Chanting and Breathing
I've haven't felt a lot of light these past several days. Consequentially I haven't felt like writing, working on any art I have in mind, knitting, or doing much of anything. My energy feels pretty low this week and I feel like I'm reached the overload point of things to work with in my life.
Last Sunday after teaching yoga at Dishman I went out to Corbett, out into the thick of the windstorm to my Mom's. They had no power and a tree and lines were down on the road to them, forcing a detour around the back. I saw a tree down over a house and other trees down all around, even one nearly on the road I was driving. The wind was howling at gusts between 60-70 mph. It would have been easy to imagine Dorothy flying past a window. It didn't occur to me until later, when someone exclaimed at my going out there in the middle of a windstorm, that I'd done anything that unusual.
When I got there I saw that Mom looked pale, scared and tired. I just listened to her for a while as we drank tea made with water heated on a kettle a top the wood stove. I opened the Christmas present she'd got for me. The whole time I felt tight inside, aware of all the muscles around my heart locking up, the coldness in my chest.
Finally I got Mom to settle in a chair and taught her some Pranayama. I could tell she was breathing in the top of her lungs only out of pain and fear. I coaxed her to take breaths that were as deep as possible, to learn to feel how the body moves when the breath moves into the whole lungs, just feeling the breath breathe the body.
I told her as far as any meditation goes, just to keep coming back to what the body felt like breathing. That's all she needed to try to do, that and to scan the body, finding the places that do not hurt as much. Like Hogen told me as a technique for sesshin, when my chronic pain gets really bad. What hurts is obvious, the noise of the hurt is so loud in the body & mind, find what doesn't hurt and take refuge there for a while. Feel the breath in the parts of the body that do not hurt. I told her to try this even it was only the top of her right ear that didn't hurt!
I taught Mom the most simple form of Nadi Sodhana (alternate nostril breathing), just a breath on each side. I was pleased to see doing this left her looking a little more clear in the eyes. Although I have great faith in Nadi Sodhana to restore calm and balance, some part of me was tensing against my Mom not really trying it, dismissing it as silly. She nearly did stop, not liking the feeling of breathing through one nostril that was a little congested. Much to my surprise she kept going for a while and said she did feel a little better afterward. I'm going to record this for her, I think she'll be more apt to practice if it is guided.
It was hard watching her. It felt like being a kid again, sitting waiting for her to be finished with chemo treatments. Feeling anxious and scared myself, watching all the other faces taut with fear around me. Trying to immerse myself into a book while I waited and waited, through so many appointments, until she would come out ill & frightened and we'd go home. At least I had something to do this time, teaching her to breathe and be still in her body, that is more than I've ever had when she's been sick.
This latest scare feels somehow larger and more frightening than ever before. I'm terribly aware of the ill-health Mom's experienced over the past year, how she isn't as strong. I'm trying not to actually call it cancer yet. Neither has been diagnosed, just suspicions... more tests are needed, results are inconclusive. I'm trying to hold onto that, to not react in fear to what is not yet certain. I'm finding it difficult not to tighten around the fear, to keep opening to what arises in the present.
Since last Sunday I've felt drained all week. It has felt dark to me and the momentary joy of Tuesday morning's inauguration has felt tarnished by the disappointment in Mayor Sam Adams for lying. Even worse than feeling disheartened by the lies I've felt great irritation with the media for whipping the whole thing into a frenzy that's a distraction from the real problems facing Portland. Work has been extremely frustrating all week. It just felt extra hard to generate much light at all, even for my own small corner. I've been sustained by the light others shining around me, for which I'm truly grateful.
Just this afternoon something, someone just reminded me about the light I offer. Just by my being open and receptive to the suffering of others, to being present to it. Just by offering to chant a persons name.
I maintain the list of names we chant during service with the Portland Sangha of the Zen Community of Oregon sits zazen together. Service contains a part called the Transfer of Merit. We recognize that we generate energy when we practice together and dedicate that merit to people who are ill, in distress, or who have recently died.
