High in the quiet snow covered mountains,

My heart

Ushered by a dream 

Awakened to darkness 

Startled into revelation

A year since my breast was cut away.

I will never be the same.

In the dream

A dark star awaits,

The star reflected in scans and biopsy reports, 

In long pauses and shaky voices 

Of nurses 

And doctors 

And heads of departments

In the scientific names and details 

Critical to bodily survival, 

Lost in piles of paperwork.

In the dream 

The star is no longer hidden deep within, 

But centered above me 

So that

I lost myself in what appeared to be

A twisted cross of ebony

Turning toward the darkness 

Walking though my body,

Completely alone, singled out

I found myself

Coming into prayer.

Not through the door of an imposing cathedral, 

Not on my knees at my bedside, 

But through a softening 

Given by time 

A lens to focus my breath

Prayer is not a universal language like music or beauty,

Prayer welcomes the unknown

Prayer is the call to listen

Prayer disarms the mind

Prayer creates form from loss

It is the labor of the soul turning inside out.

It is the

Seed sprouting 

Bud opening

Fish splashing

Bird singing 

Tree swaying 

Wonder 

Where the visible is given to the darkness, 

The hidden and held lost in light.

Angie Alkove -3/07/2023

Randall Mullins, Feb 25

Expecting a light morning for news,

I turn on the tv, 

coffee in hand, 

feeling at ease, 

until a baby boy’s face appears on the screen. 

His father, 

who must have loved his son,  

“lost it,” as we say, 

shook him too hard, 

and killed him. 

He was charged with murder, 

and is now in custody.

This, brothers, 

all over the world,

from our lonely workplaces 

to fields of battle, 

is our harsh invitation 

to transformation. 

Those among us 

who also have lost it, 

or who came close 

(I am one), 

but managed to stop short of tragedy, 

recognize the hard truth.

“Love your enemies” 

must include 

loving those 

wounded parts 

of ourselves where we

have not yet learned 

to weep our way toward home.

Is it not clear 

that most of the destruction 

of Things Sacred comes 

from the wounded hearts of men?

Let us hold one another accountable, 

but let us not condemn this man 

before remembering 

that we are in this struggle together.

Is he not Everyman?

a brother?

wounded like us, 

but never beyond repair?

He deserves time apart, 

a place of penitence, 

a penitentiary, 

a space 

where the soul can come forth.

It can happen.

Someone has said that 

the young man 

who does not weep 

is a savage, 

and the old man 

who does not laugh 

is a fool.

Transforming our pain, 

healing, 

includes the sacred work 

of grieving, 

and we can never 

complete this work alone.

We too are in custody, 

but not in a prison. 

We are in custody of the Beloved,

helping us turn toward home.

We have a True Home 

at the Sacred Center of Everything.

waiting there to embrace us.

Even if it seems 

thousands of miles away, 

let us turn toward home, 

walking shoulder to shoulder, 

with brothers 

drawn to the same sweetness, 

knowing ourselves as Beloved.

– Randall Mullins (Dedicated to my Illuman brothers)

Grace is there for the asking 

Tall Weeds choke the way 

Arms thrashing through the weeds 

Trying to get to the clearing. 

The clearing appears 

Meadow, beauty, open air 

Sense the air in my lungs. 

Fresh, crisp, life giving. 

No more weeds 

No more thrashing 

No more cut arms 

Clear freedom 

Until it is not.  

Rocks in the meadow 

Just below the short grass 

Not seen.  

First trip: 

Oh damn  

I did not see it 

Second trip 

What is this shit 

Who put that there? 

Third trip.  

I sit down, 

Despondent 

Wondering. 

Will this ever get smooth  

Ever? Ever? 

Grace is there for the asking. 

Not smooth but 3-D,  

There to trip me? 

Deep crevasses, 

Big rocks, breaking down 

To little rocks in the meadow 

That make beauty real.  

May these offerings be in service to the end of suffering for all beings, throughout all times, and in all directions throughout the cosmos.

Practice

The Sangha of the Pandemic offers several opportunities for a safe, inclusive, free, virtual community contemplative practice. Everyone is welcome regardless of meditation experience or spiritual lineage.

The Zoom link is:  

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89989680789

Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays: 6 AM PacificTime

Monday: calm abiding, Samatha, Tuesday: body awareness, Thursday: Tonglen

Sunday at 7 AM Pacific Time: Four Brahmaviharas

and

Monday and Thursday evenings at 4:30 PM Pacific Time : Practice and Inquiry       

Please feel free to forward this email and any posts from our website at:

Sangha of the Pandemic                   

While teaching in Waldorf schools, I was introduced to a practice for the children of starting each morning lesson with a questions: “What’s new?” In the early grades , their attention was directed to something new or different in the classroom. As the years progressed, the children began experiencing the question as more open ended and began including new experiences or new ideas that they had or were having. As we advanced to middle school, the questions was more refined to what we were studying at the time or what issues were active in the community. 

