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Category: reflections

April 12, 2012

soft power for introverts

Ben Howard, author of One Time, One Meeting, wrote this lovely piece on introverts and how to engage in a world that is driven, loud, and often self-promoting.  I particularly liked the ideas of “quiet persistence” and “soft power.”  Ben references a book about introverts by Susan Cain - Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking – and then in his inimitable way takes it deep into the dharma, weaving together patience and diligence.

Watching the window installers, I was struck by the steady, unrelenting way they approached the task.  And it is a formidable task, this tearing out wood frames of a friable old farm-house without taking out chunks of the (wood) wall.  Hour by hour, window after window was pried away from almost a hundred years of clinging to the frame; the opening was cleared of debris and the new window inserted.  They cleaned the floor and outdoor surfaces of splinters and nails, methodically moving from section to section.  There wasn’t a moment of wasted or mis-directed energy; conversation was light yet never broke the rhythmic dance between deconstruction and reconstruction.

In a quiet moment’s conversation at the conference last week, a friend and I shared the frustrations we feel when we want immediate results and have them come in a particular form beyond what the situation can grant us.  We reflected on the years we’ve put into our work and eventually gazed astonished at what had emerged from our own quiet persistence.  I spoke with someone else of wanting a more “intimate relationship” between our organizations and later through a different interaction with her came to a painful realization of what that intimacy would cost.  I wondered what diligent persistence in that direction would bring me.  In another conversation with a friend, I garnered from her wisdom that the true circle of impact is much closer to the heart and it’s easy to disperse our energy when we get caught by the wanting-creatures.

Kabir’s warnings against the wanting-creature notwithstanding, it’s difficult to “stand firm in that which you are.”  This is especially so in a world that loudly proclaims it knows us better than we could know ourselves.  It’s easy to doubt our senses and to lose them.  It’s a short tumble into the rabbit hole of crippling grandiosity and inadequacy.  To persist with diligence requires reducing our reactivity to the voices that decry our strengths, our commitment, and our willingness to begin again moment after moment.  It means honestly appraising our deepest intentions, willingly acknowledging our deepest fears, and proceeding with attentive awareness of the impact of our actions.

I’m not sure if this is what is meant by “soft power” but it does seem softer than the sledgehammer and crowbar approach and more powerful than strong-arming a connection.

6 comments
April 11, 2012

an unknowable purpose

There is this chaotic moment in renovations where the content of rooms begin to infiltrate each others space.  That’s what happens when we instigate change: barriers drop and boundaries blur.  As a masked introvert (that’s someone who is an introvert but can play the role of an extrovert), I shy away from large gatherings, especially ones that can trigger my insecurities as a professional.  Yes, I still hold a membership in the Group for Impostors and Miscellaneous Posers (GIMPs).  So this mindfulness conference was a challenge at many levels and my only recourse was to find a sofa somewhere out of the scrum and curl up with sufficient determination to drive away all the other introverts.

The problem however is that deciding to go to a conference (after avoiding it successfully for 8 years) AND agreeing to present at it effectively precludes all the introvert’s strategies I’ve cultivated over the years.  More than that, having cultivated a practice of being aware of the never-ceasing flow of sensations meant I couldn’t even lie to myself.  Saying yes to engaging in the marketplace is by definition opting for change, being open to change, and being vulnerable to what havoc that change can wreak on the fragile self-system.

At the same time and thankfully, it opens us to confirming what is important and necessary to continue to be who we are.  Who we truly are, not the clinging fearful self who emerges when threatened with loss.

This was the space I eventually entered as the myths and misperceptions of who I am as this or that flowed around me.  These projections were the real impostors and posers yet it was disconcerting to see the constructed imaginings that had grown in the minds of others during my absence from the gatherings.  And of course, despite recognizing them as delusions, I caught myself hopping into the minds of others trying to find that rewind and erase button.  I know you’re not surprised that I was an abject failure at re-directing even one misaligned neuron.

This is the uncomfortable and crucial truth about engaging in the marketplace.  Only you will know who you are.  All else is constructed to serve an unknowable purpose.

