Poking Holes In The Busy Mind

I don't have any new art to show due to a variety of distractions so I will do a little shameless shilling for some of the holiday cards I have posted to Etsy. And that's all I want to say about that.

As I worked away this morning clearing out the kitchen cupboards, that will be removed tomorrow to make way for new ones, I became aware of a subtle (no maybe it wasn't all that subtle!) tension. It was this tendency to rush. I need to get this done and then that done and how about the next thing, blah blah blah! There was my mind chasing me around like a horrid little boss, not even in exchange for minimum wage. Mid swish of the dish cloth, I stopped, remembering to just enjoy the pleasantness of doing. I realized I do this a lot, think of the long list of things that need doing, mostly inconsequential things in the grand scheme scenario. It creates a palpable tension in the body, steals the present moment and sucks the joy right off the bone (that's a nod to all you turkey eaters out there!)

It reminded me of a Pema Chodron video clip that I'd seen out there on the web (maybe over at Mind Deep) where Ani Pema talks about this restless state of needing to get on to the next thing. She talked about how she even experienced this unsettled feeling when she was on a solitary retreat where there was nothing that needed to be done next! So that is the state of the ego, the mind always puffing up it's important little self, creating a story of this or that. It is a habit of mind, that we can dissolve by pouring our awareness on to it. But is there more too it? Is this the mind's distraction to prop itself up, to keep us away from our real work, which is to chip away at our ego based identity, to turn this little self from a solid, hungry being into a thinner more ethereal shadowy creature, poked full of holes, the ghost of swiss cheese. Or am I on to some sort of spiritual conspiracy theory?

The Zen of Home Renos

I could make excuses for being awol from the blogging world but what are excuses anyway? Justification, explanation, the whirring of monkey mind when we feel we should have done other than we did. Wisdom lies simply in acknowledging what is. I have been preoccupied sweeping and phoning and feeding the fabulous carpenter who is staying with us while he does some reno work in our new-to-us house. It felt comfortable to use a dear friend's brother, from another island, to tackle the long list of jobs we had for our new place, jobs that fell beyond our meager skill set.

So with some enthusiasm and a smidge of trepidation we invited someone we hadn't met and his two papillion puppies into our home to stay while he worked, putting in doors, taking out shower stalls and walls. It has worked out swimmingly. He is skilled and quick, good company and easy to get along with. I remember my Zen teacher saying when things went well: "it didn't have to be this way." In other words appreciate and feel grateful for what goes well and smoothly in your life. Too often we tend to ignore these things. We never think, "gee I am glad not to have a toothache!"

And as always there is Dharma in everything. I get to watch my habitual tendencies, the tendency to feel a bit on edge having someone I don't know around the house 24/7. And then when I remember, I remind myself to relax and just be the silly, foolish self that is me and to enjoy our new housemate with all his own fun and quirky details.

Not being a dog person I wondered about having 2 busy little dogs around the house and honestly they are fine, cute, quiet and well behaved. I even found them sleeping in front of the Buddha in the Zendo one afternoon. Before I could snatch a picture I had disturbed them and they got up. So I am learning new things. I remember the words of Patrul Rinpoche in "Words of My Perfect Teacher" when he lists the difficulties that sentient beings born into the animal realm have. I don't worry so much that they hop up on the blanket on the couch for a little snooze.

A small glitch in a wall that got opened up presented a problem and over dinner we came to a compromise solution on how it could be dealt with, not what I had hoped for, "but sure the easy way would be okay, I agreed." But when I awoke in the morning I knew it was not a comprise I wanted to make if at all possible. So over coffee I pursued an alternate solution, asking more questions and I found that I could get closer to the outcome (less wall, more open space) that I was looking for. It reminded me that kind and thoughtful perseverance is a good thing, that if something is important to you it is worth following every thread to the end. A big Dharma lesson for me over the years has been that, just because I decide on one thing in the evening, doesn't mean the issue can't be revisited the next morning. I tend to operate from "well I agreed to this, I need to stick to it." It has been a big lesson for me to learn, that I can change my mind, nothing is written in stone. You can always move from where you are.

And I could feel so much gratitude for our carpenter's cheerful ways and competence in his work. I feel very fortunate to have found such an easy, uncomplicated solution to the work that needed doing. And so while I have been simply leading an ordinary life doing mundane things like preparing 3 meals a day and sourcing material and gathering needed supplies, the day is filled with Dharma, the dharma of working with habitual tendencies and of feeling gratitude for an easy relationship with our skilled help. It is fun to prepare food for him as a sort of offering.

What Dharma are you finding these days in your ordinary life?

