God as Tofu

The other day I was in a restaurant, and I mistook the lyrics to a song being quietly played in the background as singing "God is like tofu."  This mistake made me laugh, but then I started thinking about this concept.

For those of you who cook with tofu, you know that it can come in a variety of textures and shapes.  Moreover, tofu is pretty bland by itself:  it tends to take on the taste of what it is cooked with.

It struck me that perhaps God really is like tofu.  It seems the idea and perception of God's nature -or even if there is not God- take on the characteristics of the believers.  There is an old adage that what someone says about another person says more about him/her than about the other person.  Perhaps the same is true of our religions:  what do different approaches to faith say about the societies and individuals that practice them?

Mortality and the Minute

The perception of time is a strange thing.  Our lives are finite, and our mortality assured.  Teaching attributed to Gautama Siddhartha tell us that we are not truly free and living until we face the knowledge that we will die.

The idea of dying bothers me.  The other night I had nightmares about it.  Buddhist thought on the existence of an afterlife is varied and runs the gamut from belief in reincarnation (an idea carried over into Buddhism from Hinduism) to a kind of merging of the consciousness into a spiritual whole and even to the denial of an afterlife. Buddhism easily holds in its ranks many atheists for whom there is firmly a belief in no creator and no afterlife.

It's just plain scary!  And the fact that I feel this way tells me I have not come to grips with my own mortality.  I don't want to die.  I don't want the education and experiences that enrich me now to perish when I'm gone.  I want to know who comes to my funeral and to watch over my loved ones from another dimension of being.

But I increasingly am not sure there is anything once I die.  Moreover, -similar to the Buddha's answer that we cannot know if there is a God and to focus on something we can do something about now- I don't think there really is any way for me to know if there will be an afterlife for me.  So I feel the hot, rushing wind of time speeding by me when I think of my own death.

And thus I had to kind of laugh and grimace the other day when I was agonizing through a long meeting and so wishing time would speed up so the meeting would be over.  I laughed and grimaced inside because of the oddity of juxtaposing my desire to live longer with my desire to have time pass faster.  Should I, this frail mortal creature, be relishing every last second I have?  Isn't even a boring or painful moment of experience better than no experience at all?  It all kind of seems absurd and again brings me back to this core concept that we must live in the Now.  Until that meeting, however, I had not realized that the Now I seek is one of intense peak moments of pleasure...or mystic oneness...or joy...or even poignant feelings of grief that highlight life.  A lot of daily life though is kind of boring, and those moments too are enriched by experiencing them in the Now.  It seems I need a good bit more wisdom and meditation though to train myself to serenely experience all those meetings!

On Being

Our minds constantly seek to be something in the future:  to be rich, to be doing something, to be with someone. Yet ironically the mind shies away from just being. To sit in the present and observe life is a challenge.  Thus I'm coming to view the mind as an organ of future thought and memory reorganizing. I'm not sure what to call the faculty that peacefully observes the present without needing to judge and categorize it. Meditation brings out this Observer. 

Was Gautama Siddhartha a Real Person

One of the most sensitive subjects in religious studies is whether a beloved religious figure was an actual, historic figure. Even for those people for who there is actual historic proof they lived, their lives are often shrouded in myths and legends. 

I have a number of thoughts on this topic. For one, does it matter if the teacher existed in the way our stories say?  Or are the teachings important?  I guess this depends on one's perspective.  

For example, can Christians find meaning in a Christianity with no historic Jesus or resurrection?  Does the Mormon church fall apart if Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon and there were no golden plates or guiding angel?  Does the Torah stand if there was no Moses?

In turn, what if the Buddha is merely a legendary amalgam of different people and their teachings?  Can Buddhism survive on its message if there is no clear messenger?

To this question, my personal answer is yes as a Buddhist.  After 2500 years, it is challenging to separate myth and history regarding Gautama Siddhartha. For me, the practice and teachings are what I find helpful and of importance. I would certainly like there to have been this one genius Buddha who expounded these teachings and served as a role model. Nevertheless, my belief system does not require a Buddha anymore than I need to know the essence of Italian cooking was developed by one incredible chef to be able to take delight in Italian cuisine.  The recipes live on and develop. I suspect Buddhism similarly developed.  And if there was a historic Gautama Siddhartha, I suspect he would want us to focus on the practice. 

