getting to know fear

This is a follow-up to the “relinquish!” post of two days ago. 

So what if I am ready to relinquish, to let go, to cease clinging. Where will it take me; where will it leave me? My fear—and fear is the underlying feeling—is that I’ll be in freefall, without anything solid to hold on to. I’ll be vulnerable (again): naked.

Following the practice of Buddhism, I sink into the feeling I’m calling fear. Consciously entering the bodily sensations, the physical experience of it. The immediate reaction is “no, don’t do that to me!” It’s the voice of the ego, the self that’s been hurt, that is hurting still. Zen teacher Ezra Bayda suggests that this is the time to ask, “What is this?” The what, he writes, comprises two aspects: a physical sensation and a thought pattern. He cautions to take tiny steps in approaching the core of the fear. So just writing all this, acknowledging my Angst, is that crucial first step. I am afraid that letting go of clinging will be painful—just as painful and devastating as the original loss.

As I sit with all this, paying attention to this breath, and the next, I become aware of a tighness, a holding in my shoulder and neck area. It’s as if I’m wearing yoke, the kind put on a pair of oxen* to pull ancient carts. I sit with that. Shifting from thinking directly into bodily awareness. Not trying to figure out what the yoke’s about, what it’s symbolism might be, how it got there, and how I might take it off. Just sit and be aware. And again ask, “What is it?” A brace, an armour, a weight—as if made of steel or carved from aged oak. Beneath that, my chest and heart area — soft and accessible, vulnerable yet unafraid.

Ezra Bayda: “Just the willingness to stay with the fear, to be curious about the fear, is a big step from pushing it away or trying to overcome it. Cultivating the willingness to be with fear is a step towards learning the willingness to be with our life as it is” [my emphasis]. It’s this non-rushing towards analysis and solution-finding (fixing) that continues to surprise me about this meditative approach. Its gentleness is, in fact, filled with strength; and light.

* The harness is called a yoke and a pair of oxen a ‘yoke of oxen.’  Ezra Bayda. (2002). Being Zen: bringing meditation to life. Boston: Shambala, p.70.

who dwells within?

St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) wrote: “What a shame that, through our own unconsciousness, we do not know ourselves! Wouldn’t a person look foolish, friends, if you asked her who she was and she didn’t know, had no idea who her father or mother were or what country she came from? If this seems stupid to you, know that our own stupidity is incomparably greater when we do not strive to know who we are. What transcends the body? We have heard that we have souls ….

“But we rarely consider the soul’s excellent qualities or who dwells within or how precious she really is. And so we don’t bother to tend her beauty. All our attention is focused on the rough matrix of the diamond, the outer walls of the castle, which are none other than these bodies of ours.

“Remember, this castle has many dwellings: some above, some below, others to either side. At the center is the most important dwelling of them all where the most secret things unfold between the soul and her Beloved.”

The Interior Castle. New translation by Mirabai Starr (2003). Penguin, p.36.

if you …

If you want to become whole,
let yourself be partial.

If you want to become straight,
let yourself be crooked.

If you want to become full,
let yourself be empty.

If you want to be reborn,
let yourself die.

If you want to be given everything,
give everything up.

From Tao te Ching, translated by Stephen Mitchell, (1988), Harper, No. 22.
The unknown author may have been a contemporary of Conficius (551-479 BCE).

relinquish!

Almost a year’s gone by since I lost my first* love (for more, see the top-of-page tab on grieving). More recently I’ve been struggling with getting her out of my system. It’s as if she’s still part of me, embedded in every fibre of my physical and emotional self. Places, scents, and sensations continue to remind me of her. Each time I wince with the memory of loss. If only I could “let go,” I’d be free again.

Letting go of what, exactly? Haven’t I tried to let go of the memory of her, of the love given and taken away, of the extraordinary feelings of ecstasy our union had presented us with? Yes, but not quite. What I’m called to let go of, I’m beginning to realize, is clinging itself: to what used to be and to what I’d wished would last forever.

