From the a tweet from Tricycle Magazine:

“Solitude is impractical and yet society is fatal.” – Ralph Waldo Emmerson

There’s got to be a middle way. Meditating with others?

I’ve been told in the past that I tend to be somewhat long winded when I blog.  Well folks, this is gonna be one, so get ready.

I had an idea of what I wanted to cover in the podcast this week.  My thoughts were together and I had planned to record today (Sunday).  I was going to FreeLance Camp San Antonio on Saturday, so I knew it would be a busy weekend, but I felt sure I could get everything accomplished.

Then Friday evening, I got an email from my meditation center that a great friend and teacher at the center was killed Thursday morning in a hit and run accident.  I was floored.  I’ve talked before about how precious life is and that just because someone has terminal cancer doesn’t mean that they will die before we will.  Life is fragile and can be taken at any time for a plethora of reasons.  That being said, sometimes it really sucks to be proven right.

First, let me tell you a little about Kevin.  She was in her early 60s, a former teacher, a wonderful potter, one of the most giving people I have ever met and had one of the most distinctive looks I have ever seen.  She dressed in pinks, purples, lavenders and such.  Her hair was blueish grey and always spikey.  As crazy as it sounds, this was a look that she pulled off with unmatched beauty and grace.

She really threw herself into things she loved and believed in.  She was a past president of the San Antonio Potters Guild.  Her pieces I have seen we just like she was; beautiful, but not in the classical sense.  The glazes, the designs and the shapes were anything but classical or standard, but one look and you could tell it worked.

She had served as the Director Of Shambhala Training at the center for a number of years, a position she held at the time of her passing.  She took the position at the same time I accepted the Director of Communications position and we served together thorough good times and bad for a number of years.

We attended a teacher training weekend several years back to learn and be allowed to teach at the centers.  Even with our past teaching experience we were very nervous.  We had gone through the weekend being in different groups, each leading book discussions and such, but we ended up together for the big finale:  The Talk.  We were all given a list of topics to choose from and then were to prepare and deliver a short (7-15 minute) talk on the topic.  We had jokingly remarked that we were both nervous and had even tried to pump each other up for it a bit.

I don’t remember if Kevin volunteered to go first or if she was just who was selected, but she ended up in the lead off spot.  She took her seat, arranged her notes, introduced herself, took a drink of water and a deep breath and launched into what should have been a good 10 minute talk and she finished in what seemed like about six.  I don’t think she stopped to take a breath!  I was trying to make some eye contact to get her to slow down, but she was hauling serious ass and showed no signs of slowing down.  At the end she took a deep breath, looked around our little circle and asked if there were any questions.  She answered the questions and except for the speed, had done an awsome job.  But the story doesn’t end here.

Then it was my turn.  Having watched Kevin win the Daytona 500 of talks, all I could think about was keeping my cool and trying to keep it slow.  That was the odd part…if you would have picked one of us to go way too fast, it would definitely have been me.  But I overcompensated and sounded like I was on valium trying to keep calm and slow down.  We both got a kick out of it after it was all over.

When we go back, from training, we began giving short talks and the like which led to our leading some multi-week classes.  I co-led a class on Emptiness and Kevin was a student.  We examined the nature of emptiness by studying the teaching of the Heart Sutra.  After about 4 weeks of study, the final assignment was to take what you understood what was being said in the classic Heart Sutra and re-write the whole thing for the modern world.  Kevin’s was simply wonderful.  One of the most insightful I have seen.  The day after I got the news that she had passed, I remembered what she had written and was fortunate of enough to have actually kept a copy.  Today at her Sukhavati (funeral), we all are given a chance to share fond memories of her and I offered take on the teachings of the Heart Sutra and I now want to share it with you.  First, is the classic version of the Heart Sutra, just for reference:

THE SUTRA OF THE HEART OF TRANSCENDANT KNOWLEDGE

Translated into English by the Nalanda Translation Committee, with reference to several Sanskrit editions

Thus have I heard
Once the Blessed One was dwelling in Rajagrha at Vulture Peak mountain, together with a great gathering of the sangha of monks and a great gathering of the sangha of bodhisattvas. At that time the Blessed One entered the samadhi that expresses the dharma called profound illumination, and at the same time noble Avalokitesvara, the bodhisattva mahasattva, while practicing the profound prajnaparamita, saw in this way: he saw the five skandhas to be empty of nature.

Then, through the power of the Buddha, venerable Sariputra said to noble Avalokitesvara, the bodhisattva mahasattva, “How should a son or daughter of noble family train, who wishes the practice the profound prajnaparamita?”

