curiosity piqued
In the golden morning sun
i am reminded of the ghost
of a young asian woman
whose name I don’t know.
i think of her while reading
poems of william carlos williams,
and while making cake
with my daughter, kadie
i see her from the corner
of my eye, when an eyelash
flickers near the duct,
stinging, causing a salty tear
and i can hear her sigh as
i awake to the ringing of the phone
“Hello ?” I answer, only half awake,
but there’s no one on the other end
“Here, just stand here and be quiet.” she covered her lips with her index finger to say ‘shhh’, “I’ll come and get you when he’s gone”
She ushers me into the small closet in the kitchen, gently closing the faux walnut, accordion doors. It was dark, but lines of light fell onto my Incredible Hulk slippers. It was dark, but the orange-yellow light from the kitchen falling on my feet kept me company, kept me safe.
I could hear voices down the hall. I couldn’t make out any words, just muffled tones – one low, one higher – back and forth behind doors. I looked down at my slippers and smiled. It was warm behind the walnut brown doors. It was calm above the slivers of light coming in through the slats.
A loud scream, a dark word howled, a metal creak and a large car door slamming. Engine on, tires kicking up dirt and gravel on their way towards the highway. The doors opened and I was covered in light.
Wringing nervous hands in her apron, “Come on, go wash your hands for dinner”
The blank page is such an oppressive thing. It has an overpowering presence and stalls all creative thought. I wonder if there is a secret deity responsible for the power of the empty page, whether it be a blank piece of paper, an empty screen, or a series of empty lines, the presence is there. It looms over the mind and halts any process of thought. It guards the neuronet like an unblinking, unwavering sentinel, protecting that bit of emptiness with all it’s might.
“7. For many aeons deeply pondering,
The mighty sages saw its benefits,
Whereby unnumbered multitudes
Are brought with ease and to supreme joy”
Past Buddhas and bodhisattvas have thought deeply on the subject of mind and how it affects both the individual and the world around them. Bodhichitta has such profound effects, it can be seen to both enhance the individual practicing, as well as those around. Bodhichitta allows one to see and experience the world more clearly, thereby allowing compassionate thoughts to lead to compassionate communication, which is always helpful between people.
This also helps eliminate misunderstanding, inhibits venomous speech caused by fear or anger, and allows the softness of one’s heart to guide thought, speech and action. All of which helps strengthen bodhichitta within the person practicing, and helps the world around them by eliminating (or at least, softening) the unnerving energies of fear and anger which often plague our communication.
When we communicate without bodhichitta, often our hearts close down and harden. This is a protection mechanism trying to keep us safe from what is perceived to be potential emotional harm. But much like the stress response to non threatening modern day issues like being stuck in traffic, this response of closing the heart happens even when the situation in non threatening.
An example is when we discuss politics in America. Most of the time when we Americans discuss politics, it is either with someone who completely agrees with our point of view, or with someone who completely disagrees with our point of view.
In the former case, we are open and energized and compliment one another in ideas. In the latter case, however, we tend to close down, our hearts harden as we go to battle for what we believe to be the correct way of political thinking. Instead of listening to the other person’s point of view, we try to edge in our own point of view in order to dismiss theirs. We state statistics or examples to prove ourselves right, in an attempt to force them into the “reasonable” way of thinking – our own.
By practicing bodhichitta, we would be able to keep our opinions and ideas, but we could also keep our hearts open and see things from another perspective. We would be able to understand another person’s point of view, even while keeping our own thoughts and views on the matter.
Bodhichitta allows us to see the myriad human experiences and how they connect us all. It allows us to dance with these ideas and connections, rather than trudge through life with an emotional machete, hacking and slashing our way through the jungles of life.
*All quoted text is from The Way of the Bodhisattva by Shantideva from Shambala Classics
“6. Virtue, thus, is weak; and always
Evil is of great and overwhelming strength.
Except for perfect bodhichitta,
What other virtue is there that can lay it low?”
