One Bright Pearl

It has been an interesting journey this year. I have separated from my wife, had an emotional/psychological breakdown, lived and practiced at Sanshinji Zen Community, kicked methadone, traveled all over the country, laid off from my job, worked for the Obama Campaign, and lived homeless for the last six months. And despite being homeless, reduced to living very simply, my child support gets paid, I eat, practice, work out at the gym(a monthly pass is less than a single night in a hotel room and I get to shower daily!), and see my children several times a week - I am fortunate.

It is a wonderful life and I am grateful for all I have today. It wouldn’t be possible if not for having the great good fortune of being born in this human body, and having the tremendous blessing to hear the Buddha Dharma.

For as long as space exists,

and as long as sentient beings endure,

may I, too, remain,

to dispel the suffering of the world.

Blessings be…

Tags: Acceptance, Bliss, Buddhism, Gratitude, Intention

There are times when I find that I am taken over by what Eckhart Tolle refers to as the ‘Pain Body’. It is during the onset, or attack, of deeply seated emotional pain that I am most vulnerable to slipping into unawareness. These memories, dormant energies trapped beneath my self concious, in the body proper, are still presenting there own truths to me. Not that I have to believe the thoughts that are generated by their energy, just that, at it’s core, these entities have a fact trapped in the physical body, waiting to be acknowledged, without judgment, once and for all.

Over the past weekend I received some news that instantly overtook me. Awareness was still there, but all the thoughts and their corresponding pain made it extremely difficult for me to remain present in the Now. I just kept fueling the pain with my thoughts and in turn the pain continued to grow, thus fueling more negative thoughts and emotions. I felt desperate… and determined to practice with this experience. I felt that if I could not be present with it, and just fell into unconsciousness, then what is the point of the deep truths I have been privileged to witness, experience recently in my life.

In response, I searched for a bit of help from the universe, and in a spark of intuition, the idea of receiving help from nature came to me. Nature, Mother Earth, has been my refuge since my childhood. I knew of places in the forest and countryside where something bigger, deeper than myself, resided, and would find refuge resting there.

As I have only lived a short while in North Carolina, I am not aware of any power places locally.The places where I tent, or camp, are not such places. Beautiful forests, yes, but, for the most part, there seems to be a pall across much of it. I think the history of slavery, exploitation of indigenous tribes, has marred some of it’s psychic landscape. It’s as if the land around here has it’s own pain body to be acknowledged.

Suddenly, I remembered Cape Hatteras, and knew that it was such a place, a wind torn spit of barrier islands that had claimed many shipping vessels, and the lives contained within, over the centuries. It was a place of fierce truth, impartial to all. A place that I had once visited some 25 years ago, and was instantly struck by it’s timelessness, it’s power.

Without doubt, I drove there, some 288 miles, and spent the afternoon. I was still completely overwhelmed by the intensity of the emotional pain in me, but with a bit of effort, and help from the environment in which I stood, the presence began to return.

The ocean was full of windswept whitecaps as a gale force wind blew fiercely from the northwest. The old lighthouse had been moved, it looked, half mile to the southwest, from where it had once stood during my last visit, as nature relentlessly manifested unending change in the form of coastline and tidal waters.

The ocean, vast as the blue sky above it, grounded me. A great blue sky above a tempest. It was appropriate and addressed the situation directly. Over the next several hours I found that place within, and without, from which old wounds are healed. Joy began to replace fear, and an inner confidence, a truth beyond thought and personal identity, created more space within this human being.

I don’t know who I am anymore… or what I’m doing, and that’s ok for this moment.

Sri Aurobindo teaches that one must prepare the ground as it were, for the Grace to assist one in this journey. That without Grace, one has no hope of reaching the highest evolution of consciousness and embodying it’s deepest truth. I don’t know what the highest truth is, but Grace holds me in her embrace. For that I am deeply grateful.

This great earth, and all life, sentient and insentient, support me. Gratitude flows in an unending circle.

Tags: Awareness, Eckhart Tolle, Grace, Pain Body, Power Places, Presence, Rinzai Zen, Shamanism, Soto Zen, Sri Aurobindo, The Mother, Universal Truth, Zen

After years of practice something finally gave way. A shift occured that seemed impossible before, and in fact, extremely simple. It was as if a switch had been found, and yet had been there all along. Just waiting to be noticed by itself. Thinking dissolves instantly, and just this abides.

