Foundations of Daoism

Posted on August 17, 2019 by admin

Guidance from my teacher’s teacher, Dr. Jeffrey C. Yuen, an 88th generation Taoist priest from the Jade Purity School, Lao Tzu sect, and a 26th generation priest of the Complete Reality School, Dragon Gate sect.

4 Stages of Daoist Meditation:

1. Relaxation of the body: The physical body, muscles, bones, fluids etc, find a way to settle down so that sensations do not become a distraction. (Sthira sukham asanam)
2. Concentration: focusing of the mind through various means. Daoism often uses the micro-cosmic orbit to link different parts of the body to each other in circuits of qi/energy/prana, integrating front and back, inner and outer, yin and yang.
3. Relaxation of mental body/mind. The concentration practice can create its own form of mental tension through the challenge of harnessing the mental energy. It may feel like work! Create an ‘inner smile’ so you enjoy the practice. This becomes concentration without distraction, while relaxed.
4. Lightness of spirit. The final stage is a feeling of levitation or lightness, as spirit is freed up from entanglements.

4 Basic Principles of Daoism:

1. Shen: reconnecting back with my ancestry to learn and have respect for the gift of life that has been passed along to me. This is the early reference to the divine, the source of all life.

2. Xian: Life or existence always arises in a duality known as yin and yang, or as Patanjali would say, the dvandvas, the pairs of opposite. One of the things we do as humans is to take the natural order of duality, of yin and yang, and divide the world into good and bad. This is of course the exact same action described by the second skandha we have been discussing in our Buddhist teachings.

3. Ming: Is about our lives and the choices we make in this dualistic world. The human being has paradoxically both free will and pre-destiny. We are born into a given body, in a given social climate, at a given historical moment, at a specific place on this planet. Without getting into the subtle realms of karma, as humans we have to face the world as it is presented to us. Deep reflection here shows that all human experience has its ups and downs, good days and bad days. This is the natural cyclical view of Daoism, but we often, as mentioned previously, get entangled in chasing after ‘good’ and running away from ‘bad’. This is not necessary. Alan Watts, in his last book “The Watercourse Way” tells the story of a farmer to illustrate this.

This farmer’s horse had run away, and the neighbors all came by to offer condolences for such bad luck. “Maybe” the farmer said. The next morning his horse returned followed by six wild horses, and his neighbors came exclaiming his good fortune. “Maybe”, the farmer said. That day his son broke his leg trying to tame one of the wild horses. “How awful”, said the neighbors when they heard the story. “Maybe” said the farmer. The next day, the local army recruiters came by to conscript his son into the military, but he was rejected because of the broken leg. “How lucky”, said the neighbors. “Maybe” said the farmer.

Our free will comes in regards to how we react to the world. An angry person tends to see an angry world, just as an anxious person tends to see an anxious world. A happy person tends to see a happy world and a loving person tends to see a loving world. In other words, we have the opportunity to make the best of the world we have been given, not that this is in any way easy. In the chapter 2, verse 48 of the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna offers similar advice to Arjuna

yogasthah kuru karmaani sangam tyaktvaa dhananjaya
siddhyasiddhyoh samo bhuutvaa samatvam yoga ucyate

Remaining steadfast in yoga, oh Dhananjaya (Arjuna), perform actions, abandoning attachment, remaining the same to success and failure alike. This evenness of mind is called yoga.

This steadfastness or samatvam comes from reflection and the disciplined cultivation of your own personal principles for living. In Daoism, as in yoga, you yourself reflect upon your life and the world around you and use your own insights for self discovery. It is not a belief system that you ‘buy into’.

4. The Dao: The Way: with reflection, mediation, observation of life, we discover our own connection to shen, the divinity, we can reconcile our behaviors, and begin to live our lives in harmony with all, moment to moment. It is self cultivation.

