Cheri Huber's Practice Blog

The Privileged Environment

2012-01-19T11:27:00.000-08:00

To facilitate the introspective focus required for awareness practice, we observe what we call the privileged environment. It’s a privilege to have the time and space in which to attend to one’s inner workings. It’s a privilege to have others support that environment through their silent, respectful, adherence to a set of guidelines, maximizing everyone’s opportunity to be present to and go beyond egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate and find freedom.

For as long as I’ve been offering sitting/awareness practice, I’ve held a firm line on “keeping the privileged environment.” Over the years I’ve spoken with countless people who have come to us from other sitting practices. The reasons given most often for their switch are along the lines of too much ego, too political, and too social. I’ve also heard many reports from folks in the Sangha that they nearly quit when first sitting with us because it was too weird and too unfriendly. (As my teacher pointed out, lo those many years ago, it’s the “too’s” that’ll get you.)

I realize it takes most people a while to see the value in such a thing, though not everyone. There are, in fact, those who sit with us for the first time and heave a huge sigh of relief that they don’t need to be social and don’t need to be a personality. What is true is that practice is not personal; it’s not about or for the personality. It’s not social, yet it is very friendly. The difference? It is heart to heart friendly, not ego to ego friendly.

I can certainly sympathize with the wish to have all the “people needs” in one’s life fulfilled by others who are pursuing a spiritual path, practicing conscious, compassionate awareness. If a person is single, what better place to look for a partner? If one is seeking a new or larger circle of friends, again it’s a no-brainer. If you want to start a business, what a great place to look for supporters, mentors, and partners.

It’s a no-brainer and a really bad idea.

The reason I’m so adamant about keeping the privileged environment is that egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate:
~ is constantly lurking
~ is always focused on sabotaging efforts to awaken and end suffering
~ finds an easy opening when people lose their focus of attention
~ knows people often lose their focus in interactions with others
~ knows it takes a long time for people to recognize when it (egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate) has taken them over.

The Buddha left us a detailed and specific roadmap for awakening and ending suffering. From the depth of his own practice and decades of guiding others, he understood and clearly communicated the steps we need to follow to “work out our own salvation diligently.”

During the recent New Year’s retreat, we explored five of the practices the Buddha taught us to employ in our journey:
~ the practice of lovingkindness
~ the practice of pure attention
~`the practice of ever-expanding faith
~ the practice of constant devotion
~ the practice of inquiry through correct dhyana.
Each of these serves us magnificently as we take those steps along the path of working out our own salvation. The one that speaks most directly to the subject of the privileged environment is the final in the series, the practice of inquiry through correct dhyana.

Inquiry through correct dhyana guides us to seek clarity directly from insight that arises in conscious, compassionate awareness. We don’t look to conditioned mind for answers; instead, we allow the intelligence that animates to inform us. The simple application for that is living in “I don’t know.” The procedure we follow in applying the wisdom of “I don’t know” is to allow the guidance from our practice to rest, koan*-like, in our consciousness, relying on “ever-expanding faith” to sustain us until the moment of clarity when our doubt or confusion is cleared away by the arrival of an edifying insight. (*A koan is a spiritual “puzzle” that cannot be understood intellectually but must be apprehended in a flash of intuitive understanding.)

For example: I know there’s something in our practice about “the privileged environment.” And, it’s always said like that, like it’s a “thing,” so I sense it’s important, though I can’t see why. I get “custody of the eyes,” not watching other people. That just seems polite. I get not talking to other retreatants when we’re on retreat; we’re meant to be silent. What I don’t get is why we can’t get to know one another. How will I ever feel like I belong in this group if I have no idea who these people are? Besides, I have a lot of questions and it takes forever to get information from the Monastery!

All perfectly understandable, yes? All perfectly understandable from the perspective of egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate. (If we’re honest, what that “getting to know people” often means is “finding out what’s wrong with them”!) So, here is a perfect chance to apply the practice of inquiry through correct dhyana. I don’t know what this is all about. I get it that egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate might not be the place to look for clarity. What I will do instead is to “sit with it.” I will hold that lack of clarity in my awareness, approach it like a koan, accept each insight that comes to me, and trust that sooner or later I will see. (And, to support that process I can avail myself of options such as Open Air.)

Now, a word of caution: One of egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate’s most successful ploys is getting the human to believe something along the lines of “that doesn’t apply to me; I can handle this; I know what the privileged environment is and how to maintain it; I can be in relationship with people in the Sangha and it’ll be just fine.” The peril in which that that puts everyone—instigator, colluder, and Sangha as a whole—would take more than this communication to elucidate. (If anyone is interested, I’d be happy to give that elucidation a go.)

As we move into this year of deepening practice, talking more about Practice Plans, Sangha Market, stewardship, and other “group” activities, I want us to be as clear as we can be that stepping over the line from privileged environment to social interaction is a dangerous step we must all be cognizant of NOT taking. What we have as a Sangha is simply too precious to endanger. And that’s a “too” worth having!

In gassho,
Cheri

Lit Up

2012-01-12T10:51:00.000-08:00

I really am lit up about practice.

During the retreat season I’m so often involved with and fulfilled by the work we’re doing that sitting down to write just doesn’t happen. Now that our focus is on practice itself, rather than facilitating practice, I find I want to communicate with folks every detail of the extraordinary changes this organization is making.

2011 was such a time of change for the Zen Monastery Peace Center and Living Compassion that we designated 2012 as the Year of Deepening Practice. (I hope you read about this in the first issue of our new monthly newsletter: http://blog.thezencenter.org/from-the-guide.) A strong argument could be made that 2011 was a year of deepening practice and 2012 is simply going to build on that foundation, but who would want to argue about such a thing! The important thing is that we are pleased with practice as it is and want it to continue and grow.

Interestingly, the economic downturn proved to be a boon for our Sangha. We began looking for ways to reduce costs, make practice more affordable, and expand the practices we offer at no charge. At the same time we asked those who could afford it to pledge monthly support for the Zen Center, which, in turn, supports the work of Living Compassion, primarily the Africa Vulnerable Children Project. Sangha stepped up in a big way, and we’ve been able to continue and expand a full range of practice opportunities, even while working to maintain the Monastery and upgrade accommodations.

Perhaps the biggest reason for our success in 2011 is the extraordinary gift of our volunteer CEO, Ashwini Narayanan. Many of you had a chance to meet her in one of the amazing (not too strong a word, is it?) What You Practice Is What You Have retreats, held in North Carolina and at the Monastery. What you perhaps don’t know is that she has been guiding both organizations on a daily basis for most of 2011. Working with me, the monks, and those in support roles in both organizations, she has moved us to the point where the term “organization” is truly apt. Her business skills, the depth of her own spiritual practice, and her ability to bridge those worlds is making an enormous difference for us and for the practice. Under her leadership we have expanded what we offer, been more financially viable, and taken better care of the monks and the Monastery.

Here are two of the many great ideas Ashwini has put forth:
1. In 2012, we will launch the “Rest, Receive, and be Thankful” weekends. These will be Friday evening to Sunday lunch mini-retreats, a break from the often stressful pace of the world—a chance to be in nature, participate in a yoga class or workshop, meditate, eat nutritious vegetarian food, take walks, draw, journal, or simply sit and be. These weekends will be in addition to our traditional schedule of week-long retreats, at-home practice days, and guidance days.
2. We have created a Visiting Monk Program in which we accept applications to train as a Visiting Monk each month of the year. This replaces the one-month-only Deepening Practice Training. More information on this program will be available soon.

To facilitate these changes and the growing involvement of Sangha, we are offering as a kick-off for the Year of Deepening Practice an at-no-charge course of guided introspection (see link below) that will result in a yearlong plan for practice that we have cleverly titled a Deepening Practice Plan. DPP training will support all of us in working through any resistance egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate might throw up in an attempt to derail a wholehearted, life-transforming, freedom-and-joy-producing Practice Plan for the year. Following that initial course will be monthly support to guarantee our commitment to liberation remains stronger than conditioning’s commitment to our lack of liberation!

Another thing I’d like to mention is our plan to help folks pay for all of this. We want people to participate in as much of practice as possible—it’s what makes life fun, exciting, and satisfying, rather than endlessly subjected to suffering—and, as I wrote in the last blog, we know that can be expensive, even at our bargain basement prices. I’ve written twice now about the possibility of becoming a vendor on Sangha Market to help generate funds to support one’s practice and have extra to support practice in general. Before long we will launch another available possibility: fundraising. Details soon.

That’s the beauty of Sangha. No one is going to have to go it alone. We’re going to be on this journey of deepening practice throughout 2012, and then, if we remain true to form, we will figure out ways to go deeper in 2013!

To sign up and get in on the ground floor of these changes, go to Deepening Practice Program: http://www.livingcompassion.org/deepening-practice-program.
Visit Sangha Market: http://www.sanghamarket.com.
See current schedule: http://www.livingcompassion.org/schedule.

Gassho,
Cheri

The Huber Cure

2011-12-15T15:59:00.000-08:00

Here’s a saying everyone who has been to the Monastery is familiar with: “We have many guidelines but only one rule: We will use everything in our experience to see how we cause ourselves to suffer so we can drop that and end suffering.” The often overlooked piece of that is “We will use everything....”

Egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate wants to be in charge of awareness practice, just as it wants to be in charge of every aspect of a human life. One of its most successful techniques for gaining and keeping that control is to highlight what works best for it while distracting a person from seeing what supports awakening and ending suffering. (Good to remember that “awakening and ending suffering” is synonymous with “getting out of the control of egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate.”)

With little if any conversation, the person is given to understand that there are some areas of life suitable for practicing awareness and others not in practice’s purview. Meditation is an acceptable place for practicing awareness—particularly acceptable as few people are allowed actually to do it. But “larger, more important” life content, such as work, money, children, and health, must be left in the domain of conditioned mind where they can be dealt with “thoughtfully and intelligently.” (As I’m fond of pointing out, there are very few people who will entrust really important matters in life to that old bungler God. “Oh, sure, I believe in God and will pray like crazy to get what I want, but I’m going to look to conditioned mind to make the big decisions.”)

With that arrangement in place, egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate can relax into assurance of a steady diet of human suffering. (Good to remember that “human suffering” is synonymous with “dissatisfaction.” The person looking to conditioned mind for direction is guaranteed to live in a world of “something wrong” and “not enough.”)

I want to set the stage with that perspective because, at first glance, it can be difficult to see just how “The Huber Cure" is awareness practice. But awareness practice it is, pure and simple. Here’s how.

For years I’ve been fine-tuning the awareness practice of “being sick.” Sick, like many other things in life, doesn’t seem to show up as often when we start scrutinizing it. Not a bad thing, certainly, but it does make it harder to practice with that particular content. Fortunately, just as many of the monks were recovering from various types of bugs, one found me. Let the games begin!

I will now go step-by-step through the process I hope each of you will follow should you “get sick.” After you have practiced in this way for a bit, please let me know what happened. Perhaps we can change lives throughout Sangha and beyond.

I woke up in the morning feeling fine. At about 2:00 p.m. I had the first inkling that I wasn’t feeling well. There was enough congestion in my sinuses that I thought I might be coming down with a cold. I DID NOT “WAIT TO SEE.” (Very important steps will be in caps.) I immediately took a hot shower, wrapped up in layers of clothes suitable for a tour in bed, and donned a hat. I got in bed, turned on the heating pad I keep for these situations, and prepared to sleep and sweat until the bug could no longer maintain lodgings in my person. This process usually takes about two days, as few as 24 hours is not uncommon, 3 days would not be unusual. That’s the physical part.

While resting I only rest. I don’t read, do email, talk to people, text, watch movies, etc. I remain as immobile as possible, and, yes, you may have guessed it, I do prone meditation. I have all sorts of attention-directing practices that I enjoy, and I rotate through them as I rest. ABOVE ALL, I DO NOT ENTERTAIN ANY VOICES. I don’t allow any conversation about work I should be doing, obligations I have, what a misery this is, why me, what did I do to bring this on. I welcome this as life’s gift to me—a complete time-out to give the body an (always) much-needed rest. I don’t take medications that will mask symptoms so I think I feel better than I do. If I can’t breathe I will take something to open a nasal passage, but that doesn’t alter the resting behavior.

Now, here’s the really, really difficult part. When a body is truly ill there’s very little ability or desire to do anything other than rest. THIS ENABLES THE SYSTEM TO USE EVERY BIT OF LIFE FORCE TO HEAL ITSELF. But when one starts to feel better, egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate slides in to siphon off any “extra” life force. For instance, if I felt a little better the voices might say, “You could do some email now; that wouldn’t be a big strain,” and conditioning would slip a foot in the door. Soon I’d realize I’m tired again, and if I’m not paying attention I won’t notice the healing energy is being skimmed off to feed egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate. Now that the voices have an entry, they can start in with their, “you should, what about, oh no, it’s all your fault” torture. Know what I mean?

So, how is this awareness practice “pure and simple”? This way of approaching this particular life content is how we learn to approach all content in life. Each situation that arises in a person’s life is there as an opportunity to make a choice for suffering or for freedom. The body knows how to heal itself, but it needs support and cooperation. If we keep taking energy from the body and giving it to egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate, the body will weaken and egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate will get stronger. If we give attention, awareness, energy, life force to what life is offering us in each moment—pure, undivided focus on WHAT IS, HERE/NOW—our experience will be freedom.

One other item for your consideration: Sugar and “upset” (read: negative voices) are the quickest way for egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate to “get” you. They each take a terrible toll on the immune system and leave a person vulnerable to any and all attacks.

Again, I’d love to hear your experience. Shall we take on children, money, and work as next conversations? By the way, that bug held on for just about 24 hours!

In gassho,
Cheri

Have You Seen Sangha Market?

2011-12-01T10:50:00.000-08:00

I was writing an article for the inaugural edition of the Sangha newsletter, due out January 1st, when I received the email announcement from Living Compassion for the holiday gift-giving ideas with its focus on SanghaMarket. I opened it and was filled with, there’s no other word to describe it, pride. What a beautiful job people in this Sangha are doing!

Starting with the email class “Living Beyond Karma” and accelerating with each new “bump” in the world economy, I’ve been exploring ways to keep our practice viable, sustainable, and accessible. True, we need to keep our attention on the Monastery, the “mother ship,” because it’s such a tangible expression of practice in the world, but we also need to be sure practice reaches practitioners and that the path between the two is easily traversable. Some aspects of getting practice to practitioners has been made easier with technology, but the issue of getting practitioners to in-person practice opportunities, such as workshops and retreats, remains challenging.

For most of our Sangha the biggest obstacle to practicing in person is financial. There aren’t a lot of folks who can afford to attend as many retreats as they might wish to, usually because of the cost of the retreat, transportation to get to the retreat, or that much time off work. As the economic situation around the world remains unstable, the difficulties compound. What to do?

In “Living Beyond Karma” I offered people the challenge of paying $500.00 for the class with the understanding that during the course of the class they would learn how to generate that amount of money doing something they love that supports their practice. The vast majority of participants succeeded in meeting the challenge, and many exceeded it. Those who generated more than the cost of the class would use the extra income for something they wanted to do or have and could not otherwise have afforded.

It was those successes that inspired the vision for Sangha Market. Wouldn’t it be grand, we thought, to have a “market place” where Sangha could post items to sell, generating income for themselves and for the Zen Center/Living Compassion? Yes, that’s a grand idea! It was not, however, an idea without severe obstacles. But an intrepid group of Sangha stalwarts confronted and overcame each obstacle until, adjustment by adjustment, we had a working site. And, there, sadly, Sangha Market languished for many months as we focused attention on many necessary structural improvements in the organizations themselves.

Much effort is happening behind the scenes to make Keep It Simple more functional, the new communication/information strategies are coming together, the web site is getting ready for a major overhaul, and the time is right for Sangha Market to step into the spotlight and play a large role in helping Sangha and our beloved practice toward all the security we can manage in a reality of impermanence! When Nancy (long-time Sangha) stepped forward, offering to pick up this project and bring it to its full potential, we were all delighted.

So, this holiday season please consider becoming a buyer and a seller on Sangha Market. For help and support getting started, contact Nancy at nandanna2@hotmail.com.

Give a gift to someone—remembering that you are someone—that will benefit us all. It’s fun, it’s supportive, and it’s definitely for a good cause…practice.

In gassho,
Cheri

Sangha Market

2011-11-02T12:06:00.000-07:00

Last week on Open Air* we had a great conversation on the Good News Update section about Sangha Market as a vehicle for focusing more attention on present moment activities that deepen practice, while providing products and services that support ourselves and Sangha. In addition, these products and services create much-needed financial stability for the Zen Monastery Peace Center and Living Compassion.

Here are highlights of what we talked about:
• Sherry, of Simply Celebrate, is producing an e-book of the many ways Sangha is using recording and listening to support awareness.
• Anna has turned her love of painting into a business, helping support her family and the kids in Kantolomba.
• Many of us enjoy Renee’s bracelets, with reminders such as “pay attention” “practice” “be here now” and “all is well.”
• Jen’s natural soap, the only soap I use now
• Sandy’s lotions, the only lotions I use now
• Soon I hope everyone with an ereader will be enjoying Nancy’s perfect little shoulder bags designed to hold them and their cords.
• Jen’s voice recorder holders made from Zambian chitenge. I haven’t misplaced my recorder or had it turn itself on in my backpack since receiving one.
• We have everything from greeting cards to superhero capes (a wonderful gift for little kids of all ages!), all created with love and attention from awareness practice for awareness practice.

