Category Archives: Buddhist

Weekly Photo Challenge: Change

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Pema Chodron writes in a book called “Comfortable With Uncertainty”:

According to the Buddha, the lives of all beings are marked by three characteristics: impermanence, egolessness, and suffering or dissatisfaction.  Recognizing these qualities to be real and true in our own experience helps us to relax with things as they are.  The first mark is impermanence.  That nothing is static or fixed, that all is fleeting and changing, is the first mark of existence.  We don’t have to be mystics or physicists to know this.  Yet at the level of personal experience, we resist this basic fact.  It means that life isn’t always going to go our way.  It mean’s there’s loss as well as gain.  And we don’t like that.  …We experience impermanence at the every day level as frustration.  We use our daily activity as a shield against the fundamental ambiguity of our situation, expending tremendous energy trying to ward off impermanence and death. …The Buddhist teachings aspire to set us free from this limited way of relating to impermanence.  They encourage us to relax gradually and wholeheartedly into the ordinary and obvious truth of change.”

 

Much of my life and energy of the past 10 years has been spent trying to cope with change, as I watched my husband’s health deteriorate and my children grow from an innocent childhood into a difficult adulthood.  Five years ago, my husband died at the age of 47.  In my most agonizing moments of wrestling with impermanence, I would take myself for a walk.  Two blocks from my house was a place I liked to call “my prairie”.  It was a place where “relaxing gradually and wholeheartedly into the ordinary and obvious truth of change” came naturally.  At that time, I’d never heard of Pema Chodron and knew very little about Buddhism.  But I could see change all around as leaves turned color, decayed, and returned to the soil where new shoots would eventually spring.  Cloud formations came and went, as did the warmth of the sun.  Paths mown in the prairie grass grew indistinct and were redirected.  Small animal carcases seemed to melt into a puddle of fur and bones until even those were carried off or disappeared.  Change was constant and friendly, not the scary beast I was beating from my front door every day.  

“My prairie” became a very special sanctuary to me.  This is where I went on September 11, 2001 to think.  This is where I went when I returned to my old neighborhood after moving in with Steve in 2011.  This is where I will wander following the Bridal Shower my daughter’s best friend is throwing for her in June.  I bring myself and all my changes into this sanctuary, and I feel immediately embraced by the bigger changes of the Universe in its course.  All the impermanence, egolessness and suffering of my life seems to settle down into just What Is when I am here.  I feel at peace.  It is my pleasure to introduce you to my picture of Change…

change  

Weekly Photo Challenge: Future Tense

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The challenge for this week is Future Tense.  I admit, thinking about the future often makes me tense, anxious, sometimes panicky.  I have a vivid imagination and a lot of irrational fears.  And I’m working on breathing, living in the present moment, all those Buddhist practices that address those thought patterns that Western Pragmatism put into my head.   The OMG! your children, your finances, your health, your retirement….you must have a PLAN for the future, you must be PREPARED, if you’re not anxious, you obviously haven’t grasped the situation!!!!  There are DANGERS out there in life!   

Do you think life is something to be feared?  Do you think life is a wonderful adventure, naturally unfolding, peaceful and harmonious and without judgment?  How do you want to live your life?  You have a choice. 

path to the dark side

Posting in High Dudgeon or How to Rant Gracefully

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The precepts of Buddhism are on my mind.  I’m trying to be precise (aware) and gentle and graceful in this blog, but today, what I’m aware of is anger.  And this is very uncomfortable for me because I’ve built up quite a habit of avoiding anger at all costs.  I don’t like to find it in others, and I don’t like to find it in myself.  However, it’s a very important part of being human.  So, how do I face it gracefully?

Steve has some cassette tapes of Thich Nhat Hahn giving talks on relationships.  He speaks (or whispers, practically) about how to confront your loved one by opening with, “Darling, I suffer…” 

So, who is the loved one I want to confront?  Yahoo! news. 

