Category: Spiritual Musings
The Life of The Buddha
Great documentary. And it’s quite a nice touch that the actor who plays the Buddha is smoking hot, too..
More Buddha
Out of the blue, I decided to check out Paris Jackson’s Twitter page. Okay, this really only occurred to me because her family’s been in the news about some disputes over money. I had read that Paris had reported her grandmother missing on her Twitter page. So, for the first and possibly only time in my life, I looked her up.
Having satisfied my curiosity, I was about to close the window until I saw — lo and behold – on the left side of the screen, ANOTHER BUDDHA.
This is so interesting in part because I’m more attracted to Advaita Vedanta (Hinduism), than to Buddhism, but Buddha keeps showing up. What does he want?
Buddha, Buddha, Everywhere
People in my life know that I make a big deal out of pleasant coincidences. I generally refer to these auspicious confluence of events as synchronicities.
I started noticing synchronicities a few years ago. For a while, I’d keep track of them in my journals. Then, there were so many that I simply could not keep track of them.
For a while, I tried to figure out why these cool and interesting things were happening. I noticed some patterns. My synchronicities:
– did not seem to concern terribly important things (i.e. life and death situations, huge decisions or existential issues)
– were generally pleasant and delightful
– made me happy
– seemed to happen in “batches”
Years ago, I gave up trying to figure out why they happen. I did read Carl Jung’s work on synchronicities with some interest, though I did not delve deeply into the psychoanalytic framework he uses. These days, I interpret cool coincidences as evidence that (1) I’m in the right place at the right time (2) the Universe/God/Angels/Beings of Light/Oprah were essentially reminding me that we live in a magical, matrix-like world (3) God loves me and has a sense of humor.
In any case, my recent trip to New England was full of cool synchronicities. The most noticeable coincidence was the plethora of Buddhas that seemed to follow my every step. When I arrived at my mom’s place in Portland, Maine, I noticed her collection of Buddha statues and took a few pictures. I had seen them before, but I felt some need to document them this time.
A few days later, I showed up at a friend’s place in Cambridge only to find a tiny Buddha statue on the bed in which I’d be sleeping. Again, I snapped a picture.
While walking in Harvard Square, I randomly bumped into a friend I hadn’t spoken with in years. That night, I swung by his apartment. At some point, I noticed a Buddha statue in one of the rooms. I was delighted, though not surprised, despite my friend being allergic to most things spiritual. He then proceeded to point out the half a dozen other Buddhas in his living room. An interesting conversation about the meaning of life, his interests in nature and my interests in Buddhism and especially Hinduism commenced.
Other coincidences during the trip (some less impressive than others):
(1) While driving through Cambridge, I felt compelled to stop by the Weeks Bridge, a beautiful pedestrian walkway that arches over the Charles River. The bridge overlooks my old place at Peabody Terrace, where I lived for 5 years as a graduate student at Harvard. I walked up the washed-out white steps of the bridge, beheld the water and entered into meditation while listening to the recording of my “Harvest Moon” cover (a song I’d become obsessed with). While on the bridge, I decided I wanted to grab a coffee. My heart led me to Petsi Pies, a cool cafe and bakery I used to frequent. At Petsi Pies, I ordered a mocha latte, still listening to my music. Then, I watched as they took down the morning menu and put up a chalk board for lunch. I blinked when I saw that the special of the day was the “Harvest Moon” sandwich. I’d never seen that there before, and they told me they didn’t have that special the previous day.
(2) Walking through the Cambridge Commons, a little park on Harvard’s campus, I noticed a couple walk past me. The woman was wearing a bright green summer dress with a striking gold necklace. Her hipster male friend had on a matching green t-shirt. About 55 minutes later, I walked back through the Commons to my car, and the same couple walked past me, in almost the exact same spot where we crossed paths an hour before.
(3) The Buddhas. The Buddhas!
(4) A lot of synchronicities seem to involve my bed. Staying in my friend Miriam’s home, I noticed that there was a TV box next to the bed where I would be sleeping. It said, in big letters: “BLACK CRYSTAL”. Okay, this one is a stretch, but it still made me smile.
(5) In my mother’s guestroom, I turned and saw a stack of books on the bedside table. One of the books said “Advaita” on its spine. I knew it was meant to be my book.
