Robert Thurman
Showing posts with label Dharma Studies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dharma Studies. Show all posts
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Dharma for Personal Reflection
Robert Thurman
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Daily Living: Grist for the Mindfulness Mill
One of the cultural drawbacks we seem to have here in the West is the tendency to separate things into various and sundry categories or typologies. This is especially true when it comes to the spiritual life. Our culture has a habit of separating the spiritual path from daily living. The result is that many things that happen in our lives either go unnoticed or are trivialized and, as a result, we often miss important spiritual lessons. The fact is all of life can be our teacher. Zen teacher Charlotte Joko Beck speaks clearly to this issue:
Life always gives us exactly the teacher we need at every moment. This includes every mosquito, every misfortune, every red light, every traffic jam, every obnoxious supervisor (or employee), every illness, every loss, every moment of joy or desperation, every addiction, every piece of garbage, every breath.
I often hear students pursuing spiritual development complaining that life is too demanding, too hectic to allow for real spiritual transformation. The thought of finding time to meditate, for example, seems totally beyond the scope of reasonable expectation:
“Did you ever try to get two kids and a lazy, chronically distracted husband to school and work on time?” So remarked a thirtyish participant at one of LifeBrook’s introductory Zen classes. “I face that five mornings a week, and that’s before I start getting ready for my job.”
No doubt many can relate to the chaos this woman is describing. I know I can. I have found that most folks can find the time to squeeze in at least a brief meditation period at some point during the day. These brief periods, if pursued with commitment and discipline, can be far more beneficial than you think. However, that is not my main point for writing this article. What I hope to get across is that meditation, as important as it is, is only a small part of mindfulness practice.
One helpful way of making sense of mindfulness practice is to define it in terms of formal practice and informal practice. In our formal practice, what we are doing is meditation. This aspect of mindfulness practice can take many forms but most often, it involves sitting quietly and observing the breath. Informal practice involves maintaining periods of mindfulness throughout the day. Informal practice can also take many forms, from something as simple as pausing a moment to watch your breath each time you turn a door knob or cross a threshold. Informal practice can be something as seemingly mundane as walking the dog or changing a baby’s diaper.
Given the frenetic pace of modern life, mindfulness practice offers us a way to incorporate our spiritual practice into the very fabric of our daily lives. And when you think about it, that is exactly where our spirituality should be. Lama Surya Das, an American Buddhist teacher trained in the Tibetan tradition makes a cogent point regarding this aspect of spiritual practice:
Today it seems to me that we have little choice but to assimilate all we experience into our spiritual lives; it is all grist for the mill, manure on fertile fields of spiritual flowers. The sacred and the mundane are inseparable. Your life is your path. Your disappointments are part of your path; your dry cleaning and your dry cleaner are on your path; ditto your credit card payments. It’s not helpful to wait until you have more time for meditation or contemplation, because it may never happen. Cultivating spirituality and awareness has to become a full-time vocation, and for most of us this has to take place within the context of a secular life here in the Western Hemisphere.
Whether we are sitting on our cushion or seat in formal meditation or whether we are folding laundry or drying the dishes, the principles of mindfulness remain the same. Our practice is the same in the zendo and in the traffic jam: we are to fully engage the moment as we pass through it. Lama Surya Das continues:
For you, the seeker, what matters is how you attend to the present moment. This includes motivation, intention, aspiration, desire, hope, and expectation. This is not just about what you do but how you do it. The present moment is where the rubber actually meets the road. Your traction on the path, spiritually speaking, depends on how you apply your heart and soul.
In order to “gain traction” on the spiritual path it is best for us to be realistic and reasonable with ourselves. What this means on a practical level is that we have to be both perceptive and honest. We have to be perceptive enough to realize that we cannot train ourselves like monks and nuns – not while we are living in the contemporary world. By accepting this fact, those of us who are highly committed to the path we have chosen can relax a bit and go easy on ourselves. We can come to the realization that five minutes of solid, committed practice of meditation and/or mindfulness can be of tremendous benefit. We also freely understand and accept that on some days, five minutes may be all we can spare.