I was reminded of this practice by Chuck Fondse in a sangha share recently when he related an experience of approaching the solstice as fresh and new and then that leading to an experience of every moment and experience being fresh and new.. The daily habit of this question: “What is new?” can become a daily practice for us too. Beginning the day with this question may free the mind from habitual thinking and open the experience to what is.  

It is like the experience of a new year. New Year’s Eve has always been a time of washing away, putting down, releasing the accumulations in mind, heart and body that have bunched up from the previous year. In addition to un-clinging, there has been the habit of grasping for something new in the coming year by setting goals or planning specific changes in life. If instead one approaches the New Year with “What is new?” with pure openness, there is a possibility of freedom from expectation of something to come (grasping) or regret of something that has passed (clinging). A gesture of gentle, openhanded receptivity offers the opportunity for connection to what is, and strengthens the capacity to respond with the skill and means that are called for and not what the habitual conditioning thinks is needed. 

Rudolf Steiner introduced a meditation practice for the new year that has this openness to what is. There are many interpretations of this practice, referred to most often as The Holy Nights Meditation. It is often practiced from December 25 – January 6 in reflection of the Christian celebration of Jesus’s birth. However, throughout Steiner’s lectures and notes form other folks, he indicates that the practice can begin on the longest night of the year, the solstice, and continue through January 1st. Some references include a 13th night as well. One of the reflections that I read about the practice was that beginning on the first day of the New Year, we start to collect uncompleted intentions, or we begin to fill up a trunk of hopes and regrets. This continues throughout the year until, near the closing of the year, there’s a bottleneck or backlog of stuff that wants to be attended to. The invitation in this practice might be to methodically reflect on the year month by month and see what hopes are being clung to or what regrets are taking up space in our consciousness. Another approach is to use the practice to open our mind-heart to unknown possibilities in the coming year. There are many other approaches as well so just seeing what shows up as you engage in the practice is great!

The Practice of the Twelve Holy Nights. (My interpretation)

• Place a journal and pen next to your bed so that you can access it easily in the night or first thing in the morning.
• Prepare, ahead of time, your question that you will carry through the Holy Nights. For example, you might ask what will come in the month of ____? (The first night would be January, second February and so forth through the twelve months.)
• Each night before going to sleep write at the top of the page or area the month and year that you will be working with.
• Go to sleep having asked the question and to the best of your ability refrain from dwelling on it as you drift off. 
• If you wake in the night with a dream, write it down with as much clarity as you can and then go back to sleep. If you don’t dream during the night, upon waking up take time to write whatever you are experiencing or contemplating upon waking.
• Repeat this for twelve or thirteen nights. 
• It seems that one of the most important parts of the practice is to remain in an open, non-assumptive frame of mind when you ask the question and when you record your experiences in the journal.
• If you are  using the practice to review the year, begin with December and work back by month until last year’s solstice. If you are practicing opening to what is coming toward you in the year ahead, start with January and progress through the twelve months
• If an experience arises during the day that draws your attention in an our of the ordinary way, record that as well. 
• If you are not able to begin the practice on the actual solstice, no problem. Begin when it feel right for you. The important thing is to stay with it for a consecutive stretch of twelve nights.

At the end of the twelve nights, review what you have written and keep the journal someplace accessible so that you can refer to it as the year progresses. This is not a prognostication practice so don’t be concerned if what shows up is odd or extraordinary or nothing at all. Like all practices, the invitation is to experience and notice the effect of the experience.

Another possibility would be to incorporate the reflection or question into your daily practice for these twelve days. The indication for the night and dreams is that the veils between our conditioned, habit stream and our open, non conceptual nature is thinned when we sleep. So maybe a daytime contemplative practice would work better for some folks.

May the joy, kindness, compassion and equanimity of your true nature and the nature of all beingness rain down in unending blessings this year and in all years past and present.

May this practice, these words, and all actions be in service to the end of suffering for all beings throughout all times and in all directions throughout the cosmos. 

-William

From the perspective of the Mahayana teachings of buddhism, as far as my understanding goes, there are as many paths as there are beings to walk them; as many ways to walk the paths as there are atoms in all the cosmos, as many teachers as there are moments in and out of time. These paths, ways of walking, teachings and teachers are all revelations of true, untouched goodness, the primordial essence, thusness of all things.

