Delusions, vigilance, & rising bubbles

I’ve been making a practice of reciting the 8 Verses of Thought Transformation, something the Dalai Lama does also. (And look how he’s turned out, haha) Usually, I say them in my head before getting out of bed in the morning, or right after my early meditation. It took me a while to memorize them, & now that I have, I get a glimmer of how clear my mind is by the measure of ease with which I can fully attend to the recitation. As with all things, I can sort of gauge my mindfulness at a moment, by such glimmers. Sometimes, while reciting the Verses, I have to restart & restart. Sometimes, I have to look them up in my journal just to be sure I’m not mangling them! In any case, they are “working”. That is, these 8 Verses are proving to be a jim dandy MindfulnessTool —>> my thinking is slowly changing. My thoughts are transforming.

One of the Verses in particular, the third, has roundly caught my attention:

Vigilant, the moment a delusion enters my mind, endangering myself & others, I shall confront & avert it without delay.

At first, I thought: “Ha! I don’t have any delusions.” (Turns out, that was delusion #1, haha) Then, “Well, OK. But …. I don’t have any major delusions.” (#2) After a while, they began tumbling in (#3 – #some million). And, then, somewhere in the #bazillions, I realized this:

The thoughts of suicide that my dominatrix ego has flirted with for more than 20 years are themselves a delusion.

Such a thought, killing oneself, is a delusion because it presents itself as a rational answer to overwhelming life problems. The reality is that no trouble, however irritating, or recurring, or difficult, is truly overwhelming: I’m not literally curled up in a fetal position in the corner, so I’m not actually rendered unable to cope. (Though, to be honest, metaphorically I sometimes feel that way:) And a suicide certainly poses no solution to anything; it actually only cuts off all possiBILity of finding a solution. Never mind all the attendant delusions that follow from it: **no one will miss me (#bazillion 1A – I have family, friends, etc), **the world is better off without me (#bazillion 1B — who could possibly know??), **the suffering I cause will cease (#bazillion 1C & D — my daughter would be devastated & someone would have to find the mess I made!), **it’s the best solution for all (#bazillion 1E - #infinity — how can the effects of one human, reverberating throughout All of Time Yet To Come, be determined?!?).

No, no, that idea, killing myself, besides being self-centered & self-indulgent, isn’t really what I want. And this is how I know that, for sure:

As I was meditating this morning, one of the thoughts that kept appearing as I labored to still & center my mind, was of Ending It All. I even caught myself well into a little ‘fantasy’ of taking the 38 from the closet shelf, going out into the woods (so there’s no tainting of the house) & shooting myself. As I pictured myself walking toward the trees, I realized I was looking for some kind of miraculous intervention to take place, something that would indicate I’d pushed the Universe to the brink, & it would cave in to my demand: I’d be happy. Catching myself at this point, & yanking my obstreporous mind back to the breath, I could feel — carried aloft on bubbles of laughter — my love for being alive, in this life. In this life, no matter its sorrows, or incorrigible troubles, no matter my failings, faults or flaws. In this life, whether I’m “happy” or not. In this life, where all possibilities reside.

I have no delusion that such thoughts as these will never come back (#infinity 1A 8q). But, thoroughly vigilant as I am becoming, this particular delusion, carried aloft on those rising bubbles of laughter, will be confronted & diverted without delay.

Related articles

• Without Grasping and Delusion (mindmindful.wordpress.com)
• True Cessations (maitreyabuddhistcentre.wordpress.com)

Sunday Post: PLEASURE #6 & MindfulnessTool

Most mornings, I do the cryptograms & the Sudoku puzzles in the newspaper. This little interlude affords me a certain kind of pleasure – jumpstarting my sleepy brain, teasing out little tendrils of thinking ability:), giving some satisfaction at simple being able to work them correctly. They also — & this is especially true of the Sudoku — make for great MindfulnessTools, as they show me a lot about how my mind is working right then. (Read where I’ve written about this before.)

One would think that this would be pretty much the same each day. But, no, no, my mind reveals itself to be behaving very differently from day to day – & probably from moment to moment, haha. I imagine there are several variables at work here — how much sleep I got, whether I’ve had any coffee, my general health, maybe what I ate the day before ….. perhaps my biorhythms or the phases of the moon??

For those who’ve never tried Sudoku, here’s a concise exposition: There are 9 rows, 9 columns & 9 boxes – each have 9 squares within. And the point is to enter the numbers 1-9, so that each appears only once in each row, each column & each box. In an exercise of “If This, Than (not) That”, Sudoku is essentially a game that reflects this famous saying by John Muir, the great naturalist & wilderness preservationist:

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.

In Sudoku, the placement of each digit affects the placement of every other. Change one & almost all the others change too. Working the puzzle this morning, I was momentarily mentally arrested by realizing this very thing: this engaging game, based on logic, but which sometimes requires the occasional intuitive leap, is a lovely little model of the entire cosmos!

I firmly believe that this principle applies to ALL of us — we, too, are little models of the entire cosmos. This is what fuels my journey toward greater mindfulness: When my mind changes, the entire universe (multiverse) is altered. The micro is the macro, a puzzle is the universe. And in my small revelation, with its gigantic impact, I take a great deal of pleasure.

http://jakesprinters.wordpress.com/2012/02/25/sunday-post-landscape/

Related articles

• Keep Your Mind Sharp With Sudoku (everydayhealth.com)
• Joining the Sudoku Puzzle Bandwagon (prweb.com)
• Stimulating The Mind With The Addictive Sudoku (prweb.com)

Let me introduce you ……….

….. to a dear, but veryvery shy friend of mine. She has always hung back, away from the limelight ……. well, from ANY light, really. Hiding under the proverbial bushel, I guess, And, to my dismay, I have been ignoring her for a long long time, even though I love her so: She is my Inner Artist, tired of invisibility — she is mad as hell & won’t take it anymore!!!!

My artist self, peeking out

She is — rightfully, but SHYLY – asserting herself in the world, never to go back into hiding. Or, more accurately, to be hidden …... Who is this emerging being? Why, it’s none other than …… ME!! And she/I is coming out, via another WordPress blog, Contemplative Eye. She/I would love for you to visit:)

At Contemplative Eye, I will be exploring “miksang“, a Tibetan word meaning “Good Eye,” which is based on the Shambhala and Dharma Art teachings of the late meditation master, artist, and scholar Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche. Eventually, I will attend courses at the Miksang Institute for Contemplative Photography, but for now, it’s just me meandering, floundering, exploring ……….. becoming Who I Can Be ……..

In a way, photography & the other artforms I’ll pursue will be great big, ongoing MindfulnessTools — I see this artistic emergence as another form of ”watching my mind”, learning to be more mindful, taking meditative-ness out into the world, through all facets of my being. ALL of us are enriched by ANYone who accesses their attentive, attending self.

I have much to learn, so I bid you stay tuned! Whaddya think??

Open your MindfulnessTool Box ……….

…………… because here’s another great one! It seems to be simple, but the doing of it will be the hard part, I suspect, ha! This comes from Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, the source of SO many wonderful teachings, via Facebook. Here’s the full article, written by Martine Batchelor.

In the Korean Zen tradition, there is a method of meditation that uses the question “What is this?” to cultivate concentration and inquiry together. As you sit or walk in meditation, you ask constantly, “What is this?” Repeating this question develops concentration because it returns you to the full awareness of the moment. As soon as you become aware of being distracted by past events, anxieties about the present, or future dreams, you ask “What is this?” This way, the power of questioning dissolves distraction.

I’ve only been working with this for the few hours since first reading of it.