Category: EVENTS

Posted on by joseph mauricio

ECLIPSE

PARTNERING WITH THE UNIVERSE

Those in proximity to the shadowed path of the eclipse are scurrying to make Air B&B reservations, shoebox pinhole cameras and even wedding plans along the path of totality. There will be shouting, singing, and dancing as the sky darkens. It’s kind of sweet to think of so many of us celebrating together, even though anything beyond us seems accompanied with a splash of dread these days. Life and death create each other every moment. The universe birthed us and the universe will end us. Along the way, we’ll mark the passage of our moon across the sun. When he was still a cat, Yusuf Islam referenced being followed by a “moonshadow.” Moonshadow, moonshadow.

At some point this summer, as the universe decides to reveal it, there will be a less noticeable, but far more salient, event. A supernova will be visible on earth.  This once in our lifetime event will mark the dramatic death of a star that exploded 3,000 years ago.  However, the light will be reaching us this year. It is stunning to think that looking into the majesty of a clear night sky we are seeing a chronicle of our past. Even the contemporaneous events of today’s eclipse will have happened 8 minutes earlier. If we look closely enough into the stars between the stars we can see back to stars created at the start of time. And as we look up tonight much of what we see is no longer happening. This is all beyond most of our capacities to grasp, so today’s otherwise ordinary event will be interpreted in many ways depending on the diverse capabilities and aspirations of the interpreters. Some will see evidence of a godhead as others see a harbinger of doom.  Some will believe it to be a portent for good things and many will devise stories with the opposite conclusion. Is this evidence that we are not alone? Or just a momentary shadow happening in an insignificant corner of the universe?  In times before, this was a fearful and awe inspiring moment in the animal annals of our forebears. But today, in these darkening moments, we will partner with the universe.  And as cool and rare and special as the eclipse is to those in our part of the world, our interpretations of the eclipse will have more to say about ourselves than anything else. If it’s a message to us, then what of those who live beyond the shadow?

The eclipse is an event born of perspective. The moon is close to us, and so appears large enough to block the sun. It appears meaningful because it is our moon.  Yet, as above, so below. And doesn’t this celestial event beautifully depict an ordinary process in everyday life?  Buddhists don’t generally speak of heaven or hell. They speak instead of awareness or ignorance.  Buddhists  talk of “obscurations” to the clarity of understanding. The obscurations that are close to us are meaningful enough to create shadows in our understanding. There is a big wide amazing world that is blocked by this one thing we can’t look past. And because that one thing is close, like the policeman in your rear view mirror, it appears larger than it actually is.

In meditation theory, the sun is used as a depiction of awareness. The sun shines on everything equally regardless of whether it is blocked by the moon, the clouds or the turning earth. Awareness is alive and awake in the universe whether or not we are conscious of it. It is the work of the meditator to uncover the veils of self-imposed obscuration that block access to awareness. We notice thoughts that are actually quite small in the scheme, and bring our attention back to the space afforded by the breath. As we do this, we are stepping back from the thought and revealing a larger context. Our blockage might appear less significant, even humorous. Over time, these obscurations become less solid and less imbued with “meaning”. They become right-sized. Sometimes they disappear altogether. Although the significant obscurations require less force, but more patience.  Some will likely return. When that happens we are faced with the same task. Notice them as thinking, and return to the breath.   This reconnects us to space, which is perspective. It sucks that we often have to be fooled again and again but that is the work of creating access to awareness. That sunlight will, in time, permeate our experience, but there is a lot of slogging to get there.

Many of us are inspired by the idea of space travel. To many kids of my youth, astronauts displaced the firemen and soldiers of my parents’ generation. It was exciting, and to many of us, it still is. But to the astronaut, it was hours and hours of training to get to hours and hours, and maybe years and years, of sitting through endless space. Each step we take is a small step. But, as we are humans, we will likely make a big AF deal of every step. Look at me! I’m coming back to the breath! Huzzah!

In truth, we are training to be ordinary, simple and exactly who we are. And considering our outsized view of ourselves, that is remarkable. In Shambhala Buddhism they call this authentic being. Authentic being connects us to life around us without interpretation. Things are as they are and it is the work of the meditator to see that as it is. But the things that are close appear very large. The vastness of space is threatening to existence, hence the onus on survival as a hunkering down, and closing off into the safety of the cave. In this way, we hunker down in the safety of our minds, returning again and again to the bone we’ll chew.  Eventually, we need more than that bone. Humans have held to their families, beliefs,  and clans for security.  But we have eventually had to venture out, trading security for sustenance. In the coming century the first families could well be born off planet. From some perspective, this is beyond frightening. From another, it is inspiring and exciting. To those who accept the mission it will be a lot of work and routine. Some of us today are building entire fortresses over small flickers of thought. And some are returning to the breath on a journey to enlightenment.

But whether we are journeying through outer space, or the space of our minds, we are partnering with the universe. And, while we are likely not as special as we’d care to believe, we have the possibility of forging a sacred bond with the great unfolding of life. Awareness is our power. And though ego and self-importance provide all the obscurations we think we need, we might develop the power to be released from the “bondage of self” and see through space to the truth beyond.