Seriously, I am angered by a sense of false reporting that I feel every time I log on.  Important issues are sparsely represented.  Celebrity activity is ubiquitous.  The site reeks of phoniness, of Lifestyle but very little Life.  So, in my state of indignation, I wrote a kind of rant.  I will post it here with the graceful prefix:

Darling Yahoo!, I suffer. Unemployment isn’t news.  Celebrity divorces aren’t news.  Pet tricks aren’t news. Death isn’t news.  Where is the joyful message of Life?  The new moon, the new day, the new leaf, the new mutation, the new energy, the new decomposition, the new layer of sediment, the new moment, the NOW that has never been before and will be over immediately so that the next NOW can appear?  The earth, the stars, the Universe is moving and changing, and you’re afraid to report it.  The one thing we’re not making up, inventing for our own fascinated misery, gets shushed and shunted because certain people don’t want to hear.  What makes them so certain?  Their belief freezes everything real, stops it  mid-drip, or so they think.  Nonsense.  Wake up!  Get your mind out of those delusions.  You can make observations; you can’t make certain.  Bring me observations of the Universe, dear Yahoo!, and less of the machinations of man. 

That is all.

 

Peaceful Sunday

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Placido Domingo.  Quiet, tranquil Sunday.  Ah, me.

Last night, we saw our first Lyric Opera of Chicago performance of the season: Simon Boccanegra by Verdi.  An appropriate story for an election month, dramatic and political.  Two opera megastars were featured in the leading roles: Thomas Hampson and Ferruccio Furlanetto.  The story and the music are captivating.  (This performance was rather a disappointment, stiff and unimaginative.  I much prefer the La Scala production starring Placido Domingo in the title role, even if his voice is not as resonant as a baritone.) The point is that Simon Boccanegra is a man who spends his life and loses his life in the pursuit of peace.  The Italian political scene is characterized by vendetta, family feuds, curses, treason, and rebellion and peopled with villains.  The story shows, though, that everyone is a villain.  We all harm each other in one way or another.  Forgiveness and reconciliation is the only way to make a difference.  How many people must the Doge pardon by the end of Act III in order to die peacefully in his daughter’s arms?

                                                                                       

This morning, I logged on to the internet and began a conversation with my blogger friend, Helen, of 1500 Saturdays.  Her post was about brutal killings in Nigeria, titled “How did humanity get so lost?”.  How do we respond to suffering, to the villainy that surrounds each of us?  Which stories do we listen to; which do we tell?  How do we make a peaceful Sunday in our world?  Please click here to read her post, the links, the comments and spend some time considering your own response.  “May all beings be happy; may all beings be free from suffering.”

 

 

May All Beings Be Happy

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Out of the technological complications of internet networking come some of the simplest expressions of human compassion, a wish for another person’s well-being, even if that person is a virtual stranger.  And it makes the sleek, glib, electric world a bit softer  and warmer.  I’ve made some sweet connections this week with a few of my favorite bloggers, all of whom live at least a couple thousand miles away.  I’d like to share them with the rest of you.

Mistress of Monsters is like another daughter to me, in a way.  She is getting married next week.  Here’s an exchange we had.  She turned it into a blog post.

Naomi Baltuck is an amazing blogger and professional storyteller.  She’s also a mom.  I see a kindred spirit in her…although she’s much more adventurous and accomplished than I am, yet.  I echo her wish in this post for the Weekly Photo Challenge prompt: Mine.

And then there’s that rascal, Stuart.  He’s a gritty city photographer who travels to exotic places like Brazil and Spain and has just taken up residence at a farm for the winter.  We inspire each other to keep open to possibilities.  Here’s his post. Our exchange is in the comments section.

I’ll be taking about 3 weeks off from the blogosphere beginning next week, but I will be thinking of all of you.  May All Beings Be Happy.

Tower Perspectives

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Buddhism teaches me much about the interconnectedness of all things, about perspective in consciousness, about the dangers of dogma and claiming to know the capital T “Truth” about anything.  What is this thing in front of you?  You can give it a name, describe it with words and symbols, but that is not the reality of that thing.  Those words and symbols are useful but limited.  The experience of that thing is more, more than you can describe or symbolize, more than you can communicate.  Yesterday, I went to Lapham Peak State Park and climbed a tower.  Here are three different views of the tower.  How do I convey the experience, the wind, the dizzying aspect of ascent, the vast horizon, the humor of humans who visit and the irony of our inability to depict our emotions and our consciousness of grand things?  Perhaps these shots will give you a partial idea.

What do you “beleve”?

