Saturday Connection
We rested in the morning, CK felt like she was coming down with something. We decided that hanging out at a movie with friends, as we'd planned the night before, was still something we both felt up to doing. We met up downtown to see Terry Gilliam's new movie. Afterward we got lunch from the Bombay Chaat House cart, enjoying it in the new park downtown. The day wound up at Powell's, mostly just to have coffee, and a quick shopping trip. We both really enjoyed connecting with some new friends even though we felt pretty tired as we headed home.
For today's poem I played around with the 3 line format of a 5-7-5 (syllables) haiku. Stringing several of these sets together to evoke the experience of lunch.
Saturday Lunch
The square was filled with
Sunlight streaming sideways and
The sound of water.
With conversations
Loud & sharp, punctuated
By impatient words,
Offset by laughter
And with appreciation.
A hum of voices.
The scent of rich food
Hung in the air, enticing,
Promising delight.
Mostly Haiku
Spent the day with Mom. It was a good day, I felt better after actually talking with her. After a lot of running around with Mom I rushed off to Beer & Blog to meet up with CK. Dinner at the carts and more hanging out - made for a really late night. I was really too burned out to write much about anything at all.
I've decided to recycle a children's board book for ABCs into an artist journal for haiku. I'm not sure yet if I'll use all my own haiku or some of mine mixed in with work by other authors. Mindful of wanting to continue the 30 Poems in 30 Days challenge and the possibility of many haiku for the book, I wrote a short haiku inspired by the afternoon.
Hood Haiku
Grey sky, white mountain.
Late afternoon sun glowing
Against winter snow.
Present to Joy
Spent some time with a dear friend who's recovering from major surgery today. I took over a lot of my art supplies in case she wanted to be creative, but since she was feeling somewhat low, energy-wise, we just chatted and I made lunch.
GK devotes her energy to the cultivation of Love and Joy. She helps keep a small group I occasionally help facilitate called Loved Based Living to provide a place for people to nurture the Love in their life and then extend forward into the world from a place of Love. It felt very good to reconnect with her after many months.
Later I'd mindfully reflect upon the joyful moments of my day. There were many, there always are many moments of joy in each day. During this time I am especially mindful of the need to be really aware of those moments that fill my day rather than feel caught up in the worry and fear.
Present to Joy
Present to joy,
To beauty
Small and large,
That fills my
Small world.
I awake in health
Far better than
Many others,
Especially my Mother.
I arise in next to
My Beloved and
In our own home,
Roomy, filled with art.
I venture out unhindered,
Free to move about,
Pause in appreciation
Of the sun’s brilliant
Light breaking through
Clouds and illuminating
Fiercely bright blossoms.
Anxious Energy
Yesterday I awoke feeling anxious. Had a difficult time getting to sleep and then bugged by Puck once I got sleepy. I finally tossed him out of the bedroom and closed the door a little past 1AM. In the morning I awoke after another dream where I was trying to teach yoga to a large class and no one would pay attention to me.
I could feel the desire to just stay home. There was laundry to do, food to make, art projects to make for people. A softer side of my Inner Critic just wanting us to stay safe, warm, comforted. Instead I mindfully got ready and went to a yoga class. I felt better afterward, like I nearly always do.
Yesterday's poem reflected that pull of depression under the Inner Critic's sweeter enticements.
Siren Song
Stay home, she says.
It is safe here, warm,
There are so many
Things to do,
That need doing.Softly, sweetly
She whispers
From inside me.
Wrapping up my
Anxiety tightly.
Encasing it in
Enticement.Don’t go,
We are afraid.Shattering the
Delusion of
Security I touch
The energy of effort
And leave the house.
Mom News & Poetry
My Mom called today to tell me I was off the hook for taking her to a 5PM doctor's appointment. I was relieved, it would have me driving from Gresham to rather near my house and back to Gresham, during some of the worst traffic. I didn't begrudge taking her at all and was glad I could, but I certainly was relieved to hear her doctor was needed in surgery.
