The undiscovere’d country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will…
May 30, 2014
0 days to go.
I used to think change was a leap of faith. Today I learned differently. Today was my last day working for a company that I alternately despised and held in contempt, and at times found downright revolting. Yet I never had the courage to leave.
As of Monday, I’ll work for Interplanetary Title, Inc. And, to tell the truth, they promise to be little different. It feels as though I’m transferring from one cell block in a prison to another. Interplanetary Title has so much rhetoric about how good they are–and yes, they’re serious. After all, their rhetoric goes, they can name charities with whom they’ve been generous enough to share their ill-gotten booty.
No, change isn’t a leap of faith. In fact, it’s not a leap at all. Our world spins at 1,040 miles/per hour. We hurtle through space around the sun at 67,108 miles/per hour. Even when we stand perfectly still, we are at the very center of a whirlwind of change.
On Monday when I go to work, all of the countless projects I did for the bank will be gone, like sugar castles in rain. This whole transition thing has made me feel in a very visceral way that we are not made to last. Nothing is. Not your job, not your house, not your marriage, and certainly not your body.
What then, is change? It is the constant state of how things are in samsara. It is the condition upon which the cycle of birth and death has rested since beginningless time. This transition has given me the extraordinary gift of glimpsing for the very first time my own mortality, my own impermanence.
These thirty days have been a journey well-taken.
Close friends who have long been together will separate. Wealth and possessions gained with much effort will be left behind. Consciousness, a guest, will leave the lodge of the body. To give up the concerns of this life is the practice of a Bodhisattva.
May 12, 2014
19 days to go.
Today, Samuel Johnson was let go. Jesus. He’s been there since Moses talked to God. I tell myself it’s not because Sam’s been very sick. I tell myself it’s not because he’s been making so many mistakes. I tell myself that this didn’t happen because Interplanetary Title, Inc. thinks someone like Sam, who’s been in the title business FOREVER, is just dead weight. I tell myself he wasn’t let go because we’re all no more than numbers on a balance sheet.
I tell myself these things, but to my dismay, I’m not deluded enough to believe them.
There’s a storm here tonight, and it seems so very appropriate because I kinda feel like there’s a storm inside me.
Before this whole Interplanetary Title, Inc. transition thing happened, I told myself that when the time came, I’d be able to face up to my own mortality. I told myself that death was inevitable, and I perfectly well understood that it would happen to me one day.
Somehow Sam–a man who was an absolute fixture in my professional life–being let go has made the scales fall from my eyes. Tonight I feel the utter inevitability of my own mortality, and to my dismay, I find that I am not deluded enough to deny it.
Throughout my many lives, what did I gain?
I have been god and wraith; I have felt joy and torment;
I have been hale and ill; I have been king and pauper.
But now that I traverse the path under sound guidance,
bless me to make this lifetime meaningful!
May 6, 2014
25 days to go.
The migraine is still with me, giving my world a strangely ethereal feel. Having a migraine has an odd effect on me. It’s like having a low-grade fever. This reality becomes permeable, not at all solid. Tonight anxiety seems like a distant memory; maybe even from someone else’s life.
At work, I do mantra about once an hour. As I silently repeated om mani peme hum today, I felt as though I were tuning myself to something. The funny thing is, I didn’t feel like the hollow body of a guitar, or like the string that is plucked. I felt like the sound that reverberates and arises from a plucked string.
This is a wonderful feeling because it lasts for only a moment then dissolves, then arises again, then dissolves. Somehow, the truth of what we perceive as ‘existence’ isn’t in the arising or the falling away. It’s neither one nor the other, nor is it both. It’s somehow in the moment between each arising and falling, which feels like a complete moment of suspension, when there is nothing and everything at the same time. It’s an interesting way to directly experience impermanence and emptiness.
My Dharma friend Tashi is always trying to explain how all of our experience is like this—constantly arising, then dissolving. But in my ordinary life, I don’t experience that moment of emptiness. Even though Tashi says quite frequently that emptiness isn’t nothing, it’s hard to get past that concept. The actual experience of emptiness isn’t nearly as frightening as I always thought it would be. I thought it would be a blank nothingness, a complete annihilation of all that is.
