"Mindfulness is Not a Part-Time Job," a talk by Issan Dorsey

A Dharma talk given by Issan Dorsey Roshi
Originally posted on 1/13/2012

This transcript appeared in the newsletter of the Gay Buddhist Fellowship in January of 1995, four years and five months after his death from AIDS.

From Allen Ginsberg's collection

Someone said to me the other day, “Aren’t you always working on something?” Yes, we are always working on something, but hopefully it’s not up here in our heads, filled with words to obscure it. I was talking with a friend recently about the phrase, “coming to reside in your breath-mind,” and working with the phrase, and how useful it is to me. I thought it was interesting that I’d never really heard it before, and was just now beginning to work with it. I realized that I actually just heard it deeply.

This has been with me since I first started practicing. It’s a whole way of working with your mind—and I’ve been thinking a lot about it lately. I hope you won’t have to wait for 20 years before you begin to hear how to work with this thing called the mind in your zazen meditation.

Now, people who come to practice immediately sit much more easily than they did when I first began to sit at Sokoji Temple years ago. I remember everyone sitting with their legs bent up. They’d sit for five minutes, then they’d lie down and moan. But now people come, and it’s like we already did that part for them. It’s as if we have a shared body that has already gone through that preliminary stuff, and people are already able to experience some aspect of zazen practice and how we practice together.

We have to be willing to explore and experiment. First, we have to have a sense of humor and a willingness to explore and experiment with our lives and our discomfort. We know that sometimes we can sit for a few minutes, or even a few days, and at some point it gets pretty uncomfortable, and it’s uncomfortable for us not to invite our thoughts to tea, and reside in our breath-mind.

“Don’t invite your thoughts to tea” is an expression of Suzuki-roshi’s, which I’ve always found useful. You know these are just words, and we have to remember that every human concept is just delusion. Still, we use words and provisionally talk about our experience. Lately I have been exploring this way of thinking with a friend who has AIDS dementia; the virus is living in his brain. I’m thinking and working on it and talking with him about it because the virus that is attacking so many of us now ends up being in the brain. So is there some way for us to experience that? I don’t know yet. My question is: how to be with people who have dementia and how to experience the dementia that we all have anyway? It’s called delusion. Mind is always creating confusion, joy and pain, like and don’t like, and depression. But there is also a “background mind.” That is what my friend and I have been discussing.

Sometimes when I’m talking about uncomfortableness, I talk about the five fears. One of the five fears is the fear of unusual states of mind. How can we come to have appreciation and respect for this fear and not just some resistance, so that we can enter our fear, allowing these new areas of uncomfortableness? When we can enter each of these new spaces, we can begin to look at truthfulness.

Why do we have to sit? Really there’s no reason to sit. If we’re completely sincere, then there’s no reason to sit. I’m not completely sincere so I have to keep sitting to check. Even if we’re involved with unskillful actions, the one quality we should strive for is truthfulness. Truthfulness takes a total commitment to see all aspects of ourselves and our unskillfulness. If we can embrace the totality of ourselves, we can embrace the totality of others and of the world. Our tendency is to think about things before we do them. Even when we see a beautiful flower, we say, “Oh what a beautiful flower.” “Beautiful flower” is extra. Just look at the flower with no trace.

Suzuki-roshi wrote, “When we practice zazen, our mind is calm and quite simple. But usually our mind is very busy and complicated, and it is difficult to concentrate on what we are doing.” This is because when we act, we think, and this thinking leaves some trace. Our activity is shadowed by some preconceived idea. The traces and notions make our mind very complicated. When we do something with a simple, clear mind, we have no shadows, and our activity is strong and straightforward.

So, even with zazen practice, it gets so complicated. We’re dissecting every aspect of what’s going on, reviewing and comparing. How do we keep it simple and straightforward? How do we come to know this basic truth of practice and Buddhism? The teaching and the rules can and should change according to the situation and the people we’re practicing with, but the secret of practice cannot be changed. It’s always true.

We teach ourselves and encourage ourselves by creating this space, the meditation hall, so we can begin looking at our minds. “Don’t invite your thoughts to tea.” “Where is your breath-mind?” I used to say, allow this kind of mind to arise. But now I’m saying create background-mind.

