It's been really moist these last few days. I imagine this creature has been waiting a long time for the sun to break through.
Being. In Nature
Close your eyes and awareness naturally flows inward and to the other senses. Our daylong retreat on Saturday explored what it means to "be" with nature as a backdrop.
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Much of our day was on a knoll over the Potomac River at River Bend Park. Though it was in the high 80's, every small breeze added to the cocktail of sensations: bird songs, the rush of the river over rocks, the rich humid air, the occasional plane overhead and the irregular drumbeat of Piliated woodpeckers working over dead trees nearby.
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Meditation in nature provides so many doorways to paying attention. One technique is to narrow your awareness to one square foot of forest floor and to notice all the details ... from the diversity of plant life to the movement of bugs.
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A more expansive meditation is to cloud gaze and feel the space in which everything forms, changes and disappears.
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Meditating in nature in a group provides a rich sense of camraderie, a sense of 'being alone together.' The photo above is from a trust walk. One partner is blindfolded, doing walking meditation with the senses open. The other partner is providing caring support. It's a wonderful dance of vulnerability, openess and receiving.
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I'm inspired to do more of these retreats. Stay tuned if you'd like to join in the future. We end at 3:30, providing you time and space to practice the meditation technique, put so eloquently by friend and teacher Eric Kolvig, 'to wander like a happy dog.'
Being ... In Nature
Every time I connect with nature something profound happens. I sense rhythms that run much deeper and stronger than my small concerns and grievances. I'm incredibly fortunate to live so close to the park and the river, especially along the flood plane where the scene changes so dramatically. To that end, Ellen Tynan and I are offering a daylong retreat - actually 9:30 - 3:30 - at River Bend Park. We'll have some solo practice, group practice and some adventures that are guaranteed to heighten the senses. Registration is limited to only 20 people.
We're ending at 3:30 so we can break out and do our own thing, whether we're called to solo practices or some group explorations.
By the way, that brood of ducklings is now down to two extremely vigilant little ducks and their momma.
Little Ones
Babies everywhere. The high water of the Potomac seems to have wiped out a lot of the Canada Geese nests. Only two goslings sighted from afar, but here's a robust little family navigating the floodwaters.
Bye Bye Blue Bells
The Virginia Blue Bells came on strong this year, then got drenched in the recent flood. These woods are normally a field of blue. Since the waters have receded, the remaining blue bells look pretty beat up.
Barbara K Foust 1924 - 2011
My mother died last week. I had the good fortune to sit with her a few hours before she passed. Barbara Kingston Foust of Pittston, Maine, died on April 20, 2011 at Maine General Nursing and Rehab at Glenridge.
She was born on November 16, 1924 to William Frank Kingston and Louise Anne Schucholz Kingston in Melrose, Massachusetts.
She graduated from Russell Sage College in Albany, New York with a degree in nursing.
She and her husband, Earnest Foust, bought a 73-acre farm in Pennsylvania in 1956 and set about raising children, sheep, horses, dogs, cats, quail and the occasional orphaned raccoon.
Her interest in herb gardening led to a chapter she wrote for the book The Rodale Herb Book for Rodale Press.
Referred to sometimes as ‘the woman who dyes at the festival,’ she presented for many years at the Kutztown Pennsylvania Dutch Folk Festival, demonstrating how to work with vegetable dyes and spinning wool. She worked with wool in a variety of forms such as dying, knitting, and weaving. For many years she imported spinning wheels from Scotland and sold dyeing, weaving and spinning supplies.
Her interest in healing led to her becoming a Reiki Master and a dowser. She supported and trained many people in the healing arts.
She is survived by her husband, Earnie Foust, four children, Virginia Louise Mutti and husband Larry, William Foust and wife Linda, Jonathan Foust and wife, Tara Brach, Matthew Foust and wife, Karen, grandchildren Laurel Mutti Patwardhan, Johanna Mutti, Matthew Foust, Jason Foust, David Foust, Sarah Foust, Hannah Foust, Allison Foust and great-grandchildren Molly Foust and Ryan Foust.
