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Years ago I dreamt that I was riding bare-back on a palamino horse on a large plain in Mongolia. Many of our dreams do not “come true.” But this is one dream I want to fulfil.

However, I went vicariously through my friend “Red” (Carell Doerrbecker) who, with her husband Konrad, flew to Asia (including Hong Kong, China and Mongolia) this July and returned with some fabulous stories that she shared with me, Ted and Merrily Spearin, Paul Persofsky and Jen Janes over breakfast in Toronto, Canada in early August.

Turns out she almost didn’t make it to Mongolia because she flirted with the wrong guy in Hong Kong.

Here’s “Red” recounting what happened.

Konrad’s team has just won gold, silver and bronze at the World Championship of Dragon Boaters in Hong Kong, (July 04-05, 2012). Before flying to Beijing, we go to see the 112-foot majestic, slate-grey statue of the Buddha which is surrounded by statues of bodhisattvas. In the distance stands the Po Lin Monastery. Joining the tourists are cows and bulls! I pat the cows. No problem. They are docile.

Now, back home in Toronto, whenever a dog comes to me to get groomed, I start the ceremony with “Who’s the handsome boy?” accompanied by a wink.

So I saunter up to a Brahmin bull and extend my hand to pat him, saying “Who’s the handsome boy?” I don’t remember if I winked or not. But what I can tell you for certain is that that’s the last time I’ll flirt with a bull. His head goes down. His horns hit my legs. I fly threw the air. I land in a square where people wait for buses……My initial evaluation of this guy so far? He plays rough.

Konrad, startled but not surprised — my red hair, like Anne of Green Gable’s, gets me into these kinds of situations every once in a while — runs over to help me. “What was the very last thing you said to that bull?” he demands?…Oh don’t tell me, I know…Who’s the handsome boy?” I nod numbly. My face is now as red as my hair. “You’re lucky he didn’t kill you,” says Konrad. “He could have. He chose not to.”

Maybe with my red hair the bull mistakes me for a Spanish matador with his red flag. Or perhaps my flirtatiousness — “Who’s the handsome boy?” — encourages him to get overly-familiar with me, even though it was our first date. Or maybe that is just his way of showing friendliness! At any rate, Konrad laughed for the rest of the two-week trip.

Here are five pics to accompany the story above. Read the rest of this entry »

PLEASE NOTE: Each of us has both masculine and feminine energies, whatever our gender. However, for purposes of this webpost, I will use men as my example of the masculine energy. For the word “man” you can read “male\animus energy.”

In positive manifestation, masculine means tolerant, patient and accommodating. The fundamental masculine quality is immovability and bluntness. Men may have the wisdom to know what is happening, whether just or unjust, good or bad, negative or positive, and to just let things be as they are. Masculine energy is also known for loyalty, reliability, and the ability to join in groups to achieve common goals. It is culturally associated with politics, institutions and traditions. <source: Judith Simmer-Brown, “Pure Passion”, Shambhala Sun, July 1999. Click here to read full article.>

But there are times when “to just let things be as they are,” as mentioned above, arises from fear of hearing something you’d rather not hear, or having to express feelings you’d rather not express, not from a positive application of the masculine principle. On this negative manifestation of male energy, Judith Simmer-Brown comments:

On the other hand, masculine energy can be too accommodating, even lazy, and tends to be dull and oblivious. Without the stimulation of feminine wisdom the masculine can go to sleep or be lulled into merely habitual routines…. Click here to read full article. <source: Judith Simmer-Brown, Pure Passion>

While growing up, I was somewhat of a “daddy’s girl” and wanted to know that he was there for me. Like many men in my experience, Dad didn’t have a great deal of enthusiasm for expresing feelings. Or talking about personal problems.

At the age of 21, while walking along the white sands of Fort Myers Beach, Florida at Christmas, I told him I felt that he didn’t support me. He was surprised. By “unsupportive” I meant that he didn’t initiate a discussion of matters that concerned me. He could sense that there were areas of my life with which I wasn’t pleased, or about which I might be troubled. But he “just let things be as they are.” As a result, I didn’t initiate discussions with him because I felt he didn’t want to hear or talk about these matters.  I interpreted this lack of meaningful communication to mean that he was uninterested. Once he understood how I saw his silence, he broached topics that he thought may concern me without waiting for me to initiate conversation.