This practice is simple: watch your breaths and don’t invite your thoughts to tea. But not inviting your thoughts to tea doesn’t mean to get rid of thinking. That is discrimination. So, there’s no reason to get rid of thoughts, but rather to have some blank, non-interfering relationship with them. Don’t make your mind go blank; rather, have a blank relationship with your thoughts. Begin to see the space behind and around the thoughts, and shift the seat of your identity out of your thoughts and come to reside in your breath-mind. We develop our intention to reside in our breath-mind by first bringing our intention to “breath as mind,” and then by shifting the seat of our identity from our thoughts to our breath.

This all ties in with how we use this space, this laboratory. We should have a willingness to explore with our lives, and this is our laboratory right here—how we use the meditation hall and how we use what happens outside of it. Mindfulness is not a part-time job.

If you want to see more about the life and teaching of this remarkable man, please visit my page: "The Record of Issan."

What is the "Real Work" of the Enneagram?

Originally posted November 1, 2011

Claudio Naranjo in Berkeley 1971-1976

I have been personally engaged in the study of the Enneagram since 1972, when I began four years of intense personal work in Claudio Naranjo’s SAT group. Until now, I have only spoken privately with friends about the proliferation of books, teachers, and controversy about the Enneagram. In all the hubbub, I hope that the real value of this work is not lost or diluted to the point that it becomes no more than an interesting curiosity.

This was the first of a series of articles about the Enneagram, its history and use, as well as its spread among the Jesuits. I created a database, an Enneagram Bibliography, using online resources as well as the recommendations of Enneagram students. I have included books, studies, DVDs, tapes, and other materials that primarily deal with the Enneagram as presented in the West, as well as materials from the Gurdjieff sources that contain information of interest to the Enneagram enthusiast.


One current myth about the Western transmission of the Enneagram goes something like this: in the early 1970s, Claudio Naranjo, fresh from his brief, incomplete training with Oscar Ichazo in Arica, Chile, began a somewhat tentative conversation with a select group of therapists and teachers in a Berkeley living room. He distributes crudely mimeographed nine-pointed figures to the experienced self-observers he has called together to flesh out the sketchy outline of personality characteristics that Ichazo had developed for each point. Then these highly trained psychologists and teachers set about connecting Claudio's and Ichazo’s fragmentary notes with well-documented psychological research and the best diagnostic tests.

As someone devoted to the study of ideas and how they shape culture, I love stories of discovery and invention. Some of the stories are obviously self-serving, while others have the ring of real experience. In either case, still filled with many assumptions, obvious and hidden, they are rich in information.

Sometimes it is very clear that the myth itself is part of the teaching method—for example, a great Japanese Zen Master copied a key koan collection the night before he secretly left China. His teaching emphasized the immediacy of Zen insight, diligence of practice, and the spontaneous breakthrough: stay up through the night and enter a new world before the sun lights your ordinary one.

In other cases, the myth supports the domination of one school over another. Elaine Pagels and others have shown convincingly that the Council of Constantine authorized only the Jesus Teachings that supported the authority of the bishop of Rome, rather than the Gnostic teachings that were equally prevalent in early Christianity. This move was so successful in suppressing an idiosyncratic teaching that we only knew about these sects from the polemical literature written to brand them as heretical until the remnants of a Gnostic library were discovered in the Egyptian desert in 1948.

I think that both these motivations can be found in the Enneagram myth: an early substantiation of the early link between Enneagram study and serious, scientific psychological investigation, and secondly, that the basic elements of Helen Palmer’s “authentic” narrative tradition come from the “Source” itself and were somehow misplaced.

I do not wish to sound mean-spirited, but this smells like either a carefully crafted version to promote Palmer’s teaching or, at best, her followers' oversimplified reading of history in the light of their experience and what they have been told about her oral teaching method and her sources in Naranjo’s work. Any myth, distortion, or fabrication that is in the public record or published materials is fair game. I would like to describe that seminal period from my own experience.

