Pema

THINK OF OTHERS

Sharing the heart is a simple practice that can be used at any time and in every situation. It enlarges our view and helps us remember our interconnection.

The essence of this practice is that when we encounter pain in our life we breathe into our heart with the recognition that others also feel this. It’s a way of acknowledging when we are closing down and of training to open up. When we encounter any pleasure or tenderness in our life, we cherish that and rejoice. Then we make the wish that others could also experience this delight or this relief.

In a nutshell, when life is pleasant, think of others. When life is a burden, think of others. If this is the only training we ever remember to do, it will benefit us tremendously and everyone else as well. It’s a way of bringing whatever we encounter onto the path of awakening bodhichitta.

things that excite me

play this Saturday with L
upcoming trip to the beach with J and K
waves with Amara in Charlotte late September
Judith at the very end of September
jobs i applied for

overnight flight

& recovering from intermittent sleep. the air here feels extraaaaaa muggy after washington state freshness. soft moss on barefeet. wild green growing everywhere. ocean breezes. orca whales. sea lions. windy chill boating up towards canada. spectacular view of Mt. Baker. amazing food. fun times and conversation with Nej and Jamey. it is so easy to be around them. it felt like we were housemates again. i did get hit with some grief when we checked into a room overlooking Cascade Bay on Orcas Island...reminders of his connection to WA and all his gorgeous photographs of the northwest and of our stay at the beach in a similar space with a kitchen and view. but i am okay. cried a bit. it's all okay. i know what i was doing. i was loving and trusting jumping in with my heart open. to them, i was the fool who believed him. what seemed so obvious to his best friend, he was just manic not really in love...why didn't she tell me this earlier? what now seems so evident to him...oh, how stupid of you to actually believe anything i said was true. no point in rehashing their bullshit. i am just exhausted and kind of bummed to be back. i am going to apply for lots of jobs, though. it's all okay. loving me.

i did just eat a banana

why do i continue to put more faith in samsara than the truth? i lost my taste for delusion but still find ways to add sugar, poison.

Lojong: How to Awaken Your Heart

By Pema Chödrön

Pema Chödrön's new commentary on Atisha's famed mind-training slogans that use our dificulties and problems to awaken our hearts.

When I first read the lojong ("mind training") teachings in The Great Path of Awakening by the nineteenth-century Tibetan teacher Jamgön Kongtrül the Great, I was struck by their unusual message that we can use our difficulties and problems to awaken our hearts. Rather than seeing the unwanted aspects of life as obstacles, Jamgön Kongtrül presented them as the raw material necessary for awakening genuine uncontrived compassion. Whereas in Kongtrül's commentary the emphasis is primarily on taking on the suffering of others, it is apparent that in this present age it is necessary to also emphasize that the first step is to develop compassion for our own wounds. It is unconditional compassion for ourselves that leads naturally to unconditional compassion for others. If we are willing to stand fully in our own shoes and never give up on ourselves, then we will be able to put ourselves in the shoes of others and never give up on them. True compassion does not come from wanting to help out those less fortunate than ourselves but from realizing our kinship with all beings.

The lojong teachings are organized around seven points that contain fifty-nine pithy slogans that remind us how to awaken our hearts. Presented here are nineteen of those slogans.

First, train in the preliminaries.

The preliminaries are also known as the four reminders. In your daily life, try to 1) Maintain an awareness of the preciousness of human life. 2) Be aware of the reality that life ends; death comes for everyone. 3) Recall that whatever you do, whether virtuous or not, has a result; what goes around comes around. 4) Contemplate that as long as you are too focused on self-importance and too caught up in thinking about how you are good or bad, you will suffer. Obsessing about getting what you want and avoiding what you don't want does not result in happiness.

Regard all dharmas as dreams.

Whatever you experience in your life—pain, pleasure, heat, cold or anything else—is like something happening in a dream. Although you might think things are very solid, they are like passing memory. You can experience this open, unfixated quality in sitting meditation; all that arises in your mind—hate love and all the rest—is not solid. Although the experience can get extremely vivid, it is just a product of your mind. Nothing solid is really happening.

Sending and taking should be practiced alternately. These two should ride the breath. 

This is instruction for a meditation practice called tonglen. In this practice you send out happiness to others and you take in any suffering that others feel. You take in with a sense of openness and compassion and you send out in the same spirit. People need help and with this practice we extend ourselves to them.

