Todayand#8217;s FBA Dharmabyte, and#8220;Working With Energy,and#8221; is a short, personal talk by Singhamati given given at the 2011 National Young Triratna Buddhists Weekend retreat exploring the theme of and#8216;Energy for Enlightenmentand#8217;.
Dharmabytes from free buddhist audio
Working with Energy
[music] Dharma Bites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for your life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. Thank you, and happy listening. [music] So I'm going to start with pulling. [music] One day you finally knew what you had to do and began. Though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice. Though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. Men's my life each voice cried, but you didn't stop. You knew what you had to do. Though the wind cried with its stiff fingers at the varied foundations. Though their melancholy was terrible, it was already late enough. And a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. By little, by little, as you left their voices behind. The sars began to burn through the sheets of clamps. And there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own. That kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world. Determined to do the only thing you could do. Determined to save the only life you could save. So, I think in a way that poem probably says more than I'm going to say in the next 50 minutes. And yeah, I think the poem is called "The Journey" and it's by Mary Oliver. And I've often referred to this poem in the last 10 years of practicing this. And I think in a way the poem talks about how we work with energy or how I work with energy. So, we're on a journey and we're moving on that journey towards awakening or towards enlightenment. And thank you very much to talk about enlightenment as that uninterrupted state of creativity. So we're moving from a place of our old voices, our old habitual responses to the world. And we're learning to recognize the new voice. To find our ever more creative ways of responding and relating to our experience in the world. And in a way that's my journey. That is the journey in my opinion. Moving from the reactive to the creative. So how do we do that? How do I do that? I do that through, well the way I'm going to talk about it is anyway. It's through my relationship with the Buddhist Shakmin. And yeah, so I do that through relating to his life story, his life story as a journey. The teachings that he's given us. And the symbol, the symbol of the Buddha himself. So we've got this cool dude. We've been here and I was delighted to see it when I arrived. Because it holds the two essential elements. It holds the earth pack community and it holds the bowl. So these two symbols are the symbols that I use in my life to help me work with my energy. And guide me towards more creative, more awakened ways of being. So that's why I'm going to talk about these two symbols and how I use them in my life. So let's start with the earth-touching mudra. So we've got a lot about Mara in the last two days. So Mara, the kind of evil one, the demon, all those voices that we all know only too well. And comes to the Buddha or comes to go smooth when he's on that path that's genuine towards enlightenment. And he's trying to discourage him with all his minds to attain that sense of awakening. And in a way, Mara said, "Who are you? Who are you to gain enlightenment?" And in response to that, the Buddha's response is to touch the earth. He calls it earth to witness. He calls that earth to witness. And Mara knows at that point that he is defeated and he gains enlightenment. Now I don't know about any of you, but I feel like I touch you quite a lot in my life. Glad to be standing on it at this moment. Yeah, so I think that earth-touching mudra, it's a way in which we say no to those old voices. And a way in which we harness that energy and turn it towards the new voice. And I suppose in the spiritual life, there comes that point where you have a choice. We have a choice in most moments in our life, whether we want to listen to and respond with that old voice, with that old habit, or whether we want to listen to the new voice and be creative. And in a way, if I was listening to the old voice, I wouldn't be stood here right now. Because that old voice would be saying, "Who are you to be doing that?" And what would that room of people think of you? And you won't say the right thing, and they'll all think you'll love it, or something like that. So in a way, the old voice is always there. The old voice is always there. And it's probably the little girl inside of me who's still shouting those voices quite loudly. And in a way, that's Mary Oliver saying, "Man, my life." That's what those voices do, they want us. They're quite desperate actually at times. And we have to find the strength that we have to harness our energy to those more creative directions. And there's something about touching the earth, just saying, "No, I'm not going anywhere." I don't want to be driven by those voices anymore, and I want to be able to be who I really can be, or something. This quite often, this phrase from Roomie comes to