In the Fall of 1971, Claudio Nanranjo began to teach a small number of students in Berkeley. Starting with 25 to 30, SAT grew to more than 100 by 1975. He had recently returned from Arica, where he had been part of another group of 50 Americans, self-selected from the vanguard of people representing the new thinking centered at Esalen, California, the first Americans to work with Oscar Ichazo. Aside from Naranjo, John Lilly was the most prominent and the most steadfastly insistent on maintaining an independent stance.

I estimate that Naranjo spent more than two years connected to Ichazo and Arica, whether in preparation, traveling, conversations with Ichazo, participating in all the exercises in that first Arica Training as well as experiences where Ichazo directed him personally. (Claudio, for example, did live in a solitary retreat for 40 days in the Arican desert - his only contact with other humans was Ichazo driving out to see him every day). I will let Naranjo speak for himself about these experiences in his teaching and writing.

When I joined SAT in September of 1972, I found myself in a more ordinary group than the Arica pioneers from Esalen. We were relatively younger, spiritual idealists of the 60’s generation, liberated in our attitudes towards sex and drugs, deserted by the faiths of our collective fathers and mothers, holding strongly to the idea that spiritual practice could overcome the ills of society that was becoming increasingly materialistic and egocentric, aggressive and greedy. There were a few Ph.D.’s, several Ph.D. candidates, two priests, a Jesuit and a Franciscan, medical doctors, school teachers, a designer, several carpenters, a sprinkling of licensed therapists, but far more therapists in training. A good cross-section of ordinary, highly educated, college-town Berkeleyites.

We worked together at general meetings on Tuesday or Thursday evenings—these were shock points, times according to some Sufi tradition, when real change was possible. At other times during the week, we also broke into small group meetings. Most of us meditated for at least a half hour everyday, wrote in our journals, focused our work, our self-remembering, through directed exercises that were suggested, or “indicated,” by Claudio and delivered by either Rosalyn Schaffer or Kathy Speeth (who as a child sat in the lap of Mr. Gurdjieff and taught us the sacred dances, the “movements” of Gurdjieff).

Frequently on Saturdays and Sundays, Claudio sat on a tattered sofa in the large living room of an old fraternity house on Hearst Avenue while we sat on the floor. Claudio would begin saying, “Let’s do zazen,” and we sat in meditation for an hour. Then Claudio began to talk informally, exploring points on the Enneagram, asking questions, telling Sufi teaching stories about a character called Mullah Nasrudin, even stories about cats. (I can remember that Sunday very well because by the next Friday, I owned two stray cats). There were many references to G.I. Gurdjieff, the trickster; Claudio was very familiar with the work of Gurdjieff, though he never claimed that he had ever been trained or authorized by any of Gurdjieff’s successors.

It was always a lively conversation. Claudio drew on his expertise as Fritz Perls's foremost disciple and explored the conjunction of meditation and psychological practice. There was always psychological work. It was also creative and challenging; for example, as a classical pianist, he created meditation experiences with Beethoven symphonies.

One thing was clear to all of us: Claudio Naranjo was, during that period, an inspired teacher. Something of a momentous spiritual nature had happened to him in Arica, and we were present while he was unpacking that inspiration. We were part of a great experience, willing guinea pigs in a psychological spiritual experiment.

This first use of the Enneagram as a teaching tool for spiritual growth and inner work was not delivered on crudely mimeographed diagrams, although there were copies of Enneagrams that we used to make our own notes and observations. Claudio Naranjo developed and tested his work in real situations with a group of bright people who were dedicated to self-understanding and deep inner work. It felt more like a crucible than a study group. It was not merely the intellectual exercise portrayed in the literature that began to appear about 10 years after Claudio finished his initial work.

In the next post, I will try to probe the muddied origins of the Enneagram, looking for signs of its descent into psychobabble.

To review my Enneagram bibliography, please follow the link.

© Kenneth Ireland, 2011

How I moved from Point 7 to 9

Mr. Gurdjeiff’s ‘chief characteristic’ and getting your type on the Enneagram.

Or how I went from Point 7 to 9.

