"I've
always worn my sadness like a heavy coat. This is the first time it's
started to enter into me, pass through me, and change me into something
from within."
This was my closing comment on a recent online discussion thread regarding grief and loss. I think there is a threshold for every person, where the pain in our lives outdoes the amount of mindfulness we have thus far cultivated. The pain-to-mindfulness-ratio is greater than 1. Sometimes much greater. Perhaps some people have trained to the point where they can handle death and loss, injustice, heartache, fear, etc. But at a certain point it seems like everyone breaks. Isn't this the idea behind torture? That there is a point beyond the skillfulness we all have to cope with the pain and difficulty life brings our way.
For the past several months, and far more acutely these past two weeks, I have lived beyond my personal threshold. I will spare you the details. Or, more accurately, I will spare myself the process of sharing the details with an undisclosed internet audience. I do not know if the disparity between my perceived levels of mindfulness and the pain I am experiencing says more about my level of pain or my level of mindfulness. Probably the most accurate assessment is that the directional arrow points both ways. There is an immense amount of pain to understand and transform, and the mindfulness I have cultivated thus far in my life also has much room to grow. I make neither statement from shame or grandiosity. This is simply is how it is.
Deep grief can be one of the most painful things to bear. I think there's a reason we speak of having a broken heart. Not a tired heart, not a wounded heart, but broken. If we knew how to handle it, it wouldn't be broken - it might be worn down or slowed, it might be aching, but broken means it no longer works in the way it is intended to work. Something about the heart's ability to love, open, hold space for joy, triumph, loss, hope, etc. has been undeniably damaged. The heart simply will not work the way we want it to.
Then what?
Today I am faced with the undeniable realization that I simply do not know how to grieve.
I know how (as I said above) to wear it like a wet blanket or heavy coat - to be weighed down by the burden, aware of its presence, heavy under its auspices. But to let grief pass through me - to brave the storm that threatens to overwhelm and drown me - to enter the pain that holds no promise of relief, there is no skill set I have yet cultivated sufficient strength or courage to brave. Wednesday morning was the first time I cried in months, though every day I've wished I could - every day has been a day when tears are called for. But the numb ache - the pressing up against the wall of grief and peering in at it - so far it's the only thing I've known with any degree of regularity. That and distraction, beautiful sweet blessed distraction. CS Lewis starts his A Grief Observed by saying, "No one ever told me grief feels so much like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is the same.... I keep on swallowing." Such a mundane thing to notice, but that's how it is, I guess.
I am reminded of a scene in the gospels where a group of men peel back the roof to the home where Jesus is staying and lower a paralytic into the house on a mat. The man himself lacked the capacity to get up and come to Jesus, but his friends are there to do the work on his behalf. Jesus cites their faith as the reason for the man's healing, and the man walks. Sometimes I think - in the darkest times - mindfulness is like that. Sometimes you just lie on your back paralyzed and hope the people around you know how and where to carry you. These past few months people have asked, "do you need anything?" I always think, "Yes, I need everything - I need so much - but I don't know what - and if I did, I wouldn't know how to ask for it." With time, some some clarity might come. "Yes, I need a place to go - can I come over to your home if I need to just sit - if I need somewhere other than here to read, or to stare at a wall?" Mindfulness enters. But not a peaceful, calm mindfulness. A different kind of radical mindfulness. I wonder what it would be to speak to torture victims of mindfulness. "Focus on the physical sensations of the breath" as electricity rockets through their body to the point that the very fibers of their being feel as if they are being ripped to shreds. Again, there seem to be levels of pain that eclipse the power of what we normally think of mindfulness. Perhaps the mindfulness we have cultivated in our practice helps quicken the recovery time, I don't know. Perhaps the practice lets us move through the grief more quickly. But oh how difficult it is to dive INTO pain and not run away from it. Sometimes it's just as well to give yourself the grace to run away for a little while. I've been a spiritual perfectionist for so long it sometimes takes all the grace I can give myself to sit in front of the tv for three hours and enjoy some laughter and some relief.
And today, without community, without the people in my world who help me grieve - who lift the roofs off of houses and lower me into the presence of the sacred, I don't know where I would be. More lost. More angry. More overwhelmed. A week ago Monday I needed the presence of two people I knew and about 7 strangers in order to sit for 20 minutes in Centering Prayer. Without them I could not have done it. As much as I wanted to have it in myself without help, my sangha gave me the space and the grace to be with myself for more uninterrupted time than I had spent in weeks. And I survived. Maybe that is what mindfulness is all about (if mindfulness is all about anything at all) - learning how to bear the stark reality of being nakedly with ourselves. And for the past few weeks I've had to give myself a world of grace as I have "failed" time and time again in knowing how to be with myself. My skin is the last place I want to inhabit. My grief is the last thing I want to feel. The torrent that threatens to overwhelm. I never knew mindfulness was so bound up with faith. Not faith in a deity, per se, but faith that the rip tide will not suck you under completely - faith that you can surface from a pain that feels like it won't let up - not soon, perhaps not ever. Maybe the goal isn't to fill the emptiness, but to make such radical peace with it that it is no longer an enemy, but a friend. In Hannah Hurnard's Christian allegory Hinds Feet on High Places, the main character Much Afraid journeys up the mountain with her two companions, Sorrow and Suffering. They do not seem like good or desirable companions, but as she climbs and learns to trust, she begins to realize that they are trustworthy helpers, who will indeed see her safely to the top if she lets them.
