"Our Suffering" is the Very Material with which we Practice

     “The path of spiritual practice is often called purification of the heart. We don’t have a choice about what we purify – rather, what needs purifying shows up in our lives. The question is whether we can be mindful enough to be present to it. Sometimes the suffering and pain we internalize goes deep into the core of who we think we are – whether it is a thirteen-year-old boy’s feeling of hating how he looks, other judgments we make about ourselves, or the multitude of judgments the world can make about us.
     The practice of mindfulness invites us to see that we are so much more than who we think we are and our full and beautiful lives are so much more than just our suffering. Can we be present to all of that too?”

       Larry Yang. “Awakening Together. The Spiritual Practice of Inclusivity and Community.” Wisdom Publications, 2017.                        excerpt published in Lion’s Roar, November 2017

At a Store's Doorway, Taos NM

Zen's Big Picture

     "Enlightenment is our true nature and our home, but the complexities of human life cause us to forget. That forgetting feels like exile, and we make elaborate structures of habit, conviction, and strategy to defend against its desolation. But this condition isn't hopeless; it's possible to dis­mantle those structures so we can return from an exile that was always illusory to a home that was always right under our feet.
      For many of us, there is something that pushes us and something that pulls us. We're pushed by our own pain and the pain we see in the world around us; we're pulled by intimations that there's something larger and more true than our ordinary self-oriented ways of experiencing life. Here's a tradition that says, Yes, we understand that, and there are ways to make those intima­tions not simply a matter of random chance but readily and consistently present. It's possible to make ourselves available, in all the hours of our days, to the grace we so long to be touched by, and to spread that grace to the world around us."                 Roshi Joan Sutherland 

Refining Disenchantment

     A recent post concluded with: "We can prevent a great deal of unnecessary suffering by carefully observing how craving & aversion operate in our daily life, recognizing their arising early, ... and shifting attention from these towards matters that will actually benefit us." http://jglovas.wixsite.com/awarenessnow/single-post/2017/07/14/Advertising
     Easy to say, but how can we actually put this into practice? First of all, we need to become disenchanted with life as it is. For some, especially those who've had a challenging childhood, and are reasonably in touch with what's going on internally & around them, disenchantment can start early in life. For many, disenchantment hits like a sledgehammer on their deathbed. For others, disenchantment ensues from major trauma, shattering their illusion of control, self-concept & worldview all at once ("shipwreck"). 
     "Disenchanted" is an interesting word, implying that our default tendency is sleep- or trance-like. So wisdom traditions, especially Buddhism, teach that we need to wake up or else continue suffering needlessly over & over again. So like a gardener, if we don't like the crops we're producing, we have to re-assess & optimize our gardening procedures. As in gardening, we are to minimize & finally eliminate all that impedes healthy crop growth - in our case, evolution of consciousness.

      “In practical terms, cultivating (the perception of not delighting in the whole world) can be implemented through a willingness to let go and relinquish whatever one is accustomed to clinging to, in particular one’s opinions and preferences, judgments and views. In this way a refinement takes place compared to ... freedom from sensual desire through dispassion and freedom from ill will and harming through cessation. At the present juncture even the more subtle traces of unwholesomeness in the form of any type of clinging are being relinquished.” 
     Analayo. "Mindfully Facing Disease & Death: Compassionate Advice from Early Buddhist Texts.” Wisdom, 2016.

Morning Sea Fog at Conrad Beach, Nova Scotia

The Zen of Not Knowing

     "Beginner’s mind is Zen practice in action. It is the mind that is innocent of preconceptions and expectations, judgments and prejudices. Beginner’s mind is just present to explore and observe and see 'things as they are.' I think of beginner’s mind as the mind that faces life like a small child, full of curiosity and wonder and amazement. 'I wonder what this is? I wonder what that is? I wonder what this means?' Without approaching things with a fixed point of view or a prior judgment, just asking 'What is it?'"
       Zenkei Blanche Hartman. "Seeds for a Boundless Life: Zen Teachings from the Heart." Shambhala, 2015. 

Photograph by David A. Lovas

Transcending Extreme Views

     We live in a time of partisanship: bias, prejudice, one-sidedness, discrimination, favoritism, partiality, sectarianism, factionalism. Vicious reflex aversion or frenzied blind support for topics ranging from politics, economics, religion, sex, gender, even sports, is based NOT on careful analysis of evidence, BUT solely on identification with certain groups. If "one of us" is criticized, no matter how justly, we immediately react as if it were a life-threatening personal attack. Yet it's just our ego being criticized.
     There is a much more nuanced, wiser & healthier approach:

     “Sympathizing with (extreme ends of a) perspective is easy; walking the knife-edge between them is more difficult. Can we employ each viewpoint to interrogate the other, without accepting either perspective as absolute? Such an approach can be discomforting because it is so destabilizing: what remains of one’s own standpoint? This process invokes the understanding of Buddhist practice … which emphasizes the realization of ‘nondwelling mind”: a mind that does not identify with any particular forms, including thought-forms such as ideologies, whether religious or secular.”
        David R. Loy. “A New Buddhist Path. Enlightenment Evolution and Ethics in the Modern World.” Wisdom Publications, 2015.

Soccer Hooligans - Getty Images

What If?

     If creative imagination materialized continuously, in real-time, each piece of material could perceive only "self" - who or what they are. Might not myriad pieces of material mistakenly assume separate individual identities, forgetting their true identity, nature or origin?
     But what if the materials began to realize that their properties were impermanence, unsatisfactoriness & not-self?

Are You Sure?

     "Real faith means holding ourselves open to the unconditional mystery which we encounter in every sphere of our life and which cannot be comprised in any formula. Real faith means the ability to endure life in the face of this mystery.” Martin Buber 


When You Are Old
W.B. Yeats

When you are old and grey and full of sleep, 
And nodding by the fire, take down this book, 
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look 
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace, 
And loved your beauty with love false or true, 
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, 
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars, 
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled 
And paced upon the mountains overhead 
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.



     “If you want a barometer for progress in practice, look at how skillful you are at holding ‘not sure’. It’s very different from what most spiritual disciplines teach. Exercise the skill of being mindfully ‘not sure’, apply it and try it out. Remember this is not just another technique or position we grasp in our search for security. Really try it out in your formal practice and in daily life. Start to experiment with the result of restraining the mind’s tendency to grasp at wanting to be sure.” Ajahn Munindo 


     "Certainty": http://www.johnlovas.com/2012/03/certainty.html

          "In the Forest" watercolour on rice paper by Krista Hasson   http://fogforestgallery.ca