There are no problems to be solved. There is only the mind to be trained.

Stupid People

Definition of a stupid person: one with a sincere and heartfelt lack of curiosity about the world around them, rooted in the profound self-centeredness of only being interested in one's own personal and immediate pleasure. Example: a teenage boy.

The Mother-In-Law Chronicles

Here's some irony. I'm more agitated now during my few hours of "respite" from caring for my mother in law with dimentia because my thoughts and emotions are now allowed to go unchecked. While I'm with her, I must constantly practice lojong: give all profit and gain to others, take all loss and defeat upon yourself ("Oh, I'm so sorry I broke that (thing that was broken before I got here)), and completely obliterate my ego. Interestingly, there's a profound peace and serenity in doing that. Now that I'm not practicing lojong, I must go and do my sitting practice in order to maintain my sanity!

Confessions of a Buddhist Slacker: House Painting

I’m sitting on my cushion, looking out the sliding glass doors at the valley below. The trees are bare. The land is sighing peacefully, catching its breath before winter. I fervently resolve to meditate on equanimity so that, for the sake of others, I may attain complete enlightenment.

Patrick Gaffney’s voice, velvet, soothing, guides me from my iPod.

I picture Rinpoche above me, golden and glowing, infusing me with his equanimity and his universal love.

I picture my mother-in-law on my right-hand side in her most annoying glory. She’s telling me, for the 600th time, how some “jackass” insulted her in 1946 and she’s holding her autographed picture of George and Barbara Bush.

I picture my friend on my left. She’s spending her entire day off with me, coaching me and my horse at a horse show. We win second place!

Through my iPod, Patrick continues, “The label ‘friend’ and ‘enemy’ is just based on how the person affects my well-being. But is others’ well-being only significant inasmuch as it supports our happiness?”

Out loud, “Hell yes!”

Oops.

I press the STOP button.

Okay, I guess that was a rhetorical question.

I remember when my husband and I were building a house. He wanted me to pick the exterior color. He showed his mother my swatches. She told him, “She’s going to RUIN that beautiful house!” He told me that she suggested gray or blue. I told him I thought gray was depressing and blue was boring. I won that round.

My mother-in-law and I always argued through my husband. I wish I could take back the continuous heartbreak I caused by making him the battlefield between his mother and me, the two people he loved most dearly.

I wish I could have seen myself clearly back then. I always thought I was right. I was a jackass. My mother-in-law was right, gray or blue would have been more appropriate for a house by the lake than the redwood color I picked.

I wish I knew things were impermanent back then. My husband and I never got to live in the house. He died of cancer the next year.

I press the PLAY button.

(Guided meditation excerpt from: “Guided Meditation on Immeasurable Equanimity,” Track 36 from “Arousing Bodhichitta, The Heart of the Enlightened Mind: The Bodhichitta Mengak Study Pack,” published by Rigpa.)

Oh no, poetry, haiku, run away

My Lama

mind serene

heart a volcano of love

is what I should be

This is the year

This is the year I write my book and become whatever I'm going to become.

Fixing Rigpa

When I was working for Rigpa, the buddhist group to which I belong, I frequently heard people (myself included) say, "We need to fix Rigpa" or, "Doing 'x' would fix Rigpa," or "Why doesn't 'x person or group' fix Rigpa?"

After much thought, reflection, blood, sweat, and tears, I have finally found the answer. The secret is, of course, in the teachings. The Buddha said that you can't cover the entire surface of the earth with leather, but you can cover your feet with leather instead.

Rigpa doesn't need fixing. We are what needs fixing. We spend our time trying to fix our problems, one after another. But there is no end to our problems because we live in samsara. Samsara is, by definition, a giant hairball of knotty problems. There's no way to fix it. The only thing we can fix is ourselves.

We join Rigpa to find a way out of samsara, out of the hairball we're choking on. Instead, we find hairballs here too. We get dismayed and think it shouldn't be that way. So we think up all sorts of ways to fix Rigpa and get really upset and frustrated when we can't.

We can't fix Rigpa because what one person likes, another dislikes.

I no longer live in a place with a Rigpa center, but there are a couple of Rigpa students nearby. So we've been getting together at each others' houses for Sangha Days. We all look forward to them and absolutely love them and they recharge us. We take turns reading the script out loud, watch the teachings, practice, and eat what we've all brought to share for lunch. What could be simpler?

