Highly recommended!

From May 08 issue of the Shambhala Sun

“The crazy wisdom approach to fear is not regarding it as a hangup alone, but realizing it is intelligent. It has a message of its own. Fear is worth respecting. If we dismiss fear as an obstacle and ignore it, then we might end up with accidents. In other words, fear is a very wise message….The point is, you can’t con fear or frighten fear. You have to respect fear. You might try to tell yourself that it’s not real, that it’s just false, but that kind of approach is very questionable. It is better to develop some kind of respect, realizing that neurosis also is a message, rather than garbage that you should just throw away. That’s the whole starting point — the idea of samsara and nirvana, confusion and enlightenment, being one. Samsara is not regarded as a nuisance alone, but it has its own potent message that is worthy of respect.”

Chogyam Trungpa, From “Fearlessness” in CRAZY WISDOM, pages 124 to 125.

On July 8 I’m departing for a one month semi-solitary retreat in Colorado. I’m house sitting in a beautiful but remote house in the foothills of the Rockies. There is no regular phone service. I say “semi-solitary” because for 3 or 4 days during this time, some others will also stay at the house. And I might drive to Shambhala Mountain Center to hear talks from my teacher, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche.

During the month, I will be super focused on writing, on seriously finishing the first draft manuscript for my new book, “The Wisdom of a Broken Heart.” I have such huge plans for this retreat: to write, first and foremost, but also to seriously, seriously devote myself to Buddhist practice. And I can’t resist the urge to also try to quit eating all bad foods, begin a strenuous exercise program, and blog every day. (I’ll be able to get online.) I just want to make every single day count. I’m so afraid I’ll eat cookies and play Solitaire on my computer all day instead.

A friend and spiritual advisor suggested setting a schedule for myself. Okay. I shall. Here it is:

7-8 Meditation
8-9 Breakfast
9-12 Writing
12-2 Lunch and Break
2-4 Writing
4-530 Meditation
530-7 Dinner and Break
7-9 Revisions, reading of dharma books

I figure if I say this on my blog, I’ll be too embarrassed not to do it. Taking shame as my motivation may not be the most spiritual thing of all time, but it will do in a pinch. The important thing will be to write. And practice. And commit to self-care as my hidden emotional life steps out of shadow and offers to box with me.

Relationships are lonely. Even good ones. My relationship with my husband is lonely. My relationship with my guru is lonely. They’re the same kind of lonely—I have no idea what either of them is really talking about. And these are the good relationships. I really love them both, but in both cases the relationship is planted somewhere just outside my capacity for understanding. The only thing I know is that I’m no longer in a relationship with a person (husband or teacher). I’m in a relationship with a relationship. Which doesn’t really care what I have to say, particularly. So I just wait for it to tell me what to do.

The other day, we had a fight. (My husband and me, not my teacher and me) It was a bad one. Super bad. Bad like leaving-the-house-at-1AM-to-go-sleep-on-the-couch-in-my-office bad. It’s so cliché to say I can’t even remember what it was about, but I sort of can’t. Well maybe I can, but just don’t want to believe that something so unbelievably stupid (someone not telling someone else that they bought a new camera, for example; I mean it only cost $200 and I needed it for work) could cause two normally sane people to absolutely lose their minds and jump all up and down yelling at each other. I mean for goodness sake.

I was so depressed by this argument. I drug myself home at 6AM, dreading seeing him, but also hoping I would so he could see that I was still ignoring him. As I let myself in and walked up the stairs to our bedroom, he was exiting the shower, towel around his waist. His hair was wet and smelled like drugstore pineapple. His bare chest looked kind of dewy and sweet, not at all like the chest of someone you’d hate. Although I was still angry, I could see that he no longer was. (When he blows up in anger his emotions metabolize and become digestible—he feels better after a “good” fight. For me, a fight is like getting socked in the head, the kind of punch that at first you can’t even feel how much it hurts and then throbs for days…) He came toward me and held his palms up in an unreadable gesture. My palms spontaneously rose to mirror his, whether to stop him from coming closer or to hold him to me, I also couldn’t tell. Back off. Come here. It didn’t matter which one I did, because in that moment, I realized I was trapped. I couldn’t push him away, nor could I hold him close enough. I couldn’t keep him at bay because our lives are no longer two separate-but-parallel tracks as they were when we began living together. No. We’re living one life together. I don’t know at what moment this happened, but something invisible pushed us into a single life. We must have held each other one too many times. Inhaled each other’s breath while falling asleep one too many times. Had the same fight, kissed the same kiss, exchanged the same glance, eaten off the same plate one too many times. Our bodies and hearts have re-formed into cutouts that can only hold the other. From this realization and from the sight of his bare chest and the scent of his pineapple hair, I wanted to open to him, to hold him close just because for whatever mysterious reason, the mere sight of him touches me so much.

