Posts Tagged ‘Buddhism’

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Keep These In Your Pocket


28 Apr

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Life can be tough to navigate and deal with sometimes.  For my money it’s a good idea to have some tools & tricks to deal with the bugger when it goes pear-shaped, or gets weird.

I once read that the reason why Buddhism is given in lists (4 noble truths, 8 fold path, 3 root poisons, etc) is because the Buddha taught before such things were written down, and it is easier to remember lists.  Being as I have a terrible memory, I can really get behind the idea of keeping it simple.

To that end I think there are a few things everyone could use to keep handy.

A way to keep fit that you enjoy. For me that’s Aikido and Tai Chi.  Those have the added bonus of keeping me a bit safer too.  Tai Chi is awesome for its portability.  I also collect odd body-weight exercises that I can always do should I need a quick workout.

Some level of knowledge of how to keep your system fueled. Here I am thinking about a modicum of knowledge about food and how to make healthy choices.  I also have a simple food-plan I picked up from my active time in OA – three meals a day, no snacks, no sweets, no peanut butter, no pizza.  That combined with a basic fear of fast food keeps me well fueled.

A philosophical model/modality that helps you get through life. I keep a few basic truisms close to hand – “The map is not the territory”, “Opinion is not fact”, “We all see through our own distinct reality-tunnels”, and my personal favorite, “All statements are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense.”  I also like, “Don’t be that guy”, and (thanks to Diane) “Just be cool, dude.”  I also like Buddhism for compactness and a basic strong grounding in psychology, Taoism for simplicity, and the Integral Model for catch all applicability/orientation.

A way to connect to the truth. Atma Vichara and Meditation are my mainstays here. Atma Vichara you can find out about (my take on it) here.  For Meditation you can poke around my tagged posts here.  The vichara gets me zeroed in on the basic truth of what I am, and by extension since there really is not-two in this reality, the truth of everything.  That may be a bold statement, but luckily the truth cannot be spoken so i don’t have to bother to try.  ;)   Meditation helps me develop equanimity and sharpens my awareness.  Two very useful skills for dealing with this wacky world.

What are some of your tools for getting along in life?  I would love to hear them!

Cheers!

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A Measuring Stick For Behaving Well


26 Feb

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Diane Musho Hamilton has a great post over at her blog that inspired me today – Simply Uncool. It’s a great piece and reminded me of a distinction I got this one time at Burning Man…

Don’t be that guy.

We all know examples.  This is the guy (or gal) who does something incredibly inappropriate at a high-school party, like trying to hit on the host’s Mom.  Or, the guy at Burning Man who keeps interrupting everyone to tell them how they should be doing what they’re doing.  Or, the layman in a sangha who snickers when someone asks a novice question at the Q & A after a dharma talk.  Or, the goober who always posts derisive, dismissive posts on Facebook threads making light of something held serious by the poster.

We all know that guy behavior when we see it.  Thing is that that guy seems to float about, doesn’t he? It’s a phenomenon we all inevitably partake of.  It’s those moments when we should have known better.  Those split-seconds where the words come out a fraction faster than we can catch them.  Where we behave as if no one could ever know.

We have all been that guy a time, or two (or three, or seventy-five.)  Luckily now I, and you, have a mantra to remind us to check in on our behavior.  We can hold what we are doing against our remembrance of the shenanigans of that guy, and if we are being that guy we can cut it out! (This time… maybe… heh…)

P. S. ~ Thanks Muse!

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Stop For a Second


08 Jan

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I’ve been reading the book Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha
by Tara Brach, Ph. D., and deeply enjoying it.  The last section dealt with the concept of the sacred pause.  This is a practice I try to work into my life, and it was great to get a reminder.

The idea is to take a moment to stop striving, or goal-seeking, or activity to try and get somewhere, something or someone and just be with what is real for you in the present moment.  It’s a sort of energetic reset.  Just taking a moment to see what is so, without judgment or plan.  It is a state of welcoming whatever is present, just as it is, and checking in with the core of ourselves.

Tara suggests the idea of picking a specific activity for practicing the pause.  Something you do on a regular daily basis.  This could be before you brush your teeth, before you leave the car, as you finish ting your shoes, as you sit down for lunch, or any activity that you do regularly where you can take a moment for yourself to pause.

I find a pause in my day to take a moment, or three, to just experience what I am experiencing consciously is incredibly invigorating and greatly sharpens mental focus.

You could try one right now before you read the rest of this post.  Take a few moments to close your eyes, relax your body and breathe easily.  Let your awareness scan through your current experience.  How does your chest feel? Your jaw? Is there any tightness there or elsewhere? Are there a stream of thoughts going through your mind? How does gravity feel on your flesh?  After a few breaths slowly open your eyes and go back to reading.  See how that feels.

