Category: Performances

Posted on by joseph mauricio

The Bandits of Hope and Fear

Remembering 2 Remain Human in The 6 Realms

A Tibetan Buddhist saying warns that the bandits of hope and fear come to rob us of the present. The present being the precious moments that comprise our life. The true gift of opening this present is that it’s not only where we find our life, but it is the only place where spiritual awakening is possible.

In short, no matter how we apply ourselves, we will never awaken some day. We can only awaken now. Imagining what might occur if we keep working for it is fruitless unless we are present to experience it when it happens.

And we can only experience the present now.

Hope and fear are deeply ingrained in us. Hope can be exhilarating when it lifts our mood and makes new possibilities seem real. But hope will not get the job done. And if the desired result fails, our exhilaration can collapse into defeat. Fear constricts us from the other direction, narrowing our world and limiting our choices.

The six realms of Buddhist cosmology offer a useful map of human experience. Whether we understand them as literal worlds, social structures, or psychological states, each realm shows a different relationship to hope, fear, and the present moment.

The god realm is a state of sustained pleasure in which we feel comfortable and untouchable. Yet when the conditions supporting it disappear, the fall can be dramatic. Much like secret passages leading from the study to the kitchen in the game “Clue,” the god realm seems to have a trapdoor leading directly to hell. When a seemingly perfect life collapses, the shock can plunge us correspondingly into anger and despair.

Just below the realm of the gods—past the velvet ropes, inside the VIP world that most people on the ground level never see—is the jealous-god realm. Like the nouveaux riches standing impatiently at the velvet rope. They may get past the ropes, but they’ve got to work so hard to look and act right to get there. These poor jealous gods have so much to be grateful for, if they could only stop looking over their shoulders. Hope drives us forward while fear warns that someone else may be gaining on us.

At the center is the human realm. Interestingly, in the Buddhist system, gods are not in the ideal position because they lack the impetus for moral reflection. The human realm, with all its pain and uncertainty, is considered the ideal position for growth. Here we possess the courage to engage with others and participate fully in the world. The human experience becomes more stable as we learn to work with hope and fear. We can acknowledge fear, letting it wake us up, without allowing it to control us. We can recognize our hopes and ambitions without allowing them to fool us with insidious desert mirages. The more we long for water, the more water falsely appears.

As we get sucked in by the seduction of hope, or chained by the restriction of fear, we can notice and return. Just as we practice in meditation. Just like a fisherman employing “catch and release.” Notice our thinking just as it is. And then offer it back to the stream.

Even “higher” meditative states can be mere distraction if they keep us from encountering ourselves. Human experience involves the whole of reality: pain, sadness, and suffering, as well as joy, inspiration, and bliss. If we choose to “spiritually bypass” these, we become attached to the hope of a higher plane in fear of being tainted by an actual life. The Buddha said that life is suffering. When we bypass pain, we bypass life.

Thus, the human realm is said to be the most painful, as we are fully aware of our pain and the possibility of its cessation. And it is so easy to letour awareness slip and have hope steal us away with the promise of higher realms, or fear drag us down.

Below the human realm is the animal realm. Animals have tremendous wisdom and so much to teach us. But their existence is servile and contained in a shuttered awareness. Psychologically, it is a condition in which our options seem limited and our behavior becomes habitual. We repeat familiar patterns because they feel safer than the unknown. The animal realm can offer a kind of security, but it is the apparent safety of narrowed awareness rather than freedom. We enter it when we want nothing beyond what we already know, and when anything unfamiliar feels threatening.

Next is the hungry-ghost realm. Hungry ghosts are traditionally depicted with enormous mouths and bellies but impossibly narrow throats. They crave nourishment yet cannot receive it. We inhabit this realm whenever we cannot get enough. We may eat, smoke, shop, scroll, or surround ourselves with stimulation and still feel empty. Compulsive consumption is often an attempt to compensate for fear, loneliness, or trauma.

We are not enjoying what we consume; we are trying to fill something that consumption cannot reach.

This hunger can also take a visual form. I once walked down the street with a friend I was dating on the first warm day of the year. Everyone seemed beautiful, and my eyes kept wandering. Finally, she turned to me and said, “You look ridiculous when you do that.”

“Do what?” I asked.

