That’s Just How It Is

It has come to my attention that our Sangha focus for the year, “The Cooperative of Practice: Being Lit Up Together” may be causing some confusion and potential suffering.

As we well know, egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate will use anything and everything to maintain its control over a person’s attention. So, we can’t be too surprised that conditioned mind has come up with a way to attempt to snag our current practice focus and turn it for its benefit.

I suppose there are lots of ways “Cooperative of Practice” and “Lit Up Together” could be turned into “maintaining the illusion of a separate self,” but here’s the one I’ve been hearing about.

People are getting talked into believing that “having the fun of being in the present” and “being lit up with what you’re doing” means to go out and buy and do all the things you’ve always wanted to have and do. The result is that people are too “spent,” in every sense of the word, to be able to participate in practice. “I’m cancelling the retreat I signed up for because I’m going to a writing workshop.” “I can’t make it to sitting group for a while because I have a belly-dancing class that night.” “I need to stop my monthly financial support of practice because I’m going on an expensive trip.”

That’s really NOT what we’re going for in “Being Lit Up Together.” That’s not even what we’re going for in being lit up!

The lit up we’re talking about—and the only authentic lit up there is—comes from being in Life in the moment. It doesn’t come from the ego getting something it claims to want. Yes, there can be excitement and great fun in “getting something new and shiny for me,” and we all know how quickly that passes into remorse or disappointment or a focus on the next new and shiny ego wants to consume and turn into dissatisfaction.

Now, let us be perfectly clear: I am not saying a person shouldn’t go to writing workshops or learn to belly-dance or go on grand trips. Not at all. What I am saying is that if we do ANYTHING instead of practice it will end in disappointment and dissatisfaction. Why? Because everything that comes from and is done for ego-I must inevitably end in disappointment and dissatisfaction. That’s just how it is.

So please don’t be confused about this and don’t get bamboozled. First and foremost, you must devote yourself to what satisfies your heart/mind. You must be with Life. When that’s the case, with Life guiding your choices and decisions, you will never be disappointed or dissatisfied. That’s just how it is.

Gasshō,

Cheri

The Voices Don’t Care about Content

Incalculable suffering happens because people believe what the voices in their heads are saying. Person is going along and hears that was wrong or you shouldn’t have or people think you’re… or people don’t like you or you’re never going to have what you want or you’re just not good enough or you can’t or you should or it’s your fault…. On and on it goes with the person feeling worse and worse with each statement. Short film clips of past mistakes and failures are interspersed with predictions of future disasters.

When asked about depression I often respond that I’ve never known a depressed person who is not living with self-hate. I’ve concluded it’s not possible to “be depressed” without the “depressing” conversation of “what’s wrong.” We are all “depressed” when listening to and believing the haranguing voices of self-hate.

Without the voices’ comparison, judgment, negative assessments, criticism and a litany of loss, lack, deprivation and fear, a person is simply in the moment they’re in and there’s nothing wrong. A true story.

But here’s the reason I’m writing to you today. (If you’re a recording and listening person, please record what’s coming and listen to it many times a day until it sinks into the depths of your being, never to be excised by any voice, no matter how pernicious.)

Those voices do not care one whit about the content of the conversation.

The voice in your head talks to you about what you believe, not what it believes. The voice will talk to you about anything you will believe and feel bad about.

If money is an issue for you, it talks about money fears and woes and mistakes and a future of deprivation—and that it’s all your fault. If you have body image issues, it will talk about how you look, compare you to others, let you know that everything wrong in your life is wrong because of the way you look—and that it’s all your fault. If you have relationship issues, it will point out what wonderful relationships everyone else has, how lacking or inferior your relationships are, how it’s always been that way and always will be—and that it’s all your fault.

If none of the above is your issue, I’m sure by now you can fill in your version of the torture system!

We have so much trouble catching on to this because the torture is perfectly tailored to each of us individually. Because it’s all done in secret, we don’t realize everyone is suffering within the same process just with different content. Plus, it all started so long ago that by now it’s just the reality we live in. There’s nothing about it to flag us as something we should question. “I am overweight.” “I don’t have enough money.” I don’t have the relationship I want.” What’s not to believe??

