A Spiritually Unemployed Type Checks Out Reggie Ray

Tonight we had the great, good fortune and treat of seeing Reggie Ray speak in person. I have his book "Touching Enlightenment With the Body" and his teachings, which I first encountered in Tricycle Magazine, have always resonated with me.

But I was not prepared for how deeply I experienced what he said as true. Some of this may drive you crazy, but now you're warned, so if you read on, it's only because you want to be incited! (that's the disclaimer, kids, no karmic lawsuits allowed). He started by saying how much of Tibetan and Asian Buddhism is cultural, bringing with it the hierarchies, the sexism and other aspects that are not essential parts of practice. Yes, I wanted to stand up and shout, yes. That's what doesn't sit right with me. That's one of the things that causes me to say "I am between traditions" when people ask me where I sit these days. It's like that awkward pause when people ask you what you do and you confess that you are "between jobs". Ah so now I get it, I am spiritually unemployed!

Ray seemed so clear and present in a way you don't often see. He talked about how his initial relationship with his Buddhist practice was all in his head and his intention was slightly misplaced. He talked about a brush with a cancer diagnosis (that turned out to be false positive), but lead him to throw out all his academic writings on Buddhism and embrace a more earthy approach that was based on the importance of how we live our daily lives.

I loved his story about his cancer encounter, how he realized as he spent time in cancer clinic waiting rooms, that there are 2 world views. Most of us live in a dream world, he said, even if we say we know we will die some day, we don't really believe it. There is an unreality to it. It's out there in the great beyond of "some day, pass me another slice of pizza, please." The other world view is that of cancer patients, who finally get it on a visceral level that they will die. Once you have been touched by this, he said, it doesn't go away. Speaking as a member of this little club I can attest to what a shocking realization this is. And even though there is a waking up to reality, I don't recommend membership in this club (not that you get to choose)

Ray went on to candidly talk about how he is hated by 12,000 people, briefly touching on his split with the Shambhala community. He spoke of his teacher Chogyam Trungpa with nothing but the utmost reverence and respect.

He did a couple of short body meditations with the group so we could have a taste of his practice, and talked about how his Vajrayana style or pre-Vajrayana meditations bear more similarity to the spiritual practice of indigenous people than Buddhist practice as we know it. It can sound a little esoteric or perhaps heady when he talks about the ultimate reality being accessed through the relative reality but I think it is just the shortcoming of language. It is difficult to describe in words what must be experienced through the body. You need that direct encounter to actually "get it". All the words are really only pointing the way.

He talked about what is really important, is how we live our day to day lives, how we experience each person and circumstance as our path. He talked about how the body is each person's personal gateway to what he calls the "ultimate", what others might call awakening. He talked about how it is all a transformative experience that takes a life time and that it's really all about love; coming to that place where we can deeply appreciate everything we encounter. It's not about "idiot compassion" which has been a subject for discussion out here in Buddha's blogland or "being nice all the time". Just as we can love our children but let them know that some actions are inappropriate, we can use this same discernment but without judgement and unkindness. Not easy, but possible.

I was deeply moved by what I experienced as a deep expression of truth as I listened to Reggie Ray speak. I have seen videos of him and heard his audio tapes and while I often liked what he had to say I was never really touched by it in the same way as hearing him speak for 2 hours. Tonight I experienced the humility and clear vehicle that he is for the Dharma. And for that I am truly grateful.

Closer to the Truth

I am artless, as in without art, new art that is. Due to the last month's activities art has been pre-empted by other parts of life, the parts where people die and you have to find new homes for their stuff or other people get ready to sell their houses and have to clean and paint and declutter.

The last week has been particularly weird. I am not unacquainted with the suffering in the world and yet it seems so in my face lately. In my human-trying-to figure -it-out-way, I ask what's this all about, why is this coming to me? A fruitless, even foolish question, with no answer. It just is. One day there is an email from a new friend who has just received a cancer diagnosis. On the same day a note about another friend who has had a serious cancer reoccurance. Another day some not so good news about a family member's cancer surgery.

