Category: Writing

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

CARING FOR THE CRAZY

Awakening Our Loving Kindness

 

Our minds are huge—larger than we understand—capable of being incredibly sane, clear, and beautiful. But at times, quite the opposite. We can get lost in cul-de-sacs of unresolved reasoning, like a kid in a hall of mirrors distorting and reflecting upon itself.

Today I want to address the circular, repetitive, sometimes violent thoughts that bang around our minds from time to time. Often at the worst times. Perhaps on the eve of a busy day while trying to get to sleep our brain instigates an imaginary dialogue, as if trying to resolve an unresolvable equation.

I should have said this. I could have said that. Why didn’t I just get up and leave?

One particularly curious part of this game is when there seems to be a false resolution. We roll back toward slumber, but after a moment of peace the mind shoots up again: Waiut! I could have said this!  I should have told them that …

When this happens, we are too focused on trying to sleep. And that’s a problem. Each time we look at the clock, we calculate the remaining hours until the alarm rings, we are focused on something that is not the issue. The problem isn’t that we can’t sleep. We sleep almost every day. The issue is that we can’t stop our brain. We can’t let go of something.

When I get stuck with something after I’ve been triggered, I can feel how compromised my inner world becomes. My thoughts, my feelings, and my concerns around the issue stop being trustworthy. I am trapped in a self-referential world, trying different experiments to free myself, only to arrive at the same unhappy result. A crazy person once said this was the definition of insanity. I am flagellating myself, desperately fixated on what I can’t resolve.

But what is actually happening?

Let’s look at the particulars. This endless, expansive, extraordinary mind of ours was originally developed as a defensive organ. As humanity evolved, we lost our fangs, our claws, our venom—but we gained cerebral processing power. In early times, when we were threatened, our minds had the ability to strategize and escape. Likewise, we could strategize ways to increase sustenance for ourselves, our family and our clan. The mind became the great problem-solver. And to this day, it will try to solve problems—whether or not we have a problem. All it needs to initialize is to be triggered. And then, although the lions our ancestors ran from are no longer here to chase us, we are still running. We are still strategizing. We are still trying to find a release from danger.

Unfortunately, when nothing is actually happening—when we are not facing a tiger but simply a feeling of being threatened—the mind can’t find the culprit. Without a real object to land on, it spins freely, unable to find what isn’t actually there. Sometimes we’re trying to find a way out of a problem we can’t find.

So how do we work with this? I have come to think of it in five stages.

  • The first stage is knowing that it will leave.

This matters because when we are caught in the cycle, it feels permanent. We are in pain, and we are desperately trying to find a way out. But even in the most intense moments, there are gaps—moments of forgetting, moments when the deluge softens, when the mind is calm, even for only a moment.

This stage is about recognizing that those moments of peace are not accidents. They are evidence. When the storm returns, it is not because the temporary storm is stronger. It is because the calm, which is the mind’s true nature, is trying to break through.

  • The second stage is recognizing what is happening now.

If we trace the experience backward—looking for causes and conditions—we can quickly open a Pandora’s box. Whatever is happening now likely connects to past wounds and future fears. But this stage is about cutting through all of that with Occam’s razor, or the sword of Manjushri. What is actually happening?

Not what we wish were happening. Not “I’m not getting enough sleep.” Not “I’m driving myself crazy.” No judgment, no speculation. Just simple recognition: This is what is happening. We can’t stop our mind. That’s what’s happening. You might call this “facing the crazy.”

But stop calling it crazy.

  • The third stage is

Instead, look at what’s happening without judgment or speculation. Allow it to be as it is. There is a basic law here: until we accept something we can’t discover how to work with it. And until we do that, we’re kind of stuck with it. So, before we do anything, we have to stop labeling it as broken and simply say: This is what’s happening.

Acceptance does not mean approval. It means we stop fighting. It means acknowledging reality.

  • The fourth stage is beginning to work with it.

