We held our January Meditation & Communi-Tea practice yesterday at Yoga Bliss. The last Sunday over every month we will offer students more time to go a little deeper and make new friends. We’re drawing inspiration from Karen Armstrong’s “Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life”. Ms. Armstrong is a best selling author and TED Prize Winner who created and launched the Charter for Compassion.
Karen spent years researching and studying religious traditions in many parts of the world. In her initial TED presentation, “My Wish: The Charter for Compassion,” she shares her concern that
” . . . we are living in a world . . . where religion has been hijacked. Where terrorists cite Quranic verses to justify their atrocities. Where instead of taking Jesus’ words, “Love your enemies. Don’t judge others,” we have the spectacle of Christians endlessly judging other people, endlessly using Scripture as a way of arguing with other people, putting other people down. Throughout the ages, religion has been used to oppress others, and this is because of human ego, human greed. We have a talent as a species for messing up wonderful things.”
Now is the time to know
That all that you do is sacred.
Now, why not consider
a lasting truce with yourself?
Now is the time to understand
that all your ideas of right and wrong
were just a child’s training wheels
to be laid aside,
When you can finally live
with veracity and love.
Now is the time for the world to know
that every thought and action is sacred.
That this is the time
for you to compute the impossibility
that there is anything
But Grace.
Now is the season to know
that everything you do
is Sacred.
I listened to one of his more recent talks focuses on Gratitude. I appreciate his down to earth authenticity in speaking of all the things that go right in the world – there are so many of them we often don’t recognize them. For many, 99.99% of life works to support our well being yet we focus on the 0.01% that may not be working. My body is functioning, I have food, shelter, electricity, transportation. I could go on and on about the blessings I enjoy and often take for granted.
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.
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.
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.
In 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.
In our Sunday Introduction to Meditation Class at Yoga Bliss we explored one of Dr. Christopher Germer‘s “mindful self compassion” practices. We began creating a state of mindfulness by feeling the six points of posture in our bodies. Taking time at the beginning of a seated meditation period to adjust our position and build stability. We used Dr. Germer’s guidance to cultivate a soft, allowing, loving attitude toward our bodies: a mindful attitude.
He suggests we try his Soften, Allow and Love practice. He explains that when we soften around our physical discomforts we might avoid the tendency to tense up and reject our experience. Allowing refers to letting thoughts come and go without judging ourselves for their occurrence or content. Cultivating self love and compassion can encourage us to respond to difficult feelings with tenderness. I like the way he incorporates breathing, gestures and words or “mantras.” You put your hand on your heart and breathe . . . direct love to any part of your being in distress . . . silently say soften, allow or love, love, love . . . Most of us would be happy to do this for a fretting child or elder in our care. How willing are we to do this for ourselves?
In our Sunday Introduction to Meditation Class at Yoga Bliss we focused on observing our mind’s activity. We established concentration by focusing on the breath and physical sensations. Our walking meditation almost felt like a procession. We synchronized our pace and felt particularly attuned to each other.
We all experienced mental “busyness.” One student shared a familiar feeling of anticipation. She described “always feeling poised or perched” as her life’s stance. We explored the way this impulse “to do” drives us forward – often away from experiences, issues and people we could benefit spending more time with.
Students used concentration techniques such as counting individual breaths to sustain their concentration. While walking we maintained focus by taking a step upon inhaling and landing a step upon exhaling. Nevertheless, we all lost our attention at times. In his book, Buddhism Without Beliefs, author and meditation teacher, Stephen Batchelor describes the mind’s inherent restlessness:
Focused awareness is both calm and clear. Just as calmness is prevented by restlessness and distraction, so clarity is undermined by boredom and lethargy. Drifting between these two poles, we spend much of our time either slightly hyper or slightly depressed. . . . Distraction drugs us into forgetfulness. Even when we yearn to be focused on something meaningful, it erupts again. We cannot switch it off – and the more frustrated we get the worse it becomes.
He suggests embracing whatever mind state we find ourselves in: accept this is how things are right now. “Acceptance might even lead to understanding what it is that we’re running from.” We could even bring a sense of compassion, patience or tenderness to our experience – we all share these very human mind states.
As a kid, I remember nagging my parents during our long road trips between California and Idaho: Are we there yet? As an adult I now wonder whether There is the place where we find ourselves suspended between restlessness and boredom. It’s a place where we can be curious and open: a place where our questions are as valued as our answers. I sometimes feel the pull of resistance to experiences that I’ve framed as an obligations. I want to let go of what I think the experience will be and just jump in. Perhaps this is the journey we take together in meditation. We take the plunge and see what happens.
We had the Sunday Introduction to Meditation Class at Yoga Bliss yesterday: several guided meditations and a period of mindful walking. We entrained our awareness on breathing while listening to silence – even the silence that exists within sound. Our practice was inspired by Matthew Sanford‘s experience of silence in healing after a traumatic injury that left him paralyzed at thirteen.
In The Body’s Grace, the interview with On Being radio journalist, Krista Tippett, Matthew describes the silences of separation, connection and integration. In his book, Waking: A Memoir of Trauma and Transcendence, he recalls an inner silence he was forced into from which he eventually accessed a powerful yet subtle mind body connection.
In principle, my experience is not so different from yours, it is only more extreme. … My mind-body relationship changed in an instant — the time it took for my back to break. But the changing relationship between mind and body is a feature of everyone’s life. We are all leaving our bodies — this is the inevitable arc of living. Death cannot be avoided; neither can the inward silence that comes with the aging process.
I now experience a different, more subtle connection between mind and body. It does not require that I flex muscles. It does not dissipate in the presence of increasing inward silence.
… It does require, however, that I seek more profoundly within my own experience and do so with an open mind. It means that I must reach intuitively into what may feel like darkness.
We held our January Meditation & Communi-Tea practice yesterday at Yoga Bliss. The last Sunday over every month we will offer students more time to go a little deeper and make new friends. We’re drawing inspiration from Karen Armstrong’s “Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life”. Ms. Armstrong is a best selling author and TED Prize Winner who created and launched the Charter for Compassion.
