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(Prologue: I’ve got first-hand experience that a real understanding of the laws of karma can substantially change our lives for the better. I created this weblog to share information and personal experience with others. May it be of benefit!)

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Meditation is no longer a strange word. Scientists have done many studies to show the benefits of meditation on our health, both physical and mental.

This post is, however, not directly about the health benefits. It is about the misconceptions around meditation. It is necessary to deal with this because meditation is one of the tools that can help us to change the course of our lives, our karma. And if we are operating on misconceptions, then we cannot make proper use of this valuable tool.

Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche provides the context for this post

“If we follow thoughts back, we can see that they stem from an embedded karmic situation that has gone on for a very long time.”

“The point of buddhism is that we are creating future actions. We can change the course. We are not stuck in our karma.” (Classes 4 and 5)

By meditating, we see how the mind that created our karma is the same mind that can cut the creation and maintenance of that karma.

Before we get into details about how meditation can cut karma and allow us to control our lives, I want to first dispel some common misconceptions: Read the rest of this entry »

PLEASE NOTE: Each of us has both masculine and feminine energies, whatever our gender. However, for purposes of this webpost, I will use men as my example of the masculine energy. For the word “man” you can read “male\animus energy.”

In positive manifestation, masculine means tolerant, patient and accommodating. The fundamental masculine quality is immovability and bluntness. Men may have the wisdom to know what is happening, whether just or unjust, good or bad, negative or positive, and to just let things be as they are. Masculine energy is also known for loyalty, reliability, and the ability to join in groups to achieve common goals. It is culturally associated with politics, institutions and traditions. <source: Judith Simmer-Brown, “Pure Passion”, Shambhala Sun, July 1999. Click here to read full article.>

But there are times when “to just let things be as they are,” as mentioned above, arises from fear of hearing something you’d rather not hear, or having to express feelings you’d rather not express, not from a positive application of the masculine principle. On this negative manifestation of male energy, Judith Simmer-Brown comments:

On the other hand, masculine energy can be too accommodating, even lazy, and tends to be dull and oblivious. Without the stimulation of feminine wisdom the masculine can go to sleep or be lulled into merely habitual routines…. Click here to read full article. <source: Judith Simmer-Brown, Pure Passion>

While growing up, I was somewhat of a “daddy’s girl” and wanted to know that he was there for me. Like many men in my experience, Dad didn’t have a great deal of enthusiasm for expresing feelings. Or talking about personal problems.

At the age of 21, while walking along the white sands of Fort Myers Beach, Florida at Christmas, I told him I felt that he didn’t support me. He was surprised. By “unsupportive” I meant that he didn’t initiate a discussion of matters that concerned me. He could sense that there were areas of my life with which I wasn’t pleased, or about which I might be troubled. But he “just let things be as they are.” As a result, I didn’t initiate discussions with him because I felt he didn’t want to hear or talk about these matters.  I interpreted this lack of meaningful communication to mean that he was uninterested. Once he understood how I saw his silence, he broached topics that he thought may concern me without waiting for me to initiate conversation.

For my father to think that he knew what I was concerned about and therefore didn’t have to talk to me about them, was, to me, an intellectualization. I believe that the purpose can be to avoid the expression of our genuine feelings vis-a-vis significant others, in this case, daughters\women. Intellectualizing feelings, because the male energy thinks it that it knows all the answers or that the expression of feelings is really not important, can shut the door on important aspects of relationships that are significant to us.

Here is a pictorial representation of the negative male energy:

<The Son of Swords card in the Motherpeace Tarot deck represents the negative male energy. It) implies that you are approaching your goals in an overly rational way. The thoughts that determine your movements are like words cutting you off from the nourishment you need to sustain life. The cold logic of your ego is about to strangle the dove of your heart. You need to soften and remember that you are not functioning in a vacuum. Let go of the false sense of isolation you feel and connect to the rest of life….you need to stop thinking and get down to feeling. <source: Motherpeace: A Way to the Goddess through Myth, art and Tarot by Vicki Noble>

Read the rest of this entry »

The beloved is the occasion of something unlimited, a feeling of connection and destiny that dissolves our selfishness and isolation. <source: Norman Fischer: “Falling in Love,” Shambhala Sun, July 1999

In my webpost posted on May 27, 2012 entitled Relationship Series Part Eight: Commitment – You can hold.  You can fold. Or you can just walk away, I raised some questions around the nature of commitment.

