just be it Just Be It is a practice of presence that recognizes the limits of language. When aware of silence there is a state of inner still alertness. You are wholeheartedly present.

Language is a system of arbitrary symbols used for the purpose of trying to communicate with one another.  The problem with arbitrary symbols is just that…they are arbitrary.  Yet, for centuries we try to push the notion that meaning is in the word.  In fact, meaning is in the person.  An entire field of linguistic study, General Semantics, is founded upon this.  When I speak of my experience of the Divine, I’ve left that experience.  Language removes me from the experience of the ultimate as I enter my thought patterns.  The felt sense of God is somehow lessoned as I move from the heart to the intellect, trying to capture that experience with words.  Further, I can never repeat that experience and you can never have my experience, as hard as we may try.  I have my experience.  You have yours.  You have your experience of my experience and I have my experience of your experience, and on and on it goes.  With billions of sensation and perceptual events available, there’s simply no way we’d ever come to the exact same experience, no matter what.  Yet, our heart knows something the intellect and language can never come to.  It knows the experience of One, of the felt sense of being held within the non-separable God.

“Their heart may be said to be the interpreter of God’s word.  Listen to the heart, it interprets his will in everything that happens.  For divine action secretly informs the heart of its purpose through the instincts rather than through the mind, indicating them either by chance happenings making the heart respond at random, or through necessity in which case there is no choice, or through impulses to which there is an instinctive response.”

“It is like a musician who combines long practice with the perfect understanding of music, who is so immersed in his art that everything he undertakes connected with it will have a touch of this perfection.  If his composition were to be examined, it would turn out that they conformed perfectly to the conventions and that he was most successful when working unhampered  by them—so much so, that connoisseurs would hail his impromptus as masterpieces.  For convention, if followed too closely, restricts talent.”

1. 38, the sacrament of the present moment

Brother David Steindl Rast says that when dealing in paradox, we’re likely dealing with the divine.  de Caussade writes:

“Without rules, nothing more orderly; without preparation, nothing more profound; without skill, nothing more accomplished; without effort, nothing more effective; and without precaution, nothing better to adjust to whatever may happen.”  p. 39

This is a depth of living that gives us courage “to be”.  It provides the nourishment to face uncertainty, to enter ‘I don’t know land’ with humble confidence.  The willing hearts come under the influence of divine action, “whose power over them depends on the extent to which they have surrendered themselves.”  p. 32

Katagiri Roshi calls this “whole hearted” action.  While our intellects crave understanding through words, there is no perfect understanding.  There is just an accepting of “profound awareness of something that is greater than the intellectual world.”  He writes:

“To digest means to take care of your everyday life by totally accepting that there is something greater than the intellectual world.  How do you do this?  Through everyday life that is impermanent, you have to actually touch something deep that is eternal.  By making your body and mind calm, you can go deeply into the human world and touch your life profoundly.  Then you can feel what is eternal, not in an intellectual or philosophical way, but in a practical and realistic way.”   p. 218  Time is the Universe

He further speaks to the beauty of quality living from the whole heart when writing:

“We don’t believe that our life is walking on the bottom of the ocean because we are always living on the surface, hanging on to the past, present and future.  We think the bottom of the ocean is something other than daily life.  But we cannot ignore the fact that our life in the stream of time is constantly changing.  It is constantly changing because it is manifested from moment to moment at the pivot of nothingness.  So if you want to live your life to really work, then whatever you do—dance, art, painting, photography, or sitting zazen–your life must be swimming on the surface, and simultaneously it must be rooted, walking on the bottom of the ocean.  That is living wholeheartedly.”  p. 81 Time is the Universe

He speaks of an emptiness where we let go of fixed ideas ‘in order to go beyond them’.
Real living, when being/doing merge, is when ‘you become one with your activity, whatever it is, and do your best.’  Katagiri says, ‘When you see yourself, your activity, and your body and mind in the realm of emptiness, occupying the whole universe, there is oneness.’ p. 53  This experience is found in the heart, beyond words and the intellect.  Some call this the food of faith.  Katagiri calls it Big Hope, that which is beyond the arbitrary symbols of language.  My heart resonates with the linguistic symbols of God and Jesus.  This meaning is in me.  We all respond differently to these words, given our necessary different life experiences.  While we support one another by trying to communicate the spiritual experience as best we can, ultimately, it seems the best we can do is sit in silence, breathing the same air, in gratitude for this gift of being, this opportunity to share life with one another, outside our intellectual notions of time and space.  This is peace.  This is hitting the mark of kindness.  I truly believe this is the will of God…of divine Providence.

Life is difficult.  Our thoughts continually plague us with desire for something different.  These thoughts take us from the full experience of the present moment as we drift into hopes for things to be as they were or hopes that they’ll change to something we dream of.  Yet, I contend that real joy for meeting the gift of the moment may be our best skill for adapting to changing conditions.  If I’m rigidly holding on to ideology/dogma that’s located in the ego/intellect, I’ll most certainly miss the ‘will of God’ found in the heart/Divine.

