Now for Something Completely Different

This moment, the one you are experiencing right now, is a perfect one.

To say this does not mean that this moment is a pleasurable or enjoyable one for you, necessarily. That's what we usually mean when we say things are "perfect"——that we really, really like the way things are right now. But to equate perfection with desirability is an egocentric viewpoint, not one that has big picture validity. In fact, this very moment, in its perfection, might offering me pain, or unhappiness, or some other form of discomfort. The perfection of the moment has nothing whatsoever to do with me liking the quality of that moment.

This moment is a perfect one because it is the only possible outcome resulting from the events leading up to it. The "effect" of this moment has been governed with the unavoidable logic of the "causes" preceding. If I happen to be unhappy with the moment, that doesn't spoil it's perfection, because the nature of this moment, including my feelings about it, is the logical result of things like memory, my previous life experiences, my attitude, my outlook, the current mixture of hormones and enzymes and neurotransmitters in my brain, my current physical condition, etc, etc.

In other words, dropping dead of a heart attack is a perfect result, if viewed as the logical consequence of heredity factors, poor eating habits, a dissolute living style, or a sudden contact with high voltage power lines. A truly horrific world would be the one where you don't die when a giant grand piano crashes onto your head from an overhead pulley. We need for the world to follow logical physical principles, and so it does. So how else could any moment be anything but perfect?

Viewing the world in this way——seeing each moment is a perfect one-- isn't to then suggest that we're supposed to "accept" whatever happens to us and not take action to change it. After all, perfection is also present in our resistance to the circumstances of the moment, in our choice to move in another direction.

At the same time, there's still a profound peace to be had from recognizing the perfection of the moment, even when it's unpleasant, because it then frees you from disagreeing and wrangling with the reality of it. A lot of grief we bring on ourselves isn't so much the actual pain, as our disagreement and refusal to acknowledge its truth and reality.

An interesting change begins to happen at the very instant you acknowledge the perfection of any moment. Things become exactly as they are, and immediately there is a burden that lifts from your shoulders——the burden of constantly trying to improve and perfect things. You find yourself entering into experience very directly, since there is really nothing to accomplish in a perfect moment. You just live it with a full embrace. The past is irrelevant ( it doesn 't even exist, really), and the future is interesting only because the current moment feeds it. Each moment is what it is, and the very next moment becomes an utterly logical and perfect result of the previous one. The power of our actions becomes blindingly evident, and you begin to feel a precision and economy and powerfulness in how you make choices. What you do in response to this situation is, in itself perfect, and it will lead to the inevitable (perfect) experience of the next moment. There is nothing to change, really, and nothing to regret. Only experience.

Normally, this method of seeing things comes to us in tiny little flashes, with considerably more time spent lamenting the past or worrying about the future. It is possible, though, to find yourself recognizing and embracing the inherent perfection of this moment, then the next moment, then the next moment, so that there's really nothing else but this moment, perpetually. Strangely, it's a form of immortality. String a thousand of these moments together, and it becomes a 15-second experience that can change everything and rewire your circuits in a major way.

*****

This kind of approach to phenomenology may seem pretty esoteric and exotic, but in reality you can find it in the mystical traditions of almost every major world religion. In Christianity, for example, you will find such a practice inherent in "The Cloud of Unknowing," a seminal work of Western Christian theology.

I began to learn about it through the study of Dzogchen, a branch of Tibetan Buddhist practice, that is also known as "The Great Perfection." Depending on your leanings, you could look to either source for more information on this way of viewing the world.

Some Buddhist Basics

In the Buddhist philosophy that I follow, it is thought that human suffering is the result of the cyclical reliving of behavior patterns. The human condition is said to be one of both quiet and overt suffering, because we are trapped into repeating the same behaviors again and again. For very fundamental Buddhists, this is believed quite literally——that the human soul/personality is actually reborn again and again in subsequent lifetimes. For Buddhists of a more symbolic bent, it's taken as a comment on our human habit of reliving the same behaviors and problems again and again within this life.

Either way, though, the driving mechanism of this literal or figurative rebirth is the energy of hunger, hatred and ignorance. The cyclical, recurring problems of our existence arise because because we don't see things as they are (ignorance), which leads to either some form of subtle or obvious longing or attachment (hunger), or some form of resistance and aversion (hatred). These three problems are very intimately connected, and making progress on one leads to progress on all three. In other words, seeing things as they are quite naturally causes a reduction in grasping or aversion, and reducing grasping will naturally lessen hatred and cause us to see things more nakedly.

The principle tool of spiritual development, for Buddhists, is meditation, and the goal of meditation is quite simple: to practice the surrender of our pulling and pushing, our hatred and hunger, and thereby see things as they are. Should we ever accomplish this permanently, the legendary result is nirvana——the escape from the dreariness of cycle repetiion. Fundamentalists believe that such a soul no longer requires rebirth; more modern believers suggest that such accomplishment will cause this life to be one of peace and happiness.

To the westerner approaching Buddhism from a different culture, all this will feel pretty alien and unnatural, but very gradually almost everyone who steadily practices will see some literal truth to it. Most of us see it only in small glimpses, especially at first, but it is surely there: surrendering aversion and grasping causes you to see things much, much differently, and the result is a peace of mind that is most definitely transcendent and can be life changing.

Buddhist practice can seem to be a bewilderingly complex system of practices and lessons, but it's important to understand that it is all really about this very simple goal of surrendering hatred and longing, and seeing phenomena as they are rather than through the filters of wanting and disliking. Although there are many different schools of Buddhist practice, they all share this goal. The practices that focus on seeing the impermanence of phenomena, for example, focus on this because it automatically shows you that there is no logic to clinging to things that will vanish in a moment. Practices that focus on non-selfish compassion for others are designed to lessens our attachment to ego. The "middle way" that is so much a part of Buddhist practice is largely about applying antidotes to the extremes of greed and hatred in an effort to find the silence that occurs when they are neutralized.

