Some things require a second try!

I am free

I have absolutely no idea what I am doing here -or what will show up where-but felt inspired by Rev. Mugo's audioblog. I loved hearing her voice. I am inspired also by the brilliant sunshine and warm winds bathing New England today. I feel like spinning circles on the lawn.

Not having any material of my own, I borrowed I Am Free, which is this years favorite of mine. I learned it from the children who attended the retreat at Stonehill College last year. I believe the store at the Deer Park Monastery sells the CD if you want to hear it in it's entirety and in better tune!

May all beings be free!

Zenmom
Authentic Kindness of the Heart

Avalokiteshvara

Winter is dragging on in New England and Zenchild spent the entire week battling fevers to 103, just to name one of her many symptoms. It's a humbling realization that in life, in general, sometimes all our grand efforts to help are reduced to simply patting a back, sitting on the bed, fetching water. Even in the ICU, with all the wonders of technology at our command, it can be the most difficult task just to be fully present for a patient for whom the technology will not be enough. And it feels like I am not enough either until I shake off my pompous delusion of being able to make everything right and do what I can do -set my intention and be present.

This week I've been feeling tired, sun-deprived, and uninspired so I felt a tiny bit of anxiety when I was given a small assignment by my sangha leader: to speak for a few minutes on the first mindfulness training at our sangha today. This will be part of a panel discussion in preparation for a transmission ceremony to take place at the day of mindfulness we are planning for the end of April. Here's Thay's version:

"Aware of the suffering caused by the destruction of life, I am committed to cultivating compassion and learning ways to protect the lives of people, animals, plants and minerals. I am determined not to kill, not to let others kill, and not to support any act of killing in the world, in my thinking, and in my way of life."

(Sigh.) Doesn't it just make you appreciate the Ten Commandments where you could march right by "Thou shall not kill" with a quick "check" and be on the way to heaven? I notice even with this training I want to commit fully to vegetarianism and call it accomplished... my ego, it's relentless! But this training has ramifications that reach into every area of my life, with the goal of cultivating compassion and weeding out the seeds of violence even in my thoughts. It's easy it is to recognize the benefit of good intentions and wishes, as I've been noticing at home and at work this week. How is it that I can think I've got a free pass on violent thoughts and bad attitudes devoid of compassion? I realize I am called to pay attention to the effect my actions and thoughts are having out there in the world which also cause suffering for myself. It requires vigilance though as it seems I purposefully set good intentions but the less benevolent thoughts take a more insidious route into my consciousness.

So I circle back to the first words as a place to begin: "Aware of the suffering caused..." because it seems clear that the first step in eliminating causes of suffering is to become aware of them, to look deeply at my own part in perpetuating violence as I make choices everyday. Everything's on this table: what I eat, what I say, the clothes I wear, the car I drive, even the actions I don't take that support the status quo and institutionalized violence: war, poverty, prejudice. Phew! Thank goodness we are asked only make a concerted effort to head in the direction, knowing we will never reach the ideal.

In one dharma talk, Thay refers to the depiction of Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, who has one thousand arms and one thousand hands. In the middle of each hand is an eye. The image is so stunning. When we have eyes in our hands, when we can see what our actions are doing, then we can have compassion. Maybe I can bring a photo to the sangha today so I don't lose my train of thought and crumple into a heap of mono-syllables when a mere 40 or so eyes turn to me...LOL.

More importantly, this morning we are baking brownies for a soup kitchen being put on by sangha members. Another example of "too little" thinks my cynical mind. Then again, who doesn't enjoy a brownie now and again and today it's what we can do. I'm going to think about those thousand arms. Those eyes. And into each brownie we will breathe the intention, "May we be aware of suffering. May we be free from suffering".

Zenmom
Authentic Kindness of the Heart

Taking refuge

This blogging experience hasn't been what I expected. That's usual for me actually, LOL. I thought that my blog would be a personal journal, one that might encourage or help others. When I decided to become an aspirant in the Order of Interbeing I found the Woodmoor Zendo blog and was thrilled to read a bit about Nacho's experience, his description of the lineage, and his account of ordination. I came upon a few sites here and there where aspirants had written small pieces in newsletters about their working with a certain precept, all fascinating and encouraging to me.