I clean out my mother's apartment and though I have managed her passing fairly well I am struck by how sad I feel as I take the last few pieces of clothing out of the closet and put them in a box for the Hospice Thrift Shop. My brother and I ponder the original birth certificates of my parents that we find in a locked metal box my mother kept. There is a finality to it all that can't help but be sad. And yet not every moment is sad. My brother tells stories about jumping on the bed as a kid and breaking it. We enjoy potato latkes and challah sandwiches in the sunshine at a little cafe our mother liked. Impermanance washes over us like the sunshine. We swish it around in our mouths with the coffee.

Yesterday I chipped a tooth and was ready to go down the avenue of, "man things are crazy and weird and bad. Who let the demons out? And I was going to slump into a heap of overwhelm on the chesterfield when a young friend called to tell me his mother had been seriously injured trying to commit suicide. All of a sudden my sad day and my chipped tooth didn't seem that important. Someone elses's troubles eclipsed mine and I offered an ear and some empathy.

I don't mean to sound like a downer but there it is, the truth of suffering all around us, sometimes closer to the top of the pond than others. So many people to keep in my prayers these days. It reminds me of the story of the mustard seed where the Buddha tells a woman whose son has just died to bring a mustard seed from a house that had not been touched by death. She canvases the village but can't find one. It is just one of the ways we are all connected. It is one of the things that helps compassion arise in us.

So as I drove along in the sunshine today I had to remind myself to really see that sunshine, to enjoy the cool fall air, not to get caught up in the story of how I am being overwhelmed by suffering. I can conjure up a whole big story that focuses on the suffering, making it big and everything else small. But that is not the whole truth, everything is moving and shifting. If I can move and shift with it from moment to moment my reality moves closer to the truth. I am freed from the big solid ball of suffering that threatens to suffocate me. It is more like a lacey tapestry with light shining through the openings. My wish for you is that you too, can breath in some joy through the openings.

The Zen of Donuts

Here I am imitating a shopper at the Portobello West Market that I did last Sunday in Vancouver. With the temperatures and humidity being more like Georgia than Vancouver most of the vendors spent some time sitting in lumpish states or discussing where we were in the melting and wilting process. In more energetic moments we lurked around the open doors slurping up little breezes. Everyone was friendly and the quality of the craft out there was amazing and inspiring. It was quiet, it was not particularly profitable and it was fun; all of which are simultaneously possible if you give up wanting. I was curious about the "market scene" and circumstances made it possible for me to give it a try. I don't have to wonder any more. As my Zen teacher would say, "a no is as good as a yes."

So I have been out living in the real world with intermittent wireless access and no burning issues to blog about. I used to say about the dinner making process, "I feel like I've cooked it all." And recently I've been feeling a bit that way about blogging. Of course the Dharma is endless and everywhere but somehow those bloggable moments are not popping their cute little heads up in the landscape calling for me to capture them.

But here's a couple of things I have been chewing on. Worry and fear come up for me. I'm usually not a big worrier but I do get hit with these lightning strikes of fear. This week I had a little go round with worry. As someone who had cancer the mysterious twinges of the body can bring up fear which morphed into a little worryfest for me this week. It's interesting practice watching the mind respond in it's habitual way. First the mind responds to something in the body and then you see how that response of fear creates its own physical reaction. It truly can be suffering embodied, running with that fear and yet..... it is so hard to resist ... the human version of the moth drawn to the flame. And it sucks the energy right out of you, that little sponge towel, worry.

