Turning The Mind Into An Ally - 3 – Peaceful Abiding

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This morning we continue a series of talks based on the book,  Turning the Mind into an Ally, by Sakyong Mipham.  In the third chapter, he expands on this powerful practice of peaceful abiding, (shamatha in Sanskrit) practice that we began talking about a few weeks ago.  We start by simply concentrating on the breath.  This is the very first step in taming our mind. 

Just as an athlete prepares for his sport with practice, we prepare for living by finding time to practice meditation.  The concentration tool enables us to tame our mind and be more fully aware of what is arising moment by moment.  Often, when people first start meditating, they do so to relieve stress, and that is often a good side effect.  BUT, it is also important to know that meditation brings a quieter environment externally which sometimes brings more awareness of our internal frenetic thoughts, emotions and sensations.  We have been having all these thoughts, emotions and sensations before, but perhaps we didn’t realize them consciously.  Sometimes like a storm that has been brewing outside a window, meditation is like opening the window for the first time and experiencing the storm firsthand. 

This place of presence is where we incorporate the practice of peaceful abiding to weather the storm of our varying thoughts, emotions and sensations.   You might think that you have to artificially create a peaceful abiding, but the Buddhist teachings encourage us that human beings are at their core peaceful.  If that’s true, why have we fought ourselves and each other so much for so many years, decades, millennia?  I could jokingly blame it on too much testosterone, but I’m sure too much estrogen can be blamed as well.  It seems that all that conflict may have been part of our evolutionary process.  We fight when we are afraid.  We fight when we are not even aware of the possibility of peaceful responses.  It also seems we fight out of habit sometimes.  Now, right here, we can challenge this old notion that we are inherently angry, inherently at odds with the world.  Perhaps that is just what we have learned. If you are holding on to an assumption that human beings are inherently fighters, imagine if that were not true.  What if we could realize and tap into an innate ability to find peaceful solutions to whatever conflict arises? 

I want to stop and add a caveat.  I understand that there are times when aggressive tactics must be taken.  I often tell the Buddhist story that if you are able to save the lives of 200 people by killing one person, then you should do so, even going against the Buddhist guidelines of not killing.  However, I also offer that we often rush to judgment that the aggressive solution is always the best solution. 

If natural peacefulness is our birthright, how might we reclaim the experience, and find a way to respond in kinder, more skillful, ways?  Sakyong encourages us that there are several practices to rediscover our innate ability to peacefully abide in each moment.

First, we can decide to have a larger motivation than simply the comfort of our own mind.  Our selfish desires and distractions often lead to unskillful words and actions.  We can become more intentional in our motivation.  Ask yourself this question:  “Do I want to be a better person?”  “Do I want to be stronger, kinder, wiser and more focused?” "Am I willing to give up some old unskillful habits to see the bigger picture, to be of greater service to myself and to the world?"  We all need to be clear about our motivation and intentions in order to get through the dark night of the spirit when difficult times arise.  Are you willing to no longer put the simple comfort of your own mind as your first priority? 

We all know the feeling of giving in to our discursive thoughts and emotions, those fleeting desires and aversions that we all have. Sakyong describes this process as if we have an allergy to a certain food and eat it anyway, wanting so desperately that initial sense of pleasure that comes from the taste and the texture, but later experiencing the allergic reaction that causes us great suffering.  I really relate to this analogy!  I am allergic to dairy—I get terrible migraines after ingesting it, but I absolutely LOVE cheese.  There are times when I just want to smell, to savor, and to taste a glorious piece of cheese, and I succeed sometimes in ignoring the fact that I will have a severe migraine that will last for hours, if not days.  Ahhhh, but that desire for the taste and experience of cheese sometimes overwhelms me…..

We can choose to be aware of the desire for those things that are unskillful, and learn instead to tolerate the craving, then refocus all our energies on the feeling of peaceful abiding that can ultimately dissolve the unskillful thinking and emotions.  I learn to tolerate the desire for cheese, but not give in to the action (most of the time :-).

