I have a card on my desk that says "The Way Out is the Way In," a beautiful little printed woodcut showing a soulful face with a bird swooping over it. The eyes of this face are somewhat hollowed and heavy lidded, a little weary looking, which is the way I've been feeling lately. Chogyam Trumpa Rinpoche wrote this, and it's these words I want to explore.
In all the years I have been meditating on retreat I have heard different iterations of this saying, and it wasn't until the last week in October when I sat the Fall retreat at Spirit Rock that I allowed myself to accept this necessary and painful inward journey. I understood that no matter how many remedies I tried to cook up for my loneliness, restlessness, confusion, and fear, I still had to look inside myself to make myself better, to care for myself. What I discovered inside amidst the confusion and fog from lack of sleep was a deep sadness, an aching of loss for my grandmother and mother whom I've loved and lost, and a relentless cruel self critic that I'll call Hortense. Alongside this unlikely mix I could feel a heart beating that made my body feel warm when I touched my chest, and helped me to say words like, "May I be Happy and Peaceful" to myself like a prayer in the dark of night.
When I couldn't sleep at night, I pulled the blankets up around me and breathed deeply through my whole body in the darkness, when I felt the pinching in my leg and ankle from my injury while walking to the dining hall, I tried to send kindness and compassion to my body, instead of spite and resentment, and when my body twitched in restlessness on the cushion, I simply saw it as restlessness in the body, not anything inherently wrong with me. One of our teachers said one night, "You are not your own fault," and the more I replay that in my mind, the more wisdom I find. We inhabit bodies we didn't choose, and these bodies do a wide variety of things that we have no control over, and then they age, and then they die. The bodies are NOT who we care. They are our temporary home... We need to tend them, care for them the way we the resting place we call home. And we need to locate within this bodily home the compassionate heart that says, "I forgive you for harm caused, for your inherent imperfection..." This is part of that inward journey, along with the part where we allow the pieces of ourselves that have caused us shame and sadness. It turns out that it is all of a piece, like they say. One complex mosaic of the dark and the light, the throbbing of love and the aching of despair.
This last month has been a time more of darkness than light for me, but now I am trying to reach inside and find the warmth. The numbers of hours I haven't slept, the confusion and anger and fear that has come as I begin to feel cognitively impaired, the different remedies I have tried that have not done their magic, and the sense of floating through a surreal dream that has resulted from all of it -- these have colored my time and dampened my spirits. But there have been a couple of little gifts along the way which have given me hope and energy: my visit to the dignified old temple-like Columbarium here in San Francisco where I will have a niche for my ashes behind a lovely little glass door in a room where sunlight pours through stained glass windows, and then a visit to Oregon to celebrate the impending arrival of a great grandson, a gathering where I was surrounded by daughters, granddaughters, other relations and friendly souls hugging one another and laughing, while a gentle cool rain fell outside. It had been so long since I had seen rain, and I remember putting my face up to it and smiling, feeling the cobwebs being washed away. Within the space of just a couple of days I witnessed my own final resting place and the prospect of a brand new child in my family whom I will get to know only briefly. Death and life all felt, and deeply.
I am softened by all of this and there seems to be more space in my heart. I can go here when sleep refuses to come. It is my real home.
My Elephant Friends
Amboseli elephants
Monday, November 9, 2015
Tuesday, October 6, 2015
In the Midst of Confusion and Suffering ...
Well, it hasn't been a very "examined life" lately, I must say ... These last two weeks I have been wandering in a surreal landscape of sleeplessness and confusion, and have been performing only the most rudimentary of tasks in order to get through the days. Sitting down and writing often felt like it was beyond the scope of my abilities, and I knew this, and it was o.k. For the time being. Because everything is just "for the time being."
In a darkened room late at night I lie on my couch - now turned into a bed - and I breathe deeply, wishing to spread calm through my nervous system. And I think about so-called pleasant thoughts so as not to agitate my brain: thoughts like the beautiful video I saw of the orphaned elephants in Kenya being lovingly tended by their keepers, or the pleasures of the novel I'm reading, or imagining getting together soon with my family ... Benign and comfortable thoughts. Following what I've learned about sleep disorder, I have turned off the television and engaged in less stimulating activities like reading before I turn out the light. Medications sit at the bedside as well as a cup of what I call "sleepy tea"... I am not doing well on the couple of meds I've taken for reasons unknown, and I keep searching for another way to help myself sleep ... Perhaps a pot-laced piece of chocolate will help... Yes, as a matter of fact it did help last night.
But there are more nights to come, and life is uncertain... What does this insomnia suggest? Am I anxious or worried? Am I stressed or angry? Is my body's chemistry changing in some mysterious way that causes this hyper vigilance ? Does knowing the answer to any of these questions really help? What does help?
I do know there is too much bad news inside my head, and I am considering going on a news fast. This will be hard, because I'm addicted to the Evening News Hour on PBS, and the NY Times online. The school murders, the hospital bombings, drowning cities like Charleston, the mean spirited energy on the political front ... these and much more. The vibrations from these horrors are swirling in my brain every day, with only the occasional respite of good news, like the real and compassionate Pope Francis in Washington DC and New York, or our Governor Brown signing the Assisted Dying law in California, or the beautiful soulful face of President Obama as he declares he will make gun control political, because that's the only place where we can negotiate a change. Yes, there's a lot to think about and hold.
