Forgiveness is fundamental to our well-being and our spiritual growth, and is central to the teachings of Jesus, Buddha, and other spiritual figures. So why do we so often forget (or refuse) to put it into practice?
At this time of year we hear a lot of Hallmark card rhetoric about peace on Earth and goodwill towards men. But that very peace and goodwill begins in your own heart, and it expands outward from there. Forgive those who have trespassed against you, just as you would wish to be forgiven for your trespasses. Forgiveness and compassion are the prerequisites to peace on earth. Start where you are. Who can you forgive right now, in this very moment? And how would that change your experience of the world? Holy child, what in the hell are you waiting for? Be the change you want to see in the world.
Join Dennis Hunter for a free 37-minute satsang (dharma talk) exploring the stickiness of resentments, the freedom of letting go, and the vital role of forgiveness in spiritual awakening. Adapted from material presented in Chapter 13 of You Are Buddha: A Guide to Becoming What You Are.
Recorded on Christmas Eve, 2014.
Showing posts with label growing up. Show all posts
Showing posts with label growing up. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 24, 2014
Sunday, July 27, 2014
Boyhood
There is a moment in Richard Linklater's new film Boyhood when the film's main character, Mason — caught deep in the throes of the most awkward transitional years of high school — realizes that growing up is not necessarily the guaranteed outcome of getting older. In a pensive, philosophical conversation between Mason and his girlfriend — the kind of intelligent, emotionally engaged dialogue that has become like Linklater's filmic signature — Mason reflects on the fact that his mother, who has worked hard to be as grown up and responsible as she can be, still seems as lost and confused about the direction of her life as he is about his own.
Boyhood is unlike anything else I've ever seen in cinema, just as Linklater is unlike any other director working today. Over the course of the film we watch Mason grow from a shy, introverted six-year-old into a shy, introverted young man going off to college. But rather than using multiple actors or special effects to depict Mason and his family aging across the years, Linklater filmed the same group of actors repeatedly over the course of 12 years. As Mason's character ages, so does the actor playing him, along with his family members. The effect is that, although Boyhood is a fictional story, it illustrates the joys and pain of childhood and growing up in a way that is profoundly authentic and true-to-life.
But what does it even mean to grow up? Who the hell really knows? It seems to have a lot to do with taking responsibility for ourselves, getting with the program, and becoming successful in life — at least that's the message that the adults in Mason's world keep preaching at him. Do your homework, complete your chores, get ahead in school, find something you're good at and excel in life. But for all their good intentions and rhetoric, those very same adults keep struggling to find their own way in the world, and repeating mistake after embarrassing mistake. Mason's mother keeps marrying the wrong guys, and his father seems stuck in a perpetually rebellious childhood phase of his own.
Boyhood is unlike anything else I've ever seen in cinema, just as Linklater is unlike any other director working today. Over the course of the film we watch Mason grow from a shy, introverted six-year-old into a shy, introverted young man going off to college. But rather than using multiple actors or special effects to depict Mason and his family aging across the years, Linklater filmed the same group of actors repeatedly over the course of 12 years. As Mason's character ages, so does the actor playing him, along with his family members. The effect is that, although Boyhood is a fictional story, it illustrates the joys and pain of childhood and growing up in a way that is profoundly authentic and true-to-life.
But what does it even mean to grow up? Who the hell really knows? It seems to have a lot to do with taking responsibility for ourselves, getting with the program, and becoming successful in life — at least that's the message that the adults in Mason's world keep preaching at him. Do your homework, complete your chores, get ahead in school, find something you're good at and excel in life. But for all their good intentions and rhetoric, those very same adults keep struggling to find their own way in the world, and repeating mistake after embarrassing mistake. Mason's mother keeps marrying the wrong guys, and his father seems stuck in a perpetually rebellious childhood phase of his own.
Wednesday, June 4, 2014
YOU ARE BUDDHA
"Combining insight into the spiritual path with engaging personal anecdotes, You Are Buddha introduces Buddhist practices and philosophy to support whatever path you're on."
— Susan Piver, Founder, The Open Heart Project, New York Times best-selling author of The Wisdom of a Broken Heart
"You Are Buddha speaks about the nature of our mind and the spiritual path in a very fresh and personal way, making profound insights and practices readily accessible. By looking at ancient wisdom teachings through a contemporary lens and sharing his own rich experiences on the path, Dennis Hunter offers an approach to the Buddhist teachings that can be employed by readers of all kinds of backgrounds. There is no need to label oneself a Buddhist to benefit from this book and discover the basic nature that we all share."
