the flavors of mindfulness...

Mindfulness of the Breath is a concentration practice. It helps the mind focus and become more steady. It calms the mind and the body. And it trains the mind to look more deeply at our experience as it arises. As I have mentioned elsewhere, the breath is not the only focal point we can use. It is a good one for the a number of reasons - it is always with us, it’s portable, it happens in the present, you don’t have to believe anything special, it’s close to the seat of our emotions, and no one has to know you’re practicing. But for some people, the breath is not appropriate - if there is a physical condition involving the breath or some trauma that is triggered by the breath. In such cases, using touch points - left hand, right hand, left foot, right foot, seat, left hand, etc. - can be a very effective alternate to the breath.

Concentration is one of two basic forms of mindfulness practice. The other form is open awareness - mindfulness of experience as it arises and passes away without choosing one experience over another. This second form is practice is how we practice when we bring awareness to the changing sensations in the body, to the arising and passing of emotions, and to our stream of thoughts, moods, and mind states. This is as important for practice as the concentration practice as it holds the key to wisdom.

The essential ingredient for both of these forms of practice is kindness towards self and others, compassion, a basic friendliness that doesn’t judge thoughts for arising, bodily sensations for being uncomfortable, unpleasant events from occurring. This doesn’t mean we have to agree or support everything that arises or happens. It means we accept that the experience is happening. We are mindful without pushing away or grasping after these experiences we like or don’t like. And we also pay attention to experiences we don’t understand and/or are confused by.

This basic kindness toward ourselves and others and this acceptance of our own experience is essential to our wholeness.

And the new year arrives....

Yesterday I learned a family member I hadn’t seen for many years - a much younger cousin who lived in Colorado - was much too close to the wildfires and huge winds that raged through this past week. She and her family had to evacuate. Fire came on three sides of their community and a small area at the end of her street also burned. While their home was spared, there are no services in their community - heat, electricity, phone service. And the fires were dampened only by snow and freezing weather.

This suffering will come close to us on some occasions and seem very distant on others. I find myself saying, but this is different, this is family. And at the same time, thinking, what about all those other people who aren’t? People whose homes actually burned. Those three people who lost their lives. Are they not also family?

This scenario and this reflection has been repeated over and over again for each us. With each new disaster, we are faced with another decision point - to turn away and say, but they are not family, and go on with our lives, or to turn towards and allow our hearts to break again at the suffering of another member of our human and animal family.

Our path is to allow our hearts to break open when we can, to offer ourselves compassion when we can’t, to explore the edges of these states, and to find a way to have a conversation from the depths of our own interiority to the wide world of our exteriority in a way that sustains us with authenticity and connection. This might be an aspiration, not at all a certainty, an intention that can be explored with kindness towards ourselves and all beings. We will also find that we have moments when this aspiration is achievable, has been achieved.

For this, we practice.

I offer a poem from David Whyte. If I have offered this before either here or in MBSR, it is worth the repeated exposure. It is also so very right for this transition into the new year.

“Start Close In” 

by poet David Whyte, David Whyte: Essentials.  c 2020


Start close in

don’t take the second step

or the third,

start with the first

thing

close in,

the step

you don’t want to take.

 

Start with 

the ground

you know,

the pale ground 

beneath your feet,

your own

way to begin

the conversation.

 

Start with your own 

question,

give up on other

people's

questions,

don’t let them

smother something

simple.

 

To hear 

another’s voice,

follow

your own voice,

wait until

that voice

 

becomes an

intimate private ear

that can

really listen

to another.

 

Start right now

take a small step

you can call your own

don’t follow

someone else’s

heroics, be humble

and focused,

start close in,

don’t mistake 

that other

for your own.

 

Start close in,

don’t take 

the second step

or the third,

start with the first

thing

close in,

the step

you don’t want to take.