Drive all blames into one.

This is advice on how to work with your fellow beings. Everyone is looking for someone to blame and therefore aggression and neurosis keep expanding. Instead, pause and look at what’s happening with you. When you hold on so tightly to your view of what they did, you get hooked. Your own self-righteousness causes you to get all worked up and to suffer. So work on cooling that reactivity rather than escalating it. This approach reduces suffering—yours and everyone else’s.

Be grateful to everyone.

Others will always show you exactly where you are stuck. They say or do something and you automatically get hooked into a familiar way of reacting—shutting down, speeding up or getting all worked up. When you react in the habitual way, with anger, greed and so forth, it gives you a chance to see your patterns and work with them honestly and compassionately. Without others provoking you, you remain ignorant of your painful habits and cannot train in transforming them into the path of awakening.

All dharma agrees at one point.

The entire Buddhist teachings (dharma) are about lessening one’s self-absorption, one’s ego-clinging. This is what brings happiness to you and all beings.

Of the two witnesses, hold the principal one.

The two witnesses of what you do are others and yourself. Of these two, you are the only one who really knows exactly what is going on. So work with seeing yourself with compassion but without any self-deception.

Always maintain only a joyful mind. 

Constantly apply cheerfulness, if for no other reason than because you are on this spiritual path. Have a sense of gratitude to everything, even difficult emotions, because of their potential to wake you up.

Abandon any hope of fruition.

The key instruction is to stay in the present. Don’t get caught up in hopes of what you’ll achieve and how good your situation will be some day in the future. What you do right now is what matters.

Don’t be so predictable.

Do not hold a grudge against those who have done you wrong.

Don’t malign others.

You speak badly of others, thinking it will make you feel superior. This only sows seeds of meanness in your heart, causing others not to trust you and causing you to suffer.

Don’t bring things to a painful point.

Don’t humiliate people.

Don’t act with a twist.

Acting with a twist means having an ulterior motive of benefiting yourself. It’s the sneaky approach. For instance, in order to get what you want for yourself, you may temporarily take the blame for something or help someone out.

All activities should be done with one intention.

Whatever you are doing, take the attitude of wanting it directly or indirectly to benefit others. Take the attitude of wanting it to increase your experience of kinship with your fellow beings.

Whichever of the two occurs, be patient.

Whatever happens in your life, joyful or painful, do not be swept away by reactivity. Be patient with yourself and don’t lose your sense of perspective.

Train in the three difficulties.

The three difficulties (or, the three difficult practices) are 1) to recognize your neurosis as neurosis, 2) then not to do the habitual thing, but to do something different to interrupt the neurotic habit, and 3) to make this practice a way of life.

Don’t misinterpret.

There are six teachings that you might misinterpret: patience, yearning, excitement, compassion, priorities and joy. The misinterpretations are 1) You’re patient when it means you’ll get your way but not when your practice brings up challenges. 2) You yearn for worldly things but not for an open heart and mind. 3) You get excited about wealth and entertainment but not about your potential for enlightenment. 4) You have compassion for those you like and admire but not for those you don’t. 5) Worldly gain is your priority rather than cultivating loving-kindness and compassion. 6) You feel joy when your enemies suffer, but you do not rejoice in others’ good fortune.

Don’t vacillate.

If you train in awakening compassion only some of the time, it will slow down the process of giving birth to certainty. Wholeheartedly train in keeping your heart and mind open to everyone.

Train wholeheartedly.

Train enthusiastically in strengthening your natural capacity for compassion and loving-kindness. 

The article above has been excerpted from The Compassion Box by Pema Chödrön, © 2003. Published by arrangement with Shambhala Publications.

Pema Chödrön is a fully-ordained Buddhist nun and the resident teacher at Gampo Abbey in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. She is the author of The Wisdom of No Escape, Start Where You Are,When Things Fall Apart, The Places That Scare You and Comfortable With Uncertainty.

