Day Thirty-one…

March 31, 2014

So, here I am, day thirty-one. As this ending approached, there was a growing sense of anxiety–what now? And a growing sense of sadness for something well-liked that was about to pass out of my life.

But today, seemingly out of nowhere, while answering an email at work, I realized I was wrong. This isn’t an ending. It’s a beginning.

For a long time, maybe a year, I would only bake bread in my bread machine. I was afraid to venture beyond pressing those buttons, selecting my shade of crust, and seeing that comforting “Complete Time” some four hours hence. I was done. All I had to do was wait for perfect bread.

But I started to want more. I wanted to make the bread mine somehow, make it more personal. That has turned into its own kind of pilgrimage that’s so far blossomed into about ten different flours on the shelves of my newly decorated pantry, three special pots for baking artisan bread, and of course a baking stone, because who wants bread with a burned bottom crust?

I say all that to say this. When I first came to the Dharma, and began to practice with dedication, it felt so alive, so real. I brought as much of it as I could into my ordinary life. Then I wanted more. I wanted to make it mine somehow. This pilgrimage has let me do that. These thirty-one days have let me build a firm foundation for a practice that is uniquely my own. Now, as in bread making, I have Artisan Dharma.

Now, the adventure truly begins.

What’s next?

Moments Sponsored by the Dharma…

Day Thirty…

March 30, 2014

Thirty days of my fifty years of life and no ephiphanies, no grand realizations, no fame or glory. No biggie. I should have called this the Grab Bag Pilgrimage because that’s what it’s ending up being. And not one of those no-gift-over-five-dollar events, either.

I started out thinking I’d get more holy–at the very least. I mean, it is a pilgrimage, right? I got so much more than I bargained for. The biggest gift of the pilgrimage has been a crystal clarity about how karma works. As more and more peace and clarity arose in mind, I could see more and more clearly how our unskillful acts put causes for suffering into our lives.

Just being able to see the relationship between cause and effect is itself a gift of peace. It makes it so easy to abandon hope. There’s nothing to hope for. These last thirty days I have truly seen the wisdom in these lines of prayer:

My every act is followed by a consequence,

just like a shadow as the day grows older.

Bless me to be extremely cautious,

avoiding harm and accumulating virtue.

Once we begin to realize this, we can begin to abandon hope and when we do that, we let go of so much fear in our lives.

What would I call this? The grab bag of Dharma.

 

Day Twenty-Nine…

March 29, 2014

Day twenty-nine of the pilgrimage finds me packing flour into brand new containers and redecorating the space I once used to write fiction. My Dell laptop has been replaced by King Arthur 9 Grain Flour, Ancient Grains Flour, Harvest Grains Blend, and a host of others.

I was very afraid to let go of writing fiction. I thought there would be some terrible emptiness in my life. But there’s baking. There’s the non-fiction collaboration dharma writing project I’ve begun.

This happening while I’m on the pilgrimage makes me eye the rest of my life. What else am I needlessly holding onto? What can I let go of? I don’t know the answer. But I do know this. Holding onto fiction writing led to pointless suffering. Only when I became nauseated with that suffering could I let it go. I always thought letting go took courage, and that I couldn’t do it. Maybe for a little while, but not really. Now I’m starting to believe otherwise. I’m starting to believe that when we live our lives in resonance with the Dharma–that which holds–then letting go of that which doesn’t hold becomes the irresistibly right thing to do.

Day Twenty-Eight…

March 28, 2014

So day twenty-eight of the pilgrimage finds me with less agitation in mind. I wouldn’t call it peace. I think I’d call it balance. That’s been the biggest gift of these last twenty-eight days: the gift of not being afraid to be knocked off my seat. In earlier days of the pilgrimage I’ve called this weeble peace. And that’s exactly what it feels like.

We grow up in the west believing we have to ‘stand our ground’. But…honestly…that’s such a path of struggle in the constantly shifting chaos of the illusions of samsara. These last few weeks have really allowed me to experience the peace of being knocked over and not struggling with it.

When I began this pilgrimage, I thought I’d meet each day with enthusiasm, and I’d just rush home from work to meditate. But then…life happened. There have been so many evenings after work when I’ve thought–not tonight. I can’t do this meditate and pray thing tonight. I’m too damn tired (stressed, irritated, hungry..whatever). The later I got into the pilgrimage, the more horrible that thought was. And up until about halfway through the month, it was real struggle on those nights. But one night, I just thought…okay. I have these feelings. I don’t want to do this. I don’t feel like I can do this. And that’s okay. They’re just thoughts, just feelings. And I may not do this tonight, but I’m going to at least start and see how far I get. Once I let go the struggle of not wanting to have those feelings, it was so easy to retake my seat and meditate and pray. Those evenings led to a quiet kind of bliss.

