Posted in dharma by David
May 29, 2009 Tags: video
who do you think you are?
a local student interviewed me recently for a project about identity, and this was the submitted project for the class — a 19 minute video and collection of interviews. i’m arranged contrasted with an actor, a transgendered person, and others all discussing identity.
[UPDATE: The video was deleted after the class apparently]
What do you think of the Bible bill, to acknowledge the part the bible played in the creation of the United States by making 2010 the “year of the bible”?
ya, i don’t think it would pass really nor get signed, but it’s interesting to see the bill floated at all in congress. perhaps this is in part how a representative from georgia gets props in the bible belt. i’m tickled by the representative from massachusetts barney frank’s retort though, “What is 2012 the year of? The Quran?”
that said, i don’t see any problem at all acknowledging both how the united states has a stated view of religious tolerance and at the same time has a more judeo-christian heritage and viewpoint. that’s just how it is. perhaps celebrating a particular aspect of heritage doesn’t imply an advocacy for that viewpoint? it seems like it does though, as in making 2010 or 2012 for that matter a celebration of a specific ethnic or religious tradition a kind of advocacy — almost like the religions are competing in the same american competitive spirit. which is odd to me, the competitive quality or any sense of advocacy. how does one celebrate their faith without denigrating others faith or view? seems like there is a way to do that, but maybe our american competitive habit makes that harder?
assisted with a shambhala training level five this last weekend. it was wonderful, spacious, and lots of fun. this was also a bitter sweet ending to a full sequence that i assisted from a level one weekend through level five. in that sequence, i’ve gone along with a number of folks together. and that was the end. i may well see some folks again and again, but it’s not certain. so there is a sense of loss at the same time as a sense of completion.
this was the sixteenth shambhala training weekend that i’ve assisted. with each level it feels both more comfortable being on the spot and holding a roll like that, as well as giving me a sense of just how deep one can go with a meditation practice and how much better and accessible i could become as a meditation instructor. mostly that sense has been from working with such excellent directors and fellow assistant directors. they have been an inspiring group of settled, warm-hearted, and seasoned meditation practitioners.
and as usual, the participants have been just as inspiring with their dedication to a difficult practice and their determination to see it through. we all come to a contemplative path from a different place and with issues to wrestle unique to ourselves, so there is no real sense of where students should be or achieve in these levels. nonetheless, the effort and the willingness to confront one’s demons with gentleness and patience is endlessly inspiring.
for the last couple years, i’ve spent weeks each summer studying buddhist philosophy in the green hills of vermont. part of a program, called mipham academy, we have had a smallish group of scholarly meditators who are currently going through a 9th century philosophy text line by line. this is led by khenpo gawang, a young tibetan lama trained at namdroling monastery. each line takes us awhile. we’re going about as deep as one can with the material.
but shambhala buddhism is mostly about meditation; about a personal contemplative path and exploration, about cultivating individual insights and loosening the stuck places in our emotional being. so why study obscure philosophic material if you’re not going to be an academic?
this also relates to the more general question, why do you think it’s useful to mix study with meditation practice at all? why not just sit and see how the mind moves directly?
i think one reason relates to discernment, both sharpening our mental skills of discernment generally and also exploring the typical biases and errors of view that we encounter every day. in doing so, we gain more tools for working with our mindstream skillfully. and that informs the meditation practice, and daily life.
this lotto ad reminds me how romanticism can be so seductive and wistful and at the same time so curious.
i have to confess, i’m just as sappy as anyone really. i can’t help that a narrative like this pulls at my heart. but at the same time i wonder how much of that is genuine appreciation, and how much is a product of disney. by that i mean how much of my yearning for connection is really misplaced.
dorje loppon lodro dorje is an american buddhist teacher and scholar who i have never met, but who i have tried to study with online or in writing when i can. his pre-tibetan name is eric holm. in one of his commentaries on the five wisdom energies, in particular about padma energy of passion, he talks about romantic love as a common way we access our basic goodness - our inner tenderness and openness - our buddha nature basically. but, he cautions, we often then confuse that connection as having to do with the other person. and that’s why losing a partner can be so devastating because we lose the connection with our own heart. this is doubly sad though because that connection was always ours to begin with, and the other person was just helping us find it. it is possible to have that connection with buddha nature all the time, within or without a romantic relationship, in spite of what disney movies tell us. this is mostly theoretical to me, i trust lodro dorje’s teaching on this because it has a ring of truth to me, but in the mean time i keep polishing my knights armor so it has a nice sheen and others will love me for it.
we have language in english for various emotions: anger, jealousy, fear, loneliness. but when you try to talk about the experience of more subtle states of mind — below emotions — what do you do? paint a picture, literally?
i haven’t studied the Tibetan concept of “wind” at all, but i’m starting to wonder if this is what they’re getting at when they talk about the experience of one’s inner winds. Below emotion there is a kind of texture that we feel, that shifts and moves and is hard to name but we have an ordinary experience of. Maybe sometimes people say “I feel a little anxious” as a way of talking about those more subtle feelings; not quite a full blown emotion but still there.
so why talk about these textures at all? well if what i’m reading holds water, and it seems logical, that these more subtle textures are the engine that fuels then the larger negative emotions. and our discomfort, and wish to push away certain textures, that then leads to a cascading or positive feedback loop that then leads to the full blown emotion. by cascade i think this can still occur almost instantaneously, but sometimes slowly enough to see the “little anxiety” then build to be anger or something more problematic. so if we could practice resting and relaxing in the subtle irritation and subtle anxiety and subtle discomfort, without reacting to it, would that then lead to a more sane life? that’s my question lately.
sitting monkey is place where