Treasures of the Self

Another little shot of the Zen garden in progress

In a comment on my last post, Dharma blogger extraordinaire 108zenbooks said something like "even in the harshness, I feel your gentleness".  This got me thinking.  Since that post was about the heavy club of judgment we often wield, I wondered about the flip side of that stick; appreciation. My own gentleness, hmm, appreciate that??

While we are often quick to cite our shortcomings and could easily whip off a long list of them in a blink, we don't often give much attention to our strengths or positive qualities.  Have you ever been at a workshop where people are asked to name their positive qualities or strengths?  Things get very uncomfortable and quiet.

To cite the bleeding obvious, as Basil from Fawlty Towers might say, I am not talking about ego here.  But you knew that, even if you've never seen Fawlty Towers (poor you!).  We are not puffing ourselves up here like peacocks, filling ourselves with false confidence, but contemplating the unique qualities  and gifts we came here with.  Because we are individuals, with our particular karma, we carry with us unique gifts.  Lynette's comments reminded me that one of my qualities is indeed gentleness.  I often see this as some sort of shortcoming and that would be judgmental fairy waving it's dark little wand.  And I think each personality trait (can I call it that?) has it's flip side.  Tenacity can also manifest as stubborness.  Gentleness can morph into timidity.

But I think as part of our practice we need to develop an inner confidence, one that we develop based on clarity and intuitive knowing of our relative self.  This is where our practice begins.  Without loving and appreciating our little self, we can never hope to move outside of it and experience the dropping of boundaries and seeing the bigger picture of "no self". We need to appreciate and value this "little self" first.  It can only be an aid to our practice because it takes courage to do this work, to travel this path, to know that we are fine just the way we are and we can do better.

Bill Plotkin, from the Environmental Buddhist site says, "Each of us is born with a treasure, an essence, a seed of quiescent potential, secreted for safekeeping in the center of our being. This treasure, personal quality, power, talent, or gift (or set of such qualities) is ours to develop, embody, and offer to our communities through acts of service -- our contribution to a more diverse, vital, and evolved world. Our personal destiny is to become that treasure through our actions..."


What are your gifts that you came here to explore and share?

Buddhist Pep Talks for January

Is it just me or is January a challenging month? After riding the updraft of the holiday season, visiting with family and friends, I always get a little melancholy in January. It's kind of classic, isn't it? There is the excitement of looking forward to the new year, writing about it in my journal and contemplating it and then it's here. And then comes the question what to do with it? The evenings are dark and quiet, the sweet treats have been put away in favour of a cleanse.

So I am thinking of what little Buddhist pep talk to give myself. So here are the things I have been reminding myself of: "Impermanence., I whisper, remember impermanence. It's the opposite of those little labels in the back of shirts that read "permanent press". While something may seem as solid as Arnold Schwarzenegger, they too shall pass. And observation moment to moment shows me the truth of this. I don't need to say to much else to little self on this subject, she seems to get this one.

Another thing I like to tell the little self is" self, you have a choice. You can spin a long strand of spidery thoughts or you can choose to see that cobweb as ethereal, spun silver, or you could just blow that cobweb away . You get to choose how you use your mind. Pop that tire out of the rut."

That melancholy that settles over me so snugly is simply the movement of the emotions. "Self, are you listening? You can be pulled down a long dark road by the chain of feelings or you can refuse to get on the bus. Just like at the department store of thought, you get to pick. Are you buying this one or not? " We are drawn to the arising of feelings, sometimes by a ferocious pull, perhaps from beyond this lifetime. Habit, karma? And yet one thing I remind the inward peeping little self, is that it can be a razor's edge, not pushing away what arises but not indulging it. We need to spend a little time on this tightrope to find our balance. "And did you throw out those rose tinted glasses, like I told you to?"

And so the feelings and thoughts about the time of year and how I feel come and go. I watch them like some personal little youtube video. There I am riding the horse. There I am falling off. There I am wishing I had a cup of coffee. And so it goes and it is really all just fine. I am grateful to be in the position to do this, to watch and learn and contemplate. And to keep company with my amazing companion, the Dharma.

