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.
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.
Pema Chodron once said, the Buddha was someone who walked out the door, and just kept walking. HIs life stands as a testament of liberation from economic, spiritual or emotional encumberments. Many people interpret this to mean that attachments are bad, and that we should let go of everything at all cost. But while renunciation is the foot of meditation, once we have loosened our grip on things, the path to liberation continues back to service to our world. What about our families, friends and communities? And what of the Buddha’s own family? Were they actually smiling
But it is important to remember the doctrine of Basic Goodness. If we are able to see the goodness in anything, we can develop the ability to understand it. Attachment is the same energy, in essence, as mindfulness. The word for mindfulness 
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.
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.
A slow uncovering of the wounds that bind us, is an apt description of the path of compassion. Understanding and transforming our pain is a common motivator for the path. Many of us came to the path because we were in pain. There is nothing like a broken heart to introduce us to meditation. But once that heart has mended, or once we get tired of that broken song, what is it that prompts us to continue on the path?
So how can we help anyone, when we ourselves are wounded? We talk about “opening the heart”. But what does that mean? Usually, this statement evokes feelings of empathy, communication, and kindness. But doesn’t opening the heart also release the pain that we have been protecting and the suffering we are protecting ourselves against? When we began the path our wounds were the source of antagonism and aggression. In an attempt to protect ourselves from a future projection of past violence we struck out against actual or imagined danger. However, it may be that these wounds are also the source of empathy, communication, and kindness. The “Lion’s Roar” may be that the wounds we guard in embarrassed secrecy may be our gateway to compassion. When we have worked the path of self-discovery, we get what it is to be human. And because of this, we understand what humans need. Opening the heart is simply relaxing the protective tension with which we gird ourselves. As this cocoon is protecting us from real, imagined or remembered pain, we must respect it. Opening the heart is not about aggression at all. Opening the heart is acceptance and release.
Pema Chodron speaks of suffering as having created a wound in our heart. All of us have those wounds. Pema suggests that we cover the wound to protect it, as we would a physical wound. However, with a physical wound we remove the bandaid for it to heal under the sun. But emotional wounds often remain covered, and so healing is compromised. We become embarrassed of the wounds, somehow believing we are the only ones. Because they don’t heal in the shadows, the wound becomes sensitive to touch. We are constantly bumping into the wound, and flincing through life trying to protect ourselves from the pain. This creates more suffering. Yet, the saddest part of this is how we are denying the very thing that makes us unique. No one notices perfect trees in the forest. We notice the trees that are gnarled and curled from lightning, bent by wind or darkened by fire. These trees have character. And our pain gives us character. Lightning struck trees don’t feel embarrassed about themselves. Nor do three legged dogs. Nor do blues musicians, or poets as they express their pain. Is there a form of life on earth that judges itself as much as humans do? There is a song by The Big Moon that goes “trouble doesn’t last forever. The trouble is that memories do.” 
acknowledge and hold our fears, rather than be controlled by them. The cradle of loving kindness is the gentle firmness of the body opening to the experience of fear. Rather than constricting our feelings in a body of tension, we are holding our fear with openness.
On the other hand, should we STOP and FEEL into our present experience rather than be driven by fear, we can acknowledge and hold it with open arms.
deadly conditions and extreme energy, yet the mountain is seemingly still. It serves to inspire and guide us. It is not hurrying or competing. And should we be drawn to climb the mountain; haste would not be in our favor.
A kinder, and vastly more productive, approach would be to employ mindful awareness to relax into a flow state that optimizes our experience and honors our existence. We are able to stand up and hold ourselves with dignity and grace. I had a teacher that suggested I slow down enough to move quickly. This is pausing just enough to synchronize with our mindfulness and awareness. Then when we are interrupted, we can respond intelligently with consideration. We say considerate because we are considering a fuller situation before we react. When our mind is racing, we don’t have time for that we’re rushing down the street late for work and pushing people out of the way or cutting off cars on the road, without any regard for the basic human relationships that make us feel confident and strong. The more we push our life out of the way so we can force our agenda the more we are robbing ourselves from the fundamental sustenance of our life. That sustenance can only come from being grounded. It’s as if we’re pulling the nutrients up from the earth. But we can only do that if we’re synchronized with the earth. When we are synchronized, we are present, and the game slows down. We see that we have more options than the panicked reactions that come from speed would reveal. When we are grounded, we are able to consider more helpful approaches.
One thing that blocks the flow state for us is this feeling that we are pressured and have to make an immediate decision. We have to act immediately without pause, without thought, without consideration. When we’re running late, miss the train and we’re delayed another 8 minutes we stand on the platform looking up at the clock, tapping our feet. The speed and constriction that we become addicted to slams us into survival mode. Our options are reduced to fight flight or freeze. When something stops our momentum, we either lash out, run away, or freeze in a PTSD trance. The remedy is to boycott reaction, pause and breathe. Feel your feet on the ground. Come back. Then we can respond. 
actually have a considered response. It might be offering some counterpoint, it might be walking away, or it might be simply waiting in space until the next right action becomes clear. Once we make an offering of our anxiety our fight flight freeze reactions are transformed. We’re using the same mechanism of reactive mind but because we’ve paused and synchronized, we’re able to use these impulses with executive reasoning. Fight turns into expressing our point of view, flight may be that we can walk away. Retreat is not surrender. Retreat is simply stepping back to regroup. And freeze might simply be resting here. This is not a PTSD trance state where we can’t move but a loving pause where we have the option to do nothing but remain present. Not to react, but just simply to wait. And that waiting is the essence of patience. If we learn to pause when we’re triggered, we might find that we’re more patient at stop signs, more patient in the subway and more patient with our life.
If Trungpa recommended we accept our thoughts without judgement, there is one category of thinking he deemed unacceptable. “Negative negativity” are the judgements we have about ourselves, including those we have toward our own negativity. Negativity is naturally inherited behaviour. Blaming our negativity is counterproductive. It’s essentially blaming ourselves. Whenever we feel the tightness associated with self-affliction, we can come to see that we are punishing ourselves, which is self-flagellation. We can just let any self-judgement go.WE don’t have to pretend we are a buddha, or Mother Theresa or Kendrick Lamar. We can be ourselves and accept negativity as small minded and self-defeating but entirely common and natural. We can allow ourselves to feel our negativity without judgement – but also without action. We can become aware of our underlying behaviors without acting on them. We have every right to feel however we feel, but no right to inflict those feelings upon ourselves or anyone else. If we act out our negativity we are training the mind to continue negativity. On the other hand, as we are socialized not to act out, “acting in” builds internal pressure until we explode, or fall into depression. Both of these actions build the propensity for us to see the world negatively making it easier to act out/in.