January 14, 7 – 8:30 p.m.

12 South Dharma Center

Cost: No set fee but donations appreciated

In the Buddhist tradition, a broken heart is not a problem to be solved, but a remarkable opportunity to discover wisdom. This evening talk will introduce you to the skills needed to work with a broken heart – not to drive it away or tie it up with a bow, but to find the messages contained in this most difficult situation.

Whether your heart was broken yesterday or years ago, all the elements are there to discover your innate spiritual warriorship. As we talk, you will discover that the dark power of heartbreak can introduce you to gentleness, fearlessness, and intelligence. If you stay with your broken heart, it will surely lead you down the path to wisdom.

Susan Piver is an authorized meditation instructor in the Shambhala Buddhist lineage, the New York Times bestselling author of The Hard Questions, and the award-winning How Not to Be Afraid of Your Own Life. She has been a student of Buddhism since 1995. Her new book, The Wisdom of a Broken Heart will be published by Simon & Schuster in January, 2010.

The 12 South Dharma Center is located at 2301 12^th Avenue South, corner of 12^th and Linden, suite 202. For more information on how to find us, go to www.onedharmanashville.com

by Lisa Ernst

A samurai once asked Zen Master Hakuin where he would go after he died.
Hakuin answered ‘How am I supposed to know?’
‘How do you not know? You’re a Zen master!’ exclaimed the samurai.
‘Yes, but not a dead one,’ Hakuin answered.

Recently a friend posted on Facebook that he felt sad because it was the anniversary of his mother’s death, along with a dear friend and mentor of his. Quickly the comments came pouring in. The responses were well intended, no doubt, yet nearly all of them contained a type of story designed to make the grieving individual get past his sadness.  Here’s a sample of the comments: “Just remember that your mother is in a better place now.” “Your mother is watching over you from heaven.” The next comment came from the original poster, saying “I’m sad my mother won’t be here to see my daughter grow up.” The comments that followed again were designed to smooth it over “She watches your daughter every day.” “She’s guiding your daughter even though you don’t see it.” Again, the original poster commented saying, “Thanks for your comments, but I’m just really in a funk right now.” Finally the tone of the replies changed. The last few posts were without stories or attempts to smooth over his grief. Instead they just said “I’m sorry for your loss,” and “That must be hard for you.” Comments like these indicated that the commenters actually heard his grief and didn’t feel the need to dissuade him from his experience. His final post reflected that this “caring without fixing” really was meaningful to him.

In my experience, even long term meditators will fall into the pattern of trying to smooth over and create stories when people share a significant loss or feelings of grief. Many of us are inexorably drawn to imagine favorable outcomes to make ourselves and others feel more positively about bad news and loss, often in hopes of not getting stuck in negativity. The truth is that many grieving people are caught in a trap of negative stories, telling themselves that they will never recover, feel happy or find meaning in life again. So it’s understandable that those around them want the grievers to “look on the bright side.” The problem is, it doesn’t work and often makes things worse.

I experienced this myself last year when an art show in Houston I had been preparing for many months was abruptly cancelled because of Hurricane Ike. I had been showing at a wonderful museum district Houston gallery for years, and finally I would see it in person and meet the owner and staff members. In addition, many friends from Texas were planning to come to the show. On the Thursday before the show, I got word that Ike was scheduled to hit the city on Saturday. My initial thought was that the show would be rescheduled a week or two later. That thought made me feel a little better. But once the storm passed through, it was obvious that repairing the city infrastructure would take much longer than expected. The show could not be rescheduled, and I was very disappointed. As I shared this with people I knew, I kept hearing their stories and attempts to put a positive spin on it, such as “I’m sure the gallery will reschedule in a few months,” and “this is proof that the universe has bigger plans for your art.”

I was tempted to believe those stories, to try and latch onto a positive scenario that would take the edge off my disappointment and justify all the work I had done.  I also struggled with the tendency to speculate that I had some kind of “bad karma” that had brought on the unfortunate timing of the hurricane. In the first few days after the cancellation, my mind regularly moved across the continuum from positive pep talk to thoughts of despair. But the benefit of my meditation practice allowed me to see this pattern quickly enough that I didn’t dwell there for long.  Gradually I began to see through the reactive thoughts to my genuine response:  loneliness. Initially this made no sense to me and I tried to overlook it. Slowly, though, I quit turning from the loneliness or seeking an explanation. As I experienced the loneliness fully, the duality of my positive and negative thinking ceased and the wisdom of my true response became clear. Like most artists, I create my work in solitude, and the art show is a celebration of that effort in community. Because of the hurricane, the culmination of my effort — the public celebration — was never realized.  Hence the loneliness.  Nothing more and nothing less. Acknowledging and experiencing this loneliness allowed me, with lovingkindness, to let go and move on from disappointment.