“Letting go is the essence of the spiritual life, the heart of spiritual practice,” write Jack Kornfield and Christina Feldman, “beginning to let go brings an immediate and profound revelation. Only when we are no longer full of opinions and expectations are we truly receptive. Only when we are no longer afraid of loss do we begin to open in a whole-hearted way to the world around us. … In the discovery of aloneness is the discovery of what it means to be truly together with others. In travelling this path of inner transformation, we are encouraged to let go of everything, to relinquish every form of clinging [my emphasis]. We are encouraged to let go of preoccupations with the past, investment of the future, and clinging in the present. We are encouraged to renounce our images, expectations, fears, and guilt.”

No kidding! Relinquish every form of clinging. Renounce expectations and fears. Don’t hold on to guilt. What was, was—and what is, changes before your eyes. Freedom comes from being fully present with what is right before our eyes, not what was of what we’d hoped it would become.

“Do not hesitate to love and love deeply,” writes Henri Nouwen. “You might be afraid of the pain that deep love can cause. [no kidding!] When those you love deeply reject you, leave you, or die, your heart will be broken. But that should not hold you back from loving deeply. The pain that comes from deep love makes your love ever more fruitful. It is like a plough that breaks the ground to allow the seed to take root and grow into a strong plant. Every time you experience the pain of rejection, absence, or death, you are faced with a choice. You can become bitter and decide not to love again, or you can stand straight in your pain and let the soil on which you stand become richer …”

* borrowed from the Leonard Cohen song line “You’re my first love / and my last / there’s no love after you.” 

Jack Kornfield and Christina Feldman are meditation teachers associated with Spirit Rock. The quote is from Soul food: stories to nourish the spirit and the heart, 1996, Harper, p.309. 

Henri J.M. Nouwen was a Dutch-born catholic priest who taught at Yale and Harvard Divinity Schools and spent the last ten years living amid people with developmental disabilities at Toronto’s L’Arche. Quote from The inner voice of Love, 1996, Doubleday, p.49.

be grateful

Rumi says:

“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.”

Mawlānā Jalāl-ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī (1207-1273) Persian poet, jurist, and theologian; translated by Coleman Barks.

what is this?

How do I explain what happens when I “teach”? I’ve just returned to Galiano after guiding a one-day silent retreat on Mayne Island and conducting an afternoon workshop on “the beauty of imperfection” in Vancouver. Both times I came away thinking, “What’s coming out of my mouth?” I go in with some sketchy notes but hardly consult them. When I speak I don’t reach for some borrowed knowledge, some prepared speech—instead words come through me, not from me. As if my conscious thinking is suspended and I hear the words at the same time as those who’re listening. Simultaneously, I feel connected to everyone in the room, seeing each dwelling in their own experience, drawing the words from my mouth. My words, yes—and yet not my words. Is this what the mystics write about? That the Word comes through them, from a higher consciousness they’re unable to name.

Bede Griffiths addressed this phenomenon: “If I try to find words to express that transcendent Reality, I have to use images and metaphors, which help to turn my mind toward the truth, and allow Truth itself to enlighten it. … I can say that it is like a multitude of thoughts gathered together in a single mind which comprehends them in a single idea embracing all. Or going deeper, I can say that it is like a communion of persons in love, in which each understands the other and is one with the other. … This is as far as human words can go.”

Grasping to comprehend and describe, I reach for the word mystic. Am I overreaching, being presumptuous? Aren’t mystics the great ones of the past who spoke ecstatically of union with a higher presence … what they saw as the Beloved (Sufi), God (Christian), and Great Mother (Hindu) to name but a few? “The word mystic may mislead or intimidate some people,” writes Andrew Harvey, “the prestige accorded to it has traditionally been so exalted that they feel such heightened perception and joy can only belong to and are attainable by only a few chosen beings. This is far from the case. Mystical experience is always available—to any who really want it; and all human beings are given in the course of their lives glimpses into the heart of the real which they are free to pursue and forget.”

sources: Bede Griffiths. (1977). Return to the center. Templegate; Andrew Harvey. (1996). The essential mystic: the soul’s journey into truth. Castle Books, p.x 

images (top): “Mystic Rose” www.nzamt.org.nz ; (bottom): just how many “Mystics” teams are there?

