The Average Buddhist

Charnel Ground Practice & Herculaneum

Brookdale Cemetery Dedham: Photo by Fred Levinson

I have a habit of wandering graveyards when I’m upset. It calms me and helps put problems in perspective. Life is short and ends too soon for most of our liking. The worries and anger that consume us now will be wiped away in the decay of time.

Far from being upsetting to me, graveyards are serene. When it comes to its residents, the struggle is over. Depending on your belief, dukkha has either ceased or transitioned to another form. In either case it has become divorced from the person who used to be, whose body now decays underground. Theirs is a past history and many more will join them in the ground in the future. So, humbled I can better focus on the present moment.

When there is some kind of problem, a graveyard also represents the collective wisdom of the life experiences of those who are interred there – kind of like a collective ancestral shrine. I can turn to any random headstone and say, “Okay, T CRANE, what would you do?” Perhaps I’ll receive insight as an answer.

Usually, it’s just silence, though. T CRANE comes back with, “Darned if I know. Figure it out for yourself.” Thanks, Dude. They put fresh flowers on your grave for that gem?

Globe Spots: Photo by Bo Løvschall

When I first learned about Tibetan charnel ground practice, I thought ewwwww! Then I thought, hmmmm… For those who don’t know, the charnel ground is a place high in the mountains where the dead are brought to be offered to the vultures. I am told they can be messy places where scattered human remains can be found randomly lying around with a smell that is less than daisy fresh. This practice came about largely because of the frozen temperatures in the highest communities in Tibet. Digging holes in the ground for burials is not an option most of the year.

There is a wonderful pictorial review of a “sky burial” here (Warning: parents review pictures before showing to your children)

The more I thought about it, I recognized that practicing in a charnel ground is really only an extension of my current practice in graveyards. The single addition is the potentially jarring presence of a disarticulated hand or eyeball to bring one back to the present moment like a visual gong. Living in America, of course, the opportunity for charnel ground practice is limited.

Skeletons from Herculaneum: Photo Barbara Wilson Arboleda

I’ve written previously about my reflections of A Day in Pompeii (as of this writing in Cincinnati). In one corner of the exhibit, I was brought to a startled standstill. There were two large sections of street strewn with skeletons piled on one another. This composition of human carnage was not from Pompeii, but from its nearby neighbor Herculaneum.

According to the descriptions of the artifacts, Herculaneum was somewhat closer to Mount Vesuvius and the first pyroclastic flows reached Herculaneum before reaching Pompeii. Apparently, great blasts of accelerated hot air rushed through Herculaneum, incinerating the flesh from the bodies of all in their path. The result was a sobering tableau of instant annihilation.

Herculaneum Skeletons: Photo Barbara Wilson Arboleda

Flash of Bodhiccita. I think this is the closest I have come to charnel ground practice. In it resides the reflection of every human catastrophe that has been and each that is to come. Meditation on this simple fact of our fragility individually and even as a group commands me to stop my moaning and just get on with life in the present moment.

Emptiness in Fear and Death: Pompeii Exhibit

Early this year, I took my younger daughter to the Museum of Science in Boston to see a special exhibit on Pompeii. Though I’ve been fascinated by the story of the buried city since I was a child, I never knew how many misconceptions I had about this historic tragedy. To begin with, I believed the entire population of Pompeii was buried in the sudden explosion of Mount Vesuvius. At the exhibit I learned a great majority of the people escaped across the Bay of Naples.

I previously thought the figures of the citizens’ of Pompeii’s last moments on Earth were ossified remains. In fact, the bodies of the victims of the eruption decomposed long ago leaving hollowed out cocoons in the ash. An archeologist named Giuseppe Fiorelli developed a technique wherein figures of the victims at the moments of their deaths could be recreated using these hollows as a molds for plaster castings.

Some part of me was disappointed the figures of the Pompeiians were not “real.” Another part of me chastised myself for for being unforgivably morbid.

It was fortunate that the plaster figures were placed near the end of the exhibit. By the time we arrived, we had seen frescos, oil lamps, furniture and a petrified loaf of bread. We had learned that Pompeii was famous for its fermented fish paste, which had been a popular export at the time. They even had fast food take out! The construction of the exhibit allowed us to construct an image of a vibrant, complex civilization that was more than a pile of abandoned corpses.

Viewing the casts of those who died in the eruption was intensely emotional. We found ourselves in uncomfortable proximity with the agony of death. The postures and poses of the dead revealed deep sadness and yet resolve. I felt like a voyeur, trespassing on the intimacy of the passing of these fellow beings. Despite this, I was also assaulted by the emptiness of it all.

There was no spirit, no bone, no flesh. There was no physical remnant of the pain and panic reflected in the statues before us. The figures were at once heart-wrenching and insubstantial, just like all our suffering. It is present in the moment then gone, both individually tragic and interdependently arising.

