Brokedown Bliss

 

We got them boys now. Thought we’d be smart and hole up in a fancypants rv park with hot tubs and swimming cools and electricity and on-demand chicken nuggets. but we was outplayed by illness and orneriness and bad capacity. We managed some good moments in there, but damn we thowed a lot of shoes and got tangled in miles of barb-wire and jumping cactus and plain old ugliness.

I still want things to be a certain way. I still get flummoxed when they don’t comply to my expectations.

I fail in ever new ways to be a good man. I lose my shit with those sweet boyos. I get mad. I am horrified to face how I get. How I let myself get. I love them but damn I fail at being a good human around them. And when the woman looks at me when I lose it. I want to die is what.

All them among you who’d cast a stone, get ’em ready.

 

Let fly.

 

***

 

My beloved teacher, Shamar Rinpoche. Dead now more than a year. I have wrote here before how he got much closer to me after his death than he was before it. I got no explanation for it but I know it to be true.

Here is a little story you can believe it if you want to or you can say it isn’t so:

When the boys got here they were both in some degree sick and they got worse over the first few days and we was just waiting our turn for it. About five or six days in to the visit I got nailed in the middle of the night. Woke up with the alarm in my body- you know that one? You go to bed fine, but in the dark of the night you feel the fever and the nausea like a greasy sea beneath you- you don’t know quite what’s wrong but your body wakes you up? It says, “Hey, boyo. Get up out of bed right the fuck now cuz some bad shit is about to go down.”

I was unhinged by it. Weepy and resisting and overmatched. How could I be this sick and in a tiny trailer with two other sick boys and feed them and clean them and entertain them and not redrum them? How could I take to a sick bed and leave my lovely long suffering wife to handle them alone?

I was just overfuckingwhelmed. And sick. And freaked out.

 

So there’s this practice we do where when we feel shitty we say, “Well, since I’m feeling this shitty, let me take on all the shitty feelings everywhere, for all beings, and let my suffering ease their suffering. Let me have all of it, and let my experience of this sufffering take all the other suffering away.” This is called tonglen, or exchanging self for others. And it works. It’s a powerful practice. You breathe in all the suffering in the form of black smoke and you breathe out brilliant white light that goes everywhere and when it touches the other suffering beings it relieves their suffering. Not that this is actually happening, but it is happening in your mind, and that’s what matters.

anyway what I usually do is try to imagine everyone suffering, but it becomes kind of diffuse and non-concrete as it expands and expands- eventually I feel like, “Well, this is my aspiration, and I can’t really and truly get everyone and every kind of suffering, so let’s just imagine it’s working and move on.”

But this night I was in such a state that I was just determined- I’m going to suck out every single tiny black smoke particle wherever it might exist- in any realm, in any dimension, in any time- let me get absolutely every single bit of it and burn it up, transform it. All suffering. Everywhere. All of yours, down to the last bit. All of everyone’s, ever. Give it to me and let me burn it up. Let me have it all so no one must feel what I’m feeling.

it was a kind of more powerful way of relating to the practice than I’d tried before.

 

So all this was happening as I was thrashing in my sick bed, feverish and nauseated and kind of crying. And here’s where it gets weird. Shamar Rinpoche came to me. Just popped right into my head and my heart and my sickness. His face, his presence, his wisdom and light and love and humor, and just like that the big fear and panic in my heart- he took it into his.

he took it into his. effortlessly and with a sweet smile.

 

And I felt completely cured. Blissful and happy and whole and fine. And I saw him and I felt him and I was so grateful. But then I saw that he was relieving me of a burden that was rightfully mine. So I told him. I said- “Thank you for relieving my pain and my panic and fear. But I am capable. I can handle it. I do want to burn up the suffering of others. I don’t want to be so sick that I can’t help my grandkids and my wife, but I can deal with this little cold and fever. Thank you and thank you and thank you, but let me be a grownup, let me do what is mine to do.”

 

And just like that I was sick again. But not as bad. I was totally cool with it. The panic and fear and resistance were gone.

 

***

 

Probably this was just the workings of a feverish mind. Probably my teacher did not come visit me and relieve me of my burden out of his own limitless compassion.

 

But this is not what I believe.

 
***

 

None of this matters. I am insignificant and my small troubles are equally insignificant. True sorrow exists and true suffering covers the face of the globe nor will it cease to do so.

 

But I want to say thank you to him all the same.

***

 

 

I am so flawed. So enslaved by my desires and fears. Yet I am capable of great, of limitless love and compassion. I possess, just as you do, the perfect and stainless nature of the true mind. I am all things. As are you.

 

***

 

The other night I dreamed that my daughter gave a teaching to a group of high lamas and other realized beings.

 

“Be kind.” she said. “I forgot what else there was, I didn’t do my homework. But I remember that part.”

 

Seems good enough to me.

 

***

 

Namaste.

 

No Hard Feelings

 

***

When my body won’t hold me anymore
And it finally lets me free
Will I be ready?
When my feet won’t walk another mile
And my lips give their last kiss goodbye
Will my hands be steady?