The Five Roots, or Lessons for Humanity

(From Chinese Herbal Medicine, these are literally roots that carry lessons as well as herbal support for humans. The homonym shen, although written as a different character, is used to describe the plant aspect, that points back to shen as spirit. )

Sha Shen: Life is impermanent. Trying to grasp sand is futile, as is trying to grasp at life. Let if flow through you. Appreciate the impermanence as something beautiful and delicate, so you can be totally present and appreciate what is happening in this moment.
Ku Shen: Bitterness: Life the root ku, life can have its bitter moments. All part of the nature of things. We have conflicts and challenges, but these allow us to grow. If life was always simple and easy, we would never learn anything. Also, we learn that those who may cause us conflict are also Divine, so we learn to suffer together.
Ren Shen: Humility: We are being held/ cared for by a much larger presence. The Universe is operating as a vast on-going flow of love and our ‘small selves’. To be human, to be humane, is to be humble as we bow to the Divine, not in fear, but in gratitude for all the little gifts.
Dan Shen: Alchemy: Dan means alchemy, as in the term dantien. Our physical form has spirit as its fundamental nature, but this is often hidden. Alchemy asks how can I redeem, from matter, Spirit, which is immutable, incorruptible. And these can be seen in many small ways on a day to day basis. A smile, a bird song, a flower, the night sky, a leaf falling from a tree. We don’t need large miracles, but only to see the miraculous of life itself. Can we change ourselves such that we know this as a living reality, and not just as a good idea.
Xuan Shen: Ever Desire-less. When we let go of our thoughts, beliefs and desires, we begin to see the mystery. As we humans we often think that we can conjure up the divine through ideas and beliefs, in our own images and desires. But ultimate mystery, the Dao, Truth, is not available to our thoughts. It is in awe and letting of of our beliefs. This takes a lifetime of practice.

And Now, we return to the Nei Jing Tu, for your cultivation of these aspects of Daoism.

The first set of lines above the image is from just to the right of the lower dantien and describes aspects of the whole picture, the single grain of millet sitting just above the crown chakra (GV-20). The blue eyed foreign monk is said to be Bodhidharma, the Indian monk who brought Buddhism to China. Can you find that inner support? Can you find the other images in the painting, and then inside your own inner sensory world.
The second set of lines is across from the middle dantien and the third, across from the upper dantien. Let your imagination and perception meet. There is much imagery around the organs in Chinese Medicine as well.

The iron ox plows the field where gold coins are sown;
Engraving the stone, the young lad holds a string of cash.
A single grain of millet contains the entire world;
Mountains and streams are decocted in a half-sheng cauldron.
The eyebrows of white headed Lao-tzu hang down to earth,
And the blue-eyed foreign monk holds up the heavens.
Orient yourself towards the mysterious and it is realized-
Outside of this mystery there is no other mystery.

I am properly and attentively cultivating my own field-
Inside there are numerous sprouts that live for ten thousand years.
The flowers resemble yellow gold, their color not uncommon;
the seeds are like jade grain, their fruits perfectly round.
Cultivation completely depends on the earth of the Central Palace.
Irrigation necessarily relies on the spring in the Upper Valley.
The practice is completed suddenly and I attain the great Tao-
I wander carefree over land and water as an immortal of P’eng-lai.

Fa-tsang says: Violet eyes clarify the four great oceans;
the white light pervades Mount Sumeru. (Mt Meru in Sanskrit)
Tz’u-shih (Maitreya Buddha) says:
Between the eyebrows white light constantly emanates.
This can liberate all sentient beings from the suffering of ceaseless incarnations.

100 years of Gratitude

Posted on December 14, 2018 by admin

I was hoping he would make it to today and beyond. Surpassing his guru/brother-in-law Krishnamacharya in time spent on our planet would have pleased him no end, but 95 plus years would have to do. Happy 100, B.K.S. Iyengar, wherever in the cosmos you may be!

I was blessed to have been able to not only study with him, but to have a deeply personal/cosmic connection that existed on a multiplicity of planes. Relationships with spiritual teachers are always simultaneously simple and complex. Simplicity is the common ‘Ground of Being’ where you meet as fellow humans in love and mutual respect. Complexity is the interaction of the personal karma you both bring to the table that is rarely clear but always educational.

