Joining With Naturalness Part Three

Picking up with the section entitled “Buddhist Yoga Exercise,” reminding ourselves, as the authors do in their first paragraph, that there are many varied “Buddhist Yogas” and thus many different ‘exercises,’ let’s explore what Goldfield and Taylor have to say regarding the practices taught by Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso.

They make the important point, I believe common to all Buddhist Yogas, that movement practices are essential for developing the ‘practice mind’ in and throughout our daily activities. While walking meditation is a common practice (especially in the Theravada tradition) for instance, in Zen ‘work practice’ is strongly emphasized. In fact, it was during my Zen training that I learned to hang sheet-rock, as well as use several different power tools!

Goldfield and Taylor remind us of the three qualities of mind guiding the intention behind practice and specify that while exercise has many physical benefits for the body, our mental attitude must be one of ‘renunciation,’ in that we renounce clinging to body as ‘truly existent.’ I might prefer to phrase it as “renounce clinging to body as self.” This is an important piece often ignored in contemporary yoga (asana) practice. In fact, I find that some approaches to practice actually encourage and strengthen identification with the body as self, which will ultimately prove futile, as the body ages and becomes less able to perform the more challenging asanas. This is not, however, merely a contemporary issue, as texts as old as the hatha-yoga tradition (roughly 1,000 years old) already warn that the practice of asana, outside the context of raja-yoga (here meaning meditation) become ‘obstacles to liberation!’

Remembering the second quality, I encourage students to re-affirm their bodhicitta by reminding themselves that they practice for the benefit of all beings. And finally, that our practice is to cultivate the realization of the true nature of ‘things as it is,’ as Suzuki Roshi would often say.

In the following section, “The Key Points of Yogic Exercise,” the authors say that the most profound way to apply the mind during activity is to focus on the true empty nature of phenomena. Their description of maintaining the ‘nondual awareness, the union of luminosity-emptiness’ recalls the practice I teach of “Big Sky Mind.” 

They suggest focusing attention at the point four fingers width below the navel, which in Zen is the hara. Sometimes I too ask my students to focus here, especially during vinyasa practice, as in going from plank to upward-facing dog to downward-facing dog moving from this point. They all express a distinct difference in the energy and fluidity of movement.

Most of the rest of this section speaks of the body as impermanent, in the fact of its constant changing nature. In “Body of Peace,” I emphasize that in fact, nowhere in the universe is there absolute stillness. There is constant vibration, what Tantra calls spandha. What we call ‘stillness’ in meditation is actually a kind of calm-activity, vibrant, yet easeful, vigorous yet at rest.

I especially like the following phrase: “Experience is much softer than when we are clinging to ourselves, objects, and ideas with heavy conceptuality.” This is the “body of peace,” which is boundless and all-pervasive, not limited to the outline of the ‘skin-bag.’

The section entitled “How To Use Sickness To Enhance The Practice Of Buddhist Yoga” is another aspect of Buddhist Yoga that is both often mis-understood and/or ignored. The second of the Five Remembrances is “I am of the nature to have ill-health; there is no way to avoid having ill-health.” Frequently, when I offer this teaching, it brings up a lot of resistance among many students. They think it is ‘negative thinking’ and would rather ignore such realities. They may even be working under the delusion – encouraged by some ‘new age’ thought – that if they are ill they ‘brought it on themselves’ and that if their practice were ‘good’ they could avoid all illness!

What the authors here remind us of is that illness can be worked with skillfully to attain deeper realization of our true nature. And indeed, isn’t it true that when things go well for us, it is kind of easy to let practice slip away? Then the shit hits the fan and we rush back to the mat or the meditation cushion! Many people come to my “Body of Peace” retreat with the notion that a body of peace never feels pain. One of the first things I tell them is that in fact, a body of peace is beyond pleasure and pain; that in going beyond circumstances, there is a peace that can contain pain, that is undisturbed, as Patanjali puts it, “by the pairs of opposites.”

No Gaps

I have a tee-shirt from Zen Mountain Monastery that features an enso and brush calligraphy saying, “No Gaps.” That’s how we are expected to practice: with no gaps, seamlessly throughout the varied activities of daily life. My teacher, Samu Sunim would often exhort us that “there is no way of the Buddha outside everyday life.” Thinking that practice is one thing, and our life is another is one of the most pernicious beliefs a practitioner can fall victim to.

In this penultimate section, the authors are telling us that our training is to be engaged, to act without attachment, with compassion and the energy of bodhicitta. There is ultimately nothing separate from the naturalness we seek to join with. Thus, ultimately, we come to see that therefore there is nothing that truly needs to be ‘joined.’ We have never really been separate!

As they conclude, at first all this takes effort. Our conditioning keeps pulling back into delusion. But, over time we experience glimmers of emptiness and the relaxed ease of naturalness and as practice and life become not-two, life – including pain, illness, aging and death – becomes more joyous, spacious, natural.

I enjoyed this chapter quite a bit, and hope to hear from you, dear readers, what you have received from this reading. 

Book Club: Joining With Naturalness by Goldfield and Taylor (Part Two)

The ‘heart’ of this chapter is the section entitled “Foundations of Buddhist Yoga.” Goldfield and Taylor say that, at least for their school or lineage of Tibetan Buddhism, these foundations are: renunciation, bodhicitta, and the view of the true nature of reality.

