The Water of Life
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Water and flowing rivers are often used as metaphors for life. Intuitively, we know that the nature of life and spirit are somehow like the nature of water in its many forms. I invite you to experience the following meditation, perhaps to deepen or clarify your sense of the nature of your spirit. Perhaps it will help you to map where in your life are the dams and stagnant pools and where your spirit flows free.
Take your time and read slowly, or have someone read this to you. Give yourself the luxury of a pause in your busy day to think unhurried thoughts and feel beyond your normal sensations.
Give yourself a few moments to settle your mind. Let your mind become still like a crystal mountain lake. Let your breathing become like the gentle wind in the trees. It rises and falls with no effort on your part. Its whisper brings only peace. Its movement only enhances your sense of stillness. Your thoughts are like gentle ripples on the lake. They are of no great consequence and they cannot disturb the deep stillness below the surface. With each breath your muscles relax. They are like the leaves on the trees that surround your lake. They move only with the breeze. They hang loose and unrestricted—no grasping, no tension.
Now, imagine you are a drop of water resting on a leaf high on the side of a mountain. A while ago you were almost nothing—a few molecules of oxygen and hydrogen floating free, but in the cool mountain air you found yourself condensing out of the fog to a single drop of dew. You are pure and clean and newborn. You lie comfortably on this bed of green for a while, but then you notice that you are growing gradually larger, and as you grow you feel a force working on you. Gravity works on your expanding mass drawing you to the edge of the leaf. You pause, and then with no volition and no resistance fall away from the leaf and down to a new level of existence.
You find yourself now in the company of other water drops. You feel the pull of the earth drawing you and your companions together, and soon you sense the movement of your little group along the earth. Little by little you move along growing in power, gaining mass, and soon you find yourself part of a stream. You sense yourself as part of something great moving ever along the face of the earth, never quite knowing where you are going, but always drawn on. You are drawn by a force that is so much a part of your existence that you forget it is there. It motivates every move you make, but it is as if it is nothing. In spite of its power, the force is invisible to you, and as you grow and as its effect on you increases, you become less and less aware of it.
As gravity pulls you and your companions along, you find yourself part of a larger stream. It grows and gains momentum, and soon your stream is a river.
Your river carries you along swiftly now. As the speed of your flow has increased, so has the turbulence. You find yourself swept along through dark canyons and down roaring rapids. Sometimes you are thrown free of the flow and find yourself splashed against the rocks. Sometimes time seems to slow as you hang almost unmoving in stagnant pools held by the force, but cut off from the flow.
Sometimes, going nowhere, you evaporate into seeming nothingness. But every time you awaken again back on the mountain and the journey begins once more.
As you flow in your river, you become aware of other beings that depend on you. Your river is full of plants and animals from one celled protozoa to great salmon and sturgeon. These life forms take you for granted because you are all they know. Without any intention, you form the structure for their existence. You are them and they are you. When you are healthy and clean, life grows in you. When you lose your luster, life dims and dies.
Somewhere along the way you may find yourself behind a great dam. Someone has put it there to slow your path and harness your power. Perhaps you wonder at the wisdom of blocking the cycle of life that is the flow of the river, but there you are confined and under pressure. You may be trapped there for a long while, and all you can do is remember the rightness you felt in your free flowing state higher on the mountain.
If you are lucky, you’ll find yourself beyond the dam before you evaporate this time. You’ll again feel the flow, and maybe now you’ll see more clearly the power and importance of the force that draws you along your way.
And as you travel on you gain in wisdom, and the understanding grows that you are not an individual drop of water. You are a part of a great river that is part of something greater still. What is beyond the banks that hold you in is a mystery, but you know it is awesome and great. You come to see that all the other drops of water are just like you. You move and they move, not separately, but together– each affecting the other.
As your journey draws on, you become aware that the banks that held you in are no longer apparent. You have become part of the great sea. Your individuality means nothing here. You know now that the illusion of separateness is just that– an illusion. You and the other drops of water are all one. Sometimes a drop appears to be a drop, but soon its true nature is revealed as it resumes its flow, as it again finds its place in the cycle.
Nothing is lost when the drop becomes a river or when the river becomes the sea. Everything is gained as the great water wheel turns. The sea gives birth to wind and wind gives birth to rain. Rain gives life to land and land carries the river back to the sea.
As we live our human lives, let us be like the water. Let us be conscious of the flow. Let us not forget the great ground of being that draws us on through life. Let us live in a knowing hope, aware that all being is in transition, that all movement is back to the source. Let us treat those around us as reminders of our illusionary individuality. We know that they are us and we are them connected in ways we cannot fathom. Let us grow in compassion for all beings, for they share our journey.
Tom Barrett
Fallibility
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“What is truth?” a disciple asked Nasrudin.
“Something which I have never, at any time, spoken—nor shall I.”
— The Pleasantries of the Incredible Mulla Nasrudin by Idries ShahDay after day alone on the hill,
The man with the foolish grin is keeping perfectly still,
But nobody wants to know him,
They can see that he’s just a fool,
And he never gives an answer,
But the fool on the hill
Sees the sun going down,
And the eyes in his head,
See the world spinning around.
—Lennon & McCartney
I heard a philosopher on the radio describe “a culture of fallibility” as one of the conditions under which democracy can flourish. He was referring to a cultural agreement that nobody has a monopoly on the truth. Such a consensus allows, even requires, a measure of respect for the other party. It allows negotiation, compromise, and disagreement with a quality of civility.
