Category Archives: Practice Notes

Notes on the things currently going on in my personal meditation practice, as well as posts from other meditators that seem to be helpful to me.

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Connection

Connection

So here’s the thing.

We are not really separate beings; we just think we are. We think we are separate because we can’t see the connections, and because there’s so much noise in our brains, we can’t feel them either.

Humans originally knew intuitively that we are part of the world – read Vine Deloria’s God is Red for a modern understanding of that – but then language and math, symbolic culture in general, science, and religion gradually convinced us that we are separate

Here’s some astounding rumination:

“I think the discovery of nonlocality is touching in on the whole. So that these seemingly separate events are somehow connected through the whole. … you have this larger enveloping field and we’re, you know, just beginning to understand something about that… so I love that discovery although I don’t think we’re anywhere near really knowing what we’ve come upon. —Brian Swimme

“nonlocality: In physics, nonlocality or action at a distance is the direct interaction of two objects that are separated in space with no intermediate agency or mechanism. Regarding the unexplained nature of gravity, Isaac Newton (1642-1727) considered action-at-a-distance “so great an Absurdity that I believe no Man who has in philosophical Matters a competent Faculty of thinking can ever fall into it”. Quantum nonlocality refers to what Einstein called the “spooky action at a distance” of quantum entanglement.”
—- These are both from Wiki.

I.E.: particles that are vastly separated by distance will exhibit the same response at exactly the same time. With nothing we know of connecting them!  And we have no idea how or why this happens. But it’s been known for some time now…. over 50 years and no answers coming from the scientists to explain this anomaly, this thing that doesn’t fit with the rest of the theories. Like much of quantum mechanics, it essentially says all that Newtonian science is just wrong. At least at the quantum level, which is where everything starts…

The significance being: though we are still stuck with ideas from old science ( things in the world are discrete, separate) the new science – well, data – agrees with the pre-scientific notion that everything is CONNECTED! “…this larger enveloping field…” Indeed!

We started out, we humans, knowing our place in the world, understanding ourselves as part of the natural order. We knew that everything was divine, worthy of respect and honor, as it was all part of this whole.

But the process of seeing ourselves as separate began long ago, embedded in the process of evolution and development of consciousness, and as symbolic culture came along it exploded those old understandings. Then, with Galileo and later Descartes, this separation became the intellectual context of our lives. Even in religion, the divine was separated from us, from the world of nature. God lives in heaven, not in things.

Those who oppose science and cling to religion are really reacting to this false notion of separation, and what they’re really seeking is return to that understanding of connection, of the essential unity of existence.

The challenge for moving into a new world, a new consciousness, is to find a path to return to understanding of our unity without abandoning the knowledge that science has brought us, the practical knowledge of how things work in the physical world.

Those of us who have come to understand our true nature as part of the natural continuum rather than as a separate, discrete self must help in this process. And part of that is helping people to have a direct experience of this truth. Face it, no one will change because of what you and I say.

There are, I suppose, a number of ways one can come to have some experience of this new consciousness, this seeing thru the illusion that we exist separately. For me, meditation has been the primary vehicle, but it seems to me – and I am just beginning to intuit the outlines of this part – that it is highly important what the context of one’s meditational experiences are. Not just the external context, but the emotional and intellectual context… having taken acid may help! Seriously, anything – skydiving for example – that shakes up one’s conditioned grasp on consensus reality is probably helpful to bring with you into meditation. Lots of experience in the natural world is an important aspect of it, I think.

I’m hoping to bring more thought to bear on this as I dig into the whole thing…

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Solutions that work for everyone

In July I posted a link and a few paragraphs from a BPF article on the trend to McMindfullness, with the following paragraph:

Bhikkhu Bodhi, an outspoken western Buddhist monk, has warned: “absent a sharp social critique, Buddhist practices could easily be used to justify and stabilize the status quo, becoming a reinforcement of consumer capitalism.” Unfortunately, a more ethical and socially responsible view of mindfulness is now seen by many practitioners as a tangential concern, or as an unnecessary politicizing of one’s personal journey of self-transformation.

