Tibet in 1945

Remarkable 1945 home movie footage by Major James Guthrie includes a glimpse of the Dalai Lama. From BFI archives.

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Light in the Darkness

…its just happening. It has nothing to do with my muscles or my cleverness, it has to do with so-called grace of God. Like the ripening of the apple on the tree. Nothing to do with human cleverness.

Andrew Jordan in conversation with Carol Sill

C: Hi Andrew, glad we can have another conversation here in Vancouver. It’s a rainy day today. And we’re talking about having a lot on your mind. You know, as we get into the fall and September happens and everybody’s getting anxious and getting started again, let’s talk about what happens when you’ve got too much going on or too much on your mind. What are some of the ways that you think about handling that?
A: Well, I’m aware that people around me .. in a sense of a mirror.. are complaining – it’s my complaints too, but I put it in their mouths. Friends and acquaintances complain that there’s too much on their minds, the to do lists are too long, and I hear comments like “I’m overwhelmed,” “I’m panicking” “Too much too much” “Time is too short” “Things are speeding up.” The reason I’m mentioning it is because I identify with it. So really it’s one way of talking about myself.
So indeed that’s the case. That predicament. Too much on the mind. Too much on the to do list. Now what do we do?

C: Right.

A: It’s crazy-making.

C: You know a couple of talks back we were talking about authenticity and being authentic in the moment. How is it possible to find that moment while everything is whirling around you? What do you do about that? I can hear, even now, sounds in the background at your place, where we’re talking, I know, we’re all enmeshed in our lives. What are some of the strategies that you use, if there are any? How do you sort yourself out?

A: I actually built myself a meditation room in a crawlspace in my house. Putting cushions, carpet, candles, even a sound system. So I can go there, and I do, I haven’t been there today, or yesterday I somehow missed it, but later today I will go there because I need it for my sanity. So I close the door in this crawlspace, I made it comfortable and cozy. Maybe I’ll light a candle, maybe I’ll sit in darkness, and I’ll do a meditation for about 20 minutes. And remind myself that all the noise, the craziness, the to do list (the to do list has validity for sure), and yet I need to tune into, find the place that has a higher validity than the high to do list. Because if the to do list is left till tomorrow most of the items will wait, even though it seems like they won’t, but they do. So should I be sick or have some legitimate reason for not attending to the to do list, seems like no big deal. Certainly there are deadlines and so on that have to be attended to.
But I do find this meditation room, which can be a corner or a cushion to sit on, and that’s an oasis, an escape from the madness that seems to be happening around me.

C: And then by going in there you then re-center, and you’re able to come out and actually engage more fully in your life in the world. It’s not just that you escape, and then wait for the next time you can escape. Right?

A: Right. I guess somebody might drink and get drunk to escape and then come back and find their problems have not decreased – quite the opposite. No, this is different. It is different from getting drunk or avoiding through a method like that. I think it’s almost like retreating to set the priorities straight. Because once I find myself in a state that seems like madness, that’s not good. Madness is not good for me.

C: How do you define madness? Madness is being at the farthest away from the center that you can be? Or – how do you sense that?

A: I’m okay with being busy. I don’t mind having a long list. I mind that feeling of panic that I can’t handle it. I don’t like that. That’s crazy. So that’s the signal to stop, look and choose. One method is to go and meditate, to get my priorities straight. And then I can come back, typically, and prioritize my list and do what I need to do. And that’s sane. And what I can’t do, I cannot do. But  the difference between a panicky state and a calm, efficient state ..[phone rings] It may ring again, and there’s a busy household behind that wall..

C: So you were talking about the difference between an efficient state, and a state when it gets out of control. We all know that it gets out of control. And if you’re a spiritual person you might think, “Oh no, I might not be on the path if all this stuff is happening to me and I’m finding more difficulty coping.” But don’t you feel that your additional sensitivity takes you to another level so you’re always required to learn more about incorporating peace of mind into your daily life.

A: Initially, the increased sensitivity seems to cause more trouble than not. More sensitivity, initially in myself and I noticed with others who I meet, gives almost the sense that I was better off before I was sensitive. Not that it’s a choice. Initially increased sensitivity causes trouble. Typically.

C: And then?

