I am the canyon.....

Recently, I had the most amazing and unexpected experience while visiting the south rim of the Grand Canyon. We had spent two days in the desert at 107 degrees and were quite relieved and very happy to take a cooler and greener drive through the most amazing pine forests and yellow fields to the south rim of the grand canyon. It was late morning when we arrive. We had received a brochure at the gate of the park which had given us some information explaining the geological reasoning behind the this astonishing slash into the surface of the earth, which we perused before we started the 2.5 mile walk along the rim of the canyon.

I noticed immediately that the park had built no barriers between the walkers and the mile and a half drop to the canyon floor. One could walk out on the most precarious looking outcroppings of rock. I found this trust in basic human survival very refreshing and found myself walking out over the canyon every chance I got. It was while standing on one of these outcroppings staring out into this world of time that I began to feel the most profound sadness. It was thick in my throat and my heart started to feel constricted. As the day at the canyon proceeded, this feeling stayed with me.

I needed to understand what this place was and why it was having this effect on me. Throughout the day, I read all the information cairns which explained why the canyon had occurred. I ran my hands over all the incredibly old rocks provided to touch. I spoke to people to get there impressions and asked questions of others. I was learning how the canyon.. , when the canyon ...,
why the canyon...., but the sadness persisted and nothing I was learning about the canyon seemed to relieve this very physical sensation that I was feeling. In the late afternoon, when we left the canyon to return to the hotel, I was still not resolved.

After a little supper and a short rest, I decided we needed to go back. I was not done with the canyon. I was feeling confused by the effect this place was having on me. We returned to the south rim to watch the sunset. It was the sunset that told me the story of the canyon. As soon as the sun began to descend, and the light values in the canyon shifted, the canyon became alive. It moved and morphed; it lit up and went dark; it's colours turned warm, it's colours turned cold.....red to purple....green and blue. My heart broke open with love for this very old woman. I did not want to move. I wanted to lay down and sleep in the arms of this canyon.

After the sun went down, all the people left. It became very, very dark. The only light was the specks of stars in the sky. It was like floating in the arms of the universe. When I could no longer see, the canyon came alive with sound....birds, animals and bugs... all singing into the darkness. It was in that moment that I remembered my teacher. I could hear him say, "what is this?" I had not yet asked the "what" question. I sat on one of the outcroppings of rock over the canyon, and meditated. I stayed with the "what is this?'..."what is this? This was my only thought and I was immediately filled with confidence that this was finally asking the right question. This would end my confusion. After a while of staying focused on this question, a small gentle voice began to fill my mind. "I am the canyon". "I am the canyon". "I am the canyon". Tears ran down my face. The sadness had erupted and evolved into an understanding about who I was. I was old. I was changing every moment, like the canyon at sunset. I was morphing; constantly morphing. The canyon was always changing and so was I. My sadness was the human sadness of loss, of change, of impermanence. The canyon had a lesson for me. I will be forever grateful for the canyon and the generous lessons of my teacher....thank you, Wayne

What is our life about?

Our aspiration, our calling, our desire for a genuine life,
is to see the truth of who we really are...
that the nature of our Being is connectedness and love,
not the illusion of a separate self to which our suffering clings.
It is from this awareness that Life can flow through us;
the Unconditional manifesting freely as our conditioned body.

And what is the path?
To learn to reside in whatever Life presents.
To learn to attend to all of those things
that block the flow of a more open life;
and to see them as the very path of awakening...
all of the constructs, the identities,
the holding back, the projections,
all of the fears, the self-judgments, the blame...
all that separates us from the letting Life be.

And what is the path?
To turn away from constantly seeking comfort
and from trying to avoid pain.
To open to the willingness to just be,
in this very moment,
exactly as it is.
No longer so ready to be caught
in the relentless spinning mind.
Practice is about awakening to the true self,
no one special to be, nowhere to go.
Residing in the Heart, just Being.

We are so much more than just the body,
just this personal drama.
As we cling to our fear,
and our shame, and our suffering,
we forsake the gratitude of living from our natural Being.

So where, in this very moment, do we cling to our views?

Softening around the mind's incessant judgment,
we can awaken the heart that seeks to be awakened.

And when the veil of separation arises,
Life simply unfolds as it will.
No longer caught in the self-centered dream,
we can give ourselves to others,
like a white bird in the snow.

Time is fleeting
Don't hold back.
Appreciate this precious life.


---an earlier version of this poem appeared in
Being Zen; Bringing Meditation to Life

The "what" question.....