Second and third, there are two forms of thinking and emotions that often increase the likelihood of an allergic reaction:  expectations and preferences.

Our culture often encourages everyone to have lots of expectations.  Thinking we must decide in advance exactly what we want, we then feel disappointed, unhappy and discouraged when we don't get exactly what we want.  What caused the expectation in the first place?  Is it necessary to have expectations? You might find it valuable to reflect on these questions.  We can explore the possibility of practicing being so present in the moment that we don’t need to know exactly how things are going to turn out.  We learn through peaceful abiding, we show up fully and with kindness, and see what happens.  Imagine life unfolding through awareness and kindness—what might that look like?

Then, there are all the preferences we have about most everything.  I like sushi, but I hate creamed corn.  I like funnel cakes but don't like Mexican food.  We meet someone and often think "I like", "I don't like" or "I ignore".  On and on and on, we form these preferences and begin to dissect the world, the people around us, and ourselves into three categories:  like, dislike or irrelevant.  These preferences can strongly color our experience of each moment.   In Buddhism, we are encouraged to replace the need for preferences with the practice of curiosity.  We learn to get comfortable with not needing everything to be a certain way.

I am very much a neat-freak (I like to think of it as being very "zen").  I find myself liking my outer environment to be a very certain way.  (I especially love the smell of Windex.) When my daughter comes to visit, she has a VERY different perspective of "clean enough", and finds my "zen" habits very annoying.  So, we both practice compromising.  Every time I start to feel unhappy when my surroundings aren’t spic and span, I try exploring not needing things to be exactly the way I want them to be.  What am I feeling right now?  Is it really that important to clean everything in the house?  Sometimes the answer might be yes!  Other times, not so much. 

To sum up this beautiful chapter on Peaceful Abiding, we can look beyond our desire to simply make the mind comfortable and instead expand our motivation to a greater good.  We can use concentration to bring awareness to the presence of thoughts, emotions and sensations and begin to disentangle ourselves from our storylines, our expectations and our preferences.

Little by little, sitting in calm abiding, a little more joy arises for "no external reason".  There is joy within you right now, just waiting to be unleashed.  Through cultivating curiosity and non-preference, we give greater joy and happiness room to expand.   Let that joy and happiness come out and be.

Turning The Mind Into An Ally - 2 - The Bewildered Mind

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This morning we continue a series of talks based on the book,  Turning the Mind into an Ally, by Sakyong Mipham.  This book is a rich overview of the basic Buddhist principles, but he approaches them in new and accessible ways. I highly recommend it!

In Chapter Two, he begins the explanation of the Four Noble Truths by drawing the link between a bewildered mind and suffering.  Each of you here today are somewhere on the spectrum of suffering.  Some of you may have some serious,s obvious struggle, illness, injury or issue that you are grappling with, maybe the kind that consume your thoughts. “How can I relieve this suffering?”  Or if it is about someone dear to you, “How can I relieve their suffering?”  Our minds are designed to pose questions and look for answers.  On the other end of the spectrum, you might not feel like you’re suffering at all today, feeling at peace with all things.  Nothing to change, nothing to fix, just resting in a moment when everything is okay.  Ahhhhh.  And the rest of us….we’re somewhere in the middle.  The Buddha discovered, that this sense of suffering or dissatisfaction is often lurking in the background--we might not even be aware of it most of the time--causing us to feel a little off-centered, not satisfied, some vague sense that things are quite right, that we should be doing something, and then if we did something, then maybe sometime in the future, everything will be okay. 

It is as if we are all living out the fairy tale about Goldilocks and the Three Bears.  She goes into the Bear’s house when they are not home—first of all, what was she doing walking into a stranger’s house?  But that’s another issue,   She begins to try out chairs and porridge and beds.  She’s trying to make her external circumstances just right so that she feels happy. 