Once we conclude that we own the truth, then everybody who disagrees with us is wrong, and we have a right to make them think like us. This attitude makes democracy impossible. And it leads to repression, holy wars, inquisitions, and other unpleasantness. At the personal level, too much attachment to being right creates a rigid ego structure that can only get in the way of growth. It closes us off from deeper understanding of reality that can come with releasing our limited personal point of view.
Some of us are lucky enough to be constantly reminded of our fallibility. Being a bit of a fool offers many opportunities to become non-attached to rigid belief systems. Constantly having to revise what you thought you knew can be very freeing. Of course it can also be frightening.
The ego is like a psychological safety net. We develop this ongoing sense of who we are and what we can do to provide continuity and cohesion to this changing flow of mental states that seem to arise out of nowhere. Experiencing emotions and other mental phenomena without a stable sense of self can be quite unpleasant. Therapists who treat personality disorders will confirm this for you.
The ego is a tool to tell us who we are in the great order of things. It allows us to act purposefully and confidently in the face of a complex, confusing, perhaps incomprehensible world. When we cling too tightly to ego we become rigid. When we too abruptly release the ego we may experience fear, anxiety, even psychosis. Suddenly the world may not make sense, and we are not comfortable with that. The difference between a sage and a psychotic may be that the sage knows the world doesn’t always make sense, and it’s not a problem.
So how do we learn to accept our fallibility, loosen our grip on our tightly held belief systems, and free our mind to accept what is, instead of the illusions we want to believe in? Various thinking traditions have devised ways of handling this.
• Socrates used to ask a lot of tough questions that would take his students on an intellectual ride that landed them somewhere beyond their preconceptions.
• Rinzai Zen teachers offer students koans, seemingly unsolvable questions, like “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” Contemplating the koan may eventually move the student past confusion and self doubt to a more expansive sense of being.
• Sufis have collected many stories, often featuring Mulla Nasrudin, that contain a mind bending twist that pushes the listener to see the world differently.
• Strategic psychotherapists do something like this when they engage a client in a paradox that destabilizes the client’s fixed view of themselves or a situation. By destabilizing a rigid system, the therapist hopes to allow a healthier, more fluid solution to emerge.
I offer the following visualization exercise in the spirit of fallibility, hoping you will find something of value.
Practice:
Close your eyes and imagine you are sitting atop a grassy hill. The sun is shining, so you are warm and comfortable. The wind is blowing ever so gently—just enough to be refreshing. Down below lies all the world in its busyness, but you are not concerned about that now. Here on the hilltop you are alone with the grass and the clouds and the occasional bird that flies by. You have no worries, and you are smiling gently to yourself. Allow this little smile to move into your heart. Let it calm your mind and your soul.
As you sit here perfectly still, your breathing relaxes and you feel a wonderful sense of peace. You feel the weight of your body on the earth and feel like you are a part of the hill and the air and the sun. You feel completely at home in your body. Yet you can see yourself from a point of view outside yourself as well.
Look at this person sitting there so peacefully. See your seated, smiling self from all sides. Open your heart to this person. Acknowledge that you have limited information, that you sometimes make mistakes, that sometimes you don’t know what’s going on with yourself, and that sometimes you don’t say the right thing. In the acknowledgment, reassure yourself that it is all right. Acknowledge that you are a human being—and human beings make mistakes.
Now again visualize yourself seated comfortably upon this hill. Imagine that sitting in front of you is a person who looks to be a bit of a fool. Their clothing is rather odd and they have this funny smile on their face. You greet them and they greet you back. They reach out to shake your hand. Their hand is strong, but also gentle and warm. As your hands touch, you suddenly see that this is a very wise person. This is one who no longer worries about the mundane things in life. This is a person with deep life experience. You perceive that in their mind they have gone places you can not even conceive, and yet they are very humble. Their touch is quite human. In their eyes you see great warmth.
You begin to understand that they can see into your heart. They can see all of your flaws and failings. They can see things that you will not let yourself see. In spite of seeing all of your fallibility, this person expresses deep compassion for you. They see your struggles, and they honor you and love you despite your failures. They can see the limits of your perceptions and they invite you to share in their expansive world view.
Imagine that this great being in the guise of a fool reaches up and touches your brow with a finger tip. At this touch in the center of your forehead you find yourself completely at peace with yourself. You are very aware of your body and your breathing, and at the same time, all sense of thought falls away. Inside you are very quiet and that smile that you placed in your heart grows and grows until your heart is overflowing with love.
This love is like a light that shines from your core. It enlightens your sense of being, and it encompasses this wise person in front of you. It grows and grows and it is like a beacon shining from the hilltop. Your love and compassion flow to all those frail and faulty humans you know, and to all that you don’t know. You understand that the light of love is infinite, so it need never dim. You see that as your tolerance and compassion touches every person you encounter, it fills each person and is transferred to everyone they encounter.
Soon you are able to see the whole world filled with light and love. And wherever there is darkness you wisely know that the solution is more tolerance, more justice, and more compassion. You promise to remind yourself that in all of your fallibility you will carry an intention to be kind to yourself. You will extend that kindness to the rest of your world as well. And in doing so you trust that the love returned to you will surpass any expectation.
Tom Barrett
Concentration Meditation
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“The goal of meditation is to free your awareness from its identification with your senses and your thoughts. So freed, your awareness permeates everything but clings to nothing.”
