I get angry, It only empowers you "to move in for the kill".

"Get out. "
"You get out!"
"You get out! "
"Fine, I'm leaving."

I witness myself going to the park to meditate.
I witness my self sitting and breathing.
I remember there was an I who experienced my partner pushing my buttons.
I remember there was an I who experienced my rush of adrenaline.
I remember there was an I who experienced my anger.
I remember there was an I who experienced hating myself for getting angry.
I remember there was an I who experienced lashing out verbally.
I remember there was an I who experienced the escalation yelling "You get out!"
I remember there was an I who experienced the decision to leave.
I remember there was an I who experienced the decision to go to the park to meditate.

Sitting in meditation,
I notice there is an I who is a witness to these memories.

I notice there is an I who is a witness to my anger.
Behind that, I notice there is an I who is a witness to hating my anger.
Behind that, I notice there is an I who is a witness to judging my anger.
Behind that, I notice there is an I who is a witness to judging my judgement.

But then,

Behind that I, I notice an I willing to witness compassion for my anger.
Behind that I, I notice yet another I, who is willing to witness compassion for judging my anger.
Behind that I, I notice yet another I, who is willing to witness compassion for my hatred.

Behind that I, I notice yet another I, who is willing to witness the adrenaline rush leaving my body.
Behind that I, I notice still another I, who is willing to witness compassion for my partner.
Behind that I, I notice still another I, who is willing to witness dropping the entire story
of what happened.

Behind that I, I notice still another I, who is simply willing to witness the breath.

I then notice that the I has been there all along.

This omnipresent I was already in place prior to fighting
with my partner.

I notice this I was ready, willing, and able to witness the guts and grit
of a yelling match.

I notice this I was ready, willing, and able to give up the fight.

I notice this I was ready, willing, and able to witness meditation in the park.

I notice this I was ready, willing, and able to witness the story dropped and simple breathing.

I notice this omnipresent I, has no attachment to the story.

I notice this omnipresent I, has no attachment to the outcome.

I notice this omnipresent I follows me wherever I go.

I notice this omnipresent I is already waiting for me when I get there.

I notice this omnipresent I, has no attachment to anything that happens to me.

I realise this omnipresent I, is always present in any situation.

I realise this omnipresent I, would even follow me into a horrific car crash.

This omnipresent I, would be in the car crash waiting for me.

This omnipresent I, would willingly witness the experience of severe head trauma and a total loss of memory.

I realise this omnipresent I, would be perfectly willing to witness my confusion and the experience of being lost without, the
51 year old story of who I am.

I realise this omnipresent I, would be willing witness my confusion as I try to relearn the alphabet.

All of a sudden. I realise, this omnipresent I, has no attatchment to my memory.

This omnipresent I, is not the memory of who I am.

This omnipresent I, is pure emptiness, it has no fixed characteristics.

I realise this omnipresent I, could even be, the I in my partner.

I realise this omnipresent I, is not attatched to my form, therefore it would be
ready willing and able to witness my partners form.

I realise this omnipresent I, is identical to the I in my partner.

I realise this omnipresent I, is the I in my partner.

Me and my partner share the same I.

This I, is present throughout my being.

This I, is present throughout my partners being.

My body. My partnersbody. One I.

Wherever I look, inside myself, I see the I.

Whenever I bother to look, inside my partner, I see the I.

I see the I, willing to inhabit my self or my partner.

This is the path of I.

I can follow this path into the heart of any person.

This is the path of I.

The one pure and clear witness.

I am the I, who stands witness to all experiences in human form where ever that may be.

I am, the one pure and clear witness, who shatters the illusion of separation.

I am the twelve-year-old girl who throws herself into the ocean after being
raped by a sea pirate.

I am the sea-pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving,
as I rape my disowned self and shamefully throw her into the ocean.

Morning Dread

the American Buddhist Center — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 16:13:00 +0000

by Dawn Downey

The front door slammed behind me, echoing through the house. Home from the last day of third grade, I shouted for my mom. She didn’t answer. I ran upstairs to peek out my bedroom window. In the back yard, a half empty laundry basket lay on its side beneath the clothesline—pajamas strewn like corpses on the grass. I pressed my forehead against the screen and looked in all directions. The buckeye tree that we used for third base rustled in the hot breeze. When the front door opened, I expected to hear my brothers yell up the stairs. But the door closed softly. The dead bolt slid into place. A heavy footfall landed on the bottom step. Another followed. I held my breath. The fourth stair squeaked. Then silence. I crawled into the back of the closet and buried myself under a pile of dirty clothes. The floor outside my bedroom door creaked once, then again. And I woke up.

I always woke up at that point. Familiar surroundings came into focus and the fear receded. Until the next night. When I was in grade school, I dreaded going to sleep.

Now I dread waking up. As soon as the eyes open in the morning, while the mind is calm, I notice a barely discernable, yet unmistakable, disquiet in the belly. Dread.

I lay motionless to examine it. The slightest twitch of a finger troubles its still dark waters. As I watch it, I have the oddest feeling that it’s staring back.

It differs from other fears that call on me.

Depression visited in my twenties, after a traumatic breakup. My mother described reaching out for me through that despair, as talking to someone at the other end of a tunnel. Fear locked me away from lunch dates, job interviews and family gatherings. A therapist was the only person I hazarded a relationship with.

Morning dread does not imprison me. It’s a feral cat stalking the edge of a dark road.

Stage fright calls when I speak in front of a group. Knees quiver. Nerves jump. Acid stomach rages. Two days before the event, I accuse the reflection in the mirror. Well, here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten us into. One-day prior, I consider calling in sick because, really, I am. I spend the final hours in the bathroom or racing for the bathroom.

Morning Dread has no jumping nerves, or flopping stomach. No signs of life at all. It’s the dead air left in the wake of a lover’s abrupt exit.

Height phobia accompanied a visit to a roadside oddity. Before it was retired, Big Brutus, an 11 million pound, sixteen-story shovel, had excavated coal by scooping up house-sized chunks of earth. I climbed four stories of narrow metal stairs along the outside of the behemoth to explore its cavernous engine room. Preparing for the return trip to the ground, I poked my head out of the door I’d entered. On realizing how high up I was, I gasped and prepared to spend the rest of my life inside Big Brutus. Since a backwards climb was the only way down, I stuck my foot out behind me. It dangled above the ground searching for the top step. I felt I was on the edge of a roof, taking one step backwards into thin air.

Unlike Big Brutus, morning dread doesn’t panic me into immobility. She’s a black widow, seducing me across her web.

I discovered omniscient fear while on retreat in West Virginia. Each day, I walked the forest road that ran in front of the monastery grounds. I turned right at the end of the driveway. Then realized I’d grown afraid to turn left. When a dog barked three houses down an intersecting street, I retreated and went in the opposite direction. The walk ended each day at the same sharp curve in the mountain highway, because I was afraid to go around the bend.

But morning dread is not afraid to turn this way or that. There is no turning. It only sits, as still and dark as four a.m.

Its silence leaves questions unanswered. Who is creeping up the stairs for me? A stranger lumbering ever closer with fist clenched? A trusted loved one about to crash through the bedroom door to ravage my innocent heart? Or those faceless triplets -hunger, poverty and failure? Trapped in the nightmare, I hunker down inside the closet of my imagined safety—unable to claim my real life.

But morning dread fears no particular monster. It appears before I’m afraid to starve or fail. Even before I’m afraid to love, there is simply afraid. Morning dread reveals itself as this primordial ooze from which the first I-thought springs. Without it, there can be no I.

Afraid transforms a budding ego into a verdant garden, where manicured pathways meander through fragrant preferences. Juicy decisions sweeten on the vine and colorful opinions bloom in the sun. All maintained with backbreaking labor. If I rest, it all returns to its natural state.

If I stop tilling my thoughts, I rest in awareness, my natural state. I am the pure awareness that enfolds everything, including morning dread. Released from the mind’s limitations, I am infinite—awareness watching itself. In my natural state, my true feelings flourish. I call them compassion, joy, and peace. My authentic spirit blossoms. I call it innocence. My real life flourishes. I call it freedom.

Who would have thought this drama fun

the American Buddhist Center — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 19:47:00 +0000

by Fattah

I wrote a letter to The New York Times a couple of weeks ago. It was about the Iraq war and how we have totally trashed that country and now don’t know what to do. I find myself reacting to the war a lot. Any of us who remember Vietnam can see the parallels all too clearly: the country turning against a war that was ill-conceived from the start, the lack of action by the politicians in Washington to end the conflict, the patriots who believe we cannot accept defeat even though our strategy has failed to solve anything, the soldiers of the country we are occupying who can’t seem to take over their own defense, the population of the occupied country who are suffering so horribly in the situation. We are mired in another guerrilla war where we don’t know who is friend or foe, and we don’t know how to end it.

Unfortunately, war is the very nature of this world. From the time we first rose out of the muck, we have been fighting over turf and privilege and killing each other over who gets what. We see what we want and we don’t want to talk about it. We want to take it, even if it doesn’t belong to us.

For all our great learning and professed high ideals we see, we want, we take, and this primitive equation is the basis of most of the conflicts in the world. Those in power might try to make us believe that we are fighting for higher motives like saving the world from communism in Vietnam, or establishing democracy in the middle East, or protecting ourselves from terrorism – but at the heart of it we are fighting for what we want now or being able to get it in the future.

This is also true of the inner war we are all fighting. We see, we want, we get plays out over and over again in our daily lives. It’s a lot more complicated now than it was it ancient times. It’s no longer just food and shelter, but all the imaginings that advertising in our pop culture can stimulate. Can we get the richest, best tasting food, highly fashionable clothes, the most powerful and luxurious car, a large, comfortable home. We are told by some that these accoutrements are our birthright and if we can focus our will on having them we will get them. Are we willing to fight to make it happen? Certainly, although it will lead us into a struggle without end. What we get will never be enough. That’s what the millionaires and billionaires will tell you –it’s not enough. There will always be something more we want.

There is another type of inner war we are fighting. This is the war to make the world be the way we want it to be. This goes beyond our basic needs and desires. It is generated by both the way we view the world and how we would like it to be. We are great dreamers living in a world that is impermanent, unsatisfactory, and selfless. We try to deny these characteristics and believe that we can somehow avoid their harsh reality.

