Category: Writing

Posted on by joseph mauricio

HELP

 

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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?

Posted on by joseph mauricio

THE ATMOSPHERE OF VENUS

For Valentine’s Day 

 

Valentine’s Day is set aside to commemorate falling in love. Saint Valentine, roses and chocolate, Cupid, and Venus—the morning star named for the goddess of love—are classic symbols of romantic love.

But, as with romance itself, surface appearances often conceal deeper realities. St. Valentine was a tragic figure. Roses have thorns. Chocolate spikes blood sugar and precipitates an emotional crash. Cupid is a hunter with the aim of a baby. And Venus, the planet named for the goddess of love, so beautiful as the first glimmer of hope in the morning sky, actually has a surface temperature of 450°F, a claustrophobic atmosphere of Methane gas. It rains sulfuric acid. It’s seismic disquiet has earthquakes and volcanic eruptions daily. It spins backwards, and each day lasts as long as a year.

And yes—this is the planet named for the goddess of love.

Not to rain acid on anyone’s parade, but problems with romantic love arise when we fail to look beyond our projections to see the truth beneath.  We will never truly see another if we fail to recognize ourselves. Everything we grasp becomes poison if we fail to grasp ourselves. Loving another without knowing ourselves is like putting on silken finery without having bathed. Surface beauty disguises disillusionment without internal clarity.  When we look to someone without self-awareness they will remain mere projections in our internal dramas. We cannot know another if we fail to know ourselves. We cannot love another if we do not love ourselves.

Self-love is the requisite for loving. We talk a lot about this idea of self-love. But what does that actually mean? Practically speaking, terms like self-reliance, self-respect, and self-support may be more useful. We cannot fully love what we do not understand.

The idea of self-love is vague and undefined, much like much of our cultural language. To make self-love practical, we can look at the actions that lead toward it. For meditators, that may mean developing awareness, wisdom, and clarity about ourselves—and the willingness to go beyond ourselves and work with the world around us. However, we little help to our community, to the other beings that make up the life we are part of, if we lack self-familiarity and have not developed self-reliance, self-respect, and self-support leading to self-awareness.

Without self-awareness, our world is reduced transactions with two-dimensional tools: I want this. I want that. The path of meditation suggests we can step beyond ego’s base needs and begin to see and function clearly in the world. In relationships, we often hear that we must place another’s needs above our own. Yet, seeing ourselves requires that we don’t lose ourselves.  Honoring ourselves enough to go beyond ourselves without giving ourselves away; it is setting aside primal reactivity and learning to listen. Listening does not require believing. In fact, it works best when belief is suspended. With self-familiarity—developed through meditation—we can hear what the other person thinks they need. And that distinction matters. Wants, desires, and needs are not the same. “I need you to be quiet right now” is not the same as “please be quiet right now.” Our needs are often confused with wants. By becoming fixated on the surface experience of what we think we want, we often lose ourselves and actually fail to support our needs.

Pining away whining for someone else to love us nor provide for us will bring only insecurity and dependence. And news flash: dependence is not love. Hurting, yearning, self-flagellation are all very dramatic, but they are not love. Pain is not an expression of love. Pain is often the self-absorption that comes from lack of awareness.

This can be remedied through meditation. By sitting with ourselves patiently we develop familiarization which naturally leads to self-respect and self-awareness. And from self-awareness, love—caring and affection—arises on its own. Our base nature is clear, kind, and compassionate. In the Buddha’s later teachings came the radical notion that all beings possess Buddha-nature—an innate seed of wakefulness. This wakefulness can be recognized and refined through self-awareness, cultivated through meditation. Returning to the present moment is like Occam’s razor, cutting to what is essential so we can see clearly.

So beginning a meditation practice is like a courtship. We are slowly, deliberately and patiently learning to trust ourselves enough to open and reveal our Buddha Nature.

Loving ourselves doesn’t mean we have to like ourselves all the time. But if we look beyond judgment, assumption, and neglect, meditation may offer us the self-awareness and dignity to recognize someone we might like. And all of this is an act of loving.  Sitting there with yourself, quelling the storms by seeing the storms, learning to hold space for the longest relationship you’ve had in this life. Learning to fall in love with no one else around.

And from there, we can look beneath the surface and begin to love others.

 

 

Posted on by joseph mauricio

LEARNING TO SURRENDER

Where Do We Go If We Let Go?

