appearance

On vanity . . .
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On vanity . . .

All notions of subject and object, self and selves, phenomena and characteristics are mere transformations of consciousness.

By this truth may I know that all appearances are vanity.

i. What does this mean to me?

I’m not sure what I expect from our prayers when I sit down to write a contemplation. At first I thought the simplicity of the words hid some grand esoteric, deeply philosophical truth. But no. I find that the prayers form mostly a “How To” guide for living in samsara without becoming lost in the illusion.

The line of the prayer before this one tells us that all we see and experience is “mere transformation of consciousness only.” Last time we talked about how there are two kinds of truth when watching a magic show. There’s the ‘truth’ that your eyes see. And there’s the underlying process of what the magician is actually doing.

Well, that’s nice to know, we might think, but – so what? Of course there’s no such thing as magic. We all know that. And with something as obvious as a magic show, it’s easy to understand that no one is really being sawed in half. Not so in samsara.

This line of our prayer reminds us of the nature of samsara. Our local friendly AI tells us that one of the meanings of vanity is “the quality of being worthless or futile.” Samsara is a realm of struggle and desire. We desire something, we get it, we move on to wanting something else, and then we go struggle until we get it. That cycle is exhausting and it’s only halted by death.

So what is our prayer telling us about living in samsara? It’s telling us that the appearances we experience do not have the qualities we assign to them. Another way to say appearance is to talk about the “outward form” of something.

This takes us back to the magic show. The appearance is magic. But magic in and of itself  is a worthless understanding of how things are. We know the magician is doing something, but we don’t know what he’s actually doing.

In the same way, samsara is all appearance. This is not to say that we dream reality into existence. Rather it’s to point out that what we experience in samsara is merely the outer form. Like the magic show, there is an underlying truth, but in our limited minds and bodies, we don’t have access to that Absolute Truth.

ii. How would I explain this to someone else?

I’d start by saying ‘the devil is in the details’. The line of the prayer before this one tells us that all we experience is mere transformation of consciousness. That is to say there is an underlying truth in samsara, but our experiences in samsara arise in the mind.

Once we accept this as true, then it becomes fairly obvious that all the appearances we experience couldn’t possibly live up to the qualities we assign to them. If I have two clear glasses, and I fill one with green liquid and the other with blue liquid, are the glasses themselves now green and blue? No. But the appearance is that we now have two different color glasses. Is it wrong to assign the glasses the colors of blue and green? Not exactly. But it’s futile to proceed as if the glasses are now green and blue. That would be a fundamental misunderstanding of what is.

In samsara, we do this all the time with just about everything. We absolutely and unquestionably believe that there are two glasses of different color. To the degree that we live our lives believing in fundamental untruths, we suffer. The source of our suffering comes from trying to work with or shift a ‘reality’ that we believe. In this realm of struggle and desire, there is no satisfaction, no peace, no end to suffering. The Dharma teaches us that the glasses are clear and furthermore, the glasses themselves are merely the outward form that arises in the mind of some Absolute Truth.

iii. How do I bring this into my life?

Before I began studying the Dharma, no matter what I did, there was this horrible feeling of emptiness and dissatisfaction in my life. Materially, I was fine, but I couldn’t escape those feelings. Only when I began studying the Dharma did those feelings subside. Once I began to understand about the illusory qualities of samsara, I no longer desperately searched for ‘happiness’ in samsara.

I try to remind myself of this prayer when samsara starts getting to me. ‘No,’ I say to myself, ‘what I’m experiencing right now is not what it appears to be.’ My job can be very frustrating at times because I feel like I’m not getting enough stuff done that has to be done. Then I take a step back, breathe and remind myself that there is no point in fighting against how things are. My experience of reality, I remind myself is exactly that, an experience. This helps me to refocus my attention on what is, rather than what I want it to be.

This can be very liberating. There is simply no amount of emails that I can answer that will be satisfying. Not in samsara. This is where the Dharma and our prayers become important guides to living in samsara. The more we realize that nothing in samsara is substantial, or permanent or independent, the more we free ourselves of the pangs of living in samsara.