Lojong: How to Awaken Your Heart, Pema Chödrön, Shambhala Sun, September 2003. 

pink streaking across azure sky, gold purple tinted puffs of cloud & adorable call from 7 year old niece snapped me out of self-absorption! my niece called to talk to me....it was the sweetest little conversation and awesome to hear the difference in her level of engagement. so cool. have to pack for Washington state. things will heal. with time. my tender heart. om tare tam soha.

can't keep it in

giving

"There are many forms of hunger. There is the hunger for food, and there is a hunger for love, for purpose, for truth. There is the hunger for health, for happiness. There is the hunger for companionship, for inner peace, for the sense that we belong. There is a hunger for laughter, and there is a hunger for God. The hunger that lives in the human heart is part of the kinship that threads us all together. We are independent beings with a profound need to give and receive from each other. For what one of us is lacking, another has in abundance, whether that be a bowl of rice, a skill, a wisdom, a capacity for love, a knowledge, or a courageous heart. Our urges and our gifts, our longings and our offerings, are all needed and all are indispensable. If we are touched by the images of men, women, and children that we have seen starving for food, it is because they are a reflection of our own need. They are a reminder not only of that part of us that is hungry, but also of that part of us that needs to give in order to be whole." ~ John Robbins, "May All Be Fed"

It's then like a log you should remain.

pain body

this is my pain body
this is my pain body
this is my pain body

oaojjbkgtlbmg;

what?! it doesn't make sense
it can't
i can see how little he values our connection
the way he threw it away
it is insane, truly
to say a few days before how much he loves spending time with me
and then to disappear
without a trace
as if we never shared a connection
as if we never shared our hearts
as if we never shared our love
it is insane
and it really hurts

i know i am buddha nature beyond all stories and ideas
i am also human and feeling so much sadness and mourning of someone i felt so close to 
who has shut me out so completely
and treated me like i am nothing
or something to be discarded so easily
without a flicker of care or any hint of the intimacy we shared

i can only ask
please, the love that is bigger than me
the heart that opened fearlessly when i saw his face
that heart now please release me
let me go
into the love of that heart and fully feel that love for myself
treasuring the sweetness we shared and moving on
please give me the strength

it's so clear to me

that i don't want to be a librarian
now what?

weird blog formatting dumbness

Eternity

He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sun rise. 

william blake on non-grasping

dharma teaching yesterday was using these three points to cut through habits of mind

1. recognition...i have tasted presence, buddha mind and know that to be my true nature

2. decision...to return here, continually bringing myself back

3. confidence...that i can liberate myself from suffering

this is very helpful now, in the thick of crazy thoughts and emotional pain

the trick is remember these 3 points in times of joy

had i been practicing with as much sincerity and fervency as i am when motivated for want to be free of suffering during the happy beginnings the addiction could not have set in...i changed loyalty to the feelings of being loved and in relationship. from the buddha to  my body with another (bodies that are decaying) from the dharma to the desperation of getting that love i didn't receive as a child (only i/life can give) from the sangha to the senses (temporary and deceptive)

good news is it's not too late to go back now to now

:)

For when, with irreversible intent, The mind embraces bodhichitta, Willing to set free the endless multitudes of beings, In that instant, from that moment on, a great and unremitting stream, A strength of wholesome merit, Even during sleep and inattention, Rises equal to the vastness of the sky. -Shantideva 

the passage i had memorized several months ago.  how perfect.

dear heart who opened jumped in with me

i am sorry i used you for my happiness

my wise friend broke it down

when we met he was saying (exuberantly, emphatically, constantly) with his words actions and being:

see me
i see you
i want you to see me
i want to see you

that is the most beautiful way to meet
and so hearts opened, revealing unabashedly to each other

now he is saying (flatly, consistently) with his words actions and being:

don't see me
i don't see you
i don't want you to see me
i don't want to see you

that's what has changed
it is jarring, disorienting, confusing, and devastating to let someone in
so close
closer than close 
body and mind and heart
and then so suddenly they leave
so distant
more distant than distant
a barricade of Buddhist concepts keeping you out of their
body mind heart
"just let it go"
"don't hold on to what people say"
"everything is impermanent"
there is addiction
i admit
underneath is still the trust and openness
that the addiction would die
and the connection would still be there to hold us
but all my threads into him he cut
and they are flying around
looking for somewhere to anchor, to attach
and attachment is human
attachment to outcome is foolish
attachment to someone we love is developmentally natural and normal
the difficult thing is he left, closed down and made the decision alone
if we could have stayed with each other through the drop and then drifted as 2 parties continuing to participate equally in our dance
that would have been gentler
what's the point of this would have could have should have

