The Divination of Our Dark-Side.

In the Spirit of Halloween, let’s unmask our demons. 

One of the forms of celebration associated with the ancient holiday of Halloween is divination. The ritual of divination is connected with a primal instinct, as everyone of the world's major religions are vehicles meant to bring about the realization of divinity. This ritual manifest in a great many ways, and in honor of Halloween I would like to take a moment and explore the divination of our dark side that Halloween emphasizes.

The Evolution of Progressive Buddhism.

Gurus, Authority, and Free Market Buddhism.

The Marketplace of Ideas.

The Statue of Liberty stands as a proclamation of Western, secular freedom and dignity, welcoming all with the words of Emma Lazarus:

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore."

This principal is what underlies the ideals of the American experiment. American culture is an amalgamation of other cultures—the melting pot—fueled by the freedom of experimentation and the primitive mandate or right to express your true self in an open and creative way. America is an open exchange of ideas, information, and experience—a marketplace of ideas.

I am not referring to the “economic” market place. Rather, by free market I am referring to the cultural space that accommodates experimentation and evolution. The free market of ideas is not guided by fame or profit, but by a practical realization of personal truth. Intellectual speculation is transformed into direct experience, whether confused or sane, through an experimental process guided by the intelligence of trial and error.

Progressive Buddhism.

Buddhism as a whole is entering this chaotic, powerful American free market. The Theravadin, Zen, Korean, Tibetan, Vietnamese, and Pure Land traditions are all planting roots here in the West. In addition to the traditional lineages, academia is making a contribution. Intellectuals are evaluating these Eastern traditions from the point of view of medicine, psychology, and sociology, and submitting their opinions. As a result, American Buddhism is emerging as a unique mixture of this wide array of disciplines. It is an American, or progressive Buddhism.

Western Buddhism: Spiritual Hallucination or Authentic Spirituality?

“It is essential that we bring the correct understanding of Buddhism into the western world, not one bound by cultural chains. When everything is clean-clear in your own mind, nobody can create obstacles for you.” ~Lama Yeshe

Spirituality, for so many of us, is a solution or an escape from the discomfort found in our daily lives. We come to spirituality in search of “something else.” We want some “thing” set apart from the aggravation and monotony of our everyday life. The cue to search for fulfillment is undeniably intelligent, but the tendency to do so in a realm of time-&-space that is disconnected from the reality of our day-to-day affairs is a gross misunderstanding, because our imagination is the only point of departure from the immediacy of our life. Imagining happiness is the path of The Secret©, not the Buddha.

Since true fulfillment is not the product of an hallucination, Buddhist spirituality begins with a recognition of our personal disappointment and proceeds with an internal investigation of the causes and conditions that created this seemingly inescapable atmosphere of despondency. We cannot reject the relative truth of our life for two reasons: First of all, our relative existence is a physical event or a natural dimension of our absolute Self. Second, our subjective experience contains the fundamental misunderstandings that conceal a direct experience of our larger Self, which is the source of true fulfillment. In order to discover what we are looking for, we must first understand how we lost it. One could say that spirituality is the observation of confusion, because when confusion is seen for what it is, it is immediately transformed into wisdom.

There is an inborn urge in each and everyone of us that seeks fulfillment. This primordial drive is the human imperative to transcend the perverted tendency to think about ourselves, and actually be ourselves. This movement seeks expression in every aspect of our lives—food, art, conversation, music, sex, business, and solitude. Unless we are able to move beyond our limited self-conscious narrative and begin to explore this ever expanding experience of our true Self, we will continue to be plagued by dissatisfaction and pervasive restlessness. But moving beyond requires that we first move through, which begins with us embracing our relative existence.

