Cynicism and truth, part 1

I look forward to my weekly podcasts with The ID project – Ethan Nicturne’s unique and modern interpretation of Buddhism is educational, honest, and entertaining. This week the topic was Cynicism and the 3 pillars of zen. As a religious refugee, his talk hit upon a lot of thoughts I’ve had lately and he put it so eloquently: (Keep in mind that he was speaking – not writing!)

“One of the things that I’ve always like about the Buddhist tradition is that you are required to be skeptical. Now that’s a strong statement. I did not just say it’s unlike some other spiritual traditions because they let you ask questions, or if you’re a somewhat disbelieving son of a bitch like myself they’ll allow you to stay in the room, right – but they really want you to come around to their perspective. The Buddhist tradition is a method of investigation and inquiry that requires disbelief to function. Do you see the difference? It’s different than saying if you have any questions, sure, and we’ll enlighten you, and then eventually you’ll get it, and become a Buddhist and we’ll humor you through that process. You need to not believe – to get anything out of this. So that really fascinated me, Because of that I think it’s the perfect method of life inquiry for our post-modern, democratic society. “

Ethan hits it on the head for me. This method of inquiry is so refreshing because it is ego-less in it’s approach. We get to approach the teachings with a skeptical mind, and through application we see if they actually work. The Buddhist teachers are the first to say, “hey, if it doesn’t work, don’t use it. No problem.” This way of approaching spiritual life is all about truth, not about belief. The tradition is about using what literally works, not about defending a set of beliefs. There is nobody trying to convert anybody. The basic premise of the tradition is to sit, be still and pay attention. If you pay attention, truth will be illuminated. Religion goes the opposite way and says, “Here’s a list of things that are true – live this way. Take this list and through belief that these things are true, they’ll be true. If you want to ask God yourself – good! Ask him. But if you get a different answer than we believe in, just keep asking until you get the right answer.” I know this is provocative to say, but it seems to me that religion asks us to believe in things with no burden of proof. This later approach is similar to using the scientific method in reverse – taking an assumption and finding the proof to justify the belief. In the Buddhist tradition, it’s the other way around. It’s about keeping a completely fearless, open mind and noticing what pieces of truth I can find along the path. The burden of proof is on the teaching itself – the awareness of reality, rather than on the practitioner or the rigid belief. It’s so beautifully said in my favorite quote by Thich Nhat Hanh: “Your own life is the instrument with which we experiment with the truth.”

Greenfrog sent me the following story while back, knowing it would make me smile.

August 31, 2008
Tricycle’s Daily Dharma
What Happens to Most Pieces of Truth
One day Mara, the Buddhist god of ignorance and evil, was traveling through the villages of India with his attendants. He saw a man doing walking meditation whose face was lit up in wonder. The man had just discovered something on the ground in front of him. Mara’s attendants asked what that was and Mara replied, “A piece of truth.” “Doesn’t this bother you when someone finds a piece of the truth, O evil one?” his attendants asked. “No,” Mara replied. “Right after this they usually make a belief out of it.”
-Christina Feldman and Jack Kornfield, in Stories of the Spirit, Stories of the Heart
from Everyday Mind, edited by Jean Smith, a Tricycle book

Interestingly enough, faith is a big part of Buddhism. I’ll continue this post and jump into the 3 pillars and how contemplative study actually illuminates the truths within religion. In the meantime, take a listen to Ethan’s dharma talk – it’s a good one. (It’s on I-tunes under ID Project)

Love

My own suffering came through depression. I’ve learned to live with my own internal world in harmony – most of the time. Yesterday and the day before? Not so much. I cannot fully explain how the sister teachings of yoga and buddhism have changed my life. Only to say that working from the inside out is the only way I’ve been able to find peace, to create real transformation within. I sit here and I can feel myself climb out of two days of depression, amazed that it’s ready to move on so quickly. But that is what I’ve learned – almost everything is impermanent. The only steady in life is God. My old definition of God doesn’t resonate for me anymore, and through openness I’m rebuilding my concept of God. Maybe as I learn more, I’ll add to my definition, but so far the only truth I’ve really been able to fully accept is Katie’s: God is reality. Whatever is right in front me – that’s God. How can it be any other way? If God is the only unchanging thing, and God is reality, then I have to look really deep underneath all of the constructs of the mind to find something eternal. And, somewhere at the root of it all, lingering under everything – God is love.