it just fucking is
and life IS like that
doesn't always give you the gentler, kinder way
now the kindest possible thing is to take care of myself
see myself in the ways he could never see me
listen to the needs he was never able to hear despite stating them repeatedly
detox from the unhealthy addiction that made me stay even as he increasingly could not see or hear me
no need to idealize
he changed over and over again
the most painful change to my little girl is this one of being completely shut out
but the most painful change to adult vanessa was when i kept saying yes to the relationship over the signals my body and heart were giving me as i kept compromising my need for alone time, my need for stillness and quiet, my need for heart-centered right speech and my need to practice right view, my love of my sangha and my teacher, my love of dance and need to practice movement, my joy at self-expression that is not wholly centered around him.

adult vanessa thinks we could have worked it out if he wanted to, making healthy choices, not living together
adult vanessa also sees someone who doesn't want to be seen, who doesn't want to see, who cannot appreciate her kind loving open heart smarts and beauty
so fuck that.

don't use the buddha to justify lack of compassion

that's all i really have to say.

i get sick to my stomach. there was and is the addiction...that's mental fantasy world overlay covering the true intimacy and love and connection that was and still is there...for me. though he says he doesn't need relationship i know that's bullshit. though he says if you aren't addicted to the excitement, don't need what people get out of relationship then you just don't need it. connection, acceptance, sharing our lives and hearts openly with others, this is part of being human. sure the excitement...we don't need. that wasn't really relationship that was diversion and romance. the chance is to let this fall away and stay...with what we're feeling and what we're experiencing through the change to see how we can show up more real and true and stay in love. but this is me arguing with reality, with life, because what is happening is he does not love me. i am lovable and he does not love me. okay. as much as i want to hold on to him...not even the dream, just missing the openness and humor and play that flowered between us from the start....i see this is gone. he has left. i need to stop leaving myself in trying to fix or change what is. what is is what is and i must love it. even as my heart feels gashed open and bleeding...really. i never jumped in so fully into naked true love and vulnerability and unabashedly showed myself...good and bad. does this mean i am too bad...i drove him away. my mind tells me...if only i had said done or not said done then he might be here. but he's not here and he doesn't love me. i can love him and be grateful for the deep connection intimacy and sweetness we shared, can mourn the loss of his beautiful body close to mine, the loss of feeling part of his family when i met them, the loss of trust and sharing all of our thoughts and dreams and daily musings. it's back to what is always here when all else falls away (and all else does fall away): NOW. and i thank my dear friend D for meditating with me this evening and reminding me of who I am. i am coming home. i also found such a beautiful home in the space where my heart and his heart met. i appreciated his brilliant mind, playful energy, openness to strangers, his warmth and compassion. may you be free and at peace. 

perspective

front porch new orleans jazz insect hum and buzz. friend coming soon for crepes, smooth batter in fridge waiting to be fried and filled with spinach, mushrooms, chevre or lemon and sugar or egg and ham and cheese. 


"standing in the shower thinking" & realizing it's not personal...it never was. the liking me and the not liking me, neither are personal.
the excitement over printer. over photography. over computer. here one day, gone the next.
it's the same. an object to express energy and enthusiasm over. here all the way one day, nauseatingly sickening to his brain the next. i am the same. an object. there was never really seeing me. maybe those first few days...maybe?


and as we became enmeshed...not the first week or two but within the first month, i felt myself betraying my heart and body...even spoke up a few times about feeling disturbed about colluding in making fun of people...there was a lightness about it sometimes...seeing oh...these people have lost their way and feeling even some compassion for their lostness. but unless i am enlightened, how can i speak about anyone else's experience? i am the same. totally lost and found, depending on when i remember, when i get into the moment and when i leave. and in the bonding through the rejection of others, of the world (similar to past codependence, including my father, the criticism of other bonded us as having a correct superior view, and i was worthy by association with the superior person i worshipped).  in the beginning of this relationship there was already the awareness i could easily turn into the rejected so i kept giving up myself to merge with his identity and beliefs...of course, in this i rejected myself because he never asked me to abandon anything. the momentum was so strong and i felt suffocated, no space, no quiet, no stillness.  


