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November 9th, 2009

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November 8th, 2009

sinfest_mod [meddler_inc]

11:32 pm - Help Wanted

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buddhists [okmyturn]

11:27 pm - Offering of cloth on behalf of the dead Impermanent alas are formations, subject to rise and fall. Having arisen, they cease; their subsiding is bliss. wojtesticles

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sinfest_mod [zionchild]

12:53 am

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November 7th, 2009

buddhists [sublimevisions]

06:10 pm - eSangha this place is supposed to be a sangha of sorts, right? if the sanga could be loosely considered an electronic billboard. Until I am enlightened, I go for refuge to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. Through the virtue I create by practising giving and the other perfections, may I become a Buddha to benefit all sentient beings. I really love this one. it's just so basic.. ya know?

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sinfest_mod [meddler_inc]

12:11 am - A Household Word

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November 6th, 2009

kochansky

04:45 pm - I'm free!/Oh Noes! I'm free!/Oh Noes! Originally uploaded by Articulate Matter So I'm finally done with jury duty... and my laptop's hard drive died. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I haven't lost any pictures and cursing the extra delay for the calendar. *sigh* Murphy's Law strikes again.

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buddhists [owl_clan]

07:40 pm - China... is so out of touch The Chinese government actually believes that it is going to be allowed to choose the next Dalai Lama, by finding and promoting his reincarnation. You have got to be kidding me. Any Tibetan Buddhist (or Buddhist otherwise) with more than eleven brain cells would never accept that. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091106/ap_on_re_as/as_india_china Has China never considered... the utter asinine transparency of declaring themselves Atheist, being violently oppressive to many, and thinking that others will trust them to make religious decisions for a religion they've excoriated and persecuted for decades?

