a zen story

 

Ryokan lived the simplest kind of life in a little hut at the foot of the mountain.

One evening a thief visited the hut only to discover there was nothing to steal in it. 

Ryokan returned and caught him. “You may have come a long way to visit me,” he told the prowler,

“and you should not return empty-handed. Please take my clothes as a gift.” 

The thief was bewildered. He took the clothes and slunk away. 

Ryokan sat naked, watching the moon.

“Poor fellow,” he mused, “I wish I could give him this beautiful moon.”

 

source:  Reps. P. (n.d.). Zen flesh, Zen bones. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, p. 12. Ryokan (1758-1831), Japanese poet and calligrapher. image: www.zenbrush.com

delighting in another’s happiness

Buddhist meditation practice is designed to cultivate a number of virtues, including loving-kindness or benevolence, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. I’ve mentioned the first two before and would like to tell you about the third. 

Mudita (a Sanskrit term) can be translated as “sympathetic” or “altruistic” joy, the pleasure that comes from delighting in other people’s well-being rather than begrudging it. The more deeply one drinks of this spring, the more secure one becomes in one’s own happiness, and the easier it becomes to relish the joy of other people as well.   

“As we undertake sympathetic joy as a formal meditation practice,” writes Sharon Salzberg, “we begin with someone whom we care about; someone it is easy to rejoice for. It may be somewhat difficult even then, but we tend to more easily feel joy for someone on the basis of our love and friendship.” 

When you’d like to try this practice, find a quiet place and at least ten minutes. Sit and turn your attention to your breath. Notice the in- and out-breath as it passes through your nostrils, your throat, upper chest, or abdomen. Place a hand a few inches above your navel and notice the “rising” and “falling” as breaths come and go. Follow them for a while, even saying the words in silence: Rising … falling; rising … falling. 

Sharon Salzberg: “Choose a friend and focus on a particular gain or source of joy in their life. Don’t look for absolute, perfect happiness ion their life, because you may not find it. 

Whatever good fortune or happiness of your friend comes to mind, take delight in it with this phrase ‘May your happiness and good fortune not leave you’ or ‘May your happiness not diminish’ or ‘May your good fortune continue.’”   

Notice thoughts and feelings arising as you do this. Are you finding it relatively easy or difficult to do? What, if any, resistance or critical voices arises? It’s not uncommon for the the ”enemies” of mudita to make themselves known, among them jealousy, envy, judgment, comparing, prejudice, and avarice. By themselves they are just what they are: voices fabricated by a busy mind. Be sure not to feed them but to return your attention to your breath.  

 

Also notice physical sensations: where in your body do these voices reside? What is their feeling tone: sadness perhaps, or fear. Be curious and, above all, be gentle with yourself. Notice … and return your attention to your breath. Again and again. Do it they way a mother might gather up a meandering child: with love and patience. Thank you.

 

source: Salzberg, S. (2002). Lovingkindness: the revolutionary art of happiness. Boston: Shambala, p. 134.

now THAT’s awesome

A replica of Argo, the mythical ship that bore Jason and the Argonauts on their quest for the Golden Fleece, sails through the Corinth Canal, Greece. The ship carries a crew from all 27 EU states. source: BBC

please touch

At work we’re being offered no-charge CranioSacral Therapy sessions by massage therapists practicing their new skills. How wonderful it is to slip away in the middle of a shift to lie down and be gently touched. Fully clothed, of course. As she worked her way the full length of my body, I was struck by how simple touching made me feel cared for. As tensions drained from my neck and shoulders, my body felt as if held by the table and, by extension, the earth below. No rubbing or massaging, no special techniques required … just hands gently resting on my skin.

When I visit hospice patients at their bedside, I instinctively reach out with non-verbal gestures of contact and comfort. Respecting their vulnerability and privacy, I’m careful how and where I make contact. Hands and feet seem to be a permissible places, so are upper arms and shoulders. Sometimes stroking the other’s hair, wiping their brow, or placing a kiss on hand or forehead is appropriate. And always, even with patients who seem non-responsive, touch is accompanied by my voice, asking for permission and consent. It all hinges on circumstances, context … and utter respect for personal boundaries.

“Because in our society so much in our attitudes about touch has become sexualized, we place more and more restrictions on the use of physical touch” (Perez, P. [2008]. The importance of safe touch in the healing process.) 

“Touch is one of the most essential elements of human development, a profound method of communication, a critical component of the health and growth… and a powerful healing force” (Zur, O. & Nordmarken, N. [2004]. To touch or not to touch: Rethinking the prohibition on touch in psychotherapy and counseling.)