For my father to think that he knew what I was concerned about and therefore didn’t have to talk to me about them, was, to me, an intellectualization. I believe that the purpose can be to avoid the expression of our genuine feelings vis-a-vis significant others, in this case, daughters\women. Intellectualizing feelings, because the male energy thinks it that it knows all the answers or that the expression of feelings is really not important, can shut the door on important aspects of relationships that are significant to us.

Here is a pictorial representation of the negative male energy:

<The Son of Swords card in the Motherpeace Tarot deck represents the negative male energy. It) implies that you are approaching your goals in an overly rational way. The thoughts that determine your movements are like words cutting you off from the nourishment you need to sustain life. The cold logic of your ego is about to strangle the dove of your heart. You need to soften and remember that you are not functioning in a vacuum. Let go of the false sense of isolation you feel and connect to the rest of life….you need to stop thinking and get down to feeling. <source: Motherpeace: A Way to the Goddess through Myth, art and Tarot by Vicki Noble>

Read the rest of this entry »

The beloved is the occasion of something unlimited, a feeling of connection and destiny that dissolves our selfishness and isolation. <source: Norman Fischer: “Falling in Love,” Shambhala Sun, July 1999

In my webpost posted on May 27, 2012 entitled Relationship Series Part Eight: Commitment – You can hold.  You can fold. Or you can just walk away, I raised some questions around the nature of commitment.

The results from my contemplating the nature of commitment are that there are two main types: the conventional type based on ego; and authentic commitment. Read the rest of this entry »

Lately, at the Thursday morning meditation practice sessions at the Shambhala Meditation Centre of Toronto, he has been giving short talks on a variety of topics.

As Ted is one of my spiritual spouses (please click here for definition), I’d like to pay tribute to him here by intermittenly publishing some of these talks on the Shambhala Buddhist dharma.

On May 24, 2012, he spoke on The Proclamation of  Goodness.

Proclamation of Goodness:

May basic goodness dawn.
May the confidence of goodness be eternal.
May goodness be all-victorious.
May that goodness bring profound, brilliant glory.

(source: Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche on the third anniversary of the Werma Sadhana, 10 October 2010)

Ted and boiling spring, Iceland, September 2012

The proclamation is a statement that basic goodness (please click here for definition of basic goodness on the ultimate plane) is the fundamental quality of reality before any moralistic concept of good or bad. This view is our starting point and begins with the mind of enlightenment.

He then took each line and explained it.

1. May basic goodness dawn.
   Taking the view above as the basis of our own reality and working from that supports us in creating enlightened society. Differing views such as people are bad or sinful and a heavy emphasis on individual achievement lead to much different forms of society.
2. May the confidence of goodness be eternal.
   Working with the view of basic goodness (described immediately above), we develop confidence that we can proceed with our lives and with creating enlightened society
3. May goodness be all-victorious.
   Sense of intent\aspiration that our lives and society can be guided by basic goodness
4. May that goodness bring profound, brilliant glory.
   this line speaks to the bringing about of the state of enlightened society\joining of heaven and earth

Living our lives in terms of basic goodness helps us work with our karma altogether. We begin to develop the courage to undercut our own habitual patterns, the very patterns that both create and maintain our karma. (Please click here for the two components of habitual patterns.)

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(Prologue: I’ve got first-hand experience that a real understanding of the laws of karma can substantially change our lives for the better. I created this weblog to share information and personal experience with others. May it be of benefit!)

Weblogs are meant to be personal. Hopefully readers will find something in mine that can help them to create a more fulfilling life. I offer this highly personal account so that it may benefit others.

 Once we begin to question our thoughts, our partners, alive, dead, or divorced, are always our greatest teachers. <source: Byron Katie: I Need Your Love — Is That True?>

I have been trying to write a draft of this webpost on commitment since April 03, 2012. I am finding it especially difficult.

