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Posts from the ‘Musing’ Category

Oct 27

Steve Jobs FI

The Religion of Steve Jobs


Since his death, a lot has been said about Steve Jobs and his Zen practice.  What I’ve found surprising about much of this talk is the number of practitioners who proclaim Mr. Jobs not a “real” Buddhist.   After all how could he be a “real Buddhist” given that he was so very rich, or that he never practiced Dāna (दान), or maybe that he employed “sweat shop” labor.   There were many things for people to pick on and pick people did.   In some cases I’ve seen comments that were outright vitriolic.

Some of this isn’t surprising.  For reasons that continually fail to reveal themselves to me, we practitioners often seem to get into “my Buddhism is better than your Buddhism” jousting matches.   I supposed it’s understandable from the belief versus realized philosophy point of view.  My teacher, Rodney Smith,  gave a great talk recently  about the difference between belief based philosophies versus realized philosophies.   His assertion was that in belief based philosophies, the believer doesn’t question their practices but needs others to believe as they do to reinforce their world view. The believer even ignores the obvious cracks in the belief system or white washes over them to avoid questions that could threaten the belief, a.k.a. “my Buddhism.” In the realized practitioner, the cracks in the philosophy and/or practice of the philosophy are “where the light shines through.”  The realized dharma practitioner probes at the questions to find deeper understanding rather than to project their fear of the answers onto others.  Perhaps we should ask ourselves why we need Mr. Jobs to be our kind of Buddhist.  Perhaps we should ask ourselves where our  judgement of his practice comes from with the perspective of our own practice.

We are all just practitioners, and none of us is perfect.  I “fail” in my practice often.  These “failures” are just opportunities for me to obtain better understanding of myself and to cultivate my practice further.  It is certain that Mr. Jobs had challenges in his life that he needed to overcome as well, as we all do.   As Bhikkhu Khantipalo says in the introduction to the Maha-kammavibhanga Sutta, “The minds of people are complex and they make many different kinds of kamma even in one lifetime.”  The mind of Mr. Jobs was clearly quite complex, most likely leading to many different kinds of karma.

I am grateful that Mr. Jobs’ spirituality is a subject of conversation.  There is an entire thread on the dualism between what is Zen and what American culture understands as Zen.  Mr. Jobs gave us an opportunity to discuss and examine our own practices.  Whether his Buddhism was inferior or superior to mine is irrelevant and is a judgement call made from a place of separating and forming our egos, not from a place of Anattā (अनात्मन्).   Nobody really knew Mr. Jobs’ heart and nobody knew his personal struggle along his path. None can therefore judge. Even if they could, is it in any way beneficial to do so?

Thank you for your contribution Mr. Jobs, and blessings on your journey.

Oct 14

It’s been while ….

All of us want to improve our practices.  Sometimes we work on our concentration. Sometimes we work on our awareness. I’ve had the fortunate opportunity to deepen my practice along both vectors over the last few months.  The unfortunate side effect is that the rest of my life has become more hectic and less tranquil.  Hectic to the point that I’ve not had time to actually write anything here.

On the concentration track, I spent an inordinate amount of time on airplanes crossing the country this past summer. There is a certain quality of quiet and flow you experience when you become an experienced traveler.   I recall smiling to myself while descending a particularly tall escalator at Boston Logan airport.  I recognized that the scene was so familiar that I had stopped seeing it.   I wasn’t spinning on what my flight number was, was I late, would I make it, did I forget anything or anything like that.  I was enjoying a moment of solitude among a crowd, simply listening to my breath as I moved down toward the corridor below.   I was so concentrated on my breath and ease, that I had forgotten to be present with the activity and scenery around me.    Concentration before awareness.

I missed many opportunities to sit with my sangha over the course of the last few months as well.  I also had my normal routine of sitting, exercise, daily activity disrupted repeatedly.   I became acutely aware of the unease and shifts in my attitude, psyche and inward demeanor when I would miss meditating even for a day;  the subtle impatience, the increased heart rate when some frustration or road block would come up; the few extra seconds it would take to fall asleep.   I became more and more sensitive to my own practice and all the ways it effects my physical and emotional being.  This awareness can be quite distracting if you react to it.   Awareness before concentration.

