Step Four: Take Action.  The final step in The Misleading Mind by Karuna Cayton is to use the clarity developed through the practices of stilling and connecting with our emotions.  As we see that our reality is constructed, we detach from its power to define us, to set our identity in stone.  The remainder of Cayton’s book covers a lot of ground, beginning with the way we create (and re-create) our reality and diving into the need for ethics and self-compassion.  By his definition, the litmus test of ethics – or rather the way one knows if an action is ethical – is if it leads to creating health and well being.  

I’m chewing on this.  Harkening back to the first post of this series about past actions that ripen into present karmic consequences, I have to wonder about Cayton’s definition.  I wish things were so clear-cut when choosing actions that avoid harm and foster good.  One thing I’ve learned about making decisions to divert harm: someone is always invested in the trajectory of the present moment and you’re bound to piss them off when you mess with their equation.  And the reason is simple: in your mind, their actions may bear harmful fruit; in their mind, your actions may bear harmful fruit.  I’ve often found it useful to sit with some people and, as a starting point, agree that we are likely both delusional in our perceptions.  We strike up a partnership to pool our investments and determine the best course possible.  Sometimes it works.  Sometimes it doesn’t.

There’s no “most times” because inevitably someone decides that their delusion is more important to defend than adapt.

In matters of determining ethical actions, I keep returning to René Girard’s monkeys and the banana (see Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World).  Initially, the conflict is about eating the banana.  Inevitably however, it becomes about who owns the banana.  Getting caught in right and wrong is also like that.  Initially, it’s about the right thing to do.  Eventually, it’s about who is seen as doing the right thing.  This is where the self-awareness and clarity of mind is crucial.  Once I can see that I’ve become invested in being the one who is doing the right thing, I’ve lost the ground I stand on.

Nevertheless, I’m pleased that Cayton raises the issue of ethics as an important aspect of practice.  There can never be enough said, written, or taught about it.

A little lesson from Zen Master Sprout to go along with The Misleading Mind and Karuna Cayton’s Third Step: What’s going on?  Over the few months, Volvo (on the left) has been suffering the boisterous bouncing of Sprout.  He takes great delight in pouncing her off the rocking chair, sofa, zafus at every opportunity, taking advantage that she is clawless and he is fully loaded.  For a while, we worked hard at intervening, insofar as one can intervene with a lightning fast kitten who has perfected the surgical strike.  Even when we caught him and applied an appropriate reprimand, there was neither remorse nor reflection, making rehabilitation unlikely.  Shame and blame were not effective on the monster and we decided that Volvo (who was at least losing her pudginess from the running around) was going to have to handle it on her own.

The middle sections of Cayton’s book deals with the destructive emotions – he also calls them “disturbing emotions.”  Attachment, aversion, and ignorance are covered rather well.  I particularly like his work up of “ignorance” which causes all kinds of… well… confusion when we try to understand it.  Confusion, doubt, fogginess, uncertainty, illogical thinking, blind faith, forgetfulness, and absence of introspection are some of the ways we manifest ignorance.  In fact, this little list helped me track my reactions to the caterwauling when Volvo and Sprout were duking it out over something or the other.  I had no idea if leaving this up to animal nature was the right thing to do.  I think at some level my contemplation and intention in letting them sort it out was based on the eternal koan: does a cat had Buddha nature?  I was hoping they did because animal nature was not proving tolerable.

In the section on blame versus accountability, Cayton makes some clear points about the difference between the two concepts and the litmus test of that difference.  Blame leads to unskillful action; accountability leads to skillful ones.  In my rather simple terms, blame says “everything conspired so I couldn’t do better.”  Accountability says, “I can do better.  Period.”

I watched the two cats leap to the windowsill together and held my breath.  They sat there for a long time enjoying the breeze and the swooping starlings.  Sprout turned to Volvo and she made it clear that whatever he was telegraphing was not on.  No howls, snarls, or shrieks.  Just a clawless paw suspended in the space between them.

“You can do better.  Period.”

We’re continuing with The Misleading Mind by Karuna Cayton.  I’m trying to find the connection between Step Two: Set up your laboratory and a rationale for the practice as he’s teaching it.  I know you know.  You know I know.  I know that you know I know and vice versa.  But in a book that sets out to deal with the Trickster Mind, I really want Cayton to assume I don’t know!  But I’m going to trust his process and practice anyway hoping it leads to that pot of gold.

Reading the instructions for setting up the laboratory, I have a strong sense of Cayton’s corporate coaching persona coming through.  The language is very “go-get-’em” and the “ABC” breathing practice floats out there without much of an intention to anchor it.  I can infer the intention because I know from other experience that the practice holds promise; but it takes me away from my intention to hold a Beginner’s Mind.

