Lotus and Lily Field Notes

This week the Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, the source of most of my insights about Buddhism, is giving a series of talks at Nalanda West about analytical meditation.  I have been taking classes at his center and reading his books for almost two years now; this week is the first time I’ve actually heard him teach in person.  It has been moving and quite wonderful.  There is an ease and naturalness to his presentation that is thoroughly disarming–he presents himself as totally uninterested in glamour, and laces his talks with self-deprecating humor and earthy examples–tonight it was the story of him listening to the Rolling Stones’ Emotional Rescue in a monastery in Sikkim in the 70s (“I guess we were hoping to be rescued from the monastery”).
But underneath all that is a deep and pervasive wisdom.  And inspiration as well: when he said, tonight, “we keep telling ourselves same lies over and over and over again until we actually believe them: that we will last forever, that our experience is solid and permanent, that our concepts really exist.” In the midst of a somewhat tangled set of life circumstances just now, these words were deeply meaningful.

I have to give myself a modest pat on the back for showing up for these teachings, and not running screaming from the room.  To sit still and listen with an open heart and genuine pleasure to any spiritual teacher takes some doing (this has been a good year–Cynthia Bourgeault is another success story for the mystical Christian side of my brain).

The occasion for Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche’s talks is Nitartha Institute, a lovely and in-depth exploration of Buddhist philosophy that is now most conveniently being offered a few blocks from my house.  This is not the year for me to attend but I hope to do so another time.  I’m really amazed by the Nitartha Institute’s vision: to provide a context for traditional Tibetan Buddhist scholastic philosophy to be taught in a Western context, in a way that makes sense to Westerners.  This vision will take time to unfold (it’s been going for eleven years already), but as the DPR said the other night, “I’m a conversative”.

Sometimes my quixotic pursuit of the spirituality of Gregorian chant seems foolish and pointless.  But maybe there is a way in which this work can sprout its own roots and grow, just like these beautiful Buddhist projects springing up all over.

Anyway, I just keep studying and growing and listening (most recently also to Peter Brown’s fantastic Rise of Western Christendom, which is opening up huge new vistas of understanding about the context of Gregorian chant–more on this later, I hope).

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A couple of weeks ago, I almost acquired a Blackberry.  My jet-setting library world colleagues (believe me, before I had this job I had no idea library-world jet-setters exist.  They do.) all carry them, and they are all plugged in all the time.  I was able to overcome the temptation this time around, and just a few days ago I was reminded why I am glad I made that choice.

Stuck in O’Hare airport with one of the afore-mentioned jet-setters, I watched her tap away on her Blackberry to fill in the spare moments of our conversation.   She’s a smart person, a good person, someone I really respect.  But as she jokingly said at one point “more communication is better communication!”

I’ve been thinking about that comment, and about Blackberries.  Sitting in meditation a day or so later, this thought popped into my head: “Is what I am doing communication?  Or something different?”  In one sense, meditation is a vertical communication, or maybe a communion.  On another level it is a communication with the self.  But it is also something different, something outside the domain of communication (language, concepts, intention, ego).  Something wholly other than communication, wholly other than information.  To my day-job, web-enabled, information-professional self, that’s just utterly shocking!
A few years ago I heard a prediction: “Someday there will only be two kinds of businesses: web businesses and anti-web businesses”–meaning, I think, businesses that make money off of what people do when they’re not online.  While there may not be much money in it–at least for me–maybe meditation is the anti-Blackberry.

And maybe that’s why I’m glad I don’t carry one of those seductive little fruits.  At least not yet…

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Here are my wife Victoria’s notes on the first of a series of Lotus & Lily meetings on how we organize ourselves for the future.  Politics *is* spirituality, and the organizational aspects of religious life are fascinating and revealing: the perfect dance of incarnation as finite human beings attempt to embody their visions in the context of social interaction and group dynamics.

