Wise Heart Way

Principle #15 Delusion misunderstands the world and forgets who we are. Delusion gives rise to all unhealthy states. Free yourself from delusion and see with wisdom.

There is no practice in this chapter.

good thing it's called "practice"

Unfortunately (for my inner peace) and fortunately (for my development as a human being) I've had a fairly good number of opportunities in the last few weeks to practice watching my own tendencies towards anger. If you had asked me a few weeks ago, I would have said that I rarely get angry anymore, and certainly I am less temperamental than I used to be. But man oh man, anger definitely rises up and I can still fly of the handle, that's for sure. In these last few weeks I've been able to catch myself doing it. I haven't necessarily been able to stop myself, but I have some distance and I can see my anger rising and taking over. At least I can stop before one-sided blame or vengeance takes over. But I know even this more controlled anger isn't healthy. Even forgetting the damage it does to my soul -- I could feel anger doing damage to my body.

I allow myself to slip into anger, and I know why.  I express anger, because it's easier than expressing pain. (That's something that's good to know about myself, but also good to know about others. Angry people are people in pain.)

Often, Kornfield will write about a client who needs to "simply feel."  Ha. So much easier said than done. "Now imagine how you might communicate about your fear and hurt rather than blame," he says. I get that. The irony here is that I must "communicate" about this with people who are long dead or who are completely incapable of "getting" whatever I have to say. God  has a wonderful sense of humor, eh? The challenge then, for me, is to not need validation from outside of myself. Good thing it's called "practice."

Gentle Art

Julie, who snapped this photo, is someone who offers no aggression in her art. Her vision springs from the wide sky of her gentleness. Thank you for this last post, Lez. You say it all so wonderfully. I try to teach gallery visitors that when we look slowly and not carelessly, the artist's true intention mysteriously surfaces. Note: forgive my absence on WHW lately and know, fellow Wise Hearts, that I am faithfully working the practices and am up to date with my reading. My WH text, propped on my nightstand, inspires my last thoughts before I shut my eyes. More to come ...

Transcending Aggression

I’m reading chapters each morning in The Essential Chogyam Trungpa.  It’s a collection of excerpts from his voluminous collection of writing, and a good introduction to his work if you haven’t read him.  He’s the Tibetan Buddhist scholar and teacher responsible for bring Tibetan Buddhism of the Shambhala tradition to America.  And he’s the founder of Naropa University in Boulder, CO.

As most of you know, Shambhala Buddhism is the tradition I study and practice, and so I consider Chogyam Trungpa my root teacher.

The chapter I was reading today is from his book called Dharma Art (published in 1996), and in this chapter he talks about the kind of violence artists can fall into when they denigrate themselves, or speak of their work or their creativity in negative ways.  I’ve been made aware, recently, of how often I speak negatively of myself, or denigrate my work, or make conclusions about a lack of creativity.  I’ve been trying to watch that tendency, and I’ve thought often about how violent it is to an emerging quality to squash movement the way we do with violent or negative language.  So this is good material for my own spiritual practice.  But also, I’m trying to work some of these thoughts into a writing workshop I’m developing.

And then, as so often happens, the universe brings me just what I need to coalesce some thoughts, or to clarify some attention I’m trying to bring to my own behavior.  In this chapter,  called “Art and Everyday Life,” Trungpa says this:

"Aggression is antiart.  If you are not in an aggressive state of mind, you feel you are rich and resourceful and infinitely inspired.  When somebody is angry and uptight—even such ordinary, literal aggression as anger—then it cuts all possibilities of improvising what exists in your life as part of your artistic talent.”

Isn’t that wonderful?  This is a lesson I’ve been learning in yoga too—to stop the aggressive tendency I have toward bending the body to the will.  Be gentle, my teachers say.  Rest often.  Soften your approach to the practice.  To be aggressive about the practice is willful.  And the pose will not offer itself up under conditions of willfulness.

So in my teaching, I will begin asking students to become aware of the ways in which they are being aggressive about their writing, their creative process.  How are you forcing?  How are you chastising yourself?  How are you breaking the tender stem of a new seedling by squashing it with your dissatisfaction?  Let us be gentle with ourselves and with our emerging creative efforts.  Trungpa says, “transcending aggression is the root of all the artistic talent one can ever imagine.”

Get the Message

Isn’t it amazing how the universe provides us with the very lessons we need at the very moment we need them?  Take the chapter  we’re studying this month in The Wise Heart—“Beyond Hatred to a Non-Contentious Heart.”  Recently, I have been the recipient of a great deal of hatred from another person.  It has been a shocking and disturbing experience, on many levels.  But thanks to my practice and to the instruction I’m getting on Buddhist psychology, I am able to watch this outpouring of anger from a friend with amazing equanimity.  The reason is what Kornfield teaches us in this chapter:  “Aversion and anger almost always arise as a direct reaction to a threatening or painful situation. . . . A fearful situation turns to anger when we can’t admit we are afraid.”

