Pema Chodron quote

“So even if the hot loneliness is there, and for 1.6 seconds we sit with that restlessness when yesterday we couldn’t sit for even one, that’s the journey of the warrior.” Pema Chodron

Mark Epstein quotes on desire

"From the Western, Puritan point of view, it’s always been seen as dangerous, devilish, the enemy. From the Eastern spiritual point of view—as adopted by many Western practitioners, at least—it has the connotation of something to be avoided, a poison. As a psychotherapist, I’ve been trained not to avoid the so-called “real stuff’—anger, fear, anxiety—and this certainly includes desire. Desire is the juice. It’s how we discover who we are, what makes a person themselves. I wanted to try to explore how to work with it more creatively. "

 "Different teachers have different approaches to this: some recommend avoidance of temptation or renunciation, while others talk about meeting desire with compassion. Another strategy is to recognize the impermanence of the object of desire for instance, by countering lust with images of how disgusting the body really is."

"Other teachers say that desire is really just energy that we have to learn how to use without getting caught by it."

"The Buddha’s point, I think, was that by renouncing clinging we actually deepen desire. Clinging keeps desire in a frozen, or fixated, state. When we renounce efforts to control or possess that which we desire, we free desire itself."

"It may not be so much that we have desire as that we are desire. Try- ing to renounce desire is like trying to renounce yourself. This isn’t the way to see the emptiness inside. But clinging is different. We can renounce clinging without estranging ourselves from desire."

 "Can you give your lover the freedom of their subjectivity and otherness? Admit that they are outside of your control?"

"One thing that has helped me think about this is the psychoanalyst Jessica Benjamin’s theory that there are two kinds of desire. A male desire (present in both sexes), which knows what it wants and is going after it, which is all about trying to obtain satisfaction. And a female desire, not just in women, which is more about interper- sonal, and intrapersonal, space. The male desire is about doing and being done to, while the feminine desire is about being. Think of a baby at the breast. In one version, the breast is trying to feed the baby—it’s forcing itself into the baby’s consciousness, or the baby’s mouth. In the other version, the breast just is. The baby has to find it, discover it, for herself. It’s almost like our culture is hip to “male” desire, assaulting us constantly with “you want this, you want that.” It’s so much in the object mode that it doesn’t yield the room for what she’s calling a femi- nine desire, which is “Give me some space to know what I really want.” "

"A famous psychoanalyst named Otto Kernberg speaks of sexual union as the experience of a lover revealing himself or herself as a body that can be penetrated and a mind that is impenetrable."

"...the Buddha taught not only abour suffering, but about the end of suffering. Desire is only a problem when we mistake what’s ephemeral for an object, something we can permanently grasp. It’s only suffering because we don’t understand."
From an interview in Tricycle

Quote from Thanissaro Bhikkhu

“Give in to this impulse, give in to that impulse, obey your thirst. It’s good for the economy, it’s good for you spiritually. Watch out, if you repress your desires you’re going to get tied up in psychological knots.” The lessons our culture teaches us—to go out and buy, buy, buy; be greedy, be greedy; give in, give in—are all over the place. And what kind of dignity comes from following those messages? The dignity of a fish gobbling down bait. We’ve got to unlearn those habits, unlearn those messages, if we want to revive words like dignity and restraint, and to reap the rewards that the realities of dignity and restraint have to offer our minds."


From Thanissaro Bhikkhu from tricycle teachings: addiction

4th of July

Liberal commies like me have a harder time expressing patriotism because we feel so let down by the promise of equality and justice. There is no doubt that the middle class is shrinking and we have drifted right into the politics of hate. What's to be proud of there?

God fearing red blooded Republicans seem to have won. The vapid anti-government talk of personal responsibility, white washes structural inequality, racism, poverty, and the limited reductionism of the republican victory. I take no pride in the anti-community, greedy darwinism of the Reagan dawn.

Even Nixon sent poor people large tax rebates in the mail, no stigma. Current republicans are indifferent to others suffering, justifying it by talk of enabling the poor and cycles of poverty. I happen to work with the poor and know what they are talkin about, but disagree about whether we are smart enough to work with that.

And the neo-liberals have allowed it all to happen, went gently into the night. Chaney may have had lots of Halliburton stock, but I challenge democrats to rid themselves of this stock. Oh, no wait, greed is good. No wait, greed isn't good. We need to two party system to throw out corrupt politicians on both sides.

I'm grateful to my grandfathers and fathers, grandmothers and mothers, who fought for a better America. I hope to have to courage to fight for a fair and just America. An America that doesn't need to flex it's muscle through the military, but flexes it's dignity with restraint and wisdom.

Current Pop

"...when the self become a selfie — when people start approaching themselves and others as things, to be posed, bartered or possessed, rather than as beings with rich and infinitely various inner lives —morality becomes destabilized, making it difficult to determine the difference between a playful risk and real one, or even between violation and fun."