On the other end of the spectrum, we have to be honest with ourselves about our commitment to practice. Many times I have found that people who insist they don’t have time for practice actually have plenty of time, but they lack the discipline and will to get down to doing it. Like many in our “quick fix” culture, these folks want the benefits of mindfulness training and meditation practice without the effort required to secure those benefits. Like the “Beauty School Dropout” in the musical “Grease,” these seekers” have the dream but not the drive.”
Beyond perception and honesty, we also need sincerity. Taking up spiritual practice requires a consecrated commitment if it is to be fruitful. Dabbling here and there, taking a little of this and a dab of that is interesting and spiritually stimulating, but does not reap lasting rewards. If you want to move forward with your spiritual practice, whatever the tradition, brace yourself for some hard work. Again, sincerity is essential. Buddhist writer Andrew Weiss tells us:
Offering ourselves sincerely to the moment is the key to good practice. Our intention in practicing mindfulness is more important than any technique. Many meditation teachers have pointed out that all the skill and effort in meditation will not yield fruit if we do not have this sincere desire to wake up…..Five minutes of practice with the sincere desire to wake up to the present moment is worth more than a lifetime of practice without it.
Our daily lives, rather than posing obstacles to spiritual practice, offer the optimal venue for growth. This is especially true when it comes to mindfulness training. Our task is to train in the ability to completely give ourselves to the present moment, whatever we may be doing. Although initially challenging and at times frustrating, if we persevere at this task we will find that the benefits will be well worth our efforts.
(c) L.D. Turner 2010/ All Rights Reserved
Friday, July 30, 2010
Transpersonal Compassion: Serving a Larger Vision (Part Two)
In order for compassion to become more than just a nice idea or a sentimental feeling, it must flow out of the internalized wisdom of the ages, particularly as related to the reality of “interconnectivity.” The idea of interconnectivity, now confirmed by the field of quantum physics, has been around for many centuries and is at the core of interspiritual mysticism, that one aspect of world religion that seems to transcend culture, time, and especially theology. It is a mystical connectedness that promotes compassion and engaged action to make the world a better place for all who dwell here. In essence, it is a deep wisdom that gives flesh to grace. The great spiritual writer Kahil Gibran spoke of this interconnected reality when he said:
Your neighbor is your other self dwelling behind a wall. In understanding, all walls shall fall down. Who knows but that your neighbor is your better self wearing another body? See that you love him as you would yourself. He too is a manifestation of the Most High.
In India, for example, we have the story of Indra’s Net, which is strung throughout the universe with a precious jewel at the places where the cords of the net intersect. These jewels, in turn, reflect all of the other jewels. Similar to the modern discovery of the hologram, the image of Indra’s Net is filled with symbolic wisdom depicting the interconnectivity of all that is. We will briefly return to a consideration of Indra’s Net later; for now, let’s look at a more modern source. Gary Zukav, in his groundbreaking book entitled, The Dancing Wu Li Masters tell us:
…the philosophical implications of quantum mechanics is that all things in our universe (including us) that appears to exist independently are actually parts of one all-encompassing organic pattern, and that no parts of that pattern are ever really separate from it or from each other.
In the Christian tradition, the writings of the great mystic teachers echo these same truths, often in symbolic and metaphorical ways. Julian of Norwich especially comes to mind as well as Hildegard of Bingen and Madame Guyon. The writings of Saint Theresa of Avila and the life and work of St. Francis also point to the interconnectivity of all life and the necessity of having a heart of radical compassion.
The great Romantic poets like William Wordsworth and Percy B. Shelley have voices that ring loudly with the sense of the interrelated aspects of the natural world and their American counterparts, the Transcendentalists, in the writings of Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman, also echo this theme of divine connectivity. And then there is the work of that master of the arcane, William Blake who spoke of the mystic’s ability:
To see a World in a grain of sand,
And Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour.
