Category: EVENTS

Posted on by joseph mauricio

CRYING TO THE SKY

The Role of Prayer in a Non-Theistic Tradition

 

Buddhism has largely been divorced from the idea of an overseeing creator—someone to whom we can supplicate, someone managing our experience, someone to yell at us when we’ve gone astray. This is called Theism. Turning an object into a thing that, in turn, becomes a solid reference.

Refuting the existence of God, as we know, is called atheism. Sometimes atheists can be more dogmatic than theists, turning a non-thing into a very solid proposition.

Then there is a story of the Buddha, when asked by Indian scholars why he did not refer to a god. Buddha reportedly answered, “Because that’s not important. This was not a denial of gods. It was a repositioning. By placing the question of a deity into the realm of theology, he freed himself to be a teacher, not a priest. This was his great reformation. And this is what we call non-theism.

As Buddha removed the idea of a spiritual hierarchy he placed responsibility back into the hands of human beings. The gods were not the issue. The issue was how we wake up in this life right now.

But what if I simply want to pray? 

When I am faced with confusion, reaching out to something feels important. When I have failed myself—as I have, repeatedly in my life—it would make sense to look beyond myself for solace.

Before I came to Buddhism, I would fall into treating God like my butler. Someone to do my bidding when difficulty arises. I’d ask for this, ask for that—often with more demand than humility. And when I didn’t get what I wanted, I’d recoil in a huff, turning the name I once called in reverence, into a curse.

It would seem I was invoking a codependent, rather than empowering, relationship.

The point of Buddha’s teaching was not to establish a system of divine dependence, but to guide people toward leading themselves on the path of awakening. Nonetheless, I have secretly envied the certainty of deeply religious people. I am moved when I walk down a busy street and see someone kneeling in prayer, facing Mecca. I am struck by the conviction of those who feel aligned with a power they trust completely.

Non-theism is not a denial of god. It is a refusal to rely on a deity as a solid, external savior. Instead, it suggests that when we call upon something beyond ourselves, we are co-creating an experience between our mind and the wisdom beyond the conceptual limitations that mind. So, praying to the sky, indeed crying to the sky in sadness and frustration, with the hope that we can go beyond ourselves is actually a very practical method.

When I am in states of confusion or despair, praying to Padmasambhava gives me relief. It gives me orientation outside of my habitual patterns. Over time, this has developed into a kind of faith.

But it is a practical faith.

I don’t assume this process would work for everyone. I don’t believe it is better or truer than any other object of prayer. It is personal. A gateway. A way of stepping beyond myself and receiving.

The non-theistic view suggests that we can use the idea of a deity—or prayer itself—as a gateway to access something larger. If someone believes wholeheartedly in a deity and finds strength in that, then that’s great. Buddhism has not rejected these forms. And although in its fundamental form Buddha’s teachings turned away from reliance on a deity as the teachings spread, it adapted and changed. In Tibet, for example, figures like Guru Rinpoche (Padmasambhava) were said to transform local spirits—forces of fear and chaos—into protectors of the Dharma.

Whether taken literally or symbolically, the message is clear: what is frightening, chaotic, and unknown can be transformed into something that supports, even protects, our path.

That is deeply compelling to me.

So yes—I pray to Padmasambhava. Not because I believe in a solid being somewhere granting favors, but because I have faith in the transformation of darkness into awakening.

When I am lost in confusion, doubt, or fear, I remember my teachers. I remember the Buddha. And sometimes I call out—to Padmasambhava, to the sky, to something beyond myself. My work is to find passion in a belief that opens to possibility rather than narrows down on expectation.

Whether I visualize a deity, a teacher, or simply cry to the very sky amounts to the same thing. Rather than limiting my prayer to a fixed, external god I am asking for guidance to step beyond myself.

Buddhism tells us to rely on ourselves, why do I still feel the need to pray?

Because I have run afoul relying solely on myself. So I ask for help. And the simple act of asking opens the gateway to a greater possibility. And rather than limit those possibilities to my own usual thinking I’m simply opening with the question.

Not expecting reward. Not demanding results. But praying to the open sky – and the loving spirit of the universe – removes the burden of having to do anything my way. All I have to do is open and trust that I will understand.

Posted on by joseph mauricio

OPENING TO LIFE . . .

 

And Living the Life We’ve Been Gifted

In some readings of Buddhist thought, there is the interpretation that desire is problematic—that people on a path to awareness shouldn’t be desirous. We shouldn’t want anything, and we most certainly shouldn’t hold onto it if we did.

I can’t think of a better way to forestall someone’s development on the Buddhist path than to turn them away from their basic human instinct.

The purpose of meditation is to wake up, or you might say, learn to pay attention to our life. If we are awake in our meditation, then we may wake up in our life. If we are awake in the world, then our senses would likewise be awake. In Buddhist practice, these senses are sometimes referred to as gates as these sense gates are our connection to the world.

I suppose, for the sake of developing calmness we could keep these gates locked. We could shutter our ears, wrap out mind in a cocoon, look to the ground, and live out life dutifully waiting for it to pass. We might move to a cave and lock ourselves away from everything. But even then there may be interesting stalagmites, stalactites, rock formations, and dark secrets that exist in this subterranean world.

As long as we have a mind, we will have no shortage of things that grab our attention. But shutting down the mind would be to shut out life. I think it’s a much braver to be willing to open our senses to the world. But how can we do this and keep our equilibrium?  With consistent meditation practice we can train our mind not to grasp at everything it sees, thus getting thrown out of balance.

