Why I Left My 10 Day Vipassana Retreat, part 1

Why I went to the retreat:

I went to the retreat because I wanted to deepen my sitting meditation practice.  More, I wanted to learn a certain type of meditation - vipassana - in a formal, structured way, one that would force me through the disciplined steps of approaching the meditation practice that I would be far less likely to do on my own. And, if I am being honest, as much as I said that this wasn't my intention, I also think I wanted to experience one or two of those intense mystical moments people talk about where the divide between self and other disappears, the boundaries drop away, mind and body disappear. I was looking for some sort of unitive experience, perhaps as a peripheral but highly desirable effect of going to - and completing - the retreat.  At a deep level, I was truly searching for a practice that would inform my meditation going into the future, and inform my day to day journey of awakening, transformation and enlightenment.

What the retreat is:

I'm not going to say much about this.  You can search for "Goenka Vipassana retreat" and read all about them. They are free, which is nice - supported by the donations of course alumni. They are 10 days, and they are completely silent. This means no talking, no gestures, no nonverbal communication and preferably no eye contact. They also ask you not to read, not to do any writing or journaling, and to abstain from any and all religious/spiritual practices that you may do as a part of your regular routine/lifestyle. The schedule is this, more or less:

4am: wake up
4:30-6:30: meditate in the hall or in your room
6:30-7:15: breakfast
7:15-8: rest
8-9: formal meditation in hall
9-11: meditate in room or in hall, depending on instructions and preference
11-11:45: lunch
11:45-1: rest or questions in hall with teacher (1 on 1 - this was the only situation where talking was allowed, unless you had to talk to the manager about a logistical concern)
1-2:20: meditate in hall or in room
2:30-3:30: formal meditation in hall
3:30-5: meditate in room or in hall, depending
5-5:30: tea break with the option of fruit and/or milk in tea for first time retreatants
5:30-6: rest
6-7: formal meditation in hall
7-8:15: dvd discourse from S.N. Goenka
8:15-9: meditation in hall
9: rest (lights out by 10)

I won't expand on this except to say two things: 1) there were generous breaks in between sessions so that people could stretch and go to the bathroom.  2) no one was watching over you to smack you if you used any of the room meditation times to nap or sleep in.  That was not encouraged, but it was an option.

Last thing to sketch the retreat itself - there is no exercise allowed except for stretching and walking in the designated walking paths (about 1/8 mile loop) during rest times. They ask you not to run, do yoga, etc.

One request.  Don't pre-judge the retreat and say "that's so stupid" or "what a ridiculous expectation," etc. One thing about actually going and making the struggle-filled decision to leave: my reasons for leaving feel very deep and vulnerable and difficult.  Superficial criticism of the retreat structure seems rather off-putting after engaging with it at a very deep and challenging level. I don't know if that makes sense or not.  If not, that's okay.  It's also fine if you think these rules are stupid and bonkers.  After wrestling with them I've had less objective judgments about whether they are good or bad.  I do have a lot to say about my own relationship to them, to which I now turn my attention.

Why I left the retreat (I can't promise that this will be short. In fact, it might end up being quite long):

I can't quite say "I left because it was hard," thought it was. It was painfully hard. Literally. Schedule meditation time was 10 hours and 45 minutes. There is an encouragement to spend as much of this as possible in an upright posture, either kneeling with support or cross legged on a cushion. There is only so much postural adjustment one can perform before the same muscles are exhausted to their core.  The silence was challenging, but more than this, the boredom was almost suffocating.  There was absolutely nothing to do.  Nothing.  During the rest times I could nap, walk, or lie on my bed and stare.  I could also meditate - were I insane.  I could also stretch, if I had a bone lick of energy left in me, which I rarely did.  And the silence insofar as it meant "not talking" was relatively easy.  The "no acknowledging others in any way including eye contact" was what really punched me in the gut.  It felt awkward, forced, and incredibly distracting.  After three days of meditating I was so powerfully aware of the people around me.  To ignore them felt forced.  It felt awkward and uncomfortable.  It also felt isolating and difficult.  I understand in my head, and even in my heart, the notion of why this is done.  It is such a painful thing to be left with ourselves sometimes.  To be forced to face the discomforts we find in our mental activity.  To be left without ALL of our typical escapes.  I understood the notion behind it.  Which is why I can't say that I left because it was hard.

More than anything, I left because I lost faith that the meditation technique itself was worth it.  In fact, the most powerful and transformative meditative experience I had while there was when I went "off script" and did my own thing.  You are, as you can imagine, absolutely not supposed to do this, but I was so damn tired of trying to focus on my breathing while my legs were screaming at me because they were falling asleep that I let myself be with that agony and move into it, body and mind.  It was powerful.  When the meditation period ended I had to come back to my body.  I had the most profound feeling of "what just happened?"  But I digress.

When we got to the end of day 4 they began to teach vipassana meditation.  Insight meditation.  Before this we were building our concentration by attending with one-pointed focus to the breath itself as it entered and exited the nostrils.  I understood the benefit of this, though three days of 10 hours a day breath focus was one of the most boring things I've ever invested in.  Rewarding and beneficial.  But oh so boring!

When the Vipassana instruction commenced I thought, "Wait, is this it? we are just doing body scans?  JUST BODY SCANS?? ARE YOU KIDDING ME???"  I can't even begin to tell you of the let down I felt inside.  I had intended to go to the retreat and "empty my cup."  Learn meditation as if I knew nothing about it whatsoever.  Drink from their instruction as one would when one is a complete beginner.  But when they started teaching us how to go from head to toe, part by part and notice sensations in the body briefly without judgment and then move on to the next part of the body... something inside me just sunk.  "This is so disappointing," I thought.  I don't know if I thought it in those words, but it was in my body, my heart, everything.  I don't know what I expected, exactly - but something different. I met with the teacher to say I was thinking of leaving. That I needed him to talk me into staying.  He told me what was coming up.  His first words were about the next day's instruction: "You are going to learn how to not just scan down the body, but back up."  This was not encouraging.  Part of my frustration was that this type of body scan for subtle sensation was painfully easy for me.  I do massage and energy work.  I practice taiqi, qigong and yoga.  I am very familiar with noticing subtle sensations in my body.  His progressed map of what the rest of the retreat looked like did not encourage me.  When I asked about why we were simply jumping from one sensation to the next instead of staying with sensations long enough to observe "the arising and passing away of phenomena" (a common Buddhist idea) he answered me.  His answer was fine, but not satisfying. He said it had to do with how we are prone to cling to or reject sensations based on whether they were pleasant or unpleasant.  Forcing ourselves to move on helped us avoid that trap.  I got it, but it felt like there were other ways around that conundrum.

He told me that they don't broaden their meditative focus to include the thoughts and feelings, just the body.  This was disappointing.  He said that when you observe the subtle sensations of the body without any judgment, attraction or aversion, you begin to disentangle the suffering and knots of the mind at the deepest level.  The idea is that those sensations are linked to the mind through the body (this is how I understood what he was saying) and so when you can observe the body without reactivity you become less reactive to what passes through your mind and emotional body.  I wasn't going to disagree with him, per se, but this really did not introduce anything new or profound into my practice.  I had been noticing and observing my body and working to defuse the reactivity and judgment for a long time.  I would often broaden this to encompass the feelings that arose as I noticed things in my body.  Or even the thoughts.  Letting them pass without judgment.  Noticing them.  Relaxing the bodily tendency to tighten, grip, control or reject those feelings or thoughts as they arose.  Just letting them come, letting them go.  I just keep thinking "maybe I've already been doing this??"  Maybe I wasn't going to get anything from this?  Maybe I'm further along in my practice than I thought?  All disappointing questions to entertain.  Funny that they would be disappointing, but they were.

