The Inner Frontier

We are more animals than we believe; that's the mark of humanness, perhaps, to think we're special somehow.

If you present a dog with a freaked-out chicken--a running, shrieking, panicked bird--only one outcome is really possible: dog chases prey. Pretty soon there are feathers and blood everywhere.

It doesn't matter how "good" the dog is: chicken runs, dog chases.

So many of our lives are just like this. Or they were like this once. In a dog, this is instinct. In a human, this is heedlessness. Because we do have a choice. If we don't chase the chicken the way we used to, it's because we had the good fortune to 1. encounter painful consequences and 2. to make the connection between unthinking action and resulting pain, and to learn from that.

Animals kill and cuddle and mate and don't know why. We do too--waking up to find ourselves in the middle of fight, flight, feeding, or f-ing. Dogs are hunters. Men are hunters. Whom do you cheer for on the nature show, the cheetah or the antelope?

And women? I don' t know them so well. I suspect that we run shrieking from warriors, only to be slaughtered--or to become warriors ourselves, with a strength men fear to meet.

In meditation, in sesshin, there is hope. The possiblity of mindfulness, of knowing what we do. We set up a disconnect between the chicken and the bloody, feathery mess.

It's one thing not to chase a physical chicken, looking and smelling so right; but how not to chase the delicious fowl of your own mind? How to turn inward and look into oneself with dignity? At the end, what nobility I manifiest is known only to myself; at the end, I can only be true to my own values, regardless of how I look to others. There is one who knows everything about me; that is the one whose standards of conduct must be satisfied.

Inside the Altar

When you see reality
you will know that you are nothing
and in being nothing,
you are everything.

--Kalu Rinpoche

If that's so, then
WHAT! IS! THIS!?

You know, I woke up today and the altar meant nothing. The spiritual world seemed to have faded. I could only see this looming vulnerability, this overwhelmed-little-girlness.

Then, in yoga--feeling digested and destroyed--I realized that yes, the spiritual is not "out there"--not anything to do with altars. The spiritual is actually right here. There is no "Dharma" in this mind state, because Dharma has drawn close, and there is only one blazing eye filling the field of view. Buddhas and Bodhisattvas cannot be seen; lessons cannot be remembered. Not because they have ceased to exist, but because they are so close in. They are inside; they are experience itself.

This is Dharma-without-idea. Just pure feeling.

Post-Sesshin Verification of Mind

Next time you meet a pet or a child with big eyes--some thoughtful-looking pre-verbal creature--try dropping the boundary of self and establishing the mind-meld love vibe. You need not look directly at little thing; only dissolve the heart into local space. You will inevitably see them react by looking back at you, or making repeated side glances. Occasionally there will be the impression of communication-- bewilderment and anxiety are common concerns among the small and powerless.

You need not wait until after a sesshin to try this, but it feels more normal and less hokey then.