Jamie Evans
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I missed this class live unfortunately but enjoyed watching the recording. I’d already read Susan’s wonderful little book about the heart sutra. I was always attracted to paradox. I LOVE the opening line – “Thus have I heard”.. puts me right in the .. ahem … heart of sangha. All the great works have arresting opening lines.
In the previous class, I think, Susan happened to mention that the heart sutra is often chanted in a monotone, which led me to wonder how it sounds in Japanese. (I lived in Japan for seven years and speak the language quite well). Japanese is said to be a monotone language – this is not true at all really, but compared to Chinese dialects it might be considered so. I quickly found an album of various versions of the heart sutra in Japanese and have been listening and chanting daily. So much fun. Then I noticed a version in Vietnamese, chanted or rather sung by Thich Nhat Hanh. Very different and utterly captivating and beautiful. I’ll get around to English at some point, I suppose, and perhaps some other languages, too!
I was reminded of the day I went to the Art Institute in Chicago to look at the extensive collection of Asian art while listening to the Emerald podcast. A lovely experience. There’s a Buddha statue from Myanmar, glittering gold, enlivened by a recording of a student from Myanmar who attended the School of the Art Institute and said she would come and sit by the statue when she was feeling cold, miserable and homesick. (I could relate!) So touching. She pointed out that sitting below the statue and looking up made it seem to smile, whereas looking head on, as most visitors do, made the face seem rather severe. She noted her sadness that the figure in question was sadly dead now, because it was not regularly given offerings of flowers, food and candles as it would be ‘back home’ in its original context. My studies came alive for me that afternoon. At the end of my visit I turned a corner and came upon a modern Korean piece of ceramic art featuring the heart sutra in Chinese characters – so beautiful and intriguing.
Chanting makes me feel a part of something bigger and deeper. I hope to make it a regular practice.
What do the three yanas mean to me?
hinayana – I NEED this vehicle. The discipline, simplicity, consistency of practice. Honesty. The dedication to the container that produces the magic.
mahayana – compassion, the sangha. A connection with the sangha makes the road meaningful and simultaneously eases the road.
varjayana – Vajryana is the most elusive for me at this point. Yet, here I am, and I think there is a deep reason for that. I was drawn here somehow and feel more and more at home in this sangha.
My intuition is that vajryana tugs at my heart and brings me alive. The paradox and the mystery mystery gives me the energy to practice and to be.Wow! Follow that! A beautiful heart-felt response to what I feel is a very difficult prompt. Thank you so much for sharing this, Sue Ellen.
Hello everyone!
I’m Jamie Evans, a fourth grade teacher in Chicago, originally from Liverpool.
I came to Susan’s work via her amazing book, The Buddhist Enneagram. Absolutely brilliant! I’m an extremely grateful graduate of the Open Heart Project Meditation Teacher Training Program, which deepened my own practice greatly. I learned how deeply mysterious, paradoxical and powerful regular practice can become. Also, what an incredibly deft teacher Susan is.
Unfortunately I have to admit my practice became much more erratic since the teacher training course ended, so I am keen to join a dedicated sangha and get back in the swing of things.The four Rs of trauma are
realize
recognize
respond and DON’T
re-traumatizeI certainly feel much more consciously aware of the issue of trauma in students and teachers as a result of our studies and discussion of this topic. I’m very grateful for that.
Trauma was part of my childhood, as for so many, and as an elementary school teacher I’m well aware that it’s all around us. Sometimes we teachers are explicitly informed of some of the background, more often we are not.
I feel more confident than ever before that I can trust my intuition and compassionate awareness to feel out the teaching relationship. I am careful to respond kindly to my students and give them space for their own experience.Dear Sanjida,
Thank you for your kind and thoughtful words. You helped me to see this idea much more clearly.
Wednesday morning. The results of the election are in. The Election. I hope it doesn’t become known to apocalyptic posterity The Last Election. You know the one I mean.
