The End of Suffering....

One of my meditation teachers on the retreat I sat a few weeks ago gave a morning reflection which I adapted in part.  It went something like this:

Why are you here?  (Here she leaned forward and peered at each of us.)  Why are you here???

To end suffering!  Isn’t that right?  (We all nodded.)

And what causes suffering?  

Clinging.  The Buddha said, “Nothing whatsoever is to be cling to as me or mine.”

What do we cling to?  We cling to our bodies.  Then we cling to ideas about what our bodies should be like - thinner, stronger, younger, more attractive, with hair like this or that, able to wear different clothes, healthier.  Think of the various ways we attempt to change our bodies.

And our thoughts and feelings.  We should like this person more, we should be kinder, we shouldn’t think this thought or that thought.  We shouldn’t feel sad, or angry, or impatient, or frustrated, or anxious.  And yet sometimes we do.  

Does any of this sound familiar?  She went on to say:

The Buddha was very clear.  When we think or do something that is unwholesome, we suffer.  When we think or do something that is wholesome, we don’t suffer.  So we can end our own suffering by abandoning what is unwholesome and embracing what is wholesome.

And how do we know what is wholesome?  The Buddha pointed the way in the Fourth Noble Truth.  The way to the end of suffering is the 8-fold path:  

Here I am inserting the Buddha’s original teaching on the end of suffering and a link to the entire teaching which is fairly short."The way leading to cessation of suffering, as a noble truth, is this: It is simply the noble eightfold path, that is to say, right view, right intention; right speech, right action, right livelihood; right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration.”       https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn56/sn56.011.nymo.html

And before you give up with the magnitude of what is being suggested here.  Consider this:  The key to it all is in each moment.  Moment by moment we can end our own suffering by abandoning what is unwholesome and embracing what is wholesome.  If we are stuck in a negative thought pattern, we can bring mindfulness to it, which is wholesome, accepting that it is here and holding it with the thought, this is a negative thought pattern, I didn’t choose to think it, it just arose.  But I can choose now to be aware of it and I can choose to let it be without taking it on as me or mine, without hooking my identity to this thought pattern, without encouraging, feeding, supporting, or reinforcing it.  It arose and I can allow it to fade away.  

That is abandoning a negative thought pattern that was causing suffering.  That is abandoning an unwholesome habit pattern.  That is ending suffering in that moment.

"Are our lives leading onward...."

I ran across this quote from Joseph Goldstein who has been one of my main teachers and a guiding light in how he has conducted his own life. It comes from a book Creating a Life of Integrity: In Conversation with Joseph Goldstein. Joseph says:

"We must continually ask ourselves, are our lives leading onward in any way?

Of course, we also need to find the line between being impeccable and being rigid,

so that we refine our understandings with a light heart.”

What I have followed and noticed about Joseph’s path is how his heart and his generosity and his onward path are merged. He along with Sharon Salzberg and Jack Kornfield purchased with collected donations the land and buildings they developed into the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA. They began offering retreats themselves and training Western teachers to offer retreats as well. They also invited many of their esteemed teachers from India, Thailand, Burma, and elsewhere to come and teach at this new center. Dipa Ma was one of those teachers.

Joseph supported women teachers from the beginning at a time when the women’s movement was still in its beginning efforts. He organized a trip to the Burmese monasteries that have been so important to the insight tradition asking sizable donations from the travelers for these monasteries. And with his leadership, the retreat center began offering scholarships specifically to encourage people of color to attend.

More recently, say in the last 10 years or so, realizing the debt of Western Buddhism to the Eastern traditions which were held by people of color, he led his colleagues to investigate why there weren’t more people of color or of difference attending the many retreats. What they realized is that people of color weren’t attending in larger numbers partly because of economics and having the time and opportunity, but also because they didn’t see themselves reflected in their teachers. So Joseph began widening the search for and the training opportunities for teachers of color. Today Insight Meditation Society has a robust roster of retreats taught by people of color for people of color. It is perhaps the most diverse retreat schedule of any retreat center anywhere.

And all because Joseph continually asked himself, is my life leading onward in any way?

Of course, you know where this is going because we have all become more aware how our personal happiness and well-being is connected with the well-being of the planet and the health and happiness of its many inhabitants. Just as in psychology, we have moved beyond the Freudian model that says our personal happiness is entirely rooted in our personal past to the family systems model that says that a troubled child is not an isolated event in a family but often the "identified patient” in a malfunctioning family. As we look around, we see that is true in community systems, political systems, national systems, and world wide systems. And perhaps it makes the question "are our lives leading onward in any way” almost overwhelming to contemplate.

Which is why Joseph added the second part, “Of course, we also need to find the line between being impeccable and being rigid, so that we refine our understandings with a light heart.”

So can we begin to bring this question more into the light, "Are our lives leading onward in any way?" And at the same time, allow our consideration of this question to develop naturally and "with a light heart?"

Self-acceptance and the Marlboro Man

I’ve been thinking about self-acceptance recently. I’m sure many of you can relate.

