Wanting

Stopped writing to this blog because I felt I had stopped following the Buddhist path.  I was learning more and more about Authentic Kabbalah.  In my view, although not of people who are in Kabbalah they have striking similarites.  Briefly, in Buddhism, the ego and desire are the culprit(s) and responsible for our suffering.  In Authentic Kabbalah it is not the desire so much as what the desire is for.  If one's desire is pointed in the direction of serving others there is no suffering.  I have been studying for over a year and these are very complicated ideas so I am really boiling it down to it simplest expression.  I am in a most unusual place emotionally.  The truth is I have a desire to give.  It is a a very small, teenie weenie, itsy bitsy desire.  The thing is when I try to act on that desire it is revealed to me very quickly that I fall short.  I become very ashamed of how selfish and self centered and how interested I am in satisfying my desires and not those of others and how uninterested I am in what others want.  Interestingly though it feels like these states and feeling are good for me.  Like exercise, it feels healthy. 

5/15/12

Sitting meditation is very important.  I think I commented in a post that I had gotten into the habit of simply being mindful all the time as best I could.  I returned to a period of sitting meditation for only 15 minutes a day once a day but everyday day and I can already tell the difference.  Another thing I am doing that I think is helpful is naming the sensations.  If I am angry rather than just trying to look at it, I say to myself "this is me being angry."  By labeling the experience for some reason it takes away its power.  I had an incident today which previously would have been very upsetting.  I had spent some time organizing and putting things into a container and ended up dropping it and spilling everything out on the floor.  I did not have one iota of upsetting emotions.  I was not happy about it but it did not ruin my whole day and I was able to pick everything up and put it away again.  Who was that?  It was very out of character for me.  I think what I am coming to realize is that this is not about becoming a good person or a better person so much as it is about learning who you are and learning to accept yourself with your faults.  I may in meditation realize that I spend a lot of time thinking a worrying what others think.  On the outside I could care less but on the inside it really is important to me to be liked and respected.  It slowly sinks in that this is me.  I don't deny it but accept it.  At the same time I realize that the obsessiveness can cause suffering.  I can see how a picture in my mind can lead to an emotion that leads to a thought that leads to a physical feeling in my body and that I might want to do something else than create pain for myself.  For a long time I was thinking that there is not choice but I think there is some choice if you are conscious of what you are doing early enough in the chain of events to do something else.  A good day.        

5/13/12

Such a long time since posting.  My practice has been all about mindfulness meditation.  I am taking an on line class on Vipassana.  It started with focusing on breathing and then expanded to awareness of the whole body.  It is amazing to me how sensitive you can make your body by simply paying attention to a particular part of the body.  Then the class went to becoming aware of your emotions and finally to your thoughts.I have really had a lot of difficulty maintaining my practice lately.  The course was good if only to re-motivate to practice again.  This is hard.  Often my meditations are not pleasant.  I have become very aware of negative feelings and thought and it has been very painful.  Anyway the experts say that this can be normal and it is really just a process of healing.  So much of who we are is hidden away.  We have learned to dismiss and ignore it and when you learn to pay attention it is painful.  I also am not interested in journaling,  It is hard to write without thinking about the reader and what they think and that is exactly what I don't want.  I am reading a book that is also on mindfulness.  It is entitled "Rewire you Brain for Love"  I got about 1/2 way through.  It has several meditations in it and has a lot of information about meditation and brain science. 

Compassion

     I have not written for awhile.  I began a post a week ago and only did a sentence and a half.  I'm in very good spirits these days.  To summarize; yes, it is our nature to be selfish.  Everything we see, taste, smell, hear and feel is from our point of view.  By nature we are designed to have our needs and desires satisfied.  Yet, we are never truly satisfied.  We always want more than we have.  When we are unhappy, it is not so much because life is bad, it is just because we want it better.  No matter what we seek it is unsatisfying.  We work too hard to make money we don't need.  We want a bigger house than we need, a nicer, newer car and so on.  We are trying to feed our ego.   We want to feel better about ourselves and our lives through corporeal stuff.  Well guess what?  It won't happen!  At least not for some of us.  The ego will never be satisfied.  It is a bottomless pit of desire.  This is something I think a normal healthy kid learns, at least to a degree and is something I think I knew once and forgot.  Happiness happens when you are not focused on yourself and your happiness.  It happens when you are focused on trying to do for others.  Paradoxically you can't even do for others with the intention that it will make you feel good.  If that is your intention you will always compare the actual joy you receive with the joy you expected to receive and it will always fall short.  You must have the intention of doing for others for their benefit and then you will receive some joy but only as a fringe benefit.  It will be like an unexpected and delightful surprise.  Buddhists don't necessarily believe in any supernatural deity but for me it is helpful to believe in some kind of creative life force and to have an intention behind your actions of pleasing or being in alignment with that force.  If I can't do for others because I am not getting enough in return I need to focus on doing it for the creative life force then it is not only possible to do it, it is rewarding to do it.  In the Kabbalah classes I am taking they gave an analogy of serving an ordinary person and serving a great person.  If you worked in a hotel carrying bags for guests and a customer needed their bags taken up to their room you would naturally do it but also expect a tip.  If you were to do the same thing for a famous artist you really like or a rich person you admire or a great politician it would be a joy to do it for them.  That joy comes from putting the needs of someone else in front of your own.  Of course you end up bragging to everyone that you carried the bags of that great person and so the ego creeps back into your life.  Wouldn't it be great if you could treat all people like that?  To adopt an attitude that everyone is a great person and it is an honor and joy to love and serve them.  The key here is not to focus on the action.  Maybe you don't do a great job carrying those bags.  If your focus is on the action you will likely beat yourself up on how lousy a job you did.  There will be times when your actions are not appreciated and this can be very disheartening but if you heart was in the right place, if you tried to please then there will be some joy in it for you as long as that is not why you acted.  Is it really possible to be so altruistic?  Probably not.  I am just saying to try or intend to be altruistic and in your meditations and self awareness work, notice that you fall short but also accept yourself.  It is your nature to live your life and want a reward for everything you do.  It is that wanting a reward that can make your life very unrewarding.