A Dharma New Year
I spent the first moments of 2009 on my zafu in the zendo at the Portland Dharma Center sitting zazen with members of both Zen Community of Oregon and Dharma Rain. The silence of zazen was punctuated by 108 rings of the bell. A ring for each of the types of impediments to enlightenment.
Last year I'd spent the New Year at a women's retreat, Joy in Mindfulness. It was a very special time and I look forward to doing it again sometime. Aside from the yoga teacher training (financial and time resources are dedicated to this) and no vacation time, I really wanted to experience New Year's with my community and my beloved this year.
There was a potluck dinner to start followed by sacred circle dances led by Chozen Bays. After we settled into the zendo for Fusatsu, a ceremony where we burned paper where we'd each noted things that are impediments to our true selves, zazen, a chanting service, and closed with some sparkling cider served formal tea style in the zendo! What a full night!
CK and I made an African peanut stew from the Becoming Vegetarian book that we both like a lot and I made some matcha cupcakes, which were very popular when I brought them to a sitting night earlier in the year. Our Sangha must have agreed since both were all eaten up by the time we packed up after midnight. It was a delicious potluck dinner, I may have gotten some unexpected butter, but that may happen from time-to-time. Some of the stand out dishes were several variations of salads made with quinoa that inspired CK & I, buckwheat noodles tossed with a sesame dressing, carrots & tofu, and there was a very tasty lentil & chard soup we'll have to track down the recipe for later. Oh, and Brussles Sprouts, which we both just love!
For some people the sacred circle dances Chozen teaches are a "big snore", but I enjoy them a lot. They are simple, close and always invite a lot of shared, gentle laughter. I am pretty thrilled that CK enjoyed them too!
The only downside to a perfectly wonderful night was when I began to stiffen up and hurt a lot, from my right lower back to the ankle, during zazen. We sat a longer second period, with no kinhin between zazen periods (only a wiggle bell), and I didn't switch to a seiza bench between. They'd opened a few windows to keep the zendo cool (to help keep everyone wakeful) and I grew tight, chill, and further into pain. Always a very challenging part of my practice.
Even still, I'm used to working with the pain so it doesn't detract from events overly. Once we got home, I had some ibuprofen, hot tea and snuggled under a warm blanket until I was feeling better. Sleep will further help.
Tomorrow, today really, we're off to Eugene for a couple of days at a bed and breakfast, a little exploring, and a lot of relaxing.
End of Year Reflection
Tonight there was a practice circle after zazen instead of the more usual sanzen. As a Sangha we haven't been together very much since Ango ended mid-month; kept away by weather and holidays. That being the case HB thought a circle would let us all reconnect more as a community. He asked us to speak to what we've learned about ourselves over the past year and what our intention is for the coming year.
At first when practice circles are announced I feel deep gratitude for the opportunity to sit back and listen to others. To not have to speak, reveal myself to my community. Given the way the year has gone I voluntarily spoke up about mid-way through the regular members rather than wait to be called upon.
I've learned a lot about myself this year. There have been many hard and painful truths surface. What I settled upon to share, to be brief so all people would have time to talk is that I've realized what a "behind the scenes" kind of person I prefer to be.
I like being generous with compassion, patience, understanding and support with others. I particularly like it when I can do this from behind the scenes, facilitating the progress and comfort of others. Not that I don't like receiving acknowledgement for these efforts, but I prefer that acknowledgement be accompanied with little fanfare.
More importantly I realize how I am not generous with myself. I begrudge myself the same compassion and love that I easily give to others. I set unreasonably high expectations for myself and deny myself when I understandably fail to meet them.
Where Silence and Stillness Meet
Big day today -- told two co-workers I'm close with and my boss about the divorce, my being a lesbian. The first one I talked with is a gay man on my team who went through a similar transition himself several years ago. It was good to have his advice and I was very moved to have his offer of a sympathetic ear as I make this change in my life. My boss just gave me a big hug and offered support. My other co-worker, who has a 17 year-old son struggling with his sexuality, offered another hug, support and asked if I'd be comfortable talking with her son when he was ready to start talking to people (her son, and my knowing I might be able to be some kind of resource for him, was part of the reason I told her).
As with telling other people, it goes just fine. People are supportive, open, loving and very respectful. Everyone also seems to be really behind AM & I doing this to nurture our friendship and to be fair to everyone involved. It hasn't been really fair or satisfying to either of us for a while and adding CK to it as a polyamorous relationship for me only meant that it was unfair for more people.
Tomorrow I'm going to have lunch with DH and tell her the news. AM and I are going to send out an email to the rest of our friends over the weekend since we'll have told the closest friends by then. I'm sure there will be emails and phone calls galore after that. More than anything it is just tiring and I feel drained. It was a tremendous relief to have the routine of zazen at the Dharma Center tonight.