Now the challenge is to bring these two together as in the Samadhi Sutta : “There is the development of concentration that, when developed & pursued, leads to mindfulness & alertness.”

I’ll endeavor to keep writing while I practice and try to manage the life of a parent, manager, investor, son, husband, strategist, home owner and so on, and so on and so on…….

Jul 18

Escalade FI
1 Comment

Judgement of the Escalade Driver

Okay, we all see crazy drivers sometimes.  We all get cut off by someone who is driving without applying any compassion or care for themselves or those around them, thereby taking our lives, as well as their own and a few others’ lives in their hands.

Now normally when I get cut off by someone, I say something snarky and unwise when my kids are in the car, such as, “that person must be very important to be in such a hurry.”  I know it’s nice and isn’t right speech in many senses but, for now, I have to look at it as better than a profanity.

The other day however, someone cut me off so egregiously, well I won’t say driving because that would imply some level of skill controlling a vehicle in a safe manner,  compelling a black Escalade that I reacted uncharacteristically poorly.    The person behind the wheel was apparently entirely unaware of anyone else on the road at all.  She ran me into the shoulder and nearly into a guard rail to avoid her.  Of course because my daughter was in the car with me, I was all the more upset.  Of course it showed up as anger and of course I had a difficult time holding my tongue.  How in the world could someone be so callous towards everyone else anywhere around their path?  How could someone be so blind to the mess they were leaving in their wake? What kind of reckless jerk would endanger my daughter and I so thoughtlessly!?!  ARGH, I could have screamed and did, just a little….

Then I thought, what kind of an example am I setting?…  My daughter is sitting in the back seat at the ripely impressionable age of nine and here I am about to spew a stream of blue invectives a mile long.  My grandmother used to say something about cussing a blue streak powerful enough to make a long neglected road house toilet bowl sparkle. Well that caliber of blue streak was about to blow past my lips.  What kind of parent teaches a child that the right response to a danger is to lash out with powerful stream of indefensible language, anger, and fear driven sarcasm.

Where is my equanimity?  Where was my compassion after all, for the person who just nearly killed me.  I know that’s a little nutty to consider when you’re still correcting after a hard swerve on 405.  But honestly, for her to be that out of control was one of a case of serious pressure on her to make a critical appointment, powerful delusion about her own invincibility and immortality, or perhaps mental illness.  In any case, there is no way that a rational, well-balanced person would behave that way.  If she had a relative on their death-bed, this recklessness might be understandable, but even then her mental state warrants compassion.  I can’t think of any possible story for her careening down the highway that doesn’t require some compassion.  It’s so easy to just blame people for being stupid and careless without looking any deeper. But skinning the onion a little, there is always some reason ranging from traumatic childhood leading to narcissism to plain old vanilla emergency.   The very least I could do is incorporate her into my metta practice and hope for her.

My reaction and focus on judgement did not help me recover from the near collision successfully or skillfully.  My reaction also did not help me be aware of other potential dangers on the road had any existed.  Judgement trumped my mindfulness when I needed it dearly. Judging the driver didn’t garner me anything other than fear, anger and some potential reprehensible parenting.

While there often isn’t time to turn judgmental into a judicious examination of the situation, initial discernment of my fear reaction and patience would have probably helped me maintain mindfulness.   For further reading, Thanissaro Bhikku penned a good contrast between judgmental and judicious that’s worth a look.

Jul 16

Covered Bridge FI
1 Comment

Back from Retreat

I returned from a five day retreat in nobel silence at Cloud Mountain a few weeks ago.  I must say, it was exhausting and fulfilling at the same time.  The funny part is, that many people have asked me “what did you get out of it??”   I honestly don’t know the answer to that question.  Hopefully writing this will help me clarify that for myself.  I was hoping to get some clarity on a few items and perhaps just a little peace and quiet to practice in.  Or at least that’s what I thought I wanted.

