Part of a world-wide “going green” effort is the recycling programmes that many cities have put in place.

This webpost is how we can go further by “greening” our thoughts by recycling them, so to speak.

Following on the last post (dated September 11, 2011 immediately below this one), we learned that genuine spiritual guides and teachers avoid following a thought “down the road” so to speak. They let it go as it arises.

Why do they do this?

Because thoughts lead to volitional action. Which leads to the creation of karma.

How do they do this? By many years of participating in a fitness regime for taming and training the mind — meditation practice.

Meditation practice  provides instructions — labelling and letting go — whereby I can relate to thoughts and the emotions they evoke in a way that does not lead to action. (That’s why it’s said that meditation is one of the few times that we are not accumulating karma.)

But how about in everyday life? How can we recycle thoughts back into primordial energy? I’ve developed an exercise that helps me deal with the thought as soon as it arises in my everyday life. In my city our recycling programme involves three bins — green, blue and grey —  for a variety of items, e.g. garbage, paper, glass, and food etc. etc. etc.

There’s now a fourth “bin.” The city didn’t provide it. I created it. It’s virtual. It’s for thoughts. As soon as I can see the thought — either as it arises, or, more likely (at my early stage of development), when it is full blown — I “put” the thought in the thought recycling bin where it is transformed back into pure energy from which it arose. You can create your own virtual thought recycling bin. Mine is just vast space, like the sky.

The idea of “recycling” thoughts follows the second law of thermodynamics. Put very simply, it says that energy (in whatever form it has taken) returns to its original state as soon as the form decays. In terms of thoughts, the energy of a thought is released when we let go of that thought. If we grasp, attach and fixate on the thought, the opposite happens. We get caught up in a karmic chain reaction. It is described here.

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It is almost impossible to meet the challenge. We tend to go AWOL. Even for two minutes!

We’ve neglected mental fitness. We’ve been brought up on a diet of action, doing, going. We’ll get physically fit. But we don’t make time to practice fitness for the mind where we could actually meet our own minds directly and reclaim them.

Try the challenge! When you get a Pass grade, I’ll meet you here.

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• to listen to others rather than trying to dominate the conversation
• to be kinder, less aggressive
• to get fit
• to spend more time with family
• etc. etc. etc.

My New Year’s resolution is to NOT make any effort around “self-improvement.”

Why?

As long as you’re wanting to be thinner, smarter, more enlightened, less uptight, or whatever it might be , somehow you’re always going to be approaching your problem with the very same logic that created it to begin with: you’re not good enough. That’s why the habitual pattern never unwinds itself when you’re trying to improve, because you go about it in exactly the same habitual style that caused all the pain to start. (source: Pema Chodron: Start Where You Are)

I want to unwind my habitual “self,” not improve it!

Let’s be clear. I’m not taking about the self as who we actually are. I’m using the term “self” here as it pertains to our manufactured self, ego.

Our usual resolutions revolve around tweaking this manufactured self that we cherish so much.

What’s wrong with being kinder? Nothing. But I like to use what I like to call “the royal road” to reach my goal.

And that royal road is mindfulness and awareness. By practicing mindfulness and awareness, we aren’t admonishing ourselves with commands like “don’t be unkind”  in an effort to be kind. Instead, we notice again and again and again when we are being unkind.

By practicing small increments of awareness — over and over again — of our thoughts and emotions, a quiet yet substantial revolution takes place: the thoughts, emotions and actions that underlie our habitual patterns of aggression and laziness , for example, are eventually undercut.

Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche once used the analogy of walking down a road in the same shoes day after day after day. Eventually, the soles of the shoes wear out. Likewise, eventually, with mindfulness and awareness, our habitual tendencies get worn down.

At the same time, we are undercutting our tendency to maintain our karma and create fresh karma.

Not bad!

Please click here for sources on how to practice mindfulness and awareness.

Update — January 03’11:

I had to take my car into for repairs this morning. When I was told what the problem was and how much it would cost to repair it, I said “No thanks.” I then began to feel sorry for myself.

I finally remembered my own suggestion: rather than admonish and scold myself —”Stop feeling sorry for yourself”— I simply practiced some mindfulness about how sorry I was feeling for myself. I watched the thoughts arise, abide, fall away — only to rise again. And again.

The something interesting began to happen: unbidden, I began to focus on how lucky I — with back disabilities — am to even have a car that I can still drive. The second-by-second practice of mindfulness created a larger space for some other attitude to arise.

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When I wake up, I often experience depression. It’s different from chronic depression or even “daily-variety” depression.

