Peace is every step

Today is one of those days where I feel like an enormous effort is required to just keep breathing and the waters are rising fast. All around are pieces needing to be picked up and the task looks large, large, large. Appointments, insurance papers, strong emotions, pain...amid the everyday "stuff" of life. What is it that Thich Nhat Hahn says when someone really blunders? That their practice is "not so skillful"...I think that could be it. He seems to say it with a big grin and a little shrug as if to add "That's how it is sometimes". That's how it is for me today.

It's really a very kind compassionate way to look at what we might normally call "failure" because the sense is that compassion and understanding are skills and if we don't have them so much now there is a possibility that we can learn them. We can increase our capacity, our skill level, by practicing the teachings. Great teachers rarely waste time blaming or shaming. I'm trying to learn that too.

It's one of the beautiful features of Buddhist teaching as I understand it...that we learn to love others by first accepting and loving ourselves, that we achieve liberation and then look to the goal of liberation for others too, that suffering can be understood and transformed into peace and joy.

At a retreat last summer, I decided to purchase a special gift for myself, a calligraphy by Thay. I took my time, mindfully considering each of the black inked phrases available that day. "I am home", "I have arrived", "Interbeing", "Drink your tea", "Peace in myself, Peace in the World" but the one that spoke to me most deeply was "Peace is every step" because it reminds me that all the places we go, we get there one step at a time (this is good for my rushing problem) but also that each step is a new chance to choose peace (good for my "I blew it" mind) and that I have always before me the opportunity to begin again, right here, right now.

I think I'm going to take a few moments to sit quietly before the framed calligraphy and immerse myself in the lovely truth of that message, reminding myself that I can take refuge in the dharma anytime. I can feel the smile of the teacher, I can see the little shoulder shrug, and I feel very grateful that a renegade monk from a war-torn land opened his heart to share his love and wisdom with us. Very skillfully. It inspires me to keep on practicing.

Zenmom
Authentic Kindness of the Heart

Shifting Ground

Wow! Remind me to always qualify any announcements of what I'll be doing at any point with some tentative disclaimer such as "I'm planning" or "I hope to" or as my grandmother was apt to say "God willing".

My keychains went to the aspirant dinner without me.

My husband's Dad had died a couple of days ago and due to a cemetery scheduling issue (!) was not to be waked until today and buried tomorrow. My husband decided to keep a doctors appointment on Friday for which he had waited a long time. He left the house at 930 am but hardly 10 minutes later I was listening to the adrenaline-charged voice of a bodhisattva who had witnessed his car careening off the side of the highway and bothered to stop and get my cell phone number. He gave me the location and added that I should "get up there" because "he's in bad shape".

No problem. My specialty...rushing.

My car ride was a study in observing my mind. Breathe, breathe, breathe, I chanted...then breathe slower, breathe slower as my face began to tingle. Clutching my cell phone, "Who can I call?", and the awful thought..."No one." It would seem too cruel to ask anyone to merely accompany me in my terror. It seems that there are these moments in life when we are just alone and the ground is sliding around below our feet, or worse, sinking. Pema Chodron says that it's an illusion that we think we can ever stand on solid ground. We can't.

The good news is that as I approached the scene of flashing lights and neon striped emergency workers I could see my husband through the eerie picture frame of twisted metal created by the sunroof of the car on its side, holding his hand to his head, moving therefore breathing. It took nearly an hour to extricate him as I stood breathing my gratitude for the entire scene, especially the very capable, very young people who are willing to do this for a living. My husband's Dad had been a firefighter and it was a curious thing that at one point when I asked to approach the car to let him know I was there, my husband's bloody hand wobbled out a pile of papers and folders to me, mong them his Dad's funeral and insurance papers. On top, covered with glass but in perfect condition was his father's plaque commemorating his many decades of service in the fire department. I couldn't help but think it represented some kind of very good karma as I held it like a shield across my heart.

