And after six days of Tibetan Buddhism...

...I am still not practicing lovingkindness NEARLY enough.

I was so lucky to have had the gift of unemployment (no, really) during the week that the American Museum of Natural History was hosting my Tibetan Buddhist teacher as part of its Brain exhibit (specifically on Brain and the Tibetan Creative Mind).
http://www.amnh.org/calendar/event/Living-in-America:-Brain-and-the-Tibetan-Creative-Mind/
I was able to attend three out of the four meditations that my teacher led, and to generally be among Tibetan monks and Buddhist practitioners, and to think deeply about Buddhist practices. It definitely changed a lot of things for me, and has made me approach a few people and challenges differently. But guess what? IT'S STILL HARD. It is still so hard to be a human being interacting with other human beings. All of us imperfect and cranky and tired and hungry and sometimes with sore feet and sometimes being elbowed out of the way... One evening, Khen Rinpoche was leading this amazing meditation - in the Hayden Planetarium, thank you very much - and a woman was sitting on the floor and all of these folks kept coming in late (so, so late) and they had to push past/climb over her to get to the few remaining empty seats, and finally she got so angry she really stomped up the aisle and sat down in a chair and you could see it took her quite a while to shake it off. She was literally shaking her head in anger every few seconds. I kept thinking how ironic it was that she had so much anger during this meditation session, and that she couldn't recognize that none of the people had meant her any harm with their actions; they were just late and anxious and clumsy. On the other hand, I was so distracted, and was watching her, and judging her, and judging the late people, etc. etc. and missing out on these beautiful esoteric instructions for imagining the Buddha on four thrones sitting on eight lions. So: I still have to practice.

Big time.

There were many other experiences, both enlightening and disheartening, but this is just the description in brief. And all week, it made me think about alternate names for the blog and for myself...Muttering Buddhist, Cranky Buddhist, Bitchy Buddhist, Completely Unsuccessful Buddhist, Not There Yet, Buddhist With An Uzi (this only happens when I ride the subway, honest)...

The goal, however, is to really, truly, begin a regular meditation practice. I was happy to learn one new meditation practice, and in addition, to get instruction on tonglen, which I've been drawn to before but feel that I've done incorrectly. Perhaps having written it down on this here blog - even though no one yet knows it exists - will make me a bit more accountable to the universe, and will help me get started.

(The image is from http://www.freewebs.com/dharmabeads/initiations.htm)