When I lay down my fears
My hopes and my doubts
The rings on my fingers
And the keys to my house
With no hard feelings

When the sun hangs low in the west
And the light in my chest
Won’t be kept held at bay any longer
When the jealousy fades away
And it’s ash and dust for cash and lust
And it’s just hallelujah
And love in thoughts and love in the words
Love in the songs they sing in the church
And no hard feelings

Lord knows they haven’t done
Much good for anyone
Kept me afraid and cold
With so much to have and hold

Mmh
When my body won’t hold me anymore
And it finally lets me free
Where will I go?
Will the trade winds take me south
Through Georgia grain or tropical rain
Or snow from the heavens?

Will I join with the ocean blue
Or run into the savior true
And shake hands laughing
And walk through the night
Straight to the light
Holding the love I’ve known in my life
And no hard feelings

Lord knows they haven’t done
Much good for anyone
Kept me afraid and cold
With so much to have and hold
Under the curving sky
I’m finally learning why
It matters for me and you
To say it and mean it too
For life and its loveliness
And all of its ugliness
Good as it’s been to me
I have no enemies
I have no enemies
I have no enemies
I have no enemies

 

***

 

This just blew my doors off.

 

***

If we could just remember that this is all already gone. We don’t get to hold any of it, not for even a whole day. It flows through us without ceasing. In our imagined poverty we clutch at what can’t even be slowed down, even less stopped. But it is limitless. Never ending.

Our suffering rises up like this, our splashing and reaching and grabbing and fleeing. Since we are limitless our suffering is limitless, too. No one can stop us doing this but ourselves. But stopping it is all that is needed.

Let go of the whole thing. You can’t be harmed. In this world of ceaseless manifestation you can never be poor. Never alone. Never something imperfect. Your story is longing for you.

Nothing to be added, nothing taken away. Only love for what is. In all of its loveliness. In all of its ugliness.

I have no enemies.

 

***

Lay down your burden,  Tyler Durden.

***

 

Namaste.

 

 

***

 

Extending Throughout Space for the Benefit of Beings

 

***

Abre tus ojos.

 

 

 

***

 

Yolie is headed west to pick up the boys and bring them back out here in the desert for a Thanksgiving visit. She’ll be two days out and back so I’m going into retreat in the silver spaceship until her return.

 

My practice focus will be on Chenrezig, or Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Great Compassion.

I’ve turned the Airstream into a mobile retreat center, with a spacious and beautiful altar for candles and offerings, and my practice space on the floor in front of it with my cushion and a low table for my practice texts. Incense fills the air, my chants and prayers fill the air, my mind fills the space, my body both is and dissolves, and the very air is full of limitless Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, teachers, lineage holders, friends, enemies, strangers, beings from the six realms, and anyone who wants to attend.

 

I sit and pray. I give thanks and offerings. I offer all that I am. I am utterly present, and utterly transported- to this exact place.

Perhaps it is an indication that practice has taken hold in me. I understand little, and am easily misled, but I am devoted. I both believe in and long for immersion in practice as something key to my development. Not that there is something to achieve, or something to become other than what I intrinsically already am and have. But like a dog loves to chase sticks I love to practice. Throw a stick for me and I will chase it until I collapse. Not to get the stick. I know there isn’t any stick to get. But for the joy of chasing it. For what I am when I am in practice. Which is exactly what I am when I’m not in practice. Except that I can’t say I’m ever not in practice, if you know what I mean.

So much of the Dharma makes perfect sense to me. Train the mind, settle the mind, open the mind. Be ethical in my conduct and I’ll cause less harm to myself and others. Cultivate kindness and compassion. Think of others before myself. Try to help. Try not to judge. Don’t feel sorry for myself, but have deep feeling for the suffering of others, which is in every way vaster and more plentiful than my own small sorrows. Let go of wanting things to be some other way than they are. Be open and curious about what’s revealing itself in this moment. Attend to what is and give less to what was and what might be.

 

These are all things that you’d be hard pressed to argue against.

But Dharma also includes things that make no sense to me. I can’t really talk rationally about them and I’m not certain that I should, that there’s any benefit to it. But practice includes aspects that fundamentally unhinge my rational view of what is. Experiential phenomenon that defy explanation and yet continue to manifest. The teachings advise me to pay little attention to these phenomenon, so I don’t make too big a deal about them. I don’t chase them and I don’t cling to them. I don’t assign any importance to them and I keep my nose to the grindstone as it were and continue my work. I have seen others who leap up at these occurrences and run off after them. And I have seen these people get utterly lost. So I am cautious. I am prudent. I retain my focus.

But I don’t deny them, either. I welcome their coming and I feel a bit wistful when they go. And although I do not court them or cling to them( to the best of my small ability) they nevertheless exact a powerful change in how I perceive this reality- the only reality there is. Like an acid that dissolves duality and solidity wherever it is found, these experiences undo the glue that holds together a rationalist, mechanistic view of the nature of mind and of reality. What the teachings say is that these things manifest and that’s fine, that’s an indication, if you will, of progress, but they are not to be trusted in their own right- they are artifacts and not the thing in itself. Don’t be fooled, the texts explain.