Perception and desire are not the cause of suffering. Suffering happens when we grasp at things, often with a gripping panic as if holding on for dear life. This becomes problematic with our unbridled appetite to devour all the things we see, feel, taste, touch and think. Likewise when we lash out attacking all the things we disdain. And likewise ignore everything we deem beneath our attention.

Passion, aggression, and ignorance are the three seeds that are the cause and condition of the clinging and grasping that throws us off balance and causes suffering when we land on the ground.

Suffering comes from the friction between our solidification of things we desire, disdain, or deem unworthy, against a reality that is always moving and changing in continual dynamic flux.

The world is moving. It’s singing. It’s dancing. And we’re invited to join the party.

But if we see something we want, our attention will narrow and focus on the desired object. That’s problematic. When we objectify anything we turn it into something solid and fail to see it clearly. This is not reality. Believing in things that are not reality causes harm.

As much as anyone loves to be desired, it’s a rare circumstance when people want to be owned and objectified. Life wants to be seen. Life wants to be understood. Life wants us to dance, not growl at the wedding table because our partner is dancing with someone else.

By the same token, there are certain attachments that are entirely natural—for instance, parent and child, any of us and the pet that loves us, our favorite music, poetry, or favorite places on the beach or in the woods.  This is natural.

It becomes unnatural when we are grasping and clinging at objects  driven by a need to control. Our need to control comes from insecurity, from a disbelief within ourselves.

And hence we hold on to things that we deem valuable, things that we believe will increase our status if we cling to them, or manipulate them into clinging to us in some codependent dance. This is the dance of insecurity, not the open and flowing dance of life. Neurotic clinging and control is a stumbling, drunken reeling across the floor, bumping into tables and chairs, knocking things over. It is out of step with the natural flow of life. And it is precisely this dissonance—being out of step with the flow of life—that causes suffering, pain, and anxiety within us.

The more anxiety we feel, the tighter we cling. The tighter we cling, the less in the flow of life we are, and the more pain we are likely causing.

If we grip hard enough, we might believe for limited periods of time that we have gotten what we want, that we have wrestled that which we desire into our grasp and placed it in an immovable straitjacket. But it will never really please us, and it certainly won’t please the objects that we cling to and refuse to truly see.

We fall in love, and then we go into this state of blind gripping that keeps us from actually knowing and understanding the very thing we covet. We would rather keep a bird caged than experience birds in their natural beauty and majesty.

So how do we allow ourselves to feel natural attachment without falling into clinging and grasping?

Like everything, it takes training.  We sit in daily meditation practice and finbd the stability to see and release all that we perceive.  If we are willing to open our mind in meditation, and release ourselves from the grip of compounded thinking  then we are learning to open our eyes in life.

We start the process of releasing our grip when we see something that attracts us. Rather than grabbing and narrowing down on it, we could open up to it.  That opening can lead us to further perceptions.

We could see one thing we love and rather than narrowing down on it like a predator we can open top it in appreciation.  The same is true of things we hate, disdain, or fear. When we grab onto hatred, or really want something feared to leave us, we are still clinging. And we are imbuing it with much more power. By struggling with them, we are making ourselves smaller than the things we struggle against.  When we are smaller than an adversary, we are prone to lash out and grapple. But in the martial arts, for instance, students are trained to remain relaxed, open and balanced.

So the work here is to open up to that which we fear. Opening up simply means allowing ourselves to see the object clearly. We are not increasing the fear so much as opening to it and seeing what is actually there. And opening our eyes is the best defense.

Releasing our grip, lifting our gaze, and opening our senses to the world is not only brave, it’s an effective way to live.

It doesn’t mean we have to agree with anything. It doesn’t mean we have to like what we see. It simply means we are joining the party and becoming part of life.

So to me the two steps are simple:

open my eyes and remain open to what I see.

And when I inevitable collapse into grasping panic, I forgive that as basically human and seeing it as a departure from reality return to something present, such as out breath or our body.

There is nothing wrong with perceiving our world. There is nothing wrong with appreciating our world. There is nothing wrong with healthy attachments.

But there is nothing wrong with going wrong and clinging for dear life, as long as we realize it’s not reality and are willing to let go of the fantasy, and return to reality.  It’s okay to make mistakes. Notice them. Release your grip and come back to the flow of life in the present.

The art of being human is based on the practice of making mistakes and having the bravery to return to openness.

Posted on by joseph mauricio

SPRING AWAKENING!

Good morning.

Chögyam Trungpa often began his talks with that salutation. Regardless of the hour, he would hold his golden fan open and proclaim “Good Morning.” Even though he sometimes began his talks very late at night, there was no irony intended. He was inviting everyone to wake up.

Good morning.

Any moment can be a fresh start when we’re awake to greet it. This very moment, right in this moment, can be an invitation to open to life.

So much of our lives are lived sleepwalking. We move through our days inside protective cocoons of habit, belief, and repetition, until we stub a toe against reality. In recovery parlance we talk about “islands of clarity” – moments of awake when we see beyond ourselves with more perspective. Unfortunately, for most pre-enlightened beings, we fall back into our brown out almost instantly. The pull of our sleep is so very strong.

People say “wake up and smell the coffee”.  But I can smell the coffee just fine from bed.

Dilgo Khyentse, Rinpoche said that the difference between the dreams we have at night and the dreams we walk through in life is duration. Dreams at night last mere seconds, despite the fact that they feel much longer. In the same way, our lives feel long and solid. In truth, our lives are startlingly brief. In fact, we are dying the moment we are born. Each moment of life ends and gives birth to the next. Yet, though we know life is short, we live as though we are permanent. We believe our pain is permanent. Our fear is permanent. Our identities are permanent.