I used to dread going to Sangha Days at Rigpa centers. Because our little group comes together with no expectations, no agendas, no habitual dysfunctional group dynamics, we have lots of space to just enjoy the teachings, have wonderful discussions, and work with ourselves during the practice. The organization called Rigpa doesn't even exist. But yet it does :-)

As we fix ourselves, Rigpa will also fix itself.

Crazy Trades

I just finished reviewing my trades from my yesterday morning crazy.

They are the trades of a certifiably Crazy Woman.

It's fascinating to review an actual record of my crazy actions.

I am speechless.

My Crazy-Making Blame Game

I've been feeling like I've finally gotten my life somewhat under control and settled. What a great feeling that is! Every day I've been able to do the three things which I consider my mission in life: 1) Meditate every morning, 2) Day trade in order to make money to support #1 and #3, and 3) work on my book.

My mom's best friend just got laid off. She's 68 years old and doesn't know how to use the computer. Of course, everything is now online--applying for unemployment, applying for jobs, looking for jobs, etc. So I've been helping her. I make her sit at the computer and tell her what keys to push so she can hopefully learn to be self-sufficient and learn some job skills. It takes a lot of patience, which I am running out of. I haven't had time to work on my book since I've been spending a couple hours each evening helping her.

The thing I detest doing most in the entire world is helping people with their computer. I think all the old people who don't know how to use the computer should die immediately and relieve the rest of us of their burdensome presence. Younger people who don't know how to use the computer will be destitute and homeless and will get what they deserve. I'm neither exaggerating nor kidding. They need to learn or die or never call me ever again.

Last month, my mother-in-law and I decided she needed a new computer since her old one was not worth fixing. I found a great deal online, but she decided she wanted to use a new credit card, which she didn't have yet. I told her to call me when she gets it.

So now, she finally wants me to buy it. I figure my mother-in-law had her chance earlier so now she has to wait. I can't handle the irritation of helping 2 old ladies at the same time with their computers. Also, another friend is calling me who I assume also wants help ordering something online. I ignore that too.

This morning, my mom says I should call my mother-in-law and help her with her computer.

So as I'm doing my morning meditation practice, I'm actually thinking about how much I do not want to help any of these people. I try all sorts of strategies to help me overcome this feeling. I try to generate devotion. I think about interdependence and how it is impossible for us to exist without help from one another. I think about how many times I've been too dumb to figure something something out and needed someone else's help. I think about how the nature of samsara is suffering and that this situation is normal and inescapable. I think about how this human life has no meaning except to serve others. I think about how the buddhas and bodhisattvas work not only for the enlightenment of all beings, but also for their happiness and well-being.

That helps calm my mind a little bit and I manage to finish my practice. But deep down, I can't get rid of the irritated feeling that my life would be much better without any of these people and how I am damn tired of helping people.

Day trading is like playing sports. In order to perform, you have to be completely focused, alert, well-rested, and in a very good frame of mind. On my first trade of the day, I fat finger and I lose money in less than 3 seconds. Great. So, OK, no worries, it's early in the day, I have plenty of time to recover my loss and then some. I keep telling myself to stay cool, but I'm really pissed. I get into "revenge" and "make it back" mode. I lose more. And more. And more. After I've nearly tripled my losses, I give myself a time out and step away from the computer.

I stalk around the big empty house, blaming my mom for pissing me off first thing in the morning by telling me I should call my mother-in-law. I blame my mom's best friend because being tortured for 2 hours every evening makes me doubly angry because she's also stealing my happy book-writing time. I blame the repair guy for distracting me during my premarket prep. I blame our neighbor and her friend for coming outside my window and distracting me during trading hours bearing silly gifts of homemade, organic blackberry jam, apple butter, and hot pepper jam. I blame the phone that keeps ringing.

I try to figure out how I can eliminate all the people from my life. I can't eliminate my mom, because I'm living at her lovely house. I would have to move out, maybe back to my own house in Albany. I try to think up living scenarios in which I could live completely free of all human beings. As I'm meditating on this, slowly I realize with horror that I've become a prima donna who can only perform when the stars are perfectly aligned. Which, of course, will never happen. Ummm, what was that thing the Buddha said about not trying to cover the earth with leather, and covering your feet instead?

I realize that the act of blaming people is a whole, ADDITIONAL, negative emotion piled on top of the tediousness of helping people with their computers. I realize that the act of blaming is a lose/lose situation, and the biggest loser in the blame game is me. Here I am, in a complete fury, all by myself. Who's to blame now?