Here’s something to consider. A very good argument can be made that our lives consist of what we give our attention to. That voice in the head wants our attention. It lives on our attention. Without our attention it does not, cannot exist. We are trained to give our attention to “what’s wrong.” In this way, our lives consist of “what’s wrong,” and the voice feeding us information about what’s wrong has full control of our attention and our lives.

If you decide NOT to believe that story you’re being told, if you really get it that it’s not true, it’s just something you’ve been trained to believe, then you’re truly free to put your attention where you want it to be, on the life you choose to have.

Here’s the next thing to consider: What might happen to the “issue” the voices incessantly yammer on about if you stopped listening to their yammer? Would those stories be “true” if no one experienced them as true? What would be “true” about your life if you weren’t living in reaction to what’s wrong, loss, lack, deprivation, fear, criticism, and comparison? Might be worth finding out, don’t you think?

Habitual Karmic Sensations

If we say, “I had the thought that…” or “It occurred to me that…” there’s a strong, implied, usually unexamined assumption that there’s a “someone” who is doing that. If we stopped and considered, the language could give us a hint that what we think is happening is not what’s happening. “It just came to me…” could be an even bigger clue as to what’s actually happening, especially if it’s phrased, “It suddenly came to me that…” But we fail to get the clues.

We often hear in practice “What came up for me…” in response to what another person offered. This is always a bit troubling for me; I am unable to hear it without a vague since of having ingested something that didn’t agree with the system, as in “losing one’s lunch.”

Lately we’ve moved to “It just dropped in…” to describe the experience of insight arriving from beyond the realm of “my doing.” We use this expression to acknowledge the fact that “this information simply appeared in my conscious awareness, and my only role was to be present as it arrived.” I didn’t think of it. I wasn’t the creator of this insight. I didn’t generate it out of my own, personal brilliance.

This is a very good thing to notice all the time, since that’s what’s happening all the time. What “I” can contribute is an endless repetition of previous repetitions. The new stuff, the awarenesses, the insights, the “ah ha’s” and “oh, I see’s” come from the intelligence that animates and do not belong in any degree to ego-identity. Standing near an artist creating a masterpiece doesn’t give me claim to the creation!

In an exchange with someone recently, I heard myself refer to “anxiety” as “habitual karmic sensations.” (You can see now why the previous exploration of how information comes to us.) It occurred to me that (a la the description above) that way of labeling the experience previously called “anxiety” could be helpful.

Once we get enough associations around a label, such as anxiety or depression or panic attack, the label itself can produce the dreaded effects and, worse still, we stop paying attention to what’s actually happening.

Years ago, I met a former carpenter who was a former carpenter because he’d cut off three fingers with a circular saw. He told me that every time he heard a power tool his remaining fingers began to crawl toward his armpits. That seems to me a perfect description of “habitual karmic sensations.”

Something happens. A person is upset, traumatized even. The body registers those sensations. At some point those sensations cease to be associated with a memory of a trauma and become the harbinger of a trauma. Soon the sensations themselves are the producer of the trauma and a person is living in fear of sensations that produce a fear of sensations.

Now, the above insight just dropped in. I have no proof there’s any validity to it, but it certainly has a ring of truth, doesn’t it? And, definitely worth putting to the test of scrutiny through the attentive, curious attention we call “the spirit of inquiry.”

According to a recent survey, one in five people in the U.S. is taking a drug for conditions such as depression, attention “deficit,” and anxiety. Perhaps those numbers wouldn’t be so high if we were encouraged to drop labels and have a present moment relationship with the sensations in the body rather than being thrown off into terrifying stories of what those sensations mean.

In gassho,

Cheri

Talisman

You’ve made it to the cushion, and you’ve found a nice patch of wall. Now what?

One of the most challenging aspects of maintaining a meditation practice is overcoming the wealth of information coming at us from conditioned mind about what meditation should be and all the ways that we are doing it wrong. This is an example of a conditioned process I like to think of as “the expert.” When we try to do something new, we are met by an authoritative voice that seems to know everything there is to know about it and is eager to provide “helpful” information about the myriad ways we are failing to measure up. The expert strives to set our expectations so high that they cannot possibly be met. If we are unable to turn away from this barrage of false information, we can’t help but come away feeling like a failure.