We believe in the bubble.

We often live inside bubbles made of belief—sealed worlds of fixed assumptions about who we are, what is possible, and how long our suffering will last. Once we expand as far as we can within that enclosure, we begin to dull and atrophy.

Then something merciful happens. The bubble bursts. Fresh air rushes in. And for a moment, life feels miraculous. And what is a miracle if not the sudden rebirth from what seemed lifeless?

Yet so often we try to preserve that miracle, clutching it this is like someone opening a window for fresh air and then quickly shutting it so the freshness cannot escape. But rebirth is not a possession. It is a cycle.

Nature teaches this relentlessly: winter gives way to spring, death to life, ending to beginning. They are not opposites so much as two expressions of the same movement. I once heard a Tibetan teacher ask a room full of students, “How many of you have accepted the reality of death?” It being a Buddhist gathering a few hands went up.

Then he asked, “How many of you understand that you are dying right now?”

That question remains with me.

The death of winter is already the birth of spring. The end is already the beginning. And just as surely as every beginning comes from death, every life leads to this same destination.

In birth we leave behind of the dark and protected enclosure that first held us. In our life, living to our fullest is leaving the soft enclosure of our cocoon and learning not to squint so much at the sun. But looking ahead, we always miss what’s behind. It pulls us. What we’ve experienced feels so much more real than what we’ve yet to experience. Beginning is always a barter with something we lose.

I think of my niece on her wedding day, radiant in the doorway beside her father, suspended in that extraordinary moment before stepping forward. The future seemed so luminous that I had to go and offer my blessing.

As I drew closer, she was l cursing in that abrupt jersey way that the damned dress was cutting into her ribs.

There it was all at once: the transcendent and the corporeal, the sacred and the profane, the perfect image and the very human discomfort beneath it.

Every human birth is beautiful and painful and horrible. Because awakening is not abstract. It happens precisely here, in the tender recognition that life is moving, changing, dissolving, and renewing in every moment.

Many years ago, I found myself in a mountain community of practitioners who had been deeply shaken by the death of their teacher. There was grief everywhere, yet also an extraordinary honesty and warmth.

In that open mountain space, my own heart began to soften. Something in me that had been encased began to thaw. What I discovered was that there are two kinds of containers. One is the bubble of self-protection, which suffocates possibility. The other is the cradle of love and kindness, which allows something truer to be born.

The first imprisons. The second incubates.

Perhaps this is the real invitation of spring: not merely to admire rebirth in nature, but to allow it in ourselves. To understand that every awakening asks for a small death.

Every fresh morning is also the ending of the night. So whether the weather is good or gloomy, if we’re sad or glad, any movement of mind is precious and everything we encounter is an invitation to wake up.

Good morning.

 

Posted on by joseph mauricio

IN THIS TOGETHER

The Power of a Self-Healing Community

 

A basic premise of recovery and healing is that isolation incubates pain, expanding it into suffering. On the other hand, communication, community, and connection allow space for healing.

It is true that when we are triggered, wounded, or overwhelmed, crawling into our protective space is often needed in the initial stages of healing. There is a wisdom to retreat. Sometimes the first act of sanity is to step back, become quiet, and allow the nervous system to settle.

But more quickly than we might find comfortable, isolation begins to have diminishing returns. At some point, if healing is to continue, we need to open up and connect with others, or the wound begins to fester.

Part of the reason is that the isolated mind reflects only itself. In that closed loop, it begins to feel different, separate, unique. We suffer in a way that seems as though no one else could ever understand. When we try to communicate we may feel as though no one gets us. And while this is true to some extent—no one knows the exact particulars of our experience—we are, as Maya Angelou reminds us, “more alike than we are different, my friend.”

By sharing our private pain with a trusted community, we allow ourselves to see it from a different perspective. We also give others the opportunity to empathize, often because they have lived their own version of something remarkably similar. We may begin in isolation until we are strong enough to reach out. And this makes us stronger. The stronger we become the wider our community is likely to become. At some point, our community may include those with differing opinions and points of reference. But, as the Buddha instructed the soldier, take the arrow out first. This is akin to the “putting your gas mask on first” trope.

 

HEALING.

When we are wounded—frightened, defeated, antagonized, or simply exhausted—it feels personal, as though we are being attacked by the world itself. It is reasonable that our immediate reaction is to strike back, assign blame, or clench our fists against the forces that seem to be victimizing us. But our reactions are not really the point. Blame blocks healing. Healing comes from feeling. Or, as is said, “feeling is healing.” Blame is something that happens in the head while feeling happens in the heart.

And it is our heart that has been wounded. The heart doesn’t have the same logic or language as does the mighty brain. The heart paints in abstract colors. We can only listen in and hold space for ourselves with loving patience until the infection abates.

The point is that we have been hurt and we need to acknowledge this. It’s not about who did what. It’s about what is. And what is, is pain.

The first step in working with hurt is to acknowledge it. Not what caused it. Not what it says about our personality or our place in the world. Not the story. Simply the hurt itself.

Can we face it directly?

Once we face the hurt, acceptance becomes the next important step. In time, we can train the mind to experience pain without immediate elaboration—psychological, social, or philosophical. We begin to see what is there without rushing to explain it.

Then acceptance opens into inquisitiveness. We become interested. Where is this pain happening? How do I feel it in the body? Is this pain being amplified into suffering or finding the space to heal?

 

COMMUNITY.