Reading the memoirs of C.S. Nott, Teachings of Gurdjieff: A Pupil's Journal, I got a glimpse of what it might have been like to work with Mr. Gurdjieff in a way that’s somewhat similar to our current work with the Enneagram. Shortly after the liberation of Paris, amidst seemingly endless, exacting meal preparations, dinner toasts, music and piercing conversation in his Paris flat, Nott details G working with two young women, new students from England, who have to catch the night train to Dieppe and return to London. In a series of short, intense meetings with G, these students define their ‘chief characteristic’ in a precise way that they could use as they set out on the path of self-remembering. The urgency of discovery is sketched out in simple, direct language.

There is, however, no mention of the Enneagram, no evidence that G used the Enneagram to identify the ‘chief characteristic.’ I find it puzzling that if G did use the Enneagram in this way, we find no clear reference to it in the accounts of his early students. But what we do find is interesting: that the students were equipped with personal, precise, and exacting tools for self observation; that defining one’s chief characteristic was a process, a conversation with the teacher; and that it was something that the student him or herself did as part of their inner work.

Fast forward to late Spring 1975. I am in a large living room on the Arlington in Berkeley. Kathy Speeth has organized a series of nine evening presentations about the Enneagram for the “therapeutic” community. In attendance 15 or so therapists who are interested in the Enneagram but not members of Claudio’s SAT group. Among them is Helen Palmer, who has been hearing about the Enneagram from Claudio’s students in her own practice of psychic readings.

I remember those conversations quite clearly. They were a departure from the usual work of his SAT group. Kathy and Bob Ochs had asked me to be on a ‘panel’ of Seven’s, ego ‘Plan’ as both Ichazo and Naranjo referred to the point “Gluttony.” This was the first time several people of the same fixation spoke in front of a group and answered questions.

Claudio directed, laying a foundation with descriptions of the 9 points. In itself, this was not unusual, but his comments were definitely tailored for an audience of trained psychologists, and not the more conversational tone aimed at a student’s personal work that he normally used. The authentic tone of self-observation may have been present, but I felt that the obligation of explanation (perhaps performance) distorted the feeling of each point.

In my previous work in SAT, senior students were most involved in what we called proto-typing. In my case, Bob Ochs, the Jesuit priest among Claudio’s original students, was my primary source for helping me determine my fixation. Ochs had organized a study group in Chicago shortly after he joined Claudio’s group, and the following Fall, he offered a course on the Enneagram at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, where I was a student. He followed the usual academic format—14 weeks of lectures plus additional work—but his presentations and assignments were not the usual seminary fare. By Christmas of that first year, most members of Ochs’ class were typed. He said I was a seven, a ‘classic’ seven, a sexual seven, which became the point I worked with for my entire time in SAT.

And so, at the invitation of Kathy and Bob, I shared my understanding of ‘Plan’ during those first panels. At one point, Claudio turned to me and asked: “Are you sure you’re a 7?” “Of course,” I said with a laugh. Claudio said, “Ah, there it is. Listen to that laugh. Ken really believes that everything will turn out. That is a clear sign of point 7—the conviction that everything is OK.”

Fast forward again, this time 25 years. It is 1996, and I am taking care of Bob Hoffman, who is dying of cancer. Claudio, back in Berkeley after teaching in Spain, visits often. One morning as he is leaving, he turns to me and asks, “Did I type you a 7?” “Yes, you did,” I answered with certainty. (Didn’t he remember?) “I must have been crazy,” Claudio laughs. “You are a 9. No 7 has your earthy sense of humor. If you look for ways to take care of yourself, I think that you will discover a rich vein.”

Of course, I knew point 9, and I knew in an instant that Claudio had nailed me. I had been in the conversation too long not to recognize the truth. The 9 is blinded by forgetfulness of self. I was sick and upset for a full week before that split second’s observation, saying goodbye and opening a door to a world that fit me exactly. (I have never seen convincing evidence that any of the Enneagram tests are reliable, but I am convinced that physiological reactions are strong indicators that you have really understood yourself on the Enneagram. Trust yourself, all of yourself, even when you don’t quite feel like yourself.)

So, why am I telling this story? Certainly not to discredit Claudio or his teaching methods or what might appear to be an oversight. My five years with him changed the direction of my life. I love life—before I only pretended to love it. Is this a confession of my own slowness to learn and understand? I hope not. I certainly do not feel that I wasted 25 years thinking that I was a 7. Is it to discredit the understanding of any particular teacher or school? That is not my intention, but I might try to issue a gentle warning not to give yourself over completely to any teacher, in any circumstance—even if they are Jesuits.