We’re pretty hard on ourselves as a culture. The Marlboro man epitomized the solo persona the country admired - strong, independent, self-reliant. I don’t think the Marlboro man had much of an emotional life which is probably why he was a chain smoker. Probably not much in touch with his feminine side either. Vestiges of that image still linger to a greater or lesser degree as a powerful archetype in the American personality.

We often encounter our unwillingness to accept ourselves when we feel inadequate or criticized or shown up in some way. Or when we’ve blundered or suddenly come face-to-face with some unseen and unseemly part of ourselves. And it can be a pretty painful process if we ourselves pile on the criticisms and join forces against ourselves in what we perceive to be a well-deserved self-bashing.

It is my fervent hope that by this time, we’ve all begun to recognize the signs and to marshall our inner resources to practice loving-kindness and compassion towards ourselves.

But I’ve also begun to wonder if we can’t approach this at a more elemental level working up and out as well as down and in. By that, I’m referring to our basic building block of mindfulness - awareness of breath. And this also refers to any focus of body awareness we choose such as the sensations in the hands or feet or seat. Or the sound scape.

When we practice breath awareness - and I’ll use that as my example, we pay attention to the breath as it arises and falls in each passing moment. The instruction is to allow the breath to be just as it is - without trying to make it into anything else, without judging it as being less than any other breath. This is the breath the body called for. This is the breath the body is capable of. And the question for us as meditators is this: can we be with it? Can we accept this breath as it is? And this breath as it is? The ragged as well as the smooth? The shallow breath as well as the full breath?

And even, the breath that feels inadequate as well as the breath that fully satisfies?

In this simple practice, we can begin the process of accepting - ourselves and reality - just as it is in this moment. Are we anxious and breathing rapidly and shallowly? Can we be with that? Are the wildfires making our air smoky? Can we be with that?

Can we accept our breath - just as it is? Our bodies just as they are? Our world just as it is?

It doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t attempt to improve any of it. But first we have to start where we are.

I wonder what the Marboro man would make of that.

Meditation on an alarm clock...

Having been on retreat all week, the inclination to silence is still strong within me. But as you will see below, not as silent as I at first thought.

I attended a 6 day retreat - the first step of a year long study of deep concentration states. The first few nights this week I stayed with the retreat schedule - only getting up a little early to do my yoga and to extend the half hour morning sit a bit. But then I felt the urge to have a longer sit which I had learned from my June retreat would work best as the first sit of the day. So I set my alarm for 5 am and went to sleep. I was aware I wasn’t relaxed. The teachings the evening before were both stimulating and unsettling and I hadn’t elected to stay past the evening’s end for a period of silent sitting.

At a certain point in the night, I realized I was dimly awake and waiting for the alarm to go off. My body was tensed against the impact of the alarm the way it sometimes does. And I began to worry how much time I had left to sleep. I didn’t want to look and discover it was only a short period. So I lay in bed attempting to sleep but worried that as soon as I went back to sleep, the alarm would go off. It occurred to my half-asleep mind that this was similar to waiting for death, not making the most of the time available, waiting for the inevitable end.

After a period of time as I became more awake and sleep still would not come, I had one of those head-slapping, “I should have had a V-8!” moments. I was lying in bed, a bundle of tension, resisting an alarm that would go off at some point so that I could get up early and practice! In actuality, the time I needed to practice was right at the moment - in the dark of the night, with my body tense, dreading the little ring from an aging travel alarm.

I did a brief body scan to discover my body resisted being scanned. So I began to offer myself loving kindness and compassion. In less than a moment, I was aware I was back in my body, opening to the suffering that was present in that moment, and the alarm was firmly back in the future.

When I finally looked, it was only 3:30! So I got up, did my yoga, and made my way to the meditation hall.

Life is what happens while we’re making plans and anticipating the future. This is such a crucial and sometimes obvious truth yet one I have to learn over and over - and over and over again. The pull of planning, which is important for sure, and the worry over future possibilities can transfix the mind again and again. Freedom comes when we wake up to whatever is our life in this moment.

Wouldn’t you know Rumi was here before me?

Don't Go Back To Sleep

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.

Don't go back to sleep.

You must ask for what you really want.

Don't go back to sleep.

People are going back and forth

across the doorsill

where the two worlds touch.

The door is round and open.

Don't go back to sleep.

What's happening now?

The practice of mindfulness meditation can be contained in two phrases: “What’s happening now?” And "Can I be with it?" The first question is about awareness of our experience - from the larger rhythms to the most minute shifts and changes. The second question is about accepting that experience, allowing the experience to be - because it is already here, whether it is difficult or pleasant or neither one - and knowing it for what it is. It doesn’t mean becoming passive, getting run over, and not trying to change what can be changed. It means accepting the reality of this experience without denying it or pretending it’s other than what it is. This is what is happening right now. And knowing how we feel about it is also what is happening right now. Our liking it or not liking it, our resistance or our acceptance.

Having experiences is one thing. Knowing having experience is being awake to the miracle and possibilities of the moment. This knowing is what unlocks the transformative power of mindfulness.

Walking in the heat....

