November 23, 2014 by dharma pen

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 flavors 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.

In 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 for 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.

November 9, 2014 by dharma pen

On the truth of everything…

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

This is my contemplation on the second line of verse 44 of the root text of Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones.

heart treasure

“To recognize as deity whatever forms appear is the crucial point of the development stage;

Clinging to appearance as beautiful or ugly is liberated into its own nature.

Free of clinging, mind as it appears is the body of Supreme Chenrezi;

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

Full Disclosure:

This is my first contemplation written entirely on my laptop.

This is my first time thinking of thoughts as ‘appearances’.

Written Sunday, November 2, 5:45AM

Explain to someone else (making it my own)

When I was a little girl, one of my favorite fairytales was Rumpelstiltskin. I was intrigued that this little man from another world could spin straw into gold. I was too young to know how spinning was really supposed to work, so I didn’t understand that straw couldn’t actually be spun into anything. I’d never seen a spinning wheel, so that wasn’t the ‘wow’ in the fairytale for me. That came from being able to change something into another thing that it wasn’t.

After Rumpelstiltskin came into my life, I watched my mother cook with different eyes. I wondered if her making dead bloody meat into something dark brown with gravy that we could eat was like spinning straw into gold? Or was it when a grown up put wood into the fireplace, and then hours later, only ashes were left? Most of all, I wondered if somewhere, hidden in some secret place, in some secret castle, was there a spinning wheel that could turn straw into gold? And if there wasn’t, why not? What was it about this world (outside the fairytale) that made things so…stuck-feeling?

After hearing that story, the world felt stuck to me, like a still-frame of a movie, as though there should be change, but something was working hard to keep it still. As a six year old, I didn’t have the vocabulary to say any of that, it was just a vague certainty that the fairytale was right somehow, and it was our world, where straw couldn’t be turned to gold, where something was very wrong.

Lo these many decades later, reading Patrul Rinpoche, I can put into words that vague certainty. Indeed, the world is not fixed in concrete. In fact, just a year later when I was introduced to the story of a man going up to the top of a mountain where a god wrote on a stone tablet, I was perfectly ready to believe it. I mean, why not? That’s how things should be. The world is not fixed, except in our own perception of it. Even in my seven year old mind I knew that sounded more right than my actual experience of things.

The mind, as imperceptible as space, is an almost magical sense organ that paints the world in literally any colors we can imagine. There is phenomena. There is mind. Everything else arises from our eons- old karmic formations that run in deep riverbeds (and millions of tributaries) of attachment, aversion, and indifference. These distortions shape all that we see. Don’t believe me? Try looking at a flower and simply perceiving it. Bet you can’t. Bet you start thinking something like…that’s a nice shade of yellow…wouldn’t put it on my walls or anything, and I sure wouldn’t wear it, but it makes a nice flower. Didn’t Mary Sue have that color roses at her funeral? Who sends yellow roses to a funeral?…oh yeah…it was her crazy aunt, the one who thought she could make shredded ice in the food processor and…

And on and on. This is an exaggeration of elaboration, but it’s how our minds work. In fact, all phenomena is empty of true permanence and true self, and is utterly dependent on the perceiver for its existence. About this emptiness, or voidness, Dilgo Khyentse says, “The truth of voidness is the truth of everything …. everything, the whole universe and all sentient beings, is primordially void. Phenomena are neither spoiled by the idea of impurity nor improved by the idea of purity. The true nature is, simply, always itself.”

I think that for 99.5% of people on the face of the world, it’s impossible to simply perceive phenomena. We’ve come to rely too heavily on our elaborations to help us identify and shape our reality. But, what if started where we are? What if we started simply by remembering that all we see in the world is a direct result of what we believe and feel and what we’ve already experienced? If we could do that, we might be on our way to realizing the emptiness nature of all things. We might be on our way to recognizing that all we see is a shimmery reflection, like moonlight on water, of some aspect of our Buddha Nature, our true self.

***

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

The mind is very seductive. I’m not sure if that’s part of what mind does, or if that’s a result of our need to believe our constant, ever-present distortion of what is. My mind has a peculiar ability that I wouldn’t dare impute to anyone else, so I’ll write this as though I’m the only person in the world, in the history of mankind that this has ever happened to. If you happen to know a ‘friend’ who’s had a similar experience, so much the better.

