Attentiveness and Intention: On Practicing the Five Strengths

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After publicly confessing last week about my difficulties with meditating every day, I managed to pull it off - an entire week of meditating for 5-10 minutes every single day. Sometimes it didn't happen until the evening, but it always happened. I'm happy with my progress and feel like I'm building momentum, which feeds nicely into this week's lojong tenet:

Practice the five strengths, the condensed heart instructions.

The UnfetteredMind.org translation isn't very different, "A summary of the essential instructions: Train in the five forces." On the other hand, the explanatory passage they provide does add to my understanding - especially since it actually explains the five forces:

The five forces are: developing momentum through consistent practice, training in all areas of your life, sowing virtuous seeds through acts of goodness and kindness, feeling regret about reactive states of mind or destructive actions, and dedication of personal benefit to the welfare of all beings. (Emphasis theirs.) (Source.)

Before I move onto the Tricycle passage that stuck out to me, I want to explain the gif up above. As I started to consider the five strengths/forces, I realized that my recent confession and ensuing uptick in meditation is an example of the kind of momentum one can develop through consistent practice. I also realized that I'm also already pursuing all of the other strengths/forces. The picture accompanying the passage on UnfetteredMinds.org is of a flower, but if the five strengths are like a flower then surely I'm a butterfly who is dependent on the flower. It's like I'm there, and I'm doing what I need to do, but I need to be attentive and intentional about it - or moreso.

And that brings me back to Lief's piece about this tenet. The bulk of what she wrote mirrors what I shared above, but her suggestion for how to live with this teaching is interesting - and once again it's a thing I already do:

Pay attention to how you decide to spend your time. How much of your activity each day is intentional? Choose a day and try deliberately setting an intention to place whatever you are doing that day within the context of mindfulness and loving-kindness practice.

The loving-kindness part might be hard, since (like everyone else) I'm prone to being overly critical of myself. However, that's what I'll be focusing on this week.

Until next time, namaste and all that.

Meditate, Meditate, and What Was that Other Thing? Oh, yeah. Meditate.: On Joining with Meditation

This week's tenet is straightforward. Understandable even to people who aren't trying to constantly wrap their heads around ancient teachings, no doubt:

Whatever you meet unexpectedly, join with meditation.

The translation at UnfetteredMinds.org isn't necessary for understanding, but it does add more depth: "Work with whatever you encounter, immediately." Unlike with the last few tenets I've examined, the explanatory paragraph at that site adds even more:

All experience is in the present. You either open to it right now or you fall into reactive patterns and reinforce them. (Source.)

Even though I felt fairly confident I had a grasp of where to go with this teaching, I still consulted Tricycle, and I'm glad I did. Right at the beginning of Lief's discussion, it resonated super strongly:

When our lives are going relatively smoothly and predictably it is easier to maintain our mindfulness. But when things are happening fast, it is hard to remember to join what we encounter with meditation. It is also easier to think of others if we ourselves are not currently either in the midst of some crisis or caught up in some amazing opportunity. But it seems that no matter how hard we try to stay on an even keel, we keep being blindsided by unexpected events. (Source.)

All I can say in response is, "Guilty as charged." I do manage to meditate every week, but I have a hard time with every day. I've gotten to the point lately where I can make myself sit down by promising myself I only have to do 5-10 minutes. I know that's enough, really, but I miss being able to sustain the concentration and find time for 20 minutes daily. However, that's not the point of this tenet. No, the point of joining "with meditation" isn't about chastising myself for not meditating. It's about noticing when I'm not and trying to figure out why I'm not. I'm still working on not judging my actions, as I wrote about last week, and this exhortation to work with whatever, immediately, is another way to do that. Another way to be aware.

Not much interpretation needed here, at any rate. A pretty straightforward tenet, so I'll close with Lief's suggestion for working with this teaching:

In order to join experience and meditation, it is helpful to begin by noticing when that does not happen. So today’s practice is to pay attention to “losing it.” Strangely, simply seeing such moments more clearly, without too much judgment or commentary, is a way to extend an attitude of practice more consistently and deeply into our ongoing activities. (Same source as previous Tricycle quote.)

