Satya Robyn's Blog, page 3

What is your heart’s purpose?

Last night, as a part of the weekly Buddhist practice I offer online, my Dharma talk was about this quote:

The big distinction between good art and so-so art lies somewhere in the art’s heart’s purpose, the agenda of the consciousness behind the text. It’s got something to do with love. With having the discipline to talk out of the part of yourself that can love instead of the part that just wants to be loved. ~ David Foster Wallace

I recognise this distinction, and I think we can apply it to everything we do. Sometimes I act from the part of me that needs, and sometimes from the part of me that wants to offer. Of course, most of the time it’s a mixture of both.

These different modes create very different effects in the world. We know how it feels to receive a lavish gift from someone who is desperate to be loved. They require our gratitude or our admiration in return – it’s not really a gift, we’re being ‘bought’. We also know how wonderful it feels when someone offers us something simply because they would like to make us happy, like this chocolate tart my friend made for me this weekend.

How do we know whether we are acting out of the part of ourselves that loves rather than the part that is desperate to be loved? For me, the biggest clue is how I feel during or after making the offer. Am I waiting for a particular response? Are there any traces of resentment? Has the act of giving left any ‘shadow’ at all?

An example of this shadow is the mix of emotions I feel while marketing my new book. Through selling, I’m making an offering – I know that the information in the book will be helpful for many people, and so I want to get it into their hands. I also find myself feeling disappointed when I haven’t sold as many as I hoped, or received many reviews. The disappointed part of me was hoping to be ‘fed’ through the affirmation of sales and praise.

The shadow of our giving shows us what we need, and for this reason it is precious. It redirects us to what needs healing in ourselves. This disappointment shows me that I need to find myself some alternative ‘food’ which doesn’t rely on others (or which involves me asking them for help in a more direct way). This might be rewarding myself for writing the book, or reminding myself that I am already helpful to others, or even that it isn’t necessary to be helpful in order to be loved. I might ask a friend for a hug, or take my disappointment to the Buddha.

If we find parts of ourselves that need love, we can invite them into our lap and ask them to tell us about it. Looking after our tender parts in this way will free us up to make offerings from a place of abundance, with no strings attached.

This piece of writing is my offering to you today. I hope it makes you happy

What do you need but not want?

A lot of the things I offer to the world are a ‘hard sell’.

Nobody skips happily to see me for psychotherapy, where they pay money to feel horrible. People are understandably sceptical of our form of Buddhism, which encourages us to acknowledge our foolishness and to open to the Other. My latest book is called ‘What Helps‘, and buying it means acknowledging even a smidgen of vulnerability or need. The wonderfulness of 12 step groups is like the sweet milk of a coconut which you have to get open with your bare hands.

Why don’t I start selling quick fixes and chocolate instead? Actually, going into the chocolate business is tempting…

I sell the things I sell because they’ve helped me beyond measure. I owe my life to them. And I want to pass them on.

In my experience, what I think I want is often not the best solution. ‘Be careful what you wish for’. Receiving affirmation for my writing, a bag of chips on a bad day, more money… getting these sorts of things in the past has always turned out to be a poor substitute for nourishment, or at best a mixed blessing.

Unfortunately, I have also found that the things I most need are often the last things I think I want. My body lays me low with flu, because it can’t find any other way of stopping me. I have a horrible time with a colleague, because there’s no other way to be shown a neglected part of myself which is desperate for attention. I face a fear, and feel a huge weight leave me.

I used to think that we should force ourselves and each other into these uncomfortable ‘it’ll be good for you’ activities, but now I trust that we enter into them at a pace which is safe and sensible for us. Sometimes it takes years for people to come along to the temple for the first time – that is as it should be. There’s no point in taking the medicine if we’re not yet able to ‘keep it down’.

What can we do? We can notice what we think we want, and wonder about what we might need. We can pay attention to the way the Universe keeps pointing us in the same direction, and take a step. We can be gentle with ourselves when we find our limits, and patiently “…trust in the slow work of God” (Teilhard).

We can celebrate the blossoms when they appear, in ourselves and in others. They are so beautiful!

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Gratitude for ‘Beautiful beautiful flower bloom’ by Min An from Pexels

What’s your cheese?

I just walked past our old cat Fatty, curled up on the back of the sofa. He opened one eye lazily and, as I neared the fridge, leapt from his comfy blanket and trotted over to me.