A friend asked me, about a week after leaving the retreat "what are you looking for?" It was a broad brush question, but it encompassed my going to a retreat, obviously seeking something.  I listened to the question with this translation: "What is it you are seeking that you think you don't already have?"  I think that is a koan that took me deep into silence.  I had no answer.  Why did I even go to the retreat?  What was I seeking?  What did I think I didn't have?  How amusing that I was disappointed by the realization that possibly I already had what I needed.

But I left on day five.  I kept thinking about how I had six more days off from work and I could spend them on the low-feeling probability that I would get something profound from the retreat OR I could do something that I knew would be enjoyable and meaningful, though with less possibility of helping me have some profound and life-altering spiritual breakthrough.

So I drove home, spent the night in Los Angeles, called my godparents in Sedona, Arizona, and made plans to drive to see them the next day (Tuesday).  I went to Berry Bowl the next morning, packed up my car, and went to Sedona.....


(more to come: a little about my time in Sedona, and a lot about my reflections on the retreat itself once I had removed myself from it... a bit of subjective objectivity, if you will... including that feeling I finally had of "I am home" when I had my first walking meditation with my Wednesday night sangha in Pasadena....  Oh... and if I forget to put it in my next post, I really need to say that when I decided to leave, the teacher at the retreat was incredibly kind.  He was caring, compassionate and loving, without a trace of judgment or shaming.  This was so meaningful, and to me is the one thing that truly moved my heart to deep gratitude.  I can't forget to say that, so I am saying it now.  To be continued...)

Letting it be enough

I have noticed a pattern lately in which some of my MOST unhealthy behaviors seem traceable to a simple inability (I think I ought to say "difficulty" rather than "inability") to let things be enough, as they are. What I mean is this - I go for a short walk and I enjoy it.  I think I should walk farther, because if I enjoyed this short walk, I should extend it and walk even more. I watch something funny or inspiring online and I want something that increases that feeling even more. Something even MORE inspiring and/or funny.

As little of a thing as this can seem at first, I have noticed that it leads me down paths in my thoughts and actions that are quite disastrous. As I sat observing my simple, ordinary experience today, the thought came to me, "why isn't this enough?" Why can't I let this be enough? And then I could. At least then, in that moment. The strange thing is to notice that I'm looking for some kind of capping experience that alters ordinary life into something always marked by some kind of completion. Instead of allowing the experience of a moment to be what it is, I start seeking ways to make it "better" or "more."  I am, if you'll pardon expression, seeking some kind of emotional orgasm. Something to bring me to a satiated, almost drug-like state. Something to push me beyond the realm of "ordinary" and into something I think is more complete and sublime.

It makes me think of the times at Deer Park when I have had that textbook eating meditation experience: I sit down, the bell is invited, and we start to eat. As I take a few bites I realize I really want some soy sauce on my lentils or rice. But the practice is to stay seated and be with the meal in front of me. I can't get up and "fix" it. So I have an opportunity to let the meal in front of me be enough. To not need to improve it, build upon it, make it better, etc. To simply dive more deeply into the experience of what it is, rather than seeking to make it into some penultimate ideal of what I think it should or could be. When I do that, I realize that it really is enough - as soon as I let go of the story in my head saying that it "should" be something better, more fulfilling, more intoxicating.

I suppose I could even play that game with this blog post. Perhaps, in light of this realization, and because it is late, I will simply let this be enough.

Spiritual Ego

Lately I have been pondering my plans for how often I will go to Deer Park this year.  Last year at this time I was going down 1 or 2 times per month, which lasted the first seven months of the year until the monastery closed so that the monks and nuns could travel and lead retreats around the country.

This year I am anticipating being there with less frequency, which gnaws at me a little bit.  As I've reflected on it, however, I have realized that part of the reason it bothers me - perhaps a way too big part, is that I've gotten used to feeling this strange ego boost from my relationship to the community at Deer Park.  I go there often enough and feel at home enough there that people ask me if I live there.  I have friend who are monks and who are nuns.  Some of them I correspond with, collaborate with, organize with, etc.  And I have begun to realize how much a part of my spiritual ego identity it is when I am here in Los Angeles or Pasadena to talk about my nun friend this or my monk friend this or my other friend who used to be a monk, etc.  I feel special and unique.  I have this set of experiences that others do not - I am unique and interesting and fascinating and special...  and somewhere in my reflections upon this I have decided that I want to stop holding up flashing neon signs that say "I am friends with nuns and monks at a Buddhist monastery...." and so forth.  I want to just practice.  And I can do that at home OR at the monastery.  I can do that with friends who have never been to Deer Park.  I can wear my connection to a place with much less ego and pomp.  I can just be a person in the world.  Like Rilke's beautiful verse:

I’m too alone in the world, yet not alone enough
to make each hour holy
I’m too small in the world, yet not small enough
to be simply in your presence, like a thing—
just as it is.

I think it is easy to to want to be more than what we are, just as we are, in any given moment.  Because my practice is about a practice, not a place.  And it is about a spiritual community, but not as a sense of ego identity, but a place and a way of being together to call home.  And that is something that can be nurtured everywhere and anywhere.  It doesn't need to be in the mountains of Escondido or at Plum Village in the south of France.  I can just be who I am in any moment.  To simply be in the presence of something holy.  Myself.  My steps.  The earth.  All of you.

Every day.

Mindful Crashing

Part 1 – The Incident

About a month ago, someone I know posted on Facebook about an accident she had falling off the back of a motorcycle.  She mentioned that through previous moments of bodily trauma in her life, she had always rushed on too quickly, neglecting to pay proper attention the actual experience her body was having.  She said that this time, after she fell, she sat on the ground and became aware of her body, her surroundings, her sensations.  Mindful of her presence in the road, she moved to the side of the road and sat down, giving more attention to the injuries and shock her body and mind had just sustained.  Sitting with those and honoring them.  This past Saturday, when I swerved to avoid a car who was crossing over the double yellow lines separating the carpool lane from the rest of the highway, when I squeezed my brake as hard as I could to avoid slamming into the car in the next lane over and hit it anyway, when I sat on the asphalt of the 405 aware that I had just had my first motorcycle accident and I was both conscious and alive, this was the first thing that came into my mind – this woman’s post on Facebook.  And I thought, don’t move yet.  Just sit for a moment.  How are you in your body?  Sit with that.  Be present.  And so I was.  And I realized I was okay.  I was alive and sitting on the road by my bike.  I could see, breathe, stand up... I was alive.  Then I realized I was sitting on the 405, and there was probably a host of people around in their cars wondering if I was “okay” (I’ve come to realize in the past 4 days that there is no objective gauge for what this word “okay” means).  I waved to the car in front of me to signal I was not dead or dying.  I stood up.  The car that had necessitated my swerve was gone already.  The car I hit had not moved.  I walked up to the woman driving and said “I’m okay, but there’s damage to your back bumper.  Do you want to pull off to the shoulder and exchange information?”

