reflections

In the ten years I have really been a committed practitioner of the dharma. I say it like this because most of my life I have been a Pseudo follower of the dharma but never really wanted to give up any of my shiny Samsaric Distractions drugs, sex, and alcohol you name it I liked it and wanted to keep it. So ten years ago I was at the end of my rope. I had truly hit bottom my life looked very close to a demilitarize zone and there was a lot of suffering. I had a moment of clarity where I saw things as they really where and I decide to make a change. I got sober.

Sobriety presented me with a new challenge I had to come to believe that there was something out there greater than me then I had to allow this conception of a higher power to guide my life. This was no small feat but with the help of guys who had done it before me and step work this came.  At first I used my mother’s conception of a higher power as it was what I was raised with. Then it started to evolve into what it is today.

One of the things I had to do was pray and meditate. I remember the first Time I meditated I sat for about 3 mins it seemed like a life time my head was so loud it scared me and I was crawling out of my own skin. I decided then that prayer was enough and I needed not look to meditation too much. My karma had other ideas. The damage I had done to my brain through years of abuse had caused me to have clinical anxiety. That is I would have crippling anxiety attacks, to the point of complete disassociation and being in full flight or fight mode for no reason. This would happen three to four times a week and would last up to two hours.  Sometimes a slow build all day then bang full blown attack sometimes just out of nowhere boom cold, sweat dry throat, fear and knowing I was going to die fearing it to my core. Making up all kinds of stories and reasons why this was going to happen. I would often fixate on death dying, what happens after, will it hurt, you name it. Anything that was completely out of my control and needed a level of acceptance, a level of acceptance I did not at the time have.

I went a doctor and he suggested I take a benzodiazepine this solution was completely unacceptable to me. I knew me far to well and I knew if I started taking a pill to cure my problems and change my perception it would only be a matter of time before I was drinking and using drugs again. He offered me the prescription and I told him no thanks. It was a hard decision to make the attacks seemed like they were destroying my life. I despaired about it for a while but came to the resolve that crippling anxiety attacks four times a week was still better than the  horror and pain my life was before I got sober. I was not about to jeopardize my sobriety for any amount of “easy road”.

On one such occasion I was walking to my apartment and it hit me out of nowhere it was one of the strongest attacks I have had even to this day. The terror that filled me was unbearable I thought my heart was going to explode. My mind ran rampant with thoughts of death and dying and I knew this was it. I did the only thing I could think of in the moment. I had presence of mind enough to know that if I did not die here, this was going to end. So I sat down, closed my eyes, started to breath, and counted my breath it was a technique my friend Fa Jun  had talked about at a coffee shop years before.  As I sat there counting my breath the story in my head slowed and I started to notice that the attack albeit was not gone but somehow more manageable. Now I was just dealing with what was, my heart was racing, I was in a cold sweat, and I felt as if my throat was in the desert. However the story I was creating about all this physical phenomena was gone and that took most of the power away. I got up and looked at my watch it had only taken ten minutes to halt the attack to a point where I could walk and manage my life. By the time I made it to my apartment about five minutes later it was over and gone like a dream. 

It was then I realized the immense benefit of meditation in my life. I started a daily meditation practice as best I could. I would close my eyes and count my breath in the morning sun while I filled the pools at the apartment complex I worked at.  If I had an anxiety attack I would go sit down and meditate. This went on for many years prayer and meditation had become a cornerstone of my life. After three years I rarely had an attack and if I did it was easily managed once I identified it I knew what to do. 

At three years sober I was able to locate my daughter and moved to Washington to be closer to her. This in itself is a whole story I will write about later. Once I moved to Washington I had left my entire support group in AA all the guys I had gotten sober with All the people that knew me I left it all to come out to Washington and be a dad.

Now at the time I had no worries about this because I knew all I had to do was go to meetings out here and find a new support group. No problem right? Well funny thing about attachment and the mind it seemed to me like they just did not do AA right out here. The meetings to me where horrid no one wanted to talk to me or even seemed to care one way or the other if I was new and needing a support group. I would share I am new and have expectations that someone would invite me to at least fellowship after the meeting and no one did. Looking back now I realize that I forget I am a six foot four two hundred and twenty pound man with a bald head and covered in tattoos. I am not the most approachable if you don’t know me. Plus with the problems I was having at home with my girlfriend at the time, that had moved from California to wa with me. I was finding it increasingly harder to go to the same meeting with any type of frequency to actually have people get to know me. So I did what any good Alcoholic does I copped resentment and stopped going to meetings for almost a year.

I still continued to pray and meditate, I still continued to read out of my book but this was not enough. I eventually got so miserable I started begrudgingly going back to meetings. It was not the same I did not like it but I got a sponsor and worked my steps again but something was missing.  After about A year I was still miserable and unfulfilled I was doing everything I knew how to do and nothing was working. I knew drinking would not solve anything but I did not know what else would. I was once again at a spiritual bottom this time in sobriety. I was scared and in a lot of pain but this time I could not think of a way out.

