You in the front row, sit down and watch the show

When we take the one seat on our meditation cushion we become our own monastery.

We create the compassionate space that allows for the arising of all things: sorrows, loneliness, shame, desire, regret, frustration, happiness.

Spiritual transformation is a profound process that doesn’t happen by accident. We need a repeated discipline, a genuine training, in order to let go of our old habits of mind and to find and sustain a new way of seeing. To mature on the spiritual path we need to commit ourselves in a systematic way. My teacher Achaan Chah described this commitment as “taking the one seat.” He said,

“Just go into the room and put one chair in the center. Take the seat in the center of the room, open the doors and the windows and see who comes to visit.

You will witness all kinds of scenes and actors, all kinds of temptations and stories, everything imaginable.

Your only job is to stay in your seat.

You will see it all arise and pass, and out of this, wisdom and understanding will come.”

~ Jack Kornfield,  A Path with Heart

Worst Enemy / Best Friend

Our  own worst enemy cannot harm us as much as our unwise thoughts.
No one can help us as much as our own compassionate thoughts.
~ Jack Kornfield, Buddha’s Little Instruction Book

Thank you for all the well wishes, offers, chants and prayers.  I am feeling much better, just a bit fatigued now.  Many Blessings,  John

“To do” list

After 8 days of a fever and various other side effects, my body and mind are returning to normal (whatever the hell that is).
I am thankful.
I am smiling.
Now to get back to my “to do” list.  (I borrowed this one from Jack Kornfield)

Things to do today:
Exhale
Inhale
Exhale
Ahhhhhhhhh

Multitasking is Overrated and Over Valued

About once a year, when I am not paying attention and my mind is a million miles away, I make a quick movement  as I bend down to pick something up and “Aargh”,  I strain my lower back.

About once every 3 months or so I’ll be in a hurry to work out and get my reps over with – not  paying attention to the movement of the weights in my hand, nor the movement of my muscles, nor the movement of my joints and “Snap” I sprain a muscle.

Every so often I will not sit and breathe, practice my Qigong and rush off into my day and I will come home with a tightness between my shoulder blades (it’s where my body holds stress)

It was one of those weeks this past week.

3 quotes from Buddha’s Little Instruction Book by Jack Kornfield helped to  realign my thoughts so I could realign body (or is it vice versa? ? ?)

Our body is precious. It is our vehicle for awakening. Treat it with care. (pg 48)

When you walk, just walk. When you eat, just eat. (pg 65)

Stay centered.  Do not overstretch. Extend from your center, return to your center. (pg 69)

does the ringing in my head mean i’m calling myself to prayer?

There are certain themes that reoccur (not just recently – but over long periods of my life):

One theme is the unfamiliar perspective of non-judgement – “not already knowing” the answer – when something is presented to me.

One is about being a compassionate and kind container to hold uncomfortable thoughts and emotions as they arise.

One is how I touch the Witness behind the ego – the greater self who watches the “John” as he  plays at life.

Yeah, these replay themselves a lot in my life.
I like how Jack writes about these things – enjoy . . .

“Mindfulness is a directed attention to what is actually here before we have all our judgments and ideas about what is right and wrong and what is good and bad.  Mindfulness means paying attention and seeing things clearly without reaction.

From there we can respond in wise ways rather than be caught in our habitual patterns.”When we take the one seat on our meditation cushion we become our own monastery. We create the compassionate space that allows for the arising of all things: sorrows, loneliness, shame, desire, regret, frustration, happiness.

Spiritual transformation is a profound process that doesn’t happen by accident. We need a repeated discipline, a genuine training, in order to let go of our old habits of mind and to find and sustain a new way of seeing.

To mature on the spiritual path we need to commit ourselves in a systematic way. My teacher Achaan Chah described this commitment as “taking the one seat.” He said,”Just go into the room and put one chair in the center. Take the seat in the center of the room, open the doors and the windows and see who comes to visit. You will witness all kinds of scenes and actors, all kinds of temptations and stories, everything imaginable. Your only job is to stay in your seat. You will see it all arise and pass, and out of this, wisdom and understanding will come.”

–Jack Kornfield, A Path with Heart

have you hugged a flying monkey today?

To open your heart like a Buddha,  we must embrace the ten thousand joys and the ten thousand sorrows.

