Month: September 2023

LEAN ON ME, WHEN YOU’RE NOT STRONG.

Those of my venerability might remember the Bill Withers song. Withers voice was soft and strong and had such a rich timbre, you could feel the arms of his soul reaching out. Or perhaps it was his “Grandma’s Hands”,  another song about the lineage of being held with loving kindness. Yet, Bill’s kindness was not syrupy or sentimental. It was strong. Then, of course Ringo’s masterpiece, “Octopus’ Garden” was about how octopi attract and protect their mates by surrounding themselves with reflecting sea trinkets in a garden. For Ringo, who had grown up with poverty and illness, the song was about escaping a world of pressure to an undersea sanctuary of kindness and peace.

In the 90’s Veruca Salt had a song titled “Eight Arms To Hold You” which was the working title of the Beatles second film “Help” adapted from a line in the song “From Me To You”. There was little sentimental about Veruca Salt, who were direct descendants of the Riot Grrrls. Yet, the strength and ferocity of their music had the power of holding you as the world came crashing around. Kindness is strength. Caring is powerful. And compassion may be the bravest we can be. Compassion not only supports those we hold, but ourselves as well. We are empowered by the strength we feel as we are steadfast for those who need us.  There has been no greater feeling in my life than when I have been there for someone I loved.

Although, I frequently did mess that up by laboring over what I should do, or what I might say. Making it about myself.  We’ve all done this. We let our pride and self-interest distance ourselves from the simple act of holding another. When a frightened child comes into their mother’s room at night, they don’t need to be schooled in logic. They don’t need to be told their fears are misplaced. They need to be held. They need the strong arms of someone who loves them despite their fear. And when the fear subsides, they might need to walk back to their room. Loving arms know when to hold and when to let go. That is why the Buddhist teachings say that true compassion is a balance of wisdom and caring. In Vajrayana Buddhism we refer to the appropriate relationship to the teacher as “mogu”, which translates to longing and respect. Both ideas posit two conventionally counter-posed energies that create balance. In the former instance we have caring, which is our heart’s effort to hold another, combined with the wisdom to let go and create the distance we need to allow the other to grow. In the case of Mogu, we have the heart connection of love which is balanced by having the self-respect to not lose ourselves in that love. We also love our teacher but offer them the respect to protect their space and personal dignity. We respect our teachers by emulating their example as we grow into our own expression of dignity and strength.

Compassion is not co-dependence. True Compassion is strength.

When I was a boy my mother was young, beautiful and insecure. My father was away much of the time and during that time her life was unstable, chaotic, and chronically underfunded. Yet the love she held for her children was nonetheless unshakable. However, along with the strength of her love, her fear was also transmitted to us. Love and fear were her gifts. In the years that came my father’s career developed, and as it did our economic concerns lessened. And yet as he became successful he grew away from her.  Insecurities changed but fear remained impactful on our lives. Children love swimming pools but pools don’t care for them.  My mother’s love was ever present and yet her frightened loneliness was always there. Over time, her life became truly challenging. As if by some karmic plan she was forced from one insecure situation to another. And yet, it seemed her higher power had guided her to greater strength and independence. To her credit, my mother never became bitter or vindictive. And in time, she gained great power. She was a vessel of her belief and a loving support to her children, but also her world. I was always welcome in any of her humble homes. They always become our home.  Even as she had less material comfort than before the divorce, and even as her insecurities had, in many ways, come to fruition, my mother gained a spiritual strength that was an inspiration to all who knew her. She went from being a fire that offered love and pain to becoming to the earth itself, stable, loving and true.

Like any mammal, we humans feel more than we think. We think we know, but what we know is informed by how the instinctive way we feel about them.  feel a We feel love and we feel fear. And though our lower instincts drive us to self-protective, defensive acquisition, materialism does not calm our deepest fear and anything we achieve is never as healing to our spirit as being held in the arms of love. And nothing that strengthens us as much as leaving those arms to stand on our own. But the greatest expression of love may be when we share our strength with those who need us. Inside, no matter what we achieve for ourselves, we all yearn for the strength of a mother tigress resting with her pride. Or an octopus arranging its garden of sea glass for its bride. Or a fawn looking to its mother for guidance, protection, and love. When a newborn looks to a parent who loves them there is an energy exchange that is a transmission of one of the strongest forces in our world.  But that love heals the caregiver as it nurtures the child. We are strong enough to allow others in need to lean on us. Not collapse into us, or become dependent on us, but lean on us until we both become strong.

