A Spirituality of "the Selfie"

The phenomenon of the "Selfie" challenges the traditional notion of a humble, unselfconscious spirituality like almost no other element invented by modern technology. What are we to make of this, and how might it contribute rather than hinder the spiritual journey?

One of my wise thirty-something daughters told me the other day that she sees the Selfie as a major way the members of her generation seek to discover who they are. Out of touch with any deeper, more stable identity, they use closeup cell phone self-portraits to offer a window into their own selfhood. Those Selfies taken in a mirror seem especially to justify this kind of interpretation. You can almost see the exploratory "Who am I?" expression on the person's face in the midst of taking the shot. However, I don't think this interpretation is the end of the matter. For I believe there is also a real and genuine spirituality lying behind the phenomenon of the Selfie.

Growing up near Amish country in Pennsylvania, I accepted as gospel truth the idea that one should avoid giving too much self-conscious attention to one's public persona or image. The Quakers on my mother's side of the family supported this move toward humble self-forgetting, as did the Christian contemplatives with whom I studied for over thirty years. However, since I've gotten on Instagram, I've been introduced to a huge culture of Selfies, including photos in the outdoors taken with the help of "Selfie Sticks," and lovely models who aim the phone video camera at themselves, taking a movie from every possible seductive angle. In fact, I've gotten to where I look forward to Instagram outdoor pictures with people in them, especially since there are so many health-conscious, beautiful people recreating in the Great Outdoors these days.
As you might expect, I like to employ myth in trying to understand the spirituality of what traditionally would have been regarded as evidence of narcissism. Tibetan Buddhist Rinpoche Chogyam Trungpa once used the playful image of "Empty Space putting on makeup" to talk about how spacious awareness "dresses up" as the individual egoic self and as all worldly phenomena. Poet Anne Waldman, one of Trungpa's students, actually wrote a whole poem employing this image, called "Makeup on Empty Space."  Here, "empty space" refers not to a mere nothing but to the spiritual reality of spacious awareness, "Dharmakaya," which is also filled with creative potential.

In any case, I like to imagine our Beloved Source emptied out in blissful, ecstatic love into the spaciousness of our awareness, and then playing a long, long game in which He or She masquerades as the constricted reality of both yours and my ego - acting "cocky," self-important, even arrogant - but always with a sense of playfulness and a "this-is-not-really-who-I-am" attitude underlying the entire game. Here each of us might embody a certain sexy, self-important, aloof, self-occupied attitude, yet KNOW we are putting on an act and playing a lifelong game! And that precisely is what a Selfie is: the divine self PLAYING at being self-preoccupied and self-important, temporarily forgetting that all of this posturing is actually a game, yet periodically waking up to the vastness of the True Self with a pleasant sense of shock and surprise :)

Photo: Sunrise on Sprague Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, September 19, 2015

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It is the boundary BETWEEN ignorance and enlightenment that we seek.

The sunsets in canyon country are absolutely spectacular! I find it amazing to realize that the most beautiful times of day - sunrise and sunset - are those periods that exist on the boundary BETWEEN light and dark. This phenomenon illustrates superbly the fact that it is not so much "enlightenment" all by itself that we seek, but the experience of transition BETWEEN ignorance and enlightenment. Indeed, it is precisely the movement from enlightenment back into seeming ignorance that allows the former to reveal itself yet again in a fresh and new way.

Putting this awareness into a Buddhist context, Chogyam Trungpa says: "There is this whole idea of using samsaric situations as stepping stones to enlightenment. It's the idea that if there is no samsara, there is no enlightenment. The two are interdependent . . . According to the tantric teachings, realization takes place in the moment when the boundary BETWEEN the two occurs."

Photos: Sunset, with the La Sal Mountains, a butte, and a Pinyon Pine on the horizon; Canyonlands National Park, UT, November 28, 2014. "Samsara" in a Buddhist context refers to the indefinitely repeated cycles of birth, misery and death caused by ignorance.

Transforming Our Experiences of Blame and Praise

In the previous post, I mentioned having a week in which I experienced instances of both blame and praise regarding myself and my work. There, I mentioned the fact that time spent in Nature helps facilitate the dissolving of these two seeming opposites into a vast spaciousness and seamless flow of Love.
However, I've discovered that there are other lessons to be learned as well from experiences of both blame and praise.