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on by joseph mauricio

CUTTING THROUGH

The Signal in the Noise

 

Cutting Through is a term coined by Trungpa, Ripoche. It was inspired by a Tibetan Buddhist practice called “Trekcho” which is a series of practices used to cut through obstacles.

This notion was foundational to Trungpa as he developed his teachings for the West. Faced with the profusion of conflicting and confusing information in his new home, it seemed the energy of cutting through was a very good place to begin. The first book he published in the United States was the seminal Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism in which he wrote about releasing ourselves from the trap of using spiritual practices for material ends. More generally, cutting through refers to a fundamental energy that can be developed to cut past mental complication and confusion. It is not something we need to try to do but simply a natural aspect of our mind that we can isolate, develop and employ when needed.

We tend to think that extricating ourselves from webs of confusion would be a complicated practice. This is not necessarily so. Rather than adding complexity to complication, the practice of Trekcho is a like lightning strike or a hot knife through butter. When confusion arises instead of getting bogged down in the minutia of clashing narratives, we could simply cut through and effortlessly move past. This is an assertive application of mind that can be employed, as needed, to clarify and simplify situations in life.  It is essential, however, that our view is to help rather than harm all concerned.

A cat mom will swipe at an unruly kitten to keep it in line. The strike is instructive and after the lesson is conveyed, there are no residual hurt feelings. Unlike humans who imbed psychological narratives to everything, mammals just do and move on. This is natural. Trekcho is natural. It is action in its purest form. This “clean” cat mother action is representative of the Vajra family in the Tibetan Five Wisdom tradition. It is cutting through the noise directly to the signal. In its wisdom form, Vajra energy is characterized by sharpness, clarity and decisive action. But Vajra has a shadow side. When in the service of self, the energy manifests as anger, frustration or impatience. The inflection point between the wisdom of clarity to neurotic anger comes as we are pulled from doing what is needed for all concerned, into self-interest, prejudice or resentment.  When the energy is self-serving it becomes destructive rather than constructive.

Vajra energy is so potent it becomes very important to remind our psyche that we are employing it for the benefit of beings.  When we say, “benefit of beings” we mean all beings concerned –  including, but not exclusively, ourselves. As it is so easy to slip into self interest, all formal Trekcho practice begins with acknowledgement of a wisdom lineage and an assertion of the Bodhisattva Vow.

Like mom cat we are not analyzing, we are doing. Cutting through is pure action. Just make it simple. Occam’s razor is a scientific principle the states when you have a preponderance of possibilities, the simplest possibility is our first step. Usually, it’s right in front of our face.

Finding the signal within the noise, or the point in the profusion of life’s information, means we are not adding further complication but instead cutting through discursiveness and ignorance. This is an application of a stabilized mind. Often people mistake ignorance for meditation. Spiritual bypassing is employing what we’ve learned in meditation to avoid the sharp edges of reality. Trungpa famously said “meditation is not a vacation from irritation.”  It is about dealing with life and learning to keep balance and poise in the turmoil. It is not jettisoning to a dissociative state free of other people’s worries.  We are other people.  Lofty ideals make us feel we’re destined for something greater while we’re up to our knees in swamp water. We might notice the slow, steady movement of crocodiles or alligators or whatever the heck it is in the swamps. If we want to help others we have to cut through the judgments, doubt and noise and admit we’re in a vat of trouble.

Cutting through is hard medicine for hard times.

The image for cutting through is the sword of Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom. However, the sword he wields not a sword of destruction. It is sword of wisdom.  It is said the sword is so sharp it cuts through the noise without violence. The sword of Manjushri cuts past the obstacles with not credit or blame. It is so sharp it moves through obstacles as if they weren’t there. This is possible, because, in fact, they aren’t really there. Most of the obstacles that we face are made-up or fake news or our own judgment, doubt and shame.  Rather than creating more noise by arguing the point we just cut through to the point.

The sword of prajna that is so sharp sometimes merely gripping its handle is all we need. Remembering that this is all made up. Remembering elaboration and complication are never the point.  Having the confidence to know that and then let go.  A dull knife cannot cut, so you hack maybe saw, but you make a mess and infinitely more pain.  By developing clarity and sharpening our wisdom we cut past hacking and sawing to cutting through.  through but the sharpest knife but without even application it just sees the confusion and we’re past it effortlessly and decisively.