I’ve recently discovered a French Jesuit named Jean-Pierre de Caussade who wrote a wonderful book entitled The Sacrament of the Present Moment. It was written in the early 1700’s, and here’s what he writes:

“It is necessary to be disengaged from all we feel and do in order to walk with God in the duty of the present moment.  All other avenues are closed.  We must confine ourselves to the present moment without taking thought for the one before or the one to come.  For is not God’s law always under cover, as it were?  Something will prompt us to say: ‘At the moment I have a liking for this person or this book, or an inclination to take or offer this advice, to make such a complaint, to confide in or listen to this person, or to give away this or to make that’.  These stirrings of grace must be followed without relying for a single moment on our own judgment, reason or effort.  It is God who must decide what we shall do and when, and not ourselves.  When we walk with God, his will directs us and must replace every other guidance.

Each moment imposes a virtuous obligation on us which committed souls faithfully obey.  For God inspires them with a desire to learn one moment what, in the next, will uphold them in the practice of virtue.  They are drawn to read this or that, to observe and reflect upon the smallest happening.  In this way everything that they learn and hear is fresh in their mind and no dedicated novice will carry out her duty better than they do.

In all that these souls do, they are aware only of an urge to act without knowing why.  All they can say is: ‘I have an urge to write, read, question or observe this.  I obey this urge and God, who inspires it, supplies me with a store of knowledge which subsequently I am able to use to the advantage of myself and others.‘  This is why they must always remain simple, pliant and responsive to the slightest prompting from these almost imperceptible impulses.  God, who possesses them, may make use of them in any way for his glory.  If they were to resist these impulses, like those who depend on their own efforts and initiative, they would be depriving themselves of countless things essential for the fulfillment of future obligations to the present moment.  Since people do not recognize this, such souls are criticized and blamed for their simplicity and they, who blame no one, who are tolerant and understanding of all sorts and conditions, find themselves despised by the falsely wise, who are unable to savour that sweet and refreshing submission to God’s commands.”   pp. 15-16

I personally find great wisdom in this call to the present moment.  If we’re carried away in thoughts and our notions of identity and self importance, we can’t hear the ‘will of God’.  Yet, when we fully surrender to our connection with the Divine we’re supported to the best of our Being.  When I cultivate gratitude for this very gift of being I find deep joy and motivation to ‘show up’.  To tap into ‘divine Providence’, it’s necessary to ‘pay full attention’.  This requires the surrender of our pull to ‘our’ intellectual ‘judgment, reason or effort’.  It moves us from pride to humility, in full acceptance to the glory of God’s will.  It’s the core of faith, this openness to receive the gift of the given without question, even in the face of others’ ridicule and an outcome that may not have turned out as we had wished.  Yet, de Caussade writes, “God reveals himself in all things through faith.” p. 17.

A working formula for this practice would be, 1. Show up fully, 2. Pay full attention, 3. Be/Do Your Best, 4. In full faith to divine Providence, knowing I don’t control the outcome.  The last, an unexpected outcome, may be the most challenging, as de Caussade writes, “It is in these afflictions, which succeed on another each moment, that God, veiled and obscured, reveals himself, mysteriously bestowing his grace in a manner quite unrecognized by souls who feel only weakness in bearing their cross, distaste for performing their duty, and capable only of the most mediocre of spiritual practices.”  He goes on to describe abiding faith, an acceptance that all will be well provided on this journey, even when our beliefs have been shattered, even when our hopes have gone empty.  There is still God everywhere, fully open to experience within the present moment:

“You are seeking God, dear sister, and he is everywhere.  Everything proclaims him to you, everything reveals him to you, everything brings him to you.  He is by your side, over you, around you and in you.  Here is his dwelling and yet you still seek him.  Ah!  You are searching for God, the idea of God in his essential being.  You seek perfection and it lies in everything that happens to you–your suffering, your actions, your impulses are the mysteries under which God reveals himself to you.   But he will never disclose himself in the shape of that exalted image to which you so vainly cling.”  p. 18

Yes, life is difficult.  As the First Noble Truth of the Buddha says, “Life is suffering (restlessness).”  We’re continually grasping to be back there or over there, anywhere but right here, now, in full awareness to this next arising moment, in all its glory.  Our mind is for teasing us with, “I’ll be happy when….”, or “I’ll be happy if….”.  Why not just be happy to Be, cultivating the open mind in gratitude to the changing and our felt sense of interdependence (God everywhere and in everything), in full faith and obedience to Divine Love?

Some recent insights:

May we receive this moment completely, graced to BE, not caught in thoughts of previous moments or future moments.

I don’t have to be right, just open minded with a renewed spirit.

Each moment, Divine moment.

Each moment, Grace given.

Many minds, One heart.

I like the notion of “life, liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” for All creatures.  It’s deep gratitude, humility and moderation, walking with a gentle footprint.

One can’t be whole-hearted with split attention.

The experience (feeling, not thought) of the Divine leads one to hitting the mark (of kindness, joining, interdependence).  This experience is beyond words, beyond thought.  When we let our words separate us, we miss the mark, the root of the word ‘sin’.

In faith, the journey is to wake up to divine Providence…to the will of God…to hold humility in ego’s temptation to greed, power, fear and ignorance, to be/do that which is best for all with harm to none.

Lord, make me an instrument of peace.  And give me the wisdom to know the value of practice, since instruments don’t sound very good when not tuned properly and when not dedicated to practice.

