Perfect as you are

Opening to the sensory experience of life, the feeling tone, self-stories that arise. I have found that by being willing to allow life to touch me, open to what is arising in each context in a gentle non-judgmental way, I find myself growing emotionally and psychologically not by hunting down trauma (wanting for a better word), not by seeking a particular experience but by allowing the contact with the present context arise opening to my self-story that arises with those conditions. By opening to the self-story that arises in a gentle non-judgmental way, I allow the story to run. Opening to this story gently gathers the resources to be present with it. As I open I am not identifying with the story which allows the story to unfold in its own way without editing if editing arises I open to that. To me, the sense of editing our self-story is the 5 hindrances.  These are the ways we defend ourselves or engage with the conditions arising wanting them to be different. 

As this process of opening gathers its resources depending on the conditions arising the ability to release the self-story arises bringing ease and the potential for insight into this body/mind system. Revealing how we have attached to the idea of being this body and the emotions and thoughts that arise with it. By opening to this process, we begin to let the body/mind story run, as that is what it does, it is a sensory stimulating experience. As Dhamma practitioners our job is not to numb it out, it seems more of an allowing this story to be. When we let it be, it begins to reveal many treasures which were held out of awareness due to holding on to certain ideas/beliefs. The process of maturing is continuous, with each arising condition awareness arises with it, each awareness has to go through the process of opening/maturing with the conditions arising, when the process of awareness matures it leads to cessation, but not always. The experience of cessation gives faith to continue this process of practice. Maturation of awareness is gradual but can be experienced as maturing at different rates dependent on the conditions arising. Sometimes we are opening to a process which feels painful, uncomfortable. As we stay opening to this process we realize that this is where we are at, our awareness is at the stage of finding this experience painful, other times we may drift on with a process till awareness reaches equanimity. All we can do is be willing to open to the process we cannot force release. The process of opening to what is arising releases the ambition to achieve which allows a more thorough maturation with less by-passing of experience.

 When the process of opening begins to maintain itself I find there is a sense of stabilizing in what I call the primordial nervous system our deep fight or flight systems. These are the primary felt experiences, it can feel like a raw direct experience of Dukkha. We may find that while opening to these experiences we become aware of our deeper motives in life and the self-stories we have to create in reaction to this Dukkha. As we steady in this and insight knowledge arises we may experience deep states of calm and joy. I feel much of practice is opening to our stories that arise in relationship to our lives, opening and releasing the stories of self. When conditions are right we drop the selfing process of this sensory experience. This creates a shift in perception which gives permission for every aspect of our human experience to rise into awareness, we are learning to question ideas and self-believes.  In this process of letting go we are emptying everything, and due to the process of opening we are not blind to what we are letting go of, so letting go humbles us as it reveals our perfections and imperfections. Leading to the realization that who we are right now is perfect as due to the law of conditioned arising this is what is happening right now.

Worldly winds. Simply complex.

Do any of us make it through a day without having contact with one of the worldly winds?

 Praise and blame, self-image success and failure, pleasure and pain, fame and disrepute. These are the different polarities of this human life, with its relationships and the nature of the body.Looking at these you could probably identify a base for these images we have. Have we built a self upon praise? on blame? on pleasure? on pain? on fame? or disrepute?. I know I have, I reckon I would have a self image built upon each of these, some of them coming together to create a nice little complex. I feel like I take one as base, this is who I think I am. Depending on how self obsessed I am I may not notice its polarity as it passes by through the day. This sense of crystallising around a particular wind, creating a self position is ignorance. When we crystallise it becomes hard to sense wholesome qualities, because the crystallised self has taken the central seat, rather than sharing the seat with what ever is arising.  My sense is that these eight qualities are a foundation conditioned into our nervous systems by our bodies, parents, ideologies, society, religion, education. They begin to form our super ego, that voice in our selves that judges, measures and decides the value of what we are doing/thinking/being.

How do we live with these winds, how can we take the power of these winds to fuel our wind mills of growth and maturation?

Usually we react to them, we may try to take them as positions for a self and attach to them. Once we have a position we then need to maintain it.This can be either a positive or negative self image. As conditions are impermanent this position is in constant flux, so we try to maintain the original perception developed , this can not happen, we may get close but never again the same. The original perception of self is now in conflict with the ever changing conditions of life=suffering. Watch how mindful you are off maintaining a self image? I am a calm Buddhist, I am a person of integrity or authenticity. If your being mindful of being a particular way you have taken a position against conditional arising.

Life is the worldly winds, these winds are not-self. Life is complex, when we stop resisting complexity life is simple. Simply complex.

How do we not take a position? I find in my practice that positions I take arise dependent on the conditions arising. So it is more of the case of knowing a position as it arises, when we open to the arising of a position we begin to see the conditions that are bringing around that particular position. We know it as conditions, by opening to the conditions we become aware of the conditions which have formed our attachments to taking certain positions.

