Starbucks Patrons Assaulted By Toddlers...

...well, more or less. I take my two year old daughter to a gym class every Saturday a.m. After class, a bunch of us load up our strollers with our writhing toddlers and head over to Starbucks to re-fuel. Typically, there's about four parents. Three of 'em are packing doubles--two kids each. That means seven little ones, twelve to twenty-three months of crying, happy, laughing, jumping, playing todds.

Yeah, you should see the looks we get when we roll in, pushing our convoy of strollers. People shake heads, roll eyes, guffaw, tsk and generally wet themselves at the site of our arrival. Now I know what the Romans felt like when the Vandals showed up ready to sack the place.

Of course, not so long ago I was on the other side of that $4.00 grande two-shot, extra-hot skim cappuccino. Now, its like "any port in a storm". I mean, once you become a parent its like you're viewed as an escapee from a leper colony. You know, you keep showing up at all the places you used to go, but people kind of turn their heads, avoid eye contact and ignore you? Same deal at Starbucks. People stare across the top of their java at you like you personally just brought in a batch of fresh Ebola virus spores and dumped 'em to the ventilator shaft.

But like any self-respecting leper, you learn to ignore the nasty looks, pick your diseased limb off the ground and shuffle along back to your cave. Only problem is, before you do that--you have to secure a table for you and your co-lepers so you can suck down over-priced scalding drinks while simultaneously toddler-wresting a wriggly two year old, save them from asphyxiating on handfuls of lemon pound cake, keep from kicking over the table and carry on meaningful, interesting conversations with other adults who are also living on rationed sleep.

So we roll in to the 'bucks and can you believe it? I spot a free table. Starbucks, 10:30am Saturday morning--primo caffenation hour and I find a free table. Only problem is, the table's in the middle of the room which means we won't be able to fit our strollers next to us. But the table next to it only has a dad and his five year old son--and next to them there's no tables. Just wide open free space. A welcoming plateau of stroller-accommodating grazing land. Our Mecca.

I make a bee-line to dad and his boy, and roll up just as he gulps down the welcoming sip of his java-juice. "Hey, any chance I could switch tables with you guys?". I mean, I'm asking him to relocate all of two feet. Well, angry-dad gives me this look like I just shoveled glass shards in to his drink. He doesn't even reply, just looks me up and down...then up and down. Finally, he makes this big show of like, swallowing his sip, glares at me and goes "Because you have...a stroller?!".

Okay, so I'm like a Buddhist forever, right? So this stuff is supposed to just roll of me like water/duck. But honestly, I can be kind of confrontational (Hmmm, wouldn't have anything to do with DRINKING TOO MUCH COFFEE WOULD IT?) when pushed. And this is exactly the kind of situation where I can justify my self-righteousness (protective father, a helping friend, blah/justify/blah/justify) and go right back at someone.

But the wildest thing happens. Nothing. I mean, this guy fires a hate-rocket at me and it just...passes right through my body. Zoom. Right through. I feel nothing. Nada. Zip. No anger. No impulse to attack/defend/repeat. My mind doesn't even do a double take, you know where I hear myself go after someone then have to talk myself down before I come up with some faux-polite response? Just big, vivid alive space. There isn't even a jet trail from the hate-rocket, just space.

So Space-Dana replies, "No, there's a group of us". Its almost like I'm having this really civil conversation with myself, he's not even an obstacle--he's just kind of this non-threatening outline/cut-out of a person and I've chosen to not color in the cut-out with my projection of anger/threat/obstacle/fill in the emotion. Turns out he's a one-rocket guy and the next thing I know he switches tables and bingo--everyone's has what they need, sans hostility. For the most part.

What hit me right between the eyes most keenly is how much healthier it is to not project. It hit me because I felt different. What I felt was normal. Not like I just had some kind of flame-out which had left me charred, the burnt stench of which I'd be feeling and smelling for hours/days to come. So there 'ya go. My advice? Don't grab on to your own solid state of mind so tightly it gives you agita. And even if you're sure the other person's your problem, bear in mind just for fun, it could be a whole self-imposed smoke and mirrors thing.

Oh, the big bonus of the whole thing? Two tables away there was a family of three? Their kids were screaming so loud it was blowing the plastic lids off people's lattes and no one even noticed our happy little table of Gremlins.

How Silly Am I?

I mean, really. I just caught myself in the reflection of my own appearance and I'm like, walking, talking, moving, reacting, speaking, thinking, moving, distracting, avoiding, perverting, grasping, presuming and commenting on every thought in my brain. And that was just in one split second of a moment.

