Don't Act with a Twist

"Don't act with a twist." Chogyam Trunpa

This morning when I pulled this card from my lojong deck, I couldn’t imagine what it could mean. Then I read Chögyam Trungpa’s explanation in Training the Mind. It ended with, “The practice of this slogan is to drop that attitude of looking for personal benefits from practice—either as an immediate or a long-term gain.” All day long I was pondering what would mean to give up thinking about gain from practice.

I imagine that everyone takes up spiritual practice initially at least expecting some benefit unless the inspiration comes from somewhere much deeper and maybe not even recognized. Over many years, I know I have hoped somehow spiritual practice could improve me, make me happier, make me lovable, teach me how to love, and any number of other projections on how life would be different when I finally found my practice. I question now whether I have arrived at a place where I don’t expect anything from it for myself any more or if I ever will get to that point. Jamgon Kontrul in The Path of Great Awakening relates it more to the stages of the Buddhist path and arriving finally beyond practicing merely for yourself to responding “to the inspiration of full awakening for the benefit of others.” In Thomas Keating’s writing he talks about devotion and service. They appear to be to him two sides of the same coin. I believe that what starts out being for ourselves through growing in devotion over time leads to the desire to be of service to others. Somehow it becomes too good to hold onto just for ourselves and a desire to share rises from within. There is a growing sense within me that there is an aspect of “being” for others, not just doing. Perhaps what arises from practicing no longer just for our own benefit, but for the benefit of all beings (which includes us), is that it opens our hearts wide. Then do from this heartful place, whatever we do will be of benefit and not done with a twist.

Rituals Western Style

I am listening to a program by Joan Halifax. In it she was saying how bereft she felt the West was of rituals of passage.

Yesterday as I sat at the inauguration of Naropa's fifth president, I realized it was very much a ritual of passage not only for our new president, Dr. Stuart C. Lord, but also for the faculty, staff, students, board of trustees and communities that are touched by Naropa. It seemed so appropriate that a school that teaches it students how to make rituals would include a very sweet ritual for the actual swearing in ceremony with Dr. Lord sitting on a cushion with the Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche combined with the usual Western style speeches of congratulations, and invocations and music from African, American Native, and other religious traditions.

Most of my life, I have avoided such programs. My initial incentive to go was to support Dr. Lord as a student and as a person of color. Then it was to support the Rinpoche and my Shambhala community. Finally it was in recognition of my own need for more ritual and community in my life and the sheer joy of participating in it. I was happy to arrive early and find something useful to do to be of help.

Today I attended a ritual of a completely different flavor and texture. The Rinpoche is going away on retreat for a year and this was a going away party of sorts. But so consistent with this being a contemplative community, there was a very long, slow, silent ritual by an archer. There were chants and incantations in Tibetan by the Rinpoche's mother, step father and step brother, chants by the community for his longevity, and a blessing ceremony for the whole community. The sweetest part to me was the deep-felt request from Acharya Judith Simmer-Brown to the Rinpoche on behalf of the entire community for the Rinpoche to live a long life and to continue to teach his community. You could feel the depth of her own heartbreak from losing past teachers to death and at the thought of the Sakyong being away from the community for a full year.

I also attended the dialogues on Thursday night. I had the honor of refilling the water glasses for the dialogue participants. I had to find the pitcher and glasses and get everything ready. It seemed like something small at first and then I felt like I had been given a great responsibility. I had an opportunity to care for them in advance and to be very mindful of them throughout the whole dialogue in a way I would not have if I hadn't in my own way been a participant too.

One of my Naropa undergraduate friends is graduating in December. She told me all about her plans for her family and friends to come to the graduation and how excited she is about this opportunity to take the walk to get her degree. I did not even go to my undergraduate ceremony. I only went to my high school and MBA ceremony for the benefit of my mother primarily.

As I sat in the audiences these past few days and listened to my friends excitement yesterday, I realized that I have missed something important by not participating in the rituals that I have passed by over the years including many funerals. Through our Cultivating the Sacred class, I am learning how valuable rituals are and how few opportunities we actually do have to participate in them in our culture. So the next time someone invites me to a wedding or a ceremony of any type, I will not so quickly turn up my nose at it and may even accept with joy instead of disdain and go and really be mindful of the opportunity I have to particpate in a rite of transition Western style.