In Ezra Bayda's book, the Zen Heart, I have found some very interesting thoughts about the "what" question. He describes three habitual grooves where most of us get caught spinning in the mental world: analyzing, blaming and fixing. "These conditioned patterns are detours from being the present to reality and taking any one of them guarantees that we will perpetuate the story line of "me".
In his discourse on analyzing, he explains "that through analysis, we can uncover why we think the way we do, why others are doing what they are doing, or why something happened the way it did. We think that this mental understanding is necessary for our comfort. But, most of the time, does asking why on this level give us much real clarity or satisfaction? Don't we usually end up just spinning in circles? Granted, when we uncover our believed thoughts.....those repeated thoughts that we have the habit of taking as reality.....we can sometimes see how these thoughts impact our emotional reactions, but most of the time, the reasons we come up with are, at best, only marginally accurate.
From a practice perspective, the real question is not why but what.....what is my life right now? Or even better, "what is it?" This question moves us out of the mental world into the experiential world. "What is it?" serves as the perfect koan because, like a koan, there is no way you can answer it by thinking or analyzing. In doing so it allows us to experience the spaciousness of the nonconceptual. In fact, the only answer to this question is the actual experiencing of the present moment itself. The only answer is "just this". Right now, ask yourself, What is this?" To answer, simply feel the breath going in and out. Feel the air in the room. Feel the tension in your face. Feel the energy going through your body. Experience a felt sense of the overall body posture. Experience "just this"....the simple quality or texture of the moment. Naturally, when difficulties arise in life, we look for answers, because we prefer the comfort of black and white thinking. We continue to hold on to the notion that we can figure life out; yet, the fact is, we'll never figure life out by asking why. Most often, we just don't know."
The second equally fruitless detour is blaming. Ezra's passage explains the this sometimes very subtle way of escaping groundlessness is very compelling and is much like an addiction. He says that if we look closely, we will see that blaming is primarily a defense against feeling the anxious quiver of our experience. "The practice countermeasure to blame is to directly face the pain we are trying to avoid. this is not mental process" it involves feeling the pain, residing in it, as the physical reality of our life. I'm talking about doing something very straight forward, yet very difficult, which is to cut through the story line of blame and instead stay in the present moment of our experience. We simply do not want to do that. To enter the present moment of hurt, ask yourself what that hurt actually feels like physically. Remember, the word "hurt" is just a concept. Again we are back to the question "what is this?"
The final detour from reality in Ezra's book is fixing. "All of us need to become aware of our strategy of escape, our own specific patterns of trying to "fix" our experiences. The quality of perseverance is of key importance, because we have to learn to just stay, even when our experience is not pleasing us in the ordinary sense. Put simply, the solution is never about fixing, but rather about staying....especially staying with the fear of helplessness and the loss of control."

As I am loving the "what" question in my life and am seeing the great potential in this koan, I will be writing more on this subject. I hope that you will enjoy this fresh approach to the present moment.

A person who falls on the earth.....

A person who falls on the earth, stumbling on a stone, will stand up by means of the same earth they fell on. You complain because you think the earth is the problem, having caused your fall. Without the earth, you wouldn't fall, but you wouldn't stand up either. Fall and standing up are both great aids given to you by the earth. Because of mother earth you can continue your practice. You are practicing in the zendo of the great earth, which is the problem. Problems are actually your zendo.

Shunryu Suzuki

I must say a word about fear

I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. I has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins in you mind, always. One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy. Doubt meets disbelief and disbelief tries to push it out. But disbelief is a poorly armed foot soldier. Doubt does away with it with little trouble. You become anxious. Reason comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons technology. But, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. You feel yourself weakening, wavering. Your anxiety becomes dread.
Fear next turns fully to your body, which is already aware that something terribly wrong is going on. Already your lungs have flown away like a bird and your guts have slithered away like a snake. Now your tongue drops dead like an opossum, while you jaw begins to gallop on the spot. Your ears go deaf. Your muscles begin to shiver as if they had malaria and your knees to shake as though they were dancing. Your heart strains too hard, while your spincter relaxes to much. Only your eyes work well. They always pay proper attention to fear. Quickly you make rash decisions.You dismiss your last allies: hope and trust. There, you've defeated yourself. Fear, which is but an impression, has triumphed over you.
The matter is difficult to put into words. For fear, real fear, such as shakes you to your foundations, such as you feel when you are brought face to face with your mortal end, nestles in your memory life a gangrene; it seeks to rot everything, even the words with which to speak of it. So you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.

from the "Life of Pi"

Thank you, Walt

This is what you should do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season or every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body..........

