Muddy Practice

…

muddypractice — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 05:06:26 +0000

you illuminated words are like honeyed milk
which balms my soul

even when i feel that i am dying inside
wracked by the stray meanderings of mind
cornered by the pointless flailing of my anger, the demons of my neuroses and fears lashing out at me
taking succor from your expressions of profound love and compassion and unadulterated wisdom
how can i fail to reach the ultimate goal?

my illuminated winds like honeyed milk
balm my soul

like the first warm spring day
again i feel rejuvenated
bubbling over with energy to give to loved ones
contentedly in bliss i can sit still for hours
as if in love again for the first itme

taking such succcor and inspiration from the majesty of unadulterated reality
how can i fail to extinguish suffering?

dreamt last night

muddypractice — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 06:01:24 +0000

I am with a couple of old friends. We are in NYC, watching workmen shovel and sweep away enormous clumps of dirt that are the size of bales of hay. Part of their routine is to push the dirt against the curb so that pools of recent storm water can soak it up and dissolve it and they will not present an obstacle to passing traffic. As the men do so, clumps of the dirt scatter through the air and end up adhering to our clothing and skin. We take the time to pick them off of us. The texture is something like that of a moistened steel wool pad or the coarse whiskers of some animal. Some of the portions of street that have been cleaned now look like rich inlaid marble glistening after a quick sunshower.

Eventually the workmen hand tools to us; it is our turn to sweep some of the dirt-bales. Almost immediately a section of a tool pricks a spot on the inside of my wrist, and blood gushes out from an opening the size of a perforation that an office hole-punch would make. I am taken by the color of the blood, it is an almost otherworldly-seeming bright beautiful red. I try to stop the bleeding on my own by pressing the fingers of my other hand against it, but soon begin to feel faint and realize that I must forget the cleaning business at hand for the moment and seek some assistance in staunching the wound.

~StREsS~, the subtle body, etc.

muddypractice — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 08:31:38 +0000

I’ve written previously here about how one often-overlooked aspect to so-called spiritual practice is that involving the subtle energetic body. Granted, many or probably most people in our culture may look at you a little funny if you start talking about the subject of the subtle energetic system, but at the same time, many of those same people appreciate the feeling of receiving a good massage or the effect of a yoga class or an acupuncture treatment. Now, all of those things work in a rather direct fashion on the subtle body, but it’s perhaps worth realizing that everything affects our subtle energies; hence the feelings of relaxation and well-being that we derive from eating nourishing foods that are appropriate to our constitution, or engaging in pleasurable sexual activity, or spending time in a pleasing physical environment. By the same token, we are certainly familiar with the frazzled nerves and general overstressedness of our systems that can result from being in overstimulating, unpleasant environments, or overworking, or being around abrasive people, not getting enough rest, etc.

The unfortunate fact is, most reading this (well, okay, both of you…and by both of you, I’m referring to my left and right eyeballs!) live in a world in which our subtle energetic systems are quite out of whack, rendering even initial forays into spiritual practice far more difficult then they need be. Even the most health-conscious of us are constantly being upset, overstimulated and in general thrown out of balance by the world in which we find ourselves living. Taking time to undo the stress that accumulates in us can make efforts at meditative or other practices worlds easier.

I was so happy to recently come across some excellent articles by the amazing Tsoknyi Rinpoche which deal with this very subject matter. It’s at once heartening and exciting to me that a Buddhist teacher is taking the time to address these issues in very explicit terms. The first two articles are about working with Lung (rlung), which is equivalent to Vata in the Ayurvedic system. Due to the chaotic, stressful, overstimulating nature of contemporary life in our culture, even those of us whose Lung has not been aggravated to the point of chronic anxiety/depression still suffer from low-grade conditions of tension, discomfort, and emotional imbalances which rob us of the feelings of peace and well-being that are native to us. In addressing these imbalances, the tensions and impurities in our energetic systems begin to dissolve and purify, and spiritual practice is made a thousandfold easier to pursue.

From Part 1 of A Very Human Condition: Subtle Body Difficulties in a Fast-Paced Life

…In fast-paced societies, we aren’t taught about subtle body agitation, but we can feel something is wrong. So we try to dispel the distress with remedies using holidays, parties, drugs and drink, meditation, massage, going to the gym, self-help workshops, yoga classes, you name it–hoping one of them will do the trick. They all can bring lung down temporarily, but subtle body’s deeply etched patterns have not been touched and the trouble returns as soon as we swing back into high gear.

from Part 2 of A Very Human Condition: Subtle Body Difficulties in a Fast-Paced Life

…However, even though mind is less cloudy and body less painful, when things become very active again, lung will most likely race back into action. Despite ego’s belief that we need lung’s full speed to be successful, we really don’t. So simply talk to lung, saying something like, ” Come on back down, Honey. This is your cozy home, right here below the navel. You don’t need to be racing all over the place. Stay in your cozy home.” By using kindness, rather then ego’s hope and fear-inducing stories, upward moving lung will calm down and learn to stay in its proper place, even when we have a busy day. Really, talking to lung this way helps. And it’s important for another reason as well. Lung can only do its job of balancing mind and body from within its home below the navel.

