grasping haiku

lassoing raindrops
how can I find a way to?
wind blows clouds take them

Mindful shopping

Unable to resolve my love of shoes (which are almost all leather) and my repulsion of the destruction caused by the leather industry, I had to think pretty hard. It just occurred to me that when I buy leather shoes from GoodWill I just paid a company to keep them out of the landfill (not to mention all the other great things that company does which I like to support). When I buy leather shoes from a new-stuff store, I pay the company that will order the replacement (indirectly, asking someone to go kill another cow please and pour the dyes and other toxic water chemical treatments into our water supply; and god knows all the effects on all the people involved). I don’t like the idea of paying someone to live a life of killing animals; or to help create a world of living among the carcasses (ie., you can see youtubes of discarded skins piled along side the Ganges). Still I am very attached to what I am used to. Although I haven’t eaten cow since the 1980’s, etc. I have a very long way to go.

On a different mindful shopping experience:

I just bought a 1968 Raleigh, made in England. It is, IMO, a thing of beauty. Built from a strong heritage of dependance on the bike as the main mode of transportation, the way it rides is like a sculpted extension of the body. The bike store successfully kept these out of the landfill. The salesperson mentioned, it isn’t another mass produced item just shipped across the world, it has been giving rides for decades now. No mistaking, I am a big fan of genius green manufacturing processes when they happens; reinventing that wheel can be one of the greatest ways to help the environment.

I looked at the long lines of new bikes also in the store; so many emblazoned with large, loud, brave fonts and there was my black, elegant, simple, creaky beauty. Too bad I did have to listen to the salesperson who had taken the time to listen to me; I didn’t know before I arrived how much pleasure this old thing would bring me.

How many discoveries are out there waiting for us to take the time to listen, think and see? So many thanks to Thich Nhat Hanh for saying, all the conditions for happiness are right here in this precious moment. We can for example, think of the eyes. We can see how lucky we are to have eyes that work. And like an xray we can use the ray of mindfulness to go through the entire body that way.

In those moments we escape feeling we need anything else, we see all that we already have is more than enough. When we don’t escape that we can still apply mindfulness to shopping. We can discover how things are made that we find joy in and we can make mindful choices. Even if all we do is read amazon reviewers we can see more than what the marketer wants us to see. We can think outside this box. Maybe we can get outside the box altogether and just recycle it! LOL

Patience

In what experiences do you have patience? What steals it away? When wanting mind becomes so strong it can mean we miss seeing that on the way to getting what we want we got lots of what we didn’t want. We can create all these unnecessary and unwanted experiences in the veracious grasping and clinging to getting something we want. If we just want it a little, we can see, oh there is all this about the way in which we are getting there…that is the patience, noticing all the stuff about the way we get there and caring for that too.

I think during in-patience we stop seeing the moment we’re helping create on the way. I think it happens when we are wanting something so badly that it makes us blind.

That blindness is a pretty uncomfortable because of the tension that you could fall into a pot hole at any moment. When we are just plainly seeing what is, there is security in that and that feels very good. Even if what we are seeing isn’t pleasing, we know it’s temporary. Seeing what is, also means seeing it is all temporary. How can we cling so hard to what is fleeting? There is the notion that there is nothing to hold on to.

If we can get familiar with all the moments we have of wishlessness or patience, it to helps us recreate them. I think patience happens when we have this deep sense of no where to be, no where to go. Like in that moment we don’t have to be a movie star. We can still work hard for that just not that we HAVE to be that or ELSE.

Art of Disappearing – Ajahn Brahm

Just finished one of Ajahn Brahm‘s books, the Art of Disappearing, and since I keep thinking about it and I have a chance to toss some quick notes (mostly quotes from the book) here, voila:

“We expect and ask impossible things from this world”

“By practicing and deepening your meditation, stage by stage, your sense of self, your ego, starts to vanish…monastic life is set up for you to disappear..And as you practice your meditation, you see that when even a little bit of you disappears, you have more peace, freedom, and joy.”

“In meditation, when things get still, they disappear.”

“…it’s useful to practice skillful means like anatta-sanna, or nonself perception. It’s very clear in the suttas that there’s no such thing as a self; indeed, that’s basic Buddhism. In scientific journals, too, psychologists tell you that there’s no self; it’s just a construct…It follows that an arahant gets into jhana very easily and that even the anagami, a nonreturner, does so without problems or difficulties.”