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zenjohn

03:07 pm - Awake (Rough Draft) Suffering and the Ego Self Human beings special because we're convinced we possess certain essential qualities, traits, beliefs, emotions, memories, tendencies, and habits of mind. We see who we are as being strong or weak, good or bad, happy or depressed, motivated or lazy - the list is endless. We think we're creatures with souls who persist through time, that we're essentially the same such person as always, and that we'll exist like this forever. These qualities, for better or worse, make up our sense of identity, and ultimately come together as a way of being. It is, in short, our unique understanding of self. The problem is that the person we each believe we are usually isn’t particularly happy. We suffer. We think we’re too this or not enough that, that we have problems and issues, and that these states of being are exceedingly difficult if not impossible to change. We hate our jobs or our relationships or our roles in life. We carry ourselves through each with a distinct sense of brokenness and imperfection. We think if only our loved ones measured up, if we had more money or more things, if we finally found a way to work through our issues, if we get right with God, and so on, we’d be complete enough to end our struggle and achieve serenity. Our dissatisfaction doesn’t arise in a vacuum; it’s not a feature of original sin, nor the outcome of biochemistry. It flows instead from our unique experience with life, the events we’ve encountered, and the way we make sense of reality. We’re born into the Universe essentially helpless blank slates. Maybe we have certain biochemical traits, physical abilities or disabilities, or genetic tendencies, but these are matters we ultimately resolve based on what happens later in life. Our karma, the cause and effect our lives bring us, is primarily a matter of potential, circumstances, and the way we cobble together our understanding of reality. And although most of us are raised by loving committed grown-ups who embrace their parental roles, no one experiences anything close to perfection in the care they receive. Even the best mothers and fathers imperfectly nurture us through our hardships and struggles. Instead, these human beings, who bring to life their own set of issues, talents, struggles, and competencies, do the best they can but are often  marginally or even woefully inadequate in preparing autonomous, happy, safe, and happy human beings. The result leaves us with a sense of helplessness, dependency, weakness, and imperfection, as we learn our desires are fulfilled in more or less direct relation to the competency of the adults in our lives. More important, we also quickly realize there is a relationship between the care we receive and our behavior towards our caregivers. We learn if we perform in certain ways, we enhance our parents’ motivation, and in turn hopefully get more of what we seek. We find our elders rely upon us to meet their needs. We perceive the functions we serve, and the responsibilities our relationships entail. Although still children ourselves, we find other’s happiness, meaning, and sense of purpose depends on us. Our roles, the demands we encounter, and the responses we get become increasingly complex. Tensions emerge as conflicting desires arise within and between us. Our needs no longer rule the day, as we come to understand we’re not the center of anyone’s universe but our own. In all of this, we develop habitual ways of making cognitive sense of what we face. We remember what worked before and replay these efforts in the hope our successful experience continues. We learn. We form concepts and beliefs. We add these notions together and grow repetitive ways of making sense of the world. With luck, our efforts become more sophisticated and our ability to meet our needs becomes more competent. Out of this, we end up with certain notions of self, of others, and of the Universe we inhabit. We come to see ourselves in certain concrete ways. We think we’re smart or stupid, outgoing or introverted, happy or sad, good or bad, loved or unloved, important or unimportant, and assets or liabilities to our parents. We come to see the world and its people as bountiful or barren, safe or dangerous, pleasant or harsh, loving or unloving, and helpful or harmful. The list of possibilities is essentially endless. These ideas form the foundational building blocks for what we take as reality. In accord, we develop strategies to balance these core truths of self and others in ways that allow us to attain our share of life’s bounty. For better or worse, we learn to use our self’s perceived talents to get what we want, to keep bad things from happening, and ultimately to create lives worth living. Unfortunately, the conceptual reality we create in our heads is by no means a perfect fit. Sometimes we’re conflicted. Sometimes a frightening disconnect occurs between what we think, what we do, and the results we obtain. Sometimes we experience searing pain or unexpected misfortune that seemingly has no connection to who we think we are or what we do, and sometimes we simply seemingly shut down, as the periodic trauma of everyday life intensifies and we don’t know how to proceed. Our efforts to make sense of this disconnect usually fall somewhere along a continuum between concluding there’s something broken in us or there’s something wrong in the world. Either our efforts failed, the world’s efforts failed, or some combination of the two conspires against us. Over time, as