— Khenpo Karl Brunnhölzl, author of The Heart Attack Sutra and The Center of the Sunlit Sky
"Starting from the most profound understanding of the Buddha’s teachings, You Are Buddha offers an elegant and practical guide to bringing these insights into your daily life. The presentations of meditation practice, and working with negative thoughts and emotions, are especially valuable. Because this book is grounded in Dennis Hunter’s own deep personal experience and his extensive practice of meditation, it brings a very contemporary perspective to these classical teachings."
— Andy Karr, author of Contemplating Reality: A Pracititioner’s Guide to the View in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism and co-author of The Practice of Contemplative Photography: Seeing the World with Fresh Eyes
DISTRIBUTION DETAILS
INDIVIDUALS:
U.S. paperback available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble
European paperback available from Amazon Europe (U.K., France, Germany, Spain, Italy)
Also available in paperback at the CreateSpace store
Available at Amazon for Kindle readers and apps
Available for iBooks at the iTunes store
Available at Barnes and Noble for Nook e-readers
Available for all e-book readers at SmashWords
BOOKSTORES, LIBRARIES AND INSTITUTIONS:
The book is available through Ingram and other industry-standard ordering systems. Bookstores or libraries can also order the book with reseller/institutional discounts with a free Createspace Direct account.
EVERYONE:
Come join the open Facebook group YOU ARE BUDDHA for news, reviews, information about readings, workshops and book-related events, discussions, and more!
WORLDWIDE:
You Are Buddha is available in various editions (paperback and/or e-book) not only in the U.S. but also in Canada, the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan, Mexico, Brazil, India, and Australia! Check your specific country's Amazon page to see which editions are available where you live.
STAY IN TOUCH:
Email me at onehumanjourney@gmail.com if you have any questions about the book, would like to request a review copy, or would like to schedule a reading, workshop or book-related event.
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All the best to you.
Dennis
Sunday, October 27, 2013
Get Over Yourself: Resisting the Tyranny of Ego
When I lived in the monastery, one of the most profound and challenging aspects of our training as monastics was the principle of choicelessness.
As humans, we ordinarily spend a vast amount of time — maybe even the majority of our time — fussing over our personal preferences about everything from our food to our clothing and appearance to the creature comforts of our home. A big chunk of this time goes into trying to get our way and impose our personal preferences on other people, and negotiating all the conflict that arises from clashing preferences. Our partner feels like eating sushi tonight and watching a certain TV show, but we feel like eating pasta and watching a different TV show.
Dropping the Habit
Like Goldilocks in the children's fable, we jump constantly from one experience to another, always searching for the one that's "just right" — the one that fulfills our personal preferences. We spend our lives trying to make ourselves comfortable by selecting and acquiring the objects that meet our criteria. But our preferences are fickle and quixotic, and things often don't live up to our expectations. The movie we so looked forward to — and coerced our friends into seeing with us — turns out to be dreadful, and we leave the theater feeling disappointed (and chastened by our friends). The pasta that pleased us yesterday bores us today. The shirt we loved when we bought it last season looks like a fright when we put it on now.
In the monastery we were encouraged to drop this self-defeating habit and to work, instead, with the discipline of choicelessness.
Life Does Not Revolve Around You
You learn very quickly in the monastery that life does not revolve around you and your personal preferences. As in the military, there's a structure and a program to be followed for pretty much everything. You either get with the program, and learn to be generally okay with it, or you make yourself miserable by struggling against it. That's your choice. Which one is more appealing?
That may sound harsh, and in some ways it is. But when you actually embrace choicelessness as a practice, a form of spiritual training, it can open you up in unexpected ways. You start to see that the quick thrill of getting what you want pales next to the deeper sense of contentment that comes from accepting that which is, without complaint or struggle.
Sometimes a Burrito is Just a Burrito
You may still hate the burritos that are served every two weeks, like clockwork; you may still hate the film that was chosen by the group for movie night. You may hate the schedule, and feel a burning resentment at being coerced out of your warm bed and into the cold meditation hall at 6 a.m. for the first practice session of the day. But after a while you start to glimpse that your personal preferences are just that: they're just your personal preferences. You begin to see that you are enslaved to them, and they make you miserable because you take them so seriously and believe it's your job to satisfy them all the time. The less seriously you take them — that is, the more you stop whining and get with the program — the less miserable you make yourself and those around you. You begin to taste the freedom that comes from not blindly following your own patterns and urges.
Maybe you discover that the burrito is not the dramatic culinary insult that you have made it out to be. It's just food, after all, and you could actually do something completely contrary to habit, like choose to eat the burrito anyway, without throwing a temper tantrum because it's not what you like. In doing so, you may even experience a faint glimmer of gratitude that, unlike so many other people in the world, you have a burrito to eat in the first place. What's that, you say? A burrito isn't what you wanted? So what? Who said life was supposed to give you everything you want all the time?