This is from an excellent article from The Record: Music News from NPR, which includes videos, called "When Pop Stars Flirt With Bad Taste".

The article ends: "Party music creates a space where the things that do run us — whether they're good things, like ethical codes or laws protecting the vulnerable, or painfully restrictive ones, like the grind of money-making and the trap of consumerism — seem to give way, and a space opens up for exploring desire, sensuality, and the unexpected. Blurred lines can lead to exciting new places. But sometimes we need to draw them, for ourselves, again."

I hadn't seen these videos all the debates are about and a few seconds into each one is enough for me. The phrase "guarding the gates of the senses" comes into my mind. The freedom to explore one's sexuality is not something someone else gives you, it's something you claim or take for yourself. But as the first quote points out, the objectification of people isn't what sexuality is about. We lose the rich inner lives.

My partner said after I showed her some videos and read the article to her, "You know how we teased that all the old people should go onto an island somewhere? Well, now I want to go to that island."

McMindfulness

"Bhikkhu Bodhi, an outspoken western Buddhist monk, has warned: "absent a sharp social critique, Buddhist practices could easily be used to justify and stabilize the status quo, becoming a reinforcement of consumer capitalism." Unfortunately, a more ethical and socially responsible view of mindfulness is now seen by many practitioners as a tangential concern, or as an unnecessary politicizing of one's personal journey of self-transformation."

This is from an excellent article called, "Beyond McMindfulness" by Ron Purser and David Loy.

Also, "In their branding efforts, proponents of mindfulness training usually preface their programs as being "Buddhist-inspired." There is a certain cachet and hipness in telling neophytes that mindfulness is a legacy of Buddhism -- a tradition famous for its ancient and time-tested meditation methods. But, sometimes in the same breath, consultants often assure their corporate sponsors that their particular brand of mindfulness has relinquished all ties and affiliations to its Buddhist origins."

And this: "But mindfulness, as understood and practiced within the Buddhist tradition, is not merely an ethically-neutral technique for reducing stress and improving concentration. Rather, mindfulness is a distinct quality of attention that is dependent upon and influenced by many other factors: the nature of our thoughts, speech and actions; our way of making a living; and our efforts to avoid unwholesome and unskillful behaviors, while developing those that are conducive to wise action, social harmony, and compassion."

I thought a lot about this when I was reading Mindfulness For Dummies. First off, I think it's a wonderful book, and I recommend it. But I have often wondered at the denuding of the Buddhist roots, as stated above, in the mass marketing of mindfulness by people who want to make a living off of it. The Dharma is supposed to be free. When you turn to marketing, to sell ideas, a presentation of ideas, then you're selling a presentation of ideas. Old time Buddhist might guard ideas because people were not "ready" for them. But today you can go pretty far on reading ideas. Sangharakshita talks about intellectual indigestion. You get too much before you are ready for it. The information age has created an open source Buddhism, which is good, but it lacks the social supports of integrating all that information.

There's a conflict in a way, people want to pursue their joy, and that means there's a million yoga teachers, and a million meditation teachers. I was at the library today and I almost got a Buddhist book because I've seen so much advertising for it. The spiritual marketplace is fiercely contested, and bought.

I actually like to look at all the ads in Tricycle and other Buddhist magazines. But I've never bought anything from them.

Spiritual materialism isn't just buying cool rupas and great meditation benches, it's also going on retreats with name dropping teachers, and going to foreign countries to study with teachers. It's hard to know if that's really what's required. Maybe you can stay where you are and deepen your practice by your own efforts, and the support of a good local sangha.

Of course generosity is about putting your money where your values are, but it's also a subtle way of increasing the money for a sangha. I've gotten the softest sell at Buddhist centers, but there have been times where I got a harder sell on giving to the community than I did in Christian churches.

Which all goes to show you that you can never turn off your critical faculty, and that if someone pitches you from a spiritual angle, that's just another pitch. Good spiritual friends exemplify, and don't ask anything for it.

I've heard people coming off long retreat, get people wanting them to give them the gist of it, without doing the work. You don't really need anyone else, you just need to go deeper into yourself. Of course the community is good for support. Giving it, not necessarily getting it.

Tintin in Tibet

I'm reading Tintin in Tibet (The Adventures of Tintin)

I scanned it for Buddhist references. There is one scene with a stupa, that Captain Haddock wrecks when he bumps into it. Of course the setting in the mountains give it a sense of place.

They go to a monastery, where there are a bunch of monks. They have yellow hats, which makes them Gelugpa. One of the monks can levitate, and can sense where a person is from an article of clothing, and then denies it to be mysterious.

I don't really like the Yeti part of the story.

Herge wrote it before the invasion, and flight of the Dali Lama, in 1959 by China, but it was published in book form in 1960.

The Dali Lama said, "For many people around the world Tintin in Tibet was their first introduction to Tibet, the beauty of its landscape and its culture. And that is something that has passed down the generations," and he gave it an award.