One day I got a call from a friend and he told me a spiritual teacher I had great respect for was going to be in town doing a day long and a dharma talk and I should go. So I did I went to the Dharma talk and listened to Noah Levine speak of the Dharma and of a way out of suffering. It was all stuff I had heard before I knew of the four noble truths, I knew of the eightfold path I read a lot about the dharma and studied a lot in my search for a stronger meditation practice. This time however it really clicked and for the second time in my life I knew what I had to do.  Bill Wilson stated in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous that if we did not continue to expand our spiritual practice we would drink. That’s what I had forgot to do expand my spiritual practice

The next day I sat with Noah at a daylong in Seattle it was painful to sit that long but I did it. We would sit thirty minutes and walk thirty minutes. Somewhere in all of this I had a huge revelation a feeling of this is what I need to do washed over me. Almost as if I had remembered what I was supposed to do with my life. It all seemed so natural and easy even the pain was just that, pain. It was what it was.  Nothing was wrong it just was. In my life, in my practice, in AA, in my relationship, it was not wrong it just was. I had been labeling everything good bad or indifferent so long I was once again making a prison for myself with my own interoperations of event that where just happening.

After that day I threw myself in to spiritual practice with great zeal and somewhat of reckless abandon.  I joined a weekly meditation group in Tacoma and did everything I could to help and make sure it stayed alive. I started meditating and going to a WAT that was out here I even started going to more meetings and actually bringing something to them instead of taking or having expectations of what I thought the meeting should be doing for me.

For the most part my life improved greatly. Internally I was feeling better I was growing spiritually and beginning to understand my purpose here in samsara. However my partner she was not feeling the spiritual wave. I tried everything I could to integrate her with my spiritual practice offered to bring her to the WAT to the Sakya an AA meeting anything I tried to get her to meditate with me, to no avail however. This simply was not her path and she did not like the idea of it taking my time from her. she already had to share my time with my daughter , work and AA this seemed to be the last straw and she would not have it.

Over the next two years my spiritual practice grew and my relationship declined very badly. Instead of dealing with this fact I chose to just do more spiritual practice in hopes it would work out. Eventually our fights got so out of control. I felt I needed to seek outside help and went back to a therapist for help with my anger and inability to deal with this side of things in an adult loving and compassionate manner. It seemed I could be kind loving and compassionate to all others in my life except for this woman who had been there for me so many times before.

I learned a lot from my Dr. Most of all I learned that sometimes things are not broken there just over and there is nothing you can do to fix them just accept it and move on.  I eventually got enough courage up to end the relationship it was a rocky, bumpy, painful and awkward journey to say the least but it had to be done and I learned a lot about myself and my habitual habits along the way.

Through all of this my practice and reliance on the Dharma has grown.

nothing is wrong

What if nothing is wrong ? This sticks with me. Resonates within me often when I meditate. What if nothing really is wrong? What if it just is. That is in fact the truth nothing is wrong until I judge it. Until I label it as such. Inherently things are not wrong or right they  just are. It is not until my  mind comes in and starts throwing labels and judgments around on everything it comes in contact with does it become anything other then what it is in that moment.
Through my attachment and aversion to what is happening in the moment I let the moment  slip away. I judge as wrong or right or pleasant and unpleasant. In that one label my mind goes into a whole pattern of reactions  to the label I have just put on the situation. A pattern worn deep into the groves of my mind by constant habitual reactions.  If it is unpleasant aversion kicks in I want it away, I want to pretend it is not there or not happening. If it is pleasant I want more and more and more till either it makes me sick, hurts me, I hurt it, or I finally get bored with it and move on to the next pleasant addiction.

the Constant habitual cycles of my mind are what my meditation helps me with. The more I further my practice the more room I get between thought and reaction. It is in that moment if am lucky enough, I get to respond in a skillful mindful way.

Vinny Ferraro has a mantra I learned early on in meditation. It is "nothing to do , nowhere to go, no one to be, Nothing is wrong . " This mantra to me sums up everything I need to here in relation to my constant Attachment and aversion.

Nothing to do. In this moment I have nothing else to do but what I am doing in this moment. If I am mindful in this moment and not worried about what I am going to do next  I can devote my full attention to experiencing  whatever there is to experience in that one moment. I will not be a sleep I will be Awake and present for whatever comes my way.

Nowhere to go. I am constantly in a rush and for no reason most of the time I really have nowhere to go to but I want to rush off to there any way. By doing this I never allow time to settle into the moment to just be with whatever is. My mind by keeping me constantly rushing around has effectively distracted me from the moment at hand. I can no longer interact effectively or respond loving and compassionately  if I am not present in the moment . If I am constantly worried and fixated about getting  somewhere in time. This expectation or attachment to being in a certain place at a certain time can and often does distract me from the moment I am in and once again I am asleep not fully present.