How do you give and receive touch in your daily interactions? What is acceptable and what is not? How do you still your (and others’) hunger for safe, healthy, and healing touch? Notice how we’re sanitizing our longing to be touched through such services as massage therapists, hair stylists, spa technicians, human touch robotic massage recliners at $1999, and vibrating chairs in public places (”insert coins here”)?

Order of Canada

Canada’s Governor-General Michaëlle Jean named Dr. Henry Morgentaler to the Order of Canada Tuesday for his services to women and for leadership in the fields of humanism and civil liberties. The Order is the country’s highest civilian honour. 

 

The Conservative Government has distanced itself from the awarding and the Roman Catholic Bishop of Toronto deplored honouring “a medical man who has brought not healing but the destruction of the defenceless and immeasurable grief.”

 

Dr. Morgentaler argued that access to abortion was a basic human right and women should not have to risk death at the hands of an untrained professional in order to end their pregnancies. Morgentaler, a Polish Holocaust survivor who immigrated to Montreal after the war, opened his first abortion clinic in 1969 and performed thousands of procedures, which were illegal at the time.

 

His abortion clinics were constantly raided, and one in Toronto was firebombed. Morgentaler was arrested several times and spent months in jail as he fought his case at all court levels in Canada. His victory came on Jan. 28, 1988, when the Supreme Court of Canada struck down Canada’s abortion law. That law, which required a woman who wanted an abortion to appeal to a three-doctor hospital abortion committee, was declared unconstitutional.

 

source: CBC News

hear the mystic speak

Kabir was a fifteenth-century Indian whose spiritual growth was influenced by Sufi poets and the ideas of Hindus. When he speaks of the “Guest,” he refers to God or the Great Mystery.

The darkness of night is coming along fast, and the shadows of love close in on the body and the mind.

Open the window to the west, and disappear into the air inside you.

 

Near your breastbone there is an open flower.

Drink the honey that is all around that flower.

Waves are coming in:

there is so much magnificence near the ocean!

Listen: Sound of big seashells! Sound of bells!

 

Kabir says: Friend, listen, this is what I have to say: The Guest I love is inside me!

source: Kabir, versions by Robert Bly. (1977). The Kabir book. Boston: Beacon Press, p.35.

&^%#* holy curiosity!

During the recent monastic retreat on loving kindness (metta) the question arose as to “where do love and compassion come from?” If you’d asked me at that moment, I’d have said that they come from inside of me and, beyond that, from being loved by others. Thomas Merton, in quoting St. Bernard of Clairveaux, says that “man’s nature is to love.” He’d most likely answer the question by referring to God’s love: boundless and timeless. And that all we have to do “is to get out of His way” to receive it. My ego (a.k.a. “small self”) has always seen love as something to distrust and to access according to circumstances, purpose, and preferences. (Note that none of this pertains to that other big mystery–romantic love–which, to me, throws everything into chaos anyway.)

 

As I regard my transformation over the last ten years from egocentric toward altruistic loving I confess that I don’t know where love comes from. It seems much too vast and mysterious to be of my own making. True, by committing myself to walk this spiritual path, I have opened myself to the possibilities of being a loving person, but it’d be arrogant to claim that I generated it on my own.

 

How about thinking of love (and its cousins compassion, kindness, and generosity) as a force field (as Zen teacher Chozen Bays puts it), a wellspring arising from the unknown which I am—with all humans, animals, plants—free to drink from? That this source flows continuously, without conditions and restrictions, for everyone’s benefit? And that if we wish to drink from and share with others the benefits of this well certain efforts may be necessary? And that such efforts (also known as determination, vow, or intention) would include opening our hearts and minds to the possibility of being lovable ourselves and thus capable of loving others.

 

Albert Einstein says that “the important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when one contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvellous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.”

 

image: profile.myspace.com; to hear Thomas Merton speak on youtube, click here.

opening to all this

At hospice three patients died during the night and morning. A short time later a few of us with a spare moment–two nurses, a volunteer, and our new music therapist–gathered to bless the rooms in remembrance of those gone from us and those about to arrive into our care. Families have left, carrying with them white plastic bags of personal belongings, assorted flowers and mementos, and our heartfelt wishes for their next steps. Now my heart yearns for one of John O’Donohue’s blessings:  

May the touch of your skin

Register the beauty

Of the otherness

That surrounds you.

 

May your listening be attuned

To the deeper silence

Where sound is honed

To bring distance home.

