Author: joseph mauricio

Posted on by joseph mauricio

A WORKABLE MIND

Paying Attention to the Tool We Use to Pay Attention

Before I take my brain out in public, it seems only prudent to check the machinery. Before I unleash my normally passionate—and sometimes reactive—engagement with the world, I like to get in sync with my mind, and have some idea how I’m actually feeling. How I am feeling will influence how I’m doing.

This is called “mindfulness of mind.”

You’ve heard me say this before, but of all the things we’ve applied our minds to, all the things we’ve learned, assimilated, perceived, felt, tasted, touched, and thought about, the one thing we rarely investigate is the very tool doing the investigating. It’s as though awareness of our own mind lies behind a firewall that keeps us from seeing it’s machinery.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

Similarly, when we sit in meditation, we often fail to notice the mind that is actually meditating. Instead, we seek relaxation, comfort, or elevated states of consciousness. YouTube is filled with guided meditations promising euphoria, deeper vibrations, heightened awareness, or awakened desire. Yet one of the greatest possibilities is often overlooked: learning to work with the mind itself.

To do that, we first have to look at it. And what better place than the relative stillness of meditation?

Rather than trying to achieve anything, we can engage in what I think of as pure investigation. Captain Kirk referred to the Prime Directive issued from Starfleet Command – observe without interference. If we’re trying to force the mind into solving problems or elevate it to some higher state, we’re using the mind to do something instead of discovering what it already is. As necessary as it is to occasionally do things, the doing mind is not poised to see itself. Before we can know what the mind is capable of, we have to learn to simply look without creating any complication.

When we next sit in meditation, we can begin with a blank slate. “Blank” is in quotes because the mind is still full of thoughts, habits, and the momentum of our actions. But we can step back from the display rather than becoming caught in it. Each time we notice we’ve wandered, we gently return to the object of meditation—the breath, a mantra, an image, or a candle flame. That return creates space and perspective.

The technique is wonderfully simple. Follow it with patience and persistence. When we’re lost in thought, notice it, accept it, release it, and return. When we notice ourselves judging, planning, or reacting, do the same. Every return loosens the grip of the thinking mind and allows its natural openness to emerge.

In Vajrayana Buddhism it’s said that the space the mind encompasses is the same space the universe encompasses, and that this space is imbued with intelligence. That word can be misleading. This isn’t intelligence in the sense of being clever; it’s raw wisdom. In Tibetan Buddhism it’s called rigpa—the awake quality underlying experience itself. It’s easily overlooked because it is so simple and so open. And it is that openness that allows us the space to see clearly.

That bit of philosophy is really just background. The practice itself remains uncomplicated. Keep returning to the object of meditation and allow the mind to reveal the space to reveal the mind. The mind knowing itself is a process best kept prosaic rather than mystical. Scientists don’t get overly dramatic during the investigation.

What we often discover isn’t mystical at all. We might simply notice, My mind is very reactive today. Or, I’m exhausted. Or, I’m feeling needy. When those observations arise, treat them like any other thought: notice them, acknowledge them, release your grip, and return to the practice. One profoundly beautiful aspect of meditation is that this simple process creates space for flashes of insight. The temptation, of course, is to grab hold of them. Look how smart I am.

Trungpa, Rinpoche, described the proper relationship as “touch and go.” Appreciate the insight, then let it pass. We’re not dismissing it. We’re simply refusing to interrupt the mind’s natural capacity to continue discovering. Grasping, by definition, narrows the mind. Releasing our grip allows the space for the mind to have glimpses of itself. Over time these brief glimpses accumulate. We develop a more cooperative relationship with our own minds. Instead of being led around like an animal with a ring through its nose, we begin to stand beside this remarkable gift we’ve inherited through evolution. We gain the freedom to respond rather than merely react.

One final disclaimer: these glimpses are only the beginning. Here we’re talking about the relative mind—the mind we take out the door each morning to meet the world. Yes, there are deeper dimensions of awareness explored in contemplative traditions. And no, You Tube likely won’t get us there. But before reaching for extraordinary experiences, it’s wise to become familiar with the ordinary mind we already have.

In Vajrayana Buddhism they believe it’s the ordinary mind that reveals the mind’s magic.

It may be that one of the most profound things we can do is simply learn to work with that relative mind, presenting ourselves to the world in a functional, creative, and compassionate way—responding with intention instead of habit. In this way, everything is fresh.

Life recreates itself in every breath.

Posted on by joseph mauricio

THE IMPROBABILITY OF PURPOSE

Setting an Intention For Our Intention

We sometimes find ourselves off course in life. For me this stems from being off course with my mindfulness practice. If I’m not paying attention now, I’m likely not on track down the line. Without mindfulness intentions will to come and go.

Without grounding in Mindfulness successful outcomes are a statistical improbability.

Some of us have very … um … creative minds. Minds that move in many directions simultaneously and wanders back to the point whenever it gets there. Minds that avoid structure like some kids avoid broccoli. You might call this attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. My therapist for instance.

But, our mind is what we have to work with. And I’ve found it rewarding to do the work. To that end mindfulness became very important to me. I had been ashamed of the way my mind didn’t easily conform to social convention. In time, I found my way into the practice by learning that I needn’t force myself into a boxlike arbitrary stillness in order to be present. While my version of present experience might be more fluid than someone else’s both myself and those theoretical someones need to each find our way to working with our minds.

Working with my mind I realized the importance of being present in order to be present in my life. However, I need to find a way to stay present without feeling as though I’m being tied down or forced into someone else’s brain. The truth is, despite years of meditation training, encouraging my mind to rest in the present remains an ongoing practice. It’s less an accomplishment than an application. A daily manual application.