What usually occurs is that we delude ourselves until the realities of sickness, disease and death intrude in our daily lives to give us a wakeup call. We have not come into this world for self gratification or fulfillment. We have come here to see through the illusions of this life. Only that will end our suffering.

Part of this dream we are in is that if we can cling to the material part of this world it will give us more permanence. People like to accumulate a lot of stuff. We are always buying more or better furnishings, clothes, entertainment media, gadgets, automobiles. Stuff lasts a long time. Eventually our homes get full, and we have to rent storage space to accommodate more. This trend has created a huge boom in the rental storage space industry. We are storing more than we can ever hope to use, but we keep shopping. So shopping becomes a primal urge. It is so reassuring, so affirming of our presence in this world. If I have all this stuff, I have to be around to use it.

We can also cling by affirming our physical presence. We can take care of our body with exercise and diet. If we can stay fit, aging can be forestalled. Use the right moisturizers, some wrinkle cream, dye our hair to get rid of the gray, maybe a little plastic surgery, and we can continue to look young.

I try to stay young with exercise. I tell myself that if I can just continue my high quality workouts I won’t have to worry about aging. It seemed to work for me when I was in my thirties and forties but it’s no longer working for me in my fifties. Aging and disease have caught up with me. We can deny it for a long time, but eventually we start to wear out. We tire more easily, and when we get injured, it’s harder and harder to recover. The impermanence of the physical presents itself.

We cling to this life for three reasons. First there is the survival instinct that is so deeply ingrained in the primitive part of our brain. It’s fight or flight, and in emergencies it will take over and short circuit all our thinking. It’s a powerful, protective mechanism that soldiers often experience on the battlefield. They do things that they would never normally even consider doing to stay alive. After the episode, they look back and cannot deal with what they have done instinctually, in deep terror.

Many soldiers coming back from Iraq have experienced this. It’s called PTSD, post traumatic stress disorder. They react from the primitive centers and then, later on, when they think about it, they are horrified at what they did. They feel guilty and become tortured and obsessed by the memories. They cannot accept what they, in great fear, instinctually did.

We cling to this life because we are all addicted to experiencing it. We believe that our random thoughts give us our life, but most of our life is produced by the chemicals of the lower centers of the brain and the brain stem. However good or bad the quality of our life, we are accustomed to feeling these chemicals in our bloodstream. They are produced in response to the stimulation of our daily living. Even those who we consider to have totally miserable lives for the most part, want to continue experiencing their existence in the way they always have.
Which substances we crave are established by the environment we were raised in, but we all want them. We have some ability to change what type of the chemicals we want, but part of the basic nature of our organism is to crave them. That is one reason that people who are deprived of outer stimulation tend to lose the will to live. No stimulation, less chemicals, less connection with life.

It’s interesting that this type of sensory deprivation is similar to some of the spiritual practices we do. No wonder people experience such a struggle with meditation, when we are so accustomed to our normal fix of these substances.

We also cling to this life because of the attachments we have to others. The thought of leaving those we are close to, especially on a permanent basis, is extremely hard to deal with. This goes beyond the physical world. When we care about people we take them into our hearts and they become part of us. We are tied to those we love in good and bad ways. The unseen bonds that give us support, allow us to be intimate, and unite us can also limit our growth and help keep us stuck in delusion.

The world’s unsatisfactory nature is also difficult to accept. We believe if we can gratify ourselves enough the world will seem better and we will be happier. I enjoy therefore I am happy. To some extent this works. My mother was an adherent of this theory. One of her favorite quotes was by Robert Louis Stevenson:

“The world is full of a number of things
I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.”

Unfortunately, if we’re always distracting ourselves with the pleasant, we miss the message living would bring to us, that life is unsatisfactory because we are living in illusion. This is the impetus we need to grow, to look beyond the life of the senses for true freedom. It’s like the Greek myth of (Sissy-fus) Sisyphus rolling the boulder up the hill only to have it fall back down before it reaches the top. We are always shaken out of our pleasant routines by life’s harsh necessity. We can never escape life’s unsatisfactory nature by pursuing gratification in the world.

Selflessness is probably the most difficult of the three to accept. We dream we are the doer and can’t even imagine an alternative. It’s inconceivable. In the West, we cultivate a strong ego so we will feel secure and dominate. I am great and in control of my life. We see that in those with a developed sense of self who accomplish great things in life. All the people we envy and choose to emulate, with very few exceptions, are those who are rich and powerful.

This is a great enigma, for at some level the ego knows itself to be a masquerader and is putting up a front to protect itself, protecting the illusion that we are independent individuals. The ego fears that it will be found out and will go to any extreme to avoid being unmasked.

We truly treasure this sense of self. This is who I am, even if our sense of self comes from negative beliefs. This is me. And we have deep suspicions that death will be the end of what I recognize as me. That’s why the idea of heaven or an afterlife is so appealing. Every religion has some particular idea of an afterlife or rebirth after death. Organized religion actually bolsters this sense of self in many ways. One of the most powerful is by claiming control of what will happen to us when we die. We want this self to continue on after our existence in the body ceases. We desperately want it to be true. And we want our loved ones to be there too, to meet us in the afterlife – even our pets. This is a perfect example of the great attachment we have to this ego. Generally, where there is great attachment there is great delusion.

Where are you fighting against the nature of life? Is it the impermanence? Most of us have difficulty when friends, relatives, or treasured pet die. My father experienced this. When my mother passed quite suddenly, he couldn’t accept it. He raged against the loss, and eventually ended up blaming God for taking her away. It was hard for him to grieve and let go, so he stayed angry for a long time. The only way he could try to hang onto her was to be mad.

I fight against the impermanence of life in my struggle with this body. It’s seems like I’m having to do more and more to maintain it and there is always something new coming up to be taken care of. I took my good health for granted. Most of us do.

Do you fight against the unsatisfactory nature of existence? We are trapped when we are caught up in seeking the pleasant and avoiding the unpleasant. “The painted ponies go up and down.” It’s a vicious cycle, and as we get older the equation changes, and there is more of the unpleasant to deal with.

Life is hard to accept. It will never be the way we want it to be. That’s where the dukka – suffering – comes in. We are always thinking life should be other than it is. We also think it will get better if we just keep doing the same things we have always done to cope with it.

For many years I thought if I could just get enough drama in my life I would be happy. I had great skills at creating situations in which I felt misunderstood and rejected. I have enough awareness now that I don’t get so caught up in the alienation but I still produce it. And I still have trouble feeling acceptance and appreciation from other people. I can see my strategy is not working but I keep using it.

At least now I can recognize being stuck in my old patterns. Sometimes I can choose a different approach. But it’s not really a matter of me choosing. It seems like the awareness does the choosing so it’s not an act of my will. It just naturally follows from the seeing.

Are you fighting with the past, not accepting your limited self, constantly frustrated with who you want to be, and not becoming more aware of the greater non-individual self with a capital S? We are so hard on ourselves. We want so badly to be fixed, to be perfectly adjusted to life. But we ain’t broke. We just need more awareness: awareness of the true nature of life, awareness of who we believe ourselves to be, awareness of the limitation of our outlook, and finally, awareness of the greater Self. We don’t know who we really are, we just know what we’ve been through. It’s true, there really is no you.

May we all come to this realization and share it with the world.
May all beings come to awakening, not one left behind.

Amein

Drama-holics Anonymous

the American Buddhist Center — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 19:14:00 +0000

by Dawn Downey

I’m a drama-holic. I want to stop the drama, but I’m powerless.
I blame it on all that neuro-peptide-pathway-connector stuff. Somebody told me about the great time they had at a party that I hadn’t been invited to. That make me feel left out and it fired the hey-what-about-me connection, which then gave my brain a shot of the I-knew-it-nobody-likes-me chemical. I got the water bill in the mail and it was twice as high as usual. That made me feel stressed, which fired the I-hate-opening-the-mail connection, which then gave my brain a taste of the I’ll-never-have-enough-money chemical. When similar circumstances re-occur, connections are strengthened, assuring a constant buffet of delicious chemicals. It’s a non-stop dessert cart for my brain.
And I have a powerful sweet tooth. I’m addicted to drama.
The biggest drama in my life has been playing out for half a century. It’s a conflict between failure and success. I tend to stick with an activity only until I start to get really good at it. I feel successful. Then I quit. Quitting is key because it maintains the sense of inadequacy that has underscored my entire life. Quitting sustains the drama of self-criticism. It gives my brain a hot fudge sundae.
For the several years that I’ve been taking yoga, I have fought the urge to quit. But I’ve stuck with it, and the body’s become stronger and more flexible. I’ve slowly advanced from beginner to level 2. I was feeling successful. But the addiction to the drama of inadequacy had to be fed. If the drama ends, there’s no desert.
So, out of the blue, I injured my knee. I missed yoga for three weeks. I returned to class. Two months after the knee healed, I broke my wrist, which kept me from class for six months. When I returned, muscles had atrophied, joints had stiffened and I wasn’t quite good enough anymore. Things were back to normal. And my brain got a seven-layer chocolate torte off the desert cart.
I’m also starring in a costume drama. I bought a pair of shorts three years ago. Two years ago, the top button stopped closing. I keep the shorts because the fact that they used to fit assures me of ongoing theater. With healthy eating and regular exercise, the button closes. Then old familiar eating habits return. Button won’t close. This play has been in production for two years.
Last week, I put the shorts on and low and behold, I butoned them without even thinking about it. I didn’t even notice it until midway through my morning walk. I was excited. I congratulated myself. I spent a whole day of wearing those shorts, proud that I’d achieved my goal.
But the day after button success, I felt edgy. Life was out of whack. I craved something that would get it back in balance. When the urge to grab a handful of chips hit me, I forgot to just watch the urge come and go. When the urge to buy a package of Mint Milanos hit in the grocery store, I forgot to just watch that urge rise and fall. When the urge to have a brownie at a party hit me, I forgot to watch that urge, too.
After those shorts fit, I dove headfirst into an entire three-pound bag of tortilla chips, a whole package of Mint Milanos and – multiple brownies. A couple of days later, the top button missed by a mile. The shorts drama was back. I felt bad, I felt self-critical. But the brain got its chemical fix- a hot fudge sundae from the desert cart.
The drama addiction is insidious because the story lines can be microscopic. My latest attempt to psyche myself into dailly exercise was to tell myself that it’s just like brushing my teeth. No big deal. Just another way of taking care of the body. The body requires maintenance, and the older it gets, the more maintenance it requires.
But even this innocuous idea of taking care of the body creates a goal that I have to work towards. Daily exercise is the goal. On any morning when I resist, there’s a little conflict. It’s resolved when I remember the words “oh yeah, no big deal, just like toothbrushing.” It’s only a 25-second drama, but it nets my brain one chocolate chip cookie off the desert cart.
If you think you’re free of the need for drama, take a look at your intimate relationships. Addictions flourish there like mosquitos in standing water. But go easy on yourself. Start with the little things – the things your partner does that you have no logical reason for disliking, but you want to change anyway.
There’s that irresistible urge to squeeze the toothpaste tube the way you want it squeezed, and to turn the toilet paper roll back in the direction that you want it. After all, that’s the right way, isn’t it? If you’re having the same little conflict every day, it might be time for Drama-holics Anonymous.
Wanting things to be different than the way they are is the seed of drama. I want to feel adquate when I feel inadequate. I want to be better at yoga than I am right now. I want the button to close when it won’t. I don’t want it to close when it does. And it’s not enough for me that I do my regular walk, I want to want to do it. Addiction to drama comes in all sizes, invades every crook and cranny of my life and is often impossible to discern.
Well, thank goodness I don’t have to cure it. Because the desire to cure my addictions sets up another conflict with myself. I’d better cure myself. I’ll be a bad person if I continue these addictive patterns. I’ll be a spiritual failure if I don’t rise above my desires. If I don’t live up to that standard, I’ve got conflict, which is essential for any good story.
You don’t have to cure or heal or change anything. Just see everything. Awareness itself burns craving into a harmless pile of ash. Watch everything, without doing anything about what you see. See everything about yourself without explaining, understanding, analyzing, criticising, approving or disapproving. And if you don’t see anything at all, watch the reaction to that. You will see that the reactions, and the urge to react, will vanish. That leads to a more peaceful life, especially at home.
But there’s a hidden danger in watchfulness. The more I watch myself dispassionately, the less I know about what I see. The more I watch, the harder it is to pin me down and prove that I exist somewhere. I think I need to feel like a failure, but everytime I enjoy a success, I can’t find myself inside that description. I define myself as resistant to exercise. But on every day that I do it eagerly, I can’t find me inside that definition anymore. I think I’m a drama addict, but when I watch them, the addictions come and go. I can’t even place myself inside that description anymore.
I’m left with a paradox. It seems useful to uncover your addictions. It seems skillful to watch them rise and fall. But if you do, you might see yourself disappear.

