'Tis the season...

Happy Solstice! In this time of deepest darkness, all about us nature is quieting down, settling in, and going dormant. Meanwhile many of us are busier than ever, adding even more to our social calendar and to do list.

Whether we celebrate Christmas or not, most women can relate to the sense of wanting to create a happy experience for our families and/or friends. There is a frenzied quality in the air that some find harrowing and others find delightful. I remember my mother always saved some shopping to do on Christmas Eve, just to be out in the hustle bustle of it all.

It is definitely busier in the streets around the holidays. People are more distracted and do even less wise actions when driving.

I've been very conscious of making sure I drive safely, but the sense of overwhelm comes out in different ways. Yesterday I left my purse behind at a meeting as I was off to another meeting. Forgetting a purse for a woman is rare. Our bodies just don’t feel right walking out a door without it. But -- what are the chances? -- just the night before a friend left my house without her purse! What are the chances of that? Pretty good during this time of year it seems.

How do we stay mindful this time of year? We center in, reset our intentions to be present and compassionate. We pause, we slow down, we sense in, we breathe.

The theme of my local Toastmasters club meeting yesterday was (what are the chances?) ‘Inhale, Exhale’ -- such a great theme. But did I pause to notice my inhalation and notice my exhalation? Did I hear the message? No! My mind was caught up in the task of taking meeting minutes, of being sure the guest next to me understood what was going on, and peripherally sensing the limited number of shopping days before Christmas. Sometimes we are just so caught up in planning and worrying that we forget what it is to really live, to really be here, to really feel that aliveness.

Yesterday morning I received an email from my Ohio friend Marita. We know each other from winters spent in Mexico, but we stay connected throughout the year because she’s a talented photographer who sends out group emails of her adventures wherever she is. This is the first year she has been stuck in Ohio, in the deepest coldest winter they've had in quite awhile. She’s no fan of the cold, and has always made a point to be in warmer climes. In fact, until now she didn't even own a decent pair of winter boots. But yesterday’s email started this way:

“Frequent snowfall this month has opened a window into a new world for me.  A natural world in which the Who - What - When - Where of wildlife is revealed like magic.

“Reading tracks in snow can be intriguing.  Am I the first human on this trail today?  That dog is not on a leash!  Which direction did they go?  These footprints were made last night, then covered by a fine dusting of snow this morning.  How many deer were passing through?  Was that a squirrel?  No a rabbit.“

Her words were such an inspiration to me. When we let go of what we wish things would be like and begin to notice what is happening in this moment, magic happens. In this moment, whatever this moment holds, there is always something of value.

Again my mother comes to mind. She was of the generation that followed her husband’s career without question, and so she made homes in many different places. Once the home was set up and the children situated in school, she set about to establish herself in her new community. She found people with shared interests, did volunteer work for peace, one time became a realtor, one time got her college degree in marine biology and started a Greek restaurant. She was an amazing woman in part because of her ability to make the best of every situation. Now she didn't pretend it was easy to make the transition, just as Marita’s emails from a week ago were a tad grumpier than this inspiring one. But in both cases, these women accepted what is happening in the moment, and instead of clinging to some alternative reality or criticizing this one, they found a way to discover what is it about this time and place, exactly as it is, that they could enjoy, engage in and maybe even love.

So often in life we think that something outside ourselves needs to happen for us to be happy. But this is simply not the case. For my friend in Ohio, for my mother in her many new homes, for us in this season that sometimes feels like a steamroller, we all have choices in the way we relate to what is going on in our lives.

If we can let go of wishing for things to be other than they are, if we can befriend what is happening in this moment, we are not 'settling'. We are simply not relying on external circumstances to create our happiness.

So let’s give ourselves the gift of mindfulness this season: When things get scrambled, let's pause, inhale, exhale, reset our intentions to be present, anchored in physical sensation, and to be compassionate with ourselves and others, especially when we feel overwhelmed, exhausted or sad. Let's send metta, loving-kindness, as a healing balm for what ails us and what ails the world: May you be well, may you be happy, may you be at ease, may you be at peace. In this way we sense our deep connection with all life as we breathe ease and joy. 'Tis the season!

Wise Speech -- Poetry & Meditation

I couldn't end our exploration of the use of words without visiting poetry, for poetry is the natural outpouring of the meditative mind, a mind that is present, clear, fearless and filled with tenderness for all life.

I am fortunate to be a member of an ongoing class at the College of Marin called ‘The Poetic Pilgrimage.’ Together, under the tutelage of Prartho Sereno and Catlyn Fendler, we read selected poets, both current and ancient, and then are given prompts to inspire and free us to hear the words that rise up within us and to write poems ourselves. We are training our minds to notice.

