Running away from Decisions

Time to get organized. I write out a long list of things to be done. Then all of a sudden something pops into my head. Something that absolutely must be done first. And it doesn’t even make the list. I devote myself to it completely. Finally, at the end of the day, I look at that list and laugh. The list of things I won’t do today!

Is it just me?

Or else something must be done. It absolutely needs to be done. Then, for sure, I will either leave it until the last conceivable moment to get started, or else I’ll pause, and let go of this need, perhaps after having delayed and procrastinated so long that it makes no difference. And then occasionally, snap!, out of nowhere, I’ll do it after all, with a resolution quite unexpected. Isn’t the will a strange thing? For in that pause, the vice-like grip of needing and wanting is released, its message cast out into the winds and sometimes the wind in its grace blows it back, and with that new-found momentum at our backs we can set sail. (Music can help too, as can the inspiration of imagery, or merely the setting limits on how long to spend on it, all of which occupy the little mind, so the big mind can go about its business unimpeded.)

Notice that image of the wind! The wind is at our backs. We can never push the wind. So it is with our lives. We like to plan and organize in advance, to push the proverbial cart of our desires. But this is something I learnt just yesterday. Those two-wheeled levered trolleys for transporting boxes… try to push them, and they veer left, right, and all over, but pull them behind you, and you make a beeline to your destination. The horse must indeed come before the cart.

Is there anything you’ve learnt recently which you should have known ages ago?

And so it is with life. Why anxiously plan ahead when so often we will veer from our plans when the time comes… and then look back with guilt at not having done what we had planned? Or perhaps, you know exactly how things should be, in which case you’ll enjoy this little experiment:

Imagine tomorrow as your ideal day. Run through in fast motion everything you would like to happen, the places you would go and the people you’d meet, and all the unresolved situations in your life and for each, running through all the possibilities in your mind’s eye, settle on how you will resolve them or how you will begin to resolve them on this day. Do you have clear and distinct ideas, or worlds of contradiction?

This is actually a great way of reminding oneself of decisions we’ve made in the past, decisions we’ve often forgotten, so they couldn’t have been decisions after all, merely possibilities to remember when the time comes, and the reminder is useful! But the imagination is boundless, and the possibilities also.

So if, like me, you are lost in worlds of contradiction, then you’ll appreciate my call for spontaneity:

• to concentrate almost all one’s thoughts and actions and importance in the present,
• to trust oneself to make the right decisions in the future,
• to make those decisions and run with them leaving a gap of silent mind which the resisting thought can’t breach, and
• to loosen wilfully the desire for complete control.

You know, pulling the barrow of desires behind you, some of them might fall off without you noticing. But don’t worry! Anyway, the best things in life, at least in my experience, have always been those that were completely unplanned and totally unexpected! Ah, bliss!!! :^)

Songs of the Valley

Ingredients:

A selection of nature-inspired poems by five American poets I had never heard of before.

Directions:

The Fountain (Denise Levertov)

Don't say, don't say there is no water
to solace the dryness at our hearts.
I have seen

the fountain springing out of the rock wall
and you drinking there. And I too
before your eyes

found footholds and climbed
to drink the cool water.

The woman of that place, shading her eyes,
frowned as she watched, but not because
she grudged the water,

only because she was waiting
to see we drank our fill and were
refreshed.

Don't say, don't say there is no water.
That fountain is there among its scalloped
green and gray stones,

it is still there and always there
with its quiet song and strange power
to spring in us,

up and out through the rock.



Forsooth I am a Gypsy  (Charles G. Blanden)

My soul is full of morning,
My heart is full of song;
Forsooth, I am a gypsy
That roves the world along.

Beyond the Hills of Shadow,
Beyond the Vales o' Fear,
I pitch my tent and tarry
A day, a month, a year.

And none shall tax my spirit,
And none my dreams destroy;
For I am free as winds are,
A comrade unto Joy!


I Hear a River thro’ the Valley Wander  (Trumball Stickney)

I hear a river thro’ the valley wander
Whose water runs, the song alone remaining.
A rainbow stands and summer passes under.