— Ram Dass, The Journey of Awakening“Before all doing and creating, before he ever begins to devote and adjust himself to his task, the artist summons forth this presence of mind and makes sure of it through practice.”
— Eugene Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery
Being in the flow, being nonattached, being in the moment do not mean being a wimpy airhead. Sometimes people on a spiritual path accept an idea that seems to suggest the way to enlightenment is to adopt the personal characteristics of gelatin. I would suggest that this is not the way of the sage.
If you fall into the swift current of the river, it may be wise to go with the flow. This does not mean you let the current take you anywhere and you just tread water. It means you swim with all your might toward safety, skillfully using the current to aid you.
Non-attachment (a term we much prefer to “detachment”) does not mean you don’t grab the flotation device that is thrown to you. It means you use it while it is helpful to do so, but you can let go when the time comes. If your life preserver is caught on a branch and is pulling you under, let go of the life preserver. To push this metaphor for life just a little farther, if you are at risk of drowning, the proper focus of attention is what is happening right now—your relationship with the water and the shore, your breathing, your energy level, your buoyancy. Things like that, rather than how bad your hair is going to look, or regrets that you never learned to swim.
The threat of imminent danger may automatically focus our attention on the present, but what do we do day to day as we bob along the gentler currents of everyday life? It is so easy to get caught up in routine and to go wherever external forces push us. A better way is to practice skills that will help us cope with the dangers of life that inevitably present themselves.
Concentration is a fundamental skill in work, play, and spiritual development. When we focus our attention, we can direct whatever power we have at our disposal towards the problem or goal. Usually, emotions like fear or desire automatically focus our attention. But how do we develop focus when we also seek freedom from binding emotional states? The answer: practice.
Most spiritual traditions use some ritual or technique to aid practitioners in developing concentration. Many traditional meditation exercises are practices to enhance the ability to concentrate. The following exercise is one you can use to power up your capacity for concentration.
Practice:
A very old concentration meditation is to bring your attention to a candle flame. The candle flame is a beautiful point of focus and we encourage you to use it if possible, but if it is not practical in your circumstances you can use something else. If you are going to practice at your computer, perhaps you can turn down the brightness on your screen and focus on the little light that tells you your monitor is on. A thumbtack on your bulletin board or a coffee ring on your desktop could also work.
Sit upright in a comfortable position. The object of your concentration should be not too far away and within your line of sight, so you can see it with slightly downcast eyes. It should be centered in your visual field, so you see it equally with both eyes.
Direct your attention to the one point you have chosen to focus on. Let your eyes focus there. Let your attention focus there, too. As random thoughts arise, just let them go by and return your awareness to the point of focus. This is an act of will. Notice how your thoughts distract you from your purpose, which is merely to focus on one thing. Without any negative interpretation of the distraction, continually come back to your focus.
You may hear sounds. You may feel sensations in your body. Thoughts may form out of nowhere. With each interruption, firmly bring your mind back to your point of attention. Do so with patience and kindness towards yourself.
Continue to practice this concentration meditation day by day and you will begin to notice greater awareness of your mental processes. You should find that focusing on the important things in life is easier for you, and you may begin to relax the grip of attachment to what is non-essential.
Tom Barrett
Hands Across the Chi
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“Miracles do not happen in contradiction to nature, but only in contradiction to that which is know to us in nature.”
— St. Augustine
“Many hands make light work.”
— A Proverb
Look at your hands. Take a moment to appreciate the wonderfulness of your hands. See how they move. Just imagine—10 appendages working together to tap away at those little bitty keys on your keyboard. For some of you they do it with considerable speed. They may even do it when you aren’t looking at the keyboard. It’s amazing. Are you amazed?
Place the palm of your hand an inch or two from your computer screen. What do you feel? Do you feel heat? Can you feel the static electricity? Anything else?
Try the same thing by placing the palms of your hands an inch or two apart. What do you feel? Let your palms come together. Now what do you feel? Take a moment to wonder at the sensitivity of your hands.
Can you appreciate that you carry with you always two of the most miraculous tools in existence? If a genie gave you a wish and you asked for the most valuable tool in the world, she would show you your hands. How lucky you are.
Your hands are full of nerve endings and those nerves connect with huge numbers of brain cells. They are tremendously complex in their structure. In their function they have allowed our species to perform miracles of creation. In any tradition that deals with life energy the hands are critical in sensing and directing that energy. The laying on of hands, for instance, is a very old tradition of using the hands in healing.
Your hands carry within them powerful life energy. The Chinese call this energy chi. The Japanese call it ki. You can learn to direct that energy by studying Chi Kung (Qigong) or Reiki, but the skill is also known by faith healers, massage therapists, and great lovers.
In meditation training, one of the frequently asked questions is “What do I do with my hands?” The answer may vary depending on the meditation tradition, but usually the trainee is given instruction in placing the hands in a particular position.
This hand position is called a mudra. A mudra aids the meditator in at least two ways. First, it creates a slight tension in the hands that helps us to focus our consciousness. Since the areas of the brain connected with the hands are so vast, settling them down is a big help in concentration. Second, the position of the hands may be used to direct the flow of chi in a way that aids the meditator.
A traditional Buddhist mudra is the cosmic mudra. You will frequently see this hand position in statues of Buddha. Try this: Place your left hand on top of your right, middle joints of your middle fingers together, and touch your thumbs lightly together. See how your hands form an oval? That oval is placed against your body just below your navel. If you think of the energy flowing through the oval, you can see that it centers on your tan tien or hara, which is a powerful grounding energy center in your abdomen.