Choicelessness in Everyday Life
You don't have to go to the extremes of shaving your head and living like a monk or a nun to work with the practice of choicelessness. You can experiment with it in your everyday life. Take one small opportunity each day to notice when your ego is trying to manipulate a situation to get your way — and when you notice that, just see if you can drop it. If there's a discussion between you and your partner or your friends about what to do on a Friday night, make a conscious decision to drop your personal agenda and just do what they want to do instead. Watch your ego kicking and screaming like a brat as you eat the burrito. Eat it anyway. It's food. What's the big deal? Notice, afterwards, how your whole world did not, in fact, come crashing down as your ego predicted it would.
The spiritual path is about learning to recognize and peel away the layers of our individual ego — with all its demands and distortions, its likes and dislikes — in order to uncover the egoless, undifferentiated Being that is our true nature. As long as we are caught up in the lifelong momentum of trying to satisfy our ego's preferences and keep ego happy, it will be hard to make much progress at peeling away those layers. The practice of choicelessness is a tool that helps us, moment by moment, drop down through the onion, one layer at a time.
It's a lifelong practice, and I'm not sure that anybody really gets it perfect. But the more you can drop your mind's struggles to acquire what you like and push away what you dislike, the more possible it becomes to glimpse the truth and to find a more abiding form of contentment.
Seng-ts'an, one of the forefathers of Zen Buddhism, put it like this:
You are cordially invited to get over yourself — starting right now.
As humans, we ordinarily spend a vast amount of time — maybe even the majority of our time — fussing over our personal preferences about everything from our food to our clothing and appearance to the creature comforts of our home. A big chunk of this time goes into trying to get our way and impose our personal preferences on other people, and negotiating all the conflict that arises from clashing preferences. Our partner feels like eating sushi tonight and watching a certain TV show, but we feel like eating pasta and watching a different TV show.
Dropping the Habit
Like Goldilocks in the children's fable, we jump constantly from one experience to another, always searching for the one that's "just right" — the one that fulfills our personal preferences. We spend our lives trying to make ourselves comfortable by selecting and acquiring the objects that meet our criteria. But our preferences are fickle and quixotic, and things often don't live up to our expectations. The movie we so looked forward to — and coerced our friends into seeing with us — turns out to be dreadful, and we leave the theater feeling disappointed (and chastened by our friends). The pasta that pleased us yesterday bores us today. The shirt we loved when we bought it last season looks like a fright when we put it on now. In the monastery we were encouraged to drop this self-defeating habit and to work, instead, with the discipline of choicelessness.
- Forget about your appearance. Leave your fancy hair products behind. Shave your head like everyone else. Forget about jewelry and make-up and accessories and your favorite clothing — they're not allowed. Wear the simple robes that are given to you, which (surprise!) look like everyone else's. Stop trying to be "unique" and to "express yourself" with your appearance. That's just your ego.
- Forget about your eating preferences. Eat the food that is prepared for you, and eat it only when it's placed in front of you at the appointed hour. If you don't like the food, you're cordially invited to keep your complaints to yourself. Or don't eat.
- Forget about your creature comforts. Sleep in the bed that's offered to you. If you don't like your roommate's snoring, you're cordially invited to get over it. Try wearing earplugs.
- Forget about sleeping in, or planning your day according to your mood. Wake up with the others and follow the schedule. Do your practices. Do your chores. Do your work. Don't like the schedule? You're cordially invited to get used to it.
- Forget about escaping on Open Day into the movie of your choice. You can choose to watch the one movie that is provided on Friday night — which is selected by majority vote — or you can choose not to watch it. Don't like it? Leave the room. Go to bed early.
Life Does Not Revolve Around You
You learn very quickly in the monastery that life does not revolve around you and your personal preferences. As in the military, there's a structure and a program to be followed for pretty much everything. You either get with the program, and learn to be generally okay with it, or you make yourself miserable by struggling against it. That's your choice. Which one is more appealing?
That may sound harsh, and in some ways it is. But when you actually embrace choicelessness as a practice, a form of spiritual training, it can open you up in unexpected ways. You start to see that the quick thrill of getting what you want pales next to the deeper sense of contentment that comes from accepting that which is, without complaint or struggle.
You've spent your whole life trying to get everything and everyone around you to align with your personal preferences. How's that working for you? Maybe, just maybe, it has caused more trouble than it's worth. So how about dropping all that and just letting things be as they are?
