The Trusting Spirit - Tamara Engle

The Trusting Spirit 

My days are short, and as I grow weaker, 

I experience so much gratitude for my meditation 

--- not only the joy and ease it's brought,

but the hard parts, 

for every bored and restless sitting 

and every fearful fantasy 

and every pain and ache I sat through 

and every itch I didn't scratch 

was training for kindness, a training for the muscle for bearing witness 

for the trusting spirit 

that carries me now as I face my death

-- Tamara Engle, member of New York Insight Meditation Society

All of me, all of time: Do Dishes, Rake Leaves

https://goo.gl/CYZy9w

Do Dishes, Rake Leaves

BY KAREN MAEZEN MILLER| SEPTEMBER 23, 2016

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Karen Maezen Miller on how the domestic practice of ancient Zen masters can lead us to intimate encounters with our own lives.

In the fall, the broad canopy of giant sycamores in my backyard turns faintly yellow and the leaves sail down. First by ones, and then by tons. A part of every autumn day finds me fuming at the sight of falling leaves. Then, I pick up a rake.

Tell me, while I’m sweeping leaves till kingdom come, is it getting in the way of my life? Is it interfering with my life? Keeping me from my life? Only my imaginary life, that life of what-ifs and how-comes: the life I’m dreaming of.

At the moment that I’m raking leaves, at the moment I’m doing anything, it is my life, it is all of time, and it is all of me.

In the spring, the garden bursts to life and once again I see what time it is. It is time to weed. When I look up across the endless stretch of the job before me, I surely want to quit. But if I manage to regain my focus on what’s at hand I realize it’s just one weed. There’s always just one weed to do next. I do it weed by weed, and the weeds always show me how. I never finish.

Looking for greater meaning in life, some people think that housework is beneath them. Cooking and cleaning are beneath them. I know that feeling well. Sometimes they seem so far beneath me that I can’t see the bottom. I can’t see the beginning or the end. Is there a point to doing the work that seems pointless? The work, with no visible end, no redeeming value, and no apparent urgency? Yes. It’s the wisdom of the ancient homemakers.

After Buddhism came to China, the Chan school replaced the tradition of itinerant alms-begging with communal living. It was practical, for one thing. And it was practice. Monastic training came to encompass all the work essential to everyday life—cleaning, cooking, and gardening—as well as meditation. For that reason we could well view the great Chinese masters as our progenitors in mindful homemaking, since many of their teachings point directly to the everyday chores we might rather high-mindedly neglect.

A monk asked Joshu, “All dharmas are reduced to oneness, but what is oneness reduced to?” Joshu said, “When I was in Seishu I made a hempen shirt. It weighed seven pounds.”

More than a thousand years have passed since Joshu gave that response, originating one of the many classic koans that recount his provocative teachings. To this day seekers are still struggling to find a way out of the shirt. What does it mean? What is he getting at? I don’t understand!

We don’t just struggle with a shirt in a Zen koan. We struggle with the shirts in our hampers. With the pants, the blouses, the sheets, and the underwear. Laundry presents a mountainous practice opportunity because it provokes a never-ending pile of egocentric resistance.

It’s not important to me. It’s tedious. I don’t like to do it!

The monk in this story is like the rest of us, seeking wisdom through intellectual inquiry.

If we’re not careful, this is how we approach mindfulness: as an idea, one we rather like, to elevate our lives with special contemplative consideration, a method for making smarter choices and thereby assuring better outcomes. The problem is that the life before us is the only life we have. The search for meaning robs our life of meaning, sending us back into our discursive minds while right in front of us the laundry piles up.

In his commentary on this koan, the late teacher and translator Katsuki Sekida rinsed Joshu’s shirt clear of obfuscation. “Joshu’s words remind us of the keen sensibilities of people who lived in the days when things were made by hand. The seven pounds of hemp was woven into cloth and cut and sewn into a shirt. When Joshu put on his hempen shirt, he experienced a sensation that was the direct recognition of the shirt for what it was.”

The shirt, you see, is just a shirt. Feel the fabric, the weave, and the weight of seven pounds in your hands. The laundry is just the laundry. Pull it out of the hamper, sort by color and fabric, read the care instructions, and get on it with it. Transcending obstacles and overcoming preferences, we have an intimate encounter with our lives every time we do the wash. It’s nothing out of the ordinary, but no one turns their nose up at a clean pair of socks.