A handy way to turn away from “the expert” and its kin is to choose what I like to call a “talisman.” A talisman is just a simple bit of experience that we practice returning to again and again. It is like a base camp from which we set out on our adventures in the exploration of awareness. As we continue to practice coming back to the talisman again and again, it becomes increasingly familiar. As we persist in its use, deviations of attention away from the talisman become more and more obvious.

Most introspective disciplines employ talismans of some sort or another. Many Zen practitioners count cycles of ten breaths; Taoists and Buddhists of all sorts employ a wide variety of chants; Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and Christian contemplatives focus their attention on the names or attributes of God. All of the above make use of a variety of icons, statues, and other images to anchor their attention.

What sort of talisman should you chose? The Christian theologian Francois Fenelon advised choosing a short word, such as “God” or “Love.” I’ve had success with both (you needn’t believe in any particular notion of “God” for the word to serve as an effective talisman), but my personal favorite of late has been “Thanks.”

Most of the power of the talisman emerges from its use rather than anything intrinsic to the particular word or image.* So long as you have a simple, familiar and - hopefully! - pleasant place to return again and again, the talisman will serve its purpose. Have fun with it, and choose some experience you like. With luck you will be spending a lot of time there.

As with any tool, it’s essential to recognize the time and place for its application. At first it may be all you can do to hang on desperately to your talisman as you are buffeted by wave after wave of conditioned processes trying to wrest control of your attention away from you. As you develop the skills of keeping track of your attention and directing it where you choose, opportunities will arise to let go of your talisman without immediately ending up in the grip of conditioned mind. At times like these we can set out from our base camp and explore the surrounding country, secure in the knowledge that we have a safe place to return should we get into trouble.

Eventually, when we have become well established in tracking and directing our attention, the act of sitting down for meditation will be enough to turn attention away from conditioned mind. As our efforts on the cushion are met with less and less resistance, we can spend more time exploring the deeper reaches of awareness. When conditioned mind is on the offensive, we can fall back on our talisman; otherwise we can dispense with it and go further in our explorations.

As the Buddha pointed out time and again, every teaching is a tool to get us beyond the obstacle in our way in this moment. When you’ve crossed a given river, it’s time to put down the raft.

Gassho

Bee

*There are some differences to be noted between a chant, image, word, etc. - or even from word to word, image to image, chant to chant - but it has been my experience that these differences are dwarfed by the overall effect of having a familiar piece of ground on which to make a stand against the conditioned processes which rally to divert our attention when we try to get a bit of clarity. Pick something you like and stick with it. It isn’t much use to have a whole belt full of tools that all do roughly the same job!

Can't Have Too Much Inspiration

Preparing for the upcoming “Resistance” email class I’ve been re-reading the previous session. This activity in conjunction with participating in a variety of retreats has rekindled a concern I want to draw our attention to.

The phrase we use most often to distinguish the illusory ego “self” from the animating principle is egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate (often referred to as EKC.) In its unabbreviated form it’s a bit of a mind and tongue tangler, but clarifying when we break it down to its components.

If we accept the premise that we are the sum total of everything that has produced us, we suspect we did not arrive in this incarnation free of “predispositions and tendencies.” (All parents will agree that no two of their children arrived alike; each appeared with a unique temperament and affect.) When those karmic inclinations encountered current life circumstances—family, culture, society, time, and place—we began a series of adjustments that resulted in a complex of processes we have learned to think of as a constant, consistent, fairly unchanging entity known as “I.”

Believing that construction, that conglomeration of processes, to be real and true, “I” works hard to be “who” “I” am and how “I” should be. Maintaining a belief in a consistent “I” is dependent on looking to the same body of information for confirmation that what “I” experiences is real and true. The source of that information is a mind that has been conditioned to believe certain content and reject all other content.

The guarantee that “I” looks to conditioned mind and nowhere else for information resides in a system of “self” hate that punishes every infraction, large or small, “real” or imaginary. “You will, you won’t, you must, you should, you shouldn’t, that’s right, that’s wrong, you’re good if, you’re bad when…” On and on it goes monitoring, judging, assessing, comparing, punishing—controlling.

For those of us working hard to wake up and end suffering it is essential to devote ourselves ceaselessly to navigating the obstacle course of fabrications and ploys egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate uses to trap us in its small, artificial world. 