On a very practical level, I have found that there is a tangible physical sensation to this surrender of longing and aversion. At meditative moments when I momentarily know myself to be in the zone, there is an almost cellular sensation that an energy which normally grips us, like magnetic charges either attracting or repelling, suddenly falls silent. The feeling can be a bit unnerving and ungrounding, and can even frighten you at first. But if you can come to trust it, you find a delicious sensation of peace and calm within it. A frantically spinning hamster wheel suddenly falls silent. I think that my own practice, whether it involves one lifetime or many, will be to gradually trust this sensation and rest comfortably in it more and more often.

And progress doesn't require any kind of massive accomplishment, but rather just an ongoing surrender of the habits that interfere.

Space Exploration

This morning on the bus ride into downtown, a young man took the seat next to me. He was munching on a large, chocolate covered sweet-roll with one hand; in the other hand he was thumbing through a novel. Not just any novel, but a graphic comic-book novel with bright, violent colors. In his ears were audio earbuds, through which MP3 music was audible, even to my failing hearing. At one point, the young man even took a phone call, removing only one of the earbuds to talk, while continuing to eat and to read his comic book at the same time.

It was a voracious orgy of sense fulfillment, and I both admired the young man's ability to juggle so much data, and was worried for his mental well-being.

His was an extreme example, but in this young man I recognized a pretty common human urge. As a modern culture, if not as a species, we seem to be intent on filling up all available emptiness and space with sensory stuff. I cannot even use a public restroom these days without also reading advertising placed at eye level on the wall above the urinal.

Because we are so intent on filling up every empty moment, every blank space, with excitement and sensory input, we might logically conclude that humans have some inherent nervousness and fear regarding openness and space. We're told that a large percentage of Americans are now so uncomfortable with silence that they use television and radio as sleep aids. If modern humans don't hear the voice of God, it may well be because they've chosen to distract themselves with Muzak instead.

This speaks, I think, to a certain existential uneasiness we have about our own identity. It's the information flowing through our senses that gives us an illusion of concrete solidness, and we force-feed ourselves all this experience, all these sights, all these sounds, all these tastes, to reassure ourselves that we do actually exist. Our deepest fear, I think—the one underlying all the other forms of nervousness—is that we don't truly exist. If we keep the forms flowing fast enough, we can fool ourselves into thinking otherwise.

And so one of the very biggest moments in a spiritual practice comes when we finally run up against the inherent spaciousness of existence. This seems to be a necessary stage no matter what spiritual tradition you practice. Some Christian practices place a supreme value on "surrendering to God," which is a metaphor for recognizing the relative insubstantiality of our "selves". In the various eastern traditions I have studied, there comes a point when the practice inevitably discovers a certain kind of emptiness or hollowness that is quite jarring and disconcerting.

For example, ever one I know who has had a serious meditation practice speaks of coming to a time when the quiet, relaxed seeing-of-things-as-they-are reveals that things we once viewed as solid and concrete are in fact extremely fluid and ever-changing. It's certainly not all that hard to recognize that emotions, thoughts, beliefs, feelings don't have any material substance, and it's not all that long that you begin to recognize that even the things you regarded as physically solid, such as mountains and boulders, exist solidly only within a split second of time. Nothing is genuinely real in terms of permanent solidness; everything is in motion, at all times.

Lots of meditators will acknowledge that this is a point where they're forced to work through a time of despair or even depression. After all, we turned to spiritual pursuits in the first place in order to transcend the temporal, to discover something eternal. What we discover, instead, is that nothing eternal exists, whatsover. Form is the most fleeting of all things, and we begin to feel that we are being devoured, evaporated by this spaciousness we didn't really want to see. The very first intimations of this can be extraordinarily shocking. The rug gets pulled out from under you entirely, in a way that can feel quite devastating. Lots of people even talk about a physical feeling of vertigo, a sense that they are falling, when they glimpse the true spaciousness of things.

But then, if you begin to experiment at resting in the spaciousness, the fluidity, you begin to sense that it is within this spaciousness that genuine awareness, genuine freedom exists. You are falling, yes, but there really is no ground that is going to shatter you when you hit. You begin to have moments when you begin to appreciate the ocean, because you are no longer fighting waves. When spaciousness and fluidity are the matrix, all things become possible.

Ever so gradually, you learn that the antidote to pain isn't to grasp for the shore of a particular island, but to swim freely among all the islands.

Suffering is largely the process of trying to make things solid, when their inherent nature is spaciousness.

For Now, Anyway

A recent change in my work life is greatly cutting into my available time for blogging, and also for checking up on your blogs, which is a far more serious crime. My job now involves direct supervision of 20 people, many of them remarkably immature personalities, and it is very rare that I'm able to put together more than 20 minutes to focus on a single task in between interruptions. Sometimes, days go by before I can get back to cyberworld and check up on what my friends are doing.

So life has become a bit more dense lately, but strangely, it hasn't particularly affected my level of happiness. What I'm aware of is a kind of controlled frenzy, but within it there never seems to be a lack of space or perspective. I feel a bit like a conductor orchestrating a large group of rowdy musicians. It's noisy, but all the notes are still defined by the space and silence surrounding them.

I'd like to think this hints at a certain spiritual maturity has been reached, but this could well be wishful thinking on my part, ego puffing itself up. I am aware, though, that in recent days I feel a good deal of comfort and trust in my instincts to respond appropriately to circumstances, even very difficult ones.

A phrase from a favorite teacher keeps popping up for me. "...(true practice) is realizing that space contains matter, that matter makes no demands on space and that space makes no demands on matter. Spirituality is a panoramic situation in which you can come and go freely and your relationship with the world is open. It is the ultimate non-violence."

For this moment, anyway, I get it.

