Category: Awareness

Gratitude Means Taking in the Good.

May 6, 2020

Awareness, Gratitude, Happiness habit, Uncategorized, vedana

Daffodil Hill, Photo by Celia

Contentment is life living through you.

Joy is life living through you.

Satisfaction and strength

is life living through you.

He says don’t be afraid.

Don’t be afraid.

Love, feel, let life take you by the hand.

Let life live through you.

~ Hokusai

“If the only prayer you said was thank you, that would be enough.”

~ Meister Eckhart

“Light will someday split you open; even if your life is now a cage.”

~ Hafiz

Dear friends,

This weekend offered those spring days where the temperature of the air on my skin made me happy. I opened all the windows in my house, shut since fall, and let in the sweet air. This clean air, the gift of limited travel, and fewer emissions blew through my house and filled it with the hope of spring, new life, light, and growth. I felt Grateful. Grateful for this day, the gentleness of the weather and my being here to breathe in it.

Contact with the weather and spring itself brought up pleasant vedana, the second foundation of mindfulness as taught by the Buddha. Vedana is a Pali word that denotes the three feeling states which populate each moment of our lives, the pleasant, unpleasant, or neither pleasant nor unpleasant. As living beings, we excel at noticing unpleasant, especially when it involves pain or interferes with getting what we want. We get gold medals in noticing what is wrong, unfair, and threatens us. We get silver medals at noticing the pleasant. In fact, we unconsciously lean towards pleasant. We shift positions constantly to avoid discomfort, buy sheets with high thread counts, and read about how to create lives with nothing but pleasant experiences. The third state is likened to a radio station playing very faintly, too soft to notice until it gets turned up and we like or dislike it. This experience is the subtle one that usually slides below our awareness; we often try to add something to our experience to escape from the feeling of “nothing much” or neutrality which we can find boring. Understanding how we are pulled by these three constantly occurring mindstates is a way we can gain some freedom. We can understand that we are running from what is unpleasant or neither pleasant or unpleasant or running towards what promises some sweetness.

But how does gratitude fit in? Gratitude is mindfulness and appreciation of the pleasant. It is metacognition, the awareness of the embodied response to pleasure, ease, and happiness. When we have gratitude, we are not clutching at an experience of pleasure, but resting in awareness—oh, the sun on my skin is like this. The scent of magnolia flowers is like this…ah, pleasant.

Folks on spiritual paths can hold themselves to some difficult standards and mistake numbness and neutrality for spirituality and equanimity. We can be afraid to celebrate goodness for fear of becoming swept away by it and committing that Buddhist sin of “getting attached.” We may feel guilty experiencing happiness and delight when so many people on this planet are suffering and mourning. We can forget that our present moment awareness includes what is pleasant and welcome. If we push away our own happiness and dull our awareness, we are not helping those who suffer by tamping down our joy—in fact, if we do not have the nourishment of ease and happiness, we have fewer resources to offer those who are suffering. Noticing the pleasant does not mean we become hedonists, living solely for sensual pleasure and gratification. Noticing the pleasant and seeing it occurring is a way we can bring our mindfulness, the compassionate awareness of moment to moment experience, into full flower.

Gratitude requires that we are fully present for what is good in our lives. If we have a sense of guilt or hint of unfairness—that we aren’t deserving or we should be appreciative of our good fortune because others are suffering, we effectively snuff out real gratitude. Evolutionary biologist, Paul Gilbert (2009) describes this type of obligatory gratitude as “part of our threat/self-protection system. There will be a tinge of feeling bad at not appreciating things…Genuine appreciation is learning to take joyful pleasure; it’s not about ought or should feelings” (p. 238). When we practice gratitude, we are creating a conscious suggestion to seek and notice the positive things that are occurring.

When we train our minds to notice, we actively change the neurobiology of our minds. Neural pathways are strengthened from repeated use. When we actively encourage ourselves to pay attention to the lovely and pleasant, this creates neurogenesis, new connections that further reinforce this behavior. Just like anything, the more we practice something, the better we get at it—our thought patterns are no exception. We can follow our innate bias and continue to dwell on the pain and suffering in our lives or we can balance our experience and train in gratitude—in awareness of the beautiful as well.