A: And then we pray. And then we pray because then it’s a question of taking responsibility for my state of mind. No more complaining, no more blaming. Taking responsibility which is easy for me to tell you, it’s hard for me to do it myself. And yet there is no choice, than the one choice, which is to choose to say yes to the responsibility. I am responsible for my state of equanimity as opposed to panic. Because initially with increased sensitivity panic increases. The propensity for panic increases.

C: I think that’s true. I know that, and that’s why people rely heavily on traditional methods: the meditations, the teachings, the following of maybe the scriptures, or something, anything to hold on to so that you can retain both that open sensitivity and the ability to still function in the world. Because it can get somewhat jarring sometimes and you have the sense that you should completely retreat. And yet it’s not necessarily the way to give the gifts to the world. It’s something to be reconciled.  Yearning for the cave, when in actuality maybe you have to give something in the physical. And when you have a family, that’s obvious – there is duty there, there’s dharma, right?

A: Yes. I wonder… I think this topic relates to this concept of death and rebirth. To die to the old paradigm, which is very hard to do, and to be reborn in the new paradigm which is a blessing, but that’s heavy duty process. I think that we hear metaphors like the caterpillar,  cocoon and then emerging as the butterfly, so there is this amazing transformation happening which is dying as a caterpillar and being reborn as a butterfly. …..this metaphor keeps repeating, coming up. […]

C: And when that happens, there is the pupa stage. When the caterpillar goes into the pupa, and doesn’t relate to anything and the transformation is occurring, without any contact, it’s like suspended animation, and while that’s happening transformation happens inside. And then, coming out as a butterfly. That’s actually very beautiful metaphor. But how..we..

A: You can say that ..

C: We think, but we don’t know how it actually feels. We can look at it from a distance, but I think it’s probably painful all the way through.

A: And it appears like there’s no end to it. It looks like pain forever. Until it changes. And indeed the pupa … death. And its just happening. It has nothing to do with my muscles or my cleverness, it has to do with so-called grace of God. Like the ripening of the apple on the tree. Nothing to do with human cleverness. That transformation has a mind of its own. Maybe that would take us to the topic of faith. [phone rings] “Emuna “ is the word in Hebrew for it,

C; Could you spell that for me?

A: In English I would spell it EMUNNA – but of course it’s spelled with a different alphabet. And in Sanskrit there is something similar, I don’t know the word right now, it’s faith. That deep knowledge that “Its Okay.” The apple will ripen on the tree, under the right conditions, the pupa will transform. And this is what I have to remember should I find myself in a painful place, where I cannot go back – much as I would like to in my ignorance, and fear. I know too much to go back and not enough to go forward. That’s a painful place.

C: I think that applying this way of thinking to busyness that can take us into a spin is really helpful. Because everything is part of our transformation, all these vortexes around us are part of our transformation, and our ability to handle greater and greater energy fields, and to allow God to handle greater and greater energy fields through us, and through our lives.

A: That sounds beautiful.

C: I think that would be a way to help understand a busy time as it starts arising.

A: Yes, and it looks like it’s an increasing complaint in the general  world, in the collective I find myself in.  And the reason I’m even talking about it or mentioning it, is because, should it happen to any one of us, we might think that I’m the only fool in town. Everybody else has got their acts together, only I am a disaster inside, under my masks. And it may not be so. It may be just part of the evolutionary process.  And it’s a tough one. We cannot look at our grandparents and say, I’m going to do what my grandfather did, which was the case, say, a few generations back., because of safety, and that helped sanity. It was clear, my father and grandfathers  were carpenters, that’s what I’ll be doing. Or shoemakers. There’s no question,  here – we have to invent, reinvent, we don’t know.

C: And so we have to be in touch with our intuition, we have to understand who we are a little bit, or at least be able to follow our inner guidance so we have clues as to what to do, because it is all new in the moment, isn’t it? We are involved, on another level, not just personal, in a time of transformation – socially, politically, in every way.