Holding others with our love is a love that holds the whole world.

 

The power of kindness often gets overlooked.

Kindness is accessed by gentleness, so we sometimes view it as inconsequential or miss it all together. Kindness doesn’t have as large a handle as aggression, so when push comes to shout, it’s a challenge to remember it’s simple power. We often regard kindness as something we’re ‘supposed’ to do or we use it as a placeholder for more active feelings that may later come raging to the fore. When kindness is used to deny our feelings we are being unkind to ourselves. We are trying a bit too hard to be civil. But if this is not how we really feel, then the other steel-toed shoe will drop. In all of these circumstances, we are being less than honest.

This is not genuine kindness.  Genuine kindness comes from kindness to ourselves. It is the honesty to accept how we’re feeling and the confidence to stand up and meet our world with a smile. Rather than using kindness as a default when we are too worried to speak our mind, we can lead with Genuine Kindness as a way of opening the door to our experience.

Genuine Kindness radiates naturally to others because it is based on kindness to ourselves. It comes from the sense of self-regard and confidence we build in our meditation practice. When we lead with kindness, we are expressing the bravery to lift our gaze and smile at the world. When we smile, we release natural endorphins that quell pain and encourage and open exchange with loving world. But, smiling works when the world is less than loving. We can smile at danger, smile at sadness, smile at aggression and as Trungpa Rinpoche said, “Smile at Fear.” When an actual smile is inappropriate, or would be mistaken as provocation, we can smile inside. We can look into the challenging places in life with optimism and grace. We can meet difficulties by supporting our health and wellness.

Regardless of circumstances, if our view is to lead with kindness and open into understanding, we demonstrate the confidence of a leader. In the Shambhala Buddhist tradition, we refer to warriorship. In this case, warriorship is not based on aggression or competition. We are not trying to best another or make ourselves more powerful than the present moment requires. We are opening to our fear, our doubt, our hurt with the bravery to accept our feelings. When we are insulted by another, who is it that is hurt by this if we remove ourselves as a target? When we fight back, we weaken ourselves and that aggression lodges in our system. Standing up to someone is not done by lowering ourselves. It is best done by rising up in confidence, accepting our own feelings, and remaining open. This is not easy. You might say rising up is a tall order.

Warriorship requires the self-discipline to not take everything personally. So rather than “trying to be kind” we are being kind to ourselves by not indulging in crap trading. We are not using kindness as a weapon, a ruse, or a ploy. We are not being kind as a placeholder until we go home and yell at the dog. We are avoiding aggression because it is an ineffective strategy. It doesn’t work. It only hurts ourselves. In the recovery tradition, they talk of “drinking poison and expecting the other person to get sick. The other person likely didn’t even know you were triggered. They are off, down the road to insult someone else. Meanwhile, you are up all night steaming and retelling the issue again and again. Maybe one of those retellings will tell it right, but I tend to doubt it. The next day we are likely to relive it all again by telling our friends. And our friends, of course, will be complicit in indulging the story. You may be looking for someone to agree with you and most people will do in hopes that the invective will end. They will cheer us on, without knowing any of the particulars, in hopes that it all will end.

Self-anger and self-affliction don’t help to defend ourselves. In fact, the erode strength and confidence. The more we beat up on ourselves, the weaker we get, and the more we feel victimized by the other. But chances are no one is doing anything to us but ourselves. And even if we were truly wronged beating ourselves up is no way to counter anyone else’s aggression. Kindness is the warrior’s sword. It is a way of disengaging from the aggression so that we can see things more clearly. When we are brave enough to stand in discomfort and respond with genuine kindness to ourselves and to the moment, we are building health and confidence. With confidence we are better able to defend ourselves. We act wisely and effectively instead of impulsively and self-destructively.  We are manifesting the warrior within us. I find it helpful to have an image in my meditation. A warrior queen, king  or nonbinary being with the power to enjoy life and the grace to dispatch aggression without aggression. Kindness evokes a great strength.