One technique I find helpful is to encourage my mind the time to have my brain feel its way into the present. Not necessarily emotionally. I mean literally feel. Making mindfulness less a mental exercise than an embodied experience. Through repeated practice, presence becomes less something I remember to do and more something my body begins to recognize and remember. Mindfulness in muscle memory, you might say.

This applies throughout the day as it occurs to us. When opening a door, I can feel my hand on the doorknob. Walking across a room, I can feel my feet making contact with the ground. These small moments of embodiment gently interrupt the momentum of distraction and restore a sense of presence. And presence is reassuring. It reminds the fearful part of the brain not to worry because we’re here.

However, it’s not practical to be locked into this. Mindful presence isn’t something we force or hold onto. It is more a place we can return to. We learn to move naturally through our day while remaining grounded in our experience, by coming back as we need to our feet, our hands, our intention.

Until the mind wanders again, that is.

That’s not failure. That’s what minds do. And we can see it as an opportunity to further embed mindfulness into our neuro-stream. In this case we’re embedding full body purpose. The practice is to recognize when we’ve drifted, accept that and remember to return. With patience with our brain we’ll rewire it to recognize, remember, and return. Then our mind can rest more easily where it is placed.

At this point, I should mention that I’m designating our neurological experience its wiring at the “brain” and our ability to establish a purpose in life and experience a spiritual and creative fullness as “mind.” The brain needs to be rewired to remember to return to the tactile present so thye mind can feel calm and clear.

Over time, this embodied mindfulness begins to translate into everyday living. We don’t have to meditate every waking moment. We simply touch base from time to time by reconnecting with the body in throughout our daily life. Lifting our head from the laptop. Feeling our feet in the earth. Remember we’re human and need encouragement as well as purpose.

I’m referring to this as applied intermittent mindfulness. Or, you might say AIM. And the AIM is to flowing through life with ease. Therefore, just as we are seated in our experience, we can be seated in our purpose. You see, the qualities of unconvention make it easy to drift astray for our purpose. How often do we wake up as if out of a dream wondering, as David Byrne notable asked “how did I get here? … Is this my beautiful life?

Our intentions, no matter how noble, are surprisingly fickle when they exist only as thoughts. We think we can do it. Hahaha the “road to hell” and all that. One reason why we can’t keep on track, go off the diet, or forget to get to the meditation cushion is that it’s only an idea. And an idea without a corresponding action is just a thought. If our intentions are only thinking, no matter how well intended, they will change.

Our intentions become reliable when they’re more deeply rooted in the body. Feeling the breath, the feet, the hands, even for a few seconds, gives our purpose somewhere to land. Instead of chasing lofty ideals, we inhabit them. Mind, body, and intention begin working together, and our aspirations become less theoretical and more lived.

We don’t simply intend to be present, compassionate, or wise—we embody those qualities, grounded in one ordinary moment at a time.

In that way, we build a mindful life.

Posted on by joseph mauricio

OFFERING

Making Space For Life

I think we all feel that we have enough on our minds. Maybe too much. I remember the cartoon of the school child raising their hand, “ma’am can I be excused, my brain is full.”

In truth our minds are capable of accessing astronomical amounts of information. It’s simply that the part of the mind we believe is ourselves sits in a narrowly defined space without much processing space. I imagine a cluttered desk in the corner of a dark room. With the curtained windows revealing the beautiful grounds if we only had time to look up fro our work.

Borrowing an analogy from computers, when our RAM becomes overloaded we might move files to an external drive or into the cloud to free up space. We’re not really losing anything; we’re creating room for the system to operate more efficiently. The result is greater fluidity of mind and better access to the life outside our windows.

Our brains can stand in on an episode of hoarders. Meditation is a step in clearing the space just enough for us to access our own heart. Just enough space to recognize ourselves in the crowded room.

One of the oldest spiritual principles, found in many traditions, is the practice of offering. We might think of offering as a kind of information offloading. Whether we imagine it as uploading, downloading, or simply making space we’re creating room for the mind to function more freely.

In recovery traditions we speak of turning what we cannot change, but need to accept, over to our higher power. Whatever we believe about god or not god, the operative point is that we are offered a means to free up space. We just need to offer it.

From a materialist perspective, offering can feel like loss because we’re conditioned to believe that having more means being more. In traditions shaped by guilt, we may even feel that an offering must hurt—that only by surrendering something precious can we earn the favor of a deity or satisfy a reward-and-punishment version of karma.

This isn’t the Buddhist view.

To punish ourselves by giving things away simply because we want them is just another form of ego. We create a story of sacrifice that proves how good, pure, or virtuous we are. The Buddhist understanding of offering is much simpler. It is the gradual relinquishing of whatever we’ve mistaken for ourselves. It is opening. It is letting go. Our aim is to strip me down to our essential being without the entrapments of the world.

In this regard, offering need not be punitive because punishment is a form of aggression. Reward and punishment belong to the larger samsaric cycle that keeps us trapped in habitual patterns. Buddhist practice points instead toward freedom from those cycles, which is why the Middle Way avoids both indulgence and self-denial.

So I don’t think it’s cheating to begin by offering the very pain we don’t want. If we’re honest, we may discover that beneath our pain lie the attachments keeping us bound to suffering. What are the things weighing us down? What continually pulls our ship off course? What in my life am I still carrying that no longer needs to be carried?

Why? Because suffering begins when we mistake impermanent things for permanent ones. We believe our identities, possessions, opinions, relationships, and even our thoughts possess an enduring solidity that reality simply doesn’t support.

Emptiness, on the other hand, allows for the spontaneous creation of new realities. The Buddhist path can be understood as progressive stages of letting go, progressive stages of opening, or, as Khenpo Tsultrim Gyatso Rinpoche beautifully described it, “progressive stages of emptiness.”

