Celia Landman

The Monastery of Family Life

February 18, 2019

Awakening where we are, compassion, Everyday mindfulness, Families, Householders, Making our practice our own, Uncategorized

Stream in winter. Photo by Rick Errichetti

“Each person is different. Freedom does not come by imitating others.” ~ Ajahn Chah

“You may not be perfect, but you are all you’ve got to work with. The process of becoming who you will be begins first with the total acceptance of who you are.” ~ Bhante Gunaratana

“Live your life. Do the dishes. Do the laundry. Take your kids to kindergarten. Raise your children or grandchildren. Take care of the community in which you live. Make all that your path and follow your path with heart.” ~ Dipa Ma

“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity” ~ Albert Einstein

Dear Friends,

We are imperfect and relationships don’t follow rules. Families and children can create unimagined tests of patience and endurance. Our lives can become consumed and seemingly hi-jacked by the urgent needs of another and we are left feeling like a shell of ourselves, all our desires thwarted. And this is the monastery of family life.

The hardest role I have in my life and the one that has taught me the most about love, renunciation, diligence, humility, and equanimity is parenthood. Meditation teacher and psychologist, Jack Kornfield writes “Parenting is a labor of love. It’s a path of service and surrender and, like the practice of a Buddha or a bodhisattva, it demands patience and understanding and tremendous sacrifice.” A great part of this sacrifice is learning to let go over and over. Before my kids were born, I thought I was calm and freed from much of my reactivity—then I had kids and my enlightenment date got pushed way back. How could these small people, turn me from a mellow sage into a neurotic parent I would not want to sit next to on a bus?

Our culture is driven by success. We want to look like we are able to cope with our lives, but sometimes our children can provide us with challenges that we cannot overcome. My first child had colic, which meant she cried about seven hours a day and woke up many times during the night. If my success and happiness as a new mother was measured by my ability to soothe my child—I was a terrible failure. If my daughter was born twenty years earlier, I would have read about letting her cry and not picking her up. But she was born in the time of attachment parenting and I read that the best, kindest thing to do was to pick up the baby whenever she cried. So that’s what I did, with the result of being exhausted and totally resentful and she didn’t stop crying. When she was older, I was advised to parent according to the Myers Briggs personality traits and be firm and decisive with her, set strong limits and distance myself. Whenever I followed the directions from a book written by experts, it hurt my heart. Instructions written by someone who never met me didn’t allow for my own authentic way of relating and I ended up feeling like a fraud.

Our brain’s ability to analyze can pull us into the path of self-doubt where we distrust our own instinct and abandon our internal sense of truth for the cookie-cutter actions of experts. We are flooded with self-help books from experts in all fields. We have been told to eat like a Mediterranean, a Californian, and a cave-person. I’ve lost track or what we’re supposed to eat; I believe food is out and we are supposed to subsist on Kombucha. We can get seduced by the world of pretend perfection and invulnerability we see on social media. The beautiful houses and the how-to blogs can create the obsession of correctness and competency. There’s the expression, “fake it ‘till you make it,” meaning to just do the thing to create the habit and confidence to make it our own behavior. But what if we fake it and it stays fake?

What I came to embrace in parenting is the practice of authenticity and respect—of looking into my own heart and letting my children know how their actions affected me. I stopped being a superior being exercising my legitimate authority and set my intention to care for me and for them without sacrificing either of us on the altar of social approval. I learned to pause and sense my body and emotions before responding. I would ask my kids how they would handle the situation if they were the parent. I didn’t become an equal or a friend. I became someone who respected themselves and allowed themselves to make mistakes because I trust that we can figure it out. We are designed as a species to be in relationship and when we make missteps we can have the confidence in our ability to make repairs.

Monastics entering the life of renunciation learn to give up comforts and to endure hardship, not sleeping, living in arduous conditions and often being in contact with those who they would rather avoid. Renunciation is also part of parenting. There is the relinquishment of sleep, comforts, projects and plans, showering and preferences. Parenthood anchors the focus of attention on a small helpless being. When we learn to see that householder life can be a pathway to practice, we learn to stop trying to make it free from pain and let it teach us how to stay with grace in the midst of pain and things that aren’t the way we would choose. Zen poet Gary Synder wrote, “It is as hard to get children herded into the carpool and down the road to the bus as it is to chant sutras in the Buddha Hall on a cold morning. One is not better than another. Each can be quite boring. They both have the virtuous quality of repetition.”

Weekdays, I wake before sunrise and begin my sandwich meditation—this includes waking my teenaged son up, waking him up again, making his lunch—seeing he has something in his stomach before ejecting him from the house so he can meet his bus. I feed two cats and two dogs, clean two litter boxes, wash some dishes, drink coffee and then sit in meditation. I have a choice. I can think about everything I do before sitting meditation as an obstacle, or I can see all my actions as a continuous stream of meditation. When I look at my life without compartmentalizing, my everyday acts transcend the mundane and become acts of devotion. All of our life can be an act of dedication and respect for ourselves, our time and talents, and for those close to us.

