What do you want to do today?

There is so much opportunity in that question.

We tend to fill that void with errands, entertainment, consumption and distraction.  We fill it with browsing, shopping, social media and all sorts of sudden urges. We fill it with many things that have no lasting value.  Illusions you could say.

So what do you want to do today?

I am tired of chasing illusions.  Tired and weary.

It is not so much that my life is really that busy.  I make it busy in order to avoid answering that question in a meaningful way.  It is easier to consume and be entertained.  Easier to remove myself from the irritation of being open and present with that incredible opportunity.  Easier to stay distracted than face the uncertainty and discomfort that arises when you don't actually have an answer. 

I can't say what value having a spiritual practice will bring to your life.  What I can say with confidence is that having your own practice will allow you to sit with uncertainty, with doubt and discomfort.  It will allow you to pause for a moment before neurosis leads you down illusion's game.

You might end up being honest and certain about who you are in an authentic and genuine way.

When you are authentic and genuine, you discover an inexhaustible wealth that wants to be shared.  It wants to connect, lend a hand, share a laugh and benefit others.

What do you want to do today?

No lasting effect.

When searching for consummate meaning in our lives,
time and time again we go outside ourselves,
always asking ourselves what we should do now-
travel, food, friends, job, volunteer, family, kids-
all these goals once achieved have left us unfulfilled.
Why change now?

We either seek out escape-
spa, vacation, lazy Sunday, the new.

Or we seek out illusion-
food, fun, goals, experiences.

Neither have lasting effect. Both are conditioned.

Illusions

Are illusions real?  Do they truly exist?

On the one hand they appear, but we know from inspection and analysis that they can be proven to be false and deceptive.  If we are unaware of what is going on we could be tricked into thinking that illusions are real.  This kind of deception could create all kinds of problems for us, believing something to be real when it isn't.  Many a con artist has profited from this sort of deception. 

Eventually though the deception wears thin and we see things as they truly are.  With that knowledge we are never deceived in that same manner again, never caught up in the cycle of ignorance. 

So the question remains, if illusions aren't real, how do they exist?   We experience them, they have a certain color, shape, sound and maybe even touch.  But we also know from analysis that they are only brought about by certain conditions and that if those conditions fall away the illusion vanishes, thus they are not truly real. 

So we could say that while illusions appear, they are not truly existing.  I think that is a rational and logical way to describe how they exist.  While they appear, they do not truly exist. 

What about mirages? Dreams?  How about the reflection of the moon in water? 

What about an echo or a rainbow in the sky?

You should look about your life and even your self, what appears but does not truly exist upon further analysis?

What examples can you think of?

The Charnel Ground

Photo courtesy of Himalayan Arts

The charnel ground is a very evocative image used by Buddhist practitioners.  

It is disgusting, filled with disease and pestilence.  It is strewn with carnage and lifeless, wandering souls.  

Your emotions and senses run rampant in a charnel ground.  The only way to survive is to stay on high alert.  The charnel ground would love to claim you as its next victim, to bend your will and seize your heart.  Your head might be the next one hanging at the gates as a symbol of its conquest, left to rot and grow old as a reminder for those that might come near.  

Some practitioners actually choose to practice their sadhana in this environment.  Of course they could retreat to peaceful forest groves, alpine meadows or glacial peaks, but they choose the charnel ground.  For these yogins, the very fabric of their day to day life is the path of liberation.  They look to first hand experience to transform their own obstacles and poisons, constantly battling the gods and demons of their own hopes and fears.  It is a direct encounter with wisdom, through insight transmuting poison into a healing nectar that pacifies their own and others ails. 

We all live in a charnel ground of our own thoughts and emotions, hopes and fears.  Our habit since beginningless time is to turn and run, to seek out better conditions and a supportive environment.  And this works, for a little while.  Then we start to meet more resistance and the charnel ground gates start to creak open, beckoning you. 

The nice thing about the charnel ground is that you always know where you stand.  If you are struggling to reconcile your internal conflicts, fighting against yourself and your environment, then you still have more work to do.  If you are able to transform all situations into insight and can use this to bring about the welfare of beings, then I think you have found your calling.  

Either way, better get to work.

The Dakini

 

The world of appearance and possibility is the dakini.
Try to control her and she will torment you,
O the scorn she will bring to your heart.
The wise let her fly unhindered through the expanse of space.
So be wise, O child,
And she will bring you endless great bliss.

Dance Standing Still

The ultimate bodhicitta slogans are instructions that are meant to allow one to recognize and cultivate ultimate bodhicitta in meditation.  

