I'm reading Pema Chodron again. Her thoughts on the idea of renunciation, an important Buddhist concept:

[Renunciation] has to do with letting go of holding back. What one is renouncing is closing down and shutting off from life. ... renunciation is seeing clearly how we hold back, how we pull away, how we shut down, how we close off, and then learning how to open. It's about saying yes to whatever is put on your plate, whatever knocks on your door, whatever calls you up on your telephone. ....The journey of awakening--the classical journey of the mythical hero or heroine--is one of continually coming up against big challenges [the things that make you freeze up] and then learning how to soften and open. In other words, the paralyzed quality seems to be hardening and refusing, and the letting go or the renunciation of that attitude is simply feeling the whole thing in your heart, letting it touch your heart. You soften and feel compassion for your predicament and for the whole human condition.
(from The Wisdom of No Escape, p. 51-53)

AB

thinking about Buddhism- detachment

This was the hardest one for me to wrap my brain around, and I have to be honest-- it still is not all that appealing to me. But the Buddhist idea of being detached, of not allowing yourself to be attached to anything, still has been very interesting to me as a mental exercise. Again, I think part of the reason that it took me so long to even begin to understand detachment is because there is no good word in English for what is meant when a Buddhist uses it. Before I knew anything about Buddhism, if you had asked me to tell you what it means to say someone is "detached," I would have said they were emotionally cold, unavailable, and stand-offish. But I don't think that is what Buddhists mean by the term at all. The word "un-attached" is somewhat closer to the meaning, I think, but still doesn't quite get it.

My understanding is that Buddhists believe that everything we do and see and feel is dictated by our thoughts. And our thoughts are nothing but our perceptions; they have no literal value, no basis in what is truly real. So there is no point in becoming attached to the way we think. You may think that it's depressing when it rains. You may think that you are worthless because your parents were so horrible when you were a child. You may think that you aren't capable of achieving greatness because you tried once or twice and failed. You may think that your neighbor is angry at you because he barely spoke to you at the mailbox yesterday. All of those are thoughts that could have a strong influence on how you act, maybe with all kinds of consequences that could go on for a lifetime. But all of those thoughts are just your impressions, they're just smoke, or maybe soap bubbles. They have no validity beyond what you give them. They may or may not have anything to do with anything.

So the idea is that there is no point in getting attached to your ideas or opinions. The goal is to live your life with an open mind, not let pre-conceptions get in the way of your direct experience of reality. Try to drop all your opinions and just live, keep breathing. Just see what happens. I'm not sure I'm explaining this very well. I'm trying to learn to approach my experience with a feeling of softness and vulnerability, rather being defensive and clutching tightly onto my ideas about what is scary and what is impossible.

Each of us has situations where this is harder or easier, depending on our own experience and personality. Ideas and objects and people that are particularly difficult to let go of are "sticky"-- they cause us to grab on tight to our fears and insecurities and not want to let go. We know that new pair of shoes would (briefly) make us feel better so we clench tightly the idea that having a new pair of shoes will make us happy. We are absolutely positive that this job is essential to staying financially solvent, so we fuss and fret about every little detail of what goes on at work. We try to protect ourselves by clutching tightly onto whatever makes us feel safe.

But the only thing that is dependable, really, is that things will change. The tighter we clutch, the more seriously we take our attachments, the more miserable we will be when they fail us. When the shoes don't provide durable happiness. When my job is eliminated and I don't know what to do.

In classical Buddhism, you want to get to the point where you attach no importance to anything in this world. And that's where I get stuck (um, so to speak). I do think there are things in this world that are worth forming attachments to, even if it will hurt like hell when the attachment fails. And I think if you follow the philosophy of non-attachment to its conclusion, it is difficult to make a case for art (art for art's sake, anyway)-- which is very important to me. So a classical Buddhist would probably just think that I am admitting to my immaturity, and of course I am. But I'm OK with that.

So that's my take on it. Since I think this is the last of my posts on Buddhism (for now, anyway), I'll just say it one more time: I'm a beginner in the study of Buddhism. If someone out there with more experience would chime in and clarify things, I'd appreciate it.

AB

thinking about Buddhism- meditation

When I first came in contact with Buddhism, more than ten years ago, it wasn't very appealing to me. The couple of books I had read and the Buddhists I was acquainted with at that time made it sound like it was all about discipline-- being cool and detached, unemotional, your thoughts under perfect control. I was curious about it, so I tried meditation a bit and read a bit more, but it went nowhere. But about four or five years ago, I ran across the writings of Pema Chodron and met some different Buddhists, and my impression began to change.

