Immaculate Preconceptions: Spiritual Practice Minus the Miracles

It was recently reported that the members of the Committee on Bible Translation have produced a revised version of the King James Bible that refers to Mary as a “young woman” rather than a “virgin”.

From an MSNBC article:

Most controversial is its revision of Isaiah 7:14 to predict that the messiah will be born to a "young woman," not to a "virgin," a characterization that some critics say casts doubt on the miraculous nature of Jesus' birth.

I wonder what would happen if someone stumbled upon some irrefutable evidence that the conception of Jesus Christ was the product of a good old fashioned sexual intercourse and not some divine intervention. Would it render his teachings any less important?

There is similar folklore around the birth of the Buddha, yet no practicing Buddhist (at least I don’t think so?) takes the stories around his conception and birth literally.

Mary (Jesus’ mother) was said to have been visited by an angel that told her she was to give birth to a savior, and legend has it she did so without having to have to do that nasty, mundane sex thing. A few hundred years earlier, Maya (Siddharta’s mother) had a dream in which she was pierced by the tusks of a white elephant, and told that she was to give birth to a savior. And she did so, presumably without any help from her husband.

There are probably just as many miraculous acts attributed to the Buddha as there are attributed to Jesus, and it’s pointless to try and prove or disprove any of them.

I do think these stories demonstrate our tendency to idealize spiritual practice and try to make it somehow “special” and “out there”.

I first starting meditating during the peak of the New Age movement of the 1980’s because I was hell bent on developing extrasensory perception. And there are some who follow certain spiritual paths in the hopes of a euphoric (or at least slightly more pleasant) afterlife that can somehow compensate for all of their earthly trials and tribulations.

I think Buddhism would catch on much more quickly if it promised an eternal and luxurious afterlife. Or if it taught that praying to someone out there would help make a change over here. But that’s not what this is about, and the sense of personal responsibility required for this practice can be very daunting.

It often doesn’t feel good to practice meditation—in fact, more often than not it’s downright uncomfortable. Some days I sit and I’m lucky if I notice two cycles of breath amidst the discursiveness. Then there’s the occasional physical discomfort which I don’t need to go into.

Ultimately, not having to wait around for miracles and knowing there is something we can do anywhere and anytime is more liberating than daunting. There are no promises of otherworldly experiences and no check list of sins to memorize and follow to the letter. There is however a need to somehow conjoin what we experience when we sit with the rest of our lives and to let that better inform our behavior and improve our state of mind.

Nothing magical, just an ongoing process that does seem to yield some nice results, although subtle at times.

I’ll take that over a virgin birth any day.

Arnold Schwarzenegger on Impermanence

Recently Arnold Schwarzenegger was interviewed and revealed that while he generally feels good about where he is in his life at the moment, the one thing he is having a hard time dealing with at the age of 63 is the fact that he is aging:

"I feel terrific about where I am in my life, when I look back at what I've accomplished," the former governor tells Lloyd Grove. "But I feel so sh*tty when I look at myself in the mirror."

Read the whole article HERE

Aging is inevitable and one of the best teachers we can heed when it comes to impermanence.

Don't Forget to Breathe (Thank you, Thich Nhat Hanh)

My default position is feeling overextended and like I just don’t have enough time. It’s a state that I easily gravitate to despite many years of practicing and supposedly “knowing better.”

Many people operate this way, and I’m really good at pointing it out in others when I see it happening. But until very recently I hadn’t been fully able to acknowledge this tendency within myself.

Secretly I had this idea that slowing down, pausing, and leaving some gaps open instead of filling every minute of the day with some kind of activity is for those other practitioners, not this one. I’m the exception; I’m just too busy after all. Seminary studies and practice, work, socializing, television. Blame it on the rain, or even the dharma for that matter. Gaps are for saps.

I’ve always been a huge admirer and fan of Thich Nhat Hanh but I secretly found his emphasis on mindful breathing to be redundant:

“Breathing in, I am aware that I am breathing in; breathing out, I am aware that I am breathing out…”

After all, I know that I’m breathing in and breathing out for crying out loud. Isn’t it obvious?