I went for a walk yesterday late afternoon with the slightly cooler temperatures urging me on. It was still too hot in the sun - even at 4pm, I thought sadly.

But I was listening to Joseph Goldstein teach mindfulness meditation in 5 minutes bites on 10% Happier thinking, “This probably won’t work too well since I’m walking.” (I don’t usually listen to my iPhone but the recent heat had seriously dented my enjoyment of walking.) So I modified the instructions on sitting practice - paying attention to the breath - by bringing awareness to my feet and legs as the instructions for walking meditation suggest. In the five lessons I heard during my walk, Joseph took us through mindfulness of breathing, mental noting - noting “in - out” with breath at the nostrils or “rising - falling” with breath at the chest or belly. I found I was able to bring my awareness to my upper lip and nostrils - even while walking - and there was a tiny bit of joy in that. He also suggested that if a strong sensation, feeling, or thought arose to leave the breath momentarily to bring the awareness to that sensation, feeling, or thought, investigating this strong experience. When it passed, return the awareness to the breath.

As I walked along, I found myself disliking the heat of the sun when there was no shade. I was caught in the aversion to the heat and suffered. But then I walked into the shade of a large maple - blessedly dark shade - and felt a wonderful coolness. Hmmm, I thought. Back out into the sun for a bit, then back into the shade, and suddenly, I smelled the most wonderful fragrance. It was just a few seconds of a light sweet fragrance - from the garden on the farm nearby or wild flowers, I didn’t know. I realized the cool shade and the light fragrance were regular occurrences on my walks but had been getting overshadowed by my dislike of the heat. When mindfulness inserted these experiences into my awareness - the fragrance, the cool shade, and rhythm of my breath and my feet - they balanced the heat of the sun and the aversion I felt toward that heat. Suddenly, I was aware that mindfulness had totally transformed my walk. There was moment by moment awareness of pleasant experiences, unpleasant experiences, and neutral experiences. Not because the walk had changed but because I had changed the way I was paying attention to it.

Yay, Joseph, I thought. Mindfulness rocks!

Sunday as a day of rest//

I’ve been thinking about rest and of the path of Right Effort - one of the Buddha’s eight-fold paths.

I’m sure you have had one of those days when there are so many events on your schedule, perhaps a holiday as well, and required appearances that you wonder - Wait! Where is time for “self-care” and honoring inner priorities?

Yesterday was such a day for me.

It was Mother’s Day. It was my birthday. It was my two sister’s birthdays. There was the annual Mother’s Day concert presented by a group I helped found performed by my piano teacher. There was a required class from 5 to 6:30 of my Mindfulness Meditation Teacher training program. I was presenting a 15 minute talk on Mindfulness of Emotions at that class. There was an early dinner to celebrate the concert.

And although the day was too full, something was missing. And the fact that something was missing was distorting my perception of everything else.

On Friday I rectified that. Taking my courage in hand (holding my breath), I invited my family to a zoom gathering to check in on the cluster of health situations, to celebrate multiple birthdays, and to share the joy of a recent wedding.

This is not about my busy Sunday. It’s about what I realized at the end of that day.

It wasn’t perfect. Someone at the concert lamented how Covid had changed our reception. No one supplied a non-alcoholic beverage for the reception so I spent part of the concert figuring out when I could run to the store next door for lemonade. I got a little stressed about the lemonade. I got more stressed about giving the talk in class later. And to top it all off, someone started to complain about the zoom meeting. Fortunately, that person caught themselves and bit back their criticism before letting it take shape. And I just took over and “led” the family zoom meeting to make sure all those involved in medical stuff were heard from, the newly weds had a chance to share, and all mothers - biological or otherwise - were honored.

At the end of the day, all I could remember was the bitten-back comment from the relative, getting stressed about the reception, my nervousness about the class presentation, all the ways my talk might be improved, and the anxiety about scheduling and leading the family gathering. Yammering voices. And I wondered was it worth it?

And then I had the revelation. Wow, everything that I wanted to get done got done! Yes, it had a few messy spots. But the structure of the day was perfect (!) because everything that needed to be honored got honored.

And suddenly I could see something I’ve said over and over to students. All the echoes of criticism or not doing enough were just old tapes in my head that got activated by one or another thought, comment, non-habitual action. And seeing all those voices of dissent trying to tear down a perfect day was freeing.

I have been overwhelmed with happiness and joy all day about my super-crowded Sunday with birthdays, Mother’s Day, May concert & dinner, class presentation, and family health check-in/birthday gathering.

The little carping voices all just shut up! At least for now…

An Invitation to a Come-As-You-Are Party

In this morning’s meditation, I was reminded of a conversation I had with a meditator about bring our selves as we are to our practice. It really is an old-fashioned come-as-you-are party - pajamas, hair smashed to the sides of our heads, preoccupied by the endless fascination of our phones…however it is right now.

I was sitting in meditation and noticing how persistently busy/wild my mind was. I could feel the energy of distraction as a powerful force. My first thought was, “This isn’t going to go well today. I’m too distracted, I’ve taken too many days off and now I’m paying for it. So I might as well go do something else and wait for a better time.” Then I stopped and remembered this conversation about bringing our minds as they are in this moment to our practice - about not having to straighten up our minds, get in the right mood, maybe even practicing to get ready for practice! Don’t get me wrong; there is definitely a wholesome use to practicing to practice. But it’s really just showing up for practice.

