Patience Comes to the Bones
Last week I posted (here) about realizing that the attribute of patience is….well, let me just say: not my strong suit.
I’ve been especially aware of this lately….as all of a sudden it seems, I’ve been deluged with projects/tasks/responsibilities….several which appear to me in states of quasi-crisis.
The result of which is that I haven’t been posting as frequently as I would like.
Even now, as I’m typing, I feel the need to rush.
So….
I take a deep breath.
And offer this for today:
Patience
by Mary Oliver
What is the good life now? Why,
look here, consider
the moon’s white crescent
rounding, slowly, over
the half month to still another
perfect circle–
the shining eye
that lightens the hills,
that lays down the shadows
of the branches of the trees,
that summons the flowers
to open their sleepy faces and look up
into the heavens.
I used to hurry everywhere,
and leaped over the running creeks.
There wasn’t
time enough for all the wonderful things
I could think of to do
in a single day. Patience
comes to the bones
before it takes root in the heart
as another good idea.
I say thins
as I stand in the woods
and study the patterns
of the moon shadows,
or stroll down into the waters
that now, late summer, have also
caught the fever, and hardly move
from one eternity to another.
Read All About It
We made the news!
St. Louis reporter, Debra Bass, attend a recent meditation retreat led by Shaila Catherine and Phil Jones, held this past August in the Kansas City area. (The retreat was organized by Mid-America Dharma, whose board I recently joined.)
This was Debra’s first silent retreat..but it looks like it won’t be her last:
“I’m rather animated, and dramatic storytelling is one of my favorite ways to entertain friends. I’m a loud laugher, and I love a pithy exchange of verbal volleys. My typical retreat involves a passport, yoga classes, lux spa treatments and a juicy murder mystery book. Needless to say, some of my friends expected that I’d call to be rescued from this serene retreat in a 120-year-old building that was originally designed as a mental health asylum known as the ‘Home of the Insane.’
“Yet, in the end I wanted to stay a few days longer in my aged twin bed and vintage floral sheets, crocheted blankets and a stiff creaky mattress. I wanted to sleep a few more days with the gurgling moans of the window air-conditioning unit. I wanted to continue being awakened by the ting of hand-rung bells as 6 a. am.
“I knew I would miss doing yoga barefoot alone on the cool stones lining the Koi pond. I would dream of the afternoon ritual I dubbed porch swing meditation.
“I was not ready to leave. I had found my groove…
“When I returned to my daily life in St. Louis, my friends asked if I felt different (I did) and they asked if I thought my life would be better. At this I shrugged. Within hours of returning home from the retreat a series of unfortunate events showed me that life would continue to be life. The first text I received when I turned my cell phone back on was an image of one of my dearest friends in a hospital bed. He had emergency surgery (ironically, he was my emergency contact during the retreat). Next, a flat tire. At the service shop, I was informed that I needed four new tires that were installed as I waited with my luggage still in the trunk.
“Then, an email from the guy I’d been dating for six months telling me that we should probably just be friends. As I digested this news, I heard screams and shouts outside and a loud knocking on my front door. My neighbor told me that my air condenser had been stolen by two guys in a white SUV. I had been home 17 minutes when I stood staring at the empty concrete patch where the unit had been.
“After the police left, I took a shower, climbed into bed and slept. I lamented my losses and shed a few tears from fatigue and frustration, but I did not ask why me, why now, why does the universe hate me or indulge in grousing other than wonder. A recurring theme at the retreat was that you can’t change life’s cruel tide, but you can choose not to be roiled by it. The next morning I got up at 6:30 a.m. to mediate……”
***
She goes on delightfully from there. And concludes:
“At the end of the retreat, we each shared thoughts, insights, impressions of our experience and one guy in his 30s who works as a lobbyist said that he never felt more alive than he did right then.
“I initially shuddered at the hyperbole, but I couldn’t deny that I felt significantly different. I felt clearer-headed than I could remember. I felt unburdened. I felt utterly and completely OK that I’d spent eight perfectly good summer vacation days sitting in a dimly lighted room with strangers I didn’t talk to. And I wanted to stay.”
***
Click here to read the entire article. It includes links to upcoming retreats, recommends finding a group to start practicing with….and: there’s a link to Dharma Town!!!!!!
