It's enough

In the West there doesn't seem to be a good emblem for those who starve even while they gorge themselves, or at least not one that's related to a spiritual tradition. Perhaps in apochrypha; the cannibalistic giants in the Book of Enoch, half human and half angel, rooted neither in heaven or earth, are so famished that they eat everything they can and they are still starving. They wreak such havoc on the world that God drowns them and everything else in a deluge that signals the necessity of a new beginning.

That never-enough syndrome of those prediluvian monsters wasn't washed away with the waters, it seems to have crept back to reflect to us the phenomenon of broken receptivity in human souls. They thirst but they cannot drink. No pollination can happen. It doesn't matter if God is immanent or transcendent, either way his rays aren't absorbed, nothing is ever enough.

In the Buddhist tradition Hungry Ghosts have huge bellies but needle thin necks, they can't receive even though they have the means of holding much. Thich Nhat Hanh explains the situation this way but I suspect the issue goes back to a lack of mirroring in early childhood. He writes "Our society creates thousands of hungry ghosts every day. Looking deeply, we see that they are everywhere around us. These are people without roots. In their family, their parents did not demonstrate that happiness is possible. They did not feel understood or accepted by their church or comminity. So they have rejected everything. They don't believe in family, society, or religion. They don't belive in their own traditions. But they are still looking for something good, beautiful, and true to believe in; they are hungry for understanding and love." Understanding Our Mind, p. 66

I've been watching the Hungry Ghost in me for a few years now, studying the way it takes everything for granted and is so rarely satisfied. Yesterday in meditation I saw my heart opening and closing; closing to the outside world in defensiveness so that I could receive no nourishment from it; opening to the world like petals emerging from a flower, ready to soak the astonishing beauty and freedom of the world deep down into the pours, ready to radiate whatever perfume of openness the mystery of the heart offers the world in return. I was stunned.

A little red

...goes a long way. I found a 1955 copy of The Happy Holisters and the Trading Post Mystery on the street. Above, the illustration on the inner cover. Images of happy families that abound in media of the era and more recent ones had me fooled for a long time. I really thought families were supposed to be happy like that all the time. Ha!

In Sky Dancer there's a part where Guru Rinpoche (Padmasambhava, Pema Jungne) remarks that it was good that his disciple, Yeshe Tsoygel, had difficulties completing an errand. This is good, difficulty is purification, he said. Some remarks go straight to the marrow.

Absolute Sweetness Sweetens Absolutely

Thanks to Malku and Alanna, to Joe, to the hummingbird and the condor whose head she rode on to reach an altitude 20,000 feet. Now I know better what a bodhisattva is. How else can you dance in the sky? Thanks also to Troy for bringing the world of Chöd back to me, and to the Kestrel I saw perched on PS 154 last night. Without birds of all kinds, I think I would be lost altogether.

Kornfield

My dad recently returned from a Buddhist retreat with Jack Kornfield and was moved to send me Kornfield's book, The Wise Heart. I cracked it open to the middle for a core sample and found something I rarely see, an account of someone's experience of meditation. This is tricky, subtle territory and even experienced buddhists I've met at times don't really see the purpose in meditation beyond focusing the mind. But in meditation things GO ON, things few people even have words for, so I'm a little awestruck with this passage:

Her first two weeks were filled with the usual ups and downs of body and memory release, the gradual settling down. When her mind became more silent, the boundaries of her sense of self began to evaporate. Her consciousness opened. She would look at an oak tree and feel her arms as the branches. She would breathe and the room breathed too. As she became ever more carefully attentive, an almost atomic level of perception was revealed to her. Each sound, each step, each sight broke apart like a pointillist painting. Over the weeks, her senses became a river of thousands of vibrating points of light. At first this was alarming, but with trust she let go into the changing river. One day both her self and the universe dissolved, dropping away into luminous emptiness. Later a tentative sense of self reappeared and she floated between form and emptiness for some days. She described it as "sitting like a Buddha," experiencing a joyful release, the sweet fruit of years of practice. p.87

It gets better. Kornfield recounts how, when she returned to the real world, this woman experienced what psychologists would call a spontaneous psychic integration and what a shaman would call a soul retrieval. All her life she had tried to be the son her father had hoped for, but finally, after dissolving, she came back together as the woman she was never allowed to be, reborn to her formerly marginalized femininity at the age of 48. "Like a newborn."

Bears and Siddhas

We went to a window store in Bay Ridge to get a screen, and this man who worked there let me take a picture of his bear tattoo once I expressed my admiration. He told me he had been down to the deep south to see a tattoo artist who specializes in covering up tattoos you regret having gotten, in this man's case, an image of his ex.