There are lots of interesting nuggets in the following; I present it here for whatever spiritual merit it might offer, but also to provide an insight into the ways one group is exploring what it means to be together.  Pretty wonderful, actually.

(Parenthetically, I am just back from a good week working in Ohio.  It was very, VERY COLD (-1) and snowy; I am deeply grateful for 45 and rainy in Seattle.  It feels just like Hawaii.  But my workgroup feels more and more like a sangha–precious precious to see new people joining us and to feel the energy start to coalesce.  Not clear how stable it will be, but I welcome the pleasant sensation of growth and health there as well.  Is it something in the stars?)

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Yesterday marked the beginning of our self-examination and rethinking of Lotus and Lily as a group.  This discussion is happening through a series of Lotus and Lily Steering Council meetings scheduled for Spring 2007.  We started the series by dedicating this first session to looking at the big picture–the purpose and vision of Lotus and Lily.

I volunteered to take notes on the conversation, which you’ll  find below

May the compassionate beings of Buddhism and Christianity smile upon and bless our efforts,
Victoria

We started promptly at 6pm and by staying on schedule we had enough time for all our regular activities, besides a planning meeting from 7:15-8pm.

We started the discussion by reviewing the written statement that appears on the opening page of the Lotus and Lily Yahoo Group website.  Then we each took turns commenting on the statement and describing our hoped for vision of Lotus and Lily.

The idea of Lotus and Lily being a group that equally embraces Buddhism and Christianity was affirmed.  A number of people—but not everyone–even went further and said that they would like to have a greater integration of Christian and Buddhist practices, rather than keeping them equal but separate. 

There were calls for us to use time at our gatherings more efficiently, energetically, and creatively.  If we’re not always having Steering Council meetings at future gatherings, then there could be some time available for additional activities.

Clearly, members want Lotus and Lily to be a place for their own Buddhist-Christian spiritual practice, and for support of that within a group setting.  But mention was also made of several ways in which the group can be a resource and offer service to the larger community.  We can contribute to peacemaking and societal healing by simply letting the larger community know of our existence.   With so much of the contemporary world being affected by inter-religious polarization and conflict, we can raise society’s consciousness about greater possibilities for interfaith harmony.  By offering a welcoming and open environment we can help make Buddhist practices (especially meditation) more accessible to the Christian community.  Also, we can contribute to the healing of American ex-Christians who have become Buddhists.

Several people said they’d like to see the group’s prayer practice become more intentional and focused in terms of growing the varieties of prayer practices, and clearly invoking sacred Christian and Buddhist presences during the course of prayer.

Three areas of general agreement clearly emerged from the discussion:

1)      We’d like our mission statement to more clearly state that people can elect to be members of Lotus and Lily and still maintain membership(s) in other churches and places of worship.  We invite people to creatively explore how to fit Lotus and Lily into their lives.  Participation in Lotus and Lily is not necessarily to the exclusion of other religious/spiritual affiliations.  It’s up to the individual.

2)      We’d like to grow the group and to have more members.  This would bring more energy to the group, allow the work of running it to be more fairly distributed, and to keep it afloat when some members are sick, traveling, or are otherwise unable to attend or participate.

3)      The group does not currently miss or feel the need for a spiritual teacher or leader.  We are happy to define Lotus and Lily on our own terms, rather than having the shape of the group be defined by, and be a function of, the character of a specific teacher.

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I’ve been doing daily meditation for roughly 1-1/2 years now, one session a day in the morning.  One of my resolutions for the year is to “meditate more”, which I am interpreting to mean “meditate twice a day.”  And it’s been a total bear.  In the morning my mind is relatively clear and calm, and despite the expected annoyances I am making decent progress.  “Progress” is a tricky term when it comes to meditation (since a lot of the point is “don’t do something, sit there”).  But I notice greater calm and better ability to focus and kind of let arise what arises: good stuff.