Bidding For Good

Today is the opening of the Shambhala Sun's On-line Auction. Just in time for Christmas shopping! Is that a Buddhist oxymoron? Or does that make me a moron for suggesting that Buddhists should do Christmas shopping? Oh, help get me out of this tangle! At any rate there are some pretty fine treasures and retreats over at the auction site including a piece by moi! This is my second year participating and I love it. Last year a woman bought my piece for her husband's office and I shipped this little surprise directly to him. It was fun to know the story and to be part of the gift giving process.

But I am always honoured to be able to offer a little something to such worthy players. It was fun to watch the bidding on my piece at the recent SFT auction. This is such an easy, fulfilling way to be able to offer what seems uniquely "me" to the cause of supporting the Dharma. Am I getting into the hot water of ego (who is this me?) and desire (shopping?) Okay time for me to go back to the cave. There's a lot of cave talk these days, especially here. And of course it is the season for hibernation. Let me lumber off.....

Thinking Mind, Grumbling Mind, Embrace Them All

Here is another refining. I have touched up Buddha, adding some more subtle detail, somewhat in the same way that by doing my practice I am refining myself. It is true that we all have Buddha nature and depending on how you like to look at it we can see ourselves as scraping the "gunk" of our karma off our lovely personal self portraits to reveal the our true nature. Here we are energy, having a human experience. And the teaching reminds us that this is a rare and precious occasion. But how often do we (I) really remember that my human life is a rare and precious treat to be savoured and held with reverence?

I have been watching my grumbling mind again (still?). So what else is new? The little faults I find in daily things and people. I see the grumbling and my first inclination is "I don't like it". I resist this aspect of my humaness, my karma. I have a difficult time making friends with it, seeing it as just thoughts. I go immediately to the place of feeling "bad" that I am petty. I heard a talk in an online course called "Awakening Joy", I believe the woman's name was Catherine Ingram, where she talked about standing on the tube platform in London's underground and thinking: "I could just push that person over there onto the rail line." She said that doesn't make me a bad person. It is just a thought.

And my Zen teacher has pointed out, it is what we do with that thought that is important. If we have an angry thought, do we act on it? Or do we simply feel the internal power of that anger, its energy and watch it pass (however long that takes). It is our response that we are working with. Thoughts and emotions arise. Do we react (without care) or respond (by considering the bigger picture)?

Our future karma depends on this. Do we strengthen those inclinations of anger and me, me, me? Do we build the neural pathways that lead to similar future reactions? Or do we work to resist and restrain ourselves from following "unwholesome" paths of action? These are the questions of the day, of the weekend for me? This is the cutting edge of practice.

So if I am mindful I remember to be compassionate toward myself, instead of judgmental. I can look at the suffering that this little scenario has caused for me and see that it is the suffering that leads to the end of suffering. If I had acted on every little negative thought, this would be the suffering that leads to more suffering! And experience tells me that this is not the way to go. So here I am finding polishing the family heirlooms (the human family!).

In the Company Of Confusion

This little mixed media piece sold at my art sale last weekend but I've been thinking about it.  The text on it came from an old Shambhala Sun and as I cut out bits, I read some.  One thing that seemed to linger on was the comment that "until we are enlightened we are subject to a lot of confusion" (or delusion if you prefer that term), that confusion is a common human state.  

That resonated with me.  It's one of those things I like to think of as the good news and the bad news all rolled into one.  It's good news because it reminds me that I am not alone in my confusion because sometimes I'm so confused I think I'm the only one that's confused.  Sheesh, that's confusing!  Would someone please just hit me with the enlightenment stick.  And well the bad news is that confusion can feel pretty unsettling, like a little ball of chaos rumbling around inside you, maybe how you'd feel if you'd just eaten the spiritual version of a deep fried mars bar?  And I think the reason this comment on confusion resonates is I see it's truth in my daily life.

I see the truth of it because as impermanence would have it, the confusion finally just lifts and I get a little clearer .  Or at least I think I do.  I get to look back and say, ah I get it now.  Right now I can look back and say that several weeks ago I got carried away and planned more than is sensible for me.  I was driven by the desire to make things happen, so much so that I wasn't very clear.  I wanted this and I wanted that.  I wanted action and excitement and I was going to make those art sales happen!  So I buttoned up my  I-can-make this-happen coat and plunged head long into the wind storm of want.  I learned that desire and the belief that we are in control create a pretty foggy landscape, one that's easy to lose your way in.  And it offered me a little lesson.  And to my credit I was willing to stop at the fork in the road without having to get rear-ended or fall off a cliff.

