Aloha Sangha

ancient wisdom for crazy times

Tag: Jack Kornfield

  • don’t let the mind become a lonely hunter

    don’t let the mind become a lonely hunter

    You have all you need. The bounty is already laid out at your doorstep.

    The title here steals from Carson McCuller’s remarkable debut novel The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, published in 1940 when she was only 23.

    Our mind can easily turn into a lonely hunter when it thinks there is something to get or achieve in meditation.

    When we eat breakfast, can we just eat? Just taste the oatmeal or the cereal or the fruit?

    Can we relish the wisdom of our senses as they taste and smell toast and jam, and not give way to the push and pull of the mind?

    Yes, we have thoughts, we are not trying to become mindful robots.

    But can we be there for the forming of language? And equally there for the arising of thoughts of liking and disliking, catastrophizing and fantasizing?

    Let’s see.

    • 1. As you are making breakfast, you hear a ping sound and as you check out a notification on your phone you …
    • 2. notice the toast is burning.
    • 3. The thought arises: my morning is ruined.

    Can we simply hang there a second in the space that sees the thought “my morning is ruined?”

    As the late Thai meditation master Ajahn Chah remarked, if the house is flooded, can we just have a flooded house, and not also a flooded mind?

    Can we for just a brief second notice what the mind is up to? Can we name it?

    The Zen teacher and poet Norman Fischer observes, “naming a soup salty or spicy or vegetarian is different from experiencing it on the tongue, on the lips, drawing it from the spoon.”

    Our mindfulness practice exposes the conditioned guts of our own mind.

    Vanity Sounds the Horn and Ignorance Unleashes the Hounds Overconfidence, Rashness and Desire (from The Hunt of the Frail Stag)

    Vanity Sounds the Horn and Ignorance Unleashes the Hounds Overconfidence, Rashness and Desire (from The Hunt of the Frail Stag), 1525

    But there is nothing you need to go hunting for, it will all show up with just a little patience with the simple instructions of our mindfulness practice.

    All that is necessary is for us to show up

    … on our cushion, or in the moment as we notice what the mind is up to while paying a parking ticket or shopping for groceries.

    And as we show up again and again, our practice matures; we can see more of this conditioning arise and pass away. We let go more easily and naturally.

    We just show up to dance with our sense impressions.

    And what an exhilarating, mournfully jubilant and spontaneous dance!

    The dance of our life!

    Ajahn Chah described this practice as committing to “taking the one seat.”

    As his student Jack Kornfield describes it:

    Just go into the room and put one chair in the center. Take the seat in the center of the room, open the doors and the windows, and see who comes to visit. You will witness all kinds of scenes and actors, all kinds of temptations and stories, everything imaginable. Your only job is to stay in your seat. You will see it all arise and pass, and out of this, wisdom and understanding will come.

    It’s just this simple. Don’t make it complicated. And don’t let your mind talk itself into becomg a lonely hunter.

    You have all you need.

    The bounty is already laid out at your doorstep.

  • check the lining of your own mind

    check the lining of your own mind

    Just when I thought things couldn’t get more dreadful, they did.

    Yes, I know pandemics happen. Evolution hurts sometimes, I guess. Writing in the New York Times on September 23rd of this year, the epidemiologist and physician Dr. Amitha Kalaichandran observed

    Evolution can sometimes look like destruction to the untrained eye.

    We just passed 200,000 deaths here in the USA attributed to Covid-19. Yes, in our Civil War and in World War II, more of our citizens perished.

    But so many of these Covid deaths could have been prevented.

    Last week our liberal Supreme Court Justice and champion of women’s rights, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, passed on. Not an hour after this tragic loss, US Senate Republicans were scheming to get a conservative Justice confirmed to replace her before our presidential elections in November.

    And yesterday I learned another innocent Black life taken by police gunfire will go unpunished. Say her name.

    I don’t know if I can take any more. But I get up and go to work each night, like I always do.

    There is a story from early Mahayana Buddhism I sometimes remember when I feel numb inside, like I do now.

    A young person wished to go off and explore the world on an open ended journey. The night before the departure, a good friend, who came from a well-off family, sewed a valuable gem into the lining of a warm jacket chosen for the journey.

    Many years later, the traveler returned, looking haggard, not well, and wearing rags for clothes. The good friend asked how the journey had gone.

    “Terribly,” the friend replied. “I ran out of my supplies in a short time, and could not afford even one meal a day all this time.”

    “But you had that valuable jewel I had sewn into your jacket the night you left–you could have sold it for all the food you would need, and then some,” the good friend answered.

    BK 1980 66 scaled e1601651131759

    That’s the end of the story. Yeah, it’s not the best ending.

    But what uplifts me is recognizing we all have this valuable jewel sewn into the lining of our very existence, in the fabric of our being.

    You know I’m going to say it now, after this build-up, right?

    As you pay mindful attention to your everyday life, the priceless jewel sewn into the fabric of your own mind allows you to regulate your emotions and helps you ride the waves of their intensity.

    The late, great Indian yoga innovator and teacher, Swami Satchidanada once remarked that while we can’t stop the waves, we can learn to surf.

    The heart of our mindfulness practice is this–that although the waves of fear and grief triggered by this pandemic may not stop any time soon, our heart and mind can become so open and balanced, that we can hold the turning of the world in a quiet place of stillness.

    That we can relate to ourselves and others with kindness, warmth and compassion. Our mindfulness practice teaches us to hold our restlessness with a little kindness.

    And it this turning world starts to settle down on its own. Then you see you can do this. Whatever happens, you can be with it with kindness.

    Psychologists call this widening the window of tolerance. Dan Siegel calls this sailing on a river of well-being.

    When we are outside of our window of tolerance, our nervous system goes into survival mode – fight, flight or freeze. We get overwhelmed and go into freak-out mode, or go numb, as I have gone these past weeks.

    Also writing in the New York Times, this time back in the early pandemic time of April, 2020, the prominent mindfulness teacher and former Buddhist monk, Jack Kornfield wrote:

    The Japanese Zen poet Ryokan Taigu wrote: “Last year, a foolish monk. This year, no change.” We need to acknowledge our humanity. Your feelings are your organism trying to handle things.

    And we are trying as best we can manage under these extraordinary circumstances. Mindfulness can help. But we practice gently and progressively, one step at a time.

    As the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg reminded us about enduring social change, the alchemy of mindfulness similarly manifests its miracles slowly, patiently; she once said:

    Real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time.

    Perhaps we can well honor her legacy of wisdom by practicing the slow burn of kindness and patience in these troubling times. The jewel of mindfulness clearly illuminates this path.

    If the turbulence in your life obscures the path, check the lining of your own mind.

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