Addressed in this way, noble Avalokitesvara, the bodhisattva mahasattva said to venerable Sariputra, “O, Sariputra, a son or daughter of noble family who wishes to practice the profound prajnaparamita should see in this way: seeing the five skandhas to be empty of nature. Form is emptiness; emptiness also is form. Emptiness is no other than form; form is no other than emptiness. In the same way, feeling, perception, formation, and consciousness are emptiness. Thus, Sariputra, all dharmas are emptiness. There are no characteristics. There is no birth and no cessation. There is no impurity and no purity. There is no decrease and no increase. Therefore, Sariputra, in emptiness, there is no form, no feeling, no perception, no formation, no consciousness; no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind; no appearance, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no dharmas; no eye dhatu up to no mind dhatu, no dhatu of dharmas, no mind consciousness dhatu; no ignorance, no end of ignorance up to no end of old age and death, no end of old age and death; no suffering, no origin of suffering, no cessation of suffering, no path, no wisdom, no attainment, and no nonattainment. Therefore, Sariputra, since the bodhisattvas have no attainment, they abide by means of prajnaparamita. Since there is no obscuration of mind, there is no fear. They transcend falsity and attain complete nirvana. All the buddhas of the three times, by means of prajnaparamita, fully awaken to unsurpassable, true, complete enlightenment. Therefore, the great mantra of prajnaparamita, the mantra of great insight, the unsurpassed mantra, the unequaled mantra, the mantra that calms all suffering, should be known as truth, since there is no deception. The prajnaparamita mantra is said in this way:

OM GATE GATE PARAGATE PARASAMGATE BODHI SVAHA

Thus, Sariputra, the bodhisattva mahasattva should train in the profound prajnaparamita.”

Then the Blessed One arose from that samadhi and praised noble Avalokitesvara, the bodhisattva mahasattva, saying, “Good, good, O son of noble family; thus it is, O son of noble family, thus it is. One should practice the profound prajnaparamita just as you have taught and all the tathagatas will rejoice.”

When the Blessed One has said this, venerable Sariputra and noble Avalokitesvara, the bodhisattva mahasattva, that whole assembly and the world with its gods, humans, asuras, and gandharvas rejoiced and praised the words of the Blessed One.

And now, here is Kevin’s modern take on this teaching:

Heart Sutra

This is the way I heard it: once Moh Hardin was sitting with a great gathering of the San Antonio Shambhala Center Sangha. At that time, Moh was sitting in meditation. At the same time, noble David Sanor, who was also sitting, saw a gap and he perceived that emptiness means that there is no one thing.

Thus through the power of the Buddha, venerable Lans said to noble David , “How should one proceed along the path?” Addressed in this way, noble David Sanor said, “Oh Lans, one should who wishes to proceed along the path should see that emptiness means that there is no one thing. Form is emptiness, emptiness also is form. Emptiness is no other than form; form is no other than emptiness. Thus, Lans, all dharmas are emptiness, phenomena has no characteristics. There is no beginning and there is no end. There is no clarity and there is no confusion. There is no work, and there is no idleness. Therefore, Lans, in emptiness, there is no joy, no anger, no fear, no relief, no sight, no sound, no smell, no touch, no love, no hate, no cushion, no floor, no DVD, no Ipod, no email, no war, no peace. There is no achievement, there is no failure, no birth and no death. There is no pain, and no relief from the pain. There is no wisdom and there is no stupidity. There is no hinayana, mahayana and no vajrayana. There are no senior students and there are no beginners. There is no goal and there is nothing to achieve. Therefore, Lans, since there is no goal, Bohdisattvas abide by means of prajanparamita. Since there is no deception, there is no longer anything to fear. They transcend delusion and attain enlightenment. All the buddhas of the past, present and future, by means of the practice of prajnaparamita, fully awaken to complete enlightenment. Therefore the great mantra of prajnaparamita, the mantra of great insight, the unsurpassed mantra, the unequalled mantra, the mantra that calms all suffering should be known as the truth, since there is no deception. The prajnaparamita mantra should be said in this way:

Gone, Gone, Gone Beyond, Gone Way Beyond, So be it!

Thus, Lans, you should just get on the cushion and let it all go. Then Moh emerged from his meditation and praised noble David Sanor, saying, “Good, Good, David, that’s just how it is. One should practice profound prajnaparamita and everyone in Halifax will rejoice.”

When Moh had said this, venerable Lans and noble David, along with Vicki, Kevin, Jeannie, Preston, Jeremy, and the world with its Shambhalians rejoiced and praised the words.

It was so wonderful to actually get a teaching from her even after she had passed.

And speaking of teaching, this situation gives me a great chance to give a little insight here.  I think Kevin would have really liked that.  If you listened to the last podcast and read the comments section, you’ll know about the conversation my good friend Jen from the Inside My Head podcast and the Hypernonsense podcast were having.  You see, as we have discussed with several teachings, including the Four Immeasurables, a common thing in Buddhist teachings based on compassion is to apply them first to people we care about, then to people we are indifferent about, and finally, those that we have negative feelings about.  This final step is the most difficult part and I had the experience today.  You see, as I said, Kevin was killed by a hit and run.  I don’t want to get into it too much, but suffice it to say that she was not in a car when she was hit and she was just left there.

