You are More than your Sorrow

“Suffering is not enough.
Life is both dreadful and wonderful.
To practice meditation is to be in touch with both aspects.
Smiling means that we are ourselves,
that we have sovereignty over ourselves,
that we are not drowned in forgetfulness.
How can I smile when I am filled with so much sorrow?
It is natural— you need to smile to your sorrow
because you are more than your sorrow.”                                         Thich Nhat Hanh

 

"The world is not a problem to be solved;
it is a living being to which we belong.
It is part of our own self and we are a part of its suffering wholeness.
Until we go to the root of our image of separateness, there can be no healing.
And the deepest part of our separateness from creation lies in our forgetfulness of its sacred nature, which is also our own sacred nature."                        Thich Nhat Hanh 

“… perhaps one can say that reality is not designed to accomplish a defined goal so much as it is made to serve the incomprehensible fact of what is. … We must learn to accept and love what is rather than always wishing for something different.”
    Robert A. Johnson, Jerry M. Ruhl. “Balancing Heaven and Earth: A Memoir of Visions, Dreams, and Realizations.” HarperCollins, 1998.

The more you understand, the more you love;
the more you love, the more you understand.
They are two sides of one reality.
The mind of love and the mind of understanding are the same.”           Thich Nhat Hanh 

 

 

The Mature Human Being

     “Do not confuse motion and progress.
     A rocking horse keeps moving but does not make any progress."         Alfred A. Montapert

"Now we will count to twelve

and we will all keep still,

for once on the face of the earth,

let's not speak in any language;

let's stop for a second,

and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment

without rush, without engines;

we would all be together

in a sudden strangeness.

Fishermen in the cold sea

would not harm whales

and the man gathering salt

would not look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,

wars with gas, wars with fire,

victories with no survivors,

would put on clean clothes

and walk about with their brothers

in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused

with total inactivity.

Life is what it is about...

If we were not so single-minded

about keeping our lives moving,

and for once could do nothing,

perhaps a huge silence

might interrupt this sadness

of never understanding ourselves

and of threatening ourselves with death.

Now I'll count up to twelve

and you keep quiet and I will go."

 

Pablo Neruda

 

      "Non-doing" is not doing nothing, rather it is the sense of effortlessness, arising from the felt sense of rightness, balance, authenticity. Non-doing is wise, nurturing behavior which minimizes suffering & maximizes long-term flourishing, peace & joy for ourselves & others. Our 'wise elder' part becomes stable, and holds our own & others' 'inner child' in safety & unconditional love. Inner & outer conflict, friction & noise are minimized; silence, stillness & peace maximized.
     This is not science fiction, this is just us being mature, civilized human beings.

 

 

Feeling Our Way Back Home

     Under stress, we automatically rush to our head, quickly trying to figure out how to get rid of danger & find safety, security, comfort. Increasingly however, we're feeling stressed almost continuously. Not surprisingly, for most of us, our heads have become home - an unhappy home.
     Can you feel when your center of gravity is in your head? It's all thinking / self-talk / self-concern isn't it? Can you sense a heaviness between the ears, even a continuous mild headache, often with tightness in the jaw / neck / shoulder areas? While "in your head," you're disengaged from the here & now - "absent-minded", "spaced-out." Such inattentiveness creates the false impression of being uncaring, that you're ignoring & disrespecting people around you, and contributes to accidents - adding to our stress.
     So under stress, we habitually escape into our head, often making the situation worse. We easily recognize the feel of this in our head as well as in the rest of our body - trembling, increased heart rate, butterflies in our bellies etc. We feel tight, alone, isolated, disconnected, anxious & afraid. Such unbalanced thinking is clearly useless, harmful, and feels wrong. 
     Balanced thinking - intentionally planning a project, preparing a menu, designing a garden, solving a math problem etc - is being fully engaged, in a relaxed, sustained manner, with what we're doing, being & feeling at home both in our body and in the present moment.
     Full engagement means that our mind, heart & the rest of our body are working in harmony, in a relaxed, joyfully efficient manner! This feels good! "Flow" is one term used to describe the enjoyable state in which an activity is performed fully immersed in energized focus & full involvement. We feel spacious, intimately connected & engaged with life.
     When we care for a beloved young child, puppy or kitten, we joyfully hold them in love & safety. This is the easiest way of remembering the feel of fully engaging all of our intelligences: mind (reason); heart (emotions & connection to others & environment); and body (physical power & groundedness or connection to the earth / reality). It's a fascinating combination of nurturing, interconnectedness, power & groundedness - like a mother grizzly with her cub. Other examples of this felt sense: hugging a loved one or looking into their eyes (person or animal); doing work (or hobby) that we consider to be our calling; when we see, hear, or read about anything that deeply resonates or touches us.
     We ALL know this felt sense of intimacy with the present! We know & remember this! It's a matter of remembering to return home to our whole self and learn to trust that it's safe & infinitely more pleasant to live our authenticity.
     Mindfulness training very gently, very slowly, eases us back into trusting that it's safe to leave our disembodied stressed-out thought-world, and return to be grounded, at home in our balanced mind-heart-body.
     1) Learn to recognize the unpleasant feel of being in your head: stressful repetitive thoughts, often with the feel of stress in the rest of the body.
     2) Relax, allow, feel awareness descend from your head, down into the heart area. In the heart region, with infinitely patient practice, you will (sooner or later) feel warmth radiating in all directions, outside & within your body. No forcing, no impatience - patiently, gently, feel, sense your way along. This radiating warmth is the physical / energetic feel of your interconnectedness with others, the environment, life itself. This viscerally felt sense of connectedness is profoundly restorative & healthy (vs sad & unhealthy sense of isolation, "me against the world", loneliness).
     3) The warmth extends downward to include your belly, within which your "hara" resides. The hara is the energy center in the middle of the abdomen, 2 inches below the navel, deep along the body's vertical axis. This is your body's power center, from where meditators, martial artists, opera singers & weight-lifters cultivate & generate power, the point around which gymnasts & figure skaters twirl, etc. 
     Even if your abdominal area feels unsafe, the hara is in a protected place, deep within the vertical core of your body. Far from being vulnerable, it is your own power center, never harmed, always reliable. The hara connects & grounds or anchors us to our body, present-moment reality, sanity, stability, the earth.
     4) Keep noticing whenever you get lost in your head, and allow yourself repeatedly to sense your way back down to hang out in the heart & hara centers. See how it feels to perceive life from this balanced mind-heart-body perspective. 
     If this works better & feels healthier, saner & more joyous, then keep patiently, gently practicing - it just gets better & better, despite challenges along the way.

