Mahamudra Dreaming

Hello friends,

This weekend we are receiving a review of the summer festival teachings on Mahamudra. Kadam Lucy just led us in a wonderful meditation on the emptiness of the self - naturally quotes from some of Mimi's earlier blog posts on emptiness are in order. Follow the links if you'd like to read the entire post (recommended).

She posted in 2012 about a teaching that Gen-la Dekyong had given at summer festival that year. Gen-la mentioned that she had mistaken a dead brown leaf blown by the wind for a little mouse scurrying across the yard. Mimi says about hearing this story, "I was thinking that I didn't have this kind of mistaken appearance very often, but then I soon found two examples: I saw a bowl with a curled-up banana skin as sliced lemons, and a small stick as a thin black slug like the one that I'd seen earlier that day. Because we have so much faith in what we see, recognizing these mistakes helps undercut that confidence and helps lead us to understanding subtle mistaken appearance, believing that the things we normally perceive truly exist."

Also from 2012: "Years ago at an offsite emptiness retreat on Vashon Island, my first Teacher described our involvement with objects we see as being like a dancer and their dance: There is no dance without the dancer. There is no object without a mind perceiving the object. "It takes two to tango," as the expression goes : ) "

Who knew Mimi was a poet?! In this post during election season 2012 entitled "Lies" she shares a bit of emptiness wisdom in poetry form, then ends the post by saying, "And you thought I was going to write about the election, didn't you? : ) "

Finally, from summer of last year, she shares this story in a dream she had: "In the dream, a bunch of Sangha friends came to my house and sang chanted prayers and recited the Heart Sutra. It was glorious. Obstacles were definitely removed, blessings definitely received. A person called Mel had apparently organized it all and played DJ. All the Buddhas were there, with the female wisdom Buddha Prajnaparamita in the starring role... Even though it was hot, everyone seemed to go away even happier than they arrived."

This last post especially touched my mind because, well, it's hot again :) and Buddha Prajnaparamita is still in the starring role :D. Mimi had a visit from Kadam Lucy yesterday, which I think was very meaningful to her. Kind, wonderful friends are spending time at the house this weekend so that Richard can attend the review teachings at the temple.  Health-wise, Mimi's still in the phase of gradual decline, no major changes. She's still fatigued, still has a pretty good appetite, a bit of occasional nausea when she overexerts herself. For those of you who have been looking forward to regular posts, I'm going to hold off posting further until there's a more significant change in Mimi's condition. So if you don't hear anything for a while, be assured that things are continuing along here as they have been for a while.

With love,
Boswell
rebecca-dot-lafond-at-gmail-dot-com

To Contentment and Beyond

Hello Friends of Mimi,

Boswell here.  All of your love and wishes are coming through and are deeply appreciated.  Mimi is still looking over her email occasionally so she has seen your kind messages.  In Mimi's own words from a post last April: "I deeply appreciate your prayers for me. You can see that they work. Makes it so easy to have faith."  As always, please feel free to add a comment to this blog post, send a reply message to Mimi, or email me at rebecca-dot-lafond-at-gmail.com.

Just wanted to give you an update on Mimi's current state of health.  As a background, here's a wrap-up of the last 7 years of Mimi's cancer adventure in one sentence: she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and underwent treatment; has had chemo on and off to address recurring abdominal tumors; had a metastasis to the brain a few years ago and was treated with surgery, radiation and chemo; and was most recently advised by her doctor that curative care is no longer an option.  And so she is now on hospice and preparing for a peaceful death.  The tumors in Mimi's abdomen are growing noticeably, and a recent brain scan indicates that she has cancerous lesions on the meninges of the brain, also known as leptomeningeal carcinomatosis, carcinomatous meningitis, and a host of other long-syllabled medical terms.  The brain cancer causes inflammation, so Mimi is once again taking a steroid called dexamethasone to keep the swelling down.  She's written about taking this medication in previous blog posts - it's the one that makes her really talkative, energetic and HUNGRY!  We can maybe consider these side effects to be a blessing as she has been receiving many visitors from near and far, and she has sufficient energy to engage in conversation.  She's also eating really well which is helping her to keep up her strength.  Many friends are bringing food to share during their visits - in fact, we're expecting Sally with dinner any minute now.  It's a gift for Mimi (and for us all) for her to be able to share these moments with friends and family.  The last few days have brought a poetry reading (Lynn Ann), an industrious cleaning of the master bedroom (Linda L), a tidying up of the garden (Linda S), and many kind and friendly ears to listen to Mimi's thoughts about the end of her life (Heather, Brian, Laurie, Eve, Kit, Noreen).  As the weekend approaches, her social calendar continues to be full and family arrives on Monday morning.