With this prayer reminding us that “all appearances are vanity”, we have the freedom to rely on our own Buddha Nature. It is complete and whole, nothing missing, nothing to add. In this way, we can live in samsara with compassion, wisdom and open hearts.

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On the scents of things…

Currently I’m studying Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones with a Dharma friend, the Venerable Tashi Nyima.

This is my contemplation on the first two lines of verse 46 of the root text of Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones.

heart treasure“To recognize smells as unborn is the crucial point of the completion stage;

Clinging to odor as fragrant or foul is liberated into its own nature.

Free of grasping, all smells are the fragrant discipline of Supreme Chenrezi;

In the self-liberation of smelling, recite the six-syllable mantra.”

 Full Disclosure:

Exploring the scents of things helped me explore the sense of things.

Written Sunday, November 16, 5:00AM

Explain to someone else (making it my own)

There are few things I enjoy more than the smell of brewing coffee. My favorite scent of coffee is when it’s a really, really dark brew, like French Dark Roast. There’s something about that sharp rich scent that makes me think of early mornings in cafes in Paris, watching the sun lift into the sky. It makes me think of brisk mornings in London, with the only warmth coming from that strong brew warming my hands through a thick porcelain cup.

At this point, I should make a few confessions. I almost exclusively drink ‘girl coffee’. You know, the light roast coffeeflavors like Raspberry Chocolate Truffle or Caramel French Vanilla. I don’t like the taste of dark roast coffee. It’s far too bitter. While I was born in England, I was far too young when I left to ever be allowed to hold a cup of steaming hot liquid in my tiny hands, and sadly, I’ve never been to Paris. But the sense of smell is so evocative, that it can make us have ‘memories’ of things that never happened. Of course the seduction of scent is that much stronger if it’s tied to an actual memory.

This week in working with this verse, I’ve really paid attention to the smells in my life. What I’ve noticed is that smells give the illusion of immediately evoking an emotion. There doesn’t seem to be a feeling of unpleasant, pleasant, or indifference. This week I really took notice of how smells are a part of the rhythm of life. In the early mornings, there’s the scent of the soap I use in the shower, the toothpaste, the mouthwash, even the floss has its own minty scent. Interestingly, all of these scents are pleasant, but they evoke anxiety, because they’re part of my ritual before going to work.

I bake nearly every weekend. Yesterday, I took the time to notice how just opening the container of All Purpose flour and taking in the light scent of unbleached flour brought a whole flood of emotions. I was so happy at the thought of being in my kitchen most of the day baking, then giving away what I’d baked. The scents of the cinnamon and nutmeg and vanilla as I added them to recipes were a foretaste of good things to come—literally. I could almost taste the finished muffin as I put the ingredients together.

In taking the time to slow down and watch how scents weave in and out of my life, I saw what Dilgo Khyentse meant when he wrote, “We love to savor fragrant scents […], yet all smells…are void in nature.” Yes. This week I noticed how utterly empty scents truly are. It was a little bit easier to see it with scents because they have such strong associations.

As my week went on, I tried to get as close as I could to stripping away the associations I have with scents. It was nearly impossible. The scent I had the most success with was soap. I realized that I use a lot of different soaps—bath soap, soap for my face, soap for the laundry, soap for the dishes, soap for the dishwasher, soap for cleaning the bathroom, soap for cleaning the kitchen counters. My life is inundated with the scent of soap. I was able to notice that in every instance the soap itself had a ‘pleasant’ scent, but I didn’t always enjoy smelling it because many times the scent was associated with doing a household task that I don’t particularly enjoy doing.

Being able to take that step back, I was able to notice that the smell itself wasn’t actually pleasant or unpleasant. And even though I thought of soap as ‘clean smelling’, it actually smells like a lot of cleverly mixed chemicals, all of them poisonous, I’m sure.

What did I learn from this little exercise with soap? I experienced that it was my clinging that was creating the experience of ‘clean smelling’. I saw that the actual experience of ‘soap’ is completely manufactured in my mind based on my past experience with similar scents. I saw that the experience of the scent of ‘soap’ is unborn, a projection of my own karmic tendencies.