  

The editor Gayle Karen Young  Whyte writes in the commentary:   

START CLOSE IN.  This poem was inspired by the first lines of Dante’s Comedia, written in the midst of the despair of exile from his beloved Florence.  It reflects the difficult act we all experience, of trying to make a home in the world again when everything has been taken away; the necessity of stepping bravely again into what looks now like a dark wood, when the outer world as we know it has disappeared, when the world has to be met and in some ways made again from no outer ground but from the very center of our being.  The temptation is to take the second or third step, not the first, to ignore the invitation into the center of our own body, into our grief, to attempt to finesse the grief and the absolutely necessary understanding at the core of the pattern, to forgo the radical and almost miraculous simplification into which we are being invited,  Start close in.

 



The sun stands still...

Today is the the winter solstice - at 10:59am according to the internet. Solstice literally means the sun stands still - “sol" is the Latin word for Sun, of course, and “sistere" the Latin word for “to stand still.” The winter solstice is the shortest day because the Northern hemisphere tips as far away from the sun as it can get in its orbit around the sun.

What I always found fascinating is that the sun has been setting later by a minute for a full week already. Sunset seemingly pinned at its earliest time, 4:15pm, on Dec. 3 and “stood still” for 10 days. It wasn’t until Dec.13th that the sun set 1 minute later at 4:16pm. Now - today - on Dec. 20th, the sun will set at 4:18pm and set later each day by larger and larger increments. Note: These times may vary slightly in different latitudes but the trend will be the same.

The sun has been rising, on the other hand, later and later through out this same period eating away at our daylight at the beginning of the day and outweighing the increasing daylight the later sunsets provide - 6:54am on Dec. 2nd, 7:03am on Dec. 13th - a full 9 minutes less daylight in the morning over the same 11 day period.

Sunrise hasn’t yet reached its time of “standing still" and won’t until Dec. 27th when the sun rises at 7:11am. Then for the next two weeks, sun rise “stands still” pinned at 7:11am for 5 days, sliding to 7:12am for 5 days and back to 7:11am for 5 days. Finally on January 11th sunrise begins to move out of stand still mode and rises at 7:10am. By then sunset is at 4:36pm - 16 minutes later than it’s nadir - and the perception of later sunsets and longer days is well underway.


This still point of the natural world has been significant throughout human history and probably animal history as well. We are especially reminded of our connection to the natural world, the solar system, the body of the earth and our own bodies during these days. We are nature and nature is us. Practices that support our inhabiting our bodies fully can ground us, can connect us with the sources of renewal and healing within us and in this natural world.

No safe passage...

Every year I give my family books. The idea originally was to sustain the independent bookstore. But their reading interests vary wildly from women writers of the early and mid-twentieth century to Chicago Blues, to books about the climate crisis and books to help us forget the climate crisis. So I am ordering more and more on Amazon for used or hard to find books and feeling rather shameless about it. The salesperson at my Indie bookstore was positively relieved when I offered not to help them stay in business by insisting they find and order the above array in time for Christmas.

One of the books I’m giving is Paul Hawken’s Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation. Many, if not most of us, careen between denial on the one hand and despair on the other, the Scylla and Charybdis of the climate crisis. And yet, as the Buddha said, there is a middle way. The meditation version is our tendency to suppression of feelings on the one hand and to dramatic and reactive expression on the other. Denial and despair.

As Carl Safina writes in a section of Regeneration called “Wild Things,” “A United Nations panel last year released a report roughly summarizing…that a million species face extinction in this century. A million deaths, Stalin reputedly said, is just statistics. Even Mother Teresa said, ‘If I look at the mass I will never act.’ This emotional overwhelm, this paralyzing tsunami to the soul, has been termed, ‘Psychic numbing.” Mother Teresa had added, though, ‘If I look at the one, I will.’”

Paul Farmer of Partners in Health said the same thing, help the one in front of you, the one who touches you and arouses your compassion in this moment.

Safina continues later, “It would help all of us, and the cause of the world’s species, if we think more granularly; speak more specifically; focus on what can be meaningful, and stay observant of the many beauties remaining. Beauty is the single criterion that best captures all our deepest concerns and highest hopes. Beauty encompasses the continued existence of free-living things, adaptation, and human dignity. Really, beauty is simple litmus for the presence of things that matter. …As we make our habitual appeals to practicality, the argument we cannot afford to ignore, the one that must frequently be on our lips is this: We live in a sacred miracle. We should act accordingly.”

