Gestures

Gratitude

Patience

(I love the photography of Patrick Latter. Here is the source of this one.)

A lovely book has crossed my path: How Patience Works. It's actually a short novel, and while I'm only 10 pages in so far, I can say I'm enjoying it.

I read a straight up dharma book about patience. And I wrote about it as one of the 6 perfections.

Excellent fiction, in my mind, takes in the big ideas and applies them to lives. I'll let you know how it goes.

Apparently Innocuous Decisions

Reading from The Numerical Discourses of the Buddha: A Complete Translation of the Anguttara Nikaya (Teachings of the Buddha), I read "...seing danger in the slightest faults..."

My psychology transforms that one. Not sure if I'm the only one who noticed. I can really use that one against myself in a self attack. Shame is an attack on the self that serves no purpose. I think I heard "shame spiral" in a pop movie, but it applies. Using the teachings in the right way are important. Most people don't do close readings. I hope it's not just me. I think what the phrase is pointing out is small things. In recovery talk it's Apparently Innocuous Decisions (AIDs). Little things that lead to substance use. But aren't we addicted to fossil fuels, and materialism and titillation, distraction and high fructose corn syrup and lard drizzle. 

Ancient Greek Quote

"Let there be less suffering...
give us the sense to live on what we need."

Chorus,  381,2, in Aeschylus's Agamemnon.

Swayambhunath Stupa

I watched light of the valley the 15th renovation of swayambhu which I'd recorded from PBS. It's about the Swayambhunath stupa west of Katmandu. It was beautiful to see how the local people were, the Newars were persuaded to deconsecrate things so that they could take them down and repair them. I remember seeing this site in the movie Little Buddha. It was beautiful to see the devotional reverence.

hassle and uplift scale

Read an excellent article on relapse prevention and came across the hassle and uplift scale. Fascinating. The enlightened person, I imagine has very few hassles and lots of uplift. Seeing that some situations gave me more hassle than uplift, I reflected by asking myself if it has to be that. Do I have to experience hassle.

We make the world with our minds. Why not live in paradise? Nirvana is not another place, it is here. We choose to live in samsara or nirvana. It's not easy, it's not like flipping a switch, there's the higher evolution. Those not busy being born are busy dying. Pathing is better than not pathing.

Also in the article is an interesting concept, "apparently innocuous decisions" which are really the beginning of relapse. I think there are apparently innocuous decision that lead you away from the path too. Like watching netflix, or playing video games, in my case. I take refuge in watching sports, watching TV and playing video games, the three dungs. They are the three dissipations. Not the three jewels.

Here's a quote from the relapse article:

"A person who's life is full of demands may experience a constant sense of stress, which not only can generate negative emotional states, thereby creating high-risk situations, but also enhances the person's desire for pleasure and his or her rationalization that indulgence is justified. ("I owe myself a drink"). In the absence of other non-drinking pleasurable activities, the person may view drinking as the only means of obtaining pleasure or escaping pain."

That made me think of "compensatory indulgences".

Wonderful World

What A Wonderful World

I see trees of green, 
red roses too. 
I see them bloom, 
for me and you. 
And I think to myself,
what a wonderful world. 

I see skies of blue, 
And clouds of white. 
The bright blessed day, 
The dark sacred night. 
And I think to myself, 
What a wonderful world. 

The colors of the rainbow, 
So pretty in the sky. 
Are also on the faces, 
Of people going by, 
I see friends shaking hands. 
Saying, "How do you do?" 
They're really saying, 
"I love you". 

I hear babies cry, 
I watch them grow, 
They'll learn much more, 
Than I'll ever know. 
And I think to myself, 
What a wonderful world. 

Yes, I think to myself, 
What a wonderful world. 

Oh yeah.

Sometimes I get songs stuck in my head, and then I look up the lyrics and listen to it a lot. I think I heard this son in that movie about a Vietnam DJ, with Robin Williams in it, Good Morning, Vietnam.

My years later, I was looking for something positive, and I thought of it, so I digested the lyrics and listened to a number of times.

