Lotus and Lily Field Notes

My workplace continues to place great demands on me these days, of the sort that haven’t left me a lot of creative room for explorations on the outside.  I ended up spending a good part of yesterday writing jokey limericks for each of my 15 colleagues here in Seattle.  It was a labor of love, immensely satisfying, though of an entirely topical and insular nature: they won’t make any sense to anyone outside our walls.  And in fact I do feel grateful to this little cadre of smart, committed, and savvy people I work with–so that felt like time well spent in a twisted sort of appreciation.
What work has been these days is a place that demands continuous open receptivity to the reality of each moment, and therefore blissful in a very precise sense.  I come in each day expecting my brain to be twisted into an absolute pretzel, and it rarely disappoints.  In this situation the worst thing you can do is expect things to be a particular way: they won’t be.  What’s rather cool is being able to see into the nature of this circumstance with clarity and, what is more important, acceptance.  That allows for a sort of tantric transformation that unveils the energy beneath each situation and allows it to be experienced as perfect and complete just as it is.

I’ve had the crazy thought lately to start a meditation group among my co-workers.  Risky, exciting, problematic (hmm, where would we meet?  hmm, would that be divisive?).  But every day the reality that the workplace is a sacred field is becoming clearer.  Who knows where it will end?  Who needs to know?

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When I was nine years old and we had a house full of aunts and uncles and cousins I was consigned to sleeping on the sofa…in the living room…with the Christmas tree and all its attendant presents.  Nine years old is probably the height of Christmas-lust, so as you can imagine I had great difficulty in going to sleep.  Hour after hour dragged by, and haunted by the twinkling lights on the tree, the midnight hush of expectation, the glittering ribbons on all those gifts (so many of them, so many of them surely intended for me) my own longing began to taste metallic and bitter in my mouth.  Finally, at about 2 or 3 in the morning, I gave in and broke open one of my stocking stuffers.   I was so strung out, exhausted, and guilty that in attempting to open the gift I discovered, a groovy late-sixties-style mobile, I caused it to become hopelessly twisted up in itself–it never did recover.  I’m not sure I ever quite recovered either.  Maybe that’s one of the experiences that ultimately let me to Buddhism.  That night I certainly did experience, most vividly, the organic relationship between desire and suffering.

I think the Christmas season is a rich opportunity for reflection on these sorts of dynamics: not what actually happens, but what we expect to happen, and how we relate to the fulfillment or disappointment or utter subversion of those expectations.

For me the holidays continue to twinkle like the mocking tree lights during that long, long Christmas night.  To be present to the twinkling, to notice the surge of hopeful expectation, and to notice what actually happens–that sounds like a very good Christmas wish…

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A nice post from Jon at The Wild Things of God about Buddha Day, which is December 8–same day as the Immaculate Conception.  He concludes:

May all of us be inspired to follow the examples of Mary and the Buddha who in their different ways both brought the light of the world into the world.

Now that is an inspired thought.  There are a kazillion books comparing Buddha and Jesus–interesting, but not always that successful, in part I think because there is such a fundamental disjunction between Buddha as Enlightened One and Jesus as Light.  But Mary–ah, Mary is very much like the Buddha.  Very different stories, but as Jon suggests both of their roles were to recognize something fundamental about reality and bear witness to it.  Both were, in some fundamental way, like us, however transformed or special their presence became as a result of their encounter with Reality.

We can make Jesus into our Brother–that does work for many people–but it kind of twists the tradition away from its self-identified core, and that always makes me a bit uneasy.  What I just adore about Mary is the spaciousness around her.  Sure, there are plenty of dogmatic assertions about her, but she’s bigger than that, and has not, I would argue, become the captive of theology that her Divine Son has become.

It’s a similar spacious place that the Buddha occupies: they both seem to say, “Don’t look at me, look at what came through me.  *There* is the key to your salvation.”
I’m going to pay a little more attention the next time December 8th rolls around.  Thanks, Jon!

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The ever erudite Will Buckingham at ThinkBuddha.org writes about Buddhist Inclusivism by Kristen Kilbinger, which critiques the notions of exclusivism (my way is right) and pluralism (all ways lead to the same result) in favor of an approach that recognizes that paths may be different–and goals may be different too. The book sounds fascinating, but as usual I am most amazed by Buckingham’s clarity and erudition. OK, jealous might be the afflicted form of what I’m feeling. But trying to loosen up a bit.

He concludes the post with:

What if we were to give up on the idea “I am”? To see that we are thoroughly conditioned, to see that we have no substantial self, and to give up on the idea that we are Buddhists, atheists, Marxists, Christians, Jews? Then might it not be possible to experience Nibbana – the extinguishment of the heat of our struggles and our rivalries – here and now?

Because such Nibbana is not, I think, a religious goal at all. It has nothing to do with religion. It has nothing to do with being a Buddhist. As long as you think you are a Buddhist, it is impossible. It is, instead, the ordinary peace for which our poor human hearts ache.

Nice!

