Minor Satoris

Sometimes I think life is just a series of minor satoris. Little enlightenments. Epiphanies. Insights to some small thing that might be happening. It’s so hard to make sense of things sometimes. The dramas and jostling of egos. Mine included.

And then one day I step back and all the jostling disappears. It could be something simple. A spider on the wall. A dust devil swirling across the desert. But it’s enough to bring me back to the moment.

These small moments add up over the years and make us who we are. How we act in every day life and how we react when something heavy comes up. It all matters.

Can it always be forgiven?

Monday I was returning home from a walk and was stopped by a rattlesnake coiled in the middle of the driveway. It rattled its tail at me, a dry, chilling sound. A dangerous sound. Yet, I respect the rattlesnake and the warning it gives.

Tuesday night I dreamed of two deer standing in the same place as the rattler. They stared at me with a gentle gaze, an unusual sight out here in the sagebrush.

I thought about Blake’s lion and the lamb. Is danger experience? Two deer grazing innocence?

Or is it none of that? Maybe it’s just the desert.

Hard mind, soft mind

The soft mind of Zen is an intuitive mind, one open to ideas. A soft mind accepts and embraces; it doesn’t criticize or condemn.

A hard mind, on the other hand, bends everything to fit its own view of the world.

I’ve been both ways, but for the past few years I’ve worked on cultivating a softer mind, and I’ve learned a few things in the process.

It can be particularly hard to change our way of thinking but we can do it by making conscious choices, and sometimes it leads to greater happiness. I had a friend once with a hard mind. One time he told me, “Almost everything in my life tells me my way of thinking is wrong, but I’m not going to change it.”

Maybe he’s happy. Who am I to say? But the conversation stayed with me because it struck me as so strange. Does it bring happiness to be at odds with the world? It never has for me.

Recently, this change in thinking has included a new look at Buddhism. A few weeks ago I read a post on Notes from the Bluegrass, one of the blogs I follow, Ok, so I’m not just a Buddhist that really resonated with me. She wrote about her love of certain aspects of Buddhism, but how part of it, that she said could have been a matter of interpretation, “upsets my journey rather than assists it.”

My own journey has been changing lately too. I still have a strong sitting practice, but I’m less sure of Buddhism than before. I sometimes wonder if religion is just a place for hard minds to belong.

Originally, I was drawn to Buddhism, and particularly Zen, because of its acceptance and simplicity, and that hasn’t changed.

Meditation helps me stay more present. Through the years, it’s helped me observe better and react less with knee jerk reactions. Simplicity works for me. Plenty of Buddhist scholars expound eloquently on the meaning of dukka or the merits of Theravada versus Mahayana or is Vajrayana closer to the pure practice of Buddhism?  That’s great, but it makes my head spin, and, honestly, I don’t care. Books are wonderful, and some of my best journeys have been through books. They’ve taught me much and I still read voraciously.

But for me, a spiritual practice is different. It’s personal, and it’s between me and whatever power is out there, God or Buddha nature. For some it’s prayer. Others find that connection through chanting. Meditation works for me.

I still love  Zen and will continue to sit,  but I’m not so comfortable identifying myself with a particular religion. I’ve listened to too many arguments, seen too much posturing. And religion seems to bring it out.

But I’m trying to keep my mind soft and open to even that.

The soft mind is really the stronger of the two because it accepts so much more easily, whereas the hard mind threatens to break when encountering ideas different from his or her own.

How do you nurture a soft mind?

 

Did the Buddha sit on a zafu?

 

Last week I chose some photos that meant “culture” to me, and I got to thinking about a conversation, actually several conversations, I’ve had with friends about Buddhism and the way it bends and changes and adapts to the culture it finds itself in.

It seems natural to me.

One of my friends, however, said he had to express his “disparagement with the idea that Buddhism should be adapted to the culture it is working in. I can’t accept that because then I would be accepting the idea that it should be watered down for commercialization and packaged as a another self-help video in the New Age movement.” He then cited a Vietnamese monk he knows who was impressed by his insight, thus lending credence to his view.

So Buddhism hasn’t blended with Vietnamese culture? It’s come down undiluted from sometime around the 5th century BCE when Siddhartha Gautama first sat under a bodhi tree and became enlightened?

How can Buddhism possibly not have changed and blended with cultures?