Dog Parables (working on our blindspots)

the American Buddhist Center — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 19:01:00 +0000

Cesar Milan

by Jim McGraw

A 21st Century Parable, maybe…..
A number of years ago I was having an appointment with a person at my job. About half-way through our conversation, this thought emerged in my mind; “whoa, this person smells like dog poop”. Naturally, I didn’t say anything to the individual, and was able to let this observation pass as we proceeded to focus on the issues at hand. The next hour I had another appointment with different person. In a similar fashion, through the course of our conversation I became aware that this person smelled exactly the same way. Again, I said nothing to the person, but I had more internal dialog since this happened twice in a row. I thought to myself, ‘how amazing, what are the odds that this could happen twice in a row, I truly live in a world of wonders, I can’t wait to tell someone about this, blah, blah, blah…’ (parenthetically, of course by now some of you are anticipating the punchline, that I was oblivious to at the time). Back to my story…so I had finished up with that appointment and went on with the rest of my day. Later that afternoon I had a meeting with my co-workers. Through the course of the meeting, I pushed myself back from the conference table to stretch. I also crossed my legs, putting my right foot on top of my left knee in a type of lazy half-lotus position. Instantly the smell of dog poop returned, and I discovered much to my surprise that I had a fairly huge amount of Golden Retriever on the bottom of my right shoe. Even though I’m a bit slow on the uptake at times, the pieces began to fall into place. That morning I had walked through our backyard which our dog, Cara, uses as her master bathroom. More importantly, I unknowingly left the backyard with secret gift from our dog and went straight to work. In retrospect, it became apparent that I had been the source of the mystery aroma all day even though I automatically assumed it was someone else.

Of course the moral to this story is fairly clear. I tend to see in others what are actually my problems. This crude example of dog poop on my shoe is very basic and easy to admit. It is more difficult for me to admit that the very people that push my buttons are the ones that touch some disowned aspect of myself. There are many names for this process; our baggage, our triggers, or the projection our Shadow side. It is easier to react to our weaknesses as seen in others, as opposed to revealing our blindspots and acknowledging our own shortcomings. Who is he culprit at the bottom of this process? Our ego; our little self that attempts to prop-up the facade of our public persona. A quote by Anais Nin captures this process eloquently “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are”.

Some people assert that a clue to our projections are our emotional reactions that are out of proportion to the situation (e.g., anger, envy, revulsion). I think some well-know political figures exemplify how others can elicit rage in people. For example, some people not only disagree with George, or Hillary, or Barach or Al Gore, but they have an intense visceral reaction to the person; perhaps this is evidence of these individuals touching something in us that we perceive as unacceptable or unrefined.

The process of projection seems very common in we unenlightened folk. Little things about other people drive us crazy and we find ourselves trapped in repetitive responses. For me, I have to admit that one of my issues get triggered when my spouse or daughter misplace something. When this happens it particularly irks me, and I’m sure it’s due to the fact that I lose stuff quite frequently. Another trigger for me is when someone is talking and they attempt to give the pretense that they know what they are talking about even though it appears highly questionable; naturally this pushes my buttons because I’m doing the very same thing myself this very moment. And now back to you. Think of a characteristic in others that pushes your buttons, perhaps something small that you encounter frequently. Also, reflect upon your common reactions; frustration, ill will toward the person, indignation, gossiping behaviors? Lastly, consider how this may be a repetitive pattern, in that this behavior in others and your reactions elicit the same suffering time after time. Buddhist thought recognizes this tendency in humans, and offers us methods to alter the pattern. A short passage, attributed to the historical Buddha himself, provides a vivid image of this process. Coincidentally, he also uses a dog in his message:

“Suppose, monks, a dog tied up on a leash was bound to a strong post or pillar: it would just keep on running and revolving around that same post or pillar. So too, the uninstructed worldling regards form as self… feeling as self… perception as self… volitional formations as self… consciousness as self… He just keeps running and revolving around them, his is not freed from form, not freed from feeling, not freed from perception, not freed from volitional formation, not freed from consciousness. He is not freed from birth, aging, and death; not freed from sorrow, lamentation, pain, dejection, and despair; not freed from suffering I say.” (In the Buddha’s Words by Bhikkhu Bodhi, 2005, p. 39-40) This quote is from the book, In the Buddha’s Words by Bhikkhu Bodhi. A quick aside about the style and phrasing of this passage. The editor Bhikkuh Bodhi notes that the words of Siddhartha Gotama were not written down for a long time, therefore his teachings were memorized by monks so they could be passed-on verbally. For that reason, he explains that much of the repetitive style of the passages are due to the nature of the oral transmission of the teachings.

Back to content of this message from the Buddha. At times we are the dog getting tangled-up in our thoughts about self; the mental formations of what we identify with as self, and the things we don’t accept or admit about ourselves but project onto others. And so we spin around the pole again and again, and we like to blame the pole, even though it is our own running that is the real problem. So now, let’s be Buddha-nature dogs and stop our unconscious running, pause, and do something different. Buddhism offers numerous practices, including things that fall under the Noble Eightfold Steps of Right View and Right Effort, that help us liberate ourselves from these negative, habitual reactions. I’ll begin by using myself as an example:

When my spouse or daughter misplace something, I can be consciously aware that this is an old trigger of mine that reminds me of my periodic spaceyness. When my associated feelings of frustration and anger emerge, I can choose to be conscious of my own feelings and even state something to myself silently (“hello petty frustration, I see you are back”).
Breathe and try to remain mindful of the feeling, practicing one of the four foundations of mindfulness- being aware of the feeling in the feeling. At this point it is very important to use Right Effort to take my awareness away from the person who has triggered this response , and keep the focus on me and my feelings, internal formations, and projections. Throughout this time I attempt to breath mindfully and simply observe the rising and passing of my reaction with non-judgmental awareness.
When the time is right, that is, when I am sufficiently calm and collected, I try to use discerning wisdom to uncover the roots of my reaction. Perhaps I’m mad when my daughter loses a book in the house because every morning I have difficulty finding my shoes. Maybe I should do something different, maybe I should ask our dog for help.
4) Lastly, as the event ends, I can reflect on how this experience was different. I got less frustrated with my daughter and didn’t get our morning off to a rough start. Also, I was able to laugh at myself and accept my disorganization while trying to work on it. I also recognize that life will offer me many more opportunities to develop this unevolved aspect of myself.

These steps are not new. They are simply the compilation of well-known Buddhist practices including awareness, breathing, mindfulness, and looking deeply. The core idea revolves around Right View- remembering that we create our strong emotional reactions by our own thoughts.

Now I invite you to do a mental rehearsal for an actual event that commonly pushes your buttons. Please recall the person and characteristic that triggers a strong reaction in you and let’s go through these same steps while you visualize yourself creating new, more skillful patterns:

Become consciously aware that this person’s behavior is a trigger for you and represents an area of potential growth for yourself. .Heighten your awareness of your feelings and reactions that arise in this situation. Please state something to silently to yourself to identify the feelings or reactions, such as “hello frustration…, envy, disgust….pride,….. I see you are back”.
Breathe and try to remain mindful of the feeling, practicing one of the four foundations of mindfulness-being aware of the feeling in the feeling. Where do you feel it in your body? Use Right Effort to take your awareness away from the person who has triggered this response , and keep the light of awareness on yourself and your feelings, internal formations, and projections.
Please stay with your reactions in a calm way, using your breathing meditation skills to calm yourself and practice calm abiding. Simply observe your feelings using non-judgmental awareness.
When the time is right, use discerning wisdom to uncover the roots of your reactions. Perhaps this person reminds you of something in yourself; what is it? Perhaps this person is a Buddha in disguise, and is giving you a precious lesson that you can not receive in any other way? Reflect on how this interaction was different. Maybe you got less tangled-up in the leash of your own projections and mental formations. Maybe you were even able to detach yourself from this little round of suffering by laughing at the folly of your little self.