There's also the young bright eyed high school students who come to 826 Valencia to be tutored in writing on a Monday evening -- energetic, and shy, precocious, and sometimes awkward, these kids are committed to working on their writing. They have stories to tell and a willingness to learn how to go down that writer's road, a hard one for sure. There's also the tender loving respect in a room of hospice volunteers past and present whose hearts are breaking because their community seems to be seriously eroded and the zen in the Project is clearly fading away. And of course there are the random acts of kindness that come to us as we go through our days, small and sweet, sometimes just a random smile, or something so small we barely see it.. We don't have to think of the world as a terrifying place really because on the other side of the terror sits the beauty of people's feelings and actions. The old "10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows" that the Buddha talked about...
BUT, when you haven't had enough rest and sleep, a lot about the world does feel scary: the speed of every moving vehicle in the city, the noises both sudden and ongoing, surrounding you as you navigate your way through the day. I feel like an old lady these days, mincing along slowly, watching my every step. You could say I'm becoming increasingly mindful, I guess, and that's a good thing, but there is also a lurking feeling of overwhelm from everything around me. So, I must stop and simply see this as "overwhelm," and not let it define me or my experience. That's what a "good Buddhist" would do. I do know this, but will I practice it, will I be able to dis-own this difficulty? I want this very much ... not so I can call myself a good Buddhist, but so I can open my heart again to my life, and work and think more spaciously.
Maybe tomorrow, after I spend an hour really waking up (for that is what it is like on medications), I will sit on my cushion for a while and breathe. Yes. I think that's a good plan. And see what shows up. And if my granddaughter's face comes to me I will smile, or if I see a slaughtered elephant or drowning person, I will just breathe deeply and send out love to the world ... and to myself. It appears that this is what I must do.
In a darkened room late at night I lie on my couch - now turned into a bed - and I breathe deeply, wishing to spread calm through my nervous system. And I think about so-called pleasant thoughts so as not to agitate my brain: thoughts like the beautiful video I saw of the orphaned elephants in Kenya being lovingly tended by their keepers, or the pleasures of the novel I'm reading, or imagining getting together soon with my family ... Benign and comfortable thoughts. Following what I've learned about sleep disorder, I have turned off the television and engaged in less stimulating activities like reading before I turn out the light. Medications sit at the bedside as well as a cup of what I call "sleepy tea"... I am not doing well on the couple of meds I've taken for reasons unknown, and I keep searching for another way to help myself sleep ... Perhaps a pot-laced piece of chocolate will help... Yes, as a matter of fact it did help last night.
But there are more nights to come, and life is uncertain... What does this insomnia suggest? Am I anxious or worried? Am I stressed or angry? Is my body's chemistry changing in some mysterious way that causes this hyper vigilance ? Does knowing the answer to any of these questions really help? What does help?
I do know there is too much bad news inside my head, and I am considering going on a news fast. This will be hard, because I'm addicted to the Evening News Hour on PBS, and the NY Times online. The school murders, the hospital bombings, drowning cities like Charleston, the mean spirited energy on the political front ... these and much more. The vibrations from these horrors are swirling in my brain every day, with only the occasional respite of good news, like the real and compassionate Pope Francis in Washington DC and New York, or our Governor Brown signing the Assisted Dying law in California, or the beautiful soulful face of President Obama as he declares he will make gun control political, because that's the only place where we can negotiate a change. Yes, there's a lot to think about and hold.
There's also the young bright eyed high school students who come to 826 Valencia to be tutored in writing on a Monday evening -- energetic, and shy, precocious, and sometimes awkward, these kids are committed to working on their writing. They have stories to tell and a willingness to learn how to go down that writer's road, a hard one for sure. There's also the tender loving respect in a room of hospice volunteers past and present whose hearts are breaking because their community seems to be seriously eroded and the zen in the Project is clearly fading away. And of course there are the random acts of kindness that come to us as we go through our days, small and sweet, sometimes just a random smile, or something so small we barely see it.. We don't have to think of the world as a terrifying place really because on the other side of the terror sits the beauty of people's feelings and actions. The old "10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows" that the Buddha talked about...
BUT, when you haven't had enough rest and sleep, a lot about the world does feel scary: the speed of every moving vehicle in the city, the noises both sudden and ongoing, surrounding you as you navigate your way through the day. I feel like an old lady these days, mincing along slowly, watching my every step. You could say I'm becoming increasingly mindful, I guess, and that's a good thing, but there is also a lurking feeling of overwhelm from everything around me. So, I must stop and simply see this as "overwhelm," and not let it define me or my experience. That's what a "good Buddhist" would do. I do know this, but will I practice it, will I be able to dis-own this difficulty? I want this very much ... not so I can call myself a good Buddhist, but so I can open my heart again to my life, and work and think more spaciously.
Maybe tomorrow, after I spend an hour really waking up (for that is what it is like on medications), I will sit on my cushion for a while and breathe. Yes. I think that's a good plan. And see what shows up. And if my granddaughter's face comes to me I will smile, or if I see a slaughtered elephant or drowning person, I will just breathe deeply and send out love to the world ... and to myself. It appears that this is what I must do.
Saturday, September 19, 2015
A Siesta for the Ego
My body has been delivering a few truths to me lately, and since I do NOT want to contemplate the circus of the political right wing, the desecration of Planned Parenthood, the tragic journey of migrants across Europe, or my deep seated ambivalence about Hilary Clinton, I thought I'd take a look at what I've been seeing lately and how it has made me feel.