I believe we all have this capacity to do what mind tells us we can’t possibly do. But I think sometimes we’re afraid to give up the struggle and just get knocked over because we’re so sure that if we don’t stand our ground, if we let ourselves get knocked over, we might never get up.

We’re wrong. Our Buddha Nature is always right there. And it is the Ultimate Weeble. It is perfectly established. It cannot be knocked over.

What would I call this? The weeble of Dharma.

Day Twenty-Seven…

March 27, 2014

Down to the wire here. Only four more days left to become fully enlightened. At a guess, I’d say I probably won’t be a Buddha by March 31st at midnight.

So what are the benefits of the last twenty-seven days? Too many to name, I think.

One of the coolest things is feeling like I have my own Starship Enterprise. The pilgrimage has given me a real feel for how infinitely vast the mind is. It’s so vast in fact, that the Enterprise could race along at warp speed for a million years and never traverse more than a quarter of a millimeter of its vastness.

To paraphrase Carl Sagan, mind is big, really big.

Day Twenty-Six…

March 26, 2014

Day twenty-six of the pilgrimage is…interesting. All of a sudden, I’ve realized, just as I begin to write, that I no longer feel like this pilgrimage needs a destination.

I’m not sure why that is.

Maybe it’s because in the last twenty-six days, in spending so much time hanging out with my mind, I’ve been able to experience something I only knew intellectually before. My Dharma friend Tashi works very hard to help people understand that “the world” isn’t “out there” somewhere. It’s actually an internal mental representation. It took a while, but I finally came to understand that. I came to understand how that had to be true. But knowing something and experiencing it are two very different things.

All of this is to say that maybe I no longer feel the pilgrimage needs a destination because any destination would be an internal representation. It would limit the pilgrimage to the imaginary boundaries of samsara.

Maybe the pilgrimage is more like the yellow brick road in the Wizard of Oz–a road that unfolds with each step you take. In that sense, the pilgrimage is the destination.

I’m not sure what I’d call this–the Dharma brick road?

Day Twenty-Five…

March 25, 2014

I feel like I’m at the Great Enlightenment Liquidation Special. I  have only six more days to be completely enlightened and then…then…

I don’t know.

It’s not like enlightenment will ever be liquidated and sold out. But it sure is irresistible not to believe that a thirty-one day pilgrimage of prayer and meditation ought to culminate in some great epiphany.

No epiphanies here–just this twenty-five day journey with no destination in sight yet. If I were a pilgrim to an actual place–let’s say Canterbury Cathedral–I’d be packing up to go home by now. I’d for sure be stopping by the gift shop to get my Canterbury Cathedral snow globe. I wonder what it would have in it? Bits of manna?

This is how the twenty-fifth day of the pilgrimage feels–it’s hard to take samsara seriously. It’s hard (in a good way) not to brush up against its dreamlike texture. It’s hard to see samsara as being ‘out there’ apart from ‘me’ somehow. I still perceive it that way, but I’m very aware that it’s a wrong view.

If I could draw or paint, my painting of samsara would be surreal, like Dali’s famous dripping clocks, The Persistence of Memory. I’m starting to realize at a non-conceptual level that there are no solid boundaries. I suspect there are no boundaries at all between things. I’m beginning to suspect there are no things for there to be boundaries between.

 

What would I call this? The Persistence of Dharma.

Day Twenty-Four…

March 24, 2014

This morning when I was sitting at a traffic light, I looked for the present moment.

I was at an intersection with cars passing in front of me from left to right and from right to left. I kept my eyes on a tree straight ahead of me, but across the street.

At first I thought the cars traveling from left to right were in the past when they were on my left, in the present moment when they passed directly in front of me, and in the future when they continued on my right. This is how we normally think of events in our ordinary life, right? They emerge from a ‘past’, come into our ‘present’, then proceed into a ‘future’.

But here’s the thing. I already knew about the cars on my left in my peripheral vision. If I already knew they were there, then that was my past. So far, so good. But then I realized that I also knew about the cars passing directly in front of me. That was the past, too. When they drove by and continued into my peripheral vision on my right–well, heck–that was the past, too.

Then there came a moment, right when the light was about to change, and there were no cars in the intersection. I realized that that moment of complete emptiness and openness was the future. The future’s got nothing in it and everything in it at the same time.