• I am not “the marrying kind”— But I do want emotional intimacy with those significant others who value it as much as I do, and who respect the preciousness of the vulnerability that this creates;

• I do not want to be part of a conventional “cozy couple”— I just want to be capable of loving in a non-ego way; and
  

• I do not want to live with my significant others-of-the-romantic-kind — But I cherish the time we spend together.
  

But that doesn’t mean that the idea of commitment is not important to me. It is. But I begin to realize that I don’t know what commitment really means.

May 14, 2012 …..I’m having supper with Alex (click here) at Remy’s in the Yorkville district of Toronto. I’ve been trying to work out what “authentic commitment” means. Or at least, what it means to me. I raise some of these questions during our discussion over supper.

• Are love and commitment inseparable?
  
• Can you love but not make a commitment?
•  Do we commit to a person?
  
• To a relationship?
  
• To a view about how to live?
  

I tell Alex that I begin to think deeply about the nature of commitment because of a message my life partner leaves for me just before he dies at age 61 in November 2004.

I just called to say I love you. I wish that I would have done more of that. I regret that I wasn’t more romantic. One of the regrets of my life is that I took you for granted. I spent a lot of my life running away from commitment, running away from anything that made me feel tied down. This was because I was frightened. I was afraid of getting it all right! Most people say they are  afraid of getting it all wrong. I was afraid of getting it all right. It was ingrained in me as a child that all family relationships and all family units fail. If I had got it all right I wouldn’t have known what to do with it! I realize that it was a disastrous thing I did by allowing my fears to run — and ruin — my life. I couldn’t break the cycle.

I had a lot of self-esteem issues. I never felt good enough or grand enough. I’m thinking right now of “Diamond as Big as the Ritz,” [1922 novella by novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald], and the song “Putting on the Ritz.” I spent my life putting on appearances, trying to look successful. I was bitter. Even if I had had a diamond as big as the Ritz I would have been unhappy. You were my diamond as big as the Ritz, but nothing made me happy. I really missed the whole point.

I could have given you a multi-faceted joy — like the multi-faceted diamond that you are — if I hadn’t been so uptight and bitter. My life with you should have been an adventure. Just being together should have made me happy. I could have appreciated just sitting down eating a lovely meal with you. But nothing ever felt like it was enough.

Falling in love with you should have been enough. But it wasn’t.

There was nothing more you could have done. There was nothing more you could have given me. This was an unending cycle that I couldn’t seem to break from my childhood.

Put another way, I think my life partner is saying that he chose his habitual patterns over freedom from a negative karmic cycle, over a mature relationship. As a result, this kept his  karmic cycle going.

And the result for me?

I end up putting my own romantic nature on the back burner. That is, until I had a raw, intimate, erotic dream on February 03, 2012 that threw me into an identity crisis. (Please click here to review the dream.) That was one day after, i.e. on February 02, 2012, that I reviewed the message presented above from my life partner. It was as if he were speaking to me through the dream of February 03, 2012 to warn me not to hide from who I am like he hid from who he really was. Not to let habitual patterns obscure who we actually are on the relative plane.

May 20, 2012:  I attend a class on the Sadhana of Mahamudra (click here for more information on the sadhana). We are discussing the idea of  “the three confidences,” one of which is decisiveness. My vajra brother Fred Cohen suggests another word for decisiveness, namely commitment. Not waffling around. BINGO. Finally, things have started to fall into place around what commitment might be.

Being decisive about something. Not waffling around. Read the rest of this entry »

PLEASE NOTE:

My weblog is an in-depth look into the concept and experience of karma. So when I started to write this Relationship Series, I debated with myself whether to include the dream below.

It is raw. It is intimate. It is sensitive. It is erotic. I then realized that the dream, notwithstanding its appearance, is not primarily about sex. Instead, it illustrates the theme of unresolved issues around romance.

