In my last piece I explained the unconscious or storehouse consciousness. In this piece I will discuss two complementary practices that free us from the contamination of negative or unwholesome seeds stored within this storehouse. The first is altering the seeds we place in there through our intentions and actions. The second is practicing meditation so can stop producing seeds and empty out those that we are storing. As we let go of projections from the past we store within our unconscious, we dip into a stillness which is always at the center of our being.
Yogacara teachers refer to paramita practice as a wonderful way to replace unwholesome seeds with wholesome ones. The six core paramitas are patience, generosity, morality, effort, meditation, and wisdom which I have discussed in other pieces, so I will only give a single example of how this works. Let’s say that the current “shelter in place” limitations due to the coronavirus are making you anxiously impatient. Maybe you obsessively use the media to try to figure out when the pandemic might subside, and your life might get back to normal. You might practice the paramita of patience by repeating a phrase to yourself whenever you notice your agitation about this is rearing its head. You could use my teacher, Suzuki Roshi’s phrase things as it is,based on the teaching of radically accepting what life hands us. If you do this every time your agitation arises, you are planting new, positive seeds in your own storehouse. Or you can find a different word or phrase which resonates with you. We need positive seeds to enhance and sustain our meditation practice. The second practice yogacara teachers recommend is meditation, which is also the 5th paramita. Through meditation it is possible to still the rushing waterfall of experience (perfume, seed, experience, perfume, seed, etc.) which I discussed in my last piece. Luckily, the yogacara unconscious both stores memories and is the seat of our quiescent Buddha Nature, unchanging, unborn and fundamentally real. Extended meditation periods or retreats are times when we have the best opportunity to notice our seeds without judging them an, as a result, they shrivel up. When ego (mana in Sanskrit), calms down in the stillness of our meditation, the storehouse empties out and functions as a mirror, reflecting all life within it. As the Chinese Zen teacher Shen Hui said in the 8th century, “Those who see into the storehouse have their senses cleansed of defilements, and open to Buddha-wisdom.” To settle into this mirror mind we need to recognize bad seeds as they appear in our meditation. If we do this without watering them, they dry up on their own. Here’s an example: Let’s say a memory of the delightful taste of some beverage like coffee comes up during my meditation, followed by a craving to have a cup. All I need to do is recognize the craving; fully accept it; allowing the seed to shrivel and die as I keep coming back to my breath and my other sensations. In meditation retreats you may notice forgotten scenes from childhood and jumbled scenes of unknown people arising or possibly be disconcerted by feelings of rage or grief. As you bring any of these negative seeds into full consciousness, opening to them without entertaining them, they begin to vanish. These two yogacara practices, adding good seeds into our storehouse and releasing our attachment to all of our seeds, do not transform us overnight. Changing ingrained patterns takes similar dedication and proactivity to walking after surgery. But sooner or later each of us can tap into Shen Hui’s mirror mind and begin to enjoy our lives right in the middle of difficult times like the one we are currently having. We have a tragic human history. Generation after generation, we have been caught by the limitations of our conscious mind and unaware of how negative projections from the past influence our behavior. If we add some good seeds into our storehouse and meditate with consistency and determination, our projections dissipate. The process of opening up to them and not activating them is very simple. The more we do this, the greater possibility there will experience “mirror mind,” our own still nature, which reflects all life within it. In my next couple pieces, I am going to suggest how Buddhist yogacara teaching helps us work with experiences which we are not generally conscious of. I think this teaching is particularly relevant, as fears which seem uncontrollable can unexpectedly arise during these difficult times.