Decisive and effortlessness. Sometimes we think the antidote to complications and confusion would be a more aggressive complication. But that “fire with fire” approach is the dull knife of our ego assertion.  Vajra decisiveness is so clear, and so sharp that cutting through is effortless. We don’t antagonize the obstacle, nor do we try and assert our point. We just simply cut through and step beyond.

Posted on by joseph mauricio

FIERCE COMPASSION

Staring in the Face of Hate

 

Lately there are times I find myself yelling at my computer. That’s embarrassing because as a Buddhist I’m committed to a path of nonviolence and compassion. I do what I can to my maintain emotional balance. I try to stay politically neutral and focus on the human qualities beneath the actions. And like many of us, I’m becoming increasingly frustrated.

But that frustration is starting to feel violent toward myself. I’m not sure that a philosophical soft focus is actually seeing clearly. I’m angry. But do I put nonviolence on hold long while I scream at the screen? Do I have to release myself from my vows of compassion?

Or can compassion speak to the totality of my feelings? Can compassion be fierce? Can there be nonviolence married to activism? Can we be assertive without aggression? Can we engage with life even when we feel overwhelmed and impotent? Well, as our last great President said, “yes we can.”

First of all, we can relax. It’s not your fault. It’s not the world’s fault. It’s not even Donald or Stephen Miller or Kristy Noem’s fault. We may hate many things in this world, but if we hold that hatred inside, or swallowed it in embarrassment, we become victims. We’re allowing the hurt of a hurtful world to hurt ourselves. And that is helping no one. Even reactions we deem understandable, depression, fatigue, teeth grinding anxiety, while forgivable, are not helping anyone. And this makes us feel inadequate, which makes everything worse.

But I’m convinced we can develop compassion strong enough to let ourselves become angry, or depressed or anxious. How we are, who we are is all we are. And if we’re dedicated to helping the world we need ourselves. Yes, we can.

Mealy mouth hallmark card compassion is based on people pleasing people to get by skirting across the surface. True Compassion is based on clear seeing, or insight. When we see beyond self-interest into things, and into the world.

Compassion and wisdom are the two wings of skillful action. When compassion and insight are melded,  we have caring wisdom and smart compassion. When this happens skillful means is born. Skillful means , or upaya, is action that is appropriate to the moment. It’s not a philosophy or law. Upaya is action that best serves ourselves and our world. Hence, True Compassion is not kindness alone. It does not have to be sweet. It is not restricted by public acceptance, social politeness, or emotional numbing. Compassion is wisdom and caring combined to produce actions that actually reduce harm in the world and ourselves.

Okay, sounds good, but how do we do it? Starting with wisdom, seeing the world as it is implies paying attention despite our judgements and prejudices. Often it’s our judgement that hurts. We carry judgments around like old laundry. Clear seeing is looking past  judgement no matter how justified we feel and seeing what’s actually happening. This takes training. We have to learn not to believe everything we think or everything we think we feel. We have to doom schroll critically and believe less. We have to learn to see without judgement – or at least put judgement aside long enough to see what’s there.

However, that doesn’t mean we have to fix anything. We see what’s there and if there is nothing we can do to help then our upaya may be just witnessing – holding our seat, engaged and caring, present and representing sanity for the life on our planet.  Seeing what’s there and holding 0ur seat is more powerful than we might think.

Buddhist iconography illustrates the point. Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of wisdom, carries a sword. This sword of wisdom cuts through confusion, bullshit, and disinformation. The Bodhisattva of compassion, Avalokiteshvara, is sometimes depicted with a thousand arms that represent the many possible actions compassion my take when in the service of wisdom. Tantric icons are depicted flaming, as they burn up the prejudice and ill-will their compassion is liberated as active, and passionate. Compassion is not a static philosophy. It adapts. Compassion responds. Compassion does what works. If we come from wisdom, seeing clearly beyond our self-interest, what needs to be done becomes apparent.

And when nothing is apparent, then witnessing may be what needs to be done. Staring in the face of hatred is not a mere default. There are 8 billion of us watching. Staring in the face of hatred, even through our cellphones, can be a powerful thing. I care deeply about nonviolence and communication. I care about kindness and love in our society. Compassion is insight born of clarity and love, fused into action that is appropriate and effective. But love is not only heart emojis and floating balloons. Love is not passivity. Love is not silence in the face of harm.