My first thought is that the focus on color, in the context of America, makes it a song about race and racism. Seeing the rainbow in faces makes it explicit.

I love "how do you do?" being turned into "I love you." Now when people ask me that I feel like it's really sweet. Positive attribution might be a distortion, but it's a useful distortion. 

Then in the end he talks about children, and implicitly the hope of the future. They will learn things that he never knows. It's implied that through the improvements and evolution of humans, we shall learn to appreciate all the different colors, a Star Trek kind of world where race no longer something that exists.

I love the gravelly voice. Armstrong was a big cannabis smoker. I read a biography of him, because it's the first great titan of jazz. Ken Burn's documentary on jazz seemed to almost focus too much on him. And yet his is perhaps the greatest figure in jazz because he is among the first. Parker, Coltrane, Davis, Mingus, Monk don't exist without Armstrong. I haven't been to his museum in Queens. I think I need to try that museum out.

In other spiritual jazz greats, A Love Supreme, by John Coltrane is also song that oozes with spirituality. I got a stereo for my birthday and I got out my CD collection and have been listening to a lot of music, and the radio. I was listening to some Bach the other day in the car, and it was very powerful, felt spiritual. 

I wish Simon Schama would do a history of Buddhism.

I wish Simon Schama would do a history of Buddhism. I've been watching the fascinating Story of the Jews.

Religion is beset with this problem. While tolerance and the freedom of belief seems fundamental to me, I also felt in the heady days of conversion that my own spirituality was the right one, and wished everyone could see the light I was seeing. We mix personal with the social, and thus try to convert people. Why can't we just enjoy what we have? We need to see the reflection back in others, we are social beasts.

In the pluralism of modern day New York City, there are many different brands you can pledge allegiance and a tithe. You also have the freedom from religion. Most people take that route today, they have experienced the imperialism of their childhood, and declared independence. And yet they feel they are missing something. My atheist friend is always pointing out the study that atheist tend to know the most about religion.

Community is always imperfect, relationships are wounding. We project our original relations onto the templates of the past, with our habitual responses, and get snookered.

The existential crisis freedom from religion creates can be very creative, and you could say the world since the fall of religion has been a explosion of exploration of this. That has also lead to problems with substance abuse, and other addictions, as hedonism replaces spiritual ideas. The secular humanist ideals are attractive, but there is no church to reinforce the culture of it. Again, we are back at humans as social creatures.

Academics get lost in the minutia of being an expert, spiritualist preach cliched bromides, and it's hard to find someone in the middle, learned but of the world.

The difficulty is tolerating ambivalence, not knowing, Keat's negative capacity. We need stability, something to stand on, building blocks, psychologically. We need guiding principles beyond our own reactive pleasure seeking.

The Buddhist word for faith also means confidence. Developing confidence in the chosen path is not a bad thing, it's tested in the fires of your own experience.

I think all traditions are beautiful. When I learn about other traditions, I get that warm fuzzy feeling I get with my tradition, at people striving to be more. Hedonistic pleasure seeking has it's limits, and I think it's OK to seek your own pleasure at times, but there needs to be a balance.

Just likes in Buddhism there needs to be a balance between essentialism and nihilism, a fetter.  

Drinking

I quite enjoyed watching this video this morning.

On thing that strikes me about this video from 1993, 21 years ago, is that Bhante thinks about the consequences to others. Pratityasamutpada is the first thought. If someone references a red herring of other's behaviors, then he suggests people focus on themselves. He demonstrates a kind of democracy, in that they voted on whether to add a 11th precept, and it failed. He discussed the differences between the west and India, where drinking is more taboo. He talks about his own example, where he quit drinking all together even though he likes a drop of wine during a meal, because of the impact of others. I really like it that he supports the freedom of others, but shows such a kind example. Another tac he takes is that fine, you look at one example, but what about the majority example, can you see that? Finally he does say that there is to be no drinking in FWBO centers, now renamed TBC.

In all my time with the TBC, they were dry events, except parties. I do remember someone asking if I was fit to drive, after I'd had some beer. At the time I thought that was annoying question, but I think it's a fair question.