One Person at a Time

This morning while I was meditating, my phone rang. When I looked at the caller ID, it was a cell phone in Washington, DC. I assumed it was a friend returning my call. I decided to check the voice message. It was a call from a complete stranger that found me completely by accident.

She is an extraordinary young photographer named Emily Troutman, and she has just been designated a Citizen Ambassador. She acheived this distinction by entering a contest sponsored by the UN asking "If you could speak to world leaders, what would you say?" Please, please go to her blogsite and watch her film. It brought tears to my eyes. The text is also on the site.

Here is an excerpt from the end of the video:

"I want us both to agree to say one true thing out loud everyday. To remember one real person. To remind ourselves that our tragedies—yours and mine—are lived and felt one person at a time; just like our hope, our renewal, our future can also be lived and carried out into the world, one person at a time. You have a chance to be that person. So make a promise with me:

I promise to humble myself.
I promise to grieve.
I promise to bow down to truth.
I promise to argue.
I promise to listen and to live with intention.
I promise to know my own strength.
I promise to risk something.
I promise to stop talking about what hasn't been doneand start doing something different.

We are 6.7 billion real people who want to be remembered, who only want to live a life as good and as safe as the one you live. If we promise to think of you, to work with you; I hope you'll promise to think of us, to work for us. One person, one small baby, one dream at a time.
Sincerely,
Emily Troutman

Here is a link to her Message to World Leaders:http://www.emilytroutman.blogspot.com

As well as the press release regarding the contest:
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=32591&Cr=akasaka&Cr1=

I am hoping to travel around and ask people the question I answered, "If you could speak to world leaders, what would you say?"

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I wasn't actually able to assist Emily with the reason she called me, but I am hoping to help her in her mission by getting her an invitation to Naropa.

Re-emergence

Yesterday our Centering Prayer class had an all day retreat. It was a beautiful encounter with my own contemplative practice, sitting in the beautiful silence, and with contemplative Christianity which I have never really known before now.

I am reading "The Grace in Dying" by Kathleen Dowlings Singh. It is another thing that has come into my life by synchronicity. I was told about this book by two or three people including David Frenette (teaches the Centering Prayer class) in the last week. I found a copy on my bookshelf. Two friends sent it to me awhile ago, and I filed it with my hospice book collection.
It is an awesome book about the qualities that take place as we near death and the notion that we come out of the Ground of Being (God, Source, etc.) at birth, differeniate ourselves (develop ego) and then return to the Ground of Being just before we die unless we figure out sooner that that which we are longing for is the return to God.

If we figure it out sooner we start a contemplative practice. If not, it happens anyway as we approach death. It doesn't matter which contemplative tradition we "dig our deep well in." According to Ken Wilbur all mystics of every tradition ultimately discover this unity. It is inevitable as the night follows the day that you will re-emerge into God. But how wonderful to do it in life as we live at this very moment. Then to have time to share this blessing with others and help them to this consciousness. That seems to me the deep work of our call to chaplaincy.

Sacred World

In Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior, Chögyam Trungpa describes Sacred World. The world becomes sacred essentially because we treat it as sacred and hold that intention in the way we express ourselves both internally and externally. In the external world, it is holding the intention to regard our home as sacred. Sacredness is a way of connecting to the moment as it is right now. It is being aware of how we maintain our home; how we cook our food; how we attend to our friends and family and all the details of our everyday. According to Trungpa, this paying attention and being present to our lives is how we move our existence out of the mundane and into the sacred. It is out of this sacred space that we create enlightened society.“Enlightened society must rest on a good foundation.…if you apply awareness in any situation, then you are training your whole being so that you will be able to open yourself further, rather than narrowing your existence.”

