Our Moving into Meditation class focused on the very human experience of not wanting things to be the way they are. Our “not wanting” things to be as they are often adds anguish to life’s inevitable challenges. We explored how We Can’t Get No Satisfaction, the third chapter title of Toni Bernhard‘s book: How to Wake Up: A Buddhist Inspired Guide to Navigating Joy and Sorrow. We drew inspiration from Jack Kornfield’s book, No Time Like the Present: Finding Freedom, Love and Joy Right Where You Are. Jack offers suggestions we can use to free ourselves from ways of thinking that narrow our choices and keep us stuck. Poet Jane Hirshfield ‘s words – imaginative and playful – invoke creative ways of accepting life just as it is.
Author Archives: catherine
Identity & Self
Our Moving into Meditation class focused on the elusive nature of identity. In our mindfulness practice we come to recognize that we are so much more than who we think we are. We considered The Self as Ever Shifting flow, the second chapter title of Toni Bernhard‘s book: How to Wake Up: A Buddhist Inspired Guide to Navigating Joy and Sorrow. Poet Jane Hirshfield invites us to surrender our assertions of identity. She reminds us that we are embraced by the world in so doing. Finally, poet Yi-Young Lee‘s elegant poetry invites us to spread our wings and fly.
Li-Young Lee and his parents, Chinese expatriates, fled from Jakarta in 1959 to escape anti-Chinese persecution. (To learn more about Li-Young you can read Paul T. Corrigan’s Conversation with Li-Young Lee.)
Adventures in Ethnobotany
This Wednesday I started my six month Ethnobotany Apprenticeship with Earthwalk Northwest. I’ve been anticipating this adventure for months – delving into some of the required texts: Thomas Elpel’s Botany in a Day, Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast, by Jim Pojar and Andy MacKinnon and Medicinal Plants of the Pacific Northwest by Michael Moore. I carried them on our trips to the Yakima River Canyon to help identify plants. I identified this beautiful Sagebrush as Artemesia, part of the Aster Subfamily, Chamomile Tribe, Anthemideae. And so I am welcomed to the world of botanical taxonomy. Botany in a Day (BIAD) is a great introduction to the “patterns method of plant identification.” Washington Native Plant Society is another wonderful resource that includes The Starflower Foundation educational resources and Image Herbarium. This site has been a treasure to me as a newbie. It offers great ideas for introducing kids to the natural world from grades K to middle school.
My first day in class with instructor Karen Sherwood was a joy. I met our class teaching assistant, JT and fellow class mates Janie and Jen. Karen gave us an overview of the journey, describing our weekly activities and foraging trips.
She outlined gathering guidelines which are based on common sense, gratitude and reciprocity. We created an offering bag of sweetgrass, sage and cedar to be given in thanks for the plant material we take for our studies.
Karen explained that we will be creating our own plant press and herbarium. The plant press will be portable and easily used in the field. Here is the cover of JT’s herbarium – a mammoth collection of native plants, pressed and fixed onto pages documenting habitat, ecology and virtues – truly a labor of love.
We will also be developing a relationship with a particular plant ally for the length of the course.Our Plant Ally Project will be a deep study of the plant, drawing it with leaf, flower, fruit and seed. Research will cover its scientific characteristics as well as traditional and current uses. We will explore these uses and then present our findings at the end of the program. I know my friend already: Populis balsamifera, Black Cottonwood. It grows in my backyard along the Raging River and throughout the Snoqualmie Valley. It’s unmistakable scent is often on my body by way of massage oils and salves.
Karen and Frank, Earthwalk cofounder and instructor, hosted a beautiful Wildfoods Feast for us. The dishes included the wild foods that Karen and Frank had gathered over the past months on land and sea. Here is our memorable menu:
Bullwhip Kelp Pickles
Alder Smoked Cheese
Poached Sicilian Sea Bass dressed on Nereocystis & Sargassum Seaweeds
Indian Popcorn made from local wild seaweed
Nettled Eggs
Land and Sea-weed Salad
Chantrelle and Morrell Mushroom Barley Soup, accented with Stinging Nettle
Acorn Flour Cakes
Elderberry Jelly
Rosemary Shortbread Cookies
Chocolate Nori Cake with Elder-Plum Glaze
Let the feast begin!
Everything Changes
Our Moving into Meditation class focused on the ever changing nature of life. In our mindfulness practice we break society’s spell of feeling we are being carried away. We experience a wholeness upon savoring each moment with full attention. We drew inspiration from meditation teacher and writer, Toni Bernhard‘s book: How to Wake Up: A Buddhist Inspired Guide to Navigating Joy and Sorrow. Toni contends that by embracing life – as it is – we have the potential to realize well-being. In her article, Meditation in Motion, meditation and yoga instructor Jill Satterfield encourages us to explore full awareness of our bodily experience to wake up and be with what is. Finally, Jane Hirshfield‘s exquisite poetry takes us deeper into our creatureliness.
Mystery & Transformation in Meditation
Our Moving into Meditation class completed our study of Frank Ostaseski’s wonderful book the Five Invitations. In today’s class the 5th invitation to cultivate “don’t know mind” became an exploration of mystery and transformation.
In realizing our selves as mystery we open the door to awe and wonder. We truly live with uncertainty and touch the elemental feeling of fear. Voices of poets, naturalists and writers joined with Frank in encouraging us to be embrace and engage change and impermanence.
When Death Comes
Mary Oliver – earth inhabitant, particular and real, ever curious, left so quietly . . .
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it’s over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
~~~~~~~ Mary Oliver
Perfect Trust
The Great Way runs
to left, to right,
the ten thousand things
depending on it,
living on it,
accepted by it.
Doing its work,
it goes unnamed.
Clothing and feeding
the ten thousand things,
it lays no claim on them
and asks nothing of them.
Call it a small matter.
The ten thousand things
return to it,
though it lays no claim on them.
Call it great.
So the wise soul
without great doings.
achieves greatness.
Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching
translated by Ursula K. Le Guin
Witnessing the Sacred
Our Moving into Meditation class drew inspiration from the end of Frank Ostaseski’s wonderful book the Five Invitations. In today’s class we explored the 5th invitation to cultivate “don’t know mind.” Cultivating this mind state challenges us to traverse the ever-changing ground of uncertainty. It awakens us to what we hold most dear, to what is sacred. We listened to the voices of naturalists and writers Terry Tempest Williams, Rachel Carson and Gary Snyder describe how they encounter the sacred.
Intimacy in Meditation
Our Moving into Meditation class is nearing the end of Frank Ostaseski’s wonderful book the Five Invitations. The book offers some fundamental principles for living a conscious life and for serving others who are nearing life’s end. In today’s class we explored the 5th invitation to cultivate “don’t know mind.” Two essential human experiences – intimacy and vulnerability – characterize this expression of mind. I believe our willingness to be so fully human is also an expression of love. Continue reading
Remembering in Meditation
Our Moving into Meditation class continues to draw inspiration from Frank Ostaseski’s wonderful book about living with the awareness that we’re going to die. His book distills what he’s learned into Five Invitations we can answer in living a conscious life. In today’s class we explored the workings of memory. Our fallible memories inform our life stories. They can keep us rooted in the past while strongly defining our present. Frank suggests that bringing “don’t know mind” to our memories and stories can be profoundly healing. Continue reading