From Tibet dakinis and mandalas are thrown into the mix. Dakinis also eased their way into Japanese culture and became known as Dakini-ten. Buddhism in Japan embraced taoism from China. In fact, the entire influx of Buddhism into Japan was the result of one of the greatest culture occurrences in history: The Silk Road, where Buddhism was brought from Nepal. The Buddha even looks different in different countries. Some of those Thai Buddhas bear a strong resemblance to the old kings of Siam. Some schools of Buddhism are Theravada. Others fall under the Mahayana heading.

Clearly Buddhism, and probably all major world religions, has done plenty of bending and adapting to culture, so why is it an issue now that it’s begun making its way into the West? Could it be my friend honestly believes it’s not been commercialized in Asia?

There is a tendency, for many, to idealize cultures outside our own. It’s called “Orientalism” when it’s dealing with Asia. Orientalism is a kind of reverse racism where the east is imbued with a spirituality that those in the developed west can never understand. It’s somehow purer, more innocent.

I don’t think it’s accurate.

I don’t know if globalization is good or bad but I do know it’s real. There are people in all countries seeking spiritual solace, just as there are many, many around the world looking to money as a means to happiness. And it’s every where.

At the gates of temples throughout Asia, Buddhism is just another commodity. You can buy bodhi leaves in plastic bags in Bodh Gaya, malas made out of wood and seeds, incense and, of course, Buddha statues of all sizes and prices.

Really, we have no monopoly on watering something down and packaging it as another self-help video in the New Age movement. It’s just different is all.

I remember a trip I took to a cave in Gansu Province, China. I was with some friends. It was raining and we hiked up stone steps carved out of the mountain to the cave at the top. A monk sat sedately by the entrance. One of my friends asked me if I had any questions, and I figured why not? So I asked him the path to happiness. He asked me for some money, which I gave him, and he told me, “Pay your taxes and always listen to your government.”

 

 

Forward

Today I packed away rocks and gods. A set of sequined curtains tossed in the trash. I’m shedding, clearing out, cleaning my house while cleaning my psyche.

One of my beliefs is we’re always moving forward to our true nature, and each of us is exactly where we’re supposed to be. No one can journey for us.

There’s a line at the end of the Heart Sutra that translates roughly into going, going, going beyond, always becoming Buddha. Hail.

I’ve always liked the line because it feels dynamic. We move forward. Every day we become.

More.

Moving Forward

Weekly Photo Challenge: Silhouette

These photos were taken at the ruins of Nalanda University in Bihar, India. Nalanda was an ancient center of Buddhist learning from about fifth century CE to 1197 CE. Nalanda was ransacked by the Turkic Muslim invaders in 1193. The monasteries were destroyed and the monks driven out. The library was so vast that records say it burned for three months after the invaders set fire to it.

The little girl pictured here was part of the group I was traveling with. Her name is Cherida and the woman in the first picture is her grandmother. When I showed the photos to her parents, they said, “But you can’t even tell who she is.”

The crows were just with us for the day.

Related articles

• Weekly Photo Challenge: Silhouettes (aniaarcher.wordpress.com)

Weekly Photo Challenge: Big

Weekly Photo Challenge: Mine

What is mine is a thing of muscle, bone and sinew. It’s an inner world I find through silence and a wall. It’s the active act of sitting, just sitting, and through the sitting the universe begins to unfold, slowly, nearly imperceptible, but one day I found the world softer, myself softer. I could breathe deeply with a sense of calm that is mine, truly mine.

 

 

 

Occupy Wall Street: Isn’t it interesting

It’s the one year anniversary of the Occupy movement and the latest DP Challenge “post of the week” to come through my email was to voice our opinions on it. We were asked to take a poll with three options to choose from:

1. I’m all for it and even participated in some events
2. It’s a nice idea, but I don’t think protests do anything
3. I don’t support it at all, and disagree with the ideas

None of these really describe how I feel, but I was surprised to find that me, a former radical,  ended up choosing Number 3 as the one closest to how I feel today.

Of course I  support the Occupy movement from the perspective of freedom of speech. I figure everyone has the right to protest and voice their opinions, provided they’re not violent, but usually  violence does erupt in one way or another with the protesters blaming the cops and the cops blaming the protesters.

It’s the same old story and that’s why I can’t get behind the movement. As long as we continue with this dualistic thinking: us vs. them (even if “them” is only one percent), good vs. bad, right vs. wrong, we’re going to keep going in circles and ending up in the same place.

Life is more complex than that. We don’t live in a world of black and white but of nuances and shades and textures. Some right, some wrong, some things balance between the two. The Occupy movement feels rigid, unbending and myopic.

