Infinite Smile

Michael discusses how it is that we can carry a practice that allows for us to “get there” in terms of waking up. Among the most necessary approaches to this process is to deconstruct the reality we live in from a personal perspective, at least. This is most easily done by exploring the 5 senses (sight, taste, touch, hearing, and feeling) followed by the 6th sense (Asian teaching points to thought on this sense). The 7th sense involves our sense of time (past and future), the 8th sense involves what we might call the Seer, or the Witness. Even this sense is followed, and held openly by another, 9th sense, although even calling this a “sense,” misses the mark. Still, the Path is revealed as this approach unfolds. Michael covers much of this and goes into greater detail on this topic in his book, Awake In This Life.

This evening’s talk spans poetry, rock ‘n roll, awareness, friendship, and how we can meet our experiences during the Holiday season with care and purpose. In fact, Michael argues, “awareness itself, is gratitude.”

Among the most important aspects of spiritual work is our sense of community. It can inspire us and keep us focused on the needs of the moment. It can also remind us of how necessary it is to make friends with our fear, thus allowing for our actions to be sourced from an undivided sense of purpose.

So often we find ourselves working to build things that we see as beneficial: a life, a relationship, a home, or even a philosophy that might work to offer us shelter from the chaos of contemporary living. In this talk, Michael offers us a chance to examine this process and consider an alternative. Recognizing what is always, already, in play can shed light on recognition as opposed to creation.

As the poet, Atticus points out, we are often very complicated beings. This shows up especially in relationships. While any relationship can be a challenge, our intimate relationships are especially good at helping us uncover our attachments. This is at once a challenge and a gift, in terms of spiritual practice. In this talk, Michael discusses relationships and how they offer us opportunities to integrate spiritual teaching.

What is loss and where does the fear associated with it come from? What about anger? What is grief? How do we best cope with these general attributes of loss and the negativity that it inspires? This evening’s podcast goes to the heart of this very human experience.

It all happens here, in this very body. While it’s critical we not get lost in its desires, enlightenment doesn’t happen in any other place. Alex Grey

So often we can feel closed off from ourselves, the world, and those around us. In this talk, Michael discusses another option that leads us on a decidedly different spiritual and psychological trajectory, even when situations are difficult.    

It’s all about relationships. Seriously. Everything is related, interdependently, to everything else. Enjoy the podcast of this talk.

Topics such as dealing with negativity, difficult people, and situations that challenge us are covered in this talk.

Enjoy this evening’s talk on the integration of spirituality into real life experiences, including shopping and politics.

Enjoy this evening’s talk, spanning a wide range of spiritual topics.

Enjoy this evening’s talk on how perfection shows up in the strangest ways.

This evening’s talk covers a range of topics but centers around the idea that hopelessness offers us freedom. This is covered by Pema Chodron in her book, When Things Fall Apart.  

What happens when we really stop? Really. Stop. This question can guide us into an openness that may fundamentally alter our lives. Imagine life without the sniff & scurry, the shake, rattle & roll. Imagine a life where we get past our tendency to chase our own tails. Breaking our addiction to movement, that so many of us have, helps us get past suffering… which is at the core of the Buddha’s teaching.

This evening’s discussion centers around Michael’s proposal that our identification with ideas, objects, feelings, our bodies, our histories and our perceived destinies will always block any kind of stable awakening.

In this evening’s talk, Michael describes the benefits of sangha as a shortcut to uncovering our pre-existing enlightened mind. He further goes into the ways that Awakening manifests in each of us as a series of qualities that show up as being at once conscious and, at the same time, spontaneous. In other words, this talk describes how qualities of flexibility, not knowing, questioning, simplicity, the recognition of what is always prior to mind and body, surrender, patience and discipline. Additional topics include, the fallacy of conflating Buddhism with New Age practices, and getting a sense of our internal freedom we often refer to as the Witness.