Stranger (Thomas Merton)

When no one listens
To the quiet trees
When no one notices
The sun in the pool.

Where no one feels
The first drop of rain
Or sees the last star

Or hails the first morning
Of a giant world
Where peace begins
And rages end:

One bird sits still
Watching the work of God:
One turning leaf,
Two falling blossoms,
Ten circles upon the pond.

One cloud upon the hillside,
Two shadows in the valley
And the light strikes home.
Now dawn commands the capture
Of the tallest fortune,
The surrender
Of no less marvelous prize!

Closer and clearer
Than any wordy master,
Thou inward Stranger
Whom I have never seen,

Deeper and cleaner
Than the clamorous ocean,
Seize up my silence
Hold me in Thy Hand!

Now act is waste
And suffering undone
Laws become prodigals
Limits are torn down
For envy has no property
And passion is none.

Look, the vast Light stands still
Our cleanest Light is One!



The Song of Siva  (Ameen Rihani)

'Tis Night; all the Sirens are silent,
All the vultures asleep;
And the horns of the Tempest are stirring
Under the Deep;
'Tis Night' all the snow-burdened Mountains
Dream of the Sea,
And down in the Wadi the River
Is calling to me.

'Tis Night; all the Caves of the Spirit
Shake with desire;
And the Orient Heaven's essaying
Its lances of fire;
They hear, in the stillness that covers
The land and the sea,
The River, in the heart of the Wadi,
Calling to me.

'Tis Night, but a night of great joyance,
A night of unrest; --
The night of the birth of the spirit
Of the East and the West;
And the Caves and the Mountains are dancing
On the Foam of the Sea,
For the River inundant is calling,
Calling to me.

Stay Awake Silly!

Ingredients:

We could all do with some tips to stay awake sometimes, when we haven't slept the previous night, when we're in a boring lecture we can't understand, when we've eaten too much for lunch or for whatever reason the eyes just keep drooping shut and we can't concentrate. Caffeine is the usual remedy. Did you know that green tea contains caffeine? And it's good for you also... how cool is that! The smell of peppermint is said to be reviving also, as is brushing your teeth, splashing your face with cold water, eating an apple, staring out the window, opening the window, jumping out the window (no, please don't do that!), taking a breath of fresh air, turning on the tunes, and if all else fails and you can't just let yourself surrender to a delicious little nap on your desk, then here are some exercises for you. This is a re-post from taogirl, now "no more taogirl", who in turn got it from here:
http://deepsm25.wordpress.com/2008/12/17/office-exercises

Directions:

Below is the routine that I recommend each and everyone of you to preach and practice and follow it every step of the way at work.

As a warm up, let’s do some Tai Chi..



Follow like this to ease your
neck & shoulder pain



Wa..wa.. aaa





Move to the right
and then to the left




After that, move to the left
and then to the right





Just follow. Don’t force yourself to do 360 degrees, 180 degrees will do. Bend down a bit like you gonna faint. Repeat a few times till you’re bored





Grab anything on your desk and smash your head hard. If you are still sleepy smash harder






After that move your feet and swing your body a bit like this. Do it like it’s nobody’s business and remember to smile.






Move your feet and body just a bit like this….
Do it like there’s no problem at all…





And now more aggressive!
Don’t bother about what others say





Let go of all your stress…



If your boss ask what you are doing, move your head slowly like this and tell them you’re dying in the office.





When your boss walked off, get your colleague to join you and move your body like this. The more the merrier …



Finally, dance like this.



Still Sleepy ??



GO HOME !!
Pssssst: Hopefully you are still employed!