I realized what I was really saying. I meant I wanted to wait for a better mind. And yet this was the mind I had. So I said to myself, "OK, can I bring this super busy mind to practice this morning?" And as I turned my awareness to my super busy mind, I had a revelation. I saw the suffering in it. Being distracted is suffering. And we can practice with suffering.

So I turned toward loving kindness and compassion. Sharon Salzberg who brought loving kindness back to the west in the 70’s says:

Loving kindness is a meditation practice that is a way of experimenting with our attention. What do we pay attention to? Who and how do we pay attention? If we’re in the habit of fixating on what we’ve done wrong, the thing we didn’t say right, the exercise or the experiment of lovingkindness would also be to open to the good within us. It’s not trying to pretend that everything’s good, everything is perfect, that we have no problems. But we can have a truer picture of who we are, we can open to what’s good with us.

Rather than seeing it as a meditation where we’re trying to pretend to feel something we actually don’t, or that we like everybody when we actually don’t, it’s an exercise in paying attention. The power of the practice is the gathering of our attention.

For me, letting go of trying to have a different mind - maybe the mind I had before I went to Costa Rica - was a huge relief. This is the mind I have now. We think we can step in the same stream twice but the stream is different and all the water is different. This is the water in the stream now - different from yesterday and the day before.

So letting go of what was - and is no longer - is the freedom our practice can bring us.

So consider this an invitation to a come-as-you-are party.

Outside the country, outside the comfort zone...

Upon returning from a recent trip to Costa Rica to attend a wedding:

Costa Rica was an onslaught on the senses. So many people milling about in the market places, in the churches, in family gatherings - brothers and sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles, children and babies, dogs and birds - all coming and going. Of course, rapid Spanish everywhere with occasion much shorter translations. So much noise from cars, unmuffled trucks. Driving or even being a passenger in a car was an exercise in moment by moment mindfulness, negotiating endless turns with oncoming traffic, having to be ever watchful of motor bikes darting in and out of traffic in the urban areas, potholes and dirt roads in the mountains. And a wealth of new sights - signs and wires everywhere, buildings of many colors, open air “sodas” and other places to eat - all accompanied by the cacophony of passing traffic, tin roofs on small houses and shacks made of whatever material was at hand, shelter having a different meaning in a near equatorial country versus our northern one of wintry weather. And mountains - mountainous towns and cities, mountains in the distance, mountains covered with clouds and mountains verdant with tropical life, magnificent mountain vistas in the higher reaches. An explosion of color with flowers everywhere - on the ground, hanging from vines, in bushes and trees with fruit hanging heavy from chocolate, papaya, mango, and other trees whose with names I’ve forgotten. By the roadside, in the weeds, in gardens and forests, brilliant flowers whether cultivated or haphazard.

With such a blitz of the senses, mindfulness took on another dimension that I have yet to integrate. The experiences were so intense, so warm and welcoming, so revelatory of a different culture, a different way of being in family, so continuous that I began to feel like an overstuffed suitcase - packed with one event after another, one array of emotional responses after another that I initially felt needed to breathe and be carefully assimilated until my northern reserve began to break wide open to the ebb and flow of colorful intensity that was Costa Rica.

A friend sent me this article from mindful.org that I love. It speaks to new and experienced meditators alike. Our practice is a continual process of letting go into this new moment and this new moment - with these new moments varying widely in intensity and emotional as well as actual color.

As part of the “Real Love with Sharon Salzberg” event hosted by Women of Wisdom and Mindful, meditation teacher and author Sharon Salzberg discussed the true meaning of love for ourselves, others and life. The following is an excerpt of her talk.

The first meditation instruction I ever got was sit down and feel your breath, just feel the natural flow of your in and out breath. And as many of you have probably heard, I was very disappointed at first. I thought, “Feel my breath? I came all the way to India.” You know, where’s the magical esoteric practice thats going to wipe out all my suffering and make me a totally happy person?

I’d been going to school in Buffalo, New York and I thought, I could’ve stayed in Buffalo to feel my breath. And then I thought, “How hard can this be?” And it was like whoa—it is not so easy. I thought ok, what will it be, like 800 breaths or 900 breaths before my mind starts to wander? And to my absolute amazement, it was one breath and I’d be gone. And I’d be way gone.

What I heard over and over again, what I did not believe actually, was the most important moment in that practice happens after you’ve been gone: after you’ve been distracted, after you’ve fallen asleep, after you’ve just connected. Because it’s really a practice of recovery—how do we let go, and how do we start again?

It’s really a practice of recovery—how do we let go, and how do we start again?

