Basic goodness is the shimmering brilliance of our being.

"Basic goodness is the shimmering brilliance of our being."

Sakyong Mipham,
Tibetan Buddhist teacher

Photo: Aspen leaves lying on a bench next to the Great Stupa of Dharmakaya; Shambhala Mountain Center, Red Feather Lakes, CO; October 14, 2013

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Our true self is like gold that is covered by greed, lust, anger and ignorance.

The Buddha said: "Every being has Buddha-Nature. This is the Self. Such Self has, from the very beginning, been under cover of innumerable defilements. That is why man cannot see it.  [Imagine that] there is a poor woman here. She has true gold concealed in her house. None of the people of her house, whether big or small, know of it. But there is a stranger, who, through expediency, . . . digs out the gold that had lain hidden. The woman sees it, [and] is gladdened . . . The case is the same with the Buddha-Nature which every person has . . .They . . .  cannot see the Buddha-Nature which is within, even though they possess it. [For] they are reigned over by greed, lust, anger, and ignorance."

The Nirvana Sutra

Photo: Golden River Birch leaves and the Great Stupa of Dharmakaya, Red Feather Shambhala Center, CO;  October 7, 2013

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Let Your Anxious Self Melt in the Sunlight of Meditation

"Above all, be at ease, be as natural and spacious as possible.  Slip quietly out of the noose of your habitual anxious self, release all grasping, and relax into your true nature.  Think of your ordinary, emotional, thought-ridden self as a block of ice or a slab of butter left out in the sun.  If you are feeling hard and cold, let this aggression melt away in the sunlight of your meditation.  Let peace work on you and enable you to gather your scattered mind and awaken in you the awareness and insight of Clear Seeing.  And you will find all your negativity disarmed, your aggression dissolved, and your confusion evaporating slowly like mist into the vast and stainless sky of your absolute nature."

Sogyal Rinpoche, Tibetan Buddhist teacher

Photo:  Long's Peak and Mt. Meeker dissolving in late afternoon light, Westridge, Lory State Park, CO, January 23, 2012

Let Your Fear Dissolve Like a Teaspoon of Salt in a Vast Open Lake

 

 "I am sometimes still afraid, but it isn't the same experience of fear I usually had before.  I have a deeper knowledge of the vastness of connection in life, within which fear arises . . . As our faith deepens, the 'container' in which fear arises gets bigger. Like a teaspoonful of salt placed in a pond full of fresh water rather than in a narrow glass, if our measure of fear is arising in an open, vast space of heart, we will not shut down around it.  We may still recognize it as fear, we may still quake inside, but it will not break our spirit."

Sharon Salzberg, Buddhist meditation teacher

Photo: Upper Ice Lake, San Juan Mountains, CO, July 14, 2011

Self-Hatred and the Dalai Lama

 

"Self-hatred is truly an epidemic in the developed world.  U.S. citizens have so much wealth, but they have a poverty of spirit.  There is a very revealing story about the Dalai Lama, who was meeting with a group of Buddhist teachers from the United States and Europe.  One of the teachers said to him, 'A great obstacle to meditation practice of many of my students is extreme self-hatred.  What can I do about this?'  Apparently the Dalai Lama did not understand what the teacher was asking.  He had to have the question translated from English to Tibetan about three or four times.  Finally he asked, 'Why would anyone want to hate themselves?'

Spiritual practice will help you accept yourself as you are with your own particular quirks; it will also help you see the Buddha-nature within you - the unchanging part of you, beyond all quirks."

Diana Winston

"When I first heard the word self-hatred and was first exposed to this concept, I was quite surprised.  I found the possibility of someone hating themselves quite unbelievable . . . The antidote is seen in our natural Buddha-nature, the acceptance or belief that every sentient being, particularly a human being, has Buddha-nature.  There is a potential to become a Buddha.  Even such weak sentient beings as flies, bees, and insects possess Buddha-nature.  Then why not I?  Why can't I also become fully enlightened?"

The Dalai Lama

Photo: A honeybee explores my finger, Greyrock Meadow, Roosevelt National Forest, CO, October 23, 2009

Penetrate Through the World with Loving Awareness in Order to Find the Underlying Spaciousness Upon Which All Things Shimmer

"Inhale the energy of lust into your heart, and then feel outward from your heart, feeling the world as if it were your lover.  With an exhale, move into the world and penetrate it, skillfully and spontaneously, opening it into love . . . Make love with the world in this way, all day, pervading and dissolving all unease.  Feel the world against your body like a naked woman, vulnerable and alive, and allow the front of your body to press into and through the world's body, liberating the knots of accumulated pain . . .The way a man penetrates the world should be the same way he penetrates a woman: not merely for personal gain or pleasure, but to magnify love, openness and depth.