me, which is, "You must ask for what you really want. Don't go back to sleep." You know, it's like, we must listen to those voices and ourselves. And I think that a touching movie has got me to where I am today. Yeah, there's a big event in my life that's got me here. When I became a lecturer, I was 24. I didn't have any other young Buddhist friends. And I prayed like, "Well, what were my friends saying for me?" It felt like a big coming out as a Buddhist in a way. And you know, what were they thinking of me? And will they still love me? Yeah, I'm a conformist. So I'm doing to be drawn towards conforming to the group. And in a way, I just had to touch the earth and say, "Okay, I'm going to be more than individually in this moment, and I'm going to follow what I truly believe." And to an extent, being ordained, the experience of alternation was a similar thing. Though the week before, I walked to the cuties, we'd get all tamed. But right, that's with Mara, actually. In Mara, through every doubt, he could at me. It's a kind of camouflage, to help Anthony describe it. And yeah, I agree with that, really. So, self-doubt, certain others, doubt in my connection with the Dharma, doubt in anything, really, and everything. And you just have to touch the earth in that moment. You have to know that there's something deeper in you that's drawing you on. Yeah. So I think touching here happens in those big moments in our lives. And it also happens every day in the little thing. So, you know, I don't know about you, but maybe you've fallen out with someone recently, and you kind of get angry with them. Maybe you feel a bit blamed or a bit criticized. And it's quite hard to stop that constant running of what happens and what you taste then, if you saw them, or whatever. It's that kind of anger that's in us that's kind of fueling. And I think there's a point where we just have to say enough now, actually. I can keep running this mental story over and over and over, but maybe enough now. Maybe enough. Maybe I've done enough of holding the cold, the burning cold up anger. Maybe I'll put it down, and touching the earth can be a way of playing enough, actually. Because the mind will proliferate endlessly, in greed and hatred and pollution. And craving is the same. I'm probably better at craving than I am, actually. Definitely more of a group type. So, you know, maybe you're lost in that endless fantasy, oh, again. And yeah, after a while, it's like you just notice it's like taking it out there and craving is taking it out there. And maybe if you just come back to a current experience, it's okay, actually. So maybe there's a point where, well, craving is the second noble truth, isn't it? It's the court of liquor. So, you know, there's a point where we have to say enough now, when our mind's got into those states of greed, hatred and pollution. And actually, there's the kindness in that. I used to think it was me being a bit hard on myself, you know, if I was feeling like I was in an angry place or a place of craving. I was like, oh, that's a nice thing, just to let myself be that. But actually, there's a kindness sometimes, you're just singing off. So, thank you so much. And I think we also do it in meditation, every time we come back to the breath. We're touching the earth. We're coming back to wise intention in that moment of where we want to put our attention rather than what we can have for breakfast or how we're feeling in that moment or whatever the story is that we're distracted by. So every time we come back to the breath, every time we come back to that intention to develop matter, we're touching it there. So, in a way that's touching the earth, it's a way of harnessing our energies. This is the way that I work with my energies to move it in ever more, I hope, creative directions. But what I found is I need the bowl too. So, the Buddha talks about right efforts and he gives us this image of the lute. So, he says, "If you want to pay lute beautifully, if the strings are too tight, it doesn't work. If the fingers are too loose, it doesn't work." And I think I have a tendency to the too tight, to be over-fakened, to the need to get it right all the time. The need to be spiritual, that mic on us, that's how it's made today. It will be my thought, it will be spiritual. Yeah, in a way that can just be a bit too tight. And one more of the other touching measure, I think, is the guiding stuff for me. I need the bowl as well, it balances it. And I think I can say this, I think in the spiritual life, I walk a razor sager. I try to walk in the middle way between being over-identified with my experience and being alienated with my experience. So, the other touching measure is a great way to stop us from being over-identified. But let's not tip into every dimension. So then we need the bowl to help us be open to our experience, be receptive to our experience. So, it's what the bowl is doing, it's just open and receptive. It holds everything. In a way I am the bowl, I am a bowl, that's all I am. I am experienced, ever-flowing, ever-impermanent, inherently empty. Nothing sticks. And you need that symbol to balance it, to keep reminding me