No-Self, Part 3

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Jack Kornfield is a widely respected author, teacher of Vipassana or Insight meditation, and a founder of the Spirit Rock Meditation Center, http://www.spiritrock.org.

In a classic discussion of spiritual practice in general, and Buddhist practice in particular, A Path With a Heart, Kornfield devotes a chapter, “No Self or True Self?” to the question of identity.  Two key points emerge:  not to take this too literally, and not to be upset by the concept.  He notes that his teacher, Achaan Chah, said, “If you try to understand it intellectually, your head will probably explode.”

Achaan Chah spoke of this paradox one evening in his monastery in a way that was quite astonishing for a Buddhist master.  He said, “You know, all this teaching about ‘no self’ is not true.”  He went on, “Of course, all the teachings about ‘self’ are not true either,” and he laughed.  Then he explained that each of these sets of words, “self” and “no self,” are only concepts or ideas that we use in a very crude approximation, pointing to the mystery of a process that is neither “self” nor “no self”

Another of Kornfield’s teachers, used to laugh at how easily and commonly we would grasp at new identities.  As for himself, he would say, “I am none of that.  I am not this body, so I was never born and will never die.  I am nothing and I am everything.  Your identities make all your problems.  Discover what is beyond them…

Those teachers and authors I have quoted over the last several posts share an interest in an experience I stumbled into – the seemingly counter-intuitive freedom that comes with relaxing our grip on rigid concepts of what we are and what we are not.  At any time this seems troublesome, the real question becomes, who or what feels enhanced or diminished by the words, “self” or “no-self?”

An excellent resource on this and other questions is the Spirit Rock website given above. Under the “Meditation 101” tab is another tab called “Audio Resources,” with links to literally hundreds of recorded talks, given at Spirit Rock and elsewhere, that plunge into seemingly difficult topics like this.

No Self, Part 2

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People and things appear solid and self contained. We mostly experience ourselves as if we just appeared on earth the way Superman did – one day the wonder-baby showed up from outer space. Buddhism suggests that this conventional view is just a story, an idea, that doesn’t align very well with what we discover if we pay attention. In other words, Buddha told some different stories, that align more closely with experience, and with happier experience.

Like other great spiritual teachers, the Buddha knew he was telling stories (google on the Heart Sutra), and in particular, he warned his followers, that just because we suffer if we get attached to the story of a separate self, we will also suffer if we attach to the story of no-self – if we take it as a hard truth, a doctrine, a dogma.

Why does belief in a separate self cause suffering? Because it leads to a foxhole existence. Halt, who goes there, friend or foe? It also brings an awareness of physical mortality as loss – we aren’t going to last and neither is anyone we care about. My favorite analogy is one of the simplest: we experience ourselves as waves on the ocean, rushing to shore.  It may be exhilarating when we’re young and death is something that happens to old people, but let a few decades whiz by, and the rocks and shore look a whole lot closer. And aside from that, how often does the sense of separation cause an uncomfortable sense of disconnection?  A million variations on loneliness.  And how much more suffering do we create for ourselves and others in an effort to scratch the itch, dull the pain?

Jerry Uelsmann - Untitled

Buddha tried to shift our understanding. Yes, we are waves for a while, but our true nature is ocean. Ocean changes but it doesn’t go anywhere.  A wave that knows it is and will ever be ocean has a lot less to worry about.

***

Our true essence goes beyond birth and death.  It can never get sick.  It can never get old.  It is beyond all conditions.  It is like the sky.  This is not a theory.  This is the truth that can only be realized in the realm of enlightened consciousness.  This consciousness is surprisingly accessible to each of us. – Anam Thubten

When that awakening happens there is no longer any desire to become something other than who we are. Every previous idea of who we are vanishes, along with the pain, guilt, and pride associated with our body. In Buddhism this is called no-self. This is the only true awakening. Everything else is a spiritual bypass.– Anam Thubten (emphasis added).

Try this.  Pay attention to your breath in silence.  Look at your mind.  Immediately you see thoughts are popping up.  Don’t react to them.  Just keep watching your mind.  Notice that there is a gap between each thought.  Notice that there is a space between the place where the last thought came to an end and the next one hasn’t arrived.  In this space there is no “I” or “me.”  That’s it. – Anam Thubten (emphasis added).

