Last week when I conducted the lightening tour of Buddhism around the world, I mentioned that all forms of Buddhism were based on the Four Noble Truths.  
In their barest form, they are as follows:

First Noble Truth - There is Suffering.

Second Noble Truth - There are causes for suffering.

Third Noble Truth - There is an end to Suffering.

Fourth Noble Truth - Here is the Path to the end of Suffering.  The Fourth Noble Truth contains the 8-Fold Path as the way out of suffering.

When I began to contemplate teaching the Four Noble Truths as part of this Insight teaching stream I have embarked upon, I began to have my doubts.  I’ve heard these teachings for years and have learned to appreciate them more deeply as time went on, but they are not taught overtly in the MBSR.  And they may be considered too simplistic or, in their simplicity, not relevant to today’s life.  Or perhaps just a relic of Buddhist thought.

Then I found an article in Tricycle Magazine on The Four Noble Truths which contained this paragraph:

"The Buddha is said to have realized these fundamental truths on the night of his great awakening. But fearing they were too far removed from ordinary experience for others to understand, he decided to keep them to himself. Legend has it, however, that the god Brahma Sahampati intervened, convincing the Buddha he must pass on what he’d learned. So the Buddha tracked down his former meditation companions, the five ascetics, who were residing in the Deer Park near Benares. In what is known as his first sermon, the Buddha taught them the four noble truths. The ascetics are said to have been enlightened on the spot.”   ~~ from The Sri Lankan monk Walpola Sri Rahula’s book What the Buddha Taught

I was a little taken aback that my doubts were shared by the Buddha who also had his doubts about teaching what he had learned.  But as one of the profound insights of his awakening, he recognized these truths as profound truths.  This is the way things are and this is the way out of the suffering we experience in the way things are.  So you dear reader/meditator will be like the Buddha’s former meditation companions for me.  I will talk about the first three Noble Truths this week and the fourth subsequently.

Let me start by just saying, the Buddha was a human being.  He never said otherwise and his teachings reflect this.  The importance of this fact of his being human was what he often said, to paraphrase, if I can do this, so can you.  

The First Noble Truth - There is suffering - may seem a little obvious.  And also a bit of a downer.  The Noble Truth part of this statement is that in this very life, there is sickness, aging, and death for all.  In addition, there are floods, fires, wars, famines, natural disasters for many.  We know this and yet life goes much better is we can keep some of that at bay and appreciate friends and family, art, beauty, nature, connections of all kinds.  Except that we find our selves suffering nevertheless.  The Buddhist word is Dukkha and refers to big suffering such as the dire list above and little suffering - annoyances, irritations, not getting what one wants.  And even if we do get what we want, there is unsatisfactoriness.  The good experiences are soon gone.  The bad experiences aren’t gone quickly enough.  And in between there is a lot of confusion.  The suffering being referred to here is the suffering our minds can cause us - thoughts, feelings, ideas, beliefs, desires, hatreds, aversions, fear of aging, sickness, death, other people, getting hurt….the list goes on.

The teaching here is to know at the depth of our being that there is suffering.  Not just in the generalized way - sooner or later the big stuff is coming for me.  But in the moment by moment way, Oh, I’m hurt by that person’s comment.  Here is suffering.  First Noble Truth.  The traffic is making me crazy.  Oh, here is suffering in the frustration and irritation, fear of being late, etc.  First Noble Truth right here in the car.  Or the supermarket line or the family fight or the pain of a teen-ager.  There is suffering.  Can we be with that basic truth?  Can we recognize and open to the suffering and the truth of suffering?

So when the Buddha got to the Second Noble Truth - There are causes for suffering - the monks were paying attention.  The cause of all suffering is attachment, wanting, clinging.  Attachment of wanting things to be other than they are.  Wanting the good to stay and the bad to go away.  Wanting what we want when we want it.

There are four kinds of attachment:  1) Attachment of sense pleasures (think ice cream, or wanting to be comfortable when the body isn’t, or an insufferably hot summer day.  2) Attachment to ideas and opinions.  Ever get into an argument with a friend over a different point of view or even some fact that could easily be checked but neither of you could back down to check?  3) Attachment to spiritual materialism, different spiritual forms.  Any questions?  4) Attachment to the concept of self and who we think we are - or should be.  We’ll circle back on this one frequently.

Second Noble Truth:  There are causes for suffering.

The Third Noble Truth:  There is an End to Suffering.  Really.  A lot of our suffering is caused by our delusions about the way thing are, about how much control we have, about how we should be able to be a certain way, live a certain way, think and feel in certain ways and not in others.  Delusions, assumptions, habit patterns.  One of my teachers calls it “mental furniture.”  That furniture got moved into our minds.  It wasn’t there to start with.  And it can get moved right out again.  Simple.  And not so simple.  But still simple.  It can be moved right out again.  We can wake up to the way things are, to the truth of this moment, to freedom from suffering.  Really.

This musing has gone on long enough.   I hope to follow up in subsequent musings and begin to wade into the Fourth Noble Truth - There is a way out of suffering.

Transitions...

This spring season is a time of transition.  It’s a beautiful spring day with daffodils and magnolias in bloom, ospreys active with their nests, animals of all kinds nesting and beginning to reproduce.  And a poem that I found today in Joseph Goldstein’s Experience of Insight from an old Zen nun was more powerful than any description I could give:

Sixty-six times have these eyes beheld the changing scenes of (spring).
I have said enough about moonlight; ask me no more.
Only listen to the voice of pines and cedars when no wind stirs.

I was re-reading Joseph’s book because I have been thinking about my roots in the Insight Meditation tradition, known as Vipassana as well, or early Buddhism or the Theravadan tradition to be distinguished from the Mayahanan tradition from which Zen springs, or the Tibetan tradition of the Dalai Lama.

I thought a little orientation to the various Buddhist schools might be helpful.