In this evening’s talk, Michael describes the benefits of sangha as a shortcut to uncovering our pre-existing enlightened mind. He further goes into the ways that Awakening manifests in each of us as a series of qualities that show up as being at once conscious and, at the same time, spontaneous. In other words, this talk describes how qualities of flexibility, not knowing, questioning, simplicity, the recognition of what is always prior to mind and body, surrender, patience and discipline. Additional topics include, the fallacy of conflating Buddhism with New Age practices, and getting a sense of our internal freedom we often refer to as the Witness.

In this mashup of two talks, Michael uses the phrase from Dogen Zenji’s, Instruction to the Cook, where he suggests that each grain of rice be handled carefully, “as if it were your own eyes.” Treating our lives this way helps us awaken to the truth that any Tathagatha, or person who actually sees reality, can embody. This embodiment is a gift. Something referred to hal in Arabic, or satori, in Zen is this very gift. But we must earn it. We do this by being open and available vessels that carry this teaching with greater potency the more we sit still. This is how we care for our practice… as if it were our own eyes.

What happens when we are in the midst of disagreement?  This can apply to a marriage, a friendship, a community or (perhaps especially) a legislative debate or an election. The Buddha had some thoughts on this as noted in the famed Quarrel of Kosambi, where he offers some guidance. Engaging in the practice of right speech and right thought can do wonders, according to the teaching. The same applies to the ways in which we deal with our own practice. There are several blocks, by the way, that inhibit the openings that meditation can offer each of us as practitioners.  

Michael asks the audience in this week’s talk, what it is they think that enlightenment will bring them. He then goes forward to suggest that enlightenment will bring nothing to our experience that we don’t already have. But its realization can fundamentally alter the course of our lives. Weaving this in to the beauty and the stresses of the holidays the Dharma talk centers around how it is that we can offer up, as Yunmen suggests, an “appropriate response” in the midst of it all.

While several of Michael’s students have gone through the trials and tribulations of going through the shuso ceremony, where students offer up (among other things) their first Dharma talk, David Fitzgerald was the first to have his inaugural talk to the community recorded. An artist, a father, a retired informational technologist, a poet (as you’ll soon hear) and an all-around great guy, David’s talk is a reflection of deep wisdom and timeless beauty. Cheers and nice work, David.

So what is it that gets in the way of Awakening? If we are already Awake, why don’t we feel it? According to Michael, wisdom traditions seem to offer up some suggestions. Among the most important pointer is stillness itself. Without stillness there can be no authentic awakening. Period. This simple fact, according to Michael, points us, at least in Buddhist terms, toward the 4th Turning of the Wheel. In his talk he references Ken Wilber’s recording titled, The Five Reasons You’re Not Enlightened, where the the simple question, “If it’s all Spirit then why am I not Awake”, is addressed. Each of the turnings of the Wheel of Dharma is briefly addressed in Michael’s talk. Put simply, we miss the Great Perfection because we’re so busy clinging.

If we’re willing to follow our fear and our negativity with our whole being, according to Michael, we are offered an opportunity to awaken. The loosening of our individual consciousness into a universal awareness is the byproduct of an authentic meditation practice that helps us face these fears and negativity with grace. Watching the bondage inherent in our individual consciousness, he continues, allows for the Freedom of universal awareness to open through us. Practicing this “watching” supports the development a virtuosity for each of us no matter what we might be facing. In the face of all threat, all danger, all stories we find that there is an invitation to evolve past what has always held us back from realizing what is forever beyond anything we see as limiting.  

In this talk, Michael walks meditators through the rough stages of spiritual ascendancy. With practice, he shows, the egoic structures as their practice deepens. He goes on to suggest that the felt-sense of what’s real is what we call, “love.” Also, he talks about the spiritual journey, from his own writing, where he suggests that we have a chance to recognize that everything is an extension of who and what we think we are. We see, as he suggests that from the nondual perspective, we are extensions of all things that ever arise in our awareness. This witnessing awareness, rather than something that is a dissociative experience, is instead something that is profoundly integrated. While in his talk he uses a whiteboard in his talk, all of it relates to the Infinite Smile Sangha logo.  