So I look at this person who is so deeply angry and frustrated with me and know that he is resisting experience, i.e., his own fear.  He is resorting to deeply conditioned reactive behavior that he adopted when he first encountered fear, anxiety, or insecurity.  And that behavior allows him to believe that the cause of his unhappiness is outside of himself. He is assuming that “I” am the reason things have gone wrong for him, when in fact “I” am the reason things have gone wrong (or right) only for myself.  The experience he has with me is only a drama designed to direct him to the drama within himself, a message to help him heal himself, his fear, his sense of abandonment, his loss of security.  I see him so angry, so fuming with disappointment, so willing to cast all goodness aside.  I see this, of course, because I, too, have fumed in the same way.  But no longer.  Kornfield quotes a famous Zen saying:  “If you understand—tings are just as they are.  If you do not understand—things are just as they are.”  Ha!

The practice for such delusional behavior will sound familiar by now.  When we become triggered by an event or a person, first we “recognize in our bodies the rigidity of aggression, the pain of rage, the contraction of fear.  We become intimate with our frustration, anger, and blame.”  Then, “we learn the difference between reaction and response.”  This, of course, is the tricky part—learning the difference between reaction and response.  But that’s what the practice is all about.  Mindfulness offers us that wee bit of space that occurs between the event and the reaction to the event.  It gives us a way to remember the spaciousness we have access to always.  It reconnects us to our authentic selves and to right action.  I wish in my last interaction with my angry friend I could have paused, taken a deep breath, pulled from my deep resource of wisdom.  I cannot change the way he reacts, but I can change the way I respond to pain of the world.
     The Buddha said, “If others speak against you, do not be angry, for that will prevent your own inner freedom.  Learn to bear their harsh words patiently until they cease.”  This is my practice.  Along with compassion for all of us who suffer because we’ve killed the messenger and failed to get the message.

Principle #14: If we cling to anger or hatred, we will suffer. It is possible to respond strongy, wisely, and compassionately without hatred.

Practice: Discovering the pain and fear behind anger.

Hold Desire Lightly

Chapter 13 “The Transformation of Desire into Abundance”

With his characteristic clarity, Kornfield maps a challenging terrain:  how to deal with desire.  “Buddhist psychology wants us to release unhealthy desires and hold healthy desires lightly.”   I might know this is a path to freedom, but most of the time I struggle to hold desires in check. 
   I have a friend who is quick to criticize Buddhist thought and practice.  It really annoys him for some reason.  And one of the things that annoys him most is this notion of being without desire.  He launches the very tired attack that Buddhism is a form of nihilsm, which, of course, is patently not true.  The idea, Kornfield cautions, is “not to be without desire, but to have a wise relationship with desire.”
     But the question remains, just how do I do that?  Well, first of all, I must recognize when I’m in the throes of unhealthy desire.  Kornfield gives the very specific characteristics of this state:  “There is a tension in the body, an emotional contraction, a stickiness of mind, a focus on the future.  There is a driven quality.  Anxiety, jealously, rigidity, and insecurity all become stronger.”  Wow.  That’s a pretty specific diagnosis of a problem.  So once again we’re asked to “feel the feeling.”  It’s crucial to making changes.
    OK.  Once I feel this stickiness, what do I do?  His answer:  “the powerful discipline of letting go.”  This is a hard one.  If I believe that my anxiety will be quenched by that which I desire (a new sofa, a lover, a seat on the city council, etc.), it becomes very challenging to drop the desire.  I get trapped into thinking the object of desire is going to solve my problems.  I’ll be happy or honored or filled up or something else, you name it.  But in that state, I forget what I most desperately want to believe from The Lotus Sutra:  I already possess all that I seek.  The diamond I am searching for is in my pocket.  All that I want to be is already present.  Just let go of desire and let all arise.
   It’s at this point that I have often balked at Buddhist practice.  Just let go is almost as frustrating as the Nike injunction to “just do it.”  Sounds so easy, but it isn’t easy when you’ve allowed yourself to be shackled by all manner of restraints.  But then comes the third step, the one that calms my uneasiness about letting go.  “Through the practice of mindfulness and compassion, desire can be transformed.”  Mindfulness and compassion. Both are necessary to begin breaking the shackles.  I relax in this moment and make an intention to drop unhealthy desire once it is recognized.  I hold compassion for myself instead of condemning my aversion.  This compassion opens a space in my heart that allows me to recognize my natural state of wholeness and fulfillment.