It is in fact, a moment that is both an eon of lifetimes and no time at all; a moment of unfettered bliss.
It is not this.
It is not that.
It is not both.
It is not neither.
Nagarjuna
May 4, 2014
27 days to go.
I have a migraine today. One of the blessings of having a migraine for me is that this reality seems very hazy, not quite solid. Anxiety isn’t really a big deal. When seen through the hazy gauze of a migraine, nothing’s a big deal. The downside is that…I swear…it sounds like there’s a construction crew in the parking lot behind my apartment building. I’m seriously considering hurrying them on their way to Nirvana.
Today, I very strongly experienced the illusion of loneliness. It feels that I’ve never been this lonely. In fact, every time this arises, it always feels that I’ve NEVER been so alone. When it comes, the loneliness is epic, worthy of any Greek tragic hero.
We’re funny, aren’t we? What drama.
Tonight the journey feels like exactly that–a journey whose path winds through unknown yet strangely familiar territory.
If I squander my time in secondary practices, death will find me unsettled.
Bless me to live with the mind of enlightenment and die with the Holy Name!
May 3, 2014
Today has been a very ordinary day. I am so grateful for that. Anxiety today has come and gone so many times, I think my mind has a built in revolving door; a big one. But by working with anxiety in meditation and post meditation, the comings and goings of anxiety feel like unpredictable visits from a friend. The fear of what anxiety will bring with it seems to diminish more and more each day. I’m not sure how that’s happening.
As I went through my day baking and writing, I was aware of a smooth, uninterrupted flow of…something…I don’t have a name for it, or even a concept. But it was very powerful, the way it feels to stand just feet away from Niagara Falls and feel all that power of millions of gallons of water falling per second.
The sheer ordinary quality of such a day speaks to the simplicity of who we truly are.
Remembrance of the Buddha
is the mind of enlightenment;
there is no safe refuge, no greater purpose,
no more earnest confession, no rejoicing more full,
no entreaty more candid, no purer dedication.
May 1, 2014
30 days to go.
This whole experience with anxiety is the strangest experience yet on the spiritual journey.
When you first learn how to write fiction, you learn a whole bunch of techniques. At first none of it makes sense, all of it’s tiresome, and you write some seriously bad prose–think squeaky violin in the hands of a beginner.
Then there comes a day when you do your practice writing and the technique just rolls right onto the page; and it’s good. But the next day, you’re a squeaky violin again! Gradually, you have less and less squeaky violin days, until finally the technique becomes second nature.
Working with anxiety in this whole experience of the company I work for shutting down has been like that. Sometimes I feel anxiety arising and I’m totally aware it’s a phenomenon happening in the mind. I can completely rest in that arising. Other times, it’s a Tsunami and I’m drowning in it.
This can flip back and forth from hour to hour. It’s like looking at an optical illusion that keeps jumping back and forth. This constant flip-flop is exponentially better than the solidly monolithic crushing weight that anxiety used to be for me, but still. It’s really weird to feel your experience flip-flop like that.
The truly amazing thing about this experience is that I’ve become aware of the incredibly, unspeakably vast space of the mind in which this constantly changing perspective is happening.
The mind is empty luminosity;
it is peaceful and clear, free from elaboration–
bless me to rest in the nature of the essence.
Tashi…I finally get it… thank you… 🙂
April 30, 2014
Today is one of those days when nothing goes wrong, but everything feels wrong.
I’ve set forth theories for why I might feel this way today.
1. There are less Happiness Molecules in the air, therefore causing the Happiness Barometer to be unusually low, creating the ideal conditions for unpredictable Storms of Melancholy.
2. The sun’s beams are striking the planetary body at precisely the wrong angle, therefore making conditions impossible for the necessary Happiness Light Wavicles (wave/particles) to occur.
3. The cow jumped over the moon, and the dish left the spoon for a fork.
4. The moon is in Aquarius.
5. Karma.
Hmmm…which one could it be?
