Pause...

I step outside and into the pearly sort of darkness that tells of low clouds and falling snow. Sure enough, the white stuff is everywhere. It mounds on the ashcan, covers the cars, piles atop the birdfeeder.

           

This snow swallows every sound and brings a hush to the night. I stand still and feel the coolness of the air, its dampness against my cheek. I stretch out my hand and tiny flakes grace my palm. Dropping my arm, I remain a bit longer, steeping myself in stillness. Finally, my robe no match for the cold, I go back inside.

           

I have just taken what psychotherapist and meditation teacher Tara Brach calls “a sacred pause,” one of the key practices detailed in her thoroughly engaging book, Radical Acceptance. As the title suggests, Tara walks us through a process of receiving whatever comes our way with an openness larger than any preferences we might hold.

           

“Radical Acceptance is the willingness to experience ourselves and our life as it is,” she writes. Accepting "absolutely everything" allows us to be aware, “of what is happening within our body and mind in any given moment, without trying to control or judge or pull away.”

Accepting the peace of a snowy night, though, is one thing. Let us fast forward now to a wholly different situation...

Sunshine streams through the dining hall windows as I sit at the nursing home with my elderly father. His cancer has returned, and I’ve just learned of two incidents of explosive behavior the day before. As we sit together now, he's telling me a story that's an alarming jumble of past and present, so confused I find it nearly impossible to follow.

I remember to pause. I then work with what Tara calls the two wings of Radical Acceptance. With the first wing, I simply notice…Tightness in my shoulders and stomach. Helplessness, anxiety, sorrow. An urge to ignore my uneasiness, or get rid of it by trying to fix what cannot be fixed.

Instead, I breathe deeply and welcome the second wing. I bring a compassionate presence, a kindly awareness to all that is rising in me and everything occurring in this moment. And something begins to shift.

           

No longer resisting what is, a tenderness begins to emerge. My body softens and my heart becomes less constricted. Gradually, it opens. Affection swells and spills over, affection for myself as a struggling daughter and affection for my father, in all his human fear, anger and confusion.

           

This is the fruit of genuine acceptance. Tara writes, “We meet the ever-changing stream of life--this living, dying, breathing world--with accepting presence, and our hearts invariably open.”

           

And it all starts with a pause, one that clears the way for Radical Acceptance. Such acceptance is not passive. We may act, but whatever action we choose will likely be wiser and more effective, streaming as it will from an open heart.

So, my friends, may we pause well and often. And may every aspect of our lives, those we relish and those we find difficult, open our hearts more fully.

Blessings on all your pauses,

Loanne Marie

I highly recommend Radical Acceptance. Tara does an incredible job making these concepts accessible within the context of our very human lives. To visit Tara's website, chock full of info and free audio and video talks, click here.

Renga!

I’ve always loved haiku, those delightful little poems that offer us a delicate moment in just a few words. Recently, though, I learned that haiku arose from a much older tradition, the dynamic, collaborative poetry known as renga. This is how it works.

           

Poets arrive at a gathering with a freshly written verse of three lines. One of these hokku is chosen as the poem’s opening stanza. Each poet then separately composes a possible second verse. One of these is selected. This process continues, poem flowing through some mysterious process of becoming as verse gives rise to verse. Finally, a completed poem emerges.

           

Andrew Shelling, in an article on renga in the magazine tricycle, describes this process as “poem responding to poem.” Each stand~alone verse links to the one that precedes it, yet also moves the poem into new and often surprising territory.

           

Just like life. A moment, beautifully rich and complete unto itself, softly or startlingly becomes the next. Each instant arises from and is inextricably linked to all that precedes it, yet adds its own nioi, a Japanese word meaning scent. And that scent carries us into the next moment.

           

Of course, in our busyness we often miss the fragrance entirely. And so we practice slowing down~~in meditation, in contemplative prayer, amid nature, and in the writing and reading of verse.

           

In haiku and renga, Shelling writes, stanzas are “too short for complicated ideas, fancy metaphors, intricate figures of speech…(and) leave small room for self~promotion…(or) philosophic reference.”

No, this is bare bones poetry, perfect for those who want to touch the bare bones essence of life, that indescribable something that streams beneath all human activity and contrivance. The Japanese term for this quality is yugen. In The Japanese Theatre, author Benito Ortolani describes yugen as, “a profound, mysterious sense of the beauty of the universe…and the sad beauty of human suffering.”