Whenever we experience blame, we have an opportunity both to learn from our mistakes (and take responsibility for them), AND to practice realizing that there actually exists NO separate self to shoulder the blame. Here, I find advice from the Dalai Lama incredibly helpful. "Guilt," he explains, "does not exist in Buddhist terminology. With the Buddha nature all negative things can be purified. Guilt is incompatible with our thinking as you are part of an action but not fully responsible for it. You are just part of the contributing factor." In other words, our mistake is part of a whole mosaic of mishaps, many of which have nothing to do with us. Here, we take responsibility for our part, and then let it lead us into the larger network of contributing causes to which it is connected. 

We can also use our experience of blame to practice compassion for others, especially when we realize that we are participating in the sense of self-hatred that is experienced by every other person on this Earth. When we work to heal our own instances of self-castigation, we are simultaneously helping heal a similar experience IN EVERYONE ELSE. From a theistic perspective, we are also given an opportunity to practice the maxim which states: "God writes straight with CROOKED lines." In other words, we begin to transform our mistake by looking for the amazing good that can come from it.

Similarly, with praise, we are invited to go deeper. Rather than getting hooked on the compliments we receive from others, we are invited instead to see them as a mere window or mirror through to a deeper sense of goodness that is much vaster than our own individual self. Here, I appreciate the term that Tibetan Rinpoche Chogyam Trungpa and his son Sakyong Mipham use: "basic goodness." They never refer to it as OUR basic goodness, as though it is a quality we can possess within our own individual self. Rather, it is a larger Reality - which they call "Buddha-Nature," or which a Christian might call "the Christ-self" - in which everything on Earth participates.
 

In this way, we can use both blame and praise to deepen our spiritual awareness and connect us to all other beings inhabiting this Earth.

Photos: (Top) A golden Cottonwood tree points us to the vast landscape beyond, with Greyrock looming on the horizon, Larimer County, CO, October 23, 2014; (Middle) A mosaic of ice patterns covers Lewis Lake, Snowy Range, WY, October 31, 2014;  (Bottom) Golden Cottonwoods are mirrored in Watson Lake, Bellvue, CO, October 28, 2014

All things arise - unborn - out of spacious awareness and decompose back into it, only to arise yet again!

Yesterday, I visited the Great Stupa of Dharmakaya at the Shambhala Mountain Center near Red Feather Lakes, Colorado - about an hour from my home.  I wanted to go when the aspen trees were gold - and on an overcast day - to minimize the contrast that so often occurs between the bright white of the Stupa and the relative darkness of the surrounding landscape.  Shortly after I began photographing, a huge thunderstorm moved in!  But first, I was able to take these photos! 

I was intrigued to find some elk bones - a skull, several jaw bones and some vertebrae - lying in the grass right next to the Stupa on a bed of fallen aspen leaves.  I also found a large fallen tree decomposing into beautiful reddish-colored mulch!

To me, these images of elk bones, fallen aspen leaves and decomposing mulch were the perfect embodiment of the Buddhist realization into impermanence.  More specifically, they spoke powerfully to me of the fact that all physical phenomena (nirmanakaya) and energetic phenomena (sambhoghakaya) arise - magically, almost, and "unborn" - out of the sky-like expanse of dharmakaya, the fundamental "ground" of reality that we identify with during meditation practice.   Together, these realms constitute the Trikaya, the Three Bodies of the Buddha. Liberation occurs when we learn to identify ourselves more with the Dharmakaya than with the realms of impermanence that occur with the sambhogakaya and nirmanakaya. Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, whose cremated ashes are housed within this Stupa, has this to say:

“Dharmakaya is like the sun, sambhogakaya is like the rays, and nirmanakaya is like the rays hitting the objects on the earth. Nirmanakaya is the physical situation, and sambhogakaya and dharmakaya are the level of mind . . . At the dharmakaya level, we are looking into enormous space. That particular enormous space—that inconceivable, enormous space—is the basis of the original unbornness . . . "

Trungpa describes the sense of humor or play that arises in us when we realize - surprise! - that all of phenomenal reality arises seemingly out of nowhere - out of "dharmakaya."  Here, meditation practice contains an element of intrigue and play when we watch, spellbound, as all thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations arise magically out of the sky-like expanse of awareness, and then disappear back into it, only to arise yet again in the very next instant.  The whole process is, we might say, like unspoken echoes arising out of nowhere!