with everything else, we discern patterns to this suffering, and as a result, we construct additional aspects of cognitive identity and reality to accommodate this experience. Maybe we realize our parents aren’t all wise, loving and giving, or that our own efforts are clumsy or misplaced. Perhaps we conclude the need wasn’t all that important. Or, we decide there is something in us that didn’t deserve what we wanted. Maybe we come to believe we’re weak or needy, that our relationships are dysfunctional, that we or our loved ones have too many problems, or that we’re somehow bad or evil or selfish or greedy. And so, we internalize and attempt to accommodate these new conclusions. We develop methods of attending to the parts of self whose needs don’t get met or we endeavor to change those aspects of the world that threaten us. If we believe we’re undeserving, we learn to deny our needs. If we’re fear part of the world, we learn to flee it. If we’re unsatisfied with loved ones, we try to change or reject them before they hurt us. As time goes by, these elementary efforts evolve into even more thoroughly defined core truths of identity. No longer do these events constitute mere beliefs and experience; instead, it’s who we are and what the world’s like. We become, at best, people who survive and thrive because of our successful efforts and talents. We become, at worst, broken, imperfect, undeserving, selfish, unlovable beings. To us, other people become angry, self-centered, and inherently neglectful. The world becomes a hostile, dangerous, and hurtful place. And consequently, we learn to cope by developing more tenacious habits of mind and patterns of behavior meant to address this core reality. We learn to distract, hide, or remove ourselves from anything that brings these untenable truths into view. Although recreation, entertainment, love, sex, alcohol and drugs, money, career, religion, and so on aren’t necessarily problematic, we misuse them in service to our inner reality. We become excessively controlling, critical, and obsessed with changing the world and its people to fit our perceptions of what reality ought to be. At an extreme, we become, compulsive, alcoholic/addicted, grossly depressed, exceptionally angry, and often very hurtful to ourselves and others, all in a vain effort to secure some portion of peace and respite from a harsh and impervious reality. In short, we struggle, and suffer, and live our lives lurching from peaks of great joy to valleys of deep suffering. Zazen and Waking Up Truth is, however, this isn't who we or the world really are at all. At the very least, it's not the end of the story. It’s merely what we habitually think and do. Our cognitive commitments long ago petrified into an ego self set apart from an external objective world, and in all this we’re utterly and stubbornly entrenched in a small world of very very basic conclusive truths. Only a conscious and sustained effort at waking up stands any chance of yielding the sort of needed change we seek. It takes deep courage and firm resolve. It calls on us to mindfully relinquish our cherished talent for distraction and control, not only in the beginning when motivation is all shiny and new, but later too, when our inner fear screams out to resume escape. It requires facing with open eyes and hearts the devils, demons, protectors and managers who inhabit ego’s contours. And it eventually requires discovering the beings underneath, the lost little children whose silence is very likely ego’s ultimate goal. All our waking moments are spent in active connection with the world. We experience this as a kind of perpetual doing where the focus of our attention and effort is purposely directed elsewhere. This activity is ubiquitous; it permeates consciousness. Our days and nights are filled with one task after the next, often to the extent that we find intolerable the sensation of having nothing to do. We crave stimulation, and obsessively seek it out in work, play, relaxation, and sleep. We eat, drink, take drugs, make love, read, talk, watch television, listen to music, practice a profession or vocation, learn, clean house, wash our clothes, shop, and worship compulsively because we wholeheartedly believe if the right combination of object oriented goodness is achieved, we’ll feel better on the inside. At least part of the reason we do this is to remedy what we fear in its absence. Doing nothing, we think, isn’t just morally suspect, it’s also an invitation for more suffering. Once our attention lags we find ourselves lured inward, to our thoughts and feelings, to our beliefs, and to exactly the places within where friction exists. And there, we sense, lies terrible truth we don’t know what to do with and horrible pain we cannot vanquish. We're conflicted. Something continues to signal the inward view, the introspective look, the crying struggle deep in our hearts. But just when the clues re-appear, other aspects of ego rise up to divert our gaze elsewhere. We work, sleep, eat, drink, fantasize, pray, and chase frantically after whatever appears out the window of mind until that nagging inward tug ceases its pull, because the last thing we really want to do is go inside and find our pain. So our egos don’t want to meditate. We may have a part of self who thinks Zazen (Japanese, literally “seated meditation”) is cool or inspiring or leads to something worthy, but when push comes to shove, no one wants to just sit. It’s foreign; it runs counter to everything we’ve ever done in life. We think it’s too hard, wasteful of our time, somehow selfish, and far more alien then anything else we'd ever consider doing. These perceptions are wrong, of course, but until our egos let go such notions, none of us stand a very good chance of ever turning towards a fully mindful life. At best at this juncture, we're just adopting a new religion, a new solution, a new fix. Just sitting means to reduce ego’s activity to the bare minimum. We’re not washing dishes or driving cars or reading books or talking to anyone. We’re not actively planning the day or pondering The Iliad or learning guided imagery. We're not deciding to think about anything, and we're not deciding not to think about anything, because in Zazen we not only cease directing our consciousness towards anything in particular, but we also don't resist whatever within us does dare to emerge. We don’t practice Zazen to achieve enlightenment or attain nirvana or become more mindful. We don’t do it to become Zen Masters or Mystic Warriors or to gain entrance to some new reality. We sit. That’s all. There’s irony in this. It flows from the layers of truth and playful falsehood that come with a real meditation practice. We don’t sit for any purpose because we’re so completely addicted to always having a purpose in everything we do that only by embracing an overt and committed non-purpose can we break free of such an object-driven mind. Yet as soon as anyone truly seems to let go of intent, something new pops up to take it’s place, and we intentionally turn our attention to letting that something new go. Once our grip loosens ye again, like a lock on a river taking new water, the space fills with new thinking, new ideas, a new focus to let go of. And so, while at one level it’s meaningful to speak of deflating ego, obtaining enlightenment, finding God, or manifesting Buddha-Nature, at a deeper level, we realize, our seeking mind itself defeats this very purpose. And so we just sit. Upright, on a cushion (or in a chair), our backs straight, legs crossed, left hand upwards on the palm of the right, thumb-tips touching. Eyes half open. Breathing without control or hindrance. Witnessing the content of mind. Zazen is paying attention and witnessing. We notice our bodies, our breathing, the posture we maintain, the feeling of the breeze across the face, and the ground beneath our body. Perhaps we feel a sense of peace, as we release whatever captured our focus prior to sitting down, and turn our conscious presence, to present moment. Soon enough we’re thinking again of course, wondering about this or that, worrying about the day ahead or the one just just. We think this mindfulness business is stupid or pointless, that there’s something wrong because we can’t just focus on what we think ought to be present moment, or that our lives are too involved for the foolishness of seemingly not doing anything. Mostly, we wonder why it is we simply cannot stop thinking. If we’re earnest, in each such moment we catch ourselves, acknowledge conscious mind’s focus, and return as best we can to the undistracted moment. Over and over this process repeats, as we bear witness to whatever crosses the travel-worn paths of mind. Thoughts arise, patterns emerge, the wind breaks over our shoulders, and the floor returns beneath our feet. We feel and forget the breath in our lungs and belly, the sense of straightness from our hips to our heads, the view before our half-closed eyes. New meaning appears. Maybe we learn we can indeed sit quietly for brief periods of time. Perhaps we discover how important physical comfort is to our perceived well being. Sometimes we’re inundated with concern about events arising later in the day, or we realize we’re ruminating about the past. Often there’s a kind of excitement, as the act of just sitting becomes routine and we come to think we’re Buddhas. And frequently, we find ourselves struggling openly with difficulties we can’t satisfy, worries we don’t want to face, problems that defy solution, and tasks we dread. No matter. Witnessing and letting go continues, as we return again and again to breath, posture, the experience of just now. There is a kind of deep and fundamental learning that takes place here. It defies explanation or description because it doesn’t depend upon words, sentences, pictures, or sound. It comes at first in the thorough realization that sitting still just with self is nothing at all like we originally feared. It appears in the clarity of seeing how attached we are to our thinking and judging and clinging to one or another particular state of being. It emerges when we notice how much we believe certain things, worry about particular events, and compulsively circle our awareness around the same sorts of concerns again and again. More important, it’s the realization none of this has to be the way we are. We don’t have to obsess about how we look, act, think, or do. In witnessing what happens in stillness, we come to understand how foolishly important we’ve made our habits of mind. And eventually, we notice from this increasingly comfortable seat of newfound freedom the underlying commitments, tendencies, and conclusions we’ve hinged our reality upon. Most significantly, we begin to finally glimpse something we’ve vainly sought after for as long as we can remember: the true and startling act of letting go. Returning to mindfulness, we again enter the simplicity of present moment. We experience an increasing ease with settling in, letting go of superficialities and trivial worries that in the beginning stymied us. Our former concerns with aching knees and remaining awake haven’t