The seasons turn again...

…and change abruptly. Black Friday turns to Monday Sales turns to Giving Tuesday and the lights go on, the Christmas music plays in stores, Santa decorations abound. This is a compelling holiday infused with images of warmth, family, snow scenes (especially horse drawn sleighs crossing little bridges to the cottage surrounded by snowy pines), and the smells of cinnamon and nutmeg.

There is also the relentless drumbeat to buy, give, and acquire, to put up lights, write Christmas cards, wrap presents for shipping. It is a time that tests our practice of stopping and letting be, allowing and recognizing, breathing and staying in this present moment.

Let us use our practice to help us stay aligned to our deepest values, not just our to-do list, to make our lists and check them twice to see if they do indeed align with what we care about, and then plan our lives and the expenditure of our precious resources (our time, our energies, our happiness and that of others, our finances) according to our inner messages.

This time we spend in practice helps us all center into this moment and allow all the strings and ties that attempt to bind us loosen and fall to the ground. These opportunities to practice are how we can fill and refill our selves and our energies during a season that seems determined to leave us at the edge of January of the New Year running on fumes and credit cards.

This Thanksgiving season is one of contrasts.

There is the anticipation of a much loved holiday and family celebration with visions of recipes involving nutmeg and cinnamon, apples and nuts, roasted vegetables and 10 ways to cook a turkey, and family and friends gathered in gratitude for another year and each other.

And there is the other more poignant side of that image - those alone by choice or circumstance, those far away or estranged, those struggling to make ends meet, those in nursing homes, prisons, homeless shelters.

And many families are grieving this holiday from the loss of loved ones. There have been a number of deaths in the community this week as well as tragedies we read in the news - older people whose time had come, people whose illnesses finally overwhelmed their bodies, and people older and younger taken by accident or misfortune.

It is these dark and light threads that weave through our lives side-by-side that remind us to be grateful for the days we have, still or busy mornings, afternoons of work, projects or errands, and the precious minutes when we turn toward this breath and then this one. Let us know in our bones that the only time we have is now and honor this moment with our full attention.

May we practice in gratitude and compassion knowing that we, too, are heir to the 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows of this life.

The Impermanence of ...well...everything

It is in the changing of the seasons that the earth reminds us of the impermanence of things. Summer’s zephyrs turn to early hurricanes turn to fall breezes turn to howling winds and back to steady cool air moving and shifting. Leaves let go of trees gently or by force and litter the ground with piles of color. What was green becomes brown and grey.

As evening fell on Saturday, the skies darkened, the winds became fierce, a freight train of a tornado passed noisily by, somewhere in North Kingstown and beyond, stillness returned, and the last of the sunset could be seen in the sky. All in the space of 30 minutes. Sometimes impermanence is more apparent than others.

And our lives are just as changeable - just as tumultuous in one minute, calm and steady in the next. We can see this more clearly when we sit in meditation.

Just as we see the changing world outside, we can see the unending procession of feelings, emotions, sensations within. When there is a period of stillness, does there arise an impulse to hold on to it? With pain and confusion, is there a powerful desire to push it away?

But when we sit and allow these currents to come, pass through and become something else, can we begin to notice the stillness of awareness? The crazy shape-shifting of conditions inside and out, large or more subtle, and the still presence of knowing those conditions that doesn’t become that which it knows?


Joy and Impermanence

We’ve been talking about joy for the last several weeks. And I’m sure some of you have wondered whether this is just papering over the suffering in our lives and in the lives of others.

It’s important to understand the role of impermanence in our lives. Perhaps you’ve noticed in your meditation that the breath is always changing. The in-breath turns into the out-breath. The out-breath turns into the in-breath. This ever-changing process can be mistaken for a solid experience when we call it by a single name - breath - and when we depend on it so completely. But each breath is as different from another as one snowflake is to another.