Then she told me that the doctor was an oncologist who has treated her in the past.
It would seem that the stomach cancer she bested oh so many years ago is back. Or just a new cancer in the stomach. Either way, it is Very Bad News.
She's known for a few weeks now, from back when she was in the hospital the last time. They told her there. It had show up in her T cell counts, they'd looked there with some of the blood work they were doing.
She said she couldn't face telling anyone. She's only told her husband last week. I felt some anger that her great idea for telling me in person, because she'd wanted to avoid telling me over the phone, was to do so while on the way to an appointment with the oncologist. I'm glad she told me over the phone. I'm just glad she finally told me.
I've lived well over half my life, perhaps closer to two-thirds of my life under the shadow of my Mother's possible death. As a child it felt like icy darkness, dread of being forced to live the rest of my childhood with my aunt or my grandmother. I spent long hours sitting in waiting rooms, reading while she would get chemotherapy.
Cervical. Skin. Stomach. Breast cancer, twice. Who knows, there may be another cancer in there I'm not recalling right now. Additional problems too, angina & other heart problems, gall bladder, infections, cellulitis, and the list could go on. In and out of doctor's offices, clinics, hospitals. Always accompanied with dread.
The news hurt. It always hurts to hear she is sick, possibly hospital bound again. She doesn't want to go through another major surgery. I don't blame her. She's had radiation so many times they cannot really fall back to that. I don't recall her mentioning chemo. She said they've prescribed a lot of pain medication.
I remembered the last time she was sick and I mentioned it to Hogen. He reminded me that I know how to face this. I've had an enormous amount of practice facing the grave health of my Mother. How to keep moving forward in the face of fear.
So I moved forward. Running a number of errands we normally would have to cram into a weekend. Tasks made easier since I wasn't at work any more. The fear subsided. In it's place remains an ache, anticipatory grief for the loss that may possibly come sooner than anyone would like. Grief for myself, for bearing the burden of her fear of death throughout so much of my life. Deep grief for all the loss she's experienced, a whole lifetime of loss and very little joy.
Unsurprisingly the news has deeply touched my offering in the Poetry Challenge.
The Loss That Comes
The fear of
My Mother’s Death
Has shadowed
Most of my life.
I’ve grown older
Immersed within it.I easily touch
My child-self’s
Icy, dark fear of
Being left alone.I feel the grasping after
What was lost.
What never was.
What will never be.I become aware of myself
Endlessly spinning around
The same mythology of
Fairness.
Justice.There is a certainty we
Wish to avoid.We are dying.
From moment to moment.
First breath to
Last breath.
Every last
One of us.The news comes
And the shock is
Still as startling and
Painful as it always is.
It subsides more
Quickly than when
I was a child.
Left behind is a
Dull, hollow ache of
Anticipatory grief
For the loss that comes.
The End of a Chapter
Today feels like my first "Official" day of being unemployed. Something about not making the 8AM status call. I also noted that for some reason it doesn't feel like I'm on vacation. Maybe it was because CK was busy getting ready for work herself?
In my usual style I've filled this first week out of work with projects and appointments. I am having lunch with people 3 days this week, taking my Mom to the doctor late tomorrow afternoon (amazed that she has a 5PM appointment), Portland Ignite on Wednesday night, a cohort meeting & zazen with my Zen community on Thursday. Tuesday is my official "good-bye" lunch with my team - some folks were on vacation last week and I was really too swamped to do it with trying to wrap things up.
Saturday I felt kind of extra burnt out from staying up late with a friend from our Sangha who is going to be relocating to New York indefinitely. We went and did another walk through at the venue for Open Source Bridge in June followed by lunch with a couple of the other organizers. We ended up napping in the late afternoon which felt very disorienting. In the evening we finally watched Amongst White Clouds, which was just stunning.