Sometimes a Burrito is Just a Burrito
You may still hate the burritos that are served every two weeks, like clockwork; you may still hate the film that was chosen by the group for movie night. You may hate the schedule, and feel a burning resentment at being coerced out of your warm bed and into the cold meditation hall at 6 a.m. for the first practice session of the day. But after a while you start to glimpse that your personal preferences are just that: they're just your personal preferences. You begin to see that you are enslaved to them, and they make you miserable because you take them so seriously and believe it's your job to satisfy them all the time. The less seriously you take them — that is, the more you stop whining and get with the program — the less miserable you make yourself and those around you. You begin to taste the freedom that comes from not blindly following your own patterns and urges.
Maybe you discover that the burrito is not the dramatic culinary insult that you have made it out to be. It's just food, after all, and you could actually do something completely contrary to habit, like choose to eat the burrito anyway, without throwing a temper tantrum because it's not what you like. In doing so, you may even experience a faint glimmer of gratitude that, unlike so many other people in the world, you have a burrito to eat in the first place. What's that, you say? A burrito isn't what you wanted? So what? Who said life was supposed to give you everything you want all the time?
Choicelessness in Everyday Life
You don't have to go to the extremes of shaving your head and living like a monk or a nun to work with the practice of choicelessness. You can experiment with it in your everyday life. Take one small opportunity each day to notice when your ego is trying to manipulate a situation to get your way — and when you notice that, just see if you can drop it. If there's a discussion between you and your partner or your friends about what to do on a Friday night, make a conscious decision to drop your personal agenda and just do what they want to do instead. Watch your ego kicking and screaming like a brat as you eat the burrito. Eat it anyway. It's food. What's the big deal? Notice, afterwards, how your whole world did not, in fact, come crashing down as your ego predicted it would.
The spiritual path is about learning to recognize and peel away the layers of our individual ego — with all its demands and distortions, its likes and dislikes — in order to uncover the egoless, undifferentiated Being that is our true nature. As long as we are caught up in the lifelong momentum of trying to satisfy our ego's preferences and keep ego happy, it will be hard to make much progress at peeling away those layers. The practice of choicelessness is a tool that helps us, moment by moment, drop down through the onion, one layer at a time.
It's a lifelong practice, and I'm not sure that anybody really gets it perfect. But the more you can drop your mind's struggles to acquire what you like and push away what you dislike, the more possible it becomes to glimpse the truth and to find a more abiding form of contentment.
Seng-ts'an, one of the forefathers of Zen Buddhism, put it like this:
The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. When love and hate are both absent everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. If you wish to see the truth then hold no opinion for or against. The struggle of what one likes and what one dislikes is the disease of the mind.
You are cordially invited to get over yourself — starting right now.
_________________________________
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Wednesday, August 22, 2012
A Monk No More
It has been quite some time since readers of this blog last heard from me. Many people have written or approached me to say how much they would like for me to continue writing here. I can only say that it has always been my intention to return to this blog, and add (feebly, in my defense) that life since I last wrote anything here has been, well, a bit of a rollercoaster.
About a month-and-a-half ago marked my one-year anniversary of being back in New York City, following a two-year odyssey of living as a temporary monk at a Buddhist monastery in the remote wilds of Eastern Canada. It was while living that frequently charmed life — nestled between ocean and mountains and supported by the insular rhythms of monastic rituals and hours of daily contemplative practice — that I wrote most of the essays that appeared on this blog to date. And it was through that particular filter of experience that most of you saw me and got to know me here.
That life now seems like such a distant memory to me that it’s sometimes hard to believe I was actually living in the monastery, wearing maroon robes, a year-and-a-half ago. So much water has passed under the bridge of life since then, and so much has changed. As Heraclitus said, "You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you."
People in New York City often have a wide-eyed expression when I tell them about my time in the monastery, and (assuming they aren't looking at me with suspicion or pity) they seem to regard it as proof of some special ability on my part. “Wow, that’s amazing” is usually followed quickly by “I could never do that” or “I can’t sit still” or “I would go crazy” or “I can’t imagine being without my iPhone.” Little do they know that I can’t sit still either, and sometimes I went crazy in the monastery, and even though I lived an hour’s drive from the nearest cellular signal, I still had my iPhone at my side and used it as a WiFi device to check my email and Facebook accounts. You can take the monk out of New York, but you can’t take New York out of the monk.