Another mudra, used in Christian prayer, is very simple. Just place your palms together with fingers pointed upward. Like a church steeple, the fingers point to the heavens and direct energy skyward. The position of the arms and hands also creates a powerful closed circuit of chi. While in prayer or meditation, experiment with this mudra by placing your hands in front of each of the upper chakras or energy centers in your body. Specifically, place them in front of your heart, your throat, your third eye (between your eyebrows), and at the crown of your head. Experiment with how this feels with your elbows extended a little more, so that there is a bit more pressure in your hands. Spend a few minutes in each of these positions breathing slowly and naturally, letting your mind focus on the sensations in your body. Be especially aware of any feelings of energy in your body. These might be in the form of heat, vibration, tingling, or visual impressions of light or color.
Try this one: With the three middle fingers extended, let your thumb cover the nail of your little finger—oh, wait. That’s for the American Boy Scout salute. Well, it makes a pretty good mudra anyway. A similar, but more traditional mudra is to extend your fingers and then join your thumb and forefinger to make a circle. While sitting to meditate, you can then rest your hands on your knees palms comfortably facing up. This position circulates your chi through your thumb and forefinger, and offers a nice feeling of energy exchange with the outer world. You can think of your hands as being in a receiving position, or you may use this position to extend your energy outward, such as sending healing energy to another.
There are many, many mudras. If you look at sacred statues and paintings, you will see a variety of them. Experiment with them and find one or more that feels useful to you in meditation, prayer, or other activities of concentration.
Finally, we place our palms together in front of our heart center, bow slightly, and say, “Namaste,” meaning “I honor the light within you.”
Tom Barrett
Labor of Love
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“The stages of the Noble Path are: Right View, Right Thought, Right Speech, Right Behavior, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration.”
— Buddha
“There is no easy formula for determining right and wrong livelihood, but it is essential to keep the question alive. To return the sense of dignity and honor to manhood, we have to stop pretending that we can make a living at something that is trivial or destructive and still have sense of legitimate self-worth. A society in which vocation and job are separated for most people gradually creates an economy that is often devoid of spirit, one that frequently fills our pocketbooks at the cost of emptying our souls.”
— Sam Keen, Fire In the Belly
“Like the bee, we should make our industry our amusement.”
— James Goldsmith
To what end do we labor?
It used to be that you worked or you died. If you didn’t hunt or plant, you and your family had no food. That was pretty simple.
Then somebody figured that he could make stuff better than he could hunt or plant, so he traded the stuff he made for food. Then other people started doing the same thing. Soon they had an economy, and work became increasingly separated from food production and personal survival.
Today many of us work in jobs that have little to do with survival. We work for other reasons. Maybe we work for money, which we need to survive. But maybe we just work for money because we like money and the things it buys. Maybe we work to acquire prestige or power. Maybe we work because our parents taught us that that is what you have to do in life.
Many of us made our career choices without much information or due to external pressures and expectations. Yet work is a major part of who we are. It helps define our personalities. It sets our place in society. It occupies our time. How can we ever be happy if we choose work that is not right for us?
If we are unhappy in our work, perhaps we have the wrong job. Or possibly we have the wrong attitude about the job. Many of us have satisfactory work, but we approach it with a sour attitude that gets in the way of any kind of job satisfaction. Laziness, anger, resentment, and envy are a few of the negatives that may obstruct us from making our industry our amusement.
The Buddha identified right livelihood as one of the stages on the Noble Path, which was his prescription for overcoming the inevitable unsatisfactoriness of existence. Right livelihood is a simple idea, and in its simplicity, it is applicable to the great complexity of the world of work. The concept is like a touchstone to help us evaluate our way of life. Below are some questions to consider as you evaluate whether you engage in right livelihood.
Practice:
Create some distance in your mind from the immediate pressures of work as you think on these things. Take time to calm yourself. Breathe. Relax. Create a space for peace in your heart. Ask yourself these questions and give yourself time to hear your inner voice. Listen deeply and see if you can find an answer to each question before going on to the next.
• Why do you work?
• Does your work give you pleasure?
• What is most rewarding about your work?
• What is most repellent to you about your work?
• Do you work for a paycheck only or do you see some greater value in your labor?
• How often do you feel morally compromised in your work?
• Does your work help people in some way?
• How does your work support individuals?
• How does your work support the community?
• How does your work support the world?
• How does your work support your spiritual development?
• What are your unique gifts?
• What gives you the greatest joy?
• Do you use your gifts in your work?
• Do you find joy in your work?
• If you find your work unsatisfactory, is it the work, or is it your attitude about your work?
• How can you bring more love into your labor?
Tom Barrett
Stages of Spiritual Development
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“Surely, the true work of man is to discover the truth, God; it is to love and not be caught in his own self-enclosing activites. In the very discovery of what is true there is love, and that love in man’s relationship with man will create a different civilization, a new world.”
— J. Krishnamurti
The Summer Of Love was just the beginning
That’s when the lines started breaking through.
The Summer Of Love is just a memory now
Even though those times are gone
The Spirit still goes on in me and you.— Jefferson Airplane
“Lord make me an instrument of thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.”— St. Francis of Assisi
The teenager worries that in spite of a long search he has not yet found a purpose in life. An older man is impatient with the pace of his spiritual quest. A middle-aged woman feels overwhelmed by her many obligations. A dying man wishes he had given more time to his family.