Supposedly the author Herge was having difficulty at the time, falling out of love with his wife and falling in love with his younger assistant, according to the wikipedia article.

Kids meditating

Batchelor quote

"As we proceed along the well trodden path of Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, we may begin to weary of their certainties. Perhaps trails that branch off the main track and peter out in the anarchy of wilderness catch our attention. We realize that the path we are taking might disappear into a pathless land." p. 81 Living With The Devil: A meditation on good and evil

Five Food Contemplations

From Savor by They

"Last Call" by Larissa MacFarquhar

I get sent books, and occasionally other things, like once I got opera tickets. I love the opera. I love movies. I enjoy free things, it makes me feel important. Some people joke that blogging is narcissistic. "Didn't you read my blog," Sheldon Cooper says in Big Bang Theory. There are some blogisattvas.

Sometimes I don't like a book. I try to only say positive things. I write detailed blogs about what I dislike, but I don't publish them. I have a lot of books I didn't really like and I guess the person who sent them might be disappointed. I only comment when I like a book. Often I report I got something in the mail, so as to give it some publicity. I get more than enough stuff though, and if it stopped I would be OK with that too. Often I review books that I have bought. I spent a fortune on books. I've sent a lot of workers at Windhorse on retreat. Sometimes I get something that I really like, and it's just a PDF. That's a low investment that makes me feel less pressure. No mail, no hard copy, just the electronic information.

I started reading the New Yorker in high school in Wisconsin. An English teacher brought in a stack one day and said "read this magazine, it's the best magazine." That's what we did in class that day. I loved the magazine. You'd think the class would misbehave, but we just enjoyed the magazine.

When I moved to NYC I got a subscription. Off and on I've read it over the past 23 years. More on than off. I don't currently have a subscription. When I was out of work I had to tighten my belt, and I will probably be tightening my belt for years to dig out of the debt I've accumulated. Have to cut expenses where you can. I don't have a TV, I don't have cable. I go into the projects, poor neighborhoods, and without fail people have huge flatscreen TVs. How do they get them? But I digress.

So I was pleased when New Yorker sent me this article called "Last Call". It's about suicide in Japan, and a monk who counsels people. It's a fascinating article for me on many levels.

When I was at NYU people started jumping to their death at the library. It has a huge internal space, and a long drop. NYU quickly put up plexiglass barriers. At the time I thought, "that won't work." But I read an article in the New Yorker about how a net worked at the Empire State Building. You'd think if someone really wanted to do it they would jump to the net, and then crawl to the edge and jump, but little things like that stop people. It doesn't seem too easy. Lots of people jump of the Golden Gate Bridge. A few survive. If you go feet first and angle it a little so you don't go too deep, you can survive. Universally everyone who survives reports the minute the stepped off, they regretted it. Instead of nets the Golden Gate Bridge uses volunteers that approach people who look like they are going to jump. They don't want to mar the look of this iconic bridge.

I've felt suicidal in my life. As a teenager who hadn't found his place in the world, I sometimes romanticized the idea.

I worked on Riker's Island in the suicide unit, and learned how to work with people who needed affect regulation and distress tolerance help. Most people just are expressing deep unhappiness. You really need a plan and the intent to carry out the plan to be truly suicidal. Most people are just upset and are trying to dramatize their plight. Once they ventilate their feelings and get some empathy, they settle down. Not that there is much you can do to help people who are incarcerated, but listening sometimes helps.

Riker's Island is a big mental hospital where people who were caught with drugs get time served. If we legalized cannabis we would save so much money. I don't hear the big government haters talking about that one too much. Colorado was smart. Legend has it that it's only an influential newspaper man's antipathy for cannabis that lead to it's being made illegal. Substance abuse is a huge tragedy, and we do need to try and keep a lid on it, so I'm ambivalent about legalization. In our current ruthless politics of the bottom line, I can see arguments for it.

More recently I felt suicidal when I made a big mistake. I never really developed a plan or the intent to carry suicide out, I just had ideation. But I felt so horrible for what I'd done, ending it seemed preferable. Luckily I had loyal friends and family who helped me through that time.

Japan has a particular twist on suicide. They're not the worst country in terms of suicide, a surprising list, not sure what it means to be on top, means. In Japan there are hikikomori, which are shut-ins who don't leave their rooms. They've given up on trying to find a place in society.

A Rinzai monk named Nemoto has connected with these people, and holds workshops where he has people imagine they are dead, and he holds a funeral for them. Often times it has a strange effect on them. Nemoto became weirdly giddy in life when he left the monastery. It was so hard being at the monastery that living ordinary life became so easy. The hardships he endured gave him a kind of perspective. And somehow people started being attracted to his counseling. He's doing bodhisattva work.