And if that’s true of soap, I began to ask myself as the week went on, isn’t it true of all our experience? Yes. I think it is.

***

 Apply to a past situation (how would it have been different?)

When I was a little girl, it was a stressful time in my mother’s life. She was in nursing school, she didn’t get much sleep, and she had yours truly on her hands almost 24/7. The only time she ever seemed to be at peace was in the kitchen. As a little girl, I lived in an apartment that was mostly drafty, especially in the cold and damp of a tiny suburb just outside London. The kitchen was the warmest place in the little apartment.

My happiest memories of that apartment are being in the kitchen with my mother while she created these wonderful scents that came from mysterious things called ‘garlic’ and ‘thyme’ and ‘spring onion’. I was the Chief Fetcher. I learned quickly what all these things looked like and more importantly, what they smelled like.

kitchenIn the kitchen, watching my mother cook was a time of grace for me. Most of the time, my mother didn’t want me around. She was always busy, I was always in the way. But in the kitchen, I learned how to find things, get things, and stay out of the way. The smells that came from the stove, which was absolutely FORBIDDEN territory, were divine. To me, as a little girl, those smells were the scent of peace.

As a woman, I think I’ve looked for that peace in all the wrong places. Looking back on that time in my life, I can notice that the peace didn’t come from outside of me. I can notice that the scent of peace was coming from within me, arising from my inherent capacity for peace and clarity. If I had noticed this at an earlier stage in my life, I wouldn’t have spent decades searching for a peace that had been within me all along.

***

 Apply to an (ongoing) present situation (how does it matter today?)

The biggest thing going on in my life right now is working from home. The work site of my job changed, but last weekend we learned that the new building wasn’t quite ready yet. After spending about three hours on the phone with tech support, I was set up to work from home. Wow. It’s been amazing.

One of the things I noticed this week was how the same scent can evoke completely opposite emotions. This week when I took a shower, the scents of soap and toothpaste and floss evoked absolutely no anxiety, because I knew I’d be working from home.

On my breaks, since I was at home, I was able to knit on my knitting machine. I’ve been knitting and crocheting Work Areafor decades. And only this week did I realize that yarn has its own special scent. Talk about the scent of peace. I’ve always associated knitting or crocheting with peace and calm, but I never thought of my crafting as having a scent.

This week the sense of smell has been a sort of window into emptiness for me. When I experienced a scent, I would make myself take a step back and I would question my judgment of ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Then I’d take careful notice of what images the mind conjured to go with the scent. More interesting was when images evoked scents. King Arthur Flour is having a sale this week. They send emails with ads for “Fall Must Haves”. One of the things you must have this fall for your baking is Vietnamese Cinnamon. I have to say, it’s the best cinnamon I’ve ever used, and I’m out of it. I’m planning to get more. Interestingly, the moment I saw that ad, I could smell the cinnamon, and even taste muffins I’ve made with it.

I couldn’t be this observant with every scent. That would be impossible, I think. I never noticed before how many scents we encounter as part of our everyday lives. But when I was able to watch mind in action with the sense of smell, it was a window into how the mind is constantly creating our internal representation of ‘the outside world’ based solely on our karmic tendencies and previous experiences.

When I observed mind in action, I tried saying to myself, ‘This isn’t a good smell or a bad smell. It’s just a smell.” That didn’t work. I still thought the smell was good or bad, but I became aware that ‘good’ or ‘bad’ was a view, an opinion that I was imposing on reality and then clinging to. This helped me understand the role of peace and clarity in the mind. The more peace and clarity, the less clinging. The less clinging, the less suffering. The less suffering, the greater our experience of mind’s true nature of empty luminosity.

***

 Apply to a potential situation (bringing it home to play)

Next week, the tech issue with the work site will be fixed, and I’ll have to go to the office to go to work. I’ve been trying to think of how I can work with liberation of the sense of smell in working with my anxiety and dread over facing imprisonment in a tiny cubicle to do the same job I can do here in the comfort of my own home.