Compared to the myriad ways we have invented to distract ourselves from life, virtue seems weak, a tad bland compared to the technicolor fantasy realms in which we dream ourselves in books and film. And with the surgical precision of our mastermind marketing firms, there seems to be no end to all that we need. Carefulness, patience, simplicity, concentration- these things seem to contradict the ideas that we are taught to believe are normal by the media which surrounds us. With all the daily sources we have that teach us to ignore these virtues and the fewer and fewer sources to which we have access, which teach us these virtues, virtue itself seems to be becoming weaker and evil seems to indeed be growing stronger.
Enter bodhichitta, the “awakened mind” that is dedicated to helping everyone. Without this essential tool, our virtues take a back seat to temporary pleasure and every glossy-two-page-spread desire we come across. But once we open up to our essential awakened mind, once we allow it to have a voice within us, it seems to bolster our awareness of virtue, it allows us to fully realize, for instance, just how powerful our patience can be in quelling adversity. And working from a place where the intention is to help everyone allows us to drop our hang ups, our fears and our egos.
Bodhichitta permeates through all the virtues and binds them together into a complete and powerful whole. And by rooting our virtue in an awakened mind, we are simultaneously deepening it and widening it. In patience, for instance, without an awakened mind, we can practice a patience which can lead to a sort of just trudge through it sort of patience, as if life were something that we are just trying to get through, rather than fully experience. To people around a person with this frame of mind, the person may very well seem to be an extremely patient person. But inside, the aversion to life and the need for distraction grows exponentially.
Whereas once we are able to tap into bodhichitta, we can see that we don’t need to suffer through life, that it isn’t a contest of strength and will to get through to some unknown goal or prize. Rather we can find ways of living and doing that help us and help others. Seeing the full extent of our lives and the ripples that our actions send out in every direction from our center, provides a much more powerful sense of patience that could be had without it.
*All quoted text is from The Way of the Bodhisattva by Shantideva from Shambala Classics
“4. So hard to find the ease and wealth
Whereby the aims of beings may be gained.
If now I fail to turn it to my profit,
How could such a chance be mine again?”
It wasn’t easy in Shantideva’s day, in the eighth century, and often it isn’t easy in our own, to get to a place in one’s life where there is enough peace of mind and enough free time to begin a path of self discovery and training of the mind. We need to have at least enough money so as not to be homeless, hungry, or completely stressed about finances (or the lack thereof). And we need to have enough time for both sufficient rest as well as free time to devote to improving one’s inner self. If we find ourselves homeless, malnourished or hungry, penniless and in debt, completely worn out after our days of labor, or fall into illness or disease – we will not have the ‘ease’ and ‘wealth’ required for training the mind.
Although we now have so much more technology (often cheap and abundant technology), and can practically eliminate many of the threats of malnourishment and disease that existed in Shantideva’s day, we also seem to have constructed more barriers to mental well being than perhaps the ancients would have imagined. The staggering amount of debt in which many of us find ourselves, due to our education, our homes and our cars, brings about immense amounts of stress. Also, many of us are being prescribed more and more medicines to alleviate the symptoms of more and more ailments and diseases, most of which are caused by our fast paced and stressful modern lives. The medicines often have a number of side effects which make it more difficult for us to begin in our journey of training the mind. And add to that the never ending stream of wants which are broadcast into our homes by television, magazines and the internet, plus our parental ‘need’ to give our children every opportunity available to them- and our stress levels escalate exponentially.
So if we ARE lucky enough to find ourselves in a state of ‘ease and wealth’ in our lives, we simply cannot afford to waste this precious time. Because, as we know, wealth and health are constantly in flux. There are so many ways for us to become ill, penniless, or fall into any number of problematic life situations. So if we find ourselves in a good place and can begin our inner work, our spiritual work, we must begin immediately while conditions are favorable.
5.Just as on a dark night black with clouds,
The sudden lightning glares and all is clearly shown,
Likewise rarely, through the Buddhas’ power,
Various thoughts rise, brief and transient, in the world.