There’s a song form the Plum Village songbook which goes: “The realm of the mind is mine I can choose, choose where I want to be. Both heaven and hell I know equally well, the choice is up to me.” This week, I hope you can make the choice to find what is lovely and delights you, to find the gifts of the cosmos that we so often overlook because so much is wrong. Wishing you many moments of delight for all the flowers that are still blooming in this topsy turvy garden of our lives.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

References: Gilbert, P. (2009). The compassionate mind: A new approach to life’s challenges. New Harbinger: Oakland, CA.

2 comments on Gratitude Means Taking in the Good.
I was so Mad…

October 28, 2019

Addiction, Anger#, Awareness, Buddhism, Changing habit patterns, Choice, compassion, Control, Mindfulness of feelings, not abandoning, Uncategorized

Montana hayfield. Photo by Sofie Kirk

“When someone does not know how to handle his own suffering, he allows it to spill all over the people around him. When you suffer, you make the people around you suffer. That’s very natural. This is why we have to learn how to handle our suffering, so we won’t spread it everywhere.”

~Thich Nhat Hanh, from Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames

“A person overwhelmed with anger destroys his wealth.

Maddened with anger, he destroys his status.

Relatives, friends, & colleagues avoid him.

Anger brings loss. Anger inflames the mind.

He doesn’t realize that his danger is born from within.” ~Excerpt from

“Kodhana Sutta: An Angry Person” (AN 7.60), translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu.

“Anger is a zone of energy in us. It is part of us. It is a suffering baby we have to take care of. The best way to do this is to generate another zone of energy that can embrace and take care of our anger. The second zone of energy is the energy of mindfulness.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh, from Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames

Dear Friends,

Two weeks ago, I got mad. Not regular mad, but extra-mad, boiling. Getting mad is not extraordinary, nor is it worth mentioning except for the fact that I have been practicing with my anger for the past 14 years. I had enough experience with anger to believe I knew how to handle this strong emotion, but given the right conditions, anger can be like a riptide and drag us under.

Anger is a secondary emotion. This means that although we attribute the cause of our anger to external conditions—anger is a response to emotions that may be so fleeting or shadowed by the powerful quality of anger, we aren’t aware of them. The “Anger Iceberg” from the Gottman Institute shows some of the feelings below the surface of anger. As practitioners, we understand we are responsible for our creations of body, speech, and mind. This includes how we handle our anger.

Anger serves an important function for the biological survival of our species. Anger arises as a response to the signal of threat and lets us know something is wrong and lets us know when a situation is not ok for us. Anger, with its accompanying adrenalin and norepinephrine, moves us from passivity to action and can propel us to leave an abusive situation, to make changes, to stand up for injustice. We do not want to suppress, ignore, or get rid of anger. It is a crucial part of our ability to take care of ourselves.

Unfortunately, when we are in anger, our nervous system is flooded with stress hormones and the part of our brain that understands about consequence, kindness, and wisdom doesn’t get the oxygen and glucose it needs to function properly. We are operating from the emotional center, the limbic region of the brain. You may notice that in anger, we are very limited and focused—on what is going wrong. We lose the ability to see a bigger picture and to see we have choices. We become reactive and depending upon our conditioning we may yell, fight, both physically or verbally, or escape without understanding the consequences of our actions. In anger as the Dalai Lama says, “we lose the best part of our brain.”

Another aspect of anger I can speak to is the addictive quality of anger. The opioid receptors in the neuropeptide system link the behavior—the action of anger with the reward of pleasure and relief. We get a spike of dopamine when we act or speak in anger, the same high that accompanies narcotics, sugar, or sex. In anger, we are flooded with adrenalin which gives us purpose and provokes action. We can enjoy this feeling of importance and derive pleasure from the righteousness of being wronged. We can get swept out to sea by our anger and the resulting pleasure from the neurochemical cascade and wonder how our mindfulness evaporated so quickly.

I’ve learned over the past years that anger gives plenty of warnings, so I have the opportunity to stop and attend to the feelings that are present before it gets to boiling. As Tara Brach tells us, “everything belongs,” even our emotional responses. We don’t have to shame ourselves or get rid of our angry reactions but recognize that we are called to witness our anger with the same compassion and curiosity we bring to all other aspects of our experience. We can acknowledge that we are fully responsible for the creation of our emotions and what we choose to do with them. This is karma, the literal consequences that result from our actions.