 

May the fragrance

Of the breathing meadow

Refresh your heart

And remind you you are

A child of the earth.

 

May your inner eye

See through surfaces

And glean the real presence

Of everything that meets you.

 

May your soul beautify

The desire of your eyes

That you might glimpse

The infinity that hides

In the simple sights

That seem worn

To your usual eyes.

source: O’Donohue, J. (2008). To bless the space between us. New York: Doubleday, pp.40-41.

hello again!

Just in the door after two flights from Portland to Seattle to Victoria. Feeling just a bit disoriented after five rich days of silent life at the monastery, sleeping in a dormitory (replete with farts, snoring, and narrow beds), hours regulated by bells, drums, gongs, and clappers. Forty-plus people meditating, eating, chanting, working, and resting en group. The focus of the retreat was to develop the skill of metta.

“The Pali* word metta is a term meaning loving-kindness, friendliness, goodwill, benevolence, fellowship, amity, concord, inoffensiveness and non-violence. The Pali commentators define metta as the strong wish for the welfare and happiness of others. Essentially metta is an altruistic attitude of love and friendliness as distinguished from mere amiability based on self-interest. Through metta one … renounces bitterness, resentment and animosity of every kind, developing instead a mind of friendliness and benevolence which seeks the well-being and happiness of others. True metta is devoid of self-interest. It evokes within a warm-hearted feeling of fellowship, sympathy and love, which grows boundless with practice and overcomes all social, religious, racial, political and economic barriers.”

Wow … quite an undertaking, running counter to the ways I’ve viewed myself and others. Spending a week in intensive practice was merely a first step–well, a second. First, to acknowledge that the habitual ways are competitive, judgmental, and self-centred; that they cause suffering in self, others, and the world at large; and that gentler ways are essential. Then one sets out to unlearn and to relearn. In that sense, last week was basic training, a boot camp on becoming a kinder creature.

I’d best not burble on right now as thoughts and emotions are swirling in my heart-mind … my body, too, is sore (yet refreshed) from endless hours of sitting in meditation. One way to ground in the ‘ordinary’ is to make my way to the hospice and see who’s there and who isn’t (any more).

More tomorrow. Thank you for visiting. 

source: Buddhist Publication Society, Sri Lanka. *Pali is the ancient language spoken at the time of the historical Buddha. 

the sounds of silence

By the time you read this, I’ll have arrived at Great Vow Zen Monastery in Clatskanie, Oregon … a 90-minute drive to the north of Portland. I’ll have joined a gathering of Zen practitioners for a week-long silent retreat called sesshin in Japanese,  攝心 “gathering the heart and mind.”

Silence will mean no reading, writing, eye contact, and of course no Internet. Perhaps you’ll join us over the next days by setting aside a few moments in your busy life … to sit quietly, turning inwards, observing your breath through its natural rising and falling. In those rare moments we’ll be sitting together, individually and collectively, as one. Nothing special, and yet …

 

Japanese Zen Master Dogen Zenji (1200-1256): “Do not follow the ideas of others, but learn to listen to the voice within yourself. Your body and mind will become clear and you will realize the unity of all things.”

p.s. back on the 30th

what’s wrong with this picture?

 

 

 

“Peace is our gift to each other.” (Elie Wiesel)

 

 

your monday poem

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

 

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

 

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

 

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

 

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

source:  Barks, C. (1995). (trans). The essential Rumi. Edison, NJ: Castle Books, p.90. Jelaluddin Rumi (1207-1273) was a Persian teacher, scholar, poet and mystic in the Sufi tradition.

three in the morning

Chuang Tzu (also spelled Zhuangzi, or “Master Zhuang”, 369-298 BCE) was a Taoist philosopher highly influential in the reception, interpretation, and transformation of Buddhism in China.  Here’s one of his stories as translated by Thomas Merton (American monk in the Cistercian tradition, 1915-1968):  

When we wear out our minds, stubbornly clinging to one partial view of things, refusing to see the deeper agreement between this and its complementary opposite, we have what is called “three in the morning.”

 

What is this “three in the morning?” A monkey trainer went to his monkeys and told them: “As regards your chestnuts: you are going to have three measures in the morning and four in the afternoon.” At this they all became excited and angry. So he said: “All right, in that case I will give you four in the morning and three in the afternoon.” This time they were satisfied.