One of my favorite reading combos is to read a section of the Dao, meditate on it, and then read the corresponding section of Byron Katie’s, A Thousand Names For Joy. When I read about those people who have had experiences of losing their ego, finding their true self, the description is always this unique way of looking at the world as LOVE. Love as a noun. Love as a verb. Love as the subject and the object. Love as everything. That resonates with me – I can feel it, I can understand that eternal part of myself as LOVE. Byron Katie gives an interesting interpretation of Dao 63, and a great story. It’s a story I’ve heard over and over by those who have had these experiences or glimpses at enlightenment. I wonder if the Buddha was here in our century, using modern terms, how he would recount his own story? (or would he?)

dao de ching 63

Act without doing;
work without effort
Think of the small as large
and the few as many.
Confront the difficult
while it is still easy;
accomplish the great task
by a series of small acts.

The Master never reaches for the great;
thus she achieves greatness.
When she runs into a difficulty,
she stops and gives herself to it.
She doesn’t cling to her own comfort;
thus problems are no problem for her.

Here’s an excerpt of Katie’s story, part of her chapter on Dao 63

I fell in love with myself one morning in February of 1986. I had checked myself into a halfway house in Los Angeles after years of suicidal depression. A week or so later, as I lay on the floor of my attic room (I felt too unworthy to sleep in a bed), a cockroach crawled over my foot, and I opened my eyes. For the first time in my life, I was seeing without concepts, wihtout thoughts or an internal story. All my rage, all the thoughts that had been troubling me, my whole world, THE whole world, was gone. There was no me. It was as if something else had woken up. IT opened its eyes. IT was looking through Katie’s eyes. And it was crisp, it was bright, it was new, it had never been here before. Everything was unrecognizable. And it was so delighted! Laughter welled up from the depths and just poured out. It breathed and was ecstacy. It was intoxicated with joy: totally greedy for everything. There was nothing separate, nothing unacceptable to it. Everything was its very own self. For the first time ( – it – experienced the love of its own life. I-it-was amazed! -clip-

To say it again: As I was lying there in the awareness, AS the awareness, the thought arose: “It’s a foot.” And immediately I saw that it wasn’t true, and the delight of it. I saw that it was all backward. It’s not a foot; it’s not a cockroach. It wasn’t true, and yet there was a foot, there was a cockroach. But there was no name for any of these things. There were no separate words for wall or ceiling or face or cockroach or foot or any of it. So it was looking at its entire body, looking at itself, with no name. Nothing was separate from it, nothing was outside it, it was all pulsing iwth life and delight, and it was all unbroken experience. To separate that wholeness, to see anything as outside itself, wasn’t true. The foot was there, yet it wasn’t a separte thing, and to call it a foot, or an anything, felt absurd. And the laughter kept pouring out of me. I saw that cockroach and foot are names for joy, that there are a thousand names for joy, and yet thre is no name for what appears as real now. This was the birth of awareness: thoughts reflecting back as itself, seeing itself as everything, surrounded by the vast ocean of its own laughter.

Then it stood up, and that was amazing. There was no thinking, no plan. It just stood up and walked to the bathroom. IT walked to the mirror, and it locked onto the eyes of its own reflection, and it understood. And that was even deeper than the delight it had known before, when it first opened its eyes. It fell in love with that being in the mirror. It was as if the woman and the awareness of the woman had permanently merged. There were only the eyes, and a sense of abosolute vastness, with no knowledge in it. It was as if I – she – had been shot through with electricity. It was like God giving it-self life through the body of the woman – God so loving and bright, so vast-and yet she knew that it was herself. IT made such a deep connection with her eyes. There was no meaning to it, just a nameless recognition that consumed her.

Love was the best word I can find for it. It had been split apart, and now it was joined. There was it moving, and then it in the mirror, and then it joined as quickly as it had separated-it was all eyes. The eyes in the mirror were the eyes of it. And it gave itself back, as it met again. And that gave it its identity, which I call love. As it looked in the mirror, the eyes – the depth of them-were all that was real, all that existed. Prior to that, nothing-no eyes, no anything; even standing there, there was nothing. And then the eyes come out to give it what it is. People name things a wall, a ceiling a foot, a hand. But it had no name for these things, because it’s indivisible. And it’s invisible. Until the eyes. Until the eyes. I remember tears of gratitude pouring down the cheeks as it looked at its own reflection. It stood there staring for I don’t know how long.

