Losing and Finding
At Cafe Sangha this month, I got a chance to talk with Pamela, who is a regular at the Dharma Seed KM group, and found out that she is planning to walk the Camino de Santiago this spring! I met someone at the DPP retreat last fall who had just come back from walking it, and was immediately inspired…but then I started thinking that I can’t get enough time off until next year at the earliest, and my knees hurt, and my back goes out, and — basically , I’m a couch potato — so I started to think I was crazy to even consider it…and then I ran into Pamela…and now I’m inspired all over again!
So naturally, I got out my favorite Camino book and read it again over the weekend. It’s called I’m Off Then: Losing and Finding Myself on the Camino de Santiago and it’s by a German comedian named Hape Kerkeling (who is apparently very famous). He is funny. And a great storyteller. Very down-to-earth. But also very inspiring. In a delightfully heartfelt but non-pious way.
Here’s a sample:
“I decide to spend the remaining miles today without speaking or thinking, following advice from Sheelah, who said to me in Leon: ‘You don’t feel the toll this trek is taking on your body when you walk without thinking or speaking.’…Silence is easy to maintain; I’ve gotten fairly used to that. I say nothing to the farmers on the field as I pass by, and they respond in kind. They seem to respect my silence. But it is nearly impossible to stop thinking. In my mind I keep breaking out into song, or my thoughts turn to disjointed drivel along the lines of ‘Where are my keys?’ ‘Buy cigarettes!’ ‘Aching feet!’ ‘Could go for some potato salad!’
“At some point I find I’m actually able to switch off my stream of thoughts and simply stop thinking. Incidentally, it is virtually impossible to describe a path after the fact when you are not thinking about it, since you see things without sorting them out or judging them. Dispassionate perception is hard to put into words.
“Everything joins together: my breath, my steps, the wind, the singing of birds, the waving of grain fields, and the cool feeling on my skin. I walk in silence. Am I pressing my feet onto the ground while I walk, or is the ground pressing up onto my feet?…
“Needless to say, I get hopelessly lost. With silence in my head and all this nonthinking for nine miles, I’ve lost track of the path’s arrows and scallop signposts. And once I start to focus again, I am simply somewhere at some time. It’s lovely here, but wrong. Later, though, it turns out that my meandering did not add up to more miles at all–in fact, it save me about two miles. A farmer sends me through a filed with grain as tall as I am, which brings me back to the right path. How funny! I stop paying attention to the trail, lose my way, and still wind up taking a shortcut…”
Ready for Your Close-Up?
The third Ego-Renunciation Practice that the “Dancing with Life” KM group will be playing with over the next couple of weeks is: giving up being the star of your own movie.
In Dancing with Life, Phillip Moffitt writes, “The unfolding of events that make up your life is like a movie, is it not? And you interpret every scene or event from the vantage point of being the star of your movie–is it good or bad for you, do you like it or not, and so on.
“Once you renounce being the star of your own movie, you begin to see the unfolding of each scene and the movie as a whole from multiple perspectives. You don’t forsake your role in the movie, but once you cease making it be all about you, the movie creates less anxiety and you are more able to live from your core values.”
Give it a try!
(image: Steampunk Tarot by Curly Cue Design)
How Much is Enough?
The second Ego-Renunciation Practice in Dancing with Life is committing to no longer measuring the success of your life by how many of your wants are met.
Phillip Moffitt writes, “This renunciation allows you to still have desires, but they’re not at the center of your life. You fulfill those wants that can be fulfilled while living from your deepest values, and you slowly abandon the rest.
“This means that your sexual desires are constrained by non-harming, material gains are limited by ethical and generous behavior, and your ego need for achievement and attention is less of a priority than living according to your core values. Of course you still have to fulfill your basic needs and live up to your responsibilities as best you can, but you renounce measuring success by what you have and what you have achieved.
“You many be surprised to discover how much you have been judging your life by this standard. It is so common that it is almost entirely unconscious, and it is devastating to inner growth because the ego can always distract you with another want.”
(image: Kitty Kahane Tarot)
But I Like Being Right!
The Monday night “Dancing with Life” KM group has decided to try out the Three Ego-Renunciation Practices Phillip Moffitt describes in Chapter 11 (of Dancing with Life: Buddhist Insights for Finding Meaning and Joy in the Face of Suffering). He suggests these practices as a way to “directly challenge your ego’s desire to always be in charge.” They are particularly helpful for modern practitioners because they “loosen the ego’s grasp on the mind but don’t require you to make any outward changes in your life.”
The first practice is: Renouncing Your Attachment to Being Right
“Most of us cling to the need to be right, and making this renunciation can dramatically affect both how you interact with others and how you interpret events. When the renunciation starts to be real, you have a much easier time making decisions and have less of a need to position yourself with others or in your own mind.