***

The sense-of-self is an assumed reality.  Only the idea of “me” separates us from the unconditioned truth of our being…It is possible to simply stop believing in the validity of the view of separation and free it from its isolated position by bringing the view of separation itself into awareness.  This means we are cued to the subtle pain caused by separation, and simply release the thought of separation without picking it back up. – Rodney Smith

***

I like the rainbow analogy; I can grasp it because we’re not dealing with something that appears to be solid like a person or a rock.

Let’s say a rainbow decided to practice a meditation common to eastern traditions, by asking the question, “Who am I?” and watching what thoughts pop up.  The rainbow starts out believing it is a thing, but what kind of thing?  Strangely enough, if this rainbow is very determined, it will not find anything called “rainbow!”  It sets out to discover its true rainbow self, and simply but it simply cannot be found.

What am I?   –    A rainbow.
What is a rainbow? – Umm…

What am I? – A person.
What is a person? – Umm…wanna check my ID?

If this rainbow has a lot of courage, it will discover it is made of water droplets.  And sunlight, since there are no rainbows until the storm breaks up.  And it is made of the time of day, since there are no rainbows at night.  And it its existence depends on the perspective of people watching.  Drive another five or ten miles down the highway and we may not see the rainbow anymore, though others behind us may.

As Thich Nhat Hahn would say, our rainbow discovers it is made entirely of non-rainbow elements.  It exists, but it is “empty” of a true, essential, rainbow-self.  The poor little guy may freak out at first, and yet…

Rainbow over Carmel Beach

Ultimately, it may be quite a relief. Rainbows don’t live very long.  Not even as long as flies.  Yet water and sunlight and clouds and daytime and people watching the sky are not going away…

To sneak in a Shakespeare quote:

Nothing of him that doth fade,
but doth suffer a sea-change,
into something rich and strange.

TO BE CONTINUED

No-Self, Part 1

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For several months, I have been side-stepping the article I really want to write, because it is difficult, potentially upsetting to some readers if I say it wrong, and because “who do I think I am?”

I have been wanting to write about the Buddha’s teaching of “No-Self,” or Anatta, in the up-close and personal way I have come to experience it.

Joseph Cornell - "Medici Princess"

One of the saner things I did at the end my mis-spent youth, was to begin practicing meditation and contemplative spirituality.  Twenty-five years later I was still at it.   I had experienced incremental results: better, health, concentration, relaxation, and so on.  But something was still missing.

Around 2005 I was itching to drop some of my baggage of meditation techniques, theories and beliefs and “cut to the chase.”  To simplify!  It was like walking into a cluttered room and deciding some of the crap has to go.  My thoughts turned to  Zen practice because I had read The Three Pillars of Zen, and I couldn’t think of anything more bare-bones than just to sit and breathe, which I was (hopefully) going to continue doing anyway.

I had shied away from Buddhism because I once tried to read Thich Nhat Hahn and misunderstood what he had to say about “No-Self.”  I thought he was saying the soul or “true-self, that part of us that feels very valuable, is not real.  Buddhists do not say that “self” isn’t real, so much as they say it isn’t real in the way we think it is real.

I like the analogy to a rainbow.  A rainbow is real (while it lasts) but it isn’t real in the way it appears – and we’re better off not pinning our hopes to the pot of gold at the end.

Jerry Uelsmann - "Undiscovered Self"

Anyway, in 2005, I attended a Zen Sesshin (several days of morning-to-night practice) taught by a Catholic priest (which isn’t as uncommon as people might think).  It was…nice.  Not bad, not great, but overall, relaxing and…nice.  I appreciated the simplicity and it hooked me enough that I kept sitting like that once I got home.  And a few months later, nice turned into something a lot more powerful.

One evening during the holiday season, as I thought of family members and friends who were gone, and a parent who was ailing, I felt a profound sense of loss, of precious things slipping away.  But in the next instant a thought came; with perfect, instant, compelling clarity.  The thought just appeared:  Who is sad? And in that instant, there was nobody there! All that saddness was gone because there was no one there to feel sad.