     "All profitable correction comes from a calm, peaceful mind.”  
                                                                                                                         St. Francis de Sales 


(Hurricane Dorian was barreling towards us as I wrote this blog. The eye of the storm was expected to, & did hit our small city a few hours later. It was raining, windy, and ~80,000 homes had already lost power. We were without power, landline, cable & internet for over 24hrs, many trees were downed, along with power lines. Many remained without power for up to a week.)

Only Nurture and Persevere

     "You cannot predict the outcome of human development.
All you can do is like a farmer create the conditions under which it will begin to flourish." 

       Sir Ken Robinson

Come Together ...

    "It is possible that the next Buddha will not take the form of an individual.
     The next Buddha may take the form of a community - a community practicing understanding and loving kindness, a community practicing mindful living.
     This may be the most important thing we can do for the survival of the earth."                                                       Thich Nhat Hanh

www.wisdomatwork.com

One Light

     "... one light 
               though the lamps are many."


       Preece R. "The Wisdom of Imperfection. The Challenge of Individuation in Buddhist Life." Snow Lion Publications, Ithaca NY, 2006.

Our Physical Journey towards Wholeness

     I keep being amazed at how we, as individuals & as a species, seem to have to physically experience & process & integrate the myriad mysteries of life - "the full catastrophe", from wondrous to horrific, and with mountains of sand to shovel in between. It seems akin to each of us being presented with a plate of food to eat, digest & incorporate into every cell in our bodies & thus become transformed. 
     May we do this work of a lifetime as mind-heartfully as possible.

Samsara by Wolfgang Weinhardt   http://www.viewpointgallery.ca/

Mind AND Heart to Disengage from Conditioning

     "Over the years of teaching, I've found a growing need for profound lovingkindness & compassion -- a transformation of the heart -- to underlie the insights and understandings that come out of the practice. An opening of the mind needs to be supported by compassion from the heart if the practice is to be integrated, fulfilled, and lived in our lives. 
     The value of mindfulness practice is discovered in the freedom we find through awareness. Without awareness, we repeat the patterns of fear & conditioning that keep us entangled individually & collectively. Without awareness, we suffer. With awareness, we can see the contractions of the mind, how the mind gets caught and how we can learn to let go. With awareness we can reawaken to the purity of joy and freedom that is fundamental to our true nature."                        Jack Kornfield    http://www.dharmaseed.org/teacher/85/

 

Eliza taking a well-earned rest

Head & Heart can be Miles Apart

     It's amazing how much one can read & know (facts) about a religion / philosophy of life, without this knowledge having any appreciable affect on one's way of living, and thus, quality of life. People can be very smart, and at the same time, be far from living wisely. For transformational learning to take place, learning has to be welcomed in & embraced by mind, heart, emotions, body - all that we are.
     But, for many of us, (with apologies to Vegas) 'What happens in the head, stays in the head'. Many of us remain "scientific materialists" at heart. We may accept the Buddhist ideas we read and hear about, but don't actually believe in them. "Instead, we live as if the world were dead and this (material) reality the only one that exists."