This Is.....

If my early morning mediation session is especially relaxed, my awareness of mind sometimes takes a shift, so that there is a more leisurely awareness of each phenomenon of mind as it arises. This is in sharp contract to the waterfall cacophany of thoughts and feelings that normally tumble one upon another at breakneck speed in my awareness.

An air vibration behind me enters awareness, and I can physically feel the oscillation of tiny membranes in my head.

This is hearing.

My feeling regarding this sensation is utterly neutral. It is neither pleasant nor unpleasant, but it does interest me, and my mind begins to form a rudimentary constellation around the sense object.

This is feeling. This is interest.

Instantly, and inextricably linked to the hearing and feeling, myriad associations move toward the new constellation. Memories join the bare object of hearing, and this leads to the recognition and name of this sound as "plane taking off from airport."

This is perception.

Perception continues, the constellation builds. From the sound I know the direction the plane is heading, and memory of maps tells me the likely destination is Detroit, or New York, or Boston. Mental images of these cities arise, and now there is a new sense object for the mind to constellate around. New feelings: Detroit--unpleasant. Boston--pleasant.

The perception doesn't fade until well after the initial sound object, the noise of the plane, has faded.

A skin sensation arises, along the back side of my body.

This is touching.

This time, an immediate feeling of pleasantness joins the constellation.

This is feeling: pleasant.

Perception arrives in the form of memory and language and naming.

This is perception; this is warmth.

In response to pleasant feeing, an energy of attraction arises. I want more warmth.

This is desire.

A new skin sensation arises, this one along the front of my body. This, too, is touch, but this time the constellation is a little different.

This is feeling. This is unpleasantness.

Perception tells me that this is "cold." An almost magnetic energy of repulsion, aversion now joins in.

This is aversion.

A subtle energetic shift takes place. I am aware of an intention to capture warmth, to escape cold.

This is intention.

Another energy is present, though, one that intends to study rather than react.

This is restraint.

I am now aware of two constellations around touch sensations: one dominated by pleasantness and warmth, the other by cold and aversion. Close examination, though, indicates that they do not occupy the same space; they aren't experienced at the same time, but oscillate back and forth so rapidly that there is the illusion of simutaneousness.

In truth, there is only one "this is" at a time.

The present constellations seem to grow tired of their existence all by themselves, and quietly die and fade away. Others various constellations replace them: Itching. Story-telling. Planning. Muscle aching. A fantasy. Smelling bacon.

None of them need to be avoided; none need to be captured.

Gradually during the course of the meditation, I become absorbed in the sheer knowing, the "this is" of every phenomenon that arises. For this time, anyway, I have no investment in things being different, and am nothing more than a student of what's arising.

This is delight. This is peace.

Occasionally, this fascination with the bare "this is" of experience follows me off the meditation cushion and informs the entire day. This is more common on leisurely weekend days, especially when bad weather enforces an indoor indolence, but even a work day may sometimes be treated with a steady fascination with things just as they are, whatever they are.

More and more these days, the fabric of a spiritual life seems to be just this simple.

"This is."

A Few Words Regarding "Suchness"

For the vast majority of practicing Buddhists, the lifestyle is about practice--following common sense living patterns that are intended to remove the elements that hinder our ability to be happy, and to cultivate those that nurture happiness. We try to avoid hurting others, avoid bad habits, in order to be happier, and to help other people be happier.

The idea is that living in such a way will very gradually cause us to evolve out of the habit of suffering. For traditional Buddhists, it's believed that many lifetimes of such gradual evolution will eventually bring us to the brink of full awakening, or enlightenment.

In a relatively small corner of the Buddhist world, a somewhat mystical and esoteric corner, the focus is on View. The belief here is that one can come to enlightenment all at once, in this very lifetime, by opening one's mind suddenly to see the truth of how things are. Some forms of Zen practice fall into this corner, as do the Tantric Tibetan schools, such as Dzogchen. To become awakened here is said to be a matter of achieving permanent non-dual awareness, an awareness in which it is seen finally that observer (witness) and the observed phenomenon are not two, but are the same thing. It's here that you run into strange sayings, such as "Emptiness is Form; Form is Emptiness."

It is in this corner of Buddhism where you run into a term that is sometimes translated as "suchness," or "is-ness," or "thusness." I first ran across the term while reading Ken Wilber nearly 10 years ago now, but I didn't really begin to understand it at all until I began to study the Tibetan teachers from whom Wilber was borrowing his ideas. In particular, I would recommend Chogyam Trungpa, who elucidates these powerful ideas like no one else.

A vastly oversimplified explanation of "suchness" is that it is our state of mind when we flash to a genuine experience of non-dual awareness. At these moments, past and future cease to exist, and we are entirely within the absolute perfection of a moment. All striving is seen as pointless, since each moment is a perfect one. There is no goal to achieve; it was a delusion to have been pursuing a goal at all, since Buddha-nature is already ours. We are said to experience "one taste," in which observer not only merges with the observed, but understands that there was never any separation at all.

Trungpa describes these glimpses as "flashes," and points out that once experienced, the ongoing practice is to cultivate and stablize our ability to dwell within the flash of the awakened mind.

I had studied these ideas and contemplated them for quite a long time before I had the first such small flash of really understanding what these very smart people were talking about.

It occurred during a lecture I was attending at a local meditation center. That night, the teacher was elaborating on the nature of awareness, in particular talking about how to shift one's attention during a meditation sitting from the beginning object (in our case, the breath), gently onto the faculty of awareness. We talked for quite some time about this very important element of meditation practice: resting comfortably in bare awareness.

Then the teacher said "And it will be interesting to note that at no time is it possible to be aware of nothing. To be aware, is always to be aware of some thing, some phenomenon. Phenomenon, experience itself, is always connected to awareness. You cannot have awareness without an object. And vice versa, I suppose."