“Continually give yourself away,” she replied. “It’s weak.”

She was right. I was giving my attention away repeatedly while receiving nothing but more hunger in return. Looking had become another form of hungry grasping.

Then comes the infamous hell realm, a state of such intense pain and/or depression that we cannot imagine escaping it. Hope and fear have collapsed into the black hole of anger and self-hatred. We encounter this when we are so enraged or despairing that neither light nor reason can reach us. Buddhist texts tell us the experience lasts until its karma is exhausted. Psychologically, it persists until we surrender hope and fear and accept what is.

If we do this, in time, the affliction will open just enough to afford us the space to remember our basic goodness. Once we recognize precious we are, and how precious this life is, we might see how much we are hurting ourselves. Then can begin to let go.

It’s important to note that we are talking about acceptance and release, not grasping for a hopeful mirage that, after a brief respite, will only lead back into the dark. Acceptance and release. Staying in the pain, and knowing – knowing, not hoping – that is will pass.

In this way we are remembering to stay human.

The human realm offers a middle way: remaining as open-hearted and present as we can be, remaining present between hope and fear. It is natural to imagine what we hope for, and worry about, what frightens us. But we need not let these bandits steal the present—and with it our agency and our lives.

Hope and fear usually exist outside of the present. Our practice is to not be taken away by fantasy, but to remain present and human as best we can.

Posted on by joseph mauricio

A LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS

The Faith to Face the Present

One thing I miss from my early Christian upbringing was the belief that something out there was caring for me, watching over me.

And when I felt cut off as though my spirit had darkened, I assumed I was failing. My disconnect from God was evidence of their displeasure. And so at times, I would resent God. “God fearing” translated to self-hating. While this cosmic psycho push pull afforded me lots of entertainment, it was a closed cycle that grew quickly tiresome.

It became clear, that God was a projection of my feelings at any given time. And that I used them as a personal assistant: give me this, get me that.

In time, I came to adopt a Buddhist point of view, which was less comforting, yet perhaps more rewarding. I found the comfort, solace, and protection I was yearning was accessible if I believed in myself.

My self.

But wasn’t it my self that led me into darkness in the first place?

When Buddhists speak of no self, they are saying that the self, as with God itself, is not a solid thing that can save or condemn. When we say, “inside myself,” we’re talking about a part of ourselves that is not solid. A part of our being that is vast and open.  This is called “Buddha Nature”.

Buddha literally means “awake.” The Buddha, the “awakened one”, was a historical being who instructed followers to work on themselves in order to overcome the delusions that kept them locked in cycles of suffering. As humans, we tend to see phenomena as we project them to be. For instance, we might see a vengeful God, or a loving God depending upon inner circumstance. This is a co-dependent cycle and is not wisdom born of clear seeing.

But if we come to believe, to understand, and to have faith, in Buddha nature, then we develop a relationship that is much deeper, stronger, and more rewarding than simply relying on ourselves. And it is also more reliable than anything beyond ourselves. Buddha Nature is the clarity from which we see the world clearly.

In this way, we are experiencing phenomena as what is called  “self-liberated” – which is to say, things are not how we interpret them they are as they are. We have no obligation to phenomena other than to respond appropriately. We are not required to change ourselves based on what others – or other forces – seem to dictate. We can come to have faith in a deeper and truer self that, although not solid, is always here with us.

So are we saying a self that is beyond ourselves yet within ourselves?

We are talking about a part of ourselves that is beyond the self—that is deeper, more open, and more connected to the vibrance, wisdom, and compassion of the universe. The part of ourselves that is the nature of all things. Buddha Nature is compassion and wisdom, which manifests as what is called luminosity. Like light, like the rays of the sun, luminosity points to an experience that is open and regenerative but not solid. Although not solid, luminosity can be focused toward very tangible and practical ends. Light is something we move through easily, and yet, if we sharpen its focus, it can cut through iron.

When we say that our Buddha nature lies within and beyond us, we’re saying that we are in touch with something greater than our corporeal form and well beyond our life experience. We are in touch with the universe. An important aspect of the experience of a universe is its ability to light itself, see itself, and transmit wisdom to all that exists within it. If we are able to feel that light within ourselves, we can connect to the light beyond ourselves.

