Wide Open Heart Failures

Welcome to Miriam's Now-Monthly Missive on the Shambhala Situation,

I am writing to you again (Letter #1 is here and #2 is here) because regularity and requests have helped me assemble my thoughts and share them. As I find is often the case with practice,  structure helps create a container to show up in. Without structure, I would be overcome by doubt, or give in to the idea that I will just do it "eventually." Instead, I know folks are waiting to hear from me, and get a sense of what I am experiencing, what my questions are, and what resources I have to share.

I offer none of these letters as answers, instead, as a showing of my path of exploration, with hopefully some angles you haven't yet considered, and information you haven't yet tracked. There are a lot of things to track, and endless ways to think and feel about what is going on.

So please, listen to yourself first. May my sharing help you share - both with yourself and with others.

This edition consists of three parts. 

The first part is excerpts from readings I've done this summer from books and information sources I had read before, but now with a new context. The three books are Eyes Wide Open by Mariana Caplan, The Great Failure by Natalie Goldberg, and A Path With Heart by Jack Kornfield.

I discovered Caplan's book through another Miksang teacher around ten years ago and was blown away by how she described relationship to practice. Her insights now about relating to teachers have taken on a whole new level with what has happened this summer in Shambhala.

Goldberg's book is her memoir about coming to terms with the imperfections of both her birth father and her dharma master, Katagiri Roshi, around sexual inappropriateness/misconduct. I read this also when it came out, and had a feeling of relief that Sakyong Mipham wouldn't do anything of the things described in the book that Katagiri Roshi did. More on that when we get to it....

Kornfield's title is one I have read portions of for Karuna Training, but someone on Facebook pointed it out it has an entire chapter on troubled relationships with teachers.

The second part is more personal reflections on leadership, holding space, and more.

The third part is similar to what I have shared at the end of each of these missives - further resources for reading, digesting, contemplating.

Please enjoy. Take breaks. Think and feel for yourself. I thank you for reading and for asking me to write about this. I take that assignment deeply inside and share back out what I find. Please feel free to share in comments - respectfully, thoughtfully, and with some space around what you have to say.

Love,
Miriam

Critical Devotion: A Second Letter from Miriam on Shambhala

Dear reader,

I have wondered if there was another letter in me. The first letter, and the following piece came out like a birth and afterbirth - I wrote them quickly, while still in the full pain feeling strength of the beginning of the situation. Since then, I have noticed my feelings dulling a bit, not because the situation has gotten less intense, but because my need to feel so deeply has modulated itself. Not to mention the fact that more complex emotions and thoughts are layering on top of each other now.

But then a student told me how helpful the first letter was - in fact, she and other remote Shambhalians (those without centers near them) had used it as basis for a conversation about what is happening, and others wrote their own letters after reading mine. I realized I do have some things to say, but mostly I have confusion to report.

Why should I report confusion? Because if I do it clearly, others will possibly see their own confusion mixed in mine. And, even more likely, others - or even I - will see the wisdom mixed in the confusion, because that is how wisdom and confusion roll. So here is a mix of experience, emotion, and thought, offered to you in order to help you find some resonance and consolation, clarity, and direction. Please take what you can and leave what you can't; it's not offered as debate, really, more as a sense of what a leader/teacher in Shambhala is thinking and feeling about all of this.

In a conversation with a meditation student this morning, she offered that this situation is like a muddy river - which is an analogy we use a lot in meditation instruction in Shambhala. Our minds often seem more like muddy rivers, but when we sit, the true nature of the water begins to reveal itself: clear, so long as we let the mud not disappear but settle into place. This situation won't settle for awhile - we are going to be in a muddy river a long time it seems, but that doesn't mean we can't work with our minds. In some ways, that's the main thing we can do now.

If you haven't read the first letter, please do. Respect the time and effort I put into writing these and see the context. May they all be of benefit.

1. War Zone/Apocalypse
A couple of weeks ago, a senior teacher told me I am now living in a sort of war zone. I blinked. What on earth could he mean? He explained how it was for him, when he lived through CTR's death and also the awful incidents around the death of VROT. The situation was constantly changing, with very little predictability. Important people would suddenly drop power or be put out of power, and news hit like bombs, blowing apart communities. Infighting, confusion, mass chaos. Ergo, war zone.

A few days later, without my repeating that line, an Acharya I was speaking to repeated the same thing. Clearly there was some resonance here, as these two teachers don't even know each other.