But meditating in the evening is really, really hard.  My mind is spectacularly jumpy and active; it is quite an effort just to sit still.  It’s actually a little scary to see how completely crazy and out-of-control my thoughts are, when I go about my non-meditative business as though I’m a rather normal person.  Not true!

I have been ruminating all week on the Gospel of Thomas teaching session provided by Cynthia Bourgeault at the Contemplative Wisdom Community.  One of her comments was that there is a “really scary” level of consciousness below the conventional level, that starts to reveal itself during meditation.  Yep, I seem to be getting there.  Dark night of the soul, perhaps.  Probably to be expected.  Certainly a challenge.  And most likely very, very helpful.

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I have been singing chant with small groups of men (from four to seven) for over ten years now.  One of the things I’ve learned is that in a group that size the presence or absence of each man, the addition of a new or the loss or an old member, has a dramatic impact on the experience of singing.  From tone color to interpretation to spiritual quality to emotional connection–all these things are shifted remarkably by the presence or absence of just one person.

I was reminded of this last night at our bimonthly Lotus & Lily meeting.  We’re pretty small, too–somewhere between 5 and 10 participants these days–and the presence of each individual makes an equally notable difference.

Last night we had a new participant–a very sweet older woman, the mother of a long-time Buddhist practitioner, who attends Seattle First Baptist (where our meetings are held).  She was full of interest, questions, ideas: really a wonderful addition to our crew.  I hope she decides to return.   Her thoughts and questions remind me how many possibilities there are for us to play a role in helping to educate spiritually oriented Christians about Buddhism.  There’s much to learn, and it’s not particularly easy to understand, and it’s my hope that our modest group can continue to find ways to participate in this work.

Though we style ourselves as a “Buddhist-Christian study and practice” group, it’s my sense that there are many more possibilities for us helping Christians understand Buddhism than the other way around.  (For a whole host of reasons, many Buddhists are not particularly open to Christianity.)  Our new visitor last night helped rekindle that vision for me: I look forward to seeing what we can do about it.

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I am reading Shantideva’s Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life (the image to the left is for visual effect: my translation is Robert Thurman’s in Essential Tibetan Buddhism).
The snippet below is characteristic of Shantideva’s gentle encouragement to peer deeply into the erroneous logic or our daily thoughts and move to a deeper, if counterintuitive, realization.
Since thus I injure [my enemies]
And thus they benefit me,
Why so perversely, savage mind,
Do you feel anger toward them?

I can remember being similarly inspired by the Sermon on the Mount, once upon a time.  But I say to you, love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you.

The notion of swimming upstream against our own unconscious propensities is both exciting and daunting.  Last night I saw the premiere episode of TLC’s The Monastery, in which five seekers sign up for a 40-day stint at New Mexico’s Christ in the Desert Monastery.  I expected cheesy, but the first episode was thrilling: just seeing the dynamics of the spiritual journey expounded so explicitly on primetime TV was quite stunning.  The participants all have their warts, and I do wonder if a traditional Benedictine monastery is the best place for all of them to get the support they need; nevertheless, it’s amazing to be given such an intimate view of their journeys.  A former alcoholic, a wounded Iraq war vet, an earnest bearded religious seeker, an ex-con youth worker, a burned-out emergency aid worker (to give them the most egregious shorthand idendities), all with wildly various attitudes about and relationships with religious tradition.  Kind of weird, in a way: I am so fussy and over-thoughtful about what I do, religiously, and when and how I do it.  And these guys just seem to have kind of wandered in to the sublimely rich traditional monastic environment without  really much clue about what it’s for and what it means.  But clearly each of them is on a journey of *formation*, of reshaping their humanity in fundamnetal ways.  And whatever the flaws of the environment and whatever the flaws they bring with them, it is supremely heartening to see them making the effort–especially on primetime TV!