Perhaps offering is best understood as relaxing our grip.

If our grip is too tight on the things we love, we’re likely to strangle them. Love cannot flow where control dominates. Letting go becomes our love language. We release our fear. We loosen our grip on our children so they can become who they were meant to become. Above all, letting go means allowing ourselves to see what is actually here rather than clinging to our fantasies about what should be.

Ultimately, every act of offering is practice for the greatest letting go of all.

Death is the one appointment we are certain to keep. Of the many appointments we scurry to make throughout our lives, this is the only one guaranteed.

If our purpose were simply to live life as fully as possible until that moment, we might relax into the unfolding of the process. Instead, we apply the brakes. We turn the wheel. We try to swim upstream. We cling to memories. We cling to grievances. Yet none of those things is happening now. Even when we imagine ourselves stepping backward, time continues carrying us forward.

According to Buddhist tradition, when death arrives the body returns to the elements from which it arose. Our ordinary, RAM-like mind falls away, while the deeper continuity of mind proceeds according to the momentum it has cultivated.

That isn’t heaven. It isn’t salvation. It is simply another opening.

If we stop holding on, we release ourselves from the weight of imprisonment and become available to whatever comes next. And if we resist the temptation to name it, define it, or expect it to conform to our wishes—if we remain genuinely open—we may discover that the journey itself is far more extraordinary than any destination we could have imagined.

Posted on by joseph mauricio

WARTS AND ALL

A Living Buddha

The notion of a living Buddha is that following the Buddhist path our relationship with the Buddha is alive, experiential and developmental. We are not relating to a thing, an icon or an idea. We are relating to a living part of ourselves.

This is a present tense experience happening whenever we remember. This connection is presently knowing, understanding and caring for ourselves and our world. The work in our daily meditation practice is to develop the capacity to remember this True Nature of ours and to learn to trust it. And, hence, learn to trust ourselves.

And, we don’t have to shine our shoes, watch our manners, cut our hair, or do anything other than be who we are as we are.

I often made the mistake of thinking that becoming one with the Buddha meant my body, spirit and mind had to become something else, something perfect. But I’ve come to realize that connecting to Buddha means accepting of all of me.  The parts I’m proud of and the parts I’m embarrassed by; the things I do that are virtuous and many things that are selfish and petty. There’s little value to waking up in our brain and having lots of pristine ideas about realization, if our body and heart are unable to follow.  So we need all of us talking to the rest of us and no one left behind.

Buddha Nature is the notion that our truest, most fundamental nature is perfect, free of obstruction, neurosis, duplicity and hatred. Those add-ons come from our social upbringing and seem to be devised to help us navigate the world around us. But, as we know, these patterns are not always helpful. In fact, they are primarily defensive and quite limiting. They keep our potential dampened and cause us to live lives much smaller than they might be.

But, how can we transcend these patterns, defenses and defects if we don’t see them? Buddha means “Awake” – the base of our Buddha Nature is wisdom, which is seeing, understanding and knowing. The method of our liberation from limiting patterns and ignorance is to see them and know them. These patterns grow in our ignorance of them. But if we’re able to expose them and are willing to see them, eventually we’ll grow tired of them and they will fall away. Our neurosis is part of our connection with the Buddha. In Tibetan Buddhism they see neurosis as an offering.

Buddhism has progressive stages of development. Each of these has a different relationship between the student and the Buddha. The first sees the Buddha as a leader and an example someone who has liberated themselves from ego suffering, thus affording others the opportunity to follow. The second stage relates to the teachings of compassion. From this point of view Buddha is seen as a transcendent being who radiates love and compassion for all beings. We are encouraged to nurture the seed of Buddha Nature within ourselves.

The third relationship to the Buddha is based on the teachings of luminosity and emptiness. These indicate that our full experience is a manifestation of the mind of the Buddha. There is no separation between us. And that all beings have Buddha nature. And we can learn to recognize Buddha Nature as our basic nature. From this point of view, there is nothing to change, nothing to develop and nowhere to go. We need only remember who we are.

The Bodhisattva Shantideva wrote, “may I not be a stain on the faultless noble family (of the Buddha).”  But what would cause a stain? I think this is different in Buddhism than it might be in other religious contexts. In Buddhism the primary “sin” is ignorance. Ignorance leads to negative actions caused by not knowing. So, our process is to expose these actions by accepting that we do them and to cease pretending otherwise.

The “stains” on the noble family would be to turn away from our allegiance to waking up. This is when we willfully choose not to know. It is when we shut down, turn away, and cut ourselves off from the vibrant source of wisdom in the universe, our Buddha Nature. And if we do cut ourselves off from our Buddha Nature? The remedy is to recognize this, and to remember. Simply that.

When we lose our mind, we come back.

The word for meditation in many traditions also means recollection. Remembering our connection. Remembering who we are. Recognizing when we are deluded and remembering who we are. In time, coming back, coming back, coming back cuts through the veils of our ignorance. We begin to see the parts of our being that are defenses and the part of our being that is indestructible. In time, our allegiance will change and we will begin to identify with our true nature.

In some traditions a deity offers salvation and a seat at the table of endless perfection. This is seen as our future reward. But, Buddhism is about what’s happening now.  The Living Buddha is something we feel in the moment, because it is something we are. There is nothing we need to change. And nothing we need to do but remember.

We can wake up sitting on the toilet with our head in our hands after a very full night of not -so-wakeful activity. We could wake up in a job we hate. We could wake up walking through crowds in our aggressive city. We could wake up making love to someone. We could wake up in the morning. We could wake up in the evening. We could wake up literally anytime we remember.

It’s possible that that moment of clarity might cause us to be embarrassed or self-conscious. But if, in that of authentic moment of awake, we  just see ourselves “in process” with love and affection, then we are seeing through the eyes of the Buddha at all our goodness and imperfection.

