Freedom: Living Outside Your Cage

Space Travel

It's funny how shards of truth can show up on the shore of your life, glinting like pieces of beach glass. If you've got your eyes trained on the distant horizon, you're likely to miss the shining bits at your feet. During my qi gong class as we went through our movements the instructor travelled around the room to demonstrate. When she stood by me, an old song started playing in my head "oh, oh, what if I do it wrong." I could feel muscles tense. And then the voice of wisdom interrupted the currently playing program with an important message sponsored by the Dharma, "you know it isn't about how you look, it's about keeping your eye on what you're doing." And somehow this simple observation washed over the edges of qi gong practice and poured into the river of my life. This is the thief, the furtive figure of ego that separates me from what I am doing. Whenever I lose touch with the task at hand and do the big shoulder check or look into the mirror of other people's eyes to see how I'm doing, I enter a cage of my own making.  It was an instant lesson in how not  to be free.

Rock Climbing

For many of us (could I say all of us??), this desire for approval is imprinted early in life, feeding behaviour that has us scanning the terrain to see how we're doing, how we're measuring up. Perhaps it is simply a perversion of the human need to be part of the tribe that causes us to check and see if we've been voted off the island for some infraction, some display of foolishness.  But for some reason as I stood in my wu-ji posture I could see how this thought "of not wanting to be wrong" was like a cage. To become free I simply had to turn my focus to what really mattered, pay attention to what I was doing, not imagining what others were thinking. In a lot of ways it's the simple practice of awareness that we learn in meditation.  We simply need to carry it into every crevice of our life to be free.

This is not to encourage myopic vision and discourage an outward orientation to the world. It is not about focusing on the self and not caring about the needs of others. It's simply about paying attention with care to what needs to be done at the moment, not trailing off into stories on the imaginary horizon and dividing our energies. The ability to give up the worry and stories finds its origins in fearlessness and bravery. This is the tradition of the spiritual warrior that Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche talked about.

My use of the image of a cage reminds me of  a Zen story about a golden bird locked in a cage. The bird struggles to get out but the door is closed. Turns out in, amidst all the struggling and flapping about, the bird neglects to look down and see that the cage has no bottom.

What cages do you live in? What ones have you set yourself free from, dear lovely birds of the great virtual sky?

Opportunity For Practice

This Rocks

Photograph chroma-life ink on matte photo paper

8" x 10"

$25 including shipping in North America

I wish I had painted this but it was created by a prolific, mysterious artist I know you are familiar with.  An artist with enormous range, creating mountains,oceans and forests but also small, simple things like dandelion puffs and grains of sand.  To call this magical creator mother nature is to anthropomorphize and diminish so I won't go there.  The above piece is a photo of a rock I took on Quadra Island and it looks like a wonderful Asian abstract to me, complete with calligraphy and paint splashes.   I think I just blew my cover here.  I didn't cook this up in the studio today (oh, oh).  But I love it anyway.   Who can beat the palette of the natural world?  Everything blends and fits together seamlessly.

I am thinking of things that fit together less seamlessly, perhaps with tears and holes , and frayed edges and imperfections.  I am thinking of us humans.  It seems this week I have been noticing the small miscommunications and lack of communication that happen between us human folk and cause hard feelings and misunderstandings, ruffled feathers (who wears feathers these days?), stepped on toes.  None of the events really impacted me but it seems I was the recipient of a number of stories of so-and-so did this to me.  A visitor to someone's home forgets to mention how many nights they're staying.  Someone else forgets to make a formal invitation to a person that I know was meant to be invited to a special occassion.  One party is oblivious, the other feels slightly offended.  Someone else is miffed that a friend is using a cancer group to promote a multi-level marketing product.  Another person is offended at an authority figure's perceived prickly, impatient attitude. 

And so it goes.  Nothing provides more opportunity for practice than our human interactions.  We can be rubbed raw from banging into each other in large and small ways.  And always there are two sides to every story.  When we notice behaviour in others that offends us, we have the opportunity to look inside and ask why?  Sometimes we dislike qualities and behaviours in others that mirror our own.  In these cases we get to look at what we do and see where we might do better.  Do we run rough shot over other people's feelings just to get what we want?  Do we assume everyone should accommodate our schedule?  And what can we do when we feel someone has overstepped some boundaries of good taste or behaviour?

Difficult questions.  And always it seems to me such worthy places to practice, to stop and spend some time with it.  Should I let this one go?  Is it worth pursuing?  Each event has a different solution.  When the answer comes from deep inside of us and not out of anger or a wanting to retaliate we are more likely to make sensible choices.  Sometimes we need to simply clarify in a kind way.  And sometimes we need to say no, this is not okay, but without anger or malice.

I find that the ability to deal with miscommunications with compassion and kindness is it's own reward.  No residue of regret remains.  You deal with it and move on.  And each time I can do it, it feels like that skill is being strengthened.  Now that's not to say I always get it right, but I try as best I can to wonder "how would I like to be treated in this situation?"  And because I'm human I make mis-takes just like everybody else.  So if you find me mis-taking, give me a little poke or a wink and nudge or maybe just let me know where I've gone wrong with a pinch of compassion.  This reminds me of a game my daughter and her friends played that employed "good little pinches" as they called them!

