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Our view of reality is like a map with which to negotiate the terrain of life. If the map is true and accurate, we will generally know where we are and if we have decided where we want to go, we will generally know how to get. If the map is false and inaccurate, we generally will be lost.

While this is obvious, it is something that most people, to a greater or lesser degree choose to ignore. They ignore it because our route to reality is not easy. First of all, we are not born with maps. We have to make them, and the making requires effort. The more effort we make to appreciate and perceive reality, the larger and more accurate our maps will be, but many do not want to make this effort.

Some stop making it by the end of adolescence. Their maps are small and sketchy. Their views of the world narrow and misleading.

By the end of middle age, most people have given up the effort. They feel certain their maps are complete and they are no longer interested in new information. It is if they are tired, only a relative and fortunate few continue until the moment of death exploring the mystery of reality ever enlarging and refining and redefining their understanding of the world and what is true.

M Scott Pick.

Welcome to the imperfect Buddhist. Where we discuss present moment awareness and incorporating Zen principles into modern life. My name is Matthew Hawk Mahoney, and today's episode is titled Buddhism and Maps of Meaning.

I've had a couple of experiences recently that have pushed me to talk a little bit about maps of meaning and how we navigate our. The way that we label our world as we move through it how that can differ from how other people have overlaid the different experiences of life with different meanings.

Maps and how we associate with the world and what it means

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can really create a lot of struggle between mother and son, father and daughter, best friends, enemies, lovers, all because of how we interpret. The

chaos of life. The different meanings we can assign to a certain look someone gives us when we tell them a joke. We're really excited for them to hear.

When we give someone a gift, how they say Thank you. This could all mean very different things for different people.

I moved to Florida and started working at this grocery store. After working there for a year, we hired a kid at the time he was a kid named Daniel. And we started hanging out and talking. He was into some of the same philosophies as me, a little bit more yoga, it was cool. So we connected on that.

We connected on music . We had both stopped working there. We continued to hang out and he mentioned to me, he was like, Hey, I'm going down to this Michael Singer talk. And I was like, What? What do you mean Michael Singer talk? He's like, Yeah, dude. He has a teaching center here in Florida. It's called the Temple of the Universe.

I was pretty surprised. I didn't know that. It kind of peaked my interest. It'd be cool to hear this guy talk. Flash forward about a. We plan out to go down on a Sunday we leave Jacksonville around 7:30 AM and make our way down to outside of Gainesville. And it's beautiful.

The temple's out in the countryside and you drive a winding road probably 10, 15 minutes off the highway and then you take another right turn down, another more narrow. Road and then a left onto a dirt road, and the dirt road turns onto this paved road that you follow, that winds its way up to this temple that I think it was built.

Don't quote me on this, but it looks like it's a little bit older. Maybe it was built in the eighties or the late seventies, early nineties. And so we get there and it's this wilderness retreat center. it's almost like you're hiking. Through a forest and you come upon this retreat center, we park the car and we make our way up to this building all these shoes are out front.

We take off our shoes and we come inside. It's very quiet maybe 25 or 30 people sitting. Most of them cross-legged in the meditation hall . This is about 30 minutes before the talk is supposed to start. Very, very similar to most retreats or meditation centers, if you've ever been to one.

There's a collective quiet maybe it's a little bit expected or appreciated. So you dive into that we sat quietly for a while there's a period of singing. That I wasn't as familiar with, wasn't necessarily used to or comfortable with at first. It's sending praise to the different awakened teachers as some would say. Some people believe that there are different awakened beings that have lived such as Jesus Krishna Aah, Buddha.

So in some traditions they look to all of these figures as beacons of enlightenment, truth and awakening. there Was this long mantra, like singing Budda, Budda. And then, then there were some other lyrics that went along with that. Like, I will sing your name. Get all drunk on your name.

Budda, Budda, Budha. And do that maybe two or three times through. And then it would be like, Get it all drunk on your name. Jesus. Jesus, Jesus say. So it felt a little bit different, Little bit different than what, I'm used to, My wife was there along with my friend Daniel. And Michael Singer is playing a Casio electronic keyboard, pounding out some chords.