In the third article that I am linking to here, Rinpoche points out how difficult it is for many of us feel in touch with our natural openness and warm-heartedness, due to, yup, you guessed it, the Lung problems that most of us are afflicted with to various degrees.

Here is a quote from What Does it Really Take to Open the Heart of Love?

…It seems that a lot of today’s problems are connected to this nervous speediness, problems that keep us from feeling the pulse of basic love. If you look at our own heart right now, can you say it’s really open and at ease? Actually look and see. Chances are our hearts are not able to stay consistently open because we don’t feel that basic ease of well-being.

Some stuff I found that I wrote a few months back…

muddypractice — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 06:46:44 +0000

…It’s the human condition, we all struggle with feeling limited. None of us have the incontrovertible wisdom that we long for, none of us love the way we long to, so I don’t know why I line up and take my turn in habitually berating myself for not living up to illusory perfectionist ideals.

In this life that I’m dreaming, I have difficulty surrendering to pleasure, difficulty surrendering to fear, difficulty surrendering to difficult emotions

If you examine different desires, whether they are for thing “x” or for experience “y”, they are the same desire, that is, the quality or felt sensation of the “wanting” is the same in every case. Just as in all desires, whether “for things” or to be rid of things, the desire is always that of wanting the present situation, the present reality to change. No matter what new situations are introduced, the fickle mind is never satisfied, never completely satisfied.

“Have I Said It?”

muddypractice — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 18:51:39 +0000

Lately I have been enjoying this series of words by that most controversial of gurus, Franklin Jones. Now, I have never been able to warm up to his prose, despite the fact that people whom I warmly respect will not hesitate to recommend his “Method of the Siddhas” or “The Paradox of Instruction”. However, this series of writings is much more up my alley. Ironically, it was never among the countless works that ended up being published during his lifetime or posthumously.

Perhaps every spiritual teacher has one or two pet themes that they harp upon. It may be advice to us to forego our obsessions with “women and gold” or to inquire into the source of “the I” or to realize the vanity that is “spiritual materialism”. For Jones, it seemed to harp around the idea that seeking is a primal mistake of sorts and that happiness, bliss, etc., is “always already the case” if we would just drop our habitual seeking.

Thank you to the proprietor of the Beezone website for hosting these texts; I think that they are indeed worth a look.

A brief sample from one of the chapters:

The life of seeking

Is founded in prior dilemma,

And it does not work.

The search is futile.

Ultimately

The search is failing.

The principle of the search

Is suffering.

To be

In the state of seeking,

Whatever the form,

Is to be

In the same state

Of suffering.

Fear is the most basic form

Of seeking.

Your trouble is an illusion.

Your search is a reaction

To your suffering.

Your actual dilemma

Has barely been conceived by you,

Barely experienced.

At the very best,

The search itself begins

To break down.

Eventually everything will break down.

Those who dream long enough,

Who try all the alternatives within the dream,

Who have suffered all the attainments

And failures within the dream,

Who no longer have anywhere to go,

Who are only dreaming,

Who are suffering,

Who no longer take their search “seriously,”

For whom the search is no longer

The thing to which they resort,

Who have despaired of their adventures,

Their ecstasies, their attainments,

Their ways, their methods,

Who are only suffering,

Who are only in dilemma,

Who in fact are only experiencing this contraction,

The compulsive avoidance of relationship,

But are doing nothing about it any longer,

Who know they cannot do anything

About it any longer-

They become sensitive

To the sunlight.

When you no longer have any alternatives,

When the search has died,

Then truth becomes your real possibility.

Then truth, real life,

Enters as a living possibility.

It will be your obvious need

When you have no options.

When you no longer

Have any more options,

When you have worn yourself out

Doing your number,

And you have tried

All the trips and methods,

Paths and lifestyles,

Strategies and places to go,

Then all of that

Begins to break down.

That is really the most hopeful sign.

You are only upset,

So what difference

Does the search make?

When all that has failed,

Then suffering itself becomes the point,

Becomes the experience,

Rather than all of the seeking

That is only a reaction to it.

Then a man falls into his suffering,

Becomes conscious of his suffering,

Understands his suffering,

And sees what is already the case.

When there is no defense left,

When the bottom falls out,

When there is nothing to stand on,

That is “liberation.”

When you see it absolutely,

When you see the thing itself,

The simple thing,

That is the end of it.

You fall apart.

You scream,

Or you can’t say anything,

But it just ends.

All of a sudden

The whole process

Is not going on anymore.

It becomes unnecessary and,

At last,

Impossible.

There is only

Divine consciousness,

And you are that.

There is only bliss.

Ruh-roh

muddypractice — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 20:34:26 +0000

Now, I’m not suggesting that everyone throw away (or more, uh, sanely, of course, taper slowly off of) their pills, but apparently the psychopharmaceutical industry has been effing us up the proverbial a for the past couple of decades or so.