So how do we engage with anger skillfully? When I was so angry, I found myself struggling with the energy of the anger itself—which brought me into the forever humbling experience of being a human being who is subject to stress and overwhelm. I have learned that despite years of practice, anger is one of the strongest biological and habitual snares I’ve encountered. Although I didn’t discharge my anger at anyone—it certainly made my life a hell realm for a while. I found myself shaking my head at how small I had let my world become. When I looked at the situation from a cooler perspective, I saw that my feelings of being trapped, overwhelmed, and helpless could have been resolved with two phone calls and the magic word, “no.”

Dharma teacher Joanne Friday asks us to consider if we are a victim or a student in this lifetime. When I acted from a place where I forgot I had a choice, I was a victim and my anger reflected the injustice and powerlessness of that perception. When I looked at my response as a student—I saw that old habits made me consider other’s needs and happiness above my own. When I agreed to do more than I could, I sacrificed my ease and physical wellbeing. My anger was the cry of my own body and mind that wanted to be considered and to matter.

What I forget and learn over and over, is that I need to matter to myself. When I matter to myself, I understand the limits of my abilities. I don’t overload my schedule. I get support for the heavy lifting—both physically and metaphorically in my life. This takes real mindfulness of the body and mind and recognition of our moment by moment experience. Mattering to myself isn’t narcissistic flattery or propping up my ego with importance. It means that I extend the same care and concern for myself as I do for the other people in my life.

This week I invite you to take some time out to see how you are mattering to yourself. Are you responding from habit and doing what you always do—feelings of irritation, frustration, and wanting things to be different are a hint that we are not considering our own wellbeing. What are some actions we can take to let ourselves know we matter? Time for play and relaxation, getting help, adequate sleep, time to eat without rushing, respecting ourselves enough to arrange travel time so we arrive refreshed and calm—all these strategies can help undo the conditioning that tells us to hurry and to abandon ourselves. When we value the quality of our own consciousness and we demonstrate it with our words, deeds, and thoughts, we are learning to entrust ourselves into our own care. Looking with wisdom at how we support our practice and our own capacity for peace and resilience creates the framework that strengthens our commitment to living in awareness with compassion for all beings—including ourselves.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

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Mindfulness Lab:101

August 26, 2019

Awakening where we are, Awareness, habit patterns, Listening to Ourselves, Mindfulness of feelings, Mindfulness of the Body, present moment, Sangha, The Eight Worldly Winds, Uncategorized, understanding Negativity Bias, Understanding Reactivity

Blue Cliff Monastery, Photo by Celia

“Spiritual practice is not just sitting and meditating. Practice is looking, thinking, touching, drinking, eating, and talking. Every act, every breath, and every step can be practice and can help us to become more ourselves.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

“Mindfulness is not difficult; we just need to remember to do it.” ~ Sharon Salzberg

“What are you using that time for? Are you using your time to worry or using your time to live?” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Dear friends,

It’s not hard to love people when they’re silent. On silent retreats, especially those with extended periods of quiet and intensive meditation practice, I can send metta and imagine my fellow retreatants in perfect health. I can wish they have no sorrow and their lives be filled with joy. Fast forward to the end of the retreat and my dedicated practice of openhearted friendliness and wishing the best for others can come to a screeching halt when they open their mouths. Even after deep realizations about our interconnectedness, our non-self nature and how we are caught in habit patterns, all these valuable and worthy insights seem to evaporate when we are faced with folks behaving the way they sometimes do. All our insights and wisdom are put to the test in relationship, in working and living with others who may say or do the wrong thing. Showing up as a part-time Buddha in our real life is what we are practicing for.

A week ago, I was on staff at the For a Future to be Possible retreat at Blue Cliff Monastery. What is both wonderful and challenging about Blue Cliff is that it’s a place where we are embodying the Dharma in a relational way. It’s a sort of mindfulness lab where we can experience mindful living in community. We practice mindful working, eating, communicating, and even being a mindful roommate. For this retreat, I came with the expectation of encountering confusion and clarity, moments of disconnection and community, and times when folks liked what I did when they didn’t—and I wasn’t disappointed. I met all of that and more.