I have found it quite true that the term renunciation can bring up a lot of misunderstanding, confusion and resistance among many practitioners of contemporary yoga. I usually describe it as the letting go or renouncing of our habitual, conditioned ways of finding solace, and instead taking refuge in awakening. Ultimately, I think Goldfield and Taylor are pretty much saying the same thing.

There is one aspect of their teaching that I think can be problematic, but I’d love to hear from others of you as perhaps I am just sensitive to the term, but when I hear (usually it’s from Tibetan Buddhists) talk about phenomena as not ‘truly existing,’ I think the term has too many connotations that can mislead students.

For instance, there are forms of Yoga (and at least one school of Buddhist philosophy) that does assert that all perceivable phenomena are merely illusory – that they in fact simply do not exist; that all things are mental creations. Patanjali refutes this form of idealism, as does the Buddha, from most accounts we have.

And in western philosophy, the distinction is often made between ‘being’ and ‘existence’ with ‘being’ understood as ‘ultimate, true reality, eternal and unchanging’ and existence as the impermanent, ever-changing flux of phenomena.

I attempt to side-track any confusion by speaking of things 'not existing as we think they do,' rather than ‘not truly existing.’ For instance, I might say that a rainbow is a ‘real’ rainbow. What it isn’t, however, is a solid, colored bridge from one part of the horizon to another. It appears solid and self-existent, but it arises upon myriad conditions. But it isn’t an ‘illusion’ or ‘delusion’ in the sense that there is no real phenomana.

I don’t think we have to deny that our body exists. What we have to see clearly is that the body is not-Self. It has no independent, autonomous, persistent nature. So we renounce our mis-perception and clinging.

So, we end up with the same understanding Goldfield and Taylor write about, and perhaps it doesn’t matter what terms we use. Maybe it’s just my ‘hang-up!’

The second foundation, bodhicitta, is an important concept for all Mahayana Buddhist traditions. In my book, I share this concept as one of four practices associated with the second limb of the Noble Eightfold Path of the Buddha: 'right intention' (sometimes also called ‘right thinking’). Simply put, it is the thought and intention to practice and awaken for the sake of all beings. It can be a really strong energy that can keep you practicing when personal tendencies of resistance arise. On the mat, when practicing challenging postures, I sometimes encourage students to think of others in discomfort and practice tonglen, breathing in the discomfort while contemplating all the beings in the world who are feeling similar discomfort, and breathing out relief for all beings.

Compassion is the second of the Four Immeasurables (also called the Four Brahma-Viharas) and the idea is to cultivate the intention to really do something about the suffering in the world. 'The Dedication of Merit' is another practice that all practitioners can take up, at least as a bell of mindfulness that our practice cannot be seen as self-centric. If we are happier, we want others to be happy. If we are happy, our actions do indeed create conditions for others to be happy.

The following is the version of the 'Dedication of Merit' I use to end all my classes and practice sessions:

Whatever merit we may have generated through our practice together,

We now dedicate and offer all of it

To all sentient beings throughout the world, equally.

May our thoughts, our words, and our deeds

Bring benefit to the world.

The third foundation of Buddhist Yoga Goldfield and Taylor share is the ‘view of the profound true nature of reality – nondual awareness.’ Now, as I already wrote about in my post on Victoria Austin not all forms of Buddhist Yoga adhere to a non-dual perspective, so I won’t go into that here again.

However, their teachings on the two stages: “The Selflessness of Body and Mind” and “The Emptiness of Body and Mind” are well written and clear. Of course, while we have this discussion often in sangha, many practitioners still find the Buddha’s teaching on ‘not-Self’ and ‘emptiness’ challenging.  I would like to know if any of you reading along have any particular questions about this topic, rather than just ranting on and on about it here.

What I will say here is something in regard to the passage on page 75, where they write: “whatever  phenomenon appears to our senses or thoughts, it does not truly exist as what it appears to be… and its true nature is beyond duality, beyond concept and expression.” Take the example of a candle flame. We see it as a single phenomenon. Yes it is changing, but behind the idea that ‘the flame is changing’ is this implicit understanding that there is a ‘thing’ that exists called ‘the flame’ and something of its nature persists while changing shape in the currents of the wind.

Yet, from one moment to the next, what actually persists? And can we not see that without the candle wax, oxygen and the wick, there would be no flame? The flame arises upon these conditions, thus it is empty of an independent, autonomous self-nature. So, is the flame of this moment the same as, different than, both the same and different, or neither the same nor different than the flame of two minutes ago? Can you see this is the point Goldfield and Taylor are making in the above passage. For the truth is we cannot really say any of these possibilities are accurate and yet there is a candle flame! Words are concepts, and the true reality of what is cannot be captured in concept.

This is not to say we should jettison all concepts and that conceptual thinking is ‘bad.’ It is to say that we would do well to remember this truth about the nature of reality and concepts, so that we can use conceptual thinking without getting ensnared and led away from reality by concepts. What I’ve just said about a candle flame is not dis-similar to what we can say about ourselves. Take a photo of you from five years ago. Are you the same as that person? Different? Both same and different? Neither the same nor different? Where would you look to find any ‘self’ that has persisted unchanged, independently of conditions?

When we see this reality – and not merely intellectually – the clinging quality of attachment dissolves.