Wisdom and insight arise when we cease to interfere with what is actually present in our experience at each moment. When circumstances occur that don’t fit our ideas about how things should be, our stories can be quite subtle, to the point that we may perceive them as “truths” rather than concepts and ideas. As long as they’re obscured from our consciousness, there’s no way we can let them go. We may do well to regularly ask ourselves, “what is true in my experience right now? What is the content of my mind and heart in this moment?”  Seeing the present, just as it is, creates the ground from which wisdom will reveal itself.

The Zen story at the beginning of this essay points to the mind that seeks answers that are often removed  from our present moment experience. Hakuin, in his wisdom, didn’t try to answer the question of his death with speculation or theory.  He simply acknowledged the obvious and let it go at that.

Second Annual New Year’s Mini Retreat Sponsored by 12 South Dharma Center

Friday, January 1, 20098:00am – Noon

Start your New Year on the cushion!!

This session is open to all practitioners – newcomers to old-timers.  Join us for a morning of sitting and walking meditation.  We will break at 10:00 for tea, at which time you can leave early, or plan to arrive for the latter half of the session.  RSVP appreciated but not required!  RSVP or questions to: 12southdharmacenter@comcast.net.

One Dharma will meet each Monday night in December, but we will only meet on one Wednesday and Saturday. Our  Wednesday “just sit” night meets on December 9 only and our Saturday Study Group meets on Dec. 12 only. For a detailed listing of our regular practice schedule, go here.

May you enjoy a safe and happy holiday season.

We just completed our fall meditation retreat at Penuel Ridge, and our focus on impermanence couldn’t have been more evident in nature over the weekend. It went from sunny and warm, to overcast, to heavy rains and cold, then back to perfectly clear and crisp on Sunday morning. We even enjoyed an incredible rushing waterfall after the rains. On Halloween night, the almost full moon, perfectly circled by brightly lit clouds, was truly a sight to see against the backdrop of the rural Tennessee ridges.

We were honored to have participants join us from Chicago and San Diego. Their journey to Nashville was touch and go but they finally made it to the retreat site late Thursday night with the help from another retreat participant who patiently waited at the airport for a flight that was three hours late. We had people of all levels of meditation experience, from brand new to decades of sitting practice. Everyone gave it their all, which was especially evident by the strength of the group meditation practice on Sunday morning. Many thanks to everyone who participated and supported this fulfilling retreat.

Embodying the Four Immeasurables: A Biocognitive Approach to Spiritual Practice

Luminous Mind and the Institute of Biocognitive Psychology present a workshop with Dr. Mario Martinez in a cutting-edge fusion of Buddhist psychology and western mind-body science.

Friday, October 9th, 2009 , 7 pm to 9 pm

Belle Meade Executive Suites, 4525 Harding Road, Second floor conference room (Across from Belle Meade Kroger) Nashville, TN 37205

Cost: Contributions to Luminous Mind

We want to cultivate the qualities of lovingkindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity, but what do we do with negative emotions such as anger, jealousy, and aggression?

In this presentation Dr. Mario Martinez teaches how to apply Western mind-body science to the exalted emotions known in Buddhism as the Four Immeasurables, or Four Brahmaviharas. Based on how cognition and emotions affect the immune system, biocognitive techniques offer an added dimension to resolve the fear-based emotions that can block the health benefits of the Four Immeasurables and other contemplative techniques.

Although presented using research from the Buddhist community, this seminar is suitable for people of all spiritual paths who would like to keep negative emotions from undermining their positive intentions.

Dr. Martinez is a licensed clinical psychologist and the founder of biocognitive science. He is the author of the psychological novel “The Man from Autumn” (Llumina Press) and the CD learning series “The Mind-Body Code” (Sounds True). Because of his specialty in how cultural and spiritual beliefs affect the immune system, he has been a consultant for the BBC, National Geographic, the Catholic Church, and Buddhist monks. For more information on Mario’s work visit www.biocognitive.com.

