Into the Quiet
I think I had a misconception about Zen. I think I expected that I would work towards enlightenment and I would eventually levitate and shit prolific lotus petals out of my ass, I would be so spiritual I would glow in the dark.
Error #1…”I think”. It ain’t about thinking. In reality and in practice is about training your mind to not use itself until it becomes very still and quiet. I’d say it’s like a lake without ripples. The problem with metaphors is that you have to use your mind to generate them and once you’ve activated the mind, you’ve dropped the practice…which leads me to…
Error #2…envisioning enlightenment and/or spiritual progress. Like what the fuck is that anyway? Again, when I use my mind to generate a fantasy, I’ve dropped my practice.
It begs an interesting question, though…If I keep my mind quiet all the time and don’t activate, I can’t tell you about the experience and I sure as hell can’t write a post about it.
At first I found this a little unsettling. I started blogging about my explorations of mindfulness, Buddhism, Zen, etc, as a way of journaling in public and going through my thought processes out loud. It is a way of processing through the concepts and integrating them. So to find that the practice is opposed to the process of thinking about the practice…it’s…well…it’s just un-American or some shit like that J
The outcome has been that I’ve not written much lately and just let the silence be. It’s unusual and rather counter intuitive to do that, I must say. At the same time, it’s incredibly expanding and deepening. In fact, at times (and without noticing it right away) I’ve found myself feeling like a lake with no ripples.
On Andy’s recommendation, I’ve been slowly (I find that as my mind has slowed down, I don’t inhale books like I used to, I tend now to savor them) reading through Karen Maezen-Miller’s new book Hand Wash Cold and picking a few gems, a number of laughs and unexpectedly, a few tears. One of the gems is one of her favorite quotes from her teacher: “Let’s just see how this goes”. It’s one of those semi-cryptic, possibly crazy Zen master statements that ripens over time. (I recommend this book by the way, if you are a reading type person…it’s like Mom’s version of Brad Warner’s writing style)
So lately I’ve been seeing how it goes. Is it good or bad? Well…it’s life…let’s see how it goes.
Giggles with Wolves
I recently toured and then spent a day volunteering at a wolf refuge near Pagosa Springs, CO where I’m on vacation. I wanted to go there because I was sparked by a quest to see someone’s unique take on compassion in action. It was really remarkable and if you are ever in the area, I suggest making an appointment to take a tour. The owner, Paula, is an amazing and gregarious woman who started her whole adventure by wanting to adopt a yellow lab from a shelter. While there it was a wolf puppy who captured her heart and the rest became history.
Whatever the case, as I explore my own compassion and compassionate direction in life, I was just really intrigued by someone who devoted her life of the past 15 years to this incredible animals.
So on day one I got to tour and visit and play with the wolves. Paula has a great many of them socialized for humans and the animals really ham it up and are very loving. The pic I’ve attached is of 2 brand new wolf pups that
came in from Alaska. They are 4 months old and super playful…which in wolf terms means watch your stuff cuz they will try and nab it. I almost lost my camera case to the little girl (she’s the lighter of the two). Her brother, the big black one, was determined that sister was not the only one who would be in my lap, so they both piled on. I was giggling so hard I almost fell over. They love to kiss and the little girl would put her huge paws on either side of my head and give big hugs too. I had so much wolf lovin by the end of the tour that I had to go home and wash off all the wolf slobber.
So most of the wolves had caught the kindness cooties from Paula and to cap off the day as we got to the bottom of the hill after feeding (and picking up poop) for 82 wolves and hybrids, I saw a small bumper sticker on the back of her truck that said “Compassion is Evolution”. I never asked if she was Buddhist or any other thing, nor did I ask where that sticker came from. I just knew that I had gotten a good dose of Dharma that day and left it at that…that’s the best kinda teaching really. (picking up several buckets of wolf crap will either enlighten you or make you sick, i opted for stepping up)
If you are interested in this place, it is called Wolfwood Refuge and the website is www.wolfwoodrefuge.com.
Kindness cooties – or why i meditate
Why I meditate.
I want to be kind. I want to be compassionate. I want to be the person that makes others feel more peaceful and settled just by sitting in the same space with me.
I want be kind because it is the best possible, most clear, most sensible action to take. The goal is not to be ‘good’ or avoid Hell (whatever that is) or get extra points for Heaven (whatever that is). The goal is to have no goal and still be kind.
The meditation part comes in because it is during that practice of intensified mindfulness, I get to begin to penetrate down below what my everyday mind is attached to (it’s one of the cool side effects of regular mindfulness practice). I recently heard a talk by Shinzin Young (see his youtube videos in the links to the left) in which he talks about the concept of No-self as being like an old CRT monitor displaying a pure white screen. It’s white when I look at it with naked eye, but if I put a magnifying glass up to it, it breaks down into the pixels of red/blue/green. So which is it? Red/blue/green or white? Well, it’s both depending on the perception, so we could also say it is both and neither. ..or to quote the Heart Sutra “form is emptiness, emptiness is form”.
So when I penetrate deeply enough into my own mind, and see this to be true, the notion of being disconnected from other people, places, things falls away and true kindness emerges. And true kindness is contagious like a virus, it has an energy of it’s own. Can you imagine a world infected with kindness? Kindness cooties…go get some.
Wow, so yeah, my brain was running off at the mouth and I had to get up out the bed and put this stuff down or I’d not be sleeping. I know I ain’t right. I was just down at Wanda June’s Hairdo Place and Taco Stand just a couple days ago and she said ‘boy, you ain’t right’, and I said ‘yeah, I know’.
Wanda June is insightful like that. She don’t meditate, she mostly just smells too many hairdo chemicals. She got the tallest hair in three counties, ya’ll. They say the higher the hair, the closer to God. Maybe she’s got her own enlightenment gig goin’ on.
