An Awakened Life

A gift I received today:

The Awakened Life--Uncommon Wisdom from Everyday Experience by Christopher Titmuss who entered a Buddhist monastery and became a monk for six years.

May all beings live in peace
May all beings live in harmony
May all beings be fully enlightened

One way to conceptualize awakening is to understand that it occurs at two levels, the relative and the ultimate. Relative awakening is when our insights turn our consciousness in a particular direction. One of the problems of relative awakening is that the insights get suffocated by the thoughts of our daily life. As we develop an appreciation of awakening, an energy of commitment is created that gives us passion to follow through with the the core message of our insights.

Ultimate awakening (no problem with follow through) is what happened to the Buddha under than Bodhi tree when he realized the core issues of human existence. This is were The Four Noble Truths come from.

1. There is suffering in the world
2. Suffering arises due to conditions. Desire is a primary condition.
3. There is liberation from the rounds of suffering.
4. There is a way to end suffering through a noble way of life, namely the Eightfold Path.

"In an awakened life our heart is open, steady and purposeful." We can experience an awakened state but then it is difficult to stay awaken while carrying on with our daily lives. Some of the ways to help ourselves stay awake are: contact with conscious people; mindful living; meditation; inquiry; taking risks; and contemplative reading.

May all beings live with wisdom
May all beings be awakened
May all beings live an enlightened life

posted by Adrienne

The Messy Business of Being Human

I was a participant in the eight annual Mt. Baldy Enlightenment Intensive last week. Lovely Cynthia picked Patrick, Jerry and I up at the Ontario airport and drove us up the mountain to the Zen Center. We settled into our cabins and then relaxed in the sun. They fed us Thursday night dinner which was an unexpected treat and eventually we gathered for the opening talk, taking in the other participants and anticipating the wild ride we knew we were all in for. Then it was off to bed with our contemplations. I was working on What Am I?

I froze half the night and couldn't fall asleep. I was in a cabin with 3 other women and everyone else seemed quiet and comfortable, but of course, we never know what's really going on for another unless we are sitting in dyad with them. I finally pulled myself up out of bed and cranked up the heat. Ah, sleep finally arrived although I continued to wake on and off throughout the rest of the night. The 5:55 bell came with the announcement, "Good morning, this is the first day of the Enlightenment Intensive, you have 20 minutes until the morning talk."

It was a powerful Intensive for me. Lots of stuff kept coming up about living in the moment and acceptance. What else is there to do? I exist in the moment and if I'm intending to experience the truth of myself directly, the moment is probably the best set up for that experience.

I started looking for the obvious in what I am. I exist. I intend. I desire. I make choices. I notice. I have set up my whole life around connecting with others. This seems to be my foremost path, what I desire and yearn for. I kept recalling my most recent experiences with ego--various opportunities for connection with another and ego getting in my way. It has an agenda other than my own. Ego is always busy with its "to do" list. It always has something important to give to another, or to get from another, some information or this or that or another thing. Sometimes it's busy working to impress another. Always one thing or another, things that don't interest me, that I have no investment in. I get so bored, so weary with ego's running around. I find myself functioning on automatic, ego in control. I'll be there, engaging without really engaging and then I wake up and find myself doing ego's bidding. "Hey, wait a minute" I say to ego, "this is my show, my life, my agenda here, so back off", and then I go about my business of connecting, being present, being available to another. Ego's pattern is insidious and difficult to change.

I know ego is doing it's best to take care of me and frankly, it does a fairly decent job most of the time. But it's too uppity and a control freak. It's nervous about it's survival, anxious and impatient. I've been too lenient with it, extended its leash too long and given it free run over my affairs. It's time to reign it in. Sorry ego, you gotta back off now, you've been stealing the show for too long and this is my debut. I'm the star in this drama.

Erik and Edrid were co-mastering this Intensive and the perfect masters they were. At one point, Eric was talking about the messiness of life. He used the analogy that we are all made of clay and poop and how we just sling pieces of ourselves, clay and poop all over each other. I got a picture of a potter at work, sitting at her wheel forming a beautiful bowl which to me, symbolized the building of relationship. Pieces of clay where splattering all over. Relating with another and creating intimacy is a messy business. We humans are messy, with another we lose ourselves and find ourselves and make a big splattering mess in the process. We do our work. We witness another's work. This is love. This is the dyad process.

