A poem

I was reading La Misma's blog, ande her forays into poetry have inspired me. I like the idea of just letting it rhyme!

The days are lazy I float right through
I want to do something I don't know what to do
My thoughts start collecting like a gathering storm
Sticking together and gaining momentum

I work like a maniac scrawling my screed
Though I can't stop I do see the need
My horse is carrying me in an unknown direction
I ought to control it but the horse is too fascinating

Eventually I get frightened, nervous and saddened
The landscape around me is familiar and dreadful
I kind of felt that this time was different
Why do I have such an unruly animal?

Just Be

I go to a fantastic A.A. meeting on most evenings. I've long known that it's a great meeting, that it has a spirit I can really connect with, and that my serenity level has gone way up since attending it. I think I may have finally realized why I like the meeting so much, and why I haven't been able to hit the nail on the head up until now. The thing that really struck me tonight was how gentle and unassuming almost everyone in the group is. They are friendly, happy to be there, and have nothing to prove. It's great to be part of that, liberating even. Needing to be the head honcho and needing others to recognize my superiority :) has always been part of me, and I have tended, as is natural I suppose, to pay attention to people who act the same way. As a result I missed the other 90% of the people that were actually helping me! Intellectually, I realized that helping others without hope of reward or benefit was correct, but it's a bit jolting to realize that there are a lot of people already doing it. Of course, I say there's no hope of reward or benefit, but in actual fact everyone is helped by this common gentle attitude of openess and helpfulness. Truly amazing.

The Dhammapada

Last night I was at the grocery store, and I randomly encountered a person who just began attending our Buddhist group. He's been asking me a few things, like the meanings of words, and what the three hand positions signify when doing prostrations. I haven't been a font of knowledge exactly, and he may be teaching me more than I him. I conjectured that the three hand positions refer to the Buddha, the dharma and the sangha (teacher, teachings, group of fellow practitioners), but it turns out it refers to purity of body, speech and mind. When you put your hands above your head, that signifies pure body; when you put them at your throat, it signifies pure speech, and when you put them at your heart center, it signifies pure mind.

In any event, last night he asked me about a Buddhist text which turned out to be the Dhammapada, which I didn't really recognize from his description, although after he emailed me a link, I recognized the name. Thich Nhat Hanh mentions this text in his book on the heart of Buddha's teachings.

Here is an excerpt he sent me from the first chapter:


1. Choices

We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.
Speak or act with an impure mind
And trouble will follow you
As the wheel follows the ox that draws the cart.
We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.
Speak or act with a pure mind
And happiness will follow you
As your shadow, unshakable.
"Look how he abused me and hurt me,
How he threw me down and robbed me."
Live with such thoughts and you live in hate.
"Look how he abused me and hurt me,
How he threw me down and robbed me."
Abandon such thoughts, and live in love.
In this world
Hate never yet dispelled hate.
Only love dispels hate.
This is the law,
Ancient and inexhaustible.


How true these words are.

Padmasambhava

On the left is an image of Padmasambhava (Lotus born), a legendary founder of Buddhism in Tibet. As part of my beginning practice, I'm supposed to recite 100,000 mantras dedicated to him. (Om ah hung vajra guru padma siddhi hung) I think I'm up to about 5,000. The idea is to recite 108 at a time, using a mala to keep track. (This is a necklace of 108 beads, which in my case are lotus seeds.) In any event, he is often depicted with consorts, or in yab-yum, which is the primordial union of male and female, said to be symbolic of the union of wisdom and compassion. The male aspect represents compassion, whereas the female aspect represents wisdom. (Indeed Tara, female Buddha, is said to be the mother of all Buddhas, as she is associated with prajna paramita, the perfection of wisdom.) Sexual union is decidely absent in Christian symbology, and in Western thought, it often comes attached to ideas such as shame and guilt. I think it makes sense, however, to use this imagery toward the goal of liberation and enlightenment, considering how our brains are constructed to dwell on sex to such an extent. So perhaps one can use sexual thoughts, when they arise, as reminders of how compassion needs to be united with wisdom.
After all, in the Diamond Sutra, we are told that those who wish to be Bodhisattvas should cultivate compassion (bodhichitta) for all living beings, while also clearly seeing the true nature of reality.

Medicine Buddha

I'm at my best when I remain teachable. Much of the time I have preconceived ideas of the way things are going to work, and as a result I don't pay attention when people have good ideas. Life is better when I have a truly open mind. Last night I was reminded about the antidote to resentment: pray for the well-being of the person resented. I needed to hear that, especially since I've thrown around the same advice in the past, but yet somehow had forgotten it.