In life and on retreat we encounter the Eight Worldly Winds or vicissitudes that blow through life. The Buddha was the ultimate systems analysist. He saw all life as functioning in conjunction with the concert of wholeness and that our perception is a small fragmented piece of what is truly arising. In the Lokavipatti Sutta, AN 8:6, the Buddha described a way to understand our experience of being in relationship with others and ourselves using the teaching of the Eight Worldly Winds. They are a codified example of the moving and fluid nature of our perception—and a reminder that our experience is not as personal as we think. The Worldly Winds are presented as pairs, with one aspect being something desirable and pleasant, and the other—not so much: they are gain and loss, status and disgrace, praise and blame, pleasure and pain.

You may have shared this experience of encountering one email praising us for something we’ve done and another letting us know that the exact same thing did not meet another’s needs—both on the same day. Because of the ingrained negativity bias in humans, we may find the email not liking what we did, sticks in our minds. It’s easy to run past the praise, dismissing it as coming from someone who’s easy to please, or that what we’ve done isn’t really that great—and we may find it easy to focus on criticism and get caught analyzing how we have missed the mark for the other person.

The negativity bias is part of our biological evolutionary strategy and was a useful tool for our ancestors who needed to be aware of the poison berries, the snake that bites, the warlike tribe or person who threatens our lives. We humans got very adept as distinguishing threat and avoiding it to protect our gene line and this biological evolutionary adaptation is still in play today. Although most of us don’t have to focus on which roots are edible and which will kill us, we, as a species, still give priority attention to what harms us and makes life dangerous.

Neuropsychologist Rick Hanson, Ph.D. tells us that in relationship we store up the bad and skip over the good—so much so, that it takes five positive interactions to diminish the sting of one negative encounter. We are so sensitized to criticism that we as a species tend to overestimate threat and interpret another person’s disapproval as dangerous and threatening. We can get very tight and defended when we encounter the downside of the Worldly Winds. What can help to keep us in an open relational state are two things. The first is to recognize that in moments when we are not hearing the acknowledgment or acceptance we are longing, that this is our turn at experiencing disapproval. We can remind ourselves that we also experience praise and that both these shifting winds are temporary, inconsistent, and depend upon conditions. The second way to practice is to bring our own care and compassion into this experience and to let ourselves be fully present without pushing away this feeling of sadness, disappointment, or hurt. We can look deeply at our instrument of emotion—our body—noting where this experience directly in the body. What does it feel like to be blamed? Where does it live in the body—in the flushed cheeks, the constricted throat, the burning of adrenalin in the hands? Can we stay with the sensations as they too shift and live out the life of this impermanent emotion?

A young nun on the retreat shared her experience with anger with me and a group of teens. She said she was aware when she was hurt and angry there was the desire to hurt the other person as much as they had hurt her. When we look at the range of experience we have in life, the hurt can take on a different meaning. It can be the portal to the way we practice with this condition in the world—the condition of blame or bad reputation. Doing our best to live in accordance with the Dharma involves actively working to reconcile and address these hurts and miscommunications as they occur. It takes bravery and vulnerability to stop continuing in the same pattern of aversion and distancing. Seeing these moments as part of this greater system of life can allow us to see these painful experiences not as torture and grounds for war, but as practice opportunities.

When I find myself tossed about by the changing winds, I remind myself, oh, this is what blame feels like. It doesn’t feel good—and I can be present for this too. I care about this feeling. The simple joy of fearlessly feeling what we feel can be a surprising balm for the painful side of the Worldly Winds. And moment after moment, we learn to trust that we can befriend ourselves through both gentle breezes and the wildest storms.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

Calligraphy by Thich Nhat Hanh

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It’s not you; it’s my vedana.

July 8, 2019

#training the mind, Awareness, habit patterns, Mindfulness, Satipatthana, Uncategorized, Understanding Reactivity, vedana

Columbia River Gorge. Photo by Celia

“May you have the wisdom to enter generously into your own unease.”

~John O’Donohue

“Freedom is not given to us by anyone; we have to cultivate it ourselves. It is a daily practice.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

“Desirable things do not provoke one’s mind. Towards the undesirable one has no aversion.” ~The Buddha. Connected Discourses, 1265, Bhodi trans.