Spiritual practice becomes both broader and deeper the moment we can truly forgive. This includes forgiving others as well as forgiving ourselves. Typically our defenses work as attacks against perceived external threats, but it’s “the second arrow,” as Michael points out, that is released from our bow inward. What would our lives be like if we totally forgave ourselves. This would invariably lead to a deeper comfort in our own skin, where we uncoil upward and outward, releasing to the perpetual stillness that extends both beyond and through the ego. At the same time that we open to the options afforded by forgiveness, it is critical, according to Michael, that we not mistake this deep surrender with “giving in.” Letting ourselves get hammered by others, or the world at large, only points to our attachment to confused stories that we tell ourselves about what it means to forgive. This apparent paradox, when seen through, allow us to move more freely in the world.

The Zen saying “Drinking this cup of green tea, I stop the war” offers us a chance to explore our own relationship with war. While it may sound passive and irresponsible on the surface, how we meet even the most basic activities internally, supports how we meet things, especially conflict, externally. So how do we meet war? Are we “anti-war” and, thus, at war with war? Or are we “pro-peace,” where we are not at war with war? This exploration is especially relevant in today’s world, where its population is touched so often, and so deeply, by armed conflict. So what do you feel totally committed to supporting that isn’t about clinging? What would inspire you to freely serve? How can we meet the idea of war and defense in the 21st Century. How can we be compassionate and loving in this process no matter what?

“This deep, spiritual work,” according to Michael, “is ultimately, is about resolve.” In Stephen Batchelor’s, Buddhism Without Beliefs, this idea of committed, fearlessness is supported where he suggests that we continually take accurate stock of our lives and then live from this place of honesty with resolve. While these suggestions are simple, they are not necessarily easy. Accepting as Suzuki Roshi says, “Things as it is,” and then acting consciously from this recognition. Anything less sets us up for suffering. This suffering is caused the wars that we often subtly declare with things that are external. These declarations then fuel our own interior conflict. So what is our resolve? Rumi says, “Pain wil be born from that look cast inside yourself and this pain will make you go behind the veil.” While Rumi leaves it to us to see what’s behind the veil his words direct us into the direct experience of using our own dissatisfaction in order to heal the world. Doing so helps us lead embodied lives of fearlessness. If we truly want peace, This fearlessness is something to be cultivated. How do we do this? “Begin,” Michael says, “with sitting still since doing so that we may have the chance to be totally available to what’s needed. When we can engage the world from grace and ease, our entire life becomes a reflection of this perspective. This is how we change the world.  

Michael points out, in this talk, how we  must be willing to let go of our old habits in order to develop new ones. As Joseph Campbell says, “We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come.” With this in mind, the issue of love and it’s fire unfold in the Dharma talk. Do we have the strength, so to speak, to truly let go; to allow for the Universe to have its way through us? A practice of stillness puts this question squarely in front of us and allows for the light from love’s fire to shine through us.

Whether we like to think about it or not, death is actually at our door all of the time. Is it possible to be at peace with this knowledge? Or, can this only happen if we’re in denial of death’s total offering? In this talk, Michael points out that it is imperative that we meet our life with radical honesty if we are to find peace, especially as it relates to death. Facing everything and avoiding nothing, and then relaxing in this “middle” space is the practice that offers us another path; one that leads us into the heart of an awakened life.

Whether you are a beginning meditator or a seasoned practitioner, fear can be a useful tool in this work. Practicing, for example, in the midst of our fear shows us a path toward a new perspective where we no longer end up getting paralyzed by fear but instead are inspired by it. This may sound counter-intuitive but when we get to know our fear intimately, we are offered the chance to see through it. In these moments of transparency, we begin to recognize the temporary nature of fear as well as all of the clinging that leads to it in the first place.

Michael works with The Book of Serenity‘s, Case #76 as a way of describing the path of attainment. He also weaves into this description an application of how people come together and separate in relationships. By using the phrase, “The moon sets, midnight going through the marketplace,” he points toward the teaching that there is a peace underneath whatever tangle, or karma, that we might face. With this in mind, he then pushes forward into the realm of his own situation, where he and his wife are currently employing mindfulness in how they are working through their own separation. He speaks to this by reminding us that love is fearless and fear is loveless.  

