buddhamedaily’s posterous

Back again here, and back again to a hoped-for more daily practice.  This is the hardest part for me—not sure about other people.  But my teacher tells me that I have reached the point— “classic” he says—where I have enough concentration so that all my sh$t comes up. Yep. And I suffer aversion and doubt. Yep again.  Oh I so do not enjoy that.

The method I am learning, Thai Vipassana, has as one of its steps, “Evaluating the Breath”. Yesterday, during a much-needed and dreaded one-day retreat (an all-day sit), I was attending to my breath. You do this by following its flow into yourself: nostrils, nose, that little sinus place behind the eyes, then past the eardrum and down the throat, under your collar-bones, past the lungs, and into the diaphragm. And back out, which interestingly also shows up first at the nose, where the breath first emerges when you let it go. Like turning on the hose—the water is back there but it immediately pops out the nozzle. But there is more in there. 

The hose metaphor is actually very apt, I think.  When I start it is like I am coated with plastic inside—cling wrap?—and the breath just slips by.  I feel very little. Then I start to feel the tight spots: is it up in my head, or in my throat or in my gut? like kinks in the works. And I try to soften the plastic-coating inside, that protects me from the world. So my breath doesn't tighten and constrict; so that it does not whoosh through, but starts to permeate my body.

And yesterday I started to wonder if it makes a difference, means something different, if I feel the tightness coming in or going out?  Coming in:  is that my fear of the world?  Going out: is that my anxiety of performance for the world?  I don’t know.  I just keep driving.

     

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The_in_and_the_out.zip (3415 KB)

You are at an impasse in your life.
 
You realize a project you’ve worked on for a long time just is not working. You realize your relationship with someone you love has reached a crisis and it is not good. You feel like a failure. You think—what have I done wrong? What is wrong with me?

Personally, I cling—I hate change. And even when the current path is not working, I hang on, hang around. I had the longest lead-up to a divorce in the western world: I would just not give up. I have dithered, not making hard decisions about creative work that must be made in order to move forward. Last week, our teacher gave a talk about these moments, a very helpful talk. In it, he went back to the story of the Buddha’s own path: especially the moment when the Buddha realized that the long, seven years of nearly killing himself with painful austerities in order to seek enlightenment were not working. At the end, as he is contemplating this sorry state, the Buddha says this of his practice: “Whatever priests or contemplatives in the present are feeling painful, racking, piercing feelings due to their striving, this is the utmost. None is greater than this. But with this racking practice of austerities I haven't attained any superior human state, any distinction in knowledge or vision worthy of the noble ones. Could there be another path to Awakening?'"    http://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/buddha.html 

The last phrase leapt out at me in neon: “Could there be another path to Awakening?'" The Buddha did not spend a moment feeling like a personal failure. He did not think: “I am stupid and inadequate and it’s me.” No. He had faith in his ability to get there and faith in his ability to find another method. He believed in the world--that the world harbored hope. So this is my new thought: When something has changed (and you don’t like it), or something must change (because you know it’s bad for you); or something’s going to change (whether you like it or not); then “Something’s gotta give.” I am the one that has to give—I must give up or give something away; I must give it another different try. I must have the faith to try a new method and faith that I can find it.

A couple of weeks ago, our teacher said something quite extraordinary. We are working on what he calls "natural meditation"--this is, keeping the breath in mind all day, or as much as you can (it is not hard to forget you are breathing! we are wired to not notice!) while you are out and about. In other words, trying to find that centered place where you allow your breath to gather and spread out from to fill your body when you meditate. I do it best when alone---but sometimes when I am talking with someone, I remember to find my breath and just sit there, with them, breathing very consciously. I don't know if it shows on my face, but it is uncanny how it seems they can tell I am really present in a different way.
 
Explaining this, our teacher said: "But this is why we meditate--not so we can rack up hours on the cushion. So we can learn to find the breath whenever."
 
So liberating after years of not knowing why I was sitting at all, except for its own sake. And it is kind of that--but it is also to build this beautiful, portable home I can carry with me everywhere: my own breath.

When things fall apart, when I face disappointment in my life, I notice my tendency to lose touch with my own memories. Instead of a source of comfort, they become a source of pain—when I can remember things at all! It’s almost as if I have developed a kind of immune-deficiency toward them: as though my mind becomes allergic to my own past. (oh, I say, I cannot think about that…let’s move on! But as I move on, I notice I get lonelier—for myself and all the beloved others of the past.)

This is not pleasant—ahem! Not at all. And I have been puzzling about it, beating myself up about it, off and on, for years. Now psycholanalysis tells us that of course, the present utterly colors the past—that we revise our memories constantly. That we have a deep need to line up the past so that it creates a seamless linkage with the present we are now in. The phrase: “we are now in” is important from a Buddhist point of view, because it points out how all things change. That even the past, which common sense might tell us is gone and fixed forever—we all know you “can’t go home again”, or “you can’t have a re-do”—actually is also relative. And seen as the Big Picture, metaphysics of the dharma, that is true: co-arising, impermanence, emptiness: they all teach us of the relative interrelatedness of all phenomena. This changes, that changes. Inevitably.