To the universe, this is a blink of her eye. But for us, it’s a long process. One we travel one breath at a time. All the while followed by our moonshadow, moonshadow.

Posted on by joseph mauricio

WHO’S RUNNING THIS SHIP, ANYWAY?

The great farce played upon our thinking is the uninvestigated assumption that we exist. Or more specifically, that we believe ourselves to be a permanent, independent being. Despite evidence that life is unpredictable, we act as though this was not the case. We just assume we are as we think we are. And that assumption leads to the greatest folly of all – we believe we are in control. We believe we are the bozo driving the bus, despite our GPS being disconnected.

I tend to live life from one project to the next, believing that -despite all prior experience- this time I will get it right. This diet, this financial plan, this meditation, this love. Especially this love. True Love. That’s the one that gets me. Each love I fall into becomes my center of being. I have always failed to see that my relationship to loving has all the hallmarks of classic addiction. In his masterwork, The Art of Loving, psychologist Erich Fromm defined “true love” as two people who were both ready for the same thing at the same time. He specifically nudged the reader away from the idea that we were part of something special. But, despite the slight-of-hand of hormonal urges, true love is not destiny. True love, like life itself, is a random occurrence that happened to succeed. Life is opportunistic. Einstein famously said, “God doesn’t play dice with the universe”. It seems, even a thinker as profoundly creative as Albert still searched for the occasional guarantee. If the universe doesn’t play dice it may be because dice only has 36 outcomes. The perplexing game of Go that has kept humans intrigued for 4,000 years, has less than 11,000 possible outcomes. If the universe is playing with us, It is using a much more vast and complex system than any game our brains can presently conjure. And, yet, within that ocean of possibility, we find that apple trees always breed apple trees. This interesting paradox is central to our existential being. Life is random and there are repetitive patterns throughout.

So perhaps there is a pattern to the chaos? So far in our development, humans have always bred humans. But the configuration of any human psychology is a mix of recognizable patterns and random occurrence. In general, we will cling to familiar patterns and ignore possibility. In fact, strangely, we will cling to painful patterns rather than look to an undiscovered alternative. Or even, a newer pattern that brings relief from the pain. It has been said that the mind needs 90 days to fully change a pattern. And this, all the while knowing we must change. We could be killing ourselves and yet our survival instinct, as powerful as it is, is hijacked by some nefarious conditioned need. When we are enthralled in the euphoria of addiction, crawling down the mole hole in fear, or habitually trying to milk pleasure from stones, we are blinded to the alternatives. We mistake the moment for the fantasy, as we compulsively perform the same experiment again and again. And we know what Albert said about that.

Perhaps, God is playing a shell game. Despite astronomical odds of being, once life occurs, it believes itself to be the center of all things. In our small part of the universe,  once conceived, we created an uberbeing fashioned after ourselves – replete with similar attributes, gender and political affiliations. Then we knew we were at the center of the universe and that everything was going according to plan. Ironically, feeling we were the center of all things, separated us from each other and the universe altogether. You see, when we believe we are the center of the universe, our life, or our family, then everything around us is only a projection. We see what we believe, which is to say, we see nothing but ourselves. And on some basic level this is very lonely. On some basic level, below all the games we play to keep us occupied, we are naked, cold and lonely.  Because of this, we cling to all the tangible things that we feel provide us surety.  And as we can reach out and touch these things, we feel to be in control, and so we never look beyond ourselves. We never see that if we were the center of anything it was the “vicious wheel of quivering meat conception” as Kerouac called samsara. We believe that the next thing we grasp will be the real thing and, although we’ve reached for that very thing time and time again, next time we’ll get there.

But, it’s our choice isn’t it? I mean it’s my life, I can run in circles if I like.

Trungpa Rinpoche called this the “myth of freedom.” Spinning on the wheel of samsara can be exhilarating.  It can keep us so occupied we never have to see how naked, alone or frightened we really are. But, what happens when the wheel stops? One of the most frightening things, existentially speaking, is space. But just as “Steamboat Willie” is comforting to us, they are an imaginary narrative based on quickly flickering frames. Moving pictures move so quickly we believe it’s actually happening.  Movies create the illusion of life by flickering 23 still-images a second, too fast for our eyes to see the s p a c e between each frame. But that space provides a glimpse into the possibility beyond. And that space is a crack in the belief systems we establish to prove we exist. In this way, our anxiety drives us relentlessly forward. Flickering images create the illusion that we are steering the ship.

In the same way, we believe we must steer the ship, lest we fall in and drown. But we may be holding the wheel so tightly, we never see that the ocean we’re steering across is an endless sea of undefinable change.

Posted on by joseph mauricio

THE BURNING CHILD

HEALING THE BROKEN PLACES

The child that is not embraced by the village will burn it down just to feel its warmth.

– African proverb

In a culture conditioned to a linear understanding of causes and conditions we assign blame to a problem, focusing our ire on the object of blame. In extreme cases, we might describe a perpetrator as inhuman, animalistic, or assign them superhuman attributes such as being “pure evil” or “monstrous.” In any case, we are protected from implicating ourselves in the problem.