"Feel through your pleasure, as well as through the space around it and behind it, into the ocean upon which it shimmers . . . Practice easing your attention and penetrating through things, as if feeling through the deck of a boat into the deep rhythms of the sea, or relaxing your gaze through the objects reflected in a window pane so you can know the vast landscape behind them.  Every object of your attention floats in a boundless space of being.  Ease your attention through every experience so you can know and feel this depth of openness.  Feel through the transparency of things into the inherent spaciousness in which they shimmer, as if feeling into an underlying ocean of silence.

David Deida, Kashmiri Tantric Buddhist

Photo: Phallic monolith and the Henry Mountains, Canyonlands National Park, UT, November 27, 2011

Meditation Enables Us to Watch - Spellbound - as All Things are Birthed Out of the Seamless Expanse of God's Spaciousness

 

"I experience God as Source, the Emptiness that gives rise to Form.  This is my experience.  In periods of intensive meditation practice, at times when I have been very, very, still, I've seen the world I know and recognize as myself and my story dissolve and become the vibrancy of infinite space.  The place from which the sentient, discriminating awareness of life begins, is revealed.  It feels to me like the edge of creation.  Looking at emptiness, I feel I see God.  Form is the manifest side of emptiness.  Creation keeps on happening.  My experience of emptiness is that it is alive with the possibility of everything waiting to be born. Buddhists say, 'Form is emptiness and emptiness is form.'  Everything derives from and returns to its undifferentiated source.  The Jewish Kabbalists call God "Eyn-Sof, the Infinite, that which has no beginning or end." When I pray, I think of how the Jewish phrase "God is One" and Buddhist "Emptiness" feel the same to me.  When I give thanks, daily, for my life, I think about creation as the amazing process by which non-differentiated emptiness continually is reborn as form."

Sylvia Boorstein, a "Bu-Jew" or Buddhist Jew

On my birthday, I am grateful for the continual process by which each and every moment is born - magically - out of the seamless space of infinite divine awareness.

Photo: A glacier lily pops up through the snow, Mount Rainier National Park, WA, August 5, 2011

Ego is the Most Efficient Fuel for Enlightenment

 

Student: How do you step out of ego?

Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche: I suppose, you could say, by developing a friendly relationship with ego . . .

Student: Would you give an example of being friendly to your ego?

Trungpa Rinpoche: It is a kind of communication and understanding of the mechanism of ego and not trying to suppress it or condemn it, but using your ego as a stepping stone, as a ladder . . . In fact, the very idea of enlightenment exists because of ego – because there is a contrast.  Without ego there wouldn’t be the very notion of enlightenment at all . . .

Student: When I get rid of my ego, will that make a difference?

Trungpa Rinpoche: You don’t get rid of your ego at all.

Student: But if I don’t get rid of my ego I can’t be enlightened, is that right?

Trungpa Rinpoche: It’s not as simple as that.  Without ego you cannot attain enlightenment, so you have to make friends with ego . . . Generally, ego is not aware of itself.  But in this case you begin to be aware of ego as it is: you don’t try to destroy it, or to exorcise it, but you see it as a step.  Each crisis of ego is a step toward understanding, to the awake state.  In other words, there are two aspects: ego purely continuing on its own, as it would like to play its game; and ego being seen in its true nature, in which case the game of ego becomes ironical.  At the same time, you don’t try to reject it.  The game in itself becomes a step, a path.

Student: What do you do?  You want to get rid of your ego, but you don’t reject it.  I don’t understand.

Trungpa Rinpoche: You don’t want to get rid of ego.  That’s the whole point.  You don’t try to get rid of ego at all – but you don’t try to maintain ego either . . . In other words, the ego is the ideal fuel, the fuel that is exciting to burn.  Consuming the ego as fuel, that would make a nice fire.  If you want to make a good fire, one that is dry and puts out a lot of heat, and doesn’t leave a lot of cinders, from the point of view of non-ego, ego is the best fuel that could be found in the whole universe.  Discovering this delightful fuel, this highly efficient fuel, is based on looking into the mirror of your mind.  That is what watches the ego burning.

Photo: Sunrise at West Thumb Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park, WY, September 4, 2011

The Obstacle is the Path

"The obstacle is the path."

(Zen Proverb)

If the opening in the earth's surface within the geyser basin were wide and unencumbered, the hot water underneath would not have the force necessary to spurt up in a majestic plume.  It is only the resistance set up by the narrow cone that enables the beauty of the geyser to be created!

Photo: Old Faithful, Yellowstone National Park, WY, September 3, 2011