Dear Friends,

I am back East from the great state of Oregon—Go Ducks! Travel is a wonderful way to notice our habits. When we lose our routines and possessions that insulate us, we often find ourselves anxious and fearful of what is coming our way. It can be humorous to look at all the ways we protect ourselves from the unwanted, all the ways we move and adjust our bodies, the temperature, and our surroundings to minimize discomfort. Dharma teacher Jack Kornfield (2013, 2016) notes that “It would be interesting to notice how many of our actions during the day—even small changes of posture—come about through an effort to avoid unpleasant feeling” (p.83). The unpleasant feelings are not usually the things we tell ourselves we are avoiding because we unconsciously equate pleasure and displeasure with what is outside ourselves. This is mistaking vedana (the second foundation of mindfulness) for the thing itself.

Vedana is sometimes translated as feeling, which can be confusing as the third foundation of mindfulness [cognition/objects of the mind] consists of the activities of the mind, including thoughts and emotional states. Former Forest monk, Buddhist psychotherapist, and meditation teacher Akincino Marc Weber has done extensive scholarly research on vedana. I’ve learned from him that vedana is never merely sensation or to be confused with emotion. Vedana is the quality of “hedonic feeling tone,” meaning that it contains that instant hit of liking, disliking. Even in the space called “neutral,” there exists a subtle flavor of pleasure and displeasure, too quiet to perceive. This is true even for enlightened beings, who still sense what is sweet and sour, but without the pull that drags us towards or away from.

Vedana is the awareness of the automatic like and dislike that comes from living in a body that has a built-in threat detection system. We see this easily with food. We are designed to like sugar, fat, and salt because those ingredients help us survive. Sugar and fat have the biggest caloric bang for our buck and salt is the essential mineral we need to sustain homeostasis. Most of us have very pleasant vedana when confronted with these tastes—and this is where it can get confusing—we believe that pleasure lives in the chocolate cake, or the bag of chips when it’s really pleasant vedana which comes and goes. The first potato chip tastes very different than the last as we finish off the family-sized bag and the chocolate cake isn’t at all appealing when we have a stomach virus.

In the groovy city of Portland, OR, we visited pods of food trucks and I noticed how I was drawn to certain items, smells, physically pleasing images, and tastes I associated with pleasure. I could sit back and watch the vedana show from all the six sense doors, sights, smells, sounds, the quality of touch, tastes, and the mind’s perception.

I saw my expectation shattered and the pleasant vedana I associated with an item shift abruptly when the tofu taco was watery, or the coffee was tepid. Instant dislike. I had to remind myself that I wasn’t reacting to the thing itself—I had slid into the third foundation of mindfulness [cognition] and was feeling disappointment. And I didn’t want to confuse my dislike and the disappointment with the actual thing.

A good example of confusing the thing for the vedana comes from the founder of Nonviolent Communication and admirer of Buddhist thought, Marshall Rosenberg, who uses the experience of waiting for someone who is late to demonstrate how we blame the external situation and other people for our own emotional state. We have all had the experience of waiting for someone and believing their lateness is the cause of our irritation. We can easily move into judgment and say they are inconsiderate. We can label them as chronically tardy. And my favorite pastime while waiting, to strategize how to never wait again, by being purposefully late in the future. When we confuse the unpleasant vedana for that specific person in that specific situation, we may say, I hate waiting, or I hate John. He’s so disrespectful. We don’t take responsibility for our own mental formations and emotions that are conditioned by our unpleasant vedana.

Marshall Rosenberg offers a second scenario. What if we are waiting for someone and it’s our first chance all day to rest—maybe we have been looking for an opportunity to check our email, or we just need a break. Or we are late ourselves and arrive fifteen minutes late. When our person shows up seventeen minutes late, we are actually glad they are so late. In this example, we see that lateness is not the cause of our anger. It’s our vedana and mental formations that create our happiness or unhappiness with the situation.