Anyway, to continue the "state of the union" regarding Mimi's current health situation, she's on a transdermal patch to control pain, two medications for nausea, and a variety of other meds to deal with the side effects of the main medications.  As we all know from our interactions with Mimi, she's an amazing example of practicing contentment in the face of adversity.  In a post from January of this year she wrote, "Thankfully I know my body is *not* "me," so I am still happy … and hope you are too."  It's an inspiration to witness how her positive habits of mind continue to sustain her happiness, even as she encounters these challenges.  May we all have such courage and strength!

The brain cancer, the many years of chemotherapy drugs, and the current medications are causing unavoidable cognitive decline.  About this phenomenon, she said in a post from June 2015 that, "my mind is good, my brain not so much."  She seems to lose a little bit of energy each day and yet she's a gracious hostess, always looking after the comfort of her guests.  I'll end this post with her expression of gratitude from a couple of years ago:
"Thank you, Buddha.
Thank you, Sangha.
Thank you to everyone who's been making prayers and offering good thoughts."

Imputation & Online IDs

I tend to think of self-generation as a Buddhist Deity as being a foreign experience, as something brand new that I need to learn from scratch. But if you're online, especially if you're playing a game such as a MMOPRG (Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) or you're in some kind of virtual reality, you're creating (generating) yourself. You're a different person (an avatar). You have a special name, with special characteristics (think of a superpower like flying), in a different body or shape, with different clothes (maybe even armor), with special implements, with special friends, all in a special world. That sounds just like generating yourself as Vajrayogini in her Pure Land, doesn't it? In other words, we already know how to do this.

Unlike when we're new to Tantra, in an online game we're not thinking, "I am pretending to be this character," because we're so immersed in that world. We don't tell ourselves, "I who am watching this character on my screen, am not really that character." We don't step back and analyze. We don't bother with questioning its existence, because we're fully into it. We've chosen to be there. We want to be there. When we're immersed, we're fully inside that life - we've left our ordinary world completely behind. If we could, we'd stay there for a very long time. There's a reason it's sometimes called an "escape."

Unlike our varying imputations as daughter, aunt, student, editor, and so on, we deliberately, consciously choose our various online identities. Sometimes even our user names have a special and/or secret quality to us, reflecting a particular aspect of ourselves.

I won't even mention the anonymity that allows us to show our worst qualities, to vent anger and hate.

There's also the underlying almost-emptiness of it all. Anything "virtual," meaning  computer-generated, is made of  1's and 0's - a pretty flimsy basis for so much of our current experience. If you think about it, obviously computer software comes from someone's mind. The program wasn't there until someone dreamed it up. When we're working on a computer device (smartphone, tablet, etc.), we're not investigating where those appearances on-screen are coming from, what they're made of, how they came into being. We just go with it all because it functions.

Even if you consider yourself a technophobe (which of course is a kind of identity / imputation), and you don't spend much time online or even avoid it entirely, if you've ever been absorbed in a book or a movie, you know this experience. For example, when we're reading, we're not conscious of "I am holding a book, a collection of pages with markings" - or what a Microsoft researcher used to call "sooty marks on dead trees." You're most likely identifying with the hero/heroine or anti-hero at the center of the story.

So let's stop pretending we don't get it, and get on with it.

