Deepening the Wonder

This week's topic was on The Heavenly Messengers:  Sickness, Old Age and Death.  When we are touched by them, our lives take new shape.
Below is poem from Hafiz.  Below that, the image of a decaying yearling deer I came across on one of my river walks recently.
I find the the image of form dissolving back to the elements both horrific and wonderous.

Deepening The Wonder

Death is a favor to us,

But our scales have lost their balance.

The impermanence of the body

Should give us great clarity, Deepening the wonder in our senses and eyes

Of this mysterious existence we share

And are surely just traveling through.

If I were in the Tavern tonight, Hafiz would call for drinks

And as the Master poured, I would be reminded

That all I know of life and myself is that

We are just a midair flight of golden wine Between His Pitcher and His Cup.

If I were in the Tavern tonight,

I would buy freely for everyone in this world

Because our marriage with the Cruel Beauty

Of time and space cannot endure very long.

Death is a favor to us,

But our minds have lost their balance.

The miraculous existence and impermanence of

Form

Always makes the illumined ones

Laugh and sing.

Emptiness and Form

Form and Emptiness

Meditation and Mediation

A definition of meditation I use all the time:

"Meditation is noticing what's happening - while it's happening ... and noticing your relationship to what's happening."

This definition can be most helpful when it comes to relationships and conflict.  We are more inclined to look outward rather than inward.  When conflict arises with another, we tend to skip paying attention what's going on inside and focus more on the externals.

The practice of RAIN helps immensely in this process of self-inquiry:

R - Recognize and Realize what is actually going on

A - Explore what it means to Accept or Allow your experience just as it is

I - Investigate or be Intimate with the experience.  What do you feel inside?  What are you believing?

N - As you rest in awareness of what is moving and shifting inside, Non-Identification or Natural Awareness can help cultivate a shift in your relationship to the issue

This model helps us recognize more intimately what is actually going on and how to be with it.  How we respond to conflict can be profoundly influenced by this practice.

Consider this model, a hybrid of NonViolent Communication, Mindfulness and Whole Messages. .  When you encounter conflict with another you might reflect on these inquiries:

Observable Behavior: What are the facts?  Describe the situation without evaluation, judgement or analysis.   Can you describe what happened in a way that the other person would agree?

Thoughts:  What does this lead you to believe?  What ‘stories’ arise?

Feelings:  How does this make you feel?   What sensations and emotions do you feel inside?

Needs: What are you needing?   What needs can you identify that are unfulfilled?

The NVC model goes on to form a Request that might bring you and the other person into greater harmony. (In this model, the other person is left free to honor or decline the request.)

We are constantly buffeted by the "8 Worldly Winds" of pleasure and pain, praise and blame, loss and gain, fame and disgrace.  Each of us is in a constant inner battle to maintain a sense of equanimity  (or simply trying to hold it together as best we can).

Taking ownership for our inner experience can begin to open us to empathy for another.  We can begin again to open to the inner-connectivity of our lives.

Happy for No Reason: I Dreamed a Dream

This viral video has been touching hearts around the world.  Quite wonderful.  As a friend who passed it on to me said:

It makes me cry every time I see it. There is some sort of deeply moving lesson there about judging mind...
Update:  I can't seem to get the embedded video to work.  You might try the link here.
Enjoy.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY]
Hat tip to Ellen.

Everything Taking Too Long

Life is short - and then you die.

WASHINGTON—An overwhelming sense of restlessness and impatience engulfed the U.S. this week when citizens determined that everything—the morning commute, phone conversations, getting a table at Chili's, making coffee, commercial breaks, everything—was taking entirely too long.

This piece from the Onion kind of nails it.

Hat tip to Corey.

