Simplicity and Dharma: (Expanded Version)

L. D. Turner

*** This is an expansion on a brief post that appeared at an earlier date.

There are thousands of ways to unnecessarily complicate the spiritual journey and I can safely say that I have tried just about all of them. I say this not so much to brag, but instead, to point out that I possess a wealth of experience in that highly arcane, patently esoteric spiritual practice of wasting time. If nothing else, the words wasted and verbiage expended in this opening paragraph should serve as ample proof that I am more than capable of beating around the proverbial bush with the best of them.

 Although my modes of written expression are still far from Hemingwayesque, I have learned to simplify things quite a bit. This truth holds for both my writing and my spiritual pursuits. Nowadays, I like to keep things simple.

 I suspect that my affection for simplicity has been around for a long time, lurking perhaps beneath a veneer of intellectual snobbery and psycho-spiritual babbling. What else can possibly explain my 40-year dance with the teachings of Buddhism? If ever a man sought to keep things simple, straightforward, and practical, it was Buddha. I know, yes, I know all about those long, dreary lists of psychological problems found in the depths of human ignorance, as well as the ten this, and the twelve that. Like any religion, Buddhism can get a bit weighty, but what attracts me most is the stark simplicity one finds in the practical “where-the-rubber-meets-the-road” teachings. For example, I am especially fond of this trilogy:

 Avoid Doing Harm;

Seek to do Good;

Master the Mind;

 In terms of simplicity, it doesn’t get any better than this.

  All major spiritual traditions recognize the importance of ethical living and these three lines form the bedrock of Buddhist ethics. Unfortunately, in our post-modern culture the notion of morality and ethical conduct often is either downplayed or overlooked entirely. On the spiritual path, to do either is deadly.

 Sacred Character begins with our personal conduct and our personal conduct flows from an internalized value system that we view as important. We need to know and know in depth just what we believe to be right and wrong. Again, this issue is often glossed over in our post-modern world and this is in many ways a tragedy.

Here is the foundational truth to get down in the depth of your being: Your value system, your sense of personal ethics, is the foundation upon which your spiritual journey is constructed. Without a system of personal morality, you are building your house on sand.

 

Having a personal sense of morality is only the beginning. If you don’t act on your value system – if you don’t put it into practice – you are going nowhere. You are like a house divided against itself. You, my friend, cannot stand. If you do not act on your beliefs of right and wrong, you will lack integrity. And without integrity, there can be no integration. Hopefully, you see the connection between these two words.

 

In Buddhism, the second paramita is called ethics. The Sanskrit term for this concept is sila. Suyra Das, in speaking of sila as it relates to the sacred path of the Bodhisattva, tells us:

 

We need guidelines to plan, chart, assess, and inspire our progress as Bodhisattvas, and we find them in the realm of moral ethics. This realm includes the virtues associated with living more wisely, compassionately, and harmoniously among others on an everyday basis. Among these moral virtues are self-discipline, integrity, decorum, faithfulness, temperance, tact, justice, honesty, reverence, and modesty. Bringing these qualities into our practical lives gives us integrity and good character, precisely because we’re synchronizing our three levels of being – outer, inner, and secret – on a moment-by-moment, day-by-day, year-by-year basis. When we’re doing this, we’re living the good life and helping to usher in a better world.

 Suyra Das goes on to elaborate on the meaning of the word sila:

 The Sanskrit word sila means “that which cools or calms.” In this context, cooling or calming refers to taming the virulent, seething passions that can easily overwhelm us, sometimes damaging ourselves as well as others. Specifically, the practice of ethics serves as an antidote to our tendencies to be careless, meretricious, irresponsible, cruel, false, exploitative, and unfair. Moral living exemplifies compassion in action.

 Take a few minutes and become quiet and centered. Now, please focus on the last sentence in the preceding words from Suyra Das.

 “Moral living exemplifies compassion in action.”

 Such profound and true words and, if we can apply this attitude to our daily living, we will indeed become better persons. Our moral beliefs are directly related to how we interact with the world. If we have internalized the value of compassion and behave in accordance with that belief, we put compassion into action and help make the world a better place. All so simple, yet so profoundly true.

 One of my favorite classic western movies is “The Best of the Bad Men.” In this vintage film, most of the famous outlaws of the Old West had managed to come together to pull a bank job. The James brothers, the Daltons, the Youngers…they were all there. Somehow Walter Brennan was a part of the gang, but not a member of any of the outlaw families. Still he played a vital role in the movie.

 At one point, two of the bad guys were about to have a gun fight at the bottom of a hill where the gang was camped. Walter Brennan came running down the hill with his six-shooter aimed at both of them. Next, in his unmistakable voice, Brennan told them to back off or he would lay both of them out. To emphasize his point, Brennan then said:

 “I ain’t kin to none of ya….and I ain’t troubled by no burdensome scruples.”

 The view espoused by Walter Brennan may seem humorous in the context of the movie, but it reflects how many people in our culture have come to see morality. More than a few individuals hold the idea that having internalized values is too restrictive, reduces our freedom, and takes the fun out of life. The fact is, just the opposite is true. Listen to Suyra Das:

 Individuals with a strong sense of sila, or ethics, are true to standards that reflect and elicit not only the best in themselves but also the best among human beings in general. They make promises to themselves and others to uphold these standards, but once these promises become second nature to them, they don’t restrict their lives, as others might expect they would. Instead, these promises lend clarity and power to their lives, allowing them more freedom and opportunity to live positively, grow spiritually, and help others naturally along the way.