No names travelled with the figures from their resting places to this exhibit. Their money, status and identities were gone. In this regard, each of these reflections of suffering also revealed its ultimate impermanence and imposed upon us the recognition of our own.

Craving: This has been going on forever

Human society changes. Cultural metaphors change. Languages change. In terms of Buddhist belief everything changes. It is said that an unbiased look at everything will reveal the ultimate impermanence of every thing and every condition.

Maybe…

I have been accused of being somewhat cynical in terms of the human propensity for greed, selfishness and craving. While I recognize the ultimate impermanence of all things and conditions, my unbiased (biased?) look at human nature reveals to me that these propensities never change.

So, I went to the Pompeii exhibit at the Museum of Science Boston and while there are a few more “profound” ideas I plan to share in future posts, there was one thing I found strikingly humorous in terms of what it communicates about people and craving.

A set of loaded dice.

A two thousand-year old set of loaded dice.

This has been going on forever!

Sangha in Creatures Great and Small

Since I’ve been working toward increasing my mindfulness in all of my every day activities, I have noticed that I am frequently struck by small things that remind me of the interconnectedness of practice with all things. I have started seeing Buddhist connections to things that I previously would have missed all together and which others consider mundane.

On a recent walk to work, I saw the following scene and one word popped into mind: sangha

I Meditate Like A Seal

A lot has been written about “monkey mind” in terms of trying to experience some slowing of the mental verbal-conceptual stream that  accompanies our every day life. That the Average Buddhist is so rarely able to experience a gap in the stream, even given daily practice, is a testament to the power of habitual perception.

Another core Buddhist concept is questioning this concept that calls itself “I.” Who is this I of whom we speak? Meditation on this question for even a moment reveals the fundamental emptiness of I. There is no true unchangeable, fundamentally solid self.

The other night while meditating, it suddenly occurred to me how often this word I surfaces in the stream of thoughts that are the ramblings of my monkey mind. Often, my mind strays to things I believe, things I might teach people, things I might create, then how I would explain those things. I think…I wonder…I know…

I, I, I…

Suddenly, I started hearing this in my head as the persistent barking of a seal. I, I, I…

So, I decided to check this out.

Sure enough…iStock_000009983077Wav44100

Can you hear them? I, I, I…

It seems then that I not only suffer from “monkey” mind, but “seal” mind as well. Perhaps some day there will be a whole menagerie roaming around in there.

Maybe I should start a missionary project to bring Buddhism to the wild seal population.

…or maybe just keep working on myself first…

The Tree of Compassion, Part Deux

Spring has come early to the Boston area. Already in mid-March we are enjoying days in the high 70′s and 80′s. Ignoring what that may mean for global climate change and for August (given the paucity of snow that fell this year), I’m loving it!

Today, I passed by my favorite tree that I wrote about previously and noticed a few updates. First I noticed the beautiful ring of crocuses that have popped up around the base of the tree.

I noticed that buds are starting to form on the branches. Despite it’s hardships, it looks like this tree is going to pop into full bloom!

And one more thing…

Yes, another little support added by the tree’s owner – rope this time, tying some of the internal branches to one another.

A little rope, some wooden and metal support to hold our branches in place while we bloom – aren’t we all like that?

Namaste!

Adventures in Mindfulness for Clinicians

A few days ago, I mentioned on the Facebook community that I went to a day-long class called Advanced Mindfulness Techniques for Clients: Eliminating Mental Distress. It was a great day and I promised I’d write about it. So, here I am.

In general, I look with some skepticism on the generic interest in “mindfulness” that appears to be sweeping the United States right now. It’s not that Buddhism per se is being promoted as a committed lifestyle, but rather that the inherent benefits of Buddhist practice are being harvested for general use. As a person who practices mindfulness in the context of actually being Buddhist (whatever “being” means on any given day means to my monkey mind), I have mixed feelings about the sudden popularity of this brand of mindfulness.

Nonetheless, the fact that there are very real psychological and neurological changes that have now been somewhat quantified in terms of their ability to reduce suffering gives me great hope for the potential of humanity, if a greater number took advantage of these techniques. For this reason, I must ultimately come down in general support of this growing fascination with pseudo-Buddhism. At best, it may result in an increase of interest in more spiritually connected Buddhist practice. At worst, a lot of people can be relieved of some of their suffering in this world. It’s win-win.

The instructor was Donald Sloane, LCSW. He is a long-time practitioner from St Louis, who considers himself both Buddhist and Jewish. According to his bio in the course book, he is a lay ordained Chan Buddhist teacher and has taken precepts and vows from the Linji tradition. He is also a licensed social worker with a treatment emphasis on cognitive-behavioral therapy.