Since you have done a quick visualization of this interaction, I encourage you to seek out the person and situation you just visualized within the next couple of weeks and experiment with the practice in real life. Think how intentionally encountering this situation and engaging in a different response will transform the quality of your experience. The author Rollo May speaks to this when he asserts “All evil is potential vitality in need of transformation”. Clearly, there is a lot of energy tied-up in our strong emotional reactions; what Rollo May refers to as evil. Unfortunately, this vitality is misused or even destructive if we manifest ill will toward those people that mirror disowned aspects of ourselves. Conversely, we can choose to transform this energy into insight, compassion and constructive action.

Some of you have already been doing this. Last week, Fattah spoke of some of his reactions he has to a well known political leader. In his talk, Fattah acknowledged how his own issues that were triggered by this person. At the same time, Fattah modeled Engaged Buddhism by sending an editorial comment to the New York Times regarding his opinions regarding this leader’s actions.

As we wind-down on today’s talk, please reflect on the meaning you derive from these stories. For me there are a couple of main points:

The first- a reminder that other people, especially people that push our buttons, can be our best teachers because they reveal areas for improvement in ourselves. In short, life is therapeutic if we chose to respond to these lessons skillfully, and Buddhism gives us very specific practices in order to do this.

The second point- In response to the famous Zen Koan- Does a dog have the Buddha nature?- I think the answer is clear, and, it probably also applies to cats.

And the third point- A mundane reminder to always check the bottom of our shoes before we go to work.

Morning Dread

the American Buddhist Center — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 18:33:00 +0000

by Dawn Downey

The front door slammed behind me, echoing through the house. Home from the last day of third grade, I shouted for my mom. She didn’t answer. I ran upstairs to peek out my bedroom window. In the back yard, a half empty laundry basket lay on its side beneath the clothesline—pajamas strewn like corpses on the grass. I pressed my forehead against the screen and looked in all directions. The buckeye tree that we used for third base rustled in the hot breeze. When the front door opened, I expected to hear my brothers yell up the stairs. But the door closed softly. The dead bolt slid into place. A heavy footfall landed on the bottom step. Another followed. I held my breath. The fourth stair squeaked. Then silence. I crawled into the back of the closet and buried myself under a pile of dirty clothes. The floor outside my bedroom door creaked once, then again. And I woke up.
I always woke up at that point. Familiar surroundings came into focus and the fear receded. Until the next night. When I was in grade school, I dreaded going to sleep.
Now I dread waking up. As soon as the eyes open in the morning, while the mind is calm, I notice a barely discernable, yet unmistakable, disquiet in the belly. Dread.
I lay motionless to examine it. The slightest twitch of a finger troubles its still dark waters. As I watch it, I have the oddest feeling that it’s staring back.
It differs from other fears that call on me.
Depression visited in my twenties, after a traumatic breakup. My mother described reaching out for me through that despair, as talking to someone at the other end of a tunnel. Fear locked me away from lunch dates, job interviews and family gatherings. A therapist was the only person I hazarded a relationship with.
Morning dread does not imprison me. It’s a feral cat stalking the edge of a dark road.
Stage fright calls when I speak in front of a group. Knees quiver. Nerves jump. Acid stomach rages. Two days before the event, I accuse the reflection in the mirror. Well, here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten us into. One-day prior, I consider calling in sick because, really, I am. I spend the final hours in the bathroom or racing for the bathroom.
Morning Dread has no jumping nerves, or flopping stomach. No signs of life at all. It’s the dead air left in the wake of a lover’s abrupt exit.
Height phobia accompanied a visit to a roadside oddity. Before it was retired, Big Brutus, an 11 million pound, sixteen-story shovel, had excavated coal by scooping up house-sized chunks of earth. I climbed four stories of narrow metal stairs along the outside of the behemoth to explore its cavernous engine room. Preparing for the return trip to the ground, I poked my head out of the door I’d entered. On realizing how high up I was, I gasped and prepared to spend the rest of my life inside Big Brutus. Since a backwards climb was the only way down, I stuck my foot out behind me. It dangled above the ground searching for the top step. I felt I was on the edge of a roof, taking one step backwards into thin air.
Unlike Big Brutus, morning dread doesn’t panic me into immobility. She’s a black widow, seducing me across her web.
I discovered omniscient fear while on retreat in West Virginia. Each day, I walked the forest road that ran in front of the monastery grounds. I turned right at the end of the driveway. Then realized I’d grown afraid to turn left. When a dog barked three houses down an intersecting street, I retreated and went in the opposite direction. The walk ended each day at the same sharp curve in the mountain highway, because I was afraid to go around the bend.
But morning dread is not afraid to turn this way or that. There is no turning. It only sits, as still and dark as four a.m.
Its silence leaves questions unanswered. Who is creeping up the stairs for me? A stranger lumbering ever closer with fist clenched? A trusted loved one about to crash through the bedroom door to ravage my innocent heart? Or those faceless triplets -hunger, poverty and failure? Trapped in the nightmare, I hunker down inside the closet of my imagined safety—unable to claim my real life.
But morning dread fears no particular monster. It appears before I’m afraid to starve or fail. Even before I’m afraid to love, there is simply afraid. Morning dread reveals itself as this primordial ooze from which the first I-thought springs. Without it, there can be no I.
Afraid transforms a budding ego into a verdant garden, where manicured pathways meander through fragrant preferences. Juicy decisions sweeten on the vine and colorful opinions bloom in the sun. All maintained with backbreaking labor. If I rest, it all returns to its natural state.
If I stop tilling my thoughts, I rest in awareness, my natural state. I am the pure awareness that enfolds everything, including morning dread. Released from the mind’s limitations, I am infinite—awareness watching itself. In my natural state, my true feelings flourish. I call them compassion, joy, and peace. My authentic spirit blossoms. I call it innocence. My real life flourishes. I call it freedom.

Meditation in Medicine

the American Buddhist Center — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 18:32:00 +0000

by John Corbaley

The topic I want to talk about today is something that I am currently studying: the uses of meditation in modern health care. Currently meditative techniques in medicine are going by the label ‘mindfulness-based stress reduction,’ in order to make them more palatable to non-Buddhist tastes. Meditation has been successfully utilized in the treatment of dozens of physical ailments, from hypertension to migraine headache to psoriasis. And, if used diligently and appropriately, with remarkable success.

In my research, I am looking for the scriptural and historical roots of the use of meditation in health care, and have uncovered some interesting findings. One topic I’ve looked at is the Pirit, or protection ceremony, which monks in Asian Buddhist countries perform on a variety of occasions for a host of reasons. It is often performed when someone in the house is ill. Piyadassi Thera is a Buddhist monk who has written extensively on the Pirit ceremony. He gives this description of it:

It is customary for Buddhist monks, when they are invited to the homes of the laity on occasions of domestic importance, such as birth days, house-warming, illness, and similar events, to recite popular discourses from the Suttas during the ceremony. In the domestic and social life of the people of Sri Lanka the pirit ceremony is of great significance. No festival or function, religious or social, is complete without the recital of the paritta. On special occasions monks are invited to recite the paritta suttas not for short periods but right through the night or for three or seven days, and at times, for weeks.

On such occasions a pavilion (pirit mandapaya) is constructed for the purpose of accommodating the monks at the recital. Before the commencement of the recital the laity present at the ceremony makes a formal invitation to the monks by reciting in Pali three stanzas which explain the purpose of the recital. Then the monks, generally about twelve or fourteen, who have been invited, will recite the suttas. Thereafter a pair of monks will commence reciting the remaining suttas for two hours. They will then retire and will be followed by another pair for another two hours. Two monks must be constantly officiating. In this manner the recital will last till dawn.
While the recital continues there will be found a pot of water placed on a table before the monks. On this table there is also a sacred thread called the pirit nula. For an all night pirit ceremony the casket containing a relic of the Buddha, and the Pirit Potha or The Book of Protection written on ola leaves, are also brought into the pavilion. The relic represents the Buddha, the "Pirit Potha" represents the Dhamma or the teachings of the Buddha, and the reciting Bhikkhu-Sangha represent the Ariya-Sangha, the arahant disciples of the Buddha.
The thread is drawn round the interior of the pavilion, and its end twisted round the casket, the neck of the pot of water, and tied to the cord of the ola-leaf book. While the special discourses are being recited the monks hold the thread. The purpose is to maintain an unbroken communication from the water to the relic, to the Pirit Potha and to the officiating monks, (Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha, the Ti-ratana, the three jewels.) A ball of thread connected to "The Three Jewels" and the water, is unloosened and passed on to the listeners (seated on the ground on mats), who hold the thread while the recital goes on.
When the recital in Pali of the entire book is over at dawn, the thread sanctified by the recital is divided into pieces and distributed among the devotees to be tied round their wrists or necks. At the same time the sanctified water is sprinkled on all, who even drink a little of it and sprinkle it on their heads. These are to be regarded as symbols of the protective power of the paritta that was recited. It is a service of inducing blessings. It has its psychological effects.
In the Suttas, there are two striking instances where the Buddha, as the supreme doctor, prescribes meditation for the treatment of someone’s physical ailment. In one instance, the Buddha instructed his principal companion and attendant Ananda to visit a monk named Girimananda in the Girimananda Sutta. It goes like this:
Thus have I heard:
On one occasion the Blessed One was living near Savatthi at Jetavana at the monastery of Anathapindika. Now at that time, the Venerable Girimananda was afflicted with a disease, was suffering therefrom, and was gravely ill. Thereupon the Venerable Ananda approached the Buddha and having saluted him sat beside him. So seated the Venerable Ananda said this to the Blessed One:
"Bhante (Venerable Sir,) the Venerable Girimananda is afflicted with disease, is suffering therefrom, and is gravely ill. It were well, bhante, if the Blessed One would visit the Venerable Girimananda out of compassion for him." (Thereupon the Buddha said):
"Should you, Ananda, visit the monk Girimananda and recite to him the ten contemplations, then that monk Girimananda having heard them, will be immediately cured of his disease.
He then goes on to explain the ten contemplations. The last one is called the “Mindfulness of in-breathing and out-breathing.” The Buddha explains the teaching to Ananda, the simple, elegant instructions for sitting meditation:
"And what, Ananda, is mindfulness of in-breathing and out-breathing? Herein, Ananda, a monk having gone to the forest, or to the foot of a tree, or to a lonely place, sits down, having folded his legs crosswise, keeping the body erect, and his mindfulness alive, mindful he breathes in, mindful he breathes out….
"This, Ananda, is called mindfulness of in-breathing and out-breathing. If, Ananda, you visit the monk Girimananda and recite to him these ten contemplations, then that monk, Girimananda, having heard them, will be immediately cured of his affliction."
Thereupon the Venerable Ananda, having learned these ten contemplations from the Blessed One, visited the Venerable Girimananda, and recited to him the ten contemplations. When the Venerable Girimananda had heard them, his affliction was immediately cured.