They say that over seventy per cent of America’s economy is based upon consumption.  Our days are filled with thousands of advertising messages trying to persuade us we’ll be happier if we choose a particular product.  Somewhere within the past few decades the skill of creating a desire moved to a more destructive message:  ‘You can’t be happy until you have this product.’  Today our restlessness has grown to such extreme levels that we can barely focus for more than a few seconds at a time.  The Rolling Stones’ lyric ‘I can’t get no satisfaction’ has grown to new levels of meaning.  Markets fluctuate up and down based on our consumption rates as news commentators seem to urge us to buy in support of our country’s welfare.

With this awareness as backdrop, I was struck by a recent sermon I heard from a local Lutheran minister.  His topic centered on the biblical line in Psalms 23, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”  He noted that this Psalm is the most requested for memorial services he’s conducted.  It carries the great wisdom that our peace and joy rest in the practice of faith, of cultivating gratitude for what we have.  Interestingly, this is the same truth the Buddha came to.  His great enlightenment said we must accept that life is filled with restlessness.  Our attachment to desires, grasping and wanting produces our suffering.  We can alleviate suffering by accepting what ‘is’, cultivating a practice of awareness to the moment and our release of ‘wanting’.  Our ability to do this requires great discipline and skill in the face of a culture that’s economically based on pushing ‘restlessness’.

We’re continually fighting to ‘be back there’ or ‘hoping to someday be over there’.  The anxiety we grow from not wanting to ‘be here now’ grows our stress.  One definition of stress is that it’s the gap between where you are and where you want to be.  Again, ‘wanting’ something different than what is produces our suffering.  Our remedy is found in deep, abiding faith.  It’s  the Ground of Being that holds our stability in the face of impermanence.  It’s a bigger hope that sustains when all our little hopes fall away.  It’s what remains when our beliefs are shattered.  It’s our greatest journey requiring the utmost in courage.  It’s that place where we make space, through prayer and meditation, to find the gift in what’s given.  This is not easy work and it doesn’t come naturally.

The poisons of greed and fear are unavoidable.  Deep faith that’s cultivated from the heart eventually comes to the experience of our interdependence.  ‘Not wanting’ lands us in joy for ‘this moment’.  We move past ‘craving’ a future heaven or a different life experience found in our yearning for ‘the good old days’.  We start questioning the harmful effects of hoarding massive amounts of wealth driven from unbridled greed.  We start a more mindful practice of consumption and competition, always first asking, “Who gets hurt?”.  Cultivation of ‘not wanting’ leads us to a richer quality of life that commands our awareness to ‘now’ as we steward a healthier future for those following us.

It takes deep fortitude to cultivate a practice of ‘not wanting’ in the face of rapid change.  Yet, ironically, it’s within our practice of gratitude for what ‘is’ that space opens to awareness of opportunity.

The practice of ‘not wanting’ is a practice.  It requires a commitment to ‘making space’ for regular prayer/meditation.  As we grow our awareness to the life and death found within each moment, we grow our courage to live more fully.  As we grasp for conditions ‘different’, filled with ‘wanting’, we grow our pain.  Our joy can be found in living the experience of the future within ‘this moment’.  This has been called the Isaiah Effect, this ‘feeling’ of prayer.  In contrast to petitioning prayer, filled with a ‘want’, our most joyful prayer is found in a deeper faith that ‘feels’ the prayer’s completion within the present moment.  This ‘feeling’ is so great that we have no choice but to give thanks to the Source, to the Divine, for the very gift of the experience, outside the abstract notions of time and space.  This is Big Hope.  This is Big Faith.  This is the truth in cultivating a practice of ‘not wanting’, of accepting the Buddha’s Noble Truths that life is suffering and restlessness and our peace and joy can be found in cultivating a practice of ‘not wanting’.

So how does this relate to the American Dream?  First, we come to recognize that we’re not entitled to anything.  All is gift.  If we’ve lived long enough and cultivated a practice of gratitude and ‘not wanting’, we eventually find the gift in the given, no matter what.  Somewhere in time the American Dream got turned upside down.  Our founders saw this land as a place for opportunity.  In the face of greed, oppression from massive accumulation of wealth and power from a few, and a deeper desire for freedom, pilgrims set off with deep courage to discover the gift of a new land.  The pilgrim spirit is one filled with awe and wonder found in the surprise of the moment.  There was a flexibility to meet new, rapidly changing conditions, with an open heart.  This was a deeply spiritual experience that moved from the heart in Big Faith.  It was an experience that understood the suffering of life and the need for courage cultivatied through a practice of ‘not wanting’.  It led to a spiritual groundwork that recognized the Divine in all.  It embraced indigenous cultures that also understood our sacred covenant to ‘be kind’ to one another.  It recognized the need for moderation and the power found in prayerful awareness to the ‘gift in the given’.