I Had the Best Dream

In the dream, a bunch of Sangha friends came to my house and sang chanted prayers and recited the Heart Sutra. It was glorious. Obstacles were definitely removed, blessings definitely received.
A person called Mel had apparently organized it all and played DJ.
All the Buddhas were there, with the female wisdom Buddha Prajnaparamita in the starring role.
It was powerful, like sweeping with a broom rather than just a single broomstick.
Even though it was hot, everyone seemed to go away even happier than they arrived.

A normal person would say that really happened.

This Is Not a ...

When I was at US Festival this year, I woke up thinking about that Magritte painting known as "This Is Not a Pipe" in English, which includes its caption as part of the picture. When it is pointed out, we think, "Of course, it's not a pipe - it's a painting of a pipe."
Most Magritte works I know of play with appearances.

But that image does remind me of the assumptions I make.

Do we have that recognition of the ultimate nature of the things we see or perceive?
I decided to take that painting as a teaching on emptiness, trying to recognize every form I saw as a hallucination: This is not a pipe, it is an illusion of a pipe; this is not a park, it's a hallucination of a park, etc. I find that a new and fun way to remind myself of emptiness as I go through my day.

This weekend, at the Northwest Dharma Celebration with Gen Rigpa, he used the Ballard neighborhood in Seattle, where KMC Washington is, as an example of emptiness, by asking, "Where is Ballard?" Which worked really well for me, in part because people have different ideas of its size: for example is the Sunset Hill area a sub-neighborhood of Ballard or a stand-alone neighborhood?
Also, driving around Ballard, you'll see cars with a "Free Ballard" bumper-sticker, because Ballard used to be its own town, before being annexed by Seattle. Ballard's character has also changed a lot from those days. When I arrived in Seattle 20+ years ago, Ballard was known as a place of Scandinavians and seniors. They don't recognize it anymore: That's not the Ballard I know. Now it's getting tall buildings with expensive rents. With all the construction, it's become prohibitively expensive for many current and would-be residents.
Where does Ballard end and Fremont to the SE begin? I remember when we were looking to buy a house, and the fuzzy area in between those two had nicknames like Fre-lard.
Rigpa also noted that some people would point to a place on a map, but he said, "That's not Ballard - it's a map of Ballard!"

View in a Frame

I'm sitting in a chair in my living room gazing at the view through 3 windows. Often I offer the beauty of that scene to the Buddhas, but today I am focusing on how things exist, contemplating how "the things I normally see or perceive do not exist." They do exist, but not the way they seem to (as solid entities that have nothing to do with me) but ultimately as appearances, like dreams. Having trim around each window makes a kind of frame to the picture of blue skies, treetops, birds, roofs and chimneys.

When I walk my dog, I sometimes try to feel as though I'm walking in my mind - that it extends beyond my head or my body, so that I can consider how my mind is related to what I see. In some ways, walking outside in the neighborhood has the same appearances - I see a lot of the same stuff - as what I see sitting in my living room. But when I'm inside, looking through the "picture frame" view, it reminds me that it's like art, created by someone - that is, me.

P.S. I am not qualified to teach on this profound subject, the true nature of things, or emptiness. In fact, this whole blog is largely about my experiences of trying to understand various Buddhist teachings, not to be taken as teachings.
If you want an excellent, correct explanation of emptiness, there's a FREE ebook called Modern Buddhism that you can download from
http://emodernbuddhism.com/
to your computer, as a PDF, or in a format for Apple iOS, iPod, Kindle, Nook, etc. (scroll down to see all the options and instructions on how to use them).
The book covers all of Buddha's teachings, presented for us living in contemporary society; for emptiness read the section called "Training in Ultimate Bodhichitta."

Lies

It's all lies - everything and everyone we see is a lie.
They will all say they exist. They will insist.
They will claim they are solid, real things and beings.
It is not true. Do not believe them.

They are tall tales, all of them - whoppers of immense proportions.
Do not be taken in.

They are all false. Mistaken. Wrong.
Distortions. Dishonesty after dishonesty. Deceptions and deceit.
Fabrications, all of it.
Do not fall for it.

Sometimes, for fun, I think of the Who lyric, "Won't get fooled again." And then am immediately fooled again, taken in by appearances.

Of course, we want insight into the true nature of reality, but we really don't like being duped.