A: I think we are finding ourselves … the demand on us is to upgrade in a new world. And we are not ready. We don’t have the background, typically. That’s were we suffer. So what I’m addressing right now is that transformation is an ordeal, and what I want to suggest is  perhaps it’s okay. Yes ordeal, and it’s okay. Doesn’t mean that I have to commit suicide, doesn’t mean that I have to rush to antidepressant drugs because there is a cost to it that I maybe do not want to pay, in terms of giving up my sensitivity. I’m sure it‘s right for some people under some conditions, but  as an obvious solution, that could be wrong. So just to think that yes it’s tough, and it’s part of the territory, and it’s okay.

C: Right. And that you can learn to navigate and find your way. And if you have a retreat or a meditation space, a place that you’ve created for that particular attunement, it does help you. Over time going to the same place helps with the resonance of that place, doesn’t it?

A: Yes.

C: And I think many of us have personal spaces in our homes that we use for meditation purposes or just for quiet contemplation. It’s an important part of life. Or a personal altar, whatever it is, a place in your garden maybe.

A: The Buddhists call it a refuge, so to have a refuge is crucial. ….I have a refuge, it’s almost like I have secret, I’m not totally at the whims of…

C: So you can be a strong human being, no matter what the elements are doing around you.

A: I know that I have a place to retreat to. I have a place where I can be invulnerable. That is a good first step. Another step is to find like-minded colleagues, tribespeople, that’s how I define “tribe”. … to remember that I’m not the only lost fool, because I think there is some tendency to think that I’m a total mess-up. So retreat, and friends, so there are others like me. So that I’m not the only crazy person, hopeless, like my mother always suggested  - or whatever, or my teacher or somebody… So we find ourselves in difficult places, it’s not necessarily a disaster. It may be okay. To even consider that okayness is possible in the midst of a painful place,  that’s the beginning. That’s the beginning of the light. In the darkness.

C: That’s like in the Buddhist images, in iconography there is always a Buddha in absolutely every realm.  When you see the Tibetan Wheel of Life, and all the realms are outlined, there is a Buddha in each one of them. So it’s always there.

A: Even in the darkest dark. So there must be a seed of light even in the darkest dark. So to bring it to my table: should I find myself in a dark place psychologically  I can remember and trust that it’s okay, there is okayness in there somewhere, just to allow for okayness in the midst of the darkness – that’s the beginning of that light. To remember. So if I was speaking to a friend I would say, “Consider that okayness, a tiny bit of okayness in the midst of the darkness.” And if they get it, on some resonance level even if it doesn’t feel like it, that’s the beginning of the light. Which – even a little bit is enough.

C: Well I think that’s great, and as the season changes and we go into more darkness,  it’s really good to think about that light that’s in there, and we know that as the seasons change, it’s all okay. It does make a transformation. It’s a cycle that we recognize, so we can harmonize with that and recognize that we’re involved in a natural process.

A: To stick to, anchor in that okayness, even if it doesn’t feel like that. That’s faith, and I think it’s valuable.

See the video of this conversation.

About Peter Fenner

Peter Fenner, Ph.D. is the founder and developer of the Radiant Mind course in nondual awareness.  He is an Australian currently living in France, who travels the world teaching the Radiant Mind program, a synthesis of Asian nondual approaches. He studied as a monk for nine years with many notable Buddhist lamas, including Thubten Yeshe and Sogyal Rinpoche. He is founder of the Center for Timeless Wisdom, and author of numerous books, including Reasoning into Reality and The Edge of Certainty.

His most recent book is Radiant Mind, Awakening Unconditioned Awareness, is described as follows:

Whether it is called enlightenment, pure awareness, or the “unconditioned mind,” there exists an awakened state of pure liberation that is at the heart of every contemplative tradition. Yet, according to Peter Fenner, this experience of boundless consciousness does not have to exist separately from our day-to-day, “conditioned” existence. Rather, we can learn to exist as unique individuals at the same time as we rest in a unified expanse of oneness with all existence–in a state he calls “Radiant Mind.”
In Radiant Mind, Peter Fenner shares the insights, techniques, and exercises he has developed in teaching the thousands of students who have attended his sold-out workshops, including:
- How to observe and dissolve fixations, to live in the here and now without being controlled by our desires
- Listening and speaking in a way that moves us toward pure openness–and lets us share this experience with others
- Tools for identifying our conscious and unconscious sources of suffering–and learning to transcend those patterns
“As extraordinary as unconditioned mind may sound,” teaches Peter Fenner, “it isn’t distant from our everyday life; it’s always readily available to us.” Now, this respected authority on both Eastern spirituality and Western psychology introduces readers to a set of practices available to anyone open to the complete possibilities of their spiritual evolution–and to the experience of the unconstrained bliss of Radiant Mind.
A master of nondual spirituality teaches practices for integrating the liberated state of unconditioned awareness into your everyday life.