Dharma Demons & A Trauma To The Head

I have been awol from the blogging world this week. If I had to write a note to the teacher it might look something like this: "Carole has been absent this past week because of a severe trauma to the head. She incurred this while trying to build an iweb site and register a domain name. She is still a bit dizzy and more stunned than usual so please excuse her from gym class."

Anyway the end result of banging my head against the internet is that you can visit www.zendotstudio.com and see an online portfolio which may be useful to me for more purposes than knocking myself silly.

I have noticed a couple of Dharma demons who visited me this week. The first one is what I would call an "habitual tendency", a term used by my Zen teacher. Over at Full Contact Enlightenment she links to an article which describes our "emotional signature" (which sounds a lot like habitual tendency). Don't you love that term, emotional signature? So we can say to friends, "Oh yes I signed that little drama we had yesterday with my emotional signature. Do you like the little flourish on the s or the way I always forget to dot the i?" No, not so much?" Anyway check out this piece by Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, it is a very interesting read. And looks like he has a book coming out this fall called "Rebel Buddha". I love that title. I don't get too attached to words do I?

But I have digressed. Remember the Dharma demon I referred to a few thousand words back? My partner got sick, either a touch of the flu or food poisoning or something like that, on Monday. Well for me, a little alarm button goes off, all whiny, a fearsome little buzzer that goes something like: oh no, I hope I don't get this. I always catch everything. I don't want to be sick. I hate being sick. I will probably catch this, I always do." says she who has been shell-shocked by a number of illnesses in her adult life. I recognized the little refrain right away and immediately called in the mind to do a little remedial work. " We've got an emotional clean-up in aisle 6. And call out the neural pathway crew to lay in a new groove and put up "don't go there "sign on the old road." The crew did their work rather efficiently and while I imagined feeling a little unwell, the week passed sans stomach upset.

Demon #2 dropped in for a little visit yesterday while we were chatting with a friend about finding a house and property to buy here on the island. Several small, off-handed remarks by the chatee (or was he the chatter?) threw me into spasms of fear. Oh no, what if we can't find a place? What if everything is too expensive? too small? too ugly? Yada yada yada.

I recognized how little it takes to awaken those demons of fear and worry, a classic human habitual tendencies, I think. We bounce back and forth between fear and hope, I once heard Pema Chodron say. And again, once I could see what old monkey (or was that gorilla) mind was up to he collapsed like one of those inflatable clowns (not before he'd bounced around my mental landscape for a bit).

So that was my week, pursued by demons, brutalized by digital thugs. In between I had enough time to have lunch with friends in Victoria and deliver some art to ArtCraft for their summer show. How's your week been?

Snow Globe Buddha Offers Greetings

Okay here's a Christmas Koan. What kind of holiday card do you send to your Buddhist friends? Is that like the joke, what did the Buddhist find when he opened his Christmas present? Emptiness. I know this is okay because you've come to expect complete foolishness from me if you pop by here now and then. I don't bill myself as a Zen fool for no reason at all!

I did this little mixed media piece last year (it's sold) and decided it would make a nice little holiday card. I've been searching around for the perfect quote. This morning on Tricycle's Daily Dharma there it was waiting courtesy of Sylvia Boorstein: "(I often think about the snow globes with lovely scenes at their center, scenes hidden from view as long as the “snow” is shaken up. Once the globe is left alone on a steady surface, the snow settles, and what is meant to be seen is revealed.)" I have simply used the last part of the quote "the snow settles and what is meant to be seen is revealed." And a little shameless shilling - they are for sale on Etsy if the fancy overtakes you!

It's a great thought actually because it is so habitual for us to be stirring things up. I have heard Dharma talks with the same message based on a glass of water and sand or a lake, but the stirring of silt and mud all have the same effect. These liquids and their swirling bits are offered to us as reminders that running here and there, with our incessant chatter and pouring over things simply muddy the water. If you are engaged in a regular sitting practice you will know how helpful it is to just sit; how sometimes the answers or solutions to problems just arrive as you sit. Or the problems loosen their grip on you. But we also know how difficult this is when life puts a little squeeze on us. It's hard to stop shaking that globe. We just grasp it as hard as we can and shake and shake.

Our wanting to make things happen, to have things go our way, our sense that we are in control; these are the things that cause us to grab that lovely clear snow globe and shake the dickens out of it. We think all the shaking will make the snow land in just the loveliest little drifts that will please us, but in reality life doesn't work this way. Yes our actions have consequences, but we are not privy to all the things that go into creating the results. So here is the Buddha in all his lovely hot pinkness offering up holiday greetings and Dharma from within his little enso of a snow globe.

What are you shaking up in your world today?

