your brain on prajna
This is what happens when you hang around Genju too much!
Have a wonderful weekend and may we all be reborn from the womb of prajna to serve all beings!
108zenbooks
Category: reflections
February 3, 2012
January 31, 2012
first line of defense
Try telling an orally fixated kitten that you too like to lick your bowl clean. It’s a Zen thing, I explained. Clean your bowl! As you can see, he’s not impressed. I’m fascinated by Sprout’s practice of defending himself. My lacerations will heal soon and the sting does little to deter me from testing out what actually triggers his grab-and-slash reflexes. So far I’ve sorted out that it has little to do with territory (but he has yet to meet the other two cats) or food (ample and free-range). It does have much to do with that vulnerable underbelly.
Form. The first of the Five Skandhas and the one that stands as the exemplar of the boundlessness, the unknowability of the other four. Red Pine in his commentary (1) says that it represents our obsession with the material. It is “our first line of defense in contesting attacks on the validity of our existence…” and we need to believe it exists. We try to define ourselves in terms of the structure, shape, and extension into space and time of our body. Oh and, how we fail.
Red Pine goes on to say we disregard the other four skandhas at our own peril. We risk entrenching form as the only path to understanding emptiness and forget the intricate role all five play with each other. One of the things that always fascinated me about this section of the Heart Sutra is the dropping out of “sensation, perception, memory, and consciousness” from the recitation. It worries me that we don’t chant them with the same thundering detail as we do with form. It elevates form as something to truly be wary of and without attention, our stance to the other four becomes one of benign neglect. And, truth be told, becoming caught in believing the solidity of sensations, perceptions, memory, and consciousness is more cause for worry than form by itself.
Let me put it this way: when the body fails us, we may have a sense of assault on our image, identity, potential, and so on. However the power of the delusion that we are identified by our form lies not in the body but in what we sense in it (pain!), perceive of it (Oh this is never going to end!), memories we have of it (the last time I was laid up forever!), and consciousness of the experience with it (why me!?).
So repeat regularly:
Feelings are the same as boundlessness; boundlessness is the same as feelings
Perceptions are the same as boundlessness; boundlessness is the same as perceptions
Mental formations are the same as boundlessness; boundlessness is the same as mental formations
Discernment is the same as boundlessness; boundlessness is the same as discernment. (2)
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(1) Heart Sutra, translation and commentary by Red Pine
(2) Skandha terms from Heart Sutra version translated by Kazuaki Tanahashi & Joan Halifax Roshi © 2003
January 30, 2012
intimate secret
Yes, a little Sprout fix for those of you feline-inclined. February is Feline Appreciation Month by the way, so go out and hug something furry with sharp teeth and claws.
Back to books. Tasty ones. I remember the day I dug into Analayo’s Satipatthana and just about swooned at the deliciousness of taking nibbles out of the sutra, one word, one sentence at a time. It should be tedious but it’s not. Or perhaps it’s a peculiarity of mine that most won’t point out in polite company. Liberated Life Project asked on the Facebook page:
If you weren’t doing what you’re doing right now for a job, what would you do to earn your livelihood? Quick… first thought, best thought!
I replied: study, learn, write.
How’s that for smacking up against my most intimate truth? I think I’ve momentarily arrived at that place where studying is truly for pleasure, learning is amazing just for what it entails, and writing is a joyous expression of weaving the threads together. More than all that, I hope I’ve learned to let go of the nay-saying voices: the folks who deride my love of reading about Buddhism, the ones who stand proud on their fundamentalist views that Buddhism is only about beliefs, or the ones whose faces pucker in fear and disgust when I start a sentence with “Well, Red Pine’s translation of the Heart Sutra is fascinating for its…”
Study. Learn. Write.
There’s a lip-smacking delight in this. I said to my coach (did I mention that I have one?): When you return from your journey of 10,000 Leagues under the Self, I’d like to study a sutra and start on my path of learning. His response in summary: “Why wait until I return?” In effect, he suggested I start immediately by intensifying my daily practice: meditations morning and evening every day until our next meeting. I was thrilled. We’re into Day Two. And I’ve deliciously failed already! Look, Ma! I’m Learning!
Study this. In that moment of waking, notice the sinking mind. In that moment of turning away from the edge of the bed, notice the holding back. There really is a space for a choice. ”Failure means you’re in the game,” he said in our first session. I may well end up MVP!
Learn something. Red Pine opens his commentary(1) of the Heart Sutra with a translation of “prajna which means ‘wisdom’ and is a combination of pra, meaning ‘before,’ and jna, meaning ‘to know.’” Wisdom is something that comes before knowing, a “beginner’s mind” that is transcendent and not tied to discrete entities, and by definition not something that can be “learned.” I’m still in the game!
Write. In a word, practice. It’s no different from getting up, sitting down, and opening ourselves to this unfolding panorama of life as it is. It’s tedious; muses are highly disrespectful of agendas and scheduled appointments. It’s frustrating; the black squiggles on the page or in the mind don’t always lend themselves to transparent coherence. It’s terrifying; it will never measure up to what the mind created in that interstitial space between sleep and waking up. Do it anyway. Stay in the game!
Someone asked me in a meeting whether the meditation session we run on Sunday are different from the one on Thursday. Although I gave an answer that would encourage engagement, this is what I wanted to say:
There is no answer I can give you that will bring you to your life right here, right now. If your choices are based on the particulars of time and distance, no schedule or location in space will never be the right one. No plan of practice or topic of the day will bring you to that most intimate secret in your heart. No matter what the schedule, personality of teacher, or some vague peculiarity of community, if you do not choose to step out into your life you cannot arrive in it and learn the magic it is.