Buddhism thrived in India about 2500 year ago.  The language of the Buddha was Pali but, as there was no writing at the time, the tradition was oral.  This is why there is so much repetition in the Sutras (or teachings) we have now.  Repetition was the recognized mnemonic of the day and amazingly successful.  The teachings were only written down 400 years later in Pali - the original language of the Buddha.  This was the Theravadan tradition of Buddhism and, by modern day, there were something like 27 volumes of teachings in what is now known as the Pali Canon.  This is also the only document written in Pali.  So the language of the Buddha is synonymous with the only document written in that language - the teachings of the Buddha.  They exist only in each other.    

Buddhism was pushed out of India about 800 years after the Buddha’s death.  Hinduism took on some of its forms and ideas as it took over.  Buddhism spread to China where it was called Chan and then to Japan where it was known as Zen.  Or Mahayanan Buddhism.  The famous Heart Sutra and Diamond Sutra were written in Japan - 1000 years after the death of the Buddha.  It also spread across the Himalayas to Tibet where it was known as Vajrayana Buddhism.  Tibet was pretty isolated from the rest of the world and an amazing city grew up of the highest Buddhist scholarship, monasteries all over the place, universities, the works, all devoted to Buddhism.  It has been said it took 5 years to get enlightened - like going to college.  And stories of the powers - people flying around, walking through walls, being in two places at once - come out of Tibet.  

So these are the three strains or baskets of teachings - the Theravada which is the root lineage for Insight or Vipassana here in the west, Mahayana of which Thich Nath Hanh is the most renown teacher and the Japanese Zen perhaps the best known form, and Vajrayana of Tibet - known for imagery and for meditating on images, for Lamas, and of course, the Dalai Lama.

The Theravadan tradition spread to Sri Lanka, Burma now Myanmar, and Thailand where Ajahn Chah lived and taught.  It didn’t return to India until the early to mid-part of the last century and the Pali Canon didn’t return until a teacher/monk named Anagarika Sri Munindra who was one of Joseph Goldstein’s main teachers talked a copy of it out of the Burmese military and physically transported it back to India - a pretty exciting story contained in Munindra’s biography Living This Life Fully.  

 Jon Kabat-Zinn had the inspiration for Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) while on a retreat in the late 1970’s at the Insight Meditation Society practicing in the Theravadan tradition introduced at IMS as Insight or Vipassana meditation.  I always assumed  MBSR was all based on the Theravadan teachings which contain The Four Noble Truths and the Four Foundation of Mindfulness.  Probably the three marks of existence – impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and non-self - as well.  But these teachings traveled to China and Japan as well so Buddhist scholars have found a remarkable faithfulness to the teachings as they traveled - probably in part because of those repetitions.   All forms contain the Four Noble Truths.  But Buddhism developed in other ways in these traditions - notably into the area of non-duality. It turns out Jon Kabat-Zinn was deeply influenced by these other traditions so MBSR also has significant roots in the Mayahanan and Tibetan traditions.

The other thing to note, and Joseph Goldstein wrote a book about it called One Dharma, is that all these teachings from all over the world, all the countries, all traditions, everywhere made their way to the United States where they rubbed elbows with each other in a somewhat cacophonous co-existence with some cross pollination for the better part of a century. 

This is a bit rough as my fact checker was on permanent vacation so all mistakes are mine.  But it will give you a little background color for the way Buddhism traveled from India to the United States.  Not by a direct route by any means.  

And a little background for where I plan to go next.  Into an Introduction into Insight Meditation. 

"Faith is the beginning of all good things."

"The Buddha said, 'Faith is the beginning of all good things.’”  ~~from Sharon Salzberg’s Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience.

Today I have been thinking about change - what inspires us to change.  Perhaps this was prompted by a talk I heard this week by Saki Santorelli.  He talks of the human feeling of yearning, a longing that often leads us to try something new - a new course, a retreat, or some other form of exploration and becoming.  This yearning is some sense we have of what’s possible.  Saki goes on to say, our yearning is pointing to what is deepest in us, what is already there.  We can only long, he says, for what we already are. 

The first ingredient in this quest is awareness.  Our awareness helps us center on what is wholesome in our lives and what is not so wholesome in our lives and can become very fine tuned.  We carefully pay attention to the smallest moment because, as Thich Nhat Hanh said, each moment is the mother of the next.  Take care of this moment and it will take care of the next.   So we start where we are - fully seeing what is true now.  We can’t move from our present condition, whatever it is, if we don’t see it clearly.  Or as Billie Jean King once famously said, “You can’t hit a ball you don’t see."

We encounter this seeing and not seeing in our negative habit patterns - whether around eating, playing with our phones or social media, watching or reading the news.  Perhaps shopping or worrying or misusing substances of one kind or another.  Our less wonderful habits fly under our mindfulness radar and obscure our true natures to ourselves.  

Although there are several qualities that come to mind as being important to this endeavor to change our less than wholesome habits - setting an intention, courage, resolve, and patience to name a few.  

The most important ingredient may be faith.

This quality of faith is not something we make happen although in many religions faith is a verb.  It is our belief or confidence or inner heart that tells us that even when we can’t see the path for the brambles, the path will open up.  

There are two kinds of faith in the Buddhist tradition - bright faith which is the faith based on hearing the wisdom of others and resolving to try it out for ourselves.  In this bright faith, we don’t give over our will blindly.  Or at all.  This bright faith is the willingness to try for ourselves to see if this way is helpful to us.  

The second kind of faith is verified faith.  If we have ventured out with bright faith and found the practices helpful, our bright faith becomes verified faith.  Yes, this path is wholesome, this path is helpful, this path is leading me toward greater peace - toward deeper union with my own yearning.  Or no, this path is not wholesome, not helpful; not leading towards peace.  We decide based on our own discernment.  