Seeing this helped me understand something my Dharma friend Tashi says quite a bit–emptiness isn’t nothing. I’m beginning to see now what it means that emptiness is in fact that which makes all things possible. After all, without an empty road, where would all the traffic drive?

So what about the present moment? It’s gone missing, I’m afraid. I never found it.

What would I call this? The Dharma of traffic.

 

Day Twenty-Three…

March 23, 2014

Day twenty-three of the pilgrimage finds me as I am. What I mean is my level of dissatisfaction with myself is far less than it was when I began this. I don’t mean to say I’m self-satisfied, but rather that I’m starting to experience something I first heard from my Dharma friend Tashi.

I’m starting to experience that all is perfect as it truly is, and I am perfect as I truly am. How to explain this? I don’t feel perfect—not even close. But I’m starting to experience that perfection is my natural state. In sitting meditation there are long moments of just being. In those moments there’s no experience of ‘me’. There’s simply the experience of continuing.

If I had to put an image to it, I’d say it feels the way a soap bubble looks when it just hangs still in the air for a moment. There is no tug of afflicted emotions, no feeling of being dragged along by time, no experience of being closed off into a separate little being.

I believe these very fleeting moments are an experience of our Buddha Nature of perfection. In those moments there is no need to do anything but simply be.

What would I call this? The Zero-G of Dharma.

Day Twenty-Two…

March 22, 2014

It’s hard to believe this journey will end in nine days. It’s hard to stop myself from asking, “Are we there yet?” It’s hard to think of what will come after this.

It’s been a weird experience to see the landscape of my life from a constantly changing perspective. I know I keep saying this, but it’s absolutely true that the feeling is like having your eyesight corrected. My own tendencies have become so sharply clear to me. I can’t say enough how much better I understand karma today than I did twenty-two days ago.

Sometimes it’s been very discouraging to see how long I’ve been repeating a harmful action and causing myself suffering. But much of the time, it’s incredibly liberating to see, with precision, exactly how I’ve brought suffering into my life.

I’m starting to understand that the more scrutiny we bring to our own actions, the more chance we have to free ourselves of suffering.

What would I call this? Karma and the Extreme Close Up.

Day Twenty-One… 

March 21, 2014

Honestly, when I began this, I couldn’t imagine coming this far. In a way, I didn’t believe I could. But here I am.

Today at work was so incredibly peaceful. It’s not that it was an easy day. It wasn’t. But somehow I felt that I was relating to my day differently.

I think up until yesterday, I felt that if I did anything that was ‘un-holy’ or not ‘pilgrim-like’, some Dire Consequence would befall me. I’m not sure what, but definitely something on the order of the Four Horsemen riding hell-for-leather, bringing the Apocalyptic End of All Things down on my head.

I know. Do melodrama much?

It sounds silly to even write that down. But it’s extremely difficult to dissolve the “Thou Shalt Not” ethos of growing up Christian.

Anyhoo…yesterday, Salem blew my trip. Today…I don’t feel like I have to be ‘holy’ anymore. In a strange way, it’s as though today were the first day of the pilgrimage. Now, that blows my trip. Nineteen days of being all holy and stuff…then I feel like I’m just getting started on day twenty-one? What’s up with that?

I think that feeling of ‘now I get it’ happens all our lives. We begin anew only to realize we’ve arrived at a new beginning. When I was a teenager, I knew it all. Then I turned thirty and…heck—I knew even more. By the time I got to forty, I felt like an idiot for ever thinking I’d known anything at all. Now I’m fifty, and I find myself on a journey with no destination.

Life’s funny, isn’t it?

Day Twenty… 

March 20, 2014

Day twenty of the pilgrimage and today Salem—my cubicle mate at work—totally blew my trip. I’ve come to terms with her role in my life being to test my ‘holiness’ to the limit. And today, I swear, she tested me like Job.

I felt aggression rising and…I acted out of it. I fed her drama. I fed my drama. And now…well, now I think it’s funny.

I mean, I should have known. At twenty days into the pilgrimage, I have to admit, a wee bit of smugness and spiritual arrogance was starting to bloat my ego. I was starting to think—I got this. No big deal.

And today, there was Salem in all her dubious glory doing her usual amazing job of blowing my trip. Right after it happened, I caught myself. I breathed. I did mantra.

Nothing.

I still wanted Salem to die a thousand deaths. Painful ones.

I did mantra again. Breathed. I pulled a prayer from the Dharma Brigade (a stack of index cards with prayer verses written on them). I recited a verse of prayer.

