I'm headed to the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky tomorrow. Poet,writer, and activist Thomas Merton, aka Fr. Louis, lived his monastic life there. I'll share more on this next week...

(Photo: John Cremons)

Impermanence

Buddhism often refers to impermanence. The idea that all of life (conditioned and experiential) is constantly changing. They speak of it as a universal law of nature, like gravity, and invite each of us to discover if it is true or not ourselves. Is everything always changing, moving, sliding out from under our feet? Well, yes. And it’s the insecurity that impermanence brings that causes us to try so hard to control our circumstances and cling to stability wherever it can be found.

In its teachings, Buddhism suggests it is our attachment, our dire clinging for security to all the impermanent things in our lives, that creates our suffering. We fear the unknown. We want to be sure things will stay the same because we can stand on the familiar; whether it pleasure or pain, a memory or a desire, an unhappy relationship or a lucrative job, we cling to it. And when it changes or goes away, which it always does, we are indignant, angry, miserable.

Honor Impermanence. I used to have a sticky note posted in my bathroom medicine cabinet with these words. A reminder to stay present with the jostle and flow of life, to witness the coming and going and remain awake to it all with open heart. Openness; not clinging, not pushing and pulling, not holding on for dear life.

And in my mind, the quintessential symbol of impermanence is the ever-changing, multitudinous and constantly active ocean.

The Unknowable

There is a particular metaphor I’ve come to cherish for illustrating the phenomenon of Life, the relation between the Unknowable and human beings. No doubt it has been cited before, but I cannot remember how it came to me:

Imagine the Unknowable, or God, as the great, unfathomable depth and force of the ocean. And that we humans are ocean waves, active manifestations of the Unknown. So that one wave signifies one person, stretching out in singular, autonomous formation from the Source, but always made up of ocean, always an extension of it; then crashing or dissipating or curling away, but eventually returning to the Source from which it came.

(Woodblock print, The Great Wave off Kanagawa, Hokusai, Japan, c.1832)

A Moment with Milosz

A poem from Czeslaw Milosz, written in Goszyce, Poland, 1944:

—My past is a stupid butterfly's overseas voyage.

My future is a garden where a cook cuts the throat of a rooster.

What do I have, with all my pain and rebellion?

—Take a moment, just one, and when its fine shell,

Two joined palms, slowly opens

What do you see?

—A pearl, a second.

—Inside a second, a pearl, in that star saved from time,

What do you see when the wind of mutability ceases?

—The earth, the sky, and the sea, richly cargoed ships,

Spring mornings full of dew and faraway princedoms.

At marvels displayed in tranquil glory

I look and do not desire for I am content.

New Year, New Death

Yesterday marked the beginning of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Tuesday is the Autumn Equinox, the commencement of autumn. These are new beginnings, fresh starts, opportunities for rebirth. Even autumn, as earth winds down from its green fleshiness to the sleep of winter, there is a chance for renewal.

To do this we must embrace the mirror side of beginning, that which ends. Death. To truly renew we must witness death, whether it be summer gardens, relationship with a loved one, or simply an old grievance. Our active part in beginning anew is to let go.

As we let go of old heartaches and misspoken words, space opens within our hearts. This opening is forgiveness, and forgiveness breeds compassion. We can face death with compassion.

Pema Chodron reminds us, “What we hate in ourselves, we’ll hate in others. To the degree that we have compassion for ourselves, we will have compassion for others.” So that what we can forgive in ourselves, we can forgive in others. And with forgiveness we can turn ourselves over to the new.

This Moment, Part II

When I first tried practicing Buddhist insight meditation, it was so difficult I thought I might lose my mind. Then I realized this is the point.

It’s a very simple practice to begin: Sit down. Focus your attention on your breathing, watching it move in and out. When you notice a thought or fantasy or memory you’re caught up in, return your focus to your breathe. Sometimes the thoughts are so loud and anxious that it feels impossible to even find your breathe, let alone focus on it. Or you will follow the breath and then ten minutes later you’re suddenly aware that you have been obsessing on something someone said to you last week. That’s normal, just refocus on the breathe.

Learning to be present with whatever conditions we find is the key. A thought comes, you see it, and let it go. Let go without judgment or praise or obsession, just let go. This may be the most difficult part. It’s amazing to discover how much I beat myself up for a single thought (and its subsequent emotions). Or how much I build myself up over some elusive desire I think will save me. To witness the workings of the mind, to learn from it rather than associate my sense of self with it; this is magic. And yet accessible to anyone, anywhere, anytime.