“What?”

I repeated.

“Okay.”

I lifted my bike, got back on it, started it (!) and began to slowly creep across five lanes of traffic to the shoulder, with this other driver following me, her mom in the passenger’s seat.  I was aware that my wrist was not happy to be operating the throttle and brake, but it was not very far.  I got to the shoulder and kickstanded/turned off my bike.  The young lady got out of her car with her mom and they both came back to me “are you okay?”  Yes, I assured them.  I was okay.  I looked down and saw that my jeans had been torn from about the knee to about the hip.  There was an abrasion on my left thigh.  Nothing major – the type of thing you get from taking a spill playing basketball or falling off your bicycle.  And my wrist was hurting.  We called an officer to fill out a report.  The woman and her mother invited me to sit in the back of their car rather than standing on the side of the highway.  I accepted the invitation, gratefully.  The logistics of information exchange, speaking with the very kind, helpful, and supportive police officer all happened amid the loud noises of freeway traffic.  The lady I hit and her mom were incredibly kind.  They eventually left and I waited with the CHP officer for the tow truck to arrive.  After the truck arrived for my bike (which was in surprisingly good shape!), I said goodbye to the officer (who, sadly, wasn’t willing to take a picture of me in the back seat of his police car so I could send it to my mom).  I got in the tow truck and we began the 45 minute drive to northeast LA.  When I got home, I had to check in with my body again.  How was I feeling?  What was I experiencing?  What do I do about the fact that I have four massage clients scheduled in the next two days, and I just had my first motorcycle accident?  I am so grateful to the seeds planted in my consciousness by my dear sister on Facebook.  The encouragement to stop and be present.  To hold my body in love and tenderness and awareness.  To truly be there and to listen.  I don’t know what fruit my practice would have yielded without the explicit reminder that had stuck in my brain when I read it, but having it so fresh in my consciousness was a gift and a miracle.  It is not common to hit the pavement of the 405 and have my first thought be, “how are you, body?”  But it set the tone for a very sacred experience of being with my experience from that moment to this one. 

Part 2 – The Healing After

Fast forward.  Saturday night I cannot sleep until 2am.  General discomfort, and I think maybe I am still in shock.  Sunday is something of a blur.  Lots of emotions from lots of different things.  You know, because life doesn’t necessarily stop simply because we are hurt.  I don’t go anywhere, except to walk down to my yoga studio and say hello to some friends.  I am splendidly tired.  Partly because of how long it took me to fall asleep, partly because my body is repairing itself on so many levels I can’t even begin to imagine.  I have decided by mid afternoon that I will not go in to work on Monday.  Sunday night I sleep better.  I think I take aspirin more proactively so the pain doesn’t keep me up.  Monday morning I wake up and I realize my body is still charged with fear and anxiety.  The sheer physiological trauma of impact, alongside all of the stress hormone reactions that are created in the body by such events, still sits in almost every cell of my body.  I realize that my greatest task for Monday is to figure out how to heal and release this trauma.  I realize I am afraid.  That I want to curl up in a ball and cry.  And on Monday morning I do let myself huddle up on my bed for awhile and “dry cry.”  It’s been a long time since I’ve been very “good” at crying (meaning it’s hard for me to know how to let tears just come), so sometimes I just let my body go through the motions to move some of the energy.  I realize it is time for meditation.  I sit on my cushion.  I don’t sit to feel peaceful, I sit to give honor and give space to the fear and trauma.  I sit to let the cells feel.  And they do.  For the first half hour or so, the moment of impact plays in my brain again and again.  Each time I think of the crash my body twitches, jerks, or convulses.  It is releasing something.  I let it.  I’ve heard that animals who are wounded will go off by themselves and tremble.  They are quite literally shaking off the trauma (thank you, Taylor Swift, for the good advice).  I let myself twitch.  I let myself tremble.  I let myself connect with what I want.  I want someone to hold me, but I’m too vulnerable at the same time.  I want female energy, but I don’t want complications or emotional entanglement.  After awhile I realize that I am still that child wanting his mother.  I don’t judge this.  I just let it be.  I let that yearning grow.  After 45 minutes, the bell on my phone sounds.  It feels like the process has only begun.  I reset the timer and end up sitting for another 35 minutes.

After a while, I realize that what I’m wanting isn’t actually for my physical mother to be holding me.  I wouldn’t reject her presence, but it’s only an image or a metaphor for what I’m seeking.  It’s not the literal thing.  I think of going to Deer Park on Sunday and the people I will see there.  I think of my dear monastic sister who becomes more and more like a blood sister every time I see her.  I think of how I hug trees when I am at the monastery.  I realize I need to go hug a tree.  I plan to go for walking meditation when I am done sitting.  I think of the trees outside that I can hug.  Somewhere before or after this I realized that I can take a bath.  I realize that I can honor sensual but not sexual craving I have for touch, for reassurance, for being held by letting myself be safely enveloped by water.  I plan for a bath.  I realize I am healing through the elements.  Air: the breath in my sitting meditation .  Earth: walking meditation.  Hugging the trees – wood.  Sitting in the bath – water.  I decide without having to decide that the accident itself had enough fire energy for many days. 

I realize that this might be the first time I have had any connection with the idea of “mother” earth.  I’ve always wanted to, but I always knew in my heart that the phrase was simply something I said to sound “right.”  I’ve never really had much felt experience of the earth as my mother.  As a living system, yes.  As a source and sustainer of life for us all, yes.  As our sacred home, absolutely.  As our mother?  No.  No that is not how I’ve known this precious planet.  And then I realize that my longing for my mother to hold me is actually a longing that could be met in the experience of the earth.  I think of hugging the trees.  Of opening up my heart and letting the pain and fear and grief from the past two days pour out into that tree – into the earth, and I realize that it can hold it.  Can hold me. 

I think about writing this blog post – and about how much more my Caltech friends will consider me a “dirty hippie.”  Actually hugging trees.  I smile internally.  Doesn’t matter.  I need to heal.  Something about sliding into a car on the freeway generated a trauma energy in me that needs to release.  I’m not ashamed or embarrassed by my need to hug trees – to have my sacred mother earth embrace me.  At Deer Park we talk of “earth holding.”  I was asking the earth to hold me. 

I realized that my fear was as much about what didn’t happen as it was about what did happen.  Meaning, I wasn’t just scared of the collision.  I was scared of what the collision could have been – death.  I went back to the moment of impact in my mind.  I pictured it differently.  I pictured the force more violent, something different happening, a different angle or velocity or trajectory.  I pictured dying.  In one way, at least, quite graphically.  I relaxed my body in meditation and didn’t react physically to the image.  I didn’t let mental notions or judgments about this being horrible or awful or unthinkable creep into the visualization.  I just let it be.  I could have died.  I relaxed and breathed.  That was okay.  Then what?  I thought of the trauma it would have been for the cars around me to watch me die on the highway.  I breathed into that trauma, too.  I realized that even this would heal, eventually.  Even if it took generations.  Even if it lived in them in some way and in their children and in their children’s children.  Eventually the pain would heal.  The seeds of transformation are ever present.  Even the greatest traumas (which this would not have been) can be transformed – can be healed – can wash away.  No matter how much blood is shed, the river will eventually wash it away, eventually.  This doesn’t make pain easy to bear, but it does remind me that everything passes.  That fear is not worth the energy.  It let the cells open and release that trauma.  Not just the trauma of what happened, but the trauma of what could have happened.  It doesn’t mean I plan to go out and get killed.  It does mean that the fear-energy doesn’t live and move in my cells anymore.

