Are You Kidding Me?

When people acknowledge this blog in any way I am just astonished. I was stunned when people started commenting on these posts. I was stunned when some of my dharma brothers and sisters at Still Point would approach me and say, "Hey, I enjoy reading your blog." And I was stunned earlier this year when I found that this space was featured in an issue of Buddhadharma magazine. Though I was humbled and surprised, I didn't want to talk about it.

People who know me know that I really don't like attention. I'm uncomfortable in any sort of spotlight. I'd rather blend in with the crowd under a strobe light in a club with a bangin' beat.

When I learned today that the curator of the Blogisattva Awards selected this site as Blog of the Year, I was equally stunned. A big part of me thinks that the only reason why Tom selected this site was to get me to come out of whatever rock I've been under these past few months and think about blogging again.

I'm not going to make an acceptance speech. I really do understand where Amadeus was coming from when he asked to be removed from the running, and I thought about doing the same. I guess these awards (and anything else) only hold the meaning that we give to them. Instead of looking at this exercise as something that spurs competition, I choose to see it as a showcase of all of the great things that we've seen come out of the Buddhist Blogisphere in 2005. There was a literal explosion and I'm still so pleased to stumble upon the new sites that crop up every month.

This space is currently in transition. I'm still thinking about what I want to do with it... how and if I want to continue it. Time will tell. A heartfelt thank you to all of you who've been on this journey with me. The bloggers I read (IMHO) are much more deserved of this honor than I am.

So I'll encourage all of you to continue to check out Blogmandu, Tasty Links, the Buddhist Blogs Webring, Blangha.com and all Buddhist Bloggers with blogrolls and Kinja digests who leave trails of breadcrumbs across the web that allow us to find each other.

Survivor

I've been a little sad this week.

If you ever were to ask me what fiction book(s) I would want to have with me if I were to be stranded on a desert island, I would definately say "Anything Octavia Butler." When a friend e-mailed me about her passing last weekend, it completely stopped me in my tracks. I talked to a friend about it Monday evening, and said something very similar to what Angel is saying on the subject...

Octavia's passing for me is such a lesson in impermanence. We are not (any of us) promised tomorrow, so we really need to be about the business of doing whatever it is we feel moved to do with our lives... What are we waiting for?

A few months ago, I read Octavia's final novel... an engrossing twist on vampire lore called Fledgling. I was so excited about the work... and I thought it would become a trilogy to match Wildseed, Mind of My Mind and Patternmaster. I absolutely couldn't wait for the next installment. And then Octavia died.

I have but one opportunity to read something she wrote that I haven't read yet... I'll need to procure a copy of the book she personally felt was sub-standard and has been out of print for ages... a book that fans still rave about called Survivor. A few years ago, battered, well-worn copies were selling on Amazon.com for anywhere between $100 and $400 dollars. I can't imagine what they must be going for now.

I'm thinking now about my own survival. I've been really unhappy with corporate life for a long time. In my ideal scene I'd be writing, going on retreats, practicing yoga, becoming certified to teach yoga, exploring my artistic side (musically and visually) and spending more time with my daughter. My current job doesn't afford me the time to do any of these things with consistency without feeling like a zombie.

Maybe 2006 will be the year that I totally reconstruct my life, and maybe Octavia will be the inspiration.

Self-Building, "Issues" and Resistance to Practice

Last weekend a couple of sorors stopped by for girls night in. It was supposed to be our weekly writer's club meeting, but instead we got sucked in to a few specials that were running on VH1. The first was And You Don't Stop: 30 Years of Hip-Hop--a documentary that I had seen before. Afterwards, we watched DMC: My Adoption Journey.

It was personally moving to me, watching Darryl McDaniels' story unfold because I was adopted. I can't begin to tell you how much that verb defined me from childhood through adolescence and into adulthood. Unlike Darryl, I always knew I was adopted. With that knowing came this constant wondering about where I fit, a sense of alienness inside my family, a perpetual identity crisis. I used to think that there would always be some missing piece in my life unless I pieced together my own adoption journey and understood where I came from, what my birth parents were like, why my birth mother gave me up.