This week, I invite you to look at your routine and roles in a new light, as sacred acts. How much love is in our hands as we clean the toilet, or put gas into the car? Can we know the end of suffering as we pet a cat or wash our hair? Can we respect all of our time and leave nothing out? There are no throwaway experiences or times when we are off the clock of practice. The Buddha directed his monks to have clear comprehension and awareness when sitting, standing, walking, putting on robes, using the bathroom—in short, paying attention with the same amount of care, to all of our lives, even what isn’t formal practice. With attention and respect—doing the dishes, folding laundry, tending our lives—it is all a path to awakening.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

2 comments on The Monastery of Family Life
A True Gift

February 12, 2019

Happiness, love, Loving Kindness, Metta, Uncategorized

Bison in Yellowstone National Park. Photo by Joaquin Carral

“Love is trembling happiness.”
~ Kahlil Gibran

“Love is a condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”
~ Robert Heinlein

“When we feel love and kindness toward others, it not only makes others feel loved and cared for, but it helps us also to develop inner happiness and peace.”
~ H. H. The Dalai Lama

Dear Friends,

We live in a culture obsessed and mesmerized by romantic love, the idea that there is a perfect, or at least acceptable, someone that will love and support us as we go through life, age, and show the inescapable results of gravitational pull. They will be there for us when we lose our shiny luster and are held together with tape and stretch fabric. But mostly, they will make us happy—or at least give it a good try.

Culturally we celebrate romantic love this week with the observance of Valentine’s Day. Some folks think this holiday is nothing more than a money-making endeavor of card sellers, candy-hawkers, and flower-peddlers, capable of creating emotional damage for children who are excluded and adults who feel more alone on this day. For those who are coupled, it can be akin to extortion, expected by their partner to get a gift—a good one—and are judged and blamed if they don’t come through.

Not a big surprise that in Buddhism, unlike Hollywood, romantic love is not the highest pursuit. The Buddha was an exceptional realist who understood that this singular love, that seeks to discriminate and exclude, will bring pain. The Buddha taught that whatever is dear to us, will cause us to suffer and become distraught when we encounter those we love in distress. Holding someone dear will always bring pain when there is change and impermanence. It may seem surprising that the Buddha also taught about the benefits of holding ourselves dear.

In The Rajan Sutta: The King, both King Pasenadi Kosala and his wife, Queen Mallikā, have the realization that in all the world, they love themselves the best. This may seem at odds with Buddhist ideals that our life’s goal is to be of service and the idea of self-cherishing sinks the raft we are taking to the other shore, but there it is. The Buddha gave his endorsement of this insight, noting that self-cherishing leads directly to cherishing others, “Searching all directions with your awareness, you find no one dearer than yourself. In the same way, others are thickly dear to themselves. So you shouldn’t hurt others if you love yourself” (Ud 5.1, Thanissaro trans.) If we hold our own life to be a gift of great worth, we can see that it is the same for others. Finding our own worth and goodness allows us to see that in others, who just like me want happiness.

I had an experience with this teaching a few years ago on retreat at Blue Cliff Monastery. It was a melting hot August. There was a group of Korean nuns visiting from a university to study the propagation of Buddhism in the West. Dressing in their immaculate, crisp grey linen robes, they seemed cool and immune to the stultifying humidity. For one evening’s activity, I was paired with one of the nuns for an exercise on mindful speech and deep listening. Perhaps because her English was limited and we were both taking care to communicate authentically, we shared a rare depth of understanding and appreciation in a short amount of time. As we ended our communication for the night, returning to silence, we bowed to each other and she said, “I will pray for your happiness always.” This is one of the most generous and beautiful things anyone has offered me—and I know it is not personal.

It is her practice to pray for the happiness of everyone and yet being told that I was one of those deserving of her prayers for happiness has stayed with me. This simple phrase was so meaningful and humbling, knowing that another person cared enough to act to bring about my happiness. This meant more to me than the declaration that I was loved—which is a one-sided statement. The willingness to let another know their intrinsic worth is a supreme gift that incorporates dana, [generosity] and metta [non-discriminatory love]. It enobles both the giver and the receiver, creates beautiful kamma [action] and keeps giving. To me, this is the best Valentine’s gift, letting someone know they are worthy of happiness and working to bring it about.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

1 comment on A True Gift
Life Contains Death

February 4, 2019

Dying,, karma, Unavoidable nature of death, Uncategorized

Thich Nhat Hanh, 2013. Photo by Celia

“Someday when we die, we will lose all our possessions, our power, our family, everything. Our freedom, peace, and joy in the present moment is the most important thing we have. But without an awakened understanding of impermanence, it is not possible to be happy.”

~ Thich Nhat Hanh, No Death No Fear

“Impermanence is, in fact, just another name for perfection. Leaves fall; debris and garbage accumulate; out of the debris come flowers, greenery, things that we think are lovely. Destruction is necessary. A good forest fire is necessary. The way we interfere with forest fires may not be a good thing. Without destruction, there could be no new life; and the wonder of life, the constant change, could not be. We must live and die. And this process is perfection itself.”

~ Charlotte J. Beck, Everyday Zen

“Watering the seeds of happiness is a very important practice for the sick or dying. All of us have seeds of happiness inside us, and in difficult moments when we are sick or when we are dying, there should be a friend sitting with us to help us touch the seeds of happiness within. Otherwise, seeds of fear, of regret or of despair can easily overwhelm us.”

~ Thich Nhat Hanh, No Death No Fear

Dear Friends,

I hope you are well and weathering the weather this winter. This season is long and can feel like it’s never ending—but as we know, all things begin and end. One of the reasons I find Buddhism so supportive is because it is so practical and honest about endings—specifically death, ours and everyone else’s. We all know that everything that takes life will one day die. This is a very unpopular part of living. In the U.S. we expect to get our 78.6 years as promised. We don’t see death as a natural, unavoidable part of life. In popular culture, death is seen as somehow not only unfair but avoidable if we play our cards right and eat, exercise and take our meds. This wasn’t always the case. Before funeral homes and embalmment, death was something that happened at home, with family. It was met with ritual and community sharing grief and loss as naturally as sharing the celebration of birth.

