When All Else Fails, Bear Hug Therapy

     "One afternoon, among the small group of people waiting outside the home where the Dalai Lama was staying, a visibly disturbed man shouted out to him. His Holiness walked toward him and patiently listened to the man rant about the pointlessness of living. The Dalai Lama then urged the man to think about the good things in his life, and the importance of his presence in the lives of his loved ones, as well as the good things he could do with his life by helping others. Nothing worked. So, finally, His Holiness stopped talking and gave the man a huge bear hug. The man sobbed loudly, then became calm and relaxed."

       From A Fearless Heart: How the Courage to Be Compassionate Can Transform Our Lives, by Thupten Jinpa. Reprinted with permission of Hudson Street Press in Tricycle, Summer, 2015. www.tricycle.com

one of Monet's poppies

Deep Engagement with Matters of Ultimate Concern

     "You can be musically tone deaf and have no understanding of music, just as you can be spiritually 'tone deaf' and not understand what people are doing when they engage deeply with matters of ultimate concern. But that deficit is simply an individual’s own lack of awareness, not the absence of this fundamental domain of human life. In this regard, the religious dimension of human culture is no more optional than politics or an economy. That was Tillich’s point, and even if all religious institutions are currently inadequate to dealing with these issues, the human questions themselves don’t go away, just as widespread political corruption doesn’t get us out of politics. Instead of denying or ignoring the religious dimension of life, we should seek to find ways to cultivate and develop it, so that in our time it can be rediscovered and reenvisioned."

       Dale S. Wright. "Religion Resurected. A secular Buddhist, recoiling from the ills of both theism and atheism, suggests that we move beyond both." Tricycle, Summer 2015. 

His work was his prayer - Montparnasse Cemetery, Paris

Inside Out

     Many people come to realize that all conditioned phenomena are marked by anicca, anatta & dukkha. For some it's a total "shipwreck" - a total collapse of their world. Many become cynical, bitter, hedonistic, or catatonic, frozen in their tracks, or suicidal.
 
     Completely giving up on the reliability of all external sources of happiness - AND, at the same time - opening up, loving unconditionally, being wholeheartedly engaged with whatever phenomena always awaits ...

           There is a crack in everything
           That's how the light gets in.             Leonard Cohen "Anthem"

Unconditional Love & Mindfulness

     "Loving-kindness meditation (LKM) aims to develop an affective state of unconditional kindness to all people.

     Compassion mediation (CM) involves techniques to cultivate compassion, or deep, genuine sympathy for those stricken by misfortune, together with an earnest wish to ease this suffering. 

     Both LKM and CM are centrally related to, and include the practice of, mindfulness, as noted by many scholars and practitioners from varying traditions, including Theravadin, Japanese, and Chinese Zen." 

 

        Hofmann FG, Grossman P, Hinton DE. "Loving-Kindness and Compassion Meditation: Potential for Psychological Interventions." Clin Psychol Rev. 2011 November ; 31(7): 1126–1132. doi:10.1016/j.cpr.2011.07.003.

What Barrier?

Individual Liberation AND Social Transformation

     "As we start to wake up and realize that we are not separate from each other, nor from this wondrous earth, we also begin to realize that the ways we live together, and the ways we relate to the earth, need to be reconstructed as well. That means not only social engagement as service, but finding ways to address the problematic economic and political structures - the institutionalied forms of greed, ill will, and delusion - that are deeply implicated in the eco-crisis. Within such a notion of liberation, the path of personal transformation and the path of social transformation are not really separate from each other. We must reclaim the concept of awakening from an exclusively individualistic threrapeutic model and focus on how individual liberation also requires social transformation. Engagement in the world is how our personal awakening blossoms. 
     It just so happens that the Buddhist tradition provides a wonderful archetype that can help us to do that: the bodhisattva. We overcome deep-rooted self-centered habits by working compassionately for the healing of our societies and the healing of the earth. This is what's required for the Buddhist path to become truly liberative in the modern world."

       David Loy. "Awakening in the Age of Climate Change." Tricycle, Spring 2015.                               ww.tricycle.com

Life on the Razor's Edge

     What the heck does that mean? How about being fairly continuously aware of Ezra Bayda's "anxious quiver of being"? Can you acutely feel all sorts of needs - AND AT THE SAME TIME - know perfectly well that none of these can possibly satisfy? What about acutely feeling all sorts of aversions - AND AT THE SAME TIME - knowing perfectly well that avoiding these can't possibly satisfy either? Now what? 

     You've become fed-up with distractions, diversions, addictions, delusions! Self-centeredness has finally lost its allure.  
     The real world awaits. The heart-mind opens - outwards - to what is.
     

Ego is the last to go ...

     We're usually far more eager to claim ownership of a concept or the messenger, than to really understand and embody the message.

     There's an old story of several blind men coming across an elephant. Based on which part of the animal each had their hands on, each of their descriptions was completely different. The fellow holding the elephant's ear vs the one holding the foot, the belly etc. Yet they were all correct - partially.

     But most of us would rather grab hold of & claim as ours anything, even a partial truth, than to open up to & become porous to all of reality. Just more useless attempts at creating & maintaining a solid sense of self - ego.