Ginny Taylor
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Helen, I appreciate the Thich Nhat Hahn story. As someone else who spends a lot of time in the car commuting, I like your idea of taping a Buddha image to the dashboard as a reminder. I recently bought a Pause bracelet which buzzes gently every 90 minutes for just this reason, to remember to pause and be aware. Thank you so much for sharing this reflection.
Dominic, I appreciate your response which has expanded my own understanding on this week’s reading and the idea of egolessness. These words of yours really struck me: We must try to be mindful of why we do what we do and why we are doing it. And that “True happiness is an open and broken heart.” It does sound like a contraindication to be happy and broken, but as I’m learning more about the dharma, I’m beginning to lean into the contradictions. Not that I understand them, just that there is something there worth leaning into. Thanks so much for your reflection here.
I love this from this week’s essay: “Experiencing egolessness is a process of letting go. But you do not regard the ego as an enemy or obstacle, you regard it as a brussels sprout that you cook and eat.” Pardon the pun (lol), but I really had to chew on this one to think about how this applied to my life.
As I read the article and was thinking about letting go as a path to happiness, I began to also think about how in our meditation practice we have the opportunity to ask for blessings. This asking is hard for me. I can ask for blessings for others, but for myself, is a different and challenging thing.
However, this week, since learning about the paramitas in Saturday’s class, I’ve started to ask to be blessed with generosity and kindness, letting go of what or how that act might specifically look like. And I think this letting go of the outcome is also a way of cooking the brussels sprout and eating it, or a way of being egoless. (Contrary to food stereotyping of brussels sprouts, I do LOVE them!) And that letting go allows me to find ways of being generous and kind in the moment, like on my two-hour daily commute with ridiculous traffic jams which have become a daily source of irritation for me. However, this week, I had the heart-opening pleasure of seeing a commuter allow TWO cars to merge into their lane, not just the usual ONE. This generosity actually moved me to tears. (or maybe it was that and Springsteen’s Land of Hope and Dreams on the radio?) But I thought, that’s something I can do, too, and in doing so, this might just lessen the suffering I experience on my own commute while being generous to others, and maybe ease some of their suffering.
Circling back, the brussels sprout is the control I want to have over outcomes, of how things “should” look to make me happy, which can be a disagreeable thing. However, cooking and eating it allows me to simply prepare it, take a bite, and let it go, like in my blessing practice.
I’m not 100% sure I’ve understood this simile correct, so I’m open to other interpretations!
Dominic, your story of losing your beloved mum is deeply touching. Equally so your challenge to overcome the fear of asking for help. My experience is similar in that once I asked I found out I wasn’t alone. Still I think it’s the hardest thing to do when we are suffering. Thank you so much for sharing this story.
Anne, I really appreciate your last line about understanding suffering now in a way that has opened your heart to yourself. I think many times we think about our own pain last in light of so much pain going on at home or in the world. Glad to be here with you on this journey to deeper self discovery of even the painful parts.
In 2019, on New Year’s Day, my husband walked out of 37 year-old marriage. I was shocked, devastated, and lost. Notice, I did not say that I missed him, or still loved him. I had just assumed we would stay miserably married for ever. Still, it caused intense grief in me, such as I had never before experienced. For me, grief was always something I pushed away, swept under the rug, locked in a closet. I didn’t want to touch it, see it, smell it, let alone feel it. But in 2019, things were different. I reached for Pema Chodron’s books that had remained unread in my bookcase. For the first time in my life, I “leaned” into the edge of the pain and sat there, crying, staring out the window at the snow falling. I let myself cry while petting my dogs, doing all kinds of weird things in my art journal. So what was a profound loss to me–this idea of being married forever–actually ended up being the greatest freedom. I moved to be closer to my youngest daughter and my grandchildren. I’m mentally in a much better space now, physically, socially, professionally, even financially, than I was in 2019. In the end, I’m grateful he had the courage to walk out. And I told him so recently because I needed to let this go, too, to let him know I held no grudges, though it took a while to get there.
Anne, how wonderful to include all these people, both living and not, in your lineage. I love that you include “magic” there as well. I think that if it feels right, it is right. Thank you for sharing.
Helen,
This deeply touched me: In you all, there is nothing that separates me from myself, from being myself. From you all, there is nothing I hear that separates me from a reality I sense. You are part of my lineage and I am thankful. I arrive and I sit with you. We are together. I listen. I feel surrounded. I feel brave. A ship’s mast. In the nest of my heart you are.I see a ship’s mast, the spine, upright, so dignified. Thank you for sharing.
