Instead, Stand Still and Listen
I can’t seem to get enough Tony Hoagland these days. Like this excerpt from Social Life:
What I like about trees is how
they do not talk about the failure of their parents
and what I like about grasses is that
they are not grasses in recovery
and what I like about the flowers is
that they are not flowers in need of
empowerment or validation. They sway
upon their thorny stems
as if whatever was about to happen next tonight
was sure to be completely interesting–
the moon rising like an ivory tusk,
a few sextillion molecules of skunk
strolling through the air
to mingle with the aura of a honeysuckle bush,
and when they bump together in my nose,
I want to raise my head and sing,
I’m a child in paradise again
when you touch me like that, baby,
but instead, I stand still and listen
to the breeze streaming through the upper story of a tree
and the hum of insects in the field,
letting everything else have a word,
and then another word–
because silence is always good manners
and often a clever thing to say
when you are at a party.
What Kind of Happiness?
In Dancing with Life, Phillip Moffitt writes about the difference between:
(1) Happiness that arises when things are going the way you want them to
(2) Happiness that comes when your mind is joyful and at ease, no matter what’s going on
(3) The unbounded joy you feel when your mind has ceased all clinging
“It is easy to recognize the first kind of happiness; you know full well how much you like it when conditions in your life are just as you wish them to be….
“The second kind of happiness is experienced on those occasions when you are temporarily in such a good mood, or so centered, or so quiet, or so appreciative that when you encounter an unpleasant person at work or a frustrating situation at home, you aren’t overwhelmed. Life isn’t the way you would prefer it to be, but you feel just fine right now and you are not being defined by unpleasant conditions… I characterize this second kind of happiness as being centered in a state of mind that is happy….”
Of course both these kinds of happiness are temporary. Which is why we often feel stress and discomfort, even when things are going our way. But there’s a 3rd kind of happiness, which is the ultimate aim of our practice.
Phillip writes, “The well-being that arises when you begin going through the various stages of nibbana is not subject to conditions or to the state of your mind. You can be having a lousy time and your mind not be in an exalted state, yet the mind is unruffled. This is a mind that is liberated. There is nothing temporary about it. This third kind of well-being is independent of any external or internal factors…
“The esteemed Thai Buddhist teacher Ajahn Jumnian refers to this state as ‘happy happy.’ Such a moment of well-being gives you the sense of what is possible and provides faith and inspiration for your practice. Sometimes it can happen to you on a long meditation retreat, or it can follow a life-threatening illness, accident, or a near-death experience in your life, or it can arise out of a spontaneous full relaxation into the ‘sacred now’, without your having a clue as to why it occurred.
“The common factor in moments of realized well-being is a surrender of the ego into being present with what is without resistance, followed by a shift in perception that is too mysterious to describe. The result is a sense of well-being that is incomparable, unsurpassable, and far beyond anything else you have known.”
What to Bring Home
Update:
All went well yesterday with mom’s cataract surgery. Her memory of it this morning was a little crazy….first she said she’d been awake the whole time, then she said they kept her waiting under a blanket for “hours” (the whole procedure took 45 minutes), then she said she didn’t think they’d done anything at all….but still she was in great spirits, delighted and amazed at all the things she can see!!!
***
For today:
My Memory
by Jane Hirshfield
Like the small soaps and shampoos
a traveler brings home
then won’t use,
you, memory,
almost weightless
this morning inside me.
Might As Well Celebrate
Every morning I recite these Five Reflections:
I am of the nature to grow old; there’s no way to escape growing old.
I am of the nature to have ill health; there’s no way to escape having ill health.
I am of the nature to die; there’s no way to escape death.
All that I have and everyone I love are of the nature to change; there’s no way to escape being separated from them.
My actions are my only true belongings; I can not escape the consequences of my actions; my actions are the womb from which I am born; whatever I may do, for good or for ill, of that I will fall heir.
***
I won’t be posting tomorrow because I’ll be taking my mom to have cataract surgery. That’s us in the photo above, taken in 2008, at Fitz’s, where we went to celebrate my birthday. I was 58 and had orange hair back then; she was 79 and remembered birthdays. Things change.
Behind the Counter
I went to the post office today to fill out forms, get my picture taken, and send in a surprising amount of money to get my passport renewed. There was a long line. It wasn’t moving. I watched myself starting to get tangled up in a lot of “it shouldn’t be like this”….and then I relaxed and looked a little more carefully…and I noticed how the woman behind the counter was really trying to be helpful — and caring — to the woman at the head of the line who was clearly having a difficult time of it. And then, all of a sudden, the waiting wasn’t all that much of a problem.
In tribute, I offer this poem for today:
At the Corner Store
by Alison Luterman
He was a new old man behind the counter,
Skinny and eager.
He greeted me like a long-lost daughter,
As if we both came from the same world,
Someplace warmer and more gracious than this cold city.
I was thirsty and alone. Sick at heart, grief-soiled,
And his face lit up as if I were his prodigal daughter
Returning,
Coming back to the freezer bins in front of the register
Which were still and always filled
With the same old Cable Car ice cream sandwiches and cheap frozen greens.