Tale of the Bigot: Seven Virtues

A politician meets a member of the public, and after a friendly discussion about politics surrounded by media cameras, he gets into his car. Not realizing his microphone is still on, he proclaims the impromptu meeting a disaster, questions who put him up to it, and calls the lady he talked to "bigoted" because the question she’d asked him about immigration had piqued his annoyance. A bigot is "someone unreasonable attached to a particular creed, belief or party". Ironic, eh? That politician was our poor prime minister in the United Kingdom, Gordon Brown. He swiftly apologized, but let’s look over the seven heavenly virtues and see how in a blink of an eye he broke every single one of them, not to pore over his particular "gaffe", but because they are instructive of the flaws in politics generally. And moreover, as we look over them, we see how they are not merely surface flaws, but endemic to the political consciousness.
Lack of Faith
(Inauthentic Self-Consciousness) Judging how we are perceived by others instead of acting authentically. The lady he had met was satisfied, but he was worried... how would the press pick up on it?

Lack of Hope
(Negativity) Imagining that something is a disaster, aware of the sound-bites that the media might pick up on, the inauthentic politician who has lost faith in himself then takes on the media mindset as validating who he is, self-critical of every flaw in a quest for the appearance of polished perfection, breeding a culture of negativity. “It was a disaster.” The positive person, on the other hand takes away the positive in every situation, the light at the end of the tunnel, the point of agreement in any controversy, and from this starting point works towards the good.

Lack of Love
(Fake Friendliness) The politician pretends to listen, to care, to treat each person as real, asking about their lives and their dreams, but behind this façade of friendliness is often a complete disinterest, an unwillingness to engage at a deeper level. The only desire is to put forward the candy-coated slogans and arguments of party propaganda and to get the party or oneself elected.

Lack of Fortitude
(Lack of Responsibility) Blaming circumstances on others. “You should never have put me with that woman. Whose idea was that? It's Sue I think.”

Lack of Justice
(Dishonesty) Depending on the audience, we may well need to change our mode of delivery, but the underlying message should be the same. The politicians however goes out of their way to feign consensus, and where they cannot, they feel uncomfortable. “It's very nice to see you”, but behind the scenes he felt quite differently.

Lack of Temperence
(Bad Etiquette) Insulting someone behind their back, calling them “bigoted”. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Few are the great leaders who can keep their temper and don’t let power go to their head.

Lack of Prudence
(Name-Calling) To isolate an experience or thing we don’t like, to exaggerate it, to associate it with some other known object of dislike, a “bigot”. This is the disease of the mind, setting up likes and dislikes, constructing categories of good and evil, instead of seeing things for what they are. It is a false ethics born of a false logic of association. And arguably, it’s precisely what I’ve done in this blog! :^)

Why Meditate? (Matthieu Ricard)

Extracts from a talk by Matthieu Ricard

As a Frenchman, I must say that there are a lot of French intellectuals that think happiness is not at all interesting. (Laughter) I just wrote an essay on happiness, and there was a controversy. And someone wrote an article saying, don't impose on us the dirty work of happiness. (Laughter) "We don't care about being happy. We need to live with passion. We like the ups and downs of life. We like our suffering because it's so good when it ceases for a while." (Laughter)

One of the most common confusions is between happiness and pleasure. But, if you look at the characteristics of those two, pleasure is contingent upon time, upon its object, upon the place. Also, it is not something that is radiating outside. Like, you can feel intense pleasure and some others around you can be suffering a lot. Well-being is not just a mere pleasurable sensation. It is a deep sense of serenity and fulfillment, a state that actually pervades and underlies all emotional states and all the joys and sorrows that can come one's way. For you, that might be surprising. Can we have this kind of well-being while being sad? In a way, why not? Because we are speaking of a different level. Look at the waves coming here to shore. When you are at the bottom of the wave, you hit the bottom. You hit the solid rock. When you are surfing on the top, you are all elated. So you go from elation to depression, there's no depth. Now, if you look at the high sea, there might be beautiful, calm ocean like a mirror. There might be storms, but the depth of the ocean is still there, unchanged.