Today we’ve become very confused about the true spirit of America as we logically try to honor separation of church and state.  It’s left us with a culture lacking in moral conscience.  We find ourselves fighting the empty dogma of secular believers with fundamentalists filled with notions of their ‘rightness’.  Our attempts to impose belief from our ‘thoughts’ of ‘rightness’ fill our airwaves and politics with tremendous distraction from cultivating a practice of ‘not wanting’.  The pilgrim moves from the heart and Big Faith, with a deeper courage and curiosity to the mystery of life (and death).  The pilgrim spirit is not one of persuasion, driven from a desire to change another.  It’s driven from a deep spiritual place of reverence and respect for one another, recognizing the Divine in all things and all beings.  It recognizes our biggest command, “Be kind to one another, and at the least, try not to cause harm.”  Our health is found in cultivating joy through gratitude in the ‘gift of the given’, noting the antidote to greed, fear and ignoring as ‘awareness’, deepened through prayer and meditation.  I’m filled with expectant joy and gratitude for an America of opportunity, flexibility, curiosity, Big Faith, harmony and rhythm, gratitude, and kindness.  We’re a nation founded on kindness, moderation, and mindful consumption.  For me, this is what Occupy Wall Street is about,  a return to the pilgrim spirit of kindness and opportunity and a moral conscience that always first asks, “Where’s the harm (potential or present) in the thoughts, speech, and action we’re about to pursue?”  Our moral conscience can once again be found in the ancient Hawaiian mandate, “Best for all with harm to none.”

“The Lord is my shepherd.  I shall not want.”

4:6-7

King James Version (KJV)

4 Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice. 5 Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand. 6 Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. 7And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

Good News Translation (GNT)

6 Don’t worry about anything, but in all your prayers ask God for what you need, always asking him with a thankful heart.7 And God’s peace, which is far beyond human understanding, will keep your hearts and minds safe in union with Christ Jesus.

Life is difficult.  Our difficulties come from wanting conditions different from what they are in the face of change.  Our relief is found through prayer/meditation, embracing the moment’s gift outside our restless mind.

The greatest truth is deeply coming to see the nature of time.  We struggle with our restlessness, grasping for conditions to be what they were or what we hope them to be.  Yet, the Law of Impermanence continues to work, moment by moment, constantly in change.  We struggle to ‘fix things’ but change is movement, nothing fixed.  Pema Chodrin writes:

“As human beings we are as impermanent as everything else.  Every cell in the body is continuously changing.  Thoughts and emotions rise and fall away unceasingly.  When we’re thinking that we’re competent or that we’re hopeless—what are we basing it on?  On this fleeting moment?  On yesterday’s success or failure?  We cling to a fixed idea of who we are and it cripples us.  Nothing and no one is fixed.” p. 31 from The Pocket Pema Chodrin

So we’re repeatedly brought back to cultivating a greater appreciation for the gift of time (change).  This gift is opportunity.  Human beings are unique because of consciousness.  We have the capacity to reflect and this inevitably causes suffering/restlessness.  This reflection creates our illusion of separateness.  This separateness is fed by our greed (craving for more), fear (stagnation to move), and our ignoring the interdependent nature of life (ignorance).  We want to be at peace, free from greed and fear, yet consciousness is not capable of fully grasping the interdependent Source of Being.  So we suffer, since we can’t get rid of consciousness.  Yet, life works us and deeper reflection creates deeper suffering and pain that “gives you many chances to investigate the root of life and deepen your life in dharma.  That’s why the Buddha said that suffering is truth.”  (p. 48,  Each Moment is the Universe by Dainin Katagiri).

This suffering is our greatest teacher as we learn to be one with this truth itself.  Katagiri describes it as touching the truth that’s always present at the depth of your life and then ‘bouncing’.  He refers to this momentary realization of truth (suffering/nonduality) as deepening wisdom, that experience of no ego and emptiness.  It’s a wondrous feeling of profound knowing that’s impossible to stay with.  Poof!  Back to consciousness and the dualistic realm.  Yet, the wisdom from these fleeting moments, once touched, is what sustains Big Hope (faith).

Brother David Steindl Rast says, “Hope is what’s left when all your hopes are fallen by the way.  Faith is what’s left when your beliefs have been shown to not hold up.”  He references a poem by T.S. Elliot:

We must be still and still moving

Into another intensity

For a further union, a deeper communion…

Brother David suggests we forever realize the surprise within the surprise, that there’s always more to be discovered.  Hope is what keeps us open to a fresh future, in awareness to wholehearted action to the present moment.  We touch the moment’s arrival, motivated through our suffering, only to bounce back to consciousness and dualism with a deeper faith for having touched it.

Having touched this peace, can we move past greed, fear and ignorance?  Is there a place where all this suffering stops?  While many religious traditions portray a time moment where change stops, a lasting state of nirvana or heavenly paradise, the Law of Impermanence can’t conceive of ‘stopped time’.  The Law of Codependent Origination can’t conceive of ‘separateness’ or ‘aloneness’.  Stillness in prayer/meditation seems to deepen the truth of these laws, providing an abiding faith…a Big Hope.  Now, each moment is seen as birth/death constantly working.  Katagiri writes:

Just like everything that exists in the phenomenal world, your suffering is a being that arises from the original nature of existence, and every moment it returns to its source.  So when you see suffering, all you have to do is accept it and offer your body and mind to ultimate existence.  Then you and suffering return to emptiness and there is freedom from suffering.    p. 51, Each Moment is the Universe

This practice is what gives us the courage to embrace uncertainty, to smash past the notions of ‘fixed’ things and certainty, tasting the surprise in each arising moment.  It’s where we find our motivation to experience wonder and awe, to find the gift in the given.