I wrote last time about letting go, definitely a recurring theme in my blogs posts, but I have a feeling now that I haven't quite mastered it. I seem to be doing this only intermittently, when my ankle hurts and asks for compassion, or my granddaughter writes me a letter that opens a previously closed door so we both can begin again, or when I let go of a work relationship that has ceased to nurture me. New challenges now lurk.... I have been exhausted lately, way more than normal, and have had a couple of health practitioners tell me that my 70 year old adrenal system is depleted and needs for me to find new and different ways to rest. I have in fact been fleeing disaster and seeking safety since I was a lonely little girl in an adult world... At the same time, I have been having a terrible time not being able to sleep. So, fatigue and wakefulness present themselves side by side. An odd, irrational couple, I must say. Insomnia is new to me, and I am experiencing serious resistance to this unwelcome sleeplessness in the quiet and the dark of night. It all feels too abnormal ... after all, night is the time your body is naturally inclined to sleep, right? What happens when you get only four hours a night, as any insomniac will tell you, is that your brain starts to feel impaired, and you move in slow, repetitive motion as though carrying your exhausted body through dense fog. You often feel unsafe, and even just a bit demented. And as soon as I think of dementia, the brain takes me to death and dying. And the unpleasant dark cycle is perpetuated...
None of the above is in the end cause for worry, really. There is no mortal illness in the picture. There are plenty of people out there suffering much worse physical and emotional conditions -- you have only to read the newspaper or click into Facebook to find this out. There is simply a dysfunction in my body's efforts to carry on that is crying out for attention. And this doesn't mean to planning my next distraction, like a trip to Mexico or New York city, or a lovely dinner out at some special restaurant. No, the answer would seem to be much simpler, really. But it is as well a new challenge. It involves stopping. Resting. Giving up on the obsessive striving. This last becomes such a familiar pattern for us humans, I think, this nagging message that we are here on earth to accomplish great things, perform well, get ahead, be recognized. It is part of today's climate where so much is valued in terms of how quickly it will get you the desired results... As we get older, we begin to sense significant limitations to our energy and the shortening of our journey, and so an urgency creeps in, reminding us that we never know how much time there is, and we'd better get cracking if we want our lives to mean something. But, but ... this is mind chatter, really. This is the hard working super ego that insists it tells the truth.
I doubt very much whether human beings like the Dalai Lama or Pope Francis swim ceaselessly in their thoughts about doing and not doing, or the unkind admonitions about performing perfectly ... they are too busy leading their purposeful lives, speaking their truths and opening their hearts to those they encounter. These gentlemen - and it is true they are infinitely gentle beings - are driven by love and compassion to remind their fellow humans of the possibility of freedom. They are thoughtful teachers much like Jesus who saw no divisions amongst humans but rather their goodness, potential, and ability to find the way out of suffering. I believe it is a fact that teachers must teach, just the way we all must breathe, and eat, and sleep, in order to live. This work is always needed in the world, this opening of doors and minds, and it requires a surrendering of oneself and an absence of doubt and self-judgment.
I have spent about 15 years teaching young people to write creative works and good expository papers, and as I look back on that now I don't recall a lot of time spent spinning in my mind about the how of it all. I just showed up and did the work and felt more alive and present for myself than ever before. And the more I showed up, the closer I became to my students, and the better I got. It was never about following a game plan, really, but more about just being present for the work. I have an opportunity now to return to the teaching world as a volunteer tutor, and the prospect of this new relationship makes me happy inside. I must trust this. And I must take my rest deliberately and creatively when I can so I have the energy to make a difference in the days ahead. That is what is true: just these days ahead, day by day.
I wrote last time about letting go, definitely a recurring theme in my blogs posts, but I have a feeling now that I haven't quite mastered it. I seem to be doing this only intermittently, when my ankle hurts and asks for compassion, or my granddaughter writes me a letter that opens a previously closed door so we both can begin again, or when I let go of a work relationship that has ceased to nurture me. New challenges now lurk.... I have been exhausted lately, way more than normal, and have had a couple of health practitioners tell me that my 70 year old adrenal system is depleted and needs for me to find new and different ways to rest. I have in fact been fleeing disaster and seeking safety since I was a lonely little girl in an adult world... At the same time, I have been having a terrible time not being able to sleep. So, fatigue and wakefulness present themselves side by side. An odd, irrational couple, I must say. Insomnia is new to me, and I am experiencing serious resistance to this unwelcome sleeplessness in the quiet and the dark of night. It all feels too abnormal ... after all, night is the time your body is naturally inclined to sleep, right? What happens when you get only four hours a night, as any insomniac will tell you, is that your brain starts to feel impaired, and you move in slow, repetitive motion as though carrying your exhausted body through dense fog. You often feel unsafe, and even just a bit demented. And as soon as I think of dementia, the brain takes me to death and dying. And the unpleasant dark cycle is perpetuated...