 No, a strong sense of personal values does not restrict our freedom. Instead, it gives us parameters to operate by, facilitates easier decision-making, and, in a sense, helps us define who we are. Values also help us to keep flowing forward toward our goals in life, especially our spiritual goals. Values can be seen as being like the banks of a river; they keep the water flowing toward its destination. Without banks, a river becomes a swamp.

 A personal value system serves other positive purposes as well. Each of us it seems is equipped not only with a Sacred Center, but also with a lower center. This lower center is dominated by the ego and its selfish mind set. As a result, even the best of us engage in behaviors which are less than stellar. Speaking of myself, I know that I try to approach life as much as possible from a positive and sacred viewpoint. Still, there are times when I act with selfishness, anger, a mean spirit, and an overall sense of negativity. Having an internalized set of values, a personal moral code if you will, helps me not only identify when I am going off the spiritual rails, it also tends to reduce the frequency with which I behave in a negative manner.

 As our world culture moves forward in this new and challenging century, the importance of each individual developing and maintaining an internalized, spiritual value system – one based on inter-connectivity and human compassion – is essential. More to the point, each person has to act on that value system. He or she must be the same inside and outside. This is the true meaning of integrity.

 So, where do we start? Why not keep it simple? I suspect we all could:

 Avoid doing harm

Seek to do good

Master the Mind

© L.D. Turner 2009/All Rights Reserved

Noteworthy Dharma Teachings

Every time we are able to know a desire as a desire, anger as anger, a habit as habit, an opinion as opinion, a thought as a thought, a mind-spasm as a mind-spasm, or an intense sensation in the body as an intense sensation, we are correspondingly liberated. Nothing else has to happen. We don’t even have to give up the desire or whatever it is. To see it and know is as desire, or whatever it is, is enough. In any given moment we are either practicing mindfulness or, de facto, we are practicing mindlessness. When framed this way, we might want to take more responsibility for how we meet our world, inwardly and outwardly in any and every moment – especially given that there just aren’t any “in-between moments” in our lives.

Jon Kabat Zinn

(from Coming to Our Senses)

Simplicity and Dharma – A Brief Introduction

L. Dwight Turner

There are thousands of ways to unnecessarily complicate the spiritual journey and I think I can safely say that I have tried just about all of them. I say this not so much to brag, but instead, to point out that I possess a wealth of experience in that highly arcane, patently esoteric spiritual practice of wasting time. If nothing else, the words wasted and verbiage expended in this opening paragraph should serve as ample proof that I am more than capable of beating around the proverbial bush with the best of them.

 Although my modes of written expression are still far from Hemingwayesque, I have learned to simplify things quite a bit. This truth holds for both my writing and my spiritual pursuits. Nowadays, I like to keep things simple.

 I suspect that my affection for simplicity has been around for a long time, lurking perhaps beneath a veneer of intellectual snobbery and psycho-spiritual babbling. What else can possibly explain my 40-year dance with the teachings of Buddhism? If ever a man sought to keep things simple, straightforward, and practical, it was Buddha. I know, yes, I know all about those long, dreary lists of psychological problems found in the depths of human ignorance, as well as the ten this, and the twelve that. Like any religion, Buddhism can get a bit weighty, but what attracts me most is the stark simplicity one finds in the practical “where-the-rubber-meets-the-road” teachings. For example, I am especially fond of this trilogy:

 Do No Harm;

Pursue the Good;

Master the Mind;

 Friends, it doesn’t get any better than this.

( to be continued…..)

(c) L. D. Turner 2009/All Rights Reserved

Wise Words for Today

To wake up is hard. We must first realize that we are asleep. Next, we need to identify what keeps us asleep, start to take it apart, and keep working at dismantling it until it no longer functions. As soon as we make an effort to wake up, we start opening up to how things are. We experience what we have suppressed or avoided and what we have ignored or overlooked. When that happens, the reactive patterns that have run our lives, kept us in confusion, distorted our feelings, and caused us to ignore what is right in front of us are triggered. They rise up strongly to undermine the attention that is bringing us into a deeper relationship with what we are and what we experience. When we can see those patterns and everything that is constructed out of them as movement of mind and nothing else, we have begun to wake up.

Ken McLeod

(from Wake Up To Your Life)

Sorry For My Absence

I just wanted to take a few minutes and apologize for my neglect of this blog of late. To say that I have been busy would be a vast understatement. Also, I have been reaching a point of critical mass with several of my other writing venues and, if the truth be known, have felt just a tad overwhelmed.

Be all that as it may, I am now hoping to devote more time and energy to “Moonlight” as the days progress.

ldt

Living With Awareness: Meditation and Mindfulness

L. Dwight Turner

At times the search for happiness can take on the character of a greased pig at a county fair. Running, dodging, weaving, the porker seems to elude your grasp with the uncanny skills of an old Kung Fu master. And then, just when you think you have the hog in your clutches, it looks at you with a wry grin and slithers away, leaving you with an arm full of air and Oleo.