In another sutta, the Maha Kassapa Thera Bojjhanga, the Buddha goes to visit the monk Maha Kassapa. It goes like this.
Thus have I heard:
On one occasion the Blessed One was living near Rajagaha, in the bamboo grove, in the Squirrels' feeding ground. At that time the Venerable Maha Kassapa who was living in the Pipphali Cave, was afflicted with a disease, was suffering therefrom, and was gravely ill.
Then the Blessed One arising from his solitude at eventide visited the Venerable Maha Kassapa and sat down on a seat made ready (for him). Thus seated the Blessed One spoke to the Venerable Maha Kassapa:
"Well Kassapa, how is it with you? Are you bearing up, are you enduring (your suffering)? Do your pains decrease or increase? Are there signs of your pains decreasing and not of increasing?"
"No, Ven. Sir, I am not bearing up, I am not enduring, the pain is very great. There is a sign not of pains decreasing but of their increasing."
"Kassapa, these seven factors of enlightenment are well expounded by me and are cultivated and fully developed by me. They conduce to perfect understanding, to full realization (of the four Noble Truths) and to Nibbana. What are the seven?
Then the Buddha goes on to teach Maha Kassapa the seven factors, the sixth of which is concentration. About this, the Buddha says:
"Concentration, the factor of enlightenment, Kassapa, is well expounded by me, and is cultivated and fully developed by me. It conduces to perfect understanding, to full realization and to Nibbana.
Thus said the Buddha, and the Venerable Maha Kassapa glad at heart approved the utterances of the Buddha. Thereupon the Venerable Kassapa recovered from that affliction, and that affliction, of the Venerable Kassapa disappeared.”
Concentration, of course, has come down to us as the meditative practice of samatha, the practice of absorption, when paired with vipassana constitutes modern mindfulness practice.

So we find ample evidence for the Buddha utilizing his teachings in general, and meditation in particular as a treatment for physical ailments. Hopefully modern medicine can follow his lead and utilize meditation more widely for the valuable mind states it is able to bring about in people. Where I work, at St. Luke’s hospital, we are currently investigating its potential in the treatment of persons with Alzheimer’s disease and accompanying cognitive challenges. Perhaps we will be able to use it as beneficially as the Buddha, who has always been called the great healer

Waking Up Is Hard To Do

the American Buddhist Center — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 16:03:00 +0000

by Fattah

Listen to the stillness,
Does it make a sound?
Or is it like the chorus
Of a song coming round?
Oh, my hearts a singing
With joy overflowing,
When I remember who I’m not
And don’t know where I’m going.

Things are not as they appear in this world that we inhabit. That which seems solid and most enduring is mostly air. Those who seem rich and powerful are mostly impoverished by their needs and at the mercy of their own desires. Those who should be able to do the greatest good, often do the greatest harm. The variety of entertainment we have available, which we deem a great blessing, may be a great curse. The food we consume, which seems tasty and nourishing, causes much of our ill health and disease. The education we so admire does not help us understand ourselves or each other. The religions we create often do more to alienate us from other people and the divine than they do to unify us and realize our higher nature.

I got to see through some of my illusion on our Sangha retreat several weeks ago. This separate self, which I do so much to hold onto, didn’t seem as separate as it usually does. The alienation, which I am so good at producing to keep others away, didn’t appear and without this cherished distancing I was vulnerable but without anxiety. Giving up my daily routines for the retreat schedule led to greater freedom and the loss of control over my agenda did me no harm.

We rarely get to see what delusion we live under. We are so good at creating our reality. Each of us believes we know who we are and what life is about. At the top of our agenda is protecting ourselves in the world and preserving the delusion of this separate, suffering self. We live in fear and most of us die in fear. Fear that the boundaries we have set up for protection will dissolve and we will be helpless and at the mercy of the world. Fear that we will cease to be so intensely aware of ourselves. Fear that we will cease exist. The mind will not go there. It doesn’t want to entertain that thought. That fear is so completely overwhelming.

Fear is at the basis of all our motivation. It gives us our life. Each person has their own strategy for dealing with it. Mine is spinning out alienation. I imagine that I am unlike others and the world does not have what I need. I feel isolated and alone. I feel unloved and unappreciated. It doesn’t matter how many times I have experienced this as untrue. This is my story and I’m sticking to it. This is who I am.

We all have a story that we tell ourselves and we are often not aware of it. That story is created by the matrix of who we think we are. It is so deeply imbedded in our outlook it is transparent to us. What is your story? There is an easy way to discover it. Look at your life and see where you suffer. Your suffering is rooted in and nurtured by your story. I feel alienation and am lonely because of my story. Another person may be caught up in fighting the disorder of the world because of their story. Another person may feel constantly wronged and persecuted by others because of their story. Another person may be obsessed with being comfortable and enjoying luxury because of their story. Another person may be focused on filling their life with constant activity because of their story. Another person may have an inexhaustible desire for, more material goods or wealth because of their story. It’s all a story and we are very attached to it. It gives us who we are.

We must realize that our story is not true and that is a huge jump in perception. We are so convinced that what we see is who we are, that our life is real. It’s like telling a small child that the nightmare they just had is not real. When they are still half asleep they won’t believe it. This is something I had a great difficulty with when I was young. The wolves and lions in the closet were coming to get me. The monster under the bed would grab me if I wasn’t totally hidden under the covers. This was, of course, total delusion. We are so mesmerized by our story we cannot see reality. Reality is beyond our normal awareness.

A perfect example of this is what has happened in this country since 9/11. The world has become a fearful place and we seem continually threatened by the terrorists who are poised to strike us again without warning. Some believe that they endanger our very way of life. Is this true? Is the world as we know it about to come crashing down because some extremists were able to crash a few planes into some buildings? Are we engaged in a world war because a handful of men killed several thousand people? There are many people that truly believe it.

We cannot see true reality. We have been so conditioned to see a fearful world that the world of kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity is invisible to us. It takes a transcendent experience or a transcendent teacher to show it to us, to allow us to see beyond the world of the senses. In the movie What The Bleep they had an illustration of this. When Columbus came to the New world the natives could not see his ships. They had no concept or experience of them so they couldn’t see them. The shaman saw the ripples of the ships in the water and knew there was something there. After much contemplation of this phenomenon he was able to see the ships and show them to the rest of his people. We are caught on the lower rungs of reality and are so absorbed in hanging on that we cannot look up the ladder or climb higher.

Reality is we are not born nor do we die. We are not separate, suffering individuals living in a dangerous world. All the dramas of life are unimportant and meaningless. It’s all an illusion. We come from a perfect brilliant, stillness and to it we will return and all that happens in between is a fabrication that we get caught up in. We are beings of light and energy trapped in a body, chained to the earth. We come empty handed, we leave empty handed but we spend a great deal of our time here clinging to what we have created because we believe it is real.

It’s time to awaken from the nightmare. We cling to this life in terror because we are afraid to let go. We can never be happy or content in this world of the mind and senses. This life is meant for realization. We are like children playing with their toys, not wanting to grow up. Remember the song from Peter Pan, I Won’t Grow Up. We believe that growing up will destroy the world we have so carefully created. There is some truth in that. What we don’t see is that there is another, larger world out there just waiting to be discovered, another reality.

That reality is beyond time and individuality. It is beyond the fear that we are completely obsessed with, that dominates our thinking and decision making. It is the realm of the Buddhas and the enlightened ones. To us it seems so far away. One of the reasons for that is that we depend on the interpretation of the mind to define our experience, to give it solidity and to understand it. In the realm of the Buddha that doesn’t work, for the mind cannot go there. Whenever we have a transcendent experience we immediately try to identify and quantify it. The only tool we have to do that is the mind. Then we try to hang onto it and duplicate it. This is grasping. It’s all the grasping of the mind. We also tell ourselves that which I can’t understand and describe isn’t as valid as my everyday experience. It’s not real. Without a practice to support it these experiences fade away rapidly and no effort of will gives us additional access to them.

Waking up is hard to do. The mind that gives us our life is also our greatest obstacle on the path to realization. We are nearly totally dependent on it and it is almost useless in advancing us on the path. Waking up requires unlearning most of what we know. Waking up requires an open heart, which no amount of thinking can produce. We cannot think our way to freedom. We cannot create another reality with our mind that will produce it. That is what we are all so good at, creating our own reality. We have been doing this our whole life. We create this fearful existence and the suffering that comes along with it.

Waking up requires a practice, a teacher, and a Sangha to support it. There are many great adepts who have done it on their own but most of us need help. A practice is necessary to quiet the mind and discover our habitual patterns of thought. A teacher is necessary to help us see our delusion, which we are often blind to, and to help free us from the blocks of our adaptive childhood. A Sangha is necessary to support us in an endeavor that is nearly totally alien to our culture and upbringing.

How solid is your practice? Are you working at it daily, hour by hour, minute by minute or are you devoted to enjoying life, accomplishing a lot, or trying to be happy? Who is your teacher? Are you studying with an adept or are you content with reading books and following the mental directions you constantly give yourself that produce your separateness and suffering. Where is your Sangha? Are you practicing with a group of seekers or simply hanging out with friends and relatives that help you sustain this individual neurosis we maintain.

Waking up takes us beyond this individual, mental existence. It’s a whole different ballgame. Waking up requires us to stop telling ourselves that the world is a certain way. Waking up requires us to stop judging ourselves and others. Waking up requires that we suspend our beliefs and enter the present moment. That’s a lot to give up. We have a huge investment in this self, this past we have created and identify with, in a future that we want to project ourselves into. The truth is the past does not exist and there is no future. These are creations of the mind.