These were the first moments after I was born as it, or it as me. There was nothing left of Katie. There was literally not even a shred of memory of her-no past, no future, not even a present. And in that openness, such joy. There’s nothing sweeter than this, I felt; there is nothing but this. If you loved yourself more than anything you could imagine, you would give yourself this. A face. A hand. Breath. But that’s not enough. A wall. A ceiling. A window. A bed. Lightbulbs. Ooh! And this too! And this too! And this too! I felt that if my joy were told, it would blow the roof off the halfway house-off the whole planet. I still feel this way.

morphing

This week brought me some new insight. My business partner at the Yoga Studio is both a marriage/family counselor and a Yoga Therapist. The philosophy of Yoga therapy falls right in line with my own experience; that the body speaks to us and that we have everything that we need inside of ourselves for our own healing and understanding. This method of Yoga Therapy as taught through Phoenix Rising consists of the therapist putting the practitioner in yoga postures and holding them physically at their edge while they talk about their experience. The experience consists of moving through the physical body, the prana/subtle body, the mind and the emotions. It is completely self-led, the most the therapist says is: “what’s happening now?” and occasionally repeats the last sentence you say, so you can hear yourself clearly.

I decided it would be a fun thing to try. In the session, I picked an issue I wanted to work on, we set an intention, started with a simple meditation to center ourselves, and then she physically put me into postures. The fascinating thing was that I was bringing up intensely detailed memories of my childhood – things I hadn’t thought about since the time they happened. I didn’t bring up any memories of significant or huge events in my life, more simplicity, like the crazy 1975 wallpaper in my mom’s kitchen and walking home from school with my hair swinging in the wind. Memory after memory came up and they were all nice, warm and fuzzy. There was one key thread that strung all of those fabulous memories together – the Mormon church. Every memory had to do with my Mormon family, my Mormon friends, my Mormon way of life. I was left at the end of the session with a lot of insight – realizing that I often long for my own experience currently in the church to feel as real as it did for me as a child. I also realized how profoundly I love what the church provided for me in my life, and how that translates into the disappointment I feel that the gospel is not what I thought it was while growing up. The session was really positive.

Two days later, I trekked to Santa Cruz with a group of moms from my current ward. I haven’t had much of an opportunity to get to know sisters in this ward because we’ve only been here a year, and I’ve been putting more space between myself and the church. Working full time also puts me in the minority, leaving no time for group park days, etc. There was a nice group there, nice kids, beautiful beach. One of the things I love about the church is that it puts me in contact with people I would normally never be friends with. Such was the case yesterday. The other moms brought doritos, I brought wheat thins. The other mom’s are reading Star Magazine, I’m reading A Path With Heart. One mom was complaining about the weather, I was in the water playing with my kids. They all believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet, I don’t. For the most part it doesn’t bother me. I guess I’m glad for feeling of family I have with them, regardless of our differences. Sometimes, it just feels frustrating.

Backtracking to May when Greenfrog (fellow Mormon/Buddhist/Yogi, only labeled for the sake of the story) came to the yoga studio for a photos shoot. It was a very interesting day for me, being able to instantly talk with Greenfrog without having to interpret vocabulary or explain beliefs. The similarities of our backgrounds within the church, our periods with depression, the experiences with yoga, bhakti, meditation, even the books we’ve read lined up so closely. It seemed that there was this shared understanding – just as I felt with members of the church before my disaffection. He would say something and I would nod my head in understanding and vice versa. During this year due to my unique viewpoints of spirituality, I had come to the conclusion that I was on my own. I felt OK about being alone and that realization brought me a lot of peace along with a lot of inner-strength I didn’t know I had. So it was a real surprise and joy to meet Greenfrog through our blogs, and then again in person. Somehow talking to him was very comforting, confirming my own thoughts that I really am indeed sane. We prefaced the photo shoot with meditation, chanting and a short yoga practice. While sitting in meditation it was still and peaceful and powerful. Toward the end when my mind started becoming active again, two things hit me: #1 – imagine what the church would be like if we all put down our to-do lists and simply sat together in being. I can’t imagine anything more profound, it cuts right through to the heart of spirituality. #2 – this is what the pioneers felt like! How wonderful it is to find somebody who shares your experience in spirituality, and practice together. The Mormon terms of Brother and Sister seemed so easily felt in the simple quiet of doing nothing. No wonder the pioneers wanted to create zion and be around like-minded, like-believing people. It feels good.

I’ve always hated the word maturity. It seems a bit arrogant. As I go through my own practice and path though, that word keeps popping up for me, as if it is morphing into something more palatable for me to digest. I look at these experiences and realize that along with change and acceptance comes a maturity within the spiritual realm. For me, part of that maturity is learning not to resist what is right in front of me. Not to label it away, or disown it because of a simple aversion. Not to think that people should be any different than what they are, or that I should recreate my childhood, or that everyone should understand me. Certainly not that the church should hold everything for me now the way that it did through my 9-year old eyes. Finding acceptance for the way things are is helping me continue to grow and learn. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out where to put little pieces of myself, where I will invest it and where I won’t. As I accept the idea of spiritual maturity, I’m having an easier time listening to my instincts and deciding where I want to be.