Kind of Crazy
This study of the Abhidhamma is fascinating (and kind of crazy….for example, it says that there is a sequence of 17 separate “mind moments” that occur in the cognitive process of seeing a visual object, which begin with a moment of “life continuum” passing, then “vibrating,” then “being arrested”, then a moment of the mind “adverting” to the “sense door being stimulated” — the eye — then “seeing consciousness” happening, then the seen object being “received into the mind”, etc etc etc).
But I’m willing to go with it. Because, frankly, it’s not any “crazier” than what modern, Western science has been telling us…and which meditators have been confirming for 2600 years…that what we take to be “real” and “solid” and governed by a “self”….is not.
For example:
“Subatomic particles are not made of any material substance. They have a certain mass but this mass is a form of energy. Energy however is always associated with processes, with activity; it is a measure of activity.
“Subatomic particles, then, are bundles of energy, or patterns of activity. The energy patterns of the subatomic world form stable atonic and molecular structures, which build up matter and give it its macroscopic solid appearance thus making us believe that it is made of some material substance.
“At the everyday, macroscopic level, the notion of a substance is quite useful, but at the atomic level it no longer makes sense. Atoms consist of particles and these particles are not made of any material stuff. When we observe them, we never see any substance; what we observe are dynamic patterns continually changing into one another–a continuous dance of energy.”
— The Turning Point, by Fritjof Capra
What 3?
There was an interesting exercise this week in the homework for the on-line Abhidhamma course I’m taking. The topic is the 10 Beautiful Qualities of Mind/Heart (called Parami, in Pali), which are mental legacies that can be developed and then passed on from one mind-moment to the next (and, according to the teachings, from one lifetime to the next).
These 10 Beautiful Qualities on Mind/Heart are:
Generosity
Non-Harming (Ethical Conduct)
Renunciation
Wisdom
Energy
Patience
Truthfulness
Resolve/Determination
Lovingkindness
Equanimity
The exercise was to rank these qualities in the order of their prevalence, predominance or frequency in our own heart/mind. Then to select the 3 we felt were most developed (i.e. our default setting) and the 3 most absent. Then to reflect on why these were chosen, and on what benefit/suffering has been present in our life as a result.
Interesting.
I chose Resolve, Energy and Non-Harming as my 3 most developed. And Renunciation, Equanimity and Patience as my 3 most absent.
Hmmm.
So now the exercise is: what personal activity, belief, attitude, emotion, etc. must be let go of in order to further develop the 3 most lacking?
OK. This is the hard part.
Stay tuned.
***
(image: Three of a Kind, by Sharon Atkinson)
Selling Fishhooks
Last night, one of my dharma buddies and I listened to a fascinating talk by Guy Armstrong, titled: Consciousness, Awareness and Nibbana. In the talk, he quoted this lovely poem by Rumi:
Tending Two Shops
Don’t run around this world
looking for a hole to hide in.
There are wild beast in EVERY cave!
If you live with mice,
the cat claws will find you.
The only real rest comes
when you’re alone with the Mystery.
Live in the nowhere that you came from,
even though you have an address here.
That’s why you see things in two ways.
Sometimes you look at a person
and see a cynical snake.
Someone else sees a joyful lover,
and you’re both right!
Everyone is half and half,
like the black and white ox.
Joseph looked ugly to his brothers,
and most handsome to his father.
You have eyes that see from that nowhere,
and eyes that judge distance,
how high and how low.
Yow own two shops,
and you run back and forth.
Try to close the one that’s a fearful trap,
getting always smaller. Checkmate,
this way. Checkmate that.
Keep open the shop
where you’re not selling fishhooks anymore.
You ARE the free-swimming fish.
Welcome Home
For today:
My Life Was the Size of My Life
by Jane Hirshfield
My life was the size of my life.
Its rooms were room-sized,
its soul was the size of a soul.
In its background, mitochondria hummed,
above it sun, clouds, snow,
the transit of stars and planets.
It road elevators, bullet trains,
various airplanes, a donkey.
It wore socks, shirts, its own ears and nose.
It ate, it slept, it opened
and closed its hands, its windows.
Others, I know, had lives larger.
