What Is Happening On The Inside?

"The real issue for most people is not what is happening outside, but what is happening inside of us. How we experience a situation depends on how we view it -- how we interpret what is happening, how we describe the situation to ourselves. Our experiences of happiness and suffering don't come from other people or other things, but from our own minds.

When we look back over the day or our lives, we may not feel so good about what has happened in the past. It could have been our attitude, or what we said to somebody, or how we acted.

To help us “clean up” emotionally and resolve uncomfortable or harmful feelings, we need a purification practice so that we can learn to forgive ourselves and dissolve the negative emotions and karma we have created.

In the Tibetan Bön tradition, there are several purification methods and skills that anyone can learn and practice. Geshe YongDong will introduce and share some of these methods which include using the breath, mantras, meditation, visualization and hand mudras." from Sherab Chamma Ling Centre on Vancouver Island.

This is a good reminder of how things actually work. We see the world through our particular "karmic" glasses. It reminds me of a quote attributed to the Buddha, "With our minds we create the world." It reminds me of how responsible I am for what I encounter, "of how I see the world".

And I like that there are practices that can help me "clean up" emotionally, things that are perhaps beyond my mundane understanding. I like the slightly esoteric. A little spiritual scrub up! And an important distinction for me is that while I realize I am responsible for my actions it is evident that I am not in control, a big difference.

So if we pursue a spiritual path it is as RM Jiyu Kennet said, "we are standing against the world," that is against the conventional outward looking nature of modern human life. We are as Geshe Yong Dong says in the above quote, concerning ourselves with what is going on on the inside. We bring sanity to ourselves and hopefully kindness and compassion to the world. Care to join me for a scrub?

Nourishing Your Inner Being

"Nourishing Your Inner Being" is the title of Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche's latest webcast which you can watch here. I love that he even asks this question, "how do you nourish your inner being?" There are a lot of similarities in the various traditions of spiritual practice and some differences.

These days I find myself gravitating to the positive, nourishing aspects of practice. Probably for a couple of reasons. I am familiar with suffering and have a personal tendency to be a bit of a glass half empty type. So to bring this body mind into balance it is helpful to pull a little in the direction of the sunny side. Breaking my habitual patterns means focusing on the positive. And I want to be clear that this does not mean putting on a pair of rose coloured classes and a flowered mu-mu and stumbling around giddy with crazy joy.

But nourishing my inner being is something that appeals in the form of building my own strength (physically, mentally and spiritually). In his webcast Rinpoche talks about the 4 qualities of a nourished inner being: peace, creativity and expansiveness, power, strength and confidence and fearlessness. He asks "what quality do you especially need in your life right now?" If perhaps we are feeling stuck or frustrated then maybe we need creativity to approach this. How can I be of help to any other beings if I am not nourished myself? If I am depleted and crabby? Perhaps as an example of what not to emulate??

And in true Bon spirit Tenzin Wangyal describes how we are nourished by the elements of water, fire, earth and air. If we feel suffocated in our lives, maybe we need more air? Try it. Deep nourishing breaths? Time in the great outdoors? Are you someone who loves to swim? Perhaps you find your nourishment in water. Fire is the element that brings creativity and love, warmth and enthusiasm. You probably know some firey folks or maybe you are one?

Rinpoche always goes back to the source of nourishment as stillness of the body, silence of speech and mind and spaciousness of our minds and hearts. We connect with these he tells us through our awareness. The old simple but not always easy.

I always find that the great outdoors is a nourishing place for me. Lately a wander around my pond, a trek in the bush can lift both my spirit, improve how I feel physically and bring a delicous sense of peace to my day. A little hanging out with some tall, straight fir trees is truly nourishing for me (something I learned to pay attention from my wise qi gong teacher). And how do you nourish your inner being these days?

Is Your Life A Dream?

I promised I would share my spiritual thrashings with you and here's a bit. I am reading "The Tibetan Yogas of Dream And Sleep" by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche. Dreams have always intrigued me and I have a dream that has followed me in different variations throughout my life. I am always driving in this dream and of course there's lots of variation, mostly troubling like the brakes don't work, or I'm driving from the backseat. Various people accompany me on these crazy drives. Most recently I was surprised and confused to find myself driving a right hand drive car.

