The Open Heart

When the eyes open, the heart opens. The more you see, the more you feel. Even an ordinary walk through the neighborhood breaks you open – the desiccated skull of a hummingbird, an out of season flower, a discarded condom wrapper – everywhere you look the poignancy and insistence of life, death, and everything in between. It’s as if the whole world – scattered for a while in disparate embodiments – is longing for reunion.

            Being born means initiation into the world of death. Instead of seeing this as bad news or some sort of cosmic unfairness, we shift into acceptance and a door opens, and if we’re brave, naïve, and crazy enough to walk through that door the world begins to shimmer with unspeakable beauty. The only thing left is love.

            The world’s spiritual traditions are rife with paradox: it is only when we give that we receive, it is only when we release that we attain, it is only when we let go that we make contact, it is only when we surrender that we win. Grasping, clinging, craving, attachment, ego-demands, and self-obsession lead only to suffering. All bliss needs are unclenched hands and an open heart. Give bliss a chance. Let go.

            There is nothing to grasp, and there is no one to do the grasping – this is the great secret. A confluence of factors tricked us into thinking we were separate from everything else, and spiritual practice – any spiritual practice – is the long, slow process of undoing that trickery.

            As white light scatters through a prism into colors, so too the oneness of Being scatters into multiplicity as it passes through the prism of the human mind. Our crude perceptions and conceptual thinking distort and imprison Oneness into paradoxical categories of our own making. Then we become warehouse workers, taking inventory, and cataloging conceptual boxes into hierarchies. We call this “knowledge.” We squander our lives arguing about doctrines, theologies, definitions, and labels. Meanwhile, the real world – the unquantifiable world right outside the doors of our carefully organized warehouses – flows by like a lazy river.

            Water doesn’t ask, “Am I a stream, a river, an ocean, a cloud, or a drop of rain?” It rests in its waterness. It allows individual transformation and evolution of purpose to take its natural course. We, on the other hand, insist on our labels and hierarchies – at great cost.

            We have become addicted to explanation. Like drunks lurching for the bottle, we stumble into the arms of any decent argument or self-serving emotional appeal – anything to assuage the uncertainty of not knowing.

            Not knowing is the doorway to unity and reconciliation. Not knowing is the embodiment of courage. Not knowing is an act of love.

            The simplicity, the clarity, the unmediated symphony of this present moment eludes us when we remain enamored and caught by our thoughts about this present moment. Somewhere along the way we became convinced that our true life, our real life, existed in the realm of thought. That was the most destructive thought of all.

            When you wake up in the morning say thank you. Say thank you as you drift off to sleep. Say thank you between tasks. Say thank you in the middle of everything. Make thank you your mantra. It doesn’t matter who you’re saying it to. Simply be in the consciousness of thank you. We do not say thank you to appease or acknowledge some higher power – the higher power isn’t a needy parent. We say thank you to open our hearts and minds to the truth that we did not create this – we receive this – our lives, these hands, this passion, this beauty, this support, the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, the love we rely on. We live in the holy thank you. When you do this, you turn the key that unlocks wisdom, wellness, and bliss.

            A nearby star floods our planet with light. Through photosynthesis plants utilize this celestial energy to replicate the cells of their own bodies. Plants are starlight storage systems. Then animals eat the plants, and each other. Then we eat the animals and the plants. In this way all life forms are embodied starlight, feeding on one another in an endless energy exchange. Individual forms come and go, but energy doesn’t die – it just keeps changing address. Life is not a possession. No one owns the energy. The water does not belong to the sea – it just holds it for a while. We do not live life. Life lives us. As Eckhart Tolle wrote in Stillness Speaks, “The opposite of life is not death. The opposite of death is birth. Life has no opposite.” That’s why the only sane response to any of this is thank you.

            When it is our time to navigate death, other’s or our own, we are forced to let go. The pain of the loss is directly proportional to our grasping. The tighter we cling, the more acute our trauma.

            A young mother came to the Buddha carrying her dead child. She’d heard the Buddha had powerful magic that might restore her child to life. She asked the Buddha, “Is there anything you can do to help me?”