The rest of the 2 day hospital tale is a mix of kindness and caring alongside frustration and waiting and things being lost and misunderstood: more opportunities for patience and compassion than should be allowed. The diagnoses at the end of the trail of scans and exams include a concussion, contusions, a stable vertebral fracture, and a Herman Munster-like gash in the forehead. The hard part is that though home now, my husband is badly injured, barely able to walk, and will miss his Dad's services today and likely tomorrow. My heart aches for the nearly 50 year old man who so badly wants to see his Dad one last time. I think about how I coaxed him from his father's bedside the night he stayed with his Dad as he died, with the words, "You'll get to say good-bye again". I didn't add, "God willing."

I know it's just more shifting ground and turn to my teacher Thay's instructions for answers to the question "What can I do?" And I find some. In between the dressing changes, and pill dispensing, and efforts to prop pillows I sit and breathe. As best I can be, I am present.

More opportunities to practice. God willing, I will.

Zenmom
Authentic Kindness of the Heart

Keychain links

Tomorrow night I am having dinner with my Buddhist mentor and 2 others who are interested in studying and practicing in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh. We'd all previously made a commitment to 5 mindfulness trainings, or precepts as they are more commonly called, but in the last several months each of us decided to seek lay ordination in the order called Tiep Hien or Interbeing. It feels like a vast undertaking to me and one for which, at any moment, I am afraid I will find out that I am completely unsuited.

However, I've felt this way before. I recognize it. Here are the things for which I've heretofore felt completely fraudulent about even attempting: being a grown-up, being married, becoming a mom, being a nurse, tackling the ICU, stopping drinking, passing the graduate school entrance exam, and really loving someone.... I am heartened when I consider that since the end is not in sight the only thing to do is: take a step, take a step, take a step, smile. I may never wear the brown coat that signifies ordination, some embodiment of "when the fruit is ripe, you know it" that somehow exemplifies readiness. Still, I will get wherever I get step, step, stepping and smiling all the while.

As usual, I am grateful when there is company on the path. I've always been the type to like to share notes with others, benefit from a different perspective, marvel at differences and beam with the lovely comfort of understanding. So today while I was waiting to pick up my daughter at school, an idea floated to me and I popped into a local bead store with an idea, a vague image having to do with hearts, our hearts, and a shared path. When each of us accepted the 5 mindfulness trainings we received a "dharma name" which was meant to reflect our intentions. Mine is Authentic Kindness of the Heart and the other aspirants' dharma names also end with "of the Heart". So for my dinner partners, I chose 3 hearts of cloisonne, bone, and brass, some little sparkling crystal spacers and took them home. Paying attention to remaining mindful I breathed gratitude into my little assembly of colors and wire and carefully crafted matching key chains.

Dinner was late but it seemed that seemed ok.

Oddly enough, my 12 year old just flounced by on her way to get ready for bed and announced "I heart you Mom"....just computer talk I know, but still. She's calling now and I'm going. Smiling.

Zenmom
Authentic Kindness of the Heart

Aspiring to be zenmom

I want to give voice to the part of me who aspires to be zenmom. I used to work with a woman who, whenever the conversation turned to the crazy antics of pre-teens, would close her eyes, adopt a semi-lotus position even if standing and chant "We will be zenmom, we can be zenmom". Indeed we are living with honest-to-God zenmasters. (We learned that in Whole Child Whole Parent while we were still pregnant, didn't we?) Still, it's turned out to be rigorous training. Who needs obscure koans when the questions like "If you hadn't been my mother, would I ever have been born?" come fast and furious from the back of the mini-van. Who needs to be startled with the rap of a zenmaster's stick when confronted with the jolt of finding out that your darling offspring has indeed done something that you'd have bet your life savings could never happen! Beginner's mind? Is there any other name for the mind of parents who aspire to practicing understanding with a first child and get to feel smug for exactly a nano-second with the second. Then comes the jaw-dropping realization that with a different child, it's all different.

So all this tongue-in-cheek is not to make light of the road to spiritual liberation on the Buddhist path Only to say, that I am a mom and I want to be on the path of liberation too. Thank goodness for our little zenmasters who give us an endless amount of raw material with which to work, and instant feedback on where we are spiritually in any given moment. That said, some adult help from those further along the path seems necessary too. Ah, spiritual directors, dharma teachers, sangha sisters and brothers...Instruction, correction, encouragement....Precepts to study and practice.

So lucky....time to make dinner...

Zenmom
Authentic Kindness of the Heart