Rumi says:
“The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.”

That breeze is always blowing. It has been blowing for thousands of years. We are so immersed in our concerns we don’t feel it. Feeling it requires us to drop our guard and open to a different way of being in the world. In our minds we are so far away from awakening. As long as we identified with thinking waking up is hard to do. In our hearts we are not separate and afraid. In our hearts every moment has potential insights to free us. In our hearts life is precious and utterly mysterious. In our hearts waking up is easy. In our hearts we are free.

May all beings awaken,
Not one left behind.

Amein

The Road Most Traveled

the American Buddhist Center — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 16:00:00 +0000

by Victor Dougherty

I think it is interesting to notice how Eastern philosophy describes life as a path, almost as if it were a walk through a lightly wooded area. Here in the West, life is often compared to a highway. My comparison is different only with regard to the patrolman waiting around the bend. That’s right, on life’s highway I got a ticket; a ticket for speeding.
Of course, I didn’t realize it at the time but officer Karma was doing me a favor. Oh how I pleaded and carried-on, but his face remained stoic and rigid as he continued to write-out the citation.
“Why were you going so fast?” he asked in a low, authoritative voice.
“Actually, I am not sure but I know I’ve always done it and when I do I don’t feel much pain.” I also tried explaining that this wasn’t my fault, if I’m busy and going fast I look important, people will like me better…and if they like me they won’t leave me.”

With a Mona Lisa smile he ripped the tickets out of the aluminum-backed clip board and handed them to me. I could see myself in his dark sunglasses, perhaps for the first time ever. As he turned to go he pointed the way and said “watch out for the detours,” I would come to know what he meant later.
Sitting for a moment, I put my sky blue AMC Pacer in gear and headed back out onto the open road. Things were much different now, for one, it was brighter. I could see better, the landscape was different, many of the concrete buildings and institutions that were so important were gone, crumbled, there was a certain beauty in the emptiness around me. All I could see now were signposts; they were much clearer now and seem to speak right to my heart. The first one read:
STOP JUDGING
Well, that was short I thought. Whoa, there I go judging already, you idiot didn’t the sign just tell you…hey! Idiot is a judgment! Well, It’s better to be an idiot than a hypocrite, wait, isn’t “better” a judgment? Suddenly another sign appeared:
QUIET THE MIND
That was good timing. As I drove on I decided to turn on the radio, however I could only get one station now:

“You’re listening to OM, the sound of the universe, reminding you that each being is a beautiful note in one grand cosmic symphony.”

I think it was a country station because the DJ said “stay tuned for more Dalai!”
Just then I noticed a car tailgating me. As I looked at the other drivers around me on the road, some were in the slow lanes, smiling, waving their traffic tickets at me and seeming to enjoy the ride. Others were speeding past us in a blur of driving, talking on the cell phone, eating a burger and yelling at the other drivers. I felt differently for them now, they reminded me, of me, and I knew they too would someday meet officer Karma.

At this point the skies became cloudy and rain began to fall, I started remembering old events, relationships and feelings. Up ahead I came upon a large flashing orange detour sign and thought I better take it, at least it felt like the right thing to do. I changed lanes and made a right-hand turn when right in front of me on the shoulder was a police car. He flashed his lights at me and motioned for me to pull over in front of him.
“I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong!” I begged.
“First, you didn’t pay attention to the sign because you were supposed to turn left. Second, you didn’t pay attention to me because I told you to watch-out for the detours. Why don’t you listen?”
“Well, sir, that’s a very good question. I think that the mind wants to jump ahead during conversations so it can come up with responses that will control situations or appear witty and funny because that is how I have coped with discomfort, and people make me uncomfortable because they judge me…
Officer Karma stopped writing for a minute and I added…”because I judge them.”
He smiled and tore the ticket for “inattentive driving” out of the now familiar aluminum backed clip board. As he handed it to me he said:
“Well just remember boy there is a reason God gave you two ears and only one mouth. Have a nice day, unless you have other plans.”
As I pulled back on the road I came to a sign that said: “Aversionopolis 1 mile,”
I was feeling hunger pangs so I thought this could be a good place to visit. Just then my cell phone began to ring it sounds like this: (bell) I pulled over to answer it.
“Hello?”
“Those aren’t hunger pangs.” The voice said.
“Excuse me?”
“Where do you feel it in the body?”
“Well, up here near my heart.” I said.
“See, the nourishment you need is in Sanghaville, turn around and get back on the road, and go past the detour you’ll come to it soon.”
“Thanks, but who are you?’ I asked.
The voice retorted, “question is, who are you?”
It was nice to be on the road again, peaceful, funny how I only know that now because I have been on the road before, I have at least experienced a little peace. It seems we only know things through contrast.

The voice on the phone was right, Sanghaville was just ahead and as I entered the quaint little town I noticed how friendly people were. Everyone was smiling and waving and no one laughed at my sky blue AMC Pacer. I pulled up to a little place called “Café Namasté” on the small green chalk board above the shiny counter was the daily special: “Truth on a bun, with a side of compassion salad” I asked the friendly guy behind the counter how much the special was, he said;
“Well it might hurt a little, but it’s free.”
His voice was familiar, “why will it hurt?” I asked.
He just said, “I don’t know, but it often does.”
“Well, ok I’ll take that.”
He then pointed behind me at a table and said “it’s already there.” When I turned around I noticed all the people in the café were setting my table and sharing their own truth and compassion with me. We talked for hours and told each other stories of the road and though they were different, they also seemed to be exactly the same. As I finished and was thanking all of my new friends a stranger came in, he looked a little hungry. As he sat down I brought him a fresh bowl of compassion salad, and though I didn’t eat any dessert, watching the stranger clear that bowl was more fulfilling than any chocolate cake.

When I got back into my Pacer I noticed that not only would it hold more than four people, it was holding a lot more than four people, I think every person on the planet was in there. In the passenger seat was a beautiful girl unfolding a road map and saying:
“If we go this way we might be able to catch the turnpike!”
Time seemed to disappear as we traveled together. Sometimes in silence and sometimes we would sing or talk. Sometimes people would come and go but still everything seemed to be perfect just the way it was.

At the top of the approaching hill I could see some flashing orange detour signs, I thought maybe I better take it, see what I get for thinking?
As soon as I got onto the detour and turned around to ask everyone what they thought, I realized that everyone was gone; I seemed to be alone in my car again. However, it didn’t look like it was going to be difficult to get the answers to my questions, because there were so many roadside stands on this route. Every 10feet or so was another stand and lots of people. This one sells answers in a pill or rolled up in a cigarette. This one sells answers in a bottle. That one over there sells answers from a pulpit and next to it is one that sells answers in the form of lots of new and shiny things. Oh! there is a favorite, the video game stand! I ran back to my car to get my credit card, which has always been an answer for me, when I noticed officer Karma writing a ticket and placing it on my windshield.
“This is a no parking zone, why did you park here?”
But officer Karma these stands help me forget! They mask the pain and they help me when I feel bored.” He just shook his head.
Then my cell phone rang (bell) but this time there was no voice, only silence, and in the silence I could feel peace and suddenly the questions to which I needed the answers to, so desperately, no longer mattered.
I gathered my ticket off of the windshield and got back on the road. The closer I got to it the more people from Sanghaville started to show up. The beautiful girl with the road map reminded me that I should stop at the court house and take care of these tickets.
As I entered the courtroom there were no benches only cushions and blankets. The room was quite full; many people from many backgrounds seem to be meeting up with officer Karma. The bailiff poked his head in the door and exclaimed:
“All sit”
So I pulled up a cushion and waited for awhile. When I closed my eyes the judge appeared; he was young, thin, salt and pepper hair, I’m not sure about the beard though, and anyway he spoke to me.
“You got quite a handful of tickets there”
Mmmm, nice voice I thought. “Yes sir, I keep getting them”
“I suppose you will too, are they teaching you anything?” he asked.
“Well yes, I seem to learn more from the tickets than the detours. And both seem to point to a pattern of sabotaging my journey altogether.”

He took the gavel and he hit the bell on his desk and said:
“Good, your fine is 100 Buddha bucks.”
As I walked outside all of my friends were standing around the car applauding.
Once again we were on the road talking, singing and enjoying the silence together. I could see what appeared to be a toll booth ahead and a sign that said:
“The Great Way Turnpike”
I pulled up to the booth and the window slid to the side, the guy inside looked familiar.
I asked him how much the toll was and he said:
“Whatever you want to give, just do it with a generous heart as those who have gone before you have done.”
As I gave him my money I asked what the road ahead was like. He said that parts of it were nice and parts of it were on fire.
“Where does it go?” I asked
“I don’t know” he said.
“Are there any detours on this road?” I questioned.
“Oh you better believe it buddy! And you’re not the only one who takes them! Now, do you have anymore questions?” he asked
“Yes.” I responded.
He then smiled and said “Good! Something else for you to let go of.”
And from there we just drove into our day.

Glass Half Empty

the American Buddhist Center — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 18:48:00 +0000

by Fattah

I flunked the exam. The exam was the test for being an optimist. Not only did I flunk it, I scored so low I wasn’t even on the chart. If an optimist says the glass is half full and the pessimist says it’s half empty, my glass is nearly dry. You see, my glass has a hole in it near the bottom so it can’t ever hold much water. It never gets filled up. This is not new information for me. I have been living with this attitude for as long as I can remember. Julie and I joke about it sometimes but it is pervasive in my outlook. Some of you may remember the character Joe Btfsplk in Al Capp’s comic script Li’l Abner. He would walk around with a dark rain cloud a foot over his head. I have that rain cloud too.

We all have pervading attitudes that mold our outlook and experience of life. Some people have an attitude that is more negative, as mine is and some have an attitude that is more positive. We don’t realize it but this attitude is chemically induced and dominates the way we view the world. In a sense we are all on drugs, the substances produced by our brain chemistry, and life occurs mainly for us as a result of this chemical flow. Our conscious flow of thoughts is continually conditioned by memories from the past brought up by our brain chemistry. It puts the argument for free will in a whole new light. Can we be willing something that is mostly reaction triggered by substances released into our bloodstream. Hardly!

