February | 2016 | Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray)

To be honest, I was starting to think maybe I’d picked the wrong word this year. A month has passed already and instead of feeling immersed, focused, clear, I was feeling a little lost. Yoga and writing come more naturally to me, but I was finding it hard to meditate, let alone deepen my study of the dharma. This morning I was scrolling through my Facebook feed, trying to find some direction or distract myself when I saw a post from Lodro Rinzler, “New video teaching up to kick off a year series studying Atisha’s mind training slogans.” I recognized the screen capture from an email I got at the beginning of the week from him, one that I’d filed away like all the others for some later date when I have “more time.”

You can sign up for Lodro’s newsletter and he sends a meditation challenge every Monday. Sometimes I watch, but more often I file it away for later. When I saw the post on Facebook, I actually read what it was about, and I was in.

Three years ago, Susan Piver was focusing her Open Heart Project Practitioner teachings around the lojong slogans. I enjoyed it so much, was learning so much. I have two books from Pema Chödrön about the same topic and was using them to help deepen my understanding. Then Susan made the difficult decision to discontinue the Practitioner program, and we never made it past the 17th one. So I was so happy to see that Lodro was teaching them, that he was committed to the full set of 59.

Lojong (or “mind training”) slogans are from a classical Tibetan Buddhist text, and are described by Pema Chödrön as offering “pithy, powerful reminders on how to awaken our hearts in the midst of day-to-day life, under any circumstances.” The editor of the book by Chögyam Trungpa about these same slogans describes them this way,

The Root Text of the Seven Points of Training the Mind is a list of fifty-nine slogans, which form a pithy summary instruction on the view and practical application of mahayana Buddhism. The study and practice of these slogans is a very practical and earthy way of reversing our ego-clinging and of cultivating tenderness and compassion. They provide a method of training our minds through both formal meditation practice and using the events of everyday life as a means of awakening.

Pithy. Practical. Perfect. I don’t know if I’ve told you this before, kind and gentle reader, but it’s that practical application component that draws me to Buddhism. All the stuff about various deities and realms and karma is interesting to me as an intellectual exercise, but it’s the part where the rubber meets the road that I get excited about. I look to the dharma as a way to understand how to be a better human — how to meet what is beautiful and tender and keep my heart open, how to face what is brutal and terrible and not give up.

And the first lojong slogan is one of my favorites. It presents what are sometimes referred to as the Four Reminders. The slogan is “first, train in the preliminaries,” and those preliminaries or reminders are:

Maintain an awareness of the preciousness of human life, the luck of a human birth
Be aware of the reality that life ends, death comes for everyone
Know that karma is real, actions have consequences
Contemplate that as long as you are caught up in yearning for pleasure and shying away from pain, the suffering of suffering, you will remain trapped in unhappiness

I’ve written about the Four Reminders before. I was happy to revisit them this morning. Even happier to feel myself back on the path, encouraged by what Pema says about this study, that “when we work with the slogans, ordinary life becomes the path of awakening.”

1. My amaryllis is blooming again. For the whole year I had it at my house while Eddy Hall was being remodeled, nothing. Now that it’s back “home” it’s working on at least five double blooms. It cheers me up every time I walk into my CSU office.

2. Our Highlander is running again. It broke down last week, had to get towed to the shop, and there was a chance a big bad thing had happened and it was done. It’s 14 years old, so it would have been disappointing but not unreasonable. But for the price of the maintenance it was 600 miles away from needing anyway, we replaced what needed fixed and it’s on the road again.

3. We bought a new car in the meantime. We’d been planning on it, since our other car is 18 years old, and since we are driving to Oregon this summer with the dogs and wanted something more dependable. With the Highlander in the shop, it seemed like a good time to take the plunge. Blue wouldn’t be my first choice, but since it’s really the dogs’ car, it works (i.e. Ringo Blue). It’s a hybrid and has so many fancy features it’s practically sentient, probably smarter than me. (The first night we had it, after spending an hour reading the manuals, Eric looked out the window, and when I asked “what are you looking at?” he said “I wanted to make sure it hadn’t driven away”). I feel so lucky that we have the means and that the people at Pedersen Toyota made it so easy.

4. Snow day! That hardly ever ever happens. In fact in the 15 years I’ve been at CSU, we only had one other full day closure and one day that they shut down at noon. It was nice to not have to worry about getting anywhere. And the dogs loved it.

5. Teaching. Even though I had to cancel my Tuesday morning class because of the 14 inches of snow, I subbed my Wednesday and Friday morning classes. I am still amazed by the confidence I have teaching yoga, knowing how to sequence things and what cues to give and not caring that sometimes I’m the fattest person in the room. I also have two more Wild Writing, Crazy Wisdom workshops scheduled.

Bonus joy: roasted butternut squash, physical therapy, the rest of the final season of Mad Men on Netflix, clean sheets, clean water, a warm shower and a clean towel, how the dogs come in and “take a shower” with me — sleeping on the floor each on their own bath mat, how much Ringo loves frisbees, how much Sam loves getting in bed with us in the morning and thumping his tail until I pet him, our new bathroom (yes, still), texting, Wild Writing class, being willing to show up even when I’m not perfect, and kitchen counter love notes.