I have to be honest. I haven’t come up with anything. So I guess now is a good time to try it out.

My primary objection to returning to the office is that there’s no good reason. Absolutely none. In fact, my monitor at home is nicer than those rinky dink cheap office models. When I asked about telecommuting opportunities (as work at home is known in corporate parlance), I was told…no opportunities are available at this time. Interesting. They’re available in Fort Lauderdale. They work from home. My manager works from home…in Austin. What’s wrong with Dallas?

As I work my way through returning to the office to work, I can notice that mind is doing exactly the same thing it does with the sense of smell. Mind is creating an internal representation of reality based on my tendencies, previous experiences, and afflicted emotions.

The reality is that I’m going to be in a different building, with a different configuration. I don’t have any idea what the computers will be like because I’ve never been there before. The office is very, very close; barely a five minute drive. The reality is I have a dream commute, a ridiculously easy job, a good salary in a time of economic hardship across the country (and the world), and I’m whining because I have to drive a few minutes instead of getting to work at home in an oversize sweater and flannel jammies.

The reality is my back hurts. So do my wrists. I never really appreciated the ergonomics of the corporate environment until this week. If I actually were to work at home long term, I would have to invest in a very good chair, a wrist rest, and another monitor. Some tasks are very difficult to do without the dual monitor system I’m used to at work. I would probably also have to invest in an actual desk.

The reality is that it will save me a great deal of expense to work in an office because all of the equipment is provided. Another reality is that my commute is so ridiculously short that I barely notice it.

The reality is there are upsides and downsides to returning to work in an office. While the experience of returning to work in an office, in and of itself will be neutral, how I experience it will depend entirely upon where I choose to focus my attention. Of course, if I let mind go hog wild and run willy nilly, I’ll be in a state of nervous exhaustion by Wednesday, the anticipated return date. On the other hand I can choose to focus my attention on the many advantages to returning to work in an office.

And there we have it. Just like the sense of smell can be liberated by watching the mind at work, any opinion (view) we have of reality can be liberated when we come to recognize how our karmic tendencies and afflicted emotions color what we experience.

In this coming week, mind will offer up many ‘reasons’ why working from home is so much better than the dreaded return to an office. Right now, I believe wholeheartedly that mind is right, that returning will be dreadful. But at the same time, I’m aware that this wholehearted belief is an opinion, a view of reality that’s probably not so right.

That’s a good place to start my week. I think it’s a good place to start our lives each day…I’m thinking this, I believe it, but it’s just an opinion. The truth isn’t out there. It’s in here.

I can work with that. I think we all can.

buddha at ocean

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On tomorrow’s laughter…

Currently I’m studying Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones with a Dharma friend, the Venerable Tashi Nyima.

This is my contemplation on the first line of verse 38 of the root text of Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones.

heart treasure

“Whatever appears is delusion and has no true existence;

Samsara and nirvana are just thoughts and nothing more.

If you can liberate thoughts as they arise, that includes all stages of the path;

Applying the essential instruction for liberating thoughts, recite the six-syllable mantra.”

”

 Full Disclosure:

It’s so easy to get taken in by ‘reality’ that it’s hard to write about the magic act without getting caught in it.

Written Tuesday, September 16th, 5 AM

Explain to someone else (making it my own)

When I was very young, I saw a movie called ‘Finian’s Rainbow’. It was about a leprechaun who’d come to this side of the rainbow chasing after the pot of gold someone had stolen from him on his side of the rainbow. That movie used to come on a lot. I’d watch it over and over. I think I was intrigued by the idea that a rainbow was something you could travel like a road and then end up on the other side in a whole new world.

As we go about our ordinary lives in samsara, we carry this same sense of child-like wonder. Is there, we ask ourselves again and rainbow potagain, that one act, or maybe that one job, or that one person that will give me a life on the other side of the rainbow? But time passes, we age, and we’re still on the wrong side of the rainbow, and the pot of gold doesn’t materialize. This makes us bitterly angry, frustrated. We become more desparately driven with each passing year to find that perfect life that always seems to lie just on the other side of whatever rainbow we’re chasing after.