Our conversation in the small group during this past Saturday helped me to think more broadly about my lineage, and to include elements that bring me joy. This week, I’ve been trying out the following lineage story, asking a blessing from:
The trees: tall, silent, ever changing, givers of oxygen, removers of carbon dioxide, leaves shimmering between green and change.
My teachers: Susan, Suzi, Louise, Laraine, and for the blessing of their teachers on my practices of writing, meditation, art, creativity.
My ancestors: My matriarchal line, an almost endless line that goes back to the unknown women who had to live off the land, who experienced loss and hardship, but also deep joy, who saw trees, sunrises, snow, streams, lakes, children.
The unknown wind at my back: (Thank you, small breakout group, for this one!) To the unknown teacher, yet to come, or maybe already here, not yet visible.At this stage of my life, this lineage seems more true to who I am in this moment, which is more spiritual than religious. I’ve been trying to remember to include the offering and blessing awareness in my daily meditation practice. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. When I do, I realize I am not alone in this solitary meditation practice, and that there is something deeper, not fully known, and more vast at work in my life, and this always make me happy, as if I don’t have to do this life on my own.
Hi Tracey, It seems that this time has a lot to hold. I’m grateful that you shared so openly your experience, your questions (like, are karma and psychological conditioning different, or the same?), here in this forum space.
Hand over my heart, I see you.
GinnyGwen, I’m so sorry to hear of your suffering. Opening to what is, and finding compassion with one’s body, in my experience, is never easy. May you go gently with yourself.
I’ve chosen the second Noble Truth, that is the Cause of Suffering, which, according to the Buddha, is “craving…accompanied by passionate desire, and which is total delight with (or attachment to) this and that.
My interpretation goes like this.
Before me I see a beautiful golden maple tree in autumn. The leaves shimmer in the light like gold, and then begin to drop one by one, dancing this way and that, shimmying to the ground. I try to catch one, to grasp it in my hand so I can save it, press it into a book, or between two sheets of waxed paper like I did as a child. I must have at least one or two for my collection! The problem is I can’t catch one. Just as one seems to be within my grasp it will sways somewhere else, and so I chase there. I am always frenetically chasing after these beautiful leaves, and yet never really capturing them for myself permanently. This builds frustration in me, and feelings of hopelessness, and anger, and self-doubt (maybe the leaves don’t want me?), and so on.
Just recently, I had an incident that I think illustrates this second Noble Truth in my life. A teaching friend whom I deeply respect and admire over-reacted to my leaving an empty food container in her trash when a raccoon go into it overnight. Yes, she had asked for us not to do so, but I had felt I had “licked the container clean” and felt comfortable discarding it as I had. My friend did not feel the same. She didn’t know it was mine when she made an example of it before the class the next day. I was mortified, partly at what had happened and that it was my fault, and also partly because of her big reaction to it. I confessed that it was mine, and everyone in the group including the teacher seemed to let it go, but I didn’t.
I stewed over it for the following week, I added self-aggressive thoughts about how stupid I was, how I hoped she would still like me, that she would still want me in her art classes as her student, how everyone in the group must think I’m an idiot and so on. I swirled in these thoughts, attaching to them. Finally, I wrote her a note, and we cleared the air. She had let this thing go last week. I, on the other hand, had not. When she wrote to say that all was fine between us, I felt such a surge of relief that I cried. Imagine, crying over a mauled-by-a-raccoon food container!
As I was journaling about this yesterday, I was reminded of the story Susan tells in her book Right Here Now, pg 56 about how after her breakup she had gotten lost in the thoughts of her ex and his new girlfriend, and what she should or shouldn’t have done, etc., and how while sitting on the hot summer curb on trash day, a voice came which said, “But nothing is happening right now.” Certainly in my case, no one was in my room at home shoving that mauled food container in my face, yelling at me, calling me a bad person. It was only me. Nothing was happening then. I was creating it all.
To me, I’m slowly realizing how this grasping and craving and adding story to events and incidents has plagued me much of my life. And I’m actually kind of excited to have had this awareness, this awakening, as painful as this past week has been with this drama on top of having COVID.
I’m grateful to be in this course to experience the teachings given that all seem to be leading back to my meditation practice. Breathing in, out, letting go, begin again. Wow, kind of amazing.I love how you are devoted to understanding what really matters to you. I, too, feel a danger warning with devotion to a guru or living individual. Your last line about surrendering to and allowing your heart to open deeply spoke to me.
Kate, I love that you bring in some historical context about Buddhism in Tibet. I think I forget how the teachings were transmitted in such a closeness between guru and student. I also loved your last lines which made me think of Susan’s book Start Here Now. Thank you again for the definitions!