At the Enlightenment Intensive it's not about working on a specific relationship with another but rather about intending to directly experience the truth of the moment and opening ourselves to receive that truth. It's also about opening ourselves to another, being nakedly open to receiving whatever they have to offer. Opening ourselves to another's splattering messiness and accepting it without opinion or judgment. And the amazing with this is that we don't get dirty. The poop flies, the clay flies, and we are so open, so totally non-resistant to this stuff, it just dissipates into it's native nothingness. All we do is get it and let it go. We give the gift of understanding. Another's messiness does not sully us.

Eric also offered the analogy of taking out the trash...that's a lot of what is going on when the active partner is contemplating and communicating. So much of what we are holding on to and identifying with is just simply garbage and it needs to be released, kind of like a big stinky fart or belch. We are helping another take our their trash and we don't even have to wash our hands in the process. At other times what comes out of another are these incredibly beautiful sparkling gems of truth. And as we sit there openly receiving, the light of these truth gems strike us with their brilliance and open us more, filling us with the truth of our own selves. We accept it all with understanding and compassion and the process works it's magic on us.

At one point I was experiencing being stuck. I had all these ideas, perhaps correct ones, about what I am but correct ideas are not direct experiences. Edrid told me that maybe I needed to take the leap. I said I would if I had any clue what to leap into. I also told him about the moments when I "show up" and he encouraged me that that's the time to delve deep into my question. What is my experience of Self when I show up? I'll continue to be working on that. One thing I've noticed is that I feel very warm and transparent. I'm also in love. And happy.

As the Intensive drew on I came to understand the leap I need to take. It is of course leaping more into my life. Taking the plunge into a deeper truth. I've put my toes in the water and that's a start. I'm inspecting the truth fabric of my daily life and patching up the areas that have worn thin. I've been letting ego get away with some indulgences and some threads could break if I'm not careful, leaving a hole for me to fall through. And that landing would stir up too much mud in the pond.


Posted by Adrienne

As Much As You Wanted That Breath

Adapted from one of Charles Berner's lectures:

Once there was a monk who had a master. And he’d been with him for two or three years, trying to get enlightened, and he wasn’t making it. So he said, “Oh master”, as they were going for a walk one day, “please tell me what I’m doing wrong? I’ve followed everything you said, and I still haven’t gotten enlightened. What should I do?” The master didn’t say a thing, he just kept on walking.

And after awhile they came to a stream, and they began to ford the stream. They got about halfway across, and suddenly the master stopped. The student thought, “Aha, I’m going to get a lesson, I know it. He’s going to teach me something. I know him.” And sure enough the master looked right at him, grabbed him around the neck and stuck his head under the water. “Huh? See? I knew it, he’s going to enlighten me thought the monk. So the monk is underneath the water waiting for the enlightenment experience. And he waits a little bit more, but nothing’s happening except he is getting a little bit short on breath. And he thinks, “Well, now, I have confidence in my teacher, and I know he’s going to get me enlightened, so I’m just not going to show any signs of strain here; and so I’ll just endure.” And so he’s under the water enduring.

The master still has him by the neck. Pretty soon, he really starts to get into trouble. “This is serious. I’m hurting. I could drown under here!” The master just holds him under the water.
“Well,” he thinks, “I don’t think my master understands my situation, so I better let a few bubbles up to let him know that I’m in trouble.” So he lets up a few bubbles, but the master just holds him right under the water and doesn’t budge an inch. The monk thinks, “Well, I don’t think he got it.” So he goes “bruummph”, and all the air comes up and he wiggles a little bit. And the master just holds him underneath.