The issue of “what is mind?” seems to be what he gets to in the third chapter.  How do I clarify my experience so that I can understand reality is what I create?  So, in the ABC, A is for anatomy; bring awareness to the areas of tension in the body.  B is for breathing; anchor yourself in the breath.  C is for counting (really); count the in- and out-breaths.  I can’t resist so let me infer that the sequence is to calm and steady internal turmoil.  In psychological circles, it’s a variant of progressive muscle relaxation blended with breathing to calm symptoms of anxiety.  Not a bad thing but a link to how this prepares “the laboratory” (presumably of body-mind) would have been helpful.

Enough about the book.  More about me practicing with the book.  Cayton explains that “disturbing emotions” have the power to “hypnotize us…so they become ‘reality’.”  This nugget is worth getting to and a powerhouse of energy is conferred when I work with it.  It also reminds me of Tara Brach’s use of the term “trance” in describing our habitual energies and auto-pilot.  I call it getting on trains that take us away from our experience in the moment; we believe escaping on the train as the reality because we think it’s safer or that we’re actually acting on the distress.

Later in the chapter, Cayton points out that our mind is very much like a video camera and TV screen running simultaneously.  Our sense organs (I’m interpolating) record the impingement of sensations which leaves a mental imprint.  And, at the same time, we’re layering our interpretation of the experience on that imprint.  Instantly, the process of logging the experience becomes laden with our bias, our preferences.  We create the world as we are.

And it ain’t so.  We can absolutely count on that.

It’s easy to make more of something than it is.  It’s easy to put a negative face on a person or situation to justify our anger, frustration, helplessness, and ultimately, our reactive actions.  

A couple of weeks ago, I made a phone call to an agency that, over the last 15 years, has referred people for psychological treatment.  I needed some paperwork sent for a particular client so they could take part in one of our programs.  The colleague I spoke with was embarrassed; she hedged around her answer and then blurted out, “You’re no longer on our provider list.”  She was upset about it, working on re-instating our clinic, but until then her hands were tied.  As the story wound out, it seems someone from my ignoble past has slid into my professional life with an agenda.  From what we could tell, this has been cooking for about four years and has ripened into action.

I spent a few days embellishing various fantasy scenarios of retaliation.  To give myself credit only one or two involved violation of the precepts.  Mostly, hunger strikes on the steps of the agency, opening a free clinic, and holding protest marches tended to be the flavour of my hit-backs.  Now before you go all Awwwww on me, let me point out that the ego is still quite rampant in the latter scenes despite the great Gandhi-like camouflage.  And then there were days of practicing one of the Shadow Fourth Noble Truths: Noble Outrage; I envisioned miles of needy patients snaking down hallways, winding out into the parking lots, and drifting in wounded aimlessness down the street.  I rarely worry about the closure of DVD rental places; there are ample life has uploaded into my mind. 

And then, in sangha, a friend asked what we were going to do to protect ourselves.  I responded, “Nothing yet.  It’s only been four years.”  True, there is potential in this situation for injustice, inconvenience, and the up-ending of projects waiting to be activated.  All of which to say, there is great potential for high drama and the tilting at windmills.  Yet once I strip away all the drama, faux-calls-to-social-engagement, and I call into play that powerful practice of patience, I’m left with a very different set of choices.

Reading The Misleading Mind by Karuna Cayton, it was good to see I’m not too far off base.  In the book, Cayton describes four steps to vanquishing the delusional mind.  Step One: You have a Choice!  I do absolutely have a choice.  There is a choice in viewing something as just what it is.  No more, no less.  As I sat with the not-doing, this was an additional realization: to narrow* our focus on the individual or the situation as it is now is the delusional process.  And no choice of skillful actions can arise out of that perspective.

Cayton sets up a four-step process of training the mind.  I don’t quite follow the set up of the book to see how the four steps match up with the chapters.  But maybe that is just my hobgoblin mind wanting a clear map.

Regardless, it doesn’t take away from the practice he describes and which I’ll explore this week.

* Edited 2012 May 21 @ 0941

For some reason, the theme of dancing has been popping up in my writings.  Recently, I reviewed Mindfulness: an 8-week plan to find peace in a frantic world by Mark Williams and Dan Penman.  It’s a lovely book and as with any manual that guides us through our suffering, I approach it with a seriously critical stance.  Mark’s book makes it easier because of the chocolate meditation in the first chapter.  But letting that go, letting it dissolve, I am also aware that in my own struggles through anxiety and depression, I’ve never done well with the authoritarian, directive approach to healing.  I’m very much of the “let’s eat the pudding to see if it proves to be worthwhile.”  Yes, dear reader, the correct aphorism is that “the proof of the pudding is in the eating.”  In other words, like Zen, the words are devoid of teachings; the experience is the practice.