Wikipedia has a neat entry on anatta-sanna, here is a small part, “If the word “soul” refers to a non-bodily component in a person that can continue in some way after death, then Buddhism does not deny the existence of a soul.^[4] In fact, persons (Pāli: puggala; Sanskrit, pudgala) are said to be characterized by an ever-evolving consciousness (Pali: samvattanika viññana),^[5][6] stream of consciousness (Pali: viññana sotam;^[7] Sanskrit: vijñana srotām), or mind-continuity (Sanskrit: citta-saṃtāna) which, upon the death or dissolution of the aggregates (skandhas), becomes one of the contributing causes for the arising of a new group of skandhas. However, Buddhism denies the existence of a permanent or static entity that remains constant behind the changing bodily and non-bodily components of a living being. Reportedly, the Buddha reprimanded a disciple who thought that in the process of rebirth the same consciousness is reborn without change.^[8] Just as the body changes from moment to moment, so thoughts come and go; and according to the anattā doctrine, there is no permanent conscious substance that experiences these thoughts, as in Cartesianism: rather, conscious thoughts simply arise and perish with no “thinker” behind them.^[9] When the body dies, the incorporeal mental processes continue and are reborn in a new body.^[4] Because the mental processes are constantly changing, the new being is neither exactly the same as, nor completely different from, the being that died.^[10]…Neuroscientists and philosophers of conscious have started incorporating the notion that there is no self in to current theory with Daniel Dennett being a well known advocate of this position in his theory of consciousness.”

This one is taking some thinking for me. I am thinking are we all like a part of an ocean, the waves are showing up and changing constantly and everything being a part of everything (literally we are all a swarm of molecules and energy) there is no one separate self.

“You just watch and gather the data…We all have our escape strategies. But remember: when you use those escapes, you’re not learning anymore; you’re just wasting time. It’s important to observe your reactions to things. This practice is wise in itself, and it develops further wisdom; it helps you go far deeper in your meditation. Whenever anything comes up that is unsatisfactory – that’s when you observe…and gather data because you want to understand…to learn from your experiences…Here is the data for insight, the dung for your garden…you don’t own them. You don’t escape from suffering on a retreat; you face it and disengage from it.”

“Be with [frustration] for a long, long time, until you know it thoroughly. When you do, you become free from it.”

I think it’s important to add you are doing that with a lot of compassion and non-judging.

“Always remember that it’s not that you can do it [meditate]; it’s that you aren’t getting in the way. The process happens when “you” disappear. When you’re demanding, you are there. When you have ill will, you are there. When you have craving, you are there. When you have boredom, you are there. All these things create a sense of self that thinks it owns thing and gets involved. You are the problem. And you can’t just go somewhere else: wherever you go , you take you with you. So everyone should disrobe: take off the “I-garment.” That which you take yourself to be, that sense of self, should leave and vanish. When the sense of you disappears, there’s no ill will or desire, because they’re part of the ego and the illusion of self. Then there can only be contentment and peace.”

“When you see clearly, you stop expecting things from life that it will never be able to give. That’s my definition of suffering: expecting from life what it can never provide. If you want too much from life, you suffer. You create that suffering with your expectation. When you understand the limitations of life and the limitations of your abilities, you know that all you can do is try your best to be helpful and not harm others. But even with the best of intentions, sometimes you won’t succeed. That’s life; you can’t do anything about it. A wise sensitivity to the world around you comes from seeing things as they truly are-seeing that the nature of the jungle is harm and suffering. Right now, we all have old age, sickness, and death latent in our bodies. This is the nature of our bodies. ”

“The Buddha said that the amount of tears you’ve cried is more than all the oceans of the world (SN 15:3). You’ve died so many times that if you piled up all your bones, the heap would be greater than a mountain (SN 15:10)…Fortunately, there’s a way out…”

There is a concept in Buddhism that your consciousness can be released after the body dies and not return to a new body, instead stay out of the cycle of samsara and move into a great and beautiful other realm.

Thich Nhat Hanh playlist

I created this play list via Youtube of my favorite of his talks.  At about 33 minutes of the one titled Awakening the Heart, he describes how the tops of the trees blowing in a huge storm (look like the tree will fall) are like the mind in a strong emotion (like anger or fear); the base of the tree (look like the tree will stand strong deeply rooted) are like the abdominal area where you have deep breath. When in the middle of a strong emotion if you can bring awareness to your deep breath it transforms your experience. The emotion doesn’t last no matter what you do, if you do a mindfulness practice in that moment or not. He relates the concern about youth suicide and people losing themselves to an overwhleming emotion. Learning and practicing coming back to breath can save people from so much needless pain (the 2nd arrow). It is a great talk. The other two are shorter and also great. Please enjoy them. We are so lucky to have the chance to listen to talks on Youtube.

Brooks Palmer Clutter Busting with Mindfulness and Compassion

Brooks has been meditating for many years. His books have mindfulness all through them. He inspires you to see what your feeling tone is and what your stories are about your stuff – this clear seeing and compassionate approach takes you from where you are and creates empty new fresh spaces for the actual you to be in. He inspired so many old me’s and old stories about me to walk out the door (with the stuff going to goodwill). The stuff was holding the old stories that I had to realize just weren’t me anymore. Immediately the actual me had more room to be. His books are truly amazing. We are so lucky he picked this to do. I am so grateful for his approach and his work. Also enjoy his blog.

loka samasta sukhino bhavantu

Nearing my 400th yoga class now, I have fallen in love with this song often played by various teachers at the studio. Translation: May all beings (Loka) everywhere (Samasta) be happy (Sukhino) and free (Bhavantu) .