A Letter from Miriam on the Current Shambhala Situation

A drawing I made this week when I couldn't write about this yet.

I am writing today as a teacher, Vajrayana sangha member/student, and lineage holder in the Shambhala Buddhist tradition. Most of my life is deeply entwined in Shambhala; all I teach has at least some if not a lot of contact with Shambhala. Today is the end of a very long and hard week for those of us in Shambhala, and I want to write to you about some of my story this week with my feelings (first) then thoughts (second) and resources (last).

Some of these things have appeared elsewhere – in Facebook conversations, in personal exchanges with others – some of these are new. I wanted to compile them all together for myself, for my fellow sangha members who are suffering, and for those confounded by the news and outside the circumstance all together. Everything I say here is in my own words and my own experience, however, I don’t exist in a bubble and I have been greatly inspired, and supported by many folks this week, especially my Shambhala Office of Social Engagement peeps this week.

I will insert a trigger warning here, because there is mention of sexual abuse and clergy sexual misconduct. I myself am a sexual abuse survivor, though I have never experienced abuse in this lineage. Please read with care – lots of self-care and also care for me and for other survivors who tell their stories. 

Turning Forty

Birthday wish list from a student for me on my fortieth birthday.

Tomorrow, I turn forty. I have looked forward to this day for awhile, actually. something feels clarifying, balancing to me about turning forty. For a long time, I have felt like "an old soul" in a young body. Early loss as well as early gains (like becoming a dharma teacher at 26!) have made my life seem a bit more advanced than those around me, even if I am no wiser or more advanced a person than my peers. Not fundamentally. But somehow I feel my age has caught up a bit to where I am, as I humble and realize how much there still is to learn, while also appreciating all the felt understanding my complex life so far has helped me access earlier.

The above photo is a student's gift to me. I used the last week of classes in a series to ask my students - all but 2 out of 28 are past forty, most of them well past forty - to write about turning forty. I heard many wonderful stories, and learned many wonderful things, all of which resonated with what I already anticipate or have been experiencing approaching forty.

The overall feeling was a combination of "giving less of a shit what others think" while also "feeling more compassion for self and others." This is a great combination, and one I am happy to take with me.

My nephew (4 months old) and myself this week.

I got a few personal addresses, too, folks directly wishing me lots of love. And one of my students then took care of our cats while we were out of town, and left me the above list. I treasure it. It reminds me of what I already know and all there is still to know. By "know" I mean crossing the gap between intellectually knowing - there's a lot I intellectually know, especially about emotional/psychological/mind things - and felt sense knowing, or knowing in my body, instinctively.

So long as I reach first for neurotic habits and what classic Buddhism calls "unvirtuous" actions (nothing to do with Christian virtue - simply an expression recognizing what causes benefit and what doesn't - non virtuous doesn't cause benefit), there's more to develop. Most of us are there - in the awkward place where we "know" but don't yet have integrated all the knowledge. I think of this as the gap between knowing and wisdom. Many people have told me I have a lot of wisdom for my age - I've been told that a long time - however, I really simply have a lot of knowledge. Wisdom is slower coming, really. It takes a long time to learn in a way that stays in the body, helps the body reveal its own wisdom.

Or maybe it doesn't. Being with my four-month-old nephew, my wife, Ilana, joked that perhaps babies actually know it all until age one, when they conveniently forget it all. Certainly Elyas seemed completely wise, in a deep, felt sense way - perhaps because he is actually pre-intellect?

Regardless, something is syncing up between my age, what I "know," and what I have some wisdom about. Feels about time. For a long time I've felt older inside than I appear outside, and now, I can see myself aging, bit by bit, outside as well. As folks in their 20's begin to look at my skeptically, I feel some loss, but mostly gain. Finally. I am a bit synchronized.

I will leave you with a passage from Sakyong Mipham that I have been contemplating lately. On surface level it seems cheeky and funny, but it feels quite profound to me. What is young? What is old? These are easy questions to quip answers to, but actually, they are unanswerable (which, you will see from my previous post, are my favorite kind of questions lately).