I remain convinced that participating with Sangha Market can be one of our most powerful tools for withdrawing time and attention from egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate and returning it to the heart where it belongs. When I’m engaged in making something that requires my full attention, enthusiasm, creativity, passion, and love (for instance, writing a message such as this one), there’s nothing left over for conditioned mind to feed on. When I can hope what I’m doing will be helpful to another being, when there’s a possibility that my efforts will serve the awareness practice I so love… well, it is, as they say, as good as it gets.

I invite you to come play with us. If you have visited the Sangha Market website in the past and feel you know what it’s all about, please visit again. This message is aimed at encouraging lots and lots of sellers, which will in turn create lots and lots of buyers.

If you’ve visited and felt intimidated, help is here. Nancy, one of Sangha Market’s original participants as seller and buyer, is offering her expertise in all aspects of the site. She can assist you to post an item for sale, create a store, buy something, find your way around the site—whatever you need. You can email her at nandanna2@hotmail.com to set up an appointment to get all your questions answered.

The Sangha Market website does not yet reflect its future glory, but together we can help it reach its full potential. My hope is that by the end of the year Sangha Market will have played a large role in everyone’s holiday shopping and be in high gear to begin 2012 in style.

Don’t forget: Those voices arguing for not participating are the same ones that always try to talk you away from your heart and into a miserable relationship with egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate. Grab your recorder, remind yourself what you know about choosing your heart over karmic conditioning’s hateful shenanigans, then “cruise or jet on the internet to http://www.sanghamarket.com.”

In gassho,
Cheri

*Archived at http://www.livingcompassion.org/open-air-archive
Join Open Air Tuesdays at 4:50pm http://www.talkshoe.com
Open Air is also available as an iPhone app!

Real Magic

2011-10-21T08:23:00.000-07:00

A friend told me about a movie she’d just seen. “Should I see it?” I asked after hearing the plot. “No,” she responded, “the message is much better than the delivery.”

Here’s the plot as I heard it. A little girl has an imaginary friend. He’s the perfect companion and they live in a wonderland of beauty, creativity, fun, and adventure. However, this idyllic life comes to an end when she reaches her tenth birthday, the age when imaginary friends must be left behind so that a child can join “the real world.” The girl grows up to be serious, competent, and responsible. She works at a serious, boring, dead-end job and becomes engaged to a “perfect” man who is handsome, successful, rich, self-absorbed, and completely oblivious to who she is. Everyone is happy for her because she’s made the perfect match and will now live happily ever after. Though she is not happy or fulfilled and doesn’t feel seen or loved, she is sure there is something wrong with her because she has, after all, the perfect life. Everyone and everything tells her that hers is the life all good people desire, the perfect life with all the perfect things, and she is clearly wrong not to be thrilled. The “right” person would be ecstatic.

She soldiers on, trying to be happy, until magically her imaginary friend, now grown-up as well, returns to show her what’s possible. He knows everything about her: favorite colors, books, art, and foods, what she wants, wishes for, dreams of. While she’s away he even decorates the apartment she’s never had time or energy to make into a home. The new world he creates for her perfectly captures and expresses her essence. She’s seen and understood, mirrored in a way that allows her to see the unique beauty of her being.

Just what we’re all wishing and hoping for, yes? Okay, maybe not the apartment decorating but certainly being seen, understood, and loved unconditionally.

Up to the return of the imaginary friend the heroine’s life is one we can all relate to, I suspect. Egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate on a world-wide scale gives non-stop information to every little child about how life is, what’s real and important, how a person should feel, what leads to happiness, and, in most cases, just what it means about a person if they don’t achieve the state of bliss and ease they should. For most children, the world presented in the media—and even through education—is just not going to be the world they live in. What we realize with awareness practice is even if all the “right” content falls into place—right job, right partner, right children, right home, etc.—those externals don’t guarantee happiness. Like the woman in the film, most of us reach that much-encouraged-by-society conclusion that not having the “right” feelings is proof that there really is something wrong with us.

The point in the movie at which reality becomes magic is the very point at which in “real life” magic becomes reality. Each of us does have, and has always had, an “imaginary friend” who is more real than all the bogus information we were force-fed growing up. We have direct, immediate, 24-7 access to the wisdom, love, and compassion that animates this world of ours via the Mentor. Each of us has an expression of conscious, compassionate awareness that is exclusively in relationship with us. We have a kind, clear guiding wisdom that knows us completely, understands us perfectly, supports us unconditionally, and will show us the path that does lead to the happiness we’ve always known was possible for us to have.

Karmic conditioning about what’s real and what’s imaginary is strong. We’re meant to live an entire life believing, following, and trying to please the inconsistent, confusing, cruel conversation of conditioned mind that has been yammering at us since before we can remember. That conversation was always at odds with what our heart knew and gently attempted to return us to, a world of kindness and compassion. But the pressure to believe the voices comes from every corner of our conditioned world, and it can feel impossible to get free of it. HOWEVER (and this is the biggest however ever), as soon as you hear the voice of the Mentor telling you what you’ve always known in your heart to be true, you can never be fooled again about what’s imaginary, what’s real, and what’s magic.

In gassho,

Cheri

The Second Letter

2011-07-28T14:45:00.000-07:00

Gassho,

Here is the second letter I promised:

“Dear Cheri,
I was in the TTFG [It’s Time to Feel Good] online class, and I learned a lot. I admit to dragging my mind/feet about getting the small recorder from Radio Shack, but I did it and regularly recorded and listened. It changed everything. I had no idea that the ‘voices’ in my head were not me, but either a young sub, or from a source that didn’t ‘wish me well.’ I knew the little recorder had worked for me in guiding me on a new path, but I had no way of knowing how it could literally put me on the right path, and save my life.

I have been taking road trips with my dog the last couple of years. To have a vacation together was the first priority, but what started to occur became uncomfortable. I found that traveling alone to unknown places, I started to experience fear. Fear at highway interchanges, fear at large city rush hour traffic. I recognized the young sub that experienced my mother running out of gas. I still find myself filling up when the gauge is halfway. But all the planning failed me two weeks ago.

I had printed out directions, but was trying to hold the shaking paper and read and remember them before each turn. It was almost impossible not to mention dangerous, as I would sometimes swerve. I missed a couple of vital exits, and found myself over a hundred miles out of the way before I found out, not to mention low on gas. I felt intense panic at being lost on the road when I was supposed to have already arrived at my hotel. I was afraid to drive at night and night was approaching. My heart pounded as I pulled over to the side of the road. I scrounged through my accessories. I had packed that little recorder! I was sweating, and I recorded the fear stories, and then waited for my mentors reply and listened. And then my mentor gave me an idea. Slowly, track by track, I read the directions into the recorder… each road I needed to take, each turn I need to make. I took a couple of deep breaths, played the first new track and started to drive. I could play it over and over again to remember. Once accomplished I would hit the arrow again and my voice guided me to the next exit, the next turn. I felt my little sub start to relax as she heard my voice calmly giving directions, as if there was a passenger sitting in my car. I finally pulled into the hotel parking lot two hours later, and cried tears of triumph. My mentors voice, my voice had guided me in just as surely as if it had been an air traffic controller for an inexperienced pilot. This little device saved my life in several ways.

Eleanor Roosevelt once said, ‘Do a little something every day that scares you.’ I think she knew what happens: when you don’t run from fear, you grow. Fear’s rawness is still within me each time I leave home, the ‘what-if-this-happens’ thoughts. But this time my mentor was my road companion, and I am truly grateful! Thank you again for the class, the insistence about the recorder and the guidance!”

This intrepid practitioner has captured practice beautifully, wouldn’t you say? I’m most grateful for this message of courage and triumph. Thought you might enjoy it as well.

In gassho,
Cheri

The First of Two Letters

2011-07-27T18:37:00.000-07:00

Gassho,

While going through the stacks that have accumulated on my desk during these busy retreat times, I came across two extremely helpful letters. The first has helped my practice as an example of how I commit each day to working hard not to be, and the second has added to the reservoir of inspiration that fuels my determination.

The first letter was unsigned and arrived with no return address. It stated:

“I feel compelled to make some comments on the food at my recent stay. The quality of food is not what it once was. This makes it difficult for me to refer friends to go there. One concern is the amount of soy products. Over the years I have read about the many concerns about soy some mainly in the processing. Of course we do not really know what to believe in the media and what is really best for us to eat so I just want to share these links. [This was followed by three links with titles that included “dangers of soy.”]
I would prefer cows milk, rice milk, coconut milk, hemp milk over soy and did not feel I had a choice. While there were cows milk products (cottage cheese, cheese, yogurt) not sure why you cannot offer milk.
I rarely eat processed/white flour (pasta, rice, bread) and would have liked to have whole grains (whole wheat bread, brown rice)
There was very little variety and actually few vegetables. Even the soups had few vegetables in them and the salad was mainly lettuce with few vegetables either. There was not much variety in fruit either. Gassho”

Oh, my, where to begin? The oddity is that our menu (the one this person is complaining about) contains almost no soy. We had re-done all the recipes when we discovered Quorn products, a near-perfect protein source containing no soy. But, for me, a conversation about the menu, the diet, would miss the point completely.

The Buddha—the Buddha—took a bowl out one time a day each day of his life and begged the scraps of food he would eat. According to the information that has come down to us, he died from eating rotten mushrooms some poor person had put in his bowl. (He blessed and thanked that person before he died for helping him on his journey!)

How have we come so far from the essential point of awareness practice—waking up and ending suffering—that we won’t spend 8 days eating meals that are not meeting our culinary standards without feeling the need to complain? When did a spiritual retreat become something we wouldn’t “refer our friends to” because the plentiful, mostly organic vegetarian food didn’t fit our dietary preferences?

A huge percentage of the world’s population goes to bed hungry every night. Countless children are dying of starvation around the planet as I write this and as you read this. The food we throw away in this rich and privileged culture of ours would keep them happily alive.

Does this mean we should feel bad and guilty? Of course not. But I think it does mean we should be grateful in every moment for all we have. We should live in a constant, resounding, heart-felt “thank you!” (Yep, I’m using the word “should” intentionally here.) We should.

I know that no one reading this needs the lesson contained herein. I know that. And, as it has served as such an excellent reminder to me to keep my attention where I choose for it to be, on unconditional love and gratitude, I thought you might enjoy the reminder too.

Tomorrow I will post a very different story of awareness practice.

In gassho,
Cheri

A Participation Game

2011-06-23T08:14:00.000-07:00

Tuesday night on Open Air, Jen, our Africa coordinator, with the help of that intrepid reporter-monk Dave, launched the 2011 fundraising campaign for the Africa Vulnerable Children Project. This year we celebrate the 10th anniversary of our commitment to assist in poverty alleviation in Africa and enter our 6th year in Kantolomba.

If you’ve been involved in this practice for any time at all you know what a very big deal “participation” is for us. Ours is a practice. There’s nothing philosophical or theoretical about what we do. It’s a “bringing conscious, compassionate awareness to how you are and how you do what you do in each moment” way of living. One is either practicing, or one is not practicing. Understanding, knowing, learning, and figuring out don’t have a place in this every-moment, paying-attention practice of ours. With that orientation the folks behind the fundraising campaign have come up with a way we can all participate in this decade celebration by practicing our every-moment awareness via what they’re calling the Participation Game.

Now, I confess this sort of thing has never been my idea of a good time. I don’t enjoy games. Most of the games on offer when I was growing up were competitive, and I never liked seeing anyone lose. I just couldn’t understand the fun in something that resulted in one person or group being wildly happy while another was miserable. Oh, sure, I heard all the “it doesn’t matter if you win or lose, it’s how you play the game,” messages, but I didn’t see anyone buying it. When I realized I was cheating so my cousins could win, I quit altogether.

So, when I heard the word “game,” I watched my fundraising enthusiasm start down hill. “Can I please just hold a bake sale?” (Anyone who knows me well knows how much I must dislike games to have a thought like that!) However, I’m a student of Zen so that response was pretty quickly replaced by, “Okay, I’m willing. What do I do?”

As some of the details of the game were announced I found myself getting a little bit excited about it. The first thing we heard, on Open Air, was an invitation to send an email to africa@livingcompassion.org with “participation” in the subject line. All very mysterious. I determined to send mine in as soon as the show was over and promptly forgot. Fortunately, we had another chance the next week and I got mine in. More details were revealed. I saw some emails go back and forth as the strategy was being finalized, but didn’t really take in the details. (I don’t like games, you know.)

Then, on Tuesday night, again on the Good News portion of Open Air, all was made clear! I raced to the website and could not believe my eyes. It’s gorgeous, clear, easy to follow—fun. And, best of all, it’s a game in which everyone wins!

I cruised around making my pledge and signing up here and there (I thought I might win one of those guidance appointments), and generally had a very good time playing. I highly recommend it!

As I was playing, I recalled something that happened a couple of weeks ago at the Monastery. We were all racing around getting the place ready for a retreat, each of us with a long list of chores and tasks, attempting to get as much done as we could before the meeting time of 4 o’clock in the garden. Earlier in the day two of the monks had prepared 3 beds for transplanting tomato plants from the greenhouse to the great out of doors. It was a big job to get all those little ones into their new homes and important to do while the sun was lower in the sky, giving them the best chance to avoid the shock of a painful transition.

Everyone gathered and set to the task in typical attentive, mindful, kind, monk fashion. I was completing a task on another part of the grounds at the time, but heard glowing reports later that evening during group about how much fun it was to do something like that together. The feeling of everyone focusing their attention and energy in one direction to accomplish a compassionate outcome is as good as it gets. The consensus was that doing anything with Sangha is fun.

I confess to having felt a little twinge of disappointment that I missed the great tomato extravaganza because I know from years of experience that it’s true—being with Sangha makes everything fun. Given that, you can imagine how delighted I am to get to participate in the Participation Game.

I invite you to join the fun.

In Gassho,
Cheri

A Vision for Practice

2011-04-22T12:38:00.000-07:00

Gassho,

I find that when I’m engaged in an email class I have little inspiration—not to mention time—for writing a blog. I love email classes. I love the back-and-forth, getting to watch what arises in me in response to what someone writes about their practice. I love the feeling of Sangha, all of us practicing together. I feel the same way about Open Air and even the tweets, though tweets don’t have that groovy two-way communication. I can just imagine everyone out there reading and seeing and smiling.

The recording and listening email classes—named “It’s Time to Feel Good” and based on our newest book What You Practice Is What You Have—began in November and, with a short break during February and March, will continue until the end of April. Somewhere out in the middle of the last one, and continuing through this one, I began working with our new “business coach” on a retreat that will be made available only to those who have completed a recording/listening email class.

I just had a birthday* and birthdays are often an opportunity to consider mortality—especially at my age! It has occurred to me that it might be of some assistance for me to articulate my vision for practice, given all these new features in our practice.

I still see the foundation of our practice as the Not What But How work. Having a sense of how a human operates via learning to direct the attention, meditation, and the five processes (beliefs and assumptions, aspects of the personality, projection, centering, and disidentification) is core work, so much so that I still teach that retreat once a year at the Zen Monastery Peace Center. The There Is Nothing Wrong With You retreat, the follow-up to Not What But How, brings clarity—and usually profound transformation—as the role of self-hate in a person’s life is dissected.

The next huge piece of practice is recording and listening. As many of you have heard me state, I’ve never in 30+ years of offering this practice seen anything bring the level of transformation that recording and listening is providing. The unique and astonishing piece of it is that people are able, usually for the first time, to experience that 1) they are not egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate, and 2) they can have immediate, direct access to the wisdom, love, and compassion that animates us. Not “get that,” or “understand it,” but have a direct experience of. That is truly life changing.

However, I’ve not found that people can reach that depth of experience either by reading the book and following the directions, or even by doing a day-long workshop. The resistance from egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate is simply to big and too virulent for most people to move through unsupported. So, until we figure out another way, doing an email class to gain the support for getting to that direct experience seems our only avenue. I commit to offering the It’s Time to Feel Good email classes until we come up with that alternative teaching/supporting method.

When a person has completed all those elements of practice, they will be ready for the new 8-day retreat that, to me, reveals egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate in a way that is stark and unforgettable. I predict this retreat will be as transformative as There Is Nothing Wrong With You and, as such, requires a participant to be well-steeped in every aspect of practice. This stage is for the very committed practitioner.

Then, the people who have these practices under their belt will be invited to participate in a project that I, cock-eyed optimist that I am, think is going to change at least our society, if not the world. The reason I’m hopeful about that is that when There Is Nothing Wrong With You came out—nearly 20 years ago now!—the concept of self-hatred really didn’t exist in society. “Voices” were something the “mentally ill” heard. Now there are few therapists who don’t use clarity about the role of voices and self-hatred in their practices, and those notions have even slipped into most spiritual practices.

However, it’s not changing society that is my ambition, it’s maintaining support for Sangha. We all know that if practice isn’t right in front of us, it’s easy for egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate to begin its stealth slither back into our lives. How do we stay connected, focused, supported? I think Project Next is all that and more. Stayed tuned, please.

*This from the Zen Monastery Peace Center Guestmaster:
Cheri recently had a birthday and one of the monks gave her the gift of the commitment to hold ZERO tolerance for self-hate the entire day. Both Cheri and the monk were pretty excited about it, and Cheri asked us to pass along to the whole Sangha that she is open to late birthday presence (couldn't resist!). If you would like to join in, choose a day and commit, midnight to midnight, no matter what happens, no matter what the voices say, no matter what "unskillful" things occur, to NO SELF-HATE! You can do it--it's actually fun! If you would like to let us know how it goes, post a comment on Cheri’s Practice Blog.
In Gassho,
Guestmaster

PS Remember that deciding “no self-hate” does not mean there will not be any. It will likely be even louder than usual. It means you are not going to participate with, talk to, resist, or in any way engage with it.