Sharon Salzberg has this to say in her book Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience:

“Faith does not require a belief system, and is not necessarily connected to a diety or God, though it doesn’t deny one.  This faith is not a commodity we either have or don’t have - it is an inner quality that unfolds as we learn to trust our own deepest experience.  

The Buddha said, “Faith is the beginning of all good things.”  No matter what we encounter in life, it is faith that enables us to try again, to trust again, to love again.  Even in times of immense suffering, it is faith that enables us to relate to the present moment in such a way that we can go on, we can move forward, instead of becoming lost in resignation or despair.  Faith links our present day experience, whether wonderful or terrible, to the underlying pulse of life itself.”

The Joy of Taxes....

Spring officially arrived a week ago.  Daffodils are bravely raising their heads - those that survived the late winter freeze.  The finches are twittering away in mating and house hunting mode. 

And taxes are upon us.

I was surprised at how energizing and cleansing my tax process was this year.  Also how sobering and a cause for rejoicing.   Sobering as I got to see what the last three months - six months, maybe, the last year - have meant in terms of my mind’s capacity to organize and stay ahead of paper.  A cause for rejoicing because I could see it and deal with it.  

I finished the process last night after an intensive day and a half of sorting, searching, assembling, and happily, recycling.  And I felt good.  It took me a while to recognize that the persistent good feeling I was having was joy.  And another while to realize what had been missing from my entire two day process of organizing and clearing out.  

Aversion.  There had been no aversion.  

Well, almost.  Just one brief incidence of stomach tightening which I noted.  But then, it disappeared and didn’t return.  I just went from one task to another.  And tedious as they might seem, I didn’t find them tedious.  I just recognized the the next step in a logical progression of steps and did it.  

I am reminded this morning of the story of the two arrows.  I have shared that story here.  A person is shot by an arrow and feels the pain of the arrow.  Then she begins to  worry about who shot it, will he survive, what was the arrow made of, how long will it take to recover, and most importantly, what does she have to do to prevent getting shot by an arrow again - ever!  That is the second arrow.  That is the suffering of aversion.  Pain is inevitable.  Suffering is optional.

Taxes are the first arrow.  You remember, death and taxes?  But there was no second arrow for me.  No worry, no frustration, no overwhelm, not even a sense of regret or of personal criticism for having let things slide.  When I found a file missing, a bill unpaid, an accumulation of receipts, I just found the file, paid the bill, sorted the receipts.  And when I saw how I could have organized things better, I remembered how I already had made things easier this year over last and just resolved to extend those methods into the coming year.

Joy was present.  Without aversion, I could do my taxes with joy.  And that in itself was another source of joy.  Joy and wisdom beget joy and wisdom.

Just a quick reminder:  According to the Buddha and our experience bears this out, we have an immediate conditioned response to every experience that arises - pleasant, unpleasant or neutral.  Pleasant when we smell bread.  Unpleasant when we hear a jack hammer perhaps. Neutral when we notice our breath or pass through a doorway.  The Buddha called them vedana or feeling tones.  And each of these feelings tones leads on toward wanting or grasping if pleasant, not wanting or aversion if unpleasant, and delusion if neutral.  The suffering is the clinging of wanting, the avoidance and pushing away of not wanting, and the delusion of thinking that either of these will make us happy.  

Can we learn to see the subtle aversion that may pervade our lives?  Not wanting to do taxes is just one example.  What are some of the things that cause the suffering of aversion?  That block joy just as surely as clouds block the sun?

Spring is here.  The sun is shining after rain has watered the ground.  And hope is present…the stirring of new life…the cycle coming round again….

And the opportunity for joy is always present.

...in love, not hatred

I received this quote from Thich Nhat Hanh this week.  

“Someone asked me, ‘Aren’t you worried about the state of the world?’  I allowed myself to breathe and then I said, ‘What is most important is not to allow your anxiety about what happens in the world to fill your heart.  If your heart is filled with anxiety, you will get sick, and you will not be able to help.’” ~~ Thich Nhat Hanh

What I like about this quote from a master is the reminder of the many realms of our existence that can contribute to our suffering.  We are very aware of our personal suffering whether aging, sickness or loss and how that impacts our hearts and minds.  Many of us come to mindfulness and meditation because of acute disturbances in one or another of those areas.  But we may overlook or discount how much impact the suffering of others around the world may have on our ability to be happy and peaceful.  And there are other issues people face that cause ongoing stress and anxiety - issues around financial security, the stress of discrimination whether based on race, sexual orientation, religion, or simply being a woman or an older person.  For some, this may be the back ground drip drip drip of people in the news striving to deprive a group of people you might belong to of their rights to adequate health care, or housing, or simply the right to walk around freely without insult or threat.  For others, the threats are more imminent and visceral.

Mindfulness and meditation have been havens for many of us on all of these fronts.  But we can easily image how useless mindfulness and meditation sound as a balm to the people of Ukraine for instance or young black men stopped by police or incarcerated people.  

And yet, we can remind ourselves that it was Viktor Frankl, who spent 4 years in a concentration camp, who wrote:  "“Everything can be taken from a man (or woman) but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.” "When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

And it was the Dalai Lama who fled his native land and endured many hardships including the death and torture of many of his monks, who still counsels finding joy in this life, saying, “Everybody wants to be happy.  Nobody wants suffering.”  And it was this truth which brought Thich Naht Hanh to the US after years in the war in Vietnam, because he realized that the suffering being caused by our country in his country was the result of intense suffering in our country.  And it was Thich Naht Hanh who said as I quoted above:  "What is most important is not to allow your anxiety about what happens in the world to fill your heart.  If your heart is filled with anxiety, you will get sick, and you will not be able to help.” ~~ Thich Nhat Hanh

And that brings us back to our most basic freedom to choose to be happy, to choose peace, and to choose to bring mindfulness into our lives - to sit in meditation and cultivate our minds and hearts in freedom from suffering, in compassion, and in equanimity.  