None of the above is in the end cause for worry, really. There is no mortal illness in the picture. There are plenty of people out there suffering much worse physical and emotional conditions -- you have only to read the newspaper or click into Facebook to find this out. There is simply a dysfunction in my body's efforts to carry on that is crying out for attention. And this doesn't mean to planning my next distraction, like a trip to Mexico or New York city, or a lovely dinner out at some special restaurant. No, the answer would seem to be much simpler, really. But it is as well a new challenge. It involves stopping. Resting. Giving up on the obsessive striving. This last becomes such a familiar pattern for us humans, I think, this nagging message that we are here on earth to accomplish great things, perform well, get ahead, be recognized. It is part of today's climate where so much is valued in terms of how quickly it will get you the desired results... As we get older, we begin to sense significant limitations to our energy and the shortening of our journey, and so an urgency creeps in, reminding us that we never know how much time there is, and we'd better get cracking if we want our lives to mean something. But, but ... this is mind chatter, really. This is the hard working super ego that insists it tells the truth.
I doubt very much whether human beings like the Dalai Lama or Pope Francis swim ceaselessly in their thoughts about doing and not doing, or the unkind admonitions about performing perfectly ... they are too busy leading their purposeful lives, speaking their truths and opening their hearts to those they encounter. These gentlemen - and it is true they are infinitely gentle beings - are driven by love and compassion to remind their fellow humans of the possibility of freedom. They are thoughtful teachers much like Jesus who saw no divisions amongst humans but rather their goodness, potential, and ability to find the way out of suffering. I believe it is a fact that teachers must teach, just the way we all must breathe, and eat, and sleep, in order to live. This work is always needed in the world, this opening of doors and minds, and it requires a surrendering of oneself and an absence of doubt and self-judgment.
I have spent about 15 years teaching young people to write creative works and good expository papers, and as I look back on that now I don't recall a lot of time spent spinning in my mind about the how of it all. I just showed up and did the work and felt more alive and present for myself than ever before. And the more I showed up, the closer I became to my students, and the better I got. It was never about following a game plan, really, but more about just being present for the work. I have an opportunity now to return to the teaching world as a volunteer tutor, and the prospect of this new relationship makes me happy inside. I must trust this. And I must take my rest deliberately and creatively when I can so I have the energy to make a difference in the days ahead. That is what is true: just these days ahead, day by day.
Tuesday, September 8, 2015
Letting Go and Moving On ...
I have taken to being out in the world more these days, feeling the almost soporific effects of hanging out in my beautiful cave-like little house on White Street, and wanting to find a change. This journey into being seventy this year feels fraught with self-reflection, hunkering down alone with my cats and my books and my addiction to NPR, and pondering, always pondering, the slowing down of my routine. A weird and claustrophobic life, I've been thinking. And so I sit now in one of my favorite lunch joints, at the bar looking out the open windows onto bustling Chestnut street where San Franciscans march through the 85 degree heat with apparent ease. I don't enjoy the heat, especially in this city known for the cool sea air, the fog, the eternally unchanging temperate climate. Yesterday I felt the city gasping under this heat, and the baking warmth coming off all the stone buildings and the sidewalk, and it seemed I was walking in a surreal universe. I prefer this sitting iindoors at the pretty wooden bar with my IPad and recording my reflections, and finding amazing focus in all the hubbub.
About a week ago I quit a job I had been doing for over ten years, and my system - that is my mind AND my heart - is still getting used to it. I have been a volunteer caregiver for the dying here in San Francisco at a remarkable organization called Zen Hospice Project, and it has been a journey of learning, expansion of heart, tears and laughter, more learning, and the giving and receiving of love. Working amongst about 60 other volunteers, I have become witness to the greatest mystery of our human lives, watching people traverse the border between the living and the dead, and breathing with them as they go. It was hard at first as I got used to the strange sounds of death rattles and sights of strange fluids and the chilling reality of the shutting down of a person's body. And pretty soon the world of the dying became a natural and normal one, and there was no more pulling back, and I saw I was being given an incalculable gift: intimacy with other human beings at the most momentous, and most undefinable moment of their life. And so I showed up every Thursday to spend 5 hours in mindfulness and service. It colored the rest of my life, for sure, and I believe helped me become a better listener, a better witness to life's strangeness, and it gave me a community that felt like home, a place where clear speaking and authentic listening prevailed, and where we were (are) guided by our understanding that we are not in control in this life.
Relationships emerged and then faded as fellow volunteers came and went, as we continued to watch the dance of impermanence. I worked at Laguna Honda hospital, a somewhat bedraggled skilled nursing facility that a local writer has called "God's Hotel," and then moved on to serving at our small facility in an elegant old Victorian house on Page Street where we welcome only six patients at a time, and are able to help them create new homes in their rooms, and prepared homemade organic meals for them. A rarified world this was/is. Our days were always punctuated by 10 minute meditations followed by thoughtful sharing of personal and hospice experiences. Needless to say, we all got to know each other very well over time, which you can't always say for our relationships to the residents who came and went with an ephemral rhythm, some staying for a few months, some for only a few days...
Somewhere along the journey of this work of mine, I began to feel overwhelmed, or just worn out, by this living with the finiteness of mortality and impermanence at every turn, and as I saw the organization begin to define itself in a new way, I thought that my part as a player was coming to an end. Change was coming, and I saw that I couldn't allow myself to feel a part of that. AND, my personal life was shrinking and narrowing, which made me feel less sanguine in some ways. Everything seemed to be pointing to the importance of a change of routine. A little voice was murmuring at me: get out in the world more, move away from the cave of contemplatioin and reflection... which translates to leave the introspective world of hospice care and get out of the meditative nest of your home, and see what it's like to be a seventy year old lady in the city, complete with bum ankle and creaky joints.