At some point, we may be to turn outward and speak it aloud to others. This is a brave step in the healing process. To let go our healing and begin to feel with others. This creates more space for the wound to continue to heal. There are many ways to do this: therapy, spiritual friendship, meditation communities, recovery groups, or simply trusted friends.

Sometimes just allowing someone to speak their pain exactly as it is—without fixing, changing, or judging—gives them the opportunity to hear themselves more clearly. In that simple act of being heard, something often softens. And when others respond not by solving but by speaking their own truth in a way that resonates, the person may feel less lonely, less cut off, less singled out by life.

Of course, each modality has both strengths and shadows.

Therapy can be profound, though there is always the risk of dependency on the relationship itself. Community spaces that discourage crosstalk can offer a neutral and nonjudgmental container, though at times they may feel emotionally distant. Informal conversations with loving friends can provide warmth and support, though sometimes those closest to us may only echo what we already want to hear.

To me, an ideal healing community contains something of all of these elements. Warmth. Heart connection. Support. Space. Camaraderie. A sense of being understood and a willingness to understand. One of my mentors, Michelle Killoran, introduced this to me as “the self-healing community.” We are seeking a community, built on empathy and understanding, that allows the next stage of our healing journey.

We are more alike, my friends, than we are different.

How can we help one another without adding further confusion—either through subtle judgment or through over-support of each other’s neuroses? How can we help one another see our own minds and our own path toward healing? And just as importantly, how can each of us become clear enough within ourselves to communicate what we truly need from the group, ourselves, and each other?

Sometimes we need simply to be held, physically or metaphorically. Sometimes we need clear advice and instruction. Sometimes we need silence. Sometimes we need witness. My hope is that this community can become a place where all of that is possible.

We are more alike, my friend, than we are unalike.

Posted on by joseph mauricio

Red Light, Green Light

Navigating the Traffic of Life

 

In my coaching I use the analogy of traffic lights to illustrate how we might move through life with grace.

Some people rush through life as though red lights were a personal challenge. They think they’re outrunning danger by never slowing down — like someone racing home before the consequences catch up. Others never take their foot off the brake, as though they’ve forgotten the point of being in traffic in the first place is to move toward a destination. They inch from red to cautious yellow but never relax into the open, fluid travel that makes for a joyful life.

Neither approach is particularly graceful. Neither is mindful.

If we want to travel through life with fluidity, we need both mindfulness and awareness. Mindfulness pays attention to what we are doing right now. Awareness senses where we’re headed and what lives at the edges of our experience. The cooperative interplay between the specificity of mindfulness and the expansiveness of awareness is exactly what we train for in meditation practice. And it’s transferable to life.

Mindfulness without awareness can become narrow and dutiful. We focus so closely on the task at hand that we lose sight of the larger landscape. Awareness without mindfulness can become ungrounded — expansive but drifting, easily pulled off course.

What we’re cultivating is balance. A cooperative relationship between grounding and spaciousness. I like to think of their union as mindful awareness — attentive to the point we occupy while conscious of the flow surrounding it.

We often talk about developing flow in life. But what about danger?

When something feels off, that’s often a yellow light — not red. Yellow means slow down. Pay attention. For example, if someone we’re dating is harsh toward children or animals, that’s a signal to pause and look more closely. A red light would be something unmistakable — physical abuse, clear harm. Red means stop.

Yellow is different. Yellow is dropping into a lower gear while climbing a steep hill. You’re still moving — just carefully, consciously, with heightened awareness.

The problem is that some of us live as though every light is red. Or we forget to shift back up once the hill has leveled out.

Traveling carefully through perceived danger requires discernment. But when the road opens, we must allow ourselves to move freely again. Green means go. It means trust the conditions. It means flow.

This is especially true in relationships. Sometimes we need to slow down, let go of our personal momentum, and resynchronize with our partner. But we cannot live forever in repair mode. We cannot make a home at the yellow light.

A common pattern I see in clients is that their relationship becomes a series of red lights. All complaint. All caution. All obstruction. So they go elsewhere to find green — work, hobbies, friendships, even fantasy. Inside the relationship, they believe there’s no open road left.

But there is almost always some way forward. The question is whether we can find it together. That may require slowing down first — synchronizing — before gently pressing the gas again.

This is true with our relationship with ourselves. We may find places in our body, heart and mind that we are stuck. Places we just don’t want to go. Shadows in the mind, create blockages in our body, that manifest as limitations in life. Sometimes the red lights in life have their roots from red lights in our mind. We can run the lights, pushing past our doubts, with eyes on a supposed destination. But this is a disregard for our actual experience. The experience we need to learn.

Patience is so important. Finding the gentle perseverance to keep moving forward one step at a time, one day at a time, and stopping to synchronize as we need. But always remembering to allow ourselves to move forward.

 

Posted on by joseph mauricio

THE FIRE HORSE

Hello everyone, and happy Lunar New Year.

I’m inviting everyone to join me this evening for a simple ceremony and conversation reflecting on the coming year. If the ancient traditions are to be believed, this year may be volatile. For many of us, life already feels that way. This may be a good time to speak with one another, to support one another, and to orient our minds toward compassion, empathy, and psychological and emotional health.

This invitation is very last minute, and I’m not assuming there will be a large attendance. But I’ve found—especially within the Dharmajunkies community—that when gatherings arise this way, the people who come are the people who need to be there. Recently, one of our members, Sherri Rosen, suggested that during this time of difficulty, change, and winter—communicating and being present for one another is especially important. I think it would be wonderful to follow that suggestion and gather tonight at 7:00 PM simply to be together: to celebrate, to find joy, and also to talk honestly about the joys and challenges we are experiencing.

