Boredom as The Way

Zen is an intensely first person practice. Sitting on the cushion, over and over again, referring back to the self. Or, to be more accurate, the No-Self.

Being aware of being bored these past few days has opened many doors for me. I’ve been having great conversations with folks about boredom and being bored and I’m discovering that many people are having a similar experience. So at one level, the experience of boredom is part of the overall retreat experience. It’s a collective hitting the wall and going deeper.

I’ve been having feelings of “is this all there is” and then grudgingly coming to accept that this is it, this is my life. I am the common denominator wherever I go. I am the meaning maker of my life. I am the one who experiences joy, anger, pain and everything around and beyond that. I bring the world into existence every day.

But it isn’t even I. It’s the awareness behind the ego-I. In a recent teaching, Roshi was using the metaphor of a tea cup for us/the ego. As the metaphor progressed and morphed inside me I could feel it turning into a teacup with no bottom, immersed in the flow of the ocean, just becoming a conduit for awareness. That’s where boredom is taking me. It’s becoming the path. This doesn’t feel like a terribly exciting discovery, actually. But it does feel like a huge relief to see clearly.

The state of non-dualism is becoming a familiar place to me. What’s more, I’m finally learning language for it. At Shalom and on retreat, we’re in a non-dual state often, mostly accessed through the heart. But there’s a tendency to treat it like, poof! surprise! we’re here! and no one really can tell us how we got there exactly (although there definitely are methods) and we mostly language the experience as God appearing.

Here, I am dropping myself into a non-dual state for hours every day. It’s starting to become a familiar feeling that doesn’t have any of the poof! feeling to it at all. At first, I feel a huge sense of relief simply to be in the non-dual state. It’s not like any of the screwed up parts of my life have disappeared, but I am in a larger, expansive state that holds everything – including my screwed up parts. Only in non-dual, it’s all really okay just as it is. I don’t even feel the need to do anything about it, because it has its own perfection, it just IS. But as I continue in the non-dual state, this “it’s all okay” feeling begins to feel like radical indifference. And that’s very uncomfortable because (once again!) I’ve got this concept that I’m supposed to feel loving all the time. I believe that this is the ground giving rise to my boredom, even disappointment. Paradoxically, the non-dual Big Mind state is offering me a profound sense of responsibility in a state of being where there are no rules.

Moving into Big Heart, which is just as big as Big Mind but is the feeling aspect of it, feels like a relief. Whew, all of a sudden I care again. In Big Mind there’s no need to do anything at all, just be. Big Heart moves me back into the world and action once again. But one isn’t better than the other. They’re literally the yin and the yang of one particular state of being. Big Heart is the state of Kanzeon, Kuan Yin. Big Mind is the Buddha just sitting there. But for me to choose one over the other is just insanity, because that would be to deny a very important part of myself.

To switch gears here, Alistair and I have a fun weekend lined up. Joyce Harvey-Morgan is driving in from her home town of Boise, Idaho to join us for the weekend. We’re going to head out to the desert near Moab – maybe go to Bryce or Arches National parks. It’s been almost 70F lately and down to around freezing at night. I hear that the desert has even wilder temperature swings than that. So I’d better bring my woolies.

I’d like to close with a wonderful quote that Jim Hession posted to the blog today (thank you, Jim!) – it’s a good touch stone:

"The great affair, the love affair with life, is to live as variously as possible, to groom one's curiosity like a high-spirited thoroughbred, climb aboard, and gallop over the thick, sun-struck hills every day."

The Voice of Boring ..... zzzzzzzzz

I really love writing for this blog. I want to thank everyone who’s been tagging along and sending me wonderful comments, sharing your experiences with me. I also want to specially thank Gerry Rumold for loaning us the laptop we’re using for big chunks of time every day. It’s been a huge gift. Thank you!

This week we’re moving into the more serious space of actually doing facilitation with one another in small groups of 10. This has intensified the whole experience for me, even while I'm beginning to feel the excitement of the "project" of Big Mind wear off.