In this evening’s talk, Michael looks at the three components to truly letting go. He first begins with the aspiration for awakening. Secondly, he points to the appreciation of what we have been given in this life. Thirdly, he points to the need for there to be a resolve when it comes to practice itself. In this letting go, freedom, fearlessness and joy tend to arise of their own accord, even when situations might not be to our liking. Michael points to a deep unity that we can feel when we commit fully to walking the path. He suggests that this unity is the most fundamental sources of our felt sense of love and deep peace, and then asks how our lives might change if we knew that we had nothing to fear. The more there exists a recognition of this fearlessness and the more we see the permeability of the separation we typically feel between self and other. From this place we have an opportunity to deeply experience a congruence with living a life we’ve always wanted to live.  

In this video, Michael discusses the idea of love as inspired by Paul’s letter to Corinthians, Chapter 13. He then compares the Christian version of love to a decidedly Buddhist interpretation, drawing on the idea that love can be seen as a simple, felt sense of the Infinite. Michael’s inspiration for this talk came out of a visit to his childhood church and a discussion he had with his friend and minister of this organization.

One of the things that Zen practice leaves out, according to Michael McAlister, is a more direct approach to uncovering the Witness. This simple awareness, is all there ever is, and in this talk, Michael uses a piece by Ken Wilber in order to point out this constant Witness as a way for deepening a practice. Following this part of the talk, Michael goes on to describe what can be expected as practice deepens and what meditators can expect as the process unfolds.  

When we let ourselves truly recognize what lies beyond our preferences and our attachments, we begin to get a sense of how expansive we really are. This recognition can be an explosive experience that rattles us to our core, scaring us from continuing our practice. In this talk, Michael encourages us to stay the course, and as he points out in his book, Awake in This Life, letting the magnitude of what we are work its mystery through us. Doing so tends to break down all sorts of areas of identification not only in relation to our sense of self but also our sense of the tribes and the causes that we feel we feel connected to. Despite this questioning, however, we often find that we have a chance to bring a deeper consciousness into our “normal” world, thereby enabling an even deeper, even more profound participation in our lives.  

“There is only choice,” as Michael has pointed out. Even not choosing is a choice. Even in spontaneous expressions of joy or pain, we choose how we will relate to the ways in which we meet these experiences. When we open to the truth that all things are temporary, our choices begin to take on a different kind of quality; one in which we consciously begin to see that all of our choices either take us into the light of awakening or away from it. With this in mind, Michael points out the ways in which we cling to the very things that prevent enlightenment. Past and future orientation, for example, in addition to preferences, will always point us in the direction of our attachments. These attachments end up defining the boundaries of our delusion. But the gift of these limitations are that each of them shows us what we need to get past in order to awaken to the Truth that lies beyond name and form.

In this evening’s talk, Michael discusses the opportunity that each and every life event, no matter how great or how small, how wonderful or how dark, gives each of us the chance to awaken. He points to what is always prior to any experience and equates this “priority” to the teaching at the core of the Zen koan: What did your face look like before your parents were born. From here the talk points to our tendency to cling to all aspects of our mind: our memories, our convictions and our plans. Tending to our awareness of this clinging is precisely, according to Michael, what frees us from it.

When we commit to directly knowing, as we say in Zen, our True Nature, we have to be willing to give everything up. Everything. Lingering attachments work to insulate us from a full exposure to this very life that we are leading, according to Michael in this evening’s talk. “When awakening happens,” he says, “there is the realization that all form is experienced within the emptiness of the True Self… this is Buddha.” To what extent are we committed to uncovering this realization? Do we hedge our bets as we approach our spiritual path by clinging to whatever doubts or excuses we may have no matter how subtle they may be? These and other questions provide the structure and inspire the content of this Dharma talk.

In this talk, Michael addresses several issues; among them, how we often lose the view we’ve been offered by insight. He’s written about this and calls it “The Rubber Band Effect,” and suggests that we take pains to examine its source. Doing so helps us see not only how practice helps us develop a greater steadiness as we meet the world, but also our meditation helps to cultivate deepen our acceptance of what is actually happening in each moment. He also addresses an article that was shared with him in which Joseph Goldstein offers a way for busy people to “turbocharge” their practice in nine minutes a day. While this isn’t enough time to get at the roots of our delusion, both Michael and Joseph Goldstein agree that the exercises application can do wonders to deepen wherever we might be on the path.