The classical texts ask us to observe the length of the breath, thereby pointing us to this truth, the impermanence of the breath. "Is this a long breath in?,” the texts ask. "Is this a long breath out? Is this a short breath in? Is this a short breath out?” Some texts go further and ask us to discern, “Is this a warm breath? Is this a cool breath?”

Look to your own experience. How is this breath? This one you are having right now? How is the experience of this breath unique?

Similar to the breath, our experience of joy and suffering is always changing. There is no permanence anywhere. When something good happens, we want it to stay. But alas, it passes on. But when something bad happens, it too passes on. Too quickly in the former case. Way too slowly in the latter.

That is why we’ve been bringing mindfulness to our pleasant experiences - to our moments of joy. To savor them, to feel them in our bodies and bones, to bring curiosity to them, understand their roots. This mindful investigation allows us to recall the experience, feels its reverberations and memory in our bodies, and strengthen our neural connections so that joy becomes a well-traveled pathway in our brains.

So what about suffering? Ah, there’s a whole other conversation.

Or is it?

Blessings

I’ve been talking about our basic need for happiness.
As the Dalai Lama says over and over again, “Everybody wants to be happy. Nobody wants suffering.”
This is a universal truth that could help us see others in a different way.


Imagine someone who really annoys you or perhaps even infuriates you.
There’s plenty of material around.
Pick just one of them and imagine how they make you contract inside
because of what they said once or say over and over again,
how untrue it is or how blind it is
or how they are blaming you for exactly what they themselves have done or said,
how protest arises in you with frustrated and impotent force.


Allow yourself to see how unhappy that person makes you.

Let me rephrase that.

Allow yourself to see how unhappy you become when you think about this person in this way.


Now imagine that in reality you could see this person at home with family or by themselves and you can see this person is hurting.
Perhaps they can’t pay their bills, perhaps they are scared.
Perhaps they are ill or have just lost their mainstay support.
Perhaps they have done something wrong and they know it -
but they can’t admit it because it’s too humiliating and shameful.

Do you have a wish to be able to sit beside them and comfort them?
Or to help them? Or perhaps just to say, yes, I’m hurting too?
Reflect for a moment.

How does it make you feel when you feel those feelings of empathy or compassion towards this person?

* * * * *

I was in the presence of someone a while ago who had let the people around us down in some very human way. Instead of apologizing and moving on, the person was defensive and closed-down - blaming everyone else.

Then this person offered a reading to the gathering - an assignment. Also an assignment, the gathering offered praise.

Gradually, I saw this person begin to thaw out from the mass of resentment that couldn’t look at anyone. They sat up a little straighter, their eyes began to open wider. First the corners of their mouth turned up and then a big smile emerged. The screen lit up.

I was reminded of a poem. I had found it helpful in my chaplaincy days but hadn’t remembered it for a while. Suddenly as I watched this person, this poem came to mind.

I realized I was witnessing the truth of the poem right in that moment.

“The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on the brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing”

― Galway Kinnell, Three Books: Body Rags; Mortal Acts, Mortal Words.


START CLOSE IN

Last time I wrote about starting over with our practice - and how that starting over is one of the larger rhythms of our practice. As we emerge and then retreat and emerge again from the pandemic, we may find our rhythm off-balance, our outer shells softened and suddenly sensitive to the cacophony of the larger world. We may find what we thought was a new normal shifting and disappearing and shifting again in some way changed beyond our basic recognition.

I found this beautiful poem called “Start Close In” by poet David Whyte in his book David Whyte: Essentials* which evokes a deep sense of this.

Start close in
don’t take the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take.

Start with
the ground
you know,
the pale ground
beneath your feet,
your own
way to begin
the conversation.

Start with your own
question,
give up on other
people's
questions,
don’t let them
smother something
simple.

To hear
another’s voice,
follow
your own voice,
wait until
that voice

becomes an
intimate private ear
that can
really listen
to another.

Start right now
take a small step
you can call your own
don’t follow
someone else’s
heroics, be humble
and focused,
start close in,
don’t mistake
that other
for your own.