Enjoy your investigations. Open to the winds, let them blow through, humbling and removing the formation of self.

Process of opening

The process of opening as a meditation practice instead of the more traditional direct and aim practices I have found has brought about a normalizing effect. It has the potential to take down the boundaries of life in a receptive manner rather than one of cutting of that can arise when keeping ones attention upon a single object, which leads to absorption, which gives the sense of having removed boundaries. The process of opening to thought/emotion as it arises gives permission for life to be present, whatever it is. Which in itself is insightful as it reveals that you are not that what is arising. The process of opening is not taking a position; it is just opening to the processes arising right now. This is interesting as it reveals the positions that we do take in meditation/life.

The processes of ego which are about our survival, these fit nicely into the process of aim and direct meditation. As ego aims and directs and feels into its environment to achieve its goals. When we aim our attention we are training the ego to not get caught up in the environment .Yet if this is done from a lack of wisdom, based on ideas of attainment what tends to happen is a form of suppression. What happens when we can’t maintain the suppression? This form of meditation can give some quick results in feeling composed, focused and energy. But this is all dependent on conditions and can be hard to maintain. Hopefully must of us create enough suffering in this approach that we let go, revealing a more natural and sensitive approach. This is what I found for myself and when I came upon unlearning meditation it made sense to me. The process of opening as a meditation practice opens to all the above influences, revealing how this ego system works, allowing it to arise rather than cutting it off/suppressing. This allows energy to flow, as there is less resistance as we are not trying to control a process, the energy softens and becomes more wholesome as it begins to naturally release that which is unwholesome.  As we begin to open and this becomes a natural inclination in our practice we no longer need to seek special conditions. Yes there are environments which are more conducive to the mind settling yet our relationship to life is not one of escaping from, running from retreat to retreat, teacher to teacher.

 By opening we find stillness in the flow of conditions.

What is opening? To me opening is a sense of being just a little bit bigger than what is arising. This allows me to notice thoughts, the emotion travelling with the thought and the bodily energy associated with it. Which I find gives me a holographic perception of this human experience arising NOW.  What the process of opening isn't to me is becoming vast, massive, absorbing into a sense of oneness through avoidance of life. When we come to a point in having a deep faith in the process of opening we don’t seek experiences, this non -seeking brings about release and cessation of self when the conditions are right. As we open we naturally begin to let life in, which brings about a maturation of our nervous system which is the condition for release.

Happy travelling and be well.

Little self, Big self and Not-self

I have noticed in my practice over the years three types of self. Firstly there is the little self, this is the contracted me caught up in my neurosis, worry, reacting to life as it arises. Doing my best to find some stable ground from where I can set about planing how to control this chaotic vortex of experience. This is the self built upon strategies and self images ( I used to be a Buddhist monk, I am a long term meditator, I am a psychologist  these ideas do not have any actual effect on the chaos apart from creating suffering). They are positions taken due to delusion and the feeling of being overwhelmed.
Then there is the Big SELF. To me this is the experience of space, stillness, equanimity a capacity to be bigger than life. This to me shows up in the areas of my life where my practice feels mature, developed, it is my optimal experience. It has a kind of freedom to it, yet it is the illusion that arises from having developed a practice, having had some insight, yet this has been gathered up to create a insight persona,we have become the one who knows.
Then there is Not-self, the big self thinks it knows this. Yet there is a big difference between equanimity and release of the self. It is not a sense of largeness, or vastness that can be attuned to when then mind is very still. It is the end of Self, not ego. Self is the stickiness that believes it is ego. Not-self is a moment of non stickiness, when life is not taken personally, no self is being constructed, it is a non experience. A hole in the fabric of self experiencing. Giving rise to faith in liberation, leaving a perception which seems to be neither a perception or a non perception that informs the process of spiritual development which aids in the maturation process. Does the experience of Not-self mature? or is the maturation the process of self structures being  released when Not-self arises?
I have to admit my experience in the Not-self arena has been rare, yet it has greatly informed my being. Big self and little self I know well. I feel it is not appropriate to make value judgements on these different types of self, just to open and know them when they are present.

Everyday living, everyday choices.

What is the process of everyday life practice, this part of the path often named right livelihood?

I find this interesting as there are many potential positions to take on this.

We can take the directing the mind to this present moment. Intending to bare witness to our lives from moment to moment as we would upon the cushion when we develop a traditional mindfulness practice. As our practice matures over time we may find that we tend to become a bit more spacious in our directing which allows us to feel the effects of  the different contexts we pass through in our lives and our relationship to them. I have found myself that as awareness matures there comes a point where I kind of just live life directing my attention from daily task to task,person to person, yet there is a openness and investigative attitude that seems to have its own momentum. This takes down the barriers created through different self views relieving the pressure of having to be a particular way( a good Buddhist who never swears, and is NICE all the time).