Nemoto started to feel overwhelmed by it all, and then his father got sick and he stopped responding to all the e-mails he got. He had heart problems, and got angioplasty. He finally wrote the people he'd been corresponding with for years, and they didn't care. Sitting in the hospital he supposedly cried for weeks. He entered a dark night of the soul, when you realize you're not getting anything back from your spiritual practice. And yet somehow he found a way back. He saw some messages of support. He decided he wanted to meet people face to face, and not take e-mails and phone calls. The ones who made it to his remote temple put in the effort to get there. He felt meetings got a kind of resolution that gave him a better feeling about working with people.

I won't give the dramatic ending away.

Larissa MacFarquhar has written a beautiful article. Unfortunately the content is not free yet. Magazines tease you by giving you some content, but they can't give it all away. A subscription to the New Yorker isn't that much and you really get what I consider to be the best magazine in the USA.

(I've had a few friends who've interned at the New Yorker, and I danced with Emily Naussbaum, the TV critic in the New Yorker, once, about 20 plus years ago at a party. My second ex introduced me to her probably the last time we went out together. ("All my exes live in New York and Connecticut" isn't such a good rhyme.) I don't really hobnob with the intelligencia of New York, despite my desire to join the club. But I can read their lovely work, and so can you.)

Supposedly Japan doesn't have a lot of psychotherapy. Nemoto was functioning as a kind of crisis psychotherapist, listening to people. He realized that people needed to extend some efforts to utilize him, and he wanted to step out of the circular talking. When I was a therapist I used to feel despair when I felt a kind of circular talking, a clinging to a story. What Yalom called the "help refusing complainer" in his famous book on groups.

I notice sometimes that people are focused on their rationalization, and have a hard time seeing past their justification of what they did to see that someone is pointing out "what about this". They just press the button and resume the story. Sometimes empathy can help people feel heard, and then they begin to listen to themselves more deeply. I do that too. I'm not putting myself above others. But it's an interesting phenomenon. How do you really change? I think meditation, relationships and psychotherapy are three ways lots of people work for change. Change isn't easy. We can't solve a problem on the terms that created the problem, we have to be infused with a new  perspective. When you're hunkered down in self justification, it's hard to take on another perspective. Koans are about breaking out of a perspective and trying something new.

So go get a New Yorker and read this awesome article.

(I read an article that you can increase blog traffic by saying "How Can I die?" I think our deep political unrest contributes to individual strife here in the USA.)

congratulations

As reported on TBC News, Mike Osgood becomes Vimalamoksa (dot under the s, Westernized spelling Vimalamoksha). A Sanskrit name meaning “Pure Liberation”. Private Preceptor Shantinayaka.

Vimalamoksa allowed an e-mail to be posted on this blog. Vimalamoksa embodies the true spirit of spiritual depth. I rejoice in your merit. 

Social Justice in the USA

(source)

I have been reading the writings of Henry A. Giroux. I am disgusted with American politics. I experience horrified anxiety, the far enemy compassion.

Just to take one quote:

"The neoliberal policies funded by the new financial elite cut funding for programs such as Head Start, eliminate breakfast programs for poor children and portray people on food stamps as freeloaders. The latter baseless insult is particularly vicious since the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is crucial for low-income children living in extreme poverty because it "greatly reduce[s] food insecurity . . . which, in turn, greatly enhances their chances of doing well in school and growing up to be successful, productive adults."

(Giroux cites a Krugman article for the quote.)

Johnson's war on poverty has turned into a war on the poor. In this climate nobody is surprised by the idea of a coming civil war. When you hear things like the military has bought up a bunch of ammunition. I have friends who think civil war is inevitable. They are arming themselves against the upcoming civil war.

Giroux writes, "As public visions fall into disrepair, the concept of the public good is eradicated in favor of the narrow, private orbits of self-interest and individual happiness, characterized by an endless search for instant gratification, consumer goods and quick profits."

Non-violence is a key commitment in Buddhism. Violence tells one they have left the path. People are ill when they move towards samsara. We've lost a sense of interconnectivity, which is a force that counters isolation. We've lost a sense of spirituality that asks us to reach for more than instant gratification.

There is a temptation to turn away from what is happening; The social injustice, the politics of hate and hurtfulness, the pushing of people into precariousness, blaming the victim, the cultivation of fear and isolation.

Giroux suggests the appropriate response is more strenuous activism and advocacy. I think Occupy Wall Street is the the tip of potential for what we can do. I think there is an Arab Spring coming, and I hope it's non-violent. Social justice actions counter the dispair, isolation and lack of compassion.

I wish what Chesar Chavez said was true:

"Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. And you cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore."

But I fear we lose focus. I've lost focus with meditation and vegetarianism. I forget what I have read in The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-vegetarian Critical Theory, 20th Anniversary Edition.

I'm listening to The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. and I am aghast at what has happened to America.

I'm looking into Barbara Kingsolver's solution, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. Even if we've lost the activism of the Vietnam era, we still have the power of the consumer. An educated consumer that rejects "food science" that processes the nutrition out of whole foods, is one small positive step.