In my own direction session last week (I see a spiritual director anywhere from 1 to 4 times per month), I came to relate to Heartache as if it were a personified presence in my life. And I realized that this Heartache is here to help me - to lead me somewhere I don't know - and as much as s/he feels like a radical enemy, I can in fact embrace her/him as a friend. And here is where fear begins to dissipate, just a little. Because when the reality of your life seems to be heartache - and that heartache seems to be an inescapable enemy with whom you must contend - there isn't a lot of hope in that. But when I can turn to Heartache and embrace her... or him... or her - and realize that though she might hurt me, she is still a friend - then I can find peace, even amidst sorrow. Then I am less afraid of myself, because mindfulness is not supposed to get me away from this heartache. Mindfulness is really there to teach me how to lay down my defenses and become friends with this scary helper. I don't want to, but there is no other way. Our world doesn't always praise things that slow us down and make our goals and agendas more difficult to reach (or nullifies their validity altogether). But sometimes things come into our life precisely to shatter the agendas we carry with us and open us to a deeper wisdom. Or perhaps being open simply is the deeper wisdom. Perhaps there's no "thing" to "learn" from all this - perhaps it's just about simply being broken open - to have a heart torn open and left that way, without designs to "fix it," and all the grace that comes from that just comes, just from being open, just from learning to be kind to oneself amidst this pain and loss and heartache. To let the grief rivers flow through me instead of just weighing me down like some kind of heavy mat pressing against my unyielding body.
I can honestly say I don't know if anything I've said makes rational sense. There's not a lot of rational sense to make these days. It's just one day at a time, learning to embrace the heart's center - learning to live with loss and pain and know that it's okay, even if everything just feels horrifying.
Kindness to oneself might just be the most important thing some of us will ever learn. And to me, now, it might just be the only thing worth learning. On the in breath, and the out - whatever I feel - wherever I am. In. Out. Present moment. Wonderful moment. Maybe our ideas of "wonderful" get a little fucked up sometimes. It's good to remember that mindfulness isn't about keeping the pain out. Thousands of people just lost their lives in the Philippines. Thousands upon thousands more lost their homes, their livelihoods, everything they knew and held dear. Devastation. How do we breathe through that? Hopefully, with grief choking us on the in breath, and tears flooding us on the out breath. Reaching into our hearts as we step with our left foot, reaching into our lives and resources as we step with the right. There's this moment where Jesus hangs on the cross, at the end, when his breath is almost gone from him (crucifixion kills you by asphyxiation). "Into your hands I commit my spirit," he says. Pneuma, I would guess the word is here. The word that also means breath. Into your hands I commit my breath.
I really don't know what that means to this post - or if it means anything, but somehow it felt worth mentioning. And hey, I told you from the beginning, I have no idea how to grieve - I'm just making this up as I go along. Maybe we all are. Maybe that's the whole damn point. I guess it makes it just a little easier when we can offer each other immeasurable amounts of kindness as we go along. Because we are all doing the best we can. Even when we're not. Even when the best we can really sucks. I think it also makes it easier if we can offer that same kindness to ourselves. Over and over and over again.
Amen.
Sunday, November 24, 2013
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
What is mindfulness?
Thich Nhat Hanh says that we have to be mindful not only of what is going on here, but what is going on "there." What good is it to eat a piece of fish mindfully if we are unaware that the overfishing of this species is altering ecosystems on the other side of the world? What good is it to eat mindfully if the workers who grew my food are also exploited. Mindfulness brings attention, not only here, but also there. Of course we cannot always be aware of all things that are going on around us - or within us - but we can begin to practice in ways that include the world around us, not simply our own body and breath. In the end, we all breathe the same breath - we inter-breathe, which means we must be mindful of the things that we do to affect that interbreathing.
Lately I have found it difficult to be "mindful." How can I be mindful when there are baby bottles to wash, and I am so tired from lack of sleep that all I can think about is getting to bed. But do I have the energy to sit... just for a few minutes... just one bit of meditation or centering prayer before unconsciousness consumes me? I think in some ways mindfulness is also the asking of these questions. We cannot always take one peaceful step after another. Sometimes we must move quickly. But can I know that I am moving quickly? Can I be in tune with the hurry, with the anxiety that is produced when I rush? Can I also embrace that with compassion, and seek to learn ways to reduce this hurry - to reduce this anxiety? I think that is what mindfulness means. Sometimes it is in the asking of questions - not in a panicked perfectionistic type of way, but in an aware, open way. Sometimes I need more sleep. But when I sleep so much I let slip my spiritual nourishment, my community involvement, my exercise, etc., then I have become unmindful. When I fixate on any specific thing, I tend to fall out of balance. Perhaps balance and the energy of mindfulness are inextricably interwoven. I cannot find one without the other. I can get neither ahead of myself nor behind. "Let what I do flow from me like a river, with no forcing and no holding back." Sometimes it is hard to walk this balance. This too is a kind of meditation, when we do it with gentleness and self-love.
I can't always do things perfectly. When there's a baby or some other circumstance that destabilizes an easier environment for practice, one must learn how to adapt, to find meditation in the actions, and to give compassion when it feels like there is no mindfulness, no meditation, no "spiritualness." Sometimes the seeking after spiritual feelings is self-indulgent. Sometimes there is only the ordinariness. The frustration. The crankiness. Sometimes this crankiness, this too is an object for awareness. We grow even as we see it. Even as we embrace it, sometimes tearfully. Our ego is stripped as we see that we are not always perfect. We are not as enlightened as we thought.