Thanks to each of you who take our monk up on that invitation—eager to hear how it goes. And, for a little inspiration before you start your no self-hate day, take a look at the youtube video of Bob Newhart on MadTV doing a routine called, “Stop It.” (Choose the long version.) So Zen!

In Gassho,
Cheri

From Mystery to Predictability

2011-03-26T08:33:00.000-07:00

A retreatant sent this to me after the 2010 Santa Sabina retreat. --Cheri

From Mystery to Predictability

Karma can seem to be something of a mystery. What is it? How did I get “mine”? What actually is “my” karma? I remember an exercise on a retreat with you many years ago. You asked us a number of questions designed to help us get a picture of our own essential karma. I remember that my answers to the questions painted a very familiar picture of life as “me”; then what I saw in that sort of drifted away from conscious awareness. If you had asked what my karma was and how it operates in my life, I probably would have given a very vague answer… “It’s a mystery,” to quote one of my favorite lines from the movie Shakespeare in Love.

The recording process has clearly revealed the mystery around my own particular brand of karma, with more showing up every week. The road map of suffering is revealed! The broad brush strokes are clear; the subtleties are emerging daily.

After recording my “stories” and identifications for just a very few months, it is hard to remain clueless about exactly what those stories are. Almost every other entry among hours of entries is a version of two, or at the most three, stories. I listen and think “wow, that one again; that’s the same one as this morning and yesterday, too!” No more mystery for me about what the stories are that send me down the familiar hole of suffering, complete with the same package of sensations and conversations.

And, as the stories continue to repeat and be recorded, I begin to see what is behind them. What are the beliefs and assumptions that make these so real? Who is it that always falls for them? What does she believe about herself? What survival strategies arise to defend her from these stories?

So, for me, mystery has been replaced by a considerable amount of predictability. 98% of the stories are a version of 1) there is something horribly wrong with my body, physically, and I am going to be very sick and die “young” (kind of funny when you know how old I am), and 2) I am a bad/wrong person and they hate me. Both of them are directly tied to shame; for either, “I should be ashamed of myself.” The words I can most often hear in my mother’s voice are “shame on you.” The response, historically, to the stories and that sense of shame and failure is also not a mystery: the classic fight or flight. Either stand my ground and argue my case, or say, “it’s too hard, I can’t, I quit” and leave.

A couple of days ago, story #2 got started, complete with all the emotions associated with rejection and inadequacy. I grabbed the recorder like a lifeline, told it exactly what was going on, what I was feeling, and asked the mentor for help. Even through all of my emotion, the mentor was right there. First of all with reassurance for the little one getting the beating: “I know; it’s hard. I can understand why you feel that way.” And then as the guide for the adult me: “We don’t have to respond that way any more. You are an adult and can act as one. What would you like to do to take care of this situation? I’m right here to help you.” And that was that. The little one felt heard, and she disappeared. The adult was there and she knew what to do. All sensation and story gone in less than five minutes and on to a new moment.

So, not only is the karma now predictable, the way to handle it is, too! And all because of a little device made of metal and plastic that is able to digitize my voice and play it back. And all because of the willingness to use the recorder, to do the practice, to show up for me and for all beings.

Not only is there relief for me and all the internal little ones in this, there is the social relief as well. No one has to deal with that unfortunately identified version of me! And, best of all, a gift of the greater predictability of karma is the ability to be present to the mystery that is life.

Thank you, Cheri, for this practice – all forms of it – and for the invitation to reflect on what I have seen about karma and its evolution from mystery to predictability.

The Giant Watermelon of Presence

2011-02-15T11:18:00.000-08:00

I’ve noticed that while conducting a labor intensive email class I have little energy or even willingness for blog writing. The demands of emails, phone calls, and texts occupy the rest of the time that could go to such a pursuit. Now that the email class is over, energy and willingness have turned to creating the retreats for the participants from that class, and I notice that with extra time and space, insight on broader topics is returning. I suppose that’s how it always works; resources are consumed by whatever the attention is focused on. I just hadn’t realized insight was so “subject driven.” While it is my experience that there are snippets of insight triggered by doing email classes and planning retreats, I don’t tend to have the big “AH YES,” fleshed-out, full-blown, general-purpose, this-is-how-it-works insights that are available in less content-focused times.

Something else I’ve noticed about insight: Insights seem to grow, in much the same way a plant grows from a seed. A seed looks very different from the plant it grows into. In fact, it’s a matter of faith for me that that is what really happens. I hold this tiny thing in my hand and require myself to get it that with time and care it will grow into a giant, sprawling creature that we call a watermelon!

With the same faith, I pursue awareness practice. I sit. I’m silent. I focus attention. I breathe with conscious awareness. I let go. I accept. I have faith. I trust that this will grow into insight, clarity, compassion, wisdom, freedom, and joy. It doesn’t seem as if just sitting down will lead to all that; it’s hard even to imagine such a possibility. But sit I do, and silent I am.

In the beginning the insights are tiny and seem huge. Do you remember those days? The “ah ha” moments were magical, mystical. The world changed from frightening and overwhelming to exciting. It felt like falling in love or a return to the happy days of the best of childhood. Then, over time it got harder, right? Practice went from effortless to work. I no longer wanted to sit in meditation; meditating was no longer a thrilling adventure into awareness. It became something I had to do, against tremendous resistance.

Still the insights appeared. Egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate, the source of all that resistance showing up as a conversation from conditioned mind, fought against the insights. “Oh, brilliant. You just saw what everybody has been talking about forever.” Or, “You had that insight a dozen times before and it didn’t do you any good.” Or, “You let go of that years ago and here it is again. You’re a failure!”

See, though, if this is also your experience of insight: There’s only one. The only insight we ever have is, “This is it!” Every “ah ha,” every moment of sparkling clarity, shows us the same thing: this is it, here we are, there’s nothing wrong, all is well, relax, say yes, say thank you, enjoy.

What you may not be noticing however—what egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate desperately wants you not to notice—is that insight, incrementally, is occupying more and more of your attention and awareness. Insight is expanding into a larger experience of presence in life.

That tiny seed of conscious awareness is growing into a giant watermelon of presence! (Just couldn’t help myself—had to say it!)

What is our part at this point? We must keep tending, keep taking care. In the garden, once the initial preparations have been made, tending translates into providing the right amount of water and watching out for dangerous critters. In life, in awareness practice, tending is a matter of paying supported attention—in the forms of sitting, workshops, retreats, everything that brings us to here/now—and watching out for dangerous critters—in the form of egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate.

Gassho,
Cheri

The Heart Never…

2010-12-28T13:29:00.000-08:00

Just about every difficult or disastrous situation has occurred because at least one person involved either didn’t know egocentric karmic conditioning was not their authentic nature or was fooled into believing it was for long enough to do something unfortunate.

It’s extraordinarily difficult to get, to experience, that the voice talking in your head is not who you are. In fact, it takes a lot of looking to realize there’s a voice talking. “I don’t want to, I have to, I need, I don’t feel like it, it’s too hard, I’ll do it later”…sound so very much like they must be me, it’s just me thinking. It requires a lot of close attending to catch on that there’s “someone,” who actually feels most like “me,” who is listening to the voice talking.

People are conditioned to take ownership of and responsibility for all sorts of things that have nothing to do with them except they all happen in the same body/mind. Opposite opinions arise constantly, we feel one way and then another about any number of topics, one day we feel agreeable the next we don’t, and yet we go right on saying “I,” as if we are one consistent entity that is thinking of and expressing these disparate notions. This is the world of duality, and the way a “self” can appear to be separate from every “thing” else is if that illusory self takes up, and argues to maintain, opposing positions. I think X, we don’t agree, you feel Y, but at least we’re in accord that they really are delusional.

There’s a handy little tool we can apply to see if we are close to center or have been bamboozled again by egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate: We can look to see if there’s an argument in progress.

Are you arguing for or against something? Are you arguing inside your own head or with another “outside” person? Is there a voice in your head arguing that there’s something wrong with you? If there’s an argument, you can know it’s egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate doing the arguing, no matter how convinced it wants you to be that it’s “really you.” How can we know that? We can know that because the heart never argues, and the ego never stops arguing.

Isn’t that a handy little check-in?

In gassho,
Cheri

What We Are Up To

2010-12-09T08:48:00.000-08:00

[This is, verbatim, an email sent on December 7 to our current email class, “It’s Time to Feel Good.” The focus of the class is to make a recording of the loving encouragement of your internal mentor to keep your commitments to yourself. The commitment participants have in common is to record (R) and listen (L) to the recording as often possible. (One class member suggests we’ve coined a new verb, R/Ling.) The point is to drown out the voices of egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate, which usually dominate our internal dialogue, with what we know to be true.]

TTFG Dec. 7
What We Are Up To

Gassho,

I sensed in the most recent batch of responses a creeping reassertion of the slimy, slippery, sneaky tentacles of egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate, and it occurred to me that perhaps it’s time for a review of just what we’re up to here. Please, if you are not feeling those creeping tendrils, do not think I’m addressing this to you—though it’s always helpful to be forewarned, n’est-ce pas? Sooner or later, they will creep.

Remember in What You Practice Is What You Have how often I came back to “one process does not lead to another”? Another way to say that is “the outcome is the same as the process.” In conditioned thinking you can “do this and get that;” which is a lie. In truth, if you do this you’ll only ever get this.

In other words, you do a process as a practice because what you get is the process that you practice. (Ha, this really IS Zen.) Or, one doesn’t lead to the other; one is the other.

The value of Zen awareness practice—when you do it!—is that you don’t question the process. You just do it. (We must keep in mind here that Zen awareness practice is completely voluntary. We sign on. We ask to do it because we want to end suffering and believe this is the way to do that.) So we do the practice. No if, ands, or buts. What you do in awareness practice is to do what you’re given to do. You don’t evaluate it, you don’t decide to do it based on how you feel about it or whether it feels good or you like it or you can see the value in it or you want to—you just do it. Because you said you would. Because you decided to. Because you committed to do it.

The opportunity with that commitment is to look at what prevents you from keeping it. Overcoming the resistance that arises is what the practice is about. Overcoming that resistance is what will free you. The fact of the matter is that your commitment could be to wake up every morning of your life and pat your nose 3 times—it doesn’t matter. All that matters is doing what you committed to do. It has nothing to do with whether or not what you’re doing is beneficial, though in this case, practicing awareness, is far beyond merely beneficial. The point is that in the process of doing whatever it is you’ve committed to, the fighting it, resisting it, whining, arguing, complaining—whatever you’re indulging while doing the practice—is how you get to see everything that is between you and whatever it is you want for your life; everything that stands between you and life itself because all of that resistance is egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate, the only thing keeping you from the life you know is possible for you.

Through keeping this one commitment—to talk to and listen to the unconditionally loving, wise compassionate guidance of your authentic nature—you will learn how to keep a commitment to whatever you choose. I am suggesting to you that the ultimate commitment is to live life, not egocentric karmic conditioning, and that’s what this process will allow you to do.

This is how you train yourself in practicing keeping commitments. In this discipline you learn to physically execute what you authentically commit to. This is how you get out of the world of karmic conditioning. You have to do the process because the outcome is inherent in the process. You don’t do the process to end suffering; by doing the process you end suffering—the outcome is the process.

I will love to read (in 50 words or fewer) what happens as you consider this.

In gassho,
Cheri

Talk about Snakes…

2010-12-02T18:48:00.000-08:00

Gassho,

There’s an Old Zen Story about the monk who wakes up one morning with snakes crawling all over her body. She, understandably, became immediately hysterical. When those called to her by her wild shrieking attempted to tell her there were in fact no snakes, she became even more upset. She was inconsolable. The head monk called in the local physician who suggested drugs to calm her down. She screamed louder at the thought. Next a therapist was brought in, but unable to communicate at all through the yelling and thrashing, suggested that perhaps the doctor was right. Finally (finally?!) they decided to send for a Zen Master. The master arrived, sat down quietly in a corner of the room and began to meditate. Eventually the monk was drawn into the stillness and slowly calmed enough to tell the master what was happening.

“They’re all over me,” she moaned piteously. “There are hundreds, maybe thousands of them, they’re everywhere. What can I do? Please help me,” she pleaded.

The master nodded thoughtfully and then told the monk, “I will help you. But first I must go to a far city; I will return in two weeks. Until then you must do two things.” “Anything,” cried the monk. “I will do anything.”

“Very good,” said the master. “Until I return you must, first, watch these snakes very, very carefully. Observe them minutely. Note their color, sizes, shapes, textures, patterns, and facial features. See everything there is to see about them and, second, do not mention them to a soul. Say not a word about them to anyone.”

When the master returned two weeks later, the head monk ran through the gate excitedly calling, “The snakes are gone! The monk is cured!”

I had quite a difficult situation arise this week. Nothing like waking up with snakes all over me, but one of those circumstances that can try one’s practice. The temptation, for me anyway, when that sort of thing happens is to talk about it. I’ve heard there’s a culture somewhere that, when there’s a death, assigns “telling the story” to the person closest to the deceased. The individual tells the story over and over until there’s no more emotional charge. Or perhaps until the facts have integrated enough that the person is free simply to grieve and begin to accept. Who knows?

I’ve long suspected that, depending on the situation, telling the story can be more a matter of “adding fuel to the fire” than taking steps to let it go. There can be that little spin, the right choice of words to elicit the desired response. Each telling can add another layer, voices might slip in, there’s a touch of added emotion, some memories surface from similar situations… And, yet, without any outlet it can feel as if the energy, remaining contained, festers.

What is a person to do? Yep, you guessed it—a person can pick up their recorder and have a very helpful talk with the Mentor. The story can come out. The story is heard again and again, if one so chooses. Information, encouragement, clarity, wisdom, compassion can come in from a source with no investment in anything other than the end of suffering.

The result of this choice to turn to the Mentor via the recording and listening was a letting go personal best for me. I highly recommend it. It is such a savings in time, energy, money, and effort. We have “stop, drop, and breathe,” and now to that we can add, “stop, pick up the recorder, breathe, hit record, and talk.” Okay, it’s not as catchy—but it’s equally powerful.

In gassho,
Cheri

Picking Up the Pieces

2010-11-19T14:25:00.000-08:00

This is from one of the monks. It is helpful for dealing with old emotional wounds.

Picking Up the Pieces

My favorite lesson from studying Buddhism has been this: You are not special.

We walk around convinced that we are different, that our challenges are greater than others, that other people just can't understand. They can understand. They're dealing with the same challenges, and believing the same lies about them.

Those lies serve a purpose. They prevent us from sharing our insights about the problems, and thereby protect the source of those problems. When we stop believing we're special and different, then we can begin helping each other overcome the challenges we all face.

In that spirit, I offer a bit on one of my own challenges. I suspect many folks will recognize themselves in it.

Frequently as I go about my life, the memory of some painful experience will pop up in my awareness. My immediate reaction is to get away from the pain. I want to separate myself from the experience, to get outside of it, to put up a barrier between myself and that past trauma, so I alienate myself from both the initial experience and the experience of remembering.

There is a belief that this is a necessary process; if I just relive the misery of it often enough, surely I will avoid that sort of pain in the future... right?

This is a very clever lie, and it serves to maintain the system of suffering. If I believe that it is not OK to have been the person who experienced that pain, then I can set myself apart from it. I can bury my head in the sand - pretend it isn't happening. As long as I am pretending I am not the sort of person these things can happen to, I am not in a position to address the conditions that lead to experiencing that pain: I am primed for a repeat of the experience.

If instead of believing that it wasn't OK, I accept that I was a person who experienced something traumatic, then I can see the memory for what it is: A record of a time that has passed, and no longer has the power to hurt me. If I look more closely I see that the pain I feel today is the pain of alienation. When I was pained, I longed for escape, and so I tried to push away the person who was hurting. Later, as the experience resurfaced, again and again I practiced pushing it away until the pain of alienation was greater than the pain of the experience itself.

The pain I feel today is all smoke and mirrors. It is a construct of little pieces of me that I have cut away in my desire to escape, and the stories I have told about losing them. All of that is in the past.

Today, when I look closely, I can see the trick that is being played. I can retake those bits I have pushed away, accept that I was once someone who was hurt, and follow the memory all the way back to that moment I have tried to avoid. There, aware and accepting, I can see that the pain that was need no longer be, and let it lie in the past. This done, the construct falls apart, the sting is taken out of the memory, and that which desires my suffering has one less tool to work with.

Today I can see something else. The system this process serves to maintain is clever, but mindless. It must again and again cause me to feel pain, and so it will forever serve up every memory I might wish I could forget. The great opportunity is this: So long as I am looking closely when it happens, this system which works to make me suffer will dutifully seek out and bring to me all of the places I have been hurt. I need only reach out and collect those pieces I have lost. In its desire to cause my suffering it will serve to make me whole.

"I can't do this!"

2010-10-30T10:37:00.000-07:00

See if this is at all familiar. There is something in your life that you are really unhappy with. Could be anything. Could be a job, a relationship, where you live, your weight or level of fitness, finances…whatever. And you’ve been trying to be okay with this whatever-it-is for a really long time.

I’m not talking about the habitual daily ploy of “I don’t like” that conditioned mind is using all the time to maintain dissatisfaction and the illusion of separateness. I’m referring to a cyclic process of descending to a place of “I can’t do this,” followed by a “pep talk” from conditioned mind that convinces you that, “Yes, you can because you have to. You have responsibilities, bills, people to care for. Besides you can’t just quit your life! That would be crazy. You’ll starve. You’ll die a street person with a shopping cart full of junk parked next to you in the gutter where you’ve fallen.”