I didn’t need the priest to confirm that it was the real deal, though he did a while later when I spoke to him again.   I got a further confirmation when I attended a daylong retreat led by Anam Thubten, a Tibetan Buddhist teacher whose message is summarized in the title of his book, No Self, No Problem.  His basic suggestion for meditation is simply to rest from all physical and mental effort:

As we begin to rest and pay attention, we begin to see everything clearly.  We see that the self has no basis or solidity…We might want to apply this simple inquiry whenever problems arise.  If we feel angry or disappointed, simply ask, “Who is the one being angry or disappointed?”  In such an inquiry, inner serenity can effortlessly manifest…When all the layers of false identity have been stripped off, there is no longer any version of that old self.  What is left behind is pure consciousness.  That is our original being.  That is our true identity. No Self, No Problem pp. 5-6.

Anam Thubten

Anam Thubten’s website:  http://www.dharmatafoundation.com/about.aspx

TO BE CONTINUED.

RIP – Leslie Nielsen

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Part of my holiday weekend was a self-imposed media blackout; often enough, it’s refreshing not to know what is going on, and so it was only this morning that I learned that Leslie Nielsen is gone.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2010/11/29/131661180/remembering-leslie-nielsen-a-master-of-the-art-of-not-being-funny

There are precious few movies that stay fresh after three or four viewings, and almost any of his silly flicks will have me in stitches though I have seen them numerous times. Laughter and good humor – what a gift in this world!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTHsNVXXlus

So long, Shirley!

“Tinsel,” by Hank Stuever, and other Christmas musings.

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Last night I was working at the computer while a TV Christmas movie that neither of us were watching droned on in the background. I looked up when a little girl whose father had died said she was going to the north pole “to ask Santa to make Daddy not dead.”

I instantly recognized the world-view I’d had  at the age of four.  I went to Sunday School, of course, but knew that Santa Claus was the man with the mojo – the go-to guy.

I watched the movie for a while.  It was interspersed with commercials designed to lure me to the parking lots at 4:00am on Black Friday – and tried to remember certain art history lectures I’d heard at this time of year.  “The iconography of Christmas,” that kind of thing.

I remembered that the Puritans outlawed the celebration of Christmas, while in early 19th century New York, Christmas tended to be a drunken revel.  Wealthier citizens would find themselves terrorized by the rabble – kind of trick-or-treat with an edge – give us money or else.  I recalled that the well-to-do seized the “Night Before Christmas,” to attempt to transform the holiday – to get some of those energetic revelers into the stores.

I googled on “Christmas History in America,” and here are a few tidbits I found on the first site that came up: http://www.thehistoryofchristmas.com/

  • Christmas was illegal in Boston from 1659-1681. Anyone “exhibiting the Christmas spirit” was fined five shillings.
  • Congress and everyone else worked on Christmas Day, 1789, the first one celebrated  in the new American nation.
  • The New York City police force was formed in 1828, in response to a Christmas riot.
  • Before the civil war, north and south were split on Christmas.  The holiday was regarded as somewhat sinful in the north, while celebrated as an important social occasion in the south.  Yet in the 1860’s, Abraham Lincoln asked Thomas Nast for an illustration of Santa Claus with union troops, which had “a demoralizing influence on the Confederate army – an early example of psychological warfare.”

St. Nicholas delivers gifts to the Union Army

  • After the civil war, children’s picture books and women’s magazines had a large role in transforming the holiday into something we would now recognize.
  • Christmas was finally declared a United States holiday on June 26, 1870.

***

One interesting piece from a year ago was an NPR interview with Hank Stuever regarding his book, Tinsel:  A Search for America’s Christmas Present, an account of three Christmas holidays he spent in Frisco, Texas. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121720242&ps=rs

Tammie explained to me early on about life in Frisco, that fake is okay here. And I think that’s a theme running through the book, fake is okay. If you’re going to ever fall in love with Christmas again, you have to embrace the fact that fake is okay here, no matter where you are.

 

The "Griswald house" in Frisco, Texas

 

Stuever wanted to do a piece on the Christmas season in a place well out of the snowbelt – where a White Christmas is pure fantasy.  He chose Frisco, Texas in part because he grew up in that part of the country, but also because it’s a town with seven million square feet of chain retail space, and:

[Christmas is] a half-trillion-dollar event in our lives. It steamrolls everything…so I wanted to go to one of those new fangled 21st century American places that are built around malls and box stores and big houses and big churches…demographics led me to Frisco.