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Just back from my Nalandabodhi discussion group tonight on Penetrating Wisdom.  We were talking about the Five Wisdoms, which, while it might be an excellent name for a fifties doo-wop group, is actually a set of teachings about the spontaneous arising of insight from the ground of pure being.  Five wisdoms, five poisons, five buddhas: they all emerge from the same sources and manifest differently only because of the degree of relative clarity or confusion with which they are held.  So:

The wisdom of mirror-like clarity is one form: the poison of anger and aggression is another form–they both arise from the same energy and differ only because one is spontaneous and fluid and the other is fixed and dualistic and attached.  This makes a lot of sense in my recent experience: I was so exercised during a meeting today that I was pounding a table with my fist so loud that it resonated through our entire office suite.  Why?  I had this vividly clear, picture-perfect image of how things *should be*, but was clinging too tightly to that, was not able to be present to the whole of the fluid and dynamic situation, and the outcome was an angry outburst, which in fact did prevent me from grasping the totality of what was going on (ok, yes, some element of boneheadedness, but also a lack of clear communication and attentiveness from many of the parties involved, including Yours Samsarically Truly).
And the same applies to the other wisdoms/poisons: pure awareness/ignorance, equanimity/pride, discrimination/passion, and compassion/jealousy.

Out of this dance of experience we have the choice to reside within rigid and narrow emotional ghettos, or to dance freely in the endless play of manifesting energies.

This kind of evaluation of emotional experience is so rich and meaningful–after many months of analytical, intellectually rigorous philosophical work in my studies of Buddhism it is like the moment in the Wizard of Oz when the landscape turns to color.  Ding dong!

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I just got a cool calendar from the Jizos for Peace project, a wonderful collaborative activity in which thousands of people created images of Jizo Bodhisattva, which the folks at Great Vow Zen Monastery near Portland, OR, then took to Japan last year.  It reminds me of how some of us at Lotus & Lily were privileged to create and send in a few Jizo panels (chanting the mantra “om ka ka kabi san ma e sowa ka”).  The project is over but I love the scale of it, the creativity of it, and the wonderful art that resulted.  Lots more pix here.

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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’m learning about dzogchen these days, a set of Tibetan Buddhist teachings somewhat akin to Zen, that emphasize the notion that all phenomena are empty and luminous. I’ve heard “empty and luminous” quite a bit in my Tibetan dharma journey, but I had an insight the other day that I’ve found helpful: it’s as though our ordinary-mind experience is a thick dark raincloud–it seems very solid and forbidding and inevitable. But the sun is shining behind it, turning the edges of the cloud into a fiery luminous gold. So any experience, however impacted or emotionally fraught, contains within it this lumininosity.

This image has been particularly helpful the last few weeks as my day job starts to ramp up in intensity, becoming much more demanding than it has since I started there three-1/2 years ago. We just got a bunch of new funding and more on the way, we’re hiring new staff, and my role is already starting to become much more business- and leadership-oriented than it’s been. I have to go back 8 or 10 years to recall a time when I found myself in such a position, at my previous job (in the software business). In fact it was in conjunction with that last management role that I discovered a degree of suffering that first started thinking seriously about the dharma.

I’m feeling pretty good about this workplace shift, and one of the main reasons I feel OK is that I now have so many useful Buddhist tools with which to disassemble and think more usefully about day-to-day challenges. Empty and luminous, like the sun illuminating a dark cloud.

Of course, other things are different too: I’m working for a non-profit that’s doing good work (it’s all about libraries), and I really enjoy and respect the people I work with and for. Those do make a big difference. But pressure is pressure, and I’m feeling it more already, and Buddhadharma is not just a nice thing to have in my pocket–it’s essential.

And there are also interesting insights to be gleaned from thinking about the Buddha’s teachings in the context of business doings. One further reflection has to do with the way business planning is all about a presumption of *knowing* –knowing what you’re going to sell, who’s going to buy it, what will happen next month or next quarter.  Our whole business way of thinking (whether profit or not-for-profit) is built on this model of certainty.  We probably couldn’t function without it.  But it’s helpful to remember (especially when the stress gets high) that it’s all not only luminous but also empty.  There’s a profound unknowing, beyond conceptual thought, that lurks in the heart of the most carefully cultivated business plan.

Sometimes I wish I had more time to be a scholar, or a thinker.  Being immersed in worldly pursuits limits the possibility of realizing some of those dreams I’ve had for a long time.

But within the deep dark clouds of mundane activity, something is shining…

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Wulfila the Lonely Goth riffs on my recent post about lineage and authenticity in Christianity and Buddhism.

I strongly believe in spiritual lineages, perhaps as necessary “empowerments” to certain kinds of ritual more than anything else….It’s just that in terms of real spiritual authenticity, the authority with which such lineages are typically invested is more likely to destroy the things they are attempting to accomplish than contribute meaningfully to attaining them. Maybe the only compelling authority is the kind that turns itself upside down, becoming its own parody.