In yogacara teaching, there are several levels of consciousness. The 8th (deepest) level, the storehouse-consciousness, is very similar to the western unconscious. It is a subjective phenomenon, a repository for all our memories, and it colors everything we do. If ten people look at a complex rock formation, one may see a baby’s face on it, another an animal, another something else entirely. The 7th level (the level just above the storehouse), referred to as manas, is what we call ego in the west. It is the seat of our, “This is me. This is mine. This is not mine”orientation. Manas/ego, generally keeps a tight grip on the storehouse. Its primary function is to store seeds (emotional memories from the past). Seeds are of two kinds; positive and negative. And movement between ego and the storehouse is a three-part process: First, I have a conscious experience, second, that experience emanates a perfume, third that perfume coagulates in our unconscious into a seed- then I have another experience which activates another seed, which leaves a further residue which creates yet another seed- on and on and on. This continual movement from experience to stored memory to projection to experience creates a rushing waterfall of experience, residue, seed, experience, residue, seed, so we are continually captured and propelled forward by our projections from the past. There was a woman in the office I used to work in who activated all kinds of negative reactions from me… and sometimes she did nothing at all but walk past my desk. As I practiced paying attention to why my seeds were getting so activated, I realized that her actions were igniting memories I had not been conscious of about my own mother. The pandemic that we are currently in is very likely to activate negative seeds in all of us. As a friend told me about his experience being hospitalized with the virus for three days in March, (and his wife added that she didn’t know if he was going to live because he had so much difficulty breathing), I started getting afraid myself, activating some of my negative seeds. I remembered being by another friend’s bed more than 30 years ago as he was gasping for breath just before he died of pneumonia. Negative seeds serve an important function, since they warn us about potential danger. But if this warning light is on too much of the time, we can lose our balance and can no longer enjoy our moments. Luckily, the seeds we produce are not all negative. Positive or wholesome seeds both create and are a result of positive experiences. In my next piece I will discuss two complementary practices based on yogacara teaching: Altering the seeds we plant through our intentions and actions; Practicing meditation so can see through ego, and dip into our deep, quiescent nature, released from the tumult of the rushing waterfall. Life hurts all of us and we all carry wounds from our childhood. The question is how we deal with them. Openness and non-judgmental attentiveness to these wounds can lead to strength and wholeness rather than ongoing trauma regardless of how severe the wound was. Our wounds are general lodged in the body, so if you spend time in your meditation staying with your sensations, you may make contact with feelings that emerge. It is your actual experience in the moment, not your old stories or your thoughts about how your life was supposed to be, that’s most important.
Shame or the fear that goes with it doesn’t have to be a problem. It only plagues us if we repress it, try to wish it away, or let it hold us back from doing what we want to do. When we start to feel depleted, inferior, not good enough, or defective, shame may be kicking in. And we can all learn to recognize its energy. Here’s a meditation you might try: 1. Name an experience you had not too long ago of shame. During your meditation tune into it. See if you can identify the external trigger and what you said to yourself right before feeling the shame (e.g., “I never get it right, no one will ever love me because I’m too old,” etc.). 2. Realize that you are not the feeling. You are much bigger than any single feeling. 3. Be curious. Where is it coming from? A particular memory or series of memories? Are there accompanying bodily sensations and thoughts or images? 4. Do you have an ideal or expectation you’ve created that causes the shame (e.g., “I should be perfect at work or exercise, I shouldn’t have this fear, this shame”). Are you clinging to an ideal that there will be no uncertainty, only stability and control, and shame comes up when the ideal isn’t met? 5. Notice how the word “should” maximizes your fear or shame. Who would you be without that ideal? Imagine yourself trusting in uncertainty, being open to whatever comes. 6. Who are you when you are not hooked by that fear or shame? Can you move around with a sense of trust in yourself and in the world? What you might do to experiment with being more trusting? You might try experimenting as my therapist friend recently did. She felt ashamed when she found out that a statement she made to her client led the client to consider quitting therapy. When the client shared this with her, my friend made a simple apology and owned up to her own feeling of shame. It helped the client a lot to see that even her own therapist experienced shame. When you’re feeling ashamed you might notice one of two things that commonly occur: 1.) You want to hide, to withdraw from the human closeness we all want and need; 2.) You let the shame propel you to give into the other person’s demands. When I work with folks at Zen Center, I explain to them that disengagement/withdrawing or enmeshment/going along to get along are generally mirror images of each other. Then I help them consider how they might practice the middle way of engagement. Often what we take personally is really quite impersonal. What was done to you or for you arose out of a complex series of causes and conditions over which you had little or no control. Besides, in most cases you were just a kid! Our wounds do not disappear, but they stop hooking our mind and imprisoning our heart thru the practicing self-awareness and self-compassion. As Zorba the Greek said, “To live is to roll up your sleeves and embrace trouble.” This is my first of two pieces on healing shame through compassion and bare awareness.