2. Regard all dharmas as dreams.

Normally, our reality and day to day affairs seem very concrete.  Our experience feels very real as we are going through it- the whirlwind of our thoughts, surging emotions, feelings of joy and our aches and pains.  We usually don't examine our experience and we just take it for granted.  Life in a nutshell.  

As we move away from our experiences, in the following hours, days and weeks we find it increasingly hard to remember what it was exactly that we were holding onto.  What did that wine and steak taste like again?  What were we arguing about?  What was it that we were so desperate to uphold, reaffirm or prove?  Was it worth all the effort?  

Regarding all dharmas- all experiences, sense objects and activities- as a dream means that we relate to them with less fixation, more openness.  Dream here doesn't mean hazy or unclear.  We can have very lucid dreams, dreams that evoke very real emotions and feelings while we are caught up in them.  The key is that when we awake from a dream we know it was just a dream and that the experience was temporary and fleeting, that it was just something that we were fixating on in our own mind. 

We can experience this sort of insight in our own meditation.  When we take our seat in meditation we become aware of an endless dance of thoughts, sights, sounds and feelings.  Our habitual tendency is to fixate on these phenomena in all their variety, but in meditation we just let them be as they are without following after them.  As we begin to relax into that illusory dance we begin to discover an underlying stillness.

Within the space of meditation, without grasping at the dynamic display that is arising in all its variety, we begin to notice and appreciate this unchanging quality.  Despite movement there is stillness.  It is here that we can look at the next slogan.

3. Examine the nature of unborn awareness.  

When we look at this awareness, we are aware of this unceasing dance of phenomena that is occurring, but since we are not getting caught up in that display we are also aware of this calm stillness.  Look at that.  Where does this come from, where does it go?

When you look at the dance you find there is nothing to hold onto, it is an endless play that can take any form at all and yet never exists as a single thing whatsoever.  When you look at the mind, there are all these things we are aware of, yet there is an underlying stillness that is lucid and alert.  When you look at that mind, you cannot find anything.  There is nothing there to hold onto, mind is unborn, yet there is this awareness that perceives very clearly.  From here we can address the next slogan.

4.  Self-liberate even the antidote.

When we look at the dynamic dance of phenomena, we find that despite the unceasing play there is this unchanging stillness which could be interpreted as nothing ever really happening.  When we look at the mind we find that while it is aware, we cannot find any particular 'thing' that is actually mind. 

The danger here is that we could come to the conclusion of 'Well, what's the point? Nothing matters, nothing ever happens.  Who cares, it doesn't matter what you do'.  This is very tricky, for we risk becoming nihilists- heartless narcissistic bastards.  Don't do that. 

Self-liberate the antidote means not to get caught up in that experience, don't solidify that experience of emptiness.  Don't fixate on that experience of not finding anything that is truly lasting.

5. Rest in the nature of the alaya, the essence.  

In meditation, we seek to move beyond our coarse level of mind and learn to rest in a more subtle level.  There are eight types of consciousnesses- five sense (sight, hearing, olfactory, taste, touch), conceptual consciousness, emotional consciousness and the alaya, or foundational consciousness.

The idea of resting in the alaya is that we are not supposed to get caught up in the dance of the other seven consciousnesses.  We don't want to follow after all the sights, sounds, smells, feelings and thoughts we are experiencing as we sit in meditation.  Learn to rest in a calm, clear, non-discursive awareness.  As we familiarize with this place of natural rest, free from coming and going, we also familiarize ourselves with ultimate bodhicitta.

It is important to understand that the alaya is not ultimate bodhicitta, but it is a much more subtle level of mind where we can begin to appreciate the qualities and characteristics of the nature of the mind.

Resting in the alaya we can see the dreamlike nature of all phenomena.   Not getting caught up in the dynamic dance of phenomena, we are able to examine the nature of unborn awareness.  Without clinging to that experience we self-liberate even the antidote, which is the empty nature of awareness.  We rest in lucid clarity, the mind open and expansive.  All of this is something that we are not creating in meditation, it becomes self-evident as we continue to sit with the proper instruction.

6.  In post-meditation, be a child of illusion.

At the end of the meditation session, don't just get up and go about your day.  Carry whatever insight or experience you have from meditation into your daily life.  Let it infuse your relationships, your work, your good times and your bad. 

Regard all situations and activities as dreams.  Don't get caught up in the dance.  We need to participate in the dance, we don't really have a choice here.  We cannot be a wallflower in the dance of life.  But as we dance we can adapt, respond; we can lead or follow; show strength or vulnerability.  We can affect the shape and the form the dance takes, a miraculous display that can appear in any way whatsoever. 

Go dancing, be a child of illusion.