It’s clear listening to the interview that Stuever isn’t there to make fun of anyone.   He expressed gratitude several times to those who invited him to shop with them, decorate with them, and celebrate in their homes.  He speaks with admiration of the single mother who tries to provide a nice Christmas for her three children with $1200 total, in a town where as many as 50,000 lights are part of home lighting displays.

She struggles really hard to always remain positive, which I think makes her emblematic of a lot of Americans who just, you know, come what may, we’re always told to make ourselves happier and be positive. And Christmas is really a freight train coming full of that, you know…there’s something wrong with you if you’re not happy at Christmastime.

Steuver, who writes about popular culture for the Washinton Post, doesn’t wind up too sanguine about Christmas. I wrote about Christmas because Christmas sort of freaks me out, like it’s so big and people have so much expectation heaped upon it that they can only come out of it with a smidgeon of melancholy amid all that joy.  

***

It’s the dark time of year.  The traditional time for sitting by the fire and telling stories.  Reflecting.  Hoping for renewal and the return of the sun as another year passes (where did the time go?).  Hoping for warmth and belonging, connecting with friends and family, our hearts full of the memory of and hope of Christmas peace:  hot cocoa around the fire, under the tree.  Mistletoe.  The star of Bethlehem, Currier and Ives prints, the Christmas we got that brand new bike as a kid. 

Hank Steuver’s book seems to ask, in Dr. Phil’s words, “How’s that workin’ for ya?”

It’s probably a good thing I cannot find my copy of  King of Morning, Queen of Day, a fantasy novel by Ian McDonald, which contains the funniest and most scathing single page on Christmas that I’ve ever read.  As in how will “Jingle Bell Rock,” or the Beach Boys’ “Little Saint Nick,” strike you in the stores four weeks from now?

The refreshing thing about reading the history of Christmas is seeing how dramatically the holiday has morphed in a short period of time.  Has and certainly will again.  Christmas as we know it or think we do is already a thing of the past – it is anything but solid and fixed, either for individuals, families or the culture.  And that’s really good news.  Did I mention how I feel about, “I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus?”

The Wishing Tree

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I was recently trying to find a story I read a long time ago, a version of a traditional eastern tale told by Paramahansa Yogananada, called, “The Wishing Tree,” or something very similar.

A search on that name turned up:  a 1999 movie, an acoustical music group, a Salvation Army campaign, an award winning book about a girl whose father goes off to war, a flower shop in Hoboken and another in Singapore – and that was just on page one of the 1,750,000 results reported by Google.

The phrase “wish-fulfilling tree” brought links more in line with what I was after, stories and cautionary tales that seemed to echo a comment of George Bernard Shaw, “There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart’s desire, the other is to get it.”

For Hindu’s, the tree is called Kalpataru and was revealed by Shiva to his wife Parvati.  He tells her,  “‘Kalpa’ means ‘whatever you desire’ and ‘taru’ means ‘tree.’ “Whatever you wish for, you will immediately get from this tree.”

Kalpataru

The site where I found this illustration, http://www.petermalakoff.com/the_wishfufilling_tree2.html, has a version of the story I was looking for, but I like Yogananda’s telling better, and this is how I remember it:

Once a spiritual seeker, who had long roamed the Himalayas in search of enlightenment, spied a single tree growing in the center of a small valley. He took shelter under its boughs and remembered the legend of special wish-fulfilling trees that angelic beings place in such remote regions to help wandering ascetics, and he wondered if maybe….

He pictured a nice juicy orange, and it instantly appeared in his hand. How long had it been since he’d had a good meal? He thought of every delicacy he had ever enjoyed, served on gold plates, and servants appeared bearing the feast. He’d been sleeping in the open so it was natural to wish for a house – no wait, a palace! And anyone with a palace and gold plates needs guards and soon, our friend had a squadron of soldiers saluting and awaiting orders.

He conjured butlers, and cooks, and seamstresses.  Dancing girls, too, of course, and while he was at it, gardens and fountains.

Satisfying one’s every whim isn’t easy, and at last the seeker sought out his own room for a nap.  He gazed through the window at the lush forest he’d planted nearby for hunting, and as he drifted off, he wondered if that had been wise.  What was to prevent a fierce tiger from jumping into his window?

And that was the last thought he ever had.