 

Dogen once compared enlightenment to “moonlight in a dew drop, dripping from a duck’s beak.” Or, was it a crane’s beak? I suspect it is the same either way. In a very similar vein, a very wise and eccentric old Daoist teacher I met when I lived in China said that catching a glimpse of pristine reality, shimmering in that sublime and sacred space between our thoughts, was like capturing a tiger in the ass of a gnat.

 

Aside from the obvious lessons here, Dogen’s teaching and that of the old Daoist both point to the fact that both happiness and the wisdom of enlightenment are found by being present to what I like to call “the divine moment.” It is precisely here, in the “sacred now” that we discover that for which many of us seek so diligently. It is right here, right now, right before us that we discover that which was never really hidden.

 

 

I don’t know about you, but I often struggle with the mindfulness necessary to discover the blessed pearls of the present moment. My mind, as the enlightened tell us, is like a monkey, jumping here, flitting there, and forever raising a ruckus of sound and fury. If this is true, and it certainly is, then my mind is often like a monkey on steroids. It just refuses to accept the tether I seek to employ. My mind, indeed, has a mind of its own.

 

Still, I refuse to give up on such an important issue. I make every effort to improve in this area of my life. To my way of thinking, the more mindful of the moment I am, the better my chance of discovering the divine in the mundane reality of daily living; blessings that I didn’t even know existed; and perhaps most important, messages God may have for me. I firmly believe that we often miss divine guidance because we don’t have ears to hear and the reason we don’t have ears to hear is that we are too busy and too noisy.

 

I have found that mindfulness and mediation are inseparable practices. The process of meditation is, in reality, an exercise in establishing mindfulness in a specific place for a specific amount of time. The object of our meditation may vary – it could be the breath, a mantra, a prayer, a candle flame, or whatever. You see, to meditate is to be mindful and I have found that the more often and the more consistent my meditation practice is, the more I am able to be mindful when I am not meditating.

 

Some people complicate mediation way too much. They either turn it into some arcane practice from Inner Bhutan, complete with Tibetan chants and visualizations of everything from Indra’s Net to Shiva’s phallus. It doesn’t have to be this way, really. Countless sages from every spiritual tradition will tell you that counting the breath is enough.

 

Meditation also involves getting off your cushion, mat, zafu, or what have you and taking that pristine awareness into the world of your daily living. I love the following words by Jon Kabat-Zinn about the essence of meditation and mindfulness:

 

We need to develop and refine our minds and its capacities for seeing and knowing, for recognizing and transcending whatever motives and concepts and habits of unawareness may have generated or compounded the difficulties we find ourselves embroiled within, a mind that knows and sees in new ways is motivated differently. This is the same as saying we need to return to our original, untouched, unconditioned mind.

 

How can we do this? Precisely by taking a moment to get out of our own way, to get outside of the stream of thought and sit by the bank and rest for a while in things as they are underneath our thinking, or as Soen Sa Nim liked to say, “before thinking.” That means being with what is for a moment, and trusting what is deepest and best in yourself, even if it doesn’t make any sense to the thinking mind.

 

From Kabat-Zinn’s words we can see that there is nothing mysterious, esoteric, or bizarre about this process of mindfulness. More than anything else, it is a simple and straightforward effort toward self-mastery, which is an essential goal on the path of spiritual evolution. Although many people tout the virtues of the undisciplined life and, as some say, “going with the flow,” this is in contradiction of the real Zen life. If you happen to be fully enlightened and your karmic debts have been paid in full, then you might consider going with the flow. If you happen, however, to be like most of us, you will readily admit to seeing through a glass darkly and that your karmic spreadsheet still has plenty of red ink. For most of us, going with the flow will garner an experience that resembles more than anything else, the life of a log.

 

Again, I return to the words of Jon Kabat-Zinn, a man who lives his message of meditative mindfulness:

 

More than anything else, I have come to see meditation as an act of love, an inward gesture of benevolence and kindness toward ourselves and toward others, a gesture of the heart that recognizes our perfection even in our obvious imperfection, with all our shortcomings, our wounds, our attachments, our vexations, and our persistent habits of unawareness. It is a very brave gesture: to take one’s seat for a time and drop in on the present moment without adornment. In stopping, looking, and listening, in giving ourselves over to all our senses, including mind, in any moment, we are in that moment embodying what we hold most sacred in life. In making the gesture, which might include assuming a specific posture for formal meditation, but could also involve simply becoming more mindful or more forgiving of ourselves, immediately re-minds us and re-bodies us. In a sense, you could say it refreshes us, makes this moment fresh, timeless, free up, wide open. In such moments, we transcend who we think we are. We go beyond our stories and all  our incessant thinking, however deep and important it sometimes is, and reside in seeing what is here to be seen and the direct, non-conceptual knowing of what is here to be known, which we don’t have to seek because it is already and always here…..In words, it may sound like an idealization. Experienced, it is merely what it is, life expressing itself, sentience quivering within infinity, with things just as they are.