Here it is as sung by Girish.

Ending Conflict talk by Ajahn Brahm

Another excellent talk of his posted on youtube. He is not talking about bullying or worse, he is talking about general disagreements where people need to find a way to work together and get past things. I don’t want anyone to think its about staying in abusive situations, get out of those. I embedded it below my notes, quotes:

You have to know where someone is coming from to really empathize with them to respect your enemy. We have to meet with people we disagree with. And allow that disagreement to occur. And to realize the only way we can have peace and harmony, is to say yes disagreements are there but that is perfect to have disagreements. Because if you think they shouldn’t be there then conflict will always be there.

Unfortunately in the western world we have this terrible concept of justice which is revenge; an eye for an eye; seeking revenge and to punish. In Buddhism the focus is acknowledge you made a mistake, give forgivenss and strategies to work with to keep it from happening again. Punishment creates more conflict. If you’re a Buddhist karma will resolve it. No one gets away with anything there is always a sort of natural justice. That gives of the freedom to forgive and not to need to punish. Otherwise conflicts will never end if we think that the opponent has not been punished enough yet.

Instead Buddhism focuses on what strategies will work so that it will never happen again. Reordering priorities. Standing back and thinking what is really important. Being right is not that important, justice is not that important. Then conflict can be ended. Mostly they are based on ego: I am right. Ajahn encourages people to disagree with him so it can be worked through. “That would be terrible if people always agreed with me, that would be like a cult…if you don’t disagree with me I will get very upset, but not too much please.” LOL

Its not about you, its not about someone else, its about us. Change your priorities and you end conflict. Whose right whose wrong matters is the focus. We’re all always halfway in between somewhere of right and wrong. When we change the priorities where peace and harmony matter more than who is right in that moment, we end conflict.

Don’t keep bringing it up, let grass grow over it. Forgive. Let the us be bigger than the: I am right. The best result is that the “us” is healthy and strong. Let all that pain of the past go. Sometimes people send Ajahn complaints; he deletes those; he keeps the kind ones. Why not? It encourages him to do more.

He tells the story about a broken motor on a boat that is way out to sea. In the stress two people repairing the engine get in such a terrible fight one of them says I am leaving, literally packs their bag and shows up on deck. Realizing the idiocy of it through his rage. He goes back to work on the engine. There is no escape for us right away sometimes.

We realize that blame doesn’t really help at all. Its all about us, the big us that is important. Get those priorities right and we can have a very peaceful world. Don’t give up hope there is a path there is a way. Focus on the beautiful stuff, that is actually much bigger. Someone gets angry with you that is a short time, compared to the many times that it worked out. Two bad bricks is not reason enough to destroy a wall. We let that go.

Depression and Anxiety – Ajahn Brahm’s talk

See my notes on his excellent talk below. Here is the embedded Youtube video of the talk):

When you’re young you care so much about how people see you; in your 40s and 50s you let go of a lot of that, then in your 60s you realize no one was actually really looking, like people mostly don’t think about you, you know? We are all pretty worried about ourselves, or other things.

Egg farmers story – One Farmer takes the basket and fills it with the chicken dung brings it into the house, stinks up the house.
The other farmer takes the basket brings in the eggs, makes an omelette for the family and sells the rest for cash. We carry that dung around our whole life. When we look back on our life’s prosperity, we could see all the great things that are happening.

The bricklayer may focus on the 2 bricks that are out of line or the 998 that are right. Taking the good things for granted.

If you can remember what worked, if you bring attention to that in your mind, you can more likely repeat what worked. “You learn from successes much more than you ever will from mistakes and also you avoid this terrible trap of depression.” Remember the temporary nature of everything, that this too will pass. “Knowing its not going to last, takes away the pain.” When things are going well never take it for granted. You really work hard to make sure that prosperity lasts as long as it can. Always have to work. Keep working hard. That way the prosperous time will last forever.

We hear junk food all the time, criticism, all the things you did wrong. When you get a compliment you dismiss it. Why? We need to hear that, it is like health food for the mind. When you hear a compliment say Thank you I deserve that. Don’t dismiss it. The person giving the compliment will be glad you didn’t.

Receiving praise with thank you it encourages praise and otherwise what is left – the fault finding, etc. People have far too many desires and expectations..asking from the world what it would never give you. Australia will never win the world cup. [LOL, well that I don’t know about that.] Keep your desires in practicality, don’t reach too far. When people do they get frustrated, depressed, angry seeing the world as a way it isn’t.

When you actually work within the parameters of life and you’re wise enough to know what you can achieve and what you can’t, when you don’t have these stupid desires, these obsessive goals. Which actually put you thru so much pain and suffering that you get depressed.

