Water Works.....

Today in my neighborhood, there was a tour of homes that have been involved in making 'rain jars.' I LOVE that I live in a community of folk who are this creative and devoted. This is as 'grassroots' as you can get!

I hope you enjoy -- and perhaps are inspired by -- this website.

metta
poep sa frank jude

BOOK CLUB: "Mind and Body at Ease" by Sarah Powers

I’ve long been a fan of Sarah Powers’ work, so I was looking forward to reading her contribution to Michael Stone’s anthology, Freeing the Body, Freeing the Mind. Sarah’s essay is Chapter 7 of this book, and she begins right out of the gate, so to speak, asserting, “Hatha Yoga is an introspective path.” Of course she’ll have no argument from me on this point, but I wonder still how many practitioners understand it as such?

The next part of her opening sentence strikes me a bit strangely though, when she seems to place the “introspective path of self-transformation” that is Hatha-Yoga purely in terms of using “the body as a vehicle for harmonizing and strengthening one’s energy” that allows one to then – with this ‘balanced energy’ – be in a place of better understanding for freeing our minds with the “meditative awareness practice” that is mindfulness. She goes on to speak of “braiding” Hatha Yoga and mindfulness together as our practice life.

I say this strikes me strangely because I think that in our practice life, these are not at all two ‘things’ we braid together as much as one fully integrated, comprehensive practice. In cultivating a mindfulness of body, for instance, while practicing the postures and movements of Hatha Yoga, the practice jointly balances energy and cultivates understanding and freedom of mind. In my own practice, I cannot sense them as two when we approach Hatha Yoga as an introspective path.

I don’t wish to belabor the point here, but I do want to clarify that what may seem like two practices that complement each other can indeed be approached as one single, comprehensive practice. And honestly, this is how it feels when I’ve taken class with Sarah: seamless!

Her distinction between “active attention” and “receptive attention” is an interesting one. Of course, various mindfulness meditations emphasize these different forms of attention regardless of the posture one is in. For instance, the body scan most often used as either First or Second Foundation practice requires much active attention as one directs one’s attention throughout the body in a systematic way. While doing so, one is encouraged to maintain an ‘equanimous mind’ which is a non-reactive receptive state.

That she sees these two forms of attention as related to yang and yin approaches to yogasana is telling, and again makes sense. Whenever I am offering equanimity practice, I emphasize yin-yoga practice, though of course, again, this kind of receptive, non-manipulating kind of attention is also needed in more vigorous vinyasa as well – as Sarah also mentions. It is always, ultimately, a matter of emphasis. Almost always, distinctions made for didactic purposes over-emphasize the differences and make it sound like they are truly separate, while in practice, we find a more fluid relationship to these approaches.

One thing I really appreciated about Sarah’s contribution is her examples from her own life. It is important for practitioners to understand that this ‘practice’ is, as she writes, a ‘life-practice,’ so her use of her hot flashes as an example of working with mindfulness is very pertinent. One caveat: ‘awareness of sensations’ is more accurately associated with the Second Foundation of Mindfulness, and I suspect her referring to is as the First Foundation on page 92 is a typo or simply a slip of the pen, so to speak, which I think becomes obvious when she refers to the First Foundation of Mindfulness as “mindfulness of the body” on the very next page.

I completely feel at resonance with Sarah, especially when she writes about what I call ‘building a bigger container.’ When we rest in a more receptive mode of attention in the face of discomfort, we are doing so not to become more stoic, but to cultivate the ability and capacity to meet the unavoidable afflictions, disappointments and difficulties of everyday life “without adding suffering to our suffering,” as she puts it. This is a real freedom that is truly available to any of us, if we simply give ourselves the time and permission to stay in that receptive state.

I also appreciate her drawing attention to ‘self-talk’ as part of our mindfulness practice. So much of this self-talk can be so unkind and self-lacerating. Most people would be appalled at the idea of saying such things to others, but their minds lash out at them with such vitriol. And then there is all the under-mining self-talk that she speaks about.