Prajna.
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(1) The Heart Sutra, translated and commentary by Red Pine
January 20, 2012
get thee behind me, sardine
Thank you for all the concern you’ve expressed about Sprout, on- and off-line. After much deliberation (read: 10 minutes angst + 2 minutes discernment), we decided to try a live trap. I’m not in favour of traps – heart-filled or otherwise. However, as the weather deteriorated and my mental state kept pace to the tune of the wild winds, it seemed the only thing left to do.
The first night we put the trap out filled with kitty kibble and a can of salmon mash. If Sprout showed up at all, we likely missed it in the out-of-sync periodic window checking. By bedtime, we had deliberated every contingency of leaving the trap out overnight versus taking it in. The advantage of leaving it out was that we might capture him – or something with four legs anyway. The disadvantage was that if it did trap him and we didn’t know it, he was left in the cold with no shelter. Bringing the trap in meant another day of cultivating distress tolerance. Besides we had no idea it was going to work anyway and my mind pulled in at the what-if gas station and filled its tank to overflowing.
Doubt is formidable foe. It erodes all the accumulated wisdom or at the very least punches illusionary holes in the safety net of knowledge. In the face of the hindrance of doubt (which is not the same as Great Doubt), I tend to build endless loops of ”but-what-if-and-then” scenarios or put on my Chicken Little costume (is it really a costume?) and scurry around the house traumatizing the cats. Frank googles “how to catch a feral kitten.”
Sardines.
Yes. Pungent, oily, slimy small fry fish. We laced the kitty kibble with the stuff, slathered it on the cage wire, set the door (I wanted to put a blanket in it just in case he needed the comfort) and laid it out on the deck. No Sprout. Apparently the delightfully sunny day and the vast acreage of mice-filled fields were more appealling than store-bought sardines. However, by nightfall he slithered up to the deck like an adolescent past curfew hoping Mum and Dad were asleep and he could catch a snack without waking them.
We sat at the kitchen table ready to pounce outdoors at the sound of the trap being sprung. I still had deep doubts about its safety which fed a firestorm of fears that he would be hurt in the process. After all, our good intentions had not done well for his mother and my brain now had this one-way neural path that anything I might do intending good would end up bad. Ah, Doubt. You insidious, entrapping, pungent creature. Get thee behind me!
I used to think that doubt was counteracted by confidence. Now I sense that doubt is rousted by the willingness to take that risk we would anyway if not crippled by our need to always have a good outcome. Furless, clawless, top-heavy creatures that we are, the common assumption is that we use our brains to compensate for our inability to risk in the same way a sabre-tooth tiger or polar bear would to survive. Perhaps not. Lumber we might but there was certainly a willingness to take the risk by going out to hunt or to turn and face the rampaging beast in order to protect our offspring.
We are not risk averse because we are defenseless. We are defenseless because, in taking a risk, we fear what an unfavourable outcome might say about our competence. Meet Sprout. Five pounds and quite disdainful of the sardines. While in the trap, on the way to the vet, he delicately ate all the kibble around the fish.
January 19, 2012
the lazy person’s guide to the galaxy
There may seem a contradiction between the title of this post and the lead picture. Or perhaps not. I look at this picture and see this steady trek across the fields, hugging the small ravine in places only to leave it for a gentler slope up the hill; a wondrous result of meeting the day which doesn’t reveal the deeper effort to not believe my thoughts. It was our first snow shoe trek of the season; in truth, it was our first snow shoe together in years. The day, the sunshine, the acres of crusty snow was a finger-snap, breaking through the trance of anxious misery over a continuously mentally failing mother, ailing cats, and life’s other vagaries. The outcome of that trance has been a heaviness in the seat of both body and mind.
While the heaviness in my seat is a health consideration, I must admit the mental torpor in its cognitive manifestation is what causes me grief. For the most part, my days are filled with assessing situations, negotiating, shifting gears, and trying to stay out of the mind of others. It’s fast-paced, unrelenting, and not for the risk-averse. In contrast and I don’t know if it is cause or effect, in matters of my own well being, I am far more likely to take the slothful path. I could bring that analytic mind to bear on the conundrum of wasting the 2 hours scheduled each day, every day for 15 years to get to the gym. There is a clear predictive equation between my nastiness factor and the sugar content of a morning snack that would benefit from my wisdom about highly processed carbohydrates. The luxury of a meditation room attached to the general offices seems far less seductive that the mantric clicks on Facebook.
I should be clear (making an effort at arousing the analytic mind here) that it’s not about fuzzy thinking. It’s about the unwillingness to consider the alternative to “Meh.” Call it resistance, tentativeness, captive of past and future, it amounts to the same thing. There is a sedating seductiveness to not rising up and taking charge of the direction of our mental life. And the consequences are as debilitating as any physical disease that comes from not dealing with the fat-ladened arteries or the bulging belly.
When we aren’t willing to rouse ourselves to stop the downward or outward spirals of self-defeating thinking or self-abuse, we open the gateways to superstitious thinking. If perceiving reality isn’t likely to soothe our fears, then magic will, says our deluded mind. Unrelated events take on great significance, skies are filled with portents of success or failure, and our actions (which are our only belongings) become caricatures of rituals to keep bad things from happening. Ironically, in the shackled mind the world becomes a scary place – a galaxy far, far scarier than the fear of taking charge of how we think.
Sloth and torpor. Not for the mentally faint of heart.
