Water Is All

On early morning walks around the lake, I notice vegetation, so recently a vivid green, shifting now toward tan under the blaze of a searing sun. Acres burn nearby, weather patterns change, and the political arena heats up as well. And in our personal lives, relationships shift, fortune comes and goes, and loved ones weaken and die as new beings incarnate and begin their own too~brief travels through the world.

           

It’s enough to make a person melancholy, even a bit frightened. How do we move through the uncertainties of life with spirits intact?

           

Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh speaks of two dimensions, the historical and the ultimate. His metaphor is the ocean, a lovely image for these hot days. Waves live in the historical dimension, as do all things that begin, end and change with time. When we touch the ultimate, however, we know that wave is only water and water is all.

           

When we focus on a particular wave~~the discomfort of sweltering temperatures, the rancor of the political arena, or some nagging problem~~our vision contracts. We zero in on a transitory occurrence, and the salty sea is lost to the waves.

           

It’s time, then, to consciously reorient. Nhat Hanh’s metaphor reminds us this needn’t be so very difficult. Water is right here. We simply shift our awareness. We cease our ruminations and outward busyness and awaken to the present moment, just as it is. For if the historical dimension exists in time, the ultimate is most directly experienced in the present. As the Indian yogi Prajnanapada put it, “If you are in the moment, you are in the Infinite.”

           

Most of us must cultivate an ability to perceive the enduring within the temporal. With practice, however, we learn to move between the two with greater ease, and even to hold both in the same moment.

           

On this morning’s walk, I again ached for the thirsty flora and fauna that call this place home. I hurt, too, for those affected by the fires. Then something shifted.

I still walked on parched earth, and flames had become no less deadly. Yet, everything was suddenly more alive. I had opened. I breathed into a vibrancy of which I had not been aware just seconds before. It wasn’t so much that the historical dimension gave way to the ultimate. It was that the ultimate rose up and was shimmering everywhere.

In Nhat Hanh’s image, I was no longer captivated by waves. The ocean was all, and it shone through each and every ripple. For a few moments, I was merely a molecule in a vast sea. And then another wave surged and swept me away.

No matter the waves any of us surf, we can open to the ocean. It may not change the height or intensity of the particular wave that holds us, but reorientating to that which is larger and imbuing us all~~waves and surfers alike~~can only help.

As one H2O molecule to another, namaste!

Loanne Marie

Be The Web

When I was young, we said grace before our evening meal.

“Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts which we are about to receive from Thy bounty, through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

No one taught me this blessing. It was simply an ever~present part of our evening ritual~~which likely explains why I rarely thought of its meaning. I loved how the words cascaded one over the other in an engaging rhythm. But did I think about their significance? Seldom.

As I matured, things began to change. I became influenced by forms of spirituality that recognized that all was sacred. This, of course, included the food that came from the earth and nourished the body. During this time, a new grace appeared, one that continues to be a part of my eating life.

The silver rain, the shining sun,

The fields where all the wild things run,

And all the ripples of the wheat,

Are in this food that we now eat.

So as we sit for this­­­­ ­­­­­­______ (adjective~~lovely, delicious) meal,

With ______ (adjective~~grateful, joyous) hearts we know and feel,

That we are eating rain and sun,

And fields where all the wild things run.

Though I loved the poetry in these words, still I used this blessing infrequently. Earth’s bounty and my incredible good fortune in having such wholesome food were too often intellectual concepts rather than heart~felt experience. The habits of unconscious eating were still strong in me.

And then Thich Nhat Hanh came into my life. This gentle Buddhist monk forever changed my relationship to food and the process of eating. The first line of the eating prayer in Nhat Hahn’s tradition is~~

“This food is a gift of the whole universe~~the earth, the sky, numerous living beings and much loving work.”

The oatmeal that warmed me this morning was possible only because of photosynthesis, moisture, vibrant soil, farmer, salt miner, trucker, grocer, stove manufacturer and propane producer. One chain, many links. One web, many strands.

In Buddhism, though, a blessing before meals serves primarily to orient us. As a preamble to the experience of eating, its intent is to encourage us to be fully present throughout the entire process. Full awareness~~an appropriate response to “these Thy gifts,” don’t you think?

I now say grace before most meals. As I look at my plate, I recognize all that it holds. And I see myself there, too. I re~member myself into that vast web. By nourishing my body, the food I eat allows me to move out into the world. How will I honor these gifts and carry them forward into the web?