I was in India when the Occupy Wall Street movement broke out in the U.S. and so I watched it unfold in another culture, one that is not as dualistic as we are. And I tried to watch it unfold with a new set of eyes, from the perspective of my Indian friends which was mostly along the lines of “Isn’t it interesting.”

But what’s your opinion, I would ask and they would say, “Yes, yes, the protesters have a good point. But the other side has a good point too.”

I admit, I had some waves of nostalgia where I felt I could be easily swept up in the emotion of it all and out there on the streets with the crowds and the tear gas, but it didn’t last. That’s just not me any more. I can’t find it in me to tell the rest of the world how to live.

Yes, I know one percent of the population holds 99% of the wealth. Isn’t that interesting.

When I see the faces of the Occupy protesters, I see hatred, self-righteousness, anger. And I also see laughter and people just out there having a good time to be actively doing something.  I’m convinced one friend joined so he could dress up in costumes and get pictures of himself. It felt more like a party than anything, but a party where one percent wasn’t invited.

It’s not that I don’t want peace. I do. But I think we’re going about it the wrong way. Peace isn’t a goal to attain, and then we have it, it will just be here. It isn’t static. Like life, it’s fluid and changing, and I truly believe the only way we will have peace, is if we find it in our own hearts first.

I’ve even heard people talk about fighting for peace. Now, that’s an oxymoron if ever I heard one.

The Zen writer, Lin Jensen, writes in an article “Doing Nothing for Peace”  how he adopted the Tao Te Ching philosophy of “doing by non-doing.” At peace vigils, he sits. Just sits. That, to me, is the most productive–and profound–thing we can do because it requires an element of trust in life to unfold as it will.

Certainly, there are times to take action, but I don’t think the Occupy movement is one of them. When we try to impose our will on actions or ideas, they become brittle, and again that duality of me against you comes into play.

Another Buddhist writer, Tom Reed, in his essay, “The Next Occupy Movement: Into their Hearts,” called the Occupy movement the yang side of a plan we should all be working on. He wrote, “It seems to me that just like the Buddha, we have to become awakened to the reality that we’ll only survive a financial disaster of national scope by saying, “Enough – enough of grasping onto trying to be right all the time and trying to force others to think like us – enough of clinging to the need to blame others for our woes – enough of vengeance lust against those we perceive must be punished for our suffering.”

Both of these writers articulated better than I what I see as the duality, the split from the soul of this movement. There’s really nothing new or productive happening, and I think it’s because we’re still clinging to the same old way of thinking. My side is right and your side is wrong. We need to move past this idea that there are only two options, but many, many possibilities. Perhaps there are solutions we haven’t even considered.

And maybe the way to do this is by non-doing.  When we allow peace to be a path, as Gandhi said, something  unfolds that’s gentle and able to bend. Gandhi also said, “An eye for an eye just makes the whole world blind.”

So my opinion of the Occupy movement?

Isn’t it interesting?

Right listening and unsolicited opinions

I’m doing another re-blog here. I’ve been following this blog, bluegrass notes by Yogaleigh for a while now. She always has something interesting to say on healing and spirituality, so wanted to share this latest post: Right listening and unsolicited opinions

Learning Buddha nature from cats

Mr. Darcy on the hill

I was the kind of little girl who was always bringing home stray animals. Then I would cry bitterly when my mother made me give them away, which she nearly always did. It was an early lesson in attachment.

When I became an adult, my lifestyle didn’t leave a lot of room for animals, so for a long time I didn’t have any. Plus, my husband was allergic to cats, so they weren’t an option.

When I left my husband and moved to northern California, I once again opened my home up to strays. But it didn’t take long to realize that living on the edge of a canyon with a forest behind was not a conducive place for cats. The food chain always triumphs.

Shasta, the bathroom diva

So I decided, no more cats.
But the cats came anyway. There must be some pipeline among animals that lets them know where they can find a free meal. One day four half wild kittens showed up in the woodpile. Another time two kittens were foisted on me. If I didn’t take them I was told, they were going to the river. When I came back from India, my son had taken in a small gray cat.

Since the world is not full of eager people to take in stray cats, I keep them and feed them. And, often, they disappear.

I took it hard at first. I still take it hard, but I’m learning to let them go. Cats have their own minds and here on the hill, I can’t really think of them as belonging to me. They stop by and offer company and every day I realize may be the last time I see them.

More importantly, I’ve learned I can’t save them. Whatever fate or karma is theirs’ in this world, all I can do is give them shelter while they’re here and say a prayer for them when they go.

It’s all we can do for anyone.

Emily, my cat in Shillong (India)