It’s not that easy, because we are so conditioned. Everybody knows from life, we just sit down to think something through, and our minds jump to the past, jump to the future, they’re all over the place. And very often what happens is just this tirade: I can’t believe I’m thinking, no one else in the room is thinking, they’re not thinking how many people live here. Every single one of them is on the verge of enlightenment. I’m the only one who’s thinking, why am I thinking? I’m so stupid, I’m so bad, no one else is thinking. They’re sitting here in bliss. Maybe they are thinking, but they’re thinking beautiful thoughts. I think these stupid thoughts, like I am thinking about roundabouts, who thinks about roundabouts? I don’t work for the highway department ….

That’s usually what we do. And when we fall into that, not only have we extended the length of the distractions somewhat considerably, but it’s so demoralizing. It’s so exhausting, we don’t feel the wherewithal to start over, to come back, to begin again.

So the secret ingredient of that whole process is self-compassion. You don’t need to go on that tirade, and if it begins you can let it go. You can have some kindness towards yourself and just return. That’s why we say meditation is a practice of resilience. We say the healing is in the return, not in never having wandered to begin with.

Love and hatred in the news...

This past week in the news has shown even more starkly how the world is also a sangha. With the rise of technology and social media especially TikTok (who knew? Without a grandchild this would be a lost world to me) (TikTok has become the vehicle by which the Ukrainian people are letting the world know what is going on where they are), we are now where we have never been here before, as Thomas Friedman wrote yesterday, in a world in which so much is known so quickly by so many people about a war in a distant land. The global response has been nothing short of amazing, simply because this war is not happening in the darkness of previous wars but reaching the wider world in real time through images and videos on Youtube, and Facebook and TikTok.

What are some of the lessons for us as meditators as well as human beings so far? We are filled with compassion and fear for the Ukrainian people. Can we also feel compassion for the Russian soldiers who may or may not want to be invading a foreign land? Can we also understand that they feel fear and loneliness and most would much rather be home? We may also be filled with anger and revulsion at their crazed leader. Can we also see the suffering in reaching such a state of isolation and rage and perhaps even helplessness that tearing down the whole establishment is preferable to feeling the shame and humiliation and rejection that is also present? Have we not felt some of those feelings ourselves? And yet, this doesn’t mean we condone or excuse or allow such destructive acts. What it does point to is how we relate to our resolve that this aggression is intolerable.

As we sit and breathe, feeling our bodies and breath in our bodies, a kind of joy arises naturally. The joy of being present in this moment, now. And this joy too exists and can be known. It can be quite subtle, this joy. Don’t go looking for the white elephant in the forest when it may be sleeping quietly on your own hearth. I believe I have mixed a metaphor here but you get the idea. Joy is already present.

Why is this important? Because we can lift up that joy and gather strength and resilience from it. We can allow it to melt our anger and fear and redirect that energy into compassion and resolve.

And then we can extend that compassion to all those around us as well as those far away who are suffering - to both sides of a conflict, to those we fear as well as our friends and allies, to every one in our global sangha. And this joy and this compassion keep us safe from the destructive forces of hatred. They also allow us to do what we can to contribute to a positive solution - out of love, not hatred.

This is a well-known quote from the Dhammapada, a sacred Buddhist scripture:

Hatred never ceases by hatred;
But by love alone is healed.
This is an ancient and eternal law.

This is an ancient and eternal law. Think about it - an ancient and eternal law. This is simply the way it is.

Can we begin to touch this truth and allow it to grow in our hearts?

the flavors of mindfulness...

Mindfulness of the Breath is a concentration practice. It helps the mind focus and become more steady. It calms the mind and the body. And it trains the mind to look more deeply at our experience as it arises. As I have mentioned elsewhere, the breath is not the only focal point we can use. It is a good one for the a number of reasons - it is always with us, it’s portable, it happens in the present, you don’t have to believe anything special, it’s close to the seat of our emotions, and no one has to know you’re practicing. But for some people, the breath is not appropriate - if there is a physical condition involving the breath or some trauma that is triggered by the breath. In such cases, using touch points - left hand, right hand, left foot, right foot, seat, left hand, etc. - can be a very effective alternate to the breath.

Concentration is one of two basic forms of mindfulness practice. The other form is open awareness - mindfulness of experience as it arises and passes away without choosing one experience over another. This second form is practice is how we practice when we bring awareness to the changing sensations in the body, to the arising and passing of emotions, and to our stream of thoughts, moods, and mind states. This is as important for practice as the concentration practice as it holds the key to wisdom.

The essential ingredient for both of these forms of practice is kindness towards self and others, compassion, a basic friendliness that doesn’t judge thoughts for arising, bodily sensations for being uncomfortable, unpleasant events from occurring. This doesn’t mean we have to agree or support everything that arises or happens. It means we accept that the experience is happening. We are mindful without pushing away or grasping after these experiences we like or don’t like. And we also pay attention to experiences we don’t understand and/or are confused by.

This basic kindness toward ourselves and others and this acceptance of our own experience is essential to our wholeness.

And the new year arrives....

Yesterday I learned a family member I hadn’t seen for many years - a much younger cousin who lived in Colorado - was much too close to the wildfires and huge winds that raged through this past week. She and her family had to evacuate. Fire came on three sides of their community and a small area at the end of her street also burned. While their home was spared, there are no services in their community - heat, electricity, phone service. And the fires were dampened only by snow and freezing weather.