This week I invite you to look at the things you like and dislike—things you are drawn towards or move away from. What is the mental formation and vedana in that situation or thing that is pulling you? When we imbue something with a permanent fixed identity, we can be jerked around by the automatic response of vedana. Whenever we have a judgment, that is a good indication that we have mistaken vedana and our emotions for the thing itself and we are believing what we think

We can still have a favorite dessert—and it might taste even better when we let ourselves enjoy the experience of pleasant vedana, knowing that all vedana is fleeting and conditional. Practicing with vedana, we can get some clarity and use this awareness as information. Knowing our experience as it truly is, shows us the impermanent and constant flickering nature of pleasant and unpleasant. Recognizing the tireless pulse of liking and disliking for what it is can give us the clarity we need to choose our path instead of being dragged along by our senses.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

Reference:

Kornfield, J. (2013, 2016). Mindfulness: A practical guide to awakening. Boulder, CO: Sounds True.

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Can Anger be Love?

January 21, 2019

Activism, Awareness, Buddhism, Ending hatred, non-violence, racism, Uncategorized

Cliffside, Barre, MA, photo by Celia

“I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.”

“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’”

“Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.”

All quotes, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Dear friends,

On the eve of Martin Luther King Day, we collectively celebrate the life that included a fierce commitment to compassion and dignity for all people. We also recognize that Dr. King was leading people to a social revolution in a society unwilling to recognize justice and equality. Dr. King brought the eyes of the world to see the unlivable reality of being black in a white world. He did this without firing a single bullet, but through non-violent action which removes hatred from our hearts. That was the teaching of love Dr. King brought to an America incapable of receiving his message without fear. His murder and death are part of the American legacy of violence, continued fear, and discrimination against people of color. This Monday we have a collective reminder of the promise of the beloved community, where all people are considered, and an opportunity to mourn Dr. King’s dream that is still beyond the reach of our American reality.

Dr. King understood that aggression and violence lead to more violence. Violence may serve as a justification to oppressors to continue their domination and persecutions and violence and aggression continue the fire of hatred. This is the fire that can only be quenched through a radically different approach. We’ve seen the power dynamics of warring countries. Conflicts can last for generations with one side oppressing the other, then shifting power so the other becomes the oppressor. This is a continuous cycle of ignorance and violence without end.

The Buddha’s words always categorize anger as unwholesome, consistently associated with hatred and ill-will and always an obstacle to spiritual progress. Bhikkhu Bhodi told me that anger is a “wrong motivation” and Buddhist teacher and activist Donald Rothberg states when anger and hatred are at the base of intention, the resulting action and kamma will be harmful to self and others. We know from our own experience that when we act in anger—we are at a deficit and the best part of our brain is unavailable due to the increased amount of cortisol and adrenalin, starving off the full engagement of our prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that is responsible for compassion, wisdom, and can discern consequence.

While unchecked anger is without question dangerous to our relationships and clear thinking, anger does have a place in our emotional life. This single interpretation of anger as a vehicle for actions rooted in hatred, vengeance, and the desire to harm another may not be the whole story. The Dalai Lama and Donald Rothberg consider the terms “afflictive emotions,” “ill will or hatred,” to be more accurate translations for the Pali word “kodha” which is commonly listed as anger. An action rooted in hatred is always harmful–but anger can serve us.

When we understand the usefulness of anger, we can see it as energy and information. The Western view of anger is more nuanced, ranging from outright retaliatory rage to a feeling of moral grievance at the ill-treatment of the weak. Rothberg writes that anger in the ancient Greek world and in the West is seen “as an appropriate response to what is socially inappropriate, immoral, or unjust.” Anger can be used as the fuel for action in social justice actions. In the struggle for India’s independence, the US Civil Rights movement, and Catholic worker movement, anger does not result in ill-will but catalyzed marginalized groups to act with non-violence and seek to liberate both the oppressors and the oppressed.

Anger sends the clear message that something is wrong and needs our attention and can be the sustenance to create an organization that uses civil disobedience to save lives. Anger at injustice may be what love feels like. Looking at the intention beneath the action there is the desire to protect and defend life and to change what is intolerable to live with. When we know how to be with anger, not to allow it to bring us into hatred, or cause pain, but when we can hold our anger with care and understanding, we can use it as the fuel for change.