Since then I’ve discovered Charles Eisenstein, or at least begun reading deeply into his thought, and seems he presents a wonderful example of someone who sees a way forward for society as a whole to embrace mindfulness, or at least the insights that come from it, in a way that incorporates  both a sharp social critique and an ethical, socially responsible view.

His philosophical insights are rather complex and difficult, at least for me at this point, to reduce to a few paragraphs, and trying to do so seems to risk putting people off by creating the impression that his comments are facile and overly ambitious.

Rather than try to digest his thoughts as I understand them so far, I’ll just say here that he (and his ideas) seem to embody the Buddha’s teachings – apparently without claiming to be a Buddhist – better than any American with equally high profile credentials and visibility that I’ve come across. He offers his writings on a gift, or donation, basis so you can go to his website and read the full text of his books (at least the latest one) and decide what you think of it. Then there’s the opportunity to download it or order a print version, again, paying whatever you feel led to contribute.

I’m really just beginning to get into his thought deeply, and am finding it very helpful in bringing me back into a positive view of my meditation practice.

I have long been convinced that ‘there are no individual solutions’ (a loose quote from Peter Marin) to our world’s problems. One of the issues that keeps coming up for me is that at times it seems my spiritual practice is just one of those solutions that blisses me out and doesn’t really contribute to the overall betterment. Just a process, as Trungpa says in Spiritual Materialism, of collecting nice spiritual practices, feeling good about myself for having all these lovely collected practices on my mantle, but not truly a liberating practice that is taking me on the bodhisattva path.

So I have been happy to find, in Eisenstein’s writings, some confirmation that what I’m about is not so far from all that. I guess what is most interesting is that from his very different perspective, that of a scientific philosophical analysis of the whole of life’s evolution, it is the misunderstanding of self, the reification of this illusion we call the self, that is at the heart of our social malaise.

Of course, in Buddhist teachings, this ignorance of the true, impermanent, empty nature of self – and the craving to make that self real – is what causes our suffering.

I’ve been struggling to articulate all this for a while now, and tho I’m still not there, I’m getting a better idea of what it is that’s driven me into this state of disillusionment and doubt, and getting better at seeing how and why what he says is beginning to make me feel better about things.

The best I can do at this point to articulate that is to say that it is clarifying to see that our personal, my personal, suffering has the same root cause as the suffering and degrading of humanity at the social level.

I am working on a better understanding and better explanation of all this… and I’m working on doing better in my meditation practice!

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A very timely and to the point critique of secularized mindfulness training: Beyond McMindfulness.

A few quotes from the article:

Suddenly mindfulness meditation has become mainstream, making its way into schools, corporations, prisons, and government agencies including the U.S. military. Millions of people are receiving tangible benefits from their mindfulness practice: less stress, better concentration, perhaps a little more empathy. Needless to say, this is an important development to be welcomed — but it has a shadow….

Uncoupling mindfulness from its ethical and religious Buddhist context is understandable as an expedient move to make such training a viable product on the open market. But the rush to secularize and commodify mindfulness into a marketable technique may be leading to an unfortunate denaturing of this ancient practice, which was intended for far more than relieving a headache, reducing blood pressure, or helping executives become better focused and more productive….

Mindfulness training has wide appeal because it has become a trendy method for subduing employee unrest, promoting a tacit acceptance of the status quo, and as an instrumental tool for keeping attention focused on institutional goals….

Bhikkhu Bodhi, an outspoken western Buddhist monk, has warned: “absent a sharp social critique, Buddhist practices could easily be used to justify and stabilize the status quo, becoming a reinforcement of consumer capitalism.” Unfortunately, a more ethical and socially responsible view of mindfulness is now seen by many practitioners as a tangential concern, or as an unnecessary politicizing of one’s personal journey of self-transformation.”

From BPF: Beyond McMindfulness

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Tara on Why you want to meditate and don’t…

Tara Mackey, in “My Organic Life,” relates an amazing and wonderful story, and has graciously given me her okay to re-publish it here:

The #1 thing people ask me about after reading my blog is Meditation: they ask about it above my job, above my wellness, above the fact that I am on 0 medications to deal with pain, depression, grief and anxiety.  They ask me about Meditation above the beauty, above the fashion & above the nutrition aspect.  This actually makes me really happy, because absolutely none of the other things would be possible (or were possible) for me without Meditation.