Discerning your point on the Enneagram may be instantaneous or it may take years. Certainly don’t be disheartened if you leave your first weekend with no clear idea of your fixation. It is really OK not to know, to be hesitant, or even to change your mind as your understanding and your experience of self deepens.

Or to ask the question in another way: is it also OK to live your life on the assumption that you are not the person you thought, or have been told, you are? Of course. That’s the way that most people live, and they may or may not suffer. Of course, my choice would be to live life as honestly and authentically as possible. But it’s also my experience that even when I’ve been blessed with a bright flash of an extraordinary insight, real changes have appeared incrementally, slowly, and even painfully.

As our own understanding increases, we contribute to everyone’s understanding. Any powerful, genuine insight into the mind’s inner workings takes time to sort itself out and make itself useful. Exaggerations, missteps, and, unfortunately, misuse of the Teaching hurt people rather than liberate them, but conversation and debate are always a healthy antidote if intentions are not self-serving.

There is I think a real lesson in the sense of urgency presented in the story about G’s young women students working to discover their Chief Characteristic in his Paris flat. Especially for me, a 9, it is a task to learn introspection without a lot of plodding and fussing. The ride through Paris to the Gare du Nord is, in fact, really wonderful. On the other hand, tripping out about an imaginary trip to Paris is a waste of time.


Notes on further reading.

Among the many wonderful accounts of Gurdjieff’s teaching, Nott’s is only one. In my view, reading Claudio Naranjo is essential for any student of the Enneagram. I have also written at more length about my own experience with Claudio and the early SAT group on my blog “All and Everything Enneagram.” Please leave any comments, questions, and observations you want.

"We Inter-Are"--Contemplating Virtue from my Hospital Bed, 1989, Hollywood

by Morgan Zo-Callahan

April 21st, 2010

This is the last chapter of Intimate Meanderings, Conversations Close to our Hearts, which Morgan and I put together. If you want to read more and purchase the book, just click on the link.

In a sense, human flesh is made of stardust. Every atom in the human body (excluding only the primordial hydrogen atom) was fashioned in stars that formed, grew old and exploded most violently before the Sun and Earth came into being.—Nigel Calder

Dependent co-arising fits right into Ecology. People who are sensitive to the interrelationship of all things are into Dharma lore. There isn’t a more certain path into enlightenment than that of the realized capacity for being wide-eyed in the Cosmos, being totally alive, right now, with no separation between he who is aware and that of which he is aware. Yes. Just look at It 

All!—Tom Marshall, S.J.

The other darkest blue-black night, I was looking up at the moon, bright pearly silver, inviting wonder. I took a deep breath, viewing golden-lighted stars with spontaneous seconds of delight and submission to being alive, aware, somehow being consciously a part of spacious skies; 14.6 billion years of creating itself, the universe is changing, ever-evolving, all being, causes and effects of each other, all continually inter-acting. You and I are related so closely in this luminescent, mysterious process, beyond what we can fully know, bringing joys as well as disasters that we cannot control. I’m a tiny participant, along with you, in this dance of stars. I was shaken into this humbling realization of Thich Nhat Hanh: "We inter-are."

A very shocking experience taught me on the deepest level how interdependent we are in life and how I'm connected even with those I consider hostile people. That which is in all people is likewise to some degree in myself.

I was walking out of a 7-11 in Hollywood, just before dark, when six gang-bangers attacked me. The police would later say I must have looked like a rival gang member. They did not go for my wallet—they wanted to kick the shit out of me. I fought back as best as I could. I was punched, head butted and finally one of the guys sneaked a long gray blade into my stomach, severing my renal vein and cutting my left kidney in half. There was blood all over the place.

The guys disappeared into my twilight zone of being between life and death. I experienced the thin line of passing out and somehow willfully hanging onto consciousness. For a few seconds of expansive consciousness, a "part" of me went up into the sky, looking down at my body below and my immediate surroundings. My body expanded. I don’t interpret this experience as a disconnected spirit or immortal soul (atma) looking down on me. I don’t know if there’s any separate-non-physical eternal consciousness; yet, there’s no doubt, as many have related, this remarkable psychic process happens. I was, if only quickly, floating above my body, quite a crumbling, bleeding mess.