HB said something tonight in his Dhama talk about there being a space where silence and stillness are the same. Silence isn't being closed off and isolated, rather the state of being we are in when we are entirely still. Where we are when we settle the mind into silence and rest in the essential self, to paraphrase Patanjali.
I wasn't there when I first started to sit zazen tonight. RP had told me as I was heading upstairs to the zendo that HB had said he wanted to the Ino to wear a microphone when chanting. I felt my stomach tighten up in response and I tried to laugh about it.
I settled onto the bench and breathed in deeply a few times, feeling my diaphragm move the air. Just trying to let the thoughts settle and let go of thinking about chanting with a microphone later. And it worked for a little while.
Until I felt the anxiety about my voice come back and this time it came accompanied by old emotions from childhood. I worked on my breath and when I felt that slipping sideways feeling of something triggering my PTSD I focused my gaze on the radiator, the repeating patterns on it. I looked sideways and CK's profile, feeling the energy of her sitting next to me.
I never felt the full heart pounding, skull crushing fear I've had show up. Just a kind of sadness. I was able to remind myself that what happened to me was years ago and I am just fine now, that I was in the zendo, with people around me who care very deeply for my well-being.
I didn't even have to say it again and again. Once I'd grounded myself by connecting to the room, the radiator and CK beside me, I was able to feel the breath and the sadness together. The steam clanged loudly in the pipes, I was pleased to note my heart was beating at a calmer pace. In kinhin I felt myself slide into the movement meditation with profound gratitude and stillness of mind.
When I returned to my cushion for zazen I set my mind to metta. I pictured myself, the little girl who wanted to be a Rose Princess, and began the practice. I was amazed to find myself staying with the practice, breathing in, breathing out a loving-kindness prayer for myself.
May I be free from suffering and fear.
May I be free from anger.
May I be free from shame. (an extra one I add for myself sometimes)
May I be happy.
Usually I cannot even stay with myself enough to do three of those prayers. My mind wanders around, off planning and full of fear, shame. When I consider that I've done enough mindless metta I focus on a person I love, a person I have a more neutral relationship with, and a person I dislike or have difficulties with. These are normally easy and focused, when I send metta to others.
Tonight I was able to stay with myself, the image of myself as a little girl. 9 rounds of prayers, each staying mindful. Not unwavering, but never so far I forgot where I was, which is the usual case. After 9 I did the three prayer sets for others and then let myself return back to my body, the feel of it being breathed, until the bell rang.
I started to Hogen about it, but decided to hold off, just letting my acknowledge of it just be still a little longer. It has been such a full day
Shossan
Last night it felt like the words were still percolating down through the layers to be able to write about them. Tonight it seems like there is more space between them and writing.
Shossan was done last night after zazen. Like sanzen, it is a chance to get to ask the teacher a question about your practice. Unlike sanzen, which is done in a room, privately with only your teacher and you, shossan is done in the zendo, standing, in front of the entire sangha. It provides the opportunity for everyone to share in the teaching being given.
First of all, I tried very hard to not practice questions in my head while sitting zazen. "Just be in the body, feeling the breath in the body.", I reminded myself when I found myself rehearsing. And it didn't go too bad. I felt some of the stillness of zazen settle around me like a blanket.
When shossan started I tried to be attentive to the sangha members, the questions they asked, Hogen's responses. When the row I was sitting in was given the indication that anyone with questions could get in line, I got up with a question in mind.
Even now it is gone. I stood a few steps behind the teacher's bowing mat, tried to be attentive to the person in front of me. That's gone now too. I moved forward when it was my turn, bowed to Hogen and went blank. The nice, safe, un-revealing question I had in mind was gone.
So I went back to a question I've had for a few weeks. I've not asked it in the past two sanzens I've had because I've been focused on the immediate change occurring in my life, but this question is what came out of the quiet anxiety I felt at realizing my question was gone.
When I talked to Hogen about the shame I felt coming up, what to do with it when I had checked out and knew I was making an ethical choice. This shame feels like some awful echo again. When it and some of the fear come up I tell myself again and again that it is nothing but old emotions, feelings that were unsafe for me to experience during the events that created them, ghosts. I try to send myself compassion, loving-kindness, and stay in the present.
These things feel like they get between myself. Last year's Ango was around the theme from a Teisho from Maezumi, "Close the gap between yourself and yourself." Hogen also had me practice with learning to have more pride for my achievements.
This Ango arrived and I felt like I was still working on the gaps. I try to assimilate what happened during my childhood, acknowledge that I had been so afraid and hurt. When I try to think of some of the things as part of who I am my mind just stops. It doesn't want to move into those spaces. It stops cold at the precipice and says, "Everything but this."