This is the practice:
1.  recognize the emotional contraction
2.  be mindful and compassionate
3.  drop unhealthy desire
4.  watch fulfillment expand

Principle #13: There are both healthy desires and unhealthy desires. Know the difference. Then find freedom in their midst.

Practice: Generosity

We're almost half way through the book now.

Interesting. The chapter I'm reading in Wise Heart often reinforces what we're working on in group during the same time. Not only that, at the same time the world often offers me opportunities to practice what I'm learning. Very obvious opportunities. What's that about? Whatever. It's pretty cool.

In group we've been talking about our default behavior within groups. Mine is to hang back, be quiet, and not call attention to myself. I have always attributed this to shyness and left it at that. I had never really thought about why the shyness is there. In group I have learned (experienced) that to a great extent group settings reenact the family group and we act accordingly, using coping behaviors we learned in childhood.

There is a photo of our family taken when I was about 4 years old. Photos of our entire nuclear family are rare and there is only one that includes our beloved Nonna and the uncle from Italy who only visited us once. Like my other siblings, I treasure this one photograph. Our uncle's visit was such a big event, I have lots and lots of vivid memories of his short time with us. (Lulu -- do you remember how he made bird sounds and moved his fingers inside his shirt, pretending he had a bird in there?)

Anyway, one of my most vivid memories is gathering for the family photo.  I remember sitting in my place, saying to myself that I didn't want to be part of it. Small children think if they can't see you, you can't see them. So I took myself out of the picture by deliberately putting my head down while the others faced the camera. Since I didn't want to be there, I made myself invisible.

In our family, it was not wise to call attention to yourself, because being the center of attention would bring unpredictable, unrewarding, and, often, negative results. And so often I coped by taking myself "out of the picture"  -- making myself invisible by being quiet, "good" and not asking for things, sometimes going under my bed to listen to what was going on in the house from afar.  My adult shyness -- hanging back in a group or suppressing and not making my needs known in  relationships -- is a form of taking myself out of the picture. I still act as though I am risking terrible consequences if I call attention to my self, my thoughts, my needs. I have a deeper understanding of this childhood stuff. I am understanding not only how my coping behaviors were formed, but also how I have carried these child-made coping behaviors into my adulthood, and how they have shaped my choices and relationships. I had resigned myself to being invisible.

This is a long windup, because the main point I want to make is that all this psychology only takes you so far. Because now that I know all this, what do I do? Just get over it?

Fat chance.

But here's where my group, which has a Buddhist bent,  and Wise Heart, have helped me most of all. Mindfulness -- it's the key to everything. In group, we're not being asked to "get over it." We're being asked to "pay attention" to how our default behavior is limiting us. Mindfulness is a space where I can find another way. Finally, I have a tool. With mindfulness I don't have to be compelled by childhood wounds and habits. With mindfulness I can, on a situation by situation basis, find other ways to respond to the world.

I feel less pressured to "change" (and less guilty about failure to change). Instead, I feel encouragement to "evolve." Mindfulness brings with it a welcome release from self-judgment. I know I've taken only a few baby-steps on a very long path, but the new direction they have taken me in makes me feel like they are giant.

Meditation helps me to calm myself, so I can hear myself think and it is definitely carrying over into the rest of my life where in general I find myself being more mindful, slowing down, being more conscious and purposeful and less reactive. Instead of beating myself up over the times I slip into old habits, I celebrate evidence of small progress. And overall, I am taking my life a lot less seriously. I can laugh at my humaness and the humaness of others. 

Chapter 12 was very helpful for me. Often groups feel chaotic and distress me, and I will tend to go with the flow, because I can't quite find my place. Pulling back is also a way of protecting myself from the chaos. Oddly, I can feel "a lot going on" in a group, even when people are quiet. But now that Kornfield has described the "confused temperament," I can be more mindful of how my confusion also plays into my behavior. More than ever, I know solitude and meditation are important for me to function, because they help me recharge and get clear before I enter the "fray" in the outside world. (Side benefit: trusting myself more)

Lately, I have consciously tried to play against my default behavior and practice carrying the clarity and peace I find alone back out  into the world with me.  This past month, I was given several real-world opportunities to practice what I'm learning. Group situations -- five panel discussions, actually -- where I had to make my voice heard. As if it's not hard enought for me to participate in something like that to begin with, another, more dominant, person made it particularly challenging for me. So, I meditated. And during panels I was mindful of my body and feelings, and after one of the sessions, I spoke up to that challenging person, and I did it in a firm, but gentle, non-angry, non-reactive manner. And then, because the universe is just not going to let me get off easily, I had to speak up to her once more.

That's grown up Mary Ann, holding her head up for the photo.