Life may be a great teacher but who wants to be taught (when what I really want is for the pain to vanish. It’s 5:17 am and the second night of constant pain is turning into morning. Waking from fitful sleep, I roll and turn, looking for a position that might give some comfort. No point taking pain meds as they don’t seem to do any good. Running a bath and hoping for relief from hot immersion … I barely get wet when I scramble out with a howl. Always looking: over there, in the next moment, with this diversion or that, please fix me #$%! Anything but stay in this moment, with this pain, and face my helplessness.
That’s the word which jumps off the page as I look to Ezra Bayda for guidance. With his experience of long periods of undiagnosed pain, he’s been a practical advisor in the past. Today he surprises me: not with the hoped-for breathing remedy, but this:
We all dread the helplessness of losing control; yet real freedom lies in recognizing the futility of demanding that life be within our control. Instead, we must learn the willingness to feel–to say yes to–the experience of helplessness itself. This is one of the hidden gifts of serious illness and loss. It pushes us right to the edge, where we may have the good fortune to realize that our only real option is to surrender to our experience … .
Later this morning: taking Bayda’s observation to heart, I opened to the fact that I cannot fix this, that I’m helpless and without magic powers. Even the physiotherapists (two!) were puzzled by the symptoms but gave it their best. A taxi took me home, still in 4-out-of-5 pain, but something has changed. What is it?
source: Bayda. E. (2009). Zen heart: simple advice for living with mindfulness and compassion. Boston: Shambala, p. 155.


discomfort. It did not mean worrying whether the pain might go away, whether this meant the end to good health as I’d known it, nor how soon I could get an MRI and spinal surgery, etc etc. In short, it meant lying still and shifting attention from “me” to the next breath. And the next, and the one after that, and, each time the scared self wanted to run and complain about the unfairness of it all, sink into the marvel of yet another breath. Right there, at the centre of breathing, in the pure sensation of the fresh and unknown inhale/exhale, I found the absence of pain.
This morning, seemingly out of nowhere, came an insight: let go some more, release the grip on an old fantasy which you know, deep in your heart, is no more than bubbles in the air.
(further to yesterday’s post)
April at the

Yeah, the projects, disasters, dreams, losses, and what-have-you that push and pull us through life. There’s neither happiness nor unhappiness, there just IS. Well, that’s what I think right now.
As I get ready for sunday morning meditation, sweeping the floor, straightening cushions, refreshing the flowers, and setting out tea cups, my focus is on Now. Personal worries naturally make room as I shift my intention to serving others. In a story, the student approaches his teacher, saying , “I feel so discouraged; what should I do?” The teacher pauses and then replies, ”go and encourage others.”
(Further to yesterday’s post)
It’s been three weeks since my hospice job ended and I continue to feel its absence. ”Loss is the absence of something we were once attached to,” writes Stephen Levine,”grief is the rope burns left behind, when that which is held is pulled beyond our grasp.” Days go by as if in a fog. My eating habits have gotten worse, my sleeping pattern erratic. I do a bit of this and some of that. I am adrift in a sea of not-knowing. What can I hold on to, laments the voice within. Throughout the spiritual literature, and certainly in Buddhism, we’re told that clinging leads to suffering, holding on generates pain, dis-ease, and unhappiness.
Several times a year, for a decade now, I go somewhere to be silent with others. There is a magic of being alone in community, to retreat. Few words, no eye contact, no touching, no polite gestures; just being together, meditating, eating, working, chanting or praying. I’ve done this at Zen, Benedictine, Franciscan, and Thai monasteries, for as short as a weekend to as long as ten days.
Have you ever done a silent retreat? Would you like to? Is there a place and a time you could go on one where you live? If you’re at all curious, you could start small (a good idea for most): an evening “sit” at a local Zen, Vipassana, Shambala centre, or a church that offers Centering Prayer. In the Quaker tradition people join in a “meeting for worship,” a time of communal silence, occasionally broken by words spoken spontaneously from the heart-mind-spirit. 
look for is (often) right in front of us. As the man said, we don’t need new landscapes, merely new ways of seeing.
everything. “And the fear?” Yes, the fear also. Pause. “Rather than focus on what I don’t have or what’s not happening … make friends with it?” Yes, befriend it. Not every friend is welcome, and yet they keep coming and we let them in. “Could be that this friend has something to teach me, eh?” Pause. “I’m tired. Have to lie down. Let’s see if I can get out of this armchair by myself. …*&%# … “OK … give us a push!”
Following this morning’s meditation (with five other lovely beings at my house) I found an email query from a friend: Are you hungry?