The results from my contemplating the nature of commitment are that there are two main types: the conventional type based on ego; and authentic commitment. Read the rest of this entry »

Lately, at the Thursday morning meditation practice sessions at the Shambhala Meditation Centre of Toronto, he has been giving short talks on a variety of topics.

As Ted is one of my spiritual spouses (please click here for definition), I’d like to pay tribute to him here by intermittenly publishing some of these talks on the Shambhala Buddhist dharma.

On May 24, 2012, he spoke on The Proclamation of  Goodness.

Proclamation of Goodness:

May basic goodness dawn.
May the confidence of goodness be eternal.
May goodness be all-victorious.
May that goodness bring profound, brilliant glory.

(source: Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche on the third anniversary of the Werma Sadhana, 10 October 2010)

Ted and boiling spring, Iceland, September 2012

The proclamation is a statement that basic goodness (please click here for definition of basic goodness on the ultimate plane) is the fundamental quality of reality before any moralistic concept of good or bad. This view is our starting point and begins with the mind of enlightenment.

He then took each line and explained it.

1. May basic goodness dawn.
   Taking the view above as the basis of our own reality and working from that supports us in creating enlightened society. Differing views such as people are bad or sinful and a heavy emphasis on individual achievement lead to much different forms of society.
2. May the confidence of goodness be eternal.
   Working with the view of basic goodness (described immediately above), we develop confidence that we can proceed with our lives and with creating enlightened society
3. May goodness be all-victorious.
   Sense of intent\aspiration that our lives and society can be guided by basic goodness
4. May that goodness bring profound, brilliant glory.
   this line speaks to the bringing about of the state of enlightened society\joining of heaven and earth

Living our lives in terms of basic goodness helps us work with our karma altogether. We begin to develop the courage to undercut our own habitual patterns, the very patterns that both create and maintain our karma. (Please click here for the two components of habitual patterns.)

If you found this post helpful, please share it with a friend. Then consider subscribing to the weblog. Just click on the Subscribe button in the navigation bar and follow one of the three, easy-to-follow instructions. Thank you. 

(Prologue: I’ve got first-hand experience that a real understanding of the laws of karma can substantially change our lives for the better. I created this weblog to share information and personal experience with others. May it be of benefit!)

Weblogs are meant to be personal. Hopefully readers will find something in mine that can help them to create a more fulfilling life. I offer this highly personal account so that it may benefit others.

 Once we begin to question our thoughts, our partners, alive, dead, or divorced, are always our greatest teachers. <source: Byron Katie: I Need Your Love — Is That True?>

I have been trying to write a draft of this webpost on commitment since April 03, 2012. I am finding it especially difficult.

• I am not “the marrying kind”— But I do want emotional intimacy with those significant others who value it as much as I do, and who respect the preciousness of the vulnerability that this creates;

• I do not want to be part of a conventional “cozy couple”— I just want to be capable of loving in a non-ego way; and
  

• I do not want to live with my significant others-of-the-romantic-kind — But I cherish the time we spend together.
  

But that doesn’t mean that the idea of commitment is not important to me. It is. But I begin to realize that I don’t know what commitment really means.

May 14, 2012 …..I’m having supper with Alex (click here) at Remy’s in the Yorkville district of Toronto. I’ve been trying to work out what “authentic commitment” means. Or at least, what it means to me. I raise some of these questions during our discussion over supper.

• Are love and commitment inseparable?
  
• Can you love but not make a commitment?
•  Do we commit to a person?
  
