the dance

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.

Mary Oliver

After over a month of feeling very sick, I’ve been remarkably well for the last several days.  It is amazing how much lighter my step is, how much brighter and friendlier all of life seems when I don’t feel ill.

My illness is like my dancing partner.  I’m learning to dance with her and learning to let her lead is the hardest part!  I keep trying to lead and all that gets me is sore feet.  It increases my suffering to resist or deny or get angry or sad about being ill.  Practicing with my illness has been like having a very determined teacher.  In this way, my illness is both my enemy and my friend, a curse and a blessing.

When I’m in the middle of a bad time, lying on the bed with my body curled around the pain, so weary that every movement is hard…all of life loses its spark and joy.  I’ve felt horribly guilty for this, thinking that I should be able to regulate my moods better, that I should have that stiff upper lip and be a man.  But my teacher has been showing me that this guilt and shame only add to the pain and suffering.  Now, I remind myself that it is normal to feel this way, that there is nothing “wrong” with me when I become surrounded by darkness during times of illness and pain.

Another lesson my teacher has been impressing on me is that everything in my life must take second place to the illness.  Where once I was dependable, now I have to back out of plans at the last minute.  I often avoid making any plans at all because of worry over breaking my word yet again.  When the symptoms return, my life becomes very stark and narrow.  I often feel sadness.  It is hard to hurt again, hard to feel ill so often, hard to let my partner and family down.  I worry about Tam during these times, stuck here in the dark with me.

I’m beginning to learn that I must pay careful attention to how I feel.  My body will tell me what I need to know if I will but listen.  When I get tired, I must rest, not soldier on.  When I find that something makes me ill, I must lay it down, even if I love it.  (goodbye coffee, dear friend)  I’ve been learning to treat my body with respect and compassion, letting it lead in the dance.  Remembering that resistance increases the suffering.  Remembering that the illness must lead and my job is to follow.  During times of pain and weakness, this is tough.  I struggle to accept this as my path. 

They say that if you pay attention, all of life is your teacher.  Perhaps this is the greatest gift of the illness, this paying attention.  This learning to follow, to submit to the hard teachings of my Guru Crohnes has also given me eyes to see all sorts of small blessings in my every day life.  It has forced me to be quieter, to sit stiller, to listen, to be engaged.  I’m thankful for that.  So, crank up the music.  The night is young and I feel like dancing.

 

an apron full of berries

She sits down and puts her hand to her chest and rocks.

Thinks of all she has lost and will lose.

All she has had and will have.

It seems to her that life is like gathering berries into an apron with a hole.

Why do we keep on?

 

Because the berries are beautiful, and we must eat to survive.

We catch what we can.

 We walk past what we lose for the promise of more,

just ahead.

(From “Home Safe” by Elizabeth Berg)

the uncertain nature of reality

 

Pema Chodron, talking about what happens when we stop shielding ourselves from the completely uncertain nature of reality -  “ All the ways that we hold back and shut down, all the ways that we cling and grasp, all our habitual ways of limiting and solidifying our world become very clear to us, and it’s unnerving”.   I’ll say.  It feels like stepping off a cliff, again and again and again…

“At that painful point, we usually want to make the teacher wrong or make ourselves wrong or do anything that is habitual and comforting to get ground back under our feet. (A sudden urge to check my email…the refrigerator beckons…the remote jumps into my hand…)

“But when we make an unconditional commitment to hang in there, we do not run away from the pain of seeing ourselves—and this is a revolutionary thing to do and it transforms us. But how many of us are ready for this?

And here is the kicker — One has to gradually develop the trust that it is ultimately liberating to let go of strongly held assumptions about reality”.

This little excerpt seems to express some of what I’ve been experiencing lately.  Because of my illness and depression, I’ve had the opportunity to attempt spiritual practice in the midst of pain and uncertainty.  There have been interesting experiences and insights, but I don’t  feel much like trying to put them into words just now.  Maybe it’s because I feel a little lighter, my step seems softer and I don’t want to stumble backward because of too much thinking.  But my head is full of interesting new thoughts and I begin to have a bit of enthusiasm for life again.  That is a good thing.

Just Breathing

Ezra Bayda is my new most favorite writer/teacher.  I’ve seen him quoted and had him recommended to me, but only just recently got my first book by him - Zen Heart: Simple Advice for Living with Mindfulness and Compassion.  I can already feel the transformative power of this book!

For instance, my sleep has been off lately.  I lay in bed and shake with tension, gripping the sheet tightly, all of my muscles clenched.  When I got up last night, this is what Ezra had to say about moving toward saying yes to difficulty:  “This mind-set grows with the increasing unwillingness to stay complacent.  Saying yes allows us to move toward unknown territory, even while the voice of fear tells us to stop.  As we understand that without this step we will forever remain stuck, there’s a willingness to enter into life in a new way.”  This describes very well the whole process of becoming uncomfortable with life half lived, with the pretend life.  It also acknowledges that this step is terrifying.