 

The two arrangements were the same in that the number of chestnuts did not change. But in one case the animals were displeased, and in the other they were satisfied. The keeper had been willing to change his personal arrangement in order to meet objective conditions. He lost nothing by it. The truly wise, considering both sides of the question without partiality, see them both in the light of Tao*. This is called following two courses at once. 

source: Merton, T. (1965). The way of Chuang Tzu. New York: New Directions, p. 44. *Tao ( 道, Pinyin Dào ) is a metaphysical concept found in Taoism, Confucianism, and more generally in ancient Chinese philosophy. While the character itself translates as “way,” “path,” or “route,” or sometimes more loosely as “doctrine” or “principle,” it is used philosophically to signify the fundamental or true nature of the world. 

spontaneous prayer

Another patient died yesterday morning. I’d grown fond of her (and of her husband who sat and slept at her bedside for days: such dedication). While two nurses straightened her bed, disconnected medical instruments, combed her hair and arranged a favourite shawl, the family waited outside, half comforting each other, half staring forlorn into the distance. Death had been expected and yet . . .

 

I entered the room, assisted the nurses, tidied crumpled-up tissue papers and wilted flowers … then stood alone over the still-warm body. Silence … Deep bow … Having known her a devoted catholic, I placed my right hand on her forehead and asked God to receive her, to place her at his side, to send blessings and relief to her husband, her grown children, her many friends. From a collection of blessings, I prayed:

Depart, O Christian soul, out of this world;
In the Name of God the Father Almighty who created you;
In the Name of Jesus Christ who redeemed you;
In the Name of the Holy Spirit who sanctifies you.
May your rest be this day in peace,
and your dwelling place in the Paradise of God.* 

And then a Hail Mary, repeated twice more, just as she and I had done a few days earlier. Whether I understood or believed the specifics didn’t matter at that moment. I knew with certainty that it was the right thing to do, that it would give her comfort. And that it would comfort her husband who knew what I was doing in there.

 

Afterwards I thought about what I’d done, wondered whether I might have trespassed on religious territory. I was, after all, neither a priest nor a practicing catholic. But my intention was pure and spontaneous: to say words that would give peace to her soul. A few days earlier she’d invited me to sit at the edge of her bed and, with a chuckle, had called me “Father,” knowing very well that I wasn’t one.  

Henri Nouwen says of prayer that it “has meaning only if it necessary and indispensable. Prayer is prayer only when we can say that without it, we cannot live” [or die, I’d add in this instance]. “When we pray we come out of our shelters and see not only our own nakedness but also see that there is no enemy who haunts us, only a friend who would love nothing better than to clothe us with a new coat.”

source: Nouwen, H.J.M. (1972). With open hands. New York: Ballentine, pp. 50, 53;  *prayer retrieved from www.humble-access.org.  

the gift of attention

The people I work with are superb role models: from the one who cleans a room after a patient’s departure, to the physician who examines, explains, and prescribes, the volunteers who dash to answer a call-bell, the social worker who assists families during times of distress, nurses who provide expert care … and many others. One thing they’re all good at is listening: to each other and to patients and their loved-ones.  

Monitoring my own interactions over the last few weeks, I’ve noticed how often I jump in with clever observations, premature conclusions, and the always-suspect bits of advice. When I’m with patients, I’m quite good at listening, pausing, holding silence, and eliciting responses if that seems appropriate. But with co-workers, so my inner critic informs me, I tend to do more talking than listening.

“Every form of caregiving is a treasure of teaching,” writes Kathleen Dowling Singh. “The treasure is offered whether the caregiving occurs in the form of caring for babies and children, the lonely, the elderly, the frail and infirm, the disturbed, or the dying. … Each act of care brings us into the realm of the private, the intimacy of the interpersonal.  …

“The gift of our complete and focused attention is one of the kindest gifts we can give each other. It confers on both parties, apparent giver and apparent receiver, a sense of meaning, of value, of mattering. Why? Because in the moment of the gift of attention, we are actually present; our attention is deliberately and single-pointedly placed, our very life in that moment is meaningful.

“I have come to think that ‘being understood’ is sometimes even more of a fundamental human need than ‘being loved.’ We are nurtured in the gift of another’s attention. It provides the safest of places in which to share our vulnerabilities, fears, doubts, and triumphs. … We feel reconnected to our common humanity in the moment of being present with each other.”

source: Singh, K. D. (2003). “The gift of attention.” In: Brady, M. (ed.). The wisdom of listening. Boston, MA: Wisdom Publ., p.192. Dr. Singh is Buddhist teacher in the Tibetan tradition, a therapist, and author of The grace in dying: how we are transformed spiritually as we die. HarperPerennial (1998).