Bisy backson

I've been writing for the IDP blog on a regular basis for almost five years -- not because I think I have great insights to share but because it needs to be done. I've worked on daily newspapers for all of my adult life (except for six horrible months immediately after graduating from college when I did public relations), and I understand the need for new content. I know how to produce content. So I do.

For me, it's been a practice in opening, sharing ideas. Since I don't have a live, in-person sangha, this has been a way to explore ideas and share thoughts. It's also about discipline and posting on Saturday mornings. And I've been good about meeting that deadline, providing content. Until recently.

Over the last month or so, I've left my slot empty or posted at other times. There were good reasons: Travel, retreat, events. I've been too busy.

It's interesting that in Buddhism, busyness is associated with both laziness and restlessness. In both instances, external activity is a way to avoid facing what's happening internally.


Gil Fronsdal, talking about the hindrance of restlessness, says:

Constant activity can channel the restlessness at the expense of neither confronting it nor settling it. Because restlessness is uncomfortable, it can be difficult to pay attention to. Paradoxically, restlessness is itself sometimes a symptom of not being able to be present for discomfort. Patience, discipline, and courage are needed to sit still and face it.

The traditional antidote for restlessness is to sit still.

In the Samyutta Nikaya, the Buddha said that when the mind is restless, "it is the proper time for cultivating the following factors of enlightenment: tranquility, concentration, and equanimity, because an agitated mind can easily be quietened by them."

A time of restlessness is not the time for study because that can cause further excitement, he said.

But you can study the restless body and mind. Focus on the sensations; get to know, intimately, the feeling of restlessness, without the narration the mind provides. Feel the muscles, the energy, the tension and release. Then look at the mind: Where is the razor's edge, the head of the pin, the moment where you go from awareness to I-can't-stand-this-for-another-second? Can you find it? Can you rest there?

Feelings become overwhelming when the physical sensation and the mind work together to keep the hamster wheel of samsara spinning. You can investigate either one on its own, but when they join they create a tsunami of restlessness/busyness/stress that sucks you under.

As much as I identify with that scenario, that hasn't been the case for me lately. I'm not overwhelmed, just short on time. I have a job, a commitment to Buddhist practice that takes 2-3 hours a day, a family.

For some people, establishing discipline is a hard practice. That hasn't been my problem. Meditation has been a daily practice for me since I started. For me, not meeting expectations is much harder because it means giving up the validation that comes with doing what you're supposed to do. It means relying on myself to validate that I'm doing what's right for me. That's hard.

And then that's what you sit with.

Beginner's heart, loving heart

In his classic book, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind,  Suzuki Roshi succinctly pointed to our original nature as our true nature -- unfabricated, unfiltered, disentangled from preconceptions that color our view.

"In the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few," the book begins.

What if we extended that to our hearts -- if we cultivated beginner's heart? What would that be like?

If you could go back to the the firsts in your life -- the first time you drew a breath or recognized a caregiver's face, held hands, received a kindness, received a heartfelt thank you -- how would that feel? What would it be like to experience affection without all of the concepts and questions we layer onto it: What does this person really want from met? Is this The One? Will it last? Will they expect something in return?

What if we could simply see the world with an open heart, without anticipating arrows headed toward it?

I saw the phrase "beginner's heart" this week, and it stuck with me as I was thinking about the Interdependence Project's month of metta meditation in August. Metta is a practice of cultivating beginner's heart, of recognizing that underneath the labels we stick on ourselves and others is a common, untrained, open, and accepting space.

We all start out with open loving hearts, but as we gain experience we build walls. Noah Levine describes as building a papier mache shell layer by layer; each disappointment or heartache adds a piece of paper, maybe tissue paper, maybe corrugated cardboard, until the heart is well-protected. Nothing gets in or goes out. But the heart is constricted; it can't expand beyond the space the shell allows.

Beginner's heart, though, is as big as the sky.