In yoga, I have learned to laugh at myself when I fall out of a balancing pose. I used to think I needed to "try harder" or "focus more." But I have learned that balancing poses simply reflect back to me where I am. Today I am scattered, I am a mess, I am all over the place. If I "try really hard" to balance - well, perhaps if I succeed in not falling out of a pose, I hurt myself more than if I let myself fall. Because then I have this delusion that I'm "better" than I actually am. I miss the awareness that my practice is trying to bring to me - the revelation of where I truly am in this moment. I think it's the same way when we find ourselves responding to family or friends or circumstances with anger, irritation, or fear. When we simply try to not be angry, irritated, or afraid, then we miss out on the chance to tend the deeper seeds - to engage our journey on much more substantive levels (of course if we get carried away with the fear or anger, we remain equally unconscious). Too often we focus on the symptoms. We get rid of the headache, but underneath there is still the cause - unattended. Mindfulness is not a practice of getting rid of anger and fear. It is a practice that begins by holding them - paying attention to them - breathing with them. Same with panic, hurry, frustration, perfectionism, self-chastisement, or any other unwholesome mind-states. We work to eliminate them, yes - but by dealing with them at the roots. You cannot just trim weeds, you must dig deep - your practice must go beneath the symptoms, and this requires mindfulness. And mindfulness requires patience.
I remember a chapel message delivered at my undergraduate institution one Easter. The speaker was reflecting on what it takes to follow Jesus. He said something to this effect:
"Maybe you are asking yourself this Easter, what you can do to become a better follower of Jesus. Well, if we are to take the Bible seriously, perhaps the most spiritual thing you can do this Easter is to fail... All of Jesus' disciples failed him in his greatest hour of need."
Everything came from this failure. This willingness to be utterly human. Peter had told Jesus "I will never deny you, even if EVERYONE else denies you, I will never." Peter was the victim of hubris and self-delusion. He denied Jesus. Three times. He failed. But perhaps our failures - our falling out of a posture - in yoga or in life - have more to do with helping us grow than do our "successes." Perhaps it is our failures that show us more clearly where - and who - we truly are. Because we are not our images of ourselves. We are not our posturing. Sometimes I think I am most myself when I lose my balance and fall out of a pose. I'm just human. Somewhere along the line someone told us that was unspiritual. But at the end of each day we return to our breath - we remember that we are only ever just human, and in that humanity is our spirituality. In that and nothing else.
Wait. That is not quite accurate. My spirituality is also in YOUR humanity. It is in the trees and the forests and the animals we too often mistreat. It is in the body of the world, as Eve Ensler so wonderfully put it. One Body, One World. Our spirituality is there. One breath. One future.
Together.
Lately I have found it difficult to be "mindful." How can I be mindful when there are baby bottles to wash, and I am so tired from lack of sleep that all I can think about is getting to bed. But do I have the energy to sit... just for a few minutes... just one bit of meditation or centering prayer before unconsciousness consumes me? I think in some ways mindfulness is also the asking of these questions. We cannot always take one peaceful step after another. Sometimes we must move quickly. But can I know that I am moving quickly? Can I be in tune with the hurry, with the anxiety that is produced when I rush? Can I also embrace that with compassion, and seek to learn ways to reduce this hurry - to reduce this anxiety? I think that is what mindfulness means. Sometimes it is in the asking of questions - not in a panicked perfectionistic type of way, but in an aware, open way. Sometimes I need more sleep. But when I sleep so much I let slip my spiritual nourishment, my community involvement, my exercise, etc., then I have become unmindful. When I fixate on any specific thing, I tend to fall out of balance. Perhaps balance and the energy of mindfulness are inextricably interwoven. I cannot find one without the other. I can get neither ahead of myself nor behind. "Let what I do flow from me like a river, with no forcing and no holding back." Sometimes it is hard to walk this balance. This too is a kind of meditation, when we do it with gentleness and self-love.
I can't always do things perfectly. When there's a baby or some other circumstance that destabilizes an easier environment for practice, one must learn how to adapt, to find meditation in the actions, and to give compassion when it feels like there is no mindfulness, no meditation, no "spiritualness." Sometimes the seeking after spiritual feelings is self-indulgent. Sometimes there is only the ordinariness. The frustration. The crankiness. Sometimes this crankiness, this too is an object for awareness. We grow even as we see it. Even as we embrace it, sometimes tearfully. Our ego is stripped as we see that we are not always perfect. We are not as enlightened as we thought.
In yoga, I have learned to laugh at myself when I fall out of a balancing pose. I used to think I needed to "try harder" or "focus more." But I have learned that balancing poses simply reflect back to me where I am. Today I am scattered, I am a mess, I am all over the place. If I "try really hard" to balance - well, perhaps if I succeed in not falling out of a pose, I hurt myself more than if I let myself fall. Because then I have this delusion that I'm "better" than I actually am. I miss the awareness that my practice is trying to bring to me - the revelation of where I truly am in this moment. I think it's the same way when we find ourselves responding to family or friends or circumstances with anger, irritation, or fear. When we simply try to not be angry, irritated, or afraid, then we miss out on the chance to tend the deeper seeds - to engage our journey on much more substantive levels (of course if we get carried away with the fear or anger, we remain equally unconscious). Too often we focus on the symptoms. We get rid of the headache, but underneath there is still the cause - unattended. Mindfulness is not a practice of getting rid of anger and fear. It is a practice that begins by holding them - paying attention to them - breathing with them. Same with panic, hurry, frustration, perfectionism, self-chastisement, or any other unwholesome mind-states. We work to eliminate them, yes - but by dealing with them at the roots. You cannot just trim weeds, you must dig deep - your practice must go beneath the symptoms, and this requires mindfulness. And mindfulness requires patience.