A cover-up tattoo artist is a very specialized talent, and I'm sure they have many sad stories to tell, although perhaps there's some kind of confidentiality ethic they uphold. I was just glad to see a bear on a man's arm, seemed like a good choice what with those long claws so perfect for pulverizing decayed wood, for clawing away what's dead and worn out, what no longer serves its purpose, so the light of morning can get into the wound.

The hand of the Siddha holds what I read in Holy Madness is a teaching mudra which slightly resembles the don't walk sign. And I'm sure, if my understanding of Buddhism is a good one, that the hand also says "stop." Stop mistaking appearances for reality. All that you thought is good in no more GOOD than anything else, all that you thought is BAD is no worse, let the addictive and materialist cycles fueled by mistaking one's experience of a thing for its essence stop. Stop thinking that all you need to do to alleviate your suffering is improve your situation by getting a better apartment, more better friends, cooler gadgets, nicer car, more nuanced wine, more effective drugs.

This teaching always reminds me to notice what my assumptions are about the things I reflect on. In this way anti-realism will never be trite, at least not for civilians to academic philosophy, and has the potential to bring humanity closer to overcoming the evils of reductionism and prejudice. But Jesus said it so charmingly, along the lines of, you know, before you can help remove the splinter in your brother's eye, you might want to take the log out of yours. Very funny, Jesus. Bear claws are really good for that. So the light of morning can get in.

L'Shana Tova!

2 lions and 3 suns

Nora kindly agreed to let me share her drawing of 2 lions dancing under 3 suns. I can't help wonder where this vision came from. I hope you can forgive a mother's pride.

I'm getting familiar with my new book, Ocean of Nectar by G.K. Gyatso. I bought the book because the title shakes me deeply, and also because I'm obsessed with Buddhist teaching presently, but last night I was delighted to learn that the text deals with the teachings of Nagarjuna, an important Buddhist philospher and poser of the tetralemma, a philosophical equation that some use as an antidote to the mindset of Aristotelian dualism. Just in time, as I was getting stuck in the quagmire of trying to speak Buddhist but sounding like a nihilist. Right-o Lisanne McT?

Anyway I opened Ocean of Nectar randomly this morning and had a sip, and found these lines written by a King devoted to Chandrakirti, Nagarjuna's chief disciple.

The the power of Glorious Chandrakirti
The mighty stone lion came to life,
And brought the Dhuraka war to an end
Without harming a single person.

There are many remarkable legends from that part of the world, not the least of which is the Life Story of Milarepa, a 10th Century Tibetan sorcerer turned Buddhist, also in the book pile.

rainbow tara

Last night I went to bed somewhat unhappy, and woke up the same way. For a second while waking, some nameless joyous thing briefly appeared in my mind, peripherally, something like a gorgeous overlay of jellyfish and jewel-planed diatom, like a thought form carrying a time-release capsule of happiness.

Later I felt a little better realizing that I wasn't upset because of some one's behavior, but in fact all responsibility rested with my attachments. No attachments, no disappointments. So who's to blame for my suffering? My attachment to things that never existed outside of my mind in the first place. Perhaps it might seem like semantics, but it might also have been a flash of wisdom that freed me from wrestling with blame and liberated me from victimhood.

I treasure those moments when such liberating wisdom suddenly appears in my mind, if only briefly. It reminds me of the occasions when I've gone to Prospect Park and am elated, without fail, by the appearance of one of the hawks, whose clear vision and acuity never cease to inspire. What's to stalk? Ignorance and self delusion.

Above, a Thangka of White Tara that hung in the room where I worked on Friday, somewhat distracting me from the rather difficult photographic challenge I faced that day. I'm completely fascinated by the eye in the red-painted palm of her hand. I'm not sure who to attribute the painting to, most likely it was painted by the Tibetan artist Romio Shretha. If you double click the top image you get a closer look at the way the artist suggests Tara's compassionate wishes for true freedom and happiness for all beings with the rainbows spiralling from her third eye and heart. Sigh, sigh, sigh.

Buddhist Vocabulary

Yesterday I passed a tree on Prospect Avenue that had a hula hoop stuck very high up in it, and it reminded me of reading Black Elk Speaks, of considering the symbolism of the sacred hoop and tree of life, the central motifs of his visions, that gave a sense of the sacredness of things even as his people died around him of disease or left tribal life due to the decimation of the Buffalo. On occasions, this medicine man was able to cure the sick and bring rain, but he could not protect his people from the settler's relentless grasping for land and resources that were the hallmark of the period. In their hopes of driving the Indians out of coveted land, they killed every last Buffalo, erasing a species and a way of life.

What an example of what the Buddhists call "self-grasping," or "self-cherishing." In last night's lecture Matthew Reichers explored the idea that this mental habit of "self-grasping" is the cause of suffering and conflict in society. He read this line from his teacher G.K. Gyatso's book: "Self-cherishing is like an iron chain that keeps us locked in samsara," stuck in the mind the sees our own personal dramas, beliefs, traditions and property as more important than those of anyone else.