The event will be a fundraiser for Luminous Mind for the purpose of bringing in more teachers in the future. To register or for more information, email info@luminousmind.net or call Rita Frizzell at 463-2374. To download a flyer of the event, go to http://www.luminousmind.net/events.html

This World of Shadows and Echoes: Working with Impermanence

October 29-November 1, 2009 (Halloween weekend) Penuel Ridge Retreat Center

Led by Lisa Ernst and Tom Neilson

I beg you to just see all existent phenomena as empty and to beware of taking as real all that is nonexistent.  Take care of yourself in this world of shadows and echoes.

–Layman P’ang’s dying words

A core insight of the Buddha is his understanding of impermanence or emptiness, which is eloquently evoked in the above quote by Layman P’ang.  Since time immemorial, the human race has had to deal with the fleeting, ephemeral nature of life and the knowledge that everything we have and love will one day be gone.  Buddhism offers a way to transform the suffering that accompanies impermanence into openness, flow, and the joy of living life to its fullest.  This classic three day silent meditation retreat will focus on working with impermanence in our meditation practices and in our daily lives.  We will integrate the basic technique of mindfulness practice with direct awareness as a way of being intimate with oneself, one’s life, and the world. This practice can enrich and enliven life while also facilitating the process of transforming the suffering that accompanies grief and loss.

The retreat will consist of sitting and walking meditation, chanting, and dharma talks.  There will be opportunities for individual meetings with the teachers.  This retreat is appropriate for both beginning and advanced meditators.  For continuity and to enable deepening of the practice, we ask that you plan to attend the full retreat, arriving between 6:30 and 7:30 p.m. on Thursday October 29 and completing at noon on Sunday.

Lisa Ernst has been practicing and meditating for the past 20 years in both the Zen and Theravada traditions. She is the founder of One Dharma Nashville and has taught meditation in prisons and corporations. In 2004, Lisa received teaching authorization.

Tom Neilson is a clinical psychologist and long time meditator.  His approach to Buddhism draws primarily from the Theravada Insight and Zen traditions; additionally he has interests in Vajrayana Buddhism and non-duality expressed in other world religions. His understanding of Buddhism and spirituality has been influenced by Nagarjuna and Dogen.

The cost of the retreat is $150.  There will be a separate opportunity to offer dana (donations) to the teachers, who are receiving no other compensation for their time. A deposit of $50 is due by Friday, Oct 23. Please make your check to One Dharma Nashville and send to: 12South Dharma Center, 2301 12^th Ave South, Suite 202, Nashville, TN 37204.  Additional information and directions will be provided prior to the retreat.  Please contact onedharmaretreat@gmail.com with any questions.

This Friday I’m heading up to rural Massachusetts in hopes of getting born again — again.

Six years ago, in the same locale, I attended my first and only silent meditation retreat. It was just about the most amazing experience of my life. Certainly it seemed more dramatic than my very first born-again experience — my response to a southern Baptist altar call as a child, which I wrote about in this space last month.

I came away from that week feeling I had found a new kind of happiness, deeper than the kind I’d always pursued. I also came away a better person — just ask my wife. (And neither of those things lasted — just ask my wife.)

So with the retreat approaching, I should be as eager as a kid on Christmas Eve, right? Well, no. Meditation retreats — at this place, at least — are no picnic. You don’t follow your bliss. You learn not to follow your bliss, to let your bliss follow you. And you learn this arduously. If at the end you feel like you’re leaving Shangri-La, that’s because the beginning felt like Guantanamo.

We spent 5.5 hours per day in sitting meditation, 5.5 hours per day in walking meditation. By day three I was feeling achy, far from nirvana and really, really sick of the place.

I was sick of my 5 a.m. “yogi job” (vacuuming), I was sick of the bland vegetarian food, and I wasn’t especially fond of all those Buddhists with those self-satisfied looks on their faces, walking around serenely like they knew something I didn’t know (which, it turns out, they did).

Yes, the payoff was huge. But it’s unlikely to be as big this time around. It’s famously hard to replicate the rapture of your first meditation retreat. Last time, during the first half of the week, my apparently prescient unconscious mind kept filling my head with that old song by Foreigner, “It feels like the first time, like it never will again.” I’ve never especially liked that song, and during those first few days it joined the list of things I hated.

What I hated above all was that I wasn’t succeeding as a meditator. Now, as the two leaders of this retreat were known to point out, you’re not supposed to think of “succeeding” at meditating. And you’re not supposed to blame yourself for failing. And blah, blah, blah.

Well, they were right: To “succeed” I really did have to quit pursuing success, and quit blaming myself for failing. And some other things had to go right.