In the chain of causation, there is what she refers to as the first and second ‘beats’ of stimulus and assessment, and the third and fourth beats as reaction and action. Mindfulness is a form of nirodha, or containment. We feel a reaction of grasping or aversion to a sensation that is assessed as pleasant or unpleasant and we consciously inhibit any action based upon the conditioning so that we can choose a more creative way to respond.

Sarah strongly makes the point that mindfulness allows us to see the choices our life experience make available to us. Without mindfulness, we live in an almost automatic mode of conditioned reactivity and end up feeling ‘victimized’ by ‘fate.’

Along with Chip Hartranft’s opening chapter, “Awakening to Prana” and chapter five, “Joining With Naturalness” by Ari Goldfield and Rose Taylor, I find Sarah’s contribution to be my favorites so far. All of them offer solid, sound understandings and approaches that I hope are making the relationship between Yoga and Buddhism more clear among readers. What do you think?

December Daily Practice (Health Practice): Hydration

Really, it’s not only because I live in a desert that I’ve thought to share this practice! In winter, we tend to spend more time indoors, with windows closed and the heat on (unless we live in the tropics or in the southern hemisphere, where it’s getting on summer now but then you need to hydrate there just as well). If you are finding yourself in such a situation, you know that your sinuses can dry out, and this in turn can lead to sinus infections. Dehydration can also lead to headaches, fatigue, constipation and many other imbalances.

As well, December can be a pretty stressful time, with the holidays and family gatherings, so I thought I’d offer a simple practice, that won’t take much time, but may help you weather the season in better health and spirits.

The Practice: After waking in the morning, before your morning shower, or brushing your teeth, or coffee, or asana or mediation practice --  before just about anything else other than peeing – drink a glass of water (about 6 – 10 ounces). THEN, after showering, or whatever else your morning ‘get-me-up’ routine is, drink another glass of water.

That’s it. Simple.

If you’d like, you can write this gatha in your own handwriting and past it above your sink, or memorize it so that you can say it to yourself as you take that first glass of water:

Water flows from high in the mountains.

Water runs deep in the Earth.

Amazingly, water comes to us,

And sustains all life.

Some folk believe the big wars to come are not going to be over oil as much as water. Already thousands of people throughout the world lack access to fresh water. And yet, our bodies are about two-thirds water. This water is not separate from the water that falls as rain and snow, that runs in our rivers and streams. As our waterways become more and more polluted and overdrawn, what will this mean for our bodies? Are not the waterways of the Earth our external arteries?

To be mindful of our water, our need for water, and to celebrate the gift of water is to cultivate awareness and help preserve and conserve this precious source of life for all beings.

Seriously? Some further comments in response to Michael Stone

Michael Stone, yogi, psycho-therapist, activist, writer, and friend, wrote a comment in response to my last post (Why take life so seriously? It’s impermanent.) on FaceBook, prompting me to take this opportunity to delve again into what I was attempting to get at in that post.

Michael wrote: Isn't "peace the path" because our actions matter, not in a future life awaiting us, but in the real social, political, emotional, familial life of ours now? frank the title of your blog makes me uneasy as it comes close to the passivity that a (mis)understanding of non-attachment connotes. yes, the asset of joy means everything. and so does action! mindfulness happens in action, whether joyful or serious or upset and neutral. if we focus too much on not taking life so seriously, we can become indifferent, or worse, we tend not to study our actions and their consequences.

Michael specifically says that it is the title of my blog that made him uneasy. I don’t know (and I should have asked) if he had read the post before commenting. And if he did read the post, I should have asked if the rest of the post left him uneasy as well, or if it indeed were just the title.

After all, the title is simply from a bumper-sticker I found humorous, and yes, a bit provocative. And that was exactly why I chose to use this to title this particular post. As I responded to Michael, it was meant to be both humorous and provocative. I think perhaps the humor may have been lost on Micheal, and it simply 'provoked' his response.