Within the paths of the lineages of wisdom that I have been exposed to there seem to be some similar experiences in the process of revelation.  We have been exploring these in the last several weeks: 

• faith
• practice as concentration and insight 
• revelation of obstacles on the path as the three poisons of passion, aggression and ignorance
• awakening to the causes and conditions of these obstacles: karma
• liberation.

These are by no means a complete summary of the experiences on the infinite paths nor are they the only commonalities on the paths. These are the ones that have been most prominent in my experience and understanding of the wisdom lineages that I am familiar with.

Faith: At some moment in a life or in pre-birth, everyone seems to have had an experience of complete ease, free from suffering and fear, with a non conceptual connection with all beings and an experience of unconditional goodness. When this experience passes, the imprint on the whole being remains and is like a permanent beacon that reminds us of the experience as being the true nature of all beingness. Regardless of what path one is on, it seems that there is faith in this experience, and the knowledge that arises as a result of the experience, that is guiding us or calling us to return to what we know, from that initial experience, to be the true nature of beingness.

Practice: All practices seem to have two core constituents; contemplation and insight.

Contemplation is the practice of quieting unconscious and habitual thoughts, feelings and actions. It is most often practiced as focused attention on one thing: the breath, an object, an inner picture, a guardian, a prayer, god. In this practice, what is thought of as a self separate from other and all the constructs that make it, begins to diminish and a stillness that sometimes manifests as a presence or presence remains. There is a taste of the experience of the nature of beingness in the quietude of the mind, emotions and body.

Insight is what sprouts, grows, and blossoms from that rich soil of quietude. It often a surprise and is rarely what one thinks they are looking for or needing because it arises, not out of the habitual mind, but the still, open mind of contemplation.

Obstacles on the path: The light of insight shines brightly on the path, not only illuminating the way of return, but the obstacles or unconscious, habitual and conditioned ways of being, that have diminished our inherent capacities and our nature of goodness. This light also illumines how one diminishes and hinders others on their path. When one contemplates the obstacles they seem to congeal into three types, referred to as poisons in some buddhist texts: passion, aggression and ignorance.  ( See the links for more on these. )

Karma: The revelation of the obstacles leads to the understanding of the causes and conditions of these unconscious habits of being or karma. In the contemplation of these causes and conditions one begins to see the how and why of their existence. This knowledge also reveals the insight of how they are perpetuated in, and perpetuate, an unending cycle of suffering. Upon further contemplation, one may begin to see that there is no reality in these poisons as such; that they are fabrications of early life or pre-birth imprints and resulting, conditioned habits. As a greater understanding of the mechanism that runs the engine of karma develops, mind, heart, and body, in their natural brilliance, begin to effortlessly drop the habits that have burdened us in the path to return.

Liberation: First in an instant, in moments, in periods, in days, weeks, lives, past and future, in timelessness, through the experience of a path, the suffering and obstacles on a path, and the glimpses of reality on a path, one arrives where there is no path and never was; where there is no arriving and no leaving; our omnipresent nature as goodness.

These words are dedicated to all wisdom elders and wisdom teachings and to bringing about the end of suffering for all beings throughout all times and in all directions.

May it be so.

-William

Practice

The Sangha of the Pandemic offers several opportunities for a safe, inclusive, free, virtual community contemplative practice. Everyone is welcome regardless of meditation experience or spiritual lineage.

The Zoom link is:  

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89989680789

Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays: 6 AM PacificTime

Monday: calm abiding, Samatha, Tuesday: body awareness, Thursday: Tonglen

Sunday at 7 AM Pacific Time: Four Brahmaviharas

and

Monday and Thursday evenings at 4:30 PM Pacific Time : Practice and Inquiry       

Please feel free to forward this email and any posts from our website at:

Sangha of the Pandemic                   

Liberations is instantaneous.

Liberation is in the moment when one sets down a burden and before picking up another.

Liberation is when the search stops.

Liberation is when the search, and what is sought are experienced as having no independent inherent essence. 

Liberation is when the mind rests in the understanding and experience of the emptiness of all things that arise as a result of a cause.

Liberation is the freedom of spontaneous, unconditional forbearance toward all beings and oneself.

Liberation is the dropping of the concept that one is not liberated. 

