108zenbooks

Tag: practice

August 24, 2011

redact

Sitting in the cauldron that is spiritual training gives rise to a panorama of experiences.  Some are accompanied by awe and a belief that learning is happening.  Some are accompanied by heart-crushing despair that anything could grow on such hard ground.  But the depth of penetration of Dharma rain is imperceptible to the ordinary eye.  At least that’s what I keep telling myself.

In an ironic twist, what would become the recurring theme of this training began on my drive home from out-of-town work last Thursday, the day before I was to leave for Upaya and the Chaplaincy Program.  I was racing to get home in time to unpack so I could pack again; a comforting ritual before every trip I take.  I drafted in behind a tanker hauling flammable material and tried to keep a good distance as we wound along the two lane highway.  The back of the tanker was a round, silver mirror and my car was reflected dead center of the steel plate.   Stretching out on either side of the reflected car were the dividing line of the highway and the  white line along the shoulder of the road, making the scene a parallax  in a mirror enso.

Viewed from the car I was driving, I realized I was seeing where I had been at the same time as where I was going.  Past in present; present in future.  This theme of convergence played out over and over the following days in training as my biography and biology converged to give different perspectives of each moment, each relationship.  What I believed was my self-story, or biography, often diverted events along lines of loss and lack.  Listening to my body and quietly calming the ramping up of anger, fear or confusion corrected the story arc (there’s always a story arc).  Be careful when it’s appropriate to be careful.  Speak up when likely to be heard.  Offer but don’t take offense at the response and yet notice the heart turning away.

Over the week, ancient themes of connection and loss, protection and wounding, were compiled and re-organized in this anthology I call The Story of Me.  It’s not done.  It will never be done because every moment is an occasion for a different perspective on what is unfolding.  We can’t erase events that make up our history; we can’t reconfigure the past.  But we can take the opportunity to view them from a different angle and in that way know how to understand and adjust our position in the present.

2 comments
August 23, 2011

detract

Dharma teacher Cheri Maples (Tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh) led a retreat on ways in which we are lead by our unconscious biases.  She talked about unearned assets; those behaviours and benefits we accrue simply because we belong to a class, race, or other form of an in-group.  I don’t want to say much but offer this to you as an exercise.

What are some of the benefits that come to you simply by virtue of your membership in a socioeconomic class, a race or ethnicity that is the dominant group in your culture, a gender or sexual group, a position in an organization, and/or a religious community of practice?

What are you assumptions about what has accrued to persons in other groups?   This is a tough one so an example would be the assumption I often run into that being Asian means I’m good at Math or am diminutively cooperative.  While the former is true, it’s less about being Asian and more about not being diminutive in any way at all.

These are the unconscious biases from which we make decisions about ourselves and others.

Can you uncover at least one that had fostered a belief in yourself as entitled or unworthy?

1 comment
August 22, 2011

contract

Chaplaincy Core Training is over but I’m still here at Upaya finishing the second part of training in Trauma Resilience. It’s been ten days of generous teachings that began with a taste of the Five Buddha Families, Unconscious Bias, and a whole lot of inner dharma woven through. On the second day, my body reacted to an accumulation of dust, pollen, travel, and having spent the previous week housed above a helicopter hangar dodging leaking fumes of diesel oil. My throat closed, my chest contracted, and breath came in wheezy gasps.

It’s what happens when we are challenged to take on certain things; things that signify a threat to our system. The body in its wisdom shuts down the doors to vital organs like the lungs and does its best to expel whatever intruders flew in under the radar. An initial encounter with deep dharma can be like that. I contract, protecting treasured views and assumptions. My fear-based reactions are to render myself cold and still; distant and impenetrable.

If the Five Buddha Families are a typology of my form and shadow, apparently I play in the Vajra dimension where things reflect clear, sharp, and precise. The shadow is the manifestation of a character that is opinionated, authoritarian, and demanding of perfection. Thankfully, the aspects of other parts of the mandala soften the edges. But perhaps I could work a bit more on skillfully being opinionated, authoritarian and demanding of perfection.

As part of one exercise we were asked to find our “neurotic” side on the mandala. In other words, how do our everyday anxiety-based reactivities manifest? Initially, I thought it was the Padma family which represents a passionate need to magnetize others into connection. Being a foodie, fit with Padma because it’s such a soothing process when I’m distressed. And certainly, my somewhat incessant need to make sure everyone has a link to community that can embrace them could be called a neurotic need to prevent harm from befalling the lone traveller.