 

THE FIRE HORSE

The Lunar New Year differs from the standard Western solar calendar in that it is organized around the moon’s cycles as they appear to us from Earth, rather than the Earth’s revolution around the sun. The solar calendar takes precedence in the West because it structures our daily lives and institutions, yet—as we see with leap years and uneven month lengths—it is not a perfect system. The lunar year, by contrast, is deeply organic. It aligns with the cycles of the moon, the tides, and many of our internal rhythms—the basic biological and ecological rhythms of life on this planet. Importantly, the lunar cycle corresponds across hemispheres, offering a shared global rhythm.

In many Asian cultures, each lunar year is associated with an animal that represents the energetic quality of that year. These animals combine with elemental forces—such as fire or water—to create a repeating cycle. Beyond being culturally symbolic (and, yes, the source of the placemats in Chinese restaurants), this system offers a way of reflecting on how energy moves through time.

Because lunar calendars differ slightly between cultures, some people celebrated yesterday and some celebrate today. This variability reflects the organic nature of human systems themselves. This year, many who observe the lunar cycle recognize it as the Year of the Fire Horse.

Traditionally, the Year of the Fire Horse is associated with intense energy, independence, volatility, and radical change. Fire combined with Horse amplifies passion, speed, and momentum. It is often seen as a year of disruption, upheaval, and breaking from tradition. It is linked to strong-willed individuals—especially women—who resist control. Historically, it has even been feared in some cultures as a time of social instability or misfortune. At the same time, it symbolizes fearless momentum, revolution, and catalytic transformation.

In short, the Year of the Fire Horse is fast, fierce, uncontrollable—and transformative.

Considering the upheavals we are already experiencing in culture, politics, and climate, this year feels like a kind of clarion call. That call may point to external circumstances, to our inner lives, or—most often—to both. While there may not be a direct causal relationship between how we feel and what is happening around us, the two are frequently in conversation.

Most people who observe the Lunar New Year live within Asian societies—some of the world’s oldest continuous cultures. These traditions often emphasize understanding natural rhythms as a way of relating wisely to present circumstances. While surface-level cultural expressions differ widely, beneath them we find shared human rhythms and basic truths.

The Buddhist traditions I study and practice center on the idea of Buddha nature—sometimes called basic or fundamental goodness. This view holds that all life, in its essence, has its own purpose and truth. While this fundamental goodness is often obscured by the conditions of social and psychological life, the teaching suggests that, at our core, we are not broken. We are already whole.

Whether or not one can prove this philosophically, living as though it were true can change how we relate to ourselves and others. Rather than assuming we are flawed and need fixing, we might experiment with the idea that we are fundamentally good and that our task is to uncover what is already there. The audacious implication of this view is that believing in our own goodness—and in the goodness of others—reduces the impulse toward violence, defensiveness, and overcompensation.

Losar, the Tibetan New Year, is traditionally a time of renewal and reconnection with this wakeful, good heart. From this perspective, working with the energy of the coming year begins with the assumption that the energy itself is not wrong or bad, even if it is challenging. If we believe in ourselves and in the basic goodness of humanity, then even volatile conditions can become workable.

Like learning to ride a horse, engaging this year’s energy calls for flexibility, clarity, and determination. We don’t dominate the horse, nor do we abandon ourselves to it. We synchronize. We adjust. We ride.

This year invites us to honor ourselves, to honor the spirit within us, and to learn how to ride that spirit toward the manifestation of goodness. It is a year to honor women. A year to honor change. A year to honor fear without being ruled by it.

By honoring fear, I mean respecting the warning signals that arise—ignoring them would be foolish. But red flags do not erase green ones. Pausing to regrip, to recoup, and to resynchronize does not mean we cannot move forward. Once we find our balance with this volatile but powerful energy, we may be able to let ourselves move with it—clearly, compassionately, and with discernment.

Posted on by joseph mauricio

LEARNING TO SURRENDER

Where Do We Go If We Let Go?

 

I was heading into a massage session when the instructor entering behind me gently touched my upper back. She leaned over my shoulder and whispered in my ear, “what do you think will happen if you let go” and pressing the point said, “right here?” It was stunning. My tears welled up. I didn’t know what it was, but I had been carrying it around since I was a child forever being the good soldier.

Why not let go? What will happens if I lose? What the hell am I trying to prove? What is it I’m carrying?

I can be like a dog with a bone sometimes. When I’m passionate about something I hate the idea of letting go. It’s mine, damn it, even if it’s hurting me. But that’s me. Everyone has their own style of attachment. And attachment will always lead to struggle because we’re trying to hold something still in a universe that is always moving. Reality is stretching and expanding, dissolving and moving away from us, as we desperately cling and grab to anything we can. Oh what joy when we find that bone to gnaw!

The late absurdist auteur, David Lynch, once drew a multi-frame cartoon he called “The Angriest Dog in the World.” It was a picture of a dog straining against its tether growling fiercely, that was copied in several frames unchanging, as day turned to night, the the seasons changed around him.

I kind of loved that guy. I think we admire people who are fighting cancer, or refusing to go gently into the night. There seems to be virtue in struggling against the laws of the universe.

One thing about human experience is when something goes awry, it reminds us how little control we have. This makes us feel small. When things don’t go our way, it’s not a punishment. It’s an opportunity to adjust and even grow. But it generally feels pretty bad.

On the other hand, when things work out the way we expect, or better than we expect, there is no end to the auto-backslapping. Perhaps it’s best to employ the middle path and not to take too much credit. It’s just life. It happens to all of us.