So when I started up this Zenmom blog, I didn't think I'd be including other bloggers in my metta meditation, offering good wishes for lab results, doing tonglen for those like myself in challenging relationships, wondering how the mothers of these gutsy young monastics in foreign lands feel about their children, so noble but so far away, and wondering if they miss their families too.

Nacho's post entitled "Taking refuge in the blangha" gave me a chance to think about this a little further. In my adult "real" life I haven't had a community of practice, or even a community of like-thinkers. I started working with a spiritual director about ten years ago when I was yearning for some human feedback and conversation about Spirit and my spiritual path. Since my SD lives in the middle of Puget Sound and I live smack on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, even this relationship exists over phone wires as does my more recently formed relationship with my dharmacharya, who is, at least, only one state away!

Over the years, as I've journeyed through interests in creation spirituality, far-to-the-left Christianity, contemplative prayer, meditation, and Buddhism, almost all of my fellowship has been of the online variety. Only in the last few years, through attending a few Thich Nhat Hahn retreats and having a local sangha become available to me, have I been able to practice on a regular basis with other folks. It's ironic that although I ban my daughter from My Space and lecture her incessantly about the dangers of online predators saying, "you never know if people are really who they present themselves to be", some of my most important heart warming "real" relationships have been formed online. (I once threw my entire family into a panic when I met and went camping with an online friend, a lovely woman from Manhattan, with whom Zenchild is allowed to correspond since we have now even had her to visit in our home. Pity the poor child that has to live with my inconsistencies, but I digress.)

This virtual world has a way of eliminating the distraction of physical presence and my inherent prejudice about how people look and what I'm expecting them to say. While it's true that the lack of input from body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice requires a more careful and precise use of words, in another sense, online we may cut right to the essence of who we are: thoughts, ideas, feeelings. Sometimes these are more easily expressed when I can take my time and make sure that I am saying exactly what I mean. My real-life sangha is a little formal, low-key, without much interaction save some polite conversation in hushed tones around the shoe changing area and a lot of bowing. My sangha may become more of a refuge for me in time, especially with increased commitment to making it so. But for now I have to say, the online community, including this blangha, feels very nurturing.

I'm grateful for that and I do take refuge. Thanks everyone!

Zenmom
Authentic Kindness of the Heart

Vrushali

I've been preoccupied this last week trying to pull a rabbit out of my hat which is what writing a paper for a course feels like after 20 or so years of non-paper-writing! To my delight I've found all kinds of on-line help....programs that auto-format your paper with instructions like "click here and begin typing", even a service where I could submit my paper on a Saturday at midnight and have "Vrushali" zip it on back to me marked up with comments and suggestions by Sunday dinnertime. Wow, where were these people in the 1980's when I really had better things to be doing!

I had to pause, smile wanly, and read again when I came to this comment:
"For a large part of the essay, you simply go on giving quotes from people about the topic in concern here. You should give the readers your analysis, Susan, not the critics’. You are supposed to use the source information only to support your statements and opinions, not the other way round."

How do you suppose this guy got to know me so well just by reading a 6 page paper on nursing theory? I want to wail back "Well, I don't have any opinions of my own! Whadya think, that I've been a nurse for 20 years with my eyes OPEN?" Heck, I've been alive for 45 years half asleep too.

I was raised practicing a religion in which I was told what "we" believe. There is one prayer that is memorized by every child called the Nicene Creed that is a long series of "We believe" statements which, as far as I know, have not been revised in a very long time. It's not that I find fault with this or any statement of beliefs but I am awared that in all my 12 years of religious education, I was never encouraged to evaluate them, to question why these particular beliefs were deemed the most important ones, or to consider making them my own in an authentic way.

Scrambling along on this Buddhist path is a lesson for me in trying to stop quoting the critics, to stop trying to figuring out what "we" Buddhists believe so I can just sign on the line and relax about it. I have to admit that even with my dharma teacher and my spiritual director, I have the tendency to look for validation for my own experience even though, I assure you, they are both on to me. I want it easy, but that's not their job.