2 comments
April 10, 2012

taking off the filters

Which do you follow: the teacher or the teachings?  We all have a quick answer and I’m sure one popped up for you as you read the question.  I’m beginning to understand that the question is premature rendering as misdirected any answer we give.  Long before we consider the question in its either/or form, we need to ask ourselves if there is anything standing between our heart and our vision.  Years of longing and striving can do that, dust gathers on the window panes and obscures the real question.  And sometimes, there is nothing for it but to take out the whole structure and insert one that better serves the purpose.

In the field of teaching/facilitating mindfulness-based courses debates rage on (yes, rage on) about many issues.  Is it secularized Buddhism?  Is it a misappropriation of religious concepts, a convenient excision of techniques from the heart of spiritual practice?  Is it simply a fancy name for what your grandmother told you but you forgot in the swirl of scrambling to adulthood?  I don’t tend to agitate over these questions because, in my experience, the truth, like the dharma, will out.  In other words, it doesn’t much matter what you call it; just practice.  (There is a caveat to this I will get to later this week.  Or not.)

Last week we spent time at the mecca of mindfulness, what Saki Santorelli once called the Mother Ship, the Center for Mindfulness.  It was the 10th Annual conference.  I wasn’t looking forward to it, being averse to the typical strutting and bellowing that signals territorial marking in close spaces.  But I figured this being a gathering of mindfulness teachers and practitioners (scientific and practical), surely… well surely…

Besides, I had a sweet deal in being part of a superhero trio presenting a pre-conference all-day workshop on Holding the Heart of MBSR.  Now that was a delight!  And a practice.  In its essence, it was a foray into seeing clearly, opening to what motivates us as teachers of MBSR to shift away from prescribed form and content, being transparent about our intentions and the likely impact on the integrity of what we claim to practice.  In a nutshell, how do we honour the teachings and not let the teacher or her unexamined intentions become an obstacle?  Fascinating questions, the answers to which will likely unfold over the years.

Done with the workshop, I was free to wander the rest of the week, connecting with old friends and greeting new ones.  And in various encounters, the rumble of territorial markings became audible.  Well surely I couldn’t have filtered out the human tendency to want, to crave, to feel unsafe and therefore to bare fangs, set boundaries, and draw lines.  Apparently, I did.  I do.  This is where the practice of simply noting is a good one; it helps negotiate through the conversations that circle the marketing of the self and poorly masked rhetorical questions.  I mean noting that in myself as well because certainly there were many, many times when I caught myself falling into being the product rather than the person.

And that brings us back to the question: The teacher or the teachings?  My practice in the moment is to choose neither because they are inseparable.  Teachings manifest through the teacher and the true teacher is an emergent property of the teachings.  But like the windows in my house, before any of that is put in motion, we have to take down the desire-caked, delusion-riddled old panes and stand exposed to the elements which we have kept at bay.

(Kate Crisp, of the Prison Mindfulness Institute, posted this great article on dealing with conferences.)

3 comments
April 9, 2012

collateral effects

It occurred to us one day that single-paned windows may not be the best thing to have in an already-leaky old farm-house.  That didn’t astound us as much as the fact that it took 30 years of living here to suddenly have the light bulb go on or the light shine in on this fact.  I wonder – and then ruminated – on what we had done with all the money that could have gone into changing the windows decades ago.  And then I anguished about the possibility that we might have made a bit of a dent on saving the environment had we not squandered our earnings on food, clothing, paying loans, and sending the kid to university.

The truth is I couldn’t imagine how I would prepare the rooms (15 windows!) so that there was access to the windows.  And then there was the worry about how much damage there would be to the existing frames and how much would it cost to fix the collateral damage!  I rarely seem to worry about the task itself as I do about collateral damage; an approach that, my friends and mentors point out, keeps me from actually engaging in potentially life changing events.