It has always been challenging for me to reconcile the luxury and ease of having the time and opportunity to be able to contemplate these things, and the awareness of other people, whose birth into genetic streams of generational trauma and whose lives and thoughts are consumed with just surviving, and not conducive to contemplation without a heroic amount of effort. In my life the experience of liberation is the freedom from habits of mind and conditioning that lead me to attachment or aversion. It is freedom from the mental gymnastics of doubt and judgment of self and others. What is liberation for the starving masses in war, flooded, and drought stricken lands? What is liberation for the deeply impoverished rural populations of the Western societies, who have been led into the addictions of alcohol, pain relievers, 24 hour hate media, and spiritual charlatans promising liberation? What is liberation for the urban destitute who don’t even have the respite of nature and its solace, but are born into canyons of empty, concrete and glass promises and unscalable and soul crushing mountains of the Wealthy’s law and order?

As I hold these disparate worlds in the crucible of contemplation, I notice that, by opening my experience to the images and thoughts that arise from seeing the lives of the folks who do not live in the luxury of having time and opportunities to contemplate, the incessant habit stream of conditioned thinking dissolves. I am no longer a cloud of lofty aspirations mulling the nature of reality. I experience being grounded in humanness and thisness. The non conceptual qualities of loving kindness, compassion, gratitude/joy and equanimity are unveiled as manifestations of true nature, not merely concepts. Fears of losing my place in the hierarchy of materialism and intellectualism drop away and I am left with the prayer that I will have the capacities and be presented with opportunities to bring ease to those who are suffering however, whenever and wherever that suffering occurs. 

That is all that is left.

I experience liberation.

In the teachings of the boddhisatva path to liberation, the buddhas and enlightened ones appear endlessly, without hesitation, wherever there is suffering. They rarely show up as pulpit bangers or cushion sitters or miracle workers, but dressed in the garb, the desires, the attachments, the lostness of those who are suffering, regardless of social class, spiritual lineage, or past deeds. They are relentlessly residing within the caves of the suffering, living as companions to those who are suffering, no matter how it manifests. In some of the teachings it is pointed out that those of us who live lives of material ease ultimately suffer immensely when we realize our ignorance of how we may have perpetuated suffering in the world because of our ignorance and desires to hold onto our luxury. While the sages immerse themselves into these caves of ignorance, greed and hatred they are shining lights on on the path to liberation that originates from each individual’s, unique, inherent manifestation of goodness. Like Jesus and all the wisdom teachers, these buddhas descend into hell, not to battle with the lost souls but to invite them without conditions into the heaven of their own true nature.

When I am able in a moment of presence to willingly and without expectation to offer all that I am, and am not, to bring about an end to suffering, I experience liberation. I practice and study the dharma, however it shows up, to be always ready to step into the cave and don the garb wherever and whenever the call comes. I often cannot hear or am ignorant of the call because it is drowned out by the cacophony of my own mind stream of conditioned greed and aversion. But there are moments, more and more with practice, that this willingness to show up, presents opportunities to apply the lessons of buddha, dharma and sangha, in the world. It is not like when, in my younger years, I would barrel into the barrios with my arrogance and righteousness to save those “lesser” folks from their lives. Riding in on my white horse into save the lives that I assumed were insufficient without what I had. The experience is merely waiting for the invitation to walk a path with another without any objective but to relive suffering, whatever that means to them.  

With the practice, the path, that I have the skills and experience and humility to travel, steps into me, meets me, and shows me where and how I can do this work without causing more suffering. When I slow down enough and listen without ambition or agendas, what is needed offers itself as a gift for deeper practice and understanding of the path. Liberation is the result of the acts of selfless/egoless serving and dedication to the end of suffering for all beings throughout all times and in all directions. Liberation is the result of finally being willing to be unconditionally, essentially human.

These words are dedicated to all wisdom elders and wisdom teachings and to bringing about the end of suffering for all beings throughout all times and in all directions.

May it be so.

-William

Practice

The Sangha of the Pandemic offers several opportunities for a safe, inclusive, free, virtual community contemplative practice. Everyone is welcome regardless of meditation experience or spiritual lineage.

The Zoom link is:  

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89989680789

Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays: 6 AM PacificTime

Monday: calm abiding, Samatha, Tuesday: body awareness, Thursday: Tonglen

Sunday at 7 AM Pacific Time: Four Brahmaviharas

and

Monday and Thursday evenings at 4:30 PM Pacific Time : Practice and Inquiry       

Please feel free to forward this email and any posts from our website at:

Sangha of the Pandemic                   

The first few paragraphs of this post are my attempt to wind through the mental and emotional knots of how the three poisons work to create karma. For a real life, non conceptual reflection on work ing with karma skip right down to Chuck Fondue’s story. 