I’m reminded of Tom Robbins’ passage in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues about whooping cranes who cling to their migration paths despite the encroachment of civilization and how every institution worth its salt has its own demise built into it. Or the story I heard from Wayne Teasdale once about two Tibetan lamas discussing their situation after the Chinese invasion. They’d lost everything: students, social status, the authority conferred on them by centuries of tradition. The first one said, “well, what do we do now?” To which the second replied, “I guess we’ll have to stand on our own two feet.”
I hear in Wulfila some disappointment in his experience of Tibetan Buddhism, and I’ve shared some that experience in the past: in that world it’s very easy to get mixed up in the snarl of lineages and philosophical schools and exquisite, very pretty rituals, and lose the point. I guess I feel very lucky and more than lucky to have hit upon a pretty healthy center with a healthy teacher. But if you talked to me a couple of years ago (and who knows? maybe if you talk to me a couple of years from now) I would say “lineage? feh!”

This tradition/authenticity thing feels very much like the Buddhist/Christian razor’s edge I live on: the right answer is not on one side or the other. We need tradition; we need authenticity–despite the fact they have every appearance of being mutually exclusive.

Sitting last night in St. Mark’s in Seattle listening to “O” antiphons service, it all came back to me again: five years ago last Easter I was anointed with oil in that very space by Bishop Vincent Warner as part of my confirmation. I felt at the time the lineage behind the action, the centuries through which that touch had been passed down from bishop to bishop, and ultimately to me. I still feel grounded by the experience; it’s still important to me–maybe not so much in a philosophical or wisdom sense, but in some other elusive, but very real and important way.
I come back once again to my favorite Zen story, from the Blue Cliff Record: “It is not a matter of knowing or not knowing. Knowing is just a delusion. But not knowing is just vacancy. When you reach the true way, beyond doubt, it is vast and open as all of space.”  Knowing (aka being in the lineage) is delusion; not knowing (aka being outside the lineage) is just vacancy.

So there it is: there’s no escape. Whether or not you’ve been touched by some bishop or empowered by some rinpoche, you’re going to have to stand on your own two feet.

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Will Buckingham at ThinkBuddha has a nice post on saying yes, referring to a book called Yes Man by Danny Wallace, who constructs a story out of a decision to say “yes” to every opportunity.

This reminds me of a superb theatrical improv class I took a few years ago from a local Seattle legend Matt Smith.   Though it’s probably been 12 or more years since the class, I definitely count Matt as one of my most important teachers.  In improv, saying “yes” is the heart of the practice.  I remember my first class with Matt when I happened to pair up with him for an exercise.  He fixed me with his intense stare and intoned, “you killed my brother” with such conviction that it utterly startled me.  But in the framework of the exercise I had to chuck all my resistance and say “yes I did–and here’s why: he’s a bastard just like you!”

Utterly freeing activity of the highest order.

I may have drifted away into the much more serious and less playful world of Buddhist practice, but something of Matt’s coyote-like wisdom and go-for-broke passion still lingers.  At least I hope so.

My daredevil act for the day was to go to the “O” antiphons service at St. Mark’s Cathedral, a rich panoply of incense, processions, gorgeous music, profound readings.  As I wrote yesterday, today is the first Sunday of Advent, and going to the service was a way to test (yet again) the question of my relationship with the Christian liturgical year.  For me it’s a maelstrom of confusion and ambivalence, beautiful poetic language and abhorrent philosophy and spectacularly deep wisdom.

So what else is new?  And why should this particular bounded arena of experience be any less rich with opportunities for experiencing the empty luminosity of enlightened mind?

I will just keep asking the questions, because that’s what’s happening.  Resolution seems like a silly idea anyway.  For now,today is Advent 1, and I say YES.

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It’s December 2; tomorrow is the first Sunday of Advent.  The cycle of the year is one of the precious gifts of the Christian tradition, far more fully developed and elaborate than the calendars of any religious other tradition (I tip my hat to the Jewish calendar, which is rich indeed–but the Christian calendar took that basic framework and made it the focus of still further elaboration).

Growing up I knew little of this richness.  As a low-church Protestant “Lent” was something my strange Catholic friends did, “Easter” was one day in the year when we were supposed to pay attention to something special going on (“Christmas”would have been the other, but was of course overshadowed by more materialistic interests in my young mind, so I’m not quite sure what we were told).

Of course there is a calendar of festivals in Buddhist traditions, New Year and  Buddha’s Birthday and the like–humans like to have such activities to celebrate.  But I would say none of it holds a candle to the Temporale and Sanctorale of Medieval Christendom.  And ever since I came across it through my study and performance of Gregorian chant, it has been relentless and compelling and inevitable for me.  My daily or weekly observance of the passage of Christian sacred time has waxed and waned through various degrees of my enthusiasm; but there is a  pulse to the turning year, underlying the chaotic meanderings of my life, that seems fundamental and necessary in some mysterious way.
Advent I: the cycle begins again, and renews the gorgeous Christian preoccupation with time.  In the beginning…at the end time…in the day of the Lord…always the passage of time really means something from the Christian perspective.  Astutely, the Buddhist framework might point out that such a forceful attachment to conceptual thought is highly problematic.

But there you are: in the Christian world, at least the one I most adhere to, it’s beautiful, it’s inevitable.  The first chant of the first mass of the year, “Ad te levavi animam meam”–to You I lift up my soul–is often beautifully illuminated in medieval manucripts, signifying start here–it’s going to be quite a ride!.

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