When I do metta practice, I try to remember that each person -- the neutral one, the loved one, the irritating one -- has this heart inside them, covered over by their own layers of hurt and fear. And if I can touch my own beginner's heart and let go of whatever concepts I have about them that land them in those categories, I can reach out for that. And when my heart feels that shared space, there is an openness where love flows.

If all else fails, I think, "Well, their mother loves them." And knowing how I feel about my kids, it's possible to see them with the eye of lovingkindness rather than judgment.

In Buddhism, the heart and the mind are seen as one thing, the heart-mind, not the two distinct aspects of ourselves that Westerners generally see. We think the heart wants what it wants, and the mind knows what's good for it. The heart handles emotion, the mind does analysis. We can use that for this contemplation.

What if you could let down the defenses around your heart? Maybe for a 15-minute metta practice? Would that change the world? Or just your view of it?  


 

Limping toward nirvana

I've been thinking about writing something about the IDP's Year-Long Immersion and Instructor Training  program since early December, when the early application deadline was approaching, but I wasn't sure what I could say. I was a graduate of the first iteration of the program, in 2011. (Originally, it was called the Buddhist Teacher/ Meditation Facilitator Training; my inner 12-year-old delighted in the idea of being a certified MF, but the name changed quietly during the year.)

I did not enter the program expecting to become a teacher. I was looking for a way to deepen my study of Buddhism, and this program appealed to me for a lot of reasons.

2011 was a transformative year. The IDP training was part of that, but I also did a two-week retreat with Lance Brunner, a fabulously kind and creative teacher; was a head oryoki server during that program, and did several weekend retreats in the Shambhala Sacred Path program. All of those things worked with other things, the warp and the woof of life and study.

Now I lead meditation and Buddhist groups. I don't really look at it as teaching -- I see it as sharing information that I've learned from studying and inviting people to explore how that works in their lives. Maybe that's possible because my groups are small. I don't live in New York, and to study and practice with people on a regular basis is difficult. Leading these groups gives me a chance to develop live sangha.

The Buddha said that you are your own best teacher. He told his followers not to take anything he said on faith but to try it for themselves and see if it was useful on the path toward the transformation of suffering.

And that's what the IDP program does -- help you find ways to teach the dharma, to yourself or others; in a class setting or through art, music, dance, blogging, or simply being at peace with yourself in a chaotic world.

Stephen Schettini is a former Catholic and Buddhist monk whose post on religion and righteousness on his blog, The Naked Monk, question life's big answers; expose yourself to doubt, caught my interest, partly because of this discussion on the IDP blog about the teacher training program

Schettini writes:

In Tibetan Buddhism, one’s teacher never gets angry or befuddled. Rather, he ‘manifests wrath,’ meaning that he puts on a show of anger because you need shock treatment, or silence because you’re unable to process the truth. You cannot be part of the community and question his motives. ‘The Path’ is itself code for steering clear of creative acts of discovery. When I eventually acted on the realization that I should find my own way or lose all self-respect, my connection to the community was severed. I was still there; I hadn’t yet even disrobed, but I was excluded from the circle of trust.

Buddhism, he says, was no different from the Catholic church is shutting down questions or challenges to its dogma.

Eventually, he writes, he went outside the organizations and back to study the lives of Jesus Christ and the Buddha. What he found were inspirational examples.

Buddhism was a crutch when I was psychically lame. The tools and the community healed me sufficiently that when the time came I was able to leap from my ivory tower and go on my way. Luckily, I landed on my feet. To ascribe it to destiny or karma is to retreat, pretending I have an explanation when all I have is a code word.

That's his story. It makes valid points, as does the IDP blog post. The Buddha -- who was reluctant to teach in the first place -- didn't set out to create Buddhism. I think he'd endorse using the path he laid out to find your own wisdom. But the path requires you to keep checking in, to see if your wisdom comes from your buddhanature or from dogma, and that's the value of it.

You will get something all your own out of the training. Intrigued? The application deadline is Tuesday, Jan. 15.

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