This seemingly pointless exercise has helped me see how totally futile it is to try and ascribe a single cause to any event or emotion. Our view is narrow and shallow. Karma is inevitable and inscrutable.
Although, I have to say–I’m pretty partial to my Happy Molecules theory.
Understand that the consequences of your actions are inevitable because all the pleasure and pain of sentient beings results from karma.
Gampopa
April 29, 2014
Thirty-two days to go.
I’m listening to this really fun audio book called How Music Works. One of the things the writer talks about is that it takes ten thousand hours of practice to be ‘expert’ at anything. He was talking about musicians and how their musical training usually starts in childhood.
That got me thinking. Ten thousand hours is 416 days; that’s 1.14 years. I started thinking about my afflicted emotions, and how I’m over-the-top expert at some of them. Does that mean I’ve spent the equivalent of 1.14 years, twenty-four hours a day, non-stop, with no sleep, practicing…aggression, fear, resentment, frustration?
Sadly, yes, I think that’s exactly what it means.
This has given me a true understanding of why mind training is so very crucial, and so very urgent. We don’t want to continue becoming experts at our unskillful habits. It’s made me see how we could all think about logging some more time practicing compassion, patience, peace.
It’s made me ask myself, as my day winds down…what did you practice becoming expert at today?
As I wake, may I renew my pledge to free all beings;
as I lie down to rest, may I inspect and purify all faults.
Bless me always to live between these two!
April 28, 2014
It’s very different to walk on dry sand than it is to walk on concrete. Since we first learn to walk on very solid ground, we soon take our balance for granted. After a mere three years in our sturdy little bodies, we recklessly throw our weight from one foot to the other, running after whatever catches our fancy.
Not so walking on sand. The problem with dry sand is that it shifts every time you take a step. Your feet don’t sink down to the same depth with each step. For many months, you have to think about your balance because those unpredictable shifts are just enough to throw off your balance. It always feels a little like you’re going to trip and fall.
After many, many thousands of practice steps, the feeling of being just a moment short of falling is still there, but you learn to trust the sand. You learn to work with the unpredictability. Soon, you do a kind of dance with the sand, your body constantly adjusting to keep your weight swinging smoothly from one foot to the other.
I’m finding that learning to be with thoughts in the mind is a whole lot like walking on sand. At first, the sheer unpredictability of arising thoughts and afflicted emotions is enough to knock you off balance. You find yourself on your backside, with sand sifting down into uncomfortable places. But after a while, you learn–all that unpredictability is just how mind is. You start to trust that you won’t fall over.
That’s what today felt like–walking on shifting sand without being afraid I’d fall. Sure. Anxiety was there but…it was just more shifting sand; just mind being mind.
I’m very grateful for today.
As I eat and drink, may the hungry and thirsty be sated;
as I go on my way, may all journey safely;
as I sit and lie down, may the tired find rest…
April 27, 2014
Today, I didn’t think; more accurately, I experienced thinking as an activity of mind. This meant that whatever thoughts or afflicted emotions arose in my confused mind, I was aware that they were happening in the mind. This made anxiety a whole lot easier to handle, a whole lot less exhausting to deal with.
This wasn’t something I did consciously. I didn’t get home and say to myself–no matter what thoughts arise, I’ll remember they’re just thoughts. It wasn’t like that at all. It just sort of … happened. Now that my day is nearly over, I find myself wanting to desperately cling to this new sense of balance. But…that’s a thought arising in the confused mind–better figure how I did this so I can keep doing it.
Why does ego try to take credit for absolutely everything? Talk about a diva.
This strong urge to hold on, coupled with my awareness of how impermanent our thoughts are helps me to understand better why it’s so important to live our lives as an exercise in letting go. There is nothing we can hold onto, nothing. The longer it takes us to realize this basic truth of impermanence, the longer we will suffer in the cycle of birth and death.
When all goes well, may I credit the Buddhas;
When it does not, may I take perfect shelter in their grace.
April 26, 2014
Thirty four days to go.
