Category: Taking refuge in ourselves

Standing Up and Coming Home

June 22, 2020

Activism, Everyday practices, racism, stopping, Taking refuge in ourselves, Thich Nhat Hanh

Lion’shead Peony, Photo by Celia

“I stand up for you.
You stand up for me.
We stand up together.
And this is how we do it.
I care for you.
You care for me.
We care together.
This is how we do it.” ~Larry Ward, Senior Dharmacharya

“We all have to suffer less in order to restore some kind of balance within ourselves. Only then can we engage in meaningful and collective efforts to build peace in the world.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, Calming the Fearful Mind: A Zen Response to Terrorism

“I am part of this universe. The air is part of this universe. With each breath, the universe changes. With each inhale, the universe changes. With each exhale, the universe changes.” ~Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, In Love With the World: A Monk’s Journey Through the Bardo’s of Living and Dying.

Dear Friends,

These are exciting and unprecedented times. In the recent weeks we have witnessed a world-wide awakening to responsibility and accountability. As we are called to witness Rayshard Brooks’ killing by police, we are also seeing White bodies standing with Black bodies calling for justice and change. This is a big shift and it is time. My purpose in writing this is to call us all in to witness change happening and to see that sometimes things appear to happen slowly and sometimes they appear to happen very quickly. I also want to acknowledge that unrest, fear, instability, and continuing conflict can take a very real toll on our physical and mental wellbeing. Black and Brown bodies who have lived with the understanding that they are not safe have an inherited heightened level of stress and vigilance. I have heard both outrage and a bittersweet relief that when the whole world saw the lynching of a Black man, the whole world responded with swift condemnation and mourning. This response is overdue and seeing what happened on the streets of Minneapolis and Atlanta made it very clear that living in a Black body—we are less safe in this world than if we are in a White body.

For White people right now, I have heard shock and heartbreak and there is broken trust in the system they believed supported justice. For People of Color there is the heartbreak of once again seeing oppression and murder. For all of us in this world, living with the Corona virus, job insecurity, the increasing polarization of political and social differences, all bodies are feeling this vigilance and exhaustion. We are longing for a safe home, for comfort, and predictability and finding more instability each time we turn on the news. We know that for systems to change, sometimes things need to fall apart. No political regimen, no system, no country, no being is exempt from impermanence. Change is hard on us and we are in a time of profound and rapid change. We may wonder where can we find a calm center of rest, where is home now?

Thich Nhat Hanh (2010) writes, “I don’t suffer because I’ve found my true home (p. 8).” This home is not limited to a specific location, even confined to a country. “Thanks to mindfulness, I was able to find my true home in the here and now (p. 12) …Our true home is the place without discrimination, without hatred (p. 13).” Thay tells us, when we can touch into this moment, we can rest free from worries about the past and fears about the future. The peace and stability we are able to produce in this present moment creates the next moment. Coming home to ourselves is a way to stop, rest, and heal…which we need to do in order to engage in the heavy lifting that is required of us.

As one teacher described the Buddha’s teaching on the three universal marks of existence, “Everything keeps changing; it will shake you up and it’s not personal.” Right now, we are shook. We are tired and there is more to be done. I am calling us all in to find rest in the midst of unrest, in this moment that is filled with the potential of change and with real hope. Our ability to care for ourselves and to recognize that we are already co-creating the future with each breath we take—the universe is different. Each thought we produce changes our minds and hearts. The way we think, speak, and act creates a mark on the world and on our consciousness. Our freedom is paired with responsibility which includes responsibility for caring for ourselves, for finding our own ability to come home to ourselves, to have faith that enlightenment is inevitable.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

Reference:

Nhat Hanh, T. (2010). Together we are one: Honoring diversity celebrating our connection. Parallax: Berkeley, CA.

Here are some opportunities to practice:

A link to Resmaa Menaken’s free 5 day workshop to heal racialized trauma https://www.resmaa.com/

link to an article Dharma teacher Cheri Maples wrote about being a Buddhist Cop, https://www.lionsroar.com/a-buddhist-cops-approach-to-justice/

Please click to see a sutra study offering from Dharma teacher Larry Ward:July 15^th, 7 pm, online. Join Larry as he offers study and practice with the Lokavipatti Sutta: The sutra on the Failings of the World. https://www.thelotusinstitute.org/calendar/sutra-study

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Crossing to the Other Shore

September 30, 2019

habit patterns, Mindfulness, Samsara, suffering, Taking refuge in ourselves, Uncategorized, Understanding Emotions

Washington State Forest. Photo by R. Errichetti

Over and over, the seeds all get planted;

Over and over, the rain-god sprinkles rain.

