Nothing is left undone (Part 2)

(See part 1 before reading this)

I chose to start with a picture of two people playing push-hands because 1) it's tai chi related, as are these posts, somewhat and 2) I think push hands really profoundly illustrates this taoist idea of wu-wei - non action that is not the same as inaction.  A way of doing without "doing" and moving in the world without creating extra resistance, tension etc.  I guess I should say at the output that I think the "master" of whom Lao Tzu writes has to have let go of perfectionism.  A perfectionistic striving after mindfulness, non-doing, enlightenment, or any other spiritual ideal seems to be a great hindrance to the "attainment" of that ideal.  Probably because spiritual ideas are not meant to be attained, they are meant to be lived.  By real human beings, not by ideal forms of humanity who just so happen to also have bodies.

So what does that mean to my present-moment life?  Well, I think it is primarily about letting go.  And I will admit, I am terrified of letting go.  Part of why I feel so much stress and burden is because I am holding on to the illusion of control - that I can somehow just "figure out" the solutions to all of these "problems" and then everything will be peachy - forever.  But then it's just a game of whack-a-mole that extends way beyond my ability to ever win - or even come close.  Too many things remain undone when I'm trying to manage everything.  Because then I have this friend in need over here, and this friend, and this task, and this appointment, but I also need to stay committed to this practice, etc. etc.  In the words of AA's big book: [Am I] not the victim of the delusion that [I] can wrest happiness and satisfaction out of life if [I] only manage well?   Oy.  So turning things over.  Surrendering.  Letting go.  But, what if it all comes crashing down?  What if it all falls apart.  It's funny, I literally wrote a book about letting go, and here I am 4 years later still learning how deep this practice runs, and how much it truly asks of us, by way of trust, honesty, surrender, and humility.  Because first the ego has to be exhausted by the idea that it can appropriately manage all of life.  Then it can let go.  Then nothing is done, but nothing is left undone either.  Probably because then I step out of the panic mode of "this needs done... and this needs done... and.. and... and..."  Again, in AA terms, it's "first things first."  I know there's a ton of shit I "need" to do, but I can't do it all at once.  How to I just put everything on the shelf and let it sit there, perhaps disappear altogether.  Face the fear that maybe (just maybe) my life will be okay even if I can do everything, or even most of things, I wish I could.  I can look at what I can do right now, and focus on being 100% present to that, with all of its concomitant emotions and sensations.  And I can be present to those, too.  What happens if we let go?  Who knows.  It wouldn't be letting go if you knew what was going to happen, if you knew that by letting go it would "all just work out."  Then letting go would just be another magic tool - a trick to manage our lives by not managing, and I don't think it works that way.  

So the energy of mindfulness has to embrace the fear and the chaos and the overwhelm, too.  Bring an energy of acceptance and compassion to what feels like unmindfulness.  Because that unmindfulness might just be coming to awareness of deeper tensions and fears being uncovered as I grow.  And for you, too.  What feels like regress might actually be progress.  Might actually be deeper awareness of what you didn't see before hand.  Am I still  going to be stressed and panicked from time to time?  Am I still going to be overwhelmed by the amount of change going on in my life and the lives of those around me (THREE newborns, really?)?  Of course I am.  But perhaps I can bring just a little bit of mindfulness to it - along with compassion when I can't get up at 5:30, or I put off going to the dentist, or the list in my head is a mile longer than the list of things I've "done."  So that's my journey.  To get to a place where there's not anything to be done, because I'm doing one thing at a time.  Just one.  Yesterday I was sitting outside eating a late breakfast and looking at beautiful tree in bloom.  I was chewing very mindfully and taking in the beauty of the tree, and it felt like I was being very mindful... focusing on one thing, only.  Then I realized, no... I am focusing on two things: chewing and looking.  So I stopped chewing and looked, only.  Suddenly the tree sharpened in my vision, the silence deepened... the beauty became exponentially more profound.  It was a sacred intimate moment that happened because I stopped chewing and just looked.  I have tears at the back of my eyes just thinking about it, and deep gratitude for the ability to do just one thing.  Just one.  Right now "does nothing" is a little to abstract.  But perhaps, just perhaps, I can trust that my life will be worthwhile even were I to die before I got to the dentist, or if I never sign up for another tai chi class again.  And maybe, just maybe, this will allow me to get still enough to listen for what I really should be doing.  If there are shoulds.  If there is really a doing.