In the time of the Buddha, death was out in the open and 2,600 years later in India, death continues to be center stage. It is not uncommon to see funeral processions and bodies carried through the streets to the burning ghats. One of the contemplations the Buddha gave repeatedly is to meditate on death and the parts of the body. Monks still visit the equivalent of the charnel grounds in Asia and reflect on the process of dissolution and decomposition. In Tibet, children are taught that everyone they encounter will have suffering and death. This teaching helps to develop compassion for each person. Developing a familiarity with death allows us to touch the poignancy of living in impermanent bodies. We touch the shared pain and vulnerability that comes from the death of those we love and the collective fear of losing our own existence.

Just as we see in nature, the constant fluid shift of season and change, death is transformation. Death does not mean we stop and become nothing. Thich Nhat Hanh, in No Death No Fear, reminds us that we are subject to natural laws, specifically, the first law of thermodynamics. This principle of life states that energy can become matter and matter can become energy, both are transient, but they cannot be destroyed or annihilated. In the same way, we are always becoming.

When we leave this lifetime, we leave the marks of our actions, our karma as our legacy. Buddhist practice recommends that the dying person have the chance to hear how their good actions contributed to life. This is an opportunity for caretakers to tell the dying about the ways they have made a difference. The reminder of one’s own goodness helps folks die without regrets and the fear they have wasted this lifetime.

One of the most famous Buddhist teachings on death is the story of Kisagotami an impoverished and disrespected woman who bore a son and earned the esteem of her in-laws. When the boy died from an accident, she went mad with grief. She carried her dead son with her asking everyone she could for medicine to cure him. When she encountered the Buddha, he promised to give her medicine to cure her son if she could bring him a mustard seed—something as common as a grain of salt—from a house that had never known death. As Kisagotami knocked on door after door receiving the answer that ‘yes, this house knew death,’ the realization of the impersonal and inescapable nature of death restored her to a clear mind. She was able to recognize the truth of death and release her son. She uttered the words, “It’s not just a truth for one village or town, Nor is it a truth for a single family. But for every world settled by gods [and men] This indeed is what is true — impermanence” (ThigA 10.1, Olendzki trans.).

Recognizing death puts our lives into perspective. When we realize that each person we encounter will die—just as we will, that knowledge can profoundly change how we interact with those around us. Those who have terminal diagnoses recognize this. And we all have a terminal diagnosis—we just don’t know our expiration date. Mindfulness of death promotes, samvega [spiritual urgency]. It also produces compassion to know that each person we meet, the lovely ones, AND the irritating, abrasive ones are subject to impermanence. Recognition of death is also a call to show our authentic caring for others. Rather than hesitate from fear, we can practice communicating our love and appreciation while we are here now. We learn not to hold back for someday since events and circumstances may never be more perfect than this minute.

One way to be with this recognition of death is to practice the awareness that everyone you meet today will one day die. This simple reminder can make a big difference in our day. The disappointments and desires to achieve or be seen a certain way may take a back-seat to being present with people right now. The awareness of transience in all things can be a way to access this teaching in a gentle way. Noticing how all things, animate and inanimate constantly break down and rebuild, take life and decline, can help us see the inherent naturalness of this change. As we learn to stay and be a presence of compassion at each moment, we create the solidity and presence to look at death without fear. We can learn to trust that we are strong enough to bear all that life has to offer and in not turning away, we gain freedom and the joy of living an authentic, courageous life.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

3 comments on Life Contains Death
Can Anger be Love?

January 21, 2019

Activism, Awareness, Buddhism, Ending hatred, non-violence, racism, Uncategorized

Cliffside, Barre, MA, photo by Celia

“I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.”

“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’”

“Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.”

All quotes, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Dear friends,

On the eve of Martin Luther King Day, we collectively celebrate the life that included a fierce commitment to compassion and dignity for all people. We also recognize that Dr. King was leading people to a social revolution in a society unwilling to recognize justice and equality. Dr. King brought the eyes of the world to see the unlivable reality of being black in a white world. He did this without firing a single bullet, but through non-violent action which removes hatred from our hearts. That was the teaching of love Dr. King brought to an America incapable of receiving his message without fear. His murder and death are part of the American legacy of violence, continued fear, and discrimination against people of color. This Monday we have a collective reminder of the promise of the beloved community, where all people are considered, and an opportunity to mourn Dr. King’s dream that is still beyond the reach of our American reality.

Dr. King understood that aggression and violence lead to more violence. Violence may serve as a justification to oppressors to continue their domination and persecutions and violence and aggression continue the fire of hatred. This is the fire that can only be quenched through a radically different approach. We’ve seen the power dynamics of warring countries. Conflicts can last for generations with one side oppressing the other, then shifting power so the other becomes the oppressor. This is a continuous cycle of ignorance and violence without end.

The Buddha’s words always categorize anger as unwholesome, consistently associated with hatred and ill-will and always an obstacle to spiritual progress. Bhikkhu Bhodi told me that anger is a “wrong motivation” and Buddhist teacher and activist Donald Rothberg states when anger and hatred are at the base of intention, the resulting action and kamma will be harmful to self and others. We know from our own experience that when we act in anger—we are at a deficit and the best part of our brain is unavailable due to the increased amount of cortisol and adrenalin, starving off the full engagement of our prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that is responsible for compassion, wisdom, and can discern consequence.

