I don’t remember the past the way it happened.
Good news or bad news?
August 20th, 2009Taking it in
August 19th, 2009
People write all kinds of things
on blogs.
I learn from them all.
The standards I want
August 12th, 2009
I betrayed my friend’s trust and she made it public.
That’s all it took: I would not have it any other way.
Without a motive…
August 1st, 2009
A man must love a thing very much if he not only practices it without any hope of fame and money, but even … without any hope of doing it well.—Oliver Hereford
My students give me advice
July 22nd, 2009
I polled my students from the Spring quarter. Day in and day out for ten weeks I shared myself with them, and so they learned about me things I often don’t know myself. I wanted to know what that is, so I asked them. This is what they said:
Eduardo, your life will be better if you:
• Wore more color
• Go to the movies more
• Meet new people
• Ride a bike
• Go to the gym
• Find a girlfriend
• Go sky diving
• Spend more time with your daughter
• Go on vacation to a new place
• Give breaks during class and watch a funny YouTube video with us every day
• Take time to appreciate the good stuff in your life
• Join the Cal Poly Arab music ensemble
• Didn’t spread yourself too thin
• Work less and go chase women around instead
• Remember to eat lunch every day
• Were more organized
• Didn’t dress so fly
• Could do a one-arm pushup
• Ditched class to go to the beach
• Used your knowledge to get rich instead of teaching at a public university
• Shared more of those weird analogies you use in class with everyone
• Took your students on a field trip
• Shared more about your life outside of work with your students
• Got a puppy
• Played video games
• Swindled kids out of their lunch money
• Listened to all the LP’s of the Velvet Underground on vinyl
• Pick up the guitar
• Take a good vacation and relax
• Dye your hair green
• Went cliff jumping
• Do not watch those mind altering videos your friend from London sends you
• Bring fruit to class
• Listen to Basshunter or global deejays
• Don’t make things too complicated
• You spent less time reflecting on the intricacies of relationships and more time on relaxing
• Follow the advice you give your students regarding the value of questioning your stressful thoughts.
Once more, from my students I learn that I still have a lot to learn.
A Color Theory of Freedom (and of those who point the way)
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.
We begin now
June 14th, 2009
It’s never too late to be what you might have been!
-Mary Ann Evans (George Eliot)
(With thanks to Joan Halifax Roshi for passing this on)
Realpolitik
June 8th, 2009
I don’t pretend to be happy
I just live my life instead.
How to tell if a decision is the right one
June 7th, 2009
Sit still and ponder
Is there peace in it?