 

From Kabat-Zinn’s description, it is obvious that coming to live in the present moment, to be mindfully attentive to what is happening in front of our eyes, is a spiritual experience of high significance. On rare occasions, we may be granted by grace a glimpse of this unadorned reality of “just what is” beyond our ideas about what is. These moments are personal epiphanies, always remembered and transformational in nature.

 

In essence, to meditate and become mindful in our comings, goings, risings, and fallings – in our successes and our failures and in our joys and our suffering – is indeed the experiential definition of a mainstay of the spiritual life: engagement.

 

To be engaged is to be truly alive, vital, involved, and useful. It is the foundation of all effective spiritual service. When we are mindful we can be engaged, and when we are engaged, really right there in our wholeness in the totality of the divine moment, we become part of the solution rather than the problem.

 

© L.D. Turner 2009/All Rights Reserved

Radical Compassion: Part Two

L. Dwight Turner

The great Romantic poets like William Wordsworth and Percy B. Shelley have voices that ring loudly with the sense of the interrelated aspects of the natural world and their American counterparts, the Transcendentalists, in the writings of Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman, also echo this theme of divine connectivity. And then there is the work of that master of the arcane, William Blake who spoke of the mystic’s ability:

 

To see a World in a grain of sand,

And Heaven in a wild flower,

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,

And Eternity in an hour.

 

The world that we interact with each day only appears to be solid. In point of fact, it is an intricate dance of sub-atomic waves and particles that obey none of the traditional or expected moves of predictable choreography. At its core level, our apparently solid, material world is less like classical music and more like jazz. Just when we think we have a handle on how things are, these very things change, morphing into something totally unexpected and often totally mysterious. Someone wise, I forget who, once said the life is not a riddle to be solved but a mystery to be lived. How true, and the sooner a person grasps this fundamental truth, the less frustration will appear in his or her life.

 

It is not my intention to travel too far down this road of quantum physics at this juncture. Suffice to say that contemporary science is increasingly coming to grasp the same fundamental truths that mystics and shamans have voiced for many centuries. Simply put: Everything is interrelated and interdependent and when one part is affected by something, at a very core level, every other part is also impacted.

 

In teaching about the interrelated aspect of the universe, I often use a simple analogy that explains these principles in a basic way. I use the example of raisin Jell-o. Imagine you have concocted a delicious tub or raisin Jell-o. Choose your favorite flavor if you like. The raisins are the important thing, here. Now, what happens when you take your index finger and thump one of the raisins? All the raisins move. Crude as this metaphor is, it makes the point that all the raisins in the bowl are connected and if one raisin moves, they all move. This is what the mystics, and the quantum physicists, are talking about when they speak of interconnectivity.

 

As the church moves into the second decade of the 21^st Century it has already become apparent that great changes are in the wind. I feel some of these changes are connected with an increased understanding of how God’s magnificent creation is put together in this incredible holographic manner in which each part contains the totality of the whole and every aspect of his world exists in an interdependent relationship with every other part. This is no romantic sentimentalism I am speaking of. Instead, it is a living, vibrant reality that, when one takes it to heart, changes everything. For the church, the message of the gospel become less of “let me show you the way,” and more of “What do you need?”

 

This move toward proactive compassion is a move of grace. Perhaps you are not accustomed to looking at grace that way, but grace is what we are dealing with. As stated earlier, a major part of Christ’s incarnation and our ongoing mission is to give flesh to grace. Caroline Myss makes this cogent observation in her book, Invisible Acts of Power:

 

What really happens inside you when you respond to someone in need? Why do some people jump out of their seats to help another person, while others look the other way? No doubt, some people have been taught to be kind and others may be naturally thoughtful. But I think something greater than compassion or good manners is at work, something beyond the motivation of the strong to help the weak or the wealthy to help the poor. I think it is the invisible power of grace, moving between the open hearts of give and receiver. The action itself, the lifting of a heavy piece of luggage or the drink of water offered to the thirsty man, may be small. But the energy that is channeled through that action is the high-voltage current of grace. It contains the power to renew someone’s faith in himself. It even has the power to save a life.

 

It should not be too difficult of an intellectual jump to see why this concept of interrelated reality should lead to a true and radical sense of compassion. What happens to me in the ultimate sense, happens to you and vice versa. When a child dies of hunger or disease in a poverty stricken nation, some part of each of us dies. We may not feel it, understand it, or even recognize it. Still, it is a fundamental spiritual and quantum truth. It is wise to remember the words of the 17^th Century poet John Donne as he spoke of the custom of the time which involved ringing the town’s bell whenever someone died:

 

Any man’s death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind;

Therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

It tolls for thee.

 

© L.D. Turner 2009/All Rights Reserved

Radical Compassion: Part One

L. Dwight Turner 

Jesus Christ was not a man of compassion; he was a man of radical compassion. From his voluntary mission to this broken world, to his mysterious ascension back into the heavenly realm, there was no theme he stressed more in both word and deed. From his opening salvo quoting Isaiah about bringing release to the captives and good news to the poor, to his dying plea of, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do,” Jesus exemplified a compassion far beyond what the world had seen before. Indeed, it was and is a radical compassion.

 

Jesus’ stories about the Prodigal, the Good Samaritan, and his treatment of the woman caught in adultery all point to the need for a compassion that transcends the normal boundaries defined by contemporary culture, then and now. Indeed, it was and is a radical compassion.

