XXXVII (Aging into a Prime)

Yesterday was my 37th birthday. Going into the day, I felt a mild sense of despair. It’s just another day, it shouldn’t mean anything, just like New Years Day shouldn’t mean anything, right? But that was the problem - it didn’t seem to mean anything. I knew that the time would come when there would be few people left to go out with on my birthday, and I have no family, so these numbers just mean less and less and I would have to start dealing with it at some point. Still, I had a hard time shaking this downer of a feeling, even when I woke up yesterday morning.

So I sat and meditated and had one of the better and more focused unguided meditations that I’ve had in a while. When it was over, I just sat for a while, and as I got up and started preparing coffee and breakfast, I thought about the last three-plus months as I’ve started this path into Buddhism. It was not so much a birthday as a re-birthday. I am actually re-born as a more spiritual person than I’ve been in years. This isn’t born-again evangelical or road to Damascus kinds of moments, but it’s still significant.

And I haven’t smoked a cigarette in over three months now.

So the day went OK. I let my bad feelings go and went to work and was very productive. I had lunch with friends. It all went pretty well.

Until I got home found my dog limping and injured. She had damaged both of her left feet sometime during the day: tore a nail completely off a back left toe, and some internal damage/bruising of a front left toe (that one seems much more sensitive and painful than the torn-off toenail).

I ended the day at the emergency vet, making sure no bones were broken and getting the toenail-free foot bandaged. It was a far less scary experience than last time at the e-vet when the dog was having neurological issues. And mindfulness practice helped keep me fairly grounded as I waited to be seen.

The dog’s injuries may have come from either (or both) an encounter with a knocked over baby gate and/or my awful mean and nasty hard plastic and metal ski boots (those were also knocked over). Normally I ski on my birthday, but the sub-par conditions and low level of interest kept me from going up this year. There seems to perhaps be a cause-and-effect going on here: had I gone skiing on my own, would the dog have been injured like this? Seems like a weird effect of karma if so. Of course, one never can know these things for sure and can only deal with the current events instead of the what-ifs.

So I’m taking my birthday day-off today to keep an eye on my Greyhound so that her bruised paw can heal. All of my in-mind self-generated suffering over turning 37 in relative loneliness has evaporated.

New Years

Here, just a couple of days into the new year of 2012, I found myself thinking of New Years Resolutions. I generally don’t make them. I’ve long believed that the changing of the date (month, day, year) doesn’t mean so much, really, and that we should always be practicing continuous improvement. However, I tend to reflect on years as a whole, remembering years like 1999 and 2004 as significant years emotionally and creatively. This may be due to my birthday being in the first half of January, so thinking of 1999 and thinking of turning and being 24 are all bound together.

But what of resolutions? As I mentioned, I generally do not care much for them. However, I have noticed that my daily bit of minute practice and meditation has dropped quite a bit over the last couple of weeks. It’s been the holidays, of course, and even though I am back to living near family and am not traveling nor hosting guests, it’s still a disruptive time of year: many days off (including some personal days just to use my paid-time-off before it expires), many activities, empty offices, businesses open at strange hours. There’s also been no Pujas, except for a special New Years one which I missed.

But now, all of that madness is over, and it’s time to get back to work and daily lives here in the heart of winter. After two or more weeks of chaos and disruption in the day to day, we need to get back on track. Maybe that’s what New Years Resolutions are for: resolving to get back to the daily practices that get so disheveled with all that we do at the end of the year. Whether that’s meditation, exercise, cutting back on excesses, etc, it is a good time to refocus that energy instead of letting the chaos continue.

This was happening to me with meditation, of which I’ve done little over the past couple of weeks. This morning was going the same way as I passed over my generally-allotted time (between when I get up and the dog gets up, wanting breakfast) without taking the time to sit. “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,” I thought, before I realized “No, today!” and I sat down and meditated after breakfast. Granted, there were a few more distractions with the dog walking around, but it wasn’t so bad. It’s not my full practice, but it was still a serious and useful effort.

So, no big resolution, no big unreachable goal, just needed to remind myself of what was slipping away (daily meditation/practice) and why (end of year disruptions). What I like about Buddhism as I’ve experienced it so far is that it almost celebrates such awareness. Instead of taking the two useless roads of either beating myself up or procrastinating once again, I thought “so I’ve been missing it. Why am I missing it today?” and was able to get back on the path with just a couple of thoughts and actions.

So yes, it’s a new year and it doesn’t feel any different today than it did seven days ago, except that it’s time to get back to our lives and practices and I think that’s where resolutions work best: get back to what you were doing and stop the negative inertia that recent disruptions may have made.

