Going forward, it’s my intention to post a bit more often, every two weeks or so. I hope this is a welcome increase!
In my book Age of Anxiety I have one chapter on sex and one on money. I put these in because sex and money are major sources of anxiety in our culture. Research on couples’ therapy suggests that they are also leading causes of difficulty in sustaining intimacy. In this piece I will discuss the body in Buddhist teaching and practice and in my next piece I will focus specifically on Sex and Money. Much of early Indian Buddhist teaching focused on the needto move toward enlightenment, the unconditioned, by letting go of the bonds of the conditioned. The focus in cemetery meditations in which monks sat in the charnel grounds was to was to let go of all attachment to the body, viewing it as a container of filth—-flesh, bones,mucus, and puss, all of which needed to be transcended if a practitioner is to experience the unconditioned. In the Zen tradition, which grows out of Mahayana rejection of this dualism in early Buddhism, the body is of great importance and value. Since the beginning of Zen in China, there’s been an emphasis on getting out of your head and realizing that your own body, with all of its limitations, is the very body of Buddha. Several prominent Zen teachers from those early times emphasize that your very own body, needs to be cared for and valued, since it is the body of Buddha. In American culture, it was Walt Whitman who first wrote about the sacredness of the body in defiance of our Puritan forefathers’ rejection of it. “I Sing the Body Electric” shocked straight-laced New Englanders, who had a general belief that the body was animal and indulgence of it, including sexual intercourse, was an example of our sinful and fallen state. Our major task was to conquer and subdue these animalistic tendencies(as the early Buddhist Arhats had supposedly done). Here’s an excerpt from Leaves of Grass published in 1855: The man’s body is sacred and the woman’s body is sacred, No matter who it is, it is sacred-- is it the meanest one in the laborers’ gang? Is it one of the dull-faced immigrants just landed on the wharf? Each belongs here or anywhere just as much as the well-off, just as much as you, Each has his or her place in the procession [of the universe]. Whitman and a group of his fellow New Englanders, influenced somewhat by eastern non-dualistic spirituality, relished the rich experience of the body—extolling the virtues of taste, touch, sight, smell. They developed a small but impactful counter-culture. Fast forward a little over a century and we see the seeds of Zen being planted by Japanese Zen masters in the 1960s as they interact with members of a burgeoning American counter-culture, a counter-culture which developed out of post World War II repression. If you looked on my own bookshelf in the early 1970s you would have seen The Joy of Sex right next to The Heart Sutra. Our counter-culture was simpatico with Zen in many different ways including the emphasis on being fully engaged in the moment. We loved the adage coined by Fritz Perls, “lose your mind and come to your senses.” This makes sense. We connect with one another through our physical beings, whether it be through a hug, a conversation, cooking a meal, making love. In Zen, instead of viewing the body as a vile puss-filled container of poisons, we value it as our Dharma Container, complex and rich, in its capability to distinguish thousands of sounds, tastes, and scents. Here’s Whitman again: The curious sympathy one feels when feeling with the hand the naked meat of the body, The beauty of the waist, and thence of the hips, and thence downward toward the knees, The exquisite realization of health; O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul, O I say now these are the soul! What great Zen! The body is the soul and the soul the body for Whitman just as the conditioned is the unconditioned for the great Zen masters. Is it possible to relish our bodies, just as they are, rather than wishing that they were different? After all, this very body is the body of Buddha, not some other body that is thinner or taller, with more muscles or curves. If we appreciate Western Art history we see how different types of body shapes for both men and women were valued and appreciated over the centuries. Can we appreciate the full spectrum of body build, sexual orientation, and gender identity in the same way? You might take a minute to ask yourself: what is it about your own body that you do not easily accept? How might you shift your framing of your reality to be more fully appreciative of your amazing body? So often we think of our body as a possession that we can treat in any way. Last spring I broke a tendon in my foot and had to spend more than two months on crutches with a medically fit boot that went well above my ankle. I referred to this as my“practice partner”—if I took care of it, it would take care of me and it did. Since getting out of the cast/book I have been sensitive to and appreciative of my body and its working parts in away I never was before. Here’s Whitman again: I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough, To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough, To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough, To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round