And what was “success” like? Well, to start at the less spiritual, more sensual end: By the time I left, eating the food I’d initially disdained ranked up there with above-average sex. I’m not exaggerating by much. When I first got there, I didn’t understand why some people were closing their eyes while eating. By the end of the retreat, I was closing mine. The better to focus on the source of my ecstasy. I wasn’t just living in the moment — I was luxuriating in it.

Also, my view of weeds changed. There’s a kind of weed that I had spent years killing, sometimes manually, sometimes with chemicals. On a walk one day I looked down at one of those weeds and it looked as beautiful as any other plant. Why, I wondered, had I bought into the “weed” label? Why had I so harshly judged an innocent plant?

If this sounds crazy to you, you should hear how crazy it sounds to me. I’m not the weed-hugging type, I assure you.

And as long as we’re on the subject of crazy, there was my moment of bonding with a lizard. I looked at this lizard and watched it react to local stimuli and thought: I’m in the same boat as that lizard — born without asking to be born, trying to make sense of things, and far from getting the whole picture.

I mean, sure, I know more than the lizard — like the fact that I exist and the fact that I evolved by natural selection. But my knowledge is, like the lizard’s, hemmed in by the fact that my brain is a product of evolution, designed to perform mundane tasks, to react to local stimuli, not to understand the true nature of things. And — here’s the crazy part — I kind of loved that lizard. A little bit, for a little while.

Whether I had made major moral progress by learning to empathize with a lizard, let alone a weed, is open to debate. The more important part of my expanding circle of affinity involved people — specifically, my fellow meditators.

At the beginning of the retreat, looking around the meditation hall, I had sized people up, making lots of little judgments, sometimes negative, on the basis of no good evidence. (Re: guy wearing Juilliard t-shirt and exhibiting mild symptoms of theatricality: Well, aren’t we special?) By the end of the retreat I was less inclined toward judgment, especially the harsh kind. And days after the retreat, while riding the monorail to the Newark airport I found myself doing something I never do — striking up a conversation with strangers. Nice strangers!

My various epiphanies may sound trite, like a caricature of pop-Buddhist enlightenment. And, presented in snapshot form, that’s what I’m afraid they’re destined to sound like. All I can say is that there is a bigger philosophical picture that these snapshots are part of, and that I had made some progress in apprehending it by the end of the retreat.

The “apprehension” isn’t just intellectual. This retreat was in the Vipassana tradition, which emphasizes gaining insight into the way your mind works. Vipassana has a reputation for being one of the more intellectual Buddhist traditions, but, even so, part of the idea is to gain that insight in a way that isn’t entirely intellectual. Or, at least, in a way that is sometimes hard to describe.

On Thursday night, the fifth night of the retreat, about 30 minutes into a meditation session, I had an experience that falls into that category, so I won’t try to describe it. I’ll just say that it involved seeing the structure of my mind — experiencing the structure of my mind — in a new way, and in a way that had great meaning for me. And, happily, this experience was accompanied by a stunningly powerful blast of bliss. All told, I don’t think I’ve ever had a more dramatic moment.

This retreat is coming at a good time for me. In June I published a book that I’ve been feverishly promoting. Publishing and promoting a book can bring out the non-Buddhist in a person. For example, when book reviewers make judgments about your book, you may make judgments about the reviewers — ungenerous judgments, even.

Also, you’re inclined to pursue the fruits of your activity — like book sales — rather than just experience the activity. Checking your Amazon ranking every 7 minutes would qualify as what Buddhists call “attachment.” And attachment is bad. (Oops: I just made a judgment about attachment.)

In fact, in general I’ve been living like someone who hasn’t been meditating with much regularity or dedication, who has strayed from the straight and narrow. It’s time to start anew.

At the end of my first retreat, still reeling from that Thursday-night experience, I told one of the meditation teachers about it. He nodded casually, as if the insight I’d had was one of the standard stops on the path to enlightenment — but far from the end of the path. Through truly intensive meditation, he said, the transformation of your view of your mind — and your view of your mind’s relationship to reality, and your view of reality itself — can go much deeper than I’d gone.

That would be interesting! But this week I’d settle for half as deep.

Dharma Talk by Sanchi Reta Lawler

Coming Full Circle, a Contemplative Approach to Death and Dying

Wednesday, August 12, 7pm

Our culture offers very little effective guidance to the Dying Time, and we are often caught unaware, uneducated, and un-practiced as to the terrain of this most poignant Initiation.  As with all passages, whether it be in our own Dying Time, or that of beloveds with whom we have shared the depths of life, we are invited into the Temple of Pure Mystery, where we are met with the reflection of many aspects of our Heart’s Journey.