Flash.

There was a common sense truth here that I saw, so simple that I was stunned to have missed it for so long. Of course awareness occurs only with an object, and this implied a reflexive truth: that all objects, all phenomenon, include awareness within their fabric. In all things, awareness is included. It is inherent in all phenomenon. It could be no other way. It's only our mistaken view that prevents us from joining into this cosmic awareness. In one writer's words, "you no longer look up and admire the sky. You become the sky."

In the years since, I have had other flashes, and I suppose its fair to say that the experiences both awe me and terrify me a little. Unlike the Dzogchen masters of Tibet, I'll almost certainly fail to fully awaken in this lifetime.

In my own rare and fleeting glimpses of non-dual suchness , my experience is of a complete dissolution of boundaries between self and object. But unlike what occurs in madness, this dissolution carries with it not annhilation of self, as we commonly fear, but a vast and natural expansion of self into a kind of grand awareness that is implicit in all things.

The paradox of progress in this kind of practice is that it's really not about achieving anything at all, but about systematically surrendering all the things that obstruct our genuine awareness. First and foremost among these obstructions is the terrible defense of the small self, sometimes called ego. It is this defense that fills our normal everyday life, which is exactly why we imagine that awakening is a difficult feat rather than wonderfully simple. Pretty much everything we thought we knew turns out to be a delusion.

Even with pitifully small experience, I would warn you that this is very serious practice that requires much discipline and fearlessness. It most definitely should not be viewed as some kind of shortcut for people too impatient to practice moral living. Expert teachers will tell you that you have to pretty much surrender everything you've believed about yourself to practice in this kind of way. After 10 years of rather serious study, I know just enough to be careful.

No Expert, Me.

Sometimes in these pages I am asked to speak as an authority on Buddhism. While I'm flattered at this, I also feel compelled to say quite honestly that I should not be regarded as any kind of expert. I am not a formal teacher of Buddhism, nor am I a veteran of lengthy meditation retreats that have given me the keys to the Absolute.

My practice is that of an amateur in every sense, and while it's true that I've avidly studied these subjects for a long time, it would be a mistake for anyone to see me as anything but a serious beginner.

While there are many various spiritual traditions that interest me, Buddhism has always held a special appeal for me. Partly this is because there is an intellectualism to Buddhist study that appeals to my need for cerebral exercise, and partly it's because Buddhism has a clean coolness and clarity that I find to be an enormous relief and antidote to the fiery emotional winds that once dominated my life.

But if pushed to really define why I see myself as a Buddhist, the reason can be summed up by one single experience.

About 15 years ago, one Saturday morning saw me shopping at a local indoor retail center in Minneapolis, a relatively avant guarde section of town known as Uptown. In one of the upstairs galleries at the shopping center, I came upon a pair of Tibetan Buddhist monks working on an elaborate geometric mural painted with colorful sands, known as a mandala. The exhibit was sponsored by some American-Tibet exchange program, and the room was sparsely decorated with a simple Tibetan alter with some small shrine objects, but it was extremely simple by most standards.

Mandala artwork is a well-known craft in Tibet. These large sand "paintings" are created on the floor, by artisans who sit cross-legged on the floor, applying the dyed sands to outlined patterns with tools that most closely resemble those pastry bags that bakers use to apply fancy frostings to wedding cakes. Sometimes the designs are purely geomentric; sometimes they resemble landscapes or other natural scenes. The artist sits cross legged, hold the nozzle of the bag where he or she wants the sand to fall, then gently taps on the metal tip so a fine layer of sand drifts down and covers the wood base. A variety of nozzles are used, depending on the relative coarseness or fineness of the design.

In can take days, weeks, or even months for a mandala to be completed, depending on its complexity. Ultimately, this is an exercise in understanding the temporary nature of existence, since the artwork is never preserved, but is soon cast to the winds or allowed to wash away in a river.

On this particular morning, the two young monks were nearing completion on the mandala; a small flyer announced that in a week, the mandala would carefully be carried down to the shores of Lake Calhoun and allowed to wash away. A number of observers came and went during the hour or so that I sat and watched the monks. Once, a man paused to ask me a question, a fact that puzzled me until I realized that the khaki trousers and Minnesota maroon sweatshirt I was wearing was very close to the saffron and gold robes the monks were wearing. I had by mistaken for some kind of tour guide or sponsor for the exhibit.

The work was painstaking, with the monks hunched over in a position that would have been agonizing for you or me. They were about three hours into a four-hour work session. Eventually, they'd be relieved by helpers.

Then a young family with two small children came into the gallery to watch, and something in me know that problems were brewing. The mandala could not have been any more delicate, and the boys were about 4 and 6 years of age. No genius was required to see what was coming.

The moment of disaster was both entirely innocent and quite dramatic. One of the young boys, as they sat off to the side to watch the monk, kicked off his boot---which sailed across the floor and smeared colored sands to all four corners of the compass, effectively ruining the portrait. Days worth of work were instantly ruined.

Now, I know that Buddhist monks were supposed to be patient and kind, but nothing prepared me for the response of these two young monks, perhaps 20, 25 years old. I would have supposed that even these fellows would have to wrestle with anguish and possibly impatience at seeing their work ruined. In my mind's eyes, I imagined that they'd struggle with a bit of anger, probably successfully fighting it back, then grinning and bearing it.

That's about the best I'd have hoped for for myself, on my very best day. But even though I was watching with utmost intensity, I saw not the least flicker of dismay in either of these young monks at seeing their hard work demolished in a moment. Instead, one of the monks simply asked for the boy's name, then lettered his name in finely scripted colored sands on the floor of the gallery using his bag of slendidly colored sands. The boy was at first startled at not being scolded in any way, then lit up like a Christmas tree when he saw his name emerge on the floor.