__________

Posted on by joseph mauricio

That Perfect Moment

What happens before a thought?

Is there an instance of space that opens? Before we fill it with a cognition? Before we decide what this moment means? Before the notion of “me” arises again? Maybe in this perfect moment of open space anything and everything is possible.

I wonder whether the birth of a thought is analogous to the birth of the universe. What happened in that impossible moment preceding the Big Bang? Was there a perfect stillness before everything burst into being? Or is that simply another story our minds tell because we cannot imagine beginnings without a “before”?

And is it even possible to reduce our thinking to a singular thought, or reduce the birth of our universe to a singular event. Neither is likely true. Thoughts arise in astonishing succession, perhaps even simultaneously, from different regions of our mind. We notice one. We cling to one. Or perhaps, one chooses us and carries us away into its narrative.

Maybe the universe is no different. Perhaps there are countless beginnings happening all the time. Countless worlds appearing and disappearing, all interacting.

We act as though what we are thinking has always been here and will always remain. Once a thought captures our attention, it suddenly feels solid. Real. Obvious. We stop seeing it as an event occurring in consciousness and begin treating it as reality itself.

The cosmologist Jenna Levin suggests that labeling something “infinite” is intellectually lazy. To declare something infinite may simply mean we’ve reached the edge of our understanding. We’ve stopped asking what might be after we’ve reached our cognitive event horizon.

Perhaps our attempts to find an edge to the universe is an attempt to map the extent of what we know. Once we’ve defined a conceptual edge – or determined that there is no edge – we are trying to define it. To hold it. To accept it as a given. To make it something we can inhabit.

Perhaps we do the same with our thoughts. Rather than investigating them, we crown them with permanence. We believe them. We inhabit them. We defend them. We mistake them for truth rather than recognizing them as temporary appearances arising in the universe of awareness.

One anxious thought becomes my anxiety. One political opinion becomes what I stand for. One heartbreak and my life is over. Before long, we’ve constructed a reality around something that, moments earlier, did not exist.

Meditation can show a snapshot of this process. And that snapshot might offer a glimpse of freedom from it. You see, believing our thoughts disables our ability to see them as thoughts. This is a form of imprisonment because it locks us into living and reliving only what we already know. As comforting as this is, it comes at the expense of everything else we might become.

If we sit quietly and follow the “prime directive” – which is to notice what arises without interference, such as judgement, desire, preference, et al. We will see that thoughts don’t actually arrive in a neat line. They bubble up from nowhere, overlap, interrupt one another, disappear without resolution, and occasionally dissolve before they’ve fully formed. Sometimes there is the faintest glimmer of gap—a tiny opening before the machinery of interpretation begins again.

Gap is intriguing. It is almost impossible to catch. Yet it opens the door to everything that isn’t a thought. Which is to say, everything else. The moment we recognize the gap, another thought has already arrived to congratulate itself for finding it. This kind of mental selfie interrupts the prime directive and invites us to believe what we are thinking. And believing is not seeing.

Perhaps that’s why contemplative traditions place so much value on resting in awareness rather than chasing thoughts. Not because thoughts are bad, but because they are astonishingly persuasive. Every one arrives announcing itself as reality.

And every one eventually disappears.

So, perhaps with meditation we are stepping back and gaining a perspective. What gives us perspective is space. Gap is a glimpse into opened undefined space. In time, singular moments of gap become perspective from which we can see without believing or interfering.

Maybe the “perfect moment” isn’t something mystical waiting somewhere outside ourselves. Maybe it is simply that immeasurably brief instant before experience hardens into certainty. Before we decide what this is, what it means, who we are, or what comes next.

Not because certainty is wrong.

But because that tiny opening reminds us that things are not solid, or defined by the limit of our understanding. Reality is alive. Much of it is beyond our understanding, but that should not stop us from looking. If we release ourselves from beliefs, from hopes and fears, from right and wrong, we may accept what’s there. Not agreeing or disagreeing, just seeing. Seeing everything we see whether we see it or not.

Our universe—whether out there among the galaxies or in here among our thoughts—is not a finished object but an ongoing event. And remembering that every thought, no matter how convincing, came from, and will return to, that perfect moment of gap where everything is possible.

Posted on by joseph mauricio

DON’T START BELIEVING

Just Connect to the Feeling

The title is a play on the Journey song. Though it was a massive hit, I’m not a fan of the band, nor the sentiment of the song. Don’t stop believing? What would we do if we didn’t have to believe anything?

Beliefs are things we have to squint our eyes to see. We have to force them. Beliefs are ideas. And, tho ideas can greatly affect reality, ideas are not reality. And isn’t attaching ourselves to a belief, or a belief to ourselves, clinging? Clinging often comes at the expense of alternatives. But not always. Sometimes a belief is temporary and leads us to a next stage of development.

But sometimes they become solid and last throughout our lives. We lug them around, even when they’ve become obsolete. They have such gravity they tend to warp what we see, bending reality to their particular point of view. For instance, many people hold strong spiritual beliefs that place our nuanced reality in black and white terms. This offers a great deal of certainty. I sometimes envy that. When I feel overwhelmed, it would be comforting to find such surety. Surety in what? People fill the tabernacle with song and praise, but are any two people of those people believing the same thing?

It seems to me that each of us has an inner life informed by our particular experiences. Beyond that, there is so much we do not understand. Yet we always seem to need to know something. If we can force ourselves into believing something that many other people believe along with us, we feel comforted and strong. And if we believe our belief is right, we are often inclined to define that by believing someone else is wrong.

We may even come to believe they are a threat to our belief. In this way, we turn the whole world with its colors and dynamics into a binary contention.