So with this book, I started with Chapter 1 and practiced each day to truly experience the cultivation of a different stance to my life as it is.  Here.  Now.  And yes, the chocolate helped.  But what helped more than anything is the connection with a lovely idea that our practice is one of learning to dance with life again.  I feel like I’m surfacing out of a heavy fog or maybe making land from a storm.  Whatever the metaphor of coming into ground from chaos, it feels like it is time to dance into my life.

Whole-heartedly.

In the case of cruelty, you recognize that, however cruel and vicious your assailant, you understand, even though it makes no rational sense. Yet you have no sense of moral superiority or righteousness. 

The last sentence was a heart-opener.  I had shared with a colleague the frustration of seeing someone “get ahead” despite what I saw as all his shortcomings.  And digging into the raw truth I said, Why not me?  Somewhere along the back-and-forth of our conversation he used the word “jealous.”  While it didn’t feel right, it made me sit up and listen to my tone, examine my intention, and dig deeper.  Was I really jealous?  Was it about belonging in a place and space to which I was not entitled?  Was it greed?  Unearned assets?  I’m going to need a convoy of backhoes and bulldozers to get into this one!

When I tie in McLeod’s statement of being released from a sense of moral superiority and righteousness, I can get a glimmer of what might be happening.  True, I react strongly to injustice.  But is righteousness the appropriate response to injustice?  Is there even such a thing as a personal injustice or is that just a euphemism for self-centered?  Oh dear.  Pants down again!

Practice tells me that the path out of this is one of gratitude.  Accepting that there are many places I will never enter.  So being grateful for all the millions of hectares of space I can enter is important to see and practice seeing clearly.  I’ve already been chosen.  There is nothing more to add.  Nothing more to demand.  But it doesn’t stop there.  These friends, colleagues, and teaching moments are just ingredients for the meal.  They are wasted left in the fridge and no more nourishing than the poison of all hindrances.

Time to get cooking!

I’ve been contemplating the positive correlation between hiding one’s light under a bushel and wimpiness.  When I was a child, my father said, “Work hard.  Excel.  And you will be chosen.”  So I did.  And it has been a never-ending source of confusion to me that no one has yet anointed me the Chosen One.  I’m sure you are just as surprised.  About your own absence of anointment, I mean; because I’m quite sure you too have worked hard, excelled, and waited to be chosen.

Or perhaps, it’s not so much about being chosen but about being seen.  Perhaps it’s about being valued.  Appreciated? Or is it about being acknowledged, that briefest of nods our way that says: Well done.

Now, I’m not whining.  Truly.  I’m wondering about those moments when I’m caught between stepping out and showing my talents or stepping back and avoiding opportunity denied.  I always thought it would be terribly self-centered to do the former and yet could not bear the thought of the latter.  So I suspect over the years I’ve done this silly awkward dance, hauling that little light of mine out with one hand and having the bushel poised over it in the other.

End result: A wimpish waltz with fate.

What to do?  I’ve started reading a rather captivating book on Zen practice sent along for review* which has a few nuggets about this and that.  What caught me however, though the author himself doesn’t write of this relationship between busheled lights and the wimp factor, is the issue of self-centeredness.  He notes that zazen is the slowing down of this self-centered mind-body chattering we live out.

What?

Yes, you read it right.  It is the chattering that is self-centered.  Not the stepping out or the appropriate proclamation of one’s expertise, goodness, rightness, capability, and power.

The mind is self-centered.  Autogenic: it creates itself in the world it creates.  And, if we lack awareness, of the mind-body link, the body follows close at its heels.

That’s quite the revelation for me.  Now the real problem: what shall I do with all these bushels?

______________

*The review will be published sometime in June.

Where Does the Dance Begin, Where Does It End?

Don’t call this world adorable, or useful, that’s not it.

It’s frisky, and a theater for more than fair winds.
The eyelash of lightning is neither good nor evil.
The struck tree burns like a pillar of gold.

But the blue rain sinks, straight to the white
feet of the trees
whose mouths open.
Doesn’t the wind, turning in circles, invent the dance?
Haven’t the flowers moved, slowly, across Asia, then Europe,
until at last, now, they shine
in your own yard?

Don’t call this world an explanation, or even an education.

When the Sufi poet whirled, was he looking
outward, to the mountains so solidly there
in a white-capped ring, or was he looking
to the center of everything: the seed, the egg, the idea
that was also there,
beautiful as a thumb
curved and touching the finger, tenderly,
little love-ring,

 as he whirled,
oh jug of breath,
in the garden of dust? 

Mary Oliver, from Why I Wake Early (2004)

On the death of any living creature the spirit returns to the spiritual world, the body to the bodily world.  In this however only the bodies are subject to change.  The spiritual world is one single spirit who stands like unto a light behind the bodily world and who, when any single creature comes into being, shines through it as through a window.  According to the kind and size of the window less or more light enters the world.  The light itself however remains unchanged.

May the light shine through you and may we all remember that we are one.

Have a delightful weekend and thank you for practising!

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.