Love can be active and it can be fierce as a mother bear defending her cub or as still as a cat mother holding her child.

What we are witnessing now—politically, industrially, militarily—has very little to do with care.  Our political systems are not designed for anyone’s well-being. Most are designed to accumulate power. Power is a commodity. The planet, and the life that lives on it, are transactional bartering chips. It always has been. Very recently, Stephen Miller, the White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security, spoke openly about how all the world respects power. Only power. He said nothing about compassion, wisdom, even knowledge. Nothing about communication. Nothing about safeguarding the health, safety, or dignity of the people he claims to represent. Fascists never do. They always tell people to tighten their belts ahead of a glorious future.

The greatest nation on earth. The strongest. The richest. We’ve heard this before. And yet the US has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the industrialized world. We have one of the lowest literacy rates among peer nations. Our system clearly benefits some at the expense of many. This is not a family. This is not even a clan. This is a power structure designed to keep some in power at the expense of the rest.

Two core strategies always appear when power is threatened: find someone to blame and attack them hard enough to terrify everyone else. Brand dissenting as treason. Call critics enemies. Violence doesn’t even need to be subtle. When anyone who speaks up is targeted, freedom of speech collapses without a single law changing. Media narrows. Culture bends. Institutions rebrand themselves to survive.

And to be honest, the viciousness feels good to many. Ironically, a narrowing focus feel like freedom. Greed, hatred, domination seem sexy to those who feel resentful. It feels good. But this comes at an extraordinary cost. Nature always corrects imbalance. Always.

And we need balance too. Rage that destroys our health and clarity helps no one. Turning off the news sometimes is necessary. Creating boundaries is necessary. But if we are committed to compassion, we cannot turn away. We have to look directly at violence—even when it’s standing right in front of us, aiming straight at our face. Or shoots us in the face.

I remember earlier years of unrest—Kent State, assassinations, repression. It felt hopeless then. And yet the presence of resistance mattered. Protest mattered. Witness mattered. The chant was “the whole world is watching.” And it was. Pressure accumulated. Things shifted, slowly, imperfectly, but measurably. And things changed.

As they will again.

 

 

Posted on by joseph mauricio

…AND THE BEAT GOES ON

FINDING YOUR GROOVE

This post is inspired by the great rhythm keepers of the music of our lives. From African tribal drumming, through the ubiquitous grooves of Hal Blaine, Carol Kaye and the Wrecking Crew, to the funk groove of Tony Thompson and the beautifully intuitive timekeeping of Ringo, their grooves moved us across dancefloors, through our lives, and took up residence in our minds while we were jogging, showering, or trying to otherwise not pay attention.

As life is not static, I am interested in the notion of flow both life and meditation practice. Like finding our groove.  Dropping down to the root, finding the groove and letting the feel take us.

Mindfulness / Awareness practice is a form of meditation where we are mindful of an object happening in the present while allowing a natural expansion of awareness around that. At the beginning of our training this process is clunky but with practice we begin the follow the music. An anchor that connects us to mindfulness, such as the breath, should be something present, tangible, and definite. This grounding allows us to keep time with the flow of life in order that our meditation is grounded enough for us to relax and open into awareness. While mindfulness is grounding, awareness is much freer. Although seeming opposites, rather than competing, these two can work beautifully together. This is much like a rhythm section creating the ground to free the music.

In our personal practice, we can be mindful of the breath beating out a rhythm as we become aware of the room or our body to begin with. In time, we might relax further, allowing awareness of our thoughts without becoming lost in them.

This dynamic process posits an interplay between the baseline of the raw present and the abstract movement of our creative process—breath and thinking. Thoughts are very rarely in the present and so without training they might lead us away from mindfulness. When we lose mindfulness, we lose our awareness. However, if mindfulness becomes strong enough, we can allow the mind to play. Mindfulness and awareness are two distinct operations of the mind. Should we develop our mind training to a point where these two components speak to each other and work together, our thoughts, sounds, and feelings become less a distraction and more part of the music of our present experience.

Mindfulness is not stationary. Like everything in physical reality, the present moment is dynamic. It is always moving. Mindfulness is keeping our consciousness present with this movement. When we are synchronized with this movement, we are on the threshold of a flow state.