But what I love about Ezra is that he doesn’t skip over what happens next:  “Practicing with our daily life on this level is particularly difficult when the mind is reeling in self-doubt and confusion.  At such times, how do we return to the heart that seeks to awaken?”  He tells me there are bound to be tough times, but doesn’t leave me there.  He gives me something to do, bless his soul:

“When everything seems dark and unworkable, when our aspiration has grown dim, one thing we can always do is take a deep breath into the center of the chest, and on the out-breath extend to ourselves the same warmth and compassion we would extend to a loved one in duress”. 

Things do seem dark and unworkable right about now, so if you need me, I’ll be the one leaning against the wall, breathing deeply.  Thanks, Ezra.

Not just relief…but a cure

Loneliness is not cured by human company.

 Loneliness is cured by contact with reality.

People don’t really want to be cured.

What they want is relief; a cure is painful.

Anthony de Mello

I’ve been wondering what is going on with me lately.  I’ve been wondering if maybe I’m depressed.  I don’t have much energy.  Doing anything at all feels like trying to move through water.  It is hard to get excited about anything much at all.

I didn’t really notice how down I’ve been until I awoke the other day in a good mood.  I wasn’t hurting, wasn’t nauseous or sick and had energy.  I’d kind of forgotten how good it feels to feel good.  Tammy was really happy to see me feeling so well.  That’s when I realized I had been feeling sick for months.  And it was wearing on me.  Unfortunately, my energy and healthy feeling only lasted a couple of hours.

This week I haven’t been able to stop crying.  I keep crying over things that really aren’t that big a deal.  But everything seems big to me right now.  Everything seems hard.  And unfair.  Like the odds are stacked against me and I don’t have a chance at all.  I keep telling myself that these are just feelings, that they will pass, that they aren’t real…but it really isn’t helping much just yet.

I realized that I’ve been kind of down since I didn’t get to move as planned this spring.  Stuck in Florida for another summer.  Now I’m wondering if I need to get meds.  I’ve never taken meds when I’ve been down in the past.  It’s been a long time since I’ve felt this dark.  I was putting the dishes away yesterday and found myself caressing the big knife, imagining plunging it into my chest and all the trouble and pain of life being done.  Not that I ever would do that.  I wouldn’t do that to my kids or to Tammy.  But just realizing how I was thinking kind of freaked me out a bit.

The last two days I’ve been trying to sign up for school.  I’m proud as hell of Tam for starting next week.  She applied for Pell Grant for me awhile back, but I wanted to wait till after moving to start school.  Then I realized that going to school would help me get my energy and happiness back…just to get out of the house and interact with people and be interested in something.  But I keep running into walls, over and over, and it looks like I won’t be able to get signed up in time to start back to school this fall.  Which just makes me sadder than if I’d never tried.  Ah well.  This post is starting to depress me.

What I started out to say is this:  maybe what is happening is that I am doing this inner work (through meditation and mindfulness practice) and maybe the pain I am feeling has to do with that.  I kind of hope so, in that at least it would serve a purpose.  Not just random depression and darkness, but an experiencing of the darkness in order to be cured. 

We are healed of a suffering only by expressing it to the full ~ Marcel Proust

averted vision

I suspect there is something inherently misguided and self-defeating and hopeless about any deliberate campaign to achieve happiness. Perhaps the reason we so often experience happiness only in hindsight, and that chasing it is such a fool’s errand, is that happiness isn’t a goal in itself but is only an aftereffect. It’s the consequence of having lived in the way that we’re supposed to — by which I don’t mean ethically correctly so much as just consciously, fully engaged in the business of living. In this respect it resembles averted vision, a phenomena familiar to backyard astronomers whereby, in order to pick out a very faint star, you have to let your gaze drift casually to the space just next to it; if you look directly at it, it vanishes. And it’s also true, come to think of it, that the only stars we ever see are not the “real” stars, those cataclysms taking place in the present, but always only the light of the untouchable past.

Tim Kreider

the better way to live

If you think of life as a journey, most of us jump on the interstate.  We rush to our destination (death), hurrying, hurrying.  The road is intentionally built  away from anything that might slow it down, so one misses the 35 mph changes and endless intersections and stop signs…the small towns, the folks waving from their porches, the mountains and streams and forests. 

Buddhism has been a much-needed exit ramp from the mindlessness of interstate travel to the more intimate reality of a the small by-way.  Everything comes into focus.  Yes, there is pain, but it hurts less when you really feel it.  And there is so much happiness!  To experience each day seems a wondrous gift.  To feel protected and safe, to be contented and pleased, to have life unfold like a poem, like a flower in the sun’s embrace…lovely.  Every night I feel a kind of sadness that the day is over and every morning I awaken with a new curiosity about the day to come.  So different from just getting through till my next day off or laying down and realizing I was only slightly present for the whole of the day!