I RECENTLY REACHED AGE FORTY, a turning point in most people’s lives. Before that birthday, people would routinely describe me as a “young lama” or a “young teacher.” They were always exclaiming, “You’re so young!” But when I turned forty, something surprising happened. They started saying, “Oh, you’re getting old.” One day I was young, and the next day I was old. One day I had all the time in the world, and the next, time was running out. I thought, “What happened to the in-between period when I could just be an ordinary adult?”-from Ruling Your World

Shame

Yup. There's no mincing around it. 
This is what has been coming up lately, in my life, in my wife's life, in my students' lives. 
Shame.

When I don't get done what I set out to do (PS I had unrealistic expectations)...
When I make a mistake - or even moreso, a series of mistakes - while teaching or in public...
When I choose to sleep in instead of meditating...
When I procrastinate...
When I feel sexually aroused in a situation I suspect I shouldn't feel that way in...

I feel ashamed.
Shame.
A heavy brick in my belly.
A punch to the gut.
Not a voice, not an inner critic, nothing that conscious or obvious or literal.
I don't THINK it, I FEEL it. In my locked up hips, my tightened legs, my triggered wrists.

More and more I am convinced that this is what Writer's Block, what creative resistance, what perfectionism, what procrastination ALL ARE - shame. Which is the cause and which the effect? Shame is like the fuel that powers the freezer that keeps us locked in one place. Not exercising, not writing, not exploring, not asking - all because some part of us, deep inside, believes we are unworthy. Anytime we make any kind of perceived error, it goes right into the evidence bin - not only have we done wrong, we are wrong.

For a long time, I have contended that Brene Brown's teachings on vulnerability and shame (click here to watch her stunning TED talk) are a perfect compliment to Shambhala's teachings on Basic Goodness (an article here demonstrating how the two are linked). Shame is our biggest block, our most underground and dug-in belief that we are not good. If we believe this, we can't believe we are basically, fundamentally good. We can't believe in bodhicitta, that we are all born awake and with full potential.

Shame is endless in its layers. Luckily my faith is also endless in its depths. Every time I find a new layer - this last week it was seeing that during a live online class I felt ashamed of myself because of technical errors beyond my control! - I react, I work with my body responses (through TRE or breathing) and then I slowly unpack all that was going on there. It can take months or just a moment. Over time, it gets easier to see, and easier to let go of the belief in shame, let go into the belief of my own - and others' - basic goodness.

What do you do when you encounter shame? How do you know it in your body? Do you know it? Does it have a voice? A story? Or is it more undercurrent? What is your relationship to shame and vulnerability?

And if I catch you using these questions, or my exploration, to compare yourself to, and shame yourself with, I'll come right over there and hug you and hold you while you cry. 

That is your punishment. I will mete it out mercilessly.

As Sakyong Mipham likes to say: "Be careful, or I am going to get gentle with you!"

Spontaneity, Serendipity, Accuracy and Curation

Quest 2015 Prompt from Jason Silva*
In what ways might you artfully curate your life in 2015 to occasion serendipity, creativity and awe?
Ontological designing says: We design our world and the world designs us back.
What are the linguistic and creative choices you can make in 2015 that will in turn act back upon you and transform you?

Lately, Ilana and I have been speaking to "curating" our lives: directing what we want to happen and making it happen. For instance, for me, a day off is a bit risky - so easy to consume lots of social media, even overwork, only to get to the end of the day and not have done the things I want to do and actually need to do: meditate, practice, write, exercise.

So how can I curate my life, my days off, like an exhibit - seeing on the wall what I want there - without overplanning it/overstructuring it so the exhibit feels like one of the walls at an early Paris museum?

So this question - curating to occasion serendipity, creativity and awe - takes me back to a core principle - a few of them - in Shambhala Buddhism.

1. The relationship between spontaneity and accuracy: Trungpa Rinpoche speaks to the necessity to allow for spontaneity in order to find accuracy. We so often emphasize planning/accuracy over spontaneity. But the natural order is in fact to arrive at spontanenity first, then allow accuracy to arise from that. In other words: if we are truly present, what is needed will arise.**

2. Serendipity - or magic - arises out of every situation. It is always there. Always. The question is: are we practicing - eg curating - our lives enough to recognize it? Sakyong Mipham often speaks to the fact that we already know how to meditate and contemplate - we just usually use these practices to focus on getting what we want or eliminating pain or ignoring what we don't want to see. If we use these practices - this power of mind that already exists - to see what is actually here, then we find we have all we need.**

3. Therefore, if I curate my life to allow for spontaneity, I will find the serendipity that is always there. Now the question: how do I curate for this? The answer might seem contradictory, but here Trungpa Rinpoche speaks to "intelligent spontaneity" and the role of discipline. I find the "answer" - mind you, not simple and not one-time, is practice. Doing the very things I avoid if I don't schedule them - same list - writing, exercise, meditation, practice - these are the things I have to structure (aka discipline) in order to allow for the space needed for serendipity.