to think we know the Way more than others is lunacy and delusion! the Zen Teaching of the Bodhidharma distills to the essence, the simple...don't worhip a buddha to find buddha. and yet the mind can so easily worship itself when the ego reads these words. thinking we need no teacher. the teacher is not to be worshiped but to defer and surrender to the embodiment of the teachings in one who has more mastery over mind than myself. maybe Zen works for a different mindstream, but the Vajrayana path works to neutralize and bring down the primacy of mind and thought for me.


it's sad. really. i appreciate the intimacy in my life. i am learning to fall completely out of love with love and completely in love with reality, true intimacy with self, from which grows authentic spontaneous sharing of a moment with another. i have tasted this with friends of the dharma. this must be my focus. staying in sanity and love.

ouch

my heart

desperate

i know you have your own path

and i trust your choices

this is not to convince or influence you

but to give you the opportunity to feel some empathy for

Vanessa's experience

the word you used

when we were last on the phone

about me

desperation

you said you felt it coming from me

and it concerned you

yes, i admitted guiltily, desperation

another reason i caused you to leave, my mind cruelly told me

how did the same sincere expression of love we both had always shared freely now become desperation?

Well even if it is DESPERATION

Yes, i say!

it's okay,

it's natural

it comes. it goes.

welcome to being human being

i got so so close to you

and so I believed, 

from everything you expressed,

you to me

so I did feel deep intense sorrow grief and confusion when you swiftly pulled away

unable to communicate about our connection

sure, 

i fucked up

you fucked up

and

i saw how it could be fucking okay

on the other side

like all those times you said

we would walk through the fire

we would always be together

etc.

i felt, 

absolutely natural normal bewildering painful heartbreaking desperation

when I felt you walking away instead of through

it is traumatic to lose so intimate a connection

under such stressful circumstances

of course I felt desperate

we were bound beautifully

from our first meeting

yes, suffering arose

as is the nature of life

from an amazing number of compounding conditions

no one's fault

not even relationship's fault

so i believed we could reset and restart, easing in gently and carefully and mindfully

and "desperate" was one expression of this powerful and beautiful faith in us and our love

"desperate" was also the confusion and disconnect between what you had always said

and what you were doing

i mean, 

what the frack?!

so yes, desperate

desperately human

what do you think I would be feeling when you,

who so repeatedly and confidently assured me that our relationship would endure,

was choosing to leave it anyway?

sure, i understand it was a dream and so, being a dream, nothing was lost

and the way i lost myself in our connection there was so much to be gained in our parting

however, the experience as a human in love, in sweet connection with a such a rare and precious mind and heart is that of pain and sorrow when it is rejected so quickly

i know that I was not rejected

our commitment and connection and trust and intimacy were rejected

you once asked me to trust you.

we were laying in bed and you were crying.

you held me and pleaded with me to remember that you love me even if you couldn't always express it

so when the silence and distance fell between us

and you were in some weird hotel

and i was waiting to hear that you were okay

i was doing my best to trust 

to trust in your healing

to trust in my ability to show up in the way you needed

to trust in the love you told me was always there

and my trust showed up as grasping as surrender as breath as acceptance as tears as reading about bipolar as holding my breath as grief as confusion as fear and sometimes, as you felt, desperation.

In other words: as being human

and here is my heart

still trusting

totally in love with my perfect humanness, 

with my desperation.

in love with my gorgeously innocent being for bravely jumping in and opening myself to you, at the first moment of our sweet meeting

sharing with you my body, mind, heart

so genuinely

so authentically

so honestly

so tenderly

i did feel how i closed around us

just a habit of conditioning

yes my thoughts insist,

a slower pace could have allowed me to pay attention and intervene before the stress built up

and alone time would have reduced my moodiness and would have fostered reflection and healthy choices

it could have been the way we did relationship so intensely and quickly,

losing sight of the spaciousness with which we started

any relationship would get pushed to the edge in the context of such huge disruptions and shifts: the death of your mom, travel, moving, cohabitation

losing the self care

our codependency which we shared, together

still, everything happened perfectly

so i thank you

first in 

the realization of your pain from bipolar

then in the realization of our suffering 

then in the acceptance of our breaking up 

and in the release and letting go of our dream

my heart is getting the chance to love us more deepy

i am just feeling such compassion for me and for you 

and such love for all of us

on this ridiculous planet

hungry

why you got hungry ghost? he asked me. why, why? it is such a habit! it is so strong. the strongest...a cycle of making myself bad, unworthy, then looking for redemption or rescue from outside, then apologizing for the whole thing and admitting my flawed thinking when i knew it all along but seem to use to for attention...like the thinking i am bad is a way to prove i am good. to admit fault and apologize must have been a way i felt loved. admitting my short-comings. i can remember sulking in my room alone and knowing if i cried in remorse hard enough for being bad and repented then i would be good again from all my regret. i am not 7 or 8 years old anymore.