Why?

I have been sleeping.

So?

My defences are down. It’s not so easy to get back into my comfort zone. Ego is threatened.

Why?

Because it’s about to come face-to-face with the truth, namely, that it is not solid and has no permanent self-existence that is independent from the causes and conditions of daily life.

I’ve found an antidote!

When I wake up and am experiencing depression, I remind myself to call it “discomfort” rather than “depression.”

This is not some word game. It believe the word “discomfort” is more accurate than “depression.”

After applying the label “discomfort,” I then do a very short exercise to connect in with the energy of awakened mind and set my intention for the day.

We can appreciate depression as being like a wobbly staircase. When you put your foot on the first step, you wonder whether it’s going to hold you. You might fall. But as you take further steps, you realize that it’s going to carry you upstairs.

We learn to reject the terror of morning depression and to step into morning basic goodness, right on the spot.

From Ocean of Dharma: The Everyday Wisdom of Chogyam Trungpa. # 77.
Originally condensed from Great Eastern Sun: The Wisdom of Shambhala, pages 30-31.

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How often have we heard “It’s the thought that counts”?

For example, if we couldn’t get someone the expensive gift that we would like to have given them, we can comfort ourselves with the belief that “it’s the thought that counts!”

That’s the use of the word “thought “as in “intention.”

But believing this phrase It’s the thought that counts is also how we can get ourselves into trouble.

If you have no interest in a thought, it has no power.
You oxygenate them with your beliefs and interests – Mooji

How?When we forget that thoughts are indeed just thoughts, not reality. In other words, we create problems for ourselves when we make  our thoughts  “count.”

If you don’t know it’s a thought it becomes your reality. <Anon>

Then we go further and become fixated. Obsessed. Grasping. Attached.

We don’t attach to things; we attach to our stories [thoughts] about them – Byron Katie, author of Loving What Is

and

The root cause of suffering is identification with our thoughts, the ‘stories’ that are continually running through our minds – Eckhart Tolle

This identification, clinging, attachment, leads to volitional action.

Which leads to the creation of our karma.

That’s the problem.

Now, here’s the promise! The very thing (confusing out thoughts with reality) that causes suffering is also the jump-off point  for going beyond our entrenched beliefs and habitual patterns that underlie every thought — mindfulness-awareness practice.

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We shall fight on the beaches – <source: Sir Winston Churchill>

When we talk about the fear of death, I believe that it is really ego’s fear of its own destruction.

Ego struggles to maintain its solidity. But it is a battle that it can never win because it fights to maintain a solidity that is illusory.

Whenever there is any threat that might expose the shifting sands that underly ego, this ego tries to secure a “beach-head” — like the beach-heads at beaches code-named Juno, Omaha, Sword and Gold, in Normandy, France on D-Day, June 06, 1944.

We might habitually drink alcohol, take drugs, eat, stop eating, call friends, ignore friends, sleep, play sports, have sex, manifest self- righteous anger etc. etc. — anything to restore a feeling of comfort with who we think we are.

These habitual patterns contribute to both creating and maintaining our karma. Sometimes this produces negative effects, as described in previous posts, namely, Deconstructing The Karma of Alleged Killer….; and I’m-just-a-link-in-your-chain.

On “D-Day” — which stands for The unnamed day on which an operation or offensive is to be launched  — the terrified teenage warriors provided target practice for Nazi guns perched on the cliffs high above the beaches on which the soldiers landed.

We shall never surrender <source: Sir Winston Churchill>

I noted above that ego tries to secure a beach-head like those beach-heads on D-Day.

But that’s where the similarity ends. For on June 06, 1944, these warriors, with invincible courage, set aside ego and surrendered to big mind. They sacrificed small, self-centred, “me first” mind on the altar of basic goodness.

I cannot think of a greater tribute to those of you, “dead” or “alive,” who fought there, to say, with heartfelt gratitude that, despite being on what amounted to a suicide mission, you established a beach-head — both literally and spiritually — from which to conquer hatred in all its forms.

Wherever you are now, I thank you.

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In Tibet we say: “Negative action has one good quality: it can be purified.” So there is always hope. Even murderers and the most hardened criminals can change and overcome the conditioning that led them to their crimes. Our present condition, if we use it skillfully and with wisdom, can be an inspriation to free ourselves from the bondage of suffering. <source:  Sogyal Rinpoche from Glimpse of the Day>

You’ve just done something you wish you hadn’t. Perhaps it caused suffering to someone. We know that the seed we’ve just planted will ripen at some point in the future.