“10 Tips for a Mindful Home,” by Karen Maezen Miller.

“With only a change in perspective, the most ordinary things take on inexpressible beauty. When we don’t know, we don’t judge. And when we don’t judge, we see things in a different light. That is the light of our awareness, unfiltered by intellectual understanding, rumination, or evaluation. When we cultivate nondistracted awareness as a formal practice, we call it meditation. When we cultivate it in our home life, we call it the laundry, the kitchen, or the yard—all the places and the ways to live mindfully by attending without distraction to whatever appears before us. But it’s hard for us to believe that attention is all there is to it, and so we complicate things with our judgment—debasing the ordinary as insignificant and idealizing the spiritual as unattainable—never seeing that the two are one.

A monk said to Joshu, “I have just entered the monastery. Please teach me.” “Have you eaten your rice porridge?” asked Joshu. “Yes, I have,” replied the monk. “Then you had better wash your bowl,” said Joshu.

This famous koan is easy to view as a metaphor. Empty your mind and get rid of your notions of spiritual attainment. But suppose you don’t view the bowl as a metaphor? That might change the way you look at the dishes in your kitchen sink and instruct you just as thoroughly.

The kitchen is not only the heart of a home, it can also be the heart of a mindfulness practice. In cooking and cleaning, we move beyond ourselves and into compassionate care of everything and everyone around us.

Eating is our sole essential consumption and cooking is our one common charity, so you’d think its purpose would be obvious. Yet with a critical eye to the value of time and what we judge to be our higher talents, meal preparation may seldom seem worth it. Cooking for two? Not worth it. Filling the fridge? Not worth it. Sitting to dine? Not worth it. Cleaning up after? Not worth it.

Nothing is worth the measure we give it, because worth doesn’t really exist. It is a figment of our judging minds, an imaginary yardstick to measure the imaginary value of imaginary distinctions, and one more way we withhold ourselves from the whole enchilada of life that lies before us.

If nothing is worth it, why cook? Why shop and chop, boil and toil and clean up after? To engage yourself in the marvel of your own being. To see the priceless in the worthless. To find complete fulfillment in being unfilled. And to eat something other than your own inflated self- importance. That’s what we empty when we empty the bowl, and a busy kitchen gives us the chance to empty ourselves many times a day.

A monk asked Joshu, “What is the meaning of Bodhidharma’s coming to China?” Joshu said, “The oak tree in the garden.” Enough about laundry and dishes, you might be thinking, what about the deep spiritual questions? Why do the great mystics strive so diligently for enlightenment if it has no more depth than what’s found in ordinary housework?

See beyond your house, Joshu answers, beyond the delusion of a separate self trapped by the false perception of what is inside and what is outside. This is true mindfulness: not the narrow boundaries of our conceptual abode, but the phenomenal world of the awakened mind. Joshu tells us to open our eyes and awaken in our own backyard.

Once again, Sekida prunes the intellectual interpretation that can obscure our clear sight. “There were many giant oaks in the garden of Joshu’s temple. We can well imagine that Joshu himself was personally familiar with every tree, stone, flower, weed, and clump of moss—as intimately acquainted as if they were his own relatives.”

Where is the place you know as well as your own family? Indeed, that is as proximate as yourself? It is the place where you are at ease with a full load, fulfilled by an empty sink, telling time by the leaves and weeds: making yourself mindfully at home in the home you never leave.