If you have been triggered and are carrying the poison around with you, there is a process you can go through. Find a quiet place in your environment and let your mind find its quiet place. Remove yourself from the fight and be inquisitive into your experience:

1. is my anger helping? what am I defending? was this actually personal?
2. what was my part in it? (did I provoke things? did I leave myself open to being triggered?)
3. can I accept my feelings as my own (feelings are not created by anyone, but we can hold to them and make them injurious to ourselves and others)
4. can I let my assumptions of the other go? can I remember that what they think of me is not my business?
5. can I regain my internal balance and strength?
6. can I open to the compassionate energy of the universe, in this very moment, in this very place?
7. will I choose sanity and balance or delusion and reaction?

When we are triggered, we are neurologically panicked and do not have easy access to serenity and peace of mind. When pressured, it is far easier to reach for the cudgel than to rest in the space of balance. When we are pressured, we react and want the world to react to us. With all kindness, I must say, this is very weak. The way of warriorship is to practice meditation regularly so that we are trained to respond with the space and balance that is self-kindness. From that high vantage, we can offer the world genuine kindness. This reflexively feels better than the afflictions we place ourselves in to. When we feel better, we are better, and it matters less what anyone did or didn’t do. That’s them. They are not my business. My job is not to figure out anyone else or to blame anyone. I feel as I feel. I can own that. My primary job is to be genuine and kind. From there I can see my world.

That lofty vantage is right here on the ground. When I am not defending myself, or attacking anyone, my view is expensive. I am open to all sorts of creative alternatives. I can find creative ways to respond, creative ways to disengage, or creative ways to defend myself. I can find creative ways to protect myself and care for those I love.

Those creative alternatives come as I stop defending, turn my mind to my higher power, and listen. That love is always there. All I need to do is remember.

 

 

 

 

“There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy”

Today we’re going to look beneath the matrix and perhaps begin to touch on the infinite and inscrutable world of what manifests as everyday life. Many spiritual philosophies see everyday life as the simple appearance of a deeper, more complex, structure. Hindus believe that there is a corresponding spiritual plane of existence which we were approximating in our temporal life. Christians believe that there are angels, saints and beings of a deific nature that communicate between us and an intelligent being that created us.

The Buddhists believe that physical forms are informed by non-cognitive realms similar to the Christian triad of Father, Son and Holy Ghost but without gender or personal designations. Buddhism is by nature impersonal. This does not mean that Buddhism is not concerned with interpersonal relationships, but it questions the ‘me’ designation we place on ourselves and our experience.  Simply said, ‘me’ is a designation I place on myself so I can understand you. And ‘you’ is a designation I place on everything ‘other’. This is a helpful, if crude, tool for understanding the complexities of our experience. However, from the Buddhist perspective we are so very much more than you and me. We are not separate at all, but interconnected with all reality. The problem is not that we formulate a template to communicate with others, but that we believe it. We believe we are separate and so life happens to us, or we gain mastery over the forces in our life. This dualism creates a two dimensional us and them antagonistic way of seeing the world. We so strongly attach the surface appearance of things, we are disabled from seeing the fullness of experience. Everything becomes a material we can use, or a transaction we can benefit from. This is called materialism. We so believe in things that we become a thing.

Yet the temporary nature of things, and the vastness and unpredictability of the universe and the great distance between all the things we believe to be real suggests there is more to life than we see.  Among the materials of life, earth, water, fire and air, there is a fifth element which is often overlooked yet is the most plentiful: space. The space between things. The space within things. Space is so integral to the ordering of the universe, the term quintessential, which means “fifth element”, is meant to convey the essence of things. The essence of things is not a thing at all.

Space is most often seen as distance. The vastness between bodies of the universe, or the vastness of the universe that folds the bodies as well as the vstnes within each body. In fact, space exists within all physical structures. The things we believe are real simply because they appear real to our senses are actually made of atoms. Atoms are very small designations, but much larger than the microscopic particles that comprise it.  But taking an atom as an example, the distance between its nucleus and the nearest orbiting electron would be as if the center of the atom was the size of a basketball placed in the center of Metro Life Stadium and the electron was orbiting around the stadium. Otherwise, the element that comprises the things we believe to be solid is itself 99% space. The vast amount of space within atoms, is also within the particles within atoms. The more science looks into our physical world, or the more it uncovers space. The more astronomers look into the universe, the more they discover space.