Is there anything we can do to lessen the future, negative karmic impact on us?

Fortunately, yes.

The antidotes to future negative consequences are at the heart-level — nurturing of compassion and purification….. an appropriate topic for a Mother’s Day
post.

There are probably many antidotes. Here are a few:

• The Four Powers of Purification – In the Autumn of 1967 I first met His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama at Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada. His Holiness described these powers in his lecture to us, which was published in 1969:
  
  “If his past (evil) Karma has not as yet borne fruit, it will still be possible for him to obliterate this unripe Karma by utilizing the strength of the four powers, namely: 1. Determination to attain the status of Buddhahood; 2. Determination to eschew demeritorious deeds, even at the cost of one’s life; 3. Ther performance of meritorious deeds; and 4. Repentance.  Such is the way to attain immediate happiness, to pave the way for attaining liberation in future, and to help avoid the accumulation of further demerits.” <source: The Tibet Society, Occasional Paper No. 1: Happiness, Karma, and Mind, December 1969>
  
  Click here for fuller explanation.

• tonglen practice as taught by Pema Chodron;
  
• Ho’oponopono – scroll down til you see the section entitled This is an excerpt from the forthcoming book “Zero Limits” by Joe Vitale and Dr. Hew Len. Due out July 2007; and
• Lovingkindness (Metta) and Compassion (Karuna) Meditation that I received from Namgyal Rinpoche in February 1970
  

(This post is based with appreciation on materials gathered at a seminar on karma with teacher Jay Lippman.)

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In the March 21, 2010 post, we discussed what we can do once the consequences of our previous actions ripen.

Unlike Erica in the popular Canadian TV show “Being Erica,” once the seeds from past volitional actions have ripened, we cannot go back and change the consequences.

The only choice we have at this point is how to relate to these consequences. Are we going to dwell in anger, bitterness, resentment if we see the consequences as negative? Or gloat, bask in ego-pride because we see the consequences as positive?

Many of us think of Cinderella as a “fairy tale.” But I like to think of it like this: while we may not have a fairy godmother upon which to call, if we relate to the obstalces in our lives as teachers rather than demons, something magical happens. Just as Cinderella’s fairy godmother produced a beautiful ball gown for Cinderella to wear to the royal ball, and turns a pumpkin into a magnificent coach, and transformed weak, tiny mice into swift steeds, our inner splendour can be released.

When we meet obstacles (that which prevent us from fulfilling our expectations or desires), we often look around for someone or something to blame. Or we may withdraw, or try to somehow seduce the obstacle. These responses keep us imprisoned in our habitual patterns and create further obstacles.

A few years ago, I started to save some of the quotations from daily e-mails I receive from Rigpa Glimpse of the Day to which I can refer when I need help to turn ugly rags of a mentality of poverty into ball gowns, to turn a feeling of being stalled into a handsome vehicle to take me somewhere, or to turn a feeling of powerlessness into a way to energize that handsome vehicle.

Here is my favourite:

Pain, grief, loss, and ceaseless frustration of every kind are there for a very real and dramatic purpose: to wake us up, to enable, almost to force us to break out of the cycle of samsara and so release our imprisoned splendor. <source: October 24, 2004>

This next is a rather graphic description of an enlightened approach to the obstacles in our lives:

Imagine that you have gone all your life without ever washing, and then one day you decide to take a shower. You start scrubbing away, but then watch in horror as the dirt begins to ooze out of the pores of your skin and stream down your body. Something must be wrong: you were supposed to be getting cleaner and all you can see is grime. You panic and fling yourself out of the shower, convinced that you should never have begun. But you only end up even more dirty than before. You have no way of knowing that the wisest  thing to do is to be patient and to finish the shower. It may look for a while as if you are getting even dirtier, but if you keep on washing, you will emerge fresh and clean. It’s all a process, the process of purification. <source: July 20, 2003>

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Unlike Erica in the popular Canadian TV show “Being Erica,” once the seeds from past volitional actions have ripened, we cannot go back and change the consequences.

Our past lives karma might be determined but in this life we should always try to remedy it, make efforts to make it workable.” <source: “His Eminence Namkha Drimed Rinpoche, January, 2011 in reply to a question that I sent to him.>

The only choice we have at this point is how to relate to these consequences. Are we going to dwell in anger, bitterness, resentment if we see the consequences as negative? Or gloat, bask in ego-pride because we see the consequences as positive?