So here I am on a very hot San Francisco afternoon sitting on a barstool and beginning to look outward just a bit ... consider the intoxicating world of men and women and cats and dogs and streets and rolling hills and goldfinches and hummingbirds, and ...........There is a lot to this being alive thing, I've found, and as I exit the womblike enclosure of house and hospice service, I am inspired and hopeful. The gifts of contemplative pratice and mindful service will always be with me no matter where I land, and I will forever treasure the voices and spirits of those I helped get to the end of their lives.... We (I am) are a part of all that we have experienced, and there something beautiful in the aging process ... sort of like the deep, velvety bouquet of an old wine.
With deep gratitude to Zen Hospice Project ...
About a week ago I quit a job I had been doing for over ten years, and my system - that is my mind AND my heart - is still getting used to it. I have been a volunteer caregiver for the dying here in San Francisco at a remarkable organization called Zen Hospice Project, and it has been a journey of learning, expansion of heart, tears and laughter, more learning, and the giving and receiving of love. Working amongst about 60 other volunteers, I have become witness to the greatest mystery of our human lives, watching people traverse the border between the living and the dead, and breathing with them as they go. It was hard at first as I got used to the strange sounds of death rattles and sights of strange fluids and the chilling reality of the shutting down of a person's body. And pretty soon the world of the dying became a natural and normal one, and there was no more pulling back, and I saw I was being given an incalculable gift: intimacy with other human beings at the most momentous, and most undefinable moment of their life. And so I showed up every Thursday to spend 5 hours in mindfulness and service. It colored the rest of my life, for sure, and I believe helped me become a better listener, a better witness to life's strangeness, and it gave me a community that felt like home, a place where clear speaking and authentic listening prevailed, and where we were (are) guided by our understanding that we are not in control in this life.
Relationships emerged and then faded as fellow volunteers came and went, as we continued to watch the dance of impermanence. I worked at Laguna Honda hospital, a somewhat bedraggled skilled nursing facility that a local writer has called "God's Hotel," and then moved on to serving at our small facility in an elegant old Victorian house on Page Street where we welcome only six patients at a time, and are able to help them create new homes in their rooms, and prepared homemade organic meals for them. A rarified world this was/is. Our days were always punctuated by 10 minute meditations followed by thoughtful sharing of personal and hospice experiences. Needless to say, we all got to know each other very well over time, which you can't always say for our relationships to the residents who came and went with an ephemral rhythm, some staying for a few months, some for only a few days...
Somewhere along the journey of this work of mine, I began to feel overwhelmed, or just worn out, by this living with the finiteness of mortality and impermanence at every turn, and as I saw the organization begin to define itself in a new way, I thought that my part as a player was coming to an end. Change was coming, and I saw that I couldn't allow myself to feel a part of that. AND, my personal life was shrinking and narrowing, which made me feel less sanguine in some ways. Everything seemed to be pointing to the importance of a change of routine. A little voice was murmuring at me: get out in the world more, move away from the cave of contemplatioin and reflection... which translates to leave the introspective world of hospice care and get out of the meditative nest of your home, and see what it's like to be a seventy year old lady in the city, complete with bum ankle and creaky joints.
So here I am on a very hot San Francisco afternoon sitting on a barstool and beginning to look outward just a bit ... consider the intoxicating world of men and women and cats and dogs and streets and rolling hills and goldfinches and hummingbirds, and ...........There is a lot to this being alive thing, I've found, and as I exit the womblike enclosure of house and hospice service, I am inspired and hopeful. The gifts of contemplative pratice and mindful service will always be with me no matter where I land, and I will forever treasure the voices and spirits of those I helped get to the end of their lives.... We (I am) are a part of all that we have experienced, and there something beautiful in the aging process ... sort of like the deep, velvety bouquet of an old wine.
With deep gratitude to Zen Hospice Project ...
Saturday, August 29, 2015
I Love the Fog
I woke up this morning in my little beach house by Salmon Creek and everything was bathed in pale gray fog. There was a hush in the air and yet I heard the ocean roar in the distance ... maybe not roar, but rather gently rumble. All the green plants close by were covered in dew as the fog shed its moisture, and the outside wooden deck felt cool and wet on my bare feet. I can barely see the ducks in the estuary and can locate the snowy egret only because he is dramatically white amidst all the gray. There is a little convention of wild birds on my deck pecking away at the the food I left them, the red wing blackbirds looking particularly elegant and dramatic in the mist. This is just another Saturday morning at the beach.
When I was five or six I trudged to school in the fog, holding on to my Winnie the Pooh lunchbox, and I loved the feeling of camouflage that I experienced. Ever the loner, I felt safe in this cloaked state. I fell asleep at night at my Grandmother's listening to the song of the fog horns, which always seemed to be in a minor key. I remember feeling that the moan of those horns was meant especially for me. When I was older and living in North Beach on the eastern end of the city, I recall watching with excitement as rolling pillows of fog poured over Russian Hill to the west, coming toward us like the ocean in slow motion.
Though fog generally evokes the many years of my life in San Francisco, I've experienced it in England and Ireland, those beautiful rolling green landscapes bathed in moisture and reeking of the earth and placid sheep, and out on the water in Vietnam as we cruised Halong Bay in a junk exploring ancient islands, and obviously in places not clear in my memory at the moment. This beautiful blanket of moisture has always conjured comfort and safety for me, a sense of being held in a benign cocoon. And then there is the mystery of fog. Think of a Sherlock Holmes film where the undaunted detective strides through the foggy wet London streets as the street lamps cast their eerie light here and there and remind us of danger. Yes, comfort and mystery all in one ... The shades of gray in our lives.