First a word about Cloud Mountain.  The place is incredibly beautiful and serene.  If you’ve ever been to the Cascade Mountains, you know they are green.  This was GREEN.  There were leaves, vines or ferns everywhere.   The pulsation of life was astounding.   I had a private room that was very comfortable.  The meals were all vegetarian and very good.   Andy the new cook was wonderful at his craft and preparation.   The grounds were beautifully walkable even in the damp and cold rain of a weirdly winter like June in the northwest.

Each day consisted of rising at 5:45 am, many 45 minute sitting meditations with associated walking periods, as well as dharma talks, ending at 10 pm. No talking was welcome except to when necessary to perform assigned tasks like cleaning or cooking. After I returned people would often ask, “what was it like to spend a week in silence?”  For me, that was easy.  I’ve spent half of my adult life business traveling alone.  Sitting on airplanes, riding on trains, in a rented car, evenings and mornings in hotel rooms, all alone and quiet.  For others, silence was less natural.

As I’ve been told by many, I went thru the normal and expected period of adjustment. For the first few days, I was just not feelin’ it.  I couldn’t get quiet.  My mind was a complete cacophony of chaos slow brewed with some interesting creativity and a lot of imagination. By the time I had even realized I daydreaming my way thru some long lost conversation, the 45 minutes were up and it was time to walk.  Once I did get quiet though, I was able to meditate very clearly and quietly.   Aside from the usual aches and pains of sitting so much, it was incredibly pleasant and peaceful, allowing me to access a level of mindfulness I had not reached before.  Small noises, little itches, sounds of life or rain outside, vanishing scents, the texture of my shirt against my skin, all registered separately and discretely as no thoughts, no emotions, no … well I guess me, existed.

The unexpected consequence was the disruption in my practice when I returned.   I simply couldn’t meditate for a week or more.  I didn’t want to.  In fact, I had a lot of doubt about my practice and my ability to remain committed.  It had been so lovely, with such nice people, and so serene that the very fact that I didn’t get any amazing insight was just disappointing.  I felt like I wasn’t “good” at practice.  If I had been, I’d have gotten something really amazing out of it.  But what I got was time to quiet myself, some extra tools for mindfulness, some good metta technics and practice and a few new friends.  That’s all great but what happened to the flash of insight, the floating into anatta (Sanskirt: अनात्मन्) or just some seriously blissed out moments in deep, penetrating meditation.  After a few weeks of neglecting the disciplined practice I had become accustomed to, I realized that I had been expecting too much and as a result, was disappointed by a really great outcome.  Silly.  Turns out that I had fallen into the trap of over-reading the significance of retreat.  I really wanted much more out of it than I originally thought.  Not being clear about my real expectation in my conscious mind lead me to a practice shaking doubt afterward.    In reality the insight I gained was that examination of motivations and expectation is as important to practice as examining the result and the finding a path forward.

A note on the teachers :  Andrea Fella and Greg Scharf were great.  I had heard many talks by Andrea on AudioDharma, but had never heard a dharma talk of Greg’s before.  He was surprisingly and refreshingly insightful.  His talk on patience was heart felt and very moving. You can find more of Greg’s talks here at DharmaSeed.org

Jun 16

Lotus Flower FI

American Buddhism : The Maha Council

There is an interesting article on the Huffington Post about the recent meeting of the Maha Teachers Council in Garrison NY.

As stated on the Garrison Institute’s website, the purposes for the gathering were to discuss :

THE MINDFUL SOCIETY – a visionary consideration of the promise and the pitfalls as the Dharma spreads more widely into medicine, science, healing, education, the arts and all aspects of Western culture.

PRESERVATION OF DEPTH AND ADAPTING SKILLFUL MEANS TO A NEW WORLD – how to preserve and adapt the Dharma in new conditions without losing depth.

FROM ELDERS TO THE NEXT GENERATION – 50 teachers under age 45 will join the council to consider together how the current teachers can best support and empower the next generations.

All of these sound like very relevant, reasonable and timely topics for a group of multi-traditional teachers of the Dharma in American Society.  The purpose of each of these topics seems quite clear.