(6) At my friend’s Cambridge apartment, there was a Buddha on the bed in which I slept.
(7) Lying in bed at my friend’s place in Boston, I woke up to see a book on “Chi Running” on the floor nearby. The book explains a technique for running long distances without hurting one’s self — the subject of an extended conversation I had with someone about a week ago.
(8) Conversations with various people I did not know I would talk with revealed synchronistic interests, reflections and experiences that are too numerous to get into here . . .
Duality and Nonduality
On Stillness & Stereotypes
One of the advantages of living in awareness of the present moment is that you begin to consciously experience what it means to live beyond stereotypes
I recall hearing Eckhart Tolle talk about this aspect of stillness in one of his videos on EckhartTolleTV.com The basic idea, as he explained it, is that being aware of other people as living beings requires attuning to their energy in the present moment. It is in this way that we can connect with each other more fully rather than relying on expectations, prejudices and stereotypes derived from our conditioning and socialization.
In my research, I spend a lot of time thinking about the consequences of ethnic and racial stereotypes on inter-group relations. Much of my work concerns the way minorities interpret and respond to everyday racism and discrimination. In my own life, I have also been surprised and disturbed by how difficult it can be to not be influenced by the lingering (negative and positive) preconceived ideas we have about each other. Usually these expectations are formed on the basis of appearance. I know all of this intellectually – and yet – even as a scholar concerned with race and antiracism, even as a person of color, even as someone who asserts solidarity with the LGBT community, even as a woman, even as a “spiritual enthusiast” with a universalist/nondual perspective — even I have had to confront the persistent and pernicious effects of stereotypes on my perception of others.
If I have found it difficult to “live beyond” stereotypes, then how much more difficult must it be for people who share no particular affinity for universalism, who are not directly concerned with discrimination or who have not had the good fortune of having friends and loved ones in diverse communities and cultures?
One of the most profound changes I’ve experienced as I’ve prioritized my spiritual life has been truly connecting with other people – not on the basis of my assumptions about them or my past experiences – but rather on the basis of the energy that arises in the immediacy of our interaction. As I began to put some of Tolle’s teachings into action, I noticed a remarkable flowering of my social life. I now find it so easy and natural to engage with others when I’m anchored in stillness. Instead of seeing folks through the lens of my expectations, they appear to me as they really are: awe-inspiring, beautiful manifestations of the Divine.
Now, when I encounter anyone – I find myself more automatically and easily feeling their aliveness. When and if stereotypes emerge in my mind, I notice them and use that awareness to draw me back into Presence. In the immediacy of the present moment, stereotypes and expectations simply burn away . . . how could they persist in the light of the “now”? As I more naturally connect with and sense others, I increasingly have breathtakingly beautiful experiences, exchanges and encounters with such a wide variety of human beings . . . all of which has made my life even more rich, inspiring and exciting than it already was.
Stereotypes deaden our relationships. They prevent us from seeing and connecting with what is real and essential about all of us. For me, it is not enough to simply acknowledge, intellectually, that prejudice and discrimination are “bad”. You can’t overcome the influence of conditioning and socialization through “good will” alone. What is really required is a conscious realization of who we really are – beyond identity, beyond the ego, and certainly beyond stereotypes. In the context of this understanding and inner knowing, connecting with others becomes natural and easy..not the result of effort. It’s the same process by which virtuous and “right” action naturally flows from “right” perception. When you know who you really are and you know who God really is, you don’t try to act like a good person, but goodness can simply flow through you like light shining through a transparent vessel. This is, of course, so much easier when we get our egos and past conditioning out of the way . . . in fact, getting over ourselves and living more fully in the present moment are both prerequisites for deeply experiencing love, peace and joy in our relationships with others. It’s in this way that we come to truly see that there are never really any “others” out there. There is only the Self, the oneness of God . . . and we are all made of, by and in It.
A Love Story
Every day . . . every single day . . . something happens in my life that shines light on some area in need of greater “realization of Self”. One of the “gifts” of awareness of one’s inner world is greater sensitivity to any and all unpleasant sensations. It is always sometimes very uncomfortable to deeply engage these moments of tension, pain or stress, but looking unpleasantness in the eye is really the gift that keeps on giving. Because life is so full of suffering, we are never at a loss for opportunities to learn, stretch and grow in the throes of unpleasant feelings and situations. Somehow, if we’re lucky, we come to experience grace in the midst of suffering as we allow Life to show us how to more fully and deeply rise in consciousness of who we really are.
