Category Archives: heart

Balancing attention during meditation

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Here’s a quote from Chogyam Trungpa that I find extremely helpful in knowing how to “hold” your attention and expectations during meditation. If you are new, you might try doing these one at a time, and then find a way to give them equal balance at the same time.

In the practice of meditation, concentrating too heavily on the technique brings all kinds of mental activities, frustrations, and sexual and aggressive fantasies. So you keep just on the verge of your technique, with 25 percent of your attention. Another 25 percent is relaxing, a further 25 percent relates to making friends with oneself, and the last 25 percent connects with expectation — your mind is open to the possibility of something happening during this practice session.These four aspects of mindfulness have been referred to as the four wheels of a chariot.The ideal number of wheels we should have on our chariot is four, the four techniques of meditation: concentration, openness, awareness, and expectation. That leaves a lot of room for play. That is the approach in the buddhadharma, the Buddhist teachings. A lot of people in the lineage have practiced that way and have actually achieved a perfect state of enlightenment in one lifetime.

Like Panhala, which sends a poem each day, Ocean of Dharma sends a Trungpa quote most days. Check it out at oceanofdharma.com.

Second breakthrough

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My second big breakthrough in this year of meditating for 30 minutes each day has evolved over the past few days, and I am still integrating it. I can’t say exactly what it’s about yet because it’s a process that must unfold over time, and I don’t want to blindside anyone who’s significantly involved.

This deserves my care and attention, and that means keeping it close until I am clear how to proceed with [what I think are] everyone’s best interests in mind, as best I can.

So, I’m sorry, dear readers, that I can’t say more right now. I am looking forward to the time (hopefully in the next couple of months) when I can just blurt it out and let the world know!

This breakthrough is different from the first breakthrough, which was a shift in my point of view. This one  involves actually making some big changes in interacting with the world.

Change within followed by change without.