The heart of Buddhist practice is meditation. But my early understanding of what that meant was looking at it slantwise. I thought the idea was to completely shut down all thought in your brain and try to merge with the Great Nothing. I don't think I had any idea exactly what that meant, it was just my impression of Buddhist meditation. When I sit down to meditate now, my goal isn't to stop thinking, what I want is to create a little space between me and my thoughts, to watch them, see them go by-- the classic example is like watching clouds float across the sky. (I especially like that example when it is the night sky, with clouds floating by in front of the vast starry expanse.) The idea is to not attach any significance to them, to realize that they're just thoughts, electrical impulses that have no meaning outside what I give them.

I should confess here that I am terrible at this. I have what I think of as Busy Brain Syndrome. Not that meditation is easy for anyone, but I think a lot. In the space of a minute, I might think about what we're having for dinner, who's picking up my son from school, what responsibilities are "real" vs. ones that I've just picked up out of guilt, where my daughter is going to college next year, whether or not I'm over-involved in her decision, is that load of laundry done, and if evil starts small, how am I participating? And honestly, I have rarely managed to stop this flow of constant mental chatter for more than a minute or two, although I've spent far longer than that sitting and working on it.

but what I'm learning to do is to just observe all that constant stream of thought. Just sit and watch it. When I first started, I would imagine that I had some sort of helmet that completely covered my head and it was all covered with lights and dials and wires that were constantly blinking and humming and clicking, representing all my mental activity. And then I would just slip out of the helmet and leave it sitting there, flashing and humming and clicking away, all by itself. It is such an enormous relief sometimes to leave it aside. According to the Buddhist teachers I've read in the last few years, the mind is innately spacious. We just have to step away from the claustrophobic stream of thoughts that makes us feel stressed, overwhelmed, and anxious to experience that spacious, open feeling. I've only rarely experienced this; I'm not the most disciplined of practitioners. but I've experienced it enough to continue to work at it.

Should I put my disclaimer in every day? I'm a beginning student of Buddhism. Take all of this with a grain of salt.

AB

thinking about Buddhism- suffering

Suffering is an important concept in Buddhism, but one that took me a long time to understand. Maybe I still don't understand it very well.

At first reading, it seems so entirely different than the Christian understanding of suffering. In my Evangelical childhood, I was taught to see suffering as a means to an end. The New Testament epistle of James says quite bluntly: "Consider it all joy, my brothers, when you encounter various trials (ie, when you suffer), knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance, and endurances produces perfect results, that you may be full and complete, lacking in nothing."

In Christianity, Suffering is the refiner's fire. You pass through problems and "tribulations" so that the trivial and unimportant is burned away, and you become a better Christian, a better person. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, more or less.

The not-so-subtle undercurrent (for me, back in the day) was: the more I suffer, the more deserving I will be of God's love; and even this: the more I suffer, the more God loves me. It leads to a sort of "Bring It On" mentality among some of us. Oh, yeah, I'm suffering, but it's making me into a better person. I think you find this attitude particularly among Christians of Northern European descent. :-)

So when I first started studying Buddhism and ran across the idea that "All is suffering" (a summary of the First Noble Truth), and that the point of Buddhism is to escape suffering, it made no sense to me. Why would you want to escape suffering? Suffering is part of life. Suffering is what helps you grow up. If you run from suffering, you miss out on life, you are a baby.

I struggled with this misunderstanding for a long time. I spent the whole time I was reading the Dalai Lama's book on happiness arguing with him. (Arrogant, much?)

I've come to think it's mainly a problem in translation, though. There is no way in English to differentiate between what His Holiness is talking about and the kind of suffering I was thinking about. The word suffering is used to mean something different, and it was a bit of a stretch for my WASP brain.

Finally one day last spring I GOT it. I was drying my hair, and feeling irritated that it was already time to get a haircut again. You get a haircut; it's too short for a week; then it's just right for a couple of weeks; then it's getting too long; then it's already time for a hair cut again.

And like the proverbial lightbulb going on, I thought, "Oh! that's it!" Nothing like the small mundane things to help you see larger truths. The Buddhist idea of suffering is more about the endless cycle, the daily grind, the unending work of getting through life. You get up, eat breakfast, go to work, come home, eat dinner, clean up, go to bed, then the next day you do it all over again. It's all about the cycle, the endless cycle.

It's a classic East/West difference. I was trained to think of suffering as a linear thing, something that happens along the way that is a means to an end, a process that gets you to a goal-- the goal of being a better Christian. Your life is going along just fine, then some big problem hits, and you have to get through it. Then things go back to normal (usually). Getting through the time of suffering helps you grow.

The Buddhist idea is about endless reiterations of the same things, the kinds of things my WASP brain would have considered background, white noise. In Christianity, suffering is big stuff--persecution, illness, losing your job. In Buddhism, suffering is just the grind, the stuff you have to do over and over to get through the day.

Like laundry. Laundry never ends. There is always more laundry to do at our house. Or cooking. Someone is always hungry at our house. Or batteries. Here are the rechargeable batteries I have: cell phone, iPod, camera, laptop. You charge them up, use them for a few hours or days, then they have to be recharged again. It's an endless cycle, and it's a pain in the ass.