In practical terms, this means that there is an aspect of our being that need not be defined, encapsulated, contained, or controlled, because it is well beyond our abilities to do so, but is a very tangible, practical, apparent, and present part of ourselves, nonetheless.

With our meditation practice, we train our mind to open to an experience of Buddha nature and the Buddha nature of others, the world and the universe. It is admittedly difficult for me to feel the Buddha nature of those who have harmed me or those who I feel do wrong. But I am absolutely committed to the view that it is not my job to determine who has done wrong. My job is to remain present and open and recognize those glimpses of light when I see them. There are some beings whose Buddha nature I cannot imagine opening my mind enough to see. Therefore, faith is important in those instances.

So, am I a being of light? Well, that seems a way to make light solid. It’s not the light that will save me. In fact, nothing will save me from what is happening. This is my beautiful life. It’s up to me to live as fully as I can.

When things become hard, dark and solid, I have faith that when I am able to return to the present moment, things will have the best chance to work in a way that is best for me. The present moment is devoid of expectation. So, we are not asking or demanding anything. We are here, with our feet on the ground, trusting that we are what we need, all that we need in this moment.

So, as with all things “Buddhist” the middle way is indicated. Letting go of both our need to control all eventualities, and our wish to curl up and have something save us. We do the work to keep our mind present and clear, and at some point we learn to open to space, Space may open to us.

Posted on by joseph mauricio

PROGRESS

Not Perfection

There is a saying in recovery rooms: “Progress, not perfection.” Perfectionism may appear to be a commitment to excellence, but it is often something more anxious and self-defeating. It comes from the fear that we are not good enough as we are—that we must perform, impress, or remain in control to earn our place in the world.

Recovery traditions sometimes describe this fear as a lack of trust in God. In the Shambhala tradition, we might say it reflects a lack of trust in our basic goodness: the inherent dignity and wakefulness beneath our habits, defenses, and social identities.

The recovery tradition also talks about asking a higher power to free us from the bonds of the self. They talk about relying less on our habitual defenses to extricate ourselves from the snares of life and more to surrendering to the will of God. In Buddhism we might draw a distinction between our defensive self and a higher self, which can be seen as Buddha Nature, or Basic Goodness.

Most of us learn to move through life by adopting different versions of ourselves. We become the student, the professional, the son or daughter, the parent, the funny one, or the person who always knows what to do. These identities are not necessarily false. They help us meet the demands of society. The trouble begins when we mistake them for the whole of who we are.

Then life becomes a performance. We move from mask to mask without asking who is underneath.

Because these identities are defensive, relying on them gradually erodes our confidence. We promote ourselves while privately fearing we have nothing to offer. We judge ourselves harshly and then overcompensate, swinging between feeling like the worst person alive and trying to become king of the universe. Lacking faith in ourselves, we try too hard and overdo nearly everything.

Buddha nature is sometimes compared to a diamond: indestructible, reflective, and clear. Yet we often hide this treasure from ourselves as carefully as if we were protecting it from thieves.

Early in my spiritual path, I lived in a meditation community. I had come from the New York comedy scene, an experience that had left me feeling largely hollow and unseen. Nevertheless, I believed people should laugh at my jokes. They were professional-grade jokes, after all. When the community failed to acknowledge my comedic brilliance, I found it deeply frustrating.

Eventually, I asked a dear friend why nobody seemed to appreciate my talent. He smiled and said, “People love you in spite of your bullshit, not because of it.”

It was painful, funny, and liberating. My jokes were not simply jokes; they were often attempts to impress people. And like many attempts to impress, they concealed more than they revealed. I was trying to control how others saw me because I did not trust that the person beneath the performance was worthy of being seen.

I am grateful that this strategy stopped working.

Over time, I began to believe that I was fundamentally good. I discovered that it was safe to be kind, vulnerable, and sometimes silent. As my confidence grew, other people’s jokes became more interesting. So did their tragedies, wisdom, and experiences. I could learn from them once I stopped spending so much energy promoting and defending myself.

This understanding also changes how we respond to harm. Basic goodness does not mean everyone behaves well, nor does compassion require us to excuse wrongdoing. People cause real damage, and accountability matters. But harmful actions often arise from fear, confusion, pain, and a desperate effort to compensate for insecurity. Recognizing this larger picture can help us avoid perpetuating the same suffering.