Start close in,
don’t take
the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take.

The editor Gayle Karen Young Whyte writes in the commentary:
START CLOSE IN. This poem was inspired by the first lines of Dante’s Comedia, written in the midst of the despair of exile from his beloved Florence. It reflects the difficult act we all experience, of trying to make a home in the world again when everything has been taken away; the necessity of stepping bravely again into what looks now like a dark wood, when the outer world as we know it has disappeared, when the world has to be met and in some ways made again from no outer ground but from the very center of our being. The temptation is to take the second or third step, not the first, to ignore the invitation into the center of our own body, into our grief, to attempt to finesse the grief and the absolutely necessary understanding at the core of the pattern, to forgo the radical and almost miraculous simplification into which we are being invited, Start close in.

Whether the world has been changed by a pandemic, storms and fires, or a private tragedy, or even a cruel remark, we all know that urge to take the second step or the third. Come, let’s start close in...together.

* David Whyte: Essentials, Gayle Karen Young Whyte, Many Rivers Press, Langley, WA c2020

FALL BEGINNINGS

Sometimes the summer overwhelms our practice with family gatherings and travel. Even if it doesn’t, there can come times when the practice feels like work - stale and heavy. It can feel discouraging to go to the cushion, to sit down to practice - as if we have to go through everything we went through to establish our practice before it fell away with the demands of family, social occasions, summer vacation…. or crises, emergencies, disruption.

There can be any number of reasons our practice time succumbs to the demands of our “off-the-cushion” life.

But like everything else in life, our practice too is cyclical, has seasons, waxes and wanes. Sometimes when we “resume” our practice or start over, we find we have to go back to the beginning, back to basics, back to breath awareness, just sitting for 15-20 minutes and working up to longer periods and more varied practices.

This is actually great practice.

Because as we start over, we may notice we are not starting over from the same place. We may step into the same stream, but the banks have eroded, the ripples have moved as the bottom sands shifted, the water is different.

And so are we.

So this is a wonderful opportunity to practice where we are now - with the conditions that exist now - in the stream that is flowing now. Our practice might be like the Guggenheim spiraling upward with new and different art work on display, or perhaps it’s like the ever-widening circles in a pond when a pebble is tossed in, or the looping patterns of the hawks or eagles riding the thermals along a mountain ridge.

This starting over is a natural part of practice. On a minute by minute level. On a day by day level. On a seasonal level. In the wider spans of our lifetimes.

Practice evolves, changes, becomes more hidden and then more apparent again. And often, whether we are sitting or not, our practice is going with us into our worlds, informing our actions, helping us notice when we’ve become crabby or unskillful, supporting us when we bring wisdom to the forefront.

So come, let’s begin again together. Exploring what’s present for us now. Noticing similarities and discovering differences. We’ve all learned and grown this past year plus of Covid.

Much of it may seem dark and disturbing but there are wondrous silver linings to notice in our own growth, in our own ability to relate to the ever-changing world we find ourselves in.


The Generations Speak

Many of us get caught in patterns of self-criticism and harsh judgements about ourselves - from our physical appearance to our careless words to our anxious thoughts. We didn’t choose or create any of this.

With investigation, we realize how many of our parents' habit patterns they passed on to us - anxieties, compulsions to lock and re-lock doors, ability to tell good stories, generosity, tendencies toward substance abuse…. the whole mess or as Jon Kabat-Zinn says, the full catastrophe. And then we begin to see they were as affected by their parents as we are by them. And so on and so on.

Maladaptive patterns are often passed down to us in some form or other. Indigenous psychotherapy has the concept that these patterns assured resilience and survival of the next generation and that they contain valuable information for us. This view allows us to look at our patterns and thank our ancestors for doing everything they could to survive and to make sure we survived. It also allows us to hold our perceived flaws more lightly as we were not in control when they were handed down to us. And it is our work - as it was theirs - to sort the useful patterns from the not-so-useful patterns. Awareness and open hearted investigation are our most powerful allies in this work.