           

With its traditional emphasis on simplicity, impermanence, and the lessons embodied in the natural world, renga has long been associated with Buddhism. “Renga, like haiku,” Shelling writes, “is not just a poem but a state of consciousness." Quoting 17th century renga poet Matsuo Basho, Shelling tells us that for a person living in this awareness, “everything he sees becomes a flower, and everything he imagines turns into the moon.”

           

A finished renga is a necklace of individual haiku beads strung seemingly without effort. This is poetry as meditation, poetry as a doorway into the Eternal Now.

           

Our days are renga, too, sparkling strands of haiku moments. Let us string them with awareness, allowing each bead to awaken us more fully. And may we delight in being part of such a dazzling collaboration, for together, poem responding to poem, we create something precious and new.

Blessings on this haiku moment, the one right here as you read these words. May you welcome it and add your own sweet nioi before passing it on.

Wishing you flowers and moons,

Loanne Marie

Here’s a link to Shelling’s article Whirling Petals, Windblown Leaves in the winter 2007 issue of tricycle. It is worth reading, indeed!

And here’s a lovely little tutorial about the writing of tiny poems, How to Haiku.

Addendum

Shelling’s article quotes Murasaki Shikibu, a writer of more than a thousand years ago, saying, “It was unthinkable that a poem should get no reply.” Shelling writes that to, “make no response, Murasaki believed, is to have no heart…to show oneself ‘uncooked’, a mere barbarian, with the shabbiest of table manners or bedroom etiquette.” Well, Murasaki certainly made her feelings clear on that one!

Traditionally, renga comes with some rather stringent rules. Though things have relaxed a bit with modernity and renga’s introduction to the west, custom continues to dictate some specifics. But as Shellling writes, “Maybe the elaborate rules devised in feudal Japan… have gotten less important than the simple human act of making poems together.”

So it is in this spirit that I offer you an opportunity to renga (yes, I’m makin’ that a verb!), right here on this blog. I’m not exactly sure how this will work, but I do know it could be great fun. If you’re interested in renga~ing, email me a note to fromthezafu@mac.com. By next weekend, when folks have had a chance to respond, we’ll start the process of figuring out together how to begin.

So, please, don’t be shy! As Shelling writes of his own renga experience, we can allow our renga “to compose itself, independent of our will” as we all write, “without a trace of self~centeredness…toward a single poem.” Sounds fun, doesn’t it?

Hope to hear from you~~yes, you!

* * * * * *

Oooh, it looks to be great fun! If you'd like to follow our renga in process~~or even contribute yourself!~~you can do so here.

Of Trees and Arrows

Tasks appear on your to~do list faster than you can cross them off. Time vanishes. Pressure builds as deadlines draw near. Or maybe you’re struggling with something far more critical. Perhaps you’ve been diagnosed with a serious illness or have had a recent heartbreak.

Whether our difficulties are mundane or profound, how do we manage them? For starters, we can choose to not make things worse.

At a recent retreat, Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh shared a teaching of the Buddha’s known as The Second Arrow that speaks directly to this issue. A person is hit by an arrow that pierces the skin. It is removed, but immediately afterward, a second arrow strikes the same spot, intensifying the pain and complicating the healing process.

Metaphorically, this is often what we do with our own difficulties. Story~making creatures that we are, we take our original hurt and embellish it. Using our considerable creative powers, we expand the wound.

In the first example above, I may tell myself that I’ll never get it all done and spin a tale of being incompetent or helpless. I may unwittingly convince myself that I am a victim of a deadline or that finishing the task to perfection is a reflection of my worth. In more serious situations, I might tell myself that my anguish is more than I can bear. I may blame myself or others for my misfortune or conclude that I’m jinxed or powerless.

I can, in other words, shoot myself with a second arrow. Heck, I’ve been known to shoot myself with a whole quiver full of arrows, each one furthering the original distress and limiting my ability to respond appropriately and effectively.

The wise person stops with the first arrow.

This teaching encourages us to stay with the original experience, simply as it is. It warns against both exaggeration and avoidance. It advises against spinning into anger, despair and blame. It urges us to attend to our difficulties without complicating matters further by piling on additional layers. In this way, our wound remains just what it is. Nothing more. We are then better able to take constructive action.