In the past couple of months a deepening has been occuring of this peaceful abiding. There seems to be a kind of veil that almost feels like sleepiness that is fallen through effortlessly. Then a sharpness of sensation occurs, and the brightness is revealed, the dream flows impersonally from moment to moment.

It had been me, the thinker, in my own way, the whole time. Now it seems so simple.

Let me be clear though, as simple as it is, my thinking mind still slips in, through a backdoor, to reassert itself; and, from time to time, I lose myself in believing it is real. And yet, it has been seen through clearly, and the abiding returns in a flash.

Of course it is real, on the one hand, the thinking thinker itself arises from the depths of nothing, the source itself. It is as Old Buddha Eihei points out, enlightenment exists from the very beginning, from the very first sit. Even before that. It has always been there, dreaming itself, waiting to be discovered by the dreamer it dreamed, so that it, the source, might find pleasure in itself through the infinite creation of it’s timeless dreaming.

This is true joy.

Tags: Awareness, Dreaming, Dreams, Eckhart Tolle, Eihei Dogen, Eihei Dogen Zenji, Integral Yoga, Old Buddha Eihei, Rinzai Zen, Soto Zen, Sri Aurobindo, Sri Ramana Maharshi, Waking Up From The Dream, Zen

It seems that the very attempt to integrate or understand my experience of Spaciousness is resistance to allowing the space to be.

Non-gaining can not accommodate integration.

Gain is loss. Loss is “Loss”. Loss is the Way.

I am Not.

Not. Not. Not.

Tags: Ati, Buddhism, Chogyam Trungpa, Dzogchen, Eihei Dogen, Emptiness, Gain, Gainingless-ness, Loss, Maha Ati, Non Being, Non Gaining Mind, Rinzai Zen, Soto Zen, Space, Spaciousness, Sri Ramana Maharshi, Zen

Something is happening here. It feels as if a new opening is taking over my life. I cannot see the future and the past isn’t important. The process of moment to moment exploration of this life as it manifests as a singular field of action is creating some kind of change I cannot put into words yet. It is as if any thought about this process is the very prison it is freeing itself from. And yet, the process includes a kind of refined thinking that is a diamond tool that assists the process.

On a conventional level, for me, the witness is aware almost continually throughout the day… or is it presence? Anyhow it seems that there are levels to this, the presence dissolves, the witness notices, the witness dissolves, the presence notices, like an oscillation. There seems to be an even higher level of consciousness, a supra-aware force penetrating everything at once, as if the foreground and the background merge infinitely into “just this” eternally.

This is the technical aspect of my mind working freely with what I experience and attempting to formulate a way to describe, understand, and integrate this understanding, without diminishing it, as much as that’s possible when examining the infinite or non-dual ineffable thusness.

Of course, it has also become very clear that this process can be continued endlessly, and since I have this gift of a human body/heart/mind, I wish to develop it fully while the time is here. To that end, I have been experimenting with different angles of approach, trying to create new methods of my own as an aid to waking from the dream. My favorite one at this moment is to witness the witness. This is very interesting as it seems that when I do this, everything stops, and being takes over instantly.

So on a practical level, to describe this clearly(lol), if one has developed the witness to a degree that it is relatively an effortless function to watch, witness thoughts and emotions arising within ones consciousness, and one is clear to the witness, the witness clear to that, the next step is simple. Just ask oneself, “what is this that witnesses the witness?” Open ones consciousness to the experiential expression of that, witnessing the witness. It is impossible to think anything about it, at this point, and the potential found there seems boundless.

As a blog is a kind of journal, at least this one is, it documents my life and thinking and practice of waking from the dream, allowing me to simultaneously share it with others. If you somehow have stumbled onto it, I wish to state that comments are welcomed. If one disagrees or just thinks I am crazy, please point it out, I can only grow from the exercise, that’s why it is called practice. You could choose to agree with me also but I will learn much less from that. Comments are moderated however, and I may challenge your premise, but only so we might both grow from the exchange.