Others, I know, had lives shorter.
The depth of lives, too, is different.
There were times my life and I made jokes together.
There were times we made bread.
Once, I grew moody and distant.
I told my life I would like some time,
I would like to try seeing others.
In a week, my empty suitcase and I returned.
I was hungry, then, and my life,
my life, too, was hungry, we could not keep
our hands off
our closes on
our tongues from
Remember to Recognize
I’m loving this Abhidamma course! For example, I had a little “ah-ha” moment when I was listening to Steve Armstrong give the meditation instructions…after hearing him define “mindfulness” as “remembering to recognize.”
At the beginning of every sit, his instructions are to:
Remember to recognize the present moment experience.
I heard that and I thought: Ah-ha! “Remember” is sati (be mindful) and “Recognize” is sampajanna (clearly know)! As in the traditional instructions where the Buddha describes his followers as “contemplating the body [or breath, or whatever] ardent, clearing knowing, and mindful….”
For me, the instruction to “remember to recognize” suggests a much more specific quality of attention than “bring your awareness to…,” “notice..,” or even “pay attention to….”
It’s one thing to be more-or-less “mindful” of the breath, or body, or whatever’s going on in the mind. And quite another to remember that what I want to do is to actually recognize what’s happening.
Try it!
Cosmic Allurement
More from the talk Jack Kornfield gave at the Fetzer Institute (which Mirabai shared with me during my visit with her):
“I think of love as mysterious, like gravity. You can research it in certain ways, but scientists cannot agree on the nature of gravity. Brian Swimme talks about cosmic allurement, that we came out of the singularity and we remember it.
“The great mystery is that we are interested in, attracted to, anything whatsoever. Love beings there: to become fascinated, to feel allurement, is to step into a wild love affair on any level of life. By pursuing your allurements, you help bind the universe together. The unity of the world rests on the pursuit of passion.
“Contemplative practices are designed to re-establish or re-awaken the original visceral body sense, both physically and emotionally. In practice, all our senses are somehow awakened to love.
“The question for the future of humanity is: How will transformation happen in the world? Not by outer change alone. No amount of computers or internet or nanotechnology and biotechnology are going to stop warfare or racism or environmental destruction without an awakening to interdependence and to love.
“Without the inner dimension meeting the outer, we’ll achieve new scientific developments but probably also find new ways to oppress and harm one another. We’ve been doing it for a long time. Plato [may have] said that only the dead have seen the end of war. You hear that and you weep…
“We have to remember that we are all interdependent. Love is the shift of identity, the opening, the permeability in membranes. It doesn’t mean that you lose your individuality but that your uniqueness is linked to the whole. Love is what we long for, and it’s what makes us happy.
“Why not become the one who ‘lives with a full moon in each eye that is always saying with that sweet moon language what every other eye in the world is dying to hear.'”
This Life. This Flood.
For today: This poem.
My Sandwich
by Jane Hirshfield
So many things
you’d not have thought of
until they were given.
Even the simple —
a cottage cheese sandwich,
a heron’s contractable neck.
You eat. You look.
Then you look back and its over.
This life. This flood —
unbargained for as lasting love was —
of lasting oddness.
Soundboard of the Mind
I’ve completed Week 1 of the 6-week on-line course I’m taking through Spirit Rock — A Field Guide to the Mind: Practical Abhidamma for Meditators — and so far, so good. I especially like the analogy teacher Steve Armstrong uses for the 52 Mental Factors outlined in the Abhidamma.
He says: “The 52 different mental factors are like a soundboard of the mind arising in different combinations and strengths in each moment of consciousness.”
For example, there are 7 of these factors that are said to be “involved in every moment of mental life/consciousness.” These are:
* Contact — this is the simultaneous arising of sense object, sense door and sense consciousness, e.g. visible object + eye + seeing consciousness
* Feeling — the pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral feeling of the moment
* Perception — the recognition of the uniqueness of the moment
* Volition — the intention (which may be dormant or highly activated)
* One-pointedness — the ability to select a single object at any one moment of time
* Psychic life — the life force of the mind (this is what’s present in a body but not present in a corpse)
* Attention — the ability to confront the percent moment’s object
***
Cool!