The evening dialogue will center upon considerations that are both common and unique in the process of Death and Dying.  Also, we will touch upon aspects which will be explored in the upcoming cycle of the Coming Full Circle training that begins October 2 (email ssafer@comcast.net for info).

Please reply to ssafer@comcast.net if you plan to attend the Dharma talk.  In the event that the number of responses exceeds the capacity of the zendo, you will be notified of the change in location.  There is no fee to attend; however your donations will help 12South Dharma Center meet its overhead costs.

The One Who is Not too Busy
By Norman Fischer

You keep a to-do list, but you can’t get through it by the end of the day, and you’re frustrated because you feel like you haven’t been able to get enough done. You find that things take longer than you thought they would. And when people ask how you are, “Fine” has been replaced by “Too busy.”
Welcome to the “too busy” club.
In this technology-driven world, we can do more, so we do — and we love it. We feel effective and powerful as we check items off our lists and use our cell phones, BlackBerrys, and computers, sometimes all at once. We’re multitasking, doing as much as we can in the least amount of time. We’re active, creative, and engaged! In demand! Being too busy makes us feel as though we’re making an impact.
On the other hand, feeling too busy drives us crazy. Falling ever further behind as the to-do list relentlessly grows (each item generating many more items almost as fast as we can think of them) is nerve-racking and stressful. We begin to feel like prisoners of the list, prisoners of our lives and our desires, prisoners of time. There just aren’t enough hours in the day. It’s as if we’re doing battle with time — and losing.
But the point is not how many things we have done or will do in a given amount of time; the point is how we do what we do. If we’re rushed and frantic, we’re too busy. If we move through our tasks with equanimity, patient and composed, we’re not.
In the Zen Buddhist tradition that I’ve been practicing for many years, there’s a story that illustrates this point: A monk is sweeping the temple grounds. Another monk comes by and says, “Too busy!” The first monk replies, “You should know there is one who is not too busy.”
Our sweeping monk may have been moving quickly, and so he looked “too busy” to his brother monk. But inside — in his mind — he wasn’t busy. In the midst of his vigorous activity, he was in touch with “the one who is not busy.”
The states of “busy” and “not busy” aren’t defined by how many things there are to do. Contrary to popular opinion, there is no such thing as multitasking; the brain can tend to only one thing at a time. Being too busy or not being busy is an interpretation of our activity. Busy-ness is a state of mind, not a fact. No matter how much or how little we’re doing, we’re always just doing what we’re doing, simply living this one moment of our lives.
That moment may seem long or short. Time is an internal, not external, reality. Have you noticed that half an hour in the dentist’s chair lasts longer than half an hour at a fun dinner party with friends? And five minutes waiting on hold on the phone passes more slowly than five minutes watching a movie. Time is how we live it, not what’s measured by the clock (after all, the watch was invented fairly recently, in the 16th century). To be sure, our world operates on clock time, which is convenient and necessary; how else would we make it to that dentist’s appointment or dinner party? But the clock is supposed to be working for us, not the other way around. If we feel too busy, we’ve mistaken a feeling for an objective reality and are held captive to that reality. It needn’t be that way.
Okay, you say, good theory: We think we’re busy, but we’re not — we’re just doing one thing after another. But the habit of being convinced we’re too busy is hard to shake. What can we do about this persistent mania of feeling task- and time-driven?
Understanding something differently is only a beginning. To change the way we live, we have to practice what we’ve come to understand until it becomes a natural part of us, a habit of thought, feeling, and body. Sometimes just a phrase can help: “Not busy.” Remembering our two monks, you can say this softly to yourself when you feel overwhelmed. I do this when I feel crazed; with the repetition of the words, I immediately recognize that it is my feelings and my thoughts that make me feel pressured, not the tasks I have to do. They will get done — or not, and the world and I will survive. Even if I do have a crucial deadline, I’ll have a much better chance of making it if I feel “not busy” and can proceed with a calm mind. Feeling frantic doesn’t make me more efficient. Quite the contrary, it makes mistakes and glitches more likely.
It goes without saying that if you’ve bitten off more than you can chew in a day, or in a lifetime, you’d better step back and change your circumstances, if at all possible. Let go of a few activities: Peace of mind is more important, and healthier, than those few extra accomplishments. But if you can’t or don’t want to change your circumstances, you need to find the most serene and beautiful way to live the life you have. In the end, if you persistently and unpleasantly feel too busy, remember this: It’s not a fact; it’s a choice. There is one who is not busy. That one is you.