N.B. the evidence suggesting this arrives not from rabid “anti-psychiatry” cranks or say, rank and file Scientologists, but rather from three soberly-written tomes reviewed here in the NYRB.

Speaking of the cranks and quacks, though, if I get around to it, then I will try to post a piece regarding my own highly unscientific theories regarding some aspects of mental illness, at least the garden-variety anxiety ‘n’ depression ones. In case of schizophrenia, I’m afraid I don’t even have benignly unhelpful wild speculation to proffer, other than advising consulting a shaman…and seeing as if you’re reading this you probably live in a culture where the only “shamans” are the hokey variety advertising in the back of new age publications, then my slim parcel of advice is even less helpful.

ANYHOW, have a great day, everyone!

For some reason I was thinking about this quote today…

muddypractice — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 02:27:07 +0000

The following is from a dialogue between Robert Hunter (who is perhaps best known for his role as a lyricist for the Grateful Dead) and Terence McKenna.

My personal take on the “secret” of DMT: it was long, hard work making this world real. It was, and is, done for a purpose. To have others. To believe in them fully in order to experience love. It goes against common sense to try and see through it. Ignorance is the primary condition of Eden. But entropy is at work and a world made for love is not satisfied with the transformational edict “eat and be eaten” but kills and does not eat. A sense of ultimate unity is lost and the delusion of fundamental diversity breeds alienation. This is not Eden. Yet the monad doesn’t face itself and subsume Its creation. The failing would be eternal. Therefore, doors are opened and enough of the plot is “made flesh” to allow orientation regarding the surface gist of the matter. Collectivism is a wrong approach to nostalgia for the purity of the monad. Healthy diversity perpetuates the rationale of the creation, such as it is. Healthy men, women, races and nations evolving gladly to a recognition of the source, rejoining it in a gradual and rejoicing manner, “bringing in the sheaves,” would be a better solution to the human aspect of this work, and is the substance of sacred ceremonial.

My take could be way off base but anything more Gnostic is off-putting. Phil Dick fell down that sink. And Lovecraft, I wouldn’t doubt, though he professed no belief in what he wrote.

Bonus: here is a video of Kathleen Harrison talking about DMT, including a mention of smoking it on her first date with Terence…

Andy Warhol quote

muddypractice — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 15:58:12 +0000

“Before I was shot, I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there — I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life. Right when I was being shot and ever since, I knew that I was watching television.”

Depressed by the state of the world?

muddypractice — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 20:37:50 +0000

Things are pretty awful here.

I was recently reading a teaching on Guru Rinpoche given by the Khenpos. I think this is a beautiful and inspirational story.

Buddha Shakyamuni taught that there are infinite world systems containing an infinite number of sentient beings. Therefore, there are also countless emanations of enlightened beings to serve their awakening. There are thirty-six other world systems which are near our own. Each one hosts a different emanation of Guru Padmasambhava. I will tell you about one of these worlds. To the east of here is a world where the concept of poverty does not even exist. Buddha Shakyamuni and Guru Padmasambhava have both emanated there to give Sutra and Vajrayana teachings. Being so strong and wealthy, it was only through the teachings that people in this world learned about poverty and imbalances like we have on earth. Upon hearing of this, they thought, “Oh, what a wonderful place! If only it was like that here, we could practice generosity and serve others. There is something very special in the acts of giving and receiving. It would be nice if we had that kind of situation in our world.” This is an example of the influence of Guru Padmasambhava on beings in one of the thirty-six relatively nearby worlds.

We all get overwhelmed with the suffering that we experience, see around us and learn about via the media. I love the way this beautiful story flips the situation as we normally perceive it on its head and inspires us to take advantage of the inexhaustible resources of wealth that we all have within us.

The story speaks to something that I love about Vajrayana and Buddhism in general. If one reads the sutras there is such an immense worldview described within– infinite dazzling universes, infinite pure Buddha lands. Towards further elucidation, Vajrayana and Mahayana speak to any felt impoverishedness of self with which we struggle, and reveal ourselves and all others to be resplendent with sublime qualities.

In our culture we have a tendency, as Ngawang Zangpo writes in Guru Rinpoche: His Life and Times, to “view every person and situation as a challenge to ‘name the ten things wrong with this picture’”. The pure view of Vajrayana, on the other hand, encourages us to view ourselves and others as pure and without fault. What a difference such a view makes, and what a genuine panacea it can be if we take even moderate steps towards viewing our world (i.e., our projections) that way. It perhaps sounds simple, reductive, and Pollyanna-ish, but on the contrary it actually presents a much more realistic view than our habitual cynicism which is constantly being confirmed and reinforced by our cultural surroundings, the media, etc.

note to self

muddypractice — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 00:28:13 +0000

the true guru will introduce you to yourself

why would it be any other way?

don’t trust those who lead you away

it’s not that they have evil motives

but they are distracted by that which obscures their self

this holds true in every realm of relationship

if you have made mistakes on the path home

then why not be guided by those who point you in direct fashion, as opposed to those who react from their own fear and confusion!

real love is a good place to start as far as all of that is concerned

seeing as it reflects our true self, we know it when we are present with it!