When emotions run high, the fear mind takes over and latches onto simple answers. And naturally, we believe we are right. This feeling of righteousness wants retribution and dismisses the inclusion of societal and familial issues as pandering snowflakery. The Buddha spoke of Karma as the law of cause and effect. He also spoke of the interdependence of every event to all else. Despite conditioned tendencies toward black and white binaries, the Buddha saw that the causes of any event are myriad and nuanced. This would seem frustrating to the raging defensive mind latching onto rightandwrong. But a reactive mind is generally devoid of nuance or compassion. Compassion doesn’t mean kindness to those who’ve caused harm. It means understanding those who cause harm.

When we assign blame, we are forcing reality into a binary. A binary which has ourselves and our value systems as the prime arbiter. This is good and evil from the way we see it. And the angrier we become the narrower our focus. This might be a factor in why people of color are incarcerated at higher rates than whites in our predominantly white culture. When we are seeing it our way, what of those who don’t conform? But is this willed ignorance only creating time bombs? What are we missing when we push some aside? And are those shadowed voices so needing to be heard that they will grow in ire until they erupt in violence?  The Buddhist teachings on compassion are unequivocal in their directives that we see beyond our parochial beliefs and begin to understand others.  Are we able to step back and see those we demonize? Only recently, a court found the parents of a son accused of gun violence as culpable. Was this a groundbreaking step in widening perspective or was it just shifting the binary? Looking at the home, looking at the school, looking at the community and looking at the gun communities and legislation tied to the influence of economic pressure are all ways that violence is interconnected. So, as the Buddha taught, Karma is complicated.  Then how do we manage the overwhelming preponderance of information that is karmic cause and condition?

What can we do?

Blame is not doing. Nor are platitudes. Nor are promises. How do we begin right here right now? We all have a child, either in our family or in our heart, who needs care and support. But are we listening? Or are we shunting the child aside as we are consumed by our busy lives? Are we in fact ashamed of the child? Are we embarrassed by the snowflakery of caring for an inner child? All too often in our society and our heart we are pushing the children away. Ignoring the most potent and important part of the village. In many indigenous cultures, villages cared for their children. This not only created homecare for stressed parents, but also allowed a wider perspective for the child to grow. This wider perspective also helped to moderate any neurosis the caregiver might pass on the child. A village based on community is self-healing and co-supportive. In this way the child can grow with freedom to become healthy versions of themselves, not reactive copies of a copy of their parents. In some cultures, criminals and those with mental illness were taken into counsel with the elders of the community. This is a healing circle. The view is that connection is healing and isolation, whether by social ostracism or mental evasion, encourages infirmity. The places we hide in our mind may be protective. But they are also places we fail to grow. They are the burning children of our hearts waiting to be heard, held, and understood.

A view of compassion may be that we have the capacity to be our own village. And maybe we can extend our view outward and see others as ourselves. We are all hurting and unheard. Maybe by awareness we can begin to see and heal the places within ourselves that are keeping us in darkness. And maybe we can learn to give expression to the wounded children that so desperately need our love. One way to illuminate the darkness is to burn the village. Another way is to touch the heart and allow that child to be accepted as they are before that happens. Perhaps the flames of anger can be softened into the warmth of compassion.

Compassion can be seen as the transformation of hatred into empathy. We don’t have to fear the flames. We can hold them and allow their rage to soften into warmth.

The picture is from photo sessions for the album WAR by U2.

 

Posted on by joseph mauricio

GIVING UP CONTROL

    … and Stepping Beyond Fear

One of the ways we rob ourselves, and reduce our life is by demanding ownership of our experience. And ownership implies controlling the process and the outcome of what we own. But our life is not property. Life is a self-existing dynamic with our past and our world, unfolding naturally as a flower grows and unfolds. Ideally. But, as it is our life, we want what we want to occur in ways we want them to occur. And we want this in our time-frame. Like standing over a flower and yelling at it to grow faster. Or, maybe we are shaming, intimidating or manipulating the flower. Or maybe, more generously, we try coaching the flower to be its best self.

I hate that ‘best self’ thing. I’d like to tell the best-selfers to find their best self someplace away from me.  Best self implies that there are unfortunates below, and those we aspire to above. But aspirations can be limiting. I know this is the opposite of what is meant by aspiration, but what are we usually aspiring to? Someone else’s value of success? Some way of finding love when we believe we are unlovable?  Maybe we are basing our future on trying to rectify a broken past?

Or maybe we just want it our way.

With all respect to Frank and Sid, that my way thing is odd. Do we even know what my way is? All I know is that my way is a demand on our future. It is an expectation. An expectation based on what we know so far. This precludes any knowledge we might develop, or changes that are unforeseen. But life is unforseen. Expectations are a recipe for disappointment and disappointments breed resentment.  So we are locked in the ouroboros cycle searching for the definite in an undefinable world. This leads to further resentment.  Resentments are like cold condiment bottles from the back of the fridge we can’t seem to throw away. Resentments rob our life of joy. Suppose we just cleaned the fridge? Suppose we tossed out that old mayo turning gelatinous yellow? Why do we keep holding on to it? Are we hoping to meet someone with baloney and bread who needs us? But that mayo’s no good now, son. In fact it’s dangerous. Just let it go.