At the Sukhavati today, we obviously had practices for Kevin, but we also had practices for the person who struck her.  Acharya Moh Hardin, who just happened to be in town for a regional conference talked about this.  The person who did this is tied up with ego.  He/she was only concerned with what was going on with them, how it would effect them, what would happen to them.  And never thinking about what would happen to Kevin.  Even now, they are probably still thinking of this:  Will I get caught?  How do I stay out of trouble?  What will this do to MY life?

And yet, part of our practice today was to offer positive thoughts to this person.  Not because we want them to feel ok about what they have done, but because we want them to REALIZE what has happened.  We arn’t hoping that they will be relieved from feeling guilty about the event, but that their clinging to ego will be relieved so that they can actaully deal with it properly and sanely.  That being said, working with that feeling was one of the hardest practices I have ever done.

Just because we label ourselves as Buddhists doesn’t mean our feelings towards those that wrong us.  It just means that we have choose to look closely at and work with these feelings.  It’s not uncommon for for various religions to ‘pray for’ those that have wronged them.  Christians do it, Jews, Hindu, etc…  And believe me, it’s difficult no matter what we label ourselves, but we can learn quite a bit about ourselves from working with this practice.

That being said, I will miss Kevin greatly.  Peace be with her.  Om Ami Deva Hri.

The setup:

I’ve been tagged by Luis Sandoval at Daily Slackr to participate and share Seven Things You Don’t Know About Me writing project.  So here goes:

The Seven:

1. I sleep hooked up to a machine
I have sleep apnea which means I stop breathing when I sleep.  Consequently, I wear a mask at night that’s connected to a machine called a CPAP, that ensures I keep breathing during the night.

2. I always wanted to be a rock star
I started playing drums at an early age and sucked.  I took up the guitar and, for a long time, sucked.  But I eventually developed a little bit of ability with it.  I’ve played in bands since high school and have actually been in some mildly successful ones.  I’ve played country, blues, jazz, metal, folk…you name it, I have probably played it.  There was even a time when I contemplated taking a couple of years off work and attending the Guitar Institute of Technology in LA and make a go as a professional musician, but, it wasn’t to be.

3. I’ve jammed with a number of members of the Rockabilly Hall Of Fame and one member of the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame
These include Skeet Seaton,  Jimmy Evans, C.W. Gatlin and (although he probably doesn’t remember it) Levon Helm.  Admittedly, most of these are because I was either friends or in bands with their kids, but hec, it still happenned numerous times!

4. I write poetry
Yup, that’s right.  Snicker all you want but I enjoy it.   I started in high school and continue to this day.  Some of it turns into songs and some is just meant as spoken word.  I also have an ever growing collection of Haiku that I have written over the last 10 years.

5. I had my hair cut by Elvis Presley’s hair stylist in his living room
The man’s name was Homer Gilliland and cut my hair in his kitchen using nothing but a straight razor.  It was one of the best haircuts I ever had.  He cut Elvis’ hair from the late 60′s to the mid 70′s and had numerous memorobelia in his house.  (not to mention the large, white car with EP on it that sat in the driveway.

6. I have been the maid of honor at a wedding
Ok, let me tell you the story, then you can point and giggle.  I lived in Vegas for a couple of years and my friends Dave and Sally Schwartz were living in Southern California and decided to come to Vegas to renew their wedding vows.  They brought their two kids Landon and Jeff(affectionately referred to as ‘The Flying Schwartz Brothers”)  The best man and maid of honor were going to fly in later and meet them for the ceremony at The Little White Wedding Chapel on the strip.  Well, for some reason (if I recall, the flight was cancelled) the best man and maid of honor couldn’t make the ceremony.  So there we stand:  Bride, Groom, two pre teen boys and me.  The first thing decided was that Landon, the oldest, should be the best man.  So this left the maid of honor slot, me and a ten year old.  Since Dave and Sally have a great sense of humor, and there was no way of convincing a 10 year old that he should be the maid of honor at his parents wedding, I stepped up and filled the role.  It was a blast, and I love telling this story to people when it comes up.

7. My elementary teacher once broke my collar bone
I was in second grade and we were out at recess.  I happened to accidentally walk through the middle of a football game that some kids were playing and ended up in part of a dog pile tackle.  (It was a different time then.  Kids could play rough at recess and it was no big deal.)  As one of the final people jumped on, I felt a pain in my right shoulder and heard a snap.  I had a fairly high pain threshold as a kid so rather than screaming and crying, I just sat quietly.  I am told a few tears came down my face, but I just sat on the steps quietly holding my arm.