Buying food at your local famer's market helps us to wipe the carbon stench off our "organic" vegetables from the factory farms in California, and support local farmers.

I was sickened to read the other day that our ginormous corn surplus has found it's way into our honey.  (Honey isn't vegan anyway, it's taking the not given.) I read that farm grown Tilapia is as bad as bacon. To think that fish is free range from the ocean is just wrong. Even if it is from the ocean they take their huge dragnets and kill everything in the water and air.

The irony of KFC offering to donate money when you buy a giant soda... If you can't see the irony in that, you've lost any sense of propriety. That's like handing someone a crack pipe and giving them a coupon to a rehab. It doesn't make any sense. So many health problems addressed in the medical-industrial complex are our own creation. We are happy to spend billions of dollars trying to fix things after the fact instead of an ounce of prevention. And people worry about their freedom to buy a big gulp when Bloomberg tries to do one small gesture, by limiting the size of sodas. Soda is the perfect obesity machine--you don't feel the fullness of the calories you ingest. That is your freedom cause?! We've lost a sense of the larger social justice vision.

We've lost our middle class. I could go on and on. As this post demonstrates, I'm going to share more ideas of social justice here. Even if I'm not a perfect person, I can articulate social justice ideas.

So we fight the despair, become wise consumers, educate ourselves instead escapism, fight the horrified anxiety, voice our viewpoints in as many ways as politically possible, and work to evolve ourselves into the higher evolution.

Here's a video that challenges our current state of affairs:

The why and how of effective altruism

Long Direct Quote from Living with the Devil by Stephen Batchelor

One moment we are "pathing," only in the next to find ourselves "stuck" and "blocked." We may not have lost our sense of purpose and direction, but feel incapable of making any headway. It is as though a barrier has been placed across our path and we can find no way to surmount it. We feel hindered, trapped, frustrated. The more we struggle to be free of the obstacle, the more we seem to bang our head against the wall. It is as though Mara deliberately puts immovable objects in our way to frustrate our aspirations. We find ourselves paralyzed by an obsession or fear, we meet with accidents and calamities, we are debilitated by disease and the ravages of aging.

Progress along the Buddhist path to awakening is said to be "obstructed" by the devil of compulsions. A compulsion is any mental or emotional state that, on breaking into consciousness, disturbs and captivates us. Whether inflamed by anger or inflated by pride, we feel ill at ease and hemmed in. A compulsion encloses us within its boundaries. When overwhelmed by depression, not only are we inwardly sunk in despair but whatever we see, hear and touch is abhorrent.

Shantideva compares compulsions to "bands of thieves" who lie in waiting for an opportunity to invade us and "steal the treasures" of our minds. As soon as there is a lapse in self-awareness, a compulsive thought or image is liable to erupt, triggering a torrent of longing or despair that leaves us rattled and bewildered. As creatures of Mara, compulsions act as if they were autonomous forces. We suffer anxiety or panic "attacks" and feel overwhelmed by unwelcome thoughts. We are seized by feelings and images that we cannot seem to shake off.

The depiction of Mara as autonomous being who argues with Buddha illustrates how such drives feel as though they happen to one. I do not choose to be lustful, lethargic, conceited, or deluded; I find myself feeling that way. I do not decide in advance to think a thought; it comes to me as a ready-made phrase. I talk of "my" desires, "my" fears, and "my" doubts as though I somehow owned and controlled them. But when I try to let go of them, I find that it is not so much I who have them, but they who have me.

So many books so little time.

Tricycle magazine is awesome. It's launched the desire to read 4 books.

I loved the excerpt on boredom from Sangharakshita's latest Living Wisely: Further Advice from Nagarjuna's Precious Garland.

I read his first book on Nagarjuna's Precious Garland, and I want to read this one. Sangharakshita is my root teacher, to whom I'm eternally grateful for.

I enjoyed reading an excerpt by Shozan Jack Haubner from Zen Confidential: Confessions of a Wayward Monk.

What I liked about the excerpt was that it was genuine, authentic and honest. Nothing special.

I want to read Kyra Phalen's novel Siddhartha The Warrior Prince.

I want to reread Herman Hesse's novel, too. To compare and contrast the two books would be interesting for a book club. Maybe.

I want to read the poetry of Marie Howe, like in her last book The Kingdom of Ordinary Time: Poems.

I found the 3 poems quite good, in the magazine. In the interview she talks about taking care of her brother during his sickness unto death. She's supposedly the poet laureate of New York, my adopted home state. The Empire State. Not sure what that means.

And I enjoyed the teaching from Thanissaro Bhikkhu and Pema Chodron, two A list Buddhist teachers.

I'm grateful for this issue to arrive. The previous one didn't and it seems there's no amount of e-mails that can be written to fix the matter. This modern world; all kinds of technology with little glitches.

There's a lot of articles about technology in this issue that I haven't read.