And from that place of peace, any help we bring to the world will be grounded in peace, not suffering - in love, not hatred.

"Never underestimate the power of compassionately recognizing what's going on." ~~ Pema Chodron

I’ve been pondering this phrase from Pema Chodron’s book Comfortable with Uncertainty that has been with me all week. 

 “Never underestimate the power of compassionately recognizing what’s going on.” 

It’s from a chapter called “Slogan:  If you can practice even when distracted, you are well trained.”  She goes on to say, “If we can practice when we’re jealous, resentful, scornful, when we hate ourselves, then we are well trained.  Again, practice means not continuing to strengthen the habitual patterns that keep us trapped; doing anything we can to shake up and ventilate our self-justification and blame.  We do our best to stay with the strong energy without acting out or repressing.  In so doing, our habits become more porous.”

Her phrase “without acting out or repressing” is a reminder of the Buddha’s Middle Way.  He was talking about the extremes of over-indulgence or self-mortification and "acting out" or “repressing" can be seen in this light too.  "Acting out" is our tendency to blame others or to lash out at those closest to us when we’re upset.  Or perhaps speaking harshly to a neutral other such as a bank clerk or a customer service representative.  Maybe that’s the more extraverted path.  “Repressing” is our more introverted tendency to blame ourselves, say it doesn’t matter, pretend nothing happened and we’re not having any feelings about it, or simply bury so that even we don’t know anything happened.  Except we don’t feel good.  

These two extremes come into play more frequently when some strong feeling has arisen around a disturbing event. And this brings me back to Pema Chodron’s wonderful phrase, “Never underestimate the power of compassionately recognizing what’s going on.”   The power of that process comes in both aspects of that sentence.  The one most easily understood and hardest to practice is that of bringing an active compassion to ourselves for these disturbing feelings we have.  Until it becomes a deeply grooved habit, this compassion towards self is something we have to remember to practice towards ourselves and to monitor to see if our compassion practice is as wholehearted as we can make it in that moment.

The second aspect is equally important.  “Recognizing what is going on.”  The word “recognizing” implies that we’ve been here before - this is a familiar territory, an old feeling, a pattern.  From our MBSR training, an automatic habitual reaction.  It has automaticity to it.

If we can turn towards our more difficult feelings or experiences and look into them more deeply, we can begin to see their habitual nature - we can recognize, “Oh, yes, I’ve been down this path before.”  And if we can bring compassion to ourselves for that habit pattern before we sweep it under the rug in denial, we can begin to see the underpinnings of the pattern more clearly - what it feels like, what thoughts arise, where is it in the body.  Following these threads, we may begin to remember other times we felt this way or this pattern arose, and perhaps remember when it would arise when we were younger.  

Eventually our investigation may yield up further truths.  We may begin to recognize how impermanent the pattern is, it arises and then is gone.  We may  feel more fully the suffering in this pattern.  And we may, with our compassion as our support, see that this pattern arose as a habit, not under our conscious control, not something we wanted to arise.  And that lack of conscious control can help us see the impersonal nature of this pattern.  As the Buddha taught, "This is not me.  This is not mine.  I am not this.”

All of these investigations help weaken the habit pattern and allow us to abandon the pattern, to let it go just a little bit more with each round of investigation until the pattern dissolves in the warm broth of our compassionate recognition - our awareness.

We are not two....

Thich Naht Hanh gives a talk on non-duality.  Non-duality is not something I’ve talked about.  It’s related to concepts of emptiness and non-self.  What non-duality is saying is that we are all connected - TNH calls it interbeing.  We inter-are.  He uses the metaphor of the ocean and the wave.  We are both individual waves and we are also ocean - as in physics, a tiny piece of matter can be both a wave and a particle.  This interconnectedness of non-duality in meditation is the understanding that there is no subject separate from the object of meditation.  There are not two.  There is one event - the meditator and the object of meditation are one.  Logically this makes sense because the object doesn’t exist in our experience if we aren’t experiencing it.  The object and the experience of the object are a single event.  

Although non-duality is not ever mentioned in the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program (MBSR) - and you perhaps can see why, it is at the heart of it.  Jon Kabat-Zinn developed this program with the deepest intentions for participants to develop a life-long practice that could be transformative in freeing them from suffering. And non-duality is a key concept in that transformation.

Thich Naht Hanh continues then to talk about suffering.  If someone has made us suffer, we suffer.  And that’s not all bad.  Suffering is useful.  

I know.  I know.  Wait a minute here.  But remember TNH lived through the Viet Nam war leading a monastery of monks and nuns to go out into the villages to help ease the suffering of many people in many different ways.  He knows trauma.  He knows the worst of war and the worst of humanity.  And yet he says suffering can be useful.

Here’s how.  When we suffer and we can be with and look deeply at our suffering, it opens our hearts.  We can begin to feel compassion for ourselves.  And when our hearts open, we can look deeply at those who made us suffer and our hearts perceive the suffering in that person as well.  He points out we are only the second victim.  The perpetrator is the first victim.  This looking deeply gives rise to compassion for that person as well.  We access compassion through our own suffering and then we can see with compassion the suffering of that other.  

And here we circle back to non-duality.  The reason we can see the suffering of that other is because that other is not other.  That other and ourselves - we are one fabric.  We inter-are with each other.  We are not two separate anything except in our own mental constructs  - in the small “I” of identification.  Thus, when we begin to see non-self, we begin to see interbeing in a deeper, visceral way.  We have all seen this.  And we also continually get caught in our own separateness.

This applies to all people, all animals, all trees and plants, to our earth.  We inter-are with our earth and, yes, with the vastness of our universe.  And we watch in deep compassion as we allow ourselves to see our earth and all its beings suffer.

It has been said the universe is one consciousness manifesting in different ways.  And our understanding of this starts with the simple breath.

The End of Suffering....