Between provocation and response, we can create a gap. In that gap, we can ask: What is happening inside me? Do I feel threatened, ashamed, or offended? What do I need? Will my reaction protect anyone, or will it simply continue the cycle?

The Buddhist path asks us to avoid causing harm and, where possible, to alleviate suffering. Each time we pause, pay attention, and choose a compassionate response, we strengthen our confidence. We accumulate evidence that we can meet life without hiding behind perfection, aggression, or performance.

Progress is possible precisely because perfection is unnecessary. Beneath all our masks and mistakes, something worthy remains. Our task is not to manufacture that goodness, but to trust it—and learn to live from it.

True confidence comes from finding our natural strength. Not strength based on egoic principles but strength based on our truth. The confidence of a mountain, an oak tree, or every blade of grass with the strength to be. Just be.

One way to move on the path without engaging (or enraging) our little monsters is to move slowly and have respect for the plateaus. Not moving is an opportunity to restock and regain our inner strength.

Do less in order to do more. Slow down in order to move quickly. Don’t buy into competition or transactional manipulations. Just be you, aware of you, and proud of what you are becoming. Beware stupid pride. Always scan your brain for defensiveness. Let go of stupid pride and relax.

Because you got this.

Posted on by joseph mauricio

NO MISTAKE

And No Problem

Learn from your mistakes, it is said. But I don’t believe we learn from our mistakes. I believe we learn from our wisdom. And the only mistake we truly make is to not pay attention. Then we fail to listen to our wisdom.

Especially when we make a mistake.

Indeed, we need literal instruction to learn a process. And in the process of learning, mistakes are not only a given but may often be a positive. Mistakes can create a shift in our attention toward a new paradigm, a new idea. There’s a line I love from songwriter Caroline Miner Smith that says, “Maybe losing is a life hack / So I get my life back / So I can start all over.”

Once we reboot, any mistake or occurrence that happened outside of our own tight little plan can be seen as an opportunity for a fresh reboot of awareness. But by identifying with the mistake, we likely obscure the wisdom. We become mistake laden and feel, beaten down by our own judgement.

I once heard a mindfulness teacher tell her students, “If you were paying attention, then time is never wasted.” I love this. From that point of view, mistakes are not wasted opportunities, nor are seemingly wasted or undervalued stretches of time, as long as they become reminders for us to be present. When we are present, there is nothing else we need. And we can work with whatever happens.

So, there is no mistake. And actually, no problem at all.

It may be that we wish situations were different than they are. But who is doing that wishing? And how does that wishing help us pay attention to what is actually happening?

This is where we make the mistake.

Something gnaws at us inside and we become triggered. We click out of our connection to the present and begin internally arguing with life because there is something else we want or perceive we need. We want to adjust time; for it to speed up or slow down. This creates cognitive dissonance. We become agitated. We start tapping our foot, drumming our fingers, darting our eyes from thing to thing. We fall victim to every distraction in our meditation. Due to anxiety, we feel we should be somewhere else doing anything else.

It’s as though every eye is upon us. We’re no longer aligned with what we’re actually doing, and so we trip over our own feet. Our sneakers are outrunning our mindfulness.

But this is only a problem when we fail to recognize it; when we mistake distractions for our life.

The only mistake we make is to not be present.

What does this mean?

When we are fully in the present, we are embodied in the present. Our physical form, our mental acuity, and our emotional being are aligned. Sometimes we say: strong body, clear mind, open heart. Grounded, clear, and accepting.

This is all we need.

The process is simply to return often enough in our meditation that we begin to recognize strong body, clear mind, open heart—not only in our meditation, but in our daily life. In time, we begin to identify with that wisdom manifestation rather than the obscurations to it. This begins to engender true confidence. Not the confidence born of bling, setting or status. But confidence in the fact that when we are present in body, spirit and mind we have all we need to meet the moment.

We spend so much time—perhaps wasted time—reaching for the bling outside of our grasp. But the way to scale tall mountains or cover long distances is to attend to each step. Knowing our ultimate destination does not require us to fixate on it. We should know it. See it in our mind and then trust that we can let it go and be present for them process.

For example, we decide we’re going to meditate for twenty minutes. We can trust time in that way. We don’t have to keep watching the clock to make sure we’re getting there. Indeed, watching the clock is not being present.