The illusion is that others don’t suffer.  We somehow think accumulation of material goods or worldly achievements will stop suffering.  We polarize, separating ourselves in reflection that causes much unnecessary suffering and pain.  Yet, cultivating a deeper stability gives us courage to open, to move as water, in a deeper caring for one another.  This practice gives us greater awareness to the thoughts, emotions and actions that come up through our moment to moment living.  Either they serve to reduce suffering, hold stillness in no harm, or increase suffering.  Either they are kind or unkind.  Either they hold wisdom in the truth of the Law of Impermanence and Codependent Origination or they ignore them.  Up and down.  Rise and fall.  Poof!  Consciousness and emptiness, forever at play in a deepening practice.

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Cultivating a sustaining felt sense of joy is hard work.  No doubt, we all have our predispositions for holding a joyful attitude.  Yet, as we move through life, experiencing deeper suffering, the work becomes more challenging.  I’m extremely inspired by the person over ninety years old who still carries a joyful air with eternal possibility.  At ninety, you’ve seen most of your friends and family shed their bodies.  You’ve experienced a wide variety of injury and disease.  You’ve watched your body entropy over the years and you’ve felt the diminishing attitude our culture promotes toward the elderly.  And yet, somehow these people sustain a smile on their face that encourages me toward disciplined ‘joy practice’.

I’ve heard it said that if you’re body is still breathing, you’ve still got more than 50% working, no matter how bad off you are.  Now that’s something to be grateful for.  Gratitude is a major component to cultivating joy.  Our real work is to make space to find the gift in the given.  An attitude of joy is one of no complaint.  It’s putting attention to the fullness of life rather than what’s lacking.  It’s recognizing that we’re entitled to nothing and therefore, should take nothing for granted.  All is gift.  This is perhaps most difficult when dealing with perceived enemies, unexpected illness or injury, and ultimately, death.  And dealing with the inevitability of shedding our own bodies is perhaps the best way to cultivate the shear awe and wonder of the next arising moment while being served in these bodies.  I cultivate joy when I’m prepared to let this body go tomorrow, yet stewarding it to live beyond ninety.  This really brings me to life.  It’s what motivates me to wake to this next arising moment.  When we lose our long term vision we lose our awareness to death.  Finding hope in death, we find meaning in life.  This awareness of shedding the body should not really be about fear, but about the inspiration to appreciate life, aiming to meet death without regret. It wakes me to the truth of what life is about, this appreciation practice that yields sustaining joy, no matter what.

So how about the contrast between ‘joy’ and ‘enjoy’?  Joy is sustainable with regular practice.  Enjoyment is not.  When seeking enjoyment or pleasure, as soon as we have the experience we were grasping for, we’re filled immediately with a vacuum, a restless that produces guilt or desire for more.  Joy practice brings us to deeper and deeper conditions of well-being.  We can face conditions that don’t turn out as expected and find the gifted surprise.  We can stand tall in the face of those who aim to hurt us and hold love for them as our brother or sister.  An ever present awareness of our death is the greatest teacher in helping us to take care of life in the best way.  There’s a deeper realization that the only thing that’s permanent is change.  Consequently, in addition to gratitude, patience and awareness practice is central to our sustained joy.  With a strong joy practice, I’m less inclined to cave to my ego’s desire to react to another.  In the ’60’s I was livid with Defense Secretary Robert McNamara for decisions made with regard to the Vietnam War.  He later produced an academy award winning documentary called The Fog of War. His mind opened to see the incorrect assumptions that were made, assumptions that cost fifty-eight thousand young American lives.  Sen. Robert Bird was against the civil rights movement, only to later change as a key ambassador to equal rights and peace.  I would hope that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will some day open to the tremendous harm done from incorrect assumptions made in our military engagement in the Middle East.  None of us is immune from causing harm in our reactive judgments.  Yet, when we practice patience with a non-reactive mind, our decisions and actions will cause less harm.  I’m sure we can all think back to those moments where a little pause, a dedicated ‘joy practice’, would have produced a kinder response.  It really carries the qualities of prayer as described by Brother David Steindl-Rast:

“What is it that makes prayers prayer?  When we try to put into words what the secret might be, words like mindfulness, full alertness, and wholehearted attention suggest themselves.” from Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer.  p. 42

Sustained joy is the result of focused attention and wonderment.  Awareness and patience produce an open mindedness that receives sustained surprise.  Filled with wonderment and awe for the gift of the given, we meet the universe with eyes wide open.  Joy practice opens the closed mind as we cultivate our wholeness in the prayer response.  Brother David relates it to the eyes wind open of children.  He speaks of prayerfulness as that which keeps the child alive in us:

“And the child within us never loses the talent to look with the eyes of the heart, to combine concentration with wonderment, and so to pray without ceasing.”  p. 46

He goes on to say that this is very difficult work, cultivating the mindfulness, gratefulness and prayerfulness we have come to experience in those whole hearted moments.  Yet, it’s because of those whole-hearted, being moments that we know where to aim for deeper maintenance.  He speaks to the notion of this as practice:

“But for once we have managed to do it, we know at least that we can do it, and how it is done.  The rest is a matter of practice, of doing it over and over again, until it becomes second nature.”  p. 49

So the core elements of this practice are awareness, patience, stilling the thinking mind, and cultivating the whole heart response.  Brother David says we can’t be mindful without being grateful.  He also says that joy is a necessary consequence of gratitude.  He goes on to say that it’s a great ‘full’ response that comes from the heart, from the realm of being where we are one with all.

Some practices that facilitate the whole hearted prayerful response are listed below.