What is your goal in life? I am demanding my right to be celibate, celibacy rights LOL love it. You don’t have to win the match just enjoy the game. You get the promotion its more stress. There is never enough money. Why work so hard for the promotion when you can get it so your actually doing it for happiness. Status, what is that? Life sometimes does go wrong its not perfect, so don’t expect that. There are many times when loses happen and that is sad. So you accept there will be depressing moments in life, we don’t make anything worse of it. Joy at last there is nothing wrong with you if you get upset, if you cry, its normal, there is no perfect perpetual happiness in this world. It is so exhausting to be someone else. You can just be you. When you sit in meditation, you can just be you.

We don’t meditate to try to get something, we meditate to let go of things , that craving that wanting, to get something we want. Being here and wanting to be somewhere else, that is called suffering. Trying to get somewhere else, anything but being here, being you. Let it go. Just be who you are and then you find you have incredible energy, brightness, clarity.

Every time you want more money/something else you can’t enjoy what you have right now. Yeah when I get that thing, then I will be happy. Craving is unfaithful, promises you something but never delivers. 58:00-If you want to have a powerful body exercise it. If you want to have a powerful mind, keep it still. Bare energy of the mind comes from stillness. You get so much energy that depression just can’t exist. One of the greatest causes of depression is that people’s brain has just been working too hard. Make peace with your depression, open the door of your heart to being depressed. When you stop fighting energy starts to come back. When you are not getting negative about being negative. Don’t meditate with force, don’t struggle, let it go. Monks who have been doing it for years, are great at just letting it go. You know life has hard times it isn’t new or shocking it is just what it is in that moment. Meditation which makes peace, allows energy to come back.

Someone asks what to do when a friend experiencing depression comes to you. He says be sensitive, drop the plan, don’t show up with this book or this quote I used last time: what he calls knowledge. Be sensitive, sometimes an arm around the shoulder helps sometimes then they will punch you. As long as I am silent as long as I’m kind don’t try to repeat what worked last time or remember the instructions in the book. Whenever someone is really going thru something this is something he tries, dropping the plan, the knowledge and being sensitive in that moment. Don’t let knowledge get in the way of truth. Knowledge is what you’re supposed to do. Truth is what is right in front of you right now and there is a huge amount of difference. Be in that moment and be with that person and you actually feel what needs to happen in that moment.

Everyone gets depression big or small, its part of life. I think I missed noting many things in this talk (it may have been a different one of his talks): he advises volunteering helping people and he talks about being with people, like visiting someone in the hospice and their just not wanting to talk about their illness with you necessarily. Like don’t start with, how are you feeling. They want a friend someone who will talk to them like a friend, what is the latest, tell a joke, etc. Of course no absolutes it just made sense what he said that people get sick of talking about how they are doing to the nurses and doctors (that is their job) they want a friend also. He says don’t forget a person living with an illness is not the illness first, they are the person first. So it is not a depressed person, it is a person experiencing depression, for example.

Thanks Ajahn Brahm for this talk. Best to everyone.

Dharmmaseed talk on science behind mindfulness

Diana Winston describes, beautifully and simply, some of the thousands of studies on mindfulness.
She has many talks posted via Dharmaseed on the subject.

Waves of thought

I want to share a poem I keep returning to. Sogyal Rinpoche writes “When I meditate, I am always inspired by this poem by Nyoshul Khenpo”:

Rest in natural great peace
This exhausted mind
Beaten helpless by karma and neurotic thought,
Like the relentless fury of the pounding waves
In the infinite ocean of samsara.

(Tibetan book of living and dying, ch. 5)

Jack Kornfield: The Ancient Heart of Forgiveness

Right livelihood; the impact of our actions

Watching the movie, A Life Among Whales, for the first time I really saw the people working in the meat industry. While the animals die, the workers are seeing/doing what others don’t see. It was a very painful realization for me that I hadn’t thought of the effect on the workers trying to earn a wage and landing in these jobs. It was easy to see that the hunting “sport” cultivates aggression. Football cultivates aggression. That isn’t the same as people earning a daily wage creating their karma and others paying for them to keep up this aggression. And there they are. And here we all are. It’s not to play a blame shame game, its to see. People all over the world are paying to help provide one means of living or another. It is a great feeling to put down a dollar mindfully aware, with full consciousness, knowing this is helping someone have a peaceful life and for me to have a peaceful life.

Hope you watch the movie, whales are apparently huge and gentle at the same time, you can even swim with them! It’s brilliant and profound.

Julie Wester “We are earth resting on earth”

In her Dharmmaseed talk Grounded and Spacious, once again you hear her peaceful voice and great teaching. I am so happy to find yet another speaker I love listening to teach so I wanted to make note here.

Sitting on the earth: “…noticing how that feeling of being planted on the earth comes to you. And in fact we are earth element, we are made of the same stuff as the earth. One of the ways the energy of our lives manifests is as earth element. So we are earth resting on earth. An interesting possibility to consider…”

Interesting the link is to the retreat’s talks, the talks are also linked via the teachers’ pages as well (I intend to listen to Spring Washam’s). That linking is nice because I learned about the retreat this way.