And it really is the cutting edge of practice, working with this. Experience the fear, the worry, yes let's look, what's it all about? And then when and how to redirect? Too much of this is not helpful is it? Or is it like a hole, you need to get to the bottom of it and see what's there? Is it empty or filled with old crap from the past? Get out the shop vac. Or is it just a bad habit, that needs to be directed, like a small child, "no, Melanie we are not going to jump off this cliff, why don't we go to the park instead?" It is skillful means and sometimes I'm not all that skillful, I think. And it's an experiment as is most of this good life. Try it one way, no luck, well on to creative solution #332. And of course as I well know it's not on my timelines. I do my work and the fruits of my training arrive in their good time not when I shout out the order. Who do I think I am, Gordon Ramsay?

I got to sample the fruits of some long hard training with a family member recently, someone who over the years has proved difficult to get along with, who no matter how much I had tried to avoid clashes with, always managed to draw me in and push my buttons. A special talent that drove me mad and then I simply chose to avoid their company. Recently I spent some time with this person and was able (for reasons unknown to me) to simply accept him at face value and spend some pleasant time with them. Life's small miracles.

So those are my Dharma bits. Is that like Timbits (you have to be Canadian to know what those are)? When I was a kid my sister and brother who are much older than I, would sometimes tease me by asking me if I wanted some donut holes from the donuts my sister was making? Of course I would bite and they would give me an empty plate and find this quite hilarious. That's a clue about Timbits and the zen of donuts.

Be Willing To Be Disturbed By The Truth

I have a couple of  Dharma thoughts rolling around in the old grey matter.  I'm not sure why we call it grey matter because I heard Rick Hanson describe our brains as being a lot like a couple of pounds of cottage cheese (but maybe that was just the consistency, not colour. Grey cottage cheese, blech!!).  And that's the useless fact for today kids!

The other day as I was walking with a friend she told me about a woman from my old Sangha that had recently had surgery for stomach cancer, in fact she had her entire stomach removed.  Now while we all might find this a bit shocking it touched me deeply.  In fact I couldn't quite shake the unsettled feeling this left me with.  As I wobbled around in the darkness for a day or so, I considered what it was about this I found so disturbing.

Having done the whole big C thing myself  almost two years ago I could appreciate the difficulty of the situation: the delivery of the diagnosis, the waiting for surgery, the hospitalization, the surgical escapade and recovery.  I knew all those crevices rather intimately.  And did I mention the fear.  Yes the frozen landscape of terror we travel through at various points in the journey.  Of course my heart went out to her.  But it wasn't just that.

What then?  As I went through the excavation project, digging to the bottom of the unsettled hole it looked like this: This woman, who I had reduced into  caricature of herself, seemed to have a charmed life from outside appearances.  She is quite beautiful has a devoted husband an incredible water front home, and a PHD in something.  Everything our culture values, perfection embodied, all the ducks in a row.  And yet here she was ..... in this seemingly samsaric state.  Kind of like a "hungry ghost", unable to eat, but needing sustenance to survive.  

And when I looked it in the eye, lying there at the bottom of the hole, was impermanence, all red eyed and knarly toothed.  Just staring me down, saying Carole, look at me.  There are no guarantees, no one gets one in this human life, can't buy the extended warranty on this one, offer not valid on this product.  The great "unknown", where we all live all of  the time, hadpopped up and given me a big wack on the upside of my pointy little head..  There it was reminding me that squirming is optional but that the nature of existence is that "we really never know".  

I need to be reminded.  I need to be reminded on a regular basis so that I get it at a blood and bones level.  So that I don't continuously push it away.  I need to be an intimate acquaintance of impermanence (ya, me and impermanence we're sleeping together).  It is not dark or frightening if understood in the fullness of what we  are.   We are really just energy passing through this human realm, but somehow when we get here to this little earthy abode we build ourselves a house of  brick solid thoughts for protection.  We don't like it when the wolf comes by huffing and puffing.  There is a Buddhist quote from Dogen in the Shobogenzo that goes something like : " be willing to be disturbed by the truth."    And I think that is it, shearly and utterly.  I was disturbed by the truth.  And as I always find when these things come to me.  I can't make them go away.  Just as they arrive, they leave quietly after I have entertained them.  And I am wiser for the truth.  And me and the big bad wolf, we're going out for coffee tomorrow.  Want to come?

