My Everyday Disguise

7/18/16

After the ethereal experiences in the ring with Zoloft at the Wind Horse equine therapy ranch up in the hills overlooking the Coachella Valley, I've felt more collected than ever before. Zen. Focused. Finding myself able to help others by feeling as opposed to thinking outright with the logic propensities at extremes and my arms crossed over my chest. Multi-colored Tibetan prayer flags coiled around their biggest trees, blowing softly in the wind. I stopped and just as we were to leave for the return trip down through those serpentine snaking roads back into town, I watched fibers of a small red flag fringe blow off into the wind like horse hair, cantering on updrafts cast from the peaks of nearby topography. I had been doing some reading, and according to Buddhist mantra, hanging prayer flags benefits all living things of the world, as every time the wind blows and wafts against the flags blessing energy is sent out in all ten directions to purify every living soul that it touches—ten directions compromising the eight directions of the compass and two more—the heaven above and the earth below—dissolving hardships and obstacles that stand in the way of dharma to-be. This, in theory, will avoid shortcomings, generate auspiciousness, leading to the letting of goodness in the days to come. The same can be said of circumambulating a stupa, the main holy object of Buddhism according to the teachings of Chenrezig, the Compassionate-Eyed One. This is reason for Buddhist pilgrimage, home to Mahabodhi stupa, or Kathmandu, where the Bouddhanaism stupa sits.

What's interesting is the next bit:

"Any being who does one circumambulation of or one prostration to a stupa is liberated completely from the karma to be born in any of the levels of hell. One becomes a non-returner and achieves highest enlightenment."

A non-returner. Lucifer was a non-returner. My sense of being had been given to the belly of the beast, devoured in the darkest hollows of suffering, slain dreams, tortured thoughts—granting with some possibility, that my wings will return to me yet. With at least one step, one walk around the block, your spirit can be influenced by the so-called "circumambulation" to achieve varying states of serenity. Mantras, like prayers, are exuded outward, talking out, transmitting to higher powers. Meditation, the zen of being open, is the receiving and reception, the active and passive nodes of listening, to everythingness and otherness.

Practicing meditation on the "Eight Verses of Thought Transformation" coalesces the potential for subdued anger, in the reactive mind, attacking both body and mind with light, completely filling the body, purifying ignorance and selfishness. One mala, or 108 chants of the six-syllable mantra, follows the "om mani padme hums"' that come with meditations:

1. With the determination to obtain the greatest possible benefit from all sentient beings—
2. Whenever I am with others, I will always see myself as the lowest of all. And from the very depth of my heart, I will respectfully hold others as supreme—
3. In all actions, I will examine my mind and the moment a disturbing attitude arises, endangering myself and others, I will firmly confront and avert it—
4. Whenever I meet a person of bad nature who is overwhelmed by negative actions and intense suffering, I will hold such a rare one dear, as if I had found a precious treasure—
5. When others, out of jealousy mistreat me with abuse, slander and so on, I will accept defeat and offer victory—
6. When someone I have benefitted and in whom I have placed great trust hurts me very badly, I will practice seeing that person as my supreme teacher—
7. In short, I will offer directly and indirectly every benefit and happiness to all beings; I will practice in secret taking upon myself all their harmful actions and sufferings—
8. Without these practices being defiled by the stains of the eight worldly concerns and perceiving without grasping all phenomena as illusory, I will release all beings from the bondage of the disturbing, unsubdued mind and karma—

The spiritual realm of Eastern thought presenting quality again, in dynamic systems of value-driven dogmatic themes: determination; putting others above yourself; self-examination, confrontation of attitudes, aversion; recognizing suffering and killing it with love; looking at jealousy, abuse and slander as an acceptance of defeat and instead offering victory; practicing seeing past misplaced (mis)trust; pushing out happiness [indirectly] and secretly taking in harmful actions and sufferings, attitudes. Finally, and then finally, releasing all being(s) from the bondage of a disturbed, unsubdued and wildly karmatic mind.

"The karma of the sentient mind never just fades away, even in hundreds of millions of years. When the causes convene and the time is come, the consequences can do nothing but flower."--Lord Buddha Himself

Karma can be a total bitch. All forms of karma come back full circle, the vicious kind, the snake eating its tail, wrapping fearless infinity around my arm in a tattooed coil. Being with these horses, learning how to take a moment with them and not think of how I arrived here, or of how the things I've done in the past could have possibly affected my future or life—in its strange myriad of mystery and untold wisdom—had decided to place me in this space, from that place between two spaces leading into now. Right now.

Being here, in the beautiful time spent being alone with one's thoughts, looking at the clock every ninety seconds or so wishing for just another moment of solitude in my hotel-grade four-post bed with built-in cringe and creak. After a full day's work of listening to problem after problem from the same reoccurring character(s), taking on the load of emotional heft so they can see the light beyond the shadow for more than a few seconds of a glimpse, one might grow weary from not being able to take enough moments for introspection. Staying mindful, working on the self like an open heart on the half sleeves projecting zen images in ink—this is enough to preoccupy me for days, searching for that place where I have a quiet mind and a soul that is totally open, thoughts kept at bay. Here. Now.

Knowing others as well as you know yourself, being assertive in your openness and intuiting how to look for the similarities, and not the differences, is part of spiritual growth for the ongoing emotional development of a man's contented soul. To find this human temperament is to tolerate differences, in values; the approach to sensing, feeling, perception, and the philosophic dance with judgment belongs on the compass of personality between one pole and another. When a man softens his boundaries to those around him, giving his inner being the outward visibility if seen inside out, there is no longer a stranglehold on the captive empathy passively-contained within the solar plexus of his emotional fortitude. To put it simply, if a man was to release himself to the multifarious personalities of the world at large, moving through the world past judgment, past over-analysis and over-analyzing expectations, seeking true reality, where I discover that buoyancy of surfing the 'violent waves' until they subside, discovering them to be far less torrid and far more terrific than the original self: my everyday disguise.

"Happiness is not readymade—it comes from your own actions."- Gandhi