his or her neck for a moment, what is this then? I do not ask any more delight, I / swim in it as in a sea. There is something in staying close to men and women and looking on them, and in the contact and odor of them, that pleases the soul well, All things please the soul, but these please the soul well. In Zen Buddhist practice, we put primary focus on grounding and aligning the body both on and off our cushions. If we are continually slumping, can we gently bring ourselves to an erect posture, noticing how our body has been carrying the weight of some dissatisfaction? If we see this dissatisfaction in an attentive, non-judgmental way, our slumping usually corrects itself. Can we be aware of each emotion or sensation, accepting them, rather than imposing old patterns that create stiffness and rigidity? In my next post I will discuss how we can respect and love for our own bodies and those we are in intimate relationships with can enhance sexual expression and caring. Some of us may still be reeling from the divisive rancor of the Kavanaugh hearings. Both my side (the good guys) and their side (the bad guys) are more against each other than ever. Is there any way we can change this dynamic? Here’s a quote from Mother Teresa:
“I was once asked why I don’t participate in anti-war demonstrations. I said that I will never do that. But as soon as you have a pro-peace rally, I’ll be there.” When we’re against something we get fired up, and that can be healthy. The anger from my own brother’s suicide in a locked ward propelled me to create humane alternatives to locking folks up when they are struggling with severe mental health issues. On the other hand, staying with our anger can be unhealthy and ineffective. In coming posts I’ll discuss four limitations of “being against.” The first limitation of “being against” is that the path forward is confusing and vague. I remember having a geology teacher in school who was on my case. I was afraid to run into him in the halls, afraid to talk in class. This sapped my energy and will power. But what if I had thought about it differently and focused on what I really wanted to learn about geology, what interested me, and how I could work on that? If something happens that you don’t want, you may not be able to resolve the entire issue, but there are positive actions you could contribute. The Kavanaugh hearings seem to be motivating many people to support women who are running for office. The second limitation of “being against” is that it’s not sustainable. If you’re just moving away from the pain of what you don’t want, you’ll waver when the pain waivers or you’ll burn out and give up. But if you focus on what you care about and how much you want to change things to be better, your motivation may maintain a steadiness. The third limitation of “being against” is that it doesn’t inform your unconscious mind, which communicates through images, not words. It has trouble processing the negative, “I don’t want to fail in geology,” but creates the image of “fail.” If you haven’t given your unconscious a clear picture of what you want, it has to figure out what “not fail” might look like. But the more you think about and talk about failing, the more you keep “fail” alive. Every couple of years for the last 16 years I have initiated people at Zen Center into our tradition, which includes giving them Buddhist names. Early on I gave someone a name, which in English meant, “freedom from fear.” Unfortunately, for the next year or two, this person focused on his fear in a more unhealthy manner than before I gave him that name. I learned something important from that. The next time I gave someone a name who had major fear issues, I gave her a name meaning, “great courage” Anyway you can get your unconscious on board will help you. Let’s say you are scared about something. How about allowing yourself to relax in your meditation, relax into your “don’t know mind” and let your unconscious generate ideas? You might say to yourself, “I don’t know how to create what I want. But if I did, what might that be? Where could I start?” A fourth limitation of “being against” is that it’s tough on the body. When we are focused on what we hate, fear, or what makes us angry or stressed, we may have discomfort in our neck or shoulder, our jaws may clench, our heart may pound. This is all to prepare us for “flight or fight.” And if we focus on what we don’t want constantly our stress manifests itself as chronic anxiety or depression. A few weeks ago several people at our Zen center participated in the program, “10 days free from violence.” Folks felt good about the talks and other activities that were offered during this time period. But I bet they even would have felt better if it had been titled “10 days of cultivating peace.” Here are a couple of examples contrasting the power of being for rather and the power of being against from my own life. In 1967, when the Vietnam War was raging, Hubert Humphrey (who many of us considered L.B. Johnson’s lap dog for his promotion of the war) came to speak at Stanford, where I was going to school. I got angrier and angrier as he defended the war, so angry that after his speech was over I found myself in a group who was chasing him after he left the building. We didn’t get far because of the phalanx of secret