depression

A wild depression
Has stolen away the hope
Which he claimed as his only friend
Here on earth.
Alas who will now flash
A rainbow of hope
Across his heart
Sunk deep? (Sri Chimnoy)

A friend told me of her recurring depression. We agreed that it’s a weird dis-ease to live with. Typically, we keep it under wraps, afraid that others will dismiss it as an off day, a passing mood, the blues. We have learned to think it’s somehow our our problem, a character flaw, something we must deal with on our own. Yet it’s perfectly OK (and tends to yield plenty of sympathy form others) to run to the doctor’s with a cold, an ache here, and a sprain there. Tell someone you hurt your back and have been sent to a specialist, up goes their concern meter. But mention depression and more likely than not, the conversation stops and the topic shifts.

For 35 years now, depression has come without warning, sucked the life force out of me, thrown me into an emotional fog as thick as pea soup. I’ve felt disoriented, helpless, and miserable. I must have been difficult to be with. “I can’t help you,” a dear friend said recently, “it scares me when you get like this.”

All I wanted to say—had I found the words—was this: please don’t try to help me; this thing comes and it goes; it’s familiar to me. There is, however, a huge service you could render … and that is not to turn away. Right now your very being–that’s your gift. It assures my frightened heart that I’m not being abandoned or rejected. And another wish: try not to enter my darkness. Maintain your separateness instead and look after your own heart. That way we can meet refreshed when I come up for light, both a little wiser for having lived through it.

“One of the hardest things we must do sometimes,” writes Parker Palmer, “is to be present to another person’s pain without trying to ‘fix’ it, to simply stand respectfully at the edge of that person’s mystery and misery.”

p.s. Having undergone the gamut of psychotherapies, I finally gave in to my physician’s urging to try anti-depressant medication (SSRI). I say “gave in” because until then I believed that I’d be weak to take pills. We experimented with various drugs (each with their peculiar side effects) and I’ve been on a low daily dose ever since. For the first time in my adult life, I wake up with a smile and go to sleep with a smile.

Palmer, Parker J. (1999). Let your life speak: listening for the voice of vocation. New York: John Wiley.

it takes this long

The mystery does not get clearer by repeating the question,
Nor is it bought by going to amazing places.

Until you’ve kept your eyes
and your wanting still for fifty years,
you don’t begin to cross over from confusion.

From The essential Rumi as translated by Colman Barks. (1997). Castle Books, p.64. image: Wanderer above a sea of fog by Caspar-David Friedrich, (1784-1840), German Romantic painter.

the g-word

What about “god”? I occasionally use the word in a quotation or when trying to express something bigger than myself. I’m uncomfortable with the word as it points to the “almighty” of the religion of my youth. And look what’s been done, and continues to be done, in the name of God! ”May God guide us into battle” (so we can kill and maim others), for instance, or “God bless this country” (but not the other ones). How many times and for what dubious causes has God’s name been evoked?

Each person, I imagine, will have a different answer to the question: what is god? I’ve heard Zen teachers, who practice a non-theistic religion, refer to God in relation to the god-ness within each person: our Buddha-nature; the essence, the pure being. A dear friend bristles when I mention the word in that way; for her it means church with all the trimmings she despises. When I brought it up in conversation on the ferry last night, the person quickly redefined the topic from God to Jesus “my personal savior.” 

My own conception of God were imprinted via childhood indoctrination and obedience re church attendance, prayers, and confessions. Tell me: what sins could a child of eight possible commit and have to confess to a strange old man clad in black sitting in a box behind a curtain who, in exchange for a dozen hastily recited prayers, then “forgives” said trespasses in God’s name? No wonder so many were traumatized and are reluctant to go near the “god” word. And yet … there’s a longing to name that which is present and beyond our comprehension. 

Now in my sixties I’m gradually finding a new use for the word, discovering a meaning that does not rely on the great religions, but expresses something I find un-expressible yet palpable. But language is tricky. “Words strain,” writes T.S. Eliot. “Crack and sometimes break, under the burden, / Under the tension, slip, slide, perish, / Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place / Will not stay still. / Shrieking voices / Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering. / Always assail them.  