The response I posted to Michael’s comment on Facebook was the following: Michael, I agree that "if we focus too much on not taking life so seriously, we can become indifferent" but my experience with students (and most people I know) is that we don't focus on taking life less seriously at all. The point of this post is that through self-absorbtion, most of us take things too seriously (personally) etc. Thay himself offers the practice of stopping and considering what you (and the person or persons you are caught in drama with) will look like in 100 years.

Our actions DO matter. AND I do believe we'd be better off not taking ourselves so seriously at the same time. Or as Pema Chodron puts it, "Enlighten up!" I've often experienced that when a group of practitioners can feel easeful enough to laugh at themselves and their 'craziness,' a deeper sense of authenticity and intimacy is the result.

I hope by this you’ll see that I am not saying that life is meaningless or that we should adopt a frivolous attitude to it. Everyday, as part of my prostration practice, I chant the following gatha:

Great is the matter of birth and death!

Impermanence surrounds us!

Be awake each moment!

Do not waste your life!

This is a pretty 'serious' verse. But to approach our actions and their consequences seriously is still not necessarily the same as taking ourselves seriously, and it was this that I was particularly addressing in my post. This is why I specifically talked about “drama queens” (and we all harbor an inner drama queen to some extent or another).

Sally’s comment directly addressed this when she wrote: Thank you!... this resonates so much with my current family drama that pulls me into thinking and getting so serious. I'd much rather be light, forgiving, loving, and letting go. I will always remember how easily you said there is nothing to forgive when I was so sorry to have forgotton to show up on a class that I was suppose to sub. That response is still with me as a reminder to extend it foward. so much gratitude.

I wrote that post after I had just returned from a Yoga Teacher Training in Costa Rica, where many of the students were oppressed by the suffering of taking themselves and their ‘little dramas’ so terribly seriously. It was this tendency we all share that I was addressing in my post. This is not to minimize the difficulty of life, of family and relationships in general. But again, as Thay reminds us, impermanence should wake us from this daze of taking every 'insult' to our ego so seriously. Many times when I have found myself getting upset and building a Gone With The Wind narrative around a perceived slight, I have used Thay's practice of imagining myself and my loved on in 100 years and the drama completely deflates, as does my anger and self-defensiveness!

Michael responded to my comment saying: thanks frank. sometimes i get charged with being serious (for those who don't know me) and i only mention this because social change that arises from compassion still requires confrontation. we need to confront, with metta, what's in us, but also what is around us. that's serious business!

And I totally agree with Michael that social change is indeed ‘serious business.’ And that compassion sometimes requires we confront injustice. But I still hold that we should work for social change in the same spirit as we work for personal change (or transformation) and that is by not taking ourselves so seriously! I believe this is part of the message we should take from the Diamond Sutra where the Buddha says that the bodhisattva works for the liberation of countless beings, and when countless beings have been liberated does not for one instant believe that any beings have been liberated. Why? Because if we think "I" have saved "others" we are falling into self-cherishment. 

One of the Buddha’s core teachings is the teaching of anatta or not-self. That we take every thought that goes through our head ‘personally’ is part of the problem of duhkha. As Joseph Goldstein says, "thoughts, feelings and emotions are all conditioned by impersonal forces." As hard as it may be to accept, there is nothing ‘personal’ about any of it! That we take things ‘personally’ is what I mean by taking things too seriously. Perhaps I should have been clearer, and so I thank Michael for his comments, prodding me to re-state my intention here.

As Karen Maezen Miller writes in Momma Zen, “Yes, we all have a load on our hands, but the heavy is in our heads. Set the heavy down and sweep aside the useless mental clutter.” As her teacher, Maezumi Roshi told her, “You make everything work.” Don’t we all do so when we take ourselves overly seriously? Life is more fun that we sometimes make it. When a child asked Thich Nhat Hanh what he did for fun, Thay responded with a smile, “Everything I do is for fun.” As I titled an earlier essay, I think of it (life, practice, commitment) as all of it being  “Important Fun.”

In metta

poep sa frank jude

Why take life so seriously? It's impermanent!