Sunday I think I'd finally rested enough to suddenly be hit with the reality of my unemployment. The anxiety I'd managed to push off with the huge task list finally manifest. Big waves of uncertainty and groundlessness. My Inner Critic, Lovey, wailing, "What have you done!"
What really struck me is just how much of my sense of self has been wrapped up in the job I held, in teaching yoga. Letting go of my regular class at Dishman was bad enough, but at least I still had my job to give the impression of stability, of knowing. I think I was really quite unaware of just how much I measured my self worth, my idea of who I am, by those titles and those paychecks.
Today starts a new chapter where I practice with letting go of more of the idea of "Self" as some construct of all the memories I have, titles I've held, places I've been. Another reminder that I am not my job, not my paycheck, not comprised of the entries on my resume. All of that stuff is mind chatter, part of the noise that separates us from the Essential Self, the No-Self Self.
And it is poetry challenge time in the Zen Community of Oregon. What is now becoming an annual tradition of writing 30 poems in 30 days. To start off, prime the pump as it were, a rather smallish poem:
Home
Scent rising up from the kitchen.
Grain steaming. Roots roasting.
Cats sleeping peacefully.The simple gifts of home.
Mudita Bhāvanā
Mudita, one of the four Brahmavihāras (divine abidings), one of the mind-states of an enlightened being. Mudita is the state of rejoicing in the happiness of others, the state of sympathetic joy. It can also been see as the recognition of an inner joy we always have access to which helps us to appreciate our lives.
Bhāvanā is Sanskrit for 'development', 'producing', or 'cultivation'.
Mudita Bhāvanā is the cultivation of the mind-states of joy and appreciation or gratitude.
I recently invited a group of people, not necessarily Buddhist practitioners or mediators, to join me in looking at a mindfulness exercise based on one Chozen Roshi sent out last year.
Part of her mindfulness task included the following: "We want to engage in Mudita practice as an investigation of what we can or are appreciating in this moment rather than as a way of suppressing or ignoring negative mind states. We want to broaden our awareness to consciously include and embrace what we appreciate and notice what effect that has. Do negative mind states drop away by themselves when we focus on what we appreciate? Does our habit or conditioning to notice and become obsessed with the negative change with Mudita practice?"
We would spend a week spent dedicated to the practice of Mudita Bhāvanā. At the end of the week each participant would write a little bit about their experience and share it with another participant in a letter. In the end, nine people participated. Right away people commented on how just anticipating the dates to start the experiment brought mindfulness to their daily life. I was thrilled to receive this feedback and have made it part of my own practice. It has been an opportunity for me to gratefully receive positive feedback and fully, truly enjoy the excitement of others.
I've been making a practice around appreciation for all of Ango. I continue to note something I appreciated about my day each night before bed. On the nights I forgot, I merely note it and write something in the morning. I stay mindful of my vow to be gentle with myself and do not let my Inner Critic beat me up too much about not doing this task exactly when I "should have".
This past week of really staying mindful to gratitude and sympathetic joy has been far more challenging than I expected. On the 5th I was given the opportunity to take a severance package at my job of 7.5 years. I wasn't actually on the list to be laid off, however, if I volunteered it would mean upper management wouldn't look at having to lay off someone with only a few years left to retirement with pension intact.
The truth is, I am grateful for my job. I appreciate the illusion of security and comfort it provides me. Some of the people I work with, particularly my boss, have become real friends over the years I've known them. However, most of the time my job has been unsatisfying, frustrating, and stagnant. Upper management has denied me a promotion for a few years now. Bearing all that in mind I said I'd volunteer to be laid off. My boss and I discussed early May as a potential target for me to leave and I was very appreciative of this time to wrap up loose ends.
Tuesday morning I was told that my volunteer offer had been accepted. However, despite my careful planning, the separation date would need to be the end of this month. I would have less than two weeks to wrap up the most demanding of the loose ends. I also am forbidden from sharing the news with my teammates until Monday; they will get 5 days warning.