Feb 03, 2012 – I and a man called Alex are lying on a king-size bed together. We are in the middle of it. Fully clothed. I am propped up on my left arm facing Alex who is lying flat on his back. Our strong karmic connection with and affection for each other is obvious. Two other couples lie at each end of the bed, again fully clothed. I do not know who they are. They are lying still. But their affection for each other is obvious. He asks me “Why aren’t we together?” I reply “because I would never leave you.” He whispers “Oh God.”  I lean down and kiss him. He doesn’t move. He says nothing. Then I put my head on his chest and simultaneously, I experience a feeling of sadness.

Life had been going along very well. I thought I knew who I was. Until this dream. It haunts me. Why? For the last three decades I have believed that my karmic path does not involve romance. The dream is saying that I have been mistaken. Oh-ooooooooh.

Here’s what the anatomy of one identity crisis looks like:

• Feb 01 — Have eye operations to remove cataracts.
• Feb 02 — review message from my late life partner (click here for message)
  
• Feb 03 — Have this dream. Wonder about the timing of the dream. Given my eye operations, am I (figuratively speaking) seeing clearly now?
• Mar 22 — I meet one of my spiritual spouses for supper (please double click here to take you to my Glossary for a definition of “spiritual spouse”) to discuss my dream. I’ve known him for 34 years. For the first time in our relationship he pins me down in a way he has not done before — “You’re a romantic Maggie.” He goes on to say:
  

Neither the man (Alex)  nor details of the dream are important here. Sex is merely the symbol the dream uses to point to the main message, which is that your long-held view of yourself has crumbled. This long-held view is that “romance-is-not-part-of-my-karmic-path.” There are unresolved issues around romance that you have to resolve now. If you don’t resolve them,  you will maintain your karmic patterns. You have shut off that part of yourself. This dream has administered a shock to you. But you were ready for the shock. That’s why it has been so effective.

• The message of the dream haunts me to the point that

• on Mar 21st my crystal mala breaks — this symbolizes to me that my identity (how I think of myself) has fallen apart; and
• on Mar 24th I go the wrong way on a one-way street.

• Mar 23 —  I have an appointment with my health practitioner, another of my spiritual spouses. His suggestions are the same: focus on the main message of the dream, not Alex, not the details of the dream itself.
• Mar 31  — Meet a trusted girlfriend for coffee and muffins – “girltalk” is fun and light, but also serious. Helpful. “Ride the energy and drop the storyline,” she suggests. My women friends have a different perspective than my spiritual spouses. Both are valuable.
  
• Apr 01 — April Fool’s Day – Cry.
• Apr 02 — Send my health practitioner an e-mail. He gives me an appointment that day. When I arrive, I announce to him that I must be delusional. While I realize that I am being “thoroughly processed” as it is known in the dharma teachings, I am panicking. Actually, it’s just that I, like Humpty Dumpty, have taken a fall off the apparently solid wall (wall symbolizes who I think I am; my identity) on which I had been sitting for many years. The rug has been pulled out from under my storyline which could be expressed as “romance-is-not-part-of-my-karmic-path.”

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

But this time I do not rush to “recover.” As frightening and painful as what I am experiencing is, I don’t want to re-cover. I want to manifest as who I actually am. (Double click here to review my previous post about Humpty Dumpty.) I don’t want ego to be put back together again.

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humtpy Dumpty together again.

Notwithstanding the fact that we do not focus on the man in the dream or any particular detail in the dream, at this appointment my health practitioner and I discuss the detail of my kissing the man. To me the kiss  (as a symbol)  “seals the deal.” But what deal? It is not clear in the dream, except that it is an acknowlegement of our connectedness. So what kind of relationship would I like with this man, my health practitioner asks? Given the latent eroticism of the dream, my reply surprises him:

As long as I can spend time with him I don’t care if he just wants to walk around the city or read the newspaper and drink tea together. Whatever suits him suits me. In other words, for me it’s choiceless in the best sense of that word — heart trumps ego. But I do miss the relationship we had many years ago where we could chat on any topic in a no-holds-barred way. In the dream as soon as I say “Because I would never  leave you,” the man figuratively goes to sleep. In other words, he does not want to relate directly to my answer. He prefers to use the king-size bed to sleep, not make love. In other words, not only is the nature of our relationship not clear in the dream — it is not clear in “real life” either. In the meantime, I have to go on with my life. {ADDED OCTOBER 21’12: I see now that the man didn’t respond positively to my saying “because I would never leave you” because he is not looking for any commitment for me. He doesn’t want to involve himself in a committed relationship.)