I was surprised to read that the initial telling of the tale had the main character as an old woman, who was a thief, and when discovered by the bears, she was taken to the town square and impaled on the steeple.  Somehow, along the way, that story got Disney-ized, so that the old woman became a young lovely girl, named Goldilocks, and she simply runs home and gets a strong reprimand from her mom.  The story was told about being safe and not messing with other people’s stuff!

But Goldilocks can also be a tale about the Four Noble Truths.  Number One:  life involves suffering and dissatisfaction.  We are tired and hungry or lacking in some way.  Number Two:  We often seek happiness in inherently dissatisfying ways, by craving other people’s stuff and other people’s lives—doesn’t it often seem like other people have something better going on than we do?  The grass is just a little bit greener on their side. We judge our situation, we judge our thoughts and emotions and sensations, and we often try to find relief in very unskillful ways (like Goldilocks breaking in and stealing).  We are trying to fix this feeling of something being wrong, by buying something or getting into a relationship or simply distracting ourselves with the many devices our environment has to offer.  In Buddhism, this constant cycle of grabbing at happiness and trying to avoid suffering is called Samsara, the  repetitive cycle of acting in ways caused by our ignorance about happiness.

When my family and I were in the ICU with my mom three weeks ago, there was a moment.  I was just sitting trying my best to be present and realizing that I was having this dissatisfying feeling that I ought to be “doing” something for my mom.  At that moment, I happened to look around the room and saw single one of my family members was engaged with their phones.  No one was paying attention to Mom, lying in the bed in the middle of the room.  Now, granted after three days in the hospital, it can wear anyone down, but it was as if I could feel the lure of the cellphones distracting everyone away from the extremely painful situation of watching my mom die.  I admit there was a moment I felt superior, just for that moment, that I wasn't on my phone and was trying to fully present.  A smugness arose silently inside me. 

Then, just a few nights ago, I went out to dinner with some friends and was walking home, and there was a moment when I felt an overwhelming sense of great peace, joy and happiness—what a beautiful night, the perfect weather, a great meal, good friends.  A few moments later, someone texted me, and before I knew it, I found myself lost in the distraction, completely oblivious to the beauty all around me.   Aargh! 

Perhaps we all have a little Goldilocks in us, that desire to try out other stuff to see if we can relieve this sometimes relentless feeling of suffering or dissatisfaction.

Number Three:   we have met the enemy, and it is us.  We can find a deep sense of happiness and well-being without anything, not one thing, in our outside word changing.  In the book, Sakyong says, “It’s not the place we are in that is samsaric, but our mind’s perspective of it.”   This is one of the most amazing lessons that Buddhism teaches.  Happiness can be cultivated as a positive mental state, regardless of external circumstances, regardless of whatever thoughts, emotions or sensations might arise. 

Number Four:  We can find this peace and happiness by following the Eightfold Path: Wise View, Intention, Speech, Action, Livelihood, Effort, Meditation and Concentration.  These eight practices lead one to experience more happiness in one’s life and less suffering.  It doesn’t mean that suffering and pain never arise again, but we now know that we can all, every single one of us, cultivate a sense of peace amidst the chaos of life. 

The last point made in the chapter is that most of us cling to a solid, separate, permanent sense of self, when that entity simply does not exist.  We are all this fluid, ever-changing, evolving, bundle of processes that we have come to identify as our “selves” but is really all an illusion.  You might have eaten something for breakfast or had a cup of coffee—at what point does the scrambled egg or coffee and milk cease to be them and start to be you?  We are breathing the same air right now, inhabiting the same space, very interconnected and interdependent and ever changing in this very moment.  Clinging to the illusion of a solid, separate, permanent self causes suffering.  This practice has proven that to be true for thousands of years.

When we learn to ride the waves of being, when we become a little less identified with our thoughts, our emotions and our sensations, an experience of peace ultimately arises.  Contentment, courage and curiosity arise naturally when we  loosen our grip on needing everything to be a certain way.  Don’t be so sure of who or what you are, and who or what anyone else is.  I encourage you to practice being curious like a young child—what is this experience in this moment?  What if you were experiencing this activity/event/person/feeling/thought/sensation for the very first time.  We can bring a fresh perspective to each moment, and find that peace is there waiting for us to discover it.