This is usually quick up to this point, but here’s where the work begins. Once I have recognized and accepted this experience, and once I have stopped judging or trying to fix something I don’t yet understand, I can turn toward it with care. Maybe even respect. Damn this is some powerful shit.

I can ask: What is this really about? What does this need?

Usually, the surface story is not the whole story. Anger may be covering fear. Fear may be covering hurt. But beneath all of that, something more immediate is happening.

This stage is about listening rather than solving. We are not trying to fix anything. That fixing impulse can be aggressive—a kind of inner patriarchal clampdown. Instead, we are opening to something sensitive and delicate inside us, something that may be wounded. We need to proceed with caution. We’re holding space and listening in. And by doing this we’re accessing a larger part of the mind that sees and cares for the spinning.

A mind that can navigate past the defensive layers, and without triggering them, touch that wound directly. And that does not need words, language, prescriptions, or explanations. It needs to be felt, acknowledged and held.

Why can’t the wounded child go to sleep?

  • The fifth stage is loving-kindness.

Rather than struggling to change anything, we can recognize, accept, and work with the experience through love and kindness. By taking the time to do this with love and care it becomes clear that we are not the turmoil. We are the love. Rather than being victimized by the torrent of mind, we access the greater mind of loving acceptance. We are that mind. We can rest in her arms.

When a child runs into the room because it fears monsters, it does not need a clinical explanation. It does not need a scientific breakdown of why monsters do not exist. It does not need to be yelled at or pushed back into bed. It needs to be held. Comforted. Assured that it is safe.

Even as adults who know there is no danger, something inside still needs to feel that safety before it can rest. Before we send the child back to bed, we might ask: Are you okay to be brave now? Are you brave enough to sleep? We are not speaking to logic. We are speaking to feeling. We are taking the time to find the tenderness, to feel it, and to listen. If this process robs me of sleep, it will have been worth it—because I have learned how to work with something I cannot control.

The tigers of mind and the monsters beneath the bed are not what’s real. What’s real is the power of our love, and the truth of our suffering—that we have been hurt, that we have been shaped by experience, but that we can learn to care for ourselves.

And sometimes we’re late for work.

________________________

 

Can’t sleep?

Can’t still your raging mind?

Can’t find serenity in the storm? 

Turn your attention away from the clock

To your heart 

Let the anxiety remind you

You have access to a heart so big

It can hold a screaming mind 

A heart so strong it can ease your panic.

A heart so steady it can still the storms we all endure 

The brain screams loudly

And loving kindness is quiet

so it needs to be awakened and engaged

Awaken loving kindness

And let that hold you 

 

 

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THE JOY OF SADNESS

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HELP

 

______
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

OUTSIDE THE BOX

The   S  P    A       C        E   Between

Opportunities appear when we open to possibility. Opening is releasing the grip of tension. Despite conventional renderings, or panicky manifestations, thinking we know what we want doesn’t always help. When we cling to a specific outcome we miss whatever else life may present.

And sometimes getting what we want is its own particular torture.

As the Bard wrote, “ah, there’s the rub“. When we are opening to our desires, we are also exposing ourselves to the possibility of danger.  So, to hedge our bets, we close in on something, as if to capture it. Rather than opening to desire, we are closing down on the things we desire.

In this way, we are living in expectation rather than possibility much of the time .

Living in possibility requires we step outside the box. We move through life jumping from box to box like cats. Boxes soothe us. They define us. They protect us from the overwhelming vastness of everything that doesn’t fit neatly. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the mind building these cradles of protection. The problem begins when we believe they’re real and forget we’re inside one.

That’s when belief starts masquerading as truth.

Belief does not equal truth. In fact, the stronger our belief, the less we see. The more we cling, identify, defend, and perform, the narrower our vision becomes. Belief hardens into a thing. And things, block the view.