Too Darn Hot

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I have been given the day off from my job at Old World Wisconsin.  When the heat index is over 100 degrees, we expect few visitors to the outdoor living history museum.  With my time, I imagine accomplishing all kinds of things, but in truth, I am simply sitting in front of a fan in the living room, drinking cold water.  I am surrounded by books.  “Savor” by Thich Nhat Hahn is right at hand, bringing mindfulness into my view, but what I am mindful of is the sun beating down on the roof next door, angling through the windows despite the mini-blinds, heating the air so that any breeze coming in feels like the blow-dryer set on High.  I imagine all the sweet corn that I want to be eating next month shriveling up in the fields.  The loss of that treat – roasted in the husk, dripping in fresh butter and seasoned with salt and pepper – is probably not as devastating as the loss of an entire crop to a farmer.  Dust Bowl conditions may be just around the corner at this rate.  We are all connected to the changes and conditions on this planet.  How can we be mindful and act compassionately as a community?  How can we become “solid, peaceful, whole, and well” and improve the well-being of the world through collective compassion?  And can we cause a sea change on the planet before our brains are so baked that we can’t think at all?  I retreat into distraction and immediately think of this song…

Drops of sweat tap dance down my trunk…

Conscientiousness melts into individual survival…

When will the healing rain fall?

Imagine

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While investigating a new follower, GYA today, I watched this YouTube clip from his May 17 post.  Again, I had to ask myself about the source of my tears.  (see my post Why These Tears? from 2 days ago)  Watch it and see if you don’t have the same questions.

Okay, I’ll wait while you go get a tissue.  Or watch it again.  (I did both.)

I love his choice of song.  It really puts the focus on the force of consciousness.  What does your brain spend time on?  Did you catch the comment by the one judge who said that it made her think that the things she worries about are “pathetic”?  Pathetic.  Sad.  Sorrowful.  Tearful.  That we get stuck in negative and depressive patterns of thought surrounding circumstance is very sad to me.  That there are other options, that we do have the capability to change our focus and probably our futures is the great joy.  The tears are a double whammy.  I am sad that seeing physical deformity and hearing the story of a child’s abandonment brings me to focus on depression by default.  I am overjoyed to see that assumption shattered by the reality of a young man who enjoys love, the gift of a beautiful voice, and the opportunity to create a life that is satisfying to himself and an inspiration to others. 

I hope that anyone reading this can take the time to IMAGINE today.  Imagine the things you worry about dissolving in a broader perspective.  Imagine your limitations transformed by the transcendence of judgment.  “Handicaps” aren’t handicaps.  Reality is neutral.  You can make a positive or a negative judgment about them, and that will effect your experience of them.   I really believe this is what we do with our enormous brains, but most of our culture thinks that’s metaphysical hocus-pocus and that quality of life is found in the nature of circumstances.   “IF” conditions are right, you can be happy.  Why not just be happy and never mind “conditions”?  This is not my own idea, of course.  It stems from centuries of Buddhist thought about suffering.  I have only recently begun to see it illustrated in my Western life.   So here’s the million dollar question: what is happiness and how can you discover it?  My mother used to quote, “Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God.”  If so, joy is everywhere.  Happiness is everywhere.  It’s already here, then.  It doesn’t need to be discovered; it may simply need to be uncovered.  “Cleaning the windshield” is what Steve sometimes calls it.  Get rid of the crud that keeps you from seeing the happiness that is all around.  Imagine!

Living for today…

Peace Walk

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Yesterday, I blogged several quotes from Thich Nhat Hahn.  Last night, I came across a passage in Living Buddha, Living Christ that illuminated my journey through widowhood, change, and doubt.

“One day when you are plunged into the dark night of doubt, the images and notions that were helpful in the beginning no longer help.  They only cover up the anguish and suffering that have begun to surface.  Thomas Merton wrote, ‘The most crucial aspect of this experience is precisely the temptation to doubt God Himself.’  This is a genuine risk.  If you stick to an idea or an image of God and if you do not touch the reality of God, one day you will be plunged into doubt.  According to Merton, ‘Here we are advancing beyond the stage where God made Himself accessible to our mind in simple and primitive images.’  Simple and primitive images may have been the object of our faith in God in the beginning, but as we advance, He becomes present without any image, beyond any satisfactory mental representation.  We come to a point where any notion we had can no longer represent God.”

“The reality of God”…beyond any notion or representation, there is a reality, an experience.  Returning regularly to this experience is what Thich Nhat Hahn refers to as “deep practice”.  It requires awareness, mindfulness, being awake and paying attention.  What is the experience of being in this living world?