The Dharma of Swine Flu

If you know me, you will know I'm not a big consumer of news.  So the first I'd heard about swine flu was when a couple of friends visited my art show on Saturday.  And then I saw some news of Sunday (more swine flu) and when I stopped by my mother's on Monday, BBC World News was chewing away on swine flu.  

And there it was the Dharma, oinking in my face.  You see I am booked to do "The Make It Show" in Vancouver this coming weekend.  Which means crowds.  Three days of crowds.  Three days of crowds of mobile young people.  Several cases of swine flu have been identified in the lower mainland.  So I needed to think about this.  Actually it wasn't a case of need.  I woke up this morning and the first thought was, "I don't think I should do the Make It Show."  You see I had cancer surgery just over a year ago and since then my immune system (and shall we say body/mind) has been in a state of shock.  I spent a lot of last year bouncing back and forth between one flu and another.  I became somewhat of a mini version of Howard Hughes, opening doors with my scarf, passing on dinner at my mother's care home.  With the help of some serious mega vitamin treatments and some herbs I am doing much better, but.....  

I had to give some serious thought to going to this event.  Would it be fun?  Would I worry?   The weekend itself would be a tiring 2 1/2 days of show, something I knew but was prepared to do.  Was it worth it?  In monetary terms?  In health terms?  Since being sick I have learned to look at things a little differently.  Some things just seem to matter less.  In the end I decided that it was not worth putting myself in harms way for "some money".  I have pre paid $250ish to be part of the show.  I had to be able to say to myself I am okay with loosing that money.  Though it ouches that thrifty part of me (who likes to watch $250 go for nothing?).  I felt I could let it go.  If I got sick and died for $250 how would I feel then???  Oh, you say I'd be dead and it wouldn't matter.  True enough.  Bad choice.  Do not pass go.  Straight to you next life as a small dog!  I had to say that in the past I might be pretty attached to that cash.  But life threatening diseases have a way of lending perspective, encouraging gratitude and equanimity.

I had to look at whether this was a fear based decision.  Carole, are you just running and hiding under the bed?  And my answer was no, that I was using common sense.  I did have the flu in March.  I am more vulnerable than some.  It is not fear based to admit the truth about yourself.  I feel pretty clear about that.  I am not sitting by the TV quivering in my boots.  I am going to the Theatre, out to dinner, to my mother's care home.  True all this swine hype is pretty revved up by the media for the sake of getting people to tune in to the news all day long.  True the media loves nothing better than a good tragedy.  We are in such early stages of it all.  It may well blow over into nothingness but at this stage so much is unknown.  It's not like I plan to lock myself in the house but to put myself in a potentially harmful environment when I don't have to seems unnecessary.  I don't need to go.  I don't need the money.

So I could feel all the discomfort of having to decide, of going back and forth and second guessing myself.  Really all is unknown.  There are no right or wrong answers.  I could feel a sense of embarrassment  about having to backtrack and tell a bunch of people I have changed my plans.  Maybe they'll think I'm a wimp.  But would pride be any reason to go ahead with this?  

I cringe about saying in these pages that I have had cancer.  I have hinted at my "health opportunity" as a friend calls it.  It is strange and if you've never been there, there is something mildly (or perhaps not so mildly) shameful about having to say you've had cancer.  Somehow it seems like some admission of failure, some inadequacy, something for the marked and pitiful few.  But there it is.  It just is.  Is it like coming out of the closet if you're gay???  Or telling people you're bi-polar or schizophrenic?  Maybe I understand the feelings that course through those souls a little better now.

So here I am.  I am fine.  I am good with my choice.  I am disappointed that the young woman who runs the "Make It" Show could not find anything exceptional about my situation to offer me more than routine cancellation policy (1/2 off her fall show).  And yet I am willing to let that one go.  Everyone does what seems good to them.  Ironically she is doing a silent auction for "The Cancer Foundation".