I remember a chapel message delivered at my undergraduate institution one Easter. The speaker was reflecting on what it takes to follow Jesus. He said something to this effect:
"Maybe you are asking yourself this Easter, what you can do to become a better follower of Jesus. Well, if we are to take the Bible seriously, perhaps the most spiritual thing you can do this Easter is to fail... All of Jesus' disciples failed him in his greatest hour of need."
Everything came from this failure. This willingness to be utterly human. Peter had told Jesus "I will never deny you, even if EVERYONE else denies you, I will never." Peter was the victim of hubris and self-delusion. He denied Jesus. Three times. He failed. But perhaps our failures - our falling out of a posture - in yoga or in life - have more to do with helping us grow than do our "successes." Perhaps it is our failures that show us more clearly where - and who - we truly are. Because we are not our images of ourselves. We are not our posturing. Sometimes I think I am most myself when I lose my balance and fall out of a pose. I'm just human. Somewhere along the line someone told us that was unspiritual. But at the end of each day we return to our breath - we remember that we are only ever just human, and in that humanity is our spirituality. In that and nothing else.
Wait. That is not quite accurate. My spirituality is also in YOUR humanity. It is in the trees and the forests and the animals we too often mistreat. It is in the body of the world, as Eve Ensler so wonderfully put it. One Body, One World. Our spirituality is there. One breath. One future.
Together.
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Returning to the Breath
Once again I am reminded that there are times when the only thing that can be done is to return to the breath. I try and try to find the answers in my head, but they are not there. I look for answers in a book or on a page or in a prayer, but they do not come. Perhaps this is because the questions I am asking are all wrong - born of an imbalanced psycho-spiritual-physiology that is disrupted and exacerbated by continuing to think it, reason it, plan it, try to "solve" it.
When I go back to my breathing, mindfully, purposefully, it is a way of saying that this "problem" is intractable. And acknowledging that it might not be a problem at all - it might be an imbalance of my own expression of being in the moment. Simply put, breathing is the way I can let go of illusory problems I am 100% convinced are real. Because I can't un-convince myself. They feel too real for that - and the more I think on them, the more I entrench the neural pathways that convince me they are real - that they are scary - they are unsolvable and therefore terrifyingly overwhelming.
But when I go back to my breath, I let my body and mind relax apart from the energy surrounding the story that continues to create fear or anxiety. I let go. It is not easy. The stories seem to demand our recycling them in our mind's view; turning to the breath interrupts that flow. It forces us to say that "solving" this "problem" is not the essential thing in my universe today. It is a relinquishment of control. And that is beyond difficult, yet it is so simple. I just stop. I say "I cannot bear this any more," and I begin to let it go, relax in my breathing. I make a commitment not to fix, not to try to solve, to just put it away, to just breathe. Maybe I need a day. Maybe a week. But attempting the same solutions in my head over and over again - this does not work. Being in my body, relaxing, beginning to share with the people around me the swirl of feelings I feel - all of this works. Letting go. Releasing. Surrender. This is why I have fewer problems when I meditate - when I practice Tai Chi - when I practice yoga. Because I am not living in my problem-creating centers. I am living in my peace center - I am whole. Because my breath is always just what it is. My body's movements are always just what they are. And even if they hurt, I am not adding to the pain through fearful thinking - obsessive thinking.
And now I will go there, rather than typing about it. In the breath. Letting everything go...
When I go back to my breathing, mindfully, purposefully, it is a way of saying that this "problem" is intractable. And acknowledging that it might not be a problem at all - it might be an imbalance of my own expression of being in the moment. Simply put, breathing is the way I can let go of illusory problems I am 100% convinced are real. Because I can't un-convince myself. They feel too real for that - and the more I think on them, the more I entrench the neural pathways that convince me they are real - that they are scary - they are unsolvable and therefore terrifyingly overwhelming.
But when I go back to my breath, I let my body and mind relax apart from the energy surrounding the story that continues to create fear or anxiety. I let go. It is not easy. The stories seem to demand our recycling them in our mind's view; turning to the breath interrupts that flow. It forces us to say that "solving" this "problem" is not the essential thing in my universe today. It is a relinquishment of control. And that is beyond difficult, yet it is so simple. I just stop. I say "I cannot bear this any more," and I begin to let it go, relax in my breathing. I make a commitment not to fix, not to try to solve, to just put it away, to just breathe. Maybe I need a day. Maybe a week. But attempting the same solutions in my head over and over again - this does not work. Being in my body, relaxing, beginning to share with the people around me the swirl of feelings I feel - all of this works. Letting go. Releasing. Surrender. This is why I have fewer problems when I meditate - when I practice Tai Chi - when I practice yoga. Because I am not living in my problem-creating centers. I am living in my peace center - I am whole. Because my breath is always just what it is. My body's movements are always just what they are. And even if they hurt, I am not adding to the pain through fearful thinking - obsessive thinking.
And now I will go there, rather than typing about it. In the breath. Letting everything go...
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
Walk on the grass
“The true miracle is not walking on water or walking in air, but simply walking on this earth.”