Things pretend to be solid. They look self-contained. But they are designations — temporary labels slapped onto dynamic processes. What we call a thing is usually just the visible tip of an interdependent, interdynamic iceberg beneath.

Take any object. A chair.* A body. A flag. Reduce it to atoms. Then reduce those atoms to subatomic particles. Many of those don’t even behave like tangible matter. Even protons and neutrons dissolve into stranger, less graspable components. With each reduction, solidity fades into pure energy.

The Buddha taught that there is no independent, permanent thing. No thingness, you might say.

Time tells the same story. The chair I’m sitting on feels solid enough. But it’s degrading as I write this. It was once a seedling, then a tree, then lumber, then furniture. One day it will be firewood, ash, soil. Compared to the age of the planet, its entire existence is a flicker.

Everything is in flux. And yet we try and freeze the flux by singling out a parcel and gripping to it with all our might. We turn movement into identity.

“I’m a good son.”; “I’m the black sheep.”; “I’m a patriot.”; “I’m progressive.”; “I’m conservative.”; “I’m spiritual.”

I’m a Buddhist.

But even that is a box if I think it makes me something. In fact, there is nothing to hold on to with any certainty.  We crawl into these psychological enclosures and call them reality. We defend them. We argue from inside them. We build whole lives around them. And because we believe them, they feel solid.

But belief does not equal truth.

The more tightly we hold a belief, the more it becomes an obstruction. It filters out contradiction. It edits complexity. It reduces the living world to manageable pieces. It trades reality for control.

Here’s something unsettling: what’s most real might not be identifiable things at all. It might be the space between them.

In a live talk, I sometimes ask students to shout out everything they see in the room. They call out the ceiling, the lights, the cushions, the walls, the other people. Then I ask: what is most prevalent here? What is most prevalent, by far?

Space.

There is more space in the room than anything else. More space between objects. More space within objects. More space between atoms. More space inside the atom itself. If you include the space between things and the space inside those things, space dwarfs everything. There is more dark matter, and (thusfar) unknowable space in space.

And yet, everything is born from space.

Everything we see, and believe to be real, is only makeup on space. Yet, we don’t notice space. We notice surfaces. And from those surfaces we build belief systems. We construct narratives. We freeze dynamic reality into slogans and identities.

We do this personally. We do this politically. We do this culturally.

Nations are not fixed. Political movements are not fixed. Generations are not fixed. Every “how it is” is already unraveling into what it isn’t. Each new wave of voters arrives with a different nervous system, different media diet, different mythology. What continues isn’t permanence. It’s momentum.

Yet we cling as if the box will hold forever.

We rarely notice how we slide from one enclosure to the next. Somehow we move from curious children into solid, themed adults without recognizing the transition. We inherit boxes. We decorate them. We defend them. We mistake them for ourselves.

We do this because boxes feel safe.

The first step toward freedom isn’t smashing them. It’s noticing them. The second step is seeing that they have no solid walls.

If nothing is fixed, how do I stand? If identity is fluid, who am I? If beliefs are provisional, what anchors me?

But emptiness doesn’t mean nothing exists. It means nothing exists independently or permanently. Everything arises in relationship. Everything depends on everything else. That’s interdependence.

Subjectively, this can feel like release. An opening. A loosening of tension. In Buddhist language, it points toward Nirvana — not annihilation, but the end of clinging. The end of defending the box as if your life depends on it.

Between the boxes lies space. And space feels dangerous because space is undefended. It’s exposed. There’s no script in space. No ready-made identity. No tribe guaranteeing your place. Just awareness without enclosure.

We crave that openness. You can feel it when your life starts to itch. When the role you’ve been playing gets tight. When the identity that once felt powerful now feels like a costume. So, we long to step out. We read saying like “life begins at the end of your comfort zone.” Sounds good, but stepping into space feels naked.