Years and years of pain without mindfulness, of stress without gain, of time spent without tact and of sickness without cure brought me to a place of complete breakdown.  My average workday was spent getting up at 7 a.m., biking to work on an empty stomach, taking 10-12 different kinds of RX pills (none of which were vitamins), begging for 10 mins a half an hour into work to go get a bagel, spending 2 hours at work taking small bites in between other tasks to eat it, and then working on an empty stomach in a dark room with no windows for the next 8-15 hours.  Sometimes I slept there.

My average weekend was spent dragging myself out of bed at 3 in the afternoon, I’d eat one, two, three highly processed meals, take between 11-15 different pills (none of which were vitamins or minerals), go about my day, drink some alcohol at night to fall asleep, wake up the next day and do it over.

The breaking point was a few months after I was off all my meds.  I was sick.  Really, hopelessly, helplessly sick and I’d lay in bed for absolutely hours staring at the ceiling asking Why Me?  Why the hell was I, after all the tragedy and heartache and crap I’d gone through, not getting better when I was trying my damn best to do the right thing?  It occurred to me every once in awhile to just take a Lamictal (some of the worst withdrawals I’ve ever had was coming off this mood stabilizer) to feel better.  Just one wouldn’t hurt me, and then I’d be able to get up and move and speak and function without this terrible weakness, this nausea and headaches and everything looking over saturated.  Just one.

I remember going into the bathroom, opening the cabinet under the sink, and taking out the garbage bag full of Rx bottles that I had thrown together when I decided to come off everything.  It was full not only of pills that did work, but pills I had been prescribed that didn’t work – totaling what added up to almost 90 different bottles.  I kept picking up bottles upon bottles looking for the “Lamotrigine” one.  Valium?  Nope.  Xanax?  Nope.  Fentanyl?  Nope.  Celebrex?  Nope.  Zoloft?  Nope.  Flexeril?  Nope.  I discarded them one by one before I found the Lamictal bottle and emptied two, dust covered pills into my palm.  I filled up a glass of dirty NY tap water and opened my mouth.

And then something truly remarkable happened.

I stopped. 

After about 3 weeks of not taking anything, I realized what I was doing.  That taking “just one” Lamictal wouldn’t be taking just one.  That whenever I REdecided that being a slave to a pill was not what I wanted with my life, I’d be right here again.  Sick, and debating.  In 3 more weeks, or two more months, or 3 more years, this is where I’d be.  Counting the pills in bottles, nauseous as an animal, and hoping I have “the right one” for whatever ailment I was facing that day.  It felt way more helpless and WAY more hopeless than being sick, which I knew was temporary.  Being a slave to a mood stabilizer was LIFE-LONG helplessness.   And I wasn’t ready to accept that in my life.

From here I looked for other ways to cope.  Josh had helped me, truly, through his own meditations.  He’d lay in bed while I was sick and put his hand on my back and concentrate.  Sometimes his energy worked to soothe me, sometimes it didn’t.  Mostly, it didn’t work when I didn’t believe in it.  On the days where I felt impossibly sick, he had absolutely no power to make me feel better.  I designed it this way because I was scared – not only of what would happen if I stayed sick, but the longer I was sick, I started to get scared about what I’d have to do with my life when and if I got better.  This was an especially frightening thought, because I knew that the sort of jobs that I had had in the past had contributed immensely to my illness.

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To be honest, I used to think people who Meditated were foolish.  Today, I cannot picture my life without Meditation.  Even though, for me, the practice is very new.  Meditation was not a daily part of my life until the end of 2011, but it has changed me in all of the best ways since.

