Wind Singing Trees

A Ritual to Read to Each Other

If you don’t know the kind of person I am
and I don’t know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant’s tail,
but if one wanders the circus won’t find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider–
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give–yes or no, or maybe–
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

~ William Stafford

I read this beautiful poem in the wondrous book, Second Suns: Two Doctors and Their Amazing Quest to Restore Sight and Save Lives, by David Oliver Relin.  The book is about the work of Nepali doctor, Sanduk Ruit, and his American partner Dr. Geoffrey Tabin.  Their organization, The Himalayan Cataract Project (HCP), performs low-impact cataract operations in the developing world, installing artificial lenses to allow blind people to see again, usually overnight.

The author describes his adventures following these two remarkable surgeons as they perform amazing feats of healing in some of the poorest regions of the world.  He tells Dr. Ruit’s story of growing up in a remote Nepali village and how he came to be a world renown eye surgeon.  He describes Dr. Tabin’s amazing adventures as a world class mountain climber – including his summit of Mt. Everest.

It broke my heart to learn of the author’s 2013 suicide.  He was so passionate about investigating and reporting on how these two doctors brought their amazing healing vision to life.   He accompanied them through very difficult conditions in Nepal and Ethiopia.  I am grateful to Relin for writing such an amazing account of how HCP doctors performed some 266,000 successful operations in remote parts of the planet.

Truly a light in the world’s darkness.

Morning on Deep Creek Trail

All real living is meeting . . . Martin Buber

This morning I was looking for some inspiration from Roshi Norman Fischer.  He’s a poet, writer, teacher and Zen master.  His writing and teaching are informed by his experience of being a spouse, father and friend.  I was seeking him out after reading his beautiful book about growing up: Taking Our Places.  The book describes his years long mentorship of a group of teenage boys.  I was drawn to his approach of not having a specific agenda other than supporting these young people in their search for meaning and purpose at a pivotal time in their lives.  They created the group together and it took shape as a living thing which grew to meet the boys’ needs.  Here are a few tastes from the book:

We are all struggling with our own maturity, none of us can claim the job is finished to satisfaction.  But we feel for each other, and that feeling softens and opens us, driving more room for us to grow.  Although the process of maturing is endless, and all of us are in the midst of it, we can help each other through our human feeling, which is always wiser than we are.  . . .

. . . I eventually came to  see that, paradoxically, my vow never to grow up and my vow as a Zen practitioner to become mature myself and to work to mature others were quite compatible.  In fact . . . these two vows were necessary mirrors for each other.  “Not to grow up,” not to drop the endless search for truth because it is too difficult or too risky or too impractical or too costly, really meant “to grow up,” to become a person capable of true responsibility and real love because true responsibility and real love depend on a constant involvement with the truth. . . .

What is true maturity, anyway?  It’s a good question, one that needs to be pondered for a long time.  There are answers to life’s most important questions, but they are never final; they change as we change.  Maybe true maturity is finding a way of keeping such questions alive throughout our lifetime.  For when there are no more questions, we stop maturing and begin merely to age.

The beautiful feeder tree or nursing log I filmed seemed to illustrate the endless cycle of growing, maturing and touching each other in feeling, intimacy.  According to Wikipedia, “a nurse log is a fallen tree which, as it decays, provides ecological facilitation to seedlings.  Broader definitions include providing shade or support to other plants. . . . Recent research into soil pathogens suggests that in some forest communities, pathogens hostile to a particular tree species appear to gather in the vicinity of that species, and to a degree inhibit seedling growth. Nurse logs may therefore provide some measure of protection from these pathogens, thus promoting greater seedling survivorship.”

Okay – these are words which can only point at the tree.  Being there I was able to experience the tree – the shared space of change, growth, death and decay.   Tree body, human body, wind body, water body.  Moist greenness, crispy brownness.  Wind currents, moisture vapors.  And then, there is ineffable feeling.

I’m so grateful to be alive.  Thank you nurse tree, thank you Roshi Norman, thank you Zen.

The Matrix of Love

tumblr_m7kynnDD2k1qlire5o1_500In our Sunday Introduction to Meditation Class at Yoga Bliss we returned to the practice of building a posture of awareness.  Our bodies come to express the quality of attention we are cultivating with our minds.  We explored narrowing and broadening our focus using the breath as our home base.  We always begin with the physical sensations of breathing and then notice other sensations as they arise.  We investigate experience with bare attention, nothing added.

Then we notice our feeling response to sensation – whether it’s pleasant, unpleasant or simply neutral.  What is the direct experience of pleasant feeling?  Is “pleasant” in the body, the mind, the heart?  Does our response arise in thought forms?  Do these forms have bodies?  Can you explore the body of a thought?  Then we notice emotions – their arising and passing away.  What and how do anger, joy, irritation, boredom and love live in our experience?

As we open ourselves in pausing we come to know that nothing is still or solid.  All experience changes and it’s hard to find a lasting essence.  Even the “me” we navigate the world with is ever changing and can’t be known completely.  This realization is tinged with sadness and perhaps a sense of deep appreciation for the gift of life.

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