Walt Whitman

Letting go of Control

Spiritual maturity is usually considered a necessary for true awakening, and I am often asked if there is a sign of spiritual maturity. It is true that spiritual maturity is a necessity. 

This kind of maturity, however, has little to do with how people usually conceive it. 

It is not related to the number of years you have devoted to spiritual practice; or the number of years that you have prayed, or the number of years you have "been good". 

At the most basic level, spiritual maturity has to do with the realization that you are not in control. 

This is, of course, a shattering realization, because from the age of two you have believed in the possibility of control, and much of your attention and energy has been funneled into the fight for control. The desire to be in control, the illusion of being in control, and the hope of being in control, are all based on the megalomaniacal belief, that you know when and what the outcome should be.

 Obviously, you can control many things to a greater or lesser degree, but there is nothing that you can totally control. 

You can control your bodily functions to a degree, as well as circumstances, thoughts, emotions, position and survival. But you can never have complete control. 

You need no model for letting go. You cannot "do" letting go. Neither is letting go a kind of saintly passivity; not being bothered by anything. The mind is very slippery. And can even use the desire to let go as a tactic for control.

 Letting go of control is a deeper relaxation, a floating on the ocean. You can become aware of where you are holding on and you can just let go and allow the ocean to hold you. You can become aware that all your tension and clinging are unnecessary. And then relax and let yourself be supported. 

In this same way, you can become aware of all the mental and emotional energy that gets exerted in holding on to a particular story, and you can just let it all go. 

There is a deeper intelligence than the one you use to control, and it is present to be recognized in all of our lives, at all moments. Different emotions may arise including fear, because to let go means that you could fall or you could lose something. 

Yes, be willing to lose everything. It is the same as meeting your death. 

Consciously meeting your death, means discovering what cannot be controlled and what is bigger than anyone's power to control. There can be a blessed surrender to that.

 If you are searching for a safe, comfortable life, than the freedom I am pointing to is not for you. The invitation to accept the "diamond of life" is not an invitation to safety and comfort. It is an invitation to live life fully and completely, which is never safe and is often uncomfortable. Comfort and safety are often searched for because of the belief that they will bring happiness and fulfillment. "If I am just safe enough, then I can relax." 

But I am talking about recognizing that you can relax right now, even though you aren't completely safe and you never will be. In that understanding, is more than safety for the body, mind or emotions. There is safety not in any particular form of being, meaning "your" body, or your loved ones bodies, but of "being-ness", which is eternal. "Diamond in your Pocket".....Gangaji

Meeting Fear.....

At the root of every fixated pattern of suffering, is the avoidance of one core emotion, fear. 

Fear is not the real problem.

 The problem and the continuing complication is all of the mental activity that gets generated in order to avoid really experiencing fear. 

Meeting fear is actually simple. It is so simple that there is really no "how to". The skill is in seeing how this meeting is continually avoided. Within this avoidance, all of the unconscious, fixated, habitual patterns of suffering are structured. 

How is it that you avoid your fear? Do you go numb? Do you deny it? Do you dramatize it? Do you go against it? Do you talk to yourself incessantly? Do you continually fantasize about some future gratification, such as sex, food, power, money, or enlightenment? All as an avoidance of fear. 

Right now, you have the capacity to stop avoiding your fear.

 It is that simple. You can stop telling yourself whatever you are telling yourself and meet what is here.

 In meeting any emotion without telling a story about it, you can meet the truth of yourself. More importantly, you will recognize that this truth has been here all along. 

Fear passes through it. Anger, sadness, fixated behavior and despair, emptiness, fullness, ignorance and enlightenment, all pass through the truth of yourself. All emotions and mental strategies come and go.

 You are here. You have always been here. Unchanging, radiant, pure and unafraid of any fear that appears.

 If all that you desire is to be rid of fear and you run from it or deny it, fear will haunt you. As anything that you run from, it will continue to haunt you. 

In turn, if you chase whatever it is you desire, it will remain just out of reach. This is also true of the spiritual search. If you want God and you chase God, God will be just out of reach. If you stop and drop every concept of God, you are enfolded in the living presence of God. The complications that arise in your life, reflects either an avoidance of what haunts you, or a grasping after what you desire. 

In an instant of being fully conscious all complications disappear. Even in the most complicated circumstances, it is possible to be simply clear. Whatever fear may have haunted you all your life, when you stop and say, "alright fear come, I am ready to meet you" you will find that it will start to dart between the corners. If you will send your consciousness after it into every corner, what a discover you will make. Where is fear? What does it feel like? What is close to it? What is underneath it? In this moment, if there is not fear present, you can tell yourself some story that will generate fear. And then ask yourself directly, where is fear? Maybe you will feel it in your heart. Maybe in your belly. With your consciousness, drop into the middle of the fear. If a story is still going on in your mind about the fear, let that story go. Let your consciousness fall into the fear, that it may have been avoiding for millions of years. When there is an openness to fear, where can it be found? What a strange creature fear it. It exists only when there is resistance to its existence. When you stop and open to what you have resisted through time, you will find that fear is not fear.