- Thich Nhat Hanh (Thay)
Yesterday as I walked across campus, I began to notice the difference in my mood depending on whether I was walking on the grass or on the cement sidewalk. I noticed that when I walked on the grass, I felt lighter, more at peace, more present, more embracing of myself and of the moment. When I moved from the grass to the concrete, I felt hurried, isolated, stern, almost retaliatory. As I began to reflect, I thought how hard and unforgiving the cement is. It does not yield, does not embrace. There is no softness. Then I began to reflect on how much time we spend walking on this hard, unforgiving surface we human beings have created. So much time. Walking on the unforgiving ground. And I began to wonder if we are so hard because the ground we walk on is hard. If we are so unforgiving because the ground we walk on is unforgiving. When I walked on the grass I felt more free. I felt grateful. I realized how much more I need to walk on the grass - to remind me that I am embraced, accepted.
Walk on the grass. As often as you can. Or simply stand on it, and feel the gentle give beneath your feed. We were not meant to live in a concrete world. We were meant to live in a world with wind and grass and trees and oceans. A world that wraps itself around us - contours to our bodies - to our feet - to our souls. Not a world that slaps hard against us without relationship - a solid, unforgiving world. Maybe the next time you notice someone who is stern, or angry, or unforgiving, you can invite them to walk on the grass with you, slowly, mindfully. Maybe literally; maybe figuratively. Maybe the grace of our presence can also be a soft place for people to step... forgiving, gentle, beautiful.
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Tending a Garden
Everything worth having takes work. For someone who grew up feeling like everything worth doing came easily, this is a profound paradigm shift. Relationships, black belts (excellence at anything, really), dogs, babies, health, happiness, gratitude and joy. I've lived too much of my life as if one could throw hundreds of seeds into his or her backyard and watch a beautiful garden magically appear. Everything worth having takes effort.
At 31 I'm finally beginning to realize that the effort is worth it - not just for the "thing to be had," but because there is beauty and transformation in the effort itself. Work. This is not the opposite of happiness, but the turning of the knob that opens the door. I know this is true because of what I feel in my chest as I write it.
It's interesting that the first thing God did for humans in the Genesis 2 Judeo-Christian account of creation was to ask them to work and tend a garden - to cultivate the garden of paradise. Thich Nhat Hanh speaks of watering seeds in ourselves and those around us. The seeds of love, joy, and happiness. This really is the project of life. When I was young, my father told me that if we could find a pet that didn't eat, drink, or go to the bathroom, we could buy a pet. My response [elated]: "MOM, DAD SAYS WE CAN GET A PET!!!" - unaware that all things worth having also require effort. There is no dog worth loving that does not also crap. There is no baby who does not cry.
As a professor in acupuncture school once told me, God never closed the gates to paradise; God simply put a fiery angel with a sword to block the entrance, which means any one of us can walk straight back into paradise. We just have to be willing to walk through fire to get there. And once we get there, there is still a garden to tend - one day, one breath, at a time.
At 31 I'm finally beginning to realize that the effort is worth it - not just for the "thing to be had," but because there is beauty and transformation in the effort itself. Work. This is not the opposite of happiness, but the turning of the knob that opens the door. I know this is true because of what I feel in my chest as I write it.
It's interesting that the first thing God did for humans in the Genesis 2 Judeo-Christian account of creation was to ask them to work and tend a garden - to cultivate the garden of paradise. Thich Nhat Hanh speaks of watering seeds in ourselves and those around us. The seeds of love, joy, and happiness. This really is the project of life. When I was young, my father told me that if we could find a pet that didn't eat, drink, or go to the bathroom, we could buy a pet. My response [elated]: "MOM, DAD SAYS WE CAN GET A PET!!!" - unaware that all things worth having also require effort. There is no dog worth loving that does not also crap. There is no baby who does not cry.
As a professor in acupuncture school once told me, God never closed the gates to paradise; God simply put a fiery angel with a sword to block the entrance, which means any one of us can walk straight back into paradise. We just have to be willing to walk through fire to get there. And once we get there, there is still a garden to tend - one day, one breath, at a time.
Monday, July 22, 2013
Mindfulness Reaches
"When mindfulness reaches to embrace the world around us..."
This is a phrase that rings in my head as I think of what I want to write. I think it's a sentence I've read before, perhaps in some of Thay's books, perhaps elsewhere. After another blessed weekend at Deer Park, my inspiration to write lies here, in these words.
Mindfulness is about so much more than simply finding happiness... or, as I wrote in my last blog, perhaps it is about so much more than finding an easy, cheap happiness. The kind of happiness that blocks out the pain of the world within us - and around us. Perhaps even the kind of mindfulness that blocks out the joys and happinesses of the those around us as well.