Nothing is Left Undone....

I hope you brought your inhaler... I'm about to take you inside of my mind.  I figured the best way to "get to" what I want to talk about, is to share with you the obstacles I experience to my getting there.  A verse in the Tao Te Ching reads something like this:

The ordinary person does many things
and there are many things left undone.
The master does nothing
and nothing is left undone.

Less and less do you need to force things,
until finally you arrive at non-action (wu-wei).
When nothing is done, nothing is left undone.

Um.  What?  So three weeks ago I went to Deer Park Monastery, had an amazing encounter with the practice of mindfulness, came home started this blog.  The problem was, of course, that at home, I have more I do than on retreat. I have a job - two of them actually.  No one is cooking my meals for me, so eating mindfully either means spending money on food others cook for me (it's harder to eat out mindfully, I've noticed - there are people talking all around you, music playing, and, if you're at a place with servers, servers seem to get concerned when you eat your food one bite at a time, smile, and breathe) or cooking mindfully AND eating mindfully, which takes, well... time.  So here's the mindstorm of the past few weeks - or at least a glimpse of it:

I came home wanting to get more into yoga and tai chi.  But what does that mean?  Do I go train formally, or do I do it on my own?  I used to train up in Burbank (tai chi) but I left b/c I didn't like the head instructor, but I liked the classes and the structure and the attention to detail.  I liked the difference it made in my life when I was there.  But it's in Burbank.  And I'm trying to wean myself from car dependency.  So what happens when I start driving less.  And how do I fit it into my schedule anyway?  The classes are Sunday morning and Monday evening.  What is my tutoring schedule going to look like after the summer arrives, anyway?  What nights do I want free?  When will I fit in going to yoga?  And I've been trying to wake up earlier, you know, to practice mindfulness: longer meditation, walking meditation, maybe tai chi or yoga.  But then I'm tired.  Oh and if I want to ride a bike or do yoga or martial arts more consistently, I have to go to the gym and rehab my knee/leg, which is supremely important since my arthroscopic surgery in October.  Otherwise biking, weaning from car dependency, etc., is a no go.  And waking up early I just want to sleep on my lunch breaks.  And what's this all going to look like once I start my new part time job on Tuesday and my schedule changes, AND, dear God... I haven't even mentioned FRIENDS or COMMUNITY yet.  Why am I feeling so disconnected and overwhelmed?  I haven't placed myself in community for a long time.  So it's time to remember to get back to my community of faith... I do this.  Deep breath.  Maybe tai chi and yoga aren't things to get so damn worked up about.  After all, I do have some debts I am paying back, so maybe I can just do yoga at a studio and at home, and continue to learn the tai chi yang long form from my dvd at home.  This sounds good.  Deep breath.  Relax.

Money... money... oh my student loans come out of deferment in June... do I put them back into that so I can pay off my credit card and a personal loan I am paying back?  Yes, probably. That means something else needs to be done.  I am on my last pair of contact lenses, I need to go to an eye doctor.  I am also due for a dental cleaning.  All of this "many things undone" is stressing me out - I need the chiropractor.  Perhaps I should start waking up earlier to meditate?  DO YOU SEE MY INSANITY?  Three of my closest southern California friends have newborns, and I want to see them as much as possible.  So then there's finding time for that.  And finding time for other friends.  And meetings I go to every week.  And how am I going to leave my footprint on the world, after all?  This is important - I should probably figure this out right now, while I'm typing this blog and feeling guilty about not calling the dentist or chiropractor yet and anxious that the dentist won't have an opening that works for me and then I'll have to just call back next week... and... and... and.... this is only the surface of it.  It doesn't enter into my confusion about relationships, my concern for the health and wellbeing of certain people I love dearly, my struggles to grow as a person, an adult, a spiritual being, and a recovering codependent.  Throw in a trip to NY to see my family and I'm f'ing tired!!!