When we meet the world with inquisitiveness, we open ourselves to discovery. But all too often anxiety causes us to clamp down on belief with white-knuckled tenacity. We find it reassuring to be certain about something. In doing so, we cease discovering. We believe something is true and therefore imagine we have found something. That something becomes a fixed reference point.

A path of discovery is an open system. Once we decide something is absolutely real and true, we begin to close the system.

Buddhism speaks of “non-dual” experience. This is to say that subjective experience is inseparable from, and concurrent with, external phenomena. Seeing a waterfall is an experience that happens in the mind as it happens in the space before us.

If we believe the waterfall is self-existing and imbued with magical properties, we might conclude that the sound of falling water is speaking directly to us. We might align ourselves with others who hear these magical utterances and accept them as real. As we fixate on the experience, we may fail to notice how loneliness, longing, or need is shaping our faith.

There is nothing wrong with hearing the poetry of a waterfall or experiencing it as healing. But turning that into a universal truth may be an attempt to make ourselves feel important. When Buddhists speak of emptiness, they are not denying the existence of the waterfall. They are questioning the solidity of the mental interpretations and elaborations that arise between the waterfall and our direct experience of it.

The mind is very busy. Meditation trains it to rest on one thing while allowing everything else to unfold around it. We hear the waterfall and feel healed. But when we immediately reach for our phones, searching for likes and validation, we may be turning the experience into a commodity.

It seems we often lack the confidence to let life be what it is without turning it into something larger than necessary. Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche often said, “NBD” — no big deal. Perhaps we make events feel significant so that we can feel significant. When others feel the same thing, the experience can become euphoric. And that can feel wonderful and life-affirming.

But euphoria is not reality. It is a temporary hijacking of the senses, including our higher mental faculties. Falling in love is so powerful that it has inspired centuries of poetry and music. It can be spiritually transformative. Yet transformation, by definition, is temporary.

Relationships that endure allow the feeling of falling in love to become something else. If the bond is strong, it may evolve through many creative forms. The Beatles eventually stopped writing love songs. As disappointing as that may have been for some listeners, it gave them the freedom to explore a much broader creative landscape.

And at some point, of course, the dream was over.

What do we do then?

Shorn of belief, we’re left with ourselves. With our experience. And our life does need not be explained, apologized for, fixed, aggrandized or diminished. Perhaps that has been the point all along. Not to believe, but to simply feel. To experience life directly before rushing to explain it, own it, or turn it into certainty. It will never be certain. Yet, the waterfall still falls. The heart still breaks. Love still comes and goes. Joy still visits. Grief still teaches.

Life continues to unfold whether we understand it or not.

Maybe our task is not to arrive at certainty, but to remain open to the mystery.

Posted on by joseph mauricio

TURN AND FACE THE STRANGE

Ch-ch-ch-changes…

We’d go crazy if things never changed. Be honest: how long could we reasonably continue doing exactly what we’re doing without growing, shifting, expanding, or evolving? We need change. Yet we dread it nonetheless.

This dissonance creates friction in the mind. We react to change while simultaneously guarding against it. It’s like gritting our teeth while being dragged from a warm bed despite every effort to stay bundled beneath the covers.

The Buddhist community has a saying: Change or be dragged.

“Okay, okay, I’ll change,” we say, “but I’ll do it my way and in my time.”

So we step into a bright new world disgruntled, tense, and prepared for whatever danger we’ve projected onto the future. It’s an odd thing about us that we believe rehearsing danger somehow protects us from it. Another saying I’ve heard is that worrying is like praying for something bad to happen. In a sense that’s exactly what we’re doing—reciting a mantra of defeat before we’ve even arrived.

Starting fresh could be a breath of fresh air. Yet many of us simply drag the same luggage into the new situation. It’s exhausting.

As I write this, I have boxes, crates, folders, and containers filled with notebooks and writing that go back forty years. I’ve moved them to four different homes. Yet I haven’t opened a single notebook in any meaningful way for decades.

The cost isn’t just the weight of moving them. It’s the space they’ve occupied in my life. I once stored them in my mother’s basement. When she died, I emptied her house and inherited another collection of photographs, cards, papers, and memories. Her archives merged with mine.

I’ve always judged people whose homes were cluttered. Their spaces made me feel claustrophobic. But over time my judgment softened. I began to understand that most hoarding is rooted in fear. People aren’t simply collecting things. They’re holding on. They’re bracing themselves against change.

But isn’t change a good thing? At the very least, isn’t it completely inevitable?

Why do we cling so tightly to things that prevent us from changing?

If change is unavoidable and growth comes through change, perhaps what limits us isn’t change itself but our panic around it. What are we actually afraid of?

David Bowie sang, Turn and face the strange.

What’s new? What’s next?

The problem is that what’s next often arrives burdened by everything we’ve carried from what’s already been. Imagine arriving at a dinner party with six suitcases.

“Why all the luggage?”

“I wanted to come prepared.”

The central fear beneath change is the fear of the unknown. We can’t control what we don’t know. So the body grips around old memories, old wounds, and old identities as though they might protect us.

Is it fear of failure? Fear of success?

Maybe.

But perhaps we fear something even stranger. Perhaps we fear no longer being afraid.

What would we be without all the baggage? Without the trauma bonds? Without the nagging doubts and familiar stories?

What if we moved in without carrying everything with us?

In my workshops, I sometimes suggest that participants bow as they enter the room. The bow can symbolize leaving some of their baggage outside the door. I tell them they’re welcome to bring a small carry-on filled with neurotic attachments. That usually gets a laugh.

Yet what if we could actually choose when fear is useful and when it’s simply our attempt to control life?

One effective way to control the world is to make it small enough to manage. A world without uncertainty. A world without disappointment. A world without heartbreak.