  

Come to Rest

“You do not need to change or fix whatever you are trying to escape from. Just recognize the patterns of escape.  Experience both the dynamics of the impulse to escape and the possibility of not following that impulse, of tolerating the impulse with no story, no strategy, and no preferred outcome. Simply be here, doing nothing. Give up every effort to escape, and recognize what truly holds you. Surrender and come to rest in the peace of your being.”

~ from: The Diamond in Your Pocket, by Gangaji

Turning The Mind Into An Ally - 1 - The Rock and the Flower

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This morning we begin our new book series, entitled, Turning the Mind into an Ally, by Sakyong Mipham, who is the oldest son of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.  Trungpa was the wild man of Tibetan Buddhism here in the west—he was profoundly instrumental in creating a groundswell of interest in Buddhism starting in the 1960’s, including the first Buddhist University, Naropa, in Boulder, Colorado and many monasteries throughout the West.  His teaching style was iconoclastic, see say the least.  Pema Chodron was Trungpa’s student and even writes the foreword to this book—she was Sakyong’s meditation teacher when he was a young boy, but humbly says that she is now his student.  Pema is a rock star teacher in her own right, but always defers to others as her teacher—I admit that I bristled a bit when she talks so deferentially about someone younger than her as being her teacher, but therein lies a lesson as well.  We can humbly understand that everyone is our teacher.   Even in this small act of looking for the pecking order of who is a better teacher than someone else—this is the mind causing us suffering.    The very first sentence of the very first chapter is,

“Many of us are slaves to our minds. Our own mind is our worst enemy.”

How true.  We discussed last week in the Tuesday night group that most of us weren’t told growing up that we had the ability to train the mind so that we could choose how to respond to thoughts and emotions.  For me, I was told what was right and what was wrong.  “Do the right stuff and don’t do the wrong stuff.”  But, then, thoughts arose, and I felt the desire to do some of the wrong stuff—that which I was told was “wrong”, but that which my mind told me was desirable.  I’m thinking generally about sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll, but hopefully you can relate to this tug-of-war that we often have with our minds.  We know doing something won’t make us happy in the long term, but in the short term, we really really really want to do it.  And so the battle is waged.  We wear ourselves down, then sometimes give in to those desires that cause us or others suffering.

It was a surprise to me when I began studying Buddhism to find that there is this ancient, well-tested system for training the mind to respond to everything in more skillful ways.  It doesn’t have to be woowoo or through belief alone.  In fact, this process of mind training that is central to the Buddhist way of life, is only possible by trying it out, working with it yourself, trying it particularly when things get tough.  You can live in a cave and practice these teachings, and make great progress, but the real success comes from integrating the teachings into as many moments of each day as we possibly can, particularly those when the going gets tough.

So, where to begin?  In the first chapter, Sakyong compares the mind to a rock and a flower.  For most of us, we think of our mind as a rock—solid and unchangeable.  The flower represents the potential for our mind to generate wisdom and compassion.  So, instead of being knuckleheads and beating our head up against the same wall again and again, we instead can decide to create some fertile ground for planting our flowers of wisdom and compassion.  The analogy of preparing the ground for planting is a good one.

We can prepare the ground of the mind, first by taking away this false notion that the mind is unchangeable.  We know now from the neurological research being done that the mind is very malleable.  Once we realize and incorporate this truth into our reality, we can move away the “rock”, and begin to prepare the soil of the mind.

Perhaps we can take the analogy further by thinking about tilling the soil and fertilizing it as the preliminary meditation practice.  In Sanskrit, this initial practice is called, “Shamatha” or peaceful abiding.   We can calm the mind by concentrating on a specific object, like the breath, or a mantra, or word or candle flame—whatever tool works best for you.  This is the very first step in almost all meditation processes.