However, that space is hardly empty. The energy that keeps the nucleus of an atom together is known as the “strong force”, which is one of the four basic forces in the universe. Thuis force is so powerful that when it is erupted there’s a vast rip in the time and space continuum, such as the radiance of a star, or an atomic bomb.  In a controlled way, we are able to harness that incredible energy to provide lights, power and communications however. Space is hardly devoid of potential. The term “emptiness”, a designation used by western scholars, is a misnomer. It’s a way a materialist explains what they cannot quantify. It’s used as a conceptual designation to describe the indescribable. But emptiness is hardly empty.  Space is potential.

What does this have to do with washing the dishes?

Well, just as our physical world is made of unseen particles and energies, so our lives are motivated by karmic propensities we don’t fully understand. Our hearts are touched by feelings, most of which we are unaware. Unseen energy becomes manifest in the physical world like angels communicating the will of God, or the Holy Spirit transmitting the will of the father to the child. In Buddhism we refer to Sambhogakaya, the energetic realm that transmits from the vast emptiness of pure intelligence of the universe to all who are open enough to experience space in everyday life. Energies of the Sambhogakaya are felt as the vastness of the universe touches us through feeling and instinct, such as how we respond to music or to falling in love. Most of us misinterpret that sacred connection by taking things personally.  We turn universal love of the universe into a commodity we can barter.  We take the energies of the universe as proof that we are real. This is not to imply that we are not important, or that we do not exist. It means we are not as important as we think we are, and we do not exist as we think we do. It seems we misinterpret life’s experiences by making them about us. So, this divine communication with the absolute becomes twisted by self-referential concepts. We interpret the energies of the universe to mean things about ourselves and our society. Because of the specific makeup of human psychology, we bifurcate our experience into what Buddhism refers to as dualism. We create us and them and so become separated from the simple experience of being fully connected to our life. Everything in the conventional, societal mind is interpreted as for or against us. This means, whether for, against or neutral everything in our experience appears to be about us. This makes our mind heavy and our perception dull. We go through life disconnected and discouraged.

Conversely, when our mind, spirit and body are aligned they naturally open to the world. In meditation we are training the mind to synchronize body, feelings and life in the present. Body, spirit and mind are called the 3 gates. When these are aligned and open we are able to connect to our life as it is. When we are fully synchronized it is as if we are in a gap in our narrative. From that point, we are not interpreting reality. We are experiencing it directly. When we are fully open, we receive information as though it were a transmission. It comes through us, unblocked by our grasping, without reference to ourselves. We are the channel or the vessel. Getting to this state of complete openness is rare but happens more often than we realize. It is said, when students receive empowerment from their Lama, there is this conjoining of minds that occurs outside of conventional time.  This experience is said to happen at birth and death. It is also said to occur during an orgasm, or prosaically, when we sneeze. Anytime our body, mind and spirit are connected and fully open. Perhaps this is what happens when Pentecostals speak in tongues in tongues, or when shamans dance or Dervishes spin. It is not a mental experience alone, although in a Buddhist context, we are fully awake. When this moment of acute synchronicity happens it’s as though time pauses and the eternal passes through.

Yet, often when this moment of grace happens, we immediately label the experience and so miss the point. It’s like gasping at the incredible beauty of the Grand Canyon, and then turning to take a selfie. Usually, these gaps in our usual narrative are interpreted as being about us, and so we stomp on the preciousness of the moment by creating labels, context and concepts to smother them. We think this gap is either a problem or a blessing, but always in reference to ourselves as separate from all else. In this way our mind becomes dull, and our life ensconced in habit. It is the purpose of our meditation to begin to free the mind of its dualistic constraints and become spontaneous and clear. In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, we refer to this as developing Pure Perception. We increasingly see our life as Pure Appearance.

The liminal space between waking and dreaming offers a glimpse of the dynamic interplay between realms of our experiences, or glimpses into the matrix, as it were. I love moments when my mind can glide there as if surfing consciousness. Over time, my meditation practice has led me to less interpreting and more experiencing. With less interpretation that world is more real and bright. With less dualism, there is less struggle. With more understanding of the interconnectedness of life, compassion becomes as natural as space itself.