So there it is the Dharma of contemplating our choices a little more deeply, not being so attached to all the things that are out there: our plans, our money, our pride.  It is an opportunity to let go.  It is an opportunity to work with the three poisons of greed (wanting money & outcomes), hate (wanting the show organizer to offer some compensation), delusion (thinking I am healthier than I really am).

I am sitting with that sense of unrest that arises when we have to change our plans, the disappointment of looking at the things that are ready and waiting to go to the show.  And I can be good with my decision.  As Ajhan Chah says,  "let go a little, have a little peace, let go a lot, get a lot of peace, let go completely, have complete peace."

Working With Words And Fear

I heard a story today from a friend that made me think of two things: fear and the power of words.  My friend was having some difficulty breathing, shortness of breath and so visited her doctor.  He sent her over to the Emergency Dept of her local hospital, the quickest way to get an xray.  In the course of examining her and reading the Xray the attending physician learned she had breast cancer 4 years ago.  He immediately jumped to the conclusion that the fluid they found on her lungs was the result of cancer and told her she was probably now sorry that she had declined conventional treatment and would have to see an oncologist and have chemo or radiation this time.  All this prior to any test results.  Needless to say, my friend was left reeling and spent a very uncomfortable weekend waiting for test results.  By Tuesday she was relieved to hear that the tests showed no cancer.

I felt angry for my friend, that this doctor, a person in a position of power, would have such little knowledge or regard for the power of his own words, that he would share his hasty conclusion and his treatment biases with her in the blink of a beady eye.  It  would seem he had no understanding that  his words would instill deep fear in her.  I assume no one in the helping professions would knowingly set out to arouse fear in another.  I can't know this for sure.  The only thing I can know for sure is that words carry power. They can hurt or they can heal.   They can inspire and create hope.  They are probably as powerful or more so than the drugs and treatments this doctor believes in.

Everyday we use a lot of words, mostly without examining them very carefully.  My friend's story made me think of "right speech", one of the Buddhist eightfold path.  It reminded me of how important it is to consider what we say to others, to hold our words up to the light and examine them carefully as if they were small jewels or perhaps tiny granules of poison.  I was reminded of how we can hurt people with our words without even noticing it.  I was reminded of the energy and power of words and how we should handle these harbingers of joy and harm accordingly.

Then I thought about fear, how it can suddenly well up inside us, for any number of reasons.  The situation my friend faced would incite fear in most people.  I have spent time with the C word and it is a very scary place.  So what do we do with that fear.  Well my experience is that  we hold on for the ride.  We experience it in our bodies, if we can sit there, feel our hearts race and our body tremble.  As much as we can we try to be present for that physical sense, to experience it directly.  Sometimes we can and sometimes our minds race away.  Sometimes we need to get up, have a walk, turn on some music, watch a funny movie; skillful means.  I can remember when my daughter was young, our Naturopath commented about fever, "fever is good  but you don't want it to overwhelm the body."  My experience with fear is the same,  that sometimes if the fear is intense we may need some relief from it.

And if you watch fear, it comes and goes, just like everything else, it is impermanent.  We might think it is always there, but there is an ebb and flow to it.  And mostly if we can just stay with it for the wild ride, we find that it either changes or it isn't exactly how we thought it would be.  And if we are present for it, we can take the next tiny little step needed and keep moving and readjusting from the points along the path.  And weirdly fear can be an opportunity, an opportunity to connect with others, to experience their caring and generosity of spirit, an opportunity to soften up a little, to recognize how vulnerable and frightened we all are inside, an opportunity to get to know ourselves and how we operate just a little bit better.

There is a sign I love in the parking lots of some of the regional parks around here.  The signs read, "Thieves operate in this area."  (like they have some kind of special permit or license).  We are kind of like the park.  You never know when fear will operate in your area.