And you thought I was going to write about the election, didn't you? : )

Prayers for a Leaf

While teaching about emptiness this Summer Festival, Gen-la Dekyong was describing gross mistaken appearance, where we mistake one object for another common object, such as seeing a hose as a snake. She was encouraging us to notice our own examples by describing how she had taken a dead brown leaf blown by the wind for a little mouse scurrying across the yard. Laughing at herself, Gen-la said she was "daft" for nearly making prayers for an inanimate object!
I was thinking that I didn't have this kind of mistaken appearance very often, but then I soon found two examples: I saw a bowl with a curled-up banana skin as sliced lemons, and a small stick as a thin black slug like the one that I'd seen earlier that day.
Because we have so much faith in what we see, recognizing these mistakes helps undercut that confidence and helps lead us to understanding subtle mistaken appearance, believing that the things we normally perceive truly exist.

Dis-integration

This morning while lying in bed, I was contemplating dissolving my body into emptiness by considering how what I think of as a single unit is actually made up of various parts ... and each of those parts is itself made up of parts, and so on, following the classic Buddhist pointing-out instructions on trying to find our real body. Instead of the word "dissolve," however, what came to me was "disintegrate." I hadn't noticed before how that word is built - "dis-integrate" - because that's not the way it's pronounced, and I usually think of disintegration as a general decay or fading away.
I found it helpful to see the word broken up into its parts(!) that way because it shows me that the word means to take something integrated and separate it into parts, just as I was doing.

Of course, what integrates my body is my mind: My body is simply an idea, a word, a label I assign to a grouping of physical components.
When I'm on autopilot - that is, almost all the time - I think of my body in terms of integration: My mind unites all my body parts into a whole. I think of my body as a discrete unit, not as a bunch of components unified by a concept, a mental act of thinking "my body."
My body seems to be the fundamental unit, and it often seems as though there's no other way to conceive of it.

But there are other ways of viewing the body. For example, in addition (subtraction, really) to breaking our body down into pieces, we can build up groups of bodies into larger units: into teams or crowds, for example. Or families. Americans are often described as individualistic, whereas some other societies are said to be family-oriented, that the basic unit is the family, not the person. Can you imagine really thinking that way?
As Geshe-la says in Eight Steps to Happiness, in the section on the kindness of others:

Without others, we are nothing. Our sense that we are an island, an independent, self-sufficient individual, bears no relation to reality. It is closer to the truth to picture ourself as a cell in the vast body of life, distinct yet intimately bound up with all living beings.

Just as we can mentally disassemble our body into parts, we can use the body itself as a part, to mentally assemble the larger body of humanity, for example.

Dancer and the Dance

Years ago at an offsite emptiness retreat on Vashon Island, my first Teacher described our involvement with the objects we see as being like a dancer and their dance: There is no dance without the dancer. There is no object without a mind perceiving the object. "It takes two to tango," as the expression goes : )
You could riff on other variations of this idea:
* No music without the musician
* No magic without the magician
* No love without the lover ... it's a (co)dependent relationship : )

My Body as a Phantom Limb

In previous posts I've mentioned phantom limbs as a concept that helps me understand the emptiness of the body: People who have lost a limb can still experience pain where it used to be. It shows the role of the mind in perceiving a body even though it - and everything else - is essentially in the mind.

At the Western Canada Dharma Celebration in January, Gen-la Dekyong mentioned that our body seems to extend a bit beyond the borders of our skin. It's true - we conceive an area of personal space around our body and can sense it when someone enters that zone. I think of it as being akin to the territorial waters around a country, which it defends along with the land within its borders. Interesting, too, that how far our personal space extends is largely culturally determined - mind again!

Did you know there's a phenomenon that's the opposite of a phantom limb, where you deny having a part of your body that's still intact? A friend has a daughter with a brain injury; when she looks at her arm she says, "That's not my arm."

Today when I was meditating on the emptiness of my body, I was imagining the whole thing as a kind of phantom body. The body I was perceiving was no more real than an amputated arm. I think it also helped with the idea of an absence, to keep me from seeing emptiness as nothingness.