Migraines

I had a wonderful weekend leading the "Buddha and Body" retreat at Kripalu Center.  About ten minutes after the program ended I hopped in the car and made my way to Connecticut for our annual meditation festival at Watering Pond Yoga hosted by my dear friends Dorothy and Michael.  After a wonderful gathering, a great meal and a good sleep I headed back down to DC in pouring rain in the morning.  The tension of driving in such driving rain kicked in a headache which led to a migraine. I'm grateful for those rest areas on the New Jersey turnpike and for a car (Honda Element) which can be converted into a nap zone.  In the midst of the rain and a free floating migraine I found myself entranced by this image of rain falling on the sunroof.  Kind of trippy.

rain-on-sunroof

Call Me By My True Names

A reflection of clouds at the river's edge.

The reading from class this week exploring 'self and world.'  From Thich Nhat Han.

Call Me by My True Names

Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow because even today I still arrive.

Look deeply: I arrive in every second to be a bud on a spring branch, to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile, learning to sing in my new nest, to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower, to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry, in order to fear and to hope. The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that are alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river, and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time to eat the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond, and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence, feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones, my legs as thin as bamboo sticks, and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat, who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate, and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my hands, and I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to, my people, dying slowly in a forced labor camp.

My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all walks of life. My pain if like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names, so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once, so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names, so I can wake up, and so the door of my heart can be left open, the door of compassion.

The Life of the Buddha

It's easy to forget, when we are caught in the busy-ness of our lives, that we are on a journey.  Though we may not realize it, we are constantly growing, adapting and refining our understanding of what is around us and our relationship to it. In reflecting on the Life of the Buddha and how it mirrors our own journey, I was thinking about how plain and straightforward I could make it. This is probably an over-simplification, but here is my thinking:

  1. We start off feeling protected and part of the whole. Womb service is great.  Everything we need.  As children, many (certainly not all) of us have for some period of time a certain degree of safety and sense of feeling loved.  A time of innocence.
  2. Something goes wrong. We don't get what we need.  We have what in the Forum training is called "A Break in Belonging."  The sweetness of a protected life is shattered and we realize we are on our own.  For many, this happens early and gets reinforced when we hit the big disappointments: failed relationships, unrequited love and the self-doubt that settles into our psyche.
  3. We shift to a strategy of austerity.  We resolve to fix what's wrong. We focus on self-improvement. We decide to 'whip ourselves into shape.' We bear down on the degree we want. We make huge sacrifices of time and energy toward our job or career.
  4. We start to wake up. We begin to pause and question our motivations and ask ourselves what is most important.
  5. We surrender to what is. Rather than chasing something 'out there,' we begin to explore what is already here.  We begin to unravel the tensions and stress that hold us back from being fully present.
  6. We awaken. To some degree, we begin to recognize the power of shifting from the realm of thinking to engaging into moment-to-moment awareness.  We begin to live from an intention of cultivating greater presence to what is actually going on.
  7. Life goes on. From a place of greater inner freedom, we move through the world less bound, more prone to happy attacks and surges of gratitude.  We engage into action less driven by greed, aversion and delusion, and more from compassion.

Many of us are familiar with the story of the Buddha.  (I wonder how many people think the Buddha actually looked like Keanu Reaves?)

The first part of his life he was carefully and thoughtfully protected from the suffering of life.  His "rude awakening" was encountering the Four Visitors of Sickness, Old Age, Death and Renunciation.  He went off and engaged into six years of austerities, ultimately realizing that austerity would not lead to liberation.  He realized the Path of the Middle Way - neither indulging nor denying the senses.  Neither grasping nor pushing away anything that arises.

His practice was what we practice today:  bringing awareness and presence to the play of feeling, thought, moods and states, noting what arises, what falls away and to our relationship to this constantly shifting constellation of phenomena.

After his awakening he travelled and taught for forty years, freely engaging all who sought his teaching, summing his message as 'teaching about suffering and the end of suffering.'

In that same way, I think each of us is waking up to the suffering in and around us.  We are coming to know more and more intimately the painful result of greed, hatred and delusion.

Each of us in our own way is called to pause, slow down and ask ourselves what, truly, is most important.

little-buddha