On Trying To Be Buddhist

Eyes and Seeing

Just an odd observation.  There are at least three states of being with one's eyes closed - first, sound asleep; second, eyes closed preparing to sleep - not seeing anything; three, eyes closed but looking and seeing anyhow.  That is, there are times when I close my eyes but stay awake and aware - I am looking, in essense, at the back of my eyelids, as people sometimes say.  I don't see much, but it's not the old blackout curtain effect of shutting my eyes in order to sleep.  There's an almost luminous quality - something to experiment with.......

Seeing

Just after writing my previous post here, a friend shared with me a quote from Headlong, a book by Michael Frayn.  In this quote, the narrator is looking at a particular painting for the first time.

"...my eye's doing what the human eye always has to do to take in the world in front of it.  It's flickering and jumping in indescribably complex patterns, back and forth, up and down, round and round, moving fifty, sixty, seventy times a second, assembling patch after patch into a first approximation of a whole; amending the approximation; amending it again.  For a picture this size, some four feet high by five feet long, even the most cursory scan must take a matter of seconds.

"Already, even as I look at it in those first few instants, what I'm contemplating is not the picture but my accumulated recollection of it."

A great description of the process that, for all practical purposes, prevents us from seeing reality, even as it presents us with its own rendering of that very reality.

Being A Little Mindfull

In the past few days I've been noticing how multi-threaded my mind is much of the time.  Whenever I'm doing anything that does not demand my full attention, I end up with my thinking crowded with many concerns.  Usually they become linked together: preparing to put out the Netflix DVD in the mailbox involves noting the time and then considering when the mailman will come; then I flash on the need to write a short note to my niece (a long overdue note) and question whether I can get that done that before the mail pickup.  Everything is like that - scraps and shards of thoughts, images, sensations; short chains, and long ones, some leading to entirely unexpected territory.  If any of the new ideas seems important, fear of forgetting it is added to the blend - and in fact I'm a nearly compulsive list maker. 

So - today I'm trying to be more aware of this all.  It's not an issue of focusing more clearly on the main tasks, or anything like that - just being aware of what's going on, not letting my entire mental field of view get filled with this melange, and drawn toward more and more remote topics.  And in fact, that works - the whole flow slows down a bit. What does float by is clearer, more defined, and the whole is more peaceful.  Except right now as I write.

This is a different experience because it does require precise focus on these thoughts, turning them over and exploring them, shaping them into words and sentences, watching them appear on the screen as I type...  it's not clear yet how to be fully aware of this process.  It feels quite different and in fact though on one level there is a clear focal point and much less of the tangential stuff, there is not at all the sense of clear awareness that I had as I prepared to put the Netflix DVD into the mail. 

Conclusion?  Thinking and awareness are different - they interfere with each other.  That brings to mind Rigdzin Shikpo's stunning statement, "...Buddhas do not think..."  Though this is "Duh!" territory for most meditators, I haven't seen it this clearly before.

Speculation

The contents of the mind are a torrent of fragments - images, thoughts, concepts, etc.  Through learning and discipline, we make something coherent out of all this - we impose order.  So the world we perceive is the reduction of perceptions to something coherent and manageable.  Is it possible that dreaming is just one of the mental states that occurs when we relax this normal discipline?  Is dreaming necessary, not for its content, but for its base state - rest?  That doesn't mean the content is without meaning - but it is a different perspective.

Ignorance

Ignorance is one of the major obstacles that we encounter, according to Buddhist teaching.  The 'three poisons' as they are called, that form the very center of the endless round of life and death, are lust, hatred, and ignorance.  And usually ignorance is seen as lack of knowledge, perception, or even intelligence. It appears to be a rather passive fault - at worst, wrong views, misunderstanding, quite unlike the active qualities of desire and hatred. 

A long time ago one of my dearest friends pointed out to me that one can also see ignorance - in some instances at least - as rooted in actively ignoring things.  There is an element of choice in such ignorance, not the simple dice-toss of one's genes, or bad luck in birthplace, parents, personal qualities.  Choosing not to be aware is the worst form of this poison.  The subtlety of it makes it even more powerful.  It's hard not to notice burning desire, or firece hatred - but that soft turning away that is the first step into not-knowing happens so easily, seems so innocent that it is doubly dangerous. 