So why do I find that the people who come to me – even people who come to me earnestly – about wanting to try it, have completely dismissed it a week later?  I’ve compiled some proper excuses that I get:

” I Don’t Have the Time”

This is the most popular excuse that I get, and it’s a fallacy. Saying you don’t have the time to meditate is like saying you don’t have time to fill up your gas tank because you’re too busy driving.  I had to learn, actually, not to get super insulted by this excuse, because the truth is: We all have the same amount of time.  Saying that you don’t have the time implies that I do have the time – as in, I must not be busy enough if I can find 30 mins in my day to take care of myself.  The reason that I get anything accomplished with my life is specifically because I take that 30 mins a day to take care of myself.  I’ve had people sit on their computers on Facebook chat for OVER half an hour giving me excuses about why they’re not meditating.  You have the time, you just don’t value it.

” I Don’t Know How “ 

I cannot tell you how many people have come to me and said ” I tried what you said, and it didn’t work.”  or ” I’m no good at silence”  or ” My mind won’t let me” or ” I fall asleep.”  We put a TON of pressure on ourselves to do things the “right way”, and Americans tend to have very linear thinking.  If it doesn’t look like it did in a magazine, if we don’t get immediate results or if it just plain seems too hokey, we don’t give it a real shot.  The most basic, brilliant meditations involve sitting quietly and focusing on your breathing.  I can’t think of anyone I know who cannot do that. :)

” It’s Boring “ 

Well, sure it is.  It’s not an action-packed movie and it’s not Ryan Gosling making googley-eyes at you.  If your mind won’t let you, if you feel like you’re no good or if it didn’t work, or if you fall asleep, you now have all of your reasons to Meditate more.  I bet when you first laid your fingers on a piano, you couldn’t play Beethoven.  I bet when you first learned to read, you weren’t picking up War & Peace.  Meditation, like everything is, is something that gets easier with earnest practice.  We call Meditation a “Practice” for a very good reason – you are practicing it every time you do it.  And it’s certainly not going to give you the same stimulation that TV or Movies do, so don’t expect that.  This is about learning your body.

” You’re a Crazy Hippie and I Won’t Hear Any of Your Stupid Herbal Remedies to My Real Problems”

The majority of people hold themselves back by thinking that Meditation only works for certain people.  That they are not capable of learning themselves, or that it’s not important, or that it’s not worth their time.  They think that their pain, their problems, their situations, are better, more extreme, or different than what the rest of us are going through, and that spending quiet alone time can’t possibly have any positive effects on their life.  Truly, I think this is the most harmful place to be in, but one that I understand quite well.  It’s very easy to get caught up, especially when we have chronic or persistent pain.  I cannot tell you how many hours of my life were spent wishing that I had a knife to cut the pain from my back out.  I would have done ANYTHING, including surgery, to relieve the immense, throbbing, terrible, cutting pain that I experienced every moment that I wasn’t knocked out on some pain med.  And if someone had taken me aside and said “Just sit down and learn yourself, and you’ll be able to control your pain” I would have told them they were goddamn crazy.  But I am here to tell you that it’s true.

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Meditation is the most productive thing you can do, and there is nothing in the World stopping you from doing it except for yourself.   Practicing meditation regularly will bring you to a place of immense peace, physical well being, and emotional stability.  It’s the most powerful tool for creating the life you want.

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On the road with the Buddha

“If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!” says an old Zen story.

This is simply the Zen way of saying, in dramatic and obscure form, that whoever you may meet along the way whom you think to be Buddha is really just your own delusion and should be annihilated.

But I have had some real encounters with Buddha, in the form of developing better understanding of my practice, on the road.

Back when I was driving many hours alone to go to Zen meditation retreats, I realized that I could take advantage of those hours to practice at least some rudimentary meditation along the way rather than just waste the hours listening to music or radio shows or my own tortured thoughts. Especially on roads with little traffic, I could (quite safely) focus on the highway lines converging in the distance, the horizon line, even on other vehicles in a way that at least approaches meditation.

In heavy traffic, I could maintain equanimity and calm by approaching it as a meditation. I found I was better able to enter into the sesshin after such a trip than I had been in the past.

Earlier this week, I went on a three day motorcycle trip, spending long hours on the road, and I again noticed certain parallels with meditation practice. I was much better able to maintain concentration on the road ahead, particularly in challenging road conditions, by approaching it with this meditative mindset. I was also able to maintain the upright posture for long hours without tiring, thanks to a number of ten-day Vipassana courses!