Like lightning which allows us to clearly see the landscape on even the darkest of nights, we sometimes find wisdom teachings which speak to us and allow us to clearly see our lives in a light not previously available. When this occurs, and we are able to translate simple words into deep insights and integrate those into our lives, precious and wonderful things begin to happen. We may find an ease to our life not previously experienced. We may begin to see the world more fully and more openly. And we may be able to feel compassion more deeply than we ever had before. These instances where we are able to feel and assimilate deep wisdom are incredibly rare, like seeing the landscape clearly on a darkened night with the help of lightning. So when we are given the opportunity to experience these moments, we simply cannot afford to dismiss them or push them back or attempt to ‘schedule time’ for them at some later, more ‘convenient’ date.
The present is the only time that exists, and it is more precious than any of us realize. We must begin our path now. We must begin to train our minds. We must begin to practice compassion and patience. We must begin now, for ourselves and for everyone else.
*All quoted text is from The Way of the Bodhisattva by Shantideva from Shambala Classics
it seems as though
I’m living under water,
deep and alone, surrounded
by the calm fluid, stillness
I can see your face in the
ripples on the surface
of the water,
so close,
but when I reach out I realize
it’s just a reflection of you
disappearing into a thousand
fluid fragments above me.
I can hear everyone
above the surface laughing,
tuned down an octave by the
pressure of the water,
and I can see their sneers
painted on the water above-
as I drift lower, lower,
sinking away from the light…
The Way of the Bodhisattva Chapter One: The Excellence of Bodhichitta
“Homage to all Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.
1. To those who go in bliss, the dharmakaya they possess, and all their heirs,
To all those worthy of respect, I reverently bow,
According to the scriptures, I shall now in brief describe,
The practice of the Bodhisattva discipline.”
Learning deeply, and integrating wisdom into one’s life and one’s being, generates a feeling of gratitude toward those who have offered their wisdom. Shantideva bows to all those who have come before and offered the wisdom they have uncovered to all those who were able to receive it.
“2. Here I shall say nothing that has not been said before,
And in the art of prosody I have no skill.
I therefore have no thought that this might be of benefit to others;
I wrote it only to habituate my mind.”
Here, Shantideva explains that in his mind, he is not offering a unique and deep wisdom teaching, but merely ideas that have been presented before by the masters, but he is offering these ideas in a way that will benefit himself in his attempt to integrate the ideas and allow them to permeate in his mind, to train his mind with these ideas. But with his commentary, we are able to take lofty ideas given to us by the previous masters, and distill them into quite useful and graspable ideas that we are able to integrate into our own studies and our own meditations. Not unlike writers who take the ideas of modern day physicists and restate them in such a way that the average enthusiast will understand. These writers are able to take ideas and concepts which are far removed from our day to day experience, and break them down and relate them to our own experience so that we are able to understand (if only in a rudimentary way) these concepts and give us the ability to integrate them into our day to day experiences. Without these mediators, such knowledge would remain in the confines of the very few who are able to understand a single subject in a very deep way, but through the use of very specific and uncommon language and concepts. Shantideva is one such mediator.
“3. My faith will thus be strengthened for a little while,
That I might grow accustomed to this virtuous way.
But others who now chance upon my words
May profit also, equal to myself in fortune.”
By repeating these wisdom teachings he has made for himself, he is able to strengthen the ideas in his own mind, thereby strengthening his constitution and his resolve to continue his practice. Also by repeating these teachings, he is teaching his mind that this is the normal routine, the normal way for it to see the world. We now know that in regards to how the brain works, when we repeat the same ideas regularly that we are really changing the way the brain functions and reacts. These ideas construct new neural networks which hard-wire new pathways in the brain- meaning they create new physical structures in the brain which allow the brain to more effectively assimilate and more efficiently recall and utilize the information in the future. He also tells us that we, hearing or reading his words, may also profit in these teachings.
This is also my reason for writing these posts. So that I too may strengthen my faith for a little while, that I too may grow accustomed to this virtuous path.
Next week I will delve into the next sections of this first chapter.
*All quoted text is from The Way of the Bodhisattva by Shantideva from Shambala Classics