To begin with, all of us at Infinite Smile offer each of you well wishes as we begin the holiday season. We also are so thankful for all of your support and participation in this project of awakening. Recognizing our gratitude elevates our experience as human beings, so taking this time to appreciate all of the blessings each of us has seem appropriate. The fact that you listen and support us as a community makes a difference to many people. With this in mind, we seem to be trained in this culture to always want more, or less, of things and experiences. We seemingly spend very little time appreciating what we have in the here and now. What’s more, the nondual teachings of “Emptiness” and how it appears to be an utter void to the mind, can be experienced as total fulfillment to our deepest sense of being. Michael approaches this evening’s talk with this paradox and offers up pointers on how to bring about the fullness of Emptiness in the midst of every single experience we might have.

Regardless of our tradition, we can reduce our spiritual practice to its component pieces and find that Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths offers us a path toward freedom. We first recognize our anguish, we then see it’s cause as our clinging, we then realize a freedom from our clinging is possible and finally we see that there is a teaching that helps support a stabilization of this realization of freedom.

Michael begins this talk with the following quotation from Rilke’s Duino Elegies: For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror which we are barely able to endure, and it amazes us so, because it serenely disdains to destroy us. This sets up his talk by making the point that it’s in our desire to categorize and compartmentalize experience that we defile what’s being offered. He goes on to say that “if we don’t mess with suffering we free ourselves from suffering’s mess.” While this may sound counterintuitive, it is the path offered to each of us as our meditation practice deepens. Gaining a sense of safety is usually what attracts us to practice. We seek an escape from what our reality is offering and initially meditative work can offer us refuge. But at some point, what initially appeared to us as a refuge begins to reveal itself as something entirely different. As our practice deepens and our individual consciousness is loosened on universal awareness, we begin to see that all manner of negativity and resistance begins to arise the more exposed we feel. This is precisely what meditation is designed to do: force a deepening realization that we can not get any closer to Spirit than we already are. Facing this beauty and then accepting all of its implications allows for Rilke’s point to settle within our hearts, thereby offering us up as continual expressions of love.

In this talk, Michael speaks about how the One Precept of “Doing No Harm” can actualize the potential of awakening in any situation. Along these lines, Michael openly shares how he and his wife have separated so that their marriage might be exposed to a more powerful expanse of clarity. He relates this shared decision to the One Precept and how both he and his wife wanted to make sure that the resistance patterns that arose out of their ten-year relationship didn’t adversely affect their kids. The process of difficulty and illumination continues, as he says. As the talk progresses, Michael elaborates on Zen’s Grave Precepts: Not killing, not lying, not misusing sexuality, not lying, not abusing intoxicants, not criticizing others, not being arrogant, not being greedy, not harboring anger and not diminishing the Triple Treasure (Buddha, Dharma and Sangha). By doing so, he points out how we can examine our own tendencies toward harming ourselves and others in very subtle ways. Making amends if we have gotten off track, it is suggested, can be a powerful antidote to suffering as long as we don’t attach to an outcome.

Actively meeting inspiration through poetry can make a huge difference as we move through the world. The same applies to uncovering the things that crack us up. Laughter matters since it is a celebration of the unexpected and defines an unattached space that we can enjoy if we’re available to it. Similarly, being available to love changes us in that it allows for a felt sense of the Absolute. This felt sense of the Absolute leads us onto the path of an expanding consciousness that can be mapped. Michael starts the discussion by pointing out gross level awareness, then moves on to the subtle level, the causal level and then into what can be referred to as nondual Suchness. As a side, he also notes that the causal Witness is also referred to turiya while nondual Suchness is termed turiyatita in Hinduism. From here Michael suggests that our practice can become unbalanced when we become more interested in “becoming” than simply “being.” When we stabilize ourselves in simply Being, he suggests, the Becoming takes care of itself, with a little help. But the opposite is not necessarily true. This aspect of Michael’s teaching flies in the face of some other contemporary teachers’ work.