Mindful Society : Buddhism and Buddhist teachings are creeping into main stream thinking.   We’ve come an awfully long way from the hippie, drop out, Timothy Leary stereotype of the 1960′s and 1970′s.  We’ve come a good distance from the “Dharma & Greg” version of Buddhism in pop culture.  We’ve come so far that now classes on mindfulness are springing up everywhere.  Searching for the term “mindfulness” on Google gets you nearly 11,000,000 results.   One of the comments on the blog post was from a Buddhist who was taking a class in stress reduction that was mostly Buddhist mindfulness techniques.  She wondered how many people would react negatively if they knew they were being taught an eastern religion. All this is tantamount to the classic marketing notions of “losing control of your messaging” and “loss of brand identity.”  When others define your value for you, you no longer are able to express your real value. I’m definitely not a fan of marketing Buddhism. However, the practical implication of this is that people who are new to Buddhism will no longer be the clean slates. People will come to Buddhism having studied yoga, mindfulness as a stress reducer and having an even more baked idea of what means.  As a teacher, you’d have to be able to not only understand the issue but know how to teach the partially knowing and un-teach the incorrectly engrained.

Preservation : The world is changing and, as a teacher, how you engage the Sangha (Pali :  सन्घ) has to change with it.  How do you give a talk on the issue of distraction in the age of twitter?   How do you talk about quieting the mind when your average Sangha member has multiple jobs/hats/commitments that are overwhelming them?  How do you talk about the value of retreat when actual disconnected vacation time in America is a vanishing commodity?   The depth of the Dharma is honestly overwhelming sometimes, even for those who are steeped in it.  How does a teacher reach that level of depth when there are cellphones ringing during your meditation time? Life is changing, and more rapidly than ever in history.  Teachers must adapt and adapt quickly to make the Dharma relevant to the soup we all swim in.

Elders : Let’s face it, many of America’s leading teachers are of the generation that preceded mine.  Yet this is the first generational shift, or passing of the torch since Buddhism took hold in America outside the immigrant communities where the practice was native.  The next generation of teachers needs the support and generosity of the elder generation.  The younger generation needs to respect, as John of Salisbury might have said in Metalogicon, that they are standing on the shoulders of giants. I know some will take exception to this, but I’d just ask how many of us have read and learned from Jack Kornfield books.  I know I have.  ”How can we help?” is a logical and appropriate question for the older generation to ask. Discussing this seems nothing but natural.

My teacher attended this meeting and spoke about it last night at our regular Sangha gathering.  His interpretation of the event was that there was no divisiveness, no outward biases between traditions and a spirit of cooperation and respect.  He felt that there wasn’t a single older teach present who didn’t ask “how can I help” when discussing passing the torch to a younger generation.  He left me feeling as though this was a productive step in helping set the tone for the path of American Buddhism.

Reading the article however, one gets a picture of a little confusion, a lot of unskillfulness in picking participants, and a bit of elitism on the organizers’ parts.  I was a little surprised by some of the comments as well, which ranged from the wise to the headscratcher, including comments made by some of the critics in the article itself.  And yes, the fact that I was surprised means I need to work on my equanimity, or Upekkha (Pali : उपेक्षा).

The headscratchers come in one or more of the following forms :

  • My Buddhism is better than your Buddhism
  • People who attended arehas-beens, out of touch>
  • They were all old white males
  • They are only in it to make money
  • They don’t speak for me
  • They can’t be real because they’re all converts to Buddhism
  • Even having the meeting was against the teachings of the Buddha
  • Buddhism is a philosophy, no it’s a religion, no it’s a philosophy
  • Buddhism is bad because it’s a religion, and all religions that aren’t mine are bad (including atheism).

Okay, the last two are irrelevant but one has to wonder what people get out of posting these kinds of comments..  It’s unclear to me.

Most of these criticisms can be understood from the point of view of the writer.  This doesn’t make them valid but only a thread of a story the writer is espousing, born of the conditions leading to their point of view.  They do little to help meet the goals of the gathering itself.    The also do little to unite us as a single Sangha.

