True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.
-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Archive for the ‘Unconditional love’ Category
Insight breeds Service
Monday, January 16th, 2012
Guards Down
Wednesday, December 21st, 2011The frontier of vulnerability
is immediate
I wrote this down after listening to David Whyte’s Midlife and the Great Unknown.
Usually I write little things like that and the blog post ends, but I think that this one needs clarification.
So, what is this post about? It’s about the fact that I used to think that to become a fully open and vulnerable person one had to take a tremendous leap from where one stood.
But this is not correct.
All it takes is a very small step: the step of lowering one’s guards. And this will appear to be difficult, but there is always a gentle way to take this step. For example, if I resist making myself vulnerable in front of my Dad, if it feels too steep, I can say to him: I sometimes think about opening up to you and I don’t because I fear you will not know what to do with it, I fear I will put myself out there and not be understood, and that scares me.
See what I mean? The first step feels too steep, I acknowledge this, and this acknowledgement becomes the step I take. Still too steep? Say: Sometimes I want to tell you how I really feel and I notice I stop myself. Too steep, still? Say: I want to get closer to you, but I don’t know how. Do you have any suggestions? Too steep, still? Sit next to him, in silence, even if only for a few moments, and appreciate his company, the sweetness of his presence, just that moment. Still too steep? Do this, from the distance, for a briefer moment still. We all start somewhere.
Most importantly, this is not a consolation prize to true intimacy. This is true intimacy, because it is growing out of the moment where I’m at, rather than from some mental/emotional state I think I’m supposed to be in for such intimacy to take place.
What I’m trying to say is that the edge of where I have to be to grow in love is not somewhere out-there where I take visibly heroic actions but rather somewhere in-here, nearer than near, where I show something authentic about myself to the person in front of me, and to myself.
All other frontiers of vulnerability are imagined
And writing this makes me very emotional because, well, this is not theoretical. I fear telling my Dad how I feel almost all the time, and I haven’t told him this yet. It feels too steep. So I’m telling you instead. That’s the step I could take today. And it is bringing me to tears.
We all start somewhere.
La peor diligencia es la que no se hace
Saturday, July 30th, 2011
Yes, you
Thursday, November 25th, 2010This morning I took a look at my list of friends, family and acquaintances and reflected on how grateful I am for each one of you in my life. You will find some of those reflections below.
Read it slowly, with full intent, if you will. I wrote these reflections about you.
I am grateful to you because you’re funny and unassuming. You’re so adaptable and often in good spirits. You’re tender, vulnerable, sophisticated. You love your family dearly.
I’m grateful to you because you’re original, bold, experimental, sensitive and extremely amusing. You are innocent and beautiful and fragile, and smart. You’re so classy and attractive and grounded in spirit and in the strength of your family. I’m grateful to you because you’re intense and don’t give up, because you strive to understand the world we live in. I have so liked it when we have had the chance to share from the heart, learn from each other, listen to each other, spend time together.
I’m grateful for your open heart, your determination to keep living amidst adversities, your depth of character, your intelligence. Many of the things I’ve learned from you have sustained me on the rainy days of this life, and kept me warm and smiling, on the inside, even as a I felt soaked to the skin. Have you any idea how much you have meant to me?
I think about you and admiration is what I feel.
Thank you.
Days run into weeks, weeks into months
Sunday, November 7th, 2010
Near the place where Zen Master Hakuin lived there happened to be a food store. The owner of the food store had a beautiful unmarried daughter. One day she was found with child. Her parents flew into a rage. They wanted to know the father, but she would not give them the name. After repeated scolding and harassment, she gave up and told them it was the Zen Master. When the child was born they ran to the Zen Master, scolding him with foul tongue, and they left the infant with him. They said to him: “Take care of this child as you’re the father.” The Zen Master said, “Is that so”. That was his only comment.
He accepted the child. He started nourishing and taking care of the child. By this time his reputation had come to an end, and he was an object of mockery. Days ran into weeks, weeks into months and months into years. But there is something called conscience in our human life, and the young girl was tortured by her conscience. She finally disclosed to her parents the name of the child’s real father, a man who worked in a fish market. The parents again flew into a rage. At the same time, sorrow and humiliation tortured the household. They came running to the spiritual Master, begged his pardon, narrated the whole story and then took the child back as they said to him: “You don’t need to take care of this child anymore as you’re not his father.”
His only comment was: “Is that so.”
(Taken, with light editing, from Reps, Paul; Nyogen Senzaki. Zen Flesh, Zen Bones: A Collection of Zen and Pre-Zen Writings)
All Is Well
Sunday, April 4th, 2010
Yesterday I missed you terribly
So I closed my eyes
and gave you back to me.
Welcome back.
Shhh
Thursday, March 11th, 2010I wondered for years why if TW was so effective nobody was as “advanced” as KT was even though there’s now been people doing TW for decades. One day I understood that 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 that day into words it would read 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 I learned that day was just how much I was like everyone else:
.
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.
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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 that 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.
Spiritual advice to follow on odd days
Thursday, February 11th, 2010
- 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.
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).
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.
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.
Extra Ordinary
Tuesday, April 7th, 2009
It’s not because I’m invincible that I’m reliable
It’s because I’m vulnerable and I know it.