I was down to 999 deaths. Not all of them painful. An improvement, to be sure.

For a few long moments, I was so discouraged. How could this be happening on my pilgrimage when was I working so hard?

Okay. I admit it. I was whining. Totally.

Then a moment later, I became aware of how incredibly familiar that cycle of feelings was; how it had been going on for decades, maybe for lifetimes for all I know. I realized it wasn’t personal. It was cause and effect. I was experiencing the karma of all the years I’d spent letting those afflicted emotions run my life.

Then I had an extraordinary thought. What I was experiencing was afflicted emotion. It was insubstantial, dependent, and impermanent. If had the capacity to experience that so incredibly vividly, then how much more did I have the capacity to experience my Buddha Nature which is true bliss, true self, true purity, true permanence?

I really owe Salem a Bath & Body Works gift card for today.

Day Nineteen… (my birthday)

March 19, 2014

From my morning journal: (5:40 A.M.)

This morning of the nineteenth day of the pilgrimage finds me with much mileage on this body—fifty years worth. It’s hard to believe I’ve made it to fifty. It feels like I’m officially not young anymore. Whew! That’s a relief. Now I can be old in peace.

Still not enlightened. I’ve been wondering about that. How would I know if I were enlightened? Would I wake up one day with complete and total understanding of Einstein’s theory of relativity? Would I start glowing? That would be embarrassing. Especially at night. Or maybe a halo would appear over my head. But then, how would my hairdresser do my hair?

Maybe enlightenment ain’t all that.

******

From my evening journal: (7:49 P.M.)

This evening of the nineteenth day of the pilgrimage finds me hungry and tired. It’s hard to believe nineteen days have gone by. It’s hard to believe fifty years have gone by. Looking back, it seems like the snap of a finger.

Nineteen days into the pilgrimage and I’m becoming aware of a profound restlessness. That’s the label I give it, but it’s not restlessness as in “I’m bored. I want to do something.” This feels ancient somehow. It feels like the constant thrum of a machine the size of a galaxy at work. But…and this is so weird…that great machine seems to be inside me. How can that be?

The constant reverberation, the constant turning of millions of gears is what I label “restlessness”; it is literally rest-less. I’ve had a more and more naked awareness of it in the last few days. It not only feels like it’s in perpetual motion every moment, it feels like it’s always been motion—as in since before beginningless time.

It’s an odd awareness, an odd sensation. Most times I want to move away from that never-ceasing motion. But there are times when I can simply abide with it. For those fleeting moments, in the midst of all that furious motion, there is no machine. There is no ‘me’. There is only being. It is the profoundest peace I have ever known.

What would I call this? The engine of Dharma.

Day Eighteen…

March 18, 2014

Day eighteen of the pilgrimage finds me wondering about devotion and seduction. I’m wondering whether they’re the same thing, or if one causes the other.

In my past, I’ve been seduced by romance. I don’t mean a person. I mean the idea of romance–candlelight dinners, moonlight walks on the beach, murmurs of everlasting love whispered in my ear. I looked and looked and looked…but…no go.

When I first came to the Dharma, I was seduced by the idea of trying a new way to decrease my suffering. I didn’t believe it, mind you. But it was a seductive idea. I dabbled a little. Then a little more. Then…a little more. I’m not sure at what point seduction slipped into devotion.

I know that ultimately it doesn’t matter. The seduction of the Dharma is no different than any other seduction. There’s this maddening impulse to lose yourself in it; to somehow come to the ends of it and lay claim to it. Of course, that’s impossible.

The seduction of the Dharma is the perfect seduction…it has no end.

Day Seventeen…

March 17, 2014

Day seventeen of the pilgrimage finds me in a calmer world. I don’t mean peaceful. I mean my environment seems to have less waves of anxiety; less highs; less lows. Maybe what I mean is my world feels even–an even keel–like a gently rocking boat on a vast sea.

If I had to compare this feeling to something easy to visualize, it would be a sine wave. That’s the kind of evenness I mean. The highs don’t peak, and the lows don’t bottom out.

At the same time, the world is more vivid. My emotions are more vivid, more dynamic, as if I’d gone from a black and white 1950’s TV to a 3-D surround sound home theater. There’s a sense of sharp focus about things.

Along with this there’s a sense of ‘no big deal’. Not because nothing matters, but because I’m beginning to experience samsara’s dream-like texture. Usually we miss it because we’re so distracted by our afflicted emotions. But when we pause to listen, we can almost hear the great clockwork of mind’s grinding gears, busily bringing our reality into being at every single moment. After a while, you start to realize that mind is just ticking along, doing it’s thing.