For several years now we’ve been treating Fatty’s dodgy thyroid with daily lunchtime pills. We discovered that the most painless way of achieving this was to squidge them into little balls of cheese. The only down-side is that he loves the cheese so much, he pesters us for it all morning and whenever we go anywhere near the fridge.

It’s not complicated: someone near the fridge means the possibility of yummy cheese. We’re not so complicated ourselves. We build up associations between different things, and these associations deepen over time.

Whenever I walk into the shrine room here at the temple, a sense of calm descends. After all the hours I’ve spent practising in this room, my body knows what to expect before my brain has had a chance to think any thoughts.

In the same way, the Buddha in my office has become associated with the promise I make to him every morning, and the weekly online practice sessions I hold with him in the background of the video.

As a Pureland Buddhist, I have the richest, deepest, most inspiring and most joyful associations with the nembutsu, saying the Buddha’s name: ‘Namo Amida Bu’. Nembutsu is my fridge, and the Buddha is the cheese. When I say the nembutsu I am connecting with all the previous times I’ve said it, all the people I’ve said it with, and all the warmth, light & love I’ve received during these times over the years. All this, conjured by a short phrase – magic!

It’s helpful to work at building up these positive associations. When I light a candle, the part of me that writes know that it’s time to write. When I go through my night-time routine, my body knows that it’s time to go to sleep. When I sit on our favourite bench with a cup of tea, my whole being knows that it’s time to relax. Regular repetition over time is the key, little and often. A little bit of (for me, vegan) cheese every day.

What is your cheese? Your fridge? How can you help the relationship between these two things to become richer and deeper?

 

 

Are you a saint or a pickpocket?

“When a pickpocket sees a saint, he sees only his pockets. When a saint sees a pickpocket, he sees only god.” ~ Ramana Maharshi

The pickpocket survives by taking money from other people’s pockets. Yes, he could have made different choices. We can always choose differently. But we will never know how it was for the pickpocket to grow up in the family he did, to learn the things he learnt, and to suffer the things he’s suffered. How can we know what lies at the root of his heart?

I am the pickpocket. I am the pickpocket when I scoop out two bowls of ice-cream and offer the slightly smaller one to Kaspa. I am the pickpocket when I avoid visiting a friend in hospital because I am afraid of hospitals. I am the pickpocket when I try to manipulate the world to make me feel better. I am the pickpocket whenever I am driven by fear.

The saint has great compassion for the pickpocket. She doesn’t condone his behaviour, but she does see how hard it would be for him to choose a different path. She identifies with his hunger and his suppressed guilt. Is the pickpocket God? I would say instead that she is looking at him as God would see him, through God’s eyes. She recognises him as a precious son of the Universe, just as we all are.

I am the saint. I am the saint when I ask the Big Issue man if he wants a sandwich because it occurs to me that he might be hungry. I was the saint when I let myself be led to running a temple, despite my wariness. I am the saint whenever I am led by love.

We all have parts of us that are pickpockets, and parts of us that are saints. How to shrink the former and expand the latter?

Anything that helps us to be less afraid. Connecting with others. Taking refuge in a spiritual practice or nature. Being kind to ourselves. Owning up to our pickpocket-ey parts and forgiving them. Tickling our bunnies’ ears. Pausing in front of the spring flowers. Writing blog posts. Closing our eyes for a moment and letting the light saturate our skin.

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Today’s video for you, about setting boundaries.

On being lazy

I have always strongly identified as Someone Who Works Hard. When speaking to friends, I catch myself complaining about how busy I am. When I look back at a day crammed with work, I feel good about myself.

Recently I’ve also noticed that I am Someone Who Wants To Do Nothing. To hide under a furry blanket and watch junk-food-TV. To put off the difficult jobs or get someone else to do them. To stretch out in the sun until I feel muzzy.

Sometimes I am lazy. The word ‘lazy’ implies excess, like the words ‘greedy’, ‘mean’ and ‘arrogant’. Lazy is when I over-indulge in rest. Greedy is the second bowl of ice-cream I eat after desert, and mean is when I don’t put any money at all into the donation bowl. These activities have a compulsive element, which means that they are being employed as an emergency measure. They are our best attempt at giving ourselves some of the comfort we’re desperate for, of dealing with our exhaustion, or of keeping us from feeling something.

Of course, there is a middle way in here. A place between workaholism and avoidance, a healthy balance of doing and not-doing. I inhabit this space too, and I manage it more and more as time goes on.