In the Dhammapada, a poetic interpretation of the Buddha’s teaching from Francis Story reads, “Not by hating hatred ceases. In this world of tooth and claw; Love alone from hate releases —This is the Eternal Law.” (Dhp Verse 5). This same idea is expressed by Dr. King when he said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” It was the commitment to love without exception that made revolutionaries like the Buddha, Dr. King, Mahatma Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela create revolutions that change not only the power structure but also free the oppressors from the continuous damage of perpetuating hate and discrimination. Guided by wisdom and non-preferential love, we can make wise choices towards loving others—even those who perpetuate the cycle of abuse and hatred. Treating our anger with respect and consideration, we can use the information to act with fierce compassion, just as Dr. King taught—because we are not free until all of us are free.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

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Opening the Channels to Life

January 13, 2019

Awareness, Big mind, Buddhism, Gift to self, Retreat, stopping, Things as they are, Uncategorized

Buddha Cliff, Photo by Celia

“If I were to tell you that your life is already perfect, whole, and complete just as it is, you would think I was crazy. Nobody believes his or her life is perfect. And yet there is something within each of us that basically knows we are boundless, limitless.”

“As long as you’re capable of becoming annoyed, you can be sure something will annoy you.”

“Enlightenment is not something you achieve. It is the absence of something. All your life you have been going forward after something, pursuing some goal. Enlightenment is dropping all that.”

~ All quotes from Charlotte Joko Beck, Zen Master

Dear Friends,

Happy New Year. I wish you much delight and ease as you continue caring for yourselves and others in 2019. For the past four years, I’ve taken time off from my life during the busyness of the holidays to disengage from the pattern of my regular life and spend time on retreat in silence, listening to myself.

Retreat is a precious gift we can give to ourselves, a time of giving permission to slow down and to pay attention to things we normally don’t notice. We can take our time to chew each mouthful off food and reflect on our great good fortune to have food, especially when it is made with care and skill. During retreat, we can let go of plans and allow ourselves to be surprised and delighted by the weather since we have nowhere to go and nothing to do. And we do not have to have an opinion about the weather.

This time away, I had the opportunity to re-connect with the beauty of the forest, the green starbursts of mosses and streams flowing under thin glazings of ice. What I noticed was that my attention became wider. I could sit and listen to the rain and the wind, or go outside at night and look at the stars. In stillness and quiet, with an unhurried mind, the gifts of the universe are available to us.

Thinking about the sensitivity and receptivity while on retreat contrasted with daily worldly life, the difference is clear. On retreat, we are invested in being and in the world we are invested in doing. To my mind, it’s like a sea sponge—a filter feeder whose pores are open to all the nutrient-rich content of the ocean. At our most still, we are the same as the filter feeders, all channels open to experience without discrimination. As we return to our working lives where we have projects, responsibilities, and deadlines we close off some of our attention from what is unimportant to achieving our goals. Gradually without awareness, we can close all channels of attention until there is only one channel we are filtering all experience through, the story of me and mine. To each sensation, each sound, taste, and sight, we constantly ask—how is this for me; how does this affect my bottom line; is this helping me with my agenda? We become like a sea sponge with only one aperture unable to be adequately nourished, unable to take in what won’t benefit our status or wellbeing. We forget to enjoy the life that is constantly swirling around us and we forget that we too are part of this flow of arising and passing.

Sound meditation is a wonderful way to create a bigger mind and experience the constant arising and passing of phenomena. Noticing the beginning of sounds, the ending, the way sounds overlap creating interplay and texture is a sure way to access some of our closed channels of attention and nourish the reality of Interbeing. What is also wonderful about sound meditation, is that it includes everything, the traffic, the neighbors’ loud TV, or your colleague typing in the next room. Sound meditation is portable and makes room for all the experiences that are happening right now—and it can soothe the judging mind that uses the label “irritating.”

If you like, right now, stop and listen without grasping onto the sounds, just allowing them to come to you without preference. Notice how the body reacts to listening. Do the shoulders get tighter with certain sounds, or soften and release with different sounds? There is no right way to hear—it is solely your unique human privilege right now. If your hearing is compromised—you can use your eyes—soften the focus and notice color or form, use the sense door of contact and direct your attention to the experience of contact on the skin. How does the skin on the hands feel in contact with the air, or the skin of the arms covered with clothing?

This week you may like to use your sense doors to nourish yourself in ways often overlooked. Taking in the uniqueness of this moment—knowing that there will never be another moment just like this one we can fully receive the gift of the present moment.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

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