I'm starting to feel pretty ordinary being here as I settle into the routines more deeply: wake up, meditation, breakfast, work hour, free hour, teaching & practice, lunch, free time, afternoon with Roshi, dinner, zazen or teaching

I'm bored. I started feeling bored a few days ago. On top of it all, feeling bored catapults me into worrying about not being engaged in the process. I feel sleepy during meditation and I yawn even when Roshi’s facilitating. It’s really true what they say: wherever you go, there you are. I think I’m coming face to face with myself. I bore myself.

This afternoon, Roshi facilitated the Voice of the Sexual Pervert again. A collective groan went through the group. I interpreted the groan as “oh no, can’t we move on from this, we’re bored with this one by now”. Alistair interpreted it as “oh, no, not again, we’re uncomfortable.” I guess I know what I was projecting.

Still, my boredom made the afternoon stretch into an eternity. Every time I thought Roshi was finished with the voice, he’d just start into another aspect of it. Then I spent some time feeling guilty that I was bored. All the reasons started colliding in my head: I’ve come from across the country to be here, I moved my life around just to be here for a month, not to mention spending a lot of money on this training, etc., etc. Being bored just doesn’t fit in with my idea of how I should be: an industrious, attentive, good little Zen student. All bright-eyed with enthusiasm, sharing frequently and openly in the group. But that’s just not my reality.

But isn’t that what Zen is all about? Not having preferences of one thing over another? (Or is that just another idea I’m trying to shoehorn myself into, one that fits in with my particular view?) Zen is definitely not about moralizing one way or the other. But that one flies in the face of my recovering fundamentalist Christian background, one that preferences good over evil. Or at the very least, good behavior is supposed to reward me better than if I am bored. Gratefully, in a conversation with one of the monks this evening, he validated me, saying that it’s okay for me to be bored. That maybe this voice is fairly integrated in me. That makes sense to me. Maybe that’s why doing corn starch massage at retreats bores me stupid. Been there, done that. I don’t even need the t-shirt. I’d rather wash my hair.

Deeper down though, what I secretly fear is that I’m missing out on something if I’m busy being bored. For instance, I’m admittedly attached to awakening. What if I miss the moment of awakening just because I’m bored?

On the other hand, what if I just give myself a break and admit that yes, every single moment of my life is precious and awakening can happen at any moment. Even when I’m not looking. Even when I’m bored. Maybe even because I’m bored. Now wouldn't that be a trip? That makes me laugh!

The Third Party Rule

Alistair and I had Date Night the other night. (Let me tell you, it’s not an easy thing to do with a houseful of people and the bathroom right next to ours. I found myself wishing for the privacy of our beloved Quonset Hut where we can make noise.) We usually start out with a check in, letting go of anything hanging on from the day, including any pesky resentful niggles. We try let go of anything that might come between us. What we want is intimacy with each other.

Awhile back, Alistair and I came up with only one hard and fast rule for date night, which is the Third Party Rule. We discovered that when we’re together in intimate space and we wind up talking about someone else, then the intimacy and the positive energy between us drops like a stone. After invoking the Third Party Rule, we also notice that the intimacy gets more intense and more pleasurable. The trick is to catch myself doing it, because talking about also feels pleasurable. Some call that negative pleasure; I call it dishing.

To use the 3-2-1 of Ken Wilber (3rd person, 2nd person, 1st person) -- a very handy guide -- talking about (3rd person) something or someone else rather than from myself (1st person) is an energy killer. Intimacy goes down the toilet and I’m engaged in something else. Instead of intimacy (just another word for process) opening up between me and you, it starts to close down.

I’ve noticed this seems true for the Big Mind process too. When we speak as the Voices (1st person), the power of the process increases dramatically and I’m right inside it. “I statements” are pretty much the name of the game. Just the opposite is also true. When I don’t speak as the voice, instead I’m offering an opinion, a tasty piece of scholarship, debating with another person, I’m talking about something (3rd person). If other people do this too, then the group starts to fray at the edges. We start to look more like a bunch of chickens scratching around competing for their feed. It’s fun but not terribly intimate.