Before I leave the appointment, my health practitioner gives me excellent suggestions around practices that deal specifically with intense emotions (kleshas). Another suggestion involves the concept of “offering.”

Don’t resist anything that arises in my mind, he says. Instead, offer it all to the lineage, the three roots, the buddha, dharma and sangha. To others who are not Shambhala Buddhists, they may think of it as offering to the universe. It doesn’t matter. Just offer.

• April 04 — I weigh myself at my fitness club before taking aquafit class. I have lost 15 pounds in three weeks. That evening, I attend the events around the 25th anniversary of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s parinirvana. In one of the film clips we see to honour Rinpoche, he says
  

  Go out and fall in love…..with something.

Never let it be said that I don’t follow the command of my guru!

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April 04, 2012 is the 25th anniversary of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s death (parinirvana). I am using this post to pay tribute to his great love for his students and to a heart that sustained and guided his escape from mountainous Tibet in 1959 so that he could bring the Shambhala buddhist teachings to the West.

“The main point is to have a heart! If you don’t have a heart, you have to build one. If you need further reinforcements, take a piece of my heart. You have it. It is yours.” (Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche)

In Part Two of this Relationship Series, we discussed “falling in love.”

Today’s post is about love.

Me: I gather that love comes out of primordial\ultimate basic goodness. But how can we relate to it on the relative plane? The use of the word “love” seems to be so abused at this point [as to render it almost meaningless]. We have “bought into” a lot of the ceremonies that our society has taught us about “love.”

To be a spiritual warrior, one must have a broken heart; without a broken heart and the sense of tenderness and vulnerability, your warriorship is untrustworthy. – Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

But I have been suspicious of “falling in love” because I have at times embraced the negative connotation. This produced a struggle between my genuine nature as a romantic on the one hand and my concept of falling in love on the other. Read the rest of this entry »

(Prologue: I’ve got first-hand experience that a real understanding of the laws of karma can substantially change our lives for the better. I created this weblog to share information and personal experience with others. May it be of benefit!)

I’m starting a series today about relationships because nothing touches us more deeply. At the same time, nothing gives us a better opportunity to discover and understand our own basic goodness and that of others.

The first realization on the Buddhist path is our own emptiness — we look at the self and find nothing permanent. The next step is the egolessness of other, says Sakyong Mipham, and the way we discover it, interestingly, is through love and compassion.

People sometimes ask me why I’m not in a “relationship.” I’m surprised! I have lots of relationships. So does everyone. It’s choiceless. If you’re a human being, you have relationships.  “Oh, I don’t mean just any relationship,” they say. “I mean a romantic one.”

My reply:

First, when someone whispers sweet nothings in my ear, I don’t feel comfortable saying “I’m sorry. I have a hearing loss in that ear and can’t hear you!” As we all know, sweet nothings are meant to be whispered. Not shouted. I suppose I could put my hearing aid in, but that’s probably not very romantic. And it would take time. Maybe he would forget what he was going to say in the first place, especially if he is as old as I am! (to hear the song Sweet Nothings by Brenda Lee, click here please.)

Second, I’m a light sleeper. I awaken several times during the night and have had to train myself to go back to sleep. I did this by listening to books-on-tape. I fall asleep listening to a story. My ex-husband and I were able to spend some time together before he died at age 61. When we turned out the lights at night, he used to say to me “OK Marg, what bedtime story are we going to listen to tonight?”

On a little more serious note:

I wear the wedding band given to me by my late life partner a few years before he died,  not because I am clinging to “us,” but because it sends a perspective that I embrace, namely, that I’m not looking for love. I am love. I am basic goodness.  So are you.