A world without life, perhaps.

Life is movement. Life is change.

The question isn’t whether change will come. The question is how we will meet it.

The most effective way to move through circumstances we can’t control is to strengthen our capacity to pay attention. There is tremendous power in awareness. Awareness allows us to face the strangeness of life without immediately recoiling from it.

This takes practice because our habits were originally created to comfort us. Repeating familiar thoughts and behaviors makes life feel predictable. But over time these patterns become limiting. We begin to believe we can only be who we’ve always been.

Then change arrives anyway.

We panic. We feel broken open. We scramble to reconstruct the old self as quickly as possible, as though our survival depends on it.

But what are we protecting ourselves from?

Maybe we’re protecting ourselves from the very transformation we secretly long for.

When we imagine a new relationship, we often create a list of qualities our future partner should possess: kind, assertive, protective, independent, adventurous. Anything except meeting a real human being and discovering who they actually are.

We try to control change before it arrives.

Meditation offers another possibility.

Each time we notice we’ve been swept away by thought and gently return to the breath, we’re interrupting an old pattern. We may feel constrained by this practice. Part of us would rather indulge a wild, unbridled mind.

But look closely. That unbridled mind isn’t exploring new territory. It’s running the same circular track it’s always run.

Notice that.

Then return.

You’ll get swept away again. Notice that and return again.

And again.

And again.

Gradually, something shifts. We stop trying to control every experience. We stop demanding certainty from an uncertain world. We stop carrying so much of yesterday into tomorrow.

Eventually, we learn to let ourselves be.

And being just as we are, we may find the courage to turn and face the strange—not armored by fear, not burdened by baggage, but simple, present, and curious.

Then we can see what happens next.

David Bowie refused to lock himself into commercial patterning. He was a creative chameleon. It’s telling that the most uncomfortable change he endured, was when he did his two most conventional and commercial releases. “Let’s Dance” and “Tonight” launched him into a greater commercial stratosphere, but he hated looking like and sounding like everyone else.

And, of course, he didn’t and wasn’t. He was unique and creative even when he turned to face same because it was a great change for him.

His latest change was his death. It left a space that we could all feel the brilliance that once filled it. I think we still do.

Maybe we can find our own brilliance changes.

Posted on by joseph mauricio

TALKING TO MYSELF

Making Sure I’m still here

I was riding in the car with a friend. After a time we had fallen into silence. I found myself having an imaginary conversation with a brother who lived on the other side of the continent. I’m an Italian American, so I talk to myself with my hands. My friend glanced over and asked, “Are you winning the argument?”

Having done a number of lengthy meditation retreats, I’ve had the opportunity to see my mind in different contexts. When we spend enough time sitting quietly, something interesting happens. We begin to see our thoughts without automatically becoming part of them. Something like looking out the window of a high rise at pedestrians scrambling below. The activity continues, but we are no longer caught in the chaos.

What surprised me from this perspective, was how damned crowded my mind seemed. Although I came to understand that the very act of seeing my mind from an objective perspective meant that I was accessing the open space of my mind. That was the vantage that allowed me to see the overcrowded streets below. And I saw that the preponderance of the crowding wasn’t brilliant ideas or profound insights. It was rote, repetitive narration. Endless thought streams in which I was explaining, defending, proving, correcting, and justifying… something. To someone. For some reason. The loudest conversations were defensive. I was making points to people who were not present, defending myself against accusations that weren’t being made, and winning arguments that never actually happened.

Then again, none of it was really happening.

I began to notice how much psychic real estate I had been giving to these internal debates. Within the enormous landscape of my mind I had selected the same arguments – or the same kind of arguments – repeatedly. Each discourse consumed me so thoroughly that there was little room left to experience life as it was actually unfolding.

Without space for fresh experience, all we really see are reflections of our own ideas. And most of the time those ideas had me at the center. “This is what happened to me” “This is how I was offended.” “This is who I am.”

“This is me.”

Perhaps what we are doing when we talk to ourselves is trying to prove that we exist. Descartes famously said, “I think, therefore I am.” He meant that the very fact of consciousness proved existence. But somewhere along the way, many of us began to believe: I think, therefore this is all I am.

We become identified with the commentary.

The strange thing is that our thoughts mostly tell us what we already know. They recycle familiar experiences, familiar fears, familiar hopes, familiar resentments. We return to them again and again, as though familiarity itself were a kind of refuge. Even when the stories are painful, they are comfortable because they are the devil we know.

Meditation practice offers us the mental space to notice this process. One of the most important moments in meditation is not achieving tranquility or reaching some exalted state. It is simply noticing that we have become lost in thought.

That moment is huge.

And then, of course, in time we might develop the willingness to return to the present. In time, consistent practice will build the neural pathways that will change our allegiance from escaping into interwoven narratives of habitual thinking to actually living in the present.

For years I believed my thoughts completely. If I was anxious, I became the anxiety. If I was angry, I became the anger. If I was defending myself in some imaginary courtroom, I became the defense attorney, the prosecutor, the judge, and the jury. I would stay up in bed cycling through what I should have said or what I might have done. This is our mind as a defensive tool trying to save us from imaginary evil.

Now, when I catch myself caught in one of those internal arguments, the first step is very simple. “This is just a thought.” Not a revelation. Not reality. Just a thought. I don’t layer a better thought over a limiting idea. Thoughts are thoughts are thoughts. A radio prattling in another room.

And simply noticing them is the result of the neural pathway development from meditation practice. We will begin to see when we are escaping into thoughts, arguments, complaints. And we begin to see that we have a choice to turn from that.

Thinking is not the totality of our mind. To say that thought is the whole of mind is like saying that the foam floating on top of a lake is the entirety of the lake.

There are depths beneath the surface.