I like this rich text by Ken Wilber: “Divinity has one ultimate secret, which it will whisper in your ear if your mind becomes quieter than the fog at sunset: the God of this world id found within, and you know it is found within: in those hushed silent times when the mind becomes still, the body relaxes into infinity, the senses expand to become one with the world—in those glistening times, a subtle luminosity, a serene radiance, a brilliantly transparent clarity shimmers as the true nature of all manifestations, erupting every now and then in a compassionate Radiance before whom all idols retreat, a Love so fierce it adoringly embraces both light and dark, both good and evil, both pleasure and pain equally ….”

sources: Ken Wilber. (2004). The simple feeling of being. Boston: Shambala, p.1.   T.S. Eliot. (1944). The four quartets.  London: Faber and Faber, p.12.  image: brendajohima.com 

do you ever pray?

 

“When you pray, you yourself must be silent … let the prayer speak.”

“Become what you are: more exactly, return into yourself.”

Kallistos Ware, titular Bishop of the Greek Orthodox Church for England and Diokleia

 

 

ok for catholic priests to marry?

The answer continues to be No. The newly-elected head of Roman Catholic bishops in Germany recently declared that the concept and practice of priestly celibacy is “theologically unnecessary.” Predictably, conservative bishops swiftly denounced the proposal as being “out of line” with official thinking (source: SPIEGEL).

The current pope (Benedikt XVI) comes from Germany and is a super-conservative. Among other backwards moves he advocates the return to Latin as the proper language for church services and views musical instrument other than the organ as inappropriate during services.

Question: does God prefer to communicate in Latin and does He really not like guitars and tambourines? Apparently someone in Vatican City has the answers. According to the principle of apostolic succession, Popes are thought to be direct descendants of St. Peter, Christ’s first disciple, and, by their own decree, infallible. Interestingly, said Peter (previously known as Simon) was married (Mark 1:29-31).

PS: I confess to have been raised a Catholic, including Holy Communion; left the Church at age 14; frequently enter churches for contemplation and organ concerts; been on retreats with Franciscan, Benedictine, and Camaldolese monks; consider the Eucharist a most mysterious sacrament; know people who’re practicing Catholics; and think of Jesus as a great teacher. 

image: Benedikt XVI

tea cemetery [sic]

I’m still coming across mementos from my December stay in Thailand. A clipping from the December 13 Bangkok Post reports on the New Lucky Restaurant in Ahmadabad, India, which is located in a centuries-old cemetery (“Bustling eatery features milky tea, buttery rolls, and graveside seating”). 

The café has been open for forty years and people are still dying to get in. Krishan Kutti Nair has helped run the restaurant built over a centuries-old Muslim cemetery for close to four decades, but he doesn’t know who is buried in the café floor.

“Our business is better because of the graveyard,” Nair said one recent afternoon after the lunch rush. graves are painted green, stand about shin high, and every day the manager decorates each of them with a single dried flower. They’re scattered randomly across the restaurant—one up front next to the cash register, three in the middle next to a table for two, four along the wall near the kitchen. The Hindu notion of death as merely an opportunity for rebirth makes the prospect less frightening than it is in the West, according to Dr. Varis Alvi, a retired professor in Ahmedabad. Although the tea shop cemetery is Muslim—Hindis cremate their dead—most Indians would feel comfortable relaxing in a cemetery, he said. “Graveyards in India are never scary places. We don’t have a nice literature of horror stories so we don’t have much fear of ghosts.”  

Customers seem to like the graves, which resemble small cement coffins. The graves probably belong to the family or associates of a 16^th century Sufi saint whose tomb is nearby, Prof. Alvi said. “We spend all day here,” Mohammed Tafir said between cups of tea. “The graves are holy, they’re good luck. This brings us good luck too.

image: apologies for the mixup: these gentlemen are not waiters at the New Lucky.

no perfect healing, alas

Here’s my dilemma. Again and again I meet people (I’m speaking of friends here) who tell me of a book or a speaker or an event which causes them to be excited. Something has touched them, stirred hope and enthusiasm, offered a way out of everyday chaos. My first reaction is not sympathetic joy* (Mitfreude in my old German) but a blend of sadness and envy … and the urge to offer bits of I-have-been-there wisdom. But I hold back, not sure how (or whether, or even why) to say anything.