While unchecked anger is without question dangerous to our relationships and clear thinking, anger does have a place in our emotional life. This single interpretation of anger as a vehicle for actions rooted in hatred, vengeance, and the desire to harm another may not be the whole story. The Dalai Lama and Donald Rothberg consider the terms “afflictive emotions,” “ill will or hatred,” to be more accurate translations for the Pali word “kodha” which is commonly listed as anger. An action rooted in hatred is always harmful–but anger can serve us.

When we understand the usefulness of anger, we can see it as energy and information. The Western view of anger is more nuanced, ranging from outright retaliatory rage to a feeling of moral grievance at the ill-treatment of the weak. Rothberg writes that anger in the ancient Greek world and in the West is seen “as an appropriate response to what is socially inappropriate, immoral, or unjust.” Anger can be used as the fuel for action in social justice actions. In the struggle for India’s independence, the US Civil Rights movement, and Catholic worker movement, anger does not result in ill-will but catalyzed marginalized groups to act with non-violence and seek to liberate both the oppressors and the oppressed.

Anger sends the clear message that something is wrong and needs our attention and can be the sustenance to create an organization that uses civil disobedience to save lives. Anger at injustice may be what love feels like. Looking at the intention beneath the action there is the desire to protect and defend life and to change what is intolerable to live with. When we know how to be with anger, not to allow it to bring us into hatred, or cause pain, but when we can hold our anger with care and understanding, we can use it as the fuel for change.

In the Dhammapada, a poetic interpretation of the Buddha’s teaching from Francis Story reads, “Not by hating hatred ceases. In this world of tooth and claw; Love alone from hate releases —This is the Eternal Law.” (Dhp Verse 5). This same idea is expressed by Dr. King when he said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” It was the commitment to love without exception that made revolutionaries like the Buddha, Dr. King, Mahatma Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela create revolutions that change not only the power structure but also free the oppressors from the continuous damage of perpetuating hate and discrimination. Guided by wisdom and non-preferential love, we can make wise choices towards loving others—even those who perpetuate the cycle of abuse and hatred. Treating our anger with respect and consideration, we can use the information to act with fierce compassion, just as Dr. King taught—because we are not free until all of us are free.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

2 comments on Can Anger be Love?
Opening the Channels to Life

January 13, 2019

Awareness, Big mind, Buddhism, Gift to self, Retreat, stopping, Things as they are, Uncategorized

Buddha Cliff, Photo by Celia

“If I were to tell you that your life is already perfect, whole, and complete just as it is, you would think I was crazy. Nobody believes his or her life is perfect. And yet there is something within each of us that basically knows we are boundless, limitless.”

“As long as you’re capable of becoming annoyed, you can be sure something will annoy you.”

“Enlightenment is not something you achieve. It is the absence of something. All your life you have been going forward after something, pursuing some goal. Enlightenment is dropping all that.”

~ All quotes from Charlotte Joko Beck, Zen Master

Dear Friends,

Happy New Year. I wish you much delight and ease as you continue caring for yourselves and others in 2019. For the past four years, I’ve taken time off from my life during the busyness of the holidays to disengage from the pattern of my regular life and spend time on retreat in silence, listening to myself.

Retreat is a precious gift we can give to ourselves, a time of giving permission to slow down and to pay attention to things we normally don’t notice. We can take our time to chew each mouthful off food and reflect on our great good fortune to have food, especially when it is made with care and skill. During retreat, we can let go of plans and allow ourselves to be surprised and delighted by the weather since we have nowhere to go and nothing to do. And we do not have to have an opinion about the weather.

This time away, I had the opportunity to re-connect with the beauty of the forest, the green starbursts of mosses and streams flowing under thin glazings of ice. What I noticed was that my attention became wider. I could sit and listen to the rain and the wind, or go outside at night and look at the stars. In stillness and quiet, with an unhurried mind, the gifts of the universe are available to us.

Thinking about the sensitivity and receptivity while on retreat contrasted with daily worldly life, the difference is clear. On retreat, we are invested in being and in the world we are invested in doing. To my mind, it’s like a sea sponge—a filter feeder whose pores are open to all the nutrient-rich content of the ocean. At our most still, we are the same as the filter feeders, all channels open to experience without discrimination. As we return to our working lives where we have projects, responsibilities, and deadlines we close off some of our attention from what is unimportant to achieving our goals. Gradually without awareness, we can close all channels of attention until there is only one channel we are filtering all experience through, the story of me and mine. To each sensation, each sound, taste, and sight, we constantly ask—how is this for me; how does this affect my bottom line; is this helping me with my agenda? We become like a sea sponge with only one aperture unable to be adequately nourished, unable to take in what won’t benefit our status or wellbeing. We forget to enjoy the life that is constantly swirling around us and we forget that we too are part of this flow of arising and passing.

Sound meditation is a wonderful way to create a bigger mind and experience the constant arising and passing of phenomena. Noticing the beginning of sounds, the ending, the way sounds overlap creating interplay and texture is a sure way to access some of our closed channels of attention and nourish the reality of Interbeing. What is also wonderful about sound meditation, is that it includes everything, the traffic, the neighbors’ loud TV, or your colleague typing in the next room. Sound meditation is portable and makes room for all the experiences that are happening right now—and it can soothe the judging mind that uses the label “irritating.”

If you like, right now, stop and listen without grasping onto the sounds, just allowing them to come to you without preference. Notice how the body reacts to listening. Do the shoulders get tighter with certain sounds, or soften and release with different sounds? There is no right way to hear—it is solely your unique human privilege right now. If your hearing is compromised—you can use your eyes—soften the focus and notice color or form, use the sense door of contact and direct your attention to the experience of contact on the skin. How does the skin on the hands feel in contact with the air, or the skin of the arms covered with clothing?