What would I call this?

The clockwork of Dharma.

Day Sixteen…

March 16, 2014

Day sixteen finds me thinking about words Jesus said in one of the gospels–this world is not our home. As I pass the halfway point of this pilgrimage, I begin to wonder whether or not we’re all pilgrims in samsara. This isn’t where any of us belong. If it were, we wouldn’t have that constant yearning to be somewhere else. We wouldn’t always be reaching for the next new shiny thing.

I don’t know. Just a thought.

This is from today’s morning journal…

There’s this feeling of peace, but it’s not a calming, soothing no-waves-in-the-ocean peace. If I named it, I’d call it Weeble-Peace. It’s a feeling that I don’t have to fight so hard (or maybe not at all) to stay standing. I can wobble. I can get knocked over. It’s all good. Weeble-Peace means I’ll get up again.

Whatever comes, all the way up to death, there’ll be fear, and anxiety, and frustration and all the other afflicted emotions that have plagued me all my life. But I don’t have to be afraid, not even of fear. Because Weeble-Peace means I get knocked over and I land right in the Dharma. Weeble-Peace means having the wisdom to gradually begin to see and experience that I am perfect as I am and all is perfect as it is.

Where is there to fall to?

What is there to fall from?

Day Fifteen…

March 15, 2014

Fifteen days into the pilgrimage and I feel as though I should be enlightened. At this point, I’m willing to settle for an epiphany on the meaning of life. Yes. That’s a joke.

I find that my default is changing. You know how we all have a sort of ‘behavior auto-pilot’? It’s like cruise-control for the mind. You know there are no stressors in the immediate environment, so you can cruise for a bit.

One thing that totally blows my mind about the pilgrimage, a kind of mini-epiphany, is how incredibly fast we can have increased peace and clarity in our mind. My default used to be what I’d call ‘Mildly Scattered Mind’. In cruise-control there was mild agitation and mildly confused thoughts arising. Lately it feels like my default has shifted  to ‘Mildly Focused Mind’. I don’t have to work as hard to quiet the chatter in my mind because it’s quieter in there these days. This gives a feeling of being more focused.

Now, nearly half done with the pilgrimage, I feel like one of those people who say, “The first thing I’ll do when I’m done quitting smoking is go have a cigarette.” I’ve been wondering what I’ll do on April 1st…go out and get agitated?

I don’t know the answer.

Maybe on April 1st I’ll have my first epiphany.

Day Fourteen…

March 14, 2014

The pilgrimage goes on apace.

Researchers have lately put the number of our thoughts at 50,000 per day. Math isn’t my thing, but I find myself utterly fascinated by this. I pulled out my calculator.

That’s 2,083 thoughts per hour in 24 hours.

I’ve been wondering what I would do with fifty thousand of anything.

Fifty thousand recipes.

Fifty thousand dollars.

Fifty thousand lifetimes.

I’ve had nearly fifty thousand thoughts already today. By this reckoning, by the end of the pilgrimage, I will have had 1,550,000 thoughts. I wonder how many of those thoughts will be of helping others? How many will be thoughts of freeing myself from samsara? Most of all tonight, as I walk this road of pilgrimage, I wonder this…how many of those thoughts will prepare me to let go at the moment of death?

Day Thirteen…

March 13, 2014

So, day thirteen.

I’m hungry, not enlightened.

I’m taking this journey with no idea of the destination.

As I approach the halfway point of this pilgrimage, I’m haunted by there being no destination. I feel like I should be going somewhere. But if we’re to believe that we’ve wandered samsara for eons (and I do believe that), then apparently having a destination ain’t all that.

Because I’m pretty sure no one ever left their body and thought, at the moment of death, “Wow. Angst. Drama. Getting old. Getting sick. All that suffering was great. Where do I sign up to go back?” Of course I can’t be certain of that, but I’m thinking it’s a pretty good bet.

So, all this planning we do, day in and day out, lifetime after lifetime, just lands us right back in samsara. Maybe a destination isn’t all that important. Maybe it’s what my Dharma friend Tashi calls aligning with your highest good; kind of like a homing beacon. If we wander samsara lost, lifetime after lifetime, then at least if  we align with our highest good, our path will eventually lead out of the burning house. Won’t it?

No destination. No enlightenment. And hungry. Does that make me a pilgrim, or an idiot full of sound and fury?

Day Twelve…

March 12, 2014

Day twelve.

Still not enlightened. What’s up with that?