Back to the knobs of beef and packages of hotdogs,
These familiar shelves strung with potato chips and corn chips,
Stacked-up beer boxes and immortal Jim Beam.
I lumbered to the case and bought my precious bottled water
And he returned my change, beaming
As if I were the bright new buds on the just-bursting-open cherry trees,
As if I were everything beautiful struggling to grow,
And he was blessing me as he handed me my dime
Over the counter and the plastic tub of red licorice whips.
This old man who didn’t speak English
Beamed out love to me in the iron week after my mother’s death
So that when I emerged from his store
My whole cock-eyed life —
What a beautiful failure —
Glowed gold like a sunset after rain.
Frustrated city dogs were yelping in their yards,
Mad with passion behind their chain-link fences,
And in the driveway of a peeling-paint house
A woman and a girl danced to contagious reggae.
Praise Allah! Jah! The Buddha! Kwan Yin,
Jesus, Mary, and even jealous old Jehovah!
For eyes, hands,
Of the divine, everywhere.
2016
Who Makes You Smile?
I’m thinking about leading a guided Metta meditation at Sunday Sangha this coming weekend. Metta is often translated as “lovingkindness,” but I prefer “goodwill” or “friendliness” because it’s really about developing the habit of responding to others….and to ourselves….with a non-judgmental, non-aversive attitude.
Traditionally we start the practice by wishing happiness/safety/wellbeing to ourselves, but sometimes that’s hard. It feels selfish. Or awkward. Or it brings up feelings of unworthiness. Or reminds us of how unhappy/unsafe/unwell we often are!
So instead I like to start by telling people to picture someone who makes them smile. (Could be a kid. Could be a dog!) Usually this evokes such a pleasant mental feeling that it’s easy to want good things for that person…or pet: May you be safe. May you be happy.
Lately I’ve tried using less traditional phrases like: I hope things go well for you. I want you to be happy. May you live well and prosper!
Sound like fun? Join us on Sunday. (11:00 am to 12:30 pm at Solar Yoga, 6002 Pershing, 63112)
Or try it right now:
Think of someone who makes you smile. Wish them well.
Pursuit of Happiness
I’m in the mood for a little Tony Hoagland today…something from his collection of poems: What Narcissism Means to Me.
How It Adds Up
by Tony Hoagland
There was the day we swam in a river, a lake, and an ocean.
And the day I quit the job my father got me.
And the day I stood outside a door,
and listened to my girlfriend making love
to someone obviously not me, inside,
and I felt strange because I didn’t care.
There was the morning I was born,
the year I was a loser,
and the night I was the winner of the prize
for which the audience applauded.
Then there was someone else I met,
whose face and voice I can’t forget,
and the memory of her
is like a jail I’m trapped inside,
or maybe she is something I just use
to hold my real life at a distance.
Happiness, Joe says, is a wild red flower
plucked from a river of lava
and held aloft on a tightrope
strung between two scrawny trees
above a canyon
in a manic-depressive windstorm.
Don’t drop it, Don’t drop it, Don’t drop it–,
And when you do, you will keep looking for it
everywhere, for years,
while right behind you,
the footprints you are leaving
will look like notes
of a crazy song.
What Love’s Got to Do with It
Tonight I meet (by Skype) with my White Awake study group. It’s a very thoughtful and surprisingly non-confrontational course of study that looks at Whiteness and Racism and while it covers pretty much what you’d expect, it’s unlike any “diversity training” I’ve ever done before. It’s hard to explain what’s so different about it. Let me just say that it feels like this time the subject is being looked at with love. And it’s having a profound impact on my ease and openness in looking at — and talking about — the many habitual ways that people in a dominant culture tend to ignore/discount/not-see/not-include whatever doesn’t fit into the narrative of that culture.
So in honor of this process of waking up, I offer this quote from Maya Angelou:
“I don’t trust people who don’t love themselves and tell me, ‘I love you.’… There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.”
2016
By Jan
Comments Off on Never Any More Than There Is Right Now
Never Any More Than There Is Right Now
In the first talk our little “Sampler” group will listen to next month, Lila Wheeler offers this quote from Walt Whitman, which I pass on here to you:
Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems…
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand….
nor look through the eyes of the dead….
There will never be any more perfection than there is right now;
any more heaven or hell than there is right now.
***
The title of Lila’s talk is Joy and Gladdening. You can listen to it here.
2016
Will This Lead to Happiness?
At yesterday’s Sunday Sangha, Thomas kicked off a lively discussion about the nature of desire and the “hallucination of perception” that getting what we want will make us happy. He offered this passage from Joseph Goldstein’s Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening:
“Sensual desires arise from the fundamental misperception that they will actually bring about a lasting happiness–something that, given their impermanence, is not possible. In Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Anna’s lover comes to this realization:
‘Vronsky, meanwhile, in spite of the complete realization of what he had so long desired, was not perfectly happy. He soon felt that the realization of his desires gave him no more than a grain of sand out of the mountain of happiness he had expected. It showed him the mistake men make in picturing to themselves happiness as the realization of their desires.'” (The mistake women make too, I might add.)