I am left wondering though, will the dust ever settle?

Quote Collection

Help would be helpful! Greenfrog is helping me with a little project and I thought it might be fun to extend it to everyone.

1. At the yoga studio, I have a big wall up high over a wall of windows that is perfect for a yoga quote or a word or two of inspiration. Imagine you’re in the middle of a very intense class and your mind is wandering. You’re holding warrior B and gazing at the wall. What words would help pull you back into your breath and body and out of your mind? …Breathe …Be Here Now …It’s not a big deal. Unless of course – you want it to be….. What would work for you?

2. I love quotes and words of wisdom. I keep a little collection tucked away and I know they will be useful as I produce newsletters, etc. What are your favorites?

This one is befitting to me at this moment in my life:

“When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds: Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction and you find yourself in a new, great, and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.” *Patanjali

The Story

Capital T, capital S. I was raised by an English teacher and taught how to love a good book. As the story goes, I finished Kindergarten, and came home crying because I hadn’t learned to read yet, and couldn’t ride a bike. My mom was due any day with child number 4, but she ran behind my bike anyway with her knees hitting her belly until I took off on my own. And every time she nursed my little sister I would climb up on the couch next to her, blankie in hand, to read. I became a voracious little reader and my baby sister fell in love with my special blankie.

Aren’t stories wonderful? I love listening to people, their history, their drama. I’ve come to realize though, that stories aren’t always necessarily real, or helpful. One of the keys of freedom is to put some space between you and your story! Staying in the present moment is a key to jumping out of the wheel rut of karma and into a new realm. You can’t do that if you’re attached to your story.

So, as I get ready to open this yoga studio, I’ve had so many chances to practice this. Friday I was tired, and stuck in my story. It was a pretty valid story. Can I share? I am the only experienced yogi on this yoga studio project. My intention is to set the studio apart from a spa experience or a gym, or even a pilates studio. I want the curriculum to be meaty and transformational. I also want to bring my own unique viewpoint of light-heartedness and joy into the space. So, in my mind, the literal space should reflect the funk that is Cosmic Dog Yoga. The studio Cosmic Dog Yoga should be a little, well - Cosmic.

Here comes the drama. I’ve worked hard on the design. I want it to have that hippie feel. Along comes my contractor (LDS guy, great friends with my non-LDS business partner), and he is one of these quintessential male-types. A nice enough guy, but doesn’t know how to listen and just does whatever he wants once you’re gone. (I know – labeling, but remember… it’s just a story…) He is a talented craftsman and a super reliable guy. Try as I might though, I just can’t convince him that the space should have an air of imperfection – a tacky bulletin board door, atrociously bright wall, or crazy wall mural of an elephant God. Now the story gets good. I wanted the door to my office to covered in cork so that it would be a community hub of personal notes, business cards and random bits of love. We had a fabulous discussion about doors. It went something like this.

Me: I want my office door to be plain and cheap because I’m going to cover it with cork.

Him: You don’t want that – it will feel like a cave.

Me: Perfect! Yogis love caves.

Him: A bulletin board will look horrible, it will be hoakie. Bad hoakie. Architecturally it doesn’t work.

Me: I love hoakie. I think you’re getting it.

Him: Ok, so I’m ordering the glass door in the morning.

Ahhhh! Isn’t that a good story? Then I add to it in my mind with a “he shouldn’t be this way” and a “he doesn’t get it” and a “he hasn’t even ever been in a yoga studio before!” and I have a complete drama going!

I’m aware enough of The Story to realize that I’m starting to get attached to it and replay it in my mind and I just can’t reconcile that I want the space to have a certain feel. To transport you to a new place just when you walk into the door. I have a vision after all, and it’s my job to manifest that vision! I called my mom (a recovered LDS member and life-coach/wise women) and admitted my frustration and attachment. I told her I knew it was time to leave the story within the situation, and asked her “what do I do with my desire?, my vision?” And then she helped me have a huge “a-ha” moment. I said, “I need to let go of my story now”, and she said “oh Sattva! I love stories. I love a good book, a good movie. I love listening to teenagers and friends tell their stories. I just don’t believe them.” And then she proceeded to teach me how to hold my space a little bit, to stay true to my higher consciousness while saying “No” in a loving way without engaging ego.