But it’s not about any of us.  Still, this stubborn Taurus often feels there must be something at the end of the struggle other than a pile of discarded discord.

Once I’m engaged in a struggle, I seem to have to prove something to somebody. I’m going to save this relationship, or I’m going to tell this person off though I never do and just toss about in my bed all night.  At some point, I’m just struggling for the struggle. I’m attached to the energy. Attachment brings suffering—I’ve done the research—and it’s a pretty universal human experience. When we grab hold of something we deem important, we don’t want to let it go. Our ego latches on, and whatever grand justification we started with, the war becomes all about us.

Whether we’re gnawing on a bone to pick or basking in a relationship we hope will never end, we’re stuck in attachment. No matter the rationale, the outcome is suffering.

When we grip tightly enough, we lose sight of the suffering altogether. We keep going because after all the investment, letting go feels frightening. Being right and refusing to listen can feel like strength, like clarity—but it isn’t clarity at all. It’s ego blindness. The part of us that needs to prove a point takes over. Our view becomes so narrow, so refined, so focused on our objective that it feels like certainty.

Neil deGrasse Tyson says one obstacle in science is when people know enough to think they’re right, but not enough to see they’re wrong. Since we actually don’t know, the wiser move is to let go.

Letting go doesn’t mean we’re wrong. It isn’t judgment or punishment. It’s a physical experience of loosening our grip.

Dogs eventually have to drop the bone to eat. Children eventually leave the tattered, saliva-ridden doll behind when they go to school. The attachment was soothing—but it isn’t sustainable.

Everything changes. Everything is subject to the movement of the universe. Things only appear solid and unchanging. Great pain comes from believing “this is the way it is,” or knowing it will change but insisting it change our way. Needing control, we choose to suffer, holding onto it, growling if anyone tries to take it away.

I once said to a struggling student, “Have you noticed how when you’re tired and underslept, everything feels more important and more dangerous?” She stared at me with dagger eyes and said “no.” An amazing teaching: sometimes the best thing is to shut up and let people discover it themselves.

Surrender means letting go with body, spirit, and mind. Wherever we’re gripping, there’s tension in the body. Feeling that tension, knowing it’s causing discomfort, and doing nothing to fix the story is the first step. We get addicted to the drama because it feels like control.

Letting go in spirit means releasing our attachment to how the struggle makes us feel—powerful, victimized, justified. Letting go in the mind is harder. We don’t just “stop thinking.” We replay arguments in bed at night. The way out is through love and kindness, drawing the attention out of the body. Until we let go of attachment to feeling bad or feeling victorious, we keep planting seeds of suffering.

Love naturally brings openness and surrender. Mindfulness helps us remember that whatever we latch onto becomes inaccurate and becomes suffering—for us and often for others.

In 12-step communities they say, let go and let God. In the Pentecostal tradition I grew up in, surrender was physical—tears, release, catharsis. In Buddhist tantric traditions, a transmission can release gripping in an instant, sometimes with nothing more than a clap of the hands. Letting go doesn’t have to be heavy. It can be joyous. A relief. An offering.

As we surrender and let go of proving anything, our body softens, the struggle ends, and we sit upright and open. We are making an offering to the universe, while allowing ourselves a fresh start.

Posted on by joseph mauricio

A POLITICS OF SOUL

Believing, Really Believing, In Basic Goodness

Juneteenth is no longer a national holiday, just as the celebration of Doctor Martin Luther King is no longer a national holiday. The shameful history of slavery, the Reconstruction era, and Jim Crow are all being removed from textbook history. A powerful white right-wing coalition has risen, seemingly under our noses, to a prominence that allows them to affect great change in our nation.

How did this happen? Through the basic sleight of hand of the shell game, one of the oldest betting games we know. Three cups: you place the pea or seed or pebble under one, then move the cups quickly, giving the impression that you are revealing the right one. People bet, and then they pick a cup. All physical illusion — or the ledger domain, as it’s called — is based on this bait-and-switch idea. The mind goes in one direction while reality is hidden, perhaps to be revealed later.

Like a virus that lies dormant until circumstances allow it to ripen and infect, our country has changed into something many of us fail to recognize. One political bait-and-switch is to demonize someone or something, diverting attention while corruption allows wealth to accumulate behind the scenes. Recently, this has worked in two directions, which while pernicious is working brilliantly.

You blame immigrants, left-wing politics, protesters, and critics as the problem, amassing popular power by portraying deviance. But “draining the swamp” begs the question: who’s swamped, and what swamp? Yet people get excited to support cleansing — ethnically, socially, politically. Great change is coming, and if you follow us, you’ll be on the right side. Life becomes binary: you are either marching along or in the way.

The reverse bait-and-switch is when the resistance is allowed a misleading point to direct their ire. We might call the leader demented or crazy. We might denigrate the leader and their followers with virulent accusations. But this is a false pebble under the cup. We are still looking the wrong way. Who benefits while we demonize the leader? Who benefits while we demonize the scapegoat?

To find the right cup, ask: who benefits? Admit the takeover of society has happened. Kudos to the bad guys. Get over it. But who is gathering power that moves the country away from history, popular considerations, and compassion. Who is  turning us toward the mercenary transactions for a few?

I long for reporting that moves from denigration or blind support to actual facts. What is happening? Who benefits?

Let’s break it down. When a government loses touch with the people it purports to serve, it becomes more powerful than the people’s will and spirit. It benefits a narrow spectrum of supporters. Power is amassed to perpetuate their agenda. However, rather than dwell on horror, aggression and hyperbole we could hold to the spirit of humanity that is our birthright. We could recognize and empower our own basic goodness, continue to show up, and create a politics of soul — a doctrine of goodness and a spirit of nonviolent resistance.

