The paradox of the self.

Every once in while, a line we read or hear will leap out at us.  Today, that line came from Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, who writes: “The self loathes suffering and loves the causes of suffering.”

I think what rang true for me was how succinctly this truth was expressed, and how absurd of a paradox it is that we live this way.  And yet, we all have this self, and we do the best we can with it, amidst all its complexities and ironies.

The complete quote from the book “What Makes You Not a Buddhist”:

“From time immemorial we have been addicted to the self. It is how we identify ourselves. It is what we love most dearly. It is also what we hate most fiercely at times. Its existence is also the thing that we work hardest to try to validate. Almost everything that we do or think or have, including our spiritual path, is a means to confirm its existence. It is the self that fears failure and longs for success, fears hell and longs for heaven. The self loathes suffering and loves the causes of suffering. It stupidly wages war in the name of peace. It wishes for enlightenment but detests the path to enlightenment. It wishes to work as a socialist but lives as a capitalist. When the self feels lonely, it desires friendship. Its possessiveness of those it loves manifests in passion that can lead to aggression. Its supposed enemies – such as spiritual paths designed to conquer the ego – are often corrupted and recruited as the self’s ally. Its skills in playing the game of deception is nearly perfect. It weaves a cocoon around itself like a silkworm; but unlike a silkworm, it doesn’t know how to find the way out.”

– Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche

Daily Dharma

I thought today about this blog and how I couldn’t remember the last time I posted on it. There’s a tendency, once something has been neglected for so long, to just leave it alone and let it die.  Then it occurred to me that the same thing happens to a meditation practice, or yoga practice.  If we get out of the habit, our inertia keeps us away.  So I resolved to do something about it and write anyway.

Lately, I changed my homepage on my internet browser to a website that posts dharma quotes each day. This one is impressive, often with four or five new quotes a day:

http://justdharmaquotes.tumblr.com/

It’s nice to think about starting my time on the computer with a gift of a thoughtful reflection, or reminder of larger concerns.

The broken jar of jam

Yesterday in the kitchen, my roommate dropped a jar of raspberry jam on the tile floor.  Actually, she almost threw it in her awkward attempt to catch it mid-flight, smashing it completely.  After the delicate barefoot avoidance sweeping and sponging up the mess, she later lamented to a friend: “what a waste of jam.  I just opened it.”  The friend smiled and just said: “it was an offering!”

This brought about a memory on a teaching I heard from Reb Anderson at Green Gulch, who proposed that gifts are not only something to be done in the here and now, but could be given in the past.  That it was always possible to transform what you thought was a loss into a gift.  A parking ticket that cost you hard-earned money becomes a gift to the city who desperately needs it to maintain the roads.  And as my roommates’ friend suggests, anything could be an offering to the divine, to an unknown spirit, to God, or to the Universe where nothing ever goes wasted.  It’s only a different frame of looking at things, but while dwelling on loss usually brings disappointment and regret, this is the frame of mind that can bring peace.

In the body

While sitting today, I thought about how I sometimes feel as though nothing is learned by meditation.  But today, it occurred to me that might be true cerebrally, but perhaps not so much physically.  Meditation gets stillness into the body.  The body tangibly feels what it means to stop and not do, to consciously and willfully be okay with inactivity.  This is a difficult thing to convince the body to do in language, in intention, or in promise.  The body doesn’t necessarily listen to the mind’s provocations, but in the experience of sitting still, day after day, the body comes to its own understanding and acceptance.

Of course, the body and mind are not two different things as we typically think of them.  The effect of quieting the body is often directly linked to quieting the mind.  It could happen the other way around too, but since we are so much in our heads as a culture, it helps to re-orient to physical grounding that then radiates in sympathy from there.  Perhaps even to others whom we encounter along the way.

The Freedom of Things You Don’t Have to do.

This morning, I was struck again how the space of meditation is a place for freedom.  Typically, our conception of freedom is the ability to do whatever we want.  But meditation offers a different view of freedom: a liberation from having to do anything at all.