B.K.S Iyengar defies categorizing. Sui generis all the way. His fiery genius has spawned a world wide following in exploring embodied spiritual wisdom. His deep insecurities, stemming I am sure from a very challenging and often abusive childhood, kept getting in the way of his finding a lasting deep inner peace. But that edge fueled his relentless desire to explore. Genius often carries that paradox. Navigating his energy field was challenging for me, and my own personal spiritual growth eventually required me to step back from the unresolved shadows of the community arising around him. But he gave me three great gifts, unsurpassable spiritual treasures, that remain with me moment to moment and nurture me.

The first gift was how to practice. Within the first few days of my meeting him in Pune in January of 1982, he came up to me while I was struggling in trikonasana. He puts his foot directly toes to toes with mine and says ” why is this skin pink and this skin white? Why is this turning in, but this out? He was asking me to feel, directly in the moment, what was arising. There was no ‘right or wrong’ action. Just, are you fully present? Of course I was trying to ‘think’ my way into the answers and was totally flummoxed, but he was amazingly patient.

The second gift was validating my own practice. This was a real gift as he told his assistants to ‘leave me alone’ during the classes in Pune. There were often a handful of Iyengar wannabes roaming the classes looking to ‘adjust’ students so they would get the ‘right’ pose, but he kept them away from me. My body is quirky and he let me explore his teachings without outside interference. That was huge for me.

The third gift was the heart to heart connection that came outside of the classroom setting. In the previous post, we looked at the Brahma Viharas, the profoundly healing and heart opening practices passed down from Vedic times, of great importance to the Buddhists and yogis as well. As an example of ‘it is always the present moment, this reminds me of one of the more extraordinary moments in our complicated relationship. In the summer of 1987, the second Iyengar National convention was to be held in Cambridge MA. As the president of the BKSIYANC, the sponsors of the 1984 convention in San Francisco, I was asked by Patricia Walden, one of the local organizers, to address the teachers gathering the evening before the official opening. I was to speak just before Iyengar who would say some words to complete the evening.

For the previous months I had been studying and working with the Brahma Viharas as I was writing an article on them for the Iyengar Yoga Institute Review, our tri-annual journal published in San Francisco. I was clear that the message of ‘citta prasadana’ , Patanjali’s description in I-33 of the result of practicing the Brahma Viharas, was of great importance to the yoga community, as some stresses and strains had appeared over the three previous years since the first convention in 1984. I had it all planned in my head, as I didn’t use notes.

When the time came to speak, I got somehow became sidetracked by something, or many things and just as I was finishing I realized that I had totally spaced out and forgot all about Patanjali and Sutra I-33. It was so disappointing, but all in my head, or so I thought.

B.K.S is next and as he comes up to the microphone, he looks right in my eyes. He then addresses the group: ” I had prepared to say some words to you tonight, but something has just come to me now so I will change.” And he then proceeds to base his whole talk on sutra I-33, explaining the Brahma Viharas and their importance. It was a serious OMG moment for me.I not mentioned my topic to anyone, but he somehow he tuned into me and the whole field and joined me in the teaching. The heart to heart, being truly ‘seen’ and validated by your teacher, on the spiritual plane, in the moment, was a gift that keeps giving.

One of the many aspects of Iyengar that I truly loved was his total lack of pretension. He did not pretend to be holy, or above the messiness of the human condition. If he was in a bad mood, everyone could feel it. He could be embarrassingly obnoxious when his anger got the better of him, and in a split second switch to being overwhelmingly generous and loving. He also had a great sense of humor. There was the time in Pune when he came up to me while we (the class) were in uttanasana. He bends down and sort of whispers to me “do you mind if I use you to make a joke?”. Caught a bit by surprise, I said of course. He stops the class and has everyone come over to watch me and my hamstrings. “Look at this man. He is a mule.” He then proceeds to adjust here, slap there, touch here. Energy moves and the pose changes. “See now? This man was a mule and now I have turned him into a racehorse.” And then he starts giggling.

I’m still a mule, but one very grateful for having been blessed by his presence. Happy Birthday B.K.S!!! See you on the cosmic planes.

Also a Happy Birthday shout out to my son, S.B.K., Sean Bishop Kilmurray, turning 22 today.

Love, Death and the Skandhas: pt 2

Posted on December 3, 2018 by admin

“Life and death are of supreme importance. Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost. Each of us should strive to awaken. Awaken! Take heed, do not squander your life.”

This quote from Dogen Zenji, founder of the Soto School of Zen in Japan in the 1200’s, is recited at the end of the afternoon zazen practice session at the Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, and alludes to the first of the five invitations from Frank Ostaseski’s book mentioned in the previous post. The five invitations are useful to everyone, at all times and are at the core of spiritual practice.

1. Dont’ Wait! Begin Now, not later, not tomorrow, not when you feel better, or have more time. Do not squander your life! This breath: pause, relax, open, allow; begin again …. Practice is not just on the mat, but every moment of your life is your practice. Take heed! Awaken! You never know when Lord Yama may come knock knock knockin’ at your front door. Be ready to greet him. Learn your own skandhas and transform them through practice.

2. Welcome Everything, Push Away Nothing. In a previous post I included the famous Rumi poem, the Guest House, which describes the sense of this second invitation. We tend to seek pleasure and avoid pain, at all levels of existence, but we can never heal the wounds that do not get to see the light of our own discriminating wisdom. Your soul will provide lessons that need to be learned, and they usually involve some type of pain or suffering. Trust that you will be able to face the challenges.

Now in cases of more serious trauma, we may need outside support. Somatic Experiencing, the work of trauma resolution developed by Peter Levine and others is an excellent therapeutic approach to working with embodied trauma. Other types of psychotherapy can also be helpful to hold the larger energy field and help the client modulate their own nervous system. All of the upayas, (the Sanskrit word for ‘skillful means of stabilizing the mind field and opening the heart) are helpful when practiced. We will look at working with the Brahma Viharas as an upaya in the next post.

3. Bring Your Whole Self to the Experience.

Social media has been a disaster when it comes to the third invitation as it has created a forum for people to contrive personalities out of fantasy and feeds the illusion that faults, fears, weaknesses or other unpleasant aspects of our real moment to moment self sense need to be hidden away. Not just from others, but from ourselves as well.

There is wisdom that comes from facing the ‘undesirable aspects’ of our selves. To quote Frank, ” Yet more than once I have found an ‘undesirable’ aspect of myself, one about which I had previously felt ashamed and kept tucked away, to be the very quality that allowed me to meet another person’s suffering with compassion instead of fear or pity.”

My aggressive cancer diagnosis has uncovered all sorts of hidden nooks and cranies of my ‘non’ conscious mind, where fear, shame and other unpleasantries lurk. My practice is to welcome them, and then bring them into the light, holding them lightly and compassionately, but neither ignoring nor getting lost in them. Not claiming this is fun, but necessary.

4. Find a Place of Rest in the Middle of Things

Last July, I had an MRI done on my prostate, and that involved being tied down inside this tubular machine for a half hour or so, with load banging noises and whirring sounds surrounding me. I was supposed to be still so as to not blur the images. This was good practice in finding a place of rest in the middle of things. Sometimes, the chaos comes from the outside, as with the medical world. Sometimes, it comes from the inside, where you own emotions and thinking are creating the chaos. Resting in the middle of things is , of course, meditation practice. Meditation means literally staying in the middle, staying centered, in spite of what is happening around you, or inside you.

This is not an easy practice so it is best to start with simple challenges. Can I sit in a quiet room for 10 minutes, without needing to ‘do’ something. The inner urges to keep busy, to ‘fix the problem’, to ‘improve’, are relentless. The demands from the outer world are equally daunting. Pause, take a deep breath, relax, open to the moment, allow it to be just as it is. Repeat, again and again. The urge to ‘do’ is habitual, but can be transformed through practice.