Embracing our subjective experience does not mean continuing to blindly believe in the solidity and continuity of the ego; rather it is an invitation to open up, observe this pattern of personified thought, and recognize the limitations of a compounded state of mind. In meditation, we observe our minds. We watch as our subjective narrative is constructed by one thought interacting with another thought, creating the illusion of a solid personality. In observation, the ego’s true nature is revealed to be an open-ended process that isn’t in a state of fluctuation, but is fluctuation. As a result, we become intensely curious about the gaps in this endless process of revolution—the space between the dissolution of one self-conscious moment and the emergence of another—and begin to explore the unlimited nature of our true being. This exploration is the most fundamental of human instincts, as it is a moment towards who and what we truly are.  

Enlightenment, which is just a word used to describe the fruition of this fundamental imperative, is something most of us want in theory, but few of us are willing to work for. In practice, we go out of our way to avoid it. When we come to spirituality the ego is in the driver seat. We do not want to change the dynamics of our lifestyle. Rather than rediscovering our intrinsic courage or capacity to sit in and move through our personal disappointment, we keep “dealing with it” by applying more pressure and speed. We resist change with every ounce of energy at our disposal. Instead, we want the spiritual path to conform to our self-centered agendas. We don’t defend sanity by uncompromisingly setting aside time for silence, we put meditation on the back burner. We practice when it is convenient for us, so that we do not have to sacrifice the apparent solidity and speed of our limited self’ image and its endless agendas. When the ego outlines the path of practice, the criminal is in charge of the crime scene.

Many of us window shop spiritual traditions until we find a path that demands little or nothing of us. This is the appeal of new-age spirituality. Transforming the spiritual path into yet another mechanism that validates pre-existing patterns of consciousness is what Chogyam Trungpa referred to as spiritual materialism. However, spiritual materialism is not limited to new-age circles. It is a problem that manifests within traditional religions as well. Spiritual materialism is present when we manipulate the teachings in order to preserve the belief that the small self is our true Self. The best way to manipulate the teachings is to ignore them all together.

So many people in the west are participating in Buddhism as if it were a hobby. I have suffered from this delusion (click here to read about my adventures as a Buddhist Dumb-Ass). I tried to keep the path of transformation at a safe distance by convincing myself that the east was spiritually superior. I thought of Tibetans as wizards, and related to Buddhism as if it were nothing more than a role for me to play. So, I read the books and remembered my lines. I bought the mala and got the “Om Mani Pade Me Hung” tattoo. I engaged in wordy debates about Buddhist philosophy without the slightest god-damn clue as to what I was talking about. Even when I did develop some intellectual understanding, it was totally divorced from practice, and therefore empty and unsatisfactory. I loved applying Buddhist standards to Christian theology, in order to assure its insufficiency and my own superiority. I was the same old miserable person with a new wardrobe and vocabulary. I had created some fairy tale apart from my daily life. I was still trapped in my imagination, and as a result nothing changed.

I cannot begin the spiritual journey—an exploration of the deeper truths about myself—by adopting the persona of another person, nor can I postpone transformation. The path is the most powerful urge in my life—the path is my life, and true contentment is contingent upon my conscious participation. Everything in my being is calling me to the path. This innate inspiration is the indestructible drive to be myself. No justification—I think too much to meditate, I don’t have the time, I’m too busy, Americans are too materialistic, or westners are not spiritually inclined—will prove to be a sufficient excuse to ignore the call to participate in our life. We will continue to be tormented by dissatisfaction and restlessness, which is nothing more than the friction between the imperative to rest with the totality of our original being and the habitual tendencies that seek to evade this primal mandate.

The spiritual path consists of fully embracing this life. We must begin where we are at. For westerns, this means that we must fully embrace our 9-5′s, anglo-saxon names, and the culture that wrote our narrative. We must be willing to see the movement of our own dissatisfaction and the causes and conditions that set it in motion. These are relative truths. We cannot embrace the relative truth of our existence by relating to someone else’s station in life. I have to be willing to relate to my own unwillingness. I have to confront my own dishonest attempts to avoid open and honest relationships; rather than trying to mimic the as seen on TV/ ideal relationship. Getting a bumper sticker that says, “Loving-Kindness is my religion” or wearing a mala is no substitute for directly relating to my own inability to soften-up and be authentic. I can no more cultivate compassion by mindlessly reciting prayers in a language I do not speak, than I can produce a patronus charm by parroting Harry Potter.