Favorite talks I listen to often are Ed Brown’s talks. I took tons of notes on his Ocean of Merit talk. I wish I had written a post on this talk since at the moment I can’t remember where the notes are and what motivated me to make so many notes.

A new fav. quote Jack Kornfield said in a Dharmmaseed talk: “War is a failure of imagination.”

Mindfulness in one moment

So much of mindfulness writing reads so breathy. I was just wondering why is that? Maybe because it is such a shock to us how this works. It’s emotional to experience the shift, to see what was right before us. Just a moment ago I was having a negative thought I noticed it, using the practice, with curious open awareness – oh there is negativity. And poof! it vanished I also noticed. Why did it happen to vanish? Not spinning the story into, oh I am so negative, this world is a mess, etc. Just (out of a long worked for habit of mindfulness) oh there is negativity, not judging in that moment that experience. And the next moment was – what the heck happened to it? It was a small thing, like a small wisp of a cloud passing over, you can hardly call it a cloud. Gone with the other 67,000 thoughts I had that day.

I imagine a physicist shining a light on an electron in order to see it. Once a photon of light hits the electron, the energy of the photon shoots the electron out of sight. It moves, it changes, it is no longer what was being looked for. That was a metaphor, still as the Quantum enigma is, we don’t know why, but observation changes not just our perception, it changes actual physical reality*. It is even creepy, it is not the culture I grew up knowing where you know just deal with it, if you don’t like it, tough that is the way it is. Well actually, no, if you don’t like it, wait 15 minutes, or shoot look at it a different way. You’re freer when you are in the habit of realizing your perception, your story is what is making you so uncomfortable most of the time. Maybe it is a physical sensation that happens so quickly in the lower back then it goes away, maybe it comes right back for another moment. An hour later you’re saying my back was hurting all day. Was it? Next, it has been hurting continuously for the past 10 years. What I noticed is the pain changes with each moment, if I look honestly I see that. Still I can see the story coming back. It is an old story with deep neuron “grooves” pathways that are repeatedly zinging that way. Well we can change it. We can learn and practice mindfulness. We can open to something new.

Recently, in a moment I slowed down, we were stressed to get to school on time and I noticed nothing really mattered more than this moment. And what was happening in this moment? It didn’t matter it was the most important thing. It happened to be helping a 5 yr. old tie a shoe, it could have been anything with anybody. The other person would feel it. Would feel the care. The care about this very moment, the only moment that is. Past doesn’t exist, the future hasn’t happened. You are the sky, not the weather (as Jack Kornfield quoted Pema Chodron in a recent dharmaseed talk). War is a failing of the imagination (Jack Kornfield). Why should we wage war on this moment? It is all that is happening.

*Quantum enigma: Physics encounters consciousness, p. 72: “The physical reality of an object depends on how you choose to look at it.”

Mindfulness, the best friend; Mindfulness authors

Mindfulness is like a best friend. It throws its arm around you and asks what is going on, I mean what is REALLY going on? and then, how can we face this together, and then this and the next moment, etc. Looking on together with mindfulness with great curiosity at each experience, awake.

There are so many excellent authors to read, I hope you are all opening up to them. For four years all I read on the topic of mindfulness was Pema Chodron. In 2007 when I started reading collections of “Best Buddhist Writing” by McLeod, I realized there are tons of great authors on the topic.

Over vacance I started a few books including The Mindfulness Revolution, edited by Barry Boyce (also a collection of works) and In the Shadow of the Buddha, and Just One Thing. I just finished Waking by Matthew Sandford (I couldn’t put it down) and am still in the middle of a few I am getting a lot out of: Eight Mindfulness Steps to Happiness (I love Gunaratana’s books); Everyday Zen; Letting Everything Become Your Teacher; Work, Sex, and Money (Choygam Trungpa); Mindfulness, Bliss, and Beyond; Awake at Work.

Other most helpful authors (in no particular order): Thich Nhat Hahn, Choygam Trungpa, McLeod (Wake Up to Your Life), Soygal Rinpoche, Tarthang Tulku, Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, Dzigar Kongtrul, Sharon Salzberg, Larry Rosenberg, Joseph Goldstein, Francesca Fremantle, Sakyong Mipham, Arnaud Maitland, Stephen Levine (Gradual Awakening), Barry Boyce. I tried many others that just weren’t quite kicking it for me at the time. For me, the authors I keep coming back to are Pema, Trungpa, and Gunaratana. Favorite speakers: Pema, Ed Brown, and Jack Kornfield.

Hope this helps someone who may have been like me, only reading one author for a while and ready to open the door a little wider. There are so many helpful writings, I hope you will try some new ones. Each teacher teaches something more.

Being everything while doing nothing; Yoga and mindfulness hold hands

What is it about stopping that brings everything to you. In a yin yoga asana, you pull into a pose and stop. All the body and breath is right there, all you are is you now. Not the dreams or drearies of past and future. We aren’t stored in the future or past, yet when our brain is there, a part of us is not. So being all our is-ness, being all we are actually, it’s a very different feeling.