So that's what I'll be working on. Until the next time, namaste and all that. 

Wind and Rain are Just Another Kind of Good Weather: On the Four Practices

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Like the last tenet I examined, this new one sent me looking for commentary before I could get my head wrapped around it:

Four practices are the best of methods.

According to one source I consulted:

"The four practices are generating goodness, clearing away negativity, filling obsessions with awareness, and nourishing wakefulness in your life."

I can get with that, but really I need more. So of course I turned to Tricyle. According to Judy Lief, the four practices are accumulating merit, putting away evil deeds, welcoming your neurotic attacks as wake up calls, and maintaining self-awareness. My interpretation is, "keep doing good; stop doing bad; don't get so stuck in your head about the good or bad; and be aware of where your head is."

After I read all the things and thought about it for a while, I found myself remembering a movie I watched a long while back - Casanova. It's very much a typical romantic comedy but in a historical setting with real-ish characters. I don't actually recommend it, but there is a quote from that movie that's stuck with me all these years later:

"Love, love is something else. It's the weather being good every day because wind and rain is just another kind of good weather. That's love."

Without rain, no flowers or food or babbling brooks or rainbows. Without the neurotic moments, there's nothing to push me to deepen my practice and to work on my self-awareness. It's odd that I was just having a conversation about this very point with a friend last night. I told him that the neurotic moment isn't about the issue running around his brain, so he should stop thinking about that thing and breathe and then look at something cute on the internet and breathe and then think about something concrete like the feeling of his feet against the ground or the sounds going on around him. After I'd calmed him down, he told me he appreciated what I'd said because, "You're blunt but not judgmental." One of the best compliments I've ever gotten, and it seems to me that - beyond reducing the bad and accumulating the good - that's the point of this tenet. No giving myself brownie points or demerits for my good deeds or bad, just awareness and intention. Not judgement, just awareness and intention.

Lief's advice for putting this tenet into practice is going to be a stretch for me, but considering that conversation I had last night, I know it's possible:

"When you do something good, try to remove any add-on of self-congratulation or righteousness.  When you make a mistake, try to remove any add-on of self-punishment or guilt. Instead, simply commit yourself to refraining from such actions in the future. Tune in to whatever arises as a way to reconnect with kindness and awareness." (Source)

So that's what I'll be doing this week. Until the next time, namaste and all that.

It Must Be Indicative of Something Besides the Redistribution of Wealth: On Examining Confusion

This week's tenet is a doozy:

Seeing confusion as the four kayas is unsurpassable shunyata protection.

Lolwut, right? Kayas? Shunyata? Huh? After reading the slogan, I immediately navigated to UnfetteredMinds.org, which gave me a different translation - "The ultimate protection is emptiness; know what arises as confusion to be the four aspects of being." - and that made me laugh. A slogan about confusion is confusing? I'm not even vaguely surprised. The explanation provided by UnfetteredMinds.org added a little, but not enough:

"All experience is empty, vivid, and the two together heighten awareness. These three qualities are inseparable. Experience your life this way."

So there I was, confused about confusion. Going to a meta level about my emotions and mental processes is nothing new to me: I've been anxious about anxiety many times. But being familiar with the phenomenon doesn't make it easier to tame. So, as you probably know if you've read this blog before, my next stop was Tricycle and that was exactly what I needed.

"Basically, the point here is that if we really look closely at the way our mind works, even in the midst of confusion, we always find the same process: one of continual awakening. This process is described in terms of what are called the four kayas or 'bodies.' Through careful attention and meditative practice we begin to see how every perception begins with uncertainty and openness (dharmakaya); then starts to come into focus (nirmanakaya); then develops energy and begins to come together (sambhogakaya), and finally clicks, synthesized as immediate present-moment experience (svabhavikakaya). It is as though confusion is awakening in disguise."