I went outside and walked slowly along the sidewalk.  Present with my steps.  Walking on the earth.  The miracle, Thay says.  Truly that day it was a miracle.  I could be dead.  Any time you crash a motorcycle you could be dead.  I wasn’t being melodramatic.  It wasn’t a “hey look at me, can you believe what I just survived!” type of awareness.  I’m not a Lifetime movie.  I’m just aware that it is/was a possibility.  But instead of being buried or cremated, I am walking on the earth.  Two days after a motorcycle accident on the 405, I am walking on the sidewalk, breathing the air, being with my steps, honoring my body’s wisdom.  Honoring my need to surrender and heal.  Miracle.  I am alive.

I stop and hug a tree.  When I hug people I don’t open my heart and flood them with the pain I carry inside of me.  I embrace them as a welcoming, a meeting of souls and bodies and friends.  When I hugged the tree I was hugging the earth.  I was hugging my mother.  I let myself melt.  I let myself become a small child.  A hurting child.  I let myself sink into the bark and empty the damaged, fearful, skittish and frightened parts of myself into the energy of this representative of the planet’s love.  The planet’s ability to love, embrace, accept, transform and heal.  I wonder if my pain nourishes the tree-life the way my respiratory waste (CO2) nourishes it.  I wonder if we are built in symbiosis in this way as well.  I wonder if the trees offer us their trauma as healing for us and if our traumas can be life for the world of plants when offered in love, gratitude and sincerity.  I don’t think about that for very long. I am too busy being held by my mother.  I am too busy pouring out. 

I let go.  I feel cleansed.  In my bones.  In my heart.  In my core.  I keep walking.  Slowly.  Mindfully.  I hope no one calls the cops on me because I look like a fucking weirdo.  I cross the street and walk back.  Dogs like to bark.  I feel sad that they are not more at peace.  I think about how fear cycles into the animal kingdom.  How we live in a world where there is violence, and so we train dogs to protect us.  This is not “wrong.”  It just shows how our fear conditions the worlds we create around us.  I look at the dogs with loving, sad eyes as they snarl at me through the fence.  I walk a little farther away because I don’t want to incite them to this kind of protecting.  Most of the dogs who are barking simply seem to enjoy the sound of their own bark.  Only one dog truly seems hostile and angry.  I keep walking.  I hug another tree.  I stop and touch the bark of still another.  There’s an energy there.  I could spend all day with it.  I am more healed now than I ever could have expected to be two hours previously. 

Part 3 – Healing with my motorcycle

Eventually I come back to my home and I look at my bike across the street.  I realize it is time to go make peace with my bike.  I don’t pressure myself.  I walk over and sit down on the curb next to my bike.  Like a friend you haven’t seen since a big fight.  Just sit, don’t say anything.  Just let the energy become safe.  I looked at it.  Impressed at how it held up under the collision.  Impressed at how my own body held up.

Saturday night in the shower I had thanked my right arm for taking the brunt of the impact.  I thought about how my jeans tore.  I thought about how my leg got scraped up, and I realized how much more severe my wounds could have been.  The pain in my wrist was from its absorbing momentum that would have otherwise been transferred and absorbed elsewhere in my body.  The price my arm paid in taking that momentum saved other parts of me in ways I can’t know.  I thanked my arm from the bottom of my heart.  Perhaps it even saved my life. Probably it saved my leg from a deeper cut or a stronger bruising. 

I look at the bike from the curb.  Not an enemy.  Not unsafe.  Not a danger.  I sit on the bike, hold its handlebars in my hands.  I think I would have started shaking if I had done this two hours earlier.  But I’ve already played out the “worst” case scenario of motorcycle death in my mind.  I’ve realized I don’t need to be scared.  Sitting on the motorcycle, I am at peace.  I am truly at peace.  My neighbor comes home and asks how I am.  I say I am okay and that I am doing some of my psychological healing.  She nods as if to say that is a good and natural and appropriate thing to do.  She says she is going to the store in twenty minutes and asks if I need anything.  I say, “Which store?”  She says Vons.  I say “Epsom salts.”  She says she will get some if they have any.  I know they have some.  A few hours later her five year old brings me epsom salts.  I thank her and she walks away.  I’ve never been handed epsolm salts by a five year old before.  The universe is always creating new situations.  How many times have I said “there’s a sentence I never thought I would hear in my life!”  Every experience is – or at least can be – something brand new.  “There are no ordinary moments.”  Or maybe every moment is ordinary, and the ordinary is also extraordinary. 

I don’t think I realize how much I needed this day of mindfulness until I watch myself on Tuesday doing things that would have completely paralyzed me at another phase of my life.  My bike is towed to the dealership.  I go to the rental car agency.  I go to urgent care.  I get an x-ray.  I go from urgent care to CVS to fill a prescription.  I sit and talk with someone for a long time.  I go home and have a message from the insurance adjustor.  My motorcycle is totaled.  Totaled?  It looked like I wouldn’t even round out my deductible payment and it’s totaled.  I call the dealership to confirm.  Totaled.  I need a new vehicle.  I call my dad and we brainstorm.  When I can’t handle anymore I say “I’m maxed out, let’s talk more later.”  No hostility, no irritation, just acknowledgement.  It’s been a long four days.  I go to Caltech and put in an appearance at the group meeting of one of the research groups with which I work.  I’m not sure if they all know what happened, but I think they do.  I get a few smiles.  I’m glad to let them see that I’m still alive.  I leave to go see my boss and another coworker who are both not there.  I leave to go see another person on campus.  Also not there.  I go to acupuncture.  Another way of caring for and loving myself through this process. 

Part 4 – Right Mindfulness and Ongoing Reflections

I think about the lesson I learned and lived throughout these few days - to take the time to ask/listen for what needs to be done… and then do that thing (and sometimes that thing is to do nothing).  My conversations with my insurance company (about an hour’s worth of conversations in between finding out my bike was totaled and calling my father) was no less a practice in mindfulness than my hour and twenty minutes of sitting meditation the day before.  If I had chosen to sit on my meditation cushion when I needed to call Geico, I would have been hiding from the thing that was indicated for my life in that moment.  If I had tried to have an hour conversation with my insurance company instead of sitting and letting my body relive its trauma in a healing way, I would have been doing what far too much of the world today does: charging ahead of my healing.  Acting unskillfully, unmindfully, and unaware of the habit energies determining my behaviors and running my life when I am neither conscious nor awake.  In each moment I have had the opportunity to live mindfully and awake.  This is not about perfection; it is about intention.  I am sure there were many things about the past 4 days that could have been handled differently, “better.”  But the choice I made from the moment I hit the pavement, inspired and nourished by someone else’s experiences and reflections, to be present to my body with mindfulness – that choice began to create a ripple effect in how I have experienced these subsequent days.  The simple act of stopping to honor my body led to the next moment and the next moment.  How do I honor my body now?  And now?  And now?  How do I honor this moment – this process – this experience? 