Other religions say it differently don't they? I'm amazed by how many paths there are to the top of the mountain, and yet it's still such a challenging and sometimes terrifying climb. Please throw down rope.

16th St. 9 ball

Well, that was weird. After dropping of my daughter at school I got stuck on 16th St. behind a car with Vermont plates that read "9 ball," which was, in turn, stuck behind the trash truck. It didn't turn out that badly though, 9 ball pulled over and I squeaked by the truck after folding the rear view mirror in. We here in Brooklyn have a unique opportunity to learn to keep calm in tight spaces. It reminds me of the Buddhist practice called Tonglen, in which meditators imagine they breath in the ills of the world, anger, anxiety, depression, all suffocating things, etc., and breath out bliss, freedom, light and spaciousness.

There's a strange interplay betweent loose and tight in the air today. I woke up at 5:30 so happy to stay in bed, and kept waking up in a state of anxiety only to realize I had more...time....Then finally I was dreaming of a bee crawling very quickly in the direction of my alarm clock, getting to it just as it actually started buzzing.

And with that, a photo of a tadpole we saw Sunday that's developing in a tank over at the Boathouse in Prospect Park. I think one of the reasons it's so satisfying to observe tiny critters in water is because it amplifies our sense of space for some reason, which can bring either great relief or terror depending on your state of mind, relative agoraphobia or claustrophobia.

Buddhism Mish Mash

Last night at the Buddhism talk given on St. Mark's at the Vajradhara center Matthew was ripping it up like he always does, making the case, as he always does, that the cause of our happiness does not lie in the world around us. I like the look he gets in his eyes when he's putting the nail in the coffin of ignorance, as if the nail would stay in place, it seems that most sneaky zombie of ignorance is especially good at getting out and running around wasting everyone's time in frivolous pursuits that temporarily seem so meaningful but don't lead to any kind of lasting happiness. Apparently, you don't have to be into pharmaceuticals to be a junky. You know what kind of junky I am, I bet.

Matthew makes that same point several times a week in a most patient and cheerful sisyphusian manner. (The coffin and zombie metaphors are mine, I don't think he'd espouse them.) Recently I heard something slightly different from him. How pleasant when something new suddenly makes sense. I understood him to say that we feel dissatisfied so often because we believe that we have a separate existence from the everything, but this is a misunderstanding, we actually don't. I wanted him to say a little bit more about this idea, maybe he will someday, because I wanted to think more about that wonderful thought, that we have an intimate connection with all things, all the time, that we're inseparable from our world and the people in it. How much more motivated are we then to take care of each other and those living things we can see as family.

At the talk I sat next to a woman visiting from India, dressed all in blue, sitting next to her doe-eyed daughter, also dressed in blue. She had a photo of the holy man Sri Ramana Maharshi on a chain around her neck which surprised me because I considered him, as a Hindu, to be from a very different line of thought. I'd bought a book about him from Andy, the man that runs that store called "A Healing Place" on Garfield. When I read it, it left me with the impression that there's a self, the little, scared, very particular person, and the Self, the substance of all things and our true nature, a state without Ego, perhaps without boundary. Is it any wonder then that many of us find our dreams running together so frequently?

This quote from Maharishi gives me a sense of the man's compassion. Who can't relate to that miserable, graceless feeling he addresses here. Look no further, says he.

...The Sage was asked by someone what he should do to deserve Grace; the Sage answered; "Are you asking this question without Grace? Grace is in the beginning, the middle and the end; for Grace is the Self; but because of ignorance of the Self it is expected to come from somewhere outside of you."

Maya Yoga, Page 213-214

Honestly, I don't know how anyone can pick one tradition to follow on the path of wisdom. This stuff is too hard and faceted to look at from any one angle. It seems every time I turn around some new and surprising thing carries the staff, and I have to completely open my mind, again, again, again... You'd agree, wouldn't you, that the cubists were very good teachers?

Highway Motif

Seconds before I saw this tanker I had been daydreaming about the things I've learned from Buddhist teacher Matthew Reichers.

I was savoring the words diamond mind, in Buddhism the mind that dissolves all sources of suffering by observing that none of these feared or desired objects have fixed characteristics. No matter how hard we try to convince ourselves that things are one way or another.

I remember times when I've been convinced someone or something was evil incarnate, only to find out that it or he or she caused me to benefit in some way. Other times I was hankering for something I identified as heavenly, only to realize that whatever it was would bring with it many irritations.

According to the Buddha, the diamond mind is that aspect of awareness with the power to dissolve all delusion, the ultimate vehicle to freedom. Like diamonds, we are made of carbon, so I guess the potential for clarity is within us.

I'm glad I wasn't driving the car that day, with all this daydreaming, I might have caused a collision.