Today was a near perfect day. Not because it was anxiety-free. It wasn’t. Not because I got to bake to my heart’s content. I did. It was near perfect because the anxiety about what’s going on at work was there all day, but it didn’t feel frightening the way it usually does. I didn’t feel attacked by it. I didn’t feel like Hannibal going up against Rome. Today I experienced something I learned intellectually from mind training.
The mind is indeed a creature of habit. Today I experienced my fear of anxiety as a habitual response to a specific stream of thoughts. I experienced today that I could stop choosing fear as a response. This didn’t make anxiety pleasant, but it did allow me to have a day that wasn’t a constant turning away from some nameless, formless fear. That was pretty amazing.
I don’t know what tomorrow will be like, but I am incredibly grateful for my experience with anxiety today.
If I encounter happiness, let me grateful.
If I encounter suffering, let me redouble effort.
Bless me to know that gratitude is wisdom and effort is compassion!
April 25, 2014
Today…has been one of those days that really needs a rewind button…
These problems and vicissitudes are all of my own making:
it is only self-cherishing that prompts unskillful action.
Bless me to recognize my false self and its poisons!
April 24, 2014
I made coconut-banana-chocolate chunk muffins this morning before work. It’s a brand new vegan recipe, so it was a test bake. I tried one before I left for work.
Now, one of the weird things about baking is that when you take your bread (or cake or muffin) out of the oven, in most cases, it’s not actually done. We call it ‘cooling’, but really it’s still cooking. This morning I was edgy and impatient, so I tried a muffin that was still so hot it burned the roof of my mouth. It was awful–flavorless, mushy. I almost tossed all ten muffins in the trash, but I was running late.
This afternoon when I got home, I tried a muffin. Of course, after nearly nine hours, they were completely cool. Oh my gosh. Delicious. Subtle flavors of coconut, permeated with the sweetness of banana, and rich wonderful bites of chocolate chunks. It was a whole different experience.
This has made me think of how our afflicted emotions can be “too hot to handle” at times, and how that skews our experience. Today at work I got so incredibly frustrated with Salem (my co-worker), I wanted to throttle her until her eyes popped out of her head. Now, after meditation and prayer, I can see that Salem was just…being Salem. It’s how she is. She’s a yak, not a raven. She’s never gonna be a raven. Not in this lifetime; heck, maybe not for a few lifetimes.
What was manifesting was my “too hot to handle” anxiety. Noticing this has freed me of the resentment that rose in the wake of my frustration. It’s made me see that, just like muffins and artisan bread, we are at our best when we allow the heat of our afflicted emotions to dissipate, and allow the coolness of peace and clarity to arise. It’s the difference between seeing our world through the distortion of heat waves, and seeing our world in the crystal clarity of a clear winter day.
Yaks do not fly, and ravens do not till the soil.
It is pointless and callous to comment on the obvious.
Bless me to understand the common and uncommon appropriations!
April 23, 2014
Anxiety feels like this: you’re on a roller coaster and you’re all the way at the very top, then suddenly you go careening down. Except this is a Monster Coaster. You’re so high up, cities on the globe are pinpoints. You’re falling so fast, there’s no breath in your lungs. There’s no ground under you and you’re sure you’ll violate the law of perpetual motion and fall for-freakin’-ever. That’s what anxiety feels like.
Just lately, I’ve had the chance to get very up close and personal with that feeling. It’s been interesting.
Today, I thought very much on something my Dharma friend Tashi shared yesterday,
Serene Trust is the gift of the Buddhas,
the shower of Their compassion.
When we invoke the Buddhas through prayer and mantra,
it is not to ask, beg, cajole, or barter.
We express our gratitude for Their blessings of peace and clarity.
Until then, I’d never realized how Christianity has ingrained in me that ‘prayer’ is always to an outside entity.
I tried today being grateful for blessings of peace and clarity. I really did. But I didn’t feel serene or trusting. I felt like an idiot. I just couldn’t be grateful for something I wasn’t experiencing and…I don’t know. It didn’t work for me.