This suffering will come close to us on some occasions and seem very distant on others. I find myself saying, but this is different, this is family. And at the same time, thinking, what about all those other people who aren’t? People whose homes actually burned. Those three people who lost their lives. Are they not also family?

This scenario and this reflection has been repeated over and over again for each us. With each new disaster, we are faced with another decision point - to turn away and say, but they are not family, and go on with our lives, or to turn towards and allow our hearts to break again at the suffering of another member of our human and animal family.

Our path is to allow our hearts to break open when we can, to offer ourselves compassion when we can’t, to explore the edges of these states, and to find a way to have a conversation from the depths of our own interiority to the wide world of our exteriority in a way that sustains us with authenticity and connection. This might be an aspiration, not at all a certainty, an intention that can be explored with kindness towards ourselves and all beings. We will also find that we have moments when this aspiration is achievable, has been achieved.

For this, we practice.

I offer a poem from David Whyte. If I have offered this before either here or in MBSR, it is worth the repeated exposure. It is also so very right for this transition into the new year.

“Start Close In” 

by poet David Whyte, David Whyte: Essentials.  c 2020

Start close in

don’t take the second step

or the third,

start with the first

thing

close in,

the step

you don’t want to take.

Start with 

the ground

you know,

the pale ground 

beneath your feet,

your own

way to begin

the conversation.

Start with your own 

question,

give up on other

people's

questions,

don’t let them

smother something

simple.

To hear 

another’s voice,

follow

your own voice,

wait until

that voice

becomes an

intimate private ear

that can

really listen

to another.

Start right now

take a small step

you can call your own

don’t follow

someone else’s

heroics, be humble

and focused,

start close in,

don’t mistake 

that other

for your own.

Start close in,

don’t take 

the second step

or the third,

start with the first

thing

close in,

the step

you don’t want to take.

The editor Gayle Karen Young  Whyte writes in the commentary:   

START CLOSE IN.  This poem was inspired by the first lines of Dante’s Comedia, written in the midst of the despair of exile from his beloved Florence.  It reflects the difficult act we all experience, of trying to make a home in the world again when everything has been taken away; the necessity of stepping bravely again into what looks now like a dark wood, when the outer world as we know it has disappeared, when the world has to be met and in some ways made again from no outer ground but from the very center of our being.  The temptation is to take the second or third step, not the first, to ignore the invitation into the center of our own body, into our grief, to attempt to finesse the grief and the absolutely necessary understanding at the core of the pattern, to forgo the radical and almost miraculous simplification into which we are being invited,  Start close in.

The sun stands still...

Today is the the winter solstice - at 10:59am according to the internet. Solstice literally means the sun stands still - “sol" is the Latin word for Sun, of course, and “sistere" the Latin word for “to stand still.” The winter solstice is the shortest day because the Northern hemisphere tips as far away from the sun as it can get in its orbit around the sun.

What I always found fascinating is that the sun has been setting later by a minute for a full week already. Sunset seemingly pinned at its earliest time, 4:15pm, on Dec. 3 and “stood still” for 10 days. It wasn’t until Dec.13th that the sun set 1 minute later at 4:16pm. Now - today - on Dec. 20th, the sun will set at 4:18pm and set later each day by larger and larger increments. Note: These times may vary slightly in different latitudes but the trend will be the same.

The sun has been rising, on the other hand, later and later through out this same period eating away at our daylight at the beginning of the day and outweighing the increasing daylight the later sunsets provide - 6:54am on Dec. 2nd, 7:03am on Dec. 13th - a full 9 minutes less daylight in the morning over the same 11 day period.

Sunrise hasn’t yet reached its time of “standing still" and won’t until Dec. 27th when the sun rises at 7:11am. Then for the next two weeks, sun rise “stands still” pinned at 7:11am for 5 days, sliding to 7:12am for 5 days and back to 7:11am for 5 days. Finally on January 11th sunrise begins to move out of stand still mode and rises at 7:10am. By then sunset is at 4:36pm - 16 minutes later than it’s nadir - and the perception of later sunsets and longer days is well underway.

This still point of the natural world has been significant throughout human history and probably animal history as well. We are especially reminded of our connection to the natural world, the solar system, the body of the earth and our own bodies during these days. We are nature and nature is us. Practices that support our inhabiting our bodies fully can ground us, can connect us with the sources of renewal and healing within us and in this natural world.

No safe passage...

Every year I give my family books. The idea originally was to sustain the independent bookstore. But their reading interests vary wildly from women writers of the early and mid-twentieth century to Chicago Blues, to books about the climate crisis and books to help us forget the climate crisis. So I am ordering more and more on Amazon for used or hard to find books and feeling rather shameless about it. The salesperson at my Indie bookstore was positively relieved when I offered not to help them stay in business by insisting they find and order the above array in time for Christmas.

One of the books I’m giving is Paul Hawken’s Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation. Many, if not most of us, careen between denial on the one hand and despair on the other, the Scylla and Charybdis of the climate crisis. And yet, as the Buddha said, there is a middle way. The meditation version is our tendency to suppression of feelings on the one hand and to dramatic and reactive expression on the other. Denial and despair.