After that little pep talk, you, as the old song says, “pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again.” You use the tools of practice, reassuring yourself that you can do it, you just need to work harder. “Supportive” voices tell you that if you were really doing spiritual practice you wouldn’t be having this problem, and you bravely soldier on toward the next round of, “I just can’t do this.”

A monk recently sent me this:

“There is an old saying, often attributed to Mark Twain (like so many others!), 'To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.' This is the essence of projection. We take our conditioned understanding of the world and we project it onto every experience we have. In this way, no matter what is going on in our life, we have an experience that perpetuates the patterns of thought we have been conditioned to. If we are conditioned to be angry, the whole world is an opportunity to be angry. If we have been conditioned to be victims, the whole world is trying to victimize us.

The truth of the matter is that not very much of any significance happens to the vast majority of us. We wake up, we eat, we pass waste, we sleep. In between we do some things that allow us to keep the process going. We are, after all, islands of curiously persistent chemistry. Like all other life forms, we are spectacularly well suited to our way of going about this. In addition, we have the wonderful knack of being aware of the process. On its own, the experience of going about our lives is one of joy and contentment.

Ego, however, wants none of this. Ego wants to be a star. Ego takes the essentially meaningless events of life and projects onto them a conditioned drama in which we are the center of attention. In short, Ego makes up a life, and convinces us we are living it.

Consider: You are the star of one show, a supporting character in several more, and an extra in 6.7 billion others. The overwhelming majority of the time that you make an appearance in any life, you are little more than a canvas on which another ego paints a bit of story. This is an indisputable fact of life.

Ask yourself: what does it serve to have a problem with that?”

A very good question, indeed, the answer to which can take us in at least a couple of interesting directions. One possibility is to eliminate the drama ego imposes on our lives through its endless melodramatic projections of misery and despair. This approach would look something like, “Well, this seems to be what I keep choosing in my life so I’m just going to accept my choice, admit this is what I truly want, and enjoy the consequences of the decision. I continue to choose that food, that person, that story, that job, that activity and, therefore, I will acknowledge that is what I want more than I want an alternative and that will be that.” Or, you could decide that rather than allowing “your,” or someone else’s ego, to paint a story on the canvas that you’ve assumed is your life, you will start listening to the deeper wisdom, the gentle longing, the sweet tug toward what your heart wishes for, a possibility that continues to appear to you in all its clarity right before the first voice tells you, with that edge of panic, “You can’t do that! You have to do what you’ve always done. You have to keep doing what makes you unhappy, that’s the responsible thing to do.”

Gassho,
Cheri

It Is Time to Feel Good

2010-10-26T15:32:00.000-07:00

This is encouragement to sign up for the new email class, “It’s Time to Feel Good.” It is time to feel good. It’s long past time to feel good for most folks, and the only thing standing between a life of suffering that is not wanted and a life of freedom and well-being that is wanted is the resistance of conditioned mind as it tries to maintain its control over a human’s life. “You don’t have time.” “It’s too much money.” “You can’t afford it.” “You won’t do the work anyway.” Look to see if, without that conversation, you would want to have some additional, powerful support for yourself going through the holiday season and into a new year.

I’ve introduced this new work of “what you practice is what you have” with something akin to mild trepidation and a whole lot of excitement. This is as close to “it” (as in “this is it”) as I’ve managed to articulate. It has been received by our Sangha pretty much as I had anticipated; when at center people are eager and enthusiastic, and when identified with egocentric karmic conditioning/self hate, there’s the standard resistance. This we can work with. We all do, all the time.

What I was really curious about is how this new approach would be received by the larger community of practitioners who use our perspective in combination with other approaches. I knew I wouldn’t have to wait long, as most of the people I meet at events, workshops and retreats participate in all kinds of other practices—the curse of so many options!

The response so far is very good. At a recent workshop a participant expressed amazement at the depth of her response to the work. This is someone who has done a lot of practice—and a lot of practices—and figured she’d done just about everything and knew how it all worked. She found herself stunned that so simple an act—being coached, mentored, inspired, reminded, and encouraged in her own voice—could produce such a profound experience of compassionate acceptance within her for her.

I could never understand why so many people are programmed to “hate the sound of my own voice.” Now I get it. With that programming, people are unlikely ever to be open to hearing compassionate words from the one person truly capable of loving them unconditionally.

Just as I did with the work of There Is Nothing Wrong With You when it was first introduced, I want to guide folks through this practice here at the beginning. Over the years we will all become familiar with how it works, but in the beginning karmic conditioning can throw up roadblocks and confusing directions likely to impede progress unless those efforts to sabotage are thwarted. I am devoted to thwarting sabotage!

It’s time to feel good, folks. Let’s.

In gassho,
Cheri

Only Don’t Know

2010-10-04T17:22:00.000-07:00

Gassho,

In a conversation I had with a friend, he said, “I’m trying to figure out your mood; what your energy is doing.” (That’s California-speak for, “How you doin’?”)
Me: “Why not see what your energy is doing instead of projecting onto me?” (We have that kind of relationship.)
He: “Good idea. Here’s a better one: How about if I don’t “figure out” what either mood is? Why should I allow conditioned mind to frame and label everything, then get me to believe I know what’s going on?”
Me: “Great question!”

What followed was a lively, rather profound exploration of the relationship between what is in the moment and the multi-layered process of interpretation used by conditioned mind to set up the suffering world of “I/me/mine.”

From awareness practice we know, intellectually at least, that labels are not things. To help us see how we confuse words and concepts with the thing itself, Alan Watts offered that great image of a hungry person walking into a restaurant and eating the menu. When asked, “How are you feeling?” most people will answer with a word or words that they believe express a state of sensations/emotions. If the person says they feel anxious or depressed or afraid, we don’t actually know much of anything about what they feel. We’re meant to project our own experience of a state we call by the same label and everyone can go on pretending we know what we’re talking about. (Not hard to understand why people so often feel misunderstood.)

This habit of looking to conditioned mind to tell us about the moment we’re arising into is, of course, the source of suffering. If one is not here, right here, eyes wide open, nothing else going on as the moment arises, one has no way of realizing that all those interpretations an egocentric karmically conditioned mind are putting forth are not true. One tiny flicker of assumption, based on a word that suggests a concept designed to create an illusion, and the hapless human is light-years off into an imaginary world of made-up nonsense that will result in nothing but suffering.

Karmic conditioning is ceaselessly seeking to reinforce its own imaginary reality. In each moment it projects and the unconscious human believes. We’ve all heard those examples of the hungry person driving down the street only seeing restaurants, or the person with a near empty gas tank seeing nothing that isn’t a gas station, or the very clear, “when a pickpocket sees a saint he sees only his pockets.” What’s less obvious is that a person who is karmically predisposed to fear sees every situation as dangerous, a victim always feels mistreated, the entitled expect to be first in line, and the arrogant assume the best is their God-given right. Each of us assumes that our assumptions are reality and that what conditioned mind is presenting is accurate. But of course neither is true.

Korean Zen Master Seung Sahn was famous for using, “Only don’t know” to point people toward his “don’t know Zen.” Not knowing, knowing that we don’t know, knowing there’s nothing to know and there is no one to know it is a very helpful understanding, But just as important as the “don’t know” in this good advice is the “only.” Only. Solely and exclusively. Nothing else. Just that. Everywhere, all the time, “don’t know.” Do not think you know and do not try to know. With that focus it gets harder and harder for egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate to build and maintain a world of suffering for us. Instead of just going along with the same tired old program, we can ask, moment-by-moment, “Is that so?” “How do you know that?” “Who says so?” “What if that’s not true?” “What else is possible here?”

In gassho,
Cheri

It’s So Simple, Really.

2010-09-24T13:09:00.000-07:00

Gassho,

For whatever combination of unknown reasons I’ve had the opportunity to give a number of interviews lately. They allow me to do something I really enjoy, which is to pare down my expression of practice to the bare essentials. This isn’t a workshop or retreat with a theme that I try to adhere to, a series of exercises and experiences designed to provide a participant with a particular perspective. This is an hour of “so what is Zen awareness practice and why is it important?”

After one such talk the interviewer and I agreed that while it would be lovely if our exchange were helpful to others—and we really hope it is—it didn’t matter because we, at least, got to where we wanted to go through the process of conversing. Focusing, asking, looking, responding, seeking clarification, finding words to express brought each of us, through the direction of our attention, HERE, where we want to be.

We have fingers crossed that the new book is going to arrive in time for the Bridge Walk. This afternoon I’ll record the guided imageries that go with the book. This one captures, I think/hope, as perfectly as June and I can manage, the essence of Zen awareness practice as offered through A Center for the Practice of Zen Buddhist Meditation (yes, that’s the official, legal name of this organization). The book lays out those bare essentials I’ve been speaking about in the conversations with the interviewers (and pretty much anyone else who will stand still long enough for me to tell them.)

What are they? There is nothing wrong. Period. LIFE is all there is. Separation is an illusion. There is nothing real that suffers. We can stop identifying with the illusion of a self that is separate from life, from its imaginary suffering existence, and end suffering in any moment we choose. All suffering happens in a conversation with the illusion of egocentric karmic conditioning/self hate. Drop that conversation, turn your attention to HERE/NOW and you are free. (You will be the judge as to its efficacy, but the unique aspect of this book is that it lays out the “how” so clearly.)

The Buddha taught it. Jesus taught it. Sages and awakened adepts around the world throughout recorded history have reinforced this understanding: Just as life is, life is perfect. Just as you are, you are perfect.

How can you know that? Stop indulging egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate. Get out of that conversation about what’s wrong and what’s lacking. Get HERE/NOW. With fresh eyes and mind, SEE! You will know.

Yes, you will see that there is nothing to know and no one to know it—and you will know that! It’s quite magical. It’s the mystery we keep hearing about.

The fact of the matter is, when you’re looking through the magic it is crystal clear that there is nothing real in the universe that wants you to suffer. There’s nothing to fear, nothing to regret, nothing to feel bad about, nothing wrong and nothing lacking. Turn your attention to “yes” and “thank you” and feel life’s joy. Might sound corny—if you’re listening to conditioned mind—but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

In gassho,
Cheri

Awareness Junkie Man

2010-09-14T12:45:00.000-07:00

Gassho,

My grandson sent this to me recently:

It is our nature to be powerful, joyful, vibrant, full of energy, and in command of our experience. Conditioning can only control us AFTER we have been beaten down into a weakened state.

The great trick of conditioning is that once we have been beaten down by outside forces, conditioning convinces us to use our own strength to keep ourselves down. This is the only way it can have any hope of controlling us.

Exactly so.

It is because of conditioned mind’s single-minded effort to redirect attention to maintaining its position of control over the life force that animates us that, in our practice, we encourage an even greater diligence in keeping attention and awareness here/now with life. To that end we offer a wide range of practice supports—most free of charge—that those wishing to wake up and end suffering can avail themselves of. Practice Everywhere reminders (which come with technical assistance for anyone new to this sort of thing), Daily Peace Quotes, Transform Your Life (the perpetual calendar of quotes and awareness exercises) is now available as a free iPhone app, Open Air talk radio’s thousands of hours of archives, The Voices cartoons, Peace Practices, these blogs… Then there are things like Reflective Listening Buddies and at-home working meditation retreats, the 30-day retreat in the back of Making A Change for Good that have a small cost.

In short, there are enough practices to occupy a person’s attention around the clock, enough fun, interesting objects for attention to keep the willing practitioner grinning constantly. (The grin, of course, is what happens when a person is living Here/Now.)

But, sadly, people—good, sincere people—continue to get talked out of availing themselves of all those grins and instead allow conditioning/self-hate to use the strength of their very own life force to keep them in bondage.

I don’t know how many of you have a sense of what the monks do day in and day out. If you’ve been around for any length of time you probably have a strong sense that they do a lot. They do. They work 24/7 doing their own practice and offering practice to others. Briefly (keep in mind that these are only the big rocks in their job descriptions), Michael is in charge of all things food, Amy handles the logistics of practice (who is where when doing what), Sequoia does communication between practice central and the rest of the world, Melinda facilitates and combines psychotherapy with Zen practice, Dave oversees practice, training, the Monastery itself and too much more to imagine, and Jen is in charge of keeping and coordinating the big picture of every aspect of practice(!), our financial wellbeing, and the Africa Vulnerable Children Project. This leaves only Alex. What in the heck does Alex do?

Like everyone else, Alex has a long list of services he performs, but what he brings to practice is a willingness, enthusiasm, and creativity that keep us all inspired. If you’ve seen him you know that he is always “decorated” with the various reminders he wants at the front of his conscious awareness to keep him inspired. There are pictures of the children he’s partnered with in Kantolomba, the Peace Quote of the day, the exercise from Transform Your Life, and whatever else he’s currently working on. He’s done the 30-day retreat from Making A Change for Good repeatedly since the book came out. He draws a Voices cartoon every week. He’s invented an iPod shuffle earbud reminder system that will be unveiled next month with the new book What You Practice Is What You Have. The guy is non-stop! Oh, and he’s that great singer on the Open Air commercials, the author of “Stop, Drop, and Breathe.”

But here’s what has inspired me to write this blog: He, and his alter-non-ego Awareness Junkie Man, are launching a campaign to raise $5000 for the children in Kantolomba. If that money comes in, Awareness Junkie Man (complete with goggles, cape, and, we fear, tights), will walk across the Golden Gate Bridge on October 2 at the 9th Annual Bridge Walk. This I want to see!

So, I am proposing a matching grant. I will match donations up a thousand dollars that come in by the 21st. Are you in? http://www.livingcompassion.org/donations

Oh, and one other insight I had this morning. Tomorrow is the last day to get a t-shirt for the Bridge Walk. This one is a stunner (drawn by Alex), and we want everyone who would like one to have one. If the voices are telling you you can’t afford it, here’s my offer to you. Email the registration office at registration@livingcompassion.org with your name, address, and t-shirt size, and I will cover the cost for you. (In case anyone is having a suspicious moment, these funds are not coming out of donations. I have a part-time job.)

I hope you will join us in person, in spirit, or both in making this Bridge Walk the biggest and best ever. A lot of great people and really adorable children are counting on us. http://www.livingcompassion.org/bridge-walk

In gassho,
Cheri

Just Keep Going

2010-09-05T08:34:00.000-07:00

In many ways this August 2010 trip to Zambia was the hardest one for me. Being there is always physically challenging—malaria medications; the need to be covered with insect repellent; scarcity of fresh fruits and vegetables; the standard difficulties with water, electricity, and the internet—but the poor air quality this time took the challenge to a whole new level.

When people have no way of dealing with trash except to burn it, and when a huge percentage of the burning trash is plastic, the result for the environment and lungs is disastrous. When those circumstances take place in the hottest, windiest season of the year, we get that “whole new level” I mentioned. So, when the day arrived for my departure, while it is always sad to leave good friends, I was ready to get on the plane that would fly me away to the marginally more agreeable atmosphere of the Johannesburg airport.

We have a departure tradition in Ndola. The traveler checks in the requisite two hours before the flight, after which we adjourn to a nearby coffee/tea establishment to go over last-minute details. Alas, the computers were down and all tickets were being written by hand. By the time I got my boarding pass, there was barely time to say a hasty farewell and make it through the rest of security and immigration before queuing up for boarding.
Ah, here we go!

The airlines in that part of the world have a few traditions of their own. One I find most (yes, the word I keep coming up with is “challenging”) challenging is spraying the interior of the plane before take off and/or landing. I understand that there are all sorts of challenging (!) critters who would stow-away and set up housekeeping in new locations without that spray, but goodness, it is unpleasant to be closed in a small compartment, breathing air one intuitively senses just isn’t good for a human, reassurances from the airline to the contrary.

Moments after the plane had been sprayed down, the captain came on the PA to announce, in that tired or bored voice people assume when they want to sound reassuring, that there “are a couple of problems with the plane.” A couple!?! My row mates began telling stories of these kinds of situations leaving Ndola, specifically involving the very plane we were on, which had come in two days before and promptly been grounded for mechanical problems. OK. This might not go as planned.

He announced we would be deplaning and returning to the terminal, while the airline either fixed the problems or brought in another plane from Johannesburg. The seasoned travelers on this route groaned simultaneously and announced, “That’s it, we’re stuck, we won’t get to Jo’burg tonight.” I, too, was groaning, but inside the conversation was more along the lines of, “No, this is not possible. If that’s true I’ll lose my entire itinerary. This is not happening!”

As we stood to deplane, the Captain came on once again to announce the door would not open! Not a problem, there’s a door at the back, we’ll just bring stairs…

Imagine this next part happening at the speed of “I am perfectly willing to accept whatever happens, and I am going to do absolutely everything humanly possible for me to get to Jo’burg and make my connecting flight”:

I’m first in line at the desk.
Airlink: We don’t have any information.
Me: What’s that plane on the tarmac?
Airlink: That’s a Zambezi Air plane.
Me: (Internally, “Yikes.”) Where’s it going?
Airlink: Johannesburg.
Me: Can I get on it?
Airlink: Don’t know. You can ask them.
Me: If I can get on that plane, can I get my luggage off of yours?
Airlink: Yes, if you can get a ticket, we’ll get your bags.