A Quick 3 Month Evaluation, starting down the Buddhist path

It's been roughly three months since I walked into the sitting meditation class in the nearby Gonpa. The experiential "Introduction to Buddhism" class started the following week. In those three months, I attended all eight weeks of class, plus a bonus movie week. I attended many Saturday meditation classes. I made it to a couple of English based Chenrezig pujas and have now gone to four full-on Tibetan pujas. I, along with a small group of other visitors have met with Lama and have been warmly welcomed into the sangha. Daily practice is still hit-or-miss, but more hits than misses. I think I finally have the 100 syllable Vajra Sattva mantra memorized. I read "Joyful Wisdom" by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche and am now reading "Awakening the Buddha Within" by Lama Surya Das. This past week, I finally added the first Buddha statue to my home on the form of a medicine Buddha.

The internal changes and accomplishments are harder to understand and quantify. This is still the barest beginnings of the path. I have not declared intent to take formal refuge, but I expect that day is coming. A new "beginning practitioners" course starts shortly after the new year and I'm looking forward to attending it. Samatha meditation and other techniques are working well. I need to make and take more time to just sit.

The strongest and perhaps most surprising things, so far, are that I'm still going, and that I haven't smoked for three months. As mentioned in an earlier post, prior attempts at "going back to church" have seldom lasted more than a couple of weeks.

Made it!

After a couple of mornings off, I managed to return to morning mantras and meditation today. This is not terribly exciting news on its own, but it's a symbolic victory for me not falling too far into sloth and apathy this early in the process.

Skipping

This morning I did not do my little bit of morning meditation and mantras. I know this is the trap of which I should be aware: the mild slipping and skipping that feeds back into the daily grey of my normally spiritually-void (neither good nor bad) life. Yet it somehow feels OK, like it's really the order for the day. I continued to read "Awakening the Buddha Within" and don't feel like I've strayed much from the path. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

I've now attended two Chenrezig puja's and three full-on tibetan puja's, which is more Sunday services than I've attended in the past decade. Previous attempts at "going back to church" never lasted longer than a couple of weeks before I would start to feel uncomfortable or just lost interest. I need now to remind myself that just because I've made it three weeks instead of my normal two, that I can slack off. It's a vulnerable time where sloth and pseudo-comfort can win out. I think that this time I will prevail and stick to this path because it just feels so much more right than anything I've tried in the past. It's just up to me to stick to said path.

A Visitor's Introduction

Hello. My name is Jeffrey Shell. I'm a software developer and occassional artist and musician, in my mid 30's, living with a retired racing greyhound. A little more than two months ago I started to stumble into Tibetan Buddhism. It seemed quite by accident, but I find myself sticking around. With this blog, I plan on capturing some of my experiences and thoughts as I start on this path.

It started when I went to a guided sitting meditation class at the Urgyen Samten Ling Gompa with a couple of friends, all of us visiting for the first time. I have long been interested in meditation, but never had much success with it. Perhaps that is because I did not know my intent. Most recently, I hoped to start a path that would lead me to transcendental meditation so that I could, perhaps, tie in to the same creative energy as David Lynch. Lynch has described the benefits in various talks and in his book Catching the Big Fish.

My other reason for going to this class is that it is close to home, held in a center that used to be an LDS (Mormon) meetinghouse, but had been a nightclub and concert venue for much of the last twenty years. One in which I've wasted plenty of time in my younger years. A few years ago it was converted into a Buddhist center, but I had never been back inside since the conversion.

In that first class, we went through some basic Samatha meditation, focusing on the breath. And through questions and answers I rapidly found where I had gone wrong in earlier, unguided solo meditation efforts. All of that was fine, but towards the end of the hour another man came in and sat down in front of us: Lama Thupten. He introduced himself and spoke for a few minutes. I remember him chiefly telling us to give away what we had learned, to be aware for others that might need our help. I also remember him telling us not to worry about things we can't control or fix - to just let go of those worries. That bit affected me as I had been going through a lot of anxiety with my dog who had been rather sick this past summer.

What really stood out, however, was that notion of giving away and letting go of whatever good and insight we gained in that class. This was different than what I had expected, yet it made total sense. It changed everything for me as I realized that my intent for meditation had been very selfish: I want to tame MY mind. I want to be a better artist. I want to be cool and collected. I, I, and I.

I noticed that the place was offering an "Introduction to Buddhism" course, and that it would be starting the following week from when I went to this guided meditation class. Realizing that I really knew nothing of Buddhism, but liking the impact of the Lama's words, I decided to check it out further with my primary intent being just to learn.

Right as classes began, I caught a nasty little cold, and the two events conspired to enable me to suddenly give up (or at least take a long break from) smoking.

It's been just over two months since that happened. The introduction class is over, and I'm still here. And there. I've made it to some Chenrezig puja's, and have now been to two full tibetan puja's and spoken with Lama Thupten. I've started to take on some structured daily practices, and am continuing to read and explore. My new intent is to start attending the Beginning Practice course when it begins next month, and to use the time in between to experience and question for myself.

I'm not sure where this path will take me. I have not yet committed to taking formal refuge. But I'm not running (either away from or further down the path).

I have decided to share my experiences and thoughts here with the hope that it may help others as much as it might help me.