If we can just step back for a moment, detach from our own appearance just ever-so-slightly and look at ourselves--its pretty funny. Last night my foot hurt. I've developed a callous from running. I looked at the callous, fingered it, felt some pain--then put my shoe back on and ignored it.

Because even though I know from direct experience its just skin and the moment I wear it down with a pumice stone it'll stop irritating me--there was this moment after I perceived it, just this little itsy-bitsy moment where I formed the thought "that callous is part of me--I could be in pain if I remove it".

Despite the fact I've ground away these suckers before, and I know it won't cause me pain, know in fact that the way to stop the pain (as I've personally and directly experienced myself) is to simply remove the callous--I cooked up the thought that some solid part of me was being threatened and in response to the threat, the callous is still there.

And that's exactly what I do with my thoughts. I don't even not see them as part of me--that's too discriminating, too courageous. I simply create my identity with the thought as it simultaneously forms/arises/appears. Which really, is more economic. You cut out the middle man so to speak, which is objectivity/space--you just go directly from appearance to identification. My foot hurts/I am my foot.

This student once went looking for his teacher--when he arrived at their typical meeting place he found a note "Gone to the freak show". Well, I guess in 10th c. India there wasn't a freak show around every corner, so this student was like totally WTF? He searches all over, finally makes his way to town.

In to the main market area--bustling with activity--people selling, living, dying, stealing, arguing, loving--and he sees his teacher, sitting down just watching all of this frenzy and action going down.

The teacher's just sitting there, frog on a log. Not doing a damn thing. And the student gets it *lightbulb*. This is the freaskshow. This is the circus, the carnival. We all paint ourselves up with this mask of presumed identity and then go running around reacting to everyone else's mask.

Voltaire said "Life is a drama for those who feel, a comedy for those who think". Most of the hardcore, real deal teachers I've ever encountered have at some point absolutely just stunned me at their instantaneous ability to convulse with laughter in the midst of what I perceive to be well, drama.

Once spent a week with this very revered, elderly Tibetan lama. Very serious stuff. First night, at dinner--he goes around the table asks everyone where they're from. You know, getting to know us. With every response he beams, nods in gentle understanding, repeats the person's cherished home "Oh, Mic-hi-gan?". Very grandfatherly, clipped Tib-English pronunciation.

I'm sucking it up. Loving this Lama. To me he's the Burl Ives of Lamas. I just want to curl up with him and watch that "Rudolph The Red Nose Reindeer" special and just be cuddled by this kindly little old soul. He gets to me, I reverently whisper "Californi..." don't even finish the sentence he laughs out loud, like hysterically "Mickey Mouse!".

Everyone stops, he stands up, points at me and still, laughing his ass off shouts "Mickey Mouse!". Well, ain't I suddenly the most popular guy to humiliate at the table. Of course, everyone cracks up and now the whole table like, ten people are pointing and laughing, "Mickey Mouse!". And everyone is having this total moment with Burl Ives lama, but me.

I'm of course, smiling playing the whole thing off like "Oh, I get it...California, Disneyland--Mickey Mouse". But inside I'm like "Are you fcuking kidding me? Dude, we were gonna rent the Rudolph special together?! Hang out, cry when Rudolph's nose won't light...". I'm dying. But you know, to him my drama was his comedy.

Oh and it goes on. I'll give you the cliff's notes, but the next acts of the comedy were Act 2: Dana awakens in the middle of the night to discover everyone's shoes have been laced together then tied to his arm while he was asleep in the hopes that he'd move his arm and drop twenty pairs of shoes on his head. Act 3: The day we depart, the entire staff receives the most loving blessing from Burl Ives Lama who promptly turns to me and head butts me. Not head butt like, oh here's the traditional Tibetan greeting with a little extra oomph, head butts me like he's an English soccer player for Manchester United after like, twenty pints of Guinness.

So anyway, for what its worth--if you happen to catch your own reflection in the mirror--any mirror and for just a split second you have that odd feeling like your watching some television show and you spaced out and when you came back you felt like even though you just missed part of the show it didn't really matter because what-the-hell-is-this-about-anyway-and-why-am-I-watching-it?

Well, either turn the volume way up so you don't notice you're spacing out anymore or get ready for some sleepless nights. 'Cuz once you start questioning what's really going on around you...well, things take a turn for the interesting.

The Week of 4/17: Suffering Goes Big!