This week you may like to use your sense doors to nourish yourself in ways often overlooked. Taking in the uniqueness of this moment—knowing that there will never be another moment just like this one we can fully receive the gift of the present moment.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

6 comments on Opening the Channels to Life
Home to Ourselves for the Holidays

December 23, 2018

Listening to Ourselves, Mindfulness of feelings, not abandoning, present moment, Renunciation, Self-care, Uncategorized

Paperwhites, photo by Celia

“Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you.” ~David Whyte

“I have gone forth,

but not in search of sensual pleasures.

Seeing the danger in sensual pleasures

— and renunciation as rest —

I go to strive.

That’s where my heart delights.”

~ The Buddha, “Pabbaja Sutta: The Going Forth”, Thanissaro Bhikkhu (trans.)

“The more difficulties you have, in fact, the greater opportunity there is to let them transform you. The difficult things provoke all your irritations and bring your habitual patterns to the surface. And that becomes the moment of truth. You have the choice to launch into the lousy habitual patterns you already have, or to stay with the rawness and discomfort of the situation and let it transform you, on the spot.” ~ Pema Chödrön

Dear Friends,

It’s busy out there. We are shopping, hosting, checking Amazon Wishlists, buying Secret Santa gifts for the office, traveling to be with relatives, making New Year’s plans, and let us not forget there’s always some last minute shopping. There’s overwhelm and preparations for the hosts and tremendous longing for those who are unable to be with their families. There’s also isolation and sadness for those who are not part of the dominant Christian culture or are alone on holidays. December is both the busiest and loneliest time of the year.

More than a dozen years ago, I read about a simple holiday practice of making gifts for the wild animals. The author made peanut butter pinecone bird feeders for the chickadees and the squirrels and scattered dried corn for the deer in his yard on Christmas day. These simple gifts for those whose opinions won’t get us a promotion or be able to reciprocate in kind really touched me. This man was able to detach from the loud voices of the commercial world, to listen to the quieter voice of his own deepest intentions and honor his own kindness, inclusivity, and unrequited giving. That is my message today, a heartfelt encouragement for us all to take some time to stop and listen deeply to what our lives are calling out for.

This was the choice the Buddha made. Born into a life of privilege and power, he recognized that pleasures and comfort were not enough. His life needed to become simpler to find the truth. So he left. The Buddha must have been deeply discontent and unable to participate in a life that was so unsatisfactory. Instead of burying his heartsickness and living out his life comfortably as the pampered son of a tribal leader, he listened deeply to his own sense of responsibility for his own salvation and wellbeing. We know his journey ended with enlightenment and his teachings on the end of suffering have set free countless numbers of humans. For most of us, taking off from our lives, leaving our children and spouses to begin our spiritual quest raises issues about honoring our agreements and our compassion for others, not to mention our financial responsibilities and subsistence. As lay people with families and jobs, we can remember that there are many ways to come back to ourselves, to our true intentions and stay in our role as parent, partner, and householder.

We can start small and take a five-minute break to listen. Listening to ourselves is a way to remember who we are and what is going to set us free. We can begin with mindfulness of the body/mind. How are we feeling today? What’s the territory of my mind—what emotions are visiting and how am I really? We can ask if we are aligned with our heart’s intentions. How are we living our deepest desires today? Have we dropped our aspirations to spend today in the present moment and unconsciously consented to exchange our peace and ease for irritation and exhaustion in the form of a completed shopping list and a clean house? We can ask the poet David Whyte’s question, “What brings me alive right now?” What do we want our lives to be made of?

At this time of year, we can remember that all moments contain choice. We can pause and consider what we consenting to in each encounter and each moment. Remembering that returning to our inner wisdom and stillness is available for us even in this season of doing and getting. That’s my wish for us all as we turn towards a new year, that we may deepen our trust in our own goodness and learn to listen to our truest desires.

Wishing you joy and happiness for the new year.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

1 comment on Home to Ourselves for the Holidays
To Reconcile Means to Trust

December 10, 2018

Buddhism, Changing habit patterns, Expectations, Families, Forgiveness, Reconciliation, Relationship, Right speech, Self-care, Self-Kindness, Uncategorized

Winter Stream. Photo by Rick Errichetti

“The wounded child is there and we don’t even know she is there.

The wounded child in us is a reality, but we can’t see her.

That inability to see it is a kind of ignorance. This child has been severely wounded.

She or he really needs us to return.

Instead, we turn away.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh from Reconciliation

“It’s a cause of growth in the Dhamma and Vinaya of the noble ones when, seeing a

transgression as such, one makes amends in accordance with the Dhamma

and exercises restraint in the future.”

~ Digha Nikaya verse 2

“The people around us, our family and friends, may also have a severely

wounded child inside. If we’ve managed to help ourselves, we can also help them.

When we’ve healed ourselves, our relationships with others become much easier.

There’s more peace and more love in us.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, from Reconciliation

Dear Friends,

The holiday season brings lots of opportunities for families to connect and be together. For some of us, these celebrations are a real celebration, joyful occasions where we renew our connection with our families experience support, trust, and feel at home again with those we are closely linked to. And then, there is the dark side of the holiday, when old habits appear, people say things and react uncovering old wounds or creating new ones. We may leave the holiday table feeling bruised and battered and running for shelter instead of experiencing a safe refuge where we encounter care and consideration.