Each of us can view our life in terms of the particular challenges we face at the moment. Or we can think of the moment as one point in an evolving lifelong process. It is helpful to know that our challenges are not unique to us—that perhaps we are on a developmental track shared by the rest of the species.
When we were born, we began a journey through developmental stages common to all humans. We learned to hold our head up. We learned to crawl. We learned to walk and talk. We played children’s games. We evolved in our relationships with our peers as children do. Our parents may have bragged about how soon we walked or talked. They may have worried that we were behind schedule on some of these things. They knew, though, that there was a process unfolding. Child development has become a popular concept this century, and while we may not understand it perfectly, we accept that it is a process with identifiable stages.
The personality development of adults is discussed rather less often than child development, and many of us don’t realize, or we forget, that we are on a life path with stages. One can describe those stages in various ways. In the “American Dream,” one graduates from school, gets a job, marries, has kids, buys a house, repeatedly buys various vehicles, gets the kids through school, and then retires from the job to live a few post–rat race years of self-gratification before dying.
Another developmental model was described in Hindu scriptures about 1800 years ago. In her book Passages, Gail Sheehy writes:
“In the first stage described by Hindu scriptures, those gloriously suspended years between the age of 8 and early twenties when one is a student, one’s only obligation is to learn. The second stage, its beginning marked by marriage, is that of householder. The next twenty or thirty years are the time to satisfy the wants of man: pleasure, primarily through the family; success through his vocation; and duty through citizenship. When time inevitably dims the pleasures of sex and the senses, when achieving no longer yields novelty and discharging one’s duty has become repetitious and stale, it is time to move on to a third stage: retirement. Anytime after the birth of the first grandchild, the individual should be free to begin his true education as an adult, to discover who he is and ponder life’s meaning without interruption. Traditionally, people in this stage were encouraged to become pilgrims. Man and wife together, if she wished to go, were to pull up stakes and plunge into the solitude of the forests on a journey to self-discovery. At last their responsibilities were only to themselves. The final stage, when the pilgrim reaches his goal, is the state of sannyasin … In the Hindu texts, the sannyasin ‘lives identified with the eternal Self and beholds nothing else.’”
This ancient description of life’s passages can be useful to us now as we look at our lives. We need not defer all our spiritual pilgrimages until old age, but we can be patient with ourselves at the earlier stages knowing that perhaps learning about the ways of the world and living in the fullness of life are appropriate for us in early and mid-life. We can look forward to later years when the pressure of achievement is lighter and we may focus more deeply on self-discovery and the ways of the spirit.
We should accept that if we are young and unsure, that is the way of things. We can study and learn more. If we are struggling to establish ourselves in early adulthood or focussing our energies on career in our middle years, that is normal and healthy. It doesn’t mean we have to abandon our desire for greater spiritual depth. If we are in our later years we need not face retirement as an empty time of waiting to die. We can go deeper into life seeking the subtle truths.
In his book The Journey to the East, Herman Hesse’s main character pines for the days of the great spiritual pilgrimage of his youth. He mourns the passing of a glorious spiritual movement that seemed to have passed away before its time of completion. He wonders what happened to all those fellow pilgrims who so idealistically walked eastward seeking spiritual truth. The character finds that the movement never stopped, but he had lost track of it in his active life.
Perhaps those of us in the so-called Baby Boom generation are in a similar position. We lived a moment of hope in the sixties, when peace and love were where it was at, and the Age of Aquarius was about to dawn. Then families and jobs drew us into mundane lives that looked way too much like the lives of our parents. But now as this populous and influential generation grows older, its mass developmental task will be to look more deeply into the ways of consciousness and spirit. Having already given in to the values of peace and love and having sampled varieties of unusual human consciousness, what impact can we expect this maturing generation to have upon our spiritual culture? Maybe the Summer of Love did not end. Perhaps in our busyness we just lost track of the time.
Practice:
Take a few quiet moments to think about yourself in the context of your personal development. Where are you now in the span of a normal human life? Are you just starting out as a young adult? Are you a student? Are you trying to establish yourself in the worlds of work and family? Are you in your middle working years? Are you nearing retirement? Are you retired?
Are you doing what you expected to be doing at this stage of life? Is your life much different from others of your age? What do you enjoy about this time of life? What do you think you are missing?
Carry your imagination forward a few years. What do you think you will be like in five years? Ten years? Twenty?
What can you do now to become the person you want to be then? What can you do now to be the kind of person you want to be now?
Imagine you are face to face with a wise teacher– someone who knows you well and knows the way of truth. What question would you have for them about your life? What answer would they have for you?
Grant yourself the love that you deserve.
Grant yourself the patience to live your life in the present.
Grant yourself permission to grow and develop your uniqueness in your own time.
Tom Barrett
Envy
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“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house; thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox nor his ass, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.”
— The Tenth Commandment
[Addendum to number 10: . . . or his or her girlfriend or boyfriend, their vacation home, their hot tub, their sports car, their computer system, their high paying job, nor anything else they’ve got that you judge better than yours.]
“Who is poor?
He who is not contented.”
“How is heaven attained?
The attainment of heaven is the freedom from cravings.”“What destroys craving?
Realization of one’s true self.”— Shankara (687–718)
Imagine you are alone in the world. Everyone else has disappeared and all the possessions of others have been left behind for you. You could go into any building and possess any object. You could claim ownership of any building or vehicle or piece of land.