With most New Yorkers, the next series of questions usually goes something like this: “So, when you were living in the monastery, were you celibate? Really? Wait, so you mean you didn’t have sex with anyone? No one? For two whole years? Not even once? You’re kidding! Oh my God! I would die. So, wait, I hope it doesn’t make you uncomfortable that I’m asking you all these questions? Are you sure? Okay, so, I mean, did you at least...you know? Oh my God, I would die!” Well, here I am. I did not die, and neither would you. Personally, I think a two-year sabbatical from sex and romance did me a lot of good.
Actually, I like to think it did me a lot of good but I don’t really have any proof of that. My post-monk intimate life in New York has certainly not been anything that I would hold up as a role model for anyone. About a month after I landed back in the city I met someone and fell deeply, madly in love — in the intense, all-or-nothing way that perhaps only someone who has been starved for intimate connection for several years can fall in love. But love, as it often does, stayed for a little while and then abruptly went away, and I was left holding a bag with the broken pieces of my heart in it. Only I now had another person’s name written on each of those pieces and I couldn’t seem to wipe it off. When I came back from the monastery, my heart was wide open and strong, wider and stronger than it has ever been. But by the time love was done with me, my heart was shriveled and bruised and enfolded upon itself, and I felt weaker than I have ever felt in my life.
It has taken me some time to be able to look back on that experience and say that it was probably exactly what I needed, and that it arrived and departed exactly when it was supposed to. But I can say that now, and there are even occasional moments when I can say it and actually mean it.
Once people have gotten past the sex questions, they usually want to know what was it that led me to go to the monastery, and what did I learn while I was there? What did I get out of it? Did I find enlightenment? Have amazing spiritual realizations? Achieve inner peace? “You seem, like, so Zen, so chill. That must be from your time in the monastery.” No, actually, I was always pretty much like this. It’s just my outward persona. And you can ask my close friends about how Zen and chill I really am. They know you can scratch off the polished Zen facade and you'll find someone underneath with all the neuroses of Woody Allen and all the maudlin narratives of Adele, just waiting to come out.
I used to say, when asked, that what I brought home from the monastery was a sense of being more comfortable in my own skin, and a stronger feeling of compassion for others. But I don’t even make those small claims anymore. Since my return I’ve been tested enough times — by love, by family, by friends, by the noise and greed and rush of New York City itself — to know that my compassion often flies out the window when it’s needed most, and I can still find myself at times wanting to be in a thousand other skins than my own. La piel que habito no es siempre lo que quiero habitar.
As for why I went to the monastery in the first place, well, it had something to do with wanting to explore my spiritual development — which is to say, my growth as a human, as a being, as a human being — in an intense, all-or-nothing way that no other environment or path seemed to offer. (You see, I suppose I fell into monkhood as blindly and whole-heartedly as I fell in love.)
The other day I came across a quote by one of my favorite Buddhist teachers, Ken McLeod, who seemed to sum it all up:
Going to the monastery was a way of trying to explore my spiritual potential to the fullest extent I could at the time, no holds barred. Frankly, nothing — except, perhaps, joining the circus — could “impinge on your life in society” more than moving to an isolated spiritual community and donning the robes and following the vows of a monk — the epitome of someone who walks away from society and all its materialistic expectations. Going to the monastery was going against the stream of everything society said I should be doing instead. And it was an immersion into the formalities of spiritual practice that I realize I may never be able to duplicate in my life outside the monastery. I also recognize that it was an experiment that not everyone has the luxury of making, and that I was fortunate to have had the experience, however challenging it may have been at times. And in the end, I’m keenly aware of the fact that I came out of it with nothing in particular to show for it. Only a deeper sense of connection to the world and to myself, and a deeper willingness to work on myself and nourish my strengths and know my weaknesses — to accept myself, warts and all.
And for now that is enough.
About a month-and-a-half ago marked my one-year anniversary of being back in New York City, following a two-year odyssey of living as a temporary monk at a Buddhist monastery in the remote wilds of Eastern Canada. It was while living that frequently charmed life — nestled between ocean and mountains and supported by the insular rhythms of monastic rituals and hours of daily contemplative practice — that I wrote most of the essays that appeared on this blog to date. And it was through that particular filter of experience that most of you saw me and got to know me here.
That life now seems like such a distant memory to me that it’s sometimes hard to believe I was actually living in the monastery, wearing maroon robes, a year-and-a-half ago. So much water has passed under the bridge of life since then, and so much has changed. As Heraclitus said, "You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you."
People in New York City often have a wide-eyed expression when I tell them about my time in the monastery, and (assuming they aren't looking at me with suspicion or pity) they seem to regard it as proof of some special ability on my part. “Wow, that’s amazing” is usually followed quickly by “I could never do that” or “I can’t sit still” or “I would go crazy” or “I can’t imagine being without my iPhone.” Little do they know that I can’t sit still either, and sometimes I went crazy in the monastery, and even though I lived an hour’s drive from the nearest cellular signal, I still had my iPhone at my side and used it as a WiFi device to check my email and Facebook accounts. You can take the monk out of New York, but you can’t take New York out of the monk.