My mind’s peculiar ability is that it can make me believe anything. In the past this was one hundred percent true. These days, I’m not such a zealot. I question the One Truth of Mind a bit closely these days. But in my past, I was a total Zealot of the Mind. If mind put it out there, I believed it. Now, think about this. Recent studies show that we have approximately 50,000 thoughts on any given day. Sure, some of those are what I call ‘throwaways’ like…what’s for dinner? Should I do laundry tonight, or can I put it off one more day? I should really stop and get gas, but I’m too tired.

But then there are those thoughts that can really set us buzzing like …my god…I’m 35, and what have I done with my life? I should have married my high school sweetheart. He would have made me so happy. If we could just pay off the mortgage, everything would be great. If we got a smaller car, we’d spend less on gas, and I could go back to school and make more money, and we’d be happy. If I work two more fifty hour weeks, I’ll get that promotion and I’ll be so happy. These thoughts, depending on how often they repeat, can be like tornadoes or hurricanes in the mind, and they will drive us into probably foolish and definitely unsatisfying actions.

In my past, when I was a Zealot of the Mind, my One Truth of Mind was …if I could just fall in love, find someone to love me, I’d be happy. I’ll leave it at saying that I was so wrong, I could have predicted an ice storm inside an erupting volcano and been more right. In my past, I have been such a true Zealot of the Mind that my life became an unending series of actions that led only to unhappiness, dissatisfaction, guilt, and eventually a strong aversion to people. At one point, I believed my unhappiness was the fault of people, no one in particular, just people in general; and if they’d all leave me alone, I’d be happy.

Looking back on that time in my life, I can notice that mind’s seduction was so effective with me because I was so desperately unhappy. I was willing to cling to anything, believe anything that promised a way out of that misery. If I could have taken a step back, I might have noticed that mind was simply doing what mind does: seducing me into believing what I wanted to believe. Once I’d noticed that the seduction relied on me acting based on my emotions, I may have been able to see through the appearance of the seduction, and see what mind was actually saying. Looking back now I can see that mind’s actual message was…this isn’t working. You need to do something else. At the time, that was absolutely true. If I’d been able to notice that, I may have been able to begin putting in place causes for happiness in my life, rather than causes for suffering.

***

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

The biggest ongoing situation in my life right now is my job. For weeks now, I’ve been planning to get a new job. In fact, I had accepted a new job. I’d made all sorts of preparations to drastically reduce my income. Weeks of preparation, everything was set, then it came down to one email: the email to my manager letting her know that I would be resigning in three weeks. I sent the email.

I got back the expected, “can we talk about this?” request. Sure, I thought. You talk. I’ll listen. I’m done here. That phone call changed my life. I’ve been with the same company for just about twelve years. When you’re part of something for that long, you mold yourself to it. You come to believe that you have so much on the line. You come to believe there are things you simply can’t say, simply can’t do. You box yourself in. And after a very, very long while, that box starts to feel like a cage, and you come to wholly believe in its reality.

Talking to my manager on the phone, I completely realized all of this. The mind is so very fast. It took maybe two heartbeats for all of that to go through my mind. But the moment it did, my whole world shifted. It was so quick, it was almost disorienting. There was an actual physical sensation of the room tilting, then righting itself. In those few off-kilter seconds, I saw that I was free. I, in fact, had nothing at risk. I told her everything, all the reasons I was leaving. No it wasn’t the fact that I hadn’t gotten a raise in two years (that actually made me laugh), no it wasn’t that I wanted more advancement. It wasn’t any of that. It was the fact that I was working with someone who is wholly unqualified to do her job.

In that moment of utter freedom, I told my manager that nothing had to change, because the only one unhappy with how things were was me, which meant I was the one who had to go. In the end, my manager said she would make changes, and asked that I would stay and give her a chance to do that. That was the last thing I’d expected. My world tilted again. Stay? No. That wasn’t part of the plan. But in this brave new world I’d entered, what exactly was the plan? And suddenly, for just a second, I had an instance of what I call ‘meditation mind’. In that instant, I realized that going or staying didn’t actually matter. This was karma. Wherever I went, whatever I did, I had to live my karma.

I wish I could explain how realizing that made it the right decision to stay, but I can’t. It was a realization that came from a place beyond language, beyond perception.