I was driving today, listening to the first cd from a woman I believe to be one of America’s great song-writers and a scarily moving performer – who yes, also happens to be a friend of mine. You’ve most likely never heard of her, though her 80s band, Slow Children, did have some success on college radio and in the dance club scene. Pal Shazar’s first cd, released in 1991, is called Cowbeat Of My Heart, and several of the songs do indeed have a bit of a country twang, but her lyrics are always deeply thoughtful and often of a narrative bent.

Well, today, as I was driving, her song “Mon Cher Violette” was playing, seemingly echoing something I said to the Moksha Yoga teachers in Costa Rica last week; a statement I had read on a bumper-sticker back in Tucson, that perhaps we shouldn’t always take life so seriously, being that it is impermanent! Pal sings:

You’re so dramatic Violette,

You take life so serious

When life’s not serious at all

You’re like a missionary with that weight you haul

It’s a tragedy

So apologetic Violette

I find that curious

When your slate is super clean

Just like a visionary shocked by what she’s seen

It’s a comedy

In the Zen tradition, we are taught that all beings are without blame; that they (we) are perfect, whole, lacking nothing just as we are. So many difficulties and sufferings arise because we fail to see that. Practice isn’t about making it so, but more about leading us to realize that it is so!

All of us know drama queens (and perhaps have one living within us) who seem not to be happy unless they are embroiled in some complex, confused drama, all facets of which seem to be nothing short than a matter of life and death! I sometimes take a mildly sardonic pleasure in pointing out to such drama fiends that all stories end in death!

In another of her songs from this cd, “Go Jackie,” Pal exhorts a friend to “let it go,” and stop attempting to hold on to what he no longer has:

Oh let it go Jackie, nobody’s born to be

A prisoner of his fate

How long you gonna wait?

Many students misunderstand the teachings of karma in a fatalistic kind of way, yet it was the Buddha’s understanding of karma that points to the only possibility we have for freedom! Whatever hand we may have been dealt, how we choose to play it is what determines the outcome; it is not pre-determined how the game will go. And as Thich Nhat Hanh often emphasizes, if you wait for external conditions to be a certain way before you have peace and joy, then you are waiting for a future that can never come. There is no path to peace; peace is the path! If you do not claim and step into your freedom now, when else do you think you can?

So perhaps next time you’re feeling that the situation you find yourself in is so terribly, pressingly important, take a breath and remind yourself of what you’ll be looking like in 100 years. How will what you are fretting over be seen from that perspective?

And may you enjoy now!

Book Club: Zen Body by Eido Shimano Roshi

Chapter Six, the entry from Eido Shimano Roshi, is rather short and, in my opinion, rather slight, so my comments will also be short – and most likely slight as well.

In his opening sentence, it’s rather clear that by joining “Yoga” and “sports” as things the Buddha was trained in, along with the presumption that having studied yoga and sport, the Buddha was “very fit,” that Eido is thinking of Yoga as physical training. If I could, I’d tell Eido that everytime he trains a student in zazen, he is teaching Yoga!

Where I have complete agreement with Eido Roshi, is in his assertion that “the body is indispensable as the mind for finding ultimate liberation.” In fact, I often quote Georg Feuerstein, who said that enlightenment is a full-body experience.

As a long-time student of Zen, I appreciate Eido Roshi’s discussion of soji (cleaning). Since the baby’s arrival, I’ve found that I’ve more opportunity to practice while cleaning (laundry, dishes, diapers etc) and it has been truly a very nourishing practice. When fully immersed in this practice of cleaning, mind becomes still, at one with action. Action seems still, even in movement, as mind has ceased to run commentary.

As I teach in Body of Peace, when body, breath and mind are fully and completely aligned and relaxed into action, the true body is seen to be the 10,000 things. As Eido, quoting Dogen puts it:

"The entire world in the ten directions is nothing but the true human body."

For those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving Day, I hope yours is truly a time of reflection on the myriad gifts we receive daily. As the November Daily Practice of Naikan allows us to see, we benefit from countless, innumerable beings constantly.  And to all of you, I wish to take this opportunity to thank you for your practice, for your desire and commitment to awaken for the sake of a more loving and joy-filled world.

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.