Meditation space

There is a great book by Kathleen McDonald titled How To Meditate. It definitely comes from the Buddhist perspective, but in it she makes the case for having a meditation setting where you enjoy being. Meditation is something you want to do, and environment goes a long way in promoting that.

The photo is the altar I created. I'm still in the beginning stages of my schools practices, so I have received no formal instruction, if any exists, on what an altar should have on it. So i made my own.

The elements of course reflect a few things relative to my schools particular flavor. Namely the pictures of the lineage of the teachers and the deities we honor. But if you aren't Buddhist, and don't care to be, do something else.

But let me tell you about the thrift store reality of my altar, and meditation setting. Th box there is a piece we bought at Target years ago. It used to be my whole alter, and when I need to move stuff, it all went inside and then became portable. The other wood you see, the base , top, and backing, are objects I made from plywood to look like the great Diamond Stupa in Colorado. I did that because I read somewhere that a stupa on the altar is auspicious. I didn't want to buy one, and I had this sheet of plywood, and hey! Let's go to a different dimension.

The big Buddhas was a gift, the pictures of my teachers and the lineage I downloaded or purchased for a few dollars. The offering bowls, the little brown wood incense bowl, and the green water container are all thrift store purchases. The malas were both made from items on hand, and granted, one is fresh water pearls and the other lampworked beads, but that's what we have on hand. The prayer flags I got in mailers from The Campaign for Tibet.

The black cushion on the right I purchased when a member of a Meditation Center in Minnesota. On the other side of the altar is a bench I made, which I sit on, and the little desk for the items I read before I meditate.

The overall cost is minimal, there is more elbow grease, but I like my space under construction. Mind you, I still need to paint the stupa. And in your own meditation space, you can have whatever you want.

My computer, which is directly to the left of my altar, is on a door I painted checkerboard pattern. I am still hunting down pictures of my heroes, which include Paul Wellstone, Walt Whitman, and the Dalai Lama to hang somewhere around my work area as inspirations. It's the same concept, I just expanded it to my work area. So what ever you want, or not to place, in your meditation setting, feel free.

Now let's discuss a question that will come up. Isn't all this stuff in my meditation setting distracting to what I am trying to do? That's true for a while. It also serves as a reminder of your purpose, and in my case, the several things are symbolic, and it helps focus my mind on what is important as well as fueling insight meditations.

So make your space comfortable and attractive. it will improve your meditation.

The Need for Discipline

This is a tough one for many people. It's easier almost to be like I am, and get so disciplined that the issue then is the discipline and not the goal of it, or to just struggle doing it at all.
So I think first it's necessary to have a purpose for doing it. I found an excellent one in the Thirty Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva, composed by the monk Thogme. Our local lama passed this gem on to us.
In verse 35 it says, " Once you have become accustomed to mental afflictions (dramas, addictions, neurosis, pride, victimhood), they are hard to cure with antidotes (affirmations, meditation, mantras). Therefore, with the remedies of mindfulness and awareness, to eliminate mental afflictions the moment they arise is the practice of a bodhisattva."
So take heart! It can be done. It states in verse 29 that tranquility and wisdom meditation, the basic kind you learn in Buddhism, "completely conquers all afflictions."
It also says in verse 26, "If lack of discipline prevents you from benefiting yourself, then your wish to benefit others is just a joke. Therefore, to guard discipline with no longing for worldly existence is the practice of a bodhisattva." Let me add to that some words from Wayne Dyer, from his book The Power of Intention. According to Dyer, to activate your power of intention, the first of four steps is that of discipline. He says, "Learning a new task requires training your body to perform as your thoughts desire. So eliminating ego identification doesn't mean disconnecting from your body, but rather, training your body to activate those desires. You do that with practice, exercise, nontoxic habits, healthy foods, and so on."

So let's look at three elements of maintaining a balanced discipline in your life. The first is motivation. A Buddhist perspective is that of verse 26: benefiting others. It's fairly easy to be altruistic, but that can be a mental affliction we can add to the above list. The true aim of verse 26, as well as Dyers point, is benefiting yourself. The Buddhist view is the same of that of modern EMS services: watch your own safety first. I'm no good to anyone else if I'm no good. It's okay to want to benefit yourself, because both Dyer and Buddhism speak against the growth of ego. Ego will not consider the benefits of others outside of how they can benefit me. Discipline will help you achieve your goals!
The second is in-formation. Yes, I said information. You need both. When pursuing anything, such as those items in Dyers list, you need information first. Let's look at meditation for example. "How should I sit?" is usually a first question. Do I close my eyes? How do you not think? What about an altar? Incense? What do I wear? Which is why you gather information form either a text, or a practitioner, or preferably both. With that information, you can start the process of in-forming. That means making the data you have in your head a part of your life. The info begins to form your inside person. Info becomes experience, and then in-formation has happened.
Preservation means that we guard the discipline we have. Of course, as the fruit of the practice being aimed at takes place, the discipline is easier to maintain. The opposite is true as well, as I noted in the verse about becoming accustomed to mental afflictions. This step might mean that you need to alter what you do. It might mean you go to bed a little earlier to get up earlier to have quiet time alone when you can meditate. Or not watching TV for an hour so you can write. Or not spending the time on the computer or at the library so you can go work out. If you start with little steps, and work your way forward, it is much easier than trying to alter everything at once.