Hyper-speed. Found an adorable fellow who was immediately sympathetic, walked me to the Zambezi ticket counter so I wouldn’t get stuck behind official lines, and explained the urgency of the situation to his colleague who hopped on writing a ticket (no computers, remember). “Will I make it?” I ask. “I think so,” is his less than reassuring answer. What seemed like hours later, I had a rather expensive replacement ticket for the one going nowhere. Back to Airlink with my shiny new ticket. “Can I get my bags?” The woman from the ticket counter stood up and I followed her out across the tarmac, while she yelled at young fellows to open up the plane and offload the luggage. There my bags were. Back we trudged, sweating profusely in the scorching sub-Saharan Africa afternoon sun.

More forms and conferencing and explaining and my bags were checked to Jo’burg. After profuse thank-yous, some discrete tipping, and hugs all around with my new best friends (amazing how going through an emergency bonds people!), I was once again on my way through the rest of security and immigration to queue up for boarding. I felt, and I suspect looked, as if I had just run a summer 10K—perfect way to start 48 hours of travel!

On that flight I reflected on the relationship between acceptance, maximum effort, and letting go. I remembered a call years earlier from a monk who, driving up to the gate of the Zen Monastery Peace Center to leave for an appointment, came upon a huge tree that had fallen, blocking the road completely. “Guess it’s God’s will that I not go,” was the comment. “Perhaps,” I replied, “but I suspect it’s also God’s will that you go get a chainsaw, cut up that tree, and clear the road.”

Seems to me we never have to decide anything, even in circumstances such as these. Our job, our opportunity, is to show up with all the trust, willingness, and courage we can muster. Life will take us where we need to go.

When we decided to purchase the property for the Monastery, we had many uncertain moments, most of which resulted from having no money. How was this going to work? Would we be able to find the money? What if we couldn’t come up with all we needed? Much “sitting still with” was required. Finally, in one of our discussions, Sr. Phil said, “Well, how about if we just keep going until something we can’t get past stops us?”

Good plan. Here we are 23 years later, still going!

In Gassho,
Cheri

From Zambia - Conditioned mind’s self-improvement plans

2010-08-12T07:44:00.000-07:00

Gassho,

Yesterday the leadership team from the Cooperative in Kantolomba came to Castle Lodge for our first big powwow of this trip. At these meetings we always attempt to look at specific issues and big picture items.

The Cooperative, quite on their own, came up with the year 2030 as their target date for Compound-wide sustainability. Not just the forty or so families involved directly with Living Compassion, but the entire thirteen-thousand-soul population of Kantolomba Compound. To choose 2030 as the sustainability goal for our primary group would not be impressive, but 2030 as the sustainability goal for the entire Compound is an outrageously ambitious proposition.

As we’ve read and listened to conversations among development people, we’ve learned that two things are important: 1) metrics (exactly how much of this, how fast, verifiable and preferably replicable, and 2) a solid exit strategy (we want to go in there, get it done, and get out). Sitting in that meeting yesterday I had a couple of, for me, helpful insights and a few peaceful chuckles.

Egocentric karmic conditioning, as we know, is very serious—about itself. Who it is, what it does, and what it thinks is terribly important and meaningful. That perspective goes a long way toward keeping other illusions-of-selves-separate-from-life focused on believing this illusory world of ego is the only reality and must be the recipient of all time, attention, and effort. This should not be a surprise to us.

I bet each one of us can find our own “personal” relationship with that very same process. There is something about you that has been identified as a problem or simply in need of improvement. A plan is formulated. Expectations are established. A timetable is created. Standards are applied. And, where has that landed us?

If we’ve fallen for enough of conditioned mind’s self-improvement plans (in which “it” puts forth a plan to improve a “me”), we get it that the whole process is never going to achieve the stated goals because the whole process is set up not to achieve the stated goals but to achieve a set of “unstated goals”—failure, guilt, blame, recriminations, discord, and suffering.

We have several guiding principles in our practice, familiar sayings designed to assist us in navigating our way through the landmines egocentric karmic conditioning unwaveringly directs us toward.
~~It’s not what; it’s how.
~~With the ideal comes the actual.
~~One process does not lead to another.
~~You will do for the love of others what you would never be willing to do for yourself.
~~Here/Now/This is all there is.
~~There is no self and other.
~~There is nothing wrong.
~~What you have is what you do.
~~The quality of your life is determined by the focus of your attention.
~~What you practice is what you have.
~~The person who realizes intrinsic enlightenment in the morning does not mind dying in the afternoon.

2030 may arrive and some or all of us may be here to see it. Does that matter? Not a whit. All that we have, all we will ever “have,” is This/Here/Now. We have the amount of air we have in our lungs and the amount of love we have in our hearts. That’s it. If we waste a single second of this most precious gift of conscious, compassionate awareness we call life in order to try to fix or change something, we are in danger of missing the point entirely. In other words, “Always we hope someone else has the answer, some other place will be better, some other time it will all turn out. This is it; no one else has the answer, no other place will be better, and it has already turned out.” -- Lao Tzu

Gassho,
Cheri

The Two-Sentence Rule

2010-07-26T09:27:00.000-07:00

The quote today, July 26, in Transform Your Life, “I respectfully decline the invitation to join your hallucination,” by Scott Adams reminds me of a very helpful “encouragement” we have in our practice: Don’t participate in any internal conversation more than two sentences long. Another, similar, guideline is: Spiritual practice does not begin until the beatings stop. Together these constitute a powerful set of reminders for who we are and how life works.

There are several basic understandings that are extremely supportive of a spiritual aspirant working to escape the “convincing’ arguments egocentric karmic conditioning puts forth for keeping one’s attention on “something wrong and not enough.” The first thing we need to get—as an intellectual understanding that moves as quickly as possible to the level of intuition and onto clarity—is that life is not dualistic. The conditioned human mind is dualistic; life is not. Life contains the human being with the ability to experience life as dualistic, but that’s not the same thing as life is dualistic.

How can we picture this? Imagine that life is a giant empty “container” the size of infinity. Now, of course, the difficulty in that endeavor is that conditioned mind, with its dualistic perspective, draws a line around the edge of infinity and wants to know what’s on the other side of that line. (It doesn’t actually want to know anything, but that’s the kind of remark that can derail a line of exploration such as this; conditioned mind will always consider it worth a try.) So, let’s put that aside and imagine our infinity has no edges, there is nothing beyond it, it is not contained in anything else—it is all there is.

“Inside” that infinity is everything that has existed, does exist, and will ever exist throughout time and space for eternity. There is nothing outside That and that That is This. Let’s say we call This the Ground of Being or Brahman or True Nature or God. Can we then see that there is no other or opposite or “separate”? There is only One and That is all that is.

It can feel when viewed through a conditioned mind by the illusion of a self that is separate, that we are having this discussion outside That. But of course we’re not because that’s not possible. There is no “outside”!

So, that’s very helpful to practice with, to move along from intellectual understanding to intuition or insight to clarity. There is nothing wrong. There are no mistakes. There is no “them.” There are no good people and bad people, no right/wrong, no past or future. This is it and it is us and we are it.

To help us get to clarity about that fact, we can practice the “two sentence rule.” Egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate keeps the illusion of duality alive in a conversation about what’s wrong, loss, lack, deprivation, fear, urgency, the past, the future, using judgment and comparison as its tools. Its method is conversation, a conversation in the head of a human who is vulnerable to being caught in a dualistic belief system. Without that conversation the illusion of a dualistic reality cannot be maintained. Why? It cannot be maintained because there is no illusion of a separate self creating and sustaining that imaginary reality.

The Practice: Conditioned mind starts a conversation that will quickly build to the “something wrong/not enough” perspective it must create and maintain in order to support the illusion that it is real. We, practicing attending to waking up and ending suffering, listen just long enough to get a sense of which story is being spun with an intention of drawing us into unconscious collusion. We recognize the ploy and turn our attention to Here/Now/This, the breath, the space between the thoughts, returning to an experience—even if fleeting—of the infinite container in which all arises.

Within that breath, that letting go everything as This, to be This, it is quite easy to respectfully decline all invitations to join in any hallucination the illusion of separation might currently have on offer.

Gassho,
Cheri

Letting life live me

2010-07-20T16:38:00.000-07:00

My practice, and the one I encourage others in, could best be described as “learning to let life live me.” The quote “don’t seek after enlightenment, simply cease to cherish opinions” has long been a guiding beacon on that path. Letting go, getting out of the way, saying yes, receiving, accepting, allowing. This life belongs to life. “I” get to enjoy it for as long as life animates this form, and when it no longer does I will no longer be. Simple as that.

Recently I’ve been enjoying realizing how perfectly meditation practice teaches us the how of letting go and letting life live us.

As we know, the only thing standing between a “me” and a peaceful, joyful life is egocentric karmic conditioning’s “better ideas” about how life should be. Those interfering better ideas are difficult to recognize, harder still to let go, when we’re busily going about the day. But when we sit in meditation we can practice being open to everything that is, just as it is, in a safe, “manageable” environment.

For instance, a thought--the result of a sensation labeled anxiety--arises about something I need to do. If I’m up and moving around in life, that combination of thought and emotion can launch a flurry of unconscious activity leading to more unnoticed sensations, thoughts, emotions, behaviors—and suffering. But here I am sitting in meditation. I can watch the whole thing arise, linger, and pass through, knowing I’m not going to follow any conditioned patterns of behavior because my commitment is to staying here paying close attention for this period of practice.

There’s a sensation somewhere in the body that carries the label “pain.” I get to practice being with those sensations rather than allowing conditioned mind to take the label and run with it—run away from the sensations and the body having them. I can stay with the body, exploring what feeling feels like when labels and stories don’t get to replace experience.

Practicing in this way lets me see the process egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate employs to take the life force away from life and to use that energy for its own suffering purposes. I get to see how I have been conditioned to abandon myself each time a story arises that “this is too hard” or “I don’t like this” or “I don’t want to do this” or “this is scary.” Sitting there, present, alert, attentive, willing, committed, I can recognize that’s not “me” talking about “too hard/don’t want to.” That which has made this commitment to meditate, to wake up, wants me to live without suffering, knows stillness as home, is life and revels in the delight of being present with itself. And I get to see that THAT is all of me.

As the awareness of what is animating a human being becomes more obvious, the enthusiasm for following an illusion of a separate self around through life dwindles rapidly. Shall I choose to have my life guided by unconditional love or a cruel and hateful conversation? Doesn’t require a lot of discernment.

Faith and trust grow with practice. We can relax into life’s utterly impersonal unconditional love. We can feel the stress of trying to figure it out, trying to get it right, of believing we should know or that there’s something to know or someone to know it drain from our body, mind, and emotions. As we learn simply to be in meditation, we know how simply to be in life…and that is worth practicing!

In gassho,
Cheri

We are in love.

2010-07-07T14:15:00.000-07:00

Last evening on Open Air I heard myself say a sentence I really like: “We are in love and we can fall in love with the love we are in.” We are in love. As fish are in water, we—and they!—are in love. This notion of “being in love” caused me to think of the Garden of Eden tale.

If we read from Genesis in the Judeo-Christian bible we find this creation story:
God charges Adam with tending the garden in which they live, and specifically commands Adam not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Eve is questioned by the serpent as to why she doesn’t eat from that tree. Eve states that the commandment not to eat of its fruit says that even if she touches the fruit she will die. The serpent responds that she will not die, rather she and her husband would "be as gods, knowing good and evil," and persuades Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Eve eats and gives the fruit to Adam, who also eats. At this point the two become aware, "to know good and evil," evidenced by awareness of their nakedness. God then finds them, confronts them, and judges them for disobeying. God expels them from Eden to prevent them from also partaking of the Tree of Life. The story says that God placed cherubim with an omni-directional "flaming sword" to guard against any future entrance into the garden.

When I look at that tale I get to:
1) This, our very world, is the garden and the garden is love.
2) We, as human beings, have the ability to experience ourselves as separate from life, outside the garden, cut off from love.
3) Rather than that ability being an example of our inherent evil, it is a beautiful gift enabling us to feel lost and then know the joy of feeling found. We believe ourselves to be unloved and unlovable only to realize we are unconditional love.
4) Once we realize who/what we truly are, we can see that there never was an entrance or exit to the garden, we have always been in the garden, there is nothing other than the garden, and we have always been living in love—we just didn’t know it.
5) When we have that knowledge we are free to be love, which is when we fall in love with the love we are in, and, yes, if that isn’t God-like, I can’t imagine what is!

Rumi said:
“A lover’s food is the love of bread,
not the bread. No one who really loves,
loves existence.

Lovers have nothing to do with existence.
They collect the interest without the capital.”

When we are in love with love rather than with an object, in love with the process of love rather than the content, we can feel that we are always in love, a love without conditions. How can we practice that? We can practice turning our attention away from the conversation in the head aimed at reducing the unconditional to conditional, be with the breath of being, and recognize that as love.

In gassho, in love,
Cheri

Aphorisms and Truisms Self-Hate Can Use

2010-06-28T11:19:00.001-07:00

Reading the Practice Everywhere tweet “Better to be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubts,“ caused me to reflect on how many of those kinds of insidious messages most of us have been given. From standards such as “children should be seen and not heard” to vague information that what you’re feeling and the amount you’re feeling is wrong/bad, we have managed to take in an impressive amount of “negative intelligence” under the guise of truisms or words to live by.

A few more that occur to me:

A fool and his money are quickly parted.
A friend in need is a friend indeed.
Better to be safe than sorry.
All good things must come to an end.
All's well that ends well.

I’ve tried to see how we get information such as “those feelings” are “anxiety” and anxiety is a bad thing. I can’t recall hearing anything specific but somehow the message gets transmitted loud and clear. Wouldn’t it have been wonderful if we had been encouraged with something like, “Oh, those are sensations; they’re how human beings feel life. They don’t mean anything in particular. You have to pay close attention because they change with every situation and you don’t want to miss any messages from life.”

A variation on the value of truisms I wish someone had given me is along the lines of, “maybe yes, maybe no” from the story of the old fellow whose only horse runs off. The neighbors say, “What a terrible thing to have happen to you.” He responds, “Maybe yes, maybe no.” The animal returns in a few days bringing a small herd of wild horses with it.
“Isn’t that wonderful,” say the neighbors. “Maybe yes, maybe no.” His only son goes out to break the horses, is thrown and his leg is broken, rendering him incapable of helping with the work. “Isn’t that terrible,” say the neighbors. “Maybe yes, maybe no.” The army comes by looking for able-bodied men to fight the most current war. “Isn’t that…” You get the picture. Bottom line point is that we simply do not know. Ever. Anything.

How about this: As you recognize the vaguely unsupportive to downright self-hating “truths” that torment you when you’re not attending closely, post them to this blog, and we will create a great list of “conventional wisdom” that is not wise at all under a heading of Lies to Ignore.

The Problem with Believing We Know

2010-06-23T09:14:00.000-07:00

To the illusion of separation, to the “I,” the world of duality is assumed to be all there is. In a dualistic reality of right/wrong, good/bad, suffering/liberation, I must strive to be the right, good, liberated person. Anyone who is paying attention knows the futility of engaging in this struggle.

Two concepts that students of Buddhism learn early on are that desire/wanting is to be overcome and non-attachment is what we’re working toward. We learn this, accept it, know it, and believe it—which is part of the problem. Dualism raises its head in the world of spirituality when we try to overcome attachment and desire while amassing the right information and beliefs. (I am showing great restraint here because pretty much every word I’m writing “should” be in quotation marks.)

The difficulty is that “overcoming” and “amassing” require an “I” to do them. The “I” must divide life up into thises and thats in order to determine what is a good thing and what is a bad thing, and the whole world of suffering is created and the illusion of a self separate from life is maintained.

There is nothing to overcome and nothing to amass, nothing to believe and nothing to know, nothing to resist or avoid. And, most important of all, there is no one to do any of that. (If you heard a voice in you head say something along the lines of, “Oh, yeah, I know that,” that’s the “I” I’m talking about!)

Life is quite relaxing when we stay with attention/awareness, here/now, and let life do its part—everything else! But when egocentric karmic conditioning gets hold of the teachings, the dharma, it can try to turn them against us, causing not only suffering but much confusion.

Gassho
Cheri

There’s a Goat on the Porch

2010-06-13T13:16:00.000-07:00

Quietly eating my lunch, I look up to discover a goat on the porch. We stare at each other for a moment, me trying to take in this very unusual event, she doing whatever processing she’s doing. I observe that she’s very short and quite wide, with lovely horns and a very gimpy right front leg. Oh, swell. Not only do I have a goat on my porch, I have a pregnant, three-legged goat on my porch. This was not in my plan for the day!

Fortunately there’s a dog yard, large and secure, that I can put her in while I attempt to find her people. Leading that goat to the pen quickly put me in mind of those “herding eels” or “nailing jello to a tree” images. No sooner had I closed the gate behind her than she commenced in earnest her efforts to get out. She climbed, she crawled, she butted, she bellowed; at one point she launched her little round self over a loose part of the wire, doing a decidedly inelegant belly flop outside the fence.

As I’m chasing her around, trying to corner her long enough to get a handhold on her horns I tell her, “I’m just trying to help you. You may not be aware of the fact, but I happen to know mountain lions roam these hills. A fat little goat would be a tasty treat for a mountain lion.” My reasoning falls on deaf ears; all she wants is out. She has no idea where she’s going when she gets out, she just wants out.

I can see my own life in that; I can see a lot of people’s lives in that overwhelming desire to “do it my way.” I often refer to it as a “devotion to bad decisions,” but I think its proper name is karma.

If there’s no larger perspective, all that’s available to us is egocentric karmic conditioning’s perspective. What dominates our experience is all that “no, no, I don’t want that, I want that…” energy coursing through the body.