Karma is the activity, experienced and observed, of the perpetual engine of cause and effect. Karma is not the cause of suffering. Suffering manifests as a result of how I relate to karma. Release from suffering is not an effect of karma. Release of suffering comes about as a result of how I relate to karma.

Karma is the beginningless activity of cause and effect. Being beginningless it is also endless. Being endless it is beginingless. Mental and emotional suffering and release from this suffering are effects and causes in the infinite expanse of karma. The effects of grasping clinging, lust, and greed of passion that come about are effects.  These effects are caused by the conceptualizing mind wanting to hold fast to, or make definitive, to know for sure, an ultimate cause of karma. Aversion, hatred and violence as expressions of aggression are the effects of the mind wanting to push away anything that reminds me of the reality that the causes and effects of karma are unknowable. These passions and aggressions are the effects of the ignorance of the true nature of Karma as being beginingless, endless and empty of true nature. 

In the cases when I experience suffering as aggression, I am relating to karma by trying to avoid, push away, destroy; i.e. act aggressively toward karmic activity that I believe threatens my well being and/or survival. It is also when who and what I think myself to be, or what I want to be, is brought into question. 

In cases when I experience the suffering of passion I am relating to karmic activity by trying to grasp and cling to, the experience of freedom from suffering. It is the suffering of the mind trying to make something permanent.

The suffering of ignorance manifests when I forget that the activity of the karma that I experience is merely a perpetual engine of cause and effect.  This engine of activity has no intrinsic nature and no form. It is a habit of a conditioned mind and therefore cannot be pushed away or clung to. Ignorance is when I believe that karma, its activity, and the resulting suffering is the absolute nature of reality; when I believe that Karma is more than merely habitual, conditioned activity in the infinite field of beingness. 

The suffering of ignorance arises when my habits of thinking and conditioned reactivity to karma draw my perception of reality away from the experiential knowledge of the true nature of being. This true nature arises to awareness when I experience a pause in the mind’s incessant activity and see reality just as it is: unconditional, universal goodness.

So how is it possible to work with something so omnipresent and and intrinsically non-existent?

From Chuck Fondse.

First things first: I am writing down my experience with mindful concern. Writing it down gives is a permanence that is not part of the experience. In fact, after I share my experience, I will tell the “rest of the story” that shows just how impermanent it was. 

November 11 to 14, 2022 

My surgery for a right knee replacement is scheduled for Monday morning, early. Arrival time is to be 6:15am at the surgery center. Today is Saturday. I have spent the past days on the beach in Oregon with my spouse. Today we spent the windy, chilly, mostly cloudy day on the beach with my children and grandchildren, with a photographer capturing the day for photos to be shared at Christmas and beyond. We are having a laughing good time. If I shared photos, you could see it. My granddaughter Alice is an angel, and Marjke is being her normal naughty self. 

Jan and I leave to pack up our room and meet the rest at a breakfast place that Alice is so excited about. The food is good, I have Buckwheat pancakes, a treat I can rarely find. Then, my body starts to cramp and off to the restroom I go. I have a history of such stomach occurrences ever since my extreme dysentery incident in the 70’s in the middle east. I have learned to live with it and for the most part control it. What happened next took me by surprise. I had extreme vertigo. Jan needed to help me to the car. I rested for the rest of the afternoon, and it seemed to go away. 

Sunday was spent at home relaxing, getting the house ready for my recuperation. Sunday evening we ordered our favorite Chinese food and I was wolfing it down as usual. And then it hit again. The whole world started to spin. I was scared. I closed my eyes, opened them and still the same. I am worried about not being able to do the surgery. After an hour, it subsides a bit and I do my pre-surgery shower and sleep in a bed with clean linens on them, following instructions of the surgery center. 

Monday morning alarm goes off at 5:15am. I get up thankful that the vertigo was gone. We were heading for the door when I almost fell. It hit again, powerfully telling me that I was not in control. I had to use my walker, intended for post surgery, to get to the car. As Jan drove me in the dark rainy morning, it did not get better. I hobbled into the center to the reception desk and was checked in. The nurse comes to get me and helps me to my room. The world is still spinning. I tell her about it. She asks me to stand before she leaves me to change into those wonderful challenging hospital robes with no back. I almost fall. She is alarmed, tells me to sit and leaves to consult with the anethesiologist. I beg her to let me be for a bit but she is not going to just let me into surgery. She leaves. I look for a spot in the floor that can stop spinning and bow my head. 