I have been reflecting a lot on drinking lately. I have brewed my own beer, and there have been times in my life when drinking did take energy and money from me. I do think I have alcoholic tendencies, and there were a lot of people in my life while I was growing up who you could say drink too much.

I remember in one of Bante's memoirs, he drove across Europe, and was astonished by how much of agriculture was given up to wine, and I think he said he stopped drinking at that point, because while he liked a little, he thought the world had devoted too many resources to drinking and he did not want to participate in that.

He also talks about contributing to the culture of bragging about drinking, and the effect that might have on other people.

One time when I wrote in the reporting journal of men who have asked for ordination, that I got tanked with my preceptor, and someone condemned me from Sri Lanka. I remember being very tired the next day for a retreat inside a prison. But in the end it went well. I think being in jail was very stressful for me, and that may have contributed to the drinking. Also some people bought us a round when we were about to leave, and they wanted to talk about Buddhism.

I guess I remember some bit in Milarepa where he drinks and thinks he gets enlightened. But if you look at that story, that is the only instance of drinking, and he's laid of lot of ground to get to the point, and maybe the drinking released some inhibitions. They talk about Ananda not being enlightened and wanting to join a counsel of remembered speech from the Buddha, but you had to be enlightened. This made his efforts more tense, but just before he fell asleep, he relaxed and achieved enlightenment.

What I think is interesting in all this is that it's a case by case example, and that you must consult with your spiritual friends. Friendship is the emphasis. They don't want to judge others. I really find the desire not to judge others as really important.

Bhante also uses the phrase "pseudo-spiritual book keeping" to refer to someone who says, "well, I don't drink so I can be a little lax with the speech precepts." Bhante says you must apply yourself to all the precepts and not look for excuses not to.

My son wants to use the computer to play Minecraft, so I'll edit this later.

Savage Pilgrims

Reading Savage Pilgrims: On the Road to Santa Fe, Shukman quotes D.H. Lawrence, "...Which I am I..."

This could be interpreted 2 ways. Is he talking about the multiplicities within oneself, or is he talking about interconnectedness? Either way it's cool. I wonder if that's what the Buddha was thinking about when he talked about rebirth. How we all have a John Malkovich inside of us.

A surly troubled youth asked me the other day, "why do you care?" He was referring to the negative choices he was making. I think now my answer is interconnectedness. I think that's what the Bible is getting at when Christ says what you do to the least of me, you do to me. I feel like that my conservative friends have lost that insight.

Lawrence goes on to talk about a prayer to Saint Catherine. Again, it's ambiguous because there are lots of Saint Catherines. The most famous one is a virgin who every time she converted someone to Christianity, they were murdered.

It's hard for me to imagine Christian persecution in Christian America. It's the Christians who are doing the persecution here. It's not hard to see when people feel like they are closer to the truth, they can, out of insecurity, turn it into intolerance.

But a Bluesman (or woman) doesn't turn suffering into revenge.

What I like about Savage Pilgrims is that Shukman takes his own spiritual journey, and he's trying to shuck off his conditioning, and get closer to the bone, and embrace his freedom. I've only read 67 pages, but it's a beautiful travel memoir so far.

the path

(source)

I haven't meditated in yonks. I asked myself why I haven't been. My answer was that I had lost the habit. How would I refind the habit? A commitment. How does one go about following through with a commitment? Thinking about it is my first thought. Why do I want to meditate? I hope to be more aware for the sake of others.

My standby meditation is mindfulness of breathing the TBC way, with 4 stages. I've done the 16 stage anapanasati on retreat, but it's just so involved. Not that I don't like a little insight even when I'm calming myself.

I take a look inside, and it's a foul rag and bone shop. And yet, to look at that a little, it dusts the shop a little, it doesn't look as bad. Perhaps one of the reason why people don't meditate and do therapy is that when they tune in, they don't particularly like what they see. For me, that's the whole point. You drag stuff out into the daylight and it loses it power. It's a painful process and I accept my resistance to it, forgive my foibles, weakness, imperfections. I'm a middle aged man with the same old problems, but then I tell myself about the spiral. The upward spiral. It's all to a point. Even if I'm knocking at the door of the spiral staircase, that is worth it.