Time is not the enemy. In fact, time is the meditator’s ally. Rather than being impatient, we can acquiesce and be grateful that we have the time. For where are we running? Where are we going? To the end? As though meditation was a task to cross off a list. But meditation is an experience of being. It is rewiring our plastic neuro-brain so that we may be present with the process of life.

The meditation teacher Ponlop, Rinpoche said, “Speed is a fundamental disrespect for our being.”

So let’s honor our being and honor our time by relaxing into our lives and paying attention. And if our efforts are intended to lead us somewhere—whether it be the end of our meditation session or the end of a journey atop a mountain—our intentions are best served through mindful attention to what our life is offering us right now.

Perhaps honoring our being means trusting that we do not have to be anywhere other than where we are. We can know where we’re going without abandoning where we stand. We can have intentions without rushing toward them. We can make mistakes without turning against ourselves or our lives.

We simply return to strong body. Clear mind. Open heart.

And do this again and again until we get the point. As long as we are present there no mistake.

And no problem.

_______

Posted on by joseph mauricio

WHAT LIES BEYOND?

UNCOVERING WHO WE ARE

The key to understanding ourselves is to employ gentleness. This is important because we are organic beings. We will nurture plants on our windowsill but treat ourselves with a demanding impatience before we’re even out of bed. Pushing ourselves is counterproductive as none of us likes being told what to do. Especially by ourselves.

Coming to know ourselves, and how to work with that person, takes gentleness, patience and commitment. This is not unlike a courtship. Gentleness is key in moving past the watchful guardians of ego. Ego is the wound-tight mental structure intended to help us fit in with a given social milieu. This may change from situation to situation. Unfortunately, ego likes to work undercover and so we have the impression that these faćades are all “me”.  Hence, ego obscures who we really are by making us think everything is about us. This all works smoothly when we feel comfortable and confident. But should we feel challenged, triggered, ‘less than’ or insecure our ego will pull one of it’s strategies from it’s bag of tricks.

Ego has a number of strategies. We might try to impress others so they will admire us. But being admired is not the same as being accepted. And these days humans are tired of competition. Darwinian food-chain climbing is played out. It’s exhausting.

But our intrepid ego remains undaunted. If besting the others fails, we might take a weaker position below them whether that be service or subservience. But whether high or low, ego’s strategies will ultimately fall short because we’re not addressing who we are. You can fool all of me some of the time and some of me all the time. And it might feel like me and it might look like me, but I am not a duck, and never will be.

Somewhere inside, we know it’s not real. Whether it slams us in the face, or festers silently over time, we know we’re playing games. And games have only short term reward.

So what drives this? We were born with a deep biological programming to fit in because there is more protection in the herd. Whether we’re leading the charge, or trailing behind, we have a gripping urge to be ‘part of’. Ego is the structure tasked with helping us fit.

Ego can be helpful if, through deepening meditation practice, we transform self-consciousness into self-awareness and become able to see our social faces. And then, as long as we don’t believe them, we can employ them mindfully. But when ego lies unseen, it can also be very limiting to our growth. Because in order to protect us, it will reduce our frames of awareness down to manageable quanta it can control. This involuntary ignorance narrows our world, but sadly also limits our life.

Frankly, seeing ourselves can be a very de-stabilizing experience.

But self-knowledge is integral to spiritual growth. If we come to know ourselves we may become willing to grow beyond our defenses. This can be scary. Who will we meet there? Who hides below the façade? Who are we before we have a plan? What will happen if we’re not in the game? Will we still be loved? Or will we be hounded into the fields alone?

Breathe out. One step at a time. We’re in a gently insistent courtship with someone we love and, perbaps, would love to know better.

OMG love!? Do we really need to love this being? The comedian Jordan Jensen has a wonderful routine where she says “love myself? I didn’t ask to be with this bitch. I just ended up here.” And for some of us, yes, we’re in a contentious relationship with our closest partner. Maybe we learned that from our upbringing. The schemes of ego replicating what the milieu has shown us. Locked in the trauma dance of ego.

And if we’re genuinely satisfied here then we might live happily unhappily in heated turmoil. A rule of ego is “do what you’ve done, then do it again. Then do it again.” Some of us find abuse comforting. Someone is paying attention. We’re being seen. But is that bruised flinching person really all we are? Or, maybe we’re the rageful abuser?