can i just forget the whole thing and stop fabricating these short-comings and submitting to these false feelings...the neediness. it's not real. i have no neediness. when i was single sure, i longed for relationship sometimes, but really was well-practiced in feeling the longing and using it to connect to heartful presence. i did not suffer. why i create suffering now in this beautiful relationship with another? another who is so generous and kind. relationship is so hard! i found it easier to be alone, of course. so in awe of the connection, so moved by the intimacy, so grateful for the understanding joy love play and so scared i am fucking it up with my pattern of wanting, craving, addiction to attention and specialness, my way of feeling loved by another. when did i shift that burden to someone else...that is the very thing that causes the wanting...because it is up to me. and not me, really. it is not up to anyone, it is given away, to the moment, in letting go and then it is found to already be there. i found it a million times before. i am learning to do relationship in a new way...my conditioning is going against what i know to be true...and that hurts when i follow the conditioning. such a compelling powerful habit. and then brain asks, then this train of thought creeps up which is actually the ghost in DISGUISE!!! "who wants to be with a hungry ghost? you are messing it all up, he's going to leave you, you always do this, so NEEDY, you are a fraud, you can talk the Buddhist talk but you live like a regular needy girl! he will see how crazy you are and difficult just like all the others and leave you." well, i have been alone and can be again, but is that true? only if i make it true.

i want to handle this tenderly and carefully as there is a caring and sweet man who is here sharing a home, opening his heart.  i made a vow when i wrote my letter, that i would be in it to win it...awakening in relationship. i want to be more diligent and attentive to catch when the cycle starts...to the subtle thoughts and feelings, before i am swept in, up, drinking the hallucinogenic water and creating stories of disconnection, lack, or unloveableness. it's stupid. he said last week that this is small love and that it takes patience to have the true love, the ultimate not relative. yes, i know there is the Love i could experience with him if i would just STOP. stop it all. the trap is creating problems, or believing a train of thought that is untrue but pumps me with the juice of unlovability so that i can then get the feeling of being loved, but it just builds and builds...like proven loveable once, find a bigger challenge to loving me, until it is proven true, HA! i am unloveable. i went through this already. i know that ghost is unloveable. no, not unloveable...ultimately not real. the ghost is just pretending to exist and is a distraction. it is the feeding of the ghost that makes it seem real. and this...these confessional posts where i see my pattern and shit...even this is part of the trick the trap, as i get goodie star points for being so self-aware and honest about falling down falling asleep. here i am feeling bad about all of this and that makes me feel good. STOP.

one thought leads to another leads to another like i worry i'm annoying then i worry what is really annoying is that i think i'm annoying. seven layer cake of self-consciousness...it comes and goes. i have a stretch of several days of feeling light and free and playful and then heavy negative thoughts come for a day or two. pay attention. sit on your cushion. watch the breath. this morning i labelled everything that pulled me away from my focal point beneath the nostrils, the touch of breath above my lip as "thinking" or "sinking" for thought mental monkey mind loops or laziness/sleep/depression. this is what i devote myself to...no bullshit no "good" Buddhist performance no talking about how much i get it only sitting, breathing, meditating, practice, practice, practice, for the benefit of me, my relationship, and all beings.

to me, my lover is such a living example of freedom, lightness with/acceptance of his own humanity. the freedom to be flawed makes the flaws insubstantial and insignificant, my identification, attachment to dwelling on my flaws makes them dense and the suffering palpable. he inspires me to be so many things. mostly, my true no self. also, to live more simply and quietly and with less activity or belongings, which i was actually doing more before we met! just seems like things have sped up since spring hit...this winter was so quiet slow full of solitude. sometimes i miss the solitude but am still speechless that i have met such a kindred loving heart who wants to play. stay in play, vanaynay. stop the worrayayayay. metta. 