I have to say that for me the experience of technology is at once empowering, intoxicating and frustrating. It seems like you can do things, but at the same time requesting the issue they never sent seems like an impossibility. Reminds of the movie Brazil where a fly causes the wrong man to be sent to jail.

I don't mean to whine about not getting the issue, I think I could replicate this experience countlessly. I have a swank car that somehow leaks inside. It's never been the same since someone smashed a window and stole my airbags, and a tire went flat.

My laptop has broken countless times, most of it my kids spilling water on it or dropping it.

My iPhone has had problems at times, I wasn't getting crucial text messages for a while there for no reason I could understand.

The wifi in my apartment goes out inexplicably, and you don't know whether it's the host server, lots of traffic on the internet, my provider having heavy traffic, my modem having a problem, my router having a problem, the airport in my computer or my computer. When it doesn't work, I've just mentioned 6 possible weak links, and there's probably others, like my battery dying on me, or the human element that I've just done something wrong--but I inherently feel that technology should work for me, not the other way around, that I have to work for it.

And my work life has been computerized somehow. When I first got into social work it was hand written files. Now it's all computer programs: EPIC, CONNECTIONS, PROMIS

I remember when the mother of my children was giving birth there was a nurse who sat in the room inputting stuff into a computer. She never even really looked at us, she was just there to tend to the computer's needs.

Technology just seems so inevitable, like that's the way it's got to be, the whole shebang is a runaway train that you just need to step off the tracks, do not try and stop it.

Yet I'm so bewitched I'm writing a blog.

The Bliss of Inner Fire

I just reread my review of The Bliss of Inner Fire, thought it was interesting. Wrote that a while ago with a really good editor helping me shape it.

The Bliss of Inner Fire: Heart Practice of the Six Yogas of Naropa by Lama Thubten Yeshe
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

My review from Wildmind:

I have the fantasy that there is a perfect book out there for my next spiritual step. A book like The Bliss of Inner Fire by Lama Thubten Yeshe complicates things. It’s the kind of book that spawns a list of other books to read: First off, Tsongkhapa’s Having Three Convictions, or The Six Practices of Yoga by Naropa, which Lama Thubten Yeshe refers to quite a lot because they are his root texts.

The Bliss of Inner Fire by is based on Lama Yeshe’s talks on the last two intensive retreats that he gave before he died in 1984 at the age of 49. He chose to talk about tummo, one of the six yogas of Naropa, which is explored in Tsongkhapa’s Having the Three Convictions. Tummo is the practice of inner fire. It’s the practice where you can sit outside in the winter and not feel cold — but that’s the exciting magical explanation. Lama Yeshe isn’t into these exotic claims, he’s a real Buddhist. It turns out that it’s like every other practice — it’s designed to move you towards enlightenment. The sense of concentration and insight of deep meditation has a kind of convergent tendency.

Lama Yeshe is from the Gelugpa school, but appreciates the Nyingma, Sakya and Kagyu schools, which are the four main schools of the Tibetan Tradition. You probably know this but it’s worth repeating: while the Dali Lama is a world spiritual leader, he is also from the Gelugpa school.

Lama Thubten Yeshe was born in Tibet in 1935. At the age of six, he entered Sera Monastic University in Tibet where he studied until 1959, when he was 24. He had to flee the Chinese invasion. His main teacher was Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche. When he finally got to the Tibetan community in exile in India, he resumed his studies. These studies are rigorous and involve much debate, study and even all night sessions. He’s a favorite of the Gelugpa tradition perhaps because of his young death; he’s a kind of James Dean of the Gelugpa tradition.

One theme of the book is the importance of practice over “book Buddhism” — a kind of dilettante Buddhism. Lama Yeshe says, “These days we have no shortage of intellectual information, but I truly believe there is a shortage of fertilization. We collect so much information, but we do very little with it. This is why we have so little success in our spiritual practice.” The dharma lives in people, not just in books. Books represent people in a way, but they are not fully embodied, not interactive. A book is circumstantial speech; it just goes on and on regardless of the reader and the reader’s needs.

Lama Yeshe has encouraging advice for people who regret the time it took to finally find Buddhism, “Try to be reasonable in the way you grow, and don’t ever think it is too late. It’s never too late. Even if you are going to die tomorrow, keep yourself straight and clear and be a happy human being today. If you keep your situation happy day by day, you will eventually reach the greatest happiness of enlightenment.”

The book is based on talks, and so once you get past the three introductions, it reads like smooth encouraging advice for the most part. Then it gets into more complicated visualization practices, where it seems like it would be better to see these teachings live, and be able to seek clarification for yourself.

Lama Yeshe makes some interesting distinctions about western thinking. Lama Yeshe says, “In the West, desire seems to refer to sense gratification. However, in the Buddhist view, desire is not a craving of the senses but the mental concepts and projections that we build up on an object, thereby bring us problems.” And, “If you know the nature of desire, you can really control your mind because you are able to question and to understand your own view of desire’s object. Otherwise, you cannot see the mind’s trick. With it’s constant “I feel, I want,” desire plays tricks on you, leading you to a constant restlessness that can mess up your life.”