But I digress gigantically. The main focus of "The Tibetan Yogas of Dream And Sleep" revolves around developing lucid dreaming capabilities. Rinpoche says: "If we cannot carry our practice into sleep, if we lose ourselves every night, what chance do we have to be aware when death comes. Look to your experience in dreams to know how you will fare in death. Look to your experience of sleep to discover whether or not you are truly awake." Sheesh, I am barely aware when I'm awake was my first thought! But there is something that strikes me as a practice worthy of exploration.

One of the concrete practices Tenzin Wangyal suggests is this: "Throughout the day practice the recognition of the dream-like nature of life... Upon waking in the morning, think to yourself, "I am awake in a dream. When you enter the kitchen, recognize it as a dream kitchen. Pour dream milk into your dream coffee. It's all a dream, you think to yourself, this is a dream. Remind yourself of this constantly throughout the day.... Keep reminding yourself that you are dreaming up your experiences, the anger you feel, the happiness, the anxiety, -- it's all part of the dream... In this way a new tendency is created in the mind, that of looking at experience as insubstantial, transient and intimately related to the minds projections. As phenomena are seen to be fleeting and essenceless, grasping decreases... Doing this practice, like all practice changes the way one engages the world... When we think of an experience as "only a dream" it is less "real" to us. It loses its power over us -- power that it only had because we gave it power, and can no longer disturb us and drive us into negative emotional states. Instead we begin to encounter all experience with greater calm and increased clarity, and even with greater appreciation."

While this practice is aimed at eventually helping us be aware while dreaming, I like the immediate payoff of reminding us that things and circumstances are ever changing and can't be held on to. As I tried this last night (and he recommends making it a deeper experience than just a thought) I noticed that I was okay with regarding the things I find difficult or unpleasant as a dream but wanted the things I loved to be solid and real. In an instant it was apparent where attachment rested it's hook and claw. I also found there was something slightly disorienting in regarding my life as a dream. I could feel the shaky groundlessness of it all.

So I think I might teeter off and have a piece of dream chocolate with a dream cup of tea. Where will your dreams lead you?

Exploring the Spiritual Landscape

Here's a picture of the carpenter's helpers that have been staying off and on at our house. Sometimes they get a bit bushed from all the work they do and sneak into the zendo to do a little closed eye meditation.

On a slightly different topic from cute little puppies....or perhaps we can say i've been following the scent of something that's been enticing me, at least spiritually. For a while now I have felt drawn to the Bon tradition of Tibetan Buddhism (dare I call it Buddhism?). I started with a book by Lama Surya Das on Dzogchen and then stumbled across some talks by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche and loved the simple directness of his guided meditations and his talks. It felt like the Tibetan version of Zen and I felt somehow at home here. There was a sense that I could connect easily with the meditation instructions and the directness of the teaching. I liked the earthiness of it, the shamanic connection to the earth, the use of the body. I like that it addresses healing of the body, mind and spirit through its practices of healing sounds and dream & sleep yoga.

While the practice feels simple enough even for my pea brain, there are many aspects of it to add and build on as you explore the tradition, breathing exercises, yoga, healing sounds and the intriguing dream yoga. And of course like many Buddhist traditions it works with our pain and encourages us to develop our compassion toward ourselves and others.

There is also a Bon Sangha nearby and Geshe Yong Dong who leads it does Tibetan astrology and offers it on-line. I gave my daughter a reading for her birthday which seemed appropriate as she embarks on professional life as a nutritionist.

Recently after circling them for a long time, I finally closed in on some books on the Bon tradition and bought them. I am currently reading and listening to the CD that came with "Tibetan Sound Healing". Also on the reading list is "The Tibetan Yogas of Dream & Sleep" and "Wonders of the Natural Mind", all by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche. I will keep you posted as I explore the tradition.

Where are your spiritual explorations leading you these days?