With most New Yorkers, the next series of questions usually goes something like this: “So, when you were living in the monastery, were you celibate? Really? Wait, so you mean you didn’t have sex with anyone? No one? For two whole years? Not even once? You’re kidding! Oh my God! I would die. So, wait, I hope it doesn’t make you uncomfortable that I’m asking you all these questions? Are you sure? Okay, so, I mean, did you at least...you know? Oh my God, I would die!” Well, here I am. I did not die, and neither would you. Personally, I think a two-year sabbatical from sex and romance did me a lot of good.
Actually, I like to think it did me a lot of good but I don’t really have any proof of that. My post-monk intimate life in New York has certainly not been anything that I would hold up as a role model for anyone. About a month after I landed back in the city I met someone and fell deeply, madly in love — in the intense, all-or-nothing way that perhaps only someone who has been starved for intimate connection for several years can fall in love. But love, as it often does, stayed for a little while and then abruptly went away, and I was left holding a bag with the broken pieces of my heart in it. Only I now had another person’s name written on each of those pieces and I couldn’t seem to wipe it off. When I came back from the monastery, my heart was wide open and strong, wider and stronger than it has ever been. But by the time love was done with me, my heart was shriveled and bruised and enfolded upon itself, and I felt weaker than I have ever felt in my life.
It has taken me some time to be able to look back on that experience and say that it was probably exactly what I needed, and that it arrived and departed exactly when it was supposed to. But I can say that now, and there are even occasional moments when I can say it and actually mean it.
Once people have gotten past the sex questions, they usually want to know what was it that led me to go to the monastery, and what did I learn while I was there? What did I get out of it? Did I find enlightenment? Have amazing spiritual realizations? Achieve inner peace? “You seem, like, so Zen, so chill. That must be from your time in the monastery.” No, actually, I was always pretty much like this. It’s just my outward persona. And you can ask my close friends about how Zen and chill I really am. They know you can scratch off the polished Zen facade and you'll find someone underneath with all the neuroses of Woody Allen and all the maudlin narratives of Adele, just waiting to come out.
I used to say, when asked, that what I brought home from the monastery was a sense of being more comfortable in my own skin, and a stronger feeling of compassion for others. But I don’t even make those small claims anymore. Since my return I’ve been tested enough times — by love, by family, by friends, by the noise and greed and rush of New York City itself — to know that my compassion often flies out the window when it’s needed most, and I can still find myself at times wanting to be in a thousand other skins than my own. La piel que habito no es siempre lo que quiero habitar.
As for why I went to the monastery in the first place, well, it had something to do with wanting to explore my spiritual development — which is to say, my growth as a human, as a being, as a human being — in an intense, all-or-nothing way that no other environment or path seemed to offer. (You see, I suppose I fell into monkhood as blindly and whole-heartedly as I fell in love.)
The other day I came across a quote by one of my favorite Buddhist teachers, Ken McLeod, who seemed to sum it all up:
“As long as you limit your experience to what fits into the world of society, you will explore your spiritual potential only to the extent that it doesn’t impinge on your life in society.”
Going to the monastery was a way of trying to explore my spiritual potential to the fullest extent I could at the time, no holds barred. Frankly, nothing — except, perhaps, joining the circus — could “impinge on your life in society” more than moving to an isolated spiritual community and donning the robes and following the vows of a monk — the epitome of someone who walks away from society and all its materialistic expectations. Going to the monastery was going against the stream of everything society said I should be doing instead. And it was an immersion into the formalities of spiritual practice that I realize I may never be able to duplicate in my life outside the monastery. I also recognize that it was an experiment that not everyone has the luxury of making, and that I was fortunate to have had the experience, however challenging it may have been at times. And in the end, I’m keenly aware of the fact that I came out of it with nothing in particular to show for it. Only a deeper sense of connection to the world and to myself, and a deeper willingness to work on myself and nourish my strengths and know my weaknesses — to accept myself, warts and all.
And for now that is enough.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Put Away Childish Things
Lately I've been reflecting on maturity, and what it really means -- and especially what it means on the spiritual path. So much of what we strive to accomplish and to become through spiritual practice is, in essence, about simply and fundamentally and properly growing up, becoming genuinely mature human beings. And, by the same token, so much of what causes us anguish in life, what keeps us trapped in cycles of suffering, is overwhelmingly about childish concerns and about refusing to grow up.