Click here or on the title in order to listen to Michael’s talk. To subscribe to this podcast, paste this address directly into a podcast aggregator. This will automatically download new discussions on a regular basis. The easiest option is to download the new iTunes software and subscribe to this podcast from the Buddhist and/or Philosophy sections of the Religion & Spirituality list. ____ How can we ever become truly intimate with our emotional and physical pain? Or, in Buddhist terms, how can we welcome Mara? In tonight’s talk Michael suggests that our pain is often a better guide along the Path than pleasure. Countless sages have spoken to this but Michael uses the words of Thomas Merton and Rumi to point out this aspect of our work where “all the buddhas are practicing.” Questions and comments deal with the issue of constant physical pain; facing our emotional pain with the same intense awareness as we might with our physical pain; and recognizing that when we come close to actual death we are offered a teaching.

There comes a point in our practice where we consciously let go of everything that has supported our work. It’s not that we reject or avoid anything but rather that we stop holding on to all that’s familiar. This is especially true when we let go of our personal stories of right and wrong; of who we are and who we aren’t; of who is with us and who is against us. Getting past all of this mind activity tends to open us in interesting ways. We begin to see that there is nothing to hold on to, but that there is also nothing holding us back from our personal and collective evolution. Our hearts and minds open, as do our bodies. Enlightenment, at this point, isn’t something we experience, but rather it experiences itself through us.

When we can accept reality as it is, we can no longer find ourselves to be at war with it. There is nothing to resist, in other words, when we are no longer clinging to any expectation that things should turn out a certain way. When we can rest in this space, we open to our True Nature. When we can live from our True Nature, we find that we always have everything that we could possibly need with us all of the time. This takes practice and discipline. It takes a fearlessness that allows for us to study our own suffering. This study shows us that whatever we cling to, we end up diminishing. Loosening our grip on things through our stillness practice, on the other hand, ends up enhancing not only our experience but also the lives of all those we come into contact with. Our lives can be led not from a place of vanity where we seek a continual aggrandizement of separate selfhood, but rather we can live from a deeply connected place where abundance flows to, through and from our being. Here is where all war ends and peace becomes expressed continually.  

We often begin our spiritual journey because we’re at the end of our rope. We seek ways to avoid our discomfort. Unfortunately, when our  practice centers itself around seeking we find that our progress along the path is continually blocked. Authentic spiritual work helps us shift our perspective in radical ways, especially when it comes to seeking. Rather than our meditation helping us to develop the strength necessary to hang to our rope, so to speak, with greater efficiency, we find that our sitting practice helps us let go of the rope entirely. This isn’t comfortable. But all awakened beings have developed a quiet peace around this letting go as they’ve dealt with their tendency to cling. Awakened beings see that seeking itself presupposes a loss of something. Awakened beings know that nothing has ever been missing. As this process unfolds we begin to see that certain guideposts show up. First, we see that our practice unfolds as an expression of our identity. We look to become “good Buddhists” or “good Christians,” rather than being Buddhas or Christs. This orientation is about safety and understanding and manifests as the surface of our personal consciousness. Second, we uncover varying degrees of resistance. It’s here that we can begin to actually feel our preferences and attachments. This level of our awareness shows us the interior of our personal consciousness. Third, we begin to lose our need to understand, to gain anything, or avoid anything. There is a peace and an openness that arises out of a felt sense of being rather than a conceptual framework for uncovering some kind of gain. Integrating all of this allows us to begin to reorient ourselves, and our living, from a place of release rather than from a place of certitude. Seeking ends here allowing us to rest as finders.

Kanshi Sosan’s work, The Mind of Absolute Trust, offers us some great guidance in relation to meeting our lives fully. Michael leads the sangha in a reading and brief interactive analysis of the text, pointing out how we might best integrate the meaning of the text within our day-to-day lives. “Learning to trust the Universe,” Michael says, “means we can trust ourselves. In trusting ourselves, we can begin to trust others more fully.”