I watched the monks for another hour, long after the family left. When I finally stood up to leave, one of the monks stood, and bowed to me with a smile as I left. I wasn't asked for any contribution, wasn't handed flowers, didn't receive any literature asking me to join the club.

As I looked back through the storefront glass, the monks were already back at work, in intent and joyful concentration on a task they well knew was entirely ephemeral.

That day, I knew that I'd very much like to be like those monks. If not in this lifetime, then perhaps in another.

Concentration, Spiritually Speaking

The subject of "concentration" gets a lot of attention in spiritual circles, particularly among Buddhists. Concentration is courted in a meditation practice is thought to be a trait of substantial benefit to progressing on a spiritual path. However, confusion often arises because the traditional western definition of concentration isn't quite the same thing as the Buddhist meaning of the term.

Modern westerners approach meditation with a gung-ho goal of achieving a fierce, single-pointed that involves a highly focussed, intellectual obsession with some object that has been selected for attention. While this kind of concentration, similar to what we used to cram for an exam in our school days, can be useful for beginning to quiet a mind that wanders wildly, it isn't exactly what genuine concentration is about.

Spiritual concentration is a more refined thing. It's is not about intellectual ferocity, but comes about when a mind exists in unity and connectedness to circumstances as they actually are at the moment. Concentration is absent whenever the mind finds itself alienated from real conditions, obsessed instead with goals and outcome.

Browbeating oneself into banishing all thoughts, sweatily focussing on the breath, or a mantra syllable, or a flame, or an mental image of a lotus flower, isn't the end goal at all. This rudimentary form of intellectual concentration is useful only as a bare starting point for beginning the process of quieting the mind. It should be dropped the moment we begin to glimpse the quiet awareness beneath, which is what we're actually seeking.

What we're seeking to join ourselves to during meditation is not an object at all, but the restful, wide awake quality of bare awareness itself. A concentrated mind isn't one that lacks thoughts, feelings and concepts. It's one that is awake, present to whatever phenomena are occurring.

In practical terms for the meditator, this kind of concentration will have a more subtle feel to it. When I reach it in my own sittings, it's sometimes accompanied by a physical sensation of first becoming microscopically small, then paradoxically large. This kind of concentration feels like a fine jeweler's hammer—much smaller and humbler than a sledge hammer, but capable of far more intricate and powerful work, in the end. It's this tool, after all, that can carve diamond.

To Meditate

A colleague who learned that I meditate regularly asked me about it the other day. It turns out that some years ago she had struggled mightily to "get" meditation, and was rather wistful about the fact that she hadn't made it work for her. It was, she felt, a rather serious failure in her life. In listening to her words, it was obvious that she had been anticipating dramatic changes, had wanted them badly, and was disappointed with herself at failing with something she wanted so much.

I'm always somewhat matter-of-fact when describing what meditation can and will do for you. In truth, expecting dramatic, mystical results is one of the surest ways to hinder yourself in a mediation practice (or in any spiritual endeavor, for that matter), so I surely don't really play up this aspect of the practice.

One of the best definitions of meditation I ever heard came from a Tibetan Rinpoche, Chogam Trungpa, who said that mediation practice was really nothing more than "making friends with your own mind."

A similarly useful and reassuring definition came from a teacher of basic insight practice, who said that meditation was really nothing more than "experimenting with letting things be exactly as they are, with no pushing or pulling."

(The movement from "concentration" to "insight" meditation comes about naturally. At the point where you are truly letting go and letting things be as they are, insight arises automatically.)

Such definitions might quietly disappoint you, if you're looking for something more earth-shattering. It's not until you're well into practice, perhaps for many years, when you finally realize that these simple definitions have a quiet, earth-shattering quality after all.

When you start a meditation practice, it's essentially not much more than setting aside 30 or 40 minutes a few times a week, or perhaps each day, to just let the mind fall quiet, to see what might happen, to see what it feels like. It's not uncommon at first for this to feel like a slightly guilty pleasure, since the luxury of letting the mind go quiet is so very alien to us.

This is because our normal status for being in the world is one of incessant, never-ending willfulness. Virtually all our energy is spent in pulling or pushing against things as they are, in an effort to transform them into something that suits our liking. So to take a break, even for a few minutes, may seem like an utter waste of time, a luxury that delays our accomplishment of goals. I, for one, fiercely defended my willfulness, seeing it as the engine that allowed me to accomplish things in life.

Very gradually, though, as the mind begins to settle just a little, a quiet insight starts to take shape. There is another way of being in the world, and that is simply to act logically and naturally based on circumstances as they happen to be at any given moment. You begin to see that you can "be" in the world by just responding to things as they are. All the mental pushing and pulling --the desire and aversion–-have absolutely no impact on changing things. The experience of wanting or rejecting, in fact, are entirely unpleasant, when examined directly.

No amount of wanting will cause a dirty sink to miraculously become clean and neat.

Washing the dishes, however, does the trick.

"Hold on a second," you might say. "If you don't hate a dirty sink, or want a clean kitchen, then the place will never get cleaned." The common belief is that desire and aversion are the fuel that makes the engine of accomplishment turn.

But I'd suggest to you that this isn't so. A decision to wash the dishes can well arise simply because the kitchen is chaotic, and the natural thing to do with chaos is to create order. Wanting and hating are symptoms of having failed to act intelligently, not a fuel that causes us to act.

Willfulness-- pushing and pulling, desire and aversion--need not enter into the equation. Without willfulness, the world begins to act through you, and you begin to have a sense of experiencing things as they are, not as an affront to the way you'd like them to be.

In the early days (perhaps the early months, or years) of a meditation practice, the meditation session itself is a novelty, is something far different than the way you lead your life off the mat. Gradually, though, you find that the outlook you have while meditating begins to carry over into the rest of your life. Eventually, you start to live a meditative life, and everything that happens becomes a part of your on-going practice. "Hmm," you think when your tire blows out on the freeway. "How interesting the way my heart pounds during fear," even while you matter-of-factly slow the car with precision and pull safely over to the shoulder, rather than panicking.