I suspect that what helps me to find this middle way is owning my laziness. I have been in denial about being lazy for a long time. In order to sustain my high output of work, it was necessary to force the lazy part of me into a back room. I was taught that laziness was BAD, and so I disowned it. Unfortunately, we can only force parts of ourselves into back rooms for so long. When the lazy part is finally allowed out (or smashes through the door), it goes to town. It keeps me pinned to the sofa for most of the day, when I’d actually rather be having a gentle walk in the park or doing a bit of weeding.

If I can acknowledge the lazy part when it arises and be kind to it, it seems to pass through more quickly. Oh, I feel lazy this afternoon – it’s possible for me to take a long nap, so I will. Oh, I really want to over-eat tonight – okay, it’s not the end of the world. It helps to be curious about why I might be feeling lazy or greedy – have I overdone it? Am I feeling sad about what happened last week?

It also helps to get to know the part that pushes me to work really hard. A really good question is: what does this part think might happen if it stopped doing what it was doing? That people would stop liking me? That everything would fall apart around me? I can acknowledge that part’s fears, remind it that it’s not on its own, and encourage it to relax.

As we get into conversations with the workaholic part and the lazy part, we help them to live alongside each other with more harmony. These parts of us become less polarised, and there is more ease in the system. Sometimes I work too hard, sometimes I get a good balance, and sometimes I am lazy. That’s okay. So how can we all get along?

Which of your qualities are you shoving into back rooms? What are the words you most often use to judge others negatively? What is the cost? How would it be to say ‘Sometimes I am…’?

My name is Satya and sometimes I am lazy. What a relief.

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I’ve made a video offering for you today: watch me here and then maybe buy a copy of my new book, ‘What Helps: Sixty Slogans to Live By‘ for someone who could do with a little direction, inspiration or consolation. (That might be you.)

Photo via Pexels.com with thanks.

On being our own mothers

Today I framed this baby Satya, so she can sit on the bookshelf just to the right of my desk.

I am slowly getting better at looking after the little Satya that is still inside me. For years I didn’t listen to her. I ignored her fear when I was out of my depth, and I didn’t realise how tired she got when I strove forwards.

I closed my ears to her because her feelings were inconvenient, or they didn’t match the idea I liked about myself. I shut out her sadness or anger because I don’t like to feel sad or angry. She’d been shut away for a long time, and when her feelings burst through, the strength of them could be too intense for me.

These days, I remember to ask her how she’s doing more often. Sometimes she tells me that she wants more fun, or that she needs me to avoid people for an afternoon. Sometimes when I’m ambivalent about a decision, she tells me ‘no’. Sometimes she’s upset and I don’t know why, and so I just give her a cuddle for a while.

It helps.

How is the little version of you doing? How often do you check in with it? What would it like you to do right now?

Sending a hug to all the little people inside us. May we be better mothers and fathers to ourselves. As we learn how to care for our little people, we have more and more love to give away.

Taking care of the temple

Remember that at any given moment there are a thousand things you can love.  ~ David Levithan

This morning I lugged plant pots up and down two flights of stairs, washed slippers, tidied out some drawers and cleaned away drifts of incense dust, and it made me very happy.

It’s been too long since Kaspa & I have been available to ask the sangha to join us in a ‘taking care of the temple’ morning. These are the times when we look at the long list of jobs to do around the house and in the garden, and we tick things off one by one.

There is a great satisfaction in seeing a shiny desk and a swept porch, and it is lovely to work alongside other community members. But this is what really made me happy this morning: I was cleaning the Buddha’s house.

It is easier to remember the sacred nature of the objects around us when they are close to something we care deeply about. I take extra pleasure in setting a vase of fresh flowers on my office shrine next to the golden Buddha who watches me as I type, and I love knowing that the cleaning we do in the temple hallway will be seen and appreciated by all who use this space.

Once we get the hang of seeing things in this way, though, we can extend the ‘shrine space’ to infinity. We can replace the candles on the Buddha’s main shrine, hoover the Buddha’s carpet, clean the Buddha’s porch, weed the Buddha’s car-park, pick up litter from the Buddha’s pavement, make an offering to the homeless man sitting in the Buddha’s alleyway, send money to those who need food in the Buddha’s far-away city…

For me, the Buddha reminds me to love things – to clean and tidy as an offering, and to feel it a privilege to do so. What reminds you to take care of things? Your children? Your beautiful garden? How can you increase the size of the pool of love around these objects? How can you find a thousand, a million things to love?

Help, I’m tired of myself

This is an Asking For Help blog, where I answer a question (from myself or others) with a slogan chosen at random from my book, ‘What Helps: Sixty Slogans to Live By‘.