So on to my life, where mindfulness allows me to be present for what's happening without the overlay of everyone else's commentary, just my own experience. And on to my cushion where I can observe what comes up for me over and over, where the thoughts go, which ones return, what the feelings are, what my body does with these energies and just letting it all be ok. Looking deeply at my own experience, learning how to identify the thoughts that give rise to my particular suffering, beginning to find ways to transform suffering through understanding and compassion... In the end, this deep looking and working with my own stuff, leads to clarity, even insight. I know because I've experienced it, just a bit, just a glimmer but enough to make me "believe". It's really pretty amazing.

My creed may be short but it's my own and at that, subject to change.
Now to remember not to hold too tightly. Tomorrow's another day and everything can be different. I must thank that Vrushali.

Zenmom
Authentic Kindness of the Heart

Bead lady

Lately I've been having a harder time than usual getting to my meditation time as early as I like. When I meditate for the first time mid-day or even later, it feels like coming in halfway through a movie or a party, as if I've missed out on half the fun I could have had. Which is true in a sense because that first connection with my breathing, making myself present for the day, makes mindfulness that much easier for the 24 hours ahead.

Ideally my morning sitting fits nice and snug between my shower and breakfast, while the coffee brews. Lately it's been so cold in the morning, zenchild has been beset by a spell of disorganization running around noisily looking for crucial items such as her favorite barrette or worse, her school shoes, and I've been desperately trying to see if I can pass in one assignment for a nursing theory class that will allow me to apply for an extension (what WAS I thinking?). At any rate, I have a litany of excuses as usual.

So since I am so adept at finding and describing all the things that make it hard for me to get to my cushion, I wanted to give equal time to considering the things that make it easier for me to stop stumbling so much with my practice, walk a little straighter, make a greater effort. I came up with a list of conditions that make my sitting more likely...getting to bed on time, sunshine drawing me down the stairs, zenchild's items gathered and ready to go. And then the things that make it easier for me to be mindful during the day...among them some habits I've acquired of returning to my breathe as I start the car and open doors or remembering my teacher Thay whenever I see a cloud (He told the kids once that he is "mmm, perhaps 70% cloud", something that zenchild has not forgotten.) As a child myself my classmates and I were instructed by the nuns to say a prayer whenever we heard church bells and it'd been a habit of mine to connect with the ultimate when I hear bells ringing , even before I'd heard of the bell of mindfulness.

This morning I was reminded of another "bell of mindfulness" and thought to mention her here. She is a very small older asian woman who crosses my path many mornings when I drive my daughter to school. She is walking a route that we've only partially figured out...we don't know her starting point and wonder though we may, we don't know her destination either. In the winter she looks like a small eskimo with her furry hood tightly drawn around her face. No matter what the weather she walks with small, slow steps, smiling a little smile and in her hands, always, rosary beads swinging to and fro with each of her steps. Zenchild reports..."They aren't mala beads. There's definitely a cross on the end" or "Oh look, the beads are green today, almost fluorescent!" For a while she had a theory going that the beads matched her day's outfit but that was disproved. If we don't see her for a while, we worry about her and think to throw in a Hail Mary of our own for her, since she obviously likes them so much.

One particular morning after drop-off, I was having a very tense conversation on my cellphone with Zendad and I pulled into a side street to talk because I was so distracted. As my conversation continued I could see the woman, whom Zenchild calls "bead lady", turn down the street and advance toward my car getting bigger and bigger in my side view mirror. Despite the conversation, I couldn't take my eyes off her. It was sheer admiration for her- the personification of sheer equanimity, faithfulness, dependability. As she came to where I was pulled over she passed by on the other side of the street and as she did, she looked over. I don't know if it was my tear stained face that inspired her or if it was just a whim but she took her beads, turned slightly without stopping, and blessed me with them, making a small cross in the air, deepening her smile for a second and continuing on. It was truly a moment of loving-kindness, of grace.

So she came to my mind this morning with the acknowledgement that she belongs on the list of things and people who help me remain on the path. Thank goodness for people like her. Her good example, the very energy she exudes, makes me want to rush home to my meditation room and hit the cushion running. What would she ever think if I told her this? Some day I'm going to find out.

Zenmom
Authentic Kindness of the Heart