Most weeks I get names from people. Emails, people chatting with me at the Dharma Center. Whispers of Stage IV cancers, old age, failed business... Sometimes nothing other than a name, which list it belongs on (in distress or died). I set the list out on the table before and after zazen on Thursdays, so at times I merely see new names appear, handwritten on the page I bring each week.
This week, this afternoon in particular I've been able to tell people that I'd add a name to the Merit List. Even after performing this service for the Sangha for a year now I remain a little surprised at how so small a gesture means to people. A friend said to me she was so touched just by my offer of support for her fear for her father's health, just that I came forward at all. Another sent me a message to let me know how much it means to her and her friend to add a name to the list. A complete stranger, brought to me by way of to me by way of the Internet (friend of a friend of a friend...) emailed to ask me to chant for his brother who just died, how it was of comfort to him. It is merely my open offer to acknowledge the suffering of others that generates light.
Some days it doesn't feel like much, I think I forget how much this small thing can mean to someone suffering in grief, anxiety. It is merely the act of being open to the suffering of another person, not wishing it would go away fast and not getting too caught up in my own fears of potential, inevitable loss, just being present for their suffering and offering to formally acknowledge it.
Once a week I chant all of these names, there are other people who chant them during the rest of the week. I recite each name carefully and clearly into the silence of the zendo. Giving time to each name so everyone there can all hold the names of each person in mind. It is this small thing I can do, even when my own light feels very dim, just show up each week and say the names, even when it is tremendous effort to do so. Using my voice to make the container for the grief and worry we all carry with us.
Sustaining Light in Darkness
The day after writing about the necessity of creating our own light I got some pretty dark news. First the news a dear friend's marriage has turned abusive. She's in Kentucky, his idea, and arranging to try to move back to Portland is pretty difficult. Immeadiately after getting off the phone with my friend I called my Mom back.
Last year they gave us a real scare by telling her that her chest pain might be due to a suspicious shadow on her right lung. Then suddenly everything changed and the cause was congestive heart failure and over 20 pounds of fluid in her chest cavity. They explained the shadow as interference due to all the fluid.
Only her chest still hurts and it isn't her heart, the congestive heart failure is under control. Several x-rays ahve revealed the spot is still there on her lung, right about where she's been saying her chest hurts all along. She is being scheduled to see an oncologist this week.
She's also been going through a lot of very serious procedures to help with her vision loss. Last week they told her that they didn't believe the loss was due to her diabetes and gave her a tenative diagnosis of retinal carcinoma. There's some additional tests needed, but it is rare so arrangements are being made for her to be seen at the Casey Eye Institute up at OHSU.
My Mom has had several forms of cancer: cervical, breast (twice), skin. She's had several other major health problems too. Since I had a lot of problems with asthma as a kid and was sick a lot, between my health and my Mom's I spent a lot of time reading in waiting rooms at doctor's offices, clinics, and hospitals.
It is hard, difficult news to hear and I feel the instinct to draw in tight around myself, close up around the pain. Hogen told us recently that this is the very thing that must be resisted, this reaction to shut down into the darkness. This is where the energy of practice is at once the most needed and most difficult to sustain.
What Good is Revisiting
I woke up feeling heavy, cold and anxious this morning. I got out of bed early thinking I'd take a hot shower, sit zazen a little, and then I'd be up to going to work. Instead I felt worse in the shower, no amount of heat seeming to help the cold grief I felt. After drying off, feeling small, I crawled back into bed, crying.
I'd gone through yesterday feeling tight with the tension of the news I'd received in the morning. A close friend's marriage, which has taken her into isolation in Kentucky, has turned abusive. My mother's received tentative diagnosis of retinal carcinoma and a suspicious shadow on her right lung. She'll be seeing a Kaiser oncologist for the right lung and arrangements are being made for her to be seen at the eye institute at OHSU. I just felt a kind of shock at it all. On top of getting ready to sign the divorce papers it is a lot to take in.