So how do we proceed in our quest for happiness? Very often we look outside. We know, by experience, that we can be what we call "in little paradise" and yet, be completely unhappy within. The Dalai Lama was once in Portugal, and there was a lot of construction going on everywhere. So one evening he said, "Look, you are doing all these things, but isn't it nice, also, to build something within?" And he said, "Unless that – even you get high-tech flat on the 100th floor of a super-modern and comfortable building, if you are deeply unhappy within, all you are going to look for is a window from which to jump." So now, at the opposite, we know a lot of people who are in very difficult circumstances manage to keep serenity, inner strength, inner freedom, confidence. So now, if the inner conditions are stronger – of course, the outer conditions do influence, and it's wonderful to live longer, healthier, to have access to information, education, to be able to travel, to have freedom, it's highly desirable. However, this is not enough; those are just auxiliary help, conditions. The experience that translates everything is within the mind.

If we look from our own experience – anger, hatred, jealousy, arrogance, obsessive desire, strong grasping – they don't leave us in such a good state after we have experienced it. And also, they are detrimental to others' happiness. So we may consider that the more those are invading our mind, and, like a chain reaction, the more we feel miserable, we feel tormented. At the opposite, everyone knows deep within that an act of selfless generosity, if from the distance, without anyone knowing anything about it, we could save a child's life, make someone happy. We don't need the recognition. We don't need any gratitude. Just the mere fact of doing that, fills such a sense of adequation with our deep nature. And we would like to be like that all the time.

We know we're not always angry, always jealous, always generous. So, because the basic fabric of consciousness is this pure cognitive quality that differentiates it from a stone, there is a possibility for change because all emotions are fleeting. That is the ground for mind training. Mind training is based on the idea that two opposite mental factors cannot happen at the same time. So there are natural antidotes to emotions that are destructive to our inner well-being. So that's the way to proceed. Rejoicing compared to jealousy. A kind of sense of inner freedom as opposite to intense grasping and obsession. Benevolence, loving kindness against hatred. But of course, each emotion then would need a particular antidote.

Another way is to try to find a general antidote to all emotions. Look at anger itself; it looks very menacing, like a billowing monsoon cloud or thunder storm. But we think we could sit on the cloud, but if you go there, it's just mist. Likewise, if you look at the thought of anger, it will vanish like frost under the morning sun. If you do this again and again, the propensity, the tendencies for anger to arise again will be less and less each time you dissolve it. And, at the end, although it may rise, it will just cross the mind, like a bird crossing the sky without leaving any track. So this is the principal of mind training. Mind transformation, that is the very meaning of meditation.

The brain was thought to be more or less fixed. All the nominal connections, in numbers and quantities, were thought – until the last 20 years, thought to be more or less fixed when we reached adult age. Now, recently, it has been found that it can change a lot. A violinist, as we heard, who has done 10,000 hours of violin practice, some area that controls the movements of fingers in the brain change a lot, increasing reinforcement of the synaptic connections. So can we do that with human qualities? With loving kindness, with patience, with openness?

So that's what those great meditators have been doing. Some of them who came to the labs, like in Madison, Wisconsin, or in Berkeley, did 20 to 40,000 hours of meditation. They do, like three years retreat, where they do meditate 12 hours a day. And then, the rest of their life, they will do that three or four hours a day. They are real Olympic champions of mind training. (Laughter) So what did they find? Here is the preliminary result, which I can show because it's already been shown. The bell curve shows 150 controls, and what is being looked at is the difference between the right and the left frontal lobe. In very short, people who have more activity in the right side of the prefrontal cortex are more depressed, withdrawn. It's the opposite on the left side: more tendency to altruism, to happiness, to express, and curiosity and so forth. So there's a basic line for people. And also, it can be changed. If you see a comic movie, you go off to the left side. If you are happy about something, you'll go more to the left side. If you have a bout of depression, you'll go to the right side. Here, the -0.5 is the full standard deviation of a meditator who meditated on compassion. It's something that is totally out of the bell curve. Some meditators are able, also, to control their emotional response more than it could be thought. Like the startle experiments, for example. If you sit a guy on a chair with all this kind of apparatus measuring your physiology, and there's kind of a bomb that goes off, it's so instinctive response that, in 20 years, they never saw anyone who will not jump. Some meditators, without trying to stop it, but simply by being completely open, thinking that that bang is just going to be just a small event like a shooting stars, they are able not to move at all.