They say spiritual traditions make sense of suffering. Nietzsche suggests you get too comfortable with suffering, but I think he misses the point. The grace to accept what is happening isn't easy to come by. We stick the second arrow in. One is enough. Pin down the demons and stair at them. They don't go away, but they lose their power.

So to confirm why I meditate, I reflect on the path. Meditation is the path. 

Walking prayer

With beauty before me, may I walk

With beauty behind me, may I walk

With beauty above me, may I walk

With beauty below me, may I walk

With beauty all around me, may I walk

Wandering on the trail of beauty, may I walk

- Navajo: Walking Meditation

quote

From page 45 of The Path To Awakening: How Buddhism's Seven Points of Mind Training Can Lead You to a Life of Enlightenment and Happiness:

"It takes enormous will-power to think positively and no effort at all to let the mind dwell in negativity."

digital intelligence

From an essay: When The Factory Turns Cold:

"The French revolutionary (and Karl Marx’ son in law) Paul Lafargue wrote “The Right to be Lazy” in 1883 that the “proletariat has allowed itself to be seduced by the dogma of work.” In his provocative tribute to the merits of laziness, Lafargue refuses to privilege work over all other pursuits (Lafargue). No, this is not a call for a population of couch potatoes; it is rather a refusal of the configuration of the work society. Kathi Weeks, a Duke University professor, explains that Lafargue’s extravagant refusal of work is not a refusal of productive activity. Lafargue speaks out against the ideology of work as highest calling. Weeks points to the autonomist Marxist critique that does not only focus on alienation and exploitation but also on the overvaluation of work itself (Hoegsberg and Fisher 151).

At first, such demand may sound outlandishly elitist. How could we possibly unlearn our extreme work habits, our overvaluation of work? Who’d pay the bills. Really, who can afford this? In her excellent book The Problem with Work, Kathi Weeks supports demands for basic income and shorter work hours.

For Weeks, the problem with work would not disappear if invisible labor would be more visible and appropriately compensated. The problem is not only about the degradation of skill, low wages/exploitation, and discrimination. It’s about “securing not only better work, but also the time and money necessary to have a life outside of work.”(Weeks 13) Do you remember the times when people still had hobbies and knew how to take a vacation?

The refusal of work is really a refusal of the way work is organized. Concretely, proposals for unconditional basic income, discussed intensely and for a long time in Europe, would make that possible."

I quoted my favorite part of the essay but it's so much more than that section. It questions our use of the internet in smart ways, and brings a kind of mindfulness in digital interactions. Wonderful essay.

Preciousness of life

From page 42 of The Path To Awakening: How Buddhism's Seven Points of Mind Training Can Lead You to a Life of Enlightenment and Happiness:

"The dharma teachings explain in detail what a precious human life is. It is by no means a mere generalization. Rather, the precious human life means precisely you. You can practice the dharma and so your life is precious: you have the freedom to pursue the dharma; you have time to attend dharma lectures, you have the intellect to understand the meaning: and you hare physically able to do the practice. It makes you realize how lucky you are."

quote

"It must be mentioned here that even today some things are kept hidden from all but the most serious practitioners. Here, wit it comes to the teachings on ultimate bodhicitta, much will remain unwritten." p. 28 The Path to Awakening.

I don't think that should keep one from addressing the seven point mind training, but it could make one wish to study them within a tradition.

I think some writings make one meditate. Some writings make one seek sangha.

Sunday thoughts

So I've begun to read The Path To Awakening: How Buddhism's Seven Points of Mind Training Can Lead You to a Life of Enlightenment and Happiness.

There is a 6 page introduction to the teachings of the Buddha. I have not heard the teaching about the various turnings of the wheels. I have heard the teaching the three lakshanas.