One of my meditation teachers on the retreat I sat a few weeks ago gave a morning reflection which I adapted in part.  It went something like this:

Why are you here?  (Here she leaned forward and peered at each of us.)  Why are you here???

To end suffering!  Isn’t that right?  (We all nodded.)

And what causes suffering?  

Clinging.  The Buddha said, “Nothing whatsoever is to be cling to as me or mine.”

What do we cling to?  We cling to our bodies.  Then we cling to ideas about what our bodies should be like - thinner, stronger, younger, more attractive, with hair like this or that, able to wear different clothes, healthier.  Think of the various ways we attempt to change our bodies.

And our thoughts and feelings.  We should like this person more, we should be kinder, we shouldn’t think this thought or that thought.  We shouldn’t feel sad, or angry, or impatient, or frustrated, or anxious.  And yet sometimes we do.  

Does any of this sound familiar?  She went on to say:

The Buddha was very clear.  When we think or do something that is unwholesome, we suffer.  When we think or do something that is wholesome, we don’t suffer.  So we can end our own suffering by abandoning what is unwholesome and embracing what is wholesome.

And how do we know what is wholesome?  The Buddha pointed the way in the Fourth Noble Truth.  The way to the end of suffering is the 8-fold path:  

Here I am inserting the Buddha’s original teaching on the end of suffering and a link to the entire teaching which is fairly short."The way leading to cessation of suffering, as a noble truth, is this: It is simply the noble eightfold path, that is to say, right view, right intention; right speech, right action, right livelihood; right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration.”       https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn56/sn56.011.nymo.html

And before you give up with the magnitude of what is being suggested here.  Consider this:  The key to it all is in each moment.  Moment by moment we can end our own suffering by abandoning what is unwholesome and embracing what is wholesome.  If we are stuck in a negative thought pattern, we can bring mindfulness to it, which is wholesome, accepting that it is here and holding it with the thought, this is a negative thought pattern, I didn’t choose to think it, it just arose.  But I can choose now to be aware of it and I can choose to let it be without taking it on as me or mine, without hooking my identity to this thought pattern, without encouraging, feeding, supporting, or reinforcing it.  It arose and I can allow it to fade away.  

That is abandoning a negative thought pattern that was causing suffering.  That is abandoning an unwholesome habit pattern.  That is ending suffering in that moment.

"Are our lives leading onward...."

I ran across this quote from Joseph Goldstein who has been one of my main teachers and a guiding light in how he has conducted his own life. It comes from a book Creating a Life of Integrity: In Conversation with Joseph Goldstein. Joseph says:

"We must continually ask ourselves, are our lives leading onward in any way?

Of course, we also need to find the line between being impeccable and being rigid,

so that we refine our understandings with a light heart.”

What I have followed and noticed about Joseph’s path is how his heart and his generosity and his onward path are merged. He along with Sharon Salzberg and Jack Kornfield purchased with collected donations the land and buildings they developed into the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA. They began offering retreats themselves and training Western teachers to offer retreats as well. They also invited many of their esteemed teachers from India, Thailand, Burma, and elsewhere to come and teach at this new center. Dipa Ma was one of those teachers.

Joseph supported women teachers from the beginning at a time when the women’s movement was still in its beginning efforts. He organized a trip to the Burmese monasteries that have been so important to the insight tradition asking sizable donations from the travelers for these monasteries. And with his leadership, the retreat center began offering scholarships specifically to encourage people of color to attend.

More recently, say in the last 10 years or so, realizing the debt of Western Buddhism to the Eastern traditions which were held by people of color, he led his colleagues to investigate why there weren’t more people of color or of difference attending the many retreats. What they realized is that people of color weren’t attending in larger numbers partly because of economics and having the time and opportunity, but also because they didn’t see themselves reflected in their teachers. So Joseph began widening the search for and the training opportunities for teachers of color. Today Insight Meditation Society has a robust roster of retreats taught by people of color for people of color. It is perhaps the most diverse retreat schedule of any retreat center anywhere.

And all because Joseph continually asked himself, is my life leading onward in any way?

Of course, you know where this is going because we have all become more aware how our personal happiness and well-being is connected with the well-being of the planet and the health and happiness of its many inhabitants. Just as in psychology, we have moved beyond the Freudian model that says our personal happiness is entirely rooted in our personal past to the family systems model that says that a troubled child is not an isolated event in a family but often the "identified patient” in a malfunctioning family. As we look around, we see that is true in community systems, political systems, national systems, and world wide systems. And perhaps it makes the question "are our lives leading onward in any way” almost overwhelming to contemplate.

Which is why Joseph added the second part, “Of course, we also need to find the line between being impeccable and being rigid, so that we refine our understandings with a light heart.”

So can we begin to bring this question more into the light, "Are our lives leading onward in any way?" And at the same time, allow our consideration of this question to develop naturally and "with a light heart?"

Self-acceptance and the Marlboro Man

I’ve been thinking about self-acceptance recently. I’m sure many of you can relate.

We’re pretty hard on ourselves as a culture. The Marlboro man epitomized the solo persona the country admired - strong, independent, self-reliant. I don’t think the Marlboro man had much of an emotional life which is probably why he was a chain smoker. Probably not much in touch with his feminine side either. Vestiges of that image still linger to a greater or lesser degree as a powerful archetype in the American personality.

We often encounter our unwillingness to accept ourselves when we feel inadequate or criticized or shown up in some way. Or when we’ve blundered or suddenly come face-to-face with some unseen and unseemly part of ourselves. And it can be a pretty painful process if we ourselves pile on the criticisms and join forces against ourselves in what we perceive to be a well-deserved self-bashing.

It is my fervent hope that by this time, we’ve all begun to recognize the signs and to marshall our inner resources to practice loving-kindness and compassion towards ourselves.