How long would the novelty of possession last? What good would an abundance of things do you in the absence of people? What would you value? How long would you be happy?
Now imagine you are surrounded by people, but you have absolutely nothing. Perhaps you are in a refugee camp with thousands of others and there is no food and no shelter. Maybe the sun beats down on you all day and the nights are cold. Your possessions are gone, but you have relationships. You are surrounded by family. A child sleeps in your arms. Now what do you value?
Imagine you live a life where you have enough to eat, you have clothing that protects your body from the cold, you have adequate shelter from the weather, and there are people in this life who could use some love. What more do you need?
Envy is desire for or attachment to something that is not yours. It is a form of craving. It is a thought—a delusion actually, a delusion that what we have is inadequate, but that something someone else has will bring us happiness.
How happy can an envious person ever be? If we aren’t happy with what we have now, can we ever be happy? Envy prohibits satisfaction. It creates an emotional force field around a person that prevents satisfaction from occurring.
Envy is a signal that we have not yet learned to appreciate the sufficiency of our life. It tells us and those who observe us that we are entangled in a condition of lack. It tells the world that we have not fully accepted ourselves as ourselves. It signals that we are cut off, separated from the oneness of creation.
We never experience envy when we understand that we are part of the whole and all that is is part of us.
As the 8th century Hindu mystic Shankara said, realization of one’s true self destroys craving. When we meditate upon the nature of the self we come to understand that an independent self is an illusion. When in meditation, our frame of reference expands out beyond the horizon we realize that there is no independent self. We are all in this together, each a part of the whole. What is mine is yours. What is yours is mine. We have no reason to be attached to desires for more. We have no sense of not having enough.
A good description of a basic meditation to practice each day is A Sitting Meditation found in Buddha’s Little Instruction Book by Jack Kornfield.
Tom Barrett
Hara Meditation
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When you meditate, sit with the dignity of a king or queen; when you move through your day, remain centered in this dignity.
— Jack Kornfield, Buddha’s Little Instruction Book
Back in the 1950s and 60s, meditation was frequently described as “contemplating your navel.” I tried this. “OK, it’s an innie. Got a bit of lint. Now what?” It didn’t seem like a very satisfying spiritual practice. In fact, the idea of contemplating one’s navel seemed so silly that the phrase was popularly used to deride meditation and poke fun at Eastern religion. Possibly I missed something in my initial attempt at meditation.
Later, a football coach would teach me about being aware of my “center of gravity.” He would say, “If you run around with a high center of gravity your opponent is going to knock you on your kiester. So move as if your center of gravity is a couple of inches below your belly button.” It turned out that if you maintained mental consciousness of your weight centered in your abdomen you could flatten large young men moving at high speeds. It was better to be the flattener than the flattenee.
Further down the road I encountered an Aikido master who taught about keeping one point of consciousness at the hara. Hara is the Japanese word for a point in your body about two finger widths below your navel. It is a major center of ki (chi, life energy). He demonstrated how maintaining “one point” was useful, not only in Aikido, but in daily life. When he put his consciousness at his hara he became immovable. Several men much larger than he could not lift him, nor could they push him off his base stance. Yet in demonstration he could throw six attacking students in what appeared to be a graceful and nearly effortless dance of martial art. I found that by putting my mind at my hara, I was more balanced, and activities like opening heavy doors, pushing a car, or even just walking and running were easier and more graceful.
The hara has many names: t’an-tien, dantien, chi-chung, second chakra (or third chakra in some systems). In any discipline that is sensitive to the subtle energies of the body, it will be identified as an important seat of power and balance. Using the hara in meditation can help counterbalance our tendencies to be in our head.
Westerners, especially, are trained to focus consciousness in the upper energy centers. We are thinking people or feeling people. Our life energy seems to be centered in our heads or hearts. Some of us identify our egos with our brains and we experience the world through our heads. It is as if our bodies just dangle down from our noggins, never really touching the earth. Or we go through life centered in our hearts. We feel deeply. We are compassionate loving beings, yet we can be swept away in our emotion, and our hearts are prone to breaking.
As children, our attention is drawn away from our lower centers of energy. We are taught not to touch the “naughty bits.” We are instructed not to look at our nether parts or those of others. Anything below the navel and above the knees is off limits to any more than a passing awareness. Consequently, some of us become absolutely fascinated with the region and others cut off any relationship with it.
Given these circumstances, one might predict that Western civilization would develop a struggle between sexual titillation and self-righteous prudery, and that it would have some difficulty maintaining its sense of harmonic balance with the planet.
So let us consider a practice of meditation that is immanently simple, but that will allow us to bring our energy down to earth, find our balance point, and connect with a locus of balanced power.
Practice:
Traditionally, this meditation would be done in a classic cross-legged sitting meditation position. However, it may also be done sitting in a chair. Luckily, the proper position for sitting at a computer is nearly identical to the proper position for meditating in a chair. If as you do this, your boss asks what you are doing, you may say that you are performing an experiment in computer workstation ergonomics. In fact, if you find the correct meditation position and apply it to your keyboard work, you will likely experience less muscle strain.
Adjust your chair so that with your feet flat on the floor your torso, thighs, and shins roughly form the shape of a stair step. In other words, the angle between your spine and thighs is about 90 degrees and the angle between your thighs and lower legs is about 90 degrees in the other direction. It is better that these angles be a little more than 90 degrees rather than less. Your head should rest comfortably on your neck. Your spine should be erect so that your head balances there without much muscle tension keeping it in place. Sit up straight and find that balance point. Your gaze should be slightly downward.