Most aspirations and expectations lead us to carry resentment. Are we trying to fill something lacking? We believe we are less-than and so shout in the mirror that we will change. We swear it. We promise it. And when it doesn’t happen, we ignore that and begin the cycle again fueled by resentment aspiring to change this time. When we don’t lose 10lbs, we try to lose 30. Maybe all we want is to be a version of ourselves that we can live with. All of these projections are based on what we already know and ignore all that we might become if we learn to let go. We are clinging tightly out of panic to the straws on the shore afraid of where the river will flow.  Although straws won’t save us, they are not the problem. The problems come when we clench our eyes and hold to the straws, (the person, the moment or the memory) with such tenacity that we miss what is actually happening. We are still singing that song about the one that got away as we miss all the others asking us to dance. Sometimes I think we do this deliberately, specifically so we don’t have to try something new. It’s a peculiarity of humans that we will choose what we don’t want over what we don’t know. We will choose pain we have had over the possibility of a cessation of pain we haven’t experienced. Hamlet didn’t fear the sleep of death. He feared “what dreams may come”.

We choose the devil we know, I guess. The problem is we never know. Even the devil doesn’t know. The unexamined life leads to dancing with one devil we know after the next, just so we have a semblance of control. But the only way to have control over life is to reduce that life down to a very small space. Even then, none of us are really ever in control. And, although that won’t keep us from trying, the river of life will do its thing, as it does. It doesn’t need us. It is actually not our life at all, but an experience we are invited to take part in. And the more we try and wrestle it into submission the more we feed our discontent. The river flows where it will no matter what straws we cling to or plans we make. Our need to control the flow does nothing to enhance our journey, it just makes the ride cumbersome and inelegant.

So are we to just roll over and play dead? Have we no say in our life, even to lead a virtuous life? I believe we have every say if we release control and gain agency. Control is blind clinging based on fear. Agency is an awakened flow state based on acceptance. As the only way to effectively approximate control is to limit possibilities, we are allowing fear to reduce our life. But if we are in acceptance of what our life is, and where it is growing, then we can navigate our journey on the path. In order to navigate, we have to have our eyes open. We must see where we are in order to have any hope of influencing where we are going.  And then we have to develop the mindfulness to pay attention as life unfolds. If we are awake and present, then life will show us where it leads. And then we can make an awake decision on how best to follow.

Finally, we have to be willing to work with fear and not succumb to the need to “do it my way.” Working with fear is acceptance of fear. It’s a willingness to allow fear to guide us. Fear is important for our survival, but it does not have to control us. If we accept our fear, we can use it as a stepping stone into the unknown. Rather than reacting to fear by reducing our world to habitual behaviours we have done time and time again. However, if we relax with our fear we can respond to life and all its dangers with creativity and spontaneity. We can try and control the path and predict outcomes to keep us from pain. But, pain is inevitable. If we accept this, and are willing to rest with our fear in the present, we might become an engaged partner in life.  Like being seated and balanced in the Kayak, we can navigate the flow if we keep our eyes open.

 

 

Posted on by joseph mauricio

AWAKENING

AWAKENING TO EMOTIONS

Every moment we become aware is a new beginning. Each time we come back to ourselves and the moment we are inhabiting, we have a fresh start. Although, most of the time the “stains” or attachments of our previous moments linger. So we enter our new moment with some baggage. Have you ever awoken in a good mood, only to remember you were in a break up, or had just lost a job and so felt obligated to go back to suffering?

Acknowledging how we are actually feeling is an important step in our fresh start. “I’m still feeling guilty”, “I’m still angry”. Felt senses often remain, like a veil over our next moment. Wiping the sleep from our eyes, we sometimes wake in the morning with echoes of our night’s dreaming like a cloak around us. Sometimes we don’t remember the details of the dream, but the feeling remains. Maybe this points to something peculiar in our daily life. The story is often ephemeral, while the feelings are more tangible. This experience is the opposite of our conventional approach where we believe thoughts and ignore our feelings. We attach to our version of events while diminishing or ignoring how we feel.  But our version of events relies on thoughts. And thoughts are notoriously unreliable.

Feelings, on the other hand, are happening in real time, in our body.

Trauma is often long past, but residual feelings from that pain may be happening now. So, we believe if we investigate the story, we will find a way of resolving the feeling. And perhaps this is sometimes helpful, but the way we feel right now is the best way to release the turmoil our body is creating in the moment. Feel the feeling. Don’t define it, or judge it. Just feel and sense where your body is reacting.  Feelings keep generating and updating the trauma narrative, so the actual events have morphed into entirely new scenarios. Often we take these iterations as fact, and dismiss our feelings as fantasy. And sadly, we often transfer the past scenario onto the present or the future. We are regretful of the past and gunshy of the present as we plan for a catastrophic future.

Understanding emotions begins with a willingness to accept our feelings right here, right now. It develops as that familiarity allows us to become less and less afraid of them  At some point we may realize that we can honor our feelings just as they are. That life is enriched by our feelings. In fact, our feelings and emotions might be the most human thing about our lives. The pain in our heart is what characterizes humanity. It is also happening now. If we are willing to accept and look into the felt senses, our discomfort might guide us more deeply into our life. It’s possible that although we re often afraid of our feelings and dismissive of emotions, feelings and emotions are the point of living.