So what I told my colleague was this, as she expressed her disappointment in herself over her expectations for meditation. "The feeling of disappointment....Are you experiencing it? Right now?"

She paused for a moment, then nodded.

"That's mediation," I said.

Thoughts on Emptiness

The Buddhist practice as it has evolved for me more closely resembles a practical science than it does a religious practice. Meditation is nothing more than a technique for becoming familiar with the activities of our mind and studying it. Everything else——all the highly touted spiritual goodies— simply flow from that common-sense observation.

What I invariably notice is that very precise, close observation of almost any subject always has the effect of eliminating the subject's solidity. Study a piece of marble and you begin to see the veins of ocean sediments, even the individual grains of sand—not a big solid chunk stone. Meditation, like any form of observation, introduces space into any object. And in the case of mind-study, it introduces space into thoughts, emotions, concepts——all the stuff that we sometimes treat as though they have material concreteness.

Some years ago, after I'd already studied meditation for a few years, there came a quiet little breakthrough. On the cushion one day, I was looking at some very old, very ingrained hostility toward a family member that had arisen in me. It was a very common thing for me in those days. I was looking at this hostility very closely, studying all its nuances—when the thought suddenly came to me:

"This is only a feeling. It has no weight, no physical body, no substance of any kind. This feeling is present only in this moment, and only in my mind. It can't be photographed or recorded in any way. It is not real, but only an odd mental activity."

The "solid thing" was a story I had been telling myself. Over and over.

And instantly, the decades-old resentment I'd been nursing was seen as a rather bad plot in a soap opera. It wasn't real in any truly identifiable way, other than as a weird little constellation of enzymes and hormones and brain chemicals that had strangely come together for a moment. And I felt, for perhaps the first time, that my emotions didn't own me, nor I them, but that they were just phenomena with their own cycle of life.

That day didn't mark an absolute turning point. I still have times when I'm gripped by worries and irritations and fears—times when I treat them as though they're my possessions. But with increasing regularity, as I get more astute at studying these mind activities, I see them as little more than stories that my mind habitually tells itself. Deep seeing reveals this to be true about virtually everything —everything—that troubles me: it always turns out to be nothing more than a temporary construction of mind. Not real in any kind of demonstrable way, less concrete than water vapour.

This, I've come to realize, is one way of looking at the Buddhist concept of emptiness. When you look at anything closely, you realize that it has no permanent, concrete substance at all, but is merely a snapshot of energy in time. All things arise, all things pass away, and the illusion of stability and permanent realness is just a story we tell ourselves.

Even a chunk of marble is really just a collection of recently bonded sand particles on its way to becoming sand again sometime in the future.

Initially, I found myself a little saddened by this recognition, because something in me really wanted some things to be permanent. Gradually, though, I'm recognizing that it's the clinging to permanence that causes much of the sadness and pain. Turn loose, go with the emptiness, and illusion begins to fall away and a pretty delicious freedom begins to cook.

Tuesday Buddhism

Buddhist philosophy begins with position that is terrifically different than the tenants of most western spiritual beliefs. This perhaps explains why it feels so alien, especially to those of us raised in Judaic/Christian traditions.

The degree of difference can be clearly seen when you look at the Buddhist version of genesis:

In the beginning, Buddhism would argue, human beings mistakenly made a incorrect distinction between matter and space. To matter, and the various physical forms assumed by matter, they gave the name "real." Spaceousness, however, was demoted to a position of non-reality, so much so, in fact, that to this day we believe that space is nothingness, a void.

This belief in the primacy of form makes up what Buddhists term the first of five skandas, sometimes translated as "aggregates" or "heaps". The skandas represent five different mistaken assumptions human beings make, which form the foundation of a cyclical, unhappy existence. Each of the skandas is a karmic result of the preceding skanda, and depends upon the others.

So the first skanda, form, arises due the human decision to reduce spaciousness to non-existence, and to give primacy, and false permanence, to the various shapes that matter takes. The first human error is in separating matter from space, in separating various forms from one another, and in believing in the truth of "this vs that."

Note how radically different this position is from Judaic/Christian mythology, where the separation between matter and space, rather than being the cause of misery, represents the birth of reality. In this mythology, it is God, not man, that separates heaven from earth.

In the Buddhist cosmology, the second skanda arises when we strangely choose to take up a relationship to the various forms that we have noticed. We create the illusion of ego by creating a feeling that we exist in relation to the various forms that have arise. Feeling is the second skanda, and it is created because we hold to a belief in self and other. "This is me, and that is not me, and that's how I know I exist," is the logic.

The third skanda is usually called perception, and with this skanda there arises an impulse to take some kind of action in relationship to the various forms perceived by ego. We respond with longing to the form, with hostility to the form, or with indifference to the form. This is the skanda that is responsible for desire and hostility in all their forms, and it exists to prop up the illusion of ego/self. We grab for the things that support our sense of self, we reject those that threaten it.

The fourth skanda is usually translated as intellect. This aggregate includes a complicated system of mental concepts and beliefs, a framework that attempts to make sense of various forms and their relationship to one another. In modern western society, this is the skanda that is most highly celebrated. We may, in fact, view intellect as the supreme accomplishment of the human species. Buddhists, however, regard intellect as a construct built on faulty foundations (the previous skandas) and do not find it of particularly important value.

And because intellect cannot exist without a context, the final skanda is consciousness, which is a somewhat artificial ocean upon which the intellect bobs and sails. In this context, it does not mean awareness, which is a non-judging quality that does not discriminate. Awareness is much different from the skanda of consciousness, which exists to give relationship and context to ego and form. Awareness leads us to awakening; consciousness (as defined here) is something of an obstruction.