I've spent the past two days in "triage mode" trying to determine what is critical to be changed starting Monday, once the people who will assume my responsibilities are informed. This morning I had to lie during a team call as to why I couldn't pick up a new project. It felt awful.
In that moment, on the verge of tears and feeling nauseated, what could I feel grateful for? Could I turn toward the positive things about that moment instead of feeling crushed by the negative mind-states rapidly manifesting? Having been focused on this practice I found that a long list came to mind very quickly.
- I felt grateful that I was working at home and not having to be face-to-face with people.
- I was appreciative of the sun breaking up the clouds and beginning to brighten my home office.
- At hearing nervous discussion about job cuts happening in my department I felt grateful knowing that having volunteered to go it meant some of those nervous people would keep their jobs for the time being.
- I deeply appreciated the encouraging words from CK via instant message.
- I was/am profoundly grateful to have a partner who is glad I'm being laid off and reassures me that she's got my back.
- I'm so grateful that she doesn't mind reassuring me a lot these past few days.
- I was appreciative of the cup of very good tea I was drinking.
- I was happy to be at home where I could go out to the garden or enjoy the company of the cats.
After directing my thoughts toward all the positives in the present moment I did feel better. The tears subsided as did the tightness in my throat and chest. I was able to focus and come back fully into the present moment, including the challenging team meeting.
In the past week I have found that each time I mindfully direct my thoughts towards sympathetic joy and gratitude there is a noticeable sensation of feeling lighter. Whereas my anxiety manifests itself in a tight, crushing sensation, Mudita feels as though weight has been removed. I feel anxiety as a terrible weight, a tearing at my heart center, but when I mindfully cultivate joy and gratitude, I feel my heart pulse with life and open to the present moment.
I have found it interesting to compare the practice I do with Metta, Loving-Kindness (another of the Brahmavihāras), and Mudita. When I practice Metta for myself I feel comforted, protected. I don't feel an openness in my heart until I turn my Metta practice toward others. It is almost as if my self-directed Metta is more about nurturing my hurt than about becoming more open. Mudita is entirely different in that I feel that opening in my heart when I practice for myself.
I've really found it useful to first do Metta practice for myself, comforting the hurt my heart/mind feels, and then cultivating Mudita from that safe, nurtured space. Using the two practices together this way has felt very powerful. Although it isn't easy yet, I have found that the more I practice Metta and/or Mudita, the faster my mind shifts. Even if this shift is small and I am not entirely lifted out of the negative mind-state I've found myself in, these practices still create space, light, and ease.
Just the Sound of Rain
Today was kind of rough. The full big reality of some recent decisions started to hit and it felt very uncomfortable. Adding to the discomfort is the uncertainty and stretch of being involved in negotiating a proposal for a venue - there's large numbers involved and I've never done this kind of thing before. A whole lot feels very uncertain right now.
I don't really like uncertainty or change. I grew up with a too generous helping of both of those, combined with entirely disordered, dysfunctional and sometimes abusive behavior. All is a recipe for fearing change. I feel waves of big craziness from Lovey, my Inner Critic:
"Are you absolutely mad?! How could you be volunteering to give up this security?!"
With all that energy I went to sit zazen with my sangha tonight, fully expecting two periods of monkey mind: Lovey berating me, some wholly inappropriate music, a little crying -- the usual. Well, the usual for my zazen for the past several months if not most of the past year. My zazen has become distinctly restless and is just one more task I must accomplish each day in order to be a good person. My teacher recently recommend that I sit less each day to try get those periods to regain some sense of restfulness.
Tonight I was prepared. I had the mala CK got for me, my wrap, and I even had a new handkerchief someone sent me, embroidered with blue & white columbines. I was ready for it. Instead during the first sit, with a physical sensation, a "popping" of energy in my head, suddenly everything stopped. Maybe still a little bit of voice, the observer noticing the quiet and commenting at this reminder of zazen as rest.
