Choosing Our Thoughts

If you are reader of Buddhadharma Magazine perhaps you have noticed this piece of artwork (or not!). It's one of my paintings but as an observant fellow blogger noted it had no credits. Problem rectified. Buddhadharma will kindly include the credits in their next issue.

Enough ego fluffing. This morning after I did my meditation the thought popped into my head, "if I'm energy having a human experience, why don't I make it a more balanced experience? I have a choice of where I turn my mind, don't I? Do I always need to head straight to supermarket of life aisle that stocks mainly suffering? Why don't I turn down the aisle filled with grateful, generous, & upbeat a little more often?"

Just a little reminder that I do have a choice. A reminder that the old habitual tendencies need a little attention sometimes, a little dusting, perhaps some serious scrubbing, maybe a little carpentry? Perhaps this thought was prompted by seeing a clip on BBC World News that it was the 4oth anniversary of Monty Python's Flying Circus. One of the clips showed Eric Idol nailed to a cross singing "Always Look On The Bright Side of Life". Nothing like a little craziness to get you to sit up and pay attention.

It's always an interesting question for me because suffering exists. Denial is more appropriately a river in Africa than something applied to our life situation. Suffering allows us to see what we do and change, if that's appropriate. And sometimes suffering just is (the first noble truth), no action required. There is a compassionate side of suffering as the Buddha pointed out. It is the suffering that leads to the end of suffering. Not to be confused with the suffering that leads to more suffering. Same product, different aisles. The second one definitely requires the clean-up in aisle 7 announcement.

But I find it so important to remember (in fact I forget this a lot) that the whole picture contains a lot of variation. Life is rich and full of many moments of wonder and joy and sheer delight (not to mention a few moments of equanimity). We can be prone (read that as I can be) to forget this, to not notice, and wrap the whole parcel up tightly with strands of suffering. The little tinselly, shiny bits of joy get buried. Simple choices of language can make a difference. In a course called "Awakening Joy" someone once suggested that the simple change of words from "I have to" to "I get to" made a big difference in her day. She replaced "I have to go the the grocery store" to "I get to go to the grocery store". Small children in their innocent wisdom often embrace daily tasks with that kind of gusto for life, a gusto that feeds our energy instead of depleting it.

And while some thoughts just arrive, fully formed in our pointy little heads, we do have the choice of whether we entertain them or set them loose. We can question, let go or redirect our thoughts. We can turn them upside down and inside out. We can plant new ones and have a whole new nursery of little thought seedlings. We are the head gardeners in our strange little minds (ridiculous pun intended).

So that's it for the shopping trip and gardening project today kids, we're clipping the "choice coupon" when it comes to thinking and we're getting coconut ice cream, not cod liver oil. When we're done we'll have a big bowlful while we watch those seeds of contentment sprout.

Tasting Life: Sweet, Salty, Sour, Pungent Or Bitter?

I just received my complimentary copy of "Buddhadharma Magazine" and I will have to post my art that appeared there as the credits that often appear in the "gutter" (which is the inside edge along the fold of the magazine) got lost. I had so much fun with that one when they suggested I look in the gutter for the credits. No I couldn't find myself in the gutter, although I know I spend some time there on a regular basis! Anyway I will get credit in the next issue which is just fine.

But what I am getting around to is a piece by Ezra Bayda, a Zen teacher whose clear, pragmatic writing I like a lot. In his Buddhadharma commentary called "The False Promise" he talks about how we spend a lot of time, years in fact trying to "be free of the anxious quiver of being". What a great image, "the anxious quiver of being." It can be almost too much to bear sometime.

And I think if we're honest most of us go there, trying to escape the anxious quiver. We embrace and lean into the comfort and try and get the uncomfortable out of the way as quickly as possible. We're hoping through our practice that we'll become less angry, less fearful, less gripped by our emotions, more clear and wise, less greedy. Some look forward to some sort of "enlightenment". We might hope to be calm and tranquil or clear, maybe blissful. We all spend some time with our hopes.

But Bayda points out: "One of the hardest things to understand in practice is that we don't have to fulfill our idealized pictures of how we're supposed to be or what life is supposed to be. All we have to do is experience and work with what our life is right now. It doesn't matter what arises. Nor does it matter how we feel about it. This may be hard to accept, but all that matters is whether we can honestly acknowledge what is going on and then stay with the present-moment reality of the experience."

So if we're attentive we will see ourselves in our little games, wanting, hoping, expecting. We'll see ourselves trying to control our environment or trying always to figure things out. Why did this happen, what does it mean? As our house hit the market on Thursday I could see this. Until now we have just been working away, focused on the many hours of painting, sprucing and tidying that went into preparing the house for sale. What, the closets need to be neat as a pin, all the kitchen cabinets too, and the basement? But underlying all this work is some expectation that this will make the house sell. I even (for shame) snuck into the yard next door and tidied the pile of old barbecues and strollers that sat in clear view of one of our windows. Pragmatic yes? Am I trying to control outcomes? Yes. I did it out of frustration and longing after several friendly chats with the upstairs neighbours produced no tidying results.

But for me where I really get lost is in the "how I feel about it" part. I love working with what arises, that is my passion, seeing where I hope, seeing how I try to control or make sense of the unknowable. But I am easily lost in the "I wish that didn't make me so mad" or "I wish I was more compassionate", or "I shouldn't feel that way."

So Bayda's article really called out to me, reminding me that it's all okay, the passing clouds of the day. Yes I can do my practice and yes it may change me in the long run but it's really about just being here with "the anxious quiver of being"

There is lots of grist for the mill as our house hits the market, as I prepare to do my mother's paper work and settle her affairs. I will even confess to using a feng shui method to help with the sale of the house, (hoping in action??) that Erin from Dragon Horse told me about. It's a fun little tidbit that you want to know, right? She gave me a little red envelope. In it you put some dirt from your garden, something metal from your kitchen and a piece of wood from a baseboard. You throw all this into a fast running river! Have I resorted to magical thinking or am I just working with unseen energies?

So there it is. Our life as the path. Mostly we know this but it is so easy to loose our way. What comes to us is our practice, not our ideas of how practice or life should or shouldn't be. Each little morsel of our experience is as flavourful as the next if we just let the taste rest on our tongue, not preferring the sweet to the bitter.