She liked to tell a story about a time when she was a little girl in elementary school. A solemn old man came one day and all the children lined up to shake his hand. He explained that he, as a civil war veteran, had once shaken hands with a veteran from the Revolutionary War, and they now, as children were only one hand shake away from the birth of the nation. If you’ve been touched by Barbara you were probably touched not only by her kindness, but a sense of timelessness.
Earnie is well and living in Pittston, Maine with Matthew, Karen, Sarah, Hannah, Alison, Reuben the dog, Ellie the cat and their goldfish, who has gone through a number of name-changes and who's name is currently up for debate.
His contact information is below:
Earnie Foust 580 Wiscasset Road, Apt 1 Pittston, ME 04345-5312 207-582-8615
Meditating in the Middle of War
Rats! I still can't upload images! I first met Steve at an Intensive I co-lead at Kripalu Center. He wanted a deep retreat before redeploying to Afghanistan. I was touched by his dedication and sincerity and wondered how he was going to manage keeping a practice alive in a war zone, especially given the responsibilities he had.
We've stayed in loose touch over the years. I ran across this blog post the other day which filled in some details of what is like to be in a war zone as an American soldier practicing meditation.
This is entitled An American Buddhist Practicing in Afghanistan.
Winter Scenes
Winter solstice images:
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Feeder Raider
I fell asleep after my morning meditation and woke up to the sound of Tara laughing hysterically downstairs. I'd relocated a feeder and it was just low enough for a squirrel to do some chin ups for breakfast.
Morning Light
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Two distinct qualities of illumination on two separate mornings.
The more I explore photography the more I'm reminded of the philosophy, "Be a seeker of light."
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The Coots are back for the winter. They must have showed up yesterday afternoon. They'll be here through Spring.
Two Coots. Way cute.
A Heron hunting just below the dam.
Morning light bouncing off the river. (Not retouched in any way, but taken with a 300mm lens.)
Light and Death
Low morning light and fall foliage:
Awareness, Energy and Healing
I'm sitting in a hotel room sensing the results of 11 days of this Qigong Healing Intensive. This was not a 'practice' intensive, though we certainly put in many hours of practice. This was a 'healing' intensive. Most of the participants were working with serious health issues ranging from cancer to advanced Lymes, to neurological disorders, to Parkinsons to adrenal exhaustion.
Buddhism speaks of the Heavenly Messengers and how they can profoundly help us wake and and reframe our lives. Sickness, Old Age and Death, when we truly 'let them in,' open up new worlds.
I certainly felt the poignancy of life and death in this intensive. Participants were deeply, sincerely and perhaps even urgently engaged into every aspect of the practices. One woman came just for an afternoon on her birthday. We found out she'd died the next day. Apparently about a year and a half earlier she was told death was just a few days away. She came to an intensive, experienced a profound resurgence of energy and gave herself fully to the practices. In the next year and a half, she enjoyed a deep healing with her family, an abundance of love and gratitude and died in peace.
Beyond just learning the flow, we did intensive practices to stimulate the movement of chi (energy), including using sound healing techniques.
At first, the idea of chanting specific sounds while visualizing organ systems seemed a bit esoteric, but I found myself getting deeply absorbed into the vibrations and inner felt-sense shifting. I had done chanting for years in the ashram, but never in this fashion, directing the sound currents inwardly with intense concentration.
Visualization is key to these practices. "Where the attention goes, the energy flows," is a standard saying in mind-body traditions, and our visualizations were both inner focusing and quite literally 'out there.' We visualized the spiraling Milky Way both outside and inside. We visualized the body as a column of light surrounded by oceans of light. We visualized our spinal bone marrow alive and pulsing and moving through every part of the body. We visualized energy flowing from the pads of our index fingers pouring into the center of the brain.
