Category Archives: Western Teachers

Teachers primarily of American and European cultures

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intimacy

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How many ways can we say “intimacy?”  We say that “no separation, no attachment” is intimacy.  “No gain and no loss” is intimacy.  “Cause and effect are one” is intimacy.  “Responsibility” is intimacy.  “Forget the self” is intimacy.  “Really be yourself” is intimacy.  All these are simply different ways of saying the same thing: be intimate.  Yet so long as we lock ourselves into this bag of skin, we lock out the rest of the universe and there is no intimacy.

Teachings of the Insentient by John Daido Loori

And yet, I wonder… how am I experiencing this intimacy except through this bag of skin…

The flowering almond meets me each year with a profusion of white blossoms.  One year I pruned it in hopes that it would bend to my desire of being a bonsai.  For the next few years, it stopped blooming.  Branches dried and broke off each winter under the weight of snow and ice.  I was heartbroken and finally decided it would have to be pulled up the next Spring.  But we ran out of time and it lay neglected for another year or two.  Then one year, the branches put out burgundy-tinged buds that exploded into clouds of white blossoms.  Sometimes responsibility means letting go and letting be.  Sometimes intimacy is falling in love with how steadfastly things change.

Thank you for practicing,

Genju

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i’m here – you’re there

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The self is programmed not to be forgotten.  You sit there trying to forget the self – and just the trying recreates, from moment to moment, the self.  All kinds of barriers come up.  Every time you get to that edge of “falling away of body and mind,” something pulls you back.  That is the program.  “I’m here, I’m here, I’m here – you’re there.”

Teachings of the Insentient by John Daido Loori

This is a tough balance.  Intimacy means letting go of “I’m here” and falling into the completeness.  Yet, as any narcissist will tell you, it’s just too frightening to let go of the “I’m” and to trust that dissolving the separateness will not be as deeply wounding as what caused the narcissism in the first place.  Daido Loori points out that the self-centeredness is a product of our evolution as creatures without the powers that kept other animals safe.  In the face of predators, we are not fast, agile, or with special skills like the ability to fly away from danger.  All we possess is our brain power and ability to reflect on ourselves.  And that very intellectual prowess has resulted in both beneficial and disastrous decisions in our history.  In creating the “I’m here – you’re there,” we place a barrier to being intimate with all that has, in fact, created us.

I don’t know that there is a cure for my narcissism.  There will always be sticky points in the negotiation between saving the world and saving myself through a momentary comfort.  This is a selfishness that is neither useful nor beneficial.  But here’s a start.  I can arrange my selfishness so that it takes a subservient position to compassion and wisdom.


But not everybody is going to realize (that intimacy with the earth will not permit us to live our lives in the old way), at least not for many lifetimes.  And those of us who are lucky enough to find our way into this incredible Dharma have a responsibility to use its wisdom and sense of intimacy in a way that nourishes the earth itself and all its inhabitants.

Thank you for practicing,
Genju