I've always believed in the shades of gray, I think, perhaps because the confusion I was raised in offered no clear and safe points of reference. And so I lived through days, months, and years of the gray, no anchor. Eventually I got used to it because I had to. A certain trust in the gray mystery came to influence my intellect, and became part of what I saw as true. I remember numerous conversations with daughter number one when she was little, and later when she became a young adult, heated words about right and wrong and the great mystery in between. She wanted to settle the questions of her world in black and white, and I kept telling her no, that was not the way the world worked. The world was filled with mystery (which I continued to see as a benign fog), and that was o.k. We could still find our way because we had reason and a determination to seek our own truth. But of course she didn't come to wisdom because her mother pronounced it to her ... the path is more complicated than that.
The older we get the more we see the ambiguities and confusions underneath the big picture. As I grow old and struggle with loss of vitality, connection, self assurance perhaps, the more my mind tilts inward, examining and weighing the quirkiness and complexity of my life. I see how many detours were taken, promises abandoned, and points of view shifted. At age twenty it is much easier to feel certainty and conviction about right and wrong because the world is narrower, less life has been lived; by the time you get to sixty or seventy you see just how many different rights and wrongs are possible. I think this has something to do with relativity, but I'm not going to journey there.
The blackbirds are still doing their dance outside around the food dish, crimson red paint strokes flashing through their black wings as they flutter and argue. The sun is beginning to push through the gray mist. Pretty soon the ocean will be visible again and the water on the creek will be sparkling in bright light. The soft fog blanket will eventually disappear and become a memory. This makes most people smile and rejoice. They want into the light. And it's not that I don't want to see the sun, or feel its warm hand on my back. It's all of a piece, really ... I (we) need it all: inky dark night for our rest, fog shrouded morning where we hunker down with the thought anything is possible, and the sparkling day arriving, offering its unknown gifts .... Just another Saturday at the beach.
When I was five or six I trudged to school in the fog, holding on to my Winnie the Pooh lunchbox, and I loved the feeling of camouflage that I experienced. Ever the loner, I felt safe in this cloaked state. I fell asleep at night at my Grandmother's listening to the song of the fog horns, which always seemed to be in a minor key. I remember feeling that the moan of those horns was meant especially for me. When I was older and living in North Beach on the eastern end of the city, I recall watching with excitement as rolling pillows of fog poured over Russian Hill to the west, coming toward us like the ocean in slow motion.
Though fog generally evokes the many years of my life in San Francisco, I've experienced it in England and Ireland, those beautiful rolling green landscapes bathed in moisture and reeking of the earth and placid sheep, and out on the water in Vietnam as we cruised Halong Bay in a junk exploring ancient islands, and obviously in places not clear in my memory at the moment. This beautiful blanket of moisture has always conjured comfort and safety for me, a sense of being held in a benign cocoon. And then there is the mystery of fog. Think of a Sherlock Holmes film where the undaunted detective strides through the foggy wet London streets as the street lamps cast their eerie light here and there and remind us of danger. Yes, comfort and mystery all in one ... The shades of gray in our lives.
I've always believed in the shades of gray, I think, perhaps because the confusion I was raised in offered no clear and safe points of reference. And so I lived through days, months, and years of the gray, no anchor. Eventually I got used to it because I had to. A certain trust in the gray mystery came to influence my intellect, and became part of what I saw as true. I remember numerous conversations with daughter number one when she was little, and later when she became a young adult, heated words about right and wrong and the great mystery in between. She wanted to settle the questions of her world in black and white, and I kept telling her no, that was not the way the world worked. The world was filled with mystery (which I continued to see as a benign fog), and that was o.k. We could still find our way because we had reason and a determination to seek our own truth. But of course she didn't come to wisdom because her mother pronounced it to her ... the path is more complicated than that.
The older we get the more we see the ambiguities and confusions underneath the big picture. As I grow old and struggle with loss of vitality, connection, self assurance perhaps, the more my mind tilts inward, examining and weighing the quirkiness and complexity of my life. I see how many detours were taken, promises abandoned, and points of view shifted. At age twenty it is much easier to feel certainty and conviction about right and wrong because the world is narrower, less life has been lived; by the time you get to sixty or seventy you see just how many different rights and wrongs are possible. I think this has something to do with relativity, but I'm not going to journey there.
The blackbirds are still doing their dance outside around the food dish, crimson red paint strokes flashing through their black wings as they flutter and argue. The sun is beginning to push through the gray mist. Pretty soon the ocean will be visible again and the water on the creek will be sparkling in bright light. The soft fog blanket will eventually disappear and become a memory. This makes most people smile and rejoice. They want into the light. And it's not that I don't want to see the sun, or feel its warm hand on my back. It's all of a piece, really ... I (we) need it all: inky dark night for our rest, fog shrouded morning where we hunker down with the thought anything is possible, and the sparkling day arriving, offering its unknown gifts .... Just another Saturday at the beach.