It felt a little bit foreign at first. I just started getting into it, letting go into the singing, and I, it was enjoyable. I felt good. I do orient myself towards the.

Awakened life of these people that were sung about, that they could be a beacon and be a point of, hope for people. And so I can align myself with that and it felt good to fall into it. My wife who deals with pmdd, which is Premenstrual Dysphoria Disorder

she has a very harsh dip of certain chemicals in her brain during this time, and so she tends to get much more irritated than she normally would, and she has a hard time with repetition already. So this singing of. The different holy names and songs started to drive her a little crazy. So she got up and left the talk.

He finished with the singing and Michael started his talk. His talk was about the different waves of life that life has, these different experiences, different things that come.

That if you could imagine life being like a lake, Sometimes that lake has waves on the top of it. Sometimes it's clear and still, but those waves are the experiences of life. They could be emotions, thoughts, people, actions of those people. And those are all a part of the same lake, but they're a wave. The wave is still a part of the lake.

And so his talk was about fighting these waves fighting. The manifestations of life. internally what that looks like is holding onto an experience of life, one of the waves and holding onto it. Whether it's, I don't want this to happen, so I'm gonna push this wave back and fight it from rising and falling back into the ocean. And all that does is keeps that wave alive longer. Or there's, I'm gonna hold onto this wave, I'm gonna hold onto it.

I wanna keep it alive. This is who I am, this is what I believe. That was the gist of his talk.

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Finishes talk, and Daniel and I decided to get up and look for Amanda. Head out. We got up and there was a decent amount of people up and stirring around and we put our shoes on. And as we started to walk out, I was like, Man, I have to pee. There's a lot of people in there.

So we started walking and we found Amanda, she was laying on a bench out in this large clearing that they had made in the forest. There was a big clearing . I approached her, I was like, Oh, hey babe. And you know, checked in with her, everything was fine. I was like, I gotta pee. I went to the edge of this clearing, big wooded area and peed.

Took a pee, relieved myself, took a piss. And there was a little bit of like, Oh man, I hope, nobody sees me or hope this doesn't disturb anybody. But there really wasn't much thought to it. I felt like I was out in the woods and there was a big clearing and there was an edge of the clearing, and so I had to go pee. And so I turned around and I started walking back towards Amanda and Daniel and the car.

I saw that during the talk someone had set up a table of books on the table there was a book by Parra Hanza Yoga Nanda, which was serendipitous cuz I had talked with Daniel a bit about Yoga Nanda on the way down to the talk. I picked it up. I was like, Daniel, this is the guy I was talking about.

As soon as I pick it up I hear, Go wash your fucking hands. I didn't even realize who, who he was talking to. And then I realized it was me. Cause I had just gone pee . And I was like, Oh. And I set the book down and I looked up and there was an attendant, the person that was watching over the table

Browse fled. Pretty serious looking at me I was shocked. Taken aback, and I was genuinely said . That's interesting. I had seen this gentleman in the talk where we were talking about the waves of life coming in, passing through us and. We fight these different waves, how we try to push back against what is coming our way.

Or we pick out a wave and say, That wave, I don't like that wave. Fuck that wave . And I just thought it was just really an interesting juxtaposition between the talk and what had just happened. Then the realization hit.

I was like, Whoa. I started to look around and I was like, Oh, here's what the other guy saw from his map. Guy comes out, comes onto what's considered holy land or a place of practice where people come and try to relax and do recreation, and he went over to the edge of this area and took a. And then he walked over and picked up the book, and maybe it wasn't the fact that he didn't wash his hands, but hey, this is not right.

This is a sacred place for us. This guy's coming out here and he's peeing.

And oh, Michael Singer is still in there doing a silent meditation, and this guy left before. So, you know what? Fuck this wave, Fuck this guy. Not gonna happen. And so that hit me in that moment that, wow, I am just totally not seeing or mis perceiving how other people may perceive this map. My map was like, Hey, we are out in the woods

I have to. So I went Pee

I was like, Wow. And it was an opportunity for me to let go and to not be reactive. Luckily I felt. Some letting go in that moment, and I didn't see it as an attack.