I silently recite mantra at work about once an hour. I have a pop-up on my MS Outlook calendar that comes up every hour and says “…breathe…”. Today, each time it came up, I recited mantra and made a conscious effort to ‘suspend my belief’ in prayer and just say the words. By doing this, I was somehow able to find a way to resonate with the actual sound of the words. It was sort of like humming harmony to a melody. With om amideva rhih, nothing really happened. They sounded like pretty words, but that’s about it. But, with om mani peme hum–wow!
I felt like a tuning fork vibrating to just the right note. I’m not kidding here. I could feel a powerful vibration through the center of my body. For whole seconds at a time, my mind reverberated with it. I’ve never experienced my entire mind turning to something. When that happens, you get a real sense of how incredibly vast mind truly is.
I think part of the reason it was easier for me to let go of the concept of ‘prayer’ with om mani peme hum is because I don’t have a visual for that. It’s a string of words often repeated after prayers. But for om amideva rhih, I have a pretty strong visual of Amideva. This seems to lend itself to ‘prayer’ rather than mantra recitation.
With om mani peme hum, it was as if for a moment, there was absolutely no separation between me and . . . well . . . anything.
I’m not sure if this is what Tashi meant, but…it felt different than ‘prayer’. It was a whole lot more powerful.
You have got to try this!
Bless me to recognize that this experience
is insubstantial, dependent, and impermanent.
April 22, 2014
Today, the new company that’s buying my company had an HR rep onsite to talk about benefits. Sitting there listening to him talk about how much it would cost me to stay ‘healthy, I thought about being lost and whether or not you can ever find your way back. I don’t think so.
In the same vein as the philosophical understanding that you can’t bathe in the same river twice, the same person can’t get lost and return. If you find your way back, then you are now a person with the skillful means not to get lost the same way again. Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz comes to mind. I bet next time there’s a tornado, she takes Toto and hides underground, rather than being swept away again.
I think sometimes being lost feels worse than it is. After all, in this whole transition thing, being ‘lost’ means that no possibilities are closed to me. Intellectually, I know that’s true. But still, having the new company rep come and talk to us today felt a little like an undertaker taking my measurements for my coffin.
Bless me to neither be proud nor despair,
but to abide in peace, free from self-grasping…
April 21, 2014
When I was a kid, it was a real toss-up between Lost in Space and Star Trek. Dr. Smith’s trouble-making ways really tickled me. Looking back, I think it’s because, of the entire cast, Dr. Smith seemed to mind the least being lost in space. I wanted to be like that.
I felt so lost in the terrible screaming matches between my parents that finally culminated in their divorce. I guess I wanted to be like Dr. Smith–to not mind so much feeling lost.
As a woman, in the maturity of my years, I think I want the same thing–to not mind so much this feeling of being lost, of being un-moored.
On Friday, April 11th, it was announced that the company I work for is shutting down. It’s being bought by another company. They’re labeling it ‘a transition’. Talk about marketing. Everyone’s scared. Everyone’s feeling lost. Nobody believes their promises. Nobody knows what comes next.
I know that life is always like that, but this really puts me in touch with vulnerability and my own fear of letting go. When I first came to Texas, in flight from Relationship From Hell, my job was the only constant in my life. I have clung to my job for nearly nine years, not coincidentally (I’m sure), the same number of years I spent in Hell. I have been determined not to let go of my job. When I have made efforts to leave, they were in truth, half-hearted.
And now this.
The sale will be finalized on May 31st. I’ve taken a vow to meditate and pray between now and May 31st, and bring this to my path. For the next forty days, I’ll be exploring what I call the Dharma of being lost.
I hope you’ll come along for what promises to be an interesting ride.
I take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha.
precious human life to carry others across the ocean of samsara. I might get a little lost sometimes. Some really huge waves might come, but my Buddha Nature will be right there, keeping me on course for compassion one thought, one breath, one word, one act at a time.
they were daisies), and everything in the house was exactly as I wanted it. Back then this meant my dolls were my blessedly silent and always smiling companions. We enjoyed tea from my tea set. Of course I didn’t go to work or pay bills. I had only the dimmest understanding of why my parents left me with a babysitter all day long except for two days a week. I had no concept of bills at all.
dharma pen 