Saturday, August 22, 2015
A Heart that Closes and Opens
We expect a lot of ourselves we humans, especially in times of ostensible defeat or difficulty. When we stumble, are knocked down and fall on the ground, we tend to expect the universe to be normal and safe when we get up and move on. When our hearts are broken, we often brush ourselves off, and will ourselves to return to normal as soon as humanly possible so we may find love again. When we fall into disagreement with someone we often grit our teeth and summon our determination to prove ourselves right. Our mind works so hard trying to run the show, driving us forward to be normal and good, to prevail, do the right thing, and be in control. But when someone we love dies, our brains don't find it that easy to cloak the heart so we can simply soldier on. Death - one of the few unavoidable truths of human life - does this to us, helping us crack open in the face of what is real. It shows us, I think, that the heart and not the brain is our essence.
I recently learned of a degenerative condition in my right ankle that has been brewing for some time and will change the way I move out into the world in the future. It appears there will be no long hikes in Africa, or exploration of Tibet, or squash playing, or just plain marching up and down the hills of San Francisco... Arthritis is a disease (I first called it a beast) that usually affects those "of a certain age" and is in a way symbolic of the aging process. Here it is in front of me now, and I can feel my heart and mind contracting in response, as though to forbid its presence. No such luck, of course. It is alive and present in the body and cannot be cut away or made to disappear. So, what is one to do? Can I welcome it as an another "guest," as Rumi wrote in his classic poem? And just how is it possible to welcome something that makes you wince when you take some simple steps? I am not sure. What I know is that my problem solving brain is working overtime to try to figure out how to walk and move about in a different way, and what supplements or aids might be effective in diminishing the pain, and whether the great bug-a-boo of surgery is actually an option for someone in my position. I do know that a few glasses of wine soften the body in a strange way and momentarily blur out the physical stress, but so does a good movie, talk with a dear friend, or a nice meal lovingly prepared. And still ... there it is... While my mind is working away with the laundry list of solutions, I feel my heart shrinking around this new assault on my person. The heart withers and the brain goes on to imagine a dark and dingy trajectory of disability and limitation. It dares to tell me the story about becoming seriously disabled. Yes, it is a story, and it lives in the future which of course is not known. And instead of comforting my vulnerable body and forgiving myself for getting older, I get caught in a whirlwind of doubt and anxiety.
I experienced loss of another kind this last week. A dear friend of mine who lives in my old home town of Taos, New Mexico, has died after a valiant battle against late stage ovarian cancer. When I received the news I remember feeling a warmth and a softening in my chest, an ah-ha moment that reminded me of the preciousness of human life. I have no idea where my mind was - perhaps taking a well deserved rest - and that was a good thing! I recalled my last evening with this beautiful woman and the radiance I felt coming from her as she bravely offered her heart and mind through a long evening with close friends, wine, and conversation. She was very clear about where she was on her journey and didn't need to talk about it. Candles flickered and glasses were raised and life was all around us. Now she is gone. This is what happens to all of us. And the mystery of it all defies the powers of mind ... When I think about this lovely lady who was a shooting star in the sky, I realize that we all are just that: shooting stars or comets or great soaring birds winging our way across the heavens. We are fragile, we humans, and life is uncertain, whether we are seventy, thirty, or sixteen.
If I could see myself as a magnificent shooting star making its way through the air, then perhaps I could hold my physical difficulties with compassion and love. And why not? This body has done a great job getting me this far and it is unclear how long we'll be doing this together ... it's only fitting to show it some respect. Show it my open heart, not the twisted cruel one that resents my mortality. I am now taking refuge in my house that overlooks the grand and mysterious Pacific Ocean and there are snowy egrets in the creek foraging for fish, deer in the meadow beyond prancing through the brush, and as I look out at that landscape I come closer to seeing myself as a very small piece of the grand puzzle, one little player who searches for grounding, acceptance, and peace of mind. And none of this has anything to do with the power of the mind. I am grateful. I thank the universe.
I recently learned of a degenerative condition in my right ankle that has been brewing for some time and will change the way I move out into the world in the future. It appears there will be no long hikes in Africa, or exploration of Tibet, or squash playing, or just plain marching up and down the hills of San Francisco... Arthritis is a disease (I first called it a beast) that usually affects those "of a certain age" and is in a way symbolic of the aging process. Here it is in front of me now, and I can feel my heart and mind contracting in response, as though to forbid its presence. No such luck, of course. It is alive and present in the body and cannot be cut away or made to disappear. So, what is one to do? Can I welcome it as an another "guest," as Rumi wrote in his classic poem? And just how is it possible to welcome something that makes you wince when you take some simple steps? I am not sure. What I know is that my problem solving brain is working overtime to try to figure out how to walk and move about in a different way, and what supplements or aids might be effective in diminishing the pain, and whether the great bug-a-boo of surgery is actually an option for someone in my position. I do know that a few glasses of wine soften the body in a strange way and momentarily blur out the physical stress, but so does a good movie, talk with a dear friend, or a nice meal lovingly prepared. And still ... there it is... While my mind is working away with the laundry list of solutions, I feel my heart shrinking around this new assault on my person. The heart withers and the brain goes on to imagine a dark and dingy trajectory of disability and limitation. It dares to tell me the story about becoming seriously disabled. Yes, it is a story, and it lives in the future which of course is not known. And instead of comforting my vulnerable body and forgiving myself for getting older, I get caught in a whirlwind of doubt and anxiety.