After an a.m. yoga class, it can profoundly change how I experience many hours of the day. Each moment I am more open and more present for others and myself. It is very interesting. A few hours after such an amazing a.m. class I saw a seagull soaring over the lake. Often I have admired the superficial beauty. This time I felt that was the moment in that yin asana this morning. That moment I was soaring. What was it, I asked myself? It was doing nothing and being everything.

We are all braver than we often know. We are moving in a world we essentially are not seeing at all. Where does the seat you are sitting on stop and the floor start? There are no clear boundaries, on a molecular level this “border” is a blur (and mostly of empty space). Everything is a part of everything else (Etienne Gilson‘s work helped me see that). We have great expectations given we are so blind. That is just the start of course. Dark matter is believed to constitute 83% of the matter in the universe and 23% of the mass-energy (Wikipedia on Dark Matter). Physicists call it Dark because they mostly have no idea what it is! That is a lot of matter to not get. It is a bizarre world. Quantum physics just makes my head spin. Still we walk on like oh well, its all the same.

We say, of course the grass is still green again today. Really its a strange miracle. Just because the laws of physics always did exist doesn’t mean they will always continue to do so (as my Greek prof. John Wyatt liked to say). And just now we seem to learn that light is no longer the fastest traveling entity. On some level we are just flesh and blood temporarily walking on an amazing planet. On some level, we are this amazing eternal part of the world. Our energy will continue to intertwine into it, our consciousness can go on forever. After reading The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying I realize I have no good reason to be so fixed in my thoughts about what happens, what consciousness is.

So we bravely walk on and knowing all we see is what is, as best as we can know, and being satisfied with this. What we sense, see and feel is what is. What we are dreaming about is a dream. It may have once been real or may become real. Still it is not what is, it has no is-ness. So it isn’t. Mindfulness is about getting in touch with what we can know. And that is very much what is real in this moment. And is less about what we dreamed the next moment would be. Although that dream is so important to note. Because our is-ness involves so much time spent in the thinking, the worrying, the storylines, the dreams. Mindfulness techniques allow you to be with that experience kindly and find moments of groundedness.

My first great yoga teacher told me when you first started here your head wasn’t even on your body! That is so funny, I know I was so full of dreams one time I simply fell right out of a standing pose onto my mat in her class. Our astonishment was funny. It was as though I woke up being splashed onto my mat. After completing over 300 classes in the past 2+ years, I can say, yoga first blew the door open to body sensation awareness I had been trying to learn by sitting meditation for many years. Next, more posture awareness came into my daily life and now more and more breath awareness. Yoga is a great place to practice mindfulness techniques. It is a great place to get grounded in your body. It takes you from that place where you are thinking so much you become a floating head.

Some moments in yoga can feel like diving off a cliff. Another moment in yin yoga can be like touching your deepest most comforting self. Like holding yourself, your real self, so deeply and lovingly, just as it is in that moment, with all its pains and aches and joys and blissful moments. Caressing and being with what actually is. Sans the dream of what should, would or could, just what is. With the yoga teacher reminding now: Stay. Breathe.

Apps and a free database of resources

The past couple days I have been having fun discovering mindfulness mediation apps with my ipod. Then I found (ATI) Access to Insight : readings in Theravada Buddhism. This app is an amazing resource of suttas, readings and resources listed for ebooks, dharma talks; content downloads as well as lists of websites with resources (ebooks, articles, talks to inspire you to meditate, etc). I am frankly a bit blown away at the moment by the quantity of resources. Still exploring it myself I wanted to make a quick note of it here.

Anyone with a computer can access all this simply through the webpage: www,accesstoinsight.org

Technology is also a gift to our mindfulness practice

Teachings are accessible via Dharmaseed, YouTube, teachers’ websites, eBooks; online journals and databases provide research in the area.
Teachings are often free and portable. I carry dharma ebooks and talks with me every where my tiny ipod goes and listen to talks on cd in the car. This allows me to get little droplets here and there.

It helps place the teachings into the everyday.

Teachers I will likely never meet, I can see giving a talk, I may be able to email them or iChat.
Technology opened up access. Students around the globe can access helpful teachings that can help them help themselves. Providing insights and skills for creating more love and happiness and ways of working with suffering. I am really grateful to technology. It truly is a gift. We are freer to ask all our questions, with a hope that we can get answers.

I try to stay awake to the addictive and unskillful uses and abuses of technology. I went camping recently with some friends and I was shocked at how deeply relaxed I was after having had time away from screens. It was almost as relaxing as my last mindfulness retreat happened to be.

So why not see our time as valuable during and away from screen-time? How do we ensure our screen time does not take away from filling other important needs? Our technology requires maintenance like a car does, which can be time consuming and stressful. We have to carefully maintain how much time we spend using it. It’s an issue if blogging to communicate with people around the world keeps you from communicating mindfully, clearly and carefully with people in front of you.

