Rosie
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Kat, thanks for the reminder to just describe what I’m doing (posture, breath,labeling thinking, coming back). Because I’m sitting in a chair for class, What I did was sit in a chair in front of the computer, trying to say what I do when I’m on the cushion. Next time I’ll leave the chair and sit on the cushion, and narrate what I’m doing. Thanks!
Melanie, I had a similar experience of nervousness, and appreciate the reminder to frame it as excitement!
I was surprised to find myself nervous, which I had not anticipated. Although it was with just one person, no judgments, clearly just for practice, and yet I was nervous. To the point where I forgot to say a lot of things about posture. When I realized that I’d forgotten, I had an internal debate about whether it was too late to add them. I can’t say that I was happy about anything about how I did, or how I felt. I’m looking forward to trying again!
I wish there was time to give each other a little bit of feedback before getting whisked back out of the breakout roomOh Stina, I so resonated with your lineage of mothers! When I first learned to meditate, and heard the instructions, I thought, “These people clearly have no children!” And yes, the Buddha leaving his wife and newborn child (the day after his son was born! And no note, just gone!) ooh, that’s a hard one to look past. You might like to read The Buddha’s Wife, by Janet Surrey and Samuel Shem; it tells the story from the point of view of Yasodhara. (And isn’t it weird that we don’t even know her name? Just “the Buddha’s wife”, like for years I was just known as “Zoe and Jordy’s mom.”)
I hadn’t ever really thought in terms of lineage in that language. But now that I’m thinking about it, it’s really fun to notice that I have immediate strong identification with three separate lineages.
The first one to come to mind is JUBUs – a term coined by Roger Kamenetz in his book The Jew in the Lotus, standing for Jewish Buddhists. I’m Jewish by heritage, and though I haven’t ever identified as a religious or spiritual Jew, I have always known myself as a cultural Jew. And not surprising to me, many (if not most of the American Buddhist teachers I’m familiar) with are also JUBUs. Here’s a partial list; I bet you’ll recognize a lot of these names. Joseph Goldstein, Sylvia Boorstein,Tara Brach,Leonard Cohen,Lama Surya Das, Mark Epstein,Norman Fischer, Allen Ginsberg, Philip Glass,Tetsugen Bernard Glassman, Natalie Goldberg, Daniel Goleman, Dan Harris, Goldie Hawn, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Jack Kornfield, Ethan Nichtern, Sharon Salzberg.
The next lineage that I strongly identify with is women Buddhists. I learn best from teachings by Buddhist women. Pema Chodron, of course. Lama Tsultrim Allione. Susan Piver. And I’m drawn to books about Buddhist Women: The Hidden Lamp: Stories from Twenty-Five Centuries of Awakened Women, edited by Florence Caplow and Susan Moon. Being Bodies: Buddhist Women on the Paradox of Embodiment, edited by Lenore Friedman and Susan Moon. The First Free Women: Poems of the Early Buddhist Nuns, translated by Matty Weingast. And my favorite: The Buddha’s Wife: the Path of Awakening Together, by Janet Surrey, PhD and Samuel Shem, MD. I strongly recommend this one (and I think it would make a great OHP Book Group book).
And my third strongly felt lineage is makers, especially knitters. I come from a family of talented knitters, and grew up in the midst of my mom, my aunts, and my grandmother, who taught me to knit so young that I don’t even remember learning, any more than I remember learning to walk. You’ll see by my profile picture how well knitting and meditation go together. (Picture borrowed from the cover of medKNITation, by Suzan Colgan.Kat, your essay is so beautifully written! The way you identified and described your pattern of swinging back and forth really shone a light on the two extremes. And your description of staying with the groundlessness as akin to discovering flight – so inspiring! Thank you!
Liana, I love your curiosity about this question, and everything else (“why do I listen to that podcast?”) Although we’ve had very different life experiences, your attitude of curiosity has sparked questions in me as well. Thank you for that!
I have not swung back and forth. I don’t think I ever was an eternalist – the notion of a god (or gods) judging me was never something that I was taught, or that resonated for me. There was a time when a piece of nihilism did resonate – that “dead is dead”. But that didn’t lead to “so nothing matters”. And the dichotomy of “god(s) vs no god(s) doesn’t resonate, either. It feels to me like there’s something, but not a judge.
So I don’t really have experiences with either. What I do have is the experience of “something else”.
Good friends were Wiccan and I had a big backyard, so for years I hosted rituals for Solstice and Equinox, as well as a pagan wedding. What appealed to me was the connection to nature, and I came to think of myself as a pantheist. Once I was in conversation in an interfaith setting, and somebody said he was struggling to accept God. He said, “I need to see a burning bush.” And what came out of my mouth was “Every bush is a burning bush!” Meaning all life is sacred and divine. So – neither nihilist nor eternalist.
Two things came to me during our discussion in class of eternalism and nihilism: one of my favorite quotes, and an image. The quote is “Things are not what they seem; nor are they otherwise.” (As quoted in 1,001 Pearls of Wisdom (2006) by David Ross, from the Shurangama Sutra) I love this quote; so much fun to play with.
And the image that came was that of a labyrinth. Not a maze:there’s only one path, and it leads to the center, but in a way that’s very indirect and constantly changing. It goes in when it seems like it should go out, and goes out just when you think you’ve reached the center. It’s easy to wonder if you’ve somehow made a wrong turn (though that’s impossible). And yet if you stay on the path, you get there. I can’t rationally explain what this has to do with eternalism and nihilism, but it feels like an illustration of my path: not here, not there, not neither-here-nor-there.Jake, thank you for raising the issue of safety! So important, and I’m grateful to you for the reminder.
Also, I love your phrasing of responses (or no response) “arising” – that is my experience of it as well, and you expressed it beautifully.Octavio and Stina, thanks for highlighting the importance of being comfortable with uncertainty. I agree that that’s highly desirable, but I don’t know how to be comfortable when I’m not. So my aspiration and practice is to be willing to be
uncomfortable, in the service of the work.Kat, I love your metaphor of the path. It’s helpful to think of having walked the path oneself, yet it being new and different for each person who walks it, and that part of our job is to keep coming back to the path.
When I think about path as metaphor, I also think of labyrinths – it’s a path, and it’s definitely leading toward the center, but not at all in an obvious way.And we just have to stay on the path, and notice our discomfort and/or wonder and/or curiosity.As a psychotherapist, this is something that I think about and practice every day. And I see a lot of overlap with offering meditation instruction.
For me, supporting discovery includes creating an environment, a safe place, an opportunity, for someone to investigate what is true for them.
The most important skill is patient/present listening. I’ve cultivated this skill by framing it as “listening meditation” – noticing when my thoughts about what I’m hearing are distracting, and coming back to listening to the other person.
Other important skills are curiosity and non-judgment. I cultivate this by practicing Beginner’s Mind – remembering/reminding myself that I don’t know what’s true for them, only they know.
And then there’s learning to ask questions rather than giving advice. And learning to ask those questions in an open, curious way that doesn’t imply what the “right” answer is, or even that there is a right answer. And that’s easier when there is genuine respect for the other.