I don’t feel as if I’ve even begun this practice, like I’m in some sort of remedial prep stage…yet the difference is astonishing to me and I have hope of much more as I go…

Buddhism has been a bit like yoga to me, in that it took a bit of study to find the branch of yoga that suits me best and so with the different lineages of Buddhism.  But even as I’ve been studying the different strains, I’ve loved that the Buddha encouraged one to listen to all the teaching and keep only what resonated close to the heart.  And I love that there are so many variations on the practices and even the teachings because of the sculpting each culture did to create their own, very personal practices.  I get the feeling that the west is still in the beginning stages of adapting the dharma to fit culturally and temperamentally.

Sometimes I lay in bed at night with my mind and heart so full of new ideas and perceptions and feelings that it is difficult to give in to sleep!

 Bhaddekaratta Sutra

Do not pursue the past.
Do not lose yourself in the future.
The past no longer is.
The future has not yet come.

Looking deeply at life as it is
In the very here and now,
The practitioner dwells
In stability and freedom.

We must be diligent today.
To wait until tomorrow is too late.
Death comes unexpectedly.
How can we bargain with it?

The sage calls a person who knows
How to dwell in mindfulness
Night and day
“One who knows the better way to live.”

looking at thoughts

Wells and springs clean themselves by running freely. Block the stream and it gets dirty, cloudy, and foul. It is the same with looking at your thoughts.  My mind and heart will clean themselves if I simply look at my thoughts calmly and with complete and honest engagement.

This  is terrifying at first, both humbling and discouraging.  Improvement comes as I begin to recognize the transitory nature of thoughts.  They float by like clouds in a deep blue sky.  They pass.  I am not the clouds.  I am the sky.  I don’t have to reach out to push away the clouds whose shape I somehow reject, nor do I have to try to draw the ones I deem worthy around me like a smoky disguise.

I think this is one of the most freeing things meditation and mindfulness practice brings.  The clearing out of the mind.  My experience of this (so far) is just like described here:

“Imagine a cluttered garage. You can’t walk two steps without bumping into some old junk and stubbing your toe. It’s the same way in the mind; you can’t walk two steps without bumping into some painful memories, rigid self-perception, or unyielding belief about yourself and the world. Our minds are full of these things, and mediation is not going to eradicate these thoughts. Instead, mindfulness practice helps to create the sense of spaciousness without creating more junk. Mindfulness is a way of enlarging the cluttered garage of our minds. And occasionally, you might even get an opportunity to throw out a piece of useless junk”.  Arnie Kozak

I’m beginning to get a sense of this new spaciousness.  Not so much during the time on the cushion.  There it is just the returning to the breath, again and again.  But my relationship to the thoughts that float by is changing, both on the cushion and off.  I’m starting to be quicker to release when I’ve grabbed a thought and begun the inevitable process of filling in the whole “story” that goes with it.  I’m starting to notice the tension in my gut, the raising of my shoulders towards my ears.  It is becoming easier to let go of a wrong perception and also to let go when I’m wrong about something.  What freedom, not to be hopelessly clinging  to what is unable to be held!

Block the stream and it gets dirty, cloudy, and foul. This is a simple fact.  Psychology knows this. The Buddhist texts teach this.  Jesus did not say otherwise. The scholars tell us that the words attributed to him about sins of the heart were concocted by a later Christian.

 

In my experience at church, a lot of attention was given to wicked, sinful thoughts and “sins of the heart” but not in a way that helped much to rid me of them.  It seemed be more on the order of a commandment.  To put such negative force onto something magnifies its power.  All of the emotional and mental energy is spent in covering it up, hiding from it, denying its existence.  It makes me think of how long it took me to learn that not thinking about or dealing with traumatic experiences causes them to gain enormous power.  Plus, they get all sticky with puss and rot.  And the energy!  All of that energy spent, the spring dammed, the water becoming murky and poisonous.  It is no wonder that some church folks get off track.  They become blinder and blinder to their own stuff, all the while turning the inner whispered accusations outward onto the judgement of other folks.  Sad.

I really do need to read Jesus before Christianity by Albert Nolan.  I love the title.  I would like to salvage what I can, to not throw out everything.  I want to throw out what doesn’t fit, but hold on to what is good and auspicious, what will serve me on this continued adventure.

changing my mind about anger

You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger. ~ Buddha

A man once cursed the Buddha to his face. The Buddha only smiled. The man became even more incensed and asked, “Why don’t you respond?” The Buddha replied, “If someone refuses a gift, it must be taken back by the one who offered it.” The Buddha then recited this verse:

“For those with no anger,
how can anger arise?

When you practice deep looking and master yourself,
you dwell in peace, freedom, and safety.

When you understand the roots of anger in yourself and in the other,
your mind will enjoy true peace, joy, and lightness.

You become the doctor who heals himself and heals the other”. ~ Thich Nhat Hahn

“I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized.”~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

“Each of us literally chooses, by his way of attending to things, what sort of universe he shall appear to himself to inhabit.”
~ William James

The root of all difficulty and conflict lies in the mind; therefore, the solution to all difficulty and conflict lies in changing the mind.  ~ Kusan Sunim

learning to be astonished

Let me keep my mind on what matters,

which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be

astonished.

Mary Oliver