of how we need to be open. So, thinking about what does that look like? So, like this morning in meditation, and probably we are just feeling really scared. There's a kind of little girl in me just going, "Oh my God, you're about to talk about yourself, that's really scary." And I think part of me just wants to keep coming back to the breath, come back to the breath. And actually, I needed something bigger, I needed to be a bigger container in that moment. That's your needed, that scared part to be there. Not in an over-identified way, not into having to go into every story, but every time that I've ever been scared and all of that. But just like, actually, that I mentioned said, it's got a lot of energy in it. And if I'm just trying to bypass that, it doesn't work. So, you need to be open to our experience as well. Yeah, sitting away, the bowl is a sense faster becoming a bigger container. So, being open, being a bigger enough container to hold all of our experience. Hold the joy, hold the despair, hold the ecstasy, hold the bliss, hold the... Whatever your experience is, whatever is the boredom, the neutral feelings, whatever it is, just... Oh yeah, that's how I am like. In a way, that's what we do when we try to become a bigger container. And that bigger container is just full of matter, just full of unconditional love. And, yeah, in a way, I think the bowls are becoming an ever more important symbol to me in my life. Maybe, through years of ear touching, I've developed, I wonder, a sense of more stability to be able to sit with the whole range of my experience. And so then the bowl is a way of trying to integrate that experience and bringing more unconditional love and acceptance. And I think the bowl is a place where, yeah, I'm a kind of personal note, I'm developing a deeper acceptance of who I am and the things maybe I don't know like about myself or the things that I wish weren't like that, but they are. And that's just very integrating, actually, not to have the cut off parts of myself. And so, yeah, I'm ever great to look at. And I think both of these symbols, the ear touching, which are in the bowl, actually, they think it's pointing out the mood. Yeah, they're not, they're not entering themselves. They're symbols to help us guide our energy towards more creative states. And actually, at least they are pointing to the little things that all things are impermanent, inter-essential, and unsatisfactory, that's what conditioned the Christmas. So to me, the two symbols really balance each other. And I get a sense that I need them, I need them to work together to help me find my own reference points, to be more between the video and to be more of a full human being open to all of my experience. Yeah, so in a way, that over-touching imagery is me finding my reference points. It's me being a true individual, it's me stepping free from the group and then it's other people. And the bowl is that, okay, but who are you really? And let's be accepting it, I think this is that experience. Now, very symbols may or may not work for you. Yeah, and I encourage you to find your own symbols. And Buddhism's full of symbols. So we've got hundreds of bidders and baby sat go figures, different colours, different moods. So find your own. Find your own symbol. It could be the vaguerre or the pervert that, you know, in the drawing book by last time. It could be the bow. It could be lots of upper symbols, the sword, magi tree, and the sword. Yeah, so there's all those symbols out there. There's also, if you're not into the bidders symbols that they're not resonating, then there's other symbols in nature. So that's what the Buddha often more called on. He called on the solid rock that cannot be shaken. Yeah? Or he called on the tree with its roots, or the Fletcher straightening arrow, or the carpenter-shaping wood. Yeah, so find your own symbol, whatever that is. And those symbols would change at the time, let them be fluid. But, you know, I do encourage you to find a symbol that's going to help you to guide your energies in more creative ways. And move towards, yeah, move towards being who you truly are. Now I'm going to end with a poem as well. This is called "Art of Disappearing by Nene, Em, and She Have Night". When they say, don't I know you, say no. When they invite you to the party, remember what parties are like or answering. Someone telling you in a loud voice that they once wrote a poem. Greeting certain fools on a paper plate, they're not calm. If they say we should get together, say why. It's not that you don't love them anymore. You're trying to remember something too important to forget. Trees, the monastery bell at twilight. Tell them you have a new project, it will never be finished. When someone recognises you in a grocery store, not briefly and become a cabbage. When someone you haven't seen in 10 years appears at the door. Don't start seeing him or your new songs. You will never catch up, walk around feeling like a leaf. Knowing you could tumble any second, then decide what to do with your time. Thank you. [Applause] We hope you enjoyed today's Dharma Bite. 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