It occurred to me later that I do pray for people regularly in the Medicine Buddha Sadhana that I do from time to time. I had included some names on my Medicine Buddha list originally because I wanted to be free of resentments against them, but I had forgotten that purpose. It turns out it works a lot better if you bring the right intention to the prayer, and try to feel it as deeply as you can.

Medicine buddha's aspiration is to clear away the illness (both physical and mental) of all sentient beings, and bring all beings to enlightenment. He's like Shakyamuni Buddha, only with an emphasis on healing. During the ceremony, you visualize yourself as Medicine Buddha, forming in your own mind Medicine Buddha's aspiration to heal all sentient beings. Even if you feel Medicine Buddha is metaphorical, the idea of Medicine Buddha is brought forth during the ceremony, taking residence in your own heart. By visualizing yourself as Medicine Buddha, you realize his potential to heal all beings, because you yourself can then go out into the world and effect positive changes. Thus Medicine Buddha really does help all sentient beings, acting through us. On the other hand, many people take Medicine Buddha to be an actual independent, supernatural entity. As a Buddhist, I'll keep my mind open to the possibility, but also as a Buddhist, I won't accept anything that I haven't personally discovered. That's such a wonderful aspect of Buddhist teaching: we should not take things on faith. Rather we should only accept and adopt that which we have personally verified through introspection, deep looking, mindfulness and meditation.

Shame of sex? We can help!

I don't know whether you've gotten spam with this particular subject in your mailbox, but I certainly have. I'll come back to this subject in a bit. In my last post, I described a kind of unease that I was feeling, and, actually writing about it in the post, I realized that worrying about my worry was counterproductive. By the end of the post, I was feeling much better, and I went on to take a guilt-free nap later in the day. I went to an A.A. meeting that night, and I really felt a divine presence was there, and was speaking to me, with the basic point being that I need to pray for guidance. I pray a lot to help other people, but I realized that I never pray for guidance about what to do, how to help other people. I meditated that night for longer than I usually do, visualizing God as a kind of energy field permeating the space around me, thinking "God is good." "God is love." This felt really good. Somehow the key to the whole process was to let go of my worry about my worry. When I don't live up to my expectations, I very often upbraid myself and get angry with myself. This usually exacerbates the problem, one reason being that I don't fully acknowledge the problem. It's like "I feel bad, but feeling bad is bad, stop feeling bad! Let's think about something else." This will never get to the root of the problem. It's like perpetually turning around to avoid the elephant in the room. So, without guilt or anger, I gently acknowledge the problem, and this is a first step to healing.

So what about the title of this post? Well, an aspect of myself that I dislike is my propensity to immediately perceive women through a sexual filter. I automatically form a snap judgment of many women when I first meet them based on body shape and other things. And, I've noticed, I have a tendency to immediately upbraid myself for doing so. Considering how deeply ingrained this seems to be biologically, I don't think it's possible for me, in the short run, to stop perceiving women this way. However, constantly beating myself up about it isn't helping, and I think I just need to let go. Seeing my problem clearly without harsh judgment, I can more easily be aware of it and act around it. Basically, let my mind do its thing, but being aware of it, not let it cause me to act foolishly or hurtfully. This last Sunday during meditation at our Buddhist center, I actually began to resent two young women who were there for distracting me! After a while the thought occurred to me to stop worrying and let them distract me. At that point, somewhat paradoxically, I stopped being distracted.

The common thread here is that obsessing about things I perceive as problems actually creates a big problem itself, and that letting the perceived problem be is more effective than being angry that a problem exists.

Here is a revised version of a prayer I wrote a while ago, now incorporating a request for wisdom, which is what I was reminded I needed to ask for at the A.A. meeting a couple of nights ago,


Buddhas, bodhisattvas, enlightened beings in the ten directions,
God, Buddha nature, the Holy Spirit,
I ask for willingness, strength and wisdom
To remove those defects of character whose extinction
will be of maximal benefit to all sentient beings.
I take refuge in enlightened dharma teachings.
Obhects of refuge, abide with stability in my heart.

tayata gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi soha

Another post without a catchy title

I've decided to take a break from the Gospel of Tom. Part of my motivation for studying it was an outreach effort to "anonymous," but analyzing my motivations further, I see there was an agressive component. I pretty much knew anonymous wouldn't like it. I still think it's a fascinating gospel, giving us a view into early Christianity that we wouldn't otherwise have had.

