Destroy what defines you

Ego keeps busy trying to build a wall around itself, to shut itself away from the “other.” Then, of course, having created this barrier, immediately the ego also wants to communicate with the other, which it now perceives as “outside” or not part of itself.-- Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

"When I look at you, I see same," the Dalai Lama, pointing to himself and an audience of Middlebury College students

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One of things about Buddhism that feels right to me is nonself -- the idea that I don't exist as a permanent, unchanging entity. Everything is always changing, always in play, and that's OK. Labels may apply in a given situation but not another one. There isn't a Me Party line to toe.

I have difficulty with labels, right down to my name. I don't feel like Nancy. But that's what I'm called, so I answer. I've also been known to answer to Linda, Barb, Kim -- whatever name the person who is looking at me uses. I know who they mean.

This week on Facebook I described myself as "'a Buddhist, atheist, feminist vegan who works for a newspaper and believes that sex is biological but gender is a construct and therefore flexible. I'm pro availability of abortion, and some of my best friends (and closest relatives) are gay." I am all of those things, but also none of those things, if you want to lay down cultural rules that I have to abide by in order to use them as descriptors. I am a rebel.

 As a feminist, I expect I'm supposed to be happy that women's issues are front and center in the presidential campaign. And I've enjoyed mocking Mitt Romney's binder full of women as much as anyone.

But it's time to move beyond the meme. Labeling issues as "women's issues" still puts them into a pink ghetto. They are human issues, quality-of-life issues.

Far worse, to me, is that the discourse worsens the cultural divide between men and women. Men this, women that. Yes, there are differences. But differences are just differences, not destiny. And my fluid labels become more solid when someone says that, as someone who falls into one of those categories, I *must think/fee/want a certain thing.

The more we harden our cultural categories and boundaries, the more we hard our hearts to others. If we can slot someone into an "other" category -- however unconsciously we do it -- we've created a divide. We distance ourselves, and we fill that space with barriers.

When Sokuzan Bob Brown visited the Interdependence Project, he looked at the humans sitting there and said, "When I look at you, I see nothing." What a powerful  view. What a beautiful gift to everyone in that room to allow them to be who they were in that moment. No more, no less, because there is no more or less. There just is.

Close your eyes for a moment and clear your mind. Observe your breath. When you open them, notice how quickly you categorize the next person you see and what labels you apply. (Woman. Friend. Worker. Pretty. That's why I got in a flash.)

Sometimes you need to categorize or classify things. Knowing that you're doing it -- what the labels are and what they mean to you -- can illuminate how your mind and your cultural conditioning work.

Gender theorist Kate Bornstein offers this handy chart of 15 common ways we separate ourselves from others. How many do you automatically apply?

What is sacred to you?

Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche defined sacred space as "a space that is recognized with heart and mind, that radiates a particular atmosphere you cannot help but feel."

I bet most of us have those places. And for many of us, it's not here. This is ordinary, workaday, clean-the-house, share-with-too-many-strangers space. It's dirty, it's crowded, it smells bad. Sacred space -- that's at the beach or the mountains, maybe in that place we haven't been to but long to go to. Nepal. Tibet. Iceland. Costa Rica.

But Trungpa Rinpoche, who had a strong feeling for the word "sacred," maintained that ordinary spaces can be sacred too. Your tiny apartment, your kitchen, your bedroom can be sacred.

"If you regard space as sacred, if you care for it with your heart and mind, then it will be a palace," he writes in "Shambhala: Sacred Path of the Warrior.

In that way, you can live like a king in a tiny studio apartment.

The Asian-American Arts Alliance is holding a 12-day, 25-event arts festival called the Locating the Sacred Festival. It began this week and continues until Sept. 23 in New York City. It offers a bounty of opportunities to contemplate your relationship with the sacred.

You can nominate your sacred places in the five boroughs to appear on an interactive map. (left)Check it out at www.placematters.net Those dots all represent places or urban sacredness, and the map offers more details about each one.

On Saturday, Sept. 15, I'm helping another IDPeep, Maho Kawachi,and I will lead meditation at an art gallery in Brooklyn. It's part of an exhibit called "Interpreting Rituals: The Butterfly Effect." I'm excited by the chance to meditate with art around me. Art is one of the things that connects me to my mind and heart.

If you read this early enough you can join us. You can check out other festival event offerings on the calendar, the map or by searching by category.

But if you're not in New York, you're not separate from the sacred. To connect with the sacred, your mind and your heart have to be open. And if you are able to do that, then every space -- and every being in it -- is sacred.

Hot and cold

Last week I was in northern Vermont on retreat. Next week I will be in Florida on a business-related trip.
In Vermont, I slept with three fleece blankets to stay warm. I don't expect that will be a problem in Florida.
Will it be better?
I heard a talk recently by Shinzen Young, who trained as a Zen monk. He recounts going to his teacher and asking, what is the difference between hot and cold? (The answer he wanted, he says, was about non-duality, and hot and cold were merely an example.) When pressed, the teacher replied: When you are hot, you boil and you die. When you are cold, you freeze and you die.
I interpret this to mean, (a) extremes of anything are not healthy; the middle way is best; and (b) either way, you're going to die so stop fussing about the temperature.
So ... cold has its beauty -- sharpness, clarity, a drawing in. I like the weight of many blankets.
And warmth has its loveliness, its ease, its lightness.
Whatever circumstances we are in, we can find something to appreciate about it.
When we have "fundamental appreciation and respect for what we do, every act is a sacred act," Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche says. "With that inspiration, we regard every experience in our life as sacred as well."