Finding Your Way Home

Finding Your Way Home

 Original Collage on Vintage Book Page          Matted Size 8"x8" - Image Size 4.5"x 3.75"

$25 CDN free shipping in North America

Do you think I'll be able to touch my toes with a pencil in 3o days?  Is my 3o days of art like joining curves or weight watchers for the right side of my brain?  Maybe that part of my brain will be lean and muscular or maybe it will be sneaking out for french fries when no one's looking.  Wouldn't it be great to discover you are creatively double jointed, that your mind can bend backwards in strange contortions creating amazing and wonderful things.

Just like in other parts of our life we have habitual tendencies.  I think it's the same in our creative lives.  We have places we know, grooves that are burned into our brains, little neural cow paths.  Sometimes we  call it our "style" and it's not a bad thing.  But sometimes you need to stretch, you need to move off that familiar little cow path and sometimes you need a little kick to get you going.  Is that a goat on my cow path?

Knowing I am going to create a small piece everyday, somehow lets me wander off the path.  It feels more like play and exploration.  And this is where happy accidents happen.  I didn't know I was going to create a little village when I started out this morning but here it is... something totally different than I usually do. 

As I cut and pasted and painted I looked at the little houses with their pleasingly simple forms and thought: " What is home?  Where is home?"   It's not just a bricks and mortar kind of thing or a straw thing with 3 little pigs and a big bad wolf.  It reminded me that we have a deep call, a pull toward home like Odysseus in the Greek myth.   This is the Dharma of home.  Home at it's deepest level is our authentic self.  We are searching to discover who we are, to understand what is really important in our lives, to be comfortable in our own skin, to know we are perfect in our imperfection, that everything is fine just the way it is; all our bumbling and stumbling.  That is the feeling of our true home.  It is a place of calm and comfort and generosity. But home always has its dark corners and a cellar that can be dank and earthy, where bottles of old wine and ignored heirlooms hide.  Perhaps a dusty attic that holds a cobweb and a treasure or two.

That's my home over there, the one that's green and orange, with the crooked stair case, two chimneys and a big porch.  Where's yours?

Preparing For The Best

Last week over at the Dangerous Harvest blog a couple of comments were made that have stuck with me and which I have tried to bring into my daily practice.  In a discussion of Swine Flu there was a comment made about "preparing for the worst" and Barry of the Oxherding blog made an interesting comment of I wonder what it would be like to "prepare for the best"!

Now that turned some lights on  in the dark little room I sometimes bang about in.  My Zen teacher and I often comment  to each other that we are "aversive types" whose minds often go to the dark bits of lint on the carpet.  But to some extent we're all aversive types.  Brain research as cited by people like Rick Hanson over at "Wise Brain" say it's the nature of our brain to be drawn to the negative, rooted deeply in our origin as vulnerable creatures out on the Savannah.  That has helped keep us alive as a species and we still carry this proclivity with us even into our modern world.  What no tigers looking to make a meal out of me, well maybe that neighbour who's making all that noise is a threat to my peace of mind.

So to make a short story long, as I often do, I have been using this as a little mantra, "why not be prepared for the best".  Each time I think about something that could happen or might happen, or something going on that I don't care for, I am practicing saying "why not be prepared for the best".    My Zen teacher would call this "looking up".  And what could be a more helpful way to be in the world.  If we're looking up, we're most likely to see the sun, the birds, the blue sky. Certainly for me it's a turning, it's an opportunity to work with the habitual tendency to look down and see the gum stuck on the side walk.

And it is important I think to remember that looking up, is not putting on rose tinted glasses and saying everything is wonderful if it ain't!  It's not about pushing away our pain if that's what's coming up for us.  It's about not going with the tendency to look through the pain stained glasses all the time.  There is a joke in my family that we make about my mother.  It's either too hot or too cold for her.  And if we're not careful we may find ourselves living out our lives in this same inhospitable environment.  I say time to cultivate a little inner climate change!  I don't have a toothache, it's not raining and I am happy that I am fit and able enough to go off and paint my upstairs hallway today!  I have coffee and a paint brush and am "prepared for the best"

Peeling The Zen Onion

This week I had a really nice phone conversation with a "Dharma" friend I haven't seen in a while.  I will put a moustache and dark glasses on her to protect her identity and keep me from getting into trouble with the people I love.  She had been on holiday with her partner and made the interesting comment that their last holiday together had been a "renewal"  and this most recent holiday had been a "retreat".    She was hinting at the deep and difficult terrain we can get into on retreat (and with those closest to us).  It's like you go off for a sunny hike in the mountains and the storm comes in.  You get soaked, almost freeze, the stove doesn't work, the tent leaks, your boots rub your feet raw.  It is not the imagined trip you had in mind.  And yet, and yet....