empty boat

notes.

nightmare

awake 3:50am and nervous to go back to sleep for the images i have seen and fear i felt during my dream. i wondered as i crept out into the dark hallway anxious to turn on the light how much conditioning needs to be stripped down until i can remain totally unmoved, unshaken, equanimous with demons and devilish scenes and the prospect of my own death--or maybe the dying not the death because as C recently said to me, death is easy it is the dying that is scary and for me a mystery. when violent images come up, of course the body and brain contract, move toward self-preservation. this is to be human, animal, natural...not something i need to suppress. but there is a difference between a rope and a snake and when will something false stop making me afraid? i have been awoken more frequently lately by 3am sounds and disturbances. i feel okay being up. no resistance to that. the only suffering were the moments trapped in belief of the realness of the dream. same as waking...when i believe what i am experiencing is lasting, ultimately true, or identify with it, i suffer. whether it is a violent man stalking me in sleeping dream or the most pleasant experience in waking dream. attachment to a feeling of love, connection, excitement, and trying to recreate it missing what is happening now and the connection in being in that totally as it naturally arises. today i noticed stinginess with my time, leaving the moment into "I" thoughts when I perceived "I" was being held up, delayed past my duties and wanted to go, in fact, was leaving in my mind and body while someone spoke with me...or it was kind of a dance of me asking myself "can i really listen to her now...just what she is saying right now in this moment?"  while feeling the tug and pull of a "me" with things to do, places to go. for the most part, i was able to keep letting go while staying aware of this "me"-ness coming up. i also have been stingy with things and money...in my brain though i practice letting go as I watch others use or enjoy the things that "cost me" and feel myself GIVING it up, giving it away even while the contraction remains, clenches, and releases, clenches, releases. it's a fun game we play...the Me with the Seeing. feeling very supported in my relationship. feeling very supported by returning to the basics...what the Buddha taught nothing extra esoteric.  http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html

incredibly grateful for love, lover, loving and our now together home.

reality

"We become mindful by abandoning our expectations about the way we think things should be and, out of our mindfulness, we begin to develop awareness about the way things really are."

seeing the struggle of mind attaching to what it prefers, pushing away what it doesn't want and craving what it does...in the happy transition of union is also fear and anxiety. instead of trying to solve the anxiety or get rid of the fear can i be here with all of it...instead of creating a story or a problem with thoughts that could invent 10 million causes for my discomfort and 10 million solutions for rearranging...the truth is anicca. impermanence. this too shall pass. what i was experiencing last week is gone, yesterday, the day before all dead. today each moment unfolding i can stay in the fear of the loss while missing the new or let go and accept what is.

i am supposed to complete 10 hours of analytical meditation on impermanence. here is where it starts...the real life experience of change, falling away, death of a moment, death of a feeling, death of a form...rising is another moment, another feeling, another form and these will perish, too. as will i. i saw some stretched out wizened skin on my body, near throat neck chest and could see my aging my changing my dying and decay, i am not how i picture myself still sometimes as a little girl or young woman long hair i get surprised when i look in the mirror sometimes.

space
freedom
are these conditional? my mind is making them so. when they are not. can i let go of my notions of these?
what is it i need when the anxiety and confusion comes in...the overwhelm of not knowing where to put my energy on him on me on us on dancing on dressing on connecting how to live spontaneously as life well it's impossible to do otherwise but i have preference for feeling a flow of action coming from centeredness and being that seems off-kilter...perspective though: it's been 1 day. 1 day of off-kilter...dance and move through the change..or fumble and fall and trip through the change. it's all okay. blessedly and beautifully okay with Love and Acceptance and Commitment as the ground of this change.

thankful for the practice!