None of us have had lives that are free from suffering. As Zorba the Greek said, “Trouble? Life is trouble. Only death is nice.” To live is to roll up your sleeves and embrace trouble. So how can we open our hearts to include whatever is before us? Or better yet, how can we transform the world as we transform ourselves? To do this we need to directly face the truth of Jung’s statement, “Perhaps I myself am the enemy who must be loved.” When we begin to accept our lives as they are unfolding, we may begin to see a problem as an opportunity. But first we have to open up to it and face it without a trace of judgment. I wonder if the corona virus gives us just this opportunity! Many of our “troubles” are due to projections from incidents in the past when we felt ashamed. Maybe you didn’t know the answers when called upon in class or maybe the girl or boy you were attracted to rejected you. Maybe you were teased or bullied for your size, weight, or way of dressing or maybe, like me, you were the last one chosen to be on a team. If we feel ashamed of something as adults, usually a childhood memory has evoked this, whether we are conscious of this or not. We may be catapulted right back to the rawness we felt then. We may feel off balance, unworthy, or simply want to hide, just as we did then. And this may include bodily discomfort or pain. Shame damages a person’s image of themselves in ways that no other emotion can, causing you to feel flawed, inferior, worthless, even unlovable. Maybe you were caught cheating on a test and the teacher called you out in front of the class as happened to me in the eighth grade, or your coach called you a screw-up in front of the whole team, or you wet your pants at a sleep over at a friend’s. In each of these examples, you may have felt helpless and you got down on yourself because you “should have,” in the last case, been able to hold your urine. Shame is a response to helplessness, and the indignity suffered. We generally believe that we have control over what happens to us. But this is often not the case, especially for kids. We believed when we were at that sleepover that “should have” been able to hold our urine and we feel ashamed that we didn’t. Often, we build up a wall of shame denial. This wall can include refusing to acknowledge our own mistakes, being hypercritical of others, or dumping on others in some other way. The more we think that we need to be perfect, the more we tend to practice shame denial. The question then is how can we use meditation practice to heal shame? The best way to do this is by practicing self-compassion. We know how much the kindness, support, and encouragement of others helps us whether we are five years old or fifty years old. But how about giving that same encouragement and kindness to our very own selves? And how about doing this as part of our daily meditation? In my second book I talk about neural plasticity- the brain’s capacity to grow new neurons and make new synaptic connections. This means that it’s possible to pair the old shame memory with new experiences of self-empathy and self-compassion. When we do this, we are re-pairing! It might be good to first notice the types of things you criticize yourself for: are they related to your body or appearance, your job, your friendships, or something else? How do you intensify this criticism? Maybe by magnifying your mistake, generalizing beyond it to include lots of other things you have done wrong, by repeatedly “should-ing” yourself, or by “all or never” thinking, or maybe a combination of all of these. What kind of language do you use when you put yourself down? You can change your language to be more supportive and kinder by including self-compassion in your daily meditation practice. I have worked with many people to find compassionate language they might use with their favorite pet or best friend, which they then practice applying to themselves. You might try the following self-compassion meditation, (which I got from another meditation teacher). 