 Fear is energy. Fear is space. Fear is the Buddha. It is Christ's heart knocking at your door. 

 from "Diamond in Your Pocket" by Gangaji

Suddenly...

"Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depth of their hearts where neither sin nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in the eyes of the divine. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed....I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other."

Thomas Merton

to K....I would like to tell you a story

In a large temple of Thailand's ancient capital, Sukotai, there once stood an enormous and ancient clay Buddha. Though not the most handsome or refined work of Thai Buddhist art, it had been cared for over a period of five hundred years and become revered for its sheer longevity. Violent storms, changes in government and invading armies had come and gone, but the Buddha endured.
At one point, however, the monks who tended to temple noticed that the statue had begun to crack and would soon be in need of repair and repainting. After a stretch of particularly hot, dry weather, one of the cracks became so wide that a curious monk took a flashlight and peered inside. What shone back at him was a flash of brilliant gold. Inside the plain old statue, the temple residents discovered one of the larges and most luminous gold images of Buddha ever created in Southeast Asia. Now uncovered, the golden Buddha draws throngs of pilgrims form all over Thailand.
The monks believe that this shinning work of art had been covered in plaster and clay to protect it during times of conflict and unrest. In much the same way, each of us had encountered threatening situations that lead us to cover over our innate nobility. Just the people of Sukotai had forgotten about the golden Buddha, we too have forgotten our essential nature. Much of the time we operate from the protective layer.
from Jack Kornfied's book "the wise heart".

gratitude to the teachers

"Through simmering in the raw discomfort of our tendencies, we can gain victory over our aggression and experience the confidence and well-being that come from patience".

This book is amazing! "Light Comes Through".....Dzigar Kontrul....it is at the library.
Pema reads the text to me. Great gratitude to the teachers....

Genuine non-violent attitude

The famous Tibetan meditator Geshe Ben said that his only practice was to watch his self importance bloat up and then crumble down again and again. See how it made his mind freer and freer every time it crumbled brought meaning and pleasure to his life. In fact, it was his life's passion.

"Anger comes in the guise of a friend, righteous and protective and with airtight logic. Fear and paranoia come with aggression, because, when we have made a separation between ourselves and others, we have, in effect, created enemies. This is a form of violence".
Dzigar Kongtrul

"Anger often gives the illusion of clarity."
Dzigar Kongtrul

Our deepest fear

"Our deepest fear
is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear
is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light,
Not our darkness,
that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves,
who am I to be
brilliant,
gorgeous,
talented and fabulous?
Actually,
who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small doesn't serve the world.
There's nothing enlightened about shrinking
so that other people
won't feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest
the glory of God that is written within us.
It's not just in some of us.
It is in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other people
permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fears,
our presence automatically liberates others.

Nelson Mandela
1994 Inaugural Speech

Last night I was reading Tibetan Relaxation by Tarthang Tulku. I think this book has some insights into the throat chakra that I had never read before. The section of the book was called sensations and breathing. As I feel that there is much merit to feeling the sensations in your body and breathing into these sensations in moments of intense reaction, I was curious. The name given to working in this way is Kum Nye. I am finding this a very effective yoga from the Tibetan tradition. "The breathing of Kum Nye is a gentle form of breathing that enables us to contact the energy of the breath, which is itself inseparable from the subtle mental and physical energies that prevade the body. Located at the various points down the centre of the body, from the top of the head to the base of the spine, are a number of energy centres,which include the head centre, the throat centre and the heart centre." These are the chakras and it is in these places in the body that we can feel intense constriction when we care having emotional reactions. Some times it feels hollow, sometimes hot, sometimes tight....but we label it all as pain....I don't really feel this is helpful and would encourage a more careful observation and "true to the experience" label. What does it really feel like for you? I know for myself, my throat is quite often where some of this intensity lands. As I was pondering "why the throat",and I observed that this reaction is reported to me quite often, I found the article. "The energy of the breath is particularly associated with the throat centre, with both evokes and coordinates the flow of the energy throughout the body. It is through the throat centre that we can most easily learn to contact and balance the energy of the breath and the other subtle energies of the body. The throat centre is traditionally pictured as a sixteen petalled flower with two blossoms connected back to back. One eight-petalled blossom in directly linked to the head center, the other to the heart centre; as energies pass through the throat centre, they flow outward to these other centres. When the throat centre is settled and calm, the energies flow in a balanced and coordinated way, resulting in the integration of the mind and body. All too often the throat centre is agitated and the energies of the body become imbalanced. When this occurs we tend to lose touch with our feelings and sensations.This in itself makes it difficult for us to move towards balance within ourselves because it breeds the sense of dissatisfaction that leads us to look outside ourselves for fulfillment. When we are in this state, our feelings are actually secondary feelings, interpretations of mental images, which we then feel back to ourselves. We live predominately in our heads, our awareness focusing on memories of past experiences. The flow of energy to the head centre increases and the energy flow to the heart centre lessens. No longer able to contact the nurturing feelings of the heart, a sense of almost continuous dissatisfaction arises- a subtle form of anxiety felt in the throat centre as a kind of tightness, which results in the self reaching out for experience." The article goes on to explain how Kum Nye breathing helps us dissolve this pattern of anxiety and leads us back out to direct experience. Breath slowly and mindfully into the throat and release the tightness. When in conflict, move to a place where you can be alone. Stay with your body sensations, lose the story, and breath until the conflicted energy transforms. Many blessings in the practice.

