Sharing myself « The Way of It

Shhh

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

I wondered for years why if TW was so effective nobody was as “advanced” as KT was even though theres been people doing TW for decades now. One day I understood we were all chasing the end of the rainbow. That day I “graduated.” It was a quiet ceremony. Nobody was informed. I did not receive a special certificate. If I had to put what I learned into words, it would sound like this:

It doesn’t end.

It’s just not a problem that it doesn’t end.

That’s the freedom.

The most amazing thing about what I learned that day is how level ‘from below’ I am to the rest of humanity:

I

I’m just as fucked up as the man next door,

I just don’t beat myself up about it as much as he does.

That’s the enlightenment I know.

And sometimes

I notice he beats himself up much less than I do.

Those days he is the enlightened one

and I’m proud to call him

Teacher.

II

Deep forgiveness for our apparent imperfections.

Deep compassion for our apparent flaws.

A knowing that it’s okay to be just like this.

Even as I try to be a better man with time.

Perfection and Imperfection in perfect harmony.

That is the enlightenment that I know.

III

Anything I can compare myself to

Is imagined.

Why would that be a fair standard of comparison?

Better to spend my time appreciating

How much of a good friend

I can be to myself.

Posted in Begin again, Buddhism, Innocence, Life, Nirvana, Peace, Poem, Samsara, Service, Sharing myself, Surrender, The Work, The gift of inquiry, Truth, Unconditional love, self=Self | No Comments »

Spiritual advice to follow on odd days

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

domino

Trust your own inner intelligence above anything else.
Periodically consider points of view different from your own as a matter of practice, and
Give yourself extended periods of time every now and then where you completely rest from thinking about spiritual stuff in any way. Devote that time to things you love to do like riding a bike, baking cookies, being with people you care about, living your life.

Posted in Begin again, Friends, Innocence, Life, Peace, Service, Sharing myself, Surrender, The Work, The gift of inquiry, Truth, Unconditional love | No Comments »

One with Karma

Friday, December 11th, 2009

cake24

Much more than some sort of ‘eternal bliss,’ the end of suffering is a kind of equanimity, a perspective of the sort ‘this, too, shall pass,’ a gentle endurance towards small and large discomforts alike. If those sound like some sobered up (even boring) claims about what freedom can look like in practice, good, because that is the point of this post.

Meditation and self inquiry, dutifully engaged, deliver a taste of this basic freedom, and the miracle, the mind blowing grace of it all, is that THAT IS ENOUGH for us to be able to live a peaceful, joy filled life. The realization of this enoughness can happen in an instant or it may take a lifetime to figure out, and some people die without fully knowing it. It is the veil that separates heaven from hell, in this moment. And this realization can’t be promised. No meditation, medication or ’spiritual technique’ can give it.

This does not render our practices useless, however. Paraphrasing Joan Halifax Roshi: Enlightenment is an accident. Our practices make us accident-prone.

Posted in Begin again, Buddhism, Nirvana, Sharing myself, The Work, The gift of inquiry, Truth | No Comments »

A Color Theory of Freedom (and of those who point the way)

Monday, June 15th, 2009

I

The spiritual search is like color Blue thinking it’s best to be White.

We call White being ‘enlightened’ in the human world.

So Blue goes on retreat and fasts and reads self help books and goes to therapy, basically attempting to clean all of the blueness from itself in the belief that once all trace of blue is gone, what’s left underneath is the White that represents what it truly is, what it wants to spend all its time as.

II

From what we know about colors, this is absurd.

White is not a ‘real’ color. White is a composite of colors from the electromagnetic spectrum.

Now, while engaged on genuine spiritual inquiry, Blue will be invited to learn about itself from the thoughts it has about all of the other colors. Blue learns that it is like Red, sometimes, and that it is like Purple, sometimes. Blue may go deeper and learn that it was identifying with its manifestations more than with what originated them. It may learn that its truer nature is that of radiation, that different colors are simply radiation being emitted at different wavelengths (If you take radiation that appears blue and increase its wavelength it will now appear red, if you decrease it’s wavelength it will now appear purple, and so on).

spectrum3

III

Blue may learn that it was seeing itself literally in a very limited light and of the futility of trying to strip itself of all blueness. Better to own your own blueness, your own purpleness, your own redness, and so on. All colors have their uses.

Even as these realizations may take place for Blue, it never really ‘transmutates’ to ‘White: ‘White (Enlightenment) is a myth.’ The radiation that ‘Blue‘ is may lose it’s identification with ‘Blueness‘ and then be fully able to see itself as showing up as all wavelengths, and one can call that a ‘truer’ Enlightement, but what’s really important is to be in touch with the fact that one shows up as blue, sometimes, red, sometimes, and so on. And that’s the part that is really important: to be in touch with how one is showing up this moment and to have intimacy with that. And the reason why that is what matters is because, right now, that’s all one’s got. All the rest is a story.

IV

This little model helps me explain people’s disillusionment with their spiritual teachers. In the same way we, as spiritual seekers, long to be White we want our teachers to be White, so that we have somebody in our life who we believe can show us the way. But n o b o d y is White.

‘White‘ is a story.

buddyjesus

A spiritual master is somebody who is in touch with all her colors, AND who owns them when he or she shows up as that, and that equanimity with all colors is as White as it gets. When we don’t understand this and our teacher begins to show his or her blue and red and purple sides, we’re disillusioned. We attack them in our minds or write blog posts about them. We separate from them and I know that’s not wise because it all feels like pain. I know that because I’ve done it. It all stems from a basic confusion about what enlightenment is and is not, and about the deeper meaning of purity. The simple way to begin to clear up that confusion is to literally recognize that ‘Enlightenment is not what you think.’

This prompted me to write a little poem, which I dedicated to my friend Michelle Kassinger. We had a good time the other day talking about the matters that eventually became the ingredients for this post. Here it is.

Working on it

I am aware of the colors I wear today
I am aware that those colors are not all that I am.
Allowing those insights to percolate right through my actions
So that I may live a life of balance
That’s the enlightenment that I know.

Posted in Begin again, Buddhism, Innocence, Life, Nirvana, Peace, Samsara, Sharing myself, Surrender, The Work, The gift of inquiry, Truth, Unconditional love, self=Self | 9 Comments »