“Most people go their whole lives without every really waking up.”  I quoted this in my last post.  It’s so easy to go through life asleep.  Asleep at the wheel, asleep at work, asleep with friends, asleep while watching tv, asleep while on jury duty.  All I really did was begin to pay attention and become willing to listen.  Continually listen.  I gave my body what it needed without being self-centered or narcissistic.  I remembered to tell my supervisors I wasn’t coming in.  I took care of medical, financial, physical, emotional, and spiritual needs – none to the neglect of the others.  I stopped.  I listened.  I sat.  I hugged trees.  I filed claims.  I made phone calls.  I didn’t tell a bunch of people what happened to get sympathy or pity or attention.  I was mindful that, depending on how I told people, it might spark feelings of fear in them, and so I tried to be careful how I told others, and when.  More than anything, perhaps, I did not waste too much energy fighting this as something that should not have happened, nor berating myself for being stupid or foolish. 

I know that I was driving between lanes.  Overall, what I did was safe and yet also risky.  Someone chose to break the law and cross in front of me over a double yellow line.  I have dealt with the frustration, anger, and disappointment that someone could steer a motorcycle into another car and then simply drive off.  I am still dealing with that, I guess.  I am willing to reevaluation my priorities that lead me to “lane split.”  I am wondering at what point the increase in risk to my life ever becomes worth consistently being able to “arrive” more speedily at a destination.  Is even a .001% (and of course it is more than that) increase in the likelihood that I could die on the road a worthwhile chance to take so that I can cut 15-30 minutes of my commutes during rush hour?  I am rethinking the words in the fifth mindfulness training: “I am determined not to gamble.”  I do not have a problem with lottery scratchers or slot machines, but perhaps I think the payoff of getting somewhere just a little sooner is worth a gamble with my life.  I am not answering these questions yet, but I am sitting with them, and letting them reflect back to me more deeply where the priorities of this world and myself lie.  It gives me pause to reflect on what is important to me, and why – and how not lane splitting might be my most powerful act of nonviolent resistance in a society consumed with getting “there” more and more quickly.  I don’t know.  I do know that I am alive.  That I am here on this earth, and that I can walk on the ground and kiss it with my feet.  I know that I can hug the earth and let it absorb my pain and my trauma with its seemingly infinite capacity for love and restoration.  I know I can celebrate the sunshine and the starry night sky for another day.  And I know that I am here with you, reading this blog.  Either rolling your eyes at my hippie-ness, or struck by something that for you is a “takeaway” piece of wisdom or insight.  I know that we are here together.  Today.  And this, more than anything else, is the miracle.

Reflections on Continuation, Concrescence and my Uncle Mark

Yesterday was my birthday.  Every time I think of the miracle of coming into this world, I am reminded of words of Kierkegaard from This Sickness Unto Death – that we all have two separate consciousnesses with regard to our being: that of being and that of having come to be.  It is this latter aspect that continually marvels me.  We all have some sense of existing, in some manner, and at some point in our lives this stark fact intrudes upon our consciousness.  We are.  And that is miracle enough.  But there is another aspect to it: that we have arrived here... as if planted... through no action of our own whatsoever.  I did not conceive myself, nor did I ensure my survival through the first many years of childhood.  My existence is the result of innumerable factors, all of which were completely beyond “my” control or awareness.  I have, as it were, simply “come to be.”  And here I am.  For awhile I thought how cruel it might actually be to bring children into the world.  Because these beautiful innocent creatures inevitably mature to bear the pain and difficulties of adulthood.  Because it is difficult to be.  Even more, perhaps, it is difficult to become.  I think of the words of Andrea Gibson: “I asked the Sun, ‘Tell me about the Big Bang.’ It said, ‘It hurts to become.’”  And it does.  It hurts to become.  But somewhere through the journey of becoming, I have found a self that is composed, as my teacher continually reminds me, of “non-self” elements.  This year I asked my father for only one thing for my birthday: a picture of my uncle, Mark, who died in Vietnam over a decade before I entered the world.  Why?  Because my spiritual practice has awakened me to the fact that I am a continuation of those who have come before me.  My Uncle Mark influenced my father to the very depths of his being – influenced the kind of man he sought to be in the world, and the kind of integrity he sought and continually seeks to embody.  And his death began in my father a journey of questioning the sense – or lack thereof – that exists or does not exist in the world… a world where people die for no real reason (at least in the sense we are normally conditioned to seek for reasons), where painful things happen, where difficulty is inherent.  Where it hurts to become.  And my father became.  And continues to become.  And my mother, who brought me into this world through the vehicle of her body, she also continues to become.  And it is in their becoming that I found doorways to my own.  My journey out of the trenches of myopic manifestations of my childhood faith began when my mother opened that door for herself.  Her choice of freedom over fear – her light – gave me permission to choose freedom as well, gave me permission to open to that same light in me.  Shining in the darkness. 

And sometimes it is enough to know that we are a continuation of those who have come before us.  Sometimes it is not.  Because the people who proceed us do not always continue to become. Sometimes they become stuck, and we feel as though we are pushing forward through sludge and resistance, seeking to break ties that bind us to people and heritages that we no longer wish to embody.  To things that we did not ask for, because we did not ask to be born.  We did not ask for this “having come to be.”  And yet we are here.  And that, I think, is when it helps to remember that those who continue after us are continuations of us.  My uncle did not know when he died in Vietnam over 45 years ago that his life would continue in me, or in my brother who inherited his name.  But it has.  He has.  And just as surely others will be the continuation of my life and being in the world.  The little boy who was my child for those sacred months in 2013 is a continuation of me, whether he knows it or not.  Whether he ever knows it.  The friends who share this path with me.  The people whose lives I touch simply by being.  By becoming.  And yes, sometimes it hurts to become.  

In my Buddhist tradition we speak of the birthday as a “continuation day,” and I believe I have just touched a bit upon why.  We do not have a single moment when we become a person and then, from that moment on, we just are, solidly, unchangingly.  We are always becoming, and our life begins before we are conceived.  We live as seeds in our mothers and fathers, even in the most specific and biological ways.  Cellularly and physiologically you can trace that back even further, of course, to the ways in which an egg cell forms in the ovaries, or the strange mechanisms by which sperm is produced in the male body (I know, no one wants to think of these things with regard to parents, but these are the miracles that create and continue us as living beings).  The water, the nutrients, the sunlight, the oxygen, the miraculous becoming of a human being from non-human elements.  And then there is the passing on of psychology and sociology – culture and conditioning, education, awareness, language.  We are beings who inherit.  Beings who come to be.  Beings who become.  And at some point in our lives we realize that we are.  That we possess some faculty of self-determination and awareness.  We come to understand that the choices that we make create conditions that give rise to the ways in which we will continue in the world.  Not only in ourselves, but also in the “selves” of others around us, the Earth, the living and non-living systems that comprise it, and on and on and on.  Thay (Thich Nhat Hanh) once said that we have as much free will as we have mindfulness.  In my own life I have found that mindfulness creates a space between my experience of life circumstances and my responses to those circumstances.  As I cultivate mindfulness through meditation, insight, love, stillness and breath, I come to see that my choices are not simply mindless continuations of the factors that have brought me here.  I come to see that I am a synthesizing, integrating entity in the world.  A locus of what the philosopher Whitehead called “Creative Concrescence.”  I am a being in which the universe takes its history and makes radical novelty in any given moment – the universe gives birth to new manifestations of itself, through me, in every moment.  But I only truly get to be this instrument of concrescence when I am awake.  I am reminded of the line in the movie Peaceful Warrior:

“What would you say if I told you I keep seeing those shoes in a dream?”