I pressed the wound in my stomach to stop some of the blood from coming out.

The doctors told me I was the first one to save my life by putting pressure on my wound. But to live, I needed to be saved by the Good Samaritan. Later, I would need expert surgeons. How we need each other! Passersby ran by the desperate scene, frightened. Cars slowed down and then screeched away, ignoring my "Please take me to the hospital!" A few cars stopped, opened their doors, and then changed their minds and took off. Me alone now for perhaps twenty minutes, holding my guts as tightly as I could, telling myself to keep breathing, keep awake; don't give in to that fainting feeling. If I pass out, I joke, I'll die in front of a 7-11, instead of in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater? Not this way! Not by fellow Latinos, many of whom in my life I love.

Finally, my good, lovely Samaritan, a Christian named Mike Bunnell, passed, stopped, opened but didn't shut his car door, and took me to the emergency room of Kaiser Hospital on Sunset Blvd., just a few blocks from where I was stabbed. I was in for a long surgery, my lungs collapsing, more than a month in the hospital.

What a strange and wonderful experience for my growing as a human being: sensing the "inter-being" of the attackers, a hero who saved my life, the surgeons-nurses-therapists who healed me, police, friends, family visiting me in the hospital, and myself: all together. This unexpected, difficult trauma also allowed me to feel forgiveness, as well as blaming, being angry. Luckily, it was mostly an occasion of gratitude for life, for resolve to live well, to improve myself in the areas of virtues such as mindfulness, being peaceful, releasing my anger, and jealousy.

I had some hours of quiet and many hours of social interaction. Sometimes, pain wouldn't allow for social contact or the presence required for meditation and reflection. As police showed me pictures of gang members, I would think about how much they looked like some of my students, dark, Latin, handsome, looking older, more hardened than their ages, and my rage somehow melted before it could start. My heart went out to them, understanding that they are finding acceptance and some personal power by being in gangs; some of them are seriously addicted to crack, meth, and heroin.

You hurt me, dear hermanos, but I truly forgive you, by which I mean I still wish that you be happy and that I intend no revenge or payback. Even though I cannot like you right now, I won’t close my heart to you. I wish you find what will really make you feel peaceful and full. I agree to cooperate with the police to find you young men who pulled off this payback on the "wrong man." You need to face the consequences of your harmful actions—not a payback, though you might interpret it that way. Believe me, it’s not. [I could identify two of the six gang members, but the police gave up after a year of searching for them. No witnesses came forward.]

And how close I still feel to you, Mike Bunnell!—though we're totally off into our own worlds—we stay in touch. I would later visit the doctors, therapists, and nurses to personally thank them and give them small gifts. A lady therapist once asked me, "If I wanted to talk about it?” I just cried for about the entire hour with her; she facilitated lots of healing just by her warm, open, and understanding presence. How dependent I was on that kind, lovely woman. Without the air of the skies and the warmth of the sun, we would perish. Without Mike’s generosity, my good luck, and the preparedness of expert medical care, I wouldn't have made it.

I spoke extensively with the policemen and policewomen on a few occasions. They talked about their frustrations with the huge gang problems in L.A. They related how a different gang that same day had stabbed an elderly man in the spine, taking his wallet and watch. The man is now paralyzed from the waist down. We talked about the gangs from El Salvador, from Mexico, from East L.A., and South L.A. We talked about the work of Dolores Mission in Boyle Heights. I told them about my Mexican and Salvadoran students and how I went to funerals for a few of them, murdered in drive-by shootings. Sometimes we talked about our personal lives. I had never felt such closeness with people in law enforcement and never thought much about how tough their jobs are, in often-hostile surroundings. How is it that we ended up speaking with each other for so long? I learned so much about lives I knew very little about. It's crazy to say it, but here we were also enjoying ourselves in our conversations about "good" and "bad" guys. We were making more of the occasion than just looking at mug shots and my groaning in pain from the after-effects of a long surgical wound, stapled together from my stomach to the bottom of my chest.