We all have these maps that we use to navigate our world. We have these maps of how we act at work. We have maps of how we are in relationships. We have maps of what is okay to bring up in a conversation or not okay to bring up in a conversation. We have maps about where it's okay to go pee and where it's not okay to go pee.

We are all navigating our world with maps, and maps are fine. We need maps for. Because maps allow us to create a set of rules or a set of guidelines, a set of principles that we can all follow to make life more cohesive.

How are the maps formed? The maps are formed by our experiences, by watching other people, by what we read, what we watch on tv, and what we reinforce in our own mind. For instance, our map of marriage might be developed by our parents' marriage. And so my map, if I never make any revisions to it, could be very different than the map of a person who had parents that were lovingly married, Christian, and together and are still together.

My parents. We're lovingly together to a degree from the time I was born until eight or nine, and we moved to Oregon and they bought , motels in southern Oregon and a lot of stress and money, financial issues ensued and there were sides came out, I started to see different levels of abuse and my dad started to retreat into.

Pretty much letting my mom do almost everything sitting back smoking weed sitting in a man cave . And so that was like, okay, that's kind of like my map of marriage. That was my map of relationships. And then the other case would be my friend Ryan who. Again, this is completely from the outside.

I don't know what his, what he saw, what their problems were, you know what the reality is. But from the outside, , raised in the same house, parents still together, lovingly together, very stable home. A lot of focus on him and his sister and their development, it seemed like the parents kept their corals.

Kind of behind closed doors if there were any. And they would talk about things and they were a united front they had a direction that they were going together. So his map of what marriage and relationships could look like if he just left it based on what he experienced, which probably wouldn't be that bad versus mine if I had never done any revisions, where would my marriage be?

So we develop these maps about life based on the experiences we have and the people in our life. When we're growing up. We start to develop

how to navigate the world,

in Budh. There is a concept of beginner's mind, and beginner's mind is a broad concept, but when it comes to maps and how we navigate the world, beginner's mind encourages us to approach situations, people, emotions, and life. With just that a beginner's mind, we let go of some of, or most of the maps in our mind.

We try to be with what's happening and experience it as if it's our first time experiencing it, being present there, witnessing what's happening. And so an antidote to perhaps controlling abusive, destructive angry maps is beginner's. When you see yourself starting to go down that path of , Well, fuck that.

That's not how this is supposed to go. That's not what he's supposed to say. He's supposed to say this, She's supposed to do this. I'm supposed to get this. Things are supposed to go this way. That might be an indicator that this is an opportunity to practice Beginner's mind. Beginner's mind is practiced with present moment awareness, coming back to the present and being with what's happen.

Watching what's happening in our minds bodies and watching all those expectations in our minds go by being present with what's actually happening, the reality of what's happening, the current wave that is coming up out of the clear lake, either we can push back against it or let it move through us.

Beginner's mind will allow us to. Revise our maps to start to see that, oh wait, not everybody is kind. Not everybody is considerate. Not everybody owes me kindness. Not everybody owes me consideration. Not everybody has my best interest in mind. Okay, well this is a revised map. So then now, It's up to you.

How do you want to revise your map? And you could say, Well, not everybody considers me, so you know what? Fuck them. I'm not gonna consider them. That's one revision. I'm not saying it's the best revision. Another revision could be, Not everybody considers me, not everybody is kind to me. Okay, Well then do I choose to be kind in return to who?

Who do I choose to be kind to? Do I show kindness to everyone with no expectation of kindness in return. Only you can answer those questions and it's not a shoe fits all situation. These maps are going to have to be unique to your life experience to what you feel like you can handle. Cuz not everybody can handle showing kindness to everybody to.

That pain and hurt put on them by people they've shown kindness to without, some level of anger or resentment. So we have the opportunity to revise our maps and present moment awareness allows us to disentangle the seriousness with which we place on our old maps and the maps of meaning we've develop.

All right, we are going to practice three minutes of present moment awareness. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, try to bring an awareness to this moment. Hear are the sounds around you,

and just witness whatever needs to be noticed. If you are working on a computer, see if you can step away from the computer and look outside the window and just see what you can see. So let's. Practice for three minutes starting.

All right. Thank you for stopping in. I enjoyed sharing with you some of my mishaps over the last week. I look forward to talking with you next time. All right. Take care.

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