In terms of the neurology of mindfulness, I found the discussion on the various aspects of the limbic system (a.k.a., the fight or flight mechanism) to be particularly interesting. In the past, some people have felt that merely taking one’s mind off of one’s problems improves well-being. One brain imaging study, however, compared a group of people who were engaging in a mindfulness task to a group of people who were performing a distraction task. The results showed that the reactivity of the amygdala (which is responsible for producing excitable, anger and fear) decreased in the mindfulness group, but not in the distraction task group. That is, mindfulness practice reduced the activity in the part of the brain that produces extreme negative emotions. The distraction task did not.

In an interesting discussion of the prefrontal cortex, I learned that greater activity in the left prefrontal cortex of the brain results in increased feelings of wellbeing. When the right prefrontal cortex is more active than the left, a person tends toward depression and sadness. What can help to shunt high levels of activity in the right prefrontal cortex to the left prefrontal cortex? Compassion practice, like Tonglen, for example. Pema would be pleased.

This class also reinforced some conclusions I have been coming to lately as the result of studying quantum physics. The more we understand about the underlying workings of the world, the more it appears to align with what Buddhists have asserted all along. One of Mr. Sloane’s slides is an example of this convergence: “Western Psychology has been looking for the self; What we mean by the self her is for there to be some single entity that coordinated what is going on in the mind-body; So far, the researchers all appear to agree: THERE IS NO SELF” (The capitalization is his).

I recommend this course for Average Buddhists who are involved in patient care of any kind. It is designed in particular for psychologists and social workers, but I found it to be very applicable to my work as a speech-language pathologist. If you haven’t got the enthusiasm for studying brain science, there is still a useful take home message. The impact of all of this meditation and practice that we do is real. They are capable of making actual physical changes in the material world of our bodies that helps to relieve the suffering of those engaging in them. That is enough for most of us to know.

The Tree of Compassion

We get by with a little help from our friends.

- The Beatles

We all need support sometimes. There are days we feel strong as an oak. On others we feel, shall we say, less than prepared to meet the challenges life has set out for us.

I walk the 1.25 mile to work as often as I can, both to fit some exercise into my day and to support the environment. Some days, I’m feeling more spritely than others.

On the days I am feeling a little punkish (as my grandmother would say), I take special joy in one particular tree I pass by on my journey. It’s a kind of spindly looking squat thing which branches kind of splay out in all directions. For several years now, one of these branches has been supported by a long piece of wood that is hooked under it like a crutch.

When I pass this tree, I smile. To begin with, I picture the owner of the yard loving this tree enough that they are willing to care for it in this way and give it the prosthetic assistance that it needs to help it survive. In addition, I think about the tenacity of life. This little tree just ain’t giving up – like Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree.

A few months ago, as I approached my bark-covered friend, I noticed that something had changed. Perhaps things had – shall we say – deteriorated a bit. But incredibly, the loving support remained.

With it’s owner’s care, perhaps it will still bloom in the spring.

Be Lazy – Love Unconditionally

Idiom has it that it takes fewer muscles to smile than it does to frown. So, be lazy and smile. It seems to me the same principle is true of love.

When someone we love betrays our trust in them, the suffering has an intensity that can overreach the scale of the original injury. Our reflexive recoil against the pain brought on by the scorn of a loved on can make us lose our perspective. We may feel there has been a breach that can never be mended and be tempted to harden ourselves against love – the person who wronged us in particular. We often invest our ego in the idea I can never forgive him/her or put conditions on our willingness to forgive.

The thing is, we are designed to heal. With time, our minds process negative interactions. On a subtle level, we recognize the multiple factors involved in every dispute. We are capable of perceiving causative factors that may not have been evident at the time of the insult. Unfortunately, once we have ego identification with the pain, it becomes difficult to dismiss the defense mechanisms that sustain our anger.

This results in a tug-of-war between our natural process of healing and our conscious desire to prop up our pride by maintaining our self-righteous indignation. Ultimately, however, the natural entropy of anger is a stronger natural force than the fire of injured passion. The bottom line is that staying angry takes work.

Humanity’s limitless capacity to heal in this way demonstrates that giving unconditional love is an easier state of being than loving conditionally. This is not to say one has to agree to be plod on repeatedly. Rather, all of us have an inherent understanding that none of us are always on our best personal behavior.

We all have “issues.” We all get triggered. When we truly examine our interactions, we all must ultimately acknowledge our gratefulness that others have been willing to let our moments of ego-clinging and selfishness slide. This recognition results in cognitive dissonance in providing only conditional love. Instead of soothing us, it amplifies our struggle and increases suffering for those who commit themselves to loving conditionally.

Consciously deciding to embrace the personal weaknesses of those we love – forgiving even when someone doesn’t “deserve” it; drawing closer even when we want to pull away – brings us closer to our natural state. It’s just plain easier.

In the waning hour of this Valentine’s Day, commit yourself to this principle: Be lazy – love unconditionally.