My Mind on Tape Delay

In the tradition I follow, we speak of three times, or sometimes four times.  The three are past, present, and future.  And the fourth is simply that which is not entangled with any of the three times -  that is, non-dual, enlightened mind.  As for unenlightened mind and linear time, I've always thought of the three times as similar to each other - just different segments of the time continuum.  But it dawned on me the other day that in fact, neither the past nor the future exist at all.  They are only memories and plans - concepts, thoughts in my mind now.  The present is all there really is - but grasping that present, capturing it, considering it, that actually doesn't quite work either.  By the time I have anything clearly in mind, it is gone - what I now have is part of the past, really; it's not the true present, fresh and immediate.  All my thoughts and conceptualization may seem like the present, and have an apparent present as their object - but by the time they are clear in my mind, they are also no longer really present - all of reality is on tape delay.  As I reflect on it, I never never actually get what is in the present.  I am just mucking about in a museum full of stuff from the past.  The 'real' present is all that is, the fourth time is the only time - yet not time at all, just ....

Patterns, Meanings.

A decade ago I took a break from Buddhism - not sure how else to describe it.  I'd hit a wall in my study and practice, was exhausted from my day job (which required not only my week-days, but weekends, and sometimes nights; on call 24x7x365; sleeping with my beeper under my pillow;) and I despaired of handling my responsibilities in the sangha to which I belonged, or fulfilling my teacher's expectations.  So I just dropped the Buddhist part.  It was difficult to do - very painful, and not only to me, but a necessary relief. 

For the following months, I explored other options - and rested.  After about a year, something began to become clear to me - very clear, but inarticulable, and quite unexpected.  At first I said (to myself) that being Buddhist over all those years had altered something in me that could not ever be changed back.  That was as far as I could express it.  But it was so clear in its own way that I continued to turn it over in my thoughts, looking for better words.  It was a weight on my tongue, I could taste it....  The next version was, "Before I was ever Susan I was Buddhist."   Still not satisfactory. 

But what I wrote in my previous entry, is it: "The meaning lies in my nature, not my history or actions.  I say, my nature, but my nature is not mine, it is not me - it's what is there when I find that there is no me - " 

And this is my teacher's gift. 

Foreground and Background

Meditation involves maintaining awareness.  In the form of Buddhism I follow, it is an essential practice.  When I was in the hospital in January of '05, I noticed how hard it was simply to be in that awareness.  Partially, I'm just not used to it.  It's not a theoretical understanding - it's experience, and familiarity.  It's like a physical skill - all the understanding in the world is useless in comparison to actually exercising the skill.

But even trying to exercise awareness in the hospital setting was very very difficult.  I wondered why.  I could tell it had something to do with the fact that I was scared, and sometimes in pain.  It's as though those two forms of suffering focused my grasping at my sense of self.  Feeling under threat, I paid attention to my limited being, my own boundaries - I was, or part of me was, trying to protect myself. 

One obvious conclusion from all this is that it's easier to do these essential meditations when not in a state of immediate suffering.  And there's a warning here - better get the work done before I have to rely on it.  Because at that point, I won't be able to do the basic work. 

As I think more about this experience, I see that when I am very comfortable and feeling safe, I can relax my grip on my 'self'.  I don't feel a need to protect my boundaries.  But when something hurts me, mentally or physically, then this sense of self solidifies again.

Awareness seems to involve letting go - not what I would have thought, right off the bat, given that the word often refers to focus, and so often takes an object.  In the Webster definition of "aware" it says, "aware may indicate either general information, wide knowledge, interpretative power, or vigilant perception."  And the act of perception, of course, always is the perception of some thing. This is an important distinction in coming to see what meditative awareness really is, because it is not the second type - it is not the type that takes an object.  It is not the sort of thing meant by phrases such as, "I was very aware of the pain in my foot,"  or, "I was aware of someone else in the room." 

A momentary recognition of (meditative) awareness is like a switch of attention from foreground to background.  Most of the time I'm occupied with foreground objects - at the moment, for example, I am occupied with the PC screen on which these words appear, and the keyboard under my fingers, the thoughts in my mind, and the words expressing them.  But when I remember to recognize awareness, suddenly I am the background, and these other things are happening in the foreground.  Now I watch them, even though I am also what is producing them, but I see them like a movie on a screen.

This is another clue to the whole process - foreground: tight control and focus; background: release, open boundaries.  Pain and fear are alike a call to arms - they pull me out of the background (if I am there at all) into foreground focus, preparing to protect my self.  So it comes back to self - the more I am myself, the more I need to take care of myself, the less I will be able to maintain this meditative awareness except during times of explicit relaxation, safety, and quiet.  Recognition of emptiness and dissolution of self are what will allow me to move into the background - the 'place' of alert clarity, of, ultimately, perpetual awareness.  And yet this very awareness is also the revealer of emptiness, and the solvent of self.  A virtuous circle.