Category Archives: Western Teachers

Teachers primarily of American and European cultures

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window of opportunity

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What has been cooking within?

Memories and feelings over the years
have formed an “I” that seems so solid
But just as the walls of a house form
a protected space where people live,
this “I” merely provides a platform
for the experience of life.

The body has a shape and a form
and seems so important.
But like a cooking pot,
it is the space inside that is important.
The body is a mere pot.
What has been cooking within
all these years?

I picked up The Sage’s Tao Te Ching – A New Interpretation – Ancient Advice for the Second Half of Life by William Martin.  He writes in the Introduction that “without the reemergence of the sage as the model for older people, we’re in ever-greater danger of trivializing ourselves into further decay and decline.”

The verse above is #11, my favourite verse in any translation of the Tao Te Ching.  In fact, it’s the litmus of a translation, the window into the soul of the Tao.  Martin goes on to write:

The time has come to redefine ourselves.
We are not our memories,
important though they are.
We are not our bodies,
familiar though they are.
There is something else here,
mysterious and elusive.
What is it?

It is time to remove the bars from the windows.  Time to step through, step over the sill into the life we have.

Thank you for practising,

Genju

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window on self-promotion

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An interesting concept: self-promotion.  Some of the events that stirred the dukkha pot over the last weeks have been encounters with the manifestation of self-promotion.  Actually it hasn’t been obvious, coming couched as self-compassion.  However, the language should have tipped me off.

“It’s really important to me to do this on my own.”

“I don’t want to be part of a group.”

OK, I take that back.  The language didn’t tip me off because it sounded very assertive in setting boundaries.  The only thing at hinted at something being fishy was a felt sense of the ground shifting, the subtext sliding from goodness to grasping.  And, I tend to give a lot of credit to the inherent goodness in the Other.  That is, I give credit forgetting that inherent goodness is not necessarily goodness manifest.

Am I being harsh?  I probably am.  My downfall always comes from looking at ways connection and community can be cultivated.  If we dug deep, it’s likely tied to losing culture and community at a young age.  Or maybe it’s having had a powerful family and community which trained a mind that knows there is safeness in numbers, that the work is easier when the aspirations are embodied by many.  Who knows.

Whatever the reason, I know community is critical and it’s always a shock to realize the Other may not share that vision.  I think getting through the koan window on this one is to stop assuming that building sangha is a common aspiration for all Buddhists.  The other part is to develop a discernment of self-compassion from self-promotion.  Paul Gilbert, author of Compassionate Mind, notes that self-compassion and compassion for others go hand-in-hand.  He also is very clear in pointing out the difference between self-compassion and self-promotion.  In fact, as I read it, the latter is a shadow side of the former, cultivating competitiveness, entitlement, and personal indulgence.

It’s hard to differentiate just by listening to the words.  Is it setting a boundary?  Or is it holding a possessive view?  Is it clarifying the nature of self?  Or is it clinging to Self?  It’s a tricky line we all cross over and over.  And I see myself caught in its sticky web when I blunder along assuming the other has not only the same aspiration for a mutual outcome but the same North Star to guide us there.

Thank you for practising,

Genju