But I’ve also begun to wonder if we can’t approach this at a more elemental level working up and out as well as down and in. By that, I’m referring to our basic building block of mindfulness - awareness of breath. And this also refers to any focus of body awareness we choose such as the sensations in the hands or feet or seat. Or the sound scape.

When we practice breath awareness - and I’ll use that as my example, we pay attention to the breath as it arises and falls in each passing moment. The instruction is to allow the breath to be just as it is - without trying to make it into anything else, without judging it as being less than any other breath. This is the breath the body called for. This is the breath the body is capable of. And the question for us as meditators is this: can we be with it? Can we accept this breath as it is? And this breath as it is? The ragged as well as the smooth? The shallow breath as well as the full breath?

And even, the breath that feels inadequate as well as the breath that fully satisfies?

In this simple practice, we can begin the process of accepting - ourselves and reality - just as it is in this moment. Are we anxious and breathing rapidly and shallowly? Can we be with that? Are the wildfires making our air smoky? Can we be with that?

Can we accept our breath - just as it is? Our bodies just as they are? Our world just as it is?

It doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t attempt to improve any of it. But first we have to start where we are.

I wonder what the Marboro man would make of that.

Meditation on an alarm clock...

Having been on retreat all week, the inclination to silence is still strong within me. But as you will see below, not as silent as I at first thought.

I attended a 6 day retreat - the first step of a year long study of deep concentration states. The first few nights this week I stayed with the retreat schedule - only getting up a little early to do my yoga and to extend the half hour morning sit a bit. But then I felt the urge to have a longer sit which I had learned from my June retreat would work best as the first sit of the day. So I set my alarm for 5 am and went to sleep. I was aware I wasn’t relaxed. The teachings the evening before were both stimulating and unsettling and I hadn’t elected to stay past the evening’s end for a period of silent sitting.

At a certain point in the night, I realized I was dimly awake and waiting for the alarm to go off. My body was tensed against the impact of the alarm the way it sometimes does. And I began to worry how much time I had left to sleep. I didn’t want to look and discover it was only a short period. So I lay in bed attempting to sleep but worried that as soon as I went back to sleep, the alarm would go off. It occurred to my half-asleep mind that this was similar to waiting for death, not making the most of the time available, waiting for the inevitable end.

After a period of time as I became more awake and sleep still would not come, I had one of those head-slapping, “I should have had a V-8!” moments. I was lying in bed, a bundle of tension, resisting an alarm that would go off at some point so that I could get up early and practice! In actuality, the time I needed to practice was right at the moment - in the dark of the night, with my body tense, dreading the little ring from an aging travel alarm.

I did a brief body scan to discover my body resisted being scanned. So I began to offer myself loving kindness and compassion. In less than a moment, I was aware I was back in my body, opening to the suffering that was present in that moment, and the alarm was firmly back in the future.

When I finally looked, it was only 3:30! So I got up, did my yoga, and made my way to the meditation hall.

Life is what happens while we’re making plans and anticipating the future. This is such a crucial and sometimes obvious truth yet one I have to learn over and over - and over and over again. The pull of planning, which is important for sure, and the worry over future possibilities can transfix the mind again and again. Freedom comes when we wake up to whatever is our life in this moment.

Wouldn’t you know Rumi was here before me?

Don't Go Back To Sleep

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.

Don't go back to sleep.

You must ask for what you really want.

Don't go back to sleep.

People are going back and forth

across the doorsill

where the two worlds touch.

The door is round and open.

Don't go back to sleep.

What's happening now?

The practice of mindfulness meditation can be contained in two phrases: “What’s happening now?” And "Can I be with it?" The first question is about awareness of our experience - from the larger rhythms to the most minute shifts and changes. The second question is about accepting that experience, allowing the experience to be - because it is already here, whether it is difficult or pleasant or neither one - and knowing it for what it is. It doesn’t mean becoming passive, getting run over, and not trying to change what can be changed. It means accepting the reality of this experience without denying it or pretending it’s other than what it is. This is what is happening right now. And knowing how we feel about it is also what is happening right now. Our liking it or not liking it, our resistance or our acceptance.

Having experiences is one thing. Knowing having experience is being awake to the miracle and possibilities of the moment. This knowing is what unlocks the transformative power of mindfulness.

Walking in the heat....

I went for a walk yesterday late afternoon with the slightly cooler temperatures urging me on. It was still too hot in the sun - even at 4pm, I thought sadly.

But I was listening to Joseph Goldstein teach mindfulness meditation in 5 minutes bites on 10% Happier thinking, “This probably won’t work too well since I’m walking.” (I don’t usually listen to my iPhone but the recent heat had seriously dented my enjoyment of walking.) So I modified the instructions on sitting practice - paying attention to the breath - by bringing awareness to my feet and legs as the instructions for walking meditation suggest. In the five lessons I heard during my walk, Joseph took us through mindfulness of breathing, mental noting - noting “in - out” with breath at the nostrils or “rising - falling” with breath at the chest or belly. I found I was able to bring my awareness to my upper lip and nostrils - even while walking - and there was a tiny bit of joy in that. He also suggested that if a strong sensation, feeling, or thought arose to leave the breath momentarily to bring the awareness to that sensation, feeling, or thought, investigating this strong experience. When it passed, return the awareness to the breath.

As I walked along, I found myself disliking the heat of the sun when there was no shade. I was caught in the aversion to the heat and suffered. But then I walked into the shade of a large maple - blessedly dark shade - and felt a wonderful coolness. Hmmm, I thought. Back out into the sun for a bit, then back into the shade, and suddenly, I smelled the most wonderful fragrance. It was just a few seconds of a light sweet fragrance - from the garden on the farm nearby or wild flowers, I didn’t know. I realized the cool shade and the light fragrance were regular occurrences on my walks but had been getting overshadowed by my dislike of the heat. When mindfulness inserted these experiences into my awareness - the fragrance, the cool shade, and rhythm of my breath and my feet - they balanced the heat of the sun and the aversion I felt toward that heat. Suddenly, I was aware that mindfulness had totally transformed my walk. There was moment by moment awareness of pleasant experiences, unpleasant experiences, and neutral experiences. Not because the walk had changed but because I had changed the way I was paying attention to it.