Paradoxically, these exact opposites might be much closer than we think.  What is clear is that when we don’t feel free, it is because we believe we have to do something we don’t want to; some responsibility, some obligation, some authority directing our actions.  And, often, it is good that we feel this responsibility, because the world needs help.  But some time sitting quietly opens up the space for liberation from even our own authority, which attempts to direct our lives and tell us what to do.

This can happen inside of meditation as well, the mind can become autocratic, insisting that it’s not being done right for one reason or another.  But pursued far enough, the absurdity of this position becomes clear.  There is no reason you can’t think in meditation.  You don’t have to follow the breath.  You don’t have to be some perfect practitioner.  There are always guidelines, which can help if we don’t know where to go next, but as soon as the oppressive feeling of any kind of authority arises, we can relax and remember that this is a safe space to not have to do anything or be anyone.

 While listening to a recorded talk this morning, I was reminded of an expression that Shunryu Suzuki Roshi made in Zen Mind Beginner’s Mind:

“To give your sheep or cow a large, spacious meadow is the way to control him. So it is with people: first let them do what they want, and watch them. This is the best policy. To ignore them is not good; that is the worst policy. The second worst is trying to control them. The best one is to watch them, just to watch them, without trying to control them.”  (p.32)

In the talk I heard, various other examples were substituted for “people,” such as the mind and  desires.  Of course, the way that is recommended by a Zen priest to give space to your cows is to sit in meditation.  This pausing in the day to return to basics is a widening of the pasture of life.

It is often heard that city life is hectic, stressful and overwhelming.  I believe this is due mostly to excessive input: everywhere we look, information is coming in and we have to synthesize, form opinions, react . . . it can get exhausting.  This is why so many cities have a vent, a place to go and get away from the stimulus.  A beach on an ocean or lake, the mountains, or a large park are useful places to detangle from the input and push the reset button. 

Similarly, meditation can do this, by providing the space for thoughts to wander themselves out without getting an accelerating push from additional stimulation.  By realizing there’s nowhere to go, the mind can quiet down a little bit and some rejuvenating space can appear. The cow  wanders contained in the pasture, but with enough space to feel the possibility of movement. 

Not-using the computer

After breakfast this morning, I walked back into my room with a vague intention to meditate or practice yoga.  I saw the computer, conveniently sitting on the desk.  It’s only sleeping.  A simple brush of a keystroke will wake it up and bring to me the infinite and addictive world of information and connection.  This is a familiar pull, the lure of the screen.  Living in the Bay Area, I see a tremendous number of people on the street, or waiting for a train, or on the bus using screens. Interacting with their electronic devices. Getting things done, being efficient, or avoiding boredom.  I do it too. But sometimes the lure of the screen can pull me away from something I really do want to do, such as meditate in the morning, or simply relax.

So I sat down in front of my computer.  And didn’t turn it on.  I just stared at the screen and followed my breath and practiced patience and the feeling of spaciousness in the presence of the screen.  I felt I was doing a kind of re-education, letting my body learn a valuable skill: that I can sit in front of a screen and not interact with it.  That I can be free of the need to acquire more information and organize my schedule and messages a little more.  This not-using of the computer gave me a gap where I could simply relate to my computer as a mute object with no demands on me.  This small amount of freedom was a great relief.

And then I calmly turned my computer on and began to write.

Shantideva’s self-help

I was recently reminded of Shantideva, an 8th-century practitioner, who wrote Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life.  In that text, he says that he is writing it to motivate his own practice and clarify his own understanding.  Did the text escape his possession and fall into the hands of others?  No, I think that to share with others and to publish his thoughts was an integral part of the motivation and perhaps an intention to receive feedback which would further his understanding.  Of course, the irony is that he is writing a Mahayana text, whose tenet is to help others and think of others before the self.  So is Shantideva pointing out a commonly-held idea that “you must help yourself before you can help others”?  Or is his stated intention of helping himself a ruse, designed to conceal his ultimate intention to help others but without being so idealistic about it?  Another idea might be that to express an intention to help himself, the reader is now fully aware that she is an active agent in the text for herself, completely responsible for her own interpretations and whatever she might receive through her reading.