It was fun. It was absorbing. And it works. At least in the sense that it opens the frame of awareness. When I feel the aliveness of my body and connect it with the aliveness of the spinning galaxies, my sense of 'what's wrong' definitely shifts.
How will this affect my daily practice? I'm confident I'll do many of the exercises daily. I came to really appreciate the dreaded 'wall squats' - a full squat facing a wall, creating a 'spinal wave' as one stands. A few of these opens up this very long spine of mine in a way that both restores my energy and balances the vertebrae. The form, which takes anywhere from 30-60 minutes, is a choreography of movement that absolutely helps settle my mind. Particularly for times when I'm feeling scattered, I know this will be a great tool.
I appreciate more than ever the 'form' of a practice, particularly when the guiding instructions are to 'merge the form and the formless.'
For more on Mington's work, click here.
The Rally
My friend Corey invited me to drive to his house in Arlington to ride our bikes to the rally on Saturday. A five mile peddle into town on my new bike on an adventure! Bliss. As Jon Stewart said, “I’m not exactly sure why we are here,” but I enjoyed everything about the day. During our bike ride down past the Pentagon and across Memorial Bridge we shared in the joviality and spirit of celebration with the mix of pedestrians and cyclists streaming downtown.
The crowd got more and more dense as we made our way to the mall and after a while we were forced to walk our bikes with the throng. Chaining our bikes to a tree I momentarily found myself fearful of leaving my precious new two-wheeler so exposed. But this was a day of non-fear, so I let it go.
I’m somewhat agoraphobic. One reason why I dislike being in crowds is that at over 6’6” with my boots on, my presence automatically generates ill will for those behind me. Corey and I magically found a spot in front of some people sitting down, so that allayed my self-consciousness. They weren’t going to see anything anyway, and weren’t expecting to.
Two women standing next to us were from San Diego. During the opening music there was a spirited discussion about the last World Series game. It felt so ... Wholesome and American.
The rally itself was a mix of good humor, some brilliant humor, great satire and little morality plays exploring the dance of fear and rationality. With so many years living first in the Peace Corps, then in an ashram and now not a big TV watcher, many of the cultural references went zinging right by me, but the spirit of event touched me in many ways.
Moments of little rushes: The enormity and diversity of the crowd. The good cheer and camraderie. The readiness to laugh and the openess to irony. The signs. At some times the sound level was too low, particularly way, way far away, so a chant of ‘Louder! Louder!’ was passed from the back to the front, a distance of many blocks.
Perhaps the most poignant moment for me was at the end when the crowd began to disperse. We moved slowly together, shuffling away from the mall and when I came up to our bikes, they were on their sides, dusty and looked like they’d been trampled on.
I immediately felt anger and started lurching them upright. An Indian man said, “These bikes are locked.”
I replied in a tight voice, “This are our bikes.”
Once I got the bikes upright and saw nothing was damaged beyond dirt and grit all over them, I noticed two young girls in the tree above. I assumed that since the bikes had fallen over, they couldn’t get down. They looked a little frightened.
I figured this man was their father. He was a pretty small guy. Without thinking, I stepped up to the tree and said, “Here, I’ll help you.” I reached up and slipped my hands under the first girl's armpits. She let go of the tree limb and I pulled her toward me, swung her to my side and eased her down to the ground.
The second girl was a little more fearful. I assured her I wasn’t going to let her fall. Eventually, she too let go of the limb and I managed to help her down, though her weight surprised me and she came down a lot faster than I expected.
Around that point I noticed my anger was gone and I started doubting that they were responsible for knocking over the bikes. For whatever reason, the family was either eager to dispel any tension or simply in their own rush of exhuberation. Within a very short period of time, we were bantering about the day and how it went, relaxed and smiling a lot. The father spoke with an Indian accent, but the girls, pre-teens, had strong American accents. I could see how close the family was. They took a photo of me, commemorating me ‘rescuing them from the tree.’ I felt almost reluctant to say goodbye.