But no embrace will ever really satisfy. I could never hold him close enough for him to actually know me; he would never know what it felt like for me to do this, why I was doing it, or to recognize the sequence of thoughts and feelings that led to this opening. I saw the depth of our connection and the simultaneous inability to know each other. He must feel the same exact way, I thought as I pulled him close. Very lonely. And, I realized, the closer we got, the more shocking and painful it would be to still not really know each other.

***

In my spiritual practice as a Buddhist, I’ve been encouraged to open myself to spiritual wisdom, to the kind of knowing that goes beyond the conventional mind. I’ve made a commitment to this effort and have taken many vows, taken on demanding meditation practices, and even found a guru, something I had always scoffed at as an excuse made by the lily-livered to forego adult responsibility. But when you find your teacher, it isn’t all that different than finding your husband. On one hand, you are bowled over by the extraordinary fact of their very existence and how profoundly and unquestioningly you love them, but on the other, during the first-blush phase, you look at them and go, “that’s it?” Still, as both relationships progress, your beloved becomes both more familiar and more mysterious as time goes on. You question the vows you made. Some days they seem outrageous, impossible (I said I’d always love you?) and on others their true meaning deepens beyond what you had originally imagined.

If the marriage vow is to love, the vow to the guru is to open your self to his instruction and influence. It’s very scary. But here’s the funny part. It’s way more complicated than doing 100 Hail Marys or 100,000 prostrations just because he told you to. At some point, the guru enters your mind. It’s impossible to describe this. It begins with simply recalling his verbal instructions when you sit down to do your meditation practice (“make awareness itself the object of your meditation”), then graduates to unbidden reminders as you go through the day (you’re about to give the finger to the guy who just cut you off in traffic, but suddenly remember your teacher saying, “regard all beings as your mother,” which is a guru-way of saying, please don’t flip people off). But at some point, you stop hearing the teacher speak to you in his voice and you start hearing him speak in yours. I think. It’s very hard to know. But what seems to happen is, because he is your guru, you have somehow always known him. It’s sort of like, as a grownup, still hearing your mother’s voice when you’re about to take the last piece of pie (“haven’t you already had two pieces?”) only he says things like, “regard all dharmas as dreams,” and “the mind is empty and luminous.” The more you relax your mind, the more you practice, the more kinds of wisdom energies begin to manifest themselves in your existence. These energies are variously described as self-existing wisdom, Buddhas of wisdom, bodhisattvas of compassion, and, of course, as Susan Piver, if you happen to be Susan Piver.

But are the Buddhas and bodhisattvas really there? Do they know me? How will I ever know them? Am I inviting them or rejecting them? I have no idea. Sometimes I think I’m in a relationship with them, sometimes I don’t. I can feel that the longer I practice, the more something happens, but I’m not really sure what that something is. I used to simply go to dharma talks and then try to practice what I’d been taught. I still try to do this. But just as often, these days I get my practice instructions from Aerosmith songs or an overheard conversation on the train. There’s nothing mysterious about it—I’m just listening to my iTunes or going to work and suddenly something clicks, like, “it’s really true—I don’t exist.” I don’t know where it comes from. Everything starts to sound like the teacher’s voice and all I know is that my efforts to connect more deeply with him have become much more dreamlike and difficult to differentiate from my own mind. It’s very personal. Intimate. Lonely. Just like my husband stepping out of the shower with pineapple dewdrops in his hair, my teacher steps out of my own mindstream, palms held up in an equally inscrutable gesture. Communications are taking place in a way I no longer understand. These two individuals have taken root within my mind and speak to me in their own curious language, using my mind as their voice. Some days I can make out what they’re saying and on others it sounds like complete gibberish. The last thing I can share with either of them is what it’s like to be with them. It’s just too intimate to describe. Both relationships are teaching me something, but I can no longer understand the instructions. Still, learning occurs.

A few weeks ago, I was talking to friend of mine, also a practitioner, but from a different lineage. He was telling me that nowadays, his meditation practice consists of getting up in the morning, going to his cushion, and just sitting there. He basically tries not to do anything at all. To relate to the teachings, there are no longer any rules to follow such as “place attention on the breath” or “visualize an open sky.” Just like me, he doesn’t really know what to do anymore. He can’t go back to following a set of practice instructions, nor is there a new set to jump forward into. There is only space and the feeling of groundlessness. In his tradition, he says, this stage of spiritual development is called “stupefaction.” This is where no one can tell you what to do anymore, no one but your guru, who somehow can never be found, yet is everywhere. All I can do is listen, without knowing what listening looks like. Some kind of dialogue is taking place beyond my radar. No one will ever know what this is like for me. Not even me.

