All about birthdays

Ah, my birthday. Again.

I remember when birthdays took forever to arrive. All that anticipation! One of my granddaughters recently turned five and she could barely contain herself with the anxious excitement. It seemed like her special day would never come, especially since she had to somehow survive her little sister's birthday the week before. By the end of that day she retreated to her bed, all pouty and sad. I whispered in her ear that in a few more hours it wouldn't be her sister's birthday anymore. I don't know if that was skillful, but it certainly cheered her up.

At my age birthdays seem to come around much faster, in turn making them seem more ordinary. Every day on Facebook it's some friend's birthday. It's like a birthday ball bouncing around in a circle and each of us holds it for a brief moment before it passes on to someone else. In that moment it's fun to be the center of attention, but it's also a relief to let it go.

Some of us dread our birthdays as annoying reminders that yet another year has passed. There’s no getting around the fact that this corporal life is finite. Finding a way to be in a comfortable relationship with impermanence is a big vital challenge. We get training by our losses, each one carving out a little more understanding if we take the time to be present with our grief; or a little more frantic denial if we ignore it.

By this time in our lives it's not the number of years we've accumulated but how we have lived that makes us feel old or young. Wallowing in regret, freaking out about the future, over-indulging and striving for distant goals all seem to add years. Living in the moment with whole-hearted authenticity, a sense of unity with all beings may make us seem younger, or may make us not care how old we look!

If our age doesn't correlate with how we feel inside, like some alien label that doesn't fit, it’s only that we have a whole set of misconceptions to what being that age looks like and means. If we can recognize that this right here is what this age feels like and looks like, then we can age with more ease.

My biggest problem with birthdays has been that I felt so naked in my 'birthday suit', waiting, passive and powerless, until this strange day passed. I create my life the way I want the other 364 days of the year, but on my birthday there was a sense of having to pass the baton for the day and hope that someone would carry it. Would the designated people 'responsible' for my birthday (close relatives and friends since our youth) remember to call or send a card? If so, phew. If not, woe is me. Fortunately I began to notice how people often take control over their own birthdays, throwing parties and creating the day they want for themselves. What a relief to have permission to do the same.

Throughout my birthday there were impromptu visits, cards, phone calls, emails, text messages and Facebook greetings. How delightful! This is the first year I have let Facebook broadcast my birthday to my friends. I realized how much I rely on it to remind me of friends' birthdays and allow me to easily send them good wishes, so why should I be so churlish? It felt great to get greetings, and at every notification throughout the day I would immediately 'like' and 'comment'. When my oldest son called and I told him I was feeling a wee bit overwhelmed, he said, "Mom, you just wait til the next day and respond to everyone with one comment, like: "Thanks everyone for all your birthday greetings. I had a great day and you helped to make it so.' Brilliant. I'll remember that for next year! Maybe.

There was also a year when I realized that a birthday can be simply a day to be grateful for having been born. How about a shout out to the mother who went through labor all those years ago? And to the father who played his part so well? And to the doctor who delivered us? My doctor was said to be grateful to me for coming out quick enough so that he didn't miss his tee time at the golf course. Oh yes, I was a born people-pleaser.

Finding a way to live with this 1/365th of our life experience can be challenging. Some seem to do it so easily while others struggle. A birthday is a good day to be especially present to listen to the kind loving words of others and to notice the inner conversation that can make the day either pleasant or a living hell.

Last year I spent my birthday on retreat at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. It fell on Day Four of the retreat, and I was so happy to feel so fully alive in silence, aware of everything. It felt like the best birthday ever.

Maybe having had that birthday 'time out' from social interaction and the possibility of expectation last year, allowed me to come to this birthday with a fresher, less needy way of being. In the early morning hours when I woke up to see it was going to be a really hot day, I decided what I wanted: To have a picnic lunch in a shady place, and if my kids and grand-kids were available then we'd have it in a shady playground by a creek. And in the evening maybe we could sit out in the warm night at a local French restaurant and have a dinner salad. And thus I formulated a spontaneous birthday that suited the day and suited me, and it too was the best birthday ever.

Wishing you all wonderful birthdays whenever they are and however you choose to spend them. And thanks once again to the many people who made this birthday so lovely. And oh yes, most especially, Thanks Mom! You are always in my heart, and I’ll always feel gratitude for your greatest gift to me: This very life.

The Wisdom of the Breath, the last tetrad of the Anapanasati Sutta

The fourth and final tetrad of the Anapanasati Sutta is called the Wisdom Group. Continuing to be present with the breath, the Buddha instructs us first to focus on impermanence. We can do this by noting how sensations in the body arise and fall away, how the breath itself changes over the course of our meditation practice.

Then he asks us to focus on 'fading away'. What could this mean? Is it  the edges of who we hold ourselves to be that fade away? With your eyes closed, see if you can tell where this defined person you call 'me' ends and where 'other' begins.

Without the sense of sight those edges disappear, don't they. With the eyes closed the sense of body loses its tight definition. And with a focus on the breath we are even less sure about clearly defined edges, aren't we? The breath is inside us and outside us. Where are the boundaries we previously took for granted?