This teaching is often used to illustrate the subtle distinction between pain and suffering in Buddhist thought. Pain is a reality of this world. Suffering comes from how we relate to that pain. Looked at in this way, pain may happen to us, but suffering is what we do to ourselves. For most of us, our pain turns into suffering automatically.

Another image offered at the retreat has helped me interrupt this habitual response. The branches of a tree blow wildly in fierce winds. The trunk, however, is unmoving, particularly as it nears the ground. When we are in crisis, we are like the branches of the tree, flailing around to beat the band. But when we move down into our trunk, into our root even, we touch stillness.

I find this image instantaneously helpful. When my thoughts and emotions are running amok, I remember the branches. And I choose instead to identify with the trunk. While it’s difficult to describe, I energetically pull out of my mind and move down into my torso. Feeling the rise and fall of each breath in the abdomen can have the same effect.

Immediately I am calmed. Not happy perhaps, but no longer thrashing about. A much wiser choice, indeed. And besides, while I’m busy makin’ like a tree, I won’t be shootin’ myself full of arrows!

So to all you magnificent trees out there who may, in certain situations, believe yourselves to be branches alone, get ye to your trunk! And leave the quiver full of arrows on the ground!

Blessings!

Loanne Marie

Thich Nhat Hanh

The most effective way to learn a foreign language is the immersion method. Rather than sitting with dictionary and grammar book, one actively lives the language with others.

I have just completed such an immersion program, though the language was not truly foreign to any of the attendees. It was a language heard now and again by us all, one as near as our own breath, as close as this very moment.

For five days in magnificent Rocky Mountain National Park, 900 of us took part in a meditation retreat led by Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh (pronounced Tik N’yat Hawn). Born in central Vietnam in 1926, Nhat Hanh entered the monastery at the age of 16 to begin the practice of meditation and scholarly study. In the 1960’s, confronted with the war’s devastation, he became a proponent of “engaged Buddhism”, a movement that blended a life of meditation with a commitment to alleviate suffering in the world.

This was meditation~in~action. While rebuilding bombed villages and setting up medical clinics, the nuns and monks meditated. They breathed with an inner calm while creating schools and advocating for peace.

This approach continues in Nhat Hanh’s present~day activities, including the retreat I attended in which formal teachings were actively applied to the most ordinary moments of life. While there were periods of sitting meditation, these were not the backbone of the retreat. We meditated continuously, living and breathing the present moment in every act.

It was marvelous! We were a village of meditators, each one of us committed to being as aware as possible, all of us trying to live the reality that all is one, despite the divisions our earth eyes might see.

While eating, we looked deeply into the food on our plate, seeing sun and rain and numerous living beings reflected there. While walking slowly, we touched the earth with reverence. Listening to daily talks by Nhat Hanh, discussing our experience in small groups, greeting one another in silence with only eyes and smiles to communicate~~in virtually everything we did~~we returned again and again to the spacious qualities of the present and our interconnectedness with all of life.

Yet it was not all bliss. The mind can be a tumultuous place. Without the usual methods of distraction and avoidance, habitual patterns of thought and emotion became more obvious. We were encouraged to greet these as opportunities to practice, transforming any difficulties we encountered while actively nurturing our positive capacities.

As one experience moved into the next, and each day streamed into the one that followed, my inner stillness gradually deepened and an openness to the world around me, simply as it was, grew. When my husband and I took off for a few days of camping following the retreat, I took the experience into the forest. I carry it with me still.

When I studied at a language school in Mexico decades ago, I was thrilled when first I dreamed in Spanish. I recognized it as evidence that this new language had seeped deep into my core. Last night, I dreamt in the language of awareness.

In the dream, a person with whom I’ve had a great deal of conflict was speaking in the way I often find offensive. I did not, though, react as usual. I saw clearly the pain that gave rise to his behavior and, importantly, recognized this same pain in myself. Rather than responding with anger or defensiveness, I breathed with compassion~~for him and for me and for us all.

My immersion program has come to an end. It is time now for me to speak the language on my own, amid a daily life that will surely offer me many opportunities for practice.

Wish me well!

Loanne Marie

Here's a lovely little song, No Coming, No Going, which we sang at the end of the retreat.

If you'd like to learn more about Thich Nhat Hahn, here's a link to the website for his monastery in France, plumvillage.org. He also has monasteries in New York, California and Mississippi.

