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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 beneficial!)

What warning did Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche never tire of repeating? It’s this: the more senior we become in practice and study of the Shambhala Buddhist teachings, the more subtle ego gets.

First, here’s how I’m using the word “ego”:

Ego is the absence of true knowledge of who we really are, together with its result: a doomed clutching on, at all costs, to a cobbled together and makeshift image of ourselves, an inevitably chameleon charlatan self that keeps changing, and has to, to keep alive the fiction of its existence.

In Tibetan, ego is called dakdzin , which means “grasping to a self.” Ego is then defined as incessant movements of grasping at a delusory notion of  “I” and “mine,” self and other, and all the concepts, ideas, desires, and activities that will sustain that false construction.

Such grasping is futile from the start and condemned to frustration, for there is no basis or truth in it, and what we are grasping at is by its very nature ungraspable. The fact that we need to grasp at all and to go on grasping shows that in the depths of our being we know that the self doesn’t inherently exist. From this secret, unnerving knowledge spring all our fundamental insecurities and fears. (Italics are mine.)

(source: Rigpa Glimpse of the Day February 10, 2011)

So what is it that has become more subtle as we advance and become senior students? 

Its  [the Sadhana of Mahamudra] essential teaching is that the nature of the practice itself undercuts any ideas of spiritual materialism. The practice addresses the subtle corruption that can take place when our spiritual practice makes us feel superior to others and we become engaged in rebuilding the fortress of ego. <emphasis mine>

Senior students and practitioners have done years of work on understanding ego. We have experienced, to some extent, what I call the Humpty-Dumpty syndrome. 

But the danger lies in going into GUT mode:

1. Grasping onto this understanding;
   
2. Using advanced knowledge to feel superior to others;  and,
   
3. Turning it into just one more way to build ego back up again.

OK. That’s the summary of the webpost. Now let’s examine a little more. Read the rest of this entry »

(Please note: the words in a different colour from the main text are hyperlinks. Please move your cursor over them and then click to get connected to the information.)

Just before starting the New Year’s Weekthun (a week-long urban meditation retreat) at the Shambhala Meditation Centre of Toronto  lead by Gaylon Ferguson of Shambhala International, I had come to two conclusions:

• My heart friend  is not a friend to me. It’s a one-way street. I’m his friend. He is not mine. How he manifests towards me does not align with my core values, namely, basic human friendliness, concern and support — some of the attributes that are the hallmark of (relative) basic goodness;  and
  

•  While I honour whatever his own truth is at any given time, and understand from where he is coming,  it does not mean that I choose to live with the situation.

So on Day One of the New Year’s Weekthun, I enter the shrineroom in a state of profound sadness. Like James Bond’s martinis, I am shaken, not stirred. Being stirred comes during the weekthun itself.

This sadness, as it turns out, is a perfect starting point for me where Peaceful Abiding and care for others can be practiced. 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 beneficial!)

Today is January 01, 2013. Many of us will have made, or will be in the process of making, New Year’s resolutions. For example:

• to be more emotionally generous in sharing our feelings and experience
  
• to communicate in a genuine way, i.e. communication that goes beyond ego, that isn’t defensive, e.g. “You’re putting words in my mouth.” “That’s just your projection.”
  
• to appreciate the support that others give us, rather than taking it for granted or thinking that it is somehow our “due”
• to be kinder, less aggressive
• to get fit
• etc. etc. etc.

My New Year’s resolution is NOT to try, or make any effort, to improve myself.

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. (Please click here for definition of ego.)

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

What’s wrong with being kinder? Nothing. It’s trying to be kinder that presents a problem, as Pema Chodron’s quotation above demonstrates. 

I myself like to use what I call “the royal road” to fulfil my intention.

And that royal road is mindfulness and awareness. (Please click here for definitions of these terms.) 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 powerful revolution takes place: the thoughts, emotions and actions that underlie our habitual patterns (please click here for definition and descriptionof term) of aggression and laziness , for example, are eventually undercut.

Atisha (please click here for more information about this great teacher) summed it up very well: Two activities: one at the beginning, one at the end. (Please click here for more information about the slogans.)

In the morning when you wake up, you reflect on the day ahead and aspire to use it to keep a wide-open heart and mind. At the end of the day, before going to sleep, you think over what you have done. If you fulfilled your aspiration, rejoice in that. If you went against your aspiration, rejoice that you are able to see what you did and are no longer living in ignorance. This way you will be inspired to go forward with increasing clarity, confidence, and compassion in the days that follow.    (Please click here for source of Pema Chodron’s quotation.)

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

Not bad! Especially for someone who refuses to “improve.”

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

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