Yay, Joseph, I thought. Mindfulness rocks!

Sunday as a day of rest//

I’ve been thinking about rest and of the path of Right Effort - one of the Buddha’s eight-fold paths.

I’m sure you have had one of those days when there are so many events on your schedule, perhaps a holiday as well, and required appearances that you wonder - Wait! Where is time for “self-care” and honoring inner priorities?

Yesterday was such a day for me.

It was Mother’s Day. It was my birthday. It was my two sister’s birthdays. There was the annual Mother’s Day concert presented by a group I helped found performed by my piano teacher. There was a required class from 5 to 6:30 of my Mindfulness Meditation Teacher training program. I was presenting a 15 minute talk on Mindfulness of Emotions at that class. There was an early dinner to celebrate the concert.

And although the day was too full, something was missing. And the fact that something was missing was distorting my perception of everything else.

On Friday I rectified that. Taking my courage in hand (holding my breath), I invited my family to a zoom gathering to check in on the cluster of health situations, to celebrate multiple birthdays, and to share the joy of a recent wedding.

This is not about my busy Sunday. It’s about what I realized at the end of that day.

It wasn’t perfect. Someone at the concert lamented how Covid had changed our reception. No one supplied a non-alcoholic beverage for the reception so I spent part of the concert figuring out when I could run to the store next door for lemonade. I got a little stressed about the lemonade. I got more stressed about giving the talk in class later. And to top it all off, someone started to complain about the zoom meeting. Fortunately, that person caught themselves and bit back their criticism before letting it take shape. And I just took over and “led” the family zoom meeting to make sure all those involved in medical stuff were heard from, the newly weds had a chance to share, and all mothers - biological or otherwise - were honored.

At the end of the day, all I could remember was the bitten-back comment from the relative, getting stressed about the reception, my nervousness about the class presentation, all the ways my talk might be improved, and the anxiety about scheduling and leading the family gathering. Yammering voices. And I wondered was it worth it?

And then I had the revelation. Wow, everything that I wanted to get done got done! Yes, it had a few messy spots. But the structure of the day was perfect (!) because everything that needed to be honored got honored.

And suddenly I could see something I’ve said over and over to students. All the echoes of criticism or not doing enough were just old tapes in my head that got activated by one or another thought, comment, non-habitual action. And seeing all those voices of dissent trying to tear down a perfect day was freeing.

I have been overwhelmed with happiness and joy all day about my super-crowded Sunday with birthdays, Mother’s Day, May concert & dinner, class presentation, and family health check-in/birthday gathering.

The little carping voices all just shut up! At least for now…

An Invitation to a Come-As-You-Are Party

In this morning’s meditation, I was reminded of a conversation I had with a meditator about bring our selves as we are to our practice. It really is an old-fashioned come-as-you-are party - pajamas, hair smashed to the sides of our heads, preoccupied by the endless fascination of our phones…however it is right now.

I was sitting in meditation and noticing how persistently busy/wild my mind was. I could feel the energy of distraction as a powerful force. My first thought was, “This isn’t going to go well today. I’m too distracted, I’ve taken too many days off and now I’m paying for it. So I might as well go do something else and wait for a better time.” Then I stopped and remembered this conversation about bringing our minds as they are in this moment to our practice - about not having to straighten up our minds, get in the right mood, maybe even practicing to get ready for practice! Don’t get me wrong; there is definitely a wholesome use to practicing to practice. But it’s really just showing up for practice.

I realized what I was really saying. I meant I wanted to wait for a better mind. And yet this was the mind I had. So I said to myself, "OK, can I bring this super busy mind to practice this morning?" And as I turned my awareness to my super busy mind, I had a revelation. I saw the suffering in it. Being distracted is suffering. And we can practice with suffering.

So I turned toward loving kindness and compassion. Sharon Salzberg who brought loving kindness back to the west in the 70’s says:

Loving kindness is a meditation practice that is a way of experimenting with our attention. What do we pay attention to? Who and how do we pay attention? If we’re in the habit of fixating on what we’ve done wrong, the thing we didn’t say right, the exercise or the experiment of lovingkindness would also be to open to the good within us. It’s not trying to pretend that everything’s good, everything is perfect, that we have no problems. But we can have a truer picture of who we are, we can open to what’s good with us.

Rather than seeing it as a meditation where we’re trying to pretend to feel something we actually don’t, or that we like everybody when we actually don’t, it’s an exercise in paying attention. The power of the practice is the gathering of our attention.

For me, letting go of trying to have a different mind - maybe the mind I had before I went to Costa Rica - was a huge relief. This is the mind I have now. We think we can step in the same stream twice but the stream is different and all the water is different. This is the water in the stream now - different from yesterday and the day before.

So letting go of what was - and is no longer - is the freedom our practice can bring us.

So consider this an invitation to a come-as-you-are party.

Outside the country, outside the comfort zone...

Upon returning from a recent trip to Costa Rica to attend a wedding:

Costa Rica was an onslaught on the senses. So many people milling about in the market places, in the churches, in family gatherings - brothers and sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles, children and babies, dogs and birds - all coming and going. Of course, rapid Spanish everywhere with occasion much shorter translations. So much noise from cars, unmuffled trucks. Driving or even being a passenger in a car was an exercise in moment by moment mindfulness, negotiating endless turns with oncoming traffic, having to be ever watchful of motor bikes darting in and out of traffic in the urban areas, potholes and dirt roads in the mountains. And a wealth of new sights - signs and wires everywhere, buildings of many colors, open air “sodas” and other places to eat - all accompanied by the cacophony of passing traffic, tin roofs on small houses and shacks made of whatever material was at hand, shelter having a different meaning in a near equatorial country versus our northern one of wintry weather. And mountains - mountainous towns and cities, mountains in the distance, mountains covered with clouds and mountains verdant with tropical life, magnificent mountain vistas in the higher reaches. An explosion of color with flowers everywhere - on the ground, hanging from vines, in bushes and trees with fruit hanging heavy from chocolate, papaya, mango, and other trees whose with names I’ve forgotten. By the roadside, in the weeds, in gardens and forests, brilliant flowers whether cultivated or haphazard.