Hogen told me to be patient with myself. To stop expecting myself to be done with this already and feeling like I'm not making progress. There isn't a time line for my way on the path. He focused on one of the other of the Paramitas for me, shaki which translates to peace, patience.
It isn't that I'm judging these things unfairly. There's no way they can be looked at without expressing sorrow that I experienced them. I try to picture myself as that child and recall as much love for her as I can. It is reasonable that I judge what hurt me as a child as bad.
To be patient with letting the scope of my childhood fear surface and be acknowledged, that feels like the practice Hogen was talking about. To not rush these emotions off and want to be done with them already. To treat them with loving-kindness, again and again if necessary, until those emotions feel comforted and quiet down.
Rails Off
This past Sunday CB noted that in the Tibetan tradition of Buddhism there are many guideposts, ways to let you know you're on the right track. In Zen you're sat down on a cushion, encouraged to be still and all the other rails are taken off.
In the past few days it feels like I've gone about dismantling and taking down some of the few remaining rails on my life. I have a great weight of mourning, of feeling pain at disappointing people and leaving the comfortable safety of routine. I also feel a humming undercurrent of excitement on the changes that will be in my future. I told HB last night that I believed I was making the right choice for myself, what was true, however, that didn't lessen the difficulty of it, the pain of it. So pain, mourning, excitement, and love all at once.
Since I've taken the rails off, pulling down all my roles, make-believe ideas about myself, everything feels as intense as it really is. All I can do, again and again, is be present for it. I'm aware of all the ways in which I wish I wasn't, the times I'd like to just crawl in bed and hide, sleep the time away. Practice and love brings me back.
Generosity
This first Dharma talk during Ango was given by CB on the topic of generosity, the Paramita dana.
She talked to two main points: the ways in which we can manifest generosity and how we must cultivate a peace that we carry within us. Towards the end of the second period of zazen she asked to consider what we could do to project generosity there, upon the cushion, without speech or movement.
Metta came to my mind immediately, projecting loving-kindness and opening the heart. This called to mind to me the difficulty I have offering that back to myself. I thought about my pain, how I just work around it, let it be this dull, background noise accompanying the humming and drumming of my daily life. The physical pain particularly, but the emotional pain as well.
It had been a long day. The chair made me ache at the restaurant where we met to discuss the fund raising dinner around CB's new book, Mindful Eating. My stomach was a little upset and my back and hips ached, a spot in my right quadratus lumborum particularly so. Really, I just hoped the bell would ring soon so I could stretch out.
I took a moment and just thought about compassion for that spot that ached. I offered some sympathy to myself for the constant pain-noise, always somewhere in the back or hips. I acknowledged that it is tiring and hard to manage chronic pain. I didn't feel sorry for myself, just recognized the effort. Just focused on trying to be generous to myself.
I Am My Practice
Finally met CK's mother and step-father -- feeling hugely relieved that the anxiety of that first meeting is over and pleased to have had the chance to spend time with them. I felt a little more comfortable after spending the whole day to them. It also helped to have reassurance from CK that I was doing great, especially at those times when I felt like I was babbling.
It also wakes up a little of that awareness of just how much I do not fit in with, feel connected to, my own family. That awareness was still with me this morning when I read news from my Mom that she'd had an infection from her eye surgery and on Halloween slipped, falling on her back. I was aware of feeling both worried about her and weary of the constancy of her ill health.
On Sunday CK and I discussed sanzen, if it were to be offered while we were at Sunday service at Great Vow Zen Monastery. She had made an ango commitment to go to sanzen with HB at least once. I noted that at the monastery she would literally sit behind me in line and would be able to watch all the things to do that way.
So I found myself sitting before HB in the more formal sanzen room at GVZM. He blinked in surprise at me and I mentioned CK's visiting family. I talked to him about the shakiness right now, how my practice was leaving me aware of the ways in which I've not been fully honest with myself. At the same time I have feeling as though more and more of who I thought I was just falls away.
He asked who I am. At first I responded that I don't know. That is part of the anxiety I'm feeling right now, the shifting of who I thought I was. After a moment I looked up and said, "I am my practice." and he nodded at me.
Today was kind of tough, some painful truth. On top of a busy weekend with not enough sleep I find myself very tired tonight. All day while working on some Perl code my mind has pulled away reactions and moved closer to what hurt was not being addressed. As tough as it was I feel like I am working towards the truth again.
A little autumn haiku
What my mind came up with when I was trying to settle it into the silence of zazen at Great Vow Zen Monastery on Sunday, November 9, 2008.
Geese flying overhead.
Wild messengers calling out,
"Winter comes, prepare!"
