I contemplated this very thing last Sunday, but the comparison came to me accidentally, backwards from experience so to speak. I was trying to experience a certain freedom of mind, and yet at the same time to be very physically present in the shrine room, with floors and people and light through the windows – in other words, not just caught in a concept of freedom, not just lost in focus, if I can say it that way.

This was what showed me how Guru Rinpoche’s revered statement applies. One is more here than ever before, and one’s mind is empty. And the practice of this is possible.

I had a bit of an answer recently during a Sunday morning sit at Shambhala. After working really hard for three hours and making some headway, as it were, I perceived that my ordinary self was struggling to catch up to the tastes of liberation experienced, and was very tired.

So it’s really perhaps just as simple as one has always perceived since starting to meditate: it’s not the being in the moment that takes energy, it’s having to start over again an instant later. It’s the firing up of the motor again. It’s the sadness at seeing ourselves cover the moment over with glue. The stickiness of our grasping. Seeing this again and again.

~~

Duality, duality. All answers to questions such as these must come in relative truths. And as Anam Thubten Rinpoche has made clear to us, we’ll have our ego with us every step of the way towards enlightenment – the ego is very spiritual, always ready to buy more time outside of liberation, with answers that keep the ego intact.

Even so, to share this or even consider it I have to use relative terms. As practitioners we have to think in terms of making progress, and even sometimes in terms of experiencing setbacks, although we don’t let such things hinder our practice. These are all just the appearances that arise and give us the material of realization. And as is taught, we use relative truth continually to switch our grasping away from samsara and towards liberation.

~~

The Shambhala Sunday sit for me is when I work the hardest all week. I really enjoy these three hours of meditating every week, I’ve been going since I started meditating four years ago. They help my practice through the rest of the week, and the longer sessions let me build a focus for things I don’t always attempt during my shorter sessions at home: things like guru yoga, contemplation of karma, death or compassion, and dwelling briefly in more subtle experiences perhaps.

In recent months during these longer sessions I’ve been working harder, raising windhorse frequently, supplicating Guru Rinpoche, really aiming for the clear mind of the master. I’ve found in certain blessed moments that I can experience a mind that is mine, yes, but which I can only approach through the mind of Guru Rinpoche. The great ones lift us higher I think, and I’ve heard it said that only the rain of blessings from them enables any of us to progress along the path.

~~

But I wonder if I should be so weary after this practice. I wonder what I’m doing wrong. Am I going anywhere, or just digging a deep groove in the wrong place? This seems to be the thing to do, to chase after objectives, to aim for practice targets. But shouldn’t more energy flow into me? Shouldn’t there be less striving, more surrender?

Ah, practice. I don’t know these answers. It seems we move from one set of answers to a new set of mysteries.

And I call this a glad thing.

When something makes us happy we forget, or don’t notice, that all that’s happened is we’ve allowed ourselves to lift the pressure off our happiness button a little bit. The happiness that arises is a function inside ourselves, or we could better say, a quality of ourselves that exists always.

We can flash on memories, dreams, little instances of joy and exuberance and happiness – call it freedom perhaps? – and we can actually see that this feeling, this function of feeling, has been a faculty that we’ve possessed all along. It just needed a reason to come awake.

So the goal of practice in general is to pull back from the things we call events and circumstances, and draw closer to the faculty of ourselves that’s doing the experiencing. Drawing back from the reasons and the circumstances, drawing closer into ourselves purely as experiencers, we find the happiness faculty, and witness our own foot pressing down on it, keeping it choked back, while we wait for perfection to occur, to give us a reason – an excuse – for joy.

It’s basic mindfulness to all you seasoned meditators, but it’s always worth the reminder that we have to keep practicing when appearances arise and seem good, just as much as we do when coping with fear and the lowlier emotions.

Let’s always remember how well Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche explains this in that post I made a while back, called When the Pain Gets Small Enough We Call It Happiness

Now a new era begins for me, and I find myself with four blogs that speak about things that matter to me. One is about the local politics of the small American town I live in. One is my business blog, dealing with public policy at the national level, economics, and sustainability. A third, a new one, is about local farm markets, surviving through the practice of eating good food (a radical notion). And there’s this one, Sacred West.

I’m going to try to post to all four, although by no means equally – each in due season one would say. We’ll see how it goes. One day I’d like to merge all four into one, and somehow have a coherent theme. The theme would be sustainable world / sacred world. We’ll see how THAT goes

This great encouragement is from His Holiness the Gyalwang Drukpa:

On this small planet, in the daily dreams of our life, beneficial deeds are always recommended, simply because we are all born to help each other.