Often emotional being is frequently described as an inner child. And like a child, we can learn to love and care for our broken heart so that our feelings become less crusty and defensive, and more tender. To some this seems a weakness. But it is the unfeeling crust of our defenses that create a calcification of our natural empathy and compassion. Our life becomes warped around our defenses. Our body holds tension in a misguided attempt to outrun our past. Our mind reiterates and projects catastrophe in a misguided attempt to protect ourselves from the future. And so the “bandits of hope and fear” rob us of the present. And the most important part of our life is happening in the present.

As with children, our fear of the responsibility might cause us to push them away or try to control their experiences. We might feel that our anger and anxiety are necessary to protect them. But is that the best way to protect them? The children are the point, not the obstacle. And while we can honor our children and our inner child, we can’t let then lead. Children need leadership and guidance as well as love. In the same way, working with emotions implies work. How can we honor our feelings, but still incorporate our intelligence so that we can protect our heart and ourselves? The answer begins right here. Come back. Release judgement. Allow the experience to unfold. See that the child is its own being and learn to de-fuse our reactive defenses and see them as other. I have fear. I have anger. I have jealousy. But I am not those things. I am the awake being that experiences but doesn’t identify. I am the awake being that allows. I am the awake being that cares. But I am not longer a child. I am the awake being that holds the child and allows it to grow.

And just as children grow, our emotions will change if we are not clinging to them. This is called “holding open space.” Be present but allow the changes to happen. Anger may turn to sadness, sadness to openness, openness to courage. We can protect our heart and still allow it to breath. In fact, we can allow it to sing and to dance and to love.

I love the story about how in modern times we need to describe feelings and proscribe an antidote. When a patient is depressed doctors administer medication which implies treating a disease. We often identify with our diagnosis. “I am bipolar”. “I am neurodivergent.” I have adhd.” And these become defects we try and change. In native cultures when a depressed person came to the healer the healer would ask “when did you stop dancing”. “When did you stop singing?”  Maybe there is nothing to fix and everything to love. Loving our sadness, loving our pain, loving our tenderness, loving our joy. These are the doorways to our life.

Notice. Accept. Feel. Release.

This is awakening.

 

 

Posted on by joseph mauricio

THE UNRELIABLE WITNESS

We are not what we think.

This is frequently heard in meditation circles. The path of meditation serves to uncover the fickleness of our thought process so that we can see beyond ourselves. Our thoughts don’t define us, as much as keep us entertained. If we give ourselves over to the path of meditation, we might end up finding there is more to ‘me’ than we thought.

Many of us want to change. We feel if we can do this, or adopt that, drink this, or stop eating that, life will be better. WE will be better.  However, if we have pre-conditions as to what change should be, we will likely change into versions of what we know. Instead of allowing change to change us, we want to control the outcome. But nothing in life is entirely as we expect. When I stopped drinking I had very grand ideas of how I would improve. I thought I needed these expectations for motivation. I will be thinner without the calories, I will be clearer in my life goals, I will make more money.  Naturally, as expectations set up discouragement, grand expectations are the precondition for great disappointment. So, like many, so often, I fell off the wagon in frustration. I would build myself up only to be let down. And this led me back to the same patterns for comfort. Whether I was so amazing or disheartened, this game kept spinning until finally my discouragement led me to just crash and, in exhaustion, just stay there. Once I got over the shock of not having the old pattern to rely on, I slowly began to see a life beyond my expectations. And it began and ended right here on the earth.

I saw what my Buddhist teachers were always pointing toward, that life was beyond my ability to control or define. That was the bad news and the good news. Rather than living out the patterns of my conditioning, life became more about discovery. Instead of believing that my ideas were real, I could STFU and see what was actually happening. Life from the vantage of my cushion was clearer.  There is an old saying “disappointment is the chariot of liberation”. As much as it hurts to hit bottom, if we are patient and willing to stay with ourselves, we might begin to see life more clearly. The path of meditation practice is one of removing the scales, or dropping the veils, that obscure reality. We become quite taken with our powerful minds. Mind is an amazing tool if we are able to access our higher power and see the fluctuations of our thought process. It could be said that even our mind is not what we think. It is much more than that. However, we limit its potential by iterating the reiterations of our thoughts again and again. But while our mind is vast, our thinking brain is only seeing what it has been conditioned to see. How much do we believe what we’ve been taught? And, while much of that serves us well, it is simply not all there is to life.  When a student of Trungpa, Rinpoche asked a particularly complicated and confused question he would lovingly say “it seems you are not a reliable witness.”

Really? but this is my life and my mind! I’ll do it my way! Well, okay then, but don’t complain when the outcome is always the same. And while we’re tightening the grip on our opinions, we fail to see that opinions keep changing. We fall in love with that perfect person only to realize this was not the one. We might move from town to town, or change our room or our hair color trying to define that illusive “me”.  We go from remedy to remedy to staunch the same wounds. We keep eliciting people in our lives to help us work through the same scenarios. Caught in the turbulence of needs, wants and desires we believe anything that will keep us from crashing. But, maybe crashing is just what we need. Maybe we need to hit bottom.