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From my friend Donna (a good hugger in her own right): you have to watch this Free Hugs Campaign video.  A beautiful 3 minute piece that brings tears of relief and joy, and also of sadness at how estranged from our humanity we have become.   If the essential teaching of the Buddha and Jesus is our fundamental oneness, expressed as love or compassion or wisdom or enlightenment or the kingdom of  God–then this is a pretty good parable.

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One of my fun Sunday afternoon hobbies is hunting through the CD bins at the mighty Seattle Public Library.  Today I found this treasure.  In addition to the sublime music, there’s that extraordinary image on the box, as pure and clear an image of devotion as one could hope to find.  Giving yourself up totally, pouring all of yourself into that which is beyond you.  The relinquishing is not easy.  But the result is beauty, a beauty that is not from you and not even about you.
How is this not prayer?

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One of the key distinctions between Buddhism and Christianity is in their attitudes to the source of liberation:  traditionally, Christianity assigns that role to the Savior, while in Buddhism there is a pretty strict emphasis on the need fo individuals to find their own liberation.  (There is an escape clause in some Buddhist traditions,, however: one can get the help of the Buddha or others to be reborn in a Pure Land, where self-liberation becomes a much easier task.)

As I’ve said before on these pages, I’m really attracted to the individual responsibility of the Buddhist path.  So it was with some surprise, during a meditation session this morning, when I stumbled across a notion (ah, notions.  Can we really trust those notions anyway?) that I was not alone, that buddhas and bodhisattvas galore were standing by to assist me on my journey.  Very much like the sense I’ve had on occasion that Mary and the saints were standing by to assist me.

In my last post I wrote of the two wings by which “the victors” can soar to enlightenment: relative truth and absolute truth.  From an absolute point of view there is nothing that can be identified as singular, permanent, and independent; from this perspective the notion of some sort of “entities” that actually affect “my” liberation is just so much conceptual claptrap.  But, on the other wing, these wonderful beings, whatever they might be bejewelled bodhisattvas or bloody martyrs, serene cosmic buddhas or Most Compassionate Virgins, are right there, available, intending to make use of all their accomplishments, all their merit, all their grace-given purity or steadfastness or humility or potent wonder-working powers–they are ready to use those powers to help *us*.  To help *me*.

So however important it is for me to continue to diligently pursue the study and practice that helps prepare me for liberation (and it’s very important), I’m just basking right now in the beautiful notion, shared by both of my core traditions, that there is help: when the road gets long or the burden gets heavy or the accumulated karma gets to be too much (or the laziness or anxiety or whatever it might be that stands in my way)–at that moment there is some shining being that is up ahead on the road there, profoundly wise and skillful like the best imaginable helpful character in the best imaginable fantasy novel, and totally focused on helping out.

I could stand to learn a thing or two about helping out better myself, in my own decidedly non-enlightened state of being.  But it sure is reassuring (at least tonight, when I kinda sorta grasp the idea) to contemplate who’s out there to lend a hand.

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I was thinking today, in the context of my Buddhist practice, about my friend Henry Yu who is a serious and creative Tai Chi practitioner.  He first learned the forms, and then started exploring what was inside those forms.  He says, “you have to find the way to follow the flow of energy: when you understand the energy flow, then you will do the form perfectly, without trying.”  Very much like any enlightenment-state practice: when we are fully in alignment with the Tao, or the Divine, or Buddha nature, then the practice flows easily and naturally: it is in fact the only thing to do.

Meanwhile, though, a little effort is in order, as we struggle to understand what’s really going on…tracing the outline of the form, even when we don’t fully understand it, is not such a bad thing to do.  And at this point it’s kind of the only option!

