Abandoning Laziness

We can never be sure how long we will be in the bardo of the living. No one can say. When and where we will die is always uncertain. It is completely unpredictable. No matter how rich or clever you are, you can never know how much longer you have to live. Since we're not sure how long this life will last, Guru Padmasambhava advises us to abandon laziness.

Now is the time to increase appreciation and gratitude for our life situation, to arouse ourselves and make a joyful effort to realize great results. We should develop confidence in our way and be happy in our endeavors. Don't just assume that you are worthless and incapable. Don't let this opportunity slip by and have cause for regret. Learn to work effectively, happily, and with commitment.


Venerable Khenchen Palden Sherab Rinpoche
from a commentary on Zhi-Khro

I love the energy of these two paragraphs. The bold, joyful, and resolute sense about it. No hesitation. No wasted words trying to mitigate worries or possible offenses.

Even though I have done a lot with my life already, and have a long resume filled with "good works," I sometimes struggle with laziness.

When laziness is considered as a form of unneeded delay, then I see it as a frequent "friend" hanging about this house of my life. Unneeded delay can appear in almost any form. It might look like the stereotypical forms. The lounging about. The not doing anything. The putting in no effort. I'm that person sometimes. For many of these days, though, it might be in the form of busy, of doing something called work, or even of doing spiritual practices, if they are done to avoid something else. I'm that person sometimes as well.

Noticing this is helpful in my opinion. Noticing without berating yourself. And yet also noticing without going too soft on yourself.

A lot of modern spiritual teachings stop at the not berating yourself, which I think is a mistake. Because our world is so full of distractions now that a person can learn to drop off the inner judgment, but still get lost amongst the tide of non-essentials coming their way.

Zen folks like to talk about discipline, but I don't think that's quite it. Commitment, with joy, seems more true to my ears. May we all tap into this along our various paths.

Feeding the "Me" Beast: Yoga and Body Harming

In an engaging post over at the ID project blog, yoga teacher J. Brown writes the following:

I remember a particular occasion when I was teaching one of my trademark power vinyasa classes. I was barking out my well prepared sequence and, instead of my usual attention to everyone’s alignment, I happened to be noticing the facial expressions of the people in my class.

They looked miserable. They were filled with struggle and strain, just doing their best to get through and not enjoying themselves much in the process. There was a distinct lack of joy.

Afterwards, several students came up to thank me and tell me how great the class was. It made me feel uncomfortable. Walking home, I kept thinking: “What am I doing?”

Fact is, I was proficient in the practice I was teaching but it was not really helping me feel well. I had a lot of chronic pain that I rarely admitted to, even to myself. I was convinced it meant “opening.” Shortly thereafter, I blew my knee out doing Baddhakonasana with a belt and an assist. For all my diligent studies and abilities, super yogi couldn’t walk.

Around that same time, a friend of mine attended a large yoga event in NYC with a venerable teacher, considered to be a living “master.” She was one of a very small percentage of the 600 participants to have the guru assist her in one of her poses, only to have her hamstring connector popped at his forceful hand. I remember seeing her several days later, she was still in considerable pain.

Experiences like this have often left me feeling horribly disenchanted with the yoga community. The issue of overly forceful assists aside, how can yoga teachers who espouse ahimsa not be held accountable for harm done under their auspices?

These are great examples of what happens when, in my opinion, achievement driven Americans are lead by more achievement driven Americans. Or teachers from other nations who go along with that achievement drive. As I have begun to do short bits of teaching yoga classes, and have had more extensive conversations with a few mentors and classmates, the issues around ahimsa (non-violence) to the body have become very bright for me. And I can't help but see the link between our consumer culture and the kinds of power yoga classes where people blow out knees, feel no joy, and are generally disconnected from their body, mind, and "spirit."

Instead of learning to incorporate the depth of yogic teachings and practices that undermine the desire to achieve, and to do things "perfectly," many teachers and studios choose (sometimes unconsciously) to run classes and programs that end up feeding the "me" beast. Obviously, some of this has to do with the plethora of poorly training teachers who barely had been practicing before they got the missionary yoga bug. And some of it is the insidiousness of capitalism worming its way too deeply into the decisions people make around structuring their classes and yoga organizations. But lately, I think this really stems back to that disconnect from the mind/body, from our buddha-nature if you will.