“Giving up always being right doesn’t mean you forsake your opinions or your right to seek social justice, but you are not defensive, judgmental, or self-righteous in your approach to life.
“You mindfully live with the fact that even when you’re wrong, it’s okay because you are coming from your deepest intention. Also, you learn from being wrong (or right), therefore you become a more effective person.”
Give it a try!
I’ll post the second and third practices in the Friday and Monday posts. Stay tuned.
(image: Witch Tarot)
What Am I Supposed to Do?
More from Kamma and the End of Kamma, by Ajahn Sucitto:
“Meditation is a deeply transformative activity. This may sound strange, as meditation doesn’t look that active: it ofter centers on sitting still, and within that, in silence. And as for doing anything with the mind….all that apparently entails is a few seemingly inconsequential things like bringing attention onto the sensations associated with breathing; or, maybe witnessing thoughts as they pass through. Meditation doesn’t seem to be a very significant process at all.
“Beginners ask: ‘What am I supposed to do with my mind to make it better…what should I think about?‘ In fact, one point about meditation is that it’s about moderating that ‘doing’ energy; and consequently being more receptive.
“The teaching is that the more we moderate our energy in this way, the more we’re going to arrive at a resultant brightness, confidence and clarity. Then restlessness, worry, and impulses to distort ourselves don’t arise.
“And because of this, meditation can generate far-reaching effects in our life: we get to enjoy and value stillness and simplicity, and that inclines us towards wanting less and letting go.
“Meditation centers around two functions. The first is a kind of healing, a tonic. It’s called ‘calming’ (samatha); the settling and easing of the bodily and mental energies. The second function is ‘insight’ (vipassana), which is more a matter of looking into the body/mind that has become calm, taking in how things really are.
“The two functions work together: as you settle down, your attention gets clearer, and as you see things more clearly, there’s less agitation, confusion or things to fix. And where the two processes conclude is in guiding the mind–or rather the moods, attitudes and memories that get us going–to a place of resolution.
“Meditation is about action that leads to the end of action.”
Traveling
In preparation for walking the Camino de Santiago, I naturally started….reading! (And, OK, I’ve been walking a bit, too.) It was the title of the article in yesterday’s New York Times that got me going: Paths of Enlightenment. The article turned out to be a book review of The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot, by Robert Macfarlane, which I immediately downloaded and started to read. It was not a mistake. The writing is gorgeous. The walks he describes are inspirations. And the reflections that are the result of those walks are their own special of journey.
Here’s a sample:
“I followed the field path east-south-east towards a long chalk hilltop, visible as a whaleback in the darkness. Northwards was the glow of the city, and the red blip of aircraft warning lights from towers and cranes. Dry snow squeaked underfoot. A fox crossed the field to my west at a trot. The moonlight was so bright that everything cast a crisp moon-shadow: black on white, stark as woodcut. Wands of dogwood made zebra-hide of the path; hawthorn threw a lattice. The trees were frilled with snow, which lay to the depth of an inch or more on branches and twigs. The snow caused everything to exceed itself and the moonlight caused everything to double itself.”
But even more than the beautiful use of language and the evocative descriptions, I am drawn his thoughts on the profound effect of place:
“As I envision it, landscape projects into us not like a jetty or peninsula, finite and bounded in its volume and reach, but instead as a kind of sunlight, flickering un-mappable in its plays yet often quickening and illuminating….For some time now it has seemed to me that the two questions we should ask of any strong landscape are these: firstly, what do I know when I am in this place that I can know nowhere else? And then, vainly, what does this place know of me that I cannot know of myself?“
(image from The Maddonni Tarot)
Swimming, Not Drinking
I love this line from Kamma and the End of Kamma:
We don’t have to drink the water we’re swimming through.
Here’s more:
To not drink in the ocean of samsara (the endless rolling on of habits and entanglements) means checking and restraining the pull of the senses, checking and putting aside the “programs” of the mainstream, and cultivating full attention and awareness…
Through following the Eightfold Path, you realize that you’re not as embedded in samsara as it might seem.
For a start, you never actually become anything for very long. Sure, you seem to go through periods of agitation and tension, but with practice there are periods of joy and humor–and as you get more skilled in attending to the mind, the habit of holding on to particular states loosens up.
You find yourself identifying with this or that state less and less; and that reduces the stress and turmoil.
Seen like this, human life is a great opportunity. Regardless of the effects that we inherit, we can always act skillfully and cultivate the mind; we can always move towards goodness, happiness and liberation.
“Kamma and the End of Kamma” by Ajahn Sucitto is available free in pdf form by clicking here. (Scroll down…the first page has no text.)