In honor of Doctor King, who encouraged followers to act without violence because violence played into the scenario the power structure wants. They demonize resistance to see it as harmful and worthy of extraction. But those who’ve bartered their souls to gain power over the world are well versed in aggression and violence. So, a resistant alternative would have to find the power of goodness. But failure to act in times of change is supporting the problem. Yet, acting out of aggression only plays into the game. How can we move toward our heart, spirit, and higher mind in strength and fortitude.

Buddhists teach that each of us has Buddha nature, an enlightened spirit in our hearts and minds. Many harken back to the Buddha’s fundamental teachings: there is no independent solid self or spirit. Yet his later teachings introduced people to their indomitable essential nature —Buddha Nature, a fundamental goodness that is realized when we step beyond protecting, and renounce cherishing the self. Instead of adding to cruelty by advancing egoic ideals, can we find a soulful rendering of feelings and emotions that ignite the spirit? While we cannot absolve the world of hatred and evil, we can reinforce our own goodness and strength and allow that to inspire the world around us.

We could choose a politics of soul: doctrine of caring and kindness, a proclamation of the indomitable spirit of love and compassion. This does not mean hugging mask-clad aggressors or hoping for the best while everything collapses. It means building strength around our belief in goodness and keeping it intact at all cost.

At all cost. Whether or not this effects current turmoil, our spirit will eventually guide the greater humanity away from vicious self-interest. This may not happen as quickly as our attention-deficit culture desires, but compassion and the manifestation of goodness are developed in the long game.

The evening before his assassination Doctor King looked out into a darkened crowd and said: “I’ve been to the mountaintop. I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.” He was killed the next day. Yet his spirit lives on. As does the spirit of those who endeavored to bring peace, kindness, equality, and liberation, despite attempts to kill it.

Dr King’s words are remembered long after we’ve forgotten J. Edgar Hoover. John Lennon will be remembered longer than Richard Nixon because, despite his faults, his dream of love and equality speaks to our Human Spirit. Gandhi presented the possibility of liberation that inspires us to this day.  We remember a love that lasts forever, because love is forever.  Love is quiet within the shouting but is ultimately stronger than aggression that momentarily seems powerful.

Please, do not fall for the sleight of hand of momentary power. Take a seat in your good heart and follow your true nature. Your awake nature. I stand for a politics of soul. I stand for a government of kindness. I stand for a world where compassion has a chance.

 

Posted on by joseph mauricio

THE ONLY PLACE TO BE

Is Where We Are

The good news is, you’re already here. The trick is to remember that.

And to recognize that.

And to experience that here, now.

It’s easy. Maybe too easy? We seem to want dramatic solutions to dramatic problems. We take classes in cognitive awareness, feel crystals, and throw the I Ching. The more anxious we feel, the more effort we think we need to escape. But when our thinking is hijacked by an inflamed brainstem, simply coming back to now can bring us into alignment and return us to an optimum mental state. As humans, we have evolved to employ higher mental functioning, but we need clarity of mind to fully access that state. Unfortunately, we’ve retained shadows of a less awake, fearful, scurrying mind that sometimes hijacks or clouds our reasoning. Reasoning becomes overthinking,  catastrophic thinking or distracted escapism. When our thinking is compromised, we would do well to pay less attention to the narrative of our thoughts and more attention to recognizing when the mind is distracted it’s thinking.

When we train in meditation, we are training to notice when the mind is distracted and to bring it back to the present. We don’t need deep psychological reasoning for this process. In fact, the simpler we keep it, the better. We notice, we return, and we do all of this with no judgment, no explanation, no concepts at all.

Quite simply, what is happening now? What am I experiencing now in the simplest, most tactile way? Not grand ideas, but simply the experience of my hands, feet and breath.  Letting go of ideas of what we think is happening, we turn our attention to our feet on the ground. I mean really do that. Really feel your feet on the ground. Not think about it. Just feel your hands on the desk or your thighs. Bring yourself back home. You can do this walking around your kitchen when anxiety arises. Come back to  the experience of your feet on the floor. It’s that simple to break the momentum of panic, thinking and fear.

Aside from placing a gap in the panic, being aware of ourselves, and parts of ourselves, is comforting to the frightened part of us that can take over our whole day.

Mindfulness of mind means noticing when the mind has hijacked us, taking center stage with some thought or idea that obscures everything else we might see. Mindfulness of being awake in the present moment reminds us to come back to what is verifiably happening, such as the breath or our posture. When the mind notices itself, that noticing is happening in the present. But when the mind gets lost in the narrative of its thinking, we are no longer in the present. We are removed from it.

Most of the time we are lost in regret over some past action or anticipation of some future occurrence, and both of these are imagined circumstances. When we bring ourselves back to our body, that is actually happening here. We can take solace in that. We can begin to feel grounded when we return.

That said, coming back to the present and then judging that experience—such as noticing how distracted the mind is or believing we have to apply ourselves further—are also thoughts that are not actually in the present. They are closer to the present than imagining we are in Tahiti on the beach, but they are still one step removed because we are talking to ourselves about the present. The experience of the present is nonconceptual.

There is a great irony in the art of meditation: being grounded in reality is not what we think. Being grounded in reality is an experience. Mindfulness of mind is the experience of stepping back and seeing what the mind is doing from a grander perspective. It is like a snapshot, and as soon as we start commenting on that snapshot, we darken our connection to the experience. We confuse it. We complicate it.