       Ray RA. Indestructible Truth. The Living Spirituality of Tibetan Buddhism. Shambhala, Boston, 2000.

Martin Kristiansen   www.dpreview.com

Letting Go of Words, Opening the Heart-Mind

     Close the language-door and
     open the love window. The moon
     won’t use the door, only the window.                  Rumi

Portia contemplating Noah; Noah contemplating grass

Crisis of Faith, Limits of Intellect, Magical Thinking, Ego, Processing Obstacles, Meditation

      “… most of us have agonized over that sickening ‘crisis of faith’ when firmly held personal beliefs are suddenly stripped of a visceral sense of correctness, rightness, or meaning.”

       Burton RA. “On being certain. Believing you are right even when you’re not.” St. Martin’s Griffin, NY, 2008.

     Burton's book takes one as far as the intellect can go. But the intellect hits a glass ceiling, arresting at a relatively early stage in the normal psychosocial development trajectory. Sadly, many scientifically-educated people (religiously) believe that science / cognition is the source of all reliable information, and that Freud's "ordinary unhappiness" is "as good as it gets."

     If we seek the truth, and can handle it, we explore what is true with all our senses (mind-heart) open - with an "I don't know mind." This involves letting go of all ego-maintaining dualistic magical thinking. Many spiritual seekers hit and arrest at an emotional glass ceiling - unwilling to let go of comforting dogmas which they've outgrown.

     Sitting meditation, particularly over years of serious continuous practice and meditation retreats, gradually helps "process" obstacles to experiencing reality. This is mind-body work that each individual needs to do for herself to experience - even the Buddha didn't offer short-cuts.

     See also: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/2013/03/304-positive-psychology-cynicism.html
     and: http://www.johnlovas.com/2013/04/dont-know-mind-have-no-opinions-see.html

How & What We See

     "So many of the clients I see feel deep anger and cynicism about people. They summarily dismiss some for not meeting their expectations, and constantly put down others for their 'trivial' concerns and 'stupid' pursuits. In their anger and frustration, they do not see that they must change the way they see their fellow human beings if they are to release their own pain.
     When you look at others with the part of you that is feeling bad about yourself, you tend to see other people as bad. I see like that sometimes. When I’m feeling bad about myself, I see human concerns and pursuits that go way beyond trivial and stupid all the way into completely incomprehensible. I can see all that stuff. There is a lot of it to see in people – if you’re into seeing it.
     If you’re not into seeing it, you might want to periodically travel to that part of yourself that isn’t feeling bad, which is the heart, and start seeing the world with the eyes of the heart. The eyes of the heart don’t see bad in people, except with the compassionate desire to comfort and alleviate their pain. The eyes of the heart see the brave and beautiful search of other human hearts looking for happiness, truth, peace, love, and God. Every human being is a seeker of the truth of her own self and of the truth of the universe. When we know that we’re all on this journey together, we no longer concern ourselves with who’s bad and who’s good, who’s stupid and who’s smart, who’s ahead and who’s behind, we just take the journey, following the same searching heart that everybody else is following.

     ‘Make your eyes pure,’ says St. Hildegard of Bingen, and they will see only purity.

     So the next time you look out the window and see multitudes marching into their next round of trivial and stupid pursuits, immediately change your vision, see with your heart, see them all as the pure, searching human heart looking for happiness, truth, peace, love, and God in the best ways they presently know how to do this. Fall in love with them all for doing that. Fall in love with them all, period. They’re heroes and saints and gods and goddesses in magnificent disguise. See them as truth looking for truth, as love looking for love, as God looking for God, and you’ll be seeing truly. ‘The world is as you see it,’ says the sage Vasishtha, so when you see with the eyes of your heart, you see the whole world on a journey to the heart.”


        Alter RM, Alter J. “How Long Till My Soul Gets It Right?: 100 Doorways on the Journey to Happiness.” Regan Books, 2001.

Blue Rocks, Nova Scotia

Listening

     "To listen" in Chinese

     "The characters in 'ting' represent the eyes, the ears, the heart, (the total being) and undivided attention. ... Listening requires the whole being to be involved when trying to understand what is being communicated. And the concept of undivided attention is crucial. ... one listens with the whole being."

        Beall ML. Perspectives on intercultural listening. in Wolvin AD ed. Listening and human communication in the 21st century. Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2010.

     You may wish to see: http://www.johnlovas.com/2012/01/mystery-essence-of-all-life.html