Likewise, in meditation practice, we are training our minds to notice whatever arises: the physical experience of being, what we see, hear, smell, touch, taste with our senses, our inner commentary, the judging of that inner commentary. And we do metta practice, sending universal loving-kindness to whatever arises -- to others and to ourselves. And in that process, over time, we find we soften, mellow, sweeten, deepen, lighten, and are enriched by this ongoing being.

“All I was doing was breathing” is a poem title by Mirabai, a 15th century north Indian poet who considered herself married to the god Krishna.

All we are doing as we meditate is breathing. Or more accurately, noting the breath, because there is no effort in the breathing. As we rest in the simple state of being, we create a space for compassion, gratitude, appreciation, joy and generosity to well up within us.

When we spend time in this kind of loving silence, the words that rise up eventually are words of inquiry, fearless clarity, wonder, gratitude and praise. These by definition are poetry. Let’s look at each of them:

INQUIRY

Poetry is often a journey of inquiry, experienced in a state of wonder, the state we are in on a meditation retreat, more and more as each day goes by.

Here is a quote that was recently shared by the poet Sophie Cabot Black in an interview in The New Yorker: “For me, the act of writing comes out of query. Each image turns to the next with its question and gets answered. Or with its answer it gets questioned. Poetry is my way to understand what is difficult. How one thing can be explained through another—is to get closer, to unhide what feels hidden..”

Both poetry and meditation deeply notice of what is present in this moment, in the world around us and in the thoughts and emotions that traverse through our consciousness.

FEARLESS CLARITY

Poetry is not afraid to explore in a compassionate way that which is bitter, difficult or ungainly. Poetry unmasks, dissolves obscuring filters, and sees with fresh tender eyes.

As it happened, in meditation class last Thursday, our weekly reading of our Pocket Pema Chodron focused exactly on this. (We read these brief chapters, after meditation and before the dharma talk, in sequential order without regard to the dharma topic. Usually they lend some extra dimension to the discussion, and in some cases, like this, the reading could not be more aligned if I had purposely chosen it.) It was Chapter 44, titled ‘Gloriousness and Wretchedness’. Pema says there is value in both the gloriousness and wretchedness of our life experience. One inspires us and the other softens us.

Just so, poets are fearless in the face of what is. They do no go for the gore but if it is part of the experience of a moment they will not shy away from telling what is true. Those difficult encounters, told with tender perception, awaken the poet and the reader to a deeper, softer understanding of the nature of life. (How different this is from the addictive quality of some writing, where misery and suffering are used for entertainment and confirmation of a limited fear-based world view.)

WONDER

The more we meditate, the more we let go of the need to know definitive answers because we recognize that to live in the wonder is the gift itself. To incessantly be seeking out answers is just part of that useless activity of shoring up our defenses, wanting control, wanting solid ground to stand on.

One of my favorite retreat experiences was the realization that I don’t know. All these assumptions I make about myself and the world around me are totally for convenience. I remember how I looked at the concrete under my feet during walking meditation, and I realized I knew nothing about most of it -- only a small portion of it was exposed, and I didn’t really know all that much about that!

I suppose it could have been scary to discover I don’t know, but in fact it was liberating. It was delightful. Contained within it was the realization that all the struggles we make to know everything are exercises in futility that we can just release. This is not to say that we should give up the pursuit of knowledge, but we can enjoy the process a lot more if we do it with awe and wonder, rather than a driving need to uncover, expose, conquer and claim.

This famous advice from Rainer Maria Rilke, in his Letters to A Young Poet says it all:

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

PRAISE & GRATITUDE

So much of poetry is written at a moment when the poet is simply looking out the window at an ordinary day and seeing the gift of this life.

There is a Buddhist saying that to be born into human life is as rare as a turtle surfacing within a circle the size of a life preserver floating in the vast ocean. Scientifically this is certainly true for us. Think of all the causes and conditions of all our ancestors that had to happen in order for us to have this chance to be here. The mind boggles!

The mind at rest, not striving, not in fear, can recognize the gift. On a silent meditation retreat, by day 4 the faces of retreatants glow with gratitude. Awakening to ‘this, just this...ah, bliss’ is simply a recognition of the gift that is this life, regardless of the causes and conditions. Any human, in any condition, even the most horrendous, can experience this joy. It is not purchased, it does not come with possessions or comfort. It comes from within, from awakening. We wish for all beings to be fed, housed, clothed and cared for. And hopefully we take wise action to help make that so. But even in the midst of great challenges, we can awaken to great joy and sing praises and feel gratitude, not for things but for the gift of being alive in this moment.