In the introduction by Shamar Rinpoche he says he doesn't want his teaching to be secetarian, but then the first paragraph of the explication of the root text he says this is the primary teaching in the Kadam School. I think he can have it both ways, I don't get so caught up on contradictions, I see it more as a dialectic. There is something good about understanding what your tradition really is.

With Buddhism hitting the wide world, with the invasion of Tibet in 1950, culminating in the Dali Lama fleeing in 1959, you get the teachings going into a lot of different cultures, and that process can be like sifting for the gold. With Tibetan Buddhism spreading over the world, other traditions have found the west to be more open. Zen, Theravada and other traditions have seen an opening of receptivity and curiosity in the west. The dirt of culture drops out. Actually, I don't see culture as dirt, but it is important to see what is culture and what dharma transcends culture, and what culture does to the dharma. And dirt is a positive association for me, live rich soil is so important. This whole interplay between culture and dharma is interesting and important.

One of the things in America is that secular mindfulness is about denuding Buddhism of all the various sort of religious aspects. No foreign chanting, no weird drawings, no foreign rituals.

One of my facebook friends noted a study that showed meditation did not help with stress relief as much as therapy and medication. I'm OK with that, because to make meditation into stress relief is not really the Buddha's intention. That might be one of the things that's needed to progress on the spiritual path, and that might just be trying to curb some of the negative aspects of materialism, the idea that life is all about amassing the most possessions possible. People torque themselves up to a high pitch to succeed, and then need a way of winding down, when they realize alcohol or drugs come at a price. You can turn to meditation for that, and that might help, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's just not particularly Buddhism, we have to be frank about that. You can use meditation to enhance your materialistic quests for security, housing, exquisite experiences, and status. This is why the military and the business world like secular mindfulness.

Phil Jackson can be the Zen basketball coach, and make millions and millions of dollars. And I am happy for him, and I'm really glad the Knicks are looking into him running the Knicks. But I don't see him as particularly Buddhist, and all the stuff about Zen and him is really overblown. Just like the Zen of Steven Jobs. I'm happy for people to be open to outside influences, but Steven Jobs doesn't really need to be co-opted by Zen to make Zen any better. I don't want Buddhism to become a kind of Scientology where it's really about making it in Hollywood. It's not some in club that is exciting because it's an in club.

People need a lot of metta though. I could use more. My partner was saying that the other day, people just need to try and be a little nicer. She thinks that would make our world a better place. There's nothing wrong with meditation making you nicer to people. Lets just be clear what our intension is. Are we meditating to be nicer so we can make more money or are we just meditating to be nicer. Are we meditating to move towards enlightenment, not matter how far off that might be? In the acceptance verses in the ordination ceremony of the TBC, you accept ordination for the sake of enlightenment. I've heard people disavow enlightenment, it seems to far off, it's said you can't know what it is until you are that. I personally see that as a denial of what the Buddha did as being special, that you can do it, and that it's worth aiming for.

Seven Point Mind Training

The Path To Awakening: How Buddhism's Seven Points of Mind Training Can Lead You to a Life of Enlightenment and Happiness arrived in the mail today. This is by Shamar Rinpoche. The Shamar Rinpoche version is translated and edited by Lara Braitstein.

I've read Becoming a Child of the Buddhas: A Simple Clarification of the Root Verses of Seven Point Mind Training a number of times and have studied it in study groups. This is by Gomo Tulku, translated by Joan Nicell. When you google Gomo Tulku, you get the rapping lama, which I think might be another incarnation. It's hard to untangle the thicket of lineages and teachers. But the one thing to know is that the Seven Point Mind Training might not be a standardized text, and might have different version in different traditions. The whole point of it is to have pithy short verses that pack big punches, so they are changed over time, and each lineage will see various versions as the best one. And then someone translates them into English.

The Seven Point Mind Training goes back to teachings of Atisa, through Checkawa Yeshe Dorje. So the various versions will be based on these. So we're reaching back to Atisa through a number of teachers and a translators.

This one by Shamar Rinpoche, is from the Kadampa tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, though the teachings reach out into the modern movements, and other traditions. If you were in that tradition, you'd probably read this version first. I read the Gomo Tulku version as recommended by the TBC. I have no idea why or how that came to be the one to read at that time.