• Radiant Mind site
  
• Radiant Mind (Book)

Video conversations with Peter Fenner:

• Peter Fenner on Radiant Mind
• Peter Fenner: Non-Dual Awareness

Peter Fenner: Non-Dual Awareness

Continuation of the conversation with Peter Fenner.

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Diamond Sutra Quiz

We know it isn’t possible to have any one correct answer to this quiz on the multi-layered and deeply meaningful Diamond Sutra, a sacred Buddhist text. Still, the answers are taken from the text itself, revealing in some cases the limits of the linear mind. Enjoy playing within these concepts.

Michael Shandler: Journey to Non-Dual Buddhism

“And often I’d find I began to rest in pure awareness…. I wasn’t trying to concentrate, I wasn’t trying to achieve anything, I wasn’t trying to go anywhere. And after a while this began to feel very very natural.”

Michael Shandler in conversation with Carol Sill

C: Hi, I’m  Carol here in Vancouver.

M: I’m Michael Shandler, and I’m here at Amherst, Massachusetts.

C: And so today we’re going to be talking with each other about Radiant Mind, and about some of your interest and history. What would you like to start with?

M: Well, would you like to know a little bit more about Radiant Mind?

C: Let’s do that first, sure.

M: I came across Radiant Mind about four years ago when I met Peter Fenner. Peter Fenner is an Australian guy who is a professor, a PhD in Buddhist studies, and I heard about a course that he was offering called the Radiant Mind, which is a 9 month long course. And I was interested in steeping myself deeply, more deeply, in non-dual Buddhism.

So I thought this was a great opportunity to learn more, and little did I know when I signed up for this course, what I was actually in for.  So I went through the 9 month long course and I learned a tremendous amount. It was not an intellectual pursuit, though, so much as an experiential .. as an experience, really. And after that was done, Peter asked me if I wanted to continue working with him, and in fact to become a Radiant Mind coach and trainer, which since that time I’ve been actively doing.

C: Well, you were deeply involved in a spiritual life well before then, weren’t you?

M: I was, and I have been. I started actually, and I was thinking about it today – I think my first pursuit was when I lived on a Kibbutz in Israel in 1967.  There weren’t very many books to read but I came across a book – I’m struggling to find the name right now, but – it had to do with games people play. I think that in fact was it’s name.  Games people play about, you know, being a parent to child, or being adult to adult, or speaking child to adult or child to parent, and so on. I found it very very intriguing. It was really my first exposure, as a 20 year old, to psychology. And I really got into it, and I realized for the first time in my life I was interested in psychology and in spiritual things. So that’s how I got started.

And from there I actually came to North America and I went through the whole kind of hippie revolution, if you will, with taking psychedelics and blowing my mind. But perhaps paradoxically that was how I came to have a deeper appreciation of the spiritual realm.

C: How was that?

M: Well, I was exposed to an experience which was just beyond my rational mind, beyond anything that I’d ever experienced before. And it opened me up to the possibility of realms beyond my normal consciousness.

After that I became very interested in yoga and meditation , and I met Ram Dass. I heard a recording of his and I was so moved by it that I wrote him a letter and asked him if he would come to -  I was actually in Montreal at that time for a 3 month period -  if he would come to Montreal to maybe give a speech.  He wrote back and he said: Great, I’ll come.

And indeed, he showed up about a month and a half later, and he and I went on the radio together, we were chanting and doing all these sort of weird things – at least in those days they were still pretty weird for me.  And the next day was the talk.  5,000 people showed up, and we only had space for about 2. So he said to me: Do you think we could get another hall for tomorrow night? I’ll stay longer. And I said: Well I’ll make something happen. And I went out there and I found another large hall, and this time we crammed the place again. That started a kind of a very intense relationship with him, and I became his road manager.