I feel excited! I feel a little intimidated but not scared. There are a lot of details to be worked out. Say a prayer and send loving energy if you feel so inclined.

~~~

Speaking of readers, as of today there have been 607 hits on this blog. Thank you! Thank you! THANK YOU!

I haven’t gotten any feedback on my decision to slow down on posting. If you want to share your opinion, give feedback, ask questions, make comments, it’s pretty easy to leave a comment. I believe you can even be anonymous. I read them all, delete the ones that are obviously spam, and approve the others for posting. Pretty simple.

I’d love to hear from you, even just a hello.

People problems popping up

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Had a difficult time sleeping last night because of problems at work. Wanted to go back to sleep this morning, but my feet got me out of bed and walked me to the zafu. I needed that.

In the middle of my third month of daily meditation, people problems are popping up.

The first was about working with a health care practitioner with whom I did not have rapport. After a couple of days and some wonderfully wise words from my friend Katie (“That’s not how I experience you, Mary Ann”), I decided not to work with that practitioner. She’s probably talented and certainly well-meaning. I know what it’s like to work with health care practitioners that I trust, and I’m glad I know the difference.

Now some problems with a colleague have come to a point where I feel like I need to speak to our boss. Depending on my boss’ handling of the situation, I could decide to leave my job.

Recently I ran across this quote from Chogyam Trungpa:

Without problems, we cannot tread on the path. We should feel grateful that we are in the samsaric world, the confused world, so that we can tread the path, that we are not sterile, completely cleaned out, that the world has not been taken over by some computerized system. There’s still room for rawness and ruggedness and roughness all over the place. Good luck!

So…I will remain centered, clear about my values, compassionate to others, and ready to rock and roll with whatever comes up.

Meeting with my teacher

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I had a good visit with my teacher tonight. I sat for the first sitting, and when the bell rang to begin kinhin, she tapped me on the shoulder, and we went to the practice review room.

The form is to give your name and your current practice instruction. Mary Ann Reynolds, whole body awareness.

I  talked about how my realization that everything is awareness is continuing to unfold.

It seems to be a big shift that changes everything because it changes the way I relate to everything. It seems to have softened my relationship with everything, including myself. I’ve become more aware of my awareness, and there are more moments when I am deeply present.

When the realization first began arising, I wanted to stuff it back down. I had a hunch that it was profound enough to mean real change, and part of me felt unsure and scared about that. Even then I knew that strategy probably wasn’t going to work.

The truth persisted in revealing itself. “Everything is awareness” is the best way I know of to put it into words, but it is so much more than words. It is an embodied realization. It feels like poetry.

Sometimes it seems so painfully obvious — that truth was always there, so why didn’t I realize it before? Why doesn’t everyone recognize this? Peg said that you can’t realize it as long as your conditioning gets in the way.

We also talked about pain. I told her of my experiments with perceiving it, moving it from foreground to background. She affirmed those and added something new to me that I feel curious about.

She said in her own practice, she noticed that whenever she was feeling pain, when she inquired within what the pain was about, it turned out to be some kind of resistance. Could be resistance to feeling sadness, or being still, for example. In that way, pain is a friend!

She said just the act of acknowledging pain and being curious about it softens it, and that there is almost always a response to her inquiry.

It could be a physiological shift, an inner image, a sound, a voice, an emotion.

I feel curious now about my pains! Also curious about what other truths are just waiting for me to realize without conditioning!

I shared some more of my personal history with Peg — childhood trauma, years later processing, the spontaneous release while reading Waking the Tiger. It felt good to share with her.

Can the world be different?

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Spent much of the morning online, catching up on Facebook and email, and finishing reading a remarkable article I started last week, The Women’s Crusade.

Here’s the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/magazine/23Women-t.html

The article mentions a nonprofit in Hyderabad, India, called Prajwala, on page 3. A 14-year-old Hyderabad girl from a poor family was forced into prostitution in New Delhi under false pretenses (a job as a maid). She witnessed the murders of 3 other girls who resisted. She was never paid and often beaten.

Eventually the police freed her and returned her to Hyderabad. She was taken in by Prajwala, which teaches new skills to girls rescued from brothels. She now earns a decent living as a bookbinder, is getting an education and helping put her younger sisters through school.

The thesis of the article is this: “With education and with help starting businesses, impoverished women can earn money and support their countries as well as their families. They represent perhaps the best hope for fighting global poverty.”

Here’s another quote: “In Asia alone about one million children working in the sex trade are held in conditions indistinguishable from slavery, according to a U.N. report…. India probably has more modern slaves than any other country.”

The wheels of my mind and heart began turning. Here, listen to them creak:

This is happening in India, the home of yoga, a practice that I love, that has given so much to me, and to so many other Americans, who are fortunate enough to be able to take yoga classes and go on yoga vacations and retreats.

Wow, this is the kind of reporting (from Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn) that I would pay for. It’s not just about how bad things are. The article notes a few organizations that are making a difference in places around the planet.

Most beautifully, it provides a big insight into how to make the seemingly impossible actually happen — end poverty by focusing on educating and empowering women.

Creak. What if, and this is a big what if, American yogis adopted Prajwala as their nonprofit of choice, to give something back to the country that gave us yoga?

I emailed Prajwala with questions. It’s not as easy as you think — they don’t take PayPal, for one. I want to know how to help — not just by giving money, but by connecting American yogis to Prajwala. How can I best proceed? Ideas welcome!

My mind was churning with this when I sat on the zafu. First my body became still, then my breath slowed, my mind slowly slowed, my energy softened.

It’s not about me. It’s something moving through me.

It comes from a heart that has repeatedly been horrified by how humans can treat each other and a mind that wants so much to believe that the world can be different.

I ask you, can it?

Life and love are synonymous

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Today is Valentine’s Day and also Chinese New Year. The zendo was packed this morning. I usually see Peg on Sunday mornings, but not today — I got there a little later than usual, not expecting a group of people in line ahead of me, waiting to see her. She didn’t have time to see everyone, including me.

I did a walking meditation, a seated meditation, another walking meditation, and then it was time for the service.

Peg passed out a reading, which we all read together aloud and then discussed. My Valentine’s Day gift to you, dear readers, is to share the text. My skills in formatting in WordPress are not that developed, so imagine this, in the shape of a heart.