In the Samadhi Pada, sutras I-12 to I-16, Patanljali gives two practices right away to get the process rolling; abhyasa and vairagyam. Abhyasa is developing stability, the capacity to not be moved’ from your seat’, from your center. Vairagyam is letting go of attachments to habits, beliefs, thoughts and patterns of action that perpetuate suffering.

5. Cultivate ‘Don’t Know’ Mind.

How do we balance the need to know, with deeply recognizing that ultimate mystery is ‘unknowable’. Like all spiritual practice, paradox is at the center of things. When I was first diagnosed with the prostate cancer last July, there were a lot of ‘unknowns’. What type of cancer was it, how long had it been there, and had it spread to anywhere else, were the first of the questions. Then there is conflicting information on just how to find out. Some feel that needle biopsies are dangerous; they can lead to infections and cause the cancer cells to spread. I absorbed that and paused. I had some blood work done to find if there were any metastasized cells in the blood stream. None from the prostate. Good news.

But my PSA (Prostate Specific Antigen, a marker for prostate cancer) numbers were going up. Not good. Following my intuition, I finally decided to do the needle biopsy to get the specific data on my cancer, and fortunately I did not put it off any longer, as the biopsy reports came back with gleason scores of 8 and 9, indicators of aggressive cancer growth. Not good, again, but with good data, a plan of action has been hatched.

After consulting with radiation oncologist Anthony D’Amico at the Dan Farber in Boston, I (we) have decided to undergo a combination of radiation and hormonal therapy. Prostate cancer feeds on testosterone, so I have just begun taking testosterone inhibiting hormones, and will probably be on those for several years. The word is I may begin to have hot flashes, grow breast tissue, gain weight, lose muscle mass and sex drive, and begin to binge watch chick flicks. Not sure about my voice.

The radiation will take place over an eight to nine week period, 5 days a week for 10 minutes each session. I will be doing this in Boston, probably beginning in early March, and there is a place where I can stay for free near the hospital, provided for out-of -town cancer patients. The radiation targets the prostate specifically, the hormones both the prostate and any other place where the prostate cancer cells may have landed. I have a bone scan coming up to see if there are any cancer cells growing in the bones. Because of the cancer, part of the prostate has fused with the rectum, so surgery will not be an option. No clean margins available.

Lots of new and useful information, but the big unknown remains. Dr D’Amico said there is a 70 – 80 % chance that in nine years I could be cancer free. No guarantees, but then again, life doesn’t offer guarantees; just possibilities to learn and grow. Anyone who is alive now knows how chaotic our local slice of the cosmos is right now. We are all in a big ‘don’t know’ moment, so it is a great opportunity to open to not knowing. We can still gather info, make intelligent decisions and lead lives of wisdom and compassion, but ultimately ‘don’t know mind’ can be our place of refuge.

This means the first skandha becomes in invitation to open, not run away. In 1990, during the third Iyengar Convention in San Diego, I was in deep emotional turmoil. I had just left a previous relationship to move in with Kate and repercussions were rippling through our local yoga world. I felt that I was in the middle of a minor nervous breakdown. But I somehow managed to teach my classes and had some extraordinary experiences with Mr. Iyengar, but one day, out of the blue, it seemed to me, he looked at me with those big bushy eyebrows flaring and said “you are always trying to escape’. He caught me totally by surprise and I did not know quite what to make of his comment. Those words left a deep impression and I only recently realized he was referring to that first skandha. He saw me at the abyss but choosing to not fully face it. Given his early years of serious illness, pain and emotional struggle, I’m sure he was very familiar with the first skandha.

There is no escape from the truth of impermanence and any intellectual resolution is totally inadequate. It is a deeply embodied state, where nerves and organs can say yes to their own fragile and yet vitally alive presence. If we can just learn to trust in life and rest there, then the infinite light of the timeless extending out over the cliff invites us to be the ultimate mystery. Emaho!