Still, it was the most quiet my mind has been since sesshin in August when I was overcome with this hazy, exhaustion that seemed to keep me in a strange fog most of the week. Only this time I wasn't hazy or exhausted, I was just there. Aware of the sensation of breath moving in my tight ribs and of the sound of the late winter rain pounding into the roof of the zendo.
The second sit wasn't as restful and I didn't expect it to be. Neither was it awful. It was just normal. Thoughts arising and returning to the breath. Through it all was the thrumming of the rain, nearly until the bell rain. The sound filling my ears, drawing me back out of my head and into my body and reminding me of the sensation of rest.
Self-Cleaning Pottery
Several weeks ago I sent my teacher Hogen an artist trading card I'd made. It has the quote from Rumi on the back, that bit that has had me thinking and meditating around it since CK gave me the book for my birthday!
Ask!
Step off
proudly into sunlight,
not looking back.
Take sips of this pure wine being poured.
Don't mind that you've been given a dirty cup.
It has been useful to consider myself as the cup and the various abusive moments in my life as the stains of the cup. The imagery has become a way to see that in being caught up in the stains I'm entirely not present to the pure wine being poured, not able to appreciate my life. When I am stuck in the pain, and the habitual reactions around it, it is like drinking the wine while complaining about the cup.
When I sent the trading card to Hogen I enclosed it inside of a beautiful card with koi painted on it. Faced with the blank interior of the inside of this card my mind rushed to put something, anything that might sound like I'm a decent student. In that speedy awkwardness I wrote down something about practice being a way of cleaning the stains of the cup.
Only it isn't. I'm totally wrong in thinking that. Believing that if I just practice hard enough I can somehow clean the stains. I can't make history go away, it is impossible. It is falling into the trap of hoping that Zen or Yoga are somehow a kind of self-improvement program that will make the past not matter.
I'm missing the point. The point is to not care about the stains, not to find some way to clean the up. This wondrous, present moment is the pure wine of life. The cup holds the wine, why in hell do I care if it has stains?
On Sunday I was hanging out after the retreat, a busy time when Great Vow gets even quieter as residents head into their day off or to attend events in Portland. I happened to catch Hogen as he prepared to head into town and mentioned what I'd realized about practice. That what I'd first written him was wrong because I still cared about the stains if I was hoping practice would clean them. I told him that the whole point is for me to not care about the stains anymore.
He smiled at me, nodded and commented that the real point is that when I no longer care about the stains then the cup will clean itself.
I had to laugh to myself as he walked off, considering the aspiration to become self-cleaning pottery.
All that and a haiku for late winter!
Late winter sunshine
Inspires flowers to burst forth.
"Spring comes!" they assert.
When my Critic is Quiet
This weekend's retreat was unsurprisingly powerful and emotional. I felt very strongly supported by my Portland friends, something CK helped to remind me of by prompting some friends to send me very positive text messages on my way out to Great Vow, and by the Sangha there. Looking back at the weekend I can see the many ways the residents at Great Vow were supporting and helping me through a retreat I came to very reluctantly.
One thing I figured out that was good to learn are the times when my Critic is silent. That critical voice or sensation in my body is so often present that it feels like I am never with out it. However, when a Dharma sister from our Portland program and I agreed to talk about when it isn't there, since the conversation was shorter, she helped me to see two times when I am utterly free from this feeling.
Unsurprisingly cooking was one of those times. When I am engaged in preparing food there is no critical voice. I am merely present to the activity of my hands, the timing of the cooking, and the food I am transforming. When I serve a new dish to someone the voice comes back, but most of the time I'm pretty confident that what I've prepared will be delicious.
I also realized that when I teach yoga there is no Critic. Even if I am anxious or terribly upset right up until the very moment I begin a class, once I start to teach the voice goes away and I am present and alert. When I transmit the Lineage of Yoga there is no space for the Inner Critic. None.
It was good to connect with these two times when I am clear and free of my Inner Critic. Now I'm wondering when else it is gone!