In the last four days--sister in law diagnosed w/cancer. Surgery today. Co-worker's baby rushed to ICU with life-threatening low-level hemoglobin count. Thirtysomething friend, newly wed--killed in a car accident. Her husband's teen son, also in the car now in an induced coma.

So here I am praying away for people, doing tonglen. Even went to St. Bart's church on 50th and spent my lunch hour with the "Angel". Saw it/her there years ago when there for a Sakyong Mipam talk. She's in a small room, a larger than life-size Angel in alabaster.

And no I don't watch re-runs of "Touched By An Angel" and I do not, I repeat do not have a pewter angel on my key chain. But I'm telling you, you step in to a small room with a thousand pound, white Angel? Hey, sh*t happens.

Then it hits me--I'm one of six billion people on the planet. Doing my scrawny, undernourished, distracted tonglen practice--who's covering the other 5.97872 billion peeps? Okay, so not all of us are suffering. But if you just stop for a minute and think about the war fare, poverty, disease, famine--at any given moment there are a lot of people in real distress.

And that's just counting the humans. How many beings are in the animal kingdom? So what to do? It seems insurmountable, the amount of suffering being experienced at any given time. Given all that, here I am at work sleepy from waking at six a.m. PTT (pre-toddler time) to practice, but mentally whining because I want an iced mochacino.

I remember when I lived at a Dharma center. There was a Tibetan teacher visiting, waiting just outside the shrine room, ready to go in and give a talk. There was this really sweet family from Montreal there, well they come down the stairs, late for the talk--and see the lama there, ready to go in.

But the little boy (he was about thirteen) was just crying a river. This teacher looks over and the boy's sister says, with that kind of perfect, child's lack of pretense--"He just found out his grandmother dies. He misses her". And man, this teacher's whole face, like the molecular structure of it changed. It softened and re-formed and melted and tears just started streaming down his cheeks.

And he walks over to the boy and puts a hand on his shoulder and the little boy didn't think twice he just grabbed this Lama and hugged him and folded his whole little body in to him and they cried and the boys snot flowed down these monk's crimson robes and they stood there together. And that teacher wasn't going anywhere. A hurricane couldn't have moved him from that boy's side.

I haven't thought about that for a long time. Could I ever care for a stranger like that? I'm going to get an iced mochaninco. I'm going to keep getting up at PTT--something about that feels right. I'll probably forget about other people's miseries until something jars me back to that reality. I'm glad my family's safe.

That teacher? One of the strongest, kindest, wisest most straightforward humans I ever had the good fortune to be around. His ability to be truly present was the result of hard work. A lifetime of literally reshaping his intention. He died a few years later in a car accident in India.

Transparency Of Concept(s)

From Chogyam Trungpa

In the absence of thoughts and emotions, the Lords (the forces of materialism) bring up a still more powerful weapon, concepts. Labeling phenomena creates a feeling of a solid, definite world of "things." Such a solid world reassures us that we are a solid, continuous thing as well.

The world exists, therefore I, the perceiver of the world, exist. Meditation involves seeing the transparency of concepts, so that labeling no longer serves as a way of solidifying our world and our image of self. Labeling becomes simply the act of discrimination.

Bonus Points...

...for anyone who clicks on the death/impermanence link under dharma teachings. I dare 'ya...

Am I Enlightened Or Just Really Pissed Off?

From Chogyam Trungpa:
EMOTIONS AS THEY ARE
"In the practice of meditation, we neither encourage emotions nor repress them. By seeing them clearly, by allowing them to be as they are, we no longer permit them to serve as a means of entertaining and distracting us. Thus, they become the inexhaustible energy that fulfills egoless action".

Which got me to thinking, how do I know when I'm "...fueling egoless action" or just being an @sshole? You know, there's people (okay, mainly NY'ers...) who fear getting in to Buddhism 'cuz they don't want to "Lose their edge and go soft", despite appreciating the newly-won sanity of their friends who've gotten in to meditation.

So which is it? R we getting truly righteous or just ridiculous? Are we serenely finishing our lite beers and leaving the bar before the good brawls start as our friends laugh at us behind our backs? Do we need the edge? Can we have our cake...and smash it too?

Tonglen Posse: Saddle Up...

...hi all. A good friend's baby just went in to ICU last night. Still doing tests, but looks like a pretty virulent form of Anemia where the red blood cells are attacked by the bodies own immune system.

The little girl's name is Daya, she's about sixteen months old. It would be very appreciated and helpful if you could include her in your practice. The mother's name is Limor--I'm sure a few healing thoughts in her direction wouldn't hurt either.