From my own point of view, anyone who walks the path of the Dharma, regardless of method of locomotion is part of the Sangha.  I follow the Theravada tradition.  Yet I’ve met Tibetan practioners who are wonderful, kind and dedicated to their path.  The most engaging conversation I ever had on a personal level was with a Zen abbot who was originally a Quaker minister.  To me it doesn’t matter where you came from, or what you are. What matters are where you are going and the intention that drives you.  Lots of people are practicing their best out there.  We would all suffer less if we respected and acknowledged the grace of that simple fact.

Another point of view that is very apt is that of Nathan at Dangerous Harvests.   He puts forward that we as Buddhists don’t act like or seem to be not very good at acting like one Sangha.  He uses the example of natural disasters and how he’s never seen a concerted American Buddhist response. He’s right, one instance of what good would look like is our ability to respond as a Sangha to internal and external events with the same intention.  I hope that this gathering will help us find a way to narrow the gaps between our traditions, and bring us all closer together.  I wonder how I can help make this happen……….   More later.

Jun 4

Shigafusa FI

Blood as a teaching tool

Ninja worthy rapid separation tool.

Okay, I must admit, I’m very fond of Japanese knives.  I cook a lot and take my tools rather more seriously than is necessary, especially for my level of skill.  I don’t know, maybe I was some sort of master sword maker or samurai in a previous incarnation.

After much consideration I purchased the pictured Shigafusa Santoku from my favorite purveyor of knives, cutlery and all things sharp enough to scare you, Epicurean Edge.

As with all things, there is light and shadow to this purchase.

The dark side is both obvious and subtle.  It was really expensive.  It’s probably unnecessary for my current  level of chef achievement virtuosity.  Perhaps it was vanity.  Perhaps it was ego, or even just rank desire for a new toy that drove me to buy it.  I wasn’t really thinking about that when I brought it home yesterday.  The Tanha Sutta on Craving as a Defilement wasn’t rolling around in my head when I blissfully signed the credit card slip. Tanha (तण्हा) translates into English as thirst.  I probably was thirsting for being a better chef.  I’m sure somewhere in there I felt like I’d be a better chef if I had this tool, and after all “I will be because of this” is one of the 18 verbalizations of craving.

The light side is simple : good, long-lasting tool that will focus me on the joy of cooking.  It’s a fussy piece because it’s made of carbon and not stainless steel.  It’s Hannibal Lecter sharp so you must be careful with it.  It also requires immediate wiping after use, as well as washing, drying and oiling at the end of the preparation.  If you don’t take care of it with tea ceremony accuracy and respect, it will discolor, rust and likely chip.  This level of attention requires focus on the task, being in the moment and very aware of what you’re doing.  Much as the tea ceremony requires discipline, skill, respect and much practice, so does the use of this knife to hack up a tomato.

I made dinner. It was lovely.  Kids were happy and I received lots of compliments on my culinary skills.  While cleaning up, I dutifully washed the blade, dried it thoroughly. I really enjoyed using my new cutting wonder tool.  I then applied some light camellia oil with my fingers, seasoning the blade, all the while beaming with delight.  My daughter was watching me.  Suddenly she was shouting “OH GROSS EEEWWWWW OOOOOH GGGAAROOOOSSSSS!!!!!!!”   I thought, “huh, what’s up with her?” She shouted, “YOU’RE BLEEDING ALL OVER THE PLACE!!!”   I asked her what in the world she was talking about.  I wasn’t bleeding.  Then I felt it running down my arm    I had sliced off the finger print of my index finger while smearing oil on the blade.  It was so sharp I hadn’t felt the tug as it went thru the skin, or even the pain of the cut.  I just kept on rubbing the oil, blood mixture into the blade..   I’m now typing this with great pain and difficulty of a bandaged right index finger.   It didn’t require suture but did require pressure and a lot of bandages.

The moral of the story is, my craving for a great tool and being a better chef distracted my awareness enough to cause me a physical harm.   I could have bought something cheaper and less ninja worthy in its capacity to sever. I probably would not have been so focused on its care or my pride in it had it been less valuable.  I probably would have been more focused on what I could do with it and not what it is itself.   This will likely not be the last very nice master sword maker blade I buy for the kitchen.  But I believe I’ll pay much more attention to utility, and the joy of the cooking rather than the prize of the tool…..

Rarely has a lesson in the downside of craving been so bloody stark.