With such a blitz of the senses, mindfulness took on another dimension that I have yet to integrate. The experiences were so intense, so warm and welcoming, so revelatory of a different culture, a different way of being in family, so continuous that I began to feel like an overstuffed suitcase - packed with one event after another, one array of emotional responses after another that I initially felt needed to breathe and be carefully assimilated until my northern reserve began to break wide open to the ebb and flow of colorful intensity that was Costa Rica.

A friend sent me this article from mindful.org that I love. It speaks to new and experienced meditators alike. Our practice is a continual process of letting go into this new moment and this new moment - with these new moments varying widely in intensity and emotional as well as actual color.

As part of the “Real Love with Sharon Salzberg” event hosted by Women of Wisdom and Mindful, meditation teacher and author Sharon Salzberg discussed the true meaning of love for ourselves, others and life. The following is an excerpt of her talk.

The first meditation instruction I ever got was sit down and feel your breath, just feel the natural flow of your in and out breath. And as many of you have probably heard, I was very disappointed at first. I thought, “Feel my breath? I came all the way to India.” You know, where’s the magical esoteric practice thats going to wipe out all my suffering and make me a totally happy person?

I’d been going to school in Buffalo, New York and I thought, I could’ve stayed in Buffalo to feel my breath. And then I thought, “How hard can this be?” And it was like whoa—it is not so easy. I thought ok, what will it be, like 800 breaths or 900 breaths before my mind starts to wander? And to my absolute amazement, it was one breath and I’d be gone. And I’d be way gone.

What I heard over and over again, what I did not believe actually, was the most important moment in that practice happens after you’ve been gone: after you’ve been distracted, after you’ve fallen asleep, after you’ve just connected. Because it’s really a practice of recovery—how do we let go, and how do we start again?

It’s really a practice of recovery—how do we let go, and how do we start again?

It’s not that easy, because we are so conditioned. Everybody knows from life, we just sit down to think something through, and our minds jump to the past, jump to the future, they’re all over the place. And very often what happens is just this tirade: I can’t believe I’m thinking, no one else in the room is thinking, they’re not thinking how many people live here. Every single one of them is on the verge of enlightenment. I’m the only one who’s thinking, why am I thinking? I’m so stupid, I’m so bad, no one else is thinking. They’re sitting here in bliss. Maybe they are thinking, but they’re thinking beautiful thoughts. I think these stupid thoughts, like I am thinking about roundabouts, who thinks about roundabouts? I don’t work for the highway department ….

That’s usually what we do. And when we fall into that, not only have we extended the length of the distractions somewhat considerably, but it’s so demoralizing. It’s so exhausting, we don’t feel the wherewithal to start over, to come back, to begin again.

So the secret ingredient of that whole process is self-compassion. You don’t need to go on that tirade, and if it begins you can let it go. You can have some kindness towards yourself and just return. That’s why we say meditation is a practice of resilience. We say the healing is in the return, not in never having wandered to begin with.

Love and hatred in the news...

This past week in the news has shown even more starkly how the world is also a sangha. With the rise of technology and social media especially TikTok (who knew? Without a grandchild this would be a lost world to me) (TikTok has become the vehicle by which the Ukrainian people are letting the world know what is going on where they are), we are now where we have never been here before, as Thomas Friedman wrote yesterday, in a world in which so much is known so quickly by so many people about a war in a distant land. The global response has been nothing short of amazing, simply because this war is not happening in the darkness of previous wars but reaching the wider world in real time through images and videos on Youtube, and Facebook and TikTok.

What are some of the lessons for us as meditators as well as human beings so far? We are filled with compassion and fear for the Ukrainian people. Can we also feel compassion for the Russian soldiers who may or may not want to be invading a foreign land? Can we also understand that they feel fear and loneliness and most would much rather be home? We may also be filled with anger and revulsion at their crazed leader. Can we also see the suffering in reaching such a state of isolation and rage and perhaps even helplessness that tearing down the whole establishment is preferable to feeling the shame and humiliation and rejection that is also present? Have we not felt some of those feelings ourselves? And yet, this doesn’t mean we condone or excuse or allow such destructive acts. What it does point to is how we relate to our resolve that this aggression is intolerable.

As we sit and breathe, feeling our bodies and breath in our bodies, a kind of joy arises naturally. The joy of being present in this moment, now. And this joy too exists and can be known. It can be quite subtle, this joy. Don’t go looking for the white elephant in the forest when it may be sleeping quietly on your own hearth. I believe I have mixed a metaphor here but you get the idea. Joy is already present.

Why is this important? Because we can lift up that joy and gather strength and resilience from it. We can allow it to melt our anger and fear and redirect that energy into compassion and resolve.

And then we can extend that compassion to all those around us as well as those far away who are suffering - to both sides of a conflict, to those we fear as well as our friends and allies, to every one in our global sangha. And this joy and this compassion keep us safe from the destructive forces of hatred. They also allow us to do what we can to contribute to a positive solution - out of love, not hatred.

This is a well-known quote from the Dhammapada, a sacred Buddhist scripture:

Hatred never ceases by hatred;
But by love alone is healed.
This is an ancient and eternal law.

This is an ancient and eternal law. Think about it - an ancient and eternal law. This is simply the way it is.

Can we begin to touch this truth and allow it to grow in our hearts?

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.