Then I laugh.

I can't control those other people. I can only control myself. I can choose how much I want to help them. If I need to, I can just let them know I can't help them. It's that simple and of course there will be no hard feelings. They are all very kind and understanding folks who only want the best for me. I can choose how much of a distraction they are to me.

I feel as if something has come unknotted.

I go back to my computer and watch the market. I make back 1/2 of what I lost in one trade. I bellow self-congratulatory, ghetto day trader type utterances, such as "We be takin' dem muffins when dey passed. We be letting y'all hold out for da shakey shakey over 70. We be taking da easy money at 60.97. We be nailin' da swing high right on da money." I call it a day, but continue to watch the market and look for good entries. I'm learning a new trading method and I realize that I've been completely missing the point of something the instructor has been emphasizing. I see the market in a completely different, more profitable light.

In the evening, I walk over to my mom's best friend's house. It's a lovely Indian Summer evening and I breathe the warm yet chill country air. I'm not happy, but I'm no longer seething with aggravation. I marvel at how much the blame game was responsible for that. I think our inner self understands the inherent futility of trying to make our worlds perfect. It's also really hard to stop ourselves from playing the blame game. So the whole exercise drives us crazy.

I help her apply for a job online. I tell her this is the last time I'm helping her with this particular task. This is three strikes and she's out after this and she better take good notes. Tomorrow I will help her with monster.com and careerbuilder.com. I see she wrote the URL's down and wonder if maybe she will figure it out herself.

I come home and pour myself some hot apple cider in a nice glass mug with a cinnamon stick and a splash of Stroh Rum and I sit down with y'all. Have you had the Stroh Rum? It's an Austrian thing and it's uniquely good. If you can't get it, don't worry about it. Your life will be just fine without it.

The purpose of my life

The purpose of my life is to live this human life.

My Ruthless Ambition

I just realized I'm one of the most ruthlessly, blindly ambitious people I've ever known.

Sometimes I'll encounter one of the gods of the world, and think to myself, "Dude, you'll stop at nothing." Sometimes I'll encounter one of the many demi-gods of the world, and think to myself, "Dude, you'll stop at nothing to take that god of the world down so you can try and take his place." And then I pat myself on the back and think to myself, "I'm not like those jerks."

Nevertheless, I'm a girl with guy-style goals and ambitions. Today, I think I'm learning one of those lessons that guys learn and I'm wondering if I made a mistake and if I should have married that guy oh so many years ago and maybe I did miss out on finding happiness in marriage, love, family, kids after all. I thought those things were fine for lesser mortals.

I now realize that there were plenty of people who encountered me who thought, "Dude, you'll stop at nothing and you mow over anyone in your way."

So I just finished the dinner dishes and my mom, her boyfriend, and my kid Alex are settled in for a relaxing evening. I turn to my blog and I'm thinking that maybe those lesser mortals had it right after all. I never had time for myself when I was all wrapped up in myself, trying to become a god of the world.

My Spiritual Materialism

I just realized what should have been exceedingly obvious: that all my ideas and projects to further the study of buddhism and help humanity are a sham unless I, myself, am practicing.

Why would anyone else want to take up buddhist practice if I haven't taken it up myself?

It's not even that I have to be, like, uh, enlightened or anything. But shouldn't I, at least, be practicing, since I've ostensibly devoted my life to buddhism?

In fact, my ideas and projects are a great excuse to avoid practicing, and thus, to avoid facing myself and having a look.

It all started with my 30th High School Class Reunion. (Which, I hear, they don't have in Europe, which, I think, is completely uncivilized.) I had hooked up with some great old friends via Facebook and one of them, after not having seen or spoken to her for 20 years except for on Facebook, completely out of the blue, drove to my house and knocked on my door and demanded that I go to the reunion. We all had a great time. Another old friend at the reunion had taken up buddhism and had taken some of our courses. So I decided to gather my local sangha mates (all 3 of them) and have a sangha day next month at my house just for fun.

Then one thought led to another. "I need to get a bell. I need to get some official Rigpa thangkas. I need to get some proper offering bowls. We could make my house the Rigpa Center. Kristen and I should do some regular open meditations in Cleveland because our friends have been wanting to join a sitting group and we've been procrastinating." I started thinking about a Rigpa Yeshe kids home school program, and how I dreamed of having a buddhist summer camp for kids at our retreat land in upstate New York. And how we need to send all the parent instructors to Rigpa Yeshe training in Lerab Ling, France. Then I thought, "I really need to amp up my day trading and make a lot of money so I can fund all this." Another of my old friends at the reunion quit her job and has been trading microcaps full time since 2003 and I thought I should add microcaps to my repertoire. I thought, "How very auspicious that I reconnected with these old friends! It's a sign." And then I stopped practicing.