Spirituality is about rediscovering the capacity to allow our life to flow from the source of authenticity, which is the silence that is at the core of our being. There are a great many obstacles that prevent this discovery. The path is about relating honestly and directly with these obstacles. Many of these hang-ups lay dormant, and only manifest when provoked. Only the reality of our daily life is provocative enough to shine a light on our shadow side. Our daily life is immersed in western culture, and our personal narrative is an example of our cultural narrative. So, our daily life can push our buttons because our daily life installed them.

When you combine mindfulness with your daily life you begin to notice that fundamental awareness expands beyond the personal narrative, because you get the opportunity to un-do the traps that keep you locked up in your limited self. When we create an alternative spiritual-verse where we pretend to be something we are not, we remove the possibility of transformation from the spiritual path. A path that ignores the possibility of transformation is neither spiritual nor a path; it is neurotic and cyclic. For Buddhism to take root in the west it must be grounded in our western lives. Otherwise, it is an irrelevant distraction to the western search for spiritual fulfillment.

Reggie Ray, of the Dharma Ocean Foundation, speaking about some of these spiritual pitfalls, as it relates to Buddhism’s migration to the West.

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A Conversation with an American Buddhist Master.

I recently had the opportunity to interview Dr. Reginald A. Ray of the Dharma Ocean Foundation for Elephant Journal. Reggie Ray brings to the table “four decades of study and intensive meditation practice within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, as well as a special gift for applying it to the unique problems, inspirations, and spiritual imperatives of modern people. He currently resides in Crestone, Colorado, where he is Spiritual Director of the Dharma Ocean Foundation, a non-profit educational organization dedicated to the practice, study and preservation of the teachings of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and the practice lineage he embodied.”

Part 1:

Spirituality & Daily Life: Interview with an American Meditation Master.

"In Buddhism we call it buddha-nature, but buddha-nature isn’t simply an established state. It is a process of being in the river of spiritual maturation that goes on-&-on, never reaching a static point. Perfection, in this case, refers to fulfilling the journey of the human life. When are fully and completely with what it means to be human, we have let go of any attempt to pin ourselves down, solidify ourselves, or encrust ourselves at any stage. It is an unending, open process. When we have completely let go of any attempt to withdrawal from life or freeze ourselves, that’s what I mean by perfection."

 Click here to continue reading part 1

Part 2:

Going Beyond Buddhist Psychology: an Interview with an American Meditation Master.

"People will tell you that they are going on vacation because they want to experience the world with a certain kind of freshness; they want to be a little bit surprised by reality. All these things that they are talking about are really spiritual goals, and there is spiritual longing in wanting to take a vacation. The problem is they get back from vacation and tell you that none of it was there! They are looking to the relative world trying to fulfill something that is already within us, and can only be found by relating directly with that larger Self."

Click here to continue reading part 2 

Part 3: 

Buddhism in the West: an Interview with an American Meditation Master.

"Dharma is about this life—it is about working with our given names and our given identities, and the institutions that we have in this culture. The minute we have to adopt any thing in our relative state of being that identifies us and takes us away from this reality, in my opinion, it is not dharma any more. I don’t know what it is."

Click here to continue reading part 3 

We are both prisoner and guard.

The 84 lb Dancing Dog & the Enslavement of our True Self.


So I have an 84 pound dog named Jack… He is pretty laid back, except when it comes to his walks. At around eleven a.m. he is overtaken by excitement, and begins to dance around the living room.  As you might imagine, an 84 pound dancing dog parading across my living room earns my immediate attention. So I get off of the computer, grab the leash, and take Jack to graffiti the park with urine.