service guards who were protecting him, but I was left unnerved and deflated by my experience. I was also a little embarrassed by how rapidly I had lost it, even though I had been meditating daily for about three years. The second example is from an anti-Iraq war march that I went on in St. Paul in 2008. I had been teaching a class at Zen center on the Paramitas (referred to as the Perfections or the “gone beyonds”) of one-sided thinking including “being against.” During the first part of the March from time to time I repeated the Paramita of equanimity, saying quietly to myself “deep peace” on my in-breaths and out-breaths. But then suddenly a phalanx of police dressed in military armor appeared and began to approach us. “Deep peace” didn’t work for me any more, so I switched to loving kindness, but it didn’t work either as I looked at these nameless robots rapidly approaching. Then I switched to the Paramita of generosity. I imagined that the police approaching me were as frightened as I was, that like me they had parents with children (my son was with me on the march) who they wanted to protect. And it worked. Soon I felt better, was able to return to “deep peace” and the line of police gradually shifted direction so it was no longer coming toward us. “Being for” takes practice and I practiced it a lot in the years between these two events. You might like to practice this yourself. First, take a few deep breaths. Then let an issue come into your mind that frightens you or makes you anxious. Spend a few moments thinking about everything that is wrong and horrible about that issue. Now scan your body: How does it feel as you focus on what is wrong or horrible? When you have completed this scan, take two or three more deep breaths. Now think about what you would like instead. What you can be for in regards to this issue? What would that look like, feel like? How can you alter the image that is not positive so you feel good? Check in with your body again. How does it feel as you focus on what you would like? You might finish this exercise by noticing how much more powerful it feels to be for something and move toward a positive solution than to be against something. In my first piece on the unconscious, I focused primarily on western teaching about the unconscious and how to work with it. In this one I would like to outline Buddhist thinking about this, which has many similarities and a few differences from the Western model. Buddhist teachers talk about a storehouse-consciousness, which is the 8th level of consciousness, an unconscious repository of memory.
Like the Western unconscious, it’s a subjective phenomenon that colors everything we do. If ten people look at a cloud, they each see something different—a face, a pillow, a car, or something else. Next to this storehouse is the seventh level, which creates the sense of, “This is me. This is mine. This is not mine.” In other words, belief in a self which is separate from others. This ego (called manas) keeps a tight lid on the storehouse. But unbeknownst to us, the storehouse is very active. It stores seeds, each of which is a condensation of a perfume or impression lingering from a past experience. In my last piece, I discussed realizing in therapy many years ago that that I was projecting onto an older woman whom I will call Kay based on an early experience within my mother stored within my unconscious. Often our lives are dominated by projections like these, which Buddhist Yogacara teachers refer to as resulting in a rushing waterfall of experience, perfume, seeds on and on, so that we never experience life freshly Furthermore, the storehouse contains both wholesome and unwholesome seeds (and some which are neutral). Those of us who are traveling the Buddhist path have two primary ways of being freed from this rushing waterfall of primarily negative projections. First, we can add positive seeds, which will subdue the rushing. The main practice advised for seed replacement is the Buddhist Paramitas. In the case of Kay, for instance, I practiced noticing when the projection came up and then practicing generosity, noticing how hard she was struggling to hold it all together and trying to be supportive of her in spite of her outbursts. And it worked! I discovered that I could plant positive seeds through my actions and intentions that could improve my relationship with others and soften my ego rigidity. The second and complementary practice recommended by Buddhist teachers is, of course, meditation. Luckily, the storehouse unconscious not only stores memories. It’s also the seat of our basic nature, unchanging, unborn and fundamentally real. We have the opportunity to see beyond our ego and its endless projections by glimpsing our quiescent Buddha nature. As these glimpses grow, the rushing waterfall of experience, perfume and seeds quiets. You can see that this goes farther than Jung’s individuation, in which the twins, (or subject and object) are always separate. We discover that as individuals we are undivided from all of life. Within this undivided wholeness our ego loses its grip on storehouse consciousness, and the storehouse manifests itself as mirror mind reflecting all life quiescently without judgment or comment. The ninth century Zen teacher Shen Hui says: “Those who see into the Storehouse have their senses cleansed of defilements, and open to Buddha-wisdom.” The early Yogacara teachers listed factors that result both in unwholesome and wholesome seeds. Lets look at craving, which is an unwholesome feature. When we crave something we lose attention. We’re distracted, and we want things to be different than they are. In our meditation practice we can:
As we do this we become calmer, and the craving or other negative factors dissipates. When it evaporates entirely, we see the world freshly with our mirror mind or beginners mind. Little by little it becomes our second nature to recognize, embrace, and relax our grip on our fixations as they enter our awareness. As our grip loosens, we experience a release, a lightening, even enlightenment. My teacher described an enlightenment experience he had while still young. He was sitting in a weeklong retreat, struggling to stay both present and focused, with fixation after fixation paralyzing him. But he kept with it; when it was time for him to have a one to one with the teacher, whose nickname was tanker he went into the small room where the teacher was meeting participants. Tanker, who was built like a sumo wrestler, took up almost all the space in the room, but when Suzuki looked at him he saw the he was tanker and experienced a huge release from his chattering mind and an accompanying heartfelt connection with all of life. I am convinced that anyone who keeps a regular meditation practice going (including sitting regularly in retreats) can let go of the sticky emotions that come from past experiences and settle into a feeling of non-separation from the world around them and even all of life. I call this an undivided heart. Even when we’ve experienced this undividedness, we’re still vulnerable to absorbing negative perfume through our activities, however. If I watch too much Rachel Maddow or Amy Goodman, seeds of anger accumulate in my psyche, so that I see everyone who supports Trump through a darkened lens rather than with the mirror mind that heals divisions within my heart. Luckily, we can access the negative thinking which causes this division any time. We can see how our seeds of projection create suffering for others and ourselves by paying attention to them non-judgmentally as each arises. But changing ingrained (thinking) patterns is not easy. Four months ago I broke a tendon in my foot and had major surgery on it. My pattern of walking was completely altered as a result of being in a boot/cast for three full months. Now I am trying to get my balance back. Similarly, our ingrained thinking patterns have been dictating our behavior for such a long time that it takes persistent effort to alter them and settle into the natural balance of mirror mind. In retreats as in therapy, you may notice forgotten scenes from childhood and jumbled scenes of unknown people or you may be disconcerted by feelings of rage or grief. All you have to do is let those unwholesome seeds come into full consciousness without suppressing them or entertaining them and their energy naturally dissipates. You can start with awareness into any area of suffering and follow it down into the storehouse where the seeds are germinating. You might ask, “Where is my suffering felt most strongly in my body? What are the underlying feelings, images and beliefs that hold it in place?” As you see these as the stuff of illusion, you might experience a natural release. I led a practice period at our Zen center some years ago in which we focused on the Six Paramitas: patience, generosity, morality, persistent effort, meditation, and wisdom. One of my most diligent students was Stan. Along with other practitioners Stan focused on trying to introduce thoughts/seeds of patience and generosity into his psyche for the first two weeks. And during the second two weeks he focused on noting thoughts/seeds that came up meditation in a non-judgmental way. During the third two weeks he did both. And by the end of the retreat following the end of the practice period, Stan exclaimed, “It’s like a veil has been lifted!” This lifting of the veil is what meditation practice is all about. If you’ve been following my last three pieces, you see the similarities between Western and Buddhist teaching about liberating ourselves from our past conditioning—conditioning which most of us are not even conscious. The Buddhist approach puts a minimal amount of emphasis on figuring out our past conditioning by focusing on abuse and harmful family patterns. Instead, teachers like me help people cultivate awareness of emotion at it arises in each moment both on and off the cushion, so we the rushing waterfall of experience, perfume, seeds—experience, perfume, seeds, no longer dominates our lives and we can experience a natural quiescence. We have a tragic human history. For generation after generation we have done harm to each other and our environment, caught by the egotistic limitations of the conscious mind. But we can change all that. We can stop hurting selves and others. We don’t need to live with a divided heart. By both working consciously to create healthy seeds and de-potentiating the power of our negative seeds through our mirror mind meditation, we can deeply enjoy each moment of our lives. |
AuthorTim Burkett, Guiding Teacher Archives
April 2022
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