Last Friday, Diane did a bit of superb facilitation. (Now I’m speaking about, so let’s see how I do.) The group started to debate, opine and pontificate on the subject of Buddhism. The group cohesion was starting to come apart. Diane (who is an extremely gifted facilitator and hangs out mostly in the emotional subtle energy realms), stopped the action. She named it and then asked to speak to the Voice of Complete Peace. Click! the group came back together. Then she asked each person to offer their perspective -- just one -- on what they know about Buddhism. What emerged was an incredibly moving sharing of each person’s intimate experience of Buddhism. Speaking from the non-dual state brought clarity and intimacy to us again. Not to mention less squabbling.

When I’m in a non-dual state, it’s hard for me to speak and put language to what I’m experiencing. This is a VERY familiar, and frustrating, feeling for me. It happens most often when I’m hanging out with the mystics at home. Diane’s skilled teaching is helping me to put language to the non-dual experience and to see it less as magical and more as ordinary. It is state that is easily accessible to me and I have definite feelings that go along with it that I can express in words. Some good words include bliss, everything’s okay, I AM, vastness, deep space, peaceful, no boundaries.

But even the non-dual has positive and negative aspects. The positive side is bliss, the cessation of all my disturbing feelings like anger, jealousy, fear, etc. It’s just IS-ness and so it seems almost silly to say anything more. The negative side is a kind of lethargy, apathy, dullness. What’s the use of doing or saying anything since in the ultimate reality of all things it doesn’t really matter?

Roshi is helping me to move beyond the non-dual, to the apex position that both integrates AND transcends the dual and the non-dual. From the apex, I have the flexibility and wisdom of acting, feeling and choosing the dual and/or the non-dual. Roshi encourages me to move past the non-dual as soon as I’ve got a taste of it because it can be highly addictive. And it’s just another way to get stuck.

Sitting in the apex position gives me the maximum flexibility, allowing for all my feelings, allowing me to act and express verbally, as well having the hawk’s eye view of Oneness. I am intimate with myself, Alistair and others.

the Path of the Human Being - Part 2 - the 5 Stages

1. -- AWAKENING

Here we experience an opening, kensho (Japanese word for awakening). This might happen only once or repeatedly. Here we catch perhaps a glimpse, or an even more clear experience of our true self, that life as we know it is not exactly as it appears. But instead, we have a profound realization, a knowing of the inarguable truth that we are The Way. But as time goes on, we discover that we are no longer in the state of awakening, that it is no longer an immediate felt sense state of being. Instead the experience of awakening fades into a memory that we find ourselves constantly referring back to. After this, we are possessed by a strong desire to make this a 24/7 experience and we set out on a spiritual path to make this spiritual state a permanent way of being. But yet we’re firmly removed from the experience. This presents dangers for those of us who teach spirituality because we’re teaching about awakening in the 3rd person rather than having a 1st person experience of it while teaching. We begin to fake it until we hopefully make it.

2. -- SURRENDER AND SUBMISSION

This is a lengthy process of letting go of old concepts, beliefs and opinions; the ways in which we think it ought to be, should be, might be, rather than relating directly to a felt lived sense and relating to that. In the course of this path, we may submit and surrender to a teaching or a spiritual path. We receive many new teachings and gather new ideas and concepts. But as we aspire to be truly spiritual people, good people, we begin to disown all the qualities that we consider to be unspiritual. For instance, really spiritual people don’t get angry, aren’t egotistical, aren’t depressed, etc., and so we disown these qualities and relegate them to the shadow. We’ve become even more distorted and one-sided as we try to return to the awakened experience and to be “spiritual”. Shadow work becomes more important than ever during this stage. Roshi says that the majority of us are in stuck in this stage, and that it can take many years to move through and beyond it.


Stage 3 – GREAT DEATH & GREAT LIBERATION

Any doubt about who you are is completely gone. This stage is also called Supreme Enlightenment. All concepts are entirely gone and we are living in direct contact with reality. This is also called Buddha Mind or the absolute. We feel that we have entirely been successful in eliminating the self or the ego. It feels incredibly free and a tremendous relief; but it is just another trap. We might find ourselves saying things like “I don’t feel anger or pain anymore”. But this is because now we’ve completely and thoroughly disowned the egoic self. To others, we come across as impersonal and condescending but we don’t see this. Very few people make it beyond this stage because the pseudo peacefulness is highly addictive. If we can see the trap of it, we must consciously choose to give it up.