 

Five-hundred years before Jesus, another prophet of radical compassion graced our world. Gautama Buddha was an example of grace and perfect love incarnate. After finding his awakening under the Bodhi tree, the Buddha went about spreading the truth that he had discovered, a truth that when astutely applied to life, could liberate beings from endless rounds of suffering. Just as with Jesus who would come later, Buddha taught through sermons, informal talks, parables, and above all, his actions.

 

Just as Christ would later set an example for his disciples to follow, the Buddha also would serve as the divine prototype for the essence of “metta,” or “loving-kindness.” In Metta, there is an internal manifestation and an external manifestation. Internally, increasing feelings of loving kindness give rise to a vital sense of compassion that is also based on the realization of the oneness of all things. These internal states of loving kindness and compassion result in the external manifestation, which is proactive service to the world.

 

This eventually gave rise to the Mahayana Buddhist ideal of the Bodhisattva. On a theoretical level, one can accurately say that the ultimate goal of the Bodhisattva is enlightenment and to some extent this is true. However, on a highly practical level, the Bodhisattva’s highest goal is selfless service. Personal enlightenment takes a back seat to serving others, spiritually and materially. Perhaps no where in the sacred writings of the world is this reality presented so directly as in the 13^th Chapter of the Gospel of John.

 

Radical compassion is compassion with legs; radical compassion is a verb. Just as the Bible tells us in the Letter of James that faith without works is dead, also, compassion without concomitant action is a lifeless phenomenon. Many sincere aspirants have the mistaken notion that the ultimate goal of the spiritual path is enlightenment. Although a sincere desire for motivation is one of our most treasured possessions, it is actually penultimate. The real aim of the spiritual journey is simply this – Sacred Service. All that we do is dedicated to the greatest good of all beings in all the worlds. Our gain is their gain, our loss is their loss, our advancement is their advancement, and it is to this sacred reality that we offer our benedictions at the end of our times of meditation and prayer.

 

In the Christian faith especially, personal enlightenment takes a back seat to serving others, spiritually and materially. Perhaps no where in the sacred writings of the world is this reality presented so directly as in the 13^th Chapter of the Gospel of John.

 

Imagine for a moment that you are one of Jesus’ twelve disciples and you, your band of rag tag friends, and the Master arrive at the Upper Room after a long, tedious, dusty day going about your business. You sit for a moment to catch your breath and unwind a few moments before you go wash up for the evening meal. You close your eyes for a few minutes, only to feel something or someone taking off your sandals. And to your utter disbelief, kneeling in front of you is the Master Jesus with a basin and a towel. Incredible….

 

The Master taught his disciples, and all of us who have read of this amazing episode, a clear and concise example of the essence of spirituality: selfless service with a heart of humility. If only more of us, especially those who claim to be followers of Jesus, would take this lesson to heart, our world would have much less pain.

 

The Kingdom of God is a divine realm of proactive compassion. This is the message that Jesus came to deliver and through his actions as well as his words, he delivered it consistently. In all that he did and he said, Jesus revealed to us the nature of God. This incarnational revelation was hinted at in the Master’s magnificent prayer in John 17. In the 21^st verse the Master says:

 

I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one – as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me.

 

In the Bible’s most well known verse, John 3:16, it is stated that for God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life. (NLT)

 

Now, to make this even clearer, let’s look at one more verse in John 17. In verse three John records:

 

And this is the way to have eternal life, to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, the one you sent to earth. (NLT)

 

Putting all this together, Jesus gave us a powerful but very real theology in this prayer and his disciple, John, fully caught its significance by saying in 3:16 that God loved the world so much that he sent his Son to save it. On God’s part, this was a perfect example of “proactive compassion” or what we often call “grace.” Motivated by the purest form of love, God was moved to have compassion on we fallen creatures, even in our blind ignorance, and he literally gave that compassion flesh by sending us the Master Jesus.

 

 

In order for compassion to become more than just a nice idea or a sentimental feeling, it must flow out of the internalized wisdom of the ages, particularly as related to the reality of “interconnectivity.” The idea of interconnectivity, now confirmed by the field of quantum physics, has been around for many centuries and is at the core of interspiritual mysticism, that one aspect of world religion that seems to transcend culture, time, and especially theology. It is a mystical connectedness that promotes compassion and engaged action to make the world a better place for all who dwell here. In essence, it is a deep wisdom that gives flesh to grace. The great spiritual writer Kahil Gibran spoke of this interconnected reality when he said:

 

Your neighbor is your other self dwelling behind a wall. In understanding, all walls shall fall down. Who knows but that your neighbor is your better self wearing another body? See that you love him as you would yourself. He too is a manifestation of the Most High.

 

In India, for example, we have the story of Indra’s Net, which is strung throughout the universe with a precious jewel at the places where the cords of the net intersect. These jewels, in turn, reflect all of the other jewels. Similar to the modern discovery of the hologram, the image of Indra’s Net is filled with symbolic wisdom depicting the interconnectivity of all that is. Gary Zukav, in his groundbreaking book entitled, The Dancing Wu Li Masters tell us:

 

…the philosophical implications of quantum mechanics is that all things in our universe (including us) that appears to exist independently are actually parts of one all-encompassing organic pattern, and that no parts of that pattern are ever really separate from it or from each other.