Mind training matters. This is not just a luxury. This is not a supplementary vitamin for the soul; this is something that's going to determine the quality of every instant of our lives. We are ready to spend 15 years achieving education. We love to do jogging, fitness. We do all kinds of things to remain beautiful. Yet we spend surprisingly little time taking care of what matters most: the way our mind functions. Controlling our mind is the ultimate thing that determines the quality of our experience.

The blog & comments were originally published on Buddhist Travelers

Olivia Ruiz - La Petite Fable

Lyrics in French & approximate translation below... does it make any sense? Only a little, but I love it.

De la belle et la bête je suis les deux

Mon antre est une vaste comédie

Je suis seule malgré l'ombre de vos yeux

Le silence attire ma folie

Cendrillon j'ai rayé ta citrouille

Avec l'aiguille de ton talon dodu

Comment être vraie quand on me souille?

Mon pied nacré a besoin d'être nu

J'ai donné mon corps au diable

Enfin j'ai sauvé mon âme

Je m'enfuis de la fable

Je ne ressens pas de blâmes

Le vilain meurt, reste le beau

C'est ma vie de château

J'ai fini par tout perdre et tout gagner

Ne me jugez pas, apprenez moi

Je suis entière, je suis hantée

Ne me regardez pas, vivez moi

Moi je suis la petite princesse, fière

Sans parures et sans couronnes

J'ai vu le serpent, la faiblesse

C'est toute nue que je me donne

J'ai donné mon corps au diable

Enfin j'ai sauvé mon âme

Je m'enfuis de la fable

Je ne ressens pas de blâmes

Le vilain meurt, reste le beau

C'est ma vie de château

Je me fou de ce que l'on raconte

Ma vie est là si cela vous chante

Je suis sortie, grandie de ce conte,

Moi je ris, je bondis et je chante.

A Little Fable
Of beauty and the beast, I am both.
I reside in a vast comedy,
Alone, but for the shade of your eyes,
And the silence brings out my folly.
Cinderella, I've done away with your pumpkin
With the spike of your buxom heel.
How to be true when I am maligned?
My mother-of-pearl foot needs to be bare.

I gave my body to the devil,
In the end, I saved my soul,
I am running away from the fable,
I do not feel to blame,
The villain dies, the handsome prince remains.
This is my life in a fairytale castle.

I finished by losing everything and winning everything.
Do not judge me, learn about me.
I am whole, I am haunted.
Do not look at me, live me.
I am the little princess, proud,
Without finery and without garlands.
I saw the serpent, the weakness,
And it is in nakedness that I give myself.

I gave my body to the devil,
In the end, I saved my soul,
I am running away from the fable,
I do not feel to blame,
The villain dies, the handsome prince remains.
This is my life in a fairytale castle.

I could not care for what they say.
My life is there if it enchants you.
I have left, grown out from this tale
And I laugh and I leap and I sing.

For some reason the lyrics remind me of 

'The Lord of the Dance', 

here played on the harp by Mary O'Hara.

 

Finally, a little joke from a man of fable, the legendary mathematician Paul Erdös:

Easter in Spain

After a cold spring week by the sea
Of blankets, jumpers, coats and tissues,
Out collecting pine cones for the fire
And reading curled up beside its warmth,
Suddenly the first days of summer
Descend hot upon the Spanish coast,
Dazzling brightness of the midday sun,
The beach scattered with its worshippers,
The orange and red shirts of children,
Shouting, running, playing in the sand
And beyond a low wall, a woman
Behind her bicycle, sunbathing.
A beautiful photo that would make,
I thought as I passed and looking back,
I saw her raise her face to greet my smile,
A flowering rose of passion’s joy and pain,
And because I had not captured her
On my camera like the sunrise,
I felt this need to do so with words.
Is that good service for poetry?

--okei