The week before I came to Deer Park for this second weekend retreat was bombed with unexpected and difficult to hear news. The kind of news you don't wish to hear, ever. But also the kind of news that you must hear. Because pain and death are parts of life's marrow. There is no life - no birth - without death. This is the Buddhist cycle of Samsara. Yet, in the Mahayana tradition, Samsara is not different from Nirvana. If you ask where nirvana is to be found, we say "also here... in the cycle of birth and death... in the wheel of pain and loss, joy and suffering... this is also nirvana." As Thay says: No Mud, No Lotus. Or Nietzsche - one must have chaos in oneself to birth a dancing star. Our wholeness is woven from the fabric of our loss... the threads of broken dreams, of hopeless nights, of unmet desires. Andrea Gibson speaks of the hill where Hafiz "cut pieces of his soul with a knife and wove them into a blanket to protect us." The unfortunate thing about mindfulness is that it can too easily be accosted by those seeking a sort of private happiness, a shell through which they can protect themselves from the "slings and arrows" of life. The legitimate pain of existence. Jung (I believe it was Jung) said that most neuroses can be traced to attempts to avoid legitimate suffering. This leads into what I will call a sort of small mindfulness. Small mindfulness is incapable of reaching beyond itself to embrace the world around me. Small mindfulness cannot hold joy and sorrow side by side, and seeks to avoid sorrow by "dwelling in the hear and in the now." But true mindfulness brings sorrow into itself to transform it. True mindfulness cannot shut out suffering because suffering is part of the hear and the now. Look around us. Those without jobs suffer. Those who have lost children, parents, spouses, or friends... they suffer. The trees suffer... many of them die. The air suffers, the ice caps, the atmosphere. There is suffering around us everywhere. But there is also liberation. There is also release. And this release is found only in the suffering. Nirvana is found only in Samsara. This is why one of the Order of Interbeing's 14 mindfulness trainings has to do with not closing one's eyes to the reality of suffering. In fact, it is a commitment to make efforts to be with others in their sufferings, whether it is through personal contact, telephone, visual images, etc. We must embrace these things for our mindfulness to be real. No discrimination. We take the realities of joy and suffering as things to be held. We learn to love the sunset while our beloved is in pain - or while we are in pain. When the shattering pain of loss hits us, we learn to be with that pain fully... because we have cultivated the mindfulness to know we will not be swallowed up, forever. Even permanence is impermanent. Everything changes. The things that feel as though they will rip out the very corners of our souls create space only for more life within us. But only if we hold it close to our being. Only if we let it wash over us. Only if we pay attention.
If we practice selfish discrimination, we will only let a few things into our being. But we also must practice a form of enlightened discrimination. I have friends who focus only on the tragedies and injustices in the world. They cannot see also the beauty. They are very angry, or they are very depressed. They are mad at the people around them who do not ever focus on the pain and the injustice. Perhaps they feel that they need to balance this blindness with a blindness of their own. Unfortunately the world is filled with many starving children. We hope that through our lives we can reduce the number of starving children. Through the ways in which we live, eat, consume, spend our money, our time, and our energy. Many of us write political letters, many of us give money to charities, and some of us go to spend time with the children who are starving. I think this is maybe the best way.
But we cannot forget that there are many laughing children in the world as well. We must remember this... we must also find ways to be with the laughing children, through our time, money, energy, and attention. The laughing children remind why we can be happy. They remind us why we want to feed the hungry children... because a well fed child is a very beautiful thing. They help us remember why we do not want to consume very much... because we want the children in the world to have enough. This is when mindfulness reaches to embrace the world around us. We see how many children are in the world, and we wrestle with the question if we should adopt rather than have children of our own. We sit with it and let it grow in us. We hear that someone near to us has lost a loved one, and we open our breathing to let that in. There is deep sorrow in the life lost. But if we look deeply there are also places to find joy and gratitude. We hope, at least, that there is joy in the life that was lost. But there will also be coming together of families, sharing of memories, forging of new bonds, and great generosities. Where there are not these things, we work to create them. We work only to water the seeds of love in each other. Gratefully. Mindfully.
The most important thing is that we do not practice for ourselves alone. In fact, this is where it can become very important to understand the Buddhist teaching of non-self. Because there is no true way to practice for your "self" alone. When you have insight you see that your self is not separate from the world around you. Not separate from the land and the trees, from the starving children, from the laughing children. You are also your friend who lost his or her beloved, you are also the beloved. And we practice to bring this awareness more deeply into all of it. Mindfulness stretches out to embrace the world - the people - all around us. Because those people are also part of who we are. If there are angry, ignorant, or over-consuming people, we recognize that we must do all that we can not to further water seeds of ignorance, anger, and over-consumption. We seek to live in such a way to awaken love, compassion and awareness, by living with love, compassion, and awareness in ourselves. I will leave you with the words of the song that has come home with me from this past weekend, and a blessing of the peace that lives within each of us, waiting to be nourished.
In gratitude you have watered seeds
of love in me in gratitude.
In gratitude, I will water seeds
of love in you in gratitude.
This is a phrase that rings in my head as I think of what I want to write. I think it's a sentence I've read before, perhaps in some of Thay's books, perhaps elsewhere. After another blessed weekend at Deer Park, my inspiration to write lies here, in these words.
Mindfulness is about so much more than simply finding happiness... or, as I wrote in my last blog, perhaps it is about so much more than finding an easy, cheap happiness. The kind of happiness that blocks out the pain of the world within us - and around us. Perhaps even the kind of mindfulness that blocks out the joys and happinesses of the those around us as well.