Flow state depends on what the Buddhists call the Middle Way. The Middle Way comprises the structure through which the present can flow naturally, so that the two extremes, rather than being in conflict, actually create the space within which we can move freely. The extremes become like the banks of a river. Using our musical analogy, on one end we have the strict drumbeat of a marching band; on the other extreme we have very open free jazz, which eschews rhythm for expressive content. In our lives, this refers to the fact that structure, discipline, and the needs and demands of life do not need to be in conflict with our central creative voice. As humans, we need that central creative voice. It makes me very sad that contemporary life deemphasizes that voice for so many of us. In that case, we are just keeping time until we die.

“Marching to the beat of a different drummer” is an odd statement, because everyone moves to the beat of their own drummer. They may rely on strict rhythms taught to them by society, or they may be more creative in their approach. Yet the Middle Way suggests that we can do both: keep time and allow creative expression to exist in our lives. If our creativity forces us away from form, then we are in danger of just wandering. If we cling to form like a life raft, afraid to let go into the waves around us, we stultify our creativity. Mindfulness / Awareness practice is the training that allows us to do both—to let ourselves go into the creative movement of life while continuing to return to what is integral, tangible, and present. As with teachers, musicians, or anyone involved in creative expression, finding the framework that keeps us present is essential, both for communicating with an audience and for giving ourselves the confidence to let go into the work.

In the 1990s, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s work (especially Flow and related writings) listed obstacles to relaxing into a flow state. A few of these are:

  • Anxiety (challenge exceeds skill)

  • Boredom (skill exceeds challenge)

  • Distractions and interruptions

  • Lack of clear goals

  • Living up to, or reacting from, another’s ideals

  • Lack of immediate feedback

  • Self-consciousness / excessive self-monitoring

  • Fear of failure or evaluation

  • Overemphasis on external rewards

  • Fragmented attention

  • Lack of intrinsic motivation

  • Poor balance between challenge and skill

  • Psychological entropy (inner disorder)

  • Fatigue or depleted mental energy

  • Environmental chaos or noise

  • Lack of autonomy or sense of control

These things that keep us from finding the groove in our lives are also among the obstacles to our Mindfulness / Awareness practice.

So, finding our way through life with synchronicity and flow requires not only letting go, but training the mind to provide the container that allows us to let go productively.

Carol Kaye rhythm genius of the Wrecking Crew 

Posted on by joseph mauricio

The Coming of the Light

BUDDHA’S LUMINOUS PROMISE

 

The holiday season is marked by lights that shimmer and glisten in the cold darkness of long nights. This tradition of surrounding ourselves energetically with radiant color harkens back to the earliest experiences of the human race. In ancient times, humans had fewer distractions and were more attuned to the world around them and the sky above them. They felt the sun rising and felt it falling and diminishing. Like all life on our planet, they learned to live in conjunction with these rhythms.

As human consciousness grew more acute, we developed ideas about concepts that began to separate us from direct perception of our life. Feeling the sky move around us, we imputed meaning to those movements. As our life was dependent on things that lay beyond our control. So we created stories. In time those stories became beliefs. This was the blessing and curse of our developing awareness. We ended up believing our beliefs.

While animals move naturally toward warmth or rest, humans began to think about these cycles. Imbued with conceptual meaning, we tried to understand what was happening. We saw the sun sink lower in the sky. and experienced nights growing longer until they reached their nadir. The longest night of the year became, for many cultures, the coldest and darkest moment of our survival.

To lift their spirits through the dark, humans lit fires, created rituals, and celebrated to urge the light’s return. After two or three days, they noticed the subtle shift—the light was coming back. Many traditions arose around this moment, celebrating the return of the sun. Certain dates were singled out as markers such as December 25th. These times were—and still are—marked with celebrations of light. As fires became torches, and torches became electric lights, the fundamental energy of the sun continued to transmit hope, stability, and wellness. From lights we string grandly across our homes to candles glowing quietly in our room, an energetic message of possibility is transmitted deeply within us. We feel the light because we are light. Every atom, molecule, and element that composes life on this planet came from our sun. When we experience light, it is said to a child recognizing its mother.