In the Christian mystical tradition, this is expressed as the process by which all of reality arises out of the boundless inner abyss of divine LOVE, and then disappears back into it, only to arise yet again during each millisecond of time.  The fourteenth-century German mystic Meister Eckhart puts it this way: "It is an amazing thing that something flows forth, and nonetheless remains within . . . All creatures flow outward and nonetheless remain within - that is extremely amazing!"

During interreligious dialogues, many have commented as well on the correspondence between the Trikaya and the Holy Trinity.  In the Christian contemplative tradition, we have The Great Silence (the "Father"), the Word (the "Son"), and the joy arising from the other Two (the "Holy Spirit," which Thomas Aquinas calls the "Sigh" of the Godhead.) But because the Word (the Son) appears in the world yet never actually leaves the Great Silence of the Father, Eckhart sometimes implies - intriguingly - that we might more accurately call It an "Echo" of an unspoken word.  "The Father speaks the Word unspoken," he exclaims. Accordingly, Eckhart refers to this process as a sort of "sport" or "play."

As others have pointed out, the Trikaya and Holy Trinity also correspond to the satchitananda of the Hindu tradition.  Here, sat ("Being") is the Source out of which chit (Being's "Self-consciousness") and ananda (the "Bliss" that arises from this self-awareness) arise.  This is again similar to some strands of Christian mysticism (e.g. St. Augustine) where the second Person of the Trinity is a kind of "mirror" in which the Source views [him]self.  Here, the Spirit is then the joy (the ananda) arising from this self-reflection.

In any case, interpreting the seeming worlds of birth and death as a cosmic sort of "Play" in all three traditions is really quite amazing!

Photos: Elk bones, a decomposing log, and prayer flags flying in an aspen grove; The Great Stupa of Dharmakaya, Shambhala Mountain Center, Red Feather, CO; September 29, 2014

Ego is the best fuel for enlightenment!

 

 
"The ego is the ideal fuel that is exciting to burn, the best fuel that could be found in the whole universe, . . . the only fuel for wisdom . . . 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. You don't get rid of your ego at all. Without ego you cannot attain enlightenment, so you have to make friends with ego. 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."

Chogyam Trungpa,
Tibetan rinpoche

Photo: A Pasqueflower glows next to a burnt, sap-exuding Ponderosa pine trunk; Hewlett Burn, Roosevelt National Forest, CO; April 3, 2014

The burning of ego is the fuel for insight and enlightenment.

"The ego is the ideal fuel, the fuel that is exciting to burn . . . the best fuel that could be found in the whole universe . . . , the only fuel for wisdom . . . In fact, the very idea of enlightenment exists because of ego . . . Without [the burning of] ego, there wouldn't be the very notion of enlightenment at all."

Chogyam Trungpa,
Tibetan Buddhist rinpoche

Photo: Nodding Sunflower blooming in the Hewlett - High Park Burn; Poudre Canyon, CO; October 12, 2012

Out of the experience of shunyata spaciousness comes the experience of mahamudra, where the things that emerge from shunyata are amazingly vivid.

"Mahamudra is a way of bringing together the notion of the immense emptiness of space, shunyata, and manifestation within shunyata . . . From the shunyata experience of emptiness, we are led to mahamudra . . . Having had all illusions removed by the experience of shunyata, there is a sense of extraordinary clarity.  That clarity is called mahamudra. . . .So the mahamudra experience is vividness . . . The eternally youthful quality of the mahamudra experience is one of its outstanding qualities.  It is eternally youthful because there is no sense of repetition, no sense of wearing out of interest because of familiarity.  Every experience is a new, fresh experience.  So it is childlike, innocent and childlike . . . The energies around you - textures, colors, different states of mind, relationships - are very vivid and precise . . . Shunyata fullness [the experience of the spaciousness of awareness out of which all things emerge] is rather gray and transparent and dull, like London fog.  But the mahamudra experience of fullness is of little particles dancing with each other within the fullness [of spaciousness]  It's like a sky full of stars and shooting stars and all the rest - so many activities are taking place."

Chogyam Trungpa, Tibetan Buddhist Rinpoche

Photo: Parry Primrose blooms at Thunder Lake, Wild Basin, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO; June 25, 2012

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