The monk begins to think, “You know, I’m not so sure about my master. I don’t know if he knows what he’s doing.” The master keeps holding him under the water. He thinks, “I gotta get out of here, I gotta get out of here!” So he starts to really wiggle and struggle. The master just holds him firmer than ever underneath the water. He thinks, “You know, I think that guy’s a little batty! My master’s a nut! I always saw those little traits about him. I’m getting out of here. I don’t care what he says. Lesson or no lesson, I’m coming up.” So with all his might, he goes “Uggggh!” And the master, with superhuman strength, holds him there, locked. The monk thinks, “Well, I guess I’m going to die. I can’t get up. He’s got more strength than I’ve got. He’s got me in a hold. I’ve trusted him and he’s betrayed me completely, and I’m going to die.”

And so he starts to just let go. At that moment, the master hauls him out of the water, and he gasps for air: “AHHHHHH,” and the master says, “Now, when you want to get enlightened as much as you wanted that breath, you’ll make it.”

My Hole

While contemplating during a dyad at one Enlightenment Intensive, I found myself in a hole and realized how ridiculously pathetic I was. I was feeling so overwhelmingly stuck, you would have imagined that I was sitting at the bottom of the hole, twenty feet down and that it was dark and muddy and cold with no way out. My eyes were shut so I opened them and looked around. I found that the hole was indeed about twenty feet deep, but there was a ladder in it, and also the sun was shining a bright ray of light right down into the shaft and the walls of the hole were completely illuminated. Not only that, I was standing on a rung of the ladder, with my head about five feet from the top with the warm sun shining on my face.

The Truth Is The Truth

There are not different kinds of enlightenment. There is not one kind of enlightenment experience that you get on Enlightenment Intensives, another kind that you get in Zen, another that you get from Yoga, another kind that Buddha had, and another kind that Jesus had. There is only one kind of enlightenment. The enlightenment that people have on an Enlightenment Intensive is the same kind of enlightenment that Buddha had. Perhaps Buddha was more deeply enlightened but that is the only difference. There are different magnitudes of enlightenment, but there is only one kind of enlightenment and that is conscious, direct knowledge of oneself If you have had it, you have had it; that is all there is to it. You might use different words than someone else to try to describe it, although ultimately, enlightenment is actually indescribable. However, even if you cannot describe it, you can still do a good job of communicating it.
By Charles Berner and Mono Sosna

During a master’s training course we were discussing whether or not there were different kinds of enlightenment. An analogy in the form of this story came to mind that helped me.

A person books a one week trip to Japan with a tour company. All of their accommodations and site seeing destinations are planned for them. When their flight arrives in Japan a driver greets them at the airport and drives them to their 5 star hotel. That evening they dine in the hotel restaurant for dinner. The next morning, after breakfast in the hotel, a tour bus picks them up for their first outing with a tour guide who speaks their native language. Each day they are taken out for several half day excursions to visit historic Japanese sites. They view the famous Great Buddha, the majestic Mt. Fuji along with various other sites. They also dine out at several Japanese style restaurants. The rest of their time is spent relaxing at the hotel.

After a week they return home. They have visited Japan. Their passport is stamped and they have photos that document their trip. But although their visit to Japan was certainly real and quite lovely, their experiences there did not go very deep.

Once home, their memories of Japan fill them with a yearning to go back, but this time for several months. On this trip, they immerse themselves in the culture and start learning the language. They live with a Japanese family and help in their pottery shop. They also work in the kitchen helping to prepare the families meals. They visit several bustling cities, the coastline and mountains. They soak in hot springs, visit Japanese gardens, and shrines.
This second visit to Japan, provides experiences that penetrate much deeper.

This is not to stay that someone will not have have an incredibly deep enlightenment the first time they break through into a direct experience of the truth. It's just an example of different possibilities, the different magnitudes of enlightenment. But enlightenment is enlightenment. The truth is the truth.

The Summit

This quote is originally from the novel, Mount Analogue written by Rene Daumai and Carol Cosman. I took it from the book The Experience Of Insight--A Simple & Direct Guide to Buddhist Meditation by Joseph Goldstein.

You cannot stay on the summit forever. You have to come down again, so why bother in the first place? Just this. What is above knows what is below but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs and one see; one descends and one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower region by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one no longer sees, one can at least still know.