“I’d say maybe you’re still sleeping.  People can go their whole lives without ever really waking up.”

And I think that is what life is really about.  Waking up.  I think that is what the protests in Baltimore have been about.  Hurting people asking a world to wake up.  Asking for insight, love and attention, the way our bodies ask for the same when they begin to break down because we have treated them wrongly.  And, as I continue into my 34^th year, that is what I want to say.  That we do not have to be mere continuations of our predecessors.  We do not simply need to perpetuate the status quo that we have inherited from generations before us.  We, together, can be those instruments of concrescence in the world – the beings in whom the universe conspires to become, to integrate its history into moments of radical freedom that birth something new.  And then I think that this, too, is continuation.  The caterpillar becomes a butterfly, but only when it acknowledges that the means that have led it to where it is now have reached their rightful end.  That the time to cocoon has come.  The time to decompose, to end.  Because in our endings are also our beginnings.  Maybe this is what the tradition speaks of when we say “no birth; no death.” 

I suppose that when I leave this life, I simply want to be able to say that: I became.  And I never stopped becoming, so that you too, could become.  So that we could become.  Continuations of one another.  Continuations of life.  Radical beings of freedom and concrescence in the world.  Seeking integration, life and beauty.

And I want to honor all of the ancestors, living and dead, who came before me so that I might “come to be.”  I want to honor the work that they did to become, the pain that they endured, the choices they made to bring me my freedom, my mindfulness, my “self” made of non-self elements, my becoming.  I want to thank my mother, my father, my brother with whom I grew up and my brother who came into my life much later (11 years ago!).  My cousins and friends and teachers and colleagues.  I want to thank the guy in high school I hated like he was the devil incarnate in high school, because he, too, became a mirror, reflecting me back to myself in the places where I was guarded, hurting and angry.  I want to thank all of those who have helped me reach this place and become the person I am, this person who is already fading into the person I will become.  The friends and spouse and romantic partners who have journeyed with me on this path – who have been so integral to my continuation.  To the continuation of my parents.  To the continuation of my Uncle Mark.  To the movement of this impermanent, empty self, rich with meaning and wonder and awe and breathtaking beauty and gratitude, through the world.  I want to thank my parents (again).  Truly.  And my Uncle Mark.  Because I am only just beginning to wake up, this strange person who has, somehow, “come to be.”

May my continuation be their continuation, and may my choices make the continuation of others easier, not more difficult.  May they contribute to our collective awakening, to the healing and preservation of the Earth, whose life we are draining through consumption and overuse.  And lastly, I offer this: if you were not able to give me a birthday present this year, either because of time or money or because we are not good friends or because we are good friends and you know that I really want and need nothing right now, here is what you can give me:  Wake Up.  Just a little bit.  Breathe.  Take a moment to look at the trees outside, or the sky, or the ground.  Touch something.  I mean REALLY touch it, like there is nothing else in the world except that one thing that you are touching.  Think about where it came from, how it came to be.  See if you can see the entire cosmos supporting its existence.  Was it created in just or unjust ways?  Ways that can be sustained into the future or ways that drive our planet toward ill-health and pollution, where we are lost in production, consumption and despair?  What is this thing that you are touching?  Can you see that it is also you?  Can you breathe with that, and then maybe, just maybe, become a little bit more awake?  A little bit more aware.  Can you touch life deeply, and be a moment or an agent of concrescence – of creating newness – of becoming more alive in this moment?  Of helping us ALL wake up, together.

So here is my wish for THIS birthday: that it would be a bell of mindfulness for every person I touch, with the energy of the bell gatha that we recite at practice centers around the world:

Mind, body and speech joined in perfect oneness,
I send my heart along with the sound of this bell.
May its hearers awaken from forgetfulness
and transcend all anxiety and sorrow.

Conversations with my father on Facebook

A few days ago I posted a political article on Facebook about the next presidential election, and the potential ramifications for the supreme court, which looks to have 4 new justices appointed in the next eight years.  Since, at this point in my life, the majority of my Facebook friends are of the same general political persuasion as myself, I did not expect much pushback, if any.  At first I only had a few likes and one or two supportive comments.  After about half a day, however, my father posted a comment that was not supportive of the article.  In fact, his post was filled with a lot of strong emotion and conviction against much of what the article said, and many things not directly stated by the article, but which are often included in these types of discussions.  I was surprised to see such a strong reaction from my father, as I usually am in these types of political conversations, because he and I seem to agree on so many other issues, and our deep values and convictions for life run so consistently in parallel.  Every time politics is brought to the surface, I am befuddled at how differently we seem to see things, at least on the surface.  But it is in just that qualification (“on the surface”) where the practice of mindfulness can do its deepest work.  Mindfulness helps me to drop beneath the surface of things and begin to look more and more deeply into their heart.  What I see on Facebook, in the way people have conversations like these, is almost always, always a kind of superficial listening with very intense, often angry or hurtful responses.  But I have noticed, in my own and others’ interactions about sensitive and controversial topics, that we rarely seem to listen for what is going on beneath the surface of a discussion.  Too often we do not take the time to sit with the fears, grief and wounds that can underlie intense convictions.  Though we know that our own convictions are deeply shaped by experience, reflection, feeling and insight, it is hard for us to remember this in a moment of disagreement, and it is often even harder to acknowledge that someone else’s deep convictions arise from experience, reflection, feeling and insight as well.

