A point of perfect balance

The other day I was riding my bike along the bike path and I had to slow down to go around some people. As I was cruising at ultra low speed, I felt perfectly balanced, completely content and at home. No anxiety about possibly falling over despite the low speed. It was a novel experience and it got me reflecting on when I first learned to ride a bike as a kid. This was a painful, slow and frustrating experience. I don't retain very many early childhood memories, but I have a glimmer of that instant when, contrary to all of my expectations and all my experience, I was suddenly balanced on the bike and cruising down the street. How awesome a gift of the person who taught me! That person was my Dad, and that moment I experienced just the other day would never have been possible without the patience and kindness he showed me in teaching me.

Motivated by my reflections, I posted the following to Facebook that evening:

 My Dad and I may not see eye to eye, but I am grateful to him for 
1. teaching me to read
2. teaching me to ride my bike
3. teaching me to drive
4. helping to instill in me a love for mathematics
The first three all seemed interminable and frustrating as I went through them, but that moment when I finally mastered each of them was quite satisfying. I doubt I would have had the patience to put up with me as a student.

Indeed, he showed similar determination and patience in teaching me to read and to drive. These are, without question, immensely beneficial skills to have.

Regular readers of my blog may know that I have had issues with my Dad and may be wondering about the change of tone of this post. Both sides are true. He was a source of immense pain during the very impressionable formative years of my life, but he has also been a source of immense benefit. It's good to be able to see both sides.

Some short poems I wrote earlier this year

June 26, 2015
Enlightenment reveals itself in an
unexpected patch of brown fur
as the cat's legs move while she cleans herself.
Nothing complicated.
Just that.

July 8, 2015
Melancholy filled the space of my mind.
I was startled to see it punctured by two magpies.

July 12, 2015
The rhythm of a dream.
Eyes open.
The cawing of a crow.

July 14, 2015
Three times arising to consciousness.
The initial sensation a tingling on the face.
The third time, I saw the fly.

A quickly composed poem

Years ago
Something shifted within me
Looking on I was puzzled and disappointed
Seeing what appeared to be a degradation
A lessening, a falling apart.

Now, seeing glimpses of Jim before the fall
I remember a bit of that time.
It was an odd time
Growing and shrinking simultaneously
I am still in a process of change

It is very interesting to observe my own mind
To watch emotions arise and depart
Like tides on the sea
Sometimes deducing their origin
And often being surprised by their appearance.

Emotional knots constrict the flow of prana
Untying them can be painful and explosive
But what other way is there than up?
Tightening the knots leads to a loss of consciousness
Which is the pain of denying  pain.

Aspiration

Confronting this new sense of reality of the Buddhist path and its explanation of how things work, the potential fate of myself and those I love, not to mention that of the countless other sentient beings out there, becomes pretty scary. Without realizing the truth of what's going on, veiled by ignorance, so many will be reborn in the lower realms, and those that attain higher rebirths will eventually fall. May I be like Chenrezi with his countless arms rescuing beings from their fate. May I not lose this sense of urgency.

This Shit is Real

Well, I returned from India and Nepal over a month ago. It was a productive journey. I changed, although as I remain connected to samsara, it does wrap its tendrils around me. One sign of change is my deepened practice commitment. It happens with some regularity over the years that I will drift out of practice and end up not doing any at all for months at a time. One way or another,  I always connect to it again. This had happened to me for about a month prior to going on the pilgrimage. and indeed for the first part of the pilgrimage, although I was participating in dharma activities (like sojong vows at the Kagyu Monlam) I was still neglecting my daily commitment. Somewhere toward the middle, when we got to Nepal, I became inspired to start it up again, and on one free day I hiked up to Pullahari Monastery and sat and did my practice for a while. My current practice is called  Lha Shi (Four Deities) and the instruction we were given were to chant 125 Vajradhara mantras followed by 100 mantras each for each of the four deities. While at Pullahari (which I was drawn to since it is Jamgon Kongtrul's monastery and also because he is a holder of the Shangpa Kagyu lineage, of which Lha Shi is a practice) I decided to do 5 times as many mantras, and that felt so good that I've been keeping to that number ever since. Rinpoche told us that the Shangpa Kagyu practices are very special in that they are easy to do and carry a lot of blessing. I certainly feel that way about Lha Shi.  Very often I get a tingling at the top of my head when I do it, even when I am very distracted. Once I did it and it dissolved a bad headache. The pain turned icy and seemed to melt down my scalp and dissolve. It is therefore obvious to me that the vajrayana vehicle is not simply superstition and that scientific materialism is simply not correct. How could the chanting of certain words and creating certain visualizations cause physical changes in the body otherwise? Of course, skeptics will not find this convincing. Indeed I would not find it convincing if someone told me about it. The argument would be that I am somehow creating the sensation myself, and maybe the headache thing was a coincidence or perhaps even by bringing attention to my scalp, I caused my muscles to relax. Possible, I suppose, but I don't think so. As I was reflecting today while doing the practice it brought to mind an even more convincing experience I had and which I've mentioned previously on this blog  associated with me meeting Rinpoche for the first time. When negative thoughts started to appear, I prayed that he would have happiness and its causes as an antidote--this was on my way to his talk by the way--and I had such an intense and powerful physical experience as a result of this that my behavior has been forever altered. I immediately became a devoted student and joined the Dharma Path program. Again, since this was an internal felt experience (albeit like nothing that had ever occurred to me prior), skeptics will not be convinced. However, consider that the experience I had, knowing next to nothing about Buddhism, matched very well experiences I would later read about when students first met or heard the name of their teacher. At least one text refers to the sense of having all of one's hairs stand on end, a text I only read later. As I succinctly put it to myself while practicing today: "This shit is real." And that brings about a reminder not to let my habits and distraction carry me away from the path that will take me and others out of samsara.