Visiting with my therapist yesterday we talked about my ability to compromise myself out of something I really need. How I'd felt really shut down when AM wasn't able to share my practice with me. How I have a weakness for being talked out of my needs, for being convinced that something else is just fine. She pointed out that I was going to compromise my sexuality, not experience a fulfilling relationship with a woman because I was able to not look at my needs.
In part it is conditioning for often being told that something else was good enough and I was being selfish for not seeing it. I grew very adept at knowing the good in situations, trying to focus on that because the times I didn't my Mother could be very angry with me, even striking me across the face once.
I can feel that part of my brain, immediately upon noting how she once hit me. Instantly going to re-frame, make that sound better. I note how it only happened once, minimizing the damage. It is the part of my mind that will insist that I was never injured by any of my family members, never had to seek medical help for anything. Like somehow the the lack of greater trauma made it all OK.
I asked CK to come to my physical/craniosacral therapy appointment with IW, trying to listen to the voice that needs. It was good to have her there and IW taught her a few releases for some of my recurring trigger points in my back and left hip. I decided not to write at all last night nor did I end up sitting.
This morning, crying in bed I decided to take the day off. Well, CK helped me to decide, helped me listen to the ways in which I just needed to cry, to rest, rather than listen to my inner critic who kept telling me to get up, get dressed, and go to work, be a grown up. Even suggesting that I was selfish and stupid for being so upset, that I was going to waste a potentially happy vacation day in the future I could spend with CK. An endless stream of reasons as to why I shouldn't just tell work I was taking a day off.
After logging in and seeing I had no meetings, I sent out a message that I wasn't feeling well. CK made me some toast and tea. After finishing those I slept for quite some time, utterly exhausted. I've resisted the urge to do more work beyond logging into my email a couple of times. I have knit a little and we're going to go for a walk out in the sunshine soon. I may even take another nap.
GM noted yesterday that she still thinks I'm expressing grief I've felt and held back for a very long time. I asked her, especially from my Zen perspective, what good is this to go back and look at this, to revisit these things. She said that in going back an feeling the grief I didn't, couldn't allow myself to express I can also look at why I felt that way. In the case of not getting to share a practice with Andy I can look at my need to share a spiritual practice with someone is important and use that experience to remember why I must express my actual needs, rather than rationalize myself, or be rationalize out of them.
We Merely Need to Shine
On Sunday CK and I were watching the second installment of 'The Story of India' which particularly deals with the history of the Buddha. In talking about Gotama's death I mentioned to her his last words, in doing so I was reminded of Mary Oliver's poem, The Buddha's Last Instruction (which is at the bottom of this post). I had noted this to her as well so today I went looking for it again to send to her.
The instruction from Gotama as he lay dying was, "Make of yourself a light". This fascinated me when I started investigating Buddhism, I thought it was very beautiful this last directive to continue to looking within the self for guidance, not outside.
Investigating Zen lead me to Shunryu Suzuki Roshi's playful interpretation of these words, "We say, to shine one corner of the world—just one corner. If you shine one corner, then people around you will feel better. You will always feel as if you are carrying an umbrella to protect people from heat or rain."
This sentiment is something I've found myself repeating many times. All we need to do, each of us, is to concentrate on shining our light in just our corner. Merely by making this effort we positively affect those close to us, encouraging them to shine more brightly in their corner. Think of the illumination of the whole world if each person merely concentrates on doing their very best to shine brightly in their corner.
I try to remind myself of this regularly. I tend to try to do too much, push myself too hard, and am far too quick to offer criticism to myself. At those times I try to recall that when I treat myself like that I'm not shining in my corner, I'm cultivating darkness instead. It is good to remember to just do my best at those times, to make the most ethical & compassionate decision I can make at any given moment. By doing this so I can still shine even when I feel tired, in pain, and uncertain.