The aim of meditation is not to become better, smarter, or more productive. The aim of meditation is to become here and be awake right now, in this moment. As simple as that sounds, this is considered both the primary practice and the pinnacle experience of meditation training in the Tibetan Buddhist systems. When we are fully here, we are fully connected to the inherent wakefulness of the universe. As soon as we think about that, we take a step away from the experience.

Mindfulness, then, is the subtle and nuanced process of stepping back in order to see our experience without stepping into conceptualization. We are looking at the mind rather than being lost in the mind. The mind seeing itself is considered a sacred moment in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. As soon as we congratulate ourselves or conceptualize the process, we step away from that experience.

The pinnacle position for the meditator is to be in the present experience without comment, concern, or criticism. When those things arise, as they naturally do, the process of recognizing them and coming back to the breath, the feet, and the hands is the process of waking up. We are training the mind to recognize distraction and to recognize presence.

The process of coming back here becomes easier and more efficient when we train ourselves to recognize both distraction and what it feels like to be here. Without complication, our feet are on the ground, our hands are on our thighs, and the mind is returning to its resting on the breath. This gives us a base to which we can return anytime.

As Lennon sang, “wherever you are, you are here.”

 

Posted on by joseph mauricio

BELONGING

Turning Loneliness Toward Aloneness

 

Everybody wants to belong. That drive, a primal self-defense embedded deep in our psychology, is so strong that when we don’t belong to something it feels empty and frightening. We often interpret that as a failing on our part. Hence, for some of us, being alone is torturous. I would fill up the space with an overactive brain. I have a joke I tell that every sexual encounter I’ve ever had was a threesome: me, my partner, and my brain.

I was the eldest child, and the oldest of my closest cousins. My affinity was for adults, and I had a mild disdain for other kids. Like a lady cat who feels affection for her owners, but has no time for other animals. Hence, I spent a lot of time with the ladies in the kitchen or alone in my room. My mom said I would “explode,” making screaming crowd noises when I imagined myself leading a rock band, or make bomb noises exploding when I was leading troops into battle. I would be the hero, have no fear, and experience no pain. I learned to find some simple genius in my room and occupied the space that otherwise so frightened me. I carried that soothing albeit violent noise around my head growing up, never understanding the life I was missing.

In time, that nagging sense of missing out on something led me to search for meaning, belonging, or anything that might calm the scratchy uneasiness I felt. I would sit in bookstores and thumb through books from Crowley to Ram Dass. I tried meditation in many traditions. At the Zen Center, I was asked to sit in the hall because I couldn’t sit still.

Eventually I came across the work of Chogyam Trungpa. The fact that he was rather infamous appealed to a rebellious part of me that feared indoctrination. Discovering meditation gave me a way of filling that inner space with experiential learning.

My inner conversations began to turn from entertaining myself toward personal development. I was still filling up space, but now I had something useful to tell myself. Trungpa made a distinction between loneliness and aloneness. Loneliness was a suffering ego state, that was so narrow we were not accepted and had no place to belong. Ego had grown too inflamed to fit anywhere, and hence I was never feel comfortable in the ordinary space of life. “I don’t belong here” might have been less about others looking down on me, bullying me, or not accepting me, and more about me trying to bully myself into being more than I needed to be. Maybe I didn’t belong because I was trying so hard to be accepted.  Maybe I had forgotten how to be who I was.

Or maybe I never knew. Maybe none of us do. Perhaps the only ones who feel comfortable in themselves are those who aren’t looking. I loved the scene in Annie Hall when Woody Allen wonders why some people seem so together and decides to ask a beautiful couple passing on the street. “What’s your secret?” he asks. They stare blankly back, blink, shrug and say that they are simply vapid and superficial.

So are we destined to writhe in the turmoil of unsettled being or simply check out and join a cult? Many people driven by the insecurity of loneliness join movements led by charismatic figures who seem to supply them with the confidence they lack. That dynamic becomes heightened when the leader points to those we should blame for our woes. Once we have the bogey people, we can feel united with others in our ire. People lacking in self-acceptance and awareness are ripe to be led. The drive for acceptance is so strong we will sell our souls to feel united.

Thank goodness for the congenitally cynical. A slogan posted at Trungpa’s center said, “A healthy distrust of the rules will bring success.” He didn’t encourage anyone to be a joiner. He didn’t expect anyone to believe what they did not discover for themselves. Meditation, free of manipulation, is pointing to what is already there, not making shit up to make us feel better. Tara Brach teaches about “radical acceptance” — accepting the shadow, the doubt, the fear, and the loneliness.

Accepting loneliness means we can rest in our unease without trying to fix it. When we are able to rest in the places we are less comfortable, when we are less willing to throw ourselves away just to belong, we begin to really know ourselves. Loneliness becomes aloneness. Aloneness is a space of self-acceptance. When we accept ourselves, our ego can relax and become less inflamed. Then there is more space for everything else — for everyone else. People have room to be themselves instead of feeling coerced. Self-acceptance allows others to feel less pressured and more inclined to accept us. Ironically, the crippling need to be accepted had become an obstacle to acceptance.

Once free of the need to occupy myself, once I was willing to accept me and the moment I was in, once I loosened the grip of needing acceptance from others, I found I could make decisions for myself. If I was wrong, then it was mine. Nothing is set in stone except our gravesites.

The fact is we were born alone despite all the fuss around us. And we will die alone despite all the fuss. If we accept being alone, we can become free of the crippling need to belong to anything just to be part of something. Then I think it’s possible to become part of everything.

Or, like Buddha’s hot dog — one with everything.