Stage 4 – FALL FROM GRACE

This is an experience of great disillusionment. The ego comes back in full force with all its disowned emotions. But because we thought ego was gone long ago, all our filters are also gone and we have nothing to protect us from feeling the full experience of all of our emotions. What’s even more painful is that we not only do we feel our own emotions, but we also feel every one else’s. It is a time of deep despair where everything seems pointless. At this stage, the task is to completely own all our feelings, positive and negative, and to consciously choose to feel them and not disown them yet again. This is where we can work with the emotions in a tantric manner.

5. -- THE HUMAN BEING

This is the stage where we consciously choose to be a human being and to embrace the ego as an important aspect and embrace it consciously and completely. This is where we fully integrate as being human. Here we have the ultimate flexibility, to feel, to own and to experience the entire spectrum of human emotions. Very few people make it to here. It could take years or even lifetimes to accomplish.


All of this reminds me of one of my favorite stories about Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Notorious for showing up late at his own lectures, he strode into one gathering, already speaking as he entered the room. He said that the spiritual path is a very arduous one. If you haven’t begun as yet, you might want to reconsider. But if you have already begun, it’s best to finish.

The Path of the Human Being - Part 1

I’m going to try to convey the teaching that Roshi gave last weekend. It’s a brilliant bit of dharma teaching that I think some folks might enjoy. But because it’s somewhat long, this will be a multiple posting. I’m going to try to condense it without losing the flavor of it. So I ask for your patience.

What must be understood is that first and foremost, Roshi is a Zen Master, and as such, his major interest is in transmitting the dharma and finding ways to make it accessible. That is why he is so invested in the Big Mind process. Big Mind looks and sounds like a voice dialogue tool. But that’s where the similarities end. Big Mind is a process to both teach the dharma AND to give people direct experience of the dharma. In the hands of a skilled facilitator, the Big Mind process has the power to awaken us.

Another important point to keep in mind is that the range of voices generally fall into 2 categories: dualistic and transcendent. Traditional voice dialogue primarily works with the dualistic voices, the psychological identities that we are more familiar with and work with during a mat trip, e.g., the victim, the controller, the protector, the damaged self, the innocent child, etc.

When working with the dualistic voices we discover that we are actually engaged in is a process of shadow work, integrating our disowned voices. We also discover that we are using our own life force to suppress and disown these voices because they’re too painful, too uncomfortable. So freeing and owning these voices releases vital life force energy that becomes available to us. This, in an of itself, is extremely healing, allowing us to live more freely in our lives and the world. All of us have had a taste of this freedom on the mat.

But when we switch to the transcendent voices, here’s a whole different ball game. We are then engaged in a process of awakening these voices within us. They are not disowned, they simply have never been opened up before and have lain dormant. That’s where it gets really exciting. Quite literally, the Big Mind process is a practice of enlightenment, helping to fast track us through these stages.

That last sentence probably sounds very big.

I’m learning all kinds of things as to what enlightenment is. It’s been refreshing to be part of a group that speak of it so openly and candidly, as something completely achievable rather than something magical.

Simply put, enlightenment is an experience of awakening that can happen quite out of the blue. One day you’re walking down the street just minding your own business, and then WHAM! you suddenly discover that you’re not who you thought you were. Such an experience can feel ecstatic or scary. But your sense of self has irrevocably expanded beyond what you now know to be a very contracted perspective of self. But we don’t have to rely on the unpredictable to wake up. We can also intentionally court it through spiritual practices such as sex, shamanism, meditation, extreme sports, asceticism, sensory deprivation, nature and certain drugs. Or Big Mind.

Our first experience of enlightenment is as a state of being. By definition, a state is an experience of something that is at first very immediate but fades away in time and becomes a memory. We find ourselves consistently referring back to to the memory of the experience. As the experience turns into a memory, many of us will set off on a spiritual path in an attempt to regain it, hopefully permanently. For most of us, this is the stage in which we find ourselves, and it can take many years to move through it, as long as 10-40 years!

Although these are called stages, they are not linear, although they are fairly sequential. Each person reading this will likely discover that s/he knows something about each one of these stages. That is because we have had a state experience of that particular stage, not necessarily have experienced that stage fully and have completed with it. And we can have experiences of one or more of these stages at the same time.