The violence in my attackers, the kindness in my hero, the dedication in my nurses and doctors, the encouraging thoughtfulness and visiting of my friends and family, the struggle of the great police officers: I was finding all these people and these qualities in myself. I am the Samaritan. I am the therapist and the patient. I am the gangbanger and the policewoman. We have all the different so-called "positive" and "negative" qualities. This terrible experience was an opportunity to cultivate virtues, Paramitas, in myself.

All Buddhist traditions, just as other religious traditions, include teachings and practices regarding virtue. In the Mahayana tradition, the ideal and the consciousness of the Bodhisattva, the super-generous, self-sacrificing spiritual attitude of compassion, is held in high esteem. This consciousness is described as luminescent wisdom, heart-full. Swimming deeply in the inner heart, it is expressed as love and impartial acceptance of all others, wishing all to be in touch with the inner heart-goodness within each person, meeting that same "place" within ourselves. We include ourselves, even though we are last. The Theravadin Arahant concentrates on inner liberation, which of course, includes the metta practice of wishing that all be happy and insisting on a moral practice, leading to a strong and kind character. The Vajrayana Siddha Tradition of realized masters also includes teachings of virtue and vice. It offers its own methods for becoming strong in virtue, especially through the relationship to the Spiritual Master.

I tried to name and consider the "Seven Deadly Sins" (pride, lust, covetousness, envy, anger, laziness, gluttony) and the corresponding Life-giving virtues, which eliminate the deadening result of living principally for ourselves, alone. Jesuits are fond of saying to live as "women and men for others." I made it my meditation to think about what qualities I could engender in myself to live a better life. There are virtues the Buddha extolled and those who follow him attempt to cultivate. Paramita is Sanskrit for “perfection,” “reaching the other shore of the eternal.” The idea of "reaching the other shore" marks the end of seeking. Six virtues (sometimes ten) are mentioned: generosity or charity (Dana); discipline, integrity (Sila); patience, non-expectation (Khanti); energy, joy (Viriya); meditation, attention (Dhyana); wisdom (Prana).

Our English word “virtue” comes from the Latin word virtus, meaning strength and vigor to refrain from collapsing under the weight of afflictive emotions such as anger, pride, laziness, and addictive pleasures. In Buddhist traditions, such collapses result from not letting go and clinging to selfish desire. Due to our seemingly overwhelming genetic and social conditioning, it’s difficult to first be honest about ourselves and then to continue our personal practice of developing our insight into the “interrelatedness” of all things and the accompanying compassionate action that flows from this insight.

It is our cordial, friendly intention, our kind actions, which greatly influence our present consciousness and circumstances; therefore, a major factor in developing generosity is letting go of being overly attached to our time and schedule, to slow down, to take breathing breaks for ourselves, even in the midst of busy days. Be generous to let ourselves be human. I used to give the finger to people who cut me off on our chaotic L.A. freeways, sometimes adding a "Fuck You"; now I say, "May you be happy whatever your day may bring you; I wish you good fortune."

\Generosity is sharing, being a charitable giver and a gracious receiver. It's exemplified in my Good Samaritan, Mike Bunnell, who just gave to me, just for the giving. In my own life, it is opening up to communication, going beyond irritations and rushing. Be a generous listener. It’s being truly present with the Right Effort to serve others, rather than being preoccupied with our own obsessive thoughts or the dualistic thinking of “looking down on” or “looking up to” others. A few friends said to me that the gang should just get blown away by Uzis, that they were trash. No such idea ever entered my mind. It’s a practical concern for the poor as well as for the affluent, to share money for really good causes. It’s being grateful for the warm sun, for beauty, for being loved and connected to the whole of life. We are all a part of each other, so why not give with gusto and generosity?

Discipline is—even in the midst of our mistakes and difficulties—to keep the moral precepts, practice compassion, cause no harm. It is being authentic; living with integrity, not necessarily what society says is the right way for us to live. Our lives are ours. Who else can live them but we ourselves? I felt somehow renewed and resolved to try and be a better human being from my time in the hospital, some healing of body, mind and spirit. I felt I could overcome my negative habits and conditioning, and cultivate inner strength and understanding. I have to do it for the young women and men down at Homeboy's Industries and Homegirl's Cafe who are doing such great jobs.