Byron Katie’s book Loving What Is nudges me off my psychological default position (ego) and helps me to respond to consequences —that I myself have brought about — in a much more spacious, graceful and positive way.

Here’s a book review:

Are you suffering because you’re being unfairly targeted or being used as a scapegoat? Feeling set up for a fall by people you thought were your friends? etc. etc. If you’re looking for a way to relate to these situations that takes you beyond simply complaining, that involves some kind of mind training then you might like the book entitled Loving What Is by Byron Katie that my sister Stephanie sent to me in 2002.

The title appealed to me right away. We spend so much time unwittingly resisting what is happening to us and around us in order to shield ourselves from the pain. We say, “This shouldn’t be happening to me.” We argue with reality.

But when I received this book on tape, I thought “There’s so many of these types of books on the market today with titles that ‘grab’ the book-buying public, but I often find the content disappointing if it’s based on strategies that are designed to make one person — the reader — the “winner” and the other one the “loser.” In other words, the strategies are based on ego.

I started to listen to the cassettes of the book. I liked it. Actually, I loved it! Then I heard that there was an exercise to do, I groaned. Don’t tell me that I have to write something down, I thought. I just want to be lazy and listen, not have to do any work. Not only that, but the exercise seemed to be at the kindergarten level. But I was impressed enough by what I had heard on the cassettes so far that I tried the exercise.

What happened was a revolution at the level of the mind. And that’s what I liked about it. It doesn’t give the reader “strategies” or lists of things to do to be “successful.” It starts with the premise that everything — including suffering — comes originally from our minds. And further, that arguing with reality hurts: “I’m a lover of what is, not because I’m a spiritual person, but because it hurts when I argue with reality.” And “when you argue with reality you lose — only 100 percent of the time” (author Byron Katie).

So rather than running around doing this, that and the other thing, start with your own mind. That’s the bravest and most fearless thing anyone can do, I believe. If you work with your mind in the proper way — in other words, based on mindfulness — the proper action to take, if any, often follows. Maybe not right away, but in time.

If you’re interested, you can by the book or cassettes or borrow them from your library. There is also a website. If more of us worked with our own minds, we would cause a lot less pain and suffering for ourselves and others. “Only when we give up ‘what should be’ can we experience the perfection of ‘what is.’” <source: creator of and publisher on this weblog, Maggie Scott>

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On subway cars in my city, there’s a sign on the door saying “Mind the Gap.” Love it! I need to be constantly reminded to let go of all the subconscious gossip and discursive thought going on in my head and just mind the gap.

The gap to which the transit company is referring is that gap between the platform and the subway car.

The gap to which meditation instructors refer is that between one thought\emotion and the next. That’s where primordial awareness and intelligence lie. That’s where the unchanging essence that underlies all changing things is. This unchanging essence is sometimes described as being as vast as the sky where “nothing but everything arises from it.” The spaciousness that lies beyond the claustrophobia of our conventional minds. Beyond judgment, contrivance, change, accepting and rejecting. Just beyond….

I know from personal experience how, in a nano second, I get caught up in thoughts\emotions and how easily I get “hooked” if one of my painful “buttons” is pushed. e.g. if someone is extremely aggressive towards me. One of my spiritual guides used the example of walking along the street and a stranger looks at you and shouts “F — — K YOU!”  Or my child does something that really upsets me. What’s my usual reaction? How can I avoid going on automatic pilot?Create a gap, I tell myself. Don’t just jump into the situation. Pause. Isn’t there some Coca-Cola ad that invites us to taste “the pause that refreshes”? Or like pressing  the “Refresh” (F5) key on our computer keyboard.

Some ways to create a gap:

1. in daily life:
   • take a few deep breaths and focus on the process — Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale —  before responding to the situation;
   • put up some signs around your home to remind yourself to “mind the gap.”
2. in meditation practice, we learn to be mindful of the gap between one thought\emotion and the next. This is where we learn to say “thinking” when  thought\emotion arises, rather than getting caught up in it, or obsessing and fixating on it.

As this weblog is an in-depth examination of karma, I want to point out that there’s a wonderful bonus to minding the gap: by not indulging in our usual habitual patterns, we burn up negative karma.

Every time a habitual pattern gets strong, every time we feel caught up or on automatic pilot, we could see it as an opportunity to burn up negative karma. Rather than as a problem, we dould see it as our karma ripening, which gives us an opportunity to burn up karma, or at least weaking our karmic propensities. But that’s hard to do. When we realize that we are hooked, that we’re on automatic pilot, what do we do next? (source: In the Face of Fear, article by Pema Chodron)

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