Suddenly I feel a cry come from my gut, tears flowing from my eyes and I say, from the gut I—Am— SCARRED. I AM REALLY SCARED. There is no one in the room to comfort me with “It will be ok Chuck. Don’t worry.” No I sit with my fear, tasting it, seeing it, embracing it as I had just learned to do in our Sangha. William had been helping us just sit with our discomfort we SAW in each of our own versions of the three poisons. And as I sat with it, the power of the spinning dissipated. It did not go away but I could stand and function without falling. No one was in the room yet. Then the Dr and nurses and administrator come in to “talk to me.” I was more afraid of postponing the surgery than of having it at that moment, but I was also SEEing that my body had memory that I was not aware of from the last knee surgery. That one went poorly. I was in the hospital for 3 nights and went home in extreme pain. 

As the doctor talked to me about why we should not proceed and the risks of ambulances and emergency rooms in these COVID/FLU times I forcefully asked him to be quiet and let me do their pre-op proof of walking with my walker all through the hallways, the prescribed test they gave me. I passed with flying colors. Yes, I was still not cognitively “all there” but the debilitating vertigo was gone. 

Surgery went very well. Only 1 ½ hours for a total knee replacement. Post surgery went very well and I have been walking from the first day out. Today, I can walk without a cane but use one for safety and stability. I am about 1 to 2 weeks ahead of the schedule that I was on with my last knee. 

Why do I share this? 

1. I realize that my body had a memory that I had pushed down below cognizant awareness. It was not letting it go until I heard it. 

2. I learned to embrace the fear, truly embrace it, and in so doing, the fear became manageable and my body responded. 

3. This would not have been possible had I not been practicing. Practice is what we do each morning we gather and the in between times when we “remember.” 

4. SO, thank you to the Sangh of the Pandemic. 

The rest of the story: I have had several major vertigo incidents since surgery, the last one being after our wonderful Thanksgiving meal at our house. I almost fell in the bathroom. This one has not left me 3 days later. I can function, sometimes slow the spinning down, but it is still there. I see my PCP on Friday to see if we can find out why. I grieve the impermanence of the solution that appeared to find me in the surgery center. I am scared that this might last and define my life going on. I am mad. I am trying to embrace each of those. IMPERMENANCE sucks. BUT, permanence is hell, the hell of expectations of perfection, happiness, the way it is supposed to be. 

So there you have it. Today I can write on the computer, I can read for short periods of time. I can do my exercises, I am much more pain free than the last knee, and I may even be able to play with my model trains. My greatest attachment is to my biking. That is one of my greatest fears, to lose that. This vertigo thing is a teacher that I did not ask for. NOT IN THE LEAST!!!! My oh my. What will a person do? – Chuck Fondse

_____________

These words are dedicated to all wisdom elders and wisdom teachings and to bringing about the end of suffering for all beings throughout all times and in all directions.

May it be so.

-William

Practice

The Sangha of the Pandemic offers several opportunities for a safe, inclusive, free, virtual community contemplative practice. Everyone is welcome regardless of meditation experience or spiritual lineage.

The Zoom link is:  

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89989680789

Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays: 6 AM PacificTime

Monday: calm abiding, Samatha, Tuesday: body awareness, Thursday: Tonglen

Sunday at 7 AM Pacific Time: Four Brahmaviharas

and

Monday and Thursday evenings at 5:30 PM Pacific Time : Practice and Inquiry       

Please feel free to forward this email and any posts from our website at:

Sangha of the Pandemic                                           

“I have good parking karma.”

“They must have bad karma.”

“Your karma’s showing.”

“What goes around comes around.”

“If you do good you get good.”

 The pop karma that permeates Western culture is rooted in the reward/punishment theologies of materialistic spirituality and egocentricity. It is centered on a “me” getting or losing as a result of actions or speech, or payback for the “other” who has taken something from or given something to a “me”. There is a thread that runs through it, spun out of reward and punishment, that if the “me”cannot get, or does get, what it wants or thinks that it needs, some unseen, all knowing force will come in and impose reward or punishment in the future upon the “me” the “other”. And that the current experience is a reward or punishment for actions taken in the near or distant past.

In my earliest exposures to the concept of karma, I could only grasp it in relation to my upbringing in the Catholic church. Like the pop culture of karma, it was dependent on doing good to get a reward or if I did something bad, I would receive penance in this life or the next. There was a little taste of practicing being in the present, but it was mostly about what happened in the past and how I need to pay for my bad actions, how can I prevent those actions from happening again, so that my future will be better. Somewhere in there was the idea that doing good for others would get me to a better place in the future. i.e. it was all about me. 