On a mostly surface level, I think these experiences show how a good solid meditation practice can assist one in most activities in life. I am a safer, calmer, more focused driver – whether in a car or on a motorcycle – and better at most of the things I have to do in my daily life, due to my meditation practice.

I’m not sure that just any “meditation” experience would be as helpful. Weekly 20-minute sessions probably wouldn’t help much, but multiple experiences of ten hours a day on a cushion for ten days – as in a Vipassana course – makes a six-hour ride seem simple to accomplish.

On a deeper level, though, there’s more to be had here than making the trip easier.

The essence of Vipassana practice is caught up in the Pali term sampajanakari hoti: [to do something with] constant and thorough awareness of impermanence. This is one important reason why we do the meditation practice itself, so that this kind of mindfulness will come to persist in all our activities. This is the true mindfulness taught by the Buddha, and the true genius of Vipassana is in this understanding of mindfulness. Most of what is presented as ‘mindfulness training’ by other authors and teachers is simply coming to be mindful of what one is doing at the present moment. A deep reading of the Sattipathana Sutta makes it clear, however, that what Buddha was talking about in the Four Establishments of Mindfulness includes the essential element of insight,  panna, so that everything one experiences (including the most mundane activities) reminds one of the ultimate truth of impermanence.

Another important term in the teachings is atapi – ardent. The Buddha says that one is to be ardent with this awareness of impermanence.

Well, let me assure you that there’s nothing much like going into a hairpin turn on a fast-moving motorcycle to generate ardent awareness of one’s own impermanence! And when that awareness is undertaken in the context of a long and serious Vipassana practice, the riding becomes an extension of the meditation practice.

Indeed, if we remember to take the practice with us when we leave the cushion, everything in life becomes practice.

When one reaches that point, the old Zen saying is turned on its head – one can embrace anyone met, for then everything one meets on the road is the Buddha.

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Week Six – Befriending

Week Six – Befriending.

Am sharing a great post from my blogging friend in Spain, Rosemary.

I recommend going back and reading from the beginning – that’s just how I am – but this is a wonderful post on it’s own as well. She’s doing lots of great work in her meditation, and we’ve been sharing notes on the difficulties of practice, which has been very helpful to me in getting back on board my own practice.

This post is on metta practice, which is probably an essential practice for anyone who wants to meditate, and probably a very good place to begin a practice. But go read “ramblinrosemaryann’ on “almostdroppedout’ and see for yourself.

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Feeling grief

How long has it been?

Sometimes it seems only last week that my mother died, tho it’s been over 18 months. But the ache comes back at times with such intensity that I feel it may never go away.

Just this morning I was reduced to tears and sobbing by the simple act of pouring cream into a glass of iced coffee. My mother loved iced coffee. With cream, but “only if it’s not stirred!” she always said. She loved the way the cream swirled into the dark coffee.

Watching it swirl in my coffee this morning, I could remember her sitting at my kitchen counter, holding her glass up to admire the cream swirling among the ice cubes. I’ll never see that again, except in my mind.

Why that creates such exquisite pain I can’t explain. Grief is such a complex thing. It swirls through one’s life like the heavy white cream lazily drifting around the ice cubes in the black coffee, slowly, ever so slowly blending in, settling at the bottom over time – until you pick up the glass and tip it to sip, then the swirling begins again. And only after many tips and swirls does it finally blend in totally, becoming part of one’s life.

Meditation practice, particularly Vipassana practice, helps with the process.

As I felt the stabs of pain brought on by the recollections of my mother this morning, I was able to move to that quiet place in my mind where I observed each level and layer of sensation: beginning with the constriction of the throat, the sting of tears, moving on through the ragged breath, the pressure inside my head, the tightness in the abdomen, the contortions of the facial muscles, then sobs shaking my body.

I was home alone, so I could just release, accept, not resist and supress. I sat down in the window seat and just held my face in my hands, letting it roll through me. It was not a fun moment, not one I would invite back in, but it was — well, it was just sensation.

And somehow, though I was certainly experiencing it fully, and the tears were real, there was in that quiet place the ability to focus on each sensation with the understanding that it was all gonna be okay. I don’t suppose that made it hurt any less, but I think it made it pass more quickly and not leave any scars on my morning.