The Buddha's Last Instruction
by Mary Oliver
"Make of yourself a light"
said the Buddha,
before he died.
I think of this every morning
as the east begins
to tear off its many clouds
of darkness, to send up the first
signal-a white fan
streaked with pink and violet,
even green.
An old man, he lay down
between two sala trees,
and he might have said anything,
knowing it was his final hour.
The light burns upward,
it thickens and settles over the fields.
Around him, the villagers gathered
and stretched forward to listen.
Even before the sun itself
hangs, disattached, in the blue air,
I am touched everywhere
by its ocean of yellow waves.
No doubt he thought of everything
that had happened in his difficult life.
And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire-
clearly I'm not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value.
Slowly, beneath the branches,
he raised his head.
He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.
Vriya, Tapas
Joy has encouraged my teacher training class to attend one of the once-a-month 'Full Moon Yoga' classes. This classes are taught by Rae and are a very different style from the usual classes. I planned to get this class done today, but the I woke up sore, stiff and very tired. I felt like I needed a nap the whole day. I just kind of meandered through the day's work.
I really didn't want to go to yoga tonight. By 5PM I was talking to AM while he put dinner together and thought about not going to the class. It was a late one too, starting at 7:35 and going past 9PM! Dinner didn't help with the heavy tiredness in my body.
What helped were two things that I try to include in my practice, Vriya and Tapas.
Vriya, which encompasses the idea of energy, diligence and effort, is one of the Paramitas, or Perfections in Buddhism. One of the six qualities of an enlightened being, Virya is the sustained energy of practice over a long period of time.
Tapas, which can be translated as "Burning Effort", is one of the Niyamas and is what we feel after holding some asana for several breaths and we stay with it; the warmth in the shoulders many breaths into adhomukha svanasana. It is also the constancy which keeps the fire of our practice burning over years and years.
Vriya and Tapas are what bring me to the cushion, to the mat, again and again.
My reward tonight was discovering that Rae's class was very closely modeled after classes in Kripalu style I'd taken for some time at Yoga Shala. I really enjoyed Sarah's classes a lot, but the effort to make it over to SE PDX from NoPo after getting to the house from Downtown -- it had just become such a chore that more and more I was finding myself making excuses to not have go out again into traffic to try and get to a class. Since she's changed where she teaches, now days my schedule just does not align to allow me to take classes with her.
Eventually I started studying at Prananda, at first because it was so close to the house. I've stayed and deepened my study at Prananda because of how welcoming the space and the people all are (teachers and students). Tonight's class was a nice visit back to a style of yoga I enjoyed a lot and have missed.
Making Do
With a day of reflection acknowledging the disappointment I'd felt back in 2006 when I was wanting to share my Zen practice with AM I've been brought round to how I so easily look past my needs. Something that CK has called my attention to. Just tonight the way she did something called my mind to this. There's a "Full Moon" yoga practice tonight at Prananda that she'd been planning to join me at. For several reasons she isn't going, but she checked in to be sure I was really feeling OK with that or if I would benefit or just want her there with me tonight for support.
At what point does the ability to be good at compromise turn into letting go of what I feel is important?
I can think of instances large and small where my memory and my Mother's collide. Where she talks about making sacrifices, and to be fair she did try do things I wanted. It was just so often there was some part of it where it was what I wanted, done to her specifications. So maybe not exactly what I wanted, but I was always pointed to how it was just as good, if not better than what I wanted. In the face of such little support, and sometimes outright threat of punishment, it is no wonder I became an accomplished compromiser.
Going to Beloit was something I really wanted and I didn't get to finish that, a decision that was lead by my Mother. Sometimes I'm still amazed that I listed to her, but I then remind myself that I'd been having a year-long emotional breakdown. I suppose it comes up when I think about it because I still feel some sadness over just leaving suddenly like I did, over not finishing something.