I’ve been working with this verse all week. And I think one of the things I’m coming to see is that when we can realize that appearances are exactly that…appearances…mind will look for another way to display phenomena. What eventually happened for me, was that mind sort of ‘clicked’ back into conventional reality. But in those moments when mind was looking for another way to display phenomena, my experience was a gap, an experience of phenomena that was in some sense ‘pure’, free of attachment, aversion, or indifference. I think, in the conversation with my manager, this happened because what she said so shattered my perception of what I believed to be ‘reality’. It was a feeling of complete freedom, no restrictions, no limitations.

I’m not going to go so far as to say that I experienced the deity in the forms arising in my perception, but I definitely experienced the inherent unreality of my reality. The falling away of the incredible heaviness of all my imputations resulted in an actual feeling of being lighter, less tied down, like an air balloon that’s been unmoored.

I’m not sure, but I believe that we can learn to have these gaps in experience simply by reminding ourselves that what we take for ‘real’ is actually a host of appearances. I think the more often the mind is forced to look for another way to display appearances, the more often we’ll be able to ‘see’ through the gap. And again, I’m not sure, but I think that gap may widen from a sliver of a moment, to longer and longer moments in which we realize the nature of our true selves and the true nature of all that is.

***

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

In the past three weeks, my manager has made incredible changes to the way things work. She’s kept every promise she made on the phone when we talked. My conversation with her has resulted in radical changes to both departments that she runs. For the most part, people seem very satisfied with these changes. Except for Salem, because now there’s no way for her to cover up her incompetence.

Even though I get up each day and drive to the same place and do the same job, nothing is the same. The work place no longer feels like a prison for me. I no longer feel like a prisoner entering a dungeon. I no longer feel like a coward who knows what must be done but who lacks the courage to do it. Now when I go to work, I’m aware that no matter how ‘real’ a perception seems when it arises there, it’s just an appearance. I experienced that thoroughly in my conversation with my manager.

Dilgo Khyentse says, when we’re working with this, and something actually happens, don’t think too much of it, “When this experience arises, be careful not to hold on to it or feel proud of it. This vast purity is not the product of our meditation; it is the true nature of things.” Well, that deflated my bubble. I was feeling like I was all that.

This experience with the workplace has been incredibly powerful for me. The very nature of my job has changed, literally and figuratively. The type of product has changed, due to the takeover. But more importantly, I’m coming to see the workplace as a sliver of emptiness in my apprehension of reality. In that one place in my life, I have utter confidence that everything I see arising there is an appearance. All that I see there has no more substance than a shadow in sunlight, a reflection on a mirror. All the beings there want to be happy. All the beings there want to avoid suffering. All the beings there are worthy of compassion.

As I go to work this coming week, I want to continue to work with this because so far, the workplace is the only place where I can clearly see appearances as appearances. The rest of my life seems pretty darn real! My intent is that by working with my experience in the workplace, I can make that sliver of emptiness bigger and bigger, so that it spreads into more and more of my life.

Seeking to exit this job has made me truly realize, beyond an intellectual level that I will one day be exiting samsara, exiting my body. To that end, I’ve begun to look at my life differently. If I had to say the greatest benefit that has come to me out of this experience with the workplace it is my realization of why I’m here, why we’re all here. We’re in samsara to become enlightened so that we may enlighten all those who suffer. If we can’t do that in this lifetime, then let us live this lifetime with grace. Let us do all within our capacity to ease the suffering we see around us.

Let us ask ourselves a question my Dharma friend Tashi brought up last week. All day, every day, let us ask ourselves…what can I do that will make a difference? I can’t be sure if living this way will ultimately lead to enlightenment, but I can be sure that it will lead to a graceful exit from samsara.

August 16, 2014 by dharma pen

On molding the clay…

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

This is my contemplation on the second line of verse 34 of the root text of Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones.

heart treasure

“

“Offer the torma of whatever arises to the guests of immediate liberations;

Mold the clay of whatever appears into the tsa-tsa of void appearance;

Offer the prostration of nonduality to the Lord of Mind Nature.

Consummating these Dharma activities, recite the six syllable.”

Full Disclosure:

In writing this contemplation, and working with this verse this week, I had an odd feeling of eavesdropping on my own mind, as though I’d ventured into a basement work room marked PRIVATE: DO NOT ENTER. I’m glad I ignored the sign.