Your nose and your navel should be in line. So should your ears and your shoulders. You may rock a little front to back and to each side to find the balance point.
When keyboarding, your hands should be in such a relationship with your body that the angle between your upper and lower arms is 90 degrees or a little more. If it is less than 90 degrees you will likely develop muscle strain in your neck and shoulders. For meditating you may simply rest your hands on your thighs. Alternatively, you can place your hands in the traditional Buddhist meditation position, the “cosmic mudra.”
Shunryu Suzuki, in his classic Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, says, “If you put your left hand on top of your right, middle joints of your middle fingers together, and touch your thumbs lightly together (as if you held a piece of paper between them), your hands will make a beautiful oval. You should keep this universal mudra with great care, as if you were holding something very precious in your hand. Your hands should be held against your body, with your thumbs at about the height of your navel. Hold your arms freely and easily, and slightly away from your body, as if you held an egg under each arm without breaking it.” This hand position will assist you in focussing on your hara.
Now release any remaining muscle tension and concentrate on your breathing. Let your breathing become very natural. It will find its own pace and you may notice that it slows and deepens. Allow the breath to sink into your abdomen. Imagine that the breath is moving like a wave between your lungs and your hara, that point in the center of your abdomen a couple of inches below and behind your navel.
Bring your attention fully to that energy center, that balance point we are referring to as hara. Allow all of you attention to focus at that point. It may be helpful to imagine a point of red light in the dark of your abdomen. Some people imagine a tiny Buddha there sitting perfectly still in total peace. Whatever image you choose, allow it to aid you in focussing, and then when it has lost its usefulness, let it go.
Continue to return your awareness to your hara whenever it drifts away. Focus all of your attention there. Be in that place. Own that part of your body. Note any sensations you have there and let them go. Releasing your mental constrictions there will allow the energy of this chakra to move up your spine and throughout your body. You may feel energized, yet at the same time you may feel the peace of being in balance. Experience whatever comes without grasping. Focus your attention without desire for any particular result. Check your posture and bring it back to balance when you feel it slip. Allow the emptiness of non-doing to bring you peace.
Consider making this exercise a part of your daily meditation practice.
Tom Barrett
Maya
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“Everyone wants to know and realize the Truth, but Truth cannot be known and realized as Truth unless ignorance is known and realized as being ignorance. Hence arises the importance of understanding Maya or the principle of ignorance.”
— Meher Baba“I dreamed I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of following my fancies (as a butterfly), and was unconscious of my individuality as a man. Suddently, I awakened; and there I lay, myself again. I do not know whether I was then dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming that it is a man.”
— Chuang Tzu
Imagine it is the end of a beautiful summer day. The air is clear and the sun will set soon. The rays of sun come from low on the horizon, and everything you see is apparent in high contrast. The shadows are deep, but where the light strikes the reflection is brilliant.
You are standing near a great old tree. You can see its ancient trunk with the sunlight creating deep shadows in the patterns of the bark. The limbs of the tree spread out in a canopy overhead. The leaves, moving gently in a light breeze vibrate slightly. You can see in this light that some of them brightly reflect the light in hues of green. Others are dark in shadow.
You know at this moment that your image of this tree is dependent on this reflected sunlight. You are not seeing the tree. You are seeing the light reflected off parts of the thing your mind perceives as a tree.
Your image of this tree is happening in your eyes and in your brain/mind. You believe the tree is there, but if not for your mind’s response to the patterns of light hitting your retina, how would you know it is there? You believe the leaves are there, even those you can’t see in the darkening shadows. You believe that the back side of the tree is there, even though you cannot see it. You understand that the “out there” is happening “in here.” The entire phenomenon of this tree that you experience is occuring within the confines of your nervous system.
How is the experience of seeing a tree different from dreaming it, except that the light bounced off the tree “out there” is the stimulus for the image in your mind?
How did you create the image of the tree that you just visualized? You constructed it out of your thoughts of “treeness” based on some symbols you read here. Amazing really. You can dream the tree. You can create it out of symbolic instructions, or you can create it out of light impulses striking your optical system. In any case, your conception of the tree does not exist independent of your mind.
We constantly make judgments based on our assumptions about reality. We believe that if we reach out and touch a tree that we see with our eyes it will be there, and our touch will confirm it. We normally live our lives completely convinced that our sensory experiences are real. It works so well that we assume that what we perceive is reality.
This is a characteristic of the Sanscrit concept of “maya.” Maya, sometimes described as illusion or ignorance, is the way we measure off the world separating things into categories. We think the world is out there and I am in here. Yet our world and our perception of it are mutually arising. We are in it, of it, and creating it as we go along. There is no there there. It is you and the world happening together.
Imagine that you lived your life always aware of the ephemeral nature of your experience. How would that be different? From the point of view of the ego it might be terrifying, since suddenly you become alone in the great void. But with a little more understanding, your perception of your own ego would become clear as a manifestation of maya. You would know that the boundary between what you perceive as the limits of your own personal identity and the rest of creation is false. You would attend to your direct experience of the world as immediately sensed. You would not be misled by labels. You would know that you and everything else are not separate, and in that knowing you would find an immeasurable and profound sense of peace.
Practice:
This week, and perhaps every week, develop the habit of spending some time experiencing clear awareness.