As Carl Safina writes in a section of Regeneration called “Wild Things,” “A United Nations panel last year released a report roughly summarizing…that a million species face extinction in this century. A million deaths, Stalin reputedly said, is just statistics. Even Mother Teresa said, ‘If I look at the mass I will never act.’ This emotional overwhelm, this paralyzing tsunami to the soul, has been termed, ‘Psychic numbing.” Mother Teresa had added, though, ‘If I look at the one, I will.’”

Paul Farmer of Partners in Health said the same thing, help the one in front of you, the one who touches you and arouses your compassion in this moment.

Safina continues later, “It would help all of us, and the cause of the world’s species, if we think more granularly; speak more specifically; focus on what can be meaningful, and stay observant of the many beauties remaining. Beauty is the single criterion that best captures all our deepest concerns and highest hopes. Beauty encompasses the continued existence of free-living things, adaptation, and human dignity. Really, beauty is simple litmus for the presence of things that matter. …As we make our habitual appeals to practicality, the argument we cannot afford to ignore, the one that must frequently be on our lips is this: We live in a sacred miracle. We should act accordingly.”

The seasons turn again...

…and change abruptly. Black Friday turns to Monday Sales turns to Giving Tuesday and the lights go on, the Christmas music plays in stores, Santa decorations abound. This is a compelling holiday infused with images of warmth, family, snow scenes (especially horse drawn sleighs crossing little bridges to the cottage surrounded by snowy pines), and the smells of cinnamon and nutmeg.

There is also the relentless drumbeat to buy, give, and acquire, to put up lights, write Christmas cards, wrap presents for shipping. It is a time that tests our practice of stopping and letting be, allowing and recognizing, breathing and staying in this present moment.

Let us use our practice to help us stay aligned to our deepest values, not just our to-do list, to make our lists and check them twice to see if they do indeed align with what we care about, and then plan our lives and the expenditure of our precious resources (our time, our energies, our happiness and that of others, our finances) according to our inner messages.

This time we spend in practice helps us all center into this moment and allow all the strings and ties that attempt to bind us loosen and fall to the ground. These opportunities to practice are how we can fill and refill our selves and our energies during a season that seems determined to leave us at the edge of January of the New Year running on fumes and credit cards.

This Thanksgiving season is one of contrasts.

There is the anticipation of a much loved holiday and family celebration with visions of recipes involving nutmeg and cinnamon, apples and nuts, roasted vegetables and 10 ways to cook a turkey, and family and friends gathered in gratitude for another year and each other.

And there is the other more poignant side of that image - those alone by choice or circumstance, those far away or estranged, those struggling to make ends meet, those in nursing homes, prisons, homeless shelters.

And many families are grieving this holiday from the loss of loved ones. There have been a number of deaths in the community this week as well as tragedies we read in the news - older people whose time had come, people whose illnesses finally overwhelmed their bodies, and people older and younger taken by accident or misfortune.

It is these dark and light threads that weave through our lives side-by-side that remind us to be grateful for the days we have, still or busy mornings, afternoons of work, projects or errands, and the precious minutes when we turn toward this breath and then this one. Let us know in our bones that the only time we have is now and honor this moment with our full attention.

May we practice in gratitude and compassion knowing that we, too, are heir to the 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows of this life.

The Impermanence of ...well...everything

It is in the changing of the seasons that the earth reminds us of the impermanence of things. Summer’s zephyrs turn to early hurricanes turn to fall breezes turn to howling winds and back to steady cool air moving and shifting. Leaves let go of trees gently or by force and litter the ground with piles of color. What was green becomes brown and grey.

As evening fell on Saturday, the skies darkened, the winds became fierce, a freight train of a tornado passed noisily by, somewhere in North Kingstown and beyond, stillness returned, and the last of the sunset could be seen in the sky. All in the space of 30 minutes. Sometimes impermanence is more apparent than others.

And our lives are just as changeable - just as tumultuous in one minute, calm and steady in the next. We can see this more clearly when we sit in meditation.

Just as we see the changing world outside, we can see the unending procession of feelings, emotions, sensations within. When there is a period of stillness, does there arise an impulse to hold on to it? With pain and confusion, is there a powerful desire to push it away?

But when we sit and allow these currents to come, pass through and become something else, can we begin to notice the stillness of awareness? The crazy shape-shifting of conditions inside and out, large or more subtle, and the still presence of knowing those conditions that doesn’t become that which it knows?

Joy and Impermanence

We’ve been talking about joy for the last several weeks. And I’m sure some of you have wondered whether this is just papering over the suffering in our lives and in the lives of others.

It’s important to understand the role of impermanence in our lives. Perhaps you’ve noticed in your meditation that the breath is always changing. The in-breath turns into the out-breath. The out-breath turns into the in-breath. This ever-changing process can be mistaken for a solid experience when we call it by a single name - breath - and when we depend on it so completely. But each breath is as different from another as one snowflake is to another.