So.

 

In what ways can you use this in your own life? You are doing something good, something right, something important. You work hard at it and things around you begin to shift. The world opens up for you in a way it never quite did before. Important things happen.

Don’t stop.

I think that’s what we can take from this. Don’t stop doing what you were doing that caused all of this wonderful new shit to come to light! Don’t take the consolation prize and run off and quit the game. Put the little blue-haired gnome in your pocket if you want, but then roll up your sleeves and redouble your efforts. You’re on to something.

Keep going.

 

***

 

My Chenrezig Sadhana booklet is growing ratty and care-worn. But it was blessed by my teacher Shamar Rinpoche the last time I saw him just weeks before his death. His name is scrawled in it. I know that physical talismans are not “things in themselves” and that no thing is “a thing in itself.” Everything is truly everything and there’s only this moment and what what what. But also I know that he touched this book and gave it his blessing for me, for my practice, for my path, for my Buddhahood. His compassion ignites the pages of that small booklet and catches the very fabric of my mind on fire because of it. This little blue book ties me to him in a timeless, limitless way. He is with me still and I am with him, no more so than when I am practicing.

In the desert a couple of weeks ago I met this remarkable human being I call “Big John” and he quoted to me the whole of the Velveteen rabbit quote as follows:

“Real isn’t how you are made,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.’

‘Does it hurt?’ asked the Rabbit.

‘Sometimes,’ said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. ‘When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.’

‘Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,’ he asked, ‘or bit by bit?’

‘It doesn’t happen all at once,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

 

That comes pretty close to how I feel about my little blue Chenrezig book. And how I feel about my teacher. And how I feel about you. And about myself.

 

Big John is one of those things that happen that can’t be explained. You are out in the middle of nowhere and a big bearded man comes up to you in the dark and whispers this to you.

What can you say about that?

 

***

Again and again I love and fail. Again and again I give myself to the big, wheezing contraption and say “do what you will.”

I will spend myself on all of you nor will I stop doing so.

 

***

 

Namaste.

 

Do open your eyes. Do so. We need you now more than ever.

 

 

***

 

Postcard from nowhere

 

***

We got our solitude on out here in the Arizona desert. It’s surprising to me how much more social we are on the road than we were in “real” life. We’ve made so many new friends and we encounter new ones all the time. I imagined that we’d be alone, together, almost all the time but it seems that we have to kind of actually make an effort to “get away”. Of course, doing that is a lot easier now that all we have to do is hook up and drive off into the wilderness somewhere. Like we just did.

I have a deep hunger for solitude and the wild open space of the desert. Especially the close, warm, and loving solitude of having the woman on the verge with me every second of the day and night. We’ve been so long together that being with each other is our default setting, and being “alone” means being alone together.

Days of silence and sun, yoga and meditation, eating our amazing meals together, and then reading or surfing the net and just hanging out, long walks, watching the sun come up and then go back down, holding hands with no words exchanged- it sparks the deepest bliss in me. I know it can’t always be like this, so I soak it up when it is.

It seems to me that one of the big changes in this life we’re now living is that we have more of those peak experiences and less of the flatline middle- more highs, a lot fewer big lows, and almost no “ghost days” that our old life seemed full of- day after day of routine that grind up year after year of our lives. This is sort of like life where you fast-forward through all the boring parts. Or most of them, anyway. And the good ones slow way down, they linger in a way that they didn’t before. Instead of a quiet romantic dinner getaway that lasts a few hours, our dates can last weeks. It is pretty nice.

Right now, though, we are hanging out with a whole crew of weirdos. And it’s great! We’ve joined up with Jamie from Enigmatic Nomadics for a “Van Build-out Party.” There are about thirty rigs parked in the boonies near Lake Havasu and we’re all going to get our build on. Hang out, help folks set up their full-timing rigs, swap tools and supplies and stories, and generally have a friendly time. Our spot in the desert is ugly and sandy and we’re all kind of jammed in together, but the company is great and the vibe is super warm and friendly.

Last night we hung out with Jo and Kathy and John, all friends of ours that we’ve crossed paths with on the road, and caught up with each other, drank beers and wine and talked story until the wee hours (well, nine pm, which is like past midnight for us!). It was a beautiful night filled with amazing talk and a sense of ever-deepening friendship. It seems like the people who have the guts to walk away from society and embrace this strange life are really interesting folks to talk to- every single one of them wears their uniqueness out in the open. And there’s very little posturing or pretending here- no one has anything to protect or defend, so they let it all hang out. It is a brave and enriching way to engage with the world and I enjoy hanging out with them.

I feel so blessed to be alive today.

***

 

I hope you are happy, and well, and safe, and loved. I’m pulling for you all the time.

 

***

 

Namaste.

 

***