Buddhist concentration is not in the manner of intense stressful focus, but rather concentrating with calm or peaceful abiding.  We are calmly compassionately aware of our point of concentration, gently noticing when we stray away with distracting thoughts or emotions.  Then, like a puppy on a lease, we gently pull the mind back to the point of focus.  Again and again, just as we do at the beginning of each meditation session.

Another part of this planting process is cultivating more curiosity about exactly what is happening in each moment.  Cultivating the experience of curiosity is also the fertilizer that enriches the soil of the mind, preparing it for greater wisdom and compassion.  What am I really thinking?  Why am I reacting in this way?   We can focus less on judging our thoughts and emotions and more on examining and understanding. 

I also note that it is with great distinction that mind is referred to as “THE” mind, not “YOUR” mind.  Most of us, we feel a sense of ownership of the thoughts and emotions that arise within.  So much so, that we self-identify as OUR mind, as our thoughts, emotions and sensations.  This process of training THE mind is about dis-identify with whatever passing thought the mind might have.  We are not our thoughts, we are not our emotions, we are not our sensations.  WE are so much more.  YOU are so much more.  By looking at the mind and loosening its stranglehold on our identity, we can begin to see what is happening in a more open and honest way. 

There is no one to protect or defend, just the mind to be tamed and trained. 

The chapter ends with three ideas for encouragement:

• Love and belief in yourself; encourage and inspire yourself and others
• Don’t give up; none of us will do this perfectly; keep trying
• Leverage the spirit of those who came before us and were so kind to leave us these teachings

Being Love – 6 – The Myth of Unconditional Love

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This morning we finalize our discussion about cultivating the quality of love in our life.  And it seems like perfect timing since I would like to dedicate this Dharma talk to my dear mom who passed away last week.  It’s been an profound process interacting with all my mom friends from an entire lifetime—from her sisters who she grew up with, to her friends from the suburb where I grew up, to her friends from the small town in East Texas where she and my dad retired, and lastly her friends she made just this last year in the memory care facility where she lived.  I had a lot of time this last week to reflect on this concept of how to infuse more love into our lives.  My mom was an expert at that.

Many of you met her last year when she lived with me for a few months. She loved this place so much!  There was several things I found irritating about my mom.  One habit she had was that she loved to meet new people and talk with them, often about what her three daughters were doing—which I found excruciating.  Complete strangers would compliment me on my achievements that my mother had shared with them.  She was always too slow to leave a party or church or a dance or any get together where she could interact with people.  As a child, I remember this trait of hers with great frustration--I wanted to go home, and she was never ready.  Another trait that bugged me was that she wanted to take my picture all the time, and I remember one skating party when I was eleven, I refused to pose for her—it seemed way too embarrassing—I just wanted to skate,  So, she took pictures of some other kid who she made friends with.  I still have the pictures of this strange girl who was more than happy to pose and make my mom happy.

My mom and dad had a great love affair and treated each other with such great respect, with roles clearly defined, they made marriage look easy.  That is the excuse I’m giving for why I was really bad at marriage. I didn’t realize that behind the scenes, they worked hard to get through the bad times together, and with three daughters, trust me, there were a lot of bad times.

In Buddhism, we often distinguish between the personal love between two people, and the loving-kindness that we can cultivate, but I am finding that these two kinds of love are more intertwined than we might think.  We talk about personal love as a love with expectations.  We talk about loving-kindness as love without expecting anything in return.  But as I reflect on the love that my mother shared with my father, with me and my sisters, with her family and friends, it seems that there is a mixture of these two loves that at the heart of how to create more love in one's life.

It seems that perhaps there is a myth of unconditional love.  This concept that if we were REALLY good people, we could love without any expectations at all, isn’t that what loving-kindness is supposed to be about?  But now, upon reflection, that kind of love seems too detached for me.  It seems that it might be easier to love someone unconditionally because we might use it as an excuse to keep them at arm's length, to not have those tough conversations when someone is being harmful to themselves or to others.