So it's been an odd week.  A number of things have happened that do not necessarily please the little self and I find when they pile up one on top of the other very quickly, that's the best time to see the  unreality, the foolishness, the folly of the self.  And as my Zen teacher would say this chips away at the little self.  In fact I'm sure I saw a little piece of self flying off this morning as I sat.  That was the image that came to me, a little shard of self debris flew off into space.  I'm sure it's orbiting some distant planet by now.  But enough imaginary space games for now.

It was so interesting to watch ME TV this week and see the unrest and disappointment stirred by not getting what I want, by having my plans thwarted.  Ah desire, how sticky.  In my head I know it but ....  I could watch that bummed out feeling come and go, come and go.  Until finally it just went, gone today, carried off by time and perhaps the sunshine, perhaps the change in activity.  It's one of those mysteries really.  It didn't go away because I willed it to go away.  It went away on it's own time lines.  Again reminding me of the amazing fact that all I need to do is my part and let go of peeking around the corner checking for results.  We can't make "feelings" go away.  That doesn't mean we should wallow, of course.  It means sometimes we spend time in the company of feelings that are uncomfortable (think of them as a certain type of house guest).   We breathe and stay present and squirm some, feel where it resides in our body.  And this takes courage.  And I can't say I can do this well or consistently, but I am willing to try.  It's kind of like that old saying "we don't know when we're enlightened but we know when we're not."   So feelings of equanimity and groundedness have returned and I appreciate their company more than ever.  In fact I think I will set out a little vase of flowers and some towels and turn down the covers for them.  I hope they stay a while. 

The Dharma Is Waving At You

I have been hijacked by the real world and become a faint shadow to the blog-osphere.  This implies that somehow the world in which we are commun-icating here is something less than real?  Which leads to the next question, what is reality anyway?  Oh, oh, I'm not going down that rabbit hole, Alice.

But I think you get my gist.  I have been preoccupied with the Bricks and Mortar, flesh & bones world of creating art, finishing work, organizing work, etc, meeting other artists and folks interested in art.  And sometimes I have been composing blog entries in my head but my fingers have not quite gotten to the keyboard.

We went to the Opera for the first time on Saturday and as always there was the Dharma, standing right in the middle of it all, waving at me.  Wherever you go, there it is!  It was the Magic Flute  and so many times during the wonderful pre Opera talk that we attended and during the show I wished I'd had a pen to jot down "that's Dharma".   So I forget many of the specific references but unbeknowningly Mozart was definitely speaking the Dharma which reminded me that all enduring art speaks some kind of truth and of course what else is the Dharma but an expression of eternal truth.  How could they not coincide?!

You could see how some of the characters in the story were simply aspects of the self, our poisons (greed, hate, delusion) our confusions and delusions.  And really what else is the search for love, which is the main tale in the Magic Flute, but our search for wholeness and happiness and harmony, uniting aspects of the self.  There was the symbol of 3 which apparently was supposed to represent the Free Masons, but is an archetypal symbol in both Christian and Buddhist religions.  There was so much more but I won't bore you with details.  It was a great evening of  story and music and  people watching, that reminded me of how delicious people are to watch in their wonderful variety and quirkiness, the delight of people dressed in their varied finery.  I could have been happy just to watch the Opera goers all evening.

And in two days of Open Studio I got to watch myself and as a young Dharma friend expressed so well "move back and forth between hope and fear".    I might not necessarily call it fear but I could see all the expectations of how it "should go" and the disappointment when these expectations were not meant.  Mornings were quiet, afternoons busier.  I had some wonderful Dharma chats with friends.  One friend who has been doing some very hard spiritual work talked about how painful it was.  And then we could talk about "the suffering that leads to the end of suffering" which is the hard stuff but you are doing your work and and then there's the suffering that leads to more suffering when we're just falling in the hole.  Another friend I hadn't seen in a long time and struggles with addiction issues talked about how strong the draw is to these things and how hard it is to get unstuck.  She has done some hard work lately too and said she could see her own "willfulness" more clearly now.