There is no standardization in how families react to hurt feelings and disappointment. Some minimize or ignore, some have a blowup and engage in simultaneous loud and energetic opinions. Some decide who is at fault and who to punish, while some distance, not trusting that there are welcome and respect. Individuals may stay away and try to keep safe from afar. It can be painful to have division and discord in our families especially at this time of year when there is a cultural expectation about what a happy welcoming family is.

Our expectations can make these situations much worse. These are the “shoulds” we insert in our judgments; my daughter should call because I am the parent. We should get along because we are family. My parents should apologize because they are wrong. He shouldn’t say/ do/think that. She should…fill in the blank. We believe that families are supposed to get along without conflict and when they don’t, we experience a loss. This loss of an ideal can hurt as much as the actual words and actions of family members. There is an often unconscious belief that if we try harder or were a better person, or they were a better person, we would stop feeling hurt and angry and there would be a magical spontaneous healing and understanding.

I recall being on retreat with Thich Nhat Hanh when a son asked about staying connected to his father who spoke with anger and refused to listen to him. Each conversation ended in a fight and hurt. Thây recommended that the son stop communicating with his father and care for his own suffering. He needed to listen to the part of himself that was hurt and discouraged, to hear the longing for trust, respect, and care for his own loss and sadness. Only then would he could be able to engage with his father without reacting from the place of rawness and quick reactivity.

In Buddhism, there is the opportunity to do lots of violence to the self through spiritual-bypass. This is a rush to get over our hurt, because –if we are good Buddhists, we know this world, including all spoken words and even our solid appearance of a self, are in the ultimate reality a chimera and have the consistency of a soap bubble. That is an often convenient mindset to escape the nitty-gritty and humbling work of looking at our own words, deeds, and intentions. We all exist in the historical dimension and when we use the teachings as an escape route from admitting our culpability or to not take responsibility for how we hurt another, we are abiding in ignorance.

Forgiveness and reconciliation and two different things. Tibetan nun Thubten Chodron says that one cannot truly forgive until they fully understand the depth of hurt they have suffered. This doesn’t mean to dive into self-righteous recounting and blaming but is a call to do the work of sitting with the difficult feelings with empathy, tenderness, and pure understanding that we are all sensitive beings who desire love, trust, and consideration. We cannot forgive until we have cared for the parts of the self who are hurt. A rush to forgive and reconcile before one has the time and space to meet their own needs results in a veneer of friendliness that tears apart quickly at the slightest offense. True forgiveness requires patience and the willingness to care for the self before extending ourselves to another who has hurt us.

Thanissaro Bhikkhu writes a beautiful article about forgiveness and reconciliation for the sangha and in our own lives that outlines some of the stages in this process. He writes, “[r]econciliation — patisaraniya-kamma — means a return to amicability, and that requires more than forgiveness. It requires the reestablishing of trust. If I deny responsibility for my actions, or maintain that I did no wrong, there’s no way we can be reconciled. Similarly, if I insist that your feelings don’t matter, or that you have no right to hold me to your standards of right and wrong, you won’t trust me not to hurt you again. To regain your trust, I have to show my respect for you and for our mutual standards of what is and is not acceptable behavior; to admit that I hurt you and that I was wrong to do so; and to promise to exercise restraint in the future.” Reestablishing trust is at the root of reconciliation. There can be no friendship, no connection, or willingness to be near someone we do not trust. And we know that trust takes time to build.

Social scientist Dr. Breneʹ Brown describes building trust as adding marbles to a jar. Each time we encounter another and experience safety when we share what is dear to us, we add a marble to the jar. When the jar is full of these small moments, we have a foundation of trust. When we do not feel safe with another person, when there are unkind words or actions, there is no trust and the marbles spill out of the jar. Building trust means we are sensitive to the needs of another and their feelings and it takes time. Rebuilding relationships does not coincide with a calendar date, as much as we may feel pressure to do so.

This holiday season, no matter what side of the table you find yourself are on—the one who feels hurt and unheard, or the one who acted and spoke with good intentions, but was unskillful and is experiencing the consequence of unmindful speech, please start at the beginning. As Thay would say, come home to yourself and make your own home a safe place. Take the time to listen to that hurt in you—and the part of yourself that needs your own care, compassion, and nurture. Remember that healing is non-linear and doesn’t go in a straight line. True forgiveness and reconciliation happen when there is enough self-care to heal the willingness to trust again.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

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I Choose Both

December 3, 2018

Generosity, Happiness, not abandoning, Uncategorized

Snow falling in Bethel, ME. Photo by Karen Swanson

“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

“When we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change ourselves.”

“A human being is a deciding being.”

~All quotes Viktor E. Frankl

Dear Friends,

Have you ever experienced a feeling of dissonance despite the fact that you are doing what you should, taking the best course of action for your job or as a parent, and yet, there was a scratchy feeling of unrest and anxiety? I am paying attention to this feeling and what I am unearthing is the effect of hidden mixed motivation. Often there are more than one motivators at play in our lives. We usually go with the ones that show us in the best light, make us look unselfish or generous. Our choices often stem from our conditioning and wanting to be seen as good. This evaluation of good and bad motivations can keep our deeper desires and needs hiding from ourselves and result in subtle and not so subtle feelings of distraction and anxiety.

One of the biggest and most concealed drivers of our actions is to be seen in a certain way. We want to do the right thing—to be the generous one, the saintly one. We certainly don’t want to be the selfish lazy one, the one who just wants pleasure and their own comfort. This desire to be seen in a certain way is one of the three hungers the Buddha spoke about, the hunger of becoming. We want to become something specific in a conditioned setting. This hidden desire for a way of being can cause great conflict when we do not have the honesty to confront our desires directly.