ululation

hair is on my head, "in full force" my friend/stylist said yesterday. growing everywhere. last may it started falling out...though it wasn't until june or july when i actually realized what was happening--since i always shed a lot of hair and still had a ton of hair, the first bald spot took a while to appear. what a ride! it was a great and gentle way of letting go. and yet i also feel happy when i see my hair now... those pangs of worry and sadness when showering and clumps of hair kept coming out...nothing more left to cover the head except scarves wigs hats. at the beach with Rob last summer...August, i think, and feeling less than free about my baldness...very unfemme. it was shortly after that A and friends helped me shave my head. i still have my hair for safe keeping. it left so something new could come in. spring time is a time of the world of form coming back after the stark emptiness of winter...returning from self-retreat into internal introspection painting and reading alone now i am getting pulled in all kinds of directions by all kinds of distraction. looking for balance to play in the world of form without getting attached or grasping to beauty and temptation...last night i went to prostration night at Won Buddhist Temple. it was just what i needed. so much more nourishing than a night at the weaver street pining for romance of which i have no prospects. what a tragic figure this "vanessa" character is...all alone. she had a man. she broke his heart. broke her own, too. forgive her, she knew not what she done did. emotionally reactive and insane, she was. now she's ready to be responsible. responsible for own feelings and loving to self and other. of course, there is no self and other just one. so when i stay one i win. when i look i lose. remember those SUB POP t-shirts, LOSER. i had one in 8th 9th grade. so cool. these image identities i have been through so tricky to not create another one. the Buddhist one now. oh, i meditate om and i am so aware...om. shimmy shimmy ya shimmy yam shimmy ya. just a liar this vanessa. just performing. will you like her? will you find her attractive? i don't want to play this game anymore. i want to see through and be seen through into truth and abide in silence and love. preferably with someone, a companion, a hot man, tuna.

getting stuck on my tail

i remember Adyashanti sharing a Zen koan in one of his talks--a bull passes through a window--the head, body, legs all go through but he gets stuck on his tail. i've had the feeling lately that i have one toe still in storyline, not quite committed to dharma as i still am hyptonitzed by false promises that the worldly life seems to promise.

Dzonsar Khyentse Rinpoche shares this lesson this way "Let's say we both are traveling in the desert, we are thirsty and then we see water. Actually we are looking at a mirage but we think it is water--because we are so thirsty that's what we want. It's such a long way away, but then, initially, both of us really want to go there. Then maybe one of us thinks, "No, this is not water this is just a mirace." That knowledge needs to be increased, or transmitted in our head. Once you have that, then you are renouncing the concept 'water,' but you are only renouncing the concept, you are not renouncing the water because there was never any water there anyway. So Buddhist renunciation should be understood this way--that you are renouncing something that does not even exist. It's not like the world is full of pleasure and great things and then you reluctantly have to give them up."

Well...this is my tail. Because i am not convinced. despite the suffering i've felt from grasping towards water that does not exist, there is still some part of my mind that believes the water is real. the happiness of relationship, the fulfillment of meaningful work in the world. transitory--the relationship and whatever delight it might bring, transitory the job and whatever sense of worth it might bring. i know this but don't fully accept it. Buddhism is drastic. the wisdom piece...Dzongsar Khyentse and Chogyam Trungpa --their teachings are drastic, uncompromising. And i see my hope clinging to itself...the me staying alive by believing in the mirage. i feel scared about truly letting go.

still, i am encouraged and inspired because if the direct path is too drastic and immediate for me to leap through window, tail and all, i have the Way of the Boddhisattva, the Mahayana teachings, which lead to the same drastic conclusion but with the smaller steps of diminishing self-importance and self-cherishing. so even if i don't abandon the sliver of hope that burns and longs for intimacy with another person, the Bodhisattva path asks of me to stop thinking of me and my and to focus on expressing natural generosity and compassion of the heart. please, purity of heart, guide me into the living truth, give up on self-love and give into love for all beings. it's like i am reluctant to give up the last shred of hope that my story might work out, in particular the romantic story, even though experience shows this is suffering, fixating on getting love, getting relationship.

Om Tare Tam Soha

been a long time...shouldn't have left you (me)

i abandon myself
when i most fear abandonment
by grasping, seeking outside
stay with the experience, the feeling
it is a pattern when the pain surfaces to push it down
since feelings were not allowed in my home, just compliance and aquiescence
punished for crying
an emotion lasts, what, like 9 seconds? let it flow, girl
go into it...the cure for pain is in the pain, that's what Rumi said, right?

read so much Rumi yesterday...so amazingly resonant and relevant through Coleman Barks
collages
tea
book
nap
hula hoop
dance
letters
phone calls
laundry
dishes
beets
meditation
friend visits
a great couple of days