He seems to be saying that desire as we know it, wanting the latest electronic gadget, or a new DVD or whatever, isn’t how to think about desire. Noticing how we add on to the story of our desires, is his point. Like “I need to maintain my status,” or, “My life is so difficult I deserve some pleasure and a DVD is the most efficient route to pleasure,” on top of the whole pleasure story. Having pleasure itself is not problematic; it’s our relationship with the pleasures. It’s not the gratification itself, but the story about it. “Ah, now I can relax now that I have a whirlpool bath.” Or, “Now that I am married, I can get on with the business of life” as if these projects truly make us happy. Not that you shouldn’t get a whirlpool bath or get married — just don’t center your story on stories of gratification so superficially.

He also says, “Even though it is sometimes said that something is nonexistent because it is like an illusion, a dream, or a reflection in a mirror, this is not philosophically correct. It is speaking loosely to say, ‘This phenomenon does not exist because it is an illusion. It is just one of my projections.’ In fact, the reverse is true. The phenomenon exists precisely because it exists as an illusion, which is independent. A reflection in a mirror is also interdependent; it exists because of the mirror.”

What he seems to be saying here, is that these illusions we build up are part of our life, you can’t just do an “illusion extraction,” because they are based intimately on your life. In a way it’s our whole world view that’s needs the liberating reorientation of a deeper understanding in Buddhism, the cultivation of insight.

At times he makes intriguing statements without explaining, like “ordinary exercise increases superstition”. Perhaps what he’s saying is that exercise is likely to distract one into the cult of the beautiful body — but we’ll never know because he didn’t expand on it.

For me, this book has too much talk of practices I don’t do, so it was difficult for me to read. Nonetheless, it’s a book worthy of a Buddhist library, for the contemporary section of one’s Tibetan Buddhism section, an informal but useful commentary on Tsongkhapa’s Having Three Convictions, which is itself a commentary on The Six Practices of Yoga by Naropa. If The Six Practices of Yoga is your root text, or you are interested in the Gelugpa tradition, you shouldn’t ignore this book.


View all my reviews

The Buddha's Apprentice at Bedtime

I came across this awesome book. I read a story from it to my 7 and 9 year old son. They said it was good. Maybe they could read it themselves, too. I like to read to my sons even though my 9 year old has to read for an hour each day for school and he keeps a log of what he's read and must turn it in to his teacher. That's a lot of reading in my opinion, but times are changing, people are growing up faster. I think it's cool they spend so much time reading. I just wonder about making it compulsory. When I read as a kid it was because I wanted to. I totally love reading now, it brings me so much joy. And I didn't have awesome books like The Buddha's Apprentice at Bedtime. I have reviewed many awesome children's books that were Buddhist.

I think in some spiritual traditions there's a lot of stuff for children, so you can begin them early. While some take a real spiritual turn at a young age, for me the turn towards spirituality came 11 years ago when I was 34.

My kids are learning two spiritual traditions. Their mother is Catholic. They have sunday school where they can teach the children the traditions. In a way, I see sunday school as a kind of cultural thing, a family thing. Learning about religion at a young age isn't a bad thing, even if it's not my tradition. As a Buddhist in America, I am very aware of other spiritual traditions.

I do like to share my tradition with my kids. Last night we watched Little Buddha for the first time. I've been waiting to show that to them. I think they were OK with seeing it at age 7 and 9. This movie splices the story of the life of the Buddha with a narrative about a boy who has been recognized as a Tulku in the Tibetan tradition. The family is skeptical because they are not Buddhist, but they go on a journey of discovery too. I've learned a lot about the Tibetan flavors of Buddhism, but I don't practice in that tradition, so in a way it's a weird kind of introduction. I'm like the guy in the movie who ends up wishing he believed in reincarnation.

My son's first communion

My youngest son had his first communion in the Catholic Church. I am a Buddhist, but I believe learning about other traditions isn't bad, and that my sons will choose their paths.

I’ve always felt that I wouldn’t oppose my ex’s bringing of my son into her tradition. Tolerance and even celebration of other traditions is important to me. She wasn’t so into the church when we were together, but that might have been in deference to me.

My only fear is the culture of shaming present in some religions, but I can’t claim my own spiritual community is absent of that. I feel secure in my spiritual tradition, therefore I am happy for kids to learn another. I will teach them what I feel is appropriate about mine. I have done that.

I had many thoughts during the Catholic mass. The children looked so cute. I love bringing families and community together. The rituals were very evocative for me.

I loved the rituals and efforts to evoke spiritual feelings, the rapture and joy of connecting with the transcendental. I wondered though if it’s dualistic to create spiritual, because then it creates non-spiritual, or mundane. I think spirituality is everywhere and nowhere. Do we really need to try to be spiritual?