In contemplating this, I was reminded of Zen teacher Norman Fischer's book, "Taking Our Places: The Buddhist Path to Truly Growing Up," which I read several years ago. At the time I read it, I don't think I was quite ready to receive its message, and for the most part it went in one eye and out the other. But I went back to look at Fischer's book, and found that it's a rich and meaningful dive into this seldom-explored topic of spiritual maturity. Fischer states the basic problem very concisely:
"The spiritual path," says Fischer, "leads us to the places we are meant to occupy in this world." And all the practices and forms with which we engage on the path -- meditation and the rest -- are tools that help us develop the maturity to truly become ourselves, to fully inhabit our own lives and to understand what on earth we are here to do.
Most so-called adults, most of the time, live more or less like children, thinking and acting from the perspective of what Buddhists call the ego: the brattish, child-like "me" that thinks primarily about its own happiness, about how it could acquire more of the things it believes will make it happy and how it could further repel or destroy the things it believes will make it unhappy. The childish ego thinks nothing of pushing others out of the way to get what it wants.
By contrast, the great spiritual masters and enlightened beings -- I'm thinking here of the Buddha, Jesus, Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama, the Karmapa, and others like them -- are perhaps the only human beings on this earth who have consistently and completely lived as genuine adults. Such beings have completely let go of the childish ego's petty concerns, and have understood the world, and their salvific roles in it, in a way that children cannot possibly do; they have become like parents to the whole human race, caring for us when we are -- isn't it obvious? -- incapable of properly caring for ourselves without grown-up assistance. Like loving parents, these great beings care more about the happiness of their children than they do about their own, and in this sense they are like the ultimate adults and we are like the ultimate children. But they are also representatives of what each of us miserable, selfish brats has the potential to become, if we apply ourselves.
Lately it has struck me that our ability to progress along the spiritual path is wholly dependent on our commitment to the basic principles of maturity, to the process of growing up. To the degree that we lack such a commitment, our opportunities for achieving enlightenment -- or even for achieving a greater degree of sanity and well-being in our lives -- are slim.
Obviously, the kind of maturity I'm talking about here is not the kind that comes when we reach a certain age; it's not something that happens when we are old enough to drink booze or to vote or to trade in our toy guns for actual guns and go off to fight real wars instead of imaginary ones. The kind of maturity we need on the spiritual path is something that develops on the inside, and its growth is entirely dependent on our full, willing participation in the process. There are quite a few young people who have this kind of spiritual maturity, and (unfortunately) there are lots and lots of old people who don't.
When we break it down, I think spiritual maturity has several key components:
We can use these qualities as measuring sticks to see where we've made progress on our spiritual path, and where we've still got some growing up to do. When I think of someone like the Buddha, or Jesus, or the Karmapa, I think of someone who fully embodies all of these essential aspects of spiritual maturity, and has brought each of these qualities to full ripening. Many people are in awe of such spiritually advanced beings because they are said to be able to display miracles, but perhaps the greatest miracle they display is the simple yet shocking fact of their utter maturity, their complete lack of childishness -- which is shocking precisely because it is so uncommon.
(To be continued....)
In contemplating this, I was reminded of Zen teacher Norman Fischer's book, "Taking Our Places: The Buddhist Path to Truly Growing Up," which I read several years ago. At the time I read it, I don't think I was quite ready to receive its message, and for the most part it went in one eye and out the other. But I went back to look at Fischer's book, and found that it's a rich and meaningful dive into this seldom-explored topic of spiritual maturity. Fischer states the basic problem very concisely:
"[Most] of us are terrified by the idea of growing up -- or would be if we ever considered the idea seriously. Mostly we don't. We usually take maturity for granted, as one of life's givens. You reach a certain age, you get out of school, you get a job, maybe you marry or settle down, maybe not, but time goes by and you're a grown-up. You get a diploma, a credit card, a job, a car, a house or apartment. After you acquire these emblematic prizes, each of which feels like a milestone, you are there. You are an adult. What more is there to it than that? We think growing up, becoming a mature human being, is natural, almost biological, something we all do automatically simply by virtue of the passage of years and the natural course of things. Life happens to us and we go along with it, and there we are, grown up, developed, wise people.
[But] when we...contemplate the question of what it really means to be an adult, fear sets in. We recognize that despite our social position or accomplishments, despite our relationships, our education, and our psychological astuteness, we really don't know what we're doing with our lives. Where is our life going? What is the purpose for which we were born, the fulfillment we deeply seek? We look like grown-ups, we talk like grown-ups, maybe we have grown-up bank accounts and grown-up responsibilities -- but do we really have any idea what we are about?