That's how it was when I was working for Rigpa. A few months after I started working for Rigpa, I stopped practicing. I found my work meaningful and extremely rewarding when I was able to actually help people. But mostly, working for Rigpa is like getting sucked up in the vortex of the entire sangha's ideas and projects to further the study of buddhism and help humanity. This vortex sucks you into a black hole of anger and frustration because, of course, time and money are extremely limited, but ideas and anger and frustration are completely unlimited. After 5 years of this I quit.

Now I'm just getting sucked up by my own vortex. I have no one else to blame. Anyway, it's an improvement because I this time I let a week go by without practicing instead of 5 years. LOL!!!!

Maybe now I've got just enough awareness to catch myself before I get too far down the hope and fear rabbit hole. So now I can choose how I live my life, instead of having my ambitions and their all-consuming emotions choose my life for me. Of course, I could have chosen to live my life with practice when I was working for Rigpa. That would have given me perspective and helped me be more effective and it would have helped me considerably with my anger and frustration.

But I guess I had to go through all that in order to see my spiritual materialism. "I want to 'fix' Rigpa." "I want to be the one who makes Rigpa big in America." "I want to bring buddhism to the corporate world." "I want to make Rigpa more efficient with technology so we can focus on helping students with their study and practice." "I want to grow distance learning to one million students." "I need to help make this retreat be the best one ever."

It's much better to just go get a job and make a bunch of money so you can support yourself in your dharma study and practice and go to retreats and teachings and maybe even help some other people to do the same, than it is to be ambitious about your "spiritual" projects.

This poem was written by a student and is in The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche, page 32 revised edition.

Autobiography in Five Chapters

1) I walk down the street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk

I fall in.

I am lost ... I am hopeless.

It isn't my fault.

It takes forever to find a way out.

2) I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I pretend I don't see it.

I fall in again.

I can't believe I'm in the same place.

But it isn't my fault.

It still takes a long time to get out.

3) I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk

I see it is there.

I still fall in ... it's a habit.

My eyes are open

I know where I am

It is my fault.

I get out immediately.

4) I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk

I walk around it.

5) I walk down another street.

All My Ideas Are Wrong

All my ideas are wrong.

Including this one.

And on top of all that, I am an ass.

The Worst Practice is the Best

I haven't been practicing.

If I spent the time practicing that I spend trying to convince myself to practice, I would have finished my Ngondro by now!

Sometimes I actually do manage to stop myself from talking myself out of practicing. During those practice sessions, I continue the internal argument about how I should keep practicing and not stop. Each prostration feels like one of those dreams where you are trying to run away from something really scary but you can barely move your legs. It takes me 3 times as long to get them done.

When I'm doing other things, I'm wondering what the heck is with my mental block about practicing.

I guess it's a purification. Maybe a big one. Maybe if I can overcome this obstacle of myself, well, maybe that's what practice is all about.

Maybe those practice sessions which are 100% struggle and 0% inspiration are the most beneficial ones.

After all, if it were easy.... Michael Dell said that he learned little from his company's successes. He learned much more from his failures.

All Accomplishment is Illusory

Samsara is a video game.
All accomplishment in samsara is illusory.

Cat Dharma

There are 4 cats living in our house. One is just on vacation here while her "owner" is away.

Each of these cats has the exact same living situation and circumstances. They eat the same food, they live in a nice warm house, we let them in and out as they desire, and they have to follow the same rules, i.e., no jumping on counters or tables, scratching permitted only on the scratching post, all couches and chairs off limits except the ones with covers or cat beds, etc.

And of course, none of them actually have to work for a living!

Though they all have exactly the same living circumstances, one is a sour puss, one is a fraidy cat, one is neurotic yet friendly and playful, and one is a very happy, life-loving, playful lap cat.

Happiness is made in the mind.

A Practice that Works

If we don't have a practice that works, that we can call upon in the midst of our desire, anger and frustration, ignorance, pride, and jealousy then we will act on them. We won't be able to see the suffering of the other person.

Rinpoche sometimes talks about a wonderful man he knew who was always very fair in his dealings with everyone. But also, he wasn't a pushover and he never let anyone cheat him.

