Clarity’s blog

My blog is on hiatus. I’ve moved to a new host so while the DNS slowly propagates this blog exists in two different locations at the same time and if that wasn’t enough, the new host just upgraded their Rails software which broke my blog. Hopefully I’ve fixed it, but who knows. And I really should be preparing for tonight’s talk instead of fiddling with this crap…

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I’ve been preparing for a talk I’m giving on Wednesday on Maitri and I thought that perhaps I can just share some of notes from the material I’ve read:

• What we need most is to love ourselves
• Only when we love ourselves, can we love others
• Through loving ourselves, we become lovable
• Accepting, relaxing, opening, feeling warmth
• We and others are fundamentally good
• Maitri allows us to make friends with ourselves
• Unconditional friendliness
• Embrace both sanity and confusion
• Accepting ourselves as we are is the key to opening our heart
• 6 aspects of maitri: familiarity,accommodation, relaxation, bravery, workability, unconditionalness
• We usually start a spiritual path thinking that we’ll improve - subtle form of aggression
• Maitri - we don’t get rid of anything. We can still be crazy after all these years
• Make friends with what we are
• curiosity
• open to what is
• gentleness,precision,openess
• when we make friends with ourselves, we make friends with the world
• fruition is playfulness
• What we are right now is exactly what we need. It is our biggest treasure
• Wisdom and confusion are inseparably linked together. When we try to get rid of our negativity we also lose our wisdom
• Satisfied with what we have
• We work with everything, not just the parts of us (and the world) that we like

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I’m avoiding my feelings lately. Well, some specific feelings to be exact. I get somewhat closer to them, and I just shut down. Go numb. This Buddha family neurosis is sometimes really difficult to work with. Sigh…
(clarity gives himself a hug).

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My blogging software has been behaving strangely, so sometimes comments would not work. I’ve tried changing some things, and I hope it will work better now. You can also try submitting again, sometimes it works on the second try.
Sigh…
I need to move this site to a new host, but I just haven’t found the time yet.

Update: I’ve moved the site to a new host, and I hope it will work better here. Please let me know if you are still getting errors!

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I’ve been encouraging some of my students to think about going to a Dathun, which is a month long intensive sitting practice, that we do in Shambhala. It seems that for some parents, that is way too much. They think their children will be brainwashed, their money signed away for the rest of their life, … All the usual fears about joining a cult.
I’ve seen this again and again happening here in Slovenia, and I was just wondering if it’s just here or if it’s everywhere like that?
When you started practicing seriously, how did your parents react?

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I really don’t feel like practicing this morning. I’m lying around, still in my pyjamas, trying to get myself to sit.
A thought hits me: will I be able to say that I don’t really feel like dying when the time comes? Sorry, Mr. Death, I’d prefer to watch this Star Trek episode instead, can you come back a little later?

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Essentially we never get rid of anything, We don’t have to get rid of all our neurotic tendencies; what we do is begin to see how funny they are, and then they’re just part of the fun of life, the fun of living with other people. They’re all crazy. And so are we, of course. But we never really see that we’re crazy; that’s our pride. Of course, I’m not crazy - after all, I’m the teacher!

Joko Beck

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pain comes suddenly,
envelops me completely,
body shaking with sobs.

May my heart be wide enough
to embrace all the suffering people in this world.
(including me)

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I’m finding out that two things I really can’t stand are piousness and being holier than thou.

Update: I was really pissed of at someone when I wrote that, and although I’ve deleted most of what I wrote, the energy of anger and separateness still comes through. I was so caught up in my own thing, I didn’t realize what a “holier than thou” post I wrote myself. Thanks to owlmonkey for his witty comment that punctured my self-absorption!

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is just the way things are

says a card that a dear friend sent me some time ago. As I came to work today I found out that we will be under a new boss and in a new department, probably have to move to a new place, new coworkers. Lots of unknown quanitities. Probably a change in how we work, as we’ve been pretty freestyle with our work so far, and the rest of the company is very organized, for every change in the program you need a request, which needs to be authorized, confirmed,… a hassle in any case.
It’s interesting how my first reaction is of course, what will this mean for me? Will I still be able to keep my flexible working hours? I like the place where I work right now, I don’t really want to move!
heh, me,me,me,me,… cause of suffering indeed.

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When you wake up in the morning and out of nowhere comes the heartache of alienation and loneliness, could you use that as a golden opportunity? Rather than persecuting yourself or feeling that something terribly wrong is happening, right there in the moment of sadness and longing, could you relax and touch the limitless space of the human heart?

from Ani Pema Chodron

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It’s weird, this new apartment has a very Buddha type energy. All I want to do is just do nothing, look at the snowy mountain peaks, relax.

And just be.

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We hear a lot about the pain of samsara, and we also hear about liberation. But we don’t hear much about how painful it is to go from being completely stuck to becoming unstuck.

from Ani Pema Chodron

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The girl sent me an article yesterday talking about Five Wisdom Energies. I’ve always loved these teachings and it was a real joy to read this:

Usually we flip-flop between extremes of feeling good or bad about ourselves, and never find any real bridge or connection between these two states. The power of the teachings on the five wisdom energies is that they show us how we can find our wisdom within the very darkness of our confusion. Energy itself is neutral; it is our attitude towards it that determines whether we are open (sane) or closed (confused). When we are open to our own energy, we experience ourselves as warm and clear. When we are closed to our energy, we feel confused and stuck. Being open or closed determines how we view ourselves and consequently the world. In fact, it is when we experience intense emotion that wisdom is closest at hand. Fully embracing the emotions that bind us can liberate us.

When energy becomes heightened we need a very powerful tool—the tool of unconditional loving-kindness, or maitri—to allow us to be who we are unreservedly. Accepting ourselves as we are, in both our sanity and our confusion, is the key that unlocks our heart. It allows us to be in the present moment just as it is, without trying to cling or push away. Accepting ourselves fully is what stops our struggle, and only when we love ourselves in this unconditional way can we also love others. Only when we love ourselves can we be lovable. Maitri has a soft quality that is open, kind, relaxed, warm and inclusive. It allows us to be who we are and let all our colors shine. We breathe easily.

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my knees are saying that this is definitely the last of moving they’re going to do for a while. 2 fridges today, 5 stories high did it, I think. Thanks again for helping, Matjaz!.

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