So I dedicate this post today to Shantideva, since I also agree that I am writing these words to help my own understanding, to put them into the world, and thereby clarify them. And, if anybody else receives some help in them, I appreciate and support this as well.  Who (even myself) can say if this is what I am really doing?  I prefer to retain this question as a mystery.

What is being said?

A friend recently sent me an essay he wrote about listening, particularly about the way in which listening is often neglected in the face of seeing. I was reminded of the vast inexpressible gulf between the senses.  That we call them “the senses” and group them into a category denies the reality that they are as different from one another as could be.  Sight is nothing at all like sound, or touch.  They have such unique qualities.

The idea that listening is somehow more powerful than seeing recalls classes I had with experimental film-maker Stan Brakhage, who used to say that “all the arts aspire to be music.”  He likened the way he edited his films to jazz composition: loose, improvisational, surprising.  He had no soundtrack to most of his films, but apparently longed for them to be perceived as free and truly abstract as music can be.  And as mysteriously direct: music has instant access to our memories.

But we’re not only talking about music.  There’s the matter of listening to all the world’s sounds.  I’m halfway though Kay Larson’s new John Cage biography “Where the Heart Beats,” which explores in depth his relationship with Zen and its influence on his compositions, which place a universal value to all sounds.  This reminds me of the beautiful short video that’s on YouTube of Suzuki Roshi discussing the difference between sound and the objectivity of noise.

I was particularly struck in the essay by the ideal of a “hospitable text,” which “would resist the smallness of interpretive mania.”  I remember the experience of watching a lot of experimental films in school, and often, there would be a palpable moment where I would give up the process of understanding what was happening.  This abandoning of the need to grasp is so liberating, but habit usually makes it rare.  The essay offered a nice view of an effective artwork, one that transcends medium: the generation of a sense of oneness and “belonging to the endless others” that is so rarely entered into, but which makes life all the more worthwhile.

There is a restaurant in San Francisco called “Opaque”   It’s completely in the dark.  The servers are blind, and the meals are eaten with your hands.  This would be a good place to experience the heightening of senses that occurs when one is taken away.  Although the senses are as different as could be, our attention can only concentrate on a limited range, and listening does frequently get lost in the incessant demands of seeing.  Sometimes it’s good to stop and close the eyes and listen to what the world is saying.

Just be this

While sitting this morning, I noticed my usual thoughts about the future.  The endless list of plans and modifications that will come soon to surely make my life better,  the constant putting myself in front of myself.

Then I thought: “Just do this.”  I then realized it was a variation of the Nike slogan.  It occurred to me that maybe Nike has had it wrong all along.  Perhaps it’s not about doing “it,” whatever “it” might be (usually an athletic activity that requires new shoes).  “It” feels like something that is “out there,” something in the future, something you’re resistant to but would be good for you, like learning a new language or running a marathon.

“Just do this” is a returning to what is actually happening right now.  The feeling of a body sitting in a chair.  What’s happening with my legs?  My breath?  What are the birds singing outside my window? “This” is immediate and I don’t have to go anywhere to find it.  It’s quite reliable and doesn’t require a new purchase of any kind.  It doesn’t require anything.  But “this” can easily slip away and disappear under a mountain of “its” and “shoulds” and “maybes” and “what ifs.”

Now that I’m writing this, I realize that the new slogan isn’t complete.  Why should I simply limit myself to an activity?  Why should I only “do” this?  What if I completely disappear into “this” with my whole being?  Yes, this sounds like a worthwhile intention.  I’ll have to make a bumper sticker.

Just be this.