Oh, I have also been having an incredibly strong urge to begin painting but I really can’t afford the materials, paint, acrylics, brushes, canvass and all that. If anyone would care to donate such items I can be reached at joseph at onebrightpearl dot org. And no, I have never painted before, but I just can’t shake this urge to do so.

Tags: Buddhism, Creativity, Eckhart Tolle, Eihei Dogen, Eihei Dogen Zenji, Playfullness, Power Of Now, Practice, Rinzai Zen, Shikantaza, Soto Zen, Zazen, Zen

The only question that has ever mattered to me is - “Who am I?” This one question has always seemed to be the main knowledge, the ultimate knowledge, the one answer that resolves all other questions about meaning, purpose, relationship to myself and others.

So what have I discovered through this questioning? More than anything, I am a storyteller, at least on the conventional level. From an absolute view, it is all there in the first word, “Who?” In the beginning there was the word and the word wasn’t “It”.

We’re all storytellers. In fact, it is through our storytelling that we create the separation. Storytelling, in itself, isn’t a problem though, because there really isn’t any problem at all, except that our story keeps telling ourselves that there is. Sometimes though, it is better to start with a problem, if your looking for an answer to solve all problems. Keep in my mind that the problem seeking the answer is smack dab in the middle of the answer itself. It is like an ourobourous, a dragon eating its own tail.

This can be a good thing, to plunge right into it completely, like a rich banquet, everything is food for the journey. This is the “meditation in action” that Trungpa Rinpoche advocated. Of course, for this to work, you have to have some kind of a practice, a container to hold it in, a crucible. Like an alchemist searching for gold, you go into your shit, wallow in it, with your eyes wide open, your meditation practice being the eye.

If you do this long enough, a shift occurs, and a gap of spaciousness begins to appear. Then, you may discover that the only problem was thinking there was a problem. This seems to be the path most of us have to take if we are to wake from the dream.

Usually, this first glimpse of spaciousness fades, as we are quickly taken over again by the dream itself. The dream is powerfully seductive because we have mistaken it for ourselves. So the dream will, normally, at least in my own experience, appropriate the spaciousness as an object of ownership, which instantly diminishes the spaciousness. It becomes a memory, an idea. This is why all the great Zen masters have said that this glimpse, kensho as it is sometimes called, is really the beginning of practice.

This is also why it is really crucial to have a teacher, because nobody else is going to tell you this. Nobody else is going to be able to tell you with conviction, with insight, that this story you are telling them about, how you are vast and wide, nothing at all really, is now just a memory and not it.

And yet, this gap you have experienced is important, in the sense, that if you have a practice, and a teacher, you can now begin to develop some confidence in the practice itself. So you return to the mat and forget about it. That is how you begin to develop spaciousness in your life, spaciousness as activity itself, as a human “being”.

So who am I? Am I the dream or the spaciousness? We are both, for the time being. And this is just a wonderful story I am relating to the spaciousness itself.

Tags: Buddhism, Chogyam Trungpa, Conciousness, Dreaming, Eckhart Tolle, Ego, Eihei Dogen, Eihei Dogen Zenji, Emptiness, Genjo Koan, Koan, Meditation, Power Of Now, Practice, Rinzai Zen, Shikantaza, Soto Zen, Spaciousness, Trungpa Rinpoche, Vajrayanna, Zazen, Zen

That is how I describe it today, the way I wanted, wished, and hoped I would be viewed by others, and by my self, eventually. I always wanted, strived really, to be this really sane, aware, and deeply realized guy who never hurt anybody, most especially, again, my self. The reality was I had this almost schizophrenic personality, a really dark, dark, heavy side that I refused to work with and held out the erroneous hope that it would just disappear. If I practiced long enough, hard enough, then one day, magically, this aspect of my character would just dissolve. Such was the nature of this nice idea that I clinged to.