When asked about enlightenment, Trungpa said it may be at our lowest point. We fancifully think of a sage on the mountaintop or a bearded all know it all in the clouds. But maybe liberation is right here. Letting the ego jenga fall around us so we can begin to see what is there. The path of meditation is said to lead to “valid cognition.” We begin to boycott the hall of mirrors of our discursive mind and step past the veil into seeing things are they are. And that cannot be predetermined. How could it? Once we step from telling and retelling ourselves what other people have told us to tell ourselves, we might see life enfolding in real time. In meditation practice, everytime we recognize our distraction, and come back to the breath we are pushing the veil aside. In time, as we stop believing in the dramas, we can just let the veil be. When we realize it’s not real we can smile at the fabrictions we create. Smile and let go. Smile and return to the breath. Sakyong Mipham refers to this as the “displaysive quality of mind.” It is the mind displaying its creativity. The idea is to let it go, so that the display can be fresh and creative. Thoughts are like rainbow paintings. Watercolors on a rainy sidewalk. They can be quite beautiful. They can be frightening. But they can’t hurt, if we don’t believe them. Thinking is a radio in another room. If I believe it’s about me I’m holding on to the airwaves. I’m making the display solid. And that kills creativity.

Believing our thinking is a rookie mistake. It’s spiritually naive. If we keep recognizing we are caught, and returning to what is real right now, in the present, we will begin to stabilize the mind. Stability of mind is the requisite condition for clarity. When we see clearly, we know what is. And that is ever changing. And rarely ever what we expect.

Posted on by joseph mauricio

IN LIVING SERVICE

IN LIVING SERVICE – Commemorating the Life of Dr. King

I’m writing on the day set aside to commemorate the life and service of Dr. Martin Luther King, which this year falls on his actual birthdate, Jan 15. To many, it marks a time to reflect on our lives and the contribution to peace, equality and understanding we may be making. It is also a day of remembrance of a fellow human who took on the superhuman task of changing the mind of the world in the face of great opposition.

And to some it is a day off. And, if so, I hope you have a good day. But, I wonder what we’re taking a day away from? Chogyam Trungpa, when asked if he ever took a day off responded, “a day off from what?” I heard an interview with Yolanda Renee King and Martin Luther King III and they asked that anyone willing might reflect on their service to the Doctor’s vision today. I thought, what service can I provide today? Reaffirming my commitment to this view, which is none other than the view of the Bodhisattva, is a good start. But am I actively supporting that view or just paying spiritual lip service?  What service commitment do I have to my fellows and what actions may I take to further that commitment. And do I ever take a day off?

From the point of view of the Way of The Bodhisattva, we ground our effort in the primary vow of not causing harm to self or others. This very much equates to Dr. King’s commitment to nonviolence. So, any compassionate action is primarily based on an important non-action, or what Buddhists refer to as renunciation. You might look at it as an offering our attachment to violence. I am letting go of aggression in order to support love. That might seem obvious, but so much hatred and destruction is seen as justified retaliation for wrongs endured.  It seems a natural response. However fire answering fire burns everything.  Aggression is forever at the ready for any human unable, or unwilling, to see further.  A commitment to nonviolence urges us to look beyond an easy reaction.  In most cases, aggression is about self-protection. In renouncing violence we have little alternative but to communicate with others. Although nonviolence is the necessary first commitment, our service has to be built on a positive view. The addict puts down the drug, but is being clean and sober sustainable if they have nothing to live for? Once we put down the drug of violence, like the newly sober addict, we are naked and alone. We need faith to sustain us. Sobriety cannot be the goal, it must be our life, one day at a time. But where is our renunciation heading?

The Bodhisattva’s next vow is to offer service to the world and to try to relieve the suffering of bengs. The Dalai Lama said, “Do what you can to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them.” These are the two foundational vows. Our view is to help the world, which is an aspirational vow and our commitment is to not cause harm, which is our requisite, one breath at a time.  And should we fall off the wagon? Well, the only remedy is to get back on. Unlike other drugs, aggression is so ingrained in our consciousness, we will likely fall back on it, believing in a panicked moment that it is the only answer to justice. But, when it becomes clear that we are only creating more hatred for ourselves and our world, the work is to go back to renunciation.  Just lay down the sword.  Once we are back we can see that violence is usually self-serving. It is aggression masquerading as helping others. We are lashing out in the name of justice.  But in truth, we panicked. We are triggered. We are not acting mindfully.  Perhaps violence needs to be employed in some instances. But, as violence begets violence, who’s violence is justified? In global conflict, warfare is often influenced by the constituency of the aggressors. Leaders want to stay in power. Their violence, hatred and bigotry are self-serving. It’s easier to amass power by rallying against a foe than to offer understanding. But, which approach is more sustainable? The fact that our societies are based on principles of defence makes it seem so. This is how life is. To many, life is a bloodsport with winning as the only goal. But, winning what, exactly? A bruised and torn world?