• To a relationship?
  
• To a view about how to live?
  

I tell Alex that I begin to think deeply about the nature of commitment because of a message my life partner leaves for me just before he dies at age 61 in November 2004.

I just called to say I love you. I wish that I would have done more of that. I regret that I wasn’t more romantic. One of the regrets of my life is that I took you for granted. I spent a lot of my life running away from commitment, running away from anything that made me feel tied down. This was because I was frightened. I was afraid of getting it all right! Most people say they are  afraid of getting it all wrong. I was afraid of getting it all right. It was ingrained in me as a child that all family relationships and all family units fail. If I had got it all right I wouldn’t have known what to do with it! I realize that it was a disastrous thing I did by allowing my fears to run — and ruin — my life. I couldn’t break the cycle.

I had a lot of self-esteem issues. I never felt good enough or grand enough. I’m thinking right now of “Diamond as Big as the Ritz,” [1922 novella by novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald], and the song “Putting on the Ritz.” I spent my life putting on appearances, trying to look successful. I was bitter. Even if I had had a diamond as big as the Ritz I would have been unhappy. You were my diamond as big as the Ritz, but nothing made me happy. I really missed the whole point.

I could have given you a multi-faceted joy — like the multi-faceted diamond that you are — if I hadn’t been so uptight and bitter. My life with you should have been an adventure. Just being together should have made me happy. I could have appreciated just sitting down eating a lovely meal with you. But nothing ever felt like it was enough.

Falling in love with you should have been enough. But it wasn’t.

There was nothing more you could have done. There was nothing more you could have given me. This was an unending cycle that I couldn’t seem to break from my childhood.

Put another way, I think my life partner is saying that he chose his habitual patterns over freedom from a negative karmic cycle, over a mature relationship. As a result, this kept his  karmic cycle going.

And the result for me?

I end up putting my own romantic nature on the back burner. That is, until I had a raw, intimate, erotic dream on February 03, 2012 that threw me into an identity crisis. (Please click here to review the dream.) That was one day after, i.e. on February 02, 2012, that I reviewed the message presented above from my life partner. It was as if he were speaking to me through the dream of February 03, 2012 to warn me not to hide from who I am like he hid from who he really was. Not to let habitual patterns obscure who we actually are on the relative plane.

May 20, 2012:  I attend a class on the Sadhana of Mahamudra (click here for more information on the sadhana). We are discussing the idea of  “the three confidences,” one of which is decisiveness. My vajra brother Fred Cohen suggests another word for decisiveness, namely commitment. Not waffling around. BINGO. Finally, things have started to fall into place around what commitment might be.

Being decisive about something. Not waffling around. Read the rest of this entry »

(Prologue: I’ve got first-hand experience that a real understanding of the laws of karma can substantially change our lives for the better. I created this weblog to share information and personal experience with others. May it be of benefit!)

A head like “These two are inseparable” evokes the idea of lovers. In the case of this webpost, the pair of lovers are the two components that create karma, namely, intention and volitional action.

On May 06’12, I wrote a post that offered the view that, of  these two components, it is not the volitional action per se that causes the accumulation of karma. It is the intention behind the action. Please click here if you wish to review that webpost.

On May 10’12,  having received some e-mails around this topic after I published the webpost, I wrote to Jay Lippman, a senior dharma teacher to ask him about this. Please click here for a biography of Jay.

While we end up realizing that we are saying essentially the same thing, the way we come to that conclusion is interesting. Jay’s focus is slightly different than mine. He focuses on the fact that the intention and volitional action are inseparable. My focus is on the component of intention.

yes we are.  My only point is that there must be the actual slap as well as the intent {i.e. the volitional action and the intention are inseparable}.

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We want intimacy. In our culture, that word generally refers to physical intimacy.

Switching gears, we’ve often heard the phrase that “practice makes perfect.”

What’s the connection between intimacy and practice?