But once I got that figured out, it seems that the attitude that you have toward suffering in both traditions is pretty similar. You don't run from it, you don't avoid it, you dive in. But where Christianity emphasizes endurance, getting through it, Buddhism emphasizes staying open, not shutting down, while you are in the midst of suffering.

Pema Chodron says you try to stay soft, instead of closing up like a clenched fist. You let yourself experience your suffering fully. You grow up. What I had interpreted in Buddhism as wanting to run away from suffering is actually not attaching importance to suffering, not letting yourself get caught up in thinking that the daily soap opera of our lives is important.

Disclaimer: As always, my understanding of Buddhism is anything but expert. More experienced insights welcome.

AB

thinking about Buddhism

I'm going to be posting about Buddhism for the next few days. That's the plan, anyway. Buddhism has become very important to me as a source of wisdom, and as a counterpoint to the way I was raised. I love the way it stretches my mind, makes me think about things from a new angle. But for reasons I'm not sure I can really explain, I'm not at all interested in becoming Buddhist. Maybe I'll write more about that at some point.

But I'm having a harder and harder time continuing to attend a Christian church. So. just thought I should put that out there. No conclusions to announce because I haven't reached any.

AB
(as always, a work in progress)

Reading Merton also helped me define some of what has been so helpful to me about Buddhism over the past four years or so. I've been reading about Buddhism for a lot longer than that-- I read Natalie Goldberg's book on Zen Buddhism Long Quiet Highway at least ten years ago, I know, and a few others along the way, too--like the Dalai Lama's book on happiness and an odd book about sheep and Buddhism called the Barn at the End of the World (I think). But I didn't really take an interest in Buddhism for its relevance to me personally until about four years ago when I ran across The Wisdom of No Escape, by Pema Chodron, a Buddhist nun who is the director of Gampo Abbey in Nova Scotia. I've picked up from reading the various reviews on amazon.com that she is considered something of a lightweight among certain buddhists, but she has been more helpful to me than I can say. I never underline in books, but almost without thinking about it, I grabbed a pen and underlined half of practically every paragraph in the first few chapters of that book. I think I've read four of hers now, and listened to a number of her teachings on CD, too. Then last year I listened to The Teaching Company's lectures on Buddhism and I've read a few other authors, too-- Sharon Salzberg, Tara Brach, Jack Kornfield, a little of Chogyam Trungpa and Thich Nhat Hanh, and a bit more by the Dalai Lama.

If that sounds like I'm bragging, it's meant to be the opposite. One of the reasons it has been hard for me to talk about how important Buddhism is to me is that I don't feel qualified. I've done all this reading, but I know it's minimal compared to what's out there. Unlike my history with Christianity, I've never lived as a Buddhist for an extended period of time, I've never even been on a Buddhist retreat. When talking about Christianity, I know it from the inside, I've lived it and breathed it. Of course I don't speak for all Christians, but there's no doubt in my mind that my upbringing was representative of a certain type of Christianity and I can speak about it with some level of comfort. But when I start talking about Buddhism, I'm way out of my league. But I can't talk about where I am now without bringing it up. So I guess I just wanted to make it clear that my understanding of Buddhism is that of a beginner. Very beginner.

So anyway. All that to say: while reading Merton, it struck me how similar the Christian practice of denying the self is to the Buddhist practice of No Self. I know that theologically there is a big difference-- I could go on for pages on the difference between "dying to self so I can live for Christ," "being broken so that Christ can shine through," and the Buddhist idea that the self is a construct that exists in our head that has no other meaning. But in practice, the way you live this out without thinking about what it means, I think they are more similar than different. The idea is to let go of the belief that your wants and perceived needs and desires have any significance at all. Merton talks about how the all the striving after the "desires of the flesh" keeps you from finding what is really important. Pema Chodron says when our minds are spinning with cares and worries and problems, to let go of the story line and see what remains, what is underneath. (I love the Buddhist definition of ego: Ego is the story we tell ourselves about ourselves.) The two ideas are not the same, but in terms of how I put them into practice in my life, they're pretty similar. And reading about the Buddhist take on this has breathed new life into an idea that had become extremely stale for me.

enough already.
AB

My working definition of faith, which is borrowed verbatim from Sharon Salzburg, a Buddhist writer and teacher, in her amazing book Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience:

"Faith does not require a belief system, and is not necessarily connected to a deity or God, though it doesn't deny one. This faith is not a commodity that we have or don't have-- it is an inner quality that unfolds as we learn to trust our own deepest experience.... No matter what we encounter in life, it is faith that enables us to try again, to trust again, to love again. Even in times of immense suffering, it is faith that enables us to relate to the present moment in such a way that we can go on, we can move forward, instead of becoming lost in resignation or despair. Faith links our present-day expereince, whether wonderful or terrible, to the underlying pulse of life itself." (I could also have just excerpted the entire book here, but that would be a bit impractical.)