And this rings the alarm of our defenses. The protective systems in our mind resist it. They tighten the walls. They reinforce the story. They tell you that outside the box is chaos, threat, annihilation. But maybe it’s freedom. Maybe it’s the annihilation of an older purpose. And like every form of life since there was life, maybe old purposes give way to new life.

So the real question isn’t whether boxes exist. They do. The mind will keep building them. The question is whether you know you’re in one.

Are you defending yourself? Or are you defending the box? Are you believing a story? Or, are you watching the story from a vantage of clear seeing?  Because be boxes — in that uncomfortable, undefended space — is the possibility of something far more alive than certainty.

And that’s terrifying.

And liberating.

 

 

  • *The late Sir Harold Pinter wrote an exchange between 2 brothers: The older brother Teddy, who is a Philosophy Professor, patronizingly tells Lenny, a streetwise pimp, to “take a chair”. “I prefer to Stand”, Lenny declines and then asks Teddy why philosophers are always saying things like “take a chair”. But once you’ve taken it, then what?
  • Lenny goes on the defensive and says Lenny operates “in” things, but he, the philosopher, operates “on” things. This is an explanation of in and out of the box. Lenny, we find our in Act 3, is simply in a larger, more insidious, box.

 

 

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Posted on by joseph mauricio

BETWEEN THE BOXES

PART 1 – The Comforts of Limitation

I’ll admit a small secret: I watch cat videos. I particularly love cats in boxes, especially big cats. My favorite is a tiger fighting its way into a box far too small for its body. It squeezes, contorts, until it bursts the cardboard apart—and then lies there, content, half inside a ruined container that clearly offers no real protection. The perfect caption read: “He is a cat, after all.”

That image sent me down a cat rabbit hole. Large, ferocious animals squeezing boxes that could not possibly hold them, yet they somehow get inside and find peace. What became obvious is that support and safety was never structural. It was pure feeling. Even when the box fails, the animal still experiences safety in the feeling of enclosure.

Anyone who has lived with cats knows that cats find the smallest, darkest hidey-holes everywhere in the house. We shake the food bag, jingle the cat bell, call their name—only to discover them calmly folded into a space we didn’t know existed. Sometimes just glowing eyes in the darkness. This is ancient mammalian behavior: nesting, concealment, protection.

Humans are mammals too, but with a difference. We’ve developed cognitive reasoning that sometimes overrides instinct—and sometimes merely disguises it. Our protective urge is still alive, but instead of crawling into physical boxes, we build psychological ones. This is the humamamalian quandary. The predator and the prey both live inside us, and they both want shelter.

Serial killers are often described as animals or monsters, yet to their perspective many describe killing as euphoric, making them feel godlike. My ethical framework refuses to accept this as anything other than a catastrophic illusion—but the illusion itself is revealing. The experience of being “beyond the box” can feel like absolute freedom. The difference is crucial. The serial killer’s god-experience is ego at its apex: “I am at the center.” Awakening, by contrast, is the collapse of the center altogether.

The serial killer has a solid center and is a only a god only from the point of view of the mouse they feel themselves to be. Sometimes the box bears no resemblance to our reality.

Recovery programs talk about “rational lies”: the mind constructing stories to justify acting out. When we believe these lies, we fail to see the box that enslaves us. We hide inside frames that feel like full states of being but are actually partial. That limitation is the price we pay for comfort.

Humammalian boxes have evolved to be efficient in a modern society with its multifarious information streams. We don’t carry crates, we switch identities. The phone rings and it’s our mother—suddenly we are someone smaller, older patterns activated. We arrive at work and assume another form entirely, a professional self designed to manage stress, competition, evaluation. Each box offers a perspective and a presentation. We become the person of the box we’re in.

Like cats, we often enter these boxes even when no immediate threat exists. The mere sight of the box is enough. From inside, we forget the box and simply experience the world as “safe enough.” Sometimes we scan the environment. Sometimes we fall asleep.