 

In the Christian tradition, the writings of the great mystic teachers echo these same truths, often in symbolic and metaphorical ways. Julian of Norwich especially comes to mind as well as Hildegard of Bingen and Madame Guyon. The writings of Saint Theresa of Avila and the life and work of St. Francis also point to the interconnectivity of all life and the necessity of having a heart of radical compassion.

(to be continued)

(c) L.D. Turner 2009/All Rights Reserved

Meditation and Living from Sacred Mind

L. Dwight Turner

Meditation and Living From The Sacred Mind

 

Lead us from darkness to light;

Lead us from illusion to wisdom;

Lead us from death to the deathlessness.

Lead us from conflict and suffering to harmony, peace, and happiness.

 

These brief words from the Upanishads, one of India’s spiritual classics, gives a brief but comprehensive view of what the spiritual journey is all about. As I meditated on the principles here, I became aware of the opposites that exist within the words and how these polarities in many ways describe the basic difference between living from our lower mind and our Sacred Mind. For example, when we operate in the confines of the lower mind, here is what we get:

 

Darkness

Illusion

Death

Conflict

Suffering

 

In contrast, living from the limitless position of our Sacred Mind, entire vistas open to us that we most likely overlooked before. When we arrive at a space where we can consistently allow our Sacred Mind to be in the driver’s seat, we encounter:

 

Light

Wisdom

Deathlessness

Harmony

Peace

Happiness

 

 I have consistently found that practices such as meditation, prayer, mindfulness, silence, and service help us acquire the ability to live more consistently from our Sacred Mind. It is because of this reality that here at Lifebrook International we spend so much time stressing the importance of spiritual practice, especially the practice of meditation.

 

Meditation is one of the most significant and beneficial practices in which we may engage. Putting aside the deep spiritual benefits derived from its utilization, there are numerous highly practical benefits as well. Medical science has discovered and verified the fact that regular meditation practice reduces stress and its resultant complications, lowers blood pressure, improves memory, slows aging, and aids in healing from both illness and injury. Mediation’s use as a stress reduction technique alone is ample reason to give it a fair trial, given the hectic lifestyle each of us maintains. The benefits, however, are far more than physical and psychological. As all lasting faith traditions have maintained, meditation helps us to find the Sacred Light that exists at the core of our being and provides a tested and proven method of making that Light an integral part of our daily living.

 

What I have discovered in my personal practice of meditation is that it is a way to deepen my contact with God and to make the power of divine energy more of a practical, pragmatic resource to use for God’s purposes. As countless mystics have asserted across the ages, meditation helps us know God as opposed to knowing about God. In so doing, regular meditative practices put is in contact with the very creative power of the universe.

 

As you expand your awareness of meditation, you will find that there are many techniques, each with its own goals and procedures. The trick is finding the method which may serve you best, then sticking with it in order to attain the deeper, more subtle benefits of the technique. While it is interesting to flit from one practice to another, much like a Humming Bird going from flower to flower, the most profound and lasting benefits of meditative practice comes from deepening your connection with one practice. As an old Buddhist adage implies, if you are looking for water, it is usually better to dig one hole 50 feet deep, rather than digging 50 holes one foot deep. Author and meditation teacher Jack Kornfield tells us:

 

To deepen our practice further, we must choose a way to develop our attention systematically and give ourselves to it quite fully. Otherwise we will drift like a boat without a rudder. To learn to concentrate we must choose a prayer or a meditation and follow this path with commitment and steadiness, a willingness to work with our practice day after day, no matter what arises. This is not easy for most people. They would like their spiritual life to show immediate and cosmic results. But what great art is ever learned quickly? Any deep training opens in direct proportion to how much we give ourselves to it.

 

Although finding our particular meditative practice is highly important, for many of us this is a difficult process. For some, this indecision is due to a general personality issue about making a commitment to anything. For most, however, it may be something else – it may be the result of having too many options to choose from.

 

Without a doubt, America has rapidly become a spiritual smorgasbord. A sincere spiritual aspirant has a wide variety of menu items to choose from ranging from the highly spiced cuisine of Hinduism to the bland austerity of Zen. While this far-ranging religious buffet has numerous benefits, it can also present several significant problems.

 

First, this plethora of spiritual options creates an army of metaphysical nibblers. Although well-meaning, these folks take a bite of this and a taste of that – a smidgen of Tibetan Buddhism and a morsel of Theravada. As a result, these seekers are always running from one sample to another without ever getting a real sense of what these various paths are about.

 

Related to the above described spiritual nibbling are other seekers who take a larger sampling of one of the available options, but never go too far. These are the aspirants who satisfy themselves with spiritual finger-foods but never get around to eating the whole meal. Content with the appetizers, this group seems capable of discussing the many spiritual paths that are available, but cannot speak to the deeper issues of any faith.