The notion of a sacred world as an orientation of mind is essential to what is known as the Third Turning of the Buddha’s teachings. In the Vajrayāna schools of Tibet, we recognize three essential epochs of Buddhist transmission. The first centers on the Buddha’s teachings of the Four Noble Truths and the Three Marks of Existence. These teachings form the foundation for everything that follows. Schools emphasizing this turning are commonly referred to as Theravāda, meaning the ancient or early schools. The First Turning occurred at Deer Park, where the Buddha gave his first sermon articulating the possibility of seeing ourselves and the world as we are.

The Second Turning of the Wheel of Dharma took place at Rājagṛha, on Vulture Peak Mountain, and emphasized the teachings of emptiness (śūnyatā) and compassion. There is a deep symbiosis between these two. In everyday life, emptiness can be understood quite practically: our ideas, constraints, and prejudices are simply thoughts. Until we act on them, they are just energy—something we can see through and choose not to solidify. A teacher once told me, as I was suffering a period of angry depression, “Nothing is happening. There is nothing here but your mind.” At the time I felt insulted and diminished. But years later I don’t recall what had me so upset. I recall her advice to me.

Nothing is happening.

Veterans of the Vajrayāna tradition of Buddhism often say that life is like a dream. This is not meant to diminish life’s importance, but to help us take things less personally. Taking things personally points to the solidification of the self—the ego that feels compelled to defend, prove, or promote itself. Imagine moving through life without that constant burden. Imagine how freely we could benefit the world, and how naturally we might benefit ourselves.

At the same time, caring for family, concern for the climate, or awareness of political consequences are all valid responses to life as it unfolds around us. The practice is to engage without personal fixation—without the need to defend or proclaim our beliefs. Reality has real consequences, and yet it is not solid except insofar as we react to it. Therefore reality is both real and not real. Science echoes this insight: what appears solid is composed of atoms that are mostly space and energy, and those components dissolve further upon investigation. As the Buddha taught, all things arise dependently; nothing exists as a separate, permanent, immutable entity.

This paradox—that things function and yet lack inherent substance—is known as the inseparability of form and emptiness. Because experience is ephemeral, we are free to manifest loving-kindness and compassion. Nothing truly obstructs this except our own limiting beliefs. The Buddha taught that compassion is natural to sentient beings, that all beings possess bodhicitta—the awakened heart-mind. This union of heart and mind reflects the truth that emotions and needs is real in experience yet empty of fixed essence. When resistance is seen as empty, compassion radiates freely.

So what in our lives is both seemingly solid and empty? Light. Light can be focused to cut through the toughest metals, yet when diffused we can walk through it and be nourished by it. Life is born of light.

The Buddha gave his third and most esoteric teachings at Vulture Peak and in refined settings such as royal courts and celestial realms—teachings later known as the Third Turning of the Wheel of Dharma. This turning emphasized Buddha-nature, the innate luminosity of mind, and the sacredness of lived experience. It returned us to the understanding that life is profoundly beautiful and that goodness is not only possible, but fundamental.

A traditional way of pointing to this truth is the contemplation of ourselves and all beings as beings of light. Life is alive. It is not a thing. It is a dynamic interactive experience. At our deepest level, there need be no doubt, no confusion, no self-limitation—only the responsibility to work compassionately with the circumstances of our lives in order to benefit our world.

Because life appears and functions while remaining empty of inherent solidity, we can come to see all existence as the expression of Buddha-nature. Goodness, in this sense, refers to awake, clear, crystalline knowing—pure awareness itself. When perception is not clouded by fear or prejudice, life is revealed as workable, even benevolent. Life does not need to be battled, owned, or subdued. Ultimately, it need not be feared, because there is nothing to lose.

Buddha-nature provides the ground from which we see all life as sacred, just as it is. While this view does not prevent death, it transforms death from an ending into a continuation. We are the universe waking up. We are the vanguard of Buddha-nature, vast as all creation, expressed here in our little corner of the cosmos.

When Vajrayāna speaks of being one with everything, it means both the vastness of the outer universe and the equally vast inner expanse of awareness. Life is energy—appearing as form yet vastly exceeding any fixed notion of being. And this is true of everything, including awareness itself. Awareness and compassion are not things we possess; they are experiences we are.

So enjoy the holiday lights. They connect us to our truest nature. Whether good, bad, happy, sad, rich, poor, sad or glad the light is always there. Whether we feel it or forget our nature it’s always art of our nature with us, because it is our nature. Our Buddha Nature.