In other news, I've been feeling down for the past couple of weeks, and I don't really know the source of this feeling, although I have suspicions. What I have noticed is that my overall mood colors my perception of the world around me, and this is a basic reason that our perception of the world is not objective. Situations that before brought me joy, such as meeting with some friends, have started bringing me anxiety and an uneasy feeling of insecurity. Remarks which I formerly would have brushed off as either neutral, or a product of another person's suffering, have begun to irritate me. Whereas meditating usually brings me a sense of calm spirituality and peace, lately it has been a stark reminder that there is something wrong. Unfortunately, I cannot definitively say what it is.

I have read that meditation is not supposed to always be calming, and that it often serves to show us the state of our own mind, no matter what that state is. I also know that our emotions are things we need to treat with respect, letting them be, not ignoring them, nor feeding them. For example, it occurred to me to write a letter full of anger and bile at someone who irritated me, and then burn it. I at first thought maybe this was a way to get the hurt out, but I didn't do it because I felt it would probably water the seed of anger within me rather than the reverse.

I've read (I think Pema Chödron) that it's good to accept that things don't have a solid base. It's good to be relaxed in the middle of uncertainty. In my case, I don't really know what's going on with my current sadness, but I also don't need to know. Perhaps it will become apparent, and perhaps it won't. I don't have to come up with a plan of action to "beat it" (what harsh words); I can gently be aware of its presence. Perhaps acknowledging its existence with eyes wide open will help. At least I won't then have secondary issues arising from repression and desperate tactics that seek to get rid of the sadness, while also not fully acknowledging its existence.

Almost missed this

Prosecutors dropped terrorism charges Tuesday against two Michigan men who were arrested after buying large numbers of cell phones, saying they could not prove a terrorism link.

Thanks to Left I on the news for catching this.

The Marauding Bubbles of Vacuum

One day it was discovered that bubbles of vacuum were spontaneously arising in the Earth's atmosphere, traveling around on chaotic courses, and eventually dissipating. They tended to stay in the upper atmosphere, never got near the ground, never came close to suffocating birds or other animals. But they made air travel much less pleasant. You would be flying along, when all of a sudden, you were shooting through vacuum. Without the air pressure differential to maintain the plane's altitude, you start to plummet like a rock. Man that hits the stomach hard. Then you hit the edge of the bubble, the plane's wings grip the air, and you rise back to your course. Now, you are not allowed out of your seat during the entire duration of the flight. Can't go to the bathroom. You are required to store all loose items in overhead bins. Gone are the days when you can store some stuff under the seat in front of you. Man it sucks.

They've tried tracking these bubbles in an effort to steer aircraft around them, but, like tornadoes, the bubbles are small enough, and capricious enough, to defy prediction. Nobody really knows what causes them either. Some have suggested that our solar system is approaching a corner of our galactic neighborhood where strange physical laws begin to hold. It may be, these people say, that the constants in physical formulae are not constant at all, but actually functions of our spacetime coordinates. Perhaps the charge of an electron varies as we move around the universe. It sounds to me like the physicists have no idea what they're talking about, but rather than admit it, invent a fancy type of obfuscation. But maybe I'm just cynical. I am especially sensitive to motion sickness, and these new atmospheric phenomena have made flying an absolute miserable hell. I feel as though God has singled me out for special retribution. I realize that this is nonsense. How can I be singled out when this phenonemon is widespread, affecting millions of air travelers?

I just keep going back to my past. Retribution is surely deserved. When I killed that vacuum cleaner salesman, I wasn't in my right mind. I barely remember doing it. It's like trying to see things in a fog. I remember there was a smell of puke, of beer cans. But let's not talk about that stuff. I didn't really kill the guy. You could tell I was joking, couldn't you? But you see the connection? Vacuum cleaner salesman and now vacuum bubbles. Perhaps it's a cosmic joke.

Short Political Interjection

Two Arab men were just arrested for having 1000 legally purchased cellphones. See this link. As far as I can tell the men haven't done anything illegal, but they have been arrested because of fears of terrorism. Their wives claim that they were buying and selling the phones for profit. It seems to me that we are stepping over the line here, arresting people even when they have not demonstrably done anything illegal.

Thomas 14

14. Jesus said to them, "If you fast, you will bring sin upon yourselves, and if you pray, you will be condemned, and if you give to charity, you will harm your spirits.

When you go into any region and walk about in the countryside, when people take you in, eat what they serve you and heal the sick among them.

After all, what goes into your mouth will not defile you; rather, it's what comes out of your mouth that will defile you."