The classical texts ask us to observe the length of the breath, thereby pointing us to this truth, the impermanence of the breath. "Is this a long breath in?,” the texts ask. "Is this a long breath out? Is this a short breath in? Is this a short breath out?” Some texts go further and ask us to discern, “Is this a warm breath? Is this a cool breath?”

Look to your own experience. How is this breath? This one you are having right now? How is the experience of this breath unique?

Similar to the breath, our experience of joy and suffering is always changing. There is no permanence anywhere. When something good happens, we want it to stay. But alas, it passes on. But when something bad happens, it too passes on. Too quickly in the former case. Way too slowly in the latter.

That is why we’ve been bringing mindfulness to our pleasant experiences - to our moments of joy. To savor them, to feel them in our bodies and bones, to bring curiosity to them, understand their roots. This mindful investigation allows us to recall the experience, feels its reverberations and memory in our bodies, and strengthen our neural connections so that joy becomes a well-traveled pathway in our brains.

So what about suffering? Ah, there’s a whole other conversation.

Or is it?

Blessings

I’ve been talking about our basic need for happiness.
As the Dalai Lama says over and over again, “Everybody wants to be happy. Nobody wants suffering.”
This is a universal truth that could help us see others in a different way.

Imagine someone who really annoys you or perhaps even infuriates you.
There’s plenty of material around.
Pick just one of them and imagine how they make you contract inside
because of what they said once or say over and over again,
how untrue it is or how blind it is
or how they are blaming you for exactly what they themselves have done or said,
how protest arises in you with frustrated and impotent force.

Allow yourself to see how unhappy that person makes you.

Let me rephrase that.

Allow yourself to see how unhappy you become when you think about this person in this way.

Now imagine that in reality you could see this person at home with family or by themselves and you can see this person is hurting.
Perhaps they can’t pay their bills, perhaps they are scared.
Perhaps they are ill or have just lost their mainstay support.
Perhaps they have done something wrong and they know it -
but they can’t admit it because it’s too humiliating and shameful.

Do you have a wish to be able to sit beside them and comfort them?
Or to help them? Or perhaps just to say, yes, I’m hurting too?
Reflect for a moment.

How does it make you feel when you feel those feelings of empathy or compassion towards this person?

* * * * *

I was in the presence of someone a while ago who had let the people around us down in some very human way. Instead of apologizing and moving on, the person was defensive and closed-down - blaming everyone else.

Then this person offered a reading to the gathering - an assignment. Also an assignment, the gathering offered praise.

Gradually, I saw this person begin to thaw out from the mass of resentment that couldn’t look at anyone. They sat up a little straighter, their eyes began to open wider. First the corners of their mouth turned up and then a big smile emerged. The screen lit up.

I was reminded of a poem. I had found it helpful in my chaplaincy days but hadn’t remembered it for a while. Suddenly as I watched this person, this poem came to mind.

I realized I was witnessing the truth of the poem right in that moment.

“The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on the brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing”

― Galway Kinnell, Three Books: Body Rags; Mortal Acts, Mortal Words.

START CLOSE IN

Last time I wrote about starting over with our practice - and how that starting over is one of the larger rhythms of our practice. As we emerge and then retreat and emerge again from the pandemic, we may find our rhythm off-balance, our outer shells softened and suddenly sensitive to the cacophony of the larger world. We may find what we thought was a new normal shifting and disappearing and shifting again in some way changed beyond our basic recognition.

I found this beautiful poem called “Start Close In” by poet David Whyte in his book David Whyte: Essentials* which evokes a deep sense of this.

Start close in
don’t take the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take.

Start with
the ground
you know,
the pale ground
beneath your feet,
your own
way to begin
the conversation.

Start with your own
question,
give up on other
people's
questions,
don’t let them
smother something
simple.

To hear
another’s voice,
follow
your own voice,
wait until
that voice

becomes an
intimate private ear
that can
really listen
to another.

Start right now
take a small step
you can call your own
don’t follow
someone else’s
heroics, be humble
and focused,
start close in,
don’t mistake
that other
for your own.

Start close in,
don’t take
the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take.

The editor Gayle Karen Young Whyte writes in the commentary:
START CLOSE IN. This poem was inspired by the first lines of Dante’s Comedia, written in the midst of the despair of exile from his beloved Florence. It reflects the difficult act we all experience, of trying to make a home in the world again when everything has been taken away; the necessity of stepping bravely again into what looks now like a dark wood, when the outer world as we know it has disappeared, when the world has to be met and in some ways made again from no outer ground but from the very center of our being. The temptation is to take the second or third step, not the first, to ignore the invitation into the center of our own body, into our grief, to attempt to finesse the grief and the absolutely necessary understanding at the core of the pattern, to forgo the radical and almost miraculous simplification into which we are being invited, Start close in.

Whether the world has been changed by a pandemic, storms and fires, or a private tragedy, or even a cruel remark, we all know that urge to take the second step or the third. Come, let’s start close in...together.

* David Whyte: Essentials, Gayle Karen Young Whyte, Many Rivers Press, Langley, WA c2020