What works to help you in the practice? If you are in a place where sitting in meditation is as frightening as sitting in the middle of the road, then take more time for the teachings! Of course in person whenever it works (joining a weekly sangha, meeting a teacher, meditation classes, yoga classes, etc).

How much screen time is a question I have to ask myself often. Is it interrupting a conversation? How does that leave space for open, clear communication? Are some times and places better than others? How much time is too much time? It is a moving target as technology changes. Try to see what is useful in this moment. Try to be honest. Ask those around you for their experience.

Maybe we can ask: is this screen getting in between us right now? or are these screens getting in between us right now in a negative way? We are in the middle of a revolution, we can’t expect ourselves to know all the answers.

Smile, enjoy the flinging electrons; and use the power button skillfully. LOL

Noah Levine talks at Dharmaseed

Noah Levine is giving some amazing talks, you can hear them at DharmaSeed.org for free (and on youtube).
The talks are confident, honest and motivating. After listening you want to meditate.

His talks are especially helpful for people living with pain. His insights on being with pain compassionately are very helpful. Thank you NOAH! I will be listening to those talks again and again I am sure.
I read his father’s book Gradual Awakening (Stephen Levine). In my opinion it is one of the best books there is, being so beautifully written – it is profound; I can’t describe it sorry, you just have to read it.
It is heartbreaking for me to know his son had so much trouble in life before discovering so much that changed his life. There is a documentary about this, I haven’t seen it though.

An aside, right now I am reading Choygam Trungpa’s book: Work, Sex, Money. It’s been very helpful for me in working out, more beautifully and skillfully, a difficult work situation that arose. It is also helping me realize something important about my career experience.

Pema Chodron: What Is Bodhicitta?

Thank you thank you thank you Pema, how can we all thank you enough for all your teachings. This talk was posted by greatpathtapes to Youtube today.

Practice for driving a car

Doing the metta practice while driving can transform the experience. It invites the driver to look out for everyone you can find in order to give them metta. It lends itself to more patient, peaceful and mindful driving. It is much more relaxing when you look at it as an opportunity to practice. One study called the problem of multi-tasking while driving: inattention blindness.

The car is a place where mindfulness practice can even save lives. It also brings peace to the driver and people around the driver. A driving instructor once told me, you don’t want to scare the people around you. Why not take that a next step and wish them: may you be safe and protected. And wish it for yourself also: may I be safe and protected, sometimes adding: may I be patient. May all drivers and those they encounter, may all be safe and protected.

Mindfulness reduces pain – Journal of Neuroscience April, 2011

Fadel Zeidan, Katherine T. Martucci, Robert A. Kraft, Nakia S. Gordon, John G. McHaffie, and Robert C. Coghill
Brain Mechanisms Supporting the Modulation of Pain by Mindfulness Meditation
The Journal of Neuroscience, 6 April 2011, 31(14):5540-5548; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5791-10.2011
Abstract

The subjective experience of one’s environment is constructed by interactions among sensory, cognitive, and affective processes. For centuries, meditation has been thought to influence such processes by enabling a nonevaluative representation of sensory events. To better understand how meditation influences the sensory experience, we used arterial spin labeling functional magnetic resonance imaging to assess the neural mechanisms by which mindfulness meditation influences pain in healthy human participants. After 4 d of mindfulness meditation training, meditating in the presence of noxious stimulation significantly reduced pain unpleasantness by 57% and pain intensity ratings by 40% when compared to rest. A two-factor repeated-measures ANOVA was used to identify interactions between meditation and pain-related brain activation. Meditation reduced pain-related activation of the contralateral primary somatosensory cortex. Multiple regression analysis was used to identify brain regions associated with individual differences in the magnitude of meditation-related pain reductions. Meditation-induced reductions in pain intensity ratings were associated with increased activity in the anterior cingulate cortex and anterior insula, areas involved in the cognitive regulation of nociceptive processing. Reductions in pain unpleasantness ratings were associated with orbitofrontal cortex activation, an area implicated in reframing the contextual evaluation of sensory events. Moreover, reductions in pain unpleasantness also were associated with thalamic deactivation, which may reflect a limbic gating mechanism involved in modifying interactions between afferent input and executive-order brain areas. Together, these data indicate that meditation engages multiple brain mechanisms that alter the construction of the subjectively available pain experience from afferent information.

Being Present in Relationships – Eckhart Tolle

Timely video as we visit people we have known for years over the holidays. He reminds us about staying grounded in the here with the body sensations instead of spinning into the story lines and the habitual. Enjoy and thank you Eckhart!:

The atom and you

I just finished one of the most powerful books I have ever read in my life: The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. Now I am reading a second commentary on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, by an author who worked with Choygam Trungpa to translate the Tibetan Book of the Dead in 1975. Her name is Francesca Fremantle. Her commentary on the book is titled Luminous Emptiness. WOW. I don’t know want to talk too much about her fantastic book yet since I haven’t finished it yet, however I wanted to mention the concepts it is bringing up in me. These two books seem to be blurring the line for me between what is living and what is dying. There seems to be living in dying and dying in living. One concept is that if consciousness (FYI: Fremantle includes writing about 8 kinds of consciousness) is included in Einstein’s concept where matter and energy can not be destroyed only transformed (e=mc2), you could at least start to see how different things could happen than maybe nothing.