The world that we interact with each day only appears to be solid. In point of fact, it is an intricate dance of sub-atomic waves and particles that obey none of the traditional or expected moves of predictable choreography. At its core level, our apparently solid, material world is less like classical music and more like jazz. Just when we think we have a handle on how things are, these very things change, morphing into something totally unexpected and often totally mysterious. Someone very wise once said the life is not a riddle to be solved but a mystery to be lived. How true, and the sooner a person grasps this fundamental truth, the less frustration will appear in his or her life.
It is not my intention to travel too far down this road of quantum physics at this juncture. Suffice to say that contemporary science is increasingly coming to grasp the same fundamental truths that mystics and shamans have voiced for many centuries. Simply put: Everything is interrelated and interdependent and when one part is affected by something, at a very core level, every other part is also impacted. Just as the quantum scientists speak of the interconnected nature of the universe, mystics in general and Buddhist sages in particular have stressed this fundamental aspect of life for over 2,500 years.
Radical Compassion, Interconnectivity, and Buddhist Tradition
All the happiness there is in this world comes from thinking about others and all the suffering comes from preoccupation with yourself.
Shantideva
In Buddhism, the importance of living with a compassionate heart and a mind of Bodhichitta comes from the understanding the universe and everything in it is a unified whole. Although this critical insight is now recognized by science, it was clearly understood by the seers of ages past. In Buddhist scripture this principle is spelled out in the story of ‘Indra’s Net,” which is found in the Avatamsaka Sutra. Diane Eshin Rizetto, Abbess of the Bay Zen Center in Oakland, relates that the image of Indra’s Net:
…conceives the universe as an enormous net extending infinitely in all directions, protecting and nurturing all of life, nothing excluded. At the juncture of each knot of the net there is a shiny, multifaceted reflective jewel. Because of its many sides, each jewel reflects every other jewel in the net in a vast network of mutual support of each other’s existence. It’s difficult to imagine the countless number of jewels in a net this size let alone the endless number of reflections on each jewel. No jewel exists without the other jewels. No jewel stands alone. All are interdependent on the presence of others. If one appears, all appear, if one does not appear, none appear. If you were to place one black dot on any one of the jewels, it would appear in all the jewels.
As Abbess Rizetto points out, each jewel in this magnificent net reflects the image of every other jewel and this image serves as a great metaphor for the interconnected, interdependent nature of the universe in which we live. In the West we treasure the concepts of independence and individuality, but in the final analysis, these romantic images are just that, images. In reality, as the great poet John Donne so aptly pointed out, “no man is an island.” Every aspect of the universe is dependent upon every other aspect and now even quantum science is verifying the veracity of this truth. In relation to the implications of Indra’s Net, Rizetto continues:
The Net of Indra is a compelling image illustrating unceasing, unobstructed interpenetration and mutual interdependence of all existence. Every action, every word, every thought – our memories, desires, fears, urges, frustrations, happiness, peace, well-being – ripples its effect into the universe. No one, no thing is excluded in its mutual resonance and all-inclusive relationship…..To follow the teaching of Dharma is to take action that is in harmony with the interrelatedness of all things. Every action has an effect and every effect leads to a cause in an infinite web of life.
Yet it is important to realize that this fundamental interconnectedness of all that exists does not completely negate our individuality. As is so often the case, the ultimate reality is one of paradox and in the spirit of Zen, this paradoxical nature of reality is brought to the forefront. We are all individuals with some degree of independence, but this individuality and independence exists within the larger field of interdependence. American Zen Master Robert Aiken explains:
You and I come forth as possibilities of essential nature, alone and independent as stars yet reflecting and being reflected by all things. My life and yours are the unfolding realization of total aloneness and total intimacy.
to be continued....
(c) L.D. Turner 2010/All Rights Reserved
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)