Use a simple meditation practice that will allow you the tranquility of mind to perceive the world in its pure essence unmarred by labels, limits, and conceptions.
Allow yourself to give up boundaries between what is inside and what is outside your thinking mind.
Allow the peace of understanding to fulfill you.
Tom Barrett
Aversion
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“When aversion is present, it stiffens the body and the mind. The aversions we feel, the prejudices we feel, the anger we feel, all push the world away. These aversions all resist what is; all block the free-flowing mind which knows things a moment at a time as they are and wishes nothing to be otherwise.”
— Steven Levine
We come into this world with some built-in tendencies to be attracted to and repelled by certain things and experiences. We are attracted to sweetness and softness. We tend to withdraw from the bitter or rough. As we grow we expand the range of things we are attracted to and repelled by. We lose interest in picking things up off the floor and putting them into our mouths. What was attractive has become repulsive. We develop a taste for things bitter, and what once made our lips curl in revulsion becomes our substance of choice.
Through experience we develop our preferences and our aversions. When we think of a person, place, or thing we may feel unpleasant emotions arise in us in response to the thought. Years after leaving an unpleasant job we may have an uncomfortable feeling each time we drive by the building where we worked. There is nothing there to harm us now, but the feeling remains, even though the feeling is cut off from any real danger.
Some feelings of aversion may be quite strong and obvious. These we may identify as anger or hate. Just thinking about some person we hate may bring up powerful feelings and a desire to do them harm. These thoughts and feelings separate us from the other and create a barrier that somehow protects us from them. If nothing else, the barrier prevents us from seeing similarities between the object of our hate and ourselves.
Other aversions are more subtle. We may not notice any obvious emotion connected with the aversion, but in some way our behavior is affected. Perhaps we have some work to complete, but time passes and the task remains undone. Maybe we have a phone call we should make, but the call is never made. Maybe we have a self-improvement goal, but we never meet it. We find that in spite of our best intentions we don’t do the exercise, we don’t sit to meditate, we don’t read the book, we don’t say the affirmations. We may not know why, but something blocks our progress.
As we develop ourselves spiritually and psychologically, one of our critical tasks is to identify our aversions and work through them. We can free ourselves by dropping useless aversions. We can heal ourselves by letting go of our hatreds.
Practice:
Place yourself in a calm state of mind. Allow your breathing to come and go by itself. Release the tension you may be holding in your muscles.
Close your eyes and think about your own attractions and aversions. Imagine that you can look at the many parts of your life as if they were laid out on a map. Family is here. Work is over there. Relationships are someplace in between. And imagine that components of your life that are attractive to you are a warm, pleasant color, perhaps a rosy pink. Now imagine that the areas of your life that you respond to with aversion are a cold color, perhaps an icy blue. Those things in your life that you love are warm and comfortable. Those parts of life that are aversive appear less inviting.
Now take your time and scan the map. Look for the warm comfy spots, and also notice the colder bluish areas. When you encounter a part of your life on this map that you identify as less warm, less comfortable, focus in on it and try to sense what about it is aversive to you. What aspect of this area repels you? Do you feel threatened? What is the nature of the threat? Is this a current threat or is it from the past? Can you relinquish the experience of feeling threatened by something that is no longer a real threat?
You may find areas on your personal map of attraction and aversion that stimulate anger. Notice these feelings of anger. Look carefully at them. Feel where they reside in your body. Ask yourself what the anger is about? What is the thought that keeps the anger alive in you?
If it is a person you have anger about, are they still doing the thing that made you angry in the past? Who is making you angry? Is it them, or is it you clinging to the anger? Might it be useful to drop this emotion that gnaws at you?
Tell yourself that you release your anger. Tell yourself that you will no longer be limited by outdated negative emotions. Create an opening in your heart where the anger once was, and allow warmth and compassion to flow in.
Looking again at your life map, you may find places where you may feel very little emotion, but you sense stagnation. Maybe you see these as greenish areas. Perhaps these are areas where you would like something to happen, but nothing happens. Maybe you feel that you just can’t get going. Try to visualize what is keeping you stuck. Do you sense some element of fear around this issue? What is the fear? What has your imagination told you might happen if you made progress? Is this realistic? Note that there has been an element of aversion active in this area. Let this awareness begin the process of dissolving the aversion.
As you go about your life this week, be aware of when you are responding to things and events as aversive. Map out for yourself the cold dark areas of your psyche that keep you from feeling joy in life. Warm those places with the antidotes to aversion, which are love, forgiveness and compassion.
May all beings be filled with joy and peace.
May all beings everywhere,
The strong and the weak,
The great and the small,
The mean and the powerful,
The short and the long,
The subtle and the gross:May all beings everywhere,
Seen and unseen,
Dwelling far off or nearby,
Being or waiting to become:
May all be filled with lasting joy.Let no one deceive another,
Let no one anywhere despise another,
Let no one out of anger or resentment
Wish suffering on anyone at all.Just as a mother with her own life
Protects her child, her only child, from harm,
So within yourself let grow
A boundless love for all creatures.Let your love flow outward through the universe,
To its height, its depth, its broad extent,
A limitless love, without hatred or enmity.Then as you stand or walk,
Sit or lie down,
As long as you are awake,
Strive for this with a one-pointed mind;
Your life will bring heaven to earth.— Sutta Nipata
Buddha’s Discourse on Good Will
Tom Barrett
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