New link below--a talk on Tonglen by Pema Chodron.

Thanks all.

You Talkin' To Me?

"Fear is one of the weapons of our ego. It protects the ego. If one reaches the stage where one begins to see the folly of ego, then there is the fear of losing the ego, and fear is one of its last weapons.

Beyond that point fear no longer exists, because the object of fear is to frighten somebody, and when that somebody is not there, then fear loses its function. You see, fear is continually given life by your response, and when there is no one to respond to fear - which is ego loss - then fear ceases to exist."

Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

Another Day, Another Dharma

So, there's a section here called 'dharma teachings/talks'. For now, I'm adding links to articles about topics raised on the blog--the skandas, the 12 nidhanas, karma.

If there's a topic you'd like to know more about, just let me know (my email addy's available under 'view my profile').

Also, pls feel free to send this blog to friends, family, extraterrestrials. Any and all are welcome.

Schmidt Happens...

...back in the day, during his teachings Trungpa Rinpoche would sometimes reference "Joe Schmidt". In his marrow-piercing high-pitched thunderbolt of a voice, Trungpa would say something like "So, just suppose Joe Schmidt comes along...".

Of course, Trungpa's mantra power being what it was, he somehow actually conjured up Joe Schmidt. Despite the fact no one's ever actually seen Joe Schmidt, he now has his own blog. There's a link to it, bottom left...

Feeling Pretty Sassy...

...humbled by no HTML experience, but driven by a large Cafe Mocha and the words of a good friend who said "Any monkey can figure out how to put links on his blog...", I've managed to create links on the blog.

1. The Chronicles Project: first hand stories about Trungpa Rinpoche.
2. The Konchok Foundation: the rebuilding of the Trungpa Rinpoche's home monastery (Surmang) in Tibet.
3. The Dharma Ocean Center: dedicated to the study/preservation of the teachings of Trungpa Rinpoche. Started by Dr. Reggie Ray, Author "Indestructable Truth". *this site has downloadable MP3's of some guided meditation practices.

The Water Just Got Deeper...

"...reviewing the buddhist view of consciousness and feeling, including how consciousness forms, how it relates to feelings, and how thoughts and attitudes spring out of that process. The abhidharma or buddha’s teachings on this go into incredible detail.

The twelve nidanas, it turns out, describes how moment to moment our consciousness forms from nothing, reacts to the perceptions of phenomenon, forms a positive, negative, or neutral opinion of that phenomenon, then jumps to a conclusion about how things should be and habitualizes the result.

We also studied the five skandas, each a mental process which all combined make up what we typically consider self or ego. the formation of the skandas is part of the nidana cycle, the fourth nidana in fact, before sense perceptions start to make contact with the phenomenal world. the consciousness skanda is paramount, but is supported by the skandas of form, feeling, formation, and perception.

Form constructs distinct views of the world, feeling just provides a very basic positive, negative, or neutral opinion of things, perception processes what we perceive, and formation pigeon-holes things into categories for us.

The importance of these teachings is deep. When Pema teaches about ‘learning to stay’, this comes from the wisdom that the cycle of karma can only be interrupted between the seventh and eighth nidanas - between feeling and craving. Once we’ve gone from feeling to actually thirsting for something then we’ve continued a cycle that ends with a further strengthening of ego and solitification of our world view.

But if we can learn to rest in feeling (the seventh nidana) then we can interrupt the habituation of ego. In fact, that’s the only way we can work with it and stop the karmic momentum. By karmic momentum I mean the quality that our feelings lead us to action which then sows the seeds of future suffering - in this case the habituation and solidification of our ego-centric view of the world.

Trungpa rinpoche also gave an interesting teaching on the skandas and enlightenment. He taught that the skandas in an enlightened being are still there. what’s different is that they aren’t connected. Meditation cuts the tight connection between the skandas. Then he went further to say that it’s not really a connection that you’re severing. Really the skandas are just crammed together by our speed.

We hate to experience space, our world feels unsolid in space. so we keep our mind running quickly so we don’t notice that there is a small gap between each skanda. so meditation lets us slow down, and then increase the gap between the skandas or in other words so we can see the large expanse of space which is already between them".

Real Life. Real Strange. Really.

Okay, true story. The other day my wife is at the subway station and overhears someone firmly, emphatically say "No, here's how it goes. The inside story? 'We, you?'...do not exist". She turns around to see a nine year old boy saying this to his little brother.