And that's when it started to click. Examining shunyata, or emptiness, is the way to live a life. Not just the confusion but the examination of the confusion, and finding the emptiness underneath, is the point. And Lief's advise for acting on this tenet was the moment when I understood completely:

"In your sitting practice, pay attention to the arising and dissolving of perceptions. Notice how your sense of self seems to arise simultaneously with each perception, ready to respond to any threat; notice the subtle undertone of fear.  What are you actually protecting?"

Once I understood it, my mind immediately turned to one of my favorite films, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (the title of this post is a quote from one of the earliest scenes in the movie). In that film, two minor characters from Hamlet become the main characters. They are trying to figure out why they are there, trying to control their paths, but inexplicably drawn along with the plot of the play regardless of all their efforts to the contrary. The movie is confusing and hilarious, and the best way to enjoy it is to let go of trying to understand the plot. So, yes, I'm going to "pay attention to the rising and dissolving of perceptions," but I'm also going to let go and try to enjoy the confusion.

Until next time, namaste and all that.

Nourishing the Flower in You: On Being Grateful to Everyone

The next lojong tenet embodies a concept with which I've been working for a while: gratitude.

Be grateful to everyone.

The translation at UnfetteredMind.org is identical to the text I'm using, but their explanation adds depth:

"Every encounter with another person gives you an opportunity to practice mind training and presence, whether the encounter is pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral." (Source.)

The Tricycle piece about this tenet is behind a paywall, so I've grabbed a little more than normal for you:

"Conventional gratitude is based on distinguishing what we like from what we do not, good fortune from bad fortune, success from failure, opportunities from obstacles. By practicing conventional gratitude, we may begin to better appreciate times of good fortune and opportunity. But what about all the obstacles, unpleasant people, and difficulties in our life?

According to this slogan, we should be especially grateful for having to deal with annoying people and difficult situations, because without them we would have nothing to work with. Without them, how could we practice patience, exertion, mindfulness, loving-kindness or compassion? It is by dealing with such challenges that we grow and develop. So we should be very grateful to have them."

After I got that famous "thank you sir, may I have another" Kevin Bacon scene out of my head, I remembered my favorite quote from another Buddhist writer, Thich Nhat Hanh: "And if you have no compost, you have nothing to nourish the flower in you. You need the suffering, the afflictions in you." This idea, of feeling grateful for the negative because it gives you an opportunity to push your practice, an opportunity to turn the negative into positive... this idea is what brought me to Buddhism more than anything else. So this is something I already do, but I'll be doing it more consciously and intentionally this week.

Until next week, namaste and all that.

Examining Assumptions and Blame: On Driving All Blames Into One

I've been trying to write this post for a week now. Recent events (especially the misogyny fueled tragedy at UCSB last week) have made it hard for me to wrap my mind around this tenet. I'm making myself sit down, though, because I need to get working with this teaching and I need to move on.

So, the newest tenet:

Drive all blames into one.

UnfetteredMinds.org has an almost identical translation ("drive all blame" instead of "blames"), so it doesn't add any depth. Their explanatory text isn't very helpful either:

"Reactive patterns bring about precisely what you try to avoid. When things go wrong in your life, blaming circumstances doesn't help. Look at the role your own patterns play in bringing about the problem." (Source.)

There's some of the same self-examination I've seen in previous lojong teachings, but for me their explanation doesn't line up well with what I know of driving all blames. As I always do, I turned next to the Tricycle piece by Judy Lief. If you want a fuller examination, and lots of wisdom, about this teaching please follow that link. The quote that hit me hardest, though, was:

"This slogan is quite radical. Instead of blaming others, you blame yourself. Even if it is not your fault, you take the blame. It is important to distinguish this practice from neurotic self-blaming or the regretful fixation on your own mistakes and how much you [are] at fault. It also does not imply that you should not point out wrongdoing or blow the whistle on corruption. Instead, as you go about your life, you simply notice the urge to blame others and you reverse it."