I have used this understanding of karma to promote the inner-critic and the self-justifier. When I do something wrong I should be punished and until I am punished appropriately, I am a bad person. Or I did something right and I should receive a reward or acknowledgment and until I do, I experience a sense of superiority in my altruism. This all can get really convoluted triggering a torrent of shame, blame, arrogance and self righteousness.

My understanding of karma as taught in the Eastern wisdom traditions is much more straightforward and scientific. It is simply action and reaction, cause and effect; action of body, emotion, and thought and the effect of those actions. It is the unconscious engine of temporal reality. There is no moral judgment, as such, because it just is. Karma is merely cause and effect ,and then effect becoming cause for further effects… endlessly. There are some elements of accurate perception of karma in the pop culture perspective in so far as they point to this cause and effect reality, but the popular conception of karma of doing something to get something only shows up in the Eastern teachings as a simile for the mechanics of karma or an inducement to not be a mean person.

From the Eastern perspective, karma is a perpetual circular track of suffering that runs on the fuel of the three poisons; passion, aggression and ignorance. It is like an infinitely long snake feeding on its own tail. It has no independent origin, it is beginningless and endless. When inquiring carefully into the fuels and the structure of karma, it becomes apparent that it is a compound of mental concepts that have no actual substance or inherent nature. Empty concepts that arise from an infinite chain of cause and effect with no initial or terminal moment.

Seeing this and experiencing the quality of this understanding, stills the habitual mind stream for a moment. In this moment that is out of time there is an experience of what Edgar Casey called the ultimate Is-ness. I think that might be what is referred to in buddhism as thusness, and in Taoism as the eternal Tao, and perhaps it is the Rapture in Christian teachings.

In the moment-less moment, there is the experience of freedom, spaciousness, unburdenedness. The perpetual habit stream of karma and the resulting suffering is seen as void of reality. It is like the experience of waking up from an all consuming nightmare and seeing that it wasn’t real. In a sense, one steps out of the endless cycle of cause and effect, karma, and steps into the reality of true nature; though there really is no stepping off or on. It is more like a final knowing that the experience of deep ease, unconditioned love and joy, and the knowing that everything including one’s experience of self as whole, holy, goodness, is just the way things are. That the grasping, clinging, greed, hatred, aversion, fear, doubt are the shadows created by the ignorance of the way things are. These shadows are a result of trying to fix or change or undo karma; cause and effect, when in reality there is nothing really there to be undone or fixed. 

When I put my hand in fire I get burned. When I drop a stone in gravity, it falls. I cannot unburn my hand or unstop the fall. I can only not put my hand in the fire or not drop the stone in gravity. I cannot stop the immediate effect of an action. If I move in anger or hatred, either in thought or deed, I cannot undo that moment of action or thought. It will have some effect regardless of what I do, think, or say subsequently. When this realization spreads into the marrow of my being, the aspiration to stop the cycle, arises in the empty space of that realization. In the space of that awareness there is the opportunity and time to look around, find the key to the engine of karma, turn it off, and get off the track.

The goodness of karmic activity is in its capacity to point, urge and cajole us to be alert to suffering and the endless causes and effects of suffering. As awareness of how habit and conditioning contributes to suffering grows, the awareness of the nature of reality as goodness expands. It is as if karmic activity is a headlamp on a path that is shrouded in ignorance; shining the light of understanding on the obstacles of cause and conditioning, and showing a way through to the experience of reality as the intrinsic goodness of being.

In this reality there is only the substance-less, causeless, absolute goodness perpetuating and being perpetuated, reflecting and re-reflecting itself. It is in the eyes of a child discovering snow, and a guardian seeing the child discovering snow. It is in the awe of infinitely different sunsets and the blinding explosions of a lightning strike. It is in the first breath of life and the last sigh of death. It is here and now. No need to search or strive or do anything to get it. Just lay back in the arms of your own goodness and in that, allowing all beings to lay back in your embrace of goodness. 

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These words are dedicated to all wisdom elders and wisdom teachings and to bringing about the end of suffering for all beings throughout all times and in all directions.

May it be so.

-William

From the beginning of life the body is constantly striving to survive. It does this by finding nutrients from outside of itself and transforming them into usable forms to promote and sustain itself. In this process it also learns to discern what is not usable and either avoids or rejects it. Internally it is also discerning, transforming, attacking, and expelling. The body develops habits and conditioning that simplifies the process and makes it efficient. In my utterly layperson’s understanding, the brain is the storehouse for the information gathered from these body experiences and directs this process through the nervous system. 