The bell rang and I went in for afternoon classes.  In the afternoon I had English, writing, reading and spelling.  Since I am right handed, I was trying to write with my left hand.  My teacher came up and asked why I was doing that.  I told her my arm hurt.  Since I wasn’t crying or anything, she didn’t think much of it and told me to write with my right hand.  I raised it to the desk and tried, but the pain was too great and there were a couple of tears.  I put my right hand back in my lap and started to write with my left again.

After a few minutes, the teacher snapped at me “I TOLD you to write with your right hand!”  She grabbed my right hand, yanked it over my head and slammed it on the table in front of me and told me to get to writing.  This time, I felt a double pop, and the tears started streaming but I didn’t make any noise.

One of my mothers students (she taught in the same building at the other end of the hall) was walking by and saw me with the tears holding my shoulder.  When he got back to her class, he asked her what was wrong with me.  She came and took me too the hospital where they x-rayed my shoulder and discovered it was broken in three places.  It was bad enough that I had to lay flat on my back on the floor for three weeks before they could put it in a brace.

When she raised the issue with the school, she was told that if she valued her job, she wouldn’t raise a fuss about it.  It was an accident and I was ok, so everything was fine.  I was young enough that I didn’t know any better.

So that’s it. Hopefully this sheds a little light into who I am, and perhaps will get some conversation going next time I see anyone in my network.

I now tag Jen Thorpe, Shawn Thorpe, Krista Bolan, Leslie Baldwin, EmDot, Marcy and  to encourage him to put something new on his blog, Skot, The San Antonio City Cynic

The rules:

• Link your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged
  (Hat tip to Beth Harte for the rules.)

Folks, I’m trying to gather a little info about the meditation habits of the folks who read this blog and/or listen to the Enlighten Up Podcast, plus get some ideas about what subjects you guys would like talked about on future episodes of the podcast.  I’ve cooked up a short survey that I’d appreciate you taking a look at.  It only takes about a minute and ask for any identifying information such as name or email.  To help it out, you can click here or on the link in the header.

Thanx!

As you may or may not know, I’m participating in both National Podcast Post Month and National Novel Writing Month.  I participated in National Podcast Post Month last year by reading some Buddhist teachings each day on this site, however, this year since I added writing a 50,000 word novel to my November, I decided to document the writing in a very simple podcast form.  I had hoped that I would have enough time left over to also do the Enlighten Up Podcast.  Unfortunately, I am quickly realizing how little extra time I am going to have, so I thought the best thing to do was to take the month of November off from the EU Podcast.  I will definitely be back in December with some new stuff and hope you guys will stay tuned for that.

If you happen to be interested in what’s going on with my NaNoWriMo/NaPodPoMo quest, you can check out the daily updates and running word count at mynovelapproach.com.  Feel free to drop by and  look around (and leave some feedback, if you’re so inclined)

It took me several days, but the site is FINALLY up and running at 100% again.  There were numerous emails to my old service provider, a couple of emails to my new service provider (who were GREAT, BTW), and who knows how many deletes, re-installs, database imports etc… but it’s finally back where it should be, at least until I do a redesign in the next few weeks.

After numerous problems, I finally got the new site up and the podcasts and posts moved over. At this point I still have to move over the themes and plugins so the place will look a little different for a few days until I finish it. I may do a site redesign after that, but we’ll just wait and see.

Unfortunately, the plugin that plays audio on the site hasn’t gotten moved over yet so you can’t play the podcasts directly from the posts yet, but everyone who is subscribed should still be getting them as normal.

Thanx for your patience!

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We are back after a few months off!

This time we’re talking about remembering. What do a statue of the Buddha, bowing, pictures and paintings and meditation practice have in common? They all help us remember.

We also mention the Four Reminders, which I talked about in a previous podcast as well as Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche’s wonderful commentary on it ‘Turning Towards Liberation’.

Special thanks to my wife Chris for adding the extra vocal talent to this episode.

As I’m sure most of you are aware, it’s been awhile since the last Enlighten Up Podcast and I should tell everyone that I have not died or fallen off the face of the earth or anything like that.  I was on a business trip for a week and didn’t get a chance to record.  On top of that, the last half of the trip I developed the flu, which I am still dealing with.  At any rate, I now have no voice, so podcasting is on hold for a few days.

If you haven’t already done so, you could take a listen to to the Podcast from the Shambhala Meditation Center of San Antonio.  Acharya Moh Hardin and Sangyum Cynde Grieve came in from Halifax, NS and gave some wonderful talks that are getting posted over there slowly.

Chris and I went to dinner with one of my Buddhist teachers last night. We went to a Chinese place and the meal ended with the requisite fortune cookies. I thought I would share mine.