So that is about quality of intending and the directing of attention, but what about our actual day to day choices? This is where to me renunciation comes into right livelihood. I have found since leaving the monastery, that I have become good friends with Google. Google is a kind of neutral space(apart from the companies own agendas)  where you can follow wholesome or unwholesome tendencies. Contemplating how to live a harmless life(or at least as harmless as I can) I find in this day and age we can research our needs and desires. In terms of this I mean researching diet, clothing, medicine and whatever takes our fancy. Finding out where these things our made, is the process of them being made, grown, one that is beneficial to the environment/ context they come from. I could get all idealistic and spout of about organic foods e.t.c but I will try not too.

 Products which seem to create the least harm in their growing and production process unfortunately tend to be more expensive. This I feel is the hard crunch in daily life practice and right livelihood, need versus desire. Can my let go of having our plasmas,having a 1000 channels to watch, driving our cars(everywhere),buying new shoes when the old ones are fine e.t.c and directing our money towards products that are beneficial to the environment and the communities that make/grow these products . Is it possible to take the letting go from the cushion into everything ? If we gave up some comforts could we afford to live more harmlessly? Not just lay Buddhists or spiritual persons of any inclination, could monastics express a preference for wholesome products? I remember when I was a monk another monk tried this and I thought it was wrong, as my view was to receive what is given and did not want to stress people to spend more money on environmentally friendly products. But now having been exposed to more information I realise that what he was suggesting would be a good idea,I feel he was coming from an attachment as he was into environmental issues and this was part of his drive in learning meditation was to find balance as he found himself getting angry around these issues. Yet through expressing a preference for products that don't damage the environment  the monastics could be supporting the process of renunciation and generosity in the lay community, helping to take the lay support away from dependence on rights and rituals and bringing food and other requisites as a merit building activity to one of investigation and integration involving the arousal of energy to create a community that is intending and creating less harm. With today's technology it is hard to claim ignorance about the way we live and its effects on this planet as a whole.

I am not perfect in the above, I find I buy a product only to find out later it has been tested on animals or made in some sweatshop in Asia.I am intending to live harmlessly and have made many changes to my life to make my life more harmless, this to me is the Bodhisattva path. As my desires wane, as I grow to understand their drives, and I attune to my needs as a human being I feel I will become more harmless.

Happy travelling.

Middle Way

What do we notice when we sit?

Myself when I sit I am aware of different polarities in my experience.

 On the one hand there seems to be chaos, a swirling, sometimes rapidly changing, sometimes slowly changing, sometimes a combination of both. A virtual tornado of sensory experience.

 During most daily activities I have a focus of attention to get tasks done, be it at work, at home attending to family, doing the shopping. During this times I am aware of chaos as a background experience, a felt experience of vulnerability. This task orientated mindset has in the past been part of my meditation practice, my early years of practice it was very much direct and attain. Then having to deal with some emotional eruptions as I did not have the strength or willpower to control my experience 24/7. These moments when emotion and chaos would dare to raise their head into my experience I found I would begin to become more human. People actually liked me more when I was human. So control seems to me to be part of this polar set in my experience.

I guess my question to myself is, what is the middle way here?

I have been seeking this for a long time, and recently began practising re-collective awareness as taught by Jason Siff. With this approach I open to my thoughts/emotions as they arise, drifting with what is arising, aware of drifting, allowing this conditioned process the space to arise,revealing itself. Not jumping in to to calm, label,or analyze. By not intending to interfere with the process arising which would suggest some kind of judgement on the experience, yet just intending to open to it, which I find reveals the qualities in the intention.  By doing this chaos begins to reveal its conditioning factors, opening to the different conditions arising develops a responsive development of wholesome qualities needed to be able open to these conditions. Rather than me thinking I should be contemplating now, or attending with loving kindness e.t.c I trust that awareness will intuitively give rise to appropriate relational qualities.These qualities may need time to mature and so may at first be hard to recognise. I have found that occasionally I direct my attention with some intention, this is when what I am opening to is about to drift on to a different topic yet I feel it would be beneficial to stay a little longer with what is in my awareness. So I give a gentle nudge to my attention so it stays there a little longer.

To me this feels like the middle way, not going crazy through thinking that chaos is taking over and then reacting by intending to control experience. Then relating to life/meditation in a habitual way of relating from some aspect of controlling. By not directing attention with intention, but opening attention up rather than directing it seems to slowly dissolve the boundaries internally. There seems to be less holding life at bay and more allowing life to arise dependant on the conditions present. There is a continuity of experience, which naturally becomes relaxing, this relaxation gives rise to potential calm states and insight into this conditioned process. I find as awareness matures chaos seems to mutate into a steady stream of conditions rather than being felt as a rushing current that is the condition that arises in the relation to controlling experience.