Small Choices, Beautiful Music

We humans are particularly adept at mucking up the waters, complicating that which doesn’t need to be complicated, confusing what doesn’t need to be confused. So it’s wise to regularly sweep the slate clean and return to the basics. I found the novel, Breakfast With Buddha, by Roland Merullo, helpful in this regard.

Merullo brings us a delightful character in Volya Rinpoche, a Siberian monk on a road trip across America. In his halting English, Rinpoche shares many spiritual concepts in plain terms with Otto, his unwilling and often disgruntled tour guide. Case in point, a discussion of free will.

“Many times every day,” Rinpoche explains, “you can go one way or the other way. You can go with anger or not go. Go with greed or not go. Go with hate or not go...These feel like small things, small choices, but every day, across one life, across many, many lives (you can) choose the good way, again and again and again, in what you are thinking and what you are doing.”

So, when life seems overwhelming and I lose sight of the big picture, I can consciously zero in on what’s right in front of me. Each and every moment offers me options, and choosing among them is really all I need to do.

I arrive at an appointment to find my name not on the schedule. I notice tears in someone’s eyes. A glass slips from my hand and shatters on the floor. I witness unkindness. I’m late for work and behind an exceptionally slow driver. I walk through the beauty of nature with my thoughts drifting elsewhere.

In every situation, options are available to me. Which will I choose? How will I direct this precious life energy given me?

While most of us generally try to do the right thing, this kind of specificity requires an awareness that makes it a life practice indeed. Yet, according to Merullo’s Rinpoche, by repeatedly choosing wisely, an inner quiet can begin to develop. “And,” Rinpoche explains, “that quiet space gives you a chance to see deep, deep into the world if you want to.”

Do we want to? Will we make room in our lives for deep looking? Another choice.

When asked about violence and hatred in the world, Rinpoche's answer is also simple. "I don't know the why. I know the is. This is the world and always the world...Inside the big world that you cannot control, you have the small world of you that you can control. In that small world, if you look, you can see whether to go this way toward good, or that other way.”

He goes on to explain that in his lineage, God is not seen as “up in the sky looking at you and judging you.” Instead, God is “giving out love and giving out love and giving out love…like a very nice music always playing. If you hurt people you make yourself deaf to this music, that's all. Not God’s fault, your fault. Not God’s judgment, your choice, you see? You make yourself no chance to feel God, or the moon going up, or any good love.”

Small, seemingly insignificant choices, minute by minute, day after day. Choices that help us find our way to the love streaming through every minute, to the joy of the music that is always playing. Now that’s a kind of simplicity I can hang with!

May we all grow our ability to hear the music.

Loanne Marie

PS. And thanks to Linda for lending me Breakfast with Buddha!

Loving Speech

A long time ago or just the other day, in a sprawling town or a small village, a gossiping man or a tale~telling woman goes to see the rabbi. “On a day when the wind howls,” directs the rabbi, “take a feather pillow to the top of the highest hill. Once there, slice the pillow through, shake it until all its feathers have blown away, and come see me again.”

The individual does as directed and returns to the rabbi. “Now go find every feather,” instructs the rabbi, “and gather them together once more.” “But that’s impossible!” the person protests. “I doubt I can find even one feather, let alone all of them, for the wind has flung them far and wide.”

“Your words, too, are feathers in the wind,” replies the wise teacher. “Once spoken, they are released in many directions and you can never pull them back again.”

* * * * * *

This traditional wisdom tale speaks to the Jewish teaching on lashon hara, which translates as “evil tongue”, and refers to speaking unconsciously or with ill intent.

“Lashon hara is a very complex phenomenon,” explains Rabbi Birdie Becker of Pueblo’s Temple Emanuel. “It doesn’t simply refer to speaking ill of others. It’s also about not being party to such talk by listening to it.” Jewish teachings are quite clear on this point. In listening to disparaging speech, we offer ourselves as the necessary platform for its manifestation and are, thus, implicated as much as the speaker.

“Lashon hara doesn’t only refer to speech about others,” Rabbi Becker continues, “Denigrating oneself is not acceptable either.”

Proverbs, that most pithy of all the books of the Tanakh, the Jewish name for what Christians call the Old Testament, puts it this way: “Death and life are in the power of the tongue.” Just like the babbling person in this tale, we often open our mouths without discernment, and what flies out can enliven or destroy. But just as the person in today's tale, we can turn toward wisdom by choosing our words with care, aware of their possible consequences.

