Lauren Lesser
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During our studies here, I’ve come to think more deeply about the meaning of “container” and I am grateful for it. As I look back on my roles, both as teacher and being taught, I find I am looking back on the aspects of values, mission and commitment that framed the healthiest exchanges that I am now seeing as containers in which the work can happen with the connection that supports growth as well as providing the space of separation that promotes and safeguards students freedom. I’ve been lucky to have many good relationships with teachers and mentors who modeled the kind of boundaried connection that taught me what I wanted to aspire to.
Hi Stina,
I am moved by how much you have had to hold and how you have traversed these challenges, but (or and) what you said at the end of your essay about the importance of boundaries and how “it becomes harder and more hurtful when the lines get blurry” is the clearest way I can think of that one can help teachers deeply understand the importance of being careful in this way.Hi Allison,
I sure do resonate with your reflection on connection and disconnection in your experiences with the paramitas and it helps me look more deeply into my experiences too.
Your example with Generosity resonates as well; it is such fertile ground for people pleasing/fawning, perhaps when you look at it in a
“bodhisattva manner”, which makes sense to me, in this way: I am reminded that I must gently and kindly (and generously) examine and identify what I am doing and return myself to the path.Liana,
I resonate with so many aspects of what you write about; the nature of the “always fresh” quality of these teachings as they “magically transform” into the guides we need as we grow; “having no expectations” has always been what I’ve strived for as a psychotherapist, to be as truly with another as I can be and clearly, here in Buddhist teachings, being with what is; and acquiring an increasing ability to “let it go” and it’s access to a particular kind of calm-and how to meet not-calm, lol.
Thanks for the thoughtful journey.Here’s the thing I love most about “Discipline.” It’s the “come back again” quality that is such an essential part of the practice. While its echoed again and again in all of the first four paramitas and met initially in our meditation practice, it is the application in Discipline that provides a container for my struggle with the obstacles of laziness, busyness and the disheartening feelings of loss and doubt; a container that helps me support the practice to ground in an expanded awareness to deeply engage my experience with myself and with the dharma studies; and a container which then points me in the direction of clear(er)-seeing compassion towards myself and others. It’s in the this-is-where-to-turn-into and come back again aspects of Discipline that help me slow down and pause when part(s) of me want to turn away, and this is what I treasure, albeit, sometimes grumpily. I can allow myself to show up to myself for permission and space to embody the parts that I aspire to and to the parts that exhibit all my various forms of flat feet. And it makes it so okay to have both that I am increasing my ability to lean into the courage to inhabit space and to make and meet mistakes with expanding kindness and humor.
Please Share Personal Reflections on Lineage
I’ve been thinking about lineage since my first serious introduction to it in last year’s OHP course, Buddhism Beyond Belief. Before then, I thought of my ancestral line and I thought of learned Buddhist teachers and figures, and then thought, well, I’ve struggled with my ancestral line and don’t have that much intimate knowledge of learned Buddhist teachers. When we met in small groups in the BBB class and one of the members said they had Julia Child on their altar, I learned I could broaden my list and my attitude.
I have a working list. I don’t think I will ever live in a space that could house all their pictures, books or relicy items, and they certainly earn me a hand-me-down scolding from Susan’s teacher Sam, but it is a list in progress, as I feel my way into more clearly discerning lineage…. and editing. Who inspires me, who do I admire, who do I want to stand with, who makes me feel awe, compassion, humanity, belonging? I remember “finding” them beginning by reading biographies by nightlight, as a child, pretending to be afraid of the dark, seeking answers; how does one live? how does one make their way in this world?
Some on my list I’ve met in person, some I’ve met in books, some in song, they have taught me to speak and to sing and to dance and to listen and to act, and to love, helped me learn, been with me in my doubt, confusion, fear, smallness, grumpiness, joy and expansion and they have helped me be present when I need to open my heart and behave with courage, kindness and humor.
I have deep gratitude that they have been/are an important part of my life and my memories of them are filled with love and admiration.
Bernie Lesser, Sam Lesser, Sylvia Lesser, CJ and Mabel Broadhead, Goldie Lipson, Henry Haskell, Ernst and Ilse Bulova, Susun Weed, Robin Rose Bennett, Renee Solomon, Mrs. Grobe, Frank Agresta, Dorothy Johnson, Sumner Rosen, Hyman Grossbard, Bertha Capen Reynolds, Sandor Ferenzi, Zusanna Budapest, Marion Tolpin, Karen Horney, Eleanor Roosevelt, Robert Caro, Woody Guthrie, Saul Alinsky, I F Stone, George Orwell, Paul Robeson, Pema Chodron, Sylvia Boorstein, Susan Piver, Juliette de Barclai Levy, John Lewis, Deb Dana, Bernie Saunders, Brooke Maxwell, Maya Angelou, Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, Pete Seeger, Laura Nyro, James Baldwin, Annie Sprinke, Rumi, Phil Ochs, Nick Drake, Aunt Alice and the League of Women Shopper’s, Bill Moyers, Joanna Macy, Mr. Rogers, Dorothy Parker, Jane Goodall, Linda ThaiO, Liana,
How wonderful! The beauty of your heart’s connection and how your lineage just seemed to reach back and enfold you.Hi Colin,
I’m really moved by the evolution of your connection to lineage, in the beauty of it’s jewel-like development.Hi Stina,
I really resonate with your questioning kid. When I was a tween and teen my favorite bumper sticker read “Question Authority” and I also find a lot of room in Susan’s “don’t take my word for it”Please reflect on your experiences with both eternalism and nilihism. When have you noticed each within yourself? (there are no right or wrong answers here)
I grew up in a household that had roots in eternalist religious traditions although it was a not very Jewish household. I was encouraged to try Hebrew school but when I announced I was done when the rabbi told us “if you have faith you don’t question” there was no pushback. It was the 1960’s and my sense of place was formed in context of the ferment of protests begun (or rather, continued, but begun as in entered my awareness) in the 50’s with the civil rights movement. Tweening and teening, I followed the slightly older kids on protest marches and burned to find my way to join the action. With all the righteousness of that time of life, I firmly and disdainfully rejected the eternalistic Judeo-Christian panoply of patriarchal beliefs and edicts, and was as close as I got to a nihilistic sensibility in my focus on the socio-political here and now, and in my confidence of my ideas of right and wrong.
My involvement with political activism introduced me to my work as a community organizer, which at first, I looked into as a means to an activist end. It became an end in itself, or rather, an enduring process that both supported and helped me evolve, or uncover, my guiding principles in a role as facilitator of discovery, loosening my grip on expectation that allowed me to be present in and inspired by both my work with people as an organizer and later as I evolved to work with people as a psychotherapist that “saved” me from reliance on/adherence to the both the ultimate authorities of eternalistic rules as well as nihilistic beliefs and opened me up to expanded questioning.
When I look back on my life, many experiences tend to lean into an eternal quality as in enduring but not fixed, with perhaps an aid of a cleaner sweep of the nihilistic brush yet with more mystery than I might see; from my sense of awe and of the eternally sacred in my earliest experiences in relationship with art, music, nature, and love and in subsequent roles with work, in shamanic herbal apprenticeships and in moving from Buddhish to Buddhist.Hi Caitlin,
I just absolutely have to savor “supporting discovery allows the wisdom and magic to live in the practice” beautifully, meaningfully said!