disappeared; and yet, their importance wanes. We experience this mindfulness as a kind of home, a place we’ve somehow made our own. Now perhaps, a new layer of reality begins to arise, as seemingly more substantial concerns come into view. Deeper thoughts emerge, as conscious mind tires of wondering how long until we the end of the sitting period, why its feet are numb, and who thought this foolishness up in the first place. As such notions drift away, more fundamental content appears, emotions flare up, and aspects of self we don’t usually notice come into view. Zazen is a revolutionary act because it clarifies the existence and limitations of the ego self. In Zazen, not only do we notice how often we think about events that leave us feeling strong or weak, happy or sad, resolved or uncertain, and not only do we see the patterns that feed such thoughts, but also we begin to see the way such thinking traps and hinders our experience of the world. Zazen puts us at the gateway to understanding the identities we’ve adopted, for better or worse, throughout our lives. Starting with the obvious roles like parent, lover, spouse, employee, and so on, we soon discern deeper and more basic selves. We notice our protectors, distracters, and reacters, the judgmental parents we’ve constructed, and the striving children seeking approval we created. We begin to see our tendencies to run towards or away from opportunities for love, commitment, success, intimacy, and so forth. And we begin to understand the causes and conditions under which these patterns of living developed. Witnessing this, we see with again-new eyes. Our deep beliefs and commitments flow across the screen of awareness like leaves in late autumn. We notice parts of self we can’t believe lay hidden. And we become cognizant of our suffering, it’s causes, and new solutions. As awareness turns to exactly the parts of self that don’t much like scrutiny, it may seem as if something’s wrong. After all, meditation is supposed to be practiced mindfulness, and mindfulness is being present in the moment without the baggage of past and future weighing down consciousness. Yet our efforts are continually thwarted now by deeper thinking, wondering, worrying, planning, remembering, and feeling. Whatever we might struggle with outside of Zazen takes on louder and deeper intensity within Zazen, cluttering up the breeze and distracting from our idea of good mindful living. Likewise, what we discover in sitting lingers afterwards, flavoring and maybe haunting our activities away from Zazen. Here, the temptation is to turn away from observing and back towards controlling. We want to try not to think about what we’re thinking. Our frustration emerges, and we judge our practice poorly, beginning instead to wonder anew if any of this has any value at all. Witnessing this, and just as we did with more easy thoughts, we notice and let it go, returning yet again to breath and posture. There may come a time in practice where even this deeper content exhausts itself. Just as we grew weary of our concerns with aching bones and tired eyes, so too our exhaustion turns away from the habit of being in some or another role or guise. The parts of ego we typically rely upon from moment to moment, as we discern our true nature no longer carry us along so well. Instead, we begin to experience younger aspects of self, as finally the scared, quiet children we once thought we were begin to emerge. The people we once thought we were, the helpless, hungry, playful, loving, and selfless beings that cried and slept and played and stared in wonder at everything there was in this wonderful strange and new world come out to join us on the cushion. Their fear, anger, happiness, confusion, and innocence flows through us, and we see the connection between them and who we later became. Memories open into consciousness and we see again the world we experienced growing up. True Self In Zazen and over time, a different kind of clarity arises. It’s not the clarity we gain from learning a new skill or mastering a difficult problem, nor is it the clarity that comes with the various life changes we may have undertaken during difficult transitional times in the past. This clarity flows in deeper water, arising as we come to know, somehow, from a place beyond ego, below the patterns of thought and feeling we’re so used to, behind the roles and identities we’ve assumed were all we were. It’s the awareness that comes from the same place where we witness whatever happens in just sitting after we exhaust our ego-identity. It’s the place that isn’t a place, from eyes that aren’t eyes, and mind that transcends thought itself. And it’s here, where we finally after all these years, really begin to see, and feel, and touch, and taste, and hear, and know ourselves, our world, whole Universe. There is a old Zen story – a question for students to ponder – where the teacher invites her students to identify the face they had before their parents were born. The students earnestly return to their cushions to ponder this seemingly nonsensical puzzle, struggling mightily from a place of ego to solve the problem. Which of course, won't work; only from the place before ego, where witnessing mind transcends who we think we are does the answer to the puzzle reside. Zazen, therefore, is about just sitting, and it’s about far more than just sitting. It’s the practice of learning to be, seeing where delusion abides, and coming to relinquish our grip on thought. It’s about letting go of ego, and it’s about letting go of letting go of ego. It’s