I remember, very distinctly, vividly, when I finally realized Buddhism, Zen, was not going to save me from my self, my suffering. It was in the dokusan room with a former teacher of mine, I demonstrated the koan I had been assigned at the previous dokusan earlier that day, my teacher asked a few more testing questions and then approved my understanding of the koan. Normally, one would leave the room immediately after that without even really waiting for the bell to ring. It was then that I motioned I wished to speak of another issue and he sat down the bell. I began to share about a particular bit of suffering I was experiencing on the cushion, a loop of self deprecating commentary that I could not shake, I knew I was more than that, more than this mind road, and yet, I really didn’t. My teacher became upset, frustrated, with me, and rang me out of the room. I returned to the mat, tired of the whole thing, knowing in my heart that when sesshin was over, I would not return to that center again.

I had invested so much, and experienced so much, and learned so much, and, at the same time, believed that I was a completely hopeless case. I could not understand how I could see koan so clearly and suffer like I did. As I left the center that final day, I was angry, more than that, rage… and despair. I had been practicing for twelve or thirteen years, really knew a bit about Mind, had experienced openings, big and small numerous times, but I was still trying to get something easy for myself, my little egoistic mind. It was an extreme shock to my system.

I actually chose right then and there to push the fuck it button as I call it, and quit practicing all together, vowing to never sit zazen again. Instead I decided I would completely give in to my darkness, go completely into my shadow. After a year or so I was using heroin daily and entertaining the idea (an easy mental leap since I was hopelessly addicted at that point), that I would live like this for the rest of my life.

Well, eventually, this wore out for me too. By that time, I had a few junkie friends, like myself, and they advised if I wanted to get off junk, then I should check out the methadone clinic about twenty blocks from my house, so I did. I was accepted as a patient, and soon I was taking 120mg of methadone daily. I felt that this was definitely going to work for me. I no longer experienced anxiety and I didn’t obsessively think about my problems. Of course, life had been turned down a notch, or three, as I embraced a very subtle narco-haze as a permanent state of being.

Finally, giving up zazen was starting to work for me, almost. There was this one little problem though, having practiced pseudo-monastically for years, either living a couple of blocks from the center or actually living at the center, I constantly found my mind bombarded with mental associations and memories of practicing. Whereas I had been able to drop my anxiety and fear, now, I found myself waking up at night from intense dreams. Dreams in which I would be sitting in sesshin, or in dokusan with my old teacher. Over and over again it would happen. I had completely descended into an avici hell, a hellish realm where the relief I had found mentally and physically, through methadone, quickly faded to torment.

I went on like this for a year or so and then one morning, I woke up, and just started sitting again, right there in the middle of it, on methadone. I no longer harbored any hope that the future would be better, that I would be any better, and just sat with exactly what my life was at that moment, practicing shikantaza. It was the first time I practiced without gaining mind.

After about eighteen months of this I began to look for a teacher again, and after another six months, I connected with Hojo-san. A couple of months later, after attending retreats with this new sangha, I checked myself into a rehab and kicked methadone, dropping from 120mg to zero in a single day. It was absolutely hellish, beyond anything I have ever experienced. Unlike other opiates, including heroin, that take three to five days to withdraw from, methadone withdrawal can last for weeks. In my case it took about seventy days before I started to feel anything close to functional.

Today, real practice isn’t about making myself into something I have never been. Real practice, practiced, is brutally jagged and raw at times. Forget the razors edge, that cut is too clean. This is deep, ripped caverns carved out of the flesh with no hope of ever being sewn back together again. Triage is abandoned. It is up to the power of life itself, to choose whether the patient is going to live or die.

No more ideas or fantasies of a better life in the future for the practice I’ve experienced today. Facing myself, I try to unflinchingly experience my mind in it’s totality, moment to moment. One breath, one activity, one taste at a time. It includes not living up to other peoples expectations of me, and for the first time, actually finding my own way.

No angel here, it will never be. No sage, no saint, no buddha, absolutely not that. That declared, there is a lot of space to be found in life today. A lot of freedom from my self.

Tags: Addiction, Authenticity, Buddhism, C. G. Jung, Despair, Eckhart Tolle, Eihei Dogen, Eihei Dogen Zenji, Heroin, Methadone, Non Gaining Mind, Power Of Now, Rinzai Zen, Soto Zen, Spiritual Materialism, The Shadow, Zen

Living like this, homeless, is a gift to consciousness. At every turn I am thrown back on myself. There is no one to blame, and each and every single thought is clearly a product of my own mind, and has nothing to do with any other person. I alone am responsible.