Well, as it turned out – and yes, it often turns out this way – the ball got put into play unexpectedly when a company called to say they would be in the area to put in windows and would I like a quote.  Impulsively I said, Sure!  Who knows if they were really in the neighbourhood but the timing seemed right.  And this time, I thought to myself, perhaps I could capitalize on what might be the collateral effects; how’s that for a positive outlook!  There are three rooms in the house that are good candidates for an episode of Hoarders and this would be a good time to do some Radical De-cluttering.

So there we were on the holiday weekend, packing, tossing, and trucking to charity bins what could be re-used from 30 years of clinging.  And I learned something about how to meet collateral effects.

6 comments
April 3, 2012

meeting the buddha at the gate

We returned yesterday.  That’s a necessary thing – to return, to come back, to see that place again for the first time.  Returning implies remembering, sati, re-collecting all those things that tend to fly away, shatter, fragment when we forget that returning over and over again is the essence of our practice.

I’m grateful to be home; I know I’ve been travelling too much when I wake up in the comfort of my own bed and can’t remember if this is the hotel where the bathroom is to left or the right of the bed.  In my increasingly steep slope down to agedness, simple things such as the relative positioning of the toilet are crucial.  And then, slowly but with unrelenting penetration, I realize I am at home (the toilet is to the right of the bedroom).  In that briefest of moments, I panic: is this where I’m supposed to be?  The answer, of course, is absolutely and perennially, Yes.

And, I’m grateful to be home.

In my travels, however, there were some lovely adventures.  We were at the 10th annual conference put on by the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society.  I joked (though there may be more truth in it than not) that I only go to such things because it positions me geographically near places I love.  So, in the whirlwind of giving a talk, listening to keynote addresses, attending discourses on this and that, Frank and I played hookey to visit the new temple at Boundless Way Zen Center.  It was such a gift to sit in the zendo and breathe, letting all the head stuff and fluff float away.  David Dae An Rynick, the abbott and dear friend, gave us a tour.  It was so animated and exciting that I forgot to take pictures!

But this was more than just a practice of connecting.  Before I left I made a vow to let go of all those things I treasure (perhaps too much).  So, along with letting go of taking pictures – other than the Buddha at the Gate here on the left – I let go of two enso from the 108 Enso series.  There they are, somewhere outside the peripheral vision of my vigilance.  To the left?  To the right?  Who knows.

Speaking of Buddhas at gates: I am remembering a story about the Buddha at the gate.  A young monk studies with a well-known abbott and takes his practice quite seriously.  Everyday he goes to the town on an alms round.  The townspeople are generous and he leaves by one of the four the gates feeling quite accomplished in having taught the dharma and receiving just reward for it from the adoring lay people.  One day as he leaves the gate, he sees a beggar there who begins to heap vulgarities on him.  The monk is astonished and rushes back to the temple with the curses, spit, and froth of the beggar’s rancor in his ears and on his skin.  The next day he exits by a different gate but the beggar is there too repeating the vicious attacks on him about his competence and worthiness.  This goes on for several days despite the monk’s attempts to teach the beggar or even just tolerate him.  The monk is confused; he feels maligned and angry that his dedication is not acknowledged by the beggar!

Distraught, he goes to the Abbott and asks how to change this beggar’s mind.  He is after all a devout student of the Buddhadharma.  Perhaps the beggar is so severely delusional that he needs to be incarcerated, treated with electroshock therapy, or put in one of those Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction treatments!  The abbot, a wise and comforting man (as all abbotts are, right?) says to the young monk:

This Buddha at the Gate is for you a deep practice of equanimity and compassion.  He sees your illness and is asking you to treat it.  It’s easy to blame him, to see him as the one who needs more practice, or one who needs to be fixed so you can continue on your own path unhindered.  But then, we lose the point of practice which is to remember who we really are – in all our manifestations.  

Well, that’s my version of the story.  The version I particularly liked was told by the Ox Master, Barry Briggs, who happened to be in the neighbourhood and joined us for dinner.  He said, our teacher’s job is to strike us down with a killing sword.  A lovely meeting of dharma hearts and I got a chance to share my lobster mac and cheese.

So whichever version you like: do take some time to meet the Buddha at your gates and attend to the message.

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