demonology 102

my sadness demon is a cat. she slinks in and winds herself around my ankles, unnoticed at first. she sneaks in, gets me to pick her up and cuddle her, then attacks, leaving me with bloody scratches. she's tricky. she wants to be calmed, to be held, to be handled gently, wordlessly. this would be a demon to lay in the cradle of loving-kindness but she doesn't want to be put down.

tolerant open loving and compassionate

"As ordinary sentient beings, we'll never completely rid ourselves of egoistic thoughts and desires; it's more a question of making an honest assessment of our qualities and gradually reducing our self obsessive tendencies. If we can appraise our attitudes as more open, tolerant, loving and compassionate toward ourselves and others, we don't have to question the effectiveness of our mind training practices."

--Traleg Kyabgon from The Practice of Lojong

demonology 101

I met my anxiety demon on my first night at karme choling. I had expected to arrive, register, be sent to a room and told when and where to appear for dinner and evening meditation. but there was no one at the desk when I got there -- just a piece of paper with my name and directions to the guest house, where I was staying. nothing on times, places, or meals. I stoof there for a few minutes wondering what to do and looking, I'm sure, like I needed to tell someone that Timmy was in the well. Looking, I'm sure, the way I used to look as a kid when total strangers would tell me to cheer up. Finally a man in a suit came out of one door and explained that it was some celebration of something to do with the sakyong and everyone was watching some address, but there was a celebratory dinner at 6 and meditation started at 7 a.m. I drove off to find the guest house. the directions were imprecise in that way that New England directions can be imprecise -- I can't remember them exactly, but there was a sign and a road, on the left and the right, and one was in the wrong place; often there's another sign or another road in the right positions up ahead, so I kept going down a two-lane road with no place to turn around once I realized I was wrong. Finding the house took longer than it should have. My room was lovely and large, but there were two beds, both made up and with towels on them. would I have a roommate? I went back and forth between beds. I being by the wall, but the bed itself was soft and saggy, so I took the other one. but that had no light or table. and so on and on. and once settled, I didn't know what to do. go back to eat? but everyone is dressed up, based on the man in the suit, and all I have are jeans and T-shirts. everything had gone wrong so far, and my ability to accept whatever came along crumbled. I sat on the bed and panicked. and then I removed myself from the panic/anxiety, and invited her to sit down with me. I assured her that it would be OK. her name is wanda, and she is much like chloe from the early seasons of "24" -- awkward and aspberger-y, saying whatever comes to mind without thinking of the effects. we calmed down, and went back to karme choling for dinner and told everyone we met that we were lost and confused. and we got information about what to expect, which calmed the anxiety demon down and told me what I needed to know to get ready for the dathun to start.

instructions 1.0.

listen to that voice. Listen to that hurt. Hold it. Take care of it. Meet pain, even your own with loving understanding. Give those voices a period of being heard. Not the whole day... But a period. Say "I know...I know you're there... I know you are hurting. I hear you...you're being heard."

I"m not yet able to separate from the pain enough to take care of it. I can do that with anxiety, and it works if I remember it. I can do it with sadness if I catch it early enough. The pain, though, is so overwhelming that I can't separate from it enough to meet it with tea and scones or anything else. Anxiety likes tea and scones; she likes an arm around her shoulder. sadness likes to be held and petted (she's a cat). pain .... just takes over.

perhaps all dragons are princesses

" We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abysses belong to us; are dangers at hand, we must try to love them. And if we could only arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful. How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us. " -- Rainer Maria Rilke

i miss my dad

I spent four hours at the Relay for Life today. It was a strange melange of a scene -- hundreds of people in an airplance hangar at Pratt & Whitney, walking in circles. There was such joy there in the survivors -- one woman in particular danced while holding a sign over her head to get people to buy raffle tickets. Of course, there was sadness. There were "mom's mighty marchers," who all wore red T-shirts with mom's photo on it. There was squeezable plastic prostates with various stages of cancer and a colon with polyps and a disased lung and a healthy one (not real ones -- rubber ones you could squeeze). no breasts, though. the breast cancer people do their own walks. Goodwin College had a sign that implied you should eat five apples a day, rather than five fruits and vegetables of whatever kind. Because it was at UTC, many of the groups were from there. Pratt & Whitney military engines group was selling "hope" bracelets. sikorsky blad had a hollow helicopter blade to be filled with donations. it was a day to practice patience with slow walkers and observe the great amounts of compassion and generosity in the room. I got all emotional looking at the luminaria table and thinking about decorating one for my dad. what would I write? I still miss you dad, even after 18 years. I'm sad that you didn't get to know BT and Mims. You would have liked them, as people, not just as grandkids. eh ... life and it's impermanence.

fearlessness

The Gift of Fearlessness

(From a talk given by Sensei Eve Myonen Marko on the Dana Paramita on September 12, 2009.)

Recently I read a brief talk by Sharon Salzberg, in which she said, “There is always trauma in the room.” You don’t have to be a war veteran or a survivor of abuse, trauma is in the room. And with trauma comes fear.

The dana paramita, the paramita of giving, is about the giving of fearlessness. One way to do that is by showing fearlessness. When we sit we let go of thoughts, eschewing fear and distraction, and give ourselves the gift of our own life. We let go of protective mechanisms and the world comes in. We let go of separation, and the riches of the universe pour in. Off the cushion we practice and live in the same way, as though nothing is missing. Anytime we think we’re poor or we withdraw in fear, it reflects a fixation on some aspect of poverty or suffering. Life lived out of that attachment is narrow and fearful. Living from the moment, living out of letting go, is a gift of fearlessness to others.

There is another way of giving fearlessness that is quite different. It’s sharing the fear and vulnerability, showing the trauma as it’s being healed. This is a way of giving not from our strength, not from what we have a lot of, but rather from what we perceive as weakness, from our own vulnerability, from the side we prefer to keep private.

Ordinarily we like to show the world our best side, the side that is successful, that manages, that’s healthy and under control. But there’s always trauma in the room. We have another treasure trove from which to give, and that is the sharing of our failures, of our struggles to remain connected in a real way to ourselves and others, of trust in the big picture. It’s like presenting a koan, and the koan I’m presenting is my own life, including what I label as its underbelly. Instead of keeping weaknesses and doubts secret I share them, I present the day-in, day-out work that I do in engaging with them.

One sees that in council, when we’re asked to be spontaneous and speak from the heart. Those who do that often speak hesitantly, as if hearing the words for the first time, working out what they have to say as they say it. That, too, is a model of fearlessness. Natalie Goldberg says that when you write, don’t be afraid to be the worst writer in the world. Don’t be afraid to present incorrect grammar or spelling mistakes, don’t be afraid to be repetitive or tentative or garbled. Just write. That’s fearlessness.

It means not hiding, not posturing, not pretending. The Dalai Lama has said that if you understand the doctrine of dependent origination, you understand the dharma. If there’s this, then there’s that. If this happened, then that happened. Everything is interdependent and co-arising. How do you teach it? By being it. By facing our lives cleanly and transparently. By not hiding or holding secrets.

Giving possessions is often easier for me than giving the dharma, which means sharing all of me. It’s easier to give homeless people money than introducing yourself by name; it’s easier to write a check to a distant charity than go into our own schools and slums. It’s easier to give a workshop on something I’ve mastered than to share something I struggle with. It’s easier to know than to bear witness.