***

I’m not usually fond of stories with explicit morals, but I first came upon this as a teaching story, in the context of a transcribed talk Yogananda gave on the power of thought.  He summed up by saying we all live our lives under a wishing tree, only we call it imagination. Lucky for most of us, our normally scattered minds are slower to manifest what we dwell on than the tree in the story.  At one point, Yogananda said, “If you doubt the power of thought, try repeating the mantra, ‘headache, headache,’ and see what happens.”

A similar aphorism that’s stuck with me since I first heard it came from Zen teacher, Cheri Huber:

The quality of your life is determined by the focus of your attention.

…which is actually very good news, as is my new favorite bumper sticker:

( you can get it at http://www.snowlionpub.com/html/product_7869.html)

Hint Fiction Contest Winners – and Two More Competitions

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I almost missed the email, but here is a link to the winner and some of the runner-up entries from the Gotham Writer’s Workshop 25 word story contest that I mentioned here earlier.

In addition to enjoying the stories, scroll down to the bottom of the page for links to two more competitions.   There is a 30 word (that is 30 words exactly) story contest that is underway – entry deadline is Nov. 30.   There is also a “YA Discovery Novel Contest” with a deadline of Nov. 30.  For $15 you can submit the first 250 words of a YA novel for prizes including an invitation to submit the full manuscript to a YA agent in New York, a free writing workshop, and critiques by editors at Candlewick, Scholastic, Harlequin, MacMillan, Viking, Roaring Brook Press, and Sourcebooks, who will judge the finalists.

Why not give it a shot?

http://www.writingclasses.com/InformationPages/index.php/PageID/720?utm_source=streamsend&utm_medium=email&utm_content=12936417&utm_campaign=An%20Editor%27s%20Advice%20to%20Writers%20+%202011%20Guide%20to%20Literary%20Agents

Good Grief – A Visit to the Charles Schulz Museum

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Eleven years ago, in December, 1999, we managed to round up everyone and get to the mountains for Christmas. There was good health and good cheer in abundance, and we had an exceptionally nice holiday. One of my gifts was a watch with this picture of Snoopy and Woodstock, which I still have, and which still evokes the memory of family and dogs, together, warm, and happy.

Snoopy and Woodstock

The man who gave us Snoopy and Woodstock died six weeks after that Christmas, in February, 2000. When a long-planned museum opened in his home town of Santa Rosa, it instantly became a desired destination, one of those spots I “definately had to visit someday.” Funny how many trips of thousands of miles we took, perhaps because they seemed like real vacations, before getting to this gem in our own backyard.

Snoopy, Woodstock, and Me

The displays do a fantastic job of illuminating Schulz’s creative process. Anyone who has flipped through a Peanuts picture book has seen the evolution of drawing styles for Lucy, Charley Brown, and Snoopy, but this exhibit goes a lot farther. Schulz worked out ideas using doodles and notes, often on yellow legal paper, which he tossed. One secretary recovered these crumpled drafts from the wastebasket, took them home and ironed thm flat, and now several of them are displayed beside the published comic strips they inspired. We get to see themes, characters, and narrative styles that were tried and discarded, along with some of Schulz’s comments, like:  “That was a bust,” or, “If I’d known then…”  We really get to see how the Peanuts we know and love resulted from the fifty year struggle of a man with a lot to say in a very strict medium, who developed his own unique form of visual-verbal haiku.

Charley Brown outside the skating rink

I just got up to fill my coffee cup and glanced out the kitchen window. How many rites of autumn have been forever shapped by Charles Schulz? Leaves. Football kickoffs. Hot chocolate. World series pitchers (GIANTS ROCK!!!!!!!). The eternal longing for the Great Pumpkin. And soon, our attention to the little orphan Christmas tree at the back of the lot, that nobody wants.

Waiting for the Great Pumpkin

One more hint if you visit:  the burgers at the Warm Puppy Cafe are exceptional, better than any fast food I can think of.  For those who can do it without breaking their necks, the attached ice skating rink is as fine as the rest of the facilities. 

Over by the door at the Warm Puppy is an empty table with a flower and a sign that says, “Reserved.” That is where Charles Schulz sat for lunch, where he watched the skaters and people passing outside. Where he dreamed and dreamed up a humble little comic strip that did things the medium hadn’t done before, and is still as much a part of starting the day as coffee.
http://www.schulzmuseum.org/