Explain to someone else (making it my own)

There’s a lot of talk these days about unemployment rates and how the economy’s recovering. Honestly, who cares? Unless there’s a job that gets you out of the burning house of samsara, every job is the same job. Wanna see a politician’s perfectly coifed hair stand on end? Tell them this: At this time (Madam Prime Minister, Mr. President…whoever), there is 99.99% unemployment, worldwide. After he or she runs screaming into the night in search of their spin doctor cavalry, think about this.

We are here in samsara to do one job and one job only: recover our Buddha Nature. Everything else is just, as my Dharma friend Tashi likes to say, entertainment. Patrul Rinpoche puts it like this: “Between meditation periods, make sure that everything you do is in harmony with the Dharma….whenever you have the free time…do only what is truly meaningful.” How many of us do that? Right, about .01%, which is why the worldwide unemployment rate is 99.99%.

Now, honestly, I don’t carry Play Dough around in my purse. Everything else it seems, but not that. I don’t have time in my life to mold little clay statues (tsa-tsas) as offerings. But there’s no need for that. We all have the ultimate clay molding mega machine with us wherever we go. We could go into the bowels of the earth or way out past where the Hubble telescope can see, and we’d still have that amazing fantastic mega molding machine right there with us. And it travels light, very light.

Our experience of reality is an internal representation created by the mega molding machine of the mind. All that we see, all that we experience is the “clay of whatever appears”. Given this, we could spend our entire lifetime molding whatever arises in our lives along the elegantly shaped lines of the Dharma. How do we do this? It’s simple, really. As we go through our experience, we remind ourselves that all is impermanent, insubstantial, and completely dependent on our karmic formations.

Lest we think this is too difficult a task, let us remember that at each and every moment we are master sculptors who shape into being a delusional reality that is convincingly permanent, substantial, and independent.

Isn’t it time we employed that incredible talent for molding the clay of whatever arises to work for us instead of against us?

***

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

Tsa-tsas are traditionally made of clay, usually mixed with the relics (ashes) of a Buddha who’s left their body. When I first heard that this past Sunday, I thought—how brilliant is that? In creating an offering, the thing we fear most—death—is actually made part of the offering itself.

I’ve thought about that all week and how, growing up Christian, offerings were made on pretty white cloths on beautifully pristine altars. It wouldn’t have occurred to anyone to put a dead saint’s ashes on all that pretty white cloth. Particulary since Seventh Day Adventists don’t hold with all that ‘Saint’ stuff. This goes with the Christian theme of sin being something to apologize to God for and to make every effort to scrub it away from your filthy, undeserving soul.

Imagine offering sin to the Christian God? He’d probably smite you into the middle of next week.

So this way of seeing offering was totally different to me. Looking back over my life, I think the situation that I could have molded into void appearance was the relationship with my mother. That caused me no end of heartache from about the time I was five years old until a little more than a year ago. I wanted desperately to be the perfect daughter. I wanted her to love me as I was—not the perfect daughter she wanted to make me into. I wanted to stop being the fat, stupid little girl (to use her well-turned Patois phrase: you no have no sense!) she always saw me as and treated me as.

If I look back on my life at that time, I can notice that both my mother and myself were caught up, embroiled i gladiator n afflicted emotions. We were like flint rocks that struck sparks of pain and anger off each other on contact. If I could have taken a step back, breathed, done a quick mantra, I might have noticed how I had nothing to do with how my mother was. It wasn’t personal. She resented having children. Any child could have stood in my place and would have been subject to the same treatment.

Having noticed this, I could have taken yet another step back and noticed that all that was arising in my experience with the woman I called ‘mother’ was insubstantial, impermanent, and wholly dependent on my karmic formations that went back for eons.

Once I’d noticed that, I may have sensed the ancient feel of the conflict, and instead of seeing it as a battle to be won over an external entity, I might have seen my afflicted emotions as markers showing me what karmic formations I need to work with to recover my Buddha Nature.

Having realized the emptiness nature of the ‘external’ conflict, I would have been free to mold each encounter into a welcome chance to work with dissolving the underlying karmic formation that all the conflict was pointing to.

***

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

The biggest ongoing situation in my life right now is my missing dental bridge. This week the dentist’s office called me with the cost. I promise you, here in Texas, I could make a down payment on a really nice house for the cost to replace this bridge. In the meantime, there’s lots of discomfort, especially when I talk. There’s the risk I could accidentally rip out the little filed down stub of tooth that was anchoring the bridge. Then I’d need an implant. And that would probably cost the down payment on a McMansion—in Frisco.

