Venture Fourth Weekly Work
Week Twenty-Nine Oct 11, 2010

Dear friends,

It's been a month since I have written, weeks that have taken me all over the country. Friday I depart for Seattle. It's busy, but also a great joy to share the dharma in these ways. I have received journals from many of you and read every word, though without time to email back.

Our present work:

Engaged Spiritual Life -Chapter 7, 8, 9, 10 and conclusion. November, December, January, February, March. Focus on one chapter per month. November focus has been chapter 7 on Interdependence. Interbeing! I'd like you to especially reflect on this at Thanksgiving. Our gratitude extends out to blanket the earth; it is really extraordinary the ways the heart can open.

In relation to exercise 1 on page 132, I'd like you to take this further in three ways:

1. the "vision is mind" practice. When self arises, can you see the ways it has arisen out of conditions. That "self" who wants it this way and that way becomes the famous person. See how Awareness can watch this with spaciousness?
2. looking at what arises from the perspective of the chain of dependent arising: contact, consciousness, perceptions, feeling, mental formations. Self is a kind of story, a mental formation. Watch it arise without ownership of it or belief in the story it carries.
3. "Who am I?" When ego-centered thoughts arise and seem to be coming from a self, ask this question. What do you find that is not the aggregates?

The exercises on pages 134-5 are ready-made for Thanksgiving. Choose that ordinary object and keep it close to your attention for a week. What do you learn? Last week I went to NC and forgot my toothbrush. Since my return, this has been my ordinary object. I never fully appreciated an ordinary toothbrush before 3 days brushing teeth with a wet washcloth. How is it made, even with choice of soft, medium and firm? Who designed such implements, so that we no longer clean our teeth with twigs? Does your toothbrush have a color you especially like? A shape that fits just right?

Do you have a special cup for your morning tea or coffee? Have you ever really appreciated it? How was it made? What about your slippers; your hairbrush? You get the idea.

Now try the exercise on "Becoming the Object," not necessarily the toothbrush or cup here, but whatever feels good to work with. What happens when you become a beautiful cup? How about if you become a cracked and stained cup? Can you become your pet for a half hour? Now can you become the \u2018famous person'?

The holidays often throw us together with family members whom we may love, but also with whom there may have been some painful history. If this happens for you, please work with the vision is mind/ famous person practice, and also with gratitude. What gratitude might there be for this person, along with the old pain. Finally, look at the ways you are part of each other, interdependence.

Look at the ways your friction with one another is part of each of you, not just the fault of one. With Geshe Tenzin Wangyal's five-stage practice with which we've been working begins with contemplating our worst enemy and culminates in the discovery that mind is empty, clear and blissful. "Vision is mind." "Mind is empty." "Emptiness is clear light." "Clear light is union." "Union is great bliss." Can even this relationship lead you into spaciousness, even if not 'great bliss'?

Even if this person abused you in some real and terrible ways as a child, can there be compassion for this person's pain? See the practices on page 139 through 148. What healing might be possible?

A word about forgiveness. When another person has hurt us badly, it may not feel possible to forgive and forgiveness can never be forced. Compassion is the ground for growing forgiveness. What's important here is twofold: to acknowledge that we participated in some ways in the drama, even just with our seemingly well-deserved hatred of the other for the ways they hurt us; and to see the ways the other person has suffered and perhaps is still suffering. When compassion goes deep, for ourselves and for the other, eventually there is nothing left to forgive. This connection is the heart of healing through knowing interdependence and with wisdom and compassion.

I look forward to talking with each of you soon.

with love, Barbara