This run of consistency doesn’t feel as forced as I thought it would. On the contrary. Practicing feels like eating really good chocolate. There’s  a Lady Godiva store–excuse me, Chocolatier–in a mall nearby. About once a year, usually on my birthday, I go there and treat myself to four truffles. It smells so good in there. It’s a seduction in chocolate. Then when I get home and slowly eat the truffles, all I want is…more.

Practicing is becoming like that. Rather than feeling it’s something I must do because I said I would, I feel drawn to do it. I feel seduced. It leaves my mind with a taste of something wonderful, but only a taste. And what I want is to come back for more.

If I had to call it something, I’d call it the chocolate of Dharma.

Day Eleven…

March 11, 2014

The pilgrimage is going on as I suppose the best of journeys go…one step at a time.

One thing I’m really learning about on the pilgrimage is cause and effect—karma. It’s literally true in our lives that there is nothing new. Nothing “happens” to us. We do everything in our lives. Nothing arises without a cause.

In the past ten days I’ve really noticed how I’m the architect of my own suffering and my happiness. We all are. That should be obvious, but we miss it all the time.

There’s the feeling that the world is brighter, more colorful, as though some filter were disintegrating little by little. It’s an odd sensation to experience emotions as both more vivid and less threatening. I don’t experience the brighter colors with my eyes. It’s more like a rising feeling of clarity about the world, about myself.

I like the colors.

Day Ten…

March 10, 2014

I feel like today is some kind of milestone. It’s my first double-digit day.

But…still not enlightened yet.

What to say about today?

It was a day when my well-planned Pilgrimage Schedule went awry. I had to do something tonight that’s left me running about two hours behind.

Eleven days ago, before I actually began the pilgrimage, I took a hard look at my schedule. Everything was in order. For one month, I thought, I can keep it that way. Following close on the heels of that was another thought…because if I don’t, I’ll never do this.

The Dharma has a funny habit of proving us wrong about what we believe to be our limitations, doesn’t it?

Today I did five impossible things in the course of my work day. Then I got home and did impossible thing number 6. Not too shabby for a Monday, huh?

This journey is all I wanted it to be and so much more. There is most definitely a sensation of traveling, of being on my way somewhere. It’s hard to explain. It’s not like being in a train, or a car, or an airplane. It’s like…being a cloud in a vast unlimited sky with no horizon. There’s nowhere to go, yet there’s everywhere to be. That’s as close as I can get to using words to capture the sense of ‘journey’ that I’m experiencing.

This is an amazing ride.

Day Nine…

March 9, 2014

So far the pilgrimage is nothing like I thought it would be. I didn’t think I’d start having holy visions or sudden epiphanies or anything like that, but…I don’t know.

What I expected: that I’d start becoming a better meditator.

What happened: I’m starting to have more clarity, more peace.

What I expected: that my afflicted emotions would nearly completely dissipate in the dazzle of my newly arising ‘one-pointedness’.

What happened: I’m getting better at seeing my afflicted emotions (which arise as strongly), and dissipating them before they become a cause of suffering.

What I expected: I would receive no benefit until day thirty-one.

What happened: I started benefiting on day one. Just doing it, just starting was like doing something I’ve always wanted to do without knowing it.

So, nope.

Nothing like I thought.

Day Eight…

March 8, 2014

Even though I bake as often as I can get away with, it always seems just this side of magic to me. You start with water, flour, salt, and yeast, and maybe a few extras. You use a spell called a recipe. You knead it, let it rise. Shape it. Bake it. And then…you have fresh bread!

The one thing I always notice about making bread is you really have to start exactly where you are. If my area is a mess, I have to clean up before I start. After I begin a recipe, I can’t run out and get something. Once the flour is in contact with the water, I have to use whatever is on hand.

This seems so much of a parallel to the spiritual journey. When we begin, we want to be world class bakers. We don’t want to make mistakes. We don’t want to start with our imperfections. It’s like we want to make bread without kneading it, without letting it rise.

Today when I was baking, I paid attention to the process. Each step is very simple. If I’m willing to practice those very basic steps with great attention over and over, the result will always be good bread.

The Buddha gave us a basic recipe for enlightenment:

Do no harm.

Do good.

Purify the mind.

If we’re willing to practice this very basic recipe over and over, we can be assured of the result.

Day Seven…

March 7, 2014

I feel a little like the plague-guy in Monty Python who sits up and says, “I’m not dead yet.”

Well, I’m not enlightened yet.

No. I’m not enlightened yet, but I’m starting to feel more and more like a weeble.