This disconnect or separation manifests individually and collectively, and thus for most of us, it takes both individual practice and collective practice to reconnect. Collective practice with the intention to reconnect, to see through the separation narratives that keep us from feeling the pulsing heart, the moving blood, the energy flowing through us moment after moment. It's not enough to just practice together, because if the majority of folks are just plugging into "disconnected narratives," then that's what will mostly be what comes out.

The body is a vehicle for enlightenment, but it also contains for us all the gunk we've collected over the years that runs counter to awakening. We often "move on" from the trauma of the past intellectually, only to discover months or years later a dull ache or nagging tension in the body that just won't go away. This is disconnect manifest on an individual level.

Entire communities can manifest this energetically, as J. Brown's class above demonstrated. Believing in a "no pain, no gain" kind of motto, class after class, he and his students chased after some elusive goal they thought could only be achieved by powering through and overriding every last signal their bodies were giving.

I've seen this in Zen communities as well, where students have "powered" themselves to sit endless hours of zazen, to the point where their minds are burned out from lack of sleep, and their bodies are riddled with chronic aches, pains, and injuries. In both Zen and yoga, there are teachings about building enough heat to burn through the mental blockages that keep us disconnected from our selves. And yet, I have come to believe that humans have struggled throughout history to find a balance between heat building and relaxing/nurturing. I frequently ponder the Buddha's breakdown after years of austere practices, and the simple, but very powerful return he made into what I would call balance. Just the simple acts of eating and drinking, of taking basic care of the body, that appear in the old Buddhist texts are reminders that racing towards enlightenment, or some other goal, isn't what this work is about.

It's fascinating to me to see that yoga's expression here in the U.S. has been so imbalanced towards the physical postures, and yet at the same time, there is such obvious disconnections between many practitioners and their own bodies. The right treatments are there, but it seems that the prescription too often has been written wrong, or illegible.

On the Death of Wangari Maathai

Wangari Maathai, the first African woman to win the Nobel peace prize, died on Sunday night of cancer. She was 71.

A towering figure in Kenya, Maathai was renowned as a fearless social activist and an environmental crusader. Her Green Belt Movement, which she founded in 1977, planted tens of millions of trees.

Maathai's death was confirmed in a statement on the movement's website.

"It is with great sadness that the family of Professor Wangari Maathai announces her passing away on 25 September 2011, at the Nairobi hospital, after a prolonged and bravely borne struggle with cancer. Her loved ones were with her at the time."

I first read about this amazing woman's work maybe 10-12 years ago. She was not only a heroic figure in her native Kenya, but an inspiration to millions around the world. She was one of those unique people who was able to truly blend human rights efforts with environmental justice, to see the interconnectedness of it all.

Furthermore, she minced no words when it came to critiquing globalized capitalism, the great disparities between the "global north" and "global south," and also the ways in which those disparities lead to increased damage of the planet.

“We are very fond of blaming the poor for destroying the environment. But often it is the powerful, including governments, that are responsible.”

"The people at the top of the pyramid do not understand the limits to growth and they do not appreciate that they jeopardise the capacity of future generations to meet their own needs."

Personally, though, I found most attractive her ability to blend the social/political with the spiritual in a way that wasn't oppressive and demanding. Simple statements, like the following one, appear frequently in interviews with her, and her writings. And although the language is different from what I might use, I feel a resonance with what she says.

“All of us have a God in us, and that God is the spirit that unites all life, everything that is on this planet.”

Blessings to Wangari for being who she was. May she continue to inspire for generations to come.

On Summer Passing

Nothing remains
Of the house that I was born in--
Fireflies.

Santoka, 1882-1940

*For more on the photo, go here.

Buddhist Relationships - A Few Comments on Attachment

I received an interesting question from a reader, and thought I'd share my answer here.