Just layers of having my wants undermined, second-guessed. Yes, it taught me how to see the positive in all kinds of situations. It has also taught me to ignore any disappointment or sadness I felt around something. I spent most of my first marriage doing it. When there started to be disconnects between AM and I, we both looked away and I reminded myself that things weren't bad, I wasn't that unhappy. That it is entirely fine to make do, make the best of what is there.
The depth of contentment, happiness I feel sharing my practice with CK turns me around to look at not sharing a spiritual practice with AM. When I began practicing with a Zen community there where a couple of years where I asked him to share this with me and he said he couldn't because he had his own practice, it wasn't the same as mine. And this is so completely true. Buddhism reminds us again and again, we must make our own way on the path. He also noted that he also tried to pull back so I would have space to have something that was my own.
Yet, I felt hurt about this even though I did understand his reasoning and even agreed with it. What I need to be mindful of is how I also dismissed my hurt and just reassured myself with reasonable compromise. I realize now that what I was craving was the feeling of Sangha, the community of people practicing together, supporting one another on their solitary way. When I practice with my partner I feel how we two make a very small Sangha, giving synergy to our individual practices as well as to the practice that is our relationship.
Go Team Pranayama!
I received the most amazing, wonderful, absolutely cool compliment today from one of my yoga students today!
Z waited for me until after class got done and people finished asking follow up questions. She told me that over the break she had faced a very difficult, life changing decision. A decision that could have dire consequences if she followed her desire over what her heart told her. She said she'd been trying to meditate and wasn't really coming to a clear answer no matter how hard she sought one.
Finally, Z said, she thought to try a Pranayama technique I taught her in last session, Kumbhaka Antara. She said that she used this technique for some time as part of meditation and when she finished sitting her answer was there. Although it wasn't the answer she was hoping for, she needed to not follow what she wanted.
Within a week, she went on to tell me, things changed so dramatically that had she followed desire she would have very likely lost her home! She told me how very grateful she was for the Pranayama I had taught her, that it was now a very useful tool in her life, helping her a great deal.
I feel so touched and humbled when a student tells me yoga helps them in any way. Having a student tell me that a yoga practice I taught them literally saved their home is just stunning!
Delayed and Present Pain
Today kind of sucked, well the two and a half hours of asana, the same asana over and over again, really had my hips and my emotions hurting. I was just utterly spent by the time I got to the flat and found CK waiting with ibuprofen, practically at the door, and dinner well under way. I felt so entirely happy, relieved and grateful to see her tonight.
I talked to her about the hurt I've been struggling with around AM resurgence of commitment to practice. I felt it keenly last night during savasana when I had said I was grateful for my practice. What I had fully in my heart was how sweet it was to be laying in savasana next to CK, how fulfilling it feels to share my practice with someone so deeply. I feel this way at times when we are sitting zazen next to each other. Just feeling profoundly grateful to share a very vital part of myself with someone and have it by nurtured by their own practice.
She asked if what I felt wasn't new hurt so much as delayed hurt. That I dove into three years of zen practice and never really felt like I truly shared it with AM. I appreciated that we each had a separate practice, but I noted at times that I'd like to deepen our relationship by sharing being part of our Zen community. I hadn't looked at it quite like that, it feels a kind of newness, but it makes sense.
Rather like the issues dividing showing up and growing several years ago, but neither of us wanted to the be the one to point them out, I never wanted to acknowledge that I was sad my spouse didn't want to share my spiritual path with me. How I deeply wanted to feel like these things that have become such a vital part of who I am are really shared, supported and mutually appreciated.
I hold onto the fact that had AM done all those things we would have eventually come to this same place. That it doesn't change anything. I suppose I'm merely mourning what I wished could have been. Not terribly productive and I try not to get wrapped up in this, staying in past regrets and wishes. Especially not when the future holds the very thing I didn't choose to recognize I was missing.