What was beneficial in my exchange with my father was that – because of our relationship and my regard for him as a person – I did not simply write him off as “an idiot” with views contrary to my own (as I unfortunately might have had he been someone else, or had I been in a different place that day).  I was not stuck in my views, and so I began to look more deeply at why he was saying what he was saying.  I began to hear the hurt and disappointment that my father feels with his government.  I began to hear a sense of despair and hopelessness that gives rise to anger.  I realized that his intellectual convictions rise in part from emotional states that are present within him.  Rather than invalidating his intellectual perspective, it helped me understand the soil in which that perspective has grown as a human soil, not to be despised simply because his viewpoints are different from my own.  As a result of pondering my father’s underlying emotional states, I began to touch my own fears and disappointments and anger regarding my government.  I began to touch the ways in which I have felt let down or betrayed, and I realized that many of my own intellectual convictions can arise as ways to defend someone’s actions or assert a point of view rather than sit with the discomfort of pain regarding government. There is, ironically, so much powerlessness in the lives of individuals and groups who live in a governmental structure that has, since the Gettysburg address and before, been intended to be “of the people, by the people and for the people.”  In touching my own grief, loss and fear about my country, I could better create space for those similar emotions in my father to arise.  In this situation, it became less about battling out ideas, and more about sharing a journey of discontent and confusion about a government gone awry.  Instead of fighting against each other to win the other over to an ideology – or to belittle another for having the “wrong” ideology – I began to see us as two people on the same side, geared toward the highest good for the nation, the world, and the people within it.  I have my reasons for believing that certain political convictions lend themselves more readily toward that, and my father has his reasons for believing what he believes.  And – because I did not write him off as a whacko on the other end of the political spectrum who, by nature of his disagreement with me, is obviously uninformed, foolish or blind – I was able to look at where his convictions come from and why.  I didn't set out to make him believe what I believe.  But I did accept his perspectives as an “antithesis” to my “thesis” – a kind of Hegelian invitation to look more deeply at my own beliefs and see where they might need adjustment or deepening, how I could move from thesis, through antithesis, to a synthesis that accounts for both, something deeper than what I originally had to offer.  I remember reading Thay’s writings in Living Buddha, Living Christ.  He says that, while from one perspective there are “right views” and “wrong views,” from another perspective, all views are wrong.  By their very nature of being a view from a certain perspective, they are conditioned and limited.  There is always another perspective or point of view. Our unwillingness to acknowledge this and look to understand and grow into other viewpoints is the cause of great suffering.  When the Buddha was asked why the spiritually inclined ascetics in India fought with each other, he said that it was their attachment to views, their preoccupation with views, etc. 

The process of engaging with my father, engaging with the discomfort caused through having someone disagree with a sentiment I put forth, and working with my habit energy of either shrinking or over-retaliating... this process allowed me to come into a deeper place.  And it made me realize that at the heart of so much public and private discourse is a lack of respect for the other.  I realized this because a key difference in my interaction with my father about this topic, aside from my own practice of mindfulness, was the deep respect I hold for him as both my father and a human being.  See, my father is a retired school teacher.  For over 30 years he taught moderately to severely emotionally and behaviorally disturbed special education students in inner city high schools.  In his late fifties/early sixties he became a chaplain, first in hospice, now in a hospital.  In broad, general terms he has, as much as anyone else I know, modeled humility and integrity throughout my life, and his life's story, shaped by the choices he has made and continues to make, is a testament to courage, strength, kindness, and compassion.  So I knew, on every level possible, that there was more to our exchange than a simple conflict of two ideologies.  I knew that there was the encounter one person (me, Jonathan) was having with another (him, Richard).  I knew that we both had and have something to offer each other in terms of opportunities for growth and self-reflection.  And I knew that if our focus was about proving our convictions correct – or at least more correct than the other person’s – then we would miss out on this deeper offering.  And this, I believe, is the living out of the second and third of the fourteen mindfulness trainings.  The second is nonattachment to views:

Aware of the suffering created by attachment to views and wrong perceptions, we are determined to avoid being narrow-minded and bound to present views.  We are committed to learning and practicing nonattachment from views and being open to others’ insights and experiences in order to benefit from the collective wisdom.  Insight is revealed through the practice of compassionate listening, deep looking, and letting go of notions rather than through the accumulation of intellectual knowledge.  We are aware that the knowledge we presently possess is not changeless, absolute truth.  Truth is found in life, and we will observe life within and around us in every moment, ready to learn throughout our lives.

The third is freedom of thought:

Aware of the suffering brought about when we impose our view on others, we are determined not to force others, even our children, by any means whatsoever – such as authority, threat, money, propaganda, or indoctrination – to adopt our views.  We are committed to respecting the rights of others to be different, to choose what to believe and how to decide.  We will, however, learn to help others let go of and transform narrowness through loving speech and compassionate dialogue.

The humility here, to borrow from TS Eliot, is endless.  We are invited in every moment to not react – to create space between a trigger and our response to it, so that we can choose more freely how we will respond.  Sometimes the best engagement is not on the level of ideas, but on the level of the heart.  The opportunity to reflect on my own perspectives, to know the movements inside of me that give rise to the ideas I espouse, and to understand myself and the other more deeply and with greater compassion are worth the mindful pause even if I end up using the same words I might have used before pausing (which is almost never the case).  The listening, the awareness and the space between my experiences and my judgments of those experiences are always worth it.  Because we are all going to have our fear, sadness and anger about the world in which we live.  And if we can help one another engage those fears more deeply by engaging our own with authenticity and openness, then we are on the right path.  We are walking in the right direction. 

So as I end, I bring my left hand together with my right as a lotus near my heart.  And I bow to my dear father, who – along with my mother – gave me life; I bow to his parents and siblings, who shaped him into the person he has become, as he has in turn shaped me into the person I am today.  I am a continuation of him, bearing that continuation torch in my own unique way.  And I honor and thank him for his own version of the two mindfulness trainings I shared above.  Because without that, I would have had to fight so much harder to become the man I am today.  It doesn't mean I have to agree with everything my father thinks or espouses.  But it does mean I respect him enough to listen deeply for the wisdom and insight that he continues to offer me. 

I think that all of life is an opportunity for practice, if we choose it as such.  And all of life can be fuel for conflict, if we choose that instead.  At the end of the day, I can still say that I don’t agree with this or that I do agree with that, but I do not need to carry the energy of hostility or conflict in my heart.  I recognize someone else trying to work with his own energies of disappointment, anger, grief, fear, etc., as I am – as we all are.  I see a companion on the journey, rather than an obstacle or an objector to my staunchly held ideologies.  I see a friend.  A father.  A fellow human being.  And that is first and last.  Before and after we disagree at the level of the mind, we are, first and last, fellow human beings on this earth.  

Joy

Two weeks ago was the holiday retreat at Deer Park.  I left on a cloud.  I left floating in wonder and gratitude and bliss and delight.  Today, as I write this, I have joy.  Yesterday I had joy.  Last week I had great joy.  For as much as I blog about sadness, struggle, pain, and suffering, it feels good to write about joy.  It feels even better to experience it, to delight in it, to let it flow out of me and onto others.  I’ve been thinking about why the real struggle of my life – although most of what I write has to do with pain and discomfort – seems to be a struggle to accept happiness, serenity, peace, and joy.  There are so many reasons.  Some of them have a lot to do with how I grew up, but I don’t want to talk about childhood experiences here, not today.  I want to talk about the impermanence of joy.  Its emptiness (which is Buddhist for impermanence, not meaninglessness).  I want to talk about how I believe part of my struggle to experience joy lies precisely in my inability to let it go.  My inability to experience it as empty.  My compulsion to grab hold of it.  Grasping.  For so long, when joy arose, I clung to it like a desperately hungry person would cling to a piece of food.  I tried to devour it, to own it, to make sure it would not go away.  And then, when it would invariably go away, I would become depressed – sometimes even guilt-ridden.  I was suffering the painful delusion that if I lived, thought, behaved, studied or practiced “rightly” that the joy would not fade.  That I would experience unending delight.  I would pause for a moment and ask you not to bring up semantic debates about the meaning of joy as opposed to or distinct from happiness or elation or some other term.  I mean “joy” simply in a conventional sense.  Something that is like happiness, elation, rapture, delight, gratitude, love... I am not trying to have a metaphysical conversation.  I am simply trying to express what we have all (hopefully) known at various times in our life.  That non-manic delight that seems to permeate out of the deep parts of ourselves, and seems to find its end and beginning simply in our very experience of being.  Of being alive.  Of being a person.  Of being a person-in-relation.  So joy comes.  And joy goes.  Joy as a feeling – an experience.  In Buddhist terms (five skandhas) we could locate it in the realm of feelings, which, like all of the aspects of personhood, are empty.  They change.  