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I am someone who tends toward self-blame as it is, but the juxtaposition of this tenet with the shootings... Wow, it brought things home. It's one thing to look for the causes of ingrained and socially acceptable misogyny, systemic racism, and the like, the things I know were at the root of the events last week. It's quite another to take the blame myself. This led me to thinking about the role I play in our racist culture. I can tell you that the moment I went from being a White Feminist to being a feminist who just happens to be Caucasian was definitely tied to me taking the blame, to seeing my privilege and how I've benefit from the systems in our country just because of where I was born and to whom.

But taking all the blame for everything isn't the point of this tenet. "The Middle Way," which is an important concept in Buddhism, talks about finding a way between extremes. It is more tied to navigating between a purely material and a purely spiritual life, but it's a philosophy I try to apply to other aspects of my day to day. So, yes, I will work with taking the blame no matter what it is, but I'll also work with not beating myself up for it. And I'll follow the advice with which Lief closed her piece about this tenet:

"Pay attention to how blaming arises and what patterns it takes.  See what happens when you take on the blame yourself. Notice what changes in your own experience and in what you observe around you."

Until next week, namaste and all that.

Forgiveness and Growth: On Transforming All Mishaps into the Path of the Bodhi

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Yes, a long silence. To the 15 of you who read this blog regularly, I apologize. I had a series of busy weekends, and then there's the fact I've pledged to get more sleep. The upshot is that this side project, as much as I love it, had to be left by the wayside for a while. The point of Lojong Ruminations, as I keep saying to myself, is not to adhere to some schedule like I do with my other blog. The point of this blog is the exploration, and so long as I keep going along the path it's serving its purpose.

Now onto the real subject at hand: the next teaching.

When the world is filled with evil, transform all mishaps into the path of the bodhi.

The bodhi tree is the tree under which the Buddha was sitting when his enlightenment happened. In the context of this tenet, "bodhi" can be understood to mean "enlightenment" or "awakening." This can be seen in the translation of this tenet provided by UnfetteredMind.org: "When misfortune fills the world and its inhabitants. Make adversity the path of awakening," (source). The explanatory paragraph they provide adds a little more:

"Whatever adversity comes your way, use it as a basis for taking and sending, Take in all the similar misfortunes of others and send out your own sense of presence and equanimity."

After sitting with the original wording, the alternate translation, and the explanatory note for a while, I turned to the Tricycle piece on this mind-training. The first paragraph hit me hard:

"When things go wrong, when we encounter obstacles, the last thing on our minds is the dharma. Instead, what is the first thing on our minds? Ourselves! It is all about how we are being inconvenienced, burdened, put upon, attacked, misunderstood, rejected—you name it. Not only do we lose track of the path, but our concern for others goes into hibernation as we focus front and center on our own particular problem."

I highly recommend reading Judy Lief's whole piece about this particular teaching. The idea of using our personal mishaps to push ourselves along the path to enlightenment is the very thing that attracted me to studying lojong. We, all of us, have upsets in our lives. Every single day. Multiple times per day. Sometimes they're major, like a divorce or the loss of a job or the death of a friend. Other times they're minor, like someone not finding a good parking spot on a rainy day or the grocery store being out of a favorite flavor of yogurt. It's not the things that happen to us that make up who we are, it's how we react and move on from the events.

And that brings me to the people you see in that picture above. I've been working on The Forgiveness Challenge lately. Desmond Tutu and his daughter, Mpho Tutu, have literally challenged the entire world to forgive. It is a 30 day long effort, with daily mini-challenges such as writing about a time when you were hurt by a close friend, what you did in response, and how it made you feel. It dovetails so nicely with the lojong teaching under consideration. For Desmond and Mpho Tutu to transform the pain of Apartheid into this beautiful idea of helping people everywhere heal... awe-inspiring. One quote in particular resonated more than anything else so far: "You forgive to set yourself free, not the other person." For me, that kind of freedom is the thing that brought me to and keeps me practicing Buddhism. I aspire to the kind of equanimity I see in Desmond Tutu, and his personal religious practice isn't as important to me as his actions are. So that's what I'll be working with this week (and for a few more weeks to come).

Until next week, namaste and all that.