            “Yes,” he said. “But first you must go into the village and find three mustard seeds, and they must be from a house that has been untouched by death.”

            She went door to door through the village carrying her dead child. At the first house she asked, “Do you have any mustard seeds?”

            “Yes.”

            “But has anyone died here?”
            “Yes, we lost our father last year.”

            She went to the next house and knocked on the door.

            “Do you have any mustard seeds?”

            “Yes.”

            “But has anyone died here?”

            “Yes, we lost our mother last month.”

            She went to the next house and knocked on the door.

            “Do you have any mustard seeds?”
            “Yes.”

            “But has anyone died here?”

            “Yes, we lost our child just last week.”

            Many hours passed. Twilight faded to darkness. She had knocked on every door in the village. Not one house was untouched by death.

            She walked out into the forest and looked up at the stars arrayed in thick fields of light above her. “The living are few, and the dead are many,” she whispered. “They outnumber even these stars.” She buried her child and went to the Buddha and thanked him. She joined the order and devoted her life to compassionate action and service. Knowing the universality of death, and the impermanence of all forms, she now understood that none of us owns any of this, we only get to love it for a while. This is the wisdom of the open heart.

Your Greatest Treasures

When we think of the word treasure we think of Trump-like wealth, Smaug’s lair, or a buried trunk of pirate booty.

             But upon deeper reflection we realize our real treasure is our loved ones – our children, our spouses, our families, and our friends.

            Yet in the ancient Chinese book of wisdom called the Tao te Ching, Lao Tzu offers a very different definition of treasure. In chapter 67 he writes, “I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, and compassion. These are your greatest treasures.”

            How are simplicity, patience, and compassion our greatest treasures?

Simplicity

            With each passing day we take on more and more, adding, never subtracting – more property, more commitments, more obligations, more appointments, more expectations. It’s a wonder we can even breathe. The more buried we are under layers of adornment and intricacy, the further we are from our essence. We lose our center and live increasingly in the outer world of thoughts, forms, and accomplishments. All of this busyness sets up a screen through which we try to view the uncarved wholeness of the world. But everything grows cloudy, distant, removed. We end up isolated in a thicket of our own judgments and thoughts. The real world – the people we love, the essential core of life – recedes into the haze. This is the disease of over-thinking and over-complexity. Simplicity is the antidote. As Lao Tzu writes, “In the pursuit of knowledge, everyday something is added. In the practice of the Tao, everyday something is dropped.”

            In his longest speech, The Sermon on the Mount, Jesus offered similar advice. “Do not worry about your life” he said, “what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable then they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?”

            Simplicity then means simplicity in the outer world as well as simplicity in the inner world. “Simple in actions and in thoughts,” Lao Tzu writes, “you return to the source of being.”

Without lifting a finger we shift into awareness. As the Upanishads of ancient India proclaim, Thou art That – we are already one with the sacred essence of all things. No seeking, no struggle. We have only to grow still enough to allow the realization of unity to rise up from where it is hidden beneath all of our complexes. In this sense then, less definitely is more. The advice Henry David Thoreau offered for hikers in his 1857 journal was no doubt meant in a much broader sense – “The rule is to carry as little as possible.”

Patience

            If the first treasure is simplicity, then the second treasure is patience. “Patient with both friends and enemies,” Lao Tzu wrote, “you accord with the way things are.” How does patience put us into accord with the way things are?

            Patience is the virtue of accepting what is. Impatience generates anxiety, suffering, and conflict. Patience generates serenity, joy, and peace. Impatience says no, patience says yes.

            In Vedanta philosophy we often hear the word renunciation. It means relinquishing the illusion of control and coming out of ego-demands and into the consciousness of surrender. Renunciation is the path to awakening and enlightenment. In Buddhist teachings the focus is on non-attachment. Dropping our endless list of cravings and complaints we finally arrive fully alive in this now moment able to experience the depth of our own loving interconnectedness with all that is.

As the contemporary Zen Buddhist teacher John Tarrant puts it, suffering is the phrase “Not this,” while enlightenment is the phrase, “What is this?” The first stance is full of judgment and resistance, the second open-hearted and appreciative.