I once read that it takes about 30 days to establish a new habit. Time-wise anyways. If you discipline yourself, and do it diligently for 30 straight days, then a new habit is born. So every day, take a baby step to benefit yourself. Get the info you need, and make a plan. Stick to it. And 30 days later, you will be a different person. You will have no only benefited yourself, but the world of those around you.

Taming the enemy

I want in this post to discuss an aspect of being a socially active bodhisattva. Some may argue the possibility of that, and I may be convinced at a a later time that it isn't a possibility, but until then I find that it is.

Verse 20 in Thogme's Thirty Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva, states, "If you have not tamed the enemy of your own anger, combating outer opponents will only make them multiply. Therefore, with an army of loving kindness and compassion, to tame your own mind is the practice of a bodhisattva."

Being socially active, particularly in politics, makes this verse important. Because if you haven't learned to tame your own mind, then politics will only multiply opponents, one of which will be your own mind. So let's look at why we tame our mind, and how we tame our mind.

The obvious reason as stated here is that until we do, we will multiply our opponents. Notice it doesn't say that anger is to be eliminated, or that combat is not to be engaged in. It does say that anger is to be tamed. So what's wrong with opponents multiplying? Well, a lot really. My perspective on being a socially engaged Buddhist means that I work for a society that is amenable to the presentation of the Dharma. Considering that the manifestations of a Buddha are often disrupted by times of karma that eliminate the prevalence of the Dharma from the world, I find it essential for future re-births that there is an opportunity for the Dharma and practice to find open expression. So in that work to create such a society, do I want opponents to be numerous, or few? I would rather there be few. An aspect that comes into play here in the "why" of it all, is considering this: is it easier to change things through conflict, or by making my enemy my friend? Anger will create defensiveness. People don't listen well when they are being defensive. Yet if I approach my own message, values, and policies I want to see married to an approach that demonstrates patience, respect, and compassion, I think I will have more success in spreading that message. That will tend to minimize my opponents, and open the way for my message to spread.

Yes, it seems that it's almost ridiculous that anyone would argue with the message of Buddhism. But some will. In fact, some folk that have quite a bit of power would have it silenced completely. That is the actuality of America in 2007. Which is what in my perspective makes being socially and politically active important.

So how do we tame our minds? That's the crux of meditation. The basics of meditation involve mastering tranquility and insight meditation, before moving on to the vajrayana forms of meditation. In fact, that is the point of tranquility meditation. Just sitting and breathing, which allows the mind to be tamed. For the mind to be trained, it needs to be tamed first. And that involves a lot of letting go of things. It seems in some ways counter productive to being involved socially, but it isn't. It makes you a better vessel. Having a tamed and trained mind brings forth clarity and insight, bot of which are needed in this world when it comes to resolving the problems that cause suffering. The aspect that comes along with this is in the third line, "with an army of loving kindness and compassion...." This phrase is loaded with meaning, and is consistent with the metaphor introduced by the word "combat." The army though is somewhat different than any other army on this planet. It has been my experience that taming my mind with an army of compassion means that I need to approach myself that way, with he full intention of having my being conquered by compassion and loving kindness. it also has meaning to me in that i am not alone in the path of enlightenment. All of the Buddhas were once human. They still exist, and are the "deities" of Buddhism. They live in the genuine reality, or some of them do. Many others are still reincarnating to rescues beings from suffering. They are the army of witnesses, whom are present when we invoke them during meditation. This is the army we are training for when we tame our minds.

Unless we tame our minds, then we are spinning our wheels. Do reduce the number of opponents we face in our path, we need to tame our mind. We need to deal with the inner opponents first. We do this by practicing sitting meditation. Not by blogging about it, or thinking about it. We need to do it. We need to allow ourselves to be occupied with compassion and loving kindness, and then go forth and conquer.

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

The Being of Meditation

I have discovered something, in my rookie seasons as a meditator, about the growing up of one's experience of meditation. It's based on the Supplication to the Takpo Kagyu, which is something we pray in our school, and I do every morning in my own practice. What I discovered is this being of meditation which really is a great picture not only of reality, but a great primer on the growth pattern of meditation.

The first part of the prayer is the invocation of the Kagyu lineage, and asking for their blessings. If you are part of the Kagyu lineage, then you have the right to expect their guidance in this matter. The second portion has four aspects: the feet, the head, the body, and the essence.