This doesn’t work because there is no thing in samsara that is not a delusion generated by a deluded mind. The nature of samsara is that appearances arise when conditions are favorable, they last a few fleeting moments, then they pass away; just like rainbows. Yet we spend our entire lives chasing after delusional rainbows. Dilgo Khyentse says, “However much we might prefer to believe that things are permanent, they are not. Yesterday’s happiness turns into today’s sadness, today’s tears into tomorrow’s laughter.”

We live our lives in a kind of deluded madness. In our delusion, we are like dreamers in a dream looking for one thing—just one thing—that is real. In the dreamlike existence of samsara, it is only the deluded mind that makes it possible to create the illusion that any appearance is substantial, permanent, and independent of the deluded mind from which it arises.

We live like magicians who’ve forgotten that  magic is only a trick, slight of hand. We’ve become deluded to a point where we believe a woman can be sawed in half, then put back together. This is no less absurd than believing that money will bring us happiness, or that our One True Love will come and it will last forever, till every star falls from the sky.

***

 Apply to a past situation (how would it have been different?)

There are so many times in my past where I’ve been sucked in by the magic show of samsara. It’s hard to pick just one.

ladderThere was a time, about two and half decades ago, when I wanted to ‘make it’ in corporate America. I interviewed for an internal posting that I thought would be my dream job, and I got the position. It was everything I’d wanted. I was high profile in the marketing department of a managed dental care company. I managed my own projects. I had my own budget. I organized and put on meet and greets for clients from all over the country. I set my own hours.

I was miserable. I couldn’t bear all the pressure. I once missed a typo on a bulk mailing. It had already gone to the printer to be done on good paper in four color process—very expensive. It cost thousands to run new, corrected copies. I began to miss days at work. I couldn’t stand the thought of being there. My boss, who was totally caught up in the ‘climb the ladder and be a success’ delusion treated me with a mix of condescension and mild disgust. I was holding her back.

One day, something (I don’t remember exactly what) went horribly wrong. It was open enrollment and the pamphlets describing the different plans available had not been delivered to the client. This was in the days before the internet. No pamphlets meant that the entire open enrollment process came to a halt. I had the client calling and yelling at me. I had the client reps calling and yelling at me.

I had…the sudden urge to go shopping. I got my purse, went to Barnes & Noble, and went shopping for a couple of hours. This was in the days before cell phones. I was unreachable. After shopping, I went home. I went back to that job after this fiasco, but it was causing me terrible suffering. I felt like a sublime failure. I felt that I didn’t have it takes to be a ‘success’. I suffered for years after leaving that job, laboring under the delusion that I was just too stupid to ‘make it’.

Looking back on that time in my life, I can notice that all of my suffering came from attachment to a delusion. At that time in my life I imputed reality to the idea that becoming a corporate Vice President (the next step in that position) would make me happy. I also believed that not being alble to do that meant I was dumb or lazy or both.

If I’d been able to take a step back and breathe, and let some peace and clarity arise, I may have noticed that I couldn’t be a ‘success’ because a part of me simply didn’t believe the corporate myth of ‘making it’. That part was desperately trying to wake me up. If I’d been able to bring my attention to nurturing that part of myself, I may have ended my suffering that much sooner.

***

 Apply to an (ongoing) present situation (how does it matter today?)

Yesterday morning I sent the last bit of information needed to complete my background check. Yesterday afternoon the recruiter called to let me know that I’d be getting a ‘Final Offer’ via email in the next couple of days.

That’s it. One phone call that lasted maybe two minutes, and I was free of Interplanetary Title, Inc. I had the urge to go back to my desk and create an email with the subject line “Out of the Office…Forever!”, then send it to ‘All’. Thankfully, I resisted that urge. But it was tough.

An interesting thing has happened since the phone call. Nothing—and I do mean nothing at all—at Interplanetary Title has even a miniscule weight of reality in my mind. Being at work yesterday felt like being in a lucid dream. I took a look at my mind. I was really curious about how  my experience could suddenly be so different. After a bit, I realized that the three poisons (attachment, aversion, indifference) were nearly wholly absent from my experience of the workplace.