For theoretical Buddhists, the skandas represent the basic fallacies of human existence, and are the root of all unhappiness. On the face of things, this fact could depress us mightily, since the skandas seem to represent pretty much everything we consider part of the human experience. What could a world without form, with intellect, without passion, without consciousness possibly look like? we wonder.

The key to the Buddhist path is pretty simple, though. We simply look at the initial premise of the first skanda—that form is separate from spaciousness. Is this really true? we ask ourselves. And we then ask what existence would feel like if we ignored the illusion of separateness, and behaved as though form and space are not separate, but are the same phenomenon.

It is no oversimplification to say that this is precisely what represents awakened enlightenment—the discovery that form and spaciousness are not separate at all. For Buddhists, meditation is not a religious practice, but a laboratory in which we experiment with our assumptions regarding matter and space.

Somebody Else's Words, for a Change

I ran across this film clip tonight, and thought I would share it with you. It's a touch on the long side, but quite delightful and I think you might enjoy it.

It explains pretty clearly why some of us have received such help from Buddhist philosophy. This is a practice that is really nothing more than a rational study of the conditions of happiness, and I doubt you will ever hear anyone speak more logically than this Frenchman turned Tibetan monk.

Have a listen:

I ran across this film clip tonight and thought I'd share it with you. It's a touch long, but it is quite a brilliant explanation of why Buddhist philosophy appeals to many of us.

This practice is essentially a down-to-earth study of the conditions of genuine human well-being, and I think you'll never find a man that speaks any more rationally than this Frenchman turned Tibetan monk. If you have a few minutes, have a listen:

Clever, clever gadget

If ever there was a timepiece perfect for the Buddhist, or the non-demoninational nihilist, this is it. Check out the

WATCH.

Alaya, part II

Since Sacred Slut and Glamourpuss asked for more information, I'll add just a bit to the somewhat overblown description of a Buddhist meditation exercise posted previously. First, though, I'd like to add that I have no desire to convert or convince anybody that my way in the world is somewhat right. I'm quite aware that it's not for everybody, and I offer these ideas simply because they work for me, for the benefit of anyone who might be interested in such things.

Sacred Slut asks "what's the point", and then argues that Buddhism's attempt to "erase consciousness" is counterproductive.

Speaking for myself, the answer is that the point of such practice is to experience a different kind of consciousness in which there is genuine freedom. We're not trying to erase consciousness at all, but to find it. The frantic mental activity that is called consciousness in common vernacular is, for us, a rather hollow phenomenon. For myself, the practice is actually quite scientific, since I do nothing except follow the evidence of my own experience.

I practice because I'm happier and freer for it. I did not find this freedom in traditional scientific pursuit, though I did indeed try mightily for a long while. Science didn't make me happy. This does.

Glamourpuss then concurred with Sacred, at least partially, saying that she felt more akin to the practice of trantra than Buddhism.

This is fine. In reality, true tantra arose out of Hindu and Buddhist traditions, and all Buddhists would have genuine admiration for disciples of tantra.

While tantra today is sometimes criticized for a hedonistic practice, in truth the goal of all tantric practice is the pursuit of enlightenment in a single lifetime, rather than in repeated rebirths. So rather than avoid earthly, sensual experience, these energies are welcomed and harnessed in the hopes that new consciousness will be opened. Tantra is a perfectly viable spiritual practice.

True tantra welcomes all the pleasures (and pains) of life, knowing that they are natural and exist for a purpose. These are extremely powerful energies, though, and practitioners are always cautioned to be diligent. The goal isn't pleasure for its own sake, but pleasure as an energy of awakening.

By the way, Sacred Slut and Glamourpuss are extremly talented writers. You'd be well advised to check out their work. They are bookmarked in the list to the left.

Rest in the Nature of Alaya

There is a Buddhist meditation exercise that is translated as “resting in the nature of alaya,” or sometimes as “resting in unborn awareness.” The practice is relatively simple, though it does require a relaxed kind of precision. The experience of alaya is quite powerful—so much so that upon glimpsing it a novice may well imagine that he’s very nearly all the way to enlightenment. In reality, though, this is an instruction given to beginners, and arriving at a recognition of alaya only indicates an entry to more serious, fruitful path.

In the Buddhist psychological system, there are many types of consciousness—some schools list eight. There are the various consciousnesses of the physical senses, for example—seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling. Then there is the consciousness of recognizing thoughts as they occur. And there is the consciousness that fully experiences the “waterfall”—the cacophony of all the other consciousnesses bumping off one another in cause-and-effect fashion. This seventh consciousness might be called an awareness of karma.

Behind all this, though, is a state of consciousness known as alaya, which is a “store” or “ground” consciousness out of which all the others are thought to originate. This is a state which makes no distinctions or judgments, but simply knows things as they are. It is non-dual awareness which makes no particular distinction between subject and object.

As anyone engaged in serious practice comes to understand, a lot of the focus and concentration practice—carefully following the breath in mediation, for example—is aimed at nothing more than bringing us to the preliminary recognition of alaya. You can practice for many years, hone your ability to focus intently on the breath, only to finally realize that you’ve reach a starting point where all this focus can be surrendered in order get to the real business at hand.

I’d like to say that after 30 years of meditation practice I rest in alaya all the time. This isn’t even remotely true, unfortunately. There are many meditation sessions where my jumpy mind never relaxes enough to rest there, and even during a very good meditation session, I may feel like no more than a few minutes of an hour session has really put me in this territory.

But even a few minutes resting in alaya can flavor your outlook for days to come. I will sometimes enjoy a full week of a remarkably peaceful and harmonious outlook on life after a good meditation session.