A few months before my daughter was born back in 1996, my parents gave me my adoption papers. Although no identifying information was provided, there were brief biographical sketches of both of my parents. I remember sitting alone in the house I shared with her father. I read it, and I wept. And I felt such a sense of release. Somehow that small picture... that small window into my birth parents' interests, talents and families allowed me to feel some sense of closure.

Looking back on it now, it amazes me... the intricacy we can infuse into our stories about our lives and what they mean. We make it all up. All of it. And sometimes it consumes us. For years I had this ongoing drama going about being adopted and what it means. But for me, instead of launching my own adoption journey, I embarked on a spiritual journey. Along that path, I found A Course in Miracles, which is very comparable to Buddhism in certain respects (in my opinion... but I'll save that discussion for another day).

The Course is all about dismantling the ego's hold on our perceptions and our actions. The one year self-study program contains 365 lessons which like koans attempt to crack through the usual way of thinking and open our minds to new possibilities. No doubt, it is a controversial text... but those who have really mined it come through the experience with amazing insights into the self, the ego, forgiveness, right seeing, and love. Reading it, I found quotes like this that made me see my own issues around being adopted in a different light:

What you think you are
is a belief to be undone.

[...from Gifts from A Course in Miracles pg. 50]

The Course doesn't stop at applying this idea to the self... it requires you to apply it to all things. What you think he is/she is/it is is a belief to be undone. I find that this fits comfortably with one of the Fifty Verses on the Nature of Consciousness in Thich Nhat Hanh's Transformation at the Base:

With store consciousness as its support,
Manas arises.
Its function is mentation,
Grasping the seeds it considers to be a "self."

[...from Transformation at the Base: Fifty Verses on the Nature of Consciousness by Thich Nhat Hanh, pg. 94]

Later in the chapter on Mentation, Thay explains:

The object of manas is the perceiver aspect of store consciosness. Just as the perceiver naturally embraces the perceived, manas embraces and clings to this aspect of store consciousness, makes it into an object and that object becomes an idea of self. All manas does is to think and calculate, "This is me." This is called mentation (manana). Day and night, manas is always thinking, believing, grasping, and considering store consciousness as its object, as a separate entity. It is always persent as a kind of instinct that takes its object as itself.

And this is why we have "issues." We look for them. We construct them. We take care of them. We become attached to them.

Watching another adoption story unfold, witnessing it with some distance and objective perspective, I started to understand the  spiritual futility of it all alongside the fundamental and adamant importance placed upon it by the ego. And I could see all "issues" in this light.

I've been stuck in a very ego-centered place these past few months with so much worry about my career, so much irritation because there has been so little stroking of my ego. People keep knocking down my damned towers (or at least I'm feeling like they are) and I'm not happy about it.  I've felt stretched to the limit, and I haven't been practicing. These things together leave me vulnerable, grasping for some sense of calm... some mental "home". There has been no affirmation of self to uphold whatever "me" I think I am and in the absense of that affirmation, the "I" has felt very unsafe.

But I think that's just what happens when we attempt to take refuge in everything except the Three Jewels. What happiness can be found by seeking refuge or salvation in anything else? As for me, I'm just looking at the ways I tend to feed my "issues" and how disconnected, self-indulgent and ego-affirming it all is. It's no wonder I have been having difficulty and resistance around my practice.

I haven't been blogging because I haven't known what to say. I guess I've felt like Jeff did when he wrote:

There seems so little to say lately. It is hard to keep up a blog on Buddhist practice when you are busy with the problem of Buddhist practice in everyday life itself.

I've found myself wondering about the place of this "Buddhist Blog" in my life when it is absent of any real Buddhist practice. Today, I'm tired of fighting it, avoiding it, resisting it, and contemplating all the reasons why I fight it, avoid it, and resist it. All of this self-building leaves me tired and sluggish and instead of writing another word I just need to get active with my practice. Maybe I'll be back later to talk about it.