Staying with Boredom | Tricycle

http://www.tricycle.com/brief-teachings/staying-boredom

Staying with Boredom

How unsatisfactory desire can feel can be gauged by considering our more obviously neurotic cravings, those emerging out of a dull feeling of frustration, boredom, and emptiness. We look for something pleasurable in order to fill that void and relieve the boredom, at least partially and temporarily. You eat a chocolate or drink a cup of tea or put on a piece of music not so much for the positive enjoyment of such things but more because you don't know what else to do. It is these kinds of craving that should concern us most, more than those that arise out of a strong, healthy appetite. And the way to deal with them is to regard the boredom itself as a positive opportunity. It is like having to deal with fear, anger, or indeed craving, or any other negative mental state. It is an opportunity to experience the energy that is usually drained away by distractions. When you are really bored, the best thing you can do is sit down and let yourself experience the boredom more fully. It may not be a deep or satisfying state, but at least you are not indulging in the things with which you usually cover up this kind of experience. Your real state of mind is more nakedly exposed, because for the time being there are no distractions. If you can stay with the experience of boredom, you can try to feel your way through into something deeper, truer, and more spontaneous within yourself.
This is likely to be more helpful than trying to force a more positive state into being or rushing to alleviate the boredom with a distraction. After a while you should find that the boredom passes. You will start to feel more positive simply by virtue of experiencing yourself more truly. And feeling more positive, you will probably want to get on with actually doing something positive. But if the minute you start feeling bored you turn on the radio or pick up the newspaper or ring somebody up, then you've lost the opportunity that the boredom has presented you.
From Living Wisely: Further Advice from Nagarjuna's Precious Garland by Sangharakshita © 2013. Reprinted with permission of Windhorse Publications.

Sent from my iPod

On Boredom

Nov. 1, 2006 On Boredom

I’m always interested in states of mind about which Buddhism either seems to ignore or has nothing much to say. Perhaps the best example of this is “fear,” a term that is absent from all the long lists of mental factors found in the Abhidhamma. This is odd, given that it is such a common element of human experience and is mentioned repeatedly by the Buddha in the suttas. But where is there an in-depth Buddhist analysis or theory of fear? I have yet to find one.

The same is true for “boredom,” another ubiquitous mental state that does not seem to be mentioned in the texts. It is sometimes said that boredom is a “modern” phenomena, presumably on the grounds that people tied to daily agricultural toil and constant material insecurity don’t have the time to get bored. I don’t buy that at all. What about all those Buddhist monks and nuns over the past two and a half thousand years, who neither worked nor were materially insecure, and who spent much of their time just watching their breath? Are we to believe that boredom was never an issue in such a context?

My sense is that “boredom” is “moha,” in Pali, usually translated as “delusion” or “stupidity.” It is one of the three root poisons of the mind, the other two of the triad being greed (lobha) and hatred (dosa).

In classical Buddhist theory, greed is the habitual response to pleasure, while hatred is the habitual response to pain. Both are forms of craving (tanha): greed being the craving to have what we want, hatred the craving to get rid of what we don’t want. Craving itself is rooted in ignorance (avijja), i.e. our primary confusion around who we are and what the world is. Mindful awareness (sati-sampajanna) is that which enables us to see these processes of reactivity at work so as not to be conditioned by them in our thoughts, words and deeds.

Accounts such as this tend to reduce our relation to the world to either one of wanting something or of not wanting something. Typically, moha, the third “poison,” is not mentioned. But just as greed is our reaction to pleasure and hatred our reaction to pain, moha is understood as our reaction to neither-pleasure-nor-pain. It is what we experience when nothing triggers our appetites or fears. To translate this as “delusion” or “stupidity” has never struck me as particularly helpful. For one thing, it immediately blurs the distinction between moha and ignorance (avijja).

But if we think of moha as boredom, it makes far more sense psychologically: for this is how we commonly react when nothing much is happening. We get bored, listless, sunk in a kind of mental fog. In terms of the five hindrances, it is what gives rise to lethargy and restlessness. The way we deal with this in meditation is to cultivate interest in what appears to be without interest. Rather than settling in to the mental fog (and more often than not confusing such dullness with equanimity), we probe the blandness of the experience with clarity and attention until it starts revealing itself as shifting, changing, unreliable, not self, contingent and very weird indeed.

-- Posted Nov. 1, 2006

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Thank you, Stephen Batchelor, for addressing this important issue for many of those who are sometimes sitting under the dome of boredom. Boredom attacks us heavily when we are thrown back to ourselves, for instance when being alone. Not paying attention will negatively shape our experiences. In the mood of boredom we are looking for compensation as one strategy instead of being mindful as the better strategy. Compensation has different forms: eating, watching TV, pondering useless ideas, self-pity etc. All these forms will poison us undercover. They stand for the potential of becoming greedy or angry. Thus, they can be considered as hidden patterns of our habitual compensation behaviour masked by the third poison 'delusion'. By ignoring boredom we fail to see what we should see in those moments: a proceeding cultivation of mindful awareness. Most of the times we find it easier and safer to sit in the fog than moving two mindful steps out of the fog. About the origin of low visibility we should obtain final and pacified clarity.

