American Buddhist Perspectives
Summer is heating up here (not literally just yet), but as I settle in here in beautiful Missoula, I am finding plenty to keep me engaged and busy. Some things I need to get cracking on:
- Annual Progress Report for my Ph.D. – How would I rate my progress? Somewhere between ‘satisfactory’ and ‘some cause for concern’, but I think I’ll be generous and go with the former. I’ve been lucky to have phenomenal support from my advisor(s), and I do have a decent outline; ’tis just time to get into the meat of it already.
- Get to work on the meat of my Ph.D.! I’ll have to return to London at some point, and I’ll have to do some work to justify that. A friend of mine at the University of Gloucestershire has generously offered to set up a seminar for me to speak on my work when I’m there, which is even more great encouragement to get on it.
- Think about a ’round the world trip? I’m already dreaming of Hawai’i in January – it’s sunny and warm (which Missoula is definitely not then), they have a conference I can speak at, and I have a couple friends there to see and stay with. From there I could hop to Japan, where an old friend from Bristol now lives, and another from London plans to be. Then India (this time with VISA in hand!) to see my old friend Soorjya in Calcutta at last. Then probably on to England, with maybe a stop off in Budapest, where a former professor of mine is helping to set up a Buddhist College. ‘Tis only a dream for now, but we’ll see.
- A more practical journey will be preparing for my friend SJ, who arrives in just over a week. I think we’ll stick to the wonders of Montana (Yellowstone, perhaps Glacier, and lots in between). It’s bitter-sweet, as the trip is associated with some loss, but again, an emptied cup awaits new tea.
- Write another article for wildmind‘s next newsletter — I posted last April on The purity of no-self, and will work on something for July on Friendship, September on Warriorship, November on Solitude, and January on Rebirth (that’s the plan, anyhow, stay tuned!).
- Bone up more on Metta, the Buddhist practice of Loving-Kindness:
In our Tuesday night University group I’ll be leading a short talk on metta (loving-kindness), followed by a led meditation, suitable for all levels of meditators. Last week my talk was very short, just looking at two aspects of dealing with our emotions.
- The first was the notion of Emotional Alchemy. The fact of the matter is that we often cannot control what emotions come up in us. We have very deep conditioning from our childhood and beyond and (perhaps) even past lives. Events in the world will trigger emotional responses, that’s just a fact we cannot avoid. What we can do is practice emotional alchemy, which is not the practice of replacing negative thoughts and emotions with good ones, or trying to ‘just think happy thoughts’. Emotional Alchemy is a process of cultivating the rare and precious emotions of acceptance and openness from our common and ordinary highs and lows. Our joyful thoughts, our negative thoughts, and all in between are simply who we are – our ordinary us – but metta is a practice of bringing acceptance and open heartedness to whatever thoughts and emotions are there. So, from our ordinary joys and sorrows can come extraordinary acceptance and openness.
- Second was the image of a mother and her child. Metta practice is much like the mother’s reaction to a child who has scraped his knee. She cannot take away the pain itself, but she takes away the trauma of the situation. Likewise, we cannot simply erase the pains of life (duhkha -unsatisfactoriness- after all, is fundamental to existence), but we can practice reacting to them openly, with acceptance, so as not to add trauma to the situation, which only multiplies our suffering.
(6/17) Next week we will look at particular phases of the practice. Some people have difficulty with the first phase, cultivating loving-kindness to yourself, but most common is the fourth phase, dealing with the ‘difficult’ person. We’ll explore strategies for the real difficulties faced in this practice. Some people have had to reverse orders a bit, starting with a good friend, which then opens their heart to shift to themselves. Others will find that they need to leave the most difficult people in their lives out of their meditation for a while so as to avoid getting caught up in old cycles of hurtful emotion.
(6/24) In two weeks we will discuss visualizations, engaging the imagination to deepen the emotional impact of the practice. Visualizations include imagining a lotus or rose at one’s heart with a diamond in it, representing our innate purity, and allowing light and warmth to grow from that pure center as we cultivate loving-kindness for ourselves. We then imagine our good friend (and then others) joining us, and our own light and warmth embracing them, bringing out the same pure qualities that in turn embrace the meditator in a reciprocal flow of metta. How much do these help? How might they become a distraction? We’ll see.
(note, there will be a Puja, a devotional ceremony, held at the Rocky Mountain Buddhist Center on Wednesday, June 25, at 7pm that I will attend and encourage others to attend as well)
(7/1) After that we will look at the theme of causes and conditions, central to Buddhist psychology. We see that our own pain and trauma is based on causes and conditions, allowing blame and self-labeling to dissipate. We also see that the the joy brought to us by friends is based on causes and conditions, allowing us to not cling to it. Likewise with our ‘difficult’ person, we see that he or she has caused us pain based on his/her own causes and conditions, bringing forth forgiveness and reconciliation, crucial steps in developing an open heart toward those who have harmed us. We can then work to set new causes and conditions, ones of acceptance and open-heartedness, to bring more goodness and joy to our lives.
[8pm update] – (7/8) Another talk on this will look at the importance of taking care of oneself first. While this may seem selfish, it isn’t. As I put it in a comment last winter:
… when I am dealing so much with my own issues, I am pretty worthless to those around me who need a hand. That’s not to say I shouldn’t deal with my issues, but that hopefully I do overcome them, and quickly. So my sphere of suffering is very small, it really only deals with this particular living being.
When I am in better shape I can more easily reach out and share in and help with the suffering of those I love, and then to neutral people, and then to enemies (starting to sound like a metta bhavana meditation), and so on. We loosen the grasp of (individualized) selfishness and come to see (experientially) interconnectedness and maybe even get some glimpse of whatever the heck dhamma is.
So it is vital that we take care of ourselves, and also vital that we cultivate relationships with good people who can/will help us out when we are struggling. Honest relationships, time in nature, extended meditation, and so on all break us out of solipsism and its rounds of suffering.
And that’ll get us going for a while at least! Here is some more reading I’ve been up to and that I’d recommend:
- Sharon Salzberg: “Facets of Metta“
- Former CEO trades Esquire magazine for A Dance with Buddhism, a two part interview with Phillip Moffit (whose writings are linked above forgiveness and reconciliation)
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