That last encounter summarized my day. One of my worst fears was confirmed: I'd discovered my new bike on it’s side and apparently messed up. In minutes I had moved from
1) fear and anger to
2) seeing to someone needing help to
3) responding to
4) seeing beyond my sense of the ‘other’ to
5) deep appreciation and connectedness.
In those minutes I had shifted from 'my bike' and 'my anger' to something far more spacious and magical.
In the absence of "I" and "mine," the mystery arises.
Big Skies
Morning Web Site
Morning Images
Spectacular light recently. A few images from the river.
An Insight into Concentration and Mindfulness
This week I gave a dharma talk on Concentration and Mindfulness, two distinct aspects of meditation training that help cultivate an awakened heart and mind. Concentration can be seen as the lens of a camera. Mindfulness is the film ... or now the ‘chip’ that notices and records what is there. I had a great insight into this recently.
This last weekend I was at a Quaker wedding held in an unheated Quaker Meetinghouse in north central Pennsylvania.
My niece Laurel Mutti married Kaustubh Patwardhan as the Quakers say, ‘in the presence of family and friends’.
I was asked to be a photographer, so I went at it, armed with my my wonderful 70-230 and 17-75 lenses and a backup camera. I shot about 500 shots and 20 video clips.
Through the day and into the evening I was focused on ‘my job,’ framing shots, monitoring the light, trying to get a balance of images and visually telling the story in a way the newly married couple and their families would like. I knew I got some good shots and I had a great time.
Being the photographer, though, I am familiar with a sense of being somewhat removed and in the role of the observer and witness.
It wasn’t until I edited the images on Monday that I discovered a whole emotional side to the images I’d recorded. A squeeze of a hand, an inter-generational hug, genuine laughter between old friends, the sensitivity and caring present through the event touched me in unexpected ways.
Concentration is our capacity to focus. Mindfulness is that which monitors and registers our relationship to whatever is in the lens.
I’d been concentrated, but I came to recognize I’d not been all that aware of my relationship to what I was focused on and how I was impacted by everything I was viewing through the lens.
Meditation is 1) Noticing what is happening while it's happening and 2) Noticing our relationship to what is happening. Concentration and Mindfulness are two wings of the practice that work in concert ... inevitably bringing us into greater aliveness. The key to cultivating mindfulness is to relax and deeply receive the experience of the moment.
That is the art of living.
A New Wave of Meditation Mentors
What teachers have inspired, touched and influenced your practice? When you stop and think about it, chances are there are those in your life who made a positive impression on you either through their knowledge, their dedication, their compassion or their capacity to be an empathic listener.
One of the reasons I stayed so immersed and associated in a spiritual community was because when I was down, there always seemed to be someone who would inspire me. Hopefully, I might have returned the favor.
As my old guru used to say, “Company is stronger than will power.” For that reason, we are revamping IMCW’s Mentoring Program. Pretty soon, if you like, you’ll be able to sign up to meet periodically with a mentor to discuss your practice and how you are applying the principles of mindfulness in your life.
Last Sunday we had a retreat to gather as a community and look at how we can organize ourselves to be available to those interested in deepening their practice.
We’ll be launching later in the year after Tara completes her Introduction to Meditation Series. Stay tuned. If you are interested in being a mentor down the road, we’ll have more information on the IMCW website.
The DC Global Mala Gathering
Out of the last many months of too-dry weather, Sunday was wet and we weren't sure how many hard core yogis and yoginis would show up at Meridian Park to listen to a talk and then do 108 Sun Salutations as part of a community-inspired fund-raising event to sponsor Anahata Grace. I think about 80 folks showed up in the drizzle. I gave a Dharma talk to start off the day, then folks headed outside. By the end of the talk the rain lifted and by the end of the yoga, the skies had cleared.
If you feel inspired to support this work of supporting teachers to go to underprivileged areas to offer yoga and meditation you can follow this link.
Many thanks to all the volunteers who made this day happen.