Posted by: JGrosse-Puppendahl | Nov. 1, 2006

Thank you for this insight. I am a barber and next time I am in-between haircuts and my mind drifts toward boredom, instead of reaching for chocolate covered almonds, I will simply observe my thoughts and be mindful of my actions. This blog has been helpful. Thanks.

Posted by: DFriday | Nov. 2, 2006

Right on, Stephen. When teaching I often refer to the Three Poisons, I point out these three ways of reacting: Clinging or grasping after the pleasant; pushing away or 'annihilating' the unpleasant; and tuning out, falling asleep, day-dreaming or becoming bored in the face of the 'neutral.'

And I thank my very first meditation teacher who told me that if I ever found myself bored, it is a sign that I am not paying attention. So the very presence of boredom becomes the 'bell of mindfulness' helping me to re-energize my inquiry.

Thanks for this posting!

Posted by: FBoccio | Nov. 3, 2006

Heh heh. Buddhism: a sophisticated art of living concerned with the eating or not eating of chocolate... A local newspaper featured a humorous article about how to aquire non-Western friends in order to go with them to a local World Music Festival: "To avoid religious debate, say that you're a Buddhist. Nobody knows what the Buddhists are up to, hardly the Buddhists themselves"...

Posted by: IThab | Nov. 6, 2006

One thing that troubles me in the spiritual teaching is when the “wrong” teacher turns a state of mind or the mind itself (himself) into a diabolic manifestation. That is what my first meditation teacher did. He told us to be deaf to our thoughts, to our mind. Happily, Stephen, you’re not doing this. Baudelaire, the french poet, did it: he said that boredom is the worse of all the vices. No less. On the other hand the modern pedagogy considers that some boredom is good for a kid, it could helps him to be creative; I verified it with my kids: with two construction toys they made a third one. So boredom seems to be a generic word. My boredom is when the life has no taste, the long french dinners for example. Dharma helps me to find the taste of what I live, especially since I learnt the vipassana meditation, since I still learn it everyday; learning clear the mental fog.

Posted by: lmiguel | Nov. 8, 2006

I appreciate your thoughts on boredom and comments made here have been helpful in my meditation.

I disagree, however, that boredom is “neither pleasant nor unpleasant.” The French term for boredom, ennui, clearly reflects its Latin roots: in + odio, in hatred. Boredom is unpleasant. That’s why it is easy to recognize.

Delusion, on the other hand, dupes us, tricks us, perverts perception. “Enraptured with greed, enraged by hate, blinded by delusion…man aims at his own ruin…” [Anguttara Nikaya 3.56]

The subject is suffering. Buddha described three kinds. Suffering due to pain which we hate. Suffering due to change which ends pleasure and makes us greedy for more. Suffering due to conditioned phenomena, a medium so pervasive as to be imperceptible. This is delusion. Unseen, delusion out-wits us constantly – our own pride, doubts, views.

The power of delusion requires a strong, distasteful translation like hoodwinked, bamboozled, double-crossed

Posted by: DFomby | Nov. 9, 2006

Stephen wrote: « My sense is that “boredom” is “moha,” in Pali…moha is understood as our reaction to neither-pleasure-nor-pain.”

DFomby wrote: “I disagree, however, that boredom is “neither pleasant nor unpleasant.”

A reaction to something is sometimes different than the thing itself.

In french “ennui” has three principal meanings: “tourment” (torment), “lassitude” (weariness) or “mélancolie” (melancholy). “Ennuyer” (to bother) is different than “s’ennuyer” (to be bored). Hatred can comes from boredom, it’s a current problem in the french suburbs.

I’m not trying to polemize, just to specify; words are often matter of misunderstanding. The intention is for us all to not suffer from boredom or anything else.

Posted by: lmiguel | Nov. 10, 2006

Comments on boredom in Spanish language. Aburrirse is to be bored. I do it to myself: "me aburro". I am bored: "Estoy aburrido". I wonder if aburrirse has any connection with the word donkey (burro). Is it "donkeylike" to be bored? John Saunders

Posted by: JSaunders | Mar. 12, 2007