I have practiced zazen for many years, gone to many sesshin, advanced through koan practice… and still, I had not seen the primary error as clearly as I do now. As another teacher said to me recently, “The only sin is identification.” Identification with my own thinking mind is the error.

How many times did I hear, “just cut off the mind road and the truth naturally appears?” It wasn’t until I gave up all maneuvering for a better outcome, a better future, a secure space, that I found that this space was always available; here, now.

No, I am not able to dwell in it constantly… and yet I have found that I can return to it over and over again. I have found that it is the returning that is most important. Yes, practice is exactly what this is, and just as clear, there is no end to this practice. Somehow, that knowledge alone, that there is no end to it, brings me the greatest peace. I am so grateful to all my teachers over the years.

Tags: Buddhism, Eckhart Tolle, Eihei Dogen Zenji, Gratitude, Mind Identification, Practice, Primary Error, Responsibility, Soto Zen, Zazen, Zen

Truly there is one root to pivot from, here and now. It is not found in yesterday or tomorrow, it is never coming to be,  it is never leaving a trace behind; turn back and face yourself, immediately.

Thinking of the source, it is missed and yet it is the source itself, manifested momentarily. Sequentialality is only a notion, and is not the source itself. The source is there nonetheless. You have missed it.

Open your eyes and look! The eyes have it, and yet it never becomes owned by the eye; never being owned, it freely manifests as half an eye. Now, going and coming is the free give and take of one thus come as the one eye.

Forgotten eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and mind, not forgotten now, yet never clinging to now, gives the point it’s place, right here now. It is only the one great fusion of earth and space manifesting time, moment by moment.

Do not cling to time in any time that is found. Give up all notions of time once and for all and meet the source of no-source as it is; continually sourcing its way through the great sky of the nights bright space. For one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles it’s light can never be seen, yet exists everywhere in time itself. One point, one root, existing here - past, present, and future fails eternally. This is the great life manifested once and for all.

Tags: A New Earth, An End To Neurosis, Buddhism, Conciousness, Eckhart Tolle, Eihei Dogen, Eihei Dogen Zenji, Enlightenment, Power Of Now, Practice, Soto Zen, Zen

While listening to Shohaku Okumura share his understanding of Bussho ¹, he states:

“The power that creates our suffering or samsara, and the power that allows us to practice and create nirvana is the same power…”

It is all our responsibility.

This realization has become koan for me. It has put me on the spot. I can’t hide from it.

It is not that I have been blind to the seemlessness of this life, rather, I have been unable to acknowledge my responsibilty for creating the suffering that I have experienced. This manifests as a reluctance to confront my destructive habit energies and just say “no”, this won’t do. To be honest, I am able to say “no” when I choose to see my habit energy, it’s just, sometimes, I don’t choose to.  I make excuses, like, “I’m too tired right now”, or pretend that I don’t recognize it because it just feels easier to go that way.

To be fair, and not make this into “another trip that I am laying on myself”, as Chogyam Trungpa would say, I am getting better at turning away from this habit energy, at least a little. I have to, otherwise it becomes a problem for me today.

The problem is this: I do see it more and more clearly now. The problem is my vows. I vow to save the many beings, I vow to save every single one. I vow to extinguish delusions, and I know the delusion inherent in going with my habit energy, it creates suffering for me and others. I vow to enter all dharma gates, and if this isn’t a dharma gate, I don’t know what is! The Buddha Way is unsurpassed, I vow to embody it fully.  Fully! No wiggle room there. I can’t pick and choose.

It is at this point, that I drop it and take a deep breath. Breathing in, I know that I am breathing in. As my fingers tap, tap, tap the keyboard, breathing, listening, looking, and thinking of this very sentence, this fuses and it is all resolved. This field becomes very bright without naming the brightness. Now “I” can rest. Resting here is just resting. No thinking of good power, bad power, it is just Power.

With Power, comes responsibility.

Tags: Acceptance, Being, Buddhism, Dogen, Dogen Kigen, Dogen Zenji, Eihei Dogen Zenji, Gratitude, Power, Practice, Responsibility, Soto Zen, Zazen, Zen