As this week has progressed, I’ve really worked with this whole bridge thing, and wondered what the heck kind of tsa-tsa this would make. At one point when the little stub was really hurting, I thought—hey, if it falls out, all I need is some clay to mold around it and I’m good to go!

In my more serious moments, I watched mind at work. Mind was playing the blame game. The truth is the dentist told me a year ago that this bridge would have to come out. I had really good dental insurance. He had a treatment plan. I didn’t go.

This year before the company I work for was sold and I got moved to this Mickey Mouse Wannabe dental insurance, Interplanetary Title, in an uncharacteristic moment of candor, warned that we should get any procedures that we needed done before we moved to the new insurance. I didn’t go to the dentist.

After all that, mind has the unmitigated gall to blame my pain and discomfort on my manager (who won’t give me time off) and Salem (who’s the reason I can’t have time off until Sept. 4). This has been an amazing opportunity to watch my mind at work. Because it hurts to talk, I spend ninety percent of my time at work in silence. And in this silence I am able to observe mind hard at work molding and assigning blame. But never to me; no, never that.

Using this stanza, this line in particular, when those thought of assigning blame arise, I repeatedly ask myself: Is this substantial? Is this permanent? Is this independent? Is this the right view? What am I missing in this picture? (Thank you to Tashi for these questions)

At first mind was stubbornly silent. Then, grudgingly, like a sulky child, I’d get answers: no, no, no, no, and “missing lots”. After repeatedly asking the same questions for days, I’m not really sure what happened. I didn’t have a feeling of molding anything, but there’s far more distance between me and those thoughts of blame now than there was last week. When the thoughts of blame arise now, I don’t get caught up in them. I don’t buy into them. They are exactly like clouds passing in a vast sky.

I’m not sure, but I think the questions allowed me to recognize the “void appearance” of those emotionally charged thoughts. Once that happened, I was able to see through them, past them, and back to the causes of suffering that I put in place for myself.

As I write this, I realize that when we acknowledge illusion as our parents, and realize we are a child of illusion, the experience of our perceptions becomes very much like soft clay. We can’t mold a masterpiece out of our lives, not here in samsara. But we are after all master sculptors with eons of experience and skill. We can certainly mold whatever arises into a shape that acknowledges and bows to the emptiness nature of all experience. In this way, we begin to free ourselves of our delusions.

***

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

It’s twenty days until I go to the dentist. Twenty days of sore gums. Twenty days of living in fear that I’ll break off that little stub of a tooth. Twenty days of eating foods I don’t like but am forced to eat because they’re soft.

Of course, it’s also twenty days to work with mind, but more importantly, to watch mind at work. I have pinking shears. They’re a special kind of scissors with curved teeth instead of straight blades. No matter what kind of paper you cut, you get pretty sculpted edges.

In these twenty days, it’s my intent to use this line as pinking shears for the mind. In just the last four days, I’ve made tremendous headway in working with blame, aggression, resentment, and frustration just by asking myself a few simple questions.

Even more unbelievably, instead of dreading going to the dentist I’m counting the days until I can lie back in that chair, under that super-bright light, and have a very nice man insert an overabundance of needles, drills and all manner of sharp metal objects into my mouth. If that isn’t molding my experience, I don’t know what is.

As I go through these twenty days, it’s my intent to notice how incredibly malleable our experience really is. If anyone had ever told me that I would one day look forward to a dentist’s appointment, I’d honestly have thought them quite mad. But going through this experience, I see how all that arises in our lives is like clay that can be molded, is in fact molded at every moment, with every heartbeat, with every breath.

As I wait out these twenty days, it feels that I’ve discovered some wonderful new talent that I never knew I had. I will move through these twenty days with keen attention to what arises and view my experience with a sculptor’s eye, an eye that sees past the illusions of substantial, permanent, independent existence. With that sharp finely tuned view, I will move through these days with the intent to sculpt whatever arises into an offering to my parents, an acknowledgement that I am a child of illusion.

I will labor as hard as any artist ever has to call forth the essence of the Buddha I truly am, the Buddha we all truly are.

May 6, 2014 by dharma pen

Lost in Space: The Undiscovered Country, Episode 14

The undiscovere’d country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will…

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.

	The Mindful Migraine… on On false designations…
	dharma pen on On false designations…
	The Mindful Migraine… on On false designations…
	dharma pen on On suffering…
	Dawa on On suffering…