How does one enter into and maintain a relationship without forming attachments? It's just one of the concepts of Buddhism that just don't seem to fit for me personally, either because I consider attachments to be very important for me, or it could just be that I misunderstand that particular concept. What are your thoughts?

This is the answer I wrote back to her.

I think there are a few ways to look at attachment when it comes to Buddhism. Part of the challenge is that many of the teachers and teachings that were brought to the U.S. were from monastic-based Buddhist practice, where renunciation and celibacy are centralized. Which causes some trouble for most of us who are living "regular" lives "in the world."

The Buddha, though, actually taught different teachings and practices geared towards monastics, and others toward lay folks. And since the Buddha's time, plenty of additional teachings and even entire schools of Buddhism have been focused on supporting lay folks.

When it comes to relationships, the way I understand it is that loving yhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifour partner, or children, or parents, etc. is intimately tied to letting go of your stories about who that person is or isn't, and learning how to be completely with them everyday as they are. I also believe it's learning how to loosen up the grip you might have around any expectations - about your partner, yourself, and the relationship itself.

Now, that doesn't mean that anything goes, but more that you do your best to drop off any behaviors or thought patterns that are overly needy or controlling, and learn to do or say what you need to without attachment to specific results.
__________

In addition to this, I wrote a post in May about sexual desire that takes up attachment from a different angle.

If anyone has any additional thoughts, or if you have a completely different view, feel free to leave a comment.

The Troy Davis Case as an Example of the Complete Failure of the Death Penalty

On Wednesday, the state of Georgia will execute Troy Davis for the 1989 murder of police office Mark MacPhail. Since Davis was convicted in 1991, 7 of the prosecution’s 9 witnesses have recanted their statements, and have repeatedly given testimony to courts and to the media that their testimony was coerced. Additional witnesses have come forward implicating Sylvester “Redd” Coles, another person at the scene for the murder. Not only did Coles brag to others about the crime, but he was the first to finger Troy Davis for the murder. Three of the original jurors have also come forward with signed affidavits which indicate that they would not have voted for Troy Davis’ guilt had they known then what they know now. Finally, there is no physical evidence of any sort linking Davis to the crime.

I have never supported the death penalty. It's an archaic form of punishment that neither does what supporters argue it does (i.e. deter others from committing similar crimes), nor is it in any shape or form compassionate. I can imagine there's plenty of disagreement on this, even amongst Buddhists and yoga practitioners - but I believe that the continued use of the death penalty here in the U.S. is a travesty. And yet another way in which we don't come anywhere near the image of the "great nation and world leader" so many Americans believe in.

Furthermore, there are all sorts of highly problematic race issues with the way the death penalty is executed here. Consider that the vast majority of people on death row are there for killing white folks. And while African-Americans are approximately 12.5% of the U.S. population, they make up 35% of the executions since 1976. In my opinion, this is one of the not so hidden examples of the lingering legacy of the Jim Crow era.

As a Buddhist and yogi, I also find that the death penalty is built around a notion of fixed personalities. It suggests that once a person has committed a serious crime, such as murder, they are forever a murderer. That they cannot change. Something I think is absolute nonsense.

It's completely true that some folks probably will never be able to turn themselves around enough to return to "regular society." In states where the death penalty is off the table, inmates who committed horrific crimes often live the rest of their lives out behind bars. However, they still get the chance to wake up to the damage they've done. To see through the delusions that led them down a path of misery and hell making. To witness something much deeper than themselves as they were in the past.

The death penalty takes that opportunity away. And is, for those who are cost conscious, more expensive for taxpayers in the process. In my opinion, it's a failure all around, and needs to disappear.

Although the current news out of Georgia isn't good, if you want to call and express your support for Davis, or sign the petition, see info below.

To get involved, contact:
Gov. Deal of Georgia: 404-656-1776
State Board of Pardons and Paroles: 404-656-5651

Sign Amnesty International’s petition.