But then I thought it’s more about community in church, shared efforts, or in Buddhism, sangha. Gathering together in shared spiritual goals. The rituals are intense--taking in the body of Christ, into your body, becoming one. You can feel how the rituals are designed to foster intensity. I honestly don’t feel a connection with Jesus beyond the human Jesus. I can admire him and see why others see him as their spiritual hero, but I just don’t feel that. The concept of God does not make sense to me, and I don’t have a felt sense of it either.

I spent my time translating things into something I understand; my higher power, as I understand it, or a common spirituality that is independent of any sect or even religion, the transcendental. I like the desire to improve ourselves, a non-materialist appreciation of what life gives. There are so many forces in our society pulling us towards accumulation of things. But what really makes us happy is experiences, connecting with others, to take a spiritual journey is real fulfillment.

No me falta means “I shall not want.” It feels Buddhist in it’s pointing out that our desires create our unrest, and not wanting is a kind of good place to be.

The preist crossed his head, his mouth and his heart, and I thought “body, speech and mind.”

I thought about the emphasis on “other power”. I’ve come to appreciate that, but I still like self-power and community power, that feels more real to me. I am willing to strive for the personification of an ideal, to merge with a spiritual hero, or archetype.

I think what I object to most is the hard sell, the primordial marketing that says I have to accept someone else’s revelation, that this is the only one true religion. But there does seem to be some recognition that we need to test it in our own experience.

There is anger towards me for divorcing my ex, as I sat amongst the family, and so even as they preach forgiveness and embracing people, I felt the icy shoulders, even the restraint as they reached out and shook my hand. It’s a high aspiration to really forgive people who have hurt you. I can’t blame them; I was not skillful at times during the divorce. I could feel them trying to be forgiving. I felt remorse at hurting them, I missed being part of the family.

My ex-mother-in-law has been nothing but kindness and has been gracious towards me. I thought about how I used to judge her high spirituality as a symptom of her powerlessness as an immigrant. But today I just felt like she’s awesome. I really respect her. She does exemplify the ideals I admire in her tradition. And a beautiful tradition it is.

Goodbye

Many years ago, there was a guy who was wooing my roommate. He was a bit portly, not the greatest looker, but he was kind, thoughtful and because he wasn't so good looking, he didn't get caught up in a lot of the shenanigans people get caught up in. My memory is of him getting amused at the stupid things people do. One thing he had in common with the roommate was a kind of critique of how silly others live, poor decisions others make. He did eventually woo my roommate, and even though she denied nothing was going on with him. One day we got a wedding invitation. He'd worn her down. I can't say he was friend because we never chose to hang out together, just him and me, and it was circumstances that we were in the same room. He was friends with my ex's brother, they had a chum group we occasionally joined in on. I did quite like him. We drifted away, as lives go separate ways, but I always liked him, and enjoyed his presence when I shared it. Yesterday I found out he passed away. Life is short. Life is precious. Goodbye. You had qualities I admired and I will miss you.

Not In Portland

In season 3 episode 7 "Not In Portland" of Lost, Jack and Kate are trying to get off the island. A mysterious woman offers her boat, but not before they rescue her boyfriend. They discover him in a kind of re-education chamber, with the message "Everything changes" and "we are the cause of our own suffering" and other messages that are quasi Buddhist, or maybe Buddhist cliches flashing on the screen. The name of the company running the experiments on the island is called Dharma Initiative.

So is brainwashing someone with Buddhist cliches and calling the malevolent company Dharma Initiative anti-Buddhist?

I don't think that just because "bad guys" use Buddhist words, that doesn't make the show over all anti-Buddhism. It's not clear, so we'll have to see how things end. But there was a moment where I thought the "bad" people were a kind of Buddhist cult gone wrong. I'm not more than half way done with the show.

There's certainly a lot of Buddhist symbolism. 108 is the number of minutes before it resets. With the obscurity of Buddhism in America, it's a tribute to just include some ideas in a popular show.

I wonder what I would feel if there was a show that was anti-Buddhist. I suppose I wouldn't like it. Usually negative comments about buddhism are oblique like when Brit Hume thought Tiger Woods should convert to Buddhism because of redemption.

One writer things Lost supports Buddhist insights. Here is another. You can google for further examples. Lost certainly has a bunch of commentary.

Lost has a whiff of Kalfka, you never quite know what is going on. What is that black blob? Why does everyone see hallucinations? What is really going on? Pressing the button seems like a odd commentary on the meaninglessness of current society work, it's so abstracted from meaning. But just when you think you've nailed something down, it switches. Twists and turns are the hallmark of a good drama and this was a wildly popular show. I'm just getting around to it on Netflix.

You clearly see people jumping to wrong conclusions. They act out of reactive tribal minds, seeing the others as all bad. It shows how deluded we can be.

I enjoy the survivalism, I like sort of back to nature narratives, without technology. I like ensamble shows, with large casts and lots of character development. And I like the Dharmic themes and references.