In our arrogance, we believe that we are in control of our life because, unlike the animals, we do not live by instinct. My friends, though our instinct has many times the sophistication of that of most animals we are held in the thrall of these primitive reactions from the lower brain by the power of the neuro chemicals in our bloodstream. We have these two enormous frontal lobes of the brain that dominate our attention, in this waking dream, but most of our reaction to life is on automatic pilot, dictated by the conditioning of the lower centers of the brain. We have such a high opinion of ourselves. We believe that the power of our thinking determines the quality and direction of our life.

I will tell you this now. Your life is not your own. The powerful animal you have within you is in control. It is an illusion to believe that, because you have the ability to do complex, convoluted analysis and manipulation of concepts, that your thinking gives you your life. We react to life in the same way all other animals do, from instinct. We totally delude ourselves in this. Rumi describes this animal in one of his poems:

“Once, a holy man, riding his donkey,
Saw a snake crawling into a sleeping man’s mouth!
He hurried, but he couldn’t prevent it.
He hit the man several blows with his club.
The man woke terrified and ran beneath an apple tree
With many rotten apples on the ground.
“Eat, you miserable wretch. Eat!”
“Why are you doing this to me?”
“Eat more you fool.”
“I’ve never seen you before! Who are you?
Do you have some inner quarrel with my soul?”
The wise man kept forcing him to eat, and then he ran him.
For hours he whipped the poor man and made him run.
Finally, at night fall, full of rotten apples,
Fatigued, bleeding, he fell and vomited everything
The good and the bad, the apples and the snake.
When he saw that ugly snake come out of himself,
He fell on his knees before his assailant.
“Are you Gabriel? Are you God?
I bless the moment you first noticed me.
I was dead and didn’t know it. You’ve given me a new life.
Everything I’ve said to you was stupid! I didn’t know.”
“If I had explained what I was doing, you might have panicked and died of fear, the wise man said, If I described the enemy that lives inside men,
Even the most courageous would be paralyzed. No one would go out,
Or do any work. No one would pray or fast,
And all power to change would fade from human beings,
So I kept quiet while I was beating you, that like David I might shape iron,
So that, impossibly, I might put feathers back into a birds wing.
God’s silence is necessary, because of humankind’s faintheartedness.
If I had told you about the snake, you wouldn’t have been able to eat,
And if you hadn’t eaten, you wouldn’t have vomited.
I saw your condition and drove my donkey hard into the middle of it,
Saying always under my breath, ‘Lord make it easy on him.’
I wasn’t permitted to tell you and I wasn’t permitted to stop beating you!”
The healed man, still kneeling, “I have no way to thank you
For the quickness of you wisdom and the strength of you guidance.
God will thank you.”

This poem is full of religious symbolism and duality. It views the animal we have within as an adversary and evil but the poem is very good at illustrating the predicament we find ourselves in. We all have swallowed this snake that crept into our mouth when we were young. This snake is the animal that dominates our life but also helps us deal with the demands of the world. Rumi describes it as, “the enemy within.” This is a considerably limited comparison. In the greater scheme of things our animal nature has been essential for our survival. It is not an enemy but it is not a total friend either. Our power to change comes not from fighting the snake or trying to get rid of it, but from accepting it’s place in our life and becoming aware of it’s operating. The snake is beautiful in it’s faithfulness to protect us but it can also constrict us to living our life from this instinctual level.

It is from the snake that we get the habitual patterns that make up our life routine. Before we became civilized and developed language the animal part of us didn’t have to learn ways of adapting to the world that were as complex as what we have today. Our social patterns are considerably more convoluted than those of primitive man. But the animal part retains the power to affect the course of our life. We do the mental dance on top of it but our gut reactions define who we are. And since we identify with the mental dance the gut reactions, that are always going on beneath the radar of our conscious awareness, don’t seem to affect us. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Above all else our animal is acting for our survival. The conditions we experienced as young children, before the development of language, are what these reactions are based on. If you grew up in a nurturing atmosphere then your general attitude toward life will be positive. If you grew up in a threatening atmosphere it will be negative. Optimists and pessimists are made not born. The uncertainty I grew up with continues to generate my outlook on the world. I know the shoe will drop, I just don’t know when. When bad things happen it confirms my position. When good things happen, I reason it was just by chance and probably won’t happen again.

These life attitudes, while very powerful and dominant, are not written in stone. As long as they remain fully in the unconscious they will be in control. As we begin to see them and watch them at play in our life they begin to weaken. Instead of experiencing life as white and black, good and bad, we see the shades of gray and how our outlook influences our perception. I know that my pessimism, which can be so all pervasive, does not represent reality but that knowing waxes and wanes.

We want to move beyond the grip of our past. We want to grow beyond the necessity of our animal self and taste the freedom of the present moment. Unfortunately, there is a huge fear in this. This is the fear of extinction, for the animal self, at all costs, wants to continue in power. As long as we are in duality the animal self will fight to protect it’s dominance. Often we need a teacher to help us discover this part of our nature. With our great mental capacity comes a great ability to delude ourselves, to deny that this creature has control of us. Indeed we are held by two creatures, one the animal self, our conditioning from the past and the other is the mental self that is constantly spinning out stories and propaganda. No wonder it’s so hard to get free.

We don’t know who we are. We suppress the animal and over-identify with the mental. In truth this separate self is an illusion. When we peel away these two parts of us we connect to an infinite essence that is using us as a means of expression. We let go and enter the field of being, becoming true instruments of the divine.

Gibran says near the end of The Prophet:

“That which seems feeble and bewildered in you is the strongest and most determined.
Is it not your breath that has erected and hardened the structure of your bones?
And is it not a dream which none of you remember having dreamt that builded your city and fashioned all there is in it?
Could you but see the tides of that breath you would cease to see all else.
And if you could hear the whispering of the dream you would hear no other sound.
But you do not see, nor do you hear, and it is well.
The veil that clouds your eyes shall be lifted by the hands that wove it,
And the clay that fills your ears shall be pierced by those fingers that kneaded it.
And you shall see
And you shall hear.
Yet you shall not deplore having known blindness, nor regret having been deaf.
For in that day you shall know the hidden purposes in all things,
And you shall bless the darkness as you would bless light.”

That part of us which seems feeble and bewildered is the strongest and most determined.

The part of us that connects with the infinite seems weak because we have so little awareness of it. When we let go of the animal and mental layers we plug into the limitless power of being.

Is it not your breath that has erected and hardened the structure of your bones?
And is it not a dream which none of you remember having dreamt that builded your city and fashioned all there is in it?

Our breath brings us into this physical form and we build up identification. We take on this identification and then forget we did it.

Could you but see the tides of that breath you would cease to see all else.
And if you could hear the whispering of the dream you would hear no other sound.

If we could stay with the breath or see how the dream deludes us all the time we would move toward freedom. These are major practices to cultivate.

But you do not see, nor do you hear, and it is well.
The veil that clouds your eyes shall be lifted by the hands that wove it,
And the clay that fills your ears shall be pierced by those fingers that kneaded it.

There is nothing wrong with being in delusion. It’s all part of the great dance. What has brought us here to be in bondage will free us in the end.

And you shall see
And you shall hear.
Yet you shall not deplore having known blindness, nor regret having been deaf.

In the Great Return, as the Sufis call it, the individual and all the concerns of the individual disappear. Past and future have no power or meaning. There is no one to deplore or regret.

For in that day you shall know the hidden purposes in all things,
And you shall bless the darkness as you would bless light.

Knowing takes on a different dimension. It is not the knowing of the intellect. It is the knowing of being. Darkness and light have their place but disappear as duality drops away and there is a radiance of the moment that eclipses all else. In the field of being we are transparent channels transmitting a blessing from the infinite to all the world.

May all beings come to awakening,
Not one left behind.

Amein.

We’re All a Walking War Zone

the American Buddhist Center — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 13:47:00 +0000

by Fattah

We’re all a walking war zone. The war is between us and the outer world. We must constantly fight to get what we need from a hostile world full of enemies, who are trying to get what they need too. In this struggle we are always on some kind of alert. Fear is rampant. Terrorist thoughts keep arising to threaten us and disturb our peace of mind. The trouble is we don’t know which of these thoughts are true and which are just imagined. Then, when we least expect it during our normal daily routine, an EBP, an emotional bomb from the past, may explode bringing up unresolved feelings from the past. The emotional backwash can be overpowering. It can be devastating.

For me this inner war is evident when I am not feeling well. I have huge amount of emotional baggage around being sick. The fog of war starts rolling in when I identify that something is wrong with my health. Then all these notions I have about not being this mind/body complex get thrown out the window and I get caught up in the fear of being out of control again. This would often happen when I was a kid. When I would begin to not feel well I would repress acknowledging that as long as possible. When I couldn’t deny the symptoms because they were getting too intense then I would get scared. Eventually my mother would discover that I wasn’t feeling well and she would question me about it. Then I would hear the dreaded words from my mother, “I guess we need to go see the doctor.” Now I was in trouble. He would certainly find something wrong. I would panic, but I couldn’t let my mother see it. I would do my best to act normal and nonchalant about it. Never let ‘em see you sweat. Be strong .

We all have these triggers that start an inner conflict. Most of the time it’s an automatic loop that kicks in and we are caught up before we know it. Our finely tuned antennae of past trauma pick up familiar vibrations, probably my mother had anxiety about me getting sick when I was young, and the chemicals that create our response to this EBP, this flash from the past, are in the bloodstream wrecking havoc before we are even aware of our response. This occurs for me when I get sick but also when the cats get sick. I see the animal is having a problem and the emotional distress kicks in. It doesn’t matter that I’m an adult, the vet is just down the street, and know we have the resources to take care of the animal. The chemicals flow and I am awash in the reaction.

I’ve been noticing this a lot lately, reacting to situations and then seeing the basis of that reacting. I have this idea that if I can just be in control, then I won’t have to worry. The problem is we can never be in control. Because we identify with our thoughts and mental process so completely and believe ourselves to be rational, capable beings we assume all we have to do is monitor our thoughts and intervene if we get carried away with emotions. It doesn’t work that way. We are always walking through a minefield of reaction, distracted by our normal mental machinations, and when we trigger these connections with the past, our reaction is in full swing before it appears in our awareness. The horse has left the barn before we try to close the gate. We have been programmed over many thousands of generations to react quickly to threatening situations. Our survival has depended on it so the potent chemicals from the lower centers of the brain kick in to protect us before the thinking in the higher centers gets underway.