"Spiritual Libertarians"

Our entire society, in the words of Generation X, has become very DIY. Do-it-yourself. The interesting thing about this term is that it started as an anti-consumerist phrase but it actually means you get to consume in the way you want. So there seems to be a strand of dharma, a huge strand of dharma, where we all want to become spiritual libertarians. We want to do the teachings in the way we do them. My teacher a lot of times says if you’re going to ask a teacher for advice you should actually do what they say. Chances are they’re going to tell you to do something you didn’t want to do in some small way. That’s what doing something good for you is, right? You have to do something that’s outside of the framework of your habitual apparatus, which means it doesn’t feel immediately good.

So I always think of this conundrum of our DIY consumerist culture, especially in the United States of America which is possibly the most libertarian society on Earth today in terms of freedom is that we all really proclaim our individual freedoms. And the way we express this freedom is by doing whatever everyone else is doing. So we don’t really want to submit ourselves to a community, which is the sangha, or a teacher, which is the Buddha principle, that’s beyond our ability to control what feels good in the present moment. And this is one of the big dangers of the superficiality. And I don’t mean superficiality in a bad way. I mean in the surface way of internet dharma, of podcast dharma, and Wikipedia dharma.

The above is a quote from Ethan Nichtern, from a talk he delivered at the recent Buddhist Geeks conference. Laying aside for now the various issues people had with that conference, I want to consider what Nichtern is speaking about.

During the first year and a half of the existence of this blog, I wrote a lot about what seemed to be an emerging "online Buddhist sangha." Numerous other blogs also took up the idea of a virtual sangha, considering the various pros and cons to such a "thing." It was, in other words, a pretty hot topic. The big three North American Buddhist mags expanded their online presence during this time, while also stirring up some controversy in the process, most notably Tricycle, with it's infamous "Dharma Wars" article.

Needless to say, things have appeared - at least to me - to have died down around the idea of "virtual sanghas" and "online Buddhism." Perhaps this is because it's become a bit more normalized, something that exists in an ever-changing form, but which amongst a swath of practitioners and dabblers anyway, is basically a given. Or perhaps, in some ways, the current limits of "going virtual" have been hit, thus limiting the amount of interest in such discussions. Perhaps enough disappointments have been had around the fickleness of the online world to have tempered the enthusiasm and nearly missionary zeal with which some folks once pushed the potential of "online practice." In any event, it just doesn't seem to be as "hot" of an issue as it once was.

Let's consider, though, Nichtern's term "spiritual libertarian" a little closer. I think he's on to something with it. However, I would actually argue that it's almost as easy to find this kind of attitude within "brick and mortar" Buddhist sanghas as it is to find online. Plenty of folks attend services, take classes, and do other forms of practice in sanghas without really doing anything else to demonstrate either a sense of responsibility to the sangha, or a willingness to let go of personal preferences.

I, myself, feel like a hybrid - having an independent streak around Zen practice (including frequent experimenting with forms and incorporating yoga), but also a long standing devotion and service to my home sangha. Although I sometimes question that "libertarian" streak, I have to say that I really can't imagine what my life and practice would be like without that devotion and service to the sangha. Especially over the past few years, as our sangha's head of the board of directors, I have had to let go of personal preferences, check the ego at the door, and develop a trust in dependent co-arising over and over again. Something I'm really not sure would have been possible if I had chosen a mostly DIY approach to practice.

In the meantime, I have noticed how difficult it seems to be to establish and maintain something resembling sangha online. Discussion boards wax and wane weekly. Niche communities have come and gone. Google+ is, it seems, a hot box currently - but for how long? The speed of innovation seems to add to the rootlessness that occurs online. Leaping to the hot new program or digital space is often given a priority over maintaining some kind of consistent community where people are currently at.

Treeleaf sangha seems to have had some success at keeping people around, and developing some sense of community amongst people scattered across the globe. However, I can imagine that even they would have something to say about the challenges and limitations of the online Buddhist world.

None of this is to say that the "project" of online practice and/or online sangha is a waste of time. I wouldn't be writing on here if I thought it was. Furthermore, I believe that Zen practice calls each of us to develop a certain kind of independence, but unlike the American notions, it's an independence tucked within interdependence. It's relational in other words, and requires a dance between form and emptiness, between loyalty to a larger sangha of "excellent friends" and an independence to fully discover/uncover yourself.