He didn’t just pull this out of nowhere. It’s based on some solid, sensible teachings found in the Anapanasati Sutra.

Off the cushion I’m slowly developing the habit of coming back to my breath in the midst of different activities instead of just plowing through my day. Like any new habit, it takes some getting used to but when I bring my awareness to my breath, even for just a few seconds here and there, it makes a huge difference in how I approach the rest of my day.

Thanks for the reminder, Thich.

Learning Equanimity from Birthers

Sometimes I learn how to cultivate a positive quality by witnessing how it’s polar opposite gets played out either by myself or people around me.

Lately I’ve had the opportunity to work with cultivating equanimity, specifically with regard to birthers who continue to spread the lie that President Obama may not have been born in this country. On the surface they present this as an issue of legitimacy (since only a natural born U.S. citizen can be president), but even more disturbing are the not-so-subtle undertones of racism implicit within this kind of talk.

Equanimity isn’t just some mellow state where I can be completely chill and detached from whatever is going on around me, but a state of mind that doesn’t discriminate between “me” and “them.” It asks that we recognize that all beings are essentially interconnected and the lines we draw between ourselves are illusory and only serve to cause more suffering for ourselves and others.

It’s easy to practice this in a genuine way when it comes to people who share my political beliefs but I really struggle when it comes to extreme right wing and tea party folks who are on a mission to discredit Barack Obama’s very legitimacy as president, while reminding everyone that perhaps he’s “foreign” (which is really a code word for “black.”)

I easily lapse into discriminating against those that discriminate against others. On a good day I catch myself and instead of just indulging my reactions, I contemplate the fourth Immeasurable quality of equanimity no matter what kinds of crazy might be coming out of the mouths of tea party people.

There’s a fine line between apathy and non-attachment. I used to think that if I didn’t react violently to anyone who opposed my political ideology that it meant I wasn’t really committed to my cause or position. Our culture puts a lot of emphasis on “passion” (a word whose roots mean “to suffer” by the way) but there’s a lot to be said about being dispassionate. I don’t mean apathetic or indifferent, but rather taking a clear and focused approach to righting an injustice rather than getting crazed and divisive about it, which only causes more of the divisiveness and craziness we hope to eliminate.

In pain? Try meditation

You don't have to be a Buddhist monk to experience the health benefits of meditation. According to a new study, even a brief crash course in meditative techniques can sharply reduce a person's sensitivity to pain.

In the study, researchers mildly burned 15 men and women in a lab on two separate occasions, before and after the volunteers attended four 20-minute meditation training sessions over the course of four days. During the second go-round, when the participants were instructed to meditate, they rated the exact same pain stimulus -- a 120-degree heat on their calves -- as being 57 percent less unpleasant and 40 percent less intense, on average.

Read the entire article HERE

How Drinking Blood from a Skull Can Wake You Up

In Korea during the Silla dynasty circa 660 CE, there was this monk named Wonhyo who decided to travel to China with his pal Uisang so they could further their Buddhist studies.

During their long walk one night, they got caught in a torrential downpour and took shelter in a nearby cave where they would sleep until dawn and continue their journey once the storm was over.

Wonhyo woke up in the middle of the night, completely parched, and after groping around in the dark for something to drink he finally came upon a large mug filled with water. He took a few sips and his thirst was instantly quenched. Grateful and relieved, he was then able to sleep peacefully until morning.

As daylight entered the cave he slowly woke up, thirsty once again. With his eyes still closed, Wyonhyo reached for the mug where he’d left it beside his makeshift bed and began drinking from it once more. As he gulped it down he opened his eyes and discovered that he was drinking from a human skull filled with bloody water. There were even some remnants of human flesh still stuck to the bone and more than a few dead flies floating around.

Repulsed, he threw the skull down and as looked around he realized that he’d spent the night in a tomb, not a cave. Decaying bodies were all around him, many of them crawling with maggots and covered with dried blood.

Completely grossed out, he was astonished to discover how powerful his mind was. He quickly awakened to the fact that the difference between a refuge or a nightmare was determined solely by his mind.

Having learned more than enough, he scrapped his plans to go to China, left the priesthood and went back home to teach the dharma as a layman.