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.

When we can accept reality as it is, we can no longer find ourselves to be at war with it. There is nothing to resist, in other words, when we are no longer clinging to any expectation that things should turn out a certain way. When we can rest in this space, we open to our True Nature. When we can live from our True Nature, we find that we always have everything that we could possibly need with us all of the time.

This takes practice and discipline. It takes a fearlessness that allows for us to study our own suffering. This study shows us that whatever we cling to, we end up diminishing. Loosening our grip on things through our stillness practice, on the other hand, ends up enhancing not only our experience but also the lives of all those we come into contact with. Our lives can be led not from a place of vanity where we seek a continual aggrandizement of separate selfhood, but rather we can live from a deeply connected place where abundance flows to, through and from our being. Here is where all war ends and peace becomes expressed continually.

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

ISmile312 - Vanity and Other Wars With Reality [ 44:27 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (2492)

This podcast features one of Michael’s students, Gina Rocca, who offers an introductory talk prior to a previous sitting.

Gina’s beautiful talk is then followed up by one of Michael’s talks as well as Q & A.

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Michael addresses the enlightened message of several traditions and suggests that they begin to intertwine at some key places. Among these points is the notion of being good to each other and recognizing the power of surrendering to what is actually happening.

Issues like attachment, identification and vanity and the distortions are addressed. Instead of resisting our lives, meditation helps us take the “backward step” that helps us fall into awakening. Crushing heartbreak as well as bliss offer us a direct path into the heart of awakening. This is our path.

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Feel free to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes.

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

ISmile302 - Living Without Distortion [ 53:40 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1990)

As spiritual practitioners we can often misplace our awareness, focussing too heavily on one or another aspect of being. We may overcompensate both intention and awareness in subtle ways, giving too much of our attention, for example, to our thinking or we can go the other way, giving too much attention to what we are feeling. But by balancing these two directional aspects of our awareness we naturally embody the very awakening that we hope to realize.

Depending on your preferred translation, the Buddha says, “In this fathom-long body and mind you’ll find the entirety of the Dharma.” Assuming that the Buddha was on to something, this is great news. We have all we need, right here, right now, in this body and mind, for awakening. But in order to uncover this gift, very often we need to give a little extra attention to what’s going on within our bodies as opposed to getting habitually lost within our minds. Meditators often fall into this trap of studying their minds without dropping more deeply into their bodies. But by practicing a simple “checking in” with our feelings and evaluating their various textures, their density and their heat, among other qualities, helps us refine our sense of our internal landscape. Doing this helps not only familiarize us with our inherent majesty, but it helps us reclaim our bodies in powerful, and often beautiful ways, that we then get to share with the world.

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Feel free to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes.

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

ISmile295 - Reclaiming the Body [ 49:30 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (2330)