Love Beyond Emotion, by Ligia Dantes, from The Unmanifest Self: Transcending the Limits of Ordinary Consciousness

As long as our relationships are dependent on our emotional state, we cannot enjoy peace among others or within ourselves. Emotions swing between extremes and are too varied in intensity for the entire human organism to live a harmonious life. A change in this way of functioning is desperately needed if peace is to prevail in the world.

Love is true neutrality; it does not judge or evaluate. It does not feel good or bad; since it is not mere thought, it does not change into an opposite. It does not like or dislike. It does not blame, so it does not need to forgive. It does not have choices or preferences, opinions or positions. It does not dictate, is not authoritative.

Love does not differentiate between life and death. It has no expectations other than what is. Love is not an ideal to venerate; it cannot be known through knowledge or thought. Love is not words, but the energy of life itself without opposites, without death.

Love is a way of being, experienced by humans and visible only in our actions. Life and love are synonymous. They are the eternal activity of universal energy without boundaries, movement, or form.

Love, being all-encompassing, is the context of all contents of the universe, and thus is infinite. And what is infinite cannot be known within the finite mind. Only in a state of being that is beyond the finite human mind-form can love be the manifest. Thus love is manifest-unmanifest, form and emptiness. Our minds can express it only in paradox.

Love is all life is and, as such, can only be lived.

I like the equation of love being the energy of life itself, visible only in our actions.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

Sitting with compassion

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Third morning of sitting early. Only had time for 20 minutes; had to get my granddaughter up, dressed, and ready for school. Will pick up the other 10 minutes this evening.

I reset the alarm for earlier. I like getting 30 minutes in.

Yesterday after sitting, I went to my chiropractor, Dr. Chandler Collins, and after testing and doing what I think of as anchoring muscle combinations, he adjusted first my left ilium and then my right.

It seemed like not much moved. The adjustments were small, seemed to be only a couple of millimeters, if that. But then…I noticed feeling stronger when I stood, not like you could knock me over with a feather, which is how I’ve felt since April 25, 1996, the date of a serious car wreck that destabilized my sacrum/pelvis.

Yesterday was a day of getting used to it. Noticing how standing is different, how walking is different, how driving is different. By the end of the day, soreness in new places. Going to sleep, not being able to tell if my neck was crooked. Reorganizing, reorienting.

There are  more adjustments to be done next week. Something to do with the Hamstring Group. (They’re architects, you know. j/k) Another week of keeping my core stable and avoiding torque. And then, maybe he’ll give me some homework and I can really get strong.

Practice today centered on something Peg said on Sunday. I was attempting to convey how my realization that awareness is everything, everything is awareness, was rippling out into my life. How my dislike for certain characters, like Pat Robertson and Baby Doc Duvalier, were parts of my awareness. How I feel some responsibility for the quality of my awareness, and how it doesn’t feel good to feel contempt or scorn toward others.

She said, “Do you know them?”

No. I don’t. I only know what I’ve read or seen or heard about them. I’ve never met them.

Chances are, if I did know them, who they are would of course be different than how I judge them now. I’d know them with breath, voice, movement, energy, a family, relationships, desires, suffering, eye movements, context, filters. They’d be fuller and more complex, not demonized. I could find compassion for them. I would be curious about their awareness and compassion.

Working with a meditation teacher

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Before late 2009, I meditated for several years without a teacher, usually for 20 minutes a day. My meditation sessions were relaxing. Sometimes they were expanding. Sometimes my mind was caught up in thoughts. Sometimes I entered deep states of bliss.

After the first few months, I did not have a sense of progression. What I experienced seemed to repeat itself at random. It was all beneficial, but random. I didn’t have a sense of where I might be headed, except there was a possibility that something called “enlightenment” might be at the end of this path.

I discovered that Peg was a meditation coach late last year, which encouraged me to commit to a daily practice. It actually seemed like a no-brainer, as in, “Mary Ann, you live in a city with a Zen priest who can function as a meditation coach! You are privileged beyond your wildest dreams and cannot pass this up!”

Today Peg encouraged the sangha members to meditate for 30 minutes daily and to meet with her weekly, and before each meeting, to remind her of our full name and our current practice. She coaches a stream of people on Sunday mornings.

By current practice, she means what she has coached us to do in meditation. For some, their current practice might be to focus on their breath. My current practice is to start with a body scan and then focus on whole body awareness.

This isn’t random. Peg has experience with both spiral dynamics and meditation, a powerful combination that means she has the skill and experience to know what to prescribe.

For instance, often a meditator will take a big leap in growth over a short time and then will level off into a plateau. The plateau is necessary to integrate the big leap. Then another big leap occurs, followed by a plateau. And so on.

She knows what the big leaps and plateaus are likely to be about, and through her coaching, can identify where a meditator is on the path and prepare them for what’s ahead.

Now I have a sense of progression and a teacher I can trust. It makes a difference. I’m actually going somewhere. It’s called maturity or enlightenment. They may even be the same thing.

Falling in love with awareness

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I sat early this morning, before work. Long busy day, just now having time to post. Feeling tired, so this will be short.

Don’t remember details of this morning’s sit. Just that then, and later in the day, and even now as I think about it, I feel like I am falling in love with awareness.

It’s a subtle yet major shift in my universe, to understand that awareness is everything. From that realization, an unveiling is slowly taking place. I can’t hurry it or even describe it right now.

I can only ooh and ahh as the process unfolds.

Going to bed now. Can’t wait to sit again tomorrow.

This being human is a guest house

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Today my sitting was like Rumi’s poem, full text below. My granddaughter, Hannah, had spent the night and was still asleep when I got up to pee, feed the cats, and do my sitting.

No sooner had I done my body scan than I heard a key in the door. My daughter, Lela, had come to wake Hannah up and get her ready for school.

I greeted Lela verbally with a buoyant “good morning”. I surmise she saw me sitting. I didn’t open my eyes.

I notice how Lela behaves differently when she knows I’m sitting. She behaves like she’s in church, all quiet and tip-toe-y.  She takes care not to disturb me. She’s very respectful.

I hear them speak in hushed voices. There is no yelling or galloping or anguish. The morning rituals are peaceful for them too.

Somehow this reverent attitude strikes me as hilarious! This church may look quiet and still, but it includes bursting forth!

When they leave, I yell, “Goodbye, you two fabulous beings! I love you!!”

And then I sat some more, welcoming other guests.

Guest House

This being human is a guest house
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.