Sometimes when we see the suffering of another clearly, a side effect is that we see how, in their pain, they try to manipulate you to ease their pain.

I think the seed of wisdom is seeing all this and understanding how to help them best.

My Mother-In-Law is here for Thanksgiving so I'm getting a lot of chances to put my practice into action!

I'm failing miserably, but I am doing much better than I used to. I'm also starting to see some of her good qualities.

When I started my practice this am, my negative emotions got washed away.

Better late than never :-)

I'll try to do better today.

I am a Buddhist Practitioner

I used to be an IT geek in Silicon Valley, the pinnacle of geekdom. I considered myself cooler and smarter than the normal humans. But that was OK because we were doing stuff to make work easier and move society towards a better future where everyone can be themselves and do what they want because they would be liberated and empowered by technology. The job was "the very definition of my being" as Lev Yilmaz says in this deadpan funny video.

Then I got a job with my Buddhist group. It didn't pay much, but that was OK because I figured out that Buddhism was really the way to move society towards a better future where everyone can be themselves and do what they want because they would be liberated and empowered by the Buddhist teachings. The job became the very definition of my being.

Now I'm learning how to become a day trader which, in a lot of ways, is even More Elite and Even Cooler than being a Silicon Valley geek. Learning how to day trade is much more time consuming, demanding, and costly than I thought and it's becoming the very definition of my being.

There's something interesting about day trading though. The more you grasp onto it and let your emotions, such as greed and desire, anger, ignorance, pride, and jealousy, rule you, the more money you lose. If you let hope and fear rule you, you will lose money, and lots of it. This is great, because I realized a few jobs ago that I didn't want my job to be the very definition of my being, but I couldn't stop myself from doing that because it seems that I need something to identify with to justify my existence.

Here's my new identity: I am a Buddhist Practitioner.

If I can't renounce grasping onto some kind of ego, I figure a healthy replacement behavior is a good interim solution.

What does being a Buddhist Practitioner mean?

It means that I practice the Buddhist teachings in order to crack my heart open to let it's love and wisdom pour forth. It's a lot of work, but I realized that in order to more society forward towards a better future, we have to change ourselves and no one can change ourselves for us.

Becoming a Good Christian

I want to be like those good Christians. You know the ones. They are so gentle, kind, and humble. They are incapable of hurting a fly. They are good through and through.

I've been wrestling with my ego by myself, and my ego's been winning. In desperation, I prayed to the lama, buddhas, and bodhisattvas and they helped me. Then I realized that I don't have to go it alone (big DUH!). In fact, it's impossible to conquer your own ego by yourself. While doing my Refuge practice, I realized that those good Christians are that way through the grace of God, and that I, too, can become like them through the blessings of the lama, the buddha, the dharma, and the noble sangha.

Those good Christians practice being in the grace of God throughout the day, throughout their lives. Maybe if I continue to practice Refuge in this way after I'm done with my accumulations, I can eventually become like them.

Right now, however, I'm like Scarlett O'Hara who really wants to be a great lady like her mother was, but she hasn't got time to be one. Right now she has to run the lumber mills and carry a gun. HAHA!!!

The Cult of Fausto

The gifts I mentioned a couple postings ago are literally paying off now. I joined the Cult of Fausto (my nickname) and signed up for the program at cybertradinguniversity.com. Yes it costs a lot and my mom would have a heart attack if she knew how much I paid. I told Austin and he almost had a heart attack! :-) But with day trading, as with any skill, you need to learn from a master of the craft.

I made $842.32 today, my first day of live trading with my new cult. Biotechs were on a tear. I traded AGEN (that was a loss) SVA, CPRX, and SQNM. I would have traded HGSI during the last 10 minutes of the trading day but I maxed out my account and didn't have the wherewithal to switch to one of my other two accounts. duh.

My mom was so excited she hugged me. Lack of results thus far was beginning to get her worried and I was starting to worry that she was going to pressure me into getting a regular day job. Getting a day job would kill the whole point of my new life. I might as well roll over and die rather than do that.

Also today, I got my mom logged into the site where you can check up on your kid's grades. Alex has gotten all 100%'s so far, plus some extra credit. We were very happy and relieved about that. I told Alex he was awesome and he was pleased despite himself. He tried not to show it but he couldn't help it :-)

Better still, my mom decided not to have any more big parties, yay!

The whole house is breathing a sigh of relief with all the good news.