Years ago I heard someone say that the curse of intelligent people is their need to have their own experience. Smart folks are not going to take someone else’s word for anything. We want to find out everything for ourselves, prove it to ourselves, make up our own mind, and make our own decisions. But going to egocentric karmic conditioning to have our own experience is not producing what we think it’s producing. (This in no way contradicts the Zen admonition to not believe what the teacher says but rather to find out for yourself. That’s encouragement to go to conscious compassionate awareness for information, not a karmically conditioned “authority.”) I recently heard a young woman, aged twenty years or so, say to her friend, “I’m so glad I’ve past that age of just believing everything.” Oh, my dear, I thought, if you only knew where that belief has landed you!

People often say to me, “I have trouble with authority figures.” “Yes,” I respond, “the authority figure you’re used to accepting inside has trouble with what it perceives as external authority figures.” I’m suggesting that the internal authority figure is the one a person “should” have trouble with. It is the source of information that results in about 99% of the suffering in people’s lives.

“Doing it my way” can often masquerade as independent freethinking, an expression of who I really am. But when I watch that little goat, hell-bent on following the information she’s getting, regardless of circumstances, irrespective of her own best interest, I recognize all of us when we are operating out of unconscious urges and unexamined desires.

The whole thing was a marvelous projection exercise.

It causes me to appreciate once again the Buddhist approach to karma and the Buddha’s admonition to work out our own salvation diligently. Our lives really are up to us. We get to do things our own way, live out bad decision after worse decision, choose experience after suffering experience until we’re ready to give up the ego’s “better ideas” and give our lives back to life to live. It’s a very good deal.

Epilogue: Forty-eight hours later she seems to have forgotten she ever lived anywhere else and has settled into a quiet routine of tree-trimming and snoozing, undisturbed by anything except her duties as guard-goat, alerting all to the arrival of unfamiliar noises. I am striving to emulate her let-go-the-past-be-here-now orientation to life.

Gassho,
Cheri

Real Comfort

2010-06-09T10:12:00.000-07:00

Last night on Open Air we had what I found to be a fascinating discussion that, heavily paraphrased, went a little something like this:
B. I know I should practice, but when I come home from work I’m tired. I just want comfort.
C. What does “comfort” mean?
B. Watching television (which I don’t own because of this), reading novels (good ones!), eating…
C. So comfort means going unconscious?
B. Yeah. And, it doesn’t really take care of me; I know that. I wake up the next morning feeling bad. Waking up in the morning to a clean kitchen takes care of me. Waking up to a sink filled with two or three nights of dirty dishes doesn’t take care of me.

Who can’t relate to that? I’m tired. I’ve been doing stuff I really didn’t want to do all day. I don’t want to do any more hard stuff. I just want to relax, do nothing, eat something that tastes good but doesn’t require a bunch of preparation, and zone out.

Nothing wrong with any of that, is there? There’s no reason not to follow that program every evening of one’s life, except for that little detail of “it doesn’t take care of me and I wake up feeling bad in the morning.”

Last week in a conversation, one of the monks and I were marveling that so many people desperately cling to lives they devote all their resources to escaping. A person who cannot come to the Monastery because of a perceived deprivation in the monastic lifestyle pursues endless distractions (and suffers the resulting beatings by self-hate), based on an inability to tolerate the life they could not possibly give up!

So, there’s B going to work each day, doing work that is unfulfilling to the point that the rest of her time must be spent “recovering from” the results of the hours she has endured. She can’t attend to herself because all her ability to attend has been used up in surviving the workday.

I loved this exchange with B, as I love all interactions with Sangha, because it’s so very clear what’s going on when we get to see how someone else is falling for the lies and cons of egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate! With B we get to explore one of the BIG LIES conditioning uses to keep people in service to it. Here’s the belief: “I need to go unconscious, turn my life over to conditioning to make it through the day. My work is not what I want to be doing; I just need to survive it so I can get to something for me.”

Of course there are too many lies in that for one little blog, but the biggest of the big, the one we all fall for, stumble over, and suffer with is: there’s a “me” this is all being done for.

I grew up hearing one of those jokes that ended with the person who was believing they would “get their reward in heaven” learning that it would be “a bale of hay, you jackass.” Kind of captures the relationship a lot of humans have with karmic conditioning. That reward is always out there somewhere. Just slog along through another day you don’t enjoy, this is leading to something…sometime…somewhere. The despair begins to set in when it dawns that the trudging is unrelenting and the reward nowhere in sight.

Blessedly, the answer is so simple—and even easy! (Plus we hear it repeated really often.) The answer: Make this moment the reward. Life is love. Not some of life, some moments of life, some times when things are going well. All of life is love, unconditional love. Spend each day in love. Give the one person whose worth you know intimately—you—the life that person deserves. Don’t entertain conversations in your head that disparage the person you have the golden opportunity to love unconditionally, an experience of unconditional love that will transform your life.

Is there a “how” in all this? You bet!
1) Remind yourself how you want to treat the human being left in your keeping.
2) Write that down.
3) Phrase those as sentences you can easily remember and repeat. Example: I’m glad we’re doing this together. Great job. You did that really well. You know, I really like you. Record this and listen to it often.)
4) Put the kind of effort into this relationship you would put into a relationship with someone you really like!
5) Make this relationship your top priority.
6) Always choose loving your person over the demands and dictates of karmic conditioning. Never, ever lose sight of this one—it’s critical.
7) Protect, honor and celebrate your person.
8) Approach a day with yourself with the same enthusiasm and excitement you would have for a party or a vacation.
9) Practice relaxing together. Learn to have fun in everything you do.
This is, after all, your life!

Sound hokey? Only to egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate. And, it doesn’t actually sound hokey to conditioning; it sounds like something that will put it out of work—and out of the house, too! Real comfort consists of being embraced in the unconditional love that animates all. Each of us gets to bring that comfort to one person—the “me” who has been promised so much and worked so hard in hopes of receiving. Now is the perfect time to fulfill those promises, and you are the perfect person to make that happen.

In gassho,
Cheri

Having That Which Animates You as Your Most Intimate Relationship

2010-06-02T20:15:00.000-07:00

A while back I suggested what I called the "ingredients for a satisfying life."
They are:
1) Dedicate your life to something you consider worthy.
2) Celebrate your contributions.
3) Have That Which Animates you as your most intimate relationship.
4) Know how to give your attention to what you choose.
5) Keep your word to yourself .

I spoke about the first two and promptly forgot to return attention to the following three. Fortunately, life, in its infinite wisdom and compassion, never lets us lose sight of anything really important to us. (Egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate has learned to mimic this trait by dedicating itself to attempting never to let us lose sight of anything that is really important to it!)

I realize what I’m going to say next could sound iffy, but, you know, if I let that stop me I would have said very little over the past years—perhaps not a bad thing. Nonetheless, I have and I will continue to, so here goes.

It’s not that I choose illness. As with most people who prefer having more that they want to do than will ever get done, have endless interests and pursuits, love feeling energetic and active, I avoid sickness assiduously. But when it comes, I confess I have learned to enjoy and appreciate it. Being sick is a bit like going on a vacation with practice.

Several days ago I developed symptoms of either a cold or severe allergies. Over the years I’ve realized that going to bed at the first sign of illness really works for me. I don’t pass around whatever I have, and I can usually get through colds and flu sorts of things in about three days. If I fight it, it fights back and I get the standard ten days or two weeks, which just seems like too much of a good thing!

This one went straight to the chest, and before long I was having trouble breathing. Not dangerous-trouble-breathing, just take-a-breath-and-collapse-into-racking-coughs trouble breathing. Under normal circumstances this could be annoying, but since I was already on my mini-vacation with practice, it was fascinating. (The real blessing in these mini-vacations is that there’s nothing else to do but pay attention.)

I began to watch for the exact millisecond when the cough got triggered. I found if I went slowly enough I could get past all the danger points and take full breaths without choking or coughing. This, of course, brought me to a place of great joy: It was impossible to do anything other than attend to the breath for each complete cycle. A moment’s lapse would be followed by collapse-into-choking-and-coughing. How perfect is that?

Since it was not possible to be concerned about anything, complain about anything, or even attend to anything other than each millisecond of the breath, there was nothing to interfere, even at the subtlest levels, with right here/right now. Breathing fully with absolute attention makes stress impossible. There’s no room for egocentric karmic conditioning to get a toe in…not even with that “incessant nattering” it likes to offer as “innocuous noticing.”

And the best part of all is that the spaciousness—created by the lack of intrusion by an illusion of a self separate from life—can be filled with awareness of That Which Animates. There’s nothing interfering, nothing blocking the wisdom, love, and compassion that we recognize as our authentic nature when we stop doing anything else.

Then I lost my voice. Bliss!

Gassho,
Cheri

Duality and the Power of Participation

2010-05-25T10:47:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I received an email that contained this: "The word "participatory" comes close to defining the highest good in African society. It is the core meaning of the word ubuntu and is enshrined in the Xhosa proverb, ‘A person is a person through persons.’ Ubuntu affirms the organic wholeness of humanity: that one realizes one's full potential only through other people. Life together is the quintessence of an African understanding of what it means to be human.”

Later I had a conversation with a psychiatrist who will interview me about depression on her radio show tomorrow, May 26. She said she had read The Depression Book and is eager to talk about the use of exercise in moving through and beyond depression, something she said was certainly not part of her medical training. I asked her if she’d read There Is Nothing Wrong With You. She said she read it several years ago, and we spoke a bit about the relationship between self-hatred and depression. My comment was, “How could anyone go through life listening to constant criticism and abuse without being depressed?” She told me that when she asks patients questions of that nature the response is invariably along the lines of “Look at how I am. How could I not hate myself?”

The juxtaposition of ubuntu with the isolation of self-hatred and depression caused me to reflect again on the critical necessity of recognizing the illusory nature of a self that is separate from life. Until we get it, grasp it in that life changing oh-I-see-and-the-seeing-has-opened-my-eyes-forever way, it is not possible to move out of a primary I-truly-believe-this-is-who-I-am relationship with egocentric karmic conditioning. And, without seeing though the illusion of a separate self, it is not possible to step free of self-hate or to experience ubuntu.

The great news for us humans is that the door conditioning has labeled exit is really the entrance and the entrance is really the exit. Depression is a perfect example. I am depressed. I have no strength or energy for anything. The voices that talk to me alternate between reporting how awful I feel and beating me up for being a person who feels so awful. I feel awful and clearly it’s my fault. This can continue unabated for a very long time because nothing interferes with that loop. The conversation robs me of energy; the lack of energy supports the conversation in that the conversation matches perfectly the sensations in my body—or lack thereof! It all makes perfect sense.

However, if I get up and start moving, the sensations in my body change. Now I’m getting different information. The voices of self-hate will attempt to push me back into my chair, predicting yet another failure, reminding me of past failures, etc., but the sensations in the body are no longer supporting that conversation. If I keep moving, the sensations will continue to change. After a time, the sensations in the body are so altered that only a great deal of effort on the part of the voices can siphon off the energy released through the exercise and return me to a state of depression.

How do I keep that from happening? Ubuntu. Participation. All of the misery-producing experiences of a human being happen in isolation—isolation from everything except the voices of egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate that have made their way inside a human’s head.

This world of karmic conditioning is often called “the world of opposites.” Usually that term is meant to refer to the fact that conditioned mind is maintained through duality—hot/cold, yes/no, us/them, right/wrong, etc. I like to use it to indicate that just about everything karmic conditioning comes up with is the opposite of what is so, that what we’ve been taught to believe is the opposite of what is true. This even applies to the notion of duality itself. Hot and cold are not opposites; they are two ends of a continuum, two sides of a coin that do not exist without one another.

Once we understand what’s actually happening, we can free ourselves! All we need is to understand the principle, and what has stopped us will free us. There is a little trick here, which is why it’s so important to grasp the principle: Only from center can we see this and accept the solution.

So, the application goes like this: I’m told I have no energy, cannot move, cannot do what I need to do. That belief keeps me in an immobile state, which reinforces and perpetuates the belief. From center I find the willingness to get up and move. I go in the direction opposite to that belief, feel better, have more energy, and can do what I need to do. From center I replace the voices of self-hatred with voices of compassionate support. From center I can see that staying in isolation and not participating keeps me vulnerable to voices that prey on me when I am alone with them. So I go against the voices, reach out, get involved, participate with others who are practicing waking up and ending suffering.

The moral of the story: Explore the opposite of what you’re being told. Keep in mind that in the world of karmic conditioning, the exits are marked entrance and the entrances are marked exit. Once you understand this trick, you can out-fox conditioning. You can go where you’re being told you cannot go and do what you’re being told you cannot do, sprinting past the gateless gate. And you’re free.

Gassho,
Cheri

Smitten with Directing the Attention

2010-05-18T12:19:00.000-07:00

I know, I know, I’m a veritable broken record (do we have an image to replace that one now that there’s at least one generation with no knowledge whatsoever of a record?), on the subject of directing the attention. Having facilitated workshops on “What You Practice Is What You Have” for the past year or so (not to mention “the quality of your life is determined by the focus of your attention” before that), and now working on this follow-up to There’s Nothing Wrong with You, which is also titled “What You Practice Is What You Have,” I find myself utterly besotted (in the best possible sense) with the practice of directing the attention.

There is everything to recommend it and nothing against it!

1) It’s practical. When you need to stay attentive to something or someone--at work, in a challenging conversation--you can do it.
2) It’s entertaining. You can make up all sorts of little games for yourself such as turning your attention to particular colors or objects and using them as reminders to turn your attention to the breath, to yourself with a kind word, etc. (Some of you may be recognizing Practice Everywhere about now.)
3) It’s relaxing. With your attention going where you choose rather than habitually to the stressful conversations of conditioned mind, stress and tension no longer have access to you.
4) It’s efficient. When it’s time to meditate formally, you are way ahead of the game by having practiced being present all day long!
5) It’s fun. Life is fun. Conditioned mind and the voices of self-hate are not fun. When you give your attention to life, your fun quotient goes way up.
6) It’s kind. When you are not lost in an unconscious relationship with the negativity of egocentric karmic conditioning, you become a pleasure to be around. You are a gift to the world.
7) It’s simple. Anyone with sufficient capacity and willingness can do it. “Now, I will turn my attention to…” No complex rules, no standards—easy.
8) It brings immediate gratification. Each moment you are HERE/NOW is a moment of wellbeing. Practice directing your attention ten times today and you have ten experiences of wellbeing. Tomorrow twenty, then thirty, then much of your day, then most of your day…
9) It’s a guilt-free pleasure. You can be enjoying this little awareness game all the time and no one will ever know what you’re doing. They will just enjoy you more because you’re more pleasant to be around.

I feel quite confident there are more good reasons for the practice of consciously directing the attention than are occurring to me just now. Perhaps if you know of additional benefits you will send them along? When you send them, I will turn my attention to them, enjoy them, and have the joy of another moment or so of wellbeing. Oh, and I will feel grateful to you for them…another moment of wellbeing! If financial institutions operated this way, we’d all be rich as Midas—but truth be told, I much prefer being rich in the joy of wellbeing.

In gassho,
Cheri

The Restful Nature of Awareness Practice

2010-05-13T18:34:00.000-07:00

In the night I woke with a profound, obvious, and very helpful realization: awareness practice is the most restful thing we can do.

I’ve been traveling a lot the past several weeks, which I’ve thoroughly enjoyed, and approached getting home with great excitement and enthusiasm. This is the perfect time to be where I live: perfect temperatures, weather, colors, sounds, and perhaps happiest for me right now, no biting bugs.* This great excitement of coming home translates into a lot of energy, which is a big piece of the awareness in the night.

With all that energy, I began immediately to tackle the business of life: sort through and open the stacks of mail, clean out the inbox, empty and store the suitcases, do the laundry…in short, “catch up” with regular life. What I hadn’t seen until my 1:00 a.m. epiphany is the unacknowledged message that while I’ve been away doing what I was doing somewhere else, I’ve gotten behind at home, and once home I need to scurry to get caught up to the point that it seems I’ve never been gone.

I’ve known about this scam for years, seeing it pulled on lots of other people! I would encourage retreatants to take time off when returning from a long retreat, allowing themselves a rest after doing the hard work of letting go karma. This was proposed in opposition to conditioning’s perspective that “you’ve been on retreat vacationing and now you need to pay the price.” At the very least, I would remind departing practitioners not to get caught up in the mail. Mail--postal, e-, or voice--is conditioning’s way of tracking us down wherever we are and luring us into the distractions of society.

I know this! What fooled me completely was the combination of all those “right” feelings. I was taking care of business, loving being where I am, enjoying doing what I’m doing, being responsible—a good citizen in every way. Surely there cannot be any harm in that.

And, the answer is no there isn’t any harm in any of it. But on a very deep, subtle level there is disappointment in my failure to keep my commitment to my heart.

Truth is, I don’t want to give any of that excitement, energy, and enthusiasm to anything other than what takes care of my heart, which is practice. Is taking care of the things that support my life other than practice? No. But when there is all that energy built up from doing practice, which is what I’ve been doing for these many weeks in the form of leading workshops and retreats, I want to give that energy to deepening the intimacy of my relationship with life, not dissipate it in chores or even in what I’ve been conditioned to think of as rest.

After that energy has been given over to fueling more present, focused meditations, when being here/now has been the recipient of the excitement and enthusiasm, after silence and solitude have a chance to replace the noise of human busyness, then, and only then, will I turn attention to the activities of daily life. And, what I know from experience is that rather than the energy I returned home with being dissipated in doing “stuff,” I will return to daily life rested, rejuvenated, inspired, and ready to participate fully in whatever life has next in store for me. That’s what practice gives to me. But only when I give myself to it.