The first aspect is the feet. "Revulsion is the foot of meditation, as is taught. To this meditator who is not attached to food and wealth, who cuts the ties to this like, grant your blessings so that I have no desire for honor and gain."
Interestingly enough, to gain a firm foothold, one needs to detach from this world. Revulsion can also be translated as renunciation. The point is the same. To gain a foothold, some stability, and as feet the implication of mobility, or movement, one needs to check the level of attachment to this world. For example, my priorities in terms of my practice. I persoanlly like to blog. I maintain this one and two others www.gonzotruth.blogspot.com and www. whidbeyharrisons.blogspot.com. The former is a politically oriented blog, and the other a family life type journal. The political blog emerged along with my emerging political awareness, and is the better example of getting too attached to this world. It was and still is, easy to find material to blog on. But the over-investment of time leads to worry, and ego, and all the stuff that attachment is made of. And if I let it, it will take over my meditation time. So I remind myself that this political reality is just apparent reality, not genuine reality. I need to cut that tie to how important I think my small contribution to the political debate is.
The blessing one seeks in this first step is not that honor and gain don't happen, but that I have no desire for them. Karma determines whether or not honor or gain will happen, and in the Seven branch Prayer, the last stanza states, "...may I become a splendid leader of sentient beings." So it isn't against the concepts of Buddhism to have honor and wealth. We do need to be free of the desire. Desire for them is an anchor in apparent reality. To utilize that mobility meditation can give me, I need to cast off that anchor to sail freely into genuine reality.
Revulsion in itself though is a good word. Besides the verbal aspect of reminding yourself (renunciation), actually feeling the weight of apparent reality, and it's suffering, is very helpful. So to re-use my anchor metaphor, there you are on the lake, fishing, getting nothing. The sun is burning you. The one lone rain cloud drenches you, and it's lone bolt of lightning zaps the end of your rod and burns your hands. More clouds are on the horizon, and now your hands hurt, making it difficult to pull up the anchor. And oops!, that lighning also popped a couple rivets in the small boat you're in, and you're taking on water. And you're in the middle of Lake Mille Lacs, which means the neareset land is several miles away. How well can you swim? Sun burned, headache setting in, hands burned from the lighning strike, and I can't swim all that well, and a storm is approaching, making swimming difficult at best. I am feeling pain and fear. That's the idea of feeling the revulsion.


The second aspect of this body is the head. "Devotion is the head of meditation, as is taught." This stanza drives to the core of this practice. This school is a verbally oriented school. Once one has mastered the lower levels of tranquility and insight meditation, and achieved some of the basic nundro practices, and connection to the Lama, the gate is opened to enter into the teachings you won't find written down in any books. It was just this last two years that an explanation of this mahamudra practice was published by the Tibetans.
Behind this gate is a treasury, considered so for it's power to accelerate enlightenment. But the concern is what gets us there. Besides the first step, of being released from lusty desires, even for the treasury of oral instructions, then one needs to have devotion.
This is where many trip up in Buddhism. Particularly Westerners. We love our individualism, and we are suspicious of cults that demand devotion. But devotion in Buddhism is not a blind faith devotion. Buddhism is not a blind faith practice. It is a reasoned, experientially proven practice. And as the last sentence explains, the type of devotion one is after is not blind faith devotion. It is genuine devotion.
There are stories in Buddhism of monks in caves separated from their teachers who achieved higher levels of consciousness and even enlightenment because of their devotion to their teacher, despite there being no actual face-to-face connection. And that's what genuine devotion is. An ardent, profound dedication. It establishes a relationship chain that allows the power of the teachings to flow through the living teachers to the student.

The third aspect is the body. "Awareness is the body of meditation, as is taught." Now we have something that connects the head and feet! And I'll pick this up in a second post!

Let the fun begin!

This blog will be where I put my revelations along the way. But first a note about my Buddhist path.

My teacher is Lama Tashi Namgyal, and his teacher is Thrangu Rinpoche. He was also being taught by Bokar Rinpoche, who walked on last year. I am in the Kagyu school, specifically Shenpen Osel Choling, practicing mahamudra, a vajrayana practice. I am essentially a rookie, and still in the general stage of mastering tranquility and higher seeing. I suppose then I will be on to the nundro practices, and after that the verbal teachings.

So that is my current perspective. I first got interested in Buddhism when I terminated a separation between my wife and I. I was not in a good place, and she turned me on to Pema Chodron. I ate it up. Although the presence of Tibetan monks has been in and out of my life several times over the years, I never got the hint. Pema was a student of Chogyam Trunkpa, who founded Naropa Institute in Colorado. I attempted to follow in the Shambhala school, but there was no local group, and at the time that was Northfield, Minnesota. So I managed then to track down some folk who eventually started what became the Northfield Buddhist Meditation Center. It was an eclectic place, and I learned to sit Zen style because my knees and back welcome that position more than the vajra posture.

When it came time to move here to Washington, I decided to stay with Tibetan Buddhism, as it had been the most predominant form in my life. And lo and behold, the doors opened up. I find it interesting that although I love to read, and have used my knowledge and ability to remember as a defense mechanism against intimacy, that I end up in a school based on practices far removed from texts. Ironic, yet needful, so I welcome it.