Actually, our minds are complex enough that we can be both, and still make it to work in the morning. But isn’t this exhausting? And, the saddest part is we’re so caught in the game, we never get to see the truth of who we are. We just see everything covering us, hiding us in the name of protecting us. I truly believe that somewhere in all of that is someone worth caring for. Maybe love is a strong word for someone we’re just coming to know. But with attention, we can begin sense our way in.

Classical Buddhism would say there is no one to find. But maybe that means there is everything to discover. Ego describes the limits of our imagination and, as such, defines the limits of our experience. But maybe we were meant to discover more. Rather than believing the stories we tell ourselves, we can look past them into a world unfolding before us. A world not under our control. We can choose to be part of that unfolding. Or, we choose to remain in the half-light of fear.

Or, we can do both, opening as we can, when we can and then shutting down when it gets too much. And with gentle probing we can coax ourselves into flowering into our Buddha Nature.

We can’t manufacture Buddha Nature. We can’t make it happen because it’s already there. It appears when the clouds part. With patience, we’ll eventually come to trust that openness. And in that openness maybe we’ll feel our essential being. Our Buddha Nature.

And maybe we’ll even fall in love.

Posted on by joseph mauricio

HOLDING THE COURSE

Why is it so hard to pay attention?

Our lives are so precious. Our time here so limited. And in that brief moment there is so much we might learn. So much to feel. So much to see. So much to understand.

We have so far to grow. And, in my opinion, we should never stop.

As we travel forward in time and space, deeper currents beneath the surface move us often unknowingly. And we are unconsciously fearful of deep feelings. Especially, as they tend to destabilize the “me” projection of ourselves we so cling to. So, we close our eyes and the currents to drive us as they may. As if we were piloting a ship, trying our best to keep on course while unseen movement inside is influencing our trajectory.

A ship’s captain has fairly tangible evidence of where the ship is heading and how to guide it toward its proper orientation. The currents move us to the left of our desired approach, so we tack against that and bring ourselves back on track.  The sea is a fluid situation, you might say. The ship’s captain doesn’t need to understand the reasons for the currents in order to steer the boat to keep it on course. The captain needs to be present and guiding the vessel with manual care and attention.

A good captain feels as much as they know. They see life as a dynamic.

Of course, it would be good to follow previous experience and maps of these currents. But maps are themselves just ideas, and the reality of the ocean needs direct engagement. When we study meditation, the nervous system and our own psychology we’re creating maps to direct our journey.  But maps are not the destination. Our study needs to take a back seat when we’re doing.  The surface reveals the port, or the destination. Looking at our life, we try to hold ourselves to a destination while ignoring the feelings beneath. And hence we are tossed off course.

The object may be our breath, but we need to visit Tahiti, argue with our family, and long to be anywhere else before we get there. Along the way, we judge our experience as failing since we’re not always with the breath. The ship’s captain is not fixated on the port. They orient toward the port and keep returning to the simplest, but rarely the straightest, trajectory. The process is one of coming back. We veer left and steer back. We do this to accommodate the currents beneath. There is no judgement about not maintaining an unattainable perfect experience.

We don’t need to understand the reasons for this inner turbulence to understand the dynamic between trying to keep ourselves present and forces constantly throwing up other possibilities. In meditation, we’re dealing with what is happening now. Yet what’s happening now is a deeper and more dynamic experience then we realize. Due to our fixation on the surface and accomplishing our journey or our destination we ignore everything else around us until something moves or unsettles us. The reasons may not be apparent, but our mind will move from the simplicity of beathing, toward complex fantasy or fixation.  

When we see this, like a good captain our executive mind simply steers us back.

Suffice to say, if the body is not settled the mind will not rest. And if our heart is triggered our body will find it hard to settle. Like a parent driving children fighting in the back  of the car we won’t necessarily engage in the logic of their arguments. We just want quiet so we can pay attention to the road. But  in the case of meditation, our mind just flits away from the discomfort. Our job is keep our balance through the turbulence enabling the executive captain to keep us coming back to the point.

And what is that point? Breath is life. And returning to our breath leads us to our life.

And being part of our life is the point.

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

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.

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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.