But I had another thought, based, as all my most interesting thoughts these days have been, on my new Theravada Insight practice of the breath. What if there is actually some reality to these “unpleasant” memories? What if they exist because I was living my life fiercely clinging to my suffering, embedded in my style of life, repeating patterns of anger, greed and ignorance? Then the real insight is this: Try not to do that NOW. Try to live the day with less suffering involved for myself and others. Try to create better future memories. This is useful because it gives me something to focus on now, in my life, to do now to participate in “change” and not simply to be its passive witness.
 

The teacher of my teacher, Thanissaro Bhikkhu, writes: "The small spot of the present moment is like that: There's a lot to tease out in here. So don't be disdainful of its potential. Learn to start out small and those small things are going to reward you. Like the fable of the mouse and the lion: The lion saved the mouse's life, and later on...the mouse could eat right through the net in which the lion was trapped." http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/meditations2.html#start
 
Time like a mouse, us imagining ourselves the lion. We save the moment, we give it dignity by witnessing it and living it mindfully. This is a genuine human contribution to the cosmos, I think. A purpose of consciousness, if you will. (Hence, the old Zen question: "What sound is made of a tree falling in the forest if no one is there to hear it?" I'd say none...) Then, the moment saves us. The well-REAL-ized, really dwelt within, present moment is like that mouse: Thanissaro Bhikkhu ends saying: "someday it will eat through the net in which you keep catching yourself."

With the new year upon us, this story in the Washington Post appears  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/06/AR2009010601195.html?wpisrc=newsletter  So interesting. My brother called it "one of those nexus incidents that reflects the entire universe like one of Leibniz's 'monads'."  About a six-year old kid who missed his bus and drove his mother's car to school, and crashed it into a utility pole along the way but emerged unharmed to finally get his school breakfast. His homelife must be tough--there is court order against his being left alone with his (sleeping) mom. But dad had to leave for work.

That boy has seen a lot of anger. Our teacher opened the new year with a dharma talk on anger. As always in the vipassana tradition, he worked closely on actual management of emotional states, and said that to do this you needed enough "concentration". Meaning, enough practice in creating for yourself the safe space of your body as your own body, a place of peaceful dwelling, a place from which you can observe the anger, distance yourself from it. Until you have that, he does not advise "dwelling on the emotions" since you'll just wallow around and be overwhelmed. Once you have that, then here is what you can do:
 
Observe the anger, and try not to blame the external factor that seems to be causing it--the other person, the situation. Instead, concentrate upon the internal landscape. Apparently the Buddha said: Do not find fault with others, find fault with yourself. But he did not mean you should say: I am angry and I am a bad person. No. That would be identifying with the anger and reinforcing a sense of attaching the self to it. He meant you should discern how the anger arises in you, and causes you suffering. It is the anger that causes the suffering, not the person outside you. The first thing you must develop is the distance inside to have compassion for yourself, as someone who is unskillfully reacting to "anger." So I say "There is anger" instead of saying "I am angry." Then instead of feeling the rush of the anger emotion, I can feel the suffering that it causes: the guilt, the anxiety... Just that little distance.

So this morning, before dawn, I am sitting here and breathing (I mean, yoho, aren't we always!) ...but with attention, with the little "alarm clock" app turned on in the computer, the one that gongs softly four times when it's up...and I am sitting there and concentrating on relaxing my shoulders. Yes, just that. For twenty minutes I am feeling my breath circulating in my always-tense shoulder muscles. Here's the latest thing I have learned: this method does not pit you against your thinking mind (as in, When you have a thought, do X to it: Put in on a shelf, label it, send it over there, blah blah). Nope, this method gives you something ELSE to do with yourSELF. Be with your breathing process, play with it, follow it around your very own body where you live. As Thanissaro Bhikku (Geoffrey DeGraf) says: "You're right here where the action is. It's simply a matter for you individually to figure out exactly where you can get your first handle on these issues. Establish your beachhead, and then from there your understanding will begin to spread out." (Meditations4, 2008) Link: http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/index.html

The Eightfold Path is the Fourth Noble Truth--the blueprint for ending suffering.   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_Eightfold_Path Follow these principles and things improve; enlightenment can even happen. Last night, teacher Sharon Salzberg quoted someone else (sorry!) and called it "the Eightfold Dot". Meaning that all the principles are tightly interwoven with the rest (which is good since, if you get good at one, it helps with the others), and also that the path often leads you back where you've been: your original Buddha Nature.
 
This reminded me of the first dot you learn when you study basic "kaishu" style in Chinese calligraphy. This first dot has FIVE STROKES, and allows you to learn all the wrist moves. My teacher kept me on it for two weeks...when done, it looks like Africa". Photo of my teacher's demonstration First Dot from a film we are shooting. You see it on top of the character on the right.