The week before I came to Deer Park for this second weekend retreat was bombed with unexpected and difficult to hear news. The kind of news you don't wish to hear, ever. But also the kind of news that you must hear. Because pain and death are parts of life's marrow. There is no life - no birth - without death. This is the Buddhist cycle of Samsara. Yet, in the Mahayana tradition, Samsara is not different from Nirvana. If you ask where nirvana is to be found, we say "also here... in the cycle of birth and death... in the wheel of pain and loss, joy and suffering... this is also nirvana." As Thay says: No Mud, No Lotus. Or Nietzsche - one must have chaos in oneself to birth a dancing star. Our wholeness is woven from the fabric of our loss... the threads of broken dreams, of hopeless nights, of unmet desires. Andrea Gibson speaks of the hill where Hafiz "cut pieces of his soul with a knife and wove them into a blanket to protect us." The unfortunate thing about mindfulness is that it can too easily be accosted by those seeking a sort of private happiness, a shell through which they can protect themselves from the "slings and arrows" of life. The legitimate pain of existence. Jung (I believe it was Jung) said that most neuroses can be traced to attempts to avoid legitimate suffering. This leads into what I will call a sort of small mindfulness. Small mindfulness is incapable of reaching beyond itself to embrace the world around me. Small mindfulness cannot hold joy and sorrow side by side, and seeks to avoid sorrow by "dwelling in the hear and in the now." But true mindfulness brings sorrow into itself to transform it. True mindfulness cannot shut out suffering because suffering is part of the hear and the now. Look around us. Those without jobs suffer. Those who have lost children, parents, spouses, or friends... they suffer. The trees suffer... many of them die. The air suffers, the ice caps, the atmosphere. There is suffering around us everywhere. But there is also liberation. There is also release. And this release is found only in the suffering. Nirvana is found only in Samsara. This is why one of the Order of Interbeing's 14 mindfulness trainings has to do with not closing one's eyes to the reality of suffering. In fact, it is a commitment to make efforts to be with others in their sufferings, whether it is through personal contact, telephone, visual images, etc. We must embrace these things for our mindfulness to be real. No discrimination. We take the realities of joy and suffering as things to be held. We learn to love the sunset while our beloved is in pain - or while we are in pain. When the shattering pain of loss hits us, we learn to be with that pain fully... because we have cultivated the mindfulness to know we will not be swallowed up, forever. Even permanence is impermanent. Everything changes. The things that feel as though they will rip out the very corners of our souls create space only for more life within us. But only if we hold it close to our being. Only if we let it wash over us. Only if we pay attention.
If we practice selfish discrimination, we will only let a few things into our being. But we also must practice a form of enlightened discrimination. I have friends who focus only on the tragedies and injustices in the world. They cannot see also the beauty. They are very angry, or they are very depressed. They are mad at the people around them who do not ever focus on the pain and the injustice. Perhaps they feel that they need to balance this blindness with a blindness of their own. Unfortunately the world is filled with many starving children. We hope that through our lives we can reduce the number of starving children. Through the ways in which we live, eat, consume, spend our money, our time, and our energy. Many of us write political letters, many of us give money to charities, and some of us go to spend time with the children who are starving. I think this is maybe the best way.
But we cannot forget that there are many laughing children in the world as well. We must remember this... we must also find ways to be with the laughing children, through our time, money, energy, and attention. The laughing children remind why we can be happy. They remind us why we want to feed the hungry children... because a well fed child is a very beautiful thing. They help us remember why we do not want to consume very much... because we want the children in the world to have enough. This is when mindfulness reaches to embrace the world around us. We see how many children are in the world, and we wrestle with the question if we should adopt rather than have children of our own. We sit with it and let it grow in us. We hear that someone near to us has lost a loved one, and we open our breathing to let that in. There is deep sorrow in the life lost. But if we look deeply there are also places to find joy and gratitude. We hope, at least, that there is joy in the life that was lost. But there will also be coming together of families, sharing of memories, forging of new bonds, and great generosities. Where there are not these things, we work to create them. We work only to water the seeds of love in each other. Gratefully. Mindfully.
The most important thing is that we do not practice for ourselves alone. In fact, this is where it can become very important to understand the Buddhist teaching of non-self. Because there is no true way to practice for your "self" alone. When you have insight you see that your self is not separate from the world around you. Not separate from the land and the trees, from the starving children, from the laughing children. You are also your friend who lost his or her beloved, you are also the beloved. And we practice to bring this awareness more deeply into all of it. Mindfulness stretches out to embrace the world - the people - all around us. Because those people are also part of who we are. If there are angry, ignorant, or over-consuming people, we recognize that we must do all that we can not to further water seeds of ignorance, anger, and over-consumption. We seek to live in such a way to awaken love, compassion and awareness, by living with love, compassion, and awareness in ourselves. I will leave you with the words of the song that has come home with me from this past weekend, and a blessing of the peace that lives within each of us, waiting to be nourished.
In gratitude you have watered seeds
of love in me in gratitude.
In gratitude, I will water seeds
of love in you in gratitude.
Monday, July 8, 2013
Coming Home to Myself - The Opposite of An Aside
As I drove to work this morning with tears in my eyes, I remembered that coming home to ourselves is not always an easy, pleasant, or feel good experience. Mindfulness, Buddhism, and spiritual practice in general are not phenomena geared toward helping us feel good all of the time. They exist to help us touch life and the present moment more deeply. The two most reputed Buddhist teachers alive today live in exile from their homes. For the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh to come home to themselves, it means coming home to the reality of the suffering in their lives. Not evading it, but going more deeply into it and learning to transform it. I suppose that this is the great lesson. Even suffering is impermanent. But it still hurts. To quote Andrea Gibson, "The sky didn't fill with color the night I convinced myself veins are kite strings you can only cut free..." It's not always easy to come home to ourselves. To inhabit our lives. It's sometimes so much easier to be off somewhere... over there... preoccupied. And, as I wandered through the weekend vaguely (and then with increasing acuteness) discontent, confused, and aimless, I found numerous reasons for why I was feeling what I was feeling. But I wasn't actually coming home to be with myself. I was off - over there somewhere - trying to "fix" these issues I thought were out of place in my life. "Need to meditate, need to send this text, need to pay this bill, need to....." until finally I went home last night and tried to be with myself. Of course it felt like I failed, because I couldn't see what was going on. I think that's the hardest part sometimes with this practice - not being able to see what is going on... not being able to fix it. And then I realized that my lens was flawed from the start because I had set out looking for fixable problems. I wasn't looking to see what is. I was searching for something I could address, rectify, which would then disappear into an easy, cheap happiness.