Seeking love keeps you from the awareness that you already have it — that you are it. <source: Byron Katie, author of Loving What Is)

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(Prologue: I’ve got first-hand experience that a real understanding of the laws of karma can substantially change our lives for the better. I created this weblog to share information and personal experience with others. May it be beneficial!)

I love Vermont.

To me, it’s always been a magical place since I first went there in January 1974 to hear Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche speak on Zen and Tantra at what was then known as Tail of the Tiger land centre (now part of beautiful Karme Choling).

I travelled there again on September 02, 2011 for six days to participate in a retreat around Tibetan King Gesar of Ling lead by His Eminence Namkha Drimed Rabjam Rinpoche. On Tuesday, September 06, His Eminence gave about eight of us an interview — arranged for us by his student Gary Mass — that lasted for one hour!

We were invited to ask one question each. In this situation most of us ask questions around the dharma teachings.

This webpost is around the simple yet profound personal question asked by Shambhala Buddhist student Leslie Witt from Vermont: how do you see the world? This is what I remembered the next day of His Eminence’s answer — PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS NOT NECESSARILY WHAT HE ACTUALLY SAID.

Highly realized persons have thoughts and emotions like everyone else. The difference is that they do not follow those thoughts. And because they don’t follow the thoughts, they do not engage in liking or aversion. So they they do not perpetuate negative karma of the three poisons.

As my weblog is around an in-depth exploration of karma, I appreciated this simple yet very profound description.

As I sat writing this post at the computer in the dining room at Karme-Choling, one of the programme participants suggested I speak to the translator, Vanessa Turner from Los Angeles, to get her recall. (Vanessa tells me that she has been speaking and translating for a number of years for her Tibetan teachers, one of whom is His Eminence, since she was 16.)

I hit the jackpot! This wonderful translator remembered what His Eminence said almost verbatim. [Please note that words in {   } are mine.] Here it is, unedited so that the reader can get the full flavour of His Eminence’s answer:

I’m really just the same as you.  I too have thoughts and emotions just like you do. But the difference between you guys and myself is that I have thoughts but I recognize the thoughts {as thoughts} and I don’t follow after the thoughts. Actually this is the fundamental difference bewteen ordinary people and lamas. Both of them have thoughts and emotions. The process of thoughts and emotions arising is the same for ordinary people as it is for lamas. The difference is that ordinary people follow after the thoughts and get caught up in them whereas lamas recognize the arising of the thoughts and do not follow after them. (He thinks for a moment.)

When I was young, I remember finding this uncontrived, spontaneous deep level of compassion that was like this feeling of compassion for all sentient beings that was not constructed or forced. It was like something that is always innately there.

I know all sentient beings. I know the way in which they are confused and lost in samsara {the world of confusion created by ego, our manufactured self} and when I see sentient beings lost in their confusion and out of that confusion engaging in creating more negative karma because of their attachment and aversion and ignorance, I genuinely feel just a sense of loving care for all of them. I really feel for them. It’s like they can’t help it. They’re confused. I see it. I see how they create suffering for themselves. I feel so much love and caring for them. So there is this feeling, this compassion, where it’s like I can see that the sentient beings and the nature of their confusion but I myself do not follow after that confusion. But I can see it!

And also some lamas who have really high level of realization they actually don’t see impurity anywhere at all. They don’t see impure sentient beings. They see only deities {wisdom beings}. They see only the display of the deity mandala. Everything that appears to them appears as the expression of wisdom as a display of the deity. Everything they hear (all sounds) arise to them as the sound of mantra. But to have that kind of view one would have to be really high level of realization.

However, I will say that when we are all gathered together in puja and sometime I just look out at all of you and I only see your goodness. It’s like I look at you all and I don’t see any faults in anyone. When we are in the puja together, all of you are wholly good. So maybe that is some reflection of a pure view because really don’t actually see any flaws in you when we are together in the puja. For lamas of really high realization everyone appears as the deity {wisdom being} and anyway I too have thoughts but I recognize the thought.  Recognizing the thought I do not follow after it. Or become entrenched in it.

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