I experienced loss of another kind this last week. A dear friend of mine who lives in my old home town of Taos, New Mexico, has died after a valiant battle against late stage ovarian cancer. When I received the news I remember feeling a warmth and a softening in my chest, an ah-ha moment that reminded me of the preciousness of human life. I have no idea where my mind was - perhaps taking a well deserved rest - and that was a good thing! I recalled my last evening with this beautiful woman and the radiance I felt coming from her as she bravely offered her heart and mind through a long evening with close friends, wine, and conversation. She was very clear about where she was on her journey and didn't need to talk about it. Candles flickered and glasses were raised and life was all around us. Now she is gone. This is what happens to all of us. And the mystery of it all defies the powers of mind ... When I think about this lovely lady who was a shooting star in the sky, I realize that we all are just that: shooting stars or comets or great soaring birds winging our way across the heavens. We are fragile, we humans, and life is uncertain, whether we are seventy, thirty, or sixteen.
If I could see myself as a magnificent shooting star making its way through the air, then perhaps I could hold my physical difficulties with compassion and love. And why not? This body has done a great job getting me this far and it is unclear how long we'll be doing this together ... it's only fitting to show it some respect. Show it my open heart, not the twisted cruel one that resents my mortality. I am now taking refuge in my house that overlooks the grand and mysterious Pacific Ocean and there are snowy egrets in the creek foraging for fish, deer in the meadow beyond prancing through the brush, and as I look out at that landscape I come closer to seeing myself as a very small piece of the grand puzzle, one little player who searches for grounding, acceptance, and peace of mind. And none of this has anything to do with the power of the mind. I am grateful. I thank the universe.
Wednesday, August 12, 2015
The Body Speaks to Us
- Yesterday I had an adventure in awareness. This woman who is a healer held my feet gently and then asked me to allow my mind to travel inside my feet, to feel what it was like inside that complicated mechanism of bone, muscle, and tendon. I did my belly breathing and shrunk myself sufficiently so I could actually fit myself inside my foot, and when I had landed, I was amazed at how crowded and busy it all was. I did this for quite some time, just breathing and feeling the busy universe of the foot, and gradually I sensed a strong pressure at the top of my left foot, a dully aching sensation that persisted and brought to mind the late afternoon four years ago when a lady in her car ran over my foot, knocking me to the ground and breaking various foot and leg bones. Oddly enough, I had thought I was "over" this trauma which sent me into emergency surgery for a badly broken elbow, but the truth of the matter is that our body holds everything we have experienced, and in some cases holds the experience with a remarkable persistence. I lay on the table and remembered my day going from light to dark, my memory of subsequent events blotted out by the sheer pain of the broken bones and the terror I felt through my whole being. There were tears that rested in my eye sockets that soon dribbled down my face. Yes, pain and fear had returned ... And yet I was safe and whole on this bright sunny afternoon in August, though my heart held layers of sadness for people I love whom I cannot help, for myself who yearns for more self-compassion.
Our bodies hold everything. There's a scar on my left index finger that calls up the morning I was with my grandparents in their country cottage and whittling on a stick with a cute little pocket knife. I was careless and I cut my finger badly. I cried, but not for long, because I was with two very stoic people and I needed to show I could rally quickly. The story is still there in my finger: the little girl who was hesitant to really feel her pain. A scar on my knee recalls the summer in Yellow Springs Ohio when I helped my husband bottle his home brew, as I lost balance and fell over on a broken bottle and then saw blood gushing from a deep wound. Looking through layers of flesh made me queasy, I can still remember. I was a young mother of twenty one, and I soldiered on ... of course. There are two vertical scar lines on my left and right cheeks where I had taken a razor blade to my face at nineteen in order to punish the man I lived with for not loving me enough. A stupid, frightening move... Happily, I don't notice these lines much anymore, though I can trace the old wounds anytime with my fingers. That story of suffering is something I still have a hard time revisiting. I don't think I want to "breathe into" that experience, though my healer friend would tell me that by doing that I can let it go.
My lungs hold fear and anxiety. When I walk the streets of the city and feel the steps of someone close behind me, I become immediately fearful. My heart starts to race, I pick up my pace, and feel my breathing speed up. There is a memory here which takes me back to being a five year old whose stuffed animals were taken away because I was asthmatic and couldn't breathe very well, and also to the time when I had to outrace an large old man who chased me up Green Street when I was nine. I hauled myself up the hill and breathed heavily, and finally reached my house safely, and now have no memory of why this character was after me. Strange and surreal, and yet this fear that came forward is terribly real. I simply don't want anyone moving in on me from behind ... I have this strange feeling that the lungs that I breathe through in my seventies are those of my uncertain childhood.
There are other stories that come from outside our own bodies. I am thinking of our domestic accoutrements like refrigerators, cars, record collections, and the pets we have as roommates. How many times have we named and boxed up another person because we noted their refrigerator filled with pure organics, their glossy BMW, or their French Bull Dog? Clearly these are NOT who we are, but rather examples of our quirky choices in the moment. The scars we carry from trauma, such as knife wounds to the finger or broken glass to the knee or slices across the face, are also NOT who we are, but again mindless and sometimes cruel detours from the path. And the way to let them go and see who we really are is to see them clearly and hold ourselves in compassion. We must breathe into our bodies and see that we are really and truly o.k. Beautiful as well...
From Dogen: "To study the Buddha Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be one with with all beings. When one with all beings, body and mind and bodies and minds of others drop away." Forget the self. Yes. Great idea.
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