When we begin to free ourselves from the difficult patterns left over from survival trauma in previous generations, we discover that the lightness of the human spirit is already present - waiting to be uncovered, waiting to be free of wrong views in order to shine forth.

The Stillness of the Mountain

This mountain - Mt. Kalish in Tibet - is sacred in four different religious traditions.

Can you sense why?  

Can you imagine living in its lowlands and valleys?
Viewing it every morning and every evening?
The stillness? The stability? Its massiveness and soaring heights?

No matter the season, the weather, the time of day? 
Illuminated by the sun by day and the moon by night? 
Obscured by clouds and fog?  Rain and storms? 
Blizzards and howling winds? 

And always….reappearing when the weather clears? 

How do we take our seat in these unsettling times? 
Or find our seat, if we have lost it?  
How do we embrace the truths that sustain us?  
And hold the suffering we are witnessing? 
How do we care for ourselves and our families
when fear threatens to engulf us? 

The call of the mountain is a reminder of the stillness within.
Stability we can touch when we drop into awareness
of this very moment.
In this very moment.

No matter the tumult in the lives around it, 
the mountain remains - 
planted and floating at the same time, 
ageless and ephemeral, 
alluring and implacable.

Reminding us that stillness is available at any moment.

I can't meditate. My mind is too busy...

“My mind is too wild,” people often say to me, “I can’t stop thinking.” 

Mindfulness is not about stopping our thoughts, nor is it about blissing out.  It’s waking up to what our experience actually is – noticing what the thoughts are that we can’t stop, noticing how our body feels sitting in a chair, noticing if we’re hungry or just anxious when we eat chocolate.  Are our thoughts critical – of ourselves or others?  Notice that.  Are they sad in remembrance?  Notice that.  Are they fearful about a future that isn’t here?  Notice that.  We might begin to see that these are just thoughts – not some oracle from above and not something we manufactured and pushed out.  Thoughts happen.  Feelings happen.  Bodily sensations happen.

 Can we just be aware of that?  Can we meet whatever is happening with awareness? 

 That’s mindfulness.

Recently I’ve been experiencing this new phenomenon called “Zoom Fatigue.” After an hour of being face to face with a few people or a group, paying attention to the computer screen full of faces - I call it “being impaled by the computer screen” - to discern expressions, understand what is being said, translate around frame freezes, wonky sound distortions, delays while people find their mute buttons, delays while I find the mute button, I find myself getting agitated. I need to get up, walk around, go outside, not look at the screen, check in with myself, go lie down, go meditate, …… anything but look at this screen one more minute, but the speaker is not finished and there is more to be said and …and…and…

And the challenge is this: can we be mindful of this phenomenon - as it is happening - in this moment. When it arises, what are our thoughts, our feelings, our bodily sensations? Where do we experience it in the body? There is much to learn about this explosion of zoom communication. It’s relatively new in our human experience. Is it the blue screen effect? Is it the lags and delays not present in normal face to face conversation? Is it the sense that we are being watched all the time? Ever try to eat something and then watch yourself chewing on the screen in full view of 20 other people?

And can we choose a different response? Some options include the following: Take the time to look down, look around, see the zoom screen in the context of your home surroundings, perhaps look at notes if that’s appropriate, but look away and check in with yourself. What’s happening here - internally? What are my thoughts? What feelings are arising? What and where am I experiencing this in my body?

Zoom may be the new phenomenon of this era. But mindfulness is as old as the hills (well, almost) and stronger than dirt! It’s been around, been proven, and exists as the gift all of our ancestors gave to us. Or perhaps mindfulness is beyond ancestry. It is a distinctly human birth right. As messy as it is to be a human being - and don’t we all know how messy that is - mindfulness is there like the north star is a guide to night travelers, the exact right ability to help us navigate these times, whatever they may throw at us - even zoom fatigue.

Life Interrupted...

April 22nd Earth Day

It was barely five and a half weeks ago I offered the All Day for the last cycle of MBSR I taught.  We met in person - observing social distancing, wiping off door knobs, and washing our hands frequently. 