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Still abuzz with preparations of various kinds, with the latest round of parody lyrics for my company retreat taking the bulk of my creative energy (my favorite thing about this activity is the way it lets you crawl inside great songs, in this case everything from Sam Cooke’s “Cupid” to “Goldfinger” to “Mack the Knife” to “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.”)  But also lots of work getting ready for the summer retreat and this crazy death ritual performance (sometimes I feel a bit like Alice Cooper).
I have noticed before that being in a deeply creative space is pretty darned scary: it’s the intensity of that space, the overwhelming and complete nature of it that at times in the past has caused me to pull back into safer territory.  My work with chant, which I love, which I feel compelled to do, nevertheless has a certain aspect of safety for me: it’s a very constrained world, and that takes away some of the terror of wide open spaces that other kinds of creativity seem to take me to.   And lyric writing, even this seemingly innocuous silly parody of silly office doings, has a similar sort of potency.  So, for example, it’s very hard for me to imagine writing my own lyrics, or even my own songs.  Too much wide open spaces for me, cowboy.  At least at this point.

But I have been exploring wide open spaces of a different sort lately, in the Buddhist analytical meditation work I’ve been doing. It’s a very formal and structured way to get to “everything you know is wrong,” as taught originally by the wonderful philosophic master Nagarjuna and expounded upon by numerous Indian and Tibetan masters.  Last night at Nalandabodhi our class was dedicated to a practicum exploring this method.  It’s a great method: you systematically dismantle all connections between cause and effect that might bring circumstances about–and then at the end (my favorite part) you quite deliberately dismantle the dismantling and let everything just flow back into the present moment, just as it is.   Quite thrilling, actually.

I mean, if I can do that (whoever “I” is), then maybe a little dangerous creativity wouldn’t be so bad after all, eh?

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For some reason, lately Amahl, one of our cats, has been clambering upstairs and harrassing me during meditation.  He yowls, butts his head against my knees, paces back and forth in front of my humbly lowered but slightly open eyes.

Today when I was (supposedly) deep in meditation he knocked the lamp behind me over, and before I knew what I was doing I was grabbing him and tossing him away, with an, “Amahl, you stupid…”–literally most of the way through this instinctively violent reaction before I caught myself doing it, and laughed sheepishly, and thought “if this is the way you behave in the middle of meditation, hmm, maybe you’re not quite as far along as you might have hoped…”

Amahl’s presence in my meditation space does have its more obviously beneficial (or maybe just more reassuring) aspects, however.  I am in the middle of an exploration of Madhyamaka reasoning, analyzing the relationship between causes and effects.  As with most of this stuff, the real point, I think, is to break one free of the attachments associated with habitual thinking, but this particular practice is really kind of weird.  The idea is to talk oneself out of the notion that individual phenomena actually arise, by determing that (1) a phenomenon cannot arise from itself, (2) a phenomenon cannot arise something other than itself, (3) a phenomenon cannot arise both from itself and from something other than itself, and (4) a phenomenon cannot arise neither from itself nor from something other than itself.

This is, as it were, the polar opposite of good ol’ testifyin’ Pentacostal Holy Spirit stuff.  Cerebral and dry, right?  But today, as I was trying to reflect on these notions, with Amahl pacing in front of me, I suddenly got it, for just a split second.  For just a second I perceived all these moments of discrete individual Amahls, disconnected from one another, spontaneously arising with no relationship to each other.  And at just that moment I hit the 4th reasoning, which implies that *phenomena cannot be causeless.*  So if  this pacing cat is neither caused by itself nor by something else nor by both nor by neither, then we are left with only one conclusion: this arising (of kitty-ness, or anything else for that mattter) cannot be established at all.  It’s not that they don’t exist.  They simply can’t be established.

Which leaves us, somewhat like a certain cat I know, pacing back and forth, flicking our conceptual tails, trying to grasp onto an answer, find a way out of the conundrum.

And that right there, that’s the place to be.  That’s the hanging-on-the-cross moment right there.  Forsaken yet glorified.  Sunk deep in complete mystery, yet completely awarke and aware.  Very nice indeed.  So thank you, my teacher Amahl, for giving me… (oops, he’s just run away–probably chasing a moth).

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