*On the last leg of this journey I did apply one of the practice tools I’m most fond of to great effect. Clearly the insect population at the last retreat had been left to their own company too long. The welcoming celebration for my arrival was truly impressive. In a matter of moments, just about every part of my body—they are not slowed at all by clothing—was covered with red, swelling, itching welts. I decided that each time I was aware of one of those welts itching, I would use it as a reminder to turn my attention to the life experience I choose to have. Blessedly it works and the result was lots of reminders and lots of good practice!

Gassho,
Cheri

Only 100% will do

2010-05-03T09:37:00.000-07:00

Since our discussion about overcoming the conditioned belief that egocentric karmic conditioning is stronger or more powerful than our ability to remain committed, I’ve been looking at similar scam people are often conned into falling for. It’s a variation on the con known as “the numbers game.”

In this variant the person is made to believe that nothing less than 100% success, 100% of the time is worthwhile. The way it works is something like this: You decide you are going to make a change, usually a change in behavior that will benefit you. Let’s say you decide to stop eating sugar. (Keep in mind this process is most commonly applied to endeavors such as meditation practice, exercise, healthy eating, getting enough sleep, not using intoxicants or drugs, as well as habits such as punctuality, swearing, or procrastinating. In short, anything that will give more life to you and less of life to egocentric karmic conditioning.)

You make your plan (if you’re like most folks, failing to see who/what is making this plan), marshal your forces, and begin with resolve and conviction. You know that eating sugar is not good for you, makes you feel bad, compromises your immune system, is associated with all sorts of health issues, and it is way past time for you to end this toxic relationship!

I suspect that if we could be hooked up to the right machinery we would be able to watch the resolve begin to diminish as soon as the program starts. The current store of sugar isn’t even out of your body before egocentric karmic conditioning begins its campaign of sabotage. “This is going to be too hard.” “You’re not going to be able to do it.” “You’ve tried this before, you’ve always failed, and you’ll fail this time.” The anxiety grows and a little more life force is drained off to fuel the voices.

You make it through a day! The voices start up. “Pasta digests as sugar.” “Drinking coffee is the same as eating sugar.” Perhaps you defend yourself. “But I didn’t have any candy!” “I didn’t have any soda.” The voice snorts derisively. “So what? There’s sugar in everything. You’re never going to make it.”

Sound familiar?

The story goes from past failure to projected future failure, all narrated by the Anti-Coach: You can’t. It’ll never work. You won’t be able to.

Before long a person just gets worn down. All that excited, empowered resolve is siphoned off to feed the stories of defeat. It doesn’t matter what you actually managed to accomplish—you didn’t meet conditioning’s standards perfectly, 100% of the time, so none of your efforts count.

What is a poor human to do?

For starters we can play our own version of the numbers game. But before we can begin our game we need to really GET it that there is no finish line for conditioned humans. Life is a moment-by-moment proposition. The Alcoholics Anonymous motto of “one day at a time” is truly courageous and optimistic. To keep a commitment not to give in to the temptation of an established habit/addiction is huge! We hear that one year for a human is the equivalent of seven for a dog. In that same way, one day of not succumbing to the demoralizing, designed-to-defeat harangues of karmic conditioning is equal to one month of non-harangue time—at least one month! Maybe one year. Maybe one lifetime.

Once this is understood we can use the understanding to our advantage. As soon as we truly grasp the magnitude of what we’re up against our score-keeping will change dramatically. For instance, on the calendar you keep with you always (no person sincerely attempting to wake up and end suffering will ever be without one), you will track your successes (yes, only what you deem a success, since we have no interest in what egocentric karmic conditioning would identify as your failures) in a whole new way. You will check in every fifteen minutes to see how your new relationship with sugar is proceeding and you will write your successes in your calendar in big, bright letters.

As we can all predict, the voices will scream bloody murder, a sure sign you’re on the right track. “You can’t do that!” “That’s insane!” “You’ll never get anything else done.” “You won’t be able to remember.” “That’s impossible.”

Really?

Isn’t it interesting that there’s always enough time and energy to obsess about sugar, to get sugar, to eat sugar, to be beaten up for eating sugar, to feel bad about eating sugar, to plead and bargain and be miserable, but there isn’t enough time or energy for bringing conscious, compassionate awareness to the human suffering in the grip of that addiction? Seems suspicious to me.

Will you have to do this keeping track thing forever? No. But you may choose to. Once you realize what a great support for being with yourself in conscious compassionate awareness writing your successes in your calendar is, there’s no telling what pockets of suffering you might want to apply it to.

The Buddha often encouraged us to use little moment-by-moment daily life choices and decisions to turn toward freedom and away from suffering. In this way, he said, we can become good in thought, word, and deed, one tiny act at a time—like filling a bucket with water one drop at a time.

So, imagine… your body is empty… an empty vessel ready to be filled… and you are going to fill it with goodness, kindness, presence, attention, awareness, compassion, acceptance, love, caring, generosity, gratitude, and all other good things… one drop at a time. Each time there is a thought, word, or action that comes from anything we might place under a heading such as “Loving Kindness,” another drop goes in the vessel. Doesn’t matter how large or small the act, even a smile, a thank you, or a flicker of conscious noticing counts. Drop, drop, drop… Isn’t that wonderful? It goes very well with, “stop, drop, and breathe,” doesn’t it? Yes, every conscious breath counts as well! How long will it take for you to realize you are filled with goodness?

Oh, do you suspect you will hear voices shrieking their protest? You bet. So what? The Buddha wasn’t talking about emptying the bucket. And, besides, this is our numbers game and we make the rules. What we say counts, counts. And for us only goodness counts.

In gassho,
Cheri

Lattes and bliss washes

2010-04-25T23:29:00.000-07:00

This is such a great question from Max. I want to address it because getting to the bottom of this issue has such broad application.

“I have a question: The first time I heard you talk about the center of the tongue, I went right there and experienced the 'bliss wash' you said I would, right then! Since that first time, I've never quite found my way back to that experience. It kind of reminds me of my first latte - how amazing it was! I still enjoy lattes today, but you could say there is also a ho-hum quality to the experience, too. Do you think that's inevitable? Or is the ho-hum quality a result of holding an expectation for bliss, maybe? Or just a matter of not being full there?”

Egocentric karmic conditioning is able to do much of what it does to cause our suffering because it has convinced us, in our conditioned habit of listening to it and believing what it says, that it is bigger and stronger than we are. Jen told me about a favorite “truism” in her family: “If you get a reputation as an early riser you can sleep until noon every day.” There you have it!

As soon as a person is convinced that, as a human incarnation, they are weaker than, inferior to, the voice of egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate in the head, the stage has been set and the suffering can continue unopposed. It is critical that we prove to ourselves that that story of our inferiority is a lie.

I often suggest to people, as disidentification practices, writing lists of what they are grateful for or simply saying or writing “thank you” repeatedly. Just about as often the person comes to me with a report that “it doesn’t work.” “I tried it, but nothing happened,” is the explanation. “How long did you try it?” I ask. The look of confused disorientation on the face of the bamboozled aspirant tells the whole story. The answer to that “how long?” question would be either, “not long” or “not long enough.”

When something is new (as with the latte), being present for the experience is fairly automatic. Everybody wants to be there, egocentric karmic conditioning included. Of course the motivation for the attendance covers a range; life is there as life unfolds because unfolding life seems to be what life most enjoys; the human incarnation is there because being in the front row as life unfolds is the most fun and exciting place to be; and egocentric karmic conditioning wants to be there because 1) there might be mischief to cause and/or 2) this may open up possibilities for future mischief.

I think “been there, done that” became such a big part of popular culture because it perfectly captures what karmic conditioning has in mind for us. First time through, fun and exciting. Second time though, been there done that. Third time and after—boring. And there is nothing egocentric karmic conditioning fears as it fears “boring.” “Boring” means there is nothing reflecting ego, nothing making an illusion of a self separate from life appear to be real.

So, we are trained that once something becomes familiar or known we no longer need to pay it any attention. Why be present to an experience you’ve already had? What you want is something new…right? Wrong. Unless what you want is the something “new” of a tired, old conversation in conditioned mind about whatever it has convinced you that you should focus on instead of being present for what is actually happening where you are in the moment you are in.

People who love great music know that constantly having something new is not the experience they’re going for. They may enjoy a new rendition of a much loved piece or appreciate hearing new musicians play their favorite selections, but they cherish those favorites and they certainly don’t wish not to be there for the experience. (Truth be told, I suppose few people would choose not to be present for the experience they’re having. It’s an unconscious process that people get hoodwinked into going along with.)

So, yes, I think we can say it’s “…a matter of not being full there.” Our attention can be hijacked and hauled off by conditioning because we fall for the story—implied though rarely stated—that we don’t really need to be here for this, we know how it’s going to go. Of course we don’t know how it’s going to go, but the fact that that truth is brought home to us over and over again does little to interfere with our willingness to believe the voices when they lead us to believe we do!

What, then, is the way around this? In the inimitable words of Michael Jackson, “don’t stop till you get enough!” You stay with it until you eventually wear down ego’s ability to resist. And, here’s the great part about that—it won’t take nearly as long as those voices would have you believe it will take. In fact, as soon as you resolve to stay with it until you triumph, you’ve arrived. Egocentric karmic conditioning simply buckles when confronted with the strength of your commitment. Best of all—you only have to go through that face-down once to prove to yourself, and conditioning, that you are the boss.

Ah, the lattes there are to savor; the bliss washes to relish!

Gassho,
Cheri

Birthday

2010-04-19T12:47:00.000-07:00

Letting the heart feel good…helping the heart to feel good…doing what makes the heart feel good… Until awareness practice, conditioned mind would have told me that whole notion is selfish. There’s so much suffering in the world; how can your primary focus be on what makes your heart feel good?

Yesterday was my birthday. I’m here in paradise not because it’s my birthday—which would be reason enough to be here!—but because it’s a relatively quiet, pleasant place to put some finishing touches on the new What You Practice Is What You Have book, before doing a workshop nearby. I awoke early to the sound of roosters crowing. A hen and her five tiny chicks were on the porch when I opened the screen door. Every day growing up I awoke to the sounds of roosters crowing. Some of my earliest playmates were hens and their chicks. It all felt complete somehow.

I was working on the unconditional love and acceptance part of the book, looking at how unconditional love and acceptance can never come from egocentric karmic conditioning, the illusion of being separate from life, and by definition conditional. Unconditional love and acceptance comes only from center, from nonseperate reality, from the oneness that is life.

I began to look at the ways we talk about the experience of unconditional love and acceptance. Happiness, peace, joy, satisfaction, wellbeing—all words we use to describe what I’m calling “the heart feeling good.”

The heart feels good only at center. Real happiness, happiness that doesn’t depend on “getting what I want” and will pass in a matter of minutes, exists at center. I suspect that everything we truly want is available to us only in the absence of “I,” ours only when we are not focused on being separate from the rest of life, but rather immersed so fully in life that there’s no ego left over to suffer.

Recently I was reading about a fellow who offers a program of things that take good care of a person. His daily schedule of care provokes questions along the lines of, “How can I do all this stuff to take care of myself in the midst of a busy life?” The answer is that all of it has to happen at center. If we were to do only those things that let the heart feel good, we would have plenty of time in the day for all we needed to do to take good care of ourselves and have the heart feel good. No “shoulds,” no “conversation from conditioned mind,” just looking to the heart to guide us. Would there be more things on our list we’d want to do? Of course! But living in “all the things I want to do that make my heart feel good” is very different from spending my life force on “trying to get all the things ego wants” or being drained by an endless battle within ego of “I want/you should.”

Lately I’m talking, and writing, about practice through the lens of “what you practice is what you have.” What we do is what we get. The focus of our attention determines our life experience. Being convinced that’s true, I’m going for the bliss!

There are two “bliss points” I know about in the body. There may be more, but I don’t know them from my own experience. These are not the same as the marma points of acupuncture, though perhaps someone very finely tuned would experience those as bliss points as well. One point is at the center of the tongue. You find it by finding the center from side to side, from front to back, and from top to bottom. You will know it when you find it; it’s like a “bliss wash” for the whole system. The second is behind the heart, between the heart and the spine. Again, be still and attend closely—you’ll recognize it when you make contact.

I’m betting you can see immediately the connection between “what you practice is what you have” and taking full advantage of enjoying “bliss points.”

Practice teaches us that only the unconditional satisfies. Only the unconditional makes us happy, let’s the heart feel good. The beautiful, awe-inspiring, drop-down-on-your-knees-in-gratitude awareness is that living in the unconditional is always available to us. In fact, it is all that truly is. We need only to stop turning away from it to realize it is ours.

Gassho,
Cheri

The Beauty of Quotes

2010-04-13T08:55:00.000-07:00

A friend recently commented during a conversation we were having about this blog that it didn’t seem necessary to use other people’s quotes, that what I have to say is enough. I very much appreciated that comment and have considered it a good bit since. Why do I love quotes so much? What is it about quotes?

What I’ve seen is that while there are hundreds of quotes I’ve found and love from as many people, there are a small number of individuals—my spiritual heroes—from whom I’ve collected just about every word they’ve written. There was my big clue!

When the Buddha spoke, the wisdom behind his words transformed his listeners. A person, finally-tuned and ready, would be transformed simply by being in his presence. The words of the Buddha communicated the wisdom, love, and compassion of a being awake in nonseperate reality. The Buddha was an expression of the wisdom, love, and compassion that animates all. His existence demonstrated what is possible for those of us not so far along the path of awakening, assuring us repeatedly of our authentic nature and ability to awaken and end suffering in this very lifetime.

We conditioned humans are taught to focus intently on the content of life (the differences) while missing the process (the sameness). We will tend to see the Buddha as very different from ourselves, special, other, and in that way believe conditioned voices arguing that his attainment is an impossibility for ourselves. But, if we focus on process we begin to realize that the wisdom, love, and compassion the Buddha so beautifully demonstrated is being expressed all around us all the time. Once we know what we’re looking for, we realize we are feeling it all day, every day. We get confused because we think it has a particular form, shape, color, and texture; we don’t expect to find it in the call of a bird or the tiny, fragile bits of green emerging in the spring. And we certainly don’t expect to find it in the wrinkled face and gnarled hands of an old person or in the faces of the poor or the hungry. But it is there, too, and it moves us.

Which brings us back to quotes. Years ago someone used the image of a water well in attempting to explain the transmission of the experience of nonseperate reality that we experience as wisdom, love, and compassion in our lives. Water is water and it doesn’t matter who draws the water or where that well is located; all water is water and, depending on the purity of the source, will be pure and will quench the thirst. That well could be in Alaska or Afghanistan, China or Rio. The person drawing the water might be of any color or culture, might speak any language and call the liquid by any name, but the water is the same water, made up of the same properties, and will do the same good job of slaking the thirst. In just this way a person in any age, from any culture, with or without any particular religious or even spiritual affiliation, who, if just for a moment, experiences and then communicates the transcendent potential of a human incarnation, gives us the means of following the clarity behind the words back to the source of inspiration.

And so I give you Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, A.D. 120-180, emperor of Rome from A.D. 161, who wrote in his journal this conversation with himself two thousand years ago!

At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself, “I have to go to work—as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for—the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?”
----But it’s nicer here….
So you were born to feel “nice?” Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and the spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands?
----But we have to sleep sometime….
Agreed. But nature set a limit on that—as it did on eating and drinking. And you’re over the limit. You’ve had more than enough of that. But not of working. There you’re still below your quota.
You don’t love yourself enough. Or you’d love your nature too, and what it demands of you. People who love what they do wear themselves down doing it, they even forget to wash or eat. Do you have less respect for your own nature than the engraver does for engraving, the dancer for the dance, the miser for money or the social climber for status? When they’re really possessed by what they do, they’d rather stop eating and sleeping than give up practicing their arts.
Is helping others less valuable to you? Not worth your effort?

Why do I love quotes so much? Because these quotes are from my teachers and guides. Because they express the awakening I live for. And because they expand exponentially the inspiring, comforting, encouraging presence of Sangha.

Gassho,
Cheri

There is nothing personal.

2010-04-08T15:19:00.000-07:00

The following came in as a comment on the “Celebrating Your Contributions” post:

“Being kind to oneself” and yet “not to take personally the person making the contribution”: this is a tricky place for me. Doesn’t being kind to myself CONTAIN taking personally the person making the contribution? Don’t I WANT this person to feel good about their contribution? And isn’t that person one aspect of myself? To “not take personally” implies to me that I SHOULDN’T feel good about my contribution.

The writer is speaking to the heart of the spiritual conundrum we conditioned humans face. The whole issue of not taking ourselves personally can seem incomprehensible until we grasp one simple, extremely well-hidden piece of the puzzle: There is no such thing as an “I” to take a “myself” personally.

The assumption of “I, me, my, mine” is the primary stumbling block in our journey from identification as “an illusion of a self that is separate from the rest of life” to disidentification and awareness of the impersonal human incarnation. When we wake up, what we wake up to is the realization that there is no possibility of something being separate from life. Life is one thing. The illusion that there is an “I” that is the subject, with everything else as object, is created through unexamined beliefs and assumptions.

I was recently in conversation with a couple whose language provided what was for me a clear and extreme example of the “I subject”/“all other object” relationship to life. Each would speak about everything in their domain as “my.” He would talk about my swimming pool, my yard, my plants. She would do the same about the very same items, taking possession of each as hers. There was no sense of these things having an existence outside the ownership of the humans. Those roses only matter as they reflect on “me” and “my” prowess as a gardener!