Is there also a sense of 'self' that softens and loses its edge? Not just the body but our rigid idea of who we are? (Read more about this.)

Next the Buddha asks us to focus on cessation as we breathe. We know that life in this body is temporal, but in this culture we like to pretend that death is an option. I was reminded of this recently when my husband and I were in Mexico writing our Mexican wills and we were asked to write out When I die.... American wills shy away from such a simple statement of fact. I thought maybe they say something like 'in the case of my demise' but when I looked up a standard will template I discovered it avoids the mention death at all, just leaps right into instructions to the heirs! That's how much we are in denial about our own death in this country. The death of strangers in the news, movies and books we find fascinating, but we’re not able to acknowledge that such an event is in the cards for us.

Coming into a deep awareness of the temporal nature of our lives is not depressing but freeing. Our acceptance illuminates the value of being fully here to enjoy life in this moment. It lets us see it as a natural part of the cycle of life.

You can investigate this yourself by sitting with awareness of your temporal nature. You might say to yourself, 'On some undisclosed date I will definitely die.' And then sit with that and see what you notice. Is there added tension in the body? Does the breath get shallower? What emotions and thoughts arise in your awareness?

The last step in the Anapanasati Sutta asks us to focus on relinquishment. When we understand and accept the temporal nature of life, accept that this body is an integral part of a whole complex set of processes and is not separate, and accept that everything is impermanent, then what is it we are relinquishing? We relinquish our fear. We relinquish our clinging to beliefs that don't serve us. We relinquish it all and open to the joy of awakening to this moment, just as it is with clarity and compassion.

So those are the sixteen steps. If it interests you then you can read Larry Rosenberg's book Breath by Breath. You can also listen to the dharmaseed.org recordings of Tempel Smith's daylong retreat at Spirit Rock that I attended in March 2015.

Thoughts & emotions in meditation, continuing the Anapanasati Sutta

In our continuing exploration of the Anapanasati Sutta, the Buddha's teaching on mindfulness of the breath, we now come to the third Tetrad, the Mind Group. Here we bring our friendly focused attention to the whole of the mind, which includes the heart in this tradition so that we notice both thoughts and emotions as they pass through our spacious field of awareness.

The second step of this group instructs us to 'gladden the mind'. This is not an instruction to put on a happy face. It is asking us to notice and in that noticing appreciate this joyous state of being fully alive and aware. It knocks us out of the temporal reactivity of our normal state and allows us to sense into the quality of infinite being. The Sutta doesn't use those words, just 'gladden the mind' but see where it takes you.

The third step instructs us to steady the mind, bringing some balance into the mix. We're not floating off into ecstasy. We want to develop states that are functional, that end suffering in our daily lives, not just a temporary escape from our personal challenges.

The last step of this tetrad instructs us to 'liberate the mind'. This isn't freeing the mind to run amuk. This is liberation from mindlessness, from assumptions not based in fact, from auto-pilot, and from habitual thinking. If you remember our investigation of the Hindrances in the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, at this stage you can really observe them in action: the clinging, aversion, restlessness, worry, torpor, sloth and doubt.

Deepening in this practice of following the breath and noticing the mental processes, we can begin to see the tenacity with which we hold onto lifelong habits, patterns and processes. We notice the activation of judgment, justification and argument, as well as various emotions that fuel aversion and desire to do anything but simply be with what is in this moment.

But if we can expand our spacious field of awareness to hold all of those difficult thoughts and emotions, without acting on the desire to push them away, then we discover we can live with them in a kind of intimacy that is softening and illuminating. We see for ourselves the pain of attachment. Then with consistent compassionate attention we might see the superfluous nature of attachment. Then eventually, without effort beyond the wise effort of our sitting practice, quite naturally the attachment softens and perhaps dissolve.  

This kind of liberation of the mind leads to awakening and a deepening of wisdom. It is a willingness to be present with whatever arises and see it with a clarity, and a willingness to question everything. 'Is this true? How do I know this is true?'

Next week we will complete this brief look at the Anapanasati Sutta.

Breath focus continues...

This week in class we continued our exploration in meditation of the Anapanasati Sutta (mindfulness of the breath), this time adding the second tetrad, the Feelings Group. If you recall from our exploration of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, 'feelings' are not emotions but our basic response to experience as pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. So as we meditate with a focus on the breath we find a pleasant experience of noticing the energy in the body and a sense of vibrant aliveness, and maybe we get excited about this. (The word 'rapture' is used to describe this state, but for me that word is simply too loaded in our culture.) We notice pleasure arising in our experience, and we develop our awareness of that sense of pleasure as we continue to consciously breathe in and breathe out.

But these experiences of excitement and pleasure are not all that is going on, is it? We also have a lot of thoughts and emotions that arise and fall away. These are mental processes that we note as a naturally occuring part of our experience as we continue to follow the breath. These thoughts and emotions are seductive and we likely get distracted from the breath from time to time, but whenever we realize we have been lost in thought, we acknowledge the existence of mental processes and come back to the breath.

