Growing up

"It seems to me in my experience and also in talking to other people that we come to a body of teachings like the Buddhist teachings or any spiritual path, to meditation in some way like little children looking for comfort, looking for understanding, looking for attention, looking somehow to be confirmed. Some kind of comfort will come out of this. And the truth is actually that the practice isn't about that. The practice is more about somehow this little child this I, who wants and wants and wants to be confirmed in some way. 

Practice is about that part of our being that, like that finally being able to open completely to the whole range of our experience, including all that wanting, including all that hurt, including the pain and the joy. Opening to the whole thing so that this little child-like part of us can finally, finally, finally, finally grow up. 

Trungpa Rinpoche once said that was the most powerful mantra, Om Grow Up Svaha. 

But this issue of growing up, it's not all that easy because it requires a lot of courage. Particularly it takes a lot of courage to relate directly with your experience. By this I mean whatever is occurring in you, you use it,. You seize the moment? moment after moment? you seize those moments and instead of letting life shut you down and make you more afraid, you use those very same moments of time to soften and to open and to become more kind. More kind to yourself for starters as the basis for becoming more kind to others." Pema Chodron

Despite the Voices

As I lay awake this morning the message came from within me. Despite the voices in my head (Mara), despite the messages I thought I was getting from the outside world (Jesus), I always listened to the voice within (buddhanature, Christ within). If the moral of Judas' story is that he had a choice, it wasn't the choice of betraying Jesus for the money, it was that he had a choice to listen to that space of love within himself. That instead of running away from the pain and uneasiness we can choose to stay with it. To turn and face it, offer ourselves to it, to climb down the monsters throat and watch it dissolve.

We can let circumstances of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder and more open to what scares us. We always have this choice.

~ Pema Chödrön

Hooked

I am spinning and have called Bill. I need help in grounding but feel okay to practice myself. I am hearing Pema's words of refraining. I am not stopping the rush of feelings but trying to let them pass on by like a ticker tape. She talked about Dzigar Kongtrül teachings on shenpa. Recognizing when we are hooked. I find therapy helps me with the content of my thoughts and buddhism works at cutting the root. This is a root issue for me. Psychic stuff. I am working to find ground in the groundless...if that makes sense.

The Noble Leader

I just read an article online in the Shambhala Sun; a discussion between Pema Chödrön and her teacher, Dzigar Kongtrül. The article was written in January of 2006 but I found a correlation in Dzigar Kontrül words between the difference in self-centeredness verses buddhnature of mind and to the upcoming transition from President Bush to President Elect Obama.

"This innate love is a powerful force that is now being led by a completely noble, incredibly dignified leader. Before, this powerful force, an army with the richness of a whole kingdom behind it and the loyalty of the subjects, was being led by a crooked king, and that crookedness created a state of confusion that spread everywhere. When that crooked leader is replaced by a noble leader, with a genuine sense of dignity, everyone in the kingdom can reap the benefit of the positive qualities that are the basic nature of the kingdom in the first place.

The noble leader is altruistic mind, and the crooked leader is self-centeredness. Self reflection is what discriminates between the qualities of self-centeredness of the bad leader and the altruistic mind of the good leader."

While I don't like all of the analogies referencing battles and good verses bad, I do find a connection between the "battle" I have with seeing the good or noble basis of who I am and my ego's persistent effort to survive. My ego operates out of fear, reacting to external input rather than relying on my built-in internal buddhanature mind to find clarity. Further in the article, he talks about overcoming this ego-based self-hatred by directing loving-kindness to our mind not to self. This is a profoundly moving concept for me.

This weekend in particular, I have been mindful of our country's Presidential transition. I feel we are transitioning from a fear-based leader or as Dzigar Kontrül notes a self-centered crooked leader to an altruistic noble leader. I know he is not referencing Bush and Obama but I like being able to connect the feeling of what he is saying with a real life experience for myself. At no other time in my life have I felt such a perceptible difference in Political leaders as I have with this election. Obama is different. He is based in loving-kindness. He operates from that space. I feel I will be able to learn many lessons in the next four years from our noble leader. "Everyone in the kingdom will reap the positive qualities that are the basic nature of the kingdom in the first place."