At the moment I want to describe a concept it keeps bringing to my mind: the emptiness. The atom is mostly empty space (think ~99%). And what is there is constantly spinning and moving with energy. Everything is changing and mostly empty. Yet when we look around it looks solid and unchanging. It is temporary and really kind of impersonal and yet I see my computer my favorite chair, it all looks pretty solid and unchanging to me!

One thing I adore about the Dalai Lama is his embracing of science. The idea is life is an experiment lets see what works. If you can measure an ancient technique for gaining compassion – Lets do it! Science and spirituality can be incredibly helpful to each other in developing ways that work. Brilliant. It is an exciting world we are living in. For now I will leave you with a vid I chanced across: Atom : The Illusion Of Reality – BBC Documentary

Rigpa website

Check out this amazing site, called Rigpa with brilliant video teachings.

Here is one where E. Tolle explains: There is no past. There is no future. WOW, how did he do that in ~2 minutes? WOW

Wake up to your life by Ken McLeod

This is the most difficult book I have found after years of reading mindfulness books. It is making me work the hardest, is what I am saying. It is training that goes straight to the most difficult issues, for example awareness about death, etc. I was happy to just now find Ken is doing online retreats via Tricycle.com and one is going on right now. It just started on May 3, 2010. I wanted to put this out there in a timely fashion. Blessings.

Mindful, conscious eating – eating with awareness

In the book The World We Have, Thich Nhat Hanh tells a story of couple traveling with their small boy across a vast desert to seek asylum in another land. They ran out of food. “Realizing all three of them would them would die in the desert, the parents made a horrifying decision: they decided to kill and eat their child. Every day they ate a morsel of his flesh, just enough for the energy to walk a little further, all the while, crying ‘Where is our son?'”(p.17, The World We Have) and they are in terrible mourning. Was it easy for the couple to eat their son? Of course not. Thich Nhat Hanh wants us to think about the impact our choices have on the resources available on the planet. Each time we take something away and use it up, we can think about that.

Many people eat twice the calories they need a day; eating enough for two adults or one adult and a child. I remember seeing a great talk by a doctor giving a talk on google video about the value of being vegan and apparently the average american eats a very large number cows (15), chickens (900), hogs (24), sheep (12), etc. throughout the course of their lifetime.

Animal fat is solid at room temperature. It sticks to our blood vessels and clogs them. Whatever organ was at the other end of the clog is what is damaged when the blood can no longer get through the opening. In multiple ways, we actually increase human suffering and starvation by supporting the meat industry. The amount of land and soil and water being used to grow the mono-crops to feed these animals could feed exponentially more people if the land was devoted to growing crops edible for humans.

We were just watching an excellent movie called “Dirt” on Independent Lens. It is about the health of the life in dirt. Healthy dirt produces healthy vegetables. The movie says we are destroying our dirt. For example, when pests find a way to unlock the mechanism for by-passing a pesticide and eating a mono-crop like wheat or corn it then has an unlimited food supply. This problem is currently solved by creating new pesticides. The diversity of plant life is vital to the health of the soil. Also, when one type of plant can not handle one type of weather disaster another can survive and visa versa.

I just ate a couple dates and I thought of how many strong hands may have touched each one. You are eating the sun that shown on it and the water that fed it and the soil that became its body as well. If you go to the date company’s website you can see photos of some of the workers. The site says their dates are picked by hand.

Speaking of Thich Nhat Hanh, he has just written a book all about mindful eating and food choices, called Savor. I just ordered it, hopefully he will inspire another post here! Thank you Thich Nhat Hanh!

DharmaSeed.org – free, excellent online talks

Dharma Seed

I am sending out a HUGE THANKS FOR THIS EXCELLENT RESOURCE. Listen for free to hundreds of Buddhist talks. THANK YOU DHARMA SEED!

Yoga, a great tool for mindfulness

If you can keep from getting competitive and keep from having it turn into an aggression against your body, yoga can be a very powerful tool for mindfulness. During, for example, an hour long hot yoga class your mind is busy trying to connect to your body. Also, I found yoga helps me connect with body sensations through out the rest of the day. Also, it helps one sit with discomfort in the body.

Most importantly, I found after the class, if I can remain in the classroom (the room is not in use), I found my mind is especially ready at that time to apply mindfulness meditation techniques. After yoga my mind can sit in meditation more skillfully and for a longer time. The mind is more awake and ready and the body more able to sit still.

For six years now I have continued to take mindfulness meditation classes once a week. This is a great tool, having a space, with a teacher, where students can share stories, successes, etc. and meditate together.

Best wishes to everyone.