Being Anchored

One form of meditation is called "tonglin" and focuses on visualizing yourself smiling, happy, healthy and surrounded by light. Then you visualize someone you love being happy, smiling, healthy and surrounded by light.  Then you proceed to visualizing the same for a person for whom you have neutral feelings. Finally you visualize this happy light around someone with whom you are having a troubled relationship.  In each visualization you picture yourself smiling and laughing with the other person. 

This meditation has produced some amazing results in my life. It has helped me deal with strong feelings of anger with other people.  It has helped me find peace and even joy working with previously difficult people. 

Today when I meditated and turned to a tonglin sitting, I realized that the anchor of this chain of joyful visualizations is the self. If one cannot first anchor yourself in love for yourself ("maitri" in Buddhist terms), then it is impossible to share this light with others.  Loving compassion for our own humanity and selves is the gateway and anchor for compassion for others. 

The Challenges of Happy Times

I think everyone enjoys it when things are going well, and we are happy.  Yet happiness also has some challenges when it comes to meditation practice. At least in my experience when I am unhappy meditation is a release. It is a way to sit down and contemplate balance and a mindfulness of being in the now. When I'm happy I'm often lost in little mental movies of all the future delights I'm expecting. Thus when I'm happy it is more of a challenge to make myself sit down and meditate. It is more of a challenge to find the balance in my life. It is harder to put down a happy expectation that it is to let go of an unhappy present. Good times also often mean that one is with friends and loved ones.  When one is in a new love or deeply in love with one's longterm partner, it can be very challenging to find the balance of not being attached to people.  

Yet meditation gives me balance. It also helps me to balance my relationships. Being mindful does not mean that you cannot love people. It also doesn't mean that you are necessarily going to become detached from them. In my experience, however, it does help me to keep a proper balance. This means for me that I do not look to make myself happy through another person.  It also means that it I keep my balance and realize that I am not here to make other people happy. That's their job. Likewise it is not their job to make me happy.  

Meditation helps me step back and evaluate all these feelings and emotions and actions on my part. It also helps me to shut off my thoughts for a bit so that I can regain it counterbalancing focus. Yet I do find that happy times are more challenging in terms of keeping my focus and meditating regularly. I've learned, however, that consistent practice brings me better quality of life, better balance with relationships, greater compassion, and an inner peace. 

The Peace of The Temporary

Spring is coming.  The ice in my driveway from almost two months of below freezing temperatures was largely melted last evening.  Winter can seem forever, but it ends.

The other night my partner and I watched the first episode of Orange Is the New Black.  It is a series about an upper middle class bisexual woman who once carried a suitcase of money for her lesbian lover who was a drug dealer.  As a result she has been sentenced to 15 months in a women's prison in New York.  It is based on a true story.

There is a character in the prison nicknamed Yoga Jones.  She is an older woman who teaches yoga and seems to follow a Buddhist or at least yogic tradition.  The main character, Piper Chapman, is in shock at being in prison, and Yoga Jones gives her this interesting piece of advice:

Yoga Jones: Do you know what a mandala is?
Piper Chapman: Um, those are those round Buddhist art things.
Yoga Jones: The Tibetan monks make then out of dark sand laid out into big beautiful designs. And when they're done, after days or weeks of work, they wipe it all away.
Piper Chapman: Wow, that's, that's a lot.
Yoga Jones: Try to look at your experience here as a mandala, Chapman. Work hard to make something as meaningful and beautiful as you can. And when your done, pack it in and know it was all temporary.

I found this exchange really meaningful.  I am preparing for an important job interview, and I am finding preparing my job talk a rather anxiety-filled endevour.  This morning as I meditated I came back to this dialogue from the show.

One could look at the work of the monks on the mandala as futile or as a depressing analogy to death and mortality.  Nevertheless, I think the message is about happiness.

The joy of living is giving your heart and attention -your love if you will- to the present moment without worry about the future.  The future will always -ALWAYS- sweep away the past.  Religions die.  Cities crumble.  Professors retire.  Servers crash.  Heaven and happiness are found in the moment.  Placing each bit of colored sand and revelling in the beauty is important.  That broom will come whether the mandala is perfect or not.   Dye your sand.  Place it with care.  Relish the puzzle.  Laugh.