Breathing

Pausing in no thought

Going deeper through disciplined practice

Kindness to others (so they suffer less)

Gratitude, finding the surprise in the gift of the given

Patience, stilling the separating, judgmental mind

Cultivating the open, non-reactive mind

Touching our doing with wholehearted being

So, to cultivate joy through joy practice, practice full attention to the breath and go deeper in seeing how everything changes.  From this gratitude for the gift of the arising moment comes deeper mindfulness and further awareness to our interconnection with all things.

It’s also helpful to examine our regular breathing.  Is it peaceful, harmonic and rhythmical?  Does it come from the belly or the chest?  Can we develop greater awareness to the separating nature of our linguistic thoughts?  Through meditation, can we extend the ‘no thought’ moment, can we release our attachment to repeating thoughts, and can we experience a deeper stillness?  With mindfulness and gratitude comes a sense of wonder where kindness grows.  The natural desire to reduce others’ suffering is watered and judgments, competition and the separating mind diminishes.  The mind opens in wonder to accept how little we know, with frequent use of, “I just don’t know.”  The destructive nature of the closed mind and the phrase, “I know that” is revealed.  The grasping to be ‘right’ diminishes as the childlike curious heart opens to an expanding universe.

In the prayerful response, there’s a deep felt sense that all is supported, even when it may seem the floor has given way.  This sense of Big Belonging transcends the separating nature of race, sex, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, economic status, etc.  The mindful, nonjudgmental, open mind is the mind that can sustain joy.

Yes, we all meet despair everyday.  Feelings of not being enough, not having enough and not doing enough creep in repeatedly from our competitive, consumptive culture.  I can only hope that whoever reads this finds some relieve through the implementation of joy practice.  It takes practice, courage and discipline and is no less demanding than any spiritual pursuit.  May you break open this practice and find wonderment and awe as the closed mind yields to the open mind, once again letting the sun shine in.

We’re excited for our last performance of the year at Washington Square Bar and Grill in White Bear Lake.  It’s a celebration in honor of the season of light, the arrival of winter, and the swing of sun/earth alignment to longer days.  So come on out for the best pre-Christmas party in town.  9pm-midnite.

In life, we can face the moment or try to dodge it.  We can commit to being ‘here, now’ or we can try to ignore the moment.  Our restless mind is continually pulling us from ‘being here’.  We can be caught in thoughts of the past or we can be consumed with disturbing thoughts of the future.  Neither holding grudges/guilt or cultivating worry seem to be helpful to our health.  Yet, most of us spend much of our time caught in thoughts of what’s been or what we expect to be.  In spiritual wisdom we’ve seen that the best way we can release from the pain of the past or the worry of the future is to simply settle fully into taking care of the present moment.  Several practices advise breathing with 100% attention to help us align to the moment’s arising.  When fully surrendered into the moment, beyond our attachments to past and future, our actions can be described as ‘in the flow’, ‘in harmony’, ‘in the zone’, etc.  We can actually measure the body’s vibration at a higher frequency.  The cells of the body experience less stress.  In fact, some have defined ‘stress’ as the distance from where you ‘are’ to where you want to be.  Surrendering in full attention to the next arising breath may perhaps be the most effective means for reducing stress, the leading cause of our dis-ease.  We can resist this moment or we can allow it.  We can fight or we can flow.  We can push or we can solidly stand in our truth without need to ‘fix’ or ‘change’ another.  The paradox is how we find our fullness through our emptiness.  An attitude of ‘c’est la vie’ does not mean ‘I don’t care’.  I think it means to stand in full acceptance of what life’s presenting in this moment.  My purpose is to meet it fully, in discovery of it’s gift, no matter what.  This is our acknowledgment to the fullness of life.  Rather than falling to the temptation of complaint, we open in affirmation to the wonder.

This moment that’s coming up can not be escaped.  We’ve been placed here for a purpose…to experience the beauty of ‘this’ arising moment.  Even in the most difficult of places, beauty is continually asking to be seen.  Our work is to make space to see the gift in the given.  The challenge is to live in the present moment and ‘be’ of it, to not get caught in thinking ‘this is my moment’.  It’s our opportunity to ‘be’…to simply ‘be’…to ‘just be’.  It’s our opportunity to help reduce the restlessness, the suffering that comes from attachment.  Our work is to continually move from fight to peace, even when under attack.  We’re constantly being asked to chose peace with the world the way it ‘is’.  This is about accepting what’s in front of us in full awareness.  It’s not about pushing peace.  This is deep forgiveness practice.  It’s a deep vow that says the unkindness stops with me.  It means letting go grudges against those who may have been unkind to us.  It means we change the cultural conversation norm of complaint and we make forgiveness normal.  It means we open our minds, navigating the world with more grace and flexibility.

This practice is not about compromise or reconciliation.  It’s the deeper heart cleansing itself and re-opening to life.  For sure, there are certain people and situations we’re best to avoid.  There are certain situations and people to nurture, just like there’s good food and bad food.  Yet, for me ‘c’est la vie’ is holding what other’s may have done in a more gentle way.  It’s not condoning harmful actions.  It’s not forgetting the wake (karma) of our life’s actions.  It just allows us to make peace with our life when we don’t get what we want.  It’s the capacity to come into our integrity, to make peace, when parts don’t work the way we wanted them to.  What’s the alternative?  To resist what is.  To hang on.  To think we can change what ‘is’.