(image from A Whole World, by Couprie and Louchard)
The End of Kamma
The DPP homework for December has arrived and one of the assignments is to read the preface and first chapter of Kamma and the End of Kamma, by Ajahn Sucitto. It’s a very enlightening book. So much so, that one of the previous DPP-ers paid to have 100 copies shipped from England, as a gift to each us in the current program. (The printed book is free, but only available in England. Electronic versions are also free on iBooks and here in pdf form.)
I am so glad to be focusing on this book for a whole month. (A whole year would not be too much!) I’ve already been using it for meditation instruction at the Hi-Pointe Sitting Group.
Here’s a sample:
Sit in an upright alert position that allows your body to be free from discomfort and fidgeting yet encourages you to be attentive. Let your eyes close or half-close. Bring your mental awareness to bear on your body, feeling its weight, pressures, pulses and rhythms. Bring up the suggestion of settling in to where you are right now, and put aside other concerns for the time being.
Take a few slow out-breaths sensing your breath flowing out into the space around you; let the in-breath begin by itself. Sense how the in-breath draws from the space around you. Attune to the rhythm of that process, and interrupt any distracting thoughts by re-establishing your attention on each out-breath.
Bring to mind any instances of people’s actions that have touched you in a positive way, in terms of kindness, or patience, or understanding. Repeatedly touch the heart with a few specific instances, dwelling on the feeling that it evokes.
Stay with the most deeply-felt recollection for a minute or two, with a sense of curiosity: “How does this affect me?” Sense any effect in terms of heart. There may be a quality of uplift, or of calming, or of firmness. You may even detect a shift in your overall body tone. Allow yourself all the time in the world to be here with no particular purpose other than to feel how you are with this in a sympathetic listening way.
Settle into that feeling, and focus particularly on the mood tone, which may be of brightness or of stability or uplift. Put aside analytical thought. Let any images come to mind and pass through. Dwell upon and expand awareness of the sense of vitality or stillness, com for, space or light.
Conclude the process by feeling fully who you are in that state. First feel how you are in bodily terms. Then notice what inclinations and attitudes seem natural and important when you are dwelling in your place of value. Then bring those to your daily-life situation by asking: “What is important to me now? What matters most?” Give yourself itme to let the priorities of action establish themselves in accordance with that.
Attend to the Peacefulness
Last night at the Hi-Pointe Sitting Group, I offered the following instructions from a really wonderful little book by Ajahn Sucitto, “Kamma and the End of Kamma.” (Available as a free download here.)
Sit still in a quiet and settled place in a way that feels comfortable. Relax your eyes, but let them stay open or half-open, with a relaxed gaze. Be aware of the sensation of your eyeballs resting in the eye-sockets (rather than focusing on what you can see). Be sensitive to the tendency for the eyes to fidget, and keep relaxing that.
Bring your attention to the sensations of your hands, then your jaw and tongue. See if they, too, can take a break from being ready to act or be on guard. Let your tongue rest in the roof of your mouth. Then sweep that relaxing attention from the corners of the eyes and around the head, as if you were unfastening a bandana. Let the scalp feel free.
Let your eyes close. As you relax all around your head and face, bring that quality of attention, slowly, gradually, down over your throat. Loosen up there, as if allowing each out-breath to sound an inaudible drone.
Keeping in touch with these places in your body, be aware of the flow of thoughts and emotions that pass through your mind. Listen to them as if you’re listening to flowing water, or the sea. If you find yourself reaching to them, bring your attention to the next out-breath, continuing to relax through the eyes, throat and hands.
While maintaining awareness of the overall presence of your body, practice stepping back from, or letting go of, any thoughts and emotions that arise. Don’t add to them; let them pass. Whenever you do that, notice the sense of spaciousness, however brief, that seems to be there, behind the thoughts and feelings. Attune to the peacefulness of that.
Feeling the peacefulness of that, take it in. Rather than demand or try to achieve calm, make a practice of quietly offering peace to the energies that pass through you.
Revolutionary Approach
Tonight is the Dancing with Life KM Group. We’ve moved into Book Two: The Second Noble Truth (which, basically, says that the stress in our lives is caused by insisting that things be the way we want them to be, instead of they way they actually are.)
I’ve highlighted just about all of Chapter 8, but the passage I’m bringing to discuss tonight is:
Craving [insisting that things to be the way we want them to be] creates an illusion, a misperception, a deluded mental reaction, which causes the mind to contract into stress and anxiety. If this state is avoided or released, the mind is naturally calm and luminous.
The three Insights of the Second Noble Truth thus represents a revolutionary approach to spiritual development–the utilization of awareness and observation to bring freedom without reliance on beliefs or rituals of any sort.
(from page 76-7, hardback edition…emphasis mine)
I chose this passage because (1) I am drawn to the assertion that our natural state of mind is calm and luminous. (As opposed to the idea that we are naturally “sinful”.) And (2) I am so glad to have been shown a way to understand my life…in a deep and profound way…without also being asked to check my brain at the door.