An easy, cheap happiness.
And there are sources in my life that can give me an easy cheap happiness. If that's what I want. That's where myriad addictions, codependent relationships, and fear-based patterns of consumption come from. That desire for cheap, right-now happiness, rather than a deep, costly experience of the present moment - the reality of now. And so I gave up. There were no fixable problems. Or I had fixed them all and I still felt massively fucked up. Even though I had had a great weekend. Sure I got a 175 dollar ticket for sitting in the wrong part of a river, but in the end, who cares?
Then this morning I sat with an unfixable problem. Something that just hurts. There are several of those in my life, but most of them I've had time to be with, to embrace, to rail against, to fight, and to accept. I don't like to accept unfixable problems. "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change" is not a prayer I always like to pray. And there are also things in this world that I find unacceptable. But then I have to remember that acceptance is not the same as acquiescence. I can accept that there is torture in the world, but I cannot acquiesce in it. In this way, I both accept and do not accept something. I accept that something is, but not that it must be. In other situations, I accept both that something is, and that it must be, and it hurts.
So then what? No one ever told me - or I never listened - that there are times when the most spiritual thing you can do is hurt. Feel the loss. Feel the ache. No. Someone did tell me that once. A priest at my church. She said "let it wash over you." "All of the truly transformed people I have known have been people who have let the grief (or pain) wash over them."
Wash over me. Let it.
Some days we do not sit to feel calm, or happy, or at ease. We sit to feel the pain. But not in an accidental sloppy sort of way. We sit to hurt - on purpose. We don't sit to be transformed, but we are transformed. By having the courage to be here, now, with all of the anguish and confusion. And that is where I am. And I am there because there are people in my life who are much moreso here than I. Sitting in the pain. Unable to run. Unable to fix. And there are those situations in our lives. Over and over again. We cannot fix them. We cannot control them. We can only be present to them - with great imperfection.
I think that truthfully acknowledging pain is the beginning of release. Otherwise the Buddha would have just pretended the sick person, the old man, and the dead body he saw on the road didn't hurt. He would never have left the palace. But sometimes we have to leave the palace in order to find our nirvana. Because nirvana actually means extinction. Extinction of the self, the falsehood, the bullshit. And there's a depth of freedom that only comes through the muck. Not around it. Because there is no around. We only transcend - if we do transcend - from within.
And to those with whom I sit together in this... I love you. With all the love I have found in life thus far.
An easy, cheap happiness.
And there are sources in my life that can give me an easy cheap happiness. If that's what I want. That's where myriad addictions, codependent relationships, and fear-based patterns of consumption come from. That desire for cheap, right-now happiness, rather than a deep, costly experience of the present moment - the reality of now. And so I gave up. There were no fixable problems. Or I had fixed them all and I still felt massively fucked up. Even though I had had a great weekend. Sure I got a 175 dollar ticket for sitting in the wrong part of a river, but in the end, who cares?
Then this morning I sat with an unfixable problem. Something that just hurts. There are several of those in my life, but most of them I've had time to be with, to embrace, to rail against, to fight, and to accept. I don't like to accept unfixable problems. "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change" is not a prayer I always like to pray. And there are also things in this world that I find unacceptable. But then I have to remember that acceptance is not the same as acquiescence. I can accept that there is torture in the world, but I cannot acquiesce in it. In this way, I both accept and do not accept something. I accept that something is, but not that it must be. In other situations, I accept both that something is, and that it must be, and it hurts.
So then what? No one ever told me - or I never listened - that there are times when the most spiritual thing you can do is hurt. Feel the loss. Feel the ache. No. Someone did tell me that once. A priest at my church. She said "let it wash over you." "All of the truly transformed people I have known have been people who have let the grief (or pain) wash over them."
Wash over me. Let it.
Some days we do not sit to feel calm, or happy, or at ease. We sit to feel the pain. But not in an accidental sloppy sort of way. We sit to hurt - on purpose. We don't sit to be transformed, but we are transformed. By having the courage to be here, now, with all of the anguish and confusion. And that is where I am. And I am there because there are people in my life who are much moreso here than I. Sitting in the pain. Unable to run. Unable to fix. And there are those situations in our lives. Over and over again. We cannot fix them. We cannot control them. We can only be present to them - with great imperfection.
I think that truthfully acknowledging pain is the beginning of release. Otherwise the Buddha would have just pretended the sick person, the old man, and the dead body he saw on the road didn't hurt. He would never have left the palace. But sometimes we have to leave the palace in order to find our nirvana. Because nirvana actually means extinction. Extinction of the self, the falsehood, the bullshit. And there's a depth of freedom that only comes through the muck. Not around it. Because there is no around. We only transcend - if we do transcend - from within.
And to those with whom I sit together in this... I love you. With all the love I have found in life thus far.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)