One of the frustrating and frankly embarrassing side effects of this “path” as I’m experiencing it is the inconsistency of the realization. While I have been living with a much higher “baseline” of peace, tranquility, joy, love and compassion, there are not-infrequent-occasions on which I still react/think/feel out of ego and the small “self”. On a certain level, I understand that being too invested in maintaining an ongoing experience of inner peace is just another game the ego plays . . . and yet . . . I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the embarrassment I sometimes feel about the limitations of my own ability to remain consciously aware of Presence. Yes, another ego game, and yet a peculiar one.
It can be a little disconcerting to have your friends and family use your own “wisdom” against you, so to speak,in an effort to show the error of your ways. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had someone tell me something along the lines of “Weren’t you just talking about unconditional love? What did you say about the ego? Didn’t you have a realization about inner peace a few minutes ago? Remember when you said . . . “
How sad is it to feel the impulse of selfless compassion in one moment, only to cede to the lure of egoic self interest in the next? How often have my friends and loved ones marveled with a mix of lurid fascination and pity as I regale them with tales of my enthusiastic spiritual practice only to later reveal the latest emotional melodrama from my love life or the hair-pulling-stress of my work?
And yet . . . how can it be otherwise? How many of us are fully realized? Who experiences total tranquility and perfect equanimity? I know of no one who has become immune to the dance of the ego and its tote bag of suffering. If there is any immunity, perhaps it is as Mooji and Eckhart Tolle teach of it: simply cultivating awareness of the dance, without attachment to or interest in its footsteps . . . like watching clouds build and dissipate on the canvas of the skies.
All of this to say: today I fucked up, knew I fucked up while I was fucking up, felt the ego’s call to identify with the fucked-up-ness, felt like crap for being so imperfect, then glimpsed the extraordinary, unchanging and unchangeable perfection within which all else arises — including ordinary, flawed ‘me’ .
I was led to the following teaching, entitled “A Love Story”, as I ruminated on these unpleasant feelings.
In this video, Mooji carries on an exchange with a man in satsang who feels that he has trouble “connecting with” God. He laments that: “I sometimes have the feeling that I am not in the right place or I don’t do the right decision.”
Some of my favorite bits from Mooji’s response:
“I don’t feel that God wants you to make right decisions . . . but more just [wants you] to be yourself. And at least, to see, there’s a saying, no? To err is to be human, or something like, the very nature of human ways is to make error. But also to be somewhat humble in our self, to see that we’re not so great. There is something in that. And something relaxes and opens up and makes possible an opportunity to see beneath the surface of our conditioning. And what you will discover will not frighten you. it will always make you realize that you’re much more a love story than you think.”
“God is not playing with you. God is playing as you.”
“Whatever caused you to be here is also taking care of you.”
“I don’t see anything in you less than what I’ve found in my own Self. And it’s not an achievement . . . it cannot be achieved. It can only reveal Itself, which is what it’s doing. And if we don’t cling to our attachments and dreams and fears and all these projections, you’ll come much more quickly into that seeing, because nothing is being withheld from you, you see? So whatever it is your heart longs to connect with or to make known or to be refreshed in, my feeling is, let’s find out what can possibly be in the way of that.”
“Even if you say you lost contact with the I Am, that cannot be true! The very I is the I Am in whose presence the sense of losing contact is felt and maybe momentarily believed in. You are the I Am, the very fact of your existence, the very fact of your perceiving is evidence that everything is issuing out of that I Am. It is the very seed of perceiving – that pulsation, that vibration of I Am . . . Maybe what you are saying is momentarily there is some distraction to some other things. But you’re going to come to see that even the feeling of distraction can only occur in consciousness and that consciousness is the I Am and you are that consciousness.”
Jeff Foster Interview
Living as Nobody
When You Know Better . . .
There’s an old quote that Oprah likes to use: “When you know better, you do better.”
No matter what you think about the full spectrum of Oprah’s work, she has directed millions of people toward wisdom and that’s quite a beautiful thing. Her free, intensive web series with Eckhart Tolle on “A New Earth” changed my life — though not immediately.