Patience is the cultivation of serenity, not trying so much to change others, but rather, to pay attention to changing ourselves. It is the skillful means not to be overly reactive to our complex emotions, which arise in our daily interactions. It's knowing that our happiness does not have to depend on the fulfillment of our expectations. I was happy to be alive at the hospital, so I could handle the very laborious therapy required just to be able to walk. I wasn't a "difficult" patient; though I would express my needs respectfully.

I tend to repress my emotions when I'm hurt and angry. The practice of meditation and self-observation allows me to breathe, feel and be mindful of the turbulent emotions I may have. It creates an atmosphere of patience within me. Our awareness will embrace our emotions and gently allow them to subside. In the process we let go of our need for others to be as we want them to be and of our anxiousness to be overly critical of others and ourselves.

Joyful energy is the result of our genuine interest in what is most real and vibrant for us; we also are happy for another's success when we know that we share our lives together. I felt this speaking especially with Los Angeles police officers at the hospital; we were so energized by sharing our joys as well as cultivating sympathy in our sorrow. Before this time, I had some fear of the police. When sincerely interested in others, we are happy when they are happy. This interest, appreciation for, celebrating with others overcomes my jealousy, my prejudices, my envy for what others have, any feeling that I'm better than or lower than anyone else. Getting banged up, ending in the hospital brought lots of pain and anxiety and fear. Yet joy was present! I also reflected how we can be content with enough in our lives. I like what Nisargadatta says: "We don't want what we have and we want what we don't have. Reverse the attitude and intention. Want what you have and don't want what you don't have."

Meditation is the practice of being still, quiet, attentive, and mindful. We just observe and breathe, be here in the moment. We do not seek experience or push any away, whether bliss, deep “absorptions” or “negative" emotions. We are awake to whatever arises in consciousness, to see for ourselves what is unfolding within. In the hospital, I had no experience of bliss; I could barely follow my breath most of the time. Yet the practice helped me deal with physical pain, by being able sometimes to "creating a space around the pain."

Wisdom supports every virtue. It is integral to our practice of loving-kindness. Wisdom cuts through separating of people, including ourselves, into “us” and “them,” “I” and “you.” I learned this thanks to a wide array of people at the hospital and even to the gang members. Wisdom discriminates, allowing us to understand the conditions of all actions. I thought about my activism, realizing that when "I'm being nice," I am sometimes just protecting my own image. That does not serve anyone. Appropriate social actions arise from wise compassion, intelligent organizing to help others be more free and independent.

At least now, my meditation is not even “work.” I no longer supplicate some energy or force or godhead outside myself. It’s natural for me to sit down and check in with my thoughts, to see what’s in my heart. I pay attention to myself, and make efforts to be kinder, especially to those closest to me, gentler, vigilant not to cause harm to others and myself intentionally.

I’m most grateful just to be able to follow the course of my breath and my life’s yearnings. I’m calling life's curves and turns "meanderings" because there’s no sure path; it’s so windy and unexpected; we’re being fired into the Unknown; but somehow subtly able to be connected to the whole of living, in peace, bliss, mental discernment and understanding. We can create circumstances where intuitive insights “loosen” us from severe uptightness. I experience happiness when living at peace within and letting others live, without any need to control or exploit others or myself.

Ryokan, a Zen monk in eighteenth-century Japan, lived in a little hut, leading an ordinary monastic life with few possessions. One night, he returned home and found a thief had stolen all his belongings. In response, he wrote the following haiku poem:

“The moon at the window,

the thief left it behind.”

Such is the wisdom and freedom from clinging! May all of us be happy and strengthened in our practice of virtue!

Sun. Orange-Yellow burning orb, eating forty million tons of material per second, sustaining us, exploding as one of 400 billion stars in our local Galaxy, the Milky Way, just one of the 140 billion galaxies in our universe. Here we are—small, yet with a precious opportunity—with a sincere intention that all beings be happy and strengthened in our practice of virtue and understanding. Ven. Dao Yuan sometimes recites at Sunday morning meditation: “The Earth is our support…” We inter-be—no separate self—the stars, moon, sun, and earth inter-mingle, the whole vibrating mesh of life courses through us in every breath.