I think that everybody needs to develop their own means of courting alaya, but for me the process is something like this:

Once a basic breathing meditation has calmed and slowed the mind enough that I can easily recognize the various activities arising and falling there, I begin to pay attention to each and every instance where the mind judges or catalogs or distinguishes between this and that. I allow each of these value judgments to dissolve without clinging to them in any way. Gradually, as I stop gripping onto judgments of good or bad, desirable or undesirable, a consciousness of an entirely different form arises. My sense, when this arrives, is that I’m seeing things more as they truly are.

At first glance, you may dismiss the feeling as one of inner laziness, since there is utterly nothing to do, nothing to accomplish in any fashion. You are simply experiencing, and there is no goal whatsoever. However, there is also a laser-sharp clarity to this consciousness that is entirely unique. There is nothing drowsy about this state, at all, so you’ll recognize that it’s something entirely different. Your attachment to language, even, begins to be surrendered.

Occasionally, similes occur to me that indicate what my experience of alaya is like.

If consciousness is a sandy beach, alaya is present when the waves have erased all ripples in the sand, all footprints, all sand castles. Normal consciousness tightly defends footprints in the sand; alaya consciousness relaxes into the plasticity of sand.

If consciousness is an ocean, reaching alaya consciousness is to drift down beneath the turbulence of surface waves and foam, and dwell in the peace of the ocean depths, out of which waves come and go freely. It is, however, a kind of water which doesn’t drown you, but feeds your lungs.

And sometimes, peculiarly, I see alaya as vast, felt-covered billiards table. And rather than being obsessed and attached to the action of pool balls careening about in cause-and-effect geometry, I find it possible to rest in the background without concern for temporary things.

It is important, though, to understand that resting in alaya is just a practice in pursuit of the goal. It is not the goal itself.

The Gospel According to Mercurious

My friend Kiyoto, at The Dragon (see list at left) asked me to repeat a list of messages sent to me from a spiritual friend. They are descriptions of what an enlightened existence includes. There are twelve of them. Here they are, with just a bit of amplification for each.

• It Is Not Elsewhere

The Christians and Muslims have it wrong when they say that heaven (enlightenment) is something we'll only enjoy in some kind of afterlife. Much the contrary. The blissful state is at ready reach, here and now, at every moment. There is never any reason to look for it beyond ourselves, for it is not found in a different place, a different time, or even a different frame of mind than the one we find ourselves in right now.

• It is Fond

While I have no argument with the Christian idea that God is Love, it has never felt that way to me. Love, as it's normally defined, is full of possessiveness and ownership and longing, and these things seem antithetical to the true goal. On the other hand, truly peaceful moments are full of quiet fondness for just about everything. This fondness is quiet and lacking in the ferocious passion that characterizes love as we normally know it. Fondness, I think, is characteristic of the enlightened state.


• It is One

False spiritual pursuit is quite often about separating and dividing and catagorizing one group of people as superior to others. There is nothing so clearly faulty than this attitude, and thus a great many religious traditions and practices are clearly false ones. On an individual level, we undermine our spiritual growth by creating separation between our selves and our experiences. The object-observer, subject-object dichotomy must be abandoned if we're going to glimpse the pure state.


• It is Precise

There is nothing gray or wishy-washy about the state of mind we seek. It is precise,and like all precise things, it is very, very simple. Complexity always hides the truth.


• It is Our Nature

Enlightenment, genuine happiness, is the logical outcome of evolution. Our spiritual growth doesn't come through fighting our nature, but by realizing it. Unhappiness is an artificial, unnatural state; peace and happiness is what is natural. Any spiritual practice that argues for inherent evil and corruption is dead wrong.

• There Are No Words

"It the beginning was the Word..." No, it wasn't. The true nature of things is more like the Taoist principle, which states, "The Tao that can be named is not the true Tao." Words by definition are symbols, and symbols, by definition are representations of objects, they are not objects themselves. Dwelling in words alone is automatically to keep yourself separate from your experience. The enlightened state is found in a place that is pre-verbal, best approached by abandoning language altogether. The waterfall of thoughts and analyis that fills our minds is not enlightenment, but a hindrance to enlightenment.


• It is Not Me

Heaven is not a place for I-me-mine, and the insistence on dividing the world into I and Not-I is the thing that prevents us from realizing it. We fear that abandoning ego will cause us to cease to exist, when in reality, to surrender the tyranny of the self makes us far, far larger than we could ever dream. In a meditation sitting, to abandon the I, even for a moment, gives a glimpse of what is to come.


• This, Too

We spend much of our lives in simple disagreement with whatever happens to be true in the moment. We think we must change things,strive for different things, when it fact we could not keep things static, even if we wanted to. Small glimpses of a truly peaceful existence shows that it is marked by a simple acceptance of whatever arises. Every moment is a perfect one, since it is the beautiful, logical result of what has preceded. To disagree with the moment is the worst kind of folly.


• It is Free

We try to capture peace and tranquility. We try to understand and catalog it and fix it in time and space. But this effort is the very thing that prevents us from knowing it, because the nature of enlightenment is that it flows endlessly and cannot be captured in any fashion. To know happiness, do not try to grasp it.


• It is As Water

Ever flowing, completely malleable. Always changing, never static. One moment, an ice crystal at the top of the atmosphere; the next, a molecule of ocean at the bottom of the deepest sea trench. Indestructible.

• It Knows

The enlightened state is not one that requires knowledge, but simple awareness alone. Dwelling in the part of the mind that simply knows, without judgment or evaluation of any kind, is the approach to peace. Unhappiness is always a function of flawed seeing. Clear seeing always leads to bliss.


• It Is What It Is

It isn't a mystery or secret; it is open right before your eyes. I used to think that the truth required a search to some cavern deep, deep within the soul. It does lie within, but only barely inside the front door. The truth is right in front of your nose.

The unhappy man is the one who spends his life trying to keep one particular sand castle in pristine condition, constantly defending it against wind and waves. The enlightened man surveys the truth of the beach, then takes delight in playing with sand.