This book describes a wonderful way of dealing with fear. The only way, in fact. By making friends with it. Offering it a cup of tea, perhaps.

Tsultrim Allione brings an eleventh-century Tibetan woman’s practice to the West for the first time with FEEDING YOUR DEMONS, an accessible and effective approach for dealing with negative emotions, fears, illness, and self-defeating patterns. Allione-one of only a few female Buddhist leaders in this country and comparable in American religious life to Pema Chodron-bridges this ancient Eastern practice with today’s Western psyche. She explains that if we fight our demons, they only grow stronger. But if we feed them, nurture them, we can free ourselves from the battle. Through the clearly articulated practice outlined in FEEDING YOUR DEMONS, we can learn to overcome any obstacle and achieve freedom and inner peace.

Betrayal. Love lost. Murder. Sweet sorrow. Haunted voices speaking from beyond the grave… This song (recorded by the great, great Johnson Mountain Boys) has it all.

No, brother, I'll never grow better
'Tis useless to tell me so now
My broken heart is only awaiting
For a resting place under the snow
I was thinking last night, dear brother
How happy our home was with joy
When a serpent crept into our Eden
In the form of fair Christine LeRoy

I was thinking last night of our wedding
One year ago only tonight
When we stood 'neath the gaslights so happy
In jewels and garments of white
When she came with the face of an angel
To wish us a lifetime of joy
My heart sank within at the malice
In the face of fair Christine LeRoy

Diamonds gleamed high in her tresses
Falling back from her ivory brow
And glistened like stars in the heavens
On her fingers as white as the snow
When she gave her white hand to my husband
I knew he thought me a toy
By the side of that radiant beauty
That beautiful Christine LeRoy

Time passed away and my husband
Grew thoughtless and careworn each day
I knew 'twas the wiles of the demon
Who so artfully lured him away
When at last one bright evening I found them
'Twas a sight all my life to destroy
Hand in hand with her head on his shoulder
Sat my husband and Christine LeRoy

Now brother, be kind to your darling
For my heart has grown sick now and faint
For the thoughts of the wiles of the demon
In the beautiful form of a saint
When I sleep 'neath the snowdrifts of winter
Where no sorrow or pain can destroy
Just tell them they've murdered me, brother
God forgive him and Christine LeRoy

Authentic Inspiration: A Retreat for Writers
Karme Choling Shambhala Meditation Center
Barnet, VT June 29 – July 6
$675
Register

“I had not written anything in a long time. The Writers’ Retreat gave me the space, time, and inward focus to let creativity happen naturally. I hadn’t realized how much I had to say. The meditation aspect of the retreat provided a peaceful structure where writing could be a pleasure once again instead of work. Susan led each day with a purposeful blend of meditation practice and writing sessions and I appreciated the fruits that came from a firm but generous schedule.” –A.B., Boston

What do writers want more than anything in the world? Time to write. Yet even if such precious time could be found, it’s not always easy to settle into the writing groove.

Get away to Karme Choling, a beautiful Buddhist retreat center in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom and spend five full days on writing and your own unique voice.

In addition to plenty of personal writing time, quiet, and the supportive (but non-intrusive!) presence of other writers, the program will include daily meditation practice and simple creativity exercises. Although the focus will be on individual work, there will be opportunities for moderated discussion of each other’s writing.

Open to writers of fiction and non-fiction, published and unpublished. Bring your ideas, works-in-progress, or simply your wish to devote attention to your creativity.

No meditation experience required. Instruction will be offered.

Join me and yoga teacher extraordinaire, Dana Strong for a life-changing journey to Cambodia and Vietnam. Through the practices of meditation and yoga, the exoticism of the outward journey will be matched by a deep inner journey. We will travel to such sacred sites as Angkor Wat and the Perfume Pagoda, as well as to the center of our own hearts and minds.

Both Dana and I are students of Shambhala Buddhism and there will be an emphasis on serious fun. Serious. Fun.

The lovely and totally excellent Dana Strong

Dana has been teaching yoga nationally and internationally since 1998. She has studied extensively with Rodney Yee and in NY with Genny Kapuler and others. She was a senior teacher at Om Yoga Center. She has completed the Graduate Program of Buddhist Studies at the New York Shambala Center. Dana’s teaching draws on her current Iyengar studies as well as her practice of meditation. She combines the fluidity of breath with precision of alignment based on personal intuition and the experience of her students. Her classes are known to be challenging but playful. She teaches and practices yoga to bring ideas and action together, creating a relaxed body and a wakeful mind.

She is also a graduate student at Columbia University, where she is focusing on Buddhist-Christian dialogue.

Part Two of radio interview with Buddhist Geeks, Ryan Oelke & Vince Horn

Interview with Ryan Oelke and Vince Horn, the Buddhist Geeks. Thanks guys! Great talking with you. Love your show.