Groundlessness

Relationships are hard. They are difficult for everyone. Our relationships are usually well designed stories that have become so solid that they most resemble "illusions". They would probably be called "delusions" except the stories are shared in relationships, and so there is more than one person seeing it. In the moments when the reality doesn't look like the "illusion", there is a very intense feeling of sinking. In those moments, we are desperate to get ground under our feet and this manifests are intense feelings in our bodies....especially our throats....I wonder why the throat....I think that there may be an irresistible need to fix the story.....so obsessive thoughts would also be involved.....and this is where the stories are communicated...this is where the stories turn into sound and enter the external world of form...they become very solid. I don't think they will become as solid as form if they are not validated by someone else. Maybe they feel like a "delusion" rather than an illusion if they are not validated."Am I crazy?" When we put the stories out there, and they become validated they become true. You have just created something from your thoughts that you can stand on, take home with you and call "Yours". A matrix of thoughts designed by you is now "reality". It has become part of your identity or part of the identity of the relationship. What if it isn't validated? What if is not made solid. These moments of "not understood", then become desperate moments. We can't quit telling the story, the thoughts are obsessive until the story is made solid with validation and we can sit and relax on that piece of ground we just made for ourselves......to resolve all those uncomfortable feeling in our bodies. This looks like the need to be "right" but is actually just a desperate attempt not to disappear. I think we need to be comfortable with the uncertainty that relationships present to us. We need to be astonished in every moment that we share. Lean into those moments of groundlessness, when the sensations are strong and fresh and familiar, and be alone with them. Take those moments gently in your arms and explore your body with your breath...These are the broken open opportunities that allow enough space for very deep understanding of yourself.

Breathing

It is the breath that connects us to this moment and allows for the mindfulness. Anything is possible in this good moment. "So for a period of time each day, try to sit in zazen, without moving, without expecting anything, as if you were in your last moment. Moment after moment, you feel your last instant. In each inhalation and each exhalation, there are countless instants of time. Your intention is to live in each instant.First practice smoothly exhaling, then inhaling. Calmness of mind is beyond the end of your exhalation. If you exhale smoothly, without trying to exhale, you are entering into the complete perfect calmness of you mind. You do not exist anymore. When you exhale this way, then naturally your inhalation will start from there. All that fresh blood bringing everything from the outside will pervade your body. You are completely refreshed. Then you start to exhale, to extend that fresh feeling into emptiness. So, moment after moment, without trying to do anything, you continue zazen.

Shunryu Suzuki

Mindfulness

"Mindfulness is the miracle by which we master and restore ourselves. Consider, for example: a magician who cuts his body into many parts and places each part in a different region--hands in the south, arms in the east, legs in the north, and then by some miraculous power lets forth a cry which reassembles whole every part of his body. Mindfulness is like that--it is the miracle which can call back in a flash our dispersed mind and restore it to wholeness so that we can live each minute of life."

Thich Nhat Hanh

Why Meditate?

"A question that arises for beginners in meditation and also, at times, for people with years of experience, is Why do we practice? Why are we doing this? The effort and commitment needed to pursue meditation is so demanding that it is appropriate to ask what value it has and where it is leading.
Meditation has to do with opening what is closed, balancing what is reactive, and exploring and investigating what is hidden. That is the why of practice. We practice to open, to balance, and to explore."
Joseph Goldstein