The problem is not that boxes exist. They are adaptive. They can even be brilliant. The problem is that they are fragile and temporary, and we forget that. No matter how ferocious we feel inside a box, it will eventually fail. Like my cat Roger hiding in an empty suitcase to avoid the vet, all the box does is delay the inevitable. Roger still got his shot. At the end of his life, he hid under the bed, refusing comfort, choosing his own final enclosure. His last moments were on his terms, in his own way, in his own box.

We do this too. Especially when we’re afraid.

 

PART 2 – The Space Between Boxes

I’ve served as a hospice caregiver, and I’ve watched people approach death by crawling into familiar patterns. An old man who wanted a drink before he went. A woman who smoked until the very end. We retreat into behaviors that once soothed us, even when they no longer protect us. Sometimes especially then.

Alternately, I’ve seen those accomplished in meditation who met their deaths as a new beginning, or a next stage.  They have experienced their own ego deaths any times – each time they stepped from their box. From outside the box, they could see impermanence, they understood the box game and knowing there was nothing to hold on to, when the time came they were in acceptance.

But, for most of us, clinging to the frail and changing boxes we think are “me”, we are afraid of death as it will tear us from everything we are attached to. For this reason, we construct boxes everywhere throughout our life. Over time, these boxes harden. What once was adaptive becomes restrictive. Sadly, we begin to live beneath the bed long before we die.

In relationships, we say things like “don’t play games with me,” yet games are simply boxes interacting with other boxes. To see yourself manipulating another person for love—causing pain in order to secure pleasure—is fascinating – when we see it from beyond the box.  But if someone points out our manipulation, we might jump back in and defend the box. Threatened boxes become rigid. Our available responses narrow.

At any given moment, we are the box we’re in. And yet each box has an edge. Between boxes there is space. That space may feel an uncomfortable contrast to the supposed safety of a box. So we hop from identity to identity like the floor is lava: worker, rebel, lover, child, controller, pleaser. The space between feels like annalization.

Meditation is learning to tolerate that fall.

Contrary to fantasy, meditation is not about finding a better box called “a clear mind.” That, too, is a trap. Although a clear mind exists and is considered a mark of meditation training clarity appears, and will disappear. Cloudy mind replaces it. without warning.  Thinking mind. Dozy mind. The movement of mind is natural unless we freeze it. Turning any of these into an identity is a fool’s game. Literally, we are fooling ourselves into believing nothing just because we’ve frozen an idea in place.

The only box we need in meditation is the body. Sitting. Breathing. Not because the breath is sacred, but because it is present. Each time the past arises, we notice it, feel it, and return. Each time the future tugs at us with anxiety, we notice and return. Not to suppress—but to release the grip of limitation.

One of the sneakiest boxes is the one that says, “I am meditating.” It rejects experience in the name of progress. But awakening is not refinement; it is spaciousness. The difference between a god-experience and awakening is simple: one puts me at the center, the other removes the center entirely.

Animals reset. Humans accumulate. We carry neurological echoes of fear long after the threat has passed. Over time, the boxes we retreat into become fewer and more solid. Eventually, there is a final box waiting. But moment to moment, we are reborn into boxes constantly. Each unnoticed transition is another quiet imprisonment.

Buddhist teaching suggests that death removes the box entirely, and rebirth is shaped by the boxes we inhabited. Whether or not one accepts that cosmology, it is undeniably true psychologically. We are continuously rehearsing our confinement.

Liberation does not require destroying boxes. It requires seeing them. Feeling the discomfort of the space between them. Trusting that openness will not kill us—though it may unseat us.

The tiger rests because it feels safe enough to see the world clearly. Not because the box is strong, but because the animal is at ease. Practice is learning that same ease without needing the boxes.

That is real strength. Resting in the space between the boxes we can see the boxes as an ever morphing game. Like kids playing fort, we believe the game, yet know its not real life.

Can we rest in the space outside our boxes without being locked into them?