By sharing our love with different expressions and through the practice of generosity, morality and understanding, we will then be fulfilling our purpose of being members of the human race.

“Try to do everything with a mind that lets go.
If you let go a little you will have a little peace.
If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace.
If you let go completely, you will know complete peace and freedom.
Your struggles with the world will have come to an end.”

Enkyo Roshi explains this in a way that brings me face to face with what she is saying, face to face with my mind’s awakening in delusion. How simple it is to see, how difficult to put into words, how well she transmits this teaching, in her explanation of these lines from a portion of the Genjo Koan, written in the autumn of 1233 by Eihei Dogen, founder of the Soto Zen tradition:

To carry yourself forward and experience myriad things is delusion. That myriad things come forth and experience themselves is awakening.

Those who have great realization of delusion are buddhas; those who are greatly deluded about realization are sentient beings. Further, there are those who continue realizing beyond realization, and those who are in delusion throughout delusion.

When buddhas are truly buddhas they do not necessarily notice that they are buddhas. However, they are actualized buddhas, who go on actualizing buddha.

And there are those who continue realizing beyond realization. Enkyo Roshi explains this also, perhaps you already see it from your own meditation experience.

In the difference between realizing delusion and being deluded about realization is the whole story of my basic practice, and perhaps the whole path.

Spend 37 minutes with the video clip, and see for yourself. This comes from Tricycle, and starts at the 7th second:

Find more videos like this on Tricycle Community

Many people are afraid to empty their minds lest they may plunge into the Void. They do not know that their own Mind is the void.

I fell into some Huang Po, and extracts from his teachings, The Transmission of Mind.

I wrote the piece for the Austin Shambhala blog, which I manage, but I didn’t publish it because I wasn’t sure how much I can reveal about the training programs. There’s a legacy culture of secrecy that has grown up around the training path of Shambhala. This is changing – wants to change, is approved to change – and I play my small part in its changing here in Austin.

I will write increasingly more about Shambhala. As I progress along its training path I become more qualified to speak of my own experience in it, and I understand more of the whole path. And I trust my own wisdom more to say only the right things and not the wrong.

Meanwhile, here’s the piece on Level Five.

~~~

August 19, 2008

Shambhala Training’s Level V weekend intensive is coming in September, long and eagerly awaited and trained for by a number of people whom I’ve seen go through the Levels over the last year or so. A small group has managed to stay together through them all, which is always a special bond. And others that I knew from the year before who missed a Level are now catching this wave too, which makes me very glad. And there will be others taking the class again, and coming in from below my radar – I hope to know them all by the end of the weekend, it will be my profound satisfaction to volunteer as staff this time around.

Steve Vosper is coming down again from Boulder to teach the class. It was a very small class last year, and he was fresh out of a three-month retreat, so we had a great sense of depth to the program. I have no idea what was unique to that event and what is standard for the Level V class, so this one will be fresh in every sense.

To me the experience of Level V was a culmination beyond all expectation of the five levels. Ever since that class I’ve gone around telling everyone: they should call it the Five Levels of Shambhala you know, the way they speak of the Four Foundations, or any other numbered list in Buddhism. I’ve wanted to show that taking just one of them is only part of the experience.

Fortunately perhaps, no one is ever swayed by my enthusiasm for this, and nothing ever changes, but at least here in this very personal opinion – sponsored by no one – I get to present my observation that there are five Levels because there are five important things to teach, each of them showing us a part of our experience. The totality of this is not apparent, until the fifth teaching takes the first four teachings and shows the unity of all five practices in one great burst of freedom.

This is why I call it generous. I was astonished to discover what Level V had to show me about my mind and the reality it perceives. To realize that this is always here, that this has always been my experience, waiting to be perceived, if someone would simply be kind enough and skilled enough to show this to me, at the perfect time.

I didn’t know what pointing out instruction was when I took the class but during my particular weekend in my interview an Assistant Director sat before me and showed me my mind experience. I was thoroughly impressed. I felt very skilled. I felt very happy to get a tiny glimpse of the reality we live in. It took over a year I’m sure for what I learned to soak into the bedrock of my practice.

I was joyous to have traveled so far, and not moved an inch, and to be such a beginner still, and yet to learn that I never have to journey to find my enlightened nature, but need only stay right here, and keep practicing.

I know of no greater gift.

This morning I thought, well, because we’ll be reborn, for one thing (unless we do really well in the bardo).

And when we’re born, for a time there won’t be a lot of wisdom going on. We’ll want our karma to magnetize not just the right parents but the right teachings from our parents, and from life, as we develop in our formative years. This will be such a great asset for the rest of that lifetime.

So, merit then. Investing now for a better return down the road.