He says on the Shambhala path we also regard sense perceptions as sacred. Instead of fighting with them or trying to get rid of them, we see them as basically good. We use meditation practice to train connect us to the nowness of our world and hone our wisdom. Through treating our world as sacred and our perceptions as sacred, we begin to experience the magic that exists in the world. We begin to magnetize magic by treating our world as sacred. We pay attention to the details of our life. We live disciplined lives with great attentiveness and with great heart. We magnetize magic in our bodies by becoming one with our existence. Our whole body hangs together as one integrated entitiy. Our sense perceptions also “work as one unit, one basic goodness, one expression of basic health.” By all the ways you take care of yourself, your discipline, the way you dress, the things you eat, how you attend to others when you are in a conversation and so on invokes this magic. Trungpa says even the way you dress, the fit of your clothes can cause you to feel upliftedness. You are synchronizing your body and your connection to the physical world outside your body.

I am starting to get a sense of how this works and how I move in the world with this sense of sacredness. I begin to see how if everyone were living from this sense of sacredness, we would treat one another differently and the whole society would move in the direction of sacred world.

Holy Ground

Joel Goldsmith says wherever we stand is holy ground. Joseph Campbell tells the story of the Vedic saint resting his feet on a sacred symbol. A priest comes along and is outraged. The saint says where can I put my feet that are not sacred. The priest keeps trying to move the feet only to discover that everywhere he tries to put them, the sacred object pops up underneath them. He catches on and moves on his way.

If everything and everyone is sacred, it begs the question what does it mean to be sacred anyway? We often think it means being special in some way like the neon sign on the church across the street that says, “You are the most valuable thing to God.” If I don’t hold anything in particular as more valuable to God has sacred lost its meaning? Is there anything in this world more valuable to God than anything else? If I accept that everything is indeed sacred, would I move through this world in a different way? Would I value everything equally or would it mean though I have reverence for everything, I could care more deeply about some things than others? What does God really think about all this anyway? Does he/she/it even think about such things or consider humans in any particular way. If I pray fervently for myself and others, is there really someone or something listening that truly cares about my existence or my suffering?

I would like to believe so and yet, I very much hold to the notion that God doesn’t distinguish, that the love of the universe belong to us all in equal measure, that indeed we are all equally sacred and equally valuable.

End of life rituals for the remaining

One of the sacred rituals that still seem to remain in our culture is the funeral. I went to the services for my hospice client. He had been born in an observant Jewish family over 70 years ago, but left those religious roots and went searching for the rest of his life. In the end he was part of a Buddhist community and was studying the Course in Miracles. It seemed he has strayed a long way from his Jewish roots, but in the end, his service was conducted by a rabbi and our hospice chaplain. His body was not allowed to sit out for a few days as his Buddhist sangha had expected much to their dismay. He was interred immediately following the service.

My childhood experience with funerals was not very good, and I was so distraught after my grandfather wake, my mother would not let me attend the funeral service. I didn’t go to another funeral until I was an adult. Even then I mostly avoided them or made excuses to not attend. When my husband died, I conducted his memorial service and turned it into a celebration of his life. At both my parents’ funerals, I thought it was a shame that the family and friends had not gathered like this while they were still alive and could appreciate the experience. My hospice client had such an experience. His spiritual community hosted a celebration of his life while he was still alive. It was a testament to his life and an affirmation of his connection to his friends and family.

I have not been to the graveside of my parents and Michael's (my deceased husband) ashes are buried in the front yard of the only house he ever owned under a tree we planted together. I don’t see myself walking up to the owners and asking if I can bow and pray in front of their tree. However recently a friend asked me to go with him and his family to his mother’s grave side for the first anniversary of her death. We placed flowers and sang hymns. It seemed very healing and life affirming for them. The one graveside I have attended with some regularity was that of my grandfather. He was buried in a concrete crypt in the field of the family farm. So he was always near at hand when I was at my grandmother’s house. I spent many hours over the years lying on his cement crypt pouring my heart out to him about my life and problems. I cried bitterly on his crypt when my mother died and asked him to watch over her. Of course I have no idea if he heard me, but this ritual that I started when I was seven has over many years given me comfort and a sense of connection to my ancestors. They recently moved my grandfather to the cemetery where my mother and grandmother are buried.

As a chaplain I suspect, I will attend many end of life rituals and even be asked to conduct the services. I believe this ritual is truly for the living and serves as a balm for the suffering they are experiencing. I have a new respect for these rituals and perhaps someday, I will go and place some flowers on my father’s grave and tell him how my life has turned out since he left.