Monday, December 4, 2006

Ego Clinging Clouds in My Blue Sky

So here I was sitting the other day, my mind doing it's usual monkey-mind thing. I had practiced my usual generation of bodhichiita, and Seven Branch Prayer, the usual things I do in my practice. First, though i open with a prayer to my teacher, and one of the things i request is "grant the blessings for the abandonment of ego clinging."And lo and behold, I saw that very thing happen. I discovered that my monkey-mind was my ego looking to bolster itself up because i was letting go of it.

Any one who tries to sit and meditate will learn that the mind likes to get real active. Particularly when you are trying to make it non-active. Well, mine as usual waits about a minute, and then off she goes. For the most part I treat thoughts like clouds moving through the sky. I just let them pass through. The other morning though I noticed something about my clouds.

I saw that my thoughts were ranging towards interests, and things i could do to improve certain aspects of myself. In other words, make the impermanent "me" more permanent. That's when the sun broke through, and I saw that it was my ego. The impermanent me, the Me of this apparent reality is really my ego, and it always tries to be permanent in a genuine reality that has no permanence. It is difficult at times to realize that as a white male, I will not always reincarnate, nor have always been born, in this white male configuration. That's how attached I am to this impermanent me. To see that though is a big step, at least for me.

So where do my thoughts range? Well, I keep an active political blog, so my thoughts range to my political views, and various web sites I want to visit or things I want to say about what I believe. I also have hobbies, and my thoughts range there as well. My thoughts range to my work, and and my ambitions in that area, or my volunteer work as a firefighter/EMT. This is the part of the Seven Branch Prayer that I like, but is a challenge. The last branch is a prayer that my merit be used to help other sentient beings, and that I become a leader of sentient beings. Being a leader involves those very ambitions, and the challenge is not being attached to that leadership position I might attain, or the honor that goes with it.

This leads me to a verse of the Dza Patrul Rinpoche's Verses on the Five Poisons Self-Liberated. Verse two says:

"Do not cling to the object of your pride, look at the clinging mind.
Clinging to oneself as best is self-arisen and self-liberated, originally emptiness by nature.
Original emptiness is nothing other than the wisdom of equality -
Within pride self-liberated, recite the six syllable mantra ( OM MA NI PE ME HUNG)"

"The wisdom of equality..." That's what I saw. I am like all other beings. My thoughts range where the thoughts of many range. My experiences are not new. To me they might be, but not unique in the universe. Human existence is not like that, otherwise it would undercut the ability of humans to have compassion. In the Christian viewpoint, it would completely usurp the mission of their Christ. Humans have very similar expediences, across the realm of time as well as across the globe. And particularly for those who are enlightened. Any buddha can help because they have been here before us.

The key here is detaching from my concept of permanence, from my interests, and my idea that I am more than equal. Not giving them up, but detaching from them. Let me use this illustration. Imagine your interest as a rock in your hand, and you are holding it, palm down. That means you need to grasp it to maintain the hold on it. The rock isn't you though. It's only in your possession. Detaching is the art of turning the hand over, and opening it. The rock is still there, but the grasping is gone. I don't identify myself by the rock of my interest, my permanence, or my status.

So I sit another day. Now I see this cloud for what it is and it seems a little bit more transparent than it was before. As I continue to sit, more clouds will become more transparent until one day, when my mind will be a cloudless blue sky

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