With A Little Help From My Friends

This little 6x6 is hot off the easel and just in time as I'm running out of art to post.  I am a slow creator and labour over things until I like them.  There is a matching half (another little 6x6) which I will post tomorrow that shows the other side of the Buddha!  Imagine that cutting the Buddha in half, eek!  The words on the painting (that look like they need a little touch up!) are attributed to the Buddha, via the Dhamapada, according to my google search!  It is a much longer poem (maybe I have to do a whole series of little paintings called the Dhamapada? to hold the entire piece because it is quite lovely)

I have to offer many bows to those who shared their personal wisdom with me after yesterday's writing about my mother.  I realize in many ways this is such an opportunity for both my mother and I to be differently in the world.  Today as impermanence would have it my mother actually sounded cheerful when I spoke with her on the phone.  Perhaps there is some relief in her deciding what she wants to do.

 She wanted to talk quite reasonably about her will.  And because my practice has shown me the value of contemplation (and I had engaged in some last night and this morning)  I could, without malice or judgement talk to her about some things she wanted to put in the will that were clearly aimed at people or that might create disharmony after her death.  I could ask her if that was what she wanted to leave behind (and given the opportunity to consider, she said no) and agreed that the bits of "stuff" were not important enough to leave behind hard feelings.

I could tell her that she needed to tell my brother and sister about her choice to discontinue meds.  She wasn't sure that she wanted to do that.  But I felt clear, given her normal modus operandi that this was important for her to do.  Not only would it be about her being clear with people, it would open up a window for heart to heart communication if my brother or sister wanted to go there.  I reminded her that they were her children and should be informed by her, just as I was.  She agreed to my surprise.  In the past my mother has used me (and I have allowed this) as a buffer between her and the world.  I am clear that I no longer wish to assume this role.  It creates hard feelings in the family, denies my mother the opportunity to connect with others, and places undue responsibility on me (which creates resentment in me).  I feel clear that my refusal to assume this long standing role helps both me and my mother.  If I make mistakes (life is always an ongoing experiment) I can adjust my course from my new vista in the landscape.  But a considered response from a non-reactive place is a good starting point.

So this is the Dharma of everyday life.  There it is all laid out before me: impermanence, contemplation, a little right understanding and right action, the fact that life is an experiment and that we are always adjusting our course.  And the fact that the joy and the suffering are always right there, intertwined in their yin & yang kind of way.  And the miracle is  that all this makes life rich and full, chunky and savoury, like some lovely hearty stew, instead of that thin watery broth that the TV and magazine adverts try to sell us. 

Capturing Accidents & Making Mistakes

This painting is from a series called "Zen Squared" which is based on the good ol' Zen circle or enso.  So if a Zen circle represents emptiness what does a Zen square represent?  And this is squared so that means, well whatever it means to those of you who are more mathematically inclined than I.  Me, I'm more interested in words, than numbers.  This paintings seemed the perfect vehicle for some slogans, some inspirational words.  Quotes and  little inspirational quips rank as one of my favourite things, perhaps up there with chocolate and cheesecake.

This one "Capture Accidents, Make Mistakes" is based on Bruce Mau's (a Canadian Designer with an international reputation) Manifesto For Creativity.  Over the years I think there have been a lot of quotes regarding the value of mistakes: things like, "if you don't make mistakes you're not really trying."  

I love the sentiment of capturing accidents.  Somehow in my mind I see a little mistake wandering by and a guy with a big butterfly net catching it, gotcha!  There is something very wonderful and very Zen about capturing an accident, the two words seeming at odds, yet mingled together they create something new and surprising and wonderful, the unexpected.  To "capture" seems so full of intention, while that "accident" just happened kind of by surprise.  It takes awareness to see the value in an accident and then intention to capture.  And finding an accident worth capturing, now there's a Zen moment!  Get ready to pounce, kitty!  Awareness, intention and action all need to come together for us to transform the haphazard into something helpful, or something of beauty or whatever the end result may be.

Make mistakes.  Well how can we help it?  But it seems like we find mistakes shameful or distasteful.  We spend a lot of time avoiding them or pushing them away (it's own kind of attachment).  But in fact it is full of the Dharma, to make mistakes.  Often when we decide to take some action, it is really an experiment in our little life laboratory.  We don't know if whatever plan of action we choose is going to work or splat us in the eye with something that smells bad or stings.  It takes courage to make mistakes when you think about it, to willingly put yourself in the position where you know you have a 50/50 chance of being wrong (or worse odds).  

And, it's humbling to actually publicly admit we've made a mistake.  Mistakes are great teachers.  They teach us how to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and start all over again (as the slightly sappy musical line goes).  And what can be more valuable than learning how to correct our course, move from where we are, and work with what we've got.  What's that other old quote, "life is not about getting what you like, but liking what you get." Okay if I'm throwing out quotes like darts in a carnival game, here's one I found the other day that I loved at first site,  "Act the way you'd like to be, and soon you'll be the way you act."  - Leonard Cohen

I love quotes that inspire me, make me think or act in some way that pulls me past my normal, habitual way of being, that as Cohen says "make me act they way I'd like to be".  And for that I love to read a little Dharma everyday, mostly from the collection of favourite books I have around the house or some new one I have discovered.  Maybe that's tomorrows blog, my favourite Buddhist books.  I have a few!  

So I think we are all experiencing the old Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times."  Are there favourite quotes or quips out there.  C'mon, I know you've got favourites, play nice and share!