In OA (and other 12-Step Programs) they have a version of this sacred stop that you can reach for (as a tool) when you are in the grip of negative emotions or energy.  It comes with the handy acronym – H.A.L.T.  That stands for Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired.  When you catch yourself lashing out in anger, fuming, stomping off, or telling take a moment and do an honest assessment.  Are you acting out for any of those reasons, and if so what can you do to actually address the issue?  It’s a wonderful way to get real with why you are acting the way you are.  You can then make an informed decision as to whether your current course of action will deal with the issue, or if a different course is called for.  Often in life we get driven to unskilled actions by misunderstood or unexamined feelings when we could actually address them and move on.

If the idea of the sacred pause appeals to you I highly recommend you carry it around in your back pocket for a few days, get some use out of it and see if it works for you.  Let me know how it goes!

Cheers!

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Grateful for it All


31 Dec

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You ever sit and watch the rain?  I do.  When I was  a kid growing up here in San Francisco we would have weeks of downpour in the fall and winter months.  I used to walk home from school getting soaked and looking forward to sitting in the living room with the curtains wide open, watching the rain stream down in thick splashes.  The street in front of our house would turn into a river, ripples blowing uphill in the wind.  I would sit there poking away at homework and watch the rain for hours, thinking about where it had come from and how it worked.

These days I am a little more in the know about what goes into making rain.  I have been on a Buddhism study kick lately and one of the concepts central to Buddhist thought is the idea of interdependent conditions which come together to form any, and every thing we encounter.  In order for rain to happen several conditions need to be present.  There has to be water, clouds, differing temperature pockets, the right amount of wind, and more.  If any of these factors is missing then there is no rain.  So, when you are looking at rain, what you are seeing is the culmination of causes and conditions.  If any one was not present then the phenomenon of rain would not be either.

The same is true of a chocolate cake.  Take away flour, eggs, milk, salt, chocolate, heat, or the person baking it and there will be no chocolate cake to be found.

This is also true of the experience I call my life.  In order for there to be this life right now there had to come together an staggeringly complex set of conditions and formations.  If any one of them was not present then neither would I be. From the countless breaths I have taken, to the food that has been provided by the labor of others, to the bed I sleep on, to the guy who cut me off in traffic, to the bank teller who was rude to me when I was twenty-two.  If any part was missing, so would I be.  The person that would be here would be someone else.

Seeing this the other day as I was walking home from work I was filled with a profound gratitude, for everything, everyone, and every situation I am with or have ever been with.  All of it is the sum total of causes and conditions that make up the man I call Travis.

Looking at things that way puts a very nice spin on them indeed.

As this year closes, with a grateful heart I offer a deep bow to all the conditions that have come together to form me.  Thank you all, each and everyone. (Yes, that gal who said I was cute “like a hippo” when I was 7 too.)

Peace and Love for the New Year!

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Slightly Better Than Doing Nothing


13 Nov

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Last weekend, Daisy and I went to see Kaz Tanahashi give a talk at Green Gulch Zen Farm for their Sunday morning dharma program. The talk was part of a retreat program called Zen in Translation. It was also the release party for a book that Kaz has been working on for the last 33 years with the San Francisco Zen Center, an English version of Dogen’s Shobo Genzo, basically the root text of Soto Zen. It’s a monster of a text consisting of two volumes totaling 1616 pages of pure dharma.

Sunday morning talks always have kids present during the first 15 minutes of the dharma talk, and Kaz spoke with them first (as is the tradition at Green Gulch). Kaz spoke of pickles. Japanese pickles are made without vinegar. Instead, they salt the vegetables and pack them down with weight for a dozen hours or so. When Kaz sent a long-time friend a copy of the completed work, his friend said that Kaz had made something good for making pickles. The kids did not quite get it, but all the adults laughed.

Several of the teachers in the SF Zen Center system were there. Many of them had helped with the translation over the years, and they occasionally piped in with commentary. Kaz spoke in a meandering way about the decades of work. He begun his career as a translator helping with a translation of the Shobogenzo into modern Japanese. During that project, he and the man he was assisting were going to various important Soto Zen temples and monasteries in Japan to look at old texts and take pictures. At one particular important temple, they were warned in the small town near the temple that the Abbot was particularly strict. In fact, the Abbot was so strict that he had driven off all of his monks and was living in the temple alone. When Kaz and his teacher arrived, they tried to offer a donation, as is tradition when visiting a temple, but the Abbot refused them. They sat amidst the decaying temple and explained to the stone-faced zen monk that they were there to gather material for a translation of the Shobogenzo into modern Japanese so that it could be appreciated by a wider audience. The Abbot nodded and said, “Well, I suppose that’s slightly better than doing nothing.”

The zendo at Green Gulch filled with laughter. Kaz smiled and said, “I think that’s a good way to think about anything we do…. slightly better than doing nothing.”

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Travis Eneix

Dedicated to looking at the self.