Over and over, the farmer farms the field;

Over and over, the food grows in the realm.

Over and over, beggars do their begging;

Over and over, the givers give out gifts.

Over and over, the giver who has given;

Over and over, goes to a better place.

Over and over, he tires and he struggles;

Over and over, the fool goes to the womb.

Over and over, he’s born and he dies;

Over and over, they bear him to his grave.

But one whose wisdom is wide as the earth

Is not born over and over,

For he’s gained the path

Of not becoming over again.

~SN 7.12 PTS, Udaya Sutta: Breaking the Cycle

translated from the Pali by Andrew Olendzki

Dear friends,

This past week there were big shifts in my life, and I recognized my old friends, anxiety and fear, who invariably arrive when I am facing change. I felt the familiar restlessness in my body and the scrambling in my mind and I could say, “I know this.” This understanding made these two characters less intimidating and their arrival was far less terrifying than in the past. They lacked the power to take away my sleep and keep my mind twirling about how to escape difficulties and change the unchangeable. In fact, they were—predictable and sort of boring. I could see that they were arising out of habit, both with the lovely intention of keeping me safe and sound. I could also see through them to the fear that this shift of circumstances awoke, the real vulnerability of living in a transient body that longs for security in an insecure world. We know that life does not give us any guarantees and things can and do change all the time. This is the essential insecurity that calls for us to be unrelenting champions for ourselves.

There is a word samsara (Pali/Sanskrit), which signifies the endless rounds of rebirth we engage in. According to scholar-monk Thanissaro Bhikkhu, samsara directly translates as “wandering on.” Samsara is the big picture of repeated life cycles, the endless rounds of birth and death the Buddha spoke about, but samsara is not limited to actual births and deaths. The cycle of samsara is constantly arising. We can change our environment, move across the country, go to therapy, do all the things we should—and remarkably, we can find ourselves still caught in the stickiness of repeated habits. This is samsara in real-time.

The Buddha described the system of repeated action in The Twelve Links of Dependent Origination. This system begins with the avijja, the fundamental ignorance of how things really are. We think we are a discrete entity with a birth and death date, and we are, but we are also more than that. When we lose sight of our interconnectedness, our non-self nature and forget, we tend to repeat the behavior and “become” again. We become the angry person, or the righteous individual, we become the victim, the rescuer, the depressed one, the wronged, the winner, the loser. When we agree with these arisings, we are back on the wheel of suffering. The Buddha asked his followers:

Which is greater, the tears you have shed while transmigrating & wandering this long, long time — crying & weeping from being joined with what is displeasing, being separated from what is pleasing — or the water in the four great oceans?… This is the greater: the tears you have shed… (SN 15.3)

While creating time and intention to practice may seem daunting, when we look in the rearview mirror of our lives, we can see the ample tears that have marked our lives and the cost is exhaustion. The question becomes, where do we want to put our energy? Into reliving the same pain and experiences, or into finding liberation? Both take effort.

With patience, we can learn to stay and see the arising and passing of mind states—even ones that look so daunting. Carefully titrating the dosage of suffering can allow us to stay present with ourselves without overwhelm. This relentless determination to be a compassionate presence can help to break the bonds of samsara and release us from reacting to our same triggers over and over again. When we can see these patterns, without becoming swallowed by the big feelings, we have taken a step towards the shore of liberation. The willingness of learning to stay, to accompany ourselves on our journey with all its joy and sorrow takes energy, but it provides us with a true refuge. We become the very place of shelter that we are searching for and when we can find this solidity in ourselves, we are beyond the reach of fear.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

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Who Makes You Happy?

September 16, 2019

Happiness, Releasing Worldly Happiness, Taking refuge in ourselves, The End of craving, Uncategorized

View from the Pinnacle Lookout, Photo by Celia

“Cleared of the underbrush

but obsessed with the forest,

set free from the forest,

right back to the forest he runs.

Come, see the person set free

who runs right back to the same old chains!”

~Tanhavagga: Craving (Dhp XXIV, V. 344), Thanissaro Bhikkhu, trans.

“Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to anything – anger, anxiety, or possessions – we cannot be free.”

~Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation

“We are always in transition. If you can just relax with that, you’ll have no problem.”