So I've done - and am doing - many things.  And there's so damn much left to do I could collapse.  So what do I do?   What do I do?  I suppose, and not leastwise because it rhymes, I should answer this question in a more manageable "part 2."

To be continued....

For Today

There is a huge difference between meditating for five minutes and meditating for forty five minutes.  The depth to which one allows the mud to settle when sitting for a longer period of time cannot compare to a short sit.  Especially when there is so much, day-in, day-out, stirring up the mud of emotional unrest, uncertainty, fear, excitement, obsessive thinking, etc.

That said.  Meditating for five minutes is better than none, and if I'd foregone those five minutes this morning, I would be in a very different head space today.  Any stillness is helpful in helping me return to myself, to remember that I am more than the sum of my thoughts, and abide in a measure of calm and stillness as I journey through my day in mindfulness and as much awareness as I can bring to each moment.

Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
till the right action arises by itself?

From Stephen Mitchell's Tao Te Ching

Returning

Returning to the present moment takes work.  Or perhaps it takes choice... and willingness.  After a weekend that I can only describe as emotionally intense, I drove to work today aware that I always have the present moment with me.  The feelings - bodily and emotional - the sensations - the awarenesses... each moment is a chance to either flee from the moment, resist it, or open to it.  I think one of the biggest hindrances to my opening to the present moment is a fear of not knowing what to "do with it."  But what is there to do with it?  If I'm trying to do something with the present moment - trying to fix some problem, etc., then I'm probably not actually in the moment.  The type of change that comes from grounded presence doesn't have the feeling of "fixing" anything.  It has the sense of centered response, rather than reactivity.  Too often the thoughts and sensations carry me.  Not often enough do I breathe in and through the thoughts and sensations to what the present moment really has to offer me.  Trying to "fix" myself, others, past mistakes, future worries, etc. doesn't let me return home.

And that is the most important thing to me today.  To come home to myself.  To have a self to come home to... notwithstanding the Buddhist notion of no-self.  Buddhist no-self just means the self I come home to is not independent and self-existent but interrelated, made of "non-self" elements, as Thay says.  The amazing thing is that, no matter what has happened, no matter the chaos or fear or overwhelm, the present moment is always there, beckoning us back.  As it did me, today, amidst all of my fatigue, gratitude, uncertainty, and upheaval, there it was - Jonathan in his breath, a home to return to.  A home not left.  A home inside myself, carried with me wherever I go, always a pause, a breath, a walking meditation away from my accessing - easier to tap into the more I cultivate the attitude and energy of mindfulness.  Readier at hand for my diligence and work.  I suppose mindfulness is like any muscle.  Use makes it stronger.  Thay says that we have only as much free will as the mindfulness we have cultivated.  This is something to think about today as I return, again an again, to this moment.  Here.  Now.

My trip to Deer Park

This past Monday was a special day for me.  Since it is also a difficult time in my life, I chose to "celebrate" by getting away - booking a retreat at Deer Park Monastery in Escondido.  This is a Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monastery that lives together in Thich Nhat Hanh's Plum Village tradition of Buddhism, which places a special emphasis on mindfulness:  Mindful eating, mindful walking, mindfulness in every aspect of lives.  Paying attention the breath, the dishes, your steps, being PRESENT to each moment - continually arriving.  Continually coming home.

In light of this, I have decided to start a new blog... to chronicle my experiences with the practices of mindfulness in my life.  How I get away from it, how I gently return to it, and what I observe along the way.  At Deer Park everything is meditation.  It becomes something of playful joke - to the point that when I would go to the bathroom I would think of "urination meditation."  The point, of course, is to pay attention, to be fully present to the experience of the moment, and to remember that this moment is the only moment there is, and that mindfulness reveals its wonder.