Fred Luskin has perhaps done more research on the benefits of forgiveness practice than anyone.  His prescription for teaching forgiveness involves the following directives:

1. In life, there’s a sense of not noticing the blessings so we put our attention to what’s unpleasant.  Become more aware of your thoughts. Practice gratitude.
2. Be willing to separate out the content of your story from the story you tell.  It’s too easy to get lost in the story.  We can’t change the content, but we can change the process.  We always come back to the truth question, “Is what you’re doing working for you?  Is it helping you reach lasting satisfaction?”
3. When listening to another, it’s helpful to actively listen with the following structural suggestion, “I hear this is what you wanted _________, and you got ______________.  I empathize that you didn’t get what you wanted.”
4. Forgiveness requires a certain grieving process.  The powerlessness has to be grieved.  We have to cultivate compassion and softness for our vulnerability.  We recognize the pain that grew from putting our trust in someone to only find it wasn’t reciprocated.  We grow an inner release, depersonalizing it as just part of the human experience… ‘c’est la vie’.  Can we sit in softness to our human experience?  Can I calm the whiner in me, still the mind, and use a deeper awareness to determine what processes are waking me and which ones are keeping me asleep?  Can I make a vow to let go the ones that aren’t working?  Do I have the courage and willingness to try other options?  Luskin says we don’t have to know exactly what will work, but a curious, open mind is necessary to break from the quick sand that’s holding us back.
5. Breath work is central to helping us break the chains of our wounding.  Even practicing just 30-40 seconds can help break the habit of the ‘victim’ mind.  Thich Nhat Hanh has an exercise where with each breath in we affirm life with ‘Yes’, each breath out, expressing gratitude with ‘Thank you’, acknowledging the very opportunity to participate in this next arising moment.  The process helps us move from the grasping mind of intellect to the rising and falling belly, eventually landing in the precious heart, cultivating our healing, our return to wholeness.  Luskin suggests we breath into the heart, give thanks, and ask for a gentler solution.
6. This step may be the most difficult.  Luskin says we eventually come to a vow to not talk about our suffering in a way that will disturb us or others.  Until we’ve truly met a place of forgiveness, of what Hawaiians call pono (balance), we vow to hold silence.  We commit to only tell our story from a position of benefits and insights gained from the betrayal.  The aim is to create a story that doesn’t limit one to a victim story.  The final part of this forgiveness practice is captured in the story we tell.  We can’t blame anyone for what comes out of our mouth.

I’ve had my share of receiving others’ unkindness.  I’m fallen into the powerlessness of victim thinking.  I’ve seen the wasted energy put to trying to change what ‘is’, to ‘make things right’.  I’ve seen people gravitate away from me when I’ve slipped back into ‘my story’, losing track of my real purpose: to tell the story from insight for the purpose of easing others’ suffering.

The journey is filled with challenges to resist the moment or face it’s wonder in awareness.  For me, ‘c’est la vie’ is about the lasting commitment to stand strong in truth, to fully meet the moment with an open mind and a full heart, in recognition to the wonder and beauty of the moment’s opportunity.  It’s about cultivating an attitude of gratitude, of ‘no complaint, no complaint’.  It’s about raising the vibration, acceptance, and letting our natural light shine brightly, even when things turn out differently than expected.

After suffering the agony of WWI, the US Congress set aside 11/11 as a day of pause.  In 1938 it was designated Armistice Day, a day to lay down arms in pause to reflect upon the loss and grief from war.  The pause was later dedicated to the loss of veterans, but this should not take away our insight to the suffering that comes from alienation and separation.

We live in a media that thrives on conflict, fear and greed.  We daily ignore the fact that we’re all inter-related, all One.  Science and ancient wisdom have repeatedly shown how everything affects everything and everything changes.  In honor to those no longer in their physical bodies, to those now here, and to those yet to manifest in body, can we take some time today to reflect upon what we have in common?  Can we pause from our need to be ‘right’, from our insecurity and desire to persuade others, and from our continual pull to fight what ‘is’?  Can we just take a few deep breaths in affirmation to the gift of life?  Can we take a few moments to wish everyone less suffering?  Can we take a few moments to touch the Divine, to touch peace?  This is all Matti Stapanek was asking when he wrote the following after the 9/11 tragedy:

For Our World

We need to stop.
Just stop.
Stop for a moment
Before anybody
Says or does anything
That may hurt anyone else.
We need to be silent.
Just silent.
Silent for a moment
Before we forever lose
The blessing of songs
That grow in our hearts.
We need to notice.
Just notice.
Notice for a moment
Before the future slips away
Into ashes and dust of humility.
Stop, be silent, and notice
In so many ways, we are the same.
Our differences are unique treasures.
We have, we are, a mosaic of gifts
To nurture, to offer, to accept.
We need to be.
Just be.
Be for a moment
Kind and gentle, innocent and trusting,
Like children and lambs,
Never judging or vengeful
Like the judging and vengeful.
And now, let us pray,
Differently, yet together,
Before there is no earth, no life,
No chance for peace.

Mattie J.T. Stepanek
September 11, 2001

Mattie was eleven when he wrote this.  He fully understood the real meaning of Armistice Day.  He left his body three years later after dedicating his life to helping others reduce their suffering.  He left us filled with One-der.  May you experience healing this special day of Oneness, 11/11/11.

