I don’t want to change you
Because our society has a view of those who are ‘religious’ or ‘spiritual’ as being either ‘holier than thou’ or wanting to convert everyone, I sometimes feel that people have this perception of me as such.
Image from Cartoon Stock
I hold back sometimes on posting videos on Facebook or Twitter of spiritual teachers, hip hop rhymin’ buddhists, surfing yogis hanging ten or any other content that could make someone feel like I’m looking down on them because I have it all figured out and reached some state of enlightenment of being. Uh. No. Maybe some flashes of how to better manage my life, but I assure you, I go right back into the arms of snuggily samsara after these incidents.
This blog is my safe space for this kind of thing because I assume that if you made it here, you have some kind of interest in the aforementioned content.
When I first met my husband, I remember him recoiling when telling him that I was spiritual-minded and quite dedicated to my practice. I think where other girls tried to get him to dress like the guys in GQ magazine, he was fearing that my motives were going to be to give his brain a big cosmic makeover and get him to join in some 8 hour long tantric chant festivals involving apexes, beads, breath work, turning words, triangles and deep discussions about feelings.
So… I’d like to assure friends, families, coworkers, random person on the street that I’m not out to convert you. I like you just the way you are.
We have heard that aversion is the opposite of craving, and in this way both are reactive to circumstance. The purpose of practice in the sense of self cultivation or the path of wisdom traditions is to release this gravitational effect of constantly orbiting around outer circumstances. We develop gravity of our own internal being and therefore are less likely of being driven here and there by the winds of the world around us, less likely of feeling “forced” to do something we do not truly wish to do, or simply acting in a very reflexive way without any consideration at all.
At a certain point of internal gravity, strange things may occur - just as when a jet begins to travel faster than the speed of sound and an explosive noise happens. Yet it is less important to be concerned with the strange happenings, and indeed they can become an obstacle. They are another set of circumstances themselves, with even greater binding power due to their inclusiveness.
Yet the need to appear a certain way or conversely to not appear a certain way is also an obstacle in regards to our practice. This is why you may have heard of the “naked” experience of mind. It is a raw and vulnerable place.
According to Chogyam Trungpa, this experience of exposure is key to vajrayana itself:
“We should understand how the vajrayana notion of brilliance differs from the notion of clear light as described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead and how it differs from the mahayana notion of luminosity. Clear light, according to the Tibetan Book of the Dead, is a purely phenomenological experience. You see whiteness as you die or as your consciousness begins to sink. Because the physical data of your body’s habitual patterns are beginning to dissolve, you begin to enter another realm. You feel white-washed, as if you were swimming in milk, or drowning in milk. You feel suffocated with whiteness, which is known as clear light. That is purely a phenomenological experience, not the true experience of clarity. On the other hand, the mahayana buddhists talk about luminosity, called “prabhasvara” in sanskrit, or “osel” in tibetan. Osel means seeing things very precisely, clearly, logically, and skillfully. Everything is seen very directly; things are seen as they are. Nevertheless, neither prabhasvara nor the notion of clear light match the tantric notion of vajra clarity.
Vajrayana clarity has more humor. It also has more subtlety and dignity. Moreover, it is utterly, totally outrageous. Things are seen as they are, precisely; but at the same time things are also seeing us precisely. Because we are totally exposed and open and not afraid to be seen, a meeting point occurs. Something makes us realize that we cannot chicken out and say that our life is just a rehearsal. Something makes us realize that it is real. That state of being is not merely a phenomenological experience. It is a real state of being, a true state of being that is full and complete. That indestructibility and clarity are vajra nature, which is superior to any other approach to spirituality, even within the buddhist tradition.”
- from “Journey without Goal”
How’s that for ‘holier than thou’? Now you know how superior this approach is, so there is no need to worry that it isn’t.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTrTtJNNcTs