Celia Landman

Finding Love in the Laundry

May 21, 2019

impermanence, Kindness, Meditation, Metta, Mindfulness, Uncategorized

Orange Moon, Photo by Celia

“No one is more worthy of your kindness and compassion than you are.”

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

“The level of our success is limited only by our imagination and no act of kindness,

however small, is ever wasted.” ~ Aesop

“My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.” ~ H.H. The Dalai Lama

Dear Friends,

It is really spring here in CT. Schools are ending; people are getting things done; everywhere there is evidence of change and movement. Spring does not feel restful. In fact, it feels like a big to-do list. The lawn which has recently begun to grow is made up of plantain leaves and patches of thatch. There are invasive plants encroaching on the driveway and a myriad array of windows to find screens for in my 134-year-old house. A pipe sprung a leak and there’s no water, but the basement always has water. Doctor’s appointments, Lyme’s disease—graduations, summer plans, workshops to schedule, it’s all happening now. The dog has arthritis, argh. I want order, ritual, and not more than three events that require my attention per day.

And yet amid all of this quicksand of a schedule, which is my life, there’s the reminder that this is all temporary. Finding the quiet in the midst of the chaos can only happen when the struggle ceases and we release the desire to have things another way. When we give ourselves over to what is unfolding, as unwelcome and hectic as it, only then can we find the space in ourselves to rest while life tumbles and twists around us. Coming back to remembering that even what seems so massive and important has a beginning, a middle and an end, and this too will change.

Last week in Sangha we spoke about doing things mindfully—one action at a time. I was reminded of a poem I wrote years ago about the practice of Laundry Metta. This is a way to bring the first Brahmavihara [Loving Kindness] into our daily lives and connect with those we often overlook. This poem tells us about the power to create community and engage in the world, even when we feel isolated and too busy to make a grand gesture of kindness and compassion. When we wholeheartedly engage in our lives–yes even folding our laundry, we can nurture the loving kindness in ourselves. Please give this laundry folding practice a try, even if it’s just for a few items. I guarantee you will never look at your laundry the same way.

Photo by Digital Buggu on Pexels.com

Small Works

There is so much helping that needs doing. And always the wonder and the worry—how do I begin to do the extraordinary

And heal the world when I have this pile of laundry keeping me from sainthood, from fulfilling my big destiny? I must start in this ordinary life with its teeth to brush and moldy lentils to toss out.

So I begin the work of my life.

I lift my son’s small green shirt into my hands.

Made in Bangladesh the label says.

I close my eyes and see hands darker than mine cutting green cloth, hands setting down the foot-press of the sewing machine. May you be paid fairly for your work. May you have clean water for you and your family, I say as my hands fold the same fabric.

A gray sweatshirt lies in my lap. Made in Cambodia. I watch hands smoothing the thick material on a table, tracing the pattern. May you not have to choose between food and medicine. May your life be easy.

There’s a tee-shirt from China.

May you be free to speak the truth. May you live without fear.

I add the folded tee-shirt to my pile.

My daughter’s camisole comes from Vietnam. I think of tired hands holding the edging and carefully stitching the lace. May your children be safe and healthy. May you rest when you need to.

I lift a towel, Made in the USA.

There were hands paler than mine folding this white cloth. May you not be lonely. May you have someone to love you.

My laundry is folded as my prayers travel around the world offering my small service.

Each day, I wear the labor of unknown hands. The work of tired eyelashes and the longings for ease and beauty. This clothing, birthed amidst the blistering buzz of sewing machine armies, traveled through your life.

Sat on your cutting table and flew over your needle plate with the rat-tat-tat of a rifle fast stitch.

For you, who dresses this body each day,

I weave for you, this garment made of kindness wished and folded socks.

Pressed between the moments of tiredness and fluorescent lights, I send a whisper of care to touch your skin and tell you, I know you are there.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

1 comment on Finding Love in the Laundry
The Making of a Mother

May 13, 2019

Ancestors, compassion, Dependent origination, Forgiveness, interbeing, Metta, Mother’s Day, Patience, Relationship, Uncategorized

The Buddha and friend. Photo by Celia

“By patience, by non-harming, by loving kindness, by caring (for others).

(Thus) looking after oneself, one looks after others;

and looking after others, one looks after oneself.” ~SN 47.19

“Those who engage in good bodily conduct, good verbal conduct & good mental conduct have themselves protected. Even though neither a squadron of elephant troops, a squadron of cavalry troops, a squadron of chariot troops, nor a squadron of infantry troops might protect them, still they have themselves protected. Why is that? Because that’s an internal protection, not an external one. Therefore, they have themselves protected.” ~SN 3.5

“Develop the meditation of appreciation. For when you are developing the meditation of appreciation, resentment will be abandoned.” ~MN 62

Dear Friends,

It’s Mother’s Day in the U.S. and it is also the time of year to celebrate Vesak, the birth of the Buddha. The qualities of a mother in the Buddhist tradition incorporate protection, compassion, and love. For some of us, we may have been blessed with loving nurturing mothers and caregivers we felt safe with. For others, this is far from our experience. Today, if you have a loving mother to celebrate, you are a fortunate being! If you have a complicated relationship, perhaps there is some mourning for the childhood you wanted but did not have. When the mourning is enough, we can move on to looking deeply into the causes and conditions that created our mother and her relationships. When we have understanding, it is the first building block of love.

The wonderful qualities we long for in our caregivers are not dispensed on the day a child is born; they are created from lifetimes of intergenerational transference. The Buddha taught that all things arise because of the interconnected web of causes and conditions. This is described as Dependent Origination. The Buddha is quoted as saying, “With the arising of this, that arises. When this is not, neither is that. With the cessation of this, that ceases” (S.II.28,65). Insight meditation teacher Christina Feldman speaks about “paṭicca-samuppāda,” (Pali) as the understanding “that there is nothing separate, nothing standing alone. Everything effects everything else. We are part of this system. We are part of this process of dependent origination—causal relationships effected by everything that happens around us and, in turn, effecting the kind of world that we all live in inwardly and outwardly.” This system is described by Zen Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh in the word Interbeing.

We can see Interbeing in all of us. We can see the results of genetics, of our upbringing and how our lives have marked us. Not one of us can create ourselves or our environment. Like it or not, we are continuously influenced and influencing our environment and relationships.

A mother is not a static, constant identity. Being a mother is a process made of conditions. For a mother to be loving, there needs to be the experience of being loved and understanding what love means to oneself and to another. Loving someone else also requires that we do not put our experience on the other person, who may have a very different understanding of love than we do. This is the Buddhist teaching on the equality complex or conceit. Perhaps we have had an experience of loving someone who is very different from ourselves. The quality of Metta, loving-kindness, does not insist that someone accept love as we would like it to be. Some people connect love with gifts, with touch, with words, food, or compliments but true love is formless; it transmits through presence and intention. True love transcends simple form.

Another aspect of motherhood is patience. Patience is much more accessible for one who understands the teaching of impermanence (Anicca) and that what seems so solid and important will change and adapt. If we longed for more patience from our caretakers, what conditions would have supported that–enough sleep, enough money? Is it possible to trace the lack of patience as a continuation of ancestral conditioning and to see how it shows up in our daily life? If we were lucky enough to have been given the gift of patience, how did it develop in our caretakers? How do we offer this gift to others in our lives?

The foundation of compassion is said to occur when loving kindness encounters suffering and the natural desire and ability arises to remove the suffering from our beloved. To do this, one must have presence and calm enough to be near the suffering of another without fear or aversion. One must possess equanimity. Compassion also requires the knowledge of how to relieve suffering and the competence to do so. True compassion requires bravery. For a parent working 60 hours a week and uncertain they can pay the mortgage, how likely is it that this sort of calm presence is available?

In the Discourse on Love is exhorts the Buddha’s followers to protect their own willingness to love all beings just as a “mother protects with her life Her child, her only child. So, with a boundless heart should one cherish all living beings” (Sn 1.8). To protect another one needs confidence, clarity, and a firm resolve in the goodness of their actions. We protect that which we value and especially those who are unable to protect themselves. The conditions that instill protection come from the recognition of what is wholesome linked with the wisdom to use one’s energy and power for the good. Parents who have known protection and care in their lives are much better equipped to protect their children without violence and aggression. Understanding an adult’s responsibility and power are also part of creating safety for vulnerable children. Protection creates a safe home where trust and ease can grow. The guidelines of sila [virtue] offer these protections for ourselves and for our children to ensure we all can live with integrity and safety.

When we see our upbringing in a wider lens that connects us to the past and the future, we can understand the conditions that have contributed to creating our mothers and ourselves. When we can look with understanding and see how the law of cause and effect has shaped our lives, we can learn to give gratitude for the kindness we have known and forgiveness for what we may have received but didn’t want.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

2 comments on The Making of a Mother
The Calm Horse and the Racehorse

May 7, 2019

Uncategorized

Calm water, Photo by Celia

“Calm is his thought, calm his speech, and calm his deed, who, truly knowing, is wholly freed, perfectly tranquil and wise.”

~Dhammapada 70, Arahantavagga: The Arahant or Perfected One

“They do not grieve over the past,

Nor do they yearn for the future;

They live only in the present

— That is why their face is so calm.”

~SN 1.10, Arañña Sutta: A Face So Calm

“Like a deep lake,

clear, unruffled, & calm:

so the wise become clear, calm,

on hearing words of the Dhamma.”

~Dhammapada 82, Panditavagga: The Wise

Dear Friends,

I hear there was added excitement during this year’s Kentucky Derby. I didn’t see the race. In fact, I’ve only seen one. Five years ago, I was invited to a viewing party and I remember two things about that gathering. The first was that I wore a hat. The second memory has greater significance and has remained with me. That day, I watched one of the racehorses being led toward the starting gate. I saw another horse, clearly not a racehorse walk next to the racer. They seemed to have a connection and a comradery between them. “What are they doing?” I asked someone who knew about these things. “That’s the calm horse.” She told me. “The racehorse is all wired and knows he’s got to run. They’d never get him into the gate without the calm horse.” I had to take that in. The transference of calm presence is felt between animals. I know I’ve experienced in my own life. More and more as I deepen my commitment to practice, I am the calm horse.

I don’t know much about racehorses and their lives, but from where I stand, the life of an animal that is bred and conditioned solely to run fast and to win it seems like an unwholesome way to live. It’s easy to see the parallel between an animal that is rewarded for what it can do, is valued for performance with our societal values. The calm horse is not rewarded for doing, but rather, for being. It is the ability to transfer presence and ease, that is valued in this other horse. The path of practice and the commitment to presence and compassion is a way to create calm horses out of racehorses.

A few years ago, I had surgery. A kind nurse walked me into the operating room. As I entered the bright room, I felt the cold air and saw the eyes of the doctors and support people looking at me expectantly above their masks. Every cell in my body wanted to bolt while the nurse spoke to me gently, telling me where to go and what was going to happen. I was clearly the racehorse at that moment and was so grateful for another’s calm presence.

I invite you to reflect on the times that you’ve been the racehorse and encountered a calm presence—and the times when you’ve been that calming presence for others. This ability to stay calm and centered in the face of other’s pain comes from the work of being present and transforming our own anxiety, fear, and distress. Calm presence is not just a nice way to be, it is a way to diffuse violence and aggression. We know that reactivity can provoke more reactivity. Responding to provocation with hatred, greed, or ignorance are ways to keep the cycle of war and suffering alive. We are called upon to transform our reactivity through our willingness to sit with what is arising and recognize our own impatience, disappointment, and hurt, that fuels our own reactivity.

Thich Nhat Hanh tells us that our willingness to do the difficult work of transformation is not only for ourselves. It is a communal responsibility. “Humankind has become a very dangerous species. We need people who can sit still and be able to smile, who can walk peacefully. We need people like that in order to save us. Mahayana Buddhism says that you are that person, that each of you is that person.” The more we are able to meet ourselves where we are without running, the greater ability we have to give this gift of non-fear to others.

In Dharma talks and in his books, Thich Nhat Hanh tells the story of the Vietnamese refugees who escaped after the fall of Saigon. Just as today, there were many deaths from too many people escaping violence and death in unsafe boats. Thich Nhat Hanh observes that in extreme stress “if even one person aboard can remain calm, lucid, knowing what to do and what not to do, he or she can help the boat survive. His or her expression – face, voice – communicates clarity and calmness, and people have trust in that person. They will listen to what he or she says. One such person can save the lives of many.” When others are in distress, anxious, or touching their suffering, our ability to be calm and unafraid of emotions is itself a gift.

This week you may like to notice the dynamic transference of calm that is going on around you and in you. We all have experienced being “whipped up,” by other’s agitation, can we remember and embody the felt experience of calm we have received? Perhaps we access calm through meditation, breath awareness, slow walking, chanting, or the awareness of ourselves as the whole, loving person that is our true self. Whatever way we have experienced calm in our lives, how do we bring it to the world? How does calm live in our daily life? Does it vanish when we are triggered by someone with different views, or in pain? Who are the people we receive calm from? I know in my life; I deeply enjoy being around those who infuse their lives with calm. Their calm nourishes mine. My wish for us all is that each day, we can nourish the calm in one other person. We can become the calm horse for all the racehorses in our lives.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

2 comments on The Calm Horse and the Racehorse
Not to Hate the Haters

April 30, 2019

Activism, Ending hatred, Healing our society, interbeing, non-violence, Uncategorized

Sunrise at Ferry Beach, ME. Photo by Karen Swanson

“Killing another person is not an act of freedom but an act of great despair and great ignorance; it will not bring freedom or peace.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

All

tremble at the rod,

all

are fearful of death.

Drawing the parallel to

yourself,

neither kill nor get others to kill.

All

tremble at the rod,

all

hold their life dear.

Drawing the parallel to

yourself,

neither kill nor get others to kill. ~Dhammapada 129-130

“Nonviolence is not a set of techniques that we can learn with our intellect. Nonviolent action is born naturally, from compassion, lucidity and understanding within yourself.”

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Dear Friends,

I returned from the Order of Interbeing retreat at Blue Cliff Monastery to read about Saturday’s shooting at the synagogue in California. Yet again, we see violence, hatred, and ignorance made lethal by the availability of weapons in the US. The rise of acceptability of white supremacy and the normalization of racism has me deeply concerned and sometimes afraid. While it is nothing new, there has always been suspicion, dominance, and distrust, it seems that the world is turning backward and forgetting. We are forgetting the atrocities of genocide, the deaths of millions in Cambodia, Armenia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur, in the concentration camps of Europe and the ethnic cleansing of Native Peoples on the Great Plains of America. Right now, there is the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya people by the government of Myanmar, the most religious Buddhist country in the world. There are no simple and quick answers to hatred and violence. When we see how long it has taken to create these states of separation and ignorance, we know these institutions will take a long while to dismantle.

More than ever we can clearly see the need to transform society—and society is made of individuals who will either adopt the populist views or not. Reactivity and intolerance can grow to become dangerous and powerful destructive forces if tended and especially when communities support the idea of separation and belief in an enemy. This enemy image creates a rationale for attack and persecution. Thich Nhat Hanh tells us “our enemy is never another person; our enemy is the wrong perception and suffering within him, within her.” In truth, the enemy is our untransformed anger, judgment, fear, and illusion of separateness that drives humans to do violence to others in the belief that they will be safe, have enough, and even have peace and happiness through violence.

We know that domination does not eradicate hatred but adds resentment and anger and fuels what it seeks to eradicate. Telling someone they are wrong, trafficking in shame and judgment will not lead to change. Real willingness to change comes from an unprotected heart that feels safe enough to admit mistake. Polarization and division, winning and conquering others only leads to violence. We know this. The hardest work is what we resist—to see the humanness is those we see as enemy, to listen to our own broken hearts and not respond with hatred and judgment. We can listen to the world that cries for help, and hear the need for understanding, for safety, and care. This is the teaching of the Buddha, of Jesus and the Prophets, to treat the one who is caught in the delusion of separateness as a friend. True change comes only when one is connected to their full humanity.

An excerpt from the Third Mindfulness Training of the Order of Interbeing reads, “We will learn to help others let go of and transform fanaticism and narrowness through loving speech and compassionate dialogue.” This is a radically different path to engagement. We condemn the violence that takes lives, the greed that deprives others of opportunities to live and the delusion that believes that separation is real and that one type of people has greater value than others. This we condemn, but we also see that we are the people caught in these views as well. We are part of them and to transform them, we must begin with ourselves. We are all co-creating each other. We are all responsible. My only encouragement is to check your heart and mind. Who are you telling yourself it’s ok to hate? Can we see the longing for consideration, justice, trust, and safety that fuels our judgments? When we can bring compassion to our own minds and care for the anger, discrimination, and separation that is alive in ourselves, we can heal our own broken hearts. When we do this, we are already healing the world.

Please be gentle with your suffering witnessing the pain and division in the world. Here is a link to a letter you may like to read. It is about reading the news mindfully by Order of Interbeing member and Sociology/ Global Studies Professor, Matthew Williams. He speaks about using the news as a practice to deepen our desire to relieve suffering in others and as an opportunity to recognize and transform our own reactivity and suffering.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

1 comment on Not to Hate the Haters
The Patient Flower of Transformation

April 21, 2019

Diligence in Practice, Faith, Patience, Transformation over time, Uncategorized

The First Daffodil, photo by Celia

“Change is a continuous process. You cannot assess it with the static yardstick of a limited time frame. When a seed is sown into the ground, you cannot immediately see the plant. You have to be patient. With time, it grows into a large tree. And then the flowers bloom, and only then can the fruits be plucked.” ~Mamata Banerjee

“When you increase the number of gardens, you increase the number of heavens too!” ~Mehmet Murat ildan

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” ~Anais Nin

Dear Friends,

Happy Passover, Happy Easter, Happy spring. Today, the grass actually looks green; there’s a mist of new green leaves on the underbrush in the woods, and the daylight stretches beyond dinnertime. The red flowers of the maples are turning the hills red and spring has settled in. Spring more than any other season is a period of change. The land is transformed, and we are too. We change our clothes, our attitudes, and begin to live more in the outdoors. We can see change clearly in the spring and we want to see change in our own lives as well.

Last fall, a friend and I planted over 100 daffodils lining my driveway. Halfway through April, I counted five emerging sprouts. That was it. I was disappointed that my efforts were for nothing and some mysterious blight had destroyed my daffodil crop. I told my friend about my doubts, and she said, “You’re two weeks behind everyone else. Patience.” But I didn’t want patience; I wanted what I saw in other people’s gardens—a bunch of great looking daffodils. It occurred to me that this daffodil conundrum was just like life. We put in effort with our practice, we fertilize and plan, but sometimes our efforts don’t manifest the way we want them too. Sometimes our daffodils don’t appear on schedule.

We live in a culture that is obsessed with achievement in everything we do. We do things to bring about results, to get better, to have peace, and change things. Improvement invades our hobbies; we need to become a better painter, singer, or have a beautiful garden. We don’t usually just do things because we enjoy them, and they are a wholesome way to spend time. A lack of measurable progress in our practice can bring on an attack of doubt, worsened by the undeniable happiness killer—comparison.

Our spiritual progress is distinctly personal—it may not look like anyone else’s. While others may be engaging in heroic actions, volunteering at clinics in war zones and traveling to give aid to those in conflicts, our path may look quiet and mundane. Sometimes we need to look deeply to see what is happening in our lives. It is hard to remember how we were before practice. It can be helpful to have a close friend or kind family member remind us. Occasionally my husband tells me, “you’re so much nicer now.” And although I understand that he appreciates how the practice is making a difference in my life, I also wonder, how awful was I before?

We may not see the ways calming the body and mind, and bringing mindful awareness to our thoughts, words, and actions are making a difference. If we turn our attention to how we interact with others, we may notice distinct marks of change. Do we have more patience and understanding with the service folks who are on the other end of the phone or the drivers in other cars? One of the best barometers of our practice is our relationships with our family, friends, and coworkers. Have we transformed our own suffering enough to make a happy life? Are we in conflict with others, or able to express our authentic truth without blaming and judging? When we consider the whole of our lives, our interactions and being each day, what one word comes to mind? Is our attitude one of service and compassion or competition and defense? What are we bringing to ourselves and to the world each day?

This week on the driveway, I started to see more green shoots poking up. Now there are buds and my doubts have vanished. Buds become flowers. It’s the natural progression, the same way practicing centering our hearts and minds brings us peace and clarity. These things go together. Sometimes that progress is difficult to see, and our gardens may not look as beautiful as our neighbors, but if we practice and continue, it is unavoidable. We change. Today you may like to sit for a while and bring gratitude to yourself for your commitment to practicing, gratitude for the ways in which you’ve been diligent and worked to transform fear, judgment, and suffering in your life. This progress is truly a celebration, even if it’s only a single flower.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

special thanks to David Nelson for sharing this photo!

1 comment on The Patient Flower of Transformation
Radical Choice

April 9, 2019

#training the mind, Choice, habit patterns, Kindness, Reactivity, stopping, Uncategorized

Waterfall, Photo by Rick Errichetti

“During the Vietnam War I didn’t want to pay taxes that would be used to bomb villages, so I gave money to charity and lived on a poverty income. That was one of the best things I ever did.”

~Dr. Marshall Rosenberg, founder of Nonviolent Communication

“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

~Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

“’Others may be harmful, but I shall be harmless, thus should I train myself.’” We must not forget that the whole spirit of Buddhism is one of pacification. In the calm and placid atmosphere of the Buddha’s teaching there is every chance, every possibility, of removing hatred, jealousy and violence from our mind.”

~Ven. K. Piyatissa Thera

Dear Friends,

It’s tax season and many of us are fuming and grumbling that taxes are one area of life where there is no choice. Marshall Rosenberg, the founder of Nonviolent Communication recognized he had a choice about paying taxes. For most of us, it would seem radical to cut back our income so we don’t support violence and live in alignment with our values—but for some folks, it is a real possibility. Another radical was the Buddha whose teaching was all about choice: choice about what we believe, what we do, and the choice to remember that we are actually responsible for our thoughts, speech, and actions.

Most of us have been raised in a culture of “have to” and “should,” and taught to believe we do not have a choice because the more choiceless we are the more compliant we are. This is true on the collective and personal level. In our relationships we may believe we are powerless to change our habits, We may believe our thoughts; I can’t stop getting mad, that’s how I was raised, or No one cares what I think. I’ve learned to shut up and not make waves. When we abnegate our choice, we are giving away the power to create our own lives. In reality, we make choices all the time. Sometimes it is simpler to be a victim— because choice means that we have responsibility. Choice means we are accountable for our behavior, our thoughts, our speech, and our actions.

One of the areas that we have the most choice about is how we will perceive another. We can come from a reactive place where we return fire for fire, but this is not what the Buddha taught. In Buddhism, the purity and kindness of one’s mind is the highest treasure. How we perceive and how we treat others is a choice. We are the architects and owners of the anger and hatred in us. If we choose to train ourselves to be free from anger and ill will, no unkind act can provoke us.

In the Kakacupama Sutta: The Simile of the Saw The Buddha told his followers that they should guard their minds to hold onto kindness, even in the event that they are sawed apart by bandits, “…we shall remain full of concern and pity, with a mind of love, and we shall not give in to hatred. On the contrary, we shall live projecting thoughts of universal love to those very persons, making them as well as the whole world the object of our thoughts of universal love.” For most of us, training ourselves to hold onto a mind imbued with love even to the point of death seems impossible and even foolish. It certainly is a huge shift from our habit of reactivity that meets threat and violence with equal force.

An example of this call to radical responsibility is seen in an article from Tricycle magazine which recounts when the Dalai Lama’s “former chant master now severely crippled from many years of torture and imprisonment, [was] asked about the greatest danger he faced during incarceration. [He replied] ‘The danger of losing compassion for the Chinese guards and torturers.” Most of us thankfully will not be tested with extreme violence, but we will likely encounter unkind words. In this area, we also have a distinct choice of our response.

When we are the recipient of unkind and harsh words the Buddha counseled, “In any event, you should train yourselves: ‘Our minds will be unaffected and we will say no evil words. We will remain sympathetic to that person’s welfare, with a mind of good will, and with no inner hate. We will keep pervading him with an awareness imbued with good will and, beginning with him, we will keep pervading the all-encompassing world with an awareness imbued with good will … abundant, expansive, immeasurable, free from hostility, free from ill will.’ That’s how you should train yourselves.” (MN 21). Mindfulness gives us the awareness to recognize the possibility of choice.

For most of us, holding onto a beautifully free and kind mind while we are being berated, hearing hate speech, or being physically or verbally assaulted is advanced practice. This is the training of Nonviolence, and the example of Dr. King, Mahatma Gandhi, and Jesus Christ. A small way to begin on the path of non-reactivity and remembering choice is using a pause. The pause is an essential tool to re-align our bodies and minds with our true intentions. A simple space of three breaths can help. With the first breath, we can inhale and feel tension in the body, as we exhale, we can release tightness and fear from the body. With the second inhale, we can be present for our thoughts and the activity of our mind. As we exhale, we can remember that it’s ok to feel our feelings without letting them push us into acting. With the third inhale, we can be present for our true intention and as we exhale remind ourselves that we are worthy of our care and have a choice about our behavior.

Stopping and breathing may not give us the outcome we want, but it can help create more space and open our minds to choices that we can’t see when the mind is reactive and tight. Stopping and breathing can help us to see that the one we believe is the enemy is actually the one who is giving us the opportunity to become free.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

1 comment on Radical Choice
The Care and Feeding of Intention

April 2, 2019

Basic Goodness, Big mind, Busyness, Changing habit patterns, compassion, Creating intention, Detached Action, Good Heart, Mindfulness, Uncategorized

Biddeford, ME, Photo by Celia

“The quality or purity of any spiritual practice is determined by the individual’s intention and motivation.” ~ H.H. The Dalai Lama

“If you were at the end of your life looking back, what would matter about today?” ~Tara Brach

“Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well.” ~Mahatma Gandhi

Dear Friends,

More than twenty years ago, I was driving home from a writing class late at night. After years of creating my own business and being someone in the eyes of the world, I was overworked and unhappy and looking to change directions. I was searching for my path that would keep me from falling into the sea of nothingness, where I would flounder and let my life ebb away in meaningless flailing towards a new identity. The class was my floatation device. I remember that very unpleasant fear that if I gave up what I knew, even with all its stress and pain, reaching towards the unknown would be a worse—some sort of soulless, bland existence. Without putting a name to it, I was looking for something bigger than my business, bigger than my own self, I was looking for an intention.

I don’t remember the radio show I was listening to that night, but the topic was about creating a framework for your life—it was nothing new in the world, but new to me. Listening, the interviewees gave examples of big intentions. For example, if your life’s work was to bring beauty to the world, you could garden, paint, write a book, raise a child, become an environmental activist, all things in line with your intention, or life’s purpose. Up to that point, my life’s goal as a designer was to make enough money to live and to be respected—which was something I could not control. The respect and recognition I longed for would come from outside myself and gauging my worth according to my approval rating effectively gave away all my own power for happiness. I could see in my writing class that I was merely transferring this small goal to another discipline. My life’s work was not money or fame; it needed to transcend myself. As the poet, David Whyte writes, “Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn anyone or anything that doesn’t bring you alive is too small for you.” What I recognized was that I had mistaken the smallness of a goal for the intention of a lifetime.

There is a knowing in the body that resonates with a true intention. You can feel it—guaranteed. Getting 10,000 followers for your blog or find that one perfect partner and living a fairytale romance is not a true intention, but a mark of achievement. This is common in our culture that looks to financial success and power as the worthy aims of our lives. When we assign ourselves a task—even a noble one, such as raising children or reversing climate change, we can tend to focus on the outcome and transfer our habits of busyness and achieving onto a more wholesome scaffolding—but we can still be tied to our judgment and evaluations of how well we are accomplishing, still caught in desire for rewards and praise and lose touch with what connects us to our larger and more selfless nature.

A true intention must also be large enough to hold everyone we encounter, including ourselves. I can’t be passionate about clean water and air and ignore the suffering in my relationships that pollute my own life—that is not integrating my intention. My intention to be a presence of care for others must also encompass myself and my family. An intention to be peace cannot thrive in a house where there is fighting and hurt. Intentions do not overlook any relationship, any moment; they are a magical size that can enfold all experiences and conditions of life.

The Buddha is recorded as saying that all mindstates and mental qualities require food. In the Food Discourse, Ahara Sutta, SN 46.5, the Buddha described the nutriments that feed both the “skillful and unskillful, blameworthy and blameless, gross and refined.” There is a type of attention that feeds the desires of greed, anger, and the belief that I am separate from the world, and there is that the food that feeds the intentions that connect me to the truth of living in the temporary housing of a body that is part of a much larger interrelated world. The food the Buddha spoke of is the “appropriate attention” to the goodness that is arising and sensitivity to the experience of the wholesome when it is manifesting. Through attention to how we are already living in alignment without our intentions—and using this experience as our food to create energy and persistence, we nurture our own goodness and commitment through appreciating our own efforts. In short—we strengthen our own commitment through experiencing our own good heart.

For a while now, I have had the intention to be a presence of care in each moment, for myself and others. This is a big intention and one that can sound theoretical and live in the mind. When we commit to our intention, there is an inquiry into sustaining it—giving it the necessary nutriments to keep it alive. We also notice what starves our intention. In my experience, there is nothing so deadly as time pressure to make me forget my true purpose.

When we are rushing and filled with deadlines, the world can become very small. We forget we are connected to others. In my life, I know that more I am rushing, when others are an obstacle instead of an opportunity, I lose my intention. Intention is made of Attention. One simple thing I do each day is to recall my intention. When the Buddha used the word remembering, sati [mindfulness], his message was that through remembering the path to liberation and the four steps leading out of suffering, we all could become ennobled. Our worth was not determined by birth, but through the goodness of our actions, our thoughts, and words…and the way we made ourselves noble was by remembering how much choice and power we do have over our habitual thoughts and actions. So, remembering our larger intention is a daily practice.

Peace activist and Buddhist teacher Donald Rothberg suggests writing out intention on a piece of paper and looking at it before a meeting or having a difficult conversation. Some days, I have written my intention on my arm in pen and am contemplating a tattoo, but things keep changing, don’t they? This week you may want to consider your larger intention in the world. Ask yourself, what is the thing that brings me alive? Leaning back into the gifts of the ancestors, the kindness we have received in our lives, the wisdom teachings, what do we want to continue and bring forth into the future to bless ours and other’s lives? How do we make our beautiful dreams into the scaffolding of our lives? If your intention is to bring healing to the world, how are you manifesting that towards yourself? Towards this moment? Are we willing to nourish our intention with appreciation for the moments that our intention is manifesting? Aligning our work, and our life with our truth and intention that can infuse the whole of our lives with purpose and the nourishment of appreciation gives us strength to continue.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

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Dharma Dog

March 11, 2019

Acceptance, Changing habit patterns, compassion, Dependent origination, Self-view, Uncategorized

Lilly and Daisy. Photo by Celia

“Dogs are our link to paradise. They don’t know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring–it was peace.” ~Milan Kundera

“If you can sit quietly after difficult news;

if in financial downturns you remain perfectly calm;

if you can see your neighbors travel to fantastic places without a twinge of jealousy;

if you can happily eat whatever is put on your plate;

if you can fall asleep after a day of running around without a drink or a pill;

if you can always find contentment just where you are:

you are probably a dog.”

~Jack Kornfield

“There never yet has been a dog

Who learned to double cross,

Nor catered to you when you won

Then dropped you when you lost.”

~Mary Hale

Dear friends,

Some days wouldn’t you rather be a dog? Life would be so simple. Dogs don’t worry much about what comes next, or how to be a better dog. There is no complex examination of morality or conflicted intention in action because clearly, if you are smaller than I am, you are to be chased and if you are larger than I am, you are to be chased. Not much scheduling or planning—car’s broken, oh well, let’s eat something and have a nap. Pretty much all unpleasantness in a dog’s life arises because of external conditions since dogs do not have a sense of self like you and I. It is this profound difference that creates so much trouble for us humans and can make us our most painful companions.

Last week a friend told me the teaching story of farmers looking out at their fields in April. If they think of everything that needs to happen between spring and harvest, their heads would pop off. I could really relate. Just trying to keep my life on schedule brings me dukkha of planning. Mixed into this adventure is the fear of making a mistake (FOMAM). The mistakes I am speaking of will not result in an oil spill, a train wreck, or a bridge collapsing, but they are painful and inconvenient for me and those who are waiting for me to show up.

I am looking into this unpleasantness through the lens of the system of causation the Buddha set forth, the twelve links of Dependent Origination. This is a complex and accurate map of how we get stuck in repeating behavior from the past in the present moment and creating our future. This simplest description of this web of cause and effect is from Thich Nhat Hanh, “this is because that is.” Looking into what “that is” can take us through past experiences, to see how we recreate our habits, our longings, and addictions and perpetuate the view of who we believe we are.

Last week, I was fifteen minutes late to a school meeting and forgot a phone meeting, both on the same day. These two missteps have stuck with me much more than all the things I did right on that same day, including arriving at two other meetings on time with traveling over an hour each way. This propensity to dwell on mistakes is part of our natural negativity bias. A useful trait for the continuation of the species, this innate evolutionary function emphasizes the unpleasant or painful in order to instill avoidance of events and situations that can bring us suffering. I see this bias in the view that glosses over all the ways I was organized and on-time that day.

Negativity bias pulls us into auto-pilot mode and adds fuel to the self-critical voice, and to our doubt and reactivity. Instead of focusing on our ability to meet the challenges in our lives, we hone in on the mistakes, the imperfections which may lead us to believe and cling to these roles as flawed or wrong. As we respond to these self-imposed labels, we either push against them (I don’t want to be the late one) or we embrace them (I am happy to be the responsible one). They can last for a few moments, or for a lifetime, bringing with them a tangle of views and behaviors to solidify or purge these traits.

In his astonishingly comprehensive book, The Foundations of Buddhism, Rupert Gethin (1998) describes the mind which mistakes biological responses to life for a personality as “merely an underlying mass of ever-changing causes and conditions, arising and falling, but which none the less, as it flows on, maintains a certain pattern which gives it the appearance of relative identity” (p. 246). When we believe we are what we think we are, we repeatedly take birth in our self-view. Each time I am late, I can further reinforce my belief, I am flaky—or each time I am on time, I could reinforce the idea that I am punctual, but even a pleasant identity will also cause pain on the day I get stuck in traffic. And being late will go against the identity I want to present, to be seen as competent, mistake-proof, reliable, as someone who lives up to their promises. So, we can see that all of these labels will eventually cause us the pain of trying to live up to them, or the pain of trying to run away from them.

This week, you may like to try this exercise, to list all of our self-views, all the good and the bad: compassionate, cruel, aggressive, patient, intelligent, slow, generous, selfish, all the ways we limit and evaluate our behavior. We tend to reward and punish ourselves based on these views. Consider what would it be like to have the same amount of acceptance and caring for ourselves when we have disappointing labels as the good ones? Can we stretch our compassion to include all of our existence without exclusion and offer ourselves to ourselves even when we make a mistake? I wonder if this is the secret of dogs? To not be sad about what we did last week and to not know how to withhold our love.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

Calligraphy by Thich Nhat Hanh

Reference

Gethin, R. (1998). The foundations of Buddhism. Oxford, New York: Oxford Press.

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Stuck in the Mud

March 4, 2019

Aversion#, compassion, Hindrances, Mindfulness of feelings, Non-attachment, Not taking ourselves so seriously, suffering, Uncategorized

“‘But what, friends, is the reason, what the cause, why unarisen aversion arises, or arisen aversion tends to growth & abundance?’ ‘The theme of irritation,’ it should be said. ‘For one who attends inappropriately to the theme of irritation, unarisen aversion arises and arisen aversion tends to growth & abundance.…’” ~ Sectarians
Titthiya Sutta (AN 3:69)

“Aversion, my friend, makes you blind, makes you sightless, makes you ignorant. It brings about the cessation of discernment, is conducive to trouble, and does not lead to Unbinding.” ~Channa Sutta (AN 3:72)

“They, superlative people, put out the fire of aversion
with good will.” ~Iti 93

all translations by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Marsh in winter. Photo by Celia

Dear Friends,

There’s a phenomenon that plagues all practitioners from time to time—it lessens as we progress along the path, but it’s a sticky thing and can catch us unaware. I am going to call it getting stuck in the mud. I had one of those muddy days last week where even before I opened my eyes my thoughts were brimming with the injustice of how others were making my life hard. The wrongness of this ate at me and as I opened emails, I saw brusqueness and blame and fights to be fought. Everything was irritating: My spouse was impatient and vexatious. The cats were quarreling. My son moped like a dejected prophet and wouldn’t accept vegetables in his lunch. The news was particularly distressing, hate crimes were up and the British labor party had split over overt anti-Semitism and bullying in the party. The world was going to hell and I was ticked off.

The only one who wasn’t irritating me was the dog sleeping on the floor. Even my meditation seemed pointless to help with these big problems of the world. And—I was supposed to be peaceful and happy, which made another thing wrong. But I didn’t want to feel better; I wanted to be miserable. I was right to be miserable because things were miserable. In short, I had jumped into the mud pit of vexation and aversion and was stomping around in it.

It was still morning and already I was tired of myself and this mood, but I was in it, victimized and defended. Aversion sat victoriously upon my chest, like a pugnacious toddler in a dirty diaper, stinking and drooling. I felt irritable and knew that this mind-state would lead to even more suffering as the day wore on.

I decided if I was in this hell-realm, I was going to really do it right and jump in with both feet. I would make a list of all the things that were the source of my irritation starting with the dent in my car, the cat’s mysterious dandruff, the medication my health insurance wouldn’t cover, the neighbor who thinks I am odd, the meeting that didn’t get rescheduled because of snow, the never-ending winter, this wind that’s threatening to bash in the door. The list went on and by the time I got to the oligarchy in America—my aversion had changed. I could see that I was hating the whole kitchen sink of events, and they were stupendously uncontrollable. As the weight of the list got heavier and more unwieldy, I began to see my aversion as just plain aversion. In fact, I was smiling as I contemplated me complaining loudly against the litany of wrong in the world.

deer footprint in snow

Ajahn Sumedho (2014), a senior Thai Forest monk writes about falling into this pit of aversion and becoming very righteous and indignant. He suggests we “bring it up into conscious form, where you can see it, make it absurd, and when you have a perspective on it, and it gets quite amusing. You can see what comedy is about!” (pp. 44-45). My list of irritations was not going away, or trivial, like climate change, they were difficult and challenging conditions created from ignorance, fear, and delusion, but when I saw them all heaped up on the scale—the enormity of my judgment was what was causing the pain and coloring my view of everything.

Instead of suppressing aversion, the permission to let it be, allowed it to flower into a mass of ridiculousness. It does become funny when we can stop pushing back against the aversion and believing it—stop taking our likes and dislikes so seriously that they pull us into reactivity and stop us from being able to see clearly—and they rob us of all the enjoyment and potential to act with wisdom and discernment at this moment.

Being able to look at aversion separates it from the unconscious belief that we are the aversion and gives us the necessary space to observe our choices. Caring for our irritation means we stop fighting against it—we stop the internal conflict that judges the judgment and creates more suffering. This is an act of loving kindness—of metta. Not accepting ourselves in this less than ideal state and always wanting to be loving and cheery is what Ajahn Sumedho calls “impractical idealism” (p. 34) that leads us to the punishing judgment of being a “good Buddhist” (p. 33). We can use our caring attention to contact the aversion and as Sumedho advises, “Have metta for the aversion you feel, for the pettiness of mind, the jealousy, envy, meaning peaceful coexisting, not creating problems out of the difficulties that arise in life, within our minds and bodies” (p. 35). The difficulties don’t stop—but we stop going to war with what is difficult. Sometimes things are painful and feel bad and knowing it, making peace, and laughing at our seriousness and the sticky righteousness of our unpleasant and grumpy thoughts is as good as it gets right now.

Maybe you have never visited the aversion pit, or maybe you can always get out easily—maybe painful feelings and judging don’t catch you up—lucky you! But if you find yourself stuck in the mud, please remember sometimes letting ourselves roll around in it is enough to get us free.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

Reference

Sumedho, A. (2014). The seeds of understanding: The ajahn Sumedho anthology. Hertfordshire, UK: Amaravati Publications.

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The Transformational Practice of Tonglen

February 25, 2019

Bodhicitta, Buddhism, Tonglen, Transforming emotions, Uncategorized

Buddha under glass. Photo by Celia

When you are suffering, you become more understanding about yourself, but also about other people’s sufferings too. That’s the first step to understand somebody is to understand their sufferings. So then love follows. ~Yoko Ono

Empathy is the faculty to resonate with the feelings of others. When we meet someone who is joyful, we smile. When we witness someone in pain, we suffer in resonance with his or her suffering. ~Matthieu Ricard

Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive. ~ H.H. The Dalai Lama

Dear Friends,

There’s a lot to like in Buddhism, the potential of finding total enlightenment, the reliance upon oneself and the trust in our own ability to make changes and free ourselves. I also enjoy the richness from the three limbs of Buddhism, Theravadin (the teaching of the elders), Zen, and Tibetan Vajrayana. Within each branch of Buddhism, there are sub-schools, different traditions, each with a slightly different flavor depending upon the lineage. One Pure Land monk described these diverse traditions as flowers in a bouquet, each one with its own beauty and fragrance, each offering a unique and distinct gift. And while I am not immersed in the Tibetan school of practice, I’ve had the good fortune to be introduced to a practice that I’ve relied on throughout the years when things get really tough. It’s the practice of Tonglen or sending and taking. What is so useful about Tonglen, is that you can practice it on the spot, in an emergency, or what feels like an emergency.

This winter, my son was missing school due to stomach pain. At first, we believed it was a virus, but after weeks he wasn’t improving. On the advice of our general practitioner, I booked an appointment with a Pediatric Gastroenterologist. Where I live, these specialists are pretty rare, and the first appointment I could get was for three weeks away at 8:30 am, on a weekday in Hartford, CT. I consulted my “maps” app, which told me it was 34 miles from home. To be safe, I estimated an hour’s drive.

The day finally came for our appointment and as we got into the car, I opened my app and saw the estimated travel time was an hour and a half. How could that be? I found out why as I sat and waited in the line of cars while the traffic light turned red for the third time; I was aware of the burn of adrenalin in my forearms and an infusion of frustration and anger. I felt absolutely helpless caught in this traffic. I couldn’t speak to a human at the doctor’s office; I kept getting an answering service; I couldn’t turn around. I was stuck. I believed I had failed my son and this time screw-up made me furious with myself. Why hadn’t I checked the night before? Why hadn’t I asked someone or known better?

I did my best to breathe and to remember my intention to be a presence of care of each moment, but my mind was churning. I wanted to be airlifted above this clogged morning commute and escape. The pain of my judgment and the physical sensations of helplessness and panic was making my trip a hell-realm. I told myself, “this feels terrible; I don’t know what to do,” and in that moment I remembered Tonglen.

I breathed in with all the tension in my body and mind, feeling this crunch of expectation and disappointment and breathed out the wish for ease and spaciousness. I breathed in again and felt the helplessness, the fear that I was going to miss this appointment, the doubt that I wouldn’t be able to care for my son, the binding frustration of being held in this line of traffic and breathed out understanding for the situation, the tender recognition that I care, and forgiveness for what I didn’t know. Then I widened my practice to include all the people in this world of more than 7 billion who, just like me, felt frustrated and blamed themselves. I breathed in with all the parents who were afraid that they couldn’t relieve their child’s suffering, felt the shared anger and disappointment, the feeling of injustice and hopelessness. I breathed out a breath of deep peace for all these people caught, just as I was, in situations we could not control. Breathing in I took in our shared pain and with each out-breath, I sent us all the wish for capacity to bear discomfort, forgiveness, and dispassion.

When I did this, I could become the witness to this experience, as well as the one who was in it. I knew that even though this moment felt so out of control and uncomfortable, it was a moment of shared experience and I was capable of transforming these emotions, no matter how fierce or unwanted. After practicing for a few minutes, I breathed in and accepted the pain of those who were suffering from this same frustration and feeling lost. I willingly breathed in the feeling of anger, hopelessness, and despair so others would not have to feel these things. Taking on their suffering and transforming it, I breathed out, sending all those who were in a panic, late, feeling frazzled and in trouble, peace, deep contentment, and non-fear.

This is the practice of Tonglen in action that moves us from victimhood, experiencing suffering as uniquely our, and connects us to all those who are suffering just like us. Tonglen reminds us of the impersonal nature of suffering and develops our compassion and bodhicitta—our Buddha nature and awakened loving heart.

The practice is simple, recognizing our pain, or the pain of another person and breathing in experiencing that discomfort, noticing the feeling, color, taste, and particulars of that suffering and breathing out the antidote to that poison. In this vast world, there must be a few other people feeling what we are feeling right now—it could be boredom, ill-health, grief, fear, or rage. We can know these emotions and breath them in with those who, just like us, are suffering. When we breathe out, we can offer them and ourselves the cooling intention of relief.

As we continue to practice, we can develop some more capacity to move through our own suffering and we can offer this practice exclusively for others by breathing in their anxiety, discomfort, and confusion, willing ourselves to take on these painful states to save others from suffering. Breathing out we offer the benefit of our merit and give them the fruits of our practice, our peace, happiness, and stillness—freely given to save others from future suffering.

Back in my car, practicing Tonglen, I recognized that maybe I would have to re-schedule, but it wasn’t the crisis that I was manufacturing. Tonglen isn’t a magic bullet, but it can transform our understanding of our situation and bring compassion to our actions. When we breathe in and recognize all those we share this moment with, we are no longer alone, or helpless. We become agents of our own well being and active participants in the wellbeing of all those on this planet who are caught, just as we are.

That day, we were 40 minutes late and we still got to see the doctor. I had gratitude for the understanding of the staff and for this practice that helped me transform pain and open my heart to all of our suffering. This week, please give this a try—you don’t have to have a crisis to start. Tonglen is as accessible as an inhale and an exhale and can join us to all those around the world, reestablish our sovereignty, and reconnect us with our true intention to live with kindness for ourselves and others.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

For a deeper guided experience with Tonglen, click here for writing from Roshi Joan Halifax.

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