Just as the moon is full, may your day be filled with ‘One-der full’ moments.

In celebration of One, taking pause from the pain of notions of two.

To heal, to be whole, from the pain of two.

Yoga…to yoke…to be in union, connected.

Armistice…to lay down arms, opening hearts in faith, hope, and love.

Tomorrow marks a shifting moment.  There’s an opportunity to deepen in our notions of ‘two’ or deepen our awareness of One.  We can expand our circle of belonging or diminish it.  We can sharpen our sword or open our arms.  We can be carried away by repeating thoughts from the head or touch the Divine from the heart.  This is not a day to try to persuade another that we’re ‘right’.  It’s not a day to try to ‘fix’ things.  It’s a day to pause, to quiet the mind and find the love that’s available.  This experience of One (Love) is who we are.  It’s an exquisite balance of head and heart, offering tremendous ability to manifest.

This is a time to step out of what’s happening in front of us in a way where we can see it.  Moving into this Witness mind, the more we move into a broader dimension (One, the Ultimate) of our collective experience.  Moving beyond the physical and beyond emotion, there’s an allowing of the energy of the world to pass through us, to reveal it, without us getting caught, wounded, or conditioned by it.  Some have called this the ‘aha’ mind, looking at the trauma in the world as Witness.  The culture would have us deepen our sleep, caught in the realm of the relative, material, dualistic world.  It would have us deepen in greed, fear and our ignorance to the power of One.  In One, we deepen to our real purpose…to experience the beauty of this moment, in all its beauty.  Even in the most difficult of places, beauty is continually asking to be seen.  There’s a tremendous challenge to not claim ownership of this moment.  It’s just the instant opportunity to participate in the ground of Being, outside notions of separation.

This is a day to recognize the peace that comes from One and the pain/suffering that comes from notions of two.  It’s recognizing real healing and wholeness through connection, deepening our awareness to our lack of ease (dis-ease) that comes from the mind struggling with alienation, with smaller circles of belonging.

A major question for us this day is, “Where does my sense of belonging stop?”  Just as a circle has no sides, the feeling of One has no barriers.  This making of peace is a dire need of the human condition, even when traveling through difficult times.  We’re constantly being asked to make peace with the world the way it “is”.  It means we hold our judgment of others, we send energy aimed to reduce their suffering, and it means the unkindness stops with us.  In troubled times, we’re asking how we can take our life as its actually unfolded to grow kindness rather than to use it as an excuse to be unkind?  It’s not asking to forget the betrayal, but to re-open the heart to life, to One.  It’s not a time to condone bad actions, but to hold the person who did them in a more gentle way.  In the realm of the Absolute we’re not only mirrored through our enemy, it’s more like a hologram.  There is no division.  We all carry seeds of greed, fear and ignorance.  We all carry seeds of compassion, gratitude, and forgiveness.  Whether caught in the trance of “not enough” or in the realm of “great fullness”, we ultimately come to ask the question of efficacy, “Is it working for you?”

Today’s Occupy Wall Street movement is doing just that.  It’s asking if monetary/corporate influence in our politics is working or not?  It’s not saying that making money is bad.  It’s asking if it’s bad when making money harms others.  It’s asking if making policy decisions that cause great harm to others is working.  And perhaps the greatest question to the extremely wealthy .01 of the 1%, “Is your hoarding really working to bring you lasting peace and happiness?”  The social trance would have us believe there’s a point of material accumulation and achievement where we no longer suffer. Yet, the more they accumulate the less secure they seem, the more ‘dis-ease’ they reveal.

The healing of America and the international community will come when  more and more wake to compassion for all.  Our real purpose is to waken others to One for the purpose of reducing suffering.  For sure, throughout the day we move in and out of Oneness consciousness.  Fear, greed and our ignoring of One happens.  Yet, in holding our human vulnerability with compassion and softness, we water the seeds of faith, hope and love.  We reach our own armistice moment, a pause in the battle with Other.  This compassion involves an inner release.  Can I sit in softness to my own experience?  Can I calm the complaining mind in me?  When the problems seem big, can I get bigger than the problems?  Can I breath deeply, opening for a greater solution?  Can I acknowledge the fullness of life and step from feeling like a victim?  When tempted to enter into whining, can I open and acknowledge wonder and mystery?

Armistice Day was established in 1938, a day to lay down our arms, on the eleventh day of the eleventh month (11/11).  In the realm of the Ultimate, it’s a day to recognize our One, our Divinity, our non-dual nature.  It’s a day to rest from fighting, persuading, arguing, and debating others.  It’s a time to enter the Witness mind, to open our hearts instead of closing our minds, to cultivate the sincere energy that penetrates all, to connect rather than separate, to wake from the social trance of two, to touch the silence of One in full gratitude for the opportunity to Be.  With this polished heart we desire the best well being for one another.  With this wanting of the best, we know we have to let go.  It means we touch love in the face of impermanence.  It’s realizing the One exists only in this moment, the Present.  It’s a quiet mind and a peaceful heart.  It’s a moment of no struggle, a moment without effort.  Again, it’s the experience of looking for who you are.

This 11/11/11, may you suffer less.

May you be in peace

May you be healed from all resentment

May you awaken

May you be happy

May you be in love (One) now