~ Jack Kornfield, Buddha’s Little Instruction Book

(there is no picking and choosing  . . .)

Dirty Dawg

From, –Jack Kornfield,  A Path with Heart
(Jack basically says it all, no need for much comment, so throw me a bone – I’m a novice at sitting)

For some, [the] task of coming back a thousand or ten thousand times in meditation may seem boring or even of questionable importance. But how many times have we gone away from the reality of our life?–perhaps a million or ten million times! If we wish to awaken, we have to find our way back here with our full being, our full attention. . .

In this way, meditation is very much like training a puppy. You put the puppy down and say, “Stay.” Does the puppy listen? It gets up and runs away. You sit the puppy back down again. “Stay.” And the puppy runs away over and over again. Sometimes the puppy jumps up, runs over and pees in the corner, or makes some other mess. Our minds are much the same as the puppy, only they create even bigger messes. In training the mind, or the puppy, we have to start over and over again.

Rubbermaid or Tupperware?

Have you ever witnessed a toddler fall?
Often you’ll notice that they do not cry until they look around and find their mother.  It is only when they see their mother (or guardian) that they go running into safe arms and let out their cry.  Why?
An evolved parent is a a sturdy and safe container for the child’s unpleasant emotions.

As we evolve in our practice, we too become better containers for the unpleasant things that arise.

To parent oneself can mean facing and confronting the disowned self and embracing it.

I came across this quote by Jack Kornfield from “Buddha’s Little Instruction Book” that made me think about this developmental process:

Even our anger can be held in a heart of kindness

Aren’t you as impressed with my bulge as i am ?

To believe ourselves to be custodians of truth is to become its opposite, is a direct path to becoming stale, self-righteous, or rigid. Ideas and memories do not hold liberating or healing power.

Wisdom is alive only as long as it is lived, understanding is liberating only as long as it is applied. A bulging portfolio of spiritual experiences matters little if it does not have the power to sustain us through the inevitable moments of grief, loss, and change. Knowledge and achievements matter little if we do not yet know how to touch the heart of another and be touched.

– Christina Feldman and Jack Kornfield, Stories of the Spirit, Stories of the Heart

I die every night and I live every day

I am not a Buddhist, despite most of these blogs.  The teachings of Buddhism however, have a significant psychological and philosophical influence in my life for which I am most grateful – it is a most auspicious teacher and has been since childhood (In my Christian upbringing I was always attracted to the book of “Job”; he was my favorite old testament character along with “Joseph” and the most meditative Buddhist in Judaism, while Joseph was the most mindful). I posted below 2 excerpts from this weeks Tricycle’s Daily Dharma and a quote from Jack Kornfield’s “Buddha’s Little Instruction Book”.  For me the are about the paradox of embracing in order to “let go” (the latter of which is a theme in my recent blogs).  I hope they offer you as much insight as they have me:

Rebirth
We are in actual fact reborn every moment with new thoughts and feelings, and we bring with us the karma that we made in the past moments. If we were angry a moment ago, we are not going to feel good immediately. If we were loving a moment ago, we would be feeling fine now. Thus we live moment to moment with the results of our karma.

Every morning, particularly, can be seen as a rebirth. The day is young, we are full of energy and have a whole day ahead of us. Every moment we get older and are tired enough in the evening to fall asleep and die a small death. All we can do then is toss and turn in bed, and our whole mind is dreamy and foggy. Everyday can be regarded as a whole lifespan, since we can only live one day at a time; the past is gone and the future may or may not come; only this rebirth, this day, this moment, is important.

–Ayya Khema, When the Iron Eagle Flies

The mirror of death

According to the wisdom of Buddha, we can actually use our lives to prepare for death. We do not have to wait for the painful death of someone close to us or the shock of terminal illness to force us into looking at our lives. Nor are we condemned to go out empty-handed at death to meet the unknown. We can begin, here and now, to find meaning in our lives. We can make of every moment an opportunity to change and to prepare–wholeheartedly, precisely, and with peace of mind–for death and eternity. In the Buddhist approach, life and death are seen as one whole, where death is the beginning of another chapter of life. Death is a mirror in which the entire meaning of life is reflected.

–Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

Each Morning we are born again.
What we do today is what matters most
–Jack Kornfield