When I was a kid, there was a toy called a weeble. The tagline for the commercial was “Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down.” They were these funny-looking things that could get whacked pretty hard, and they’d always pop right back up.

I’m starting to feel like that. There’s a growing sense of resiliency; a growing confidence in my ability to wobble, even to fall, and to get right back up. It’s not really a feeling of power or strength. It’s…well…weebleness.

Day Six…

March 6, 2014

Today I laughed at myself at work. I could feel stress building and I made myself pause and really look at what I was labeling ‘stress’. I think typically most of us ignore stress, the way we ignore the taste of salt on our lips if we’re at the beach. It’s just part of how things are.

Actually, it’s not, or so I experienced today.

When I took a close look at my ‘stress’, I realized that what I wanted was to have my way with reality. Not only did I want reality to be different than what it was, I wanted it to be my way. The emotions had the tantrum-like feel of a four year old who’s up way past nap time and refuses to go to sleep. Unreasonable. Irrational. Suffering. And really, all mind wanted was to make the emails go away and do something fun. Like bake.

In fact, I’m doing a test bake tonight.

Once I realized what was happening, I saw the humor in the situation. Once I could laugh at myself, I was able to see how I could let go of the thought of wanting reality to be another way. Seeing I could and actually doing it were two different things. I was able to do it for a few breaths, but the feeling of struggle came right back.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll be able to let go the struggle for a few more breaths than I could today.

Day Five…

March 5, 2014

Tonight, I gotta admit, I did not want to meditate. After the day I had at work…stress, stress, stress–what? Come home and meditate and pray? It sounded like a bad joke.

What I wanted to do was go to Tom Thumb, get that three layer German chocolate cake and come home and get a fork. Then I felt sorta guilty about all the eggs and butter and milk and stuff, so I thought about driving to Whole Foods to get vegan carrot cake. At that time of day it would have been about a forty minute drive.

But that vegan carrot cake was sure looking good.

I’m a stress eater. It doesn’t show much, does it?

Anyway, I did do the prayers. And I did do sitting meditation.

And I’m so glad I did.

It was pretty amazing. At one point in meditation, I could feel something supporting me, supporting my practice. Not like hands or anything like that. It was more like when someone deeply loves you and you can feel their support.

It reminded me of something my Dharma friend Tashi likes to say, “If you support the Dharma, it will support you.”

I’m here to tell you, that ain’t nothing but the truth.

Do I still want that carrot cake?

Oh heck yeah!

I’m a pilgrim on a pilgrimage, not a saint on my way to do a miracle.

Day Four…

March 4, 2014

So it’s been four days.

Hmmm…

Not enlightened yet.

I was thinking today, if I’d taken a month long trip to someplace I’d never been before–somewhere really exotic like Istanbul–what would would I be doing on my fourth day?

Well, it would certainly be a long trip, so I would have to rest. But first I would have walked around, just to see the lay of the land.

By the fourth day, I’d probably be gathering up those tourist books they have in hotels and I’d be looking for cool places to go. Or maybe I’d go shopping in the tourist trap places and get some really cheesy tourist mini-statue monstrosity of the Hagia Sophia.

But I think mostly on the fourth day I’d be walking the streets, listening to the foreign language around me, smelling the scents of different foods, taking in the faces of natives going about their ordinary lives.

It’s like that now on my pilgrimage, only the exotic land is my mind. I sit quietly in meditation and simply listen and watch what mind displays for me. It feels exactly like an extended vacation in a distant place–there’s no rush. I’ll be back to walk the streets again soon.

Before the pilgrimage I was dedicated to my practice, but I could be erratic. I never realized the effect of that on mind. Now mind feels much calmer because it knows reliably that I’ll be back. There’s less resistance to letting go of thoughts.

Before, mind was like a child who hasn’t seen a parent all day, and has to tell them absolutely everything about school–all the pictures they drew, what their teacher said that was funny, what was for lunch, and how they won at tag on the playground. In a funny way, it feels like mind is starved for attention.

I wonder how that can be when it seems that I’m with my mind 24/7? Or have I been an absentee parent?

Day Three…

March 3, 2014

Today at work I was wondering what profound thoughts I might or might not have tonight as I end day three of my pilgrimage.

Then it suddenly occurred to me. Why do we believe that thoughts of perfection are necessarily profound? Perfection is our natural state. The suffering in which we find ourselves in samsara–that’s profound. That’s something to be wondered at, yet we hardly do. We say things like, “Well, that’s how things are”, then we busily go back to our suffering.

Profound?

I don’t know.

Day Two…

March 2, 2014   Losar

Today was a pretty amazing day.