Not much. Why? We have learned an ironic truth: that the act of physical intimacy doesn’t necessarily lead to, or even involve, intimacy. (Please click here for past webpost entitled Is Sexual Attraction a Cosmic Joke?)

We also want a heart connection with others based on unconditional acceptance.  In this regard, I remember that my father told me as a young child “don’t wear your heart on your sleeve.”

My father often had good advice. But not in this case. For me, wearing my heart on my sleeve is part of basic goodness! (Please click here for definitions of this term.) It requires a great deal of courage because I am vulnerable when I wear my heart on my sleeve. Because it requires that I don’t intellectualize my emotions. Because it requires that I tell the truth. Because it requires that I dissolve the barriers between me and my heart.

The title of this post is “Intimacy – practice makes perfect.” What’s the connection between intimacy based on the heart and practice? Read the rest of this entry »

(Prologue: I’ve got first-hand experience that a real understanding of the laws of karma can substantially change our lives for the better. I created this weblog to share information and personal experience with others. May it be of benefit!)

We’re taught that we accumulate karma through volitional action. (Please click here for detailed description of what karma is, is not, and how it works.) This is  what I call the outer level of karma.

My understanding is that it’s not the action per se that creates karma. It’s the intention. The motivation. What the law calls mens res. That’s what I call the inner level of karma.

(Most of us are not necessarily aware of our real intentions. It takes a lot of honesty and conscious awareness and willingness to really explore.)

The purification process can only be successful if we understand that it is the intention we have to purify, not the action per se.

Specifically, two people can carry out the same action. One person accumulates negative karma. The other person does not. For example, if a fully evolved dharma teacher slaps a student, there is no negative karma because there is no anger. Wrath perhaps. But not anger. If we were to do the same thing, we would probably do so in anger and thus accumulate negative karma.

Why then is it taught that we accumulate karma by our volitional action? Because if we just have an intention, but don’t act on it, then we do not accumulate karma.

As my root guru used to say, “Got it, sweetheart?”

Recap of Part One: We feel like Humpty Dumpty. We fell off the wall (symbol for our life, our identity).  We feel traumatized. Shattered. Damaged. Rattled. I relax when I understand that, when karma from past lives ripens, I cannot change it. The only choice I have is the attitude I adopt.

When we’re in a serious crisis or have experienced some trauma, well-meaning friends give advice about what we “should do.”  Some suggest “roll up your sleeves,” or “pull your socks up.” Others might suggest that we try to “get motivated” to change our situation, to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Others suggest that we should try to “solve” the crisis.

I myself embrace the following perspective: Read the rest of this entry »

(Prologue: I’ve got first-hand experience that a real understanding of the laws of karma can substantially change our lives for the better. I created this weblog to share information and personal experience with others. May it be of benefit!)

 “Making mistake after mistake, I walk the unmistaken path.” Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche

I’ve done some pretty stupid things in my lifetime.

But this one “takes the cake.”

Now I am reaping the karma.

The “cake” is no longer pleasing to me. The icing on top has evaporated, exposing the guts of a cake that is no longer whole. Slices have been taken out of it. I cannot find my self anymore.

I obsess over what I see as my mistakes and ask again and again “how could I have been so stupid?” This past week I talk to a fellow practitioner about this constant daily “review” of my “mistakes.”  He quotes the following to me by heart:

……
……
The everyday practice is simply to
develop a complete acceptance and
openness to all situations and emotions.

And to all people — experiencing
everything totally without reservations
and blockages, so that one never
withdraws or centralises onto oneself.

<source: The Vidyadhara, Venerable Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, excerpt from Maha-Ati text>

That phrase “centralises onto oneself” grabs me, shakes me up  — that’s what I am doing. Centralizing into myself. I’m glad for the reminder. While I don’t necessarily “feel better,” without that reminder I will mindlessly continue to deepen the rut, the stuckness, that I am experiencing.

The Good News! I find it strangely helpful to realize that Read the rest of this entry »