In Buddhist forums, I’ve heard folks confess that they really want ease, recognition, or comfort and are surprised how that desire is driving them. There is an unspoken evaluation of “bad” attached to wanting a life free from suffering, with ease, and enjoyment. It’s much more acceptable to speak about service and the Bodhisattva ideal of liberating all beings instead of disclosing the truth of feeling irritated when caring for sick parents or acknowledging how much research and upheaval it creates cooking for a child with a gluten allergy. We may carefully attend to the sick parent and create delicious gluten-free meals for our kid, but when we have an unacknowledged conflict in our intentions, it blocks our spacious generous heart and creates resentment and a limited capacity.

The first step in opening to allow true generosity is removing the dualistic and discriminative label of good and bad to our motivations. Visiting our ill parents, or moving in to care for an elderly parent can conflict with our need for autonomy, for spaciousness, ease, and enjoyment. When we label these desires as selfish and bad, we don’t want to own them or be associated with them. Dropping the conditioned judgment and looking beyond the labels we can give ourselves the understanding that, of course—we, just like all beings, desire to create our own lives. All beings long to be in charge of themselves. At the same time we desire our freedom, we may want to honor our commitments and care for the people we love. However, when our ability to create our own lives is not supported, that lack of understanding blocks the ability to open-heartedly attend to another intention.

When we are able to regard all of our desires and motivators as benevolent—even the ones that in the past have incorporated the unskillful tactics of greed or anger, we can acknowledge them without shame or turning away. Recognizing and allowing all of our motivations takes the first steps towards accepting the whole of our humanity with compassion. If we allow all of our desires to be seen with the same valuation we step into a new way of relating to our choices—they become conscious and the methods for caring for ourselves and others become more creative and varied.

When I know I desire some rest and fun after a hectic week AND I also want to help my friend with the herniated disc pack up her kitchen because I value her friendship and want to make life better for her, allowing both those things to have equal weight gives me relief. If I believe that helping my friend is more holy, generous, and pure than caring for myself, I will create conflict through an involuntary act of self-abandonment. If I do not see the whole of my motivations and I chose to stay home and take a nap and watch a movie, I will have guilt at my choice because I continue to see one as more evolved and better than the other.

The simple practice of looking deeply and honestly gives us the freedom to choose. Knowing what we are needing and legalizing our humanity gives great relief. Recognizing the validity of wanting ease, joy, and to be seen in a certain way is already a freedom that gives us more choice. When we accept our mixed motivations without judgment we can make choices that nourish all of our desires, clearly, without punishing others for needing help and without becoming martyrs. When we act from a place of clarity, we choose the seeds we want to water and how we want to live, authentically, and with equal compassion for self and others.

This week you may want to use the guidance of the emotions to alert you to when you are operating from conflict. Looking honestly without judgment can give you the freedom to choose to follow one path of action because that value creates a more beautiful life. Recognizing our choice point that gets buried beneath the “should’ and the “have to” creates a life that includes both autonomy and compassion. When we wake up to the choices we make in each moment we are no longer a passive victim. We can recognize our responsibility and our capacity to create lives in accord with our deepest intentions.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

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Celebrate Everyday

November 26, 2018

Gift to self, Gratitude, Happiness, Healing our society, Healing Ourselves, interbeing, Uncategorized

Daffodil head. Photo by Celia

“Ever since happiness heard your name, it has been running through the streets trying to find you.” ~Hafez

“Rejoicing in the good fortune of others is a practice that can help us when we feel emotionally shut down and unable to connect with others. Rejoicing generates good will.” ~Pema Chodron

“Everything that is made beautiful and fair and lovely is made for the eye of one who sees.” ~Rumi

“This is your celebration.” ~Kool and the Gang

Dear Friends,

Now that Thanksgiving is over, Americans, once again, are plunged into the vortex of consumption. We can shop all night and day and contribute to the important fourth-quarter earnings that keep our fiscal world spinning. Gift giving is linked to celebration in our culture and comes to us as virtuous consumption, distilled from religious traditions. Our holiday shopping buoys the weighty dictates of capitalism and the Consumer Confidence Index. Maybe it’s my imagination, but holiday marketing this year seems earlier and more unapologetically fierce than ever. While I appreciate cultivating generosity, the obvious commercial manipulation to make us want what we don’t need and can’t afford seems such a poor substitute for what we are really longing for.

All the marketing in the world can’t make us believe that we will truly be happy when we get the just right thing. We know that that new computer or cell phone won’t really be the catalyst for connecting with others or make us less lonely. We know that our new weave won’t guarantee that others accept us for who we are or bring us someone to love us for our authentic self. I am looking at what we are really searching for during our hours trolling through Amazon Wishlists checking off the gifts we are obliged to buy. What do we want to celebrate? Not stuff, not momentary happiness.

I believe we are all looking to go deeper and to celebrate the gifts we have already been given. When we recognize the abundance in our lives, we can celebrate every day. There’s a celebration in seeing the generosity of the Earth, the beauty of kindness in others and in ourselves, the delight in someone who makes music, sings or creates beautiful food. That may sound naïve and impossible, but when we consider what Interbeing is—the knowledge that all rely on each other to support our lives much more than we know, we can celebrate what we have already been freely given.