Somewhere along the line, this natural, efficient and necessary process bleeds over into the learned experiences of pleasure and displeasure and the consciousness of those experiences. We begin to link survival of the body with pleasure, and death of the body with displeasure. As infants, especially in the preverbal stage, we only have our physical being to communicate this pleasure and displeasure, or to grasp for comfort and push away discomfort. As a result of the memory of these experiences the developing consciousness also becomes conditioned to maximize the efficiency of getting what we sense/think/feel will sustain us and keeping away what we sense/think/feel will harm us. We learn that crying, pooping, crawling, talking etc. will all get a response or not; give us pleasure or not. As this capacity of consciousness matures and a sense of self and other begins to crystallize, the habits and conditioning of this early developmental stage, as well as the continuing developmental processes of coming to adulthood, continue to function and calcify throughout our lives. The efficiency of the processes of physical survival are imprinted in our consciousness and we are able to skip the conscious, linear process developing unconscious habits of thinking and feeling associated, correctly and incorrectly with survival.

Over time and through repetition, these unconscious habits of sensing, reacting, feeling and thinking stimulate the development of conditioned reactions of passion with its expressions of grasping, clinging, craving and greed as well as aggression with its expressions of aversion, hatred, anger and violence. The lack of awareness of the origin and function of these habits is one part of the poison of ignorance. 

A few of the most apparent expressions of this behavior out of ignorance for me are when I have an aversion to being around someone or some situation for no obvious reason, or when I am spontaneously yelling at a driver who won’t drive the way I want them to, or judging another or myself for not doing “it” right. This is unconscious aggression. Using concentration and insight in contemplation, leads to bringing to light the hidden conditioning or habit that runs the engine of the aggression. Upon deeper inquiry, I am able to see how my unconscious grasping or clinging or lust (passion) for something is the sparkplug igniting the start up of the engine engine of aggression. More aggression leads to more intense and unconscious passions, and the endless cycle of suffering. The process of shining a light of awareness on unconscious habits and conditioning allows me to be able to then make choices and offer responses out of understanding the reality in the present moment, rather than out of ignorant, conditioned habit.

For example I may discover that the behavior or speech patterns or dress of the person that I have an aversion to, are the same expressions that I have been trying to eliminate in my own behavior; expressions that have caused some kind of suffering for me or others or have been detrimental to my craving or holding on to friendship, position, acceptance etc. 

Over time with consistent, regular, contemplative practice and open ended inquiry (inquiry without expectation of results)into what is happening in these instances, the light of awareness reveals the unconscious knots of aggression and passion that cause so much suffering in our lives and the lives of others. This awareness liberates thinking, feeling and acting from the prison of ignorant reactivity, allowing true freedom of choice in the present moment. Shining a light on conditioning and unconscious, habitual thought patterns, reveals our ignorance of the reality of the causes of suffering, slows down the process and opens up space for clarity.

This open, spacious, clarity reveals the other part of ignorance; the ignorance of our intrinsic  nature. 

As the clutter of unconscious habits dissolves, the spacious freedom of present reality opens up and there is an awakening to the realization that we and all those we share the cosmos with are intrinsically good, generous, kind, compassionate, joyful and non-judgmental beings. The more that we are able to cultivate this knowledge through practice, the lighter our experience of reality is. This lightness is generative and the boundaries between self and other also begin to dissolve.  The resulting space expands to include not only personal suffering and freedom from that suffering but also opens space for the understanding of the suffering of others regardless of how it manifests; in hatred, clinging, anxiety, despair, or violence. It also clears a space for mutual joy, kindness, and ease of being. The capacity of strength that comes with this experiential knowledge slows the conditional processes down enough that there is time to respond appropriately rather than react habitually in the face of suffering or joy. 

As Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche taught: “Everything is working working.” The three poisons that cause so much suffering are also the medicines that initiate the healing of awareness of the suffering. The suffering of the three poisons cause us to seek out the end of suffering because it is the intrinsic nature of all beings, not only to be free of self suffering, but to long for for all beings throughout all times and in all directions to  be free from suffering.

May it be so.

These thoughts and practices are dedicated to all wisdom elders in all traditions, and to all beings throughout all times in all directions, with the intention that they may ignite the flame of self awareness and provide a little solace and ease.

-William
 

Practice

The Sangha of the Pandemic offers several opportunities for a safe, inclusive, free, virtual community contemplative practice. Everyone is welcome regardless of meditation experience or spiritual lineage.

The Zoom link is:  

Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays: 7 AM CR Time

Monday: calm abiding, Samatha, Tuesday: body awareness, Thursday: Tonglen

Sunday at 7 AM CR Time: Four Brahmaviharas

and

Monday and Thursday evenings at 5:30 PM CR Time : Practice and Inquiry