Question: Yesterday I got lost on social media again, after saying I wasn’t going to, and I feel so tired of myself and my various dysfunctions – I come up against the same issues over and over again. What should I do?

Slogan: Peaks and troughs.

Interpretation: Our lives are made up of peaks and troughs, like climbing a mountain range. Sometimes we get a beautiful view and we feel fit and capable, and sometimes we twist our ankle or get grumpy and shout at our walking companion.

Here’s a quote from the book:

“It’s good to aim for the middle way, but it isn’t realistic to expect that we will ever flatten the line completely. Sometimes we will be fatter, and sometimes thinner. Sometimes we’ll be able to work efficiently, sometimes less so. Be kind to yourself when you’re up, and be kind to yourself when you’re down.”

And there’s this from the list of questions:

“In what areas of your life do you expect yourself to always be doing well?”

Well, all of them. So, okay, maybe that’s not so reasonable.

Yesterday I had a bad day on the internet. Today has started differently. Who knows if I’m making overall ‘progress’ or not. Who knows when it’ll be the right time for this dysfunction/coping habit to leave me for good, or if it ever will. All I can do is put the work in, be patient and forgiving of myself, and leave the rest to the Universe. It can see more than I can, and it knows better than me.

I feel softer towards myself now, and less attached to the idea that I’m going to reach perfection if I just try harder. Hey, you’re doing okay, kiddo.

Where are you being hard on yourself? Can you see that life is full of peaks and troughs?

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You can read the introduction to ‘What Helps: Sixty Slogans to Live By‘ here, and the first slogan here. If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer, email it to me and it may feature in a future blog.

 

Help, I’m excited but confused

Here’s the first in my new series of Asking For Help blogs, where I answer a question (from myself or others) with a slogan chosen at random from my book, ‘What Helps: Sixty Slogans to Live By‘.

Question: I’m thinking about making some big changes in my work, and I’m excited but also confused about how much of these plans might be driven by a fearful ‘grabbing at security’. What should I do next?

Slogan: If in doubt, wait.

Interpretation: I often get fired up about new projects, and I think that some of this energy is helpful. It launches me into my new projects, and it provides me with plenty of fuel to keep going. I get stuff done!

I am also aware of a tendency in me to be impulsive, and this impulsivity is often mixed up with a fierce fear-driven hope that the new project will provide me once and for all with the ANSWER. This might be more money, or more security, or more affirmation, or any number of things that I known through experience are not the things that make me happy.

How would it be to playfully approach my new project from a place of abundance and ease, feeling less worried about whether it will be ‘successful’ or not? How would it be to take the time to listen to all the different parts of me that are involved in these decisions?

While there is still confusion, I’m not going to rush to make any big changes. Instead I’ll take some time, listen to myself, and see what becomes clear. When I check in with myself now, I feel like I’ve let out a long breath. The excitement is still there, but I don’t feel any of the panic. If in doubt, wait.

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You can read the introduction to ‘What Helps: Sixty Slogans to Live By‘ here, and the first slogan here. If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer, email it to me and it may feature in a future blog.

Excited but confused: If in doubt, wait

Here’s the first in my new series of Asking For Help blogs, where I answer a question (from myself or others) with a slogan chosen at random from my book, ‘What Helps: Sixty Slogans to Live By‘.

Question: I’m thinking about making some big changes in my work, and I’m excited but also confused about how much of these plans might be driven by a fearful ‘grabbing at security’. What should I do next?

Slogan: If in doubt, wait.

Interpretation: I often get fired up about new projects, and I think that some of this energy is helpful. It launches me into my new projects, and it provides me with plenty of fuel to keep going. I get stuff done!

I am also aware of a tendency in me to be impulsive, and this impulsivity is often mixed up with a fierce fear-driven hope that the new project will provide me once and for all with the ANSWER. This might be more money, or more security, or more affirmation, or any number of things that I known through experience are not the things that make me happy.

How would it be to playfully approach my new project from a place of abundance and ease, feeling less worried about whether it will be ‘successful’ or not? How would it be to take the time to listen to all the different parts of me that are involved in these decisions?

While there is still confusion, I’m not going to rush to make any big changes. Instead I’ll take some time, listen to myself, and see what becomes clear. When I check in with myself now, I feel like I’ve let out a long breath. The excitement is still there, but I don’t feel any of the panic. If in doubt, wait.

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You can read the introduction to ‘What Helps: Sixty Slogans to Live By‘ here, and the first slogan here. If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer, email it to me and it may feature in a future blog.