This is not an easy task. Living in community with others gives rise to conflict~~both within us and around us~~which must be addressed for resolution to occur. But true peace cannot come or be sustained without respect. Our charge, Rabbi Becker reminds us, is “to keep the level of conversation moving always upward.”

I love that line! In the days since I first heard it, I've seen words spiraling upward, scented smoke swirling from a lit stick of incense.

We can interact with our fellows civilly, even during periods of strife, by holding a compassionate awareness of our essential kinship. Not only are we each trying to negotiate this perplexing human journey, but the very flaw we recognize so readily in another likely lies within us as well, though perhaps in a slightly different form.

If every human being carries a spark of the Divine, then to defame, belittle or disregard someone also defames, belittles and disregards the Divine. In speaking unconsciously or with malicious intent, we also actively reject our own true potential and, in the process, do a disservice to the gift that is our life.

We bear responsibility for these pillows of ours. They contain all that we are, all that we can be. Our every word and deed become feathers on the wind, the gift of ourselves to the world. What shall we offer, and what will become of these feathers of ours?

As another Jewish sage put it, “The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind. The answer is blowin’ in the wind.”

Speak well, listen well, be well!

Loanne Marie

PS. This essay had an interesting developmental process. A couple of months ago, reader Giselle Massi, sent me a link to an article she had published in the online magazine, The Edge. In it, she referred to the concept of lashon hara, without naming it. I was intrigued and spoke with a Jewish friend of mine, Judi, who supplied me the name along with her thoughts on the subject. Thus began a flurry of research, leading me at last to Rabbi Becker. Thanks to all of you!

PPS. For a Buddhist spin on lashon hara, see Thich Nhat Hanh's Fourth Mindfulness Training, in which he expands on the Buddha's fourth precept which prohibits lying.

All Jewels Glittering

Recently, an old friend paid me a warm and heart~felt compliment. I watched as her words swept me across continents, funneled me into the rich spiritual heritage of the East, and dropped me right into Indra’s net!

Indra began as one of the most powerful gods of the Hindu pantheon. By the 3rd century A.D., however, in a delightful example of religious cross~pollination, he appears in a sacred Buddhist text, the Avatamsaka Sutra. Here, though, it is the metaphor of his unique and marvelous net that takes center stage.

Infinite in size and stretching in all directions, Indra’s net is woven through with an untold number of glittering jewels. The true beauty of this image, however, lies in the interplay between these gems, for in the polished and glittering surface of one is reflected every other jewel in the never~ending web. And as author Francis Harold Cook writes, “each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that there is an infinite reflecting process occurring.”

This image serves as an elegant illustration of several interrelated concepts central to Buddhist thought~~emptiness, interpenetration, and dependent origination. These rather dry~sounding terms refer to the interconnectedness of all phenomena, and the notion that nothing in this universe comes into existence on its own or has an enduring identity separate from all else.

Sun, rain, air, and the very minerals of our earthly home create and sustain our bodies. Our personalities and ways of perceiving the world blend the inheritance of our ancestors with the particulars of our own history, including every individual who has touched us in ways kind or hurtful, and each event we experience. Every shred of knowledge or wisdom we hold true has been directly or indirectly given us by others, or has been teased out from the rich interplay of our daily encounters throughout life.

The complexity of it all is truly beyond comprehension. Just as jewels in Indra’s net, we stand as a reflection of all that is.

This awareness came to me when Monica offered her compliment. I recognized at least a bit of what she was truly seeing~~my mother, father and ancestors reaching back through time, every person who has shared the beauty of her soul or the pain in his heart, all the joy and hurt I have known, and each of my wise and not~so~wise teachers. And of course, recognized or not, Monica also witnessed her own reflection, for she has been part of my shaping. And shining, too, were all the jewels that she mirrors from within her own life.

My friend’s words did feel good. We are social creatures, and feedback from kindred spirits lets us measure where we stand on the path of our intentions. But her words also pulled me out of myself by enlarging my awareness so I was able to recognize all those non~self elements that comprise me.

I thank Monica for her compliment, but I also savor a sweet gratitude for all the jewels shimmering in my firmament, gracing me with their reflected light. It’s good to remember that none of us stand alone. We are but tiny specks in a vast fabric of reflection. But tiny though we may be, we are, indeed, precious jewels in Indra’s net. Let’s shine our little hearts out!

Shine on!

Loanne Marie