Dance in the kitchen and celebrate that you can still dance despite the pain in your knees and your 1980’s dance moves. Celebrate that you can feed your friends and those you don’t know. Celebrate that you have a quarter to give away to the woman sitting by the subway and that you have laundry to be washed. Celebrate the good in others and in yourself. Our feelings are worth celebrating, the happiness and sadness that let us be fully present to experience life and this body we have on loan—that allows us to engage in the process of being a human on Earth and the energy of life that enables us to wake up each day.

Celebrate when a spontaneous thought of generosity appears, the wish to help, the desire to see a world free from violence and inconsideration. Allow someone else’s point of view to matter as much as our own and celebrate dropping our judgment to find out what happened to make them speak with hatred. Find the celebration in the sweet sharpness of the pomegranate seeds that we did not have to tend, but grew healthy and fertile without our worry. Knowing what causes suffering…that first drink, eating all the cheesecake, texting that person who is not good for us, and we don’t do it—that’s a celebration. In our grief, we can celebrate that we have a friend we trust to understand. There are celebrations waiting for us everywhere we look. Where is your celebration hiding today? Celebrating this life is the realization of our interbeing. We don’t do it alone. Get a little retro with this video and start the party early. Let happiness be your default mode. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GwjfUFyY6M

May we all trust our light,

Celia

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Being Compassion Wherever We Go

November 18, 2018

Buddhism, compassion, Forgiveness, Healing Ourselves, Self-Kindness, Uncategorized

Snowclouds. Photo by Celia

“The Buddha told Ananda, ‘You still listen to the Dharma with the conditioned mind, and so the Dharma becomes conditioned as well, and you do not obtain the Dharma-nature. It is like when someone points his finger at the moon to show it to someone else. Guided by the finger, that person should see the moon. If he looks at the finger instead and mistakes it for the moon, he loses not only the moon but the finger also. Why? It is because he mistakes the pointing finger for the bright moon.’” ~Shurangam Sutta

“The teaching is like a raft that carries you to the other shore. The raft is needed, but the raft is not the other shore. An intelligent person would not carry the raft around on his head after making it across to the other shore. Bhikkhus, my teaching is the raft which can help you cross to the other shore beyond birth and death. Use the raft to cross to the other shore, but don’t hang onto it as your property. Do not become caught in the teaching. You must be able to let it go.”

~Thich Nhat Hanh from Old Path White Clouds: Walking in the Footsteps of the Buddha

“We have to continue to learn. We have to be open. And we have to be ready to release our knowledge in order to come to a higher understanding of reality.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

Dear Friends,

In our lives, we have lots of training. Some of us were taught the forms of practice in our root religious traditions. We may have gone to classes to become good Christians, Muslims, Jews, or Buddhists. We may go on retreats to learn techniques of meditation or do mindfulness training, yoga training, or some form of wellness practice. In all these endeavors there’s a point of integration when we take the practice off the cushion or the mat and we bring it into our lives. I’ve heard this described as the way we learn to dance. At first, we count steps and follow the outline, but after repeated practice, the body learns what to do and we can respond to the changing music with grace and ability. In the same way, our practice gets into our bones and we learn to respond skillfully to what is happening.

In the Buddhist tradition siilabbata-paraamaasa, “grasping at precepts & practices,” is one of the five lower fetters from the list of the ten that binds us to Samsara, the repeating habits of causing suffering for ourselves. This means getting bound up in the appearance of doing things right and believing that fulfilling one’s obligations is equivalent to practicing real compassion and wise action. So, what does it mean to be devoted to our spiritual progress and practice but not attached to form? This means making our practice our own.

What does an integrated practice look like? Our lives are unique and as Jack Kornfield reminds us, in the eons of human development, there has never been this person on the planet who is you. We are all unique and have our own individual history and life situation and that life situation is constantly changing. When we believe that we satisfy our intentions for compassion and growth through our forms of practice, we set ourselves up for disappointment and frustration when the outside conditions of life don’t support us in fulfilling our goals. And we miss the opportunities to bring these practices to the relational world.

So, we may wake up and your dog is sick, and we have to call out of work and take her to the emergency vet and we don’t get to sit and meditate, or the pipes freeze and burst in the bathroom and we have to give up our weekend retreat to find a plumber and a carpenter to make repairs. We may be very diligent at saying our compassion phrases and blessing the strangers in the grocery store, but when our elderly neighbor needs a ride to the drug store, we don’t want to sacrifice our Qigong time and drive her. In our lives, we are called upon to be the embodiment of our training and our fundamental desire to wake up and alleviate suffering in the world.

Being unattached to forms and rituals may include the need to forgive ourselves for not doing what we want and doing what is necessary. The karma-phala, the karmic fruit of practice is apparent in our quality of heart in the moments when we are called upon to respond. Do we begrudge the time spent buying our kid winter boots because we have more spiritual projects to attend to, or can we carry our intention to befriend ourselves into that project as well? The practice of compassionate presence and non-abandoning ourselves becomes wedded to our being and we can practice mindfulness of the body, of our emotions, and compassionate care of ourselves and others, no matter what is happening.

With holidays coming and the demands of family and society ramping up, I encourage us all to practice some forgiveness and realism regarding our practice. Maybe this means letting go of our consistent meditation streak on the Insight Timer app or giving ourselves understanding when we only have time for three breaths to center ourselves before sleep. But be realistic, can we make time for our formal practice? Is it supporting what we do in our lives? If doing the practice creates more pain—that’s a signal that we need to change the plan. Practice is a crucial support for developing our own stillness and insight AND how do we make it our own? I’d love to hear some of the many ways your kindness is manifesting in the world. Drop a line, if you have time.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

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