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yesterday my karma class concluded; that which has a start has an end, or as Shibata Sensei said “hello means goodbye”.
my favorite part of class was the time we spend reviewing the buddhist view of consciousness and feeling, including how consciousness forms, how it relates to feelings, and how thoughts and attitudes spring out of that process. the abhidharma or buddha’s teachings on this go into incredible detail.
the twelve nidanas, it turns out, describes how moment to moment our consciousness forms from nothing, reacts to the perceptions of phenomenon, forms a positive, negative, or neutral opinion of that phenomenon, then jumps to a conclusion about how things should be and habitualizes the result.
we also studied the five skandas, each a mental process which all combined make up what we typically consider self or ego. the formation of the skandas is part of the nidana cycle, the fourth nidana in fact, before sense perceptions start to make contact with the phenomenal world. the consciousness skanda is paramount, but is supported by the skandas of form, feeling, formation, and perception. form constructs distinct views of the world, feeling just provides a very basic positive, negative, or neutral opinion of things, perception processes what we perceive, and formation pigeon-holes things into categories for us.
the importance of these teachings is deep. when Pema teaches about ‘learning to stay’, this comes from the wisdom that the cycle of karma can only be interrupted between the seventh and eighth nidanas - between feeling and craving. once we’ve gone from feeling to actually thirsting for something then we’ve continued a cycle that ends with a further strengthening of ego and solitification of our world view. but if we can learn to rest in feeling (the seventh nidana) then we can interrupt the habituation of ego. in fact, that’s the only way we can work with it and stop the karmic momentum. by karmic momentum i mean the quality that our feelings lead us to action which then sows the seeds of future suffering - in this case the habituation and solidification of our ego-centric view of the world.
trungpa rinpoche also gave an interesting teaching on the skandas and enlightenment. he taught that the skandas in an enlightened being are still there. what’s different is that they aren’t connected. meditation cuts the tight connection between the skandas. then he went further to say that it’s not really a connection that you’re severing. really the skandas are just crammed together by our speed. we hate to experience space, our world feels unsolid in space. so we keep our mind running quickly so we don’t notice that there is a small gap between each skanda. so meditation lets us slow down, and then increase the gap between the skandas or in other words so we can see the large expanse of space which is already between them.
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last night i brought presents for everyone in karma class. guess that will cause me more karma. i duplicated the flash cards that i made for myself - to help learn the three subcategories of this and the five types of that, etc - and made just enough copies for everyone in class. a couple people commented after class that they thought they knew the material pretty well until they started flipping through the cards. it’s so hard for me to memorize so much detail, that’s probably the only way i’ll do it. just making the cards helped too though.
my current plan for meditation retreats this year is roughly this:
- 10 day retreat mid May in Colorado (at Shambhala Mountain Center)
- 14 day retreat mid July in Vermont (at Karmê Chöling)
- 28 day retreat for November in Vermont (at Karmê Chöling)
all of these are an even mix of meditation and dharma study. i’m not sure if i’ll be able to make it to all of them, but i’ll be really grateful if i can. i feel really grateful that i have the conditions in life (the karma if you will) - with flexibility at work and a good salary and a supportive set of friends - that i can plan to take time off in retreat. i hope it continues to open me up to my friends and to my world.
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the first time i was fourteen, in my back yard, with a single stick of incense and though i had no real idea what i was doing i took refuge in the buddha, the dharma, and the sangha.
twenty years later i still don’t fully understand this vow, but it has so much more meaning for me now. this time i was in a room full of wonderful people, with a senior teacher in front, and seven of us on display. he cut a small piece of my hair, i asked him to cut a grey one if he could. we said vows, and i received a tibetan refuge name. söpa lhakthong means patience and insight. when he said patience i almost cracked up. do you think it suits me? be honest.
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this weekend i finished my third meditation retreat for the year, i just can’t get enough. i’ve really noticed, even more so than previous retreats, the effect on my day to day life afterward. there’s just more space in my day. not in a time sense of the word. i’m not sure how to describe it exactly… it’s just easier for me to see the forest from the trees, moment to moment.
the ground for this weekend for me was the question, “how much space in one’s mind do thoughts arise within. do they arise in a narrow view, or a wide and spacious view.”
some examples: this morning walking from the train to work, birds i would have otherwise missed swooped across the sky, and some of the flowers along the way vividly popped out at me. it wasn’t that i was just focusing on more things during my morning walk. it was more that my mind was less hyper-focused and distracted - so there was room to notice these other things. there was more space in my mind for them.
but i’m also noticing at work that it’s easier for me to keep my attention with the person i’m talking with. not because i have some improved focus, but because i’m less swayed by distractions and trains of thought that come up during the conversation. less snared or trapped by the thoughts, there’s just more fresh air in the whole business.
drunk with the great starry
void, likeness, image of mystery,
I felt myself a pure part of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke free on the open sky.
- Pablo Neruda
sitting monkey is place where
