There’s a Goat on the Porch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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