So joy... I always used to experience joy as the ultimate goal.  When it came, I HAD to figure out how to keep it.  And by the very nature of my quest, I chased it away.  And then I berated myself for losing it.  I was, again, seeing it as some kind of spiritual reward.  But the practice of mindfulness does not have joy as its final aim.  It has as its aim the practice of being present with what is.  So that when "what is" is joy, we can be present with that.  When I left Deer Park last week after the holiday retreat, my heart was overflowing with love and joy and gratitude.  The people I met, the conversations I had, the energy, the practice, the tofu.  It was magic.  My heart was full.  More than full.  And then it started to wane.  And I got scared.  I didn’t want to “lose it.”  But then I noticed something else in me.  An excited compulsion, underneath which was fear, to go back to Deer Park as soon as possible.  I began to feel like my joy was contingent on the people that I met and connected with.  That if I didn’t stay close to them, my joy would not last.  Or perhaps it was the place itself.  And without the monastics, without the long term lay practioners, without the white Buddha statue or the Ocean of Peace meditation hall, I would not be okay.  I thought maybe I needed these things for my joy flower to flourish.  And when I noticed the addictive pull in me to go back to Deer Park very quickly – the fearful feeling that I might not be able to live and be happy without it – I took many deep breaths.  I had to find the place in me not contingent upon Deer Park or my new friends.  “Be a lamp unto thyself,” said the Buddha.  Of course I inter-am with all of the beautiful people I met and practiced with.  But the teaching is not to rely on places or people or a group of friends.  The teaching is to find the awareness and awakening in oneself - to share and nurture that in community, but to find it in myself.  So I began to let go of my addictive clinging to this joy.  I began to accept that joy too is impermanent.  That this too shall pass.  

There’s the basic attachment theory in parenting that the safer a child feels in her attachment (connection) to her parents, the more willing and able she is to venture away from them.  She knows that when she returns, they will still be there.  Or when they go away, they will come back.  The child learns this from repeated experiences.... crawling out of the room and then turning around to see the parent is still there.  Crawling a little farther, out of eye range, starting to fuss, and having the parent respond to her fussing.  Mommy or Daddy is there... I am safe.  I can explore.  I do not need to be afraid.  Children who grow up without a healthy sense of attachment may have certain difficulties later in life.  Perhaps they seek that sense of safety and stability in unhealthy places.  Perhaps they feel disconnected from themselves and not at ease in the world around them.  Perhaps they do not feel like they can find a safe place within.  I think that my experience with happiness was always like this.  If it went away, I was never sure that it would come back.  My experience said it would not.  Or, perhaps my experience said that when it was around, I could not trust it.  Perhaps I experienced happiness like an alcoholic parent – something you learn to take with a grain of salt, never really trusting, never really accepting its word at face value.  But trying to cling to and prolong every good moment you can... because it’s all you’ve got.

 

Interestingly enough, I had to learn that I could survive without happiness.  That I could survive without joy.  I had to learn that I could face what was left when the joy went away.  And the past two years of my life have been just that.  Learning to face the pain – the loneliness, the loss, the fear.  Learning to grieve, deeply, and like I never want to again, but almost certainly will.  Learning to say I can survive whatever comes – I can be present to it.  There were times when the suffering seemed pointless... where I wanted to run back to old addictions or habit energies – where I wanted to turn away from the pain inside myself to be somewhere else.  And there were times when I did.  There are still times when I do.  When I eat or watch tv or fantasize or keep busy just to get away from the unpleasantness inside myself.  But at the core of my past two years was the discovery that I can be okay.  That I can face the pain within.  That I can be home, inside myself – no matter how hard or scary it might be.  So this past week when I felt the joy slipping away from me, after my initial impulse to cling to it with some sort of unhealthy desperation, I was able to look at it and say, “if you must go, then go, I do not need you to be okay.”  And something broke open inside of me.  I do not need joy.  I do not need happiness.  And the joy and happiness that THAT realization has brought into my life is one of the most absurd and ironic parodoxes I have yet to experience on the spiritual path.  My willingness (and ability, nurtured through painful, shitty practice) to be present with, face and experience my pain was the opening into a world that does not have to cling to joy and happiness.  Just like someone experiences profound release and freedom when they stop “needing” a relationship or a partner in order to feel okay about themselves, in order to feel “enough,” I stopped needing some experience of happiness, joy or elation in order to feel like I was okay – like I was enough.  And, the paradoxes continue.  True peace for me seems to come from being okay that I’m not always okay.  Healing seems to come from holding and embracing the wounds in me that might never fully "heal." 

Happiness comes and goes.  Joy comes and goes.  I feel a bit like the Buddha in saying this – because once upon a time it was believed that the Atman – the Self – was eternal, that this self was not other than the supreme ultimate – the Brahman.  And the Buddha woke up and said, there is no “Self.”  This does not “exist” in the ultimate sense.  And I think of spiritual teachers who say that joy is the true nature of our being.  That when we touch our true being, we touch joy, which is not dependent upon our thoughts or external conditions.  It is not an emotion, it is simply what flows when we are in touch with being.  Of course... with this description, joy still becomes a “thing” - and idea of something.  And once it’s a “thing,” like Atman, like the idea of Self, we can grab it and say “this is mine!”  So I just want to say that joy comes and goes.  It is not eternal.  And I don’t need it.  When it needs to go, it can go.  I do not need to try to hold it hostage.  Nor do I need to be codependent with it, where I think I can control its behavior with my behavior.  I am going to continue my practice of being present to the moment – of enjoying my breathing and the people around me – of looking for ways to be mindful and compassionate and open-hearted.  Then, if I experience joy, I will be present to that.  If I experience hurt or grief or loss or pain, I will be present to that.  If I experience fear, I will be present to that.  And if joy needs to leave to go somewhere or to take care of someone else, it can go.

Yes, yes, yes, maybe joy is not really that impermanent thing I am talking about.  Maybe joy the metaphysical thing I’m feeling when I let go of “joy.”  I don’t know.  I’m not too sure that I care.  All I know is that today, I don’t need to be happy any more.  I only want to be jonathan.  Today, in this moment – impermanent, empty self jonathan... opening to the world around me, coming home to the island within myself.  No coming, no going.  No birth, no death.  No arriving.  And yet... here I am.

And I want to say this:  it’s worth it.  Everything I’ve been writing about for the past many months/years.  That pain in the ass, pain-laced process of learning to be with your suffering... to not run away from it.  To hold yourself in the midst of it.  To walk into it instead of away from or around it.  It is worth it.  You need to find the practices to help you be able to do it.  The practices and the community.  But it is worth it.  Every step.  Every breath.  Because as soon as I could say to happiness, “I don’t need you”... as soon as I could say “I can be happy without you...”  everything changed.  Something has broken open inside of me, and, to sound overwhelmingly cheesy, a flower has bloomed in my heart.  And I am home.