            Patience then is Lao Tzu’s word for that state of serenity wherein one is content in the present moment, no longer caught by the snare of craving something else. When you are free of expectations, the pace at which things unfold is exactly the right pace.

            And he’s specific about where we are to apply the virtue of patience – toward our friends and enemies. We all know that it is in the realm of human relationships that our serenity is most sorely tested.

            What if instead of silently demanding that everyone conform to our arbitrary expectations, we set them free to be who they are? Why are we so quick to demand our own freedom, and so reluctant to grant theirs? Let others drive the way they’re going to drive. It really is none of our business. Go around.

            This is especially challenging when it comes to our enemies. But in Jesus famous words, “love your enemies,” we hear an even deeper truth – there are no such things as enemies. There are only other people suffering like us, working with incomplete information like us, clouded by storms of chaotic emotions like us, trying to make their way and sometimes saying horrible things and acting in confusingly destructive ways, like us. The poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow said it best when he wrote, “If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”

            In chapter 15 of the Tao te Ching Lao Tzu writes, “Do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear?” Patience means leaving the universe enough room to provide you with solutions, mercies, and healings you did not foresee and could not create on your own. In chapter 64 he writes, “Rushing into action you fail. Trying to grasp things, you lose them. Forcing a project to completion you ruin what was almost ripe.”

Compassion

            The third treasure is compassion. Lao Tzu wrote, “Compassionate toward yourself, you reconcile all beings in the world.” How does self-compassion lead to universal reconciliation? It’s simple. If you cannot experience love, mercy, and forgiveness for yourself, how do you think you can offer these gifts to another? When you learn how to better love yourself, your love for others grows clear, pure, and genuinely nurturing. Still, how does this reconcile all beings in the world? Many of us already understand this: our spiritual awakening is our greatest contribution to world peace. It is through our spiritual growth that the whole world is healed. If one person shows up awake, everything shifts. Imagine if ten of us do, or a hundred, or a hundred thousand?

            Taoism avoids intricate ideology, elaborate doctrine, and complex ritual. Also missing is a specific list of prohibitions or exhortations. Instead, Lao Tzu simply draws us toward what the Zen Buddhists call our “Original Self.” Coming out of our busy minds and into our cores, we know what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and why. We just feel it. That’s how great treasures work.

Good Enough

Striving for excellence is all well and good, but the fact remains, most days we’re lucky just to make it through without burning down the house. Somehow in our culture the expectation has taken shape that every experience must be a peak experience, every moment an amazing moment, and every effort a stroke of genius. That’s a lot of pressure. Believe it or not, it might be time to lower our expectations. Maybe it’s time to get reacquainted with good enough.

The shadow side of every motivational speech is the implication that who you are right now isn’t good enough. Maybe that’s the wrong message. Do more? We’re already the busiest generation, scrambling like crazy people, multitasking, running on caffeine and nerves. When do we get to rest? When is it OK to simply enjoy the fruits of our labor? When is good enough good enough?

I’ve been thinking about my dad a lot lately, and how different his life was from mine. I race from one obligation to the next. His hours and days were filled with a kind of reverence, illuminated by a slow motion glow brought on by letting things take their sweet time.

When he died last year at the age of 90 we found an old diary he’d kept for the year 1963. It was a simple journal filled with brief entries chronicling each day’s events. Our family had just moved from New Jersey to Ventura, California, a quiet town on the beach just south of Santa Barbara. He was picking up shift work as a printer typesetting at the Ventura Star-Free Press. Like a lot of families back in those days, our family had only one car and after work he’d often walk down to the beach for a stroll along the sand or even a swim if the weather was warm. Then my mom and I would come meet him, I was only 4 at the time, and we’d all swim or walk on the beach. As the sun set we’d amble on home for dinner and a quiet evening. Maybe the neighbors or some of my parent’s friends would come by for a visit, or we’d watch some TV, one of the three channels. My dad seemed content in the knowledge that he was a father, a husband, a worker, a thinker, a homeowner, and the simple of act of being alive was enough. There was no ambitious scheme to be more, do more, own more, or in any other way stand out from the ordinary. Ordinary was good enough.

