The Journey

One day you finally knew
What you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice,
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terribe.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
but little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do....
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Mary Oliver

Achaan Naeb

In Jack Kornfield’s new book “Living Dharma”, he offers us a compilation of the philosophy and practices of Theravadin Buddhism. Ram Dass, who is one of my favourite writers and spiritual teachers, writes the forward for this book.

He suggests that “in the course of allowing these words to pour through you, perhaps a practice here,  turn of phase there, a jungle scene or a bit of clearly enunciated wisdom will attract you, will attach to you, will be something to which you will cling. Calm insight will show you why that particular thought came into your focus. And when you have absorbed what you need, then that bit of stuff will be dislodged to float on down the stream of your passing thoughts, leaving you, more than ever, here now”.


I am always drawn to female dharma teachers. They seem rare in Zen.

 So when I arrived at the chapter in the book that described the dharma teachings of Achaan Naeb, a woman in her late seventies who has established centers for study and meditation in Thailand,  I already felt honored. I was listening. 

Jack Kornfield writes that a visit to Achaan Naeb is a chance to hear clear and direct Dharma.

“She may first instruct the visitor to sit comfortably and then ask them not to move. Shortly, of course, one automatically begins to change position. 

“Wait, hold it. Why are you moving? Don’t move yet!” 

The teaching of Achaan Naeb point directly to the most obvious source of suffering, our own bodies. 

If we simply stay still and try not to move, eventually there will be discomfort. This discomfort increases until we change posture.  Almost all of our actions throughout the day follow the same pattern. After waking, we arise and go to the bathroom to ease the bladder pain. Then we eat to ease the discomfort of hunger. Then we sit down to ease the pain of standing. Then we read or talk or watch tv  (or write a blog) to distract us from the pain of our turbulent mind. Then we move again to ease another discomfort. Each movement, each action is not to bring happiness but to ease the inevitable suffering that comes from being born with a body.”

I  spent a few days making an effort to be mindful of all of these movements away from discomfort.

 I was astonished at the level  of my habitual conditioning to physical movement. 

I decided to distract myself by going to the library. My task to keep my posture while greeting suffering had proven completely unsuccessful. I was waiting in line to check out my armful of books, when I noticed a darling little girl about four years old. She had a violet colored ballet dress which had been hastily thrown over her blue jeans and pink shirt. Her mother was involved in a discussion with the librarian, and had left the little dancer to her own devises. It was clear to me that she was impatient. Her body was starting to feel discomfort.  She flapped her arms against her body; she jumped and stretched; she leaned against her mother and pulled at her mother's arms; when all of that movement failed to relieve the tension in her body, she ran as fast as her little pink rubber boots would allow to the very end of the  library and back. Back and forth she ran, just trying to relieve the sensations in her little body.

Wow! She was so innocent. She so innocently practiced moving away from the discomfort in her body. It was so natural for her to do this, so instinctive… so human. I have much gratitude to this little girl who was my teacher this day. I could hear my mother complain to friends about my constantly spinning and bouncing body. “Be still”, she would say. I surely had been practicing a long time.

So the simple dharma of Achaan Naeb, is not so simple.

Nx

sharing a breath.....

I was stopped on the path
By a robin's spacious voice.
The sweet space flung out so freely.
 Sung with a full deep breath of confidence.

So sure,
So sure that the sky
Would embrace the sound
and the generous wind
Would transport and support it.

 Empty of doubt.

The breath of the bird was as close as
My own breath.
As I listened more deeply,
I heard more clearly. 

And the song was already
In my heart.
And I was singing the song.
Flinging it out fearlessly
And the wind joined my voice.
And we all shared a breath.

 Nx










 Nx

Even strain......

Last year I was having coffee with a spiritual friend.  He had recently experienced the loss of a dear friend. I asked how he was managing the personal impact of this loss, he replied, "Even strain".  It  took me a moment to process this description of his emotional response to a loss. I had never heard this expression used to describe grief. But my body instantly understood. It is sometimes startling to feel your body understand before your mind. And then my heart understood. My mind was still not involved except to wonder what the word "strain" really meant.  I was interested in finding the definition for this word that had resonated in my body and heart with such a startle.

When I got home, I looked up the word "strain".

As the word had been used as a noun, this is where I started the research of this word. ........"a severe or excessive demand on strength, resources or abilities". One thinks of a force.....pulling, stretching......making something very taut. But he had said, "Even strain". The addition of the word "even" describes a different energy.....one that is much more balanced and level; like the lean of a man in a tug of war who is simply leaning back and holding his own. Still a serious use of all the abilities and resources available to the man, but a much more skillful use of one's strength and energy. In this stance there is no resistance to the pull, no extra vigilance; just an upright stance balanced steady on the earth.

The "even strain" requires a faith and trust in the universe; an understanding that we are not in charge of holding it all.  It expresses a place where standing upright and finding our feet is enough. Just feeling the tug and holding steady. If we do more than stand level and balanced; if we feel that we have no assistance from the universe, if we feel that we need to fight the energy of the pull......we then become the verb rather than the noun. The verb demands "a force to make unusually great effort". Clearly this implies resistance and extra vigilance to keep the rope taut.