No one to be. For years I did not love myself enough to be ok with who I am. I always strove to be different then what I was. Whether doing it to vie for the attentions of one person or another or to try and get the cool kids to be my friend. I was constantly hiding and denying who I really was deep down. Then when this self would pop up I would go through a range of emotion from hate to intense anger for being me. Not a lot of love or compassion for me, For who I was in this moment. The further I come in my practice the more I come to appreciate who I am in this moment.  I have forgiven myself of past digressions and truly come to love who I am from moment to moment. The only way I was able to do this was to realize there is no one to be. I am who I am in this moment and this moment only.


Nothing is wrong. In this moment nothing is wrong nothing can be. Wrong right pleasant unpleasant are all tricks of the judging mind. The moment is what it is and cannot be changed. It is my task to try and let go of my attachments and aversions so I can just be. In this moment it is like this. When I can reach this level of nonattachment .  Nothing truly is wrong. It is what it is and it is only my reactions to this that can change it in my mind. I have realized I have very little if any control over what goes on around me. What I do have is control over my reactions to it. I can take a situation that in light of all things is indeed very heavy with suffering and  through my reactions to this suffering I can choose to stack on even more suffering on top of what is already there.  It is my attachment to keeping something I have and my aversion to not getting something I want that can take a painful situation and stack suffering on top of it. Then I get the joys of suffering double.

Pain is unavoidable suffering is not.. In this lifetime we can be free from suffering if we choose to be in this very lifetime in this very moment we can rid ourselves  from suffering if only we realize that this is how it is.

Motivate

One of the things I find hardest to keep up at times is my desire to meditate. I know the joys of a daily meditation practice. I know the benefits as well. Nine years ago when I started this path it was out of a search for relief. I was newly sober my emotions where completely out of control. I had developed clinical anxiety from the amount of LSD and Alcohol I had consumed over the last twenty seven years. So the motivation to sit was strong meditation was the corner stone of my life.

If I did not sit the anxiety would be so great I would not be able to function. My morose self pity of poor me and look at my life would get out of control and I would become miserably ineffective. I would be no use to my fellow man what so ever. So in pain motivation was always there.
After many years of steady meditation practice I seem to find bright shiny things to distract me. Projects, work, women, food, Facebook, You name it I can find it. So, manic enough, I can go a week without sitting. Once again I get all out of whack and I don't even know why until I go to sangha for the week.


As I sit in meditation with my peers it becomes overwhelmingly obvious what I was missing all week. As I sit and count my breath and bring my attention on the now. I remember again that my primary goal is to enlighten for the benefit of all beings. Now as that is a lofty goal I know it will take much work and there is no time to lose. Yet still I will get distracted by all the shiny in this samsaric existence. I forgot it's all an Illusion. Once distracted by all the shiny it's not long before all I can see is the shit before my Bodhicitta is so low I forget how satisfying practice just for the sake of practice can be.

I am grateful for sangha it gives me the fire to burn through the darkness and be the light. The three jewels are the most precious things I have ever been given. Buddha, Dharma, Sangha what I am starting to see is you really can't have one without the others. Each one of them leads to the other. From the Buddha came the great teachings of the Dharma and through the Dharma the Great community I am a part of was born.

In moments of silence I find deep and stirring gratitude.

Tiger and the deer

There was once a monk who was known for his relaxed and trusting nature. No matter what was happening the monk would smile. If circumstances were challenging the monk would say, "If we can accept how things are and keep a positive attitude, everything we need will unfold on its own."

Once when the monk was on a month long retreat in a hermitage deep in the forest, he witnessed a remarkable interaction between a deer and a tiger. The deer, injured, came stumbling into the clearing in front of the hermitage. Some time later, a tiger wandered into the clearing and saw the wounded deer. The monk held his breath, convinced that the tiger would surely kill and eat the deer. The deer, too, was clearly worried. But as it could no longer walk, the deer accepted its fate, lying very still in the grass. To the mnonks surprise the tiger spent the next few days standing guards over the deer until the deer was well enough to wander off again on its own.

The monk was elated at this site as it seemed to validate his idea that if we could only accept whatever happens fully enough, the boundless goodness of the universe would take care of us.

A few days later lightening struck a neighboring hermitage only a hundred feet away. At first the roof smoldered and smoked. The monk accepted this. The roof then caught on fire. The monk accepted this. Then the rest of the hut started burning. The monk accepted this too. Soon the entire hermitage was gone and the nun who lived there was slightly injured from attempting to battle the flames.

When the Abbess came to investigate the fire, she asked the monk why he didn't go and help put out the fire. In reply, the monk told the story of the tiger and the deer and how it had taught him the importance of surrendering and accepting things in the way the deer had done.

"You fool!" said the Abbess. "Certainly there are are times when you should be like the deer, but if you are to be a spiritually mature person, you should also know when to be like the tiger!" With that the Abbess sent the monk away. "Don't come back until you know how to be a tiger. Only when you accept this part of yourself can you understand what it means to accept things as they are."