My Picture in a Zine
My article came out today in the Sangha newsletter, Ink on the Cat. It seemed a little strange to me to see myself there, printed, in black & white, looking out from something I could hold in my hands. I'm not sure if I've ever had my photograph next to something I wrote. When I think about it, the only time my photograph has been printed is in things like year books. Once or twice in small, local papers when I was a kid participating in a school or civic event.
In high school and college I had things I wrote show up in the school papers or literary zines. Mostly poetry, I wrote so much poetry throughout my teens and twenties. I moved onto just having a website and putting up my own poetry there when I was in my twenties. The poetry seemed to just stop showing up, years ago. It feels strange sometimes to not have poetry swimming around my head all the time. Once in a while something occurs to me, just in a flash and mostly whole. Haiku shows up in those flashes.
At times it feels like the PTSD burned through that language. When the anxiety caused by it is at a peak it feels like I am entirely cut off from any ability to think coherently, much less communicate. Being able to get any words out is a physical fight. In finally naming what left me feeling like I was broken and trying to work on it, the words no longer arrive in the spare beauty of poetry.
And yet on all sides I am being encouraged to write. My Zen teachers and community, my Hatha yoga teacher, my loved-ones, and co-workers. Tell the story of my weight loss, my realizations about myself as I study yoga, coming to a place of peace. All of is why I write a blog, trying to come up with some practice that would help me figure out how to tell whatever story decides to come up.
I feel a little at a loss as to where to start. Really all of those stories are the whole story. The free-fall of personality I experienced, was because of my weight loss. That loss of my carefully constructed personae that I defined as me left behind the stark reality of my PTSD. Peeling back the layers of the trauma leads me inexorably back to my childhood. The way out of all of these things has been the yoga and Zen practice.
I feel a sick fear at my Mother finding out what I've written and still managing to punish, humiliate, or at the very least make me feel guilty for embarrassing the family. There's a voice that says that I should wait until she is dead to write about her. I guess I feel like I don't know how to write this story because I'm still living it and most of the time lately I feel like I have no voice of accomplishment to speak from.
Yet here is my picture, printed in the newsletter next to my words. Someone from the Sangha has already emailed a compliment to me on my words, adding their voice to both CK and AM's.
Moving With the Current
I've felt my inner critic ratcheting up the guilt this week. As each day passed without me writing I felt the guilt-o-meter creep up a bit more. Edging toward that place where I just give up because I feel so guilty for slacking I can't bear the thought of facing the reality of starting over.
When interacting with people and I feel as though I was mindless or unskillful in my speech I can feel overwhelmed by the guilt of it, unable to be present for feeling bad. I'm trying to get better and actually say something to the person, as soon as I am possibly able. In the past I'd feel so ashamed of my behavior that I felt incapacitated to even address it with the person I'd hurt or made angry. Since I've been learning to say something to the person, as agonizingly painful as it feels, I often find that the person really hadn't taken offense at all or if they had, not to the extent I'd built it up to be in my mind.
So I am writing tonight, finally, after many full days. I gave a very well received presentation at work. I should be able to glean things out of that presentation into a generic one I'm going to propose to OS Bridge, a free, "pre" OSCON Open Source conference that some folks are trying to put together for next summer here in Portland (in response to OSCON moving from Portland in 2009). I'm also considering proposing a "Yoga for Geeks" workshop there as well.
Suddenly my prospects of teaching more yoga have grown! Tonight I met with the owner of SomaSpace, a studio that features formal & ecstatic dance, body movement, and she's looking for yoga teachers. The space is convienient and lovely, very comfortable feeling. PB was not merely interested in the ideas I had, but enthusiastic and supportive as well.
We talked about my starting out by offering workshops and perhaps some regular, once-a-month classes. I said I'd like to do workshops on yoga and trauma recovery as well as a regular class for members of the transgender community. I think she'd be equally interested if I offered workshops for hospice workers and other pallative caregivers. I was just stunned by all the names of people she wants to introduce me to, ideas she had about marketing, and even the suggestion that I throw a party/fundraiser for myself to fund buying props!
Then I went to zazen and spent two sitting periods, plus the walking period, trying desperately to NOT plan everything now! Even as I tried to settle myself into my breath, I had to admit I was having very good ideas! One I really like is working towards doing a Metta Yoga workshop out of all I learn from Loving-kindness retreat in April.
For the present, I have the training to finish in March. PB and I agreed to keep in touch during the winter and as it gets closer to April we'll look at some dates. I am feeling that this may be a good arugument for making it to one of her dance evenings once in a while. It is a good way to keep that rapport between us supported.
If we as practitioners think of ourselves as entering a stream, I have this feeling of being moved along by the current. Not swept up, rushing heedlessly off. Rather being supported, bouyed up and moved along in the right direction. The current providing swiftness to my Way.