But this wonderful dreamlike experience would flip back and forth like an optical illusion…is it a wine glass or two faces? As soonwineglass as an afflicted emotion would arise, I’d be instantly sucked back into the ‘reality’ of Interplanetary Title. When I worked with letting the emotions pass, the dreamlike quality would return.

Wow. It amazed me that so-called ‘reality’ could flip from ‘real’ to ‘dream’ and back literally faster than you can snap your fingers. It was like a coin tossed high in the air and turning over and over—first heads, then tails, then heads. The day went on and I noticed that I was clinging to the dreamlike experience and not wanting it to change. I knew eventually this clinging would lead to attachment, so I worked with letting the dreamlike perception of reality rise and fall like waves on an ocean.

The sudden capacity to experience the dreamlike nature of work has made it so much easier to leave. I don’t feel like I’ll be giving up anything. That would be a little like being caught in a nightmare and saying…No, don’t wake me up. I’m enjoying my suffering.

Being able to experience the dreamlike quality of the workplace has been extraordinary. I always thought that experiencing waking reality as a dream would lead to a total lack of compassion, even though I’ve been told otherwise. Just the opposite is happening. Because I’m relatively free of my suffering under the terrible weight of that reality, I have more compassion for those still laboring under the full weight of the delusion. It’s not just an arising appearance to them, it’s ‘reality’. It’s ‘how things are’. And my real job there in these last few weeks will be to be an Agent of Compassion, to be the wakened dreamer helping those still caught in the nightmare.

***

 Apply to a potential situation (bringing it home to play)

Unless something goes horribly wrong with the new job offer, I have about twenty-five business days left at Interplanetary Title. I can use one of two exit strategies. I can show up each day with an ‘I don’t care because I’m leaving’ attitude, or I can go to work each day and look for ways to use to this new capacity to experience the workplace as dreamlike to help others.

This should be a no-brainer. It is, kind of, except for Salem, who is still unbelievably, and utterly incompetent. A part of me wants to have the ‘I don’t care’ attitude, just so her job gets harder. It’s scary that I still feel that way after all the work I’ve done with that situation…but…there it is.

But…and it’s a BIG but…every act becomes a seed, then a heavy seed, then an impression, then a karmic formation. To be honest, telling myself that including Salem in my compassion is the right thing to do doesn’t help. I know yaks don’t fly and ravens don’t till the earth…but good god almighty already.

All right. So the ‘I need to do the right thing’ approach won’t work to include Salem in my compassion. It’s time for a little enlightened self-interest to kick in. I’ve studied the Dharma long enough to know that the experience of work as illusory and dreamlike is like a pebble tossed into the waters of mind. Soon I’ll start experiencing the ripples. I’ll begin to notice the underlying dreamlike state of other aspects of my life.

Since the workplace is my first genunine experience of this, I have the chance to consciously shape the seed of behavior that will eventually become my karmic formation (my ‘default’) for directing my behavior when this experience arises again. Bearing in mind that I want to plant ‘good’ seeds of behavior in my mind stream, I will go to work today with the intent of bringing a measure of compassion to all of my interactions. After all, in most other areas of my life, I’m still nearly completely caught in the delusion of ‘reality’, just as the people at work are caught in the delusion of that reality.

When my Dharma friend Tashi talked about this verse, he said that it describes the origin of renunciation. At first, I didn’t really understand that. But after yesterday, I totally understand. All that arises in mind is a delusion, a distorted dream. Once we fully realize this, the natural response is to want to wake up from the nightmare world ruled by attachment, aversion, and indifference.

Renunciation is that all-important first step to coming awake to the deluded nature of samsara. Once we begin to awaken, we begin to see clearly that the true nature of samsara is ephemeral—a city of clouds in the mind of a dreamer who’s forgotten he’s asleep. This coming awake I regard as the root of renunciation, and I’m coming to believe that it’s the only way to free ourselves and others of the nightmare pangs of samsara’s thousand fold sufferings.

woman at shrine