And he introduced me to Baba Hari Dass who became a very serious teacher of mine for about  20 years. I got deeply into what’s called Ashtanga Yoga or Eight-Limbed Yoga and that was my path for a long while.

I did take some, how can I say, maybe not deviations but some side trips let’s say, into other things. I spent a year and a half during that time working as an Arica trainer in New York City with Oscar Ichazo. And sat zazen, and had a number of other… went through the whole human growth potential EST kind of thing, but remained very true to my meditation.

And even after I went back to Vancouver to help found a community there called Dharma Sara which is still going today. And in fact they host a community on Salt Spring Island called the Salt Spring Centre, which to this day is still very active.

C: I’ve heard of that.

M: So that’s a little bit of my background.

C: So, I don’t know how to ask you this, but…You were strongly in that yoga path, and yet you took some side routes here and there, focusing back into your meditation. So how do you relate to that now, in your practice now? What would you say is the change? Or is there a change?

M: Well I think that a really big change has occurred. I think the change can be summed up very succinctly …I think that this was caused a lot by my involvement in the  experimentation with the psychedelics, in that every time I took them  I would be transported very rapidly into another realm.  And so I found myself constantly wanting to go back into that realm. So you could say that I very powerfully was inducted into the search. And so everything became about the search. When I met with Peter Fenner, I had already gotten very tired of the search and found, like wow, this is a search that maybe will never end.

C: Right.

M: What happened with Peter was he said: Why not start from the result that you want here and now? You don’t have to do anything, you don’t have to do any particular practices. And I know this is going to sound heretical to a lot of people, and it was certainly very difficult for me at the time.

But basically what it did was it oriented me to working in the present. In the here and now, particularly with attraction and aversion, which as the Buddha said are the so-called core fixations. You either basically say: I want this experience that I’m having right now and I want it to go on, or you say: I don’t want this experience, I want it to stop, I want something else. Or you’re caught up in some kind of mixture of those two. And usually it’s a complex mixture, particularly if you’re fixated in a heavy kind of way.

So learning how to work in the here and now, rather than in a progressive way where I was doing meditation to get somewhere. I began to work in the here and now and to learn how to just be present, how to just be present. And often I’d find I began to rest in pure awareness, without trying to make anything…. I wasn’t trying to concentrate, I wasn’t trying to achieve anything, I wasn’t trying to go anywhere. And after a while this began to feel very very natural. That has become, again paradoxically, the practice. Because there are lots of biases and conditioning that we have that unconsciously come into our experience and take us away from the natural way of being.

C: Well that is a great start for us.

End of Part 1

View the video of this conversation.

About Michael Shandler

Michael Shandler has been a life coach, therapist and spiritual guide for over twenty five years. He is a certified Radiant Mind coach and teaches workshops in the Radiant Mind process in cities across North America. He has also served as a change-management consultant and leadership development coach in organizations internationally.

He is the author of six books in the human relations field, ranging from the The Marriage and Family Book: A Spiritual Guide to Vroom! - a graphic comic about collaboration and teamwork.  He has studied intensively with numerous psycho-spirtual teachers including Ram Dass, Baba Hari Dass, Adyashanti, Peter Fenner, Genpo Roshi and others. He holds a Masters degree in Counseling (1981) and a Doctorate in Leadership and Group Psychology (1983) from the University of Massachusetts.

Shandler1008@comcast.net
www.spaciousmindcoaching.com
www.radiantmind.net

Video conversations with Michael:

• Journey to Non-Dual Buddhism (transcript)
• Aversion and Attraction
• Natural Pure Awareness

Natural Pure Awareness

Michael Shandler outlines the non-dual approach he uses in his one-on-one Radiant Mind coaching sessions.

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Aversion and Attraction

Michael Shandler continues his discussion on the non-dual approach, beginning with an understanding of what the Buddha called the core fixations: aversion and attraction.

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Journey to Non-Dual Buddhism

Michael Shandler talks with Carol Sill about his journey into a deeper appreciation of the spiritual realm, from psychedelics to yoga to the non-dual. “And often I’d find I began to rest in pure awareness…. I wasn’t trying to concentrate, I wasn’t trying to achieve anything, I wasn’t trying to go anywhere. And after a while this began to feel very very natural.”

Link here for the text version of this conversation.

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