This is also true when our ego gets threatened. The ego we have built up is defense against the overwhelming stimulation of the outer world. We have created this guard at the gate of perception and identify with it. The guard serves us but also dominates us and is determined to maintain this domination. The servant becomes the master.

We want to have life go the way we want it to. We are addicted to the control that the ego tries to maintain. A student came to a martial arts instructor that he had been working with for many years. He said, “Master, I have learned so much from you and do well in local competition but when I get to championship bouts I lose my edge and become fearful. Then I am defeated.” The master said, “You must let go of your attachment to having a certain outcome. Your identification with winning and losing is defeating you. The battle with your inner Self cannot be won in the championship arena, it must be won on the practice mat.”

When we truly put our cards on the table this is what we all want. We want to win. We all have an idea of how our life should be. We want to be happy and fulfilled. Life keeps presenting us with how it is, impermanent , unsatisfactory, and selfless. Our individual lives keep presenting us with the dysfunctions we incorporated in growing up. We have to give up the notion of how our life should be and see that no amount of striving will get us what we want. No amount of striving will deliver us from the fearful ego we have all incorporated.

The great dream of the individual self is to have power over what occurs. It was summed up in the poem Invictus by William Ernest Henley:

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeoning of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Find, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.”

We have exemplified this dream here in the West. The great quest of me. We have built a cult of the separate self and our present leader is a perfect example of the pinnacle of this ideal. His vision is focused on acquiring and maintaining complete power and channeling every resource of the nation to reward his supporters. He will admit no mistakes and is totally oblivious to how his shortsighted, self-serving policies affect others. He believes that in promoting his completely personal agenda he is being directed by the connection with his own deity, a God who justifies his every action.

Friends, this great myth of the personal self wrecks havoc in the world and creates our suffering. What empowers our grail like search for fulfillment and acquisition of material abundance also fuels the fear that separates us in needy, short sighted isolation. From this vantage point we look out on a world that Henley calls a “place of wrath and tears.” With this outlook there can be no salvation.

It all seems so real. Not only are we caught up in the drama of our own stream of conscious thinking but we have this individual physical form that anchors us to this reality we have created. When we are children we play at make believe and sometimes it can seem so real. Sometimes children actually see what they create although it is made up. So the world we see perfectly reflects our outlook and it seems that we are experiencing what is. It is seamless until we discover that we are not our thoughts. That is why we sometimes call our life a waking dream. We are so identified with it. We also find out that just because our thoughts arise doesn’t mean that they are true. We are getting false feedback all the time and do not see how we are being misled. It’s a self reinforcing loop.

Our reality is not reality, it is just our viewpoint. Each person looks out on their own idiosyncratic world and believes that what they see is what is. We are each playing a character in our own play and can’t understand why other people won’t accept the roles in our drama that we have assigned to them. I had this a lot when I was a kid. I was in my own world of make believe a lot and couldn’t understand when the other children wouldn’t participate. Our outlook, which seems totally authentic to us, is an attitude we have taken on. When we examine this attitude and peel away the layers of it that have built up we find that at its core there is no permanent, independent self.

This is not the only indicator that the independent self we have created is only a temporary fabrication. The conscious self appears and disappears as out thoughts arise and extinguish. As a thought arises our identification occurs. “I think therefore I am”. When the thought dissipates, in the space of no thought our identification subsides. If we have a constant stream of thoughts then we maintain the identification. When there is space in between the thoughts then we are no longer locked into it. Try this as an experiment for yourself. Begin your meditative practice as you normally would and when the thoughts begin to slow down note what happens in the spaces in between the thoughts. We think our self into existence constantly but we never marvel at our disappearance with no thought. This dropping away of the self will be more evident to you if you have done enough meditative practice to have long spaces in between the thoughts.

You can see the same process happen when you do a lot of focused chanting. The longer you chant the more you see the boundaries of the self soften, the less of this personal you there is. This can be an ecstatic experience. These boundaries of identification are so constricting and when we get free of them it is exhilarating. Our thoughts are crowded out and we get some relief from our preoccupation with ourselves. We feel the joy and can also experience our connection to a higher energy. If we are chanting with others the connection to them becomes palpable.

It’s essential to get some freedom from the mind stream. When we are caught up in it we get tossed around in the current. Sometimes the current is gentle and sometimes, especially when we get caught up in unresolved issues from the past, it can be overpowering. As long as we are identified with it we believe ourselves to be this body/mind organism with a past and future. When we work to slow the current down or even step out of the current for an instant we begin to see our transcendent nature. We begin to experience not just becoming but being.

There really is no you. That is a scary thought for most of us. Without our protective boundaries we feel so vulnerable. We think we will be overwhelmed by the world and its demands. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are safer in this land of the heart than we could ever be caught up in our thinking. Our thinking is always reinforcing our personality and creating our suffering. This personality covers or encloses a free spirit beyond time and space. This spirit was never born not does it die. It is cannot be confined in a body or separated from others. It wants to dance and celebrate the moment. It wants to reach up to the heavens. It wants to fly free from the earth and embrace the stars.

It’s true, there really is no you. May we all experience this freedom from the self.

Amein.

A Dharma Perspective on Health Care

the American Buddhist Center — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:21:00 +0000

by John Corbaley

Two recent tragic events and the public response to them have gotten me thinking about priorities in our society today, and what might be done to move them along. On April 16, a tortured young man named Seung Hui Cho engaged in a fit of rage on the campus of Virginia Technical Institute in Blacksburg, killing 32 people and wounding 24 others before turning the weapons on himself in an act of suicide.

Less than two weeks later and much closer to home, David Logsdon killed two people in the parking lot of the Ward Parkway Shopping Center before being killed by police officers called to the scene. What knits these two events together is they both represent what I think is a failure of the mental health system of the richest country in the world.

The topic I want to talk about today has past its fifteen minutes of fame and has begun to fade from the collective short term memory of the American News Cycle. The headlines have run, the editorials have been published and the blogs have spoken. This allows a bit of perspective and reflection, which we might use to gain some insight.

The stories of these two men represent a failure of our society to help these tragic souls who ended up with lives of such pain that they could no longer stand to go on living. It was clear from both their stories that neither of these men intended to finish that last day of their lives alive. And their hurt and pain was so great that they felt they had to lash out at the end and hurt others as well.

The public response was an outpouring of condolence for the families and friends of the victims. The response also included questions about how such a tragedy could occur. Questions about how persons, especially in Seung Hui Cho’s case, could obtain access to such and array and quantity of deadly automatic weapons when his mental problems were so apparently well documented.

Also in the public response to this tragedy was the criticism of the media for making public Seung Hui Cho’s tragic video taped ravings, mailed by him to NBC on the day of the shooting.

One letter to the editor of the Star criticized publishing his picture on the front page. Why publicize and lend notoriety to such an evil person the letter asked? We don’t need to see or hear anything more from this bad person, the letter concluded.

While sentiments like these might be seen to be natural and an even acceptable outpouring of grief, I think we can learn important lessons by paying attention to these men, and recognize that they do not represent an embodiment of some externalized evil. Rather, they are embodiments of the darker, needier side which resides within each of us.

The hurt and pain in Seung Hui Cho and David Logsdon arose from deeply troubled minds that had been hurting for a long time. It is difficult for us to understand the depth of the illness which plagued them both. But it shouldn’t be difficult for us to recognize it and know that these persons were in urgent need of some pretty heavy duty help.

It seems we are able to separate ourselves from people like these, apparently. We are not like them; we aren’t mentally disturbed, like they are. It is this illusion, of course, which lies at the root of the problem. It is our inability to recognize ourselves in these tragic men and see the importance of making available whatever resources are necessary to secure that help.

It is the kind of help which American society, in the form of our health care system, doesn’t seem capable of providing. In the stories of both these men was a long history of unmet needs. There were reports in both that friends and family of these men had tried multiple times to obtain help, but the safety net of the health care system was full of holes for these two.

Unfortunately, there are no fortunes to be made in mental health care of this type; the inpatient, individual therapy intensive type—unlike the outpatient, pharmacology heavy type now so prevalent and so profitable for the big drug companies. If you’ve seen the documentary Sicko by Michael Moore, you know the system of health care in this country is broken, a cash cow for a big industry that falls so short of what it might be. It makes you wonder about what we could have in this country if we wanted it. You wonder about what health care could look like if we took the billion dollars a week we are spending in Iraq and put it some other, better purpose.

Just something to think about in the coming weeks and months, when drug companies and insurance companies of organized health care start their media campaigns in response to Michael Moore’s excellent film. They set an all-time record in spending when they smeared Hillary Clinton and her single payer plan back in the 90’s. They spent more money than anyone ever had on an advertising campaign featuring Harry and Louise, employed to scare the American public into fearing any change.

You can bet that they will set records again, misleading and lying to us about the dangers of “socialized medicine.” If you work in health care, like I do, you realize that it is a system beyond broken, that only a wise and unwavering people can fix. I hope we have the wisdom and the vision to bring about the changes necessary so hurting people like Heung Hui Cho and David Logsdon and thousands like them can get help instead going on a shooting spree to end their pain.

When we look at people like Seung Hui Cho and David Logsdon, we must see that we share their space, and their pain, and we are as much as part of them as the waves are part of the ocean. We must muster up the great compassion that is embodied in the descriptions of the Bodhisattvas of the scriptures.

I will close now with one such description from the Ashtasaahaszrikaa:

[The Bodhisattva] becomes endowed with that kind of wise insight which allows him to see all beings as on the way to their slaughter. Great compassion thereby takes hold of him. With his heavenly eye he surveys countless beings, and what he sees fills him with great agitation: so many carry the burden of a karma which will soon be punished in the hells, others have acquired unfortunate rebirths, which keep them away from the Buddha and his teachings, others are doomed soon to be killed, or they are enveloped in the net of false views, or fail to find the path, while others who had gained a rebirth favorable to their emancipation have lost it again.

And he radiates great friendliness and compassion over all those beings, and gives his attention to them, thinking…I shall release them from all their sufferings…therefore the Bodhisattva dwells in the work of perfect wisdom…he wants to point out the path to all beings, to shed light over a wide range, to set free from birth-and-death all beings who are subject to it, and to cleanse the organs of vision of all beings.
(Edward Conze, Buddhist Texts Through the Ages p. 128).

---July 29, 2007; John Corbaley