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Sunday, September 23, 2007
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- Monday, September 24, 2007
Sunday, September 23, 2007life is the teacher
Lotus flower, West Lake, Hangzhou Trungpa, it turns out, spends a good deal of time in his "Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism" discussing the way we solidify life, and thereby remove the life from it. How to remain fluid? In today's Gurdjieff work, we discover the corresponding practice of "being in the moment." Admittedly, this practice is an evolutionary aspect of the Gurdjieff work- you won't find the phrase in any books by Gurdjieff or Ouspensky (at least that I know of.) The roots of this practice, which certainly has more of a Zen flavor about it, may well stem from William Segal's interest in Zen, Madame De Salzmann's corresponding support, and the subsequent influx of Zen practices such as sitting, which is now considered an orthodox part of the work even by people who stubbornly resist the influx of other "new" influences. The irony of which should, perhaps, not be lost on us. Put bluntly, the Gurdjieff work must become an evolving organism, or it will die out. And it already is, since it evolves within the practice of every person who engages in it. Today I attended one of several celebrations of Peggy Flinsch's 100th birthday. For those of you "outside" the formal work, let me just "fill in the blanks" by mentioning that she is one of the few people still alive who not only knew Gurdjieff personally but worked with him directly. He personally chose her, we're told, to read the English translation of "Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson" because... well, because. Anyway, one of Peggy's entourage reminded us this afternoon of her adage that life is the teacher. To be in the moment is to work in life- to be in life fluidly, dynamically, presently. This effort involves an acceptance of conditions, a willingness to inhabit the situation, a warmth and an openness. This means we make an effort to meet our community--both our inner and our outer community--within the same moment, at the same time, and offer an unstinting unity that devolves and evolves from the moment that exists in front of us. It implies--and demands--a flexibility and a sense of humor that directly opposes the rigidity and grim determination that many daily enterprises get conducted through and with. Trungpa mentions this too; his point, that laughter can often be the sword that cuts through the cement we have in us, and lets the water flow again. In order to find this place, and work within it from within a personal center of gravity, we need to drop the baggage, drop our assumptions, drop the cement statues we've been constructing and lining our inner garden with. Yes, it's true- gardens need static elements such as walls, borders, statuary and walkways-- but without plants, without flowers, they're not gardens. So now, perhaps after many years of rather technical study, self observation, and so on, it's the dynamic element we need to take into account and work with. Meeting each other on our own mutual ground, within our humanity, acknowledging our weaknesses, yet warmly supporting each other in exchanges, we find a place where flowers can grow. A place where practice arises within each moment, within life. Yes, it's true. When it comes to spirituality, I guess I'm a gardener, not a warrior. And maybe that flies in the face of the heroic idea that we should follow the warrior's path and storm the gates of heaven. My own take on it is this: You can feed more people honestly with vegetables than you can with a sword. May your trees bear fruit, and your wells yield water. Monday, September 24, 2007Ambition vs. Participation When we meet our moments in our lives, too often, we meet them with ambition.
We always want every moment to be a certain way, to offer a certain kind of support, to provoke stimulation, in other words, to satisfy. We tend to arrive at every moment of life saturated with the need for things to be the way we want them to. I was discussing this briefly with my local workplace spiritual genius, Annie, who has a lifetime of practice in grass-roots Christianity. This morning, she put it thus: we do not want the will of the Lord to be done, we want our own will to be done. This is ambition. We don't participate in life, we demand of it. When one finds oneself in repose, receiving life as it arrives, one has the opportunity to participate more. This may not be some massive, fabulous altered state of higher consciousness, which is what we too often demand of our spiritual work. It might be quite simple. We might just be living, receiving our lives and accepting them. We won't be fabulous. We will just be. Chogyam Trungpa spends a good deal of time explaining that ambition, the desire to get somewhere, to be better, to be "good," is basically a product of ego. When Mr. Gurdjieff advised his followers that man cannot "do," he may have been referring to this ...as we are, everything comes from ego, and ego does not do, it demands. It wants, it needs, it must have. As stated in the first two of the four Noble truths of Buddhism, we suffer, and the root of our suffering is desire, or demands. So ambition, the desire to get somewhere -- yes, the desire to get somewhere in our spiritual path -- is actually where our suffering begins. We are all so busy trying to get somewhere, we never see where we really are. My original group leader, Henry Brown, who is dead these many years, God rest his soul, called our effort in spirituality the effortless effort. The effortless effort is one of receiving and giving, not demanding and taking. To begin to understand this requires a revolution in which everything is overthrown. It's only when we realize that the whole regime is corrupt that anything new becomes possible. In "Cutting through Spiritual Materialism," Trungpa says: "We are too keen to learn something, too busy attending to our ambition to progress on the path rather than letting ourselves be in examining the whole process before we start... ...This was the experience of the Buddha. After he had studied numerous yogic disciplines under many Hindu masters, he realized that he could not achieve a completely awakened state simply by trying to apply these techniques. So he stopped and decided to work on himself as he already was. That is the basic instinct which is pushing its way through. It is very necessary to acknowledge this basic instinct. It tells us that we are not condemned people, that we are not fundamentally bad or lacking." (Pages159-160.) Yogananda said much the same thing. There's plenty of hope out there. We don't trust in ourselves. We don't have a right valuation of self. If self is a tiny, needful, grasping thing, then all it can grasp and get to satisfy itself is tiny things. It doesn't know that it would be much happier if it stopped wanting things and just saw what it had. There needs to be a much more expansive and global acceptance of Being within us. Real Being does not need to take and grasp more and more in order to satisfy its self; it is already satisfied when it gets here.
That which is already satisfied has no ambition. It offers itself by default the opportunity to participate in life, to inhabit what is rather than bend it to its own will. We have such beautiful possibilities in front of us. There is so much good that could grow within us and be offered to others. Do we sense this? Usually, I think we don't. I'm tempted to continue here, but this seems to be enough for today. May your trees bear fruit. Download 1.48 Mb. Share with your friends:
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