1. Bring to mind a shaming experience from childhood 2. What do you wish someone had said to you right after that experience? What would have been the most helpful and healing for you to hear at that time? 3. Imagine that someone you care very much about, someone you admire, is saying those helpful and healing words to you now. Hear those words in your ears. Take those words into your heart. Notice how those words make you feel. 4. Repeat those words to yourself. Take a deep breath and really take in those words. How does hearing yourself say those words make you feel? What matters is that you let the words in now. It’s good to do this practice during your daily meditation as well as other times when you are getting down on yourself. Notice when you begin berating yourself for something you have done and take a few minutes to go through the routine above. By practicing this routine over and over again, your critical voice begins to be supplanted by a loving, accepting one. Over the course of my own practice, I have been able to soften my tyrannical, (which is quite profane) by repeating to myself, “nice boy, Tim” when I am getting down on myself. If you do this patiently and persistently using your own words, you may find yourself being as accepting of your own missteps as you would for your best friend or special animal. When we first read or hear about living an enlightened life- acting from the same still center that Buddha did- it may seem like an impossible dream. But without dreams where would we be? By keeping this impossible dream alive even in the midst of the radical uncertainty that has been created by our current pandemic, we have a chance to tap into the joy emanating from our timeless center by simply practicing bringing our attention to it.
If someone tells you that your dream (whatever it is) is deluded, is that a criticism that should bother you? A phrase used in Buddhist teaching is, “flowers blooming in the sky.” This refers to how our minds get clouded by all types of delusions like a person with cataracts. Many people are experiencing more cloudedness/mind fog now due to the corona virus. In early Buddhism the goal of meditation practice was the removal of these cataracts so we might see clearly without mind fog. But Dogen turns this teaching upside down when he suggests that genuine enlightenment means radically accepting that we are all dim-sighted people (who also experience mind fog). Even a dim vision can be very motivating. And our imperfections, including additional mind fog evoked by this pandemic, may help us in our spiritual practice. My hearing impediment has increased significantly in the last 20 years, but this isn’t completely bad. I have to pay attention carefully when someone is talking as well as watch them carefully- no more spacing out if I want to be connected to someone who is sharing with me. Opening up to and acknowledging both our mind fog and our flaws may help us connect to others I ways we never thought possible. “There is the principle of the Way that we must make one mistake after another,” says Dogen. Genuine enlightenment, then, makes room for our delusions (including our mind fog) as it sheds light on them. If we are “enlightened” without awareness of our delusion, there’s a good chance that we will overlook our actions’ effects on others. The most important component of practice-enlightenment is bringing our delusions into awareness. I would like to suggest four ways in which we can enlighten our delusions: First, when you have a hazy vision of something you want to change, create, or transform, don’t dismiss it. Instead, work with it, play with it, and even fumble around with it. You may be surprised at what clarity comes out of this process. Second, embrace not knowing completely what the vision is or how to implement it regardless of how much mind fog you have. Dogen calls this “going beyond Buddha.” Third, be willing to take risks in reaching for something you deeply care about. Sure, you will fail a good deal of the time, but if you keep at it, you will be surprised at how often you succeed. When I became guiding teacher at Zen Center in 2002, I had a dim vision of how to make some of our activities less formal and friendlier for Americans, while continuing the tradition of offering priests’ training two a few individuals. Many people left during my first couple of years, but I stayed with my dim vision. And it worked! This brings me to the fourth one; don’t give up on whatever aspiration or vision you have. Trust it regardless of how crazy it is or how difficult our current environment is for you. If you keep your heart and mind open, you’ll learn to live your enlightenment in your own idiosyncratic way. Finally, this time of “sheltering inside” we might view as an extended retreat, offering us ample time to slow down our activities and our mind so we can discover how to take steps to realize our deepest aspirations as our mind becomes unburdened by thought even though the fog doesn’t entirely recede. Practice-enlightenment is what keeps the dharma alive! |
AuthorTim Burkett, Guiding Teacher Archives
April 2022
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