And if, after much struggle, we think we know the answers to such questions, we are forced to ask another, more agonizing question: Are we living those answers? Or do our lives, in the light of those answers, seem like afterthoughts, like still unformed story lines?"
-- Norman Fischer, "Taking Our Places: The Buddhist Path to Truly Growing Up"
"The spiritual path," says Fischer, "leads us to the places we are meant to occupy in this world." And all the practices and forms with which we engage on the path -- meditation and the rest -- are tools that help us develop the maturity to truly become ourselves, to fully inhabit our own lives and to understand what on earth we are here to do.
Most so-called adults, most of the time, live more or less like children, thinking and acting from the perspective of what Buddhists call the ego: the brattish, child-like "me" that thinks primarily about its own happiness, about how it could acquire more of the things it believes will make it happy and how it could further repel or destroy the things it believes will make it unhappy. The childish ego thinks nothing of pushing others out of the way to get what it wants.
By contrast, the great spiritual masters and enlightened beings -- I'm thinking here of the Buddha, Jesus, Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama, the Karmapa, and others like them -- are perhaps the only human beings on this earth who have consistently and completely lived as genuine adults. Such beings have completely let go of the childish ego's petty concerns, and have understood the world, and their salvific roles in it, in a way that children cannot possibly do; they have become like parents to the whole human race, caring for us when we are -- isn't it obvious? -- incapable of properly caring for ourselves without grown-up assistance. Like loving parents, these great beings care more about the happiness of their children than they do about their own, and in this sense they are like the ultimate adults and we are like the ultimate children. But they are also representatives of what each of us miserable, selfish brats has the potential to become, if we apply ourselves.
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
-- First letter of Paul, Chapter 13, verse 11
"I don't want to grow up! I'm a Toys R Us kid!"
-- Popular advertising jingle for Toys R Us brand
Lately it has struck me that our ability to progress along the spiritual path is wholly dependent on our commitment to the basic principles of maturity, to the process of growing up. To the degree that we lack such a commitment, our opportunities for achieving enlightenment -- or even for achieving a greater degree of sanity and well-being in our lives -- are slim.
Obviously, the kind of maturity I'm talking about here is not the kind that comes when we reach a certain age; it's not something that happens when we are old enough to drink booze or to vote or to trade in our toy guns for actual guns and go off to fight real wars instead of imaginary ones. The kind of maturity we need on the spiritual path is something that develops on the inside, and its growth is entirely dependent on our full, willing participation in the process. There are quite a few young people who have this kind of spiritual maturity, and (unfortunately) there are lots and lots of old people who don't.
When we break it down, I think spiritual maturity has several key components:
- Responsibility: Mature beings have a highly developed moral sense, and they act accordingly. This built-in moral compass comes not from following a book of rules or a code of behavior that some parental figure gave them -- it comes from following the dictates of their conscience, which is rooted in a clear understanding of what kind of action is skillful and what kind is harmful. They see what needs to be done and they do it. And they see what is better left undone and they avoid it.
- Relaxation: Mature beings have let go of childish, petty resentments and grudges, and they do not indulge in temper tantrums when they don't get things their way. They are open-minded and have no axes to grind and no chips on their shoulders about anything at all.
- Confidence: Mature beings have worked through their childhood insecurities and emotional hangups, and are at peace with themselves as they are; they are comfortable in their own skin. But they never boast; their confidence is rooted in humility, and has nothing to do with arrogance. They are okay with admitting how little they actually know.
- Joyfulness: Mature beings are able to bring joy to their lives and the lives of people they meet, even amidst difficult circumstances.
- Altruism: Mature beings downplay self-centered concerns and place greater emphasis on the welfare of others.
- Realism: Mature beings have left behind the pretensions and make-believe of childhood, and have shifted their allegiance to holding a realistic, well-informed view of the world and how it actually works. They are committed to cultivating knowledge and deepening wisdom, and to dispelling illusion.
- Perseverance: Mature beings dedicate themselves fully to the process of growing up and waking up. They know it takes work, and they are determined not to fall back into the selfish habitual patterns of childhood.
We can use these qualities as measuring sticks to see where we've made progress on our spiritual path, and where we've still got some growing up to do. When I think of someone like the Buddha, or Jesus, or the Karmapa, I think of someone who fully embodies all of these essential aspects of spiritual maturity, and has brought each of these qualities to full ripening. Many people are in awe of such spiritually advanced beings because they are said to be able to display miracles, but perhaps the greatest miracle they display is the simple yet shocking fact of their utter maturity, their complete lack of childishness -- which is shocking precisely because it is so uncommon.
(To be continued....)
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