I teach 4th grade in Chicago, safe in the bubble. Two of my students walk in sobbing openly, the whole class is unfocused and mostly sombre. It’s immediately clear we need to process this a little. No point in trying to move on with scheduled curriculum until we can at least try to clear the air.
I call the class to the rug and futon, our little sacred space at the front of the classroom where we practice meditation twice daily together. We talk it out and process our feelings. This is where I’m right at the centre of things, gently directing the show, but quite alone in that I don’t want to share my opinions and fears.
We study US political processes and discuss them openly, but I maintain discreet impartiality with them about my voting preference. They often asked me who I would vote for and even maintained they could tell. Fine, but I’m not telling.
My job here is to create a container for these young people that’s safe and respectful. To set them a better example than our political representatives do, you might say. Not always easy, but we work hard at it.Talking to the kids, innocent as they are, helped me to take a longer view of the election result. All I can do is help them learn to be kind to each other, and hope that they will continue to do so long into adulthood.
So hard to answer and yet so easy. Yes, meditation has helped me work with my anger, my resentments, my anxiety. Not at all in the sense of making them go away. Oh, no. But helping me work WITH them. Sit squarely with them instead of always running away into rumination, distraction, oblivion, compartmentalization.
How? I have no idea. So deeply mysterious.
It’s not that negative emotions evaporate while I’m practising, not at all. The thoughts keep coming in an endless loop and I occasionally lapse into self-criticism. “Why can’t I do this better?” I’m hopeful this tendency will recede as my practice continues and deepens. I’m still scratching the surface of this thing.
But yet I’ve been feeling an inexplicable and barely even describable something seeping from my practice into the rest of my life. I feel different. My sobriety feels more secure, my life feels more grounded in the now. I feel more open and compassionate as well as more realistic. It’s amazing.
Kimberly, I’m so sorry you went through this, but I find your response brilliant! Your thoughts have been helpful to me throughout the course. Thank you!
What is the noble truth of suffering? It is the suffering of birth, the suffering of old age, the suffering of
sickness, the suffering of death, the suffering of separation from loved ones, the suffering of facing
unwanted phenomena, and the suffering of not getting what one is seeking. In brief, every aspect of the
five aggregates is suffering. —The BuddhaI’m at the age where I have long started to feel the suffering of old age. The pains don’t go away. You just exchange them for new ones. But the suffering I feel much more keenly these days is ‘the suffering of not getting what one is seeking.’ More than that, the suffering of getting what one is seeking and realizing shortly thereafter that the satisfaction is fleeting at best. After all that! Now, what?
I’m still foolish enough to think I know what I want. I want it and want it and beat myself up for not being able to get it. And then suddenly one day – boom! It comes out of the blue, a gift from god. Sobriety. Praise from my boss. A comfortable pair of crazy expensive shoes. Lovely for a while… then the spell wears off and it’s right back to being miserable old me again. I need something else to fill the void. Is this what the Buddha was talking about? I think it might be.
This morning at our last session of this course I felt the sangha can fill that void.
My gifts as a teacher are a love for the practice and a genuine love for all kinds of people. As an elementary school teacher I find I’m able to bond with all my students as individuals, to praise them lavishly when it’s appropriate and to foster a love of learning as fun. I’m naturally inclined to learn alongside my students as opposed to lecturing and talking down to them. I feel comfortable in my skin this way. My sense of humour is a key part of all this. Essential!
As a meditation teacher I am comfortable with silence and genuinely grateful to be practicing together with others. The challenges arise when I lose confidence and question myself. Am I not saying enough? I succumb to the ever-present inner critic. Oy. That guy.
Working and studying with all of you under Susan’s deft and wonderful guidance has given me the faith that with devotion to the practice my confidence will continue to grow and I can be myself in my teaching as I am in my own practice.I’m so, so grateful that I landed in this particular sangha at this particular time. It has been a delight to be a part of this project.
Anne,
Thank you so much for your kind words. I feel you understood what I was struggling to express.