Or does it?  While there, we watched a dharma talk on dvd given by Thay (Thay is Vietnamese for "teacher" or "my teacher" and it is what Thich Nhat Hanh is called by his students.  When I am at the Monastery, I embrace Thay as my teacher, and so I speak of him here a bit more personally than I did when, say, I referenced his writings in my master's thesis).  In the dharma talk, Thay listed four aspects of the simple mind (I forget his term for it - people call it ego, the Buddha talked about the untrained mind, etc.).  Characteristic 1: Seeking pleasure.  2: Avoiding suffering.  3: Not seeing the danger of pleasure seeking.  4: Not seeing the value of suffering.

When I got to Deer Park I was suddenly confronted with myself.  My phone left in the car, I was suddenly without the distractions that kept a gap between me and deeply touching where I am in life.  No phone meant no texting.  I don't have facebook on my phone, but I had no computer, which meant no facebook.  It meant no turning to others to run from Jonathan.  So for the first day and a half I was at Deer Park, I was not happy.  I was scared.  I was lonely.  I was grieving.  I was facing where I was, and where I was was difficult.  I was grieving a marriage that ended a year and a half ago.  I felt the grief pot sitting inside of me and was shocked by how much loss and pain I had not felt in that interim time.  I felt the pain of being alone.  I felt the pain of "failed life" as my judgments poured over it.  I felt loss, depression, grief, sadness, failure.  At Deer Park there are a few "Gathas" (something like breath mantras) that we use for walking meditation.  One is "I have arrived; I am home."  Another is "Present moment; wonderful moment."  Well, if I had arrived home, home was a hard, scary place.  And it was not present moment, wonderful moment.  It was "Present moment; Terrifying moment."  And I think that's what mindfulness is.  A confrontation with the present.  It's not a spiritual bypassing or brainwashing trick designed to make you feel rosy all the time.  It's coming home to where you are, even if where you are is broken.

By the middle of the second day something shifted.  I don't know what.  Perhaps it was as simple as taking a shower, but I began to sink more deeply into the practice.  I began to embrace where I was rather than fight it - I really had no choice.  No phone, no texting, not a lot of ways to get away from me.  Something shifted.  Perhaps I just needed to face where I was and realize it could not consume me.  I've always been somewhat afraid of myself.  Afraid of arriving, afraid of coming home.  I used to inventory fears, and so many of my fears - as the layers were peeled back - came down to a core fear of being left alone, "abandoned."  I have spent my life afraid of being by - and with - myself.  Not knowing how to live at peace with that person, needing others to validate, affirm, and give purpose to my being.  And perhaps my truest struggles to be in community, relationships, etc. stem from the fact that I first and foremost have not known how to be at home in myself.  Present moment;

wonderful moment - even if that moment is scary, sad, or lonely... which it often is.  So I continued the practice of mindfulness into the weekend.  There were even times I chose to be mindfully unmindful.  Let myself walk quickly or eat slightly faster than I knew I was "supposed to."  Then I would slow down and come home to myself.  Today, I know there is a lot of fear that lives inside of me.  But I know too that there is joy... and a lot of gratitude.  For what?  I am not sure.  For the fear and sadness, for the ability to walk with that, and breathe it in.... acceptance, even when I might feel unacceptable.

The other profound realization (or re-realization) from this weekend was that I am not my mind.  And thank God.  I can't imagine a greater tyranny under which to live than this torrent of judgments, commentary, ideas, plans, "problems", and "solutions" to my problems.

So this blog is about mindfulness.  About my continued journey with it and my practice of it.  The things I run into as I practice mindfulness in odd and perhaps not-so-odd circumstances.  Like my coworker who asked me "I saw you walking into work today, are you sore from working out?"  "A little," I said, "but mostly I was just walking mindfully into work, trying to extend the practice from this past weekend."  I hope you enjoy and benefit from my reflections.  I hope to return to Deer Park soon.  Perhaps for another weekend, and eventually a full week - maybe even longer.  Whoever you are, and wherever you are, I hope you can be there.  One step - one breath - at a time.