This little bit of knowledge has been so freeing for me. Friday it came in my mom’s words, but it has been coming at me indifferent forms for years. Don’t believe everything you think. Doesn’t mean you don’t enjoy the story, just don’t believe it. Of course the contractor should be that way, he is. Of course I should stay true to my vision – that’s why it’s my yoga studio. (relative term of course)

Anyway, I was struck with how accurate that statement was when applied to how I’ve made peace with the LDS church. I love the story that’s told in church. I love the idea of Joseph being perfect and the pioneers crossing the plains as literal Saints. I love the story that the world is neat and tidy and that if we just stay on the straight and narrow path and don’t veer off, we’ll be saved from all of our sins. That story has an answer to most of the fears of humanity.

Eventually though, it just didn’t match up to the reality of life in front of me and the observations I made in the world around me. The LDS doctrine and story offered little help navigating the wilds of my mind. Truth has shown me that there just isn’t a straight and narrow, nor should I try to stay on one path. It takes many paths, many meanderings, and an embrace of jungle life to really find bliss and the perfection of what is. It’s taken a while, but admitting that I love the story anyway has helped me to make peace with the church. Great story. I just don’t believe it.

For me, not believing the story has given me liberation. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Anyone else?

*Sattva

If you build it…

they will come! Thank you ScottyDoo for picking up my project and running with it. As most of you know I’m extremely busy  and up to my eyeballs in projects right now: opening a yoga studio in three weeks, three kids, two callings, etc. I’m also not the most tech savvy person out there.

ScottyDoo graciously offered up his blendingzen site to all of us and his talent to help maintain it. Much thanks! Please stay after the meeting today so we can set you apart….

Suffering

Here’s a little of my story – Yogaman

for those of you who don’t know me…

I’m a yogi and have been practicing about two years. I have had a few fleeting times on my yoga mat where I seem to enter a different place of consciousness. I’m not sure how it happens. One time in particular, while doing a flow sequence of Sun Salutations (Surya Namaskara A/B), I seemed to enter a state where I was witnessing a conversation taking place between my mind and body. I did not hear words or anything, but I sensed the conversation taking place. I was in a moving meditation – just watching it happen. It was pure peace. That’s when I knew “I” wasn’t my mind or my body; that, along with yoga, sent me on a quest in search of the real me. I was the “witnessing presence,” as Eckhart Tolle describes in his Power of Now. This sounds so unreal and illogical to some, especially to church members. They just can’t understand it. It’s like they can only relate to one type of spirituality – the kind they get in church mostly. This type of experience is completely out of their realm of awareness.

I don’t discuss experiences like this very often, but I’m longing to do so with people whom I think can understand it or have had similar experiences. I’m hoping that people on this blog can relate to what I’m saying. I’ve been searching for a place where I can discuss events of this type with others who are or have been Mormon. Being Mormon and then having experiences like I just related turn your world upside down. TBMs don’t understand it, but neither to NOMs or PostMo’s. It is b/c it usually takes yoga or some form of meditation to get to this place. Does anyone relate to what I’m saying?

I don’t have these experiences as often as I’d like. I’m working on that. However, when it does happen, it recharges my batteries so to speak, in a way that nothing else ever could. This experience I just discussed also seems to resonate with an eastern view of spirituality rather than a western view (i.e., awakening). The two views aren’t completely incompatible, but they aren’t the same either. Having been on both sides, I like the eastern view better.

I welcome any thoughts you may have.

Yogaman.
Namaste!

Breaking bonds

“When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds: Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great, and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.”

This quote by Patanjali is one of my all time favorites. It really resonates with my own personal experience of finding personal liberation by questioning my entrenched thought patterns. The world I once viewed as being antagonistic and negative has been slowly transformed into a friendly place and the brightness within myself spills out everywhere.

In yoga there is a concept called maya. It means illusion – the inability to see the truth that is right in front of us. I used to relate this to the Mormon concept of a veil over the earth, keeping us from our memory of a pre-existence. In a sense, that concept of a veil is actually true – we are fogged over of our memory of the fact that we are pure consciousness. That there is something beyond even the concepts in religion.

The most effective way to move through maya is to simply embrace it’s existence, be aware that we are all deluded in some form and start questioning thoughts. Pulling on the thread of “Is that really true?” on every level is the beginning of true freedom and liberation. A breaking of the bonds that limit and a transcendence to a completely friendly universe.

When Patanjali discusses discovering that you discover yourself to be a far greater person than you ever dreamed yourself to be, that is the delusion of maya and the embracing of our true divinity.

Welcome to Lotus Liberation and all of it’s many incarnations soon to come. Please join in…

**by Sattva