right sizing what we just know to be true, and embracing the uncertain ever changing and interrelated truth of everything. It’s about True Self, Buddha-Nature, God Within, and the Spirit of the Universe. Zazen tears down the artificial walls of self. It knocks away without harming the parts of each of us we once didn’t know existed, then came to believe were all we were. It clarifies truth and the foolishness of thinking we’re damaged subjects in an imperfect universe of objects, and it offers, in such realizations, real healing, as we find ourselves letting go our deathlike grip on ego’s concerns. Zazen brings into view both the reality of our fears and concerns, and their foolishness. It teaches who we are is both far less and far more then what we thought. And it brings out the deeper clarity of realizing while we don’t necessarily become at peace with everything, we can at least and at last be at peace with not being at peace. Losing sight of our original open mindedness, we closed our hearts to the Universe. Our delusions became the round hole in which, no matter what, the innumerable shapes of reality must fit. We colored present moment from the palate of our past because without such a lens, our ego believed we were blind. And because our ego was all we thought we were, what it saw we thought was all that there could ever be. Seeing and manifesting the truth that who we thought we were is delusional is an amazing, exhilarating, and sometimes terrifying journey. Learning we aren’t just ego parts held together in service to obtaining pleasure and diminishing pain isn’t necessarily a joyful experience. Certainly from ego’s perspective, the loosening of our various cages triggers a kind of psychic vertigo that – if we’re not careful – sends us hurtling towards any seemingly easy solution that might shore up the walls and re-lock the door. This fear, however, is one of ignorance, not enlightenment. No one ultimately loses identity in Zazen; we simply realize the roles and personas we rely upon aren’t the fundamental truth we’ve always sought. We still get to protect, defend, assert, parent, love, coach, and fix anything we want. Only now, that’s decided and acted on from somewhere deeper through something that exists beyond the now secondary concerns of our human lives and karma. We still think, feel, hear, see, taste, touch, and smell. We still seek happiness, eat ice cream, desire love, hate paperwork, and drive too fast. We still worry, obsess, wonder, fret, and laugh. We make mistakes, hurt people’s feelings, behave selfishly, and sometimes fall flat on our faces. We’re still human beings, whatever that means, in a world far larger and more incomprehensible then our meager brains can handle. But in Zazen, and in our larger daily moment to moment lives, something happens that makes the journey well worth the effort. As attachment to ego, to the small selves we find within, wanes, we find our lives have changed. Where once we were trapped inside ego’s skin, we’re now somehow much larger, more connected, more involved. The world isn’t just out there and we’re not just in here anymore, because the walls we thought were made of steel have faded. It’s like discovering our steel and concrete cells were actually Japanese soji screens we can slide open and shut at will, letting in and shaping the outside world as needed. We realize who we think we are isn’t nearly as significant as we once believed. We experience an openness where our roles, patterns, habits, and tendencies remain in place but much more loosely. Life’s pressures, demands, and expectations remain but there’s less compulsion because our doing isn’t distraction, isn’t running away, isn’t something meant to fill a hole within our own hearts. We more easily experience other people with compassion and acceptance, because our concerns about being exploited or put upon no longer trigger inward fear. Indeed, the boundary between them and us, we realize, is permeable. Where they and the world ends and we begin becomes blurry and the reality of interconnection and flow crystallizes. And as our haunted past fades into calm memory, as we attend to ourselves just as we attend to whatever else we experience, and as we awake every day with eager expectancy for whatever life holds out, we realize we no longer consider our thoughts and feelings, beliefs, perceptions, and behavior as enemies to fight or allies to desperately encourage. Just as with everything else going on inside or out, thoughts aren't bad or good, right or wrong. They just are. We still have opinions of course. We still have beliefs about those opinions. But in the end and deeper still lies the far greater truth that what we think and feel is just thought and feeling, naturally flowing, changing, weaving into and out of the Universe itself. And in that space, where quiet minds and wise hearts abide, we can finally know the truth, that all is well, all is fine, and everything just is.

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bostonsteamer

11:41 am - Bad polyglot joke Q: What does a Frenchman say when he wants strawberries in Israel, and he's in a hurry? A: "Tout suite" ("Toot" is Hebrew for "strawberry") Tags: french, hebrew, jokes

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zenjohn

09:36 am A trail of roses one each day lays along the path from where she is to here sealed in frost and covered in leaves dying under the blanket of these cold days the fire in my heart burns softly through the night and will remain forever

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