As always, the questions I constantly, gently ask myself are:
Am I using this for compassion or to beat myself up?
Am I using this because it helps me feel better and be better or not?
Is this what is needed now?

I try to stay in touch with how it feels when I don't do what I want - see list above - and when I do,
that is the best motivation for me. What I do find, when I do practice, when I do curate: spontaneity arises around those structures and out of those spaces, serendipity knows where to find me.

*Quest 2015 is a "do it together" 2015 planning group happening with Jeffrey Davis. Here's a link to the video about this December 2014 curating-serendipity-group!
 
**I find it very, very important to state that none of these teachings are "prosperity principle" or abundance related in a financial way. I struggle with money, as so many do, and the idea here is NOT to blame ourselves if we don't have enough to eat, enough shelter, enough health or money. The main understanding is that of the daily suffering so many people experience, so much of it is mental state-based. If we can adjust our mental state, we can access clearer mental states and lower our amount of mental suffering. For most of us, that means that other forms of suffering will decrease, too. But it takes work and doesn't happen automatically. It is up to us - and up to the systems of oppression around us to get with what is happening, too.

Dream/Reality

Last night, before meditation at the Shambhala Center, I finally did one of the practices I was given at the 10-day retreat I did a week or so ago. I hadn't made space for it at home yet, and we had the supplies at the center, so since I was a bit early for setting up, I settled in and did it.

A practice I had done again and again for a week in a tent full of 100 people became, for me, intensely concentrated with just me alone in the silence of my local center's shrine room. In just 10 minutes of practicing, a LOT changed, shifted and I felt completely opened.

After meditation and cleaning up, I went home to do ordinary household things with Dylan - mow the lawn, weed, water our fruit plants/trees (strawberry plants, raspberry bushes, pear tree), etc. It was a cool evening, few mosquitoes, and the yard felt utterly alive to me. I slept heavily, fed by the hard work, though it took me awhile to go down, so entranced with the perfect evening air.

After the cats woke me at 5am, I went back to sleep and had this dream:
The Sakyong, Jamgon Mipham Rinpoche, who's the main teacher in Shambhala, was staying in our house. Even in the dream I thought of a story Diana Mukpo told us at the retreat - that she and Chogyam Trungpa (Mipham's father and former head of Shambhala) used to drop by their senior students' houses without warning for dinner, to see if they were uplifting their lives for everyone, including themselves, all the time. So here he was, in our house, currently without a bathroom sink, with tumbleweeds of cat hair and dust rolling around, and dirty dishes in the sink. I was mortified, but also so glad he was in my house. I went to a talk and saw him speak there, but then went home early and stayed up late cleaning. When he came back he seemed happy but said nothing about the difference in the house.

The important thing is that *I* felt it. When I told Dylan about the dream, about the stories of dropping in on their students, he looked mortified. "Too much work," he noted, and I tried to explain again - this isn't some outside standard, this is making your home as good as you want it to truly be as often as you can so that you can be your best - most alert, most rested, most supported. He got it, then. The Sakyong appeared in my dream not to bless me, not because I am special, but to remind me that I can be as prepared for myself, as honoring of myself, as for him. That I want to be. That there is no difference between me and him.

So I cleaned up my office today, put the shrine together with new supplies, and everything somehow found its place that had seemed homeless before. Putting together the books and texts from the retreat, a photo of the Sakyong fell out of my bag and landed face up on the floor. A slight smile, eyes directly looking at me, he reflected my own state - cleanliness is next to godliness, yes, but not some external god. Our own internal god, our own internal basic goodness, beyond good and bad, can land and open best in an uncluttered space.

The practice opened me up to this, I know that for certain. It, ironically, instead of taking me back to the retreat, brought me more here - into my home, into my life, into my "stuff" (of literal and metaphorical meaning). It's about time - as the retreat becomes more of a dream in my mind, a memory, the past, I don't want the teachings and their effect on me to fade. Last night was a reminder of how quickly it can all come back, and then some.

Here's to tasting just enough of the dream to sharpen up reality.