In any case, the “Know better/do better” quote is something I sort of shrugged off in agreement when I would think about it over the years. Intellectually, it made sense. But the core principle is something that I’ve come to understand in a much more profound way than I did before.
I used the quote recently with a friend when describing how I interpreted the behavior of someone who had, according to traditional moral standards, “done me wrong”. (We won’t get into the interesting question of what I mean by ‘me’ right now, but you nondual affcionados know what I’m getting at.)
The conversation went something like this:
“I told [redacted] how I felt about their behavior. I think in the light of day, reasonable people will acknowledge past wrong doing and apologize. But I am not waiting for an apology. I really do believe that when you know better, you do better.”
“Oh I don’t know about that. I don’t agree.”
“Well, yes, there are many people who are ‘aware’ that they are doing something they shouldn’t be doing.”
“And that’s sociopathic.”
“Yes, but the capacity to do what is right is also a kind of knowledge.”
After our conversation, I simmered on the quote and used it a few other times with other interlocuters. The truth penetrated for me more deeply. Yes, right action is a kind of knowledge. But what is more fundamental than “doing” is “seeing”. When you see things as they really are — when you see the truth clearly and correctly — you will know the truth and “right” action will spontaneously and naturally flow from “right” perception.
Ruminating on this reminded me of the kind of ‘knowledge’ it takes to put God and spirituality “first” in one’s life. In the past, I thought – intellectually – that I “knew” the value of God in my life . . . I thought, with all the hubris and ignorance that such a misconception requires, that God was my homeboy. I thought we were cool – despite all evidence to the contrary (e.g. systematically putting my spiritual life on the back burner after everything else). I “believed in” God, prayed occasionally, sent up gratitude for my “blessings” when I felt like it . . . Of course, looking back, I realize now how superficial my so-called “knowledge” of God’s existence was. I did, however, have other kinds of very concrete knowledge. I knew very clearly what it meant to put my work, my education, my romantic relationships or my idle interests first, but putting God first was not something I could really grasp.
For me – like so many on “the path” – it took a fundamental crisis to bring me to my knees and help me begin to consider – ever so slowly – what it would really mean to put my spirituality before everything else. In the midst of this crisis, I found myself praying a very simple but sincere prayer: “Please God, help me understand how to put you first. I want to want to, but I don’t know how.” And ever since I prayed that prayer, the universe has spontaneously, beautifully and in the most direct and clear ways unveiled Itself.
What came to me very clearly was this: if one understood the depths of peace, joy, equanimity that await us in the light of God’s love, of course we would want to put that first. But knowing such things intellectually or conceptually is insufficient . . . it requires the kind of knowing that is beyond words, beyond concepts . . . the kind of knowing that penetrates your being, transforms your consciousness and burns away the delusions that clouded your ability to see the unchanging truth of God’s fundamental oneness with not only who You really are, but who everyone else really is too.
It is a bit like this:
Imagine your ship has capsized and you’re struggling in the water, fighting for your life. There is a life raft right next to you, but you cannot see it. It’s red – and you’re color blind – so it passes by you unperceived.
As you draw what you think may be your last breath, out of desperation you reach out toward the raft.
You reach out – not because you see the raft – but because something inside of you compels you to reach out as an act of faith. You reach out – not because your eyes see something – but because your inner eyes begin to open, eyes you’ve never used before – eyes that can see things your ordinary perception cannot. You reach out on faith – maybe just the faith of a mustard seed – just a tiny grain of hope that something can save you.
Now you grasp the raft – except you still do not know what it is. You have only begun to open your inner eyes, but you can sense the presence of something powerful and stable that can and will save you. And this is a beautiful moment, because in the grip of desperation and terrible fear of your own annihilation, you begin to glimpse the possibility of salvation and eternal life. In that moment, when “you” were trying to escape “death”, you actually do die. The concept of yourself as some individual entity floating in the sea of creation dissipates as the true concept of your Self as the All-There-Is emerges.
Yes, you would have found the raft much earlier if only you could have seen it. If you had known better, you would have done better. But what a beautiful thing it is to reach out in blindness, to act on the infinitesimal faith of a mustard seed, to throw your hands out in the darkness. This moment of surrender in the midst of desperation, of seeing for the first time, is such a sacred, precious thing – something to treasure no matter how much suffering such a realization requires.
Aware of Awareness 