May 26

Books IF

Tricycle Magazine

Yesterday I attended the regular Tuesday night sitting with the Seattle Insight Meditation Society. Rodney Smith gave a very insightful dharma talk on the worry and anxiety qualities of mind presented in the Satipatthana Sutta.  When SIMS posts the video on Vimeo, I’ll add a link to it.  Very enlightening on the subject of worry.  As he described the anxiety symptomatology of the “perpetual planner,” I recognized myself rather more sharply than was comfortable. But that’s another post…..

It struck me that after the sitting, I saw someone carrying a copy of the Summer 2008 edition of Tricycle magazine. Odd that someone would carry around an issue that old, or was it? It made me realize how important Tricycle was to the beginning of my practice.  Many of us don’t have a built-in Sangha (सन्घ or saṅgha in Pali). In many places in America, there just isn’t the critical mass of people to help us get started on the path.  When I started, I was fortunate enough to have a Sangha at SIMS and Nalanda West here in Seattle, but  not the lifestyle to take advantage of it.  I was a constant business traveler with no rhyme or reason to my schedule.  I could never commit to a Tuesday night sitting or a small sitting group because who knew from week to week where I’d be. This put me in the same situation as many people new to Buddhism.  Practicing on their own. I relied on podcasts of dharma talks, some night stand Buddhism practices of buying a book here and there, scanning the library and very occasionally television programming.  Tricycle in particular was one of the best resources for me in my lonely practice for a couple of reasons.  First it gave me access to many different and very well-respected teachers in a compact form.  It gave me the breathing room to ”know for myself,” as the Buddha said in the Kalama Sutta.  I was able to read while I was on an airplane or in a hotel room the thoughts and perspectives of many teachers and consider what really made sense to me. Secondly, it gave me access to teacher from many traditions, Zen, Tibetan, Theravada and even others.   It helped me understand the coarser differences between the points of view and practices of the traditions so I could study and choose a tradition that made the most sense for me and my journey.  Some may consider this of nominal benefit, but exploring the different traditions in detail and then selecting was, for me, and I imagine many others simply not practical.  Thirdly it gave me tips on paraphernalia.  I found a lot of worthy purveyors of things like statues, zafus, zabutons, and so on in the pages of Tricycle.  There aren’t many places to just run out to and just pick these things up, like so much tofu and celery.  I didn’t even know what a zafu was!

The magazine is still a very useful resource for me.   When you can’t buy every book and you can’t read every teacher’s collected works, Tricycle provides the scope of Buddhist tradition with the brevity and clarity conducive to modern laity. The book reviews, the teachings, the essays, Sylvia Boorstein’s “Dear Abbey Dharma,” the social consciousness, the interviews all add up to a very wide range of good reading and insight.  The last issue even had an article on the Bhutanese recipe for rice wine!

Recommended - Small I highly recommend Tricycle. It was my practice support and teacher for a formative time on the path.  It continues to be a useful companion in showing me other perspectives and providing that occasional, short time out to consider my practice, which we all need after a difficult day.  A truly valuable resource that I am still grateful for today.

Metta.

May 21

Tree FI

And so it begins

Welcome to Just Practicing, where the Buddha’s teachings of 2,500 years ago meet a 21st century life of technology, media overload, a 24 hour news cycle, kids, business travel, and staying healthy.

Anybody who practices any form of Buddhism today is likely aware of what Suzuki Roshi meant when he said “Not always so.”   We constantly have to examine each situation for what we can learn.  It’s often nothing to do with what we first experience.     I always like to say that my practice is an air gap circuit breaker between the stimulus of my life and the clarity of my mind.  It gives me enough space between the immediate  and my reaction to think clearly and respond appropriately.  However, it’s shocking how many things in life have enough charge to spark across the gap of that circuit breaker.  More interestingly, it’s often things you don’t even suspect that create that carbonizing spark.    Death in the family, loss of a job, broken friendship….   In these situations, nobody would find it hard to have compassion for you if your practice faltered.  But your practice surely won’t slip when you’re late and the person in front of you at the ATM is apparently taking out a third mortgage ……

With much metta.

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