I renewed my refuge vows.

I took my first ever Bodhisattva vows.

And I witnessed a monk take temporary Bodhisattva vows.

Wow.

At the end of day two of the pilgrimage, I find myself with still no profound thoughts. I’m baking white whole wheat orange-cranberry bread tonight. It’s a test bake. This is the third week in a row I’ve tried this bread. It keeps coming out too dry. What I’m actually thinking about is whether or not the two extra tablespoons of water I added to the dough is enough.

In truth I feel a little like a tourist who goes all the way to Italy to see the Sistine Chapel and stands there wondering what color socks Michelangelo was wearing when he painted Adam’s reaching fingers.

Day One…

March 1, 2014

So, first day of the pilgrimage. It begins with a migraine and all its attendant miseries and a vow.

A couple of days ago I decided to take a vow, a simple one, “I vow to do the Pilgrimage of 62”. I did it for purely selfish reasons, I confess. I wanted to add the merit of keeping the vow to whatever merit I get for doing the pilgrimage. Nothing felt any different. I went back to my ordinary life.

But this morning, the moment I sat down to practice, my whole world changed. How do I explain this?

No psychic fireworks. No angels singing. Nothing like that. You know how when you do something all the time, you sort of lose awareness of doing it? You just do it. Practice is like that for me most of the time. It’s not that I’m not paying attention, but most of the time it’s like driving carefully. Everything just sort of comes together, and you stay focused and arrive alive.

This morning was nothing like that. I felt like I had boarded a rocket to the moon. There was this incredible sense of something very powerful about to be done. I was aware of every syllable of every prayer, every moment of sitting meditation. And there was this pervasive sense of joy. Not like getting on a roller coaster “Whee! This is fun!” joy. More like the peaceful joy that comes when you set out for somewhere you’ve always wanted to go.

I guess this is what it feels like to be on my way on my very first pilgrimage.

Wow.

Countdown…Two Days

February 27, 2014

Two days to the start of the pilgrimage. I feel like I should have something profound to say. But in fact, what I’m thinking about is getting my taxes done tonight after work. Laundry needs to be done, there are dishes in the dishwasher, and I’m deeply contemplating what brand of vacuum cleaner to buy this weekend at Target. Mine’s given up the ghost. It spews out way more dust than it sucks up.

So, no. Not a profound thought in my head.

Countdown…Four Days

February 25, 2014

Three days to the Pilgrimage. I remember when I was a little girl, maybe nine or ten, and my parents were taking me to Great Adventure for the first time. It was in New Jersey, a long ride from the Bronx! Anyway, I was so excited, I didn’t want to eat breakfast. I wasn’t hungry. In my mind, I could do that once we got there. I had plans. Didn’t my parents know I planned to get on every single ride in the park? We needed to get going! Mind you, the Great Adventure amusement park is massive, acres big.

By the end of the day, I’d eaten too much, hadn’t gone on every ride, and my feet hurt from all the walking. I was a little disappointed.

Mind is acting the same way now about the Pilgrimage. My mind rattles off thoughts like a little kid rearing to go on a grand adventure. It’s so tempting to get swept along in that exuberance. It’s touching that part of me is so excited by an adventure in the Dharma, but at the same time, I don’t want to encourage false expectations.

But…I have to admit, there is a certain energy building, that wonderful excitement of setting out for an unknown place. I don’t even know what the destination is. Maybe the journey is the destination.

At any rate, my ordinary life is in order. My schedule’s been adjusted. I feel packed…ready to go.

Countdown…Seven Days

February 22, 2014

So what’s all this about a pilgrimage? I don’t really know.

I turn fifty next month.  A couple of weeks ago in meditation the idea of a pilgrimage arose. It was very attractive. I feel somehow that this is the right time in my life to do that. Since both Mecca and Tibet (not to mention Nepal) are beyond my budget, I had to come up with something else. It had to be something I could do while living my ordinary life that would make me feel that I was taking a journey I’d never taken before.

The idea that I’ve come up with is what I now call The Pilgrimage of 62. It’s a commitment to meditate and pray twice a day for the 31 days of March and then journal for ten minutes afterward.

It’s funny. As time has gone by, I’ve been thinking that I ought to have a destination. Let’s see. Canterbury Cathedral is a little beyond my budget. I’ve decided to go the Star Trek route, and go where I’ve never gone before. Not exactly a destination, right? But it promises to be interesting.

I’ll be using this page to track my progress in the coming days as I count down to March 1st and then actually begin the pilgrimage on the first day of March.

Hope you can take the journey with me.