I think it was the many hours on the cushion, many hours in simple life situations, practicing being aware of sensation that made me able to be aware of those sensations. And each time I go through one of these experiences, it seems to get a bit easier. The sankharas there are eased a bit.

One day maybe I’ll be able to remember those moments and just smile. Ah, Mother, I love you so much!

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April 26: A garden in the desert

Finally, after weeks of trying to get into meditation again, a breakthrough!

I’ve been sitting only randomly, not being very consistent in anything, trying to focus on one of the lojong slogans each day to keep my daily life stuff from slipping too far, but all the demons that plague the meditator have been active! A few weeks ago, I did begin doing weekly yoga class again, since my wife resumed teaching the class, and that seems to have helped some, but the host of problems has continued.

I suppose that sleepiness has been my hardest problem to deal with. I think it’s part of the way depression works – at the risk of making it seem I actually think demons exist, it feels like something is trying to prevent me from accessing this thing which could really help with the depression! So I fall asleep while trying to meditate.

Of course, there are other difficulties that are fairly common to meditation, such as mental chatter and finding excuses not to sit. All of them have been taking their turn at thwarting my efforts.

But Wednesday I had a very powerful and liberating meditation.

As I mentioned, I have been practicing Vipassana for the last few years, and I also volunteer to help with registering students for the 10-day meditation courses and other work at the Vipassana Center nearby. Until recently, I was there several times a month helping with various tasks.

Part of the difficulty I have had with my practice recently stems from developing a lot of doubt – not the Great Doubt of Zen, which is a positive thing, but sort of a petty, peevish little doubt about the legitimacy of my practice and whether I would ever be able to make the progress I’d like to in a practice that comes from a fairly strict ascetic tradition. This created an undercurrent of negativity that interfered with not only my meditation practice but my willingness to continue with the service I’ve been giving for the past few years.

Then just last week, I noticed myself feeling a tiny bit more positive – maybe the things I’ve been doing, the commitment to blog about it, whatever, has helped some. The tiny opening made me decide I could go out to the Center for my usual registration role on Wednesday afternoon, so I set it up.

As normal, when coming to the Center for service, I made plans to do an hour meditation after arriving. The teachers for the course were doing a meditation that involves a recorded sutra recitation, so they said I could join them for that. The recitation is a very intense and moving one which I had only heard parts of before, and I went into it happy to have the experience.

I was sleepy off and on in the middle of the meditation, but then somewhere near the end I think I went into a very deep meditation. Of course, I wasn’t aware of being in that state as it was happening, but because of what happened next, I realized I was.

There were no precursor thoughts, no context of thinking in which to put what happened, but suddenly my eyes popped open and I was very intensely aware of a single sentence: My life is a garden in the desert.

Okay, so it doesn’t sound earth-shaking or maybe not even particularly insightful. But it came to me with a power and intensity that I can’t begin to describe. As I sat there, a bit stunned, wondering where this came from – this kind of thing doesn’t happen to me generally, in fact, it’s never happened before – tears began to stream down my face as the deeper significance of the sentence began to grow in my mind.

Again, I can’t begin to explain all the fullness of the meaning as it came to me, as most of it was non-verbal, but the short version is that I realized that my negativity was really stupid. I realized that I was really stupid to not appreciate how wonderful my life is, how wonderful and precious every moment is. At some point I just asked myself, what am I doing?!?

Since then, I have felt a tremendous release and clarity about things, and I realize – not just intellectually, but in my body – that the depression was creating all those negative thoughts and ideas.

And I think I’m back.

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Lojong #14 Seeing confusion as the four kayas…

…is unsurpassable shunyata protection.

This is one of my favorites. Though it is a very complex slogan that seems obscure at first, a little experience with it begins to make it clear.

The four kayas are:

–Confusion,

–Clarity,

–Relating the two,

–and Seeing the Whole.

These describe the four stages the mind passes through in any situation. Observing this process eventually allows one to see that shunyata is the true nature of mind, and that everything is simply this nowness.

Trungpa says there are no origins, everything is suspended in shunyata.