If someone cuts me off in traffic, letting out an expletive or flipping the bird is certainly not being true to “these Thy gifts”. Walking in a haze through my day, reacting carelessly to whatever arises, does not do them justice either.

No, “these Thy gifts” asks more. It invites a loving attention, a soulful presence. When I’m operating from my best self, I bring nourishment to others. I hope, though, that even when I’m behaving badly, folks can take what I pass to them and turn it toward greater wisdom and overall good.

Many of us honored our gifts this past Thursday. Perhaps we can keep that thanksgiving going. In fact, I’m asking that everyone reading these words~~yes, that means you!~~ commit to sitting in gratitude before your next meal.

If we would each also vow to consciously use the nutrients within that food to fuel our own unique contribution to the world~~and to make it our very best offering~~that would be a lovely thing indeed!

And while we're speaking of gratitude, please feel mine streaming right now to you~~and you~~and you, too~~for all that you do, and all that you are, in this world.

Blessings!

Loanne Marie

P.S. For other Thanksgiving~themed essays, here are some earlier posts~~

Thanksgiving 2008

and

Thanksgiving 2010

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.

Look Within

There has been much discussion about Terry Jones’s decision to burn the Qur'an, as well as the subsequent retaliation of Muslims in Afghanistan. Now it’s time for my two cents.

I won’t spend time critiquing the acts of Jones or condemning the backlash it released. I’m sure most who read these essays agree that neither was justified and that, moreover, Jones’s intentionally going after this kind of response was particularly disturbing. My current theme, though, is a bit different. First, some background.

Several years ago, my husband ran a program to treat court~ordered perpetrators of domestic violence. Whenever there was a high profile case in the news~~ a man having murdered his wife, for example~~the men in my husband’s groups would immediately jump on the bandwagon of self~righteousness, detailing the ways in which they were different from that man. My husband’s job, bless his heart, was to lasso them from this easy avenue of discussion and insist they address a much harder question~~in what ways were they the same?

Consider yourselves lassoed. In what ways are we the same as Jones and the rioting Afghanis?

Few of us will be tempted to burn a sacred document of another faith or to murder someone in retaliation for an insult to our cherished beliefs. No, our temptations are of a subtler nature, but in their essence not so very different.

Most of us can be judgmental and harsh in our dealings with others. We often act out our mistaken assumptions and our upset, while justifying our own negative behaviors. Our emotional reactions can close our hearts, allowing whatever personal agenda is primary at the time to make us unresponsive to another’s pain. These very human tendencies routinely cause harm to ourselves and those close to us and, given the right provocation, they can explode into something much worse.

Terry Jones is not the problem. He is an angry, wounded man who finds temporary relief in public acts of hate that garner him notoriety. Muslims who commit atrocities are not the problem either. They are simply using their sacred text to justify the violence within their own hearts, as have folks from many religious traditions over the course of time, including Jones.

While we certainly need to speak in opposition to such acts, our real foe is not another person, religion or culture. Vietnamese Buddhist monk and author Thich Nhat Hanh, who watched innocents die as his country was torn apart by hatred, has earned the right to teach us something on this subject. He writes, “Human beings are not our enemy. Our enemy is the violence, ignorance, and injustice in us and in the other person.”

He reminds us that we humans are more alike than different, that the seeds of every human impulse lie within us all. Those seeds that have been “watered” by our life experiences grow sturdy, while the ones that get little attention lie fallow, waiting only for the right conditions to sprout.

Anger, wonder, despair, compassion. Hatred, delight, competitiveness, kindness. We share these tendencies and more with our fellows. We each have a responsibility to curtail our unhelpful tendencies, while nurturing our wholesome impulses~~the ones that accurately reflect our spiritual traditions. Thus, we grow in our ability to live together in peace.

So, while we rightly speak out against hatred in its various forms, let us not forget that we are capable of behaving similarly. And let’s also not shy away from looking within ourselves and assessing~~and transforming~~the ways in which we behave unconsciously and thereby hurt, either directly or by proxy, our fellow human beings.

In so doing, we pay true homage to our sisters and brothers the world ‘round who are being harmed~~even as I type these words and even as you read them~~by cruelty of any kind.

Blessings, please, on our whole complex, amazing, confused, endearing, often misguided, yet ultimately redeemable species!

Loanne Marie