Let me share with you these links to some of the poems we have read together.

Pablo Neruda ‘Poetry’

Mary Oliver ‘The Journey’

Paul Hostovsky ‘Be Mine’

Wise Speech - Our Words Matter

You can see from our past two discussions that Wise Speech is not just about talking. It’s also about developing a comfort with a quality of loving silence and developing the skill of really listening to others.

Many Americans among blog followers had the opportunity to test these skills last Thursday on Thanksgiving with family and friends. How did it go? What did you notice? If you found yourself in the hot water of the sea of misunderstanding, don’t despair. Take notes! That was the test run. Chances are you have more social gatherings ahead!

One student reported that her Thanksgiving was so joyful because she spent more time resting in silence and less time thinking she needed to speak.

A friend recently reminded me that I once said that it’s helpful to consider ‘My mouth is an altar.’ The mouth, that place where speech is formed, can be treated as an altar where we lay down words in a thoughtful and sacred way. What words would we put on the altar? What words would be desecration of the honored trusting space between any two people? See if this is a helpful way to think about it for you.

Wise Speech is one of the aspects of the Eightfold Path, and so works with the other aspects. What is the relationship between them?

If we look at our cooking pot analogy, you'll see I have drawn Wise Speech (and Wise Action and Wise Livelihood) as steam rising up from the pot of Wise View and its contents of Wise Mindfulness stirred by Wise Concentration.

This makes Wise Speech and the others seem rather effortless. If all the others are in place, then these three arise. Is this true? Could be, but how often are all the others in place? When we find that we have spoken unwisely, or have a strong impulse to do so, we can look back to our intentions, our effort, our view, whether we're being mindful, and these other aspects provide us with insight into how unskillful language came about. This is really practical and useful!

One student noticed a striving quality to her efforts to connect with a friend, and a resulting difficulty with composing an email to her. This is such skillful noticing.

We can apply the same questions we have been working with throughout our investigation: What is my intention here? Do I have an agenda? Or am I truly coming from my intentions to be present in this moment and to be compassionate with myself and others? Then we can look at effort and the rest.

But there are a few more traditional questions we can ask about anything we have said, written or want to say or write:

• Is it true?
• Is it kind?
• Is it timely?

Let’s go through these three questions in a little more depth.

Is it true?

This question can create a spaciousness and balance of thinking that feels like fresh air. Even if it gets us to alter our wording from statement of fact to an ‘I think that...’ opinion, it helps to make our speech wiser. But the question opens us to re-examining thoughts and beliefs that may never have been looked at before. If we haven’t really looked at it, how can we speak it as if it is truth? Are we simply parroting what we have heard? Where did we hear it? Is this a source we know to be trustworthy? How do we know that?

‘Is it true?’ is the beginning of our exploration. It behooves us to keep the exploration going, to examine assumptions, to question everything. But for most of us the idea of questioning what we believe to be true is threatening in some way. Why? Because we believe we are what we think, what we believe, what we hold to be true.

This brings us back to Wise View and to the Five Aggregates we explored earlier in the year, that led us to understand that there is no separate self we need to defend or shore up. When we can sense our deep connection with all that is, how this human being life we are experiencing is impermanent, a fleeting conjunction of particles, a perceived segment of a much larger system of processes, and that our consciousness enables us to experience life in this moment as this seemingly-separate being with a skin-encased body, a name and other identifiers, then we can explore a simple question like ‘Is this true?’ with great freedom and curiosity. Because nothing in the answer threatens our being.

Is it kind?

What did the Buddha mean by this question? Is he suggesting that we should always be nice, don’t make a fuss, put up and shut up? Loving-kindness not about making nice in order to maintain some status quo. Instead it is rooted in a deep sense of loving kindness and compassion. So we ask whether we are speaking from Wise Intention or is there some murky motivation here?

Are we saying something nice to appease or are we expressing truth with an understanding of the power of words to wound or heal, to cut down or inspire, to create antagonism or collaboration. We cannot understand the power of our words if we perceive ourselves to be powerless.

The most powerful words in the world come from our parents. As children we craved approval and love, and were tuned into even the slightest hint of a tone of disapproval or dismissal.And we were aware when the words we craved remained unsaid. As adults we would do well to see our parents, whether alive or not, as mere humans prone to error like all others, with no instruction manual and little of what we now call emotional intelligence, and probably more than their share of challenges. We can divest the power we have given them without turning our backs on them. We don’t make ourselves impervious to their barbs by creating armor. Instead we recognize their torment and suffering, and feel compassion. May they be well. May they be happy. May they be at ease. May they be at peace.