 The world shut down the next week.  We finished the cycle on-line.

 The rising tide of suffering has been difficult to witness for all of us.  And there have been many new things to learn – how to stay home for one, foregoing frequent trips shopping, to doctor appointments, to run errands.  Then there was learning to disinfect the house, the groceries, the mail, our cars and door knobs – and the packages that became our lifeline for supplies but also Trogan horses possibly bringing the deadly disease into our homes. 

 Many struggle with working at home while schooling their children. 

 But there have been unexpected benefits – blessings even.  Kitty O’Meara’s poem “And the people stayed home….” which I have referenced below speaks to some of these.  Many of the blessings have been interior ones - time alone, time within.  Others have been the widespread impulse of generosity, of offering – as people from all the 10 directions reach out to share their talents and knowledge and wisdom over the internet – exercise, yoga, meditation, short videos of wisdom, humor, mask-making instructions…concerts, theater, courses…

 I recently attended a meditation retreat – originally intended to be 8 days at a retreat center in California involving a cross-country flight with all the hassles of travel.  Instead it was 8 days at home, meditating with 88 other participants and 5 teachers in a virtual meditation hall while I sat on the floor of my living room.  The line between life on the cushion and life off the cushion suddenly began to fall away.  It was all life – rising to sit the early meditation, getting the mail, feeding the cat, preparing and eating breakfast, meditating, checking to see if family is OK, cleaning the bathroom, listening to a guided meditation, walking meditation outside, preparing and eating lunch, doing the dishes, meditating.  If someone I knew called, I’d answer the phone.  I checked emails mostly to erase and clear my inbox.  The television was silent.

 I recalled a story Joseph Goldstein tells of being in Bodh Gaya in India practicing with his teacher Munindra.  Joseph would be upstairs meditating and he would hear Munindra greeting visitors at the door and then hear him say, “Oh, you must come meet Joseph.”  Joseph would have to get up from his cushion, talk with the visitor for a while, and finally return to his meditation and start over. This went on for days.  Joseph was getting quite perturbed at these interruptions – after all, he was there to meditate.  But then, it was his beloved teacher….  And then he suddenly let go of that and realized it was no problem.  He would get up, greet the visitor, talk for a few minutes, and then go back to meditating. 

 That story became my guide.  The interruptions become interruptions only if we consider them interruptions.  If they just happen and then we go back to meditating or perhaps if we even stay mindful through the “interruption”, it’s no interruption.  It’s all practice.

 During this period, I have begun to see my life as practice – meditation practice, watching a video practice, email practice, exercise practice. 

 And outside, no planes fly.  The air is clear.  Daffodils riot and allergy season is in full swing. Pollution is down.  Only the mailman and the USP man driving by.  Parents outside playing with their kids every morning.  Parents playing with their kids????

 Something has been lost for sure.  Some sense of security about life.  Some predictability. 

 But something else that seemed so important only weeks before began to slip away.  I’m not even sure what it was.  Was it striving? 

 There is certainly fear and uncertainty.  That comes and goes and over the weeks shifts from an alive thing that gripped my stomach to a rising question – OK, for a few weeks, but really how long will this go on?  Is this then to become what my life is? 

 And is this so bad?  All just practice?

 I’ve been making masks.  In bright patterns.  With a filter pocket and wire to shape to the nose.  I want to support health care workers.  How can I help? 

 My family and friends turned out to need masks so I made them masks too.

 Because that’s what came up.  It’s just practice.

And the people stayed home.
And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised,
and made art,
and played games, and learned new ways of being,
and were still. And listened more deeply.
Some meditated, some prayed, some danced.
Some met their shadows.
And the people began to think differently.

And the people healed.
And, in the absence of people living
in ignorant,
dangerous,
mindless,
and heartless ways,
the earth began to heal.

And when the danger passed,
and the people joined together again,
they grieved their losses,
and made new choices, and dreamed new images,
and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully,
as they had been healed.

~~ By Kitty O’Meara