She did not go into the details and yet I could feel deeply what she was talking about.  It's about the little dances we do with those closest to us.  And then finally one day we see what we're up to.  Maybe we've done the weird thing, the dysfunctional thing for the 999th time and the light finally goes on.  It is the rubbing up against another, sometimes until we are both rubbed raw, bleeding, scratched, and skinned.  It takes as long as it takes, my Zen teacher would say and then we wake up.  The first step is the seeing and the next step is saying I don't want to do this anymore.  I'm done with that.  And then there we are standing in the wilderness.  We don't know what to do.  The old response doesn't work but we don't have a new one yet.

My friend came to an understanding of how deep the habitual karmic pattern of her behaviour was.  She said she could see it reverberating through previous lifetimes.  In a strange but not fully understood way she perceived the origin of the deeply rutted groove of her behaviour.  When I talked to her, she and her partner were still working through their "stuff, exploring the shrapnel of their "retreat" experience.  It was the beginning of a new and deeper relationship with each other, one where another layer of pain and separation has been peeled off.  It's kind of like peeling an onion, this work of the heart.  We keep peeling and getting closer to the centre, to the truth, to our essential self, to our Buddha nature.  We get to see the first noble truth, the truth of suffering.  We get a first hand view of how we cause suffering for ourselves and others through our deeply habitual and often unconscious behaviour.

Do we ever get that pungent, "makes you cry", onion peeled all the way down to the centre, to the point of emptiness?  I don't know, but it seems worth the work.  And if I were a smart ass I might say something like, when life gives you onions, get out the cheese and toast and make onion soup.

Do You React or Respond?

Today  I needed  a couple of photocopies to experiment on some image transfer techniques so I walked over to a nearby repro-graphics centre.  The young man at the counter looked very hip.  He had a purple shirt on with grey pinstripe pants and white shoes and a white belt.  He clearly had disdain for the minimum wage job he was working.  He was, shall we say indifferent to me and my requests, not so much rude, as bored and uninterested.

In the past I might have responded in kind, feeling somewhat insulted by his attitude but it has become part of my practice to notice such behaviour and rather than to react to it, to try to respond with kindness and caring.  I had asked for copies  on tracing paper which  a coworker promptly told him he couldn't  do.  When I said I had specifically called  a few days earlier and was told they would do it, so they proceeded with my request.  After he'd tried a few copies, came back for more tracing paper, gotten mixed up about how many copies of what he needed to do, I asked off handedly if it was an aggravating process.  For some reason this seemed to diffuse the situation and he completed the job, almost in good cheer, gave me a gazillion copies for 92 cents and offered an invoice and smiled.

It was an interesting exchange.  We both left the situation in a good frame of mind (no new unpleasant residue or karma created) and carried on with our respective days.  I find this scenario is repeated often in shops and restaurants where people are not particularly happy with their work situations.  Sometimes they respond with kindness and perk up when I make a little chit chat and sometimes not.  But always I know I have tried to meet them as a human being, not a server, not an object, and I have made an attempt to add a smidge of brightness to the day.

I did not come by this skill naturally.  I would regard myself as a polite Canuck but if a server was surly or rude, in the past I might have taken it personally and reacted by not being friendly back.  Isn't that what most of us do?  But taking my friend the Buddhist monk out on errands was especially instructive at first.  She always makes chit chat and even asks people's names and about their lives.  She is genuinely interested and goes out of her way to connect with them.  And it has been such an education to watch the grumpiest restaurant server warm to this treatment.  It is amazing to watch the transformation.  And kind of fun.  Now I am not her  and don't do the name or family question thing as it doesn't feel comfortable to me.  We need to make these things our own.  I am more likely to make a silly comment or tell about something related I have heard or seen, if it seems appropriate.  I adapt it my quieter, less outgoing self, still stretching further than has been my habit.

What you learn is that really the surly or indifferent behaviour is not personal and on some level people are suffering when they are grumpy or rude.  If we can spread a little good will by our simple choice to respond with compassion and kindness in the smallest situation then we have added something to the world.  We have made it a slightly friendlier place.  And we feel better for it.  We have not fallen victim to our own self centred "reacting", our self cherishing stance of "how dare you not treat me as the centre of the universe."  We are in control  and we are free when we respond with conscious choice rather than react with habitual tendencies.  We are not dragged around by our emotions.  And it gets to be a fun game or a new habit.  

We let someone in the traffic line, pop a coin in the expired parking meter .  We choose to express our sense of community, our recognition that we are all in the same leaky boat together, in small ways everyday.  We don't need to wait to do works of great philanthropy, we can start with grumpy Mrs. Smith down the street.  Maybe no one has spoken a pleasant word to her in 50 years because she grumbles at everyone.   Sometimes it's the little things that count.  A small gesture of kindness can brighten someone's day.  So perhaps it seems obvious, or not like the Dharma at all, but really that's how we aim ourselves in the direction of  enlightenment, one action at a time.