June 9th, 2012

GREEN GULCH FARM ZEN CENTER

This one-day sitting will involve sitting and walking meditation, Dharma talks, Q & A and, by request, private interviews with Michael.

Confirmation will be sent to you when your $80 payment is received. Click the link below and you will be taken to our shopping cart check-out, followed up by our Paypal link. You can easily pay there with either a credit card or through Paypal.

Register Now

If you have any questions, contact Kristi.

November 2, 2011 (#43)

Student: What is the best response to someone who complains a lot?

Michael: It’s often difficult to have open dialog with someone immersed in negativity, but dialog is often the appropriate response more often than not. We always have three options, as I’ve said before, in dealing with difficulty: change it, leave it, or accept it totally. These options apply to every situation. With a negative person we can dialog in hopes of offering change. We can get out of their vicinity or even distance ourselves from their lives. Lastly, we might learn that meeting them with total acceptance offers us a space where openness can offer an increase in consciousness. This increase in consciousness has the potential to transform situations as well as people.

Student: This is so interesting since I’ve watched transformation occur in ways that haven’t been so comfortable.

Teacher: That’s to be expected. Transformation that arises out of a deepening of consciousness isn’t always what the small self wants.

Student: So true. Right now I’m watching friendships wither from a lack of interest on my part. It’s like I feel a deep lack of connectivity in relationships that used to sustain me. Pretty soon it’ll just be me and my cats.

Teacher: Things could be worse. More often than not, cats are the embodiment of enlightenment. But, kidding aside, I should also point out that friendships that wane during the course of deep spiritual work don’t have to end, necessarily. Often I’ve seen them come back even stronger as the work begins to deepen and settle. This doesn’t always happen but when it does it’s pretty cool to see.

October 28, 2010

Student: What allows emptiness to remain undisturbed? Is it when the seeing of the seeing is continuous? By grace only? Or perhaps when preferences are allowed, but not taken so seriously as one thing over another thing?

Michael: Emptiness is never disturbed. The waves of mind spring eternally from its inherent stillness and grace.

Student: So what do we do with those waves of mind?

Michael: We learn to surf. This allows Emptiness to be consciously embodied in, shall we say, an oceanic life.

Student: So the waves don’t stop?

Michael: Let’s hope not. Life’s waves keep things exciting. Learning to surf  these waves means that we fundamentally adjust our relationship to any of life’s disturbances. Rather than seeing disturbances as something to avoid, we start to see them as opportunities for practice.

I returned yesterday from the Infinite Smile Weekend Retreat at Mt. Madonna. The surroundings were beautiful and the “work” was challenging! Michael’s gentle encouragement and detailed instructions guided us as the group moved deeper into the silence. I was gradually able to drop below my surface chatter, and I could observe where my mind goes – to future, past, to judgement, and in between to moments of peace. My fellow meditators were a consistant source of inspiration and support.

I hope that each of you is able to make the time for a retreat (longer is better) with Michael in the near future. There are gifts waiting fo you- just by sitting still with others.

B.P.

Here’s another installment in a series of emails that took place between Michael and one of his senior students beginning the Summer of 2009. May you find the exchange interesting and enriching.

___

October 27, 2010 (#41)

Student: What happens when you fall in love?

Michael: We recognize ourselves through another, and then let go. This surrender feels so good that we usually end up clinging to it, which undoes the surrender, which leads to suffering. But if we can maintain an intimacy with the seeing what is sacred in us in others, without the clinging, we’re in for a treat.

Student: Yeah, it’s interesting. I know the experience of falling in love with a man, with my children, then recently with Awareness. But each day, I’m finding that when I don’t cling to any of it, these silly, little, day-to-day things occur and it’s like I fall in love all over again. I just drove by an old man hunched and sitting quietly at an outside table in front of the local Taco Bell, and as he was taking a bite of his terribly nutrition-free food. Right there, it was like I fell in love! It defies explanation. But the opening was unmistakable and beautiful. There’s an innocence, or something, there. What is this?

Michael: Sounds like compassion unfolding from a deep openness to me. We might also call this experience love without the tiniest bit of attachment. Open, free and full. And it’s constant since we start to see what is sacred internally expressed externally, in every situation.

Commuter Zen #84

June 9th, 2012

GREEN GULCH FARM ZEN CENTER

This one-day sitting will involve sitting and walking meditation, Dharma talks, Q & A and, by request, private interviews with Michael.

Confirmation will be sent to you when your $80 payment is received. Click the link below and you will be taken to our shopping cart check-out, followed up by our Paypal link. You can easily pay there with either a credit card or through Paypal.

Register Now

If you have any questions, contact Kristi.

Great New York Times piece on teaching meditation to high schoolers…

Students in trouble are given the choice of traditional punishments or participating in the meditation program, where Mr. Snyder will teach them how to meditate, understand volatile emotions and curb impulsive behavior. He intends to take the program to other schools as well.

via Brooklyn Students in Meditation Program Learn to Notice Their Emotions – NYTimes.com.

Living Without Hindrance

April 13 – 15, 2012

MOUNT MADONNA CENTER

Most of us on the spiritual path find that its the little things that get to us; that it’s life’s trivial offerings that get in the way of what we want to experience. This retreat offers us a chance to explore the opportunities life gives us, no matter how trivial or annoying they may seem, and puts them to use as we begin to skillfully work with life’s challenges.

Each day will involve sitting meditation, walking meditation and dharma talks followed by Q&A, as well as practice interviews with Michael.

Cost & Registration:

Total cost per person including retreat, meals and lodging ranges from $220. to $375. for the entire weekend.

It is not too early to sign up.  The spaces are limited and sell out quickly. To secure your spot please click the link that corresponds to your choice. Confirmation will be sent to you when your payment is received.

Accommodations:

Each of the following includes meals and Sangha fee. Please select the best option and you will be taken to our shopping cart check-out, followed up by our Paypal link. You can easily pay there with either a credit card or through Paypal.

Personal tent or van – $230 - Register Now

Center tent – $245 - Register Now

Double room – $320 - Register Now

Single room – $375 - Register Now

Double room with private bath – $345 - Register Now

If you have any questions, contact Joanne.

___

Feel free to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes.

Click on the player below, in order to listen to Michael McAlister’s talk.

Commuter Zen #83

Here’s another installment in a series of emails that took place between Michael and one of his senior students beginning the Summer of 2009. May you find the exchange interesting and enriching.

Student: Why haven’t you ever publicly claimed that you are enlightened. Is this because of how it may be taken, and that it may not be helpful?

Michael: No matter how I answer that question, I’m screwed. If I say ‘yes,’ it either turns people off or helps generate inappropriate attachments to my particular expression of realization. If I say ‘no,’ it usually lets people decide for themselves and forces some deep examination of me which usually disappoints them since, more than anything else, I’m a normal guy.

Student: Why would this being normal be a problem?

Michael: It isn’t. But lots of seekers aren’t into having the Dharma expressed from a normal guy, even though that’s what this teaching is all about. The fact is that it doesn’t matter what any of us think since our thinking, and the attachments to the arising thoughts, are what prevent realization in the first place. I’m nothing other than what I am, what you are, what all things are, at the core of Being. This makes me utterly ordinary and kinda’ boring in some ways. There’s nothing really special going on.

Student: Then what sets you apart? Why do you people come to listen to your talks and do the whole retreat thing and so forth?

Michael: I don’t know what sets me apart. I don’t look at it that way. I’m just reminding people of a Truth that they’ve forgotten. Most likely they begin to trust me and my approach because they see that I don’t feel particularly caught by much. This doesn’t mean that I’m disengaged but rather that I don’t get very stuck most of the time. To be sure, I still have worldly struggles but they don’t stick. And if they do get sticky, I usually watch as an appropriate response arises.

Student: This living without getting stuck is enlightenment?

Michael: That’s a good way to put it. But back to your question: Does this make me enlightened? Let me counter that question with another: Who is it that cares?

Student: That’s just what I’d imagined as your response. I’ve not heard anyone say, “I’m enlightened” and not had it sound egoic.

Commuter Zen #82

Living Without Hindrance

April 13 – 15, 2012

MOUNT MADONNA CENTER

Most of us on the spiritual path find that its the little things that get to us; that it’s life’s trivial offerings that get in the way of what we want to experience. This retreat offers us a chance to explore the opportunities life gives us, no matter how trivial or annoying they may seem, and puts them to use as we begin to skillfully work with life’s challenges.

Each day will involve sitting meditation, walking meditation and dharma talks followed by Q&A, as well as practice interviews with Michael.

Cost & Registration:

Total cost per person including retreat, meals and lodging ranges from $220. to $375. for the entire weekend.

It is not too early to sign up.  The spaces are limited and sell out quickly. To secure your spot please click the link that corresponds to your choice. Confirmation will be sent to you when your payment is received.

Accommodations:

Each of the following includes meals and Sangha fee. Please select the best option and you will be taken to our shopping cart check-out, followed up by our Paypal link. You can easily pay there with either a credit card or through Paypal.

Personal tent or van – $230 - Register Now

Center tent – $245 - Register Now

Double room – $320 - Register Now

Single room – $375 - Register Now

Double room with private bath – $345 - Register Now

If you have any questions, contact Joanne.

Commuter Zen #81

Here’s another installment in a series of emails that took place between Michael and one of his senior students beginning the Summer of 2009. May you find the exchange interesting and enriching.

October 6, 2010 (#37)

Student: So when I am dreaming at night, I am the dreamer, so every other person in the dream is within me. Is this accurate? I mean I wrote the whole script of every dream I ever have.

Michael: Right so the entirety of both the dream and its content is within you.

Student: Does the same then apply to my waking experience, in that every person is seen within this very awareness? Therefore, everyone and everything is within me?

Michael: I’d say so. If it’s within your awareness, it’s an object within an infinite subject. That infinite subject is, as we might say in Buddhism, your True Self. For example, we could say that as the sleeping dreamer, the dream’s content is a multifaceted reflection of who we think we are. As the waking dreamer, the day-to-day state of our waking dream is pushed and pulled by additional reflections of who we think we are.

Student: How does a person’s realization of True Self, or awakening, or enlightenment, or whatever you want to call it, change any of this?

Michael: Enlightened beings see through the dream entirely. This is why we call them “awake.” When any of us is awake, the allure of any dream falls away. So, too, does any dream’s inertia. At this great end of ends, all dreams, all content, all boundaries are recognized as permeable expressions of vast, awakened space. Utterly open. Utterly still. Utterly void, and yet, at the same time, utterly full. Living from here radically enhances the depth and scope the unhindered expression of our natural grace, joy and ease.

___

Feel free to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes.

Click on the player below, in order to listen to Michael McAlister’s talk.

I also find myself smiling at all the attachment that seems to pervade much of contemporary, and dare I say, youthful approaches to the contemporary delivery of the Dharma. Not that Warner is any more youthful than I am. He and I are the same age. But many of us in the under-50 category have been accused of missing the mark in how it is that we interpret and articulate the sacred. This criticism increases proportionally, it seems, the younger the teacher is. Lot’s of this may be warranted. It’s an issue that deserves more than a quick blog post. But in relation to Brad’s criticism of Thay, he lays down a critique that may offer each of us a chance to study our own attachments through his expression of his own.

Read on and decide for yourself.

A few people got bent out of shape that I said I believed that Thich Naht Hanh did not write his own Twitter posts. It turns out I was right. He doesnt. His Twitter profile says, “My twitter account is managed by senior students, both monastic and non-monastic.” He probably didnt even write that!

I’ve also been told by people who seem to know what theyre talking about that Thich Naht Hanh doesnt write his own books. His talks are recorded and transcribed. Then senior students edit them into books, which Thich Naht Hanh approves before publication. Of course the covers of these books simply say “by Thich Naht Hanh.”

Ask anyone who writes for a living what they think of that sort of thing and I guarantee theyll get a little wrankled by the idea. Writing is hard work. People who claim to be writers but dont actually do the work annoy those of us who really write our own stuff. Its not a big deal. But it irks me enough when I see this very common practice that I like to point it out. I would guess that about half of the “authors” whose books are shelved near mine at your local Book Barn “write” their books in pretty much the same way. I don’t think it’s disrespectful to say this. I think its truthful.

Who is Thich Naht Hanh?

via HARDCORE ZEN: Who is Thich Naht Hanh?.

Commuter Zen #80

Here’s another installment in a series of emails that took place between Michael and one of his senior students beginning the Summer of 2009. May you find the exchange interesting and enriching.

August 14, 2010 (#26)

Student: Is there a perfect time to break from the sweetness of teacher? Won’t this be known and happen naturally, just like the end of a one-on-one practice interview, or dokusan, when the bubbling energy has settled and it’s time to get up and walk out the door?

Michael: It can look that way. As I’ve seen it, it’s totally unique to each relationship. Sometimes it can be filled with pain or even anger.

Student: Anger? Really? Because we realize that we’ll never awaken?

Michael: No. We’ll all awaken eventually. The trick is to do so before we die. But seriously, seeing through any kind of attraction to its end can be difficult. It’s easy to equate it to what romantic break-ups can be like, even though the teacher-student relationship doesn’t fall into that category. There is trust and a special kind of intimacy that develops. Once the student evolves past the attraction to all of their projections of sacredness that they’ve put on the teacher, the break-up usually ensues. Sometimes this split is a thing of beauty, sometimes it’s not.

Student: How is there a seeing through the attraction for the Sacred? I’m not sure how that would look. Does the seeing through having anything to do with thinking there is something outside to bring inside?

Michael: The sacred always shows itself through the lens that we, ourselves, grind. As we grow spiritually, so does our clarity. This clarity allows for us to see our teachers as reflections of our deepest longings. Not that we necessarily want to be just like them, but that we’ve allowed our trust in them to point us towards a truth that we know exists within us. As this process comes to a fruition, and the refinements allow for a kind of finishing to occur, we see the sacred interiority of ourselves as not separate from our teacher. This inclusivity simply points us in a new direction; usually away from the teacher.

Student: This goes for me, too, obviously.

Michael: Let’s hope. There is no greater reward for me than to watch you guys grow past me. It’s like a parent dropping their kids off at college and watching them graduate all at once, I assume. For the record, I’m not sure what our break will look like, but I’m also not anticipating that when it comes it’ll be anything other than perfect… kinda’ like seeing through anything that is sacred.

Student: If there’s any sadness in relation to this, is that an indicator that something is not being seen clearly?

Michael: Is there sadness moving from 3rd to 4th grade? College to work? Any graduation is a rebirth where we bring along what we’ve gone past. It’s just that in this process of maturation, of evolution, we use muscles that we aren’t used to using. Sadness? Who knows? Maybe. Excitement and wonder? Yeah, probably. And yes, it’s a homecoming: the deepest kind. It’s an authentic return to an opening to the teacher-as-Self. In a paradoxical spiritual twist, however, there’s no return at all since we’ve never technically left what the teacher has been pointing out all along. In this way the teacher has both always been there and never been there. The teacher and the student have always been “just this.”

Commuter Zen #79

At its best, Integral clarifies our position in the relative realm when we begin to recognize the “positionlessness” we occupy in relation to the Absolute. It gives structure to our structurelessness, form to our Emptiness. The potential for helping the world become the change we see in ourselves presents itself throughout the Integral Movement. But there’s another side to this.

At its worst, Integral falls prey to its subscribers’ lack of balance. Many well-meaning Integralists are out of balance themselves, taking shortcuts as they ascend developmental heights. As I’ve seen too many times, this results in activists that diminish their effectiveness by clinging to their causes. Or, just as bad, they become “in-activists” (play the video), unwilling to meet the needs of a rising tide of global, environmental, political and deeply personal demands. In either case, we can find limited egos that see themselves as expansive expressions of enlightenment.

Between these two extremes, however, there is reason for hope. Terry Patton and Marco V. Morellihave offered a manifesto that, as long as it’s not clung to, may offer some guidance to those in the movement as well as those looking to affect change. The central point of the debate surrounding the Integral’s current state of affairs reads:

On the one hand, we don’t feel comfortable identifying with or investing our energy into the kinds of activism often associated with progressives, environmentalists, and other left-leaning groups (much less right-wing groups like the Tea Party). We find them too ideological, too rigid, and not dynamic, innovative or creative enough. Culturally, they appear too polarized, often unwilling or unable to respect opposing points of view. Though many of us sympathize with the progressive agenda, we simply don’t feel that the cause reflects our spirit and understanding of things. Thus we label these movements as “green,” “first tier,” or “postmodern” in a pejorative sense.

On the other hand, integral consciousness hasn’t yet generated a coherent cultural movement that could become its own force for socio-political change. In fact, its early expressions almost seem to deemphasize the importance or urgency of social activism. Instead, it has tended to prioritize the evolution of the self. Moreover, integral culture (especially in its more awkward attempts at marketing) often blurs across a line of credibility, and risks becoming a sub-section of the new-age, new-thought movement.

via Occupy Integral!.

In order for Integral to avoid becoming an irrelevant off-shoot of any one of the many trends and movements, it needs to consider looking at itself through its own lens. Carefully, I would argue. Doing so, as Patton and Morelli suggest, helps us occupy ourselves as well as the Occupy meme in deeply conscious ways. Clinging to the Occupy Integral idea, and the hopes and dreams that surround its application, will only serve to minimize its impact and its usefulness in these critical years ahead of us.

Michael’s inspiration for this talk came out of a visit to his childhood church and a discussion he had with his friend and minister of this organization.

___

Feel free to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes.

Click on the player below, in order to listen to Michael McAlister’s talk.

Here’s another installment in a series of emails that took place between Michael and one of his senior students beginning the Summer of 2009. May you find the exchange interesting and enriching.

Student: I’m confused in that so much of what I seem to be learning from this teaching, or unlearning, or whatever, centers around how things are at once part of a great union and yet, at the same time, they are also different. Does this make sense?

Michael: It does. You’re hitting on one of the most fundamental aspects of the teaching; that being our recognition of the simultaneous difference and sameness of all things, all the time.

Student: How does this recognition play out?

Michael: At first we see the two realities, form and formlessness. Then we see the unity of form and formlessness. Then we actually integrate the division and the union, simultaneously living as a conscious expression of both.

Student: Is this like the Zen proverb that says: first, mountains are just mountains, then mountains are not mountains, then mountains are mountains again?

Michael: Yes. But there’s a huge adjustment of perspective from the mountain at step one to the mountain of step three. First, we see the mountain as a gross form that falls in line with what we’ve always called “a mountain.” Next, after some time with a meditation practice, we see that the mountain is nothing more than a beautiful co-mingling of sub-atomic spin and space. Just like us. This object we used to see as just a mountain now arises as an interdependent, temporary expression of infinity within our awareness. Just like us. Once this happens the mountain takes on decidedly un-mountain-like qualities that allow for us to see through, if you will, its form. Instead of being a mountain that is fixed and permanent, we see the mountain as a series of relationships that are decidedly fluid. Finally, from here, we start to appreciate the mountain, in all its majesty, as a divine expression of Spirit. Just like everything else. Consciously seeing the mountain as both something solid in our awareness as well as something that is more than its concrete appearances lets us integrate the form with the formless. Emptiness, so to speak, becomes full and the mountain is at once itself, and beyond whatever our definition of mountain has ever been.

Student: And this same principle applies to anything that we can see, hear, feel, taste or smell?

Michael: Or think.

___

Feel free to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes.

Click on the player below, in order to listen to Michael McAlister’s talk.

Here’s another installment in a series of emails that took place between Michael and one of his senior students beginning the Summer of 2009. May you find the exchange interesting and enriching.

September 23, 2010

Student: Is full participation in the dance between the Absolute and the relative the same as the intersection between Spirit and psychology?

Michael: I’d say so, if we can look at our definition of the Absolute as being beyond the boundaries of the mind and the relative as being the actual boundaries themselves. So your psychology can be seen as the movement of your mind. As such, psychology is your ego’s study of itself. The spiritual path, on the other hand, offers any of us interested in doing the work an ever deepening perspective from which we can cultivate a radically different view of our own experiences. That view definitely invites a dance.

Student: But this deeper view doesn’t necessarily put us in the clouds, so to speak. It seems this deeper unfolding of the Absolute changes my approach to whatever arises in my psychology. Like when I find myself getting self-conscious or embarrassed, I’m starting to see that I am fully human. Then when consciousness shines its light on the self-consciousness or embarrassment, these experiences can be seen as if they are smoke, seen through, temporary.

Michael: Beautiful. Feels like a big relief, doesn’t it?

Student: Huge. But I’m seeing that this is the dance. And part of full integration, the process of full, open participation means always being open to new dance steps.  Does this make sense?

Michael: Yes. Shall we dance?

Commuter Zen #73

Allison Yarrow offered up this piece about Lodro Rinzler’s class at the Shambhala Center in NYC. I thought it quite interesting and struck me as so congruent with a great deal of our quasi-Buddhist approaches that we celebrate at Infinite Smile.

Rinzler authors a weekly column on Huffington Post and he has a new book, The Buddha Walks Into a Bar: A Guide to Life for a New Generation. The column, What Would Sid Do, offers an “honest look at what meditators face in the modern world,” reminding readers that “before Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) attained enlightenment he was a confused 20-and 30-something looking to learn how to live a spiritual life.”

via The Daily Beast.

As I so frequently say from the cushion, there is nowhere that the Dharma is not being offered. There is no place that exists without the fullness of the teaching. Ego itself is infused with the magesty of Spirit’s continual grace. This includes alcohol, as Rinzler points out, as well as sex. I couldn’t agree more and I’m glad to see that the Dharma’s application in the “real” world is facing these and other issues fully.

Chogyam Trungpa

On the other hand, I’ve also found that if this approach isn’t treated, ahem, soberly we can find deep divisions can present themselves in our practice. The founder of Lodro Rinzler’s tradition, Chögyam Trungpa, as well as many of his followers, fell into these traps and caused an assortment of problems. So we need to continually remind ourselves that despite the fact that our vices can be met mindfully doesn’t mean that they will not be potentially very harmful to both self and other.

For the record, I’m not trying to moralize. I am, however, pointing out that a certain spiritual finesse is needed in our work both as teachers and as students. Any of us really on the path to awaken continually needs to lean into the notion of “Do No Harm” as we live in the world. Yes, people will get hurt in break-ups. I know this first hand. And yes, occasional overindulgence may tax our bodies unnecessarily. I used to be much more familiar with this kind of pain. Not so much these days. Regardless, it is in the clarity of an individual’s intention that an awareness can unfold which allows her to awaken to a spaciousness that is “grounded” in a field beyond all vanity and all desire. Skipping the steps that get us to this fundamental peace, means that we bypass the very climb that is most needed if we are to truly awaken. Anything short of this often allows for the structures of the ego to stay intact in the most subtle of ways thereby giving rise to a very small self that mistakenly sees itself as Big.

___

Feel free to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes.

Click on the player below, in order to listen to Michael McAlister’s talk.

Commuter Zen #72

Commuter Zen #72

Can’t wait…

If you’re a film buff, you probably recall director Ron Fricke’s fantastic, visually stunning outings like Koyaanisqatsi or Baraka. Fricke’s newest work is a sequel, of sorts, to the latter. Entitled Samsara, the film is described by the director as a “guided meditation on the cycle of birth death and rebirth.” It was shot on 70mm film — one of just a handful of films to be shot in such a loving way over the past forty years — in some 25 countries. Here’s the story from the film’s website:

Samsara is a word that describes the ever turning wheel of life. It is a concept both intimate and vast – the perfect subject for filmmakers Ron Fricke and Mark Magidson, whose previous collaborations include Chronos and Baraka, and who, in the last 20 years, have travelled to over 58 countries together in the pursuit of unique imagery.Samsara takes the form of a nonverbal, guided meditation that will transform viewers in countries around the world as they are swept along a journey of the soul. Through powerful images pristinely photographed in 70mm and a dynamic music score, the film illuminates the links between humanity and the rest of the nature, showing how our life cycle mirrors the rhythm of the planet.

via Shambhala SunSpace » Director Ron Fricke to deliver Samsara, the movie.

Commuter Zen #77

Here’s another installment in a series of emails that took place between Michael and one of his senior students beginning the Summer of 2009. May you find the exchange interesting and enriching.

September 13,  2010

Student: What does “being wrong” mean from the enlightened or Infinite perspective?

Michael: It’s just like “being right.” From an enlightened perspective it’s like a punchline to the funniest of all jokes. You know, the one about there being a division between up and down, black and white, you and me, right and wrong. From the enlightened perspective, these boundaries can be recognized but they also can be seen through, thus making any claim to rightness or wrongness kind of silly.

Student: But some things are wrong, though. Don’t we have a moral imperative to prevent, for example, war and injustice?

Michael: Of course. But if we attach to our sense of what a moral imperative is or is not, we will then end up declaring war on war. This doesn’t solve anything. Instead it only makes things more brutal. On the other hand, truly meeting the roots of war, and by extension injustice, allows for us to see through any egoic definitions of right or wrong and allows for us to embody an undivided approach to any situation. This undivided approach isn’t opposed to anything and can therefore offer its expression as peace.

Student: This makes sense. So there’s no such thing as an “anti-war” position that isn’t actually warlike?