Dr. King saw that picking up arms against his enemies was selfish and self-defeating no matter how justified it felt. Many of his followers advocated violence, as though violence toward the populace would end in justice for all and happiness. Dr. King saw this as folly.  He told his followers that they would be playing into their enemies’ strength. Bigots have been practicing aggression for their entire lives, he told them.  So, he proposed an alternative. He said that God told us to love our enemy.  And then with characteristic skillfulness added, ‘he didn’t say we had to like them.’  In this way, he proposed using love as a method. Love is greater than hatred. Our very existence is proof of this. We are all products of love. We can look to the world with love and see possibility, or we can look to our world in hatred and see life shutting down. But, saying love is stronger than hatred, or peace is greater than violence, is just the view.  Love is not possible without daily renunciation and daily action.  It seems humans must retake these vows again and again. I will not react in hatred. I will foster love. I will not choose the limited method of violence no matter how powerful it feels. I will choose possibility. Love itself is just a word. Love without renunciation and action is just a hallmark card. But actively working to renounce hatred and to foster understanding can be a daily path. In this way, we are living a life of service, one day at a time.  As long as there is life to live for, there are no days off.

The Bodhisattva’s ultimate vow is service to the world. It is recommended that this offering of service be made with the Mahayana view of “no giver, no gift and no receiver”. This is to say that our offering of love and understanding to the world may have no immediate effect. It may even seem the opposite. Our giving may not aggrandize ourselves at all. We may gain nothing but the strength to continue. And that strength will grow, because we are choosing life. Service is not about us. It’s about living for the world. It’s about gently, but persistently, moving the wheel toward life. And all of this begins in our own heart. The choice can be quite subtle. It can be in our own mind, in our own thoughts. Judging, manipulating, lying are acts of aggression as they lead to separation and isolation. Caring, listening and understanding are choosing connection to life. And addicts know addiction is bred in isolation and recovery develops with connection.

Opening the heart is opening to life. It is not easy. It takes daily work to change ourselves. And it will take daily work to encourage the world to change. It will require a life of living service.

Posted on by joseph mauricio

EVERY WAKING STEP

EVERY WAKING STEP

I am writing this on the first day of the solar calendar year. New Year’s Day is seen as a time of renewal and stepping forward. However, most of us are working through the fog of our hangovers, as we try to remember what it was we’re moving past as we tentatively stumble toward wherever it is we’re going.

We have funny glasses and lipstick stains and a raging headache. Even I, who have been clean and sober for several years, are working off a sugar and carb rush from gorging on bad food. Why? To prove I’m happy. Sometimes my life feels like a series of emotional selfies trying to convince myself of something.  And so we begin the new year already buried in the past. We have grand resolutions, so inspiring today that we’ll maybe forget them in a week. In my drinking days, I would crumble the life around me, just to see myself build it back. I had a friend who told me I was simultaneously anal expulsive and anal retentive. Clean it up and tear it down. Clean it up and tear it down. And part of this crazy cycle were the outsized resolutions I would make. Inspirations that became obligations, forgotten soon enough that would be resurrected next year.  We all wish for world peace.

But what would it be like to appreciate each moment in my life? What would it be like to actually be present for my life? This would necessarily be a very slow process. One step at a time. Thich Nhat Hanh said “peace in every moment”. Bill Wilson suggested “one day at a time.” Ram Das wrote “Be Here Now.” What if this year my resolution was not an outsized or grand demand, that leads to disappointment? What if instead I resolved to step one foot after the next in humble acceptance of my life as it unfolds?  Acceptance need not be resignation. Patience need not be grin-and-bearing our pain. Acceptance of the moment can be a relief. I don’t have to try at life. I can just be. Accepting ourselves and our life as it is. Acceptance means finding life’s rhythm and dancing along. And humility suggests that we can fit into life instead of forcing life to submit to our fleeting and ever changing demands. This would reduce life down to that which we can predict or conceive. The only way we control anything is to reduce it down to a small enough space to manipulate.  Life should be bigger than we are. Life could be a space into which we can grow. And when life becomes too much, linstead of warring against the inevitable, we can learn to shift disappointment to encouragement.  Remembering to dance and to sing. Releasing the grip of demand on our life is a relief.

Remembering those we have lost as an inspiration for us to live. No one that had truly loved us would want their passing to diminish our lives.  The ones we have loved may be gone, but our love for them remains. If they loved us they would wish for us to love ourselves. In fact, it may be that there is an essential element of the universe that wants desperately to love us, if we would only learn to let it.

This year, I will burn the to-do list, even for a day. This year my bucket list will have nothing on it. This year I resolve to erase all the demands I make on myself and watch myself become. I resolve to see what life brings.  And, I resolve to remain as joyful as I can in the face of the changes that life brings. Waking in every moment. One step at a time.

But, one step at a time doesn’t imply looking only at the ground. While it is important to remember where we are, we’ve seen our feet. Life is happening all around us, all the time. I can remember my steps, but then remember to raise my gaze and look at my world. And if that becomes overwhelming or distracting? Then I come back to now. The key to being present is to enter a flow where I’m here, looking around, getting lost, and then coming  back.

Facing life with acceptance and humility, one magical step at a time.