 

During the years that I taught regular workshops on spirituality, meditation, and Buddhism, I often encountered these individuals. I don’t mean to make light of their sincerity. The majority of these seekers were desirous of spiritual growth, but were unable, for whatever reasons, to get past the bombardment of what can legitimately be described as America’s Spiritual Circus. Whenever I would ask, “What is your spiritual practice?” they would respond:

 

“Well, I have done some Vipassana and some Sufi dancing, and last summer I went on a vision quest and, oh yeah, I did a sweat lodge.”

 

More times than not, these aspirants resembled the folks we just talked about, searching for water by digging 50 holes, one-foot deep, rather than one 50 foot hole. The results, of course, were predictable: superficiality, lack of wisdom, and spiritual confusion.

 

With the myriad spiritual options available to us today, it becomes increasingly vital that we learn to be discerning in terms of choosing a spiritual path. Moreover, it is equally important to be able to make a firm commitment to our chosen path and stick with it long enough to encounter difficulties, work through them, and come out the other side. Only then will we begin to make true progress.

 

Don’t misunderstand what I am saying. Sampling the spiritual options available to us is not a bad thing. In fact, without such sampling we will most likely never discover our best path. The point I am making is each of us must eventually move beyond mere sampling. We have to, as the Buddhist principle states, “take our one seat.”

 

In his insightful book, A Path With A Heart, Jack Kornfield speaks to the necessity of choosing one spiritual practice and staying with it:

 

Spiritual transformation is a profound process that doesn’t happen by accident. We need a repeated discipline, a genuine training, in order to let go of our old habits of mind and to find and sustain a new way of seeing. To mature on the spiritual path, we need to commit ourselves in a systematic way….Until a person chooses on discipline and commits to it, how can a deep understanding of themselves and the world be revealed to them? Spiritual practice requires sustained practice and a commitment to look very deeply into ourselves and the world around us…

 

It has often been said that there are many ways up the mountain and this is most certainly true. However, the existence of numerous ways to advance toward our goal does not mean that each of these ways is best for us. After a period of sampling, it is imperative that we select a practice and get on with the process of making this discipline a regular part of our daily living. To continue dabbling here and there can be exciting, but in the end will not produce lasting results.

 

If you happen to live in an area where there are several centers that teach meditation, I would encourage you to visit more than one and experiment with the various techniques, then select one that seems to resonate with you. If no such center is available, look around on line and try some of the myriad techniques available there. The point in the beginning is not so much which technique you select, but that you establish a disciplined practice. Experience teaching meditation over the years has taught me that the setting of a disciplined spiritual practice is the most important lesson a seeker can learn at the beginning of their spiritual journey. Unfortunately, discipline is not such a popular word these days.

 

As each of us continues on our spiritual journey it is vital to understand that the foundation of our growth is the establishment of a disciplined spiritual practice. Without such a practice, much of what we do will, in the words of that great sage Solomon, be “chasing after the wind.”

 

For many of us living in the contemporary culture, this reality is sometimes tough to swallow. There are many reasons that we are resistant to this cardinal principle of spirituality. Space doesn’t allow for a full treatment of this theme, but I would like to give at least a brief overview of two primary reasons we tend to skirt the issue of establishing a firm spiritual practice. These are: Lack of time and lack of discipline.

 

Whether teaching spiritual principles to workshop participants, business professionals, or college students, I have found the most frequent reason offered for the absence of regular spiritual practice in a person’s life is lack of time. I understand this all too well because it is a reason (read excuse) that I have often offered myself.

 

Granted, life in today’s hectic society is filled with seemingly overwhelming tasks and myriad obligations. I frequently find myself wishing for 28 hours in a day, rather than 24. And, at times, even those extra four hours would be insufficient. I know many of you can relate to what I am saying. However, I have found that in my life, if I am truly committed to growing spiritually, I can find a place to carve out the time. Will I have to sacrifice something I enjoy doing? Perhaps. Will I have to change my schedule around? Most likely. Without belaboring the point, suffice it to say that rarely have I found an individual who couldn’t find the time to establish at least a short daily session of meditation, prayer, Scripture reading, or another spiritual undertaking.

 

Think of it like this. If you honestly believe that your spiritual evolution is a high priority in your life, then regular spiritual practice is essential. One cardinal truth of the spiritual path is the fact that you are not going to get to the other side of the river unless you get in the boat. The important principle here is to just get started. Don’t plan beyond that. Begin with only five minutes. After a brief time, double it to 10 minutes and eventually work your way up to whatever you believe is right for you.

 

Often, our lack of setting aside part of our day for spiritual practice is not so much a lack of time as it is a lack of discipline. “Discipline” is not a politically correct word these days. This is unfortunate because without discipline, you are not going to progress in any area of living, especially your spiritual life. You may be desirous of advancing in your spiritual walk, but that is only a fantasy. Like the “Beauty School Dropout” in the movie “Grease,” you have the dream, not the drive.”

 

I wish I could tell you that there was an easy way to develop more discipline in your life, but that’s not the case, especially if you have a long pattern of being undisciplined. The fact is, you’re going to have to work at it. Without discipline, one’s life devolves into a chaotic mediocrity. Without discipline, there isn’t the slightest sliver of achieving a life of vital spirituality.

In closing, I hope it is obvious how connected lack of time and lack of discipline are. It seems each one feeds the other in an endless cycle that results in paralysis of action. Because we do not take the time to establish a regular routine of spiritual practice, we are not able to develop discipline; and without discipline, we never find the time to practice. And on it goes.