My friend was sitting still with his grief. He was not resisting; he was not holding tight; he was just letting it be so. Just exactly what it was ... a loss....he was not adding any more weight to this story.He had achieved an  exceptionally balanced approach to grief.

Recently, a friend of mine sent me a very moving poem. This poem was written by an American novelist named Marge Piercy. She also used the word "strain" in her vivid expression except she was using the verb....."straining". It is a poem about living your life as a woman.....a "strong" woman and the habits that are conditioned into young girls that manifest into this performance of "strength".

A strong woman by Marge Piercy

A strong woman is a woman who is straining.
A strong woman is a woman standing
on tip toes and lifting a barbell
while trying to sing Boris Godunov.
A strong woman is a woman at work
cleaning out the cesspool of the ages,
and while she shovels, she talks about
how she doesn't mind crying, it opens
the tear ducts of her eyes, and throwing up
develops the stomach muscles, and
she goes on shoveling with tears in her nose.

A strong woman is a woman in whose head
a voice is repeating, I told you so,
ugly, bad girl, bitch, nag, shrill, witch,
ballbuster, nobody will ever love you back,
why aren't you feminine, why aren't
you soft, why aren't you quiet, why
aren't you dead?

A strong woman is a woman determined
to do something others are determined
not to be done. She is pushing up on the bottom
of a lead coffin lid. She is trying to raise
a manhole cover with her head, she is trying
to butt her way through a steel wall.
Her head hurts. People waiting for the hole
to be made say, hurry, you're so strong.

As strong woman is a woman bleeding
inside. As strong woman is a woman making
herself strong every morning while her teeth
loosen and her back throbs. Every baby,
a tooth, midwives used to to say, and now
every battle, a scar. A strong woman
is a mass of scar tissue that aches
when it rains and wounds that bleed
when you bump them and memories that get up
in the night and pace in boots to and fro.

A strong woman is a woman who craves love
like oxygen or she turns blue choking.
A strong woman is a woman who loves
strongly and weeps strongly and is strongly
terrified and has strong needs. As strong woman is strong
in words, in action, in connection, in feeling;
she is not strong as a stone but as a wolf
suckling her young. Strength is not in her, but she
enacts it as the wind fills a sail.

What comforts her is others loving
her equally for the strength and for the weakness
from which it issues, lightning from a cloud.
Lightning stuns. In rain, the clouds disperse.
Only water of connection remains,
flowing through us. Strong is what we make together,
a strong woman is a woman strongly afraid.

There is not a doubt in my mind that I have spent many, many years of my life being a "strong" woman. As I read this poem, my body felt the shoveling, the weight of the manhole, the deep sigh of resignation as the baby would not sleep and my legs could barely move. The enacting of the fearless strength..straining, always straining to meet the demands of the people I loved and who I dearly wanted to love me.....my gentle heart asking my lungs to blow harder into the sail. The many nights of pacing to and fro haunted by fear and worry. And the voices both outside and inside.....saying that I couldn't do it, that it was too hard for me, that I was failing others, that I would never be loved.....and then there in the background a voice that was telling me to "hurry up"....that I do not stand a chance of love if I cannot meet the demand in time.  Straining to be strong. Hoping that the others see more than just the strength.....but never truly believing that the weakness will be honored.

A few years ago, I stopped pushing on the "lead coffin lid". I dropped the bar bells. I stopped blowing in the sails. I just laid down in the water with my open tear ducts and strong stomach muscles and surrendered. I became the water. It was no longer weeping. It was just water. I gave up on the love that required me to "hurry".

I have a new practice. I live now with a more or less "even strain" on the rope.   I live with the tug to "try harder" to love and be loved. I do not act on it. When I find myself in the "habit" of shoveling. I put down the shovel and the voices say....."that is enough, dear, you have done enough. You will be loved because you are so lovable. There is nothing that you have to do to be loved."

I don't always remember to stand balanced and level holding with just "even strain" on the rope. But I usually find my way home and sit for awhile.

Norma

I'm old........

This very articulate, vicseral description of the impact of the culumutive losses in the life of a human being was extracted from a face book page and sent to me by a friend.

 I found it so moving and authentic....I will share with you here on my blog. 

“Alright, here goes. I’m old. What that means is that I’ve survived (so far) and a lot of people I’ve known and loved did not. I’ve lost friends, best friends, acquaintances, co-workers, grandparents, mom, relatives, teachers, mentors, students, neighbors and a host of other folks. I have no children, and I can’t imagine the pain it must be to lose a child. But here’s my two cents.

I wish I could say you get used to people dying. I never did. I don’t want to. It tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love dies, no matter the circumstances. But I don’t want it to “not matter.” I don’t want it to be something that just passes. My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I had for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love. So be it. 

Scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that I can love deeply and live deeply and be cut, or even gouged, and that I can heal and continue to live and continue to love. And the scar tissue is stronger than the original flesh ever was. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are only ugly to people who can’t see.

As for grief, you’ll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you’re drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it’s some physical thing. Maybe it’s a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it’s a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.

In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don’t even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you’ll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what’s going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.

Somewhere down the line, and it’s different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas or landing at O’Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you’ll come out.

Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don’t really want them to. But you learn that you’ll survive them. And other waves will come. And you’ll survive them too. If you’re lucky, you’ll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks.”

my deep thanks to Theresa for sharing this dharma......Nx