How My Son Ruined My Life

James Baraz just published a book called "Awakening Joy" and runs an online "Awakening Joy" course.  You may have heard him when he speaks in DC or when he's been part of a retreat with IMCW.  I did my Community Dharma Leadership training through Spirit Rock with him. The following is a clip from his 91.5 year old mother's talk with his Awakening Joy course in the San Francisco area recently on how he (and mindfulness) ruined her genetic propensity to worry.

[youtube]FRbL46mWx9w[/youtube]

,

The Spring Retreat

,

We are coming to a close of the Spring Meditation Retreat.

When you consider your options to step away from your busy life for a week of stripped down simplicity, do consider Club Meditation vs. Club Med.

All the basic are here:  great food, a wonderful environment, a spacious schedule and caring support for your practice. While we are all refraining from speaking, practitioners have an interview with a teacher every other day and in the silence, the support from those around you is palpable.   There is definitely a feeling that we’re in this together.

I’ve often imagined I’d feel lonely on a retreat, but it’s quite the opposite. There is a collective sharing of the ‘good’ days and ‘bad’ days, the ‘good’ sits and ‘bad’ sits.  We each have periods where we feel tight and constricted other times when we feel spacious and gracious.

After awhile the labels of good and bad drop away and I simply feel how everything changes.  The low morning light turns bright and blazing.  Bird song is busy in the morning, goes into a mid-day lull and picks up at night.  The moon is in a slightly different place each night.

James Taylor said, “The secret of life is enjoying the passing of time.”  Taking it one step further, maybe it’s just being the passing of time.

Memories Lie

I forget who it was who said something along the following:

"We spend most of our time thinking about sex, except for act itself, when our minds tend to wander."

When we really pay attention to the moment by moment rising phenomena, what is true and real?  The following, as stated so well by Tracy, who passed this on to me, is "no great surprise to meditators, though apparently a shocking revelation to scientists."

Read more on this here.

(Thanks, Tracy.)

Oh, Death

This week's class was on "The Heavenly Messengers." When sickness, old age and death touch us, our lives can be transformed.  As a great sage once said when asked of the greatest wonder of the world, he replied, "That everyone dies ... and no one thinks they will."

I thought I'd share a few of the Death Poems I read.  This is entitled "Zazen on Ching't'ing Mountain:"

The birds have vanished down the sky. Now the last cloud drains away. We sit together, the mountain and me, until only the mountain remains.

I love the following from Dogen.  How could one better describe impermanence?

To what shall I liken the world? Moonlight, reflected In dewdrops, Shaken from a crane’s bill.

Happy For No Reason: Benny Lava

I let this sit as a 'draft post' for a few months debating whether this really qualifies as a 'Happy for No Reason' video. At first I thought the subtitling somewhat racist or at minimum, arrogant.  Then I started laughing and appreciating the connection between the 'translation' and the song.

I read somewhere - I can't remember where - how some of the best dancing in the world comes from these productions.  Having watched this more than once, I'm impressed with the skill and coordination of these dancers.  Whatever you might think of the production (or the subtitles), you can appreciate the energy they put out.

Here you go:  Benny Lava

[youtube]ZA1NoOOoaNw[/youtube]

Peaking Blue Bells

The Virginia Blue Bells have officially peaked.  Here at River Bend Park, because of the annual flooding and accumulation on sand here on the inside of bend of the Potomac, we have the ideal micro climate for them.  In case you missed 'em, here's a healthy specimen - one out of many acres of them. One of the first waves of Spring.

Mindfulness and Trauma

I had a wonderful opportunity to present a daylong seminar at Marymount University this last Friday on "Focusing and Mindfulness to Treat Trauma and PTSD." We had a wonderful collection of graduate students, clinicians and hard core meditators in attendance. I was excited and a bit enthralled to be able to speak to this convergence of mind/body and contemplative traditions to treat serious trauma.  As we look at practical, effective ways to deal with such emotional and psychic suffering, the perennial teachings are emerging as guides.

My entrée into the day was telling the story of my dad, who shipped off to WWII at age 18.  By the time he got back, waiting for his 21st birthday, he'd been wounded twice, was MIA, was twice awarded medals for 'most days of sustained combat without reinforcement.'  He spent two and a half years in Northern Europe sleeping outside - the only time he had a roof over his head was when he was in the hospital and one night in barn somewhere in Southern France when he got separated from his unit.

I found out from my aunt last year that he woke up the household screaming in bed most nights on his return.  He never spoke about his experience until many, many year later when it started to spill out.  Horrendous stories of finding his friends dead in courtyards; leaving his foxhole to get an infected thumb checked out only to find they'd taken a direct hit; being told to 'clear out a village' with two other GI's and coming back as the sole survivor; his boat, crossing the Rhine at 2:00AM on the invasion of Germany taking a direct hit and him being pulled out of the water unconscious, his arm dislocated.

We've all taken hits.  No matter the degree of the intensity of our suffering, the way through seems to be our capacity to name what is there ... and to find a way to be with it.

Suffering also wakes us up.

My father went on to tap into the GI bill and became a college professor.  He became a Quaker, developed a course still offered called the "Literature of Peace." He was a draft counselor during the Vietnam War and is an active, committed pacifist, though he still gets incredibly pissed when anyone says 'some wars are good wars.'

84 and Thriving

Walking Meditation

As you've probably heard when instructed in walking meditation, we realize eventually that we're not going anywhere. Once we 'get' that, we can settle into being present to the moment in the senses.

There are many techniques:  counting steps, naming the movement of 'lifting,' 'moving,' 'placing,' coupling breath with movement, sensing the whole body as it makes it's way through space.

Here's classic form for your viewing pleasure:

[youtube]S9Mfh7rAbtI[/youtube]

(Thanks, Christine.)