What does this have to do with our own ability to speak wisely. If we are parents, it reminds us that these words we use which we may not even think about -- that may be throw-away words as far as we’re concerned, which come from a person who feels rather powerless perhaps, and certainly not capable of any real harm -- are in fact received by our children, even adult children, as more powerful and thus more painful than we can imagine. Perhaps we have raised children who are well-balanced and capable, but we cannot assume that even they are not still in need of our approval and attuned to read more into what we say than we may have intended. So be aware!

Whomever we are talking to, loving-kindness is an absence of the need to prove anything, correct or remake anyone. Kindness is not about satisfying our innate curiosity by asking nosy questions, but about taking an interest, and letting the other person take the lead in the conversation. Loving-kindness is universal, so our words are equally kind to everyone we encounter.

Is it timely?

What we have to say might be true, and it might be kind but maybe it's an awkward moment to say it. For example, it might be true and kind to say “I love you’ to someone, but not in the middle of a business meeting. Or it might be true and kind to have a real heart to heart with someone, but not while they are in the middle of preparing a big dinner. Knowing when is the right moment comes from being attuned to the silence, being fully in the moment, and allowing the words to be a response to a spell of skillful listening. The right time reveals itself.

Pitfalls

Since we are in festive season, a time when we often have so many social gatherings and succumb to unskillful speech so easily, let's explore a few typical pitfalls we might encounter:

Drinking. Some of us rely on drinking to get us through social awkwardness, but that release of inhibitions is really just a release of good judgment. If you can’t drink in moderation, don’t drink. If you drink to calm nerves, then find more skillful ways to address that concern -- self-inquiry, looking at the patterns of thought that keep you in fear; and practice, such as joining Toastmasters to get past the nerves.

Wit. Some of us so much want to entertain that we would prefer to be clever even if it cuts. Focusing on listening helps to remind us this is not a stage, we are not doing a routine.

Gossip. Getting together with people who share common bonds with others often ends up by discussing those not present in a familiar but not always loving way. Wise Speech doesn’t talk about people, period. Their stories are not ours to tell. The answer to questions about absent family or friends is, ‘Oh yes, it’s too bad they couldn’t be here. But maybe you can get in touch with them to catch up.’ Of course that family member might not appreciate you referring people to them, so a vague ‘Oh they’re just fine. Thanks for asking.’ might suffice. This is difficult, especially for women who gather together to solve the problems of the world, or at least their immediate family members, and find relief from worry by hearing the stories of other people’s relatives who are even more dysfunctional. There is also a way in which families weave a valued and supportive mythology that has benefits that the Buddha might question, but that the elders of 'the clan' seem to have a biological imperative to weave and share. That aside, gossip usually leaves us feeling a sullied. Try a period of not talking in the third person and see if it doesn't free you! As for supportive sharing of experience, there’s no harm in using stories, just keep the people involved anonymous.

Generalizations, stereotypes. Without giving our words much thought we may find ourselves repeating things we have heard without question, or we might extrapolate a single incident into a judgment about a whole group of people. This is not skillful, since these statements by their nature are neither true nor kind.

Desire to ‘be ourselves’. We have this idea that being free to say whatever comes into our heads is desirable. That anything else is censorship. Why? Do we feel entitled to move our bodies anywhere in space regardless of whether someone is already there? No. When it comes to action and to speech, we are in community.

We may imagine a person -- a friend or lover -- with whom we can totally ‘be ourselves’, as in we can mindlessly blurt out whatever pops up. This only works if we have a set of disposable friends, whose feelings don’t matter to us. You might be able to think of a friend or two who you can be thoughtless in your speech and they don’t mind, but this only means that this is the kind of abuse they were raised with, and they interpret that as intimacy. We seek intimacy and sometimes rude cutting words make us feel at home. You might recognize that in someone you know, or in yourself. It isn't wise or loving to continue that abuse.

Secrets as intimacy. Shared knowledge feels like a bond, but building a separate fortress for two or a few is clinging to fortress mentality, just letting the ‘special’ people in. The only people who want in, however, are those who are trapped in believing themselves to be special and separate, in need of constant reassurance and admiration. Healthy relationships are built on a deeply shared sense of connection with all life and respect.

Did you recognize any of these traps in your experience? Or others I haven’t covered here?

You are not alone! These are challenging and it's good to remember that this is all a practice. We all just do the best we can. All of these skills we develop are in order to reduce suffering for ourselves and others, and create loving-kindness, compassion and joy.