I met some delightful fellow artists and one particular treat was to find a woman whose work I love and have admired visiting my studio.  So while the weekend was perhaps quieter than I'd hoped for it was rich with Dharma and connections.  And as my friend the monk always reminds me "we can never really please the little self".  I reminded myself that we never really see the big picture, that our expectations are formed out of a pretty limited world view.  And in the evening as I read my bedtime bits of the Dhammapada I was reminded of this in Easwaran's commentary," ... to make progress we become eager for opportunities to go against self-will, especially in personal relationships. There is no other way to gain detachment from the self-centred conditioning that burdens every human being.  The Buddha calls this "swimming against the current", the concerted, deliberate effort to dissolve self interest in the desire to serve a larger whole, when eons of conditioning has programmed us to serve ourselves first."  I am sure these opportunities await us all today out in the world somewhere.  May you find them, rise to them and savour them!

Sunday's Mud Bath

Yesterday was a day when you could wear a Spring coat and feel the sun on your back.  We met friends at a little Italian place tucked away in the corner of a downtown plaza and  feasted on grilled vege and pasta and then took to the streets.  We wandered and chatted and passed a Saturday afternoon in the most pleasant of ways.  When they headed for home to rescue their dog from standing cross legged by the door we browsed in a favourite book store and I ended the afternoon by snagging a "just like new" copy of "The Dhammapada" translated by Eknath Easwaran. 

Here is a quote from the beginning commentary that felt appropriate for today:  "Nothing in it (the world) happens by chance -- not because events are predestined, but because everything is connected by cause and effect.  Thoughts are included in this view, for they both cause things to happen and are aroused by things that happen.  What we think has consequences for the world around us, for it conditions how we act."

I am thinking about this quote not only because it is a very good basic description of karma but it is a good thing for me to consider in light of how the day went.  It started off fine, with a sit and some household chores, a nice walk on the ocean path with my partner.  The sun was shining and the path filled with Sunday strollers and their 4 legged friends (egads there was even a ginger cat on a leash!)  One of us was feeling grumbly (and I won't mention names) and that's where the conversation headed.  By the time we got home I was feeling grumbly too, perhaps doubly grumbly as my efforts to cheer fell flat.

Now that should have been the occasion to regroup or let go but it seems that dark little cloud of a mood gathered.  It didn't really take much to send me into a funk, thinking of all the things that weren't turning out as I'd like.  And it was interesting to watch the momentum of the darkening energy.  It seemed larger than warranted like it had some origin somewhere deeper that was waiting to surface.  And I find it's a tricky thing.  It is unpleasant so what do you do? Are you pushing it away at this point or are you letting it go?  Is it possible to just let go or do you have to wait for it to run it's course and pass of it's own accord.  Was I hanging on to the misery just because that's what I do sometimes?  Is it an a habitual tendency of mine?  Is it the little self just engaging in a some drama to stave off boredom?

In the end the quote from the Dhammapada reminded me to be careful about how I use my mind, to be more vigilant.  My grumpy thoughts "were aroused" by things that happened, as the Dhammapada pointed out, but then my subsequent thoughts "could cause things to happen", a little domino effect.  It reminded me that feeling grumpy was really a kind of sloppy, lazy response to someone else's grumpy thoughts.

Both of us fell into wrong view by allowing our mood to be determined by situations that were happening out there in the world.  You know those little things that influence your mood.  Our real estate plans were not turning out as we'd hoped, house fix up's and work projects not progressing as quickly or smoothly as hoped for.  There's always something, if you want to see it that way.  Or you could say, as the Dhammapada points out "nothing happens just by chance" and a bigger picture is playing itself out.  Perhaps the timing is not right for what "I want" right now or perhaps this is an opportunity to learn a little more about perseverance.  Maybe it is an opportunity to practice acceptance of what is rather than insisting that the universe comply with my desires.  Here is one of the big causes of suffering, the gap between what is and what we want.  Now of course this never means that we should collapse ourselves into inaction but it does offer us an opportunity to look at what we're  doing and contemplate our next options.   So as I head off to find a cup of tea I will think about this line from the verse on the elephant from the Dhammapada: "Be vigilant, guard your mind against negative thoughts. Pull yourself out of bad ways as an elephant raises itself out of the mud."