As I looked deeply and contemplated on the motives and intentions of the behaviours which – when unfulfilled – cause me suffering, it was a surprise to see that the need to link people together is just a subset of a need to be sure everyone has what they ask for. It’s a form of generosity gone manic, a contraction, an allergic reaction against the truth of suffering. No wonder when people ask me for a little support and I hose them down with care, they step away – some as far away as the next continent! It’s interesting to tease this out, because another aspect of this neurotic need is to hold onto resources just in case someone needs them. Good thing, before I left, I cleared out my family room and bookshelves of thirty-years worth of accretions, including all the recipe clippings I have never and will never use. This is the shadow side of the Ratna Family.

So, questions for you:

What are you giving away relentlessly in the deluded hope it will be helpful?

What are you holding onto in the deluded hopes it will be useful only because it was once?

4 comments
August 4, 2011

an unfortunate incident with an ink pot

I was responding to ZenDotStudio in a comment stream on Tuesday’s post and explained that this week’s enso series arose from an unfortunate incident with the lid of my ink pot.  The effect (which is on Monday’s post) was quite lovely and being a creature of ever-expanding cravings, I tried to re-produce it using different colours.  The results have been rather nice, I think, despite the contrived nature of the work.

It does remind me that there is a huge difference between a “contrived” nature and a “constructed” one.  After politely trashing a Buddhist book in a review by calling the author’s personna “contrived,” the author attempted a slight-of-hand defense by claiming all personalities are “constructed.”  Ah.  No.  Not really.  More and more, I’m reading books and other writings that say more about the author’s pretense to authority-via-bluster than about Dharma.  When someone uses that big-tough-throw-it-in-your-face style, it sets off a big flashing red light for me.  And the neon sign screams, “Contrived illusion of competence ahead.  Proceed at risk of wasting your time.”

But what about a constructed illusion of competence?  I think that’s called a learning curve.  Black ink ring stain on canvas leads to curiousity about how this might become something useful.  Inadvertently cutting and pasting a data series in a long column results in … results!  Wondering what would happen if I open the computer registry and change a few values results in… well.. let’s not go there.  My IT guy just got a few free therapy sessions from me after that one.

Some people call it the “fake-it-until-you-make-it” approach to life.  I’m proposing there’s no faking it.  Really.  Take a good close look the next time you set up a constructed competence.  Who was the fake who designed, manifested, and realized it?  

We are what we practice.  And practicing competence can be what we become.

I have to go and bow to my little ink pot.

4 comments
August 1, 2011

a tomafoot

It’s a holiday weekend here.  A Civic Holiday when government employees get the day off and those of us who  need an excuse to take the day off do so in sympathetic support.  This year, it seems we all need a rest.  A bit of time to get rid of some of those afflictions that have been clinging on well past their expiration date.  The idea of taking a break, a respite, a reprieve from work is not alien to me.  Being civic-minded, I’m big into conservation.  Conservation of energy, resources, and time.  In fact, burn out theories have tied our inability to conserve resources to a variety of work-related ills.  So, I take my time off as prescribed and allow my inner sloth to manifest.

Unfortunately, this weekend started with my office computer waging a battle to the death.  Friday is not good time for these things to happen.  By the time I got it vaguely functional, it was time to set off on other chores, not the least of which was learning from Frank that the taxi cab who had run into the truck on Sunday had racked up $4,000 worth of damages.  I admire a man who can quietly say things like, “I’m afraid not, sir.  My truck was parked.  You ran into it.  We’re not going to negotiate a 50-50 settlement.”  So, as we drove home, between truck and computer woes, I was overcome by a need to do something wild and crazy.  I got on my iPad and booked two tickets to see the Lion King that same night. 

Before you judge me harshly, let me say it was one of the most difficult things I’ve done.  Not only because it’s been years of refusing to treat ourselves, but because the damn truck was bouncing so much I accidentally tapped on Box Seats.  It was worth the price.  Especially when we came home to another power failure and relished dessert at midnight by candlelight.  (Dessert was fig cashew cream with a dribble of condensed milk.)  The rest of the weekend was spent (is still being spent as you read this) lunching al fresco in the gazebo, weeding the rose garden, and tasting the hot chili peppers that are fighting back a tomafoot of tomatoes.  

 It’s easy to go round and round in same rut believing we’re doing good for ourselves – or even for the world of suffering out there.  And while we may be, it’s important not to buy so totally into that delusion that we forget we too are one of the suffering hordes.  Often, it’s really our shadow side that’s pushing the wheel around, digging the tracks deeper, and convincing us that we’re oh-so-indispensable or oh-so-wise.  It takes practice and time to take off that layer of ego and allow a direct knowing of ourselves.   True, it starts with acknowledging our suffering, being honest about it, being willing to stay with it.  And then we have a choice: we can masochistically stay there and choke in our own skin or leave behind what is keeping us too small for our life.  We can refuse to re-trace the line of old patterns and risk that vulnerability of being human.  And if we think, that’s all there is, we can notice how many times that skin has to be sloughed off as we grow our egos, over and over.

10 comments
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 33 other followers