Tough Practice Earns Documentary
I am just utterly worn out from over 2 and half hours of asana technique and critique during the longer teacher training program I'm doing. Each of the 9 of us taught nadi sodhana (alternate nostril breathing pranayama) and two asana. For at least two student teachers you would be an assistant, doing corrections. That meant doing 6 rounds as a student, repeating two of the same sequences.
Let me break that down, everyone started with nadi sodhana.
- Yogini A taught intense side stretch and revolved triangle (I assisted)
- Yogini B taught figure 4 and pigeon
- I taught warrior 1 and 2
- Yogini C taught figure 4 and pigeon
- Yogini D taught warrior 1 and 2
- Yogini E taught intense side stretch and revolved triangle
- Yogini F taught figure 4 and pigeon
- Yogini G taught intense side stretch and revolved triangle
- Yogi H (the one guy in the class) taught warrior 1 and 2 (I assisted)
All of the poses in red are hard for my the chronic pain I get in my lower back and hips due to the herniated disc I have at the base of my spine. The revolved triangle pose is a particularly challenging asana. I kept coming down to child's pose, resting my head on the ground. I felt very weak and upset by the pain to day. It was a really difficult and my dedication to yoga, to desiring to go more deeply into teaching yoga is what held me in my practice.
When I got home I was so delighted by the scent of roasted delicata squash hinting at dinner well under way I thought I'd cry with gratitude! the winter squash was served with some sauteed zuchinni, quinoa and mixed legumes. I noted afterward that I was still feeling rather burned out from class so CK and I decided to watch the first episode of the BBC documentary last year, The Story of India. A well done culture/history show sounded like just the thing to unwind.
I am really enjoying this documentary so far. It is beautifully filmed and just fascinating after the first episode (there are 5). I appreciate the interviews and the gorgeously shot scenes of ancient excavations of the earliest of Indus and Aryan civilizations!
Workshop?!
Each month I have a one-on-one phone call with my manager. We discuss what I'm working on, if there are other priorities I should attend to, what is getting in the way of my accomplishing my goals. We usually spend some time talking about ourselves. I often tell her about how my practice is going.
At the end of this year, as I was reflecting on 2008 and my practice with the precepts, how there is one peer at work who really challenges me. I find myself holding onto irritation with behavior of hers that I consider unprofessional. Not just the ways she interacts with me, but the way she treats others. I will have a call with her days after something happens and find myself curt with her, still irritated. Hanging onto the story about the irritation and anger for days.
As I work with the precept to not give rise to anger, rather to seek the source of it, I realized my co-worker offered a perfect opportunity to practice. I had thought about Bhagavan Das saying in the new and amazing production from 1 Giant Leap, What About Me?, that, "Worrying is praying for what you don't want."
In holding onto the anger and irritation it was just another way of praying for what I do not want in my life. I need to practice with working that those emotions, understand where they arise from and move forward from compassion instead. Why not start learning this at work, since I spend so many hours engaged in it.
I finished explaining all of this and some of the ways my teachers have provided insight on how to look deeply. My boss noted that on a very uncomfortable phone call with this person I had managed to interject something that sounded completely calm and supportive even though my manager said she knew I had to be infuriated by the behavior.
She then said that an objective for me around team building this year was to come up with a workshop for the whole team on how to work with irritation, change and uncertainty. Emotions my team has felt very much of this past year especially. KE told me she had this fear that I would become so in demand as a workshop presenter that I'd retire from my job very early. She said she really saw this, really saw me as providing workshops that integrate mindfulness and yoga for people in business, care givers, and trauma survivors.
When I told CK about it later, how I was so surprised and feel like I'm not up to coming up with a workshop for my team she smiled at me. She pointed out how wonderful this is, I now have my day-to-day job willing to pay me to come up with workshops for presentation to business! I hadn't thought of it that way at all, I'd been more focused on feeling entirely unprepared and lacking in skill for this kind of task -- listening to my inner critic!