There is a vast open sky above.

Yet many of us become frightened when we begin to glimpse those depths. We hear teachings about ego or no-self and immediately interpret them as attacks on our existence. We defend ourselves because our sense of self feels precious and necessary.

And in many ways it is.

But perhaps there is a difference between having a self and constantly proving that we have have a self. Maybe there is nothing to prove.

Meditation practice offers glimpses of possibilities beyond our usual patterned thinking. When the body settles into the present moment and the mind settles into the body, windows begin to open. We start to observe not only the content of our thoughts but the process itself. We see thoughts forming, dissolving, and reforming. We see the machinery rather than just the product.

And occasionally we encounter something we might find unsettling. Openness. Not the certainty, not the answers or schemes or solutions that our habit-mind presents. But openness. People often rush to fill that openness with new stories. We think we’ve seen God, glimpsed a past life, discovered a hidden destiny, or uncovered some cosmic secret. Maybe sometimes those things happen. But more often, I think we are simply rushing to replace one story with another.

The truly challenging aspect of meditation is not that it reveals something extraordinary. But that is reveals what we do not know. It brings us to the edge of fresh experience rather than recycled experience.

I’m reminded of a Monty Python sketch. The son is standing at a window looking outside. His father stands behind him and says, “Son, someday all this will be yours.”

The son replies, “What, the curtains?”

The father sighs. “No. Look beyond the curtains.”

“Oh,” says the son. “The window?”

That is often how we live. We spend our lives staring at the curtains of our own thoughts while an entire world waits beyond them. Meditation does not ask us to destroy the curtains. It does not ask us to silence every thought or win every internal argument. It simply invites us to look beyond them.

To stop seeking constant reassurance from the familiar stories of who we are. To rest, if only for a moment, in direct contact with ourselves and our world.

Posted on by joseph mauricio

Stability. Clarity. Strength.

Daily Practice Changes Everything

There’s a feeling we all have that the more triggered we are, the greater the remedy we need.  Therefore, we often overlook very basic and fundamental tools that help us regain and maintain emotional balance and mental clarity.

Being triggered affects our stability because the experience compels us to react. Often reactions happen too quickly for us to be mindful. We are, in essence, lashing out blindly, not unlike flailing about in a canoe.  But just as we might regain balance in a canoe, we can reset ourselves in life.

Before we do anything or believe anything, we can come back to the present and reset our ground.  Stability is key.

 

Stability

It is the basis for mindful (read: effective) actin. Once we have stability, the mind can settle, feeling more comfortable in the space our body inhabits. From settling comes clarity. And clarity, grounded by the stability of being fully in our body, affords the strength to navigate difficulty with balance and poise.

When we feel threatened or overwhelmed, the best first step is to recognize what is happening before we try and fix anything. What is happening right now? Is this fear? Doubt? Confusion? Anger? Frustration? Inadequacy? The answer is not nearly as important as asking the question. This is because when we’re triggered, it is a younger, sometimes ancient part of our system that becomes engaged. That part of our being may not have access to the language, training, and understanding that our higher mind enjoys. By simply recognizing that we’re triggered we begin to calm the nervous system. The effect may be temporary, but it opens the door to further engagement through self-compassion and awareness.

It is essential that once we recognize we are triggered—experiencing fear, doubt, confusion, perhaps all of these at once—we accept what is happening. Acceptance is not resignation. It is simply acknowledging the reality of this moment without immediately projecting into the future or revisiting the past. Future and past are always speculation that leads to unhelpful narratives. Instead, our meditation training, enables us to look directly at what we are experiencing now. This begins to loosen the bondage of suffering.

Looking at our experience allows us to feel into what is actually happening within us – what we are unwittingly doing to ourselves.  We do not need to come to firm conclusions. We do not have to explain anything away. We simply notice, feel, and accept.

By allowing ourselves to feel and accept the present experience, we begin to find the inner space to settle. With daily meditation practice, specifically shamatha practice, we train the mind away from clinging to reactive states and return ourselves to the balance we can only have in the present.

Coming back to the present when we are triggered is an ongoing process. Just as in shamatha practice, we go away, notice, remember, and return. We may notice tension in the body—tightness in the belly, constriction in the jaw, heaviness in the shoulders and neck. This awareness develops through mindfulness of body cultivated in meditation practice.

Recognition followed by acceptance has a neurological calming effect. It may only last a moment, but we don’t need to chase outcomes. Instead, we work with – by returning to –  the direct experience of suffering in the present moment. We feel the elevated heartbeat, the confusion, the tightening, without immediately extending it into narrative.

This can be very simple. But, one of the ways we miss the mark is by believing the stories in our mind, especially catastrophic projections. We become so frightened that we assume there must be a dramatic and immediate response. Yet often the most effective response is simply recognizing that we are being pulled away.  The world is ending – just return to the moment. My life is heading for disaster – simply return to the moment.  None of this is how I imagined it would be – return. Return. And by returning, we release ourselves from the panicked grip in our body and mind and regain our balance.

When we are triggered, frightened, or thrown off balance, we are no longer reliable witnesses. The mind begins feeding us fake news. So rather than following every conclusion and projection, we return to what is actually happening now. We address what is real and immediate: the tension in the body, the racing heart, the fear, the confusion. By boycotting the complications we construct, we gradually find stability. Then, like water held still long enough for sediment to sink, the mind becomes clear.

 

Clarity

At some point we become reliable witnesses once again. This is trusting our wisdom mind. But to do this we may have to gently acknowledge and let go of the panicked mind. The wisdom mind is quieter, subtler, and less reactive, which is why it can be difficult to access when we feel threatened.