~ Chogyam Trungpa

Dear friends,

The Buddha taught that the root of suffering was craving, tanha. He also taught that the human experience embodies a restless sense of wanting, craving for sense pleasures—the good life of luxury, longing to become something or to escape from being something unwanted. These three types of wanting, keep us spinning, moving towards and away from. We imagine if we got the right combination—keep to a gluten-free and raw diet, work out, meditate, wear organic fibers, stop watching Judge Judy, find a LEED-certified condo in a pedestrian friendly area, get the hypo-allergenic dog, put in the extra time to really learn the new software and get noticed at work, we would discover the life partner who was actually our long-lost friend from fifth grade—waiting for us this whole time, and then—we could be happy.

The Buddha knew about worldly happiness. He was raised as a privileged and sheltered child, groomed to take over his father’s leadership position. He had wealth, status, all types of things, a beautiful and loving wife and new baby… and yet—he wasn’t happy. So, he left in search of a more durable happiness than the one we find when the worldly conditions align, and we have a moment of ease. The Buddha went on a long and arduous search, nearly died and found a different type of happiness which did not rely on the external conditions of happiness being met.

Happiness is our birthright and being Buddhist does not mean we aren’t allowed to be happy, but our regular worldly happiness falls short and doesn’t deliver what we are really longing for. There is a more refined and wiser sort of happiness that comes from understanding that all the chasing and arranging we do—the looking for happiness in relationships, appreciation, wanting to be treated a certain way—will not make us happy.

We have volition or cetana, this is the intention that leads us to action. Cetana can be wholesome or unwholesome. If we act against injustice and the greed that is killing our support system, the Earth, we are creating wholesome and beneficial karma through this intention. But if we rage, treat others harshly and are violent, even this wholesome intention gets muddied and leads us to a bad destination. And if we start obsession about an intention, even a beneficial one, we can be caught in craving and pulled into suffering.

Sometimes we can’t see the demarcation line between acting on an intention and craving. How do we know if we are clinging and craving or merely wanting to do a good job and feel this project is important? A simple litmus test is to ask, Do I think this will make me happy? When I move to a new city, begin a new relationship, or join a protest, if I believe that this thing, this person, this job, the book being published, having children, or being in a relationship will lead me to an abiding sense of happiness, I am letting myself in for suffering.

The Buddha teaches us that when we get fixated on things, we create the same conditions for suffering we try to escape, but when we are free from repetitive and obsessive thinking we can act and be free. We don’t get caught in labeling ourselves and creating new and different boxes of identity for ourselves:

But when one doesn’t intend, arrange, or obsess [about anything], there is no support for the stationing of consciousness. There being no support, there is no landing of consciousness. When that consciousness doesn’t land & grow, there is no production of renewed becoming in the future. When there is no production of renewed becoming in the future, there is no future birth, aging & death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, or despair. Such is the cessation of this entire mass of suffering & stress. (Thanissaro, trans., SN 12.38, Cetana Sutta)

This does not mean we should not do things in the world. Knowing that we have a limited time on this planet, we can ask, Is this project or activity, a good use of my time? Grounding ourselves in the wisdom of understanding impermanence, suffering and the end of suffering, we can ask, Is this enough for me, right now? When we ask if something is enough, we stop considering if we fit the mold of the perfect employee—if we are good enough for this individual, or this relationship and instead ask, if this person, conversation, organization, meets the criteria of our intention to live an awakened life. Sometimes the answer is no. This job, this corporate structure, this friendship, does not align with my values and does not support my true happiness.

True happiness is based on recognizing the constant shifting of our roles and conditions of the world. It is based on living with integrity and showing up with an open-hearted intention for kindness and compassion for ourselves and others. Our happiness is made from our efforts to be the peace, compassion, and love, we are seeking from the outside world. Sometimes, my entire practice consists of going through a day, attempting to keep my heart open to everyone I come in contact with—not closing off in defense and judgment—and sometimes I can just make it through a whole day. When I do this, I dwell in the bliss of blamelessness and living in accord with the Dharma. The Buddha is recorded in the Dhammapada as saying, “Your own self is your own mainstay. Your own self is your own guide. Therefore, you should watch over yourself —as a trader, a fine steed” (Dhp XXV, V 380). We are our finest treasures.

And this is where we can touch real happiness, in our own willingness to return to our true home—ourselves. Our own ability to still the mind, our own calm abiding in the face of change, this is the safe home we have been longing for. This is what the Buddha discovered through years of self-mortification and physical hardship. He created a refuge in his own heart and mind. He stopped running. He stopped doing and found himself with himself. When we stop, we can recognize ourselves as the soulmate who has been with us our whole lives—we are right here, waiting for ourselves to show up.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

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Category: Taking refuge in ourselves

Standing Up and Coming Home

Crossing to the Other Shore

Who Makes You Happy?