When I look at the love I was given by my parents, and the love that I try to cultivate in these practices, Perhaps expectation is not quite the right word.  it seems that there is a bit more "engagement".  If I truly want to extend love to someone, I cannot stand by if they are destroying their lives through addiction and destructive behavior.  Unconditional love is NOT about doing nothing.  It is sometimes about doing something while still recognizing and respecting the free will of others. 

One of my sisters is a lifelong smoker, and my mother was a nurse and health fanatic.  My mother loved my sister unconditionally, but never hesitated to share with her that she feared that she would bury her daughter before she herself would die because of this addiction. When my mom felt strongly about something, she could be relentless. She loved my sister in spite of her smoking and because of that love, did whatever she thought might help her stop.  My sister did not find this constant advice and encouragement (some might say badgering...) endearing at all.

I think we can all agree that smoking isn’t a healthy habit, but where does one person’s opinion about what is right become conditional?  Some criticisms we share with each other may not be so black and white.   Sometimes, we try to use our love as a bargaining chip for changing them.  "I will only love you if you are the way I want you to be."  Creating some wriggle room in the definition and expression of unconditional love might lead to some messiness.  Yet, isn't life messy?  Isn't love, any kind of love, often messy?  Finding the balance between conditional and unconditional love is not easy.  And yet, I would offer that somewhere in the middle of it all is the very sweet spot of life. 

Jim Parker sent me a great TED Talk by Brene Brown about how important it is be vulnerable in order to create more love in our lives.  We must risk being rejected in order to put ourselves out there, with a love that may not be returned.   For many of us, vulnerability is far too scary, so we choose to numb out with addiction or run away with distractions, anything to not have to feel the awful feeling of hurt, fear, rejection. Brene Brown calls vulnerability the magic potion for having love in our life.  When we allow ourselves to feel vulnerable, there is an unspoken arising of worthiness—it’s okay to be imperfect and still love, be loved and belong. Brene gives us the three C’s for increasing the love in our life:

·         Courage = to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart, the courage to be imperfect, and the courage to work on those parts of you that may be hurting yourself or hurting others.

·         Compassion = to begin with ourselves to then be able to have compassion for others, because none of us needs to be perfect to deserve love.

·         Connection= to explore making connections with others who are imperfect as well; it is connection with others that leads us to the greatest joy, gratitude and happiness in life.

What I found in my parents was a willingness to love others without expectations of love in return, AND they were both willing to express concern and offer suggestions when they felt someone were being hurtful to themselves or to others.  For me, that is what unconditional love is all about. 

As one by one, friends and family of my mom came to offer me their condolences, their stories were consistent.  My mom always had time for them, she always made them feel special and cared for, she never missed an opportunity to volunteer to help others, to give something away with love (many of you have her crosses that she crocheted with love.  Her last project was trying to learn to crochet a heart when she learned that maybe a cross wasn’t the best gift to give a Buddhist…)

I had a co-worker who had a sign in his office that has always stuck with me.  He had a wife and three children, and in the hectic stress-filled life of corporate work, I know it was often difficult to have work-life balance.  But he kept a sign in his office, that said “children spell love T.I.M.E.”  That is what I learned from my mom about cultivating unconditional love.  It is not about one heroic act or a grand gesture—it was about always having time to just be with me, to be with others, to be interested in their lives, to listen carefully to their hopes and dreams.  

I recommend that we shatter this old myth of unconditional love—it does not mean that we don’t care about what others are doing, but rather we care so much that we are willing to love them as they are and help them any way we can. We do NOT have to be a doormat, but be a loving supporter, a spiritual cheerleader, a caring coach, an accepting partner, and knowing when to give someone a second or third or fourth chance.

My mom and dad were not perfect, but they were experts at unconditional love.   They were comfortable with being vulnerable and examining what they themselves could do better, and they accepted themselves and others in all their imperfections.  I am grateful for this amazing gift.