I've listened to talks from FBA on it. I don't know what's going on with their search engine, but I can't find the specific talks.

What strikes me in my memory is that all this stuff has to be critically evaluated, and made sense of. But if you spend time on them, they can come to have great meaning. And that is why I'm excited to read this new version of the teachings. I will check back with you when I get into the book.

The shortness of life

Why do we forget about death? Forgetting is an important human function. We could be plagued by existential crisis at an early age, without the resources to combat the crisis. Forgetting trauma is only temporary, it bubbles up later when we are strong enough to address it, process it, metabolize it better. The defenses are truly wonderful things even if we rail against our limitations.

We shall die soon, but we wish to face it when it's more obvious. You can read Crap! I've Got Cancer. The author of How We Die: Reflections of Life's Final Chapter, New Edition just died. You can read his obituary.

You can read the obit section of the Times every day, and somehow it doesn't sink in. The death clock tells me I will die on February 25th 2041, but that's just an estimate based on whether I smoke and what my BMI is. Optimistically I could live to 2065. Pessimistically I could live 6 more years. All of these things are estimates. It is unknown when we die.

As you get older, you know more and more people in the obit section. Long life is also interesting. One of the comments in one of my classes wasn't that death was so bad, it was the trajectory into death that was the hard part. It was in Montaigne's essays that I read about how death is actually a release from suffering at the end, and not be feared.

I began thinking about death when I read The Denial of Death. The professor who assigned me the book is surely dead by now. I remember the book blowing my mind. I'm kind of afraid to read it again. In a way it helped me on my journey into deep psychology.

In social work school I took a class on death, dying and mourning. I read Intoxicated by My Illness and Other Writings on Life and Death, and had to write a paper on a movie. I think I wrote my paper on Antonia's Line (1995) (Import All Region). I say I think because I lent it to someone and never got it back.

One of the themes of Buddhism, is that life is impermanent. Life is short. One of the reflections used in Buddhism is to reflect on the shortness of life, to try and goose out your real priorities, and drop some of the superficial stuff.

My most frequented blog posts are entitled How Can I Die? I read an article about how you can increase your blog traffic and it actually works. I wrote a blog post that ended with the suicide hotline number. At times we feel overwhelmed with negativity, but rarely are things so hopeless that suicide is warranted just based on those feelings, so people should seek help. I believe a law against suicide is stupid, and I do feel people own their own lives, and they can rationally choose suicide, like at the very end of a well known terminal illness progression. But often in depression we feel was a in a bad place and that it will never improve. That is usually untrue.

I read a science fiction book about a future where people's consciousness is backed up and if they die, you can just download the consciousness. No wait, the book was a future that promised medicine had advanced to such a point that people just didn't die any more. And at the end, it had a bit about how you could freeze your body or freeze your head. (I think that's why Futurama has all those heads in jars. I love that show.) Reflecting on the idea of living forever, you realize that the shortness of life is what gives it such meaning, and yet the subjective experience of life can be that it goes on and on forever. I certainly feel that way sometimes.

We don't live through our children, but we do live on in people's consciousness, for a short while anyway. I still think about all the dead people in my life, and all the dead relationships. People are with us as kind of psychological ghosts. We think about people in history as well. What would the Buddha do?

I'm agnostic about the afterlife, rebirth, because while it doesn't make sense to me, I think there are strong cultural factors that make it dismissed, like science. One friend said, "it's hard to imagine all this energy goes to nothing." I don't really have a hard time seeing that.

As I say we live on in the tendrils of consequences and other's consciousness. I think while our consciousness is unique because no two circumstances are similar, I think personalities are fairly similar, and it's possible that reincarnation is just seeing lines of karma in personalities; I can imagine what it was like to be this person in those circumstances. I think when you understand conditionality in a truly deep way,  all sorts of interesting things are seen, that are not part of normal consciousness.

Reflections on death are important and good, but I also think preoccupation with death, from a depressive standpoint, is a warning sign and needs to be addressed.