For those who want to have an experience of these teachings, I recommend purchasing and watching Genpo Roshi’s DVD of the same name. But nothing compares to being with Roshi as he takes the entire group through the experience of the teaching through the Big Mind process.

Tomorrow: the 5 stages of the Path of the Human Being

Gratitude

I look forward to reading Pat’s posts. They are so fresh and free-flowing- so immediate. A couple of times now I’ve sat down with the intention of producing something deep and insightful, but no luck. The harder I try the less that comes out. I know this place well from my time at school and even when writing retreat blurbs for the Shalom brochure - hours and hours of fiddling with words, willing myself to be creative. It’s torture.

One thing that is definitely not torture for me these days is meditation. We sit for an hour in the morning and sometimes for a couple more in the evening. Zen is all about letting go of the thinking mind and focusing on direct experience. The Japanese Zen term for this is shikantaza – “just sitting”. Not as easy as it sounds because the thinking mind never stops. “OK, I’m going to do nothing but just be here. No wait, wasn’t that a thought? I’m supposed to just sit, not think. OK, just try harder. That’s it. Now I’ve got it! Hold on, I just did it again. How about now?” And on and on.

In Big Mind, we work with some of the “10,000 faces" (voices) of the self by giving them a name and getting to know them. Not by thinking about them, but by being them. So now I sit in meditation and play at embodying whatever voices show up. It has transformed my practice.

Tonight I start with the voice of gratitude and think about the way that Terry, Shawn and Victoria have stepped forward, doing their part to make sure that Shalom Mountain continues. And suddenly, I’m there. My chest swells up and tears of gratitude pour down my face. For a moment, I find myself thinking, “What if I completely lose it here?” And then the thought drops away and I return to just being gratitude.

How fortunate I am to be here and doing this with Pat; to be discovering my own true nature; to witness others from around the world doing the same, all of us feeling the imperative of bringing our newfound discoveries to a world that so desperately needs it. To have the opportunity to experience this thing we call “precious human birth”.

The final bell rings. We bow to each other as the timekeeper recites the closing chant:

Let me respectfully remind you
Life and Death are of supreme importance.
Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost
Let us Awaken, Awaken
Take heed
Do not squander your life.

And we get to do it again tomorrow morning. It doesn’t get any better than this.

Hitting the Wall

It’s been a little over a week since we’ve been here and I’m starting to feel the usual retreat fatigue. I’ve got a cold and I had a fever last night (can I fish for some sympathy out there???? ). Alistair slept on the sofa in the living room in the early morning hours because of my congested snoring. This morning I decided to rest a bit longer and skip the Sunday morning talk, only to discover that the sangha house plays host to a Buddhist version of Sunday school. There were kids everywhere, running, yelling, crying, etc. Not much rest for this girl.

The Big Mind process has been running a lot of energy through this body of mine. It seems that I’m both clearing and breaking down. The best illustration of this was during the afternoon’s session when I kept slipping back and forth from the elation of I’m getting it to the despair of I ain’t fucking getting it. I kept falling in and out of the slip stream of the experience as it was unfolding. Honestly, sometimes I’d be listening to the conversation between Roshi and someone else and I’d swear that I was stoned -- but I wasn’t. It was just that kind of expansive, we’re-in-the-experience-here-but-there-really-isn’t-a-word-or-name-for-it-and-we-can’t-know-it-but-just-be-in-it kind of experience. As my dear friend Sharon Brain wrote to me recently, she wondered if pretty soon I wouldn’t be able to write any words other than IS-NESS. She could be right.

So it seems that having a cold is both breaking down my resistance as well as messing with my head. If I can only let go and hang out with it I might really “get” it. (The Voice of My Teacher says: there’s nothing to KNOW - it's unknowable.) I do know that when I let go, I feel soft.

In a few days I’ll write more about Roshi’s teaching on The Path of the Human Being that he did on Saturday afternoon. It was out of this world. His brilliance seems to come from the way he beautifully uses the Big Mind process to illustrate AND give an experience of Zen teachings. It’s absolutely incredible.