We end this second part as we did the first by actively calming these mental processes, with the power of our focus on the breath. Just as we breathe in fresh air to create spaciousness in the body, we can create spaciousness in the mind. Just as we release tension in the body on the exhalation, we can release the tight tangle of thoughts.

The students found the instructions beneficial to their practice and I hope you do too, though it is of course much more challenging to do so without someone offering guidance as you meditate. If you're in the area, come to class!

Concentration & The Problem with problems

The word 'concentration' is so misleading because of the way we think we need to configure our brains to do it. We think of it as a tightening and narrowing of or focus. But Wise Concentration is actually a much softer and friendlier way of paying attention to what is arising in this moment.

I recently attended a daylong retreat at Spirit Rock Meditation Center on the Anapanasati Sutta led by Tempel Smith who is able to express the heart of the teachings in a way we can easily understand it. The Anapanasati Sutta is the Buddha's sixteen-part exploration of using a focus on the breath to deepen one's practice and perception. Tempel recommended the book Breath by Breath by Larry Rosenberg, which I have been reading and highly recommend if you are interested in deepening your meditation practice.

Because in our weekly women's meditation class we have been revisiting the Noble Eightfold Path, I held off on discussing Wise Concentration until I had had the chance to attend that retreat, read that book and experiment with the teachings on the Anapanasati Sutta.

Ana is a pali word that means life energy that comes in; apana means waste as it is expelled; sati means mindfulness, the ability to notice in an open way. So this teaching (sutta) is all about being mindful of the whole process of the breath. If you have never meditated on the breath then the idea that there could be sixteen levels of exploration sounds improbable, but if you have spent any time noting the breath you have most likely found it to be a whole lot more interesting than you would have imagined. With this sutta we have a guide to being with the breath in a way that really deepens the practice.

The sixteen contemplations of the Sutta are divided into four groupings, called Tetrads. This week we practiced the first Tetrad within our regular meditation, first becoming aware of the breath, the quality of the breath in this moment. Without judgment we notice the breath is long, short, deep, shallow, rough, smooth, etc. Then the awareness broadens to sense the whole body in relationship to the breath. Having deepened and broadened awareness, we calm the body. The breath comes in bringing fresh air, creating spaciousness; the breath leaves taking with it all the excess energy and tightness.

Off to a good start! In the coming weeks we will practice adding in each of the other three Tetrads in our meditation.

'There is Nothing Wrong Here'

After answering any questions about this Sutta, we had time for another discussion. I always read a little excerpt from our Pocket Pema Chodron book before beginning my dharma talk or discussion, and the one I read last week, #88 titled 'An Open Ended Approach' really resonated, so we discussed what it brought up for us. It is about the importance of working with rather than struggling against whatever we are finding unacceptable in ourselves and in the world. Pema talks about how when we think in terms of problems and solutions we are making an enemy and that is not the relationship that will bring an end to suffering. 

I was reminded of how in the Church of Science of Mind, where a friend of mine is a minister, there is a phrase they use when coming upon what might be considered a problem: 'There is nothing wrong here.' That's a very fun phrase to play with every time something unsettling happens, but all of us can think of situations where saying such a thing would make no sense at all. For example, if someone is abusing a child, imagine saying 'There is nothing wrong here.' Really? It looks VERY wrong to me, and it makes me angry and I want to haul that abuser off and... 

But if we go deeper into it, we can see that making this person the enemy or even this action the enemy is not going to change anything. Bringing a more open compassionate space and a clarity of mind that is not judging but seeing all of what is going on --- all the causes and conditions, all the pain within the abuser as well as the one being abused --- creates a safe space for the person doing the abusing to let down their rigid defensive posture and feel he or she can look at the whole of what is going on. In class someone brought up dealing with someone who is addicted. Again, how much more helpful it is provide a loving non-judgmental but very aware space for that person to be able to let down his or her defenses and gain some clarity. Since real change comes from deep within, providing a safe space for that inner exploration is infinitely more useful than acting out in anger, making demands, making an enemy, seeking a solution to a problem.

Pema ends with: "The approach we are suggesting is more groundless..." And that reminded me of what Tempel Smith said at the daylong retreat about how with our meditation and mindfulness practice we are developing the ability to function well in the state of groundlessness we find ourselves in. For those of us who are always searching for solid ground, this is an alarming statement. But true! In this experience of life there is nothing solid, unchanging that we can stand on and make everything stop and be predictable. Instead we have better success and lots more joy if we learn how to live in this groundless state. Think of Alice as she falls down the rabbit hole finding interest in all she encounters even as she doesn't know where this journey will take her. Isn't that how life is? We pretend we know what will happen based on our plans and informed calculations, but then the unexpected happens and we are thrown for a loop. Why? Because we believed we were standing on solid ground, but in fact the reality of our experience is much more groundless than that. So maybe we are learning how to float in space or even fly?