Practicing this reaps its own benefits, but taking it to daily life is what I have found most useful. Because when I am aware and mindful (which is achieved by staying present) then I can witness my reactions to this or that, or where I'm holding on to anger, or what the source of some irritation or jubilation comes from. This is wisdom. This is a way to “know thyself." And in knowing myself, I know the Divine. Pema Chodron said, “The source of wisdom is whatever is happening to us right at this very moment,” when she speaks of the teacher that never leaves us. And Sogyal Rinpoche refers to “bringing our mind back home.” This moment is home. This moment is our access to the all-consuming One. It is heaven, now.

This Moment

Thomas Merton prayed: Let me rest in Your will and be silent. This is often interpreted as a passive acceptance of circumstances or suffering. Others take such a prayer to mean that God’s will is predestined. But perhaps it is this moment, whatever it may contain, that is “God’s will”. Not yesterday or when we were ten, but this very moment. Not next week, or ten years from now; not when this is achieved or that much money is saved. Now.

Consider this possibility: the only thing we have is this moment. Then it is gone and is memory. And the moment coming up that we aspire to is just fantasy. It’s the present moment in which we breathe.

Let me rest in Your [moment] and be silent. Then the light of Your joy will warm my life, Merton prayed. Because in the moment, there is no need for anything else. There is only You.

Going Home

Lately I've been volunteering at an elderly home. My newest aquaintance is Louise, who will be 105 years old in December. She’s an amazing woman, full of vitality and humor. Yesterday she mentioned her upcoming birthday, and that she would then “start asking Father to bring me home.”

She went on to explain that she envisions there being a door. And without a physical body she can’t turn the knob to open it herself. But that all the good deeds and intentions, and loving relationships and grace from her lifetime will one by one open the door a little more and a little more, until the door is open and she can enter.

I suspect that once the door is “open” she will be overcome with home, without having to enter or do anything at all. She will become Home.

Her Wisdom shakes me. My piddly 35 years to her 105. I feel like a child basking in the sun.

(Engraving by William Blake.)

True Love

Recently I was given the assignment to create something that expresses my worldview. I made a collage. With a black marker, I drew a snake eating its own tail on poster board then proceeded to wallpaper the space within the circle and outside of it with images cut from magazines. I was fully aware that my “worldview” was being dictated by images already printed in media, but was surprised to find an interesting and valuable outcome none the less.

In the bottom right of the collage I pasted a photo taken from a W Magazine fashion spread of Bruce Willis and his new wife, Emma Hemming. This powerful image initially seemed to depict the kind of partnership relationship I seek in my life. It’s an easy first assumption.

But after setting the collage up at home for a few days, I began to look at it more closely, meditate on it, discovering newer and deeper contexts. The image of the couple so forcefully entwined, staring into each other’s eyes, holding closely together, both powerful and powerless in each other’s presence, began to inspire a question.

Could this image represent my relationship with the Divine?

The worldly issue of putting gender on God might present itself on the surface, but looking closer reveals the symbiotic creativity and love between the two beings. The passion and acceptance. The mutual respect and intertwining nature of the Creator and the Created.

If this image can represent my relationship with the Divine, and I think it does, it can also be a representation of the Divine: the feminine and masculine aspects of Unity. Similar to the concept of Yin and Yang: two elements that are necessary to each other, not in opposition to each other. The one can only exist in relation to the other.

(PHOTO: Steven Klein, W Magazine, July 2009)

faith is a process... not a product.

--Kathleen Norris, from The Cloister Walk

More Thoughts on Love

Sometimes when I’m walking or driving around, I experience a spontaneous feeling of love and affection for people I see. A dusty road worker, a mother with her kids in the grocery store, an elderly man renting a movie, the fellow sweeping the subway station, a cranky old woman riding the bus… Today I realized that I love these people like I love the fictional characters I write about in poems and stories. They are dear to me in all their detriment and glory and selfishness or self-sacrifice—just people living and breathing and learning to find their way. And then it dawned on me that it’s much harder to act with love, than to simply feel love. When I interact with people throughout the day, at the cash register, on the phone, in line at the post office; can I hold on to that love and affection then? It is much harder to love in person than love from a distance. It is much harder to act love than just feel love, although one must certainly depend upon the other.

(Image: Alexander Girard “Black and White” Environmental Enrichment panel, by Herman Miller, 1971)