Of course I realize I’m romanticizing his life – he was subject to the same pain, disillusionment, and endless hunger that any man or woman feels, but none of that worked its way into his diary. But I do remember as a boy often wondering where does he go when he’d just sit in a chair and close his eyes after a long, hot day of working in the yard. My dad had a rich interior life, and that’s another thing that’s increasingly difficult to maintain in our modern, busy world of hyper-connectivity. Being quiet and being alone are increasingly rare and precious jewels buried under the clutter of our busyness.

When my dad was at work he was at work, and when he was off, he was off. That’s something I don’t have. Because of the nature of my work, I’m never off. As a professor and department chair I’m immersed in the life of my college in many ways, and I’m a mentor to 180 students. Not to mention the tens of thousands of former students who I bump into everywhere I go. They message me through Facebook at all hours of the day and night and ask all sorts of questions, and I love staying in touch, but it’s challenging. And in my work as a singer songwriter, public speaker, and writer I am constantly in self-promotion mode pitching shows, talks, my blog, and my upcoming album. I use Facebook and Twitter to build my brand and strengthen my platform. I wake up at three a.m. and ponder a web design decision or a media contact I should make. I run lyrics in my head or think through guitar solos. In my mind’s eye I peruse the photographic styles of noted local photographers and deliberate about who to use for my next photo shoot.

It may be hard to believe, but I’m really not complaining – I chose this life and I eagerly seek the next opportunity to expand my reach. I love singing, playing, recording, performing, speaking, writing, teaching, and being a part of a vibrant and thriving community of fellow artists, speakers, thinkers, and teachers.

In this crazy life many of us live, we have to work hard to make our own sabbaticals, our own Sabbaths, our own days off, our own vacations. If you don’t schedule down time you’ll go crazy, because there is always a deadline, there is always a long list of urgent emails, voice mails, texts, Tweets, and Facebook messages to respond to. If you aren’t careful, your entire life becomes one long to do list, and all human interactions are reduced to increasingly insistent demands for your time. Total strangers message me on Facebook and say things like, “Hey, I love your work, we should really hang out. I play too. We should jam and write a song together.” While I’m touched that I seem that approachable, and that people feel connected enough to reach out, I can’t help but laugh. Dude, I don’t even have time to hang with my best friends, how on earth can I carve out a minute let alone an afternoon for a jam session with an absolute stranger?

I used to continually freak out at how busy I was. Now I see it differently. Keeping a gratitude journal for the last two years changed that. Now I see my work, all of it, as an opportunity for service. I am so deeply honored and blessed that the art I make, whether in song, prose, or oratory, is welcomed warmly in certain circles, and that the encouragement I receive from audiences and readers is profoundly nourishing. Like my father, I just want to know that I’m useful, that I fit somewhere, and that my passions have a place in this world. I think of him often, his quietude, his gentle nature, his steadfast commitment to his wife and his sons and to the proposition that life is beautiful and to be relished and enjoyed. There is no later. There is only now. If it’s a beautiful day at the beach, then you go to the beach.

Wealth is wanting what you have. Success is well-being. Happiness is a decision. Joy is a natural by-product of a virtuous life. These are not secrets, they are ancient insights taught in every spiritual and philosophical tradition. And they are born out in every life lived with integrity, honesty, vigor, and willingness. Life is only a problem if you try and figure it out. If you just live it, it flows pretty well.

Finding a place where your passion meets the needs of the world is the soul work of every man and woman. For my dad it was printing. He plied his craft setting type and playing an integral role in the publication of the news, making our Founder’s ideals of a free press a concrete reality. He knew that language and print media were essential to the human project and he humbly took his place on the mechanical side of the process. And he took it seriously. But when the type was set, he turned it over to the boys on the printing presses, punched the clock and walked down to the beach. He was free. I still see my father swimming in the ocean at the end of a long day, happy, in love, grateful, and reverent. And it was good enough.