Our first impulse is rarely to calm down and relax. Yet by turning away from mental complication and returning to breathing, recognition, and acceptance, we stabilize. Stability is the necessary prerequisite for right action. Before the mind can be clear, the nervous system must become relatively calm.

When you are overwhelmed, do not fight with the mind or attempt to think your way through panic. The mind that creates the complication cannot solve the complication. Letting go of the panicked mind and returning to the body allows the mind to settle and clarify on its own.

 

Strength

Once we are stable and the mind is clarified, we become reliable again—not only as witnesses, but as supports for others and as compassionate human beings. We develop the strength of someone who is not shaken and who knows when to respond and when not to respond.

This is great strength.

This strength allows us to navigate the world and respond in ways that are actually helpful. My teacher mapped out the logic of shamatha practice very simply: stability leads to clarity, and clarity leads to strength.

Shamatha is simple and subtle. In many ways it can seem inadequate compared to the intensity of our emotions. But that is precisely why it matters. We are boycotting the dictates of panic, ego, and self-will, and opening ourselves instead to our basic goodness and the inner strength that can actually carry us through.

We notice the impulse to escape, fix, or react. We recognize it, accept it, release it, and return once again to the breathing. The breathing relaxes the nervous system, and as the nervous system settles, the urgency to fill the space begins to dissolve.

 

The Importance of Daily Mind Training

Looking at a depiction of the Buddha, you can sense their stability clarity and strength. This is, of course, due to the fact that we are seeing a picture or statue. But, we are people, flawed and insecure but able to train ourselves toward this process by noticing, accepting and returning with no hope of an outcome.

At some point, the mind of Buddha nature will dawn within us.

This is where we come back to. This is what we are training to recognize.

Posted on by joseph mauricio

WALKING THE WARRIOR PATH

Good and evil.

What cosmic narcissism to be the center of everything in the moral universe.  The classic trope of the good angel on one shoulder and the bad angel on the other with us caught in a struggle between ultimate good and ultimate evil. Many of us continue to live under the weight of these outsized beliefs.

I suppose this makes us feel important.

While the universe contains extreme temperatures and vast distances, there are no definable poles. Each point in the universe is equal to any other. Anything we measure is dependent on position. Good and evil, like all else in our universe, are relative to situation and circumstance. Nonetheless, relational binaries abound in our consciousness. They are ingrained in us as good versus evil, left versus right, wonderful versus horrible. We live squeezed between exaggerations, limited by beliefs with scant logic. I suppose binary extremes offer us a comforting sense of place. But they also imprison us in that place.

The problem arises when we turn these guideposts into solid truths. When we make our point of view solid, we end up judging everything by that imaginary metric. That point – which we come to believe is right – becomes a center by which the rest of the universe must confirm to. But just as cosmology grew from the belief that earth was the center of the solar system to an understanding of the inter-dynamics a complex universe, so our Buddhist path leads us from the limited view of our ego, with its opinions and prejudice, to understanding how we are a part of everything.

Buddha taught that truth lies between extremes. Or you might say everywhere between extremes. Calling it the “middle way,” the Buddha was turning us toward the idea of being present in life and trusting ourselves to do what is needed in the moment. The Twelve Step traditions refer to “doing the next right thing.” According to the Buddha, the next right thing is specific to the moment and its circumstances. Of course, this is predicated on clarifying our view. The role of meditation and the Eightfold Path is to train the mind to rest in the present, allowing clarity to dawn. That clear seeing disabuses our self-centeredness and allows us to see what is best for all.

The middle way is based on what is actually happening. We can point to the middle way each time we recognize an extreme belief. “This is not right,” we might say. But is that true? Are there opposing points of view? Is there nuance? What is actually happening if we strip away judgment? Then the next right step becomes clear. Buddhist thought suggests that our largest view — the view with the most room for ourselves and everyone else — is to be compassionate, open, and helpful to the world. That’s not dogma. It’s not absolute. It is a recommended direction. Then our provisional binary might become: “Is this next step leading me toward that view, or away from it?” This is a more practical binary because it relates to what we are doing in the moment, not to what everyone else should be doing.

In order to do this, we would do best to loosen our grip on needing to be right. The need to be right is a trap. My music, my movies, my politics, my religion, my point of view — these all feel like truths to me, but they are opinions. My opinions. You may feel differently, but sharing our differences openly, without coercion, is a great way to learn and grow. I don’t have to give up my feeling that the Beatles were the best band in order to remain open to understanding how much you love electronic dance music.

Once we let go of exaggerated extremes, loosen our judgments, and release the need to be right, we can begin to see clearly. But where are we heading? As with everything on the Buddhist path, we come back to the present moment. The next right step is one step. Frequently, this is all we need to do in order to reset. We catch ourselves rushing toward a conclusion, stumble, notice, and come back. Here are my feet on the ground. Here is the next step.

But where are we going?

Each step may lead toward or away from our destination. This is our provisional binary. But each step is not the destination, and the destination may not resemble the next step. We are remarkable beings. We can chew gum and walk at the same time. We can know where we are heading while still paying attention to the steps needed to get there. We can hold the larger view and let go of it enough to be here now. There is no contradiction in that.

However, it is important to remember that the steps are actually happening, while the destination is still unfolding. Or not. We make plans, and the universe laughs. So the destination is not holy. As Peter O’Toole says in Lawrence of Arabia: “Nothing is written.”

That means the path is open. And the warrior is brave enough to face it. In Tibet they say “Pawo,” which means brave. Brave enough not to be right, but wise enough to be accurate. The universe is a vast place. We can map out provisional, imaginary points to guide us, but we do not need the limitation of making them solid. We can stay open, keep our eyes ahead, and feel our feet on the ground.

This is walking the warrior’s path: open, available, holding on as needed to steady ourselves, then letting go, taking the next brave step and being present to support the life that calls us.