Michael: I’d say this is true. The undivided approach would offer itself as a “pro-peace” position.

Student: So is it possible, based on what you’re saying, that an enlightened master is never really wrong or right?

Michael: Give me one person, enlightened or not, that is “never” anything and I’ll give you… uh… a bow. The spiritual marketplace has historically found itself full of teachers that do things that are “wrong” based on the ethical standards that they themselves offer up. Perhaps this makes them “unenlightened.” What I might add here is that an awakened being isn’t ever caught by what the mind sees as right or wrong. From this un-caught place, they engage their world consciously with the intention not to do harm.

February 18th, 2012

GREEN GULCH  FARM ZEN CENTER

This one-day sitting will involve sitting and walking meditation, Dharma talks, Q & A and, by request, private interviews with Michael.

Confirmation will be sent to you when your $80 payment is received. Click the link below and you will be taken to our shopping cart check-out, followed up by our Paypal link. Once you click the Paypal link, you will have the option to pay with a credit card of your choice.

Register Now

If you have any questions, contact Kristi.

Commuter Zen #76

With this in mind, Michael points out the ways in which we cling to the very things that prevent enlightenment. Past and future orientation, for example, in addition to preferences, will always point us in the direction of our attachments. These attachments end up defining the boundaries of our delusion. But the gift of these limitations are that each of them shows us what we need to get past in order to awaken to the Truth that lies beyond name and form.

___

Feel free to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes.

Click on the player below, in order to listen to Michael McAlister’s talk.

Commuter Zen #75

September 1, 2010

Student: What is empathy?

Michael: An impersonal gift of seeing someone totally. We could also think of it as the opposite of greed.

Student: Makes sense. On another point, there are questions still surrounding what appears to be the separation between my experience and your experience. There is something that wants to make this separation the reality instead of seeing that it is an arising within one awareness that we share. So with that said, what is it that is stuck within experience that still sees you as apart from me?

Michael: Sounds like your small self is still fighting against the Big Self’s offering. This, of course, is understandable. Big Self is inviting the small self to recognize the fact that it is perpetually partial in its offering. Put simply, the ego hangs on to separation as a way of keeping its job.

The gift of non-separation that the Big Self sings means death to the small self’s priority, or, in Western terms, it is akin to ego death.

Student: The Big Self kills the small self?

Michael: No. There is no killing of anything as our awareness expands. We just begin to realize what is and what is not useful. We go past but bring along what we’ve always had in the same way that we’ve gone past our teenage and yet we bring it along in our experience as we mature. So we could say that the realization of the Big Self utterly diminishes the position of power that the small self has always known and has expected to maintain. And yet despite its newly diminished role, we bring the small self along as we deepen our practice.

Student: Something in me gets this intuitively but I can’t say that I understand what you’re saying. But the fact that I do not understand doesn’t negate or deny awareness.

Michael: Right. Awareness is beyond anything that you could ever consider “yours.”

Student: So I am before the “I” that thinks it understands. So who is left to want to understand what you’re saying?

Michael: Who, indeed. Awareness doesn’t want anything. Wanting can only arise from something that feels as if it is apart from the deep singularity.

Student: So this wanting comes from the mind, or the ego, or the small self that’s craving understanding?

Michael: Precisely.

Commuter Zen #74

At least 2 million Buddhists currently practice their religion in the United States, and many of their fellow citizens disapprove. A survey conducted by political scientists Robert Putnam and David Campbell, coauthors of American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us 2010, endeavored to determine how Americans perceive the nation’s major religions and found that Buddhists rank second to last, above only Muslims, writes James Coleman in Buddhadharma Fall 2011.

via Bad Buddhist Vibes — Emerging Ideas — Utne Reader.

February 18th, 2012

GREEN GULCH  FARM ZEN CENTER

This one-day sitting will involve sitting and walking meditation, Dharma talks, Q & A and, by request, private interviews with Michael.

Confirmation will be sent to you when your $80 payment is received. Click the link below and you will be taken to our shopping cart check-out, followed up by our Paypal link. Once you click the Paypal link, you will have the option to pay with a credit card of your choice.

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If you have any questions, contact Kristi.

Via David Sillito of the BBC comes this report — with more to come — featuring Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard (aka, the “happiest man in the world”) and others, exploring the connection behind mindfulness meditation and science.