Posted on by joseph mauricio

EYES THAT SEE THEMSELVES

Throughout history, meditation adepts, shamans, scientists, philosophers, poets, and artists have pointed to a realm of existence beyond our everyday experience. These realms exist as experiences beyond our norm, so we imbue them with fanciful mystery. Yet it may be that these experiences are very ordinary. Maybe we have glimpses of the truth beyond truth all the time. But maybe we fail to recognize these opening into the profound as we scurry from place to place to place. Our earth evolved uniquely to host conscious life, so it is quite rare and precious.  It is our home and the incubator that gave birth to a consciousness that can glimpse itself and the possibility beyond itself. Perhaps, it is through human eyes that the universe sees itself. Perhaps by seeing ourselves, we can see the universe.

Caged by gravity and necessity, life came to know itself.  If our human mind is an analogue of space, then perhaps the mind itself is vast potential tethered to a limited condition in order to develop an understanding beyond itself.  Unlimited consciousness seems to need limited circumstances to develop awareness. Just as the vastness of possibility became manifest as it was tethered and limited to the confines of our planet, so the vastness of our mind is held in a sense of self. This sense of self is an awareness of being to which we identify.  It is a protective encasement that acts as an incubator for development of our limited consciousness into the wisdom from which it came. But that incubator becomes a cage when we believe this is who we are and all we know. The power of our consciousness becomes locked within itself and can see only projections of itself.  This cage, strengthened by personal and societal beliefs, becomes seemingly solid and permanent. This fabricated self lies in dissonance to the dynamic space around it. We hold to the belief that we are solid and permanent, while everything around us changes. This dissonance creates friction that we feel as suffering. The stronger our cage, the more we are protected from the vicissitude of reality, yet the more isolated we are from the vastness of our potential. And hence, we suffer.

While many spiritual traditions attempt to see beyond the cage, Mahayana Buddhism attempts to understand both the cage and the space beyond. Compassion is a conversation between the absolute and the relative in which we develop our provisional, limited consciousness into a consciousness that knows itself and has the capacity to lead others to that liberation. Glimpsing the matrix that underlies reality can be a profound experience. But we have to develop a skill that allows us to communicate this experience to others. If carefully traveled, this wisdom path offers glimpses of an experience beyond life that offers a sense of compassion, caring and clarity. These glimpses of a larger perspective can offer more clarity to the cage with which we are and ensconced.

So, what is the cage and why would we choose to be here?

The cage is a protective encasement that allows us to grow. It provisionally separates us from everything else, so we naturally develop an identity. This sense of self is a fiction fabricated solely to provide a reference point for our development. But it is not real in that it does not have the solid capacities we attribute to it.  The problem is that we are trapped in this constraint before we have a chance to develop our relative awareness, so we fail to see our connection to all life. We begin to discriminate. And so doing, we separate life experience into for and against, good or bad, right or wrong. The system becomes complicated when our survival instincts become fused to these imaginary designations. And so we fight to protect ourselves from that which we have come to believe is wrong, or against, or evil. And in these dualistic battles, we become so self-centered that we fail to see anything, including ourselves, with much clarity. Trapped within the confines of our cage, the vast potential of mind has only itself to see. Locked in this room of mirrors, we are reduced to iterations of what we have seen before. We weave our cage from the protective patterns of past experience and live a life much smaller than we might.  Taken to its extreme, this cage is an imprisonment. But the light of awareness shines through these walls regardless. We are trained to look away from the light and try and decipher the shadows.  But every time we look up, or each time life interrupts our planning, we create a gap in the wall. Every time we bring our mind back from delusion to the breath, we widen the cracks.

And what of the space beyond the cage?

If we look at the universe for clues to our mind we see that there are so many possibilities. But most of these possibilities are deadly. Most of the space beyond our world is inhospitable to the development of consciousness. So, it is said that life as we know it is exceedingly rare and precious.  And perhaps this is why we cling to it with such tenacity. Yet in that panicked clinging, we lose sight of the larger picture around our cage. We tend to think the cage is all there is. So, it is the path of a wisdom tradition not to reinforce what we believe we are, but to develop toward openness of possibility so we might become. So, we don’t know what is in the space beyond the cage, so it would be wise to develop slowly and carefully. It is said that when we move beyond space, we look back to the cage with understanding and compassion. We are excited for our liberation as we are compassionate toward our imprisonment. The key to this gentle opening of the spirit, is that with each careful incremental step we take, we stop to see the view. And what we see is excitement for our liberation and sadness toward the imprisonment of the world. There is no way to convey our larger perspectives to the world. Our work is to learn to translate our experience in words that can be heard. The key to this translation is remembering how we felt. So, we are not jettisoning into space. We are rising slowly with the understanding that we are not alone, but connected to all.

The development of compassion is essential. That as we develop ourselves to see, we learn to see with eyes of love. Otherwise, what we see is antagonistic. And antagonism or aggression of any sort is a shutting down. Only thru the eyes of love can we see with any clarity. Only with eyes of love can we see truth.

And so, we dedicate our journey to the liberation of all beings. We wish that we and all beings may develop the mind to see beyond itself, so that we have the eyes to see ourselves.