The ploy I want to reveal here is the acronym EKC. My first objection is that people capitalize those letters. Capital letters are an interesting subject larger than the scope of this message, but suffice it to say I’m discouraged from capitalizing Monastery while other, in my opinion, far less worthy words are readily capitalized. Next is my concern that self-hate is left out of the equation, it has been dropped from the acronym.

But here’s my real concern: When we fall into a habit of using acronyms it’s a quick trip to losing sight of the meaning of the words that point to the object. This is exactly the trap we’ve fallen into with “I.” We have become so accustomed to that nefarious acronym, we’re completely unaware that we have no idea what it means.

Now, I realize in an email class you get a maximum of 50 words for your response and it’s unfair to ask you to add an extra four words. So, here’s my request: Please make it ekc/sh (lower case) and always say the full words to yourself when you write the letters, increasing your chances of not losing sight of just what we’re up against in our journey toward liberation.

Oh, and to sign up for the class, if you haven’t already, please go to:

http://registration.livingcompassion.org/email-class-august-24-2012

In gassho,

Cheri

I Am Not It and It Is Not Me.

The statement that most resonated with me to explore is: “There can be no liberation until a human being recognizes what ego (the illusion of a self that is separate from life) is, and that “it” is not “me” and “I” am not “it.” In this statement is perhaps a clue to the question “In what way is ego an illusion?”

I always feel a tremble of resistance when I encounter the statement “the illusion of a self separate from life is not who I am.” What does that mean? How can this self not be me? The premise flies in the face of what feels true. What feels true is the form that eats and sleeps and experiences and dreams and acts and thinks. This identity, the sum total of a life lived and living, is as real and true as the pain it feels when “I” pinch myself. How can that be an illusion? And how exactly is that separate from life, if everything is the intelligence that animates all?

“Our life is shaped by the mind, we become what we think” is the opening line of the Dhammapada.

What this suggests to me is that identity, “I/me,” is a mental construct, that ego identity is a by-product of a mind process. The mind organizes the sensations, feelings, experiences, and thoughts affiliated to this form and categorizes/abstracts the whole as a “someone.” The “I,” in other words, is a convenient aggregation, a localized continuous narrative of what arises in consciousness. The “I” is really a process, not an entity. But from within the process, and because language is also a mind creation, we experience ourselves as the entity not the process. So we experience ourselves as a “who” and not a “what.” Looking through the lens of identity/ego reduces life experience to a single point of view, the only point of view. The process of creating that point of view also maintains that point of view. It is a self-referencing, recursive process. Trishna, clinging to that point of view as the only point of view, is described by the Buddha as the root cause of suffering.

It is as if we were born with a pair of ego lenses and were never told we could take them off to experience the world in another way. To me, that is the wonder of Awareness Practice. It provides the tools to develop a different point of view. Through practice, we become aware that we wear lenses, that we can see those lenses for what they are—a mental process—and that we can take them off and experience life through a perspective other than those lenses. Practice opens the door to the possibility that the self, the ego, the identity that defines “my” reality is one of many processes of consciousness. To step into awareness is to experience the substrate of consciousness that manifests this form. It is the ability to experience “ourselves” as awareness and not just as a limited output of an interpretative mental process. It is a way of being that allows us to experience all being, all consciousness, and to recognize that the experience can happen without a “self” having the experience. In other words, the mental construct of an identity, a narrative interpretation, is not the only way to experience consciousness.

The world created by that mental construct is an illusion in that there is an alternative reality from a different point of view. Yes, we experience ourselves as that illusory identity, but authentically we are the awareness that contains it. With the ego lens on we cannot identify with awareness, we can only identify with ego. The limit is built into the instrument, into the lens. We give up all of what we are for a limited perspective of who we are. Such is the illusion of a self separate from life.

Liberation is only possible when we can let go of clinging to the limited perspective of ego/identity. Only when we open to the concept of anatta, all things are without a self, can we begin to experience ourselves as all consciousness. The experience of all consciousness is what is described in the first bead of the Daily Recollection as Bodhi: the experience of the joy of intelligence knowing itself. With practice we begin to recognize the feeling of “identification” with the process of awareness rather than identification with the process of ego/identity. And that’s joy – a coming home to the recognition of the whole instead of the part, dispelling the illusion of a self separate from life.

Gassho,

Aye