For most of my adult life I’ve looked to the outside, to others, for ways to unearth and unload my burdens–only to discover, at long last, that the door to healing lies deep within my own heart. Granted, it took me six decades of floundering, wandering, seeking to come to that realization. Having been raised in the RC church, with its emphasis on “God is up there,” conditioned me to look that way. Gingerly testing the notions that “the Kingdom of God is within” and “You are Buddha” has led to neither paradise nor nirvana. A seemingly bottomless reservoir of pain keeps begging for attention, age-old wounds require attendance, and heaps of (im-)perfection long to be embraced. (I’m beginning to wonder whether it’s all my “stuff” or whether I’m picking it up from others or had it dumped on me in vivo; you know, as original sin or karma.) 

Jean Vanier puts it this way: ”In our times there is a danger of thinking that everyone may become perfectly healed and find perfect unity within themselves and with others. This type of idealism is rampant everywhere. … And each day new techniques are born which will bring about this long-awaited healing. Personally I am more and more convinced that there is no perfect healing. Each human being carries their own wounds, their own difficulties of relationships and their own anguishes. It is a question of living day by day with this reality and not in a state of illusion …” (my emphasis**).

* In Buddhist practice, sympathetic joy is called mudita, a Sanskrit word meaning rejoicing in others’ good fortune. It is traditionally regarded as the most difficult of the four virtues or “sublime attitudes” for a practitioner to cultivate. The others are loving-kindness or benevolence, compassion, and equanimity. To show mudita is to celebrate happiness and achievement in others even when we are facing tragedy ourselves.

** See also related posts by typing “wounded” in the Search box at the top-right corner of this page.

Jean Vanier. (1986). Man and women he made them. p.3-4.

kosovo declares independence

a new flag for Kosovo

 

May the people of the region find peace in their hearts

Click for CBC News and BBC Background

learning with george

Ram Dass said, “Hold George W. Bush in your heart.”

The interviewer asked, “Do you hold him in your heart … with affection?”

Ram Dass replied (haltingly, due to having been “stroked” and paralyzed on his right side), “ … No. … No. I see him as a fellow soul. And I don’t … affection is too psychological of a word. I mean, I have opened … with love. Which is the most I can do to help him through his incarnation. Which is what one soul can do for another soul.” 

Ram Dass was one of our teachers at the Metta Institute. During a video conference he mentioned keeping pictures of his beloved spiritual teacher and of Saddam Hussein and G.W. Bush on his altar. Eighteen months later I finally put a magazine cutting of Mr. Bush on my kitchen altar as well—right next to St. Francis of Assisi, Kwan-Yin, Thomas Merton, my parents, and monastic teachers.

I wanted to see what Ram Dass meant by there being no difference between one human being and another, and that we’re all fellow souls on our karmic journeys. As that other great teacher said, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Jesus according to Matthew 5:44).  

Surprise, surprise! The experiment didn’t unfold as I expected. Instead of feeling generously compassionate towards Mr. Bush, I feel sadness for him, pity even. He often looks scared; more like a child caught in an act of transgression than the world’s most powerful man. Scary, that! I still dislike what he says or does, disapprove of his actions and intentions … but he’s not my “enemy.” Nor my soul-mate. Much separates us. More work for me.

Intuition tells me that the next picture to go on the altar will have to be of someone closer to home … most likely the one who gave me last year’s gift of grief (see the “on grieving” tab at the top of the page). At this very moment I’m not ready to see that face again, even if it’s on a 3×5 piece of photographic paper. The mere thought makes my heart hide behind a tightened chest.

What is it that I’m afraid of? What is keeping me from being at ease? What will it take to love this enemy?