In Yoga, one often hears the instructor guide students to turn attention to various parts of the body without ownership. “Feel the torso expand with the breath.” “Move the arms above the head along the floor.” In this way we begin to disidentify with an often harmful notion of the body as a possession of the mind, a mind that for many people is unexamined and misunderstood.

Once egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate is allowed to take ownership of anything (and that is the only “identity” that wants to have ownership of anything), that possession will be placed in a master/slave relationship in which ego has absolute authority over the fate of that possession. One of my favorite illustrative tales of this point involves (I think!) Robert Louis Stevenson. In my version of the story, Mr. Stevenson encountered a man beating a dog. When Mr. Stevenson intervened on behalf of the creature, the man told him, “That’s my dog and I’ll treat him as I want.” Mr. Stevenson replied, “No, that is God’s dog and I am here to protect him.”

Our conditioning to assume—there is no other word to describe the experience—the existence of a separate “I” is so deep that even after many explanations, even after we “get it” any number of times, it’s almost impossible for us to accept the fact as reality. But fact and reality it is. An “I” in a position of ownership and authority over anything is illusion. There is no separate self with the authority to judge, criticize, blame, and punish—or reward!

However, from center we can experience something like Mr. Stevenson and the pup: We can know, “This is God’s human and I am here to care for it.” From this perspective we realize that all of life belongs to life. We belong to life as surely as those roses, birds, clouds, and water. We are here as an expression of life. To the degree we realize that, let go an ego that has an illusory existence in an imaginary world outside the rest of life, and relax into letting life live us without opposition or interference, we are happy. To the degree that we want to be that illusion of a separate self, we suffer.

So, how can we feel good about the contributions of the person “I” call “me?” Simple. We feel as happy for and as good about gifts and contributions of this human as we do about the gifts and contributions of all humans—and of all of life’s expressions.

For more on this discussion, please go to the Open Air archives at http://livingcompassion.org/openair/wordpress and listen to the April 6 show.

Gassho
Cheri

Celebrate Your Contributions

2010-04-03T07:17:00.000-07:00

"Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was made personal, merely personal feeling. This is what is the matter with us: we are bleeding at the roots because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars. Love has become a grinning mockery because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the Tree of Life and expected it to keep on blooming in our civilized vase on the table." -- D. H. Lawrence

In our practice we are often encouraged to 1) pay attention to everything, 2) not believe anything, and 3) not take anything personally. Life is not personal, we are directed to consider. Even more difficult than that to wrap our conditioned minds around is the information that life is love. This, of course, makes no sense at all since much of life doesn’t seem or feel loving.

Every religious or spiritual tradition attempts to point out that we use one word, love, to represent both a dualistic and a nondualistic reality. For example, we use the word love to point at what is opposite to hate. That’s pretty iffy right there but we’re used to it, doing it all the time. We can love our children, our job, our house, and pasta without ever asking ourselves, “What does that mean?” And, we “hate” just as easily—companies and foods and groups of people—like those with opposing political views. These unexplored habits of thought and speech are fertile ground for egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate--what we haven’t considered carefully and come to terms with can easily be used against us. And is.

Growing up, “conceited” was about the worst things a person could be called. Yes, I’m sure there were worse things but not in my set. The guidance seemed to be “strive to be the best, ignore all success.” Who knows what the messages were meant to be, we never talked about any of it directly, but that’s what I gleaned. Do all necessary to get to the top while being humble and self-effacing. Oh, and navigate puberty with grace and aplomb.

Then I encountered an awareness practice designed to provide the experience of waking up and ending suffering that encourages people to be kind to ourselves, let go all self-talk that is critical and judgmental toward us, and “do unto ourselves as we would have others do unto us.” That’s a really hard sell. It just feels wrong.

But that moment of “but how can I be nice to myself when I’m so flawed” is the whole point of the whole practice! And the answer is one of the wickedly, delightfully paradoxical Zen conundrums: “You/I” can’t.

This is where we go from “love” to Love with an understanding that we’re moving from dualistic to nondualistic—there is Love but no Hate—and this enables us to celebrate our contribution without advancing a relationship with egocentric karmic conditioning. Only the Unconditional, All That Is, That Which Is, Authentic Nature, or “God” can truly rejoice in the efforts of we humans, and we must be at center not to take personally the person making the contribution.

Gassho
Cheri

Dedicate Your Life to Something You Consider Worthy

2010-03-29T20:56:00.000-07:00

I direct a fair amount of attention to the messages coming at us from that broader expression of egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate called “culture” or “society.” One of my fascinations is attempting to see 1) whether I see and hear what I do only because I tune in to what meshes with my conditioning or 2) if my conditioning is so in sync with society’s messages that I’m receiving everything as intended or 3) if something completely other is happening and I’m missing the whole thing! I am blessedly, and not accidentally, popular-culture deprived. But, having been around for a lot of years and having seen many fads come and go, it seems to me that much of what’s current or trendy is just a veneer on old messages of “how you gotta be.” For instance, on the surface it would seem obvious that the requirements for survival would be different if one lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan verses South Central Los Angeles. Yes? But scratch the surface and I’m betting we would find that the real message is that regardless of your location, you need to fit in and be accepted in the particular patch you inhabit.

So, to continue with my wild projecting, I’m betting each person reading this got some version of what “dedicate your life to something you consider worthy” means. Few of us got that as a direct message, but the messages we did get—do something important, make your mark on the world, be somebody, fill in the blank— cover the subject.

These kinds of messages are perfect weapons for egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate to use against us because they are so vague. What does “important” mean for heaven’s sake? How big a mark shall I make? “Be somebody” doesn’t mean me, does it? This is a beautiful set-up because the voice of self-hate will insist that whatever you do is not going to be big enough or good enough. There will always be someone it will point to who is doing something bigger and better, and as long as that person exists, well, I’m sorry, what you’re doing is just not that great.

So we are required to take our lives into our own hands, which is actually a marvelous thing. No one wants someone else, especially a disembodied voice inside the head, to be calling the shots for them, do they? (“Yes!” the voice will scream, but that’s to be expected.)

The Buddha taught us that we each have one person to save—ourselves. Each of us gets one life in which to do that. This one. He also, allegedly, taught that we will not allow ourselves to awaken as long as we are doing something we don’t feel good about. As Christmas Humphreys phrased it, “We are punished by what we do, not because of it.”

This puts us in an excellent position. We get to look—for ourselves—at what we want to devote our lives to, and then we get to practice not letting the voices of egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate have any opinion whatsoever about our choice. Each of us gets to decide that we will be a taxi driver or a school teacher or a stay-at-home parent; that we will work in a deli or as a librarian, politician, firefighter, road builder, or whatever... and the voices don’t get to cast a vote. Will they try? You bet they will, no matter what we do!

But the reason they don’t get to have a voice in the matter, aside from the fact that our life is none of their business, is that it doesn’t matter what we do; it only matters how we are. The real “thing” we’re devoting our lives to is a way of being.

We each get to choose how we want our life to be, to identify what we value, who we want to be, what we want to stand for, and we get to have a lifetime to practice that. To practice that. With no input from anyone or anything but our own heart, listened to in our quietest, most compassionate moments. With every breath we get to practice choosing what is dearest to our own heart.

That’s what’s possible for us.
We are very fortunate.

In gassho,
Cheri

Experiments in truth

2010-03-27T10:20:00.000-07:00

"Believe me when I tell you, after 60 years of personal experience, that the only real misfortune is to abandon the path of truth. If you but realize this, your one prayer to God will always be to enable you to put up, without flinching, with any number of trials and hardships that may fall to your lot in the pursuit of truth." -- Mahatma Gandhi

In studying all I can of what the Mahatma left us I've come to guess that what he meant by "truth" is what we attempt to point at in our practice with words like intuitive knowing or clarity or center or here/now/this. We cannot grasp That Which Animates us, but we can sense the Presence and let that intuitive sensing guide our steps. In practice we are always attempting to be present enough to sense the wisdom, love, and compassion that animates us, letting go everything that pulls us away from that awareness.

As long as we believe the ego is who we are, as long as we take the ego personally, our lives are limited by that misperception. Identification with the ego makes the ego the authority in one's life. Whatever the ego wants, does, says, and feels must be attended to immediately, urgently.

When we step back into awareness, viewing the ego as what it is—a karmically conditioned illusion of something existing separate from the rest of life—we can begin to learn broad life lessons about the suffering that results from an identification with ego, but we no longer need to believe any of it has anything to do with ourselves. Nor to we need to take any of it personally. This disidentification is the birthplace of compassion for all humans. From this vantage point it is easy to see what in a person springs from authenticity and what has its origin in a mistaken identification with egocentric karmic conditioning.

In practicing with the above I've come to what I call the "ingredients for a satisfying life." They are:
1) Dedicate your life to something you consider worthy.
2) Celebrate your contributions.
3) Have That Which Animates you as your most intimate relationship.
4) Know how to give your attention to what you choose.
5) Keep your word to yourself .

More about these soon.

In gassho,
Cheri

Attention, memes, and brain pathways

2010-03-24T13:29:00.000-07:00

William James said that "The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another."

One of the recent Practice Everywhere reminders encouraged us to practice turning our attention from object to object. Nothing complex, just "now I'm attending to the chair, now I'm noticing all the green, now I will listen for any sounds I can hear, now I will turn my attention to my breathing, now I will turn my attention to my mouth as I smile." The practice is one of bringing conscious awareness to the process of attending. Doing that little exercise regularly builds our directing-the-attention muscles.

On Open Air last evening a caller was telling me about having spent most of the day in a miserable conversation with the voices in his head--likely the kind of one-sided "conversation" we had as children listening to a haranguing adult. After some consideration, he realized that assessment of his day was inaccurate. A voice in his head had told him he'd spent the day in that conversation! When he looked for himself he saw he'd spent quite a lot of the day present and aware of being present with no energy going to the story of suffering in his head.

I, like many of you, have spent a lot of time exploring that phenomenon. We seem to be going through life with a "companion" who we can say, at the very least, does not have our happiness and well-being as a first priority. Yes, it would claim to be doing everything it’s doing for us, but a brief perusal of the evidence makes it clear that's a lie. Losing any part of our day by having our attention dragged to conversations in the head about imaginary unhappy circumstances and then attempting to convince us that's how we spend all our time just can't be an aid to a happy, fulfilled life!

So, we might ask, what about that? Alas, there is, of course, no explanation. We don't know why we have that shadow companion. When I find it comforting to make up a reason, I tell myself that living with egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate inspires me moment-by-moment to learn to choose compassion. Seems as good a made-up explanation as any.

Two "notions," one scientifically supported and one less easily proved, bring encouragement to use the weapon of choosing what we attend to. First, the less scientifically accepted is the “meme” theory which postulates that ideas, symbols or practices can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals; that those which replicate the most effectively spread best; and that some may replicate effectively even when they prove detrimental to the welfare of their “host.” Sounds a lot like social conditioning, doesn't it?

Second, Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz was among the first to use brain scans with patients practicing mindfulness exercises to prove that neural pathways could be altered quite quickly by simply turning the attention away from the unwanted pattern of thought and behavior and to the chosen pattern.

All this encourages me to devote an increasing amount of my time and energy to building and flexing those "pay attention to what I want my life to be" muscles while withdrawing those sources of sustenance from the suffering production machine that is egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate.

In gassho,
Cheri

Not supporting the ego

2010-03-22T10:00:00.000-07:00

Francois Fenelon, a French Catholic theologian who lived in the seventeenth century said, "It is mere self-love to be inconsolable at seeing one’s own imperfections.” Aldous Huxley commented on that statement three centuries later with, "Self-reproach is painful; but the very pain is a reassuring proof that the self is still intact; so long as attention is fixed on the delinquent ego, it cannot be fixed upon God and the ego (which lives upon attention and dies only when that sustenance is withheld) cannot be dissolved in the divine Light.”

What irony! And how perfectly reasonable, and obvious once we see it, that the very self-judgment and self-criticism we were encouraged to adopt in childhood, needed to adopt in order to survive the judgment of powerful "others,” is the very process now fueling the egocentric karmic conditioning that maintains our suffering! It’s really quite a perfect system of suffering. We’re taught to feel bad about various thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. We are convinced that feeling bad will somehow help us to be better. We’re afraid to let go of feeling bad because that’s the only thing keeping us from being worse! But, in fact, feeling bad keeps us identified with—and working hard to maintain—the very system that is the only source of our suffering.

"… and the ego, which lives upon attention and dies only when that sustenance is withheld cannot be dissolved in the divine Light” No wonder turning the attention away from ego and to HERE/NOW is so difficult. The stakes are truly life and death—for ego.

In gassho,

Getting started

2010-03-20T12:40:00.000-07:00

Gassho,

I realized many moons ago, as I was leaving the externally imposed structure of monastic practice, that if I weren’t careful and attentive I would drift away from the essential support for awareness practice that a regular daily schedule provides. Left to myself—which at the time was pretty much only what I’ve subsequently recognized as egocentric karmic conditioning—I would slide into a combination of what I “should” do and what I “want” to do and my commitment to waking up and ending suffering would get pushed so far onto the back burner as to be no hindrance at all for that egocentric self on its determined march to hell!

I began setting up a full schedule of commitments I would be unwilling to break, removing the “I don’t want to/I don’t feel like it” factor from my decision-making process. I have continued that practice for the past thirty or so years and it has served me well. I know that waking up and ending suffering is the deepest desire of my heart. That desire doesn’t change from moment to moment, and a firm commitment to showing up for what I’ve agreed to supports me in choosing my heart regardless of ego’s shenanigans.

The years have seen quite a range of commitments from shepherding a Zen Center and Monastery Peace Center to creating email classes that could support people practicing far away and, most recently, daily reminders to practice being HERE/NOW, using some of the great tools of technology. All these activities have required me to show up every day and do my best to be as centered as possible in each moment—exactly what I’ve wanted!

Now that I’ve stepped back from the day-to-day running of the Zen Monastery Peace Center and Living Compassion, I have more opportunity for my own practice and new opportunities for engaging in practice with others. I love doing the tweets! As I’ve said often, my mind naturally runs to bumper sticker and t-shirt size communication. I like short and sweet—or at least concise and clear. I’ve always thought a book title should be clear enough that if you don’t have time to read the whole book you will derive a good benefit just from reading the title. Now I get to walk around all day seeing tweets in everything I encounter. A cloud, a bird, a bit of music, a smile, a color all become reminders to drop whatever is going on in conditioned mind and get back here into this moment—awake, alive, present. I love it!

For years the way I phrased this practice was “the quality of your life is determined by the focus of your attention.” Now it’s become “what you practice is what you have.” Certainly this is not a new message; we each just find our own way of articulating the message for ourselves. (Even if someone else says it, it only matters for us when we are able to say it to ourselves and really hear it.)

I’ve been enjoying again Hsin Hsin Ming by Seng-ts’an, the third patriarch of Zen.

“The Perfect Way knows no difficulties,
Except that it refuses to make preferences.
Only when freed from hate and love
Does it reveal itself fully and without disguise.

A tenth of an inch’s difference,
And heaven and earth are set apart.
If you wish to see it before your own eyes,
Have no fixed thoughts either for or against it.

To set up what you like against what you dislike---
This is the disease of the mind.
When the deep meaning of the Way is not understood,
Peace of mind is disturbed to no purpose….

Pursue not the outer entanglements,
Dwell not in the inner void;
Be serene in the oneness of things,
And dualism vanishes of itself.

When you strive to gain quiescence by stopping motion,
The quiescence so gained is ever in motion.
So long as you tarry in such dualism,
How can you realize oneness?

And when oneness is not thoroughly grasped,
Loss is sustained in two ways:
The denying of external reality is the assertion of it,
And the assertion of Emptiness (the Absolute) is the denying of it….

Transformations going on in the empty world that confronts us
Appear to be real because of Ignorance.
Do not strive to seek after the Truth,
Only cease to cherish opinions.

The two exist because of the One;
But hold not even to this One.
When a mind is not disturbed,
The ten thousand things offer no offence….

If an eye never falls asleep,
All dreams will cease of themselves;
If the Mind retains its absoluteness,
The ten thousand things are of one substance.

When the deep mystery of one Suchness is fathomed,
All of a sudden we forget the external entanglements;
When the ten thousand things are viewed in their oneness,
We return to the origin and remain where we have always been….

One in all,
All in One---
If only this is realized,
No more worry about not being perfect!

When Mind and each believing mind are not divided,
And undivided are each believing mind and Mind,
This is where words fail,
For it is not of the past, present or future.”

This is, to me, a gorgeous way of saying what we are always attempting to point at in practice. It’s a beautiful expression of “there’s nothing wrong,” “stop, drop, and breathe,” “get HERE, “let everything go, be THIS NOW.”

Which brings me to my latest project: This letter will be posted on what we’re calling “Cheri’s Practice Blog.” (link?) The blog is my opportunity to share what’s most inspiring for me in my own practice, be in communication with others practicing, and, hopefully, expand the base of support we all need for deepening practice in our own lives and as a support for the larger Sangha.

This idea grew out of a wish to take to a deeper level the tweeted reminders to wake up/let go/get here. What happens with us as we start spending more time HERE? How do we deal with voices that attempt to interfere and sabotage? Can we really trust that it’s okay to let go the negative voices? Is it safe just to be? The blog will be the place for us to have that continuing conversation on what arises as a result of deepening practice.

Will I answer general questions about practice? Not in depth, no. Will I speak to personal issues? No, that would become a life’s work in itself! I will simply take the tweeted messages and the daily messages from Transform Your Life and connect them up with other messages I find supportive and clarifying. Then, you/everyone will have an opportunity to express what you see from that in your own practice. And we will all see how it goes.

In gassho,