I went for a walk yesterday in a strong wind and looked up to the trees.  They were all swaying in their own way, in different directions, at different levels, different speeds.  They have no notion that is “wind”.  They have an experience.

The river touches the stones and mud in the river bed, it touches the banks, it touches the wind with its surface and reflects the trees that rise high above it.  It inhabits its course without a concept or an image of anything.

I enjoy images.  I become attached to them.  Their primitive simplicity appeals to my limited brain and feels comfortable.  I wonder now if that’s why I often become “stuck”.  It’s as if I become unable to see the forest because I look so constantly at the trees.  The experience of ‘forest’ is so much more.

Every time I take a photo, I put my experience into a frame.  Would a frameless view of reality take me beyond my doubts?  Beyond my fears?

When I was a cantor at my church, I’d sing a refrain during Vespers, framing the prayers that people offered up in the pews: “Shepherd me, O God, beyond my wants, beyond my fears, from death into life.”

Shepherd me, O God, beyond my doubts, wants, fears, images, and notions…from death into Life.

Meditation

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I got myself into a mood last night while Steve was gone. We had mailed out job applications earlier that day for Old World Wisconsin, a seasonal living history museum, and gradually my anxieties about my life and work began escalating.  I searched the internet like a magic 8 ball, and the best advice I found was a quote from Teddy Roosevelt, “Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.”

What is “work worth doing”?  How do I want to spend my life’s energy?  What is worth it?  Am I even worthy of my life if I don’t do something worth doing with it?  Steve came home to find me sitting in the dark, staring out the window.  “Are you okay?” he asked tentatively.  Fortunately, we both have the ability to laugh at our moods, acknowledge them and joke about them and pay attention to them without getting too attached to them.  I did some doodling and some stream-of-consciousness writing and played my sopranino recorder a bit to loosen up and allow something to emerge.  I fell asleep with this phrase in my head: “Teach peace”.

This morning my thoughts turned to flowers and Thich Nhat Hahn.  He is one of the greatest teachers of peace, in my opinion.  If you’ve never heard of him, I urge you to do a little research.  Reading his books helped me through pivotal stages of grief and anger and crises of faith after my husband died.  I got a very personal message from his words, but his vision is for the entire world as well.  Peace begins internally and has consequences on a global scale.  I do believe that.  Today, I invite you to a meditation using Thich Nhat Hahn’s words and photos I took last summer of peonies from our garden.  I hope it nudges you awake to the happiness in you…as it did for me!

“If we are peaceful, if we are happy, we can smile and blossom like a flower, and everyone in our family, our entire society, will benefit from our peace.”
– Thich Nhat Hahn, Being Peace

“The source of love is deep in us and we can help others realize a lot of happiness. One word, one action, one thought can reduce another person’s suffering and bring that person joy.”

“The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.”

“Each moment is a chance for us to make peace with the world, to make peace possible for the world, to make happiness possible for the world.”
― Teachings on Love

“Our notions about happiness entrap us. We forget that they are just ideas. Our idea of happiness can prevent us from actually being happy. We fail to see the opportunity for joy that is right in front of us when we are caught in a belief that happiness should take a particular form.”

‎”The earth is so beautiful. We are beautiful also. We can allow ourselves to walk mindfully, touching the earth, our wonderful mother, with each step. We don’t need to wish our friends, ‘Peace be with you.’ Peace is already with them. We only need to help them cultivate the habit of touching peace in each moment.”

WALKING MEDITATION

Take my hand.
We will walk.
We will only walk.
We will enjoy our walk
without thinking of arriving anywhere.
Walk peacefully.
Walk happily.
Our walk is a peace walk.
Our walk is a happiness walk.

Then we learn
that there is no peace walk;
that peace is the walk;
that there is no happiness walk;
that happiness is the walk.
We walk for ourselves.
We walk for everyone
always hand in hand.

Walk and touch peace every moment.
Walk and touch happiness every moment.
Each step brings a fresh breeze.
Each step makes a flower bloom under our feet.
Kiss the Earth with your feet.
Print on Earth your love and happiness.

Earth will be safe
when we feel in us enough safety.

- from Call Me by My True Names: The Collected Poems of Thich Nhat Hanh

“Smile, breathe, and go slowly.”