 

What is clear is the fact that we need spiritual practice that is disciplined, focused, and productive. Without such a practice, we wind up like a dog chasing its tail, or, in the words of Solomon, chasing after the wind.

 

© L.D. Turner 2009/All Rights Reserved

The Blessings of Mindfulness

L. Dwight Turner

Mindfulness is not a strong suit in western culture. A fast-paced, hectic lifestyle joined at the hip to myriad responsibilities creates an environment where the pursuit of mindfulness is at best a pipe dream for most people. Our minds are scattered between work, family, finances, and a plethora of other pressures contending for our attention. It is little wonder that most of us feel stressed, overwhelmed, and on the cusp of burnout most of the time.

 

The irony here is that mindfulness may very well constitute the solution to this ulcer-inducing way of life that most of us call “normal.” The fact is, once we really learn to be mindful and fully attentive to what we are doing, we become more efficient and able to accomplish more while expending less energy. Further, my personal experience has taught me that when I am truly conscious of my actions, my feelings, and my thoughts – I am less likely to feel overwhelmed and stressed. I find that I can remain at least marginally centered in spite of conflicting pressures and voices jockeying for my attention.

 

Mindfulness is at its core a spiritual issue. Although all faith systems stress mindfulness to some extent, nowhere is it a more central theme than in Buddhism. Mindful living is one of the central components of the Noble Eightfold Path described by Gautama Buddha as the path out of human discontent. I have found that when I make a consecrated commitment to work on mastering my monkey mind through consistent meditation practice and make efforts to become more mindful, life becomes generally better. Nothing really changes externally – the same pressures, responsibilities, deadlines, and stress – they are all still there. But something gradually begins to change internally as a personal anchor of centeredness begins to take shape. Although I am not perfect at it and certainly I am a long way from the calm demeanor of a Mahatma Gandhi, I am less likely to appear as a trance channel for Yosemite Sam.

 

Personally, I find it hard to wrap words around the full array of positive qualities that emerge from the practice of meditation and becoming more mindful. Perhaps that is one of the reason I appreciate the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn, a pioneer in the use of mindfulness and meditation practice in health applications. Kabat-Zinn, in his book Coming to Our Senses, gives one of the best descriptions I have encountered:

 

More than anything else, I have come to see meditation as an act of love, an inward gesture of benevolence and kindness toward ourselves and toward others, a gesture of the heart that recognizes our perfection even in our obvious imperfection, with all our shortcomings, our wounds, our attachments, our vexations, and our persistent habits of unawareness. It is a very brave gesture: to take one’s seat for a time and drop in on the present moment without adornment. In stopping, looking, and listening, in giving ourselves over to all our senses, including mind, in any moment, we are in that moment embodying what we hold most sacred in life. In making the gesture, which might include assuming a specific posture for formal meditation, but could also involve simply becoming more mindful or more forgiving of ourselves, immediately re-minds us and re-bodies us. In a sense, you could say it refreshes us, makes this moment fresh, timeless, free up, wide open. In such moments, we transcend who we think we are. We go beyond our stories and all  our incessant thinking, however deep and important it sometimes is, and reside in seeing what is here to be seen and the direct, non-conceptual knowing of what is here to be known, which we don’t have to seek because it is already and always here…..In words, it may sound like an idealization. Experienced, it is merely what it is, life expressing itself, sentience quivering within infinity, with things just as they are.

 

From Kabat-Zinn’s description, it is obvious that coming to live in the present moment, to be mindfully attentive to what is happening in front of our eyes, is a spiritual experience of high significance. On rare occasions, we may be granted by grace a glimpse of this unadorned reality of “just what is” beyond our ideas about what is. These moments are personal epiphanies, always remembered and transformational in nature.

 

As special as these moments are, they rarely come frequently unless a persons prepares the soil for their coming. That is where meditation comes in. Teachers from all faith traditions stress the importance of spending time in meditation and/or contemplation. For some reason not completely apparent, the more time we spend in proximity of the “Sacred Silence,” the more likely we are to experience these divine moments of pristine clarity. Meditation, whatever form it may take, appears to prepare the soil of our being for the coming of these special times when we actually see what is before us. Meditation and mindfulness are the twin practices that increase our capacity to be receptive to these divine gifts of the Spirit.

 

In my own experience, those forms of meditation that lend themselves to the quieting of the mind have proved the most beneficial when it comes to opening up to the kind of special encounters described above. My preference has been the utilization of techniques involving focusing my attention on my breathing as an anchor to which my often skittering mind is tethered and brought under at least a modicum of control. For others, mediations involving visualization, chanting, or mantra may be more conducive to the experience we are discussing. Whatever the technique, the important component is regularity of practice. The more we meditate, the more mindful we will become. This is a simple equation, but it has been consistently verified.

 

I am of the firm conviction that the more mindful people become, the more they will be able to master themselves and by doing so, behave in ways that are less problematic and more harmonious. Meditation is the pathway to mindfulness and mindfulness is indeed, a great blessing to one and all.

 

© L.D. Turner 2009/ All Rights Reserved